Last year, Norilsk bought U.S.-based Stillwater Mining to gain a toehold in North America.
But even in the 1990s, the people of cities like Norilsk remained prisoners in a sense.
Yet if Mr Prokhorov manages to sell his stake in Norilsk, it will strengthen property rights.
Mr Usmanov's private company, Gazmetall, has made a formal approach, through a foreign bank, to Norilsk.
British diplomats who last month visited Norilsk, an isolated northern mining town, were asked for food aid.
Prokhorov's most notable transaction would probably be the sale of his 25% stake in Norilsk Nickel to Deripaska.
But he already had one big backer among its shareholders: Norilsk Nickel, a Russian firm with over 20%.
Norilsk Nickel, which supplies the car industry with palladium, platinum and rhodium, is looking to expand its operations.
The question is whether relations between Harmony and Norilsk will remain, well, harmonious in the months to come.
Russia's Norilsk Nickel (otc: NILSY) is the world's biggest producer of nickel, which is what makes stainless steel shiny.
Large and powerful companies, including Sibneft, Norilsk Nickel and Alfa Bank, were represented.
Taxes from Norilsk Nickel's mines provide nearly 70% of the regional administration's income.
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The management of Norilsk Nickel stresses that its job is to act in the interest of all its shareholders.
In March 2007, Pravda reported his resignation as general director and president of OAO Norilsk Nickel, a subsidiary of Interros.
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Norilsk Nickel expects palladium to be in a deficit next year, Berlin said, speaking at a conference sponsored by ETF Securities.
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So it was probably only a matter of time before Norilsk decided to team up with a fellow bidder such as Harmony.
On October 8, Norilsk said that it expects the Russian stock pile to be finished this year and that it anticipates no deliveries in 2011.
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In March, Vladimir Potanin, a Russian tycoon who controls Norilsk, bought a stake in Gold Fields as a way of diversifying his own interests outside Russia.
Norilsk Nickel is the world's largest nickel and palladium miner.
Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Russian investment bank Uralsib, believes that Norilsk Nickel is one of the companies the state would love to add to "its list of national champions".
Yeltsin pledged some of the most lucrative state companies, such as Yukos, Lukoil, Sibneft, and Norilsk Nickel, as loan collateral with the understanding that the state would default.
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But Norilsk Nickel, with the world's largest reserves of the metal, treads in the shadow of rumors that the government is plotting to target it as it did Mikhail Khodorkovsky's oil company Yukos.
Although it does in fact have a lot of relevance to the modern world: the taxation of palladium and or rhodium exports from the Norilsk mine are informed by it, just as one example.
The way Mr Chernomyrdin twitched about the Norilsk auction, and some sharp comments he has made lately about privatisation, have been seen as hints that he is sorely tempted to go Mr Berezovsky's way.
Norilsk's motives are also fairly clear: Mr Potanin would like to get a foothold outside Russia in case the government there decides to bully metals producers as it has done Yukos, the country's largest oil company.
The problems with PGM production in South Africa come on the heels of news from Norilsk, which said PGM output should be flat year-over-year for 2012, at 2.780 million ounces of palladium and 690, 000 ounces of platinum.
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