Cornucopia

by John Kinsella

  Kennedy, who had always been fascinated by history, was often disturbed by how little he knew about the world beyond what was defined in Irish schools, at least when he was a lad: an endless reiteration of Anglo-Irish history, and an Anglo-centric view of the world. He didn’t doubt it was the same thing in schools elsewhere, but regretted the reduction such an approach induced in young minds, ideas that remained, for most people, fixed for the rest of their lives.

  “You see after the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks saw us as part of their Komintern expansion. They called the shots and fomented revolution, which by the way was started here in Canton. It was here Sun Yat-Sen and the revolutionary movement set up their base.

  “Lenin believed that the Russian Revolution could not survive without Communist revolutions in other countries, which in turn would become allies of the Soviet Union. However, from his own experience, he realised that in economically backward countries, which at that time Russia was, revolutionary leaders were not workers or peasants, but rather middle class intellectuals, the base of the bourgeois establishment. So Lenin based his plans on the support of bourgeois nationalism in imperialist dominated countries like China was at that time, which explained his interest in Sun Yat-Sen’s Kuomintang nationalist movement.”

  “Kuomintang?”

  “Yes, the nationalist party… three words: Kuo, or guo in pinyin, means nation, country; min, the people; and tang, party. Nation, people, party: KMT.”

  Pat nodded tucking the words into his memory for future use.

  “Sun Yat-Sen’s primary goal was the reunification of his country, and for that he needed help, so after being rejected by the imperial powers, he turned to Komintern. So you see, from the early twenties the Soviet Union supported his revolutionary movement, they provided Sun with military and political assistance and helped him to build his organization.

  “It was like that the first Russian mission arrived in China in 1920, and in 1923 they set up base here in Canton, which became the KMT’s capital. where under Michael Borodin’s direction, the Whampoa Military Academy was founded.”

  “I see.”

  “The Academy’s commander was Chiang Kai-Shek,” Wu added with a knowing smile, a fact which was lost on Pat as he struggled with the names.

  “Komintern’s press and propaganda department was headed by Mao Zedong. At the same time another future Communist leader, Zhou Enlai, was starting out at the Whampoa Military Academy, which by the way is just down the river from us here in Shamian,” he said pointing outside, “they set up the academy, on Whampoa Island,1 that’s where we now hold the Canton Fair.

  The Canton Fair made sense to Pat.

  “So you see the Russians succeeded in penetrating the entire structure of the KMT. But it didn’t last long, unfortunately for them their plans collapsed and the Chinese Communists massacred. A humiliating defeat for Stalin and his plans to draw China into the Soviet orbit, temporarily that is.”

  “What happened to Borodin? Asked Pat, vaguely confusing the revolutionary with the composer of Prince Igor.”

  “Borodin died in 1951, in a labour camp near Yakutsk in Siberia.”

  Momentarily Pat thought of Tarasov and the fate that awaited him if he returned to Moscow.

  “The Communist Revolution in 1949 was what really changed everything in Hong Kong,” Lao Wu continued, “A great many Mainland Chinese businessmen and refugees fled to the British colony. Then the British imposed a boycott, which meant Hong Kong was cut off from the Mainland. That’s when our family developed its business there, we brought in money and built textile factories and the refugees provided cheap labour, helping Hong Kong to survive.”

  Whatever. Pat understood revolutions were complicated. But the fact remained that Mao had won: China was still Communist, but in a form the Great Helmsman could have never imagined, even in his wildest dreams.

  S

  un Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek (standing behind Sun)

  The same went for Vietnam, Pat thought, Ho Chin Min had won the war and lost the peace. Uncle Ho had all but been consigned to history, like Mao Zedong, almost legendary symbols of nationalism and independence, embalmed mummies, forgotten by societies more concerned by the pursuit of work, wealth and happiness in their capitalist consumer world.

