SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1075 (41), Friday, June 3, 2005
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TITLE: Couples Face Long Lines to Get Married in Palaces
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: On a sunny May day Andrei, 25, proposed on one knee to Svetlana, 24. He gave her a bouquet of flowers and he made his proposal in a romantic restaurant.
It was an unforgettable moment of happiness for both young people, who declined to reveal their last names.
The next day the excited couple hurried to the city's leading and most beautiful Wedding Palace No. 1 on Angliiskaya Naberezhnaya to apply for their wedding ceremony.
They hoped it would be soon, certainly some time in the summer.
The administrator searched for a free time slot in a computer.
"The next slot available to you will be in mid-October," she said, pouring cold water on the couple's plans.
But where there is a will there is a way and some entrepreneurial lovers, who change their minds or are wary of rushing, are only too happy to give up some the best slots in return for cold cash.
A forum on the www.svadba.spb.ru offers slots at the palace in return for cash or exchanges.
On the forum, which is popular among prospective newlyweds, wedding ceremony slots are offered for $30 to $300.
A search of the forum by the St. Petersburg Times found a message from Lola, who offered a slot on a Friday this month, and a reply from Andrei, who immediately offered to pay $200 for it.
"I have a place in the Wedding Palace No. 1 for July 6. I can sell it at a cheap price," wrote another correspondent of the forum.
Ever since one of the city's three major wedding palaces was closed in 2000 to become the office for the presidential envoy to the Northwest region, the lines to get married in the other two palaces have increased significantly.
Couples who want to marry in summer - the most popular time of the year - must plan for their ceremonies several months ahead. Some say they should even apply in October.
Svetlana said she and Andrei will take up a sale or swap if they find one that would fit their plans.
"We really wanted to get married in summer," Svetlana said, "first of all because it's a nice time of the year, and we wanted to go on our honeymoon during our summer vacations.
"It's better to have the wedding when you are in the right romantic mood. Who knows how people's emotions will change in almost half a year."
Couples who can't wait to get married can do so in district wedding registration offices, but these are drab and make the big day less special. Most brides and grooms want to register one of the most important events in their lives in a place of beauty.
Svetlana said she wants to tie the knot in Wedding Palace No. 1 because her family and friends have all been married there.
"None of my friends or relatives who were married in that palace have ever divorced," she said.
Marina Anutina, director of Wedding Palace No. 1, declined to comment on the market for slots at the palace.
She confirmed that the palace is highly popular and that the number of people wanting wedding ceremonies in summer starts growing several months before summer arrives.
Nevertheless, some slots are still available this summer, most of them on workdays, she said.
"Maybe those slots are at an inconvenient time for couples."
The low season for weddings is in May, which a Russian superstition suggests is not a lucky time for taking vows. The superstition originates from the verb mayatsya, or "to suffer," which is derived from the word "May."
"I personally think there is no difference if one marries in May or some other month," Anutina said.
She had no comment when asked if the city needs more wedding palaces to accommodate the demands of newlyweds.
TITLE: Khodorkovsky, Lebedev Sentenced to Nine Years in Camp
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Meshchansky District Court on Tuesday convicted Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev of fraud and tax evasion and sentenced them both to nine years in a prison camp, ending the biggest trial in the country's post-Soviet history.
Defense lawyers said they would appeal the verdict, and Khodorkovsky, who was once one of the nation's most powerful men until a growing clash with the Kremlin ended in his arrest, remained defiant and signaled that he thought the fight was far from over. "My sentence has been decided in the Kremlin," he said in a statement read out to reporters by his lawyer Anton Drel after the trial. "I do not consider myself guilty and consider my innocence proven.
"Judicial power in Russia has been turned into a dumb appendage, a blunt instrument of the executive branch of government," he said. "Or not so much of the government, but of a few quasi-criminal economic groups."
As the sentences were finally read out, a group of anti-Khodorkovsky demonstrators outside stood in silence, huddled under umbrellas. Across the street, a group of Khodorkovsky supporters chanted, "Freedom! Freedom!" As soon as the sentences became known, they switched to shouting, "Shame! Shame!"
Khodorkovsky's arrest in October 2003 by gun-toting special forces, the ensuing trial and the partial takeover by the state of Yukos have marked a shift toward greater Kremlin dominance over the economy and politics. President Vladimir Putin's economic adviser Andrei Illarionov, who has often clashed with his boss over the affair, has called it the biggest systemic change to hit the country since August 1991.
But as the Kremlin moved against a businessman who had climbed through the chaos of the Soviet Union's collapse to become the owner of the country's fastest-growing oil company and the country's richest man at the age of 40, the handling of the trial was widely criticized. The case has been widely seen as a Kremlin backlash against Khodorkovsky's mounting political ambitions and threat to Putin's hold on power, and Western leaders have raised questions over the use of selective and arbitrary justice in the trial.
Meanwhile the campaign, which has also included the partial renationalization of his Yukos oil major, could end up only strengthening Khodorkovsky as a political force.
On Tuesday, however, U.S. President George Bush sidestepped the question of whether the conviction was a response by Putin to Khodorkovsky's political ambitions, and refrained from direct criticism of the Kremlin.
"It will be interesting to see how Khodorkovsky's expected appeal is handled by the government," Bush said. "Here, you're innocent until proven guilty and it appeared to us - at least to people in my administration - that it looked like he had been judged guilty prior to having a fair trial," Bush told reporters Tuesday. "We're watching the ongoing case."
The U.S. administration is on a drive to revive its flagging energy relationship with Russia, which was all but torpedoed after the arrest of Khodorkovsky, who had been the biggest proponent of sending greater supplies of oil to the United States.
Khodorkovsky's conviction is likely to meet a muted reaction across Russia too. Businessmen like him who rose to wealth and power under former President Boris Yeltsin, while the majority of Russians sank into poverty, are still widely reviled.
But some observers have suggested that Khodorkovsky's jailing could turn him into a political force for having suffered at the hands of the regime.
Khodorkovsky appeared to be laying the groundwork for that transformation in his statement. "I don't have significant savings anymore," he said. "I've lost my place in the oligarch's club. But I have gained a huge number of true and devoted friends. I have regained a feeling for my country. And now together with my people I will bear this and victory will be ours together."
Saying he would continue the philanthropic works that marked his career in recent years, including aid for prisoners, he said his conviction would lead to suffering for the authorities and not for himself. "I want to say thank you," he said in the statement. "They did not win. Freedom is an internal human condition. It is exactly my ill-wishers ... who are doomed to shake under the stolen assets of Yukos for the rest of their lives."
Another of Khodorkovsky's former business partners in Menatep, Leonid Nevzlin, told reporters Tuesday that the attack on Yukos and Lebedev signaled the future demise of Putin's regime and accused the president of rigging the trial.
Nevzlin has previously said he would support former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov were he to run for president in 2008.
Kasyanov slammed the verdict on Tuesday. "Today we should all admit that we already live in a different country. The unification of democratic forces is no longer a question of political ambitions, it is a vital necessity for the country," he said, Interfax reported.
Yukos managers on Tuesday also upped the ante in response to the sentences against the oil major's former bosses. The company said it had filed an $11.53 billion lawsuit against the government for damages arising from the sale of its main production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, last December. Yugansk was sold at a knockdown price in a controversial auction as payment for $28 billion in back taxes.
Group Menatep, the holding company founded by Khodorkovsky that owns Yukos and other assets, is also suing the government under the terms of the Energy Charter, an international treaty signed by Russia. The threats of legal action have already helped upset Putin's plans to merge state-controlled Gazprom with state-owned Rosneft, the new owner of Yugansk, because of the legal risks.
After the sentences were pronounced, one of the Western lawyers representing Khodorkovsky called for further legal action against the officials behind the takeover of Yukos. "Today another step has been taken to legitimize the expropriation of Yukos," said Robert Amsterdam, a Toronto-based lawyer.
He said the people behind the trial and the verdict were "the same as those who set up a front company in 24 hours, set up a phony auction and stole a company," referring to the mysterious front company Baikal Finance Group that won the Yugansk auction and was soon afterward bought up by Rosneft. "These are the people who should be under investigation," he said.
Amsterdam also warned that Khodorkovsky's jailing would only strengthen his political clout.
"There are very few men who serve time in prison for political reasons whose political ambitions aren't strengthened," he said.
Political analysts said the sentences of nine years were aimed at making sure that Khodorkovsky stayed behind bars until after the 2008 presidential election. "There's no way they could let him out before 2008," said Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank. "They made a political figure out of him and now they fear him."
Prosecutors made sure to maintain the pressure Tuesday, announcing again that new money laundering charges against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev would be filed soon.
If filed, the new charges would keep them in Moscow for as long as a new trial would take. Defense lawyers have suggested that the Kremlin wants to keep the former oil magnates in Moscow so as to keep tighter control over their movements, rather than in the regions where the Kremlin's power could be weaker.
For now, however, they cannot be sent off to a prison colony until the sentence has been passed into law. That cannot happen until the defense's appeal at the next stage, the Moscow city court, has been concluded.
Defense lawyers said Tuesday they had little hope of winning an appeal.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev have also been fined a total of 17.4 billion rubles ($620 million) in unpaid tax bills, under a civil suit filed by the Federal Tax Service. Chief judge Irina Kolesnikova ruled to levy that amount from the two men. But Lebedev's lawyer Yevgeny Baru said that he was not sure how his clients would pay that bill off. He said they only had "minimal" amounts in their Russian bank accounts.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were both convicted of theft with conspiracy a malicious failure to obey a court order, damage to property rights via fraud with conspiracy, personal tax or national insurance evasion, and appropriation or embezzlement of property with conspiracy.
A charge of repeated forgery of documents was dropped.
The two men were found guilty of the initial charge brought against them, the fraudulent acquisition of a 20 percent stake in the Apatit fertilizer plant in a 1994 privatization. But the court discarded the charge, as a 10-year statute of limitations had already expired.
TITLE: City Hall
'Ignoring
Rights'
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Leaders of the St. Petersburg Citizens' Resistance, an umbrella group for two dozen city NGOs and opposition movements, said Thursday the city government and law enforcement agencies are arbitrary in their treatment of them and media who cover their events.
While Governor Valentina Matviyenko is fond of referring to St. Petersburg as Russia's most European city, the city's democrats argue that is only true for its architecture and history.
"A European city is first and foremost a place where human rights are respected, and this is not the case here," Maxim Reznik, chairman of the St. Petersburg branch of the Yabloko party, said at a news conference about the suppression. "Citizens' political, social and economic rights are routinely violated and those who criticize this practice are persecuted."
