The cock-up theory, meanwhile, is similar in the sense of seeing a politically-inspired government campaign against the oligarchs.
But it attributes the curiously protracted and secretive campaign against Yukos to a struggle for influence and money among various groups. Mr Putin, the theory goes, is not directing matters, because events have spiralled beyond the government's control.
Cold comfort
Neither theory is especially comforting for Russian business. The government is either wicked or incompetent, or both.
As Yukos shrinks, Gazprom gets bigger
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More persuasive, however, is a third explanation - one which has, if anything, even more troubling implications for economic reform.
On 2 November, Gazprom registered a new subsidiary, Gazpromneft, whose purpose was to gather together the firm's modest oil resources. (In 2003, the company produced just 16,000 barrels per day of oil, less than 1% of the output of Yukos.)
Gazpromneft is to be the vehicle for the previously-announced takeover of Rosneft, a once-mighty state oil producer now reduced to medium size.
Building a champion
The merger of Gazprom and Rosneft will have three main effects.
First, it will create a company with the potential to produce one million barrels per day of oil within the next few years.
Second, it will leave Gazprom fully state-owned, diluting private shareholders - currently 62% of the total - to a minority.
Third, Gazpromneft will be the perfect vehicle for the takeover of Yuganskneftegas, which will double its potential output and make it the country's biggest oil producer by far.
Money talks
The question is why.
The Kremlin insists its interference in the sector is minimal, and that oil companies are simply consolidating in response to global pressures in the industry.
This strikes most observers as disingenuous. "Companies like Rosneft don't buy a new photocopier without asking the government first," sneers one analyst.
From Moscow's point of view, there are powerful economic reasons for consolidation.
The energy business is booming: a recent World Bank report found that profit margins in the Russian oil sector were up to 36%, and 64% for gas, compared with close to zero in the West.
Gazprom, behemoth though it is, is being chipped away at by hungry private firms, whose share of gas production has risen from 8% to 12% in the past five years.
Gazprom's mature gasfields are in decline: to replenish production, it needs access to the plentiful gas produced - and in many cases, simply burned off - by oil companies.
Power games
There is a bigger dimension, too.
Russia has long used its dominance of the ex-Soviet energy infrastructure - pipelines and pumping stations, storage deports, refineries and ports - to exert control over its neighbours.
Private firms are the main source of growth in Russian oil
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Under Mr Putin, these measures have been emphasised: he has, for example, signed deals to route almost all present and future energy exports from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
Increased muscle for Gazprom means increased geopolitical influence, the theory goes.
And with Europe heavily reliant on energy imports - the new East European EU members buy 75% of their gas and 80% of their oil from Russia - Russia will increasingly be able to exert that influence westward.
Back to the USSR
Fair enough, up to a point.
All governments fret about their energy security, especially since September 11, 2001. The West might be relieved that its energy imports are to come from a solid, massively-capitalised Gazprom than from a rabble of flakey privateers.
But for those looking for progress from Mr Putin, the development is a dismal one.
Russia spent much of the first half of the 1990s dismantling its state oil apparatus, and then gathering the fragments into more or less viable corporations.
Now, that process seems to be going into reverse.
A return to quasi-ministerial control would be a blow to the industry's efficiency, and is scarcely calculated to spread the wealth of the industry most efficiently to the areas that need it.
Nor is Yukos expected to be the end of Gazprom's ambitions: an obvious next step would be to absorb Transneft, Russia's vastly influential pipeline monopoly.
The fall of Yukos was the story of 2004; next year, it will be the rise of Gazprom.
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Russia's oligarchs
