M O S C O W - Passport magazine

JANUARY 2010 www.passportmagazine.ru 

MOSCOW 

Dangerous Places 

Worth Visiting 

Traffi c-jamboree 

Wine and Dine (for a change) 

Beef at the BBC 

Icon-writing

10 

16 

30 

34 

40 

44 

3. Editor’s Choice 

Alevtina Kalenina and Olga Slobodkina 

10. Travel 

Dangerous Places Worth Visiting, Luc Jones 

12. The Way It Was 

1992, John Harrison 

Hot Spots, Helen Womack 

Trophy Art, Helen Womack 

Shocktroops, Art Franczek 

The summer of 1992, Thomas Fasbender 

18. The Way It Is 

Icon Writing, John Harrison 

Speaking in Tongues?, Scott Spires 

In the Bleak Mid-winter, it’s party time?, Stephen 

Wilson 

24. Real Estate 

Real Estate News, Vladimir Kozlev 

Change-over at the top, Vladimir Kozlev 

28. Wine & Dining 

National Treasure, Charles Borden 

More Fish (Peshi), Charles Borden 

Sinatra Restaurant and Piano Bar, Leonard Nebons 

Wine & Dining Directory 

34. Clubs 

New Year Nightlife Renewals 

35. Out & About 

40. My World 

Bad Carma, John Harrison 

Dare to ask Dare, Deidre Dare 

44. Family Pages 

Pileloops’ Festival, Part III, Nantalie Kurtog 

Puzzle Page 

47. Book Review 

California Preening, (review of Imperial Bedrooms), Ian 

Mitchell 

48. Distribution List 

January 2011 

Contents

Letter from the Publisher 

John Ortega 

Owner and Publisher 

To all our readers throughout 

Russia, countries of the former 

Soviet Union, Africa, Eurasia the 

United States and Latin America, 

and to everybody I have ever 

had lunch with or taken out 

to Chicago Prime! We wish 

everyone a very happy Russian 

New Year, Russian Christmas and 

Chinese New Year! 

As every user of WikiLeaks 

knows, PASSPORT is now 

incredibly popular throughout 

the entire world. To meet 

the insatiable demand for our 

magazine, we will be offering 

subscription and to the door 

delivery starting from the end of 

January. More details from: subscription@passportmagazine.ru 

Owner and Publisher 

John Ortega, +7 (985) 784-2834 

jortega@passportmagazine.ru 

Editor 

John Harrison 

j.harrison@passportmagazine.ru 

Sales Manager 

Valeria Astakhova 

v.astakhova@passportmagazine.ru 

Arts Editor 

Alevtina Kalinina 

alevtina@passportmagazine.ru 

Editorial Address: 

42 Volgogradsky Prospekt, Bldg. 23 

Office 013, 1st floor 

109316 Moscow, Russia 

Tel. +7 (495) 640-0508 

Fax +7 (495) 620-0888 

www.passportmagazine.ru 

January 2011 

Guest Chef Series 

Two Michelin Star Chef 

Jerome Nutile at Kai Restaurant 

January 24–28, 2011 

The gastronomic Kai Restaurant presents the 

Two Michelin Star guest chef Jerome Nutile, as 

part of its Michelin guest star series. 

From January 24th for one week only, the chef 

of the hotel restaurant “Le Castellas” located 

in a picturesque village not far from Avignon 

will present his signature dishes inspired by la 

cuisine de Provence. The dishes have plenty of 

vegetables, greens, spicy herbs, juicy olives and 

fresh fish, to help you remember sunnier days. 

Business lunch is 1,650 roubles per person. Dinner 

a la carte: from 350-2,500 roubles per dish. 

For further information and to book a table at 

Kai Restaurant, please call: +7 495 221 5358 

Free parking is provided for customers. 

Designer 

Julia Nozdracheva 

chiccone@yandex.ru 

Webmaster 

Alexey Timokhin 

alexey@telemark-it.ru 

Kai Restaurant & Lounge 

is located on the 2 nd floor 

of Swissotel Krasnye Holmy 

Kosmodamianskaya nab., 52 bld. 6 

Telephone: +7 495 221 53 58 

www.swissotel.com/kai 

Accounting and Legal Services 

ООО Юридическая Компания 

“Правовые Инновации”, 

111024, г. Москва, пр-д завода “Серп и Молот”, д.5, стр.1, 

(495)223-10-62, 

Гл бухгалтер. Якубович Любовь Александровна 

Published by OOO Passport Magazine. All rights reserved. 

This publication is registered by the Press Ministry No. 

77-25758. 14.09.2006 

Printed by BlitzPrint. Moscow representative office: 

127051, Moscow, Petrovsky Boulevard, Dom 10. 

“7 KRASOK at Kremlin”. 

In the centre of Moscow in the Business House 

“Znamenka”, dom 7.buidling 3, near 

Shilov gallery, “7KRASOK” has opened new 

salon”7 KRASOK at the Kremlin”. 

Here individual interiors reflect the refined 

atmosphere and exclusive conditions for relaxation 

and restoration of your energy. At your 

service: 77 spa-programs performed by qualified 

masters from Thailand, India and island of Bali. 

There is a special 10% discount on all services 

during this opening period. 

Book and Whisky Editor 

Ian Mitchell 

ian@ianmitchellonline.co.uk 

Nightlife editor 

Miguel Francis 

miguel@passportmagazine.ru 

You can park at the nearby Business 

House”Znamenka”. 

10:00 - 22:00 

Tel. 783-70-36 

www.7kpacok.ru 

Our Nightlife editor Miguel Francis has brought his long time dream to Moscow. In Hollywood, Miguel used to produce all kinds of events for compa- 

nies like SBE Entertainment, MUSE Lifestyle Group, Crème de LA Crème and others, working with some of the biggest nightlife players in town like Tony 

Benoit & Romain Rey-Chavent, Wilson Chueire, Costas Charalambous & Dean May. Starting this month Miguel will be organizing Passport Nightlife 

Tours, where he will gather a bunch of expats and tour them around the glamorous Moscow. Doesn’t matter what age, sex or race you are, Passport 

Nightlife welcomes everybody to induce and indulge. Tonight Riccardo Oppi (Oppi Group), Andrew Kamnev (Brainpower) and Tyler Shenkel (Capital 

Investment Consultants) will all join Miguel to embark on a quest for sunshine. Stay tuned for the aftermath in the February PASSPORT issue! Please 

e-mail miguel@passportmagazine.ru for reservations. 

Cover drawing by Artem Kostukevich, with special thanks to Abrau Derso. Artem Kostukevich was born in 1971 in Omsk. He 

entered the Leningrad Serova art school, and completed his studies in Hamburg. He has exhibited widely throughout the 

world from 2006 onwards. 

Contributors 

Ian Mitchell, Ross Hunter, Charles Borden, 

Olga Slobodkina, Miguel Francis, Helen Womack, 

Vladimir Kozlev, Deidre Clark, Luc Jones, 

Nika Harrison, Earhole, Leonard Nebons 

Passport occasionally uses material we believe has been 

placed in the public domain. Sometimes it is not possible 

to identify and contact the copyright owner. If you claim 

ownership of something we have published, we will be 

pleased to make a proper acknowledgment.

Editor’s Choice 

Festival of sacred music 

Westminster Abbey Choir 

In January, the Moscow International House of Music initiates 

an unprecedented musical event: it will host a Christmas 

Festival of Sacred Music. Blessed by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow 

and all Russia it will present leading choirs from different countries 

of the world, including the Choir of Westminster Abbey 

(London), the choir of St. Stephan of Decani Christ of the Cathedral 

of the Three Holy Hierarchs (Novi Sad, Serbia), the Cathedral 

Choir of Holy Etchmiadzin, the Moscow Synodal Choir, 

the Male Choir of the Moscow Sretensky Monastery, and the 

Choir of the Popov Academy of Choral Art. Vladimir Spivakov, 

Director of the House of Music, and Metropolitan Hilarion of 

Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department 

for External Church Relations, are the artistic directors of the 

Festival and have selected the musical programme. Religious 

music is closely related to liturgical services in churches and is 

rarely performed anywhere else. The Svetlanovsky Hall of the 

House of Music with its fine acoustics will be an ideal place 

to present such sacred music to wider audiences. The festival 

also widens the boundaries of music that can be considered 

as religious. Along with compositions by “professional church 

composers”, Dmitri Bortnyansky (1751-1825) and Alexander 

Kastalsky (1856-1926), there will be other pieces for choir and 

orchestra based religious texts. It is impossible to imagine Orthodox 

services without music, so this is a chance to delight 

in the musical side of Orthodoxy. 

9-23 January, Moscow House of Music 

www.mmdm.ru and www.passportmagazine.ru 

January 2011 

Silver Camera: a visual archive for 

the megapolis of Moscow 

Silver Camera is the title of an annual photographic competition 

initiated by the Moscow House of Photography. It was first 

held ten years ago and since then has become an important 

event for both amateur and professional photographers. After an 

initial selection, all the photographs are displayed anonymously 

and the winners are named by a jury at the end of the show in 

January. The jury usually has to decide from more than 12,000 

submissions. 800 will be on display in the following nominations: 

Architecture, Events and everyday life, Faces. 

Also in January on display in the new building of the Moscow 

House of Photography: Electrical Nights and Georgy 

Petrusov’s retrospective. This is double bill with impressive 

video installations and work by some of Russia’s best modernist 

photographers. 

December 15–January 25. 12:00-20:00 except Monday 

Moscow House of Photography, 16, Ostozhenka street 

Big artists, especially for children 

A children’s artist should be thoroughly kind, Victor Chizhikov, 

designer of the Moscow Olympic games emblem and contributing 

artist of the most popular Soviet children’s magazine, Merry 

Pictures, once said. This exhibition of graphics from Merry Pictures 

celebrates the magazine’s 55th anniversary. The exhibition at the 

Tretyakov displays graphics owned by the magazine’s publishing 

house, which has printed an astounding five billion copies of 

Merry Pictures. Over three million illustrations were printed. But the 

most important thing is that almost every Russian child even nowadays 

remembers amusing stories and characters with names 

impossible to render in English: Samodelkin, Petrushka, Neznaka, 

Dyuimovochka. These were the first Soviet “comics”, though the 

word was not in use in the Russian. Today the magazine is known 

for its lively graphics. 

15 December-20 February, 10:00-19:00, Tuesday-Sunday, 

State Tretyakov Gallery, 10, Krymsky Val

Celebrating Andrei Rublev 

It is impossible to overestimate Andrei Rublev’s influence 

on Russian culture. The greatest medieval painter of Orthodox 

icons and frescoes, a venerated saint of the Russian Orthodox 

Church, he created icons that helped Russia survive 

invasions, both morally and physically. Today his creations, 

and those attributed as his, are stored in several museums 

in Russia. Until the 17th century, Russian artists never signed 

their paintings, which is why attributions are usually based 

on literary evidence and style. Two major museums, the State 

Tretyakov Gallery and Moscow’s Andrei Rublev Museum of 

Ancient Russian Art, collaborated to prepare this exhibition. 

Little is known of Rublev’s life. Born in 1360, he was an assistant 

to the great Theophanes the Greek, who came to Russia 

from Constantinople. This means that he was trained in the 

Byzantine icon painting tradition where the spiritual essence 

of art is valued much more than naturalistic representation. 

Theophanes and Rublev are referred to as the initiators of 

the Moscow school of icon painting. Later Rublev became 

a monk in Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra near Moscow and then 

at the Andronikov monastery in Moscow. Written evidence 

confirms that Rublev also worked on the decoration of the 

wall paintings in the Dormition of the Virgin at Vladimir Cathedral, 

the Archangel Michael and the Saviour Cathedral in 

Zvenigorod. Some of frescoes are partially displayed in the 

Tretyakov gallery now. 

21 December – 27 February, 

10:00-19:00 every day except Monday. 

State Tretyakov Gallery, 10, Lavrushensky lane 

Foreign orders of 

Russian Emperors 


Insignias as Latin symbols of 

authority or power are interesting 

for experts and non-experts 

alike. Power, glory and precious 

stones come together in an aesthetically 

pleasing way. Orders 

are primarily to do with ceremonies 

and national traditions. The 

exhibition held at the One-Pillar 

Chamber of the Patriarch’s Palace 

in the Kremlin highlights foreign 

orders and insignia awarded to 

Russian Emperors from the monarchs 

of European and Asian 

states. On display are more than 

three hundred artifacts created 

by renowned foreign goldsmiths, 

these are mainly insignia: stars, crosses and chains of different 

orders. Portraits of the emperors, their ceremonial costumes, 

interiors and historical documents are also on display. The project 

was initiated by the State Archive of the Russian Federation, 

State Archives of Ancient Documents, the State Historical Museum, 

State Hermitage Museum and other Russian museums. 

Until 9 March, 10:00-18:00, every day except Thursdays, 

Kremlin Museums, One-Pillar Chamber of the Patriarch’s Palace 

January 2011


Gorgeous Exhibition of 

Russian Drawings 

at the Tretyakov 

Olga Slobodkina-von Bromssen 

The Tretyakov Gallery has opened its archives to treat us 

to master drawings of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. 

The exhibition is called “From Orest Kiprensky to Kazimir 

Malevich” includes about 250 works of art created by 

such famous artists as Karl Bryullov, Pavel Fedotov, Aleksey 

Savrasov, Valentin Serov, Mikhail Vrubel, Konstantin Somov 

and others. 

A pencil drawing is the beginning of all the fine arts. No artist 

can do without a pencil. The very word “pencil” (карандаш 

in Russian) is a derivative of the Turkic word “kara tash,” which 

means a black stone. Its ability to react quickly, its portability 

give it a priority over other techniques and instruments. The 

pencil sketches ideas. At the same time a drawing exists as 

an independent kind of art, having its own language, its own 

specific laws and history. 

There are different kinds of pencils—silver, lead, graphitic, 

Italian, wax, coloured, lithographic and others, as well as 

a broad range of kindred materials for so-called dry drawing: 

charcoal, sauce crayons and sepia. The various devices 

of working with these materials reveal the individuality of 

the artist, his temperament, gift and the level of professionalism. 

January 2011 

The Tretyakov Gallery has a unique collection of Russian 

drawings, which reflects the development of this kind of art 

quite closely. The current display allows us to follow this process 

step by step. The display shows rare 18th century drawings 

created using silver and lead pencils. The silver pencil, 

so popular during that time and which has fallen out of use 

now, leaves a weak silver trace on the paper while the lead 

pencil is recognizable by its dark-grey tone with a slight metallic 

shimmer. 

In the first half of the 19th century, two kinds of pencils, Italian 

and graphite, were in broad use. The soft Italian pencil, 

which came to Russia from Italy, gives the drawing a lustreless, 

velvety quality and an intense black tone making the 

work look noble and warm. The Italian pencil reveals slightly 

blurred contours and tender light-and-shade. At the display

you will see pencil drawings created by Orest Kiprensky, Alexander 

Orlovsky, Vasily Tropinin, Fyodor Bruni and the whole 

galaxy of this genre’s masters. 

The graphite pencil can be of different degrees of solidness 

and intensity creating a greyish tone with a slight glimmer. 

The austere lines of the graphite pencil give the drawing 

hardness and precision. The display boasts perfect drawings 

created in graphite pencil by such renowned masters as Alexey 

Savrasov, Valentin Serov, Boris Kustodiev, Boris Grigoryev 

and Konstantin Somov. 

At the end of the 19th century, coloured pencils appeared in 

the drawings of Lev Bakst, Konstantin Somov, Valentin Serov 

and Mikhail Brubel. Fillip Malyavin, known by his highly expressive 

drawings, paid tribute to the coloured pencils more than 

the others, for example in his famous work Babi (Бабы). 

Close to pencils are charcoal, chalk, sauce crayons and pastel. 

The softness and looseness of these materials gives drawings 

special beauty. Free, sweeping drawings supplemented 

by charcoal and chalk look expressive and picturesque. Charcoal 

creates a deeper black tone than the Italian pencil and 

gives more opportunities to reveal various effects. 

The exhibition shows a broad artistic variety of pencil drawings, 

so that the spectator, both professional and amateur, 

can enrich his or her understanding of the drawing techniques 

and enjoy the graphic masterpieces of more than two 

centuries of Russian art. P 

Tretyakov Gallery 

10 Lavrushkinsky Pereulok 

10.00 - 19.30 

(the box office until 18.30). 

Monday - day off 

Until April 26th 


January 2011


Experience 

the world 

of Samurai 

at the 

exhibition 

Samurai: 

the Art 

of War 

by Olga Slobodkina-von Bromssen 

Samurai: the Art of War is the name of an exhibition and 

a unique interactive project which has opened in Moscow. It 

presents the culture of the Japanese samurai: rich collections 

of ancient Japanese arms and armour, clothes and everyday 

items which will transport the viewer to medieval Japan. 

The project’s priority is to show the world through the eyes 

of the Samurai, a daring warrior, a refined poet and an inspired 

artist who is always ready to sacrifice his life for lofty ideals. 

The basis for this contemplation is the Busido (the Warrior’s 

Way), a philosophy of harmony between honest-to-God faith, 

absolute devotion, self-sacrifice, sincerity and the ability to 

appreciate beauty in all its manifestations. 

10 January 2011

Apart from showing items of the material culture, the project 

includes tea ceremonies, master classes by sword masters, 

films, master classes in ikebana, origami, calligraphy and many 

parts aspects of ancient Japanese culture. 

Samurai: the Art of War is the first exhibition in Russia using 

3-D technologies. The display presents a 3-D panorama 

of The Battle at Sekigakhara, a battle in 1600 in which 170,000 

warriors took part. The battle has been recaptured in the finest 

detail. 

The exhibition occupies 1,400 square metres of the restored 

architectural monument Meshaninovo Podvorye. It is divided 

into thematic zones, which allow guests to travel the way of 

a warrior in the direct sense of the word and observe all the 

stages of his life. Visitors can go from a medieval castle to a 

Buddhist Temple, wander Kyoto city districts and be guests in 

a noble samurai’s house. 

“Our exhibition is not an object, but an experience,” says 

one of the project’s creators, Georgy Aistov. “It presupposes 

total immersion: the guest becomes a participant. You can 

find yourself in the middle of a 17th century battlefield in 3-D 

and then take part in a tea ceremony performed in the ancient 

traditions. The choice is yours!” 

History places the samurai in such an exalted position that 

one can imagine that they have existed as long as Japan itself. 

However, samurai began to form itself only in the 10th 

century A.D. The word samurai derives from the verb saburau, 

which means “to serve a person of a higher rank.” In the 10th- 

12th centuries, during period of civil war, the samurai class 

was established, and the foundations of the samurai moral 

code took shape. 

The moral image of a samurai was defined by the most important 

features of his individuality: fidelity, generosity, duty 

and honour. Apart from his professional qualities, a samurai 

needed to display mercy, compassion, forgiveness and 

sympathy. The key quality in the Busido code is duty. A clear 

demarcation is made between one’s own feelings and duty. 

Thus, we have the tradition of seppuku or hara-kiri, unthinkable 

in the West. 

