USMAN AND REGINA

It is nice to believe that somewhere out there is a fabulous El Dorado country. It is even better to realize this land is located in the neighborhood. There is always a last option: if all else fails, I will drop everything I do here and move over to Almetyevsk. Almetyevsk is beautiful, clean, the signboards could indeed create the false impression that only rich people live here

USMAN AND REGINA

They are peers; both of them are twenty years old. Usman Ismagilov is deputy mukhtasib (moral standards overseer). Regina Mingazetdinova is a fourth year student at the Economics department of the Petroleum Institute. Usman moved to this city in 1999 from Orenburg where he finished his first year of studies at the madrasah (Islamic religious school). He completed his ecclesiastic education here, at the local madrasah named after Razaeddin Fahretdin. Regina was born and raised locally. She entered the local Petroleum Institute after graduation from the 11th grade of her high school. Usmans position title sounds respectable for a twenty-year-old, but there's a more common name for his job — missionary. Regina holds the title of «Miss KVN-2001» of the Tatarstan Republic. She is a «state budget funded» student, i.e. she does not have to pay for her tuition. Instead, the state pays her an educational scholarship of 480 rubles per month as Regina is getting good grades. There was no other viable option for her — Regina's father died when she was young and her mother never remarried. Around two thirds of all students pay 14,000 — 15,000 per year of tuition at the institute. This is prohibitively expensive for Regina's mother, even though she works as deputy shop manager at «Radiopribor» plant. Usman also studied for free. He lived at the mosques boarding house during his studies. Usman lives at the mosque now as well. Regina lives with her mom in a small-sized three-room apartment, at the last, fifth floor of a 1960s panel house. The living room of their tidy apartment prominently displays a huge plush monkey, purple-colored for some strange reason.

So why all this detail?

Because Usman and Regina both live in Almetyevsk. All other Tatarstan residents living outside this city do sincerely believe that only rich people live here, in the oil capital of Tatarstan. «Well, we may be poor, but please visit Almetyevsk, you should see for yourself how much the oilmen make...» Those people probably should not be dissuaded — it is always good to believe that somewhere else there is a proverbial El Dorado, and it is even more pleasing to think that this place is real close to where one lives. A thought is always alive: if all else fails, I will drop everything I do here and move over to Almetyevsk.

Regina and Usman are living proof of the fact that people of all walks of life reside here, in Tatarstan's own «Kuwait». Probably among this city's residents there are those who smoke «Parliament» not «Marlboro», wear designer garments by Trussardi and sleep not on Russian-made beds but on custom-made furniture crafted in Finland or Italy. All parts of the country have their share of such rich people now. However, those rich folks are few and far between — a vast majority of people are as rich as the two persons I am describing here.

«Rich» in the previous paragraph does not have to be taken solely in an ironic sense of the word — they are rich in other sense as well. What do I mean by that? You will understand this when you finish this article about Usman and Regina.

In 1948 the first large-scale oil deposit was discovered in Tatarstan. It was the Romashkino oilfield that immediately joined the list of the worlds ten largest oil deposits. In 1949, the Tatarneft oil exploration and production trust was created. On April 28, 1950, the Resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers «committed» the Soviet Ministry of Petroleum Industry to «organizing the Tatneft company». And, quite naturally, to report to the relevant higher-ups upon completion of this task. The problem was that this setting up of the company was not an end in itself: it was just the beginning. Now the company had to extract oil — lots of it. The country needed large volumes of energy resources to rebuild itself after a devastating World War II. The country also needed the hard currency revenues — and petrodollars came in handy. Siberian oilfields were only being explored at that time; existing fields in Grozny and Baku did not provide enough oil for all the needs of the national economy... This way, Tatarstan became the strategic region of Russia — and with this growing importance of the region, just a Resolution of the government was not enough. What was required here was hard work, round the clock. And this work paid off — for several decades starting in the 1950s Soviet oil in the world market was known under the name «Romashkin» — after the major oilfield in Tatarstan. In several years, a traditionally rural Almetyevsk district achieved record-breaking levels of oil extraction — 100 million tons per year. In 1953, the township of Almetyevsk was transformed into a city. By 1971, Tatneft oilmen extracted the first billion of tons of oil and by 1981 — the second billion. Right now, we are looking at the fourth billion: as of January 1, 2002, cumulative stock oil production, in the specialists words, reached 2.734 billion tons.

