SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1268 (34), Friday, May 4, 2007
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TITLE: Estonian Goods Face Boycott
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg retailers are removing Estonian goods from the shelves of their stores as part of a protest against the removal of the Soviet-era World War II memorial in Estonia, as the chilling severity of the Kremlin’s rhetoric against the neighbor state continues to grow.
Young Guard, the youth wing of the pro-presidential United Russia party, has produced a Russian-English sticker that says “We Do Not Sell The Estonian Goods” (sic) and has sent activists to campaign for the city’s retailers and their customers to reject Estonian goods.
Many Russians perceived the monument’s removal as heresy, coming as it does close to May 9 when Russia commemorates the end of World War II with a Victory Day holiday, and accused Estonia of “going to war with the human remains.”
War graves loacted near the monument were also moved.
Local retail chain Nakhodka has already decided against selling Estonian goods, while many other companies are considering such a move.
“We propose the boycott and the stickers entirely on a voluntary basis, and are not at all forcing it on anyone,” said Yevgeny Samoilov, deputy head of the Northwestern regional council of United Russia.” It is meant to give people a chance to express a civil protest against what they think is unacceptable.”
Liberal politicians called the Young Guard initiative laughable.
“Yes, the Estonian authorities made a tactless and insulting gesture but the Russian authorities are simply becoming hysterical about it,” said Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the political council of the St. Petersburg branch of liberal party Yabloko. “The Russian response was out of proportion. As for those youth groups, they are just being let loose like lapdogs against enemies appointed by the Kremlin, very much in the spirit of Mao Zedong’s fanatical Red Guards, who — many of them teenagers — were sent around to chase the discontented.”
Activists in the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi are collecting signatures to rename Tallinskoye Shosse — the main road to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia — as “The Highway of the Liberator-Soldier.”
Some Russians uphold the view that Soviet forces liberated Estonia from the Nazis at the end of World War II. Estonians meanwhile say that the country’s absorption into the Soviet Union amounted to occupation, from which it was delivered 40 years later when the U.S.S.R collapsed.
On Tuesaday, more than 70 Nashi activists were reported to have camped out near the town of Ivangorod on the Estonian border with the goal of blockading cargo from Estonia.
Moscow-based supermarket chains pioneered the boycott campaign. The Seventh Continent chain announced this week it had decided against selling Estonian goods. Another retailer, Samokhval, based in the Moscow region, joined in and said it has stopped buying and marketing Estonian products.
Several supermarkets in Petrozavodsk to the north of St. Petersburg have also stopped selling Estonian goods. Ariana, the town’s largest food chain, announced it had suspended the sale of Estonian products and posted leaflets in its branches across Petrozavodsk claiming that the decision was promoted by “the actions of the Estonian authorities.”
Oliver Kruuda, the owner of Kalev, Estonia’s largest confectionary factory, said Thursday in an interview with Estonian online publication Aripaev that its Russian partners had terminated all deals with Kalev thus closing the Russian market for the company. Kalev’s sales in Russia amounted to nearly 4 million Estonian kroons ($350,000) per month.
Alexei Tsivilev, deputy head of the St. Petersburg branch of Young Guard said it is important that the city takes part in the boycott.
“Among the people lying in the mass grave in Tallinn are the courageous soldiers who defended and saved our city during the Siege of Leningrad,” Tsivilev said.
The boycott’s advocates made no reference to losses Russian companies who do business with Estonia would suffer as a result of the economic blockade.
Sergei Gulyayev, local coordinator of opposition coalition The Other Russia, accused Russian authorities of hypocrisy.
“They are provoking us not to buy Estonian cheese but do not make the slightest move that would damage their own business interests in Estonia,” he said. “I do not see any wealthy Russians getting rid of their plum Estonian properties. Governor Valentina Matviyenko, for one, is not asking her son to sell the island he owns in Estonia, or suggesting he ends his business there.”
Yabloko’s Vishnevsky said the Russian authorities are deliberately exaggerating the scale of the conflict to downplay the recent scandals surrounding police violence against opposition protests.
In the meantime, the idea of boycotting Estonian goods is becoming increasingly more appealing to retailers across Russia. At least one retailer has even resorted to physical destruction of Estonian products as a retaliation. On Thursday, Kaliningrad-based group Wester, which has 35 stores in various parts of Russia, said that Estonian-made items have been cleared from its shelves.
“The products — including toothpaste and alcohol — will be burnt, and our financial damages totalling 2 million rubles [$78,000] are to be signed off,” the company said in a statement Thursday. “Our management is outraged by the barbaric move by the Estonian authorities [of removing the war memorial and graves].”
Sergei Ivanov, Russia’s first deputy-prime minister had earlier urged Russians to boycott Estonian goods and called upon Russians to stop taking vacations in Estonia. He also branded the actions of the Estonian leadership regarding the monument as “vandalism.”
His words were echoed by Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who touched on the sensitive issue in a speech during May Day meetings on Tuesday by calling for a boycot of Estonian products and services.
But Vishnevsky said he is not ready to give up at least one Estonian product.
“Whatever the Kremlin says, I am not going to give up drinking the Vana Tallinn liqueur,” Vishnevsky said of a well-known speciality concotion that ironically was invented during the Soviet era. “I drank it, I drink it and I always will — provided I can find it around here.”
TITLE: Russia to Estonia: Stop ‘Provocative Action’
AUTHOR: By Michael Stott
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia, brushing aside European protests, called on Estonia to stop “provocative action” on Thursday as a political crisis over the removal of a Soviet war memorial from central Tallinn worsened.
NATO joined the European Union in criticizing Moscow for failing to protect the Estonian embassy in Russia, the focus of weeklong demonstrations by pro-Kremlin youth activists.
The Western military alliance said in a statement it was “deeply concerned” by threats to Estonian diplomats and “intimidation” at the Estonian embassy.
Russia said it was doing all it could to ensure order.
The crisis broke last week when Estonia moved a bronze statue of a Red Army soldier, revered by Russia as a symbol of its enormous human sacrifices in World War Two against Nazi Germany, to a military cemetery and began uncovering the remains of 12 Soviet soldiers buried underneath it.
Many Estonians view the monument as an unwelcome reminder of nearly 50 years of Soviet rule and wanted it moved from its prominent location in their capital.
The issue is particularly sensitive because Moscow, stung by NATO expansion into its former Soviet territory, has decided to take a more forceful stand against what it sees as hostile Western encroachment on to its traditional turf.
Protesters remained camped at the front and rear of the Estonian embassy building in central Moscow on Thursday, ignoring EU appeals to respect an international treaty guaranteeing the protection of diplomats and embassies.
About 80 were milling around, and more were sleeping in tents erected along the pavement. One group had brought a large inflatable tank and pointed its gun barrel at the embassy.
On Wednesday protesters chanting “Fascism won’t pass” stormed a news conference called by the Estonian ambassador before bodyguards dispersed them by spraying gas.
Ambassador Marina Kaljurand said that during the night stones had been thrown at the embassy compound, breaking four windows. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called his Estonian counterpart Urmas Paet late on Wednesday to warn him of the “serious negative consequences” of the memorial’s relocation.
“Sergei Lavrov called on the Estonian leadership to refrain from provocative actions that may further exacerbate the situation,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Foreign Ministry also summoned the ambassadors of Germany, the EU and Portugal to express “deep bewilderment” about what it termed the “lack of a principled assessment by the European Union of the actions of the Tallinn government.”
Ethnic Russians, who make up about a third of Estonia’s population, have protested against the memorial’s removal to a military cemetery. One Russian was killed and others arrested in rioting in Tallinn last week, prompting an angry Russian reaction.
Russian newspapers, which generally back the Kremlin, have poured vitriol on Estonia.
The mass-market tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda printed a poem written “in case of civil war in the Baltic dwarf state” under the title “The Date of Victory is Coming Again — Forward! To Tallinn! Protect the Soldier!”
“The Pskov [army] division is not far off, a short quick march and Tallinn falls,” it ran.
Traders said on Wednesday Russia had halted rail deliveries of vital oil products and steam coal to Estonia, a tiny state of 1.3 million on the Baltic Sea which left the Soviet Union in 1991 and joined NATO and the EU in 2004.
Railway officials cited planned annual maintenance as the reason and denied any political motive. But Russia’s record of using energy resources for political ends prompted speculation that the move was retaliation for the monument’s removal.
TITLE: 121-Meter ‘Petersburg Spire’ Fails to Inspire
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While many still argue that the building of Gazprom’s skyscraper in St. Petersburg will destroy its low historic skyline, another plan to build another tower received permission from the city’s planning council Apr.13, Fontanka news agency reported.
The 35 million euro glass and steel “Petersburg Spire” is intended to serve as an observation structure and represents a giant doughnut-shaped capsule that goes up, down and around the 121-meter steel shaft.
The Spire boasts that it will allow visitors to see the city from a height almost twice as high as that of St. Isaac’s Cathedral colonnade, currently generates the best view of the city.
The location for the new tower has not been finalized yet. But according to the experts who took part in the Council’s meeting, the most probable site is Ploshchad Truda, a square nearby New Holland Island.
And not everyone is happy with the choice.
Mikhail Milchik, a St. Petersburg-based member of the Federal Council on the Preservation of Cultural Heritage said that the Petersburg Spire, if built on Ploshchad Truda, will be completely out of place.
“This square is one of the city’s conservation areas where new buildings are banned, and only the renovation of the old ones is allowed,” Milchik said.
“The nearby New Holland will have its own vertical dominance, the top part of the Palace of Festivals, and therefore to bring such a big number of novelties into this old area is extremely inappropriate,” Milchik told The St. Petersburg Times on Thursday.
Milchik also pointed out that the visual competition between the entertainment Spire and St. Petersburg’s historic symbol of the Peter and Paul Fortress would be bad for the city’s image.
But regardless of all of the opinions mentioned above and the fact that the square is one of the most congested areas in the entire city, with the situation expected to deteriorate in future when the Palace of Festivals with its 3500 capacity is to be opened, the city authorities say the square is the best location for the new sightseeing tower.
“Ploshchad Truda is an optimal location, because there’s no other big and beautiful square in the city, apart from Palace Square, but you obviously can’t put the Spire there,” Vitaly Ritstsi, director of the state-run Agency of City Marketing said. “It has not been decided for sure whether or not the tower will be built, but there’s a 99 percent probability that it will be erected and on this precise location,” he said.
As for the transportation problems, Ritstsi said he believes they will be solved by the ring road by the time the Spire is built.
The Petersburg Spire is planned to be built roughly in 2009. It was designed by David Marks and Julia Barfield, who are also the masterminds behind one of London’s landmarks, the giant Ferries wheel of ‘The London Eye.’
The idea behind the tower is to give people the experience, similar to that London Eye which the offers, but in other locations, David Marks of says in his interview posted on the MarksBarfield website.
“It’s getting people up high to appreciate views that they would not have been able to appreciate by any other means,” Marks said.
A tower of its kind has not been built anywhere yet, but Brighton, one of the largest and most famous seaside resorts in England, will get one called i360 in 2008.
TITLE: Patriarch Denies Claims Regarding Health Scare
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II appeared in public on Wednesday for the first time since undergoing medical treatment and said his opponents were spreading rumors he had died.
The absence of the 78-year-old patriarch from the funeral last week of former President Boris Yeltsin sparked speculation that Alexy, who was undergoing treatment in Switzerland, was dead.
“There was no truth in those statements,” Alexy said at Moscow’s Pokrovsky Convent, where he led prayers for a recently canonized Russian saint.
