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Zero Sum: The Arc of International Business in Russia
When the hammer and sickle came down in late 1991, Russia's feverish new market opened for business. From banking to breweries, sectors emerged out of nowhere, in a country that had never had a functioning economy. For the next three turbulent decades, a wild, proto-capitalist free-for-all transformed Russian society.
Then, in 2022, Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The market started to collapse; Western firms fled Moscow's skyscrapers. No country this large had ever transformed itself as dizzyingly as 1990s Russia--now, just as dramatically, it was over. The intervening decades had seen phenomenal successes and crushing failures; the creation and destruction of enormous fortunes. How did it all happen?
Zero Sum brings to life the complex, vivid color of one of the greatest experiments in the history of global commerce. What have businesses learnt--or failed to learn--from this adventure, both about Russia and about dynamics between countries and companies in the face of relentless change?
Then, in 2022, Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The market started to collapse; Western firms fled Moscow's skyscrapers. No country this large had ever transformed itself as dizzyingly as 1990s Russia--now, just as dramatically, it was over. The intervening decades had seen phenomenal successes and crushing failures; the creation and destruction of enormous fortunes. How did it all happen?
Zero Sum brings to life the complex, vivid color of one of the greatest experiments in the history of global commerce. What have businesses learnt--or failed to learn--from this adventure, both about Russia and about dynamics between countries and companies in the face of relentless change?
513 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 4, 2025
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320 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 20, 2025
Enjoyed this - an informative and engaging guide to the last few decades of commerce (and politics) in Russia.
Charles Hecker’s account is comprehensive and highly readable; the book is much less dry than its title suggests, and he interprets his brief in such a way as to tick off many of the key political developments since 1991. As a former resident myself, I enjoyed that the Moscow he depicts is highly realistic; the anecdotes are funny and relatable; the brief asides made to unnamed bars or restaurants are instantly recognisable to those who spent much time in the city’s Garden Ring. Added to that: the text does a good job of setting modernity in its historical and geographical context, and throws in a number of intriguing facts along the way. I hadn’t realised that, until recently, the world was at its most globalised on the eve of the First World War; I also appreciated the vignette around how simply changing the nomenclature from ‘third world countries’ to ‘emerging markets’ empowered analysts to better pitch for their institutions to invest in Russia - and had a visible impact on FDI. In the end, I was persuaded of the book’s key conclusion: that the invasion of Ukraine is less a dramatic departure from a previous trend towards convergence, but is instead confirmation that the balance between risk (which has always been large) and reward (which has been in decline for some time now) has permanently shifted. In these circumstances, the departure of western companies since 2022 is almost certainly more than just a temporary disruption.
All this goes to say - the book is thorough and informed. Yet perhaps inevitably, someone with the necessary background and proclivity to write a book on business in Russia is subject to a number of biases and blind spots that hinder the analysis. Though there’s not much need for him to do so, Hecker is at pains to make his politics clear. It’s taken for granted that the Soviet Union was nothing more than “sclerotic”, and - as a result - much of the misery of the ‘90s (hyperinflation; ‘shock therapy’; criminality) is acknowledged but ultimately explained away as a sad inevitability. To be fair to Hecker - he’s (rightly) quietly critical of the corruption rife in the voucher privatisation scheme, the decision made to make Russia repay the Soviet Union’s debt, and the failure of the West to create a post-collapse investment scheme for Russia at the level of the Marshall Plan. Yet the text is implicitly premised on the twin notions that market capitalism and the US are both unalloyed forces for good, which prevents Hecker from moving beyond surface level criticisms of specific (and, in his mind, seemingly unconnected) instances. Hecker makes little of the fact that the Soviet collapse led to one of the most precipitous falls in peacetime living standards in history, or that Russia was used as a guinea pig for a particularly brutal and untested form of economic ‘shock therapy’. He notes that only the US could have stopped the loan-for-shares scheme that poisoned Boris Yeltsin’s integrity, and seems surprised that they didn’t. It stretches credulity to think that these aren’t extreme and contingent events which bred certain outcomes, but Hecker ultimately concludes that - with the benefit of hindsight - Russia probably couldn’t have been anything other than it is today.
