Understanding the lives of the wealthy in contemporary Russia is like opening up a traditional matryoshka wooden doll: the distinctive external form clearly shapes the contents.

Russia is a world away from the textbook model of a free market in which risk-taking entrepreneurs thrive in a benign environment. At times there have been, at the very least, strong incentives for those pursuing wealth to bend if not break the law. Those who have amassed the greatest riches have, in many cases, had the closest connections to government or themselves held senior positions.

It is widely known that in the 1990s some Russians, now widely referred to as oligarchs, became fabulously wealthy through their role in the privatisation of grossly underpriced state assets.