Europe's woes still command wide attention from the debt crises in Greece, Spain and Portugal, but a bump in oil prices is bringing a little positive light to Russia, a key emerging market that's starting to enjoy a larger role in the global recovery.

Russia is one of the emerging markets in the BRIC group (along with China, India and Brazil). Commodities dominate the nation s economy, which makes it an inherently volatile investing play. Wide swings in energy and metals prices and a heavy government hand in specific companies and sectors and a long history of entrenched corruption have earned Russia a reputation as a high-risk investment destination.

"It's a tough sell," says Adrian Ciocoi, an emerging markets analyst working with Riedel Research Group, an independent global equity research firm based in San Francisco. "The moment I said 'Russia' to many people, they would say, 'No. Tell me about the next investing idea you have.'"

Now, however, Russia s rewards may be starting to balance out its risks.

Russia bulls see a bright future for the country economically. Its currency has started to appreciate again after a rough devaluation a year ago, with the ruble trading at 30 to the U.S. dollar from 35.3 a year ago. The currency gained strength as oil prices climbed above $81 a barrel, which has given Russian companies a healthy incentive to tap the world's capital markets. Russia is now the source of a healthy pipeline of initial public offerings on global stock exchanges.

Ciocoi estimates Russian companies including aluminum producer UC RusAl, energy firm EurosibEnergo, chemical company Uralchem and media conglomerate ProfMedia have or will raise as much as $55 billion in new equity through share listings in London and Hong Kong through 2011.

The Market Vectors Russia Fund, a frequent leader and decliner among U.S. listed exchange-traded funds, is up a giddy 259% in the last 52 weeks. However, the fund has been a volatile play -- on Aug. 28 of last year, it was up 398% from March 10. Russian stocks listed in the U.S., such as WimmBillDann Foods and Mechel OAO, have performed even better.

Russia remains a market and a country -- with serious image problems in Europe and the United States. Its reputation has been hobbled by capricious politics, falling standards of living, lowered life expectancy and weak laws. But some say the outlook is brightening. Harold Warren, a vice president of trading at the institutional brokerage Auerbach Grayson, says he has an upbeat view for both the long and short term.

"It certainly has a very bright future if you ask me," he says. "But what's happening there that doesn't get through to the western press is that it's still evolving it's still going through de-Sovietization." In a huge country, Western norms and market reforms will take years to trickle down from Moscow and St. Petersburg to its vast interior, where many local economies are still based on the system of gulags, labor camps spawned during the old days of the Soviet Union, he says.

But as Russia modernizes, the world's investors are watching one area particularly closely. Rebounding commodities which make up 60% of Russia's exports are putting the national economy back on track.

"Coming out of the crisis, people looking at Russia are trying to decide whether the glass is half empty or half full," says Alexander Kliment, a Russia analyst at the Eurasia group, a New York political risk consultancy. "The headlines are GDP growth of 3% to 5% this year, which isn't great, but it's better than having it drop 8%, which is what it did last year in the worst of the global financial crisis."

Kliment says the government is taking steps to improve its image with foreign and domestic corporations, a much-needed step after the 2003 jailing of billionaire energy oligarch Mikhail Khodorovsky, whom Putin saw as a potential political rival.

Still, the government faces a formidable challenge. Its image makeover also involves pushing back a bit on the so-called siloviki ex-KGB peers of Putin's who corralled the ambitions and economic exploitation of the first wave of corporate oligarchs, then stepped in to take their place.

It's an uncommon sentiment in the West, but Warren says prospective investors could evaluate opportunities in Russia better if they take a more sympathetic view toward its leadership.

"Putin's balancing so many things he has to balance market reforms, but he also has to keep the pensioners and the rest of the Russian people clothed and housed, and to an extent he has to appease the siloviki," Warren says. "It disappoints me when the Western press gets critical and they don't see how hard it is to try to do this."

Even modest success could mean outsized gains for an investor with a high tolerance for risk.