SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1405 (69), Friday, September 5, 2008
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TITLE: Charges Dropped 
In Reznik Fight Case
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Dzerzhinsky Federal Court on Wednesday ended a criminal case against Maxim Reznik, head of the local branch of the democratic party Yabloko, dropping the charges and releasing him, after the three police officers that had filed suits against the politician earlier this year withdrew their evidence from the case.
Maxim Reznik had been charged with insulting and physically assaulting a state representative, a crime that carries a term of up to five years in prison. 
Speaking at the courtroom on Wednesday, the policemen confirmed that the fight took place but said they no longer wish to sue Reznik and will be happy to drop the charges. The plaintiffs refused to comment on their decisions, and simply said the incident had been resolved.
The case had been surrounded by murky circumstances.
Shortly after 2 a.m. on March 3, Reznik was leaving Yabloko headquarters in central St. Petersburg when, according to accounts given to reporters by him and his lawyer, he saw a street fight a few meters away. He intervened to try to stop the fight. Within a minute, Reznik claimed, a police van arrived at speed, and officers seized him. Mysteriously, the men who had been fighting managed to escape and their identities were never established.
Reznik remains convinced the case was linked to his oppositional political activities. The politician feels the incident was a deliberate attack on him with an eye to preventing him from taking part in the Dissenters’ March later that day and the New Agenda for Democratic Movement meeting on April 6.
The incident was widely seen as having been politically motivated.
“How likely is it that this bespectacled 33-year-old, whose only sport is chess, managed to assault three police officers at the scene?” said Yuly Rybakov of the Memorial human rights group in St. Petersburg. “Even supposing he did what he has been charged with, the gravity of such a crime is hardly that of murder, banditry, treason, or rape — crimes for which pretrial detention would be appropriate. Nor is Reznik of unsound mind, a repeat offender, or in possession of any national secrets.”
But maybe he is something more dangerous — a prominent critic of the government, Rybakov continued. As such he claims to have been closely watched by the police over the past several years.
The police version of events alleged that Reznik offered physical resistance and assaulted three police officers. 
Colleagues of Reznik believe that the rapid arrival on the scene of the police was planned. The police have long taken an interest in Yabloko; its offices have been raided and searched and its leaflets confiscated more than once. Yabloko activists have complained that their party headquarters in St. Petersburg was under police surveillance before protest marches and other political gatherings. 
Reznik has been one of the most uncompromising and vocal critics of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko.
The fight with the police happened in the early hours of March 3, just hours after Reznik appeared on a live television show on the local channel 100TV showing a pile of ballots he claimed he had received at a local polling station after pretending he wanted to vote for Dmitry Medvedev in the presidential election held that day. Medvedev won the election with 70 percent of the vote. 
“I never doubted the connection,” Reznik said. “The ‘victims’ themselves [the policemen] told me they felt pressured to file the suit. One of the policemen told me in private that if it had been a [ruling] United Russia politician in my situation on that unfortunate night, it would have been them facing the charges and being placed behind bars.”
Reznik’s lawyer, Olga Tseitlina, said it was because the policemen were honest that the charges were dropped. 
“They had told us that there had been pressure on them to testify against Reznik,” she said. “Nevertheless, they took the decision to tell the truth because apparently they did not want to live with perjury and a sense of guilt.”
Opportunities for legal political activity by opposition forces were severely eroded under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in his two terms as president from 2000-2008. 
“Bad things can happen to politicians who challenge the authorities,” Rybakov said. “The Reznik case, despite its peaceful resolution, remains a warning.”

TITLE: Medvedev and Putin Call Up the Networks
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Almost immediately after the war between Russia and Georgia erupted on Aug. 8 over the breakaway Georgian republic of South Ossetia, a leading foreign news network requested an interview with President Dmitry Medvedev.
But nearly three weeks passed before Medvedev finally sat down with the network on Aug. 26, when Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.
“We were ready to meet with Medvedev at any hour, day or night,” a producer with the network said on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to talk to the media.
The delay stood in stark contrast to the readiness of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who was giving one live interview after the other to international networks and was widely seen to have won the propaganda war with Russia, though Russian forces crushed Georgia militarily.
Saakashvili’s PR offensive was ridiculed in Russian state-controlled media as an example of Western bias. But Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin now appear to be trying to play catch-up, having given eight interviews with foreign networks over the past eight days.
Hours after announcing Russia’s recognition of the two rebel Georgian republics, Medvedev gave interviews to CNN, BBC, the French network TF-1 and Al-Jazeera.
Putin followed suit with an Aug. 28 interview with CNN and Germany’s ARD network the following day.
Euronews broadcast an interview with Medvedev on Monday, and Medvedev said in an interview broadcast Tuesday by Italian RAI television that Moscow would not negotiate with Saakashvili, whom he called a “political corpse.”
Asked why Medvedev and Putin were so slow to present Russia’s case to the international media, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said both men were too busy for interviews in the early days of the conflict because they were working hard to defend Russia’s stance “on other levels.”
