The reason Putin & Russia act as they do:

I am not an apologist for Russia or Putin. Far from it; like most of my Russian friends, I abhor what they are doing in Ukraine. But I have spent some time in the country and I have some understanding of their culture and character. This article is an attempt to explain to people where Putin and his ilk come from and why they act as they do but it is under no circumstances justifying the carnage and chaos that has been inflicted on an innocent nation.

Firstly, let me relate a story which may go some way to explain the Russian character. Russians love the cult of the leader and once a person becomes a leader in any field, they immediately seem to acquire an all seeing, all understanding, all knowledgeable super power. This may sound amusing but believe me, it’s real. It manifests itself even in small things. I once spent a weekend in Barcelona with a group of Russians from the company I was working with. The group included the Director and while he was benign and far from a Dictator, the rest of the group mimicked his every move. If we went to a restaurant and he ordered fish, the rest ordered fish. If he ordered white wine, they had white wine and so on. I remember my son was with me and he was highly amused at this, because we were the only ones choosing something different from the menus. He asked, ‘are they all zombies?’ I tried to explain to them that all they were doing was showing respect but of course it didn’t make sense to a free thinking western person.

Why is this? Let’s start with culture. In Russia, there is only one type of reporting structure – vertical. Each enterprise has a Director and that Director makes all decisions pertaining to the company, from the smallest, most seemingly insignificant issue to the top management decisions that determine the future of the company. The Director does, on occasion, report to a Board or an owner, but the most important person in any enterprise is the Director. This is enshrined in Russian law and it makes the Director personally responsible for all decisions made at any level in the firm. In western terms, we are talking about what is referred to in the business as a simple structure. This works fine if the enterprise is small and the Director is in touch with all facets of the business but it gets unwieldy when the business grows.

If you are a Director of an enterprise, everyone defers to you. It can be argued that this happens in other countries also but not to the same extent. Here, most people will not oppose the Director under any circumstances and will often have a deep seated fear of them. This is understandable as people get fired on a very regular basis, sometimes for no obvious reason. I worked with one Director who seemed to like firing people, presumably because he could and he wished to show his authority. But this could play havoc with the business because he often sacked people who were doing an excellent job purely because he didn’t like them. I rarely had a conversation with this man without the words “fire” or “fired” occurring somewhere. He seemed to have a fixation on it. This is a great pity because it is so damaging to the organisation and when this behaviour is repeated, it ultimately leads to failure of the enterprise.

It can be amazing how deep this goes. I remember one Director, an elderly man I knew who had a chronic health problem. He could barely move because of a problem with his knee joint. I felt that the problem could be corrected fairly easily with a minor operation in a western clinic and our friend could well afford to have it done. I didn’t work directly with this man but I knew him well and I was friendly with his deputy. I remember one day saying to his deputy, “why do you not advise Sergey to get his knee operated on?” His reply astounded me – he said, “I am well aware that he could get his knee fixed but I cannot tell him. I cannot talk to him. He is the Director. He knows everything.” My first reaction was to burst out laughing but I realized my friend was deadly serious. He explained that this man had been a Director for thirty years – not only did he know everything, he knew he knew everything, whether it was to do with business, personal or medical or any other field you care to mention. So he believed that there was no medical solution to his problem. We did eventually resolve the problem by getting a very senior Irish guy, whom the Director respected to recommend it to him. He reconsidered and had the operation within two months. His knee is perfect and he is enjoying a happy, active retirement.

Let us think about this from the Director’s viewpoint for a moment. You can bet that he (I say he because 95% of them are men) has worked very hard to obtain his position. He has a very responsible job – the law states that he and he alone is responsible for all and every decision and action taken in his company. If anything goes wrong, he is the one responsible. He is expected to behave in a certain way - he is expected to show everyone that he is the boss, so he does. The deference bit is possibly the most damaging. No one will question him. No one will disobey him. No one will tell him he is wrong, even when it is obvious. Everyone will praise him and tell him what a great guy he is and what a skillful Director he is. Even if he makes serious mistakes (and boy do they!), none of the Russian staff will tell him that it was because of his decision – in fact, they will go to great lengths to explain away that what happened was due to external factors or, sadly, more often than not, someone internally will be blamed and will be fired. The three most common expressions in use in Russia are:

“Sto delayet?”, which means “what to do” or “what can you do” .

