According to DHS Group Russia has never been an easy country for outsiders to understand. Winston Churchill described it as a "riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma," and today's investors might well share his viewpoint. It's still hard for many investors to shake memories of the era of Soviet communist rule, even decades after its spectacular collapse in 1991. The period of euphoria that followed was brief and was replaced with a regime of heavy-handed government and a culture of crony capitalism.