Every contemporary Japanese carries history around with 

him or her. One cannot understand contemporary Japan 

without its past. The past in Japan coexists with the present 

and sometimes even has priority. 

One must pay tribute to the project itself. The organisers 

have tried to show various aspects of the life of samurai in the 

atmosphere of medieval Japan by using all forms of technology 

starting with traditional exhibition technology, up to the 

newest 3-D techniques. The display really makes one want to 

come back for more. 

The exhibition Samurai: the Art of War is open until February 

28 at the Vetoshny Art Centre (former Meshaninovo Podvorye 

behind GUM). 

Vetoshny Pereulok 13. 

Tel. 8-903-682-21-96. 

Nearest Metro; 

Revolution Square. 

Until February 28 


January 2011 

11

Travel 

Dangerous places 

worth visiting! 

Text and photos, Luc Jones 

Is the world we live in really so dangerous, 

or are we just falling for western 

propaganda aimed at scaring you into 

watching more news and being petrified 

at leaving the comfort of your own 

home? 

As a student in Moscow in 1993, I spent 

a day with the BBC and asked Angus Roxborough 

why the western media portrayed 

Russia is such a negative light. His 

response was that people back home 

wanted to see something newsworthy 

that was out of the ordinary—an empty 

shop, preferably with a long queue 

stretching out of the door and with any 

luck a babushka waving her fist. If you really 

played your cards right, the Russian 

mafia might be trying to sell plutonium 

to Saddam Hussein, or an entire village 

going blind after an attempt at making 

samogon and distilling it at the wrong 

temperature. 

Now that’s news. Nobody wants to 

hear about the trains running on time. 

Well, I know a few London commuters 

who might beg to differ as that probably 

would make the news in the UK, but back 

to the main point of the article: how dangerous 

are some of the world’s hotspots? 

12 January 2011 

I thought I’d check a few out, mainly so 

that you don’t have to, and I’m still here in 

one piece to tell the tale! 

Venezuela 

There is a lot more to Venezuela than 

simply oil and Hugo Chavez’s tub-thumping. 

The capital, Caracas, does suffer from 

spates of street crime—although much of 

this is either turf wars or opportunist—so 

take the usual precautions, dress down, 

don’t make it blatantly obvious that you 

are a tourist, avoid flashing cash/jewellery 

around, and be on your guard at night; 

best to take taxis. 

Having said that, this is a big country 

with lots to see without fear. Sun seekers 

head for Margarita island, whilst I flew 

down to Canaima in the middle of the 

jungle to see the famous Angel Falls, the 

world’s highest. 

One travel tip: you can get much better 

exchange rates than the banks offer by 

changing money on the black market— 

this is the norm and most hotel receptionists 

and taxi drivers will happily oblige. 

This is one place to avoid using plastic as 

you’ll be charged the official rate, which 

makes for a more expensive trip. Likewise 

avoid ATMs (although I couldn’t find any 

that would accept foreign bank cards). On 

the whole it’s an inexpensive holiday destination, 

and the Russians are now coming 

thanks to the recently installed visafree 

regime—shame it’s such a long way 

away or I’d be back again in a heartbeat! 

Yemen 

You have to feel sorry for Yemen sometimes. 

How they didn’t make it into Bush’s 

Axis of Evil, Allah only knows. Their President 

might be firmly anti-terrorist and 

we were warmly welcomed by the locals 

that we met on a recent visit, yet there is 

more to this place than you’ll read in the 

Daily Mail. 

Yemen is poor, and has an exploding 

population, a problem not helped by an 

increasing number of Somali refugees. It 

also has few natural resources and even 

fewer friends. OK, this isn’t Ethiopia in the 

1980s, but it’s a world away from the Skyscrapers 

of Dubai. This is a fiercely clandriven 

society and the authorities don’t 

have full control of some of the more 

mountainous regions up in the north 

where head-bangers are freer to plot to 

destroy the world’s infidels. 

So my simple advice is—don’t go 

there! Stick to the beautiful capital Sana’a 

and get lost walking around the ancient 

buildings and markets, where you can

uy cheap spices to take home. You are 

unlikely to bump into many westerners 

here, the international media with its 

overblown stories of kidnappings has 

all but killed off the demand for anyone 

to visit Yemen other than as an absolute 

necessity. This is once of the few remaining 

places on earth where foreigners are 

actually a novelty and yet unlike Egypt 

or Tunisia you won’t be permanently 

surrounded by hustlers trying to sell 

you junk. And one of the most pleasant 

surprises is that you will find the people 

and the southern half of the country 

far friendlier and more welcoming than 

wherever you come from. 

South Africa 

If someone back home gets shot, 

beaten up, knifed or glassed then unless 

a D-level celebrity was involved, 

it barely makes the papers. For some 

reason if the same thing happens to a 

tourist visiting South Africa, out come 

the headlines claiming that the crime 

rate there is worse than in Afghanistan. 

Black locals can tell the difference between 

a white Saffer and a white tourist 

within a split second, for the simple reason 

that there certainly are some dangerous 

parts of South Africa (downtown 

Jo’burg or some of the townships) but 

then again there’s little to see there anyway 

so, go somewhere else! 

South Africa is a beautiful country 

with beautiful scenery, a welcoming 

rainbow of different nationalities, plus 

everyone there speaks English! 

My trip this summer was my first for a 

decade, and timed for the World Cup. All 

the pre-tournament hype about the high 

crime rate in the end predictably came to 

nothing. Hundreds of thousands of fans 

from all over the world enjoyed themselves 

without a hint of trouble—the 

country pulled out all of the stops and 

made it happen. Sure, they’ll still got a 

way to go but it’s worth it, even if just for 

the wine! 

Colombia 

Most people associate Colombia with 

cocaine and the FARC rebel group, and 

they would be right, even if both are 

less than in their heyday. Sure, if you 

stride up to the head of the Medellin 

January 2011 

Travel 

drugs cartel, poke him in the stomach 

and tell him that his grandmother wears 

cowboy boots, then you’re likely to finish 

up chopped finer than a line of the 

white stuff. In recent years former president 

Alvaro Uribe—with considerable 

assistance from the United States—has 

enjoyed success in disarming the paramilitary 

groups and making the majority 

of the country safer to both live in, 

and travel around. 

You’ll probably kick off a visit in Bogota 

which, at 2,600m above sea level, 

is the third highest capital city in the 

world. With a population of over 8 million 

it sprawls out for miles and is prone 

to rain and mist due to the nearby 

mountains, but there are enough sights 

to keep you busy for a day or two. Stroll 

into the main square and then check out 

Narino Palace, the Presidential house. 

The safest and most convenient way 

around is by plane, and the national airline 

Avianca runs a modern fleet whose 

routes extend beyond this large country 

to much of the continent. 

I buckled up and headed for Cargatena 

up on the Atlantic coast, which is 

now UNESCO World Heritage site, no 

less. You’ll see why when you arrive; it’s 

a beautifully walled city overlooking the 

sea, and stuffed full with Spanish, colonial, 

architectural gems. Get there early 

before the crowds, and the heat swallow 

you up and I promise you that your 

jaw will drop. Cartagena doesn’t disappoint. 

Oh, and when you visit, just make 

sure that you pronounce (or spell) their 

country correctly—it’s Colombia, not 

Columbia (as in the University in the 

USA)—or else you may well have a war 

on your hands! P 

1

The Way It Was 

1992 

John Harrison 

1992 started with a new country and 

new hopes. As the pre-revolutionary Russian 

tricolour was hoisted above the Kremlin, 

it seemed that anything was possible. 

But the tidal wave which swept away the 

old system brought with it a lot of dead 

wood, and downright nasty deep-sea 

creatures which, once on the surface, 

clamoured for their share of the spoils. A 

right wing revenge was only to be expected 

after Yeltsin’s astounding victory, but 

the strength and virility of the forces which 

aligned against Yeltsin in 1992 put even as 

tough a survivor as him on the defensive, 

forcing him to change tack and betray his 

alleged principles and colleagues. 

Yeltsin could no longer play the anticommunist 

champion of the powerless. In 

chaos, everyone was powerless. According 

to VTsIOM statistics, Yeltsin’s support 

was halved during the first three months 

of 1992. And yet somehow the man held 

on to power and the country continued 

to move further away from communism, 

albeit in a fragmented way. 

What happened? Under his ‘Great Leap 

Outwards’ campaign, Yelstin at first bulldozed 

ahead with shock therapy reforms. 

Yegor Gaidar (who died in 2010) was appointed 

first deputy prime minister on 2 

March as Yeltsin was still officially prime 

minister. Prices of consumer goods were 

freed resulting in runaway inflation, and 

denationalisation of the country’s assets 

continued. The crime rate doubled, corruption 

spread after privatisation, and 

tax evasion became rampant. The rouble 

depreciated on a daily basis; we bought 

German cooking-oil, French chocolates 

and British alcohol, watched Mexican 

soap-operas and American evangelists 

on TV. Russia’s pride, the army, began its 

decline from 2.72 million men in 1992 to 

one million in 1999. The country suffered 

from losing its superpower status, and 

President Bush Snr was painfully slow in 

embracing the new Russia. The G7 was 

not interested in renegotiating Russia’s 

Soviet debts. 

Nevertheless, Russians remained in favour 

of reforms but realised just a little 

too late that mature capitalism is only possible 

with an independent judiciary and 


regulatory system, both of which did not 

exist in 1992, and do not today. Foreigners 

flew in by the plane load to start businesses 

in the wild east. For many of them, 

if Russia’s streets were not paved with 

gold, at least they glittered. Money was 

made, but the real winners were Russians 

who knew how to play the system from 

the inside. Oligarchs-to-be Khodorovsky, 

Smolensky, Berezovsky and others had 

already made their first fortunes. The old 

industrial elite tried to regain control of 

their empires and in desperation increasingly 

turned to nationalist and extremist 

groupings. According to a survey carried 

out in Moscow in 1993, only 26% of industrial 

enterprises were run by someone 

with a “professional” background. More 

than 68% were run by a former manager 

of a state enterprise. 

To set the scene, a two thirds majority 

in the Congress of People’s deputies 

was all it took to amend the constitution, 

which was changed several hundred 

times from 1990 to 1993. The constitution 

of the United States has been amended 

twenty seven times since 1791. The 

Supreme Soviet could strike down a 

presidential veto by a simple majority, 

and two thirds of the members of the 

congress could impeach the President. 

The legislative and executive branches 

of government drew further apart with 

even the vice-president siding against 

the President. The prospect of dvoevlasteie, 

a duplication of power, raised its 

ugly head in Russia once again. 

As Gaidar planned a second wave of 

price liberalisation, this time aimed at the 

oil and energy sector, criticism on the President 

grew acidic and intense. Although 

Gaidar was promoted to the position of 

acting prime minister on June 15. by that 

time Yeltsin had begun to distance himself 

from radical reform. Without the President 

behind him, Gaidar and champions 

of liberal political principles were severely 

weakened. Gavril Popov, mayor of Moscow 

resigned in 1992 after accusations 

of financial fraud. The few leading liberal 

survivors such as Sakharov’s widow Yelena 

Bonner and Galina Starovoita became 

voices crying in the wilderness. 

The President seemed to prefer a regal 

role of supreme arbitrator between war- 

ring factions, allowing him to treat the 

democrats’ problems and parliament as a 

whole with benign neglect. His periodic 

disappearances for a couple of weeks at a 

time did not help his image. In retrospect, 

Yelstin’s tactics, if one assumes that he had 

any, did work. He succeeded in uniting the 

country--against him. The threat of civil 

war was diffused, until 1993 at least. He attacked 

his enemies only after they had had 

time to expose themselves. Ensconced in 

the Kremlin, the emperor had found some 

new clothes. This was the same person 

who had declared after the 1991 coup that: 

“Russia is a country in a transitional period 

which wants to proceed along a civilised 

path traversed by France, England the 

United States, Japan, Germany and others. 

It is striving to proceed precisely along that 

path through the de-communisation and 

de-ideologisation of all aspects of the life 

of society…” 

Of the groups which appeared on the 

political front in 1992, the middle ground, 

which most closely resembled Gorbachev’s 

democrats, were the “Atlanticists”, made 

up of people like foreign minister Andrei 

Kozyrev who wanted Russia to adopt a 

Western course of development. Countering 

this position was a larger group of disillusioned 

democrats, the “democratic statists” 

who accepted that the general drift of 

Russia towards the West was natural, but 

pushed for a radically more assertive and 

right wing foreign policy, even as Estonia 

started pressing for a law on citizenship 

which would have isolated the Russians 

living there. Russians were being shunned 

from their adopted lands in Kazakhstan 

and eastern Ukraine. In Tajikistan, the outbreak 

of armed inter-clan struggle forced 

most Russian families to flee back to Russia 

in fear of their lives. 

Then there were the “statists” who regarded 

all reforms as being negative. 

More extreme were the “Eurasians” who 

favoured an authoritarian form of rule 

that would consult but not necessarily 

heed the vox populi. For them, the West 

represented the devil incarnate and clearly 

out to enslave Russia with its consumerist 

society. Eurasia was to include Russians, 

Turkic-Iranian peoples, Balts, Ukrainians, 

Moldovans, Byelorussians, and would encompass 

Christianity and Islam. Articles

appeared throughout 1992 in the Russian 

press on the Eurasian theme, many written 

by Muslim authors who came forward 

to champion the newly resurrected “empire 

saving” ideology. 

Nursultan Nazarbaev, the President of 

Kazakhstan attempted in mid-1992 to 

recreate the USSR by spearheading an effort 

to form a “Defence Union” of seven 

former Soviet republics, a “supra-national 

rouble” and “union bank”. Arkady Volsky 

and his powerful industrial lobby, which 

allegedly accounted for 65% of industrial 

output in 1991 supported Nazarbaev, 

as did, not surprisingly, former Soviet 

president Mikhail Gorbachev. Alexander 

Solzhenitsyn and a phalanx of other writers 

turned out to be secret Eurasia supporters, 

and one wonders how close the 

Eurasian point of view is to that of C19th 

philosopher N.A. Berdayev’s vision of 

Russia being a bridge between the two 

worlds, in a country which has a doubleheaded 

eagle as its state symbol. 

President Kravchuk of Ukraine bluntly rejected 

Gorbachev’s initiatives, as did Vytautas 

Landsbergis, then Lithuania’s Supreme 

Council chairman, who said Gorbachev 

was “speaking as a forthright imperialist.” 

The Eurasian movement seemed to falter, 

however it diffused into at least two other 

movements, and Russia’s dilemma between 

Slavophiles and westerners continued. 

The “Civic Union” which was formed 

in June 1992 was a powerful right-centrist 

alliance and brought together the 

“democratic statists,” which including 

Arkaday Volsky, Vice-President Alexandre 

Rutskoi and Nikolai Travkin, chairman of 

the 50,000 member Democratic Party of 

Russia. Civic Union tried and succeeded 

in slowing down reform. Yeltsin had no 

intention of giving in to the demands of 

his Vice President and the increasingly 

outspoken Russian Supreme Soviet chairman 

Ruslan Khasbulatov who happened 

to come from Chechnya. 

Whilst Yeltsin and his dwindling band of 

supporters were busy doing battle with 

the statists, a growing coalescence of the 

extreme right made its presence known. 

In October, the ‘Front for National Salvation’ 

aimed straight for the jugular and 

clearly stated its aims to unseat Yeltsin. 

Later that month, Yeltsin tried to outlaw 

the organisation, but newly established 

constitutional court ruled that a final decision 

should be postponed until February 

1993. The arrest list that this group drew 

up replicated that of the KGB during the 

1991 coup, but included a few more, such 

as Gorbachev, Volsky, Gaidar, Kozyrev, 

Chibais, Sobchak and others. To National 

Salvation fanatics, all these people were 

de facto Western “fifth columnists.” In October, 

one pro-democracy weekly Megapolis 

Express labelled the new salvation 

front “GKChP the Second.” 

The President began to show an authoritarian 

side. Slowly but surely, he 

awarded himself the very perks he had 

castigated before 1991. The absence of a 

stable multi-party system increased Yeltsin’s 

freedom of manoeuvre in a country 

where the ruler or his party owns most of 

the land. Sergei Kovalev, the Russian government’s 

human rights commissioner 

was increasingly isolated from ministers. 

Barely days after Vaddim Bakhtin, a loyal 

Gorbachev reformer was appointed 

head of the KGB in August 1991 with the 

mission of “presenting proposals for the 

radical reorganisation,” but not its closure, 

he explained that the KGB could 

not open its 10 million KGB dossiers for 

fear of “splitting the country apart,” and 

anyway, going public would make it impossible 

to recruit informers again. 

One of Yeltsin’s first acts in power was 

to create a new super ministry which encompassed 

the rump of the KGB and the 

ordinary police (the Ministry of the Interior). 

This meant the creation of an enlarged 

agency of social control which at least on 

paper would resemble Stalin’s NKVD. Yeltsin 

started out trying to dilute the power 

of the KGB by mixing its officers with ordinary 

police who were more corruptible 

and therefore easier to control. This super 

ministry was unanimously vetoed on 14 

January 1992 by the constitutional court. 

This was either a victory for the people or 

the result of pressure from the KGB. In late 

January the KGB took back its vital function 

of monitoring the political loyalty of army 

officers, and in June once again became 

the custodians of the country’s border 

guards, albeit temporarily. Yelstin’s new 

head of the KGB, Viktor Barannikov turned 

native as soon as he entered Lubyanka 

and started defending the KGB’s record 

during Soviet times. The only real change 

was that the KGB no longer scrutinized the 

churches. As a power battle between Yeltsin 

and the Russian parliament intensified, 

each side competed for control over the 

security ministry, which allowed the security 

service to follow its own agenda. This 

time the KGB was also interested in the 

commercialisation of its services, particularly 

in the export of raw materials. 

In November, the communists, whose 

party had been banned in Russia in August 

1991, obtained a decision from the 


Constitutional Court in November 1991 

allowing them to re-found themselves 

and use some of their old premises under 

the name of the Communist Party of 

the Russian Federation under Gennadi 

Zyuganov. Gone was the atheism and 

internationalism, but the commitment 

to Lenin and even Stalin remained. 

By the time of the stormy Seventh 

Congress of the Russian People’s Deputies 

in December 1992, Khasbulatov’s 

de facto clout rivalled that of Yeltsin. 

The man’s ambition knew no end, and 

he toured around the country issuing 

statements and doling out cash, seemingly 

representing “all Rus and the CIS.” 

He reached out to economic groups 

threatened by Gaidar’s shock therapy. 

Komomolskaya Provda rightly called 

the Seventh Congress, “a major political 

defeat” for the Russian President. At one 

stage, he was abandoned by the heads of 

the Russian Defence Ministry, the Ministry 

of State Security and the MVD who in effect 

sided with the Congress against him. 

