Many are surprised that the Russians like to joke about themselves and their leaders. But I wonder about the February 28, 2011 article in Pravda.ru. It was titled “Siberia to separate from Russia to become a part of USA” Now is that funny or not?

The article reads “The idea to separate Siberia and annex the territory to the United States of America has been engrossing the minds of Siberian separatists for a long time already.” It seems that many, if not all Siberians, may think at times that the Siberian regions with their natural riches live poorly just because they have to give away a big part of their incomes to other territories of the Russian Federation.

The idea, if this is really not a joke, seems to have support in some universities, like Irkutsk State University who recently held a seminar of the US-Siberian Department for Management and “Regionalistic Alternative to Siberia” Public Movement.

With so many of the educated young west of the Urals moving to Europe and America, what is left if Siberia goes east? After all, this article appeared in Pravda, which means “truth.”  With all the political unrest in Russia, like always in Russia, you never can tell.

And if you want to learn more about Russia, including some jokes, see  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman is Russia.”

It is amazing to an American to read the Russian news and hear all the varied opinions about Putin’s decision to run for the Presidency—as if there has already been a campaign and an election. But that’s the way it is in Russia—for now. And it will take another generation, at least, to make a change to something like a real democracy.

When I asked a Russian friend, wife of a Russian politician, what her husband thought of the Putin decision, therefore automatic ultimate election, she said, “He’s accepted it.” A perfect Russian answer. If you can’t do anything about it, just accept it and get on with life. Some cast the Putin decision as something approaching Stalinism. In their near-sighted perspective, it is in their best interest to do so, creating a friction and engendering patriotism.  It is unfortunate they can’t stand back and recognize the changes in Russia as they inch along and at least not interfere.

In Russia’s one-party system it’s hard to tell from abroad, that the central control is weakening. But, with a thousand year history of autocracy, I suggest patience will have its ultimate reward. It seems to always be three steps forward and two backward. But we should be grateful for progress even if only one step at a time.

Putin, shirt or no shirt, has taken the necessary steps for bring some form of order to things. I am reminded of Dr. Zhivago’s words in Pasternak’s novel: “Just now, I was looking out of the window in the train—I thought, what is there in the whole world worth more than a peaceful family life and work? The rest isn’t in our hands.” That still typifies a large but diminishing population in Russia and Putin has satisfied that generation for now. Change is happening—faster than Putin’s generation may realize. Let’s accept it and move on.

And don’t forget: read “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman is Russia.”

 St. Petersburg is a feminine city. She is an elegant and noble woman sitting draped with the jewels of her youth waiting for her prince to return. It is the most beautiful Italianate city in Europe. This “Venice of the North” with its symmetry, canals, architecture, statuary, museums, performing arts, palaces, gardens and languid summers with endless days make it a city never to be forgotten. The palaces are more flamboyant than Versailles and more numerous than anywhere in the world. I used to call it “Paris without paint,” but for the 300^th anniversary in 2003, the lady polished her nails, groomed her hair and donned a clean and colorful dress.  From my book, “Walking on Ice, an American Businessman in Russia.”

 St. Petersburg is not Russia; it is the historical myth of Imperial Russia. St. Petersburg is charming, gentle, romantic. It goes to bed at ten. But during the glorious summer White Nights it doesn’t sleep at all.

 As President of the Los Angeles/St.Petersburg Sister City Committee, I keep reasonably in touch.

 What do you think? Have you been there?

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Ella and Sergey are from Rostov-on-Don and have been visiting me over the holidays, as they did last year. It is a pleasure to have them and they love Corona del Mar, California. I can agree with them on that  Rostov is not the northern Russian city with its frigid winters and dark winter nights. It is in the far south of Russia and the gateway to Central Asia, the “—stans.” It is a cross-roads multicultural city on the Don River with a story going back a thousand years in Russian history.

Ella is a columnist for an impressive Russian entertainment magazine.  To improve her English, she came to LA four years ago. Her English is great. Her writing is super and her knowledge of people broad and deep.

Sergey is a Rostov businessman and a newly elected representative to the Rostov Duma (parliament.) You can imagine the conversations we have had, on everything from Pushkin to politics. They are a young couple, about 35, and as such are vocal participants in that growing band of young and open-minded leaders who are changing things in Russia.

That line of demarcation between the old and the new I put at age 46 now. Every year it goes up of course. It will take a generation or two to have its full impact, but we have time.

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Thanks to my son-in-law in Atlanta, I watched the 1939 film “Ninotchka” starring the famous Greta Garbo. What a treat, so funny. Set in the pre WWII Paris, three goofy Bolsheviks come from Moscow to sell jewels taken from a famous Grand Duchess and help reduce the Soviet debt. When it is learned in the Kremlin that the three have been tricked out of the jewels, Moscow sends a stern-faced woman Bolshevik official (Ninotchka) to straighten things out. But, it is the strict, non-nonsense Comrade Ninotchka that is seduced by the pleasures of Paris.