City police routinely detain opposition members, disrupt authorized meetings and even physically abuse protesters, he said.
The police press service could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday.
Vyacheslav Notyag, head of city NGO People's Solidarity, said a policeman struck him twice with a baton - on his ear and arm - during a sanctioned demonstration on May 1.
"Other people were beaten too as they attempted to get through to Palace Square," he said. "I was waving a sheet of paper with the official permission to take part in the meeting but nobody was listening, and the police blocked my way."
People's Solidarity members had carried posters critical of the city government. "City for sale. Cheap. Valya" read one poster in reference to Matviyenko's privatization plans.
Olga Kurnosova, head of NGO Citizens' Union, said democrats' requests to hold meetings in appropriate places are constantly denied.
Recently, officials suggested that a meeting against the war in Chechnya, which the organizers asked to be held outside the headquarters of the special police OMON, which sends its officers to the rebel republic on a regular basis, be transferred to the square outside the Theater For Young Spectators.
"Neither young spectators, nor the actors have anything to do with the war," Kurnosova said.
Journalist Dmitry Zhvania, chief editor of online news web site Lenizdat.ru and a member of the St. Petersburg Citizens' Resistance, said he had also received attention from the police.
On May 28, he was on his way to a flash-mob event, carrying masks of politicians and other gear in his backpack. Outside Primorskaya metro station, he was detained and taken to a police station where he spent 5 hours.
Zhvania is a co-organizer of flash-mob events, which on this occasion was to criticize the "St. Petersburg Muscovites," members of the political and financial elite who made a second home in the Russian capital through their links to President Vladimir Putin.
The masks in Zhvania's backpack were to be used for a "Parade of Judases" and featured images of Putin, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and Unified Energy Systems head Anatoly Chubais.
"I walked very peacefully and the police were certainly aware of our plans for an 'alternative carnival,'" Zhvania said, adding that the organization had announced the event long beforehand and even invited the media.
"We weren't plotting a blast or terrorist attack, just a little happening," he added. "Mind you, the colonel didn't question me, he just talked to me about Putin, soccer and different things in life. There was no reason to detain me, but they were obviously hoping that flash-mob wouldn't happen because I was sitting in the police with all the gear. But ha! Somebody else had an identical set of everything and the 'carnival' went ahead."
He did not demand a lawyer or cite the Constitution. "From my experience, I know doing that would have only made things worse," he said.
Journalists said many of their colleagues have little trust in the legal system or the law enforcement bodies, but now unpleasant incidents have been added to the hazards of the job.
Reporters complain that not only are they detained and sometimes assaulted, but that producing a balanced report often turns into a problem.
Reporters see crucial parts of their stories edited out - they call this "story castration." The bosses explain the censorship by "sublime relations" with one of the parties involved. That is, if an explanation follows at all.
Anna Sharogradskaya, director of the Regional Press Institute, said more and more journalists are joining opposition groups primarily so that dissident voices can be heard.
This conflict of interests often results in an awkward and ambiguous situation when reporters are covering political meetings organized by themselves or their editors. Naturally, human rights advocates find this tendency alarming.
"Journalists have to remain independent, but instead they take the streets to fight for freedom in a literal sense," Sharogradskaya said. "I clearly understand what drives them to join the opposition, but I believe that they have to use other possibilities and more justified methods. For instance, I see our organization as a potential venue for open discussions on this and other hot topics."
TITLE: Appeal Rejected
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected an appeal by the Communist Party against a Central Election Commission ruling that 17 out of 19 questions submitted by the party for a referendum were unconstitutional.
The Communists said they would either appeal the decision to a highercourt of in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
"This case has demonstrated that it is impossible to call a referendum in our country," said Vladimir Ulas, the Communists' Moscow chief, Interfax reported.
The commission had ruled that most of the Communists' questions would lead to extra expenditure and thus contradicted the law on referendums.
Critics said the August 2004 law effectively meant no one could call for a referendum without Kremlin support.
TITLE: Prosecutors Rule Paper's Use of Word 'Zhid' Is Legal
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The City Prosecutor's Office has again refused to open a criminal case for inciting ethnic or religious intolerance over anti-Semitic articles printed in two city newspapers, Za Russkoye Delo and Rus Pravoslavnaya.
In a written explanation of the refusal, deputy city prosecutor Alexander Korsunov declared that the derogatory term "zhid," or Yid, does not denote adherents of a specific religion.
"The term 'zhid' [mentioned in the article] and its grammatical modifications are not officially recognized as ... belonging to a certain religion," he wrote.
"The pretentious attitude of the author of the article and editors-in-chief to Judaic dogma, introduced in the article 'Jewish Happiness, Russian Tears," is based on an analysis of the officially published book 'Kitzur Shulchan Arukh,' which contains instructions of the rules of behavior for people of Jewish nationality towards non-Jews," Korsunov wrote.
The book is an ancient Jewish text.
"An appeal by the author [Korsunov] to the Prosecutor General with the request to check the data given in the book, and in case of its confirmation to forbid the activities of Jewish national religious unions as extremist ones, his desire to attract readers' attention to existing differences between dogmas ... in the absence of any calls for committing illegal actions against representatives of this or that nation, race or religion, provoking hatred or hostility ... does not constitute a crime as described in article 282 part 1 of the Criminal Code ... ," he said.
The request to open a criminal case came from Ruslan Linkov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of Democratic Russia, and Yury Vdovin, co-chairman of human rights organization Citizens' Watch.
Linkov and Vdovin in January 2005 criticized Rus Pravoslavnaya for publishing a so-called "letter of 500," which was "saturated with extremism and hatred toward Jews."
The letter was signed by 20 State Duma deputies.
The City Prosecutor's Office first rejected opening a criminal case, deciding that a warning to the newspapers was sufficient. In May they decided to reconsider the rights activists' request.
The newspapers' editors have argued that the prosecutor's office has been too harsh toward them.
In repeated comments to The St. Petersburg Times, the editors of the newspapers have denied the charges, saying all they did was analyze historical materials.
Vdovin said he did not accept city prosecutors' explanation.
"It could be a consequence of the secretive sympathy of such bodies for xenophobic moods, including anti-Semitism," Vdovin said Wednesday in a telephone interview.
"Our administration supports such moods on purpose to divert the public's dissatisfaction with the social and economic situation. This way people tend to blame Jews for all their problems rather than the authorities," he said.
There is a danger that "in a while officials would not be able to control such moods," he added.
Linkov said he planned to write a letter to the General Prosecutor to explain his concerns, and to bring an lawsuit against the city prosecution office for its "illegal" and "absolutely unjustified" refusal to open a criminal case against "a blatant crime."
Linkov also said modern Russian dictionaries define "zhid" as an insulting name for Jewish people.
Rabbi Michael Farbman, of the Progressive Jewish Community Shaarei Shalom, said of nationalism in Russia that "Russian nationalism should find the positive in itself, not the negative in others."
"A strong nation is not afraid of anyone," Farbman said, adding that nationalists do not represent all Russians.
TITLE: Border Strike Reduces Checks
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Almost no passport controls have been made of travelers entering Russia from Finland where frontier guards began an 11-day strike on Tuesday.
Senior officers have replaced the strikers at eight of the crossing points on the Finnish-Russian border. The officers focus on those entering Finland.
Reijo Kortelainen, chairman of the striking Finnish Frontier Guards labor union, said neglecting to make the checks of people exiting Finland posed dangers.
"Criminals from throughout Europe can basically come to Russia without security checks," Kortelainen said Thursday in a telephone interview.
Though Russian border staff check the passports of those entering Russia, the Russian databases for European citizens are not as comprehensive as the Finnish ones, he said.
However, Matti Mottonen, head of Frontier Guard Headquarters, said "nothing unacceptable" was happening at the border, adding that there were no traffic delays.
Mottonen said that on the weekend when traffic gets heavier the border may become more difficult to pass, but personnel will also be increased.
Kortelainen said Russians leaving Finland without getting a departure stamp in their passports could face problems when they try to enter Finland again.
However, Pafi Tolvanen, deputy chief of the Frontier Guard district, said those Russian travelers who demand departure stamps will receive them and Finnish officials will show understanding when they want to enter Finland again.
TITLE: State-Controlled Gazprom Media to Purchase Izvestia
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - State-controlled gas giant is to buy control of the influential Izvestia daily from a private conglomerate - a move that could bring one of the country's largest private newspapers under firm Kremlin control.
Gazprom Media gave no details of negotiations for Izvestia, and said it was too early to tell if the deal would lead to changes at the national newspaper.
Time will be needed to see if the paper is working "the right or the wrong way," said Gazprom Media press-service head Anton Sergeyev. He would not elaborate on the possible value of the deal.
"Negotiations on this matter are close to conclusion, and in the coming days we will make an official announcement about the deal," he said.
Citing unnamed sources on both sides of the deal, the Vedomosti business daily reported Thursday that Gazprom Media, a subsidiary of state-controlled gas giant Gazprom, and Interros - a sprawling financial and industrial group controlled by Vladimir Potanin, one of Russia's richest men - were in talks over the possible sale of Potanin's 50.17 percent stake in the paper. Industry players polled by the paper put the value of the deal at between $10 million and $20 million.
Izvestia, which dates from the Soviet period, has national reach with a daily print-run of 200,000.
Andrei Grigoriyev, editor of Kompaniya magazine, suggested Potanin might be seeking to ditch the paper in order to stay on the right side of President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. Potanin's billionaire peer and fellow oligarch oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in prison Tuesday for fraud and tax evasion in what observers say was punishment for his political ambitions.
Izvestia is a "political asset rather than an object of a media business," Vedomosti quoted Grigoriyev as saying.
Potanin has been seen as careful to avoid the Kremlin's ire. Following the Beslan hostage-taking tragedy in September, Izvestia Editor Raf Shakirov resigned from the paper amid speculation that graphic photographs the paper carried of the bloody denouement spurred the paper's main shareholder to ask him to leave for fear of Kremlin displeasure.
Gazprom has a history of reining in media outlets that challenge the Kremlin line. The company was the tool by which the state wrested control of the famously critical NTV television station from exiled media tycoon owner Vladimir Gusinsky. Gazprom said it was simply calling in Gusinsky's considerable debts.
Dmitry Oreshkin, head of the Merkator group media consultancy, called Izvestia "liberal, but in measure."