“They could not afford to spend as much time and effort as Saakashvili did then,” Peskov said. “Also, many Western media took a biased position from the very beginning.”
Numerous Western journalists have said their efforts to cover the war impartially were hampered by Russia, particularly in the conflict zone, where access was tightly controlled for foreign reporters.
GPlus Europe, a London- and Brussels-based public relations firm hired by the Kremlin in 2006 to improve Russia’s image in the West, did not respond to a telephone request for comment Wednesday in time for publication.
Medvedev and Putin understood that with no foreign television crews in South Ossetia when the conflict broke out, interviews with foreign media would have been detrimental to their case, political analysts said. 
The president and prime minister would have been speaking of Russia’s peacekeeping mission alongside images of Russian tanks moving into Georgia proper, said Alexei Makarkin, of the Center for Political Technologies.
Medvedev and Putin also dodged the international media in order to avoid questions about Russia’s possible recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia — hence their wave of interviews following the recognition, analysts said.
With the propaganda war largely over, the Kremlin is now carrying out damage control by using the international media to address Western elites rather than the general Western public, which has already largely sided with Georgia based on television coverage of the conflict, said Alexei Mukhin of the Center for Political Information.
Asked to comment on why Medvedev waited so long to talk to the Western press, a duty officer at the Kremlin press office referred all inquiries to another Kremlin spokesman.
Repeated calls to that spokesman’s office went unanswered Wednesday.

TITLE: Cheney Slams Russia Over War
AUTHOR: By Steve Gutterman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — Demonstrating Washington’s support for war-ravaged Georgia, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney condemned Russia for what he called an “illegitimate, unilateral attempt” to redraw this U.S. ally’s borders by force.
Speaking during a closely watched trip to this strategic South Caucasus nation, Cheney also said the United States was “fully committed” to Georgian efforts to join NATO.
“Georgia will be in our alliance,” Cheney told reporters while standing alongside Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.
One of the U.S. administration’s most hawkish figures and a longtime critic of Russia, Cheney was visiting Georgia and two other ex-Soviet republics — Azerbaijan and Ukraine — that are nervous about Moscow’s intentions.
The trip signaled to Moscow that the United States will continue cultivating close ties with Georgia and its neighbors even after Russia showed it was willing to use military force against countries along its border.
“America will do its duty to work with the governments of Georgia and our other friends and allies to protect our common interests and to uphold our values,” Cheney said in the joint appearance with Saakashvili.
“Russia’s actions have cast grave doubts on Russia’s intentions and on its reliability as an international partner,” he added.
Since the war in Georgia last month, Russia has boldly asserted it has what President Dmitry Medvedev called “privileged interests” in its sphere of influence, which includes the former Soviet states in the South Caucasus.
The United States is at Georgia’s side, Cheney said, “as you work to overcome an invasion of your sovereign territory and an illegitimate, unilateral attempt to change your country’s borders by force, that has been universally condemned by the free world.”
On the eve of his arrival, the White House announced a US$1 billion commitment to help the small but strategically located nation recover from its war with Russia.
Cheney also thanked Georgia for sending troops to Iraq. Georgia has been the third largest contributor of troops to the U.S.-led operation there.
“Now it is the responsibility of the free world to rally to the side of Georgia,” the American vice president added.
Saakashvili said Georgia was committed to a peaceful resolution of its disputes with the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia, which has given military, political and financial support to the two areas, has recognized both as independent nations.
Saakashvili also said Georgia was grateful for the aid, which matched his government’s estimate of war damages.
“Together with our other partners, in Europe, America and elsewhere, we will rebuild Georgia,” Saakashvili said. “We feel that we are not alone.”
Medvedev has called Saakashvili a “political corpse” and Moscow has urged an arms ban while he is still in power. Cheney, however, signaled Washington’s continuing strong support.
“You have been fearless in response to the occupation of your country and steadfast in your principles. We respect you,” Cheney told the Georgian president.
A day earlier, Cheney visited Azerbaijan, where a million-barrel-a-day pipeline runs from the Caspian Sea shores into Georgia and on into Turkey. The pipeline is the only direct route for Europe-bound Caspian oil to bypass Russia. Caspian oil also goes to Georgian ports by another pipeline and by rail.
Because of Cheney’s itinerary, “we see this as a very clear sign that alternative energy routes and sources will be secured,” Georgian national security council head Alexander Lomaia told The Associated Press.
The massive U.S. aid package was to be a major highlight of Cheney’s meetings in Tbilisi, but he will likely leave unanswered the question of potential U.S. aid to rebuild Georgia’s military.
Military aid from the United States and some Western European countries was key to transforming the Georgian army and navy from their ragged post-Soviet condition into a credible fighting force. Yet routed by Russian forces, the Georgian military will need more Western aid to rebuild if the country is to join NATO.
Angry Russian officials have repeatedly said U.S. military aid was instrumental in emboldening Georgia to try to retake South Ossetia by force on Aug. 7. The attack sparked five days of fighting and resulted in Russian forces driving into South Ossetia and on into Georgia.
