RBC - RosBusinessConsulting

Every summer we are told that there is traditionally little news in the summertime. As if to confirm this assertion, the anchormen of analytical programs go on vacation (some of them indefinitely), talk-shows are "frozen," and live radio programs become vapid. And here everything starts: blasts, arrests, removals. One hardly has time to turn once head and say "oh."

...And then I decide to catch some experienced newsman who is not on leave and ask him everything about our shaky and nervous summer lull.

- Are there any reasons at all for a lull in summer? I address this question to Professor Yury Rovensky, the General Director of RosBusinessConsulting.

- There aren't any. Business works non-stop. Many go on vacation, but you'll hardly hear about Siemens of Ford stopping their plans for some three weeks or about the London Exchange ceasing trade for a month. It is impossible! Government officials go on vacation strictly on schedule, so as to leave somebody "in charge."

- However, our MPs are mostly vacationing.

- Yet, a politician should not let himself be forgotten about even in summer. Especially, in the election year. Terrorists have no holidays at all, artists are at the peak of festivals, somebody has to separate Siamese twins, floods in Bangladesh occur in summer. As you see, a lull is hardly possible in summer. While on average we have a thousand news items a day, on a summer day there can be nine hundred of them, and on some day there can be one thousand and one hundred. It is within the limits of statistical error. Summer lull is a myth. There is news.

- But who would read them? In summer, people are either on leave or live in the country. And they want to forget about everything.

- It only seems to be like that. We have conducted surveys and found the contrary. As far as, for example, RBC's audience is concerned, even if these people do go on vacation, they still visit us from their hotel or an Internet cafe to follow the news.

- There are like maniacs, aren't they?

- No. They are quite normal. In fact, doctors have proven that people in this business cannot leave their informational field for a long time. Otherwise, after the vacation it will cost them more nerves to come back to their work. An when on vacation, they stay not where most of their compatriots stay. If there are few Russians in a hotel, the hotelier is usually not in a hurry to connect it to a Russian TV channel. However, there certainly is access to the Internet in these five-star hotels, as their clients need it. So, it is quite simple: you look through the news and then rush to the sea.

- I wonder! I've always thought that the sentiment during a vacation should be quite different. Instead of following the news, one can play games, chat, or look at naked women.

- On the face of it, it looks like that. But you are obviously not a psychologist. Paradoxically, people look for entertainment on the Net not when they feel good but when they feel bad.

- It is not paradoxical at all then. I just did not think of it.

- Remember, there was a time when whole Russia was on a chat? Many were delighted: At what a pace the bast-shoe country is developing the cyberspace! However, serious psychologists were not happy. Their arguments were quite simple: if a person is ready to be on a chat literally for years, concealing his age, sex, real name, real address and the social status, he has enough to conceal. Therefore, complexes were pressing people, or they had no time and money to meet a real person in the real world and, for example, simply to go on tour with that person. However, over the past two years surveys have shown that Russians have left chats and XXX-sites.

- Do you mean the complexes have gone, but spiritual capacity and finances appeared for real contacts and real relationships in the real world? But I think that hard-working people have just had a surfeit of it.

- May be. But it is still good! This means our society is growing up. A friend of mine once gave a VCR to his elderly parents. And do you know how they were amusing themselves while they were getting used to it?

- Possibly, they watched old Soviet movies.

- Wrong you are. They watched the tape moving in and out, using the remote control unit. And they began to watch old Soviet movies, as they got used to that procedure.

- And what do you mean by this?

- The Internet is no longer a toy. It has become a workhorse, and instrument for promotion in life.

- Aren't these celebrations premature? Actually, I very often recall one picture. The year of 1998, before the default. A luxurious Moscow office of a foreign company. A flock of employees takes a coffee break and picks up business magazines from a table at the reception. There is no guarantee that they will read or understand anything there. However, they will be looking it through with a smart look! Don't you think that the business press and business information in Russia still remain a matter of entourage and prestige?

