Russia, Harvey Sawikin is hanging tough.

"We'll be there until it comes back again,'' he said on Tuesday during a hedge fund conference organised by the Institute for International Research.

Sawikin is a principal at Firebird Management LLC, which oversees $50 million in three offshore hedge funds. Two are Russia-specific funds, and one is a regional fund that invests in countries that were part of the former Soviet Union, like Kazakhstan and the Baltic states. Firebird Republics fund, which invests in publicly traded companies in the former Soviet Union, is listed on the Bermuda Stock Exchange.

Hedge funds are private partnerships for qualified investors who can afford to sock away between $250,000 and $1 million in a single shot. They're little regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and often use leverage, or borrowed money, to juice up returns in the global financial markets. Many hedge funds active in the emerging markets have come under fire lately for their poor performance.

Indeed, funds that invest in Eastern European countries are down 31.13 percent in August, according to Chicago-based tracking firm Hedge Fund Research.

Many well-known hedge fund managers have reported significant losses from bets that went sour in Russia after the government decided to halt trading in the rouble and defaulted on $40 billion in short-term debt in August. Financier George Soros said his $22 billion group of funds lost $2 billion in Russia over the past year.

So how is Firebird's Sawikin keeping his cool? Chalk it up to experience.

He went through the Russian downturn in 1995 and his hedge funds have withstood the test of time. Last year, Firebird's two Russia funds were up around 150 percent and investors cashed in some $100 million in profits.

Now, the Russia funds are down between 65 percent and 70 percent this year and the regional fund is off around 15 percent to 20 percent, he said. That's less than the 90 percent drop in the Russian stock market, though.