In 1999, the late Boris Berezovsky had lunch with the editor and senior journalists of the FT. I had already met him in Moscow on several occasions. Berezovsky had just played a role in persuading those close to Boris Yeltsin to appoint Vladimir Putin, then head of the FSB, Russia’s security service (whom Berezovsky had known when Putin was deputy mayor of St Petersburg), to be prime minister and his successor as president. “Why”, I asked, “did you trust a former KGB agent with power?” I have long remembered his reply: “Russia”, he said, was “now a capitalist country. In capitalist countries, capitalists hold power.”
已故的鮑里斯?別列佐夫斯基(Boris Berezovsky)在1999年曾與英國《金融時報》主編及幾位資深記者共進午餐。我更早以前在莫斯科就見過他幾回。別列佐夫斯基那時剛剛在一件事上發揮了作用，這件事就是說服鮑里斯?葉利欽(Boris Yeltsin)身邊的人，任命弗拉基米爾?普京(Vladimir Putin)為總理，并把他作為葉利欽總統的接班人。當時普京是俄羅斯聯邦安全局(FSB)局長，別列佐夫斯基是在普京擔任圣彼得堡副市長時認識他的。我問道：“為什么你會讓一個前克格勃(KGB)特工掌權？”我一直記得他是怎么回答的。他說：“俄羅斯現在是資本主義國家，而在資本主義國家，資本家掌握著權力。”