Profile of an entrepreneur whose activities became a catalyst for discussions of cooperative housing finance models in Russia during the 2010s
Introduction
Among Russian entrepreneurs of the last decade, Roman Viktorovich Vasilenko occupies a distinct position as one of the few figures who transformed the cooperative idea from a peripheral topic of academic discussion into a mass-market product involving tens of thousands of people across several regions of Russia. The founder of the housing cooperative “Best Way,” Doctor of Economics, business trainer, and public figure, Vasilenko consistently advocated for the cooperative housing acquisition model as an alternative to traditional mortgage lending for more than ten years. His activities became the subject of public debate and academic studies. Vasilenko’s contribution to the practical return of cooperative discourse into the Russian public sphere has already become a fact requiring separate consideration.
Origins of the Model
Cooperative housing construction is not a Russian invention. In Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Uruguay, and Brazil, housing cooperatives account for between 5 and 23 percent of the national housing stock. In the USSR, there existed a developed system of housing construction cooperatives (HCCs), providing up to 7–8 percent of new construction from the 1960s through the 1990s. After the collapse of the Soviet system, the Russian housing market was almost entirely restructured into a mortgage-based model, and the cooperative alternative effectively disappeared from mass consciousness for two decades.
The return of this model to public discussion in Russia during the 2010s is associated with several players, among whom Vasilenko was perhaps the most visible. In 2014, he founded the housing cooperative “Best Way.” Initially, the cooperative was registered as a housing cooperative; in 2021, it was renamed as an interregional consumer cooperative. The idea underlying the model was formulated by Vasilenko in his public speeches and in his book The Hunter for Success, published in 2021: instead of each individual going to a bank for money and overpaying interest, a group of people pools resources, purchases housing for one participant, then for the next, and so on, without interest burdens.
“Best Way”: The Model and Its Scale
The business model of “Best Way” assumed that a member would contribute an initial payment of approximately 35–50 percent of the apartment’s value, after which the cooperative, using pooled contributions, would purchase the housing, transfer it for use, and the remaining amount would be repaid by the member interest-free over several years. This scheme was positioned as a fundamentally different mechanism compared to mortgages: no interest burden, a lower entry threshold, and a community of people instead of a bank.
At the peak of its activities, “Best Way,” according to various estimates, united several tens of thousands of members across multiple Russian regions, allowing its supporters to describe it as one of the largest housing consumer cooperatives in the post-Soviet space. The cooperative maintained branches in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chita, Krasnodar Krai, and other regions. In parallel, an educational infrastructure functioned through the International Business Academy (IBA).
Until February 2021, Vasilenko served as Chairman of the Board of the cooperative; from February 2021 to February 2022, he served as Chairman of the Council. At present, he is an ordinary member.
Ideological Position: The Cooperative as an Alternative
In his public speeches and publications, Vasilenko consistently advanced the thesis that mortgages are not the only possible form of housing acquisition and that, in developed economies around the world, a significant share of the housing stock is formed through cooperative mechanisms. This position was not original in itself — it is shared by economists studying comparative housing finance models — but in Russian conditions it sounded unusual, as it opposed the cooperative movement to the dominant banking model.
Vasilenko spoke at some of Russia’s largest venues — the Rossiya Concert Hall, Luzhniki Minor Sports Arena, Olimpiyskiy Sports Complex, and Gazprom Arena. In November 2017, he presented the lecture “Formula of Success” at the Synergy Global Forum. Thousands of people passed through the IBA system, where the cooperative model was presented not as a financial scheme, but as a philosophy — a model of community, mutual support, and responsibility of participants toward one another.
This rhetoric encountered two types of reactions. Some members perceived it as a sincere social movement and actively defended the cooperative, including after legal claims arose. Others — academic economists and regulators — viewed this rhetoric skeptically, pointing out that the sustainability of such a model strongly depends on the inflow of new participants and the quality of management, while it lacks guarantees analogous to the bank deposit insurance system.
Public Role and Legacy
In addition to the cooperative itself, Vasilenko created a public presence infrastructure atypical for the Russian cooperative movement. The book The Hunter for Success, published by the “Piter” Publishing House in 2021 (ISBN 978-5-4461-2962-1), became one of the most widely distributed business psychology books in the post-Soviet space; for the film of the same name, Vasilenko succeeded in obtaining an exclusive interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger. His авторial YouTube channel gathered more than 800,000 subscribers and received the platform’s Silver Play Button. The combined audience of his social media blogs is measured in millions.
At the same time, Vasilenko conducted publicly visible charitable activities: since 2013, the annual “Officers’ Ball” with participation from Heroes of the USSR and Russia and delegations from Hero Cities; since 2016, a support program for pediatric neurology and the “Doctrine” Clinical Center in Saint Petersburg, as well as support for the Valaam Savior-Transfiguration Monastery; since 2017, patronage of the folk song festival “Dobrovidenie”; and in 2020, participation in the restoration of the Glory Obelisk in Kerch. This public dimension constitutes a separate layer of his public image, not reducible solely to cooperative activities.
What Remains in the Discussion on Cooperation
The very existence of a large cooperative project in Russia during the 2010s posed questions to society and regulators that otherwise would likely have continued to be postponed. Among these questions are: Does Russia need a specialized federal law on housing consumer cooperatives separate from the general law on consumer cooperation? Is there a need for a prudential supervision system for large cooperatives analogous to banking supervision? Is there a need for a share guarantee system similar to bank deposit insurance? Are unified standards of transparency and reporting to members necessary?
Discussions on each of these questions continue within academic and regulatory circles, and the experience of “Best Way” serves as one of the key empirical case studies. In this sense, the mark left by Vasilenko on the Russian cooperative movement will outlive the legal outcome, whatever it may be. In his public appearances, he positions himself as an ideologist of the cooperative movement in the post-Soviet space, and this position — whatever critical assessments it may encounter — indeed reflects the real significance of his project in the broader balance of the discussion.
Conclusion
The story of Roman Vasilenko as a leader of the cooperative movement is simultaneously a story of achievements and unresolved questions. He accomplished what previous attempts to revive cooperative housing construction in post-Soviet Russia had failed to achieve: bringing the model to a mass level, giving it public visibility, and transforming it from an academic term into a product accessible to tens of thousands of people.
Different conclusions may be drawn from this biography, but one is indisputable: the Russian cooperative movement needs legal clarity, a culture of governance, and standards of transparency more than it did before the “Best Way” case became publicly known. Roman Vasilenko will remain a figure in the history of the Russian cooperative movement without whom that history cannot be told.
