In April, officials ‘confiscated’ 167,500 Motorola mobile phones on their way to Russian handset lovers. They’re still missing. Apparently some 50,000 were immediately ‘destroyed’ by police. The other 120,000 or so have gone walkabout. What happened?

So far the authorities have given various replies. First, that the mobiles emitted lethal doses of radiation and constituted a health hazard. Next, that they entered Russia illegally. Now it appears that Motorola has violated Russian patents. (An interesting development since Russia had no such patents when the models were built.)

Clearly, Motorola did not read the book I recommended the other day: Matthew Maly’s, ‘Understanding Russia‘.

Russia’s New Mobile Generation

Continue reading Motorola Mugged

Paolo Cuelho’s train trip across Russia has been a major media event. His carriage is flocked to and feted as it pulls into the smallest hamlets in Siberia. Which proves one of two things. Either he has a great publicist. Or that Russians still read books, unlike the rest of us who just scan the net. (As it happens, Russia does have the world’s highest male literacy rate.)

I’ve often wondered how I’d pass the time on the world’s longest train journey. Taking a few good books seems the obvious precaution. But I learned from Paulo’s blog that the rocking of the carriages prevented him from reading or writing a word. He would only hurriedly scribble something down during station stops.

A Bashkir Switchman - from the Prokudin-Gorskii collection

Continue reading Trans Siberian Scribbler

One attraction of visiting Russia is the rather good Georgian wine. So it was disappointing to read that imports from Georgia are suddenly banned.

Officially, says Russia, the wines contain too many pesticides and heavy metals. But the real story is that Georgia belongs to the so-called ‘Awkward Squad’ - Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova. These are rebel regions with unacceptably Western leanings. Which means that Russia’s other great wine producer, Moldova, is being embargoed too. For winos, things are as bad as during prohibition.

Georgian Wine : last banned in 1985 during Gorbachev’s ‘Struggle Against Alcoholism‘

Continue reading Georgia On My Mind

Probably the best book about contemporary Russia was called just that. Around the time of perestroika, ‘Understanding Russia‘ by Matthew Maly was conceived as a kind of ‘how to’ guide for new foreign investors. But Matthew’s ‘tell it like it is’ essay was so off-puttingly spot on, his bosses canned the project.

The first edition of ‘Understanding Russia’ met the same fate as a later book published by the Finnish Chamber Of Commerce - also hastily withdrawn - which thoughtfully included a section on bribing officials.

Continue reading Understanding Russia

Ever wondered what happens when you fill in those ‘customer safisfaction’ surveys? Well. Obviously enough people gave Moscow’s Sport Hotel a ‘could do better’ rating. It was dynamited the other day.

Coincidentally, this news happens while 9/11 skeptics are grabbing the headlines. Now everyone from eminent physicists to European diplomats believe that the World Trade Center was ‘control demolished‘.

Well, the Sport does look uncannily like WTC7 in free fall, don’t you think? Continue reading I Never Did Like The Bar At The Sport Hotel

Vera Mukhina’s famous statue - The Worker and The Collective Farm Girl - has gone missing from its rightful place outside Moscow’s VDNK.
Officially, the ultimate icon of the Soviet Union is being restored. But no-one is going to see it again anytime soon. Meanwhile, Moscow without this landmark is like Paris without the Eiffel Tower.

Continue reading Shame About Our Vera