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It seems, if this folktale is anything to go by, that mediation did not play a prominent role in dispute resolution in Russia:
"Once upon a time there were two women. They lived in the same village and it so happened that at the same moment on the same day they chanced to see an orange that had fallen off the back of a cart and was rolling along the street. Oranges were not often seen in Russia in those days, and were considered a great delicacy, and so the two women both ran for the orange, bent over and reached out for it at the same moment. Together their hands grasped the orange and neither would let go, or give up the orange to the other.
They argued for days over who should have the orange: one claimed to have seen it first, the other relied upon the fact that the orange had fallen onto the side of the road where she lived, not on the side of the road where her rival lived. Neither would give way, and there was no mediator in the village, so they had no option but to take the case to the chief of the village to decide. He heard their evidence carefully and then ruled that the orange should be cut in half and each woman be given one half of the orange. Satisfied that neither had lost, the two women went home.
When she reached her home, the first woman peeled the orange, ate it and threw away the peel. Across the road, her rival peeled the orange, threw away the flesh, and used the peel to make marmalade".
And the moral of the story is? Perhaps that a frank disclosure of one's agenda and bottom line in confidence to a mediator can sometimes mean that both parties could get all of (or at least a good deal of) what they want.
