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As a reporter in Russia in the 1990s, I covered the ways in which some oligarchs became like bandits in the post-Soviet anarchy of the times. After an agreement was hatched in Davos, they intervened heavily to help secure the re-election of president Boris Yeltsin in 1996. That led to the so-called semibankirshchina — or the rule of seven bankers — until some of the oligarchs fell in with themselves and, even more abruptly, with Yeltsin’s successor Vladimir Putin.

As is sometimes said, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it always rhymes. And there are disturbing echoes of the emergence of an oligarchy in the US today, surrounding some of the Beautiful Seven tech companies. “Today, an oligarchy has amassed in America so much wealth, power and influence that it literally threatens our entire democracy,” Joe Biden warned this week in his farewell speech as president. It is up to politicians, lawyers and the American people to deal with this “tech industrial complex”, he said.

Led by Elon Musk, who spent more than $250mn to help re-elect Donald Trump, tech bosses filed into Mar-a-Lago to sell favors to the incoming president and donate to his inauguration fund. What can we learn from the playbook and experience of their Russian predecessors?

Above all, as cool-headed businessmen, oligarchs expect a return on their investment. In Russia, they benefited greatly from the bad loan-for-shares scheme, a rigged privatization process that enabled them to control some of the country’s most valuable oil and metals companies, including Yukos, Sibneft and Norilsk Nickel, at giveaway prices.

Nothing comparable happens in the US. But Musk has already enjoyed a remarkable return on his investment in politics. In the days following Trump’s re-election, the share price of Musk’s car company Tesla soared, adding more than $300bn to its stock market value. There is also reports that Musk could still own TikTok’s US business if the Chinese-owned parent company is forced to divest this month.

Musk’s fellow tech titans also expect looser regulation — especially around antitrust and crypto rules — and more support for their businesses. Meta’s one-time liberal chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who reformed like gymnast Simone Biles by scrapping Facebook’s fact-checking, is now urging Trump to protect the the US technology industry from the interference of foreign regulators.

Because of their lack of institutional power, oligarchs try to influence politics by deploying weapons of mass information. The same is true in Russia where Vladimir Gusinsky runs the NTV channel and Sevodnya newspaper, while Boris Berezovsky controls the ORT channel and Kommersant paper. In the US, Musk has turned X into his personal political platform, while Zuckerberg runs Facebook and Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.

The Russian oligarchs even went so far as to try to capture the government by joining the government itself. After Yeltsin’s re-election, Vladimir Potanin acted briefly as first deputy prime minister. Berezovsky was appointed deputy head of the Security Council. As co-head of Trump’s new thinking Department of Government EfficiencyMusk is not a regular government employee. But Doge is looking to post recruits to federal agencies in Washington to recommend ways to cut costs. Given Musk’s expanding business activities, the potential conflicts of interest are severe.

Perhaps the biggest lesson to draw from Russia’s oligarchic era, however, is that oligarchs are often bad at understanding politics. In Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky over-reached, turned against Putin and spent the next 10 years in prison. Now Putin only allows his own home-trained oligarchs to do the Kremlin’s bidding.

As the narcissist in chief, Trump does not want to be outshone by others. But the biggest danger for the US oligarchs could be a backlash from his passionate Maga base. After clashing with Musk over immigration policy, Steve BannonTrump’s former adviser, slammed the world’s richest man as a “really bad guy” and vowed to take him down.

Of course, America today differs from 1990s Russia in countless ways. Moreover, stock market investors seem to think that injecting capitalist austerity into the government will improve the economy, not hurt it. But US oligarchs may yet discover that, whatever their differences with their Russian counterparts, the dynamics of power and politics are universal. Those who ride a political tiger – and slip – end up getting hurt by it.

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