SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1254 (20), Friday, March 16, 2007
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TITLE: Klebnikov Trial Stalled By Suspect
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A suspect in the murder of Forbes Russia editor Paul Klebnikov failed to show up in court Wednesday, raising doubts he would ever resurface and derailing the high-profile case.
It was the second time that Kazbek Dukuzov, who is 32 or 33, neglected to turn up at the Moscow City Court. Dukuzov missed a February hearing.
“This criminal case has been delayed indefinitely, and it won’t proceed until Dukuzov has been found and arrested,” court spokeswoman Anna Usachyova told reporters outside the courtroom in the Preobrazhensky district.
Dukuzov’s absence was met with concern and anger by Klebnikov family members who worry whether justice will be served. Klebnikov is just one of many journalists who have been killed during President Vladimir Putin’s tenure; very few of those cases have been successfully prosecuted.
“This is a test case for all to see how committed the Russian government truly is to solving this case,” Michael Klebnikov, brother of the slain journalist, said in an e-mailed statement. “Concrete actions are needed more than words. People will judge results.”
Richard Behar, the investigative journalist who heads Project Klebnikov, a global media alliance formed to shed light on the Klebnikov case and those of other slain journalists in Russia, said: “In my view, it’s doubtful that Russian law enforcement will locate the missing defendant, when they have not been able to even make arrests in the vast majority of cases involving the murders of reporters.”
Behar added: “To me, it’s also astounding that Russia is still refusing the offers from other governments to assist in the case. Russian officials concede that their judiciary is weak and not working well, so why not accept help? What’s the harm? That said, it remains to be seen if the U.S. government will use all its influence to see that justice is done, especially regarding the ultimate authorship of Paul’s murder.”
Klebnikov, 41, was gunned down in Moscow on July 9, 2004.
Wednesday’s court session had been set aside for selecting a jury.
Dukuzov and his suspected accomplice, Musa Vakhayev, were acquitted by the city court last May in the Klebnikov killing, but the Supreme Court overturned that ruling in November.
Vakhayev’s lawyer, Vladimir Gorulkov, predicted that Dukuzov would now be tried in a separate case, presumably paving the way for the court to move forward with Vakhayev and notary Fail Sadretdinov.
Sadretdinov is now being tried in a separate case — the attempted killing of Moscow realtor Alexei Pichugin. 
Dukuzov and Vakhayev are suspected of helping Sadretdinov in the failed attack.
The same jury that is hearing the Klebnikov case — involving Dukuzov and Vakhayev — is also hearing the Sadretdinov case.
On Wednesday, Ruslan Koblev, Sadretdinov’s lawyer, said Dukuzov was in hospital in Chechnya.
Vakhayev was forced to sign a court statement Wednesday saying he would not leave Moscow, Gorulkov said.
On Thursday, Gorulkov said, he would file an appeal to the Supreme Court saying his client should not be barred from leaving the city.
“They didn’t have any right to order that Vakhayev be prevented from leaving,” Gorulkov said. “Not only did he show, but he’s also sick and has a temperature.”

TITLE: Putin Moves to Replace Elections Chief
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck and Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — Long-serving Central Elections Commission chairman Alexander Veshnyakov, who has criticized Kremlin-backed election laws and political tactics, lost his job Tuesday, after President Vladimir Putin chose not to renominate him for the post.
On Tuesday, Putin named five members who will sit on the commission during the December State Duma elections and the March 2008 presidential election. Veshnyakov, whose four-year term is set to expire, was notably absent.
Commission members and political analysts agreed that Veshnyakov’s criticism of new laws eliminating the “against all” option on ballots and raising the bar for parties to run candidates, among other measures, was the likely reason for his dismissal.
“Maybe the Kremlin wants the new commission chief to be more ruthless about making political decisions or, alternatively, to stay out of politics altogether and just deal with the logistics of voting,” said Igor Borisov, one of the new commission members.
The Kremlin said the commission simply needed new blood, a Kremlin source told Interfax. The source added that Veshnyakov deserved “the highest possible praise” for the work he had done.
The commission is composed of 15 members — five of whom are chosen by the president, five by the State Duma and five by the Federation Council. The State Duma also named commission members Tuesday.
After the dust had settled, the elections commission had six new members. Four of those new members came from the president; two were tapped by the Duma. 
The remaining nine members currently sit on the panel.
The chairman is chosen by fellow commission members.
Former commission chairman Alexander Ivanchenko told Interfax the commission may tap Federation Council member Stanislav Vavilov as its next chairman.
The outgoing commission is scheduled to hold its last session March 26, Borisov said. He added that the new commission might hold its first session on the same day, at which time it would elect a new chairman and other senior officers.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Veshnyakov said that he believed that his departure marked the establishment of an “unwritten rule” that CEC chairmen would not serve more than two terms. He said that he had already received three offers of new positions from political parties, but that “this is the least likely option.”
Veshnyakov, who became commission chief in 1999, has presided over a period in which key democratic institutions have been rolled back, democratic activists say.
Under Putin, who took office Jan. 1, 2000, gubernatorial elections have been scrapped; smaller parties have been marginalized; and the Kremlin has created two pro-Kremlin parties, United Russia and A Just Russia. 
In a sign of United Russia’s strength, the party won 13 out of 14 regional parliamentary elections Sunday. The party also maintains an iron lock on the Duma.
Borisov speculated that one reason for Veshnyakov’s ouster may be his criticism last summer of United Russia-backed election measures — including elimination of a minimum-turnout requirement and provisions making it easier to disqualify candidates. “Undesirable candidates could always be removed from the ballot using this law, and the courts are not likely to be of much help,” he warned in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio in July.
Indeed, many opposition candidates were barred from running in Sunday’s elections due to technicalities in the election law. Parties that saw their candidates sidelined included Yabloko, which was prevented from running candidates in St. Petersburg. The party appealed their case all the way to the Supreme Court, but the court ultimately shot down Yabloko’s request to be on the ballot.
Yabloko officials insist they were cut out of the political process because they oppose construction of a Gazprom skyscraper in St. Petersburg.
While Veshnyakov supported barring Yabloko from running candidates in St. Petersburg, he was not always happy to see other parties banned from taking part, Borisov said.
With presidential elections — and the question of Putin’s predecessor — to be decided next year, the Kremlin wants a “less autonomous” elections chief, said Alexei Makarkin, a political analyst with the Center for Political Technologies.
“He is a relatively independent political figure with certain ambitions,” Makarkin said. “The upcoming presidential elections will be difficult, and the Kremlin needs someone less ambitious.”
Political opposition leaders were dismissive of suggestions that Veshnyakov was fired for being too liberal-minded.
“During Veshnyakov’s tenure elections simply ceased to exist,” Yabloko head Grigory Yavlinsky said. “He did his job by executing every order he was given by Putin. It really makes no difference who will replace him.”
Independent Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov concurred, saying Veshnyakov is “directly responsible for helping to destroy democracy in this country.”
“The fact that he spoke critically two or three times does not make him a liberal,” Ryzhkov added. “He fulfilled his mission, and now he will probably be given some government post or sent off to be ambassador somewhere.”
When Veshnyakov was unanimously named commission chairman toward the end of President Boris Yeltsin’s administration, analysts described his appointment as a boon for democracy and clean government.
Throughout much of the 1990s, elections were widely viewed as corrupt.
Under chairman Nikolai Ryabov, a 1993 constitutional plebiscite and the 1996 presidential election were marred with allegations of fraud.
After the 1996 election, Ryabov was removed from his post and made ambassador to the Czech Republic. He was replaced by Ivanchenko. While Ivanchenko was viewed as less of a stooge than Ryabov, he was criticized for not cracking down on regional election controversies.
Duma Deputy Alexander Babakov of A Just Russia said Tuesday that the new pro-Kremlin party would welcome Veshnyakov into its ranks, although, he added, party leaders would have to have a say. “The party is interested in these kinds of professional people,” Babakov said, Interfax reported.

TITLE: 5-Year Jail Term for Hermitage Thief
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A 55-year-old local part-time history teacher was sentenced on Thursday to five years in prison for his involvement in thefts at the State Hermitage Museum.
Nikolai Zavadsky, who had admitted to taking part in a criminal scheme involving his late wife, Hermitage Museum curator Larisa Zavadskaya, was also ordered to pay 7,388,000 rubles ($283,000) in damages to the Hermitage.
The massive theft of 221 artifacts, including jewelry, enamels, and other artifacts worth an estimated $5 million was reported last summer during an inventory that had begun in October 2005. The court proved Zavadsky guilty of having stolen 77 of the artworks.
The stolen items included a selection of medieval and 19th-century Russian jewelry, silverware and enameled objects.
During the trial, Zavadsky confessed to having taken the 77 artworks to antique shops to sell while being aware that they came from the Hermitage. He also blamed his late wife, stating that she was the mastermind behind the thefts.
Larisa Zavadskaya died of a heart attack at her desk in October just as an inspection of her department got underway that eventually exposed the absence of the works. 
During the court case, Zavadsky maintained he was selling the stolen goods under pressure from his wife who had “a forceful personality.”
Zavadsky remains the only person convicted in the case. The investigators detained several suspects, including local antiques dealer Maxim Shepel, but released them without charge. It was not established whether Larisa Zavadskaya had had any protectors at a higher level in the museum. 
Thirty-one items recovered by the police have been returned to the museum. The most valuable of the stolen artworks, a 19th-century icon named “The Assembly of All Saints,” worth about $200,000, was recovered on Aug. 3, in a garbage can outside 21 Ulitsa Ryleyeva following an anonymous call to police. 
Most of the stolen items that were recovered all surfaced in a similar manner, mainly in August and September, 2006. The Hermitage’s management have repeatedly appealed to collectors and antique shop owners, but the recovery process has since stalled. The fate of the other stolen artifacts remains unknown.
Despite the value of the goods stolen, the Zavadskys shared two rooms in a communal apartment in a dilapidating building on Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt in central St. Petersburg.
Zavadsky’s lawyer Lyudmila Mikhailova said all the money earned from selling the artifacts was spent on basic needs, like food and utilities.
Zavadsky taught part-time at the Lesgaft Physical Culture Academy and the St. Petersburg Academy for Business and Law. 
During his testimony, Zavadsky asked for a suspended sentence in order to be able to be given the opportunity to compensate for the Hermitage’s losses.
Zavadsky’s only son, Nikolai Zavadsky Jr., worked at the Hermitage from 1998 to 2004 as a forwarding agent. He pleaded not guilty and the investigation failed to prove his involvement in the thefts. The high-profile theft highlighted both the vulnerability of Russian art collections — even at the highest level of security available in the country — and the lack of transparency in the national antiques market.
Anatoly Vilkov, deputy head of the Russian Culture Preservation Board, said in August that while the percentage of solved art thefts has doubled in recent years, the numbers of undetected thefts committed by museum staff has been steadily growing. 
The director of the Hermitage Museum, Mikhail Piotrovsky, called the theft “a stab in the back,” following its discovery. 
Piotrovsky also said the avalanche of critical stories in the media that followed the discovery was part of an orchestrated campaign aimed at handing Russia’s premier museums into private hands, its goal being to create the impression that museums cannot provide adequate security.
Piotrovsky began his job as Hermitage Director in 1992 following in the footsteps of his father, Boris Piotrovsky, who occupied the prestigious post at one of the world’s richest museums for 26 years from 1964 to 1990. 
The Hermitage houses more than 3 million works of art. The collection is regularly inventoried, but because of its enormous size, many years can pass between inspections of any given department. 
The museum has only recently begun to build an electronic catalog of its vast holdings and does not have photographs or electronic images of all of them. 
The Hermitage spends about 20 million rubles ($746,000) on security each year.