 I found some great comments in the dialog and script, which reminded me of my own observations when I first came to Russia in the early 1990’s. Although the Soviet Union was gone,  daily life under the communist regime was still being endured. And often it was discussed in the satirical humor so common amongst the Russians who suffered the comfort of the autocracy for 1000 years. 

 I am going to comment on several of these scenes and lines in several posts to this website- maybe one each week for a few weeks. Stay tuned!

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

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.

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

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

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.

One part of the book is structured in chapters on Russian geography, demography, culture, business and politics, while the other is simply called “An Essay Collection.” These pages bear an openly Chekhovian description of a weekend spent at the dacha with an extended Russian family next to a carefully worded account of the role of crime and corruption in business practices and how they can be worked around; a tribute to Boris Pasternak next to a report about the October 1993 revolt and the shelling of parliament from an unusual perspective of a businessman whose operation was headquartered in the Comecon building at the very center of those dramatic events.

The author analyzes the role of the Orthodox Church in shaping the Russian psyche and identity, and categorizes Russian women in types which would make some of them blush. What brings these essays together is a transpiring love for both the strengths and weaknesses of this country and its people.

Andresen was clearly intrigued by the “Russian soul” and made an unpretentious and humorous contribution to unwrapping the “mystery inside the enigma.” It rings true even to a skeptical Russian reader instinctively ready to catch factual or contextual flaws in a “naïve foreigner’s” reflection on his country.

One of the book’s high points is the account of how the author applied Dostoyevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” chapter to business management. Three things are generic to the traditional Russian character, Andresen wrote, referring to Dostoyevsky: “the idea that good, if any, will come from some unexpected outside source (miracle); that man is not ordained to be responsible for his own welfare and progress (mystery); and that guidance and protection come only from constant dependence on and obedience to someone else (authority). There is a reversion to this in today’s Russian government. That situation is pressing to be changed by the young, but it seems always there under the surface.”

For business people without a background in Russian studies embarking on a Russia-related project, Andresen gives a short reading list: “The Icon and the Ax” by James Billington, “The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and “The Castle” by Franz Kafka. “Walking on Ice” would certainly complement the list—it can be consumed in one trans-Atlantic flight.

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

Russian history,
it seems to me,
is much like a Russian river.

It lays unhappily frozen,
obedient within its constraining banks
for a period longer than it can stand.

Then suddenly,
some foreign ray of change
permeates the ice
and the river erupts,
climbing upon itself
moving recklessly down stream
releasing its discontent,
taking everything with it,
the good and the bad,
until it finds its kind of peace
and flows quietly
with all appearances of normality.

But winter will come again
and how soon
no one knows
for sure.

Frederick R. Andresen
2000
Photo by Christopher Harrington

Excerpted from “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

My message was called “Russia, Three Sides of the Coin.” I wanted to express the underlying cultural foundation that surfaces in often-unexpected ways when dealing with Russians. Much is changing there, but much stays the same. The Cold War memories and James Bond movies fill us with so much drama about it all. One of my sayings is that in Russia there is much secrecy, but no secrets. Also that the basis for success is group loyalty thorough genuine personal relationships, fairness, and strong knowledgeable leadership.

As a primer, I gave a quick glimpse of Russian history beginning in the late 900s including the warring princes of Kiev hiring the Varangian (Viking) prince Ruark to organize them, the choice of Greek Orthodoxy to control the people, and the start of Russia as a nation. The resulting formula for ruling Russia, according to Czar Nicholas I, was “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality.”

I built a Power Point presentation which included maps illustrating the geographic and resulting religious uniqueness in Russia’s thousand year history and how that impacts the culture even in today’s supposedly borderless world. Maps showed what I call Russia’s “inconvenience of geography” with no natural borders, no free access to the sea, and all rivers running north into the Arctic except the Volga which empties into the land-locked Caspian.

Map of Russia Today

A geopolitical comparison with America shows a natural island of security, two oceans with world class ports, two non-threatening neighbors, productive agricultural land with a river network flowing into the sea, and the center of global communications. Americans take this all for granted, but Russia sees it as the main threat to their “greatness.”

Yet, I pointed out, that Russia and Russians have a lot going for them. Their greatest asset is their “minds,” not their “mines” (meaning their ample natural resources.) Their intelligence, determination, and loyalty impressed me from the start. The proverbial readiness to say “no” I stressed was an opportunity to ask “how” and tap into their amazing resourcefulness. The Russian woman’s search for a “clever” man is her quest for a partner who knows how to get around the “no” of congenital Russian bureaucracy and get the job done.

After the talk, I got some interesting questions. One executive from a major international firm was questioning the value of certain personnel changes between L.A., London, and Moscow. One Russian, a consultant on business in Russia, agreed with my summations and added some interesting historical and other facts.

The audience was terrific, and it was a joy to have been invited by SCIP.