SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1041 (7), Friday, February 4, 2005
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TITLE: Betting
Image Spurs Suit
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A descendant of celebrated St. Petersburg writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, who struggled to overcome a gambling addiction, is suing a lottery company for using the writer's image on its tickets.
Dmitry Dostoevsky, 59, the writer's great-grandson said Moscow-based company Chestnaya Igra's use of an image of the author of "The Gambler" is unauthorized, immoral, insulting and tactless.
He believes he has a good chance of winning in court.
He has claimed 200,000 rubles ($7,150) in damages, but says the fight is not about money.
"I find it outrageous that they are using the image of Dostoevsky, who struggled so hard to overcome his passion for gambling, to attract other people to gamble," the writer's great-grandson said.
"It is nothing but blasphemy and a personal insult. Besides, it is well known that 'The Gambler' has helped many people to give up betting."
Chestnaya Igra, which means Honest Play runs a nationwide sports lottery.
Lottery tickets bearing the images of Russia's finest, including scientist Mikhail Lomonosov, theater director Konstantin Stanislavsky, Tsar Alexander I, artist Karl Bryullov, commander Dmitry Pozharsky as well as Dostoevsky are sold in post offices across the country.
There are instant and weekly versions of the lottery. Each week a draw is broadcast live on RenTV.
Dostoevsky's lawyer Sergei Voronov said Chestnaya Igra's use of the image violated both the Constitution and the Civil Code.
"It is illegal to use anybody's name or image for commercial purposes without their permission or permission from their legitimate representative," Voronov said.
"A separate article says exactly the same thing about cultural figures."
Chestnaya Igra lawyer Vladimir Kravchenko wasn't available for a comment Thursday. The company's press secretary Natalya Starodubtseva said management will prepare a comment on the dispute, but this was not available Thursday.
Natalya Ashimbayeva, director of the Dostoevsky Memorial Museum in St. Petersburg, shared Dmitry's indignation.
"It is immoral and ugly indeed to use Dostoevsky's image in connection with gambling, if you bear in mind how much he suffered from his addiction, which he finally managed to overcome," she said.
"Talking to these people, explaining the ethical side of things to them wouldn't make any sense," she said Thursday in a telephone interview. "It is profits they are concerned about, not morals. Court action is the only way to address this."
Dmitry Dostoevsky isn't seeking any royalties. The copyright law protects writers for only 70 years after their death and Fyodor Dostoevsky died in 1881.
In addition, in Chestnaya Igra's case it is not Dostoevsky's work that is being exploited, but his personality, his great-grandson said."If they want to get an image to promote gambling, why Dostoevsky and not, say, [fellow 19th-century writer] Ivan Turgenev?" Dmitry said.
"The guy gambled more, spent more, lost more and had much more spare money anyway."
The first hearing was scheduled for Dec. 27 in Moscow's Tagansky district court, but was indefinitely postponed because Dostoevsky wasn't able to collect all the required documents in time to present them to the judge.
Dmitry Dostoevsky had to prove he was descended from the writer to the court.
An official statement from the Dostoevsky Memorial Museum wasn't enough.
The court requested the birth certificates of all the people that linked him to the writer. Some of these certificates are kept in archives, and some are outside of Russia.
"One of the birth certificates is stored in a historical archive in Simferopol, Ukraine, and they have had my request to acknowledge this for several months without yet acting on it," Dostoevsky said.
Dostoevsky plans to go to Moscow to try to convince the judge to get proceedings underway without the papers from Simferopol.
This year, Dmitry Dostoevsky registered the name Dostoevsky as a trademark and received the patent. This enables him to take legal action against any company using the name unethically.
To get the patent, Dostoevsky, with the support of the Dostoevsky Memorial Museum, wrote a request, mentioning the increased use of his ancestor's name "without a connection, without respect and without a context."
"The Alexander Solzhenitsyn Foundation paid the registration fee because they felt sympathy for our family's plight," Dostoevsky said.
Now, with a patent in hand, Dmitry Dostoevsky is planning more action over how his ancestor's name is used. His first step will be meeting with the managers of St. Petersburg's Dostoevsky Hotel.
"I am not really against them using the name, but they have a bed with the great writer's name written on the bed," he said.
"This is plain dirty, and far too low to be tolerated."
TITLE: Foreign Students Welcome City Hall Move
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Foreign students in St. Petersburg have welcomed City Hall's decision this week to set up a foreign students' council intended to help them with security, visas and other problems.
The move was mainly in response to attacks on foreign students, especially those who look foreign, on the city's streets. Some students have been killed.
The city government was eager to encourage students to stay in the city and has said it will do everything possible to protect students, and St. Petersburg's image.
Announcing the creation of the council, Governor Valentina Matviyenko said that the leaders of many countries are graduates of Russian universities and that hosting students was one way of promoting international relations.
"In connection with this, we should do all we can so that when students think of their time in St. Petersburg they have only good memories," Fontanka.ru quoted her saying.
St. Petersburg has the highest number of foreign students of any city in Russia, with more than 10,000 in the city. Every year those students put $90 million into the city economy, city officials said.
Among the latest and most brutal attacks was the October murder of a 20-year-old Vietnamese student studying at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University.
He was stabbed to death by a large group of youths, who were suspected to be skinheads.
Shattered by the murders, foreign students rallied in the city demanding the city government to protect them.
"We only study here, but they kill us," a poster held by one student at a protest meeting read.
Many foreign students said they want to leave Russia because they fear for their lives. A key complaint has been that the police don't protect them. Polce describe attackers as "hooligans" and make little effort to catch the offenders.
The committee will liaise with the foreign student community and make recommendations to city authorities about how to improve matters.
Vice Governor Sergei Tarasov, former head of the Legislative Assembly, was appointed the head of the new council. Alexander Viktorov, head of science and high education committee, and Alexander Prokhorenko, head of the foreign affairs and tourism committee, were appointed his deputies.
The council will consist of 23 people, including heads of universities, the head of St. Petersburg's passport and visa service and the head of City Hall's law and security committee.
"The city desperately needs such a council," said Andrew Suberu, 38, head of Nigerian community in St. Petersburg.
"St. Petersburg has many skinheads, who make our life here dangerous," he said.
"Foreigners, especially minorities, are just afraid to go out. In dormitories one can see warnings, which recommend that such students don't leave the building after 8 p.m."
Suberu, who has lived in St. Petersburg for 18 years, said he was attacked in 1999 and 2002.
He was especially concerned that "the nature of attacks on foreigners has changed" in recent years. They have gone "from mere robberies to murders," he said.
Priorities for the council should be to advise students on how to behave when they are threatened, to introduce stronger security around dormitories and to help in solving visa problems, he added.
Hashim Rungwe, 23, a Tanzanian law student at the St. Petersburg State University for Water Transport, said the council should develop new legislation that would make punishment for crimes against foreigners stronger.
If ordinary citizens witness attacks on foreigners and intervene, at least verbally, it would be a big help, Rungwe said.
Two weeks ago two youths wanted to beat him up in the metro, but a metro employee intervened and forced the troublemakers to leave the metro, he said.
Lev Karlin, head of the State Hydrometeorological University, told Izvestia that the council "must make the police work."
"We'll go to the governor, if the council doesn't do this," Karlin said.
Meanwhile, U.S. student Ryan Welch, 23, who has been studying history at St. Petersburg State University since September, said he hasn't had any security problems but he also welcomed the idea of the council.
"Most students who are attacked belong to minorities," Welch said.
But he had had difficulties because of bureaucracy in the process of visa registration.
When a student arrives in St. Petersburg, it usually takes more than a month to have their visa registered by officials.
During that time students can't leave the city, and carry a temporary document. This leads to problems if the police stop students to check registration status, he said.
"I think, the process of visa registration should go much faster and easier," Welch said.
Not only foreign students suffer from racial attacks in the city.
A 9-year-old Tajik girl was brutally stabbed to death in front of her father and young cousin last February.
In 2003, a group of young men killed a 6-year-old Tajik Roma girl and seriously injured a 5-year-old girl and 18-month-old baby in an attack at a camp south of the city. Seven suspects went on trial for the attack Monday.
Three youths received light sentences in March last year after being convicted of murdering an Azeri watermelon trader.
As the council starts its work, a 20-year-old Palestinian student was beaten up on Monday while a 20-year-old Chinese student was attacked on Jan. 18.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Finnish Economic Zone
HELSINKI (SPT) - A Finnish law on its exclusive economic zone came into force on Tuesday that will allow it better means to protect the environment outside Finnish territorial waters, the Finnish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
According to the UN Convention, the exclusive economic zone shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles. Finland has agreed on the outer limits of the maritime zones with Sweden, Russia and Estonia. The other coastal states of the Baltic Sea have already established their exclusive economic zones.
If an oil tanker flying a foreign flag unlawfully discharges oil into the sea within the zone, Finland can demand punishment under Finnish criminal laws, the statement said.