TITLE: Police Move In On Anarchists
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Law enforcement authorities have carried out a number of searches in the apartments of St. Petersburg Anarchists’ League members, Fontanka.ru reported Thursday. 
One of the anarchists, Pyotr Raush, on Tuesday barricaded himself in his apartment, preventing the police from entering the premises, the St. Petersburg-based news service reported. 
According to Fontanka.ru, the police have searched the address where Raush is registered and have surrounded the house where Raush currently lives. 
“The first search happened early Tuesday morning in the appartment where I am registered,” Raush told Fontanka.ru. “My friends are living there at the moment. The police came at six in the morning, woke everyone up, and searched for something. As a result they took away a kitchen knife…On the same day they carried out a search in the apartment of one of my friends. Then they came to the apartment where I live now and from time to time have put guards outside my windows.” 
The anarchists relate the searches to a Dec. 3 fight between nationalists and antifascists, where members of each side were injured, the news service reported. The brawl took place on the corner of Ulitsa Rubinshteina and Grafsky Pereulok in central St. Petersburg. 
Raush told Fontanka that it was “appalling” that law enforcement agencies are trying to find the people responsible for the incident  — “people who attacked peaceful marchers” — among those who were the victims of the nationalists themselves. 
“Attacks on antifascists are not investigated anyhow, but when one of the right-wing radicals got injured, they try to pin this on our comrades,” he said.

TITLE: New Holland Prize
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — Designs for the reconstruction of New Holland Island have won first prize in the commercial and leisure category at the MIPIM real estate exhibition in Cannes, Interfax reported.
It is the first time a Russian project has won a prize at the exhibition.
The designs for the island, located between the Moika River and Kryukov and Admiralteisky canals, were presented at the exhibition by the British architect Sir Norman Foster and ST Novaya Gollandiya, the firm selected to carry out the reconstruction works.
The plans envisage the construction of a Palace of Festivals with an area of 26,000 square meters and an amphitheater with a capacity for 4,000 spectators. The project also comprises an 18,000-square meter hotel and shopping complex.

TITLE: Theater To Renovate Historic Site
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One of St. Petersburg’s leading theater companies has found a way to turn a gift from President Vladimir Putin into a second performance space, it said Wednesday, unveiling a $35.6 million redevelopment plan for a unique 19th-century building on Kamenny Island. 
The Bolshoi Drama Theater was given the former Letny Kamennoostrovsky Theater by the Russian president in October 2005 soon after the theater’s artistic director Kirill Lavrov celebrated his 80th birthday.
Lavrov called the gift “luxurious” but said it was difficult to decide how to put the decayed building, set in parkland to the north of the city center, to use.
“A gift is a gift — it is awkward to give it back. But, on the other hand, it was unclear how we could use it,” Lavrov said, pointing out that the 1,200 square-meter theater could not possibly accommodate modern theater equipment and “other, what they call now, ‘infrastructure’.”
But designers have found an ambitious solution by  creating large underground premises that almost double the space available. The new theater will have 392 seats.
Built in 1827, the Letny (Summer) Theater was initially constructed as an attempt to attract crowds spending their summers outside of the city, as Kamenny Island then was. But due to frequent floods and the high level of ground water, the original wooden building designed by Smaragd Shustov had to be re-built as early as 1844. 
The current renovation aims to recreate the 1844 design. However there are no original technical drawings available, the head of City Hall’s Committee for the Preservation and Protection of Architectural Monuments Vera Dementyeva said Wednesday.
“[The new design] will try to repeat the interiors of 1844, but we can not guarantee for sure that the copy will be 100 percent accurate as we only have lists of inventories to guide us,” Dementyeva said. The rennovation is due to be complete in December 2008.
With the original premises of the BDT on the Fontanka in downtown St. Petersburg in need of urgent renovation, Lavrov denied that the repair of the Kamennoostrovsky Theater was being undertaken in order to prepare a new home for the historic troupe.
“It’s true that our theater, our home, is currently in a state of emergency. But whether [the renovation] will be done in separate stages, or we will close our doors completely for three years and will move to Kamenny Island?— we still don’t know. This will depend on the Agency on Culture and Cinematography,” Lavrov said, referring to the government agency that funds state-run  theater companies.

TITLE: Russia’s Richest Man Announces Divorce
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Zhdannikov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW  — The ex-wife of Russia’s richest man Roman Abramovich will not be the world’s wealthiest divorcee but former air hostess Irina will still get $300 million from the split, a newspaper reported on Thursday.
Vedomosti business daily quoted sources close to Abramovich as saying Irina, who met Roman aboard a plane flying to Germany in 1990, will get less than two percent of his $18.7 billion fortune after their 16-year marriage.
Abramovich’s spokesman John Mann declined to comment.
British newspapers had speculated that Irina, 39, might get half the fortune following confirmation of the split and reports that Abramovich had been seen with young Russian model Darya Zhukova, the ex-girlfriend of Russian tennis star Marat Safin.
“Two acquaintances of Abramovich say that under an amicable agreement she will get substantially less — $300 million,” Vedomosti said on Thursday.
“One (acquaintance) has noted that this sum is the total, and includes cash and tangible assets such as a house in Britain, a house near Moscow, a yacht and a plane.”
The $300 million settlement is dwarfed by the $1.7 billion that Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of U.S. News Corp, paid his ex-wife Anna in 1999 after a 32-year marriage.
The Abramoviches issued a statement on Wednesday saying Roman’s corporate interests — which include Britain’s Chelsea Football Club and a stake in Russian steel giant Evraz — would not be affected by the divoce settlement.
It said the divorce was agreed in Russia on a consensual basis and that the pair had arranged a financial settlement which included provision for their five children.
Under the Russian law, a 50/50 split of wealth accrued during the marriage is normal but Vedomosti said that apart from the $300 million payment Abramovich had only agreed to fully fund his children’s needs.
Abramovich, an orphan, split from his first wife, Olga, in 1990 and married Irina in 1991.
The 40-year-old billionaire, who built his fortune mostly from oil and aluminum during the chaos that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, has become the poster boy for Russia’s oligarchs, known for savvy business deals and sumptuous living.
Listed by Forbes magazine as the world’s 16th richest person, he is a source of fascination for Britain’s tabloid newspapers, who regularly splash photos of him and his former wife.
Top-selling Russian daily tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda’s Thursday coverage of the divorce ran to four pages. It included what it said was a list of Abramovich’s property and photographs of Zhukova, one with ex-boyfriend Safin and one with Abramovich.
The list includes two Boeing planes worth $180 million, three yachts worth more than $400 million and houses, castles and hotels in Britain and France worth over $1 billion.
Irina could have easily beaten Anna Murdoch’s record, but Vedomosti said she had not tried to win a slice of Abramovich’s holdings.

TITLE: HIV Compensation
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Central District Court in Voronezh has awarded a woman who contracted HIV in a blood transfusion 3.5 million rubles (nearly $134,000) in damages, a court spokesman told Interfax on Wednesday.
The woman, whose name has not been made public, filed suit last November against the regional health department and the local blood bank seeking 10 million rubles in damages, said the woman’s lawyer, Valery Koltsov, Itar-Tass reported.
The woman was infected in the spring of 2005 in a plasma transfusion at the Zheleznodorozhny maternity clinic in Voronezh, though she was diagnosed only six months later.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Port Exports</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Port Primorsk in the Leningrad Oblast increased oil exports by 23 percent in the first two months of 2007 compared to the same period last year, Interfax reported Tuesday.
Spetsmornefteport Primorsk, a subsidiary of AK Transneft, exported over 12 million tons of oil. The port served 248 ships. Last year the company exported about 66 million tons of oil — a 15 percent increase on 2005 figures.

<b>Eurosib Sales</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Eurosib group of companies increased sales by 12 percent last year up to $685?million, Interfax reported Thursday.
The company transported over 17.3 million tons of freight earning $469?million. Car business provided sales worth $179 million — a 37.6 percent increase on 2005 figures.?Eurosib turnover totaled $776 million in 2006. In car business turnover reached $215 million. The group invested $86.3 million into its car business last year. The group also includes construction companies and property management companies.

<b>TGK Bonds</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Profitability of TGK-1 bonds is expected at 7.9 percent to 8.1 percent a year, Interfax reported Thursday, citing a report from Raiffeisenbank Austria, an organizer of the issue.
TGK-1 plans to start floating the bonds, worth a total of four billion rubles ($153 million), on March 20. The bonds will be in circulation for seven years.

<b>Port Turnover</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Sea Port of St. Petersburg increased freight turnover by 35 percent in January-February compared to the same period last year, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The port processed 7.9 million tons of freight. Shipment of coal increased by 2.5 times up to 332,000 tons, crops — by 73 percent up to 80,100 tons and mineral fertilizers — by 37 percent up to 780,700 tons. Container freights increased by 23 percent up to 2.45 million tons. The port served 1,897 ships.

<b>Makromir Bond</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Federal Service for Financial Markets has registered a one billion ruble bond issue by Makromir-Finance, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Makromir operates in the trade real estate market. The bonds will be in circulation for 1820 days.

<b>Telecom Sale</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia sold a 3.3 percent stake in North-West Telecom, the fixed-line operator for St. Petersburg’s Leningrad region, for 1.5 billion rubles ($59 million). The stock rose 3.8 percent.
The Russian Federal Property Fund will sell 37.7 million shares at 40.9 rubles each to Moscow-based brokerage Metropol, the fund said in an e-mailed statement Thursday. Metropol won the auction by offering 420 million rubles more than the starting price, the fund said.
North-West Telecom, controlled by national fixed-line operator Svyazinvest, has more than 4 million subscribers.
The company’s shares rose 1.5 rubles to 40.90 rubles on the Micex Index.

TITLE: Baltika Bags    Barrel Full Of Profit
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW  — Baltika Breweries, Russia’s largest beer company, said profit surged 42 percent to a record last year after the company acquired three smaller rivals.
Net income climbed to 330.9 million euros ($436 million), the St. Petersburg-based company said in a statement handed out before a news conference in Moscow on Thursday. Sales advanced to 1.74 billion euros, Baltika said, without giving a comparative sum.
Earnings before interest and taxes were 427.1 million euros.
Baltika, jointly owned by Carlsberg A/S and Scottish & Newcastle Plc, completed takeovers of brewers Pikra, Vena and Yarpivo last year. The company, which controls 36 percent of Russia’s beer market, owns 10 plants in nine Russian regions.

