SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1055 (21), Friday, March 25, 2005
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TITLE: Rude Shock for Ingush Couple at Border
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Grozny-born Timur Dakhkilgov and his wife Lida got a rude shock last week when they were denied entry to Finland.
The couple is ethnically Ingush. Timur Dakhkilgov was detained for three months and beaten on unfounded suspicions that he was involved in the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings. He was later released and all the charges against him were dropped.
The couple, who had left their three young children at home in Moscow, said they wanted to have their first look at Europe.
Finnish authorities maintain that the couple planned to travel to Germany and had purposely misled border officials.
Lida Dakhkilgova said she and her husband underwent a thorough search when they reached the Finnish border by bus on the morning of March 12. They were interrogated all day and in the late evening were put in a car by customs officials and driven back to St. Petersburg.
"All we wanted was a glimpse of Europe, to see what was behind the border," she said Wednesday in a telephone call from Moscow. "We got our visas from the Finnish Embassy in Moscow and just wanted to spend two days in Finland. It turned into a real nightmare."
The family had been invited to the Finnish country house of Russian documentary filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, who described Timur Dakhkilgov's treatment after he was accused of taking part in the apartment bombings in his film "Nedoveriye," or "Mistrust." Nekrasov is working on a film in Germany.
"Nekrasov had invited us to his house in Finland to celebrate his birthday, which was Feb. 26, but we could not obtain all of the necessary documents in time," Dakhkilgova said. Our visas were ready on March 1, so we decided not to miss the opportunity and to go to Finland as tourists for two days.
"We left our children in Moscow and we had tickets from St. Petersburg back to Moscow for March 13," she said.
Dakhkilgova said their passports caught the attention of Finnish border guards as soon as they saw the couple's place of birth. Written in their passports is: "Grozny, Chechen-Ingush Republic."
"'Chechens,' I heard the border guard say," Dakhkilgova said.
Her husband was called to a separate room and was there for more than an hour, she said.
"When he came out he was very upset. I asked him what had he been doing that took so long, but he couldn't answer in a normal way. He was shaking all over; his voice was trembling."
Timur Dakhkilgov said he had been asked by the border guards to remove some of his clothes, be fingerprinted and sign a piece of paper, which was written in Finnish and he did not understand.
"Then they called me," Dakhkilgova said. "The process was the same. I had to take off some of my clothes; they conducted a body search and then fingerprinted me, saying I had to do this for security. I refused to sign the paper because I couldn't read Finnish and nobody would translate it to me."
Pasi Tolvanen, spokesman for the Finnish border guard service, said Thursday that the couple was deported because of a disparity between the stated purpose of their visit and their real destination.
"The reason was plain and simple," he said in a telephone interview from Helsinki. "When they applied for the visa, they said they wanted to spend two days at a spa resort in Imatra, but we found out their invitation originally came from Germany and the destination of the trip was Germany. They deliberately gave false information."
Dakhkilgova denied that she and her husband intended to go to Germany.
"If they wanted to justify their actions they should have come up with something more clever," she said.
Nekrasov was outraged at the treatment of the couple and said he has appealed to the Finnish courts to contest the decision to deport them.
"The invitation was written by me in a form that I have used for about 10 years to invite all of my relatives and friends to come and stay for a few days in my house in Finland and none of them had problems before," he said Wednesday in a telephone interview from Germany. "It looks as if the Dakhkilgov family was born in the wrong place for Finnish officials."
"It is a shame that all this happened after Timur went through his ordeal in Moscow after being accused by the Federal Security Service of organizing explosions in buildings on Kashirskoye Shosse and Guryanova Ulitsa," Nekrasov said. "He told me the Finns treated him worse than FSB did, rudely throwing his belongings around, performing an internal body search on him. This is just outrageous," he said.
The Dakhkilgov case was the second major incident linked to deportation from Finland of ethnic Caucasians this month.
On March 15, Finnish border guards stopped a busload of 48 Georgian women allegedly trying to go to Greece on Finnish visas. On Tuesday the group was put on a plane in Lappeenranta and sent back to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, border officials said.
The Georgians were stopped at the Vaalimaa crossing after border guards suspected that the trip might involve human trafficking, the Helsingin Sanomat reported Tuesday. The women had Schengen visas issued by the Swedish Embassy in Moscow, and the leader of the group said that they planned to go via Central Europe, Austria and Italy to Greece, and from there via Turkey back to Georgia, the paper said, quoting border officials.
"But many of the women did not know their exact route and some of them did not have enough cash to travel," Tolvanen said.
Border officials noted that the tour fitted the profile of suspected systematic human trafficking that Greek officials had noted in November. It was reported that busloads of women had been arriving in the EU via Vaalimaa, and that the buses had left Greece with only two or three people remaining on board.
In 2004, the Finnish border guard service deported about 900 people from the Russian border on suspicion that they were would-be illegal migrants. Another 550 people were sent back to Russia because they did not have proper documents, Tolvanen said.
TITLE: Finns Worried by Applicants Who Say They Lost Passports
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A spate of Russian citizens applying for Finnish visas with brand-new passports, claiming that their old passports were lost, is worrying the Finnish Consulate in St. Petersburg.
In the last month, about 100 applications have been made on behalf of people with new passports. The consulate suspects that many applicants have reported losing their passports in order to hide violations of the rules of international travel.
The consulate said the number of such cases has increased dramatically this winter. Previously, only a few visa applicants each year had presented new passports replacing ones that had been lost, the Helsingin Sanomat reported Tuesday.
Martti Ruokokoski, head of the visa section at the consulate, confirmed this information to The St. Petersburg Times, saying, "since the beginning of this year, the consulate has had to deal with 20 to 30 cases of the kind a week."
He told the Helsingin Sanomat he was convinced that some applicants have been losing their passports deliberately. The most likely reason for this was that the old passports recorded they had overstayed their visas in Schengen zone countries.
The Schengen zone covers almost all European Union countries. Under an agreement between the countries, people with Schengen visas can cross borders within the zone without being subject to checks.
Ruokokoski said passport stamps indicating arrivals and departures would conveniently disappear as would unpleasant notes made by officials, such as refusals to enter some country, if a passport were "lost."
At least some people who have "lost" their passports had been doing illegal work or had worked as prostitutes, he added.
However, he conceded it was possible some applicants really had lost their passports. Therefore the consulate could not simply deny visas in every case.
A representative of St. Petersburg's Passports and Visa Service, who declined to be named, said that if the consulate had such concerns it should inform the head of the service about the situation.
"We do have many people appealing to us after their foreign passports were lost. However, we haven't noticed a big increase of such cases recently," she said.
If people deliberately lost their passports, one of the major reasons could be "remarks made in their passports in a country they had visited," she said.
Sometimes people who have visited Israel and want to go to Arab countries also try to get rid of old foreign passports because they may be refused entry to Arab countries, she added.
The woman said that now and then the Finnish Consulate itself appeals to the service with requests to issue a new passport for a person whose passport the consulate had lost while processing a visa.
"It probably has to do with big volumes of visas that the consulate issues," she said.
Ruokokoski said the consulate does lose some passports. It lost about 10 passports last year.
"Such things should not happen, but if it does we pay for replacing the person's passport and ask the services in charge to do it as quickly as possible," Ruokokoski said.
Sometimes passports are lost not by the consulate but by tourist companies who blame the consulate, he added.
The Finnish Consulate issues more visas than any other consulate in St. Petersburg. Ruokokoski said in 2004 it issued 230,000 visas and he expects a record 240,000 visas will be issued this year.
TITLE: Spate of Pneumonia Investigated
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Leningrad Military District prosecutors on Tuesday opened a criminal investigation into why at least 22 soldiers in a Leningrad Oblast military unit have caught pneumonia in the last two months.
The soldiers were mostly first-year conscripts who served in a construction unit near the town of Sosnovy Bor, 100 kilometers southwest of St. Petersburg.
Deputy Prosecutor Grigory Kuleshov said the investigation was into violations of sanitary and epidemiological norms that caused damage to health.
Igor Lebed, military prosecutor of the Leningrad district, said the criminal case was against Colonel Vladimir Olenberg, the head of the unit where the soldiers served, Interfax reported.
Lebed said the temperatures of the soldiers' housing and workplaces were being checked.
Doctors who examined the soldiers said the conscripts had not been provided with satisfactory living conditions and many suffered from health problems, weak immune systems and a lack of clean clothing, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported.
Kuleshov said Wednesday that prosecutors had information that the soldiers had fallen ill not while working but afterward, when they stayed outside when chilly winds were blowing.
"That doesn't relieve their commander of responsibility," he said. "He is supposed to monitor what his subordinates do after work."
St. Petersburg's Soldiers' Mothers said that according to their sources more than 30 soldiers in the unit had been hospitalized.
"We received information that many soldiers were in terrible condition, and not only had pneumonia but also had symptoms of dystrophy," Ella Polyakova, the head of Soldiers' Mothers said Tuesday. "Six of them went through intensive care."
