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We head into the pub and grab a table.
“Nadezhda, tell me what it's like to run a business in Russia.”
She smirks. “Oh, it's complicated.”
“In what way?”
“You can never figure out what the authorities are requiring. Like a fire escape. I want
to do what the law says. So I go to this government office and say, 'What do I need to do?'
They're not helpful at all. They say it's all on the Internet, look there. But it's not.”
This was always one of Rose's chief gripes about life in Russia—especially for wo-
men—as she contemplated opening her own restaurant. Once she got home to the United
States and began the process, she realized it was harder than she ever imagined. But having
seen what aspiring entrepreneurs in Russia go through made her grateful.
“Now that I'm doing this,” Rose told me at one point, “I will say, there are days at the
permitting office or other government buildings in D.C. when lines are long, people are
confused, and I just want to scream, 'I'm back in goddamn Russia again!' What's funny
is, you could say I'm up against the downside of democracy—here, everyone has an equal
voice. Three neighbors were against my place and were almost able to stop me from open-
ing. But I have it so much easier. I have nonprofits that fight to help women opening busi-
nesses. There's networking.
Entrepreneurship is encouraged. I was able to get a loan from the Small Business Ad-
ministration. I really don't think Russians have much of this. Or any of this. If I were a wo-
man in Russia, trying to start a business, I would feel like there was no recourse if someone
wanted to take advantage of me. If someone is bigger and more powerful and they want to
extort money, they can do it. Nobody will stop them.”
In 2012, two students at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business,
Florentina Furtuna and Anna Ruvinskaya, looked at the small business climate in Russia
and published a study called “Small Business in Russia: Drowning in a Sea of Giants.”
They found business owners routinely “face corrupt officials who have the power to deny
licenses, permits, office space and access to supplies unless substantial 'gifts' or bribes are
offered.”
Paradoxically, efforts to stamp out crime and corruption seem to be making problems
worse. One small business owner told the authors that “in the early 1990s, the gangs of
bandits that controlled most of the markets during the period of organized crime seemed
to be more humane than the current government officials; they had a certain threshold that
they abided by; now these corrupt clerks can take even the last piece from our mouths.”
Nadezhda, in Ishim, is fighting to survive in a system where bureaucratic corruption
feeds off the chaos. If officials are never clear about what's actually required, they can say
someone is wrong—at any time. And likely collect either a fine or a bribe.
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