TITLE: Fund to Stimulate Risky High-Tech Ventures
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade has announced an open tender for managing companies to take over asset management in a Regional Venture Fund. The fund is being created to invest into relatively high-risk scientific and technological ventures, the committee press service said Wednesday in a statement.
The fund is expected to accumulate a total of 400 million rubles ($15.4 million) in assets. The funds are to be invested into risky start-ups and small scientific and technical companies. The federal and city budgets have each allotted 100 million rubles to the fund. The authorities expect that the managing company will raise the remaining 200 million rubles from private investors.
“The main problem for small innovative enterprises is a lack of financial resources and difficulties in realizing their scientific and technological know-how,” said Dmitry Bykov, deputy chairman of the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade.
To stimulate small innovative companies and provide favorable conditions for their development, the Russian government and the Ministry for Economic Development last year created a fund for venture investment into small scientific and technological enterprises in St. Petersburg. Managing companies willing to put assets in trust management could file applications up until March 30.
“Over 3,000 small high-tech enterprises are operating in the city. They include instrument-makers, computer engineering companies and producers of medical equipment. Small industrial production enterprises (over 11,000 firms in the city) also face the problem of how to increase their competitiveness and progress to innovative development,” Bykov said.
“Venture investment is a necessary condition for innovative activities. The lack of accessible financial resources for small innovative enterprises blocks the development of science, technology and production, which together form one of the most promising sectors of the modern economy,” he said.
Venture investors supply funds to small innovative companies who have been refused them by other financial institutions because of the high risk involved and the absence of collateral.
“St. Petersburg is a multifunctional center with a diversified economy which has huge potential for investment and opportunities for innovative development. In the scientific sphere, which is widely represented in St. Petersburg, small business is an important factor for innovative development. Creation of this fund will contribute to the development of small business but also to the development of the city economy,” Bykov said.
“Venture investment is rather an interesting thing. We still do not know which companies will be financed. Institutes of scientific research and venture projects based on new technologies are those most likely to be chosen. The returns from such projects could be very high. Profitability could reach 100 percent and even 1000 percent,” said Mikhail Zak, head of the analytical department at Veles Capital investment company.
However, he considered assets of 400 million rubles to be too little for such a fund. “For large investors such amounts are insignificant,” Zak said.
He was, however, positive about the fact that state funds will be mixed with private assets and did not see any threat of state interference in such an industry.
“It is more likely to be an advantage. Over the last few years there has been steady cooperation between state and business. At the moment investors consider state participation as a guarantee of stability,” Zak said.
“An investment fund for science-tech industry should be interesting to private investors. The risks are high but the returns could also be high. Such funds could attract companies working with the long-term in mind,” said Vladimir Ufnarovsky, executive director of Lanit-Tercom, a telecom and software solutions provider.
“The higher the risk — the higher, potentially, the return. But state participation automatically results in lower risks and, consequently, lower returns. It’s hard to say how it will affect potential investors. Venture investment is one of the most risky types of investment. Less profit could scare off investors,” Ufnarovsky said.
Ufnarovsky indicated that a number of venture funds operate in Tatarstan and Krasnoyarsky Krai investing into nano-technologies, mobile solutions and alternative energy sources. A similar venture fund for small companies operates in Moscow.
“The authorities in Saratovskaya Oblast have recently announced a tender for managing companies. All this is proof of the serious intentions of the state and private investors. The investors that risk now will eventually get fair profit,” he said.

TITLE: X5 Expects Food Market To Top $400 Billion in 5 Years
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — X5 Retail Group NV, Russia’s largest supermarket chain, expects the country’s food market to surpass $400 billion within five years as economic growth lifts incomes and retailers expand beyond the county’s main cities.
Retail food sales will jump 74 percent to $405 billion in 2011 from $233 billion last year, Moscow-based X5, which is controlled by billionaire Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group, said Thursday in a presentation to investors.
The 2011 forecast includes $146 billion of “official’’ sales and $87 billion in the “grey market,’’ X5 said. The company had a 22 percent share of the national market last year with sales of $3.49 billion, followed by German competitor Metro AG and Krasnodar, Russia-based Magnit with 16 percent each, according to the presentation.
Russia’s oil-fueled economy is expanding for a ninth straight year, and the boom will continue for at least five more years, according to X5. The company expects Russian retail food sales to grow 12 percent a year on average through 2011 and the top 10 chains to post average revenue growth of 42 percent as they buy smaller rivals and consolidate the industry.
The grocer said it will spend at least $700 million to open 450 new stores this year and develop a superstore format, with the aim of “massive roll-out starting from 2009.’’

TITLE: Trans-Balkan Oil Deal Sealed
AUTHOR: By Karolos Grohmann
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ATHENS — Greece, Russia and Bulgaria sealed on Thursday a long-awaited deal to build a trans-Balkan pipeline that will pump cheap crude to the Mediterranean and consolidate Russia’s influence in the European energy market. 
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev attended the signing of the deal that ended almost 15 years of negotiations on the creation of the 279-km (173-mile) pipeline. 
Once launched in 2009, the 950 million euro ($1.25 billion) link will run from the Bulgarian Black sea port of Burgas to the north Aegean port of Alexandroupolis, bypassing the congested Turkish Bosphorus Straits. It will pump 700,000 barrels per day, or 35 million tonnes of crude a year, with potential to rise to 50 million per year. 
“We concluded long-running procedures to start the operation of this project”, Putin told reporters through a Greek translator after the signing ceremony. 
“Russia’s energy potential and the geographic location of Greece and Bulgaria open up brilliant prospects of cooperation…this deal will further increase the good dialogue on the issue of energy interdependence,” Putin said. 
Since the idea was first conceived in 1993, negotiations have often seen the ambitious deal on the brink of collapse. 
Tanker delays at the Bosphorus Straits cost oil companies nearly $1.0 billion a year, and the pipeline is one of several in the making to diversify transport routes. 
“I think it will become important when it is up and running,” said Jon Levy, an analyst at the Eurasia group. 
“Generally people tend to adopt a wait and see attitude, but any additional ability to move the product is a net plus.” 

RUSSIAN INFLUENCE 
The deal will increase Moscow’s influence over the European energy market and the pipelines that deliver oil and gas, though one analyst downplayed any talk of Russian market dominance. 
“It is a bit exaggerated,” said Valery Nesterov, an energy analyst at the Troika Dialog brokerage in Moscow. 
“In Germany it’s 40 percent, it is large in Italy and some other countries, but Russia supplies only 16 percent of the total (oil) exports to Europe. Russia is not a monopoly supplier.” 
Russian oil producers Rosneft and Gazprom Neft and pipeline monopoly Transneft will now share 51 percent of the pipeline, ensuring Russia is in command. Greece and Bulgaria will share the remaining 49 percent. 
Sofia’s stake will be handled by state firms Bulgargaz and Transexportstroy, but it could sell part or all of its share to oil majors such as KazMunaiGas or Chevron. The Greek partners are Hellenic Petroleum, Latsis group and the Greek unit of Gazprom, Petroleum Gas. 
Greece hopes the project will help turn it into a regional energy hub, especially after a Turkish-Greek-Italian pipeline pumping natural gas from the Caspian Sea and the Middle East to energy-hungry Europe starts operating by early next year. 
U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said he hoped the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline would open the door to an expansion of the route operated by the Chevron-led Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which takes oil from the Caspian to the Black Sea, but he had received no promises that it would. 
“We’ve worked with our Russian colleagues and we’ve encouraged them to reach a resolution which would allow the pipeline to expand,” he told reporters in Moscow.

TITLE: Energy Stock Tumble Signals New Beginning
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian stocks sank Wednesday, led by national electricity holding company Unified Energy Systems, natural gas producer Gazprom and oil producer LUKoil.
The ruble-based Micex Index lost 2.8 percent to 1569.87 after earlier falling as much as 5.3 percent. The dollar-denominated RTS Index dropped 2.1 percent to 1779.10.
Russian stocks fell alongside European and Asian markets. The declines came after a report late Tuesday showed sub-prime mortgage delinquencies in the United States climbed to a four-year high in the fourth quarter.
“It’s a negative flavor coming from the United States with the mortgage market situation,” said Erkin Nusurov, who helps manage $120 million in equities at Raiffeisen Capital Russia. “After the recent correction on the equity market worldwide, markets have been sensitive to any negative news.”
UES fell 4.3 percent to 30.90 rubles, erasing part of the 12 percent gain in the previous three days. 
Anatoly Chubais, head of the electrical utility, checked into a Moscow hospital Tuesday after struggling with influenza for more than two weeks.
Oil and gas companies, which make up about half of the RTS Index and one-third of the Micex Index, retreated after oil prices dropped earlier in New York. Gazprom sank 2.6 percent to 253.40 rubles. Rosneft, Russia’s second-largest oil producer, fell 3.9 percent to 205.5 rubles. LUKoil fell 3 percent to 2,013.40 rubles. Alfa Bank cut its recommendation on the shares to “hold” from “buy,” citing the heavy taxation and capital expenditure plaguing the oil industry.
“Investors should face the truth: The emerging capex explosion is not a one-off event, but the beginning of a new trend,” Alfa analyst Dmitry Loukashov wrote in a report. “In the long term, Russia has no choice but to ease the oil taxation burden. However, this will take time.”
In an interview Wednesday, emerging markets investor Jim Rogers said Russian equity markets were overvalued and could burst “sooner rather than later,” revealing the skeletons in the cupboard of its “outlaw capitalism.”
“I wouldn’t put a nickel of my own money in Russia, and I wouldn’t put a nickel of your money there either,” Rogers, a long-time commodities bull, said by telephone from New York.
Bloomberg, Reuters

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Tatneft Shares Surge </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Shares in Tatneft, Russia’s sixth-largest oil producer, jumped 8 percent Thursday after UBS AG raised its stock recommendation to “buy’’ from “hold.’’
Tatneft gained 8.47 rubles to 114.24 rubles ($4.37) a share as of 1:44 p.m. on the Micex Stock Exchange in Moscow, giving the company a market value of $11 billion.
UBS raised its price estimate on the stock 7.8 percent to $5.50, saying in a report that Tatneft may increase profit from tax breaks for depleted fields and is considering a higher dividend payment this year.
Tatneft will probably realize tax savings of 13 percent on its operating profit next year, UBS said. The company may also benefit from increased reserves and output as it develops fields of bitumen, a highly viscous fuel, UBS said.

<b>Severstal Buy</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Severstal, Russia’s biggest steel producer with metal production assets in the U.S., bought Michigan’s Victory Industries Inc. to enlarge its American operations.
The steelmaker, controlled by billionaire Alexei Mordashov, plans to develop and expand Dearborn, Michigan-based Victory, which focuses on machining, welding and fabricating services, according to a statement on Moscow-based Severstal’s web site Thursday. 
Firma Stoik, a U.S. unit of Severstal, completed the transaction for an unspecified sum.