"The paper will teach its reader - who is educated, liberal-minded, and oriented toward a Western value system - to be loyal to the policies of the Kremlin," Vedomosti quoted him as saying.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Ammunition on Plane
MOSCOW (SPT) - Police have detained an assistant of a Liberal Democratic Party State Duma deputy, who tried to carry ammunition on board a plane at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport on Sunday
Yury Kuznetsov, assistant to LDPR deputy Sergei Abeltsev, tried to carry on cartridges for a TT pistol and a shell for a grenade launcher, Interfax reported Thursday.
Earlier Vyacheslav Zakharenkov, head of the department of transport security, had said an LDPR deputy had tried to carry ammunition on board a plane using his deputy immunity.
New Phone Numbers
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The city's fixed-line telephone service St. Petersburg Telephone Network, or PTS, on Wednesday began replacing all the city's telephone numbers starting with "1" with "7," and retaining the other six digits.
Until June 17 the numbers can be dialing with "1" or "7" in front, but after that date "7" will be mandatory.
In addition, when the first three numbers were 177, this will become 771 with the last four digits staying the same.
Services in Italian
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - This Sunday the first Italian-language Catholic mass for the summer will be held in St. Catherine's Church at 32/34 Nevsky Prospekt. The services will continue until Sept. 25.
TITLE: Evraz Raises $422M In Soft London IPO
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: LONDON - Russia's biggest steelmaker Evraz Group made a quiet London debut on Thursday after raising $422 million in an initial public offering (IPO) that valued the steel and mining group at $5.1 billion.
Evraz ranks among the world's top 15 steelmakers and joins a wave of Russian firms listing in London, after telecoms group Sistema raised $1.6 billion in February and retailer Pyaterochka wrapped up an IPO last month.
Two and a half hours after trading opened Thursday, Evraz global depositary receipts (GDRs) were trading at $14.38, down 0.8 percent from their IPO price of $14.50.
Analysts said the decline was in line with European peers, but that Evraz, as a new entrant, was likely to suffer more from any negativity towards the sector.
"If people get cold feet on the steel cycle, they'll punish this one more than the rest," said one, declining to be named.
Steelmakers have benefited from strong demand from China in recent years but prices have slipped back lately.
Evraz Chief Financial Officer Pavel Tatyanin said this was caused by a winding down of stocks and that high iron ore and coal costs should continue to underpin steel prices.
"It's very good news for us because we pursue an integrated model and we source more than 50 percent of our iron ore and coal internally," he said.
Evraz sold 29.1 million GDRs, or 8.3 percent of its issued share capital, in its IPO at $14.5 apiece. The firm had set an indicative price range of $13.5 to $17 per GDR.
There is an over-allotment option of up to 4.37 million GDRs, which could raise a further $63.3 million if exercised by investment bank Morgan Stanley.
Despite strong world demand for steel, some brokers saw the lower-end pricing of Evraz GDRs as a reflection of the metal market's volatility.
"Current market sentiment regarding steel stocks clearly affected the placement price, as steel shares have shown considerable weakness globally over concerns about future prices for the metal," Aton brokerage said Thursday in a research note.
"By placing the shares at the lower end of the original range, Evrazholding has not capped potential upside, while the high end of the range would have stretched valuations a bit too much," the note said.
Controlled by CEO Alexander Abramov, Evraz produced 13.7 million tons of steel in 2004.
The firm controls the Zapadno-Sibirsky, Nizhniye-Tagilsky and Novokuznetsky steelworks and has said it will use the IPO proceeds to buy mining assets in Russia and Ukraine, as well as downstream operations outside Russia.
(Reuters, SPT)
TITLE: State: Oil Must Be Locally Controlled
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: The government said foreign companies seeking to extract minerals in the country should find local partners, acting to ensure that domestic producers control development of the country's biggest oil, gas and metals fields.
In two weeks the government will submit to the Duma a draft legislation that will propose new limits reserving "strategically important" fields for Russian-controlled companies, Anatoly Ledovskikh, head of the state agency for natural resource use, said Thursday at a conference in Paris.
"Working with a local partner wouldn't present a problem. It's something that we do all around the world," Chevron Corp. spokesman Andy Norman said Thursday by telephone from London. "Any move to clarify the situation of the strategic fields is positive."
President Vladimir Putin has strengthened the government's role in Russia's natural resources industry, which holds 6 percent of the world's oil and 27 percent of its gas. In April, Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev asked Putin to support new laws aimed at increasing investment, in part by restricting foreign ownership of oil and metals deposits.
Already this year the government canceled plans to sell two oil fields (Trebsa and Titova) because TNK-BP might have won the auctions, Ledovskikh said. The Arctic fields hold a total of 657 million barrels of oil, which is more oil than TNK-BP produced last year.
The government also delayed selling the Sukhoi Log gold field and the Udokan copper deposit. Sukhoi Log is Russia's biggest untapped gold deposit with at least 1,000 metric tons of reserves. Udokan, with 20 million metric tons of ore, is the country's biggest copper deposit.
The situation has not deterred foreign firms, but has made some cautious of making new large investments in Russia. Last December, Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Lee Raymond said his company was wary of further major projects in the country.
In a show of consolidation, however, Trutnev said Wednesday that Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the biggest and second-biggest U.S. oil companies, may get priority rights to gain a minority stake in a Sakhalin-3 project. The territory holds 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas, enough to fuel the U.S. for more than two years.
However, the strategically important fields, including Sakhalin-3, will only be sold once the new laws are in place, Ledovskikh said.
(Bloomberg, SPT)
TITLE: Starbucks Tiptoes Into Russian Market
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Global coffee behemoth Starbucks is planning expansion into Russia after quietly opening its first outlet in Moscow last week.
The company has been eyeing the capital's expanding coffee culture for years but is entangled in a legal dispute with a local firm claiming ownership of the Starbucks trademark in Russia.
Seattle-based Starbucks opened its first Russian cafe in the basement of the Renaissance Hotel in Moscow last week. It managed to skirt the trademark question thanks to an international cooperation agreement with Marriott, which owns a stake in the Renaissance.
"We look forward to participating in this market. ... In the next several months, we will have specific answers," said Julio Gutierrez, president of Starbucks Coffee Europe, Middle East and Africa, warding off reporters' questions about the company's specific plans.
Gutierrez flatly dismissed suggestions that the launch was being delayed by the challenge from OOO Starbucks.
Starbucks originally registered its trademarks with Rospatent in 1997. But OOO Starbucks is claiming that the registrations were inactive too long.
"The Starbucks trademark was canceled because it was not used," said Sergei Zuykov, a lawyer for OOO Starbucks, which acquired the registration last year.
OOO Starbucks owns the Russian rights to several trademarks used worldwide, including a logo strikingly similar to the famous green mermaid, said Yevgeny Ariyevich, a partner at Baker & McKenzie, which is representing the U.S. firm in Russia.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: IT to Weigh In at 10%
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Russia's information technology industry will account for 10 percent of gross domestic product by 2008, double its current share, the Economy Ministry said in its mid-term forecast Thursday, Interfax reported.
IT services will account for 5 percent of all exports by 2008, compared with 0.3 percent now, according to the forecast, the news service said. The percentage of the workforce employed in the industry will quadruple to 5 percent.
Reserves Up by $2.2 Bln
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Russia's foreign currency and gold reserves jumped to a record $147.1 billion in the week to May 27 as the country benefits from high prices for oil, its biggest export earner.
Reserves rose $2.2 billion in the week, the central bank said in an e-mailed statement Thursday. Central bank reserves pay back foreign debt.
TITLE: Svenska Enters Russia, Retail Service in 2 Years
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Svenska Handelsbanken, one of Scandinavia's leading banks, has announced Tuesday the start of operations in Russia, the latest in a string of foreign lenders to enter the market.
Handelsbanken's Moscow subsidiary, the first in Russia by a Scandinavian bank, will have charter capital of 45 million euros ($55.5 million) and will tailor mostly to Scandinavian and British corporate clients. It plans to move into retail banking in two years, the Swedish bank said.
In addition to the Moscow unit, Handelsbanken plans to open an office in St. Petersburg, which will later become part of the Moscow subsidiary.
"For our main customer group, the Scandinavian and UK corporate clients, Russia is becoming an increasingly interesting market," Lars Gronstedt, the bank's CEO, told reporters. "It's important for us to follow our clients wherever they go."
There are over 1,400 Scandinavian and British companies present in Russia, according to the bank's estimates.
Handelsbanken, Scandinavia's No. 3 bank, has had a representative office in Russia since 1974. With total assets of $185 billion, it currently has over 450 branches in Sweden and 120 branches in other Scandinavian countries and Britain.
As Russia's burgeoning middle class continues to grow, the bank said it was "very interested" in expanding into retail banking in two years, when, by Russian law, it will be allowed to start catering to individuals. The firm, however, reiterated that no plans were set in stone.
"We put in 45 million euros now and will see how far that takes us," said Gronstedt, adding that growth in Russia is more than twice the growth of the saturated markets in Scandinavia.
The bank said that it would bring to Moscow a "very special corporate philosophy," which is not common in the banking world and even less so in Russia. Handelsbanken prides itself on decentralization, whereby many responsibilities are delegated to the branches, the bank said. Market analysts welcomed the news about yet another foreign player entering the banking sector.
Andrew Keeley, a banking analyst with Renaissance Capital, said the move is "another indication of the level of interest in the Russian banking sector on the part of major Western banks."
Foreign banks are prohibited from operating branches in Russia but can open 100 percent-owned subsidiaries, of which there are currently 36.
TITLE: Spending Hike Inflates Fears
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG/MOSCOW - The Cabinet approved an 11 percent hike in spending this year to pay for social services even as officials are under orders to curtail the runaway inflation.
Economists said they saw no easy options left to avoid yet another double-digit inflation this year as consumer prices have already recorded a 6.5 percent rise in the first four months of 2005.
The extra 383 billion rubles ($13.5 billion) allotted for spending this year, almost a third of which will come from the stabilization fund, will go on earlier- promised social programs, including salary and pension hikes. The state vowed to hand out more money to bureaucrats and pensioners after President Vladimir Putin's popularity was dented by protests against turning social benefits into cash.
The decision comes as a blow to economic liberals like Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who have tried to restrain the government from spending more money as its oil tax revenues increase.
"Raising non-interest spending creates monetary grounds for raising inflation by up to 1.5 percent," Kudrin told Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, Reuters reported.
In contrast to slowing economic growth, down to 4.9 percent in the first quarter, compared to 7.3 percent for the same quarter in 2004, Russians have increased their spending.
