The jet-setting daughter of Uzbekistan’s aging authoritarian president says she’s releasing a new music album.

Gulnara Karimova, who is alternately admired and despised by her fellow countrymen in the former Soviet Central Asian republic, wrote on Twitter that the songs on the album are based on her own life experiences.

Karimova has frequently been touted as a potential successor to her iron-fisted, long-ruling father, 74-year old former Communist Party boss Islam Karimov. But so far, at least, the 39-year-old appears to prefer fashion design and pop music to political maneuvering.

Karimova did not say when the album will be released, although she has already uploaded one track to the Internet.

“All my songs are spoken for different moments of my life,” Karimova wrote in English on her Twitter account. “The music is an experiment from trip-hop to soft rock and even pop.”

Karimova performs under the name GooGoosha, which is reportedly her father’s favorite nickname for her. In an earlier stage of her on-and-off pop career, she performed the Latin classic “Besame Mucho” with Spanish crooner Julio Igelsias.

Uzbekistan, a mainly Muslim nation of almost 28 million people, is strategically placed along a key transportation route supplying U.S.-led coalition troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

The country is rich in natural gas and gold and is one of the world largest cotton producers, making it potentially attractive to investors.

Many in Uzbekistan remain mired in crushing poverty, however, making Karimova’s opulent lifestyle the subject of heated criticism.

A recent Russian edition of celebrity magazine Hello! includes a lavish spread on Karimova’s country home near the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.

Last year, the producers of New York’s Fashion Week canceled a show by Karimova under pressure from a human rights group protesting child labor in her homeland.

While Karimova is feted in Uzbekistan as a diplomat, academic and philanthropist devoted to the cause of disadvantaged women and children, her many critics say she has used her power to forcibly take over businesses in the country.

Is Salvador Dali a French nudist, an Italian hairstylist or a Spanish surrealist? A television quiz show that portrays the ignorant answers of long-legged, skimpily clad female contestants to trivia questions is sparking an unprecedented outcry in traditionally patriarchal Georgia. Feminist activists see the debate over the show as limited progress toward gender equality in a country better known for its machismo.

The Dali question, which ultimately stumped two women models who recently appeared as contestants on “Women’s Logic”, illustrates the concerns. Unfamiliar with the meaning of “nudist” or “surrealist,” the models, after examining a photo of the mustachioed artist, chose “hair stylist” — a word they both knew. “Now it’s trendy for men in the fashion business to have a moustache,” one model said, explaining her reasoning.

The weekly show’s male participants are not expected to give correct answers. Rather, they need to guess how the women with whom they are paired will respond to the questions — or, as the show producers would put it, try to comprehend the world of “women’s logic.”

Not long after the show’s launch in March, a handful of protesters in Tbilisi gathered at the gates of Imedi TV, the show’s broadcaster, to demand that the station cancel the program, or change its format. Within a few days, more than 1,000 people — both men and women — had signed a petition drawn up by Kakabadze and several likeminded women echoing that demand.

The petition asserts that Women’s Logic violates Imedi’s own ethics standards and the country’s code of conduct for broadcasters as well as laws on gender discrimination and Georgia’s international commitments not to propagate discrimination. Imedi is now reviewing the complaint.

The activists say that the show and similar content in Georgian media only promote denigrating stereotypes about women, and damage any chance for gender equality. “The situation is dire as it is, and media should know better than to perpetuate damaging stereotypes and portray women as being inferior to men,” commented Teo Khatiashvili, a film critic and social activist.

“In this respect, Georgians’ ideas about gender equality are much closer to western values than to the values of its own neighbors,” the report found.

But much of that may have to do with economic reality; the official unemployment rate stands at roughly 16 percent, though unofficial estimates sometimes soar over 50 percent. As in Armenia and Azerbaijan, the CRRC survey indicated that most Georgians believe that a man should be a family’s breadwinner. “The role of women is ultimately seen as a reproductive one,” Khatiashvili commented.

“The first question women are asked by perfectly well-meaning friends is ‘Are you married yet?’ If you are, the second question is ‘Why don’t you have children yet?’”
Gender researcher Nargiza Arjevanidze agreed. “A Georgian woman is not seen as successful in life unless she’s a mother,” she said.

Within that category as well, though, problematic attitudes toward women persist. A study commissioned by the United Nations Population Fund showed that every 11th married woman in Georgia suffers violence from her husband, and 34 percent of these women think that sometimes they get what they deserve. More than 70 percent believe that problems with physical abuse should be kept within the family.

Surveys also have shown a strong preference for male children among parents in Georgia and the rest of the region.

The extent to which Imedi TV understands those responsibilities, though, has been the subject of much past debate. Imedi is the same government-friendly television channel that in 2010 sent the Georgian public into a brief panic with a fake news report about a Russian invasion. Khatiashvili charges that Women’s Logic continues that trend of creating fake realities.

Yet not everyone agrees that scrapping the show is a good idea. Tamar Chergoleishvili, editor-in-chief of the news magazine Tabula, scoffs at Women’s Logic, but argues that critics exaggerate its potential impact. “[I]t is at best naïve to argue that, based on such a show, employers will conclude that women . . .are stupid,” she said.

