From Russia, with free WiFi

Rumour has it that every room in the Hotel Ukraina was bugged.

One of the magnificent Seven Sisters, the grand skyscrapers Stalin built to demonstrate the Soviet Union's prowess, it is one of Moscow's foremost hotels and important foreigners were accommodated there during the Cold War.

It is an architectural delight, with its unlikely combination of Russian baroque and Gothic architecture. Inside is the steel framework used in American skyscrapers.

It was a grand project originally begun in the 1930s, meant to showcase the Soviet bloc's cultural prowess.

Some historians say Stalin was embarrassed that Moscow didn't have the skyscrapers then becoming popular in US cities, but construction was halted by the Nazi invasion in 1941.

All seven - and an eighth building in Warsaw - were completed by 1956.

The best-known buildings are the Moscow State University and the ministry of foreign affairs, the latter arguably the most beautiful building to house a diplomatic corps. The Ukraina was the second-tallest of the Seven Sisters (at 198m) and was, some say, the world's tallest hotel until 1975.

It was renovated and reopened last year as the Radisson Royal Hotel Moscow.

It's no less impressive, clad with marble throughout, a tsars-era aesthetic, and it is considered the best hotel in Moscow.

It has impressive views of the Moskva River, the White House (the equivalent of Washington's) and has a Rolls-Royce dealership in the lobby, between luxury boutiques.

"It's the new Russia," an expat living in Moscow told me.

Indeed it is. There are signs of conspicuous consumption everywhere. Businessmen have meetings in the bar, elegant, beautiful women with Louis Vuitton handbags stroll through the lobby, and cruises on the nearby river attract wedding parties and the well-heeled generally.

The car park is packed with Mercedes, BMWs, Porsches, Lamborghinis and Ferraris.

South Africa is often compared to Russia. In both countries, a new, small elite has inherited most of the wealth, gets state contracts and hangs out in fancy hotels.

Seeing modern Russia living through its growing pains for the past 20 years, and watching the past few years of our own emergence from behind an iron curtain of racism and global isolation have reinforced this perception that South Africa has similar oligarchs.

These powerful men with state connections amass obscene wealth while the vast majority look on while living in abject poverty. "Tenderpreneurs" is our word for them.

On a three-day trip earlier this year I noticed that much had changed since I was in Moscow 18 months before. For one thing, there is Wi-Fi everywhere and it's free - a boon for a traveller who never uses expensive data roaming.

Internet connectivity is now as important as any other vital service, such as water or power. We live in an information age, a knowledge economy in which a connection to the internet is a connection to the world and all its promise.

I took a cruise on the Moskva River and even the boat had free Wi-Fi. It's like being in San Francisco, that bastion of free wirelessness and, as a result, hotbed of innovation.

In Russia, a small company called Kaspersky Labs (which hosted my trip) has become the fourth-largest internet security provider in the world. There is no way it could have done that without broadband.

In June, the UN declared internet access to be a human right - clearly a move to counter repressive governments shutting the internet to suffocate dissent, as in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria.

Faster connections are coming to South Africa, I know, but the telecoms and internet industry, and the whole country, are still hamstrung by the history of our lone telecoms operator. Compare that to Russia, where the third-largest telecoms company, Beeline, gives away the Wi-Fi I used.

• Shapshak is editor of Stuff magazine