Shallow elitism

[Yoshimasa Tsuji]

I remember a US citizen sued a hotel in Yaroslavl and got the difference
back a couple of years ago, but nothing seems to have changed. Most of
the prices in Russia are "dogovornaja", i.e. depend on the purchasing power.

The Constitution of RF forbids discrimination based upon nationality,
but if I remember correctly, it does not forbid the discrimination
based upon the citizenship (nacionalinost' vs grazhdanstvo).

The above mentioned American won the game by convincing the court that
the Constitution forbad discrimination of all kinds.

After all, the Russians do not have a "fair trade law" that may forbid
to charge different prices depending upon who the buyers are. Children,
old-age pensioners, students have discounts everywhere and foreigners,
including those from poorer countries, are asked to pay more.

  Foreigners used to pay a lot more, but used to have privileges like
jumping the queue, but they now pay more and are often less privileged than
Russians.

  I personally was asked to pay some 140 dollars for the membership fee
for the Russian TeX users group when they had an annual conference last
September. I immediately refused to pay anything and cancelled the
participation as I was sure that I had a lot more to teach them than
to learn from them. (If the Russians had paid that money, I might have
changed my mind, but the costs of membership fee and the shabby hotel --
so the students dormitory was called -- were exorbitant.

  The prices in Moscow (hotels, restaurants, flats, taxi, salaries of
competent workers, etc.) have become very unattractive, which is not
right if Russians want to attract foreign investors.

Tsuji