Here is more about the New Russians from our interview with Professor Susan Hardwick:

HARDWICK: The New Russians are people who are connected in some way with the new Russian economy, so they're probably English- or German-speaking, as well as Russian. They're probably working either in travel and tourism or in business. They're entrepreneurial, they're taking a leading edge in the whole move toward, away from socialist ways of viewing economic development, to more capitalistic ways, and so they're very business-connected, they're entrepreneurial. So I think that that class, that still stands, and I know that from personal experience, trying to get through customs at the airport in St. Petersburg, with all the Russians carrying bags of products in from Finland, in my case, but from Germany mostly. So they're the New Russians, the people that can operate in a more global economy, can buy and sell, can use English or German languages, and thus have money to spend. They're the ones that are, probably the only ones that are able to buy property now in St. Petersburg… it's just happening more now, and faster and faster.

[Ambitious young people,] …that's what they want to become, and so many of them are studying English and German and other languages of business, now, and moving, the new young ones, a lot of them are moving into the tourism industry. Because when the case study was made, it was just in the early years after Intourist, which was the Soviet government travel agency, that used to be the only way you could travel in Russia. And then when things opened up, the travel and tourism industry is where a lot of the young people went, because they hoped it would give them trips outside of Russia, and because they'd studied English or other languages, they were able to lead tours and, that was the first move and now, you're right, they're, that then grew into the New Russians being more business-oriented, even in a larger sense than just the travel and tourism industry.