Soldiers drafted to the unit often have bad health and are unfit for military service. They have to do hard work in bad conditions, she added.
The incident renewed concerns about the ill treatment of rank-and-file soldiers.
Last week prosecutors opened an investigation into the death from pneumonia of a conscript serving in Izhevsk.
Ninety other conscripts fell gravely ill with pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses after being forced to withstand freezing temperatures while their plane was being refueled en route to their new post in the Far East in December of 2003.
TITLE: Federal Threat to Ax Recalcitrant Assembly
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Federal authorities have threatened to disband the city's Legislative Assembly after it failed to pass amendments to the City Charter on Wednesday.
The federal government says the amendments would bring the liberal charter, which is a form of constitution for the city, into line with the new law that enables President Vladimir Putin to appoint the heads of regional administrations, which came into force at the end of last year.
Twenty-two deputies voted in favor of the amendments on Wednesday, four fewer votes than the 26 required to pass the amendments in the third and final attempt that was allowed in a single session.
"If a regional legislature does not act to make their laws comply with the federal legislation and do not fulfill a court decision to do so, it could face punishment, including being disbanded before it completes its full term," Interfax quoted Vladimir Lapitsky, head of the legislation department of the Justice Ministry, as saying Wednesday.
It is too early to talk about any sort of sanctions in relation to St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, Lapitsky sai,d because the lawmakers still have an opportunity to approve the amendments before the matter goes to court.
"If they don't, an appropriate mechanism will be activated by the prosecutor's office and [federal] structures of justice that are charged with ensuring there is a unified legislative space in the country," he said.
Even if proceedings to disband the Legislative Assembly were launched right away, the earliest date for the disbandment would be the end of the year.
Alexei Kovalyov, a member of the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, faction in the Legislative Assembly, said the deputies intend to test the law on appointing governors in court because it contradicts the constitution.
"We believe that the federal law itself contradicts the constitution," Interfax quoted Kovalyov as saying Wednesday. "We reserve the right to appeal to the Constitutional Court to review the law on appointing governors to see if it accords with the constitution."
City Hall has been muted in its response to the failure to pass the amendments, saying in a news release published Wednesday the city government hopes that the Legislative Assembly will pass the amendments next Wednesday, the next time voting is scheduled.
"Some of the deputies have not heard the arguments presented by City Hall, which are sensible enough," Interfax quoted Vadim Tyulpanov, the Legislative Assembly speaker and leader of the Kremlin-loyal United Russia party in St. Petersburg, as saying Wednesday. "There is no threat to our parliament yet because the St. Petersburg prosecutor has not sent any official papers. If he does, the arguments will look more sensible for my colleagues."
Konstantin Serov, United Russia deputy in the assembly, said that when deputies see sanctions looming, the voting will change dramatically.
"When the question of disbanding the Legislative Assembly is raised, the Democratic faction and the Regional Life Party, which voted against the amendments, will in a friendly way vote for the law," Serov said.
The next Legislative Assembly elections are scheduled in December 2007.
TITLE: Students to Simulate the United Nations
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: About 100 university students from different countries will spend the next week in the city attending a model United Nations run by the St. Petersburg-based International Youth Diplomacy League in the international relations faculty of St. Petersburg State University.
The event runs from Sunday until April 3, during which the visitors will stay with city families.
Model United Nations are held every year. One was held in Moscow in 2002, but this is the first such event in St. Petersburg and is being held in the UN's 60th anniversary year.
The students will take the roles of UN delegates and simulate the work of various of its bodies. Each participating student will choose a committee and a country other than their own to represent during the debates in the model conference.
"They have to learn to make decisions not only in the interests of their native countries but in line with the general principles of human relations," said Olga Savchenko, a spokeswoman for the league.
The model Security Council will investigate the problem of states' responsibilities for breaches of international agreements in space.
A model European Council will discuss the development of four EU-Russian common areas and a model Commission of Science and Technology for development will study the rational allocation of natural resources.
The resolutions that the students make will be sent to the real UN, fulfilling one goal of the event - to contribute to international understanding and cooperation.
"The aim of the model UN is to increase the possibility of solving difficult situations without force, with the help of compromise; to develop communication skills and to resolve problems in a mutually acceptable way," Savchenko said.
"The model UN will contribute to the education of a new generation of political leaders and create a favorable image of Russia and St. Petersburg."
TITLE: Nurgaliyev: Crooks Run 500 Key Enterprises
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - At least 500 large enterprises in key economic sectors are under the control of organized crime, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev told the Federation Council on Wednesday.
"Organized crime has infiltrated most key sectors of the country's economy," Nurgaliyev said, Interfax reported.
Primary targets are the timber industry, bio-resources extraction, intellectual property, the alcohol and tobacco business, and the car industry, he said. "On the retail market, criminal elements are dictating pricing policies."
Nurgaliyev's comments come just one day before President Vladimir Putin's Thursay meeting with the country's top business leaders (see story this page.)
Given an already jittery atmosphere in the business community, the timing of Nurgaliyev's comments don't help calm nerves, the vice president of the country's big business lobby said.
"Why scare entrepreneurs who are already frightened?" said Igor Yurgens, vice president of Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, or RSPP.
"Five hundred enterprises is a really high number," Yurgens said. "There is no need to frighten everyone."
The Interior Ministry has many levers at its disposal to fight corrupt businesses, he added. There are more than 50 types of checks the police could use to clean up crooked enterprises, Yurgens said.
Nurgaliyev said that more than 116 criminal organizations are at work in Russia, with more than 4,000 active members and connections reaching across regional and international borders.
"If [the Interior Ministry] was able to count them so precisely, why isn't anything done with them?" said Yelena Panfilova, president of Transparency International in Russia.
"In our country, there is a tendency to talk about how bad everything is," she said.
Acknowledging problems is commendable, Panfilova said, "but where is a concrete plan of action to solve them?"
An Interior Ministry spokeswoman declined to spell out any specific steps, saying, "we do not comment on the minister's words."
After Nurgaliyev made his remarks, Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov rapped the Interior Ministry.
"Statistical information about crimes committed does not attest to the high quality of the Interior Ministry's work," he told journalists, Interfax reported.
"The Interior Ministry must think about how police operations can be [made] more effective."
Nurgaliyev's speech at the Federation Council was not the first time that the Interior Ministry painted a grim picture of crime in the business world.
Last summer, the ministry reported that in the first six months of 2004, instances of bribery and other job-related malfeasance increased 13.7 percent, retail sector crimes increased 23.6 percent and crimes in the finance and credit realm increased 17 percent, compared with the same period in 2003, Interfax reported.
TITLE: LUKoil's Expansion Spreads to Finland
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: LUKoil took its gas station chain expansion from St. Petersburg to Finland this week, acquiring controlling stakes in two Finnish gas and oil companies for $160 million, the company said Wednesday.
The announcement comes soon after this month's purchase of 37 Balt Trade gas stations and a $10.2 million land acquisition deal to build 30 station in the city, which will give LUKoil nearly a third of the St. Petersburg gas retail market.
The company's most recent acquisitions, the Finnish Teboil Ab and Suomen Petrooli, manage a retail network of 289 gas filling stations and 132 diesel pumps. The companies also act as oil products wholesalers and trade in lubricating and diesel oil.
Jointly, the two companies that became affiliated in the '80s control about 23.2 percent of the Finnish market, according to company figures.
"The main result of this deal will be LUKoil's entry into the Finnish oil products market, and the possibility of reaching the end-consumer in the country," Lukoil's press service representative said Thursday.
The acquisition of shares in the Finnish firms has been approved by the European Commission, LUKoil said.
"The growth of LUKoil's gas stations chain ... comes as part of the corporate development strategy of growing the oil refinery and sales business in Central and Eastern Europe," Leonid Fedun, the company's vice-president, said in a statement.
The oil major has not decided as yet whether it will rebrand the Finnish acquisitions under its logo, or let the firms continue trading under the Teboil and Suomen Petrooli brands.
Switching brands may not be the best option, since both Finnish companies, founded in the early '30s, have become quite prominent household names, Finnish residents say.
"They are well-known businesses to Finnish consumers," said Antti Riivari, an adviser with the Finnish Ministry of Trade and Industry.
The loss of the Finnish brand names would not be something the ministry would object to, however, Riivari said.
"We have monitoring bodies who make sure of the deal's validity. But if it has been approved by the European commission, it's fine," he said in a phone interview.
Earlier this week LUKoil's Hungarian division, LUKoil Downstream Hungary, also announced the purchase of 15 gas stations from Hungarian ABA. The deal brought the division's total number of gas stations up to 26 - just over three percent of the gas retail market in Hungary.
The new European gas stations will be supplied by LUKoil's Romanian oil refinery, the company said.
Analysts saw the recent expansion moves as part of a long-term strategy to bolster the oil major's presence in Europe.
