SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1330 (96), Friday, December 7, 2007
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TITLE: Yabloko 
‘To Dump Yavlinsky’
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Following a devastating lack of votes at nationwide parliamentary elections on Sunday, the local branch of liberal party Yabloko has called for party leader Grigory Yavlinsky to be replaced or for the introduction of several co-chairmen.
Maxim Reznik, head of the St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko, voiced the suggestion Tuesday and stressed the need for an overhaul in the party’s management and structure.
According to official statistics presented by the Central Election Commission, Yabloko received 5.1 percent of the St. Petersburg vote but nationwide the party received just 1.6 percent, way below most pre-election estimates that had given Yabloko about 4 percent of the vote.
“The local results have proved we are not a marginal party,” Reznik said. “The 100,000 St. Petersburg citizens that gave us their support cannot be marginals, and their backing gives the St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko the moral right to hold negotiations with other political forces.”
In Reznik’s view, what is implied by “an overhaul” is “a diversification of the leaderhsip and responsibility in the party.”
“We believe that the party’s management should become more diverse and showcase new, different faces,” Reznik said. “The party could consider having several co-chairmen.”
Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky has not officially commented on the statement but press secretary Yevgenia Dillendorf said the agenda of the next party conference, to be held in 2008, incorporates the elections to the leadership. The last conference that re-elected Yavlinsky was held in 2004.
Vladimir Yeryomenko, a political analyst who teaches at the St. Petersburg Institute for Economics and Trade, sees Yavlinsky as a lost cause. He argues that Yabloko in its current form is doomed. 
“A successful politician has to achieve something, and Yavlinsky has nothing to show for himself, other than low and ever-decreasing ratings,” Yeryomenko said. “A veteran politician with almost 20 years of experience, he lacks any fresh ideas and keeps repeating the same things he was saying when he first surfaced back in the late 1980s.”
“I think Yavlinsky himself knows he is getting nowhere. He carries on more or less due to inertia,” Yeryomenko added. “He is not really attempting to fight, and not even making any strong statements, other than his usual complaining. His speeches are short of energy and he oozes fatigue.”
Yabloko politician Natalya Yevdokimova blamed Yavlinsky for the party’s modest performance at the elections.
“I think Yavlinsky is directly responsible and should resign,” Yevdokimova said.
Yabloko originally formed as a political bloc for the 1993 parliamentary elections, and was registered as a party two years later. 
The party’s name, which also means “apple” in Russian, is an abbreviation formed from the surnames of its three founders, Yavlinsky, Yury Boldyrev, former deputy head of the Audit Chamber, and Vladimir Lukin, now Russia’s ombudsman. 
During the past decade, Yabloko has held discussions with another liberal party, the Union of Right Forces (SPS), about a possible alliance, but the discussions foundered. Both parties lost their representation in parliament on Sunday, and SPS leaders have also put the blame on Yavlinsky. They accuse him of individualism and putting his own political ambitions above the interests of the democratic-minded electorate that they say they represent along with Yabloko.  
Speaking on Radio Liberty on Monday, after the vote, Yavlinsky said he does not view the results as a defeat.
“We have used this opportunity to warn the voters about the danger of totalitarian rule being restored in the country,” Yavlinsky said. “Voicing an alternative to this regime was more important than any formal results, especially considering the way the count is being falsified in Russia.”
Dillendorf said the results of exit polls commissioned by Yabloko and conducted by various non-governmental sociological research agencies in 286 polling stations across Russia differ drastically from the official statistics. 
For example, according to these exit polls, Yabloko won 11.3 percent of the vote in St. Petersburg, 15 perecent of the vote in Moscow and 6.5 percent of the vote in Eastern Siberia.
Yavlinsky addressed Yabloko voters in an open letter distributed Thursday, where he slammed Sunday’s elections as “unprecedented both in the scale of manipulation and violations, the level of cynicism and hypocrisy of the television propaganda and the use of the government machine to pressurize the voters.”
“The victory of Putin and United Russia was achieved at such a price and under such conditions that it is going to backfire and most importantly result in big losses for the country and its citizens,” Yavlinsky said. “Unfortunately the majority of the Russian people do not realize this and are still unaware of what a dead-end this current political course is taking the country to.”

TITLE: President Won’t Take Duma Seat
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin will not, at least for now, take up the seat in parliament he won in last weekend’s election, Interfax news agency quoted an official of his party as saying on Thursday.
But Putin could enter parliament at a later date, one of the options analysts say the popular 55-year-old might choose to retain influence after his presidential term ends next year.
The Russian leader ran as No. 1 on the United Russia party election slate in Sunday’s vote which gave the party and its allies control of parliament.
Andrei Vorobyov, head of United Russia’s central executive committee, said Putin’s seat would be redistributed to a candidate on one of the party’s regional party slates who had not made it into parliament, Interfax reported.
“This will not be a political but a purely technical solution,” the agency quoted Vorobyov as saying.
Russia’s constitution bars Putin from running for a third consecutive term. He has said he expects to keep a role in molding policy after he steps down, but has not specified what job he would take.
Analysts have speculated he could become speaker of parliament, where United Russia has a big majority. Other options could be becoming prime minister or taking the vacant job of Security Council secretary.
Under Russian law, Putin can decline to take up his seat now but, in effect, put it on hold until a later date. To exercise this option, he must write to election chiefs within the next few days declaring that is his intention.
He will then be put on a reserve list of candidates who will receive a seat if a sitting lawmaker from United Russia gives up their seat. Government officials are not allowed to keep their posts and sit in parliament at the same time.
Most Russians would not think worse of President Vladimir Putin if he breached the constitution and ran for a third term in March presidential elections, according to an opinion poll published on Wednesday.
Putin, whose approval ratings top 70 percent, has promised to respect the constitution, which bans him running for a third consecutive four-year term. His popularity has prompted a wave of calls by political allies for him to change his mind.
A poll by the independent Levada Centre showed 55 percent would not change their view of Putin if he decided to run again, while another 22 percent said it would improve their opinion.
Putin has already said he wants to keep political influence after leaving the Kremlin but he has not explained how.
Demands to formalize Putin’s future role have topped the agenda of his United Russia party, which won a landslide victory in a parliamentary election last Sunday.

TITLE: Architects Claim Gazprom Tower Fits Into City Skyline
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The height of the controversial Okhta Tower skyscraper, to be constructed for energy giant Gazprom’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, is governed by harmonious proportions and functionality, its architects said in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.
At a planned 396 meters high — putting it among the tallest buildings in the world — the scale of the tower has prompted fears among city residents that it would ruin St. Petersburg’s traditionally low-rise skyline.
“Our analysis showed that such a height would exactly meet the proportions of the building,” said Tony Kettle, international design director of RMJM, the British company that won the tender to design Okhta Center which includes the tower.
“Let’s keep St. Petersburg evolving because it’s time for evolution!” Kettle said.
Kettle said that when Gazprom announced the tender for the design of the center, it asked that the construction of a tower be included at a height of about 300 meters. However, RMJM’s calculations showed the expediency of a taller building, with 67 floors.
UNESCO, the UN cultural body that lists St. Petersburg on its list of World Heritage sites, has also expressed concern about the aesthetic effects of the skyscraper.
Kettle said that when RMJM’s architects developed the project, they took into consideration the city’s architectural style by trying to make the tower look natural.
“The historical part of the city is based on vertical dominants against the main horizontal line,” Kettle said.  
The existing “vertical dominants” include the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the TV tower — the tallest structure in the city at 310 meters high — and a number of other sites, he said.
Kettle said the tower, to be built on the edge of the historical center of the city, will barely be seen from the city center itself. It won’t be seen from Palace Square or St. Isaac’s Square, and will look well-proportioned from many other historical places.
Another reason for the construction of an impressive business center is that “Gazprom is important to Russia and it should be celebrated,” Kettle said.
“Gazprom is the largest gas producing company in the world, and it makes 20 percent of total world gas production,” he said. “It’s significant and you shouldn’t hide it.” 
The third reason for the construction of the center is that it will regenerate the rundown Okhta district, he said.
The construction of Okhta Center  — dubbed Gazilla by opponents — is to begin in May, the center’s administration said.
“From Dec. 14 through Jan. 14 we’ll be having public hearings about the timetable for construction, and on Jan. 20 we’ll begin  hearings on the land survey,” Nikolai Tanayev, chief executive of Okhta Center, said. Tanayev said that in the meantime, the city administration is also planning to meet with UNESCO representatives. 
Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the Yabloko party which strongly protested the construction of the center on the border with the historical center of the city, said the party is still negative about the project.
“We love our city and we think this construction will make it look ugly forever,” Vishnevsky said. “If they want to have this center as it is, it should be built on the outskirts.”
“Yabloko will continue to protest the project, and we want to organize a referendum on the issue,” Vishnevsky said.
The tower itself is to be mainly made of special glass that will reflect the movement of water in the River Neva, the sky, and the surrounding area.  It will also make the tower change color.
The tower will house Gazprom offices, offices of other businesses, conference halls, and an observation deck on its upper floors.
“I’m sure the magnificent views open from the tower will attract many tourists there,” Kettle said.
The Okhta Center, which is to occupy 77 hectares, will also include a cultural and concert center, as well as a number of other buildings for offices, renovated roads and green areas.

TITLE: Russia Merger With Belarus To Be Considered
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin and other top Russia and Belarus officials will consider next week a proposed framework for the long-debated merger of the two countries into a single state, officials said Thursday.
The unexpected move, coming at a time of uncertainty over Russia’s political future, raised speculation that Putin may seek to become leader of the new country created by the merger. That would permit him to step down as Russian president next May, as required by the constitution, but become chief of the enlarged state.
Belarus’ presidential office said Putin would attend a Dec. 13-14 meeting in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, that would focus on a draft constitution of a Russia-Belarus union. It gave no details, but any constitution would describe the union’s governmental structure.
Analysts and news organizations have speculated for years that Putin could become the president of a combined Russian-Belarusian state. But talks over the merger have been mired in disagreements, particularly over the status of Belarus in the new union.
Asked if the meeting would pave the way for Putin’s election as president of a Russia-Belarus union, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the AP: “I don’t know anything about such an issue being on the agenda.”
Sergei Kostyan, a deputy head of foreign affairs committee in the Belarusian parliament, said he saw no movement toward a merger of the two countries.
“Putin’s visit will produce no sensations,” he told the AP. “Belarus is and will remain an independent country, and Minsk has very clearly said that.”

TITLE: BBC Calls for Investigation After 3 Journalists Attacked
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Three employees of the British Broadcasting Corp. have been attacked in Moscow over the past two weeks, and a company official said Wednesday it was investigating whether they were targeted because of their work.
The attacks took place on three different dates in three different locations since Nov. 24, BBC World Service spokesman Peter Connors said in a statement.
One employee, a Russian citizen who works for the BBC’s Central Asian Service, was assaulted Nov. 24 in the Moscow subway by assailants yelling racist slurs. The attackers were arrested by police, Connors said.
A day later, a Russian staff member was attacked and robbed of his phone, bank card and a significant amount of money near his home, and he suffered broken ribs, Connors said.
On Friday, another Russian staff member was attacked while traveling home from work, and suffered head injuries that required stitches.
“Although we have no evidence to suggest that the attacks were motivated by the victims’ employment by the BBC, we are exploring that possibility. We have asked the Russian Foreign Ministry for assistance in ensuring staff safety,” Connors said.
Vera Leontyeva, a senior producer for the BBC Russian Service in Moscow, referred all questions to BBC headquarters.

TITLE: Ukraine President Nominates Ally
AUTHOR: By Yana Sedova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president on Thursday nominated his Orange Revolution ally Yulia Tymoshenko to be prime minister, his office said.
The nomination follows a deal struck last week by President Viktor Yushchenko’s and Tymoshenko’s parties to forge a fragile majority coalition, raising hopes for an end to months of political turmoil. 
A parliament vote was expected later Thursday.
Tymoshenko is one of the most polarizing figures in Ukraine — adored by her supporters, but regarded with suspicion even by other Western-oriented politicians and despised by backers of Viktor Yanukovych, the outgoing prime minister.
She was the most energetic and visible figure of the 2004 Orange Revolution protests that helped propel Yushchenko to the presidency in a tense battle with Yanukovych. 
Yushchenko named Tymoshenko prime minister in early 2005 but sacked her just seven months later amid a fracas in the Orange camp.
Yanukovych became prime minister last year after his Party of Regions won the largest share of votes in a parliamentary election. Earlier this year, Yushchenko accused Yanukovych of attempting an illegal power grab and ordered new elections.

