Who really owns the Caspian Sea?
The ten largest private landowners in the United States are businessmen, billionaires and philanthropists. They add thousands of hectares of land to their lands every year. Some are interested in profit, others are concerned about the fate of the planet and the environment, and others are guided by personal motives.
Among the landowners there are family dynasties whose histories go back hundreds of years, and newly-made millionaires. If the estates of the ten largest private landowners in America were combined, their area would be about 5.5 million hectares, or 55 thousand square kilometers, which is larger than the size of individual US states, such as Maryland, Connecticut or Hawaii.
Pingree family
336 thousand hectares
In 1841, the founder of the Pingree dynasty, merchant David Pingree, began acquiring timber plots in Maine. Seven generations later, the family now owns 336 thousand hectares, mainly in Maine and New Hampshire. Unlike typical landowners who sold their property to factories for timber harvesting, members of the Pingree family collaborated with corporations, retaining voting rights, and ensuring that the work was carried out in an environmentally friendly manner.
In 1964, Pingree's heirs formed the Seven Islands Land Company, which now controls the use of the family's lands. The Pingrees have always cared about more than just profit - even in those times when forest conservation and conservation environment Few people cared. Three quarters of Pingri lands have specially protected status natural areas, which support the natural habitat of wild animals.
Stan Kroenke
Total land area: 343 thousand hectares
Stan Kroenke is one of America's largest and richest real estate developers, owner of several sports teams, including the London football club"Arsenal".
Kroenke spends a significant part of his fortune on acquiring land plots. The total area of the billionaire's holdings in Arizona, Montana and Wyoming is 4.5 times the territory of New York. In 2012, Kroenke purchased a ranch in the Rocky Mountains of Montana worth $132 million and covering 50,000 hectares—about the size of Birmingham. There is a house on the plot with an area of 930 square meters with a swimming pool. At the same time, the billionaire needs the ranch not so much for preserving capital and recreation: first of all, elite breeds of livestock are bred here.
In 2016, Kroenke spent a tenth of his fortune buying one of America's twenty largest cattle ranches, Waggoner Ranch in Texas. The estimated purchase price was $655 million. Kroenke plans to build a luxury residence on the ranch, and the land will be used for growing wheat and raising livestock.
King Family
Total land area: 369 thousand hectares
The King dynasty of landowners has owned a vast territory in southern Texas for more than 150 years - enterprising businessman Richard King began buying land here back in 1853 and expanded the land until his death in 1885. Today, the King Ranch is the largest in Texas, covering the territory of six counties in the state. About a dozen books have been written about Richard King himself, and the town of Kingsville, located not far from the ranch, was even named in his honor. In 1961, the King Ranch was designated a National Historic Landmark.
The lands owned by the King family are open to the public - tours are held on the territory for tourists and farmers are taught how to agriculture modern methods, safe for nature. Eco-tourists come to King Ranch - here you can fish, ride bicycles, and watch birds.
The ranch's territory is so vast and rich that it allows the owners not only to raise livestock and grow vegetables, nuts and citrus orchards, but even to extract oil and gas.
Singleton family
Total land area: 450 thousand hectares
Henry Singleton was a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, one of the founders and head of a large electronics concern, Teledyne, Inc. In the mid-1980s, Singleton became interested in investing in land plots and began acquiring ranches in New Mexico and California. Over the course of 14 years, the businessman bought 28 ranches and became one of the largest landowners in America and the world. By 1999, Henry Singleton already owned 1.5 percent of New Mexico. After his death, his five children took over the management of the ranch.
One of the Singletons' plots is located in historical region in New Mexico, south of the city of Santa Fe. Archaeological excavations are being conducted in this area, and the Singletons themselves are collaborating with historians to preserve the cultural heritage of the region.
Irving family
Total land area: 485 thousand hectares
The founder of the family, Kenneth Colin Irving, was a major Canadian industrialist, one of the fifteen richest people in the world. Today, his sons and grandsons own about 300 companies involved in business in the oil and gas industries, forestry, construction and telecommunications.
