Chapter III
From Poor Student to Wealthy Entrepreneur

Arthur finished school among the top students, mainly thanks to his parents getting him a tutor. They dreamed of him being accepted into a respected college. He studied earnestly and, with his father's help, he entered a prestigious Moscow institute, what made his parents happy and proud.

His first year was hard but in his second year he was able to find some free time for himself. He started going to various parties with friends but they didn't particularly attract him or give him much pleasure.

The parties mainly revolved around irresponsible thrills – drinking, making low-class jokes, and spending time with some girl or other who was devoid of any moral standards. He'd wake up in the morning with a person who meant nothing to him and what he felt wasn't any personal satisfaction but more a kind of emptiness or dullness in his head. He thought to himself, "Is this really what life is all about?"

Just to get some animalistic sex, he would have to go to the other side of Moscow, breathe cigarette smoke, drink lousy cocktails, listen to dirty jokes, participate in dumb conversations, criticize someone or other, and discuss the latest gossip.

He really preferred to go to the theater and meet interesting people. Many of his fellow students would snicker at him about this, but it didn't bother him.

Likewise, his teachers caused him to think about the meaning of life. After all, they were people assumed, by default, to be leaders; they were expected to know the answers to many questions and to help society prosper.

They got a good salary with benefits at the institute, and it wasn't that hard to get their degrees. That's why many teachers, former students of the institute themselves, had been eager to work there after they finished their studies or, having worked for some time in their fields, they returned to the institute to assume teaching duties. Arthur observed that they were not the happiest of people.

To get on the staff, some of them resorted to ugly tactics: they would spread stories of something bad a colleague had done, scheme against them, and try to use their connections to get a position they wanted.

Over time, they became more bitter and dissatisfied; many began to drink despite their growing salaries and high degrees. Only two teachers differentiated themselves from the rest through their calmness and peacefulness. You could tell that they wanted no part of this "office politics". They came from good families.

One of the older teachers surprised Arthur. He had taught courses on scientific communism and often spoke of morals. At the very start of the perestroika^[2] period, however, he left the institute and opened a bar. He sold liquor to students and made a number of shady deals.

Arthur thought about all these things many times and asked teachers about the meaning of life. They told him that the reason for being was to raise oneself in society's standing. "We should become socially successful individuals, accomplished professionally, becoming, for instance, engineers, officers, doctors, leaders…"

This was nothing new to him; they had said the same stuff in school. "All right," he thought, "So I devote from 20 to 30 years of my life to be a professor. And that's all? That's the meaning of life?

Once, however, Arthur was at a reception for a well-known artist who had attained everything he had dreamed of in his career – fame, fortune, devotees. Yet the artist himself admitted that he was feeling less and less happy about life, although he led an exciting lifestyle and increasingly received awards and gained new admirers. This all forced Arthur to consider and reconsider his future. At any rate, he knew that it was important for him to graduate, but then after that he would make a cardinal change in his life.

While still a schoolboy, Arthur knew that physical health was a requirement in life – without it you could neither attain much nor would you really enjoy it. He understood that you had to pay attention to your body. He was glad to do it: he actively played several sport games, hiked in summer, practiced bodybuilding and had a strong, tight body.

* * *

Just before Arthur graduated in the late 1980s, perestroika had begun.

In his last year, he read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelag. He saw the internal rot of the system which had inflicted its deceit, lies, and forced on tens of millions of people. He had no desire to work for the government, although he was offered work there, work which would've given him the opportunity to travel abroad regularly, a rare and special perk in those days. He readily rejected a number of tempting offers, some of which came as a result of his parents' connections and others which came as a 'package deal' from families offering a daughter. For months he had gotten a series of invitations from very influential people who offered him to get to know and marry their daughters. It turns out he was quite the promising bachelor: he neither drank nor smoked and his education promised an excellent career.

One well-connected man put it like this, "Look, as a wedding present I'll give you a new GAZ-24 car and keys to your own condo and I'll help you get ahead in your career." But he refused all the tempting offers and preferred to get his diploma free of any ties that would obligate him after graduation.

He passed his exams quite well, graduating with honors. He stayed in the dorm for several months afterward because he had injured his knee in sports.

Those days the first manifestations of freedom of speech appeared – television and newspapers didn't have communist slogans. Privately-owned stores and restaurants arrived, ushering in a new milestone in the economy.

One day at lunch in the institute's cafeteria, he met a man named Orlovsky. He offered Arthur a job taking care of certain boxes he would bring to him. "Hey, you can't walk anyway yet. May as well get paid for doing something," he told Arthur with a wink.

His last name of Orlovsky certainly fit him well – he looked like an eagle.^[3] Although his name had Slavic origins, his ethnic origins were Jewish, a fact he did not try to hide.

