Includes bibliographical references (pages 543-547) and index.

"In all of Moscow, few vantage points are as spectacular as Sparrow Hill, a forested, sloping rise perched above the Moscow River where it makes a lazy turn toward the Kremlin. One evening in September 1994, a group of wealthy Russian businessmen gathered in secret at a villa at the crest of the hill, overlooking the river. They began a conversation that would change Russia forever." "This book is a chronicle of six men who helped lead Russia in one of the grandest, most arduous experiments ever attempted: to transform a vast country, in the grip of failed socialism, into an economy of free market capitalism. The six are Boris Berezovsky, a risk-taking powerbroker; Vladimir Gusinsky, an ambitious media magnate; Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a fiercely-determined oil baron; Alexander Smolensky, an earthy banker; Anatoly Chubais, a steely economic reformer; and Yuri Luzhkov, the powerful Mayor of Moscow."--Jacket.

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