“How to Know People” is Chapter 10 of my book “Lessons in Diplomacy: Politics, Power and Parties“. Here is one of the stories it contains. I have lightly edited for context.
How to know people: Daydream Island
Two other young men helped me grasp how Russia was changing. I was visiting Daydream Island in Australia in the winter of 1993 when I heard someone speaking Russian. Josef and Pavel were playing volleyball in the pool. I got chatting to them. They were there to buy a yacht, they said, and to sail it back to Vladivostok. If I was ever there, I should look them up. If they were surprised when I told them I lived in Moscow and did visit Vladivostok from time to time, they didn’t show it.
Confident, rich young Russians
Back in the early ‘90s confident, rich young Russians were something of a novelty. Commercial enterprises were springing up, but success was patchy. The fact that the elevator in our housing block was made by “The Moscow Experimental Lift Company” did not inspire confidence. Nor did the “Russian Experimental Champagne” sparkling wine brand.
A cruise around Russki Island
Next time I visited Vladivostok, I phoned Josef. He said they’d bought the yacht, and suggested we go for a cruise around Russki Island, then in the news over a scandal involving the abuse of Russian naval cadets. I wasn’t sure what to expect – the scale of the vessel, with a couple of luxury suites downstairs, surprised me. Pavel and their girlfriends Olga and Galina came, too.
Olga and Galina on the yacht
Insurance, Russian style
After a few hours’ cruising, Josef suggested we moor off Russki Island, and lunch on some fish and гребешки, a word new to me. The autumn day was bright, and after a beer or two I asked Josef what he did for a living. He worked in страхование, he said, insurance – one of those words, like бизнесмен, a businessman, which were becoming more widespread in Russia in 1994 but did not always mean the same in English as in Russian.
‘What kind of things do you insure?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘suppose someone buys a мехсекция of fish –’
‘What’s a мехсекция?’
‘A мехсекция?’ Josef frowned at me, as if my Russian must be worse than he had thought. ‘A мехсекция is four railway wagons plus a refrigeration unit.’
‘Who would buy four railway wagons of fish?’
Josef sighed. ‘Someone buys a мехсекция of fish. The price is, say, half a million dollars. They collect the fish, and begin to sell them. But they do not pay the money they owe. I am the insurance. I go and have a talk with them, and they pay.’
‘Does Pavel help you?’ I asked. Pavel was lounging nearby in an inflatable dinghy. He had curly blond hair, a body-builder’s physique and a broken nose.
‘Sometimes,’ Josef said. ‘Other times we work alone.’
Catching scallops
I decided not to ask any more questions. The sun was warm. Josef stripped to his swimming trunks, stuck a knife into his waistband, and dived into the sea. Pavel, Olga and Galina began to fish, with simple lines. Within twenty minutes Josef had found twenty гребешки, which turned out to be scallops. The others caught several fish.
Olga catches a fish
We settled on the deck around a little camping stove, on which my Russian hosts proceeded to cook the fish and the scallops – the best I ever tasted. We washed it down with malt whisky, a gift I had brought with me, which we drank Russian-style, draining the glass with a toast. Everyone said the whisky was delicious.
Not necessarily in a desirable direction
Not for the first time, I was impressed by the ability of Russians to cobble together a nourishing and delicious meal from nowhere. More important, getting to know Josef and Pavel, and the day out off Vladivostok, were a crash course in understanding the evolution of the Russian economy – not necessarily in a 100% desirable direction.
The wrong direction? At the tiller off Russki Island
How to know people – or avoid them
I saw the two insurance executives again on a subsequent visit to Vladivostok. On that occasion the hospitality offered, involving a deserted swimming pool complex and a sauna filled with young women, was clearly a blatant compromise attempt. But that is another story.
Note: all names have been changed.
Russia before 2014
I hope you’ve enjoyed this excerpt from the How to know people chapter of Lessons in Diplomacy. I lived in Russia as First Secretary (Economic) in the British Embassy from 1992-5 when Boris Yeltsin was President. At this time, Russia did not threaten Ukraine. The unprovoked wars launched by President Putin against Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 plunged relations between Ukraine and Russia, and between Russia and those supporting democracy in Ukraine, into an abyss.
What to do next
You can find more excerpts from Lessons in Diplomacy, and plenty of pictures, elsewhere on my website.