But in the strangest twist of all, Russia's swashbuckling new capitalists have created some of the biggest roadblocks.
They mark the failure of policies intended to nurture new capitalists.
And so do some of the new capitalists.
When Russians go to the polls next month, he's counting on the new capitalists to back his pro-market reforms.
But the reported plot also comes against a background of an increasingly bitter battle among Russia's new capitalists over the privatization of state property.
Perhaps not as intended, the new capitalists were given monopolies by bureaucrats in charge of scarce goods.
Poor treatment of minority shareholders was common in the 1990's, when new capitalists were grabbing assets from the government.
And the new capitalists are thriving.
His radicalism was always carefully limited and, in the end, easily transportable into the new capitalist, democratic state machinery.
Another: One day the Devil meets a new Russian capitalist and offers him anything he wants.