David Hoffman is one of the most respected journalists in the United States today writing about world politics. For six years - from 1995 to 2001 - he lived and worked in Russia as head of the Moscow bureau of the most influential American newspaper Washington Post, witnessing and chronicling dramatic events, a real historical turning point in Russian public life, politics and economy. The book about those who would later be called "oligarchs" was the result of this business trip and received a colossal resonance in the USA and Europe. The main characters of Hoffman's book are people whose names are familiar to everyone in Russia: Khodorkovsky, Luzhkov, Chubais, Berezovsky, Gusinsky, Smolensky. The six were among those who forced Russia into a monumental transition from collapsed socialism to oligarchic capitalism, an inevitable stage on the country's path to a liberal market system.