Tatarstan oil is not as one would like it to be: it has an increased content of sulfurous compounds. It is also extracted from the depth of one or two kilometers. But Allah gave what he meant to give, and it is a sin to complain regarding Gods gift. And it is really hard to imagine Almetyevsk Tatars acting like some proverbial Kuwait resident riding white Lincolns, not having to work for a salary and starting to receive dividends from free-flowing oil straight at the maternity ward. There are many ethnic jokes about the Tatars, but none of these jokes ridicules the Tatars ethnic laziness. These folks are born workers. It is also evident from the way Almetyevsk oilfields look like.

They make a totally unexpected impression. Not a single nature protection activist, not even the one from the raging Greenpeace, would complain. The only sign of oil extraction are the rocker pumps standing here and there one by one or in small groups.

Times have changed a lot: in the past the oil extraction plan was handed down from the very top and later those same people at the top either awarded orders and medals or administered Communist party reprimands depending on the figures in the last report. Times have changed, they are hard in a different fashion: who could have thought that in the faraway Almetyevsk people will first-hand feel the slightest fluctuations of oil price at the world market?

In the old times anybody could write a letter addressed to Moscow, CPSU Central Committee, and start the letter with «Dear Mr. Khrushchev! We are the oilmen of the city of Almetyevsk. Before completion of this five-year plan period, we will be extracting as much oil as the Baku oilfields yield today. We are writing to you with one request...» And even though the Tatneft oilmen were only planning to get on par with and potentially produce more oil than Baku, party and the government were eager to meet the requests from Almetyevsk. After the letter to Nikita Khrushchev which started just like above, the funding was made available instantaneously, professors and tutors were seconded to the new institute immediately and Almetyevsk got its own undergraduate educational establishment — a branch of Moscow Petrochemical institute named after Gubkin. Funding for that branch was a separate line in the Soviet federal state budget. In 1992, the branch became an independent institute. By the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of Tatarstan Republic, the Almetyevsk branch rapidly grew in status: now among the founders of this Tatarstan university there is the republican Government. Most probably, a relevant expenditure line also appeared in the relevant section of the republican budget. But everyone in Almetyevsk knows who is really supporting the institute: it is the same Tatneft company because only the oil producers now have significant funds available. Today the annual volume of oil production of Tatneft exceeds 24 million tons. Oil is being extracted from 57 oilfields. Besides oil production, company processes oil, produces plastic-coated metal pipes, car tires, cables and a lot of other products. Over 90 thousand people work for Tatneft. Even rich people do not have money they do not need, but in the case of the university, funds were invested not even in promising new technologies but in a futures deal that was even more profitable.

Usman is outspoken: he has a lot of work. People are saved, in his opinion, by their faith. It is unusual to hear from a very young man that drinking alcohol, smoking, cheating people or striving for own enrichment by all means are all bad habits. Usman said: «The Achille's heel here is women, alcohol; just look at our abortion rate!» he heard about the local madrasah named after Razaeddin Fahretdin from «Moslem brothers» as he put it. He bought the ticket and came from Orenburg to Almetyevsk. Having finished his second and third year of studies at the madrasah, he received the title of imam-khatyb. That is, in secular terms he graduated from a higher ecclesiastical educational institution. Undergraduate ecclesiastical education in Tatarstan could be received at the Republican Islamic University in the capital city of the Republic.

Madrasah is located in the building of the city mosque named after Rinat Galeev. Mr. Galeev was heading the Tatneft company for a number of years — difficult years. The company built mosques in all surrounding villages and only after that in 1998 it built the cathedral mosque in the oil capital — Almetyevsk. There is a total of six mosques in Almetyevsk, but this one is the largest and the most beautiful.

First floor of the mosque houses student dormitories, second floor — library and classrooms. History, computer sciences, Russian, Arabic and Tatar languages are taught here as well as rhetoric, ecclesiastic sciences like fundamentals of shariat law, history of Islam, etc. All of the third floor is occupied by the spacious hall of prayer. Insofar there is not a lot of students: this year only ten students graduated.

