The exodus of the Moscow millionaires

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

As we all know, luxury and posh kitsch is the trademark of wealthy Russians. The show-off lifestyle is one of the most typical characteristics of the new Russian parvenus, they're addicted to it, and that instantly becomes obvious whenever you spot Russian tourists abroad. The first impression is: "Those guys have so much money they don't know what to do with it". Most recent surveys among the tour-operators have found that the Russian tourists are among the biggest spenders abroad. Some of the most prominent resorts in the world are now full of Russians, you'd hear Russian speech everywhere around Monte Carlo, Sharm el-Sheikh, Phuket, Cancun, Bali, Antalya, and Costa del Sol. This tendency continues in and around Moscow itself, which has understandably become the most expensive city in the world. The new millionaires keep popping up like mushrooms after rain.

But a new tendency has been sweeping across those elite Russian circles in the recent years. Ah, those poor, poor Moscow millionaires... Apparently they aren't enjoying their fabulously posh palaces any more. Not one or two of the residents of the affluent Rublyovka neighborhood (west of Moscow) have found out that most of their wealthiest neighbors have permanently disappeared somewhere...

A Russian businessman who was on one of the tours I was guiding, recently complained that his neighbor "has a house in London", and he was "constantly shuttling between London and his summer-house in Southern France, and not paying any attention to Moscow". The wife of another businessman, whose daughter was going to the elite high-school in Rublyovka, also made the observation that the owners of the most expensive properties there are gradually disappearing abroad. She said that until recently it had been almost impossible to find a vacant place in that school, and now they even "have to merge classes" to fill the quotas.

The luxurious shops and boutiques around the so-called "Luxurious Village" are now like orphans. An agency that provides housekeepers and chambermaids to the Russian elite complained that their business has shrunk drastically, because many of the wealthy families now only return to their "Dachas" (vacation homes) for the summer holidays. That's the only time they come back, and the rest of the time they live abroad - in France, Italy, Spain, England. London has practically become the biggest Muscovite colony. The Russian property brokers are also almost broke because of that exodus. They're explaining this migration with the processes that started after the removal of the legendary (and oligarch-friendly) Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov last year. Under his reign many millionaires used to feel protected and welcome. Now they're having hard times. Poor souls! ;)

But that's hardly the main reason. People already know very well that the discontent with Putin's system should only get wider and deeper, the more well-off people are. While in the province (according to polls) 1/3 of the population are already discontent with the government, that percent in Moscow approaches 50%, and among the middle-class it's even higher.

And while the wealthy residents of places like Rublyovka are voting against Putin by leaving the country, they're doing what many other Russians could not afford. The tendency that the elites never really got attached to the "elite ghettos" of Russia, is proven by the fact that the local oligarchs never bothered to fix the streets around their private mansions, and left them in disrepair. Obviously they had never meant to stay there for too long. And that ought to be worrying tovarisch Putin.

Granted, he cleansed the system from the Yeltsin puppet oligarchs, only to substitute them with his own pals. Some of the old ones (like Khodorkovsky) ended up in jail; others (like Abramovich) were smart enough to flee in time, and invest abroad (he bought FC Chelsea and moved his empire to London).

So, one day Rublyovka and the like could again become what it has always been before the Moscow boom: a string of vacation villages, where the middle-class and the more well-to-do spend a couple of weeks annually, and maybe a few weekends, and nothing beyond that. Meanwhile, most of the consumer activity originating from those circles, will symptomatically continue to be shifted towards foreign destinations. Which means an increasing flow of capitals out of Russia.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, in Russia the government is good on the local level and at the imperial level, but has never really had an in-between. Without that in-between level there's no means to moderate class issues, and without that ability to moderate them, those issues become profoundly destabilizing.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

That's a much more meaningful comment than the previous one.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

My comment about Russia reflected that this is a case of how little Putin's regime has actually changed things, and in Putin's case too much change would endanger his monopoly on power and he won't want that.