TITLE: Developing Crisis Resistance
AUTHOR: By Erik Berglof
TEXT: As another bout of risk aversion rocks the waters of international capital markets, we may be about to see who has been swimming naked as the tide goes out, to adopt Warren Buffett’s well-known phrase. It is therefore high time to assess the real sources of vulnerability in emerging markets.
By some accounts, Eastern Europe is among the riskiest regions in the emerging-market asset class. The transition region has gone through rapid opening to international capital and domestic financial liberalization. Yet while some of the macroeconomic and financial strains of this process are now becoming apparent, it is hard to believe that the region is on the verge of a financial crisis such as the one that engulfed Asia a decade ago. Strong domestic institutions and continued productivity increases will underpin further growth in most Eastern European countries.
For many markets in the eastern half of Europe, traditional macroeconomic vulnerability indicators indeed resemble those observed in the run-up to the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Rapid credit growth has fueled a consumption boom across the region and contributed to external deficits well above thresholds that would normally be considered prudent. Fiscal policy, while certainly not reckless, has on the whole failed to stem demand. Inflationary pressures persist. Joining the euro zone, Europe’s monetary goal post, continues to fade into the distant future. Should exchange-rate adjustments become necessary, private-sector balance sheets will be hit by the pervasive exposures to foreign currency-denominated credit.
Markets seem to have picked up on this. On the first day of the recent market selloff, Feb. 27, the Hungarian forint was down by 2 percent at one stage, with slightly lower declines in the Polish and Slovak currencies. The Latvian lat had already caught some of the jitters, prompting a hike in short-term interest rates. Emerging-market bond spreads have already started to widen.
A return of risk aversion should be welcomed if that leads to yields that are more in line with underlying credit quality. But the risk of overreaction is considerable and, what’s worse, the focus is on the wrong variables.
Perhaps the main lesson from the Asia crisis, as well as the 1998 Russian downturn, was that measures of institutional quality, rather than macroeconomics alone, explained which country was hit and how severely. Protection of property rights, strength of regulators, transparency of banking operations and corporate governance determined whether investors withdrew capital. Macroeconomic indicators like current account imbalances, credit growth and reserves are important, but they must be seen in their institutional context. It is in the quality of institutions and decision making that we see the most dramatic changes compared to Asia in the 1990s. In the new EU member states there is better regulation of commercial banks, the cornerstone of financial systems in emerging markets. Supervisors are making genuine efforts to contain imprudent credit growth, particularly in foreign currency. Banks’ capacity to screen credit and manage risk in assets has on the whole kept pace with the extremely rapid expansion of balance sheets.
Importantly, local-currency capital markets have developed in many countries. The rapid emergence of Russian money and bond markets over the last two years is just the most recent example of this trend. These markets provide an important alternative funding source to bank finance that is much less prone to periodic liquidity contractions. Our research shows that in all but a few countries in Eastern Europe, corporate governance and transparency continue to improve markedly. Consequently, equity markets now convey more information about enterprise-specific developments, as opposed to undifferentiated common-market events. On the whole the region now compares favorably with other emerging markets.
Just as significantly, new capital-market instruments, such as securitized or collateralized assets, have begun to transfer local risk to global markets. These instruments raise their own issues in terms of transparency and regulation, but there is no question that they allow the financial systems to support economic growth better.
Despite the events of the last couple of weeks, there should still be time to complete a large unfinished agenda of institutional reform. In particular, enforcement of existing laws and regulation need to be strengthened and sustained.
But even more progress is needed. Because at some stage the tide will turn — and when it does, it will do so quickly and without pardon.

Erik Berglof is chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. This comment appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

TITLE: A History Of Interpretation
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: A group of Germans in the Lower Saxony state legislature are trying to rescind the city of Braunschweig’s 1932 appointment of Adolf Hitler to a minor civil service post, which allowed the Austrian-born Nazi leader to gain German citizenship and ultimately to become Chancellor. The authors of the initiative say it will help reduce the stigma associated with Lower Saxony, the legal successor to the Braunschweig government.
A group of Japanese people injured in the U.S. bombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945, are suing their own government for compensation, arguing that the present government should answer for the sins of the former regime for starting the Pacific War in 1941 and failing to surrender in 1944 when Japan had clearly already lost the war.
A Polish law will come into effect in March calling for the examination of files of between 400,000 to 700,000 people for cooperating with security organs during the communist era.
Some people just don’t seem willing to let the past die. Many societies clearly prefer finding symbolic ways to settle old accounts and establish clear positions in relation to the “questionable” pages in their history to ensure that no questions remain.
The words “questionable” and “ambiguous” are, conversely, very popular when it comes to talking about the past in Russia. Even Stalin is an ambiguous figure and city streets still bear the names of the authors of Soviet repression. What’s more, the official position is that the accounts of the past have already been settled. Last fall, the country’s chief military prosecutor refused to rehabilitate Polish military officers executed in 1940 in Katyn by order of the Politburo. Courts have refused to hear an appeal of the decision by the human rights organization Memorial.
Indifference and forgetfulness are dangerous. According to a survey by the Bashkirova and Company polling agency, 46.6 percent of Russians surveyed view Stalin’s role in Russian history negatively, while 38.4 percent view his contributions in a positive light. A different study, by the FOM agency, revealed the opposite figures — 29 percent against and 47 percent in favor. It is no accident that, according to another study from Bashkirova and Partners, 41.8 percent of those surveyed said that the establishment of a new cult of personality is a possibility in Russia, 44.8 percent said they don’t believe this is the case, and 13.4 percent found the questions too difficult to answer.

This comment appeared as an editorial in Vedomosti.

TITLE: Quantum Justice
AUTHOR: Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The last two months have been marked by a number of high-profile arrests, including those of Vladivostok Mayor Vladimir Nikolayev, former Bashkortostan Senator Igor Izmestyev and millionaire Vasily Boiko. These triumphs of justice evoke mixed emotions.
The arrests bring some satisfaction. Even Primorye’s criminal elites considered Nikolayev an unsavory character. Izmestyev has been implicated as the one behind a number of grizzly murders by a group of men from Kingisepp who are in custody and awaiting trial for murder themselves. The callous nature of some of the incidents is exemplified by the case of Moscow public notary Galina Perpyolkina, who prosecutors charge Izmestyev had murdered because of what she knew about her husband’s business activities.
Boiko worked as a “black raider” in the Moscow suburbs, buying up land from poor farmers. “Black raiders” only differ from “black brokers” in that they do not kill the people they swindle. Boiko contributed to the Russian Orthodox Church and participated in Project Russia, a movement to strengthen Russia’s national character by reinstating the monarchy. Fleecing farmers, promoting autocracy and trying to defend the national character? I’m not sure these mix.
But, even though it’s hard to feel sorry for this Winnie the Pooh (Nikolayev’s nickname) when he ends up in handcuffs, it’s also harder to feel good about it when you hear the whole story. Nikolayev wasn’t arrested for what appears to be the less-than-legal way he gained control of Primorye’s major fishing company, Turnif, or on suspicion that he was involved in the murder of one of the region’s most notorious underworld figure, a man nicknamed the “Trunk.”
Nikolayev was arrested for improper use of government funds in the hiring of a private security agency. The local prosecutor’s office made much publicly of the fact that Nikolayev had hired a security agency to guard him, even though private security agencies are prohibited by law from acting as armed bodyguards, a prohibition people usually get around by hiring the agencies to provide some other service.
If, however, Nikolayev had been arrested on suspicion of murdering the underworld figure, the Trunk, this would have meant investigating the crime. But the Trunk had ties to Primorye Governor Sergei Darkin (who, for example, is married to his widow). It’s hard to see why Darkin would want to open this can of worms by having the murder investigated at all. An investigation into allegations of the improper use of a private security agency seems more convenient for everyone involved.
Izmestyev’s arrest wasn’t only preceded by the accusation of the Kingisepp gang, but also a conflict with the powerful owner of a dacha neighboring his own: President Vladimir Putin. During the course of this conflict, Izmestyev apparently irritated the president by refusing to sell his dacha at the offered price. I can’t help wondering if he would be facing murder charges if he had just sold the dacha.
And while I don’t see any point in shedding tears over Mr. Boiko and his fleecing of the farmers, the problem is that our would-be defender of Orthodoxy and monarchy had a partner — Kirill Kovalchuk, who comes from a family close to Putin, but far from the public eye. If Boiko ends up being convicted, and his powerful partner does nothing to try to get him released, what should we make of that?
In classical Newtonian physics, actions precede reactions, which have to follow from actions. In classical justice systems, the crime leads to punishment, and the punishment is a consequence of the crime. But in Russia the justice system more closely resembles the uncertainty of quantum physics. If you have committed a crime, that doesn’t necessarily mean you will be arrested and punished. If you are arrested and punished, this is not necessarily the result of crimes you have actually committed.