New U.S. military aid to Georgia would further aggravate relations between Washington and Moscow, which are already at a post-Cold War low.
Russia has also condemned the U.S. use of warships to deliver aid as a form of gunboat diplomacy. The flagship of the U.S. 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean, the USS Mount Whitney, arrived in the Black Sea on Wednesday with a cargo of aid.
Cheney was to spend only a few hours in Georgia before flying to Ukraine. The somber stopover contrasted with U.S. President George W. Bush’s exuberant visit in May 2005, when Bush spoke to a vast crowd in Tbilisi with Saakashvili.

TITLE: Yevroset Investigated In 
2 Criminal Investigations
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko, John Wendle
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — Yevroset faced twin criminal investigations this week, in what an industry source and analysts said appeared to be an attempt to undermine the possible sale of a stake in the country’s largest mobile phone retailer. 
The Prosecutor General’s Office announced that it was investigating whether Yevroset had smuggled handsets into the country and whether a senior company executive had been involved in kidnapping and extortion.
Yevroset co-owners Timur Artemyev and Yevgeny Chichvarkin denied wrongdoing by the company or its executives.
“I know everything that’s happening at the company, and nobody at our company has been kidnapping people or involved in extortion,” Artemyev said by telephone. 
He also denied smuggling, saying Yevroset had successfully defended itself from similar charges in the past and would do so again. 
In August 2007, investigators carried out searches at Yevroset and its smaller rivals Dixis and Betalink in connection with a 2005 contraband case opened after police impounded 200,000 handsets at Sheremetyevo Airport.
Yevroset first learned something was wrong late Tuesday when police raided its Moscow headquarters. The search ended around 6 a.m. Wednesday, Artemyev said.
The Prosecutor General’s Office, which disclosed the reason for the raid Wednesday, provided scant details about the investigations and did not release the name of the senior executive, whom it said in a statement was suspected of kidnapping, extortion and “arbitrariness.” A spokesman for the office’s Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, said two suspects had been detained.
Several media outlets reported late Wednesday that one of the detainees was Yevroset vice president of security Boris Levin. Artemyev said he could not confirm that Levin was detained but said it was possible because the company could not reach him or his relatives.

TITLE: EU Praised by Medvedev For Not Using Sanctions
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday praised the European Union’s decision to reject slapping sanctions on Russia over its war with Georgia but criticized the Western bloc for failing to understand the Kremlin’s motives in the conflict. 
“In my view, the outcome is double-edged,” Medvedev said of a resolution reached by EU leaders at the Monday summit in Brussels. 
The heads of the EU’s 27 member states at the emergency summit voted unanimously to postpone talks on a partnership agreement with Moscow until Russia removes its troops from Georgia. 
They failed, however, to reach a consensus on whether Russia should be punished with sanctions over its refusal to withdraw troops from Georgia proper and its recognition of the breakaway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. 
In an interview with the Euronews television channel recorded at his residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Medvedev said the EU’s criticism is a result of the bloc’s failure to understand why Moscow sent its troops into Georgia and to recognize the rebel regions. 
“This is sad, but not fatal, because things change in this world,” he said.
Medvedev nevertheless commended the EU for refraining from sanctions, calling the decision “more positive.”
“Despite certain divisions among the EU states on the issue, a reasonable, realistic point of view prevailed, despite some of the states calling for some mythical sanctions,” he said.
Medvedev’s assessment echoed those voiced earlier Tuesday by the Foreign Ministry and Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin. 
“A number of countries called for imposing sanctions on Russia and freezing relations … but they remained in minority while the majority of the members displayed a responsible approach, reaffirming the course for partnership with Russia,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Rogozin told Interfax that the EU’s decision not to impose sanctions marked a defeat for Poland and the bloc’s three Baltic states — former Soviet republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — which he accused of “implementing Washington’s line for undermining pan-European cooperation.”
The EU is insisting that Russia withdraw its troops from Georgia according to the six-point peace plan brokered last month by French President Nicolas Sarkozy after the Russian military crushed Georgian forces attempting to retake South Ossetia.
Sarkozy, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said in Brussels that he would lead an EU delegation to Moscow next Monday for talks on the current standoff in the South Caucasus. “We will have to re-examine our partnership with Russia,” Sarkozy said Monday, calling on Moscow not to isolate itself.
In an opinion piece published in several major dailies worldwide Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband warned that Moscow risks paying both a political and economic price for its actions.
“It has made short-term military gains, but over time it will feel economic and political losses,” Miliband wrote. “If Russia truly wants respect and influence, it must change course.” 
Like Sarkozy, however, Miliband advised against isolating Russia, calling on the EU to pursue “hard-headed engagement” with Moscow.
The White House, which has staunchly supported Georgia in the conflict, welcomed the EU’s decision to boost its involvement in resolving the crisis while also promising to assist Tbilisi in its recovery from the war. 
