Alexander Lebedev: Rich Advice

"She was distributing drugs in a disco in Novosibirsk," Lebedev says of Perminova. "She was actually arrested when she was 16, and she cooperated with the authorities, and she almost got killed." The police, Lebedev says, were unable or unwilling to provide a safe haven for people who helped them arrest local drug barons. Perminova's father wrote to Lebedev, he says. At the time — this was about five years ago — Lebedev was still a deputy in the Duma and lobbying for a witness-protection program. He says that no one in the Duma leadership supported him, but that he met with Perminova's father — and Elena — and that eventually they started seeing each other. "We've been together since she was 19 or 20," he says. Perminova is a model and an economics student at Moscow State University. Throughout our two-hour breakfast, she alternately serves as waitress — doling out espressos, porridge, and pastries stuffed with black caviar — and as significant other, sampling the kiwi fruit and playing on her laptop.(See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory Day.)

At this particular juncture in Russian history, it is Lebedev's self-assigned role to play, simultaneously, the oligarch and the anti-oligarch — to be the big, brash banking magnate whose estimated wealth prior to the financial crisis was around $3.7 billion and to decry the system that produces people like him, to live among the powerful while lambasting those who lord it over others. Before the global downturn, which Lebedev says has cost him $1 billion, he was a predictable, if persistent, critic of former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, routinely calling for an independent legislature, a free press and free elections, and a crackdown on corruption. Improving his image has been the Moscow tabloid he co-owns, Novaya Gazetta, which is known for publishing stories on the war in Chechnya, bribe-seeking officials and the nation's abysmal public services. Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist famous for her dispatches from Chechnya, was one of the paper's star reporters before being shot to death in 2006, presumably for writing the wrong story.(Read: "A Russian Reporter's Murder: Will a Retrial Bring Justice?")

But since the Russian stock markets crashed in mid-September — Bloomberg has reported that Russia's top 25 wealthiest people have lost a collective $230 billion — Lebedev's campaign has acquired a new urgency. He has ridiculed the efforts of Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev to revive the economy, including bailouts for the oligarchs that he estimates at roughly $11 billion. He has announced plans for an English-language radio channel in Moscow; bought the London newspaper the Evening Standard; announced plans to launch a democratic political party with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev; and (briefly) run for mayor of Sochi, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics.(Read a TIME article on why Mikhail Gorbachev is an environmental hero.)

"The system doesn't work," Lebedev says. "It has nothing to do with the ordinary Russian." He pauses for just a moment. "I don't think I'm an enemy of this state. I am a critic, yes. But they need an opposition who is going to correct their mistakes, and they need a different political system."

Lebedev seems an unlikely person to make that case. A few weeks earlier, near the center of Moscow in a stately pink building where he sometimes works and sleeps, Lebedev gave me a condensed history of the Russian state since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 — the beginnings of post-Soviet capitalism, the rise of the oligarchs, the loans-for-shares scandal, his acquisition of National Reserve Bank, the rise of Putin, the fall of the oligarchs, his 28% stake in Aeroflot, the Khodorkovsky affair, the forthcoming launch of his restaurant in London, the end of democracy in Russia, Davos, and fellow oligarch (and Chelsea Football Club owner) Roman Abramovich.(See pictures of EURO 2008 soccer.)

The Oligarchs and the State 
I ask Lebedev where the word oligarch comes from. "I think it was invented by Berezovsky somewhere in the '90s," he says dismissively, referring to Boris Berezovsky, the former oil and media magnate who prospered during Yelstin's rule but fled Russia facing accusations of fraud after Putin took charge. For most of that decade, between five and 10 businessmen (most notably Berezovsky, Mikhail Fridman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Potanin and Vladimir Gusinsky) ruled Russia. Their power reached its height at Yeltsin's re-election as President in 1996 — the same oligarchs who financed Yeltsin's campaign went on to buy lucrative state assets at knock-down prices. When he took power in 2000, Putin immediately set out to rein in the oligarchs, offering them a straightforward deal: Keep your money, but stay out of politics. Khodorkovsky, now confined in a prison five time zones east of Moscow, is testament to what happens to oligarchs who don't play by the rules. The former head of Yukos was on the verge of forming a partnership with Exxon-Mobil, and had called for a more open and democratic nation — both big no-nos in Putin's Russia — before he was arrested in 2003.

Read: "Boris Yeltsin: Not Your Average Statesman."

See pictures of the fashions of Russian Czars.
Today, the word oligarch is bandied about in the media, but it is a misnomer. The oligarchy is no longer detached from, or in opposition to, the state. It is an extension of it. Many of the very rich people who once ran Russia still run it — but they have been brought to heel by a vastly more powerful Kremlin. Their wealth is "granted" to them by a Kremlin that demands loyalty and is prepared to use all means available to enforce it. They serve the Czar (or President, or Prime Minister) at his pleasure. They understand very well that to defy the Czar is to sacrifice everything they have. They are glorified managers or subordinates who enjoy great wealth that can be taken from them at any minute, and the only way they know to secure their fortunes is to endear themselves to the state — to become cheerleaders for it. "Russia is ruled by the same people who own it," says Masha Lipman, a political analyst at Moscow's Carnegie Center. "It's not even a legitimate question to ask whether the 'oligarchs' ... work 'for the Kremlin,' for it is sometimes impossible to draw the line between the 'oligarchs' and the Kremlin."