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Spit Off Danger List
PARIS (SPT) - The Curonian Spit, an elongated sand-dune peninsula straddling the border of Lithuania and Russia's Kaliningrad region, will not be inscribed on UNESCO's List of World Heritage in Danger, UNESCO's web site reported Tuesday.
The decision follows an 11th-hour agreement on Jan. 28 between the two countries to undertake an environmental assessment of the impact of oil exploration and production by Lukoil in the Baltic Sea, 22 kilometers from the World Heritage site.
In 2004, the World Heritage Committee had set a deadline of Tuesday for the two states to present a written agreement on an assessment or the spit would be added to the List of World Heritage in Danger.
Addicts Have Hepatitis
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Half of the city's 200,000 drug addicts have hepatitis and every fifth person is HIV-positive, Interfax reported Wednesday, citing city prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev.
Not enough is being done to stop the growth of drug addiction in the city, with 3,414 criminal cases bought against drug dealing in 2004, 43.5 percent less than in 2003, he said.
Rubens on Display
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The controversial Peter Paul Rubens painting of Tarquin and Lucretia, which is at the center of an ownership spat between Germany and Russia, has been restored and put on display in the State Hermitage Museum, NTV said Thursday.
The painting has been loaned to the museum by Moscow art collector Vladimir Logvinenko, who the Prosecutor General's Office say bought it in good faith.
The German government considers the painting to be stolen, after its removal from Germany by a Soviet soldier after World War II.
TITLE: Construction Boss
Leaves Committee
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The head of City Hall's construction committee, Yevgeny Yatsishin, resigned Tuesday for reasons that local politicians say are mainly linked to his alleged involvement in a business lobby that backed Governor Valentina Matviyenko during her election campaign in the fall of 2003.
Yatsishin, a former vice president of local firm LSR, a construction group, was appointed to head the committee in November 2003, just after Matviyenko won the gubernatorial election.
At that time, city construction firms expressed fears that competitors from Moscow, with whom Yatsishin allegedly had ties, would capture a larger stake in the local construction market. Yatsishin's actions showed that those fears were well founded.
Vladimir Golman, a Legislative Assembly lawmaker and head of Soyuzspetsstroi, which unites more than 300 local construction companies, said that during Yatsishin's time in office very few local developers, if any, were assigned plots of land in St. Petersburg.
"Getting access to the upper level of the city government is quite tricky for everybody," Golman said Thursday in a telephone interview. "He [Yatsishin] may have failed to achieve a balance between certain interests [on the local construction market] as well as build coordination within the committee itself."
"He arrived at City Hall at quite a difficult time," he added. "The government had abolished the commission for investments and tenders and was going to introduce a practice of [open] tenders [for land plots]. But not one tender has yet been held."
Announcing Yatsishin's departure Tuesday, Matviyenko did all she could to dampen suggestions that there had been any ill will behind his resignation. She presented a picture of being extremely happy with Yatsishin's work, awarding him with an official certificate of honor and granting him a post as her public adviser.
In a statement to the media, the governor contradicted what the local construction business had to say about Yatsishin's performance.
"When we were forming our team we decided to fill this position with a person from business and give him an order to transfer the regulation of the construction business on to a new track, to fully transfer it to the system of open tenders," local media quoted her saying. "Yevgeny Yatsishin fulfilled this target, and in addition, he has prepared our construction complex to be transferred to work in a system of open tenders for land plots."
"A [City Hall] target, to build 2 million square meters of residential space last year, was reached," she said. "The contract with Yevgeny Yatsishin was signed for one year and today the government is also fulfilling its obligation and releasing Yevgeny Yatsishin with a clear conscience."
Vladimir Yeryomenko, a member of the United Russia faction of the Legislative Assembly, said Matviyenko's predecessor Vladimir Yakovlev, paid off those who supported him in his 1996 gubernatorial election campaign with appointments to influential posts in his administration.
"In 1996, Yakovlev appointed [Andrei] Mokrov, the former head of Soyuzkontrakt advertising department, to head City Hall's media committee," Yeryomenko said Monday in a telephone interview.
"Mokrov had been closely involved in Yakovlev's image-making campaign during the elections," Yeryomenko said. "He also succeeded in working for one year and then left just Yatsishin is doing now,"
"It probably became clear to him [Yatsishin] that this work is not that interesting and, besides, there were some tensions between him and [Alexander] Vakhmistrov [vice governor responsible for the construction sector]," Yeryomenko added.
"As a result of his departure, Vakhmistrov's position will be stronger. He will be able to increase his influence [on the local construction market]," Yeryomenko said.
Matviyenko's appointment of Roman Filimonov, Yatsishin's former deputy, to head the construction committee is a victory for Vakhmistrov, Yeryomenko said.
TITLE: Suspect Admits Buying Killers' Gun
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Pavel Stekhnovsky, one of the suspects charged in connection with the 1998 assassination of State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova, admitted in a St. Petersburg court Tuesday that he bought the gun investigators believe was used to kill her.
Stekhnovsky, who was extradited from Belgium in January, said that in 1998 he knew all the people prosecutors say organized the assassination, but could not remember how he got to know them.
He had worked as a driver for Sergei Musin, for whom a federal warrant has been issued, and later was hired as a guard for the security company Holy Night Alexander Nevsky, which the suspects also worked for.
Stekhnovksy appeared as a witness, not as a suspect, and was not put in the cage in the courtroom with the other accused. He is being held in a Federal Security Service jail.
"In the fall of 1998 I became a middleman for buying a weapon from a man called Fedotov for Musin," Interfax quoted Stekhnovsky as saying in the courtroom.
One day Stekhnovsky received a telephone call from an acquaintance, who he identified as Sapozhnikov, offering him a foreign machine-gun. Stekhnovsky said he told Musin about the offer and that Musin was interested. However, Musin did not want to meet arms dealers and asked Stekhnovsky to collect the weapon from Fedotov.
"Musin gave me a bag, I took it, and went to Fedotov, who put a package in it," Stekhnovsky said. "I went outside, left the bag in the street, as Musin instructed, and left. The same day Musin called me and said everything was all right."
He later met the dealers and paid them $3,000, Fedotov said.
Stekhnovsky said he learned about Starovoitova's assassination from the radio and was unaware that his buying the gun could have played any role in the deputy's murder, he said.
Meanwhile, defense lawyers have demanded another investigation of the Agran-2000 used in the slaying.
Lawyer Valery Sandalnev said that since the gun had been damaged during the examination, it is no longer capable of being fired and should therefore be withdrawn as an exhibit in the case, Interfax reported.
Ruslan Linkov, Starovoitova's former assistant who was injured during the attack, said this was no reason for the gun to be withdrawn.
"The gun was examined about 10 days after the assassination and it worked," Linkov said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
"The defense is merely trying to drag out the case and exclude certain evidence so that it cannot be used in the future against people for whom federal search warrants have been issued."
The trial, which began last winter, could be finished by April if the defense had not resorted to such delaying tactics, he said.
Seven suspects are on trial in St. Petersburg, including Yury Kolchin, who at the time of the crime was an employee of the military intelligence General Staff's Main Directorate, or GRU, Igor Lelyavin and his brother Vyacheslav, Vitaly Akishin, Igor Krasnov, Anatoly Voronin and Yury Ionov. All were born in the city of Dyadkovo in the Bryansk region.
Federal arrest warrants have been issued for Sergei Musin, Oleg Fedosov and Igor Bogdanov.
TITLE: Pensioner Dies
In Benefit Line
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg pensioner Alexander Pechnikov, 75, died while standing outside in a line to get his pension and a certificate to receive free medicine near the office of the Russian Pension Fund in the city's Nevsky district on Monday.
So many elderly people had turned up at the office that they were told by office employees to wait outside. The temperature was -8 degrees Celsius.
Pechnikov, who suffered from ill health and was a registered invalid, felt unwell and died. Doctors said he died of heart failure.
Thousands of city pensioners flooded the streets in January to protest the new law, which had changed their traditional benefits for what they consider insufficient monetary compensation.
City Hall responded to the protests by agreeing to give public transport discount passes to pensioners, but now elderly people must wait in long lines to get them and other services.
TITLE: Disbelief as State Says GDP Climbs 7.1%
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Statistics Service announced Wednesday that the economy expanded by 7.1 percent last year, well above the 6.5 percent to 6.9 percent forecast by market watchers and the government itself.
The reported growth, however, nearly meets the 7.2 percent annual rate needed to meet President Vladimir Putin's goal of doubling the economy by 2010 - fueling market speculation that the official figure might have been inflated.
Gross domestic product grew in 2004 to 16.7788 trillion rubles, or nearly $600 billion according to current exchange rates, the State Statistics Service said.
The figure, however, is very preliminary and could be revised later on, said Irina Masakova, head of the service's national accounting department. "More or less full information will be available in October or November 2005 ... while the precise figure will not come until 2006," she said.
