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Casino Moscow: A Tale of Greed and Adventure on Capitalism's Wildest Frontier

Average customer rating:

Exciting, But Not Terribly Informative
the best of all possible worlds?
The Robber Barons of Moscow
Brzezinski Pontificating with Ethnocentric Tunnel Vision
Red Whine

Casino Moscow: A Tale of Greed and Adventure on Capitalism's Wildest Frontier
Matthew Brzezinski
Manufacturer: Free Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0684869772

Amazon.com

If Michael Lewis (The New New Thing, Liar's Poker) or P.J. O'Rourke (Holidays in Hell, Parliament of Whores) had spent the 1990s in Moscow, they might have produced a book like Casino Moscow--a dizzying first-person account of the wild east and its shotgun wedding with capitalism. It begins with Matthew Brzezinski as a rookie reporter getting beaten and nearly killed by a pair of Ukrainian thugs; the rest of the book is a white-knuckle tour through a place where the line separating entrepreneurs and criminals is often impossible to discern. Brzezinski worked in the Moscow bureau of the Wall Street Journal. If his name sounds familiar, that's because he's the nephew of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security advisor. He is an ideal guide: sometimes it takes a fish-out-of-water foreigner to see the things a jaded native cannot. (Comparing the author to Alexis de Tocqueville or Gunnar Myrdal is a stretch, but it's the same idea.) Brzezinski also writes with great humor and amazing panache. Describing the parking lot of a high-class bank, he writes that it "resembled a well-stocked Mercedes dealership that specialized only in armored, navy blue 600-series sedans, or shestotki, as the top-of-the-line models were affectionately known--as in 'My shestotka's just been blown up, can I borrow yours?'" Gangsters, prostitutes, and Western investors fill these pages, all of them coming to life courtesy of Brzezinski's narrative skill.

Despite the title, Casino Moscow isn't just about Moscow--some of the best sections cover other parts of Russia: "It was heartbreaking that St. Petersburg had been so mistreated. Yet even in its state of decay, I still preferred its shabby elegance to Moscow's new-money makeover. In St. Petersburg you lived for the past; Moscow lived only for the day." At the edge of Siberia, on the Pacific coast, is Vladivostok--"five time zones ahead of the Russian capital, but a decade behind." The book is a fast-paced adventure story--and a must for readers interested in Russia as well as fans of modern-day gonzo journalism. Brzezinski is a writer to watch. --John Miller

Book Description

After awakening from its long communist slumber, Russia in the 1990s was a place where everything and everyone was for sale, and fortunes could be made and lost overnight. Into this free-market maelstrom stepped rookie Wall Street Journal reporter Matthew Brzezinski, who was immediately pulled into the mad world of Russian capitalism -- where corrupt bankers and fast-talking American carpetbaggers presided over the biggest boom and bust in financial history.

Brzezinski's adventures take him from the solid-gold bathroom fixtures of Moscow's elite, to the last stop on the Trans-Siberian railway, where poverty-stricken citizens must buy water by the pail from the local crime lord, and back to civilization, to stumble into a drunken birthday bash for an ultra-nationalist politico. It's an irreverent, lurid, and hilarious account of one man's tumultuous trek through a capitalist market gone haywire -- and a nation whose uncertain future is marked by boundless hope and foreboding despair.

Customer Reviews:

Exciting, But Not Terribly Informative.......2005-12-12

As someone who has been involved in Russian legal matters for the past ten years, I found this book quite interesting, if not always accurate. It is not so much that it is inaccurate with respect to what it reports, it is that it so much sensationalizes Russian business that it ignores the great multitudes of Russian businesses that are out there slogging it out just like most businesses in the West. So while I greatly enjoyed the book from a mostly prurient perspective, I did not find it terribly helpful in improving my knowledge of Russian business.

the best of all possible worlds?.......2005-07-24

This book is like the story of Candide! Except in this tale Candide remains completely ignorant of all the evidence that this is not the best of all possible worlds. I'am not even going to spend my precious time writing a decent-sized review of this debacle of a book; it's bad enough that I've read the book. If you're looking for a realistic outlook on Eastern European post 1991 condition - look elsewhere.

The Robber Barons of Moscow.......2004-08-29

Matthew Brzezinski, former reporter in the Moscow bureau of The Wall Street Journal (and nephew of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's anti-Soviet National Security Advisor) writes about his time in Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when a gambling mentality took over from the collapsed aspirations of Russia's 70 year experiment with Communism.

His book captures something of the atmosphere of Moscow and the former Soviet Union of the 1990s when anything seemed possible in the world of finance, set in a time and place in which Berezovsky, Gusinsky, and Potanin were discussed with the same awe (and envy) as Bezos, Case and (Martha) Stewart were in the United States.

One tale of a board meeting in the mid-1990s in the chapter "Potemkin Inc." (after the phrase "Potemkin village", a sham devised by 18th century bureaucrats to impress their sovereign) is particularly telling, not only about how far corporate governance has to go to attract foreign investors but also how the 'Soviet' mentality continues:

"One by one, the nine board members followed, one elderly official pausing by the microphone. 'Foreigners need to think about the future of the plant and about the welfare of its employees, not just about pumping profits,' he spat, white with anger. 'This meeting is over,' he added, storming off the stage."

Such comments have a familiar tone to consumers of Soviet propaganda. For 70 years the Soviet Union spoke of the horrors of Western imperialism, while at the same time running the most far-reaching totalitarian empire the world has ever seen.

At times Casino Moscow veers too much between being a personal memoir of his time in Moscow along with his growing relationship with Roberta and the larger story of the first few years of freedom in Russia. Snippets of the life of an expat in Moscow-the problems with personal staff, fears about safety, frustration with the petty bureaucracy-leave the reader wanting to learn more about what it is like to be in a country that has collapsed and is trying to find its place in the world community. Although I can sympathize with the desire for maintaining discretion regarding his wife's career, it was somewhat teasing that Brzezinski doesn't name her shadowy (although well known in Russian finance circles) and immensely profitable employer; he writes, "...I have taken the liberty of changing [her firm's name] to VSO, for Very Secretive Organization." Such subterfuge does little to dispel the notion of a cabal of financiers plotting the future of the world behind the scenes (which does not make Western capital look too attractive to its recipients).

Casino Moscow is an enjoyable book to read for anyone wondering about the beginnings of Russia's post-Soviet history.

Brzezinski Pontificating with Ethnocentric Tunnel Vision.......2004-08-08

Brezezinski offers nothing more than personal asinine butchered urban tales that appeal to people like himself--droll dunderheads lacking in both originality & sincerity. "Moskviche" would love to thank this "author."

Red Whine.......2004-02-17

I've never felt compelled to throw a book away. Until this one.
A reporter for a widely respected newspaper, dropped into '90s Moscow's whirling clash of cultures, should be able to come away with quite a collection of stories. And, to be fair, Brzezinski has some humorous stuff, and some interesting tales, but they're buried among too much personal detritus. There is far too much about the author, his family ties (enough already about "Uncle Zbig!") and his resentment of all things Russian. I've never read a book with such a smug (yet whiny) protagonist.
He didn't much like Russians (and had a big chip on his shoulder throughout the book), and he had little use for the expat community. With all his complaining, I wondered throughout this book why Brzezinski agreed to go to Russia, then why he stayed there, then why he bothered to write about it.
There's a good book somewhere in the Russia of the 1990s. This isn't it.

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