  “So you see Pat history is very complicated, especially that of China, where we adore money, but where, paradoxically, the Communist Party rules with nearly ninety million members.”

  “Yes, like my country, I mean Irish history is complicated, but things are on a smaller scale of course.”

  “Yes, everything in China is big.”

  “Of course … we also have fewer Communists,” added Pat.

  They both laughed.

  Old Wu re-served Pat with cold tea.

  “Our trouble today is corruption, I’m sorry to say it’s rife. Officials, wherever they are, have used their position to fill their pockets. I should not say this, but here in China corruption is very a family business. It’s almost become normal for those in a position of power to steal, using their families as a façade to hide their dishonest gains.”

  “Our family money has come from industry and investment, of course we have used our influence, who hasn’t. But common corruption is everywhere and its scale becomes visible whenever things go wrong, industrial disasters and the like.”

  1. Huangpu on the Jujiang River in Canton

  *

  The Dax fell two percent when the news came in of an armoured Russian incursion into the eastern frontier region of Ukraine. Fitzwilliams, rightly concerned, tried to call John Francis as Russia and the Ukraine wavered on the brink of all out war, threatening the Europe with disaster.

  Over the previous forty eight hours there had been reports and counter reports of armed clashes on the border east of Lugansk. This time, though there was no official confirmation, grim images of burnt out armoured personnel carriers and the bodies of dead Russian soldiers were visible for all to see on international news agencies Internet sites.

  Diplomats focused their attention on Moscow, pleading caution, whilst Western leaders and their ministers watched anxiously from their vacation villas in Tuscany, Ibiza or the French Riviera, hoping their vacation would not be spoilt by a war.

  At NATO’s headquarters in Brussels, Anders Rasmussen warned member nations the flash point had been reached, exhorting the alliance’s leaders to act against Russia’s aggression.

  Fitzwilliams was out of luck. As events threatened to escape control John Francis was boarding the Trans-Siberian Express at Beijing Railway Station, destination Moscow. There he planned to spend a week with Ekaterina before heading home to Dublin. The dramatic news did not change his plans; there was nothing he could do to prevent Mr Putin from starting an all out war, and a few more days would make little difference.

  With the words of Wu in his mind Pat Kennedy had jumped at the opportunity to join Francis for the trip. Moscow and Beijing, willingly or not, had been linked since Russian explorers had penetrated into the Siberian Far East in the nineteenth century and the chance to discover first hand those vast regions excited Kennedy’s imagination.

  Further, Putin’s bombastic gesticulations were becoming a cause for concern not only to the world but more specifically threatened INI’s business interests in Russia. A timely visit to Sergei Tarasov in Moscow would hopefully provide information as to the Russian leader’s real intentions.

  Beyond that, Pat was not about to miss out on the opportunity for a little adventure, he had always wanted to see the Russian heartland and ride the mythical train across the Eurasian steppe. Moscow and Petersburg he knew, as well as a few other cities, notably Ufa, where he had visited the Ural oilfields. Then there was the Chinese frontier crossing and the vast Mongolian plains, which he would now be able to see from the comfort of a VIP carriage on the Trans-Siberian railway.

  The two men had reserved compartments with a private bathroom, television and other facilities, including air-con
ditioning and even fresh flowers, paying the price for privacy by booking an entire compartment each, thanks to a little string pulling from INI in Moscow. This meant they had the use of the small restaurant at one end of the wagon and the bar at the other, reserved exclusively for the VIP travellers.

  T

  he Steppe

  Fortunately for them, China’s railways were modern and efficient, though there had been a number of high profile scandals including one that involved the head of China railways in Kunming who had been sentenced to death for his crimes, as had a former railways minister a couple of years previously.

  Once the travellers had been delivered to the train and their respective compartments, Francis, fearing his friend would get lost in the milling crowds of travellers, insisted that Kennedy refrain from exploring. The vast station, a monument to Chinese socialism and tradition, and a singular mix of architectural genres, was built to celebrate the Tenth Anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It was one of several mainline stations in the capital and certainly the most important in terms of size and passengers.