In addition to 485 thousand hectares in the USA, the family owns territories of more than 800 thousand hectares in Canada - the Irvings are considered one of the largest landowners in the world. They are also the main landowners in Maine.
Unlike many of the environmentally-conscious heroes on this list, the Irvings have been criticized more than once by environmentalists. Environmentalists believe that the favorite strategy of these landowners is to “clearly cut everything down and run away.”
Reed family
Total land area: 565 thousand hectares
The Reeds, who are among the top 150 richest families in America, are engaged in timber processing. The family has run the Green Diamond Resource Company for five generations. The Reeds own land and forests in Washington, Oregon and California. The family appeared in the ranking of the largest landowners in America only recently: the Reeds acquired almost half of their territories, 243 thousand hectares, in 2014.
Green Diamond Resource Company complies with all environmental standards and can serve as an example for other corporations in the forest industry. According to its charter, the company is obliged to preserve water and land resources, wild flora and fauna, cultural and historical monuments in the developed area. In 2015, at a celebration in honor of the 125th anniversary of the Green Diamond Resource Company, the Reeds planted their hundred millionth tree.
In 2000, the company approved a plan according to which 51 species of wild animals and their natural habitats would be specially protected on the Reed lands. Every year, the company uses only two percent of the available land in the production cycle, on which new trees are subsequently immediately planted so that the forest growth cycle is not interrupted.
Brad Kelly
Total land area: 670 thousand hectares
Tobacco magnate Brad Kelly owns a lot of land in New Mexico, Texas, Wyoming and Colorado. According to Kelly, he did not set himself the goal of becoming one of the largest landowners in the United States. The future billionaire grew up on a farm, and the land is something that is close and familiar to him since childhood.
Kelly bought his first plot at age 17, right after graduating from school. Later, investing in land became one of the businessman’s favorite ways to preserve and increase capital. Kelly has a good instinct for good deals - the last of the assets he acquired doubled in price in five years. The billionaire does not manage the ranch, he only invests money in the purchase, and the previous owners continue to work on the land as tenants.
One of Brad Kelly's hobbies is breeding new breeds of livestock and raising rare species animals. Kelly works with zoos and conservation foundations wildlife. On one of his farms, dwarf buffalo, antelope and wild bulls are bred, as well as tapirs, hippos and rhinoceroses.
Emerson Family
Total land area: 770 thousand hectares
The Emerson family owns land and forests in California. The Emersons' lands are rapidly expanding, every year they acquire new territories - only in 2015, plots with a total area of 22 thousand hectares were added to the family's treasury. The head of the family, Archie Emerson, is the largest private landowner in California.
Generations of Emersons have worked in the timber industry. They own the second largest lumber company in the United States, Sierra Pacific Industries. The company also cares about the environment: every year, farmers cultivate only a little more than one percent of the Emersons' land, and new trees are planted to replace those that are cut down.
Billionaires who could afford to live anywhere in the world wouldn't trade California for anything. Archie Emerson says that since childhood, more than anything else, he loves to be in the forest. Not for him best holiday than hunting or fishing on your own land.
The Emerson Woods are privately owned but open to the public. Here you are allowed to engage in fishing, hiking, and cycling, but it is prohibited to pick flowers, mushrooms and berries, spend the night in tents and light fires.
Ted Turner
Total land area: 809 thousand hectares
When CNN founder Ted Turner was a boy, his favorite things to do were hunt, fish and wander through the woods. The billionaire claims that as a child he even ended up with the police for shooting a squirrel on his neighbor’s property. Then he swore to himself that someday he would earn a lot of money and buy as much land as he wanted. Turner kept his word. Today he is one of America's largest landowners.
Turner's favorite place where he spends a lot of time is the Vermejo Park Ranch. The billionaire receives guests - politicians, royalty and show business stars - in a mansion built in the middle of a ranch more than a century ago. By the way, “mere mortals” can also live here: a room in the Turner mansion can be rented for $550-650 per night.