“The extraordinary EU summit demonstrates that Europe and the United States are united in standing firm behind Georgia’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and reconstruction,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, The Associated Press reported. “We also agree with the EU’s conclusion that Russia has a choice to make in order not to isolate itself from Europe.”
The United States has been supplying Georgia with humanitarian aid and, jointly with several other NATO countries, has deployed warships in the Black Sea in the wake of the conflict.

TITLE: U.S. To Give $1Bln to Georgia
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Washington on Wednesday announced an aid package of more than $1 billion to help Georgia rebuild after its war with Russia.
The aid package totals $1.07 billion for reconstruction, with $570 million to be disbursed this year and $500 million subsequently, U.S. officials said. None of the money is expected to go for military aid, a highly sensitive issue to Moscow.
A significant proportion will be devoted to budget support as well as to rebuild housing, transportation and other infrastructure destroyed in the conflict, one source said.
The White House plans to approach the campaigns of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and Republican John McCain to seek their commitment to continue the assistance after President George W. Bush leaves office on Jan. 20, the officials said.
The amount of the aid package appeared to dovetail with a proposal by Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, who has called for Congress to approve $1 billion in aid to Georgia -- a proposal Obama has endorsed.
Also Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund agreed in principle to lend Georgia $750 million over 18 months to soften the economic impact of the war.
Georgia has requested $1 billion to $2 billion in international aid to repair and develop infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Russia on Wednesday suspended consular operations at its shuttered embassy in Tbilisi so that ordinary Georgians cannot visit relatives in Russia.
The suspension, which means no new applications for Russian entry visas will be accepted, aims to weaken Georgia’s leadership by creating problems for its people. It came after Georgia severed diplomatic ties with Russia last week.
“A break-off of diplomatic ties is an action that has a price,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said Wednesday in Moscow, adding that the ministry is also considering other measures.
Without visas, Georgians cannot travel to Russia unless they have dual citizenship. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Georgians live in Russia, some with Russian citizenship.
Russia closed its embassy in Tbilisi on Tuesday after receiving formal notice from Georgia that it was severing diplomatic ties, Consul Valery Vasilyev said. He said employees had taken down Russian flags and other symbols that adorned the building.
The Georgian Embassy in Moscow closed Wednesday, and all embassy officials will leave by the end of September, said its charge d’affaires, Givi Shugarov.
(AP, Reuters)

TITLE: One in 10 Russians Found Guilty of Crimes
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — More than one in 10 of the country’s citizens have been convicted of crimes over the past 15 years, a retired Supreme Court judge wrote Tuesday in government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Tuesday. 
Criticizing the social consequences of what he called excessively harsh sentencing. Former Supreme Court deputy chairman Vladimir Radchenko wrote that between 1992 and 2007, more than 15 million people were found guilty of crimes — the equivalent of one-quarter of the male population. 
Of those people, 5 million were jailed, and the population now includes 8 million ex-convicts, Radchenko wrote.
“Our own historical experience shows that excessive harshening of criminal legislation and strengthening of the punitive system gives the opposite results,” Radchenko wrote. He cited a growth in crime after Khrushchev’s clampdown on hooliganism in 1966. 
The prison population now numbers 895,000, up from 763,000 prisoners in 2003. The increases come despite a recent fall in serious crimes such as premeditated murder and rape, Radchenko said.
The current Criminal Code “differs from the previous one in a number of aspects in its excessive cruelty,” he wrote. “You come to the same conclusion if you compare our criminal legislation with that of European countries such as Germany, Austria and Italy.” 
Too many suspects are being detained for crimes without sufficient evidence, he added.

TITLE: City Hall Unveils Plan for Housing Redevelopment
AUTHOR: By Boris Kamchev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In a bid to develop and modernize outlying areas of the city, City Hall last week announced a “revolutionary” public-private partnership program for the reconstruction of 40 residential districts, most of them consisting of run-down buildings built under former Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev and known as Khrushchyovky. The program “aims to improve the living conditions of thousands of citizens,” according to St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, and will be realized using funds from private investors and contractors, who will be selected at several forthcoming tenders. The first tender is expected to be held in November, and City Hall has already called on potential investors to send their notifications of interest. 
“Construction companies have two months to apply after the information about the tender is published by the St. Petersburg Property Fund on Monday (Sept. 1),” Roman Filimonov, head of City Hall’s construction committee, said last week.
The Kirovsky district has been selected as a pilot developmental project, where 15 Khrushchyovky and 48 other residential buildings will be reconstructed or demolished. 
After the new apartment buildings are complete, investors will sell the property to the city, which will return the deeds to the previous residents who previously agreed to exchange their old Khrushchyovka-style apartments for new ones. The maximum time period for the realization of the projects is nine years.
According to City Hall, the initial price for the planned work in the Kirovsky district will be $12.5 million. 
The new project also has a social aspect to it — the living space of the new apartments will meet the minimal requirements stipulated by the city: 33 square meters for single residents and 18 square meters for each family member. The city will allocate money from its budget for the construction of one kindergarten for 380 children and one school for 1,250 pupils in every reconstructed residential district.
