Charles Hecker gives a largely accurate, frequently entertaining and occasionally enlightening account of Russia’s journey from communist to right-wing authoritarianism from a business perspective. Business, after all, played a big role, both positively and negatively, in the path that led from the Gorbachev reforms, through the Yeltsin chaos and the descent into unbridled nationalism of today’s regime. Some, like McDonald’s, approached Russia benignly; others made and lost vast sums.
But there were also what Hecker describes as “chancers, even people with criminal records” who came to Russia “hoping at best to wipe the slate clean or, at least, to find refuge”.
Most of them lived in an expat bubble in Moscow and St Petersburg. Contact with Russians outside business was rare.
The suffering of ordinary Russians during economic “shock therapy” was ignored.
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It wasn’t long before Russian chancers, with burgeoning criminal records, took control. The gun became an essential business tool. Immense wealth fell into the hands of the regime’s cronies and made its laundered way to London.
I lived in Russia throughout this period and the descriptions of life given by the author ring absolutely true.
This was the Wild East. Moscow was an immense version of Dodge City or Tombstone. The Radisson Slavyanskaya Hotel was the town saloon where its American manager, Paul Tatum, bit the dust in a hail of bullets. But there was money to be made and the theory was that like the Wild West, the Wild East would calm down and the inheritors of ill-gotten gains would become solid citizens. It didn’t turn out that way.
Vladimir Putin came to power as the sheriff who would end the chaos, the gunfights, the robberies and the extortion. Initially he did and was backed strongly by western leaders. The 2014 annexation of Crimea, followed by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has led to a mass exodus of western business. But where there’s a prospect of money to be made, even on the distant horizon, businesses don’t burn their boats.
The book ends with the words: “In June 2024, Coca-Cola and Starbucks applied to extend their trademarks in Russia.”