- You are possibly right that entourage and prestigious accessories are far from being the least important things for any more or less successful person in Russia. But this is not bad at all. At the beginning, let a person read news by RBC because it is fashionable and prestigious. Just to begin with! He will be hooked in that way, and then he will begin to put letters together to compose words. And then he might acquire a taste for it and to begin analyzing…

- He would get more sophisticated, wouldn't he?

- And what do you think? Remember the business community of poorly educated "tough guys," wearing crimson jackets? Where are they? Although, less than ten years have passed since then. By the way, it is deeply misleading to assume that business information is consumed only by businesspeople or, at best, their top managers. It stopped being like that long ago. An average employee is also interested in what is going on in his market segment. Auditors and consulting companies are actively monitoring the market. The press, both specialized and "popular," is monitoring it too. Politicians of all ranks are monitoring it. And there are also a lot of scientific institutions, studying the market and its trends (I think not everybody knows that, but there are such scientific groups). There are processing business information very actively.

- Therefore, a poor student can read business news? Is that what you mean to say?

- And why not? A poor student you mentioned has at least three reasons to visit out page. First, he is most likely to have to submit his yearly thesis, dealing with, for example, the non-ferrous metals market. Second, his is looking for a part-time job. And third, he is already thinking of where he will make his career and/or continue his education after his graduation. Moreover, nobody would faint away now, if he openly admitted his intention to make a career. He would not dare to show such immodesty in the Soviet time! So, in fact, we are progressing…

- But the circle of these people is still narrow, and they are quite far from the grassroots.

- Generally, you are right. There are extremely few people in Russia who do business. As you understand, this is not a problem of the agency selling business information. In any event, we will find clients for ourselves. But where will the country go, whose citizens are still not allowed to be rich?

- Ask a simpler question please…

- Let's put it differently then. Do you remember our endless debates on a new national idea? In fact, we have tried everything we could: the idea of continuity of the Russian history, the traditional "God bless the nation," as well as "Russian national digitalization" and the idea of doubling the GDP within eight years. None of these has inspired the masses. However, there is the idea in America that has long been inspiring the masses there. It is every citizen's modest desire to become reach some day.

- I think a citizen of any country has such a dream. Possibly, even in, for example, Liberia.

- But not in Russia. If you conduct an opinion poll, using a huge sample, you will here the same answer practically from anyone: "For Heaven's sake, we do not want to be rich! We wish we could survive somehow, and that will do." And this is paradoxical.

- What is paradoxical?

- We are constantly being told that the hostility towards the business community in Russia is due to the awful social inequality. May be. However, this inequality should logically make millions of our citizens look for ways to get out of poverty and to move up from the social "bottom." However, they don't do that. The are lamenting, they want any successful people to be dispossessed of their property, but they don't look for a way to succeed. More exactly, they don't see it.

- And what can one do with such a society?

- Inform it! Everyone here is crying about the awful inequality in incomes between different social groups and between the capital of Russia and other regions. However, nobody is crying about the catastrophic informational inequality and the inequality in access to information. Yet, this gap can be more dangerous than the income gap!

- Aren't you exaggerating it? If a pauper is hungry, he is definitely not hungry for information.

- I can't agree with it. If you give a poor person free access to information on where the fishing rod is, he will start angling rather than will be trying to deprive a successful angler of his fish. Information is the way to prosperity. Connect every rural school to the Internet, and in ten years you will see that I am right. By the way, the public perfectly understands everything. I am sometimes bewildered to see specific groups of the public consuming and processing business information!

- The homeless?

- I don't know about the homeless yet, but, for example, I was going to see my friend the other day and heard quite normal elderly women discussing what would happen to oil prices after the war in Iraq. Could you imagine anything like that ten or fifteen years ago? Old ladies are analyzing oil prices!

- And what was their forecast?

- Quite reasonable: Whatever happens to oil prices on the world market, we will survive somehow…