Yaroslavl, the millennium city A cultural feast awaits tourists on banks of Volga P.08

The cricket mania catches on

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Putting pharma on the fast trackInnovation and Investments need of the hourP.03

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BANGALORE ● MuMBAI ● NEw DELhI ● WednesdaY, sePTeMBeR 29, 2010

A Business Report from The Times Of India. In association with Rossiyskaya Gazeta

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IRIna PRokofIevaspEcIALLy fOR RIR

Rabindranath Tagore visited Russia in 1930. a Russian scholar, who teaches Bengali, recalls her love affair with iconic Indian poet and what the poet means to Russians.

80 years hence, Russia recalls its tryst with Tagore

Culture celebrating poetic bonding

Soviet Union in 1930, an ap-propriate time to look back at the man, his legacy, his con-nection with Russia and how Russians see this many-sided polymath.

India will be formally mark-ing the 150th birth anniversa-ry of iconic poet-philosopher Rabindranath Tagore next May. The celebrations have al-ready begun in Shantiniketan, the university founded by the sage poet in West Bengal, with spirited renditions of songs, dances and plays composed by the bard. Russia, however, is celebrating its tryst with the Nobel laureate in September this year. It’s exactly eighty years since Tagore visited the ConTInued on PAGE 6

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aRun MohanTY spEcIALLy fOR RIR

Russian language scholarship in India is perhaps as old as the independent India itself. after a decline in the 1990s, it is now on the rise.

Russian language is back in reckoning

dialogue Building cultural bridges

The history of Russian lan-guage teaching in India is fas-cinating and dates back to the pre-independence period. There were enthusiasts from former Soviet Union who had managed to cross all barriers to reach British India for teaching Russian language and literature to Indian lovers of the beautiful Russian lan-

guage. People who wanted to read rich Russian literature in original had enthusiastically joined these classes. The former Soviet Union be-came a popular country in British India during World War II, thanks to the heroic battle that the Soviet people waged against the fascist forc-es. India saw a strong friend-ship movement with that great country in 1940s, and people cutting across party lines joined this mass movement, which had the blessings of Rabindranath Tagore.

seRGeI PTIChkInROssIkAyA GAzETA

Giving a new dimension to defence ties, Russia signed a pact with India early september to jointly produce and design multi-purpose transport aircraft.

defence ties flying high with $600 mn MTa deal

defence Multi-role Transport Aircraft can cruise at 810 km per hour

It’s a flying machine that will stretch limits of aeronautical engineering. With a payload capacity of 20 tons and speed of 810 km per hour, the multi-role transport aircraft (MTA) is set to be another milestone in decades-old India-Russia defence relationship that is evolving from a buyer-seller to co-developers of cutting-edge military equipments. The project has been on the drawing board for quite some time, but it took wings early September when India and Russia inked an agreement to form a $600 million joint en-terprise for designing and pro-ducing MTA. This plane will first appear in the Air Forces of India and Russia.

Military planes fly over victory day parade in Moscow's Red square

TIM GoslInGRIR

Russia hopes that the new immigration policy will not only attract talent, but also bring in foreign investment.

Kremlin opens its doors to attract quality talent from abroad

Workforce The modernisation mantra powers the easing of immigration rules

Russia, a law was enacted in May to ease immigration rules for highly skilled workers. The new policy will have twin benefits: it will bring in the much-needed experience and skills from abroad to develop high-tech industries and draw in more foreign invest-ment in Russia by making it easier for multinationals to

‘Modernise or die.' In keeping with Russian President Dmit-ry Medvedev’s mantra for cre-ating a modern and resurgent

such as Nokia and Intel to Skolkovo - the $2bn project to build "Russia's Silicon Valley" just outside Moscow.Russia also badly needs to at-tract experienced managers across its corporate sector to improve efficiency, productiv-ity and innovation. A report from IBM published last year says that while the quality of Russia's scientific research in-stitutions is amongst the best in the world, management schools rate poorly in global rankings.

bring managers and special-ists.Whilst Russia richly deserves its reputation for educating scientists, it loses many of them to other countries, as it does not have enough com-mercial opportunities to re-tain the best and brightest. That's the driving principle behind attracting companies

An Indian teaches Russians the joys of the game

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bookmarks02 Russia india BusinEss REpoRtin association with rossiyskaya gazeta, russia tHE timEs of india wednesday_sePtember 29_2010

www.uacrussia.ru/en Joint Stock Company United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) www.sukhoi.org/eng Sukhoi Company (JSC), Rus-sia’s major aircraft holding Partnership

news in brief

innovationsindian and russian biotech firms to shake hands

modernisationskolkovo bill Passed by state duma

financemoscow to start trading the chinese yuan

The Russian biotech sector is interested in partnering with Indian biotechnology com-panies to take up joint re-search and development of products. The biotechnology associations of both coun-tries are currently engaged in identifying areas for col-laboration and technology transfer. “We are working on creating a platform for joint activities between the Indi-an and Russian biotechnol-ogy sectors. We are invest-ing efforts towards building a

The State Duma passed the bill on the Skolkovo innova-tion hub last Tuesday, adding perks for participants, but le-gal experts and potential in-vestors said further work was needed to ensure the proj-ect's success.President Dmitry Medvedev has made the Skolkovo proj-ect, to be located just out-side Moscow, a priority to modernise Russia's economy through the development of high-tech industries.According to the bill, for-eigners will be exempt from

The Moscow Interbank Cur-rency Exchange (MICEX) is going to start trading of the Chinese yuan before the end of the year, an official rep-resentative for MICEX, said. According to estimates, the trade volume between Russia and China could reach $50-60 billion by the year end. At least 30 banks are inter-ested in this new instrument in Russia, including credit or-ganisations from Siberia and the Far East – Russian re-gions bordering China. MICEX

common platform and bring-ing different stakeholders on an unanimous ground,” Raif G Vasilov, COO of the Russian Biotechnology Association (RBA), said during his recent visit to India. He added that the prime emphasis now is on agri biotechnology and phar-maceuticals. “The Russian bio-technology sector is already strong in certain areas, and we are keen on transfering the technologies that are devel-oped in Russia to the Indian partners,” Vasilov said. rir

work-permit quotas that can complicate companies' ef-forts to hire staff from abroad. Expats and their immediate family members will initially be authorised to work in the country for three years, with an indefinite number of three-year renewals possible.The bill also introduces the so-called extraterritorial prin-ciple, under which investors' physical presence at the hub is not mandatory until January 1, 2014. This means potential investors are allowed to set up shop in Russia. rir

