March 26, 1991, 10:30 AM – Café on Nevsky Prospect*
Boris Lebedev was waiting when Alexei arrived, a stack of papers spread across the marble table like a nervous hedgehog's spines. His coffee sat untouched, growing cold. His eyes had the hollow look of a man who had not slept in days.
"You need to see this," he said before Alexei could sit.
Alexei slid into the opposite chair, shrugging off his coat. The café was nearly empty—a few old men reading newspapers, a couple arguing in whispers, a waiter polishing glasses with the exhausted precision of Soviet service. No one paid them any attention.
"What is it?"
Lebedev pushed a document across the table. It was a government announcement, stamped with the seal of the Leningrad City Soviet, dated March 15, 1991. Alexei scanned it quickly, his eyes catching key phrases: *privatization of state assets... voucher system... worker ownership programs...*
"Read the third paragraph," Lebedev said.
Alexei found it. "All state-owned enterprises with more than two hundred employees are subject to privatization through the voucher mechanism. Workers will receive vouchers representing their share of enterprise value. These vouchers may be sold, traded, or used to acquire ownership stakes."
He looked up. "This is huge."
"This is revolutionary." Lebedev leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "The entire Soviet economy is being handed over to anyone with rubles and foresight. Factories, warehouses, trucking companies—everything is for sale, and the prices are essentially zero because no one has any idea what anything is worth."
Alexei's mind was already racing. "Trucking companies?"
Lebedev smiled—a thin, predatory expression that looked out of place on his banker's face. "Leningrad Trucking Enterprise #7. State-owned, twelve hundred employees, two hundred thirty vehicles, four repair facilities, three warehouses, and a depot near the port. It's bankrupt—hasn't turned a profit in three years, hasn't paid its workers in two months. The city wants to privatize it by June."
"How much?"
"That's the beauty of it. They're not selling it for cash. They're distributing vouchers to the workers. Each worker gets a piece of paper representing their share. Most of them have no idea what to do with it. They'll sell for next to nothing—a bottle of vodka, a week's groceries, a few rubles."
Alexei stared at the document. Two hundred thirty vehicles. Four repair facilities. Three warehouses. A depot near the port. It was everything he had dreamed of, assembled in one place, waiting to be taken.
"How do we do it?"
Lebedev pulled out another paper, this one covered in his own neat handwriting. "We buy vouchers. As many as possible, from as many workers as possible. The magic number is fifty-one percent—enough to control the enterprise. At current market rates, that's maybe two hundred thousand dollars. Maybe less if we're careful."
"Two hundred thousand." Alexei calculated. It was a significant chunk of his remaining capital, but the assets alone were worth ten times that. The trucks alone, even in poor condition, were worth millions.
"The workers will sell," Lebedev continued. "They're desperate. No wages, no hope, no future. A few hundred rubles for a piece of paper they don't understand? They'll jump at it."
"And the management? The directors?"
"They're part of the system. They'll get their own vouchers. Some will want to hold on, try to keep control. But most are old, tired, ready to retire. They'll sell too, if the price is right."
Alexei sat back, processing. This was different from the base operations—not theft, but legal acquisition. Not shadows, but daylight. A legitimate company, with a charter, with assets, with employees. A foundation for everything else.
"Can we do this quietly?" he asked. "If other buyers realize what's happening, prices will skyrocket."
Lebedev nodded. "That's the challenge. We need to buy vouchers without creating a market. Spread it out, use intermediaries, pay in cash, keep our mouths shut. It's doable, but it requires discipline."
"How long?"
"Two months, maybe three. The privatization won't be finalized until June. We have time."
Alexei looked at the document again. Leningrad Trucking Enterprise #7. Two hundred thirty vehicles. Four repair facilities. Three warehouses. A depot near the port.
It was infrastructure. Real infrastructure. The kind that would outlast the chaos.
"Do it," he said. "Start buying vouchers. Quietly. Use whoever you need—Ivan's veterans, Sasha's contacts, anyone who can be trusted. I want fifty-one percent by May."
Lebedev's eyes widened. "That's aggressive."
"That's necessary. The window is closing. Other people will figure this out eventually. We need to be first."
Lebedev gathered his papers, his movements quick with excitement. "I'll start today. There's a workers' meeting tomorrow at the enterprise. I'll send someone to gauge the mood, identify the desperate ones."
"Send Ivan. He reads people better than anyone."
Lebedev nodded, already standing. At the door, he paused and looked back. "Alexei, do you understand what this means? A legitimate company. Real assets. A future that doesn't depend on... on what we've been doing."
Alexei met his gaze. "I understand perfectly. That's why we're doing it."
