SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1334 (100), Friday, December 21, 2007
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TITLE: 40 Extra Metro Stations Promised
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Over the next 12 years more than 80 kilometers of track and over 40 new stations will be added to St. Petersburg’s metro. 
Such are the optimistic plans proposed by the St. Petersburg Metropolitan program that is to be confirmed by the city government next week, according to Fontanka.ru. To fulfill the project the city will need about 400 billion rubles.
Currently St. Petersburg has an acute lack of essential metro stations, and 80 percent of city residents have to get to the metro by over-ground public transport.
The new stations are to be constructed on Vasilievsky Island and in the Frunzensky, Krasnoselsky and Krasnogvardeisky districts, as well as in some other districts of the city.
Currently the most overburdened stations in St. Petersburg are ‘Kupchino’ and ‘Prospekt Veteranov’. This problem is to be solved by the construction of a so-called ‘Frunzensky radius,’ including ‘Volkovskaya’ station, which is to be opened as early as this month, and ‘Bukharestskaya’ and ‘Mezhdunarodnaya’ stations, which should be open by 2010 on the same line.
The huge Krasnoselsky district is to be relieved by another new metro line called ‘Krasnoselsko-Kalininskaya’ whose last station, ‘Kazakovskaya,’ will be located in the south of the city.
St. Petersburg Metropolitan plans to build four more new metro stations after the station ‘Komendantsky Prospekt’, and to construct a so-called quarter circle that would go from Vasilievsky Island through Primorsky district to Vyborgsky district.
This route is designed to ease the traffic in Vasileostrovsky district. Currently there are only two stations on the whole island, but it is to get a third station by 2010.  In addition, Sportivnaya metro station will have another exit on the other side of the Neva.  These additions will help to cut the lines at ‘Vasileostrovskaya’ and ‘Primorskaya’ metro stations.
At the same time, part of the route will go to the city’s northern districts and reduce the over-ground traffic in the Okhta area.  Metro stations in that area will be essential by the time the Okhta Center — Gazprom’s tower and business center — is constructed. According to initial calculations, about 26,000 people will be working in the area by that time.
Vladimir Garyugin, head of the St. Peterburg Metropolitan Company, said the new stations will only appear in the event of a 50/50 financial scheme, according to which half of the expenses of the metro construction will be covered by the metropolitan and half by the city.  This scheme is due to begin functioning by 2010.  At the moment, the city’s metropolitan covers 80 percent of expenses.  Funds should come from local, federal, and investors’ money, Garyugin said, according to Fontanka.ru.
Last fall, St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko discussed the problem with the Speaker of the Russian Duma, Boris Gryzlov. Matviyenko said that the federal government should invest into the development of the St. Petersburg metro.  The city’s metro, which hasn’t undergone construction for the last 15 years, should receive an annual 13.5 billion rubles ($0.5 billion) from the state budget.  In reality the federal authorities allocated it only 700 million rubles ($28.3 million) last year.
The contractor for the works will remain Metrostroi, Garyugin said.
“This entire project was developed and begun back in Soviet times.  At that time the contractor was Metrostroi, and it doesn’t make sense to change it now and have some other organization finish the work,” he said.
Meanwhile, the St. Petersburg administration is also worried about the problem of the city’s heavy traffic.  The growing number of cars and traffic jams in the city will soon make traveling around the city almost impossible.  Therefore the authorities are looking for ways to solve the problem.
Recently a number of the adminstation’s committees have also discussed the Concept for Development and Reconstruction of St. Petersburg’s Road Network through 2015.  The concept was developed by the Scientific and Research Project Institute of Territory Development and Transport Infrastructure.
Oleg Virolainen, head of the city’s Road and Maintenance Committee, said the first problem the city has to solve is that of Alexander Nevsky Bridge.  The bridge is currently in bad condition, and the volume of traffic using it is huge, he said, according to Fontanka.ru.
In order to solve this problem, the concept suggests the construction of two new bridges: Bolshoi Smolensky bridge to connect Kollontai Ulitsa on the right bank with Bolshoi Smolensky Prospekt on the left bank, and one more bridge to connect Zolnaya Ulitsa on the right bank with Fayansovaya Ulitsa on the left bank next to Finlyandsky railway bridge.  Then Alexander Nevsky Bridge can be closed for capital repairs.
Meanwhile, traffic police have said that the concept lacks projects for the construction of roads to industrial zones.
The institute has however prepared a new program according to which the number of cars on the roads would be reduced by organizing the public transport traffic in separate lanes and by constructing park-and-ride lots.

TITLE: Medvedev Admits 
To Nerves
AUTHOR: By Chris Baldwin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Dmitry Medvedev, almost certain to become the next president of Russia, on Thursday formally made his application to run in the March 2 election, but admitted he was nervous at “a tough job” ahead in the Kremlin.
The popularity ratings of Medvedev, first deputy prime minister, have risen sharply after President Vladimir Putin said last week he wanted his close friend and ally to succeed him.
But though Putin’s backing makes Medvedev’s victory a foregone conclusion, the 42-year-old lawyer acknowledged some apprehension.
“I don’t feel fear, but I do feel nervousness, because I will have to justify the faith of an enormous number of people who are counting on me to carry out what is, for this country, a tough job,” he told reporters at the elections commission.
Medvedev, a short man in a dark-blue suit, appeared to mumble words of encouragement to himself as he approached a phalanx of camera-wielding journalists on a giant marble compass rose with the cardinal directions inscribed in German.
The constitution bars Putin, who has presided over years of Russia’s economic boom, to seek a third term. But the Kremlin leader has said he has “moral right” to maintain political influence after he leaves next year.
Analysts say that the choice of the St Petersburg lawyer, who has no power base of his own, was part of Putin’s plan to hold on to the levers of power after quitting.
Medvedev, the chairman of the board at gas giant Gazprom and overseer of Putin’s ambitious national projects designed to turn swelling budget revenues into better medical care, housing, education and agriculture, pledged loyalty to his boss.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) has done a lot for our country, and with his arrival, Russia’s authority in the international arena has strengthened significantly,” he said.
“People have begun to feel pride in the fact that they have a Russian passport in their pockets,” Medvedev added.
Speaking to reporters he confirmed media rumors that Putin would dispatch Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Sobyanin to manage the election campaign.
Analysts say Putin’s unprecedented decision would ensure his personal control over the already tightly stage-managed ascendancy process.
The nomination of Medvedev, a member of a more liberal wing in Putin’s entourage, and the designation of Sobyanin, who is personally loyal to Putin, are setbacks for the group of Kremlin hawks known as the “siloviki.”
Russian media has reported that the “siloviki” wanted Putin to anoint First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov as his preferred successor rather than Medvedev.
The “siloviki” also favored chief Kremlin strategist Vladislav Surkov, who served in an elite military intelligence unit in East Germany and is thought to be behind the pro-Putin youth group Nashi, to steer the next presidential campaign.
The overwhelming majority of Russians polled by the Russian Public Opinion Study Center think Medvedev will win, with 72 percent predicting his victory and only 4 percent foreseeing his defeat.

TITLE: Activists Blame Prison System for Wave of Jail Riots
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Lack of transparency within Russian prisons and the penal system in general were the main reasons behind a series of violent riots that stormed through several jails in the country over the past year, according to analysts.
Boris Panteleyev, a human rights advocate with the non-governmental Committee For Civil Rights, said several prisoners and their relatives had alerted them of a critical, highly explosive situation at a colony in the settlement of Metallostroi, in the outskirts of St. Petersburg, three weeks before a riot broke out there on Oct. 25, 2007. But when the activists shared their concerns with the colony’s management and the representatives of the federal penal service and asked to be allowed to investigate and possibly help to resolve the crisis, their initiative was rejected.
“The penal authorities simply told us to hand whatever evidence we had over to the prosecutors, and promised that the situation was under full control,” Panteleyev recalls. “As we later saw, they failed to prevent the riot.”
Russia’s penal system has been criticized for human rights abuse, use of torture and repressive conditions, with inmates sometimes having to sleep in shifts in their cells and being allocated less than 0.7 square meters of private space per person.
In April 2007, Russian authorities were ordered to pay more than $20,000 in damages to a St. Petersburg prisoner forced to share a cell measuring 8 square meters with 12 other inmates, following a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Yakov Gilinsky, a leading crime analyst with the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and head researcher on a new survey on torture in Russia that came out earlier this year, said Russia’s penal system has become excessively repressive over the past decade.
“Torture flourishes there, while anyone who works for the [penal] system is protected by an unwritten rule of impunity,” Gilinsky said. “Besides, prison terms for some crimes have increased by nearly 100 percent in the new criminal code [passed in 1997] in comparison with the previous legislation.”
Torture methods that Gilinsky said are used in Russian prisons include electric shocks, suffocation, suspension, waterboarding (tying down a suspect and pouring water over his face), binding, deprivation of water and food and severe beatings.
According to Yelena Kuznetsova, an aide on human rights to the head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Federal Penal Service, the main problem is the low salaries for the staff working in the field.
“When the wage is not competitive, it is very hard to employ professional and highly qualified people,” she said, stressing that the prisons contain large numbers of repeat offenders who are especially difficult to handle. “In St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, over 20 percent of inmates are serving their seventh or more term in jail. It tells you what sort of people we are dealing with.”
Kuznetsova complained that human rights groups that contact her about violations of human rights in prisons are reluctant to give her full names of the prisoners who report torture, abuse, corruption or violation of their rights. The official said it is essential to identify the people lodging complaints to launch an investigation into the cases. 
But human rights advocates refused to accept the criticism and said that considering the high level of corruption in the Russian prisons and their absolutely impenetrable policies, disclosing the names of the people behind the complaints would put their safety and even their lives at risk. 
Yuly Rybakov, a liberal politician and prominent human rights advocate with the Memorial human rights group, stressed that unlike Western European countries, Russia does not have a law that would allow the civil society community, and human rights groups specifically, to monitor and investigate the country’s penitentiary system. Rybakov accused the authorities of trying to paint a rosy picture while limiting the possibilities for independent experts to organize a credible investigation.
“If you compare the soothing reports prepared by the officials and the stories that we hear from the inmates, a very contradictory picture emerges,” Rybakov said.
The Russian State Duma in 2002 voted on a draft law on civil control of the penitentiary system, but after the first reading the bill was dropped. The law has not been returned to the parliament’s agenda.
“When I get a phone call from a prison telling me that the inmates were rushed out of their cells to the courtyard just before sunrise, forced to undress and kneel down for many hours, with the riot police officers beating them and urinating on them, I have no way of knowing whether this is true,” Rybakov said. “Maybe the riot police guys presented the prisoners with flowers and were extremely courteous. The law must give me the right to check. But it does not.”

TITLE: Yulia Tymoshenko Narrowly Re-elected as PM
AUTHOR: By Yuri Kulikov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KIEV — Ukraine’s parliament on Tuesday restored Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister, sealing a political comeback for a leading figure from the Orange Revolution three years ago.
Tymoshenko, who confronted a powerful coalition led by outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, won 226 votes — the exact number required to take office. Her adversaries took no part in the vote.
Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk grinned broadly as his vote, the last to be counted in the parliament, gave Tymoshenko the number she needed to win the ballot.
Tymoshenko, wearing her traditional peasant braid and a white dress, was then surrounded by applauding supporters. After parliamentary officials confirmed the tally, she took her seat in the chamber’s government section.
President Viktor Yushchenko was absent for the vote but said on his web site that the outcome provided grounds to believe that the coalition’s “steps to tackle the country’s top priorities will prove successful.”
Yanukovych, given the floor before the vote, predicted that Tymoshenko’s return would herald instability. “We all remember full well how it was when you were in office last time and how it all ended. Within less than a year, the economy shrunk by nearly 10 percent and prices rose,” he said.
“A new era of trials lies ahead for our country, trials of crises, scandals. Our people can expect no improvement in their lives. I am certain these promises will never be fulfilled,” he said.
Tymoshenko fell a single vote short of being confirmation last week. She blamed the outcome on tampering with the electronic voting system, though officials found no evidence.
The outcome of Tuesday’s vote, conducted by roll call with deputies stating their positions publicly, was in doubt until the last minute. One deputy from the president’s party, who suffered a stroke, was absent, adding to the tension.
During her first term in office, she quarreled with Yushchenko over calls for a sweeping review of privatizations, which spooked investors.
Relations with Moscow also worsened as she accused Russian firms of trying to cheat Ukraine.

