Duri the end of the Gorbachev years when Perestoika was implemented there was the begininnings of privatisation and small scale capitalism in the Soviet Union. Private business was able to occurs in the communist state that would obviously have been unthinkable in the days of; Brezshnev, Kruschev and Stalin for example. Before the end of the USSR there was a McDonalds franchise in Moscow which I think epitomises the rise of privatisation and capitalism.

This links to oligarchs as the oligarchs were the businessmen who during the end of the USSR had begun to dabble in private business and then after 1991. The most famous era of Oligarchs were ones that emerged under the Yeltsin years. In short a small group of men invested and ended up owning and controlling most of Russia's key resources and markets. Probably the most famous Oligarch is Mikhail Khordokovsky who in his prime owned Yukos oil and ended up being worth well over 15 billion dollars. He eventually, like most yeltsinian oligarchs, ran into Putin and lost. His share of Yukos was absorbed by the governments oil company, I think it was Rozneft (sp) and he went to prison on embezzlemt charges.

The oligarchs rose do to taking advantage of the chaos in the early years of the Russian federation and also used unscrupulous methods to gain money and power. As a result they were very unpopular and so Putin's treatment of them was welcomed by the average russian as they were seen to epitomise the corruption and shady opportunism that permeated early 90's Russia where a few became exceedingly rich and the rest of the country suffered due to a stagnating economy