Behold, Russia has got a new czar. No, the Romanovs did not rise from their graves. No, the Russian people did not invite a Romanov cousin, Prince Charles, to claim the throne of his Russian ancestors. No, the authoritarian Russian president, Vladimir Putin, did not crown himself Vladimir I. He just replaced the CEO of the biggest Russian company, Gazprom.

Gazprom is not just the largest Russian company, controlling 94 percent of Russian gas production and owning 100 percent of the domestic gas-pipeline network. It is also the largest gas company in the world, with 25 percent of world output and 23 percent of global reserves. Gazprom is the largest supplier of gas to Europe. Countries like Germany, Italy, France, Belgium and Austria have become its dependents in terms of gas delivery. Gazprom accounts for 8 percent of Russia's gross domestic product and for the lion's share of its hard-currency earnings. In other words, this leviathan is a super-player in Eurasian politics.

The metaphor normally applied to Gazprom is a state within a state. The corporation was created by a special decree of Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin, back in 1992. Basically, it took over from the gigantic Soviet gas industry, one of the few viable sectors of the empire's economy. Under the communists, gas exports paid for all the Soviet Union's costly imperial adventures, such as the war in Afghanistan and the space race. The reason the Soviet economy did not collapse altogether under the mismanagement of the Kremlin megalomaniacs was precisely the steady influx of hard currency from its gas industry. The people who ran that industry had to be as hard as nails, pragmatic and sly. One of them was Viktor Chernomyrdin.