Lebedev left. Alexei sat alone at the table, the privatization document still in his hands. Two hundred thirty vehicles. Four repair facilities. Three warehouses. A depot near the port.
His mother's voice echoed in his memory: "Be better than this world."
This was better. This was legitimate. This was building something that would last.
He folded the document and tucked it inside his coat, next to her photograph. Then he walked out into the grey afternoon, his mind already working through the next steps, the next moves, the next pieces of the puzzle.
The infrastructure was growing. One acquisition at a time.
March 27, 1991 – Workers' Meeting, Leningrad Trucking Enterprise #7
Ivan stood at the back of the crowd, a cap pulled low over his eyes, watching the show unfold.
The meeting was held in the enterprise's main repair bay, a cavernous space that smelled of grease and despair. Five hundred workers had gathered, their faces a map of exhaustion and anger. On a makeshift stage, three men in cheap suits spoke in the hollow language of Soviet bureaucracy—"restructuring," "privatization," "worker ownership"—words that meant nothing to men who hadn't been paid in two months.
Ivan listened with half an ear. His real attention was on the crowd, on the faces, on the calculations happening behind tired eyes.
He saw it clearly: the old ones, near retirement, too tired to fight. They would sell their vouchers for anything. The young ones, angry, looking for a way out. They might hold on, hoping for something better. The middle ones, desperate, with families to feed. They would sell for the right price.
After the meeting, he found Lebedev's contact—a clerk in the personnel office named Grigory, a thin man with a nervous twitch and hungry eyes. Grigory led him to a back office, away from the crowd.
"How many workers?" Ivan asked.
"Twelve hundred, give or take."
"How many will sell?"
Grigory shrugged. "Depends on the price. Offer a month's wages, half will sell. Offer two months, three-quarters. Offer enough, and they'll sell their grandmothers."
Ivan did the math. Twelve hundred workers. Fifty-one percent control required roughly six hundred twelve vouchers. At even a hundred dollars each—a fortune to these men—that was sixty-one thousand dollars. Well within their budget.
"Start a list," Ivan said. "Quietly. Workers you trust, who need money, who won't talk. We'll pay in cash, no questions, no paperwork until the transfer is official."
Grigory nodded, his eyes glittering with the excitement of conspiracy. "When do we start?"
"Now. Today. Every worker you approach, make sure they understand: silence is part of the deal. If word gets out, prices go up, and the money dries up."
Grigory understood. He was a bureaucrat, but he was also a survivor. He knew how the world worked.
Ivan left the depot, threading through crowds of workers who didn't know they were being harvested. He thought of Alexei, sitting in his apartment with his maps and his plans. The boy was building something real—not just deals, but a company. A legitimate enterprise that would outlast the chaos.
It was strange, following a sixteen-year-old. But the boy had vision. And vision, Ivan had learned, was rarer than courage.
March 28, 1991 – Volkov Apartment
Alexei added a new sheet to his wall of plans. This one was labeled **Leningrad Trucking Enterprise #7** and covered with numbers: workers, vouchers, costs, timelines, assets.
The numbers told a story. Two hundred thirty vehicles, average age eight years, average condition poor but serviceable. Four repair facilities with equipment worth perhaps two hundred thousand dollars. Three warehouses totaling fifteen thousand square meters. A depot near the port with direct rail access.
Total estimated value: four to five million dollars, even in the depressed market. Acquisition cost: perhaps two hundred thousand in vouchers, plus another fifty in bribes and fees.
A twenty-to-one return. The kind of opportunity that only came once in a lifetime.
He thought of his grandfather's lessons: "Fortune favors the prepared." He was prepared. He had capital, contacts, a team, a plan. When the opportunity appeared, he was ready to seize it.
But he also thought of his mother's words: "Be better than this world".Was acquisition better than theft? Was owning a company that had failed its workers any more noble than stripping bases of abandoned assets?
He didn't know. He suspected the distinction was academic. In the world that was coming, the only question was who owned what. The rest was just justification.
He picked up the phone and dialed Lebedev's number.
"Accelerate the timeline. I want control by April, not May. Pay whatever it takes."
Lebedev's voice was cautious. "That's risky. Prices will—"
"Prices will rise anyway, once word gets out. Better to move fast and pay a premium than move slow and lose everything."
A pause. Then, quietly: "You're right. I'll make it happen."
The line went dead. Alexei looked at his wall of plans, at the new sheet for Leningrad Trucking Enterprise #7, at the future taking shape in pencil and paper.
The infrastructure was growing. One acquisition at a time.
And somewhere in the darkness, the ghosts of his family watched—and waited to see what he would become.