  Francis was passably concerned at the prospect of the nine thousand kilometre voyage with his sometimes over-active friend, uneasy at the thought Kennedy would become submerged by lassitude in the confinement of the train on its long journey westward, though at that precise moment, as the train slowly started to pull out of the station he was anything but bored, on the contrary Pat was as excited as a fourteen year-old setting out on his first holiday away from home without his parents.

  Most people would have been surprised that a man as busy as Kennedy could afford to spend five days and twelve hours on a train journey, but knowing Pat Kennedy as long as he had, nothing surprised Francis.

  As a young man, at the time of the Soviet Union and Mao’s China, Francis had made the same journey, when the experience was probably not so very different to that described by Peter Flaming in the account of his journey to Peking, as it was then known, in 1934. Since those heroic times the world had moved on and Francis was keen to see the changes that had taken place in the intervening decades.

  His first visit to the Soviet Union came at the height of the Cold War when Leonid Brezhnev ruled Russia. Francis had discovered an exciting and mysterious world, an alien planet, the evil axis, where he imagined dangers lurking on every street corner, spies and entrapments, and he wasn’t far off the mark. He remembered a trade exhibition in Leningrad where he traded a jazzy neck-tie for a carton of toxic Russia cigarettes, packed in rough paper board bearing a red star and a crude image of the Kremlin printed on its cover and on each packet. For some curious reason he still had the carton somewhere at home, a keepsake, still filled with the noxious hollow tubed cigarettes.

  At the time Moscow was grim, as was its food, its spartan comforts, its empty shops and the city’s dour citizens. The few ideas he had vaguely nurtured as a young man of a socialist paradise quickly evaporated. After a few days accompanied by overbearing party hacks and fellow travellers at Lenin University, where he had attended a conference on Soviet Economics, he was vaccinated against Soviet style Communism for life.

  There was little of interest until he met Kalevi Kyyrönen, a young Finn, who was studying Russian language, culture and economic history, with whom he developed a life long friendship. A month of Vodka fuelled nights with Kalevi and his friends taught John Francis more about Russia than he could have ever learned from a hundred dry conferences.

  RUPTURE

  Sergei Tarasov had been frequently photographed alongside Vladimir Putin in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. He was part of the Russian leader’s inner circle, consulted on matters of finance and relations with the EU, London and more in particular the City. Under Putin, Tarasov had prospered, become an even richer man.

  The first signs of discord came after the then Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych hurriedly signed Putin’s Asia Union agreement, to the great surprise of Brussels and the Ukrainian parliament. Once the initial shock was over, crowds began to gather in the Maidan in Kiev in protest against the forced rapprochement with Moscow. Until then the Ukrainian government had been engaged in a long process of negotiations with Brussels for an agreement on closer economic ties with the EU, which by the sudden stroke of a pen had become null and void, consigned to the trash can.

  To the astonishment and annoyance of Moscow, Ukrainians, with the exception of the Russophone east of the country, had no desire to return to Moscow’s fold, so with a nod from the Kremlin Yanukovych ordered a savage cracked down, which resulted in the tragic deaths of more than one hundred Maidan demonstrators. It was not a good time to spoil Putin’s moment of glory with the opening of the Sochi Winter Olympics at hand, in which, according to estimates, Russia had invested a staggering fifty five billion dollars.

  During the various receptions and ceremonies, Pat Kennedy, who stood in for Michael Fitzwilliams as one of Tarasov’s privileged guests, had discretely noted the Russian banker had not received the habitual bear hug from the great man, but a rather a distant handshake. The reason it seemed was Tarasov had pleaded in favour of Brussels’ demand for Ukrainian auto-determination and non-interference.

