SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1061 (27), Friday, April 15, 2005
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TITLE: Inaction
Alarms
Israelis
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The latest refusal of the St. Petersburg Prosecutor's Office to initiate criminal cases over the publication of articles inciting racial hatred in local nationalist newspapers has resulted in a sharp reaction from Israel politicians on the eve of President Vladimir Putin's visit to the Holy Land.
Representatives of influential Israeli political circles suggested this week that Israeli leaders must raise the question of prosecutors' lack of attention to nationalists with Putin when he visits at the end of this month.
"I believe that the government of Israel and our President Moshe Katsav, who invited Putin, should question him about the official reaction of the Russian government to the mass appearance of anti-Semitic publications in the Russian media," said Avigdor Lieberman, head of Our Home Israel party, in a comment submitted to the St. Petersburg Times on Wednesday.
The Israeli politicians were alerted by the actions of St. Petersburg human rights advocates from the Democratic Russia party and Citizen's Watch who filed a complaint with the city prosecutor's office in January 2005 over anti-Semitic publications in the newspaper Rus Pravoslavnaya, or Orthodox Russia.
Last month the prosecutor's office issued an official warning to it and several other local newspapers that had published similar articles. The human rights advocates say that the office is taking too little action and insisted that criminal cases be brought against the newspapers.
"In January 2005, the newspaper Rus Pravoslavnaya, which is registered in St. Petersburg, published a so-called 'letter of 500,' which was saturated with extremism and hatred toward Jews," Ruslan Linkov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Democratic Russia party, said Tuesday in a telephone interview. "Neither St. Petersburg nor federal law enforcement bodies have reacted in a proper legal way to this publication that flares up national hatred."
"Criminal ignorance by the city prosecutor's office and General Prosecutor's Office has led to a result that 2 months after the 'letter of 500' appeared, the same newspaper has published a no less disgusting anti-Semitic letter to the General Prosecutor, this time signed by 5,000 supporters of Nazi ideology," Linkov said.
"This clearly suggests that xenophobic tendencies are growing in Russian society, which raises serious concerns," he said.
The newspapers' editors, however, argue that the prosecutor's office has been too harsh toward them.
"I believe the prosecutors are too strict with their repression because we've never been distinguished for our unrestrained publications," Oleg Gusev, editor of newspaper Za Russkoye Delo, or For the Russian Cause, which also got a warning from the Prosecutor's Office in March. "If we touch on Jewish questions, we use such well known authors as Fyodor Dostoevsky or Henry Ford, so for this reason it would be silly to prosecute us just for quoting these authors."
"They just got on us for this letter of 500 that we published and signed, using it as a reason to persecute us," he said. "We believe that the Jewish question is one, but not the main reason for economic problems, in the country. The most important is an absence of Russian self-consciousness among the population."
In the letter issued Jan. 23 and signed by 19 State Duma deputies of the Rodina and Communist factions among others, authors demanded that the General Prosecutor's Office ban the Jewish religion in Russia.
"The Jewish religion is anti-Christian and hates humanity ... sometime it uses ritual killings," one line of the letter said.
While he was advocating that the newspapers be prosecuted at the end of March, Linkov received a threat from supporters of Nazi ideology. It was posted on a web forum where there was a discussion about the official warnings issued by the prosecutor's office.
"Leave Linkov to us, we will deal with the problem," an anonymous person wrote.
Linkov submitted the threat to the City Prosecutor's Office, which started an investigation of the case.
The office could not be reached for comment, but according to city police St. Petersburg has not only several newspapers that publish anti-Semitic materials, but there is a quite significant presence of nationalistic groups operating in St. Petersburg.
"At the moment there are 18 pro-Nazi and extremist groups, and we know their leaders. According to our data, the groups contain up to 12,000 to 13,000 people aged from 13 to 30 years old," Andrei Chernopyatov, head of the city police department for terrorism and extremism, said Wednesday at a briefing.
A total of 153 crimes were committed against foreigners in the first quarter of 2005 in St. Petersburg, but most of them are not related to cases of national hatred, he said.
This week the police said it detained several people suspected of participating in the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in St. Petersburg in December, when several tens of graves were damaged and sprayed with Nazi symbols.
"The criminal police department has solved the case of vandalism," Vladislav Piotrovsky, head of the city criminal police, said Wednesday at a briefing.
The police refused to reveal to the public the age of the detainees or their affiliation with particular extremist groups, saying this information would be kept secret in the interests of the investigation.
TITLE: U.S. Consul Says St. Petersburg Post Career Highlight
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Morris Hughes, 59, the U.S. Consul General to St. Petersburg who will retire from the diplomatic service on Tuesday morning, says his three years in the city were the highlight of his diplomatic career.
"It was so not only because this time I witnessed the greatest changes in Russia that I was very interested to see, but also because here in St. Petersburg I have made more friends than in any other foreign service," Hughes said Thursday in an interview.
"As soon as a Russian knows you, their hospitality is huge," Hughes said, adding that he made good friends among Russian businessmen, museum workers and hunters, who share his hobby.
Hughes, who worked as a diplomat in Moscow twice in the Soviet era - 1976-1978 and 1983-1985 - said he had wanted the St. Petersburg posting badly and had had to lobby hard to get it.
"St. Petersburg is always an attractive place because it's so beautiful, but in my case I also wanted to see the changes in the country and wanted my wife Betty to see Russia, which played such an important part in my career," Hughes said.
The consul, who took up office in St. Petersburg in February 2002, said he was struck by the changes in Russia, which had transformed from the Soviet credo of "nothing is possible" to "everything is possible."
Hughes still remembers how in 1984 he was detained, supposedly by KGB agents, at the market in a little town 400 kilometers outside Moscow when he was taking photographs of Russian traders. The men, dressed in civilian clothes, took him to a police station and started interrogating him.
"It turned out that I had taken a picture of a lady selling a watermelon, but the people she was selling the watermelon to were KGB! I didn't know they were KGB!" he said.
In those days, when he was immediately recognizable as an American, even in a restaurant Russians would immediately leave out of fear of being persecuted. The Soviet Union gave him the impression of "a country that had a black coat on it."
Now "the coat" is off and the sun is shining in, he said.
U.S. investors are beating a trail to Russia's Northwest and many have successful businesses here. To attract even more foreign businessmen Russia needs to have more predictability, rule of law, and a strong positive reputation on those issues, Hughes said.
"The most important question for businessmen is still 'is it safe for our money here?'" he said.
Hughes, whose diplomatic mission includes providing support for U.S. business, has often dealt with the problems of American businessmen in Russia.
One of the best-known cases had to do with protecting the rights of the American partner in the Russian-American enterprise that opened the first cafe of U.S. chain Subway Sandwich and Salad at Nevsky Prospekt in the mid-1990s.
The situation turned ugly after the Russian partner illegally threw the U.S. partner out of the business, and although the American partner won a lawsuit in court, the Russian partner still refused to fulfill the court's decision.
Hughes held negotiations with the city's former governor Vladimir Yakovlev, after which the American owner finally got back his property.
Another side of St. Petersburg he enjoyed was meeting cultural celebrities Yury Temirkanov, director of the philharmonic orchestra, and Valery Gergiev, head of the Mariinsky Opera and Ballet Theater. Both men are "geniuses," he said.
"Gergiev just had a huge success in New York, and St. Petersburg and Russia can take huge pride in that," he said.
He was glad to see how many institutions, including the State Hermitage Museum and State Russian Museum, have made a successful transition from being state-subsidized to supporting themselves and competing on the world stage of art.
However, when speaking about tourism attractiveness in St. Petersburg, the consul said the city needs to develop its tourism infrastructure and provide more security to tourists.
"Since St. Petersburg, which is only developing its tourism, is competing on the tourism scene with other European and Nordic countries, which already have stable tourism reputations, the city needs not only to be as good but to be better than them to win in this competition," Hughes said.
To attract tourists, it's very important to prevent pickpocketing, robbing and ethnic crime incidents, and the quality of police work needs to be improved, he said.
"Ethnic crime is a black mark for any city," he said.
"In America we have a lot of minorities, and they'll be coming here. And I want to be able to tell them it's OK if you are black, or Indian, or Mexican to come here. But right now it's a little bit more difficult," Hughes said.
Hughes, who is the son of a diplomat, said that a diplomat needs to have at least two important characteristics: to be willing to meet new people, and to be ready to move along with the family.
His work as an Ambassador in Burundi was the most adventurous, especially after a coup d'état when the ousted president asked Hughes for asylum and became Hughes' guest for 11 months.
The African part of Hughes' career has left him with a substantial collection of African art, which he is going to give as a gift to the city's Kunstkamera museum.
However, he will take his entire collection of Russian souvenirs with him.
Hughes said he will continue to work part-time for the State Department as an inspector for different consulates.
Sebastian Fitzlyon, Honorary Australian Consul to St. Petersburg, said Thursday that Hughes "combines great tact, humor and understanding of human nature in the not very easy context of a post-communist society."
"He is admired and respected by the young and old alike. He himself in particular admires the entrepreneural spirit in people, and finally he and Mrs. Hughes are the most hospitable and modest people, whom St. Petersburg is very sorry to part with," Fitzlyon said.
TITLE: 'Train of Remembrance' Leaves for Berlin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - It was a scene, for some, right out of the movies: A military band filled the air with patriotic songs while relatives blinked back tears and waved goodbye to the men and boys behind the train windows, crisp in their full dress uniforms. But most passengers on the train leaving Belorussky Station on Thursday morning were either far past their fighting days or not yet there, and the war they were off to was already 60 years past.
The train was the last of five "Trains of Remembrance," a project developed and funded by the city government's Committee of Public Relations. Working with local and national veterans' groups, the Council of Children's Social Direction and the Moscow House of Children's Social Organizations, the committee has been bringing World War II veterans together with Moscow schoolchildren for a more engaging history lesson than any classroom can offer.
"We put together truly special trips," said committee director Tatyana Vasilyeva. "It's not simply a matter of a large delegation traveling to participate in memorials, there's also what goes on in the trains. We create audio-literary montages about the places we go to with the veterans' participation. They converse with the children during the trip, and then we take excursions once we reach our destinations."
The first such destination was Minsk, where a Train of Remembrance took 50 veterans and 220 students, artists and journalists on July 3, 2004, to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Belarus from German occupation. The delegation visited sites commemorating the war and laid wreaths in St. Petersburg, Volgograd and Kaliningrad earlier this year.
But organizers, veterans and schoolchildren agreed that the stories passed down along the way are the most valuable part of the experience -and they have drawn some participants back more than once.
"This isn't the first Train of Remembrance I've traveled on," said Pavel, 16, one of 175 students from local schools about to make the trip to Berlin. "For our country and for people my age, it's crucial to spend time with these people, the witnesses of the Great War and the great victory they made happen."
Among those boarding the train were a veteran and student who already shared a connection: Yevgeny Beletsky, whose suit was adorned with military decorations, and his grandson Igor, who flaunted the dress uniform of the cadets academy where he studies.
Another veteran, Vasily Klemyonov, considered how much the world had changed since the first time he set foot in Berlin. "After 60 years," he said, "we have a good relationship with the Germans. We've grown to be close now. We relate to each other as veterans to other veterans. People know that the war was terrible, and now we've come together."
