WEBVTT - Firsthand Observations on the Dismantling of the Soviet Union 0:00:02.560 --> 0:00:07.119 Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:10.680 You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and 0:00:10.760 --> 0:00:13.160 Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio. 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:14.920 So one of the great things about working in New 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:16.520 York City, there are many great things. 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:18.000 You get to take the subway all the time. 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:19.120 Yeah, that's not one of them. 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:19.360 Now. 0:00:19.360 --> 0:00:21.680 I do actually like the subway. You get around pretty quickly, 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:25.240 But it is the access you get to book parties 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:26.760 that you get to go to, and that includes one 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:28.680 for our next guest, who is a New York Times 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:32.919 bestselling author, biographer and a prolific writer a business management 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:35.920 trends of which he has joined us before to talk about. 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:38.320 But he is at with his first work of fiction, 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:41.920 written some thirty years ago, set in nineteen ninety one Moscow, 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:44.280 a year when the Soviet Union was dissolved. And I 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:46.800 have to say, in kind of reading again in for this, 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.159 I was googling that year and the Soviet Union. I 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:53.000 kept coming up with a Metallica concert that played in 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:55.520 Moscow for the first time ever. It was like one 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:57.400 point six million people. I think it was an open 0:00:57.400 --> 0:00:59.480 air concert, but it was a year in time when 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:01.760 it seems scot and the former Soviet Union would be 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:04.959 on a very different front and a much more democratic track. 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:07.120 It was supposed to be the end of history. 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:09.039 Yeah exactly, or a new chapter. 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:09.759 Yeah right. 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:12.399 Journalists and author Kevin Maney joins us now in our 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:14.920 Bloomberg in Director Broker Studio to talk about his first 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:17.680 work of fiction. It's entitled Red bottom Line. It is 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:19.880 about the Soviet Union back in the nineteen nineties, but 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:21.959 again a work of fiction. So nice to have you 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:22.640 back on with us. 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:26.000 How are you good. Yeah, this is great. I'm glad 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:26.400 to be here. 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:28.480 Well, I'm really glad to have you here. And I 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:30.640 know at the party it was we talked about the 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:32.240 book and stuff, but I want you to share with 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:35.800 us with our audience. It is your first work of fiction, 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:37.600 written about three decades ago. 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:42.039 Right. Well, So the background story is that in the 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:45.480 late eighties and early nineties, as the Soviet Union was 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:47.640 disintegrating in the East Block and the Iron Curtain was 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:50.520 coming down and all that stuff was happening, I was 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:52.760 a reporter for USA Today and I was covering that 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:58.120 as a journalist, and so in the it was just 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:01.000 one of these like one set of more kind of 0:02:01.120 --> 0:02:04.240 history making kind of time when all these crazy stuff 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:07.760 was happening all around me. And so I had this 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:11.960 idea that, you know, despite all the stories I've written 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:15.000 for the newspaper everything, that I would use that as 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:17.400 a setting for a novel. Now I had never written 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:19.000 a book before. At that point in time, I was 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:23.320 thirty thirty one years old, and so I wrote this 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:26.520 a draft of this novel, and then basically did nothing 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:29.520 with it for thirty years. But I held on to it. 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:31.320 But I held on to it well, so so thirty 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:34.240 years later, I actually was writing it when my daughter 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:37.760 was first born. And so thirty some years later, she 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:39.440 starts asking me about it. She says, you know, you 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:42.240 wrote that novel? Where is it? I'm going like, I 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:44.520 wrote it at a floppy disc. I worked perfect, like 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:47.040 I've never gonna it turned out that I had a 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:49.400 print out of it, like you know, the printouts that 0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:51.359 were all like to pash together with the polls on 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:54.240 the size and stuff. And I pulled out the print 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:56.280 out and I started reading it, and I'm going like, wait, 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:58.799 this is actually pretty good with a little work. 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:01.720 Why didn't you collect dust on a floppy disc for 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:02.320 thirty years? 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:02.480 Though? 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:04.680 Like what stopped you from pursuing. 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:06.760 You know, I didn't know anything about the book business. 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:09.239 I sent it to a couple of editors randomly, which 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:11.679 is probably dumb. Didn't hear anything back, and I just 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:13.560 kind of figured, well, you know, all right, never mind. 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:17.400 You know, it's like probably not that good. But then I, 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:20.320 you know, I went on and started writing nonfiction books 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:22.520 and had a lot of success. I have published nine 0:03:23.000 --> 0:03:27.079 nonfiction books, all about business and biographies and things like that. 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:30.240 So when I returned to it, you know, I had 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:31.800 more of a path and more of a knowledge of, 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:33.239 like how to get this thing published. 