Both Kakabadze and Khatiashvili agree that a onetime protest will not make a difference by itself in changing attitudes. Rather, they look to cumulative actions by all Georgians, male or female.

“You have to keep causing discomfort to those who perpetuate discriminatory attitudes,” Khatiashvili said. “And I, for one, will keep causing them discomfort.”

Influential Hong Kong-based online magazine Traveler’s Digest has ranked Russian females fourth in a global beauty rating, which strongly contradicts the popular saying that “Russian women are the most beautiful in the world.”

Girls from Sweden grabbed first place in the rating, which the author confirmed is “chauvinistic and sexist.” “Sweden is still firmly in first place on this list. The first time you visit Sweden is an unreal experience as you realize that everything you have ever heard is, in fact, true! The women are tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed goddesses whom are friendly and educated to boot,” the magazine said.

The runner-up is Argentina. “Maybe it’s the high-fashion or the romantic culture, or maybe it’s just because the women are tall, striking beauties, but there’s truly something special about them,” Traveler’s Digest explained.

Ukraine is in third place. In a similar rating, the magazine called Ukraine’s capital Kiev the city with the most beautiful women in the world, but also called on lovers of “scantily-clad women” to check out Ukraine’s Black Sea coast and especially Odessa.

“Mother Russia makes an appearance at number four on this list, but when we’re talking about women this beautiful, there’s really only a slight difference between number four and number one. For 4,000 miles all the way from Moscow to Siberia the women in Russia are drop-dead gorgeous,” the magazine said.

Last in the top-five were the gorgeous women from Bulgaria.

Unfortunately, while sales of black lipstick and gothic headgear soared, my club-hopping days slowed to a halt, hobbled mostly by an ankle twisted on the dance floor of a shifty Eurotrash hangout called Tokyo Joes. After that, things were somehow never the same. The moment you enter an edgy, high-energy new venue and urgently scout for somewhere comfortable to sit, your party animal days are over.

During the past two years there has again been a strong upsurge in London nightlife. Le Baron, known among international fashionistas as the Paris club where Nicolas Ghesquière held his first tightly packed Balenciaga après-show parties, has been imported. The Box, with it’s faintly disgusting cabaret turns, has arrived from New York. And now LouLou’s, a club with impeccable English society credentials, has risen in the heart of London’s Mayfair, set to open next month after a nearly three-year gestation.

Rifat Ozbek, who graduated from Central Saint Martins School of Fashion in 1977, is responsible for much of the décor. His mood board contains elements of: the Ottoman Empire, Diaghilev ballets (with costumes by Léon Bakst), tribal Africa, gypsy caravans, Parisian music halls and Tibetan temples.

“I left fashion when meetings about handbags took over designing clothes” he said. Regrets? “Absolutely none.”

After purchasing a holiday home in southern Turkey, Mr. Ozbek turned to designing interiors, and remembers being upset when he couldn’t find cushions luxurious enough for his décor. Thus was born Yastik—Turkish for cushion—and the first of a planned line of small shops displaying custom-made cushions as though they were paintings. An early customer, Lucy Ferry, ex-wife of singer Bryan and habitué of best-dressed lists, suddenly popped the question one day on a visit to his Ali Baba’s cave-like apartment in Notting Hill. Would he care to design interiors for a projected members club, the brainchild of her new husband, Robin Birley, son of the late Mark Birley, creator of Annabel’s and widely recognized as the ’60s begetter of London nightlife?

Of course he obliged, but Mr. Ozbek didn’t rely on his club-going memories for inspiration.

“Clubs? I don’t remember much from the past. It’s a big blur,” he said from the construction site that will be LouLou’s, donning a hard hat, safety jacket and boots. “They were not this kind of club. They were raves in warehouses.”

“Throughout the two-and-a half years we’ve been working on the project we’ve had very few disagreements,” said Mr. Ozbek, indicating the spot where an exquisite £45,000 ($72,068) chandelier will be installed, before emphasizing a staircase with a custom gold rope banister inspired by a dance hall in Pigalle and pointing out upholstery fabrics priced at around £700 per meter. “Robin has very good taste” he said. “Eclectic. Bohemian. And very luxurious.”

Anna Chapman, the “sultry Russian secret agent” who hit the headlines last year after being exposed as a deep-cover operative in the United States, is coming to Turkey this summer to appear in a fashion show, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

Chapman announced on her Twitter account that she would hit the catwalk in the Dosso Dossi Fashion Show running between June 7 and 14 in the southern province of Antalya.

A press statement said Chapman accepted the offer to appear in the fashion show on the condition that her fee be transferred in advance to a charity fund for homeless children in Moscow.

Dosso Dossi said they immediately wired the money and were finalizing their preparations for the show, where Chapman is set to wear a specially designed outfit.

The date of Chapman’s arrival in Turkey has not yet been determined.

Seen on the Daily Mail, Greene’s outfit consisted of a cropped black faux fur jacket and a simple black A-line dress, paired with opaque slim-fit pantyhose and basic velvet pumps. She accessorized this midnight look with a matching shoulder bag that she carried on her way to the Moscow DKNY fashion extravaganza. Her makeup gave her a healthy glow that helped make her stand out, with a bright orangey red lip, thick mascara on her lashes, and dusty rose eye shadow to accentuate her hazel eyes.