But the past was close at hand. Asked about his service, Klemyonov drew a quick breath.
"My plane was the old shturmovik-2," he said. "It made low-flying attacks. The Germans were afraid of those planes. It was a flying tank, and it couldn't be beat. A devastating plane. I flew one of those."
Yury Ostroumov, an editor at the magazine Military-Historical Archive, was taking the trip out of what he said was a healthy skepticism for official accounts of the war and a desire to learn from those who knew it best.
After a day-long trip during which students will listen to and transcribe many such stories by the 75 veterans participating, the train is scheduled to arrive in Berlin on Friday morning. The busy Friday schedule involves the laying of flowers at the Soviet war memorial in Treptower Park, excursions to the German Resistance Memorial Center and The German-Russian Museum of Berlin-Karlshorst, and a reception at the Russian Embassy. The train returns to Moscow on Sunday.
"It seems to me we should know what [the war] meant for us as a country and for our veterans," said Nina, 16, a classmate of Pavel's. "That's why we're going on the Train of Remembrance. We have to preserve our connection to that time."
She had found a far better way to do it than going to the movies.
TITLE: Renowned Physicist Dies
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Leading Russian physicist Boris Zakharchenya of St. Petersburg's Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute died on Sunday and was buried on Thursday.
Zakharechnya was born in the town of Orsha near the Russia-Belarus border on May 1, 1928, and graduated from the physics faculty of Leningrad State University in 1952.
He began working at the Ioffe Institute the same year and remained associated with the institute for the rest of his life, rising to the rank of director of its division of solid state physics.
Zakharechnya's biggest contribution to Russian and international science won him the Lenin Prize in 1966 for his fundamental research into the physics of excitons. In 1976 he won a State Prize and the Lebedev Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences for his researches on new effects of alignment and optical orientation of electrons with the help of polarized light in semiconductors and quantum-dimensional semiconducting structures.
With this work, Zakharechnya founded a scientific school of spectroscopy and magnetic-optics of semi-conductors.
Zakharechnya was the author of many publications, reviews and scientific papers. For many years he edited the journal "Solid State Physics."
TITLE: Ustinov Starts New Term as Prosecutor
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Federation Council on Wednesday confirmed the reappointment of Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov for a second five-year term in what human rights activists said reflected Kremlin approval of his record in prosecuting opponents of the ruling elite.
Ustinov's reappointment had been widely predicted following his nomination by President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, yet the country's top prosecutor met with senators twice, on Tuesday and on Wednesday, ahead of the vote.
Ustinov pledged to senators that he would put extra effort into curbing crime and bringing regional laws into line with federal legislation, as well as ensuring that state organizations paid their employees on time and regional authorities provided heating and electricity supplies.
In line with recent comments he has made on religion, Ustinov told senators that the Prosecutor General's Office would give priority to developing spiritual, primarily religious, qualities in prosecutors.
"In developing spirituality in people, including prosecutors, there are several components: genetic, cultural and religious," Ustinov said. "I think that religiosity must have priority in developing and raising people's spirituality."
Ustinov called for special rooms to be made available in prosecutors' offices across the country where staff could pray and observe religious rites, adding they could follow any of the country's officially registered religions.
The reappointment came two days after a Moscow court adjourned to consider verdicts in the tax evasion and fraud case of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev.
Ustinov's predecessor as prosecutor general, Yury Skuratov, said that case highlighted how Ustinov "walks a fine line between law and politics," Kommersant reported Wednesday.
Since the beginning of Putin's presidency, Ustinov has consistently backed the Kremlin's moves to rein in oligarchs and regional leaders.
Lev Ponomaryov, a veteran human rights activist, said Ustinov had allowed prosecutors to use fabricated evidence, such as in the case of former Federal Security Service officer Mikhail Trepashkin, who was jailed in 2004 on charges of divulging state secrets after he questioned the official investigation into the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings.
TITLE: Delay to Saimaa Canal Opening Costly
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The opening of the shipping season on the Saimaa Canal did not occur as planned on April 6 because Russian customs had no checkpoint working, Finnish information agency STT reported Wednesday.
It eventually opened late Thursday afternoon.
The canal, which runs from Vyborg through a series of locks to Lappeenranta, is the main cargo shipping transit connection from the Baltic Sea to the lakes of Central Finland.
Fifteen cargo ships, carrying 30,000 metric tons of freight were stuck in the canal by Wednesday afternoon. Finnish companies face financial losses from the delays of more than $650,000, STT reported.
"Several ships are stuck now and cannot sail into Lake Saimaa because the Russian customs will not let them go through the canal," Jukka Vaisanen, head of the Finnish Maritime Administration Traffic Division, said Thursday in a phone interview before the opening.
"The losses are estimated to be several thousand euros," he said.
The problem arose in fall last year when Russian customs started to implement a decision taken in 2002 to move the canal's border checkpoint from Brusnichnoye to Pyalli, closer to the Finnish-Russian border.
"We informed the authorities at the federal and regional level that it was necessary to set up suitable conditions for the operation," Kommersant quoted Anatoly Utkin, a Northwest customs representative, as saying Thursday. "But after half a year the check point has still not been set up, so for this reason we can not register cargo ships or let them through."
On Wednesday, the Finns offered Russian customs the use of a small building that belongs to Finland in order to start operations. In addition, the Finnish Maritime Administration has offered to contribute $3 million to Russian customs to organize the work of the new checkpoint.
TITLE: Drawbridges to Open Soon
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The navigation season in St. Petersburg when the drawbridges on the Neva will open to let ships pass will begin at the end of next week.
Yury Petrov, the head of state-owned enterprise Mostotrest, which is responsible for maintenance of the city's bridges, said the bridges will open sometime between April 20 and April 23.
"The city laws state that the navigation season should start on April 10," Petrov said at a news conference Wednesday. "The delay is because we have to finish repairs to the Liteiny bridge."
Some unexpected corrosion had been found in the bridge mechanism due to trams running across the bridge and from the salt used to give more traction to cars when the bridge is covered in ice, he said.
A test raising of the bridge will be conducted on Sunday morning.
"The life of a bridge is about 100 years, but because salt is used, this is reduced by 20 to 25 percent," Petrov said. "The salt erodes about 1.5mm away each year and if we didn't do any maintenance, all the drawbridges would be unusable in five years."
Salt not only damages bridges, it also damages pedestrians' shoes and car tires and another means of dealing with ice should be considered, he said.
St. Petersburg has one tenth of Europe's drawbridges. They open in the early morning, preventing wheeled traffic from crossing.
Drivers are required to keep strictly to the opening timetable and face fines of about $1,300 if they in any way delay the opening of a bridge.
TITLE: Katyn Picket at Warsaw Embassy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WARSAW, Poland - Relatives of some of the 22,000 Polish prisoners of war murdered by Soviet forces in 1940 picketed the Russian Embassy in Warsaw Wednesday, demanding Moscow apologize for the killings and classify them as genocide.
The Polish prisoners were killed by the Soviet secret police in 1940 in and around the forest near the city of Katyn, in what was then the western Soviet Union.
The remains were uncovered in 1943 by the Nazis after they had overrun the area in their invasion of the Soviet Union.
Polish lawmakers have called for Moscow to classify the killings as genocide and bring the remaining perpetrators of the so-called Katyn massacre to justice.
TITLE: Starovoitova
Confession
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One of those accused of taking part in the 1998 assassination of State Duma Deputy Galina Starovoitova on Wednesday confessed in court to being guilty of all charges against him, Interfax reported.
Alexei Voronin confirmed that he monitored Starovoitova's phone calls and then relayed information to the organizers of the assassination, but said he did not know it would be used as part of a terrorist attack to kill Starovoitova.
"At the beginning of the trial I partially admitted the charges," he was quoted saying. "Now I admit them in full."
"[Other suspects] have called me an insignificant and cowardly person," Voronin said. "But it is a cowardly thing to organize the assassination of a woman. I'm not sorry that I testified even if it means I will see a gun pointed at me when I am released."
The investigation was based on evidence given by Voronin and another witness, whose name has not been revealed to the public for security reasons. However, Starovoitova's family believes that whoever ordered the slaying has been neither named nor charged yet.
The prosecution has asked the court to jail Voronin for only 4 1/2 years because of his cooperation. Prosecutors have demanded 15-year to life jail terms for the other five suspects.
Yury Kolchin, a former employee of the General Staff's Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, the suspect charged with organizing the assassination has denied the charges, saying he believes in God and for this reason he could not kill anybody.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Ivanov: Punish Hazing
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has promised to punish those who are guilty if cases of hazing reported at a navy base in Lomonosov are confirmed, Interfax reported Tuesday, quoting the minister.
"Anybody who is found guilty will be punished, including senior officers," Interfax cited Ivanov as saying at a briefing in Yaroslavl.
"We should investigate what has happened at this military base and the investigation has already started. I was informed about it by navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov," Ivanov said.
Twelve conscript sailors fled the base last week and filed complaints about hazing after several of them were allegedly beaten up by older sailors shortly after their arrival.
Opera Center for City?
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Famous Russian opera singer Yelena Obraztsova said she would like to build a center to support young opera talents in St. Petersburg if City Hall would donate a plot of land for construction, Interfax reported Tuesday.
"I have even found men with money who will build. I just need a piece of land and would build an outstanding theater, not for myself, [but] for St. Petersburg residents," Interfax cited Obraztsova as saying.
"If I were given a building to demolish, I would start work even tomorrow and would organize not only a school for opera singers, but also study courses for [opera] directors," she said.
Chaliapin Mementos
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Photos, letters and private items that belonged to Fyodor Chaliapin from the collections of cellist and philanthropist Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, singer Galina Vishnevskya, are on display in an exhibition in the apartment museum of the famous Russian singer, Interfax reported Wednesday.
"It is difficult to say exactly where and how the items were found and obtained by Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya, but there are quite enough amusing things in their collection, " Interfax cited Zinaida Getman, Chaliapin museum director, as saying.
"So far Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya have given us only a small part of what they have," she added.
Seleznyov to Run
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Former State Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov confirmed Wednesday that he will run for president in 2008.
"I have already said this and I repeat that I will participate in the election campaign for president. And after my announcement in St. Petersburg many people have supported me," Interfax cited Seleznyov as saying.
He said he would head a left-wing movement in the next presidential elections.
City Construction
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Applications for construction projects in the historical part of St. Petersburg will be considered on a block-by-block basis, Interfax reported Wednesday, quoting City Hall officials.
A project to protect the central districts of St. Petersburg filed by City Hall offers to split the central part of the city into three zones, said Vera Dementyeva, head of City Hall's committee for the protection of architectural monuments.
"The unified protection zone that exists today is quite unprotective. The same regime of construction has been introduced in relation to all of the territory of the city center, which has protected neither Spaso-Preobrazhenskaya nor Kazanskaya nor St. Isaac's squares," Interfax cited Dementyeva as saying.
There are 18 new buildings on the committee's list of buildings that are considered as damaging to the city center landscape, Dmentyeva said.
