Telling Ukraine’s struggles in plastic
- Simon Kiwek
- 9. Feb.
- 9 Min. Lesezeit
How the businessman Alexander Surzhenko endured Ukraine’s post-communist apocalyptic turmoil from barter, bandits, and the battlefront.
The 1990s in the Wild East
From childhood, Alexander Surzhenko loved two things: history and building models. Both passions would shape his life.
However, his story began in the communist Soviet Union, a world ruled by rigid hierarchies and apodictic structures. Hence, Alexander‘s first education was technical. He graduated from the Aviation Technical Polytechnic and worked as a mechanic at Donetsk Airport.
At the same time, he studied at Donetsk University and chose Scythian archaeology – that ancient equestrian people who once ruled the steppes of Eurasia north of the Black Sea. He even published a few scientific papers and received a recommendation to study at Moscow State University, but he declined. Despite his studies in archaeology, he never pursued an academic career.
The First Years in Dnipro
Instead, he moved with his wife and daughter to Dnipro in 1986. He easily found work.
"I simply went to the nearest school and immediately got work as a
history teacher,"
he recalls. He spent eight happy years there, he remembers, witnessing the era of Perestroika and Glasnost. Alexander was already critical of Soviet reality, though he stresses that he was no dissident.
"The Soviet economic and political system did not allow for development. Without change, the USSR had no prospects and no future."
So when Gorbachev launched his reforms, Alexander felt ready for them. But soon came the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev lost control, the economy imploded, and the Soviet Union disintegrated.
For millions across Eastern Europe and Asia, it felt like the ground vanished beneath their feet. Ukraine gained independence from Moscow in 1991 and suddenly stood on its own.
Economic Life After Communism
The end of the Soviet Union was followed by an unprecedented economic and social collapse.
The shelves in the supermarkets were not empty; they were even filled with affordable Chinese products of low quality: food, diapers, clothing. So people did not starve, as one might know from Africa. But companies lacked money.
Unemployment soared and wages went unpaid. Inflation reached over 10,000 percent—a record for a country not at war. People were desperate and they stopped believing in the system. Companies lacked money, so barter trade returned.
„It was like the Stone Age,“
Alexander recalls. A company had to trade through two or three intermediaries before finding something useful in exchange. Complex barter networks emerged that kept most firms barely alive.
It was also the birth of „shuttle traders“. They traveled to Turkey, Hungary, Poland – or even Cina – to bring back anything that could be resold. At the same time they were easy victims – gangs nicknamed „athletes“ formed to rob them on the roads; others formed their own protection groups and paid a „small fee“ for safety.
From this chaos rose the first oligarchs – entrepreneurs barely distinguishable from criminals. They helped companies organizing barter chains and built ever larger business empires.
Worst of all, according to Alexander: law enforcement intertwined with the same networks it was supposed to oversee. Many officers became businessmen themselves. The line between state authority and private power dissolved.
No Regret: A Fresh Start
"Yes, it was indeed a difficult time, when the entire familiar way of
life collapsed and everything changed."
By 1993, Alexander felt, he had reached a crossroads. In fact, Perestroika meant an end to rigid ideological control for teachers. But with the end of the authoritarian system also came a rapid decline in the prestige of the profession in the eyes of many students and the public.
Alexander felt stuck. So he quit – without plan, but with determination. But he was lucky.
His saving grace was karate – no small thing. In the USSR, the sport was semi-illegal, banned for promoting indivdualism in the collectivistiv Soviet society. A subculture emerged and was taught secretly in basements.
Yet Alexander had earned a black belt. After the collapse, he began teaching and earning small sums.
Some of his students had founded a trading company. They believed his martial arts background made him perfect to lead their security team. Alexander agreed.
„I became head of security,“
Alexander proudly recounts.
Under his watch, the company remained unharmed – except for one botched robbery, when shots were fired at the guard.
