SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1045 (11), Friday, February 18, 2005
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TITLE: Award-Winning Doctor Says Village Life Is Healthy
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: RADOFINNIKOVO, Leningrad Oblast - Villages are still healthy places to live, despite the poverty, alcoholism and unemployment, says Valery Vasilyev, 49, who was last month named the nation's best village doctor for 2004.
Vasilyev, who was one of 20 doctors countrywide named as the top in their field by the Health and Social Development Ministry, said women who give birth in the village of Radofinnikovo have healthy babies. Never has any infection, including the notorious staphylococcus that babies often catch in sterile maternity wards, affected either a baby or a mother," Vasilyev said last week in an interview in Radofinnikovo, a village of about 1,000 souls lost in the forest 120 kilometers south of St. Petersburg.
Last year he delivered the child of a alcoholic woman, who gave birth at home where everything was dirty.
"They could hardly find any clothes in the house to wrap the child in, but both the woman and the baby were fine afterward," he said.
The only explanation he had was that when women give birth at home, especially in a village, they are surrounded by bacteria that they have build up immunity to, and therefore they don't get infected, he said.
Vasilyev is unusual for Russian doctors, who generally work as specialists in a team of doctors. He has worked in Radofinnikovo 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week for the last 20 years.
He removes teeth, stitches up wounds, sometimes gives patients his own blood and throws drunken hooligans out of his clinic.
"His faithful dedication to his profession was the reason we chose him as a candidate in the best doctor contest," said Lyudmila Raikevich, deputy of head doctor at Tosno Central Regional Hospital, which Vasilyev's sole-charge clinic in Radofinnikovo belongs to.
Vasilyev knows everybody in Radofinnikovo by name, remembers their illnesses by heart, and has a habit of speaking loudly to his elderly clients.
Alexei Ivanov, 77, a war veteran who walked into Vasilyev's clinic, said he "deeply respects the doctor."
"He is a very good doctor, who never makes a mistaken diagnosis and helps everyone. We are lucky to have him in Radofinnikovo," Ivanov said.
Vasilyev, who hails from the Smolensk region, came to Radofinnikovo under a Soviet-era scheme that sent university-trained specialists to areas where there were shortages. Under the scheme, he was obliged to stay only three years.
However, after his second child was born Vasilyev decided to stay on in Radofinnikovo. He also looks after residents of four neighboring villages and hundreds of dacha residents in summer.
Raikevich, of Tosno Central hospital, said Vasilyev often has to provide medical help to drunken village residents, but he treats such situations with dignity and as his "duty."
Vasilyev said at least 10 village men, aged between 20 and 45 died from alcoholism three years ago.
"The problem with alcoholism in rural areas has worsened in the last decades when many rural enterprises have closed. Many people became unemployed and started drinking more."
Sometimes alcoholism is amusing, he added.
One alcoholic patient is pathologically afraid of injections and dentistry. The man brings a bottle of vodka with him when he needs to have an aching tooth pulled out.
"He drinks half the bottle in my office, sits a while until he is drunk, and only then lets me to pull out his tooth. After that he has drinks the rest of the bottle and leaves."
Vasilyev's clinic is simply furnished - three iron beds in a small room heated by an ancient old electric-powered radiator, a few chairs, a primitive dentist's chair and a bench in the corridor.
He does not complain about his equipment, saying he is proud that he managed to acquire a heart monitor, electronic scales to weigh newly born babies and he is able to take blood samples for testing.
However, the clinic needs at least one computer, equipment for physiotherapy and a toilet.
"I want to ease the medical treatment for our patients as much as possible," Vasilyev said.
Radofinnikovo's population is aging and it is difficult for them to travel to Tosno, the district's center, for medical procedures.
Rural people's most frequent illnesses are often problems with their bones and muscles, heart disease, vascular problems and high blood pressure, asthma and broken limbs, he said.
Vasilyev said a good village doctor must to a large extent sacrifice his family life and leisure for his work. Because he usually has no replacement, he does not enjoy proper weekends.
Even when he is on holiday, he usually stays in the village and doesn't refuse to help if he is called out.
Some telephone calls come in the middle of the night. Not all such requests for help seem urgent; they can be elderly women asking how to lower their blood pressure or complaining about an itchy back.
"If fact, it's not that funny if one has an itchy back or itches in other parts of the body because it can be one of the first indicators of diabetes," Vasilyev said.
Vasilyev said that even after couple of decades he still takes people's problems to heart.
"I often worry even more than my patients, because I bear a great deal of responsibility, especially in serious cases," he said.
He remembers how 15 years ago he desperately tried to save a 30-year-old man, who had been accidentally shot while hunting in winter. The man's friends delivered him to the clinic six hours after the accident. By that time the man had already lost a lot of blood and was frostbitten.
"I spent all night with him, gave him my own blood and had him on an intravenous drip until the ambulance arrived, but he died. It was an awful experience for me," he said.
One of the feature of Vasilyev's practice is one that city doctor's are barely confronted with - dealing with insects.
After one villager came to Vasilyev complaining about ear problems, the doctor found a cockroach in the man's ear. He once extracted a butterfly from a dacha resident's ear.
Holidaymakers bring their own characteristic medical problems - they mostly suffer heart attacks and from snake and tick bites, he says.
When he's not working, Vasilyev likes to go fishing. But even then he is on call.
"Therefore I hardly ever have time for fishing," he says.
TITLE: Yukos
Goes To
Senate
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Yukos and Group Menatep took their battle with the Kremlin to Washington on Thursday, blasting Russia's image at a U.S. Senate hearing as a court heard a crucial challenge to Yukos' Houston bankruptcy filing.
Yukos CEO Steven Theede and Menatep director Tim Osborne gave testimony Thursday before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on "Democracy in Retreat in Russia."
Theede said that investors should be wary of doing business in Russia and that the Russian government's "ruthless" campaign to dismantle Yukos has dealt "an important economic blow" to "America's energy security," according to a copy of his remarks.
Osborne said Yukos and Menatep were "the victims of an illegal, politically motivated campaign" and questioned Russia's membership of the Group of Eight industrialized nations and the country's accession to the World Trade Organization.
The hearings came as Menatep and Yukos sought to escalate the public relations furor around the Kremlin's conflict with Menatep to the level of geopolitics by attacking Russia's image ahead of next week's summit in Slovakia between President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush.
As Osborne and Theede gave evidence, a Houston judge heard the second day of Deutsche Bank's challenge to Yukos' bankruptcy filing. The judge's decision will be crucial for the future of the Kremlin's plan to get formal control of Gazprom by merging Rosneft into the gas giant, a first step to liberalizing the market in Gazprom shares.
The Kremlin's battle with Yukos and Menatep has spiraled into chaos since the Houston bankruptcy case brought a host of legal threats to the state's controversial sale of Yuganskneftegaz, formerly Yukos's biggest asset, which was later purchased by Rosneft.
With Russian-U.S. relations already strained by disagreements over Ukraine, Russia's building of a nuclear reactor in Iran and potential arms sales to Syria, Menatep may get a sympathetic hearing from some politicians in Washington, analysts said.
Indiana Senator Richard Lugar (Rep.), the committee's chairman, presided at the hearing and criticized Russia in his opening remarks over its policy in Ukraine and Georgia and accused the Kremlin of stifling economic and political freedoms.
"In recent months, the Kremlin has taken action to stifle public dissent and political opposition," Lugar said. "Rival political parties have been suppressed, the election of regional governors was canceled, and most of the media has been brought under state control."
"This pattern of behavior has spilled into the Russian government's handling of the economy," Lugar said, before moving on to hammering the "campaign against Yukos and Mikhail Khodorkovsky," the main force behind Menatep, who has been in custody since October 2003 and is on trial for tax evasion, fraud and leading an organized criminal group.
As late as December 2003, The Wall Street Journal reported that ExxonMobil could be interested in buying a significant stake in Yukos. Now China and India are reported to be involved in the scramble for Russia's massive energy resources.
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said this month that a consortium of Chinese banks lent Rosneft $6 billion, which Rosneft said was not connected with the purchase of Yugansk. India's Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Mani Shankar will arrive in Moscow next week for talks about India's state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. buying a stake in Yugansk, Indian media have reported.
Osborne said the Russian government had pursued a vendetta against Khodorkovsky because of his "political activities" and said Gazprom, Transneft and Rosneft were part of the vendetta. The campaign developed into an asset grab, he said.
"What began as a vendetta brought by the Russian authorities against Mr. Khodorkovsky and his colleagues has now expanded to include intimidation and harassment of employees at all levels of Yukos," Osborne said, according to a copy of his speech released ahead of the hearing.
"Our objective is to protect Group Menatep's remaining assets, seek compensation for the losses Yukos shareholders have incurred and demonstrate to the world that Yukos, Group Menatep and its founders have been the victims of an illegal, politically motivated campaign designed to expropriate and renationalize Yukos with total disregard for the rights of all shareholders, the rule of law and generally accepted principles of international law," Osborne said.
"Menatep and Yukos are trying nuke Russia's reputation in the United States," said Eric Kraus, chief strategist for Sovlink Securities, by telephone Thursday. "They are now fighting the interests of the Russian state and are engaged in a scorched-earth policy."
"If you look at the crimes they are accused of, they shouldn't get a hearing, but because of the diplomatic atmosphere at the moment they will get a very friendly hearing from certain elements in Washington who are seeking to damage relations with Russia. Certain neo-conservatives are happy to use Menatep and vice-versa."
On Wednesday, Deutsche Bank lawyer Hugh Ray told the court that Yukos executives had backdated documents to help the chances of U.S. courts interceding, Reuters reported.
Yukos has based its claim for jurisdiction in U.S. courts on the relocation of its chief financial officer, Bruce Misamore, to Houston in early December. Under cross-examination from Deutsche Bank, Misamore said that Yukos had moved funds from subsidiaries to the United States to bolster its claims, Reuters said.
TITLE: Fradkov Tells Police to Clean Up Corrption
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Less than three weeks after telling the Federal Security Service not to take sides in business disputes, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov gave a similar warning to senior police officials Wednesday and criticized them for not doing enough to get rid of corruption in their ranks.
"Police units should not allow themselves to be dragged into corporate conflicts and business quarrels," Fradkov said.
At the same time, police officers need to help the government put an end to "the criminal redistribution of property," including questionable takeovers of companies, he said.
In a wide-ranging speech, Fradkov also called on the police to go after organized crime and to disrupt methods used to launder money, finance terrorism and smuggle capital out of the country.
Economic crimes committed by and against small- and medium-sized firms need to be stopped to help boost tax revenues, he said.
Fradkov urged police detectives to read up on economics and finance to become more savvy in their work.
The Interior Ministry has a separate powerful division called the economic security department that is charged with fighting corporate crime. The ministry's organized crime department also has the power to fight such crime.
In addition, the ministry has an investigative committee that can examine, among other offenses, economic crimes and send the cases to court.
Fradkov in January addressed a similar meeting of the Federal Security Service, which has its own economic security division and an investigative branch. Fradkov told senior FSB officials that they and their subordinates should not favor any companies, saying that some intelligence officers do so and that gives businesses an edge over their rivals. "We are going to fight this just like we fight corruption," he said.
