Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett

From October 21 to October 25, 2008, a business and cultural delegation from Oklahoma City headed by Mayor Mick Cornett visited Ulyanovsk. Members of the delegation held meetings and conducted discussions with Ulyanovsk officials, the executives of area companies, as well as cultural and community leaders. Honored guests from Oklahoma visited the Aviastar-SP aircraft factory, the UAZ automobile manufacturing plant, the Volga-Dnepr transportation company, and many other businesses in Ulyanovsk. Mayor Cornett and his counterpart Mayor Sergei Yermakov of the city of Ulyanovsk signed an official sister cities agreement on October 22, 2008. The delegation also viewed a presentation of the investment and economic potential of Ulyanovsk region and met with Governor Morozov.

While in the Russian capital, members of the delegation participated in a reception with the Vice Mayor of Moscow Mr. Vinogradov, visited the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the American Embassy. Russian-American Business magazine and Sister Cities International of Oklahoma City organized the trip.

– Mayor Cornett, what was the program of your stay in Russia?

– Our purpose was to encourage and facilitate the existing sister city relationship with Ulyanovsk. We took the opportunity also to take a look at American business centers in Moscow. We also tried to encourage cultural exchange between Oklahoma City and Ulyanovsk. Altogether, it was a combination of business and culture with the priority of establishing personal relationships that we can build on later.

We spent the first two days in Moscow and then we spent the better part of the next four days in Ulyanovsk before returning to Moscow again for a day. 

– Ulyanovsk and Oklahoma City are finally sister cities after twelve years of partnership. How do you see the future of that relationship?

– Well, I think, on a couple of levels. I am going to continue to look for opportunities that would be available to Oklahoma City companies for doing business in Ulyanovsk. Secondly, I think that we can establish some longer relationships on a cultural basis. Specifically, we are going to try to encourage some of our schoolchildren to exchange correspondence with kids their age in other countries. I think that kids in both cities would benefit. I believe that this kind of dialogue can mushroom into things that we cannot even imagine today. Building those types of relationships can create other things.

We are also going to be sending some letters to local universities about developing stronger relationships with the university in Ulyanovsk.

We will also be inviting the Mayor of Ulyanovsk to come and visit us. He indicated that he would like to come.

– I understand that you visited an elementary school in Russia. How was it?

– We visited what I would call a grade school. The children were wonderful. The children and the teachers had prepared quite extensively for our visit. The children had practiced their English and written letters to our schoolchildren. They performed a talent show. We visited a Physical Education class. You could see that they were very warm toward Americans. They were impressed that we would come all the way from the U.S. and visit them. I felt as though that visit to the school was probably the experience I will cherish the most, long term. It was a chance to interact with a whole new generation that knows nothing about past problems between the United States and Russia. At the same time, that gives you hope for the future that the problems that have existed between the two countries in the past have a decreased chance of happening in the future. 

– Some people in the United States continue to have archaic and stereotypical perceptions of Russia – they view it as a monolithic state with vestiges of the Soviet system. Media coverage is partly responsible for that… How did you find today’s Russia? What impressed you the most in Moscow and Ulyanovsk?

– I sense that there is a little distrust between the countries still. I think that this is where the cultural exchange can start to break down some of those barriers. The more people from the United States visit Russia and vice-versa, the less distrust there will be. Once you lessen that level of distrust, you really will be able to open up avenues for future collaboration.

I think personal relationships are key to removing the barriers. Of course, they are much less formidable now than they were a generation ago, but they still exist.

I think that on the local level people are ready to have a constructive partnership with America. They are into job creation, just like we are. They are trying to create a pro-business environment and create vibrant cities – in the same way we are doing it here. I am less convinced that on the federal level things are getting better. Maybe they are, maybe they are not. But on the local level, our city to their city, I have no doubt that there are no hidden agendas. We both want to create better communities and recognize that we have something to offer to each other.

What impressed me the most? I guess, the warmth of the Russian people, the sincerity. There is a wholesome goodness.

To answer any question about our visit, you really have to separate the two cities. It is just like New York is different from Oklahoma City. An experience in one of those cities is completely different from an experience in the other city. They are both fascinating in their own way. Moscow is fascinating in a kind of frenetic, artistic way. The statute of Peter the Great, I thought, was one of the most magnificent pieces of art that I’ve ever seen. In Ulyanovsk, I think the two take-homes were the beauty of the river and the warmth of the people and the sincerity of the mayor. We were received very well.    

– What question did people in Russia ask you the most?

– It was mostly us doing the asking because we were the visitors. To answer you, I think the question I was asked the most frequently when talking to the representatives of the business community was about ideas and advice for Russian companies wishing to find partners in the U.S. I did develop some opinions on the communications and marketing side of the equation. In touring the construction going on at the Miller brewery and also the Mars Corporation, it was interesting to see that the Russian government was willing to negotiate incentives for business deals – just as American cities would be. That will go a long way to getting American companies more interested.

– What questions did you ask?

– How can we do business together? What Oklahoma companies might it make sense for us to target? I am still going through a lot of that in my mind.

