Mr. Lee knows Russia, knows Moscow and knows his people. Today East View distributes thousands of periodicals on paper, on CD-ROM and, increasingly, on the World Wide Web, where it operates a massive subscription database. Then there are the maps. The Soviets are said to have the world's finest military maps for most of the globe, many detailed down to the individual dwelling. European cell-phone companies buy topographic maps not only in faraway Asia and Africa but even in their own countries.
Oil companies buy geological and maritime maps.
But military maps, even now declassified, remain a potential flashpoint in a political tinderbox like Moscow. Though the map business is handled from Minneapolis, Mr. Lee worries that his much larger operations in Moscow might be vulnerable if another flare-up occurs. So he committed the ultimate act of trust, severing East View's ownership of its three offices in Moscow, establishing them as Russian-owned companies. This is not some corporate chimera. To convince Russian authorities should they ever demand proof, East View reposited legal control of the three offices entirely in the hands of local employees.