Miss Russia U.K. — A Beauty Contest in Londongrad

A drizzly Thursday evening late in March. Outside the Merah Club in Marylebone, not far from Sherlock Holmes’s Baker Street, gallant cavaliers in heavy overcoats and distinctly un-English features emerge from chauffeur-driven Bentleys, BMWs and Mercedes’s, shepherding gorgeous young ladies in evening dress. The men represent Russia’s high society in London, the young ladies Russia’s low society. The VIPs and their companions hasten up the carpeted stairs into the club. Bobbies protect them from the common (Russian) people who are lining up outside in the drizzle to join them later downstairs in the cellar-bar, after their betters have had their preliminary vodka cocktails, caviar savouries, pirogis and blinis. There, they will participate in the election of Miss Russia U.K.

Natasha Chouvaeva, certainly a member of the upper classes and publisher of the Russian London Courier, one of six locally produced Russian publications, has stated that by now half a million Russians are living in Londongrad. This is considered a gross exaggeration but there are undoubtedly a lot of them, including several oligarchs. Among them the mining billionaire, Alisher Usmanov, who recently acquired a mansion and a park on Hampstead Heath from the Emir of Qatar. According to the 2010 edition of Forbes magazine, Usmanov is one of Russia’s richest men, with a fortune estimated at US$7.2 billion. There is also Oleg Deripaska who spent twenty-five million pounds on the residence of the Duke of Bedford on Belgrave Square and who was to be Frank Stronach’s partner in his recent negotiations to acquire Opel from General Motors. Let us not forget the no-name oligarch who spent fifty million pounds on Witanhurst in Highgate, the second largest residence in London after Buckingham Palace.

Alas, Putin’s arch-enemy, Alexander Litvinenko, is no longer among them. In 2006 – so it is said – a Duma-deputy poured a dose of radioactive polonium in his tea in the Millennium Hotel. British authorities believe they have sufficient evidence against him to convict him. He prefers not to visit the U.K.

The Financial Times has observed that thanks to Russian money, London is once again the financial capital “of first choice.”

It is said that perhaps the Russians are particularly attracted to England because, even after thirteen years of Labour, the country has valiantly preserved a (to them) exemplary class system.

This posting is based on an article in Die Zeit.