Try

The Krasny Proletary plant, with which we had reached preliminary agreements, was the first to inform us of a change in its plans for cooperation. Soon after, it stopped producing CNC machines altogether: they were too expensive and attracted no buyers.

In the first half of 1992, we tried to improve our automation system and find new clients, but by summer it became clear that enterprises were not ready for such expenses. They could barely cover their current costs. We had to close the cooperative.

Teaching remained my only stable source of income, but it no longer covered even basic needs. A bitter feeling lingered. Everything I had built with so much effort suddenly became useless. The old system of values had collapsed, and a new one had yet to emerge. To survive and, if luck allowed, to find my place in this new, harsh, and unpredictable world, I had to let go of the old and look for something new, something I could eventually call my own.

I sold meat at the market, each time shrinking under the surprised looks of my students, who hardly expected to see their lecturer behind a counter piled with carcasses. I also brokered a deal between a state forestry enterprise and a shady outfit looking to ship timber abroad. When the first wagons arrived, there were no solid logs, only crooked, useless sticks. Back then, people could be dealt with brutally for far less. After that, every entrance into a dark stairwell felt like stepping into a trap. Places like that had become common sites of reckoning, and I caught myself hunching my shoulders, bracing to pay for a deception that wasn’t mine.

In the spring of 1992, I started my own company, called Try. Like many others at the time, I was doing what people then called “business.” Some acquaintances connected me with buyers, others with sellers. I paid commissions to the middlemen and kept the rest. I sold animal feed, sugar, and other goods, did my own bookkeeping, and filed reports. The earnings were just enough to stay afloat.

At the beginning of 1993, I started working with the Novgorod furniture plant as their de facto distributor. I found stores that agreed to sell their products, set up deliveries, and even helped load the goods. After a while, the director offered me a deal: I would hire his son-in-law, and in return, he would allocate us scarce goods. I agreed, and business finally started to pick up. Perhaps that was my first small success in those difficult years.