Zero Sum

Description

When the hammer and sickle came down in late 1991, Russia’s feverish new market opened for business. From banking to breweries, sectors emerged out of nowhere, in a country that had never had a functioning economy. For the next three turbulent decades, a wild, proto-capitalist free-for-all transformed Russian society.

Then, in 2022, Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The market started to collapse; Western firms fled Moscow’s skyscrapers. No country this large had ever remade itself so dizzyingly – now, just as dramatically, it was over. The intervening decades had seen phenomenal successes and crushing failures; the creation and destruction of enormous fortunes. How did it all happen?

Zero Sum brings to life the complex, vivid colour of one of the greatest experiments in the history of global commerce. What have businesses learnt—or failed to learn—from this adventure, both about Russia and about dynamics between countries and companies in the face of relentless change?

Reviews

‘A magnificent book. A tour de force exploration of the rollercoaster story of Western capitalists and their misadventures in post-communist Russia, chronicling the hope, the naivety, the idealism, and the greed, arrogance and folly in glorious, highly readable detail. There has been no more thorough, moving or better-researched study of the epic cycle of the opening of Russia’s economy in a blaze of ill-founded optimism in the early 90s to its closing in bitter recrimination and conflict in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Tight and acutely observed with an expert reporter’s eye, this book explains in forensic detail Russia’s path, made of equal parts of hope and venality, from what could have become a prosperous, peaceful European nation to its descent into bandit capitalism and totalitarian kleptocracy.’ — Owen Matthews, author of Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on Ukraine

‘Hecker captures all the adventure, greed and profound mismatch of business cultures that first enriched and then burned Western investors in post-Cold War Russia, a “Las Vegas with snow.” Zero Sum opens a new window onto how the West’s brief love affair with Russia could have gone so wrong, so fast.’ — Marc Champion, international affairs columnist and former editor-in-chief of The Moscow Times

‘A masterful guide to Russia’s 1990s peaks and troughs, its 2000s apex and its contemporary valley between sanctions and Putin’s steadily tightening economic grip. Zero Sum lifts the veil on the thinking behind Western investment in Russia, with invaluable lessons for designing future approaches to economic security.’ — Maximilian Hess, author of Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict between Russia and the West

‘A gripping and fresh account of the geopolitics of Western economic engagement and extrication from Russia. Hecker expertly reveals why globalisation failed to transform the country and how so many Western observers misread the Kremlin’s true calculus behind its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.’ — Alexander Cooley, Claire Tow Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University

‘A detailed and lively chronicle of the challenges faced by Western businesses trying to pursue trade and investment in Russia.’ — Craig Kennedy, Center Associate, Davis Center for Eurasian and Russian Studies, Harvard University

Author(s)

Charles Hecker has spent forty years travelling and working in the Soviet Union and Russia. He has worked as a journalist and a geopolitical risk consultant and has lived in Miami and Moscow. He currently resides in East London. A fluent Russian speaker, he holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University.