Changing Lifestyles : Russia Has New Luxury--and Some Old Habits : Ritzy hotel staffed by ‘heroes of capitalist labor’ is thriving.

Yuri Bondereyev spends his spring nights on the roof of the Royal Philharmonia. From there he watches the stars and listens to classical concerts, free. Best of all, he follows the goings-on at the hotel nightclub across the street.

“It’s good to see people having fun,” said Bondereyev, the concert hall’s handyman, as he dreamily watched St. Petersburg’s upper crust dancing and drinking. “I would also probably like to have a good time like that.”

It’s unlikely Bondereyev will ever be doing any of that at the Grand Hotel Europe. It would take half his monthly salary of 20,000 rubles (about $20) just to meet the club’s $10 cover charge.

The Europe is St. Petersburg’s most visible and probably most successful legal enterprise. Since reopening under the management of Sweden’s Reso Hotels chain in December, 1991, business has been roaring. In 1992, the hotel turned over $32 million and occupancy averaged 87%--despite basic room charges ranging from $175 to $820 per night.

Most impressive is the imported work ethic: In a country famous for listless and rude employees, the Grand Hotel Europe has found people willing to work Western hours and smile Western smiles. Among a population turned cynical by the unrealistic production demands and wild government boasts of the Communist era, the hotel has found fertile ground for a ludicrous management credo that urges employees to be Heroes of Capitalist Labor.

He operates by the “Elephant Principle,” says technical director Boris Petrikevitch: “If a guest calls the front desk and asks that an elephant be delivered to his room, the receptionist should ask two questions: ‘Will that be an Indian or an African elephant, sir? And what time would you like it there?’ That’s what five stars means.”

No one’s asked room service for an elephant yet, although employees, as they were in their red-kerchiefed Soviet Pioneer days, are vsigda gotovi --”always prepared.”

Meanwhile, workmen installed four additional phones, three fax lines and extra dark curtains at one mysterious guest’s bidding. For newspaper tycoon Allen Neuharth, chairman of the Gannett Foundation’s Freedom Forum, the hotel staff flew in eight Western newspapers daily. The staff quickly found a rare king-size bed when Ted Turner and Jane Fonda requested one on arrival.

And when a visiting sheik wanted news from home, hotel guests received three days of Arabic TV alongside their CNN and MTV. The hotel also made a kitchen available to the sheik’s cooks.

Other guests have been picked up by the hotel limousine straight off the runway at Leningrad International Airport, bypassing customs entirely. “With gifts, anything can be arranged,” explained front office manager Walter Neumann.

Is this the new Russia? Can the “Elephant Principle,” as communism before it, electrify the country? Is the Grand Hotel Europe’s staff of 430-odd Russians--hired, personnel manager Yuri Ugolnikov frankly admits, on the basis of good looks, youth and English skills--the vanguard of a new revolution?

Irina Nikolayeva thinks so. Reso Hotels rescued Nikolayeva from a run-down motel about 15 miles from St. Petersburg after she wrote them about her disgust with her lazy colleagues. Now she’s the Grand Hotel Europe’s back-of-house manager--and its firmest convert to the Elephant Principle.

“I think the hotel is very important,” Nikolayeva said. “People here unlearn their bad habits--laziness, irresponsibility. People who leave the hotel take those lessons with them.”

The hard currency hotel salary, coupled with management’s emphasis on English proficiency, makes it a haven for struggling professionals. Union leader Sergei Stepanov, a former professor of Russian literature, estimates that half the employees have doctorates or the equivalent. A handful of physicians work as chambermaids, waiters and security guards.

Even the doorman has a Ph.D. After defending his thesis in 1985, Kamil Novinsky became an assistant lecturer at the St. Petersburg Veterinary Institute. On 375 rubles a month, he supported his wife and their two children, ages 8 and 5, and, over his wife’s objections, tithed to the Mormon Church.

Novinsky, 35, started out as a dishwasher at the Grand Hotel Europe, then traded his steel wool for a black top hat and long coat. He now makes 2,000 rubles plus $27 in hard currency a month.

“In this hotel, we have some steps. Dishwasher is the first step, and then doorman,” Novinsky said. And what next? “After doorman? I don’t know. But I think . . . as a veterinarian.”

New employees aren’t just trained; they’re re-educated. When Olga Atsetieva, 19, and Ilyana Kovnoneva, 20, showed up for training to take room service orders over the phone, Peter Kumlin, manager of the hotel restaurant, ordered them instead to clear off and clean a series of metal shelves. They exchanged confused looks.

“This has nothing to do with the phones, so you see how the one girl, in her eyes, she was a little surprised,” Kumlin confided. The point, he said, is to promote a holistic view of the hotel: “If they see a napkin on the floor, they should pick it up; if they see something wrong, they should get a manager.”

Real training began with Peter playing the role of a guest calling room service. Ostensibly, the new hires were polishing their English, but the Elephant Principle is also introduced: Peter the “guest” shocked the women by demanding vodka for breakfast and by threatening to check out in a huff if room service couldn’t send up an exotic fruit juice not on the menu.

Unfortunately, Ugolnikov said, many applicants are quickly disillusioned by the Swedish-imposed work ethic: “They don’t always understand the reality. They think a five-star hotel means they are five-star people. They see themselves in the five-star atmosphere, resting, partying, practicing their English.”

But why shouldn’t they think that way? Only a chosen few Russians have even made it past the doorman. The rest form notions about what’s inside by what they see through the wide bay windows to the nightclub and the popular restaurant Sadko’s, by watching workers unload the tons of supplies trucked in from Western Europe every Friday, and by mixing in their myths, hopes and dreams.

Some of the rest of those Russians may resent the fact that they’re relegated to peeks through the window of the Grand Hotel Europe. But Anatoly Sobchak, St. Petersburg’s Western-oriented, pro-capitalism mayor, contends that the existence of the hotel is healthy for the society.

“It’s good to see expensive products in store windows, to see people living well--even if not all of us can afford such a lifestyle,” he says. “It’s an incentive. We’re seeing things today that we never knew existed, or knew of only through rumors.

“For a country closed to the outside world for 70-odd years, this sudden influx is a very important, and extremely wrenching, psychological adjustment.”

But really, an elephant?