Official statistics are regularly adjusted. For example, 1999's initial GDP growth of 3.5 percent was later revised to 5.4 percent, and 2000 growth from 8.3 percent to 9 percent.
Official government forecasts for 2004 had seen growth slowing down to 6.8 percent to 6.9 percent, from 7.3 percent in 2003. Economists had predicted growth would be closer to 6.5 percent, citing factors such as investor caution over the politically tinged legal assault on oil giant Yukos and the slowing down of several key economic indicators.
"The numbers look suspicious," said Anton Struchenevsky, economist at Troika Dialog. "Monthly data released by the service throughout the year do not match the end result."
He said 7.1 percent growth could have been reached if small and medium-sized businesses experienced significant growth - a figure that is only calculated once a year, in December, Struchenevsky said. If that was the case, however, it is hard to believe that the government would have failed to notice the growth earlier and adjusted its official economic forecasts accordingly, he said.
"I believe that any growth took place in the first half of the year, while the second half showed signs of stagnation," Struchenevsky said.
Alexei Moisseyev, head of fixed income research at Renaissance Capital, said he was puzzled by discrepancies in figures describing certain parts of the economy.
A buildup of 40.5 percent in inventories is particularly bewildering, he said. In simple terms, that growth means Russian producers have accumulated huge reserves of ready-to-be-sold goods.
"Essentially the entire year's result was saved by this figure," Moisseyev said.
Even if the figure is correct, the buildup is very unhealthy, he said. "This means that the warehouses of, let's say the Izhevsky car plant, are stuffed with IZh cars," he said. "In this situation, the plant should really stop production until all the cars are sold.
"So this figure only shows stagnation in the manufacturing sector."
Economists have been stressing for months that even though household consumption is on the rise, manufacturing has been showing signs of stagnation.
The data released Wednesday suggest that the fourth quarter of 2004 saw fast growth - a contradiction of figures by Central Bank-run Moscow Narodny Bank, which puts together a GDP indicator based on regular surveys of purchasing managers in the manufacturing and services sectors.
The official data suggest that the economy grew by nearly 8 percent in the fourth quarter, while MNB calculated the growth at 4.5 percent.
Details about how the statistics agency arrived at its figures were unclear, and Masakova could shed little light on the matter. Asked about the effect of high global oil prices on the agency's GDP calculations, she said her department does not specifically study the relationship between the two. "Of course there is some, but we do not specialize in calculating it," she said.
With world oil prices staying at record highs throughout the year, Russia - the world's biggest exporter after Saudi Arabia - enjoyed a huge inflow of petrodollars.
TITLE: Sistema Plans India Buy-In
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: AFK Sistema, owner of Russia's number one mobile network MTS, agreed to invest $450 million to buy a stake in an Indian mobile-phone service provider as part of its move to expand abroad.
The holding company, controlled by Russian billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov entered into a preliminary agreement with Sterling Infotech, part of a group that owns telecommunications assets in India, in December, Sistema said Thursday in a stock prospectus mailed out to investors.
It proposed buying a stake in one of Sterling's units. "Everyone is looking to India, China, Russia and Brazil for growth, so this makes sense for the company," said Tom Adshead, an analyst at brokerage Metropol in Moscow. "Sistema has shown it can build a mobile-phone business in emerging markets."
When and if approved by regulators, Sistema will acquire a 49 percent stake in Aircel Televentures Ltd., better known as ATVL, the company said. It will seek to increase its stake to 51 percent when Indian legislation permits foreign companies to own a controlling stake.
In Russia's largest initial public offering ever, Sistema is currently selling as much as $1.55 billion in shares. The company already controls Mobile TeleSystems, the business activities of which it has been developing abroad since 2001. With its backing, MTS won a tender along with a state company to offer services in Belarus, in 2003 bought a stake in a Ukraine cellular operator, and last year - an Uzbek operator.
The financing of the Sistema's purchase in Indian may come from debt that is owed to the former Soviet state, the prospectus said.
"We are currently reviewing a potential opportunity to invest in India's mobile telecommunications market, partially using debt financing from the Russian government, involving a swap of Indian sovereign debt from Russia to Sistema," the stock prospectus said.
Aircel Televentures owns 100 percent of Aircel Ltd. and Aircel Cellular Ltd. Aircel is the largest mobile-phone service provider in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, excluding the city of Chennai.
(Bloomberg, SPT)
TITLE: Rosneft: Ex-Owners Will Pay
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - State-controlled oil company Rosneft will pass off billions in tax debts owed by the newly acquired Yuganskneftegaz production unit to shareholders of the unit's previous owner, Yukos, the president of Rosneft said Thursday.
Sergei Bogdanchikov told a news conference in the Far Eastern city of Yuzhno Sakhalinsk that nearly $5 billion in tax debts the government says Yuganskneftegaz owes would be shifted to Yukos' shareholders, Interfax reported.
"As a result of a specific policy, which Yukos conducted in relation to Yuganskneftegaz, the company has suffered damages," he was quoted as saying. "And so, we must now turn back this [debt] to the shareholders of Yukos, which mismanaged the company."
Rosneft acquired Yuganskneftegaz following a disputed auction in December, which the government conducted to pay off a portion of what it said was $23 billion in back tax claims owed by Yukos. Yuganskneftegaz was Yukos' largest production unit.
The Group Menatep holding company, which was created by Yukos' jailed ex-CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, controls some 60 percent of Yukos' shares. Group Menatep says the auction of Yuganskneftegaz was illegal and has threatened to sue anyone involved in its sale. Tim Osbourne, a director at Menatep Group, said it was "totally ludicrous" that Rosneft should seek to redirect the tax claims against the holding company.
"Even as a matter for Russian law... you buy the company you buy. They knew about the tax claims against Yuganskneftegaz," Osbourne said. "Now they are reneging on the debt. I think it's a farce."
Earlier Thursday, Interfax reported Bogdanchikov as saying that Rosneft was ready to participate in a planned oil pipeline from Siberia to a port on the country's Pacific coast. The pipeline, which is expected to cost between $11 and $16 billion will have a capacity of 80 million tons per year and will supply the oil-hungry economies of Japan and China.
Bogdanchikov said Rosneft's plans to produce 78 million tons of oil in 2005.
Also Thursday, a Moscow court refused to overturn the arrest of a Yukos lawyer who has been charged with asset-stripping. Svetlana Bakhmina was detained for questioning by prosecutors Dec. 8. Earlier, Moscow's Basmanny court had extended her custody until May 2. Bakhmina's lawyer Olga Kozyreva argued that her client had been illegally detained while only a suspect in the case, Interfax reported.
"Bakhmina was just a suspect, not a defendant, when she was taken into custody," Kozyreva said. Most of Yukos top chiefs currently work from abroad, having fled the country for fear of prosecution.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Svyazinvest to Be Sold
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Svyazinvest, the national telephone monopoly, will be sold this year after the Russian government approved a plan to sell the state's entire stake in the company, said Prime-Tass, citing Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref.
Russia plans to sell its 75 percent minus one share of the company this year, said Prime-Tass today, citing Gref. The government has drafted a presidential decree necessary for the sale. A sale will take place in the second half of the year, said Communications Minister Leonid Reiman Wednesday, without specifying how much would be sold. Svyazinvest controls the nation's seven regional fixed-line providers and the national long-distance provider.
Early Pay-Back in Paris
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Russia may repay its $44.4 billion debt to the Paris Club of 19 creditor governments ahead of schedule, Interfax reported President Vladimir Putin as saying.
Russia is "in talks over the possibility of such a decision with the Paris Club, as well," Putin said at a meeting with World Bank President James Wolfensohn in Moscow on Thursday, Interfax reported.
TITLE: Electrolux Lacks City Suppliers
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Swedish manufacturer Electrolux will not invest in its second factory in the Northwest region until it can find enough parts producers locally to make the project worthwhile, general director of Electrolux St. Petersburg Nicholas David said Thursday.
The share of locally manufactured washing-machine parts needs to increase dramatically before Electrolux will expand production in Russia, David told 80 St. Petersburg manufacturers at a St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce meeting organized by city officials.
"Future investment will depend on the success of the first plant. And the key to success is finding local components," David said.
Consumer appliances maker Electrolux plans to invest 60 million euros ($78 million) into building the second plant, but has yet to decide between a Leningrad Oblast or a St. Petersburg location. Local content needs to make up over 41 percent of the total parts before the company can make a favorable decision regarding the investment, David said.
Electrolux's first 9-million euro washing machines factory will open in St. Petersburg this summer. The company was able to secure 11 local suppliers to produce over 20 percent of the parts, but it says even a 50 percent share of locally produced parts by 2007 is not ambitious enough.
"I insist that we have a plan to dramatically increase the local content," said Jean-Michel Paulange the company's senior vice president.
Securing local production has been a top priority for all international manufacturers operating in the St. Petersburg region. It minimizes storage, production, import and logistics costs. Thus the availability of qualified manufacturers in the region plays a key role in increasing a region's attractiveness to investors, something city officials say they have kept in mind.