A Career in the Oligarchy
The gas sector of that time was a profitable battlefield: One bought cheaply in Russia and sold it expensively at market prices to Europeans. Easy money for those who gained the upper hand in it.
Not surprisingly, President Leonid Kuchma and his protégé, the “Gas Princess” Yulia Tymoshenko, came from this Dnipro business milieu, which would dominate Ukraine for many years.
Dnipro, the center of the Soviet arms and rocket industry and other key sectors, had long been a “closed city” where foreigners were not allowed to enter. This special status created even tighter networks between industry, security apparatus and politics.
Alexander received more contracts from local companies to “maintain order”. One of them earned money by procuring equipment for a state gas company via barter deals.
In 1996, Alexander experienced another key moment. He found his boss in the stairwell, staggering and clinging to the railing. A poorly dressed man had pretended to stumble in the lobby and grabbed his boss’s leg, Alexander recalls. He suspects the man injected him at that moment.
Alexander laid his boss on the floor and gave first aid. He managed to revive him. Doctors later explained that someone had injected a muscle relaxant. These drugs are used in surgery and paralyze the muscles so strongly that a person can no longer breathe without artificial ventilation.
If his boss had died, the doctors would probably have confirmed “acute heart failure”—just as with two earlier business partners whose deaths remained unexplained.
Alexander says he tracked down the perpetrators and negotiated a deal with them to prevent further attacks.
“A fantastic story with a happy ending,”
Alexander smiles. Yet he still checks doors and windows instinctively and never sits with his back to the entrance.
Blat-Networks survive the Soviet State
Alexander sees the roots of this system in the 1970s. Back then, the Soviet Union entered a period of stagnation. There was a shortage of almost everything. The shops were often empty.
The paradox: many people actually had money. What really mattered were connections. You needed to know a salesperson to get desirable goods—a cassette recorder, western jeans or even medicine. The police persecuted these “illegal” extra incomes and enforced the Soviet state trade monopoly.
“Blat” was the name of the informal network system that developed in this shortage economy. People used personal relationships and favors to bypass and outsmart the rigid centralized distribution system.
According to Alexander, people found it hard to abandon these old habits. Even after independence, they tried to solve everything via networks of acquaintances. With the collapse of the Soviet legal framework, this Blat networks did not disappear. They turned into open corruption.
Protection money and bribes were not the exception, but the norm for every entrepreneur—no matter how small. Alexander does not even want to give an example:
“Everything was permeated by it.”
The system had penetrated all levels of society. Bribes for doctors, lawyers or police officers were often euphemistically called “tips”.
Life as a Pawn Broker
So Alexander eventually took over the management of a pawn shop. A shady and dirty business, as he calls it. Especially in a country in transition like Ukraine in the 1990s. He balanced the interests of bandits, police and tax office. Only so could he reduce the constant problems that such a business brought in that time and place.
Alexander says he turned the pawn shop into a profitable business and built a reputation as an honest broker. Yet he repeatedly faced dangerous situations with criminals—once even a standoff alone against armed gangsters.
Bandits kidnapped one of their customers who owed them money and threatened to kill him. Alexander instructed his assistant to get reinforcements from the gang they were covering. A quick decision had to be made, so he went alone and faced nine ‘athletes’ by himself.
He was able to keep the situation under control until help arrived. The security chief, a retired militia officer who struggled to make ends meet, called him an idiot. Wasn’t it clear to him that he could have been killed?
First Impulses in Model Building
As a child, Alexander was fascinated by models and history. The idea of founding a model-building company grew from a lucky coincidence and this long-standing passion. His technical training and his work with archaeological material gave him a solid foundation. A newspaper article about model building as a business finally triggered the decision.
He convinced his bosses at the pawn shop to finance a first project. Together they produced flat figures of Greek hoplites in 1:35 scale for the Ukrainian brand SKIF. But the launch failed. Ukraine fell into a new crisis, and Alexander’s team lacked experience in sales and distribution.