“You can see that I feel healthy, I am serving, I am alive,” he said, RIA-Novosti reported.
Alexy, dressed in his distinctive golden canonical dress, looked fit and confident in footage of the mass shown on Vesti-24 television.
He said the rumors of his death might be linked to a ceremony planned later this month to reunite the church with its overseas branch, which broke away after the Revolution.
Officials have not said what treatment Alexy received in Switzerland.
The Russian Orthodox Church has undergone a revival since Alexy became patriarch in 1990, and the reunification with the church abroad, which will be sealed during a May 17 ceremony, is widely seen as the latest milestone in its resurgence. The move is strongly backed by President Vladimir Putin.
The plan, however, has faced opposition from some senior clerics, who accuse Alexy of being too close to the state and not taking a sufficiently tough stance on other Christian faiths or those the critics view as Orthodox schismatics.
TITLE: 3 Reports Criticize Media Freedom
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Media freedom in Russia is comparable to that in Azerbaijan and the Democratic Republic of Congo and growing worse, two U.S.-based media watchdogs said ahead of World Press Freedom Day on Thursday.
The U.S. State Department also criticized Russian media freedom this week and expressed “grave concern” over the October killing of investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya.
The three salvos should prompt a sharp protest from Moscow, which has rebuked previous assessments as biased and unfair. The Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment about the latest criticism.
The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a report issued Wednesday that Russia had slipped badly over the past five years, earning it a spot on a list of 10 backsliders that also included Azerbaijan, Cuba, Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco, Thailand and a group of African countries.
“The backsliders reflect a mixture of relatively open countries that have turned increasingly repressive and traditionally restrictive nations where press conditions, remarkably, have worsened,” the report said.
Russia ranked third worst, better than Ethiopia and Gambia but worse than the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The report said a key factor indicating a deterioration in Russian media freedom was a recent law that defines extremism as the “public slander toward figures fulfilling state duties,” among other things.
The second report, released Tuesday by Freedom House, lumped Russia between Azerbaijan and Brunei near the bottom of a list of 195 countries. Russia fell six places from last year to the 165th spot. It has the status of “not free.”
On Monday, the State Department issued a report that identified Russia as one of the worst violators of media freedom, together with Afghanistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, the Philippines and Venezuela.
The State Department also called on Russia to find the killers of Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. The murder was an “affront to free and independent media and to democratic values,” the report said. CPJ’s report says 11 journalists have been murdered in Russia in the last five years, but none of the cases have been solved, and it said the number of imprisoned journalists is on the rise.
CPJ’s report did not identify the 11 journalists. The organization previously reported that a total of 13 journalists had died on President Vladimir Putin’s watch and that the killers had never been brought to justice.
But six men were convicted and jailed in 2003 for killing several of the journalists on the list, and 16 more were on trial as of April on charges of murdering another listed journalist. One person on the list was not a journalist.
Fifty to 60 attacks were carried out against journalists last year, said Mikhail Melnikov, a researcher at the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.
He said he agreed with the U.S. assessments on the state of media freedom in Russia.
But Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-linked political analyst, said foreign organizations could not provide an unbiased overview of Russian media freedom.
“Their judgments are inadequate and based on a phobia of Russia as a superpower,” Markov said.
TITLE: Plans Afoot for Building of Yeltsin Museum
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Construction of a museum featuring the archive, belongings and personal library of the former President Boris Yeltsin could begin this year in Filyovsky Park in western Moscow, Vedomosti reported Wednesday.
The Yeltsin Foundation, an organization founded by people close to the former president with the aim of “creating the necessary conditions for young people to reach their creative potential,” expects construction of the museum to begin this year, the newspaper said.
The museum will include facilities for academic research, but the archive will not be open to the general public. Researchers will have to submit a written application to obtain access.
The project has been approved by the city’s chief architect, though State Duma Deputy Alexei Mitrofanov has filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General’s Office, in which he claims that the planned museum would deprive the public of valuable parkland.
The museum would be the centerpiece of a 1.6-hectare development and is planned to be built in the style of a Russian country estate. Five-star condominiums and office space are also planned.
TITLE: Mayor of Tolyatti Detained Over $5.8M Bribe Allegation
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Tolyatti’s mayor has been detained on suspicion of demanding a multimillion-dollar bribe, prosecutors said Wednesday, the latest in a string of mayors and governors to be targeted for corruption.
Tolyatti Mayor Nikolai Utkin was detained Tuesday after authorities seized a man suspected of being a go-between for a 25 million ruble ($970,500) bribe, the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement on Wednesday.
The money was the first installment of a 150 million ruble ($5.8 million) bribe that Utkin had demanded as part of a real estate deal, prosecutors said.
Along with Utkin and the suspected middleman, Alexander Sidorov, authorities arrested Natalya Nemykh, head of the Tolyatti city government’s land resources department.
Prosecutors have classified the case as conspiracy to commit extortion. If charged and convicted, the three suspects could face up to 12 years in prison.
Utkin’s detention comes amid Kremlin efforts to crack down on corrupt officials and consolidate control over the country’s far-flung regions.
Several governors and mayors around the country have been arrested or investigated for corruption in the past year.
AP, SPT
TITLE: Rosneft Wins Yukos Auction
AUTHOR: By Lucian Kim and Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Rosneft, the Russian oil company chaired by President Vladimir Putin’s deputy chief of staff, has won an auction for Yukos Oil Co.’s largest unit to become the country’s biggest crude producer.
Rosneft’s Neft-Aktiv unit agreed to pay 175.7 billion rubles ($6.8 billion) for Tomskneft and other assets that were grouped for sale at Yukos’s Moscow headquarters Thursday. That’s about $370 million above the starting price.
The acquisitions boost state-run Rosneft’s daily output by 230,000 barrels a day to about 2 million barrels, more than Lukoil’s 1.87 million and a fifth of the national total. Rosneft also acquired the Eastern-Siberian Oil Co., Angarsk refinery and Achinsk petrochemicals plant.
Putin’s government controls a third of an oil industry that is now pumping more crude than Saudi Arabia, after piling more than $30 billion in tax claims on Yukos to destroy what once was the country’s biggest company. Rosneft tripled output by acquiring Yukos’s Yuganskneftegaz unit in 2004. Rosneft’s chairman, Igor Sechin, is the deputy head of Putin’s staff.
Rosneft and Gazprom, Russia’s natural gas monopoly, agreed to split the assets sold today, with Gazprom taking the oil producers and Rosneft keeping the refinery and petrochemicals plant, Vedomosti reported yesterday, citing an unidentified employee of a Gazprom unit. The only other bidder in Thursday’s auction, Yuniteks, is linked to Gazprom’s banking arm, Vedomosti said.
Today’s win more than doubles Rosneft’s refining capacity.
TITLE: Norilsk Musters $4.8Bln Bid for Canada’s LionOre
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest nickel miner, on Thursday bid C$5.3 billion ($4.8 billion) to take over Canada’s LionOre, topping a rival offer by London-listed Xstrata.
Norilsk said in a regulatory filing it had bid 21.50 Canadian dollars a share for LionOre. That values the company at a 22.9 percent premium to its March 23 closing price, and a premium of 16.2 percent to Xstrata’s earlier agreed offer.
“This is an exciting opportunity for Norilsk Nickel, which will bring together two companies with a strong strategic fit and will enhance our position amongst the largest diversified mining companies in the world,” said Norilsk CEO Denis Morozov.
The offer would value LionOre at $C5.3 billion if all shares are tendered. Completion of the offer would be subject to 66.7 percent of LionOre’s shares being tendered, Norilsk said.
“We are able to provide LionOre shareholders an attractive opportunity to realise substantial gains. At the same time, we are pursuing a transaction that is accretive to Norilsk Nickel’s earnings and cash flow.”
Analysts saluted the bid and Norilsk’s shares rallied by 3.5 percent on the news, but they warned that Norilsk faced tough competition for LionOre, the world’s No.10 nickel producer, amid a race by global miners to consolidate.
“Norilsk has free cash and the market wondered what it was going to do with it,” commented Valentina Bogomolova, an analyst with Alfa Bank.
“The bid clarifies the situation for investors, who now understand that Norilsk is going to purchase assets, including foreign assets, and maintain its leading position in the sector, not only through organic growth, but also through reasonable merger and acquisition deals.”
Anglo-Swiss Xstrata said on March 26 it was to buy LionOre for an agreed C$4.6 billion to widen its geographic spread. It received approvals from Canadian and Australian regulators to go ahead with the deal.
Norilsk said its counterbid was financed through both its own cash resources and commitments from BNP Paribas and Societe Generale .
It is being advised by investment bank UBS. Its lead legal adviser is Hogan & Hartson LLP and Canadian counsel is Goodmans LLP.
LionOre is listed in Australia, Canada and Britain and has mines in southern Africa and Australia.
Analysts called LionOre, which plans to increase its nickel output by 30 percent this year, one of the best independent nickel producers still in play.
“The company (LionOre) is in a perfect state — in contrast to global players, who do not expect a substantial rise in output,” said Denis Nushtayev, an analyst at Metropol brokerage.
But, he added, Swiss-based Xstrata, which bought Canadian mining giant Falconbridge in 2006, is likely to try to outbid Norilsk’s offer.
“It is difficult to say who will win, but it appears that Xstrata will fight for LionOre,” Bogomolova said.
TITLE: Putin Gives Patrushev’s Son Medal of Honor for Service
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin has awarded Andrei Patrushev, the 26-year-old son of Federal Security Service director Nikolai Patrushev, a medal of honor for his many years of service in the economic sphere, the Kremlin said in a decree posted online Wednesday.
Andrei Patrushev has worked with state-owned oil firm Rosneft since September, when he was appointed adviser to Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin. He completed his studies at the FSB Academy four years ago, where he was a classmate of Pavel Fradkov, the son of Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, Newsru.com reported.
Before moving to Rosneft, Andrei Patrushev was deputy director of the FSB's department that watches oil company activities, Kommersant reported at the time of the appointment, citing an unidentified Rosneft official. The appointment was seen as solidifying control of Rosneft by a group of security and military officials close to Putin.
Sechin, a Kremlin deputy chief of staff and former KGB official believed to have played a key role in the legal attack on Yukos, was appointed to chair Rosneft's board in July 2004, despite having no experience in oil.
Rosneft could become the country's biggest oil producer if it manages to win two key auctions for Yukos' remaining oil units over the next week.
Dmitry Patrushev, Andrei's older brother, oversees loans to oil companies at state-owned VTB Group, Kommersant said in September.
TITLE: Lukoil to Raise Fuel Exports
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — Russia’s top oil producer Lukoil plans to raise fuel oil and vacuum gas oil exports from its Baltic Sea terminal of Vysotsk in May, but diesel shipments will fall, a port source said on Wednesday.
Total shipments in May are expected to reach 1.0 million tonnes of refined products, including 400,000 tonnes of fuel oil, 300,000 tonnes of vacuum gas oil and 300,000 tonnes of diesel, the source told Reuters.
In April, the terminal exported 896,000 tonnes of oil products, including 271,500 tonnes of fuel oil, 268,500 tonnes of vacuum gas oil and 356,000 tonnes of diesel.
Vysotsk traditionally raises fuel oil exports with the start of the river navigation as it gets additional volumes delivered via the Volgo-Balt river and canals network. The first river tanker is scheduled to arrive at the port of Vysotsk on May 4.
The terminal will receive 100,000 tonnes of fuel oil a month by river and around 300,000 tonnes a month by rail until October, the source said.
