The Satinsky Archive

The Oral History of Americans and other foreigners who participated in the historic dismantling of the Soviet economy by Russian reformers and who contributed to the creation of the Russian market economy in the 1990s.

‘When we talk about history, the behind the scenes setting of the stage is rarely understood or recorded. So, that’s very important, because this is an important period in the history of the world and for us to learn well from it, we really need to understand the biggest possible picture of perceptions that we can.”

James Hickman, director, Esalen Institute Soviet American Exchange Program

The Satinsky Archive is an oral history of the impact of Americans and other non-Russian foreigners on modern Russia as it emerged from the Soviet Union. There is an old adage that “nothing comes from nothing.” Understanding current Russia depends on understanding where it came from not only its Soviet and pre-Soviet historical roots, but the formation of the social forces that created new economic and political structures beginning in the 1980s and developing into the 2000s. The interviews collected here give a firsthand, on the ground account of this period as an historical resource and as a collection of insights into the impact of Western market capitalism as it was adopted in post-Soviet Russia. 

The Archive is an outgrowth of the extensive interviews conducted for the book, Creating the Post-Soviet Market Economy: Through American Eyes. Of the 105 interviews conducted for the book, there was only space to include excerpts from 65. Even with these limits, the book is an important contribution to the study of Russia and US Russia relations standing on its own. The Archive expands upon the book as compilation of many of the original interviews, only slightly edited but presented in full, along with some more recent interviews.  

The interviews are intended to correct some mistaken commonly held assumptions about Russia and the lack of perspective on its evolution in the late Soviet Period and then through the formative years of the 1990s and 2000s. From the American and Western perspective, the years covered by these interviews were a time of neoliberal dominance and the Washington consensus. It was widely believed that the American neoliberal market system was the model for the whole world. It was an era of American triumphalism that reached its peak around the 2008 financial crisis and now is under siege, attacked from within by the forces of illiberalism and from without by the of collaboration of Russia and China and the ongoing emergence of the Global South. Russia is a big part of this story. It emerged from the Soviet Union with the Yeltsin-era romance with the neoliberal model in the 1990s and Russians rapidly assimilated the skills and structures of a market economy. Starting around the time of the 1998 Russian financial crisis, many Russians began questioning the wisdom of accepting the America and the Western version of the market economy and social values being introduced along with it. Around this same time, the traditional sources in Russia in the security services and the military that had been disoriented in the Yeltsin years regrouped and supported Vladimir Putin as the successor to Boris Yeltsin. With the rise in oil prices, consolidation of the Russian state, and taming of the Yeltsin era oligarchs, Russia gradually rejected first foreign political and social values and increasingly asserted the power of the state over the private sector. Russian intellectuals revised and refined Russian nationalism and Russian national interests and defined the universalism of the neoliberal economic model and social values of the West as a new form of Western imperialism. Romance with the West turned to outright rejection and conflict that only fully matured with the Ukraine crisis beginning in 2014. Many of the people interviewed lived through the whole of this evolution of post-Soviet Russia as witnesses and participants, with important observations, insights, and analysis to share.

Structure of the Archive

The Satinsky Archive generally supports the structure, emphasis, and conclusions of Creating the Post-Soviet Russian Market Economy: Through American Eyes. But the Archive also adds new interviews done subsequent to that book and broadens and deepens the perspective of the interviews that could only be summarized in the book. The interviews have been organized by major themes and then topics within those themes to clarify what types of information are available in each or in other words, why listen to or read the transcript of a particular interview. Each interview each has a brief biographical introduction of the person interviewed.

Citizen diplomacy in the 1980s.

It is impossible to understand Russia of the 1990s and 2000s without looking at some of the salient aspects of its Soviet past, particularly the Cold War. The Cold War was a conflict of two universalist systems trying to triumph over the other and impose their own values and institutions. Both systems arose from European ideas and history. Soviet universalism was linked with European Marxism and utilized anti-imperialism as weapon against the West, through alliance with liberation movements in former colonies. Cracks began in the so-called Iron Curtain on both sides for different reasons. On the US side, activists and organizations that grew out of the counterculture and peace movements of the 1970s began to focus on the existential danger of nuclear war and were searching for ways to prevent a nuclear exchange. On the Soviet side, intellectuals were looking for ways out from the stagnation of the late Soviet period through exploring human potential and with interest in new computer and information technologies being developed in the West. As groups on each side found each other and began to build working ties, a whole citizen diplomacy movement began that blossomed in the perestroika era. 