Recently Ted Turner decided to take on new business- ecotourism. “Vermejo Park” and three other ranches of the entrepreneur were opened to the public who want to go fishing, cycling, hiking, photo safaris and so on.
The billionaire plans to turn his private estate into a national park, but more intimate and cozy than, for example, Yellowstone. According to Turner, in his park hundreds of cameras will not be aimed at bison - here you can be alone with nature.
John Malone
Total land area: 890 thousand hectares
John Malone ranks first in the ranking of the largest landowners in the United States. The founder of Liberty Media Corporation, one of the hundred richest people in the world, owns ranches in Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado, as well as forests in Maine.
Malone's territory is 150 times the size of Manhattan and three times the size of the million-person state of Rhode Island. The billionaire's lands in Maine make up more than five percent of the state.
Malone recently took first place in the ranking of America's largest landowners. He acquired about half of his land - 485 hectares of forests in Maine and land in New Hampshire - in 2011. Malone is an old friend of the previous hero, Ted Turner. According to the businessman, it was Turner who “infected” him with land fever. And, according to the millionaire, his passion for collecting lands was influenced by his Jewish roots and the genetic memory of a people living in him who for centuries did not have their own territory. In addition to financial and environmental reasons, Millarder says what motivates him to continually acquire more and more land is the special sense of awe and admiration he feels when looking at the vast expanses of land that he owns.
The author of seven best-selling books, Barbara Sher, believes that life after 40 is not a variation of what has already happened to you, but a completely different world, unlike the one before, just as university is not like primary school. This new life begins as soon as a person gets rid of the illusions of youth - eternal beauty, endless possibilities, confidence that old age will not come at all. T&P ends the special project with an excerpt from the book by Cher and the publishing house MYTH “Better Late Than Never” about the courage to live your own life, what happens when youth ends, and how to protect yourself from disappointments.
Let me say it loud and clear: your first life belongs to nature. Your second life is yours. What lies ahead? The grip that culture and biology hold on you is gradually loosened, and your true self is revealed. As you get older, you don't lose anything essential. Moreover, the new life will be much more conscious, balanced, creative and active compared to what it was before. And such an exciting life will begin only when you are over forty.
Pollyanna is the heroine of the book of the same name by American writer Elinor Porter, published in 1913; an orphan girl who loves to play “joy”, finding a reason for optimism in any event.
If these lines make you doubtful or skeptical, or if you think I'm going to fall into Pollyanna-like platitudes, you're wrong. I'm a harsh realist. I have never had the habit of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. What I discovered on the other side, having reached the middle of my life, and which I can now tell you about, came as a complete surprise to me. But why is it so hard to believe that great times are coming? Why do we suffer so much, starting to lose our youth? When, thinking about this, I first came across the answer, I almost laughed, because the reason for our blindness is so well hidden and at the same time so obvious that it looks like a cunning trick. Nature wants aging to be hateful. The melancholy this process causes is component biological system. After all, if everything that relates to the second half of life seems unpleasant to you, you will naturally begin to resist aging. And, as you will see, in this way you will be much more useful to the human race.
Courage to live your life
Just think about it. What would you do if you had, say, five completely free hours every day? Or every week three completely free days? Plus every year a few weeks or even months - completely at your disposal? Imagine: reliable, expected, uninterrupted periods of time that belong only to you and no one else. Has your gaze become dreamy, as it happens when TV commercials show distant beaches, azure waters and palm trees? Ah, these places where there are no crowds of people! This is time free from any obligations! A real paradise, isn't it?
Of course, few adults can afford this. If you are between thirty-five and sixty-five, it is difficult to find a free day or half a day a week. Holidays and vacations - if given at all - are most likely spent on family matters or catching up on work backlogs. When, by a happy coincidence, you have a free afternoon or Saturday, you are usually so exhausted that you think only about rest. In any case, you are so unaccustomed to free time that you don’t know how to use it. You don’t automatically take your favorite book off the shelf to sit with it by the window, or pull out your easel and oil paints, you don’t walk along the seashore, as they like to do in the movies. This is because we no longer clearly understand what leisure is. But you are not an abstract scheme or a set of your achievements. Your original and creative personality will only come back to life if you make time - time for yourself, free, unoccupied, not promised to anyone, time that you devote to your dreams or to completely idle, if you so choose. Without such time you will not have yourself.