"LUKoil management has long announced its plans to expand in Europe. It also said the St. Petersburg region was one of the most strategically important markets for the company," Alfa Bank analyst Anna Butenko said Thursday.
In light of growing oil prices, Butenko said it was natural for LUKoil to gain a solid share in all the major world markets.
LUKoil, which controls about 2 percent of all world oil reserves, operates a chain of gas stations in the United States as well as Central and Eastern Europe.
LUKoil, Russia's largest oil producer, rose 2.7 percent to 919.38 rubles on the Moscow bourse MICEX on Thursday.
TITLE: Road Tunnel to Go Under Neva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The answer to the city's increasing traffic congestion problems could be an ambitious tunnel project running under the Neva River, city officials said Wednesday.
City governor Valentina Matviyenko has approved the start of work on constructing a road tunnel that will connect the northern and downtown parts of St. Petersburg, vice-governor Oleg Virolainen told Interfax news agency.
"This week the principal decision on beginning the pre-project work has been made by the working group under governor Matvienko," Virolainen said.
The design for the construction resides as yet in the early stages, Virolainen's press office said Thursday. It is expected that the tunnel will span 1.5 kilometers and accommodate four to six lanes of traffic.
Preliminary estimates say the tunnel's traffic capacity will reach 40,000 to 60,000 cars a day, although the figures could rise to fit a potential 80,000 cars, the press office said.
Traffic problems have worsened in recent years as the restrictions on remodeling the historical city center have almost disallowed the widening of roads or other infrastructure improvements.
The city's traffic jams have, furthermore, become a serious health risk for pedestrians and drivers alike. Estimates by the Center For Environmental Initiative, a non-governmental ecological group, say that half of the city's volume of pollution, about 400 tons, come from transport exhaust fumes of cars stuck in traffic jams.
A number of ongoing city projects have been initiated to transfer heavy traffic away from the city center, such as construction of a city ring-road and the Western Speed Diameter highway.
To tackle the problem in the city center, a new bridge across the Neva (next to Volodarsky bridge) has recently opened. It is hoped that the tunnel's construction could further relieve the vast hold-ups drivers encounter in the city center, drivers say.
"I have spent three hours today driving from the center of the city to Kuzmolovo [20 kilometers north of St. Petersburg]," said Vyacheslav Chernikin, a factory worker, who regularly makes the same journey in one hour and 15 minutes on Saturday afternoons.
Current proposals for the tunnel have outlined two possible locations: from Vasilyevsky island to Yekateringofka River and from Piskaryov Prospekt to Orlovskaya Ulitsa, the vice governor's spokesperson said.
In terms of engineering logistics, there are two possibilies of building a so-called open tunnel, 1.5 meters below the river bottom, or burrowing deeper, to the depth of subway tunnels.
A deeper tunnel would involve using a drilling shield to burrow at least 25 meters to 35 meters under the River Neva, the spokeswoman said.
Although supportive of the idea in general, the plans have raised some eyebrows in engineering companies.
"The decision to create a new transportation artery in a city is usually taken only after all other means have been exhausted," Konstantin Anashkin, spokesman for civil engineering company Bovis Lend Lease, said Thursday from Moscow.
"A first option should always be a widening of the streets, streamlining of the traffic, using modern street lights systems and so on," he said.
Although part of the tunnel's goal is to reduce the congestion and fumes coming from standing traffic, the plans were met with complete disapproval from ecological analysts.
"Experience from all over the world shows that new roads, highways and tunnels tend to increase the traffic and thereby just cause additional environmental and traffic problem," said Jens Forsmark of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.
"The extreme example is Los Angeles, 70 percent of whose central part is occupied by roads and parking lots. Nevertheless, traffic and problems are huge there."
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Yukos a Bit Involved
MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia's crippled oil firm Yukos said in a statement late on Wednesday its employees were only "marginally" implicated in a money laundering probe launched by the Spanish authorities.
The company said it had met the Spanish authorities earlier this month in connection with the multi-million dollar money-laundering network and had pledged to fully cooperate.
"The company, through its legal counsel, offered full cooperation with the Spanish authorities and asked them to share any evidence that may appear to link Yukos to their investigations," the statement said.
"Yukos notes that the Spanish authorities' investigation is substantial and the allegations of possible Yukos employee involvement appear marginal to the overall case," the statement read.
Bosses Share the Stock
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Gazprom, the world's biggest natural-gas producer, may give stock options worth $41.2 million to its top managers, Vedomosti said, citing unidentified company officials.
Seventy Gazprom managers, including chief executive Alexei Miller, his nine deputies, members of the management board and heads of subsidiaries, will be eligible for the program, the newspaper said.
The program will use 14.4 million Gazprom shares, or 0.06 percent of the company's charter capital, priced at $2.86 a share, the price of Gazprom domestic shares as of Dec. 7, 2004, Vedomosti said.
The managers will have the right to buy their share allocations in three years, the paper said.
The company will allocate options on the basis of each manager's salary, the newspaper said. Gazprom's board of directors will discuss the options program March 30, Vedomosti reported.
Longer Jail Term
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former chief executive of Yukos, had his jail term extended to July 14, Interfax reported, citing the Meschansky Court in Moscow.
Khodorkovsky's imprisonment was due to end May 14, after a three-month extension that was decided in January. Khodorkovsky and his partner, Platon Lebedev, are standing trial on charges of fraud and tax evasion in the Moscow court, allegations Khodorkovsky says are retribution for his support of political opponents to President Vladimir Putin.
Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, has been jailed since his arrest on Oct. 25, 2003.
Tallinn Backs Swedbank
HELSINKI (Bloomberg) - The supervisory council of Hansabank, the Baltic region's biggest lender, backed a higher, 1.7 billion-euro ($2.2 billion) takeover bid from the fifth-largest Nordic bank Swedbank.
The 13.50 euros a share offer was made on March 22 after the council split over accepting an earlier 11-euro bid.
The price of the amended offer "is fair, a view that is supported by an opinion given by Citigroup" that has been advising on the offer, Hansabank said Thursday in a statement.
Swedbank and its rivals are seeking acquisitions to raise earnings and boost their presence in the Baltics - including Russia - where the banking market is growing faster than its peers.
TITLE: Akayev Faced Divided Opposition
TEXT: Better not be too soft on your opposition. Or so must think the leaders of the countries bordering Kyrgyzstan, which is in the grips of revolution - or, depending on your view, of thugs.
Some have called this revolution sparked by disputed elections the "Tulip Revolution," after Georgia's Rose Revolution and Ukraine's Orange Revolution. But opposition leaders have yet to agree on a name. Small wonder, because the opposition hasn't even been able to agree on coordination or cooperation, either.
After the authorities were chased out of several towns in southern Kyrgyzstan, one opposition leader, former foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva, ruled out any talks with President Askar Akayev. Another leader, former prime minister Kurmanbek Bakiyev, said talks would be possible if Akayev attended. Finally, opposition leader No. 3, Omurbek Tekerbayev, said he wanted Akayev to remain president until his term ends in October. Rank-and-file opposition members also seem to disagree. Radio Free Europe reported a Kyrgyz journalist who witnessed the revolutionary events in Osh as saying: "I had an impression that the opposition members threw stones at each other."
This is an important difference from events in Georgia and Ukraine: The Kyrgyz revolution lacks leadership and, as a consequence, is more violent. Several police officers have reportedly been killed. Indeed, it's more of a revolution than the well-organized events in both Georgia and Ukraine.
What did Kyrgyzstan, an "island of democracy" in a sea of Central Asian dictatorship, as it was called in the early 1990s, do to deserve this? Being more liberal than its neighbors is, paradoxically, part of the answer. This left room for dissent. Thus, it was possible to demonstrate against the nepotism and electoral fraud that became increasingly characteristic of Kyrgyzstan - which is a pity because everything started so well.
When Kyrgyzstan became independent at the end of 1991, it was the only country in Central Asia led by a liberal physicist, Akayev, and not a former party boss. Akayev introduced multi-party democracy, started privatization and planned economic reforms supported by the International Monetary Fund. But while Kyrgyzstan's first parliament might have been representative, it also was chaotic, independent-minded and made reform difficult. And after the presidential election of 1995, a referendum was held strengthening the presidency at the cost of parliament. This set a bad precedent. In subsequent years, Akayev gave himself more and more powers, not to push through reforms, but to silence criticism. Yet, in the short term, reforms didn't bring prosperity. This created dissent and Akayev became unpopular.
Then, during the 2000 presidential campaign, a credible challenger appeared - Felix Kulov, a former security chief who had fallen out with the president. Akayev didn't take any risks. He first made sure Kulov couldn't register as a candidate and later had him jailed on charges of "abuse of power."
