There are some fine people in Russia who believe in freedom.
About three years ago, I was at a Food Lion grocery here in Durham NC and a Russian national asked for my help in calling a cab (I was talking on my cell). Turned out, he was in the Duke Executive MBA program, and needed a ride back to campus. I said I was going that way, it was only a mile or so out of my way, and I just gave him a lift. Turns out this guy was one of the executive VPs of marketing for YUKOS (I still have his card someplace). AMAZING, no? Great thing about being in an academic town.
That was just too good to pass up! He was not in a hurry, so we sat in the car and talked for almost an hour. He was prescient and predicted the state would remove the president of Yukos and said “I will be out of a job within two years.” Part of his reason for the MBA program was to develop contacts with Asian Companies, partly for a position, and partly because he was thinking of starting a company on his own.
The comment that stuck with me more than any others was how surprised he was to see so much anti-capitalism and anti-freedom here in the USA. He said that the people were benefiting from markets in the old USSR, but it was mostly the elite who were taking the money (we call that “crony capitalism”). Although he viewed the west as a model for markets, “the future is in Asia. You preach capitalism, but you are seeing it slip away. They preach communism, but they also are seeing it slip away. Markets are freer in China. I think that is where the money will be made in the next generation.”
Interesting conversation, anyway.