I Was a Potato Oligarch: Travels and Travails in the New Russia

by John Mole

  “I have something to sell,” he whispered and looked over his shoulder at the door. My heart leapt. A rocket guidance system? A solar radiation drive? How would I smuggle it out? How do you sell things to the Pentagon? This must be a trap. I am underground in one of the world’s biggest rocket research complexes. The cameras and microphones must be straining to hear what I think, let alone say. Andrei stood on the balls of his feet and I bent to meet him halfway.

  “I have pantacrene.” His eyes opened wide and blinked twice. This had to be a code. Or an embarrassing disease.

  “Pantacrene?”

  “Yessss.”

  “What do I do with a pantacrene?”

  His eyes opened wider. I was definitely an ignoramus. “Like ginseng. From the horns of baby mountain deer. From Mongolia. Guarantee top quality.”

  My friend Paul markets seal oil from pups clubbed to death in Canada. Baby mountain deer would be an even harder sell.

  “Have you got anything more... technological?”

  “We have licence for Barents Sea”.

  Where was the Barents Sea? I had a hazy idea it was off Siberia somewhere. “Who is we? This institute?”

  “They have nothing no more. Our group.”

  A group like ICBM? A couple of chaps in a bedroom struggling to make a living while the world collapsed? “Ah, very good. Oil?”

  “Sea shells.”

  He studied my face for signs of enthusiasm. I let the silence ride, Russian fashion. I hope he mistook my poker face for serious consideration and not the suppression of a giggle.

  “It is the part we call White Sea. It is very shallow. The sea shells are ten metres thick. It will take fifty years to dredge them. We can ship direct through Norway. No problem.”

  Not Siberia, then. “Don’t the Norwegians have their own sea shells?”

  “Everybody love sea shells.”

  I cranked up a penetrating stare. A penny dropped. Our budgie gnawed a cuttlefish bone. “Chicken feed?”

  “Wonderful cement. In Germany they love the sea-shell cement. All we need is dredger.”

  “So why do you need me?”

  “The financing. Ten thousand dollars downpayment.”

  “Have you done a feasibility study?”

  Old banking habits die hard. When you ask for a feasibility study it means you are not interested. If the other party produces a feasibility study, you ask for a business plan. If they produce a business plan, the kiss of death is an environmental impact study.

  “One thousand dollars for study. We make joint venture and split fifty-fifty.”

  So that was it. He wanted five hundred bucks. A night out in London; more than a year’s salary for him.

  “Feasibility first. Money after.”

  I had many proposals over the next few months: hydrofoils from Nizhny Novgorod; semi-tanned reindeer hides from Archangelsk; machines to make bricks out of sewage and dog biscuits out of chicken shit from Saratov; a ceramic pipe through which you sucked up sewage and it came out pure water from Kiev. So many entrepreneurial opportunities. So many interesting places to go. I desperately wanted to be part of it.

  When you live in an asylum you join in the madness

  I went back to London determined to return to Russia. I hoped to make some money, but the main reason was it was so interesting. It was a country remaking itself. It would be exciting to be part of it. I liked the Russians I met and wanted to know them better. They were full of contradictions: hospitable and xenophobic, open and introverted, funny about themselves and prickly when criticized, good-humoured and morose, courageous and vacillating, stubborn and capricious, cruel and sentimental, idealistic and cynical. These were the clichés I came back with, but I wanted to find out what the people were really like.

  A franchised baked potato restaurant was the best idea I could come up with. Misha said he would try to locate a Russian partner. It was my job to find a British collaborator and seed financing.

  My favourite baked potato takeaway was Jackets next to Brixton Underground station in South London. It was not an obvious choice of joint-venture partner, as I assumed that there was only one branch and if the company was about to broaden its horizons I thought there were more obvious parts of the world to tackle, like the neighbouring communities of Stockwell and Norwood. But I looked it up in the phone book and found that it was technically a chain by virtue of two other outlets in Clapham, a more fashionable part of South London. Malcolm, the chairman and chief executive, plummeted in my esteem when he invited me to come and discuss the idea at his national headquarters above the Clapham High Street restaurant. Didn’t he have anything better to do?

  I cycled over to Clapham wondering what sort of person owned three fast-food restaurants in South London. I decided middleclass, third-generation black, ex-sportsman, savings invested in a comfortable business. Writer’s intuition. He was a whitey in his mid-30s with a posh accent and a tie-dyed T-shirt, jeans and deck shoes without socks. Contagiously cheerful, Malcolm listened to my idea without flinching.

  “Sounds good to me,” he said, thereby enrolling himself for ever in my list of great blokes.

  After a smart public-school education and a degree in politics, Malcolm had a nurture-or-nature career choice. His father had been an important person at Lloyd’s of London, the British reinsurance market funded by wealthy investors with unlimited liability. The collapse of Lloyd’s in the early 1990s was not yet a twinkle in the eye of destiny and Malcolm could have slipped effortlessly into insurance and a fat City life. But the siren song of long-distance truck driving warbled in his ear and he opted for life on the open motorway. Within a decade Lloyd’s Names were ten a penny in minicabbing and painting and decorating, but before the social levelling of mass bankruptcy they were few and far between at drivers’ caffs. Between trucking jobs Malcolm squeezed in a few days’ photo-stalking stag in the Highlands or pottering about the family retreat in Oxfordshire, which I am sure added variety to talk of coarse fishing and football round the Formica tables of the knights of the road. A preference for baked potatoes over chips would also have set him apart. But none of his eccentricities would have alienated him from his fellow truckers - I have never met anyone easier to get along with and less infected with prejudice or snobbery.

