ベレゾフスキーの葬儀 － オルガルヒ
ベレゾフスキーはロシアの政治史を語るうえで、欠かすことのできない人物である。エリティンの懐刀的存在で、エリティンの大統領再選の中心を担ったオルガルヒである。ロシアの国有企業が民営化されるときに、簡単に言えば、ただ同然でそれらの資産を手にし、一躍大富豪になるとともに、政治権力の中枢に座った人物である（この手法は、loan-for-sharesと呼ばれている。とりわけＩＭＦが提供した資金を私物化したことが有名であるが、ＩＭＦはそれを否定している。なおこの手法のまえにboucher privatizationというのがあった）。
２期目のエリティンは病弱であったから、オルガルヒは一層強大な権力を手にすることになった。こうしたなか、アブラモヴィッツをこのグループに誘い込んだのもベレゾフスキーであるし、何よりも後継者としてプーチンを選んだのも彼であった。
その後、ベレゾフスキーはプーチンと対立するようになり、彼はロンドンに逃げることになった。さらにアブラモヴィッツが巨大な資産を手にするさいに手を貸していたベレゾフスキーはその分け前に不満をもち、巨額の分け前を要求し、アブラモヴィッツはそれに応じた。
ベレゾフスキーはそれに満足せずに巨大な訴訟をロンドンで起こしたが昨年敗訴になり、そのため彼は巨額の財産を喪失し、それが今回の自殺につながったとされている（一説には、プーチン政権に暗殺されたというのもあるが。盟友といわれるリトヴィネンコは放射能入りの飲み物で、ロシア政府筋によって暗殺されている）。
アブラモヴィッツは若いときからさまざまなビジネスに手を出し、資本主義化、市場化の到来とともにその活動も活発で、そしてホドルコフスキーとの出会いで、巨大石油企業を、エリティンの命令のもとに手に入れることになり、さらにはアルミニウム産業をも手に入れる（このアルミニウムの利権をめぐっては多くの人々が犠牲になっている）。
ベレゾフスキーの葬儀は、ロシア政府の介入を恐れて、会場と日時を変更して、かなりひっそりと行われた・・・。
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Boris Berezovsky buried in low-key ceremony
Russian oligarch laid to rest in Surrey six weeks after being found dead on bathroom floor of ex-wife's mansion
Luke Harding
The Guardian, Wednesday 8 May 2013 18.38 BST
A police car and a police tent are positioned outside the gates of the house of Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky in Sunningdale near Ascot in Berkshire earlier this year. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images
The mercurial Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky was buried on Wednesday in a deliberately low-key ceremony in Surrey, some six weeks after he was found dead on the bathroom floor of his ex-wife's mansion.
Around 30 mourners including family, friends and his British lawyers attended the funeral which was held amid tight security in Brookwood cemetery near Woking, Surrey. The service took place in a small brick chapel, overlooked by suitably Russian pines and silver birches, and under a dull, overcast sky.
One guest arrived in a sleek Bentley. There were several Mercedes. But others dressed in black and bearing lillies arrived on a modest suburban train to Brookwood station. Berezovsky's close friend Akhmed Zakayev, the London-based Chechen separatist leader, was there with his son. The oligarch's daughter Elizaveta and five other children attended, bringing flowers.
Overall, though, it was a strikingly understated send-off for a man who lived furiously in the public eye, both in Russia and in the UK, his home since 2000. At the time of his death Berezovsky had spent more than a decade waging a high-profile media battle against his one-time protege Vladimir Putin. Berezovsky's relatives had originally planned to hold the funeral on Monday, but switched the day and the venue to dodge Russia's pro-Putin state media, and to wait for an Orthodox priest to fly in from Moscow.
"He was a friend. I miss him. I'm very grateful to Boris. Through him I felt the touch of history," Berezovsky's close friend Alex Goldfarb said. Goldfarb said Berezovsky played a defining role in Russia's turbulent post-communist 1990s, when the oligarch was a key figure in Boris Yeltsin's court, and promoted the little-known Putin as Yeltsin's successor: "He was responsible for Yeltsin, and then for peace in Chechnya [after the 1994-1996 Chechen war] and then for Putin and then for anti-Putin," Goldfarb said.
Berezovsky's body was found on 23 March at his ex-wife Galina's home in Ascot. He was 67. He had been living there after legal bills forced him to sell his own luxury Wentworth home. Detectives have said they believe Berezovsky killed himself. A preliminary inquest heard a ligature was found around his neck. Friends admit he was depressed and demoralised after losing his $5bn high court litigation battle last autumn against Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, a crushing defeat that wiped him out financially, and left him reeling emotionally. Some, however, are convinced he was murdered.
One mourner at Brookwood cemetery, who declined to be named, described Berezovsky as "very Russian, like something from the pages of a Dostoyevsky novel." Others refused to talk. Berezovky's full inquest has yet to be held. An inquest into the death of Alexander Litvinenko – Berezovsky's close friend – is continuing, amid government attempts to keep evidence in the case secret.