TITLE: Correction
TEXT: A story headlined “Russian Art Auction Raises $81 Million” on Page 3 of The Petersburg Times published on Friday, Nov. 30 was based on Bloomberg reports, written by John Varoli, and material from The Associated Press.

TITLE: Charity Collects Gifts For City’s Disabled Children
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A collection drive for New Year gifts for orphans and handicapped children is being organized by the charity Perspektivy and the Astoria Hotel, Perspektivy said in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
“We want to draw society’s attention to the problems of children with special needs,” said Anna Kagan, spokeswoman for the Astoria Hotel, at a press conference. “We find out the New Year’s wishes of such children and let business people know about them.” 
Maria Ostrovskaya, director of Perspektivy, said children’s New Year’s wishes range from wanting to go on a trip to other, more modest things.
“Some children dream of a musical instrument, while others just want to have a bottle of bubbles,” Ostrovskaya said.
The collection drive is being held for the second time. Last year the organization collected 420 gifts and more than 200,000 rubles, Perspektivy said.
Perspektivy aims to help children and adults with severe mental and physical problems. In particular, the organization helps children at the Pavlovsk Orphanage for Children with Special Needs and adults at the Peterhof Psycho-Neurological Home. 
“We work with children who live on the very edge of the society,” Margaret Von der Borch, president of Perspektivy, said.
“We first went to the Pavlovsk orphanage in 1995 and saw how those children literally lived in their beds most of their life. Some of them have never been outside. So we made our task to improve their lives,” she said.
Today the organization provides the orphanage with psychologists, teachers, and both German and Russian volunteers. It brings children additional food, and does the essential repairs in the building.
Ostrovskaya said at the beginning of their activity they could mainly rely only on charity help from abroad.  However, about five years ago the situation changed and half of its supporters are now Russian.
“Russian people are very generous by nature. And I think the problem with lack of Russian charity to a large extent has to do with a lack of trust in charity organizations. There are indeed cases when someone misuses the name of a charity organization. However, people can trust charity organizations with a good reputation,” Ostrovskaya said.
She said the organization needs not only gifts and things for children but also money on a regular basis.
“We can give them lots of oranges and paint the wall around them with gold but they won’t become happy from having it if there are not enough people to take care of them. In other words, we also need money to hire people to work with them,” Ostrovskaya said.
Dmitry Chudinov, chairman of the patron’s board of Perspektivy, and president of Progress companies group, called on the city’s businessmen to think more about charity.
“Charity stands next to business. It’s about philosophy and self-respect,” Chudinov said.
“It’s hard to believe, but sometimes $10 of charity help may save a human life or seriously change it,” he said. “Besides, businessmen who provide charity create trust.” 

You can contact Perspektivy at 
Tel: 320 0643 or at office@perspektivy.ru. www.perspektivy.ru.

TITLE: Historians To Focus on Stalin
AUTHOR: By Bagila Bukharbayeva
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Historians announced a project Wednesday to increase understanding of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s rule and help Russians come to terms with one of the grimmest chapters of their past.
The project’s ambitious aim is to publish 100 volumes by Russian and foreign historians in the next three years. The first five books were issued last week.
“There still has been no legal assessment of Stalin’s terror, of the Soviet system’s crimes,” said historian Nikita Petrov, one of the contributors. “We have not bothered to analyze that bloodshed and its legacy.”
Russians must understand and condemn Stalin’s crimes if they want to “save the democratic processes that we’ve started” since the 1991 Soviet collapse, he said.
President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, has rolled back Russia’s democratic achievements, restored Soviet-era symbols and tried to soften public perceptions of Stalin.
In June, he told history teachers that although Stalin’s political purges were one of the most notorious episodes of the Soviet era, Russia should not be made to feel guilty because “in other countries even worse things happened.”
In a new book for history teachers commissioned by the Kremlin, Stalin is portrayed as an effective manager. “Political repression was used (by Stalin) to mobilize both ordinary citizens and the management elite,” the book says. Also in the book, published earlier this year, the United States is cast as an evil power seeking world dominance.
Under Stalin, who ruled from 1922 until his death in 1953, hundreds of thousands were branded enemies of state and executed. Millions more became inmates of the gulag, the system of thousands of slave labor camps.
“We have not gotten over Stalinism yet because we have not yet come to understand it fully,” said Arseny Rochinsky of Memorial, a non-governmental organization that studies Stalin’s repressions.
“Look around, all the attributes of Stalinism are still here,” he said.
Rochinsky cited the Kremlin’s intolerance of dissent and hunt for external and internal enemies and the lack of an independent judicial system.
In a speech last month in the run up to the Dec. 2 parliamentary election, Putin called his political opponents “foreign-fed jackals” and accused the West of seeking to weaken and divide Russia.
The collection, titled “History of Stalinism,” is being prepared and sponsored by a fund set up by former President Boris Yeltsin, who died in April; the Russian State Archive; Memorial; and independent historians.

TITLE: Nashi Writes to Her Majesty
AUTHOR: By Alexander Osipovich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Several dozen activists from the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi picketed outside the British Embassy on Wednesday and presented diplomats with a letter to Queen Elizabeth II calling for the removal of British Ambassador Anthony Brenton.
Nashi also said it was suing Brenton on the grounds that he had broken international law by meddling in Russia’s internal affairs.
The movement’s grievance dates to July 2006, when Brenton attended the inaugural conference of The Other Russia, an anti-Kremlin coalition that includes Eduard Limonov, founder of the banned National Bolshevik Party.
Nashi calls Limonov a fascist. It also alleges that Brenton promised to give 1 million pounds, or just over $2 million, to The Other Russia — a claim the British Embassy labeled absurd.
“This would be the same as if we went to America and started giving money to the Ku Klux Klan,” Alexander Gagiyev, a co-organizer of the protest, said outside the embassy Wednesday.
As Gagiyev spoke, activists chanted slogans, waved red-and-white Nashi flags and held posters featuring Brenton’s face, stamped with the English word “Loser.”
Nashi’s letter to Queen Elizabeth II said the ambassador should be fired as he had wasted British taxpayers’ money.
Konstantin Goloskokov, another co-organizer of the picket, said Nashi would file a lawsuit against Brenton in Moscow’s Presnensky District Court on Wednesday, on the grounds that he had violated the Vienna Convention, which states that diplomats may not interfere in the internal affairs of their host countries.
Brenton’s diplomatic immunity protects him only from criminal and administrative law, not civil lawsuits, Goloskokov said. Nashi is not planning further street protests against Brenton, Goloskokov said. In late 2006, the movement’s activists repeatedly heckled him at public appearances, eventually prompting a complaint from the British Foreign Office.
A spokesman for the British Embassy confirmed that diplomats had received Nashi’s letter to the queen and said it would be passed on to the Foreign Office in London.

TITLE: $1M Found In Storchak’s Apartment
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — A prosecutor said Wednesday that $1 million in cash had been found in the apartment of Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak, who faces charges of attempting to embezzle $43 million.
The lead investigator in the case also told Rossiiskaya Gazeta that Storchak, who has denied any wrongdoing, had been detained on Nov. 15 to prevent him from fleeing the country.
“A sum equivalent to $1 million was found in Storchak’s apartment,” Dmitry Dovgy, an official in the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office, told Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
Storchak has been charged along with two businessmen in relation to a failed attempt to recover a debt owed by Algeria. He faces up to 10 years in jail if convicted. The Finance Ministry declined to comment.
“I repeat that there is sufficient proof of the guilt of the deputy minister,” Dovgy said, according to a version of the Rossiiskaya Gazeta story published on the paper’s web site Wednesday.
Storchak, the country’s foreign-debt negotiator and supervisor of the $144 billion stabilization fund, failed to convince judges on Monday to release him from prison while under investigation.
The Prosecutor General’s Office said earlier Wednesday that they would not press charges against Storchak in relation to a separate case concerning a debt deal struck with Kuwait.

TITLE: General Motors Pursues Stake in AvtoVaz
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: General Motors is bidding for a stake in AvtoVaz, Russia’s largest carmaker. The American automotive giant aims to expand its presence in the rapidly growing car market, The Associated Press reported Tuesday, citing a spokesman for GM.
General Motors recently submitted a formal bid for a stake in AvtoVaz, AP cited GM spokesman Marc Kempe as saying Tuesday. Kempe wouldn’t say how large a stake GM is seeking or how much it is willing to pay, and said there is no timeline for the bid.
Since 2001 GM has operated a joint venture with AvtoVaz in Toliatti. The plant produces two modifications of Chevrolet.
Earlier this year, a spokesman for AvtoVaz said that the company was looking for a western partner to buy a 25 percent stake in the company and develop new car models. However, an industry expert remained dubious about the prospects of the deal.
“The question of selling a stake in AvtoVaz to a strategic investor and the sale of another 20 percent of shares to a Russian metallurgy group will be discussed at a meeting of the board of directors on December 7,” said Sevastian Kozitsyn, analyst at Brokercreditservice investment company.
“Over the last two years we have heard more rumors about strategic partnerships with AvtoVaz than any other news about the company. I think that this deal can only be regarded as something real after the agreement is signed,” Kozitsyn said.
However, he considered General Motors to be a good potential investor for AvtoVaz. “Besides its wide range of car models, GM has experience of surviving in strong competition with Japanese carmakers that are expanding into the American market,” Kozitsyn said.
In the third quarter of 2007, General Motors generated a record automotive revenue of $43.1 billion and record global sales of 2.39 million cars and trucks, up four percent compared to the third quarter of 2006, “driven by exceptionally strong demand in emerging markets and improved performance in developed markets,” GM said in a statement released last month.
GM sold about 132,000 cars in Russia in 2006. Last year was a record year for car market growth in Russia, according to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Sales of foreign models increased by 280,000 units in 2006, which represents a 100 percent increase on sales in 2005. Sales of new imported cars in Russia stood at 720,000 units, a 76 percent increase compared to 2005. 
In monetary terms, sales of Russian automobiles in 2006 amounted to $5.8 billion and sales of foreign models amounted to $4.4 billion. Overall sales of automobiles in all categories passed the two million car mark — 20 percent more than in 2005, according to PwC. 
AvtoVaz produced over 966,000 cars and kits in 2006. Net sales stood at $6.77 billion last year, operating income at $344 million and profit at $130 million, according to a report audited by PwC.
So far this year, AvtoVaz has sold over 600,000 cars in Russia — a 4.4 percent increase on the same period last year— and exported over 98,000 cars.

TITLE: Tymoshenko Opposes Deal
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: KIEV — Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Ukrainian prime minister poised to return to office, wants to scrap a natural gas accord with Russia, raising concern that a price dispute between the two countries could be repeated.
Ukraine agreed Tuesday to pay Russia $179.50 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas next year, while it initially only expected to pay up to $160. Russia, which supplies a quarter of Europe’s gas supply mainly through Ukraine, will pay its former Soviet Union partner a transit fee of $1.70 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas per 1,000 kilometers, compared with the $1.60 that it pays now.
“The price of $179.50 per thousand cubic meters of gas shows the fiasco of the current Cabinet’s energy policy,” said Tymoshenko in a statement on her web site Wednesday. “We will have a chance to start talks again with Russia after the new Cabinet is formed.”