But is that quite right? I’m not so sure. Hecker correctly argues that the adoption of market economics does not necessarily entail liberal democracy, but the uncomfortable truth he never confronts (but which is well written about elsewhere by, eg., Quinn Slobodian) is that truly free markets can be actually antithetical to truly free votes. Rather than being a good faith actor that made a few sad errors, it’s important to note that the US spent the ‘90s terrified that the Communists would beat Yeltsin at the ballot box (and put an end to the experiment being conducted by a gaggle of free market ideologues drunk on Cold War American ideals). The US didn’t just miss Yeltsin’s excesses; they underwrote them, even to the extent that Bill Clinton got the IMF to give Yeltsin a loan for his 1996 re-election campaign (when he seemed doomed to lose). That’s an important element in the explanation of why Russia - even at its best - has never been anything more than a ‘managed’ democracy. Likewise, and despite the absence of any continued raison d’etre, NATO limped on as a post-Cold War zombie; whilst Hecker gives brief reference to the extreme fringe of people who argue that NATO provoked Putin into invading Ukraine (it did not; he did that all by himself), he does not address the more nuanced argument that NATO’s continued existence allows Putin to go to the Russian people and argue that a leader like him will always be necessary to stand up to a West that despises them. None of this is focused on in the text. Some of Hecker’s (impressive array of) interviewees are cowboys who were interested in getting rich quick, but what I found remarkable is that many genuinely drank the Kook-Aid and believed they were on some kind of mission. Yet what’s strange is that a text featuring a series of Westerners unable to jettison their Cold War baggage seems surprised at the continued existence of Russians suffering from the same malaise.
All the same - a good read.
Charles Hecker’s account is comprehensive and highly readable; the book is much less dry than its title suggests, and he interprets his brief in such a way as to tick off many of the key political developments since 1991. As a former resident myself, I enjoyed that the Moscow he depicts is highly realistic; the anecdotes are funny and relatable; the brief asides made to unnamed bars or restaurants are instantly recognisable to those who spent much time in the city’s Garden Ring. Added to that: the text does a good job of setting modernity in its historical and geographical context, and throws in a number of intriguing facts along the way. I hadn’t realised that, until recently, the world was at its most globalised on the eve of the First World War; I also appreciated the vignette around how simply changing the nomenclature from ‘third world countries’ to ‘emerging markets’ empowered analysts to better pitch for their institutions to invest in Russia - and had a visible impact on FDI. In the end, I was persuaded of the book’s key conclusion: that the invasion of Ukraine is less a dramatic departure from a previous trend towards convergence, but is instead confirmation that the balance between risk (which has always been large) and reward (which has been in decline for some time now) has permanently shifted. In these circumstances, the departure of western companies since 2022 is almost certainly more than just a temporary disruption.
All this goes to say - the book is thorough and informed. Yet perhaps inevitably, someone with the necessary background and proclivity to write a book on business in Russia is subject to a number of biases and blind spots that hinder the analysis. Though there’s not much need for him to do so, Hecker is at pains to make his politics clear. It’s taken for granted that the Soviet Union was nothing more than “sclerotic”, and - as a result - much of the misery of the ‘90s (hyperinflation; ‘shock therapy’; criminality) is acknowledged but ultimately explained away as a sad inevitability. To be fair to Hecker - he’s (rightly) quietly critical of the corruption rife in the voucher privatisation scheme, the decision made to make Russia repay the Soviet Union’s debt, and the failure of the West to create a post-collapse investment scheme for Russia at the level of the Marshall Plan. Yet the text is implicitly premised on the twin notions that market capitalism and the US are both unalloyed forces for good, which prevents Hecker from moving beyond surface level criticisms of specific (and, in his mind, seemingly unconnected) instances. Hecker makes little of the fact that the Soviet collapse led to one of the most precipitous falls in peacetime living standards in history, or that Russia was used as a guinea pig for a particularly brutal and untested form of economic ‘shock therapy’. He notes that only the US could have stopped the loan-for-shares scheme that poisoned Boris Yeltsin’s integrity, and seems surprised that they didn’t. It stretches credulity to think that these aren’t extreme and contingent events which bred certain outcomes, but Hecker ultimately concludes that - with the benefit of hindsight - Russia probably couldn’t have been anything other than it is today.
