Lesson 3: My Czar, My Father

Any further misunderstandings between Russia and the Western nations will be chalked up to - you didn't read what I wrote

(Originally published in October 2020)

In July 1994, one of my first meetings was with then-Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. At this meeting was a nondescript, even small man with a wire-like intensity, making me think he would jump into action or attack at any moment. His name was Vladimir Putin — the future “czar” of Russia.

Twenty-six years ago, I moved to Russia to take part in constructing the new society. With a couple of international grants secured and my public health program developed in collaboration with the Columbia School of Public Health in my IBM Thinkpad, I met with the Mayor to get the green light to set my program up in city middle schools.

Having heard the words “Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs” and “non-governmental organization,” Mr. Putin shook my hand and left. As a vital member of the mayor’s inner circle, he was responsible for attracting foreign commercial business and investment to the city. When he reached across the small table, Putin’s demeanor with me was just sort of, “Okay, whatever, kid, good luck.” But before his boss, Anatoly Sobchak, he was gentle, I recalled, even fawning. The tough-guy image that would be perfectly cultivated years later was nowhere in sight. Later, I would learn that Sobchak was Putin’s czar then, a father of sorts.

In that one meeting, the most important lesson I would eventually learn was on full display, and I was blind to it. There was simply no way I could register it, just the way that foreigners today can’t understand the all-pervasiveness of this cultural accouterment. Diplomats, as I have already expressed in other articles, are clueless to what Russia is, which is why there are so many ridiculous misunderstandings. Maybe something I write here will find its way to someone charged with “understanding Russia,” and then they will learn about this complicated but rather simplistic riddle.

The Final Lesson of Three

Russia comes off as straightforward and passion-filled to the untrained eye — this is what I and many foreigners initially thought. It usually takes a few years of immersion in Russia to realize something is amiss. The nuances of that missing link begin to follow you like a shadow, shaking it is nearly impossible.

Over the years, I have compared the moment when the initial euphoric phase gives way to the “man, I feel stupid” one to the glee I used to experience in the bushes in front of my favorite childhood house. Each Spring, my father would lay a fresh layer of wood chips through which I would proceed to make roads for my growing match-book car collection, creating a “new town, a new society.” Oh, joy! And then, my hand would run across the droppings of some cat, and with filthy hands, running into the house, the realization that my “town” was nothing more than a latrine for all sorts of local strays would descend abruptly upon me, quashing my wood-chip fun.

Lesson #1: Recently, I wrote an article about Russia’s “door problem.” Every foreigner has experienced it. To understand Russia and interactions with Russians better, it is necessary to analyze the door problem — Understand Russia’s Door Problem, Understand Russia.

Lesson #2: The second article is called Smekalka: the inner workings of the Russian Mind.

These two articles are like cultural Rosetta stones based on 26 years of life experience in Russia. Study them and you will rapidly begin to understand the self-inflicted complexity that seems to always distract Russia from moving forward, dynamically and constructively.

Lesson #3: The next lesson is the most important for understanding Russia. It is called “czar, father,” or царь-батюшка (Tsar-Batushka). “Batyushka” means father in Russian and often refers to a “holy father” like a priest or someone. In the past, the czar, Czar Alexander II for example, was considered both the “czar or leader” and the head of Russia’s nation as divined by God. This made the czar powerful and so omnipotent.

The “czar-father” (czar-father) complex is present in every Russian society layer. Simply put, it means companies and corporations will have that one person whose every whim must be catered to. Grown men and women will fawn before the “boss” regardless of the individual’s age and experience level. The title itself is what confers “divinity.”

Over my 26 years, I have been in every size of the Russian company. From 10,000 employees to 10, and the moment a new person assumes an “upper-echelon” title, the key to success with the new “czar” is to foresee his whims, to always agree with him except on the few rare occasions when he wants a counter opinion. There is some of this in the West also, of course. Personal assistants and secretaries try to foresee the whims of their bosses, often hoping to get a hefty end-of-year bonus. What differs in Russia, however, is that everyone is supposed to not only abide by the caprice; but must alter their professional expertise to fit the understanding of the czar-Batushka, the boss.

Whether the chosen path to grow sales is the best for the company does not matter. What matters is that the leader-father understands the course and feels that he shaped it by usually giving very untimely advice that can wreck the most well-prepared plans; and when the whole thing fails miserably, however, as is often the case, the head to roll will be the individuals who were responsible for the final product and not the boss. Saying that “Well, Mr. So-and-so, you altered everything at the last minute, and that is why it failed,” will only incite furor in the czar-father.

“I hired you, a respected professional, to tell me how to do it. If you were certain my ideas were bad, why weren’t you confident? Why didn’t you tell me it was wrong?”

