The way to think about Russia, Bill Browder told me in Moscow in 2004, using a comparison he recycles in Red Notice, is as a giant prison yard. Vladimir Putin, he argued then, had no choice but to destroy Mikhail
Khodorkovsky, the yard’s top dog and country’s richest man. One of a tribe of Western financiers who traversed a hermetic circuit of offices, guarded apartments, upscale restaurants and the airport, Browder would berate reporters for banging on about human rights abuses or atrocities in Chechnya. Putin was already Putin, for anyone who cared to notice — autocratic, corrupt, nationalistic — but, for Browder, Russia was an oil-powered success story, and Putin was a seer.
Understandably, Red Notice glosses over its author’s past as a devout Putinista (‘I naively thought that Putin was acting in the national interest’). I mention it not to diminish Browder’s subsequent courage, still less to imply that he got what he deserved: it doesn’t and he didn’t. Rather the contrast illustrates what Anna Politkovskaya once identified as the biggest problem for Russians: the widespread belief that ‘it’ — the knock on the door, the trumped-up charge — will never happen to them.
Because, for all his cheerleading, it happened to Browder. As founder of Hermitage Capital, he became the biggest portfolio investor in Russia. The first half of his book explains how the grandson of America’s leading communist, Earl Browder, came to occupy such an arch-capitalist role. Despite Bill’s attempt to enliven this pre-history with implausibly recalled dialogue and would-be dramatic reconstructions (‘Within seconds, I was engrossed in my BlackBerry’s email dump’), anyone not thrilled by money-making might consider skimming.
Yet some telling themes emerge. Browder — by his account, ever the Chicago little guy battling English toffs, American shysters and Russian oligarchs — is painfully status-conscious, and hates defeat and slights.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in