Sometimes we almost brag about how much we can bear. We say: “Look how hard my life is.” Essentially we mean: “I am very good man».
The idea is that if you had listened to your creative mind from the very beginning, you wouldn’t feel lost now. You would set aside time to, say, write a biography of your favorite historical figure, or learn Italian and live in Rome, or organize a jazz band. Or just try this and that until it becomes clear who you are. But, most likely, you did none of this in the first forty years of your life, because you had to choose between the embodiment of your talents and the need to satisfy your needs. And like most people, you chose needs. But it's time to change. You are ready to create your second life.
It's time to reach out and help bring back your true self, which has had to step aside and give way to parent, spouse, breadwinner, cleaner, rescuer, nurse, protector - and all the others from the long list of roles that have had to be played over the years. You need to think about your own thoughts, reawaken creativity, restore your uniqueness, satiate your curiosity and do everything that your soul yearned for, but never had time for. In the list of priorities, you need to move your desires to the very top, and let the desires of a huge number of other people fall much lower or drop out of the list altogether. It will take a lot of courage, because if you are one of those who always puts other people's needs before your own, it is easier for you to jump off a roof than to answer “no” when they want something from you. But believe me: saying “no” is not as difficult as it seems, and over time it will become even easier. As Emerson wrote (Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) - American philosopher, writer, poet, public figure - Ed.): “Courage is largely made up of previous actions.”
You have the right to live as you want as long as you do not infringe on someone else's rights. But your rights are worth little if you don't have the courage to stand up for them. For example, do you refuse someone’s request and at the same time consider it selfish not to help? If you feel injustice towards yourself, will you immediately say so or will it be difficult for you? Do you hate conflicts? Do you get a terrible feeling when someone is angry with you? Are you afraid that if you don't cooperate, people will treat you badly? If you answered yes to any of these questions, one thing is clear: you are trying to earn your right to exist. And this means that your life is not really yours. You can stop being the master of your life for various reasons.
If you are involved in conflict, your life does not belong to you.
There are times when you are so caught up in a battle, real or imagined, that it doesn't occur to you to do what you really want to do. Kevin works in sales and hates his job. He loves studying history and writing about it, but says his wife gets in the way because she doesn't have an ounce of understanding. Every time he opens a book, his wife reminds him that he has work calls to make. He becomes so uncomfortable that he can't concentrate on his books, even if she's not around. Of course, she is partly right, because irritation makes him take time off from work. “If I put the books down and actually get busy making money, I’ll feel like she’s won!” - he said.
Your life is not yours if you spend it complaining.
It seems that complaining is a separate activity, unrelated to the desire for actual improvement. Most of it seems like lamentation or prayer, rather than a real expectation of change. “My husband plays golf all weekend and just leaves me alone. During the week we work together, but on the weekends he gets the freedom to do whatever he wants. He certainly treats himself well.” “You kids never help me when I ask, but I always help you with your homework and everything else.” Empty talk. Of course, they have a basis, but nothing will come of it, because chronic complaints replace actions. Although you can announce to the whole world how unfairly you are being treated, if you can’t bring yourself to do anything, you will always complain and nothing will change. Sometimes it feels like we're almost bragging about how much we can bear. We say: “Look how hard my life is. Look how hard I work. And they treat me badly.” In essence, we mean: “I am a very good person.”
Your life is not yours if you are afraid of free time.
"It's pointless to look for free time. I once thought that I would sit, relax, and finally re-read all the books from bookcase and I will take care of myself. But when I'm on my own, I get nervous, feel so alone, and never get around to doing any of it. I end up thinking of things to do and can’t wait to get back to work,” said Eileen, a bank employee. “I deliberately lived without work for several months so that I had time to draw, and I hated it. I had a lot of time at my disposal, but I couldn’t draw. I wandered around the apartment, then ran away from the house and did whatever else I wanted!” - said Kelly, a gifted artist who now hardly draws. Her free time makes her so uncomfortable that she has returned to work and stays there late every evening. On weekends, she helps friends and is completely absorbed in the problems of people who do not care at all about her desire to paint.