TITLE: BlackBerry To Enter Russian Market At Last
AUTHOR: By Tai Adelaja
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — What is in a name? “An awful lot,” BlackBerry’s Russian fans and foes would tell you.	
In a country where handset owners love and hate gadgets with a passion, it’s little wonder that a device as innocuous as BlackBerry can still spark off large controversies.
First introduced in 1998 as a wireless handheld computer by Canada’s Research In Motion, or RIM, BlackBerry instantaneously became a darling for road warriors and business executives. 
The addictive allure of the handheld device has always hinged on providing security and confidentiality plus a slew of features indispensable for enterprising executives always on the move.
The device, once famed primarily for its secure push e-mail, now gives adherents easy access to audio and video services, text messaging, Internet, organizer and corporate data applications.
“BlackBerry is a status symbol for any self-respecting businessman,” said Mikhail Umarov, director of communications at VimpelCom, Russia’s No. 2 mobile operator. “Armed with one, you are living a real life in real time.”
Umarov envisioned a time when a Russian business executive running late for a board meeting or held hostage by Moscow’s notorious gridlock could pick up his BlackBerry smartphone and thumb away a secret memo to business partners.
However, despite the BlackBerry smartphone becoming a must-have for corporate executives worldwide — there were 10 million subscribers in October — its debut in Russia has been stuck in the realm of dreams.
Mobile TeleSystems, Russia’s largest mobile operator that was licensed by RIM in 2005 to launch BlackBerry in Russia, has been mired in a seemingly everlasting process of obtaining permission for the venture to take off. 
When the company and VimpelCom finally got a nod last week, on Nov. 27, it was for a one-year-long experimental license to import 1,000 handsets each.
VimpelCom has also been nursing plans to launch BlackBerry wireless services in Russia, even as it dabbled in various competing projects.
In September 2005, VimpelCom launched Russia’s first push e-mail solution called Mobile Email, which is everything BlackBerry but the name.
Powered by Seven, a California-based e-mail software company, Mobile Email delivers e-mail, attachments and calendar information to PDAs and smartphones in real-time, while simultaneously mirroring all changes to the corporate server.
Early this year, the company flirted with the idea of launching a BlackBerry clone using a custom-made device developed by California-based IXI Mobile, a startup backed by companies such as Intel and Texas Instruments.
The clamshell-like device, called Ogo, was designed to provide a push e-mail solution, ICQ instant messaging service and RSS support.
“However, the bug in the ointment is that the many clones on the market lack the touch and feel of the BlackBerry model,” said VimpelCom’s Umarov. 
“Nothing really comes to mind that comes close.”
Most clones also lack BlackBerry’s full QWERTY keyboard with keys shaped to minimize mistypes, and a battery life strong enough to withstand round-the-clock connections to the Internet, Umarov said.
Vasily Koval, a telecom analyst at J’Son & Partners, said while there were alternatives such as Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.0, Nokia N-series handsets, AT&T Tilt smartphone, and Motorola’s Good Mobile, “nothing compares with the information security provided and guaranteed by RIM.
“With BlackBerry, Russian itinerant professionals don’t have to wade through hundreds of unanswered emails on arrival from corporate assignments,” Koval said.
BlackBerry’s strongest selling point — its strong encryption software — has also been its biggest constraint in Russia.
“If officials of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, demand to see e-mails sent to or from an account, mobile phone operators must hand them over in a readable way,” said Eldar Murtazin, editor of the online Mobile Research Group. “There is no workaround for such a legal requirement.”
Yury Bader-Bayer, purchasing officer at the Svyaznoi cellular retail chain, stressed the need to demystify BlackBerry to make its debut in Russia less suspicious to the authorities.
But RIM’s problematic foray into Russia is also not helped by a New Jersey’s Rutgers University report last year that BlackBerry “can be so addictive that owners may need to be weaned off them with treatment similar to that given to drug users.”
“By fuelling e-mail obsession and Internet addiction, the device is more of a social allergy than technological blessing,” said Pyotr Bankov, art-director at Design Depo.
But Alexander Voiskunsky, head of psychology at Moscow State University’s informatics lab, said talks of e-mail addiction from BlackBerrys “is sheer hypocrisy and technology-envy.”

TITLE: Russia-China Pipeline Costs Reach $12 Bln
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BEIJING — The cost of an oil pipeline from Russia to China has risen to $12 billion, and the countries’ struggle to agree on a pricing deal for a similar gas pipe could drag on for years, a Russian energy official said Wednesday.
A global escalation in raw materials prices and the depreciation of the dollar boosted the link’s costs, said Vladimir Sayenko, deputy head of the fuel and energy department at the Industry and Energy Ministry.
“Currently we are talking about approximately $12 billion. This has to do firstly with the fact that pipes got more expensive, the dollar-to-euro exchange rate and some other global economic trends,” he told an industry conference in Beijing.
Originally budgeted at less than $7 billion and recently quoted at around $11 billion, the spiraling costs meant an agreed price of near $40 per ton would now likely have to be renegotiated, he said. But the project was still set for completion near an end-2008 target date, Sayenko said.
“It seems to me it will be built on time, maybe three months [delayed] —  not a great difference. The difference is the investment,” he told journalists on the sidelines of the Sino-Russo-Kazakh Oil and Gas Forum in Beijing.
Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko said last month that the schedule to complete the first 600,000-barrel-per-day section of the pipeline by the end of 2008 was still in force.

TITLE: McDonald’s Disputes Tax Bill
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — McDonald’s Russian unit is disputing a bill for 160 million rubles ($6.5 million) in unpaid taxes, Kommersant reported Tuesday.
Tax officials said McDonald’s in 2003 and 2004 improperly wrote off the cost of products purchased from an unregistered company, Ivers Import, whose registration documents have been misplaced. McDonald’s was not aware that the company was unregistered, according to court documents, the newspaper said.
The Federal Tax Service also said McDonald’s improperly benefited from a reduced tax rate for the purchase of milk and meat products that did not have government quality-control certificates. McDonald’s said its ingredients meet European standards, Kommersant reported, citing court documents.
Company spokeswman Nina Prosolova said it disputed the tax claims, Kommersant said. 
Bloomberg, SPT

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Meat Ban Under Review</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia may lift a two-year ban on imports of some Polish meat products within the next few days as a gesture of good will toward Poland’s new government, daily Dziennik reported, without saying where it got the information.
Polish Agriculture Minister Marek Sawicki, who is due to meet his Russian counterpart Alexei Gordeyev in Moscow next week, will only have to settle the details, the newspaper said.
The Russian government is “very keen’’ on meeting as soon as possible, said Krzysztof Jazdzewski, Poland’s deputy chief veterinarian, according to the paper. Inviting the minister “is a signal that the Russians really want to solve the embargo issue.’’
Russia banned meat imports from Poland in November 2005 after claiming hygiene regulations were violated. Former Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s government responded by blocking talks on a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, the principal document defining relations between the EU and Russia, which expires at the end of this year.

<b>Supermarket Expansion</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Lenta retail chain opened four new supermarkets in November this year — one in Petrozavodsk, one in Veliky Novgorod and two in Nizhny Novgorod, the company said Tuesday in a statement.
Lenta currently operates 26 supermarkets in Russia, and is constructing new supermarkets in St. Petersburg, Rostov-na-Donu, Ryazan, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar and Novorossiisk.

<b>Housing To Improve</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — By 2011 the number of communal apartments in St. Petersburg will have decreased by 40 percent compared to the current level, the press service for St. Petersburg’s governor said Tuesday in a statement.
City Hall has approved several decrees on improving the housing conditions of local residents, and 56,500 families are expected to improve their housing conditions over the next three years.

<b>Oil Cargo On the Rise</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg Oil Terminal increased cargo turnover by nine percent between January and November 2007 compared to the same period last year, Interfax reported Wednesday.
So far this year, St. Petersburg Oil Terminal has processed 10.6 million tons of cargo, including 7.5 million tons of dark oil products.

<b>New Deal for M.video</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — M.video retail chain signed an agreement with Czech producer of household appliances Baumatic International, the company said Wednesday in a statement.
M.video will be the exclusive distributor of Baumatic International in Russia for the next five years. M.video operates 114 stores in Russia (303,000 square meters of shopping area).

<b>Rail Tariffs To Increase</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Railway tariffs for cargo transportation in Russia will grow by 11 percent next year, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Tariffs for cargo transportation from customs checkpoints to Russian sea ports will grow by 14.8 percent.

TITLE: The Allure of Tyranny
AUTHOR: By Bret Stephens
TEXT: It is ultimately a cruel misunderstanding of youth to believe it will find its heart’s desire in freedom,” says Leo Naphta, the great character of Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain.” “Its deepest desire is to obey.” On Sunday, voters as far apart as Caracas and Vladivostok took to the polls and put Naphta’s theory to a practical test. 
In Russia, the result of parliamentary elections was a triumph for President Vladimir Putin: His party, United Russia, won 64.1 percent of the vote. Add that to the votes taken by the Kremlin’s allies and the Putin tally reaches 80 percent, with the principal “democratic” opposition represented — at 11.6 percent — by the Communists. The vote sets up Putin, who is exceptionally fit at the age of 55, to rule Russia for another four-year term and perhaps several terms beyond that. 
By happy contrast, Hugo Chavez’s effort to establish himself as Venezuela’s president-for-life via a constitutional referendum seems to have failed by a narrow margin. Even so, an astonishing 49 percent of voters were prepared, according to the official count, to permanently forgo the opportunity to choose a president other than Chavez. 
The phenomenon in which masses of people enthusiastically sign away their democratic rights is not new: It happened in Germany and Austria in the 1930s. But it’s one that Americans especially have a hard time coming to grips with. The freedom agenda may no longer be in vogue, but most Americans implicitly endorse U.S. President George W. Bush’s view that “eventually, the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul.” When it doesn’t and when, in fact, it is consciously and deliberately spurned, Americans rationalize it in ways that go only so far in offering a persuasive account of the dark allure of tyranny. 
Culture is one rationalization. The word is invoked by everyone from self-described Burkean conservatives to left-wing cultural relativists to explain the supposed failure of some benighted corners of the world to adopt and sustain democratic norms. In this view, Africa and the Arab world are too tribal. The Muslim world makes no distinction between the divine and the mundane. Latin America cannot find a stable middle ground between populism and paternalism. The Chinese are too used to emperors and mandarins, and the Russians are too used to tsars and bureaucrats. 
But cultural determinism often runs afoul of reality: The example of China is counterexampled by Taiwan, Zimbabwe by Botswana and Chavez by President Alvaro Uribe in neighboring Colombia. Like baseball statistics, culture has a way of explaining a lot until it suddenly explains nothing. 
A second line has it that the Putins and Chavezes of the world owe their popularity to bread-and-circuses tactics: the canny manipulation of the media, their appeal to nationalism and xenophobia, bureaucratic patronage and, above all, the benefit of having petrodollars to shower on favored constituencies. 
Here the argument is that the two men rule by what amounts to an elaborate hoax. Yet that only begs the question of why the hoax is so widely believed. Venezuelans and Russians can travel abroad and still have considerable — albeit diminishing — access to foreign sources of news and opinion; they can read the anxious op-eds warning of creeping dictatorship. In Venezuela, that might have even tipped the scales in Sunday’s vote. Yet in Russia, “outside meddling” has had no measurable effect on Putin’s overwhelming and genuine popularity, which seems only to have been enhanced by the perception that the West increasingly fears and mistrusts him. 
Perhaps the most conventional theory is that Putin and Chavez, like most autocrats, ultimately rule through a combination of intimidation and dirty tricks. In a commentary that appeared in The Wall Street Journal on Saturday, opposition leader Garry Kasparov asked why Putin feels compelled to engage in “heavy-handed campaigning if he knows he and United Russia are going to win?” Kasparov’s answer is that the president “is very aware of how brittle his power structure has become.” 
Plainly the fear factor is central to the politics of both countries. But neither is it the whole story. Russians and Venezuelans alike elected their current leaders with bitter memories of democracy: economic collapse and social chaos under President Boris Yeltsin; the incompetent revolving-door governments of Rafael Caldera and Carlos Andres Perez. Putin and Chavez both came to office promising to reverse the disintegrating trend with what the former British Prime Minister Anthony Eden once called “the smack” — he meant the word in a physical sense — of “firm government.” Their track records over the past eight years represent, if nothing else, the fulfillment of that promise and the widespread gratitude that promise-keeping engendered. 
That is the crucial context in which Chavismo and Putinism need to be understood. “The totalitarian phenomenon,” observed the late French political philosopher Jean-Francois Revel, “is not to be understood without making allowance for the thesis that some important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny: either to exercise it themselves or — much more mysteriously — to submit to it. Democracy will therefore always remain at risk.” 
There is a lesson here for Bush, who in headier moments seems to forget that freedom’s goodness must first be demonstrated instrumentally — that is, in terms of what it tangibly delivers — before it can be demonstrated morally or spiritually. There is a broader lesson here, too, that while tyranny may ripen in certain political climates, it springs from sources deep within ourselves: the yearning for a politics without contradictions and the terror inscribed in the act of choice. 
Thank goodness there is usually more to human nature than that, as courageous Venezuelans proved Sunday. Other times, that’s all there is. Welcome to Putin’s democracy. 

Bret Stephens is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, where this comment appeared.

