Reader's Letter: In defense of gatekeeper Taki

By Atanas Tilev

As somebody who knows many Russians personally, and also quite a few things about Russia and Russian culture including the Soviet times, I would like to point out that Taki (in his column titled ‘The fabric of Gstaad’) obviously did not mean the whole Nation and all Russians. I thought this was quite easy to understand this from his text. Instead, he was referring to a certain group of Russians, luckily limited in numbers, who, for lack of basic manners and all-round vulgar behaviour, ruin the ambiente and atmosphere of any place that they appear in. Unfortunately they have a negative influence on how Russians are perceived by and large by the rest of the world. Also, it makes little difference to the rest of the world if these people come from the Ukraine, Belarus or other parts of the former Soviet Union; if they speak Russian they will be perceived as Russians by most people who are not from those parts.

It goes without saying that cultured Russian people are welcome to Gstaad and surroundings like everybody else cultured and well-behaved. However, I strongly advise the landlords and the community to keep their eyes open when letting their houses or issuing purchase permissions. An accumulation of the wrong kind of people in Gstaad would not only be unpleasant but could turn out to be dangerous.

Taki should not be left alone in standing up for manners, good behaviour and proper dressing in Gstaad, since these are values by themselves and should be upheld as such for everybody’s benefit – and yes, for nurturing the right kind of ‘fabric of Gstaad’. Unfortunately bad manners and all that goes with them are not a monopoly of a certain kind of Russian, and as a regular visitor to the Palace and other establishments in Gstaad I have often enough witnessed vulgarity, sloppy dressing and lack of basic manners by representatives of other (also leading) nations. The type of Russian that Taki was referring to just stands out, because the Russian-speaking people are plentiful in comparison to many other people and the region has had a unique recent history, in which it was possible for some to enrich themselves more or less overnight through dubious means. We can thus witness the results of ‘express nouveau richness’ in combination with a lack of education, a culture in which wealth is shown off as much as possible (and thus easily perceived as style- and tastelessness), and apparently a lacking motivation in wanting to further and refine oneself within the group of Russians Taki was referring to. Combine these aspects further with an overall collapse of manners & Co. worldwide and with a diminishing enforcement of dress codes etc. by the establishments that would profit from keeping them up more rigorously, and voilà, there you are, in a sad situation where these kind of issues have to be discussed in the first place.

Atanas Tilev, Gstaad