I am in no position to be dispassionate about President Vladimir Putin’s war against Russia’s “oligarchs,” the class of men and women (yes, there are some, the wife of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzkov being the most prominent) who control the country’s most lucrative companies and natural-resource assets. How can I be neutral, as I am usually counted among them? But an insiders’ perspective is valuable nonetheless, for only an insider knows what is really being done behind the scenes.

Having been a target of Putin’s “war,” I can speak of it in very concrete terms. Because I was forced to leave Russia and defend myself from the Kremlin while in exile in England, I know how the entire repressive power of a state can be brought to bear on a single man.

Such a thing could not happen in a Western democracy. Can anyone imagine the workings of the entire French state – the police, the security services, the military, and the bureaucracy – being coordinated to secure the imprisonment of a lone individual? In Russia, it is more than imaginable.

For years, the whole force of the Russian state has worked relentlessly to ensure my extradition to Russia in order to portray me as a criminal. It took me three years in a London court to prove that I was being prosecuted for purely political reasons. The British authorities ruled that I was to be given asylum – a decision that fortunately is not being challenged in Russia. At least some in the Kremlin realize that not all courts exist merely to do the bidding of those in power.

Putin’s war against the oligarchs is sometimes interpreted as a fight against separate individuals or against ill-gotten wealth. In fact, it is a war against independent people with the wherewithal to stand up and be counted. The fight began with the parliamentary elections of 2003, when independent politicians were systematically stifled. I may disagree with the liberal Grigory Yavlinsky and his Yabloko Party, or with Anatoly Chubais (who continues to serve Russia by heading the national electricity company), but both faced insurmountable obstacles to gaining seats in the State Duma (the lower house of parliament).

They were kept out of parliament because, in truth, they represent more than themselves; they stand for people who sincerely wish to defend the idea of a “liberal Russia,” a country that is free and democratic. They were basically destroyed politically – scared away, fired from various jobs, or forced to leave the country.

There is more than a whiff of hypocrisy in Putin’s anti-oligarch campaigns. Among the people persecuting the oligarchs, I haven’t met one who isn’t trying to become an oligarch himself. Indeed, Putin’s treasured KGB cronies, who are supposed to be such ascetic hard men, all seem to be marrying their government jobs with lucrative posts in state-owned enterprises. The infamous Igor Sechin, the Cardinal Richelieu of Putin’s Kremlin, somehow also manages to have time to be the chairman of Rosneft, the big state oil concern.

Two conditions marked Russia’s oligarchs for persecution. First, they could foresee the future more clearly than others. So when everybody thought that Russia was about to become a market economy, they had seen that the turn had already happened – and so were miles ahead of the game.

Second, having quickly established their businesses, they had the will to get involved in politics at critical moments, and ruthlessly to defend the political system that they felt was needed for capitalism to survive in Russia. Boris Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996 was such a moment.

Unfortunately, at a certain moment, some oligarchs started explaining themselves. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed boss of Yukos Oil, for example, began to repent his actions publicly in order to please the Kremlin. Although I hate to be critical of a man unjustly imprisoned, his example shows that most of the oligarchs lacked the toughness to defend the political system in which they believed. They bickered among themselves and fell into a trap.

That trap was the phony belief that capital and power can be made separate. But such a wall of separation does not exist in true democracies. On the contrary, wealthy people and businesses in countries throughout the world compete with each other and with other interest groups for political access and influence.

Indeed, such political action makes for responsible wealth. For only in this way is great wealth made a healthy and organic part of the country’s political and social life. So, if Putin wins his war against the oligarchs, it will be a Pyrrhic victory: wealth will be more than intimidated; it will become purely a creature and plaything of power.