TITLE: How Nemtsov’s Arrest Differs From Anya’s
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Last week I heard the most optimistic news that an inveterate pessimist like me could have possibly imagined. No, I’m not referring to the recent State Duma elections. That isn’t news. The word “news” implies something unexpected, and there was nothing unexpected about the results of these elections.
It wasn’t the elections that made news, but the arrests of prominent opposition figures prior to the elections: Boris Nemtsov of the liberal Union of Right Forces party, former world chess champion and opposition leader Garry Kasparov and liberal activist and satirist Viktor Shenderovich. But even more surprising than their arrests was what happened while they were in custody.
I called all three of the detainees while they were behind bars. First on my list was Nemtsov, who told me that the police officers at the station asked him for his autograph and for a group photograph. Next I called Shenderovich, who said he was given the same kind of reception. These celebrity convicts were dutifully served hot coffee while in captivity, and one was even given a bottle of whiskey.
One hour before I heard the story about this VIP treatment, I heard a completely different story about Anya, a modest, attractive girl from Ryazan who had moved to Moscow and later found work in a large department store. City police stopped Anya on the street one day and demanded her Moscow registration papers, the infamous propiska. They then took her in for “questioning,” which meant a lot of frisking and crude taunts. Then the police chief stepped in and, with a lewd smile, said to his subordinates, “When you’re finished searching her, let me have her for a while in my office — for further ‘questioning.’”
At this point, Anya was terrified and handed the cops all the money that she had managed to scrape together. Then she was released. Had the officers really been planning to rape her, or was it simply a scare tactic to extort money? It is hard to say.
This is the sad reality in our country.
Returning to Nemtsov, Kasparov and Shenderovich in custody. I understand why a police officer complained to one of the prominent detainees about the rampant abuses of power in Russia, why another cop complained about his low salary, and why a third sighed and said, “When will we ever get rid of Putin?”
In Anya’s case, the police understood that they could do whatever they wanted with a provincial girl, while officers holding Kasparov, Nemtsov and Shenderovich realized that they had to be much more careful. Famous people are like aristocrats, and they enjoy a kind of diplomatic immunity that protects them from physical abuse by the police.
President Vladimir Putin has successfully created a system in which those higher up on the pecking order are allowed to do as they please with their subordinates or with powerless citizens. Putin, for example, has a free hand with the oligarchs, and the governors can do what they want in their fiefdom with local businessmen. Similarly, Moscow cops can get away with abusing a girl from Ryazan.
Russia is enmeshed in a huge criminalized web involving millions of people. Every member of this system benefits from the fruits of his crimes, while swearing absolute loyalty to his boss — the one who grants him the right and privilege to abuse the powers that come with the job.
To be sure, there are millions of people outside this corrupt system who do not commit crimes, but they are often filled with envy when they see how their colleagues get away scot-free with abusing their office. And those who commit crimes are also boiling with envy, thinking to themselves, “Here I am, pocketing only a couple hundred bucks from a simple, provincial girl from Ryazan, while my bosses are able to extort millions.”

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

TITLE: Keeping the faith
AUTHOR: By Alastair Gee
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: On weekends, Father Ioann Okhlobystin can be found tending to his flock at St. Sofia’s Church of the Wisdom of God, opposite the Kremlin in Moscow. He wears a long, black priestly cassock and sometimes gives sermons about love and friendship.
During the week, Ivan Okhlobystin acts in big-budget movies and writes scripts for action films. The priest, who uses his lay name for work, likes buying luxury watches and has a fondness for Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
What do his parishioners make of his alter ego as a screen idol?
“They’re indifferent,” Okhlobystin said in an interview last week in a Moscow coffee shop, dressed in baggy jeans and with a hat hiding his long hair, which had been dyed red for a role. “It was interesting at first, but they got used to it.” As for his fellow priests, “90 percent of them have a good attitude to it. We chat about it. They’re people, too, you know.”
Okhlobystin, 41, acted in films from 1992 until 2001, and was known for his gritty performances in movies about the army and Russia’s drug-enamored nouveaux riches. He also wrote tens of screenplays. But then he decided to give it all up and was ordained.
This year, he’s making a comeback — Okhlobystin says his upcoming appearance in “Conspiracy,” due to be released late December, will be the first time a priest has taken the lead role in a Russian movie. The film, directed by Stanislav Libin, is about Grigory Rasputin, the mystic who was a controversial friend of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna and, some say, part of the reason Russia’s monarchy was so disliked and eventually overthrown.
While researching the role of Rasputin, Okhlobystin gained sympathy for the charismatic mystic, or as some see him, religious charlatan, who was not ordained in the Russian Orthodox Church. “He was a gifted person; he undeniably cured diseases,” he said. “Of course, he wasn’t a saint — he got drunk; he was raucous in restaurants. But my research shows that he wasn’t a pervert.”
He’s also working on a number of new scripts, one comedy and another about terrorism. Compared with a priest’s wage, it’s highly lucrative work — Okhlobystin said he had just agreed to write a screenplay on biblical themes for $180,000.
Okhlobystin’s return has been welcomed by his friends, though they still sympathize with his choice to enter the priesthood.
“Of course, his decision to become a priest was a big shock for a lot of people,” said Kristina Orbakaite, a pop singer, actress and daughter of Russia’s most famous pop star, Alla Pugachyova. Orbakaite plays the empress in “Conspiracy.” “But I understand his decision. His soul at some point began to need it.”
She added: “I’m a believer — I’m a Catholic. I’d like to dedicate myself more to my faith, but nevertheless to a greater extent I’m a secular person. I’m an actress, I have children, a mother. But in spite of his burdens, he went further.”
Okhlobystin was born at a holiday resort in the Tula region. His father, aged 62 when Okhlobystin was born, was a doctor there. His mother was 19.
Although he studied directing at Moscow’s prestigious VGIK film school, Okhlobystin took his first acting role in 1992’s “Leg,” after being persuaded by his friend and the film’s director, Nikita Tyagunov. He played a soldier who loses a limb during the Afghan war. Okhlobystin then wrote and directed 1992’s “Arbiter,” and realized he never wanted to direct again.
Over the next 10 years, Okhlobystin acted and wrote the scripts for dozens of Russian films, notably appearing as a spy in 2000’s army-themed “DMB” and alongside Fyodor Bondarchuk in 2001’s “Down House,” which is based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot” and touches on similar themes — hard drugs, clubs — to the British film “Trainspotting.” He wrote the scripts for both.
Despite his mother’s disapproval, Okhlobystin chose to be baptized when he was 14, and his faith grew stronger with age. He presented a religious show on television in the late 1990s, but he said his decision to enter the priesthood came as he was driving in the Moscow region with a priest from Tashkent.
“On the way the the car broke down, and we sat for several hours on the road and played chess. He played chess very well. We chatted about life, and then he said to me, ‘Everything’s going very well for you, and you’ll achieve whatever you want. But you’re a little bit out of place.’ And I said, ‘What place do I need?’ He said: You should become a priest.’”
“For an Orthodox Christian to refuse when he’s asked to become a priest — it’s crazy,” Okhlobystin said.
The priest ordained Okhlobystin at his church in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and upon taking orders, Okhlobystin disappeared from movie screens. 
Despite receiving a number of acting offers, Okhlobystin said he turned them all down. He wrote a few screenplays, including this year’s “Paragraph 78,” set in a future where soft drugs have been legalized. But mostly he devoted himself to religion, serving at a number of churches in Moscow, and became a devotee of the U.S. futurologist Alvin Toffler. He also spent more time with his young family — Okhlobystin has six children, the oldest of whom is now 11. That all changed recently.
“At the beginning of this year, [the makers of “Conspiracy”] made me a very attractive offer,” he said. “An official offer by letter. I showed it to my boss, and he said, ‘This is a great job, the money’s good, you could build a church with this.’”
Okhlobystin wrote a letter to Patriarch Alexy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, asking what he should do, and received permission to appear in the film. Okhlobystin won’t be building a church with the proceeds, however — he’ll keep a large portion of it, and with the remainder plans to set up a rest home for stressed Muscovites in the countryside.
The money wasn’t the only deciding factor — filmmaking is like a “drug,” Okhlobystin said.
Other priests could follow in Okhlobystin’s footsteps if they wanted — they’re not forbidden from acting by scripture, said Father Georgy Ryabykh, a spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate.
“The question of whether acting is suitable for priests remains to be decided,” he said. “The general rule is that a Christian shouldn’t take a role that promotes vice or anti-Christian sentiment.”
As proof that cinema and the Orthodox Church can go hand in hand, last year Pavel Lungin had a huge hit in Russia with his film “The Island,” set in a remote monastery.
The film was shown at the Radonezh festival of Orthodox film, which is blessed by Alexy. It even prompted tabloid rumors that one of the lead actors, Dmitry Dyuzhev, was preparing to join a monastery.
For now, Okhlobystin is abstaining from roles in which the character has sex on screen. He’d also prefer not to take a part that involves swearing (and admonishes his acquaintances when they do). Though it’s preferable for Russian Orthodox priests to have a beard, Okhlobystin doesn’t — most roles don’t require one and, in any case, he said he is unable to grow one.
Other than that, he says becoming a priest hasn’t made him into a new person.
“Nothing has changed. Everybody says that people change. But I haven’t seen it in myself. Earlier I liked the music of Dead Can Dance. And I like it now. Earlier I liked BMWs, and now I like BMWs. And drinks — earlier I loved Calvados, and now I love Calvados.
“Now I have obligations. That’s the only difference.”

TITLE: Chernov’s
         choice
TEXT: The music program for this week’s Finnish-Russian Music Seminar, organized by the Sibelius Academy, the Finnish Music Information Centre (Fimic) and the Finnish Institute in St. Petersburg, includes three different genres of music represented by pop-funk band <b>Eternal Erection</b>, rockers <b>Naked</b> and DJ/production team <b>Beats and Styles</b>.
On its MySpace page, Eternal Erection, whose founding principle is “Fun for Finns,” describes its music as a mix between 1970s and 1980s black funk, soul and disco mixed with 2000s hip-hop, pop and rock influenced by Prince and Outkast, among others. 
“We’ve always made people dance, even induced trances, we’ve cured depression and inspired people’s sex life. We want to bring joy to everyone,” Rick Lover, the alter ego of actor Sam Huber, has been quoted as saying.
The show also features “Broadway rock” band Naked that lists KISS, the Beatles, Thin Lizzy, The Who, Queen, Led Zeppelin and Motown classics among its influences and, finally, Beats and Styles, whose best known track is called “Dance Dance Dance,” has been described as being “about positive energy and combining catchy songs with influences from rock, reggae, hip-hop, disco and electronica.”
All three acts are from Helsinki. They will perform in a Finnish showcase concert called “One Night — Three Styles” at Achtung Baby at midnight on Friday.
<b>NOM</b>, an absurdist band of musicians, painters and film-makers, has completed a new feature film. Called “Fantomas Unmasked” (Fantomas Snimayet Masku), it will premiere in Moscow and St. Petersburg in early January.
This weekend, the band will perform its last local concert of the year, which will be based on its whole repertoire. “It’s a normal ‘best-of’ concert, except that we rearranged all the songs this year,” said vocalist and bass player Andrei Kagadeyev by phone this week. NOM will perform at Griboyedov on Saturday.
<b>La Minor</b>, a local urban folk band that has become a local favorite for its clever interpretations of old Soviet prison and gangster songs, has unveiled its new lineup. Old-timers Slava Shalygin on vocals, Sanya Yezhov on bayan, or button saxophone, and saxophonist Igor Boytsov are now joined by three new members, drummer Yevgeny Bobrov, who occasionally performs with Billy’s Band, Leonid Agafonov on double bass and Vladimir Uspensky on guitar.
Having celebrated its seventh anniversary with a concert at Griboyedov last month, La Minor has prepared a new concert set and is busy recording a new, yet-untitled follow-up to its 2005 CD “Death of a Jeweller” (Smert Yuvelira). With the album due in December, La Minor will be touring Europe in January and February and will not launch it locally until late February or March. La Minor will perform at Soho on Thursday.

