Russians Hit Wall Street for Stock Market Training : Securities: Merrill Lynch and Dartmouth give a course on the basics to 20 from the former East Bloc.

NEW YORK — Kirill Dibrova, floor administrator of the fledgling Russian Stock Exchange, was warned for years about “the sharks of American capitalism.”

Now he and his colleagues want to swim like the sharks.

For Dibrova and 19 other visiting financial professionals from the former Soviet Union and East Bloc, Wall Street has replaced the Kremlin as the font of power and influence. They took a crash course on market economics American-style--and loved it.

Welcome to Karl Marx’s worst nightmare and Merrill Lynch’s new dream--coming soon to a stock exchange far from you.

“When I’m back home in Moscow, I have to change a lot at my stock exchange,” said Dibrova, 28, as the six-week training program ended Friday. “The system here is impressive. The market here is boiling.”

The emerging market economy in the Commonwealth of Independent States has remained tepid and sputtering. That prompted a request by the St. Petersburg Exchange last year for assistance and training by New York-based Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., one of the world’s largest securities and capital market firms.

Merrill Lynch officials, with an eye toward future opportunities in Russia and elsewhere, agreed to pick up all costs of the training program, about $250,000.

When program director Judith Swedek, director of training at Merrill Lynch, visited the St. Petersburg Exchange last March, she was amazed to see a Chrysler New Yorker and a microwave on the trading floor. “They trade everything,” she said, smiling.

Once the 20 participants were selected--financial background and English-language ability were required--they were flown to New York in August for a course that might be called Capitalism 101.

In a 34th-floor conference room overlooking New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty, experts from Merrill Lynch and Dartmouth College’s Amos Tuck School immersed them in economic principles, the American and global stock and bond markets and general business practices.

They visited the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve Bank, did their own simulated market trading, studied debt and risk management--particularly handy skills to have back home--and learned about negotiating skills and ethics.

“This concept of ‘my word is my bond,’ it’s very uncommon for us,” said Katerina Kubasova, securities department manager for a Moscow investment bank.

Kubasova, the first woman to obtain a securities license in Russia, typified the exuberance of this mostly young group--optimism that seems almost misplaced amid Russia’s gloom-and-doom economic news.

“We have a lot of opportunities, and if we allow our system to develop without interruption, we will be wealthier than you in maybe 15 years,” she predicted boldly. “We have a lot of resources and great willingness to improve.”