'No Stalin Statues'
MOSCOW (SPT) - It is better not to erect statues of Josef Stalin, but his name should not be taken out of history books, said Mikhail Shvydkoi, head of the federal agency for culture and cinematography, Interfax reported Thursday.
"If [a statue] of a man is erected in bronze, this is a sign of his positive recognition," he was quoted saying. "But Stalin was a tragic tyrant, who sometimes sacrificed [the lives of] millions of people while leading the Soviet Union to victory."
TITLE: Siemens Shut Out of Power Machines
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After months of contradictory signals from the government about whether Siemens would be allowed to take over Power Machines, Russia's biggest producer of power turbines, the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service on Wednesday issued a resounding and definitive no.
The service, FAS, said the deal would have limited competition on the energy equipment market and would be problematic because of Power Machines' involvement in defense production.
The announcement came two days after President Vladimir Putin returned from the Hannover Trade Fair, where he talked investment with German companies. He met with Siemens CEO Klaus Kleinfeld and brought back a $1.9 billion agreement between Siemens and Russian Railways to co-develop and produce high-speed trains.
Siemens, the world's No. 2 producer of power turbines, first announced it had reached an agreement to buy Power Machines, or Siloviye Mashiny, from Vladimir Potanin's Interros in July. Already holding almost 5 percent in the company, Siemens was to have acquired 73.5 percent for a $200 million investment to upgrade its facilities.
Wednesday's decision opens the door for Oleg Deripaska's Base Element and Unified Energy Systems to make a play for the company.
"We accepted the FAS decision with regret," said Nikita Kukushkin, Siemens' spokesman in Moscow. "We did not initiate this deal. We were invited by the country's leadership to invest in a concrete enterprise."
Siemens got involved after a $1 billion merger between Power Machines and United Heavy Machinery, or OMZ, began to fall apart. Putin initially appeared to signal his support for the takeover, but he was reported to have changed his mind after learning of Power Machines' role in providing equipment for nuclear submarines.
The government ministries spent the better part of a year bickering over the economic effect of the deal and discussed the possibility of divesting Power Machines' defense component.
Last Friday, 377 of the State Duma's 450 deputies backed a resolution opposing the deal, saying it would jeopardize national security.
Stanislav Naumov, a spokesman for Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko, said Wednesday that the government was not to be held accountable for the rejection of Siemens' bid.
"When you are invited to dinner, it does not mean that a marriage will follow," Naumov said.
"We are ready to cooperate with Siemens on a variety of projects, which was demonstrated at the Hannover fair," he said. "The government fulfilled its function as a night guard, saying it is not advisable to go in this direction. But it does not mean that it is sitting at the wheel and telling Power Machines where to go."
A statement FAS issued Wednesday explaining its decision said: "Under current legislation it is impossible to resolve a number of questions connected to ... the participation of foreign companies in the production of military equipment."
Both Power Machines and Interros refused to provide information on their defense production.
Alexander Branis, head of Prosperity Capital Management, who sits on Power Machines' board, said its Electrosila subsidiary made generators for submarines, and this must have been the main stumbling block.
According to the Defense Enterprises of Russia 2001 directory, compiled by the Center for Analysis of Global Arms Markets, another subsidiary, Leningrad Metal Plant, makes components for the Topol-M ICBM and Proton booster rocket.
"All these factors - creating a monopoly, Siemens' investments and the negative effects on defense production - have been under consideration all this time," said FAS spokesman Konstantin Dorokhin. "To us it has long been obvious that the positive effect would not outstrip the negative consequences."
Interros, in a statement issued by spokeswoman Larisa Zelkova, said the company regarded Wednesday's decision as indicating "the readiness of the state to assist in the development of Russian energy machine building."
An Interros representative, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the company was now considering how to further develop Power Machines, and while waiting for a decision from the FAS had not been negotiating with other prospective buyers.
With the Siemens deal in limbo, Deripaska's Base Element filed in January an application with the FAS asking for approval to buy the Interros stake.
"We have taken into account the decision by the FAS, and its motivation is clear to us," said Eleonora Veitsman, spokeswoman for Base Element. "If the FAS approves our application for buying Power Machines, we will start negotiation with the shareholders of the company."
Sergei Suverov, an analyst with Gazprombank, also said the government's motivation was clear.
"It looks as though the government through the FAS has given priority to national capital," he said. "It would like to preserve the brand of Power Machines, which is strong in the Asian markets, and to have a strong national player able to compete with General Electric and Siemens internationally.
"Power equipment is worn out, and it would make an attractive business for Russian companies such as BasEl or UES," Suverov said.
UES chief Anatoly Chubais last month announced the start of a multibillion-dollar overhaul of energy equipment and said he welcomed both domestic and foreign manufacturers to submit their proposals.
Chubais has indicated that he might be interested in Power Machines. In an interview with Profil last month, he said that if FAS rejected the Siemens takeover, "then I have a proposal."
UES spokeswoman Tatyana Milyayeva said: "We are closely studying the FAS arguments and only afterward we will present our opinion."
United Financial Group said in a research note Wednesday that neither UES nor Base Element would be good news for Power Machines.
"Base Element is not always efficient at managing its companies, which belong to a wide range of sectors," UFG said. "UES would be likely to insist on minimal prices for Power Machines' equipment. UES is Power Machine's largest customer and this would have a material negative impact."
TITLE: Russia's Carmakers Hang On to Niche
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The ailing domestic auto industry can ignore pronouncements of its imminent demise because Russian cars will still fill an important niche in the global economy, Severstal-Avto's leading strategist said Wednesday.
Fifty percent of the world's population has never made a phone call, meaning the potential demand for rugged, inexpensive Russian cars is huge, Alexei Rakhmanov, Severstal-Avto's chief strategist, said at an annual trade conference.
"The Russian car industry will find its place in the global market," he said. But Rakhmanov warned that the onslaught of foreign competition - which he likened to a "Martian attack" - would make the going tough. Last year, new foreign car sales soared more than 80 percent, to 350,000 cars, and that number is expected to rise another 40 percent in 2005.
Analysts scoffed at the suggestion that the Russian car industry was on an uphill road to recovery. But Rakhmanov argued that as Russia gears up to join the World Trade Organization, the auto industry can use its unique position to meet the competition head on.
On the one hand, Russia should continue to sell its models in Third World countries under the premise that a cheap Russian car is better than no car at all, Rakhmanov said. On the other hand, however, the industry must invest in R&D and enter international partnerships to continue producing low-cost vehicles that sell.
Lada's Kalina, set to hit showrooms later this month, is a rare example of a car born out of domestic R&D, Rakhmanov said. And Severstal-Avto's new off-road vehicle, the UAZ Patriot, is one of few Russian models to rely heavily on foreign-made components - from South Korea and Latvia to Iran and Germany. At between $12,000 and $15,000, half the price of an average Western SUV, the Patriot should be a success at home and abroad, Rakhmanov said.
UAZ is filling an order for 3,000 of its basic Hunter jeeps to Afghanistan's new police force, and GAZ last year made a delivery of Volgas to Baghdad's burgeoning taxi fleet.
Analysts agreed with Rakhmanov that Russian cars had a niche but said that did not mean drivers in developing countries actually preferred them.
"An enormous amount of people don't have access to pure water. Does it mean they have to buy Ladas?" said Alexei Yazykov, an automotive analyst with Aton. Yazykov said the industry did have a short-term future but the direction remained unclear.
Russian carmakers' greatest weakness on the international market is that they do not invest in maintenance, said Franz Josef Marx, vice president of Boston Consulting Group.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Rosneft Seeks Team
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Rosneft, Russia's state-owned oil company, is in talks with Statoil and Norsk Hydro about plans to make joint bids for oil and gas fields in the Arctic and East Siberia, Rosneft Vice President Alexei Kuznetsov said Thurday.
The companies signed preliminary agreements to assess possible projects and bids for fields being auctioned by the Russian government, Kuznetsov said at a parliamentary roundtable on Russian-Norwegian relations in Moscow.
Rosneft is more likely to bid with Statoil for offshore projects in the Barents Sea because of the company's expertise, Kuznetsov said.
Fuel Prices Need Cap
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov ordered the Energy and Industry Ministry to draft proposals to cap fuel prices, Interfax reported.
Other ministries and government departments were also ordered to draft proposals, after Russia's lower house of parliament Wednesday discussed ways to curb rising fuel prices.
The government's efforts to keep refined oil product prices low in Russia may be a way to further increase the tax burden on oil companies, investment bank United Financial Group said Thurday in a note. Proposals to change the tax system could "unbalance the relatively stable tax system in the Russian oil sector," UFG said.
Alfa Loses Bid
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Alfa Group, one of Russia's largest industrial-financial holding companies, failed to buy Kyrgyzstan's mobile phone company BiTel, losing the bid to Kazakh investment company Alliance Capital, Vedomosti reported.
The Kazakh company bought three Isle of Man-registered companies that own BiTel, Vedomosti said, citing Alliance's statement. Alfa earlier this year bought Fellowes, another offshore company that has an option to buy 100 percent of BiTel, the paper said.
Fellowes is preparing to sue BiTel's former owners, an unidentified Fellowes official told Vedomosti. Alfa's telecommunications division Alfa-Telecom and BiTel declined to comment.
VimpelCom 4Q Profit
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - VimpelCom said fourth-quarter profit rose 28 percent as the company added customers.
Net income rose to $83.7 million, or 47 cents per American depositary receipt, from $65.6 million, or 42 cents, a year earlier, Moscow-based VimpelCom said Thursday. Sales rose 56 percent to $635.7 million, based on U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.
Larger competitor Mobile TeleSystems had a 37 percent profit increase in the quarter.
LUKoil to Buy Mazeikiu
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - LUKoil, Russia's biggest oil producer, is negotiating to buy Yukos' 54 percent stake in Mazeikiu Nafta, a Lithuanian refinery and oil terminal, Interfax said, citing LUKoil CEO Vagit Alekperov.
Citibank officials are representing LUKoil in the talks, which are in their "initial stages," Alekperov told reporters in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported. Lukoil expects soon to hear from Yukos on whether that company's board has decided to sell Mazeikiu.
TITLE: Phaeton Bank on Luxury
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As the city gas station market preparesfor the expansion of LUKoil in the next two years, some rival oil companies have begun looking for new solutions to retain customers.
Phaeton holding, which operates 40 gas stations in the city, said Tuesday that it will develop a new chain of 15 "luxury class" gas stations to capture what the company identified as an emerging "premium" segment in the market.
The first such "luxury" gas station to operate under the Aero brand name opens Friday on Dalnevostochny Prospekt. Four Aero stations already exist in the city, but have not yet received a face-lift. The next 10 luxury gas stations will open within two years, Phaeton said.
Developed to resemble an airport of the future, the gas stations' design, presented Tuesday at a news conference by Phaeton, looked like something from a futuristic sci-fi flick.
The Aero chain promises customers sushi bar dining, free Internet use and mobile phone payment processing. Meanwhile, the client's car will be vacuumed, washed, and re-filled with gas by ladies in flight-attendant style uniforms and men in red and blue overalls.
For those in a rush, Phaeton has made available an express lane furnished with a timer-tableau to measure the promptness of the service.