Kyrgyzstan became more and more like its intolerant neighbors. Under Akayev's regime, the presidential family gained not only political, but also enormous economic power. Doing big business became impossible without the blessing of the family. Many businessmen were unhappy about this and are unlikely to support him, unless they think the alternative is worse. Luckily for Akayev, a stone-throwing mob might be just that.
Apart from businessmen and many ordinary people who are unhappy with the low living standards, widespread corruption and nepotism, a third group is unhappy, namely the south, where most of the revolution is taking place.
Northern Kyrgyzstan borders the steppes of Kazakhstan and is secular, Europeanized and as much Russian- as Kyrgyz-speaking. The south includes the Fergana valley, is more religious and has a large Uzbek minority. Communication between the two regions, which are separated by high mountains, is difficult in winter. This cultural divide wouldn't necessarily be a problem. But the south is politically underrepresented and much poorer than the north, which receives most investment. In addition, three years ago there was a bloody incident that has never properly been resolved and now seems to be playing a role in the revolt.
In January 2002, parliamentary deputy Azimbek Beknazarov was arrested, like Kulov, on charges of "abuse of power." But it is believed he was actually arrested for vehemently opposing an Akayev-supported treaty with China demarcating the border and handing over large tracts of uninhabited territory. People in Beknazarov's southern constituency of Ak-Sui demonstrated against his arrest and blocked roads. Then as now, protestors demanded the resignation of Akayev. In the end, Beknazarov was released, but not before a dozen protestors had died in a clash with police. This was the first time a protest in Kyrgyzstan had turned deadly, and the government promised reforms. But the only "reform" that occurred was a referendum strengthening the presidency again and replacing the party list system with a single-member district system for parliamentary elections.
But the new voting system has weakened parties. The opposition won just 6 out of 75 seats in the recent elections due to fraud, it claims. International observers agree. Anger about the official results helped bring tensions in the south to the fore again.
On Monday, Akayev announced a commission would review the results. On Tuesday, the commission announced that the outcome in at least 71 of the districts were valid. This didn't satisfy the opposition. But Akayev still thinks he can win. The opposition, after all, is divided. A majority of the population would probably be glad to see Akayev go. But who will succeed him? Can the north and the business community be convinced there is a strong alternative to Akayev?
The president doesn't want to risk his future. In October, Akayev will step down, or at least he should, according to the constitution. And he has promised to do so. But he seeks immunity afterwards, which even the outspoken Otunbayeva has promised him. But the new parliament majority would allow Akayev to do whatever he wants, be it change the constitution and run again, or appoint a reliable successor - perhaps his daughter Bermet Akayeva, who just won a seat in parliament. This might be more reassuring than opposition promises.
Kemeshbek Dushebayev, the new interior minister appointed on Wednesday, said the government might use force to restore order. Earlier, Akayev had ruled out the use of force. Whether the opposition will be as successful as in Georgia and Ukraine is uncertain. The government is prepared to use force and the divided opposition leaders are not strong enough to keep their supporters under control - a dangerous combination. And a sorry end for Kyrgyzstan's onetime democratic reformer.
Journalist Daan van der Schriek, who worked from September to December 2001 with the Times of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan, is based in Afghanistan. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times before Thursday's events.
TITLE: Soviet Icicles And Red Tape
TEXT: This winter the St. Petersburg city government introduced a new invention to protect residents from falling icicles, which kill or seriously injure several people in the city each year. The city's sophisticated new solution involves tying red and white tape around dripping pipes and downspouts and then attaching it to rusty metal fences. This is supposed to let pedestrians know that they are in danger of winding up in the hospital if they walk there. Some district administrations do not have enough money to put the colored tape on the streets and fences. Instead, they just post a few paper notices on building walls to inform people of the danger dangling above.
Authorities have finally done something, but, unfortunately, the results have been insignificant. This year, as many as 60 people were hit by icicles and taken to city hospitals. This number is about the same as recorded for the same period last year and in 2003.
Though this may sound strange, the icicle problem was inherited from the Soviet era. It is one of the hallmarks of communism, much like the thousands of communal apartments or the dozens of factories that have shut down because their products are not competitive. All of these phenomena are shining examples of the total failure of the communist idea, even though there are those who are still crazy about it. But that's another story.
Here's how icicles tie into communism. At the beginning of the 20th century, heating systems in St. Petersburg apartments functioned in such a way that roofs always stayed cold. The snow melted only in warm weather when the sun shone.
In the Soviet era, when the communal heating system was introduced, the pipes supplying heat to apartments were installed in the attic right under the roof. This makes the snow melt no matter what the weather, even when it's freezing cold. As a result, snowmelt gradually drips down over the eaves and gutters, drop by drop, every time it snows and even if it is minus 10 degrees Celsius. The icicles slowly grow bigger and bigger, like stalactites in ancient caves.
As some readers may have noticed, in Helsinki, where the city center in many ways resembles St. Petersburg, there is no red and white tape or bedraggled signs reading "Danger! Icicles!" Nor is there any threat that an icicle might kill a pedestrian after even the heaviest of snows.
St. Petersburg City Hall has tried to deal with the problem for quite a while, but it hasn't taken any action beyond stringing up tape because it lacks the money to do more. The authorities keep saying that the most effective remedy would be to heat up the aging roofs to keep snow from collecting and prevent icicles from forming. This would cost the city government millions of dollars that it would rather spend on other things, such as financing "socially important television programs." In other words, it prefers to give money to state-controlled channels to encourage them to portray City Hall's policies in a positive light, rather than actually implementing a few good policies.
This is just one of the many examples of how City Hall spends money on self-promotion instead of investing in fixing specific problems that are obvious to anyone who tries to walk straight along Gorokhovaya Ulitsa or any other street downtown once the temperatures fall.
Authorities apparently hope the icicles will go away by themselves after the city center is fully renovated in the next 50 or 100 years. If that's the case, in the meantime, St. Petersburg residents should try a new fashion accessory sure to be a hit in Russia's icicle-afflicted cities: the stylish but practical winter helmet.
By the way, this could turn out to be a promising business idea. Just think of the money U.S. companies made during the Cold War selling home fallout shelters.
I can see the ad campaign already: "Want to walk straight? Buy a helmet!"
TITLE: Big scandal at the Bolshoi
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: New operas by Russian and Soviet composers once played a prominent part in the repertoire of Moscow's Bolshoi Theater. But nearly 26 years have passed since the theater last produced an operatic world premiere. On Wednesday, the long drought finally ended with the staging of "Rosenthal's Children," a work fresh from the pens of St. Petersburg composer Leonid Desyatnikov and writer Vladimir Sorokin.
Even before its unveiling, "Rosenthal's Children" managed to provoke a widely publicized scandal. Three years ago, Sorokin's allegedly pornographic writing became the subject of a protest by Moving Together, a pro-Kremlin youth organization. Then, two weeks ago, State Duma Deputy Sergei Neverov took it upon himself to denounce "Rosenthal's Children." Although he admitted that he had not then read the opera's libretto - or any of Sorokin's works, for that matter - Neverov called upon the authorities to ban Sorokin's "dirty poetry" from the hallowed precincts of the Bolshoi. Moving Together backed him up this week, holding yet more protests against the opera.
Bolshoi general director Anatoly Iksanov issued a sharp retort immediately after Neverov's statement, defending the theater's artistic independence and comparing the call for suppression to the censorship of Soviet times. Since then, members of the Duma's culture committee have taken a look at the libretto and found nothing in it remotely pornographic. And, at the end of last week, the organizers of the Books of Russia book fair, in handing out their annual prizes for the year's worst contributions to Russian literature, tapped Neverov for a special "Honored Ignoramus" award.
The Bolshoi's last venture into new opera, like many such works staged after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, dealt with real-life figures and events of the Soviet era. Making its debut in April 1979, "Summoned to the Revolution (Leniniana)," by the now-forgotten composer Eduard Lazarev, interspersed music with spoken excerpts from the speeches of Vladimir Lenin. The opera lasted a mere nine performances.
"Rosenthal's Children" also includes brief appearances by Soviet leaders, ranging from Josef Stalin to Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as former Russian president Boris Yeltsin. But there the comparison ends. Lazarev's opera was a fairly standard piece of socialist realism. "Rosenthal's Children," on the other hand - despite being set in Russia during the recent past - can best be characterized as science fiction, in which the words uttered by Stalin and his successors are nothing but Sorokin's own clever parodies.
The subject of "Rosenthal's Children" is human cloning - specifically, the cloning of five great opera composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Modest Mussorgsky. The "Father" of the clones is a refugee geneticist from Nazi Germany named Alex Rosenthal.
