Berezovsky’s account had some holes, but he stuck to it his entire life. Whatever his exaggerations or omissions, he played a significant role in Russia’s transition from Boris Yeltsin to Putin. What strikes me is that years later — and up until his death — he still thought it had been a brilliant idea. 

Berezovsky claimed to have been the mastermind behind picking a man with no public face, a former K.G.B. agent, to succeed Yeltsin as the president of Russia. He also said it was his idea to manufacture an entire nonideological pseudo-political pseudo-movement to serve as the new president’s base of support. Berezovsky also had another brilliant idea, which to his regret Putin did not grasp: creating a fake two-party system, with Putin at the head of a socialist-democrat sort of party and Berezovsky leading a neoconservative one, or the other way around.

Well, that's pretty interesting. In fact, the last sentence above might be the most interesting one to appear in the NYT this year. But judging from Google, about the only other websites quoting it have names like Korean Jobs Forum.

By the way, what would be an enthralling fake controversy for the fake parties to fake argue over while they mutually loot the country for real?

Well, it's all too sci-fi hypothetical for me to think about. Obviously, it can't happen here.