Lukoil had earlier said Vysotsk would load up to 300,000 tonnes of vacuum gas oil, 400,000 tonnes of fuel oil and 250,000 tonnes of diesel per month in April-July.
Vysotsk plans to export around 12 million tonnes of refined products this year, compared with 9.2 million tonnes in 2006.
Lukoil, in which U.S. ConocoPhillips owns 20 percent, is Russia’s top oil producer.
TITLE: Gasoline Capped Until ‘08
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The country’s major oil firms will keep a lid on gasoline rises this year despite rising wholesale prices in order to avoid irritating the Kremlin before the 2008 presidential elections, traders said Wednesday.
Wholesale gasoline prices rose 15 to 20 percent in April, when domestic crude prices surged 25 percent, traders said.
But the trend is unlikely to carry over to the retail market during the politically sensitive pre-election period.
“We clearly remember last year’s call [not to increase oil prices] by [Economic Development and Trade Minister German] Gref and his threat to introduce state control over the prices if they go up sharply,” said a trader in a major oil company.
Last year, the government, concerned by the spike in local fuel prices, called on oil companies to curb price growth or face investigation for anti-competitive behavior. In 2006, gasoline prices rose by 11 percent in Russia.
Prices stopped rising at the end of last year and have barely changed for the last six months, standing at 17.72 rubles (69 cents) per liter in mid-April.
TITLE: Putin Approves Merger of Five Airlines
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin signed a decree approving the merger of five air carriers on Wednesday, amid government efforts to boost the country’s struggling aviation industry.
But don’t hope for lower ticket prices anytime soon. The new airline, AirUnion, is not expected to start competing against flagship airline Aeroflot for at least a couple of years.
The state will retain a stake of no less than 45 percent in AirUnion, which will include the airlines KrasAir, Domodedovo Airlines, Omskavia, Samara and Sibaviatrans, as well as a company called AirUnion RRJ, the Kremlin said in a statement.
The government sees the merged carrier as a way to encourage competition and boost safety in an industry in which many companies lack the finances to overhaul their Soviet-built aircraft.
“It’s the fittest that survive in our business,” said Olga Trapeznikova, a spokeswoman for KrasAir, which initiated the drive for the merger.
The state currently holds a controlling 51 percent stake in KrasAir, 50 percent in Domodedovo Airlines, and 46.5 percent in Samara airlines. The two other carriers are privately owned.
But the move may not change anything for another few years, not least because the process of merging airlines with different ownership structures will be mired by bureaucracy, analysts said.
While the state will hold no less than 45 percent, private shareholders will have a controlling stake in the new airline, said Igor Konkov, adviser to Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref.
“This completely changes the situation,” said Konkov, adding that private ownership of the airline will attract much-needed investment to buy the new aircraft. Konkov declined to estimate how much investment was needed but said a new plane costs $25 million to $27 million and the new carrier would need to overhaul its fleet “totally.” AirUnion also hopes to get 15 SuperJet aircraft that Sukhoi is building.
The five airlines under the AirUnion brand currently have more than 100 planes in their fleet. The alliance is the country’s fifth- or sixth-largest domestic carrier, according to estimates by Boris Rybak, head of aviation consultancy Infomost.
Konkov added that the next step on the way to the merged airline would be for the Federal Property Management Agency to estimate the value of the shares each company would bring to the new carrier. The process would take about three months, he added.
The founders of the AirUnion RRJ — whose charter capital should cover the costs of purchasing the SuperJet aircraft — are KrasAir general director Boris Abramovich and his brother KrasAir first deputy general director and AirUnion president Alexander Abramovich, Interfax said, citing corporate database SPARK.
Analysts were skeptical that the new airline would become a boon for passengers in the next few years.
The SuperJet aircraft would only be tested in late 2008, Rybak said. “And then will have to be built,” he added.
“None of these five airlines have passed the IATA audit,” said Rafail Aptukov, vice president of the nonprofit group Flight Safety Foundation International, referring to research by the International Air Transport Association.
The five AirUnion companies carried some 4.9 million passengers in 2006, up from 3.7 million the year before, KrasAir said last month.
TITLE: Oil Exports Increase 6% Despite Decline in Output
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Oil exports jumped by more than 6 percent in April to their second highest ever despite a decline in output, as higher oil prices and refinery maintenance prompted oil firms to send more crude abroad, Industry and Energy Ministry data showed Wednesday.
The data showed that oil exports via pipeline monopoly Transneft rose by 280,000 barrels per day from March to 4.69 million bpd, just short of the previous record of 4.76 million bpd in May 2006.
“There could be another jump in May this year as people will try to evacuate more crude before export duties jump from June making exports less profitable,” a trader with a Russian major said.
Transneft has already set a bigger oil export schedule for May with shipments expected to rise by at least 80,000 bpd.
The jump in April exports came amid reduced domestic refinery runs with Lukoil’s Volgograd having half of its capacity slashed by a fire in March and Surgut’s Kirishi putting one of its primary distillation units on an upgrade. Some maintenance work will be extended into May, and that could force some producers to continue trimming output to avoid an oil glut at home.
April production declined by 50,000 bpd or 0.6 percent to 9.82 million bpd from the previous all-time high of 9.87 million bpd in March.
Most big producers, including Lukoil, Rosneft, Gazpromneft and Russneft, which have been growing in the previous months, showed a decline in production of 0.5 to 2 percent.
Output at production sharing agreements, led by ExxonMobil’s Sakhalin-1 group, also declined by 7.8 percent in April. Exxon has said it hit peak production of 250,000 bpd in March.
April output was 2.3 percent higher than in April 2006 and overall production in the first four months of the year was 3.7 percent higher than in January-April 2006.
April exports rose across all destinations, including a 1 percent increase in deliveries to Central Europe via the Druzhba pipeline and a healthy 9.4 percent jump in exports via seaports.
The main addition came in the Baltic Sea port of Primorsk and Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odessa.
TITLE: Russian GDP Growth Slows Slightly in March
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s economic growth slowed slightly in March but still set a blistering pace led by a construction sector that benefited from unseasonably mild weather.
Gross domestic product (GDP) grew by an estimated 7.4 percent in March, year-on-year, compared to a revised February estimate of 7.9 percent, the Economy Ministry said in its monthly economic report on Wednesday.
The ministry had earlier estimated February GDP growth at 8.3 percent and gave no reason for downward revision. The Ministry also said GDP grew by 7.9 percent in the first quarter.
The ministry said manufacturing and construction were the drivers of growth in the first quarter of 2007. Industrial output grew by 8.4 percent in Jan-March.
“The downward trend in industry output growth observed throughout 2006 was reversed at the start of 2007,” the ministry said in the report.
The construction industry, which showed record growth rates due to a warm winter that allowed builders to carry on working, increased output by 22.7 percent compared with 1.5 percent in the same period last year.
The ministry said industries related to construction achieved the highest rates of growth. It said production of cement grew by 37 percent while manufacturing of cranes went up 81.5 percent.
The ministry said capital investment grew by 20.1 percent in the first quarter of 2007, compared with 5.7 percent in the same period of last year. Retail trade grew by 13.6 percent compared with 11.1 a year ago.
TITLE: Sberbank 2006 IFRS Net Profit Up 25.8 %
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s largest bank, state-controlled Sberbank, on Wednesday reported a 25.8 percent increase in 2006 net profit as its loan portfolio grew rapidly.
The bank, which raised $8.95 billion through a rights issue earlier this year, said its earnings to international financial reporting standards grew to 82.8 billion roubles ($3.22 billion) from 65.8 percent in 2005.
Assets grew 38 percent to 3.5 trillion rubles ($136.3 billion) in 2006 while its loan portfolio grew 42 percent to 2.5 trillion rubles.
The bank said retail deposits grew by 35 percent to 2.05 trillion roubles and its capital grew by 34 percent to 308.5 billion rubles.
Sberbank shares serve as a proxy stock for foreign investors seeking to gain exposure to Russia’s fast-growing banking sector, but the situation is likely to change after its domestic rival Vneshtorgbank OJSC (VTB) floats its shares in Moscow and London later this month.
VTB is the second largest bank in Russia in terms of assets.
Sberbank held the rights issue, the second-largest equity fund raising by a Russian company, to boost its capital base eroded by rapid growth in lending.
The retail savings bank, which last year published for the first time half-year results according to international financial reporting standards (IFRS), has said it will publish quarterly IFRS results on a regular basis in 2007.
TITLE: Food Retailer Magnit 2006 Sales, Earnings Rose 50 Percent on Stores
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Magnit, the Russian food retailer that floated last year, said on Wednesday that its 2006 sales rose by 59 percent to $2.51 billion while earnings growth lagged slightly.
Net profits rose by 55 percent to $56.9 million, while earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) gained 54 percent to $122.6 million, under international financial reporting standards.
Like-for-like sales rose by 17.5 percent in dollar terms and by 13.2 percent in rouble terms. Magnit opened 393 new stores in 2006, bringing the total to 1,893, the company said.
Magnit raised $368 million in a domestic initial public offering in April 2006. Its shares traded on Wednesday at 1,230 roubles ($47.90), up from their flotation price of $27.
TITLE: Fuel Export Duty to Rise In June, Flow Reshuffle Likely
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia will increase its oil export duty by 28.3 percent in June-July following a rise in global oil prices, a Finance Ministry official said Wednesday.
Russia sets oil and oil product export duties every two months based on monitoring of international prices for its mainstay Urals crude blend.
“The average oil price was $61 per barrel during the monitoring period of March and April. Based on this, the oil export duty will be set at $200.60 per ton from June 1,” said Alexander Sakovich, of the ministry’s customs department.
The current oil export duty is set at $156.40 per ton.
Sakovich said export duties for refined products would also be increased by around 25 percent to $147.50 per ton of light products and $79.40 per ton of heavy products, such as fuel oil, from the current figures of $117.70 and $63.40, respectively.
Export duties often prompt Russian oil firms to reshuffle their flows, refining more crude at home when duties rise and sending more abroad when they decline.
TITLE: Reverting to Isolationism
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: What mutual understanding there might have been between Russia and the West is gradually being replaced by increasing mutual irritation, suspicion and even confrontation. The two sides no longer seem to speak the same language, nor do they care much for listening to each other.
The best and most recent example of the clash between these two different systems of logic and understanding has been the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, or the CFE. Last week, in his last state-of-the-nation address, President Vladimir Putin declared that Russia was essentially suspending its participation in the CFE. He pointed out that the treaty was hammered out in 1990 between NATO and the former Warsaw Pact members, of which Russia is the only one that hasn’t since joined NATO. The treaty was modified in the late 1990s to reflect the new reality and, although Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine have ratified it, not a single NATO member has done so. This has clearly upset Moscow, as witnessed by the apparently sincere litany of complaints against the West that Putin expressed in his speech in Munich in February.
The logic behind the West’s position is the following: Moscow has yet to fulfill its commitment to remove military bases and armaments from Georgia and Moldova, and until it does so there can be no discussion of ratifying the CFE. The West sincerely views Russia’s intention to back out of the treaty with extreme suspicion since the CFE is the most effective and, in fact, the only existing instrument for controlling armaments in Europe. The desire to maintain this control has only grown along with the mutual distrust between Russia and the rest of Europe.
