In spite of their internal conflicts, members of the group worked together in order to re-elect Boris Yeltsin in the 1996 Russian presidential election, and thereafter to successfully manipulate him and his political environment from behind the scenes.
In an article published on 14 November 1996 journalist Andrei Fadin [ru] coined the term "semibankirshchina" as a takeoff on the Seven Boyars (Russian: семибоярщина, romanized: semiboyarshchina), who deposed Tsar Vasily Shuisky in 1610 during the Time of Troubles.
[9] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also used this word in his critical 1998 essay Russia under Avalanche to describe the current political regime and to warn people of what he considered an organized crime syndicate that controlled the President and 70% of all Russian money.
[16][17] The manifest was published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta and suggested that two major candidates — Boris Yeltsin and the Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov — should strike a "political compromise" in order to prevent "the economical collapse."
After the plan failed, half of those oligarchs formed what became known as Semibankirschina — a group of seven business moguls ironically named after the 17th century seven boyars who owned the majority of Russian media resources and who decided to promote Boris Yeltsin every way possible.
Since Yeltsin was highly unpopular by that time, with only 3—8% support, a complex technology of crowd manipulation was developed by the Gleb Pavlovsky's and Marat Gelman's think tank Foundation for Effective Politics,[18] with the involvement of American specialists (the latter fact was used as a basis for the comedy film Spinning Boris released in 2003).
Known as an extremely "dirty" election campaign both inside and outside of Russia,[19] it was discussed in detail in Gleb Pavlovsky's report President in 1996: Scenarios and Technologies of the Victory published shortly after.
[23][17] According to Boris Berezovsky, they acted through Anatoly Chubais — an architect of privatization in Russia and Yeltsin's right-hand man who granted access to him at any time.