  Tarasov, like certain other very rich oligarchs, had many enemies in the Kremlin, some of whom were more then willing to pour poison in their leader’s ear. Amongst these was a certain Andrei Azhishchenkov, one of the shadowy denizens of the Kremlin, head of a vast and diverse business empire with interests in real estate, construction, media and entertainment companies as well as restaurants and nightclubs.

  Azhishchenkov bore a grudge against Tarasov that dated back to the early Yeltsin years, when Russia’s finance sector resembled the Wild West and banks sprung up on every street corner. One of these was a shaky establishment acquired to front the booming real estate holdings of Nikolai Yakovlevich Dermirshian, the head of one of Russia’s Mafiya fratry.

  Properties in cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg had fallen into Dermirshian’s hands almost by chance, the product of rampant corruption, debt and extortion. As soon as the Russian economy opened the property prices rocketed resulting not only in huge added values but also a unique opportunity to launder the organisation’s dirty money, all of which called for a compliant bank, or better still, Dermirshian’s own bank.

  Acquiring a struggling bank was easy, but running it more difficult, and Sergei Tarasov, a young and brilliant business school graduate, was hired to manage its restructuring. Tarasov was quick to seize the opportunity and thanks to his talent and discretion he quickly gained the confidence of his masters and was soon appointed him head of the resurgent bank.

  At that time Tarasov made acquaintance with a nameless aid of Anatoly Sobchak’s, the then mayor of Leningrad, who was to play a role in Mosbank’s property plans in the city. That aid was Vladimir Putin, a former student of Sobchak’s at Leningrad University1. They became friends and later Tarasov acted as one of Putin’s close advisors during his first presidential election campaign.

  In those early years Putin, the former KGB lieutenant colonel, was a frequent visitor at the up and coming banker’s newly acquired villa in Novo-Ogaryovo situated in the pine-scented woods on the outskirts of Moscow.

  There was only one black mark on Tarasov’s otherwise successful rise, he had been promoted over another ambitious candidate: a protégé of Andrei Azhishchenkov. As Mosbank grew and was transformed into InterBank, Azhishchenkov, future member of Putin’s inner circle, saw Tarasov as having evinced his protégé, forgetting it was Tarasov’s talents that had created what had become InterBank, an influential, highly profitable, international bank. Azhishchenkov was a man to bear grudges and as he watched Tarasov become the new leader’s confident he bode his time, waiting for his moment to come, and come it did in the early summer of 2014.

  Following Russia’s forced annexation of the Crimea, came an uncontrolled conjugation of events. The first was the invasion of the Donetsk Region by Russian paramilitary forces, then the acc
idental shooting down of a Malaysian jetliner, followed by economic sanctions imposed by the US and EU against Moscow.

  The effect of sanctions was marginal and it was not until Russia’s life blood was hit by the fourth event that real pain was felt. This was the result of serendipitous cyclic forces in the energy market, fortuitous from the point of view of the West. A conjuncture totally independent of political or strategic considerations by the opposing parties, which resulted in the: sudden oversupply of oil and the intervention of market forces, which was translated into the brutal collapse of prices.

  The US production of shale oil had reached record levels in a market where the increased production of conventional oil met with falling demand.

  Seventy percent of Russian exports consisted of oil and gas, the revenues from which made up half of the federal budget and a quarter of the Federation’s total GDP. Unexpectedly the Kremlin found itself forced to dig into its reserves, which substantial as they were could not last forever.

  Tarasov’s fall from grace had not been entirely unforeseeable. In an interview with The Times of London, he had spoke in favour of a negotiated solution to the Donetsk problem, which in the Kremlin’s eyes was not his or any other businessman’s prerogative, however rich and powerful he was.

  Had he deliberately distanced himself from Putin’s policy in sympathy for the Ukraine’s right to self determination? No, he was a businessman and felt no particular sympathy for Kiev. Had it been a political challenge? Again the answer was negative, he had no political ambitions. Or was it his inside knowledge as a banker and investor? The latter explanation was nearer to the point.