I have been asked for my own perspectives about what I blogged on last time regarding Russia and the Russians. What follows is my own reading of the situation but it is based generally on first-hand experience with as little anecdotal input as possible.
In my own experience I think that there is something to be said for the concept that Russians are rather lost in the modern world. Russia has bossed an empire unquestioningly from the Kremlin for hundreds of years and it has been the norm to impose Russian values and culture on other nations.
Now the boot is on the other foot somewhat with Western, particularly American, values imposed on Russia as part and parcel of the process of democratization. The Soviet population saw the General Secretary of the Communist Party and the Party itself by extension as a simple continuation of a culture of blind obedience which originated with the concept of the "God Tsar" as an infallible guiding eminence in every facet of daily life.
Suddenly in 1991 the peoples of the former empire were forced to think for themselves. In most of the European non-Russian republics of the USSR the people had been thinking for themselves for many a year and had never bought into the Russian fantasies so the possibility to regain independence was a welcome salvation and deliverance from a tyrannical occupier. But for the Russians themselves there was a massive cultural vacuum to be filled.
The idea of the free market was an alien concept but in principle it sounded easy so many average Russians gave it a go. Within a short time there were many sole-traders all over Russia and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) with tables or rudimentary kiosks set up at garden gates and on street corners selling goodness knows what. These budding byiznyesmyen and women were shocked to find that the general population were not particularly interested to buy their wares and were in fact not beating a path to their doors.
What they had failed to grasp was that there is no point in selling off all your old bits and pieces to a market which already owns those very same bits and pieces, usually from the very same source by the same manufacturer - the Soviet model saw supply as being of moderate importance, NOT variety. These small traders were completely disappointed by this turn of events as they had not picked up on the idea that the market craves uniqueness. They themselves aspired to earn money to buy nice things but they could not comprehend that every other individual shared the same aspiration and was equally at a loss to fulfil that ambition.
It was the few as opposed to the many who saw what was required and made contacts in the West to bring cheap goods to the East that would make a quick profit for the speculator ready to take the risk. From the other side some Western businessmen saw the potential in the East and moved rapidly to fill the gap or even perceived gap.
I met many a sharp operator from Western Europe in the bars of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius in the early 90s - these were chaotic and certainly interesting times. What do the citizens of the new countries of Eastern Europe need urgently? Why, it has to be casinos and Spanish time-share. I kid you not! Guys from London and Edinburgh and Leeds who saw the main chance and jumped in with both feet, took the money and skipped off at great speed to the next location in Montenegro or Romania or Albania or somewhere equally naïve and ready for the BS. This was the story from the Baltic Sea to Valdivostok.
Then there was the influx of exiled nationals who came back to their homelands. This was repeated all over the FSU but the general outcome was that the exile was only too willing to come back to the land of his birthright because he or she was not especially competent at home but his new kinsfolk would probably take some time to work that out. This especially reminded me of the old acronym as taught to me by a former member of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force who was fulfilling a valuable role for a shipping line. FILTH - Failed In London Try Hongkong!
This was a huge phenomenon and I saw it unravel in Estonia particularly to such an extent that ex-pat Canadian-Estonians were virtually universally shunned as dangerous dilettantes who would be guaranteed to screw things up! But this happened all across the FSU as foreign "experts" craved to give their input. The dividend of this today is that the locals who were "educated" by these fools are now equally dumb and mistaken in their beliefs so the dilettantish culture still pervades.
But enough of the FILTH and charlatans and onwards with locals.
There were of course sharp operators at a local level throughout the FSU and these boys quickly rose to the top of the market. The term "mafia" is bandied about very generously when referring to any form of criminality in Russia in particular and Eastern Europe in general but in my experience the word is grossly over-used. Yes, there were boisterous groups who would think nothing of drawing blood from their opposition but these were more small-time players than most Western observers would imagine. There certainly were turf wars but the big league criminals were not so concerned with the provinces and concentrated on making money out of such things as dismantling the Soviet military or gaining control of natural resources.
I have met a few local bandits in my time and on one occasion I was in a meeting with the head of a company which distributed Philip Morris cigarettes in Estonia. I had brought along two high-ups from an international consultancy firm who were looking for reasonable propositions in the Baltic States. The guy came right out and said that his boys had taken care of the opposition so there was no threat to his company's position in the market. He then bemoaned the lack of choice in the local retail market for clothes and said how much he wished for a Marks and Spencer in Tallinn. He will have seen his wish granted now if he has lived this long. But his office was located above a boxing gym and to get upstairs to the modern suite we had to negotiate the gym and a small army of back-clad Russian crew-cut types wearing the archetypal 9mm suit - a black Italian double-breasted affair with the jacket baggy enough so that a shoulder holster could be worn unobtrusively. These were serious people but they saw things from the point of view of legitimate businessmen in a dangerous business. It may seem quite odd to someone sitting in Tamworth or Tallahassee but to the Tallinn mentality it was nothing abnormal.
Then there was the Afghan dairy owner who had made his money in Kabul after the Soviet invasion of his country and had then sought out the fleshpots of Minsk in preference to Afghan locales..... but I digress.
People like the cigarette vendor marked out their territory all the way across Eastern Europe and the FSU and from that point onwards regarded themselves as respectable and worthy of praise for a job well done. This was the modus operandi for the New Russians - elbow, claw and if necessary shoot your way to the top. Of course this is only a very tiny minority of people but they grabbed the majority of the wealth and their empires are still intact in most cases if they have not been already been sold off as going concerns to a genuine commercial operator.
So economic opportunities had revealed themselves to those who were prepared to seize them and that was all well and good for those who had done the seizing. But what of those who were not so motivated to use their elbows?
I can best illustrate this with a true story from the summer of 2003.
A business colleague of mine was visiting from Benelux and a female friend of his from Belarus was due to meet us in Tallinn for the Midsummer festivities. The girl arrived but my colleague and I had to attend an important bank meeting. She would be quite happy she said if we would drop her somewhere that she could do a bit of shopping, somewhere with decent boutiques. The bank's head office was located just next to a fairly high-end Finnish department store so we ushered her in that direction before heading to our meeting.
Upon meeting our Belarusian friend again she complained that the Stockmann store was not quite what she had in mind. She had been looking for Ralph Lauren, Gucci, Christian Dior and other similar boutiques as she could shop in at home in Minsk. From this point of view she was sadly disappointed with Tallinn.
The following day we were heading to a Midsummer barbecue party at a friend's house and we stopped at a newish supermarket to buy some beer, some wine and a couple of toys for the host's kids. Now this place really took our Belarusian friend's breath away. The idea of going shopping in a regular supermarket with all staple goods under one roof with self-service from the shelves and no requirement for queuing just blew her mind. "We have nothing like this in Minsk," was her comment. I can hear her as clearly as if it was yesterday.
What is the point of this little tale? Well, the retail situation in Minsk was the same as many and any city across the FSU and Russia. Plenty of opportunities to buy overpriced designer nonsense but no chance of being able to go out and do the weekly shopping in one place. The population at large were entirely ignored at the expense of the new rich who needed their baubles on a regular basis. And where would they shop for the basics in life? They wouldn't need to as somebody would do it for them if they couldn't get across to Helsinki, Stockholm or London this week or next.
And that's not an idle throwaway line. From the early 90s onwards the best shops in Helsinki and Stockholm would have Russian language signs in their windows and Knightsbridge followed only a short time afterwards.
The New Russians had everything and the Old Russians had nothing.
More to follow...
No comments:
Post a Comment