vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #146 / Business / Reading article...

Alexei Letunovsky has walked some rough roads — literally.

The director of the Far Eastern Mining and Construction Company, Letunovsky fills building and tunnel construction orders in a region that is struggling to pay for electricity, much less for multimillion dollar municipal and commercial projects.

Although the path has been difficult up to now, he has kept the company on track, if not wildly successful. At a recent party in Sedanka, engineers and road workers giddily toasted their latest accomplishment: the opening of a $55-million tunnel 30 km from Vladivostok.

The project, designed to shorten driving distances, took three years. Letunovsky says government companies financed the project, and for such orders, he often does not receive payment on time.

“Sometimes we have to pay our men with groceries instead of paying their salary,” said Letunovsky. “But we’ve never had a strike.”

In fact, the director says the company’s payroll has grown since 1993. Up to then, Letunovsky was one of the first in Vladivostok to lead the FEMCC out of government control to complete privatization, he said. In 1989, he made the company a cooperative, the communist system’s only permissible way to operate independently.

In the early 1990s (“a very difficult time”), Letunovsky formed a board of directors and led the company to buy its premises. He also bought vouchers from other companies.

The Siberian-born director says he thanks his upbringing for the ability to adapt to the rapid economic changes which have vanquished so many other Primorian companies. His mother had nine children, he said, five of whom died during collectivization and World War II. “The old system taught us how to get through hard times,” he said. “Our parents taught us how to work.”

Now the company is looking to the future. Leonid Doda, director of information analysis, says the company has more orders than it can fill. It has ideas of its own, like building tunnels through Vladivostok’s hills to shorten driving distances.

But for now, the company is just hoping it will be paid for the projects it has completed. “We have very faithful specialists, very smart,” said Letunovsky. “If the economy were good, we’d be a flourishing company.”