But is that quite right? I’m not so sure. Hecker correctly argues that the adoption of market economics does not necessarily entail liberal democracy, but the uncomfortable truth he never confronts (but which is well written about elsewhere by, eg., Quinn Slobodian) is that truly free markets can be actually antithetical to truly free votes. Rather than being a good faith actor that made a few sad errors, it’s important to note that the US spent the ‘90s terrified that the Communists would beat Yeltsin at the ballot box (and put an end to the experiment being conducted by a gaggle of free market ideologues drunk on Cold War American ideals). The US didn’t just miss Yeltsin’s excesses; they underwrote them, even to the extent that Bill Clinton got the IMF to give Yeltsin a loan for his 1996 re-election campaign (when he seemed doomed to lose). That’s an important element in the explanation of why Russia - even at its best - has never been anything more than a ‘managed’ democracy. Likewise, and despite the absence of any continued raison d’etre, NATO limped on as a post-Cold War zombie; whilst Hecker gives brief reference to the extreme fringe of people who argue that NATO provoked Putin into invading Ukraine (it did not; he did that all by himself), he does not address the more nuanced argument that NATO’s continued existence allows Putin to go to the Russian people and argue that a leader like him will always be necessary to stand up to a West that despises them. None of this is focused on in the text. Some of Hecker’s (impressive array of) interviewees are cowboys who were interested in getting rich quick, but what I found remarkable is that many genuinely drank the Kook-Aid and believed they were on some kind of mission. Yet what’s strange is that a text featuring a series of Westerners unable to jettison their Cold War baggage seems surprised at the continued existence of Russians suffering from the same malaise.
All the same - a good read.
March 5, 2025
Although the book briefly covers Czarist Russia and Soviet Union, the main emphasis is placed on the evolution gap of business activities in Russia starting from the early 90s until the full scale Russo-Ukrainian war in 2022, how it started with a bang and ended with a bang. I found the descriptions to be eventful and interesting - doing business in Russia always came with a tremendous risk, whether it was the hectic and lawlessness Yeltsin era or a more state controlled Putin era. Although the 30 year gap offered numerous opportunities to collect enormous wealth for lots of companies, the book delivered the message for the corporate world in many ways, such as impossibility to look past the state politics and blindly hope for its liberal alignment along with open trade. This is something which has never happened in Russia, so why bother asking - how did it all come down to this?
March 9, 2025
A perfect balance of diligent research and natural storytelling
January 18, 2026
Zero Sum by Charles Hecker
Hecker's Zero Sum (2024) offers an insider's chronicle of Western investment in Russia from 1987 through 2024, written by someone whose background at Control Risk Moscow provided a front-row seat to one of capitalism's most dramatic experiments. The book succeeds as journalistic narrative—Hecker writes with accessibility and occasional wit ("Taking a new transaction to the general counsel's office for approval was sort of like visiting the dentist")—but fails as analytical framework, conflating distinct periods and avoiding uncomfortable truths about Western complicity in Russian corruption.
Narrative Strengths
Hecker's reportorial skills shine throughout. Drawing on sources I knew well, including Holly Nielsen, Bob Courtney, Bernie Sucher, Tom Firestone, and Paul Melling, he constructs a readable account of the investment arc across nearly four decades. His firsthand experience enables concrete detail about how deals were structured, risks assessed, and moral compromises rationalized. For readers seeking to understand the texture of doing business in post-Soviet Russia—the practical challenges, the ethical quandaries, the evolving regulatory landscape—Hecker provides valuable material.
The book's chronological scope is genuinely impressive, tracking Russia through seven distinct phases: Gorbachev's perestroika (1985-1991), Yeltsin's chaotic privatization with 2,600% inflation (1991-1996), the oligarch consolidation (1996-1999), Putin's initial Western orientation and the Yukos seizure (2000-2005), the petro-prosperity years (2006-2014), post-Crimea sanctions (2014-2022), and the aftermath of the Ukraine invasion (2022-present). This valuable periodization captures real shifts in Russia's political economy and foreign investment climate.
Hecker's updates on the post-Crimea business environment prove particularly useful, including concrete facts about expat and company exits after 2014 and the far more dramatic exodus following the 2022 invasion. These details will be valuable for future historians attempting to reconstruct the timeline of Western economic disengagement.
Analytical Weaknesses
The book's central flaw lies in what might be called temporal conflation—"moshing together" good and bad developments without making clear when and why conditions fundamentally changed. Street murders endemic to the early 1990s had ended by 1994, yet Hecker treats the security environment as if it remained constant or evolved gradually rather than shifting in discrete phases. This obscures crucial turning points and flattens the narrative arc.