spokesman says for the mo-ment, things concerning oth-er currency pairs, such as the rouble/rupee or rouble/peso, have not been discussed. Rus-sia's trade volumes with In-dia and Brazil are, even com-bined, much less than those with China. However, Russian-Indian and Russian-Brazilian trade demonstrates impres-sive growth. Trade volume be-tween Russia and India for the first five months increased by 35 per cent, coming to $3.41 billion. v.kuzmichov

fifth generation jet fighter, next big project

The aircraft, which may serve various functions, including that of a fairly economical ci-vilian cargo plane, will be de-veloped by a joint Indo-Rus-sian team of engineers. The first flight of the aircraft is ex-pected to take place within six years. The shareholders' agreement for setting up the joint enterprise include: Hin-dustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) with 50 per cent own-ership; the Russian concern OAK-Transportnye Samolety with 25 per cent; and Rosobo-roneksport with 25 per cent. The joint enterprise, to be called MTA Limited, will be registered in India within the next two months. A branch of MTA Limited will be regis-tered in Russia. On the Rus-sian side, the airplane’s de-sign will be managed by specialists from Ilyushin, maker of one of the 20th cen-tury’s best transport planes, the Il-76. According to The Voice of Russia radio, the aircraft would be developed at Avia-star-SP plant based in Uly-anovsk city on Volga. The In-dian Air Force is expected to order at least 35 and Russian Air Force as many as 100 me-dium lift transport aircrafts.MTA can be used to transport army sub-units to evacuate the wounded, including civil-ians, in case of a natural di-saster, and to transport mili-tary technology and cargos

a multi-purpose transport aircraft and its technical parameters

the signing of the agreement between the two governments. The documents are reportedly 99 per cent ready. The new jet fighter will be based on design by Sukhoi, the company that created the flying prototype of the promising aviation com-plex of frontline aviation (PAK FA), known as the T-50. Russia has now pitched its formidable Mig-35 for the In-dian Air Force contract to buy 126 fighter jets. The cost-ef-fective Mig-35, practically a fifth-generation military ma-chine, boasts a powerful radar with an impulse phased cas-cade and an ultra-modern system for directing fire. The plan is to equip this jet fighter with the very newest missiles: air-to-air and air-to-surface. A ship version of the well-known MiG-29K has been developed specially for the Indian Navy. India also plans to buy 21 MiG-29K fighters. This plane has been such a success that the Russian Navy has also placed an order for a number of them.The sturdy decades-old de-fence ties between India and Russia, driven by trust and technology-sharing, is set to fly higher in days to come as the two sides get ready to ex-tend their military-technical cooperation agreement by an-other 10 years.

rivers: the Brahmaputra and Moskva. The BraMos can be stowed on ships, submarines, airplanes and ground launchers. It can strike over-water and ground targets, and is almost impos-sible to intercept. Experts say that the BraMos is the pinna-cle of winged supersonic mis-siles with a flight distance of upto 300 kilometers. The next milestone will be the Russian-Indian project to cre-ate a fifth-generation jet fight-er, which will be nothing short of a revolutionary break-through in the business of de-signing warplanes. Both sides are working hard doing the requisite paperwork before

stowed in special containers.Going by the record of multi-faceted Russian military-technical cooperation, the ambitious MTA project is set to be a success. In the 1990s, Russia and India created the joint enterprise BraMos Aero-space to develop and produce a multifunctional winged missile. For the first time, Rus-sia had sent technological documentation concerning the Russian anti-ship missile P-800 Oniks to another coun-try, bringing to the fore spe-cial trust that marks its rela-tions with India. In terms of combat features, there is no other missile like it in the world. On the basis of the P-800 Oniks, Russian and In-dian experts succeeded in creating an even more mod-ern missile whose name com-bines the first letters of two

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indian soldier stands guard near a truck mounted with brah-mos cruise missiles in new delhi

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www.dsm.ru/en Find analytic reviews of the Russian pharmaceutical marketwww.pharmaceuticalsinsight.com The latest trends in Russian and global pharmaceuticals markets business

Pharma market lures global giants

The outlook for the Russian pharmaceutical industry never looked better, with ex-perts predicting the market to exceed $60 billion by 2020. Spurred by Pharma 2020 vi-sion, a government strategy aimed at developing an inno-vative Russian pharmaceuti-cals industry using foreign ex-perience in research and production, foreign drug-makers are planning to pump in $4 billion to set up a base as local producers. Top Indian pharma compa-nies are also avidly eyeing the Russian market. India's phar-maceutical exports to Russia scaled upto $532 million in 2008 and are expected to go up substantially this year. Al-though the Indian pharma

companies have been in busi-ness since the Soviet times, their share of the Russian mar-ket remains a little more than 5 per cent. But with the new Russian policy, the picture is going to change dramatically. Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd managed to notch up $130 mn sales in Russia in 2009, a sharp jump of 27 per cent from pre-vious year. Ranbaxy, too, has cornered a sizeable chunk of the Russian market. Indian drugs fare well in the Russian market on account of its qual-ity and cost competiveness. “During the financial crisis, it was especially important that Indian medicines in the Rus-sian market are inexpensive,” says Sergey Shulyak, Director General, DSM Group, a re-search company. Prices were often 20-30 per cent lower

than for imported medicines because of being produced lo-cally. Both Russian President Dmit-ry Medvedev and Prime Min-ister Vladimir Putin have pitched for Indian investment in this crucial sector. “We are ready to discuss these projects and create new enterprises to create medicines,” said Med-vedev last year. “The pharma-cological market is develop-ing in Russia. It’s a growing market. Indian producers are fairly well represented here and have recommended brands. The development of the pharmacological industry in our country is a national priority, which is being per-sonally coordinated by the president of Russia.” Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Sobya-nin has invited Indian phar-macists to create joint enter-prises and build factories to produce medicines in Russia. India has responded enthusi-astically. "They are ready to in-vest in the Russian pharma-ceutical industry, including India-Russia joint ventures. Russia is preparing the list of medicines that it needs,” Com-merce Minister Anand Shar-ma said during his visit to Moscow in June. The two sides are working on a protocol on joint production. Russia, on its part, has prior-itised the modernisation of the health system and the devel-opment of pharmacology as twin strategic goals necessary for national renaissance. “The Russian market is one of the most promising and attractive for pharmaceuticals. In terms of economic growth, Russia is on a par with other countries in BRIC-MT [Brazil, India, China, Mexico and Turkey],” said Zdravko Chulibrk, head of the Moscow branch of Chemofarm, part of the Ger-man group STADA. The phar-maceutical sales in Russia in 2009 totaled $17 billion. The sales are expected to go upto $22 billion in 2011 and to $24 billion in 2012. A year ago, Medvedev set the goal of increasing the sales of medicine to 1.5 trillion rubles by 2020. Recently, Putin an-

the russian market is one of the most attractive destinations for pharmaceuticals

minister of industry and trade Viktor khristenko: russia wants a strong indian presence in the pharmaceutical sector

