Igor Ansoff

Igor Ansoff was born in Vladivostok, Russia, on December 12, 1918. His father was an American born Russian from Evansville, Indiana and his mother was Russian from Moscow.

At the time of Igor’s birth, Ansoff senior was secretary to the American Consul General in Moscow, David R. Francis, and had just completed a cross-Siberian trip on behalf of the American Red Cross, examining living conditions in prisoner of war camps. This concluded with a trip to Japan in 1918 following which the family moved to Vladivostok. The United States had a large military and industrial presence in the Far East of Russia, with more than 3000 troops onm the ground under the command of General Graves. During the six years that it took for the Bolshevik revolution to make its way to Vladivostok, US Embassy’s were slowly being shut and their contents moved east. Many strategic records ended up in Tokyo and were destroyed in an earthquake and fire. Most of the rest of the embassy documents made their way to Vladivostok.

The Ansoff’s lived in Vladivostok until the US Embassy closed in 1924, whereupon they returned to Moscow, with Ansoff senior now a Soviet citizen. They travelled the 9,000km’s on the trans-siberian railway crossing Siberia in the middle of winter where temperatures of minus 35 Celsius are common. The cattle cars of the trans-siberian were heated by coal burning stoves and the occupants slept on straw laid out on timber bunks.

With his father's American origin, and his mother's "capitalist" background (her father had owned a small samovar factory in the town of Tula some hundred miles west of Moscow) the Ansoff’s were suspect as members of the "bourgeoisie" who were assumed to harbor their "counterrevolutionary" hopes and tendencies.

Igor’s life in Moscow engendered in him a distrust of any system (political or organizational) that claimed to be too perfect, too tidy. This spirit: “expressed itself through my inability to join other ‘systems’ in which I lived, studied and worked. It reinforced my drive to excel in order to force the system to recognize and reward me. And perversely, it also drove me to excel through making innovative contributions which challenged the systems cultures” (Ansoff, 1992)

During 1932-1933 two major events occurred in Soviet life. First, a massive and destructive famine followed by the commencement of the great purge. In 1933 there was also a thawing of the relationships between the USA and the Soviet Union which led to the re-opening of the US embassy in Moscow under Ambassador William Bullit

With the reestablishment of the American Embassy in Moscow, Ansoff senior was able to get a clerical job in the Embassy and at the same time apply for restoration of his American citizenship.

The Ansoff’s left Russia through Leningrad in September 1936 on a small freighter, which accommodated a dozen passengers. The ship took two weeks to cross the Atlantic ocean finally docking in New York.

A Russian Orthodox priest took Igor to the Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan which was one of two premier high schools in New York City. With the aid of the priest Igor’s grades were translated into American equivalents which made it possible for him to graduate in one year.

Igor graduated with the highest honors at the end of the year,

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