TITLE: Yashin Tries to Unseat Yavlinsky
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ilya Yashin, the 24-year-old leader of Yabloko’s youth group, announced Wednesday that he would seek to unseat Grigory Yavlinsky as the party’s leader and unite liberal politicians in a new political movement.
“People are not able to choose between good democrats and bad democrats,” Yashin said at a news conference.
“We need to create a democratic party that will act as a magnet for everyone with these general values,” he said.
Yashin is a revolutionary-minded activist who is conspicuous at anti-Kremlin rallies. He has been seen hanging from a bridge and being chased through the street by OMON riot police.
He said Wednesday’s announcement was a first step toward stirring a popular revolution. “To change the power structures in this country will require something akin to Polish solidarity,” he said.
Yavlinsky — who has led Yabloko since its founding in 1995 and rejects uniting at the expense of Yabloko’s social-democratic values — has said Yashin is not ready to take the helm of the party.
“He would need to become not today’s Ilya Yashin, but someone rather different,” Yavlinsky said at a news conference last month.
Yevgenia Dillendorf, Yavlinsky’s spokeswoman, said his views on the matter have not changed.
Yashin said Wednesday that he had no idea what Yavlinsky meant by saying he would need to change to become leader.
Although adamant that he has no personal conflict with Yavlinsky, Yashin accused him of putting the integrity of the party above the democratic movement. He said Yavlinsky had told him that party officials were in regular contact with the presidential administration.
“I guarantee that, if I become Yabloko’s leader, I will not allow any cooperation with the Kremlin,” Yashin said.
Yabloko officials have denied links with the Kremlin.

TITLE: Deadline Ends For Candidates
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Nine independent candidates, including former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Soviet-era dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, have been registered as potential contestants in the March 2 presidential election, the Central Elections Commission said Wednesday.
Independent candidates had until midnight Tuesday to submit documents confirming that they had at least 500 voters backing their bid to enter the race, in which First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is the likely front-runner after receiving the support of President Vladimir Putin.
The Central Elections Commission received documents from 26 candidates claiming 500 supporters but approved only nine of those candidates, commission members said Wednesday.
Their documents will be scrutinized until Saturday, after which the commission will publish its first preliminary list of independent candidates, commission member Nina Kulyasova told a news conference.
Senior Central Elections Commission official Nikolai Konkin said later Wednesday that former Politburo member Oleg Shenin and St. Petersburg pensioner Nikolai Zubkov were denied registration for failing to submit the necessary paperwork, Interfax reported.
Only two candidates have been confirmed on this preliminary list, Kulyasova said: Kasyanov and Andrei Bogdanov, who is running as an independent rather than from the Democratic Party, which he heads.
Bukovsky, who was taken by force from the Soviet Union in 1976 for his opposition activities, is not expected to make it onto the ballot because he has both Russian and British citizenship. Election laws forbid dual citizens from running for office, but Bukovsky is waiting for a ruling from the Constitutional Court on the issue.
Independent candidates who make the preliminary cut Saturday still face the formidable task of collecting and submitting 2 million voter signatures by Jan 16.

TITLE: Putin Selected as Time Person of the Year
AUTHOR: By Alexander Osipovich and Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin was named Time magazine’s person of the year on Wednesday, becoming the first Russian to win the title since Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev did it twice in the late 1980s.
“Putin has put his country back on the map,” Time managing editor Richard Stengel wrote on the U.S. magazine’s web site.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin was “really satisfied” with the title.
“It is very good news for us,” Peskov told reporters in a conference call on Wednesday evening. “We treat it as an acknowledgement of the role that was played by President Putin in helping to pull Russia out of the economic and social troubles of the 1990s, and restoring national pride in this country.”
But Stengel stressed that being chosen person of the year was “not an endorsement” and “not a popularity contest” and that Time chose individuals who had made the biggest impact on world events, “for better or for worse.”
Previous winners have included Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II. In the past decade, U.S. President George W. Bush has won twice. Last year Time chose “You,” saying that ordinary people control the Information Age.
In a profile accompanying its choice of Putin, Time noted that Russia’s economy had grown an average of 7 percent yearly for the past half-decade and that Moscow had repaid a foreign debt of nearly $200 billion. But it also described Putin as “humorless” and highlighted his curtailment of democratic freedoms.
“Putin is not a boy scout,” Stengel wrote. “He is not a democrat in any way that the West would define it. He is not a paragon of free speech. He stands, above all, for stability ... in a country that has hardly seen it for 100 years.”
State-controlled television featured the news prominently on Wednesday but did not mention what Time called the “dark side” of Putin’s presidency.
They also broadcast outtakes of a two-hour interview that Putin gave to Time on topics ranging from his taste in music to his attitude toward the West.
“They keep telling us, we are waiting for you, we want you to join the family, our civilized Western family,” Putin said. “But first of all, who says that your civilization is the best?”
Putin allies praised the choice.
“This is pleasing and absolutely deserved,” Andrei Vorobyov, head of United Russia’s executive committee, said by telephone. “And I believe that most Russian citizens would have also put their names to it.”
Kremlin-connected analyst Sergei Markov said the choice amounted to a tacit endorsement of Putin’s policies.
“This vote vividly illustrates the contradictions in the West’s attitude toward Russia,” Markov said. “On the one hand, he is criticized, but on the other hand, everybody, even his critics, understand that he is doing everything right. Putin is restoring the country gradually. You can’t jump into democracy.”
Opposition leaders agreed Putin had been a newsmaker but accused him of oppressing rival political parties, rigging the recent State Duma elections and ignoring the needs of ordinary people.
“Living conditions are not improving, prices are rising and you can see yourself what is happening with the opposition,” said Sergei Udaltsov, leader of the Red Youth Vanguard. “I believe that Putin can be named an antihero of the year.”
Nikita Belykh, leader of the Union of Right Forces party, took issue with Time’s assertion that Putin was a major factor in Russia’s economic revival.
“It is not really hard to secure economic stability in a country where the price of a barrel of oil breaks $90 and where most of the income comes from oil,” Belykh said.
This is not the first time that Time has chosen the leader of an oil-producing nation during a period of high oil prices. In 1974, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia took the honor.
Graham Allison, director of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said Putin’s achievements appeared inflated because they were inevitably compared to the ruin of the Yeltsin years.
“Having inherited a report card with three Ds and produced three As, it is not surprising that he has higher favorability ratings among his fellow citizens than any other leader in the world,” Allison wrote in e-mailed comments.
The person of the year title has been given out since 1927, although it used to be called man of the year.
Besides Putin, Stalin and Gorbachev, other Russians who have won the title include Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Yury Andropov, who took it in 1957 and 1983, respectively. Andropov shared the title with Reagan.

Staff Writer Simon Saradzhyan contributed to this report.

TITLE: Opposition Gets 6 Committees
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Six of the 32 committee chairmanships in the newly elected State Duma will go to parties other than United Russia, which chaired every single committee in the previous Duma, a senior United Russia official said Wednesday.
Three new committees — on youth affairs, high-tech and transportation — have been added to the Duma as part of a restructuring process aimed at accomplishing “the daunting tasks that United Russia has set for itself for the next four years,” said Andrei Vorobyov, the head of United Russia’s executive committee.
“A number of the committees will go to the opposition,” Vorobyov said.
While formally opposition parties in the Duma, the Communists, LDPR and A Just Russia are widely seen as operating within boundaries set by the Kremlin.

TITLE: Believers See Red Over Coca-Cola Adverts
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — A group of Russian Orthodox believers have accused Coca-Cola of blasphemy over a marketing campaign showing the cross and onion-shaped church domes on outdoor refrigerators, Nizhny Novgorod prosecutors said Wednesday.
Coca-Cola’s local bottling subsidiary said its marketing approach was an attempt to promote Russia’s culture, not offend people, company spokeswoman Yana Guskova said.
Coca-Cola is not planning to drop the promotion, she said.

TITLE: Prokhorov, Potanin Agree Over Norilsk
AUTHOR: By Yuriy Humber
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian billionaires Mikhail Prokhorov and Vladimir Potanin agreed to sell part of their stake in GMK Norilsk Nickel, the world’s biggest nickel miner, after 10 months of wrangling.
KM Invest, the Moscow-based company that holds the shares, will sell 2 percent of Norilsk and 7.4 percent of Polyus Gold, KM Invest said Wdnesday in an e-mailed statement. The stakes are worth 24.5 billion rubles ($990 million) and 15.1 billion rubles respectively, based on Wednesday’s closing prices. KM Invest holds 8.1 percent of Norilsk in total.
The sale indicates Potanin and Prokhorov, the nation’s fourth- and fifth-richest men, may be near to a wider agreement on how to split their assets. United Co. Rusal said last month it may buy a 25 percent stake in Norilsk directly owned by Prokhorov, raising the prospect of a takeover by Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum producer.
“It sounds like it’s the next step in their plan to divide their assets,” John Meyer, head of natural resources at Fairfax I.S. Plc in London, said Wednesday by phone. “Norilsk needs to get on with the job though and not be distracted.”
The sale of the shares “will be made on market terms,” Rafael Akopov, a KM Invest director, said in the statement. KM Invest didn’t say who will buy the shares or what it will do with the remainder of its Norilsk stock.
Norilsk rose 61.97 rubles, or 1 percent, to 6,418 rubles on the Micex exchange, valuing the miner at 1.22 trillion rubles. Polyus dropped 5.22 rubles, or 0.5 percent, to 1,073.53 rubles. KM Invest sent its statement after trading closed in Moscow.
Prokhorov, 42, has an agreement with Rusal to sell his 25 percent of Norilsk should Potanin, 46, fail to pay him $15.7 billion in cash for the stake before Jan. 5. Rusal said last month it may seek to take over the company should it buy the stake.
The aluminum company has started syndicating a two-year, $4.5 billion loan to pay for Prokhorov’s shares, Interfax said Wednesday, citing unidentified bankers.
Rusal’s offer is 20 percent less than Prokhorov is seeking from Potanin, Kommersant reported on Dec. 5, citing Norilsk Chairman Andrei Klishas. Rusal is offering 11 percent of its outstanding shares and $7 billion to $8 billion in cash, the newspaper said, citing an unidentified person close to Rusal.
The prolonged ownership dispute is starting to hurt the company and concern minority investors, Norilsk’s Chief Executive Officer Denis Morozov said Dec. 14.
Prokhorov told reporters Dec. 15 that he couldn’t “tolerate this limbo any more” and said “it’s time we started doing business.”
Prokhorov last week blocked a plan by Norilsk to spin off $7 billion in power assets. Norilsk may try the spinoff again “in a month or two” after the ownership dispute is settled, or alternatively sell the power assets, Morozov said last week.
KM Invest also said Wednesday it would borrow $800 million from its units and then sell stakes in assets including Open Investments, a real-estate developer, oil-producer Rusia Petroleum and real-estate developer Citi.

TITLE: Gazprom, BASF Open Tomsk Gas Field
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom and its German partner BASF opened a field in Tomsk, western Siberia to fill a new export pipeline as output at older Russian projects declines.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Gazprom chairman Dmitry Medvedev officially started commercial production of the Yuzhno-Russkoye field at a televised ceremony in Moscow on Tuesday.
“Developing the Yuzhno-Russkoye field is a glowing example of Russian-German partnership. It’s a shared contribution to ensuring Europe’s strong energy security,” Medvedev said at the ceremony, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported on its web site Tuesday. He also said developing the field represented a major investment in the development and prosperity of the region. 
“We still have before us many major, important plans and new horizons for development. Russia is open for large, serious business projects, bold initiatives and mutually profitable cooperation,” Medvedev said, the newspaper reported.
Gazprom is using Yuzhno-Russkoye, which holds enough gas to supply Germany for almost a decade, to bolster production while expanding abroad. BASF got a 25 percent stake in the project after giving up a greater share in distribution venture Wingas.
 (Bloomberg, SPT)