A former senior FSB officer made a rare admission about the corruption within the FSB's and Interior Ministry's ranks shortly after Fradkov's meeting in January. "The problem is that both the Interior Ministry and the FSB provide turnkey services, since both have investigative and operational branches and thus can 'close' a rival and seize his business," the former officer told Izvestia.
Such broad powers have been used by corrupt officers to open investigations into businesses to extract bribes or to help one business seize another in exchange for a large payoff.
Steven Dashevsky, head of research at the Aton brokerage, said businesses should treat Fradkov's calls with a pinch of salt. "There is no point in reading too much into politicians' statements. There is going to be a big gap between the statements of politicians and their implementation in reality. Russia has still to bridge that gap," he said.
Some 7,000 cases of bribe-taking were exposed within the ranks of the police last year, a figure that Fradkov said Wednesday was only the tip of the iceberg. "We need to rid of the system of bribe-takers and unscrupulous staff who turn their services into quite a lucrative business," he said. He noted that the government increased the Interior Ministry's budget by 39 percent last year and by 17 percent this year to raise salaries and provide benefits in an effort to reduce the allure of bribe-taking.
He added, however, that police officers should not expect their pay - which can be as low as $200 per month - to be competitive with salaries in the private sector. "It is clear that we cannot provide for you at the same level as businesses, much less at the level of the criminals you face off against," he said.
Thus, the time is ripe to develop a more "adequate system of motivation" that would include an oversight board, the prime minister said. The oversight would, among other things, help reduce cases of police officers covering up crimes and abusing suspects' rights to solve more crimes, he said.
Fradkov directed scorn at police officers who try to climb up the ranks by whitewashing statistics to artificially lower crime rates and boost solvency rates. "I hope tough measures will be taken against them," he said.
Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev responded to the barrage by acknowledging that criticism about whitewashing statistics "is well-founded and timely." Nurgaliyev, who previously served in the FSB, also conceded that some officers violate citizens' rights.
The press regularly reports cases of police detectives torturing suspects to extract confessions so that they can report the crime has been solved. Officers' performances are calculated on the basis of how many crimes they have solved.
A nationwide survey last month indicated that 70 percent of the public does not trust the police and fears them. Some 72 percent of respondents believed they might fall victim to police abuse, according to the respected Levada Center polling agency.
Nurgaliyev said he has adopted a zero-tolerance policy for statistics whitewashing and corruption. Some 27,500 ministry employees were disciplined and 583 were charged last year, he said.
The three-star general then fired off one batch of rosy statistics after another. He said police officers solved more than 1.5 million out of the 21.9 million crimes registered last year, including about 26,000 murders and 92 contract hits. He claimed police arrested 10,000 leaders and active members of organized crime groups, without elaborating.
As part of efforts to tackle economic crime, Nurgaliyev announced the arrest of two Khanty-Mansiisk oil executives on suspicion of embezzlement.
TITLE: Kidnapped Businessman Freed
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Israeli businessman Boris Suris, 33, who was kidnapped in St. Petersburg on Feb. 10, was released Tuesday night, the city prosecutor's office said Wednesday.
Suris is in good health but none of the kidnappers have been caught, Interfax quoted deputy city prosecutor Alexander Konovalov as saying.
Prosecutors did not comment on whether a ransom was paid.
Suris was released by the kidnappers and the police didn't mount any operations to free the businessman, Interfax reported Thursday, citing an unidentified source in the prosecutor's office.
Suris said that about 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday the kidnappers let him out of a car on Moskovskoye Shosse and that he made his own way to his father's house.
The prosecutors said Suris was unable to describe his kidnappers or say how many people were involved because he was blindfolded the whole week he was in captivity.
Last week Israeli news web sites reported that the kidnappers had demanded $2 million from Suris family for his release, NTV said.
Those sites said Suris' father was also a businessman working in St. Petersburg.
Boris Suris heads a company that is the official importer of Herbalife products to Russia. He was kidnapped in broad daylight on Nevsky Prospekt and driven away in a Volga car.
His father received a videotape sent by the kidnappers showing his son in captivity.
A voice on the tape said that Suris would be released only if a ransom was paid, but did not mention how much money the kidnappers wanted.
TITLE: Former Official Sues
Over Losing Her Job
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In contrast to the tradition of top officials who lose their jobs moving quietly to another post, Lyubov Andreyeva, a former federal inspector in the Novgorod region and deputy presidential envoy to the Northwest region, is contesting her firing in court.
Andreyeva's dismissal took effect in November after Novgorod region governor Mikhail Prusak pressured the Northwest presidential representative's office to remove her, Andreyeva said.
"The governor's office is mired in corruption," Andreyeva said last week in a telephone interview. "All the investigations that concerned members of the Novgorod region government were dropped soon after they started at the personal request of Prusak. I was constantly trying to change this, so he obviously wanted to get rid of me."
The official reason for Andreyeva's dismissal was that the presidential representative's office was cutting staff, but there are still 11 federal inspectors in the office, as was the case before she was fired.
Oleg Onishchenko, who used to work in the Novgorod region Federal Security Service has taken her place.
"Mikhail Mikhailovich [Prusak] wants to have a blind, deaf and dumb federal inspector who will not push forward investigations into the abuse of power and corruption in the Novgorod region," Andreyeva said. "He doesn't want this to happen because he is hoping that the president will appoint him to carry on working as the governor," Andreyeva said.
The presidential representative's office could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Prusak confirmed Wednesday that he had been in conflict with Andreyeva, but denied he had anything to do with her dismissal.
"I once asked her to leave a government meeting," he said in an interview. "But she really should be patient. Her dismissal is linked only to staff changes in the presidential representative office. When [Ilya] Klebanov came to head the office [in November 2003] he brought new people with him, so there's nothing to be surprised about here."
"God save me from having anything to do with her dismissal," Prusak said.
Tatyana Dorutina, head of the St. Petersburg League of Voters, said Andreyeva's case appeared to be unique and an exception to the practice of lower ranked officials cringing to those ranked higher than them.
"Andreyeva was very politically active in the Novgorod region and was always in a close contact with public organizations operating there," she said Thursday in a telephone interview. "I'm very glad that she did that.
"I can only remember one similar case - a woman in one region demanded her money back from a governor who had promised to appoint her as her deputy after she financed her election campaign."
Dorutina was referring to Natalya Suchkova, a Ryazan region businesswoman, who last week demanded that Ryazan governor Georgy Shpak give him back the 48 million rubles ($1.7 million) that she said she donated to his election campaign last year in exchange for his promise to appoint her as a vice-governor if he was re-elected.
"It is quite clear that Andreyeva won't win in court, but this precedent, as well as the case [in the Ryazan region], is really outstanding and shows that there are still people in the regions who are not completely subjugated. Andreyeva has raised her head and is not afraid to say things that she is sure are true," she said.
Prusak has another 1 1/2 years to serve as a governor after being elected in September 2003, but said he would not mind resigning in order to be re-appointed to head the region by the president, according to recent law changes.
"If the effectiveness of the regional government's work depends on the president's approval of my authority, I would go for it," he said.
"I was always against direct elections for heads of regional administrations," Prusak said, "If a governor is appointed by the president, and as a result of this the president works with him, then there will be no conflict between the region and federal authorities."
The court began hearing Andreyeva's case on Feb. 10 and has adjourned until March 31.
TITLE: School Cards Carry United Russia Logos
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Critics have questioned the motives of the Kremlin-loyal United Russia party, which has donated magnetic security cards to pupils at the city's school No. 89.
United Russia says its action improves the pupils' safety, but critics point to the party logo on every card, a first at least for the city, and say the party's main interest is propaganda.
Schools started beefing up security last year after the Beslan hostage crisis ended in many children's deaths.
Boris Pustyntsev, head of the local branch of human rights group Citizens' Watch, said the action is nothing other than an attempt to force all the school's children into a single-party ideology.
But lawmaker Vladimir Yeryomenko, who represents United Russia in the city's Legislative Assembly, said there was nothing wrong in having the party logo on the children's cards.
"This is what a political market is all about: every party shows itself in the best possible light," he said. "And if a party does something useful and, as is the case with improving the security of a school, it has the right to put its name on the cards. If another party did that, I would say, well, good job."
Yeryomenko could not say whether the party planned to donate more cards to other schools.
The political aspect of United Russia's donation did not worry the school's director Valeria Bartnovskaya. "I don't really care who does this - United Russia or the Communist Party or some other party - as long as it helps to improve security," she said. "I think speculations about the forced involvement of children in politics are unfair."
Pupils are happy about the cards. "It's awesome and looks like a business card," said Veronika Vasilyeva, a 6th grade pupil. "I really like the look of it."
Veronika's classmate Ksenya Lunyakova agrees. "Everyone is envious," she said. "This is really so cool and makes us look important. Also, it is nice to know we are safe."
Svetlana, a teacher at the school and a mother of a pupil who declined to give her last name, said her child had no reaction to the party logo on the card and showed no interest in politics whatsoever.
As a mother, and as a teacher, she is relieved to see the new security system, Svetlana said. "Now I feel certain that no unwanted visitors will be allowed to the school, and the kids are not so keen to skip classes," the teacher added.
Boris Vishnevsky, a member of Yabloko, said he was outraged by United Russia's donation.
"We don't find such strategies appropriate, because the involvement of children in politics is plain illegal," Vishnevsky said. "Yabloko acts within the law, and there is potential here for a court case. United Russia has once again made good use of administrative resources. But pensioners who are taking to the streets to protest against anti-social reforms supported by United Russia will certainly explain to their grandchildren who the bad guys are."
The Communists were less bothered by the self-promotion element of the story.
Alexander Krauze, who supervises ideological issues at the local branch of the party, said rolling back a few decades would boost school security.
"In the Soviet Union there was no need for the guards in schools," Krauze added. "These terrorist attacks that everyone is so scared of are the direct result of the current policies, something that United Russia is largely responsible for."
Last year Vadim Tyulpanov, the Legislative Assembly speaker and head of the city branch of the United Russia spoke of spreading the party's influence throughout the city.
"The Moscow branch has about 60,000 members ... I believe an acceptable number for St. Petersburg would be 25,000 members," Tyulpanov said in July.
"Party branches can be set up at the grass-roots level, not only at big companies and factories, but also at small organizations such as schools," he added.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Hotel Shows Movies
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Hollywood movies shown in English with Russian subtitles are set to become a weekly attraction at the Angleterre Hotel. It is the first hotel in the city to open a cinema.
The screenings started Thursday and the 200-seat theater will welcome hotel residents and other guests every Thursday at 7 p.m. Tickets cost 8 euros (291 rubles) or 12 euros (437 rubles) with a small pizza and cola included.
"We have no intention of competing with the city's big cinemas, we just want to offer our guests new entertainment for the evening," Viktoria Petrova, PR-manager of the Angleterre Hotel said. "For our little guests, we will show animated films on Saturdays [at 11.30 a.m.], while their parents can enjoy lunch at the hotel's Borsalino restaurant."
Work Instead of Draft
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - St. Petersburg defense plants have suggested classifying the work of graduates of professional technical colleges, or PTU, at their enterprises as service in the army, Interfax reported Thursday.
Yury Bazeyev, head of the professional education department at the city's education committee, said professional education suffers "certain discrimination" when young men get drafted before they graduate.