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: Alice’s new adventures
AUTHOR: By Victor Sonkin
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Earlier this year, the world celebrated the 175th anniversary of the birth of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known under his pen name, Lewis Carroll. Virtually anyone who loves books can tell you that Carroll is the author of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” a masterpiece of children’s literature that has been translated into more than 100 languages, including Russian.
But few people know the story of how “Alice” appeared in Russia — a fantastic tale with several twists and turns that are almost as absurd as the book itself.
“Alice” first came out in Russian nearly 130 years ago, but back then, it seemed the book would not fare well here. The anonymously translated version of 1879 was met with confusion and bewilderment. “Tiring, most boring, most confused sick delusions of a little girl”; “absurd dreams may be recounted in a family circle for fun, but they are not published, illustrated and presented to the general public”; “one can hardly imagine anything less sensible and more absurd than this fairy tale; all mothers are urged to disregard this worthless fantasy” — such was the critical consensus in Russia at the time.
The absurd world of Lewis Carroll, which immediately fascinated readers in Britain, was quite alien to readers elsewhere. Moreover, children’s literature in Russia at the time tended to be extremely moralistic and plot-based, and Carroll’s wild imagination did not fit in. As time went by, several new translations of “Alice” appeared; one of them (frankly, a bad one) was done by the young Vladimir Nabokov. But for almost a century, “Alice” was not a household name to Russians, even though translators tried their best to replace obscure English hints and poetic phrasings with more accessible Russian ones.
By the late 1960s, the background for a Carroll revival was ripe. There had been plenty of children’s poetry written in the nonsense style (or translated into Russian from other languages) so the genre was no longer shocking to readers. Furthermore, Soviet life itself was increasingly absurd — and though absurdism was not officially encouraged in literature for adults, readers had softened to it. 
That was when a strange, completely Carrollian thing happened.
An official responsible for non-Soviet socialist literature was leafing through the list of books recently published in the countries of the “people’s democracy,” as the Eastern European satellite states were called back then, when he stumbled upon the Bulgarian publication of a book about a girl called Alice. 
Thinking it was a Bulgarian book, he ordered a Russian translation to be done and published in Sofia for future importing into the Soviet Union (this was a standard procedure for such publications, which were sponsored by Soviet money). The Bulgarians were surprised, and it took some effort and persuading to find someone to translate the book from English and not from Bulgarian.
That translator happened to be Nina Demurova, a university instructor of English and translation who had long been fascinated by Carroll. Thus, the first postwar Russian version of “Alice” appeared in 1967 in Sofia, with illustrations by Bulgarian artist Petar Chuklev; Nina Demurova translated the bulk of the text, while the poems were flamboyantly translated by Dina Orlovskaya. It turned out that Demurova, a relative unknown at the time, had unwittingly outmaneuvered several famous translators who were fighting for the right to translate “Alice” at prestigious children’s publishing houses in Moscow. (There’s also a persistent urban legend that Demurova is actually Bulgarian.)
“I am very grateful to the director of the Bulgarian publishing house, Angel Stoyanov — that was an unforgettable name — for finding a way to circumvent the obtuse Soviet system,” Demurova said in a recent interview at her Moscow apartment. “It was he who consulted his Soviet colleagues and finally suggested that I translate the book. After the publication, I had to collect my fee at the central bank in Sofia, and the director could not understand why I was getting Bulgarian levs for translating an English book into Russian. He was shocked I didn’t speak any Bulgarian.”
The dark-blue book with a key on its cover was coveted by everyone, and its black-market price amounted to an engineer’s monthly salary. When I was 10, I spent several months in hospital, and a young nurse once saw “Alice” by my bed. She was completely overwhelmed and begged me to loan her the book for just one night. Many stories of that kind will be recounted in a forthcoming book, edited by Demurova, about Carroll’s reception in Russia. (Part of it was published in January’s issue of the journal Inostrannaya Literatura).
Several years after the Bulgarian publication, Demurova reworked her translation for the prestigious Literary Landmarks (Literaturniye Pamyatniki) series. Since this was an academic publication, her text required significant changes; the translation became even closer to the original, and the poems were translated anew by Olga Sedakova, who is now one of Russia’s most famous poets. The book also included an extensive commentary by the U.S. science writer and Carroll buff Martin Gardner.
“I regret that the Sofia edition only came out once,” Demurova said. “The older translation was intended for children. The new one was more academic, though we did our best to keep it readable and accessible. I don’t think either of them is ‘better’ than the other — it’s just that their goals were somewhat different.”
Since the Literary Landmarks edition, four new translations of “Alice” have appeared in Russian. The most readable among them is by Boris Zakhoder, a well-known children’s author and translator whose renderings of “Winnie-the-Pooh” and “Mary Poppins” made these books instant classics in Russian families. His version of “Alice” is also admired by many, but it doesn’t give credit to the weird and uncanny in Carroll’s books.
Demurova’s translation was used for two significant Soviet tributes to Carroll. One of these was a vinyl double-disk recording of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” performed by top Soviet actors in 1974. The moving force of that enterprise was the cult actor, singer and songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky, who wrote all the songs and performed a couple of the parts. Vysotsky was frowned upon by officials, so some brave and drastic steps had to be taken to save the record from prohibition. For example, the poet Bella Akhmadulina gave an interview to the influential weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta in which she congratulated readers on the New Year and promised them a wonderful present in the form of a new, musical fairy tale. After that, it became much harder for censors to pull the plug. The lines from Vysotsky’s version still form the regular stock of quotes for people of my generation. The second masterpiece was created in 1981-82 at the Kievnauchfilm movie studio. Animator Efrem Pruzhansky made a pair of cartoons based on “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and its sequel “Through the Looking-Glass.” A far cry from the syrupy Disney version, these cartoons portray Wonderland as darkish, strange, absurd and sentimental — in other words, very close to Carroll’s original.
“Alice” had other echoes in Soviet pop culture. In the 1980s, the fantasy writer Kir Bulychyov wrote a series of extremely popular science-fiction books geared toward children that featured a girl named Alisa Seleznyova (these later became a television movie and a popular cartoon called “The Mystery of the Third Planet”). It is very likely that the name of Bulychov’s heroine alluded to Carroll’s Alice, who also confronts numerous mysteries in strange worlds.
Demurova has her own theories about why Carroll became so popular among Soviet and Russian readers.
“There’s one important point about Carroll’s books,” she said. “Traditional fairy tales of that era — be they British, German or Russian — were rather fearsome, and the children in them were often afraid. ‘Alice’ is different; there’s no fear in it. I think that’s very important.”
So perhaps the lack of fear was one reason behind Carroll’s popularity in the Soviet Union: For people stuck in a gray reality, Alice’s rabbit hole and looking-glass offered a way out.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: Promoter <b>Denis Rubin</b>, the art director of the music club <b>Maina</b> and the promoter of alternative music concerts at Decadance on Thursdays, has recently criticized the local public for not attending the concerts he promotes.
“You promote good concerts, exclusive events, and nobody goes to them,” he wrote on Livejournal.com, a blog site.
“I have taken control over Maina to do a decent program there, but when I posted it on the web, I got a reply, ‘It’s too far from us, this Maina, so we don’t go there.’” He added that a concert by the Finnish band Giant Robot only drew around 50 fans.
According to Rubin, the interesting music artists he tries to bring to the city may soon be replaced by substandard, lip-synching Russian pop acts.
However, there are a few promising events in the city this week.
<b>Ilgi</b>, arguably Latvia’s premier folk band, will come to the city to take park in St. Patrick’s Day festivities that gather all kinds of folk bands whether they have Irish bagpipes or not.
The band, which marked its 25th anniversary last year, was founded as an ensemble of authentic Latvian folk music by violinist Ilga Reizniece. 
“I think from the very beginning we were different from the authentic music ensembles in the traditional sense,” Ilgi’s website quotes Reizniece as saying.
“We have always been interested in music as art, not just the folk-lore aspect of it. There has always been a dual purpose to the group: we had to fulfill our mission in preserving the Latvian heritage, and return the forgotten lore to the nation, but at the same time we really enjoyed just playing the music.”
Ilgi will perform at Maina on Friday, but, according to the promoter, the “main” performance will be at the St. Patrick’s Day event at Port on Saturday, “because, unfortunately, folks don’t go to Maina.”
On a different side of the musical spectrum, the Tampere, Finland-based hardcore band <b>Derrida</b> will bring what it describes as “horny live action” to the city this week.
“[French philosopher Jacques] Derrida is one of the most controversial thinkers of our time and takes postmodern thinking so deep that we have problems handling it,” vocalist Ato Boldon was quoted as saying in Marsuli magazine.
“The 20th century was so fucked up that it had a huge impact in how we see the world. Nietzsche talked about the death of God, Spengler talked about the death of culture and Foucault talked about the death of man. 
“We are in deep crisis and it takes time to get something positive out of thinking.”
Derrida is performing as part of a Russian tour that also includes gigs in Moscow, Petrozavodsk, Pskov and Novgorod. It will perform at Tsokol on Wednesday.

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Gold standard
AUTHOR: By Raymond Stults
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As a rule, the Golden Mask theatrical awards festival — which this year runs from March 28 to April 14 — requires a Moscow showing of its nominated productions within the time frame of the festival. But due to problems scheduling performances for those particular weeks, the Bolshoi Theater, St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater and the Novosibirsk Theater of Opera and Ballet have received a special dispensation this year to present their nominees ahead of schedule.
Earlier this month, the Mariinsky took over the Bolshoi’s New Stage for the Golden Mask performances of its two nominated ballets: the nearly forgotten 19th-century classic “Ondine,” as reconstructed by French choreographer Pierre Lacotte, and “‘The Overcoat’ After Gogol,” a dance setting by U.S. choreographer Noah D. Gelber of one of the most famous short stories in Russian literature. Both are prime contenders for the honor of a Golden Mask as best ballet production.
 “Ondine” first appeared in London in 1843, the work of Frenchman Jules Perrot, who had co-created the ever-popular “Giselle” two years earlier. Cesare Pugni, the composer of some 300 ballet scores (65 of them during his subsequent tenure as First Imperial Ballet Composer in St. Petersburg) supplied the gorgeously tuneful music. Renamed “The Naiad and the Fisherman,” the ballet arrived in St. Petersburg in 1851. Six years later, it came to the Bolshoi, and up until the 1920s it enjoyed great popularity on the Russian stage.
Based on a celebrated short novel by Prussian nobleman Friedrich de la Motte-Fouque, “Ondine” tells of a young Sicilian fisherman, Matteo, who one day finds the sea sprite Ondine captured in his net. The two fall in love, and Ondine returns to the waters to beg the Queen of the Sea to allow her to become human and marry Matteo. Permission is granted, but only on the condition that a rose she is given retain its petals until after the marriage takes place. Otherwise, she will die. Needless to say, the petals fall off just as the wedding ceremony is about to begin, whereupon Matteo joins Ondine in a watery death.
As with most ballets of its era, the story of “Ondine” is told in brief episodes of pantomime and serves mostly as an excuse for a virtuoso display of dancing. And, indeed, virtuosity was the order of the evening at the Mariinsky’s performance. 
Choreographer Lacotte is well-known to Moscow audiences for his similar reconstruction at the Bolshoi seven years ago of “The Pharaoh’s Daughter.” Once again, as with the Bolshoi, he proved himself little less than a magician in successfully transmitting to a Russian-trained troupe of dancers the precise, quick movements and now-unfamiliar poses of French origin that dominated the world of ballet in the middle of the 19th century.
Both of the young principals that performed in Moscow, Yevgenia Obraztsova in the title role and Leonid Sarafanov as Matteo, are in the running for individual Golden Mask awards, and both danced separately and together with exceptional brilliance. In the case of Obraztsova, one would have to search far and wide to find such near-perfection in the placement of feet, hands and arms. Sarafanov — a Benois de la Danse prizewinner in 2006 — distinguished himself with seemingly effortless jumps and turns, as well as with impeccable partnering. And who can remember when a corps de ballet last danced on a Moscow stage with as much precision as that shown by the Mariinsky troupe last Friday?
Gelber’s “‘The Overcoat’ After Gogol” shared a triple bill — titled “New Names” — with a dance version of Jean-Baptiste Moliere’s play “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” by Moscow-based choreographer Nikita Dmitriyevsky, set to Richard Strauss’ lovely score of incidental music to the play itself, and a brief pas de deux, titled “Du Cote de chez Swan,” by Mariinsky staff member Alexei Miroshnichenko, which referenced both Marcel Proust’s similarly named novel and the famous “Dying Swan” ballet episode. The latter was danced to music by Leonid Desyatnikov, composer of the controversial opera “The Children of Rosenthal.”
Gelber is a protege of the great Germany-based U.S. choreographer William Forsythe and assisted in mounting the stunning trio of Forsythe ballets that premiered at the Mariinsky in 2004. While Gelber’s choreography may lack the audacity of his mentor’s, it nevertheless combines beautifully with the set, costumes, lighting and film music of Dmitry Shostakovich to make vivid both the plight of the lowly government clerk Akaky Akakiyevich, whose much-needed new overcoat leads him to catastrophe, and Gogol’s atmosphere of a St. Petersburg gone mad. Andrei Ivanov, in competition with his colleague Sarafanov for a Golden Mask award, produced a nicely convincing Akaky as he danced with tremendous energy, and practically non-stop, through the ballet’s 50- minute span.
<i>www.mariinsky.ru</i>