More troubling is Hecker's treatment—or non-treatment—of anti-corruption enforcement. He mentions the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (1977) and the UK Bribery Act (2010) but fails to distinguish between them despite their vastly different enforcement records. The FCPA's aggressive extraterritorial application, backed by substantial criminal penalties and consistent DOJ/SEC enforcement, created real constraints on U.S. companies operating in Russia. The UK Bribery Act, while theoretically more comprehensive, has been hypocritically enforced sporadically at best.
Similarly, Hecker refers generically to stock exchange "listings" without acknowledging the dramatic difference between NYSE/SEC disclosure standards and their quite loose UK equivalents. U.S. securities regulation imposed substantially higher transparency requirements on companies seeking American listings, creating genuine due diligence pressures. This distinction matters when evaluating why certain investment structures prevailed and how corporate governance evolved in Russian companies seeking Western capital.
The London Question
The book's most glaring omission concerns London's role as the primary destination for Russian capital outflows—much of it proceeds of crime or corruption. Hecker devotes less than one page to "Londongrad," despite London property, UK shell companies, and British financial institutions serving as the principal mechanisms for recycling Russian wealth into the Western financial system.
This selectivity appears strategic. The book's British spelling and punctuation signal its intended market: UK readers who might be uncomfortable with extended examination of their financial sector's complicity. Hecker's reticence mirrors the willful ignorance he describes among companies that avoided knowing about bribes in Russia—except here the subject is UK money laundering "enforcement," the quotation marks necessary given Britain's decades-long failure to seriously police Russian or any other capital flows.
The hypocrisy is profound. While U.S. banks faced billions in penalties for anti-money laundering failures and FCPA violations related to Russia, British institutions operated with relative impunity, processing transactions that would have triggered immediate regulatory action in New York. British estate agents, luxury goods retailers, and property developers constructed elaborate ecosystems around Russian wealth while UK authorities looked away. That this merits barely a page in a 350+ page book about Western investment in Russia represents a choice, not an oversight.
Missing Context
Hecker includes an intriguing digression on Kondratieff Waves—the long economic cycles identified by the Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratieff, who was executed during Stalin's purges for suggesting that capitalism might not collapse imminently. Hecker traces five waves: steam power (1780-1830), steel and railroads (1830-1880), electrification and chemicals (1880-1930), automobiles and petrochemicals (1930-1970), and information technology (1970-present), with speculation about a sixth wave driven by biotechnology and healthcare.
This framework remains disconnected from the Russia narrative. Hecker never explores how Russia's particular trajectory—missing most of the industrial revolution, experiencing compressed Soviet industrialization, then attempting to leap directly into post-industrial capitalism—created unique structural challenges. The Kondratieff discussion reads like intellectual ornamentation rather than analytical tool.
What's Valuable
Despite these limitations, Zero Sum offers genuine value for specific audiences. Business historians will find useful primary source material about deal structures, risk assessment methodologies, and the evolution of due diligence practices in frontier markets. The book documents how Western companies navigated (or failed to navigate) the gap between home-country legal requirements and Russian realities.
Hecker's chronicle of regulatory evolution—how compliance functions developed, how companies learned (often painfully) to take corruption risks seriously, how the post-2014 sanctions regime transformed the business landscape—provides concrete detail often missing from more academic treatments. His insider perspective illuminates the practical challenges of operating under conflicting legal regimes and uncertain political conditions.
The post-2022 material, while not analytically deep, offers useful factual grounding about the pace and scope of Western business exodus. Future researchers will benefit from Hecker's documentation of who left when, which sectors proved most vulnerable, and how quickly the integrated Russian-Western business model collapsed once geopolitical conflict escalated.
The Title's Promise Unfulfilled
"Zero Sum" implies an argument about inevitable conflict between Russian and Western interests—that gains for one side necessarily meant losses for the other. Yet Hecker never develops this thesis systematically. Were the periods of seemingly mutual benefit (Western capital and expertise flowing to Russia, natural resources and returns flowing back) merely illusions masking underlying zero-sum dynamics? Or did genuine opportunities for positive-sum engagement exist before being squandered by political choices?
Hecker provides material for either argument but commits to neither. This ambiguity might reflect journalistic caution—allowing readers to draw their own conclusions—but feels more like analytical avoidance. A book covering four decades of investment history should offer some evaluative framework beyond chronological recitation.