Bazeyev said many young people never return to work at plants after that.
He said the city's defense plants had appealed to the committee offering to classify the work of young people at those plants as service in the army, or to allow them graduates of PTU to do alternative service at the plants.
No decision has yet been made on the request, Baseyev said.
No Slot Machines
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Slot machines installed in the entrances or near metro stations are to be eliminated within three months, St. Petersburg legislators say, Interfax reported Thursday.
"Installation and operation of such the gambling machines is illegal. Modern legislation classifies such machines as individual gambling centers, the presence of which is inadmissible next to the metro," said Kostantin Sukhenko, a Legislation Assembly deputy.
Handicapped Shelter
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A shelter for handicapped homeless people was opened in St. Petersburg last month, Interfax reported Thursday.
The shelter meant for 10 people also helps its residents obtain the official documents they need for further transfer to homes for handicapped people.
Repairs to the shelter werer partly financed by the city's youth policy committee.
Hands-On Exhibition
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - An Exhibition of Danish design by designer Arne Jakobsen that allows children to touch exhibits opened in the Pushkin Central Children Library in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, Interfax reported.
Among the exhibits there are Yakobsen's famed armchairs called "Ant", "Egg", and "Swan".
"A child need not only look at objects, but can also touch them," said Anne Enemark, author of the exhibition. "For instance, next to the 'Egg' armchair we put a huge egg, which will allow a child to understand how a chicken feels and why the designer used that form."
TITLE: Still Toying With Kaliningrad
TEXT: The fate of a million people seems little more than a political game to the Russian authorities, and this is, I bet, exactly how the residents of the Kaliningrad exclave feel after listening for more than a decade to the Kremlin's empty promises to make their lives better. This island of Russian soil, now surrounded by the European Union, has only one way to go: It needs to use the splendid opportunity of its geographical location and integrate into European society.
From time to time, Russian politicians revisit the region's problems and mumble something about giving the territory some special status, but they repeatedly do a quick about-face screaming to all the world that Kaliningrad is part of Russia and for this reason the territory should stay as it is.
Last Friday, Kaliningrad residents' hopes were raised again when Ilya Klebanov, the presidential envoy to the Northwest Federal District of which Kaliningrad is a part, proposed making the region "a foreign territory." This status would mean that Kaliningrad legislation would be brought into line with European Union laws, and in the distant future the euro would perhaps replace the ruble in the exclave. "There are examples of this status elsewhere in the world, including in Europe," Klebanov said during his visit to Kaliningrad. "This special status would address the geographic isolation of the region and likely offer a way to eliminate this isolation, especially for Russian citizens."
Based on conversations I've had with Kaliningrad residents in the past, I can say with certainty that this is exactly what most locals want to hear. They stopped hoping long ago that "mainland" Russia would help them because they feel that the Kremlin treats the exclave as nothing more than a piece of land to toy with. Many Kaliningrad businessmen, politicians and ordinary people have told me over the years that they feel like pawns in the political game with the European Union.
If anyone doubts the validity of their point of view, just take the example of the German Consulate that planned to open in Kaliningrad last February and simplify visa procedures for Kaliningraders. One year later, the visa section still isn't working because the Kaliningrad government has not been able to find a building for the consulate the security agencies approve of. As a result, thousands of residents continue to mail their visa applications to Moscow. Cornelius Sommer, the German envoy to the exclave, has been sitting in the city's Albertina Hotel since last January.
He keeps begging for a resolution to this stalemate from any federal official who passes through Kaliningrad - whether it's Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin's envoy to the European Union, or Klebanov, who last week promised to contact the Foreign Ministry and move the matter forward.
But Klebanov is unfortunately out of favor with the Foreign Ministry, it seems. On Monday, the ministry hit back at his proposals for Kaliningrad, saying, "The constitutional status of the Kaliningrad region will stay as it is, and there are no grounds for its revision."
Now the only hope for Sommer - and, by extension, for Kaliningraders hoping for faster EU visas - is a promise Yastrzhembsky made in December to solve the problem by the time the exclave celebrates its 750th anniversary in June.
Since Klebanov was struck down, the German envoy has apparently heard nothing more from federal officials. This silence not only bodes ill for the visa section but also suggests that Kaliningrad residents are still being held hostage by the fluctuating relations between Russia and the EU.
TITLE: Novgorod Awaits More Investors
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Novgorod region has succeeded in attracting $1 billion worth of investment in the last 10 years and will progress at the same tempo for the next decade, the region's governor Mikhail Prusak said Wednesday at a briefing.
Several wood processing projects financed with foreign capital were launched in the region last year. Two of the projects alone will bring $600 million of foreign direct investment over the next few years, the governor said.
"These projects aim to stop wood from being delivered to ports in an unprocessed condition. We have the capacity to process wood here - in the same country where it will be used," Prusak said.
The investment climate in Novgorod region started warming after 1994 when local legislators passed a law to offer tax breaks for companies investing in the region.
The law stipulated that foreign companies investing in development of production facilities and registered locally were free from paying regional taxes until their investment was repaid.
The move eased such companies' overall tax bill by 30 percent, according to a regional government study.
"It is not that easy to attract investment when there is no port or pipeline [as in St. Petersburg]. Plus the total population that is able to work is just 700,000," Prusak said.
Eighteen foreign companies operate in the Novgorod region.
Among the biggest projects launched in the region last year were Stora Enso Timber, a Finnish-Swedish timber processing plant built for $13.4 million in the Nebolchi settlement, and a $61.3 million timber mill that involved the participation of Finnish company UPM Kymmene.
This year German company Pfleiderer is scheduled to start construction of another plant to produce wood materials that will cost $91.3 million.
In 2004, the Novgorod region collected 340 million rubles ($12.1 million) in tax from investors, while businesses in the region received 70 million rubles ($2.5 million) worth of tax breaks.
A prominent foreign investor in the Novgorod region is the confectionary and chocolate manufacturer Dirol Cadbury LLC which has invested $240 million in the local economy between 1995-1999.
Part of the reason for such large-scale investment has been the local administration's attitude to business.
"Cadbury Schweppes made its main investments between 1995 and1999 to finance the construction of two plants in the region. We haven't had any projects of that scale since, but from time to time we invest to increase production capacity of both plants," Ilya Blinov, Dirol Cadbury LLC manufacturing director, said in a telephone interview.
"We have a full, mutual understanding with the regional government and support from officials.
"Any question linked to our business activity can be resolved," Blinov said.
"Within APIINO, an organization that unites foreign businesses operating in the region, we can talk to regional officials directly. We meet once in two months and if we have a question it can be passed straight to the governor or a responsible official," he said.
The region, however, suffers from money shortages to finance basic needs such as transportation, and receives little federal budget support.
"About 70 percent of public transport in parts of the region is worn out. This means that there are, for instance, five old buses to each new one. When one gets broken, that [percentage] jumps to 100 percent," Prusak said.
TITLE: Chinatown Plans Irk
Legislative Assembly
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg's Legislative Assembly is to examine holding a referendum on the construction and development of a Chinatown in the Krasnoselsky district, local media reported Thursday.
Chinese state-owned Shanghai Investment and Industrial, is planning to invest $1.25 billion in the construction of a mini city in Krasnoselsky district over two years. The project aims to develop the 150 hectares of vacant land in the southwest of the city between the Peterhof highway and the shores of the Gulf of Finland.
It is intended to plan a business area with office buildings, hotels and a theater as well as an 80 hectare residential area with schools, cafes, hypermarkets, cinemas and a Buddhist temple.
The project has, however, met with protests from citizens, worried about possible problems a Chinatown might bring.
"One problem is that a great number of Chinese citizens will then flock into the city, with their families and relatives. Such quarters have their own rules and are breeding grounds for prostitution and crime," Legislative Assembly deputy Sergei Andreyev said, as quoted Thursday by his press service.
Alexander Teterdinko, a representative of the group that wants a referendum on the planned construction, said that the group registered on Feb. 10 and currently has 23 members, Interfax reported.
The referendum is supposed to question the St. Petersburg government's right to authorize ownership of a plot of land by a Chinese company, the group said.
"Our citizens should decide themselves whether they want this project or not," Andreyev said.
If the resolution is passed to conduct a referendum, it is likely to be held in May, Teterdinko said. According to Vladimir Yeryomenko, member of the United Russia faction, the holding of such a referendum is fairly unlikely.
"First, the procedure for a referendum is very complex. Second, such issues are never decided by a referendum. It is clear that the result will be against the project," Yeryomenko said. "Instead of wasting money on a referendum, City Hall should inform people how to better take advantages of this project."
"And concerning the prejudices prevailing among citizens it has to be emphasized that in Singapore, for example, there are various districts -Malaysian, Indian, Chinese etc, and in fact the Chinese quarter is the best of them," Yeryomenko said.
TITLE: Phillip Morris Plans 40% Boost This Year
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Leningrad Oblast's Phillip Morris plant will become the largest tobacco factory in Russia by increasing production by 40 percent in 2005, up from the 50 billion cigarettes output last year, the company said this week.
The increased capacity will come from an additional 50,000 square meter facility that the company's management hopes will be finished by the end of this year, Guy Guffers, Phillip Morris' production director, said Tuesday at a news conference.
The new facility, which began construction in 2002, will include a new processing line and a warehouse. The total cost of expansion works is estimated at $240 million, Guffers said.
The Phillip Morris Izhora (PMI) factory was built in the Lomonosov district of the Leningrad Oblast in 2000 with an initial investment of $360 million. The factory is a fully-owned subsidiary of Phillip Morris and produces the Marlboro, Parliament, Virginia Slims, L&M, Chesterfield and Bond Street brands.
The company said no further expansion will be discussed until full capacity levels are reached at the factory by the end of the year,
Phillip Morris operates two factories in Russia, one in Krasnodar and the Leningrad Oblast plant from which it also exports cigarettes to Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Moldova and Kazakhastan.
PMI was the largest taxpayer in the Leningrad Oblast in 2004, transferring over 1.5 billion rubles ($54 million) to the local budget - something that the oblast's Governor Valery Serdyukov said he's be loathe to lose, even though he disapproves of smoking himself.
"I believe that smoking is bad. But if one has the habit, it is better to smoke quality cigarettes," said Serdyukov as reported by Delovoi Peterburg.
"Once everybody stops smoking, though, we will find something else for the factory to produce."
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Tallinn Probes Bank
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - The Tallinn Stock Exchange will probe whether Swedbank AB broke information disclosure rules over its 1.41 billion-euro ($1.8 billion) offer to buy out AS Hansabank, the Baltic region's largest lender.
The exchange will try and determine whether some Hansabank shareholders knew about the bid before others, Baltic News Service reported yesterday, citing Gert Tiivas, the stock market's chief executive.
That report was "more or less correct," Tex Vertmann, spokesman for the Tallinn Stock Exchange, said today. "Tallinn Stock Exchange will send a letter about this issue to Swedbank," Vertmann said in a phone interview, without giving more details.
The letter is expected to be sent tomorrow, he added. Stockholm-based Swedbank offered to buy the 40 percent of Hansabank that it didn't already own on Feb. 11.
Swedbank and its rivals are seeking acquisitions to help raise earnings and boost their presence in the Baltic region, where the banking market is growing faster than any of its European peers.