During the fashion show she was asked about her latest show, Americana, which could potentially be picked up by ABC. She stated to WWD, “Hopefully I’ll be working, assuming the pilot gets picked up.” She also said she enjoys being in the States when the Fourth of July rolls by and will try to be there in time to spend a few days with her friends and family.

Ashley Greene’s style on her new prospective show, in which she plays a quirky fashion designer, is a far cry from the actress’s daily wear. She was seen on set wearing a bright yellow printed skirt, fishnet tights, studded flat ankle boots, and a black leather jacket. This punkish style was complete with a long paisley scarf adorned on her neck and her hair tied up in a messy bun.

Famed Russian fashion designer turned chief editor of Russia’s first fashion TV channel, Valentin Yudashkin, hopes to use the channel to promote new designers.

He said, “”Young designers are the main and most interesting part of the project. Now it is very difficult for newcomers to catch the interest of trade outlets and fashion magazines. On our TV channel we are going to show so called “capsule” collections. These are mini collections of several items, which represent the idea, the image of a designer, his vision. Such shows will help a designer see how popular he or she is, whether people want to buy his or her clothing, whether his or her ambitions are justified. If they are the designer has grounds to become even more ambitions and also mega-popular.”

The channel, which aims to help young fashion designers find their target audience, won’t ignore traditional fashion weeks—typically held in large Russian cities. Moscow’s fashion week is underway and doesn’t just feature collections from Russian designers. This year has a distinctly Scandinavian flavor due to the presence of legendary Swedish fashion house “Oscar Jacobson” and Swedish brand Volvo.

The Moscow Fashion Week opened, by tradition, with the show of a new collection by Yudashkin, which was inspired by the difficult life of Russian society in the 1990s. Yudashkin said he was mostly inspired by the Russian rock music at the time, which to him was a symbol of freedom. The color black, again, prevails in the collection that is characterized by a combination of different structures (for example. velvet combined with leather and lace). The French call such a style “aggressive elegance.”

From a slow start in the aftermath of the Soviet Union, Russia is now Europe’s biggest internet market with 53 million users (compared to number-two Germany at 51 million), and figures from GP Bullhound and comScore indicate that it is also growing the fastest, at 14 percent (other European countries are at less than six percent it says). On top of that, a growing base of middle class consumers — 15 million today, expected to double to 30 million in the next five years in an e-commerce market that is projected to be worth $40 billion — has translated into a veritable boom in the rise of tech companies.

But not all of that growth means big money just yet.

KupiVIP, the Russian flash-sales site, is on track to make $200 million in net sales this year, on revenues of $300 million. Oskar Hartmann (pictured), KupiVIP’s young and bullish CEO and co-founder, who I met while on a tour of Moscow’s tech scene this week (another story on that here), believes the company will be making $1 billion in sales annually within the next five years — pretty modest by the standards of Amazon, a company to which KupiVIP is compared, which had revenues of over $48 billion in 2011, but still making KupiVIP one to watch.

“It was January 21, 2009, and we were just about to get a new financing round. At the time we had negative 200 million euros in the bank,” recalls Hartmann. He explains that while VCs in Europe consider a deal done when the term sheet is delivered, and in the U.S. when the shareholder agreement is finalized. But in Russia it’s when the money gets wired to a bank account, with the paperwork being effectively meaningless without it. “Then we suddenly got a call from the main investor, who said they’d changed their mind. It was game over for us.”

So they got to thinking fast. “We called our retail partners, and asked if they would be willing to give us six months of credit. We worked out a revenue sharing deal with our biggest retailer. And then our existing VC, Mangrove, gave us a bridge loan. Then our company grew by 40 times in the next eight months.” He said the VC that dropped out at the last minute later approached them to invest again — possibly in the $55 million round the company secured in April 2011 from Balderton, Bessemer, Accel, Mangrove and others. “And they did.”

Since then, KupiVIP (‘kupi’ means buy in Russian) has been becoming an ever more ubiquitous presence in the market on a business that still counts flash sales as its biggest pillar, but now also includes white-label e commerce sites and a full-priced e-commerce site of its own called ShopTime — all distributed on a logistics network created and owned by KupiVIP that includes warehouses, a fleet of delivery trucks and even delivery men who will bring a product and wait at the door until you try the item on and decide whether you want to keep it, and then pay they guy, in cash, if you do.

Hartmann’s big idea for KupiVIP is to sell name-brand fashion at deep discounts (as with other consumer goods like electronics and food, name brand clothes from regular stores can be ridiculously expensive) with the aim of building a solution covering middle class women — and men — in “every region, every city.”

It definitely fills a hole — nothing like this existed before, and Russian women love to shop and are huge impulse buyers. Two of KupiVIP’s biggest assets are more behind the scenes:

The first has been in the creation of that logistics infrastructure. It includes a battery of attractive in-house call center girls (I think some of them may double as models for the site, and one of their incentives was for good performance to get rewarded with photo shoots for the company calendar); plus distribution centers, trucks and a fleet of customer-friendly delivery people who double as sales assistants to work with customers at the point of delivery.