Statements from both sides regarding the placement of elements of anti-ballistic missile batteries in Poland and the Czech Republic have at times verged on the hysterical. Last week’s negotiations in Moscow between the Russian and Czech presidents on this subject apparently collapsed. Russia has not even attempted to raise the issue with Poland, with which Moscow is already locked in an angry trade dispute over meat imports. The Kremlin does not trust Western reassurances that the batteries are not directed at Russia. And the West doubts Moscow’s disbelief, suspecting it to be a cover for some kind of militaristic intrigue.
The Kremlin’s repeated and heavy-handed “reminders” to leaders of opposition groups planning anti-government protests suggests that those in power are convinced that these groups, as well as most nongovernmental organizations, are financed by the West and bent on regime change along the lines of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. While this might seem like a ruse to mask Moscow’s general dissatisfaction, and the Kremlin regularly applies the catchphrase “selling out to the West” to discredit all opposition, the situation is not that simple. This is not just a case of political posturing: People in the Kremlin really believe there are plots afoot involving secret payments to the organizers of the protests. They truly believe that all media criticism of official propaganda is part of a coordinated effort financed by outsiders. Andrei Illarionov, former economic policy adviser to Putin, has called it paranoia. It sometimes seems he is right.
And then there is the situation in Estonia, where an outburst of patriotism inspired officials to relocate a statue commemorating slain World War II Soviet soldiers from downtown Tallinn to a less centrally located military cemetery. Russian demonstrators staged a protest outside the Estonian Embassy in Moscow, to which Estonia responded by denying visas to the handful of Russians still interested in visiting that country. This cannot even be characterized as a relationship but only as mutual hostility.
The sad preliminary result of Russia’s last seven years of foreign policy is that Moscow is left without a single country in the world it can reasonably call a friend, ally and good partner. Even its strongest international relationships are based on dry business pragmatism. Meanwhile, the list of countries with which Russia has ruined its relations continues to grow.
If things progress further along this path, foreign policy, as well as Russia’s entire relationship with the rest of the world, could become the main theme of domestic political discussion. More accurately, it could be at the heart of future propaganda campaigns. It is unlikely, however, to lead to any serious domestic arguments with the Kremlin, as very few politicians are willing to take that kind of risk. In fact, the reluctance on the part of Russian politicians to challenge the status quo has led the Kremlin gradually to stop listening to its international opponents as well, choosing to forego constructive dialogue and compromise.
When domestic politics are governed by strict orders from the top, it is difficult to switch gears to a different kind of discourse on the international stage.
Increasingly, Russians are taught to see themselves as living in a “besieged fortress,” surrounded by an unloving, oppressive world community plotting against them. That makes for a straight and fast road to international isolation, driven by a self-cultivated persecution complex. This condition has regularly accompanied periods of authoritarianism in Russian imperial and Soviet history.
The current political climate in the Kremlin suggests that First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov may be the one to get the nod as Putin’s successor, considering his credentials as former Defense Minister and his leading position among the siloviki. It will be easier for Ivanov to convince both Putin and the people of his worthiness in the context of the current campaign against the West. On the other hand, the future president’s opening stance toward the West at the start of his term one year from now may actually benefit from the worsening relations. Russia’s relations with the West may become so bad by then that something as simple as a genuine smile from the Russian president will be welcomed as a major step forward.
Indeed, Sergei Ivanov does have a charming smile, and once even blew a kiss to French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie. This is exactly the kind of gesture missing in current relations between Moscow and the West.
Georgy Bovt is editor of Profil magazine.
TITLE: Prestige Behind the Imperial Ethic
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Russia has once more affirmed its status as a great power and bolstered its authority in the world on President Vladimir Putin’s watch. Shortly after the State Duma condemned the relocation of a World War II memorial in Tallinn, the valiant defenders of the Bronze Soldier provided us with a textbook example of how to fight injustice.
They looted the Wool & Cotton, Sportland and Hugo Boss stores late last week in the Estonian capital. They looted a wine shop and burned a few cars. One defender of the monument was stabbed to death during the riot. Dozens of people, including police, were injured. A female police officer’s leg was broken. Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip received a death threat by e-mail.
There’s nothing new about Russian attempts to implement policies aimed at restoring the country to greatness.
One recent example was in 2005, when thugs in Poland beat up the children of Russian diplomats and stole their mobile phones. Putin sharply criticized the actions of Polish authorities. A few days later, patriots beat up three Poles — two diplomats and a journalist — on the streets of Moscow.
Another case was in September 2006, when Georgia detained four Russian military officers on suspicion of espionage. Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili identified the officers as senior members of the General Staff’s Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU. The Defense Ministry immediately refuted the insinuation in the Georgian media that the GRU was involved in intelligence gathering. Then again, under Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, the GRU may well have been involved in some other activity, such as cactus farming.
Putin responded with a call for measures to protect the rights of native vendors in our markets. After that, Russia declared war — not against Georgia, but against Georgians living in Russia. The crackdown dealt Georgians a crushing financial blow that benefited the cops, and the deportation process claimed several lives.
Now Estonia is feeling the heat.
It should be noted that Russia reacts to external challenges in a very selective fashion. The Kremlin saw nothing amiss last July when a North Korean missile landed in Russian waters near the Pacific port of Nakhodka.
When Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal arrived in Moscow for a recent official visit, he announced upon landing at the airport that his movement would not recognize Israel’s right to exist, thereby rendering senseless Russia’s attempt to draw him into the negotiating process. Once again, the Kremlin took the slight in stride.
In other words, Russia never takes offense when a so-called rogue state spits in its face.
There’s no point even talking about the official reaction to events here at home. The parliament was unmoved last week when the remains of six Soviet World War II pilots buried at a memorial in Khimki were unearthed by a bulldozer, the gravestones were tossed around, protesters were beaten by police and the remains went missing. No one called for a boycott of goods from Khimki or for the mayor to be declared persona non grata.
Countries that were once part of the Soviet empire — Poland, Georgia, Estonia — are another matter entirely. When something happens there, the wrath of Putin, the Russian police and bands of curiously elusive avengers is always ready to rain down on those who forget the words of the old song: “Our armor is strong and our tanks are swift.”
And this wrath delivers tangible results. After its diplomats were beaten up, Poland, for example, began talking about allowing the United States to install interceptor missiles on its territory, a move that infuriated the Kremlin. Georgia appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and the Kremlin still can’t figure out why.
Both of these examples clearly demonstrate how Putin’s foreign policy bolsters Russia’s prestige and restores its former imperial greatness.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Elektra shock
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A one-act shock opera, that blends antique tragedy with Freudian overtones and prompted psychoanalyst Carl Jung to identify a father-daughter version of the Oedipus complex, returns to the Mariinsky Theater after an absence of nearly 100 years.
Richard Strauss’s fourth opera, set to a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and based on a Sophocles’ tragedy, “Elektra” premieres at the Mariinsky on Sunday with performances on Monday and May 25.
“Elektra” began a creative collaboration between Strauss and von Hofmannsthal that resulted in eight operas and a ballet. Hofmannsthal spliced Sophocles’ mournful text with Freudian motifs — some critics were able to trace direct references to Freud and Breuer’s “Studies in Hysteria” — producing an intoxicating fusion of neurotic rage, trauma, emotional entrapment and eroticism.
Austrian contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink, who sang the role of the mother Klytemnestra in the original production which premiered in Dresden in 1909, called the stage experience “frightful” and said she dreaded doing it again.
“I will never sing the role again,” the singer said after the premiere. “We were a set of mad women. There is nothing beyond ‘Elektra.’ We have lived and reached the furthest boundary in dramatic writing for the voice with Wagner. But Richard Strauss goes beyond him. His singing voices are lost. We have come to a full stop. I believe Strauss himself sees it.”
The Mariinsky first staged “Elektra” in 1913. That production, by the legendary director Vsevolod Meyerhold and set designer Alexander Golovin, marked Richard Strauss’s arrival on the Russian operatic stage.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the new Mariinsky production is the issue of which of Strauss’s two contrary pieces of advice on how to handle the score Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky symphony orchestra heed.
The composer once said that both “Salome” and “Elektra” should be conducted as “elfin music,” “as if they were pieces of fairy music by Mendelssohn.” At the same time, a documented anecdote from a rehearsal of the original production, contains a strikingly contrasting recommendation. Richard Strauss was heard shouting at the conductor, Ernst von Schuch, and demanding a more ponderous sound. “Louder, louder, I can still hear the singers!” Strauss hollered.
Responsibility for the new production has been placed on the shoulders of the renowned British director Jonathan Kent, who gained international fame during his reign as one of the directors of London’s Almeida theater from 1990 to 2002.
Upon his departure from the Almeida, Kent tried his hand at opera. His debut came in 2003 when he produced Leos Janacek’s “Katya Kabanova” for the Santa Fe Opera, receiving plaudits from the critics.
One of the director’s biggest successes in opera was a rendition of Puccini’s “Tosca” which he created for Covent Garden in 2006 with glamorous Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu in the lead role. The stakes were high for Kent, as the show replaced a famous Franco Zeffirelli production originally designed for Maria Callas in 1964, which had been running for 42 years.
The idea of bringing “Elektra” to the Mariinsky was born during a conversation between Kent and Valery Gergiev. The two artists first met three years ago in the U.K., and when Gergiev proposed that the director do a production for the St. Petersburg company, “Elektra” came to Kent as a natural choice. He felt its high degree of intensity would fit beautifully with the Mariinsky symphony orchestra, renowned for its dark powerful sound, and resonate well with Russian audiences.
For Kent, this Richard Strauss opera is a story about a life lived in conflict, and Elektra herself is a person who only really exists in opposition; someone who is unable to move on from the past, and thus cannot accommodate life.
The opera’s setting is the inner court of the royal palace in Mycenae. Elektra contemplates revenge against her mother, Klytemnestra, who, with her lover Aegisthus, murdered her husband, Elektra’s father Agamemnon.
Klytemnestra is haunted by fear, while Elektra’s every moment revolves around the vendetta. Dispossessed and isolated, she is ridiculed by the people around her.
Elektra’s sister, the gravely-ill Chrysothemis, is engrossed with another predominant thought: she dreams of marriage.
Klytemnestra announces that Elektra’s brother Orestes has died in a distant land — shocking news for Elektra, who had hoped to get the brother involved in the murder plan.
Elektra digs up the axe used to murder Agamemnon hidden in the courtyard, and then discovers that Orestes is alive and safely back home. Elektra provides him with a knife and Orestes kills his mother and her lover. Elektra indulges in a triumphant dance bordering on an insane frenzy, and collapses dead.
“All of them are, in one way or another, affected by the terrible death of Agamemnon, but she can’t move beyond it and is trapped in it, and that is her tragedy,” the director said.
In Kent’s opinion, it comes as no coincidence that three years after the 1909 Dresden premiere Freud’s contemporary Carl Jung invented the term “Elektra complex” to replace what Freud had referred to as the “feminine Oedipus attitude” in his own writings.
“She is trapped in this act that incorporates the death of her father and idolization of her father,” Kent said. “Elektra gives a sense of someone who was expelled from her world and forced to inhabit the world and life in opposition. She is living like a vagrant, like someone deeply dispossessed.”
Kent puts the ancient tragedy in a contemporary setting, while the palace where the story evolves has a Jugendstil design inspired by the early 20th century architectural style sometimes called Northern Art Nouveau or Style Moderne.
The director believes that “Elektra” is strikingly relevant to the modern world.
“We do not have to go very far in our culture to see terrible barbaric acts in a world of great sophistication, so the challenge is to get a sense of a sophisticated world, beneath which terrible things are happening,” he said. “Atrocities are happening all over the world, and there are so many people who feel dispossessed.”
