Siberia Bound

The Book of the Week is “Siberia Bound” by Alexander Blakely, published in 2002. This is the personal account of a recent college graduate who decided life in the United States was too easy.

In the early 1990’s, the author moved to Novosibirsk, Siberia to see, with a business partner, whether he, fluent in Russian, could help a region of the former Soviet Union make the transition from Communism to capitalism. He and his partner borrowed money to buy cocoa beans and sold them to chocolate factories on credit.

Blakely wrote about Siberian culture. One amusing passage told of the detergent brand “Barf” imported from Iran. “Things got dirty all the time: In summer, it was dust and car exhaust. In winter, it was coal soot and body odor trapped by layers of insulation.” The relationship between Blakely’s business partner’s wife and her mother-in-law was less than friendly. This was partly because the wife spoiled her young daughter, and the mother-in-law was strict with her– the opposite behavior of mothers and grandmothers in American culture.

Sadly, the moral of the author’s story became “Be careful what you wish for.” He realized that the major cultural, political and economic changes taking place in his community meant that Siberians had become like Americans. They started riding in cars instead of walking. They ate fatty foods for lunch and the men stopped exercising. The women started going to aerobics classes at the gym.

Blakely thought that bringing capitalism to them would be a good thing. However, they soon developed an insatiable appetite for consumer goods. Once they were made of aware of their severe deprivation by the media and increased their connections with the rest of the world, they became depressed. Previously, they had been happy due to their ignorance of how materially poor they were.

Read the book to learn of the sea changes taking place at the author’s business, which sold not just chocolate, but surgical gloves, potatoes and other products; and the formerly Communist community, over the next four years.