CCI Friends,
Meet Vadim Vasiliev in the photo below. Vadim is one of CCI’s 6,000 Russian entrepreneurs who studied how to develop small businesses in U.S. companies during the ‘90s and 2000s. He provides his large showroom when we need space for visiting Americans to meet with local entrepreneurs. Here we see him describing the climate in which he and Russia’s brightest and best were reinventing themselves as they were trying to create businesses for the first time ever. CCI’s alumni are spread over 71 of Russia’s 85 regions, from Western Russia (outside of Moscow) to the Far East. We chose not to take applicants from Moscow since that one city was getting 85% of all foreign capital and programs sent into Russia. For Russia to succeed, their vast regions also had to succeed. We’ve never regretted this decision. Now we have businessmen and women all over Russia who are eager to participate when we visit their cities. One of Mike Metz’s fabulous Foto-Journal pages follows:
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Back in his day, Stalin responded to idealistic critics by saying his was the best of socialism, “really existing socialism,” with the gulags, police state, purges etc. Hey, you want free education, housing, healthcare, etc., ya’ gotta’ put up with a little pain. It was a rough bargain.
As I listened to the Russian entrepreneur below describing his successful business I thought about the rough road these Russians have had to walk as they learned how to do real-life capitalism. He described all sorts of pitfalls and how he negotiated them one after another. Today he’s a small manufacturer with a growing clientele that succeeds in spite of sanctions and dips in the market.
Vadim was a teacher who loved the outdoors, camping, climbing, skiing, and in the 90s he was sewing his own jackets and mittens to be able to do that. He met Sharon Tennison of CCI who arranged for him to come to Colorado, and learn from people who ran outdoors companies. Then he went home and started his own company. Today he runs a Russian division of a Swedish outdoor clothing supplier. The room is filled with Russians telling of their small business successes, folks Sharon brought to the US to learn from our small business owners and Rotary Club members.
The gentleman in the photo below is a “community developer.” He was a teacher in the 90s, and also was able to spend time in a US business school in Oregon, where he studied this field. Now he works with villagers in the Russian countryside, teaching them how to build agricultural and business cooperatives that enrich the villagers and give opportunities to local youth.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Russians knew little of capitalism. It had been 70 yrs, nearly three generations, since buying and selling had been allowed. On US advice, Russians in charge did “shock therapy;” overnight the societal safety nets were removed, the ruble became useless, citizens’ life savings were wiped out, inflation and unemployment surged, all leading to wild lawless capitalism, mafioso gangs, etc. This lasted thru the decade, till Putin got things under better control in the 2000s. Putin equals stability, no chaos, no dead bodies on the street in the morning. On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, order and stability comes well before some of our western freedoms. Works this way in China too. You might take the same deal under the same circumstances.
We were here in ‘94 to adopt our kids, in the wild 90s, when no one knew from capitalism except sell and buy. Desperate people on the sidewalks sold motor oil at one table, chunks of meat at another, veterans sold their watches, medals and uniforms at the next table. We bought gas from a truck parked in the street carrying 50 gallon drums, who knows where it came from. The Russians thought the end of communism would mean new cars, Coca Cola, and nice homes like the Americans had. Oh were they surprised.
Apropos of nothing, here’s a cool St. Petersburg street scene I just wanted to stick in here. This is a great place to visit.
Mike Metz
Citizen Diplomat
September 2018