The citizen diplomacy movement believed that through breaking the communications barriers between the West and the Soviet Union and through people-to-people contact, war could be avoided. The activists of this movement broke new ground using new technologies like the satellite telecommunications that enabled the rock and roll concert exchange of the US Festival in 1982, supplemented by increasing personal contacts and travel by peace activists to the Soviet Union. This period was a prequel for the much broader and deeper interactions between Americans and Russians to follow in the 1990’s. It was a movement that sowed the seeds of American promotion of civil society organizations and American Soviet joint ventures as private sector prototypes that blossomed in post-Soviet Russia. 

In this section, there are extensive interviews with many of the pioneers of the citizen diplomacy movement, which was initially non-governmental private groups supported by wealthy individuals and peace organizations. There was a strong belief at the time that if Americans and Soviets could talk to each other and learn about each other a nuclear war could be averted. 

Topics in this section include the people to people exchange activities of the Esalen Institute and Project Harmony; space bridge TV shows between the US and the Soviet Union; sister city organizations; US musicians John Denver, Billy Joel and the Paul Winter Consort to the Soviet Union; Association of Space Explorers (both astronauts and cosmonauts) and perestroika era joint ventures, i.e. Dialog, Perestroika (commercial office space), and TrenMos, first American-style restaurant.

Western Impact on the Transition to the Russian Market Economy.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, American neoliberalism was at its height as the dominant universal system. The triumphal American side saw the former Soviet states as being in a kind of receivership to the West as expressed directly by Zbigniew Brezinski in 1990. On the contrary, the Russian reformers and the Yeltsin elite saw themselves as joining in Western neoliberal system but not as vassals. Nonetheless Yeltsin relied on American and Western expertise and entrepreneurs to acquire the knowledge and help shape the new institutions required to construct a Russian market economy. In this they consciously or unconsciously mimicked the historical process of modernization of Russia through acquiring foreign technology and experts that was first implemented by Peter the Great and to a lesser extent by Stalin. The perspective of the book as supported in these interviews is that reforms, including privatization, were the initiative of the group around Yeltsin. In order to implement these economic reforms and create a Russian private market economy, Yeltsin and his cohorts looked for and relied upon foreign expertise and technical advice with the goal of creating a modern, prosperous, powerful Russia.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union initiated an historic period of change in Russia. The US government responded with political and economic support for Boris Yeltsin that led to almost a decade of intense involvement of Americans in shaping the contours of the “New Russia.” The relatively small number of personal contacts from the civil diplomacy period were replaced by a virtual torrent of Americans and other foreigners entering Russia and directly engaging with Russians in historic numbers. These interviews tell the story of those times through the eyes of Americans involved with US government funded aid programs and private institutions that shared the objectives of supporting Russian market reforms and promoting new civil society organizations.

US and International government-funded programs utilized many of the citizen diplomacy organizations as channels for aid to Russia and created many new ones through bringing in a small army of consultants and advisors to Russia, contributing to the growing number of expats in Moscow and throughout other Russian cities. 

Topics in this section include US government programs including the Peace Corps; the State Department’s Business for Russia and Community Connections programs; BISNIS, US Commerce Department’s Business Information Services for the Newly Independent States (BISNIS); Consultants Ernst & Young, Deloitte; and the Kennan Institute. This section also includes topics related to the developing expat community in Moscow, including the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia (AmCham), Moscow Country Club, American Medical Center & American Dental Centers, Moscow Polo Club, and expat established or inspired restaurants. Uncle Guilly’s Steak House, Starlight Diner, Patio Pizza, American Bar & Grill and others.

Establishing Private Business and Reform of Soviet Industry.

The enormity of the transition from the Soviet planned economy to a Russian market economy is impossible to understand without some basic outline. In the Soviet Union, private enterprise was illegal. Money functioned as an input allocated by planning agencies so banks and whatever financial institutions existed had an entirely different purpose than in a market economy. There was no private ownership of land, including apartments and buildings. Media, movies, restaurants, retail stores, telecom and other service-based enterprises were all state-owned with business practices determined by planning agencies, not by customer or consumer demand. The Soviet planning system had its own accounting systems, legal structure, operating procedures, distribution networks, and industry-specific scientific and training institutions, all of which were completely separate and conceptually distinct from Western market-based analogs. Integration into the global market economy required huge changes in these entrenched systems.

