Book Review

Doing Business With Moscow Inc

Joseph Finder is the author of "Red Carpet: The Connection Between the Kremlin and America's Most Powerful Businessmen" and of a forthcoming novel, "The Moscow Club.", Finder, Joseph

1991

Overview

Now comes a timely memoir by one of Europe's most powerful bankers, who has done business with Moscow for some 20 years and was, in early 1985, the first Westerner invited to meet the new General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, [Mikhail S. Gorbachev]. In \"Paths to Russia,\" [F. Wilhelm Christians] Christians, the chairman of the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank, relates with bracing clarity his experiences in financing some of the most ambitious projects in Soviet history, from the Yamal pipeline that supplies Europe with Soviet natural gas, to the immense Amur-Baikal-Magistrale railroad project. When the Reagan White House, in the spring of 1982, sent what Mr. Christians describes in an almost comic scene as \"seven men in dark suits\" to \"question\" him about the pipeline, as an expression of American concern about expanded German economic ties with the Soviet Union, he argued that the deal was intended as \"a modest contribution to a very difficult and lengthy process of easing tensions.\" How this was supposed to work, and whether it did, are questions he does not address. In a provocative final chapter, Mr. Christians says that only by helping to rebuild the Soviet Union -- by helping Mr. Gorbachev's Government directly -- will the West be able to integrate the Soviet Union into a united Europe. Mr. Christians is convinced that \"massive Western assistance\" to Moscow will save the Soviet Union from utter chaos and internecine bloodshed and give us a \"historic chance of a restructuring for the entire European continent.\"

• Publisher: New York Times Company
• Subject: CHRISTIANS, F WILHELM / FINDER, JOSEPH