Growing demand and slowing output means that more money is chasing fewer goods. The shortage causes higher prices and a falling standard of living, a phenomenon that in its extreme form is known as "stagflation."
Fradkov has ordered his ministers to come up with a strategy for fighting inflation by June 6. But the best way to head off price rises of about 12 percent this year is to boost private investment and increase growth, said Yevgeny Gavrilenkov, chief economist at Troika Dialog.
"Inflation was dropping in the first half of last year when the economy kept growing at 7 to 8 percent," he said.
However, Sergey Ignatiev, the governor of the Central Bank, said he expects inflation to reverse in July through September as a bumper harvest drives down food prices.
"Our target is to keep inflation at 7 percent to 8 percent this year," he told a banking conference in St. Petersburg. He insisted that the "rising inflation rate is not dependent on the monetary policy" and blamed rising utility prices and import tariffs on meat for booming prices.
Ignatiev's reasons met with skepticism from analysts. "They are not really sticking to their [inflation] target, they are just mouthing it," said Gavrilenkov. "It's not a real target, it's a spell."
Many economists say there is no other option to curtail prices but for the Central Bank to let the ruble appreciate. Monetary authorities keep the national currency artificially low by selling shovelfuls of it in exchange for dollars. The policy, which was designed on orders from the Kremlin, is meant to help Russian manufacturers compete but has also contributed to inflation.
"The Central Bank is in a bind," said Al Breach, chief economist at Brunswick UBS investment bank.
Ignatiev admitted as much Thursday, saying that "to lower inflation to 8.5 percent and not to allow a sharp rise in the real effective exchange rate of the ruble is extraordinarily difficult."
But he ruled out making the ruble stronger on foreign currency exchanges as a way to rein in rising prices. "That would stop economic growth as well as cause problems in the banking sector," he said.
Economic liberals in the government also rue the raiding of the stabilization fund, which was primarily intended to sterilize record oil revenues from seeping into the economy and raising prices.
Though the fund is rapidly growing - it swelled to 31 billion rubles as of May 1, the last period for which data is available - Kudrin had always insisted that the money from the fund should only be used to pay off foreign debt. Putin appeared to support him last week when discussing plans for the 2006 budget.
TITLE: InBev Might Buy Tinkoff
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: InBev subsidiary Sun Interbrew is on the verge of buying St. Petersburg-based Tinkoff brewery, Kommersant business daily reported Thursday.
Sun Interbrew has already signed a preliminary agreement to buy Tinkoff and is now finalizing the acquisition details, anonymous sources close to the deal told the paper.
Kommersant quoted sources and experts as saying Sun Interbrew would pay up to $300 million for Tinkoff, which had revenues of $42.5 million in 2004 and carried more than $100 million in debt.
InBev declined to comment, but the world's biggest brewer by volume has said it was looking to expand in Russia.
Russia is one of the fastest-growing beer markets in the world. In recent years, the Russian market has become the world's fifth largest after China, the United States, Germany and Brazil.
Tinkoff is owned by founder Oleg Tinkov, one of Russia's most creative entrepreneurs, who previously controlled electronics retailer Technoshock and Darya meat-processing plants. His city-based Tinkoff brewery focuses on premium beer under the names of Tinkoff, Tekiza, Zooom and T, and holds about 1 percent of the national market.
Through Sun Interbrew, InBev has a market share of more than 15 percent, making it the second-largest brewer in the country, behind Baltic Beverages Holding. The beer brands in the Sun Interbrew portfolio include Klinskoye, Tolstyak, Sibirskaya Korona, Staropramen, Stella Artois and Beck's.
(Reuters, SPT)
TITLE: Nokian to Expand Via Russian Operations
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: HELSINKI - Nokian Renkaat Oyj, the largest Nordic tiremaker, is betting on expansion in Russia to stay ahead of competitors including Michelin & Cie. and Continental AG in former Soviet countries.
A factory opening outside St. Petersburg in June is expected to reach annual capacity of 4 million tires by 2008, Chief Executive Officer Kim Gran said.
Nokian, a Finland-based company, is the biggest foreign tire supplier in Russia. It plans to triple the St. Petersburg plant's yearly production to 12 million tires to match demand expanding at 15 percent a year.
Russia overtook Finland as Nokian's biggest single market in the first quarter. Focusing on winter and high-performance summer tires has helped make the former unit of cellular-phone company Nokia Oyj more profitable and faster growing than bigger competitors, such as global leader Bridgestone.
"Our guns are aiming at one point instead of firing randomly," Gran, 50, said in an interview at corporate headquarters May 20. "It's enough that we are the maker of the world's best-quality winter tires."
Nokian Renkaat stock has almost doubled in the past year, valuing the company at 1.73 billion euros ($2.1 billion).
"Russia is a big market for a company the size of Nokian," said Kim Gorschelnik, an analyst at FIM Securities in Helsinki. "Having their own factory there gives them broader possibilities than relying on imports would."
Nokian Renkaat, founded in 1898 as Suomen Gummitehdas to sell galoshes to St. Petersburg, was the world's first maker of winter tires in 1934 and became part of Nokia Oyj in 1966.
Earnings before interest and taxes as a proportion of sales last year were up to 18 percent. This can compare with a 14 percent operating margin at Tokyo-based Bridgestone, the world's biggest tiremaker by sales; 8 percent at Michelin, Europe's biggest; and 9.8 percent at Continental, the world's fourth-biggest.
Nokian plans to double sales to 1.2 billion euros by 2009 and be the most profitable tiremaker worldwide.
Revenue has more than tripled in 10 years even as growth has been curbed by capacity constraints, Gran said. The company wants new products to account for about 25 percent of revenue will each year.
Basing growth plans on Russia doesn't come without risks, Gran said, as gross domestic product growth is driven by volatile energy prices and political shifts, corruption and red tape can make projects unprofitable.
Nokian has 26 percent of Russia's winter tire market and 10 percent for summer tires.
Replacement passenger-tire sales may exceed 50 million units by 2010 versus more than 20 million tires last year, according to Moscow-based Strategica Management Consulting figures in Nokian's annual report.
Japan's Bridgestone tire manufactuer is Nokian's largest owner after acquiring a 18.9 percent stake from Nokia in February 2003. The stake was diluted to 16.8 percent by the end of April.
TITLE: The Man and the Mythical Politician
TEXT: After being sentenced to nine years in prison, former Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky has finally become an important Russian politician. This has been his dream for a long time, apparently. His verbose public musings on liberalism and the deteriorating national infrastructure had already attracted notice several years ago.
Many believe that in fall 2002, Khodorkovsky set his sights on the post of prime minister in a future, parliament-dominated Russia, naturally only after checking his plans with the then-powerful chief of staff Alexander Voloshin. Yukos then dumped millions into getting the dull and ordinary Khodorkovsky all over national television. Yet the only thing memorable about these television appearances was the heavy mark of Kremlin censorship on his slippery words and confusing explanations.
But his dream came true anyway. It came true on Tuesday in Meshchansky District court.
The former oil magnate became Russia's first big politician working outside the system. He does not believe in cutting any deals with the Kremlin and for this reason is completely independent.
He can happily ignore the royal commands filtering down from on high. He cannot be blackmailed with being banned from the television or with being kicked out of office when someone tampers with the useless ballots of some election.
Khodorkovsky is his own man and stands outside the system that President Vladimir Putin understands and controls. He can make decisions without asking the presidential administration and without fear that something will be taken from him for his disobedience. Everything has already been taken from him, except his life and his honor.
For this reason, he now has a chance to become the focal point for a real - meaning outside the Kremlin system - opposition in Russia. And in his articles, Khodorkovsky seems to have made a decisive step to the left, and the next leaders to come to power will be leaning in precisely this direction.
I don't agree with those who claim that you can't be involved in politics from a jail cell. You certainly can - and how!
The myth of Khodorkovsky sprouted, grew and bore fruit while he was in prison. This mythical figure will remain far simpler, stronger and more convincing than the flesh-and-blood man. The real Khodorkovsky was the embodiment of the bourgeois order Russia despises. But he became Russia's native son with his own Dostoevsky-style crime and punishment. It is impossible to say how the inquisitive yet sleepy little towns of provincial Russia would have reacted to the real Khodorkovsky adjusting his glasses and staring with his intense gaze.
But it is clear that from now on every word he speaks from prison is destined to become something akin to Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago." The man who lost $7 billion while he sat in pretrial detention has shifted into the position of moral leader. In today's Russia, this position has long been vacant because the ruling elite does not need it. Yet moral authority means more to Russia than gold monograms on business cards, Mercedes and all the other formal attributes of power.
Khodorkovsky has become a tragic figure, and only tragic heroes can hope to rule Russia.
The country is sick of vaudevillian performers who professionally spout words they themselves do not believe. Russia wants the real thing, not politicking. What could be more real than nine years in a penal colony?
In the end, the road to the Russian throne has always run through tragedy. In recent history, there have only been two leaders who were not tragic and who, for this very reason, wound up in the grips of a serious crisis of legitimacy at home: Mikhail Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin.
For its part, the Kremlin has once again demonstrated that the Yukos affair stopped being a political campaign long ago. Politically, it was not to Putin's advantage to turn Khodorkovsky, the nice chemist, into a prisoner of conscience. The case unfolded according to an entirely different logic: Yukos' former owners were not supposed to get in the way of the complete and final division of the company's assets.
For this reason, they had to go to jail. They could not be allowed to take Rosneft to court, especially abroad. Putin, deputy chief of staff Igor Sechin and others like them have already shown that they do not think in political categories. For them, politics is merely one of the difficult ways to make easy money. If Khodorkovsky and his associate Platon Lebedev have to be thrown behind bars to make this money, so be it.
To destroy Khodorkovsky's political career, Putin did not have to imprison him. The president had all the means for doing so at his disposal, from the complete support of the pro-Putin majority to absolute power over the mass media. But there was no way to grab and divvy up oil assets without the slammer. Putin preferred to lose a political fight for the sake of gaining property.
From a political point of view, the president did not solve the problem; he created a problem that he will have to answer for.
Without a doubt, the Kremlin still has one more chance to make the right move. Putin could pardon Khodorkovsky. It is highly likely that the official liberals from the quasi-formed right wing of United Russia will soon start making a fuss and demanding a pardon. If Russia's most famous prisoner writes to the master of the Kremlin and asks for forgiveness - and, of course, admits he is guilty of all six charges of the multibillion-ruble sentence - the president would be most merciful and give a gift to the world community, now somewhat shocked by the unreasonably long nine years. Some observers believe this is exactly why the sentence was so long: Three or four years would not have been enough to scare Khodorkovsky. But the thought of living behind bars until 2012 most certainly would.
