Once in Russia, entrepreneurs were mostly adventurers and bureaucrats—if not outright criminals. Now business is entered by ordinary people: mid-level managers and intellectuals whom their predecessors might have called dreamers and “nerds.” Each of them is looking for an answer to a question: what will happen to me if, in modern Russia ruled by oligarchs, officials, and security forces, I take and throw away a large—but someone else’s—company in order to make a small, but mine?
The story of the “persistent idealist” Fyodor Ovchinnikov, told by journalist Maxim Kotin, answers this question.
Maxim Kotin is a journalist, special correspondent for the magazine “Snob,” and editor of the series “Real Stories” at the publishing house “Mann, Ivanov and Ferber.” Author of the bestseller “Chichvarkin E.. genius.”