Odyssey Moscow, Michael Calvey
Odyssey Moscow, Michael Calvey
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Odyssey Moscow
One American’s Journey from Russian Optimist to Prisoner of the State

Author: Michael Calvey

Narrator: Michael Calvey, Arthur Morey

Unabridged: 8 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: History Press

Published: 04/22/2025

Synopsis

It is dawn on Thursday, 14 February 2019, and armed FSB agents are raiding Michael Calvey’s Moscow apartment.He is being arrested for a crime that never happened.Twenty-eight years earlier, Calvey—a newly graduated, aspiring Wall Street hotshot—made a short trip from America to the recently collapsed USSR to look at potential investments. Sensing huge opportunity, he soon based himself in Moscow, where he lived through the “Wild East” years and went on to build several billion-dollar funds—earning enormous returns for Western investors as Russia opened up to international business. He gained a reputation that would lead to Bloomberg describing him as “a legend in the Russian market, with a reputed aversion to any kind of foul play.”But now, he finds himself thrown into Moscow’s notorious Matrosskaya Tishina prison on charges trumped up by local business rivals. As the White House and Kremlin argue about his incarceration, Calvey is caught in a Kafka-esque trap, denied access to evidence proving his innocence.Odyssey Moscow is the story not just of Michael Calvey, but of how Russia’s era of hope and aspiration finally died, and how light can be found in the darkest of places.

About Michael Calvey

Michael Calvey was a Founder and Co-Senior Partner of Baring Vostok, a private equity firm recognized for its early investments in numerous highly successful companies. Living in Moscow for almost three decades, he learned the language, married a Russian woman, and forged an unmatched network of contacts. Today, he is Chairman of Baring Ventures, which sold all its Russian assets after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and now focuses on other international markets. He is a US citizen living in Switzerland and the UK.

About Arthur Morey

Arthur Morey has recorded over two hundred audiobooks in history, fiction, science, business, and religion, earning a number of AudioFile Earphones Awards and two Audie Award nominations. He was an editor at two publishers and taught writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed. Arthur attended Harvard and the University of Chicago.

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Quotes

“A riveting tale of betrayal and lawlessness by the Russian Government, told by the most successful US investor in Russia. Calvey narrates an incredible story of creating a thriving business in Russia and with Russians over decades that is laid waste by the Kremlin. His harrowing experience in recent years—an innocent man caught and punished in the Russian criminal justice system—is told with clinical and chilling detail.” John Sullivan, US Ambassador to Russia, 2020–22

“I have known Michael for over twenty-five years, and I never met any other foreigner who appreciates the Russian spirit, perhaps even more than I do! Baring was the smartest, most reputable, and successful investor in Russia. That’s why his arrest and punishment were shocking to me and the entire business elite—it was so unfair and insane. We tried to help Mike as much as we could, but there’s not much you can do in Russia against the KGB. But he held up very well! Mike is a true hero.” Oleg Tinkov, Russian businessman and Putin critic

“From pioneering investor to financial titan to jail-time in Moscow’s most notorious prison—Mike Calvey has ventured deep inside the Russian enigma. He knows more about post-Communist Russia, good and bad, than almost any other Westerner on earth…One of the world’s most astute and successful asset managers, he’s a superb writer too, with an astonishing tale to tell.” The Telegraph

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