I think that the marketing issue is one of the most important ones. If you are going to market to the West, you almost certainly will need to use Western advertising and marketing strategies.

– What do Oklahoma City and Ulyanovsk have in common in the sphere of business and beyond?

– First, we are about the same size. From that standpoint, I think that there are a lot of similarities in the way we deliver city services. I saw a great deal of similarities in the water delivery and electricity systems, as well as in providing basic day-to-day services.

Business-wise, they have a manufacturing component that, quite frankly, we can’t hang on to. Our manufacturing jobs are leaving and largely going to other countries, primarily Mexico. It was impressive to see how Ulyanovsk was able to hold on to its manufacturing jobs. I wish that we were better able to do that.

I think that many Russian markets are underserved as far as giving their people retail choices. Whereas in America, when you are shopping in the retail industry, many choices are available to you, it seemed that Russia had fewer choices. That, I think, is one of the areas that the government wishes to expand. They are trying to bring in more companies in order to offer better choices and create a more capitalistic system.

– The world is going through a major economic crisis. From your impressions, is the Russian economy holding steady in these difficult times?

– Moscow is being affected at the higher end. There are more than a few individuals – although it’s only a small percentage – in Moscow that have accumulated great wealth. Some of those have lost great fortunes. In Ulyanovsk I did not think that they were affected at all. I think that if you go to Russia, you would find that most people are not invested in the stock market, not the Russian stock market, not the U.S. stock market, or anything else. They consider themselves to a large extent unaffected. They perceive it as an issue that Moscow is going to have to deal with, or New York is going to have to deal with, and Paris is going to have to deal with – but they themselves do not have to deal with it. Their lives are going on just like before.

Russia, on the other hand, is going to be affected in a lot of ways that Oklahoma and Texas are affected because it is such an energy-based economy. If the price of oil stays where it is, that will hurt both economies.   

– Is the government of Ulyanovsk planning to visit Oklahoma? 

– We had not talked about the exact timing of it yet, but, of course, a visit is planned. Our sister cities organization will be involved in coordinating this trip. Personally, I’d like to see it happen as soon as possible. I assume the Mayor of Ulyanovsk has a preference as to whether he would like to come in the winter or the summer.

– The judicial exchange program between Oklahoma City and Ulyanovsk is very strong. What are the benefits that this collaboration brings?

– I think any cultural exchange like that brings a benefit. In the case of judges, you have what I call opinion leaders. When those judges return to their respective communities, they interact with a great number of other people. I think that as a relationship this program is doing well because it has got funding. There is no shortage here of people that would like to go to Russia and vice-versa, but the funding is always an issue.

– Mayor Cornett, in Russia you have participated in both official and informal meetings with people – not only businessmen and politicians, but also ordinary people. Were you able to understand the enigmatic Russian soul?

– I was impressed by it. I do not know if I understood it. I came away with a realization of how genuine it was. There is a high value system in Russia, a high level of morality. That, I think, is dwindling in the United States. Of course, it has not gone away and certainly it varies from city to city, culture to culture, and family to family. What I witnessed was very impressive. There seemed to be a priority on the family unit. You see multi-generation families living in the same house. I think that this is a healthy perspective to provide to all generations.

One of the shortcomings that we have in America is that we tend to congregate with those like us. That can come down to things like age, or income, or color of skin – all sorts of different criteria. In Russia’s case, at least in the age category, they are doing a great job of having an interaction between people of all ages. I think that you can learn so much from people who are not like you. Diversity is a wonderful thing. Anything that provides diversifying encounters helps create a healthier, accepting community. I’d like to see Americans adopt some of those Russian standards.

– As a professional journalist – I know that you used to be a TV news anchor – you must have been paying attention to the media in Russia…

– As a viewer, I found two English-speaking channels on the cable system. There was the BBC and then Russia Today. I watched Russia Today extensively. I am not sure about the background on that network – it seemed to be a Western view of what goes on in Russia. I thought it was very enlightening to see that perspective. It allowed me to learn on an hourly or daily basis. I watched several hours a day of that television.

I also was able to interact with the journalists at the city hall when we signed the papers with the Mayor of Ulyanovsk. I found it to be very much like the United States – having come from that background. I was also a journalism professor at the University of Oklahoma. I taught advanced TV news classes. I found the broadcast and print media to be very similar to what one would encounter in the United States. I did not see any difference at all.

– On the whole, was the trip productive for the other members of the delegation?

– I think that our expectations were exceeded. We got a lot out of our visit. We enjoyed it even more than we expected to. Obviously, I have had a chance in the last few days that we’ve been back to tell people of the trip. If I have just 30 seconds to talk to them about it, I’ll tell them that the amount of public art that I witnessed in Moscow was many times more than what I had foreseen. I had no idea that both Lenin and Stalin were so into art and the architecture. The Volga river, just in its size, impressed me. The sincerity of the people in Ulyanovsk was easily felt. It was obvious how warm those people were, and how fortunate we are in Oklahoma City to have developed a relationship with such a group of people.