'' Within the framework of Pharma 2020, Indian manufacturers are go-

ing to offer their versatile experience in training of hu-man resources and in deep processing of raw materials for pharmaceuticals as well as in manufacturing of various pharmaceutical components. Pharma 2020 is a very fresh and welcome initiative. We are serious about invest-ing in Russia. We have the oft mentioned “India Advan-tage” in branded generic and speciality medicines.” Local manufacturers should be en-thused by the contents of the policy. While ensuring ethi-cal practices are enforced in the pharma market space, it is also necessary to ensure not only a level playing field for all players by the govern-ment, but also to seriously think about how much to reg-ulate and what to regulate, es-pecially when speaking about medium & small pharma play-ers or branded generic players who provide the real choice to the patients by the plethora of their range of products. Fur-ther, the government is also in-vited to review its perception of the pharma industry.

olga koltunoVaRiR

russian industry minister Viktor khristenko, who arrived today in india, will make a fresh pitch for attracting indian pharma companies to set up factories in russia.

Prospects indian companies can help in the modernisation of the Russian pharmaceutical industry

Foreign drug makers are planning to set up a local base, to pump in $4 b in the Russian market

$6.2 billion pharma investment target for 2020 Doing so will reduce the coun-try’s dependence on imports, as well as make medicines more affordable for consum-ers and the government.The strategy calls for 188 bil-lion rubles ($6.2 billion) of investment in the pharma-ceutical sector over the next decade in three key areas: research and development, training and infrastructure de-velopment, and introducing good manufacturing practices

at all Russian facilities. Much of that investment figure will be state funds, funneled through either regular bud-get allocations or one of the federal target programmes — state funding vehicles cre-ated to accomplish certain development goals. The gov-ernment was ready to appro-priate as much as 120 billion rubles ($4 billion) of state funds for supporting the phar-maceutical industry.

Head oF RepResenTaTive oFFice in Rus-

sia, Ranbaxy LaboRaToRies LimiTed

The strategy of Pharma 2020 is to raise the competitive-ness of the industry, stimulate the production of innovative medicines, modernise facto-ries’ equipment, remove ad-ministrative barriers for drug registration and launch educa-tional programmes. The goal is an ambitious one: to raise the share of domestically pro-duced medicines from the current 23 per cent to 50 per cent over the coming 10 years.

in@rbth.ru in.rbth.ru/letters

FASHION WEEK: Russian fashion experts discuss 2011 trends

the Quote

mihir chhaya

nounced that 460 billion ru-bles in state budget funds had been earmarked for moderni-sation of the healthcare sys-tem in Russia’s regions. Two signal events — the drafting of a law on medical insurance and the coming into force on 1 September 2010 of a new law on medicines — have allowed Russian healthcare to reach a qualitatively new level. “The attractiveness of the domestic market as an investment for foreign companies has in-creased,” says Chulibrk. He re-called that in 2006 when his company was building its own factory in Russia, it took 27

months to register his medi-cines in Russia. “Now, with the new law in place, the time-frame for receiving permis-sion to register medicines are strictly regulated and sub-stantially reduced,” he said. The burgeoning market has attracted global giants like Polpharma, Actavis, Stada, and Sanofi-Aventis, who are now building their own facto-ries in Russia. Teva, Novartis, Pfizer, Novo Nordisk, AEC PARTNERS, Wyeth Pharma-ceuticals, and AstraZeneka have all announced their in-tention to localise production in Russia.

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bookmarks04 Russia india BusinEss REpoRtin association with rossiyskaya gazeta, russia tHE timEs of india wednesday_sePtember 29_2010

www.russiancentre.org.in/eng Russian Centre of Science and Culture, New Delhi www.pushkin.edu.ru The Pushkin State Russian lan-guage Institute People

This means "skills are an ob-stacle for many Russian com-panies", the report says "with 59 per cent reporting labour resources as a significant ob-stacle to development".Foreign managers will hold the key, as Lilit Geovorgyan of con-sultancy IHS Global Insight puts it, because they "bring rel-evant skills, since most of the companies envisaged to be the backbone of modernisation are likely to be designed after west-ern prototypes specialising in cutting-edge high technolo-gies". They can also act as role models for the Russian staff under them, helping to mould

future generations in both, skills and mindset, points out Gennady Odarich of Pricewa-terhouseCoopers.With a serious managerial def-icit on mind, the Russian gov-ernment has used immigra-tion schemes for qualified people from countries such as the UK, Canada and Austra-lia. Signed into law in May, the new legislation transforms a tortuous immigration proce-dure into one of the easiest in the world, for highly skilled people at least. Qualifying em-ployees and their family re-ceive a three-year visa rather than face a yearly trek home to reapply, with the additional benefit of the chance to bypass

emergency income tax (30 per cent for the first six months) and go straight onto Russia's flat 13 per cent rate.Perhaps the biggest bonus for companies is that highly skilled employees are now ex-empt from the Federal Migra-tion Service’s annual quota on foreign employees. Contract foreigners who don’t qualify as highly skilled, companies must still apply for permission to employ from abroad. Headhunters such as Nikita Prokofiev of Odgers Berndt-son suggest the plan is helping companies focus on importing the most valuable profession-als, even whilst they're in-creasingly looking to hire lo-

cally for most positions. "The market has evolved and now hiring Russians is preferable for many companies," he says. "15 years ago, someone bilin-gual with a basic command of finance was much in demand, but now companies are only looking for senior people with very specific skills."Besides a strong desire to em-ploy staff who understand the local business culture, this is also due in no small measure to the definition of a highly qualified employee, which runs to no more than an annu-al salary of 2 million rubles ($67,000). In contrast, salaries in the local market are still re-covering from the economic

seem to be running smoothly - the authorities have put a lot of effort into making sure that the bureaucracy understands the new process at all levels." That's a welcome contrast to the chaos, which ensued when a new customs regime was in-troduced in the summer.