According to Sergei Snopok, Phaeton's head of the board of directors, the city gas stations market has reached a point where customers are willing to bear a higher price in return for more exclusive service.
He said the company saw the Aero brand as a competitor for the Neste and Shell retail chains, where demand usually exceeds service availability.
Although Phaeton said they did not as yet have estimates on the size of their potential market segment, the results of a market research report carried out together with the company's marketing agency Nebo will be complete in two weeks.
"The Aero brand commands respect, and, because it is so well developed, it will also be respected by its customers," Snopok said.
The "respect" comes at a price, however, as Phaeton have already experienced. Snopok said the construction of the first Aero gas station at Dalnevostochny Prospekt, combined with brand development, has cost about 1.15 million euros ($1.47 million), 15 percent more than the construction of a regular gas station in the city would cost.
Naturally, the "respect" will be passed on to the customer, although Snopok did not reveal Aero's pricing policy at this stage, saying only that the company will aim to be flexible in its decision-making process.
"We will play by the market rules and make sure supply meets demand," Snopok said.
Whether futuristic design and luxury service will meet customers' demands could become clearer when the company's market research results are known. Other market players, however, said they have no desire to follow in Phaeton's footsteps.
"What matters to customers is a combination of gas quality, service and price," Shell AZS general director Edgars Zalitis said Wednesday in a phone interview. However, the gas market does have some segmentation and individual customer preferences have become a more important market factor of late, Zalitis said.
Despite Phaeton's hopes that the new gas stations could become something of a trendy meeting spot, Zalitis' view seems to be supported by many drivers in the city.
"I don't go to the gas station for entertainment," said a photographer from a local newspaper.
TITLE: Ecologists Rubbish City Waste Plans
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The city's new concept for improving garbage and solid waste removal, approved by city Governor Valentina Matviyenko this week, has come under fire from environmental groups.
Ecological watchdog Greenpeace criticized City Hall's program for processing garbage as ineffective and possibly damaging to the environment in the long term.
Matviyenko gave the go-ahead for a waste disposal and processing program that will operate in the city from this year until 2014.
As part of the program, two new garbage incinerators will be built, and two existing ones will be revamped.
However, Greenpeace coordinator for St. Petersburg and the northwest region, Igor Babanin slammed the plans as ineffective.
"Turning solid garbage into gas with its further equal distribution all over the city and nearby region is not a solution," Babanin said Wednesday in a telephone interview.
Vice-Governor Oleg Virolainen, in charge of the waste disposal program, could not be reached for comment on Thursday.
The city generates over 9 million cubic meters of garbage a year, while the Leningrad Oblast, with a smaller population, creates 1.2 million cubic meters.
In addition, the city produces 1.2 billion cubic meters of liquid waste, according to an annual report by the committee on natural resources and environmental protection.
Only a part of the waste is processed.
"Only a third of the city's garbage is [currently] burnt in incinerators," said Dmitry Artamonov, director of the Greenpeace division in St. Petersburg.
"Another third (food scraps and other biologically degradable materials) is turned into compost at two factories, while the last third remains untreated altogether.
"As for the liquids - 30 percent of sewage and over 50 percent of industrial wastes flow into Neva river and tributaries untreated," Artamonov said.
Ecologists also pointed out that the city's garbage is not sorted, as is done in Germany and Scandinavia, and as a result the waste mix often includes polyvinylchloride that emits dioxins when burnt.
The harmful dioxin elements are known to stimulate cancer. The city registers about 18,000 new cancer patients every year, according to the director of state Cancer Register agency Vakhtang Mirabishvili. However, a direct link between the burning of garbage and an increase in cancer patients could not be proven, since a number of factors cause cancer, the director said.
A solution to the waste disposal problem would be to promote recycling in the city, ecologists say. Tests run by Greenpeace show some sense of willingness among city residents to participate in ecologically important projects.
"According to our data, 25 percent of people are willing to sort out the garbage before dumping it into the bins," Bananin said.
The sorting out of waste for recycling would mean more of it could be processed or collected for compost without any need for incineration, he said.
At the moment, 70 percent of the city's garbage ends up in the Leningrad Oblast, said Boris Prokhorov, head of the Oblast's committee for natural resources and environmental protection.
While Oblast officials and the environmentalists welcomed moves by St. Petersburg authorities to address the issue, other ongoing projects have yet to be completed for lack of finances, they said.
A reprocessing facility for the chemical waste in Krasny Bor has been under construction for a number of years, but "financing of the project is inadequate and uneven," said Dmitry Golubev of the committee on nature management and environmental protection.
Greenpeace's Artamonov said another major worry was the nuclear waste storage facility in Sosnovy Bor.
"It is overfilled and located just 90 meters from the Gulf of Finland," Artamonov said.
Neither the city nor the Oblast divisions of Rosstekhnadzor, a state environmental control and monitoring department, could be reached Thursday.
TITLE: Successful Appeal Lifts JTI's Chance
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Moscow Court of Appeals has upheld Japan Tobacco Inc.'s claim against the Federal Tax Service and Tuesday sent the company's case back to the lower courts for further review.
The decision, although not a complete victory, is the first point scored by the Japanese cigarette manufacturer in the fight against a $79 million back taxes bill the authorities presented to its Marketing & Sales division last year.
"This is a positive outcome for JTI Marketing & Sales. We see that the Court of Appeals has understood the situation and made a fair decision," Andrei Yerin, spokesman for JTI Russia said Wednesday in an e-mail.
"We hope and believe that the lower court will also understand our position and rule in our favor when the case is reviewed," he said.
A representative of the federal tax service said Wednesday that they were aware of the court's decision, but declined to comment further.
JTI Marketing & Sales first received the bill in July 2004, for what the tax authorities maintained were unpaid taxes since the 2000 financial year. In March, JTI's St. Petersburg-based factory Petro was also presented with a tax bill claiming $15 million for missed payments.
JTI has insisted that both bills were the result of the tax authorities' misinterpretations of the company's internal accounting system and have appealed against both in court.
In February, the Moscow Arbitration Court upheld the tax services' claim, forcing JTI to take the decision to the higher Court of Appeal. After Tuesday's decision, the case will be sent back to the Arbitration Court.
Experts have estimated the higher court's decision as particularly important, saying that it will no doubt have influence on the lower judicial chamber when the Arbitration Court comes to review the case. However, a more accurate appraisal of the situation will be possible once the reasoning behind Tuesday's decision is published.
"As a rule, if a case is returned to the Arbitration Court, it makes a decision opposite to the preceding one," Eduard Kucherov, head of the tax department at Baker Tilly Rusaudit said Wednesday in an interview with business daily Vedomosti.
"However, [in JTI's case] that all depends on what the reasoning or motivation behind the Court of Appeal's decision was," Kucherov said.
The court's justification for the decision will be published within two to three weeks, by which time the Court of Appeals is expected to set a date for the next hearing, JTI's Yerin said.
TITLE: Soft Power Politics
TEXT: A new department has been set up as part of the presidential administration, the Department for Interregional and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries and the CIS. Its mission is to increase the effectiveness of Moscow's efforts to maintain and expand its influence in the former Soviet Union.
The time was more than ripe for such a coordinating body to be created. Under the current government system, the most important decisions are always made exclusively in the Kremlin. Everyone understands that if the presidential administration is not directly responsible for an issue, it is not a priority for the government. Now, finally, the bureaucracy has been sent all the necessary signals.
For the first time ever, it seems that the authorities have chosen the right tools for the job as well. Russia will try to have an impact on the events in neighboring countries by means of cultural initiatives and humanitarian cooperation, or in other words, by using soft power, as political scientist Joseph Nye called it.
Russia's projects to promote culture and education remain one of the few effective tools for influencing governments in the CIS. They do not spark violent accusations that Russia is indulging its imperial ambitions. The intellectual and creative elite of these countries is still very receptive to the gentle, unobtrusive pulse of cultural influence from Moscow. For example, even at the very height of the Orange Revolution in Kiev, Moscow's Sovremmenik Theater had a very successful Ukrainian tour. In fact, by ignoring academics and artists in Ukraine - and particularly in Kiev - Russia contributed significantly to the defeat of pro-Russian forces in the Ukrainian elections of 2004. The increasing popularity of Russian-language schools in Kazakhstan among middle-class, Kazakh-speaking families and the success of the Slavic Universities in Baku and Yerevan testify to the great potential of educational programs as an instrument of Russian influence in the CIS.
When Modest Kolerov, who heads the new department, announced that the main focus would fall on cultural cooperation with other CIS and Baltic countries, many observers concluded that cultural programs would merely be decoys for his department's real goal of combating future color revolutions and helping pro-Moscow forces to hold election campaigns. But I hope that Kolerov indeed has a broader vision for his department and will aim to create a radically new and different set of tools for promoting Russia's interests in the CIS. These tools could prove practically infallible in changing the political direction of neighboring countries. And Kolerov and his department will be able to do just that, if they keep the following basic principles in mind.
First, they need to set long-term goals. The main aim should be to establish a system for Russian humanitarian influence that would be able to function over an extended period of time. It is important to resist the temptation to make all of the department's projects into short-term PR operations in order to get the election results Moscow wants in upcoming elections in places like Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Naturally, Russia should try to influence the outcomes of these elections. But officials should focus on supporting ideas and political positions that make cooperation and maintaining cultural and humanitarian ties with Russia a high priority. They should stop bluntly supporting particular candidates. This approach will allow Moscow to support an entire spectrum of political forces and figures that more or less advocate a pro-Russian platform.
Second, the government needs to use a politically broader interpretation of humanitarian cooperation that includes defending human rights. Kolerov faces the difficult task of maneuvering between the areas of competence of Russia's Security Council, Interior Ministry and secret services. By focusing on soft power tools in the sphere of humanitarian aid and human rights, the department will be able to take on a leadership role in crafting Russian CIS policy. It will be important to integrate goals for achieving cultural influence in other post-Soviet states with other aspects of Russia's relations with its neighbors, including economic cooperation. For example, the government could use the opportunity of Gazprom's contract with Turkmenistan to partially restore secondary and higher education in Russian in the country.
Third, we need to avoid double standards. The government needs to fight the closure of Russian-language schools as fervently in Latvia as in Turkmenistan, where there will soon be no schools of any kind. It is very important to defend the rights of Russian speakers in the Baltics, but at the same time, we should protect Russian citizens languishing in Turkmenbashi's prisons on trumped-up charges, like Boris Shikhmuradov, for instance.
Fourth, there need to be more forums for Russian humanitarian influence. Russia does not have nearly enough of them, and there is no Russian cultural center at any of Russia's embassies in the CIS. In order to work with intellectuals, the government should set up local branches of Russian institutes studying post-Soviet states. The Ukrainian Academy of Russian Studies recently opened in Kiev, but does Russia ever do anything else of the kind? Russian businessmen are lobbying for their interests in the CIS countries all by themselves. There are no organizations to unite their efforts. For some odd reason, we hear nothing about the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs or the Chamber of Commerce and Industry fighting to save Russian assets in Ukraine.