The associative image Kent uses to describe “Elektra” is revealing: a sophisticated, fine porcelain 18th-century tea cup — filled with blood.
Kent, who thrives on uncertainty, admits possessing what he calls a “risk chromosome,” suggesting he finds challenges and shaky ground immensely stimulating.
“I like frightening myself,” he said. “And I fear complacency. To move on you have to keep taking risks.”
Staging “Elektra” for the Mariinsky provides him with a series of challenges, not least of which is the cultural challenge of working with a foreign troupe via a translator.
“Cultural challenges aside, ‘Elektra’ is the most claustrophobic and neurotic piece of work, and to have it in an hour and a half — while retaining the sense and level of tension — is very difficult indeed,” he said. “And after all, theater, regardless of the genre, is about telling stories and getting away from archetypes. I need to find a life on stage that is relevant to our lives.”
www.mariinsky.ru
TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: The Skatalites, the ska band that was due to perform at Orlandina on Saturday, canceled its concert at short notice for unknown reasons.
Fans who arrived at the place to see the Jamaican legends listened instead to Markscheider Kunst, the local Afro-rock/ska band that is co-promoting The Skatalites’ brief Russian tour. The Skatalites, however, did make it to Moscow to perform at B2 the following night.
A concert by U.S. singer Lisa Germano, meanwhile duly took place at The Place, the new club which has maintained its good form since opening last month. The Place’s plans now include opening a bar on the roof — with a grandiose view of the Tarkovsky-like wasteland around.
Art Vokzal (Art Railway Station) is a new club due to open at 8 p.m. on Friday. What is described in a news release as “art space without glamour and mass culture,” is located on the premises of the notoriously smelly Red Triangle rubber factory, which is now supposedly defunct.
The club will be oriented toward adults — 26-years old and above — and has, rumor has it, something to do with a puppet theater and local jazz musicians. The address is 138 Obvodny Kanal Nab, near Baltiiskaya metro station.
Following in the footsteps of SKIF, the massive three-night avant-garde music festival that drew many fans to the likes of John Spencer and NoMeansNo last month, comes the smaller-scale Signal-To-Noise, a music event put together by Swiss singer Tamara Lee, who performs with a new, locally-based band called The Frozen Orchestra.
Opak, the first band to take part in Signal-To-Noise, was due to perform at GEZ-21 on Thursday, and will perform at The Place on Friday. The Swiss band is described on its web site as “two guys playing with a computer and various instruments.”
“They make instrumental music based on the mix of electronic and acoustic [music], on the contrast between clean and distorted sounds, melodies and noise, jazzy live drums and techno beats, sampled orchestras and lo-fi guitar... from ambient to wall of noise,” according to the site.
Opak formed in Vevey, Switzerland, in 1999, and began playing live in 2001. The band’s most recent album, “Two Sleepwalkers on a Tight-Rope,” was released on Creaked Records in 2005.
Check Opak’s photo on page viii. Skafandr, the local “dub-metal” band will bopen for the visiting band.
Another band taking part in Signal-To-Noise is Larytta. It will perform at GEZ-21 on May 13.
It looks very likely that Monade, the band fronted by Laetitia Sadier of the British band Stereolab will perform in the city in late June or early July.
Sadier visited St. Petersburg in December 2004 on the invitation of a local friend and performed an unannounced, impromptu concert at the now-defunct club Platforma.
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Stalin’s shadow
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russian 20th-century classical music takes center stage in Los Angeles this month, as Esa-Pekka Salonen, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic launches a series of concerts in Los Angeles under the title “Shadow of Stalin.”
The series, which runs through the end of June, opens with a concert on May 25 at Los Angeles’s prestigious Walt Disney Concert Hall, with Salonen leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program including Gavriil Popov’s Suite No. 1 (music from the film “Komsomol: Patron of Electrification,” 1932), Alexander Mosolov’s “The Foundry” (1927) and Dmitry Shostakovich’s suite from “The Nose” (1927-28) and Act 1, Scene 3, from “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” (1930-32).
In Salonen’s opinion, political oppression has scarcely been more evident than in the cultural life of the Soviet Union during most of the 20th century. With this series of concerts and other events, the Los Angeles Philharmonic explores the effects that government decisions had on creativity and aesthetic choices made by composers in the Soviet Union before and after an infamous 1936 editorial in Pravda — probably penned by Josef Stalin himself — called “Muddle instead of Music.” The article condemned Shostakovich’s opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” as “formalist,” leading to the composer’s denunciation and vilification at a time when political purges led to the execution of hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens.
“It’s been 15 years [sic] since the world was surprised by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and we have a much clearer idea now of what took place during Stalin’s reign with regard to how he came to power and how he kept it — and what the cost of it was,” Salonen said. “Knowing what we now know, it seems a good opportunity to take a first look back at the Soviet Union as a historic experiment that went horribly wrong, and to examine how the music written before, during, and after Stalin relates to that political change — and how Stalin, in turn, reacted to the idea of free musical expression.”
Although highlighting the difficulties of the past, Salonen said that today the situation for young composers continues to be problematic in Russia: major orchestras show little enthusiasm in new music because general audiences express little interest in the contemporary repertoire, which makes it hard to sell these concerts; listeners, in turn, do not have enough exposure to this repertoire to be able to develop a taste for it.
However, Salonen, a frequent visitor to St. Petersburg and collaborator with Mariinsky Theater director Valery Gergiev, said that the city remains a hot bed for new Russian music.
“St. Petersburg was always a leading new-music city from the days of Tchaikovsky and during the experimental period back in the 1920s, until Stalin strangled the experiments,” Salonen said.
“After so many years of persecution and fear — not the fear of bad reviews but fear for one’s life — it must be still difficult for Russian composers to return to an open and unrestricted state of mind. But when I am in St. Petersburg, overall creativity is tangible in the air, and if we support up-and-coming young talent, it will win through.”
For a detailed program of the “Shadow of Stalin” concert series visit: http://wdch.laphil.com/misc/shadow_of_stalin.cfm
TITLE: Love’s victory
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: To coincide with May 9 — when Russia commemorates the end of World War II — a new film depicting the struggles of a Soviet soldier returning from the front went on general release on Thursday.
“The Father” (“Otets”), a screen adaptation of Andrei Platonov’s short story “The Return” directed by Ivan Solovov and starring Alexei Guskov, Polina Kutepova, Yekaterina Vasilyeva and Alexander Bashirov, sheds new light on a well-known scenario.
The traditional way of depicting the return from war in Soviet cinema highlights happy heroes who come back to their families and immediately set about restoring the nation’s economy.
However, stories of broken men dealing with post-war spiritual emptiness are rarely told. In bringing Platonov story to the screen, Solovov partly redresses the balance.
The main character, Alexei Ivanov (Guskov) returns from the war to a wife and two children — but he is afraid of the reunion.
“The war in this film is something that changes the consciousness of a man. It is not so much about shooting, explosions, and death as about the breaking of a certain perception of the world,” cast-member Svetlana Ivanova, who plays a young woman whom Ivanov meets at a railway station, said.
The film explores the difficulty of returning to peacetime for both men and women.
“People on the home front also had a war. There was just another war. And the hero needs time to understand it,” said Solovov.
Platonov’s story, published in 1946, provoked official criticism in the Soviet Union. As a result the author was isolated from the literary world and was unable to work. It was forbidden to write the truth about “front-wives” and “home front-husbands.”
“The war destroyed normal social life and people faced death every day. But despite this the desire for love grew in man. There was a desire to live and love as a counterbalance to death. Love defeated death,” said Polina Kutepova, who portrays Ivanov’s wife, Lyuba.
“I believe Platonov justifies his characters’ betrayal of each other, gives them an opportunity of forgiveness, and through forgiveness a chance of new life.”
“The Father” is not a straightforward adaptation of Platonov’s story.
“One should retell not the text but the feelings from it,” Solovov said.
The story itself is only several pages long and the film’s creators had to develop a more complex narrative.
“Following the author we tried not to misrepresent his ideas but to develop them, to suppose the way the story could have been. Putting changes into the story we tried to show all the details and nuances. Platonov put his thoughts into words — short but very rich,” said Solovov.
Although the story was written 60 years ago, it is still topical, the director said. “Platonov speaks about World War II — but wars continue now,” said Solovov.
“Nothing has changed in human nature,” lead actor Guskov added.
“For me this work is a chance to give a bow to the senior generation, to the veterans. If those people had not done what they did, we would not be here.”
Victory Day on Wednesday (May 9) is a national holiday. “The Father” can be seen at local cinemas. See Screens, page xii, for listings.
TITLE: Cello champion
AUTHOR: By Daniel J. Wakin
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: People who pay the least attention to classical music probably know Mozart’s clarinet concerto and quintet, two indelibly beautiful works. But how many remember the name Anton Stadler? He was Mozart’s fellow Freemason in Vienna, a clarinetist for whom the works were written. The history of music is littered with Stadlers, great virtuosos whose artistry inspired the repertory we live with today. An outstanding example of such an artist, Mstislav Rostropovich, died last week.
Rostropovich played a number of extraordinary roles in his life: brilliant cellist, conductor, thorn in the side of the Soviet regime, champion of artistic and political freedom, mentor and humanitarian.
One of his greatest legacies, though, will probably be a prodigious body of cello music composed for him or inspired by him.
He was the recipient of five pieces by Britten; two cello concertos by Shostakovich; and Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante. He gave the first performances of works by Penderecki, Dutilleux, Lutoslawski, Schnittke, Messiaen, Bernstein, Auric and Walton and a host of other 20th-century composers.
Ralph Kirshbaum, an American cellist living in London, recalled a car ride with Rostropovich two years ago. The Russian said he was working on a new Penderecki piece. How many premieres had Rostropovich given, Kirshbaum idly asked. “It is No. 224,” Rostropovich answered — mostly cello works, but also pieces for orchestra, chamber ensemble and voice and piano (he was a capable accompanist).
“He is the supreme example of a practicing musician, an internationally renowned artist, who brings into the world so many new compositions,” said Kirshbaum, who runs an international cello festival in Manchester, England. The festival began Wednesday and will include a tribute to Rostropovich.
“He made it his business to know these composers and goad from them these compositions,” Kirshbaum said. “He would insist, ‘Must write piece for me!’”
Visual artists, of course, have always had muses, and the inspiration is obvious: they painted them. Picasso had his lover Dora Maar; Bonnard had his wife Marthe, whom he painted hundreds of times; Rembrandt, a genius of self-portraiture, had himself. Elsewhere in the world of performing arts, the great example of performer inspiration is George Balanchine, who built ballets on a succession of great dancers, some of whom became wives.
In music, the relationship between performer and composer is less intimate but no less powerful, although opera is something of an exception. Composers have long written operatic roles with specific singers — their voices, their looks, their personalities — in mind. Mozart several times added and subtracted arias based on who was singing in a particular production. Composers of that era also tended to write concertos for themselves or their students to play.
In our age, the importance of the performer as muse has grown, for several reasons. Technical advances in instrument-making over the last 100 years have broadened the range of what musicians can play. And musicians have become better. They want more music, and composers are stimulated to write for them. All this music helps keep the classical scene vibrant.
Playing an instrument brilliantly is not the only quality that leads to new works. Often, the performer is a composer too, like Holliger and Lindberg. Energy, a persuasive personality and plenty of commitment are also necessary, and Rostropovich excelled in these areas (and even composed a bit too).