The opera opens in 1976, just as Rosenthal has achieved his final triumph, the cloning of an embryonic Mozart. Nine months later, the new Mozart is "born" and joins the other four cloned composers in Rosenthal's "nursery." There they live happily until the geneticist's death in 1992 and the nearly simultaneous announcement that the government no longer has the funds to support them. In order to survive, the clones become street performers, ending up on Komsomolskaya Ploshchad amid a crowd of taxi drivers, prostitutes and passengers rushing to the three adjacent train stations. Mozart becomes enamored with a prostitute named Tanya; together, they plot a happy future life in Tanya's native Crimea. But a pimp intervenes, accusing the composers of keeping his charges away from their duties. Eventually the pimp resorts to giving them wine laced with rat poison, which kills off Tanya and all of the composers but Mozart. The opera ends in a ward of the Sklifosovsky Hospital, as Mozart regains consciousness and - haunted by the voices of Tanya and his fellow clones - looks ahead to an uncertain future.
During a break in rehearsals last week, composer Desyatnikov took time out to talk about his new opera and his music in general. A native of St. Petersburg, the 49-year-old Desyatnikov has produced a steady stream of music since his 1978 graduation from the Leningrad Conservatory. Like such distinguished predecessors as Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitry Shostakovich and Alfred Schnittke, he has enjoyed considerable success composing music for films. He also has three previous operas to his credit, two of them for children, as well as a host of works for orchestra, voice and chamber ensemble. An especially important aspect of his career has been his long-standing association, as both composer and arranger, with the masterful Riga-born violinist Gidon Kremer.
"'Rosenthal's Children' was entirely Sorokin's idea - completely original and not taken from a source of any kind," Desyatnikov said. "I liked it and agreed to write the music. We began work on the words and music in the spring of 2002, just after signing a contract with the Bolshoi."
Although the opera centers around the clones of five composers, Desyatnikov resisted the obvious temptation to use full-scale quotations of their music. "You can find microscopic citations from each of them," he noted, "but those are practically incomprehensible to anyone but myself or an expert who thoroughly analyzes the score."
Digging deeper into his creation, Desyatnikov spoke of a subtext that he characterized as the creation by the five composers of a hypothetical opera inside his own opera and without any awareness of its existence. "I know that's difficult to describe or understand, but nevertheless it's there," he said.
The composer emphasized that "Rosenthal's Children" is a serious opera, not a farce, saying that it has a parallel in the films of Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. "Almodovar also concerns himself with freakish characters, transsexuals and the like, who nevertheless have real feelings and encounter real tragedies. My characters, of course, aren't genuine human beings like his. They're clones - infants, you might say, not socially adapted. But their feelings are also real and, like Almodovar, I want the audience to have sympathy for their sufferings," he said.
Desyatnikov insisted that the music he writes has no one definable style. "When someone asks me about that, I come out with a few cliches," he said. "I like to call my music 'minimalism' [the rage among classical composers in the 1970s and 1980s] - but 'minimalism with a human face.' I also like to cite Igor Stravinsky as a major influence. And, of course, my writing does have certain identifiable characteristics. But a single style is mainly good for commercial purposes. It means that people know what they're getting every time they commission your work. To me, that's very boring and I decided long ago to use whatever style seemed appropriate to the piece at hand. I want to leave open the possibility of doing something new each time I compose, even if I don't always succeed or it doesn't lead to commercial success."
When asked about the controversy raised by Neverov and Moving Together, Desyatnikov said that it may lead to good publicity for the Bolshoi, but, for both him and Sorokin, it will only detract from what they see as the possibility of making "Rosenthal's Children" a significant event in Russia's cultural life.
Members of the Duma's culture committee were invited to this week's dress rehearsal of "Rosenthal's Children." In any case, the whole controversy may have more to do with money than with Sorokin's allegedly "dirty poems." Just days after Neverov issued his denunciation, the Bolshoi made public what appear to be the final plans for its long-awaited reconstruction, with a price tag in the neighborhood of $1 billion. Various observers, both inside and outside the theater, have speculated that Neverov's action was a possible means of pressuring certain parties - the Bolshoi's management, the Culture and Press Ministry or even the Kremlin - into ensuring that at least part of that tempting sum flows into certain well-connected hands.
"Rosenthal's Children" ("Deti Rozentalya") can be seen on Friday and Sunday on the New Stage of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
TITLE: CHERNOV'S CHOICE
TEXT: A concert by Julee Cruise was packed Platforma last Saturday, but the singer's invitation-only, V.I.P. event at the upscale restaurant Moskva scheduled for the preceding night failed to happen, as Cruise arrived in St. Petersburg too late to perform. The promoter and the booker for the event give contradicting explanations for this.
Over the past few months Platforma seems to have held most of the good concerts of the sort that Red Club used to hold, but its peculiarity, the bookstore, has been temporarily closed. According to director Nikolai Okhotin, the store will move to the club's new rooms as Platforma has obtained 70-plus meters of the adjoining space in the same building. Apart from the store, the new space will include a room for mini-events, Okhotin said. The opening of the extra space is scheduled for April 1.
Omara Portuondo, who performs in the city this week, is one of the veteran Cuban singers and musicians whose careers were resurrected by the Grammy Award-winning 1997 album Buena Vista Social Club, produced by Ry Cooder, and the documentary of the same name directed by Wim Wenders in 1999.
Often dubbed Cuba's very own Edith Piaf, Portuondo will perform at Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on Monday. Local promoters say that she will be backed by a full, 16-piece band.
Drummer Katya Fyodorova, the founder of Babslei and, later, Iva Nova, said she would premier FIGS, a quartet of drummers and percussionists, at GEZ on Saturday.
Apart from Fyodorova, FIGS features Alexei Ivanov of S.K.A. and Tribal Massive Orchestra, The Noise of Time's Marcus Goodwyn and ZGA's Nikolai Sudnik.
Brazzaville, the Barcelona-based dark pop band, which was scheduled to perform in Moscow this week, did not arrive in St. Petersburg, although the local concert was announced on the band's web site some time ago. The band will go to Almaty, Kazakhstan, instead. However, Welcome to Brazzaville! was released in Russia on Soyuz/Zakat this week.
Released in the U.S. late last year, the compilation album contains tracks from Brazzaville's first three albums and a few extras.
It's the perfect record to buy for a friend to introduce them to Brazzaville, wrote Brazzaville's David Brown in a recent e-mail interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
According to Brown, one of his Brazzaville favorites is Christmas in E.C., or Christmas in East Cirebon.
It's a song I wrote in Indonesia a few years ago, he wrote.
It's a tragic love song about a backpacking couple, living a carefree life of sex, drugs and warm climates - until the girl discovers heroin.
I hope people don't get bored of me writing stories like these. I guess I write them because I was a big fan of heroin when I was a kid. It killed several of my best friends and almost killed me. It's a vicious lover! I don't recommend it but I still like to write stories about it sometimes.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: The promised land
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The restaurant LeChaim is making a cautious entry onto the city's dining scene. On the night we visited, the place appeared to be open, in that a greeter met us with a smile and a waiter seated us promptly and professionally. However, we were then told the restaurant isn't yet "officially" open.
This would explain why throughout the next very pleasant couple of hours, the three of us were the only guests in the posh 200-seat restaurant. Seemingly designed for hosting large groups whose members may join together in a hearty toast of "LeChaim!" ("To Life!"), on this night signs of life in the restaurant were limited to the three staff - the greeter, the waiter and the chef (whom we met when he delivered our main courses with a flourish direct from the kitchen). In such circumstances it is difficult to fairly appraise an establishment's atmosphere, and the standard of the food is all you have to go on.
Luckily, LeChaim serves superior, fairly-priced and artfully-presented Jewish cuisine that bodes well for the restaurant's future.
Breaking still-warm onion rolls on which to spread complimentary quenelles of chilled egg mayonnaise, we pondered the vexed question of where traditional Jewish cuisine ends and Russian food begins. What is the exact relationship between a New York bagel and a Polish bublik? A case in point was one of the starters: pickled herring with potatoes and dill (180 rubles, $6.40).
The topic was declared moot since the dish, with its potent, marinated red onion rings was judged by the seld expert who ordered it "the best I've ever had - and I'm not joking."
Another starter, a warm salad of cracked buckwheat, pasta bows, caramelized onions and champignons for 100 rubles ($3.60) overcame the normally pungent taste of soil that comes with kasha with its subtle blend of sweet and savory flavors.
Among the entrees it was difficult to pick a standout from the tender chicken schnitzel (200 rubles, $7.30), a whole blue trout alluringly wrapped in vine leaves (350 rubles, $12.70), and char-broiled turkey breasts with cranberry coulis and apple wedges (300 rubles, $11).
The schnitzel, about the size of baseball mitt, was garnished with capers and came with chunky fries. The turkey, with a side order of gorgeous, softly fried turnips and carrots with cracked black pepper, was a little dry despite sitting a slightly alarming sea of blood-red sauce. The perfectly boned flesh of the trout had a fresh, metallic hint of sparkling river water, but was overpowered by the astringent vine leaves in which the fish was bound. It swam in a pretty sauce, which tasted as if it was distilled from humus, and was topped with a scattering of pomegranate seeds.