Fifth, we need to start doing some serious fundraising. Humanitarian projects can be very costly. Russia should be ready and willing to fund private Russian schools and universities or, for example, to subsidize the inclusion of Russian television channels in local cable and satellite television packages, which would be particularly helpful in Ukraine. In some countries, like, say Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, we might need to hand out satellite dishes to people. Perhaps it would also be worthwhile to set up a special nongovernmental fund to finance projects along these lines.
Sixth, we need to get the Russian elite to snap out of its recent hysteria. We simply cannot allow a few defeats of pro-Russian forces in CIS elections to lead to a full-blown political crisis in the Russian government, which is exactly what happened when Yanukovych lost in Ukraine. The so-called crisis came about as a result of officials' panic.
Vladimir Frolov is an independent political consultant and formerly the deputy director of the Fund for Efficient Politics. He contributed this comment to Vedomosti, where it first appeared.
TITLE: Guilty of Breaking and Entering in the Baltics
TEXT: The documentary footage showed Soviet soldiers in 1940 opening the gates of the border fence between Estonia and the Soviet Union, long military convoys with the leading trucks disappearing into a forest on the horizon and freight cars bearing prisoners from the Baltic states to the cold hell of Siberia. All these images, by the way, are unlikely to be broadcast by Russian television.
All these documentaries, which in my view represent quite a balanced picture of Estonian history since the end of the 1930s, are on public display in the Occupation Museum in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.
The 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe is obviously not about this, at least not according to Russia's current political ideologists.
Among the letters The St. Petersburg Times received in reaction to my recent opinion piece, in which I argued that the Russian leadership should apologize to the countries of Eastern Europe for the crimes the Soviet Union committed in the 20th century, were some accusing me of not knowing history. They pointed to such awful matters as the existence of concentration camps on the territory of the Baltic States during World War II, mass assassinations of Jews by fascists in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and indications of support for neo-Nazis from the contemporary population of the Baltic States.
I do not want to get into arguments with the authors of these letters for one simple reason: because none of them have looked at Josef Stalin's crimes and thus none of them was able to reach a balanced conclusion.
None of them remembers that the first concentration camp in the proper sense of the word of the 20th century was organized on the territory of the Soviet Union in the end of May 1918 in accordance with a decree signed by Lev Trotsky. By 1923 there were 315 concentration camps in the USSR - 10 years before Nazi Germany organized one of its first concentration camps in March 1933 in Dachau, shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power. The Soviet Union was engaged in the practice for quite a while.
It seems to me very disrespectful to the victims to use arithmetic to compare the regimes of Hitler and Stalin to decide which was the worst. Counting how many people each of them killed and deciding on this basis who is right and who is wrong is far too simple.
Both of these tyrants committed crimes against humanity on a scale that had no precedent in modern history. The difference today is that the successor of one of the two states they ruled - Germany - has admitted that its dictator's deeds were crimes. Since then Germany has done all it can to integrate new generations into a purely democratic society.
The other successor state just wants to forget history by trying to convince everybody around that everything was just fine.
Well, it was not fine.
When I was in the museum, watching a documentary that showed the Soviet Army entering the territory of Estonia through the gates in the border fence, I could not get rid of the feeling I was watching footage of a stranger breaking into someone's house and rearranging all the furniture in the living room and bedroom, breaking everything as he went.
One question was stuck in my head as I watched the screen. Would the 60 percent of Russian citizens who, according to a recent public opinion poll, believe that the Baltic states are hostile, be happy about some idiot breaking into their apartment and smashing their belongings? But let's give credit where credit is due. The average Russian's biased approach to the question of invasion is in many cases inspired by the country's leadership, which shouts to the four winds about its wish to be integrated into European society but at home sows the seeds of nationalism.
It is well known that deep down, many people in Eastern Europe still consider Russia a potential enemy. The reason for this is clear: Those who do not admit mistakes are wont to repeat them.
It is unlikely that Russia will repeat its history of occupation today, but the unpleasant memories are still there. Russia, as well as Russian people traveling to Europe, has a certain image abroad because of the Soviet Union's actions in the past. To change things for the better, the Kremlin should review its foreign policy and start presenting the country as a tolerant state that is open to Europe and its history and intentions.
Russia has a long way to go to achieve this, but we have to start moving in this direction some day if we want to become a civilized nation.
TITLE: Northern exposure
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn has many fans. Bono, the lead singer of U2, told The Observer earlier this year: "He shoots the music you are making, who you can be - rather than who you are."
An exhibition of work by Corbijn, who recently published "U2 and I: The
Photographs 1982 -2004," opens Friday at the State Russian Museum's Stroganov Palace.
The show explores Corbijn's unique vision and instantly recognizable style in his approach to portrait photography.
Responsible for rock's most iconic images, such as the cover for U2's 1987 album "The Joshua Tree," Corbijn traveled to St. Petersburg to oversee preparations for his first exhibition in Russia and attend its opening in person.
Called simply "Foto," the exhibition features 80 photographic works with subjects ranging from Icelandic singer Bjork to U.S. film director Martin Scorsese.
Even if many of the subjects of his photographs are rich and famous, Corbijn denies any interest in celebrity.
"Although some people think I am a celebrity photographer, I am really not; I photograph artists. And a lot of these artists are famous people, but not all of them," he said, speaking to The St. Petersburg Times at the Stroganov Palace while workers prepared the exhibition works on Wednesday.
"I'm not interested in Madonna, I'm not interested in the Spice Girls," Corbijn said. "I'm really interested in what people are making, how they express themselves, whether it's through films or through music."
Born in Strijen, the Netherlands, in 1955, Corbijn's interest in photography evolved from his interest in music. In the early 1970s he was a regular at rock concerts, taking pictures of local bands with his father's camera.
"My biggest love is music," he said.
"I borrowed the camera from my father and just took a few pictures. I wanted to be close to the music, and the camera gave an excuse for me to come close to the music.
"I liked the process of taking pictures at concerts. So I did a few more [and] my biggest love became photography."
Music is broadly represented at the exhibition. Corbijn's images of David Bowie, Frank Zappa, Patti Smith, Morrissey, Kurt Cobain, Polly Harvey and many others are displayed.
Photographing musicians has been the backbone of Corbijn's career and although he has branched out, they are still a subject he is interested in.
"In the 1970s and the 1980s, I photographed only music. And then in the late 1980s and 1990s it changed a lot to many different art forms, like movies. I started to photograph painters and writers and actors and directors and some models, and some scientists, all kinds of people.
"But I think music is still a very interesting subject matter."
In 1976, Corbijn became chief photographer with the leading Dutch pop music magazine Oor. His love for the British post-punk scene prompted a move to London in 1979 and he began a five-year stint with the British music weekly New Musical Express, or NME, the music fan's bible at that time.
His first session with the band Joy Division later that year launched a series of well-known images of rock musicians in Corbijn's distinctive, mostly monochrome, style.
"I liked a lot of music that came from England, especially after punk, like Public Image Ltd., I liked Magazine, I liked Joy Division. In England they call it 'postpunk.'
"I connected very quickly with these people and I started to work for [the NME.] And through that music paper I met so many people, so I started to work for these people and I stopped working for the magazine."
Corbijn said that however important it was, the NME has lost its impact since then.
"The NME? I don't see it anymore. I think in the 1970s and the 1980s it had a function. It was a real underground thing, independent labels... There was a space... before bands got signed, or when bands get signed by the small labels to bring it to a bigger audience. The NME had this function.
"Nowadays as soon as a band is new, they're already on TV and radio, because people are so desperate for new things, so this whole function of transition has disappeared.
Although much in Corbijn's life connected to rock music, he hates the term "rock photographer."
"I am a portrait photographer. For a 'rock photographer' it's only important who is in the picture - it doesn't tell you anything about how it's photographed. It's only who is photographed, not how. And I'm more interested in... what do you do with the person you photograph."
Corbijn said his different style stems from turning a weakness into a strength.
"This is something that has developed over the years. I think that when you realize that, your handicap becomes your greatest asset," he said.
"I can't take pictures any other way; this is the only way I can take pictures. I can't do normal family portraits, you know, I can't do normal pictures. I can only shoot this way. And that becomes your style. Because I never studied how to take a picture. I taught myself.
"So that's when you become unconventional... that's what people call style."
Corbijn is widely recognized as the man who created the entire images of both U2 and Depeche Mode with the photographs, album covers and videos he has made with them.
"You meet people, you take some pictures and then a month later they call and say, 'Can you take some more pictures?' So slowly these things develop. They never ask me, 'Can you do our record cover?'"
"With Depeche Mode, I was asked a few times to take pictures of them, and I said, 'No, I don't like them.' Then they asked me to do a video and I said 'O.K., I'll do the video.' After the video, I started to take pictures... With U2 I started with photography and then did some videos. It's something that has grown naturally."
Although Corbijn is frequently described as an "icon-maker," his subjects are often shown in an unusual settings, and sometimes in a strange poses.
"I don't have a studio actually, I go and meet people. And depending on what they are, some pictures are just natural, some pictures people do something. It's a mix. I work where I find people, and sometimes I use something that I feel is appropriate for that person."
Corbijn's pictures contain an intimacy that suggests that he is a long-time friend of people in them, but this impression is often deceptive, he said.
"Sometimes I meet them only one time, sometimes I meet a few times," he said. "With some, we're friends. Brian Eno is a friend, and he lived in the same house as me for a long time. Mick Jagger I know. One of my friends is [R.E.M.'s] Michael Stipe."
According to Corbijn, he put the St. Petersburg show together with no big idea in mind but chose the pictures according to their size since the rooms at Stroganov Palace are rather narrow.
"It's different periods of my work, different sizes of the work," he said.
Among his smaller works are Corbijn's lith prints, made with a special process that adds a brown tone to the photographs.
"My black and whites are much bigger, and also the blue ones are big and the self-portraits are big... So I selected the works because of space, and no other reason."
This is Corbijn third visit to St. Petersburg; he said he came to the then-Leningrad in 1982 and 1986, the first time as a tourist and the second time to take pictures of the British reggae band UB40, who were the first popular Western band to tour Moscow and St. Petersburg at the start of the glasnost era.
"It was very influenced by Dutch and Italian architecture, so part of me feels at home [in St. Petersburg.] The buildings are beautiful. And I prefer it to Moscow," he said.
Corbijn did admits to having been influenced by Russian culture, even if it applies mostly to his video and film work.
"One of my favorite filmmakers is [Andrei] Tarkovsky, so that's the imagery I love," he said.
"My videos and films are between the two T's of Europe - Jacques Tati and Tarkovsky. One is quite funny, fighting against modernism, and Tarkovsky is very emotional and heavy. So these are my favorite people, and I think what I make is between these two people. I'm influenced by both."
"Anton Corbijn: Foto" at the Russian Museum's Stroganov Palace, April 15 through May 10. www.corbijn.co.uk.
TITLE: CHERNOV'S CHOICE
TEXT: Anton Corbijn, the Dutch-born, London-based photographer arguably best known for his covers of U2 and Depeche Mode albums and who has created an impressive collection of images of rock musicians as well as writers, artists and film directors in his 30-year career, will open his exhibition at the Russian Museum's Stroganov Palace on Friday.
