Russia Is Not About Vodka Anymore, It’s About Hackers. Should Russians Be Offended?
February 25, 2009 |
Yesterday an author of Ecommerce Journal published an interesting article about doing online business with Russian people supposedly based on the author’s own experience and it is no wonder that today all the Russian publications – both online and traditional media outlets – are full of reactions to that article as it suggests there’s a totally new perception of Russians now: my country is now associated with our coders, developers and hackers more than it traditionally is with fur hats and alcohol. But unfortunately after reading the article myself I can’t help but feel that an old lie is replaced with a new one for no apparent reason and there’s nothing really positive in trying to make a shift from bad to even worse.
Working for the last 3 years in online business myself, most of the time from my apartment in the middle of Siberia, I think I’ve tried many times to prove to everyone willing to listen that my country is not as barbaric as people in the US and frequently in the Western Europe tend to think about it. I don’t know exactly how many times I’ve explained that we actually have internet access in our homes – even those of us living far from Moscow – and that we don’t have bears walking the streets – even those of us living in the middle of Siberia. So I guess it’s not bad that people have finally realized that Russia is now a noticeable player in IT, not only in vodka manufacturing, but it does not feel good that everything we are supposed to do online is hacking everything we can and stealing money from credit cards owned by innocent people in the US or Europe.
Basically the author of the article replaces one set of stereotypes – “Vodka, frost, bears, matreshkas, hats with ear-flaps” – with a new set – “Carders, phishers, hackers, cheap scripts, shady schemes, exchangers, WebMoney”. And unfortunately I can’t help but feel it’s not quite fair to replace innocent things like matreshkas and ear-flaps with illegal phishing and hacking. True, many people in Russia do have unique skills in IT and apply them with enough talent to get noticed, and as with any skills these can be used for good or for bad and not all Russian coders apply such skills to create malware – some of them come up with impressive projects of their own while others work in well-known internet and software giants and it is pretty difficult to imagine exactly how many Russian developers work behind the scenes in companies like Google or Microsoft.
Really, I don’t know why it was necessary to come up with something that is supposed to make Russians happy – admitting our unique IT skills and our noble nature and ancient traditions – but refusing us the right to be a diverse nation with both good developers and hackers as well as entrepreneurs that don’t differ from entrepreneurs doing business in any other country – with the only exception being that we’ve been through a financial turmoil of this or that kind so many times that we are now creative enough to survive any new crisis the world economy can make us face.
Unfortunately after reading the description the author provides for a Russian partner in an internet business, I have a feeling that he only had one partner from Russia and simply does not have enough experience to judge us. No, we don’t really expect profits of 50% minimum or we won’t even consider working with you. And yes, we do use ICQ for communications with our local friends as ICQ is traditionally the most popular IM protocol in the former Soviet Union countries but we use Skype, Google Talk and whatever else you may need if we do business online – we are very early adopters in everything, communications means included.
What’s more, I think it is simply rude to talk about our New Year vacations lasting for 10 days and accusing us of forgetting about the priority you give to Catholic Christmas. Of course when you begin the new year on the 2nd or 3rd of January you won’t find your Russian partners online and working but we are simply doing exactly what you’ve been doing just days before that – celebrating our holiday. After all, we do not expect you to work during your Christmas vacations so why don’t you let us have ours for the holiday that we celebrate the most – New Year? Who exactly is to blame for the fact that the two vacations don’t coincide and you have your days off before the New Year while we enjoy our vacations in early January? We don’t try to insist you should work exactly when we do and we respect your own schedule so why don’t you respect ours?
Honestly, it may be a good idea to try and change the stereotypes from vodka to something else but is it really necessary to replace it with something negative like hackers and cybercrime? It now looks to me that whatever the Russians do – online or offline – there’s one huge idea in the conscience of people in the US: Russia is the country to be afraid of, no matter how much people from Russia pretend to be normal.
So it is no wonder that a Russian hacker now looks like a new Russian soldier or nuclear missile – it is the new weapon that is supposed to threaten the world from the East. As a Russian I don’t think it’s really that bad when the rest of the world is afraid of you – at least it restrains this “rest of the world” from attacking you. But on the other hand do we really have to serve as a menace to the world? We are not that dangerous, we are normal people with normal business ideas – some of us with excellent programming skills in addition – and we are not really that difficult to do business with. But the most important thing is that we are all different: same as you don’t expect all Americans to have the same habits and manners you should not really consider all Russians to be the same. And when we learn to deal with people based on their personal attitude and character instead of their nationality, we will finally reach the truly global internet where people will do business together without bothering about exactly how many thousands of miles separate the partners.