Childhood memories of mom's strudel were evoked but not fully satisfied by the slice two of us shared. It was nutty but a bit dry, and the black current jam and icing sugar served with it would sate only the sugar-addicted. But any dessert quibbles seemed churlish after tasting the most amazing lemon and orange sponge cake which was masterfully both light and treacly. This dessert alone made the meal.
It is also difficult to fault the service at LeChaim, but, then again, we were the only guests there. It was altogether charming to be lavished with the sole attention of the waiter who swept poppy seeds from the bread from the starched white table cloths, refolded our heavy navy blue and gold napkins, refilled our glasses with Stepin Razin beer (45 rubles, $1.63) and even placed three chairs in the lobby for us when we went out for a smoke between courses .
LeChaim, discreetly located in the basement of the Grand Synagogue on Lermontovsky Prospekt, was, explained the waiter, fitted out a couple of months ago and is gearing up for its official opening soon. Although it takes a bit of initiative to locate, the quality and good value of the food on offer more than makes up for the effort.
TITLE: Doing the wrong thing
PUBLISHER: the new york times
TEXT: In his angry new comedy, She Hate Me, Spike Lee carries his political exasperation beyond outrage into chaos. The carelessness with which he hurls his feelings about hot-button topics onto the screen is the filmmaking equivalent of last-ditch marketing: grab everything in sight, roll it up into a big messy mud ball, and hurl it against the wall, hoping that something sticks.
This feisty New York filmmaker with a nose for tabloid news has always relished playing provocateur and setting brush fires with his rub-your-face-in-it style of riffing off the headlines. Usually his rampages leave behind at least some patches of scorched earth before burning out.
She Hate Me, which rattles on for nearly two and a half hours, is the first of his fiery diatribes that repeatedly fizzles as it goes along.
Lashing out in all directions, Lee addresses white-collar crime, the Bush administration, AIDS in Africa, the Mafia, Watergate, sex and reproduction, lesbianism and the meaning of family in a disoriented rant that lurches from one subject to the next with little to tie it together.
A sex farce one minute, a crude political skit the next, an imitation Mr. Smith Goes to Washington harangue the next, She Hate Me can't maintain its focus long enough to say anything fresh. The boilerplate polemics mouthed by stick-figure characters sound like the beery 3 a.m. debates of a college bull session that has outlasted its usefulness.
The movie begins with a montage of crisp rippling currency that features the face of George W. Bush on a $3 bill. Then it introduces its semihero, Jack Armstrong (Anthony Mackie), a 30-year-old African-American smoothie and vice president of Progeia, a pharmaceutical giant desperate to be the first company to market an AIDS vaccine.
When the Food and Drug Administration withholds its approval, Progeia's saintly chief researcher dives from an office window along with the company's stock. Reviewing the dead man's computer file, Jack learns of corporate dirty deeds, falsified data, shredded documents and stock manipulation.
Confronting his bosses, he is told to keep his mouth shut but decides to turn whistle-blower. Summarily fired, his reputation smeared, his bank account frozen, he's suddenly a nobody, and the movie takes an awkward leap by comparing Jack's misfortune to the plight of Frank Wills, the security guard who reported the Watergate break-in and went on to die in poverty while the conspirators prospered.
Enter Fatima (Kerry Washington), Jack's ex-fiancee, with whom he broke up after catching her in bed with a woman. Showing up with her girlfriend Alex (Dania Ramirez), Fatima offers him $10,000 to impregnate the two of them.
Desperate for money, he reluctantly agrees. In short order, with Fatima acting as his agent, his apartment becomes a stud farm for lesbians willing to shell out $10,000 apiece for his seed. Infinitely potent and fertile, Jack takes on four or five women a night, eventually fathering 19 children for happy lesbian couples. His attitude toward his work is comically illustrated with animated sperms bearing his face wriggling toward grinning eggs.
Long after She Hate Me has exhausted its material, it refuses to give up. In the last interminable third of the movie, Lee and his screenwriting collaborator, Michael Genet, throw in a lesbian Mafia princess, Simona (Monica Bellucci), whose father, Don Angelo Bonasera (John Turturro), does an extended, tedious parody of Marlon Brando in The Godfather.
The point seems to be that the Mafia's notion of family is kinder and gentler than Progeia's inhuman family values propounded with Orwellian cynicism by its C.E.O., Leland Powell (Woody Harrelson), and his chief lieutenant, Margo Chadwick (Ellen Barkin in a Martha Stewart haircut).
As usual in a Spike Lee film, the sexual politics are muddled. The director can't resist presenting Jack Armstrong as a yuppie version of the black sexual superman. Unveiling his manhood to a group of lesbians, who are the sort of gorgeous, slithery babes seen writhing in rap videos, his show is greeted with oohs and ahs of lustful appreciation.
The movie eventually does a turnabout by giving him pangs of conscience brought on by the disapproval of his morally upstanding family. Jack, we're informed, is not to be confused with the negative stereotype of an African-American man who impregnates women and then disappears. In his heart and soul he, too, is a family man.
Throughout She Hate Me you can sense Lee trying to do the right thing. But in spite of itself, the movie supports the adolescent caveman fantasy that a lesbian is really a heterosexual woman who hasn't received proper stud service.
TITLE: From dusk till dawn
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Catching the pulsating and exciting atmosphere of St. Petersburg's nightlife is the idea behind a new art installation, wittily called Hostages of the Black Square.
The work, by the Finnish artist and photographer Sami Hyrskylahti, opened last Friday at the Museum of Forensic Medicine at the State Medical Mechnikov Academy.
Hyrskylahti is himself something of a night owl and says the energy of St. Petersburg can be particularly felt from dusk till dawn.
I am a night person, he said at the exhibition's opening. At that time of the day, the rhythm of life is a different one. It beats faster and with more energy than at daytime, and the face of the city totally changes.
Hostages of the Black Square employs visual as well as audio effects to blend light, sound and photographic images. Influenced by the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, who maintained that by dissolving the representational forms of objects he could present pure feeling, Hyrskylahti developed Malevich's famous Black Square further to have it function as a metaphor for the energetic emotions set free at night.
The hostages are visualized by portraits of people within these black squares, lit up by flashing bright neon light installed inside the black frames. The last frame on the wall contains a mirror, thus taking everybody hostage who is looks at it.
In my opinion, it is impossible to elude the fascination of the night and thus everybody can become a 'hostage of the night,' Hyrskylahti said.
The young artist drew the inspiration for his first serious project in Russia during frequent visits to the night club Griboyedov.
This club plays an enormously important role in my life, he said. During my 10 years in Petersburg, it has been at this place where I have learned the Russian language and made friends. It is not exaggerating to say that over the years Griboyedov has become my second home.
Hyrskylahti cannot remember the exact moment when the idea for this installation came to mind. But it certainly came in the early hours after a long and exciting night in his favorite club, he said. It is then that he has his most productive and creative ideas, usually while sitting in his kitchen, drinking a cup of tea before going to bed.
At night, people behave differently than during day time and the whole atmosphere seems to be loaded with energy - especially erotic energy, Hyrskylahti said.
The next step was to find an appropriate place for his project.
One of his friends recommended him having a look at the Forensic Museum of the Medical Academy on the outskirts of the city. Next to the rooms where body parts are exhibited and documents of the academy's forensic history are displayed Hyrskylahti began creating the installation.
From the first time I came here I have been fascinated by this museum. In Finland death is considered a taboo and it would be impossible to exhibit objects connected to death, he said.
The particularity of the venue increases the contrast visitors experience when they enter the room.
While outside the sun is still shining, the room is covered in complete darkness, lit only by the neon lights, he said. I intend to make visitors feel as if they have stepped right into the night. You open the door and find a piece of nightly atmosphere preserved within these four walls. It took the artist a week to put the installation into place and he and his team finished right on time.
It was interesting to me to observe the whole process of its development. It takes a second to have a brilliant idea but days to translate it into action.
I have always been interested in space, atmosphere and light. Combining those elements can create something fascinating.
Hostages of the Black Square at the Museum of Forensic Medicine, State Medical Mechnikov Academy, 47 Priskarevsky Prospekt, Pavilion 26, through April 15. Open Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Marshrutka 51 from Ploshchad Vosstaniya.
TITLE: Taking flight
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The depth and intensity of its performances contrast with the regulated minimalism of the staging in Mariusz Trelinski's interpretation of Giacomo Puccini's 1904 "Madame Butterfly," which premiered at the Mariinsky Theater on Tuesday.
The director's innovative rendition of this sentimental tragedy about a 15-year-old geisha, Cio-Cio San, and her doomed love for a U.S. navy officer, Pinkerton, set in early 20th-century Japan, is enjoying its third incarnation.
Trelinski originally staged this "Madame Butterfly" for the Polish National Opera in 1999. The Warsaw production, with bold geometric stage designs by Boris Kudlieka, impressed opera connoisseurs worldwide. Renowned tenor Placido Domingo, the artistic director of the Washington Opera, invited Trelinski to stage the show in Washington D.C. as a co-production with the Teatr Wielki-Opera Narodowa in 2001. The Washington production garnered excellent reviews in the American press.
