Zero Sum: The Arc of International Business in Russia w/ Charles Hecker

Join Charles Hecker at the Harriman Institute for a talk about his new book, Zero Sum – a fascinating account of the highs and lows of doing business in post-Soviet Russia. Moderated by Alexander Cooley.

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?

The speakers

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.

Alexander Cooley’s research examines how external actors—including emerging powers, international organisations, multinational companies, NGOs, and Western enablers of grand corruption—have influenced the development, governance and sovereignty of the former Soviet states, with a focus on Central Asia and the Caucasus. Cooley is the author and/or editor of seven books including, Dictators without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia, co-authored with John Heathershaw, and most recently, Exit from Hegemony: The Unravelling of the American Global Order, co-authored with Daniel Nexon.