Roman Avdeev’s latest philanthropic project, Good Arithmetic, was founded this year to support Russia’s legion of orphans – recent estimates put the number as high as 700,000 – as children and young adults. For Avdeev, however, its most important function will be working to prevent orphanhood – the vast majority of abandoned children in Russia have parents living – and promote adoption.
“The government is spending a lot of money to improve conditions in orphanages but what we really need is to convince people that orphanages are not the answer,” he says. “Children should never have to grow up in orphanages. When you grow up like that it’s not possible to live normally, you just don’t acquire the knowledge of how to live independently that you do from growing up in a family.”
That, he adds, is why in 2002 he and his wife began taking orphans into their own home – now a complex of four houses – in Odintsovo, near Vnukovo airport on the western fringes of Moscow.
Given his philanthropic instincts, as well as his conviction that everyone should find and follow their true calling, it seems slightly surprising that Avdeev should have opted for a profession as cold-blooded as banking. He agrees: “As a child I dreamed of becoming a scientist, and if I could start again I would perhaps choose a different profession, maybe something humanitarian.”
Nevertheless, he says, he does like banking as a business – “at least, the type of banking we do. It’s real banking – quite ‘boring’ and conservative, but stable and useful.”
And it does, of course, allow Avdeev to indulge his passions – for charity, but also for travel and sport. He ran his first marathon this year and will run a second, in Munich, in October – after that, he says, he is considering trying his hand at a triathlon. He is also a keen climber and skier, taking his family every year to that favourite Russian oligarch playground, the French Alps.
Otherwise, though, Avdeev tends to steer clear of the destinations favoured by his richer compatriots. According to his website, where he catalogues and comments on the places he has visited, most of his travels have been in Russia – “the most beautiful country in the world” – and western Europe. He has been to the Maldives, but appears to have been unenthused: “You can find there beautiful nature, clean sea, but frankly speaking you soon get bored.”
He also, he says, prefers St Petersburg to Moscow – “it has more soul” – and the Russian countryside to either. He does yoga for two hours every morning – Russian magazine Spletnik recently published a picture of him doing the lotus position in full business regalia – and his favourite philosopher is French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre.
Russia could do with more billionaires like him.