TITLE: Timber Attracts Investment
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — The world’s top magazine papermaker, UPM-Kymmene, agreed Wednesday to form a 50-50 joint venture with Sveza to invest more than 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion).
Russia has raised export duties on timber, leading Nordic forestry firms to invest in the country. Previously, UPM and other firms have imported a large share of raw lumber from Russia to process in their Finnish mills.
The main owner of Sveza, metals magnate Alexei Mordashov, said Wednesday that investments in the new facility in northwestern Russia could reach 1.15 billion euros.
“Russian forests have a huge potential that has not been explored in full yet,” Mordashov said. The joint venture is “a first step in this direction.”
Mordashov’s venture with UPM will produce about 800,000 tons of pulp, 300,000 cubic meters of wood and 450,000 cubic meters of building panels per year. UPM will help Sveza sell pulp in Russia and the rest of Europe. The papermaker will also be Sveza’s main client, buying half of its production, said Mordashov, who also controls steelmaker Severstal. “As we participate in the venture on a 50-50 basis, our investments will be also equal,” he said.
“We will definitely attract funds on capital markets, which will allow us to break even in five to six years.” The venture plans to start construction work in 2009 and launch the facility in 2011.
The final investment decision will be made in early 2009. Mordashov said the venture also planned to attract several billion rubles from the state investment fund to finance infrastructure.
“Taking into account factors of the close location of resources and logistics, this enterprise should be one of the most efficient in the world,” he said.
UPM chief executive Jussi Pesonen also said there was no connection between the new project and a mill closure in Canada.
“UPM’s strategy is to grow, and our focus is strongly on new emerging markets such is Russia, and our plan is to grow in these markets primarily through organic investments,” said Heikki Malinen, UPM’s executive vice president for strategy. 
Russia has urged foreign companies to build sawmills and plants in the country before export tariffs for unprocessed timber jump to as much as 80 percent in 2009. Scandinavian companies have pledged investment there, while closing plants in Europe and North America.
The government has raised tariffs for unprocessed timber to support the country’s wood-processing and manufacturing industries, as it tries to reduce the economy’s dependence on oil and gas. The higher tariffs will double wood costs for Finnish companies. Finland buys about 20 percent of its wood from Russia.
(Bloomberg, Reuters)

TITLE: Car Imports Set To Soar
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian car imports will probably increase 43 percent by 2010, the Economy Ministry’s chief forecaster said.
Russia will import about 2 million cars by 2010, compared with 1.4 million vehicles this year, Andrei Klepach said during a conference at the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Moscow on Wednesday.
“The remaining niche of Russian cars will be small,’’ he said, estimating the demand for Russian vehicles at between 600,000 and 700,000 cars by 2010.
Russia, the world’s biggest energy exporter, is enjoying its ninth consecutive year of economic expansion, which is pushing up wages and fueling spending on cars and other consumer goods.      
The Ford Focus is the best selling car in Russia among foreign vehicle brands assembled in the country or imported, according to the Moscow-based Association of European Business. The Renault Logan is the second-best selling car, followed by Chevrolet Lanos, according to the association’s figures.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Okhta Center Plugged</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of natural gas producer Gazprom, began television advertisements in St. Petersburg to gain support for a skyscraper it plans to build in the city center, Vedomosti reported.
The campaign will try to counter opposition from local politicians and UNESCO to the 67-floor skyscraper by featuring “prominent” city residents in the ads, Vedomosti said, citing Alexander Dybal, a Gazprom Neft vice president.
The company plans to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to bolster support for the high-rise, which will house Gazprom Neft’s new headquarters, the newspaper said.
Under current plans, the Okhta Center will be nearly 400 meters tall and will cost more than $2.43 billion. The estimated completion date is 2010.

<b>Technopolis On Its Way</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Finnish company Technopolis Plc. signed a cooperation agreement with St. Petersburg Technopark for the construction of a high-tech complex in Russia’s second city, Vedomosti reported.
Technopolis, Finland’s largest real estate and service company catering to the high-tech sector, plans to spend $150 million to build 100,000 square meters of office, research and production space in St. Petersburg, the newspaper reported.
Technopolis is the first private developer to get involved in the project, whose first stage is set for completion in 2011, Vedomosti said.

TITLE: Putin Says Gas to Greece Will Double
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Greece wanted to double imports of Russian gas, and he praised progress in a project to send Russian oil from Bulgaria to Greece.
“Greece is interested in signing new contracts after 2016 that will last up to 2040 with volumes rising almost twofold,” Putin said at a news conference with Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis. 
“In order to increase volumes, there is a need for additional transport capacities,” he said, referring to a new gas link under the Black Sea called South Stream. 
Karamanlis said he supported the project but that it still needed considerable work. 
“People on both sides are working, and we are hoping that an intergovernmental agreement will be signed in the near future,” he said.
Putin and Karamanlis spoke after nearly three hours of negotiations over oil and gas, military cooperation and the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi.
South Stream is seen as a direct challenge to the Nabucco pipeline, a $6.2 billion project that is to carry Caspian gas via Turkey and the Balkans as Europe seeks to reduce its dependence on Russian energy. 
Last month, Putin and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi blessed the setting up of a joint venture to carry out a feasibility study into the South Stream pipeline, which will run from Novorossiisk under the Black Sea to Bulgaria.
Putin and Karamanlis also applauded a deal signed Tuesday by Greece, Russia and Bulgaria to establish a company, Burgas-Alexandroupolis, to build and manage a trans-Balkan pipeline that will send Russian oil from Bulgaria to Greece.

TITLE: Oil Fund Manager Wary on Spending
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — “Irrational” domestic spending from the $150 billion stabilization fund could fuel further inflation and make the economy once more dependent on the whims of global oil markets, Pyotr Kazakevich, the official in charge of the fund, warned on Tuesday.
Few could have foreseen that the stabilization fund — first proposed by President Vladimir Putin’s maverick economic adviser Andrei Illarionov — would accumulate so much in the four years since its creation. By year’s end, the government expects to be sitting on a cash hoard of $158 billion. 
It’s no small wonder that the fund is emerging as a bone of political contention, as domestic pressure increases on Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin to loosen the purse strings. 
As of Saturday, the fund stood at $150.9 billion and had earned an annual return of 11 percent in dollar terms, Kazakevich said this week. 
As the money flows in on the back of record oil prices, there are signs of a shifting attitude in government. In May, Putin offered the first glimpse of how the fund would start to work in the domestic economy, suggesting that surplus oil revenue be used to prop up domestic stocks — such as Gazprom and Rosneft. 
In September, Sergei Chemezov, head of newly created state corporation Russian Technologies, proposed loaning money from the fund to domestic firms, and two months later, the Federation Council’s Budget Committee said the fund should consider investing in long-term bonds issued by state-owned companies and buying shares of Russian companies.
Economists have criticized most of these initiatives as unworkable, and some analysts fear the fund is becoming a key battleground in Kremlin power struggles. 
In November, Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak, who is responsible for the stabilization fund at a ministerial level, was arrested on charges of attempted embezzlement. Kudrin has defended Storchak, insisting that his deputy is not guilty of any crime. 
Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank, said he believed Storchak’s arrest was part of a wider effort to discredit Kudrin in the eyes of Putin, one of his closest allies, amid infighting among Kremlin clans. 
“The stabilization fund is just one part of the [equation],” Pribylovsky said. “Everyone wants a part of the fund, but Kudrin doesn’t want to share it.”
Nikolai Petrov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, agreed that the fund was a powerful lever for Kudrin. 
“Kudrin is sitting on a bag of money — if you only want money ... [you] need somehow to have good or at least effective relations with Kudrin,” Petrov said. “That’s why he is so powerful, and that’s why there is a big temptation to put pressure on him.” 
Yevgeny Volk, head of the Moscow office of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, said he believed there was a backroom agreement between siloviki clans to put the various spending proposals on ice until after the elections. 
“Goal No. 1 is to guarantee [First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry] Medvedev’s election,” Volk said. “If Medvedev becomes president, I believe there is a tacit agreement that all other problems ... will be solved.”
It is not as Illarionov, now a senior fellow of the Washington-based Cato Institute, would have envisioned it.
When the fund was set up nearly four years ago on similar lines to Norway’s oil fund, the Russian economy was a one-horse engine, riding high on a tide of rising oil prices, and dependent on them at the same time. 
The idea was to create a tool able to absorb excess petrodollars and fight inflationary pressures, while sheltering the economy from oil-price volatility.
With its Paris Club debt paid off, the fund is now moving away from its original purpose, said Illarionov, now one of the Kremlin’s loudest critics. 
“I think ... those people who proposed [spending the money] committed a little economic crime because they think too much money has been accumulated in the fund,” Illarionov said. 
The fund, he added, is becoming a “victim of the greed of several groups.” 
The fund’s future is now a subject for heated debate among economists. From Feb. 1, the fund will be split into two: the Reserve Fund, which will be equivalent to 10 percent of GDP; and the National Welfare Fund, primarily designed to protect the wealth for future generations. 
The Reserve Fund would be run along similar lines to the stabilization fund in that it should only be tapped in the case of a significant fiscal gap, while the National Welfare Fund will be a much more flexible entity. 
The Finance Ministry says the welfare fund’s primary purpose is to ensure there is no pensions shortfall. But rather than invest in low-risk assets, the ministry is proposing it be put into investment funds and equities. 
Kazakevich said the government was considering ways to outsource the management of the fund to specialized financial organizations. 
Presently, the stabilization fund’s money is invested in ultra-conservative foreign securities, such as U.S. Treasury bonds, which offer minimal risk and stable returns. 
“This is a departure from the very rigid fiscal discipline we’ve seen over the past few years, but it is a reasonable time to be doing that because the balance sheet of the state is looking very clean indeed,” said Rory MacFarquhar, managing director at Goldman Sachs in Moscow. 
The Finance Ministry has earmarked 3.07 trillion rubles ($124 billion) for the Reserve Fund, and the National Welfare Fund will scoop up the $25 billion surplus. 
But economists warn that caving into domestic pressure to spend could have dire consequences. 
“Any country that benefits massively from the exploitation of exhaustible resources — as Russia does — is simply taking wealth from below ground and putting it above ground,” said Willem Buiter, professor of European political economy at the London School of Economics. “Most of [the revenues] should be saved, that’s clear. And political pressure for spending should be resisted.”

TITLE: RZD Seeks $6Bln to Expand
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Railways, or RZD, the country’s state-owned rail monopoly, expects to raise more than 150 billion rubles ($6 billion) from share sales in the next three years to help finance expansion.
RZD plans to sell part of cargo carrier Transcontainer to a strategic investor this year or next and hold an initial public offering of First Freight in 2009 or 2010, the company said in a statement Tuesday. RZD plans to spend more than 13 trillion rubles ($520 billion) upgrading and expanding its network and rolling stock by 2030, more than one-third of which will come from the state, the company said. 
As much as 10 trillion rubles of contracts will be awarded to metal, construction and timber companies for the expansion, RZD said in October.

TITLE: Central Asian Pipeline Agreed
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin secured a deal to start building a natural-gas pipeline to Central Asia, undermining a U.S.-backed plan to give the region an alternative route bypassing Russia.
The agreement to construct the new pipeline from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan was signed at a Kremlin ceremony broadcast on Russian state television Thursday.
“The creation of this new energy artery allows for long-term, large-scale gas deliveries to our partners and is a serious contribution by our countries to the energy security in Europe,” Putin said after officials from the three former Soviet republics signed the accord.
Putin reached a preliminary agreement to build the so-called Caspian pipeline, capable of raising Russian imports of Central Asian gas by 40 percent, in May. A follow-up deal to start construction was delayed after Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan considered a U.S. plan to build a link below the Caspian Sea, giving them a new route that would break Gazprom’s monopoly on their gas exports to Europe.
The new pipeline, with an annual capacity of 20 billion cubic meters of gas, will open no later than the end of 2010, Interfax news service quoted Russian Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko as saying after the ceremony.
“This is very positive for Russia and Gazprom because for the foreseeable future they’ll continue control of gas exports out of Central Asia,” said Steven Dashevsky, co-head of equities at Moscow-based UniCredit Aton. “It’s a clear setback for the West because there are still no alternative routes for Central Asian gas.”