Swedbank offered 11 euros per share to buy the rest of Tallinn, Estonia-based Hansabank, a 4.7 percent premium over its closing share price on Feb. 10. Jonas Blomberg, head of Swedbank's investor relations, declined to comment, saying he was unaware of the Tallinn Stock Exchange's concerns.
TITLE: Inventor Mixes Drinks, Business
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: An unprecedented three-taste drink container developed by St. Petersburg inventor, Olga Shorokhova, may soon open new horizons to the world of drinks packaging.
Shorokhova has invented a drink container that is divided into two parts, each holding a different drink. At the same time the container has a third opening that allow the two drinks to mix into a cocktail.
Though the idea seems simple at a glance , the Federal Institute for Industrial Property has certified that it is the world's first such invention, and one Shorokhova hopes will stimulate a "revolutionary breakthrough for many companies that produce drinks."
Shorokhova, who works at Ekros, a scientific enterprise that develops equipment for oil and chemical laboratories, came up with her idea about a year ago.
People often have little space and no recourse to a refrigerator while traveling. If one container could hold different drinks, say, milk and kefir, that would somewhat alleviate the complication, Shorokhova suggested.
"I thought that three-taste containers could be very useful for people," Shorokhova said, a culture worker and psychologist by education. "They could be useful in a car, in hospitals, or just in everyday life."
"At the same time having two children I know that often they want to have different types of juice. With this container, one could put in two different straws," she said.
Shorokhova received a patent for her invention from the Federal Institute of Industrial Property only recently. It took the institute a year to check if similar invention already existed around the world. The research found nothing that approached it.
A particularly profitable direction for the container could be its capability also to mix the two separate drinks - useful for many alcohol, milk and juice products, Shorokhova said.
"For instance, there could be a container with milk and cocoa; vodka and tomato juice for a Bloody Mary cocktail; or, two different types of wine," Shorokhova said. For Russia specifically, Shorokhova suggested a traditional combination of vodka and rassol, or pickles brine.
To introduce the invention into the drinks industry requires serious investment, Shorokhova said.
"Russia has always been the home of large-scale inventions, such as ones for space [exploration]. It has neglected inventions for customers," she said.
Shorokhova's bent for invention has ventured in several directions. She wrote several books, published psychology articles in magazines, and even developed a method for stopping smoking.
Shorokhova said she is certain that her drinks container idea will succeed, but reaction from the drinks industry has been well mixed.
Denis Gurinovich, manager of corporate communications the world's largest packaging manufacturer Tetra Pak, said that the company "always welcomes people with new ideas [on the market]," but he doubted that Tetra Pak would be interested in such an invention.
"We wish every success to the inventor. However, Tetra Pak has its own large institutions that develop new forms of packaging," Gurinovich said in a telephone interview.
Head of marketing for dairy products at Wimm Bill Dan, Olga Nechayeva, was interested to hear about the packaging invention and spoke positively about its marketing possibilities.
"I think the market has a place for such package," Nechayeva said, whose company specializes in the production of juice and dairy products, such as the J-7 juice and Chudo brands.
Nechayeva warned that "the interest from production companies would depend on the costs such package will add to the price of a product. Such packaging should not be very expensive."
TITLE: Metromedia Sells Stake In Peterstar for $212M
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A controlling stake in city-based telecom provider Peterstar was sold Wednesday by majority owner Metromedia Inc. to two European investors in a record-breaking $212 million deal.
The new owners, Luxembourg-based First National Holding (FNH) and Swiss Emergent Telecom Ventures, bought Metromedia's 71 percent of Peterstar shares.
The agreement came after an initial $300 million deal that also involved shares in the Metromedia-owned Georgian mobile operator Magticom fell through on Tuesday.
A statement on Metromedia's web site said the company will retain its business venture in Georgia "in light of better than expected 2004 operating results," meanwhile proceeding with the sale of its Russian assets.
Market players say the sale of Peterstar, a leading Internet and telephone services provider in the Northwest, has been prompted by the desire of minority shareholder, Telecominvest, to consolidate its assets in the company.
FNH, reported to have gained the controlling package of Peterstar under agreement with the second buyer - Emergent, also owns 59 percent of Telecominvest.
"Peterstar did not change its owners. One of them simply left, and now one hundred percent of stock will belong to Telecominvest," Sergei Senchyuk, director Golden Telecom's St. Petersburg branch, said Thursday.
Telecominvest management was unavailable for comment Thursday.
The new controlling owners of Peterstar say they will develop the St. Petersburg-based telecom company into a major player at a national level.
"I'm amazed by the success [major shareholder] Alfa Group has had in developing Golden Telecom, and am planning to create a similar company structurally. I hope it will have a place in the market," said Mohamed Amersi, a partner at Emergent Telecom, as cited by daily newspaper Kommersant.
The sale of Peterstar is the largest deal in the history of Russian fixed-line operators, setting a record for the amount ever paid for a local alternative provider (meaning one that is not affiliated to the State). North West Telecom holds the position as the top state-owned operator.
Analysts see the record price as due to the high competition that surrounded the sale of Peterstar's shares.
"Peterstar is a very attractive company. It works with corporate clients and obviously has the necessary level of experience and expertise to qualify as a lucrative asset," Yevgeny Golossnoi, telecom analyst for Troika Dialog, said in a telephone interview.
Both Golden Telecom and AFK Sistema have earlier reported interest in developing their St. Petersburg operations. In the aftermath of the Peterstar deal Senchyuck said Golden Telecom will not undergo any changes in the city for the time being.
Meanwhile, Sistema said its interest in an alternative operator on the St. Petersburg market has not altered.
"We will look into other possibilities to enter the market," Vedomosti reported a highly-place source at Sistema as saying Wednesday.
Currently the country's corporate communications market is valued at about $1.7 billion.
The sale is a positive sign for consumers, market players said, seeing the move as part of the market's tendency toward maturity, with tougher competition as a further knock-on effect.
"What will be interesting to observe as things proceed is how Telecominvest will manage both Peterstar and Web Plus, [Peterstar's direct competitor in Internet card sales which Telecominvest also owns]," said Alexei Semyonov, press officer at Peterlink, a local operator focusing on smaller companies and individual clients.
"They will need to position themselves at different ends of the market to avoid competing against themselves, or there is likely to be a merger in the future," Semyonov said.
Golden Telecom said it believes its presence will remain competitive despite the diversification of its main competitor.
"Even if Telecominvest sets overwhelming goals for Peterstar, in terms of country-wide operations ... our strategy won't change. It has always aimed at efficient market performance," Senchyuk said.
TITLE: Shuvalov Says Government Reforms Ineffective
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin's government reforms, introduced nearly one year ago, have failed to make Russia better managed and should be reviewed, a top Kremlin aide said in a newspaper interview Wednesday.
"I think that the system we have now is far from being effective," Igor Shuvalov told Vedomosti in rare criticism of reforms by a Kremlin official.
"Some say that the manageability [of Russia] has considerably worsened, that it has become more difficult to achieve results."
Shuvalov is seen as an influential liberal at the Kremlin, which is increasingly dominated by hardliners.
Last month, Putin made him his representative to the Group of Eight industrial nations, a sensitive job that analysts say suggests he has the full confidence of the head of state. The position was held by economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov.
Putin slashed the number of ministries to 14 from 23, ordering them to focus on strategic planning and drafting bills, and set up 58 new federal agencies to take charge of the day-to-day management of Russia.
But the new system has actually slowed down decision-making.
(Reuters, SPT)
TITLE: Finding Russia's True Friends and Foes
TEXT: In the run-up to the first Putin-Bush summit since George W. Bush's re-election, analysts, columnists, academics and unnamed "senior administration officials" have once again begun to frame the debate about U.S.-Russia relations as one between friends and foes of Russia. This polarization of the discussion about Russia is not only a lingering legacy of the Cold War, but also a contemporary weapon in the public relations campaign to reify division between East and West and subdue serious discussion about growing autocracy inside Russia. The sooner this tired and distorting framework is abandoned, both in Moscow and in Washington, the better.
The hegemonic paradigm that frames discussion about U.S.-Russia relations especially in Moscow, but also in Washington, divides the foreign policy debate into two camps. The alleged "white hats" are government officials, scholars and analysts who subscribe to realism or realpolitik as a theory for understanding international relations and as a philosophy for practicing diplomacy. Realists, so the argument goes, understand international politics as the interaction between states, and between great powers in particular. Realists care little about a state's regime type, but focus instead on the power of states and the balance of power between them. Realists in Washington and Moscow are considered friends of Russia because they seek to cooperate on issues of mutual interest in foreign affairs, such as the global war on terrorism or nonproliferation, rather than focus on so-called peripheral issues like the independence of media or the human rights of Chechens. The propagators of conventional wisdom contend that Republicans in Washington are realists, as is most of Russia's foreign policy elite.
The "black hats," so goes the conventional wisdom, are the Wilsonian liberals or idealists. Liberals understand international politics as the interaction not only of powerful states but also between regime types, ideas and international institutions. Liberals contend that democratic states interact with each other in more cooperative ways than do nondemocratic states. Their most famous dictum is that democracies do not go to war with each other. Liberals therefore believe that the promotion of democracy serves U.S. national interests, both because only autocratic states have threatened or attacked the United States and because democratic states have greater capacity and inclination to cooperate with the United States on other foreign issues such as the global war on terror or proliferation. Wilsonian liberals or Reaganite neocons are considered enemies of Russia because they criticize the current regime for its autocratic policies. The propagators of conventional wisdom contend that Democrats in Washington are the liberals, while few Russian foreign policy elites subscribe to this theory of the world or philosophy of making foreign policy.
Like all conventional wisdom, there is some truth to this two-camp characterization of the policy debate about U.S.-Russia relations. But this framing does not capture the entire debate, nor adequately describe the motivations and biases of these contending philosophies. Instead of two camps, there are really four, and none of them in the United States fits neatly into either the Democratic or Republican parties.
Among the realists, both in Moscow and Washington, there are indeed those who want to cooperate and engage with their counterparts to tackle security issues of mutual interest. These advocates of engagement see discussions about democracy and human rights as getting in the way of allegedly more important topics like arms control. These pro-cooperation realists want to accept Russia's regime type as is - and the United States' regime flaws and arrogant ways in international affairs as is - and presume that internal developments inside Russia do not influence the Kremlin's ability to be a useful, cooperative partner in fighting terrorism or preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
But, in addition to these engagement realists, there is another faction within the realist camp in both countries, which is suspicious of the intentions of the other and not at all eager to cooperate. True realists, after all, believe that the balance of power in the international system is all that matters and that this power is relative and finite. In other words, if Russia becomes stronger, then the United States becomes weaker. Former U.S. President Richard Nixon, the consummate realist, pursued detente with the Soviets not because he believed in the virtues of cooperation, but because the United States was weak at the time. His policies sought to slow the shifting balance of power, which was then moving in the Soviet Union's favor. Consequently, realists with this zero-sum understanding of power are constantly seeking to expand the power of their country and weaken the power of all other countries, be they democratic or not. Regarding the U.S.-Russian relationship, American realists want to preserve the current asymmetry of power and preserve Russia's current status as a peripheral, weak power. Russian realists want to weaken the American hegemon by any means necessary. U.S. advocates of this school of realism, no matter how many times they purport to be pursuing "pragmatism," can hardly be considered friends of Russia. Russian advocates of realism, no matter how many times they claim to be defending the national interest, are in fact perpetuating a status quo that locks Russia into a secondary status on the periphery of the world system.
