The Politics of Russian Business

One thing you have to understand is that Russia is a politi­cal country. You can’t do things alone.  Never mind about the Kremlin. That is another ocean you probably won’t have to challenge. But, even at the daily business level, it can be like crossing a big pond in a small boat. Or, as in the famous Repin painting above, like pulling the boat upstream. It is better to know you may need help on the oars and to prepare by choosing your crew yourself. In Russia they call it a “roof” which means political relationships that hopefully will be there to help when you need it. Also you hope they will leave you alone to manage your business and not interfere. In my company, we were fortunate to have trustworty and friendly connections which did just that. Some roofs leak in a storm; others are overwhelming and starve you of sun to grow in. Choose carefully.

It’s like getting married. Be careful to pick the right one as you may be with them a long time. So often I found Americans who had made some initial contacts, came to Moscow for a week and went home thinking they had made a deal. It doesn’t happen that way. Again, here is where patience pays. Patience is strength.

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A Forgotton War: Warsaw 1920

A friend of mine, originally from Krakow, Poland recommended this book to me. I had never heard of this war—at this critical time and place in European history. In this book, Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe  by Adam Zamoyski reminds us about an obscure war that had great ramifications. Coming as it did between the World Wars the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1921 was pivotal in stemming the Soviet advance into Europe and in saving the Versailles peace conference and a reconstructed Poland. Zamoyski believes that this Polish victory saved Western Europe from being overrun by the Russians, with consequences that would have created Communist states in Germany, other Eastern European states, and possibly even as far West as France.

The new Soviet state was a mess after their brutal civil war, and the best way of ensuring its survival appeared to be to export the revolution to a ruined Germany. As usual, geography dictates. Between Russia and Germany lay Poland. Egged on by Trotsky, Lenin launched a massive westward advance under the flamboyant Marshal Tukhachevsky and the Russians were only a few kilometers from Warsaw, and Berlin was less than a week’s march away. Then the Miracle of the Vistula occurred: the Polish army led by Jozef Pilsudski regrouped and achieved one of the most decisive victories in military history and Lenin was forced to settle for Communism in one country—for a time. What a mess it was, hundreds of thousands of men fought and died and a look at the maps seemed to me like four football teams on one field with no set boundaries or goals. So many mistakes, such a big victory.

Pushkin was right!

“To the orders of God or muse be obedient.

Don’t be afraid of insult,

don’t demand the laurel wreath.

Slander and praise receive

with equal indifference.

     And never argue with a fool.”

This is from a poem Alexander Pushkin wrote in 1836. The epigraph is from Horace – “Exegi Monumentum”

Maybe if he had taken his own advice, he would not have lost in life in a senseless duel in St. Petersburg not long after he wrote this. Nevertheless the advice is not to be ignored. I gave these words in a calligraphic poem, framed, as a gift to my teenaged grandchildren for their home or college room walls. It is advice we all should follow.

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The Cossacks are Coming

Recently I was introduced to a Russian lady here in California who soon informed me she was in fact a Cossack. In my interest in Russian history and culture I know about the Cossacks, but hard facts are elusive as to who they really are.  I knew them from the dramatic pictures and wild stories and that they chased Napoleon out of Russia in 1812. A few questions from my ignorance brought her answer, “Cossacks are a nation.” The origin of the name “Cossack” is from an early Turkic word meaning “free man”—anyone who could not find his appropriate place in society and went into the steppes, where he acknowledged no authority.  An independent people they have always been.

Olga told us of her family, its terrible treatment under Stalin, the “disappearance” of most of the men, Meeting Olga encouraged me to do a little research and I find their identity goes back the 16^th century in that southern steppe lands of Eastern Europe and Asian Russia, around the Dnieper and Don rivers—that geographic location destined to be forever in the way of invading armies going south or north, with  the Cossacks allying with one side or the other, or both.

As I underline in “Walking on Ice, an American Businessman in Russia,” I am always amazed at the determination and strength of many of the Russian women who come here for a new life. To meet a Cossack woman, here only three years, with a good job, and hear her decent English and resolve to better herself in this totally different culture, is admirable. The Cossacks are coming, but maybe only one at a time.

The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan of Turkey, the painting by Ilya Repin shown above is in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg

About Leadership

There is so much talk and teaching about “management” in these changing times. However, there is a difference between “management” and “leadership.” My own world experience has taught me that under good leadership, a good team manages to get the job done. Yesterday I visited the Milken Institute to hear a talk entitled “Defining Great Leadership” by Warren Bennis and Joel Kurtzman, both experienced and celebrated writers and speakers on this subject. It was a full house.

Bennis, in describing the start of his life-study of leadership related his experience during World War II as a fresh Lieutenant in a combat hardened infantry unit in France. His discussion rang a bell with me as that was so similar to my first leadership experience. In Korea in 1955 I was transferred from a non-combat assignment to a tank regiment on the front lines. Bennis and Kurtzman stressed one is only a leader when there are loyal followers and they both agreed the Army was the best training ground for this. When I was placed as a tank platoon leader, it was the “loyal followers” who trained me to be a leader. The sergeants, all veterans of chasing Rommel across Africa and Italy, showed me how to be part of the team, and lead.

Today, those companies with outstanding and responsible leadership, with the professional and social skills needed to inspire and harness creativity in the high-tech world, will be our heroes of this century.

Bennis’ book Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership and Kurtzman’s Common Purpose: How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary are available from Amazon and book stores.

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Russia Burning – to do what?

 The disastrous fires in Russia will soon be over—and then what? I was amazed to hear that the fires had started. I spent six years in Russia, in Moscow winters and summers. Nothing like this has happened before in Russia. What lasting effect these fires will have is open discussion now. Fingers are pointing9, but will they return to counting money soon?

