The Greek Variant

Vadim Kudryavtsev, founder and president of the board of directors of “Argo Bank,” among Moscow bankers was the whitest of white crows. First of all, he came to the financial fields of a renewed Russia not from the Komsomol like most decent people, but from a fairly distant sphere—show business, where he managed to work as an actor. Second, he was simply indecently educated in cultural matters. Even the most refined flattery couldn’t make Vadim Kudryavtsev start a business with a bungler—above all, he was a pragmatist. Pragmatism, combined with knowledge of the Stanislavski system, helped him survive in the infernal world of Russian business.

Professionally, Kudryavtsev was impeccably prepared. He knew English, had concepts and patter—he improvised in that area, but always flawlessly. He could make “glass eyes” in a person who had been burned by knowledge of top state secrets, and he was an tireless participant in elite sex orgies, where the most important business contacts are made. He could, having downed two liters of “Absolut,” steam in the sauna for a long time with strict gray-haired men from aluminum cosmopolitan or gas-based Slavophile circles, and afterward perfectly fit his pink “Lincoln” into the turns of the Rublevo highway at a hundred kilometers per hour.

At the same time, Kudryavtsev was a man with obvious quirks. He was drawn to everything antique to such a degree that many suspected him of having a mild madness—which, in the end, played a cruel joke on him.