These are words I have heard more than once from leader-fathers. Surviving such blow-ups is really hard. By drawing attention to the boss’s screw-up, which all top managers present know to be the case, one is also inciting the ire of the other top managers. A boss feeling less than secure in worshiping his underlings does unpredictable things, which can result in a cleaning of the house of the top managers.

Often during these blow-ups, the top manager, whose final product was ruined thanks to the intervention of the boss’s “great advice,” will actively seek the “guilty” in his department, thus offering them up for sacrifice, or the top manager will be fired outright as was the case recently with the restyling of the Sberbank brand.

Another outcome could be that other top managers, to suck up even more to the boss, will launch attacks against the individual who dared question the valued input of the czar-father. I have been in countless such meetings, and they are brutal — meetings that honestly could lead to bleeding ulcers. Oddly, in these meetings, the all-kind leader-father will observe the free-for-all among his managers with humor, while the last-minute end his

“genius” against the one rebel; and, then, like Nicholas I’s last-minute reprieve of Dostoevsky from the gallows, the leader-father will attack those defending him and suggest that if the rest had been as “brave” as the rebel, then maybe the company would be better off.

Two Real Life Examples

Rossiya Airlines

In 2006, I was the Creative Director for a local advertising agency aligned with Ogilvy & Mather. The regional airline company in St. Petersburg was seeking to do a rebranding. They were called “Pulkovo Airways” after the airport’s name, so they wanted a fresher style. I created a proposal where we kept the Pulkovo name but designed the airplanes’ exteriors to depict this wonderful city’s “tourist” sites.

Known for its famous White Nights and bridges which go up between the many islands each night, my vision was that one plane would be decorated with the visual “aura” of those endless, silvery nights; another plane would be adorned with stylized bridges, and ultimately the magic of this fantastic city would be expressed on the bodies of the entire fleet. One aircraft was even to have had the designs of children answering the question “What is St. Petersburg to you?” with their art. Everyone fell in love with the concept.

The presentation for the concept was hand-delivered to Moscow so the Prime Minister in charge of this matter in the Kremlin could sign off on it, but the rules of czar-father (czar-Batushka) required it be taken to one more person. It was next shown to President Putin.

A piece of paper with some grade-school scribbling and a signature was delivered to us at the airport. President Putin had said “no way” to the concept loved by everyone along the way up to him. His “suggestion,” which can be seen today in airports throughout Russia and Europe (recently, however, also restyled), was to call the airlines “Rossiya Airlines” and to put the Russian “tricolor” flag on the tail of the standard all-white planes.

Sber

The largest Russian bank is called “Sberbank.” It is a part of nearly every aspect of Russians’ lives — similar to how it had been in Soviet times. Recently, tens of millions of dollars were spent on rebranding. In a large and flashy roll-out, the Sberbank was renamed just “Sber” because, as the press release said, “we aren’t just a bank.”

As I have already clarified, I know how these things happen internally. I know the endless meetings, infighting, and countless moments where the “czar-babushka” syndrome clicks on and off, creating sleepless nights and heartburn for all involved. If indeed millions — and some say even over 100 million dollars — were invested in doing something so bold as to rebrand Sberbank, to turn into an odd-looking “Sber” with a check mark, then everyone in the company took part up to the czar-Batushka of Sberbank himself, Germann Gref. Czar-Batushka, however, means that the experts, unless they are technical ones, are seldom listened to.

One week after the rebranding, the Vice President in charge of the project was fired, made the scapegoat. The uproar in the Moscow advertising and business world was that the rebranding was amateur; done to launder money; an embarrassment to Russia, “Gref must have been drunk,” etc. This is yet another layer of czar-batushka. Anything done embarrasses the czar, even if it had been his decision, is punishable. Anything done so well that it threatens to draw attention away from the czar is also punishable. Stalin killed off many of the hero generals after World War II simply because they could potentially attract attention from his “genius.”

A final word on understanding Russia

Russians have a patronymic. Olga Ivanova means she is Olga “of Ivan.” The subtle suggestion that Olga is “of Ivan” means, in theory, that she is his property — the child belongs to the parent. It tells the world that Ivan is your father, your head of household, and so he is your little czar. This nuance drills deep into the soul of the Russian nation.

Children in a home may not always agree with “dad” but still look to him as an authority, although seldom a final one. Putin is the “dad,” the batyushka, and even in today’s Russia, the czar. His authority is absolute. The same dynamic plays out at work — the boss becomes the czar-batushka.

The czar-batyushka syndrome also spills over heavily onto married life, but that is a topic for another time, like when I decide to write about my many marriages here. In the meantime, when you meet a Russian in a professional or diplomatic setting, nine times out of 10, they will agree to much of what you said or offered. Then this person’s czar-batushka will take over the matter, and depending on his mood, level of knowledge, and even intellect, things will often change in ways you could never possibly foresee.

So be prepared for anything and demand nothing less.