City Hall’s press office announced that the city plans to invest $1.5 billion in total into the development program. By attracting private investment, the city expects to renovate 40 percent of the city’s residential buildings.
In 2009, the city will allocate $1 billion from its budget for the construction of social residential buildings, Matviyenko said Thursday at a conference held during the ProEstate forum.
“This is not such a profitable program for us. By settling residents in new and contemporary buildings using a public-private initiative, we will solve the problem of run-down residential districts, creating an opportunity to develop St. Petersburg’s territory,” said the governor. 
Analysts say that as a result of the new buildings, the size of the population living in the renovated and developed residential districts will increase by 20-30 percent during the next nine years. 
According to Becar Realty Group, demand on the St. Petersburg housing market dropped by 33 percent in the first half of the year.
Analysts say that the remaining demand on the housing market is supported by city subsidies for improving the living conditions of citizens.
“Mortgages are fully supported by city subsidies — up to 30 percent of an apartment’s value can be financed by the city. The sums provided by the city budget for this purpose are growing every year,” Leonid Sandalov, deputy director of Becar real estate, was quoted as saying by RBC news agency.   
Experts are unanimous that the purchasing capacity of residents has not been diminished, thanks to the subsidies and programs of the St. Petersburg housing committee. 
“It is injecting cash into the construction business as well into as the secondary real estate market, thus saving it from crises like those that we are seeing in the other countries,” said Mariana Belykova, managing director of the Baltic Mortgage Corporation.
According to experts, demand on the real estate market is also supported by residents of other cities and by foreigners, who consider St. Petersburg a promising investment center. 
“The Russian market looks very promising next to any other market: we are seeing ongoing crises on the London housing market, the same situation in Spain — where should people invest?” Maxim Gasiev, regional manager for investment services at Colliers International, was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.

TITLE: State Props Up Real Estate Market
AUTHOR: By Yevgeny Rozhkov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The aftermath of the global credit crunch and the possible impact on the national real estate market of the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia were widely discussed during the PROEstate 2008 International Investment Forum held in St. Petersburg from Wednesday to Friday, in which about 300 companies from 30 countries participated.   
The Russian government is planning to give the real estate market a helping hand in the shape of billions of rubles in investments, said Dmitry Kozak, head of the country’s Ministry of Economic Development, at the opening ceremony at the Lenexpo exhibition complex.
“A complex time like the present requires a more elaborate approach to similar forums where there is an opportunity to express and listen to expert opinions, to criticize and be criticized,” Alexander Olkhovsky, president of the Guild of Property Managers and Developers and one of the hosts of PROEstate 2008, said in a radio broadcast.  
A major global concern is commercial property transaction volumes, which in the first half of 2008 fell by 41 percent from the record levels seen in 2007. At just $236 billion, investment volumes were almost back to 2005 levels. 
“The fall in volume was driven by global credit conditions which made debt both less available and more expensive. As a result, many purchasers are unwilling or unable to transact at prices seen in 2007, while vendors are unwilling to reduce expectations.  This has caused a stand-off between buyers and sellers, particularly for large lot sizes,” said Tony Horrell, CEO of European Capital Markets at Jones Lang LaSalle.
Despite the lower volumes, the trend toward the globalization of real estate ownership was maintained, with cross-border investment activity continuing to account for almost 45 percent of total transaction volumes. There were however regional variations, with the proportion of cross-border activity increasing from 25 percent to 30 percent in the Americas, but falling from 46 percent to 34 percent in Asia Pacific and from 66 percent to 58 percent in Europe.
“With the investment slowdown in Europe and the U.S., Russia makes a promising contrast, as investments in real estate here continue to soar,” said Vladimir Pantushin, director at Jones Lang LaSalle’s department of economic and strategic  research.
Experts explain the difference in market conditions as due to the positive economic situation in Russia, which has enjoyed $4.4 billion in investments during the first six months of 2008 — a 240 percent leap compared to last year.
During the first half of 2008, foreign companies invested $2.26 billion in St. Petersburg — a nine percent increase compared to last year, according to statistics from City Hall’s Committee for Economic Development. Carmakers including General Motors and Nissan hold a combined share of 15 percent on St. Petersburg’s real estate market, and lead the parade of investors. 
Analysts doubt that the Russian real estate market will suffer any negative impact as a result of the Kremlin’s blitzkrieg war in Georgia, although some restrictions and sanctions set by the EU may scare interested investors away from the country or complicate the procedure of penetrating the national market. 
“The local [Russian] economy depends mainly on oil prices. Therefore Russia is provided with considerable revenues invested in real estate, which is seeing a more rapid growth in pricing and payback than anywhere else in Europe,” said Alexei Lazutin, director of the commercial real estate department at Becar Realty Group Spb. 
The cross-influence of the bond market and real estate market is a more important concern among dealers. 
“These are the direct competitors in Russia, and with the decline seen in bonds sales, real estate will probably attract even more investments,” said Leonid Sadalov, deputy director at Becar Realty Group.