crisis, while skilled and expe-rienced people from the West expect a premium to relocate.Odarich suggests the appetite for such candidates is strong, with PwC having "many cli-ents asking about the new sys-tem - both for current employ-ees and future hires". "It does

tolstoy, gorky and Pushkin cast their spell on indians

sian language teaching in India. India’s first Prime Min-ister Jawaharlal Nehru’s sig-nificant visit to USSR and Soviet leader Nikita Khr-uschev’s visit to India in 1955 opened new vistas for fruit-ful and multifaceted cooper-ation between our two coun-tries. As a result of these visits, dozens of industrial enterprises were built in India with Soviet assistance.. Tens of thousands of Indian specialists and engineers worked hand in hand with Soviet specialists in these enterprises, and Indian engi-neers and workers started learning Russian language in order to better understand their Russian counterparts working in those factories .The necessity for learning Rus-sian language was so impor-tant that the first Institute of Russian language was inaugu-rated in Delhi in 1965 by the education ministers of both countries. The historic Indo-Soviet trea-

Indians sincerely believed that it is only Soviet Union that could defeat the fascist forces. Soviet contribution and sacri-fice to save the world from im-minent fascist menace was unparallel, and this drew huge sympathy for the Soviet people across the globe. India was no exception. The Soviet victory over fascist forces accelerated India’s freedom movement and we achieved our independence in less than two years after the World War II ended. This is why former Soviet Union be-came so popular among Indian masses, who wanted to know more about these heroic peo-ple. Indians wanted to know about happenings in that coun-try from primary sources and hence the urge to learn Russian language that led to systemat-ic Russian teaching in 1946.The intensive exchange and strengthening of ties be-tween independent India and Soviet Union bolstered Rus-

language teachers, which is doing a significant job to popularise Russian language and literature in India by or-ganising conferences, semi-nars, talks and lectures on Russian language, literature and society. The third international confer-ence on “Russia in the new mil-lennium – Dialogue of cul-tures," held at Delhi from 15th to 17th September 2010 was organised by this association in cooperation with Internation-al Organisation of Teachers of Russian language and litera-ture and Rossotrudnichestvo - the agency for compatriot af-fairs and Russian language abroad. The conference was attended by over 150 scholars from India, Russia, UK, Uz-bekistan, Armenia, Kazakh-stan and Mongolia, and 27 re-search papers were presented in six academic sessions.Though the 1990s witnessed a decline in Russian language teaching, the interest in the language of famous Russian writers like Pushkin, Chekhov, Block, Tolstoy, Gorky seems to be undergoing a revival in past several years. Russian lan-guage classes offered by 36 In-dian universities and several Russian Centres of Science and Culture in India draw a large number of students for learning the language, and it is a matter of great satisfac-tion that it is no longer diffi-cult to get a job for the Russian language graduates.Russian language is yet anoth-er dimension of centuries-old dialogue of civilizations be-tween India and Russia.

mr. Fyodor a. rozovskiy, director, russian culture and science center in new delhi, address-es a three-day international conference entitled 'india and russia in the third millennium: dialogue of cultures' in the indian capital on september 17-20.

Moreover, the fundamental and applied sciences in USSR were very developed; Indian scholars wanted to have ac-cess to Russian research jour-nals and hence, there was a strong urge to learn Russian language, says Professor Kumar, former rector of Jawa-harlal Nehru University, who was in the first batch of the In-dian Institute of Russian Lan-guage founded in 1965.The interest in Russian lan-guage in India saw a decline in the 1990s following the So-viet disintegration and the loss of superpower status by a new Russia. Russian lan-guage teachers tried their best to keep the interest in the language intact and formed the Association of Russian

ty for peace, friendship and co-operation signed in 1971 in the wake of Bangladesh liberation war made the Soviet Union a strategic partner number one for India. The aftermath of the signing of this treaty wit-nessed unprecedented expan-sion of mutually beneficial co-operation between our two countries in all spheres of human activities, and bonds between our countries became so strong that it was termed as “special relationship" in 1980s

, making many envious of our time-tested friendship. This is the period when Russian lan-guage became one of the most popular foreign language in India. Thousands of Indians went to former Soviet Union for learning Russian language. Russian language was taught in more than 43 Indian univer-sities, which means every sec-ond or third Indian university had a Russian language de-partment.“Russian language was popu-lar in India because it was the languageof a super power with whom we enjoyed time-tested friendship," says Pro-fessor Ramadhikari Kumar, the president of Indian Asso-ciation of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature.

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Language is yet another dimension of the dialogue of civilisations between India and Russia

Foreign managers hold the key, incentives galore for new arrivals

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JNU professor Arun Mohanty is the Director of the Eurasian Foundation.

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in association with rossiyskaya gazeta, russia tHE timEs of india wednesday_sePtember 29_2010 opinion

www.cdi.org/russia/johnson Johnson’s Russia List www.russiaprofile.org Analysis of business, eco-nomic, political and cultural trends en.fondsk.ru Strategic Culture Foundation magazine

Forging global strategy with China

russia, the most equitable briC?

alexander Lukin

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China is Russia’s most important neighbour, given its vast common border and Beijing's

expected impact on Russia’s development, especially in eastern regions. The 400-year history of Russian-Chinese ties knows no wars, though there were difficult times and minor skirmishes. Today, Russian-Chinese rela-tions are at their peak. The two nations have avoided problems that strain Russia’s ties with other countries in the region, such as territorial disputes with Japan or politi-cal problems with North Korea. Problems connected to the demarcation of the 4,209.3 km frontier, which soured re-lations for years, have now been completely settled. Hun-dreds of political, economic, cultural and other events were held in 2006, the Year of Rus-sia in China, which was fol-lowed by the Year of China in Russia (2007). The countries’ heads of state meet 4-5 times a year. Bilateral trade has exceeded $56 billion in 2008, making China Russia’s third biggest trade partner. The two sides

The conventional image of Russia is a country of a few super-rich oil barons and more than