TITLE: ‘What’ Not ‘Who’ Will Shape Russia in 2008
AUTHOR: By William Burns
TEXT: As the 200th anniversary year of formal diplomatic ties between Russia and the United States comes to a close, it is a natural moment to reflect on where we have been and where we are going. That is not exactly an easy thing to do these days. In our broader relationship, mutual frustration often obscures mutual interest. And nowhere is that mutual interest more obvious than in the country’s remarkable economic resurgence, which is about to enter a crucial new phase in a transition that has already brought Russians a very long way from the traumas of the 1990s.
At the end of 2007, we have been naturally focused on the “who” questions: Who is going to succeed President Vladimir Putin? Who is going to occupy which leadership positions after the State Duma and presidential elections? While the answers to these “who” questions obviously matter greatly, it seems to me that it is the “what” questions looming over the 2008 transition that will shape Russia’s future and the future of our economic relationship for many years to come. What is the country going to do with its hard-won stability? What is it going to do with the moment of energy-driven opportunity that lies before it? Three other specific questions come to mind.
First, what will Russia do to integrate more into the global economy? This is not just an academic question. The faster that Moscow enters the World Trade Organization and other key institutions on the same terms that apply to everyone else, the faster its industries will become more competitive and the faster its economy will diversify. Since the conclusion of our bilateral WTO agreement a year ago, the United States has worked to help Russia accelerate the completion of its remaining membership talks with our negotiators in almost daily contact with their counterparts.
Another dimension of integration is making U.S.-Russian trade and investment a genuine two-way street. U.S. investment in Russia is expanding rapidly, up more than 50 percent last year alone. Russian investment in the United States is also growing. The $2.3 billion acquisition last year of Oregon Steel Mill by Evraz, Russia’s largest steelmaker by domestic volume, is an especially impressive example.
A second, related question is: What will Russia do to diversify its economy beyond oil and gas? High energy prices have driven the country’s recent economic growth, but the potential to diversify beyond hydrocarbons is substantial. Even today, oil and gas exports amount to only about 20 percent of gross domestic product. The country’s economic future rests on its resourceful, creative and well-educated people. Tapping that potential and building an innovative, knowledge-based economy is entirely possible, but it will require vision, urgency and sustained effort in which the roles of the private sector and foreign partnerships will be crucial. Boeing’s work in support of Sukhoi’s promising regional jet project is an excellent example of how such partnerships benefit both sides and help the country diversify.
Third, what will Russia do to improve its physical, human and institutional infrastructure? Without rapid upgrading of the country’s roads, railroads, airports, seaports and power generation capacity, modernization and diversification of the economy of this sprawling country simply will not happen. Protection and development of human capital is even more important. History is rich with examples of the nation’s contributions to human advancement — from Boris Pasternak in literature, to Dmitry Shostakovich in music, to Mikhail Chumakov helping to conquer polio, to Yury Gagarin and the scientists behind him who pioneered the exploration of space. But how do you develop that potential without investing aggressively in the education and health care systems?
Another crucial infrastructure challenge is institutional. What will Russia do to build the modern economic and political institutions essential to sustaining its prosperity and growth? Without these institutions, without the rule of law to protect property, without checks and balances to hold officials accountable and without stable and predictable regulatory and investment regimes, it’s impossible over the long term to attract capital and know-how or to ensure a healthy economy. How do you fight problems like corruption without an independent media and an independent judiciary to shine a light on abuses and deter them?
These are not abstract questions of political values, nor are they about U.S. lecturing or mentoring, about which I know Russians have no difficulty containing their enthusiasm these days. These are questions that only Russians themselves can solve and for which Americans certainly do not have all the answers. But they cut right to the heart of whether the country is going to realize its full — and enormous — potential as an economy and a society.
Russia’s “who” questions will be answered soon enough. It is the “what” questions, however, that will then come squarely into view. Each of them is interconnected: integration into the global economy will spur diversification; diversification won’t succeed without urgent attention to the physical, human and institutional infrastructure; and today’s dangerous excesses, like corruption and bureaucracy, will eat up the country’s successes without a serious and sustained effort against them. None of these challenges is easy, but Russia has before it one of those rare moments when it can deal successfully with all of them. For our part, for the United States and for U.S. business, it remains profoundly in our interests for Russia to succeed.
One thing that has not changed over the first 200 years of our history together is the reality that we matter to each other — and to the future of global order — in a way that few other relationships do. As we begin our third century together, what also seems clear is that our economic ties are becoming a more and more important part of our relationship. This growth will benefit both of us for generations to come.

William Burns is the U.S. ambassador to Russia.

TITLE: A Draw for Ford but a Victory for All
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Belarus was rather strange. First, Putin arrived with a huge retinue that included Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov and Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov. Then Putin and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko met one on one until 5:30 a.m.
The Russian delegation brought two sets of documents to Minsk. The smaller one contained the two agreements that the leaders signed. The second, larger set contained documents concerning the formation of a Russia-Belarus union.
The creation of a federation would require that both countries alter their constitutions and hold an election in 2009 to select a president of the new union. It would also mean that Putin’s chosen presidential successor, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, would be reduced to a temporary figurehead who would occupy the Russian throne for not more than one year.
It is clear why Putin would want such an arrangement. But this would hardly be attractive to Lukashenko, a dictator who enjoys even more control over his people, bureaucrats and the press than Putin wields in Russia. Why would a dictator give up this type of authority? Under what circumstances would Lukashenko willingly opt for a federation with Russia? The answer is simple: He would do so only if he believed that there was a real chance that he could become president of the union.
No other explanation is possible. Under no other circumstances would an absolute dictator —whose every word becomes law and whose every capricious command is dutifully fulfilled by the sycophants surrounding him — agree to serve as a servant in the court of some other dictator.
Let’s consider a hypothetical situation in which new presidential election for the new federation are held in 2009 and the two candidates are Putin and Lukashenko. Who would win? I think Lukashenko would be the victor by a huge margin. He has an absolute monopoly on power and would never allow any oligarch or secret service official to get his hands on even a tiny piece of that monopoly.
Were Lukashenko to run for federation president, voters aligned with the Communist Party and Liberal Democratic Party would surely vote for him. Moreover, I am confident that two thirds of all United Russia supporters — and even United Russia’s functionaries, including the top ranks — would back him. Although it may not be visible on the outside, many members of so-called pro-Putin political parties are unhappy with the way Putin uses them as little more than doormats to wipe his boots on.
My guess is that the two presidents were discussing the idea of a federation until the wee hours of the morning. Utilizing his keen skills as an intelligence officer and psychologist, Putin recruited the absolute dictator, Lukashenko, to serve as his court toady and to gain a third term for himself. At the same time, Lukashenko, with his overblown ambitions, tried to secure the right to run for president of the federation.
In the end, the two leaders came to some kind of understanding, signed an unrelated gas deal, and then went their separate ways.
And one other detail: Lukashenko didn’t even bother to go to the airport to meet Putin and his large delegation when they arrived in Minsk.
When Moscow announced that it would extend Minsk $1.5 billion in credit, it was packaged as a way to compensate for the expected steep price hike for Russian gas. The price increase turned out to be smaller than anticipated, but Russia offered the loan anyway. It seems that Putin shelled out $1.5 billion hoping that it will strengthen his position in a future Russia-Belarus federation.
Is this how Putin takes advantage of Lukashenko?

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

TITLE: Always a dissenter
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Mikhail Borzykin is angry again. The Kremlin’s clampdown on the press and democracy has driven the frontman of Televizor, one of the bands that helped to put an end to Soviet rule in the 1980s, to take part in street protests — and write songs such as “Stay Home” urging people to get out and protest.
“Stay home, if you’re scared / But then don’t ask / ‘Why is it so?’ and ‘What’s that for?’ / You were an idiot — you stayed home!”
A frequent sight at Dissenters’ Marches and the other opposition rallies this year, Borzykin is busy recording new songs that deal with the realities of Putin’s Russia, and is getting ready for a major double-billed concert with the like-minded punk band PTVP to protest against “Putinsburg,” a city covered with pro-presidential posters, where historical buildings are demolished and liberties are suppressed.
“I just realized that expressing my point of view in interviews, on stage during concerts and while talking with friends is not enough — you should take part in some street activities,” he said to The St. Petersburg Times this week.
“I felt I needed to stir myself up. You can live in art, but people who do so manage to overlook the most simple, everyday reality that much in their own heads depends on. And, having seen so many of my colleagues living in a virtual world, I thought it’s not enough to live in art — you should simply live, as well. So, going to Dissenters’ Marches is part of this life for me; at least I can clear my conscience a little by going there.”
Often brutally suppressed by the police, Dissenters’ Marches, a series of non-violent street protests, have been organized by The Other Russia, the pro-democracy opposition umbrella coalition led by former world chess champion and United Civil Front leader Garry Kasparov and author Eduard Limonov, whose National Bolshevik Party (NBP) has been banned as “extremist.” After being barred from the State Duma elections that took place on December 2, The Other Russia came up with a symbolic list of alternative candidates, including Borzykin.
“I met and spoke with guys from the NBP and [democratic party] Yabloko, both at marches and after concerts, and at one point I got an offer, as far as I remember, from St. Petersburg’s NBP members — they said, ‘There’s a ‘hit list,’ it’s clear that no one on this list will get anywhere, but you can state your position there if you want,’” he said.
“By joining this list, you’re saying who you are and what side of the barricades you are on. I agreed, understanding that above all, this was a demonstration list, a challenge, because it was absolutely doomed, it was clear that no one on it would become a candidate or deputy.”
“Secondly, I thought I could take part in this list, even if I was not a supporter of any parties, because The Other Russia is such a multi-polar coalition, it’s not a party with charters and programs, but a public association. That’s one of the ways to struggle.”
Borzykin’s band Televizor started to push the limits of freedom in 1985, when Borzykin produced songs such as “Get out of Control,” “We’re Walking” and “Fed Up,” which shocked the authorities. The group was banned from playing concerts for months. He said the situation at that time, when it seemed that everything was decided at the top and very few people believed that any change was possible, was similar to what happens now.
“It’s absolutely the same sense of the futility of struggle, it hits me occasionally as it did in 1984, and I remember how it used to hit my own colleagues and I had to use all my youthful enthusiasm to persuade them, foaming at the mouth, that there was a chance — just because somebody like me thinks that way, and there’s a lot of people like that. A thought really is material,” said Borzykin.
“Even people who were considered wise men at that time like Boris Grebenshchikov didn’t believe that change was possible, many of my colleagues would say that it’s totally useless, you can’t get rid of the Communist party, the Soviet Union will last forever, they have the army, and so on.
“These conversations continued until 1987, and for three years everybody kept trying to convince me that I was a provocateur and acting wrongly — that I would be better off writing philosophical songs as I did on the first album and making art for art’s sake. But by 1988 attitudes had changed; the same people would approach me and look into my eyes with respect.
“That’s an example from my own life, that’s why orientating yourself towards the majority is a slavish mode of behavior. We bowed to the majority in 1917, Hitler got the majority, but it’s thanks to a minority that things change for the better. Everything depends on the 5-10 percent of the people who care, while the rest are occupied with  family and day-to-day issues and with filling their bellies.”
In 1985, when warned not to perform subversive songs at an important competition which could have given Televizor some publicity and a chance to tour, the band disobeyed and was banned from performing live for six months. The ban was prolonged for another two months when the censors found out that Televizor had played a couple of unsanctioned concerts. 
“For a band that felt it was on the rise, it was a very sad fact, especially as the concert was good, everybody liked it,” said Borzykin.
“But this little breakthrough — it served as a signal for all the others, and people started to violate the censors’ orders massively. This struggle spread on every level and in other cities as well. Within a year this avalanche was unstoppable. [The bands] Alisa, Obyekt Nasmeshek and DDT sang what they wanted, and everybody realized that it was possible, possible and necessary.
“As a result, control started to weaken sharply, it became impossible to control everything, and the rise in popularity of these groups led to this movement getting beyond the reaches of the KGB. It’s a very similar situation now, that’s why stating a position is, I think, a very important thing, not only for building your own soul, but also for bringing together the common sense that people have retained into one energetic mechanism.”
In 1988 Borzykin led an unprecedented demonstration of rock fans to Smolny, then the home of the local party leadership, after an annual local rock festival had been canceled on the grounds of “fire safety.” Smolny sent an official to negotiate and after the talks the ban was lifted.
“It was scary when the police emerged and blocked both streets near Tavrichesky Gardens so that the column had nowhere to go, and there was a long pause, 15 or 30 minutes, when everybody thought they would break [the demonstration] up; they stood in lines, three lines on each side, with truncheons, and looked at us very aggressively,” said Borzykin.
“Nobody thought it would end so peacefully. For me it was the first time, and it’s always scarier the first time round.
“[The police] look more effective now, better equipped, it’s like Star Wars going on out in our streets now, and there’s more rage. And there’s more fear at the top if they give orders for this disproportionate use of force and brutality. I think that these people realize that they are temporary, that they stole a lot and they will have to answer for this.”
These days, however, the state does not seem to care about music that much, although Borzykin said that even sympathetic radio stations do not dare to play his political songs, while former heroes of the 1980s “rock revolution” demonstrate their loyalty to the Kremlin. Borzykin addresses his former companions-in-arms in a new song called “We’re on Different Sides of the Barricades.”
“The rock elite votes for what is going on unanimously; you can say it has grown together with the Kremlin lately,” he said.
“[The authorities] use the tactic of divide and rule very successfully; they invite rock musicians to the Kremlin, create the Our Time foundation to promote tours for young, safe and, in my view, uninteresting conformist bands using the Kremlin’s money. [These bands] are played on the radio, they are given some donations — all in all, it’s a normal strategic struggle, forcing out everybody else to the periphery, into the underground.
“You don’t even need to ban things; it’s just that the ten television shows that used to invite me don’t exist anymore, the five radio stations that were interested in Televizor’s music have changed their format. You could call it a ‘velvet ban.’”
Rather than looking for a record label that would dare to release Televizor’s new songs, Borzykin said he would put some of them out as a single that would be available for free download from the band’s website.
The absurdity of life in the Soviet Union that Televizor and the other bands were fighting against in the 1980s has returned in today’s Russia in a slightly different form, according to Borzykin.
“It’s absolute deja vu, the situation is very similar for me,” he said.
“The slogans are the same — it’s again rabid anti-Americanism, it’s exactly like a Brezhnev-era high school, the tenth form. I remember it very well, how they sent us to meetings against the Chinese threat, against the American threat. Looking for an enemy is a symptom. Only instead of the Communist ideology they’ve added Orthodox Christianity. It contradicts any common sense and only proves how obsolete the methods are, and the lack of creativity in the Kremlin’s heads.