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:35.040 I think what's interesting is it takes us back to 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:38.280 a different era, right And I know at your book 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:40.160 party we talked a little bit about it and stuff. 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:43.200 But you think about, you know, what our expectations were 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.360 for a Russia moving forward or a Soviet or what 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:49.080 the new Soviet Union or not, you know, the dissolution 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:51.320 like they did their first presidential election. Like you just 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:54.200 think about what where it was and where it could 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:54.800 have gone. 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:57.160 Well that was, you know, and when you read the 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:00.960 if you read the novel, because it's you know, it's 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:03.360 all real stuff that I experienced. I mean, it's basically 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:05.680 a made up story based on real facts of what 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:08.440 was happening. And there was this optimism. There was a 0:04:08.520 --> 0:04:12.080 sense among young people and there's you know, these young 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:14.880 characters in the novel who were all into this idea 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:17.279 of like creating businesses and you know, getting into private 0:04:17.400 --> 0:04:21.360 enterprise and you know, making contacts with Westerners and and 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:24.720 there was this incredible optimism that there was something new 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:29.120 was going to rise out of this and everybody felt that, right, Yeah, 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:31.880 everybody felt that, and you know, and us business people 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:34.560 were starting to go over I you know, I ended 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:37.840 up being present at the opening of the Moscow McDonald's. 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:40.080 I was going to talk about that because that's like 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:42.719 so iconic from that era, and it was also iconic 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:45.200 two years ago around this time. We talked a lot 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.640 about it because when McDonald's exited the country in the 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:51.560 wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it brought back those 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:54.120 images from the early nineties of people waiting in line 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:55.720 to try the first big mac. 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:58.160 That's right, yeah, and it was it was. I mean, 0:04:59.160 --> 0:05:01.800 we forget about it, how but it was this incredible cultural, 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:05.640 geopolitical event that McDonald's opened in Moscow, and there were, 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:08.080 Like I think there were thirty eight thousand people that 0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:11.240 went the first day to that McDonald's because they were 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:14.240 so hungry for not hungry for burgers, but hungry for like, 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:15.839 you know, American stuff. 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:17.880 Well, you know, it's funny. I have a conversation when 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:19.240 I was with my husband and we just said, you know, 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:22.159 what if we had decided rather than especially if you 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:24.120 look at the tensions between US and China today, like 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:26.200 if we decided, well, let's work with Russia and let's 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:29.440 manufacture stuff there, Like just if we'd made as a 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:32.960 as a world, as a you know, generally decided to 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:35.559 work more with Russia going forward, Like you just wonder 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:37.200 how things might have played out differently. 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:41.000 Well, there wasn't the transition time. There wasn't enough time 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:44.280 for enough stuff to happen because pretty quickly, and I 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:46.800 experienced this because I wasn't living there, but I was 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:50.919 traveling there frequently, right and from the late eighties to 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:54.159 around nineteen ninety two, you could actually sense every trip 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.920 that things were getting like more chaotic, more dangerous, more weird, 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:01.640 because you know, there was this sort of transitions of 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:04.560 the government from Gorbachev, Yels and Yeltsen was kind of 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:07.160 a disaster. He wasn't really he started handing out whole 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:09.400 industries to his friends, which is what the birth of 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:15.160 the oligarchs was. And you know, sort of mob activity 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.920 was running half the economy, and so there was never 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:21.640 a chance for this to really catch hold before the 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:24.400 Russian society basically got sick of this and was welcoming 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:26.599 somebody like Putin to come in and say I'm going 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:29.640 to actually create some order out of this chaos. And 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:31.599 then it just all kind of fell apart as terms 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:33.200 of being able to connect with the West. 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:35.400 What I think so notable about the novel is that 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:38.320 it paints a picture of what could have been in 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:41.600 Russia and what many people in the early nineteen nineties 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:45.240 thought would actually happen. It's there collecting dust for thirty 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:47.760 years before you go and publish it, and here you 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:50.880 are publishing it, and it's the complete opposite of what 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:53.640 ended up happening, as you just described, right, right, So 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:56.920 what was the moment you think it went wrong or 0:06:56.960 --> 0:06:59.240 went on a different path. Wasn't Yeltsin was? 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:02.000 It was under the y To administration, right, And you know, 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:06.440 I mean, look, I never met Boris Elson. But there's 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:08.159 lots of reports about him. I mean, you know, the 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:10.080 guy was kind of a disaster as a leader, and 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:14.040 it just let things sort of fall apart all around him. 