Scenes from the Wild Wild East: Snapshots of Post-Soviet Russia

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I’ve got a novel called The Siberia Job coming out June 6th; it’s a based-on-real-events recounting of the insane world of Russia in the 90s and how adventuring American investors briefly controlled Russia’s most powerful energy company, before they were forced to sell by some very credible death threats. While doing research for the book, I interviewed a lot of fascinating people with a lot of fascinating anecdotes of the wild west-atmosphere of post-Soviet Russia. I stuffed The Siberia Job with as many of these as I could, but inevitably some of my favorites had to be left on the cutting room floor. Happily CrimeReads has given me a chance to tell a few fantastic stories which didn’t fit into The Siberia Job’s narrative, all told to me by one of the book’s primary sources, “Peter.”

The Lincoln Limo Hijacking

Circa 1994, Peter was in Moscow and on his way to a meeting with the managers of a formerly State-owned company. They were keen for him to invest, and they sent a Lincoln limousine, a so-called “Lincmo”—very popular amongst the nouveau-riche of post-Soviet Russia—to pick him up at his hotel. The chauffeured ride was going fine until a jeep filled with heavily armed soldiers stopped them. The Lincmo was forced to pull over at gunpoint. Two of the soldiers jumped out of their jeep, ran over to the limo, and jumped inside. They told Peter and his chauffeur that they were engaged in a high-speed pursuit and that their jeep wasn’t fast enough to keep up, so they were commandeering the Lincmo. Peter was nonplussed, but his chauffeur was thrilled to have a chance to drive like a Hollywood stuntman. They zoomed off in hot pursuit, weaving through traffic, until they caught up to the target car. At least, it was the target car according to the army officer sitting in the back with Peter. The second soldier, a private, sitting next to the driver, said it was the wrong car—they were chasing a BMW. The officer agreed they were chasing a BMW, but said that the car they had caught up to was a BMW. The private said it wasn’t, it was a Peugeot. The officer disagreed. Peter pointed out that the private was right. The officer told him to mind his own business, and ordered the chauffeur to get ahead of the other car and block the road—which he did, apparently doing a very cinematic hand-break stop that blocked both lanes of traffic. The Private continued to insist that this was not a BMW, pointing out that the BMW logo was a blue and white spinner that this car didn’t have. The officer said that this was the car and driver they were arresting and he didn’t want to hear any more argument. The driver was being removed from his Peugeot at gunpoint when Peter’s chauffeur was ordered to move along. Just another morning in 90s Moscow.

The James Bond Villian

This one’s short: there were a lot of mobsters involved in Russian business in the 90s. Peter was invited to meet with one of them. This guy’s house had a sort-of Koi pond fish tank in it–which was filled with sharks. It’s unclear whether or not anyone was fed to them. However, Peter did hear later that when the cops came to arrest the shark mobster, he escaped down a secret escape tunnel and is reportedly now living on an island off the coast of Africa.

The Refusenik Caper

This is one Peter didn’t witness, but heard second hand. The Refuseniks were Jews trying to flee Soviet Russia for the more hospitable climes of Israel, but to whom exit visas were refused in order to prevent a “brain drain.” When they were finally allowed to emigrate, after an international pressure campaign, they were prohibited from taking cash or valuables with them. A KGB officer of Peter’s acquaintance said that, in the 80s, he was part of a team whose job it was to confiscate the wealth of emigrating Refuseniks. There was a particularly rich Jewish businessman to whom he was detailed. When the day came for this businessman to leave the USSR, he arrived at the airport with nothing. He was very thoroughly searched, and after a day of interrogation, he was allowed to leave, apparently destitute. A few years later the KGB agent chanced to run into this businessman who was back in Moscow after the fall of communism. He discovered that this guy was living in Israel and once again very rich. The KGB agent asked if he had started from scratch, or if he had actually beaten them and smuggled his money out of the country. He said he had. The KGB agent asked how. The businessman told him that the night before he left, he had a big party, to which he invited several employees of the American embassy in Moscow. At the party, he asked the Americans to join him in his study, where there was a fire burning in the fireplace. He showed the Americans that he had converted all his wealth into American dollars, had them count it, and then threw it into the fire. Apparently there’s a US Treasury regulation that currency which can be proved to have been destroyed can be replaced. The Jewish businessman got notarized statements from the embassy employees that they’d seen the money burned, and the US Treasury issued him a check to replace it.

The Finnish Escape

This is another one Peter heard second hand, and stipulated that it’s so wild that he found it hard to believe, though apparently he trusted his source. Per the story, an employee of the Russian Ministry of Defense went camping in the forests north of St. Petersburg with some of his MoD colleagues. They got absolutely smashed on vodka, and this guy left the campsite to relieve himself in the woods. He promptly got lost and couldn’t find his way back to his tent. He wandered in the forest for two days, eating mushrooms, and finally found a farm house, where he asked to use a telephone—only to discover that he had accidentally wandered across the border into Finland. He was questioned extensively by the Finnish police, and then offered Finnish residency; having worked for the Russian ministry of defense, he was considered a potentially valuable intelligence source. The Russian declined, and the Finns drove him back to the border, where he was immediately arrested. He was interrogated by the Russian police, who assumed he had snuck off to Finland to sell military secrets. He was kept incommunicado for two months, and when he was finally released, having satisfied the Russian cops that his trip to Finland had just been a big drunken mistake, he was fired from his job at the Ministry of Defense, and his wife divorced him. So he went back to the campsite in the forest north of St. Petersburg and walked back to Finland, where he claimed asylum and dropped off the map.

The Thai Dog-napping

An acquaintance of Peter’s, a Russian businessman who, like Peter, had made a fortune during the privatization of formerly Soviet industries, married a girl who was much younger and more attractive than he was. They took a vacation together to Thailand, where the businessman was hit by a car. He was almost killed, and ended up in a coma. He woke up after a few weeks to discover that his wife had, while he was in the hospital, cleared out his bank account and disappeared. The guy wasn’t worried about the money—he had lots more money stashed elsewhere—and he felt also that he could replace his wife. He was extremely upset, though, that his wife had taken their dogs with her when she’d disappeared. He hired a private investigator to track her down—she was discovered living under a new name in Brazil. The businessman gave her a formal divorce and a nice settlement, and she gave him custody of the dogs—and admitted that she’d hired a hitman in Thailand to hit him with a car. Apparently they’re now once again on friendly terms.

Conclusion

Remember, these are just the stories that didn’t make it into Siberia Job. Think how incredible the stories that did make it in are.

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