More than 80% of the Congress’s deputies 

were current or former members of the 

communist party. At the Congress, Yeltsin 

fund himself facing a solid, aggressive majority 

of communists encouraged by the 

re-legalisation of their Party. Then there 

were the nationalists and go-slow-towardreform 

centrists. All wished to reduce 

Yeltsin’s powers, and if he refused then 

he was to be impeached. The attempted 

coup failed by just 72 votes out of the 689 

needed. Yeltsin actually offered compromises 

on major issues, but the deputies 

did not. By surviving, Yeltsin lost none of 

his actual powers, with the exception that 

the Constitutional Court was empowered 

to approve or reject Yeltsin’s candidate 

for prime minister, while Yeltsin would in 

turn be able to organise a referendum to 

be held in April 1993. Under this brokered 

agreement, Yeltsin was forced to surrender 

Yegor Gaidar as his acting prime minister 

and to settle for a compromise “centrist” 

candidate, Viktor Chernomyrdin who was 

already a deputy prime minister. 

Yeltsin’s battles were by no means over; 

in fact this was all only a prelude to what 

happened in 1993. Nevertheless, people 

began to get used to the new freedoms. 

The era of open politics, where Russians 

actually identified with their leaders, a period 

which only lasted a few short years 

under Gorbachev, was drawing to a close. 

Instead there were bickering, angry men 

who shouted at each other, and who 

called themselves politicians. They commanded 

less and less respect. P 

January 2011 

15


A minefield for 

objective reporting 1992 

Helen Womack 

The collapse of the Soviet Union created 

a number of “hot spots” of ethnic 

conflict. In the late 1980s and early 

1990s, Christian Armenians and Muslim 

Azeris fought a nasty little war over the 

mountainous territory of Nagorno- 

Karabakh. Each side accused the West 

of bias in favour of their enemy. It was 

difficult for reporters to be objective. 

In February 1992, news came out that 

something terrible had happened in 

Khojaly, an Azeri settlement in the disputed 

enclave, mostly populated by 

Armenians. Hundreds of Azeri bodies 

were said to be strewn across a snowy 

mountainside. Were they battlefield casualties? 

Or had there been a massacre? 

With a group of Moscow-based correspondents, 

I flew to the Azeri border 

town of Agdam, to which refugees from 

Khojaly had fled. We arrived in the middle 

of the night, tired, but instead of being 

taken to lodgings by our Azeri hosts, 


we were bussed straight to the mosque 

to examine four mutilated corpses. 

At three in the morning, I didn’t know 

what to make of this. My rational mind said: 

“Four bodies don’t equal a massacre.” But at 

the deepest level of my being, I was shocked. 

“So when we are dead, we all look like broken 

dolls,” I thought. I was young then and all 

I had seen of death was the closed coffin of 

my grandmother at a stiff English funeral. 

The next day, we went to the cemetery, 

where Azeri women were wailing over 75 

freshly dug graves. Following tradition, they 

had scratched their cheeks bloody and 

were producing a ritual, high-pitched howl. 

Graves decorated with dolls were those of 

young people due to have been married, 

we were told. More bodies were still out on 

the mountainside, waiting to be retrieved. 

This was beginning to look like a massacre, 

I had to admit. 

At the Agdam railway station, a train 

had been turned into a makeshift hospital, 

full of women, children and old men 

with gunshot wounds. The survivors 

spoke consistently of how Armenian 

forces had attacked their town, of how 

civilians had fled into the forests, of how 

they had been trapped in a mountain 

pass and fired upon indiscriminately. 

“A terrible tragedy has taken place but 

the world is silent,” said Dr. Eldar Sirazhev. 

“The West has always supported 

the Armenian side because they have a 

large, eloquent diaspora.” 

I drew my conclusions and filed a report 

that on this occasion, the Azeris had 

indeed been the victims. Other times, it 

was the other way round. “Six of one and 

half a dozen of the other,” as my mother 

used to say about playground fights. But 

the victims of Khojaly were Muslim. 

I did my job, went home and unraveled. 

Some correspondents become war junkies 

but I had a kind of nervous breakdown. 

Having seen death like that, I suddenly 

became afraid of everything. Alcohol 

helped but it wasn’t a long term solution. 

Mediation was better medicine, enabling 

me in middle age to embrace life. P

Hunt for painted 

prisoners of war 

Helen Womack 

In 1992, the hunt was on for so-called 

“Trophy Art”, paintings and other artifacts 

that Soviet forces looted from Berlin 

at the end of World War II. Had the 

treasures all been German, the scandal 

might not have been so great. But many 

were European masterpieces that the 

Nazis had grabbed from collections in 

occupied countries, such as Holland. 

The West hoped that newly independent 

Russia would come clean about 

the hidden pictures and return them to 

their rightful owners. 

Two art historians, Konstantin Akinsha 

and Grigory Kozlov, first blew the whistle 

on Russian museums that were holding 

the treasures in dark vaults, keeping them 

from public view. The authorities flatly denied 

that thousands of priceless works by 

artists from Durer and Rembrandt to Goya 

and Manet were in Russia, having been 

taken from Berlin by Stalin’s special confiscation 

squads, as well as ordinary soldiers 

helping themselves to “souvenirs”. 

I got a tip-off that the long-lost Koenigs 

Collection of Old Master drawings, 

sold under duress to the Nazis by a 

Rotterdam museum, was being kept at 

Glebov’s House, home to the Pushkin 

Museum’s department of graphics. 

“Oh yes, they’re here, they’re definitely 

here,” a young curator told me pleasantly. 

“I’ll just fetch the Dutch expert for you.” 

Two minutes later, the woman returned 

with a stony face and said: “No, there’s 

nothing here. You misunderstood.” 

I felt the thrill of the chase. 

The story developed when a video 

came to light, showing 17th and 18th century 

French paintings hanging at Uzkoye, 

a sanatorium on the edge of Moscow enjoyed 

by scientists from the Academy of 

Sciences. I went to the estate, which had 

once belonged to Prince Trubetskoy, and 

pretended an interest in the Russian aristocracy. 

The manager wouldn’t let me in, 

for fear of disturbing the scientists, but 

she did walk with me in the grounds. 

She volunteered the information that 

the local church contained rare books 

from German libraries. “Oh really,” I 

said, “and I’ve heard that you also have 

French paintings in the main house.” 

She was aghast. “Where did you get that 

information from? I don’t like the look of 

1992 

this. There’s too much interest in those 

pictures. I won’t tell you anything.” 

That really whetted my appetite. 

Then Akinsha and Kozlov came up with 

documentary proof that ancient gold, excavated 

from the site of Troy by the 19th 

century German archaeologist Heinrich 

Schliemann and before the war exhibited 

in Berlin, was among the plundered treasures 

in Moscow. They gave me access 

to the inventory that accompanied the 

crates of gold from Germany and a paper 

confirming receipt in Moscow, signed by 

a certain Lapin on 9 July 1945. 

This was dynamite. And still the authorities 

were denying everything. Of 

course, I was desperate to find some 

trophy art myself. 

By chance, I attended a wedding. It 

was a fashionable affair and the bride 

and groom, film makers with an eye for 

Soviet kitsch, had hired a Palace of Culture 

in the countryside outside Moscow 

for their reception. 

The guests mingled among potted 

palms or played billiards in what was effectively 

a country club. I wandered into 

a ground floor sitting room and saw two 

fine landscapes hanging on the wall. 

I didn’t recognise the pictures but 

asked the director, a cheerful old Communist 

called Vladimir Davidov, where 

they came from. “Oh, that’s trophy art, 

taken from Germany at the end of the 

war,” he said without batting an eyelid. 

“I got them from Uzkoye when this club 

was built in 1954 and we needed something 

to decorate the walls.” 

He allowed me back to photograph 

the paintings, which were later identified 

by experts as Vespasian’s Temple in 

Rome and The Narni Valley by Wilhelm 

Schirmer, a German romantic artist who 

lived in Italy in the 19th century. 

It was becoming difficult for the Russian 

authorities to stonewall any longer. 

And they had their point of view, 

too. The Nazis had destroyed much of 

Russian cultural heritage during their 

occupation of Soviet territory. Russian 

treasures, such as icons, that had found 

their way to Germany had been sold 

on the open market, making it virtually 

impossible that they would ever be 

returned. Surely Russia deserved some 

compensation, they said. 


In October 1992, the Russian Culture 

Minister, Yevgeny Sidorov, admitted the 

existence of the trophy art and invited 

the Dutch ambassador, Joris Vos, to see 

the Koenigs Collection. 

It would be another three years before 

the Pushkin Museum put on an 

exhibition of trophy art entitled Saved 

Twice Over. Director Irina Antonova 

said the world should be grateful to the 

confiscation squads who “saved” the 

paintings from the ruins of Berlin, handing 

them over to museum staff, who 

“saved” them again through painstaking 

restoration. 

Did the trophy art then go back to 

Western Europe? In fact, not; most of it 

is still in Russia. In 2004 Ukraine, which 

was holding half of the Koenigs Collection, 

did return its drawings to The 

Netherlands but the rest remain in the 

Pushkin Museum in Moscow, their fate 

still “under consideration” by a very 

slow-moving Russia. P 

January 2011 

1


Peace Corps Volunteers and their counterparts attending an investment conference on the Volga, July 1993 

Shock Troops 1992 

Art Franczek 

We were ushered into a large dark auditorium 

located in one of Stalin’s wedding-cake 

buildings. A group of Russian 

officials headed by the deputy Foreign 

Minister gave speeches to a sleepy jetlagged 

group of Peace Corps Volunteers. 

They thanked us coming to Russia in 

these arduous times and they disavowed 

the rumors that the US Peace Corps was a 

CIA front. The Los Angeles Times referred 

to us as “Shock Troops” sent to Russia as 

part of an economic aid package from 

the US. The Russian officials emphasized 

that this group of PCVs came to help Russia 

develop its battered economy, not to 

build wells and teach hygiene in a Third 

World country! 

Fifty PCVs would be assigned to the 

cities along the Volga such as Nizhniy 

Novgorod, Samara, Saratov and Togliatti. 

They were a high-powered group 

that included the graduates of Harvard, 

two from University of Chicago, three 

from Kellog, fifteen bankers, lawyers, 

a couple of PhDs and me, a CPA with a 

couple of Masters degrees. 

During the months prior to our arrival 

we had read that Russia was moving towards 

boiling point. Yegor Gaidar implemented 

a shock therapy for the Russian 

economy which meant the prices of 

goods were no longer controlled and the 

value of the rouble was no longer kept 

artificially low, inflation for the year was 

2300%. GDP in 1992 had decreased by 

19% and would decrease by a total of 48% 

during the years 1992 to 1996. The West- 


(part1) 

ern press was full of stories about Russian 

shops with empty shelves, and long lines 

of people waiting to buy sausages. I recall 

a story about a sign in the Producty that 

said, “There is no meat and there won’t 

be any”. The day I left Chicago for Peace 

Corps training in November 1992, tank 

movements were reported around Moscow 

in anticipation of a coup. I wondered 

what had I gotten myself into and how 

will I survive in Russia. 

When I arrived in Saratov ( a military industrial 

city that was closed until 1992) I 

saw no evidence of starving Russians or 

long lines. The markets were full of fruits, 

vegetables, eggs and meat. Trucks containing 

Snickers, soap and other Western 

goods were parked at the markets and 

Russian consumers had a choice of more 

than one soap or toothpaste (Russian 

toothpaste also served as caulk for bathtubs). 

I recall that in the meat section the 

butcher wielded a huge, medieval axe to 

dismember the poor cow. By late 1992 

the ”chelnoki “ (shuttlers) were highly visible 

at airports and train stations. These 

people would make trips to places like 

China, Turkey and Poland. They left home 

with empty bags and returned with bags 

stuffed with clothing, leather goods and 

many other items. This was the beginning 

of a retail market in Russia. 

I remember that making a phone call 

home was quite an ordeal. Peace Corps 

training was held at a sanatorium in 

Saratov located on top of a hill covered 

with ice. First I had to negotiate a kilometre 

of ice that led down to the tram 

and into “tsentr gorod.” At the ”pochta” 

I reserved a time for my phone call at 

least three days in advance. On Sunday 

morning when I arrived I paid and received 

my 10 minutes on the phone and 

was cut off in mid-sentence. 

The Russian people were supportive of 

the Peace Corps and regularly invited us 

into their homes. It was there I learned how 

people coped. Many had dachas which 

were not simply used for relaxation. In almost 

every home I visited, the balconies 

were full sacks of potatoes, cucumbers etc. 

Most Russians had a big freezer filled with 

frozen berries, cherries and other items 

grown at the dacha. Kitchen shelves were 

full of jams, pickles and “kompot”. 

During the Soviet period, money was 

virtually useless. Soviet citizens had lived 

their lives in endless informal barter deals. 

People gave “gifts” to get anything from 

a nice cut of meat to western cosmetics. 

These gifts usually weren’t monetary. They 

ranged from theater tickets to supplies of 

scarce goods. I knew a number of doctors 

who traded their services for meat. Russian 

production plants refused to fire their employees 

and simply asked for more credits 

from the state or paid wages late. Many 

companies paid their employees in goods. 

The road between Samara and Togliatti was 

full of people selling towels, glassware, bras 

and whatever their companies gave them 

as payment for their services. Fresh fish was 

readily available on that road and could be 

purchased directly from the fisherman. 

In these early years of Russian capitalism 

barter was a way of life that helped 

people cope on almost every level. As a 

result we never witnessed the kind of 

crash that had been predicted by the 

Western analysts. I know, I was there, I 

witnessed how Russia muddled through 

its first economic crisis. P

The Summer of 1992 

Thomas Fasbender 

It was a summer of smells. The air 

outside the Metro station, loaded with 

the fragrances of human sweat, added 

to the odours that emerged from the 

Soviet retail stores. Greenish pieces of 

thawed meat at the bottom of broken 

freezers, the putrid remains of tuna, 

stinking mackerels. I learned to inhale 

consciously, savouring every breath like 

strange erotic scents. 

I arrived in Moscow on the last day 

of May. For the first three months I had 

booked a room at the Mezhdunarodnaya 

hotel, today the Crowne Plaza. From 

one in the morning the girls would call: 

Do you want a little sex? Three nights 

in a row I turned them down, then I 

moved out. The breakfast was unbearable 

anyway. 

The new, old country, Russia, had been 

in existence for a bit more than twenty 

weeks. Inflation was spiralling, finally 

amounting to 2,500% for the year. The 

last thing you wanted was roubles. Each 

day we exchanged a few and discussed 

whether the black market was legal or 

not. Nobody knew for sure. 

Nobody knew anything, but all the 

while there were some among us who 

anticipated the future, clear as if cut in 

stone. Derk Sauer started a twice-weekly 

publication called the Moscow Times, 

a stapled pack of xeroxes reminiscent of 

a newspaper. Arkadiy Novikov opened 

his first restaurant, the Sirena on Bolshaya 

Spasskaya. It was a few steps from 

my apartment and considered hellishly 

expensive even by ex-pat standards. 

The Gaidar government frantically 

tried to come to grips with the economy. 

I remembered them from a bizarre 

little conference in Lausanne called 

“Meet the Government of Russia”, that 

spring. Chubby Gaidar was the obvious 

mastermind. 

At dinner I sat opposite Chubais, 

sharp and blue-eyed. Shokhin with his 

white face and thick glasses, bright and 

melancholic, sat to my left. They were 

young and unpretentious. They had 

ideas, enthusiasm and their boss’s trust, 

and they knew that the chances of them 

breaking apart that communist monster 

economy without destroying it, were 

pretty close to zero. 

Nights in the city were dark. No 

neons, no ad posts and few vehicles. 

Hardly any locals in the scattered restaurants 

and no shops to speak of. At 

least there was parking space. 

The foreign community and the 

blessed who owned dollars frequented 

the large new supermarkets. There was 

the German one in the yellow building 

around the corner from the Beijing 

Hotel, the Italian right on the open 

lot behind the Aerostar, a French one 

somewhere, a Finnish. There was no 

talk of oligarchs in those days, and the 

term Novye Russkie had not yet been 

invented. 

We lived the life of the quintessential 

Americain à Paris after the Great War, 

grand theatre for the observant foreigner, 

safely lodged in a guarded UPDK 

apartment, watching through the tinted 

windows of chaffeur-driven limousines. 

Sometimes, in the evenings, we mixed 

with the mortals. 

And it was a summer of death. The old 

society, what was left of it after years of 

decaying perestroika, was rotting by 

the day. I remember the lifeless bodies 

on the MKAD and on Yaroslavskoye 

chaussee, then about the only roads fit 

for speeding. There was no concrete 

barrier dividing the MKAD, and pedestrians 

used to cross it day and night, 

trusting in God. 

I remember the engineer from Sweden 

who suffered a stroke in the toilet at 

our office. I spent the night with him in 

the run-down intensive care unit at the 

Botkin hospital, body-guarding the slim, 

sun-tanned man of fifty, brain-dead on 

life-support, until the sleek Swedish 

doctor arrived at dawn. 

Years later, when renascent Moscow 

quickly grew into a fad, people flocked 

in from around the world. Californians, 

Londoners, all hungry for decadence in 

the face of doom. They enjoyed watching 

naked teenage girls dance on the 

bar at the Hungry Duck and they read, 

still later, about their oh so wild, wild life 

in the eXile magazine. 

In fact by then it was long over. Gone 

like the smells and odours. People were 

already making money, playing urban 

games. But in the summer of 1992, when 

you opened the limo door and exited 

into non-reality—there it was. Moscow, 

raw: a world spiralling downward in free 

fall, a maelstrom composed of the stark, 

blazing white light that only the dying 

could see. P 


1992 How to rent a 

flat in Moscow 

A confusing start: 

Я хочу снять квартиру. 

I want to rent a flat. 

Хозяин хочет сдать квартиру. 

The landlord wants to rent out a flat. 

Refining your search: 

Я ищу двухкомнатную квартиру. 

I’m looking for a two-room flat 

(NB, NOT two-bedroom, just two rooms) 

Мне нужна трехкомнатная квартира. 

I need a three-room flat. 

Мне нужна квартира в центре. 

I need a flat in the centre. 

Сколько стоит аренда в месяц? 

How much is the monthly rent? 

Это мне слишком дорого. 

That’s too expensive. 

Дороговато. 

This is a cool word for bargaining ‘oooh, 

a bit on the expensive side’. 

Extra details: 

Какой этаж? What floor is it on? 

Есть балкон? Is there a balcony? 

Есть лоджия? Is there a closed balcony? 

Есть охрана? Is there a guard? 

Эта квартира с мебелью или без? 

With or without furniture? 

Есть стиральная машина? 

А посудомоечная машина? 

With a washing machine? A dish-washer? 

Какая станция метро рядом? 

Which metro station is nearest? 

And don’t forget to find out: 

Кто платит за коммунальные услуги? 

Who pays the local taxes? 

Кто платит за электричество? 

За газ и телефон? Who pays utilities? 

Есть интернет? Кто за него платит? 

Is there internet? Who pays for it? 

Соседи хорошие? (мирные?) 

Are the neighbours nice people? Peaceful? 

Enjoy your new home! 

С новосельем! 