Conclusion
Zero Sum succeeds as accessible business journalism and fails as serious analysis of Western economic engagement with post-Soviet Russia. Hecker writes clearly, marshals extensive detail, and provides useful documentation of how the investment landscape evolved. For readers seeking a readable introduction to doing business in Russia across multiple political regimes, the book delivers.
Yet its evasions and omissions undermine claims to comprehensive treatment. The conflation of distinct periods obscures crucial turning points. The superficial treatment of anti-corruption enforcement ignores dramatic differences between American and British approaches. Most damningly, the near-silence on London's role as destination for Russian capital—legal and illegal—represents a choice to avoid uncomfortable truths about Western complicity.
The book is particularly disappointing given Hecker's Control Risk background, which certainly should have equipped him to provide sophisticated analysis of how corruption risks evolved and how enforcement pressures shifted across jurisdictions and time periods. Instead, readers get journalism that avoids the hardest questions.
Zero Sum works best as primary source material for future historians—a practitioner's account that documents what happened without fully explaining why or evaluating what it meant. The readable style and extensive chronological coverage make it accessible for general audiences. But readers seeking critical analysis of Western investment in Russia, particularly regarding the mechanisms by which Russian corruption was facilitated by Western financial centers, will find the treatment frustratingly incomplete.
For American readers in particular, the book's British orientation will be noticeable and occasionally jarring—not in spelling and punctuation (minor issues) but in the systematic downplaying of UK financial sector complicity in Russian money laundering. This is not the definitive account of Western business in Russia that the title and scope promise. It is a useful but limited contribution that raises as many questions as it answers, and avoids some of the most important questions entirely.
Hecker's Zero Sum (2024) offers an insider's chronicle of Western investment in Russia from 1987 through 2024, written by someone whose background at Control Risk Moscow provided a front-row seat to one of capitalism's most dramatic experiments. The book succeeds as journalistic narrative—Hecker writes with accessibility and occasional wit ("Taking a new transaction to the general counsel's office for approval was sort of like visiting the dentist")—but fails as analytical framework, conflating distinct periods and avoiding uncomfortable truths about Western complicity in Russian corruption.
Narrative Strengths
Hecker's reportorial skills shine throughout. Drawing on sources I knew well, including Holly Nielsen, Bob Courtney, Bernie Sucher, Tom Firestone, and Paul Melling, he constructs a readable account of the investment arc across nearly four decades. His firsthand experience enables concrete detail about how deals were structured, risks assessed, and moral compromises rationalized. For readers seeking to understand the texture of doing business in post-Soviet Russia—the practical challenges, the ethical quandaries, the evolving regulatory landscape—Hecker provides valuable material.
The book's chronological scope is genuinely impressive, tracking Russia through seven distinct phases: Gorbachev's perestroika (1985-1991), Yeltsin's chaotic privatization with 2,600% inflation (1991-1996), the oligarch consolidation (1996-1999), Putin's initial Western orientation and the Yukos seizure (2000-2005), the petro-prosperity years (2006-2014), post-Crimea sanctions (2014-2022), and the aftermath of the Ukraine invasion (2022-present). This valuable periodization captures real shifts in Russia's political economy and foreign investment climate.
Hecker's updates on the post-Crimea business environment prove particularly useful, including concrete facts about expat and company exits after 2014 and the far more dramatic exodus following the 2022 invasion. These details will be valuable for future historians attempting to reconstruct the timeline of Western economic disengagement.
Analytical Weaknesses
The book's central flaw lies in what might be called temporal conflation—"moshing together" good and bad developments without making clear when and why conditions fundamentally changed. Street murders endemic to the early 1990s had ended by 1994, yet Hecker treats the security environment as if it remained constant or evolved gradually rather than shifting in discrete phases. This obscures crucial turning points and flattens the narrative arc.
More troubling is Hecker's treatment—or non-treatment—of anti-corruption enforcement. He mentions the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (1977) and the UK Bribery Act (2010) but fails to distinguish between them despite their vastly different enforcement records. The FCPA's aggressive extraterritorial application, backed by substantial criminal penalties and consistent DOJ/SEC enforcement, created real constraints on U.S. companies operating in Russia. The UK Bribery Act, while theoretically more comprehensive, has been hypocritically enforced sporadically at best.