In this context, the entrepreneurial impact of Americans was quite dramatic during the Yeltsin period. This influence was particularly important in new private sectors that either did not exist in Soviet times, like finance and real estate or operated very differently under Soviet state control, like restaurants, hotels, entertainment, media and telecommunications. 

The influence of multinational corporations and individual entrepreneurs was a critical driver of the growth of many of these new businesses, with their influence on the everyday lives of Russian citizens. The structural changes in the Russian economy that took place then remaining important in the modern-day Russian economy but russified and run by Russians.

This transition was facilitated by the large number of international law firms, consulting firms, accountancies, and foreign banks that also established their presence in Russia and played a significant role in creating the market economy. 

Topics in this section are financial institutions, including United Financial Group, Troika Dialog, Delta Private Equity, [Baring Vostok], [Morgan Stanley], Dialog Bank, Alpha Bank, Citibank, Fidelity Investments, Russian Trading System; real estate, Noble Gibbons, Perestroika Joint Venture; media/entertainment, including Internews, CTC TV, Radio Maximum, Moscow News, Cosmopolitan (Russian edition), Kino Mir, Kino Star de Lux, and Rose Creative; restaurants including TrenMos, Starlight Diner, Uncle Gilley’s Steak House, Rostic, Patio Pizza, Planet Sushi, and American Bar and Grill; telecommunications including SovAm Teleport, Sovintel, Baltic Communications, and US West; international law firms including Latham Watkins, LeBoeuf Lamb, and Chadbourne & Park; and consultants, including Ernst & Young and Deloitte.

Western Cultural and Social Impact: Russia’s Culture Wars

One of the lesser studied or discussed aspects of the 1990s was the deep cultural impact of Western culture and cultural values on Russia, not only in the cosmopolitan, English friendly major cities but deep into the provinces. The reaction against what was seen as an intrusion of foreign values on traditional Russian culture and values is deserving of a great deal more attention. This ranges from the dominance of American movies and TV shows, Mexican and Brazilian soap opera TV shows, American music, American values regarding treatment of women and feminism, missionaries from Protestant evangelical churches, various religious cults like the followers of Reverend Moon and Hari Krishnas, active adoption of Russian children, and active mail order bride services for Russian women looking for foreign husbands. 

While many of the negative social trends of this era were the result of faults and failures of Russian internal structures, they became associated in the minds of Russians with “reform” and “capitalism.” All of these influences impacted hugely on Russian society at a time when the security services were in disarray and crime was rampant. For business the 1990s was a period when each business had to at least consider whether it needed “krysha,” translated as “roof,” to protect themselves from criminals and sometimes from rival government agencies. It was a period in which many ordinary Russians desperately desired order and personal security. 

Simultaneously the way Russians now live their lives was also transformed during this period in ways that lead back to Western business models and practices that survive even today under Russian ownership. Russians keep in touch with friends and relatives and interact with government services through mobile phones. Russians buy and sell apartments. They shop in malls and big box stores, although these forms of retail shopping channels are currently threatened by sanctions that have removed Western brands from Russia. They listen to music on FM radio and watch movies at multiplex movie theaters. They have a range of restaurants from fine dining to fast food from which to choose. Russians are top-notch professionals in real estate development, advertising, accounting, and law. In all these areas, pioneering American and other foreign entrepreneurs created new companies in Russia that seeded or inspired Russian owned and operated competitors. The post-Soviet generation has grown up with these changes and have a lifestyle or aspirations for a lifestyle that was shaped by these new private service sector industries. 

Apart from the big structural changes in the new private sector, there are any number of smaller changes in Russian life introduced by Americans and foreigners, including the introduction of the ubiquitous Caesar salad and improved Siberian corn and soybean seeds.

Topics covered in this section are growth and later suppression of independent TV and TV news, focused on Internews; Western style entertainment without politics, including CTC TV, Radio Maximum, Kino Mir and multiplexes; police training re domestic violence, Project Harmony; krysha, Starlight Diner; agriculture; print media, Moscow News and Cosmopolitan.