Steve LeVine covers foreign affairs for BusinessWeek. He previously was correspondent for Central Asia and the Caucasus for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for 11 years. His first book, The Oil and the Glory, a history of the former Soviet Union through the lens of oil, was published in October 2007. Putin’s Labyrinth, his new book, profiles Russia through the lives and deaths of six Russians. It was released this week.

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A Blog on Russia, Central Asia and
the Caucasus

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Come Clean, Horelma

Mikhail Gorbachev is the latest to be drawn into the absurd story of the $97 million sale of London's Toprak Mansion. Last week, the former Soviet leader was feted at the 23,000-square-foot house by the real estate agent who sold it to a person he calls Hourieh Peramaa, supposedly a Kazakh refugee who fled the Central Asian country at the age of 17 in 1950 or 1951. Her husband is identified as Horelma Peramaa.

Here's how Kevin Sullivan at The Washington Post describes the party and a Persian beauty who is identified as Hourieh's daughter-in-law: Yassmin, 33, an elegant and towering woman in a remarkable red "hello, boys" dress, worked the room but politely declined to comment when approached by a reporter.

All right, folks, does anyone know a Kazakh named Hourieh? Why does this woman never speak? How did she cross one of the most secure borders in the world during Stalinism?

And who really owns that mansion?

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posted by Steve at 8:48 AM 6 Comments Links to this post