 By the mid-1990s, the best-connected former nomenklatura leaders accumulated considerable financial resources, while on the other hand, the most successful entrepreneurs became acquainted with government officials and public politicians.The privatization of state enterprises was a unique opportunity because it gave many of those who had gained wealth in the early 1990s a chance to convert it into shares of privatized enterprises.The Yeltsin government hoped to use privatization to spread ownership of shares in former state enterprises as widely as possible to create political support for his government and his reforms.