Hartmann says that it had to build this from scratch because existing delivery services were just not up to the task involved: not just sending goods to so many extensive parts of Russia but then being on hand to collect money or the goods if they’re not up to scratch. (Ozon, a competitor to KupiVIP, says that 80 percent of its sales are in cash, too.) You can imagine that if another international e-commerce company like Amazon or eBay decide to really make a play for Russia, this is the kind of infrastructure that they would need to either build as well, or buy.

The other is in the area of data collection: the company is picking up an enormous amount of information about what people like to buy and when. This is an area where KupiVIP is already making acquisitions to improve its position, specifically looking for companies that are “supportive of data intelligence, consumer mining and individualization in shopping.” That information is already helping them shape the product experience for individual shoppers, Hartmann says.

Plus he thinks that even for a company like Ozon these product categories do not make much money. He argues that this was the motivation behind Ozon’s purchase of Sapato, Russia’s Zappos, in February 2012: to be able to distribute more profitable products over Ozon’s own logistics infrastructure. “Books/electronics will always lose money. They want to overlay their delivery engine with profitable products, antiques, fashion and shoes, so it make a lot of sense for Ozon to buy Sapato.”

International expansion is another. “We have no interest in extending outside of Russia and the CIS,” he says. “There are already huge e-commerce companies in Europe. We would have to build up from zero. We need to look at markets where we can add value in the CIS before looking where we can grow internationally.” PriceWaterhouse estimates that the whole of the e-commerce market (including content like games, lottery tickets and money transfer) was worth $9 billion in Russia in 2010 and that this will double by next year. Hartmann also notes that the kinds of market gaps that exist in Russia are in other parts of the world, too — for example Saudi Arabia and India.

How do the financials look today? “We are as profitable as we want to be,” Hartmann answers. There is also talk of an IPO in the next two years. The biggest cost, he says, is customer acquisition and delivery, the area that KupiVIP has built out from scratch. (Delivery can cost 20 euros per sale but the company delivers free.) Those margins improve the more the logistics network is used, which is why we will probably continue to see KupiVIP launch ever more services in the future.

Miami-based Alex Bogomolov Jr.’s Davis Cup dream finally becomes a reality this week – though he won’t be representing the country he has called home for almost 20 years.

Moscow-born Bogomolov has been included in the Russian team, which takes on Austria in a best-of-five series starting Friday.

“It feels amazing,” Bogomolov said Tuesday. “It was always a dream to play Davis Cup, to play for Russia.”

Bogomolov, 28, announced in November that he would like to compete for his country of birth. After his debut, he can also apply to represent Russia at the London Olympics this summer.

A former hitting partner of Anna Kournikova, Bogomolov has been living and training in the United States since 1992. He said the Russian team has warmly welcomed him.

“The guys are all great. It’s a good atmosphere,” he said. “We’ve been around long time so we’ve seen each other many times on the tour.”

The 34th-ranked Bogomolov was expected to play singles alongside Mikhail Youzhny, who won his eighth career ATP title in Zagreb on Sunday. It helped him overtake Bogomolov and become the team’s highest ranked player at No. 28th.

“We have a great team,” Youzhny said. “It doesn’t really matter who is No. 1 on the team. Yes, I did win Zagreb but that’s the past now. In Davis Cup, it’s best of five, that’s a whole different story.”

Youzhny complained about a sore shoulder following the Zagreb event, where he also won the doubles title.

“We’ll see how it goes over the next couple of days,” he said.

Russia lost its opener in Sweden last year and narrowly escaped relegation from the World Group by beating Brazil 3-2 from 1-2 down in the playoffs.

The 29-year-old Youzhny, who is 15-11 in Davis Cup singles matches, believes Russia will not underestimate its opponent, despite Jurgen Melzer being Austria’s only player ranked within the top 100.

“Melzer is a great player,” Youzhny said. “He was top 10 last year. He did not get the results later in the season but he is still very good.”

Youzhny’s teammate Igor Kunitsyn is 2-0 against Melzer, including an epic five-set victory at last year’s U.S. Open.

“That was a good fight and definitely one of my best wins,” Kunitsyn said. “This is the World Group, there are no easy matches. We play away and Jurgen is a great leader of the Austrian team and they have great doubles. It’s a fifty-fifty match.”

The fourth player for Russia is former 3rd-ranked veteran Nikolay Davydenko, who is playing an Austrian team that he wanted to be part of himself just a couple years ago.

In 2007, Davydenko applied for Austrian citizenship, but canceled the application because the formal procedure became too lengthy and complicated.

“Normally you need two or three years to do that but then there were some rule changes by the Austrian government,” said Davydenko, who still shares his Austrian manager Ronnie Leitgeb with Melzer.

Team captain Shamil Tarpischev, who led Russia’s women’s team to the semifinals of the Fed Cup last weekend, can choose from four potential singles players. His Austrian counterpart, Clemens Trimmel, doesn’t have such a luxury.

“Things are pretty clear at our side,” said Trimmel, who replaced Gilbert Schaller as team captain after Austria saved its spot in the World Group by beating Belgium in the playoffs in September.

Trimmel was expected to pick 127th-ranked Andreas Haider-Maurer besides Melzer for the singles, and Alexander Peya and Oliver Marach for Saturday’s doubles.

The match will be played on an indoor hardcourt at Arena Nova in Wiener Neustadt, a village located some 50 kilometers south of the capital, Vienna.