January 2011 

Courtesy of RUSLINGUA 

www.ruslingua.com 

1

The Way It Is 

Icon Writing 

Text and photos by John Harrison 

For some years now, a group of foreigners has been 

studying icon drawing, as it is called, in Moscow under 

the auspices of the Prosopon school. I caught up 

with them in the Philippine embassy of all places in 

November where Irina Alexevna Vorfluseva was taking 

a group of ten students through the basic stages of 

icon writing. During a break for lunch, I talked to Irina 

and some of the other students about the course. 

This was their 4th week, and some of the icons were 

already incredibly beautiful. 

How long has this group been functioning 

for? 

About 16 years. 

What is the school called? (Irina) 

The school is called the Prosopon 

School of Iconology: 

www.prosoponschool.org 

Prosopon is a Greek word that means 

image, or action of God. We use this 

Greek word because icon drawing came 

to us from Byzantium. The word means 

image, or mask of the unseen face of an 

unseen God. Some of the traditions are 

pre-Christian. 


How do you teach this? (Irina) 

There is a very well worked out method 

established in Russia by Vladislav 

Andreev who was born in 1938 in St. 

Petersburg. After finishing art school 

he travelled around Russia in search 

of groups of religious believers who 

still kept the traditions of icon drawing 

going, in the depths of Soviet Russia. 

He emigrated to America in 1979 and 

taught icon drawing in New York for ten 

years, and has become something of 

an icon master in the west, and in Russia 

too. At the present time, as art of the 

Prosopon School, about 20 icon draw- 

Irina Vorfluseva 

ers are working on various projects in 

Kostroma and Moscow. The classes we 

have here today are specially organised 

for foreigners to familiarise them with 

icon art and with the traditions of Orthodoxy. 

Icon drawing is more than simply an 

artistic experience, it is spiritual in that 

it isolates a person from the material 

world and helps that person attain spiritual 

qualities. I can’t say that we do an 

awful lot on the spiritual side with this 

particular class, it is specific. Usually we 

hold all day classes where we spend half 

of the time studying Orthodox theory,

and only then go on to the practice. 

Here the classes last for 6 hours, with a 

break for lunch in the middle. We spend 

most of the time drawing icons. 

Most people here are Christians, but 

there is a substantial difference between 

the different confessions. It is easier to 

teach Catholics than Protestants because 

most Catholics have undergone 

some kind of religious training in childhood, 

and the canons of Church Orthodox 

belief are therefore closer to them. 

How do you actually teach? (Irina) 

There are 29 stages of icon drawing. 

Some of these are technical and 

some relate to invisible internal spiritual 

changes. Of supreme importance 

is the spiritual state of the icon drawer. 

There are seven visible steps which are 

deduced from the seven kinds of praying 

in the ancient religion, and 22 invisible 

steps as we call them. The Prosafon 

school does not distinguish before the 

7 different kinds of prayer carried out by 

Orthodox monks and icon drawing. 

None of what we are doing has anything 

to do with fine art. All we demand 

from the student is that he or she carries 

out the instructions of the teacher. 

Of course we would like students to 

understand that it is not possible to 

portray the face of God, but it is possible 

to portray an interpretation of God 

through action. 

Our studies are based on icons drawing 

of the 15th century and beginning of the 

16th century in Moscow and Novgorod. We 

use only natural materials such as wood, 

organic glue and mineral pigments. 

There are 6 lessons in this course. During 

the first lesson, the outline of the 

face is transferred to the board, using 

templates of ancient icons. During the 

second lesson, the icon is “opened”, that 

is, colour is added. As we draw, the basic 

spiritual idea behind this is explained. 

January 2011 

The Way It Is 

The mere fact that students are drawing 

from a template and not from their 

imagination indicates that they have accepted 

that God cannot be imagined or 

portrayed directly, and in this the drawer 

is automatically accepting his or her 

place in the spiritual hierarchy of things. 

Why is your group made up of women 

only? (Irina) 

The majority of students are women 

at the moment, which is a reflection of 

the current level of spirituality of humankind 

at the moment. Women generally 

speaking have more time, and 

icon drawing takes a lot of time. 

How much does it cost? (Irina) 

1500 roubles for each lesson, which includes 

everything apart from the boards 

and the gold leaf used to complete the 

icons, because these are expensive. On 

the site there is a list of shops where the 

materials can be bought. 

How do you, Davina, as a painter handle 

the discipline of icon painting? (Davina 

Garrido De Miguel , one of the students) 

Icon writing is based on writing, not 

painting. When I said I was a painter, they 

said: “Oh, you’ll have problems, because 

you’ll try and do your own thing instead 

of just following the course. It’s about 

not expressing yourself and following 

the discipline.” Maybe it is, but for me, 

I gain a lot from doing this, about techniques, 

about many things which I can 

take back to me own work. It’s like learning 

another language, especially the 

language of writing colour. There is also 

the spiritual aspect which is interwoven 

into this, and which is amazing. 

What was the most interesting stage for 

you? (Davina Garrido De Miguel). 

The initial stage when we chose which 

face we were going to do. The end is 

lovely, but then you’re done. 

Irina added: There is nothing wrong 

with individuality, and you can add that 

at a later stage, when you have mastered 

the basics of icon writing. The Church 

has an understanding of the spiritual 

meaning of each colour, which existed 

in monasteries in ancient times. 

If you want to find out more about the 

icon writing groups which meet in Moscow, 

contact Irina Vorfluseva, on home 

+74997423845, cell +79153291138, or at 

http://www.raaad.org/prosoponschool. 

org/new/about.html P 

21

The Way It Is 

Speaking in tongues? 

Text by Scott Spires; illustration Nika Harrison 

Walk around one of the Moscow markets. If your Russian’s good 

enough, you should be able to understand at least some of what 

the sellers are saying. But even a good understanding of Russian 

might not clear up another source of confusion: the chance that 

you won’t understand anything at all when the traders begin talking 

not to you, but to each other. Because there’s a good chance 

that they are not speaking Russian at all, but some other language 

that you can’t identify, or didn’t even know existed. 

Ex-pats who find learning Russian difficult may not know, or 

care, that there are more than 100 other languages spoken in 

this country. They represent the whole spectrum of language 

groups in Eurasia: Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Mongolic, 

Caucasian. 

In a certain sense, therefore, the Russian Federation can be 

viewed as a “linguistic preserve”, a habitat for specimens of 

many of the world’s language families. Although Russian is the 

only federally-recognized language, the country’s constituent 

entities grant 24 other languages official status. Some of 

these languages, such as Tatar, Yakut and Buryat, have sizeable 

speech communities numbering the hundreds of thousands, 


or even more. But occasional signs of liveliness conceal the 

fact that Russia’s linguistic preserve is in danger of turning effectively 

monolingual within a couple of generations. The Russian 

language is similar to English, Spanish, and Portuguese in 

its status as an imperial language, covering a vast region and 

eroding smaller, pre-existing speech communities. 

In fact, the process of language death has been going on 

in Russia for centuries; the land itself attests to this. Many of 

the place names of northern Russia (such as Lake Ilmen and 

the Neva River, and arguably “Moskva” as well) are derived 

from Finno-Ugric dialects that died out, or migrated elsewhere, 

long ago. Many languages of Siberia or the Caucasus 

have disappeared, or are in severe danger of doing so. They 

include such curiosities as Ubykh, spoken long ago in the 

Krasnodar Region, which had a jaw-breaking 81 consonants 

and only three vowels; the Tungusic languages, which are 

related to the speech of the Manchus, who conquered China 

and produced its last imperial dynasty; and the Ob-Ugrian 

languages, spoken by a few thousand people in western Siberia 

who are the closest linguistic relatives to the Hungarians, 

thousands of miles away.

An acquaintance with Russia’s linguistic archeology thus 

gives us a range of perspectives on Eurasia’s history and geography 

that we might otherwise miss. For instance, it may 

seem strange to consider that today’s thoroughly European 

Hungarians are part of the same language family as the shamanists 

of the Ob-Irtysh forests; but no stranger than to realize 

that Londoners and Parisians every day speak the same 

root words—day, night, sun; mother, father; one, two, three— 

as members of isolated hill tribes in the Indian subcontinent. 

This situation raises a couple of questions. The first is 

whether these minority languages can be saved. The second 

is whether they ought to be saved. There is no clear answer to 

either of these questions. 

The best region for understanding the threats to small languages 

in Russia is probably Siberia. Many of the phenomena 

that lead to the demise of minority languages are especially apparent 

there. Geography, politics, and culture all interact to create 

a space in which it is difficult for such languages to thrive. 

The lack of linguistic compactness, for example, is a problem 

that especially affects the survivability of a language. Siberians 

live sparsely scattered across a vast territory, which 

makes communication in the form of sizable communities 

difficult. This contrasts with, for example, the situation in the 

Northern Caucasus. It remains, in an expression that goes 

back to Roman times, “the mountain of languages,” a region 

of densely packed and clearly demarcated tongues. A striking 

example of long-term survival on the head of a pin, as it were, 

is furnished by Archi, a language of Dagestan. Archi is an extreme 

example of compactness: It is spoken in a single village 

of 1,200 people, but everyone in the village speaks it. As long 

as this situation persists, it is likely to survive. 

Policy choices have contributed to the withering of some 

languages. The family is one of the most important forces in 

ensuring the survival of a language—if parents are able to 

hand it down to their children, it will continue for at least another 

generation. In the last century, however, it was common 

for children of minority-language speakers to be taken away 

from their parents and raised in boarding schools together 

with children of other small nationalities. The inevitable result 

of this situation was that everyone grew up fluent only in Russian. 

In many cases, only people born before approximately 

1940 have preserved knowledge of a language. Once that happens, 

language death becomes almost inevitable. When the 

younger generation drops the baton, the race is over. 

Standardization can also present a problem. If a language 

has never been equipped for use in any official sphere, deciding 

where the standard ends and dialects begin can be 

problematic. The Nenets language, for example, comes in 

two distinct varieties: Forest and Tundra. Should one of these 

be chosen as the basis for the standard; should a hybrid language 

be created; or should each be recognized as a separate 

language and treated accordingly? 

These are the sort of questions that can keep a language out 

of classrooms, radio stations, and newspapers, and promote 

its eventual extinction. Even standardization does not guarantee 

a continued use, since elderly or longtime speakers rebel 

against using the new standard. 

This brings us to another fact that language romanticists seldom 

mention: the speakers themselves often see little value in 

holding on to the language. For them, there is nothing exotic in 

their native language, because it’s a familiar everyday presence. 

And its connotations can be anything but romantic. Instead of 

January 2011 

The Way It Is 

conjuring up ghosts of ancient wisdom and cultural tradition, 

it suggests poverty, backwardness, and a restricted life. Viewed 

from that perspective, there is no mystery why many people 

find the attractions of the major world languages irresistible. 

Arguably, however, there are good reasons to preserve minority 

languages, although those reasons are rather prosaic and 

may not appeal to people who perceive endangered tongues 

as something exotic and magical. Culture is really the key factor. 

Mark Abley, in his book Spoken Here, quotes an activist for the Celtic 

Manx language as saying: “The language is almost like a peg to 

hang the culture on. The music, the Gaelic way of storytelling, the 

folklore—all these things come out of the Manx language.” 

Cultures can survive the translation to a new language, but in 

the process they lose something unique and essential. Poetry, 

folklore, songs and customs have a unique sound and shape, 

and possibly a unique meaning, in one language that they don’t 

have in another. Abley also quotes the graphic words of MIT linguist 

Ken Hale, who says that losing a language is like “dropping 

a bomb on the Louvre.” 

The outside world tends to take little notice of the small 

peoples of Russia. Akira Kurosawa’s Siberian epic Dersu Uzala 

featured a Goldi hunter who befriends a Russian explorer; the 

Tuvan throat-singing group Huun-Huur-Tu has enjoyed success 

around the globe, singing songs in their native language 

that simply couldn’t produce the same effect in Russian, or 

any other language. But it is hard to think of much beyond 

these admittedly esoteric examples that have made it into the 

wider world. Linguistic homogenization is one of the factors 

that could blur the peoples’ distinctive cultural profile. P 

2

The Way It Is 

In the 

bleak 

mid-winter 

New Year 

it’s party time! 

Stephen Wilson 

How enchanting and alluring it all is! The festive spirit 

of Christmas is haunting the streets. It seems so wonderfully 

spontaneous! You can even smell the excitement. We 

can be children again! In celebrations, Russians loathe exactitude. 

There is no precise beginning or end to parties. 

Wonderful! 


As I write this article in December, fir trees (Yolki) are being hoisted 

by cranes on elegant squares, Christmas lamps are flickering 

on and off as if winking at some well-kept secret. Tinsel lavishly 

adorns window panes and even a polite “fat” model Santa Claus 

bows to me. Snow gently drifts down. We are no longer dreaming 

of a white Christmas. We are in the middle of one! 

Ex-pats don’t have to whitewash their Christmas with Bing Crosby 

songs. And we get to celebrate two Christmases (one on the

25th and another on the 7th of January) and two New Years; (the 

1st of January and the old New year on the 14th). Russian New Year 

is reminiscent of a European Christmas. Or is it? Appearances can 

be deceptive. The Russians are not actually celebrating Christmas 

at all, but New Year in a slightly Christmassy way. 

When you look more closely, illusions are broken. Everything 

appears awkwardly upside down. Firstly, you discover 

New Year is celebrated before Christmas and afterwards New 

Year again. Then don’t forget that some people still pay homage 

to old pre-Christian pagan customs, (Svyatki, a time of 

revelry and fortune telling from January 7th to 19th). You may 

ask, “How can you celebrate the old New Year?” Isn’t it an 

oxymoron? We need a brief historical explanation. 

HISTORY 

The date of New Year has constantly changed over the centuries. 

This is because it was originally celebrated as part of 

the winter solstice which marked the shortest time of year. 

This represented a major turning point, when the life-giving 

sun returned. The problem is that the precession of equinoxes 

changes over the centuries. So although the solstice has 

moved from the date of the 6th of January to the 25th of December, 

many religions preserve the old dates. If we followed 

the solstice with fidelity we would currently celebrate Christmas 

on the 22nd of December! 

Up until the 14th century, New Year was originally celebrated 

from the first of March, then later from the first of September 

and finally, in 1700, along with imported Yolki from northern 

Europe, on the first of January. 

Before Peter the Great, the peasants celebrated New Year 

not only according to the winter solstice but according to 

their locality in Russia. It was celebrated unsystematically. So 

there was a lot of confusion as to how to celebrate. Peter the 

Great sought to impose order. He issued the following edict: 

“Due to the New Year being celebrated so differently 

around the country, a date has been chosen to end this idiotic 

confusion: the first of January. As a sign of a good start 

to the year; people must cheerfully greet each other on New 

Year’s Day and wish each other good fortune and in families, 

wish each other prosperity. In honour of the New Year, people 

must make decorations from fir trees, entertain children and 

sledge down hills. Adults should refrain from fist-fighting and 

getting drunk-there are enough days for this already.” 

Yet even after this order, New Year, wasn’t a truly national holiday. 

It largely remained the prerogative of the rich. Most of the 

poor couldn’t or wouldn’t celebrate it until the 19th century. 

After the Revolution, the celebration was banned as “bourgeois 

nonsense” and only revived in the mid-1930s. Ded Moroz 

(Father Frost) was outlawed until being “rehabilitated” in 

the 1930s. The Bolsheviks switched from the Julian calendar 

to the Gregorian, which had been used in most of western 

Europe since the seventeenth century, thereby transferring 

the celebration of Christmas to the 25th of December from 

the 7th of January—except that most real Russian Orthodox 

Christians paid little attention to what the atheist Bolsheviks 

wanted. 

PAGANISM 

Paganism remains remarkably resilient in this country. Russian 

peasants called upon many deities to save them from the 

long remorseless winter, and well they might. For instance, 

a peasant might worship the goddess Poludnitza for a fa- 

January 2011 

The Way It Is 

vorable harvest, or Lada (not just a car), to assure a safe journey 

through a largely roadless country and the god Vlas to 

protect his cattle. The sun god Dazhbog was highly popular. 

From Dazhbog we derive the Russian phrase, “Dai vam Bog 

zdoroviya”, which means, “God give you good health.” 

The Russian peasant poetically viewed the sun as a father 

who was married to a female moon. All the stars were their 

children. In the spring, the sun courted the moon but in 

winter the sun vanished. This left the peasants vulnerable 

to an evil deity called Morozh. This evil deity threatened to 

freeze to death any peasant who offended him, so peasants 

celebrated the New Year by leaving apples under a tree to 

appease his anger! The origins of Ded Moroz lie with a more 

literal translation as evil “grandfather frost” who represented 

winter. Only later, as a literary reinvention, was he transformed 

into a benevolent figure with his charming granddaughter 

Snegurochka. 

Peasants would also hang animal shaped biscuits on a tree 

to honour the harvest Goddess. 

From the 7-19th of January during “Svyatki,” the peasants 

might indulge in fortune telling; gadaniya, and parading 

through the streets in animal costumes, which all sounds like 

a lot of fun. Bonfires were lit to woo back the life-giving sun 

and to warm the dead! 

How is New Year celebrated now? It is still largely a warm, 

cosy and vibrant family occasion where people gather at 

home around a table of caviar sandwiches, olives, potato and 

fish salads, and of course bottles of Soviet champagne and 

vodka. Many of the pickled vegetables you enjoy are grown 

by families at their dachas. Fortune telling and partying are 

not unheard of. There aren’t so many animal impersonation 

sessions these days, publicly at least, but nevertheless the pagan 

side is there. 

Yet the influence of western trends can be discerned. 

Nowadays, the festival is being celebrated beyond the family 

hearth. More and more Russians are celebrating it in Prague 

or London, for example. How you celebrate it largely depends 

on your character and current bank account. 

RUSSIAN CHRISTMAS 

When you watch an Orthodox Church service it seems sombre. 

This may betray the imperceptible influence of paganism. 

There is a notion that in order to distinguish themselves 

from a pagan “laughter cult”, the Orthodox decided to forbid 

laughing. 

From November 28th until the 6th of January, Russian Orthodox 

Christians fast for 39 days! On the night of Christmas 

(the 7th of January) they mark the event by walking around 

the church holding lit candles (called a Krestniy Khod). This 

event itself recalls how pagans would walk clockwise in the 

direction of the sun to summon its energy. The choirs sing 

movingly, the incense smells sweet and the chanting of the 

liturgy is other-worldly. Here you are entering a world unaltered 

for centuries. 

Incidentally, the red star you see on some New year Yolki is 

an emblem of Christmas. It symbolises the emergence of the 

morning star which guided the three Kings to the new born 

Christ. Boris Pasternak in his poem Christmas Star, describes 

the star as a flash of arson soaring through the sky. It is the 

spiritual beauty of this fire, whether in bonfires, the eternal 

flame or candles which best sums up how the Russians love to 

greet Christmas. P 

25

Real Estate News 

By Vladimir Kozlov 

City Hall plans to move 

offices from the city centre 

Moscow mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, has 

called for the building of office centres 

on the city’s outskirts and residential 

buildings closer to its centre, Novye Izvestiya 

reported. That move is meant to 

improve the traffic situation in the city as 

the lion’s share of rush hour traffic is currently 

from the outskirts to the center in 

the morning and in the opposite direction 

at night. Mikhail Blinkin, head of the 

Transport and Road Economy Research 

Institute, told Novye Izvestiya that currently 

40 per cent of all jobs in Moscow 

are located within 4 kilometers of the 

Kremlin. However, he added that moving 

offices to the outskirts would be a challenging 

task, as public transportation in 

the city’s outskirts is poor, and getting to 

a work-place located outside the center 

could be difficult. 