100 million paupers. However, despite having more billion-aires than almost any other na-tion, incomes in Russia are more evenly distributed than in any of the other BRIC coun-tries and the USA. One widely quoted measure of income inequality is the Gini coefficient, which measures the slightly broader concept of wealth that includes such things as home ownership. If communism had worked, then everyone would make the same money, which results in a Gini coefficient of zero. In a perfect-ly unequal society where one

are sure of notching up $60-80 mn billion trade by 2010. China is also interested in Russia as a geopolitical and economic partner, though Russia currently plays a much smaller role in China’s politics than China does in Russia’s. Yet, for many reasons, China wants a stable and strong Rus-sia capable of becoming an in-dependent centre of power, as a counterweight in China’s complex relations with the US and Western Europe. Finally, Russia is an important source of goods and raw materials that China cannot buy else-where (e.g: weapons) or which it has in insufficient quantities like oil and forest products. The end of the Cold War has driven Russia and China clos-er, as they resent domination by one power and share stra-tegic interests in creating a multi-polar world. The two countries have promoted groupings like Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) and BRIC and have coordinat-ed their voting in the UN on key global problems and cri-ses like Iran, South Korea and Kosovo. They are, however, op-posed to creating an anti-Western military alliance. All this does not mean that the relationship is totally hassle-free. Russia is concerned about

person has all the money, the gini coefficient is 100. Sweden is the most equitable nation with a Gini coefficient of 23 and Namibia is the least at 70.Over the last decade, the rich in the US got richer a lot faster than the poor got less poor, as shown by the Gini coefficient for US household wealth, which rose from 40.8 in 1997 to 45.0 in 2008 (the last available data), according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook.In Russia, the rich certainly got a lot richer over the last 10 years. However, the recent de-cade-long economic boom meant the poor also got much richer. In dollar terms, Russia’s GDP increased 7.5-fold over the last decade from around $200 billion to $1.5 trillion; at the same time, nominal aver-age wages increased 14-fold

its growing import/export ratio, declining equipment ex-ports and low levels of mutual investment. Some of these problems are already being actively addressed. Thus, the completion of a new oil pipe-line from Russia to China, likely this autumn, will allow Russia to double its oil exports to 30 million tonnes a year and become China’s largest pro-vider of oil. During Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to China in October 2009, a programme of cooperation be-

over the same period from $50 to around $700 a month.Russia’s coefficient rose from 39.9 in 2001 to 42.3 in 2008 – a lower increase than in the US in both relative and absolute terms, and a lower value than the other BRICs: China’s at 46.9, India’s on 53.5 and Bra-zil’s is 57.0.One of the reasons Russia does so well on a Gini coefficient basis is that everyone was sim-ply given their apartment fol-lowing the collapse of the So-viet Union, which must count

The distribution of wealth in Russia is a lot more equitable than in any of the other BRiCs.

Fyodor Lukyanov / / What is to be done With China? aLexander saLitsky / / Will China help Russia...?

tim gosLing / / Who is the best bRiC noW? igor Fedyukin / / bRain FReeze

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as well and, as an observer na-tion, it could take an active role in solving the region’s problems such as fighting ter-rorism and drug trafficking, and in contributing to the re-gion’s development. India could also be instrumental in promoting the democratisa-tion of these countries. The evolution of the BRIC group into a de facto alterna-tive to the G8 would meet Rus-sia’s interests, as well as those of India, China and other na-tions that are not a part of western blocs. There is huge scope for cooperation on glob-al issues like the reform of in-ternational institutions, energy security and climate change.The development of Russian-Chinese relations does not contradict the interests of other nations, nor does it hin-der Russia’s ties with other partners. To modernise the Russian economy – a task set by President Dmitry Medve-dev – it is necessary to cooper-ate with all leading nations and to make use of their expe-rience. This in particular re-fers to such traditional friends of Russia as India.

tween the Far East and East Siberia in Russia and North-east China in 2009-2018 was signed, involving huge invest-ments in many projects in both countries. Russia has also taken note of some recent pub-lications in China, saying that the country must ensure its economic interests worldwide by using its army and navy to control global resources and their distribution. While it does not see such views as Bei-jing’s official line, Moscow cannot ignore them as they re-

flect an assertiveness by a sec-tion of Chinese establishment. In this respect, Russia’s closer cooperation with other Asian countries like Japan, South Korea and India, which share Russia’s concerns takes on an added importance. The SCO is, however, one forum in which the interests of Russia and China fully coin-cide. Both Moscow and Bei-jing want Central Asian coun-tries to be stable, secular and economically developed na-tions. This is what India wants

The author is Director, Center for East Asian and SCO Stud-ies, Moscow State Institute of International Relations

Ben Aris is Editor of Business New Europe magazine.

as one of the largest transfers of wealth from a state to its people in history. The trouble is that until recently, no one could tap this money locked up in bricks and mortar. But with the volume of mortgage loans doubling every month since the start of summer, this wealth is quickly becoming more widely accessible.Critics of the Gini coefficient say that Russia’s rich have hid-den most of their money off-shore, but this is partly offset by the fact that most of Rus-sia’s poor also hide their money under the mattress; only one in four Russians has any kind of bank account. “The proportion of mattress-stuffed money among Russia’s poor is much higher than among America’s poor, as the US tax net is so much tighter,” says Liam Hal-ligan, chief economist at Pros-

perity Capital Management. “That suggests US inequality is even worse relative to Russia than the numbers suggest.”This transformation has creat-ed a burgeoning middle class in Russia. When Putin launched his long-term reform plan, he called for moving 60 per cent of the population into the middle class by 2020. But according to a report released by Russian in-vestment bank Troika Dialog in August, Russia is already there: Troika claims the middle class (defined as income/capita of more than $6,000 a year) al-ready makes up 68 per cent of the population, against Brazil’s 31 per cent, China’s 13 per cent and India’s 3 per cent. Whatever definition you take of middle-class, it is still clear that the dis-tribution of wealth on this score is also a lot more equitable than in any of the other BRICs.

Freed of the need to simply survive, the emerging middle-class typically becomes more political, as it has the most to lose from bad government. The Russian population has borne the pain of transition quietly for most of the last 19 years, but over the last year, a growing number of protest movements are popping up.Both Putin and Medvedev are now talking about the need to promote civil society. Medve-dev's decision to cancel the Khimki road and Putin's road trip across Russia in a Lada in August show they are both increasingly concerned about maintaining popular support. Going forward, the Kremlin is already attempt-ing to play a delicate game, balancing the easing of cen-tralised control while at the same time monitoring popu-lar opinion.

