Talking to our Future World Business Leaders

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I had the privilege of addressing the Executive MBA (EMBA) class at Colorado State University this week in preparation for their June trip to Russia. My book, “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia” is a textbook for this US/Russian MBA course, so they were well prepared and had good questions.

I covered what I call “the third side of the Russian coin” which really is the underlying thousand years of cultural influences on Russian thought, behavior, and therefore business. Much progress is being made, but there’s much more to be done.

We discussed particularly the present growing “Generation 3” as I call those who entered the great post-Soviet change fresh for the universities and institutes in the early 90s. And the present excitement and wonderment over the Skolkovo efforts to reinforce the great technology values in young Russia and bring it successfully and profitably onto the world market. The recent partnership with Silicon Valley is a cornerstone of that initiative.

To quote Alexis de Tocqueville on the subject of Russia and America: “Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”

 From my experience in Russia, I am so happy to see this sincere interest in Russia from a leading American MBA program. I am glad to see CSU playing a part in this destiny. I am confident there will be good results.

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

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.

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

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