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:17.520 So what could have been set on a path of 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:21.800 creating a more global, western facing country just got derailed. 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.440 And then you know, and Putin wanted to take it 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:27.520 in a completely different direction once he got aboard. But 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:30.040 you know, the point, one of the points you were 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:32.800 sort of alluding to here is that if I had 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:36.119 sat down to write this novel today, trying to rely 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:38.200 on my memory or my notes or something from I 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:40.720 could never have captured all the details that I did. 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:44.160 I think one of the even like for me rereading it, 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:45.800 one of the magical things about it is that I 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:48.520 wrote it in the moment, So I was recalling like 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.160 all these sort of very fresh, tiny little details about 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:54.200 what life was like for individual Russians or for somebody 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:56.320 who was trying to run a factory and trying to 0:07:56.360 --> 0:08:01.240 transition to capitalism and all these things. And because I 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:04.840 was writing it while I was there, those are captured, 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:06.840 and then you know, all these years later, now I 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:08.720 was just able to put a little bit more shine 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:12.080 on them and make it, you know, a more holistic 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:12.960 story that works better. 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:14.640 What was that like when you picked it up again, right, 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:17.280 because you hadn't read it really in thirty years there 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:19.160 is and like to go back there and be like, 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:21.320 oh my god, like, yeah, this is exactly what was 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:21.800 going on. 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:25.080 Well. What was fun for me was because I had 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:28.000 I remember very little of it, so it was almost 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:29.560 like I was reading here for the first time. I 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:32.760 got I would who is this guy that wrote this thing? 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:34.320 Is actually pretty good? Published? 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:35.040 You know what? 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:37.520 It's fascinating, right, It's like a window back into kind 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:39.280 of exactly what you were experiencing. 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.839 Yeah, oh I had, I had, so I wrote this 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:46.720 little author zone in the beginning that that, you know, 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:49.160 after before I thought of doing anything with it. I 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:51.719 actually sent it to my daughter and she is she's 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:55.080 a journalist and editor herself. So she reads it and 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:57.640 she writes back to me and says, you know, Dad, 0:08:57.640 --> 0:08:59.200 this is really good, but like here I've got like 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:01.920 two pages. No, say you can make it better. But 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:03.560 one of the things I thought was funny that she 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:08.040 pointed out was so the like, especially the main character, 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:11.599 there's kind of this nineties sort of you know, the 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:14.840 characters from friends kind of like language and snarkiness that 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:18.079 are in the book that she said, like it is 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:21.719 sort of inappropriate today, right, and like so if I 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:23.720 were writing that book today, like it wouldn't even have 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:25.000 that sort of language in it. 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:26.400 But it's emblematic of the time. 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:27.840 It was epblematic of the time. 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:30.079 Right, Yeah, like a time without iPhones and a time 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:32.320 that people had to actually you know, make plans to 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:33.840 meet in certain places, right. 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:35.640 And you know, make jokes about things that nobody would 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:38.640 want to make jokes about it exactly, and stuff like that. Right. 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:39.680 That's a really good point. 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:39.920 Right. 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:42.200 It's just again, it's a snapshot in time, right, and 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:44.120 it takes you back there and you realize, okay, the 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:46.760 things that have changed and what is appropriate or not. 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:49.079 I want to continue the conversation. We're going to do 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:50.840 a little bit of news, Kevin. But the one thing 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:53.679 I think about is more broadly is I think we 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:56.679 think democracy is going to of course always win, and 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:59.000 people are going to always want to move increasingly that 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:02.040 decoration in that direction. We've thought it with China, right, 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:04.440 with all the Western businesses moving in, and yet here 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:06.640 we are and it feels very very different. So I 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:08.200 want to maybe dig into that a little bit when 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:10.200 we come back. We're going to continue with journalists and 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:12.959 author Kevin Maney, New York Times best selling author. I 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:15.120 should point out he's here in studio, but we're talking 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:18.400 about his first work of fiction. It's entitled Red bottom Line, 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:20.559 again taking us back to the Soviet Union in the 0:10:20.640 --> 0:10:23.120 late eighties and early nineties. Will continue in just a moment. 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:25.480 I'm not going to all. 