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BOOKMARKS06 RUSSIA INDIA BUSINESS REPORTIN ASSOCIATION WITH ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA, RUSSIA THE TIMES OF INDIA WEDNESDAY_SEPTEMBER 29_2010

www.indolink.com/Poetry/tgorIndx.html Rabindranath Tagore’s poems in Englishwww.gorkysadan.com Gorky Sadan - Russian Centre of Science And Culture in KolkataCulture

Gitanjali poet still popular, new translation on the way

For many Indians, Tagore is more than just a writer and poet: he is a symbol of its cul-tural glory and renaissance, the � rst Indian to win interna-tional literary acclaim. He penned India’s national an-them, and, has the unique dis-tinction of having authored national anthems of two sover-eign countries. Tagore’s song (‘Aamaar sonar Baanglaa’: My Golden Bengal) first became the anthem of liberation for the people of Eastern Pakistan, and then became the national anthem of a free Bangladesh. For Benglalis, Tagore is clearly a larger-than-life figure. A Nobel Prize winner and a fel-low Bengali, Amartya Sen de-scribed Tagore as “a towering figure in the millennium-old literature of Bengal”. But Sen finds it puzzling that “in the rest of the world, especially in Europe and America, the ex-citement that Tagore’s writings created in the early years of the twentieth century has largely vanished”. Such a question nat-urally could only have occurred to someone who spends most of his time away from his native country and is surprised to dis-cover that his great compatriot is virtually unknown in other countries. I know one such per-son very well. He is a remark-

Tagore’s description of the two weeks he spent in Stalin’s Rus-sia was far more insightful than the accounts of famous intellectuals who were invited by the Soviet leadership. The music of the time may have changed, but Russians have not forgotten Tagore; they are even preparing to mark his jubilee, albeit not on such a grand scale as 50 years ago. Stripped of publicity and fanfare, it will be a sober aca-demic discussion of different dimensions of Tagore’s poetry and his role in the Asian cul-tural landscape. Some publi-cations are due. I can mention an essay by Tatyana Morozova, a music scholar, about Tagore’s masterpiece “Gitanjali”, a col-lection of poems for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. An Eu-ropean transcription of the music is appended to the essay. Russian translation of the Gitanjali goes back to the time of the October revolution. I am translating the Gitanjali vers-es from Bengali because the existing Russian translations are based on the English ver-sion. This time around, no gov-ernment commission has been set up and Tagore celebrations in Russia will be coordinated by the Indian embassy.

Rabindranath Tagore meets members of the Young Pioneers organization during his visit to the USSR

Dr. Arup K. Sengupta (the Bengali scholar) and the author near Tagore's monument in Moscow, 2005

''In stepping on the soil of Russia, the first thing that caught my eye was that in

education, at any rate, the peasant and the working classes have made such enor-mous progress in these few years that nothing comparable has happened even to our highest classes in the course of the last hundred and fifty years…. The people here are not at all afraid of giving com-plete education even to Turco-mans of distant Asia; on the contrary, they are utterly ear-nest about it....TAGORE, LETTERS FROM RUSSIA, TRANS-

LATED FROM BENGALI BY SASADHAR SINHA

(CALCUTTA: VISVA-BHARATI, 1960)

THE QUOTE

In Tagore's words

Dr. Irina T. Proko� eva teaches Bengali at the Moscow Insti-tute of International Rela-tions.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

VERONIKA DORMANRIR

Moscow recently hosted the 1st International Congress of Translators working with Russian to unravel lingusitic puzzles.

“Translators are the pony ex-press of enlightenment.” This Pushkin quote would have it that the greatest translators of both Russian and world liter-ature come one after another to answer a bottomless pit of compelling questions, such as:

contemporary writers, transla-tors, publishers, public institu-tions and private foundations. This is a project very dear to Yekaterina Genieva, director of the Russian State Library of Foreign Literature and head organiser of the congress. “Some of the gurus of Russian have never come to Russia, so this institute would be like a second home to them.” Sophie Benech, one of those very peo-ple, was elated: “this is exactly what we need, translators of Russian literature, are lacking: a home. We need to interact in order to make progress.”

can one and must one trans-late everything in literature? Is there any poetry that just can-not be translated? How can one acknowledge language evolution and escape its anachronisms? Is it possible to translate expressions for

which there is no equivalent? Happy to come together to dis-cuss what some say is the most difficult and beautiful profes-sion around, congress partici-pants shared their linguistic adventures with humor and literary love. Dawei Tian, who translated Gogol’s “Dead Souls” and Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” into Chinese, recommends that when a problem seems unsolv-able, one should adhere to ex-amples from life, and not to dictionaries. In fact, his col-league, Mitsuyoshi Numano, confesses that he wracked his

brain for twenty years over translating Chekov’s play “Dushechka”, which in Rus-sian means “little darling, sweetie” into Japanese. He was unable to � nd any equivalent in Japanese until new age youth slang gave him a satis-factory answer.All the participants approved a resolution at the congress’ close to set up a translation in-stitute to bene� t foreign-liter-ature translators working into Russian and Russian-litera-ture translators working into other languages. This transla-tion institute would work with

Crossing cultures: translators search for a second home

Words and Meanings In case of problems, look to real life

for celebrating his jubilee. Tagore’s name was every-where: on television and the radio, his portraits and poems were printed in all the maga-zines and newspapers. It was back then that I as a child � rst heard his name and inspired went on to devote my whole life to studying his language and culture. Incidentally, back in 1961, Matvei Volodarsky, a movie director, made a docu-mentary called “India’s Great Son: Rabindranath Tagore in the USSR”. Watching it left me with mixed feelings. One thing that was absolutely clear, how-ever, was that the celebration of Tagore’s centenary was an event second in importance only to Yuri Gagarin’s space-� ight, a milestone of sorts in the Soviet Union in 1961. The leaders who had invited Tagore in 1930 did so to adver-tise virtues of the socialist uto-pia. Nobody, of course, told their Indian friend that a quar-ter of the country’s peasants had been either exiled to Sibe-ria or executed. What struck him the most was the Soviet Union’s success in education. According to Sen, in his Letters from Russia, written in Benga-li and published in 1931, Tag-ore unfavourably compared the acceptance of widespread illiteracy in India by the British administration with Russian efforts to expand education. The British rulers of India promptly banned the book.

