Business
Where enterprise was outlawed for generations and no rule of law exists, the line between a businessman and a crook loses its meaning. Neither word can be applied cleanly, because both depend on rules that were never in place.
Stealing was common, and thousands of people did it. What sets an oligarch apart is building an empire that controls a country's natural resources and, in the end, its head of state.
In a planned economy, factories held accounting credits that could not be spent as money. Insiders with official blessing found ways to convert them into real cash, then split it with factory managers or kept it. Repeated by hundreds of operators, this one trick launched an era of easy money.
Within a very short time, private self-interest went from being a criminal offense to being openly legitimate. Young operators who were already positioned simply stepped into the role of the country's first capitalists.
The state collapsed as a regulator partly because its laws had been written for a country that no longer existed. That gap let insiders profit from currency bets and from appointments as the state's authorized bankers.
Out of embarrassment, the ruling party allowed small private businesses as a limited experiment. That uncertain, half-permitted space became the launching pad for the first great fortunes.
The planners handed out state property believing ownership itself would sort good owners from bad. They did not care who got it first, trusting that over generations competent owners would prevail and bad ones would fail. In practice, people with cash bought up the ownership vouchers in bulk.
Without courts to enforce deals, holding onto money even briefly paid off, and armed men were used to keep rivals away from it. Understanding the time value of money went hand in hand with a willingness to use force.