"The city is prepared to offer tax breaks and the territory for Electrolux's future plant, but we hope for your ability to supply the component parts," said Vladimir Blank, head of the city's economic development committee, to representatives of local parts producers at the meeting.
Last week, Blank said City Hall plans to spend 1.9 billion rubles ($69 million) on a program to improve the potential for the city's industrial development.
The reaction from local manufactures proved quite meek, with industrial development yet to meet the levels sought by international manufacturers. In their turn, local producers named tough quality requirements, the lack of logistics and mass-production structure as the factors impeding production.
The current situation has not left Electrolux management expressed despondent: they remained optimistic of meeting their goals.
"We need very simple things to be met and we hope to find the companies that are able to do that," David said.
Electrolux is also teaming up with management of Russia's Ford plant in Vsevolozhsk, which has 23 local suppliers, on production coordination projects, David said.
TITLE: Real Deal Only a Dream
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Re-instatement of the five-day period for the official registration of city real estate deals - as opposed to the currently enforced one-month term - appeared to be just wishful thinking as city officials denied possible legislature change, Rosbalt reported Monday.
Expectation among St. Petersburg real estate companies of a reversal in the unpopular regulation was dashed as officials from the local department of the Federal Registration Service (FRS) said that the one month period, introduced in Jan. 1, will continue to be enforced.
"Until now the old regulation [of Jan. 1] is in force. There were no orders received to change the terms from Feb. 1," Rosbalt news agency cited the registration service as saying this week.
According to governmental decree the St. Petersburg Registration Bureau has quit its function as a municipal organization and was made a federal responsibility.
Rumors of a change started circulating in the local media from an interview with Pavel Shtepan, president of the St. Petersburg Real Estate Association, published in an industry weekly Novostroika.
"It is possible that starting from Feb. 1 the registration of real estate deals will take just five days in St. Petersburg and 10 days in the Leningrad Oblast," the paper quoted Shtepan as saying last week.
By this week, the change not only turned out to be impossible, it looked as if reporters had misheard Shtepan - and published instead what many investors in the area dreamed to hear.
"One of the papers saying that he made this announcement does not actually mean that he made it," a secretary at the Real Estate Association said Thursday in a telephone interview.
Apart from the elongation of the registration period, the cost of the process has changed. Since Jan. 1 an individual must pay 100 to 500 rubles ($3.57 to $17.85) to register a deal, while for companies the price is from 2,000 to 7,500 rubles ($71.42 to $268).
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Swedish Ferry Deal
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Swedish ferry line company Stena Line Freight said it will establish direct routes between Sweden and one of the ports in the Kaliningrad region, Interfax reported.
The company's director Michael Macgart announced the company's intentions during a meeting with the Kaliningrad region Governor Vladimir Yegorov on Wednesday.
Baltica Seeks City Link
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Rail Baltica, a high-speed railway the European Union plans to build through the three Baltic nations, would benefit the region more if it extended to St. Petersburg, Latvian Transport Minister Ainars Slesers said.
"This project would be better if Russia participated,'' Slesers said Thursday at a press conference in Vilnius. "St. Petersburg is a big, important city, and its inclusion would add significant economic value to the route."
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which joined the EU on May 1, have poor road, rail and energy connections with the rest of the 25-nation trading bloc. The EU plans to pay most of the 4 billion euros ($5.2 billion) it will cost to build a modern rail link from Tallinn, Estonia, through Riga, Latvia, and Kaunas, Lithuania, to Warsaw by 2016.
The Russian government has expressed an interest to participate in Rail Baltica, Slesers said. "I have discussed this with the Russian transport minister, and we will soon due to perform a logistics study."
MiG Bids for India Deal
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Jet fighter manufacture MiG Corp. is aiming to improve its finances by bidding on a possible Indian order for 126 aircraft, said Chief Executive Alexei Fedorov.
MiG may compete in the Indian tender for jet fighters with Dassault Aviation SA of France, BAE Systems Plc of Britain and Lockheed Martin Corp. of the U.S., Fedorov said.
The aircraft firm owes about $290 million to Russia and another $300 million to commercial banks, Brunswick UBS brokerage said in a report in December.
MiG is currently on schedule to deliver the 16 planes to India starting in 2007, after a "second payment" from the Indian government enabled MiG to finance the $700 million project, Fedorov said Thursday at a press conference.
FAS Halts Investigation
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Russia's Federal Anti-Monopoly Service halted an investigation Gazprom, the world's biggest natural gas producer, and its acquisition of more than 25 percent in Moscow's dominant power utility, Mosenergo.
The service will instead investigate Gazprombank, a Gazprom unit, because the shares are held on the balance sheet of the bank, said Igor Artemyev, head of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service.
Gazprom spent 5.81 billion rubles ($207.5 million) between July 1 and Oct. 31 to increase its stake in Mosenergo by 6.62 percent, the gas producer said Thursday in a financial report.
Mosenergo shares soared as much as three-fold in the second half of 2004, amid speculation Gazprom was trying to boost its stake ahead of the power company's restructuring. Currently, the domestic power industry, including Mosenergo, is being broken up into separate generation, transmission and distribution companies to attract needed investment.
TITLE: The Shaky Ground of Poverty
TEXT: Today, many believe that economic growth and state social policy are incompatible. I am convinced, however, that improving the quality of people's lives is no less important than the ups and downs of economic indicators. It is not only important from a moral perspective, but also for profoundly practical reasons. Society must be stable to ensure successful, long-term economic development.
If economic policies proceed from investors' interests alone and ignore social priorities, growth will be very short-lived, or in any case it will not last long in a democratic state. Economic development can only be called healthy when a large portion of the population reaps the benefits of this growth and when the lives of the majority of families change tangibly for the better.
Count Sergei Witte, one of Russia's most eminent 19th-century politicians and finance minister under Tsar Nikolai II, had some interesting reflections on this subject in his memoirs. From his point of view, the most important problem facing Russia in the 20th century was that Russians thought of themselves economically as only half or a quarter of the average European. Looking back on his very eventful life, Witte saw that the glory and might of the Russian Empire was standing on shaky ground. The poverty and illiteracy of the majority of peasants at the time were not merely problems afflicting the poor themselves. They were problems for the entire country. Yet Russia had neither the money nor the qualified specialists needed for the kind of large-scale modernization projects that would have put the country on par with more progressive nations. This remains a common problem in poorer countries, just as it was a hundred years ago.
With its rickety social structure, Russia has developed by the sheer force of the government. It was the government that, by means of proactive economic policies, created the conditions for the industrial boom in the early 20th century, a boom that in many ways has not been surpassed to this day. The country had a chance to develop a stable society with a large middle class. But all the state had to do was weaken for a moment, and it broke down right where Witte said it would.
I do not want to draw direct comparisons between the revolutionary era and our own. Only 15 years ago, at the beginning of the economic crisis, Russia had a fairly uniform society. Today, Russians generally have a very high level of education and training. The country has everything it needs to develop an efficient modern economy. But let's take a look at the economic status of the average Russian compared to a European or American. If we compare GDP per capita, we end up with precisely the infamous quarter Witte noted: $8,000 per year versus $30,000 in Europe or the United States. This is the result of 10 years of economic crisis.
The minority of citizens capable of fitting into the market enjoy all the creature comforts of modern civilization. The rest are not only deprived of all the benefits modern technology has to offer; they are falling further and further behind its constantly growing demand for new skills. We could end up falling into a trap where the successful minority and the poor majority will become like two separate nations in a single country.
A significant portion of the younger generation is not getting the knowledge and skills needed to work in today's economy. In other words, the skill potential of the Russian population is not being reproduced. This is a serious problem. Poverty is terrifying for more reasons than its material deprivation and personal suffering. Poverty of this kind will end when the economic crisis that spawned it ends. Yet if poverty drags on for decades, if it is handed down to coming generations, it will also be terrifying because there will be no way to escape it. When the growing economy offers all sorts of excellent jobs to young people, they will not be properly prepared to fill them.
Russia has yet to confront this problem in its full-blown form. Poverty here has yet to become persistent. The problem will begin to loom on the horizon, however, if the government does not begin to take action right now.
This does not mean that Russia should become a government of the poor and for the poor. Quite the contrary. We must take decisive measures to pull people out of poverty, as well as creating the conditions for them to return and reintegrate into contemporary society and the modern economy.
The key to solving this problem is untangling one of the most astounding paradoxes of the Russian economy. The majority of people who are poor and need state support have steady, full-time employment, and some of them even have post-secondary educations. This reflects the twisted nature of how personal incomes evolved during the years of economic crisis.
The state needs to implement a consistent and logical policy to increase Russians' incomes. There should be a state program to create a large middle class. The government should take an interest in the class of people that could become the main source of stability for the country. An expanding middle class would furthermore help accelerate economic growth. Middle-class consumer demand would boost the domestic market. Highly qualified and highly motivated middle-class workers would create highly competitive goods and services.