Televizor and PTVP perform at Orlandina on Thursday. www.televizor.spb.ru

TITLE: Chernov’s
         choice
TEXT: “Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary,” a book by musician <b>Lydia Lunch</b>, was one of the grounds on which Boris Kupriyanov, head of Moscow’s leading indie bookstore Falanster, has been threatened with prosecution for “spreading pornography,” a crime that could lead to two years in prison. 
The shop, which has been frequented by all kinds of plain clothes agents since November, according to Kupriyanov’s statement, is known for selling all kinds of thought-provoking literature, including books on political subjects. Signatures in support of the shop are being collected on the Livejournal.com community za_falanster.
<b>Babylon Circus</b>, a ten-member French band that mixes ska, punk, reggae, folk, chanson and jazz, citing Manu Chao, Skatalites, Police and The Clash as their influences, will perform in the city this weekend.
Based in Lyon, the band, which is best known for its high-energy and fun live shows and sings in English and French, will play its one-off Russian concert at The Place on Friday. 
On an entirely different note, <b>The Sabri Brothers</b>, a Pakistani ensemble that performs <b>Qawwali</b>, the devotional music of the Sufis, will return to the city for the first time since its St. Petersburg debut in 2001. 
The Sabri Brothers are Pakistan’s best known, phenomenally successful family of devotional singers, hailing from Kalyana in the East Punjab, with over 30 years of sung religious poetry behind them, according to the Real World Records’ website. The band will perform at the Music Hall on Friday.
<b>Deutsch Nepal</b>, an industrial-psychedelic project from Gothenburg, Sweden, will perform at The Place on Wednesday. According to Wikipedia, the name “Deutsch Nepal” is derived from the track of the same name released in 1972 by German Krautrock legend Amon Duul.
Local politically-minded bands <b>Televizor</b> and <b>PTVP</b> will get together for a double-billed concert at Orlandina on Thursday. See interview with Televizor’s Mikhail Borzykin, pages i-ii.
Last week some acts due to play in St. Petersburg in the next few months were revealed. <b>Chuck Berry</b> has been scheduled to perform at the 2,000-seat Lensoviet Palace of Culture.
Berry performed at the much larger SKK stadium in 2003, and visited Moscow to play at B1 Maximum club earlier this year.
Berry hasn’t released a new studio album in decades, but <b>Einsturzende Neubauten</b> came with its most recent release,  “Alles Wieder Offen,” in October.
The German experimental/industrial band, which packed Port club when it performed in the city in Feb. 2004, will play at Manezh Kadetskogo Korpusa on Apr. 23. Earlier, band member <b>Alexander Hacke</b> is expected to perform in a duo with Danielle de Picciotto at The Place on Feb. 2. Called “The History of Electricity,” it will be an electronic/acoustic show in nine chapters.

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Who’s who
AUTHOR: By Karina Papp
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Famous Alumnae of the St. Petersburg University cultural fund presented the second volume of its book, “Influential University Students. Alumnae of the Leningrad-Petersburg University. Who’s Who” on Wednesday.
The ceremony was attended by the rector of St. Petersburg University, Lyudmila Verbitskaya, the leader of the Patriots of Russia political party, Gennady Seleznyov and the chairman of the city’s committee for foreign affairs, Alexander Prokhorenko. The fund was founded in 2000 to mark the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg and the 280th anniversary of the university itself, and is headed by Ninel Olesich. 
The book focuses on influential graduates of modern Russia, including President Vladimir Putin, the current first deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is widely tipped to become the next president, leader of the United Russsia party Boris Gryzlov and a wealth of scientists, journalists, musicians and heads of large enterprises. The book provides a short biography on each, along with photographs from their student days and their contact details.

TITLE: From Russia no more
AUTHOR: By John Varoli and Farah Nayeri
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: The Russian government canceled an exhibition of artworks from some of the country’s major museums that was scheduled to open at London’s Royal Academy of Arts on Jan. 26, 2008.
Officials cited the U.K. government’s failure, after months of negotiations, to offer a legal guarantee of immunity from third-party confiscation. The exhibition, “From Russia,” is sponsored by E.ON AG, Germany’s biggest utility, and is currently at Duesseldorf’s Museum Kunst Palast through Jan. 6, 2008.
The State Hermitage Museum and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts were among four Russian museums that said they would lend more than 120 paintings by artists such as Cezanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Kandinsky and Malevich to the Royal Academy.
“The British government, unlike other countries such as the United States, will not offer a legal guarantee that our artworks won’t be confiscated as part of a third-party lawsuit,” said Zinaida Bonami, deputy director of the Pushkin Museum, who is in charge of exhibitions and international relations.
“Our artworks are not owned by the museum itself, but rather they are the property of the Russian state, and this decision was made by the Federal Agency of Culture and Cinematography,” she said.
The U.K. Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it had not been notified of the Russian galleries’ decision not to loan. A spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said U.K. Culture Secretary James Purnell wrote to the head of the Russian Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography on Dec. 7 confirming that the artworks would come under the State Immunity Act of 1978.
Under that act, the state and the property of a state are immune from the jurisdiction of U.K. courts, with a few limited exceptions that don’t concern the Russian art loans, the spokeswoman said in a telephone conversation.
The U.K. government has underwritten the collection against loss or damage for a value of nearly 900 million pounds ($1.8 billion) under the so-called government indemnity scheme, the DCMS spokeswoman said. That plan is an alternative to costly commercial insurance, and means that the government, not an insurance company, carries the risk.
Earlier, the Royal Academy said it was “confident” that the Russia show would open on schedule. “Preparations for the exhibition are proceeding as planned,” the London institution said in an e-mailed statement.
According to the Pushkin Museum’s Bonami, the Russian government fears a repeat of events in November 2005, when Swiss customs officials impounded 54 French impressionist and post- impressionist masterpieces from Moscow’s Pushkin Museum. Trucks loaded with the art were leaving that country after a three-month exhibition at the Pierre Gianadda Foundation in Martigny.

TITLE: From rigs to riches
AUTHOR: By Marina Kamenev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: This year, journalist David E. Hoffman published a book called “The Oligarchs,” a historical account of the way Yury Luzhkov, Boris Berezovsky and others acquired large sums of money and power. Little did he know that the same theme was being explored by a buxom Russian author, Marina Yudenich, in the form of a shiny, golden-covered novel called “Oil” that debuted a few months ago with similar ambitions.
“I wanted to explain to people who were born in the 1990s, or who were young in the 1990s, what happened, how this period of corruption came about,” Yudenich said in an interview this week, sipping an espresso, her long, black hair tucked behind diamante-framed sunglasses. 
Yudenich, whose picture features prominently on the web site Zaputina.ru, or For Putin, studied law at university. She always had an interest in politics, and after a brief stint as a journalist, she said, she worked as a press secretary for Boris Yeltsin until the mid-1990s. She then left Russia to study psychology in Paris. She started writing in 1999, and “Oil” is her 14th novel.
The book, published by Populyarnaya Literatura, has had a print run of 200,000, Yudenich said, and another 100,000 are on their way. It’s currently the No. 10 bestseller among Russian novels at the Moskva book store and is No. 7 at Respublika book stores.
“I knew it would be successful because the theme is interesting to everyone right now, but I never expected it to be this successful,” Yudenich said.
Liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta dismissed the novel as propaganda, writing that the publishers were in a hurry to release “Oil” before the State Duma elections. The review was full of sarcastic comments, such as, “The book presents Putin as he is: white and fluffy.”
“I call this genre political fiction,” Yudenich said. “All my other novels are kind of detective books with mystical elements — it is my first of this kind.”
The novel features many real-life oligarchs and politicians, including Berezovsky, Vladimir Putin and Madeleine Albright, but its main character is fictional, a Jewish man named Leonid Lemekh. Novaya Gazeta and Izvestia have both suggested that he is based on jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. 
“It’s not Khodorkovsky,” Yudenich said, rolling her eyes. “I am adamant about that! I named all the other characters but not him, he is just a conglomerate of all the oligarchs.” 
Yudenich added that “Lemekh is a banker, Khodorkovsky is not a banker.” In fact, Khodorkovsky was one of the founders of Bank Menatep. 
Lemekh is described as someone who has “always lived outside the law,” who worked in a government bank but left it with two other colleagues to start his own private bank, one of the first in the Soviet Union.
He later develops an interest in politics, and the book describes how he bribed those in power: “On the morning of a birthday of a prominent person in government, Lemekh would have a huge bouquet of flowers and a modest-sized box with a recognizable logo on it ... at the end of the day he would leave with the presents, without a word of explanation to anyone.”
Yudenich agrees with the way that Putin treated the oligarchs: “He handled them gently. I mean, it’s not like he started de-privatization; he did not take away their property,” she said. “He met them halfway. Look at [Vladimir] Potanin, who now supports the State Hermitage Museum; [Roman] Abramovich gives money to Chukotka. They kind of help out indirectly.”
In the novel, Lemekh attempts to bribe Putin with $15 billion in a bid to run as president himself, but Putin is unfazed. Lemekh goes home, has an aneurism and dies. 
“The oligarchs are just a symptom of a young country’s growing pains. It’s a sickness like the measles,” said Yudenich, who openly resents the oligarchs. 
“When 12 people have all of the wealth, which they acquired illegally, and the rest of the country does not, it’s not fair,” she said, adjusting the sparkly white strap of her watch.
The book is set all around the world and skips in time from 1991 to present. Scenes take place in the White House, Colorado, Havana and Moscow. “I found the parts about the U.S. White House the hardest to write,” Yudenich said. “I know what happens in ours, but I have never been to Washington, so I have no idea what goes on behind their closed doors.”
The action of the novel ends in December this year — two months after the book came out. Yudenich is already starting work on a sequel. “I will probably call it ‘Oil 2,’” she said. 
The author said she was pleased with the election results. “Of course I am happy for Putin, but I do think his campaign was too aggressive. They were always going to win, but they could have done better if their PR was a bit softer, I think their campaign hurt their ratings in the end.” she said. 
Yudenich is more skeptical about Putin’s successor, “I am not sure about [Dmitry] Medvedev, I would have gone for [Sergei] Ivanov. Russia is too young for such a soft leader,” she said, making a fist with her manicured hand. 

“Oil” (Neft) by Marina Yudenich is published by Populyarnaya Literatura.