"Madame Butterfly" is one of the unrivaled favorites in opera repertoires all over the world, and the Mariinsky's new acquisition is sure to draw crowds.
The orchestra soared smoothly and effortlessly through the score, as did the soloists. Artistically convincing and technically adroit, soprano Tatyana Borodina sang the role of Butterfly with precision and clarity in a pure, silver tone.
Yury Marusin was equally compelling as Pinkerton, being very much at home with the role both vocally and dramatically. The singer made the officer human rather than a callous, careless man. His characterization presented a passionate yet shortsighted and self-centered person who finds it difficult to handle his affections and is unable to foresee the consequences of his decisions.
While it is often considered a winning decision to portray Butterfly as a faithful and reserved character who understates her emotions, Borodina gave her heroine a much more powerful temperament. This Cio Cio San is in no way an emotionally immature teenage girl; she is a woman, and her love for Pinkerton is sacred.
Cio Cio San is galvanized by raging anger when Sharples (Alexander Gergalov) suggests that Pinkerton may never come back to her and she should look for a new husband. Her lament as she longs for Pinkerton contains more hidden will than lack of hope, and the heroine reveals more stamina than anemic, moribund fatalism.
Trelinski refrains from a traditional approach to opera as the most conventional genre, emphasizing the dramatic, human element of the staging. The director brought a strong theatrical flavour to the opera, which was attuned by the abstract geometric sets.
Trelinski's "Madama Butterfly" is a visually dynamic sight, making a clear contrast to traditionally static takes on the work.
As Pinkerton inspects his new house in Act I, the sets - black shutters hiding and unveiling a white screen with Japanese text on it - move with him.
When Butterfly and her little son are walk down to the harbour at the end of Act II, watching a giant, chillingly dark cruiser arriving and waiting for Pinkerton to come out, the blue horizon slowly disappears under a black screen like a guillotine. When the horizon is covered fully by the shutter, Butterfly's hopes completely vanish.
The director avoids the opera's sentimentality as it much as is technically possible. Most renditions of Puccini, and especially the story of Cio-Cio-San balance on the edge of lyrical melodrama and tear-shedding soap-opera. Trelinski created a real world inspired by a conventional story. Bright, sharp monochrome sets - black, white red and blue - serve well to illustrate irresolvable contraditions and insuperable emotional gulfs. The colors emphasize situations and create atmosphere. They unveil the feelings and inner moods of characters.
As with virtually all imported productions, there is the risk that Trelinski's "Madame Butterfly" at the Mariinsky could seem like a cast-off. In creating an original staging, directors can't escape tailoring actor's moves and mise en scene to the possibilities of a particular troupe. And it is not always the case that the concept can be easily transferred to a different company.
The Mariinsky's production fortunately escapes this potential pitfall. Trelinski's cerebral approach, innovative sets, and references to Japanese theatrical traditions come naturally to the company - a tribute to both the performers and the director.
TITLE: Crossroads of nations
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Our train jolted slightly and began to slow and I knew that we had nearly arrived. The babushka who was seated next to us crammed her granddaughter's picture books and toys into her heavy bag and hurriedly began to wrap her thick woolen scarf around her neck. "Nadezhda, won't you come here," she called the little whirlwind who ran along the corridor. As the toddler was finding, the 1-hour-40 minute ride to Vyborg, 130 kilometers northwest of St. Petersburg, is long enough to make friends with the whole compartment. "Come here, sweetie," she repeated, with some impatience in her voice. "Quickly, get dressed. We have arrived."
On the railway platform I squinted at the bright sunlight and enjoyed the warm rays on my face.
"We are lucky with the weather," my friend remarked. The city is situated on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, and in winter temperatures can drop easily to minus 30 degrees Celsius or even lower.
We started our day-trip at the place where the city's history began: at the Vyborg fortress on the small island Linnan-Saari (Castle Island), the proud landmark of the city. The museum there gives a good introduction to the genesis and development of Vyborg.
During our museum tour we learned that in the course of its 700-year history the town has changed hands several times.
The foundations of the city were laid in 1293, when Swedish conquerors began constructing a fortress on the Karelian Isthmus. Soon, Vyborg developed into a lively trading city, bringing money and wealth to its inhabitants. The Swedish period was the longest and one of the most prosperous in the history of the town, and it ended in 1710 with its seizure by Russian tsar Peter the Great.
In the first half of the 20th century, Vyborg became one of the cultural centers of independent Finland, before it was re-conquered by the Soviet Union during the Winter War in 1939/40. Vyborg was temporarily under Finnish control again before it was finally annexed by the Soviets in 1944. It has remained on Russian territory ever since.
After this intense history lesson, we felt well-prepared for a walk around the town's old quarter. But not before we had climbed up to the top of Olaf's Tower, which is part of the fortress. Step by step we ascended the steep wooden staircase, trying not to think about its reliability or look down. But the view across the old town compensated for the many steps we had to take - at least for me.
While I was taking pictures from all sides of the top, my friend was clinging to the wooden railings, not willing to move one centimeter from where he was standing. "I had no idea how high we are," he mumbled. "I'll be downstairs."
As we walked through Vyborg's historic quarter, we had the feeling that the hands of time had come to a complete standstill. On this Sunday afternoon, the narrow, cobbled streets were almost empty, with only a small number of locals gathering in front of a store.
Now and then, a car rattled across the cobblestones but otherwise the tranquillity was undisturbed by noise. The old buildings and streets lent the peace a specific atmosphere.
As local artist Alexander Chernov told us later that day, many nations have left their traces in the old town and almost each building tells its own, unique story.
"Vyborg is not a Soviet city; it is a city of the world," he said. "It is a crossroads of nations."
Ulitsa Podgornnaya, for example, was a German street, where German merchants and traders lived and worked. On Krepostnaya Ulitsa, the main street of the old district, is the Chasovaya Bashnya (Clock Tower), first built as a bell tower for the local cathedral during Swedish rule in 1490. In 1753, when the clock was mounted, the tower got its present name. For a long time the Clock Tower also served as a fire observation point, and after the fire of 1793, Empress Catherine the Great presented the town with a bell with a royal inscription.
On the same street we also noticed a wonderful house dating from 1903, formerly owned by Finns. "Its construction is unique," Chernov explained. "Like the pentagon in Washington it was designed in a circular form with a closed yard. It was possible to get from one staircase to another without leaving the building. However, with the conquest of the Red Army, soldiers and officers moved into the edifice and took off all the tiles and stole the parquet. After that, nobody took care of the place and now it would be cheaper to build a new house than to refurbish the old one."
The fate of this building is not unique in Vyborg. Later that day, Chernov and his wife invited us to their own house, constructed in the 15th century by Swedes. Both my friend and I were enthusiastic about the charming wooden ceiling and small windows.
"Actually, we have a subtenant," Chernov revealed with a mysterious smile. "His name is Patrick Svenson; he came with the Swedes, and he has been living here ever since."
Svenson is a ghost - and one who must have been outraged about the state of neglect of the building before Chernov and his wife moved in.
"When we came here, the house was horrible to look at. In the yard drunkards and beggars were sitting, drinking beer and littering the whole area. Vandals had broken into the house and turned it into a mess," Chernov said.
The couple labored for more than a month refurbishing the place, investing their own money and turning it into their future home and a gallery.
Not many people seem to follow their example of financing the restoration of old buildings from their own pockets. The old quarter is full of fantastic architectural gems, but they seem to be doomed to decay slowly and unnoticed.
Tourism on a larger scale is still a utopian dream as most guests flocking to the city appear not to be interested in Vyborg's fascinating historical past but in cheap liquor and cigarettes.
At the market square we were amazed at the number of Finns gathering at the stalls. I remembered the words of an acquaintance who once told me that Finns are nicknamed khomyachok, Russian for "little hamster."
"Hamsters put as much food into their little cheeks as they are able to," he said. "Finnish people behave in a similar way. They arrive for one day, buy as much as they can and leave again."
The market sellers are well prepared for Finnish customers. When we stopped at a table full of videos and DVDs in Finnish, the woman behind it quickly pulled out a DVD and waved it in front of my face. Since I did not react to the stream of Finnish words pouring down on me, she seemed to realize that I was not Finnish.
"Six euros, six euros. Cheap price," she said, in English in an effort to sell me one DVD. My friend pulled me away and we left the matryoshkas, crystal vases and DVDs behind.
A friend of ours had told us about a library close to a park in the center of Vyborg. It was designed by the prominent Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in 1935, who gave the building a surrealistic and modern touch. From the inside, the ceiling looks like the surface of the moon, with big round holes in it, through which sunrays flood the reading rooms. Unfortunately, the library is closed on Sundays.
