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INTRODUCTION Writing a guide is difficult. Writing a guide about Russia is next to impossible. An unenviable but noble task of any guide to any country is to thoroughly acquaint the reader with its history, culture, way of life, traditions, customs and sights, as well as to give useful information about various aspects of life. A guide must be true and specific. It must encourage a traveller to start for the unknown. It must serve like a compass in a strange world. All this is extremely difficult in the case of Russia. Life here is changing so rapidly and drastically that any guide will become outdated before it is published. Finding one’s bearings with its help is like using a compass in a region of iron deposit. Only one thing in Russia is changing slowly and reluctantly— it is the Russian people. It is about them, their character, mentality, habits, likes and dislikes, their manner of behaviour and communication, that is worth writing about nowadays. The main principle that any foreign traveller setting out for Russia must bear in mind is that it is the Russian people that make Russia. In his days, Joseph Stalin—the father of peoples as he was called in the country—introduced a motto still widely spread and used in Russia: everything depends on the personnel. Any leader in Russia knows how true it is. Not infrequently, some hopeless projects work thanks to the enthusiasm of personnel, while very promising ones fail because of wrong partners. Find the right person or a group of people and your problem is settled. It will work by itself. Times change, black becomes white and vice versa, ‘those who were nobodies have become somebodies’ as the revolutionary hymn had it, and state and ideological values have been replaced with their exact opposites. In the space of one century, Russia has on three occasions made fundamental changes not only to the state system but to life as a whole. But whichever system they were living under—an autocratic system, developed socialism or undeveloped capitalism—the people have remained the same, amazingly saving their traditions, ideas and relations to the surrounding world. Furthermore, slowly but surely, they are refashioning the latest new world in their own way, and in such a way that it is starting to look very much like the old world.