TITLE: Dramatic icebreaker
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Olympic champion ice dancer Roman Kostomarov sat at the wheel of a jeep, his head bowed over the wheel. His ex-girlfriend slammed the door and walked away, angry that he refused her invitation to come up for a cup of coffee. “Cut!” the director said, reminding Kostomarov to look at his former “sweetheart” as she turned her back.
Kostomarov — who won gold at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin — was filming a scene for “My Hot Ice,” a new skating-themed drama series that will air on Channel One in January. The series aims to capitalize on the popularity of reality shows such as Channel One’s “Ice Age,” where actors and other famous figures learn to skate. This time the challenge is the other way round, as real-life skaters take on straight acting roles.
“‘Ice Age’ has very high ratings, a lot of people watching it, so the idea came up to do a drama series where there would also be stars, but this time not actors on ice, but figure skaters on film,” co-director Anario Mamedov said in a phone interview Wednesday. At a shoot on Tuesday that ran into the small hours, he was too busy to talk, running around in valenki felt boots as the crew filmed street scenes on a bitterly cold night on Ulitsa Plyushchikha.
The series brings in other iceskating stars, Alexei Yagudin, the 2002 Olympic champion, and Alexei Tikhonov, who won the World Championship in 2000. The series’ creative producer is Ilya Averbukh, the silver medalist at the 2002 Olympics. He acted as a script consultant but hasn’t visited the set, the series’ PR director, Tamara Borodina, said Tuesday. All the skaters took part in the “Ice Age” show.
“My Hot Ice” is being made by Star Media, a production company whose head office is in Kiev, Ukraine. The concept for the show came from Channel One and the premiere is due to coincide with the finale of “Ice Age” in mid-January, Mamedov said. Each episode will include some “beautiful dances,” he promised. 
The script hasn’t yet been finished, but a summary released by the production company, Kiev-based Star Media, tells the tale of a male skater, Molodtsov, who drops his partner on the ice, distracted by spotting his former girlfriend, also a skater. He then marries his permanently injured partner, who begins work as a trainer. In an unlikely twist, she decides to train her husband and his former girlfriend for the European Championships. 
The series “will be like a good Columbian soap opera,” the director said.
Although the drama’s male figure skaters are the real deal — Kostomarov plays Molodtsov — the roles of female figure skaters are taken by actresses, some of whom took part in “Ice Age” as amateurs.
“The hardest thing is filming actors in skating scenes,” Mamedov said. “Any actress, next to an Olympic champion, skates badly.” To get around the problem, some scenes were filmed with the heads of actresses and bodies of figure skaters. 
The director praised the skating professionals for their hardworking attitude. “They’re very disciplined. Actors can be late, can be capricious or not get enough sleep,” he said, but skaters “are ready to work as much as is necessary.” All the same, the skaters take an hour to prepare for a scene that would take a professional actor only 15 minutes, he said.
Yagudin is “great as a comic actor,” Mamedov said, while Kostomarov “could play more serious roles.” In any case, the skaters have the potential to work more on television, since they are “media personalities,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they start singing and making music videos.”

TITLE: Salon
AUTHOR: By Victor Sonkin
TEXT: Commentators often proclaim that the Russian language is in a sorry state and launch various campaigns and initiatives intended to slow down its demise. At the recent Non/Fiction book fair, Maxim Krongauz, a professor of linguistics at the Russian State University for the Humanities, and a columnist at Vedomosti presented a book with the telling title, “Russian Language on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”
Krongauz warns readers in a footnote that he wrote the book from the point of view of a concerned member of the public, not in his capacity as an academic. The position of an enlightened linguist, he says, would be that the Russian language has nothing to fear from the flood of slang and foreign words it is currently struggling with — in the long run, it will “digest” everything and regain its balance. Having said that, Krongauz sets aside his moderate attitude and joins the indignant chorus of complainers.
The general consensus seems to be that there are several things wrong with Russian at the moment. One of these is the stampede of new, mostly foreign words needed to describe concepts that didn’t exist in Soviet times. Unfortunately this process sometimes goes too far and regular Russian words are replaced by foreign terms. 
Prestigious companies in fashionable business centers consider it uncouth to have janitors — so they hire staff who are given the job title of klining menedzher. 
Another phenomenon is the creeping of Internet slang into newspapers and everyday speech. One such word, preved, a corruption of the usual privet, or hi, is now used even by people who have little to do with the Internet subculture.
Krongauz provides insightful comments on the differences between Russian and Western patterns of communication and the recent changes in Russia. Although I remember grim Soviet stores, I had forgotten that saying “Hello” to a salesperson used to be absolutely out of the question. 
Krongauz describes the experience of his friend who returned to the Soviet Union after living in the West and tried to use her new “polite” habits. The best she could hope for in reply was a brusque: “Girl, don’t hold up the line!” Conversational etiquette has certainly changed in Russia — and it’s not hard to see that it has changed for the better.
Many other changes to the language are also for the better; many others will be short-lived. Some changes, such as the gradual dissolution of Russian case system, repugnant as it is for us, are part of a general linguistic trend that we cannot really fight. 
It’s a relief that Krongauz, despite his well-founded concerns, is after all an enlightened linguist who acknowledges that our language is not in any real danger.

TITLE: What Mrs. Tolstoy saw
AUTHOR: By Katherine Shonk
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In 1887, in her early 40s, Leo Tolstoy’s wife, Sophia, took up the relatively new art form of photography. She adopted the hobby with relish and was often seen rushing about the family estate at Yasnaya Polyana in an apron, her fingernails blackened by developing chemicals. Her husband hated to be photographed. Yet every year on their wedding anniversary, Sophia put on her finest clothes and lured the famous writer into the frame for a commemorative photograph. 
These anniversary pictures, now printed together for the first time in “Song Without Words,” a collection of Sophia’s photographs and diary excerpts, are a study in body language. Husband and wife stand side by side. Sophia smiles anxiously, leaning toward Leo, embracing him or grasping his arm. Leo stands stiffly, facing the camera rather than Sophia, his expression gruff, his hands jammed into the belt of his peasant costume.
Sophia, who married Leo when she was 18 and he was 34, is often portrayed by historians as a jealous hysteric. Indeed, her anxiety comes through in the anniversary photos — but so does Leo’s unwillingness to indulge his wife’s harmless romantic tendencies. For 48 years, the Tolstoys tormented each other with love and hate. Until now, we have heard only one side of the story — the writer’s. In “Song Without Words,” the long-suffering wife finally gets to share her side. 
Leah Bendavid-Val, director of photography publishing at National Geographic Books, gained access to Sophia’s photographs at the Leo Tolstoy Museum in Moscow after hearing about them from a colleague. Her discovery is an embarrassment of riches — an embarrassment because these photographs should have been collected sooner. They offer a fascinating view of a legendary marriage, life on a pre-Revolutionary Russian estate and Tolstoy himself.
Sophia experimented with photography in her youth and embraced it with gusto many years later, leaving behind about 1,000 pictures. She composed shots of herself, her family and the peasants at Yasnaya Polyana with care and skill. Most show her subjects in context, at a slight distance: A painting of Leo looms above Sophia’s bemused face, Tolstoy appears on a tennis court with a racket in his hand, a praying granddaughter is surrounded by praying dollies. 
Bendavid-Val wisely organizes “Song Without Words” by theme — “Self-Portraits,” “The Family,” “Estate Life” and so on — a decision that lends structure to what might otherwise have been a monotonous biography of an unhappy marriage. Quotes from both Sophia’s and Leo’s diaries illuminate the emotions behind her slight smile and his customary scowl in the photos. They married out of love, but widening differences about religion, society and sex drove them both to despair. They complained bitterly about each other in their diaries, which they sometimes shared with each other. 
Between 1863 and 1888, Sophia gave birth to 13 children, only eight of whom lived to adulthood. Exhausted by pregnancy and motherhood, she tried to sell Tolstoy on the idea of birth control, but he refused. At her wit’s end, Sophia tried unsuccessfully to abort her 12th pregnancy. Yet once her children were born, she loved them all deeply. In one of the most poignant photos in the book, she leans against the shrine she built in memory of Vanechka, her youngest child, who died of scarlet fever at the age of 6. 
Sophia adored her husband’s fiction and devoted herself to serving his genius, but when she felt wronged by him, she fought back tooth and nail. In 1882, Tolstoy sought to relinquish the rights to his books, due to his conviction that owning private property was immoral. They argued over the issue for nearly 10 years, until Sophia convinced Lev to let her have the rights to “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina.” 
“With her husband increasingly focused on life beyond Yasnaya Polyana, Sophia turned outward as well. In the mid-1880s, she developed a “platonic love affair,” as Bendavid-Val describes it, with a pianist named Sergei Taneyev. The special friendship made Tolstoy miserable, but Sophia refused to break off the relationship. Their brief, chaste affair is made all the more poignant by Sophia’s photographs of Taneyev: He is no lothario, but a portly man with self-conscious posture and a shy gaze. 
Song Without Words” is an embarrassment of riches, yet one is left wishing for more — namely, that Sophia had taken up photography earlier in her marriage. It would have been a treat to see the Tolstoys in those heady, loving years, before they were worn down emotionally and physically by their demanding lives and by each other. 
On the back of a September 1910 photo marked “The Last Wedding Anniversary,” Sophia wrote, “There is no holding him!” A month later, Leo walked out on her forever, leaving a note saying that life at home had become “unbearable” and that he wanted to spend his final days in peace. As is well known, he died soon after in a train station, with sycophants keeping Sophia at bay. Her husband’s death left Sophia tortured by guilt, but Bendavid-Val reports that she “no longer showed signs of her former hysteria.” She survived her husband by nine years, living at Yasnaya Polyana through the Revolution in relative peace. 

Katherine Shonk is the author of “The Red Passport,” a collection of short stories set in contemporary Russia.

TITLE: More war, more peace
AUTHOR: By Rebecca Reich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Leo Tolstoy’s comment that “each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” struck a best-selling chord with talk-show audiences across America when Oprah Winfrey assigned Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s translation of “Anna Karenina” to her book club in 2004. Publishers took note: This fall, two translations of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” have emerged — each particular in its own way.
Readers familiar with Tolstoy’s longest novel will find much that is new in Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translation. Hailed for their work on Fyodor Dostoevsky and others, the prolific husband-and-wife team takes pains to preserve Tolstoy’s stylistic idiosyncrasies and French dialogue (estimated by Pevear at 2 percent of the original).
Tolstoy spent the better part of the 1860s drafting and redrafting his panoramic family chronicle of Russia during the Napoleonic wars. To evoke the world of half a century earlier, he visited the Borodino battlefield and drew prototypes for his characters from his own family. The result was “not a novel, still less an epic poem, still less a historical chronicle,” as Tolstoy wrote, but something new: a vibrant tapestry of history and ideas, viewed by his characters at eye-level.
By contrast with Pevear and Volokhonsky’s 1,296-page version, Andrew Bromfield’s translation of an earlier draft stands a slim 912 pages. Tolstoy completed the draft in 1866 before taking it back to revise it further, leaving it to Soviet scholar Evelina Zaidenshnur to spend five decades piecing it together through analysis of ink, handwriting and Tolstoy’s notes.
Reissued for a general audience in 2000, the draft was hyped by Moscow publisher Zakharov as the “first” version of the novel (“less war and more peace, no philosophical digressions”). Bromfield follows suit with the subtitle “Original Version,” while advising readers to compare it to the finished novel “for the rare insights it offers into the ‘creative laboratory’ of a consummate artist.”

TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Every year, hungover Russians crawl out of bed on New Year’s Day to watch “Song of the Year,” a seemingly never-ending pop marathon, in which top stars sing their biggest hits of the year. This January, the show lasted more than four hours, although to be fair it was broadcast over two days to avoid sequin overload. What gives the show an edge over all the other lip-synching, policemen-congratulating concerts on television is its presenter: Alla Pugachyova, the big-haired diva who holds the reins of power in Russian pop.
This month, Pugachyova caused widespread offense by failing to invite certain performers to this year’s show, which was filmed last Sunday. And they weren’t slow in expressing their outrage to the tabloids. First there was Lev Leshchenko, a Soviet-era crooner who still performs, even if his songs don’t exactly top the ringtone charts. “Nothing has changed in my work in all these years, but Alla Borisovna [Pugachyova] thought differently,” Leshchenko told Tvoi Den. The show is dominated by Alla’s personal favorites, he said, hinting at her daughter, Kristina Orbakaite, former husband, Filipp Kirkorov, and former son-in-law, pop singer Vladimir Presnyakov, who all performed. “Probably it’s Alla Borisovna’s friends and relatives who are there now, they are closer,” he said. “Well, good luck to them.”
A more controversial exclusion — if the show really is about the year’s greatest hits — was singer MakSim, a breakthrough act who gained popularity with her self-penned catchy songs, despite lacking famous backers. “I’m amazed at the news that I’m not on the list of participants,” MakSim told Tvoi Den. “My name was even on the Internet ads. But now they don’t want to see me.” She put the ban down to ill will from a certain, unnamed person. “I think that someone is either taking revenge on me for something, or simply doesn’t want to see me on the country’s main stage.”
The singer who gave the longest interview about how she is rising above petty intrigues was Larisa Dolina, the veteran singer of jazz-flavored pop. In her case, the ban looked particularly personal, since she co-hosts a rival New Year show on Channel One called “Songs About the Main Thing,” alongside crooner and Duma Deputy Iosif Kobzon. He in turn is said to have angered Pugachyova with details in his autobiography and was also off the bill at “Song of the Year.”
In an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, Dolina complained that she received an invitation to the concert and then suffered the indignity of being uninvited. “They excluded the cream of Russian pop,” she said. “Of course, I’m baffled. You understand: I, Lolita [Milyavskaya, singer and television presenter] and Iosif Kobzon don’t need more airtime. But I really feel sorry for the viewer.” She rejected an off-the-wall suggestion from the reporter that Pugachyova believed a tabloid report that Dolina had spread rumors of her death. 
Komsomolskaya Pravda delved into the scandal, publishing lists of artists who were initially invited and then banned — all of the above — and the stars who simply didn’t make the running: Surprisingly, these included President Vladimir Putin’s favorite rock band, Lyube, and glamour girl Zhanna Friske. Most interestingly of all, it published a print-out of the concert’s final running order, which reveals Pugachyova’s taste in pop.
Among the young guard are this year’s Eurovision entry, girl group Serebro, r ‘n’ b singer Byanka, rapper Timati and last year’s Eurovision runner-up Dima Bilan. Then there are invited veterans, such as permed popster Valery Leontyev. But Pugachyova made sure that only one star got top billing. All the other singers were allowed to perform one song, at most two. She sang six.