Within the liberal camp, there are also two factions. It is true that some who focus only on the erosion of democracy and violation of human rights inside Russia do so in order to impede engagement and isolate Russia. While focused on different questions, these liberals in fact embrace the same objective as those realists who want to see Russia remain weak. But among the liberals, there are also friends of Russia. These engagement liberals see Russia's democratic erosion as an impediment to meaningful cooperation on security issues - the perfect excuse rolled out by Russia's foes for why Russia can never be trusted. Engagement liberals, like me, do not accept the current Russian political system as is, but instead believe that Russians want and have the capacity to build democracy, and in doing so will make Russia a full, legitimate member of the international community of democratic states. We engagement liberals do not fear a strong Russia (as do the realists) but instead see a powerful, democratic Russia as potentially a real and serious ally in combating terrorism, preventing proliferation and, yes, even someday promoting democracy. Russian advocates of democracy and integration have the same vision. They are the one force inside Russia that has a real strategy for making Russia a great and respected power once again. We believe that the erosion of democracy has actually weakened the Russian state and eroded Russia's international standing. These outcomes are the permanent goals of some realists; for us, they are regrettable but hopefully only temporary consequences that can someday be reversed.
Perhaps Russia is destined to remain a quasiautocratic, quasi-democratic regime permanently entrenched on the periphery of the world capitalist system, forever labeled an "emerging" market or a "developing" economy, and capable only of gaining the world's attention through threats. If so, then we engagement liberals can be accused of idealism. But we cannot be accused of being Russia's enemies. Russia's real enemies, in Washington and Moscow, are those who have already accepted Russia's current status at home and in the world "as is." This so-called pragmatism is actually an alibi for authoritarianism in Moscow and an excuse for disengagement in Washington.
Michael McFaul is a Hoover fellow and professor of political science at Stanford University and a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center. His book with James Goldgeier, "Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy toward Russia after the Cold War," won the 2004 Georgetown University Lepgold Book Prize for the best book on international relations.
TITLE: Mean streets
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: This year, the main Oscar story for Russia has been the failure of homegrown blockbuster "Night Watch" (Nochnoi Dozor) to gain a nomination in the Foreign Language Film category. Meanwhile, a modest Moscow-set documentary has made it into the running for an Oscar without a squeak of publicity from the local media.
Shot by Polish directors Hanna Polak and Andrzej Celinski, "The Children of Leningradsky" tackles a Moscow underworld very different from the fantasy setting of Timur Bekmambetov's film. The 35-minute documentary is a no-holds-barred examination of the city's street children, based on Polak's experiences while living and studying in Moscow.
Now the film, which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival last month, is up for an Academy Award in the Documentary Short Subject category, alongside four movies made in the United States, and Polak hopes that the resulting publicity will attract attention and funds for Moscow's homeless children.
The nomination made her "very happy," Polak said in an e-mail from Los Angeles last week. "I believed it would help to find more help for the children. That is why this movie was made." Polak has joined forces with the Russian Children's Welfare Society, a New York-based charity, to create a fund named after the film. The fund will collect money abroad to open a children's rehabilitation center in the Moscow region.
Katowice-born Polak is studying cinematography at Russia's top film school, VGIK. When she arrived in Moscow, she came face to face with the city's street children.
"I met a group of homeless children while walking through Kursky Station in 1999," she remembered. "I spoke to some of them, [and] they invited me to come again." On taking up the invitation, Polak was "completely shocked" to meet a group of 70 children living on their own.
"I was just crushed. I could not believe that children could live like this," she said. "From that time on, I tried to help them as I could, especially trying to get some of them out of the street. I was trying to convince them that they could live a normal life."
Polak founded a charity called Active Child Aid, which continues to run a nightly soup kitchen at Kursky Station. She also began to take photographs of the children, and from there, it was a logical step to use her film skills to publicize their plight.
"In 2001, I started to film them to show their suffering to other people, and in this way possibly find funds to be able to change the lives of at least some of them," she said.
The film covers the everyday life of a group of homeless children living at Leningradsky Station where trains from St. Petersburg arrive in the capital. Among the heroes are Gennady, now 17, who used to live on the street and then spent some time living in Polak's apartment.
The teenager is now in an orphanage, Polak said. He has learned to read and write, and he is in seventh grade at school - the usual level for 13- to 14-year-olds. A girl featured in the documentary, Yulia, was adopted by a staff member at an orphanage. For many, though, there have been no happy endings.
"Unfortunately, most of the children who are in the movie are in prison," the director stated.
Shortly after the January nomination, the Russian Children's Welfare Society launched the Children of Leningradsky Fund. This fund will raise money to open a short-term hostel in the Moscow region for children who fall through the cracks of Russia's state-run child-care system. Such children include teenage mothers, those without documents and those who are homeless but too old to be in school.
"[Polak] has agreed that since we have the organization here in the States to raise money, the best way is [for donors] to give it to us, and we give it to her, because that way people get a tax deduction, and we've got the resources to book it properly and account for it," Vladimir Fekula, the charity's president, said last week in a phone interview from New York. "We take one thing away for her to think about."
It was also the New York charity that put Polak in contact with HBO, the U.S. cable channel that bought the documentary and gave it the promotion necessary to get an Oscar nomination.
"We expected that it would be nominated, but I don't know whether it's going to win or not because it's up against very stiff competition," Fekula said.
The charity's president was full of praise for the film, which he described as "very profound and touching and dramatic." However, he added, "There are parts of it that aren't very kind to the [Russian] authorities, so I don't know what their reaction is going to be." So far, the film has not been released in Russia, and the local media have not covered the documentary's nomination, although Ogonyok magazine interviewed Polak on her charity work in 2003.
By contrast, the Polish media have covered the nomination extensively. Marcin Kaminski, editor of Filmweb.pl, a web site on Polish film, stated in an e-mail last week that news of the nomination has appeared in "all Polish media," from television to newspapers and the Internet.
"Of course everyone is very happy about it," he said. "We hope that Hanna and Andrzej will receive the award." The film had its Polish premiere at a Warsaw homeless shelter at the beginning of this month.
The film has already received some positive critical reaction in the United States. Daniel Wible of the web site Filmthreat wrote that "this Polish-made short documentary will likely go down as a personal highlight of Sundance '05," and described the film as "devastating, heartbreaking and unforgettable."
Here in Russia, the film's favorable publicity is good news for a foundation called Priyut Detstva, or Shelter of Childhood. Priyut Detstva will run the hostel that is to be launched with the money raised by the Children of Leningradsky Fund.
"The work on the street does not make too much sense if there is no good rehabilitation program that follows," Polak wrote last week. She said that her priority was to open a center with "a very professional program that would allow [children] to make changes in their lives."
Founded in 1998, Priyut Detstva is run by Sapar Kulyanov, an associate of Polak since her early years in Moscow. When the two met at a conference on child homelessness, Kulyanov was working as the director of a state children's shelter. Polak began to send him those children who wanted to start a new life away from the streets. Some of those children are featured in the film, and in an interview last week, Kulyanov said that he found these scenes particularly moving.
"A small girl with blonde hair is begging in an underpass [in a scene from the film]. She later came to us, and she has already lived in a family for several years; she has been fostered," he said.
At present, the large redbrick building that will house the rehabilitation center is not fully built and needs major decorating work that will cost around $300,000, Kulyanov said. Ultimately, 40 children at a time will be able to spend from six months to a year at the center, receiving medical treatment and education, as well as vital help in finding a permanent home - whether that be back with their natural parents or through fostering and adoption.
The fund director believes that the success of "The Children of Leningradsky" will help the project come to fruition. "Now there is hope that the showings of the film in the United States will lead to money coming in," he said. "People watch the film with their eyes and feel it in their hearts."
For more information on the Children of Leningradsky Fund, see www.rcws.org/index.html.
TITLE: CHERNOV'S CHOICE
TEXT: Thin Lizzy will not take part in the Heroes of Rock festival at Ice Palace this week because the band has put all its European dates on hold after a concert in Limerick, Ireland that takes place on Saturday, according to a posting on guitarist John Sykes' official web site, www.johnsykes.com. No reason was given for the pullout.
Meanwhile, another band taking part billed as Sweet is in reality Andy Scott's Sweet since Brian Connolly's Sweet, which existed simultaneously with the Andy Scott version for some years, folded with Connolly's demise in 1997. The old rockers, including Ian Gillan and Ken Hensley, are scheduled to perform at Ice Palace on Wednesday.
Kacheli, one of the best live bands on the local club circuit, will celebrate its tenth anniversary with a series of concerts in February and March, kicking off with a free gig at Tsinik this week. The band, which started out performing the kind of pop rock that many bands played in the city in the early 1990s, has since developed into something entirely different, describing its style as alco drive.
Kacheli will perform at Tsinik on Wednesday and at Platforma on Thursday. The band has asked Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov to appear at the Platforma gig as a guest. Kacheli's most recent album Ne Uchi Otsa... (Don't Teach Your Father...) was released on Shnurov's Shnur'OK label last year.
Now a hot club hit in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Billy's Band, which recently provided the soundtrack to the dark comedy Nochnoi Prodavets (The Night Salesman), will showcase its new album with two shows this week.
Called Otorvyomsya Po-Piterski (Having Fun, Petersburg Style), it is the band's third studio album. The CD's highlights include the Prodavets theme song Ya Ne Vernus (I Won't Return), 32 Rubles described by singer and double bass player Billy Novik as rock and roll on trash cans, and an odd number called Tak Ya Padal (I Was Falling), which, he says, reflects my love of Nirvana and Tatu.
In concert, the original trio will be augmented by members of Billy's Big Band, the band's occasional expanded lineup, Yevgeny Bobrov on drums and Mikhail Zhidkikh on saxophone. Billy's Band will perform at Red Club on Friday and Saturday.
International acts to perform in the city this week include Pascal Parisot. Parisot used to perform in French piano-bars with a repertoire of covers of French chanson hits ranging from Edith Piaf to Serge Gainsbourg, adding some Brazilian classics, until he started to write his own material.
His current set is a mix of chanson, electronica and Latin. Parisot will perform at Platforma on Saturday.
On the more extreme front, Exploited, the veteran U.K. punk band that once proclaimed that Punk's Not Dead and is still a popular subject of graffiti, will return to the city to perform at PORT on Saturday, while the grindcore band Napalm Death will play its local debut at the same place on Wednesday.
- Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Czech's appeal
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: With the Czech Republic known more for its beer than its cuisine, a visit to U Mushketyora (At the Musketeer's) on Admiralteisky Prospekt, between Palace Square and St. Isaac's Square, can certainly help diners discover more about Czech (along with Slovak and Hungarian) cuisine, which is filling, but not heavy, and hearty.
At the Musketeer's is the third Czech pub opened by the same firm in St. Petersburg, after Gambrinus on Pervaya Sovietskaya Ulitsa and Bogemius on Naberezhnaya Makarova.