The volume of foreign investments in the construction sector of St. Petersburg totaled $143 million — just three percent of the entire investment turnover in the city, experts say. But growth will inevitably slow down in St. Petersburg, since, according to the local authorities, the city already lacks available land resources, labor and other facilities.

TITLE: Indexes Keep Falling, Ruble Declines
AUTHOR: By William Mauldin
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s RTS Index continued to fall Thursday, giving it the biggest two-day drop since January, led by Sberbank and VTB Group on concern a weaker ruble may fuel inflation, leading to higher borrowing costs and slower economic growth.
The dollar-denominated RTS retreated 3.9 percent Thursday for a two-day loss of eight percent. The ruble-denominated Micex Index sank 3.3 percent after earlier gaining as much as two percent.
UniCredit SpA cut its price estimate for Russian bank stocks, citing higher borrowing rates and concerns about corporate credit. The Micex Corporate Bond Index fell to the lowest level since at least 2003, reflecting the higher risk of corporate bonds that are traded in Moscow. The ruble declined to the lowest against the dollar in almost a year.
“The latest sharp fall in the ruble is acting as a rip current for local equities, deepening concern about inflation and capital outflows going forward,” said Erik DePoy, strategist at Alfa Bank in Moscow.
The ruble headed for its biggest weekly drop against the dollar since the second week of August, slipping to 25.3202 per dollar by 5:59 p.m. in Moscow, the weakest since Sept. 14, 2007.
A weakening currency tends to contribute to inflation as the costs of imports rise. Higher borrowing rates reduce demand for loans and raise the risk of defaults. The ruble also slipped against the euro Thursday, the currency of Russia’s biggest trading partner.
Russia’s stock market is the world’s worst performer this quarter because of concerns about inflation and a possible economic slowdown as well as political risk after Russian troops and warplanes entered Georgia last month.
“We estimate total capital flight of at least $19 billion since the beginning of the conflict with Georgia, and expect the outflows to continue, or even intensify, if the tensions between Russia and much of the world escalate,” UniCredit analyst Rustam Botashev said Thursday. 
“This turn of events could drive the ruble down further and increase Russian banks’ borrowing costs.”

TITLE: BP-TNK Partners Reach Agreement
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark and Eduard Gismatullin
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — BP and its billionaire partners in TNK-BP, Russia’s third-largest oil company, agreed to oust the chief executive officer and expand the board to resolve an eight-month dispute that threatened the British company’s future in the country.
TNK-BP CEO Robert Dudley will step down by the end of the year, the partners said Thursday in e-mailed statements. The shareholders will also examine selling shares in a unit of TNK-BP Ltd., to boost the company’s market value, and will bring three independent directors onto the board. BP rose as much as 4.9 percent in London trading, the biggest gain since April 29.
The accord leaves BP with its stake in the 50-50 venture intact while acceding to demands by the Russian billionaires for a more independent board. TNK-BP accounts for almost a quarter of BP’s global output and reserves and Russia is the world’s second-largest oil exporter. The dispute hit TNK-BP’s output and discouraged investors in the Russian stock market, contributing to a 30 percent decline in the Micex index this year.
It’s “certainly positive to see a plan for cessation of hostilities, with BP preserving its 50 percent stake and an opportunity to release part of the value via an initial public offering,” Ivor Pether, who helps oversee about $17 billion at Royal London Asset Management, said Thursday. “But it’s hard to envisage who would qualify as an independent director,” given how polarized the dispute was, he said.
Russian investors Mikhail Fridman, German Khan, Viktor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik made removing Dudley, who has headed the venture since it was formed in 2003, central to negotiations, saying he favored BP’s interests over theirs. The American executive and London-based BP both denied that.
The shareholders agreed to expand the board of TNK-BP Ltd. to 11 directors, four from each side and three independents. The current board has 10 members, split evenly between BP and AAR, which represents the Russian billionaires, the companies said.
The Kremlin has emerged as the winner in previous squabbles in the Russian energy industry, as then-President Vladimir Putin sought to strengthen the state’s control over assets. Last year, Royal Dutch Shell sold a controlling interest in its $22 billion Sakhalin Island oil and natural gas project to Gazprom, the state-controlled energy company. Shell’s move came after a government environmental watchdog threatened to revoke permits and stop work at the project.
Yukos Oil was bankrupted after the government claimed more than $30 billion in back taxes. The company’s founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is serving eight years in a Siberian labor camp. Rosneft, under Sechin’s watch, acquired many of Yukos’s assets in government auctions to pay the tax claims.
For President Dmitry Medvedev, who took office in May, TNK-BP was the first big test of his energy policies. Medvedev was chairman of Gazprom for six years as the gas producer and pipeline owner grew to be the third-largest company in the world by market capitalization. The TNK-BP dispute is part of a wider global trend in which state-controlled energy companies are battling international rivals for access to oil and gas.