An ultimate treat for a rock fan, Corbijn's exhibition will feature his portraits of Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Johnny Cash, B.B. King, Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, David Bowie, Patti Smith, U2, Kurt Cobain, Bjork, R.E.M., Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, Kylie Minogue, Depeche Mode, Leonard Cohen, Billy Idol, Boy George, Nick Cave, Beck, Polly Harveay, among others. See article, page i.
The Prodigy, who cancelled its Russian tour earlier this month due to the illness of member Keith Flint, will perform in St. Petersburg and Moscow in mid-June, its Russian promoter T.C.I. said this week. The tickets for the cancelled show are valid.
However, the reunion tour of the 1980s dream-pop band the Cocteau Twins, looks to be not happening at all. The band, which earlier this year confirmed it will reunite for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California on April 30, announced last week "with deep regret" that the reunion is not taking place, "at the request of vocalist Elizabeth Fraser."
"No future plans for any reunion are currently being made," stated the band on its web site.
The Cocteau Twins has never performed in Russia, but the band's former guitarist Robin Guthrie toured Russia with his new band Violet Indiana last year.
A highly dubious "youth movement" which uses weird symbols and Nazi-like rhetoric, gathered this week for a conference and concert at the underground club Griboyedov. In its fax message, the group said it works to "stop the 'orange' bulldozer," referring to last year's Orange revolution in Ukraine as well to the rise of anti-authoritarian sentiment in the post-Soviet countries.
Griboyedov art director Mikhail Sindalovsky, however, said the organizers had persuaded him it would be an "art project," with no political implications.
Meanwhile, the Friday club will hold a "charity event" to raise funds and show solidarity for musicians and fans attacked by neo-Nazis in Moscow and Belarus.
According to promoters, a "well-organized group of several dozens of neo-Nazis" attacked members of several punk bands on a train when they returned to Moscow after a concert earlier this month. A number of musicians were left injured, with broken arms and smashed heads. The most seriously injured was bass guitarist Vladislav Tarasov.
Tarasov has been reported to have spent some time in a coma, and he requires expensive treatment. Last month, a similar after-concert attack took place in Minsk, Belarus.
Distress, Engage at Will, Next Round, No Guns and the others will perform at the Friday club on Tuesday.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Little Moscow
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Muscovites have never been known for modesty or restraint. Moscow, home to Russia's bold, brash and bratty elite, is all about spending new money and making more.
Moscow's most celebrated restaurants promise celebrity-driven, fabulous fun for an exorbitant price. Unfathomably wealthy oligarchs and Kremlin politicians mix seamlessly with fashion models, tennis stars and golden youth in this little L.A. on the Moskva River.
Transplant the flash and sparkle of Moscow to the gloomy and despondent banks of the Neva and what do you get? Moskva Restaurant, the newest venture by restaurateur Edvard Muradyan of Decadence and Publika fame. An ambitious, new and very expensive project, Moskva Restaurant gleefully boasts in its slogan that "The Capital of St. Petersburg is Moscow."
Moskva is simply a gorgeous restaurant. Perched on the top floor of the modern City Center corporate building on Petrogradskaya embankment, patrons enjoy breathtaking views of the Neva, St. Isaac's Cathedral and the Avrora cruiser through two-story glass picture windows.
Consisting of just one airy and spacious room, Moskva has a very cosmopolitan feel to it, much like a trendy New York hotspot, all smooth angular lines, modern lighting and furniture. There are two levels to the restaurant. The upper level, next to the gigantic windows, is the preferred seating area, but we were seated in the lower level since all the best tables had been booked weeks in advance for the evening's concert by Alexei Aigi and 4,33, hailing, predictably, from Moscow.
Regardless, we felt like we were sitting on the top floor of a modern skyscraper and soon discovered that the prices were just as high.
All bartenders and waitstaff are young, handsome and male, dressed stylishly in deconstructed white cotton jackets with distressed frayed seams. Our attentive waiter spoke passable English, but I decided to stop torturing him and ordered in Russian instead.
As in a five-star hotel, all the prices on the menu are listed in units. One unit equals thirty rubles.
Soups, salads and starters ranged from a six-unit onion soup to a thirty-unit foie gras. Moscow also boasts a very extensive wine list. We ordered a glass each of Thomas Mitchell Shiraz from Australia (180 rubles, $6.40) and Requinoa Merlot from Chile (180 rubles, $6.40), deciding to continue with the shiraz for the evening.
To start, we ordered a fresh green salad with scallops, parmesean and hazelnut oil (360 rubles, $12.85) and Shitake mushrooms in coconut milk (360 rubles, $12.85). The salad was nothing special - just garden variety lettuce, pine nuts, some over-chewy, dry scallops, garnished with two slices of parmesan and copious dill. Frankly, the dill had no right to be on this very pricey salad.
The Shitake mushrooms fared much better. Tender, delicately spiced and arranged beautifully on a plate upon two crispy wafers, the mushrooms were a hit with my companion.
At this point, I was beginning to have grave financial concerns - was Moskva going to bleed us dry? Therefore, we selected modestly-priced mains. Torn between the black tagliatelli with Chorizo (300 rubles, $10.70) and farfalle with smoked salmon (300 rubles, $10.70), the black pasta won out in the end thanks to our server's recommendation.
Dressed in a delicious cream sauce, the pasta was excellent, despite the rather stingy amount of chorizo. My companion had tender beef tournedos with pumpkin puree and truffles (600 rubles, $21.40). Although it was an excellent, tender cut of meat, the pumpkin puree (which in fact wasn't puree at all - just diced pumpkin) did little to complement it. I also thought it was surprising that the server didn't ask us how we wanted it cooked.
The concert began shortly after we finished our main course. In the center of the restaurant hangs a lovely suspended stage that can support a medium-sized band or a DJ. St. Petersburg's movers and shakers, several of whom we either knew or recognized, packed the dance floor, waving their cigars and Gucci bags in time to the beat. We selected warm chocolate pie (180 rubles, $6.42) as the grand finale to this evening of culinary and fiscal decadence. This gooey, rich pie, served with fresh raspberry and blackberry sauce, was the highlight of the entire meal and we savored it bite by sinful bite.
Although it's more of a fashion statement than a restaurant, Moskva looks good and attracts the right people. After all, in Moscow, it's not what you know but who you know.
TITLE: Artful survival
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In its 92 years, the Zubov Institute of Art History has endured more than any academic center for the benign scrutiny of past cultures has a right to expect.
Revolution, war, vandalism, repression and obscurity have stalked the halls of its building on St. Isaac's Square - but the spirit of its founder Count Valentin Zubov has helped the institute continue its work and look forward to a productive future.
In March 1912, the Institute was triumphantly opened in the presence of the most distinguished representatives of the St. Petersburg art world, including the poets Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova.
Zubov, a descendant of Catherine the Great's lover Platon Zubov, studied art history at German and Italian universities, made friends with a couple of his more experienced fellow students from Russia and decided to open in St. Petersburg an institute of arts similar to the German Institute of the History of Arts in Florence, with art history courses and a proper library.
Zubov donated his private house on St. Isaac's for the Institute - still known today as the Zubovsky - and paid for the learning facilities and professors' fees. By the time Zubov left the director's post in 1925, he had collected a unique library consisting of more than 50,000 volumes.
Zubov was one of the most brilliant and self-sufficient people of the Silver Age, the period at the start of the 20th century that saw a flowering in Russian arts and literature.
After installing the Institute in his family mansion, Zubov invited the best professors - among them Hermitage curators Ernst Karlovich Liphart and his assistant James Alfredovich Shmidt (who had become curator of Dutch and Flemish art in 1901), university historian Dmitry Vasilyevich Ainalov, the well-known expert on Russian 18th-19th century art Nikolai Nikolayevich Wrangel and many others - to participate in its activities.
Zubov himself studied art methods and the history of European painting. Departments of the history of music, theater and philology were opened in addition to the department of fine arts.
After the October Revolution in 1917, just five years after the Institute had opened, Zubov managed to defend its rights from being encroached upon by the Bolshevik authorities.
Since the Zubov family had already given over the St. Isaac's Square house for use as a scientific institution, it was possible to avoid the zealous requisitioning of property enacted by the Bolsheviks.
Zubov remained in the building as the Institute's director, living in an apartment situated in the former living quarters. There were also several apartments for employees.
The Institute managed to retain its position as one of the centers of St. Petersburg's cultural life and a place of "social shelter" for intellectuals during the most dreadful post-Revolutionary days.
After the Revolution, the citizens of Petrograd, as St. Petersburg was then known, suffered from hunger, and people stored firewood in order to heat home-made iron stoves. It became impossible to heat the vast halls of the Zubovsky. Former servants devoted to the Count attempted to sell his valuables to buy wood. Despite all this, the Institute continued to lead an active scientific life and students sometimes walked several hours to attend lectures.
The Revolutionary state, which had recently proclaimed that "the stolen wealth must be stolen," was soon afraid of uncontrollable crowds of peasants and soldiers who came pouring into the city and wished to explore, first of all, wine cellars in rich houses.
The Winter Palace's wine cellars were destroyed to prevent them from being looted. The wine cellar of the Zubovsky didn't survive. When Count Zubov came home, he saw the yard outside his house covered with broken glass and flooded with red wine.
Despite freezing conditions, grinding poverty and widespread famine, Christmas balls, which presented a strange, unreal image of dancing couples wearing old fur coats and felt boots, and trying to keep close to fireplaces, were held at the institute.
Owing to his friendly relations with the "Commissar for Enlightenment" Anatoly Lunacharsky - the Bolsheviks' first culture minister - Zubov managed to hold the director's post until 1925, but finally, like many members of his class and generation, he was forced to emigrate.
He did his best to find a successor for the Institute and understood perfectly that in the new circumstances it had to be a cunning person ready to compromise.
He chose Professor Fyodor Ivanovich Shmidt, in Zubov's opinion "a man of exceptional flexibility," and, fittingly, a historian of Byzantium.
Shmidt stayed close to the authorities and attempted "to make from Zubov's club of aesthetes a proper Marxist scientific institution."
During his directorship he created more paid positions and government subsidies increased, but in 1931, after several bureaucratic purges, the Institute became the Leningrad Department of the State Academy of Art History.
Shmidt was arrested in 1937 and died in Stalin's gulag.
During the Soviet era, the appearance of the Institute changed considerably, and much of its furniture was burned as fuel during the Siege of Leningrad by Hitler's armies during World War II.
No less destruction was visited on its unique halls by post-Zubov administrations wishing to replenish its budget. Not all such attempts were successful.
According to the theater critic Sergei Lvovich Zimbal, an attempt to sell off enormous but "superfluous" mirrors ended ridiculously.
"The mirrors were carefully taken from the walls, gently carried down the stairs and... dropped before the very exit. I still remember the tragic faces of freight handlers as they stood over the pile of mirror fragments," Zimbal wrote.
In 1992, the institute was restored to its original status and given back its initial name.
Since then its employees have tried to revive the true Zubovsky spirit by prioritizing genuine knowledge and rejecting the fussy atmosphere of the post-Zubov period with its tireless striving to get subsidies and cater to the authorities' taste.