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: If they can make it there...
AUTHOR: By Bernard Holland
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: NEW YORK — Every literate Russian can quote Pushkin and hum a tune from Glinka. No Russian orchestra on the road is likely to leave either man at home. Valery Gergiev and the Kirov (Mariinsky) Orchestra of St. Petersburg, in three Carnegie Hall concerts this week, have been happy once again to leave other people’s music to other people. Patrons could be assured that Borodin or Rimsky-Korsakov or something kindred was on the way. No one seemed disappointed.
Stravinsky has seemed the closest thing to non-Russian in this series, although many will argue that his has been the most Russian music of all. Russia came late to the European musical tradition, and Glinka’s “Ruslan and Ludmila,” on Saturday evening, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Snow Maiden,” on Sunday afternoon, represent both an accommodation with and a suspicion of European ideas of formalism and elegance.
“Le Sacre du Printemps” on Saturday and “Les Noces” on Tuesday are more prehistory than history, standing apart from a story line of Western alliances that ran from Glinka in 1842 to Shostakovich halfway through the 20th century. Stravinsky’s two pieces look homeward from a distance, with something rawer, more brutal and closer to the land itself.
Gergiev, a man of infinite energy, conducted Act I of Glinka’s “Ruslan” on Saturday and the three and a half hours of “The Snow Maiden” on Sunday. The Glinka opera, taken from Pushkin, tells of true love interrupted, competed for and then resolved. It all takes a long time, rambling over five acts. The energy and light of the familiar overture, taken at quite a clip by Gergiev, create East meets West at its best. Despite its incoherence, “Ruslan and Ludmila” has become a country’s cultural ground zero and patriotic landmark.
“The Snow Maiden,” with such allegorical parents as Frost and Spring, links doomed love and romantic conflict with climate change. A chilly society held hostage by the god of cold yearns for global warming. So too the Snow Maiden; the sun melts her heart but, unhappily, her body as well.
Rimsky-Korsakov brings a civility and elegance to elemental Russian music. I admire him more and more. Birds sing out from his orchestra as lovely as the singers themselves. Textures float and are wonderfully transparent. Clashes of sound have force without ugliness. He is like a master gardener luxuriating in his colors. For better or worse “Le Sacre” on Saturday had the same qualities. The raw whine of the bassoon playing out of its natural range was made to sound gorgeous. Linear passages emerged in long lyrical lines. The admirable Kirov Orchestra boomed and shrieked in a splendor of resonance and high energy. Fast places were very fast, slow ones very slow. 
Every Stravinskian savagery was smothered in Romantic bliss. I loved it, but I don’t think it was what Stravinsky had in mind.
The singing was uniformly winning. Ludmila Dudinova (Ludmila) and Anastasia Kalagina (the Snow Maiden) were the lead sopranos. The tenor Yevgeny Akimov sang to good effect both nights. Yekaterina Semenchuk, Tatiana Pavlovskaya, Olga Savova and Vadim Kravets were among the darker voices. The Chorus of the Mariinsky Theater sang with great energy.

TITLE: Shock of the new
AUTHOR: By John Varoli
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Russian sculptor Anatoly Osmolovsky won Russia’s first Kandinsky Prize for contemporary art with a work inspired by a Soviet tank turret.
The bronze “T-72” by Osmolovsky, 38, helped him beat other finalists AES+F and Yury Albert at Wednesday’s event. Osmolovsky was named Best Artist of the Year and won 40,000 euros ($58,889) at a ceremony in Moscow.
AES+F, an art foursome, placed its hope for victory in “The Last Riot” series of digital photographs showing armed children ready to commit acts of violence. The work was shown at this year’s Venice Biennale. Albert was nominated for his video performance, “Exhibition.”
The Kandinsky Prize, named in honor of one of the greatest Russian 20th century artists, Wassily Kandinsky, is supported by Deutsche Bank AG and the Moscow-based Art Chronika Culture Foundation. Russian newspapers billed the award as the country’s “Turner Prize,” a reference to the U.K.’s top prize for contemporary art. The Moscow ceremony at the Winzavod Center of Contemporary Art, owned by transport magnate Roman Trotsenko, was packed by Russia’s business and cultural elite. Guests included billionaires Viktor Vekselberg and Mikhail Fridman. Near them sat Ukrainian billionaire and contemporary art collector, Victor Pinchuk. He sits on the Kandinsky Prize’s board of trustees.
“This is a good thing for Russian contemporary art, and in general, good for the nation,” Fridman, 43, said after the ceremony. His fortune is estimated by Forbes at $12.6 billion. “The artworks here today were very interesting.”
The prize’s creation reflects growing interest in Russian contemporary art after more than a decade of public neglect. With the Russian economy growing since 1999, wealthy Russians, as well as foreigners living in Moscow, are spending more on contemporary works by local artists.
The Kandinsky Prize, which is only open to Russian artists, “hopes to develop Russian contemporary art, and to seek out new and interesting projects and artists,” said the organizers in their manifesto. Dec. 4 was chosen as the day of ceremony because it was Kandinsky’s birthday.
The six-person jury included Valerie Hillings, a curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and Friedhelm Huette, director of the Deutsche Bank Art Collection.
Last night’s ceremony began an hour late because some billionaire guests were caught in a Moscow traffic jam. When the ceremony finally got under way, two threatening police officers entered the hall from opposite sides. They moved to the center of the stage, embraced and passionately kissed as the crowd burst into applause.
The performance was a clear sign of support for “Era of Mercy” (2005), a color photograph by the Blue Noses art duo. At the end of October, Russia’s Culture Ministry banned the image from an exhibition of Russian contemporary art in Paris. The picture shows two Russian police officers locking lips in a birch grove. The ministry said the work was a “disgrace.”
The Blue Noses — Sasha Shaburov and Slava Mizin — then came on stage to host the ceremony. Awards were given in several categories. Best Young Artist of the Year went to Vladlena Gromova for her video, “Portrait” (2007). It shows the artist drawing crude facial features onto a sheet that covers someone else’s face. When the face has been drawn, that person bites and eats an apple.
Best Art Media Project of the Year went to St. Petersburg performance artist, Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, for his video, “Volga Volga” (2006), where he superimposes his head onto that of Soviet film star Lubov Orlova in the 1938 romantic comedy of the same name. The film is reputed to be Stalin’s favorite.
“This art is so very different from everything else that is happening in the country that it’s quite nice to see,” said Vekselberg, 49, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at $10.4 billion. “I haven’t done much to support contemporary art, but I really like it.”
Vekselberg is famous for his collection of 19th and 20th century Russian art, most of all his purchase in January 2004 of the Forbes Faberge Collection.

TITLE: Waifs and strays
AUTHOR: By Katya Madrid
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “Où vont les chiens?” asks a new photography exhibition at Café Zoom at 22 Ulitsa Gorokhovaya. The quote, taken from Charles Baudelaire’s The Good Dog (“Where are the dogs going?”), not only refers to our canine friends, the cohabitants of our cities, it also nonchalantly suggests a parallel to our own existence. To make the point, photographer Wolfgang Mueller, uses a long quote to introduce his work:
“Business meetings, love trysts. Through the mist, through the snow, through the filth, in the dog days of summer, in pouring rain, they come, they go, they trot, they run under carriages, excited by fleas, passion, need, or duty. Like us, they get up early, and they try to feed themselves or pursuing their pleasures.” 
The photographs in Mueller’s show - glimpses of the lives of St. Petersburg’s homeless children, the “strays” of the show’s title — divide into two formal categories, color and black and white images. This grouping corresponds to the two distinct worlds offered by the artist. The first world is alive with color. The underprivileged, under-supervised youngsters play, run, and ponder in their own universe. They are high above the daily routine of adult life, on slanted rooftops and among the chimneys. While it is amply clear that these kids have it rough, and have needed to grow up much before their time, the longing in their bottomless eyes tells of the hope that they miraculously manage to hold on to. There is joy in their life that no amount of adult logic can take away.
The grey world is at street level. Familiar vistas exist in less than true reality. This split almost suggests that if a viewer can easily picture himself in that environment, then it is but a shadowland. The magical cityscape of the “overworld,” of imagination is at once an escape and a hyper reality version of youth. Most of us have little experience seeing our city from this perspective.
Café Zoom, a hip little place with healthy, tasty treats and surprisingly pleasant music, spreads across three rooms. The art is nestled in behind the couches and around tight corners. While it’s a cozy space that does not suffer from a lack of customers, the thought provoking nature of the images is only sharpened when juxtaposed against blissfully smiling faces of the notably young crowd. Sadly, unless you are willing to hover over someone else’s table as they squirm uncomfortably, waiting for you to move on, you will not get a good look at exhibit.  On the other hand, it’s an excuse to start a conversation with a perfect stranger.  
One of the most compelling images is a wide shot of a little girl from behind, carefully making her descent, surrounded by a sea of red roofs. Strong diagonal lines marked by the edges of the rusty structures form a perfect cross, in the center of which is the precariously balanced figure in a flowing red dress and plaid shirt. The movement in her hair and cloths show no hesitation. She skillfully navigates the turn, seemingly unafraid of the height from which she could so easily tumble to her death. The fiery red of her garment also connotes strength and will. This is her place. She is safe here. But the angle of her torso also suggests instability. It is a vulnerable pose that speaks of the little girl’s place in life. The quiet poetry of the shot is poignant.
While, or perhaps by, toying with the viewer’s perception, Mueller manages to get under the radar of socio-political consciousness. The characters that he captures are so compelling, and the scenes so intimate that one cannot help reading personality traits into the kids. These cigarette smoking rug rats, with inappropriately snow white ruffles and dirty finger mails (echoing Les Miserables) do not readily fade from memory. Their defiant eyes suggest another fragment of Baudelaire’s writing that immediately precedes the title line:
“I sing of calamitous dogs, whether those who wander solitary, in the sinuous ravines of immense cities, whether those who said to the abandoned man, with their blinking and intelligent eyes:  ‘Take me with you, and out of our two miseries perhaps we can make a sort of happiness!’”

Où vont les chiens? runs until Dec. 23 at Café Zoom, 22 Ulitsa Gorokhovaya. Tel: 448 5001. The cafe is collecting money to give to children’s charities over  the New Year and Christmas holidays.

