One of the staples of Russian political rhetoric over the last decade has been the bogeyman of the immediate post-Soviet era. “The Turbulent Nineties,” as they're known today, represent everything that was wrong with Russia's fall from grace: gangsters, corruption, poverty, and so much more. Another prominent feature of the 1990s was intense rivalry between the nation's most powerful substate groups (variably called “clans” or “mafias”). Perhaps nothing embodied this chaos better than the competition between Russia's biggest business tycoons—the oligarchs—who battled one another, armed with incredible access to both the state apparatus and the country's mass media. Putin supposedly put an end to all that, locking up or booting out the most contumacious oligarchs (like Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky, Guisinsky, and others), and acclimating the rest of the elite to a new social contract, where the state would repossess the economy's “commanding heights.” Putin's Russia would become a more predictable and peaceful place, and society's uppermost echelon—the story goes—could finally rest easy. Why then do Russian elites seem to be suffering so many sleepless nights in Putin's third term? Talking points in the last few months—thanks largely to the Kremlin's own highly publicized anti-corruption campaign—have orbited issues that were supposed to have disappeared at the turn of the century. The buzz [ru] around Moscow is that Putin is busy establishing a new foundational pact to unite (and subdue) the nation's elite. To a certain extent, this includes personnel changes (some routine, others more dramatic), but there is also a growing perception [ru] that access to power [ru] (and the wealth that accompanies it) is now available on terms quite different [ru] from what justified such privileges [ru] ten years ago. (Loyalty alone, it seems [ru], is no longer enough to guarantee immunity.) Vladimir Milov, 16 December 2012, photo by Wladimir 777, CC 3.0. The state of elite affairs is a matter of interest to all groups involved in politics and society—including the RuNet's indomitable foot soldiers, the members of the opposition. This is a point that opposition politician Vladimir Milov has pressed for years, most recently in connection with intra-elite fighting that is currently raging [ru] between Putin's top subordinates, Igor Sechin (long-time hydrocarbons czar) and Arkady Dvorkovich (Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev's own man in oil and gas). In late February, Milov, who leads a small liberal political party called “Democratic Choice” (DemVybor), authored an op-ed [ru] for the e-zine Slon.ru (with supplemental material [ru] on DemVybor's LiveJournal page), where he argued that Sechin had suffered a major defeat in a government decision to inject 50 billion rubles into the capital assets of RusHydro, Russia's biggest hydroelectric entity, at the expense of state company Rosneftegaz, which Sechin heads. (Sechin lobbied in vain [ru] to execute the capital injection by way of Rosneftegaz purchasing stock in RusHydro, which would have expanded his influence over the hydroelectric industry.) Dvorkovich scored a major coup [ru] by converting to his side longtime Sechin-ally Evgeny Dod (RusHydro's chief) in a December 2012 vote, when the company's board of directors narrowly approved the government's capital assets scheme (which already carried Putin's signature [ru]). In the article, Milov levies the particularly scathing accusation that Rosneftegaz itself represents a scheme more underhanded than the infamous “loans for shares” of the Yeltsin era (which epitomized the worst oligarchic corruption of the 1990s). Indeed, Rosneftegaz was created in 2004 as a stopgap to facilitate Gazprom's takeover of Rosneft, with the expectation that it would be liquidated afterwards. When that deal collapsed, Rosneftegaz was left—very much intact—holding 10% of Gazprom and 100% (later reduced to 75%) of Rosneft. Milov highlights the fact that Rosneftegaz's multi-billion-dollar dividends do not revert to the state budget. Instead, the company is allowed to reinvest its profits on its own. (Unless, of course, it's forced to transfer 50 billion rubles to federal coffers for a handout to RusHydro, à la Dvorkovich's plan.) Milov also highlights a story [ru] in Vedomosti from February 19 about the absence of a formal shareholder agreement between Rosneftegaz and the Federal Agency for State Property Management (Rosimushchestvo). This means that both the Ministry of Economic Development and even Prime Minister Medvedev lack the formal power to enforce directives issued to Rosneftegaz.