The institute publishes its works in limited editions and organizes conferences and seminars that attract the best art experts - but not very often the attention of the media.
In 2005, the department of the history of musical instruments is carrying out a series of seminars on the "Voice in Culture." Among them are sessions on "Greek-Slavonic Church Singing," "Articulation and Gesture," "Voice of Media," and "Byzantium's Ideal of Sound in Russian Culture."
Professors who combine work in the Institute and teaching at St. Petersburg's Academy of Arts, State University, and Conservatory give their private time to students.
Subtle methodological distinctions and contemporary art problems come to light in discussions, which sometimes resemble "society" chat.
Post-graduate students pursue their Ph.D. research on subjects that will never be fashionable or ideological. Rather, they are chosen strictly for their scientific research value.
The atmospheric halls of the Zubovsky Institute sometimes call up images of the pas. Walking the institute's corridors, one can peer into the rooms where brilliant lectures were given, where Vladimir Mayakovsky, Gumilev and Alexander Blok recited poetry and where painter Kazimir Malevich talked about Suprematism.
It might even be possible to spot Count Zubov walking along the corridor, an elegant, not very tall man wearing a dark velvet jacket with an elaborately tied silk kerchief.
The 120th anniversary of Zubov's birth in 1884 went practically unnoticed last year.
Count Zubov, who died in exile in 1969, was a unique model of absolute and disinterested philanthropy - something one is unlikely to meet in contemporary Russia.
TITLE: Golden moments
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - With a few grunts, sprints, flips and plenty of laughter and cheers, the annual Golden Mask theater festival came to an energetic end Monday night at the Mossoviet Theater.
Disguised as a chaotic track meet featuring the participation of the CSKA
basketball team, the scantily clad, high-kicking CSKA cheerleaders, numerous Olympic gold medalists in gymnastics and ice skating, and a host of shot putters, discus throwers, marathon runners, mountain bikers and more, the ceremony honored the top achievements in Russian drama, opera, dance and puppetry for the 2003-04 season.
It was a hectic, unpredictable and entertaining extravaganza worthy of the night's biggest winner - a grand and unorthodox production of Verdi's "Aida" from Novosibirsk that delighted some and infuriated others who attended a problem-plagued performance at the Kremlin Palace on April 7.
Accepting the critics' award, one of four the show took in, director Dmitry Chernyakov dryly acknowledged the clamor around his production.
"I am happy that opera is finally getting the attention it deserves," he said, adding, "I only wish that those who saw the sad spectacle at the Kremlin Palace could see how well the show runs in Novosibirsk."
Whatever complaints there may have been about "Aida," it struck a chord with the 13 members of the musical theater jury, headed by the celebrated composer Rodion Shchedrin, and with the supportive audience at the Mossoviet Theater, which lavished ovations on the announcement of each award. Chernyakov received the Golden Mask for best director of an opera, Irina Makarova was named best female singer, and the show was honored as best opera.
Another big and popular winner was the Mariinsky Theater's "Forsythe at the Mariinsky." It won best ballet, best female dancer (Natalia Sologub) and best male dancer (Andrei Merkuryev).
Accepting his mirrored plaque decorated with a winged face masked in red and white, Merkuryev jested that the athletic theme of the evening suited him fine. "I've been training for this moment for three years," he quipped.
Other shows generating multiple winners among musical productions were the Rostov-on-Don Musical Theater's version of Dmitry Shostakovich's opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" (best conductor Alexander Anisimov and best designer Zinovy Margolin) and the Novosibirsk Musical Comedy Theater's "Only Girls in Jazz," which won best operetta and best actor for Alexander Vyskribentsev.
Lyudmila Glukhova, an improvisational folk singer, was the recipient of a special Jury Prize in the musical categories. Shchedrin announced the decision, saying he was thrilled to honor this "true genius" of a singer who performed in "Songs of the Rain," a hybrid movement and musical show by the CheloVEK Theater of Omsk.
The field of dramatic theater brought honors to a mix of revered veterans and respected newcomers.
Kama Ginkas' internationally renowned staging of Anton Chekhov's short story "Rothschild's Fiddle" for Moscow's Theater Yunogo Zritelya was named best large-scale production, while the show's designer Sergei Barkhin was cited for his exquisite set consisting of a row of vertical wooden coffins. Barkhin's short acceptance speech brought down the house when he thanked his family pet.
"Everyone else has thanked their mother, their wife and their director and quite rightly so," he deadpanned. "So I would like to thank my dog, who helps me very much."
Other familiar names taking honors were Konstantin Raikin, touted best actor for his work in the Satirikon Theater's production of "Richard III." It was his third Golden Mask in six nominations in the festival's 11-year history. "Richard III" was also awarded a special Jury Prize.
Among the young artists gaining their first national recognition was Irina Pegova, winning the nod for best actress for her portrayal of Sonya in the Tabakov Theater's production of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya." The young director Mindaugas Karbauskis won best director for his production of William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying," also at the Tabakov Theater. This show additionally was named best small-scale production.
A special Jury Prize going to Eugene Ionesco's "Macbett" by the Sakha Theater from Sakha was one of the night's big crowd pleasers. This lively, tightly constructed farce about murder and mayhem was one of the top surprises in the otherwise relatively predictable sphere of dramatic shows. After receiving the plaque, the show's baby-faced director Sergei Potapov stopped briefly in the hall to accept congratulations from his famous teacher, the director Mark Zakharov.
TITLE: Saucy advertising
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Television commercials don't usually get promoted by trailers promising the latest work from a "cult director." But an ad campaign for a Russian brand of ketchup has done just that, building up anticipation for a new commercial directed by Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica.
Last month a series of short commercials reminiscent of movie trailers announced "a new film by a cult director." On March 21, viewers had their first chance to see Kusturica's ad for Baltimor's Tsygansky, or Gypsy, brand of ketchup. The director filmed the commercial in a village near Belgrade that he had custom-built several years ago and that served as a movie set for his 2004 film "Life Is a Miracle."
The commercial, which has no dialogue, is set in a picturesque marketplace. It features a man in mirrored sunglasses who is trying to buy a horse. When he doesn't offer enough, the horse opens its mouth to smile, revealing a gleaming gold tooth. At the same time a voiceover says, "He would just be good, if he weren't unique."
Gypsy ketchup isn't a new product line for Baltimor, but it isn't among the company's top sellers. The name "doesn't have a very good ring to it," Milada Gudkova, the general director of Baltimor, said by telephone on Monday. The problem is that people "have varying attitudes" towards Gypsies, she explained. The idea of recruiting Kusturica - whose films such as "Black Cat, White Cat" and "Underground" feature Gypsy life - came from the Moscow advertising agency Rodnaya Rech, and the filmmaker responded positively to the idea, she said. "We're just glad that he found the time."
The company is pleased with the result, Gudkova said, praising its "nonstandardness" and "sense of humor." The opening scenes filmed by Kusturica do not show the product itself. They are followed by shots of vegetables and a bottle of Gypsy ketchup, while a voiceover reiterates the slogan, now applied to the ketchup: "It would be glad just to be good, but it was born to be unique."
The commercial is "image advertising" for Baltimor, which makes between 50 and 54 percent of ketchup sold in Russia, according to Gudkova. While the ad doesn't identify the director, the company has publicized his participation.
The ad will be shown for five weeks on all but one of Russia's national networks in 15- and 30-second versions. The full version lasts one minute, but the company can't afford to run that on television, Gudkova said. She added, however, that it may be shown in movie theaters.
Kusturica will not visit Russia to promote the commercial, and his contract specified that his fee would remain confidential. The director is no stranger to advertising. He has previously filmed ads for Renault cars, the French banking group Banque Populaire and La Parisienne cigarettes, which are made by British American Tobacco Switzerland.
TITLE: Cardinals Convene Monday To Choose Papal Successor
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROME - Catholics' thoughts turned to who might replace their beloved pope as the cardinals, silenced by an unprecedented pledge not to reveal their thinking, prepared to meet again Monday to plan next week's conclave to select a new leader.
The papal successor was on the minds of the few pilgrims who braved the rain to wander about St. Peter's Square as they shopped around for photographs, calendars and other souvenirs with images of John Paul.
"I'd be happy if he's not Italian," said Romina Abbadini, 35, from San Benedetto del Tronto, in central Italy. "Who would have ever known that a Polish pope could do so much for his country? Maybe a South American pope would do so much for those countries."
The names of those emerging as possible papal successor include contenders from Latin America, such as Cardinal Claudio Hummes of Brazil and Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, and a Vatican official from Africa: Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria.
Europeans mentioned include Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Austria and German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Italian "papabili" include Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi and Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re.
Cardinals presided over Masses in Rome on Sunday. But they said little, in keeping with their decision to stop speaking publicly and giving interviews ahead of the conclave to elect a new pope.
Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston, was scheduled to celebrate Monday's daily Mass of mourning in St. Peter's Basilica, and leaders of the advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said they were flying to Rome to protest.
Vatican security was preparing the Sistine Chapel for the papal election, taking undisclosed measures to thwart would-be hackers or electronic eavesdroppers from listening in on the cardinals' private deliberations and getting early word of who the next pope might be.
TITLE: Experts Try To Contain
Angola Virus
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LUANDA, Angola - Disease experts struggling to contain the largest recorded outbreak of the Marburg virus said Tuesday it will take weeks to determine whether a crisis can be averted in Angola, where the disease has already killed at least 194 people.
The experts say they are recruiting tribal elders and musicians to help educate villagers who are hiding infected family members and have attacked aid groups sent to check the virus' spread.
The World Health Organization, which already has 50 experts in the field helping local authorities, is bolstering its team by flying in more specialists.
The medical aid group Doctors Without Borders also has a heavy presence on the ground.
Marburg hemorrhagic fever is a rare but deadly disease caused by a virus of the same family as the one that causes Ebola hemorrhagic fever. It spreads through contact with bodily fluids and can kill rapidly, usually about nine days after the first symptoms.
TITLE: Alarm Over
Italy Soccer
Violence
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROME - Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday that "drastic measures" may be needed to stem the rise of violence at Italian soccer stadiums, a day after a fan hit a goalkeeper with a flare in a European Champions League quarterfinal.
Soccer's European governing body said it will decide Friday on what punishment to impose on Internazionale of Milan. AC Milan goalkeeper Dida was hit on the shoulder Tuesday night, and the referee abandoned the game after Inter fans threw more flares onto the field at San Siro stadium.
Milan police chief Paolo Scarpis said four Inter fans were arrested in relation to Tuesday night's trouble. He said others were being identified and more arrests were likely.
Last weekend, scores of fans were arrested and 89 police officers injured in fighting at stadiums across the country.
Berlusconi, the owner of AC Milan, discussed the situation Wednesday with Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu.
"It is clear there is a risk of even more serious events, a risk that must be avoided through every means possible," Berlusconi's office said in a statement.
AC Milan was leading 1-0 in the game and 3-0 on aggregate according to the away goals rule. Inter was the home team in Tuesday's second leg.
UEFA's disciplinary committee could order Inter to play one or more of its next European home games in an empty stadium and the team could also be banned from next season's European competitions. Earlier this season in the Champions League, AS Roma was made to play two Champions League games in an empty Olympic Stadium after referee Anders Frisk was hit in the head by an object thrown from the stands during a game against Dynamo Kiev.