TITLE: Scorched earth
AUTHOR: By Norman M. Naimark
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: World War II — the “Great Patriotic War,” in Soviet parlance — played and continues to play a critical role in Russians’ understanding of who they are and what place their country occupies in the history of the modern world. 
By the end of the 1930s, the “Great October Revolution” had faded as a source of legitimacy for the Soviet regime, and promises of socialism had proven chimerical and elusive. The harsh realities of Stalinist industrialization, collectivization, purges and the Gulag had sapped Soviet citizens of a feeling of common purpose. 
The war changed all that. Despite the horrendous losses in population (today estimated at 27 million, or one person in seven) and of material (perhaps a third of prewar Soviet wealth), the triumphant victory over Nazi Germany served as the central legitimating myth for Soviet power in the postwar period.
Especially after Stalin died in 1953, and the Soviet state had less ability to turn to coercion and terror to enforce citizen participation, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev used victory in the war as a way to muster social support for party rule. 
At the height of the Brezhnev period, the development of almost every facet of Soviet life was subsumed to “military-patriotic education”: teaching and emulating the lessons of the war as a way to rally Soviet citizens’ allegiance to the Kremlin’s domestic and Cold War policies. By the end of the Brezhnev period, Marxism-Leninism was all but buried in the rhetoric about the heroism and sacrifices of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. The “cult of the war” supplanted “the cult of Lenin.”
Victory over the Nazis remains to this day a source of enormous pride among Russians. 
Aged veterans, decked out with medals and poorly fitting old uniforms, proudly march on Victory Day, just as they have for decades. As the slogan reminds us, “No one is forgotten; nothing is forgotten.” 
However, for some former Soviet citizens, like the Western Ukrainians and Baltic peoples, World War II marks the forced incorporation of their lands into the Soviet Union during the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and then again at the end of the war. In this context, it is hardly surprising that the Estonian government in April 2007 moved the Soviet memorial dedicated to fallen Red Army soldiers in the center of Tallinn to the city’s military cemetery, prompting protests both by Russians in Estonia and by the Kremlin.
The war on the Eastern Front between the Nazis and Soviets was the decisive theater of World War II, and the defeat of the Third Reich was due more to the Soviet war effort than to the other Allies’ military contributions combined. It is hard to overestimate the importance of the Red Army’s victory to the survival of Europe and the West. Yet Americans celebrate a history of the war that focuses almost exclusively on General George Patton and D-Day, John Wayne in the Pacific and the Battle of the Bulge. 
Ken Burns’ recent seven-part documentary on PBS, called, simply, “The War,” is a brilliant reconstruction of World War II as it affected Americans on the home front and in combat, but it really should be called “Americans at War”: a small and idiosyncratic story compared to the ferocious battlefields of the Eastern Front. History writing about the war does not do much better. This is a very good reason to welcome “Absolute War,” a new study of the fighting on the Eastern Front, though typically it is not by an American, but by a British historian, Chris Bellamy.
“Absolute War” is distinguished from more specialized recent works by its successful attempt to cover the entire war, from its outbreak in September 1939 to its final stage in the Japanese theater in August 1945. 
Bellamy is primarily interested in military matters, from the order of battle to the role of artillery and armor in tactical engagements. The volume contains 75 maps of battles, invasion plans and troop movements. Some are too detailed and hard to read for the generalist, but they provide a valuable resource for future historians of the war.
The book conventionally divides “the biggest and worst war in history” into four stages. First there was the tense period of the Nazi and Soviet occupation of Poland, from September 1939 to the German invasion on June 22, 1941. 
Next came the punishing Nazi offensive, which encircled huge numbers of Soviet troops, took some 3.8 million Soviet soldiers prisoner, and threatened Moscow and Leningrad. 
Then came the extremely dangerous period from the stabilization of the front in the winter of 1941-1942 to the defense of Stalingrad and the encirclement and surrender of German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus’ Sixth Army in February 1943. 
Bellamy focuses primarily on 1941 and 1942, when “the very survival of Soviet Russia hung in the balance.” He concludes his history by following the Red Army fronts from the “great Kursk counteroffensive” in July 1943 to the taking of Berlin in May 1945, and then to the brief, but important campaign against the Japanese in Manchuria that August.
Bellamy does a nice job laying out the particular characteristics of each stage of the war. Stalin’s interference with his generals is more marked in the first phase than in the last. The rivalries between the Soviet generals — Semyon Timoshenko, Georgy Zhukov, Konstantin Rokossovsky, Ivan Konev and others — increase as time goes on, so that Stalin is forced to intervene before the assault on Berlin.
“Beneath a veneer of politeness, with a few exceptions, [the generals] all seem to have hated one another.” Bellamy also demonstrates that at each stage of the war, the Soviets could bring more material and soldiers to bear on the outcome, developing new weapons and producing them in large numbers for the battlefield. Over time, the Soviets were able to reduce the proportions of those killed to those wounded or otherwise incapacitated.
Bellamy provides the reader with the data and background for understanding the improvement of Soviet performance. The Soviet Army was not just growing in size and employing better weapons, it was getting more skilled at planning and carrying out campaigns and battles. 
Meanwhile, the German effort, almost unbelievably ferocious and determined to the bitter end, deteriorated in terms of quantity and quality of arms and men. 
Bellamy is much less interested in the “other stories” of the Eastern Front. He has almost nothing to say about the SS Einsatzgruppen, responsible for the killing of close to a million Soviet Jews, little about the mass deportations of millions of alleged collaborators of the Nazis, and only scattered sections on the resistance to the Soviets of Ukrainian (and other) underground fighters. 
Meanwhile, Bellamy spends much more time on the partisans and their role. In this sense, he departs little from traditional Soviet (and Russian) military histories of the war, except for his interesting digressions on the important and little-known role of women combatants.
“Absolute War” is a good book at an important stage in the historiography of World War II, given the availability of newly published document collections and unexpurgated memoirs. But it is far from the last word on this crucial subject in the history of the modern world.

Norman M. Naimark is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies at Stanford and the author of “The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949.”

TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Kremlin watchers all get up early on Wednesday mornings, so that they can catch the latest bulletin from an insider who keeps her nose to the ground and her ears pricked up for juicy titbits. I'm referring of course to Kremlin Expert, the insightful column that Connie the Labrador files every week for Secrets of the Stars, a slim magazine that otherwise concentrates on pop diva Alla Pugachyova and cures for varicose veins.
This week, Connie, who is pictured above her byline with glistening nose and eyes gazing wisely into the distance, toyed with her loyal readers. Anxious for pronouncements on the future of the nation, they had to get through the first item on some restaurant that has a hologram of her and President Vladimir Putin before hitting pay dirt. 
In her second story, she got political, voicing her support for demographic growth and claiming that she will name her next children Bykap and Lyuplan. When these bouncing pups compete at Crufts, they will use their full names: "Being Like Putin" and "I Love Putin's Plan.”
The Connie column has been a fixture at the magazine since it first came out in September. It seems to be de rigeur for new magazines to give some kind of nod to the Kremlin leadership. When a magazine called "Sex & The City" came out, its first edition featured a "what's sexy" list topped by topless Putin. The "what's not sexy" list was headed by the French President Nicolas Sarkozy before his love handles were Photoshopped.
Sometimes, I've wondered about why Connie chooses to write for a German-owned magazine. But she's kept her paws to the party line and, even if the column has a ghost writer, I'm pretty sure he or she is equally waggy of tail. In one column, Connie brought up the topless Putin pictures. "My master showed he's in such good form that everyone gasped. Both in Russia and abroad," she boasted. 
Connie likes to play the role of a political innocent: "I can't wait to move to Sochi for the winter. But the master says that will happen after some important December event. I've forgotten its name," she wrote in one column. But a few paragraphs down, we found the headline "Putin as a Friend," and Connie writing surprisingly fluently about the Internet and a web site where you can put your photograph and make Putin one of your friends. 
Even though she can't quite remember the name of the site, it's clear enough that she's not referring to FaceBook -- although there are many Vladimir Putins on there -- but to ZaPutina.Ru, where thousands of Putin fans have placed their photographs.
In one column, she even threatened to start her own blog, expressing a wish to meet labradors of the opposite sex. Funnily enough, I do know a dog who has his own page on Facebook, although he fills it with doggerel. He might not be good enough for Connie, who has a pedigree, even if she's getting a bit long in the tooth.
I've never quite worked out why Secrets of the Stars readers are expected to take an interest in Connie's doings, since the rest of the magazine steers clear of politics all together and has a strict editorial policy of at least one celebrity on the brink of death in each issue as well as a cover picture of Pugachyova with big hair. 
I like to think that it was in fact Connie who suggested the collaboration, since she enjoys pawing her way through the magazine's generous section on pets and their illnesses -- this week, we learnt that budgies are liable to turn up their toes if fed salt or pickles. After all, like Secrets of the Stars' other readers, Connie is a grandmother.

TITLE: Surreal thing
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Dali Cafe // 11 Spassky Pereulok. Tel: 572 6203 // www.dalicafe.spb.ru // Open 10 a.m. to 5 a.m. // Dinner for two 690 rubles ($29).

All the dishes at this swanky new café hidden on a scruffy side street off Sennaya Ploshchad purportedly share their names with the titles of works by the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali after whom, of course, the café is named.
This throws up some strange imagery, as you would expect: grilled marinated veal (380 rubles, $15.50) is called “Flesh on Stones”; fillet of flounder with pesto (420 rubles, $17) is called “The Endless Enigma”; and bouillon with quail’s eggs and herbs (90 rubles, $3.60) is called “Atavistic Vestiges After the Rain.”
Perhaps in an effort to avoid the obvious, the literate people behind Dali Café do not have a dish named after Dali’s most famous work, “The Persistence of Memory” (1931), easily recognizable for its motif of melting watches. Melting watches are also absent from the sumptuous interior of Dali Café, which occupies a mid-sized second floor room overlooking the street, and smaller room at the back. 
A great deal of attention has been paid to the decoration of the café. There is a reference to Dali’s “Mae West Lips Sofa” in the vast crimson velvet banquettes at the far end of the room, while there are smartly upholstered Empire-style chairs at the other tables. The tables are huge, black and shiny, like grand pianos, while blood-red swag curtains are tied back with golden tasselled cords. There’s more than a hint of camp in this red, gold, and black scheme, which extends to walls that, in the front room, have been covered with an elaborate marble paint effect suggesting ruby crystals flecked with gold. In the back room, hidden by a heavy curtain, the same idea is repeated, this time with dark, brooding malachite and ebony tones. In this “dark room” there is a recently installed triptych by the up-and-coming young painter Ira Drozd. The large paintings show impressionistic scenes from what appears to be a gay pride parade. As it happens, Dali Café is listed on gay web sites and describes itself as “gay friendly.” 
The dishes are not as flamboyantly constructed as their names might suggest, and the idea of “surreal food” is perhaps a step too far. But there is wit in the presentation. A duck and pasta dish called “Gala’s Eyes” — a reference to Dali’s Russian-born muse and wife Yelena Ivanovna Dyakonova, known in later life as Gala — comes as two mounds of white pasta (eyeballs?), meat in red sauce on one and cream sauce on the other (surreal irises?) and an olive on top (pupils?). The dish stares at you until you stab it with a fork. Thank goodness they don’t supply you with a razor. It would be “Un chien andalou” all over again. 
The menu’s origins are difficult to pin down — French, Italian and Asian elements jostle for attention, with some Russian soups thrown in for good measure. Ukha (Russian fish soup for130 rubles, $5.30) is renamed “Battle in the Clouds” while borshch is transformed into “The King’s Heart” (100 rubles, $4). There is a satisfying range of salads with adventurous combinations of cold meats, salad vegetables and fruits like melon and strawberry with no mayonnaise in sight (from 120 rubles to 490 rubles, $4.90 to $20), and an unusual selection of “non-alcoholic cocktails.” These are actually a group of frappes, milkshakes, cordials and fruits that should be popular in summer and with after-club crowds (Dali Café is open until 5 a.m.).

TITLE: German Film Festival at Dom Kino
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A festival of German films, opening Friday with “Porno! Melo! Drama!” running through Dec. 16, features a wide selection of features, short and documentary films made in Germany over the last year. The festival organizers said this year’s festival highlights art house cinema, whereas the 2006 festival featured, for example, the Oscar-winning “The Lives of Others.”
The opening film for this year’s festival, “Porno! Melo! Drama!” is a debut feature film by Korea-born female director Heesook Sohn, an official guest of this year’s festival in St. Petersburg. 
The film tells the story of three women living in contemporary Germany through a series of love affiars, brief encounters, and career turns. “Porno! Melo! Drama!” was shown earlier this year during the Deboshir Film Festival and won a special jury prize.
One of the most long-waited films to be shown during the festival is the new Volker Scholendorff film “Ulzhan,” the premier of which took place at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A meditative story about a Frenchman lost on the steppes of Kazakhstan, the film essays Europe’s involvement in the East. Shot against the minimalistic, stunningly beautiful landscapes of the Kazakh steppes and mountains, the film strives to combine elements of old and new — the skyscrapers of the new capital Astana alongside with traditional shamanism, while Soviet-era concentration camps and nuclear weapons facilities are a background for contemporary criminal dramas. 
The second premier is the latest Christian Petzold film, “Yella”, shown at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. The film deals with the issues of postwar Germany’s division into East and West, years after re-unification. The main character, Yella, is desperate to get a better job and life away from her small shabby town in East Germany, unsuccessful marriage to a bankrupt, violent husband and depression. At first, her new career in the West goes successfully, but then she begins to notice that something is going wrong in her relationship with a seemingly successful businessman. Brilliantly performed by Nina Foss and David Striesow, the film takes an unexpected turn in the last few minutes.
The other films shown at this year’s festival include the social and criminal drama “Madonnen,” the social comedy “Du bist nicht allein” (“You are not alone”), the road-movie “Nichts als Gespenster” (No one but the ghosts), and sports drama “Schwere Jungs” (Heavyweights). “Am Ende kommen Touristen” (In the End Come Tourists, pictured above) deals with issues of Germany’s past, as experienced by the main character Sven as he completes alternative military service in modern-day Auschwitz.
Two documentaries will be shown at the festival: “Full Metal Village,” about a famous heavy-metal festival that takes place in a quiet village in rural Germany; and “Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin” telling the story of the legendary Hollywood director’s early years in Germany.
A special screening of a Swiss film “Vitus” will also take place during the festival. The film is the story of a wunderkind whose plans go in a different direction from his parents’ ambitions. The film won a Swiss Film Prize for the Best Film and Screenplay this year.

