Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Katy Fassett

Author:  Bill Browder

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir, History, Foreign, Politics, Business

380 pages, published February 3, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Red Notice is a real-life political thriller memoir written by American businessman Bill Browder who made multi-millions investing in Russia in the early days after the Berlin Wall came down.  After the Russians started to target Browder and his Hermitage Fund, his attorney Sergei Magnitsky was ruthlessly jailed and murdered by the Kremlin.  Browder then led an effort to expose the corruption inside Russia and obtain justice for Sergei.

Quotes 

“Seventy years of communism had destroyed the work ethic of an entire nation. Millions of Russians had been sent to the gulags for showing the slightest hint of personal initiative. The Soviets severely penalized independent thinkers, so the natural self-preservation reaction was to do as little as possible and hope that nobody would notice you.”

 

“I arrived in the late afternoon at Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport. I stared out of my window as the plane taxied to the terminal and was astonished to see the burned-out carcass of an Aeroflot passenger plane lying on the side of the runway. I had no idea how it had gotten there. Apparently it was too much of a bother for the airport authorities to have it moved. Welcome to Russia.”

 

“There’s a famous Russian proverb about this type of behavior. One day, a poor villager happens upon a magic talking fish that is ready to grant him a single wish. Overjoyed, the villager weighs his options: “Maybe a castle? Or even better—a thousand bars of gold? Why not a ship to sail the world?” As the villager is about to make his decision, the fish interrupts him to say that there is one important caveat: whatever the villager gets, his neighbor will receive two of the same. Without skipping a beat, the villager says, “In that case, please poke one of my eyes out.”

 

“After Khodorkovsky was found guilty, most of Russia’s oligarchs went one by one to Putin and said, ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, what can I do to make sure I won’t end up sitting in a cage?’ I wasn’t there, so I’m only speculating, but I imagine Putin’s response was something like this: ‘Fifty per cent.”

 

“The imagination is a horrible thing when it’s preoccupied with exactly how someone might try to kill you.”

 

“This whole exercise was teaching me that Russian business culture is closer to that of a prison yard than anything else. In prison, all you have is your reputation. Your position is hard-earned and it is not relinquished easily. When someone is crossing the yard coming for you, you cannot stand idly by. You have to kill him before he kills you. If you don’t, and if you manage to survive the attack, you’ll be deemed weak and before you know it, you will have lost your respect and become someone’s bitch. This is the calculus that every oligarch and every Russian politician goes through every day.”

 

“While Putin expected a bad reaction from the United States, he had no idea what kind of hornet’s nest he’d stirred up in his own country. One can criticize Russians for many things, but their love of children isn’t one of them. Russia is one of the only countries in the world where you can take a screaming child into a fancy restaurant and no one will give you a second look. Russians simply adore children.”

 

“Early in this book, I said that the feeling I got from buying a Polish stock that went up ten times was the best thing to ever happen to me in my career. But the feeling I had on that balcony in Brussels with Sergei’s widow and son, as we watched the largest lawmaking body in Europe recognize and condemn the injustices suffered by Sergei and his family, felt orders of magnitude better than any financial success I’ve ever had. If finding a ten bagger in the stock market was a highlight of my life before, there is no feeling as satisfying as getting some measure of justice in a highly unjust world.”

 

“This was not what they wanted to hear because ever since Barack Obama had become president in 2009, the main policy of the US government toward Russia had been one of appeasement.”

My Take

Author Bill Browder knows how to tell a compelling tale and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the audio version of Red Notice.  The first half of the book takes you through his interesting childhood.  His Grandfather ran for President of the United States representing the Communist Party and his parents were both Socialists.  Browder rebelled by going into business with the aim of making as much money as possible.  He was able to do this by capitalizing on unique opportunities in Eastern Europe and then Russia.  During the second half of the book, the Russian government turned on Browder and killed his attorney, the idealistic Sergei Magnitsky.  Browder then recounts his pursuit of justice against Vladimir Putin and his henchmen in honor of Sergei.  A captivating read from start to finish.