  Malcolm got married, but trucking is detrimental to domestic life and he looked for something else to do that would keep him out of the City. It was the beginning of the fast-food explosion. He saw a potato-sized gap in the market between industrial meat hamburgers and processed cheese pizza and launched the first Jackets outlet in Clapham High Street. We passed many happy times over a beer or a bottle of wine rehashing stories of those early days. The search for the perfect potato, the ideal spork (a hybrid of spoon and fork) and the right container for keeping the takeaway hot were sagas of setback and success.

  For ten years he was meticulous in pursuit of the quality product and service on which the concept of Jackets is based. Everything is cooked from scratch. There may be a can of kidney beans or tomatoes in the recipes, but the meat comes from the butcher next door and the vegetables from the market. He laboured into the small hours over hot filling recipes, considered diversification into rice ‘n’ peas and croissants, and struggled with his conscience about hamburgers and fries. He learned to repair the ovens, service the cook-chill cabinets, debug the payroll system. Through determination and flair and a talent for motivating people, the business prospered and Clapham High Street was followed by Clapham Junction and the flagship outlet in Brixton.

  I am impressed by anyone who has the energy and vision and guts to start a business from scratch. What I most envy is the ability to apply oneself to the same things day after day. It is an inspiring lesson for any entrepreneur, in Britain or in Russia.

  So we shook hands on our partnership. Jackets would be technical adviser to the project in return for an unspecified fee and an unspecified share of the profits. Malcolm had just finished the renovation of the top floor o
f his building. While he waited for paying tenants, I set up the Russia office. I put up a picture of St Basil’s and an aluminium bust of Lenin with his face to the wall.

  What made me cycle over more often than I needed was the aroma wafting up the stairs from the kitchen. On a ground bass of baking potato were melodies of frying onions and garlic, stewing tomatoes, herbs, spices, curries, coffee, alternately crescendo and diminuendo. The potato symphony was as lovely as baking bread and it was rare that

  I could hold out any later than noon before going downstairs for my first jacket of the day.

  On a more professional level, it was convenient to have the technical expertise literally under my feet. After forty minutes in the oven the potatoes were put in the warm cabinet. If they weren’t sold within twenty minutes, Malcolm kept up the quality by throwing them away. A baked potato that is overcooked or let stand too long or, horror of horrors, allowed to get cold becomes dry and waxy, its buttery texture and fragrant perfume and subtle taste congealed into putty, its skin bitter and leathery. Microwaving makes them worse. Since my time at Jackets I shudder at the cold brown turds piled in the corner of counters in sandwich bars and cafeterias.

  One thing still puzzled me. Malcolm was so practical and level-headed and hands-on. He had his hands full with managing three restaurants and planning expansion into a new shopping centre in Wimbledon. Why on earth did he want to get involved in Russia? The answer was nepotism. His uncle had been a diplomat, the last Governor of Aden, and had ended his career as Australian High Commissioner. He had also been a gentleman scholar of Russian, specializing in the national poet Pushkin, and had married a Russian princess from an old St Petersburg family. Malcolm showed me his uncle’s translation of The Bronze Horseman, probably Pushkin’s most famous poem, about the statue of Peter the Great in St Petersburg.

  Malcolm’s uncle and aunt were dead. There was something touching about rekindling the family’s Russian connection. Wouldn’t it be romantic and fitting to open up a Jackets in the shadow of the Bronze Horseman? I promised him we would visit St Petersburg at the first opportunity.

  The Know-How Fund was an obvious source of finance for our initial development. It was set up by the Foreign Office to fund technical assistance to the former socialist countries of Europe. Having cut my business teeth in an American bank, one of whose dictums was “nothing good ever came out of government”, I dreaded the stultifying bureaucracy and blinkered pedestrianism of the petty functionaries who doubtless administered the fund.

  In fact they were brilliant. Imaginative, supportive, helpful, fast-moving, they helped us fill out the forms. We had the offer in a week.

  Misha phoned from Geneva with news of a possible Russian partner. He was at a conference where he had met the head of the new Farmers’ Union, who saw an opportunity for his members to sell their produce at a premium.

  I spent Saturday making a video of Jackets and working up a proposal to present in Geneva first thing on Monday morning. Misha phoned again to ask me to bring half a dozen policeman’s helmets, cardboard replicas from a souvenir shop would do. I assumed they were give-aways for the presentation.

