Why do I like Moscow!

I'm writing this blog about Russia, but so far I didn't explain why I'm here, why I chose to be here, and what I like or dislike in Moscow and Russia in general, let me change that!

During my fourth year of university in France (2008-2009), I had the opportunity to go abroad as an exchange student for one year, I chose Moscow State University, Faculty of Public Administration! I started to learn Russian in 7th grade and continued to study it at the university, so Russia was the natural choice for me. I enjoyed a lot my year as a student in Moscow and after my graduation in September 2010 I decided to look for a job in Moscow.

After three months I found a job in a French company, LIPPI (http://www.lippi.fr/UK/index.php), which designs and manufactures fencing systems for the safety of people, property and infrastructures. I'm responsible for the company's business development in Russia. I started to work in Moscow the 1st of March for at least 18 months!

Since I arrived, almost every Russian I knew asked me "Why the hell did you chose Moscow?", and most of them want to leave Russia to work abroad! They told me, why do you come here, the climate is awful (true!), people in the street in Moscow are not nice (true!), the city is really too big with traffic jams and pollution (true again!), and many other defaults (corruption, lack of political competition ...).

What they say is true, everything is not great in Russia, far from it. There are of course some things I don't like about Moscow, like the weather (it was snowing this weekend and today we can see some snowflakes from time to time), the pollution and the traffic jams or the fact that the metro is crowded and that people don't pay attention when they bump into you. But it's the same in a lot of big cities and for me it's far from being a big matter. This is of course a very personal opinion and I understand pretty well that some people don't like this city!

But I have good reasons to come. First I didn't want to lose my Russian, and the only way for that was to go live in a Russian speaking country and in that case the easiest place to find a work was Moscow! The second reason is that while living abroad when I was young, I got severely addicted to traveling and after lots of years in France, I "needed" to go abroad. Working in Moscow is also a great opportunity in terms of responsibilities, I couldn't have such a job in France with my age and experience. I also knew that very good friends were waiting for me in Moscow, so I didn't have to start a new social life, just to extend it! And this is very important.

And last but not least, I like Moscow as a city! There are great places to go out (day and night!), lots of exhibitions, forums, concerts, theater plays or operas! You can find great restaurants that are not so expensive (10-20€), and very cool bars and night clubs. In Paris, most shops and places are open a maximum of 12 hours a day, 6 days out of 7, while in Moscow it's 24 hours a day and 7 days a week!! I talked about people not being very friendly in the street, it's really true, but once you know them, Russians are great people, very sympathetic and they would try to help you as much as they can. I didn't talk about women yet, but it's true that a lot of them are very pretty and charming, it's another good part of Russia, but not why I came here!!

It's now your turn to tell me why you like or dislike Moscow! You can comment this article or contact me if you want me to publish an article with your testimonial.

French version : http://regards-sur-la-russie.blogspot.com/2011/04/pourquoi-jaime-moscou.html

142.9 million, 1.6 percent, 2.2 million!

Looking at this title you might ask yourself "what the hell"! these figures represent the last statistics on Russian population. There are 142.9 million inhabitants in Russia, down 1.6 percent, or 2.2 million, from 2002 (145.1 million).

Russia's population is shrinking and women still outnumber men by millions. The male population is 66.2 million, or 46.3 percent, while female is 76.7 million, or 53.7 percent. It shows that there are 10.5 million more women than men. But if you look closer to the figures, before 35 years old there are more men then women, after that it changes due to a lower life expectancy of Russian men.

The report also shows that the urbanization trend persisted, with 73.7 percent of the population concentrated in cities and towns, marking an increase of 0.4 percent since 2002.

In Moscow, the population grew 10.9 percent, bringing the number of officially counted Muscovites to 11.5 million. It's important to point out that the real population in Moscow is closer to 14.5 million inhabitants if you take into account everyone who has temporary residency (like me!) or the ones that are not properly registered. The local authorities have the right to not register some persons (delivery or non delivery of a paper you must be able to show whenever asked by authorities), after which they are theoretically not allowed to live in Moscow, and they are not shown in statistics. Indeed, the official population of Moscow is taken from those holding "permanent residency".

This report points up the still very high mortality rate in Russia, especially for men as their life expectancy is 61 years and 73 years for women. As a comparison the life expectancy at birth in France is 78.1 year for men and 84.8 for women!! We won't discuss the reasons why, but alcohol consumption is most certainly part of it, especially for men.

Furthermore Russia's population would be much lower without a massive immigration from ex-Soviet republics. Indeed the fertility rate is only 1.54 (2009) so it's far away from 2.1 children per woman (the approximate minimum required to ensure population replacement). We can observe that for already several years the Russian government adopted a pro-birth policy that starts to pay off. Indeed, the fertility rate is regularly increasing and it's already much higher than in 1999 when it was only 1.16!

The new demographic policy for 2011-2015 has an objective of maintaining Russia's population at 142 million inhabitants and to increase average life expectancy to 70 years old.

A 2009 report done jointly by the United Nations and Moscow's Higher School of Economics predicted that Russia's population would keep falling, reaching 116 million people by 2050.

Will it come true...

French version:
http://regards-sur-la-russie.blogspot.com/2011/03/1429-millions-16-pour-cent-22-millions.html

A change in registration's legislation!

The 15th February 2011, a new law required foreigners to be registered by their landlords at their factual addresses, instead of registering at the employer's address.

Confronted to this law, the Association of European Business, the French-Russian chamber of commerce and several other associations told Russian authorities that foreign residents had great difficulties making their landlords register them. They asked for the law to be canceled and they even wrote a letter to Dimitri Medvedev himself!

Less than 45 days after the date when the first law came into force, a new law was just signed by the president Dimitri Medvedev that cancels the first one and eases by the same time the registration process. The new law extends the period that foreigners can be in the country without notifying the authorities from three to seven working days. It also ends the requirement that landlords register foreign tenants at their factual addresses, reinstating instead the previous rule of registering at the employer's address.
In concrete terms, it means that any tourist can stay 10 days on Russian territory (including the weekend) without being registered! For foreign residents, it means that they don't have to rush in to be registered.


The new law also forbids police from collecting fines from foreigners carrying invalid or missing registration papers. Instead, the organization that issued the foreigner's visa invitation will be held responsible for violations. This change is aimed at preventing extortion from corrupt police officers who could otherwise demand money on the street.

We have to say here that it's the first time in Russia that a new law passed so quickly in favor of foreigners. The speed at which the government overturned the harsher rules has even stunned the foreign business community. In my opinion, it shows that foreign companies start to be well considered in Russia, and it's a great thing for the future. 

Let's just hope now that instead of easing the registration process, they will cancel it for good, and that they will do the same for visas! I think we'll have to wait a bit for that, even if things are going on the good way! And I want to say that for the moment it's more the European Union than Russia that doesn't want a free-visa policy between EU and Russia.

French version: http://regards-sur-la-russie.blogspot.com/2011/03/changement-de-la-procedure.html
 

This is Russia!

I've watched recently a nice video that a russian company made to promote its products. It explains (partly) what is Russia. I find it quite relevant so I decided to share it!
If you can't watch the video directly on this blog, here is the link on YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOPuvTMndIs

Enjoy it!

French version: http://regards-sur-la-russie.blogspot.com/2011/03/this-is-russia.html