Similarly, Hecker refers generically to stock exchange "listings" without acknowledging the dramatic difference between NYSE/SEC disclosure standards and their quite loose UK equivalents. U.S. securities regulation imposed substantially higher transparency requirements on companies seeking American listings, creating genuine due diligence pressures. This distinction matters when evaluating why certain investment structures prevailed and how corporate governance evolved in Russian companies seeking Western capital.
The London Question
The book's most glaring omission concerns London's role as the primary destination for Russian capital outflows—much of it proceeds of crime or corruption. Hecker devotes less than one page to "Londongrad," despite London property, UK shell companies, and British financial institutions serving as the principal mechanisms for recycling Russian wealth into the Western financial system.
This selectivity appears strategic. The book's British spelling and punctuation signal its intended market: UK readers who might be uncomfortable with extended examination of their financial sector's complicity. Hecker's reticence mirrors the willful ignorance he describes among companies that avoided knowing about bribes in Russia—except here the subject is UK money laundering "enforcement," the quotation marks necessary given Britain's decades-long failure to seriously police Russian or any other capital flows.
The hypocrisy is profound. While U.S. banks faced billions in penalties for anti-money laundering failures and FCPA violations related to Russia, British institutions operated with relative impunity, processing transactions that would have triggered immediate regulatory action in New York. British estate agents, luxury goods retailers, and property developers constructed elaborate ecosystems around Russian wealth while UK authorities looked away. That this merits barely a page in a 350+ page book about Western investment in Russia represents a choice, not an oversight.
Missing Context
Hecker includes an intriguing digression on Kondratieff Waves—the long economic cycles identified by the Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratieff, who was executed during Stalin's purges for suggesting that capitalism might not collapse imminently. Hecker traces five waves: steam power (1780-1830), steel and railroads (1830-1880), electrification and chemicals (1880-1930), automobiles and petrochemicals (1930-1970), and information technology (1970-present), with speculation about a sixth wave driven by biotechnology and healthcare.
This framework remains disconnected from the Russia narrative. Hecker never explores how Russia's particular trajectory—missing most of the industrial revolution, experiencing compressed Soviet industrialization, then attempting to leap directly into post-industrial capitalism—created unique structural challenges. The Kondratieff discussion reads like intellectual ornamentation rather than analytical tool.
What's Valuable
Despite these limitations, Zero Sum offers genuine value for specific audiences. Business historians will find useful primary source material about deal structures, risk assessment methodologies, and the evolution of due diligence practices in frontier markets. The book documents how Western companies navigated (or failed to navigate) the gap between home-country legal requirements and Russian realities.
Hecker's chronicle of regulatory evolution—how compliance functions developed, how companies learned (often painfully) to take corruption risks seriously, how the post-2014 sanctions regime transformed the business landscape—provides concrete detail often missing from more academic treatments. His insider perspective illuminates the practical challenges of operating under conflicting legal regimes and uncertain political conditions.
The post-2022 material, while not analytically deep, offers useful factual grounding about the pace and scope of Western business exodus. Future researchers will benefit from Hecker's documentation of who left when, which sectors proved most vulnerable, and how quickly the integrated Russian-Western business model collapsed once geopolitical conflict escalated.
The Title's Promise Unfulfilled
"Zero Sum" implies an argument about inevitable conflict between Russian and Western interests—that gains for one side necessarily meant losses for the other. Yet Hecker never develops this thesis systematically. Were the periods of seemingly mutual benefit (Western capital and expertise flowing to Russia, natural resources and returns flowing back) merely illusions masking underlying zero-sum dynamics? Or did genuine opportunities for positive-sum engagement exist before being squandered by political choices?
Hecker provides material for either argument but commits to neither. This ambiguity might reflect journalistic caution—allowing readers to draw their own conclusions—but feels more like analytical avoidance. A book covering four decades of investment history should offer some evaluative framework beyond chronological recitation.
Conclusion
Zero Sum succeeds as accessible business journalism and fails as serious analysis of Western economic engagement with post-Soviet Russia. Hecker writes clearly, marshals extensive detail, and provides useful documentation of how the investment landscape evolved. For readers seeking a readable introduction to doing business in Russia across multiple political regimes, the book delivers.