A provincial developer steps 

in Well House 

Universalnaya Kompaniya, based in 

the south Russian city of Pyatigorsk, has 

joined the residential project Well House 

at Dubrovka, initially developed by Mirax 

Group, and is ready to invest $100 million, 

Kommersant reported. The construction 

of 25,000 sq. meter Well House, located 

near Dubrovka and Avtozavondskaya 

Metro stations and consisting of two 18- 

29 store-buildings, was suspended in 

2009. The project’s total value is reportedly 

$355 million, and the $100 million which 

the new investor says it will pump into it, 

is just enough to complete the project. 

However, individual investors in the project 

are skeptical. “We think that this is just 

a front company that stepped in not for 

the purpose of completing the object but 

to act as a bumper between the government 

and us,” Vladimir Zhossan, head of 

the initiative group of Well House individual 

investors, told Kommersant. 

Moscow lags behind in residential 

construction per person 

Although the Russian capital is predictably 

the leader among all of the country’s 

cities in the number of residential sq. meters 

built every year, the construction per 

person figure is much less rosy for Moscow. 

Based on analysis by the Gde Etot Dom real 

estate analytical centre, Moscow is near the 

bottom of the list of the Russian cities compiled 

in terms of the volume of residential 

construction per person per year. Surprisingly, 

Krasnodar, Tyumen and Stavropol top 

the list. “[Moscow] is a unique case, as high 

demand for residential property doesn’t 

lead to an adequate increase in supply, but 

only triggers further price hikes,” reads the 

centre’s report. 

Residential property prices 

up, demand down 

November saw a decline in demand for 

residential property in the Moscow market, 

according to an analytical report by 

MIAN realtor. Meanwhile, according to 

the report, prices for all kinds of newlybuilt 

property, except economy class, 

went up during the period in question. 

The highest price increase was reported 

in the elite property segment, by 1.5 per 

cent to 516,300 roubles ($16,655) per 

square meter. Business class property became 

more expensive by one per cent, to 

172,000 roubles ($5,550) per square meter, 

and prices for economy class property 

stayed at the October level. P

January 2011 

2

Real Estate 

Traffic-jamboree 

By Vladimir Kozlov 

Last autumn’s sacking of Moscow’s mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, 

and his replacement with Sergei Sobyanin is likely to have an 

impact on the city’s real estate market, which, industry insiders 

and observers hope, is going to become more transparent 

and efficient. 

“It is already clear that [Sobyanin] acts very fast,” Georgy 

Dzagurov, general director of Penny Lane Realty, told PASS- 

PORT. “He has not only been able to stop the rapid development 

of projects whose impact on the city’s infrastructure 

has not yet been examined, but he has also waged a tough 

war on traffic jams.” 

“And while at the beginning I was skeptical about such 

‘war-like’ activities, now nearly all Muscovites have been 

able to see a radical improvement in the traffic situation,” 

he added, controversially. 

Since Sobyanin took office in late October, he has taken 

some steps aimed at improving the traffic situation in the city. 

The most drastic measure was a ban on street parking in the 

city center, including the main shopping street Tverskaya. He 

also introduced the earlier beginning of the work day for City 

Hall officials so that their cars wouldn’t be on the streets during 

the rush hour. 

According to Dmitry Khalin, head of the strategic consulting 

and evaluation department at IntermarkSavills, the economy 

class residential segment is likely to get a boost under 

the new mayor. 

“This is in line with both the current structure of demand 

in the capital and the policies of federal authorities who pay 

special attention to the issue of affordable housing,” he told 

PASSPORT. “It is quite likely that within the next few years, 

there is going to be a substantial increase in the amount of 

annually-built residential property.” 


Khalin explained that more transparent regulations over access 

to land and engineering networks, as well as active development 

of the transport network are likely to be the main 

factors contributing to the sector’s growth. 

Although observers have been pointing out to inefficiency 

of the city government’s policies regarding construction and 

development, head of the Moscow government construction 

block, Vladimir Resin, wasn’t immediately replaced under the 

new city government. Only in early December, Marat Khunsnullin 

was appointed mayor’s deputy in charge of construction 

issues, basically taking over from Resin. 

But this kind of gradual transfer of control over the construction 

sector was necessary “to avoid the disorganization of the 

construction complex and global issues, such as deceived individual 

investors in residential construction,” Khalin explained. 

And the fact that some key figures in the Moscow government’s 

construction sector under Luzhkov didn’t immediately lose their 

jobs should not be considered as recognition that city development 

policies in Luzhkov’s era were effective, he added. 

“Luzhkov worked under pressure of his earlier promises 

and in an entourage made up by people who were hardly 

free from their own past, either,” Dzagurov said. “Sobyanin, 

at least to this day, has not been burdened by any vows 

from the past or people responsible for their own areas. 

He proceeds only from tasks that were clearly set up even 

before his appointment as mayor, and from the interest of 

the city.” 

Observers say that Moscow’s construction and development 

market is likely to face major changes, as its leaders enjoying 

direct or indirect support from the city’s previous government 

will have to make room for new players. For years, 

Inteko, the company of Luzhkov’s wife Yelena Baturina, has 

occupied a special position in the city’s development market, 

but now things are likely to change.

“It is quite likely that regulations over access to plots of land 

are going to become more transparent and clear,” said Khalin. 

“In that case companies from the country’s other regions, 

primarily Moscow Oblast and bigger cities, like St. Petersburg, 

would be able to enter Moscow’s market.” 

According to Dzagurov, changes are going to be positive 

for the market, attracting new developers not burdened with 

financial problems. “In a situation where Baturina will no longer 

be able to dictate to them the rules of the game, some 

[developers] are likely to return to the capital,” he said. “The 

[market shares are] likely to change. Those who were in an advantageous 

position exclusively due to their connections— 

which are being broken now—may not able to continue to 

work in a situation of tough competition. 

“Inteko’s role as a company, a conflict which meant pulling 

out of all construction projects in the capital [for a developer], 

is to change,” he went on to say. “Inteko’s positions are to 

weaken, which will lead to the strengthening of all other players’ 

positions, and especially those not linked to Inteko.” 

Meanwhile, observers are also concerned that the changing 

of power in the city may lead to delays in the execution of 

some previously announced development projects. 

“I do think that there will be an impact on the real estate 

market,” Michael Bartley, General Director of Four Squares, 

told PASSPORT. 

“Each real estate development requires a large number of 

approvals and licenses. A change in the senior levels of the 

city government creates uncertainty for both developers and 

the bureaucrats. Why spend considerable money and time 

(for developers) and planning reviews (bureaucrats) if the key 

decision makers may no longer be in their posts in 6 months 

time?” 

“I am sure that some slowing down is set to take place due 

to objective factors, but the new mayor’s task will be to avoid 

serious delays,” said Dzagurov. “Luzhkov was concerned 

about the city, and Sobyanin will make any effort to make sure 

that effective work is not jeopardized and the best of what is 

planed, the most important, is implemented with maximum 

speed, regardless of who the author is. Sobyanin already has 

an established reputation, and expecting populist steps from 

him would be silly, I think.” 

However, Dzagurov added that developers in the Moscow 

market are still to face a difficult period of between six 

months to a year, during which obtaining applicable permissions 

is going to be difficult, while they’ll still have to 

spend cash on projects already launched and pay interest 

on loans taken. 

One issue that the city’s new government will have to tackle 

is the exorbitant prices for residential property. “The price/ 

quality ratio in our situation couldn’t be compared with not 

only developed Western countries, where prices are generally 

lower than in Moscow, but also with developing nations, 

where one square meter of elite property costs $2,000 to 

$3,000,” Dzagurov said. “In our situation, the main reason for 

the high prices is the market, in which there is a shortage of 

supply.” 

“In Russia, Moscow is the political, business, cultural, financial, 

judicial and educational centre, unlike the United States, 

where, for instance, the intelligence is in Langley, the film 

industry in Los Angeles, casinos in Las Vegas, the car industry 

in Detroit, politics in Washington, business in New York, 

the airspace industry in Seattle, mafia in Chicago and oil in 

January 2011 

Real Estate 

Houston,” Dzagurov went on to say. “And, despite all that, our 

supermegapolis has only between 25,000 and 30,000 apartments 

of truly high class. But, some three years ago, Moscow 

became the world’s leader in the number of billionaires living 

in the city.” 

But, the main problem, according to Dzagurov is not the 

high prices for elite property but the fact that just about any 

type of property is overpriced. “Frankly, I am not really frightened 

or upset by the exorbitant prices for high-end residential 

property, which are justified by the existing shortage,” 

he said. “What causes unpleasant surprises and disappointment 

are high prices for business-class and economy class 

property.” 

“With regard to the effect this will have on prices, the issue 

is muddied by the continued drag on construction due 

to the lack of financing in the market. Any restriction on supply 

will inflate prices. My own opinion is that we can expect 

a short-term property bubble in 2012-2013 due to lack of development 

2009-2010, then stability as more stock comes to 

market,” Bartley said. “The impact on the end user depends 

upon which sub-segment they choose—some are more profitable 

than others.” 

Other experts believe that no major changes in property 

prices in Moscow are likely. “In the near future, a balance between 

demand and supply could be achieved,” Khalin concluded. 

“In such a situation, property prices remain quasi-stable 

and increase only adjusting to inflation.” P 

2

Wine & Dining 


National 

Treasure 

Charles W. Borden 

The sharp pop from a bottle of Shampanskoye 

echoes across every almost every 

home, restaurant and park in Russia at 

midnight on New Year’s eve, followed by 

a fizzy pour into any handy container. To 

the chagrin of winemakers from France’s 

Champagne region, shampanskoye has 

long been the generic term in Russia for 

any sparkling wine, whether produced by 

Champagne’s classic méthode champenoise, 

or the shortcut reservoir (charmat) method 

and even simple CO 2 gas infusion. 

Méthode champenoise (though not the 

name) is used for premium sparkling 

wines around the world. Abrau Durso, 

a 140-year-old Russian winery near the 

Black Sea, has produced méthode champenoise 

wines for more than 100 years. 

Abrau Durso is truly a national treasure, 

and it has fortunately had a renaissance 

in recent years. Based upon a recent 

tasting, the Abrau Durso classic sparkling 

wines are well worth a try by serious 

wine consumers. 

Russia’s love of sparkling wine 

Russian interest in bubbly is dates 

back centuries. The Cossacks made a 

sparkling wine in the middle of the 17th 

century on the Don River in the Tsimlanskoi 

and Kumshatskoi villages in southern 

Russia. This wine was even mentioned in 

Pushkin’s poem, Eugene Onegin. A red 

sparkling wine is still made according 

Georgy Nepranov 

to “old Cossack methods” in this area at 

Tsimlanskoye Winery. 

The Russian aristocracy became the 

largest foreign market for French Champagne, 

and French winemakers even produced 

a sweet version for the goût russe 

(Russian taste). This prompted interest in 

sparkling wine production in the sunny 

and warm south of Russia. 

In 1799, under the authority of Emperor 

Pavel, winemakers made sparkling wine 

at his palace at Sudak on the Crimean 

peninsula. By 1812, several companies 

were making sparkling wines in Crimea. 

During the Crimean War (1854-1856) wine 

production ceased when English and 

French invaders tore out vineyards and 

destroyed equipment, a large laboratory, 

and extensive documentation about 

winemaking and grape production. 

Prince Lev Sergeyevich Golitsyn, the 

patriarch of modern Russian winemaking, 

restored the tradition of Russian sparkling 

winemaking. He founded Novy Svet winery 

near Sudak on the southeastern Crimean 

coast (now in Ukraine), and helped develop 

Abrau-Durso on Russia’s Black Sea 

coast near Novorossiysk. 

In 1892, Golitsyn started to experiment 

with sparkling wines using the méthode 

champenoise. By 1896, his wines were 

served at the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II, 

and in 1900 they received the Grand Prix 

medal in Paris. Novy Svet and Abrau Durso 

remain the region’s most famous sparkling

wineries and they continue the tradition of 

making wines using méthode champenoise 

today. 

Méthode champenoise wines receive a 

second in-bottle fermentation to produce 

the sparkle. This requires heavy bottles to 

withstand the pressure and a number of 

labour-intensive techniques over a period 

of months or years. Early in the Soviet era, 

winemakers sought a means to dramatically 

increase sparkling wine production. The 

answer was the reservoir or charmat method, 

which produces secondary fermentation 

in a series of vats at an accelerated 

pace, and results in a sparkling wine that 

can be bottled after three or four weeks. 

The even cheaper and faster “gas infusion” 

method is now also used in Russia and 

worldwide for very inexpensive sparkling 

wines, or for that matter soft drinks. 

Charmat and gas infusion methods 

enabled the construction of a vinzavod 

(wine factory) close to the end user but 

far from Russia’s wine grape producing 

regions near the Black Sea. It is these 

methods that are used for the inexpensive 

Sovietskoe Shampanskoye that is 

greatly in demand at holidays. 

It is a sad fact that there are no where 

near enough white wine grapes produced 

in Russia to meet demand, despite 

great potential for grape production in 

the country’s south. For this reason, the 

large majority of sparkling wines made in 

Russia use “wine material” imported from 

other countries—fermented white wines 

that are ready for secondary fermentation. 

Quality varies depending upon the 

origin of the wine material, handling and 

temperatures during transport, and the 

final process before bottling. These are 

the methods used to produce. 

National treasure 

Despite more than seventy years as a 

Soviet enterprise, and the difficult times 

that followed the end of the Soviet Union, 

Abrau Durso continued to produce classic 

sparkling wines. During a tour of the winery 

a few years ago, I enjoyed one of the best 

brut wines of my life with veteran Abrau 

Durso winemaker, Georgy Nepranov. The 

winery and the tradition it has maintained 

make it truly a national treasure. 

Emperor Alexander II decreed the development 

of Abrau Durso in 1870 on land 

found by agronomist Feodor Geiduk in a 

small, rugged valley about 20 kilometers 

north of Novorossiysk, Russia’s main Black 

Sea port. Abrau Durso is named after two 

streams, the Abrau that forms a small, 

natural lake (the largest in the North Cau- 

casus) in front of winery, and the Durso, 

which falls to the Black Sea two kilometers 

distant and 84 meters below. In 1896, the 

winery was turned to sparkling wine and 

Prince Golitsyn, joined by French specialists, 

quickly began to develop it. An extensive 

series of tunnels and caverns were dug 

into the hills and the Prince established a 

school to train young Russian winemakers. 

These young winemakers continued the 

Abrau Durso winemaking tradition after 

the Revolution when the winery became a 

vinsovkhoz (state wine farm). 

Businessman Boris Titov, chairman of 

Delovaya Rossiya and reportedly a billionaire 

now controls Abrau Durso, with 

remaining shares still in state hands. He 

appears to have the money and desire 

to see that Abrau Durso continues to 

sparkle, and even more brilliantly. 

Beginning in 2007, Mr. Titov embarked 

on an extensive modernization program 

with the assistance of Herve Justin, a talented 

Champagne winemaker who helped 

rebuild the Champagne house of Duval- 

Leroy. Winemaker Nepranov continues to 

lead the Russian winemaking contingent. 

Abrau Durso planted additional grapes to 

supplement their 300+ hectares of vineyards. 

Facilities have been renovated and a 

small hotel has been built near the winery. 

Apparently some vineyards will be devoted 

to biodynamic wine production. 

Abrau Durso’s product line has been updated 

with new labels. The winery recently 

held a juried poster contest that attracted 

dozens of entries from artists around Russia 

and internationally. The winners were 

announced during recent celebrations of 

Abrau Durso’s 140-year anniversary. 

Abrau Durso now produces about one 

million bottles a year of classic méthode 

champenoise wines, which are entirely 

made with local grown grapes. It also 

produces another ten million bottles of 

charmat method wines, which are apparently 

made with imported wine material, 

primarily from South Africa. 

Abrau Durso L’Art Nouveau Imperial 

Brut made from Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, 

Riesling and Pinot Noir grapes tops the 

line. The flagship line includes Imperial 

Vintage Brut (Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir, 

Chardonnay) and Imperial Vintage Brut 

Rose (Pinot Noir). Other classic sparkling 

wines are labeled “Premium” and include 

brut and semi-sweet. I tried a delightful 

Cabernet Sauvignon semi-sweet classic 

wine, as well as several brut wines at the 

art exhibition. They definitely hold their 

own among the best of sparkling wines 

from other world regions. P 

Wine & Dining 

Aubrey Durso has a shop on the Garden 

Ring near its crossing with the Arbat: 

Abrau Durso Atelier 

Smolensky Bulvar Dom 15 

+7 499 252 2701 

www.abraudurso.ru 

January 2011 

1

Wine & Dining 

More 

Fish 


Charles Borden 

Luxury restaurants continue to open in Moscow despite 

generally sparse post-crisis patronage. On the near-west side 

alone, there are four new establishments at the refurbished 

Ukraina Hotel (now Radisson Royal), two at the Lotte Plaza 

Hotel, and more in the neighboring Lotte Plaza. 

Peshi, a large two-story, exceptionally well-appointed fish establishment, 

has joined the other west side newcomers at Kutuzovsky 

Prospekt 10, just past the Radisson Royal. Peshi’s amiable 

chef is Moroccan Safir Aziz, a veteran of sister establishment 

Bouillabaisse on Leninsky Prospekt, and ten years in Moscow. 

Peshi’s décor consists of beige distressed wood wall panels, 

trim and tables, light natural fabric cushioned chairs, with accents 

throughout of the slightly orange red that is fashionable 

these days. Numerous large monitors continuously replay 

selected ocean themed videos. Peshi is essentially a La 

Maree knock-off with similar ambiance and the ocean-depleting 

display of fresh fish and shellfish on ice, priced per 100 

grams. Customers can have their catch prepared in more than 

a dozen ways: grilled, baked in parchment, salt or foil, or Moroccan 

style to name a few. 

Pavel, familiar to us from Nedalny Vostok, was our waiter. 

The staff was attentive, as might be expected since our host,

PASSPORT publisher, John Ortega, is also a familiar figure 

and generous patron. The chef sent out a delightful “amuse 

bouche”, a spoon of chopped fresh tuna with a tall shot glass 

of gazpacho. We went over to check out the fresh catch-of-theday. 

John selected a Dover Sole, to be prepared a la Meuniere, 

cooked whole in butter, lemon juice and parsley. Live shellfish 

sat out their last hours in a large multi-level aquarium: Brittany 

lobster (1150r per 100g), Kamchatka crab (790r per 100g), 

clams, and oysters including some huge Kurile Island fellows, 

as much as 20 centimeters long. I decided to try a couple of 

the Kuriles (220r each). 

