【导读】寡头是苏联解体后，俄罗斯混乱的政治经济体制下的特殊产物。而别列佐夫斯基，更是寡头中曾一时间叱咤风云的典型。近日他被发现死于伦敦寓所的浴室中，死因至今不明。这位传奇人物的人生竟如此终结，使人感慨。
Boris Berezovsky
鲍里斯·别列佐夫斯基
The archetypal oligarch
寡头代表
A still unexplained end to a dramatic life
戏剧般人生的谜样终结
Mar 30th 2013 | MOSCOW |From the print edition
The Kremlin will need to find someone else to demonise
（别氏死后）克里姆林宫可就需要去妖魔化另一位了
IN A Russian film, “The Oligarch”, the alter ego of Boris Berezovsky escapes death and returns to Moscow in a cavalcade of limousines with flashing lights, looking for more adventures. The life of the real Berezovsky, a renegade oligarch exiled to Britain, ended on March 23rd on a bathroom floor of his house in Ascot. He was said to be depressed, financially ruined—and desperate to return to Russia.
在俄国电影《寡头》中，鲍里斯·别列佐夫斯基的化身先是死里逃生，而后于镁光灯的闪耀中，乘着一队豪华轿车回到莫斯科，开始新的冒险。而现实生活中，客居英国的流亡寡头别列佐夫斯基，却于三月二十三日，在阿斯科特家中浴室的地板上，结束了自己的一生。据说，在人生的最后时光中，他陷入消沉，财务破产，且近乎绝望地渴望回到俄国。
“There is nothing I want more than to return to Russia…I lost the meaning…I am 67-years-old and I don’t know what to do next,” he told a journalist from the Russian-language edition of Forbes, an American publication, a day earlier. According to the Kremlin, Mr Berezovsky had recently written a repentant letter to Vladimir Putin, whom he had helped to become president 13 years ago and who had kicked him out immediately afterwards.
”除了回到俄国，我再无别的念头......我的人生已经失去意义......我已经67岁了，不知道该再去做什么了。“在去世前一天，接受美国杂志《福布斯》俄文版的专访时，他如是说。据克里姆林宫称，别列佐夫斯基近日向弗拉基米尔·普金致信表示悔改，而普金，正是十三年前于他扶持下成为总统，而后立马把他踢走的那一位。
The cause of his death is unclear. A bodyguard who discovered Mr Berezovsky said the bathroom door was locked from the inside. There was no sign of struggle or forced entry into the house, the police said. The post-mortem examination showed the cause of death was “consistent with hanging”. Apparently a scarf was found next to Mr Berezovsky’s body. Whatever the cause, this was a dramatic end to the dramatic life of one of the most colourful figures in modern Russian history.
他的死因至今不明。发现别列佐夫斯基的保镖称当时浴室门从内反锁。而警方则称没有打斗或强行入室的痕迹。尸检表明死亡原因是“持续受缠绕”。在别列佐夫斯基的尸体旁发现一条围巾。而不管死因究竟为何，这都是一位俄国现代历史中富有色彩人物之传奇人生的戏剧式终结。
It was a life that Mr Berezovsky had constructed himself, scheming, calculating and miscalculating. A mathematician by background, Mr Berezovsky specialised in the theory of decision-making and in optimisation, using maths to model how choices are made. He applied those models to his life, and even to the country, as though it were a chessboard on which he moved the main pieces. He fancied himself as the chief manipulator of Russian politics: not the country’s most prominent politician, but the puppet-master of the politicians. He cherished his image as the ultimate oligarch. He cultivated the myths about his influence and power and exploited them to obtain real power, money and influence. A man of demonic energy, he was ubiquitous.
这是别列佐夫斯基自己亲手塑造的人生——使计，算计以及失算。拥有数学家背景的别列佐夫斯基专于决策理论与求最优解，利用数学模型演绎决策过程。而他在他的个人的生活，甚至是整个国家套进了这些模型，就像在棋盘上摆弄棋子一样。他自以为俄国政治的操纵者：不做这个国家里最著名的政治家，而是做操纵政治这台木偶戏的主人。他以自己超级寡头的形象为豪。他解开了关于权势的谜题，并依此去攥取真实的权力，财富，势力。近乎拥有魔力的他，无处不在。
As an archetypal oligarch, he provided rich material to writers and film-makers. By the time he left Russia in 2000, the line between the real man and the mythological character had become blurred. Mr Berezovsky did not protest, and even borrowed part of the name of his film character for his British passport. His image as a supreme fixer made it easy for the Kremlin to demonise him; and thus his death has deprived Russia’s leadership of its most useful enemy.
作为典型的寡头，他提供给了作家与电影人丰富的素材。到他于2000年离开俄国前，那条他作为现实人物与神话人物的界限已经消解。对此别列佐夫斯基没有任何反对，甚至在他的英国护照上借用了以他为原型的电影人物的名字。他的形象是克里姆林宫妖魔化他本人的最好道具，所以他的死也使俄国领导人损失了一位最有用的敌人。
Mr Berezovsky epitomised the 1990s with all the opportunities, ruthlessness, colour and individualism of those years. He thrived on uncertainty and crisis, surviving several assassination attempts, and expanded his influence. He took advantage of the chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the inadequacies of the market economy. Unlike other Russian oligarchs who wished to own their assets and be able to pass them on, Mr Berezovsky did not formally own much of what he controlled. He operated not through share registers, but through people he appointed as managers of his key enterprises.