TITLE: Keeping customs
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Staraya Tamozhnya // Tamozhennyi pereulok, 1 // 327-8980 // Open 1 p.m. through 1a.m. // Menu in Russian and English // Lunch for two: 3,600 rubles ($150)
The Staraya Tamozhnya restaurant has been long known for excellent French and European cuisine, elegant style and high prices.  During our recent visit there we had a chance to see that the main principles and qualities of the place remain unchanged.
It is definitely one of the city’s theme restaurants.  The theme is based on the historical background of Staraya Tamozhnya’s (‘Old Customs House’) location. The restaurant sits close to the spit of Vasilievsky Island, which, in days gone by, used to serve as the city’s port. The port, naturally, required a customs house, and the restaurant is based in one of its former premises.
Two figures of men dressed as 18th-century customs workers, who are busy with keeping account books, meet you right at the entrance to the restaurant. Next to them there goods for customs registration — barrels of strong rum and packs of valuable Indian spices.
The restaurant’s interior of red brick walls and arches, comfortable furniture, soft lighting, beautiful dishes and classical music playing create an exquisite and respectful atmosphere inside.  Staraya Tamozhnya’s high class style would be a perfect match for hosting a special occasion such as making an unforgettable proposal or celebrating some important personal date.  At the same time, the place would probably be a bit too formal for a first date.
There’s no doubt that the food served at the restaurant is delicious. My companion and I, who went to Staraya Tamozhnya for lunch, were delighted by the first dish — a traditional Caesar salad with fried bacon (350 rubles,  $14.5).  The portion of very fresh lettuce leaves was big enough for two, and it was covered with ideal slices and chips of Parmesan cheese that added quite enough salt and spice to the vegetables.
My companion also went for chicken consommé, served with chanterelles and poached duck liver (380 rubles, $15.3).  He said the consommé had a very light and tender taste and successfully warmed him up.
The grilled sirloin steak (1,180 rubles, $45) that I chose for the main course was impressively large.  Garnished with green beans and fried potatoes, it was very nourishing and would keep one satisfied for many hours, if not days.  Health considerations led me to accompany it with the creamed spinach (240 rubles, $10), which was entirely satisfactory. 
The filet of King Dorado fish (1,100 rubles, $45.5) ordered by my companion was deemed tasty and very light and a success. Served with baby spinach leaves, Badiane sauce and small pieces of carrots, the Dorado satisfied his taste for exotic foods.
In fact, Staraya Tamozhnya is famous in the city for its excellent seafood delicacies. Thus, when in season, the restaurant offers grilled baby octopuses, veloute of sea urchin, tournedos of lobster and monkfish, sea snails and shellfish. On its regular menu the eatery boasts fresh local oysters such as Tsarskaya (150 ruble per piece, $6), Special Silver Scale (240 rubles, $10), or Perle Blanche (320 rubles, $13); and exclusive oysters such as different kinds of Belle de quibron and Fine de Clair.
Hot fish dishes also offer a wide choice including wild Atlantic salmon, roasted seabass, fried sea scallops and fresh Lobster. Vegetarians need not fear, however, as they will find much on the menu to choose from. 
We couldn’t bring ourselves to attempt desserts after what had gone before, but the range is quite impressive with traditional Italian Tiramisu, poached pear belle Helen, hot chocolate with pistachio ice cream or warm fruit salad.
The Staraya Tamozhnya is also known for its excellent wine selection, considered to be one of the best in the city.
The service was excellent and very swift. As we were short on time, we really appreciated getting our salad five minutes after ordering and the hot dishes were ready within 15 to 20 minutes. The waitresses were not only polite but also tactful.  They managed to gracefully serve us our food without ever interrupting the conversation.
Although the prices are noticeably high at the restaurant, real gentlemen shouldn’t worry about their female companion being scared by the excess of digits — at Staraya Tamozhnya women are given menus without prices, and only men get to see the financial details.

TITLE: Another dog day afternoon
AUTHOR: By Carina Chocano
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: In the latest from the 83-year-old director, things go horribly wrong, exactly as planned.
Few contemporary American directors have plumbed the problem of morality quite like Sidney Lumet. Then again, few American directors have been contemporary for as long as he has. Lumet is 83, and his career has spanned half a century and more than 40 movies — not all of them good, obviously. But the good ones are great. The director is never more energized or interesting than when he squeezes his all-too-human characters into vise-tight spots of their own construction, then watches as the unforeseen, unintended consequences bloom. If any director will make you think twice about not thinking through a life-changing decision, it’s Lumet.
A tense anti-caper written by Kelly Masterson that’s part thriller and part Greek tragedy, “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” shares many traits with such Lumet classics as “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Serpico,” “Network” and “The Verdict,” as well as family-centered stories “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” and “Running on Empty.”
In it, Lumet breaks down the moral cause-and-effect process even further, showing how inexorably all morally compromised roads lead to one very bad Rome. The crime the story revolves around is such a prime specimen in the gallery of regrettable decisions that the director gets it out of the way early, then keeps stepping back and coming back to it for the rest of the movie, as if trying to figure out how all these well-intentioned people got there.
Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a real estate accountant with a cash-flow problem that’s at least partly related to his beautiful, childlike wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei), and a sex problem that’s apparently related to the cash-flow problem. Andy’s brother Hank (Ethan Hawke) has money problems too (divorce, child-support), but they don’t get in the way of his satisfying sex life with Gina. Andy has no idea that Hank and Gina are having an affair when he talks Hank into knocking over a mom-and-pop business that happens to belong to their own mom and pop, though he eventually finds out after the job is botched and their father, Charles (Albert Finney), has dedicated himself to taking revenge on the perpetrator.
What starts out, in Andy’s mind at least, as a victimless crime (insurance will cover their parents’ losses, and their parents will be spared the trauma of being robbed because they’ll rob it during an employee’s shift) quickly twists itself into an Oedipal knot. Andy presses his nervous younger brother into service on the grounds that he himself would be recognized. Hank agrees to do the job but loses his nerve and enlists a lowlife busboy named Bobby (Brian O’Byrne) to pull the trigger. Metaphorically speaking. Unfortunately, Bobby doesn’t stick to the metaphor, and things careen out of control from there.
If Lumet’s stock-in-trade is moral ambiguity, then Hoffman’s is his incredible ability to embody opposing characteristics at once. It’s hard to think of another actor whose characters limn the outer margins of personality so thoroughly. Nobody plays a better miserable, depressive slob than Hoffman, just as nobody plays a crisp, cold operator better than he does. In “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” he’s neither— he’s a powder-keg of pent-up rage packed tightly inside a well-armored, climate-controlled exterior. If it’s possible to slither and purr simultaneously, he does it. Of all the characters, Andy is the most mysterious and the most multifaceted. He lives his life on the surface, on a veneer of perfection, so his secrets spin off in all kinds of unexpected directions. His life is a wonder of controlled lack of control. Even his serious vices are indulged neatly and elegantly.
Signs that Andy is in trouble abound, but he maintains such a cool exterior that it’s not until late in the movie that it becomes obvious he’s driven by personal motives as well as economic ones, no matter how subconsciously. The relationship with his hapless brother is as vicious as it is protective, just as Hank’s relationship to Andy is as idolatrous as it is covetous. Hank is as out-of-control as Andy is reined in. He acts on impulse and reacts like a terrified child. Hawke seems to fall apart on the screen, flailing and lurching from one extreme to another, fighting with his ex-wife and cowering in fear in the corners of his dingy apartment. It’s easy to feel sorry for Hank, the weaker brother, over Andy, the stronger one, especially as Andy continually pokes at his weakness, calling him a “baby.”
The “baby” label comes up a lot, in fact. Charles uses it derisively and then, later, defensively, when Andy confronts him about his upbringing. Being called a baby as a grown man may hurt, but as it becomes clear, it’s also a privilege. Hank is coddled and excused, loved for his cuteness and his puppy-dog eagerness to please. Andy, on the other hand, gets no passes at all. His job is to please others and accept their inability to love him. When Gina walks out on him, she asks for a cab fare, and he patiently tosses her his wallet.
The title “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” is taken from an Irish proverb quoted in its entirety in the opening titles: “May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.” The implication is, of course, that everyone has sins the devil knows about — and could get you for— if you’re not lucky enough to slip past him unnoticed. Lumet’s movie echoes this scrappy trickster spirit. It has no illusions but isn’t cynical. It’s extremely angry but deeply humanistic.
This is no nostalgia trip taken by an 83-year-old director. It’s a fierce, hot slap of a movie, a melodrama with bite.

TITLE: Simon Banned For 30 Matches After Incident on Ice
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNIONDALE, N.Y. — Chris Simon is setting records it seems only he can break.
They’re not tainted, yet certainly most unwanted. The New York Islanders enforcer, who by many accounts is a true gentleman off the ice, just isn’t able to behave on it. Now he will spend the better part of two months trying to figure out if he can.
If he gets another chance, that one could be his last.
Simon topped his previous mark Wednesday when the NHL banished him from the league for 30 games after he took down Pittsburgh’s Jarkko Ruutu with his skate on Saturday and then stomped on the Penguins forward’s foot with his blade.
A bad move, most definitely. The fact it came only nine months after Simon was given the previous longest suspension for an on-ice incident made it even worse. If 25 games wasn’t enough to get the message across, NHL disciplinarian Colin Campbell had to take things further.
“We never considered lifetime,” Campbell said. “But we considered a lengthier suspension than 30 games. We considered a lot of numbers.”
The suspension, Simon’s eighth in a 15-season NHL career, was announced hours before the Islanders played their first game without him since his latest infraction. The effort and drive were there, even though Simon wasn’t, but New York dropped a 2-1 decision at home to the Buffalo Sabres.
“We did everything but score,” Islanders captain Bill Guerin said. “We have the hard work part down, but it’s still a loss.”
One that made the Islanders 1-6-1 in their past eight games. They outshot Buffalo 43-17, but managed to dent Sabres goalie Ryan Miller only once.
Maxim Afinogenov scored with 2:17 left in the third period, just as Buffalo’s sixth power play ended, and the Sabres won their fourth straight.
“They were playing better in our end, but we wound up with the two points,” defenseman Toni Lydman said. “It doesn’t have to be pretty — we won.”
Derek Roy also scored for the Sabres, who split the four-game series after losing twice to the Islanders in the first two games of the season.
New York defenseman Brendan Witt tied the score 1-1 at 3:50 of the third period with his first goal in 71 games.
In other games, it was Detroit 6, Los Angeles 2; Chicago 5, Nashville 2; and Anaheim 2, Colorado 1 in overtime.
Simon, on a leave of absence from the Islanders following the dustup with Ruutu, will miss more than one-third of the season and can’t return until Feb. 21 against Tampa Bay.
“Chris is a good, solid guy,” teammate Bryan Berard said. “He does have that switch where he can snap, and I think that’s why he’s been in the league for so long. It’s a tough sport.”
The 35-year-old Simon left the Islanders on Monday, then met with Campbell on Tuesday in Toronto. Campbell had said Simon would receive drug and alcohol treatment, but the NHL later clarified that Simon’s treatment simply will take place under the auspices of the league and union’s substance abuse and behavioral program.
Counseling details are kept confidential. Islanders spokesman Chris Botta confirmed drugs and alcohol are “not the issue.”
“The doctors who oversee the substance abuse aspect of the joint NHL/NHLPA program also oversee the aspect of behavioral health,” league spokesman Frank Brown said. “It would be improper to draw any inference as to whatever treatment or counseling they may be providing.”
Now everyone involved is waiting to see if Simon can be helped enough to return to the NHL and abide by the rules.
Simon missed the first five games of this season as he finished the 25-game ban he received in March for his two-handed stick swing to the head of Rangers forward Ryan Hollweg.
“He’s very contrite and very apologetic,” Campbell said of Simon during the hearings. “Very quiet, almost to the point where he’s somewhat humiliated by what he’s done himself. And that’s probably the disheartening fact to this.
“You would hope he wouldn’t do it again, but maybe he can’t help himself. I don’t know. He’s never actually come out and said, ‘I will never do this again.’”

