The political and economic changes in Russia in the last five years have been enormous, however, Russian psychiatry remains isolated from the mainstream. This isolation started in the aftermath of allegations in the seventies about the misuse of psychiatry, and has been exacerbated by recent economic uncertainty. I was therefore interested to receive an invitation to stay with a Russian psychiatrist for a week in September 1994, to investigate the possibilities of research collaboration between the Institute of Clinical Psychiatry in Moscow and the Department of Psychiatry in Southampton.