Government policy at present is phrased in terms of support and assistance. This is understandable when we are discussing help for the disabled and the elderly, for those who cannot always provide for themselves. Yet tens of millions of workers are creating the national income that allows Russia to survive. If they nonetheless need state assistance, this means we need to re-examine and revise the government's economic policy.
The absurd expression "business aid" has become a cliché. Business by definition is an activity that makes money. Business activities and the taxes they generate are the material basis for state assistance to those who truly need it.
We have to change our approach to fighting poverty. Healthy workers and entrepreneurs do not need aid. They need normal working conditions. To provide them, the government should implement policies to increase the wages of state employees, to develop small business and to create a system for encouraging companies that are working on innovative products and creating jobs with decent salaries.
In today's world, economic growth is defined as never before by a country's scientific potential, level of education and the skills of its labor force. A high-tech economy makes certain demands of a society. It will not take root in an impoverished and internally divided country. For this reason, ending poverty and forging a single, integrated society are not only the preconditions for political stability, but also for successful economic development. This is the most important aim of government policy. By solving it, the government stands to increase, not diminish, Russia's national wealth.
Sergei Mironov is Federation Council speaker. He contributed this comment to Vedomosti, where it first appeared.
TITLE: The Kremlin's Double Standards
TEXT: I don't want to insult the people in charge of Russia's foreign policy, but the recent behavior of officials toward the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe resembles a bull in a china shop. Over recent months, Russia has said it wants to restrict the activity of European observers on Russian soil. The restrictions would mainly apply to the North Caucasus and the Chechen, Ingush and Dagestani sections of the Georgian-Russian border, in particular.
In hopes of enforcing these restrictions, the Kremlin has basically tried to blackmail the OSCE, saying it would not pass the organization's budget for 2005 unless it accepted Russia's limits.
Russia wants to kill a dozen birds with one stone, as it is also proposing to slash its annual contribution to the OSCE from $11.5 million to about $4 million.
The reasons for holding up the budget are quite clear. The OSCE has exposed the Kremlin as a defender of dishonest elections around the former Soviet Union. In Russia's regions, the use of administrative resources has obliterated the basic human right to participate in free elections. After losing the game in every recent election in post-Soviet countries, Russia's response has been to argue that the West was trying to introduce its standards by demanding control over the voting process. President Vladimir Putin even went so far as to claim that the West was acting like a "tough but good guy in a pith helmet."
According to this logic, the Kremlin should quit the OSCE altogether and save itself the membership fee. Instead, it is demanding that the OSCE be reformed. This stance cannot be taken seriously. It seems like part of a comedy act.
In December, Alexei Borodavkin, the State Duma's representative to the OSCE, accused the organization of double standards and bias in its election monitoring. "The organization has shown tendencies toward stagnation and regression, and bias, double standards, and so various kinds of imbalances have come to dominate," Radio Liberty quoted him as saying. "Naturally, this destabilizes the political situation in these countries and gives rise to various kinds of extremist statements and, sometimes, actions. The latest example in Ukraine is very illustrative."
Yes, it was quite illustrative, especially in relation to the Kremlin's policy, but this, it seems, doesn't bother most Russian politicians.
One thing I just can't seem to understand is how the Kremlin could be so thoughtless as to accuse the OSCE of introducing double standards, when Russian officials and Putin are guilty of just that in their bizarre relationship to the organization. Their logic is puzzling: Russia calls for changes to the OSCE and then demands the organization let Russia reduce its financial participation to 1.69 percent of its budget. In other words, you do everything we tell you to, but we won't do a thing for you.
"Russia cannot be understood with the mind," as Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev said back in the 19th century, and in this case, the phrase hits the nail on the head.
We are left wondering, however, which part of the human body we should be using to comprehend the behavior of a government that considers the country it runs an important player in European society.
I had hoped that the recent experience with Ukraine's presidential elections would have brought the Russian political elite to its senses.
They should have grasped that Europe does not have to reform its organizations to please the Kremlin and that the Kremlin needs to reform its foreign and domestic policy if it wants to get closer to European standards of living. Achieving those standards is what those behind the Kremlin walls have announced as their aim many times.
Yet the Kremlin keeps hitting its head against the wall and ignoring the open door right next to it. This can mean only one thing: Putin has a really sturdy pith helmet.
TITLE: The shock of the new
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A Lenin double tossing and turning restlessly in a coffin.
A Chechen man armed with a long knife and a Nazi soldier, seen from above, form a hammer and sickle, the notorious Soviet symbol.
These artefacts, and a dozen more installations, performances and artworks equally mocking of Communist ideology, are currently on show at, of all places, a former Lenin Museum on Revolution Square in the Russian capital, part of the first Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, which runs to the end of February.
In the Soviet Union, alternative artists were punished by the state and their works met little understanding from a public brought up on the inviolable 19th century classics.
But these days it is not the image of Lenin turning in his grave that irks the elderly protesters gathering for daily protests outside the Lenin Museum. They gather to protest against social reforms by the government - what is inside the Lenin Museum doesn't matter to them. And from the state, rather than confrontation, the Biennale has received a handsome pile of cash. The Culture and Press Ministry has put some $1.5 million into the enterprise.
The project's most ambitious goal is to put Russia back on the world map of contemporary art, that is, back to a place it hasn't occupied since the 1930s.
Five Moscow-based artists are showing their work in the main show. Grozny-born painter Alexei Kallima is showing a mural on the theme of the Chechen conflict, while David Ter-Oganyan presents "It is Not a Bomb," a suspicious-looking construction made out of cardboard boxes, scotch tape and alarm clocks crafted to look like explosives.
In order to make a direct link with its venue, curators have decided to use the Lenin Museum's largest room, a cinema hall decorated with high-relief patriotic sculptures, to screen the ultimate Soviet movie, Mikhail Romm's 1958 "Lenin is Alive" ("Zhivoi Lenin").
As a reminder of another totalitarian regime, the young Chinese photographer Cao Fei has filled one of the halls with miniature versions of former Chinese Communist Party leader Deng Xiao Ping.
The Moscow Biennale has been prepared by six curators, only one of whom is from Russia.
Works by 41 artists and creative groups from Russia, the U.S., France, China, Germany, India, Cuba and other countries comprise the festival's main event, "Dialectics of Hope," which is being staged not only at the Lenin Museum building, but also at the Shchusev Architecture Museum and even on the platforms of the Vorobyovy Gory metro station.
Contemporary art is one of the few things that Moscow seemed to lack until now, and the city has made a huge effort to plug this gap, although the result is not to everyone's taste. As Biennale commissioner Yevgeny Zyablov puts it, contemporary art doesn't have to be beautiful. Rather, he said, it should explore, provoke and offer food for thought.
Mikhail Shvydkoi, the high-profile head of the Federal Agency For Culture and the Film Industry, told reporters he enjoyed what he saw.
"If we are thinking about our country's future, then it is important to support contemporary artistic movements," Shvydkoi said at the Biennale opening last Friday. "Besides, it is crucial for us to show that Russia is not the kind of off-the-track place but a country living within the international artistic context."
In addition to the central exhibition, the festival encompasses 30 or so stand-alone events in galleries and museums across the city. These special projects are taking place everywhere from the New Tretyakov Gallery, to the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, to the Russian State University for the Humanities, and even a pedestrian underpass near Proletarskaya metro station.
Maria Potapova, who runs an architecture project in the St. Petersburg's Pro Arte Institute, said St. Petersburg artists are making a strong showing at the Biennale.
An impressive group of St. Petersburgers, including Vitaly Pushnitsky, Tatyana Goloviznina, Natalya Pershina-Yakimanskaya (Glyuklya) and Olga Yegorova, have incorporated their works into the "Human Project" ("Chelovechesky Proyekt) among work by 16 other artists.
Manifesting what its curators brand, tongue-in-cheek, "new seriousness," the project is calls for an end to skepticism, irony and endless critical comments about others and is meant to encourage a more active attitude toward life.
St. Petersburg art critic Marina Koldobskaya is a curator of the "Human Project." As she points out, the issue of "new seriousness" has been discussed for some 15 years, but until very recently was not explored artistically.
"Well, of course there were some artists ready to show their human side to public: mewling, sobbing effusively and without any reservations," Koldobskaya recounts. "Those were the deviant few. Most artists couldn't shed a single tear. It was advantageous to pose as a pseudo-politician, pseudo-analyst or pseudo-idiot. Ethics and aesthetics became optional accessories. Passion was almost unseemly, and sentimentality was indecent. But human still seemed to be all too human."
Koldobskaya blames democracy for such a deprivation of humanity, as democracy requires criticism, instead of declarations of love or hatred.
"Contemporary society gives to artists obscure but more and more intense signals - isn't is high time to fall into line, enlist and start manufacturing something kingly and divine? Those whom we call artists will firmly refuse. Human, and only human."
What could be more human than discussing your dreams with someone?