别列佐夫斯基象征着九十年代的一切机遇，残酷，多彩，自利。他在风险与危机中起家，从数次暗杀中逃生，并逐渐扩张他的影响力。他从苏联解体后的混乱秩序以及不完备的市场经济环境中谋利。而不像别的希望拥有并传承资产俄国寡头，别列佐夫斯基并不形式上地拥有他控制的一切。他并不通过股东名册，而是通过他所任命为他的关键企业的经理的人来经营事业。
Mr Berezovsky saw money not as a goal in itself, but as a by-product of his main activity: scheming and playing politics. The process was as pleasing to him as the result. Like an alchemist, he turned personal connections into money and money into influence. Having made his first fortune by selling cars, he got to know the future son-in-law of Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first president after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and thus entered the circles of power. Mr Berezovsky paid for the publication of Yeltsin’s memoirs and regularly delivered the royalties from sales in other countries—whether real or not, nobody knew.
别列佐夫斯基不把金钱本身看做目的，这只是他的主要活动，算计与玩弄权术的副产品。这个过程便是目的，使他满足。作为一名寡头，他将人脉化成金钱，金钱化成势力。在卖汽车而赚取第一桶金的过程中，他结识了他未来的女婿，苏联解体后俄国的第一任总统，鲍里斯·叶利钦，并藉此打入权力圈。别列佐夫斯基付钱让叶利钦出版自传，并经常将销售所得版税转移到别的国家——不管这是真是假，反正当时没人知道。
He persuaded Yeltsin and his family to hand him effective control over Channel One, Russia’s main television channel, promising to turn it to their service. He then convinced the Kremlin to sell him and his partners Sibneft, an oil company, at a knock-down price, in order to finance Channel One, which he used as a blunt and effective tool of propaganda. “I never saw the media as business, but as a powerful instrument in a political struggle,” he said in one television interview. He also deployed Channel One in his wars with business competitors.
他说服叶利钦与他的家人将俄国主要的电视频道第一频道的控制权交予他，承诺将利用它为他们自身服务。而后他又说服克里姆林宫，将Sibneft石油公司以近乎敲诈的价格买给他和他的搭档，并利用石油公司的收入，来为他那僵化但有效的宣传工具第一频道输血。“我从未将媒体看做生意，这是我政治斗争中的有力武器。”在一档电视访谈中他如是说。在与他的商业伙伴的竞争中，他同样用上了第一频道。
In 1996 Mr Berezovsky got Russia’s seven oligarchs to rally behind Yeltsin, throwing their financial and media resources into his re-election. A few years later, Mr Berezovsky played a key role in choosing Yeltsin’s successor and used his money and television to propel Mr Putin to the presidency. He publicised his influence so openly that it was, perhaps, inevitable that his protégé would turn against him. Mr Berezovsky was persuaded that emigration would be wise. Having disposed of him, the Kremlin adopted his methods, including the use of television.
1996年别列佐夫斯基伙同七位俄国寡头，将他们的金融与媒体资源投入到支持叶利钦连任的总统换届选举中。一些年后，别列佐夫斯基用金钱与电视宣传铺路，在叶利钦的继任者普金的胜选中扮演了关键角色。他如此公开地传达他的势力，或许这使得他所保送的那一位将不可避免地背弃他。别列佐夫斯基被劝说去明智地选择移民。在处理掉他以后，克里姆林宫照用了他的手段，包括那电视宣传。
As an exile in London, Mr Berezovsky tried to seek revenge, but his belligerence only played into the Kremlin’s hands. His last gamble was a legal suit over a $5 billion claim against a former business partner, Roman Abramovich. A High Court judge in London found Mr Berezovsky “an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable, witness” and ruled against him. The verdict left him with multimillion dollar legal bills—and psychologically crushed.
流落到伦敦的别列佐夫斯基寻求复仇，但是他的斗争不过是被克里姆林宫玩弄于股掌中。最后他在一桩价值50亿美元的官司上孤注一掷，与他曾经的生意伙伴罗曼·阿布拉莫维奇对簿公堂。伦敦高级法院的法官认定别列佐夫斯基“一位无聊的，内在不可靠的证人”，并驳回了他的上诉。这项判决留给他数百万美元的法律费用账单，并使他心理崩溃。
It was not so much the loss of money that destroyed Mr Berezovsky, but the loss of the game of which he thought himself a master. Like the chess grandmaster Luzhin in Vladimir Nabokov’s “The Defence”, who abandons the game by jumping out of the bathroom window, Mr Berezovsky may have felt he had run out of moves.
并不是金钱的损失毁灭了别列佐夫斯基，在他自认为是主人的游戏中的溃败，才真正地毁灭了他。就像弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫的电影《防御》中的国际象棋大师卢金，放弃棋局，纵身跳出浴室的窗户，或许别列佐夫斯基觉得，他已经无路可走。
From the print edition: Europe
