Economist.com Cities Guide: Moscow Briefing - July 2006

News this month

The usual suspects

Spend a few days in Moscow and you may be stopped by police asking to inspect your documents—in theory because they suspect that you've committed a crime, in practice because they are trying to solicit a bribe. If you are a westerner with the right papers, you will almost certainly escape unharmed; if you are a dark-skinned migrant from the Caucasus or Central Asia, you will probably be taken to the nearest doorway and relieved of your savings. Indeed, people who look non-Slavic are more likely to be stopped in the first place, according to a new report from the Open Society Justice Initiative and JURIX, two legal-affairs groups based in New York and Moscow respectively.

Tales of racial profiling in Moscow are nothing new. But the report, published in June, has hard statistics proving the practice to be rampant. The study found that those who do not look ethnically Russian (but who may be citizens) are almost 22 times more likely to be stopped in Metro stations by policemen than those who are, or look like, ethnic Russians. The report’s authors recommended that the police adopt new guidelines for stopping suspects, based on behavioural rather than ethnic prompts, and be barred from collecting fines for document violations. The findings have been shared with the United Nations special rapporteur on racism, who visited Russia in June in the wake of several racist killings and assaults.

Rosnyet

The initial public offering (IPO) by Rosneft, a state-owned oil company, was first billed as the biggest in history, with talk of the listing rising to $20 billion. This figure has since been scaled down, but the company hopes to raise around $10 billion, making it one of the largest IPOs to date. The offering will probably take place in Moscow and London some time in July, when George Bush and other world leaders will be in St Petersburg for the G8 summit.

In many ways, Rosneft seems a juicy investment: its oil reserves are larger than those of Exxon Mobil, the world's top traded oil company, and last year its net profits were almost five times higher than they were in 2004. But Moscow’s rumour-mill had it that the size of the offering was reduced because investors were squeamish about the legal costs of buying in. Rosneft is tainted by a dodgy manoeuvre: the company acquired its main production asset, Yuganskneftegaz, only after the state seized Yugansk from Yukos, once Russia’s biggest oil company, and sold it in a rigged auction in December 2004. Rosneft now faces several pending lawsuits, including a threat by Yukos shareholders to sue investors who buy into the IPO. Rosneft, however, says the resizing of its offering is the result of improved finances and the rising price of oil. Either way, the level of interest in the IPO will be a good test of how western investors feel towards Russia.

Shortchanged

The dollar's spectacular decline against the Russian rouble has made visits to Moscow’s currency exchanges a depressing experience for many western visitors. But as a recent investigation by the Moscow Times (MT) revealed, such trips carry perils beyond than the dismal exchange rate. In June the MT chronicled some scams at the more than 2,500 exchange points across the city.

Many exchanges trade under the names of banks—an operator can pay a bank to use its name—but are insalubrious outfits, nestled in gambling halls, pedestrian underpasses or, in the case of one used by your correspondent recently, an old circus building. Along with the more obvious dodges, such as advertising fake exchange rates, the MT noted two risks in particular: the “businessman” in a hurry who offers his victims attractive rates as they wait in the queue for service, only to leave them with counterfeit money; and the “sticky tray”, whereby the money-changer puts adhesive on the bottom of the tray used to pass money back and forth, so that a note or two get left behind when a customer leaves. The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, the agency that monitors the exchanges, has called on the Central Bank to introduce penalties for shady outfits.

City of God

Moscow can sometimes seem a brutal, godless place, emptied of belief by communism and its collapse. A very different face of the city, and of Russia, was displayed for ten days in June at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, near the Kremlin. Tens of thousands of people queued in stifling heat for a glimpse of a relic, said to be the right hand of St John the Baptist, on view in the cathedral. Many were out-of-towners; old women in headscarves stood in the long queues, gently wailing liturgical songs.

This was the first time that the relic had been displayed in Russia since it was smuggled out of the country during the revolution. The cathedral remained open all day and night to accommodate the crowds, and the hand has been credited with working miracles among the Moscow faithful. After its stint in Moscow ended on June 16th, the supposedly holy hand began travelling through assorted Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian cities before returning to its adopted home in Montenegro.

I'm dreaming of a white July

For about three weeks each year, usually in June and July, Moscow is cloaked in what seems to be snow. Mystifying to first-time visitors, entertaining to adolescents (who set fire to clumps of it in gutters), the white substance is in fact a mass of seeds, known as pukh, from the city’s female poplar trees.

Other Russian cities also experience this strange early summer phenomenon, one of the more eccentric results of dubious Soviet urban planning. Some Muscovites blame the annual plague of fuzz on a drive to green the city in the Stalin era, while others blame planting under Nikita Kruschev. Regardless, pukh is a general nuisance: not only does the occasional pukh fire get out of hand, but also the white fluff is a bane to hay-fever sufferers. It is said to have once driven an American ambassador out of the country after he accidentally ingested some.

Catch if you can

July 2006

Cult of the Family

Until July 9th 2006

Be sure to catch this photography exhibition at the Manezh. Vladimir Mishukov, a prominent Russian photographer, has taken portraits of Russian families from different professions and social strata, lending fascinating insight to the lives of 78 families in Moscow and its suburbs. The series of carefully posed images includes a rigid policeman and his children, a financial manager and his kin looking resolutely formal in black-tie, and a peasant’s family sitting before a house in sore need of a paint job. Mr Mishukov has crafted an enduring piece of social history.

Manezh Exhibition Hall, 1 Manezh Square. Metro Alexandrovsky Sad or Biblioteka Imena Lenina. Tel: +7 495 298 1660. Open: Tues-Sun noon-9pm. See the exhibition's website.

More from the Moscow cultural calendar