One good thing about being a Russian citizen is that you could enjoy the "Russian citizens prices" in some hotels and museums around the country, which often are 30% to 50% lower than those for the foreign nationals. Sounds a bit like discrimination against foreigners? Well, it is.

This unfortunate policy is rooted deep into the pre-capitalist system: USSR needed your dollars and pounds and used any excuse to extract as much of them as possible. The second reason: rich foreign tourists should subsidize Soviet museum-goers.

Now this policy is being slowly reversed, not only for anti-discrimination reasons, but mostly because Russians often have much more money than some tourists. The State Hermitage Museum, in St. Petersburg, announced that it is planning to make the price of the ticket the same for everyone. Right now, the "Russian" price for one entry to the Hermitage is 100 rubles ($3), while the "Foreign" is 350 rubles ($12).

Mikhail Piotrovsky, the museum's director, said that it is not yet clear what the price will be: "We can't lose revenue, so we will probably pick an average of the Russian and foreign admission price," said Piotrovsky.

Here is our suggestion how not to loose revenue: open a decent cafe at the Hermitage! After all, the place has a space for it, being a residence for the Russian tsars for over 300 years? But please, please make sure the tea is priced equally high for everyone. Including "foreign nationals".

Send email to Tatyana Foley, the author of this post, at tfoley@readrussia.com.

Hermitage Stops Charging Foreigners Higher Prices [OpenSpace.ru (in Russian)]