When asked what he did for a living, he would say he was an 'entrepreneur' or 'businessman. Orlovsky's business within the institute was procurement of various types of commercial-grade equipment.

A month later, they once again met in the institute's cafe, started talking, and became friends. Orlovsky had remembered Arthur to be honest and responsible and offered him a job working with him for good money. The work was rather interesting and they travelled a lot. The essence of the job was first to buy something, and then to sell that 'something'. Entrepreneurial blood coursed in Orlovsky's veins; he knew what would be useful to buy or sell and from whom to whom.

He opened several underground shops, among which was one that made underwear. They were successful in selling their products and made a good profit at it. On top of his salary, with every sale Arthur got a good commission and within a year he had become very rich. He could easily make in a week what the institute's director made in a year. And he didn't have to go to any party meetings or participate in dirty office politics.

He bought himself a new Zhiguli car, a large, well-appointed condo in Moscow, and also one for his parents, plus, their lifelong dream – a weekend cabin.

And so it was natural that in one of their business trips, when joint ventures were just in their inception, he asked Orlovsky what this busy life was for. Orlovsky told him, "You can achieve some title or place in society, but if you don't have money, there's no point. If you have money, you can do what you want and own what you want." In this way, Orlovsky planted the seed in Arthur to have "money for money's sake."

Arthur decided to work a year for Orlovsky and then go his own way. He had gotten everything he wanted and he could take a vacation wherever he wanted. This was pretty much anyone's dream, yet still, he wanted more and more. He dived in deeper to this 'whirlpool of life', where money was the main goal, and from which it was not all that easy to get out. But in a year and a half something happened that sharply changed his life and the lives of all those connected to their business.

* * *

One night, he and Orlovsky got out of their car to have dinner. In front of them a new Mercedes and a new Russian car stopped and a couple of large guys got out. They grabbed Orlovsky by the neck and pounded him a few times against the wall.

They assumed Arthur was his driver and just told him that if he moved, they would cut him up into pieces and drop him onto the wet asphalt. Their faces didn't portend anything good. They began to ask Orlovsky why he hadn't given them any money. It wasn't dark yet and people were walking around, but no one dared to help or even call the police.

The guys threatened to Orlovsky and his family. They promised to damage him if he didn't give them a large sum of money. Arthur got frightened. Where would they get money? The guys left. Orlovsky was shaking in fear. He couldn't eat in the restaurant and he said in a trembling voice that he had his own local 'mob' guys for protection.

The next day, however, a bunch of other even bigger men showed up, many from the North Caucasus, and they demanded all his money and property. Orlovsky told Arthur that they would no longer be able to work together, that he should stay away from him, and he would have to quit the business and give the money to these hoodlums, otherwise things would end badly.

Arthur learned later that after a few days passed these hoods had grabbed Orlovsky's daughters on the way home from school, forced them into the car, scared them and told them to tell their father that the next time they would tie them up, torture them, and if they lived, return them to their father. Scared beyond belief, the daughters returned home and told their mother. Orlovsky's wife demanded that he would give them all their money.

Orlovsky sold everything he could, including his two large apartments but still couldn't raise the needed $5,000. Arthur gave him the money he needed, which surprised Orlovsky (those days you could've bought a large apartment or five to ten used cars with it). Then Orlovsky disappeared from his life. He heard rumors that he had immigrated to Israel and then to Western Europe, where he suffered from a serious heart attack.

* * *

Arthur took everything into consideration but he was sad to have let the elderly employees go, realizing quite well that they would hardly be able to find a new employer paying as well as Orlovsky did.

And then the ruble took an unexpected dive. Since Arthur's money was all invested in his apartment and car, and he had a few thousand dollars in cash, he lost very little. He was able to trade his two-bedroom apartment for two smaller ones. He lived in one and rented the other out. The money from the rental was enough to live on, plus he had that cash supply as a reserve. He also sold a few gold items he had purchased while working for Orlovsky.

And so, once again that question – what good is all this commotion in life?

He still had connections in business and he knew what activity would bring the most profit but he wasn't so anxious to throw himself into a new 'whirlpool'. What was most interesting – he had lost his infatuation with money. It wasn't fear; rather, he realized that you could earn money your whole life yet lose it all in a flash. Criminals, economic crisis, etc. – he had seen firsthand how some people lost in a day what had taken them a lifetime to earn. All that money lost its value; their lifelong labor had been for naught financially. What was interesting to note – the more money a person lost, the more he suffered.

He thought to himself, "Even if there was a completely secure bank, even if I could make myself a fortune and have everything I wanted, would that really constitute a purpose in life?"

A month after Orlovsky's disappearance something else happened again to affect Arthur's approach to life.