Poverty and indebtedness were alleviated, but there was no wholesale cancellation of debts or redistribution of property, and many of Caesar's adherents were disappointed.
The decision to nationalize the lands of the Roman Catholic Church in France to pay off the public debt led to a widespread redistribution of property.
So far, this has sounded more like a redistribution of property, rather than liberal reform.As for Mr Putin, he seems still to be keeping his options open.
In the epilogue, an unnamed official, perhaps the same one, says: "The ideology is power and redistribution of property.... Power is a means of keeping property in their hands".
Thus they do not see a redistribution of property from private hands into their own as theft but as their right.The precedent was set by the destruction of the Yukos oil company in 2003-04.
The most important value in Nashism, says Mr Illarionov, is loyalty to the regime; another feature is the unequal application of the law; and a main purpose is the redistribution of property.
The ruling "set in motion the most fundamental redistribution of property rights ever attempted by a state government in the United States," a 1990 article in Political Science Quarterly said.
Even if Putin were not so uncomfortable with the vicissitudes of democratic politics, the massive redistribution of property that has occurred during his reign militates against any political liberalization.
At a recent forum in Krasnoyarsk for economists, business bigwigs and politicians, including some members of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, there was agreement that the state is not ready to negotiate with, let alone be controlled by, society, and that existing institutions are just a device for the redistribution of property.
And it began the redistribution of property and power towards former and present security-service men, collectively known as siloviki.Mr Khodorkovsky has asserted in interviews that it was the siloviki's informal leader, Igor Sechin, now deputy prime minister, who initiated the attack on Yukos.
