Putin Leaves Private Businesses in the Cold

As Russian President Vladimir Putin keeps the world guessing what he's going to do about falling oil prices and the Western financial sanctions against giant Russian state-owned companies, people who turned Russia into a capitalist country are going through a difficult period of soul-searching. These people are entrepreneurs, founders of medium-sized companies, and for them, winter is coming.

Russia doesn't have a Mittelstand, the powerful cohort of medium-sized businesses like the one that ensures Germany's economic resilience and export might. In the 1990's and early 2000's, however, attempts were made to build one from scratch. Retail, agricultural and consumers goods manufacturing companies sprang up seemingly from nowhere, run by often eccentric but always charismatic leaders who became the darlings of a business press that was as new as their firms.