Letter From Riga

Perspective on Russia from a Man Who Fled

Still Press is less a person than an idea—to create content that is thoughtful, mind-bending (the world “Still” connotes two things at once) and that helps put our existence into perspective. It’s a team effort. The sound of the podcasts, the look of the book covers, all of it comes from a group. Your feedback is also crucial and helps direct us down the right path. So far, I have written all the posts. Today, is our first guest post.

Dr. Alexander Vanyukov was Moscow and perhaps Russia’s leading interventional cardiologist (the person who puts in stents). When senior officials needed urgent cardiac care, he was summoned. I say “was” because in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine he fled to Riga, Latvia, with his wife and two small children. Some of you might have heard him on the podcast in 2021. The full link is here.

Above: Dr. Vanukov.

“I didn’t want to live in fear,” he explained. “I didn’t understand how to be with my kids, that we would say one thing at home and another at school. Moreover, I was working in a state controlled hospital, like almost all doctors, and I understood I would not be allowed to speak openly. When you try to teach your kids basic things—no murder, no stealing, etc.—you have to explain why it is important to do such things.”

Alexander has since been called a traitor by a former colleague, an echo of Stalinist Russia or Maoist China. Think about the long-term consequences to Russia of losing Alexander and people like him. Obviously, your cardiac risks in Russia are higher. But it’s not only the surgeries he does but the people he would train, his impact on hospital administration, his children's school. All this potential energy is lost. It’s a tragedy that happens again and again, globally, in waves.

Alexander wrote the below and I translated. Enjoy!

I left Russia in March 2022 with my family, leaving behind a successful career as a surgeon, and a small business start-up.¹ I know people with much larger businesses who fled. What are we experiencing?

A businessman represents the very flesh and blood of a country. Often he lived and worked within Russia yet also created a life outside of it, in Riga. To be sure, few of Russia’s 150 million have a home abroad, a foreign bank account, let alone a document that allows them to leave. Yet the relationship to Russia and business of the typical entrepreneur and a regular Joe are quite similar. In Russia, hard work is not valued, neither the labor of others nor oneself. The entire process of setting conditions, earning money, and negotiating a wage for one’s work is somehow culturally awkward. At the same time, to be rich is considered good, as is flaunting one’s wealth. How can such a paradox exist? The answer lies in the recent past.

Serfdom ended in 1861. In reality, peasants remained without rights or a path out of bondage for many years.  A few broke out and dragged others behind them. They taught their children to feel, value and use their freedom. After 30 years, the first generation of free entrepreneurs appeared and along with them cars, factories and manufacturing.  Russian entrepreneurs and their companies became prominent figures.

Then thirty years later, 1917, everything was destroyed. In two generations there were two tectonic shifts, forward and back. The Soviets pushed entrepreneurship backward, trampling the green shoots into the dirt, destroying everything that had been created. As Efrosina Kersnofskaya wrote regarding the Soviets who stripped her of property in 1917-1918:

“I stand before the bright eyes of the GosSoviet judges, judges who are a far cry from the wisdom of Solomon…my former possessions were not great but, we can say, quite adequate. They can now be turned into a nucleus for a kolkhoz, Sovkolkoz, cooperative…whatever, you can distribute milk, breeding pigs and a wonderful astrakhan sheep …think about it: where can you find a boar like Malomud, the size of a cow and weighing 24 pounds? What kind of offspring from him! And a uterus with eighteen teats? They're rare!

—Enough! We aren’t interested in your unusual specimens, interrupted the judge. The people want to destroy anything that reminds them of landowners. They will create everything they need with their own hands.

I didn’t understand why the people should once again spit into their plate and then eat it with a spoon.”

The new Soviet rulers could not productively utilize the property they had acquired by force, destroying everything that had been created by talented people over decades. That is the beginning of the type of Russian entrepreneur we now see. It creates a very dangerous combination that is both cunning and cynical, a combination that both saves and destroys him.

Regarding cunning—many years trained us in this skill. Don’t trust anyone, be prepared for anything. Starting in school we were taught how to imitate real activity. Stunned in our ability to adapt to this, we learned to avoid controversy and became experts in not attracting attention to ourselves.

We had no sense of guilt if we managed to bend a rule and get away with it. Manipulation became normal. Since rules and laws often contradicted one another, the entrepreneurial person’s skill was in navigating this murkiness. Bribes, nepotism and mutually beneficial corrupt networks did their work. The concept of reputation was destroyed, replaced by instant gratification. The massive gap that opened up between the elite and the common citizen only solidified these deviations. Nothing was expected of regular people. His work was essentially meaningless. He had almost no ability to change his station, no matter how hard he worked.

There is only one social “elevator”—joining the political elite. And that path depends only on fealty to the machine betraying your personal code of honor. The higher you go, the more compromises the system requires of you. In exchange, you receive not only money but the ability to act above the law. Law doesn’t contain you, it serves your interests. As a result, the system serves to protect the status quo. Any moral code or empathy to others is left far behind. Personal responsibility and moral rectitude become something long forgotten. This period has lasted more than 70 years.

Then comes freedom. A wild, unbridled freedom. Freedom we don’t know how to use. Freedom that means only one thing—everything is allowed! The cunning and cynicism remain only now the post-Soviet elite is able to chase money. And being above the law, the impunity with which the elite can act becomes truly limitless.

The entrepreneur of the 1990s feels he has a stake in the country and will determine how it should be run. He makes contacts with the world, studies, and works hard. Slowly, he learns the world lives differently. He likes being a part of this broader world, he likes functioning laws and independent judges. He likes the feel of governments that actually work for their citizens. He wants the same thing for himself.

But into this effort to change Russia for the better, he runs into one issue. It grew out of the 60 years of upheaval and change from 1870 to the 1920s. You can’t count on anyone. You can’t trust anyone. The only thing that can be done is done with the prevailing government. If the government shifts, everything is lost. To what end?

I become the power and I hold on for as long as possible. The time horizon is six years ahead, the President’s term. In this battle, the gap between the elite and the common people widens even further. At least for the length of a Presidential term until a new set of power relationships are established. The regular folk are left to take care of themselves, which they have taught themselves to do.

They have taught themselves to found a company, open a store, cafe or medical center. They matured and learned and liked this new life. But the basic rules of the game never changed. Moreover, changing anything now carries such catastrophic risks that they obtained the most fantastical form. All forms of humanity were basically destroyed. Empathy, diligence and trust were destroyed not only in life but even in word.

The country began to worship mammon. And here the skill we’ve been working on for years comes into play—cunning. Today’s Russian businessman is incorrigible. He knows that the rules exist only such that they can bring riches to those that create them. He knows help isn’t coming. He knows everyone needs to be paid off. Moreover, he knows that he is allowed to work in Russia at the pleasure of the masters. The masters who selected themselves to run things. People convinced they are in fact doing a service to their subjects by allowing them to work in such a country. And both subject and ruler regard such circumstances as correct and natural.

This is why the modern Russian entrepreneur behaves like a serf. He earns money to live somewhere else, to vacation somewhere else. He has no sense of responsibility, because responsibility for his actions lies in his wallet. For a small fee he gets a cut of the action. He knows where to find the right people who will negotiate the price. He will still look like a decent person. None of the modern Russian businessmen are interested in changing power. The goal was to have time to build at least something now, because trust in state institutions is zero, and we can clearly imagine another redistribution of property when the government changes.