RUSSIAS TOP EXPORT: ADVENTURESSES

Simon Sebag-Montefiore says Russia has plenty

of women out of a sex-and-shopping novel; but, at home, they can't get enough shopping

HER ACCENT was a mixture of French and Russian. She laughed down the tele- phone. `Sernyon, it is me, Alexandra of Petersburg and Paris. I need help. The Mafia is after me. Can I come round?'

My mind whirled inconclusively: Alexan- dra of Peter and Paris? Mafia? I played for time.

`Where are you?'

`Here in London. The Savoy.'

I began to remember that I had met Alexandra at the beginning of the disinte- gration of the Soviet Union. She was beau- tiful but rough at the edges. She came from a tiny Siberian village; she wore terrible clothes and too much make-up. We had lost touch when she had left Petersburg. And now Paris? The Savoy! The Mob?

I sensed that I was about to meet a rep- resentative of one of the most singular and fascinating breeds of the Nineties: the Rus- sian adventuress. She comes to the West to seek her fortune; she is always entangled in a Mephistophelian web of sex, crime and power.

`Come on over,' I said.

Minutes later, a Bentley stood outside.

This was not the first time, in a manner of speaking. Frequently, some respectable English hostess sends out invitations. They read: 'To meet the most beautiful Russian aristocrat who is a writer of extraordinary talent and is now working in London!' In Alexandra of Petersburg and Paris, another of the Russian Empire's svelt exports had arrived.

Just as Americans imagine that an English accent signifies culture, so we British believe a Slavic voice suggests artis- tic talent. Hence most of these women depart from Moscow as members of the demi-monde and arrive in London as 'poet- esses'.

A minister's wife recently held a dinner for a Russian adventuress who had come to London as a 'singer'. No one, however, not even the minister's wife, had heard her sing. Days later, she was auditioning for a Bond film, staying in a ducal palace and laying down breathy Slavic torch-songs in some rock star's studio.

There is another type, too. Some of the less intelligent adventuresses have not noticed our weakness for Slav 'artists'. Instead, they claim to be 'Miss Russia, the celebrated Parisienne model'. This may work in Bahrain, but not in Belgravia. I have been to several dinners to meet 'Miss Russia', but each time it was a different Miss Russia. I suppose it is because it is such a large country.

One can sometimes recognise the adven- turess in question from that period of almost orgiastic liberty when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. The disintegration of empires is the finishing school of adven- turesses.

It was an exhilarating time. Moscow was filled with grandsons of Stalin's henchmen playing in rock bands, Uzbek artists, Georgian gigolos, Chechen trig- germen, Odessan pimps, Politburo mem- bers turned capitalist entrepreneurs, KGB bon viveurs, Jewish dissidents — and breathtakingly beautiful girls from dis- tant, grim provinces: they are usually aged 19, married, with a child.

Muscovites call them ‘tussovchiks' which, in loose translation, means 'girls-about- town'. When they began to arrive in Lon- don, they caused a stir. They are tall, long-legged and full-breasted with scarlet lips, white skins and broad Tartar cheek- bones. But they are also highly educated. They quote from Burns, Lermontov, Tol- stoy and Chekhov. They might have stepped from the pages of Pushkin's Queen of Spades. They are far better read than the average Sloane educated at stupendous cost at Wycombe Abbey. Banking bores who have worked in Moscow always say, `All Russians are prostitutes.' But the adventuresses are far removed from the painted slatterns that visit the bankers in their hotels, they are far more interesting.

Adventuresses respect two things which may appear contradictory: literature and money. Their reverence for money is equal to their admiration for learning. It is part of their charm that they are continually moving from suites in the Hotel Bristol in Paris to garrets in Brixton. Just when you think that some Syrian arms dealer or British grandee is about to seduce them, they suddenly throw everything away to run off with a maverick.

Pleasure is their concern. They will risk everything for it. They are like the sexual adventuresses of Seventies' feminist litera- ture, such as Erica Jong's Fear of Flying. No `fear of flying' from Moscow. Intelligent and instinctive as Siberian wolves, they have complete self-knowledge. As Alexan- dra said to me, 'The French erotic book Emmanuelle — we Russian girls are like her. We call ourselves Emmanuelleskis.'

Usually, their brazenness means they do not need to risk very much. Once they are married to some older French nabob, it is only a matter of time before they roll up in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes outside the Bohemian garret of their 'true love', either an artist or writer. These women are, in many ways, the successors of the Russian émigrés who prowled every nightclub and salon in the Twenties: it always seemed that the few who were not pretending to be Grand Duchess Anastasia were cavorting in Henry Miller's priapic Parisian novels. Today's adventuresses belong in the mid- dle-European intrigues of the novels of Joseph Roth, Schnitzler, Greene and Pasternak, a sepia vision of fur-collared coats, bare shoulders, deals for howitzers, and ivory-plated revolvers: theirs is the stealthy romance of The Third Man or Hotel Savoy.

Emmanuelleskis have already spawned their own new literary genre, related to `sex-and-shopping' novels. In Russia, there was a lot of sex but not much shopping. So Chekago by Natalya Lowndes, The Loves of `This is brilliant – virtual unreality.' Faustyna by Nina Fitzpatrick and Russian Beauty by Victor Erofeyev are examples of what one might call 'sex-and-Central Com- mittee' novels. All feature wild, clever Slav- ic heroines who seduce Politburo members, western toffs, poets and gangsters, while quoting Eugene Onegin and Vogue.

But you can always smell the whiff of grapeshot under the perfume, sense the blade under the sable. When you listen to their tales, you never know if you'll end up down an alleyway with a dagger in your side.

So out of the Bentley and into the lam- plit street stepped Alexandra, six feet tall, now 25 (her daughter is seven). After studying English Literature at, of all places, Salford University, she worked for a Petersburg property company. On this visit, she was accompanying her boss to meet an American billionaire who owned a business in London.

`If a guy came up to a Russian girl in the street and asked her for a coffee, she'd go,' she told me. 'We look like a civilised nation but we are not. We're different because we Russian women face daily the uselessness of Russian men who are weak, faithless and drunk. So we can do everything a man does. We take our pleasures when we want.' Then Alexandra asked for my advice about her 'dilemma'.

The head of an allegedly legitimate banking empire, who was really a fat Mafia boss, had been in love with her for six months. He wanted to marry her. Every day, his bodyguards — he had what was effectively a private security army arrived in a bullet-proof Mercedes to deliv- er flowers. Two weeks ago, he took her out to dinner. 'He knows all the police and the thieves in power,' she said. She claimed he was a sort of Russian version of a Godfa- ther.

Afterwards, he took her against her will to his mansion — marble fireplaces, gold taps, bullet-proof glass. Bodyguards locked the doors. He raped her. The rape was `civil' because, she said, there was no point in screaming since no one would hear but the bodyguards. But she had made her refusal obvious. A convoy of Mercedes bore her home. Triple the usual number of bouquets arrived next day. The Godfather now thinks they are engaged.

But I won't, can't marry him,' she said in perfect English.

`Call the police,' I advised.

`He owns them. We don't have the rule of law.'

`What will you do?'

`Leave Russia for good and hide here in London.'

`Won't he come after you?'

`Of course,' she said. 'With all his thugs. A month ago, he had a guy blown up.' She paused and then burst out laughing one more time. 'Can I stay with you, Semyon?'

Simon Sebag-Montefiore writes for the Sun- day Times.