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Russian ladies turning London into Londonograd

Date: 2006-10-14

A flick through the property section says it all, really. Turn the page and here is a full-page colour ad, placed by one of our leading estate agents.

It shows a newly-built pile with swirling staircases and cascading pools. It looks as if it belongs in Texas or a medium-sized emirate. In fact, it happens to be in Windlesham, Surrey.

If this was in, say, Country Life, the blurb might say something coy like Price on application'. But this ad is different. First, it's in Russian. Second, the price stares out in bold red ink: £70,000,000.'

I blink but it's not a misprint. That's the real price — in pounds,' says Elena Ragozhina.

And she should know. She is the editor of New Style, the publication in question, a fast-expanding magazine aimed at London Russians who have £70 million to blow on a house in Surrey. And we are at a party for some of her 15,000 subscribers.

The venue is far more exclusive than a mere London club or some humdrum little West End dive like The Dorchester. We are at the newly-opened Bond Street showrooms of the Leviev diamond empire.

A squad of granite-faced, ear-pieced sentries guards the door. And with good reason. This has to be the most expensive shop I have ever seen.

The cheapest thing in the entire place, according to the managing director, is an entry-level' diamond ring at £25,000.

I ask him about the diamond necklace in the case behind Elena's shoulder. Its well-hidden price tag says 4.2 million'. That's in pounds, too. Shouldn't it have a name — like the Koh-i-noor? My guide frowns. Oh no,' he says. You have to have a diamond over 100 carats before it gets a name.'

Forget those City bonus boys and all those puffed-up hedge fund squits bragging about a million here or a Bentley there. The flushest Lottery winner would feel distinctly impoverished among this crowd.

And we had better get used to it. Because London's Russian plutocracy has grown a lot larger than a few itinerant billionaires. This magazine is merely one more indicator that they are now an established demographic, a clearly-defined section of British — or, rather, London — life. So I've come to meet them.

Popular myth may still portray some Russians as knuckle-dragging thugs, draped in gold, tarts and Kalashnikovs as they stagger between nightclubs in London and St Tropez. Roman Abramovich might have sweetened the image a little — the bored trillionaire who buys a toy called Chelsea FC.

But these cliches conceal a more interesting reality: a significant number of very low-profile, very rich, very clever, more-than-averagely beautiful (in the case of the women, at least) and relatively young people who have made rapid fortunes from the explosion of capitalism into a post-communist void.

They could set up home anywhere on earth. But they have decided to do so in London.

London is a grand city with a great culture that appeals to Russians,' says Assia Webster, 34, the St Petersburg-born wife of top London jewellery designer, Stephen Webster. If you tell anyone in Russia you live abroad, they will say: Ah, tumanny Albion' — foggy England'. It is a term of affection and it has become part of the language.'

That is why the November issue of Vogue devotes page after page to The Ladies of Londongrad. Hence the fact that these ladies now have a Vogue of their own, Elena's thick, glossy Russian-speaking mag entirely devoted to foggy London. Just London. They may come from one of the largest countries on earth but these immigrants have no desire to stray much beyond the M25.

We have fashion articles but this is not a women's magazine,' Elena insists. Russians believe in culture and, above all, education. It's not all about money. This is for well-educated people.'

Scanning the occasional arty interview squeezed between bling-bling ads and party snaps of Olgas, Tatianas plus the odd porky bloke in a suit mingling with British toffs, I'd say that New Style is unlikely to be stealing many sales off The Economist.

But Elena, 49, is on a mission. She is fed up with British perceptions about rich Russians . A hyperactive engineer-turned-economics lecturer-turned-banker who came here six years ago with her banker husband, she now runs her own publishing business and wants to persuade us that these newcomers are not idle tax exiles.

They are, she says, educated business people who may be awash with large amounts of new' money but who, deep down, are no different to the rest of us. If anyone suddenly has millions of pounds to spend, they will buy things and improve their life. Russians are no different.

And in 100 years, this money will be old money.' So why do they all congregate here? They could live in New York, Paris or sunny seclusion anywhere. Why pick rainy, overpriced ASBO-land? Why leave home in the first place?

People who change countries do so because the system is not as stable as they would like,' Elena says carefully. She does not want to slag off her motherland but she cannot deny that Londongrad's Midas crowd find it much safer to be wealthy here rather than there.

In recent days, a central banker has been assassinated, as has journalist Anna Politovskaya, a fearless critic of President Putin's regime. Elena admits that any self-respecting Russian businessman travelling back home — her banker husband included — will not leave the house without a bodyguard.

But why are bankers in the firing line? After all, the bullet is hardly a regular feature of life in London's Square Mile. Here in Britain,' says Elena sharply, you have had democracy for hundreds or years. We have only had it for 15 years. Maybe in 300 years, we will be like you.'