“The court is relatively slow,” Melzer said after Tuesday’s practice session. “We are preparing for many long rallies.”

Melzer, who is ranked 40th but was 8th less than a year ago, believes Austria can get past the opening round of the World Group for the first time since 1995.

“Everything must fit together, then we might have a chance,” Melzer said. “I think chances are 60-40 for Russia as they have more high-ranked players to chose from.”

The document is composed under outside influence and aims at weakening Russia

Draft of the law On State Guarantees of Equal Rights and Freedoms for Men and Women and Equal Possibilities for Realizing them” will destroy the institute of family and result in recognition of unisex marriages, the Russian Church official believes.

“And feminism is such a powerful spike against a family! And who can speak against a family? Only those people who stand for non-traditional forms of family life. The law will empower feminist organizations to set real terror, and any ombudswoman who hate men and have special authorities will persecute those, whom she doesn’t like,” the priest said.

The alpine skiing venue for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics is about to get its first big test with the likes of Lindsey Vonn and Aksel Lund Svindal leading the World Cup circuit to the Rosa Khutor resort in Russia.

Following three days of training runs, World Cup racing begins with a men’s downhill and super-combined Saturday and Sunday, followed by the same events for women a week later.

The competitions represent the first major test events for the Sochi Games, which will be held exactly two years later, from Feb. 7-23, 2014.

“We only give them one test so that it works,” said men’s World Cup director Gunter Hujara. “If we gave them two chances, then the first would not achieve much.”

Sochi organizers are determined to show they will be ready.

“We are in good shape. We collected all necessary resources and we did our internal testing not to lose the face to the world,” said Dmitry Chernyshenko, chief of the Sochi organizing committee. “What will be considered a funny moment or will be forgiven by others, hardly will be forgiven by us, by Russia.”

While there have been construction delays at the ski jumping and biathlon venues, the Alpine skiing courses were completed more than a year ago and hosted second-tier Europa Cup races last season.

The World Cup circuit represents a much more extensive test. Athletes, coaches, trainers, equipment personnel and media will be arriving in Sochi, a year-round resort on Russia’s Black Sea coast, then escorted up to the Alpine venue in Krasnaya Polyana 50 miles away.

The races coincide with a visit from the International Olympic Committee’s coordination commission, which is chaired by former French ski great Jean-Claude Killy. It’s possible Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will attend.

For the skiers, though, this isn’t just a test. World Cup points will be on the line.

“It’s really important for me to utilize all three training runs, try to ski the best I can on every single day and get a feeling and an idea for what the course is like,” said Vonn, who is on track for her fourth overall World Cup title.

For the American, these races will mark the first step in defending her downhill title from the 2010 Vancouver Games.

“All I need is one opportunity to see the hill and then I can still visualize it for the next two years and mentally get ready for that race,” Vonn told The Associated Press. “So I’m excited for a new course, I’m excited to be on the Olympic course and hopefully it’s fun.”

After two fifth-place results at his home Olympics in Vancouver — plus a fourth-place finish at the 2006 Turin Games — downhill world champion Erik Guay of Canada is also hoping to find a comfort zone.

“Everyone’s starting on a bit of a level playing field because nobody’s been there before,” Guay said. “So if you start on the right foot and you have good results, it will just make it easier when you get there for the Olympics.”

There are three Olympic courses at the Rosa Khutor centre: one for men’s downhill, super-G and giant slalom; another for women’s downhill, super-G and giant slalom; and a third track for men’s and women’s slalom.

Severe snow drifts during last year’s Europa Cup races caused the men’s downhill to be shortened and the super-G to be canceled, raising calls for better avalanche protection.

“It’s always a lot of expectation, a lot of uncertainty in connection with a new organizer, but they have a huge organization and I’m quite confident they will be well prepared,” said Atle Skaardal, the women’s World Cup director. “But as with any other organizer, they need a little help with the weather as well.”

After the Europa Cup events, organizers made changes to the upper section of the women’s course, which had been labeled as too easy. That brings to mind the petition that racers signed because the women’s course in San Sicario was too easy at the test event for the Turin Games.

“The course in Sochi is more technical than the one in San Sicario,” Skaardal said. “It’s probably less technical than the one we had in Whistler for the 2010 Olympics, but what’s easy and what’s difficult is a different for everyone. Steep can be more difficult for some people and flat can be more difficult for others. … I’m sure it will be a very interesting race.”

Are men hunters no more? Is it up to women nowadays to make the first move?

Svetlana Kolchik

These questions popped up in my head after the latest issue of the Russian Marie Claire came out and our magazine once again turned into a large 24/7 dating agency. Traditionally, in the month of February, we run the Top Bachelors of the Year project. We publish a selection of eligible single guys’ photos, along with their brief interviews, and provide a special email at which the readers could then contact the men they liked via the magazine.

This year, we featured fifty men, ages ranging from 21 to 45, about a third of them coming from the US and Western Europe, and the rest from Russia. As always, there was no shortage of men – despite all the stereotypes, there’re plenty of good unattached guys out there. The project was a huge hit: since the day the Marie Claire had hit the newsstands, we’ve been getting dozens of emails daily, girls writing from all over Russia and even from abroad. Some of them are in their 20s, but most – in their 30s, elaborating in their messages about how well they’d done career-wise so far but how much they’d like to start a family now (the majority had left their cell numbers to apparently speed up the process). Most women had their photos attached, some rather risque. A few had written up to ten identical emails, asking us to forward those to different guys. Others sent actual letters sticking into the envelope a cinema ticket or a hot exhibit invitation for their preferred bachelor. “Here’s my work address for a bouquet to be delivered,” one girl wrote to the guy who had mentioned in the interview that he enjoyed giving flowers to modern women.