Yet its evasions and omissions undermine claims to comprehensive treatment. The conflation of distinct periods obscures crucial turning points. The superficial treatment of anti-corruption enforcement ignores dramatic differences between American and British approaches. Most damningly, the near-silence on London's role as destination for Russian capital—legal and illegal—represents a choice to avoid uncomfortable truths about Western complicity.
The book is particularly disappointing given Hecker's Control Risk background, which certainly should have equipped him to provide sophisticated analysis of how corruption risks evolved and how enforcement pressures shifted across jurisdictions and time periods. Instead, readers get journalism that avoids the hardest questions.
Zero Sum works best as primary source material for future historians—a practitioner's account that documents what happened without fully explaining why or evaluating what it meant. The readable style and extensive chronological coverage make it accessible for general audiences. But readers seeking critical analysis of Western investment in Russia, particularly regarding the mechanisms by which Russian corruption was facilitated by Western financial centers, will find the treatment frustratingly incomplete.
For American readers in particular, the book's British orientation will be noticeable and occasionally jarring—not in spelling and punctuation (minor issues) but in the systematic downplaying of UK financial sector complicity in Russian money laundering. This is not the definitive account of Western business in Russia that the title and scope promise. It is a useful but limited contribution that raises as many questions as it answers, and avoids some of the most important questions entirely.
December 20, 2024
Charles has written a unique and totally compelling book on Russia and how it did business and does business now. I was lucky enough to meet with Charles when he was writing Zero Sum but this is a book far greater than I envisaged.
The central thesis is that Russia (a country that emerged from the politics of 'Communist' Stalinism in the 1950s - which is something never to be forgotten when analysing Russia) has allowed itself to engage with business and the concept of capitalism but never at the expense of politics. The rigid grip that quasi communism and the rule of the KGB engendered in the country finds every opportunity to re-awaken when threats appear and when the West (and its businesses) think they have found a place in which to thrive.
The central fallacy of Russia and capitalism is laid bare by Charles in a well-written and very easy-to-read book that is thorough and absorbing throughout. The fallacies of Russia and its sweep between oligarchs and political mayhem is shown throughout. This is evidenced by those companies from the West that tried to make a killing in Russia (some succeeded) and the weird manner in which success was enabled - such as corruption, bribery, use of banknotes, political favours and every manner of chicanery in a state that tore away from Stalinism to a drunken spree with Yeltsin and then back to the top down grip of Putinism.
In this state, no-one wins but Putin but Zero Sum (a title that speaks for itself) won me over entirely.
The central thesis is that Russia (a country that emerged from the politics of 'Communist' Stalinism in the 1950s - which is something never to be forgotten when analysing Russia) has allowed itself to engage with business and the concept of capitalism but never at the expense of politics. The rigid grip that quasi communism and the rule of the KGB engendered in the country finds every opportunity to re-awaken when threats appear and when the West (and its businesses) think they have found a place in which to thrive.
The central fallacy of Russia and capitalism is laid bare by Charles in a well-written and very easy-to-read book that is thorough and absorbing throughout. The fallacies of Russia and its sweep between oligarchs and political mayhem is shown throughout. This is evidenced by those companies from the West that tried to make a killing in Russia (some succeeded) and the weird manner in which success was enabled - such as corruption, bribery, use of banknotes, political favours and every manner of chicanery in a state that tore away from Stalinism to a drunken spree with Yeltsin and then back to the top down grip of Putinism.
In this state, no-one wins but Putin but Zero Sum (a title that speaks for itself) won me over entirely.
November 25, 2024
Engaging and Insightful: A Must-Read for International Business Enthusiasts
Zero Sum by Charles Hecker is a masterfully written exploration of one of the most dramatic economic transformations in modern history. From the chaotic birth of Russia's free market in the 1990s to its abrupt unraveling in 2022, Hecker weaves a compelling narrative that blends vivid storytelling with sharp economic analysis.
The book excels in illustrating the dizzying rise and fall of industries, fortunes, and ambitions in post-Soviet Russia. Hecker’s attention to detail brings to life the chaotic energy of a nation reinventing itself, filled with both breathtaking opportunities and devastating pitfalls. The stories of banking moguls, entrepreneurs, and multinational corporations navigating uncharted waters are as fascinating as they are instructive.
What sets Zero Sum apart is its ability to connect Russia's economic journey to broader lessons about global commerce and geopolitics. The book deftly examines how companies adapted—or failed to adapt—to relentless change, providing invaluable insights for anyone navigating international markets today.
