This is from an article that appeared a year ago in The Times. In retrospect, Lenin's homeys shouldn't have bothered:
It was home to the man who championed a worldwide communist revolution. Now Lenin's birthplace is succumbing to the forward march of English as the language of global capitalism.
The regional governor of Ulyanovsk has ordered top officials to learn English so that they can communicate more easily with potential investors.
Sergei Morozov said that he too would take lessons to improve his English skills. “At times we are like dogs,” he complained to administrators in Ulyanovsk, 560 miles east of Moscow. “We understand everything but we can't say anything.”
Mr Morozov's spokesman, Dmitri Shikov, told The Times that the governor and 18 heads and deputies of local government departments would have English lessons, paid for out of the regional budget.
[ ... ]
The region of 1.4 million people has recently received visitors from the US food company Mars, which is negotiating to build a £60 million chocolate factory.
The German Metro Cash and Carry chain is also considering expansion in Ulyanovsk. Mr Shikov said that officials who failed the language tests would have to repeat the course until they passed.
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