With my mailbox getting seriously overloaded with megabytes of flirty blondes, brunettes and redheads, I began to freak out. Russian females have always been regarded as strong inside, but soft and feminine on the outside. Perhaps it’s one of the main reasons Western men still fancy them so much. With a project like that, aren’t we undermining our femininity flair a bit, letting the girls not only choose, but chase as well? What’s the incentive for a guy to pursue a girl if the prey is already out there, nearly desperate to be taken? I’ve heard a lot of complaints lately from modern women across the world about men becoming passive and lacking initiative in a relationship. And in Russia, the country where beautiful women are so plentiful, the girls lament about the men being plain spoiled. Isn’t it us, females, who’re spoiling the opposite sex in the first place?

Back in the 90s, when I started going out, the celebrated The Rules Book, by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, two bored Long Island housewives-turned bestselling authors, became my Dating Bible. The book, which sold millions of copies worldwide and is still considered one of the all-time most popular relationship manuals, called for a return to old-fashioned gender games, where males were supposed to be the hunters, period. Don’t speak to a man first, don’t ever call a man, never tell a man what to do and let guys do all the chasing, otherwise you go against nature and it never works, the writers insisted.

As ridiculous as they sounded, I tried following those Rules religiously for some time. Sometimes it worked, but more times it left me frustrated, and the guys – suspicious of too much scheming involved. So I kind of gave up any rules, letting the relationship evolve more like a dance, where both sides make the steps at the right place and time.

I called a few of this year’s bachelors to see how they felt about women initiating things in relationship. The guys I spoke to didn’t seem to mind. “It’s not that easy to meet a right person these days, so you do need some facilitation,” one guy said. “And, if you do get together with a girl, in the end it doesn’t really matter who made the first move.”

“Times have evolved, and the old dating approach no longer works,” another guy mused. “Modern women just go for what they want, and I see nothing wrong with it.” This guy, a successful good-looking Western 33-year-old businessman who’s worked in Moscow for about ten years, surely doesn’t lack female attention here. Still, he seemed quite happy to take part in the Marie Claire bachelors issue. “It’s easier than easy to find a girl in Moscow, but it’s very difficult to find a relationship,” he said.

And he’s definitely right. Otherwise we wouldn’t have such an easy time finding a load of singles for this project each year. It’s also true that while being all too willing to find a mate, we, girls, remain quite selective when it comes to making a choice. Just as another bachelor stressed, “No matter how generous the supply, you still ought to behave like a man with a girl, otherwise you get dumped soon.”

I asked a middle aged man who was detouring over a snow bank, giving the anarchists a wide berth. He muttered: “It’s something in ‘hispanski.’”

Then it flashed on me. It came from a movie: Terminator 2: Judgment Day. As Arnold Schwarzenegger was about to blow away the frozen remains of his nemesis, the T-1000 nanomorph, he tossed off a line that ultimately circled the world: “Hasta La Vista, baby!”

Presumably, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin does not see himself as a frozen nanomorph.

But some members of Russia’s younger generation do.

During the two months of Russia’s protest movement, government strategists have shown a calm front. They seem comforted by their knowledge that Russia’s demographic profile is more like Japan’s — top heavy with retirees – and less like Egypt’s – lots of angry youth.

It will all blow away, they seem to say. We can take it in our stride.

Confounding Mr. Peskov’s expectations, 100,000 people turned out in minus 20 degree C weather – probably the coldest Saturday of the winter.

Mikhail Dmitriev, president of the Center for Strategic Research, has a message about Russian urban youth the Kremlin does not want to hear. Due to the high concentration of universities and employers in Moscow, about 30 percent of Moscow’s residents are in their 20s. Ditto for St. Petersburg and the 10 “millioniki” – the 10 cities with populations of about 1 million. This is Arab Spring country.

Rural and small city Russia is old, dying out, and watching Prime Minister Putin inaugurating new factories every night on TV.

Urban Russian youth is online, and getting their political education from opposition radio and Internet comedy shows that regularly rack up over 1 million hits a segment.

The generational conflict was as clear Saturday as the young man who danced in the march, brandishing a homemade sign that read: “Old Putinist codgers, get out of the way!”

That did not stop three young protesters from showing up Saturday, dressed from head to toe as hamsters. They wove through the crowd in a bouncing conga line.

Svetlana Kolchak, who writes a weekly column, Women Talk, dug up this protest recruiting ad on the website of a popular Russian online dating site. Addressed to unattached women, it read: “Sixty-five percent of the protests’ participants are men, 80% boast an above-average income, 75% have an above-average IQ, and 50% are currently single. So don’t miss it!”

Not only is protesting cool, but the calendar is working against the Kremlin.

Historically, student protests take place in the spring – think Paris and Prague in May 1968, the May 1970 shootings at Kent State, and the April 1971 anti-Vietnam war march on Washington. And, of course, last year’s Arab spring.