Whether you're a student of international economics, a business professional, or simply a curious reader, Zero Sum offers a captivating and thought-provoking look at a pivotal moment in global history. It’s not just a recounting of events but a thoughtful exploration of what we can learn from them.
Zero Sum by Charles Hecker is a masterfully written exploration of one of the most dramatic economic transformations in modern history. From the chaotic birth of Russia's free market in the 1990s to its abrupt unraveling in 2022, Hecker weaves a compelling narrative that blends vivid storytelling with sharp economic analysis.
The book excels in illustrating the dizzying rise and fall of industries, fortunes, and ambitions in post-Soviet Russia. Hecker’s attention to detail brings to life the chaotic energy of a nation reinventing itself, filled with both breathtaking opportunities and devastating pitfalls. The stories of banking moguls, entrepreneurs, and multinational corporations navigating uncharted waters are as fascinating as they are instructive.
What sets Zero Sum apart is its ability to connect Russia's economic journey to broader lessons about global commerce and geopolitics. The book deftly examines how companies adapted—or failed to adapt—to relentless change, providing invaluable insights for anyone navigating international markets today.
Whether you're a student of international economics, a business professional, or simply a curious reader, Zero Sum offers a captivating and thought-provoking look at a pivotal moment in global history. It’s not just a recounting of events but a thoughtful exploration of what we can learn from them.
November 1, 2025
(Audiobook) Solid overview of the history of how Russia and foreign investment/business interacted with each other. The history does go back to the 18th century, but the main emphasis on this work is in the final years of the USSR/start of the modern Russian state. It is part history, part business pages, part cultural education. Doing business in Russia, at least before 2022, could be fraught for international investors, but it also demonstrated a land of opportunity, at least for those who could figure out some of the levers of power. While much writing on Russia right now focuses on the geopolitical/military aspect. Yet, this work does fill in some critical gaps, focusing on the economic and international trade aspect of Russia and why that matters to the overall analysis of Russia. The 2022 war did change the game, as Russia found itself more isolated from the outside world, more that it traditionally allowed itself to be in the past. Future works will have to look at how the China/Russia investment ties evolve, especially in the wake of the past few years.
Overall, a good survey-type history. It isn’t super in-depth, but not all works need that to be the case. Worth the time to read, regardless of format for those wanting a greater understanding of how business/foreign investment worked in Russia and the impacts of recent actions.
Overall, a good survey-type history. It isn’t super in-depth, but not all works need that to be the case. Worth the time to read, regardless of format for those wanting a greater understanding of how business/foreign investment worked in Russia and the impacts of recent actions.
September 1, 2025
Chockablock full of insights on the frenetic efforts of companies to invest in Russia and what it was like doing business there at the time, as well as the wreckage after Putin invaded the Crimea and then Ukraine, leading to a newfangled variety of state seizures and an autocratic capitalism. Lots about him sound like Trump. The author points out that capitalism does not necessarily go hand in hand with capitalism, and that that’s just a figment of postwar thinking.
January 6, 2025
Even without economic expertise of my own, Hecker (who has plenty) paints a clear picture of the high stakes entry, reentry and dramatic exits of companies into Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. A thoroughly interesting and timely read of a country that remains an enigma to so many.
June 24, 2025
3.5. I loved the information and the writing style, kind of like talking serious stuff in a bar after three or four vodka toasts. It gave me a much better idea of how business worked over the last thirty-odd years in Russia. It can be a little disorganized and repetitive, but it's always fun.
August 22, 2025
This is a solid look at the rise and fall of international business in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He does a good job explaining the financial shenanigans without too much jargon which made it easy to follow. He captures the big picture of the failures well.
July 30, 2025
no personal experiences revealed. basically a collection of clippings of internet reporting.
August 28, 2025
One of the many books written about expats in Russia from the collapse of the Soviet Union to todays war in Ukraine. A description of the opportunism that motivated most expats at the time.
Very much concentrated on Moscow. My own experience as Construction Project director in Southern Russia was more positive
Very much concentrated on Moscow. My own experience as Construction Project director in Southern Russia was more positive
October 20, 2025
DNF. Any one who was alive during the run up to the 2007 financial crises knows about the BRICS. This gives some interesting details, but really nothing new.
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