mediately began to recount the novel’s plot “naukaadubi” (The Crash). My entranced Bengali friend was speechless.The young generation may not be as familiar with Tagore’s prose, but thanks to Russian composer Alexei Rybnikov, who set the verses from the novel “Shesher kavitaa” (The Last Poem) to music, they are getting a taste of Tagore music. The song has been a huge hit among young people. As Russia celebrates the 80th year of his arrival in Moscow, one can see preparations are much more modest than those preceding Tagore’s centenary in 1961. At that time, the sec-ond 12-volume collection of his works was published; a special stamp and a commem-orative medal were released. Plays and ballets based on Tagore’s works were staged all over the country. The govern-ment had set up a commission

able scholar, a Bengali who has lived and worked in the US for about thirty years. After read-ing my article, written in Ben-gali in the Kolkata magazine Desh, he immediately sought me out in Moscow. His first question, why I chose to study Bengali, did not take me by sur-prise, because I am always asked the same thing by Indi-ans. Therefore, my answer is al-ways the same: Tagore. “No-body knows who Tagore is in America,” he said dolefully. He was, however, surprised when I told him that Russians not only know about Tagore, but also have built a monument in Moscow. Half an hour later, we were standing in front of a magni� cent � gure with “Tag-ore” inscribed on it. We then went to chat up with some old women looking after their grandchildren playing in the park nearby. I asked them whether they knew about this monument. They all nodded, and one of them said con� dent-ly: “he is the great Indian poet and writer, philosopher and thinker, Rabindranath Tagore”. She didn’t even stutter upon the name, which is somewhat of a tongue twister for Rus-sians. The scholar as stunned and asked them whether they had read any of his works. One of them said she could not re-member the title, but she im-

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in association with rossiyskaya gazeta, russia tHE timEs of india wednesday_sePtember 29_2010 sport

www.cricketrussia.com Cricket Russia website www.russia2018-2022.com/en read abour Russia 2018/2022 World Cup bidwww.russiateam.com National football team

anisia boroznovaRiR

russians are discovering the joys of cricket, thanks to the efforts of ashwani chopra, an indian businessman. team russia now nurtures the dream of playing at the world cup.

twenty20 fever catches on,it's time to cheer for team russia at the world cup

cricket enthusiasm indian businessman takes the lead in popularising the game; the League hopes for iCC recognition

Imagine a Russian team play-ing in the T20 cricket match. Well, it sounds exotic, but if the soaring enthusiasm of a small band of cricket enthusi-asts is anything to go by, the game, which remains exotic for a majority of Russians is

headed for better times in a country where most people can’t distinguish between cricket and crocket. For many Russians, cricket means Cricket cigarette light-ers. But all this changed last year after Eurosport, a Euro-pean sports satellite and cable network, broadcast several Twenty20 Cricket World Cup matches complete with racy commentary by “the father of Russian cricket”, Ashwani Chopra, an Indian business-man now living in Moscow. The game ended up striking a chord with Russian fans.

A few months later, Russia’s cricket team took part in the European Twenty20 cricket tournament, where it made it to the finals before losing to Hungary. It should come as a pleasant surprise to cricket-crazy Indians that Russia, too, has a national cricket team!Cricket in Russia goes back to 1995, when a group of Indian students began to organise friendly matches using tennis balls and bats. Chopra, who came to Moscow in 1989 to study at State Technical Uni-versity, and later went to Mos-cow Aviation Institute, came

since 2008, the team has been participating in euro twenty20

it's russia versus england, once more – for the world cup

up with the idea to get the group together. “I was consid-ered to be a good player in India, and I kept thinking about cricket when I came to Russia. It is like my first love, as essential as air,” Chopra told Russia & India Report (RIR). This passion bore fruit in 2000, when the United Cricket League of Russia was found-ed. It initially had just four teams: India, Australia, Brit-ain and the world team for players from other countries. Fast-forward to the present, and you have eight teams in the league, with the strongest one, Friends 11, a seven-time league champion. Along with the regular season, now there are also Twenty20 tournaments, a shorter, glam-orous TV-friendly version of the sport, which was intro-duced in 2003 to attract more fans. The Russian team began to participate in Euro Twen-ty20 competitions in 2008. Their first appearance did not go as planned, but a year later, the Russians fared handsome-ly by taking silver. “We are seeing progress. I hope we will be recognised by the International Cricket Council before the end of the year, which by then will put Rus-sian cricket on the map,” said an upbeat Chopra. “We have recently teamed up with the

we have to play against India or Pakistan, we will not see this as if we are playing against ourselves. We already have four Russian players." Chopra speaks like a cricket evangelist. “Our main goal is to involve more local players on the team. We also want chil-dren to start practicing crick-et. It has a bright future in Russia and is becoming a fash-ionable and glamorous sport,” he said.

Russian Baseball Federation. They are helping us a lot,” he added.Unfortunately, Team Russia does not have the money to participate in the Cricket World Cup, but as soon as it gets the financing, the team will take part in qualifying matches. Almost all of the Russian team’s players are those from India and Pakistan. “We all play under the Russian flag. If

Iconic cricketer Ajay Jadeja, former skipper of the Indian team, had a tryst with Russian cricket recently. Jadeja was in-vited by the United Cricket League of Russia to watch the final match of the annual sum-mer cricket championship last month. “I found out for the first time ever about cricket in Russia in June from one of my friends. My reaction was: 'Do they even play cricket in Rus-

sia?' Well, now I am here and the players play with a lot of passion,” Jadeja said. It was a voyage of discovery. "It is a different world. Unless you have been here, you are not able to understand what the place is like,” said Jadeja, who spent a week in Moscow and St.Petersburg. “Indians and Pakistanis play together and spend week-ends hanging out. This is how

comment

Russians play cricket with a lot of passion: Ajay Jadeja

they keep in touch with their homeland. It is wonderful to see how, of the roughly 3,000-4,000 Indians living in Mos-cow, 200-300 of them are out there playing cricket. Cricket brings them together.”

iLyA ZubkoRossiyskAyA GAZetA

a resurgent russia is leaving no stone unturned towards winning the world cup bid and is confident of building world-class stadiums by 2018.

