The three men named Boris

Boris Nemtsov, the archetypal young reformer, once seen as Yeltsin8217;s natural heir, who many in the West hoped would carry the torch of social and economic liberalism into the new century for Russia, is out of government, his boasted dreams of smashing the country8217;s oligarchic capitalists inruins.

The champion of Russia8217;s business barons, Boris Berezovsky, has beaten both of them. He persuaded Yeltsin and his family, increasingly fearful for their future, to begin handing over power and to bring back the discredited old prime minister Victor Chernomyrdin as a safe successor. This in turn has meant the expulsion of Nemtsov, his allies and all they stood for from the government. Berezovsky, who compares his desire for power and wealth with the sexual urge, is playing a dangerous game. He has always been a better manipulator than a politician. Now he must be wondering whether his aims 8212; to avenge himself on the Nemtsov faction, increase his power behind the scenes, and protect and expand his control over the Russian economy 8212; are not being destroyed by the economic catastrophe he has helped create.

For Berezovsky8217;s legacy is this. The rouble is still in free fall. The banking system is collapsing and foreign investors are fleeing with all the grace of first class passengers on the Titanic.There is no government, and when there is, it won8217;t have any money. None of the old problems 8212; particularly non-payment of wages 8212; have gone away. And Berezovsky cannot be sure his worst nightmare, a re-examination of old privatisation deals and a redistribution of property by a new, neo-socialist administration, will not come about.

Taking a break from an evening farewell party in the government White House on his last day in office, Boris Nemtsov sat down and tried to explain what had happened. The government of Sergei Kiriyenko 8212; it was Nemtsov who first brought Kiriyenko to Moscow from his native Nizhny Novgorod 8212; had reached a critical moment. With foreign lenders about to explode in anger over the terms of Russia8217;s debt default, the banks in crisis and the rouble beginning its precipitous slide, the reformers had to prove themselves by a show of strength. That could only mean bankrupting some of the most notorious non-payers of tax, and that would have meant disaster for Berezovsky and hisfriends.

8220;The country is built as a freakish, oligarchic, capitalist state,8221; Nemtsov told The Observer. 8220;Its characteristics are the concentration of property in the hands of a narrow group of financiers, the oligarchs. They don8217;t pay taxes and they don8217;t pay their workers. This week there could have been bankruptcies. That meant the government had to go.8221;

There has been bad blood between Nemtsov and Berzovsky for at least a year. Last August, their feud burst into the open over a huge privatisation auction 8212; the sale of 25 per cent of Svyazinvest, a Russian telecoms holding company. Largely thanks to Nemtsov and Antoly Chubais, the stake went to the highest bidder, a consortium partly financed by George Soros 8212; who announced that the days of robber capitalism8217; in Russia were over.

Berezovsky, who, despite the fact he was also in government at the time, was quietly involved in the rival, lower bid, was enraged. The battle lines were drawn. When Nemtsov and Chubais engineered Berezovsky8217;sdismissal from the government, they seemed to have won.

In fact, they 8212; and, later, Kiriyenko 8212; never had the full backing of Yeltsin to carry through the bankruptcies they wanted when the economic going got tough after the Asian crisis began in autumn. At the same time the oligarchs, too, lost trust in Yeltsin 8212; they lost faith not just in his ability to protect them but in his ability to survive. His physical weakness, indecision, failure to grasp issues and capriciousness alienated him from all his supporters. Fearing that their machinations and law-breaking over the years might eventually be laid against them in court, the Yeltsin circle were ripe for a deal.

The most senior KGB men, the most outspoken dissidents, the senior communists, the reformers of the early 1990s held very different ideals. But they shared one thing: a lack of will to prevent the USSR from collapsing, an intense desire for personal prosperity. And for the past seven years, economic change in Russia has been driven by thispsychological engine rather than by any Russian vision of what, exactly, Russia is trying to reform.