The Russian Open Game: notes on a Westerner’s experience

Abstract

The Russian Open Game is a highly structured set of techniques and procedures for managing an intensive group learning situation extending over a number of days. As such, it offers a challenge to assumptions that the “Russian learning style” does not favour the use of participatory techniques in training and organisational development. While there is a growing literature on the reactions of Russian groups to Western training events and methods, there are few records of the reactions of Western participants on Russian events. The paper presents a description of one iteration of the Russian Open Game, held in Kaluga in May 1998. It sets out the key roles and techniques of the method, and examines issues such as openness, participation and conflict as they arise in the game. It concludes that the Game involves a high level of manipulation of events and group dynamics by the leadership, and that it is this role of the leader-as-choreographer rather than leader-as-facilitator which is the principal area of difference between the Russian Open Game and a typical British participatory training or organisational development event.