The Russia Conundrum

When Gorbachev decided to ease the stagnation of the Brezhnev era, he allowed some British and American pop to be played on the radio. The Soviet state label Melodiya put out a couple of Paul McCartney albums and Billy Joel played a gig in Moscow in 1987. But it was Annie Lennox I was waiting for … and in 1989, she came.

An image of me in my youth

Annie Lennox in Red Square, Moscow 1989

Along with Peter Gabriel, Chrissie Hynde and the Thompson Twins, Annie was in the USSR to launch a double album titled Breakthrough, with music by 25 different artists, including Sting, Bryan Ferry, Sade, Dire Straits and the Grateful Dead. Soviet fans mobbed the state record stores and the discs were sold out within hours. But what was most remarkable to us was that the singers and musicians had given their services for free and that all the profits were going to the environmental pressure group, Greenpeace. This made a big, big impression. Along with hundreds of thousands of other Russians, I suddenly understood that the world outside was very different from the one we were living in. The West now appeared to me as a world of freedom and energy and colour. I loved the music, the outspokenness, the lack of fear and the independence of mind. I loved how these stars were devoting their time and energy to global issues like the environment, matters that affected and united all humankind. It was the polar opposite of how we were living – in a country that repressed music, freedom and thought. It aroused my first serious doubts about the communist system and autocratic rule; it made me admire the West and want to be part of a free, prosperous, equitable society.

It was Mikhail Gorbachev’s acceptance of economic free enterprise that allowed me to improve my own fortunes. A group of us, mostly students in our mid to late twenties with backgrounds in physics, chemistry, economics and geology, had a shared desire to prove ourselves, to make a success of our lives, to take on the world. It all began with a little computer cooperative we opened in 1987. That was what set us on a lifetime adventure, beset with both triumph and tragedy.

When Gorbachev announced in 1987 that universities could form research and development centres, and could use their expertise to offer services and earn an income, we jumped at the chance. We founded the impressively named Centre for Inter-Industry Scientific and Technical Progress, known by the acronym Menatep, selling computers and providing programmers to service the IT systems of state enterprises and government ministries. It was the age of the computer revolution, IT experts were in short supply and the country needed us to keep all the new technology running. We provided a quality service, charged high fees and made big profits.

What’s more, demand for personal computers was about to go through the roof. These weren’t being made in the USSR, so we arranged for people to bring them back from abroad when they went on official business trips. We bought the computers from them, reprogrammed them with Russian keyboards and Russian software, and sold them on for a profit. By late 1988, we’d accumulated some substantial cash reserves that were sitting unused, just in time for Gorbachev’s announcement that, after 72 years of banning private capital, the Kremlin was going to allow private banks to be formed. It was a massive change and we weren’t going to miss the chance.

Looking back, I don’t think the men who were introducing all those reforms understood that they were sealing the fate of Soviet communism. They were permitting an element of free enterprise because they needed to kick start the moribund economy. Capitalist aspiration, the urge to work hard and get rich, is, in my view, an instinct in the human brain. The communists had repressed it for seven decades, and now they let people see that it was possible again. Russians, I thought, weren’t going to be satisfied until the whole nation had returned to free-market capitalism. People wanted to work hard and improve the quality of their lives, which they hadn’t been able to do under Soviet rule. They wanted the freedom to start their own businesses, feed their families and achieve a level of prosperity that had eluded them for so long.