Clashes with foreign investors may hobble Russia’s ability to tap its energy. The country’s oil output has begun to fall this year — to 9.8 million barrels a day in August from a peak of 9.9 million in late 2007. For much of the past decade, Russia was among the biggest contributors of new global supply.
“We’re glad that the situation was resolved and the participants in the talks reached” the agreement “without bringing in third parties including the government,” Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said in the AAR statement. “We support the development of TNK-BP and believe that this company shows excellent long-term potential.” 
Dudley left Russia July 24, citing “sustained harassment” amid court battles and labor and tax inspections that led to him being disqualified from his post in Russia for two years. TNK-BP has appealed the disqualification decision.
The agreement will free the venture of “this significant distraction and the uncertainties around the company’s business plan and capital expenditure,” Dudley said Thursday in a statement e-mailed by TNK-BP.
A new TNK-BP CEO will be nominated by BP and will require the board’s unanimous approval. The executive will have the right to decide on the number of foreigners and employees contracted from BP at the venture.
“Bob is going to work through the transition; he is then going to go off on a decent break,” BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward said Thursday in telephone interview. “My expectation is that he will return in a senior role for BP.” Hayward said BP has “half a dozen” candidates short-listed to replace him.
TNK-BP lost almost half its foreign staff after clashes between BP and the billionaires over visas and work permits earlier this year. BP had to withdraw about 150 secondees at TNK-BP who hadn’t been allowed to work at the venture since March.
AAR has pushed for TNK-BP to expand internationally and has proposed investments in Poland, Germany, northern Iraq and elsewhere. BP’s directors have shot down most of these proposals, according to AAR.
In July, TNK-BP signed an agreement with Venezuela to study a possible joint project in the Latin American country’s Orinoco region, where heavy oil is produced. TNK-BP also plans now to expand in Turkmenistan and possibly compete with BP for the central Asian nation’s fields.
”We are interested in developing large projects with the active participation of foreign investors,” Arkady Dvorkovich, an aide to Medvedev, said Thursday in the AAR statement. “TNK-BP is one of the most ambitious and promising projects of this type.”

TITLE: 10 Reasons Why the Economy Will Falter
AUTHOR: By Anders Aslund
TEXT: Aug. 8 stands out as a fateful day for Russia. It marks Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s greatest strategic blunder. In one blow, he wiped out half a trillion dollars of stock market value, stalled all domestic reforms and isolated Russia from the outside world.
Russia’s attack on its small democratic neighbor was bad enough, but its recognition of two conquered protectorates as independent states has been supported only by Hamas, Belarus, Venezuela and Cuba. Putin is turning Russia into a rogue state.
Russia has gone through a grand economic recovery, but its strength must not be exaggerated. In current dollars, its gross domestic product has increased almost ninefold in nine years, but even so, it accounts for only 2.8 percent of global GDP. At present, its per capita GDP of $12,000 is a quarter of the U.S. level. While this is impressive, much of its catch-up potential has been exhausted.
The official government target is to reach half the U.S per capita GDP by 2020. It is possible to achieve that goal, but it would require carrying out extensive economic reforms during the next 12 years. The problem, however, is that Russia’s foreign aggression has strengthened the authoritarian regime, and this has ended all hopes for substantial reforms at a time when they are needed the most.
To understand Russia’s economic dilemma, we need to consider the causes of the country’s growth over the last decade and the current challenges. The dominant cause of growth has been European or capitalist convergence, which Russia has enjoyed thanks to Boris Yeltsin’s hard-fought introduction of a market economy, privatization and international integration. The country’s short economic history can be summed up as: All good comes from private enterprise. The government’s contribution has been to keep the budget in surplus and reduce taxation. 
A second cause of the high growth has been the huge free capacity in production, infrastructure and human capital after the collapse of communism. The recovery was also coupled with remonetization, as Russia has enjoyed one of the greatest credit booms of all time. With the rise of the new capitalist service sector, a huge structural change has spurred growth. Together, the systemic and structural changes amount to a gigantic catch-up effect that all post-Communist reform countries have experienced. The average annual real growth in former Soviet states from 2000 to 2007 was 9 percent, but it reached only 7 percent in Russia. 
The third factor behind Russia’s growth is the most spurious — namely the oil price windfall since 2004. While it has boosted the country’s budget surplus, current account balance and currency reserves, it is likely to have damaged its policy badly, as the elite focused on the distribution of oil rents rather than on the improvement of policy. As a consequence, Russia has seen no economic or social reforms worth mentioning for the past six years.
Moscow’s current economic dilemma is that the old sources of growth will soon be exhausted. Undoubtedly, some capitalist convergence will continue, but it is bound to slow down. 
Unfortunately, it is easy to compile 10 reasons why Russia is likely to have lower growth in the near future than it has had for the last nine years.
1. Internationally, one of the greatest booms of all times is finally coming to an end. Demand is falling throughout the world, and soon Russia will also be hit. This factor alone has brought the Western world to stagnation.