  I flew to Geneva on Sunday and arrived in time for a barbecue at the house of one of the members of the Permanent Trade Mission. There were about fifty people there, all from the Russian international community. Many were in the cast of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury, which they were going to perform before the Geneva Light Opera Society the following weekend. It was a favourite of Russian amateur choirs. There was a dress rehearsal after lunch and the helmets I brought were props. Choosing between burgers and sausages, the guests broke into “A nice dilemma we have here” and “Never, never, never, since I joined the human race” in English and then Russian and then both together.

  Back in London my family stroked their chins and tapped the sides of their noses when I told them. Yeah, Trial by Jury. Russians in wigs and bobby helmets. Pull the other one. But you couldn’t make it up and if you did, you’d edit it out in the second draft. It was a good introduction to the Gilbertian topsy-turvy I was letting myself in for.

  The Jilted Bride was sung by a pretty interpreter. She was barefoot and naked but for a piece of yellow gauze wrapped round herself and tucked under the armpits. Her black hair was fashionably cropped and her eyes were very green. She gave me a chicken wing and I told her about our project.

  “Why do you concern yourself with such small things? Do you care so much about what we eat?”

  I don’t know if I was more troubled by her question or her wicked half-smile. “When you live in an asylum you join in the madness.”

  “Is that a quotation?”

  “If I say it again it will be”

  “Do you really care about potatoes?”

  “There’s a Big World, in which there are big people and big things. And there’s a Little World for little people and little things. In the Big World they founded the United Nations, wrote Dead Souls, went to the moon. In the Little World they made Barbie dolls, composed the Chicken Dance, invented the trouser press. In the Big World people try to make man more noble. In the Little World people try to put food on the table.”

  “That is a quotation. Ilf and Petrov. The Twelve Chairs?”

  “The Little Golden Calf!’

  “You didn’t say if you cared about potatoes.”

  “Do you know the expression ‘meal ticket’? What do you care about?”

  “The future of Russian democracy.”

  “Ah. This is nice chicken.”

  The Usher came to tell us it was time for the rehearsal. The Jilted Bride went away and I could stop pulling my stomach in. While they got changed, I set up my video on the television in the living room. It was a good opportunity to test the Jackets concept on a Russian focus group and fortuitously they were dressed up as judge and jury, with gowns, wigs and helmets. I should have started my pitch with the Defendant’s “Oh, gentlemen, listen, I pray”, but since I burbled in the chorus when we did it at school I have forgotten it.

  The first thing they noticed was that the staff of Jackets and half the customers were black.

  “Is this African food? Russians do not like Africans,” said the Foreman of the Jury.

  “But this Johnston is white. Why does he not hire white people?” asked the Learned Judge, taking up the theme.

  “Is this Kleppem in the ghetto?” asked the First Bridesmaid.

  “They aren’t African. They are as British as I am. In England we aren’t prejudiced,” I said, wishing fervently it were true.

  The jury argued whether to Russians a potato is as aspirational as a Quarter Pounder. With an album of promo photos I tried to convince them that our customers would not associate our symmetrical, smoothskinned delicacies with the knobbly, leathery mutants they found in the markets of Moscow. Fortunately, someone mentioned Idaho and the American connection appeased the doubters. The clincher came at the end of my video, a shot of the street outside. Two doors away from Jackets was a new McDonald’s, a cross for Malcolm to bear, but now and for the months to come our main credential. We were in the same street, therefore in the same league, as the Golden Arches.

  It was unrealistic for me to wish for a closing chorus of “Joy unbounded, with wealth surrounded”, but I had hoped for a little more enthusiasm. I am deeply ashamed to say that we edited the video that night to give a misleading impression of the ethnic diversity of South London. And we gave almost as much screen time to McDonald’s as to Jackets.

  On Monday morning we reported to the Russian Mission on Avenue de la Paix. The place was buzzing as weighty matters from the Big World were being discussed at the United Nations. Important and serious men, some in uniform, paced the corridors with shiny portfolios. We had use of a meeting room for an hour before it was given over to preparing for negotiations in the Palais des Nations. The technician who set up the video machine assured us that it was secure and that the walls were soundproof and swept daily for bugs. It was t
hrilling to be at the centre of world events. We were proud to make a contribution to peace through the development of free and democratic markets in the former Soviet Union and commercial cooperation between formerly antagonistic global powers. And would you like extra cheese with that?

  While we waited, Misha briefed me again on the Farmers’ Union. In the liberalization of 1992, millions of roubles had been allocated from the national budget for the encouragement of private farms. Collective farms were obliged to hive off 10 per cent of their land to private individuals. Farmers received a capital grant and annual loans. The Farmers’ Union was set up to represent them and distribute the largesse. A top-down state bureaucratic institution, its independence derived not from its members but from its rivalry with the Ministry of Agriculture, which was run by die-hard believers in the state collective system.

  The Farmers’ Union director was a distinguished professor of economics and a member of the Economic Commission of the recently defunct Council for Economic Planning, Gosplan. Since 1921 Gosplan had produced the Soviet Union’s five-year plans. I hoped he was not too much of a big-picture chap to appreciate the subtleties of the takeaway trade.

  As befitted a professor he arrived fifteen minutes late. He was tall and white-haired, with the slight stoop that tall people affect, but his face did not fit. It was young and wrinkle free, as if he were being played by a student. I took to him immediately.