Once, in the middle of a punishing schedule of concerts and travel, he appeared at a rehearsal with the English Chamber Orchestra to perform a new work at the Aldeburgh Festival, with Britten conducting, Kirshbaum said, recounting a story told by a member of the orchestra. He had not completely polished the piece, and Britten took offense. Rostropovich spent the night practicing. The next day, he played it perfectly. From memory.
Another insight into his dedication to new works came from Patricia O’Kelly, longtime spokeswoman for the Washington National Symphony Orchestra, which Rostropovich led as music director from 1977 to 1994. In an interview once, he wondered with mock anger why no cellist had ever asked Mozart, “Write for me cello concerto!” in O’Kelly’s paraphrase.
It was an accusation he never wanted made about him.
TITLE: Sin city
AUTHOR: By Saul Austerlitz
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Literary endeavor being so unpredictable an enterprise, its successes akin to capturing lightning in a bottle, the notion of writing a sequel to a classic novel is always a risky one. The notion of writing a sequel to someone else’s classic is even more fraught with threat — a look at the critical response to “Scarlett,” Alexandra Ripley’s follow-up to Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind,” will indicate as much. So what form of grave-robbery could be worse than crafting a sequel to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1866 mainstay of Russian literature, “Crime and Punishment,” and making it a 19th-century police procedural? Notwithstanding these initial hesitations, and the seeming poverty of its inspiration, R.N. Morris’ quasi-sequel to Dostoevsky’s masterpiece is a surprisingly engrossing crime novel — one with a sharply etched sense of place and time, and anchored by the continuing adventures of a character already quite close to our hearts.
That character, needless to say, is not the student-murderer Raskolnikov, safely deposited in Siberian exile by the end of “Crime and Punishment.” Raskolnikov’s presence, and his brutal murder of two women, hover over “The Gentle Axe” as a constant reminder of the unpredictability and violence of human nature, and of the successes of the veteran investigating magistrate, Porfiry Petrovich. Having recently, and to the everlasting respect of his colleagues, coaxed a confession from Raskolnikov, Porfiry finds himself flummoxed by another bizarre case of Petersburgian hideousness. The police receive an anonymous note that leads them to two dead bodies in Petrovsky Park. The case appears to solve itself: A dwarf is stuffed into a traveling case, seemingly axed to death, and a giant is swinging from a nearby tree, having apparently hanged himself out of remorse after murdering his companion.
Porfiry Petrovich is unconvinced, seeing the park tableau as an elaborately crafted ruse intended to keep the police from searching for the real killer. Like any literary detective worth his salt, Porfiry notices certain physical inconsistencies, like the lack of bruising around the neck of the hanged man, indicating death by other means. Echoing his interest in ascertaining Raskolnikov’s reasons for murder, rather than the mere brute fact of his guilt, Porfiry delves deeper into the facts surrounding the two dead men, and finds a mysterious underworld with numerous affinities to our own.
In fact, “The Gentle Axe” is closest to a contemporary crime novel — more Dennis Lehane than Dostoevsky — in its evocation of St. Petersburg as a hive of criminal activity, much of it catering to forbidden sexual urges. Porfiry Petrovich, in Morris’ tale, is a new kind of criminal investigator who prefers due process to beating a confession out of his suspects. Psychology weighs as heavily as evidence, crucial to Porfiry’s understanding of the complexity of human nature. In his view, the investigator’s job is not only to maintain order, but to unpack the secrets of “the poor, miserable sinners,” “the perpetrators” for whom he aches. Porfiry claims to be in it for the glory, but this bald-faced lie only further underscores his dedication to suffering humanity. The “gentle axe” of the book’s title may refer ironically to the ostensible murder weapon, but Porfiry Petrovich is a gentle axe as well, paring away falsehoods with his bludgeoning instrument of intellect until he is left with the perfectly groomed remainder of truth.
In Porfiry’s St. Petersburg, the irrational, the inhumane and the repulsive are regular companions to the work of the investigator. The two dead men in the park are merely the beginning for a novel soaked in viciousness, both physical and mental. Fathers steal their sons’ loves, men force women (and other men) to pose for pornographic photographs, young women prostitute themselves to support their families and students starve while attempting to receive an education. Overhanging any guilty party is the sense of a society that creates, and maintains, the crippling inequality that fosters crimes like these. The plea of a single haunted soul could just as easily be the cry of every character in “The Gentle Axe”: “I am guilty. We are all guilty. But I am the most guilty of all.”
Porfiry’s search for an explanation behind the puzzling murders leads him to a young man who reminds him, in many ways, of Raskolnikov. Pavel Virginsky is the owner of some books whose pawn ticket had been recovered at the crime scene. Could Virginsky, like Raskolnikov, be capable of cold-blooded murder? At first glance, there are many similarities: “A certain tension in your demeanor. A certain unpredictability. A wildness, you might almost call it,” as Porfiry categorizes them. Like that notorious murderer, Virginsky shows himself capable of frenzied self-castigation. After being brought in to identify the dead men (a process that involves a glimpse of their post-autopsy remains), Virginsky notes, “I’m crying for myself, not for them. ... Because I can look at the severed heads of my friends and still live and still breathe and still rejoice to feel my heart beating.”
The heat of the investigation moves away from Virginsky, at least temporarily, as Porfiry’s inquiry takes in ever-wider swaths of Petersburg life. Everyone, it seems, possesses either a motive or an opportunity to kill. The question that remains is not so much who is a murderer as who acted on the seemingly irrepressible impulse to murder. “Nothing makes sense. ... There is no logic to any of this,” Porfiry Petrovich laments, puzzled by the seemingly limitless profusion of tortured souls and hideous crimes. This narrative thrust is what links Morris to Dostoevsky — the portrait of a dank, guilty world, riddled with hideous urges and needless cruelty. Even Christian faith — that shining beacon of 19th-century Russian life — is sullied by the creeping amorality of the urban underworld. One crime scene decorated with religious icons is emblematic of larger social ills: “All around, the painted saints and the beautiful gilded Christs averted their gaze. But this turning away had not saved them from defilement. Streaks and spots of blood added a new garishness to their colors.”
In the absence of God (or in his turning away from human affairs), all that is left is guilt — and despair. For Porfiry Petrovich, despair can be found even in inanimate objects: “These were not neutral everyday objects; they were the forms of despair. Despair was the one raw material from which they had all been shaped, not porcelain or brass or Karelian birch. And they were imbued with a destructive malevolence.” The malevolence of despair was the motivating force of “Crime and Punishment,” and provides a similarly corrosive veneer to Morris’ police-procedural sequel. Closing one case, solving one set of crimes, only temporarily seals the wound, pasting a light bandage over a gaping, bleeding hole that can never — will never — properly heal.
Saul Austerlitz is the author of “Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes.”
TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: When Russian pop stars get together, they probably like to discuss length, performance and whose is best at impressing the groupies. Of course, I am talking about stretch limos, which were in the news this week thanks to two crooners, Filipp Kirkorov and Nikolai Baskov, who choose not to cut any corners with their rides.
Komsomolskaya Pravda reported last week that flamboyant showman Kirkorov is planning to auction off his pride and joy, a white stretch Hummer that measures 11 meters. Meanwhile, in the latest Itogi magazine, syrupy crossover artist Baskov poses with his beloved toy, a stretch Bentley — also white, Liberace-style — that he boasts has a gold steering wheel and a ceiling decorated with a depiction of the night sky.
Poor old Filya’s Hummer is a child of a broken home. The singer
first got it as a birthday present for his now ex-wife, Alla Pugachyova. Mysteriously, though, it was Kirkorov who got more of a kick out of driving an over-extended pseudo-military vehicle. He used to ride the faithful Hummer — which has a pink interior — while touring the Baltic borshch belt
Sadly, the day came when the Filmobile got left in the garage, eclipsed by newer, better models. Now it only gets wheeled out in tabloid stories. The latest KP rumor promises that it will be auctioned on the Internet with a starting price of $250,000. And you get a mini-bar thrown in, so it’s not a bad deal.
I’m tempted, but ultimately Baskov’s car has more class, even if it’s a mere 9 meters long. He told Itogi that the interior was “strictly in the English style” — right down to the crumpled Mars bar wrappers, I hope. To make the car, they took two Bentleys and cut them in half, stuck the bits together and added a few minimalist details, such as a white leather sofa and ivory armrests. Both the steering wheel and the gear
box are gold-plated to achieve
that sought-after oil sheikh’s bathroom look.
It’s lovely to think that Baskov has a refuge from the madding crowd. The singer finds the unwashed masses a bit frightening, especially when they’re disagreeing with the country’s leadership: After the protest marches in Moscow last month, he complained to Tvoi Den tabloid that the little people with banners had really messed
up his day.
“I’m not interested in politics,” said the blond singer, who once happened to play at a completely non-political rally for Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich during his presidential election campaign. “Why should I suffer because of these ‘marches’?” he continued. “You couldn’t walk or drive in the center. It was just a crowd not controlled by anyone. You could expect anything from them. A crowd is always dangerous.”
Interestingly, Baskov told Itogi that before deciding on the stretch Bentley, he toyed with the concept of a car “styled to look like a tank or a BMP armored fighting vehicle.” My goodness. All those concerts at the Kremlin Palace must have given him ideas. Of course, a tank would be awfully good at getting through traffic, but I hear it’s a pain to install the home movie theater.
The good news is that Baskov’s Bentley is available to the hoi polloi, even if the singer wouldn’t give them the time of day at a protest march. He got a bit tired of it and now hires it out for weddings, the singer
told Itogi.
If he’s looking for a new set of wheels, and still dreaming of dictator chic, I hear there’s a used Hummer going cheap.
TITLE: Historic development
AUTHOR: By Tobin Auber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Teatro
2 Ulitsa Glinki
Open daily from 11 a.m. to midnight
Major credit cards accepted
Menu in English and Russian
Dinner for two without alcohol 2,190 rubles ($85)
With the recent opening of Sadko just a stone’s throw away and now Teatro on the corner of Ulitsa Dekabristov and Ulitsa Glinki, the area surrounding the Mariinsky Theater is clearly hotting up. It’s part of a process that looks like it is here to stay.
With the construction of the Mariinsky’s second building about to kick off and an even larger cultural project in the pipeline at Novaya Gollandiya, just around the corner, this neighborhood, colloquially known as Kolomna, is on the way up. And if Teatro is anything to go by, the future looks bright.
With large windows overlooking the Mariinsky and the Conservatory, a very relaxed, casual interior featuring arched open-brickwork ceilings, deep sofas, restrained paintings of ballet dancers and unobtrusive lounge music, the place already appears to be a hit with the artistic crowd who work at the Mariinsky itself (opera director Jonathan Kent — whose production of “Elektra” opens at the Mariinsky on Sunday — was spotted having a bite to eat here this week).
The menu isn’t exactly extensive, featuring only about twenty dishes but be warned — the English version is far briefer than the Russian version, restricting the choice of dishes available to non-Russian speakers. There’s a smattering of the now almost obligatory sushi and reasonably-priced, predominantly Italian dishes.
We began with a tuna and Philadelphia cream cheese sushi roll (350 rubles, $13.50), which was just above the general standard for St. Petersburg, and tuna tar-tar with avocado (310 rubles, $12).
Although wonderfully fresh and perfectly adequate, the tar-tar proved to be the low-point of the meal. There was nothing wrong with it, but it was easily put in the shade by the taste-laden delights that followed.
