I Watched Russia Join The World’s Markets. Now It All Feels Like an Illusion

To open Bloomberg’s first news bureau in Eastern Europe—and the fourth for the company in all of Europe—the directions were simple: Identify a space that was suitable for a big international financial firm but had something “wrong” with it. In other words, not too perfect. As a young company, we didn’t want to come off as arrogant. So in Prague, in 1993, we found an office with a fabulous view directly onto Old Town Square’s famous clock tower, with just one catch: It could only be reached by walking up five flights of steep, worn, stone stairs. We rapidly hired local staff in Prague, and then expanded to Warsaw and Budapest, working from apartments or hotel rooms until we secured new offices. Moscow was the inevitable next step.

For me, personally, it was a natural progression. My last name is Ukrainian, although my family’s from a city that resides inside Belarus. My father’s mother was born in Russia, and my mother’s family is from a small town in Poland. I’m here because my Polish grandfather chose to leave in 1920, avoiding the fate of his relatives, who died during the Holocaust. While I was in college, where my adviser’s (short-lived) specialty was East Germany, I traveled to Communist Poland to research the Catholic Church’s influence on the opposition Solidarity labor movement and to interview then-union leader Lech Walesa.