TITLE: Bhutto: Spies Are Meddling
AUTHOR: By Kahlid Tanveer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DERA ALLAH YAR, Pakistan — Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto accused Pakistan’s military intelligence Thursday of pressuring candidates from her party to drop out of next month’s parliamentary elections and urged officials to crack down on such harassment.
Bhutto, a two-time former prime minister who recently returned from years of living in exile, told reporters during a campaign stop her party has evidence of interference, though she did not say what it was.
“We demand that the Election Commission should take notice of such things to ensure free and fair elections,” she said, also accusing local mayors of gearing up to cheat.
She urged intelligence agencies to concentrate their efforts on capturing terrorists, adding, “This is not your job to indulge in politics.”
Bhutto also asked the government of President Pervez Musharraf to act against those involved in rigging the vote, reminding him that he has promised the Jan. 8 balloting will be free and fair.
Under pressure from the international community and domestic opposition, Musharraf also has said he would try to work with anyone getting a majority in Parliament. He has called allegations of rigging an attempt by Bhutto and other opposition leaders to create an excuse in case they fare poorly at the ballot box.
Bhutto, traveling in a bulletproof vehicle and accompanied by tight security, was making her first tour to remote areas of Baluchistan province, where tribal elders have waged insurgency to pressure the central government to return more of the wealth from natural resources extracted from their areas.
She urged about 10,000 flag-waving supporters at Dera Allah Yar to reject candidates from the ruling pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League-Q party, saying it had done nothing for the welfare of the masses. 
Later, Bhutto addressed about 4,000 supporters in the nearby town of Jacobabad, promising she would alleviate poverty, create more jobs for youths and improve the ailing economy.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also has been vehemently opposing the pro-Musharraf party, and the two opposition leaders have indicated they may be willing to share power if, as expected, no party wins a majority.
Sharif initially called for a boycott of the vote but later changed his mind after Bhutto refused to join him. Sharif wants Musharraf to restore Supreme Court judges he dismissed after imposing emergency rule Nov. 3.
Although Musharraf lifted the emergency Dec. 15, he has refused to reinstate the deposed judges.

TITLE: Torture Center Found in Northern Iraq
AUTHOR: By Bradley Brooks
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — U.S. soldiers found mass graves north of Baghdad next to a torture center where chains were attached to blood-spattered walls and a metal bed frame was still connected to an electrical shock system, the military said Thursday.
Separately, at least 13 Iraqis were killed when a suicide bomber targeted a group of people who had gathered around U.S. soldiers handing out holiday gifts northeast of Baghdad, authorities said. 
A car bomb exploded outside a liquor store in central Baghdad, killing three civilians and wounding another nine, police said.
The discoveries of the mass graves and torture center near Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, came during a Dec. 8-11 operation.
The torture center, which the U.S. military said it suspected was run by al-Qaida in Iraq, was found based on tips from Iraqis in the area, where the al-Qaida insurgents are very active. Graves containing 26 bodies were found nearby.
“We discovered several (weapons) caches, a torture facility that had chains, a bed — an iron bed that was still connected to a battery — knives and swords that were still covered in blood as we went in to go after the terrorists in that area,” said Army Major General Mark P. Hertling, the top U.S. commander in northern Iraq.
Soldiers found a total of nine caches containing a surface-to-air missile launcher, sniper rifles, 130 pounds of homemade explosives and numerous mortar tubes and rounds, among other weapons.
The operation also saw multiple battles between U.S. troops and militants, and the military said it killed 24 insurgents and detained 37 others.
Despite a nationwide decrease in violence of nearly 60 percent, Diyala province, where the torture center was found, is still turbulent — largely because the summer influx of U.S. troops in Baghdad, a freeze on activities by the Mahdi Army militia and the rise of Sunni anti-al-Qaida “awakening” groups have pushed militants into the area.
“Yes, there are still some very bad things going on in that province,” Hertling said. “We are slower in coming around because ... some of the extremists have been pushed east from Anbar province as they’ve seen the awakening movement there and north from Baghdad as the surge operations took place there.”
Hertling said, however, that the number of roadside bombings against coalition and Iraqi troops in the area had decreased between 40 percent and 50 percent since summer. He said there were 849 such attacks in November, compared with 1,698 in June.
But he also warned that al-Qaida in Iraq was still capable of massive violence.
“You know, there’s going to be continued spectacular attacks,” Hertling said. “We’re trying, along with the Iraq army, to protect all the infrastructure of Iraq. These people who are fighting us, who are fighting the Iraqi people, continue to just destroy with no intent to contribute to what Iraq is trying to be.”
In Baghdad, shops were closed and the streets were empty as people observed the Eid al-Adha holiday, which commemorates the prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for God. According to Muslim tradition, after Abraham expresses his willingness, God sends the prophet two sheep instead for slaughter.
Violence this week has been down across Iraq — even in comparison to the recent drops in attacks — perhaps as a result of the holiday. On Wednesday, only one body was found in Baghdad and there was just one reported killing.
However, 13 civilians were killed Thursday east of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, when a man wearing an explosives vest blew himself up amid a crowd that had gathered around U.S. soldiers handing out holiday gifts, a local policeman said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
It was not clear if the attack near Kanaan, a Shiite-dominated town about 13 miles east of Baqouba, killed or wounded any of the soldiers. At least 18 people were hurt in the attack.
Separately, the U.S. military said that its preliminary investigation into a Dec. 17 incident in which a Marine killed an Iraqi policeman as they manned a joint security station north of Ramadi showed both men suffered cuts during a fight. It was not clear what sparked the altercation.
The military said the Marine, who was not identified and was treated at a hospital and released after the fight, was not yet facing charges, but that the investigation was ongoing.

TITLE: England Left in Disarray by Sri Lanka
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: GALLE, Sri Lanka — Chaminda Vaas claimed four for 24 to leave England in disarray on 61 for six when rain stopped play in the third and final test against England on Thursday. 
Sri Lanka had earlier piled up 499 for eight declared with Mahela Jayawardene extending his overnight score to 213 not out. 
England, trailing 1-0 in the series, lost the wickets of Michael Vaughan (one), Ian Bell (one), Alastair Cook (13) and Kevin Pietersen (one) during a disastrous 40-minute session before the lunch break. 
Vaughan was trapped lbw as he padded-up to a big inswinger from Chaminda Vaas and Bell was brilliantly run out by a direct hit from Tillakaratne Dilshan to leave England to 9 for 2. 
Vaas then found the outside edge of Cook, who felt for an outswinger, and Lasith Malinga produced a brutish short delivery to have Pietersen caught behind taking evasive action. 
Wickets tumbled again straight the break with Ravi Bopara (nought) chipping a catch to mid on and Matthew Prior being clean bowled by a Vaas delivery that kept low. 
The tourists were steadied by Paul Colingwood, who is 23 not out batting with Ryan Sidebottom on seven. 
A tropical downpour forced the players off the field midway through the afternoon session. 
Earlier, Jayawardene had extended his overnight score of 149 — a record 21st century for Sri Lanka — to reach his fourth double hundred. 
Sri Lanka raised the tempo of the innings as they pursued quick runs, adding 115 runs in just 19.5 overs. 
Jayawardene’s remarkable innings — on a pitch that has been helpful for the bowlers throughout the first three days — lasted 10 hours and 13 minutes, spanning 411 deliveries and including 25 boundaries. 
The Sri Lanka captain brought up his double century with a glorious lofted cover drive of Steve Harmison. 
Jayawardene was supported by Vaas, who scored 90 from 133 deliveries during partnership that added 183 runs for the seventh wicket — a Sri Lanka record against England. 
England’s fielding was once again poor with Matthew Prior grassing his third catch of the innings, this time off Jayawardene early in the session. 
The ground fielding of the tired tourists also became shoddy with frequent misfields and fumbles. England’s most successful bowler was Steve Harmison with 3 for 104 from 34 overs.

TITLE: Turkey: Iraq Operation May Be Continued
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s military may stage more cross-border operations into northern Iraq to hunt down separatist Kurdish rebels, Turkey’s parliament speaker said Thursday, as the justice minister again urged the rebels to surrender.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan thanked the Turkish armed forces, calling their operations successful, and said Turkey was at an important stage of its fight against the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, who are based in northern Iraq.
Turkey, which has massed thousands of troops along the border, sent hundreds of them across into the mountains of northern Iraq on Tuesday. It said it inflicted heavy losses on Turkish Kurd rebels in a small-scale incursion that lasted about 15 hours — and in air strikes by as many as 50 fighter jets on suspected rebel hideouts two days earlier.
“The Turkish armed forces will carry on with these operations whenever they are needed,” parliament speaker Koksal Toptan said Thursday.
Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin said, “I hope the members of the terrorist group understand that they cannot achieve their aim by fighting the security forces.”

TITLE: China Moves To Simplify Entry Rules Before Games
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BEIJING — Visitors to China will no longer have to fill in health declaration forms from next month as a way of simplifying entry procedures ahead of next year’s Beijing Olympics, state media said on Thursday. 
Instead, visitors would have to tell border officials of any illness, the China Daily said. 
“The move aims to simplify immigration procedures and improve efficiency,” it quoted a joint issued by the national quarantine watchdog and civil aviation regulator as saying. 
The health forms were started during the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which began in the southern province of Guangdong in late 2002. 
Passengers would still have to fill in entry and customs declaration forms, the newspaper added. 
“The complicated procedures have led to growing public complaints as passenger flows increase rapidly,” it said. 
Olympic organizers expect 70 million visits by foreigners next year, up from 44 million in 2006. 
“The rapid increase in passenger traffic poses a challenge. So we’re making great efforts to simplify immigration procedures,” the report quoted quarantine official Xia Wenjun as saying.

TITLE: Official: Enough Evidence to Charge Zuma
AUTHOR: By Michell Faul
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: POLOKWANE, South Africa — South Africa’s top prosecutor said Thursday he had enough evidence to bring corruption charges against Jacob Zuma, the man standing in line to be the country’s next president.
Mokotedi Mpshe told The Associated Press that prosecutors would announce in the new year the next step in their investigation into the allegations against Zuma, who was elected party leader of the African National Congress on Tuesday.
“The type of evidence we have so far can be taken to court,” said Mpshe, who is investigating allegations Zuma accepted bribes from the French arms company Thint to stop investigations into a multibillion-dollar arms deal.
A spokeswoman for Zuma said he had no comment on the announcement. Zuma has consistently denied the allegations.
Zuma, whose political career so far has managed to survive sex and corruption scandals, routed President Thabo Mbeki to win the ANC presidency at a divisive party convention. Zuma loyalists also won all other top party posts.
The possibility Zuma would be charged with corruption had hovered over the ANC congress since it opened Sunday, but his supporters had insisted he was innocent and the target of a political smear campaign.
The ANC leader is traditionally the party’s presidential candidate, and overwhelming support for the party throughout South Africa has ensured victories for first Nelson Mandela in 1994, then Mbeki in 1999 and 2004. Mbeki is prevented by constitutional term limits from running again in 2009, but if he had won a third term as ANC leader, he would have been in position to groom his successor.
The prosecutor’s comments Thursday were likely to focus attention on the new deputy president of the African National Congress, Zuma ally Kgalema Motlanthe, who would be in line to take over the ANC — and, presumably, its presidential nomination — should Zuma be forced to step aside.
In his former position as secretary-general, the 59-year-old Motlanthe was in charge of the day-to-day running of the party. Often seen at Zuma’s side, he also has maintained relationships with people inside Mbeki’s camp.
He told reporters this week that the prospect of Zuma facing fresh charges “is very difficult to deal with.” He noted that Zuma already has been charged in the case, in 2005, when it was thrown out of court.
“The prosecution will have a second bite at him and we will see how that pans out,” Motlanthe said.
Last year, Zuma was acquitted of raping a family friend, but he outraged AIDS activists by testifying that he had unprotected, consensual sex with the HIV-positive woman and then took a shower in the belief that it would protect him from the AIDS virus.
Zuma rose to power on the backs of trade unionists, communists and the poor. His challenge now is to satisfy his supporters without sacrificing the nation’s economy.
He has been careful to make no promises and his first official pronouncements as ANC president, expected Thursday, are much anticipated, both by ordinary people and investors in Africa’s largest economy.
Joel Netshitenzhe, the chief government spokesman, sought to allay fears that Zuma’s radical and populist allies would push for changes that would send the economy sliding. He said the ANC would not do anything “to cause a destabilization of governance.”
Mbeki’s market-oriented policies produced an economic boom and created a small black elite, but the benefits have not trickled down.