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[ARTICLE] On Russia
Nov. 1st, 2003 03:59 pmFrom the Financial Times:
"A Falling Tsar"
By Chrystia Freeland
Published: October 31 2003 19:48 | Last Updated: October 31 2003 19:48
On a chilly day earlier this autumn, I was sitting in a rather kitschy, rustic-themed Russian restaurant in a park in St Petersburg with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, and a small group of executives from his vast Yukos oil company. Outside, the weather had turned gloomy.
Inside, everyone was starting to relax after a few shots of vodka and not much to eat. When it was time for toasts, Ray Leonard, an American geologist who runs Yukos's exploration department, raised his glass, took a deep breath and launched into a carefully rehearsed speech: "This is the first time I have been to St Petersburg with Mikhail Borisovich," he said. "I have been reading a biography of Peter the Great. Peter the Great invited foreigners in and had to defend them against the locals. Three hundred years later, not that much has changed. Yukos is a small microcosm of the same process and I am proud to be a small part of it."
Khodorkovsky had the generosity to thank Leonard for his tribute, but he also had the humility to qualify it. After all, he explained, the real lesson of Peter the Great was tragic, not heroic. "We have to remember that under Peter the Great there were 24 million Russians and 300,000 of them died building St Petersburg.
There were 2 million fewer Russians when Peter the Great died than there had been when he became tsar. We have developed quickly, and we have developed slowly, but in all this time, human life in Russia has not been worth even a kopek."
( Read more... )
"A Falling Tsar"
By Chrystia Freeland
Published: October 31 2003 19:48 | Last Updated: October 31 2003 19:48
On a chilly day earlier this autumn, I was sitting in a rather kitschy, rustic-themed Russian restaurant in a park in St Petersburg with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, and a small group of executives from his vast Yukos oil company. Outside, the weather had turned gloomy.
Inside, everyone was starting to relax after a few shots of vodka and not much to eat. When it was time for toasts, Ray Leonard, an American geologist who runs Yukos's exploration department, raised his glass, took a deep breath and launched into a carefully rehearsed speech: "This is the first time I have been to St Petersburg with Mikhail Borisovich," he said. "I have been reading a biography of Peter the Great. Peter the Great invited foreigners in and had to defend them against the locals. Three hundred years later, not that much has changed. Yukos is a small microcosm of the same process and I am proud to be a small part of it."
Khodorkovsky had the generosity to thank Leonard for his tribute, but he also had the humility to qualify it. After all, he explained, the real lesson of Peter the Great was tragic, not heroic. "We have to remember that under Peter the Great there were 24 million Russians and 300,000 of them died building St Petersburg.
There were 2 million fewer Russians when Peter the Great died than there had been when he became tsar. We have developed quickly, and we have developed slowly, but in all this time, human life in Russia has not been worth even a kopek."
( Read more... )
