Vladimir Yakunin - The Treacherous Path - An Insider's Account of Modern Russia

In 2011, Alexander Zhukov was succeeded as chairman of the board of directors by Kirill Androsov. Mr Zhukov was a flinty, sometimes unbending figure with whom I had numerous arguments about the company’s strategy, but he was always adamant that the board should not interfere with the technical aspects of the work of Russian Railways. The arrival of Mr Androsov, by contrast, signalled a profound and disruptive realignment of the relationship between the management and the board of directors, as well as of the company’s balance of power. His allies in the Finance and Economic Development ministries tried to insist that Androsov alone should be in direct contact with the state, and that Androsov alone should be responsible for implementing its decisions, even though the ultimate responsibility for their results still rested on the shoulders of the CEO and his management team. Androsov was followed in 2015 by Arkady Dvorkovich. Deliberately or not, it was clear to me that the balance of power in the company had shifted, and it was no longer able to operate in the way that I believed was most efficient.

For a long time the extension of high-speed railway lines, such as the Sapsan, which had been such a success in linking Moscow and St Petersburg to other regions of Russia, had been a subject about which I was incredibly passionate. I had become accustomed to thinking that, with Sochi behind me, I would stay on long enough to see through their introduction before retiring. This was, in fact, what I had told the President himself when some time previously he had asked me about extending my contract. And yet, by 2015 it was painfully evident that the conditions to achieve this no longer existed, and that even though I was still CEO of Russian Railways in name, in practice I now only wielded a fraction of the power that I’d had a decade previously. So the reasons behind my departure from RZD are more complex, and at the same time more mundane in comparison to the speculations my decision triggered. I was no different to any other employee in any other organisation: I knew that I was no longer the right man for the job.

I was not born a number cruncher; I do not possess the kind of personality that was made to deliver profits by slashing costs. I am more suited to creating things out of nothing, like Ust-Luga, the Sapsan trains, or the roads and railways that made the Sochi Olympics possible. I had flourished in the years when Russia had invested in its economy and infrastructure. When that model changed, when it seemed as if anybody else with any kind of vision had left the political stage, I realised, though it hurt me to do so, that I could not change with it. It was time to go.

How long, I asked myself, was this going to last? The euphoria of having got Jon Kil Su, the North Korean Minister of Railways, and Kang Kyung Ho, the president of the South Korean railway company Korail, in a room together – for the first time since the war had torn the two nations irrevocably apart fifty years ago – had swiftly given way to frustration as it became clear that neither side was willing to talk. Though I knew that in North Korea contact with South Koreans was prohibited, this felt ridiculous. It was March 2006 and we were supposed to be discussing the development of the Trans-Korean Railway, a project that promised to not only ease the crippling tensions in this fractious peninsula, but also to bring substantial economic benefits in its wake. (I was as keen as anyone to do whatever I could to help support the decisions taken by our respective leaders. However, ultimately, Russian Railways was not in the business of paying for politics.) A conference in Vladivostok had ended without either party shaking hands or even looking at each other, so I invited each set of representatives to Irkutsk to visit Lake Baikal. I hoped that time spent beside the ‘world’s reservoir’, might help lead to a breakthrough. My hopes were dashed almost immediately. Lengthy conversations – filtered laboriously through interpreters – went nowhere. I began to think that all of the effort I had put into even getting them into the same room would turn out to be a huge waste of time. Seconds became minutes, minutes became hours, mealtimes came and went, and, still, we could make no progress.

The day’s meeting came to an end and we moved on to dinner. Wanting to salvage something, I was anxious to get a memo signed by all three sides that would at the very least stand as a document of our shared intentions. I had no more luck with this – it soon became clear that the North Koreans did not have the authority to endorse it. I felt lost. It seemed to me that I had exhausted all possibility of breaking the ice, but I had not counted on what happened next. I whispered to the wife of the Korail president, who was sitting next to me, ‘This is unbelievable, a disaster.’ Immediately she replied: ‘Give me the right to make the next toast.’ What did I have to lose? [19] The president’s wife was a highly cultured, cosmopolitan woman, and in retrospect perhaps I should not have been surprised by the elegant and daring solution she devised. In Korea, she owned a successful animation studio that translated American cartoons, and her husband had been a dissident under the country’s former dictator, Park Chung-hee. In fact, his opposition had earned him a death sentence, and only the revelation that a number of years earlier, when he had been a teacher, he had saved Park’s boy from a beating at the hands of other children, ensured he would be spared a grim visit to the executioner.

She stood up and began by making a handful of polite preliminary phrases, before turning to Jon Kil Su and addressing him directly. It was as if a bolt of lightning had struck the room; we all sat stunned, waiting for her next words. ‘Distinguished minister,’ she said, and what could he do other than meet her gaze? ‘In Korean tradition, an older person is considered like an older brother for the younger people with him. We are talking about serious things with great value for our societies. Please permit me to address you as an older brother. As an older brother I would like to suggest that we drink to the success of this project.’ We all emptied our glasses. ‘As an older brother,’ she continued, ‘I would like to shake your hand.’

Afterwards the North Korean railway minister came to me, his face still showing the effects of the surprise we had all experienced a few moments earlier. ‘Listen, the fact that I’ve shaken the hand of a South Korean is already a very severe mistake, perhaps illegal. Don’t ask me to sign the memo, but there is a way. You, as chairman, could sign the memo alone. If I add my signature, I will be thrown into jail.’ To my great relief Kang Kyung Ho agreed. I left that evening clutching the memo as if it were written in gold. I knew how close the meetings had come to abject failure; it was a reminder, if one were needed, of the havoc that intransigent government policy can wreak on even the simplest of human exchanges. More lessons like this would follow during my career at Russian Railways, including a horrific, bloody incident that demonstrated to me how cruel and twisted are the roads down which ideology can lead a man.

Russian Railways employs a number of men who always sleep with what we called their ‘emergency luggage’ beside their beds. This bag contains underwear, socks, a few cans of food, a bottle of strong alcohol, razors and a toothbrush. As soon as they learn of an emergency these men grab their luggage and rush out, whatever the weather, often not knowing where they are going, or how long they will be away for.

I thought of them that terrible night, 27 November 2009, when I was first told that there had been an incident involving the Nevsky Express, the train that runs between Moscow and St Petersburg. Unlike them I was not dragged from my bed. I had in fact been sitting in a dinner jacket and black tie at the Mariinsky Opera Theatre in St Petersburg, with my wife by my side; how strange and uncomfortable to receive such macabre news in surroundings like that.