At one time I thought Russia was a totally isolated and totally self-sufficient. I found on one of my early trips to Moscow, in 1990, that wasn’t the case.
My company was one of the early ones trying to forge a relationship with Russia to drill and produce oil and aviation would be a necessary component and as the aviation advisor I was sent to define the use and arrange and coordinate with a Russian company to provide the airplane and helicopter support we would need.
Initially I wasn’t having much (actually none) success in making contact. Hours of sitting around the hotel waiting for translations and contacts to be made and meetings to be arranged.
Our resident managers wife took pity on me one day and asked if I would go with her to one of Moscow’s open air markets…it was the middle of the winter! Desperate to get out of the hotel I agreed and we bundled up against the below zero weather and took the subways (Moscow has a most architecturally wonderful system, built on the bones of the thousands of workers it took to build the ring) out to the market.
The market was spread across the hills of a large park and filled with vendors selling all kinds or wares from all over the communist world (Cuba, theRepublics, Africa and more). Trudging across the snow packed ground, the air heavy with the frozen breath of the amazingly large crowd, we surveyed the tables of mostly cloths made in China and other Russian republics.
At one table, where what I thought were toys, were some small military tanks. Crudely crafted I was assured they were models of authentic Russian tanks. As they were small (about 1” long)and of rough molding I took him at his word and bought the small tank for a few Rubles.
Years later I happened to “closely” examine the tank and to my surprise (well not really, I should have suspected) the “Made in Russia” tank had actually been “Made in China. отсутствие проблемы which means “no problem”.( ”Nyet problema'')
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