German Film Festival at Dom Kino, 13 Karavannaya ulitsa.
Friday, 7.12
18.00 Opening of the festival
Porno!Melo!Drama!,  2007, 80 min. 
Saturday, 8.12
15.30 Porno!Melo!Drama!, 2007, 80 min.
18.40 Yella, 2007, 89 min.
22.00 Next Generation 2007 (short-film program) 
Sunday, 9.12
13.50 Emil und die Detektive (Emil and the Detectives), 2001, 110 min. 
18.50 Ulzhan, 2007, 105 min. 
Monday, 10.12
18.30 Full Metal Village, 2006, 90 min. 
Tuesday, 11.12
19.20 Madonnen, 2007, 125 min. 
Wednesday, 12.12
18.40 Am Ende kommen Touristen (In the End Come the Tourists) 2007, 85 min. 
Thursday, 13.12
19.30 Nichts als Gespenster (No One but the Ghosts) 2007, 116 min. 
Friday, 14.12
19.00 Schwere Jungs (Heavyweights), 2006, 95 min.
Saturday, 15.12
13.50 Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin, 2006, 110 min.
19.20 Du bist nicht allein (You Are Not Alone), 2007, 90 min. 
Sunday, 16.12
14.10 An die Grenze (At the Border), 2007, 90 min.
16.10 Vitus, 2006, 122 min.

TITLE: Performances captured
AUTHOR: By Manohla Dargis
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: You don’t need to wait for Angelina Jolie to rise from the vaporous depths naked and dripping liquid gold to know that this “Beowulf” isn’t your high school teacher’s Old English epic poem. You don’t even have to wait for the flying spears and airborne bodies that — if you watch the movie in one of the hundreds of theaters equipped with 3-D projection — will look as if they’re hurtling directly at your head. You could poke your eye out with one of those things! Which is precisely what I thought when I first saw Jolie’s jutting breasts too.
Jolie plays the bad girl in “Beowulf,” a wicked demon, the mother of all monsters — here, Grendel, played by Crispin Glover — who can switch from hag to fab in the wink of a serpentine eye. If you don’t remember this evil babe from the poem, it’s because she’s almost entirely the invention of the screenwriters Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman and the director Robert Zemeckis, who together have plumped her up in words, deeds and curves. These creative interventions aren’t especially surprising given the source material and the nature of big-studio adaptations. There’s plenty of action in “Beowulf,” but even its more vigorous bloodletting pales next to its rich language, exotic setting and mythic grandeur.
At the heart of this take on the epic are the bookended battles fought by the Geat warrior Beowulf (Ray Winstone), the first against Grendel (and his mother), the second against a dragon. Beowulf visits the Danish kingdom, where he eyeballs the queen (Robin Wright Penn) and promises to fight Grendel for the king (Anthony Hopkins). In between intimations of court intrigue, the rest of the characters do what they almost always do in movies set in Ancient Times, namely grunt, shout and eat with their mouths open. Eventually Grendel crashes the party, and Beowulf leads the charge, bouncing off beast and walls completely naked, his genitals hidden by convenient obstructions. Somehow this trick was a lot funnier in “Borat” and “The Simpsons Movie.”
For the poet Seamus Heaney, whose gorgeous translation of the poem became an unexpected best seller after it was published in 1999, Grendel “comes alive in the reader’s imagination as a kind of dog-breath in the dark.” The reader’s imagination, of course, has long been one of the banes of cinema. Any filmmaker who takes a stab at literary adaptation has to compete with those moving pictures already flickering in our heads, the ones we create when we read a book. The solution for many filmmakers is to try to top the reader’s imagination or distract it or overwhelm it, usually by throwing everything they can think of at the screen, including lots of big: big noise, sets, moves, effects, stars and, yup, even big breasts.
Zemeckis throws a lot of stuff at us in “Beowulf” besides Jolie, including spears, swords, pools of gore, dribbles of mucous and images with extremely forced perspectives, which direct your vision toward the center of the frame, goosing the 3-D effect. Mostly he throws technology at us. The main characters in the movie were created through performance capture, a system that allows filmmakers to map an actor’s expressions and gestures onto a computer-generated model, which is then further tweaked. (Eye movements are captured separately.) Neither wholly animation nor live action, it is a sophisticated visual technique, and true believers see it as the future of movies, though really the most interesting thing about it is that it’s not intrinsically interesting.
To be honest, I don’t yet see the point of performance capture, particularly given how ugly it renders realistic-looking human forms. Although the human faces and especially the eyes in “Beowulf” look somewhat less creepy than they did in “The Polar Express,” Zemeckis’s first experiment with performance capture, they still have neither the spark of true life nor that of an artist’s unfettered imagination. The face of Hopkins’s king resembles the actor’s in broad outline, in the shape and curve of his physiognomy. But it has none of the minute trembling and shuddering that define and enliven — actually animate — the discrete spaces separating the nose, eyes and mouth. You see the cladding but not the soul.
The character designs for the nonhuman forms work far better. Grendel isn’t remotely scary, but he looks pleasingly disgusting, like a stringy, chewed-up cadaver with snake scales and a suggestion of Glover’s own beak. Grendel soars through the air pretty much the way Zemeckis’s busy camera does: Both are full of zip. They’re certainly fun to watch as they Ping-Pong across the frame, though neither goes anywhere meaningful. By contrast, the human characters move with a perceptible drag effect, as if underwater, with none of the kinetic vibrancy of real bodily locomotion. That makes the 3-D effects all the more important, because the only time the movie pops is when something or someone seems to be flying at you.
Yet the 3-D is necessary to the film only in so far as it keeps your eyes engaged when your mind starts to wander. Stripped of much of the original poem’s language, its cadences, deep history and context, this film version of “Beowulf” doesn’t offer much beyond 3-D oohs and ahs, sword clanging and a nicely conceived dragon, which probably explains why Zemeckis and his collaborators have tried to sex it up with Jolie, among other comic-book flourishes. The same no doubt accounts for why Winstone, an actor of substantial stomach girth who is every inch a sexy beast in his own right, has been transformed into a generic-looking gym rat complete with six-pack. Somewhere in B-movie heaven Steve Reeves is smiling.

TITLE: Everton Ends Zenit’s UEFA Cup Ambitions
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LIVERPOOL, England — Tim Cahill, who ensured Everton will be involved in European competition after Christmas for the first time in more than two decades when the club won its only European trophy, the now defunct Cup Winners Cup, in 1985, has hailed the club’s progress to the last 32 of the UEFA Cup as just reward for years of hard work.
The Australian midfielder scored a late winner to secure a 1-0 win over newly-crowned Russian champions Zenit St. Petersburg at Goodison Park on Wednesday.
Zenit suffered an unlucky red card early in the match when defender Nicolas Lombaerts was judged to have handled the ball as he put a Cahill effort behind.
Referee Kristinn Jakobsson sent the Belgian off for handball and awarded a penalty that Everton’s Spanish midfielder Mikel Arteta blasted over the bar.
Despite its numerical advantage, Everton struggled to impose itself on the clash but Cahill popped up five minutes before time to force the ball home after Joleon Lescott’s shot was blocked on the line.
“It’s fantastic,” Cahill said. “It was a big game, they were down to 10 men and they looked decent, probably one of the strongest teams we’ve played in the group.
“It’s difficult playing against a team who put a lot of players behind the ball and try to hit you on the break.
“The gaffer [manager David Moyes] said ‘go and get me a goal.’ The lads played tremendously and I’m pleased for the supporters. To top the group is a big stage for Everton.
“We’ve worked so hard to be where we are, over the years the gaffer has formed a team of players who really want to play for this team. It’s a special night for all of us involved.”
Moyes added: “I thought we played very well. We missed chances but it was a great result in the end. They were very quick on the counter-attack, which makes you a bit wary — but overall we did the job.
“We’ve got a great spirit and the players keep going. We had to change things on the pitch tonight but it’s not all about the 11 who started here — it’s the whole group.”
The result makes sure Everton are still in European action for the first time since 1985 and Moyes added: “When you go back and look [at the 22-year absence] it’s a tragedy — but we are trying to put that right now.”
Zenit coach Dick Advocaat believed his team did not get what they deserved from the game, although he admitted he did not get a good view of the crucial 29th minute incident which saw Lombaerts sent off.
Although Arteta blazed the spot-kick over the bar, Advocaat said: “I didn’t see it but the referee was very quick with his decision — but he was with all of them tonight. We got three 100-percent chances and if you get an opportunity with 10 men you have to take it because you know that with one ball played into your box they [Everton] would probably score.”
Meanwhile, in Sydney, Australia, Advocaat’s compatriot Pim Verbeek was unveiled Thursday as the new coach of Australia, tasked with guiding them to the 2010 World Cup finals. Verbeek and Frenchman Phillippe Troussier had been the front-runners for the job since Advocaat decided to stay with Zenit after he guided the team to top of the Russian Premier League .
Verbeek, 51, told a video conference he was positive Australia would be in the South Africa finals in 2010.
“I promise that we will do everything to succeed and I am 100 percent convinced that we will succeed and that we will go to the World Cup and we will have a good (tournament) over there also,” Verbeek said.
Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy, who was largely responsible for snaring current Russian national coach Guus Hiddink as Australia’s coach for last year’s World Cup in Germany, said Verbeek was the right man for the job.
“After very careful consideration and a rigorous recruitment process I am delighted that we have secured the services of a very experienced and respected national coach for the Socceroos,” Lowy said at the announcement.
“Pim Verbeek has a vast range of experience he has gained over 25 years in coaching, including several stints in Asia, and we believe he is the right man for the job of leading the Socceroos to the 2010 World Cup.”
Verbeek led South Korea to the Asian Cup semi-finals earlier this year and previously was assistant to Hiddink with South Korea when they reached the semi-finals of the 2002 World Cup semi-finals.
He boasts excellent knowledge of the Asian region having coached at club level in Japan as well as stints as assistant coach at the United Arab Emirates and South Korea, firstly under Hiddink and then Advocaat at last year’s World Cup.
The Socceroos have been without a permanent coach since Hiddink quit the job after taking Australia to the second round of the World Cup finals in Germany.

TITLE: Nine Killed in Nebraska Shooting Spree in Mall
AUTHOR: By Oskar Garcia
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: OMAHA, Nebraska — Less than an hour before he killed eight victims and himself in a mall shooting spree, the gunman called a woman who had taken him in to tell her about a suicide note — but she said Thursday she never thought he would hurt anyone but himself.
Debora Maruca-Kovac told CBS’s “The Early Show” she found the note after Robert A. Hawkins, 19, called to thank her and her family for their help, to express his love, and to tell her he had left the note behind.
“He had said how much he loved his family and all his friends and how he was sorry he was a burden to everybody and his whole life he was a piece of (expletive) and now he’ll be famous,” she said, describing the note. “I was fearful that he was going to try to commit suicide but I had no idea that he would involve so many other families.”
Hawkins carried out his shooting spree from the third floor of the Westroads Mall, the bullets from his rifle cutting through the sound of Christmas music as he terrorized shoppers and employees.
Hawkins had recently split with his girlfriend and been fired from McDonald’s. He had a criminal record and had left or been kicked out of his parents’ house.
Police Chief Thomas Warren said the shooting appeared to be random and that the dead included five females and four males, including the gunman. Warren told CNN Thursday that police plan to examine text messages sent between Hawkins and his girlfriend, as well his computer’s hard drive for any Internet communications that could explain how he plotted the shootings.
Warren would not release the victims’ identities Wednesday night and gave no motive for the attack, but promised more details in a later news conference.
Hawkins moved from his family’s home about a year ago. Maruca-Kovac and her husband, whose sons were friends with Hawkins, welcomed him into their home and tried to help him.
“When he first came in the house, he was introverted, a troubled young man who was like a lost pound puppy that nobody wanted,” Maruca-Kovac said.
She told the Omaha World-Herald that the night before the shooting, Hawkins and her sons showed her an SKS semiautomatic Russian military rifle — the same type used in the shooting. She said she thought the gun belonged to a member of Hawkins’ family. She said she didn’t think much of it — the gun looked too old to work.
Records in Sarpy and Washington counties showed Hawkins had a felony drug conviction and several misdemeanor cases filed against him, including an arrest 11 days before the shooting for having alcohol as a minor. He was due in court in two weeks.