"Tatyana Goloviznina invites the viewers to take a nap on a bed while listening to people's stories via headphones," Potapova said. "They tell you their dreams in their native languages."
Olesya Turkina, a respected St. Petersburg art critic and modern art curator with the State Russian Museum, said the Biennale has made an impressive statement about the new, greater place of contemporary art in Russia.
"From peripheral mediocre venues, this art has made it to the heart of the Russian capital, with the local works skillfully placed in international context," Turkina said. "One of the special projects reconstructs the looks of several studios of Russian artists, unveiling the energy, the spirit and the creative atmosphere to the public gaze."
While this project's intention is to coax Russia's contemporary art out of its shell and to transform it into a genuine movement (rather than the sporadic efforts of a handful of enthusiasts), work by foreign artists has assumed a high profile too.
Michal Rovner, a New York artist who was born in Israel, has captivated audiences with her video project, which blurs the boundaries between people and environment. Visitors think they are examining molecules through a microscope when they see chains of black spots on a white screen, but then are amazed to learn they are looking at people.
Christian Boltanski interprets his grandparents' stories in his chilling installation "Odessa's Ghosts." The work has the look of a deserted classroom - empty seats and soulless coats hanging from the ceiling - which sends shivers down the spine.
The artist's grandparents both come from Odessa. For Boltanski, who was born in France, Russia is his "dreamt country," which only exists in his imaginary world and is linked with real life through subtle material traces like the samovar his parents brought from Odessa.
The Austrian group Gelatin is responsible for what is arguably the show's most scandalous offering: the artists constructed a wooden toilet in the Lenin Museum courtyard. Some media reports said visitors found the toilet perfectly usable.
The biennale in Venice and Sao Paulo are currently the most internationally acclaimed art forums.
Today, there are several other international art biennales, which have recently emerged in Berlin, Shanghai and Yokohama. The Moscow Biennale creators are hoping that their brainchild will make Moscow a center in the art world.
The Moscow Biennale Of Contemporary Art runs through Feb. 28. www.moscowbiennale.ru
TITLE: CHERNOV'S CHOICE
TEXT: Last week brought two major disappointments for Petersburg concert-goers. What was advertised as a concert by the reformed Orbital, turned out to be a DJ set by ex-member Phil Hartnoll, while R.E.M.'s stadium show was cancelled altogether.
Hartnoll duly performed Friday, but the show was on the brink of cancellation at least twice in preceding days because his London agent was unhappy about the way the concert had been advertized. Publicity materials had said that the concert was to be an Orbital reunion, not a DJ set by a former band member, which contradicted an agreement signed between the local and London-based agents.
When the truth was unveiled, Samir Askerov, the local booker for Hartnoll's DJ set, called The St. Petersburg Times to say, "I've had my $20,000 contract cancelled, and it's because of you." Askerov, who is also a DJ, explained how, in his opinion, the media should work.
"You should have contacted the local promoter, which is Jet Set, as all journalists do, rather than the British party," he said. Promoter Jet Set continued distributing misleading information about the gig until the very last day.
Petersburg show business advertizing frequently makes claims that are better than reality, but to announce a DJ set as a live concert by a now-defunct band is especially outrageous and cynical. It cons the public and gives Russia a bad name around the world.
R.E.M. stopped its show a few hours before the planned event because "lengthy delays at the Estonia/Russia border caused our trucks, crew, and gear to arrive too late," a statement on its the band's official web site reads.
However, Yulia Kolomiitseva, the publicity officer for promoter Planeta Plus, said that in fact a series of delays starting with R.E.M.'s concert in Tallinn on the previous night contributed to the cancellation. There, the opening act took the stage at 9 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. as scheduled, she said. Kolomiitseva said that R.E.M frontman Michael Stipe, who arrived in St. Petersburg on the morning of the day the concert with the rest of the band, suddenly demanded a television crew into his hotel suite and made a statement at around 3 p.m. about the concert's cancellation.
Despite delays, at that point the concert could still have taken place, Planeta Plus insist.
"R.E.M.'s representatives, who did not want to make concessions under the circumstances, are also guilty in the concert's cancellation," a statement from the promoter reads.
Kolomiitseva denied rumors that the concert was ditched because of poor ticket sales, claiming that around 6,000 tickets were sold.
The high-profile cancellation has already adversely affected the local music scene. Promoter Light Music even released a statement this week, saying that a concert April 3 by Dead Can Dance will not be cancelled. Ilya Bortnuk, the head of the Light Music, explained that there has been a substantial drop in ticket sales after the R.E.M. debacle.
See gigs for this week's club events.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: A good start
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Gluttony shouldn't be on everybody's mind after the Christmas and New Year round of festivities, but you have to get back in the saddle and go out some time - even if the metaphoric horse is buckling under the weight of one too many festive dinners.
The austere but cozy interior of Vongole is just the place to finally and guiltlessly put those New Year's slimming resolutions quietly to sleep. There, the international-standard staff silently, almost conspiratorially, settle down dish after dish of tempting fare, refill your glass and remove the evidence as if to say, "Just leave it to us."
The austerity of Vongole comes with its "minimalist" decor - whitewashed walls and a blue and white colour scheme, and perhaps this restaurant only really comes into its own during the summer - it certainly has a summer house feel to it, with its rows of shuttered windows and delicate tones. A couple of stand-alone lamps add a pleasant homey touch. But add a giant, plasma-screen TV proudly showing A-ha's entire video repertoire (followed by Sting's and, mercifully as we were leaving, Kylie's) and the pleasant homey touch is thoroughly demolished. At least it wasn't too loud. The presence of a hi-tech, low-slung bar at the end of the room also struck me as unnecessary - does anyone sit at the bar in a restaurant?
Mind you, with a good Chilean white wine at only 60 rubles ($2.06) a glass, I could be persuaded. For a healthier option, real, freshly squeezed juice is on hand, at a slightly pricier 90 rubles ($3.10).
Our entrees were well-timed and showed excellent taste. A carpaccio of salmon in a balsamic vinegar sauce (150 rubles, $5.17) had just the right level of piquancy to get the taste buds flowing; what's more, there was lots of it. I was even more impressed with the "Moroccan cigars" (150 rubles, $5.17) - restaurateurs take note, I can't resist a dish with an interesting name - a good pile of crisp battered rolls with surprise fillings of meat and vegetables and a selection of dips. I decided that if the main courses were half as good as the starters, we wouldn't be doing too badly.
The main courses were, exactly, half as good as the starters, but that isn't a strong criticism considering the strength of the opening. The duck a l'orange (270 rubles, $9.31) was a good size - a nice change from those meager slices usually offered whenever duck appears on a menu. The classic duck/orange combination was staple 1970s fare and now occasionally turns up as part of a microwaveable dinners range, but I don't see it making a restaurant comeback based on its performance here.
The lamb shashlik (180 rubles, $6.20) was more successful and I can't remember having seen lamb so perfectly cooked - tender and slightly pink on the inside. (If neither of these options appeals, don't worry, there is a whole menu to explore: a world of fish, meat and poultry.)
My cheesecake weakness got the better of me when it came to dessert - I am a martyr to it. The strawberry cheesecake (110 rubles, $3.79) is better than the traditional version (100 rubles, $3.44), though neither is strictly authentic and neither makes the St. Petersburg Cheesecake Top 10. Other desserts are available.
I see Vongole, which is part of a chain which includes Deja Vu on Fontanka and Uch-Kuduk in Repina, becoming rather fashionable as time goes on. Equidistant from Gostiny Dvor and Chernishevskaya metro stations, it's well placed to attract the off-Nevsky pleasure seeker.
TITLE: Inspired by the retired
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A semi-documentary film shot at a St. Petersburg retirement home for actors and theater professionals is winning critical praise in Germany, where it has been screened this week at Berlin's Kino Krokodil cinema.
Called "Roses, Thorns and Tears" ("Rosen, Dornen und Traeume"), the 75-minute film leads audiences into the world of aged Russian actors spending their last years in St. Petersburg's House of Retired Actors, an old folks home for former actors, set designers, artists and other people once involved in the theater industry.
It took directors Tatyana Yankina and Ralf Brings four years to make the film, with filming taking place between 1999 and 2002.
"We would just come and live [in St. Petersburg] for several weeks every year, and just share everything with our heroes, and listen to their stories," Yankina said by telephone from Hamburg this week.
The directors made the movie, which deliberately avoids using a script, by asking the actors to re-enact their most compelling and moving stories.
"The script sort of self-emerged during the process of filming," Yankina said. "It wouldn't have worked if we just arrived there with a ready script and then got the people to act it. It would be utterly artificial. So we let them play their lives and then gave the film some editing."
Located at 13 Petrovsky Prospekt on Petrovsky island in central St. Petersburg, the House of Retired Actors (Dom Veteranov Stseny) was founded in 1902 by the great Russian actress Maria Savina, the star of the Imperial Alexandrinsky Theater, and still bears her name.