The crab lasagna (310 rubles, $12) was, as Michael Winner, the English film producer and restaurant reviewer for The Sunday Times would put it, “historic.” As with all the dishes we tried at Teatro, the dish managed to be light without making you feel that you hadn’t been given a full portion — perhaps this is to keep the weight-conscious ballerinas from the Mariinsky across the road happy. In any event, it certainly does the trick. Very sparing on the cheese, oil and even pasta ingredients, it was absolutely packed with taste.
The Rossini steak with liver pate (390 rubles, $15) was very nearly as good — a large portion of excellent meat, topped with a hunk of freshly toasted white bread and a rich, exquisite pate.
And again, the portion left you with the impression that you’d had a good meal without making you feel bloated. My dining companion’s suggestion that this sort of food was what you could expect at a five-star health resort, however, didn’t allow for the dessert.
You might be able to get away with the light tiramisu (210 rubles, $8) at a spa, but the hot chocolate cake (180 rubles, $7) would have you piling on the pounds.
Freshly baked, the cake came with molten chocolate oozing down cracks in its outer casing, chocolate that went perfectly with the various fruits ranged around it.
Historic indeed.
TITLE: A crime against art
AUTHOR: By Leo Mourzenko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Does life imitate art or art imitate life? There is no right or wrong answer. But when art tries to reflect a non-existent reality that serves the needs of propaganda, this isn’t just wrong: it is a crime against art.
Let’s imagine a world where students quit modern languages departments for two years of good times in the military, where corrupt policemen who also happen to be pimps are actually the nicest and most charmingly charismatic personalities you could ever come across and where hookers are connoisseurs of classical music and then you get a pretty good picture of what’s going on in “May,” a Russian film which ended its run in St. Petersburg this week.
Bearing the slogan “From the creators of ‘Piter FM’” carries weight these days. One of the brightest and the most sincere movies of last year, “Piter FM” was a true success in virtually every aspect. “May” is also a very finely executed product, which makes it even more criminally wrong.
If this film was poorly made, had a horrendous script or was filled with painful acting it would have been just another one of those laughably bad Russian films that come out with relentless regularity.
Unfortunately, this is not the case.
For those who are eager to go with the flow and believe everything they’re told on state-run television there probably won’t be anything wrong with this feature. Indeed, Leni Rifenshtal’s movies were true works of art and very impressive ones but it’s somehow very difficult to ignore what they were about.
It is a bit of a stretch to compare “May” to Nazi manifestos. However, “May” serves a similar goal: the creation of a made-up world that propagates a set of values that comes in such a dramatic conflict with real life, it is scary.
A 28-year-old Putin lookalike, senior lieutenant Pechalin (Andrei Kuzmichev), spends a three-day break in Moscow. His mission includes giving some personal belongings to the wife of a deceased army buddy, recruiting new soldiers for his division and finding a good woman. If the first part is a regular part of any war and peace drama, the other two are more complicated.
The youths who are recruited don’t seem to mind it all. On the contrary, they view their future army service as something normal, although they have no clue where they will be sent. It very well might be to a war zone, which, in fact, is where they are sent. Once they find this out, it doesn’t seem to be a big deal to them. And the filmmakers expect us to be so brainwashed as to believe that kids who look like they come from a healthy background and can even recite a couple of verses from a Tvardovsky poem would sit around enjoying a beer and small talk before being shipped off to war. Or are we supposed to believe that once they meet senior lieutenant Pechalin, everything they heard about Chechnya, Private Sychev and Yury Budanov just slipped out of their minds, leaving room for the Nikita Mikhalkov-style rubbish about the dignity of Russian officers?
Senior lieutenant Pechlin might have been a likeable character if the movie was set somewhere around 1812. Then all the talk about pride, serving the country and all that could have sounded believable. He would have been labeled “an unchangeable romantic,” and the fact he is a virgin would not have looked bogus and even his falling for a hooker would have worked. From here you may conclude, our hero’s search for a perfect wife ends up with him acquiring a valuable asset impersonated by a cutsie prostitute (Viktoria Tolstoganova). The latter used to work for a former lieutenant’s army buddy, an honorable policeman (Andrei Merzlikin) who runs the business because he doesn’t think the country pays him well enough although inside he still believes in protecting society.
As a background to this glorious story of love and friendship, we’re show multiple sights of Moscow celebrating Victory Day (May 9). This is where this trash becomes unbearable.
Everything so far can be laughed at, criticized or at best ignored. Using the unquestionable values of this country’s past is blasphemous. Seeing these ridiculous characters waltz with actual veterans, talk about war and sing new words to the melody of the war anthem The Blue Shawl (Sinenky Skromny Platochek) should apparently make us feel the connection between the generations and inspire us to heroic deeds in the name of managed democracy. Using their medals, we are supposed to cover our own weakness to honestly tell ourselves that service in the Russian military is equivalent to jail time, that we’re witnessing the worst from the past of our decorated grandparents being restored and we are to do nothing about it but stand still and enjoy the melody of a revived national anthem that accompanied their parents, brothers and sisters into concentration camps while there wasn’t — and still isn’t — anybody to stop it.
Films like this are shame and a disgrace. The survivors of World War II deserve better than having their lives waved as banners in a March of Consenters.
TITLE: Turkish Elections Set For July
AUTHOR: By Suzan Fraser
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish lawmakers moved forward elections to July 22 on Thursday, after the Islamic-rooted ruling party and its secular opposition agreed that an early ballot was the only way out of their standoff over political Islam.
The vote was unanimous despite objections from opposition legislators, who said the turnout would be low because many Turks would be on vacation. The ruling party has a majority in Parliament, and the opposition would not have been able to change the date.
“Let’s not create more chaos, as we are trying to get out of the chaos,” Haluk Koc, a legislator from the opposition Republican People’s Party warned during the debate earlier in the day.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for early elections after opposition lawmakers boycotted a parliamentary vote on Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul’s candidacy for presidency. The Constitutional Court invalidated the ballot because a quorum was not present.
At the heart of the conflict was a fear that Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party would use control of both Parliament and the presidency to chip away at the separation of state and religion, and curb secular freedoms such as women’s rights.
The standoff has drawn hundreds of thousands of pro-secular protesters into the streets.
TITLE: Milan Sets Up Chance for Final Revenge
PUBLISHER: Agence France Press
TEXT: MILAN — AC Milan is desperate to beat Liverpool in the Champions League final to erase the memory of its nightmare defeat at the hands of the Merseysiders in the Istanbul final two years ago.
Milan set up the chance for revenge with a superb 3-0 semi-final, second leg victory over Liverpool’s Premiership rivals Manchester United here on Wednesday for a 5-3 aggregate victory.
Goals inside the first half hour from Kaka and Clarence Seedorf put Milan in the driving seat at a rain-drenched San Siro before substitute Alberto Gilardino completed United’s misery.
Milan is now relishing the chance to make amends for its loss to Liverpool in the 2005 final when it threw away a three-goal half-time lead in six mad minutes to draw 3-3, before losing a penalty shoot-out.
“Now let’s take back the cup we gave to them in 2005,” said AC Milan president Silvio Berlusconi.
The former Italian prime minister insisted his team would be better prepared for penalties this time around.
“In the final in Istanbul, Liverpool’s keeper (Jerzy Dudek) succeeded in putting our players off by moving a lot on his line, and so now we will practice taking penalties against a keeper who is moving all the time.”
Kaka, whose early strike took his tally in the competition to 10 in 12 matches, is hoping to score twice in the final to equal Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Champions League record of 12 goals.
“It would be incredible if I could score twice in the final and become (joint) all-time top scorer, but the most important thing is that the team lifts the trophy,” said the talented Brazilian.
“It will be wonderful to face Liverpool again and we hope this time things will be different.
“It’s a great chance to win a match we should have won two years ago. I don’t look at it as revenge, more an opportunity to make up for that day.”
United coach Sir Alex Ferguson defended his decision not to man-mark Kaka, whose two goals in the 3-2 first leg defeat at Old Trafford last week laid the foundations for Milan’s victory.
“Kaka is a wonderful player who floats from side to side behind the strikers,” said the Scotsman.
“He has wonderful movement, a long stride and is deceptive with his space.
“But it’s not our style to man mark and that sometimes brings complications, leaving it up to the nearest defender to deal with him.”
Ferguson lamented his team’s inability to keep hold of the ball, but insisted they would bounce back in Saturday’s crunch Manchester derby against City.
“They caught us on the back foot at the start, but I still felt we could have done better,” he said.
“The name of the game in Europe is that you don’t give the ball away, and Milan kept possession better than us.
“But the nature of our football club is that you have to recover from disappointments, and we will have to do that on Saturday.
United could win the Premiership title this weekend if it defeats Manchester City and second-placed Chelsea fails to beat Arsenal.
TITLE: Rice Holds Talks With Syrian Counterpart
AUTHOR: By Qassim Abduul-Zahra
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Syria’s foreign minister Thursday in the first high-level talks between the two countries in years, hours after the chief military spokesman in Iraq said Syria had moved to reduce “the flow of foreign fighters” across its border.
The Bush administration has shunned Syria, which it considers a state supporter of terrorism, and last month President Bush assailed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for making a trip to Damascus. But the White House has been under pressure to talk with Syria and Iran, another U.S. opponent in the region.
Still, a substantive U.S.-Iran meeting appeared less certain. The Iraqi government is pressing for Rice and her Iranian counterpart to hold talks during the gathering, saying Washington’s conflict with the government in Tehran is only fueling the instability in Iraq.
In Baghdad, U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said Syria had tightened its borders to and reduced the number of foreign insurgents crossing into Iraq — a chief demand of the United States.
“There has been some movement by the Syrians ... there has been a reduction in the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq” for more than a month, Caldwell said.
Rice and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem met on the sidelines of Thursday’s conference. Earlier, a senior State Department official said they would discuss “Iraqi security issues.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was still being arranged.
Both the United States and Iran had also spoken favorably of a possible meeting, but the chances for that remained unclear.
Rice and the Iranian foreign minister “exchanged pleasantries” over lunch, the Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said. “They said hello, that’s about it,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
Iraq and the United States hope Thursday and Friday’s conference of nearly 50 nations at this Egyptian Red Sea resort will rally international support — particularly from Arab nations — for an ambitious plan to stabilize Iraq.
Iraq is pressing for forgiveness of debt and for Arabs to take greater action to prevent foreign fighters from joining the Iraqi insurgency. Arab countries, in turn, demand government ensure greater participation by Sunni Arabs in Iraq’s political process, echoing the United States.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki opened the conference by urging all countries to forgive his country’s enormous foreign debts — estimated at about $50 billion. Another $100 billion has already been written off by the Paris Club of lender nations.
TITLE: Favorite O’Sullivan Crashes Out In Sheffield
AUTHOR: By Nick Johnson
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SHEFFIELD — Former champions Shaun Murphy and John Higgins were joined by Stephen Maguire and qualifier Mark Selby in the semi-finals of the world championship on Wednesday.
England’s Murphy was the first to secure a place in the last four when he produced a sensational comeback against Welshman Matthew Stevens to triumph 13-12.
Scotland’s world number four Higgins knocked-out favorite Ronnie O’Sullivan 13-9 while Maguire and Selby beat Anthony Hamilton and Ali Carter respectively.
After trailing 11-5 overnight, Murphy was on the brink of defeat when Stevens won the third frame of the final session to move to within a frame of victory at 12-7.
Stevens, who lost to Murphy in the final two years ago, then saw his opponent reel off six frames in a row to clinch a remarkable win.
“I think it’s the hardest I’ve ever played,” Murphy told reporters. “I got up thinking I’d give it my best shot, but I never truly envisaged winning until it was 12-7.”