As a former student protester, against the Vietnam War, I recall that spring was my season of protest – sit-ins, playing cat and mouse with the police in the streets.

At my high school in April, 1971, a group of us 16-year-olds secretly pored over The Anarchist Cookbook. We studied how to flip open the back of a Volkswagen beetle, yank off the distributor cap, and thus immobilize the car – and an entire lane of traffic. The strategy, as circulated by the Liberation News Service in those pre-internet days, was to block commuter traffic on all bridges into Washington. We were going to stop the Nixon War Machine!

I would have done all that, and more!

But, my parents did not let me take the bus to Washington.

On the far side of the globe, Vladimir Putin, in the late 1960s, was living through his own rebellion. In his memoirs, he describes himself as a “shpana” or a street punk. Only the timely intervention of a judo instructor put him the on the path to university, a KGB career, and the rest is history.

Of course, today’s Russian students are completely different.

I’m sure that this spring, when Moscow inevitably defrosts, when the leaves start popping, and the girls’ hemlines start rising, the young men and women of urban Russia will be 100 percent concentrated on their final exams, and on the productive careers that await them.

And, if you believe that little fairy tale, “Аста Ла Виста, беби!”

Maxim magazine has released a promotional trailer of the issue which features Russian women Anna Chapman flaunting g-strings and a pistol.

As the magazine’s website states, in addition to the lascivious photo shoot the “mysterious debutante in [Maxim’s] list of Russia’s 100 sexiest women” also talked about “men, flirting and her future plans.”

The full video is available at the official Maxim website from October 21. The full interview with Russian women Anna Chapman and the revealing photo session can be found in the issue due to be published on October 22.

Katya Zatuliveter, a Russian woman accused of spying in the UK, is fighting attempts to deport her from the country in a court where one of the panel judges is a former MI5 boss.

­She denies all charges of espionage at an appeal before a special immigration commission, but the 26 year-old did admit to having an affair with her former employer, the MP Mike Hancock.

The MP himself eventually announced on Wednesday that he was stepping down from the House of Commons Defence Committee. Getting mired increasingly deeper in the spy scandal, Hancock said he started to feel his position was untenable.

The question the trial in the UK is trying to answer is whether Zatuliveter was spying for Russian intelligence services while working in the Houses of Parliament as a researcher.

Russian woman Zatuliveter strongly denies espionage charges and has pleaded not guilty. However, her relationship with MP Mike Hancock remains the key issue.

It emerged that she had been having an affair with him from 2006 to 2010, shortly before her arrest on suspicion of espionage.

Although Hancock was not a prominent MP, he still had access to sensitive documents as a member of a defence select committee and a former chairman of the all-party Russia committee, from which he was ousted for excessively pro-Russian views.

The Home Office representative claimed Russian woman Katya Zatuliveter was used as a ‘honey trap’, targeting Hancock for his access to sensitive documents and his vulnerability over extra-marital indiscretions.

The case is being heard by three judges, one of whom is Sir Stephen Lander, the former director-general of the MI5 security service, which might suggest a conflict of interest in the case.

Zatuliveter’s layers have already contested this point, asking how a former head of a British security service could remain impartial. This objection has already been dismissed by the High Court judge chairing the panel.

You can read Russian woman Katya Zatuliveter’s own blog on RT.

Annie Machon, a former MI5 intelligence officer, told RT that politics might determine the decision on Russian woman Zatuliveter deportation.

“I think any decision made on her deportation will probably be done in some sort of a political backroom deal, because, of course, there has been friction between Russia and the UK,” she said. “If the UK deems it to be something they could use to embarrass Russia, they might as well deport – whatever the facts are to this case.”

In 2010, filmmaker Olga Stefanova left her Moscow apartment to spend a year at Russia’s Bellingshausen polar station documenting the lives of 15 men who live there.

Thousands of miles away, Yulia Panasenko knocked on the door of her neighbor who was suffering from cancer that transformed her from a chic Russian woman to a skeleton clothed in yellowish skin. Panasenko let the camera run defiantly on.

The results of these persistent preoccupations—Stefanova’s “The Wintering” and Panasenko’s “Outro”—were part of the 12th annual Flahertiana Documentary FestivalOctober 11-17 in the Russian city of Perm, where the two films participated in the international competition with 15 non-Russian documentaries.

Festival president Pavel Petchenkin has mixed feelings about films like these. While they’re heartfelt projects, they illustrate one element of the troubling situation currently faced by contemporary Russian documentary.

“Men see that it is not possible to make a career in Russian documentary as it is today,” he says. “So they seek out other sectors. Then we see a few directors, mostly young women working in documentary with virtually no budget. They buy a cheap camera and invest all their time in their projects.

“It causes a certain type of film that makes the span of Russian documentary pretty narrow.”

Occasionally, there were experimental and internationally oriented films, such as Sergey Lintsov’s “Factories of Imagination,” about the international trend to transform abandoned factories into cultural centers. However, many of the Russian docs that screened at Flahertiana were often technically flawed films created with nearly obsolete equipment. Topics included the cancer-suffering woman, abandoned children and a grief study: Tragic human destinies, brutally portrayed as only Russians can do them.