As for the wide-boy image: If you see a terrible Russian showing off with girls and money, he is no more a typical Russian than an English drunk in the street is a typical Englishman.'

Some high-profile oligarchs use London as a platform from which to do good deeds back home. Geordie Greig, editor of Tatler magazine, keeps a close watch on London's Russian scene. While he acknowledges that there are some rotters in town, he points to billionaires like Alexander Lebedev.

This ex-KGB banking tycoon took over Althorp, the late Princess of Wales's ancestral home, for a white tie ball this summer. It cost him more than a million and raised nearly as much for Russian children with leukaemia. The guest of honour (in lounge suit rather than tails) was former Russian premier, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Lebedev, Greig points out, owns the paper which employed the late Anna Politovskaya. Here's a man who uses his wealth to oppose Russia's gambling syndicates, to preserve historic Moscow from the developers. It's a bold stance,' says Greig.

While some London Russians embody spending without purpose, and there is a lot of mindless extravagance, others are taking big risks to promote democracy.'

But why choose to park your fortune in London versus other safe havens? When you change countries, you make lists,' says Elena Ragozhina. If you have a business in Russia, where is the best location? America is too far.

London is only three hours from Moscow. Then you look at the legal and tax system. If you spend too long in America, they tax you on everything. Here, they don't.

Then you look at the language. English is more popular than any other language. Then there's bureaucracy. It is much easier to have an office here than in, say, France.

Then you look at the weather. And, true, Britain is not so good but it's better than Russia. But, most important, is education. Russians are crazy about education. In the Soviet system, it was all we had.'

Education, I rapidly discover, is one of the great unsung attractions for Elena's readers. However much the Labour Government slags off selective — let alone private — schooling, the Russians are obsessed with it.

Elena's directory for Russian expats, Exclusive London, carries a league table of all the top 40 schools within easy reach of London. Just three are state schools.

When her husband's bank brought them to London six years ago, they decided to live in Blackheath, South East London, because that is where they found good private schools for their two daughters. To Elena's profound delight and pride, both girls have gone on to leading British universities.

Wandering among the — mainly female — crowd checking out these Leviev diamonds, education is the recurring theme. And these parents all start extremely young. I meet one mother of five, barely in her 40s, whose Old Etonian son has just graduated from Oxford.

Another beaming blonde, who looks about 28, is trying on an £850,000 emerald necklace. She turns out to be a leading estate agent. When talk turns to education, I learn that she is the proud mother of a privately-educated 18-year-old undergraduate at University College London. What I love about English education is that they are encouraged to discuss things. In Russia, they are just told what to learn.'

When I ask them what they think of British media portrayals of Russian women, there is much bristling. People assume that any Russian-speaking woman is Russian,' says Elena. But they might be from Ukraine, the Baltics, anywhere across the former Soviet Union.'

It is a point echoed by her guests. Everyone at this do boasts at least one university degree and they quickly emphasise their pure-bred Russian credentials. The subtext is clear enough: Don't muddle us up with every slapper and lapdancer with a Russian accent.' Inter-Soviet snobbery is rife.

Half of this lot could, indeed, be models — some have been — but it's a bimbo-free zone full of lawyers, bankers, designers and scientists. In impeccable English, they all offer a considered overview of the British experience.

This is a calm, comfortable place for a single woman to live safely under the protection of the law,' says stunning Anastasia Yakovleva, 24, an executive with a Russian gas company. I have my plan and that is to stay based in London and I want my children to be born in London.'

Privately, though, some have their reservations about setting up family homes here in London while the menfolk continue to commute back to desks in Russia. Guns and thugs are not the only concerns.

There are plenty of 18-year-old girls back in Moscow who would like the London life,' says one expat Russian wife. Many wives would be crazy to leave their husbands alone there for long.' London, of course, is not without its distractions, too. One of the lovelies included in Vogue's gallery of Londongrad Ladies is Dasha Zhukova, the dazzling Itski-girl who is said to be enjoying footballing excursions with married father-of-five, Roman Abramovich.

Just 15 years ago, at the tail-end of communism, London was home to a handful of expat Russian citizens. Today, according to the Russian Embassy, there are 250,000.

The night after Elena's event, I join another well-dressed London Russian crowd at Thomas Goode, the Mayfair china shop where the Earl and Countess of Wessex had their wedding list.

It's a private view of ceramics by one of the Tolstoy clan plus a selection of £14,000 diamond earrings. Over caviar and champagne, the chatter hops seamlessly between Russian and English.

As I leave, I am handed another glossy Russian magazine. This one boasts colour advertisements for everything from shotguns to monogrammed yacht linen to the stunning table dancers' at the world's most exciting gentlemen's nightclub' in Soho. There are also 52 entries for educational establishments.

They may be fuelling havoc in the capital's property market. But no one can accuse the new Londongrad crowd of being dull.





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