The complex consists of several buildings housing about 100 tenants altogether. Each tenant has their own room and pays three quarters of their pension to live there. The complex is surrounded by a large park, and the tenants make use of it by growing strawberries and other fruit.
A St. Petersburg native resident in Hamburg, Germany, since 1989, Yankina learned about the House of Retired Actors by accident through an acquiantance in Moscow.
The film begins with a scene in which the old theatricals move a statue of Lenin which they find in the house. Like much else in the movie, this episode is based on a true story. The father of one of the tenents, Klavdia Otyakovskaya, bore a striking resemblance to Lenin and she loved the Bolshevik tyrant as if he was part of her family, and not, she explains in the film, in any ideological sense. But not all her fellow tenants shared her worship, and one night an anti-Lenin coalition moved the statue from its central place to a corner. But Otyakovskaya rallied and enlisted her own supporters to get the statue put back.
This incident serves as a perfect illustration of how energetic and active the Russian pensioners are, even though their energy is directed toward a matter of contemporary irrelevance.
For Western audiences, the subject of Russia's impoverished elderly might be expected to elicit sympathy and compassion. Their financial plight became a commonplace theme in representations of Russia more than a decade ago. When "Roses, Thorns and Tears" was filmed, the inhabitants of the House of Retired Actors were living in poverty.
In 2002, prominent theater critic Marina Dmitrevskaya descibed the fate of the old actors in a special program broadcast on Radio Liberty.
"People had to line up at night time to be able to take a shower," Dmitrevskaya said. "There was no sick room, and it was impossible to do carry out injections or conduct a heart test there; only the furniture was just about usable."
Conditions at the old folk's home have since improved, but, in any case, it isn't the straitened circumstances of the old theater people that has grabbed the attention of German viewers.
Rather, Yankina said, what German viewers express is admiration, not pity.
After a recent screening, the directors answered questions from the audience. Yankina said many people said they were deeply moved by what they saw, and were especially impressed by the stunning vivality of Russia's elderly.
In Western Europe, where people enjoy more privacy, a community of pensioners comparable to that shown in the film would be "unimaginable," the director said.
"German viewers were amazed by how active Russia's elderly are," Yankina said. "The problem in Germany is that our old people, although financially secure, feel redundant and isolated."
The director describes her own feelings toward her film's characters as fondness, respect and veneration.
"Once workers came to the park to mark the old trees that they wanted to cut down," Yankina recalls. "One of our heros, who didn't want the trees to be cut, went out at night and wiped all the marks out. I just admire this courage and enthusiasm and will to change things in life - many young people don't have it."
Links: www.rosen-dornen-und-traeume.agdok.de
TITLE: Golden moments
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: The maker of "Apocalypse Now" and "The Godfather," U.S. film director Francis Ford Coppola, attended the Golden Eagle film awards ceremony to collect a trophy for his contribution in world cinema in Moscow on Saturday.
Hours before, Coppola also met with President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. Putin congratulated him on the honor in a televised portion of the meeting.
"In Russia, your works are well known and highly valued," Putin told Coppola. He added that he was not just referring to "The Godfather" but also to films "that so accurately tell of the horrors of war."
"Apocalypse Now," an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" that is set in the Vietnam War, was shown at a Moscow film festival in 1979.
Coppola, who went to tea with Putin along with his granddaughter and director Nikita Mikhalkov, praised Putin for his speech at an event last week marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops, in which he spoke out against anti-Semitism and said he was ashamed of its existence in his own country.
"I saw your speech in Poland the other day - excellent speech," Coppola said .
A film by Coppola's daughter, Sofia Coppola's film, "Lost in Translation," was nominated as Best Foreign Film Shown in Russia, but the prize eventually went to Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."
Vladimir Khotinenko's submarine saga "72 Metra" (72 Meters) was awarded the Best Film prize.
Valery Todorovsky won the Best Director award for the film "My Brother Frankenstein," a film which is interpreted as dealing with the traumatic consequences of the Chechen war.
St. Petersburg director Dmitry Meskhiyev's war drama "Svoi" (Us) won prizes for Best Script (Valentin Chernykh) and Best Actor (Sergei Garmash).
The Best Actress award went to Alyona Babenko for "Voditel dlya Very" (A Driver for Vera).
Created by Tatyana Ilyina, Natalya Malygina and Alexei Shelmanov, "The Nutcracker" won the Best Animated Film prize, while "Mikhail Bulgakov on the Caucasus" won the Best Documentary award.
Some prizes went to television series. "Uchastok" (Precinct) was awarded Best TV Series, and its star Sergei Bezrukov won the Best Television Actor trophy, while Valentina Talyzina won the Best Female Part on Television prize for "Linii Sudby" (Lines of Fate).
The Golden Eagle was founded by Mikhalkov, noted for his affection for the Tsar's Russia and a strong state, in 2002 as a stately alternative to the annual Nika film awards that have existed since 1987. The awards have divided Russian filmmakers, some of whom have protested against the new prize.
The award was establibshed by the Culture and Press Ministry, the Russian Union of Filmmakers, ORT Television, All-Russia State Television and the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to the RIA Novosti, all in all, 27 Golden Eagle trophies made of silver, gold and marble were made for the ceremony. Each weighs 3 kg and is 47 cm high.
"It's kind of a 'patriotic' award," film critic Mikhail Trofimenkov told The St. Petersburg Times, commenting on the choice of "72 Meters" as the best film. He described it as a "very bad movie."
"The Golden Eagle was created by Mikhalkov to destroy Nika," said Trofimenkov. "The prizes all went to the new nomenklatura - Khotinenko, Meskhiyev, Todorovsky and Chukhrai."
(SPT, AP)
TITLE: On the road
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: LONDON - Celebrating its tenth anniversary, the St. Petersburg Ballet Theater, a commercial troupe founded in 1994 by the impresario Konstantin Tatchkin, embarked last November on a 14-week extensive provincial tour of Britain. At 3 1/2 months, this longer-than-usual tour to the U.K., where the company has been touring annually since 1998, started at the Swan Theater in High Wycombe in southern England on Nov. 18, and finally draws to a close on Feb. 19 at Newcastle's Theater Royal in the north.
This 50-strong ballet company certainly deserves accolades for its dancers' unfailing energy and sheer professionalism. Dancing an average of seven performances each week for 14 weeks with such a consistently high standard is no mean feat. This season the company presents, as usual, the three Tchaikovsky classics - "Swan Lake," "The Sleeping Beauty," and "The Nutcracker."
British media coverage has focused mostly on a new production of "La Bayadere," which was premiered by the company at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in early November just before this U.K. tour. This new production faithfully reproduces the choreography of Vladimir Ponomorev's 1941 production for St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater.
I caught the company in this ballet in late January, and I was impressed by how well the company danced it with its limited resources. There was a "corps de ballet" of only 16 women instead of 24 in the famous "Kingdom of the Shades" act, but then it would have made no sense to crowd the small stage of Sheffield's Lyceum with a bigger ensemble.
The leading roles in Sheffield were danced by the same cast who danced in the premiere in St. Petersburg - the company's star ballerina Irina Kolesnikova and a tall, handsome new 21-year-old principal dancer Dmitry Akulinin - who shows exceptional promise.
Kolesnikova, with the imposingly long and willowy figure which is increasingly the norm with ballerinas nowadays, has always possessed strong technique. Encouragingly, her dancing has been steadily gaining in expressiveness in the past few years since I first saw her in 2001. Her portrayal of the Indian temple dancer Nikiya betrayed by her warrior lover Solor was rich in emotional nuances - impassioned in her duets with Solor in Act 1, intense in Act 2 after seeing the betrayal by Solor. And she danced splendidly as the ghost Nikiya in the final "Kingdom of the Shades" act, dazzling in her technical virtuosity.
As Solor, Akulinin has a pleasing long line and an ideal classical temperament. He is a strong partner as well, and if he can strengthen himself technically in his solo, he will be something to watch.
Another young dancer, Diana Madysheva, was admirable as Gamzatti, Nikiya's love rival. In the supporting roles Sabina Yapparova was particularly enchanting in the first shade solo.
The St. Petersburg company also showed a second cast in "La Bayadere," which I unfortunately did not see. The very talented principal dancer Yury Glukhikh, who inexplicably is less prominently cast this season than in previous years, reportedly made a fine debut as Solor at the Buxton Opera House in mid-January.
In addition to classical dancing, the company also displayed its strength in the spectacular character dances in this exotic 19th century classic. The "Infernal" dance in Act 2 with a tom-tom was a hit, and the "Djampe" dance in Act 1 was stylishly performed. The sumptuous sets and costumes were a visual treat.
The dancers also excelled in "Swan Lake" (Konstantin Sergeyev's 1950 version for the Mariinsky), which I saw in Swindon. Yapparova shone in the trio in Act 1. Akulinin danced and acted with romance and passion as the Prince, though he had problems with his air turns in his solo.
His Swan Queen was Anna Podlesnaya, who was more impressive emotionally than technically. The company sparkled in the national dances in Act 3.