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:34.200 Right, yeah, back in the USSR. And that is what 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:36.959 we are talking about. Red bottom Line. It's a new 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:40.360 book by New York Times bestselling author and journalist Kevin Maney, 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:43.120 his first work of fiction, although it was written about 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:45.000 thirty years ago, and it is though it takes you 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:48.440 back to the Soviet Union in the nineteen nineties. You know, 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:51.480 we kind of tease Kevin that this whole idea that 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:54.080 we think democracy will prevail, and right now we feel 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:56.800 like democracy is under attack globally. 0:10:57.480 --> 0:10:58.000 Give us some. 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:00.559 Thoughts, as you've been a journalist, just thinking about kind 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:02.439 of what's going on in the world and how democracy 0:11:02.480 --> 0:11:04.559 continues to be tested, because we think every time a 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:07.320 market seems to open up its arms to it, we think, okay, 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:09.360 it's just going to continue. And it's not the case. 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:12.160 It wasn't certainly in the Soviet Union, it hasn't really 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:14.679 been in China, even though a lot of Western companies 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:16.360 moved in there, and we thought it would be a 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:17.079 different outcome. 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:20.840 Yeah, you know, I mean, I'm not a political expert 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:25.400 and go more of a business expert. But and you know, 0:11:26.240 --> 0:11:27.080 my observation is. 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:30.400 We thought, like the business momentum into these countries, right, 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:31.360 would kind of. 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:33.640 I mean, you mentioned McDonald's that was like a seminal 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:38.200 moment when it came to the the former Soviet unions 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:40.120 embrace of capitalism. 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:44.280 Well, yes, but there was a I think there was 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:47.040 an interesting nuance that there was not so much about 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:50.680 like this anticipation that Russia or China when you know, 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:55.160 in this nineties and we're going to be democratic, But 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:57.480 there was this anticipation that there was going to be 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:02.040 a legal system, a rule of law, a set of 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:04.720 rules that everybody could play by that was not the 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:07.000 whims of a dictator or something like that. That's what's 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:10.319 really important to to businesses more than you know, more 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:12.000 than the fact that the people are going to vote 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:15.640 for their leaders. The fact that that you know, the 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:18.240 opposite of what's happening now in Russia or in China, 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:21.720 you know, where she is sort of taking all these 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:24.760 these sort of random actions of penalizing tech companies and 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:28.040 other you know, and there's an uncertainty, and that uncertainty 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:30.360 is what the business you know, business people don't want, 0:12:32.120 --> 0:12:35.040 you know, less than the idea of pure democracy, right 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:35.800 the rules change. 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:37.480 It's funny that you say that we're you know, zekeer 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:41.920 like having Chinese ev maker making its debut here in 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:44.679 New York and I po it was a big deal here. 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:46.160 But part of the questioning with the. 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:49.199 Executive Yeah, it was the CFO right about. 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:51.800 Okay, Chinese government involvement. And that's part of the problem 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:54.160 right now, right like we just don't know as investors, 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:57.000 and we've seen certainly investors pull back when it comes 0:12:57.040 --> 0:12:59.959 to China overall of just not knowing do the rules change, 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:01.959 especially if you're investing in a business. 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:04.640 Yeah, and and you know, and and there was this, 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:07.160 you know, in the in the moment when the book 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:11.040 is said, there was this rush into uh into Russia 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:14.199 by a lot of businesses McDonald's and Procter and Gamble. 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:16.360 There was there was One of the impetuses for me 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:18.560 going over in the first place, in fact, was there 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:22.439 was you know, the Russian people had never seen much 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:26.480 of anything of American products. And I learned about a 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:29.560 convention that was going to happen where all these companies 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:32.240 like Procter and Gamble and Unilever or whatever, We're going 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:35.720 to show stuff like toothpaste and deodorant, and you know, 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:41.719 and and I an enormous convention center where there was 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:43.679 all these you know, typical displays of all these little things, 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:47.360 and just mobs of Russian citizens coming in and just 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:50.240 with bags and trying to grab everything that they could. 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:53.360 But all those companies wanted to go in because they 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:57.680 they were anticipating that the economy is going to open up, 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:00.120 there's going to be this hunger for Western may products, 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:03.480 but also that there was going to emerge out of this, 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:07.280 you know, the Gorbachev era, something that was more predictable 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.440 and stable than you know, under the whims of the 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:13.520 former Soviet premiers, that could just basically, you know, order 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:16.920 anything to have happened, right, and that was what was important. 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:18.839 And then you know, and then it all fell apart 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:23.720 when another sort of dictator like figure came into power 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:25.640 and shut that down. 