Entries by James Wald

Lenin’s Willing Industrialist: The Saga of Armand Hammer, Part 4: The Real King of Oil, and the Importance of using a Bagman

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Although the definitive biography of the Jewish billionaire Marcel Reich is called The King of Oil, the title probably belongs to industrialist Armand Hammer, for perhaps no one did as much to alter the political and economic geography of the global oil scene than he did. Others may have […]

Lenin’s Willing Industrialist: The Saga of Armand Hammer, Part 3: The Faberge Fraud and Other Sleaze

Part 1 Part 2 One day while Armand Hammer was browbeating his PR man Carl Blumay by rattling off his list of accomplishments, he mentioned that in addition to being a “great industrialist” (Blumay 362) he was also a “distinguished philanthropist and art collector” (Ibid.). He capped his speech by claiming that he may, in […]

Lenin’s Willing Industrialist: The Saga of Armand Hammer, Part 2: A Lucrative Relationship with Lenin and Stealing German Technology

Armand Hammer made his first fortune in Russia. In his autobiography, Hammer, he speaks without irony about how the Romanovs, “those once-powerful rulers…treated Russia as their playground and their treasure house” (140). It is hard to read about Hammer’s time in Russia without concluding that he is projecting, that he enjoyed the good life among […]