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Golden curtain divides Russia

Tom Parfitt

Fears of social unrest grow as Moscow's rich keep their children under lock and key.

IT IS evening and the beautiful, tanned 40-year-old woman picks up her mobile phone as she glides home in her Ferrari. "I'll be back in five minutes and I want tuna carpaccio," she barks into the handset to her personal chef.

In the back of the car, two children stare through the smoked windows as the gates of the luxury villa open. A pair of security guards monitor the arrival via CCTV. Once inside, Oleg, 6, blows his nose and holds out the tissue for his nanny to take away. "I can get you fired any time I want," he tells her later with a smirk. In the kitchen, his sister, Maria, 11, is starting a ritual complaint to their father, Aleksei, a multimillionaire property developer: "Why can't we be like other children," she asks, tugging at her Gucci T-shirt. "Why can't I go out?"

As the gap between Russia's rich and poor grows wider, a new phenomenon is emerging: "children from behind the fences." The term was coined by author and sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya to describe the offspring of wealthy businessmen who grow up in a world of excess and isolation. Russia has 36 dollar billionaires and an estimated 88,000 millionaires, while the average wage hovers around $250 a month. But academics have warned that the widening gulf between the wealthy and destitute could spark unrest. While millions of parents struggle to feed their children, the elite shower theirs with gifts and privileges that critics say are corroding their ability to integrate into society. "These are the children of the super-rich who grow up behind high fences in well-protected settlements, unable to adapt to the real world and its problems," says Ms. Kryshtanovskaya.

Fenced settlements

Crime, paranoia, and a desire to impress the neighbours have led many wealthy families to build high walls around their properties, screening them from the poverty and uncertainty outside. Their contact with others from different backgrounds is minimal. Even when they venture out from their fortified homes, the bubble is kept intact, says Miriam Hardcastle, Oleg and Maria's tutor, who retells their story. "I went to a 10-year-old's birthday party in Rublevka [an elite Moscow district] recently and every child turned up with two armed bodyguards, a nanny and a driver." Concern is growing that such children are being denied the skills to operate outside the pampered existence of secluded compounds.

"There are prisons where you are beaten and badly fed, but there are also prisons of luxury where you become stupid, and your self-evaluation inadequate," says Konstantin Surnov, a psychology professor from Moscow State University. "Life behind a fence creates a limited person."

A desire for seclusion is fuelling a huge market in gated settlements around Moscow. For $500,000-$2 million one can buy a kottedzh in a purpose-built village encircled by a steel fence or wall.

"The No 1 thing that people want is security," said Gennady Levin of Vesco Realty as he showed this correspondent around Velich, a new settlement with perfect lawns and a sports complex.

Prof. Surnov says such a life is "killing children's personalities." He adds: "It doesn't matter if you're in a gilded cage or a stone one if your mind is dead." —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

(Some names have been changed.)

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