Your life is not yours if you accommodate selfish people.
In infancy, we are all selfish, but then most people gradually awaken to a sense of justice and concern for others. However, there is a category of people who never grow up and have no idea why they owe anything to anyone. I call them "people who eat people." If you have a hard time saying “no,” tyrants can easily force you to dance to their tune. You may understand that the situation is unfair, you may even protest from time to time, trying to convey this to them. However, their response is stunning in its callousness. You complain to your friends, not realizing that they see the situation more clearly and are horrified that you give in to such a person. Often this is exactly what they tell you. But you never listen to their advice, because what you really want is for the egoist to realize how bad he makes you feel.
Only until June 29, T&P readers have a discount on paper and electronic versions of the book. Discounts are activated when you follow the links.
If your problems are similar to those described above, then you are wasting precious time and the losses are excessive. You only live once, and the thought “but I’m a good person” is less and less comforting every day, because trying to “be good” does not interfere with doing what is truly meaningful to you. If you don't get bogged down in these unproductive contradictions - internal and external - and defend the right to do what is best for you, tremendous changes can happen in your life. For example, tension and anxiety will disappear, you will be calm enough to show your individuality and talents that you have not yet demanded, and as a result, do something extraordinary. But developing talent will take time. Where will it come from? One option is to just take it yourself. In the most shameless way.
Exercise: Take time for yourself for six weeks
Take a pen and a small notepad and inside On the front cover, write down the time, at least three hours, that you intend to set aside for yourself over the next six weeks. For example: “Wednesday evening, from 18:00 to 21:30.”
Then, on the first page, make a list of people who need to be alerted to your decision and schedule to do so as soon as possible.
Watch yourself carefully as you take these steps. Are you scared? Are you nervous? Do you feel guilty? Write down all these feelings.
Now, holding a notepad and pen nearby, talk separately to each person on your list. Let them know that you will use this time for your own needs and will not be able to help anyone. If the conversation is over the phone, immediately write down what they answer. If you are talking in person, write down what they told you when you are alone. Then note how you felt during and after the conversation.
Now, for six weeks, give yourself this time. It doesn't matter how you spend it, except for one thing: it can't be used for any mandatory tasks for yourself or anyone else, including your boss and your dog. You can go to the movies, but don't pick up your laundry on the way back. You can sit by the window and listen to music, but turn off your phone. You should not be on call at this time.
Watch carefully what happens as a result. Will it happen that emergency situations and various unexpected events, as if by agreement, will begin to claim the time that you have allocated for yourself? Or those around you consider their desires emergency situations and trying to force you to help them? Or do you not allow yourself to take full advantage of the allocated hours, squeezing in some responsibilities and worries just because you have no other time for them? Or because you feel it's selfish? Or because you're bored? Remember: this is not a test, this is pure research. No one will grade you for success or failure. Your goal is simple - to become aware of everything that prevents you from taking free time. You are not yet ready for this in reality, while only reconnaissance of the territory is taking place.
This is what many people discover: “I can’t stand it! I feel so guilty for my selfishness!” “I was so scared, it was like I had stolen something!” “I always felt like everything would fall apart without me.” What about you? Have you found anything like this? If you're like most people, you'll be amazed at how hard it is to take time for yourself without some good reason.
We think we know what courage is, because everyone is familiar with images of physical courage - men at war, women in a besieged fortress. But these stereotypes lead us away from understanding. Courage means something different to everyone because everyone has their own fear. There are people who will not lower their gaze in the face of the most terrible enemy, but would rather die than make a speech in front of the public. Courage involves two things: you know how to do the right thing, and at the same time you wish it were easier. How to put this into practice? Roll up your sleeves and do what's right for you. No excuses. The time for complaints and requests for justice is over. You can't expect people to do what's fair just because they're called upon to do so, especially if they've gotten away with it for a long time. You will have to take what is owed to you on your own, that is what courage is needed for.