If Khodorkovsky wrote and asked to be pardoned, it would certainly be good for his family. Then again, it would be better for the opposition for him to do time. Regardless, he will not spend the full nine years in jail. The maximum time he would serve would be three years. Until he is up for parole or until the regime changes, which ever comes first.
Whatever decision Khodorkovsky makes, he was effectively acquitted on Tuesday. Khodorkovsky put all the blood and grime of the 1990s behind him. He got away from the same system that sent him and his angry associates to jail. So far, no one else has ever managed to survive this kind of trial by fire.
Stanislav Belkovsky is president of the National Strategy Institute. He contributed this comment to Vedomosti, where it first appeared.
TITLE: Adopting a New Attitude
TEXT: Can orphans be exploited for political gain? You bet they can. In fact, it's a sure thing. The champions of orphans score political points while those who abuse them are regarded as evil incarnate. The main task of the champions, therefore, is to "name and shame" the offenders. Preferably during prime time.
The orphans themselves tend to get lost in the shuffle, particularly when patriotism gets involved.
Foreigners, specifically foreign adoption agencies operating in this country, have been blamed for all the problems of Russia's orphans in recent months. A few days ago, a number of agencies were denied new accreditation. A week before, these agencies were doing business as usual. Suddenly, as if on cue, prosecutors discovered scores of violations, including operating with expired accreditation, doing business with unauthorized Russian middlemen and failing to monitor adopted children abroad. No smoking guns were discovered, mind you, but that hardly mattered. The campaign had begun.
This is what rankles - it's a politically motivated campaign that began in earnest back in April when a suburban Chicago woman, Irma Pavlis, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the beating death of her 6-year-old son just weeks after she and her husband had adopted him from Russia. Playing on this high-profile case, certain politicians who consider themselves patriots declared, in effect, that the Americans were murdering our children. They were not able to whip up a general frenzy, thank goodness, but they did turn the Pavlis case into a political issue.
For the organizers of this campaign, it made no difference that the Pavlis case was an exception, that it generated a huge public outcry in the United States or that Pavlis was sentenced to 12 years in prison. In the period from 1990 to 2004, Americans alone adopted some 60,000 Russian orphans, yet only a dozen tragedies such as the Pavlis case are known to have occurred. For all the horror of each individual case, this tiny percentage suggests that the system is actually working quite well.
There are currently some 125,000 orphans in Russia. Would a total ban on "selling our children abroad," which some opponents of foreign adoption have called for, benefit these children? Can a propaganda campaign make adoption in Russia as popular and widespread as it is in the United States, with its strong tradition of missionary work? Can such a political campaign bring an end to the endemic corruption in our orphanages? It's well known, for example, that adoptive parents pay an average per child of $10,000 to $15,000 in bribes to Russian officials. The answer to all these questions is no.
But another approach is possible, one that is far nobler. We simply have to rise above politics and do what's best for the children. Rather than focusing exclusively on the tragedies, we should be telling the stories of Russian orphans who have found good homes abroad, and of children who have been cured of illnesses that were considered untreatable in Russia. In other words, we should be telling the stories of children in loving families who are enjoying new lives they couldn't even have imagined while they were stuck in orphanages back in their homeland. We have to remember that, however much we might resent it, the overwhelming majority of adopted Russian children are better off with their new families abroad. Such success stories might not be advantageous in the context of domestic politics, but surely political gain is insignificant when compared to a child's happiness.
And stories of successful adoptions like these are far more likely to encourage Russians to become adoptive parents than the campaign of hate that has been waged over the airwaves these past few months. The truth of the matter seems painfully obvious: We can do far more to improve the lives of our orphans by focusing on the positive than we ever could by dwelling exclusively on the negative.
Georgy Bovt is editor of Profil.
TITLE: Basic instincts
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Since launching its first list in 2002, Hesperus Press has acquired an enviable name in British publishing for its adventurous editorial policy and the attention it lavishes on each of its graceful volumes. Specializing in short works by major writers of the past, mainly from Western Europe, Hesperus has also earned praise for the high standard of its translations. The publishers may require further encouragement in fulfilling their stated commitment to "bringing near what is far" (they still offer no examples of genuinely distant literary cultures, from Poland to Greece), but we can only be grateful for their sustained efforts in bringing closer at least one neglected fictional family: Russian novellas and long stories of 150 pages or less.
Over the last three years, Hesperus has published more than a dozen fresh renderings of lesser-read works in this category, mainly from the 19th century. Reading just a handful of these provides a new perspective on apparently familiar writers and the tradition they helped create. From the early flowering of Fyodor Dostoevsky's idiosyncratic genius in "The Double" (1846) to the brief but brilliant last expression of Leo Tolstoy's epic gift in "Hadji Murat" half a century later, the range of concerns and styles is dazzling. Unexpected echoes between the texts can be equally striking. It is an insult that begins the comic standoff between once inseparable neighbors in Nikolai Gogol's "The Squabble" ("And you, Ivan Ivanovich, are a real goose"); and an insult that drives a wedge between once inseparable neighboring landowners, one rich and one poor, in Alexander Pushkin's "Dubrovsky," unleashing terrible retribution.
Slight as they are, the Hesperus volumes reflect the entire canvas of Russian society, from serfs to princes. There are the tight-laced, posturing provincial merchants of Nikolai Leskov's "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk"; the sycophantic, posturing civil servants of Dostoevsky; the magnificent, posturing officers and generals of Tolstoy; the dissolute, idle gentry, typified by Pushkin's wealthy landowner, Troekurov; and the mostly unhappy mothers, wives, daughters, lovers and housekeepers of all the above. In general, it is an exceptionally unpleasant and merciless world where one sin leads to another and there seems to be no way back. The possibility of redemption, a key theme of longer Russian 19th-century fiction, is chillingly absent here. Dostoevsky's novels "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov" offer the hope that the internal fracturing of the modern personality can be transcended; not so "The Double," in which the main character, lonely Golyadkin, gabbles his way to insanity in a psychological case study fundamental to all Dostoevsky's later writing.
As pessimistic as "The Double," yet utterly different in its expression and approach, is the taut, sometimes primitivistic storytelling of Leskov. His Lady Macbeth is a 23-year-old given in loveless marriage to a provincial merchant. Left to herself in a clean, empty house, with icon lamps glimmering in the sepulchral silence, she dozes her way through the long days, forever waking "to that same Russian boredom, the boredom of a merchant house, a boredom so profound that, as people say, it makes even the thought of hanging yourself seem like fun." In the event, things take a much nastier turn, though the combination of violence and bitter humor in this sentence is entirely typical, and not only of Leskov's story.
Many of these works are founded on what Leskov's narrator calls "vile jokes," sprung by fate or design. They explore not so much "the basest of animal instincts," as asserted in the translator's introduction to "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" (why should animal instincts be base?), but specifically human forms of revenge, mockery and humiliation. The vicious humor of the characters draws further irony from the narrators. "Such were the noble pastimes of a Russian gentleman," comments Pushkin's narrator in "Dubrovsky" after describing Troekurov's habit of locking the less fortunate of his visitors in a room with a hungry bear (the bear is tied on a rope that can stretch to every corner of the room bar one). At such moments, Pushkin, widely celebrated for his non-judgmental authorial stance, begins to sound almost as sarcastic as Tolstoy; such is the reality he is describing.
In "Hadji Murat," one of the highlights of the list, Tolstoy contrasts the reality of a corrupt social order with Russia's perennial antithesis in imagination and fact: the ethos of Muslim life and resistance in the Caucasus. A hero among his people, the rebel leader Hadji Murat has nevertheless been forced by his feud with the local ruler, the imam Shamil, to pledge his loyalty to the Russians. Placing Murat among the top Russian brass in the south allows Tolstoy to indulge fully his loathing for the masquerade of flattery and decadence that passed for Russian power under Nicholas I. (Though written at the turn of the 20th century, "Hadji Murat" is set 50 years earlier.) At times, this hatred erupts in almost buffoonish interjections on the part of the narrator, to whom ladies at balls seem to be wearing no clothes and who pictures government couriers "exhausting [their] horses and punching drivers in the face." Set against this circus of vice is the sober, awestruck depiction of Hadji Murat as a man of faith and deed, a hero impregnable to the pervasive cynicism of the world he inhabits. Compelling in its own right, and superbly structured, the tale is an essential counterbalance to the rest of Tolstoy's late writings. He had not, it seems, entirely rejected literature or violence.
Leo Tolstoy was one of many 19th-century writers who skewered Russian society in short works of fiction."Hadji Murat" has been translated by Hugh Aplin with the authority that marks the many other Hesperus volumes for which he has been responsible. His translations are loyal in the fullest sense; each rises to the particular challenge of the author in question. Tolstoy, arguably the most straightforward in style, is rendered with a minimum of fuss; the word "cheerful" can occur three times in six lines, just as its Russian equivalent does in the original. The "rough stylistic edges" of a writer who, as Aplin comments in his introduction, "was not renowned as the most polished of the great Russian classics," are rightly preserved. Quite in contrast is the linguistic exuberance of his version of "The Squabble," which recasts Gogol's wandering narrative voice in a funny and entirely appropriate idiom; perhaps no other Russian title published by Hesperus gives quite as much pleasure.
At the risk of imitating one of Gogol's disturbingly friendly landowners, to whom everything is always quite splendid, it must be said that the renderings of Pushkin and Leskov supplied by Robert Chandler are, indeed, also excellent. Pushkin, in particular, seems to be the ideal match for the poise and brightness that characterize Chandler's work. It only seems a shame that, on all the covers of the Hesperus volumes, it is the authors of the generally dispensable forewords who are acknowledged and not the translators, whose efforts make the whole enterprise worthwhile.
Oliver Ready's most recent translation is "My Paris," by Ilya Ehrenburg, published to accompany a reprint of the original edition of 1933.