Dida was hit on the right shoulder by a flare in the 73rd minute and treated at midfield, just two minutes after an apparent goal by Esteban Cambiasso was disallowed for a foul.
Play was stopped after Dida collapsed, and the teams soon left the field. They returned 10 minutes later and the match resumed.
But fans started throwing flares again and referee Markus Merk stopped the match for good less than a minute later.
Liverpool and Juventus played to a 0-0 tie in Turin on Wednesday in another Champions League quarterfinal. The English team advanced to the semifinals with a 2-1 on aggregate.
Last week's first leg in England was the first meeting between the teams since the 1985 Champions Cup final in Brussels, Belgium, where 39 fans were crushed to death in a riot started by Liverpool supporters.
On Wednesday, several firecrackers were thrown into the Liverpool section after the game, and the English fans were kept in the stadium until the Juventus supporters were cleared out.
A Liverpool fan was attacked Tuesday night by bat-wielding Juventus fans in a Turin bar. Six Italian men were arrested Wednesday in the attack.
More than 1,000 police officers were deployed for Wednesday's match.
TITLE: Federer Wins 24th Straight
Match in Monte Carlo
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MONTE CARLO, Monaco - Roger Federer won his 24th straight match Wednesday, beating Albert Montanes of Spain 6-3 6-4 in the second round of the Monte Carlo Masters.
The Swiss star is 34-1 this year and hasn't lost since Marat Safin beat him in the Australian Open semifinals.
Federer broke Montanes three times in the second set to lead 5-1 before the Spaniard rallied back to 5-4. The four-time Grand Slam champion closed out the match with a winning passing shot.
"It was a good test for me, against a real clay-court player," Federer said. "Montanes plays much further back and we had some good rallies. The better players and the better matches are starting to come now."
Federer is trying to win his third straight Masters title, and is also getting ready for the French Open, the only Grand Slam title he hasn't won.
Safin also advanced to third round, defeating Cyril Saulnier of France 6-3 6-1. The Russian will next play two-time champion Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain.
Earlier, defending champion Guillermo Coria of Argentina easily beat Thierry Ascione 6-2 6-1, and Ferrero topped No. 16 Jiri Novak of the Czech Republic 3-6 6-3 6-2.
"The result seems easy because Ascione didn't play his best tennis," Coria said. "I believe he was nervous. I don't know what happened to him."
Coria's drop shots kept Ascione scampering around the court.
"I absolutely do not enjoy making my opponent seem ridiculous," Coria said. "But if I believe a drop shot is the right shot to play, I play it."
TITLE: Pacers Rely on Miller's Resurgence
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana - Reggie Miller's resurgence has the Indiana Pacers back in the playoffs. His teammates hope they can extend his career with one more memorable postseason run.
Miller scored seven points in another of his patented late shooting flurries Wednesday, helping the Pacers rally from a six-point deficit to beat the New Jersey Nets 90-86 and clinch an eighth straight playoff berth.
"Reggie is such a class guy and such a professional and such a great teammate, you definitely don't want to let him down," guard Anthony Johnson said. "A lot of it has to do with him and trying to send him out the right way."
The Pacers needed Miller more than ever since March 3, when All-Star Jermaine O'Neal went down with a sprained right shoulder. O'Neal hasn't played since, but Miller has rallied Indiana, which is now playing its best basketball of the season.
It has won eight of its last nine, 14 of its last 18 at home and is getting contributions from some unlikely places.
Five months ago, the playoffs seemed an implausible goal after the Pacers' season was nearly ruined by a Nov. 19 brawl with Detroit Pistons fans.
All-Star Ron Artest was suspended for the rest of the season, Stephen Jackson for 30 games and O'Neal for 25, a penalty later reduced to 15. In all, the Pacers have lost more than 400 games to injuries, suspensions and illness this season. They never started their projected lineup, but Miller never allowed his teammates to succumb to the adversity.
"I think a lot of people probably wrote us off after what happened in Detroit, and it easily could have been a death sentence for this franchise and this organization," he said. "But I knew personally I was going to be judged by what we did after that."
But it took one more charge from Miller and the Pacers to assure Indiana would be best remembered for the ability to overcome the odds rather than perhaps the biggest black eye in NBA history.
Jason Kidd led New Jersey with 29 points, 15 rebounds and six assists, while Vince Carter added 22 points and five rebounds. The Nets blew a 14-point first-half lead and a six-point lead in the final 2:22 when it appeared they were pulling away.
Their three-game winning streak ended and they lost on the road for the first time since March 13. The Nets also dropped 1 1/2 games behind idle Philadelphia in the race for the final Eastern Conference playoff spot.
"The bottom line is this: It's a five-game playoff," coach Lawrence Frank said. "This was Game 1 and we lost. But we've lost Game 1 before in a five-game series."
The Nets were done in by a barrage of 3-pointers and Miller's late charge.
Indiana finished with 12 3-pointers and managed to stay close enough with virtual unknowns like Gill and Jones, who contributed to the Pacers 41-18 advantage off the bench.
And Austin Croshere's buzzer-beating 21-footer just before halftime seemed to spark the Pacers after an uncharacteristic half in which they allowed New Jersey to shoot 50 percent from the field, take control with two first-quarter surges and lead by as much as 49-35 late. The Pacers also drew three technical fouls in the half.
While Jackson added 17 points and Croshere 13, Miller again played the catalyst.
With the Pacers trailing 83-77 and 2:22 to go, Miller connected on a long 3-pointer and flopped to the ground, drawing a foul on Clifford Robinson. Miller, again the league's top free throw shooter, completed the rare four-point play and then hit another 3 on the Pacers' next possession to tie the score at 84 with 2:00 left. Robinson contended it was not a foul.
Pacers coach Rick Carlisle disagreed. "He came off some baseline screens, lined it up and Cliff Robinson ran through him," Carlisle said. "Taking from six to two was really big."
Jones followed that with a 22-footer to make it 86-84 with 1:12 left, and after Carter drew his fourth foul with 17 seconds to go, Johnson hit one free throw to make it 87-84.
The Pacers gave New Jersey one more chance when Dale Davis made one free throw with 8.6 seconds left, but Carter missed a potential tying 3-pointer in the final seconds and Miller's Pacers hung on.
"Reggie was big tonight, Reggie is big every night," Kidd said. "He made some Reggie plays. He put his team in position to win the ballgame."
TITLE: Baseball's Return to D.C. Greeted With President's Pitch
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON D.C. - The tradition began on April 14, 1910, when William Howard Taft threw a ceremonial first pitch at a Washington baseball game between the Senators and Athletics.
Exactly 95 years to the day - and after a drought of more than three decades - the U.S. president will again launch a season of the national pastime in the nation's capital Thursday night when the Washington Nationals host the Arizona Diamondbacks in the city's first home opener since 1971.
The honor this time around goes to George W. Bush - with the "W" written in curly script on the scoreboard, mimicking the design on the Nationals' hats. It's a seemingly appropriate role for a chief executive who was once a part-owner of the Texas Rangers.
"He's loosening up and getting ready," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday.
That's promising news for Nationals catcher Brian Schneider, who doesn't want to bobble the presidential pitch amid the excitement and nerves of a historic night expected to pack some 46,000 people into RFK Stadium.
"I'm looking for that thing to come right down the middle," Schneider said. "I know he can do it."
Bush becomes the 12th president to throw out a first pitch in Washington and the first since Richard Nixon in 1969. After the Senators left, presidents performed the ceremony in other cities; Bush did the honors in St. Louis last year.
There have already been numerous milestone dates to celebrate baseball's return to Washington, which had been without a team since the expansion Senators departed for Texas 34 years ago. There was the announcement on Sept. 29 that the Montreal Expos were relocating there, followed by the opening of spring training and the first spring training game in February, an exhibition game at RFK on April 3, and then the season opener at Philadelphia a day later.
This is the last of the welcome-back parties, but it's also the biggest.
Tickets have been hard to come by, even for some well-heeled Washingtonians. The day starts with a Welcome Home luncheon for the team, and there are 95 minutes of pregame ceremonies scheduled before the 7:05 p.m. start time. Ten former Senators will be on hand, including Joe Grzenda, who threw the last pitch at the last game in 1971 and will hand the ball from that game to Bush for the presidential first pitch.
"We know it's going to be a long day," pitcher Zach Day said. "But everybody's excited for the day to come."
The Nationals are the last team to play a home game this season, which is probably for the best given the compressed schedule for renovating the stadium. Hundreds of extra chairs were being set up on the field in front of the stands late Wednesday, the sort of additional seating used for World Series games. Mowers trimmed the grass, and were hoping to find a way to get rid of the faint white lines still visible from a Major League Soccer game last week.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the Nationals arrived as a first-place team, having won two out of three against the Atlanta Braves to improve to 5-4 in the NL East. Washington is playing with much of the same roster that finished last in 2004 in Montreal, although the players are finding they have much greater fan support than they had in Canada.
"We expect a lot of excitement. The fans are going to show up and root for us," third baseman Vinny Castilla said. "They've been waiting for this for a long time."
TITLE: Defiant Atlanta Olympics Bomber Pleads Guilty
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ATLANTA, Georgia - A defiant Eric Rudolph pleaded guilty Wednesday to carrying out the deadly bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and three other attacks, saying he picked the Summer Games to embarrass the U.S. government in front of the world "for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand."
"Because I believe that abortion is murder, I also believe that force is justified ... in an attempt to stop it," he said in a statement handed out by his lawyers after he entered his pleas in back-to-back court appearances, first in Birmingham, Alabama, in the morning, then in Atlanta in the afternoon.
Rudolph, 38, worked out a plea bargain that will spare him from the death penalty. He will get four consecutive life sentences without parole for the four blasts across the South that killed two people and wounded more than 120 others.
In the Atlanta courtroom, he sat stone-faced and answered questions calmly and politely. In Birmingham, though, he winked toward prosecutors as he entered court, said the government could "just barely" prove its case, and admitted his guilt with a hint of pride in his voice.
The statement marked the first time he had offered a reason for the attacks.
"The purpose of the attack on July 27th [1996] was to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand," Rudolph said in the statement, which quoted the Bible throughout.
"I am not anarchist. I have nothing against government or law enforcement in general. It is solely for the reason that this government has legalized the murder of children that I have no allegiance to nor do I recognize the legitimacy of this particular government in Washington."
The bomb that exploded at the Olympics was hidden in a knapsack and sent nails and screws ripping through a crowd at Centennial Olympic Park during a concert. A woman was killed and 111 other people were wounded in what proved to be Rudolph's most notorious attack, carried out on an international stage amid heavy security.
Rudolph said that he had planned a much larger attack on the Olympics that would have used five bombs over several days. He said he planned to make phone calls well in advance of each explosion, "leaving only uniformed arms-carrying government personnel exposed to potential injury." But he said poor planning on his part made that five-bomb plan impossible.
"I had sincerely hoped to achieve these objections without harming innocent civilians,'' he said. He added: "There is no excuse for this, and I accept full responsibility for the consequences of using this dangerous tactic."