No image available
/ 11 September 2007
One young Russian woman sends an SMS to another’s cellphone in central Moscow: ”Hi, Katya. Ne poiti li nam drink coffee? Call asap! Cheers, Masha.” The uninitiated might take this for some technical garble, but when 24-year-old student Masha Kuznetsova recently invited her journalist friend Katya out for a coffee, she was using the latest argot of the new Russia.
With their hammers and sickles, cosmonauts and red stars, the decorations on many Russian Christmas trees still reflect the ebb and flow of a bygone atheist age as they grace the country’s homes from New Year’s Eve to Orthodox Christmas on January 7. Today, Moscow market stalls are helping to revive traditional Soviet decorations.
Long known for its rich history and elegant marble-lined metro, Moscow has suddenly discovered that it has a bad rap among foreigners — and is spending tens of millions of dollars to try and turn it around. "After all, Mickey Mouse is just a mouse with good publicity," said Veronika Khilchevskaya, a consultant working on the $27-million campaign to boost the Russian capital’s image.
It can be a delicacy or status symbol, a cure-all or even an aphrodisiac, but ecologists are warning that Russian caviar could disappear altogether as the Caspian Sea’s sturgeon population reaches dangerously low levels. The WWF conservation group has for the past few months waged a campaign to persuade Russians to give up their caviar habit for six years.
Irina, a young consultant in a Western company, loves boasting to colleagues about her trip to Argentina and showing off her tan and holiday snaps. The only thing is: she’s never been there. And this doesn’t matter, according to the man behind this novel idea for arousing envy — fake trips with real side effects.