I ordered from the menu: Canadian Lobster Salad with Lyonnaise 

Sauce (1650r), Crispy Roll-ups Stuffed with Kamchatka 

Crab and Madagascar Shrimp (990r) and Black Ravioli with 

Crab Meat and Sweet Pepper Sauce (1250r). The oysters were 

out first, and needed to be separated into several pieces to get 

down. I found them a little too “tasty” to finish. The Canadian 

lobster was firm and wonderful, and as good as anything I’ve 

had in Maine or Massachusetts. It was well matched with the 

fresh greens and perfect Lyonnaise sauce. The crispy roll-ups 

were essentially small triangular, fried spring rolls, very good, 

and the homemade black ravioli was also very pleasing. John 

was very satisfied with the Dover Sole, a real compliment since 

he is a regular at Le Dôme in Paris, the masters at this dish. 

The menu has a few non-fish entries: Duck Leg “Confit”, Angus 

Fillet with Foie Gras and some meats for the grill. Surprisingly 

the menu lacks sushi and only has a sparse collection of 

shellfish sashimi. 

The wine list is predominately white. We enjoyed a very 

good New Zealand Villa Maria Cellar Select Sauvignon Blanc 

(3100r). I saw Italian Cervaro della Sala listed, which I use as a 

wine list price index, at 8100r, for an index of 4.05. 

The setting at Peshi is perfect, the service very good, the 

fish fresh and well and properly prepared. But I left with one 

nagging thought: Peshi, like many “elitny” restaurants in Moscow, 

reminds me of a doll at GQ Bar: she looks perfect, but will 

she love me, and can I love her? In this city does it matter? P 

Peshi 

Kutuzovsky Prospekt 10 

+7 499 243 3312 

www.peshi-restoran.ru 

Wine & Dining 

Charles Borden is the Passport magazine wine and dining 

editor and publishes The Big Onion, a blog about the Moscow 

restaurant scene (www.the-big-onion.com). 

January 2011

Wine & Dining 

Leonard Nebons 

Recommendation: A place worth going 

to, Sinatra is located beyond a small 

parking lot off Pushkin Square. Located 

at 5 Bolshoy Putinkovsky pereulok. You 

take a glass elevator, large enough to fit 

a Mercedes 600, up 4 floors and upon 

entering immediately think Russian 

Rococo, and Hoboken New Jersey. The 

reception staff downstairs and as you 

enter are wonderful, friendly, attractive 

and you get a feeling that they really 

are there because they enjoy working 

at Sinatra. The décor is quite shiny, 

white leather, silver candelabras, mini 

light shows, and lots of smiles. The main 

room fits 150, and karaoke seats 40. The 

name is a product of the American owner, 

a fan of Frank’s. Sinatra is open from 

noon until 6am. 

There’s a bar on the left, as you enter, 

and the main dining room is to the right. 

There is a karaoke room on the 4th floor, 

which opens at 2am. 

Sinatra features 3 cuisines, Italian, 

Russian, and Asiatic. The chef, Monica, 

comes from Portofino, Italy, and despite 

her lack of Russian and English leads her 

kitchen team of 15 in a wonderful blend 

of culinary delights. There are 4 bar areas 

in total, with 2 in the main restaurant 

January 2011 

Sinatra: Restaurant 

and Piano Bar 

area. The head barman circulates, and 

favours some vintage cocktails, such 

as manhattans, sidecars, martinis, and 

other old classics. Drinks start at 250 

roubles for beer, 230 for vodka, and 300 

for whiskeys. The wine list is complete 

with Italian, American, German, Australian 

and French selections. The wine list 

is expensive for the choices, mostly at 

around 3000 roubles and up. But if you 

get a glass the cost is 400 roubles. Head 

Sommelier, Sergei, knows his wines, and 

has picked out an international sampling 

to complement the dishes. 

Dinner started with the Russian salad 

Olivier (690r). This was the standard Russian 

salad, but topped with crab and red 

caviar, a beautiful site, and quite tasty. 

The Italian dish was Black pasta with an 

assortment of seafood (mussels, shrimp, 

crab, Scallops) and zucchini and basil 

(500r). It was also tasty and a beautiful 

sight to look at. The seafood and vegetables, 

and chesses are all flown in fresh 

from Italy, and are fantastic. All the pasta 

is made in the restaurant, as is the bread 

and desserts, and is fresh and tasty. The 

Asiatic dish (950r) was Asian see-through 

red noodles with various fresh seafood 

(scallops, shrimp), with fresh sliced bell 

peppers. It was very tasty, and slightly 

spicy. Monica has a “no salt added policy”. 

She believes that salt is naturally 

found in the ingredients and is not needed 

to add to her dishes. A sampling of 5 

desserts (230-350r) all were delicious, Tiramisu, 

Kostata, and the others were all 

home-made. 

Entertainment was two-fold, with a 

great sound system, and state of the art 

light equipment. The singer was American 

Soul (and she can really do Aretha). Diners 

would get up and dance between tables, 

and the waitresses would dance while 

keeping an eye out for needs. People at 

the bar all seems to be dancing in place. 

And there are three dancers that pop up 

on small platforms in different costumes 

from time to time to keep the diners alert. 

Smoking is allowed everywhere, and 

the ventilation is superb. Cigars are 

coming, but in the interim bring one 

and enjoy it with the various after dinner 

drinks (300r and up), and coffees 

(150r and up). 

Toilets are unisex, 10 rooms, each with 

sinks and mini-shower bidets, and shiny. 

Sinatra is a place worth going to, whether 

for the food, entertainment, or the 

pleasant relaxed atmosphere and great 

service. P 

www.sinatrarestaurant.ru

Your restaurant should be here 

Please phone or write to PASSPORT sales manager: 

+ 7 (495) 640-0508, v.astakhova@passportmagazine.ru 

NOTE: 

**Indicates Passport Magazine Top 10 

Restaurants 2009. 

AMERICAN 

**CORREA'S 

New American, non-smoking 

environment, cool comfort food at 

several Moscow locations 

7 Ulitsa Gasheka, 789-9654 

M. Mayakovskaya 

STARLITE DINER 

Paul O’Brien’s 50s-style American 

Starlite Diners not only have the 

best traditional American breakfasts, 

lunches, and dinners in town, 

they draw a daily crowd for early 

morning business and lunchtime 

business meetings. Open 24 hours. 

five locations. 

M. Pushkinskaya 

Strastnoy Blvd. 8a, 

989 44 61 

M. Mayakovskaya 

16 Ul. Bolshaya Sadovaya, 

650-0246 

M. Oktyabrskaya 

9a Ul. Korovy Val, 

959-8919 

M. Universitet 

6 Prospekt Vernadskovo, 

783-4037 

M. Polyanka 

16/5 Bolotnaya Ploshchad, 

951-5838 

www.starlite.ru 

AMERICAN BAR & GRILL 

This veteran Moscow venue still 

does good hamburgers, steaks, bacon 

& egs and more. Open 24 hours. 

2/1/ 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya Ul, 

250-9525 

BEVERLY HILLS DINER 

The new kind on the diner block with 

a full range of American standards. 

1 Ulitsa Sretenka, 

M. Chisty Prudy 

ASIAN 

AROMA 

Indian Restaurant 

Krizhizanovskovo Street 20/30, 

M. Profsayousnaya 

www.aromamoscow.ru 

+7(495) 543-54-26 

ITALIAN 

ILFORNO 

Restaurant-Pizzeria 

25 kinds of great tasty stone oven 

baked Pizza. Great choice of fresh 

pasta and risotto. Grilled meat and fish 

8/10 Build.1 Neglinnaya Ul. 

(495) 621-90-80, (495) 621-35-41 

www.ilforno.ru 

LEBANESE 

SHAFRAN 

Quiet and cosy atmosphere. Culinary 

masterpieces of Arabic cuisine. 

Varied and substantial lunches. 

Unusual and tasty breakfasts. The 

mezze is completely addictive! 

Spiridonievsky pereulok, 

12/9, 737-95-00 

www.restoran-shafran.ru 

COFFEE AND PASTRIES 

STARBUCKS 

Now has 32 locations. 

www. starbuckscoffee.ru 

EUROPEAN 

MARSEILLES 

“Marseilles” - a cozy and warm 

atmosphere of “Le Cabaque” in 

the historical centre of Moscow. 

European and Mediterranean cuisine. 

Concerts of French chanson, 

or pop-rock, literary evenings, the 

tango and dance till you drop. 

St. Krasnoproletarskaya, 16. Pp. 1 

7 (495) 232 47 02 

M. Novoslobodskaya 

CITY SPACE 

Panoramic cocktail bar. A breathtaking 

view and loads of delicious cocktails 

on the 34 th floor of Swissôtel. 

M. Paveletskaya 

52 bld.6, Kosmodamianskaya nab., 

Moscow 115054 

+7 (495) 221-5357 

KAI RESTAURANT AND LOUNGE 

Some of Moscow's best contemporary 

French cuisine with an Asian 

touch from chef at Swisshotel 

Krasnye Holmy. 

52/6 Kosmodamianskaya Nab, 

221-5358 

M. Paveletskaya 

LABARDANS 

The restaurant “Labardans”, is a 

cultured comfortable place in 

Vladimir Mayakovsky’s theatre on 

Bolshaya Nikitskaya, right in the 

heart of historic Moscow. The restaurant 

has three halls, and serves 

Russian and European food. There 

is live music most evenings, and a 

warm, homely atmosphere. 

Bol. Nikitskaya Str., 19 

M. Arbatska 

tel. (495) 691 5623, (495) 691 6513 

SCANDINAVIA 

The summer café is one of 

Moscow’s main after work 

meeting venues. Excellent 

Scandinavian and 

continental menu. 

19 Tverskaya Ulitsa, 

937-5630 

M. Pushkinskaya 

www.scandinavia.ru 

STEAKS 

CHICAGO PRIME 

Steakhouse & Bar 

Chicago Prime Steakhouse, is the 

best of Chicago in downtown Moscow. 

U.S.D.A Prime steaks, a wide 

Wine & Dining 

January 2011 

choice of seafood, valued priced 

wines, unique specialty cocktails 

and stylish interior will take you 

into an atmosphere of casual 

elegance and exceptional cuisine. 

Happy Hours daily from 

5 pm till 8 pm 

Strastnoy Blvd. 8a, 

988 17 17 

www.chicagoprime.ru 

GOODMAN 

Moscow’s premium steak house 

chain. Numerous locations. 


775-9888 

M. Tverskaya, Pushkinskaya 

www.goodman.ru 

BARS AND CLUBS 

NIGHT FLIGHT 

If you don’t know about Night 

Flight – ask somebody. 

Open 18:00-05:00 


629-4165 

www.nightflight.ru 

M. Tverskaya 

RIVERSIDE 

ABORDAGE parties 

Bar Riverside changes into the pirate 

place ABORDAGE every Friday 

and Saturday night. 

The best cover bands, the best Djs. 

Open 19:00 - 05:00 

29 Serebryanicheskaya naberezhnaya, 

790-22-45 

M. Kurskaya 

SPORTLAND 

SportLand on Novy Arbat offers live 

transmission of a wide range of sports 

fixtures from all around the world, this 

sports bar is open from 12.00 noon all 

the way to 4.00am daily. 

SPORTLAND, SPORTCAFE, NOVY 

ARBAT 21. 

www.metelitsa.ru/sportcafe 

NOTE: For restaurants with multiple locations the most popular location is given – see the website for others. All phone numbers have city code 495 unless otherwise indicated. Reservations 

suggested for most restaurants. 

5

Clubs 

New Year’s Nightlife Renewals 

Miguel Francis 

Welcome to another amazing year of unforgettable 

nightly adventures in Moscow. 

PASSPORT continues to bring you, the expat, 

the best venues, best events and best 

times that Moscow has to offer. The cold 

weather has been biting us hard over here 

in this cold town but remember, Moscow 

nights bring captivating warmth and passion 

that will heat you up, guaranteed. 

Let’s jump right in with the latest grand 

opening in Moscow. Ladies and gentlemen, 

all welcome Sinatra. This place is a 

January 2011 

mixture of glamorous surroundings with a 

very easy breezy feel to it; once you enter 

you feel engulfed in luxury. The place is a 

mixture of a karaoke bar, restaurant and a 

club. You can always enjoy a delicious dinner 

here, but be warned you won’t able 

to sit for too long with the tunes that are 

spun here. The music here is very light, 

easy to dance to and positive. Lots of 

disco house and Freemasons being spun 

and those guys are the biggest British 

house remixes of all time in my opinion. 

Sinatra also has very uplifting live singing 

done by ex-pat divas! To top it all off, this 

place is filled with ex-pats, and that’s always 

a good find in Moscow. The place is 

definitely pricey 15-20 US$ per drink and 

no less than 50 US$ average light food bill. 

(Bolshoi Putinkovskii 5, Metro Pushkinskaya, 

http://www.sinatrarestaurant.ru/) 

Now back to the future and more playful 

glamour, although that could be good 

in some cases can’t it? Posh Friends is an 

extension of Friends Bar that used to operate 

in 2009. The place derived its concept 

from Opera Club, which burned down a 

couple years ago. The best comparison 

for Posh Friends is a mixture of Opera and 

Imperia, fun and sophisticated. This club 

is filled with very positive energy and very 

interesting people, sometimes rendered 

as “kids”. Nevertheless the club’s design is 

very common, stretching from the design 

of the old giants like DyagileV and First. 

The face-control man is none other than 

DyagileV’s very own Sasha. Anyone who’s 

been in Moscow in 2005-2006 will recognize 

the man at the door. The pricing is 

very standard, about 12-15 US$ per drink. 

If you’re looking to cut through the night 

with some child-like passion then this is 

the perfect destination for your night! 

(Pushkinskaya Ploshad 5, Metro Pushkinskaya, 

http://www.poshfriends.ru) 

It’s January, Moscow has its official 10 

days of holidays starting January 1st. 

The place is half full. Where did most of 

the Russians go? Well, they love going to 

Courchevel, France. The amount of partying, 

drinking, snowboarding, dancing 

and fine dinning that is done by Russians 

in Courchevel probably surpasses any 

tourist group that visits those snowy Alps. 

The more prominent organizer of these 

“group goings to Courchevel” is the Titan 

Event Agency operated by DJ’s turned into 

businessmen Vengerov&Fedoroff http:// 

djstyle.ru. If you want to join the pack all 

you need to do is call the number on their 

website and they will let you know when 

is the next trip. The trip is worth the networking 

that’s for sure. Regular attendees 

of these exclusive Courchevel gatherings 

are mainly local celebrities like Timati, DJ 

Smash, Zhanna Friske etc. as well as major 

businessman of Russia. But if you want 

a local Courchevel then don’t hold back, 

Moscow just recently grand opened the 

Courchevel karaoke lounge/restaurant, a 

bit pricy about 2000-5000r average bill 

for dinner but so good and cozy it’ll make 

your head spin. Located at Kuznetskii 

Most 7, Metro Kuznetskii Most. 

Happy New Year everyone, lets make 

this a good one! For feedback and comments, 

advertising, joint PASSPORT 

nightlife events, please write to miguel@ 

passportmagazine.ru. P

A Simple Thing: 

celebrity brunch at 

Prostye veshi 

Some things are “relativitily” confusing, 

some things are absolute. Having 

a full English breakfast is an absolute 

pleasure. Having an English breakfast 

in Moscow, in mid-afternoon, with tea 

in a wine bar, is apt to stir a few senses. 

Prostye Veshi, “Simple Things” is a 

delightful wine bar and bistro, handily 

placed for the flats or offices of the 

well-heeled, at 14 Bol. Nikitskaya Ul, but 

a step from St Andrew’s Church or the 

Kremlin walls. Owner Elena and manager 

Anastasia are always looking for 

inventive new ways to broaden diners’ 

experiences. Celebrity chefs knocking 

up their favourite concoctions is the 

current cunning plan: John Warren of 

Warrens’ Sausages is one of those. 

But what is a sausage? A philosophical 

question, easy to pose, harder to digest. 

As unsolvable as “how long is a piece 

of string (of sausages)?” Traditionally, a 

simple Englishman would have only a 

half pound of answers: normal, Cumberland, 

chipolata and a Frankfurter for 

the exotic traveller. And in the bad old 

AEB 15th Anniversary 

The Association of European Businesses 

has seen Russia change enormously since 

1995, and has itself been one of the major 

agents of that transformation. This was 

the clear message broadcast across the 

new Lotte Hotel for the AEB’s huge birthday 

bash. Social networking opportunities 

were plentiful, while guests chatted 

in the long, snaking queues for registration, 

name badge and cloakroom. Then 

a tricky choice. Into the cavernous hall 

for the speeches, or to the buffet. There 

wasn’t enough space, oxygen or food for 

both. 

Your correspondent missed the fillup 

and dutifully joined the listening 

throngs. The AEB warm-up speeches 

reviewed progress, bestowed awards 

to long serving colleagues and basked 

in the glow of hopeful tidings from the 

recent EU-Russia summit. “WTO: here 

we go!”, in summary. The Russian trade 

and industry minister Victor Khristenko 

welcomed us and thanked AEB for their 

best efforts. There were diplomats there 

by the dozen, and the Belgian Ambassador 

rounded the formal proceedings 

off with commendable brevity. Between 

these, tall, urbane former French Prime 

days of mass production, the easy to 

spot, colourless, tasteless and odourless 

packaged sausage. Dull. And thankfully 

not part of our menus today. 

Sausageur supreme, John Warren, has 

a mission is to lift the humble banger to 

exalted heights. With his culinary chum, 

Mike Gibson, the pair were the stars of 

Prostye Vechi in late November. Warren’s 

sausages contain only the finest 

beef, pork, spices and fillings. A ceaseless 

search for new expressions and 

newly discovered recipes give a mouth 

watering hamful of 30 choices. Who 

Minister, Pierre de Villepin, gave the keynote 

speech. This was a veritable tour de 

force, as he ranged far and wide on the 

world’s problems and opportunities. He 

certainly got everyone’s attention early 

on when he declared that the West had 

a lot to learn from Russia’s sense of purpose, 

optimism and dynamism. 

A succession of gripping and contestable 

declarations followed sequentially. 

It was pure Gaullism, with a ringing endorsement 

of greater state involvement 

to promote growth and stability. That 

January 2011 

Out & About 

could resist a plate filled with his finest 

bacon, mushrooms, scrambled egg and 

tomatoes, and a side slice of toast and 

Marmite? All washed down with a decent 

pot of Russian tea. Perfect! But it 

gets better still. Kedgeree, porridge and 

over a score more possible flavours 

await the ravenous. All wolfed down by 

happy families, while being served with 

great cheer by John, Mike and the regular 

staff. If this left the sense of space 

confused, while every space was filled, it 

made for a timeless pleasure. Do simple 

things well. Good idea! RDH P 

will have sounded interesting in Russian. 

