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.

“Grappling With Soviet Symbolism,” New York Times

In the May 15, 2010 edition of The New York Times, was an article by Andrei Zolotov, Jr. “Grappling With Soviet Symbolism. This paralleled well with the sentiments in my book  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia.” So, I wrote a letter to the New York Times and they, surprisedly, answered at once telling me it was going to be published in the International Herald Tribune. I expect to see a copy of that soon. Here is what I wrote:

 “What a welcome account of the obvious change happening in Russia today. It has been happening, but slowly and often unnoticed by the press. Lenin said Russia progressed one step forward and one step back. I say today it is three steps forward and two back, but we must acknowledge that residual step and help build on it. Zolotov covered it all well. Indeed, it is often the “blink” of events that help turn the head and then the body in a new and better direction. The Smolensk fatal crash killing the Polish leadership on the anniversary of the Katyn massacre may well have been that unexpected moment that turned the Russian heads. In my seventeen years in Russian business, it has been so obvious that the country was inching toward a reality first foreseen by Peter the Great, now led by the world-conscious young as they lead Russia out of the historic dark past into the light of the new world.”

Buy the book here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

All Economists are Wrong, Right?

 On my first tour of Russia in 1991, the tour director told a joke which still rings true today.

“President Mitterrand has one hundred mistresses. One of them has AIDS, and he doesn’t know which one. President Bush has one hundred body guards. One of them is a terrorist, and he doesn’t know which one. President Yeltsin has a hundred economic advisors. One of them is right, but he doesn’t know which one.”

Economists seldom agree and it seems that a country’s leader, especially if he is a dictator or autocrat, always has the pleasure of choosing economists who agree with him. This is so in Russia. The Soviet Union was a country of statistics. From top to bottom, statistics were created and recorded to prove a point. The point could be that the economic plan was working, or failing, that the factory was producing or not producing, or that a certain Comrade should be given a medal or shot—or both.

 One Economist was Right

 “The economic system of Russia has undergone such rapid changes that it is impossible to obtain a precise and accurate account of it…. Almost everything one can say about the country is true and false at the same time.”

John Maynard Keynes

The famous economist, John Maynard Keynes said the above, in 1925, It is true today. When Keynes made that observation, Russia was nearing the completion of the cruelest and most senseless civil war ever to ruin a promising country. It was Lenin’s twisted dream, his untried political theory which he perpetrated on a people he did not love, in order to satisfy a selfish penchant for proving himself right. It was like trying to balance a pencil on its point. It took seventy years, covering much of my life span, for its wrongness to become evident to all. Such a waste of human potential the world has never seen!

For more read “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

Three steps forward and two backward!

  “Nothing is impossible in Russia but reform.” Oscar Wilde

I think Oscar Wilde was wrong—but it will take time to know. The efforts to transform Russia into a viable and democratic economy, one that fits comfortably with the rest of the free world, will at best jerk forward over the coming years. But it is happening. Three steps forward and two backward. Still, one residual step in the right direction is something to be grateful for in a land of such immense potential. That is an improvement over Lenin’s assessment of Russian progress, “One step forward and one back.”

History has not been kind to the Russians. Seventy years of cruel rigidity under Communism within the context of a thousand years of autocratic rule has fostered a blind dependence on central authority, as de Tocqueville says “of servitude,” a resulting lack of personal responsibility and self confidence, and a fatalistic distrust of the future.

 Historically, and largely because of their geography, Russians missed out entirely on the pivotal events of Western development. A thread running through their complex political history is the fear of and acceptance of an all-powerful and sometimes arbitrary central authority, the influence of constricting medieval orthodoxy, and the mystical unifying force called the “Russian soul.”

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“You know the fact!”

“You know the fact! I am the best. I wear Levis and Nikes”

                                                                                   An unknown Russian boy

These words were scribbled by a child in small English letters on the yellow brick wall of a residential Moscow building near where I lived in 1994. That says more about the future of Russia than any academic think tank with their computer generated prophesies based on arguable statistics. There is the quest for global status in those scribbles of the young. And in the end (and the end may be down the road a bit) it is the young that count. That is where the promise lies—with those who can wear Levis and Nikes and still be Russian. That is “the fact.”

On one of those early post-Soviet days, walking down the Old Arbat, just after Mayor Luzhkov had banned the street kiosks and the pandering of KGB uniforms and Lenin T-shirts, I was approached by a small boy with a big bag. The boy, about ten, furtively looked over both shoulders to assure no police were watching, and pulled out of his plastic bag a matryoshka doll so badly painted I thought it was done by a dyspeptic. He said in near perfect English, “Look at this beautiful matryoshka doll, only $5.99.”

I said, “This is the ugliest matryoshka doll I have ever seen.”

“Then how about $4.99?” he snapped back.

“No, you could not pay me to take this doll.”

He quickly dropped it back into the bag and pulled out an equally ugly lacquer box, smiling, “Then how about this beautiful box.”

“That is worse than the doll. What is your name?

“Peter.”

“Well, Peter, you tell the guys who sent you out with this trash to give you really good dolls and boxes and you will make them and you rich.” He puffed up with pride and looked over his shoulder again to see if his mentors were watching. I continued, “When you grow up, you come see me, and I will give you a good job, because you are a great salesman.” He stuffed his ugly box into the bag with the ugly doll and ran off to tell his bosses of his promising future. That boy will go far in the new Russia—or anywhere.

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