“Eta Rossiya”, which means “it’s Russia”. This is very often used in conjunction with the first expression so it becomes, “what can you do, it’s Russia”.

“Kto vina vat?” which literally means, “who’s guilty” or who is responsible or who messed up.

Now, take them all together (and I have sat at countless meetings where this has happened) and you get – “ah what can we do now, it’s Russia, but hey, who messed up on this?” I am not for one moment suggesting that this doesn’t happen in other countries – of course it does, but it happens a lot more often in Russia. The “what can you do, it is Russia”, is particularly annoying as it is often used to justify bad service or poor performance and is an insult to those Russian people who are working assiduously to change things for the better.

Now, let’s get back to our Director. He gets such deference, such adulation, that after a while, he begins to believe it. He actually thinks that he is all knowing, all seeing and has a monopoly on wisdom. This is because everyone he mixes with defers to him and whenever he speaks on or offers advice on any subject, it is taken as holy writ. You can guess what this leads to – impatience, arrogance, even dictatorship. In many ways it may be a throwback to the old systems – I say systems because before communism, Russia had serfdom under the Tsars, so you were always deferring to a figure of authority and there was never a possibility to question it. Russia has a long history of this type of “management” or method of organisation. In fact there is a very interesting passage in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, where he describes camp commanders almost as a generic group. He is careful to point out that although the camp regime and the system that put it there was evil, not all the people in the system were. His description of camp commanders though is so apt and so analogous to today’s Russian business Directors, many of whom, I hasten to add, in my experience, are nice guys. It is the system which propagates the attitude that needs to be reformed. People need to question, need to debate, need to brainstorm regularly, need to come up with the best solution to a problem, not just the first one which pops into the leader’s head.

I remember one time having a conversation with a Deputy Director at New Year. I asked him what were his thoughts and wishes for the New Year, a common enough question. He told me he had only one, he wished that he could get the Director to think for just five seconds before he made a decision. He then laughed uproariously at the mere thought that it could ever happen. I should say a word or two about Deputy Directors – most of them do most of the work as when a man becomes a Director, he assumes he is only there to make decisions, not actually do any work. I have never known a Russian Director to prepare a report, make a presentation or do any research. That is not to say that they weren’t excellent businessmen, because sometimes they were but that is the way the system works. When a problem occurs, the Deputy is usually the first person to be called and used as a sounding board – mind you, he is usually in a situation fraught with difficulty, as he will find it very difficult to disagree with the Director but he may often know that he has to for the good of the firm. In the companies that we worked with, this was often where we came into our own. We came from a culture where you respected the boss but it wasn’t a big problem if you disagreed provided you made sense. We were officially partners with our Russian counterparts so we could openly disagree provided we did it discreetly and diplomatically and there were never any recriminations. This position was respected by most of the Directors I worked with and it led to much better decisions as their knowledge of the local scene coupled with ours of the international situation usually led to the most effective decision being taken.

Of course, many of the companies we dealt with disimproved over time and this was often in large part due to the ever more dominant positions assumed by the Russian Directors. When it got to the stage where we were being totally ignored or deliberately excluded, it was time to withdraw and this was usually the strategy adopted. The sad thing though was that in all cases that I am familiar with, the companies went downhill after we withdrew, often catastrophically so. That is not to say that we held a monopoly on wisdom, far from it, but I always felt the businesses worked at optimal level when both sides respected the others views and judgment and took each other’s advice.