From such an experienced statesman, 

one must assume that his persistent 

treatment of “Europe”, “the Euro Zone” 

and “France and Germany” as synonyms 

was deliberate. Aside from one Lord Cardigan-like 

arc of the arm to encompass 

the Mediterranean littoral and another 

to bless “Eastern Europe”, none of the 

other 25 EU members showed up on his 

radar. All in impeccable English, the lingua 

franca of the age. A fascinating 

glimpse of the view from the top. P

Out & About 

Ireland survives 

Despite all the stories of doom and 

despair on the currency front that have 

been circulating about Ireland in the 

last month or two, the Irish Embassy 

recently held two events which went 

against the trend (how very Irish!). The 

first was a lunch-time degustation, of 

both food and drink, organised by Bord 

Bia (the Irish Food Board) at which the 

star was the Irish beef supplied worldwide 

(including to H.M. The Queen, 

it was emphasised), and now also in 

Moscow. All the meat is hung for three 

weeks, and we had samples from off the 

Estonian Embassy party 

On Thursday 9 December, the Estonian 

Embassy hosted its normal Christmas 

Party for friends of the tiny, ex-Soviet 

republic. The Ambassador, Simmu 

Tiik, welcomed the guests, emphasising 

that the building we were being entertained 

in had been the home of the Es- 

January 2011 

bone and on it—both equally delicious. 

Afterwards a bottle of Tyrconnel went 

west so quickly that the last-ditch diners 

had to be rescued with a wonderful 

dram which was new to me: Kilbeggan. 

I tumbled out into the Moscow slush 

glad there was no ditch, or sheogh, to 

trap me in for the rest of the afternoon. 

The other event, on Friday 10 December, 

was the European launch of the Ambassador’s 

book of poetry—his second— 

entitled The Song the Oriole Sang (Dedalus 

Press, Dublin). Philip McDonagh’s poems 

have a lightness and grace which I, personally, 

find very beguiling. Many are 

about India, where he was posted for a 

tonian Embassy for ninety years. This 

was a reminder that from 1940 to 1991 

the country was not legitimately part of 

the Soviet Union but only occupied by 

it. None of this was to imply any anti- 

Russian feeling. The Ambassador spoke 

alternately in English and Russian—not 

in the language of the Estonians, who all 

long time, and where his wife and children 

were born. He is as “cross-border” as 

his work. Philip read accompanied by Lily 

Neill on the Celtic harp. Afterwards, she 

gave a striking solo performance which 

combined both traditional and some elegantly 

modern playing. Also reading was 

Joseph Woods, the Director of Poetry Ireland, 

who managed to raise a number of 

laughs with his witty verses about life 

both in the sheogh and out of it. Clearly 

there is cultural light at the end of the 

gloomy Euro tunnel. To paraphrase Stalin 

on Hitler, currencies may come and go, 

but the Irish people remain. P 

Ian Mitchell 

seem to be bi-lingual. The evening featured 

a concert by a modern six-piece 

jazz band from Tallinn, called Ajavares. 

The music was wonderful, but the CD 

on display illustrated the language difficulties. 

The only worlds in the sleeve 

notes that I could understand were 

“Paul Daniel”. He is the one who plays 

the “mängib kitarre”, while Ahto Abner 

plays “lööb trummi”. Of course! Later, at 

the sumptuous buffet, Mingo Rajandi 

told me that her Russian was actually 

very poor, and she regretted that fact. In 

perfect English she said that she was 

one of the “lost generation” who were 

discouraged from learning the language 

of the oppressor, and that now they are 

no longer oppressing Estonia she wishes 

she spoke their rich and interesting 

language. As it is, she can only communicate 

across the frontier by means of 

her mängib kontrabassi, and by selling 

the group’s CD, which is called Armastuslaul 

Rändinnule. Конечно! P 

Ian Mitchell

St Andrew’s Day Ball 

Scotland’s patron saint is popular in Russia—possibly because 

he is also the patron saint of Russia—and well honoured by his 

eponymous Society. This year’s Ball welcomed 370 guests, who 

packed the Renaissance Hotel at Dinamo to the gunwales. We 

were magnificently wined and dined, with a superb salmon 

and seafood starter and an exquisite steak. Between them, the 

star of the show: by popular consent the best haggis tasted for 

many a day. The wee beastie had been flown over, expressly 

to join us, and accompanied by two magnificent pipers and 

his mentor, Mr Rabbie Burns (born 1759 and still going strong) 

who’s sprightly and impassioned address belied his advancing 

years, as he filled us in before filling us up. 

After the meal, the dancing. Scots band, The Big Shoogle, 

were welcomed to Moscow with a six hour battle at DME to 

be allowed to get their kit off the apron. But all well worth it 

as the tempo ebbed and flowed with the evening’s moods. 

The dancing was intimate, thanks to plenty of affection and 

liquid succour, but also due to there being more square feet 

akimbo than square feet of parquet. Apologies to the many 

toes I twinkled over. 

The whole event is not just great fun and a demonstration of 

Scots culture, it is in a good cause. With raffles and sporran-wa- 

Russian Book Fair 

Between the 1st and 5th December the 12th International 

Book Fair was held in the Central House of Artists, or New 

Tretyakov Gallery, opposite the Park of Rest and Culture in 

central Moscow. This is where the best of Russian publishing 

shows off its wares and also where foreign publishers 

interested in the Russian market gather to buy Russian titles 

for translation and sell their own titles into the Russian 

market. Unlike most such fairs—the biggest in the world 

being New York, London and Frankfurt—the Moscow one 

is also open to the general public, which adds a literary aspect 

to the otherwise commercial atmosphere. The special 

guest this year was France, which had a huge stand in the 

central hall, but many other countries were also present, 

from Ireland to Finland, including the Czech republic, 

which was last year’s special guest. They hosted a number 

of parties, the best of which was at the Café Mart in Petrovka 

where a mix of poetry reading and jazz music was 

helped by a supply of Czech beer (see picture). This was 

Moscow bohemia old-style, as it existed before the “cul- 

The Italians are Coming 

On Wednesday 1 December the Associazione Italiani a 

Mosca (ItaM) held its launch meeting in the Renaissance 

Monarch Hotel on Leningradsky Prospekt. Following, I understand, 

in the footsteps of the British Business Club, the 

idea is to hold regular networking meetings. If this event, 

and the summer’s inter-business club regatta which the Italians 

organised, are anything to go by, these events will be 

well worth attending. The Club is open to non-Italians, and 

even accepts members without elegantly tailored suits. The 

President is Giovanni Stornante. Potential members should 

contact him through the website, which is www.itamosca.ru 

I doubt you will be disappointed. P 

January 2011 

Out & About 

tering art auction prices, the Society raised a staggering Euro 

200,000. For local charities Maria’s Children, Taganka Children’s 

Fund and Kitezh. Well done, and thank you! RDH P 

ture” of Malls laid its dead hand on the life of what was 

once a great literary city. Don’t miss next year’s event. P 

Ian Mitchell

Out & About 

British Business Club: 

Christmas Drinks 

On Wednesday 15th December the 

Marriott Aurora Hotel on Petrovka hosted 

the BBC’s annual Christmas Drinks 

party. “Drinks” was a misnomer because 

there was a spectacular array of food on 

offer as well. There was turkey for those 

who were already in Christmas Day 

mood, curry for those who wanted a 

taste of traditional British eating, and 

roast beef for those who were wise 

enough to have what, in the opinion of 

everyone I talked to, was the best beef 

they had ever tasted in Russia. I had 

three helpings. Not only that, the champagne 

did not run out until after 9 p.m. 

and the other drinks, including promotions 

by Parliament vodka and Famous 

Grouse whisky, were still going strong 

at 11. The Marriott Aurora has some 

claim to be, as one guest said to me, 

“the best hotel in Moscow”. Perhaps 

PASSPORT will start a competition. A 

Overheard in the Starlight Diner 

A clean-cut, young-ish American in a suit is telling a friend 

how much he likes being in Moscow. “Here, it’s like, everybody 

touches your butt. I was riding the Metro the other night and 

someone touched my butt. I said to my wife, ‘Honey, did you 

just touch my butt?’ And she said, ‘No, I did not touch your 


subsection might be “best hotel guest” 

of the year, an award which this time 

must surely go to Don Scott, OBE, who 

presided with his usual booming 

aplomb over the proceedings, distributing 

raffle prizes and inviting everyone 

who is not already a member to join 

what is surely the most sociable, relaxed 

and entertaining club in Moscow. If you 

think life is short, can often be sweet, 

and should at all possible times be 

amusing, then visit www.britishclub.ru 

See you there in 2011! P 

Ian Mitchell 

butt.’ I said, ‘Well, someone just touched my butt.’ See, that’s 

what I like about this place. It’s 6.30 in the evening, you’re all 

crammed into this carriage together and someone touches 

your butt. It’s not like back home in the States where everyone 

has their own ideas about personal space. It’s great!” P 

“Earhole”

Happy New Year 

thrice from all at 

PASSPORT 

magazine 

Our New Year resolutions: 

Don’t sleep in the subway 

Don't seek logic where 

there is none to be found 

Don’t believe 

in tears - Moscow 

doesn’t 

Don't forget PASSSPORT when 

travelling. 

Be nice to people, especially those 

who think Deidre sucks 

Don't give up your day job 

Give up smoking 

Remember to take my brown trousers 

when travelling with Luc Jones 

Forgive the bank clerk for losing your 

documents again 

Good 

luck! 

From the 

PASSPORT 

team

Out & About 

IWC Winter Bazaar Breaks All Records 

Text and photos 

John Harrison 

On the 27th of November, the IWC 

held its 27th Winter bazaar at the Radisson 

Slavyanskaya. Actually the hotel 

was taken over by the IWC for the day. 

Expecting the event to occupy the usual 

one large hall, I was staggered to find 

that this year’s bazaar stretched over no 

less than two vast halls and three large 

rooms where the food was laid out. 

This wasn’t a jumble sale, with cups of 

tea served in plastic cups held on a rainy 

Sunday afternoon. Here one could sample 

and buy delicious food from literally all 

over the world, made by real people from 

each country, who are temporary resident 


in Moscow. Here, for humble fees, you 

could sample and buy Hungarian “pogacsa” 

(scones) and apple pie, handmade by 

Hungarian ladies in true traditional style; 

traditional Italian LaLasagna (Bolognese, 

al Pesto and vegetarian), “Pasta al forno”, 

Christmas desserts and cookies, and Tiramisu. 

Here you could scoff real Canadian 

maple syrup, Columbian Tamal with hot 

chocolate, stuffed potato, coffee and natural 

juices and other interesting small dishes, 

and about ten thousand other dishes. 

The two halls selling items offered an 

awe-inspiring display of goods, people 

and languages. For example, in one corner 

of the hall there were leather goods from 

Madagascar, Montenegro wines, Columbi- 

an coffee, Estonian umbrellas and so on. All 

served with a smile and a contagious inner 

warmth which I sometimes feel when I am 

in the presence of people who are doing 

something truly good. I bought most of 

my Christmas presents in one morning, at 

a price which I could handle, Buying presents 

for the family in Moscow is something 

I never look forward to. 

The facts and figures speak for themselves: 

3158 guests, up from 2748 in 2009. Proceeds 

increased substantially over last year. 

The event was organised by only 6 

people, and some 60 volunteers who 

were mainly IWC members, their friends 

and families.

The stands were managed and manned 

by some 650 volunteers from 60 Embassies, 

4 associations and 3 sponsors, who 

sold their traditional and typical goods, 

which were mainly imported by them for 

the bazaar. Everybody worked on a voluntary 

basis 

Where does the money go? Proceeds 

go to a whole range of people-orientated 

charities. The IWC’s plan includes the 

following areas: nourishing the homeless 

in and around Moscow through 

soup kitchens, provision of emergency 

funds on a case-by-case basis, food, 

clothing and supporting a rehabilitation 

project. They also work in orphanages, 

in particular by preparing children and 

young people for an independent life 

by providing them with clothing, school 

materials and specialised training. 

In hospitals, the IWC funds specialized 

medical supplies and equipment. 

In 2010, the IWC additionally provided 

a number of hospitals with prostheses 

and food to individuals. The IWC continues 

to help its “Star Ball Kids”. These are 

amputees who are provided with artificial 

limbs, given payment for treatment, 

transport costs and medical help. 

Support for deprived children attending 

day care centres is provided 

by supplying food support and educational 

and social activities, such as 

computer and English lessons, arts and 

crafts lessons and independent lifeskill 

projects. Very poor foreign students 

and needy families are helped 

on a case-to-case basis. Women and 

girls recently released from detention 

centres are helped to retrain and reintegrate 

into society. 

In addition to all of these causes, the 

IWC Donations Office distributes reusable 

clothing, furniture, household items 

and toys to projects that need them. 

The IWC does not seek headline news, 

preferring to get on with the job. But 

the group does make the point that expats, 

the female half at least, are not a 

miserly group, given a framework within 

which to organise. P 

January 2011 

Out & About

My World 

Bad Carma 

John Harrison 

It is quite difficult to find a place to park near the Raddisson Slavyansky 

Hotel. The car parks outside Kievsky Station fill up quickly, 

and a mysterious one-way system leads you in zig-zags ever further 

away from the hotel. I eventually found an empty parking 

space in 2nd Borodinskaya Ulitsa, which runs along the side of the 

huge Evropeisky mall. There was no yellow line and other vehicles 

were parked there. As I left my vehicle a man stepped out from a 

doorway and for some reason offered me some roses. An hour 

and a half later I returned to my car. It had gone. I walked up 

and down the road twice, in the hope that it would suddenly 

appear. It had either been stolen, which was unlikely, or it had 

been kidnapped by the dastardly evil car parking police. 

The latter was indeed the case, as a friendly uniformed security 

man from the mall informed me. “Don’t worry, I know 

somebody who can take you to the police pound to pick your 

car up.” A man appeared out of the same shop door where the 

flowers seller had appeared, and dashed across the road towards 

us. I agreed to everything, that all it would cost is 5,000 

roubles, and that would includes a taxi journey to the uttermost 

ends of Moscow and that he would wait at the GBDD 

office whilst I paid a fine. Then I felt an eruption of anger starting 

deep down in my belly. I tried to control it and prevent 

myself from pulling his eyes and hair out and leaving him in 

bits in the gutter. Then I remembered that Russian prisons are 

bad. Pride had its own stupid way and I refused his services, 

thinking I’d sort it out myself. 

I turned the corner onto Bolshaya Dorogomilovskaya Ulitsa. 

There I met a GBDD officer who didn’t want to talk to me. It 

was suddenly very lonely, and cold, without my little car. Further 

up the road, there was another uniformed man who gave 

me the number of the department of the GBDD which deals 

with kidnapped cars: 504 1724. After the recorded message 

the voice informed me that you have to have your driving 

license, car registration document and passport with you to 

get your car back. Then a calm female asked where the vehicle 

was picked up from, and the number plate. 

Walking back to the scene of the kidnapping, I did in fact see 

a no-parking sign at the end of the street; I must have been 

blind not to have seen it. I cooled down sufficiently to hear 

a bespectacled man asking politely whether I needed a taxi. 

January 2011 

I said no, er, yes. He said the whole trip would take two hours 

and cost 5000 roubles plus a 350 rouble fine, I haggled the price 

down to 3500 plus the fine and felt good about that at least. 

In most cases, apparently, when your car has been kidnapped 

in central Moscow, you pay your fine in the GBDD office on Ulitsa 

Pobeda 9, in Reutov which is in the back of beyond, beyond 

MKAD on the far western part of the city. The nearest Metro 

is Novogireevo, but it’s about an hour walk. Bus 15 goes from 

Metro Pervomaiskaya, and takes about 30 minutes, although 

you may end up waiting at least that long for the bus, so my 

driver told me. Once there, try to keep your cool in the office, 

which is a one-storey Portakabin affair within a large GBDD 

complex. Everyone is in a predictably bad mood. The drivers 

because they are being blackmailed, and the police because 

they have to deal with these delinquents. 

There is a line of pre-perestroika-type wooden windows 

which are opened from the inside by gruff men and slammed 

shut. Most of the drivers were civil, to each other, which 

helped. I didn’t have my passport, but when my turn came 

the officer asked me why I wasn’t in London with Berezovsky 

and I answered that I wasn’t quite in the same league, and if 

I was, I wouldn’t be standing in line to pay a fine. He laughed 

and seemed to forget about the passport. You have to pay a 

350 rouble fine in a machine right there, although the officer 

seemed happy to take the cash from me direct. Ten minute later 

the window opened again and I was handed a release order 

for my precious vehicle. 

Then another mad dash through Moscow. Kidnapped cars 

are taken to whatever “spetsparkovka” place is nearest to 

wherever they are picked up. In my case, in another inaccessible 

place on Ulitsa Ryabinova Vl. 71a, near the junction of 

Mozhaiskaya Shosse and MKAD. You show the release document 

and you are allowed inside the “spetsparkovka” to pick 

up your car which is stuck with bright yellow self-adhesive 

stickers all over. It is best to remove these straightaway, otherwise 

they become almost impossible to remove. The hardest 

part of all this was subduing my anger and accepting the services 

of drivers who are clearly working hand in pocket with 

the GBDD. I speak Russian, but as it happens, most of the drivers 

seem to speak some English and seemed used to what 

must seem to them childish antics of foreigners. P

Dare to ask Dare 

Photo by Maria Savelieva 

Ex-pats and Russians alike 

ask celebrity columnist 

Deidre Dare questions 

about life in Moscow. 

Dear Deidre: 

I find life so painful: everyone is so selfish 

and always hurting each other. How do 

you stand it? It is almost too dismal for 

me and I feel disconnected from everyone. 

It is all just suffering. 

Dear Fyodor Dostoyevsky: 

I agree with you. However, I have a 

way of dealing with it. I’ll share it with 

you and that should help a bit. 

Larry Flynt (of Hustler Magazine fame) 

took a lot of painkillers for many years 

after he was shot and then, when he was 

cured and out of agony, he stopped. 

I take Larry’s approach: I’ll stop stopping 

the pain when the pain stops. 

Drugs, booze, reckless sex, over-eating, 

perusing Hustler: these are all ways 

to alleviate the pain. Keep using them 

until the agony stops. 

This, I’ll warn you right now, will be 

never. 

xxooDD 

Dear Deidre: 

I went out with a real loser guy a few 

times and he just changed his Facebook 

status to “In a relationship” and I know 

he means me!!! Can you be in a relationship 

and not know it? 

Dear Jean-Paul Sartre: 

Yes. And I’ve recently discovered 

something even worse. 

You can be broken-up with and not 

know it. 

Now that can really cause an existential 

crisis of unprecedented proportions, 

let me tell you. 

And a few benders as well... 

xxooDD 

Dear Deidre: 

I have a huge fear of commitment and 

this is keeping me (obviously) from having 

a girlfriend. I don’t know what to do 

about it. Any advice? 

Dear Stephen King: 

No. 

Anyone rational would have a fear of 

commitment. 

xxooDD 

Dear Deidre: 

Why do these New Zealanders use the 

word “wee” for little? They sound like 

Munchkins and it drives me crazy. And 

there are so many of them here. I wish 

there were wee-er! 