Sea resort city appeared to have changed the game. In fact, with months to go before the FIFA executives decide the bid in Zurich, Russia is run-ning neck to neck with its chief rival Britain. With Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cheerleading from the front, the impresarios of Rus-sia’s World Cup bid have con-verted the minuses of the Rus-sian candidacy into their sales pitch. Russia has hardly any world-class sports stadiums,

part of the country that stretches from St.Petersburg in the north to Sochi in the south. In its 1,100-page sub-mission to FIFA, Russia un-

When Russia unveiled its bid to host the 2018 World Cup last year, the idea struck many as more fanciful than holding the Winter Olympic Games 2014 in Sochi. But the success of the bid by the famous Black

except Moscow’s Luzhniki, but the powers-that-be are not deterred. Confident of a world class event, Putin has promised to underwrite the costs. "If FIFA grants us the honour to hold the World Cup, we are ready to provide them with all possible government guarantees," Putin said when FIFA team visited Moscow to assess Russia’s bid for hosting the football's biggest extrava-ganza. To make the World Cup dream

come true, Russian managers have chalked out an ambi-tious plan that includes stag-ing the events in 13 cities sit-uated mainly in the European

High on World Cup dreams, Russia set to defy sceptics

Football FiFA to decide in December; Russia can be the first country in eastern europe to host soccer's biggest showveiled plans to build 10 new stadiums that will cost bil-lions of dollars. The infra-structure frenzy is expected to kick off after FIFA decides the bid on December 2, with the Russian authorities de-termined to ensure that its spanking new stadiums, air-ports and roads are better than those of its rivals. One of the key points in any World Cup bid is what the tournament will do to develop soccer in that region. Russia clearly has an advantage, as the World Cup has never been held in Eastern Europe. On the other hand, it’s not clear whether the World Cup will give English soccer an addi-tional boost.

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BOOKMARKS08 RUSSIA INDIA BUSINESS REPORTIN ASSOCIATION WITH ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA, RUSSIA THE TIMES OF INDIA WEDNESDAY_SEPTEMBER 29_2010

www.adm.yar.ru/english Yaroslavl region website www.city-yar.ru/home/en Yaroslavl citygorod.yarportal.ru Virtual Panoramas of the citywww.guides.moscowtimes.ru/travel Travel GuideTravel

PHOEBE TAPLINRIR

A rich cultural feast awaits you in Yaroslavl, which celebrated its glorious 1,000 years recently with a gala millennium party on banks of the stately Volga river.

Fireworks, music light up Volga at Yaroslavl millennium party

Travel 'Ancient, but forever young', the city is home to splendid cathedrals, museums and World Heritage buildings

Fireworks, music and festivi-ties lit up the banks of the Volga mid-September, cele-brating 1,000 years of found-ing of the Russian historical city of Yaroslavl, older than Moscow and home to splendid cathedrals, museums and World Heritage buildings.“Ancient and forever young”, as the mayor of Yaroslavl evoc-

atively describes it, the city lit-erally breathes history, but blends modernity with effort-less ease. The city, that boasts of the world's � rst female cos-monaut Valentina Tereshkova, poet Nikolay Nekrasov and actor Fyodor Volkov, recently played host to some of the world's sharpest minds at the Global Policy Forum. Located barely 250 km north-east of Moscow, the city was founded in 1010 by Prince Yaroslav the Wise at the con-� uence of two rivers when he killed a local sacred bear with his battleaxe. Over the years, merchants and industries gravitated towards the city,

making it the biggest city in Russia’s “golden ring”. Yaroslavl is a veritable delight for anyone wishing to soak in Russian art, craft, musical and cultural traditions. This is the place where the � rst national public theater and the first provincial journal appeared. The city boasts of the famous “Tale of Igor’s Campaign” manuscript and has three out of the 20 most ancient and im-portant icons. The early 16th century Transfiguration Ca-thedral, Yaroslavl’s oldest sur-viving church, has been fresh-ly painted white and gold. Besides gold-backed icons and colorful ceramic tiles, vis-

itors can see a live bear called Masha in a cage, or a room full of chain mail and stone imag-es, representing a 12th century epic poem. You can also climb the towering belfry and enjoy the breathtaking view across the city and its two rivers.The millennial celebrations have given a new shine to the historic city. The peninsula at the con� uence of the Kotorosl and Volga rivers has turned into a "Thousand Year Anni-versary Park". On the cliffs above, the legendary site of the city’s founding, Yaroslavl’s lat-est cathedral, named for the Assumption, a splendid recon-struction of a previous church,

was opened recently. The ca-thedral is just one of several large-scale projects planned or completed speci� cally for the millennium, including new cultural centers, zoos, golf courses and hotels. “A lot of our visitors are involved in building projects,” says Pauli-na Chernobaeva, manager of Ring Premier Hotel. For her, the city is perfect: “Big, but not too crowded with a lot of very beautiful, old churches.”On the bank of the Volga River, the Historical Museum is opening a new exhibition, re-viewing 1,000 years of history through materials from the national archives, while the Art Museum, in the nearby Governor’s Mansion, cele-brates Yarolsavl’s “golden age” with yet more icons. In between the museums on the Volga embankment are some of the town's beautiful churches. The Church of St Nicholas, with its rich, blue frescoes and gilded iconosta-sis, was the � rst stone church built by the wealthy mer-chants who funded the city’s 17th century heyday. Fur trad-ers commissioned the Church of Elijah, whose walls are even

WHERE TO STAYThe 4-star Ring Pre-mier Hotel is be-

tween the main station and the town centre. Stan-dard rooms cost around 4,000 ($125) rubles per night. For a more atmospher-ic place, check out Volga Pearl hotel, which is built like a boat.

brighter, decorated inside with glowing murals and outside with ceramic tiles. Opposite this church, the Yaroslavl Re-gion administrative center is bedecked with anniversary banners. The millennial frenzy has spread its magic. Even the 10 ruble bus tickets have turned silver with “Yaroslavl 1,000 years” printed on them in red. The Music of Time continues to resonate, weaving the past and the present. “You can feel the history,” said Chernobae-va, “when you walk in the city streets, you can feel it.”

WHERE TO EATThe Vanilla Sky, right next to the River Sta-

tion at 2 Volzhskaya Nab-erezhnaya (4852/333776) is a good choice and is known for fried pikeperch with wild mushrooms (400 rubles/ $12). Or try the cheaper Tai Tai café, just across the embankment.

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HOW TO GET THEREThe journey from Mos-cow to Yaroslavl in a spa-

cious, comfortable express train takes four hours and costs around 600 rubles ($20) each way.

In the centre of 1000-ruble banknote is an engraved pic-ture of the Church of the Precursor in Yaroslavl.

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