Orest Stelmach - The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

I waited for him to answer his own question.

He did so, but only after looking around to make sure no one was listening. Still, he whispered the answer. “My therapist.”

I pulled my head back.

“Actually, my acupuncturist. A young man from China, but he’s so spiritually evolved he might as well be my therapist.” He shrugged. “A man either evolves or falls victim to his afflictions. I choose the former.”

“I couldn’t be more impressed,” I said, hoping I sounded sincere. “I had a boss who once said that seventy-percent of all businessmen in New York City were taking some sort of medication. And the ones who weren’t taking it were fools.”

“It’s the same in Russia, except the medication is called vodka and its use isn’t limited to businessmen.”

“When bribery is a way of life,” I said, “any person could be driven to drink.”

I regretted the words as soon as they rolled off my lips. Not that I didn’t mean what I said—I just wished I’d managed to restrain myself and allow the feel-good to last a little longer. But that was probably unrealistic, I realized. Our moment of shared introspection was just that—a moment. A return to the verbal combat that defined us was inevitable.

“I know you think all Russian businessmen are gangsters,” Simmy said, “but that is not the case. You can thank your free press and precious Hollywood for that misconception. I am a corporate raider. I bought my companies fair and square.”

There was truth in everything he said. After serving his mandatory stint in the army, Simmy had earned his PhD in quantum physics at age twenty-five. He then traded metals on the Russian market to earn enough money to buy his first smelter. He slept near the factory furnace for the first six months to prevent thieves from ransacking his sole asset. He turned a profit, expanded into other commodities, diversified into industrials, and formed the Orel Group, his own conglomerate. At last count the Orel Group owned fifteen companies. Of those, two were Western European and eleven were American. All of them traded on public exchanges.

“You’re putting words in my mouth,” I said. “I never implied you were a gangster. I just think there’s a criminal aspect to how business is conducted in Russia because bribes are commonplace and accepted. It’s hard to get the electricity to work without them, right?”

Simmy looked away and shrugged, as though acknowledging a truth of which he wasn’t proud. “Thirty years ago we were a communist country. We’re not going to fix our thing overnight. It’s going to take time. Just like me. It’s going to take me time to change.”

Once again Simmy’s words stunned me. Change came easily for billionaires, but usually in the form of increasingly extravagant living.

“What exactly do you want to change about yourself?” I said. “Granted, I thought you may have been a bit harsh in your car when I got out of jail, but it’s not like you’re an unrepentant killer…” I laughed to try to make a joke of my words. “Are you?”

My voice trailed off as I blurted out my question. I meant it figuratively, not literally, but given I was investigating a murder it certainly didn’t sound that way when the words left my mouth.

Simmy, however, seemed to understand exactly what I meant.

“In business I must eliminate my competition sometimes,” he said. “There is simply no other way. I mean that in a corporate sense, of course. But that doesn’t excuse my behavior in my personal life. I’ve been avoiding my ex-wife, treating her rudely. That is unacceptable because we share custody of two children. I’m not spending enough time with them, either. That’s what money does to a man.”

“What’s that?”

“It makes him want more money. Soon nothing else matters. He begins to forgive himself for his transgressions too easily.” Simmy leaned in toward me. His words sounded urgent, his voice almost pleading for me to listen carefully. “What you must understand, Nadia, is that men have no role models in Russia.”

Simmy’s assertion resonated with me. My deceased husband’s parents and my own mother and father had been World War II refugees. They’d trusted no one and seemed incapable of unconditional love. Were their children any better? One Friday morning I took the train from New York City to New Haven and surprised my husband at Yale. When I saw his petite graduate assistant exiting his apartment as I arrived, I confronted him. He backhanded me across the face, insisted he’d never touched another woman, and told me never to question his fidelity again. I took it and did nothing, that time and many times later, as my mother had done before me. I’d always held my husband and myself—not our parents—accountable for our own behavior, but there was truth in what Simmy was saying.

“Russian men don’t know how to be husbands or fathers,” Simmy said. “Who was there to teach us? The Soviet Union destroyed the Russian family. There was no freedom of speech, religion, or mobility. A man couldn’t leave town to see his relatives without permission. The KGB were everywhere. It was an empire built on fear, where men were rewarded for persecuting their neighbors. Ambition served only those connected with the central government. For all others, there was no hope for anything other than to survive. During the twentieth century, the soul of all Russian men was systematically destroyed to preserve the powers of the central government and to let the ruling elite have their way. What kind of husbands and fathers do you think this bred?”

I thought of the Western stereotype of a Russian man, lawless and drunk. “The kind who suffered and medicated his pain any way he could.”

“Why does the West think Russian men have a problem with alcoholism? Why do so many Russian marriages end in divorce? Our parents, and their parents, and their parents before them… none of them were role models, and none of them are to blame. The life expectancy of a Russian man in 2000 was fifty-eight years. When you go to Russia, you’re expected to drink in excess in all social situations. If you don’t, Russians view you as a weak person. Why is that?”

I shook my head.

“Because it means you give a shit about your future. Because it means you’re actually arrogant enough to think there’s hope for you, that you’re different than the masses, that you’re better than them, that you’ll live longer. And so the moment you refuse to drink with your host, your client, your potential business partner, he views you suspiciously. He believes you are someone he cannot trust. And he sure as hell resents you.”

I’d only seen Simmy look anxious on one other occasion, when our lives were at risk in a Siberian castle that had belonged to the FBI’s most wanted man, Russia’s most notorious organized crime leader. But here he was, flashing creases in his temple in the comfort of an Amsterdam restaurant and under the protection of his bodyguards. My observations unnerved me a bit, as to be in Simmy’s presence was to feel, above all else, temporarily invulnerable.

“Last time I saw you,” I said, “you talked about the European and American sanctions against Russia… did something else happen?”

Simmy looked around before speaking yet again, and then lowered his voice so low that I had to lean forward and strain to hear him. “Remember my friend—now my former friend—the one who complained about the President to the press? The one that said Valery was to blame for the sanctions and the miserable state of Russian society? He had his wings clipped yesterday.”

“A Russian oligarch had his wings clipped? What does that mean?”

“He was the largest printer and distributor of textbooks to primary schools in Russia. Actually, he pretty much had a monopoly. Now, as of yesterday, all schools have stopped ordering books from his company.”