The restaurant consists of two spacious rooms with a bar and a large TV-screen in one of them, heavy wooden furniture, giant metal chandeliers, and portraits of mostly French aristocrats on the walls next to Medieval weaponry - all creating the atmosphere of an old Central European tavern, welcoming its visitors with twinkling glasses and aromas from the kitchen.
At the Musketeer's crowning glories are without a doubt its beers and its range of authentic Central European starters. The restaurant (or, rather, beer-hall) offers five sorts of Czech beer, priced from 100 to 120 rubles ($3.40 - $4.12) per half liter, various Czech and Slovak berry and herb liquors (nastoiki) and vodkas.
Both starters we tried, Prague-style fried cheese for 125 rubles ($4.3) and Slovak sausage (a long thick sausage with a bit of mashed potatoes, mustard and stewed white cabbage - which is also recommended as a garnish for a main course) for 210 rubles ($7.2) were excellent.
The restaurant has a wide selection of starters, including dishes made with cabbage, cheese and a nice range of sausages, most of them priced between 70 rubles ($2.40) and 200 rubles ($6.90).
At the Musketeer's also offers a generous soup menu section, from which ox tail soup (70 rubles, $2.40) can certainly be recommended.
After such a wonderful start, the main course section seemed a bit of a disappointment, even though there were highlights. The fillet of salmon with lemon was rather dull and over-baked, while the garnish of "hot" stewed cabbage (35 rubles, $1.20) was simply a mixture of cabbage and tomato puree which should be avoided - try another stewed cabbage dish instead.
The goulash, however, is not bad. There are two versions of it on the menu. We tried the Musketeer Goulash for 370 rubles ($12.7), a traditional mixture of pieces of meat and vegetables in a tomato soup, served in a white bread loaf covered with poppy seeds.
The waitress, asked what they had done with the inside of the loaf, answered without hesitating that they must have eaten it!
The main course section on the menu offers abundant choices: the visitor can choose from beef, veal, pork, chicken or fish sections, each of which presents 3-4 dishes to choose from.
The average price for a main dish ranges from 200 rubles ($6.89) to 400 rubles ($13.79).
The dessert is nothing but three variations on the creamy approach to apricots: it's either apricots and other fruits with cream and chocolate topping (called the "dessert of tavern-keeper Palivets" for 45 rubles, $1.55), or all the aforementioned served on ice-cream ("Iceberg" for 55 rubles, $1.89) or wrapped in a pancake.
At the Musketeer's is certainly worth popping into for a few glasses of authentic Czech beer, to go with its various selection of meaty, filling dishes.
TITLE: Adult entertainment
PUBLISHER: the new york times
TEXT: Like most interesting movies about sex, Closer, Mike Nichols' deft film adaptation of a well-known play by Patrick Marber, is mostly talk. There are still a few filmmakers - not all of them French - who are capable of infusing the bodily expressions of erotic desire with dramatic force and psychological meaning, but the vast majority are content with a few moments of sheet-twisting and peek-a-boo montage.
In the past, Nichols has usually addressed sexuality with an elegant mixture of candor and discretion, and his intention in Closer, which brings him back to the raw, needy emotions of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Carnal Knowledge, seems to be to show very little while saying a great deal. There is some display of skin: one of the characters, after all, is a stripper (another happens to be a dermatologist) and a pivotal scene unfolds in her place of work. But even that moment is less memorable for Natalie Portman's near-nudity than for the emotional self-exposure of the fully clothed Clive Owen.
The verbal intercourse that dominates that scene and every other in the film is vigorous, compulsive, sometimes painful and occasionally funny, as well as more stimulating - for the characters, one suspects, as much as the audience - than the physical intercourse that is its frequent subject. It is also mannered, schematic and frequently improbable, defects in Marber's play that Nichols and his strenuously engaged cast labor mightily to overcome.
Although Closer moves gracefully through the streets and rooms of contemporary London, it never quite shakes off the stasis and claustrophobia that haunt even the best screen adaptations of self-conscious, over-reaching serious drama. At times, the smooth naturalism of Nichols' direction emphasizes the archness and artificiality of Marber's dialogue and the unreality of the people speaking it.
Nonetheless, those people, though they are increasingly difficult to like, do manage to command a degree of curious attention. There are four of them, free-floating representatives of the disconnected contemporary tribe of wandering city-dwellers, arranged by Marber (who wrote the screenplay) and Nichols into a tight, ever-shifting grid of jealousy, longing and deceit.
The opening sequence is a barbed variation on the romantic comedy cliché of meeting cute. Portman, playing Alice, a transplanted American, ambles along a crowded sidewalk. Walking toward her is Jude Law, whose character, Dan, is a newspaper obituary writer with literary aspirations. Their eyes lock across an intersection, into which Alice steps - looking, as Americans will, in the wrong direction. The taxicab that knocks her down is a hulking metaphor for the narrative that follows, in which Alice and Dan - along with Larry (Owen) and Anna (Julia Roberts), whose own cute meeting via mistaken identity and the Internet soon follows - collide by accident, continually blindsided by one another and by their own feelings.
Nichols cleverly communicates their disequilibrium by detaching their stories from the usual chronological guideposts. Sometimes the cut from one scene to the next will leap across months or even years, and rather than signal the jump with words on the screen, the film keeps us guessing about how much time has passed until a line of dialogue supplies a clue. A great deal of significant action takes place off screen, in those temporal gaps, and what we are witnessing are premonitions and repercussions - the flirting that precedes and the fighting that follows.
One effect of this dislocation is to endow a very simple story with a feeling of complication and surprise. Unlike most movie love stories, Closer does have the virtue of unpredictability. The problem is that, while parts are provocative and forceful, the film as a whole collapses into a welter of misplaced intensity. Larry, Dan, Alice and Anna seem to find themselves in a constant state of emotional extremity, in part because the quiet, everyday moments of their lives have been pruned away, but for precisely that reason their tears and rants seem arbitrary and a little absurd.
They are four characters in search of an objective correlative, their intimacies obstructed by lofty words - honesty, cowardice, love - that seem, after a while, to mean nothing at all. When the two official couples, their relationships threatened by symmetrical unofficial coupling, reach their climactic confrontations, it's hard not to wonder, What on earth are they so worked up about?
That question becomes more acute, and more damaging, when you step back to ask yourself who these people are and why you should care about them. Neither question gets much of a satisfactory answer. We know that the women are American, the men English, and allusions to past relationships and class backgrounds pop up now and then, but these four theoretical beings dwell mainly in a state of isolation amounting nearly to abstraction, without friends, families, legible pasts or probable futures. They exist only from moment to moment and only in relation to one another.
This places an enormous burden on the actors, who must in effect forge personalities out of thin air and vague language. The only one who succeeds is Owen, whose volcanic charisma is hedged - and to some extent subverted - by a flash of rugged wit. Faced with such a rival, Law wisely declines to defend the Sexiest Man Alive title recently conferred on him by the discerning folks at People magazine. Instead, he dismantles the smooth, ingratiating persona that has brought him to the brink of being a movie star and in the process reclaims his legitimacy as a nimble and clever actor.
Roberts tries to do something similar, but with less satisfying results. Anna, whose serial deceptions of Larry and Dan seem, for a time, to be driving the narrative, is a smudgily written character to begin with - watchful, morose, yet somehow able to compel her would-be lovers and herself into self-destructive fits of passion. In the name of seriousness, Roberts suppresses her natural radiance, as if the admonition Do Not Smile were imprinted in heavy black ink on every page of her script.
Her ability to neutralize her own considerable magnetism is impressive, even admirable, but it is also self-defeating. Roberts may be bored with her own power to attract, but Anna's inertia weakens the already tenuous logic of Marber's play.
Which leaves Alice, the character in whom Marber's worst failings and Nichols' best instincts coalesce. By now (but also in 1997, when the play was first performed), the tough-yet-vulnerable stripper is worse than a cliché, and Portman bravely tackles the acrobatic challenge of simultaneously inviting and deflecting the audience's prurient, fascinated gaze. Her soft, wobbly features emphasize Alice's childishness, making her performance both the most sympathetic in Closer and the most troubling. She awakens a queasy protective impulse, a fantasy of rescue that is all the more powerful for being confused.
Do you want to save poor Alice from the toxic intimacy that Dan, Anna and Larry offer, or do you want Portman to escape from a movie that, in spite of the teasing promise of its title, does everything it can to push you away?
TITLE: The many faces of NOM
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: "Ladies and gentlemen, dames und herren! My name is Yury. I am is Russian. Tonight I offer at your precious attention new compact discs. As all of you know such quality goods in european shops cost at least zwanzigsch euro! But since I work directly from the CD factory and right from this morning we start a great advertising company, this compact disc will cost for you just tri tausend hungarishe forint! I can be stopped, asked any questions, you can look at compact laser discs and if you like - purchase them. Thank you very much!"
Parodying the typical patter of salesmen, which one can hear in the local subway on a daily basis, "Intro" from "Russisches Schwein," NOM's 2003 English-language album, is a good example of the local avant-rock collective's weird sense of humor which is often mixed with social criticism.
Its most recent film, "Geopolipy" (Geo-Polips), which will be re-released, alongside NOM's 2002 first feature "Paseka" (Apiary), on DVD this week, is a hilarious collection of four stories. Three deal with dictators Vladimir Lenin, Kim Il Sung and Adolf Hitler, while the fourth takes place in the contemporary Russia and satirizes such figures as President Vladimir Putin and St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko.
The Lenin and Kim Il Sung parts are loosely based on canonical fables from the official biographies of the Communist leaders, while the Hitler one contains hidden references to Alexander Sokurov's "Moloch."
"We drew some parallels consciously. We even had a woman playing Goebbels just as Sokurov did in 'Moloch,'" said Andrei Kagadeyev, NOM's vocalist and bassist, in an interview this week.
Last month "Paseka" was screened at the 34th Rotterdam International Film Festival where it was part of the Russian "Parallel Cinema" program.
"We had three screenings on different days, and each one was sold out," says Kagadeyev, who wrote and directed the film with artist Nikolai Kopeikin.
First released on the local record label Bomba-Piter in 2002, the band later continued to put out and sell the video tape on its own.
"They told us, 'Sell the half of the copies, and we'll sell the other half, but it turned out I sold more copies than they did. I sold almost everything," said Kagadeyev. "So I turned out to be a better salesman than they did."
After five years working with Moscow's indie label SoLyd, NOM released its most recent album and film strictly on the D.I.Y. basis.
"If you want to do something good, do it yourself," says Kagadeyev about his band's current modus operandi.
"Albom Realnogo Iskusstva" (Album of Real Art), released by the band on its own expense last year, is a tribute to the OBERIU, a pre-war Leningrad literary group which included such authors as Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky. The literature of the absurd that the OBERIU professed has had a profound influence on NOM's whole body of work.
The album which is the band's ninth, is a literary/musical effort featuring NOM's early home-tape from 1987 and a "musical fairytale" based on the book "Zhuk-Antisemit" (Beetle the Anti-Semite) by the OBERIU's Nikolai Oleinikov and a few poems as well as two of NOM's regular songs.
Today's NOM is essentially a trio made up of singer and bassist Kagadeyev, showman and singer Ivan Turist (a.k.a Yury Saltykov) and keyboard player Nikolai Gusev.
