Comrades In Charms Russians Embrace Etiquette As Manners Make A Post-Bolshevik Comeback

Vera Ignatieva’s lecture on how proper young ladies accept an invitation to dance is interrupted by a door slamming behind a tardy pupil. Ignatieva halts the culprit in her tracks with a glare as powerful as a stun gun.

“Is that any way for a cultured person to enter a room?” she demands of the trembling 7-year-old arriving for a first lesson. “Go back outside and try again - this time in a civilized manner!”

Across town, the latecomer is slightly older, but the reproving glance from Alena Gil is as withering as Ignatieva’s. “You are late again, Vika. And furthermore,” says the appalled etiquette teacher, “how dare you come into my classroom with gum in your mouth!”

Slammed doors, snapping jaws, slouchy posture and sloppy table manners are under attack in places such as Ignatieva’s Ballroom Dancing and Court Etiquette School and the Institute for Noble Young Ladies, where Gil teaches socially aspiring teens.

But after eight decades in which society put more stock in a young person’s skill handling a forklift than in his or her way with a salad fork, the purveyors of polish at Russia’s revitalized charm schools concede that they have their work cut out for them.

Boorish behavior was a hallmark of the Bolshevik era, when civility was thrashed by the coinciding brutalities of war, widespread poverty and social leveling. The remnants of the Russian aristocracy fled abroad to escape exile or execution.

In today’s class-conscious new Russia, however, refinement is on the rise, and those pondering careers in international business or diplomacy are seeking to rectify their deficit of graces.

From social etiquette classes that have been added to public school curricula to resurrected pre-revolutionary finishing schools such as those within the New University of Humanities founded here by Natalia Nesterova, there is growing interest - and income - in the teaching of proper manners.

“We could hardly have operated during the Communist era, when the very concept of nobility was officially targeted for destruction,” says Nesterova. “But now that it is possible, it is all the more important that we prepare a new generation of young women to be credits to their families, to their future husbands, to their employers and, most importantly, to themselves.”

The Institute for Noble Young Ladies, which is one branch of her private university, was reconstituted three years ago on the reputation of an imperial-era boarding school that trained the daughters of wealthy merchants and noblemen in the czar’s court.

The institute now strives to incorporate the modern demands of society into the structure of education in more traditional spheres, says Nesterova.

“In today’s conditions, it is not wise for a woman to be without the intellectual means to compete in the workplace, even if she expects to be a homemaker,” she says. “That is why we have added courses in office management and business to our cultural repertoire.”

Russian and foreign hiring executives say they are on the lookout for employees with polish and that something as simple as a thank-you note after an interview can affect their choices.

“Knowing how to present oneself is as important as professional and technical knowledge,” says Konstantin Korotov, head of personnel development here for Ernst & Young, the international accounting firm that employs 500 local professionals throughout the former Soviet Union.

For 15-year-old Nina Babicheva, a charm school diploma is the ticket into the most desirable social circles.

“I’m not very good at math or science. What I love here is the attention to art and culture,” says Babicheva, who is balancing the finishing school program with her high school education. “I don’t have any big career goals. If I have to work, I think I’d like to be a journalist. But what I would really like is to get married and be free to spend my whole day riding horses.”