Russi Topi and other Delusions

Ushanka-The Iconic Russian Hat a.k.a. The Russi Topi

Out of the blue, I was contacted by a Russian chap I had once met at a conference. No prior message, no email, just a straight video call from his car. He claimed this was normal for them and immediately looped in a colleague. Nothing about Russia, or Russians, surprises me anymore, especially their business culture, or the apparent lack of it, so I didn’t react. From unscheduled calls to blunt emails and bullying tactics in meetings, it is all part of doing “Bizness wiz Mazeer Russha.” It was evening, I was free, so I let it slide.

He had called for the unlikeliest reason, one I could never have guessed. They wanted to discuss sourcing construction workers from India. They began by complaining about how hard it was to get labour import quotas, pitched it as a “great opportunity” for me, and even gave me a glimpse of Lubyanka, former KGB and now FSB headquarters, from the car window. He then went off on a tangent, cursing the “pederasts” who removed Zhelezny Felix, the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky that once stood in Lubyanka Square until 1991. He bragged about being hosted by some former Raja in India. It was half an hour of mostly irrelevant, headache-inducing chatter, of Soviet nostalgia, Russki swagger, and Putin-era imperial delusions than anything resembling business. Thankfully, he didn’t have a Z tattoo on him, or maybe he did.

I told them I would revert.

Sure enough, according to various reports, Russia now wants one million Indian workers to fill its labour gap. Low-wage, obedient, compliant workers, in their imagination. Post-Soviet Russia has long struggled to find blue-collar labour, a gap historically filled by legal and illegal migrants from Central Asian ex-Soviet republics, mostly Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Usually called “Gastarbeiters,” German for guest workers, they are also referred to by slurs such as Churka and Oleni. The ILO reports around 300,000 immigrant workers in Russia, though judging by public panic, one would think the number is ten times higher. Their wages were low, living conditions ranged from bad to atrocious, and their rights were virtually non-existent. They faced constant extortion, bribery, and racial profiling, all backed by institutionalised and culturally entrenched racism. They were also preyed upon by mafia gangs from their own diaspora, extorted for protection money or coerced into drug running.

They still came, because conditions back home were worse. Economies were fragile, politics even uglier. Different clans ran the bureaucracy, with dictators-for-life and their families at the helm of what could only be described as dystopian post-communist khalifates. Tajikistan endured a decade-long civil war through the 1990s between the old guard and Islamic radicals.

Over time, many obtained work permits, real and fake, both paid for. Some acquired Russian citizenship, brought over families, expanded their communities, and are no longer willing to work under the same conditions. Many climbed the economic ladder and became contractors, entrepreneurs, and business owners themselves.

This influx created friction. Some of these workers were not exactly model citizens. There were frequent reports of theft, gang violence, and a disturbing number of crimes against women, particularly Russian women.

Russia does have an ethnic Muslim population, but it is heavily Russified. Only after this new immigration wave did Islam become visibly present in public life. Roads blocked for prayers during festivals, animals sacrificed in public. Individually small incidents, but they provoked backlash in a society that has long tolerated authoritarianism but has little patience for cultural disruption. The breaking point came with the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in Moscow last year, carried out by Islamists from Tajikistan. The government tried to pin it on Ukrainian handlers through its propaganda machine, and hardly anyone believed it.

The response was predictable. A deeply racist and xenophobic society, backed by a rabble-rousing Duma, began demanding blood. Immigration services that had earlier milked migrant workers started cracking down instead, aided by OMON, the brutal riot police. Border controls tightened, deportations increased, and the tone hardened.

Meanwhile, conditions in Central Asia have slowly improved. The flow of new migrant workers has begun to dry up.

Russia has experimented before. It imported workers from Vietnam and still uses North Korean labour in forestry and pipeline construction in the Far East. The official justification is discipline and diligence, while locals disappear on week-long vodka binges once paid. North Korean labour comes under strict state contracts, leaving Russia hostage to a mercurial dictatorship. The Vietnamese experiment had problems too. Some could not adapt to the climate. Others formed criminal networks dealing in drugs, prostitution, and slave labour, becoming more trouble than they were worth.

Contrary to propaganda, not all rural Russian men are off fighting in Ukraine for obscene salaries, nor are their wives gleefully awaiting coffins and compensation. Most are stuck in low-paid provincial jobs, when not drinking, unwilling to relocate to major cities or adapt to high-pressure urban work. No Russian will accept half his official wage or share a room with twenty people and no toilet. More importantly, employers are not interested in hiring them anyway, regardless of what is claimed on television.

So the real question remains, where will the next wave of cheap labour come from?

Now Russia’s gaze has fallen on India. A traditional supplier of labour to the Gulf and, in Russian imagination, a land of mild, complacent, obedient low-wage workers. A myth not unlike the one some Russian women hold, that Indian men make ideal, obedient, faithful husbands.

Back to my callers. After hearing them out, I told them clearly that I had no experience in manpower supply. Still, since they had reached out, I made a few calls to friends in construction and spoke to manpower agents to understand market realities. What I learned was not encouraging, and I told them so.

I also dismantled a few of their assumptions. First, domestic wages for Indian workers are only slightly lower than in Russia, so why would anyone go? Second, there are no ready-made worker brigades sitting with passports and emigration clearance waiting to fly at a week’s notice. Even seasoned suppliers need four to six weeks to mobilise. Third, how exactly would communication work? Through sign language? Interpreters do not solve the problem when every trade involves heavy technical jargon. Frankly, whenever I hear a Russian speak Hindi, I beg them to stop. The same goes for most Desis speaking Russian, regardless of how many years they spent at the Russian Cultural Centre. Finally, with banking sanctions in place, how would wages be paid? Forget clever ideas about using Russia’s stockpile of Indian rupees. A new disbursal mechanism would require government-level agreements, and none exists.

They never called again. No follow-up, no thank you.

In theory, if a serious framework were built, covering recruitment, monitoring, permits, payment channels, and guarantees that workers would not be sent to the front, it might work. In practice, I remain sceptical. Indians are resilient and adaptable, and there is a small but successful Indian diaspora in Russia, including even a Duma MP of Bihari origin. Still, imagining a million dark-skinned, culturally alien Indians working across Russia without major social friction strains credibility.

The deeper problem is that there are almost no cultural, political, or economic bridges between the two countries today, and not much mutual respect either. Beyond the Nehru–Indira era of Indu-Russi Bhai-Bhai slogans, the only Russian thing widely known to Indians was the Russi Topi, the iconic Ushanka. Indispensable in their climate and immortalised in Mera Joota Hai Japani. That song, and the film Mera Naam Joker, were arguably the closest the two countries ever came in popular culture.

In Indian usage, though, topi often implies illusion, and topi pehnana means to fool someone. Every Indo-Russian business proposal I have encountered, from either side, accidental or deliberate, has turned out to be exactly that, a topi, an illusion that melted like snow in sunlight. This one was no different.

And let’s not forget the recent scandal where Indians lured with job offers in Russia ended up on the Ukrainian frontline.

Now, that is a textbook case of Russi Topi.