TITLE: Beijing Coverage Must Be ‘Fair’
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIJING — China said Tuesday it welcomes journalists covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, responding to complaints by a media rights group that the Communist regime has decided to clamp down on reporting in the run-up to the games.
In an open letter last week, Reporters Without Borders cited “disturbing reports” about the way Chinese authorities are planning to deal with the tens of thousands of journalists expected to attend the Aug. 8-24 games in Beijing, including plans to compile files on them and reserving the right to turn them back even if they were accredited by national Olympic committees.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the Paris-based group has launched “consistent attacks on China” and reiterated that Beijing was “willing to provide services and facilitate” coverage.
“The Chinese government and its people sincerely welcome reporters from around the world to cover the Olympic games and cover China in a fair and objective way,” Qin said. “This position will not change.”
The Olympics are a huge source of national pride for China and authorities have taken great pains to make sure nothing mars Beijing’s image.
Chinese officials last month denied widely published reports that a database was being kept on foreign journalists who plan to cover the Olympics, an issue that raised questions about the country’s pledge of increased media freedom — part of a successful campaign in landing the games six years ago.
“It is becoming clearer and clearer that the organizers of the Beijing Olympics and the Chinese security apparatus have decided to control journalists very closely before and during the games,” Robert Menard, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders, said in the letter.
Addressed to Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympics Committee, the group also complained that the IOC has remained silent on the issue.
In response, the IOC said it expects Chinese authorities to give the media full freedom to report.
“The IOC believes in the good will of the Chinese to deliver the necessary environment for the 20,000 accredited media who will come for the games,” IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau said last week. The IOC also said it is standard procedure at all Olympics for accredited personnel to receive a background check by local security authorities.

TITLE: Reports: Man’s Wife Knew He Was Alive
AUTHOR: By Rob Harris
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEATON CAREW, England — The wife of a man who was missing for five years says she knew he was alive and that a photo of the two taken last year in Panama was authentic, British newspapers reported Thursday.
Anne Darwin’s purported comments were splashed across front pages around Britain as police in northeast England prepared to question her 57-year-old husband John, who has claimed to have amnesia.
He was arrested early Wednesday on suspicion he may have faked his death. Police have 48 hours to charge or release him.
Anne Darwin, who now lives in Panama, said in an interview published by The Daily Mail and The Daily Mirror newspapers that she initially believed her husband had died in the North Sea in March 2002, when he was believed to have had a canoeing accident.
“It was years later,” she said, that her husband contacted her and revealed he was still alive, the newspapers said. She would not say when or how he made contact.
She said he has not been in Panama for the entire past five years, but that the couple had rented a villa for a brief holiday and that’s when a real estate agent took their photo and posted it on his Web site.
Anne Darwin, 55, said she would return to Britain to explain to her sons and to police what happened.
“My sons will never forgive me,” she was quoted as saying. “They knew nothing. They thought John was dead. Now they’re going to hate me. They’ll be devastated and will probably want nothing to do with me again.”
She said she knew of her husband’s plan to return to Britain, but what unfolded next surprised her.
“I knew he was going back. But I didn’t know he was going to the police,” she was quoted as saying.
She said it was possible her husband had suffered some kind of breakdown.
“Do I still love John? Yes I do, and it’s probably what’s got me in this situation. When you love someone, all you want to do is protect them,” she was quoted as saying. “Maybe I just chose the wrong husband. I did nothing wrong in the beginning.”
Anne Darwin acknowledged she could face prosecution in Britain, but said she planned to return and was consulting a lawyer.
“I don’t want to live my life as a fugitive,” she was quoted as saying.
Darwin was working as a prison officer when he disappeared in March 2002, his wife saying he apparently took his canoe into the North Sea. It was later found wrecked on a beach. A coroner officially declared him dead.

TITLE: Hatton, Mayweather Prepare For Tense Showdown
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Unbeaten rivals Floyd Mayweather and Ricky Hatton had to be restrained Wednesday after a staredown confrontation got out of hand when the Englishman answered Mayweather’s intimidation tactics.
Hatton claimed a psychological edge on his U.S. rival as the unbeaten boxers nearly came to blows early following their final comments before Saturday’s showdown for Mayweather’s World Boxing Council welterweight crown.
“I think I rattled him. I think I will [take an edge from it],” Hatton said. “I didn’t come to Las Vegas to joke. I didn’t come here to [mess] about. When he leaned on me and tried to move me back, I wasn’t going to take that.
“The time for laughing and joking is over.”
Mayweather, 38-0 with 24 knockouts, leaned into Hatton, 43-0 with 31 knockouts, during a staredown, their eyes locked upon each other and scowling faces barely an eyelash apart after cracking jokes minutes before.
When Hatton leaned back upon the champion, Mayweather said: “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me,” and Hatton, nicknamed “Hitman,” made a throat-slashing gesture at “Pretty Boy Floyd” before guards rushed between them.
“I wasn’t going to move. I would have just stood there and stared until the bell rings for the fight,” Hatton said.
“He just leaned on me a little bit and I just leaned on him back and he didn’t like it. He was trying to come across and intimidate me. He wanted me to step back, trying to impress me with his makeup. 
“Mind games isn’t my game. I gave him the ‘You’re dead’ gesture. Then I smiled at him. If he’s annoyed at that, wait until the bell rings.
“If Floyd is expecting me to collapse on the biggest stage I’ve ever had, he’s mistaken.”
Mayweather played down the incident, dismissing any notion that he lost a psychological edge to Hatton in the exchange.
“He can’t get under my skin. I’m not at all worried about that,” Mayweather said. “We will see if it’s an advantage. I’m not shaking.”
The U.S. veteran noted that when he went to England to promote the fight, he was greeted with obscene gestures and objects thrown at him.
“When I went over there they threw bottles at me, rocks at my car, giving me the finger,” Mayweather said. “And he says I’m disrespecting him?”
Mayweather called the staredown skirmish nothing unusual.
“I’ve been there plenty of times. I know what it takes,” Mayweather said. “Just another day for me.”
But Hatton felt he had deflected an intimidation tactic from Mayweather and taken a bite out of the American’s confidence.
“Floyd preys on that confidence and that’s why he did it,” Hatton said. “I think it’ll hurt him more than me. I’ll go away and forget about it now. But I think he might be seething.”
The toughest verbal taunts came from a rambling Roger Mayweather, uncle and trainer for Floyd, who said Hatton “is a good guy. You don’t win fights because you’re a good guy. He’s going to learn the difference between a good fighter and a great fighter.”
“I would like to thank Roger for making the winter shorter,” Hatton said of the lengthy speech.
Hatton also noted the tightened odds of the fight, which have Mayweather still a slight favorite.
“Listening to them talk you would have thought the odds would have been 10-1 with the little fat, beer-drinking Englishman who has been fighting ‘has beens’ and is overprotected,” Hatton said. “Yet it’s still such a close fight.”

TITLE: Iranian Leader Claims Win in Nuclear Faceoff
AUTHOR: By Ali Akbar Dareini
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEHRAN, Iran — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday called the dramatic U.S. turnaround in a new intelligence review a victory for Iran’s nuclear program, suggesting it shows the success of his hard-line stance rejecting compromise.
But his more moderate opponents at home are hoping the assessment’s conclusion that Tehran shelved its effort to develop atomic weapons will boost a diplomatic resolution of the nuclear stand-off with the West.
The political rivalry in Tehran could have important implications for what happens next in the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, now that the report has likely weakened two of the threats Washington held over Iran — more U.N. sanctions and the possibility of military action.
In past months, Ahmadinejad has faced a rising challenge from a more moderate camp centered around his top rival, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani’s allies have increasingly criticized Ahmadinejad for his hard-line positions, saying they are creating enemies for Iran in the West. Ahmadinejad has lashed backed, branding his critics “traitors.”
The head of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said Wednesday that Iran had been “somewhat vindicated” by the U.S. review, and expressed hopes it would give a push to negotiations.
“I see this report as a window of opportunity,” Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency said. “It’s a window of opportunity because it gives diplomacy a new chance.”
Ahmadinejad touted the assessment as a vindication for his refusal to cave in to the West’s demands that Iran suspend uranium enrichment and allow a monitoring program to ensure its nuclear facilities aren’t used to produce atomic weapons.
He told a crowd of thousands in the western province of Ilam that the U.S. report was a “declaration of victory for the Iranian nation against the world powers over the nuclear issue.”
“Thanks to your resistance, a fatal shot was fired at the dreams of ill-wishers, and the truthfulness of the Iranian nation was once again proved by the ill-wishers themselves,” Ahmadinejad said, drawing celebratory whistles from the crowd.
The report concluded Iran halted a nuclear weapons design program in late 2003 and said there was no evidence it had resumed. That was a dramatic change from a 2005 assessment saying Iran was actively trying to build a nuclear bomb.
Iran denies ever having a weapons program, saying its nuclear work is aimed at using nuclear reactors to generate electricity.
Tehran has pushed ahead with uranium enrichment despite U.N. Security Council demands it suspend the process, which can be used to produce fuel for nuclear reactors but also material for nuclear warheads.
The U.S. report could provide breathing room for Ahmadinejad by easing Iranians’ worries about a third round of U.N. sanctions or a war with the West. Popular support for the president has eroded over the past year, mainly because of Iran’s economic troubles but also from fears he was leading Iran into a worse confrontation.
Political analyst Davoud Hermidas Bavand said Ahmadinejad and his allies “can now claim they stood up to the West, resumed uranium enrichment and made the world recognize Iran as a country possessing nuclear technology — then were finally given a clean bill of health by the archenemy, the U.S.”
“Everywhere he goes, Ahmadinejad will claim this is an outright victory for his government. Moderates, in the short term, won’t be given a chance to claim victory,” Bavand said.
But Iran’s more favorable position may in large part be due to gains by moderates in Tehran. In recent months, Iran handed over confidential documents to the IAEA about its past enrichment activities and answered other questions about its nuclear program. Soon after, the IAEA issued a report saying Iran had been generally truthful about its past enrichment activities.
Many Iranian analysts believe supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ultimate say on the nuclear program and all other issues, ordered the cooperation, perhaps influenced by Rafsanjani, a powerful cleric in Iran’s political leadership.
Political analyst Saeed Leilaz called the U.S. report a “victory for moderate voices such as Rafsanjani who have been pushing for compromise and diplomacy,” citing as an example what he called “extensive cooperation” with the IAEA.
He also noted events in Iraq, where U.S. commanders say Iranian hard-liners appear to have reduced support for Shiite militias.

TITLE: U.S. General Petraeus Claims Decrease In Violence in Iraq
AUTHOR: By Lolita Baldor
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Citing a 60 percent decline in violence in Iraq over the last six months, General David Petraeus said Thursday that maintaining security is easier than establishing it and gives him more flexibility in deploying forces.
Armed with charts showing that as of Wednesday, weekly attacks and Iraqi civilian deaths have plunged to levels not seen here since early 2006, Petraeus said the reduction lets him make force adjustments to address remaining problem areas, which would include northern Iraq.
Speaking to reporters at the U.S. military’s Camp Victory, he said the improved security is due to a number of factors including a “a reduction in some of the signature attacks that are associated with weapons provided by Iran,” as well as a cease-fire called by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that he said had a particularly noticeable impact what had been one of the most violent areas of Baghdad.
And he said there has been a “reduction in some of the signature attacks” associated with insurgents using Iranian weapons, including deadly armor-piercing rounds.
But, he added, that it is “hard to tell if that’s because there has already been a cessation of provision of those items, or if there has been direction to stop.”
At the same time, he said the military has detained individuals as recently as October who were trained by Iranians, evidence that the instruction has continued.
Petreaus, who is scheduled to give Congress and the American people an update next March on progress in Iraq, and map out some plans for U.S. force levels down the road, refused to offer too much optimism.
“Nobody says anything about turning a corner, seeing lights at the end of tunnels, any of those other phrases,” said Petraeus. “You just keep your head down and keep moving.”
He said that around Thanksgiving commanders looked back at violence levels a year ago, and six months ago, and found a declining line in which violence had declined from a time when hundreds of Iraqis were killed and injured and US troops took heavy losses in a number of horrific attacks, to a time of still somewhat steady but less deadly attacks, to a day last month when there were just 45-50 attacks.
Petraeus met for about an hour Thursday with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was in Iraq for his sixth visit in the past year.
The general has overseen the military’s build up in Iraq this year, as force levels jumped to 20 combat brigades, with more than 180,000 troops, during certain times when some of the units overlapped as they moved in and out of the country.
“There’s nobody in uniform who is doing victory dances in the end zone,” said Petraeus, saying it will require more tough work against a very dangerous adversary.