The band is occasionally joined by its former vocalist Alexander Liver (a.k.a Dmitry Tikhonov), who now lives on the French-Swiss border and sings bass in the choir of Geneva's Opera House. Liver contributes to the band's work by correspondence and joins the band on stage during its European tours and when he comes to St. Petersburg on a summer vacation.
"Our principle is to take people for what they are, rather than for what they play," said Kagadeyev. "We tried to find a guitarist, but it turns out uninteresting because it's difficult to find a common language. We are an unconventional band and it's easier for us to work with like-minded people."
NOM played as a quintet until 1998, when two members - Kagadeyev's brother Sergei and drummer Vladimir Postnichenko (now the owner of bar Tsinik) - quit to form another band, also, confusingly, called NOM, which folded in 1991.
The extant NOM has recorded 10 new songs for the band's next album. According to Kagadeyev, the songs will be premiered in April, when the album will be finished and the band will start to look for the label.
"The songs are based on our impressions from the last year or year and a half," he said. The album will feature two songs based on lyrics by the band's artist Kopeikin, who usually takes an exhibition of his artworks on road with the band.
NOM performs at Red Club on Thursday. Links: www.nomzhir.spb.ru
TITLE: Human relations
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Amid the flap caused by the suit filed by religious and political activists against the "Russia 2" exhibit at the first Moscow Biennial, critical opinions are being formed about the quality of the new art on show.
The quite colorless international main project, called "The Dialectics of Hope," has been overshadowed by extensive, controversial special program in the eyes of the critics. Although featuring a couple of prominent international names, for the most part the special program is based on Russian participation. Despite evidence that the Russian contemporary art seems equivalent to the Moscow contemporary art scene, the most distinctive of the exhibitions in the special program was the "Human Project," made by the St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Kaliningrad branches of the network of the National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA).
The self-funded "Human Project," which wrapped up earlier this week ahead of the end of the Biennial on Feb. 28, featured 16 artists from these cities in conscious opposition to the Muscovite focus of the rest of the event.
Maria Korostelyova, one of the curators of the "Human Project" from NCCA-St. Petersburg, explained in an interview that St Petersburg artists dominated the exhibit.
"This is mainly because the humanist ideas, the 'new seriousness' appeared in St. Petersburg and it is a pronounced art tendency here. There are a lot of artists here that could be joined together under this motto.
"As for the other regions, the situation there is more complicated since the majority of the artists prefer to move and to live in Moscow (for economical reasons first of all) where the artistic situation is quite different. So, we don't have any stable picture here. But, again, we were interested to find out this humanist tendency not only in St. Petersburg, and I think we have been able to recognize it in other Russian cities. Thus, we can say that it is not a superficial statement, but a real artistic situation that has existed for one and a half years."
Korostelyova says the "Human Project" arose from "a living artistic situation."
"There couldn't be any 'made to order' art works for the Biennial. We observed the artistic process, analyzed it and chose from what already exists," she said.
However, the resulting exhibition did not always clearly match it stated aims.
"The problem why it appears not that clear I think probably could be explained by the fact that it was a summing of the positions of six curators. Like in any collective project, we had to find some compromise, each curator had his/her own view on the question, and due to this it was not always possible to reach the satisfying clearness in a short time.
"But still, within the 'Human Project', we all are interested in raising the question of how far the artistic quality can correspond with humanity, responsibility, and, finally, the emotional involvement of the artist."
Comparing the "Russia 2" show, which features high-ranking artists from the Moscow art scene, to the "Human Project," Korostelyova says "it is true that these are quite opposite artistic situations and logics, but I think that they still have a common denominator: 'Russia 2' insists on the construction by means of art of the cultural reality alternative to the existing socio-political system in present Russia which is becoming more and more authoritarian and which, accordingly, creates an anti-human oriented public space and ideology. It is especially clear from the statements of the artists and curators listed in the catalog, but on the level of the works it is less obvious. Anyway, in this sense we have quite similar ideological strategies."
Obviously the difference is to be found in the tactical focuses of these two projects. Indeed, in some sense "Human Project" becomes more intelligible in its contradiction with "Russia 2" (which, actually, was located in adjoining hall), that is, the comparison of the two projects helps one to catch some distinctions. If you look through "Russia 2" the majority of the projects appeal to some problems of the social environment, some common values and problems such as religion, army, power, terrorism, whereas the 'Human Project' focuses on the daily and quite often personified human being.
But it is one thing to make the statement, and a completely different thing to confirm it with artistically convincing examples.
In fact, the "Human Project" asked two questions: How far are you interested in others? How far are the others interested in you? Stepping inside the dark box of the video-installation "Dizziness" by the group ESCAPE, for example, you firstly have the strong feeling that you are not wanted here, and, secondly, what is most deplorable, you come across the feeling that the people inside the installation are not interested in each other. It presents a strange, quite uncomfortable situation.
Fortunately, there are other works like the brilliant video piece "22.07.2002" by the St. Petersburg artist Vladimir Bystrov where we have the opposite situation, in which it is strongly expressed that art has no other means except its own to convince you that an old woman examining herself in a mirror is able to attract six minutes of your complete attention.
Links: www.ncca-spb.ru/human/; www.moscowbiennale.ru
TITLE: Changing stages
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The venerable Chekhov Moscow Art Theater (MKhAT) is swapping stages with St. Petersburg's Bolshoi Drama Theater (BDT) for an unprecedented two weeks starting Feb. 26. The respected Moscow company is bringing 17 out of 25 shows in its repertoire. The 27 performances of the troupe's biggest tour to the city in the past 30 years will be divided between the stages of Bolshoi Drama Theater and the Theater For Young Spectators (TYuZ).
The playbill features mostly Russian titles. Dominating the program are Russian classics such as Maxim Gorky's "The Petty Bourgeois," Alexander Ostrovsky's "The Final Victim," Mikhail Bulgakov's "The White Guard," Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard," and Nikolai Gogol's "Old World Landowners."
But there is some new cutting-edge drama on the list too.
Of note are the experimental Urals playwrights the Presnyakov Brothers' "Playing The Victim," Yevgeny Grishkovets' "The Siege," Yekaterinburg-based writer Valery Iskhakov's "The Subtle Taste Of Infidelity" and an adaption of Ruben David Gonsales Galliego's award-winning memoir "White On Black."
Most of the shows were first staged between 2001 and 2004. The exception is "Amadeus," Mark Rozovsky's 1983 rendition of British dramatist Peter Scheffer's internationally acclaimed play based on the life of Mozart.
"With this tour we are aiming to represent the current stage of this theater's development," said the company's artistic director Oleg Tabakov. "Naturally, we wouldn't want to disappoint you with our artistic failures, so we aren't bringing anything which we are unsure of." On the tour, Tabakov is joined by a string of actors that are not only the stars of the company but of the entire country's theatrical elite: Andrei Myagkov, Natalya Tenyakova, Yevgeny Mironov, Avangard Leontiev, Yevgenia Dobrovolskaya, Renata Litvinova, Yevdokia Germanova and Sergei Bezrukov.
However, stage limitations made it impossible for the Moscow Art Theater to bring sets for Ostrovsky's "The Forest" and Moliere's "Tartuffe," two of the troupe's most successful shows. But Tabakov is determined to bring the productions to St. Petersburg, hopefully next year. "Some of your city's most talented actors [who have moved to Moscow], like, for instance [BDT former actress] Natalya Tenyakova, are playing some of their best roles in 'The Forest' so we simply must perform it here," Tabakov said.
The new drama, a rarely seen phenomenon on the St. Petersburg stage, is of particular interest to local theater-goers. Taboos take longer to overcome in what is arguably Russia's most theatrically conservative city, and a play such as the Presnyakov Brothers' "Playing the Victim" is sure to make a compelling impression.
A recent review in The Moscow Times, sister paper of The St. Petersburg Times, said director Kirill Serebrennikov has convincingly swept away one of the most tenacious taboos in Russian theater - the unwritten ban on using swear words.
"But the point isn't the presence of a few four-letter words that are usually likely to make purists shriek or run for cover," John Freedman wrote in The Moscow Times. "It is, rather, that the vast majority of the audience eagerly accepted that obscene rant as the most - perhaps the only - valid manner for its pronouncer to express his inexpressible outrage."
In Freedman's opinion, "Playing the Victim" is also a killingly incisive play staged expertly by Serebrennikov, set superbly in a pristine, geometric space by designer Nikolai Simonov and performed by the entire cast with a hip combination of nonchalance and precision. This play, written in the brisk, episodic style that characterizes all of the Presnyakovs' work, looks, sounds and feels like the people and the problems of the Russia that surround us today, the critic points out.
The Bolshoi Drama Theater opens its tour in Moscow on Feb. 26 with Lermontov's "The Masquerade," with Andrei Tolubeyev in the lead role of Prince Arbenin. The company's famous veterans Alisa Freindlikh, Kirill Lavrov, Georgy Shtil, Oleg Basilashvili and Larisa Malevannaya, who made their names back in the 1970s and 1980s when Georgy Tovstonogov was the BDT's artistic director, star in the troupe's six other offerings.
Moscow audiences will have the chance to see Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," Hauptmann's "Before Sunrise," Neil Simon's "California Suite," George Benard Shaw's "Heartbreak Hotel," Ronald Harwood's "The Dresser" and Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen."
Links: http://www.mxat.ru/
TITLE: Raising the flag
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Russian element at the 55th International Film Festival in Berlin, which ends Sunday, is by no means small: the country has put forward ten films, running both in the main program and the festival's satellite events.
A reconstructed version of Sergei Eisenstein's legendary 1925 Battleship Potemkin is one of this year's gems. The film, inspired by a failed revolt in 1905, will be shown for the first time ever in its unabridged version. In the 1920s, a number of episodes, including a speech delivered by revolutionary Leon Trotsky, were cut out by Bolshevik censors.
After Cannes and Venice, Berlin holds third place in the world's unofficial rating of film festivals. The last Russian film to be shown at Berlinale was Alexander Proshkin's The Russian Revolt (Russky Bunt) in 2000.
St. Petersburg is represented by two films. Alexander Sokurov's film The Sun is competing for the Golden Bear, while Andrei Kravchuk's The Italian is taking part in Kinderfilmfest, a children's film event within the festival.
The Sun tells about the life of the 124th Japanese emperor, Hirohito, one of the most controversial leaders of the 20th century. The movie follows Molokh ('Moloch,' 1999) and Telets ('Taurus,' 2002) in the director's tetralogy about dictators of the last century.
The film takes place in Tokyo in 1945. As with Hitler in Moloch and Lenin in Taurus, the Japanese emperor is shown during a time of crisis as he experiences the toughest challenge of his life.
When we tell the story of these characters we take that period of their lives when their personalities, characters and emotions are the closest to them being themselves, Sokurov said in a recent interview with St. Petersburg Times.
For Hirohito, this was the situation when the emperor was awaiting trial, [for war crimes] which, if it happened, would have dramatically changed his life. Actually, he was at a high risk of being executed, and that agonizing suspense was his greatest ordeal ever.
Sokurov is competing for the main prize with 20 other directors. Among his strongest rivals, and arguably the festival favorite is Regis Wargnier of France with his film Man To Man, which opened this year's festival.
Shot in South Africa and Britain, Man To Man is a historical epic starring Joseph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas about a 19th century anthropological expedition. The adventurers are exploring the possible connection between man and ape in central Africa.