TITLE: Modern art, Moscow style
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Although there were doubts that it would happen at all and there are even more regarding whether it can happen again, the Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art is open and will continue to be so for the next two weeks. 
Unlike the first event two years ago, the second Biennale has attracted the attention of a number of big businesses and has boosted its "official" status with Moscow and federal authorities. An introduction to the official catalogue was contributed by deputy chief of staff to the president Vladislav Surkov — the inventor of the term “sovereign democracy” and Vladimir Putin's chief ideologist. 
“We view the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art as an important part of the cultural policy of a democratic Russia,” Surkov writes. The Biennale opened with a series of grand events in Moscow two weeks ago at about the same time that in St. Petersburg citizens marching in disagreement to Kremlin policies were being clubbed and arrested by special forces police units during the notorious “march of dissenters.” 
The organisational feature (or visitor's headache?) of the Biennale program is that it is spread sparsely around the gigantic megapolis, so that an art-lover should stock up on money, time and endurance to deal with traffic jams, crowds in subway tunnels and other attractions of one of the most expensive cities in the world. 
The format remains the same as it was during the first Biennale: a main project, which suggests the curators’ vision of the international art scene, special guests (Matthew Barney’s screening of the groundbreaking “Cremaster Cycle” topped the list) and a series of so called special projects. 
Russians like to call something special, even if there’s nothing special about it (everyone is a VIP in Russia and a single screening becomes a film festival). This misuse often contradicts the main function of the term: When there are 70 special projects out of, say, 80 Biennale events, what remains ordinary? 
However, the necessary tectonic shift toward bridging the disturbing disproportion between the main and "special" has taken place, at least, in terms of quality.
Unlike the last Biennale, when the special program appeared to be the engine behind of the whole undertaking, the present main project is its backbone. Called “Footnotes on Geopolitics, Market, and Amnesia,” the project is one of the not-to-be-missed sights at the biennale. According to Iosif Bakshtein, the Biennale's commissioner, art has become merely a footnote to "statements made in the language of capital and big politics.”
The best part of the two-part main exposition is located outside the city center, twenty floors up in the yet-to-be-finished Federation Tower. Emerging young artists (of around 80 featured artists, more than two thirds were born in the 1970s) from all over the world are featured — although those from Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe visually dominate. 
Polish dissident documentary art, Africans drinking Campari against a background of Soviet war films, the "Last Supper" of a person on Death Row, stripped military power, the production of snowflakes, skateboarding in prison, a child reading Wittgenstein, neon and felt-tipped pen drawings on windows and walls and much more thought-provoking, ironic, touching, smart and silly stuff entirely packs three floors of the tower and all this is played out against the petrodollar panorama of the Moscow skyline. 
There is the funny live sculpture “Life” by Bulgarian artist Nedko Solakov, in which two guys paint the walls of a room one after another with black and white — so the room, like our lives, never remains black or white. One of the most delicate pieces, Chinese artist Liu Jianhua’s large, beautiful ceramic relief of a city reflected in water combines the contemplative practices and traditional media of the East. One of the most powerful pieces is a voiceless video by Afghan artist Lida Abdul, where the first idyllic minutes of action, which will remind Russians of monks ringing bells, are suddenly revealed to be the demolition of an old religious site.
The  second part of the main exposition — “American Video Art at the Beginning of the 3rd Millennium” — is accommodated in the heart of Moscow's luxury shopping area, at the TsUM mall, where art is to be consumed, apparently, next to the pants and underwear from Gucci and Calvin Klein. 
The selection is not as sound as the curator’s names (Hans Ulrich Obrist, Daniel Birnbaum and Gunnar B. Kvaran) and is disappointing. However, Matt McCormick’s video “The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal,” in which he argues that "the process of destroying one art form unwittingly creates another’" and finds reminders of the abstract composition of Kazimir Malevich or Mark Rothko on urban walls, is one of few exceptions that alone makes a visit worthwhile. 
Three more worthwhile events from the special program deal with Russian art. A highly anticipated display of Sots Art — the Soviet version of Pop Art — is being shown at the Tretyakov Gallery. 
Curated by Andrei Yerofeyev, this comprehensive survey spanning almost all significant names and directions in the movement is a success, although the attempt to find current examples of the genre fails. As a bonus from the fathers of the Sots Art style Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, their latest international project "People’s Choice" is also on display. In addition, Russian art is complemented with a similar Chinese remake of the style 20 years on — tracing a remarkable typology of art produced under similar totalitarian regimes. 
Another must-see show is “I Believe," curated by notorious artist Oleg Kulik, at the Winzavod Art Center. It is not clear what is more exciting — the vault of the former wine factory that is home to the show or the art being displayed there. 
But, like the effect of wine, over time the feeling of intoxication gradually wears off and few pieces are memorable, although Alexander Ponomarev’s bewitching machine for production of nimbuses is an exception. The art center, which is supposed to be the contemporary art ghetto of the future, is also hosting a handsome installation by Britain's Daren Almond, a nominee for the Turner Prize in 2005. 
The latter is a show organized by one of the few internationally acclaimed Russian curators, Yekaterina Dyogot. Her “Thinking Realism” draws some cunning parallels between Russian cutting-edge art and 19th century Russian Realist paintings and is on show at the Tretyakov Gallery from Thursday.
The historical retrospective of Valie Export, a key figure for feminist art, is also worth a visit. Next to exciting conceptual photography and video documentation of her influential performances in the 1960 and '70s, there is an entirely banal installation called “Kalashnikov.” A sort of Tower of Babel made of oil and guns, it perfectly demonstrates what would happen if art was truly expected only to produce footnotes to geopolitics and the market.
 <i>More information at http://2nd.moscowbiennale.ru/en; www.winzavod.ru/biennale; www.tretyakovgallery.ru; www.mmoma.ru/veru</i>

TITLE: Rock in a hard place
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: “Rock music in Russia is always penned in, whoever is in power,” says Andrei Burlaka, whose book, “The Rock Encyclopedia: Popular Music in Leningrad-St. Petersburg 1965-2005” was published by Amphora Publishing late last month. 
The 416-page book is the first volume of a three-volume work that Burlaka, who prefers to be referred to as a “rock historian,” has been writing since the 1980s. Volumes II and III are expected to be published later this year.
Burlaka, who now runs the web site, www.rock-and-roll.ru, once sat on the board of the Leningrad Rock Club, an organization born as a compromise between the KGB and rock bands in 1981, and also published the samizdat unofficial music magazine RIO between 1986 and 1993. He was part of a politically-active music scene that in the 1980s and early 1990s undermined state control over freedom of expression.
Since that time however, this scene has lost its radical edge: local rock musicians were barely seen at the March of Dissenters, the rally against Kremlin policies earlier this month, with only members of Televizor and NOM seen among thousands of protesters during the unofficial action.
But, according to Burlaka, rock music and politics seldom go together well. 
“The idea of rock music as a political tool is absolutely false,” he said. “It’s only in this country where everything was forbidden, it found itself together with banned writers, poets and artists. Rock and roll is essentially entertainment, show biz, it’s about getting paid to have fun.” 
Burlaka said he was going to attend the rally but had to attend the funeral of Sergei Danilov, the guitarist and songwriter of the 1970s local rock band Mify, instead. However, he criticized the leaders of the Other Russia (Drugaya Rossiya), the opposition coalition that led the rally.
The Leningrad Rock Club, whose 25th anniversary was marked with a music event and exhibition last year, gathered bands who compromised themselves with the Soviet authorities by subjecting themselves to censorship and surveillance in exchange for the right to perform. Musician Boris Grebenshchikov reportedly frequently met a KGB handler who was in charge of his band Akvarium.
“As to who went and to whom… as a rule, we didn’t go to them, they came to us,” said Burlaka. 
“Moreover, it may sound incredible, but the KGB was protecting the Rock Club from the Department of Culture and the Komsomol [Young Communists’ League]. A couple of times I was released by the KGB from the police station where I had been taken by Komsomol guards. They wanted to be evil, but ended up being good. They were forced to be, to avoid bad international publicity. Shooting [dissenters] on the spot was not fashionable anymore, besides they were a little more educated than the Komsomol people were.”
Burlaka disagrees with Seva Gakkel, former Akvarium cellist and founder of the pioneering alt-rock club TaMtAm in the 1990s, who has recently published an article that claimed that Russian rock music could have continued to develop — and in perhaps more interesting ways — without organizations such as the Rock Club.
“Seva is not right, because the Rock Club played a dual role; on the one hand, it involuntarily stifled everything that was outside of it, but on the other hand he gathered all the people with ideas in one place and helped them to survive,” he said.
“Without the Rock Club and [producer Andrei] Tropillo’s recording studio there would not have been such bands as Akvarium, Kino and Zoopark — they wouldn’t have survived. Akvarium was on the margins in the 1970s. They would do a thing or two and split — some would work as engineers, some would become restaurant musicians and some would emigrate.”
Rock music is ghettoized in Russia today in a similar way as under the Soviets, according to Burlaka.
“Rock and roll was never on top in Russia, except during perestroika, when it was seen as the ‘next big thing’,” he said. “Unlike the U.S. and Britain, we didn’t have the cultural environment where rock developed; pubs, clubs, Baptist churches, where they play the organ and sing gospel.” Although Burlaka contends that rock music is constrained, regardless of who is in power, today’s rulers are in fact often the very same people who ruled during the Soviet era.
St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko was a Komsomol functionary and then an official in charge of culture and education in the 1980s.
“As a Komsomol and cultural official, Matviyenko hated the Leningrad Rock Club vehemently,” said Burlaka. 
“Remember, for instance, how Sergei Kuryokhin [the late local keyboardist who once played with Akvarium] was invited to a jazz festival abroad, and the local cultural authorities’ reply to the promoters was ‘We don’t know such a pianist; he  stopped performing a long time ago’.”
Although current Kremlin officials Vyacheslav Surkov and Dmitry Medvedev are reputed to be rock fans who recently admitted their love for the 1970s British band Deep Purple, radio and television is dominated by throwaway pop and poor-taste acts in Russia.
“Television and radio don’t reflect or represent anything for a long time,” Burlaka said. “But perhaps it makes it easier for [President Vladimir] Putin & Co. to manipulate the public consciousness. A simple example: there are no singer-songwriters on the radio or television, whereas every year the Grushinsky Festival gathers more people than Woodstock at the peak of the rock revolution. And it’s not the only festival of its kind.”
First Deputy Prime Minister Medvedev, frequently described as Putin’s possible successor, was reportedly in a St. Petersburg hard-rock band in the 1980s auditioning, unsuccessfully, for the Rock Club’s membership. But he has left no trace in Burlaka’s encyclopedia.
“He said it in an interview a while ago, but I don’t remember him,” said Burlaka. “Probably I missed this audition. There were lots of shit bands at the time.”
The notorious meeting between Surkov, the Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration, and rock musicians such as Akvarium’s Grebenshchikov, Leningrad’s Sergei Shnurov and singer Zemfira Ramazanova in 2005 was seen as the Kremlin’s test of rock bands’ loyalty after Ukraine’s Orange Revolution — in which musicians played a notable role — although Grebenshchikov explained it as an attempt to help Russian rock music by launching the national equivalent of the Leningrad Rock Club.
“I spoke to Grebenshchikov about Surkov and his alleged goodwill a couple of times,” said Burlaka.
“There is no need for a recording studio in every town to record local nuggets there. If they like, they could come to the nearest city, Moscow or St. Petersburg. There are loads of studios here that are idle most of the time and ready to work for peanuts.
“Surkov should not have asked that wise-guy Grebenshchikov or dumb bands such as Chaif and BI-2, but me! Because nobody knows rock and roll better than me in this country.”