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:28.880 You know, you say you're not a political expert, You're 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:30.440 more an expert in business. But I'm still going to 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:34.880 ask you some questions about the politics, because you absolutely 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:38.640 understand it. We had it on the program a couple 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:39.120 of weeks ago. 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:39.560 David E. 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:41.240 Sanger from the New York Times. He's got a new 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:44.200 book out called New Cold Wars, China's Rise, Russia's invasion 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:47.880 in America's struggled to defend the West, and he argues 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:51.080 that you know, we didn't the West didn't see coming 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:55.000 post the collapse of the Soviet Union what we see today. 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:57.400 We were busy fighting, you know, this war on tear, 0:14:57.480 --> 0:15:00.000 And in the meantime, China's has the Belton Road initial 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:03.680 around the world, and Russia is coming back with its 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:06.800 plans for an empire once again. And I'm wondering if 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:11.760 you see any similarities now in twenty twenty four to 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:14.560 what you saw what we saw before the fall of 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:16.840 the Soviet Union, Like if there is sort of a 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:22.520 new kind of axis forming right now between Russia and China. 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:25.600 Well, I mean, it seems like to me like the 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:27.680 opposite of what was happening back then. Right, I mean 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:30.200 there was this, there was this moment in time and 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:34.760 again it's like it's almost like it's so different now 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:37.400 that we almost can't believe that it actually was happening. 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:41.200 But the in the if you grew up in the 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:43.960 nineteen eighties, there was this thing called the Iron Curtains, yeah, 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:48.080 which was impenetrable, right, it was, and it was all 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:51.160 those Eastern European countries. It was a Soviet Union. China 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:54.160 was a closed nation essentially to the West. So there 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:56.240 was this entire part of the world that wasn't even 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:57.880 part of the global economy. 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:02.280 But is that happening again, that seems to be we're returning. 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:04.400 That's what there was this, Yeah, So there was this 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:08.280 moment in time that was mostly contained in the nineteen 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:12.120 nineties really between China and Russia and the Deng Jumping 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:15.360 Area era in China, when it seemed like all of 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:17.600 that was this. I mean, this was the era when 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:20.840 the idea of globalization was birth, because there was this 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:23.440 moment in time when it seemed like the whole world 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:26.160 was going to play together. And if the whole world 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:29.600 was going to play together, then there was this prospect 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:34.880 for a kind of global piece that was never possible before. 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:38.200 And in the late nineteen nineties that was sort of 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:42.400 the that was sort of where we were, and the 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:45.840 economies around the world were absolutely booming, you know, and 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:47.600 that was the whole dot com move in the US, 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:53.080 and the markets were going crazy. And to me, what 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:57.600 marked the end of that was nine to eleven. Suddenly 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:00.840 it just was like this this wayake up call that 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:03.960 the world was not playing going to play together, and 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:06.120 you know, and then we started to see things roll 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:08.480 back in Russia and China through the two thousand and 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:12.159 twenty tens, and we are we've kind of moved back 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:15.240 to that era when there was this entire part of 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:19.680 the world that was operating separately from the rest of US. 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:22.840 Yeah, it's it's kind of fascinating. I do feel like, 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:24.600 you know, some of the alliances. We've talked a lot 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:27.800 about kind of the Middle East, and I'm lumping a 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:30.600 lot in there, but just kind of the amount of 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:32.480 money that's coming out of the Middle East and going 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:35.880 into so many different areas, whether it's business, whether it's renewables, 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:42.320 whether it's sports, and just that how countries, United States 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:46.240 and others are picking when to look away because of 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:48.879 the money involved, or they needed the need for an 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:52.520 alliance versus when to say, wait a minute, something's not here. 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:55.440 It's just it's an interesting time to say the least. 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:59.000 Yeah, yeah, and you know the And there's another sort 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:00.560 of sad thing about this too, is it that? 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:03.600 And just got about forty seconds last. 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:06.680 That I'm not rush because I was. I've always written 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:09.840 about technology, and so one of the things I sought 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:13.800 out in Moscow in the late eighties and early nineties 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:17.359 were these little startups that were starting to bloom. And 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:22.560 there were so many smart, incredibly talented, like software people 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:25.560 in Russia at the time, and there was this seed 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:28.119 of what could have been a global tech industry that 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:31.960 came out of there that just got snuffed and either 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:34.920 the smart people that had those ambitions came to the 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:37.239 US and set up in Silicon Valley, which a lot 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:41.200