Word: lyudinovo
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Dates: during 2008-2008
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...Lyudinovo is no stranger to unemployment: it suffered a bad bout in the early 1990s, when several of the town's factories closed and 4,000 workers lost their jobs. But by this October, after a run of good years, the number of unemployed people had fallen to just 320. That number doubled in November, and for next year all bets are off. "This is just the beginning," worries editor Pronin...
...even if it has to remain buried, anger is not far from the surface. A young woman standing outside the Lyudinovo emporium rocks her infant son's stroller and, looking around nervously, gives vent to her worries. She's still on maternity leave, but had hoped to return to work soon. That's now looking impossible. What's more, prices keep going up, including her rent, she complains, and she's had to pay a $200 bribe to get her son into a local nursery. "You tell that to Putin and Medvedev," she says angrily, and then worries that...
...recent Wednesday, 432 people have called in. Nadezhda Kumyiny is one of them. She's phoning from a small village in the Kursk region, southeast of Lyudinovo. She wants to borrow 30,000 rubles - just over $1,000. The woman taking her call fills in the details on a screen. Experienced call-center workers can process a request and grant pre-approval in under six minutes, but Kumyiny can't remember her zip code, which slows everything down. Watching over the process is deputy operations director Viktoriya Selezneva, who says the economic crisis has yet to arrive. "The volume...
Such optimism can be found elsewhere. The Kaluga region to which Lyudinovo belongs continues to draw in foreign investors, including automakers. VW has to date invested about $350 million in an assembly plant, and is producing about 320 cars per day. Peugeot is not far behind. Dietmar Korzekwa, VW's group representative for Russia, says the automaker is continuing with its current growth plans. In part, it's betting that if the Kremlin raises import taxes on autos, as it has suggested it might, it will become more advantageous to manufacture in Russia...
...Back in Lyudinovo, snow is falling heavily. Andrei Petrov, the biggest retailer in town, owns many of the stores, including the new emporium, and also runs a wholesale distribution business to supply them. Getting in to see him is hard. A security guard wants to know whether we are American spies. Petrov's deputy, Viktor Denisov, nervously locks his office door when he crosses the corridor to see his boss. Petrov is deliberately cagey about business prospects. Yes, an economic crisis is now raging, "but this is not the first time we've had one," he says. Indeed, back...