A senior Russian official, Andrei Belousov, discussed a shorthand way some people describe the state of Russian business, tracing it back to insights from a 1990s associate.
Belousov outlined a threefold framework: the “rat,” the “grunt,” and the “hoof.” In his analogy, the “rat” pounces, devours, and moves on. The “grunt” creates a pit where people crowd and push each other aside. The “hoof” represents a moose that takes a piece of moss from beneath the ice, toys with it, and finally lifts it away. He presented this at a plenary session of the export forum “Made in Russia,” during a discussion titled “Unicorns in the markets of the future.”
He clarified that the term unicorn does not appear in his taxonomy. “The unicorn story isn’t about fairy-tale marriages,” Belousov said. “It is about the moment when a technological breakthrough becomes a dominant influence in the market.”
The term unicorn was coined by Eileen Lee, founder of Cowboy Ventures, in the mid-2010s to describe startups valued at one billion dollars or more. The aim is to spotlight their extraordinary status. Dealroom data show that there are currently only a limited number of companies globally valued above one billion, including ByteDance in China, SpaceX founded by Elon Musk, and Epic Games in the gaming sector.
“People are always looking for the next move.”
During a TASS project interview series, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed how today’s business leaders differ from those of the 1990s. He suggested that modern entrepreneurs exercise less direct influence over state decisions in domestic policy, the economy, and security issues.
Putin noted that he knew many of the businessmen of that era and had worked with them. Earlier, while serving as prime minister in early 2012, he described the privatizations of the 1990s as flawed and suggested that business interests should compensate for questionable assets through a one-time payment.
He also acknowledged that today’s public sentiment toward entrepreneurship and private property is shaped not only by Soviet-era experiences but also by what happened in the 1990s. He remarked that discussions about the division of national resources were common at the time, speaking at a major industry gathering.
“There was nothing to live for.”
Anatoly Chubais, a leading architect of the 1990s reforms and the privatization program in Russia, wrote in a scholarly journal that the era caused significant damage to the economy and the population due to non-payment issues. The article’s abstract notes that policymakers and business leaders spent years trying to mitigate those effects.
Chubais has also argued that Russian society has not fully acknowledged the oligarchs’ role in stabilizing and rebuilding the economy over the past 25 years. He asserted that these figures helped restore collapsing enterprises, fill the budget, and ensure salaries for citizens.
Senator Franz Klintsevich responded by noting that in the 1990s some businessmen raised product prices for citizens and repatriated sizable sums abroad. He stressed that the economy still carries shadows from the 1991–2000 period and that income declarations from that era were not consistently aligned with Western reporting standards.
Billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who built his fortune in the 1990s, acknowledged that public reputations should not be whitewashed. He admitted in interviews that the primary motive in the 1990s was financial gain, while contemporary projects are often driven by other motivations. “People do not work solely for money anymore. My generation, graduates from Moscow State University, entered business in the early 1990s because they had little else to live on. Today, people are driven by different goals,” he observed.
“Business through the eyes of fathers and sons.”
Earlier research by NAFI surveyed Russian entrepreneurs and found that 52 percent feel it has become tougher to do business in Russia compared with the 1990s. Among respondents born between 1980 and 1991, 38 percent shared that view, while those born in 1957–1963 weighed in at 59 percent.
Fifty-five percent of younger businesspeople believe that operating in Russia now presents more challenges than it did three decades ago, with a small portion uncertain. Both groups identified the risk environment of the 1990s as the primary concern, citing safety threats and the potential for crime. The fear of legal repercussions or reputational damage has become more prominent today.
While among older respondents the sense that corruption levels have changed over the past thirty years is mixed, younger participants tend to perceive a worsening climate. This shift highlights evolving risk judgments across generations in the Russian business landscape.