from the August 23, 2004 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0823/p01s04-woeu.html

Moscow on the Mediterranean? Russia's yacht craze
By Scott Peterson

MOSCOW - The Russian capital is landlocked, and frozen solid for more than
half the year. But Russia's superrich, looking for new toys at which to
throw their money, are nonetheless turning Moscow into a boating center.

Sales of world-class yachts - like those of virtually every pricey luxury
item, from Ferraris to jewel-encrusted watches - are booming, as Russians
flex their consumer muscles more than ever before.

"The highest layer, a few thousand people, are now increasing the size of
their boats, replacing yachts worth $500,000 with those of $10 million,"
says Alexander Markarov, owner of the Avrora Yacht Club on the Klyazminskoye
Reservoir, on Moscow's northern fringe.

"Many are in the Mediterranean, but many boats are here for purposes of
prestige," says Mr. Markarov, looking across his 65-boat marina, as a vast
white yacht makes its way past Soviet-era factories on the far side of the
channel. "They use it as another office, and only go out once or twice a
season."

While the average Russian can only dream of owning a boat of any kind, the
increasing wealth of Moscow is evident everywhere, from the new construction
of boutique malls, to exclusive catalogs that offer executive jets, $135,000
watches, and Victo- ria's Secret's $11 million bejeweled 6,000-stone,
2,500-carat "fantasy bra."

Moscow now boasts more billionaires (33) than New York (31) or any other
city in the world, according to a Forbes magazine tally, which estimates
that one-quarter of Russia's vast oil and mineral wealth is in the hands of
just 100 people.

"What else is left for a rich Russian, if he already has his apartment, his
car - or several cars - and his house abroad? A yacht," says Zari Chernyak,
editor in chief of Captain magazine of St. Petersburg.

"If he has a foreign partner, what can [the rich Russian] offer him? Banya
[sauna] or shashlik [roast meat kebab]?" says Mr. Chernyak. "And the partner
shows his yacht. So just to be on equal terms, [the Russian] has to have a
yacht."

Already, a handful of Russian oligarchs are becoming famous for their
spending on water sports. Roman Abramovich - who owns Britain's Chelsea
football club - owns the 5th, 6th, and 16th largest yachts in the world,
according to Power and Motor-yacht's listing of the top 100.

His 370-foot Le Grand Bleu is currently at port in New York, complete with
its built-in 72-foot sailboat and a 68-foot powerboat. The boat is so large
that when it was in Monaco last spring, singer Shirley Bassey complained
that it blocked her view of the harbor from her hilltop home.

"I've just come back from Italy and I know that Burevestnik [Moscow's most
expensive yacht club] has got much newer and better yachts," says Arthur
Klyanitsky, editor of Yachting, a Russian luxury magazine.

"Yachting is naturally a thing of prestige in Russia, and very popular not
only among the very rich," says Mr. Klyanitsky. When he introduces himself
in Europe, "Everybody asks: 'And what about Abramovich?' But yachting in
Russia is not only for Abramovich."

Still, despite Moscow's often glitzy wealth, the roots of a consumer culture
stretch back to the Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union of the 1930s. It was then
that Moscow sought to create a new culture and mass-produce luxury goods
that would rival the West.

While millions of hungry Soviets lined up for loaves of bread, Stalin sent
officials to America to learn about everything from fast food burgers to
men's suits at Macy's.

"In Soviet times, they [made] cheap imitations of luxury goods, or things
imagined to be luxury goods from old aristocratic times or copied from the
Western world," says Jukka Gronow, a sociology professor at Sweden's Uppsala
University, who details those Soviet efforts in "Caviar with Champagne:
Common Luxury and Ideals of Good Life in Stalin's Russia."

"The Soviets relied on things produced at home, but anything imported that
had a Western label was very sought after," says Mr. Gronow. Cultural
knowledge of the Western consumer was very restricted, accentuating a
"pattern of consumption that identifies a very few items as valuable or
extremely luxurious - this we can recognize today - that makes a Mercedes
Benz a must-have."

Boats are slipping into that category, for those with money to spare in one
of the world's most expensive cities.

Interest in top-end boats began to surge in 1995, after the initial chaos
and money making of the post-Soviet collapse. Avrora owner Markarov says
sales of jetskis and Zodiac boats doubled each year, until the economic
meltdown of August 1998. Sales and club membership are on the rebound again,
since boat registration procedures were simplified two years ago despite a
reported 43 percent import tariff on such luxury craft.

Some 200 foreign craft over 16-feet long were imported into western Russia
in 2003; this year, the figure could reach 400. Nearly 7,000 outboard motors
were imported in 2003, half of them for new boats.

Among the handful of exclusive Russian yacht clubs, Avrora - which organizes
annual regattas - is geared for enthusiasts and not just as a parking spot
for expensive toys. Markarov expects to double the number of moorage spots
at Avrora next year.

"In Soviet society, there was no money but there was reputation," says
Makarov, who first visited this very marina when he was 5 years old, began
boating at school at 14, and then began sailing in the early 1980s. "Here it
was different," he says. "You could be the director of an institute, or a
worker on the factory floor, but here you drank the same vodka."

But even at the peak of Soviet and Russia society, yachts have long been a
tool of power. Before the Revolution of 1917, the imperial Romanov family
had a yacht for receptions.

Shipbuilders finished President Vladimir Putin's $4 million, 31-meter yacht
Pallada in May 2003, building it in less than a year.

Russian newspapers report that another presidential yacht, the 45-meter
Kavkaz, was built in the 1980s after Soviet spies "penetrated" the priciest
yachts in the world, to learn how to create such luxury. It was a favorite
of Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev.

According to the Sunday papers here he just took delivery of a completely
custom fitted Boeing 767 including a bedroom, Cinema, full kitchen etc etc
etc...(oh and $1M worth of anti-missile defense stuff too!)

I.

It's kind of sickening, in a way - not that I'd turn any of it down were it
offered to me, but had I that kind of money, I would probably dump a lot
more of it into philanthropic enterprises than he is - and not just for the
tax break, if I even cared about that. The old adage comes to mind - you
can't take it with you. Believe it or not, I actually think Bill Gates is
an excellent model for a restrained lifestyle when it comes to
super-disgusting-wealth.

Of course, I would have a LOT of cars. God, would I have cars. Cars coming
out of my ass if possible. So many I could drive a different one every day
of the year if I wanted. Cars everywhere!! Every garage in the world would
have one of my cars in it, there would ....

Oh, right, sorry ... back to my Service Pack 2 install and my cherry Coke.

M

"Iain Miller" <donot (AT) spam (DOT) me> wrote