You will need to firmly stand your ground, regardless of someone’s displeasure or grief. I’m not saying that you should ignore your family - no one has canceled your obligations, and your soul will not be at peace if these obligations are not fulfilled. But this does not mean that those who depend on you need to be carried in your arms, without allowing them to take a single step. It also means that you cannot ask people to treat you as a person who has your own rights - you need to become such a person, and let everyone treat it as they want. In order to fully use the previously untapped sides of your personality, you will need a fair amount of courage, and this is the purpose of the second life.
The unfolding battles around gas prices for the junta gave me the idea to once again remind everyone of the long-known truth - who and how much owns the giant of our energy industry, GAZPROM, which is considered Russian.
According to completely open data, the “state” owns only 50% of the shares (+1 vote). I put the word “state” in quotation marks because this is a small ploy to sweeten the pill. In reality, the state directly, represented by its state body Rosimushchestvo, no longer owns 50, but only 38.37% of the giant’s shares, the rest are divided between OJSC Rosneftegaz (10.74%) and OJSC Rosgazifikatsiya (0.89%).
What does this mean? Exactly that President Putin can harshly bark: “Sha! Do as I said!” only by 38%. Agree, this is a slightly different caliber in the command-administrative system of corporate management. By the way, profits from the sale of gas are also distributed - you and I get only 38% of what GAZPROM produces, because the contents of our subsoil, having passed through the pipe to the surface, are somehow transformed and begin to belong to the technicians who stuck this very pipe. As if a neighbor, having installed a pump on a well in your yard, sold water to everyone (including you), paying you a tax on this action. But I digress, let’s return to GAZPROM, clarifying that even 38% of the produced gas still belongs not to you and me, but to GAZPROM itself, we only own a share in the profit.
There is also Rosneftegaz, 100% owned by Rosiimushchestvo, which was created as a “temporary storage” of shares of Rosneft and Gazprom. It was supposed to be liquidated as soon as it repaid the multibillion-dollar loan received, but it still exists. For what? And then, so as not to concentrate the controlling stake in one hand. After all, the direct blocking stake should be 50% + 1 share. This is the subtlety - in order to directly block this or that decision, 50% +1 must be concentrated in one hand. Otherwise, horse dancing begins.
Why am I doing all this? Besides the fact that Russia is not authoritarian in its decisions on GAZPROM, ours shouldagreewith the other owners.
Who are these “other owners”? From the graph you can see that this is Bank of NY and some “others”.
Well, BoNY is clear in what way - it disguises itself as the issuer of American depositary receipts issued for GAZPROM shares. In order not to rack your brains in vain, I will explain - this is a veiled form of transfer of state property from the colony to the metropolis. Those. 27% were directly transferred to “our American partners,” as GDP likes to cheerfully joke. Why 27? But because with 25 percent comes the “publication” of the shares, i.e. the owner of this 27% can overrule decisions made by the Company.
Who else are the shareholders, who are these “others”?
E.ON Ruhrgas AG, the largest German distribution company natural gas - 6,5%
Deutsche UFG, a hedge fund company 100% owned by Deutsche Bank - more than 3%
NAFTA-MOSCOW, Cyprus company (guess why and by whom created) - 5.3%
NAFTA-VOSTOK, a fund, again, it’s not even worth explaining who created it - 1.5%
INTECO (yes, Madame Baturina) - 1%
The remaining 5.5% is sprayed among the gang, i.e. for milk for your loved ones.
So, Russia, or rather our President V.V. Putin. (in principle, for some time now I have not separated my president), are not able to firmly make an unambiguous decision on certain actions of GAZPROM, but must negotiate with the same ones who are preparing all this crap with gas supplies - amers, burghers and 5- th column, owning assets located outside Russian jurisdiction and directly managing the concern.