Dear Frank Baum: 

We can get some useful assistance on 

this question from Seinfeld: 

“Why does Radio Shack ask for your 

phone number when you buy batteries?” 

I don’t know. 

xxooDD 

Dear Deidre: 

Why are Russian men so ugly? 

Dear Naomi Wolf: 

Are they? I hadn’t noticed. 

xxooDD 

Dear Deidre: 

I am desperately in love with a Russian 

girl but she speaks hardly any English and 

I speak no Russian. What should I do? 

Dear Andre Breton: 

I have a friend in Moscow who, like you, 

is always “desperately in love” with some 

Russian or Ukrainian chick or another, although 

he can’t communicate with her. 

I think of these women of his as more 

like pets than girlfriends. This is a little 

surreal when you’re out to dinner with 

them, because you feel like ordering 

them a water bowl and a Milkbone. 

You’re not in love, mate, you’re in heat. 

Take Russian lessons—that will cool 

you down as much as a cold shower 

would, I promise. 

At any rate, it always works for me. 

That or ordering a bowl of water. 

Dear Deidre: 

In bed: Putin or Medvedev? 

Dear Eduard Limonov: 

Putin v Medvedev, eh? 

Medvedev. 

Medvedev. 

Medvedev. 

Always: Medvedev. 

Dear Deidre: 

What do you want from 2011? 

Dear Dale Carnegie: 

Medvedev. 

Medvedev. 

Medvedev. 

Always: Medvedev. 

My World 

Dear Deidre: 

I find the holiday season in Moscow to 

be depressing since Christmas isn’t until 

January and there’s not really the normal 

Western fanfare. Any suggestions on how 

to get out of my no-Holiday spirit funk? 

Dear Charles Dickens: 

I find it a relief not to be bombarded 

with the “fanfare.” 

Look what happened to the Jews in the 

West when Christmas became such a ridiculous 

extravaganza there: they turned 

Chanukah (in reality, the President’s Day 

of Judaism) into a big thing just to keep up 

with those merry Christian gentlemen. 

And don’t get me started on Kwanza. 

Just don’t. 

Someday, the Russians will do the 

same for their Orthodox Christmas, but 

until then let’s enjoy the Peace on Earth, 

shall we? Or do you really want to listen 

to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer 

about 4000 times between now and 

New Year’s? Think hard about that. 

Really? 

xxooDD 

PS Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhestva i s 

Novim Godomto all my Russian Passport Readers! 

Do you have a question for Deidre 

Dare? If so, please email her at 

Deidre_Clark@hotmail.com. 

January 2011 

5

Family pages 

Pileloops’ Festival 

Written by Natalie Kurtog, illustrations by Nika Harrison 

Chapter 8 

Searching for the hat 

Peter heard some voices and movement in the bushes behind 

him. He looked round and perceived a multitude of different colour 

Pileloops; yellow, red, blue, grey, violet and pink ones. 

“Good Day! Glad to see you again after such a long time! How 

wonderful that you’ve flown in!” They proclaimed loudly. 

The old man bowed and replied: “It is truly wonderful to 

see you. May I introduce my friend, Pileloop Peter. Peter, this 

is Yellow Pileloop, Red Pileloop, Blue and…” 

“Why are they different colours?” The boy asked quietly.” 

“They are flower dust,” the old man answered, just as quietly. 

“Tonight, when the flowers get covered with Pileloop-dust 

pollen, dust flies in from everywhere and the Pileloops’ Festival 

begins.” The old man stopped talking. “The hat, oh, we’ve 

got to find the hat, now!” 

He shouted to the guests: “Friends! After the last festival I 

left something very important behind. Do you remember the 

hat tricks?” 

“Of course we remember!” hundreds of voices chimed in. “No 

hat, no festival”! 

Then Pileloop said: “I have lost the hat! Maybe one of you has 

seen it? I left it on that pine tree during last year’s festival.” 

Everyone joined in and started to search the area. 

Sometime later, Yellow Pileloop flew up to Peter, shrugged 

his shoulders and whined: “It’s not here, not anywhere! Not in 

January 2011 

the trees, not on the field, not… what’s that?” 

Everyone looked round. Swaying from side to side, something 

black flew towards them. It was the hat. 

“My dear old friend, I haven’t seen you for a long long time!” 

it said. 

Peter’s mouth opened wide in surprise. “You old bungler 

you, how could you have just left such an amazing thing as 

this behind?” 

A black little old man with a long black beard poked his face out 

of the hat. “I picked it up a year ago and took it to my castle.” 

Pileloop replied: “Meet my new friend, Peter.” 

Black Pileloop looked closely at the boy. “What attic has this 

young Pileloop fallen from?” he asked. 

“Peter is the new master of our hat.” Pileloop replied. 

Black Pileloop screwed up his eyes in a cunning way and 

said: “Fly over to my castle, and leave your attic to your 

Pileloop. He will guard the hat. It’s high time you came and 

stayed with me. We’ve been dreaming about this for a long 

time, remember?” 

Peter bent over to his friend and said: “I don’t want to live in 

granny’s attic instead of you.” He felt ill just thinking about this. 

Pileloop said: “Don’t worry, he’s been trying to get me to 

go and stay with him for ages, he gets bored and he’s an old 

grumbler.” Then Pileloop turned round to the old man: “Thank 

you for the hat. I thought that I had lost it forever.” 

“Always ready to help an old friend,” smiled Black Pileloop 

and winked at Peter. 

Chapter 9 

Tricks 

Part III 

News that the hat had been found travelled fast. The 

Pileloops surrounded Peter and the old man. 

“Show us some tricks. Show us some tricks!” they all shouted, 

and applauded. Dust rose into the sky from the clapping, 

creating multi-coloured fireworks. “Oh come on, please, we’ve 

been waiting for long enough!” they said. 

Pileloop flew over the field and slapped his palm against 

the hat. A cloud oozed out, from which rings, ear rings, coins, 

necklaces, watches, broaches, nuts and bolts, springs, cogs, 

hooks and screws flopped out. There were hundreds of bits of 

bric-a-brac. Peter watched, astounded, as they disintegrated 

and then materialised again into various Metal, Gold, Silver, 

Bronze Pileloops. The flower Pileloops greeted them warmly. 

“Now you do a trick,” said the old man and pushed the hat over 

to the boy. Peter didn’t even manage to get hold of the hat when 

various guests one after the other, climbed out of it. There were 

Flour Pileloops which had flown in from bakers and windmills. 

But to begin with, they appeared as buns, cakes, tarts, loaves of 

bread and pretzels. Sugar from a sweet factory at first appeared 

from the hat in the form of hares, hedgehogs, spheres and plain 

old lumps of sugar, then transformed into Sugar Pileloops. 

“And now wave the hat!” The old man shouted at Peter. And that 

is exactly what Peter did. Peter felt cold and shivered. Snow started 

pouring out of the hat. It quickly covered the clearing and created 

a series of snow drifts from which snowmen, snow ladies, sleighs

and sleighs runs magically manifested themselves. Snow-ball fights 

started and the Pileloops shattered into a multitude of coloured 

particles when they were hit by a snowball, then they reformed. 

“Snow Pileloops! Snow Pileloops!” the Pileoops shouted at 

the newly arrived guests. 

Peter whispered to his friend: “I didn’t know that snow is 

dust.” 

The old man smiled and said: “That doesn’t surprise me, 

there’s a lot you don’t know. After the festival the snow dust 

will melt and will return only when winter comes.” 

Peter waved the hat again. This time sand poured out. Sand 

lay in waves around the clearing. Sand castles, little houses, fish, 

and other shapes that children make in the sand appeared. The 

shapes dematerialised and formed into Sand Pileloops. 

When all the Pileloops had gathered, the old man shook his head 

and said: “You are so like your great grandfather.” The boy smiled. 

A very beautiful girl in a pink dress flew up to the old man. 

She whispered something to him, turned to Peter and smiled. 

Pileloop gave the hat to Peter. “This is yours,” he said. “The 

tricks are over. All the Pileloops are here. Here is your hat. You 

can go back home. Do you remember the way?” 

Peter didn’t know what to do. He wanted to stay very much. 

The boy nodded his head and hesitatingly took the hat. 

Chapter 10 

The Pileloop’s Festival 

Peter thought up an excuse to stay, but he didn’t need to because 

the old man flew up to him and said ceremoniously: “We 

invite you, Pileloop Peter, to attend the Pileloop’s Festival as our 

guest!” The old man screwed his eyes up and smiled broadly. 

“Yes, great!” Peter said, other Pileloops clapped. 

The boy flew up into the air and shouted: “People give pres- 

January 2011 

Family pages 

ents to each other at festivals. I want to give you the hat!” 

The Pileloops all clapped so much that the whole clearing 

was covered with multi-coloured dust. Bees were jolted out 

of flowers and joined in, a ringing sound from thousands of 

bluebells filled the air. The old man hugged Peter. Then he 

started to jump around, and broke into a jig. 

The Pileloops merged together in one huge dance-cloud. 

Peter couldn’t conceal his amazement. The Pileloops danced, 

danced and danced. The old man, who still couldn’t believe 

his good fortune, flew up to the boy. “Thank you, this is a present 

fit for a king!” 

Pileloop held his hands to his heart. 

“Now I have a reason to look after the hat year after year. But 

how did you decide? Didn’t you tell me you wanted to own it?” 

Peter turned to his friend and said: “It’s me who should be thanking 

you! My dreams have come true! I am so happy that I was able 

to do some tricks, and what tricks they were! Now I know what it’s 

like to be a magician. Pileloop and Peter hugged each other. 

Chapter 11 

The Pink Pileloop 

The festival roared along in high spirits. Peter stood to one 

side and shyly watched the Pileloops dance. The girl in the 

pink dress flew up to him. “This is Rose Pileloop,” said the old 

man. “You have seen her already. She lives in a rose.” 

The girl took Peter by the hand and took him into the dance. 

The boy felt a bit awkward at first, but Rose Pileloop was 

so dexterous with him that he soon forgot that he couldn’t 

dance. “Have you got a girl friend?” the girl asked. “N-no,” 

Peter was embarrassed for some reason. “I don’t either. I was 

only born very recently. In a rose. Maybe I can be your friend?” 

Peter’s heart jumped with joy: “Of course!” 

Peter was very happy. He soared into the sky, twisted and 

turned in a riot of light and colour. He couldn’t believe that 

this festival was actually made of nothing but dust, the same 

dust that we come across every day at work, at home, in museums, 

on the roads, in the fields, forests, workshops, bakeries, 

windmills summer and winter, autumn and spring. The 

night slowly dispersed and the first rays of dawn appeared. 

The old man flew up to him, gave him the hat and shouted: 

“Throw the hat upwards, for the last time!” The boy flung the hat 

upwards. The Pileloops raised their hands up. Peter’s new friend 

raised her hands up. The hat shot upwards to the stars as if it was a 

rocket. When it touched them tiny flames began to fall earthward. 

“Star Pileloops! Star Pileloops!” Everyone shouted. One by 

one, the Pileloops all took off to join the new guests. They dissolved 

into the light of the new day. 

“Let’s go!” Rose Pileloop took Peter by the hand. What could 

be more perfect than touching the stars hand in hand with 

such a kind and wonderful girl who was born of a rose! 

Eventually, the Pileloops descended back down onto the 

clearing. Peter and his new friend held hands and smiled, 

looking at each other. It got light. 

“Time to say goodbye,” said Rose Pileloop. 

Suddenly, without any warning, a grey shadow covered the 

clearing. It rose up and took the Pileloops with it. Everybody 

was thrown about all over the place. The shadow took the girl 

so quickly that Peter lost hold of her. The rose dress flashed 

and disappeared together into the grey matter. P 

Translated from the Russian by John Harrison

Family pages 

Puzzle page 

Compiled by Ross Hunter 

Moscow indoors and Underground 

Winter is a great time for indoor exploration. Moscow has a fantastic range of museums, galleries and well-heated special 

places. Four are show here. Which are they? Choose among the eight great names. 

Tolstoy’s House - Tretyakov Gallery - Pushkin Museum - Mayakovsky Museum - State Historical Museum - 

Museum of the 20th century - Gorky House - Museum of Archaeology 

And here is a photo taken inside each of the above. Can you match them up? 

Metro Spaghetti. The average Metro line has 21 stations. In each list, which is the odd one out, and why? 

A Kalininskaya, Kropotkinskaya, Kurskaya, Kievskaya, Kutozovskaya 

B Mayakovskaya, Pushkinskaya, Tretyakovskaya, Mendeleevskaya, Smolenskaya, Turgenevskaya 

C Komsomolskaya, Taganskaya, Prospekt Mira, Belorusskaya, Oktyabrskaya 

D Polyanka, Krasne Vorota, Sukharevskaya, Arbatskaya (Pale Blue), Kitai Gorod 

E Novogireevo, Mitino, Rechnoy Voksal, Yugo-Zapadnaya, Ryananzky Prospekt 

F Yellow, Dark Blue, Purple, Light Green, Red. 

Mini Sudoku 

Usual rules: 1-6 in each row, 

column and box. 

2 1 

3 2 

4 6 

4 3 

4 6 

5 2 

January 2011 

Answers to December puzzles 

Saints & Symbols: St Mark’s lion, St Matthew’s angel, St John’s eagle, St Luke’sox. 

Churches: St Paul’s London, St Peter’s Rome, St Isaac’s St Petersburg, St Mark’s 

Venice. 

Odd one out: 

A Buddhism – the other three desert religions share the same heritage 

B St Peter – the other four wrote the Gospels 

C Rome – Jesus visited all the others 

D Oranges – do not feature in Jesus’ teaching 

E Pontius Pilate – is in new testament, all the others are Old Testament people. 

Symbols: Hindu ‘Om’, Islamism crescent moon and star, Buddhist wheel of life, 

Christian fish (Jesus was ‘a fisher of men’s souls’), Jewish Star of David. 

Mini Sudoku: see www.englishedmoscow.com

California 

Preening 

Ian Mitchell 

In the middle of a Moscow winter, there 

will be many who dream of California, 

the west coast American oblast which is 

run by The Terminator, and where whitecollar 

desk-jockeys in sweats generate 

electricity for the local grid by peddling 

exercise bikes in their lunch hour. But 

that is not all that happens California. Los 

Angeles also happens. 

Raymond Chandler once described the 

city as having “all the personality of a paper 

cup” and it would seem that Bret Easton Ellis 

feels much the same, despite the glitter, 

the sunshine and the slender, swaying palm 

trees, many of which are even taller than 

Naomi Campbell. And Mr Ellis should know: 

he has written two novels about the place. 

The first of Mr Ellis’s books, called Less 

Than Zero, was published in 1985, when 

he was still a brattish college kid in temporary 

exile in Vermont. He returns to 

his home-town for a socially-dysfunctional 

Christmas. The first sentence sets 

the tone: “People are afraid to merge on 

freeways in Los Angeles.” 

Two hundred pages later, the book 

ends without anyone having merged, on 

a freeway or anywhere else. They have 

passed in the night, exchanging bodyfluids, 

joints and occasionally blows. But 

they have never merged because they, 

like the author, are too self-centred to 

be able to establish genuinely interactive 

relationships with other items in the 

city’s human inventory. 

How dull, you might think, especially 

while sitting in the land of Leo Tolstoy. 

But Mr Ellis’s books are not dull—that is 

the point. He has raised to a high pitch 

of art, the illustration of isolation. His stories 

do not really present a plot, except 

in very minimalist way. They are vehicles 

for the expression of a single self. All the 

characters in them are, at bottom, the 

same, or at least trying to be the same 

thing behind variations of wardrobe and 

lifestyle accessory. Complete freedom 

produces competitive conformity. 

I mention Less Than Zero because the 

book under review, Imperial Bedrooms, 

published six months ago, revisits the same 

places, the same group of people and the 

same background cultural assumptions 

twenty-five years on. The powerful beams 

of self-absorption and narcissism are undimmed. 

Everyone is still projecting, preening 

and pooh-poohing all those who do 

not project so powerfully or preen so conscientiously. 

And still they do not merge. 

They have grown up without maturing. 

In the intervening quarter of a century, 

Mr Ellis himself left college, got stoned 

several thousand times and published five 

books. One of them was, I thought, a dud; 

two were interesting; and two were brilliant. 

The first of the latter category was 

American Psycho, the book for which he 

is best known, and which, like Less Than 

Zero, was made into a very successful film. 

Best of all was Glamorama, the book 

about the fashion/night-club world in 

New York. When I re-read it recently, I 

found myself thinking that it made Anna 

Karenina, which I was reading at the 

same time, seem lifeless by comparison. 

Granted, Tolstoy has a plot and a variety 

of interesting characters, whereas Bret 

Easton Ellis has little plot and really only 

one character: himself (again). But there 

is a vigour, a wit, a readability and a crispness 

of social observation that is far more 

entertaining than anything that the Sage 

of the Tulskaya oblast presents in his extended 

saga of social reportage. 

In Anna Karenina people “merge”, demerge, 

change and realise things. They 

regularly think about other people. In 

Glamorama they are more likely to stop 

on the staircase in night-clubs they are 

designing and ask: “Is this cool or useless? 

I’m not sure.” Conversations fall apart: “A 

long, chilly silence none of us are able to 

fill floats around, acts cool, lives.” (emphasis 

in original) The author-narrator’s motto 

is: “The better you look, the more you see.” 

So when someone unbeautiful “acts like 

an idiot without trying”, he cuts him off by 

saying, “Oh sorry, my ass just yawned.” 

Imperial Bedrooms 

Bret Easton Ellis 

Picador £16.99 

The central theme of all Mr Ellis’s books 

is stated succinctly by the character in 

Glamorama who looks superciliously 

round the night-club the author-narrator 

has created and says: “I’m thinking, 

Jesus, the zeitgeist’s in limbo.” 

Even the literary world is dismissed 

rather wittily. When a beautiful girl the 

narrator is trying to “merge” with while 

crossing the Atlantic on the QE2 is discovered 

sunning herself on deck, he 

eases himself down onto a towel beside 

her, “flexing my abs to get her attention”. 

Unusually, he notices something not 

connected with himself: “She’s reading 

a book with the words MARTIN AMIS in 

giant black letters on the cover and I’m 

hoping she’s not a member of Amnesty 

International.” 

In order not to spoil the fun, I will say 

no more about Imperial Bedrooms 

than that, though quieter, it is an explicit 

continuation of all the above. The 

central theme is elliptically re-stated by 

the author-narrator, who is now a 

script-writer, and who repels the crowd 

at the after-party of a movie premier 

on Hollywood Boulevard with a neat 

reversal of a well-known cliché. Seeing 

the socially-greedy faces of unfamiliar 

people illuminated by the lights of their 

cell-phone screens as they preen and 

dream in the cavernous darkness, he 

declines to take verbal interchange 

into the unfamiliar territory of actual 

conversation. “I’ve been in New York 

the last four months is the mantra, my 

mask an expressionless smile.” P 

January 2011 

Book review

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