Vitaliy graduated a calmer, more responsible young adult, but the rebel still lived under the surface, ready to come out. His thinking was not shaped like everyone else’s. Secretly, he was not a Communist, nor was he a patriot. He stayed self-centered, focused solely on his own well-being. His powerful mind had survived many brainwashing exercises during his forming years and helped him come up with solutions and ideas that were creative, out of the ordinary, and very successful. This type of thinking helped him advance fast through the ranks of the KGB First Chief Directorate, where he continued to follow in his father’s footsteps.
Vitaliy hated working for the KGB. He hated working for anyone for that matter, but of course the KGB was not something one resigned from; it was unconceivable, as bad as treason. There was no way out. Looking back though, joining the KGB had been the decision that had opened the door for him to become who he was today.
He spoke four languages fluently, his linguistic skills developed in early childhood by his multilingual family environment. His English was flawless and almost free of accent; his German and French were not bad either, and his unpracticed Farsi almost forgotten.
By 1981, he had shaped up and become an appreciated intelligence officer, working on assignments in Western Europe. Of course, having a KGB General for a father hadn’t hurt at all. The most coveted assignments were in Western Europe and North America, and by the time he had turned thirty, he had worked both regions. He was attracted mostly to assignments of an economic nature. He started handholding researchers and USSR delegates through their rarely seen business trips into the West to make sure they didn’t defect. He moved up to commercial contract negotiations and vetting of foreign corporations officials who wanted to open subsidiaries in the USSR. He arranged foreign trade contracts of hundreds of millions of Rubles, and in this role, he was the one getting the bribes. Corruption of the USSR commercial representatives was a well-known reality in the business circles of the West. Vitaliy was smart about the bribes he accepted. The shinier items, most coveted luxury watch, gold chain, VCR, or stereo were reserved for his commanding officer. He delivered the items personally to his boss, calling them ‘small gifts,’ and his boss never asked Vitaliy where they’d come from. Instead, he named Vitaliy for the next commercial assignment and the next one after that.
Vitaliy kept for himself the bulk of the bribes, stashing them away as hard currency or gold in places all over the West, together with contact information for key business people he had met. He had sworn his allegiance to the USSR, but when it came to his squirreled greenbacks he trusted the Western powers more. He was smart, greedy, and opportunistic, ruthlessly negotiating his bribes. Whenever he saw a way to grab a perk or make a profit, he didn’t hesitate. He also found the time to make friends with other young, ambitious, cutthroat Russian intelligence officers, friendships he cultivated carefully over the years.
One day it was over, one cold November day in 1991. Communism was done and over with, the KGB was falling apart, and Vitaliy was free again. He left the dissolving KGB without giving any notice, just scribbling a one-line resignation letter to get his papers released from Personnel. He exited the Lubyanka edifice without looking back and started building his fortune.
With the USSR falling apart and all the former Soviet Republics seeking their independence from Russia, there was chaos in the streets. Many of his Russian friends and contacts were in Russia, including the majority of his former KGB contacts, who had decided to return home instead of immigrating or seeking asylum in the West. Russia was also not a communist economy anymore. It was the dawn of Russian capitalism through a painful passage from communist, state-owned structures to the capitalist free market economy, a period one could call transitionism.
However, no one knew how to be a capitalist, how to think like one. Being citizens of a communist country for generations, never traveling outside the USSR, having mandatory but guaranteed jobs, and having lived in a system that made owning any kind of property or wealth a capital offense, no one knew how to become a capitalist overnight. No one except Vitaliy and other Foreign Intelligence officers who had stashed their cash outside of the country, had contacts in the real capitalist world, and