There is not a hint of medieval religious zealotry at the mosque. It is full of light; democratic mood (thats not really called for in such places) is overflowing the place. One can hear somebody on the top floor loudly calling a friend going down the stairs. Nobody warns that the cellular phones are to be switched off. Over there a devout Moslem is engaged in a loud and heated discussion with a lady who looks at him sardonically, waves her hand at him and leaves. The devout Moslem turns out to be assistant professor of history of the Teacher Training Institute of the city of Naberezhnye Chelny. His name is Farit Shakurov. He comes to the mosque on Fridays with his sixteen-year-old son Aidar. Farit is proud of his ancestors — he is a descendant of the chief Russian mufti Abdusalam who was living during the reign of Russian tsar Nikolai Pavlovich. Other mosque visitors could not boast such a family tree.

According to statistics, only one out of 25 residents of the Republic visits the mosque — and only once a year at that. There are around 200,000 residents in Almetyevsk. Friday afternoon prayer is attended by around 300 people, approximately one out of ten of those is Russian. «That's too few people», — says young imam-khatyb Usman.

Petroleum institute at which Regina is studying is located in its old building that was recently restored. Source of funds for this restoration is no secret at all: inside the institute is very much like the Tatneft headquarter offices located in the center of the city. Professors and lecturers of the Institute earn about 8,000 rubles a month — this includes an additional payment from Tatneft via the Miloserdie (Charity) foundation. A benevolent act indeed — monthly salary of $300 is uncharacteristically high for a professor living in the Russian province.

Regina joined the university because, in her words, she did not have much of a choice. Neither she nor her mother had enough funds available to pay for her education in Kazan, Moscow or St-Petersburg. So be it — she became an economics student... After all, she would not be working as a foreman on the oil rig... A year from now she will be graduating and, most probably, looking for a job. Each year headquarters office of Tatneft hires a few graduates of the institute, but there are only a few of those lucky ones. It is hard to say how this was done earlier, but right now it does not look like hiring by Tatneft is done on the basis of nepotism. Students see among themselves those who perform scientific projects during the course of studies and are generally seen as being bright and having business acumen. Tatneft recruiters are present at the thesis presentations given by the graduating students. Those recruiters ask presenters various questions more often than not culminating in an offer to visit the personnel department of Tatneft on the next day. Regina says that all other students are envious of the picked ones but they do not blame them for being given by Tatneft a chance they deserve. Every student has the same starting position when their first year of studies begins. After that everything is in the students own hands.

A good illustration to this idea is Shafagat Tahautdinov — the main person in Almetyevsk, current general director of OAO Tatneft. There are various methods of rating companies, but the most reliable rating is known since long ago: all it takes is an Internet-connected computer and thirty seconds worth of work in any search engine. The idea is to query on the total volume of funds controlled by a particular company. In a few seconds a table will be displayed on the monitor to be printed later.

First place in this table will be occupied by OAO Lukoil and Vagit Alekperov with $5,960 million. Further on down there will be the names of Mikhail Khodorkovski («Yukos»), Oleg Deripaska («Bazovy Element»), Anatoly Chubais (RAO «UES of Russia»), Vladimir Bogdanov («Surgutneftegaz»), Alexei Mordashov («Severstal»), Victor Vekselberg («Renova») and Mikhail Fridman («Alfa Group»). In the ninth place, with $1,665 million of companys equity funds, will be the name of Shafagat Tahautdinov. And if one leaves in this list only energy sector enterprises, Tatneft general director will raise to the fourth place of the most successful managers in Russia — because, whether one likes it or not, in a normal market economy there is only one criteria of success of the company. And there is really no other criteria, to much chagrin of macroeconomics theorists. This factor is the real price of the company. Tatneft lags behind Lukoil, Yukos and RAO UES if one considers this factor, but its price is above, say, Gazprom.

And it is OK if Tatneft is not number one in this list: Tatneft has one advantage over other contenders. It did not make such a rapid start as other companies did, but right now it is on the upswing. Tatneft invested its profits in various promising enterprises of the republic — and it did not limited itself to investing in the republic only. One may find this unusual, but Tatneft is a supplier of fuel to the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Navy. The company put itself quite visibly on the economic map of the Crimean peninsula. However, this is a Kremlin-level political game, such games are definitely not for the modest provincial city of Almetyevsk which is home to Usman and Regina, neither of whom ever visited the Black Sea coast. By the way, Regina is a Latin name, its translation means «Queen».

P.S.

You no doubt would like to know how did the romance between our two protagonists develop? Well... There was no romance. Usman and Regina never met and do not even know about one another even though they live in one small-sized city. Probably they will learn about one another after publication of this story. It would be great, actually. They are excellent young people