But I digress. This is a political article, not a business one. What I have been trying to demonstrate is that the system in place in businesses is precisely the same in relation to governance of the country. Putin as President is the boss; no one will disagree with him or question anything he does. He is (almost) universally respected and obeyed. Russians are used to this system for hundreds of years and are seriously distrustful of any type of change. The Russian system is unlike the Western system of governance. It has evolved over the millennia into a highly centralized government where those at the top have complete control. You could argue that they flirted with democracy for a time in the 1990’s under Yeltsin but Putin has recreated a system that Russians are comfortable with. Many argue the Yeltsin years were unstable and there were many food shortages due to distribution issues. Putin has certainly brought stability and a Russian will trade freedom for stability any day. So we need to understand that we are dealing with a country where, in the main, people do not have free will. That said, most are comfortable with the situation. They don’t see the freedoms associated with western democracies as essential, provided they can live their lives in peace. They have no political freedom of course but 95% of them have no interest in politics.

Many will tell you that this system goes back as far as Ivan the Terrible. I’m not sure but it certainly dates back to the Tsars. There is also a paranoia in Russia which I initially found hard to understand until I learned more of their history. It is a distrust of foreigners and a belief that they want to take over the country. To be fair, given the antics of Napoleon and Hitler, to name two, there is some justification for this view.

Modern Russian media, controlled by Putin obviously, has seized this paranoia and portrayed the west as dangerous and constantly planning to invade. I used to see this on Russian TV programs and I found it amusing if not downright ridiculous. But it has fostered the cult of the siege mentality and complete obedience to the governing regime, i.e.: Putin. Nothing is questioned. A classic example: Putin said he disliked gays, so homophobia is widespread; so is xenophobia and racism. Conspiracy theories abound and Russians love conspiracy theories. One of the things that I find fascinating is the dichotomy between the portrayal of ‘the west’ as decadent and corrupt and the absolute obsession of almost all Russians with western luxury goods. Putin regularly gives press briefings while wearing a Savile Row suit and a Breguet watch.

So, if you believe that your country’s borders are constantly under threat and you have absolute confidence and belief in your leader, then invading Ukraine is readily acceptable. Unquestioning support for the military is another facet, despite some personal doubts or misgivings based on personal experience.

Russians are not particularly religious in my experience, possibly due to their communist past but the Russian Orthodox Church survived Communism and is very powerful. It has been embraced by Putin and gives unqualified support to him and his actions, obviously including the war. Many Russians, who have rediscovered religion, look to this as further endorsement of their leader’s actions.

This cult of absolute faith and trust in the leader pervades all areas of society. Leaders in every field are effectively untouchable and are usually admired and respected. This holds good even if these people are openly and obviously corrupt and very many (if not all) institutions in Russia are. I knew people in Russia who were heads of relatively minor state agencies who were incredibly wealthy. Their equivalents in Ireland would be classed as mid-range civil servants. Putin encourages this type of system because it creates a situation where everything a person has, they get from their involvement in the state system and the head of the state system is him. So you could argue that Russia is not just a power pyramid but actually a power vertical.

As a result, Putin is free to do as he wishes; assured of total support from all areas. Yes of course there is some dissent but it is silent and hidden. Navalny was brave enough to go public and is now serving a long jail sentence. So effectively dissent or disagreement is forbidden. It is a sad situation but it is important to recognize that Russians view the world totally differently from the way we do. I can’t see this changing any time soon. There’s no doubt that Russia is losing the war in Ukraine so perhaps that will be the catalyst for great change? Given what I know about the Russian character, I wouldn’t put a great deal of money on it.

As I wrote in a different article last week, the great pity is that had Russia taken a different path after the 1990’s, they could have achieved so much. They had ten years of the highest oil and gas prices and earned countless billions of foreign currency in the early 2000’s. They still have more natural resources and territory than any country on earth. Had they used these resources more wisely, abandoned the cult of leadership and treated their people with some respect, they could now be the most powerful nation in Europe, possibly the world. Instead, they have tried to recreate the old Soviet Union by force and have caused untold misery in Ukraine, Chechnya and countless other places. At some time in the future a great Russian writer will speculate on what might have been.