I have been looking at your blog for quite a while and have always found it interesting. Written from the view of another culture.
I believe the Russian and other governments do not do enough to act against these types of criminals. This is where the bad reputation is coming from. Any intelligent person realises that people are people no matter where they are from. This same trait is the root of the problem here.
If the governments demonstrate they will enforce the law then most of this just goes away.
Mike, thank you very much for the comment, I appreciate it that you find my point of view from across the ocean to be interesting.
You are quite right, it is often about the government enforcing measures to prevent crime like mentioned by the author of that article but recently I’ve seen quite a number of trials against hackers already here in Russia so maybe we are seeing the change. And it’s quite another thing that pretty often Russian hackers are employed by foreign criminals who already know how to make money off scripts written by the hackers.
I guess there’s another aspect to this: that of media coverage that pays way too much attention to Russian hackers and way too little to legitimate Russian developers and our startups that are numerous but rarely get noticed. I guess it’s just that covering negative points attracts more attention from readers.
I think many people should travel more and discover that the world is definitely what they think
Being online can help, but I still strongly believe that in person meeting is invaluable to understand people and culture.
Having hackers is probably a logical consequence of having high level developers: such a knowledge can be used in many ways, good or bad (you can still be on the good side if you are an “ethical hacker”, helping the net to become safer). And, considering that some hackers are highly payed to get some data, the dark side might be tempting…..
The net does not understand boundaries: without a global agreement between the countries on chasing hackers, those will always find a safe place to operate.
Oups, small edit to my comment:”I think many people should travel more and discover that the world is definitely NOT what they think”
Cristophe, thank you for the comment, with the small edit it makes tons of sense for the post
Of course the best way to actually understand other people is to travel and talk to real people face to face but online communities can also be helpful if one is actually willing to listen to points of view and ideas from others.
And it’s exactly what I’m talking about: any skill can be used for good or for bad and unfortunately people can easily be lured into the bad use if it is better paid. There’s nothing we can do about it before the web actually gets some joint efforts from governments trying to fix the situation but generalizing like this is not fair to a whole nation as well.
Be cool Svetlana.We are all the same.you say what you are.you dont have to span the big Banner that Russian IS normal.me as people who is not US or Europe Knows you are normal ,being known as carder or hacker wont effect something to us as Asian since it happen not in our country.I meant Not just Russian who can do hackers.in Asian there is alot of hacker,china and the rest of south east Asia.has also that hacking stereotype.but aren’t we worry,I think we should`t cause they “just American”Not A fancy stuff to me
Hey, Svetlana! 10 days of for New Year!? They’re confusing you with us lot in Sweden
.
Seriously, not many people in the spoiled west realize that a lot of the computer skills developed i Russia (and eastern europe) come from overcoming technical difficulty’s.
A friend was recently asked to fax(!) a crayon rubbing of her credit card in order to get an account at an American web hosting company. That’s primitive.
There is a great deal of arrogans in this. Especially if the kind of baiting you desribe in you post is going on.
How about a check list for acceptable international business practices? I’m going to set to work on one right now.
Oh. and I’m having some time off for Easter, being Swedish
@PerfectMoney: Of course there are many nations with multiple cliches surrounding what we are supposed to be and of course it may be better to simply ignore it but I genuinely enjoy having the place where people are willing to listen to me speaking from another point of view and from another side of the ocean. It really feels good and I am very happy every time someone emails me thanking me for sharing my opinion and helping them change their mind slightly on how Russians are.
Jonas, long time no talk, good to hear from you and thank you for the support!
Your idea about overcoming the technical difficulties is right on spot: we just face so many of them that we have no other options than try and find a way around
The example with the credit card is amazing, something I have never heard of before myself – totally ridiculous!
And I really think there is a need in this global community to try and learn what representatives of other nations really are – and writing acceptable business practices for international business is a great idea, I think we should all contribute with our voices from around the world and this could be a very useful resource to anyone looking for objective information on doing business in this or that country.
Finally, lucky you are about Easter, looks like we don’t get enough national holidays in Russia
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