This crisis has presented Prime Minister Putin with a great opportunity to show himself a hero on TV, at the controls (really?) of a BE200 dropping water on the fires, and to pose as master of the situation, and he has done just that. That’s despite Putin himself bearing the brunt of responsibility for Russia’s lack of preparedness for the fires, according to a scathing article in the Moscow business newspaper Vedemosti. It points out that Putin abolished the state forestry service three years ago and scaled back state funding for fire prevention measures. According to the paper, Russia currently spends about 4 cents per hectare of forest lands on fire-fighting services, compared with about $4 in the United States.

The impact of this disaster will be, I think, another weight on the scale of change inching forward in that country of a thousand years of autocratic rule where all change was determined from the top down. The demand for regional elections to choose regional leaders is growing. Putin eliminated regional leadership choice and moved it to the Kremlin. Now the regions want it back. Local control to create local solutions to unforeseen disasters such as the wildfires is one of the reasons argued in favor of this move.  The fire of change has already begun. It will take time.

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Russian Contemporary Art

 by Tamara Semenova, St. Petersburg

Masha Zeiring and with Muriel Wood, both Directors of our Los Angeles/St. Petersburg Sister City Committee was the team that prepared and took over 200 pieces of art from the Los Angeles Unified School District for display during the Master Class White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia this past June-July. Masha’s parents are celebrated artists in St. Petersburg and Masha has started a web page for them and to provide an expanding representation of the best in contemporary art from that artistic center of Russia. The web page is called The Art Addiction.

I think this initiative of Masha’s is going to grow into a recognized center of contemporary Russian art in the city of Los Angeles.

Russian Corruption of Olympic Proportions

  The allegations of extreme corruption in the Russian 2014 Sochi Olympics have got everyone talking, but so far we hear of no corrective action being taken. The media is full of it. The Moscow Times, The Christian Science Monitor and the Novaya Gazeta have covered it well. This speaks of incredibly negative public relations for Russia amidst the world community.

Of course, corruption in the Olympies is not new. But after the efficient and relatively clean Olympics in Vancouver, the mishandling of such a visible international affair as the Winter Olympics forecasts a great loss of prestige for a nation trying to establish itself in as a world leader. As the Christian Science Monitor reported, the Transparency International’s annual corruption perceptions index currently ranks Russia No. 146 out of 180 countries, down from No. 82 a decade ago. A financially corrupt Sochi games will simply highlight that national sickness. And it colors the entire reputation of this honorable historic event. Not much is expected from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s publicized investigation into the affair.

Why would a country’s leadership allow or support such a demeaning thing to happen? The answers may be deep and hard to heal. To some, civil and moral disobedience is not the issue. Getting caught is the offense to avoid. We won’t know the fallout of this for some time. Heads may roll, but pockets will be filled. But, as the Russians often say, “Let’s hope for the best.”

Moscow, a City of Dogs

Don’t take offense, Muscovites. The subway riding dogs have made Moscow famous. We have seen this canine phenomenon on TV. Moscow is a city of dogs. There are two classes. Much like the city’s underclass inhabitants, those affected by the need to move out of the modernizing city can still be seen in vagabond packs or stalking alone, scheming to sur­vive, begging,. But now they ride the metro.

They sleep in the suburbs and shop in the center. Russian scientists say that Moscow stray dogs became much smarter. Once they arrive to the downtown they demonstrate different new, previously unseen dog skills. They know how to scare people into dropping their hotdog.     They don’t miss their stop while going on the subway. Biologists say dogs have very keen sense of time which helps them not to miss their destination. Another skill they have is to cross the road on the green traffic light. “They don’t react on color, but on the picture they see on the traffic light”, Moscow scientist tells. Also they choose often the last or the first metro car–those are less crowded usually.

There is of course the upper class of dogs, the canine elite, who walk their masters, regardless of rank, in the parks each morning and evening. (In my book, see the essays Dogs and My Name is Dog in the Essay Collection.)

But then there is the big picture. Moscow is a masculine city. It has muscle. It is an explod­ing powerhouse of opportunity held together by threads of per­sonal energy and ambition. It is a beehive of lives stacked twenty stories high, living the happiness and sins of people anywhere—only at the extremes Moscow hardly sleeps. It has a burly aggressiveness unique in Europe. In time, Moscow is destined to be one of the great cit­ies of Europe. The one word that describes Moscow is power.

With an energy unmatched anywhere else in Russia, Mos­cow is a sprawling, brawling, dynamic throng of eleven million people embracing dozens of races, speaking scores of different tongues and struggling to make enough rubles to survive. Not only are there two Russias, there are two Moscows, one whose people thrive and one whose people strive to survive. Not far outside the latest Outer Ring, you might think in some ways it is still the 1930s. And then there are the dogs. Maybe there are three Moscows.

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Confessions of a Russophile

From the review for “Walking on Ice. An American Businessman in Russia” from Russia Profile magazine, by its editor, Andrei Zolotov, Jr.  

Of the legion of Western entrepreneurs who came to Russia in the early 1990s in search of opportunities, many came here guided not just by greed, but by a quest for adventure. But there were few who had become infatuated with Russian culture built their businesses as a cultural matchmaking of sorts. They had the inquisitive minds and open hearts of cultural interpreters, which helped push their projects in the land, where, as one such person, Frederick R. Andresen put it, “everything is difficult—and everything is possible.”

Andresen put his insightful observations into a tenderly written, concise book, which is neither an academic study, nor a memoir; neither a business manual, nor a cultural history. Yet it somehow manages to serve all these purposes and can be recommended as an easy and highly educational read for aspiring Russia scholars and people preparing for a tour of duty in Russia.

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