Hesperus press titles
mentioned in this review:
"The Double"
By Fyodor Dostoevsky
Trans. by Hugh Aplin
Foreword by Jeremy Dyson
172 Pages. Pound7.99
"The Squabble"
By Nikolai Gogol
Trans. by Hugh Aplin
Foreword by Patrick McCabe
112 Pages. Pound6.99
"Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk"
By Nikolai Leskov
Trans. by Robert Chandler
Foreword by Gilbert Adair
112 Pages. Pound6.99
"Dubrovsky"
By Alexander Pushkin
Trans. by Robert Chandler
Foreword by Patrick Neate
112 Pages. Pound6.99
"Hadji Murat"
By Leo Tolstoy
Trans. by Hugh Aplin
Foreword by Colm Toibin
128 Pages. Pound6.99
TITLE: CHERNOV'S CHOICE
TEXT: After Brian Eno's visit last week, another alumnus of the influential British band Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry, was due in St. Petersburg on Friday to perform at an "exclusive," black-tie fashion/music event at the Konstantinovsky Palace.
A promoter was unable to comment Thursday, but according to an insider tickets sell for as much as $1,000.
Ferry was also scheduled to appear as an "honorable guest" at a fashion event at the newly opened SpoonCafe on Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa on Thursday.
Ferry first came to St. Petersburg in 1997 to visit Eno and performed with a symphony orchestra in the Shostakovich Philharmonic Hall in Sept. 2000. Ferry's concert was based on "As Time Goes By," his 1999 album of jazz oldies.
Meanwhile, Eno was in St. Petersburg performing with French-Algerian singer Rachid Taha and showcasing his forthcoming album, "Another Day on Earth," with an event at the Russian Museum. See article, page xii.
Eno was also spotted at Platforma attending the premiere of "Dark Mu," a documentary about Zvuki Mu, Moscow's 1980s avant-rock band whose eponymous debut album Eno produced and released on his Opal label in 1989. Later Eno said that the film confirmed his conviction that Zvuki Mu's frontman Pyotr Mamonov was a "genius."
Now working solo, Mamonov will stage his theatrical performance, called "Chocolate Pushkin," at the Comedy Theater on Monday.
Moscow promoter BAd TaStE said that a Moscow concert by 17 Hippies was canceled due to "inexplicable reasons" in its posting this week. It suggested that the band "is not coming to Russia at all."
Platforma, the club where the Berlin-based band was scheduled to play its local concert on Friday, also said that the show is not happening.
17 Hippies was to have come to Russia to play at an open-air concert to launch Platforma's concert venue in Moscow. But, according to art director Denis Rubin, the whole event was postponed because of a ban by Moscow city authorities that led to the cancellation of concerts by both 17 Hippies and Romania's Spitalul de Urgenta.
Nevertheless, Rubin confirmed that Chumbawamba, the third act that was to take part in the Moscow opening, is scheduled to perform at Platforma on Sunday. But, as of Thursday afternoon, it appeared that the concert might not be happening at all. Call the venue before going there. See interview, page xii.
A new jazz club will open Friday. Called Street Life, it will be located at the premises of the city's Architectural Academy formerly occupied by the notorious gay club, Club 69, which closed in 2003. The club seems to be oriented toward a blend of jazz and contemporary dance music.
Ethno Style, a three-day festival of world music, opens at the Yacht Club on Friday, while Sega del Canto, a Finnish eccentric duo who use a saw as a musical instrument will perform at Platforma Thursday.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Cherry blossom bliss
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Sakura 12 Griboyedov Canal. Tel. 315 9474, 315 7391 Open from noon until 11pm. Menu in Russian and English Dinner for two with sake 1,120 rubles. ($40). You know a good Japanese restaurant by its tuna. This fish has become almost an icon in Japan, and can sell for as much as $100 a piece in Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market, the country's biggest seafood bazaar. The Japanese will turn into die-hard travelers to discover a place with quality maguro sashimi (raw tuna steak). Luckily, a man in St. Petersburg need only travel as far as a sideroad off Nevsky Prospekt.
There is almost a rule against dining at a place situated on a main city thoroughfare. It's economics pure and simple: high rents, expensive advertising, hiked food prices. With many of the city's Japanese restaurants this rule holds, making them rather gaudy - in décor and taste.
Sakura ("Cherry Blossom") has a delicate appeal, although not so traditionally Japanese as to be obtrusive. A minute's walk away from Nevsky Prospekt metro station along Griboyedov Canal, towards the Church on Spilled Blood, the restaurant has a central location, but avoids the Prospekt's tussle and pomp. As if shy, Sakura's entrance crouches on the basement level, with no more declamatory sign than the name and "Japanese Cuisine" written underneath.
Someone once remarked that the Japanese are never as sincerely happy as when they eat. It's not really just about "happiness," however, since the tradition of eating has evolved to be a way of communicating with people.
While in Tokyo last week, I called up a Japanese friend. The first question she asked when we started arranging a meeting was what I wanted to eat. This was before we selected the meeting day, never mind the time.
What Sakura communicates immediately upon entrance is tranquility, neatness, and tactful division. A sushi bar counter fits into the opening room of the restaurant, a little further there is room for a private dining room.
A narrow staircase brings one to the main dining hall, which again contains a fountain, a bamboo partition, and a sliding door to a more private room.
A kimono-clad waitress smiles and bows. She doesn't speak a word of Japanese, but, you know, that's not going to disappoint a lot of the visitors, most of which will be Russian, although there is a strong tourist presence at Sakura too.
For sushi-virgins (and the rest of us who fail to distinguish between yellow-tail and baby yellow-tail) there is a plastic photo menu. In addition, the menu runs through all the main Japanese dishes, seemingly in order of familiarity: sushi, sashimi, salads, appetizers, teriyaki, nabemono, teppan, dessert.
When lost for where to start, especially when wishing to venture beyond the edges of Japanese cuisine - sushi and sashimi - a sure bet is to order liquor (which is simply what "sake" means in Japanese).
"We'll have hot sake, slightly sweet, mild," I say, and the smiling cherry blossom nods in understanding. In the time it takes to examine the zen garden-like design under the glass of our table, the small sake "vases" arrive (125ml for 180 rubles, $4.30).
"Kampai!" (Cheers!) to the various dishes that followed, with tuna dishes, the sashimi (as part of a three-fish selection: 690 rubles, $24.65), the carpaccio (270 rubles, $9.65), and the sushi (120 rubles, $4.30) particular recommended. Non-oily, as soft as butter, assuaging in the melt, the maguro was finely prepared by Sakura's Japanese head chef, Yamamoto Takashi.
Equally good were the slightly sweet, crunchy daikon rolls (150 rubles, $5.35), tender teriyaki chicken (180 rubles, $6.40), and yakitori (fried chicken skewers, 210 rubles, $7.50).
Less authentic, rather Russified dishes included ramen (a hot soup with Chinese noodles, 180 rubles, $6.40) and tofu salad (120 rubles, $4.30). The former was reminiscent of a spruced-up Pot Noodle, although my friend thought it wonderful.
The balance of taste was restored by dessert. Although pricey, and with nothing but the green tea ice cream (180 rubles, $6.40) and umeshu foam (240 rubles, $8.60) that are truly Japanese, the desserts were light, memorable, and a good wind-down to the evening.
When the time came to pay the check, my eyes glanced at my watch. It was 11 p.m. We had been at the restaurant more than three hours, and I had not even noticed. Does that mean that I too had reached a state of "sincere happiness"?
TITLE: Cabin fever
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A new production of Richard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde," which opened the Stars of the White Nights festival at the Mariinsky Theater last Friday is literal, universal and replete with claustrophobia.
Not a single outdoor location is featured in the show. The director locks the lovers' wild, effusive passions inside limited spaces. The story of the doomed love of Tristan and Isolde evolves in a boat cabin, a hotel room and an apartment that wraps the performance in a cold and detached atmosphere.
In Act I, Director Dmitry Chernyakov places Isolde and her maid Brangane in a cramped boat cabin with a depressingly low ceiling. The cabin is complete with faceless furniture, a computer, a exercise machine and a water-cooler, and its gray walls are adorned with personal photographs.
Just minutes after the curtain rises, the audience sees Brangane (Olga Savova) twitching ecstatically in tune with her Walkman, her moves blatantly - and purposefully - discordant with the orchestra.
Later, Isolde (Larisa Gogolevskaya) flies into indomitable rage as she ponders the prospect of marrying Marke and separation from her beloved. Generating blind fury, radiating despair and protest, she rages through her cramped cabin like a tornado, knocking down furniture and tossing aside a coffee set. The singer's voice was a little overstrained and at times somewhat hoarse but dramatically Gogolevskaya proved most convincing.
At the Mariinsky, Wagnerian heroes turn into modern, cosmopolitan, universal characters. In the story, Tristan, escorts Isolde, princess of Ireland, to Cornwall, where she is to wed Marke, the King of Cornwall.
Isolde plots to kill Tristan (Sergei Lyadov), whom she despises because the warrior, whose wounds she once healed, killed her fiance Morold in a battle for the independence of Cornwall. Tristan is a timid, bespectacled, balding man, who stands at attention, not daring to move, when he arrives at Isolde's call. In vocal terms, Isolde's domination was similarly tangible: Lyadov's humble Tristan was sometimes overpowered by the orchestra but nontheless technically correct. The Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra, already well-rehearsed in Wagner, produced a solid, formidable and highly captivating performance, with the strings dramatically yet flawlessly storming through the Wagnerian strains.
Isolde asks Brangane to prepare a potion that will kill the lovers, but she deceives Isolde and brews a love-potion instead. The magic drink works, and the two fall in love. The romance is in full swing when the ship arrives at Cornwall, but the beloved are spied on by Marke's man Melot, who attacks Tristan. Tended by Kurwenal, he survives just until Isolde comes, then falls and dies. Isolde, who feels Tristan is calling to her from the "dead of night," wills her death soon afterwards.
The new production is an unlikely show to come from Chernyakov, known for metaphoric, spiritual shows with a philosophical bent and religious references.
Speaking about the show shortly before the premiere, Chernyakov promised a straightforward work, "showing this drama through the prism of ideas, concepts and physical objects that ring a bell with modern audiences."
The objects in question were plentiful in the production: a sword was replaced with a gun, and the lovers put a "don't disturb" sign on the door of their hotel room.
The urbanized modern designs are contrasted with the narcotic, ethereal flair with which the main characters drink the potion. Moving as if dreaming with eyes wide open, stretching and rolling on the floor, the pair are unable to coordinate their movements when the boat arrives at Cornwall.
Act II, featuring a particularly long duet between Tristan and Isolde, is notoriously difficult to stage.
The director teases the audience throughout Act II, when the famous love scene in the forest - Liebensnacht - takes place. Instead of a forest, the lovers find themselves in a hotel room at the top of a skyscraper. All the singing and acting is centered around a huge bed, yet the lovers never manage to take their coats off, let alone touch each other. The tension between the lovers is huge. Tristan stares emptily into space as Marke reproaches him, while Isolde reels and staggers about the room.