Alexander did not give up. With great effort, he brought a first vehicle model to market: a German Panzer I light tank. Yet this kit also sold poorly. So he brought in reinforcements, including the talented sculptor Anatoly Gagarin. They expanded the tank with figures—a medic and two wounded soldiers. For the first time, the team earned real money.
It quickly became clear that the Ukrainian market was too small to secure the company’s survival. The brand Master Box began to export. In 2005 they exhibited at the Nuremberg Toy Fair. There they won their first international partner, Takashi Kono, who still distributes Master Box in Japan today.
At that time, the market for military figure kits was already dominated by large manufacturers from China, Russia, Japan and even Ukraine. To stand out, Master Box gave its figures personality and emotion. The idea of a “vignette in a box” was born. A set should not simply contain one standing soldier, one kneeling, one firing.
“The figures should speak,”
says Alexander. Each model set now tells a small scene. Hobbyists can build a compact narrative on a base or integrate the figures into complex dioramas with emotional depth. This was the birth of Master Box as it is known today. The real core of the brand turned out to be figures that invite storytelling.
So Master Box established itself in the global modeling scene. The themes range from Greco-Persian and Napoleonic wars to the Indian Wars, fantasy and post-apocalyptic zombie invasions..
.
The War Reaches Dnipro, but Master Box Remains Stable
On the morning of February 24, 2022, the war reached Alexander directly. At 4:21 a.m., he and his wife woke up to explosions. Kalibr missiles struck the nearby Dnipro airport, which the military used. The shock waves shook their house and “went through every cell of the body.”
The experience changed their view of life. A neighbor phoned and asked what was happening. Alexander answered: “The war has begun.” He told her to pack and leave before the roads filled with refugees.
Alexander and his wife Marina decided to stay in Dnipro and help. Outwardly he appeared calm, but inside he felt shock and anger. He wanted to fight. The first three months felt like one long, exhausting day.
At the same time, he experienced strong patriotism and unity. He travelled to raise money for ammunition and other urgent needs. Together with others, they organized patrols. Marina mobilized the global model-building community and collected donations for Ukraine.
As the war dragged on, everyday life also changed. They ran into stiff bureaucracy and formalism that no longer fit a country at war. Over time, however, life in Dnipro stabilized.
They felt responsible for their employees. Production had always remained in Dnipro and relied on local skills and labor. Machines and raw materials came from abroad, but the know-how and manufacturing stayed in Ukraine.
The company controlled the entire chain—from design and tooling to packaging. They did not want to outsource to China, even if that would have been cheaper. This helped to keep the Ukrainian economy afloat.
Exports fell by around 30 percent at the start of the war. Material shortages, power cuts and disrupted logistics made work difficult. Still, they kept the number of employees stable. Close cooperation with partners like ICM and Marina’s extraordinary organizational work helped rebuild supply chains and contact with production sites in improvised ways.
For Alexander, keeping the company running was not only an economic decision. He saw it as an ethical duty to secure income and stability for everyone involved. Marina took on a large part of this responsibility.
She manages the business side of Master Box and restored the supply chains. The company even maintained its publication rhythm and continued to export worldwide—despite higher costs and constant extra effort.
Anyone Who Visits Dnipro Today..
Anyone who visits Dnipro today would not immediately think of a city only about 100 kilometers from the front line. Construction cranes rise over new residential blocks. Along the river, developers build promenades, leisure areas and restaurants.
In the city center, new cafés and bars open despite the curfew. Salsa classes take place and students roam. Museums that tell the city’s history now also address international visitors—even if many of them are staff from humanitarian organizations. Here is life!
Alexander, like many Ukrainians, looks toward victory—and toward economic endurance. Neither Russia nor Europe expected such a long war and were prepared.
While much attention goes to the Ukrainian army, the country’s economic resilience often remains in the shadows. But since Soviet times, Ukrainians are used to organizing survival quietly in the background—through networks, improvisation and small businesses like Master Box.