Stevens, twice a beaten finalist, will now have to qualify for next year’s tournament after dropping out of the top 16 in the world rankings.
“I had the game won at 11-5, but he came back really well and I just couldn’t get over the line,” said Stevens.
Scot Maguire enjoyed a comfortable 13-7 victory over Englishman Hamilton. “The heavy boys are still in, but everybody’s as good as each other now,” said Maguire.
Selby resumed with a 9-6 lead over Carter and edged home 13-12 just before midnight.
TITLE: Nadal Victor in ‘Battle of Surfaces’
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MADRID — Clay court king Rafael Nadal has admitted he was worried “the battle of the surfaces” against grass court master Roger Federer would turn out to be a fiasco.
But the 20-year-old Mallorcan, who got the better of the world number one in a closely fought three-set battle on a specially constructed half-grass, half-clay court, said he was now looking forward to repeating the challenge.
“It was a great experience although before the match I thought it would be a disaster because it would be so hard to adapt to the court,” Nadal was quoted as saying in the Spanish media on Thursday.
“In the end it wasn’t too bad as you could play on the baseline a lot, although there were more mistakes than usual.
“Both of us would like to repeat the experience because even though it is pretty unrealistic you can play the points without the usual tension and you are more relaxed.”
The hybrid court at the Palma Arena gave a clear advantage to the player on the clay side, who enjoyed the benefit of a slower, higher bounce allowing him to attack the ball and pick his shots more carefully.
Nadal used his peerless skills on clay to maximum benefit as Federer struggled to adapt in the first set and although the Swiss took the second, he then used his characteristic tenacity to take the decider on a tie-break to the delight of his home crowd.
CHANGING SHOES
Both players admitted that constant changes in surface had made it difficult for them to find their rhythm.
“I was pretty tired at the end because of the variety of movements, you work different muscles on each side of the court,” said Nadal who had beaten Federer in seven of their previous 10 meetings.
Federer said he had found it hard to adapt his style of play to the mixed surface.
“It was a big challenge because you have a lot of things on your mind,” said the 25-year-old.
“I had problems deciding on how to play on each side of the court. I felt I was moving well on the grass, but it was harder to get going on the clay although I did adapt as the match went on.
“I enjoyed the experience, although it was a bit stressful having to change shoes all the time.”
Palma has reached an agreement to host “the battle of the surfaces” at the same venue for the next two years.
TITLE: Super 14 Heading For Final Thrill
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SYDNEY — After a slow start, the Super 14 is building up to an extraordinary climax with seven teams still in contention for the semi-finals heading into this week’s final round.
None of those seven teams, including the defending champions and current leaders the Canterbury Crusaders, are assured of a spot in the playoffs.
While half the teams are out of the running, five of this weekend’s seven games could have a bearing on deciding the final four.
New Zealand’s Crusaders and South Africa’s Sharks both look certain to make the playoffs and host a semi-final.
The Crusaders leads the competition with 41 points and can still finish in the top two even if it loses its final match to Waikato, though it is still mathematically possible for it to miss out altogether.
The Sharks has won more games than any other team this season but is a point behind the Crusaders because it failed to accrue as many bonus points.
It too could make the playoffs even if it loses its final game against the Stormers.
The other five teams vying for playoff spots are Auckland (New Zealand), the Bulls (South Africa), Waikato (New Zealand), ACT Brumbies (Australia) and Western Force (Australia).
The Force only has a faint chance of advancing, needing to win its final game against Auckland and hope other results go its way, but the other four teams all have realistic chances.
Despite playing without some of its best players after New Zealand officials ordered most of the All Blacks to miss the first half of the season, Auckland led the competition for much of the year before a late slump saw it lose three in a row.
“We’ve got only ourselves to blame for that predicament,” Auckland coach David Nucifora told reporters. “Obviously everything is riding on this game now.”
The Bulls, tied with Auckland on 37 points, looks to have the easiest finish of the teams in the running with a home match against the bottom-placed Queensland Reds.
The Brumbies stayed in contention with a shock win over the Crusaders last weekend but needs to beat Otago in Dunedin and rely on either Auckland or the Bulls losing.
TITLE: Hall of Famer Cepeda Busted For Narcotics
AUTHOR: By Adam Tanner
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SAN FRANCISCO — Law enforcement officials have charged baseball Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda with possessing marijuana and other drugs, a California Highway Patrol official said on Wednesday.
Cepeda, 69, who now works as a community representative for the San Francisco Giants speaking to children about the dangers of drugs, was stopped on Tuesday while driving 83 mph on a major highway with a speed limit of 65 mph northeast of San Francisco.
“When the officer made contact with Mr. Cepeda, she smelled the odor of marijuana coming from inside the vehicle,” said California Highway Patrol Sgt. Wulf Corrington. “This prompted her to do a search of the car and during that search she found marijuana.
She also found what is believed to be a controlled substance, methamphetamine or cocaine.”
Officials also found a syringe. Cepeda was briefly held in a local jail before being released pending court hearings. He was not suspected of driving while under the influence of drugs, Corrington said.
Cepeda’s lawyer said his client was innocent and the former baseball star does not use drugs.
“This is an unfortunate misunderstanding, and we intend to meet promptly with the authorities to explain that Orlando was not responsible for any illegal substances in the car,” his lawyer, Ted Cassman, said in a statement. “A family member is diabetic and holds a prescription for medicinal marijuana.”
Medical marijuana is legal under California state law but illegal under federal law.
“Orlando Cepeda is a Hall of Fame and World Series champion who is against the use of illegal drugs in all forms,” Cassman said.
With a career .297 batting average with 379 home runs, Cepeda was the second native of Puerto Rico to make the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
He was arrested and convicted in 1975 for smuggling marijuana from Puerto Rico and spent 10 months in prison.
According to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, Cepeda has had three speeding violations in the last three years and got a ticket for disobeying a traffic device, typically a traffic light violation.
TITLE: Canada Advances Unbeaten to Next Round
AUTHOR: By Steve Keating
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MYTISHCHI, Russia — Defending champions Sweden rolled past Switzerland 6-0 to close out preliminary round play at the ice hockey world championship unbeaten on Wednesday while Canada put aside growing controversy to advance with a 5-4 win over Slovakia.
Germany and Italy also secured spots in the qualification round after recording their first wins of the championship.
Jason Cirone scored in the last minute of extra time to give Italy a 4-3 victory over Latvia while Michael Wolf struck twice to lead Germany past Norway 5-3.
Latvia and Norway slip into the relegation battle with Ukraine and Austria.
After a scoreless first period, the Swedish attack came to life in the second connecting for five goals against the Swiss.
Johan Davidsson led the assault with a pair while Martin Thornberg, Anton Stralman and Patric Hornqvist each scored once. Rickard Wallin completed the rout with a third period goal.
The only team to win Olympic and world championship gold in the same year, the Swedes appear well prepared to add to their haul having out-scored the opposition 21-3 in three preliminary contests.
“We didn’t start this game as well as we would have liked,” Sweden coach Bengt-Ake Gustafsson told reporters.
“So we had a talk before the second period and came out more aggressive. That was the key.”
BEST EFFORT
Despite an escalating controversy surrounding captain Shane Doan, Canada produced their best effort of the tournament edging Slovakia to finish top of Group C.
Doan continued to wear the captain’s C despite calls from opposition parties in the Canadian Parliament that the Phoenix Coyotes forward be stripped of honor for allegedly insulting the country’s Francophone minority.
A Parliamentary committee Wednesday summoned Hockey Canada officials to Ottawa to explain why Doan was chosen as captain despite allegations he had directed racial slurs toward French-Canadian officials during an NHL game.
After Miroslav Satan had scored early in the third to level the score at 4-4, Columbus Blue Jackets’ Rick Nash converted a powerplay midway through the final period to clinch a well-deserved win and top the group.
“It’s (the Doan controversy) been talked about but nothing at all when we get to the rink, it’s all business when we get here,” said Nash. “We know we have a job to bring back a gold to Canada and we’re not going to let those issues side-track us.”
With his ‘golden goal’ in Italy’s game, Cirone wrote his name into hockey’s history books becoming the first player to score the extra-time winner in a round-robin game.
With the score locked at 3-3 after 60 minutes, Cirone notched his second of the game, taking a perfect feed from Andre Signoretti and beating Latvian goaltender Sergejs Naumovs from close range with 50 seconds left in the overtime session.
Germany jumped to a 2-0 first-period lead on powerplay goals from Wolf and Michael Hackert but the Norwegians came out flying at the start of the second, pumping three goals past netminder Dimitri Patzold in one minute 42 seconds to surge ahead 3-2.
The Germans recovered, hitting back with three quick goals of their own from Wolf, John Tripp and Alexander Barta to clinch the win.
Qualification round play opened on Thursday, with the Swedes facing off against Denmark and the Czech Republic taking on Germany.
Other matches saw Finland play the Swiss and the U.S. up against Slovakia.
TITLE: Bonds Homes In On Mark
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco slugger Barry Bonds hit his 743rd career home run to move within 12 of Hank Aaron’s Major League record, helping the Giants beat the Colorado Rockies 5-3 on Wednesday.
The 42-year-old smashed a Jeff Francis fastball into the right field stands to give the Giants a 2-0 lead in the fourth inning, then supplied two more runs in the eighth with a bases-loaded single that rallied the team from a 3-2 deficit.
Barry Zito won his third game in four starts, giving up four hits and two runs in seven innings, striking out four and walking three.
“It was great to have Barry Zito go out there, pitch the way he has and put us in a place to win and give him the support to win the game,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said.
n The Milwaukee Brewers improved their Major League-best record to 18-9 with a 4-0 home win over the St. Louis Cardinals.
n Chipper Jones doubled in two runs as the Atlanta Braves took a 4-3 home win against the Philadelphia Phillies. Jones has now hit safely in 12 games.
n Oliver Perez struck out 10 and had two singles as the New York Mets avoided a three-game sweep by the Florida Marlins with a 6-3 home win.
- Mark Henderson pitched three-hit ball for six-plus innings and the Los Angeles Dodgers took a 2-1 home win from the Arizona Diamondbacks.
TITLE: Suns, Spurs Advance To Semi Finals
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — The Phoenix Suns eliminated the Los Angeles Lakers from the playoffs with a 119-110 home win in Game Five of their Western Conference best-of-seven series on Wednesday.
The Suns advanced to the semi-finals and a matchup with the San Antonio Spurs, who sealed a 4-1 series victory over the Denver Nuggets. Game One is in Phoenix on Sunday.
“We’re playing solid basketball,” said Amare Stoudemire, who had 27 points and 16 rebounds.
“The way we’re playing now, we’ve got a chance to beat pretty much any team. But there’s not bold predictions for the next round because the Spurs are a heck of a team.”
The Suns, who got 17 points and 10 assists from Steve Nash and 26 points from Shawn Marion, raced to a 15-point lead in the second quarter and were up 78-64 with 6:34 left in the game.
The Lakers scored the next seven points and eventually came within five points of the Suns before Stoudemire made five free throws and a jump shot in the final three minutes.
It was the second straight season the Suns have eliminated the Lakers from the playoffs. Last season they did it by rallying from a 3-1 deficit.
Kobe Bryant scored 34 points for the Lakers and Lamar Odom had 33 and 10 rebounds. Michael Finley hit a franchise-record eight three-pointers and scored 26 points as the San Antonio Spurs eliminated the Denver Nuggets in five games with a 93-78 win.
Tim Duncan added 23 points, 12 rebounds and five assists. Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson each scored 21 points for the Nuggets.