King Marke (Mikhail Kit), who arrives at the scene surrounded by bodyguards dressed in identical black suits, resembles a contemporary mafioso: oozing ominous confidence, the shaven-headed king possesses the required power and might.
Act III is set in Tristan's parents' apartment. The characters' delirium progresses: the stage is crossed by images of the dead, including Tristan's mother visibly pregnant with him. The finale separates the lovers, with Isolde remaining desperate and alive when the curtain falls.
TITLE: Africa calling
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Africans from the continent and the surrounding islands gathered in St. Petersburg last week to encourage Russians to explore the bright side of the traditionally derogated "Dark Continent."
It took the rhythm of drums and a chorus of voices typical of Africa's many languages and cultural diversity to help counter Russian stereotypes of Africa as a continent only of poverty, hunger, disease and war on Africa Day (May 25) when a colorful display of traditional arts and artifacts, and even a fashion show, were held in St. Petersburg.
"I've a dream of Russia where such questions as whether we have houses in Africa, or if crocodiles are members of our households, are not asked," Aliu Tunkara, head of the St. Petersburg "African Union" community group that organized the event, said.
"It's a burden on us to send them [Russians] the right message from our motherland - not their books, not their media, and not their tour operators," Tunkara said. His tone reflects the pain of more than 22 years lived in Russia, where he feels there is a lack of accurate information about African life.
Video footage shown at the event showed not only Africa's jungle life and exotic tribal rituals, but also modern and sophisticated urban lives in continental Africa and the neighboring Indian and Atlantic ocean island states, some of whose people have scattered as far as St. Petersburg.
They gathered in a conference hall of the St. Petersburg Polytechnical University's Institute of International Education to commemorate the founding of the African Union (AU), formerly known as the Organization of African Unity (OAU).
Africans have regarded Africa Day as their "second birthday" ever since the organization was founded 42 years ago with the aim of uniting the then-newly independent African states, liberating others from colonial clutches and resolving interstate social and political disputes.
The OAU was conceived as a stepping stone toward a "United States of Africa" as foreseen by Kwame Nkrumah, a Pan-Africanist who had in the previous six years led Ghana to independence. He collaborated with other African charismatic leaders including Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Emperor Haille Selassie of Ethiopia and Omar Bongo of Gabon to found the organization that was intended to police the continent and be a voice to be reckoned with in the international arena.
Nkrumah's dream and how much it has failed was manifest in the AU anthem which was played to mark the start of the celebrations in St. Petersburg. It was dedicated to the memory of those who fell in the struggles to make the dream of the "United States of Africa" come true and in honor of the their legacy.
"Let us all unite and celebrate; the victories for our liberation ... Defend our liberty and unity ... O sons and daughters of Africa ... Let us make Africa the tree of life ..." goes the anthem.
In response to the call to celebrate, dancers from Mali immediately took to the stage to show their traditional dancing skills. The Malians enthralled the 500-strong multinational audience.
Then an Ivorian and a Congolese sang a due in different tongues in an attempt to show that love transcends boundaries. "To betray love is to destroy humanity," reads the words from the Russian-language version of the song.
Sudanese, Moroccans, Nigerians, Zambians, Cameroonians and Kenyans also performed. But the audience applauded the loudest when a four-year-old African boy jumped on to the stage from nowhere to grab the microphone to sing, imitating an African language he didn't know, and dancing to the tune. It appeared as if the spirit of Africa had been passed to him through the genes.
An African fashion show attracted some Russian girls from the audience who asked for spare traditional dresses so that they could join the performance.
Outside the concert hall was an exhibition of the traditional arts and crafts of dozens of countries from Cape to Cairo and the island states of Seychelles, Mauritius, Comoro, Madagascar, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe.
But it was a work by Tesfaye Negga, an Ethiopian fine arts lecturer at the St. Petersburg State University of Technology and Design, which conveyed the spirit of Africa Day with his poignant portrait of an Abyssinian girl.
TITLE: Political pop
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Chumbawumba is a punk band that does not really play punk rock.
The British band combines, amazingly, anarchist ideas and pop harmonies and cites The Beatles as an influence. Formed in a squat in Leeds, northern England, as part of an anarcho-punk movement in 1984, the band has attacked the establishment, show business and the media with their riotous songs, famously threw a jug of iced water on a British deputy prime minister at the Brit Awards ceremony and has enjoyed international chart success with hit single "Tubthumping."
Chumbawamba, which performed for 20 minutes at a Moscow festival in 2003, will make its full-length St. Petersburg debut, performing as a five-piece acoustic band this week.
Speaking to The St. Petersburg Times by phone last week, the band's singer and trumpet player Jude Abbot opened the conversation by claiming that Chumbawamba will perform Russian folk songs in St. Petersburg.
"A selection of Russian folk songs! No, I'm joking," she said. "We're performing acoustically at the moment, so its not a big rock and roll show. It's a mix of songs, some old Chumbawamba songs, some new ones, some English radical folk songs. But it's acoustic. Acoustic guitars, voices, a little bit of trumpet, accordion, a bit more folk music."
The "Frequently Asked Questions" on Chumbawamba's web site describe the band's music in the following way: "Punk. Always. Not 'punk-rock' punk. Thus we can encompass folk, doo-wop, a cappella, techno, trip-hop, pop, emo, Frutiger, Amarillo, Geneva, Helvetica and Times bold."
"It's people's expectations; it's certain words that can drop certain associations," Abbot said.
"If you say 'anarchist,' people immediately think 'punk rock,' and actually that doesn't have to be the case. Those categories are broader than people give them credit for, I think.
Chumbawamba's most recent album, 2004's "Un," features Latin influences and a Russian-style choir arrangement while using folk instruments from such countries as Poland and China.
"I think that's the sort of folky direction we are going in now. It's been hinted at on some of the earlier albums, but it's always been there," Abbot said.
Originally from near London but now living in the north with the rest of Chumbawamba, Abbot calls herself the "baby of the band," having joined it in 1996.
She joined just before the band notoriously signed to EMI and scored an international hit with "Tubthumping."
"Soon after I joined we had a hit and 18 months of madness associated with that," she said, adding that the band gained access to the media as a result of the hit record and were then able to express their views to a larger audience. Abbot said it is possible to write pop songs and still be relevant as uncompromised social thinkers.
"We write songs about things that are going out in the world, the things you want to write songs about, really," Abbot said. "There are enough people writing love songs, so we write people's stories, what is happening and that kind of thing. We've always done that, so people describe what we do as political, but we're also complete lovers of pop music, so it's presented in a kind of pop music style.
"I think people expect political songs to sound either like early Bob Dylan or like Rage Against the Machine, kind of very aggressive, and we don't do either of those. We use the medium of pop music, with its lovely choruses and harmonies, all those things. So we're doing what we like doing. It's sweet on the outside and hard in the middle."
Addressing Chumbawamba's influences, Abbot immediately names The Beatles.
"Obviously bands like The Beatles were a massive influence, a massive inspiration, people we admired. If you think about The Beatles, every album they did was different, unlike a lot of bands where every album they do is the same. We try and change. Between us likes and influences diverge massively. I might be listening to Public Enemy one minute and Joni Mitchell the next. It's pretty broad."
Asked her opinion of contemporary Abbot said it sounds unoriginal.
"The trouble with me is as I'm getting old, everything I hear I think it sounds like something else. It sounds like such and such in the 1970s. I am sure if I were 23 rather than 43, and you asked me that, I would probably say that the music scene is very exciting. Well, you asked me and I think it's all derivative."
The way Chumbawamba operates - for instance, crediting songs to the whole band rather than to one or two members - makes it different from many other bands, said Abbot.
"I think it's different from a lot of bands in lots of ways, mainly to do with how we organize ourselves. We're keeping control of it as much as we can, from running the web site to designing the T-shirts. We keep our hand in the whole process, not just how we just play songs and sing them."
The band's stance is perhaps idealistic in cynical times, a throwback to an earlier period when people thought music could change the world.
"There's the whole heap of things that can change the world and we're one tiny part of that," Abbot said.
"I think we see ourselves as a big community out there that is made up of artists, activists, writers, teachers, whatever, all sorts of different people, and everybody is doing a little bit. We are not saying, 'Our music will change the world,' we are saying we're part of a mass of people who are trying to do that."
Abbot said, the band's political activities are mostly confined in its music, sometimes playing a concert for a cause or donating a track to a benefit CD.
However, sometimes the band is capable of more direct action as it was at the Brit Awards in 1998, when Chumbawamba vocalist Danbert Nobacon poured a jug of water over British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, saying "this is for the Liverpool dockers."
"It was a kind of political action, if you like, but it was a spur-of-the-moment, not-to-be-missed opportunity, really," Abbot said.
Chumbawamba have been shechuled to perform at Platforma on Sunday but as this paper went to press it appeared that the concert might not be happening at all. Call the venue on Tel: 314 1104 before going. www.chumba.com
TITLE: Eno's evolution
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A new album by British music legend Brian Eno, to be released in Russia a week before the rest of the world on Monday, ends with a controversial new song written from the point of view of a Palestinian suicide bomber.
Eno, presenting his forthcoming solo album at the Russian Museum's Marble Palace last Saturday, said "Bone Bomb" was inspired by a newspaper story about a Palestinian girl who becomes a suicide bomber. On the same page there was an article by a Israeli doctor who explained that wounds from the scenes of suicide bombs are often caused by tiny fragments of the bomber's bones, which embed themselves like shrapnel in the people around.
"These articles were on the same page, and I thought what a combination of tragedies these represent, so I wrote the song with words from the articles," Eno said.
"Bone Bomb," sung by Aylie Cooke, is the last song on "Another Day on Earth," which has an exclusive early release date in Russia.
Eno made the gesture for "educational" reasons, as he explained in a phone interview with The St. Petersburg Times prior to his visit.
He said he wanted to fly some British journalists to St. Petersburg for the event so they could see the city with their own eyes. Eno spent six months in St. Petersburg in 1997 and owns an appartment here.
During last week's visit to St. Petersburg, Eno also appeared with Algerian-French singer Rachid Taha in a rare stage performance for the noted producer and musician.
Eno's first solo album in years is a collection of 11 tracks in which he combines traditional pop song structures and instrumental soundscapes that one usually expects from the ambient pioneer.
Eno said he made "Bone Bomb" the final track on the album because it's emotionally brutal and he did not want to follow the style of television news where horrible news is often closed with a lighter, life-asserting story of a "cat that was saved," for example, from up a tree.