<i>“Rock Encyclopedia: Popular Music in Leningrad-St. Petersburg 1965-2005,” Volume One, by Andrei Burlaka is out on Amphora. www.rock-n-roll.ru</i>

TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Ah, the smell of greasepaint, sawdust and celebrity desperation — it gets me every time. The other Sunday, Channel One unveiled its latest show, “A Circus With Stars,” featuring such luminaries as It Girl Ksenia Sobchak, scantily clad singer Zhanna Friske and buttoned-up anchorwoman Yekaterina Andreyeva.
The show is similar to previous ones about celebrities learning to ice-skate and ballroom-dance, but with more tigers. It’s a format that has also aired in the United States, although the U.S. version probably didn’t insult the intelligence of chimpanzees by forcing them to dance to the music of kitsch folk band Zolotoye Koltso.
The celebrities will have two months to master an array of six different circus disciplines, which gives the less sporty ones a bit of a chance. Giraffe-like Olympic gymnast Svetlana Khorkina was already acing the aerial work on Sunday, but when it comes to tiger-taming, the smaller, nippier ones may have an advantage.
The opening show didn’t push the celebrities very hard and included lots of numbers by the real circus artistes who will be teaching the stars. Naturally, these truly talented people have no chance in hell of appearing on television unless they’re shoving a tracksuited Ksenia onto a tightrope.
Pleasingly, the celebrities had to wear hideously unflattering combos of baggy tracksuit pants, T-shirts and nylon gilets with the Channel One logo. This was harsh for stars such as Frisky Friske, who is supposed to be Russia’s top sex symbol and was recently voted the most popular singer in a poll published in Komsomolskaya Pravda. Someone in the advertising industry once told me she’s never sung live, but I couldn’t possibly comment, since I’ve only seen her sing twice — admittedly, the same song.
Some readers are probably still salivating from my mention of icy Channel One anchorwoman Andreyeva, imagining her cracking the whip in tight jodhpurs as tigers career around the ring. Sorry, but she’s only a judge. Still, she actually let her hair down and smiled — shock horror — on Sunday.
The tigers were reserved for Yana Churikova, who hosts the “Star Factory” music contest on Channel One. Yes, there was a lot of in-house talent. No Andrei Malakhov, though — his perfectly coiffed hairdos must be saved for the nation. Anyway, the tiger interlude was disappointingly brief and, frankly, mistargeted. Surely there’s a tiger out there with Sobchak’s name written on it, possibly a relative of one of her coats.
One of the most disturbing cases of an innocent creature being forced to perform for the enjoyment of a guffawing audience was that of 8-year-old Alexandra Volkovskaya, who emceed Sunday’s episode along with former MTV host Ivan Urgant. Perhaps the only television presenter with no front teeth, she had to read a script deliberately planted with long words, such as “pragmatism,” so adults could laugh at her. Plus, she is an exceptionally tiny 8-year-old, and the whole thing brought back traumatic memories of having to be a dwarf in our school comedy contest. But at least I somersaulted with dignity.
In an interesting psychological insight, Sobchak spoke on the show of her childhood love of clowns, saying how she always wanted to be pulled out of the audience to take part in their act, but was never picked. Yes, Doctor Freud might have something to say about that. Back then, there just weren’t the opportunities for children to host reality shows, even though Ksenia would probably have knocked out her front teeth for the chance.
I’m glad Sobchak has finally got her Rosebud, but I’m not sure that watching out-of-shape actors trying to fly on trapezes is really all that fun. The only hope is that the tigers may feel the same way.

TITLE: Lenin rebooted
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Lenin@Zhiv Restaurant and Internet Cafe 
40/68 Naberezhnaya Reki Fontanki. Tel: 275 3558
Open 24 hours a day, food is served from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
All major credit cards accepted.
Dinner for two with alcohol 1,895 rubles ($72.80)

What once was Propaganda, a Soviet theme bar popular with both locals and tourists as one of the first dining places in town to serve proper bar sandwiches, is now Lenin@Zhiv, another Soviet-inspired restaurant and Internet cafe. In case you are wondering what has changed, an honest answer is given straight away by the waitress: “Everything from management to menu.” 
To toast the start of the meal we ordered two 50 millileter shots of Kosogorov samogon (home-made vodka), for 110 rubles ($4.20) each, but the glasses, my companion complained, were not cold enough. “Well,” the waitress said, “the refrigerator was taken away by the former management.”
However, the restaurant has held on to what was probably one of its most successful features — its smart and witty design. The prevalence of red volumes of Lenin’s works on shelves attached to the walls with huge bolts, elements of steel everywhere, heavy chairs, dusty books and newspapers are the major features of Lenin@Zhiv, which is a play on the Soviet slogan “Lenin zhiv!” meaning “Lenin lives!” This mixture of Bolshevik kitsch and hi-tech club design is now supplemented by Futuristic-looking computers since one of Propaganda’s halls has been converted to an Internet cafe.
The menu is also now drastically different. The cuisine of Lenin@Zhiv is inventive in the names of dishes — such “The Joy of the Communist Leader” or “Komsomolochka” — while generally representing a mixture of Russian and European styles. There’s a good selection of meat, poultry and fish dishes. 
For starters we chose “Herring To Go With Vodka” (100 rubles, $3.80), and a Windsor salad (chicken filet, fresh vegetables, green salad) — a fresh and filling dish for 140 rubles, $5.30. One of the best options is Borshch Partiiny (Party Borshch, 130 rubles, $5), a proper traditional Russian (or Ukrainian, if you like) beetroot soup that comes highly recommended. 
As for main courses, certainly go for the meat — either a Bourgeois steak (350 rubles, $13.40), tender with mushroom sauce, French fries and stewed vegetables, or a pork leg (450 rubles, $1.70), a truly filling and flavorsome dish, reminiscent of the best traditions of home cooking. Make sure you order everything strictly before 11 p.m. after which the kitchen closes and you’re left only with drinks or Internet surfing. 
On weekend evenings the place may also become quite full, so think about booking in advance. Lenin@Zhiv is an updated version of Propaganda, both in terms of its Internet facilities and cuisine, suggesting that once propaganda is worn out, only nostalgia and technology remain.

TITLE: Kolobnev Claims Stage Win, Rebellin Into Lead
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MAURS LA JOLIE, France — Alexander Kolobnev won the third stage of the Paris-Nice race Wednesday while Italy’s Davide Rebellin claimed the overall race lead with second place in the fourth stage Thursday.
Kolobnev finished 12 seconds ahead of Belgian sprinter Tom Boonen, who led the main pack in a sprint to the line.
Wednesday’s ride was the longest of the race and took the peleton over 215.5 kilometers (133.6 miles) from Limoges to Maurs la Jolie.
Kolobnev finished in 4 hours, 59 minutes, 35 seconds, while Daniele Bennati of Italy matched Boonen’s time.
“It’s my best win,” Kolobnev said. “It was really a beautiful day for me. First with the breakaway where we all worked well and in the final (sprint), where I managed to get out and hold off the peleton.”
The Russian was among a quartet which broke away after just two kilometers (1.2 miles). Kolobnev, Fabio Baldato, Heinrich Haussler and Nicolas Vogondy then rode ahead until the end.
Thursday’s 169.5 kilometer fourth stage was won by Alberto Contador of Spain, ahead of Italy’s Davide Rebellin, who displaced Pellizotti as overall race leader. 
The stage took riders over 169.5 kilometers (105 miles) from Maurs La Jolie to Mende. The race ends Sunday in the coastal city of Nice.

TITLE: Iran Ignores UN Nuclear Sanctions
AUTHOR: By Parisa Hafezi
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TEHRAN — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday dismissed any new UN sanctions resolution as “a torn piece of paper” that would not stop Tehran’s nuclear work, the official IRNA news agency reported. 
U.S., British, French, German, Russian and Chinese diplomats at the United Nations have reached a tentative deal on imposing fresh sanctions on Iran and hope to introduce the measure at the Security Council on Thursday, providing their governments agree.
“Issuing such torn pieces of paper … will not have an impact on Iranian nation’s will,” IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as telling a rally in central Iran.
An earlier sanctions resolution passed by the Security Council in December was derided by Ahmadinejad in similar terms.
Senior Iranian leaders, including the country’s most powerful figure Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have all ruled out halting uranium enrichment, which can produce fuel for use either in nuclear bombs or civilian power stations.
But moderate Iranian politicians have blamed Ahmadinejad’s defiant rhetoric for pushing Iran toward international isolation and want a less confrontational approach.
Two prominent Iranian reform parties have urged the government to suspend enrichment to preserve what they call the national interest, a reference to avoiding isolation that could hurt the economy. But officials brush off economic worries.
The new UN resolution, which may be adopted next week, could include a ban on Iranian arms exports, an assets freeze on individuals and firms involved in Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs and a call for a bar on new grants or loans, according to a proposed text obtained by Reuters.
“What is the aim of issuing such resolutions? Today we are mastering the nuclear fuel cycle completely,” Ahmadinejad said.
“If all of you (Westerners) get together and call your ancestors from hell as well, you will not be able to stop the Iranian nation.”
The West fears Iran’s atomic work is aimed at building atomic weapons. Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil exporter, denies it.
Ahmadinejad said imposing sanctions on Iran would be counter-productive.
“You sanctioned us in the past but we obtained nuclear technology. Impose economic sanctions on us today and see what would be our next step,” Ahmadinejad said.
He said Western powers were wrong to suppose Iran would give up its nuclear program under political pressure, adding that the Security Council had “no legitimacy.”
“All the Iranian nation insists on this right and will not retreat one iota,” Ahmadinejad said.
Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh said on Thursday that tougher United Nations sanctions would not harm development of the country’s oil and gas industry. Iran has the world’s second biggest gas reserves.
“For the past 25 years we have witnessed unilateral sanctions by the United States but have developed our oil industry with the help of internal resources and the help of other countries,” Hamaneh told reporters in Vienna.

TITLE: World Condemns Tsvangirai Beating, Crackdown Goes On
AUTHOR: By MacDonald Dzirutwe
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: HARARE — Zimbabwe on Thursday accused opposition supporters of stepping up violence against the government, amid rising world condemnation of President Robert Mugabe’s latest political crackdown. 
Police officials said three officers had been badly hurt in a petrol bomb attack late on Tuesday, telling state media the opposition’s “orgy of violence was spreading.”
“These actions are synchronized by people with resources and are happening throughout the country,” police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena told Reuters.
“We believe that the attacks are assuming a militia type of form,” he added. State television showed pictures of badly burned officers receiving medical care in hospital after their house at a police post went up in flames.
Officials of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said party chief Morgan Tsvangirai remained in hospital with head wounds sustained following his arrest on Sunday for participating in a banned political rally.
“Tsvangirai is still in a critical situation but he is recovering,” MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said from a private hospital at which he, Tsvangirai and other political figures were receiving treatment.
MDC officials say Tsvangirai suffered from a suspected fractured skull after being severely beaten by police.
Images of a battered Tsvangirai going to court have drawn a chorus of international condemnation.