The lead dancers in the performance of "The Nutcracker" (based on Vasily Vainonen's 1934 version), which I caught in Southend, were more uneven. Andrei Yakhnyuk was technically out of his depth, while Olga Ovchinnikova was rather bland as Clara. Still, the company on the whole danced with verve and high spirits, notably in the "Waltz of the Flowers." The snowflakes scene, which in this version has an additional solo for the Snow Queen (beautifully danced by Eleonora Adeyeva) and a lovely duet ending memorably with the Prince dragging Clara off stage on a scarf, were magnificent.
After a successful first decade with its fine productions of the 19th century classics, it is high time for the St. Petersburg Ballet Theater to broaden its repertoire by adding a few 20th century masterpieces to stimulate its dancers and audiences alike. The company should also develop more potential stars from its ranks in addition to Kolesnikova.
TITLE: Step into the light
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The experimental British choreographer Russell Maliphant twists his artists' arms into Celtic knots, finds inspiration in ancient Oriental exercise techniques and gets cutting-edge composers to write music for his ballets.
Maliphant's company to town for is performing this week at the Theater For Young Spectators (TYuZ) on Feb. 4 and 5.
The graphic physicality of dancers, their airy, effortless movements, daring visual effects and a radical score are trademarks of Maliphant's ballets. As the choreographer himself puts it, in his ballets movement serves as a conductor between light and music. For the same reason, there are almost no sets in his ballets. Maliphant's successful collaboration with renowned lighting designer Michael Hulls, which started in 1994, creates a delicate yet compelling relationship between movement, light and music on stage.
The St. Petersburg tour, organized by the British Council, features some of the troupe's most highly praised works, including "One part II," "Two Times Two," "Critical Mass" and "Choice."
Maliphant, who has more than 20 works under his belt, didn't express much interest in creating new choreography until relatively late in his career. Trained at the Royal Ballet School as a dancer, he spent seven years performing with Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet before he felt he'd had enough of the classics. Maliphant sought an alternative repertoire, which he discovered and explored working with DV8 Physical Theater, Michael Clark & Company, the Laurie Booth Company and Rosemary Butcher. He concurrently studied anatomy, physiology, bio-mechanics and the Rolfing Method of Structual Integration.
"Rolfing is about how energy moves in human bodies," Maliphant said in a recent interview about his interest in the method. "It's completely changed how things are for me."
The Russel Maliphant Company has been winning rave reviews on an international scale since it was established in 1996. In 2002, the troupe was awarded a Time Out Live Award for outstanding collaboration (for the work "Sheer"), and the People's Choice Award at the Festival De La Nouvelle Danse in Montreal.
The Daily Telegraph named Maliphant the "Schubert of modern dance," a supreme melodist of the body.
"The choreography unfolds like silk wrapping around a precious jewel, lightly touched, lovingly handled; lifts resonate with declarations of shared tenderness," wrote U.K. ballet critic Debra Craine in a review in The Times in April 2002.
"Food for the soul, an audience member sighed after two solos and two duos had introduced us to Maliphant's style - a menage a trois of ballet technique, the relaxed softness of contact improvisation, and clever lighting by Michael Hulls," wrote Susi Lovell in Montreal's The Gazette in October of 2001. "Maliphant himself moved like a panther, relaxed but alert, and powerful. Spiraling and turning, he had a particular predilection for that difficult and elusive space inches above the floor."
The choreographer is reluctant to talk about his art, suggesting that he'd rather show someone an example of it. But the especially persuasive can make him put his thoughts into words.
"It's about gravity-based flow, weight and qualities of movement," Maliphant told U.K. publication Dance Umbrella News. "Classical dance is traditionally light, and contemporary more to do with relating to the earth. I am trying to draw on and expand that range."
Maliphant's ballet creations emerge out of eclectic mixure of dance forms. A watchful viewer may find traces of classical ballet, yoga, [Brazilian matial art] capoeira, [Chinese exercise technique] tai-chi, acrobatics and contact improvisation in his work.
The balletmaster stages works outside his company as well. In December 2003, Maliphant's "Broken Fall," set to music by Barry Adamson, premiered at the Royal Opera House in London with Sylvie Guillem and George Piper. It went on to win an Olivier Award for best new dance producton.
Links:
www.russellmaliphantcompany.co.uk/
TITLE: Super Bowl
Brings Out
Gamblers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP, New Jersey - One by one, they filed in for a Tuesday night meeting of Gamblers Anonymous.
One man wore an Eagles sweat shirt. One remembered the Super Bowl Sunday he spent babysitting his granddaughter, only to find himself with an uncontrollable urge to bet $10,000 on the game, 10 years after his last bet.
Then there was the newcomer, facing his first Super Bowl since he quit a lifelong addiction in which he bet up to $12,000 a game on the NFL.
"It's a tough week," he told the gathering. "It's the trifecta: We've got football, the Super Bowl and my favorite team playing."
For gambling addicts like these, the Super Bowl is anything but super. The buildup to Sunday can be even worse: It is a time to relive bad memories, to fight gnawing temptations, to avoid thinking about the event everyone seems to be talking about.
That's a difficult proposition, especially here - in a southern New Jersey community awash in Philadelphia Eagles fever.
There are "Go Eagles" signs on cars, grocery store circulars advertising Super Bowl snacks, and seemingly nonstop coverage of Terrell Owens' injury on radio and TV.
"They just have to ignore it, and it's really difficult in this area because of all the hype about the Eagles," said Harvey Fogel, a compulsive gambling counselor. "If they were in Minnesota, it wouldn't be that big a deal. It's worse here, there's more hype because of the Eagles."
The same is true in New England, where Patriots fans are immersed in the team's hunt for a third NFL title in four years.
The game also is the subject of advertising, news media coverage, office pools and watercooler talk about the Patriots, who are favored by a touchdown to beat the Eagles.
"Certainly, this is a hard time for folks in recovery from sports betting," said Marlene Warner, program director of the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling. "In particular, the media's hyping the Super Bowl, saying it's a dynasty here in New England and the Patriots are favored to win.
"It's kind of a 'We can't lose' attitude and I'm sure that's sending signals to people that it's a sure bet, that if you're going to bet, this is the time to do it. That starts people thinking like, 'Well, maybe this one time, I can do it,'" Warner said.
To recovering gamblers whose passion was sports betting, the Super Bowl means super temptation.
It is an opportunity to salvage a losing season, a chance to erase debts with one big victory - lots of chances,. In fact, there are dozens of possible bets, including who wins the coin toss, whether the game's first punt will hit the ground or be caught cleanly and whether the reigning champs' point total will be an even number or an odd one.
Nevada sports books anticipate taking up to $100 million in legal bets on Sunday's game. Millions more dollars are expected to be wagered on the Internet.
Many others will bet with bookies who accept wagers on credit. All the gambler needs is a telephone.
"There's a romanticism to it," said one recovering sports bettor, a 41-year-old man from New England who asked that his name not be used. "You want to hear every nuance, every detail, every injury report. It's a whole thing. You're romantically connected to the sport and to the players."
And come Monday, the 1-800-GAMBLER helpline run by the New Jersey Council on Compulsive Gambling, expects to see its annual spike with bottomed-out gamblers seeking help. Typically, the lines see a 50 percent increase in calls in the week following the game, according to Ed Weed, who runs it.
"They say 'I've had it,' or 'I thought for sure so-and-so would win,' or 'I took the points,'" Weed said.
Others spend the week scrambling to raise money to pay their debts and end up calling for help the following week.
For the Gamblers Anonymous newcomer who placed his last bet in mid-November, this Super Sunday will be unlike any he can remember. Like others in his group, he did not want his name published.
"I'll watch the game and my family will have a pool and it's just normal for them. But not for me. I told myself I had to stop the insanity," he said.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Ref Scandal Spreads
BERLIN (AFP) - Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder, president of the German Football Federation (DFB), has vowed to carry on until the 2006 World Cup despite calls for his head over a match-fixing scandal.
Mayer-Vorfelder, 71, is feeling the heat after it came to light that bookmaker Oddset sent a fax to the DFB on Aug. 23 explaining irregularities in connection with the SC Paderborn-SV Hamburg cup match 48 hours earlier.
Last week referee Robert Hoyzer admitted to fixing this cup tie and the DFB have been accused of brushing the incident under the carpet.
Davenport Bounces Back
TOKYO (AP) - Top-ranked Lindsay Davenport began her title defense in the Pan Pacific Open on Thursday, beating Japan's Saori Obata 6-4, 6-2 in a second-round match.
Davenport, seeking her fifth Pan Pacific title, was playing her first singles match since losing to Serena Williams in the Australian Open final Saturday.
Russians Yelena Likhovtseva and Yelena Dementyeva also advanced. The third-seeded Likhovtseva beat American Jill Craybas 7-5, 4-6, 6-2, and the fourth-seeded Dementyeva routed Japan's Akiko Morigami 6-2, 6-2.