Herein lies the reason for Lebedev's split personality. He is indeed an oligarch — the Russian magazine Finansreported that he was the 25th wealthiest person in the country in 2008, up from No. 46 in 2007. But he has never bent the knee to Putin. In Lebedev we find, if you like, the good oligarch — the Russian with whom Westerners can do business. He has made friends with prominent people in London (Elton John, Margaret Thatcher) and Hollywood (Kevin Spacey, John Malkovich), floating freely between boardrooms and state dinners. In March, Lebedev traveled to Washington with Gorbachev, who was slated to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama. "I do and say whatever I want," he says. "If somebody wants to kill me, I do not treat it as enough reason to stop doing something, if I'm pursuing certain values or principles. It's simple."(See pictures of Obama in Russia.)

The Question Lenin Asked 
What is not simple is Russia. That quintessentially Russian query — What is to be done? — continues to bedevil the Kremlin. The country is, after all, falling apart. The price of oil is down sharply from its high of $147 a barrel in July 2008. The markets have been badly shaken by Putin's attack on steel giant Mechel, the breakup of the oil conglomerate TNK-BP (during which the Russians none-so-subtly squeezed out their British partners), and last summer's war with Georgia. And then, of course, there's the global financial crisis, which has hit Russia particularly hard. On top of all the economic woes, there's a shrinking population, a military that remains something of a joke and a problem with AIDS. Plus, you still can't (or shouldn't) drink a glass of tap water in central Moscow.

All this has aroused Lebedev's reformist zeal. More than ever, he says, Russia needs an independent judiciary and legislature, a free press, real elections, real political parties. The oligarchs, he says, understand that the system cannot survive forever. They are scared and looking for handouts. (At the top of the list is Oleg Deripaska, head of investment firm Basic Element, which has interests in the aluminum, energy and financial-services sectors among others, and recently received a $4.5-billion infusion from the state.) "Once they found themselves in trouble they started this sort of SOS signal, calling on Putin's door, 'Give us the money,' " he says. Lebedev says he is not receiving any government cash, and that the crisis and the bailouts are only widening the chasm between the "first tier" of people who own (and run) Russia and everyone else. "The first tier, this is where the crisis happened. As far as the second tier of the country is concerned, there could be no crisis because the crisis was there permanently, for 500 years."

Russia's problem, Lebedev thinks, is not Putin but the bureaucracy, which is sprawling and antidemocratic, and stymies reform. "As far as Putin is concerned, I'm not blaming it on him. I think he doesn't see it. These TV channels pocket billions of dollars in exchange for flattering Putin." Lebedev has hopes for Medvedev. He was impressed with the President's decision to meet with Novaya Gazetta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov and Gorbachev earlier this year, following the killing of yet another Novaya Gazetta reporter. "Medvedev ... said he's a full supporter of the Gulag Memorial project," Lebedev says. (Memorial was the most important human-rights group to emerge from the perestroika era. For years it has pushed for a monument in the center of Moscow recalling the victims of the gulag.) Putin, Lebedev says, would never back anything that subtracted from the Soviet record. "I think Putin thinks that this commemoration would spoil the everyday spirit," Lebedev says. "Stalin, for them, represents the state, and sometimes you can see Putin as sort of — in that way."(See pictures of Putin.)

But is Lebedev the reformer he sees himself as, or does he play another role? "There's a belief — and this existed in Soviet times — that allowing a pressure valve of dissent and allowing certain voices out there is important for legitimacy," says Robert Amsterdam, a Canadian attorney in London who has represented Khodorkovsky and frequently blogs about Russia. "In a strange way, and whether or not Lebedev is part of this, he may well be seen as a demonstration of the regime's legitimacy." As long as he doesn't "cross any of these invisible lines, Lebedev may actually shield the Kremlin from further criticism," Amsterdam says.

Lebedev understands that he has multiple uses — that he alternately angers, inspires, amuses and mystifies the Kremlin, fellow oligarchs, democratic activists and Western allies alike. Yet this much seems indisputable: simply by calling for a more open Russia and denouncing the myopia and ignorance of "the power," Lebedev is helping to make room for a new kind of politics. This is the overwhelming sense you get when speaking with him: that possibilities are opening, that things are happening that you are only vaguely aware of. You sense — you hope — that these things will somehow deliver Russia from its current doldrums, and they may very well do that. Lebedev is in charge of this puppet show. And that must be a good thing.

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