TITLE: Thorpe Retirement Leaves Aussies Sunk
AUTHOR: By Julian Linden
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SYDNEY — The shockwaves of Ian Thorpe’s sudden retirement from swimming last November are only just being felt by Australians.
Thorpe had not competed at a major international meet since the 2004 Athens Olympics but his decision to hang up his goggles has cast a pall of gloom over the Australian team’s prospects at this month’s world championships.
As the host nation, Australia were expecting to dominate the championships, riding a wave of public support on the back of the 24-year-old Thorpe’s phenomenal pulling power.
However, his premature retirement has changed everything.
Ticket sales have been slower than expected and the swagger that has become a trademark of the Australian team has suddenly disappeared.
Head coach Alan Thompson has already conceded the team will have to settle for less than what they achieved at the last world championships in Montreal two years ago, where Australia captured 25 medals including 13 golds.
“I think the home crowd will help, but I think you also have got to be realistic and know that the world has moved forward in the last two years as well,” Thompson recently told reporters.
“We were identifying the moves forward in Montreal, but you look at what’s happened since.
“The Germans have improved dramatically… the Japanese had moved forward as well… obviously the American team is extremely strong, the Russians are solid and the Chinese have sent a full team this time.
“You’re going to get a whole lot of people moving forward and that’s often the way it is the year before the Olympic Games.”
With Thorpe no longer around, Grant Hackett will be left to carry the hopes of the Australian men’s team, who were lampooned by local media after failing to win a single individual title at last year’s Commonwealth Games, while England, Scotland, Wales, Canada and even Papua New Guinea all tasted success.
Hackett, who missed the Commonwealth Games while recovering from shoulder surgery, was the outstanding male swimmer at the 2005 world championships, winning the 400 meters, 800 meters and 1500 meters titles.
The undisputed king of long-distance swimming holds two world records, is the only swimmer to win the same event at four world championships and is an overwhelming favourite to win a fifth 1500 meters title despite claiming he will be below his best after switching coaches.

TITLE: Chelsea Close Gap on Manchester United
AUTHOR: By Trevor Huggins
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Chelsea cut Manchester United’s Premier League lead to six points on Wednesday after a Frank Lampard penalty gave the champions a 1-0 win at struggling Manchester City.
Making the most of their game in hand on the leaders, Lampard drove home a 28th minute spot-kick at Eastlands to move Chelsea on to 66 points from 29 games, with United on 72.
It was another blow for City manager Stuart Pearce, whose side have slipped to one place above the relegation zone and who dismissed reports on Tuesday that he faced the sack if City lost to Chelsea and at Middlesbrough on Saturday.
Arsenal won 1-0 at Aston Villa in the night’s other game to go third with 55 points from 28 games, two points ahead of Liverpool, who have also played a game more.
French midfielder Abou Diaby scored their winner after nine minutes.
There was little real sparkle from Chelsea, who welcomed back skipper John Terry after the central defender was knocked out in their League Cup triumph over Arsenal.
City overcame an early bout of the jitters, helped by a lack of any real drive or fluency from the champions and looked to be settling in before calamity struck.
Chelsea’s Ivory Coast forward Salomon Kalou ran into the area from the left flank and was tripped by Micah Richards as he sped past the City right back.
Lampard sent keeper Andreas Isaksson the wrong way with his spot-kick to claim his 20th goal of the season.
Richards made some amends by denying Lampard a second with a goalline clearance in the second half, while Chelsea’s former City winger Shaun Wright-Phillips came off the bench to crack a shot against the crossbar in the second half.

LOSING RUN
City’s fifth consecutive league defeat will keep the pressure on Pearce, whose side are six points above 18th-placed Charlton Athletic but have a game in hand — against Arsenal.
City were also knocked out of the FA Cup quarter-finals by Blackburn Rovers on Sunday.
Pearce, who made it clear he had no intention of quitting, told Sky Sports: “If they play with that spirit and that endeavour we’ll get the victories that we need to keep us in this league — no problem.
“I’d feel the situation was very, very serious if I hadn’t seen my team’s performance tonight…it was a very close game against arguably one of the best teams in the world.”
Arsenal got a fortunate winner at Villa Park when Brazilian striker Julio Baptista tried a shot from outside the area that deflected off Diaby and past stranded keeper Thomas Sorensen.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, whose side has been hit by injuries and suspensions, said: “It was a very untypical goal.
“We could have scored two or three typical ones but we missed…I feel tonight was a great test, not many teams would have won here.”

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Chavez  ‘Not Personal’</b>
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Hugo Chavez has called President Bush a devil, a donkey and a drunkard. But on Wednesday the Venezuelan leader said his comments were “nothing personal.” 
Chavez, who had stepped up his verbal assault during Bush’s Latin American tour this week, suggested that the two adversaries might eventually overcome their differences and even play a game of dominos or baseball together.

<b>Mills Nuisance</b>
LONDON (Reuters) — Police have warned Heather Mills McCartney, the estranged wife of former Beatle Paul, about using the emergency phone number 999 too often. 
Chief Superintendent Kevin Moore of Brighton and Hove Police on the south coast where Mills spends much of her time, said there was a risk that officers may take her calls less seriously if she contacted them too often.
“We are having to spend a disproportionate amount of time on one particular person,” he said in reported remarks that were confirmed by a spokeswoman for the force.

TITLE: SKA  In Playoff Despair
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Salavat Yulayev from Ufa edged SKA 3-2 in a shoot-out finish of game three of the first round of the Russian Hockey Super League playoffs Wednesday, sweeping the St. Petersburg team 3-0 in the best-of-five series. 
Yulayev scored two unanswered goals to force overtime, and held on through overtime eventually edging SKA 3-2 in shoot-out victory at St. Petersburg’s Ice Palace.  
“We didn’t start out the way we wanted,” Salavat Yulayev head coach Sergei Mikhalev said. “It wasn’t a particularly active game and we ended up trailing early, but we pulled ourselves together and took it into overtime and were lucky to win the shootout. Even though we swept them in this series, SKA played with a lot of character and held us close in two games. It’s a solid team.”
SKA took an early lead when fan favorite Maxim Sushinsky scored at 15:35 of the first period. 
With three minutes left in the second period, Mikhail Chernov extended SKA’s lead to 2-0 when he one-timed a shot from the slot past Ufa goalie Andrei Mezin. Alexander Drozdetsky crossed the puck behind the Ufa net to Valery Khlebnikov who fed it out to Chernov. 
SKA tried to keep the momentum going in the third frame but things slowly began to fall apart. With SKA pressuring on a powerplay, Salavat Yulaev’s Ilya Zubov came up with the loose puck in the neutral zone and managed to score a short hanged goal. He rushed the SKA net and took a shot which SKA netminder Sergei Belov stopped, but failed to contain. The puck inched slowly behind Belov  — almost as if in slow motion — and slid over the goal line as fans yelled out in horror.  Igor Volkov evened the score with 4:40 left in regulation with a wrist shot that beat Belov to the far corner. 
Salavat Yulaev narrowly defeated SKA 2-1 in overtime in game one, before man handling them 4-2 in game two. Both games were held in Ufa. 
SKA St. Petersburg’s season ended much like it began — with high hopes dashed. 
Despite a productive offseason, adding much needed depth to  the team, SKA struggled at the start of the season. Head coach Boris Mikhailov was sacked in October by the team’s new, Gazprom-established management and replaced with Yury Leonev, who did little to solve the team’s problems. SKA ended the 2006-2007 season in 14th place, one notch down from last year.

TITLE: Red Wings Soar Past Predators Into Pole
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — Two goals from Jiri Hudler pushed the Detroit Red Wings into the overall NHL lead with a 4-2 home win over the Nashville Predators on Wednesday.
The win gave the Red Wings an NHL-best 99 points, one ahead of Central Division rivals Nashville.
Alexander Radulov gave Nashville a 1-0 first-period advantage before Nicklas Lidstrom made it 1-1 early in the second.
Goals from Jason Arnott (Nashville) and Hudler made the score 2-2 going into the third period.
Hudler put the Red Wings in command at 3-2 with his second of the night before Kirk Maltby added an empty-netter with 37 seconds left on the clock.
Rookie Hudler also had the deciding goal in Detroit’s 5-2 win at Nashville on Tuesday.
“Huds has a chance in his career …to be a difference maker,” Red Wings coach Mike Babcock told reporters at a news conference after the game.
“He has a chance to be one of those players that every organisation covets because …. He’s got the heart of a competitor, and he’s got the tools.”
Red Wings netminder Dominik Hasek stopped 27 shots for the victory.
• The Pittsburgh Penguins shutout the New Jersey Devils 3-0. Jocelyn Thibault made 24 saves for his first shutout in three years as the Penguins won their third straight game.
• Paul Stastny pushed his NHL rookie-record point streak to 19 games with a third-period goal in the Colorado Avalanche’s 3-2 home victory over the Calgary Flames.
• David Vyborny scored the only goal of the shootout in the Columbus Blue Jackets’s 5-4 road victory over the Anaheim Ducks.

TITLE: Draw Enough for Zenit To Progress Into Quarter Finals
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: FC Zenit St. Petersburg went through to the Russian Cup quarterfinals on Wednesday, after a 1:1 draw in the second leg of its last-16 tie with Saturn gave the St. Petersburg club a 2:1 aggregate victory. 
“On the evidence of both games, we deserved to go through,” Zenit’s Dutch coach, Dick Advocaat, said in post-match comments posted at www.fc-zenit.ru.
“I was not very happy with our first-half performance…In the second half we played better and scored a goal similar to that which Saturn scored against us,” Advocaat said.
Zenit progressed despite missing defender Eric Hagen, who was banned for the match, and four other regular starters through injury. Another defender, Vladimir Radimov, was taken off injured at the beginning of the second half.
“He came out after half-time but quickly understood that he couldn’t continue,” Advocaat explained.
Zenit needs to win the Russia Cup to qualify directly for the UEFA cup and avoid having to go through the Intertoto qualifying competition.
The club now faces Spartak Moscow in the quarterfinals.
Zenit and Saturn have already met twice this season, playing each other in the first Premier League match of the season in St. Petersburg on Sunday when Turkish striker Fatih Tekke struck deep into injury time earning Zenit a draw. Zenit are away to Rostov in the second round of league matches March 18.
Elsewhere on Sunday, CSKA Moscow started its title defence with a 3-1 home success against Rubin Kazan and Spartak Moscow also got off to a winning start after beating city rivals Dinamo 1-0.  Spartak won thanks to a clinical finish from captain Yegor Titov in the 80th minute.

TITLE: 2012 Games to Cost $18 Bln
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — The estimated cost of staging the 2012 London Olympic Games has more than doubled to 9.3 billion pounds ($18 billion), the government said on Thursday.
Confirming speculation among legislators and the media that costs would spiral, sports minister Tessa Jowell said the government would stump up an additional 4.93 billion pounds to fund the games.
“The London Olympics are a project that will change Britain for the better, forever,” Jowell told parliament, saying the games would bring “huge financial gain” to Britain.
Uncertainty over the Olympic costs has led to concern the government would raise funds by imposing a heavier burden on taxpayers in the capital and by taking more money from the national lottery, depriving other good causes of funds.
The fears have soured the euphoria that gripped the British capital when it was awarded the 2012 Olympics in July 2005.
When London bid for the games, it estimated the cost of building the main Olympic sports infrastructure in east London at about 3 billion pounds and threw in another 1 billion pounds for regeneration of the dilapidated surrounding area.
Jowell said on Thursday that the budget for construction costs was now estimated at 5.3 billion pounds, including:
• 3.1 billion pounds for building the main Olympic Park and other sports venues
• 1.7 billion pounds for Olympic infrastructure and regeneration
• 500 million pounds for a contingency fund.
It also budgeted 388 million pounds for the Paralympics, 600 million pounds for policing and security, 836 million for tax and 2.25 billion for a further contingency fund.