And now look - Putin is alone in GAZPROM. Against him are the shareholders, the authors of the coup in Ukraine, and the managers who are held by the Adam’s apple of their assets by these same shareholders.
It's something of a party conference season in Russia, and both of the country's rulers have begun to present their vision of the future to the public. A week ago in Sochi, Vladimir Putin fended off questions from members of the Valdai Club - a group of foreign scientists and journalists (including the Guardian) - for almost three hours, and eventually told them that everything would remain as it was. The Prime Minister looked fit and tanned, his nails were well-groomed, and he was dressed in an expensive suit and linen shirt with open gate. If Franklin Roosevelt was president for four terms, why shouldn't he? Putin scornfully rejected the idea of returning to the elections of regional governors and told the audience a story about how one of the elected officials chose to escape through back door to avoid meeting with disgruntled peasants affected by the natural disaster.
On Friday it was Dmitry Medvedev's turn to take the stage. Let us note that although in Yaroslavl the Russian president was flanked by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Silvio Berlusconi, this event is still not yet suitable for the Russian Davos. Medvedev wanted to do away with the idea that Russia is an autocracy (a definition that Putin clearly did not protest in Sochi). “There is democracy in Russia. Yes, it is young, immature, imperfect, inexperienced, but this is still democracy. We are at the very beginning of the journey."
Perhaps, but this cannot be said about Medvedev himself. A year after the publication of his article “Forward Russia!”, in which he attacked Russia’s primitive raw material economy, chronic corruption and arbitrariness, lack of freedom and unfair treatment of citizens (all these are his own words), it is difficult not to wonder about when will he finally start his long haul reformer. By all indications, this moment has not yet arrived.
At the same time, both Sochi and Yaroslavl stand in stark contrast to how Russian government actually works. The book coming out at the end of this month by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, two specialists in investigative journalism, - dedicated Federal service security (FSB). The authors argue that under the auspices of KGB veteran Vladimir Putin, the FSB has emerged as something more powerful and formidable than its predecessor - they call it a "new nobility." It is typical that the book will be published in English outside Russia before they try to sell it in the country.
Soldatov and Borogan write only about what they know and can prove. They do not use theories that do not have reliable evidence - in particular, the statements of former FSB lieutenant colonel Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned in London, that it was Putin who was behind two bombings of houses in Moscow that killed 200 people and launched his career - and at the same time the second war in Chechnya.
This approach adds additional weight to their research. The organization they write about has taken root in all aspects Russian life- Media, business, Internet. It differs from the KGB in two respects: firstly, there is now much less political control over the security service than under the Communists, and secondly, the generals who run it have become rich people, acquired real estate and business interests.
The most striking example of the new wealth of the FSB can be seen behind the three-meter fences on the elite Rublyovka. We are talking about the highway along which the dachas of the Kremlin owners are located near Moscow. It is also called the “Tsar’s Road”, in honor of Ivan the Terrible, who traveled along this path for falconry. IN Soviet times Members of the Politburo and Central Committee, artists and scientists built dachas in these places.
Their wooden houses, covered with peeling green paint, now look pitiful next to the brick and stone mansions that sell for millions of dollars. Now along the sides of the “Royal Road” there are Maserati showrooms and advertisements for apartments that bureaucrats can buy for their mistresses.
In 2006, former Soviet Air Force Colonel Viktor Alksnis, who was elected to the State Duma for the district that included Rublyovka, discovered that the state had distributed 99 acres of land in the area to private individuals. It was divided into 90 plots, and 38 of them became private property from the funds of the FSB Logistics Directorate. This land went to former and current high-ranking FSB officers. In their book, Soldatov and Borogan writes that generals appear in documents without indicating their names or ranks. They are simply referred to as "military personnel whose total duration of service is more than 15 years."
This is just one of many examples given in the book that show who really holds power in Russia. “The distribution of luxury real estate in the forests on Rublyovka may console generals finishing their careers, but it clearly does not prepare the new generation for the role of honest arbiters and respected law enforcement officers in a democratic society,” the authors conclude.
