December 27, 1994 – Neva Bank Moscow Branch, Alexei's Office
The numbers were everywhere.
Spreadsheets covered Alexei's desk. Reports from every affiliate were stacked in precarious piles. Lebedev had produced a thirty-page summary of the year's performance, but even that was just the surface. Surgutneftegaz production figures. Shipping manifests from Murmansk. Railway tonnage reports. Port throughput statistics. Tanker charter rates. Deposit and loan data from the bank. Fee income breakdowns.
It was too much. And not enough.
Alexei stared at the wall of information, feeling the weight of it. Four years of building, and now the empire was too complex for one mind to track. He needed help. Not more managers—analysis. People who could make sense of the data, spot trends, predict problems before they happened.
Lebedev found him there, surrounded by paper. "You look like a general surveying a battlefield."
"A general has maps. Scouts. Intelligence. I have spreadsheets from three months ago."
Lebedev studied the chaos. "What do you need?"
"Eyes. Brains. People who can look at all this and tell me what it means. Not just accountants—analysts. Economists. People who understand patterns."
"You want to hire economists?"
"I want to hire the best. Young ones, hungry ones, ones who see the future instead of just recording the past."
Lebedev nodded slowly. "There are plenty in Moscow now. The old institutes are collapsing. Academics who spent decades studying Soviet planning are now selling vegetables at markets. Some of them are brilliant."
"Find them. Bring them here. I want a department—an analytical department—that can process everything. Surgutneftegaz production, shipping rates, currency movements, competitor activity. All of it."
Lebedev moved quickly. Within three days, he had identified a dozen candidates—former professors, research fellows, even a few graduate students who had been studying Western economics in secret. All of them were underemployed, desperate, and brilliant.
The interviews took place in a conference room at the bank. Alexei sat in on most of them, watching, listening, learning. The candidates were nervous at first—a nineteen-year-old interviewing them for a job—but their excitement about the work soon overcame their discomfort.
The first hire was a woman named Dr. Natalia Petrova, fifty-two, formerly of the Soviet Academy of Sciences' Institute of World Economy. She had spent twenty years studying Western financial systems, publishing papers that no one read, developing theories that no one tested. Now she could barely afford bread.
"You want me to analyze your data?" she asked, disbelief in her voice.
"I want you to build a system. A way of tracking everything—our operations, our competitors, the markets. I want to see patterns, predict trends, spot problems before they happen."
She studied him for a long moment. "You're serious."
"I'm serious. You'll have a budget, a staff, access to everything. Your only job is to make us smarter."
She took the job.
The second was a man named Dmitri Volkov—no relation—thirty-five, a mathematical genius who had designed algorithms for Soviet planning computers. He had been unemployed for two years, supporting his family by tutoring students in math.
"You want me to build models?" he asked.
"I want you to build models that tell me what's going to happen next. Oil prices, shipping rates, currency movements. If you can predict the future, I can profit from it."
He started the next day.
By the end of the week, Alexei had hired six analysts. By mid-January, he would have twelve.
Alexei gathered them in the conference room on their first day. Twelve people, ranging from a fifty-five-year-old academic to a twenty-three-year-old recent graduate. All of them brilliant. All of them grateful. All of them now working for Neva.
"You're probably wondering why a bank needs an analytical department," he began. "The answer is simple: information is the only advantage that lasts. We have trucks, ships, railways, ports, a bank. Our competitors have those too. What they don't have is the ability to see the future."
He walked to a whiteboard and drew a simple diagram.
"Surgutneftegaz produces oil. Our railway moves it to our ports. Our tankers carry it to market. Our bank finances the whole operation. That's the physical system. But there's another system—the information system. If we know when oil prices will rise, we can delay shipments. If we know when shipping rates will fall, we can renegotiate contracts. If we know what our competitors are doing, we can counter it."
He turned back to them.
"Your job is to build that information system. You'll have access to everything—our data, public data, whatever you can find. You'll build models, run analyses, produce reports. And you'll tell me what I need to know before I know I need it."
Natalia spoke up. "And if we're wrong?"
"Then we learn. And we try again. The goal isn't perfection—it's advantage. Small edges that add up over time."
The first reports arrived.
Natalia had analyzed Surgutneftegaz production data and identified a pattern: output dipped every winter due to pipeline freezing, but the company's forecasts didn't account for it. By adjusting their shipping schedule, Neva could avoid bottlenecks and capture higher prices in spring.
Dmitri had built a model of currency movements that predicted a slight ruble strengthening in January—unusual, but plausible. If correct, it meant they should delay some dollar conversions.
Others were working on competitor analysis, shipping rate trends, even political risk assessments.
Alexei reviewed their work with satisfaction. This was what he had been missing. Not just data, but insight. Not just history, but prediction.
Lebedev joined him. "They're good. Really good."
"They're the best we could find. And they're just getting started."
"The cost is significant—salaries, equipment, data subscriptions. Maybe two hundred thousand a year."
"A fraction of what we'll gain if they're right even half the time."
Lebedev nodded slowly. "You're thinking long-term again."
"The only term that matters."