"The main reason that I put it at the end of the album was because nothing can follow it," he said.
For the album's Marble Palace presentation Eno brought British novelist and cultural commentator Michael Bracewell, who started the event by leading a conversation with Eno in front of a 50-strong audience of journalists and guests from the local music and art scenes.
Also present were several British journalists and photographers invited by Eno for the occasion. The journalists were invited to ask their questions after the conversation with Bracewell, who last year published "Roxyism," a book about the art rock group Roxy Music that Eno was a member of in 1971-73.
The Marble Palace's imperial-style White Hall complete with gilt, moldings, double-headed eagles and chandeliers, is the same room where Eno had held his art installation "Lightness" in November 1997. At that time it was a semi-destroyed black-walled room in desperate need of renovation.
Bracewell started the conversation with a question about the influence of Russian art.
Eno, who studied to be a painter in Bristol in the 1960s before becoming a musician, said he was inspired by Russian revolutionary art of the early 20th century, and that painters then believed that art could change and renew society.
"In fact the first painting I did was of Leon Trotsky, which was a copy of a painting by Lyubov Popova, which is actually in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow," he said. "It's one of her black, red and white compositions."
Eno's fascination with Russia is seen in his bold decision to release an important record here before it is available in the West. Usually the reverse is true.
Eno, 57, also explained why he chose to release an album of songs after having made many instrumental, ambient records.
"I suppose what started to happen [is that] I've lost interest in making only instrumental music because it started to seem too easy to do," he said. "Essentially you can buy a keyboard and hold down one key and have a whole career."
According to Eno, "Another Day on Earth" began with a song called "And Then So Clear" that he said he wrote six years ago before playing the track to the audience at the Marble Palace.
"I came up with that song one day. In one day, actually, I pretty much finished it," Eno said. "And I liked it so much, and I thought, how I am going release this song, and I thought, I have to write some others, and actually this record is built around this one song."
On the track Eno's voice was changed by a technician to sound "sexless," and throughout the album he kept experimenting with the sound of the human voice.
Eno said he was conscious about bringing pop song structures and electronic music together on the album because for the past 10 or 15 years the British music scene has been divided into two different camps.
"There is a 'guitar-bands camp' that all sound like Talking Heads to me, and then there is a 'computer camp' which all sound as sort of derivatives of Kraftwerk. Or of me, actually," he said.
"And these two worlds are highly separate from each other. Guitar bands almost religiously don't use computers, and computer people almost religiously don't use performance."
The album has a melancholy sound that Eno attributed to his age. The mood comes from "realizing that your life is finite. You don't realize [this] when you're 23, when it seems to be endless."
Eno, who was active in elections in the U.K. last month, admitted that the album's subject matter was political.
"When you're in your 50s as I am, what are you going to write about?" Eno said.
"You're not going to write about riding in open cars with teenage girls. If you want to have subject matter which is convincing, you have to sing about your life."
TITLE: Annan Fires UN Staffer Over Oil-for-Food
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS -UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday fired a staffer for manipulating contracts under the Iraq oil-for-food program, the first dismissal to result from a U.N.-backed probe of the $64 billion humanitarian operation, a spokesman announced Wednesday.
Joseph Stephanides, a Cypriot diplomat and longtime UN staffer, was dismissed over accusations that he tainted the competitive bidding process for a company to inspect humanitarian goods entering Iraq under oil-for-food.
"Mr. Stephanides was advised accordingly yesterday and was separated from service with immediate effect," UN associate spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Reached after the announcement was made, Stephanides rejected the charges and vowed to appeal. Stephanides, who had planned to retire in September when he turns 60, has two months to appeal.
"I am very disappointed by this decision," Stephanides sad. "I look to the appeal process in the confident hope that justice will be made and I will be exonerated because I have committed no wrongdoing."
The oil-for-food program, established to help ordinary Iraqis suffering under UN sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, is the target of several corruption investigations and has become a lightning rod for critics of the United Nations.
An independent, UN-appointed inquiry led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker first detailed the allegations against Stephanides in an interim report released in February. When the report came out, senior UN officials promised to punish anyone found guilty of wrongdoing.
Stephanides, head of the UN Security Council Affairs Division, had been accused of helping Britain-based Lloyd's Register Inspection Ltd. win an inspection contract even though there was a lower bidder, France-based Bureau Veritas, Volcker's probe found.
The committee never claimed that he sought to enrich himself. Instead, it described the deeply politicized atmosphere that surrounded the awarding of contracts, and how officials were wary about giving the inspection job to Bureau Veritas because several other companies awarded contracts were also French.
Investigators detailed how Britain, one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, may have exerted pressure to help Lloyd's win the contract.
In the same report, Volcker's investigators accused two other UN staff members of wrongdoing in the program, oil-for-food chief Benon Sevan and Dileep Nair, who headed the UN's internal watchdog agency.
Under the program which ran from 1996-2003, Iraq was allowed to sell oil provided the proceeds were used primarily to buy humanitarian goods, including food and medicine.
UN action against Sevan has been suspended until Volcker's team finishes its work, Dujarric said. Sevan was accused of a "grave conflict of interest" in soliciting oil deals from Iraq.
TITLE: Federer, Nadal Go Head-to-Head in Paris
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS - Built like a boxer rather than a tennis player, Rafael Nadal is listed at 165 pounds in the annual ATP Tour media guide but actually weighs nearly 190.
Just a growing boy, the Mallorcan says his muscular physique isn't the result of any secret Mediterranean diet.
"I eat just normally," Nadal says. "If you give me olives, I eat olives. Yesterday I ate Haagen-Dazs ice cream. I don't have anything out of the ordinary."
On Friday, the French Open will determine whether olives and ice cream are the recipe for beating Roger Federer.
Nadal and Federer meet in a semifinal showdown touted as the match of the tournament, if not the year. It features the game's top two players in peak form: Federer, entrenched at No. 1 and bidding to complete a career Grand Slam at age 23; and Nadal, the teen sensation who has won five tournaments this year and emerged as the biggest threat to Federer's reign.
"This is a match where I'd like to have fun," said Nadal, who turns 19 Friday. "I think I might be able to win. At least that's what I'm going to go for."
The other semifinal features two first-time Grand Slam semifinalists: unseeded Argentine Mariano Puerta and No. 12 Nikolay Davydenko of Russia.
Puerta, back on the tour following a nine-month drug suspension, advanced Wednesday by beating compatriot Guillermo Canas 6-2 3-6 1-6 6-3 6-4. Davydenko edged No. 15 Tommy Robredo 3-6 6-1 6-2 4-6 6-4.
Federer-Nadal is a rematch of the final in Key Biscayne, when Nadal took the first two sets, led 4-1 in the third and was twice two points from victory before Federer rallied to win.
"In the end, I felt I was the fitter player," Federer said. "He looked extremely tired in the fifth, and that kind of surprised me."
Maybe it was the Haagen-Dazs. But that final took place two months ago on a hardcourt, and Nadal has since won 22 consecutive matches, all on clay.
The slow, slick surface supposedly gives an attacking player like Federer the most trouble, and a clay championship is the lone gap in his Grand Slam resume. Andre Agassi is the only champion still playing to win all four major titles.
"That would be definitely a dream come true," Federer said. "At 23, it would be quite something."
He smiled and added, "I'm not quite there yet, so just relax."
The reigning Wimbledon and U.S. Open champion has shown this spring that he can play on clay. He has won 28 consecutive sets on the surface, including 15 in Paris.
That's a big improvement from 2002-04, when Federer won just two of five matches at Roland Garros, twice losing in the opening round.
"I think it's purely the experience, the big matches, the big occasions I've faced," he said. "It's just overall believing more in my game - not only my clay-court game, my game in total."
Many regard the No. 4-seeded Nadal as the favorite, even though he's playing in his first Grand Slam semifinal. The left-hander has delighted crowds at Roland Garros with his charisma, creativity and athleticism.
In the quarterfinals against David Ferrer, he brought fans to their feet by whipping a running forehand winner down the line into the corner - an improbable shot reminiscent of Pete Sampras. Later in the same game, Nadal hit virtually the same shot again, this time braking to avoid tumbling into the first row of seats.
Federer's game is less flashy, but more stylish. He has already drawn comparisons to the game's greatest players, and he's intent on doing what Sampras, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Stefan Edberg and Boris Becker never did: win the French Open.
"He has been playing very well," Nadal said. "He hasn't lost a single set, has he? Well, we'll go for him."
TITLE: Henin-Hardenne Advances Easily to French Open Final
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: PARIS - Justine Henin-Hardenne moved smoothly into the French Open final with an impressive 6-2 6-3 win over Russian Nadia Petrova on Thursday.
The Belgian former world No. 1, gunning for her second title at Roland Garros, looked in ominously good form as she clinched victory against her error-strewn opponent in just 68 minutes.
Seventh-seeded Petrova, who also lost in the semifinal here two years ago, briefly threatened to make a match of it when she broke Henin-Hardenne in her first service game.
The fast conditions were more suited to Henin, however, and her ferocious backhand constantly had Petrova scrambling to stay in the rallies.
Henin, the No. 10 seed, broke in the seventh game of the second set and raised her arms in triumph two games later when Petrova shanked a forehand over the baseline.
Henin, who has now chalked up 23 consecutive victories, will play Mary Pierce or Elena Likhovtseva in Saturday's final.
"I have to stay focused and concentrate on my own game, whoever I play next," she told reporters.
"I was very determined, I was patient and I was aggressive when I needed to be. I'm very satisfied. I'm getting a bit tired, but I keep winning and that's a good feeling.
"It would be a good conclusion for me to finish the claycourt season undefeated.
"I have lots of memories and emotions from here. This is a bit like home."
The other semifinal is between another Russian, Yelena Likhovtseva, and Frenchwoman Mary Pierce.
Missing from the group are the Williams sisters, two-time runner-up Kim Clijsters, top-ranked Lindsay Davenport, Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova, Frenchwoman Amelie Mauresmo and last year's finalists, winner Anastasia Myskina and runner-up Yelena Dementyeva.
Among the top contenders at the start of the two weeks, only Henin-Hardenne successfully navigated the first five rounds.
"I would be surprised if she didn't win it," said Sharapova, who lost to Henin-Hardenne in the quarterfinals. "If she keeps her level up, she has a great chance."
Henin-Hardenne's play has steadily improved in Paris despite some rocky moments.
(Reuters, AP)