Russian women win big in boxing

The Women’s national boxing team of Russia has won four gold medals at the European Championship, held in Rotterdam.

The Russian women won the team competition, winning seven medals; four gold, two silver and one bronze.

Russian women Svetlana Gnevanova defeated Lynsey Holdaway from Wales with a score of 13:9.

Russian women Elena Savielova beat Poland’s Sandra Drabik – 16:12.

Russian women Sophia Ochigava lost the final to the current world champion Katie Taylor of Ireland – 6:10.

Russian women Nadezhda Torlopova won against the representative of the Netherlands Nushku Fontaine – 13:11.

Russian women Svetlana Kosova proved to be stronger than Poland’s Sylvia Kusyak – 17:6.

Russian women Irina Sinetskaya failed to win against Samsi Yarali from Turkey – 10:12.

The UEFA European Women’s Championship was held from the 17th to 23rd of October.

Politicians, billionaires, film directors and fashion designers of the Russian elite strolled the red carpet leading up to the cream-coloured, eight-columned ballet and opera house that began life as a pet project by Empress Catherine the Great who founded it in 1776, the year the United States was born.

“The Bolshoi is one of our greatest national brands so we are all celebrating the opening of the main building of the Bolshoi theatre,” a black tie-clad Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on the grand stage.

Medvedev paid tribute to all those involved in restoring gilded lustre to a building that has been a physical witness to the rule of Tsars, their brutal overthrow in the Bolshevik revolution, two world wars, the rise of the Soviet state, the collapse of communism and Russian latest resurgence in a capitalist world.

“I would like to thank all those who took part in the rebirth of our miracle, our great national brand – the Bolshoi Theatre,” he told guests including Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian ballet legend Maya Plisetskaya, seated under a six-metre chandelier.

He then took a seat in a gold-lined box where tsars and Soviet leaders sat for performances.

About 100 musicians and opera singers in orange and white hard hats and workmen’s overalls then took to the stage, where they burst into song performing “Slavsya” by the Russian 19th century composer Mikhail Glinka.

Outside, Kremlin guards clad in charcoal grey wool overcoats encircled a Bolshoi all lit up in blue and gold.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is also expected to attend the much-anticipated event, which Russian art enthusiasts hope will cement Moscow’s position as the arbiter of the classics.

The theatre, which has survived three fires, bombing in World War Two and was at one time perched above an underground river, has been restored to its opulent Tsarist beginnings, covered in gold leaf, and had cutting-edge acoustics added.

After years of neglect and heavy use during Soviet times, the theatre was closed in 2005 for restoration. The Bolshoi Ballet troupe continued performing on the neighbouring, but smaller New stage.

Friday’s opening show will feature top dancers such as Svetlana Zakharova and Maria Alexandrova, as well as guest opera singers including France’s Natalie Dessay and Lithuanian soprano Violeta Urmana.

Performances included pieces by Russian composers Alexander Borodin, Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev.

Moscow city centre streets were grid-locked after security was beefed up to allow the 2,000 guests in for a thoroughly Russian evening, which is being broadcast live in Russia, Europe and the United States and live on video website Youtube.

Italian actress Monica Bellucci, swathed in diamonds and dressed in a strapless crimson dress, joined Russian officials as they crowded into the theatre, lined with plush red chairs that have been tested for sound-absorption.

Rare pine wood applied to the walls also helps improve the quality of the sound, which has won praise from leading opera singers, and even two of the nearest stations of Moscow’s sprawling metro will be soundproofed.

The Bolshoi had world-class acoustics before the Communist era, when sound-reflecting gold was scraped off and stolen and the hollow cylinder underneath the orchestra, thought to be impractical, was filled with cement.

The rigid Soviet-era seats were replaced with fewer, wider and more comfortable ones, cutting the number of seats for the main stage to 1,720 from 2,200.

But not everyone was pleased with the grand revamp. The Bolshoi’s principal dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze has repeatedly told local media the old theatre’s interior has been replaced with even cheaper material.

The Russian Bolshoi Theater, one of the main landmarks of the Russian capital and a symbol of Russian culture, reopened Friday after six years of reconstruction with a gala concert attended by members of the Russian and international beau monde.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were among the guests for Friday’s performance at Russia’s main ballet and opera house.

“It’s a very happy day for our country,” Medvedev said from the stage before the concert. “Our country is big, but the number of such uniting symbols, national treasures – what we call national brands – is very limited. And the Russian Bolshoi Theater is one of our greatest national brands.”

The Russian Bolshoi Theater, built in 1825, closed for reconstruction in 2005. The reconstruction was initially scheduled for completion in 2008, but the project has been marred by repeated delays as well as a misappropriation scandal.

“I am sure that what has been done here will serve generations of our citizens, all those who like the Russian Bolshoi Theater, for long years,” Medvedev said Friday.

The Russian government spent 21 billion rubles ($681 million) on the restoration, which involved more than 3,600 designers, builders and engineers.

Friday’s gala concert began with a performance reproducing the restoration work. Artists dressed in builders’ uniforms and helmets performed the final scene from Mikhail Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar opera.

The acoustics have been improved significantly. The renovated theater has a back stage, extra foyers and cafeterias, and underground premises for storing stage decorations. The work has created an extra 50,000 sq meters of space in the building