Abstract
The importance of oligarchic development and the role this played in Ukraine since independence is a vast subject deserving of a book in itself. Here the term oligarchate will be used to refer to the system of ruling that has developed in which the establishment players are oligarchs, politicians and high-level officials. The focus is on those aspects of oligarchy that are most relevant to three key themes of the book.
‘Let me tell about the very rich. They are different from you and me.’
(F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Rich Boy, 1926)
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Two important examples are Tymoshenko who has never appeared on the Forbes list, and Poroshenko who did not appear on it until 2014.
- 3.
Havrylyshyn (2006), p. 188.
- 4.
Unless otherwise noted, the information about careers of individuals is taken from Wikipedia biographies of the individual.
- 5.
Just as an example, the Wikipedia entry for Henadyi Boholiubov, in Ukraine’s top five since at least 2006, comprises a mere fifty words of essentially uninformative personal facts.
- 6.
This proposition is discussed in more detail for the entire post-communist region in Havrylyshyn (2006) Chap. 6.
- 7.
- 8.
In Western economies, there is a popular saying that the first million is the most difficult; in the post-Soviet space the aphorism is slightly modified: ‘Don’t ask about the first million!’
- 9.
Havrylyshyn (1995) gives an early account of how the Red Directorate operated to retain their earlier Soviet-period status.
- 10.
Puglisi (2003) p. 104.
- 11.
While new to transition economies from the late 1990s, this had always been the main mechanism in market economies subject to relatively large corruption—say Italy.
- 12.
Bayrachny (2013) is the basis for the list shown.
- 13.
Aslund (2009), p. 158 citing Tymoshenko.
- 14.
Puglisi (2003), p. 110.
- 15.
The oblasts or provinces are in Avioutskii’s order: Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Odessa, Volyn, Poltava, including the city of Kharkiv, and Kyiv.
- 16.
In Volyn, Avioutskii shows a certain V. Gavrilishin of Zakhidinkombank; there is no relation to the author.
- 17.
The author first heard this idea from the head of one of Latvia’s top three banks, a Russian-ethnic Latvian, who in answer to the question ‘how did you get here?’ responded: ‘I got my MBA from the Komsomol, the best business school in the USSR.’
- 18.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_richest_people_of_Ukraine_(2006); accessed 12.11.2015.
- 19.
A fuller treatment of this debate is found in Havrylyshyn (2006), pp. 23–242. For a historical example of how good institutions developed and to what extent they were due to Coase-demands by early capitalists or government initiatives, see Havrylyshyn and Srzentic (2015), an analysis of Ragusa/Dubrovnik – Chap. 2.
- 20.
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Havrylyshyn, O. (2017). The Formation and Role of Oligarchs. In: The Political Economy of Independent Ukraine. Studies in Economic Transition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57690-3_10
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