An African theme has developed in this year's event. The official program also includes two movies about the 1994 Rwandan genocide - Sometimes in April and Hotel Rwanda - as well as a screen adaptation of Bizet's opera Carmen, set in a Cape Town township.
The jury, headed by Independence Day director Roland Emmerich, will announce the winners of the awards on Saturday.
Sokurov's goal in his tetralogy is to reveal the human side of tyrants' characters. The period when dictators enjoy total power and are treated as idols are of no professional interest to the director.
It is very often that the audiences see an ulterior motive behind my films - suggesting that really the goal is to show an inevitable punishment coming in various forms, but this is not fair, Sokurov said.
I deeply sympathize with my characters and don't feel vindictive when filming. I am trying to understand what was behind their actions and what emotions led them into totalitarianism.
The Italian is a sentimental story, described by its directors as social drama, which leads the audience into the gloomy world of one of Russia's poverty-stricken provincial orphanages. To make it all the more convincing, the young residents of an orphanage in the suburban town of Vyborg, near St. Petersburg, star in many roles in the film.
Six-year-old Vanya Solntsev, played by St. Petersburg schoolboy Kolya Spiridonov, is more fortunate than his fellow residents in the orphanage because an Italian couple has decided to adopt him. But the Italian, as everyone calls him, does not express much enthusiasm about starting a new life in a warm Meditarrenean climate. Instead, he looks for his real mother.
Vanya's mother, a medical nurse who put the child into an orphanage immediately after his birth, only appears in the film for an instant.
These days it has almost become routine to see children in orphanages when their parent are actually alive, Kravchuk said.
There are many reasons for that. But what we would like to explore in our film is the moral aspect of this problem, the issue of parental responsibility for the future of the children.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Sharon Not Charged
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's attorney general decided not to file charges against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a campaign funding scandal but indicted his son Thursday, the Justice Ministry said.
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz closed a three-year-old investigation of Sharon, citing insufficient evidence of involvement in setting up shell companies to funnel foreign donations to his 1999 primary campaign.
While Sharon emerged unscathed, his son and close adviser Omri, 40, was indicted on criminal charges, including fraud, breach of trust and perjury.
Missing Plutonium
LONDON (AP) - A British nuclear reprocessing plant cannot account for nearly 30 kilograms of plutonium, but authorities believe that it is an accounting issue rather than because material that could potentially be used to make nuclear weapons has been lost, the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority said Thursday.
"There is no evidence to suggest that any of the apparent losses reported were real losses of nuclear material," the authority added.
TITLE: Armstrong Eyes Seventh Title
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS - Still hungry to race but wary he is not in the best shape, Lance Armstrong wants to take his Tour de France record to even mightier heights: He will try for a seventh straight title this summer.
Armstrong had left open the possibility he wouldn't compete this year in cycling's showcase event to pursue other races. But in an announcement Wednesday on the web site of his Discovery Channel team the Tour's only six-time winner said he will again commit himself to the race to which he's dedicated his cycling life.
"I am grateful for the opportunity that Discovery Communications has given the team and look forward to achieving my goal of a seventh Tour de France," Armstrong said.
Armstrong has overcome testicular cancer to become one of the most inspirational stories in all sports, and his sixth Tour crown last year sent him past four five-time champions: Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain.
Armstrong will start his 2005 season with the Paris-Nice stage race in March, according to the team Web site. He will then compete in the Tour of Flanders on April 3 before returning to the United States to defend his title at the Tour de Georgia that month.
Armstrong said that he and Johan Bruyneel, his friend and team manager, "will evaluate my fitness later this spring and possibly add some races to the calendar."
"I am excited to get back on the bike and start racing," Armstrong said, "although my condition is far from perfect."
Other racers probably won't attach much importance to that last assessment, and British bookmaker William Hill immediately installed Armstrong the 4-7 favorite. Jan Ullrich, the 1997 Tour champion and five-time runner-up, was at 7-2.
"It's good that he is there," Ullrich said. "The best should be at the Tour."
Andreas Kloden, last year's runner-up, added: "I always said he would ride. I am glad he's there."
Armstrong will be nearly 34 when the Tour begins July 2 - too old, some might think, to win the three-week cycling marathon yet again. There were plenty of doubters last year, too. Yet the Texan managed to defeat younger competitors with a dominant performance.
Armstrong showed last year that once he's on his bike he can shut out all manner of distractions - from a court battle over a book that implied he used drugs to the attention focused on his girlfriend, singer Sheryl Crow.
Armstrong has said he wants to win other big races, but the demands of the Tour have left little room for such Classic races as the Spanish Vuelta, the Paris-Roubaix or Fleche Wallone, which he won in 1996 shortly before being diagnosed with cancer.
This year's Tour de France route passes through Germany and features 21 stages over 2,222 miles from July 2-24. The mountaintop finishes are less intense and the time trials shorter this year. Both are disciplines where Armstrong excels, so the changes may mean he will have fewer opportunities to take huge chunks of time off his rivals.
But some initially thought the 2004 route also might trip up the champion. Instead, it proved just to his liking. Armstrong's winning margin over Kloden - 6 minutes, 19 seconds - was not his biggest. But his five solo stage wins and a team time trial victory made it perhaps Armstrong's best Tour.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Gretzky Pessimistic
TORONTO (Reuters) - On the darkest day in NHL history following the cancellation of the 2004-05 season, hockey great Wayne Gretzky painted an even bleaker picture of the sport's future.
Rated by many as the greatest player to grace the ice and one of the most respected figures in the sport, Gretzky admitted Wednesday to having little optimism that the league's woes would end quickly.
"This is not good," Gretzky told a news conference following NHL commissioner Gary Bettman's announcement earlier in the day that he was canceling the season after being unable to reach a new collective bargaining agreement with players.
London 2012 Bid
LONDON (AP) - London's 2012 Olympic bid committee wheeled out some of Britain's greatest athletes Wednesday as the International Olympic Committee's evaluation commission began its four-day inspection visit.
Steve Redgrave, a five-time rowing gold medallist, was part of the first presentation detailing the planned regeneration of a largely rundown east London suburb into an Olympic Park containing a new 80,000-seat stadium and the athletes village.
"I wish I was 20 or 30 years younger so I could be competing at a London 2012 games," said Redgrave, who won golds at each games from 1984 to 2000.
"I think we got the message across very strongly," he said.
Roddick Advances
MEMPHIS, Tennessee (AP) - Top-seeded Andy Roddick needed just an hour and 16 minutes to defeat Arnaud Clement 6-3 6-3 Wednesday night in the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships.
Roddick, the tournament's 2002 champion, had dropped his previous two matches against Clement, both on clay.
But Roddick dominated Wednesday's match with a powerful serve and knack for keeping points alive. Clement was getting to shots early but seemed to lose a step during the match.
Man U Fans to Protest
LONDON (Reuters) - Manchester United fans are planning a torchlit protest against U.S. tycoon Malcolm Glazer's takeover bid before next Wednesday's Champions League game against AC Milan at Old Trafford.
Glazer tabled a detailed proposal earlier this month which sources said would value the 126-year-old club at 800 million pounds ($1.51 billion), though its board has already said it is unlikely to recommend the offer to shareholders.
The American is facing stiffer opposition from Shareholders United and the Independent Manchester United Supporters Association.
Dynamo Has Sponsor
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Dynamo Moscow has signed a sponsorship deal with nationwide casino chain Super Slots on Tuesday as they bid to restore the team to former glories.
Dynamo, one the oldest and most successful sides in the country, were bought last year by businessman Alexei Fedorychev, who has promised to pump $150 million into the club.
Fedorychev has been compared to Chelsea's Russian billionaire owner Roman Abramovich for his lavish spending.
Referee on Racism
MADRID (Reuters) - A leading Spanish referee has hit out at the failure of the country's football authorities to deal with racist abuse and pledged his support to black players who walked off the pitch in protest.
"Those people who should be facing up to this problem are not doing so and it is a big problem," Spanish Premier League referee Eduardo Iturralde Gonzalez was quoted as saying in Spanish sports daily Marca on Wednesday.
"Of course I notice it when I am on the pitch. You hear everything there. And I'll tell you one thing, the day a black player decides to walk off the pitch I'll go with him."
Ronaldo Toe Trouble
MADRID (Reuters) - Real Madrid striker Ronaldo is doubtful for Saturday's league match against Athletic Bilbao after returning from his lavish Valentine's Day engagement party in Paris with an injury to his toe.
Club medical staff said that the Brazilian was suffering from inflammation of the big toe on his left foot and would undergo physiotherapy to deal with the problem.
TITLE: Russians Set Seasonal Bests
At Stockholm Indoor Meet
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STOCKHOLM - Olympic champion Yury Borzakovsky ran the fastest 800 meters of the indoor season, and another Russian, Yaroslav Rybakov, recorded the season's best high jump at the GE Galan meet on Tuesday.
Borzakovsky was next-to-last after the first lap but finished first in 1 minute, 46.10 seconds. Mbulaeni Mulaudzi of South Africa, the Olympic silver medalist, was 0.31 behind, followed by Wilfred Bungei of Kenya in 1:47.43.
Rybakov cleared 7 feet, 9 3/4 inches on his third and last attempt to win the high jump, a half-inch better than the previous world indoor best he shared with Jaroslav Baba of the Czech Republic. Baba was second Tuesday at 7-8.
Olympic and world champion Stefan Holm of Sweden did not compete because of an injury.
Pole vaulter Derek Miles of the United States failed to set the night's third season best, missing three times at 19-5 1/2 . Miles did clear 19 3/4 on his first try to win.
Denys Yurchenko of Ukraine cleared 18-10 3/4 to take second place in a field that included 2000 Olympic champion Nick Hysong and 2004 Olympic silver medalist Toby Stevenson. That American duo tied for fifth at 18-3, behind Igor Pavlov and Alhaji Jeng.
Veteran Maria Mutola of Mozambique, a six-time world indoor champion who has broken the world 1,000-meter record twice at the Globe, held off Mayte Martinez of Spain to win the 800 in 1:59.48. Martinez was 0.13 behind.
Olympic heptathlon champion Carolina Kluft delighted the crowd of 10,418 - the biggest turnout for a European indoor meet this season - by sweeping all events in the women's triathlon. She took the 60 hurdles in 8.36, the long jump at 21-7 1/2 , and the 400 meters in 53.59.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Ex-Zenit Coach Dies
ST. PETERSBURG (Reuters) Former FC Zenit St. Petersburg coach and Valery Lobanovsky's long-serving assistant with the Soviet national team, Yury Morozov, has died, the Russian premier league club said on Wednesday.
Morozov, who had three spells coaching the St. Petersburg side for the better part of four decades, died at his home on Tuesday night after a long battle with cancer. He was 70.
At his last spell with the club, Morozov was forced to step down as Zenit coach in July 2002 citing poor health.
He gained prominence working side-by-side with renowned Dynamo Kiev coach Lobanovsky in the Soviet Union team from the mid-1970s until the 1990 World Cup.
The two men, who also became close friends, led the Soviets to the final of the 1988 European championship in Germany. Lobanovsky died in 2002, age 63.
Aside from Zenit, Morozov also coached Dynamo Kiev, CSKA Moscow and worked in Iraq and Kuwait.