"On a day like this we shouldn't be inside anyway," my friend remarked, and we walked toward Red Square.
Apart from its name and the Lenin statue placed in the middle of it, the square does not appear to be Soviet at all. Several shops are located in the buildings surrounding it and a few cars were parked in front of them. Most of the houses seem to date from the end of the 19th century and reminded me of the little squares one finds in Vienna. Stopping at a cafe for lunch, we noticed there was a Finnish menu to hand - something we were beginning to realize was not unusual.
Surprisingly, the menu's prices were higher than in small eateries in St. Petersburg. A salmon steak with potatoes was definitely not worth the 200 rubles ($7.14) I paid for it.
We may have been better off at the Brigantina restaurant near the market square, which is located on the second floor of the round medieval tower. We had taken a look at it and were fascinated by the stunning interior but finally decided to have something cheaper. But naturally Vyborg cannot be compared to St. Petersburg, where restaurants, shops and little eateries are always close at hand in the city center.
On the other hand, living in St. Petersburg can be tiring and energy-consuming. In Vyborg life is slower and everything is more relaxed. The artist Chernov claimed that in Vyborg there only exist spiritual rules. It is place where you can calm down and find yourself.
TITLE: American Leaders Attempt To Find Common Ground
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WACO, Texas - President of the U.S.A, George Bush and the leaders of Mexico and Canada promised new cooperation Wednesday, yet dustups over defense, immigration and trade - burrs under the saddle, in local slang - continued to strain North American relations.
To demonstrate unity, Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin appeared together at Baylor University to announce their neighborhood pact, designed to make trade more efficient and borders more secure without obstructing business and traffic.
"We've got a lot of trade with each other," Bush said. "We intend to keep it that way. We've got a lot of crossings of the border. I intend to make our borders more secure and facilitate legal traffic."
U.S. relations with Mexico and Canada chilled early in Bush's first term when neither nation backed his decision to invade Iraq..
Sore spots remain. Mexico still wants to see U.S. immigration changes. The Bush administration suspects al-Qaida agents may be crossing into the United States from the south. Fox has complained about vigilantes hunting and killing Mexican immigrants along the Arizona border.
Some American farmers and businesses object to Mexico's 20 percent tax on soft drinks containing high-fructose corn syrup. And Canada, which snubbed a U.S. offer to be part of a missile defense shield, probably will bring up the long-running dispute over American tariffs on easy-to-saw Canadian lumber.
"We've got a lot to do," said Bush, who later jumped behind the wheel of a white pickup truck to give Fox and Martin a tour of his ranch in nearby Crawford.
TITLE: Parents in Last Ditch Bid to Save Schiavo
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PINELLAS PARK, Florida - Hoping to succeed where they failed before, Terri Schiavo's parents have asked the Supreme Court to order the reinsertion of their severely brain-damaged daughter's feeding tube.
The appeal by Bob and Mary Schindler - their fifth appeal to the high court - caps a rush of legal activity in the unprecedented right-to-die struggle.
Filed late Wednesday night by the Schindlers' attorneys, the request came only hours after a federal appeals court refused to order the tube reinserted and the Florida Legislature decided not to intervene. Florida Governor Jeb Bush continued his staunch support of the Schindlers, seeking court permission to take custody of Schiavo. A ruling on that request was expected by noon Thursday.
There was no immediate word when the justices might act on the new filing. But time was of the essence as Schiavo, 41, began her sixth day without a feeding tube Thursday. Doctors have said she likely would die within a week or two at her hospice.
"She has to start getting hydration. Because if she doesn't, she's not going to be with us much longer," Bob Schindler said outside the Pinellas Park hospice Wednesday night.
Supporters of Schiavo's parents grew increasingly dismayed Wednesday, and 13 protesters were arrested outside her hospice for trying to bring her water.
Schiavo suffered brain damage in 1990 when her heart stopped briefly from a chemical imbalance believed to have been brought on by an eating disorder. Court-appointed doctors say she is in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery.
Her parents argue that she could get better and that she would never have wanted to be cut off from food and water. But Schiavo's husband, Michael, has argued that she told him she would not want to be kept alive artificially, and a state judge has repeatedly ruled in his favor.
On Wednesday, a lawyer for Michael Schiavo said he was pleased by what happened in the appeals court. But he was bothered that the governor was attempting to intervene again.
"They have no more power than you or I or a person walking down the street to say we have the right to take Terri Schiavo," attorney George Felos said.
TITLE: Sharapova Poised to Improve After Nadir
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KEY BISCAYNE, Florida - Maria Sharapova expects to show some improvement in her next match, which should be easy. All she has to do is win one game.
Seeded No. 2 in the Nasdaq-100 Open, Sharapova will play her opening match against Eleni Daniilidou, likely on Friday, and she'll try to bounce back from the worst loss of her career.
Sharapova lost 6-0 6-0 to Lindsay Davenport in the semifinals of the Pacific Life Open last week. It was an astounding drubbing for the reigning Wimbledon champion, who won just 23 points while committing 25 unforced errors.
"That's just part of our sport. You're not going to be at your best all the time," the 17-year-old Sharapova said Wednesday. "I didn't really find a way to fight out there. Usually, I find a way to get a rhythm in the match, and I wasn't able to do that.
"It was good for me to take a few days off and forget about it."
All seeded players at Key Biscayne received a first-round bye. Daniilidou earned a shot at Sharapova by beating Tathiana Garbin 6-3 4-6 6-1. Vera Douchevina defeated Emilie Loit 6-3 6-3 and will next face Serena Williams, who is seeking her fourth consecutive Key Biscayne title. Americans Meghann Shaughnessy and Marissa Irvin also won.
In men's play, Americans James Blake and Robby Ginepri advanced. Blake beat Kenneth Carlsen 6-3 6-2, and Ginepri swept Filippo Volandri 7-6 (4) 6-1. Juan Carlos Ferrero, the 2003 French Open champion, beat Brendan Evans 6-2 6-4.
Fernando Verdasco defeated Peter Wessels 6-4 7-5 and will next face defending champion Andy Roddick. Iraki Labadze beat Younes El Aynaoui 6-4 1-6 6-1 and will play No. 3-seeded Marat Safin in the second round. French teenager Gael Monfils rallied past countryman Michael Llodra 3-6 6-4 6-3.
Sharapova enters the tournament with a 17-2 record this year. Her only other loss came in the semifinals of the Australian Open, when she failed to convert three match points against Williams.
"Whether I have three match points or it's 6-0 6-0, it's a loss," Sharapova said. "I'm not going to win every single match in my career, but losses really motivate me."
She needs to reach the semifinals next week to have a chance at a rematch with Williams. They met for the first time a year ago at Key Biscayne, and Williams beat Sharapova 6-4 6-3.
"That was a whole year ago," Sharapova said. "I learned a lot, and it definitely helped me."
Less than four months later, Sharapova upset Williams in the Wimbledon final. The Russian won again when they played in the final of the year-ending WTA Championships.
But barely two years after becoming a tour regular, Sharapova knows there's still room for improvement.
"Physically I have to get stronger," she said.
"And there are a lot of little things I can improve - trying to use my advantages, such as my serve, to make my life easier on the court."
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Shevchenko Ruled Out
KIEV, (Reuters) - Ukraine captain Andriy Shevchenko, still recovering after fracturing a cheekbone last month, has been ruled out of next week's World Cup qualifier at home against Denmark.
"Andriy will not be able to help us out against the Danes," spokesman for the Ukrainian Football Federation (UFF) Valery Nikonenko said on Thursday.
"But he will fly to Kiev on the eve of the game and will give us moral support."
The AC Milan striker and European Player of the Year suffered fractures to his cheekbone and eye socket in a Serie A match against Cagliari on Feb. 19.
Summit Success
KNOXVILLE, Tennesssee (AP) - Moments after becoming the most successful coach in NCAA history, Pat Summitt focused on her ultimate goal: getting Tennessee its seventh national title.
Summitt broke Dean Smith's career victory record Tuesday night, getting No. 880 in the Lady Vols' 75-54 win over Purdue in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
"First and foremost, we're going to the Sweet 16," Summitt said. "Obviously, to be in the company with Coach Smith, to think about all the people that were a part of these wins, I never thought I'd live this long."
India Coach to Retire
BANGALORE, India (Reuters) - India coach John Wright will step down as coach after the final test against Pakistan starting on Thursday, a source close to the team says.
The source said Thursday's game would be the former New Zealand captain's last in charge of the test side although he would stay on for the one-day series against Pakistan and Sri Lanka in April. Wright, 50, took over as India coach in 2000.
New Cav Coach Happy
CLEVELAND, Ohio (AP) - All it took for the Cleveland Cavaliers to start winning again was a little encouragement from their new coach. A day after Paul Silas was fired, Brendan Malone led a Cavaliers team in turmoil to a 91-76 victory over the Detroit Pistons on Tuesday night, ending a three-game losing streak.