sergey@tilarids-laptop:~$ python
Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Feb 17 2009, 16:03:38)
[GCC 4.1.2 (Gentoo 4.1.2 p1.3)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> s='КОШКА'
>>> s
'\xd0\x9a\xd0\x9e\xd0\xa8\xd0\x9a\xd0\x90'
>>> s=u'КОШКА'
>>> s
u'\u041a\u041e\u0428\u041a\u0410'
>>>
sergey@tilarids-laptop:~$ ipython
Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Feb 17 2009, 16:03:38)
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
[...skipped...]
In [1]: s='КОШКА'
In [2]: s
Out[2]: '\xd0\x9a\xd0\x9e\xd0\xa8\xd0\x9a\xd0\x90'
In [3]: s=u'КОШКА'
In [4]: s
Out[4]: u'\xd0\x9a\xd0\x9e\xd0\xa8\xd0\x9a\xd0\x90'
sergey@tilarids-laptop:~$ env | grep LANG
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
GDM_LANG=en_US.UTF-8