2. Russia’s main problem is its enormous corruption. According to Transparency International, only Equatorial Guinea is richer than Russia and more corrupt. Since the main culprit behind Russia’s aggravated corruption is Putin, no improvement is likely as long as he persists.
3. Infrastructure, especially roads, has become an extraordinary bottleneck, and the sad fact is that Russia is unable to carry out major infrastructure projects. When Putin came to power in 2000, Russia had 754,000 kilometers of paved road. Incredibly, by 2006 this figure has increased by only 0.1 percent, and the little that is built costs at least three times as much as in the West. Public administration is simply too incompetent and corrupt to develop major projects. 
4. Renationalization is continuing and leading to a decline in economic efficiency. When Putin publicly attacked Mechel, investors presumed that he had decided to nationalize the company. Thus, they rushed to dump their stock in Mechel, having seen what happened to Yukos, Russneft, United Heavy Machineries and VSMP-Avisma, to name a few. In a note to investors, UBS explains diplomatically that an old paradigm of higher political risk has returned to Russia, so it has reduced its price targets by an average of 20 percent, or a market value of $300 billion. Unpredictable economic crime is bad for growth.
5. The most successful transition countries have investment ratios exceeding 30 percent of GDP, as is also the case in East Asia. But in Russia, it is only 20 percent of GDP, and it is likely to fall in the current business environment. That means that bottlenecks will grow worse.
6. An immediate consequence of Russia’s transformation into a rogue state is that membership in the World Trade Organization is out of reach. World Bank and Economic Development Ministry assessments have put the value of WTO membership at an additional growth of 0.5 to 1 percentage points a year for the next five years. Now, a similar deterioration is likely because of increased protectionism, especially in agriculture and finance. 
7. Minimal reforms in law enforcement, education and health care have been undertaken, and no new attempt is likely. The malfunctioning public services will become an even greater drag on economic growth.
8. Oil and commodity prices can only go down, and energy production is stagnant, which means that Russia’s external accounts are bound to deteriorate quickly.
9. Because Russia’s banking system is dominated by five state banks, it is inefficient and unreliable, and the national cost of a poor banking system rises over time.
10. Inflation is now 15 percent because of a poor exchange rate and monetary policies, though the current capital outflow may ease that problem.
In short, Russia is set for a sudden and sharp fall in its economic growth. It is difficult to assess the impact of each of these 10 factors, but they are all potent and negative. A sudden, zero growth would not be surprising, and leaders like Putin are not prepared to face reality. Russia’s economic situation looks ugly. For how long can Russia afford such an expensive prime minister?

Anders Aslund, a senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, is the author of “Russia’s Capitalist Revolution: Why Market Reform Succeeded and Democracy Failed.”

TITLE: Turning Russia Into a Terrorist Enclave
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Although no countries have joined Russia in recognizing South Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s independence, Moscow can surely count on Hamas and Hezbollah for support.
This moral support came at a difficult time for the Kremlin. In recognizing the breakaway republics, President Dmitry Medvedev said he wasn’t afraid of the prospect of a new Cold War. I don’t know about a Cold War, but I would compare these events to what happened on Sept. 11, 2001. 
Al-Qaida does not possess even a tiny fraction of the human, intellectual or financial resources held by the free world. This is because al-Qaida has never made a scientific discovery, never built a factory to produce something useful and has never done anything to benefit humanity in general. Nothing. Al-Qaida’s raison d’etre is to destroy the infrastructure and achievements built by the free world.
Al-Qaida doesn’t need to produce or invent anything to survive. All it needs is evil intentions. And it is almost impossible for the free world to dissuade terrorists from blowing up a passenger airplane or holding schoolchildren hostage when they are convinced that these are legitimate ways to fight against the West. In this way, al-Qaida’s resources can’t be compared to those of the West.
Similarly, Russia’s resources also cannot be compared to those of the West. This is because Russia has nothing but oil and gas. Our stores sell Turkish clothes, Chinese electronics, Indonesian sneakers, Finnish toilets, Taiwanese cell phones, and so on. Even cement is now cheaper to import from abroad than to produce in Russia. 
Anybody who thinks Russia’s confrontation with the West is another Cold War has been misled. In a real Cold War, two countries have comparable military budgets, but this is definitely not the case with Russia and the United States. Much like al-Qaida, the main resource available to the Kremlin is malicious intentions. 
With a lot of effort, the free world may be able to stop individual terrorists or small terrorist groups. But it is entirely incapable of combating terrorist enclaves, such as those controlled by Hamas.
The greatest strength of these organizations lies in their ability to turn the entire local populations into accomplices. Ask a poor Palestinian who the Jews are, and he’ll tell you they are subhuman, terrible people who killed his cousin who was on his way to blow himself up in an Israeli kindergarten. At the same time, it will never occur to this Palestinian why Israelis don’t blow themselves up in Palestinian kindergartens. 
Ask a resident of Tskhinvali who the Georgians are, and he will answer in all sincerity that they are also subhuman. After all, it was the Georgians who attacked Tskhinvali with the sole purpose of killing its children. “Thank God we’re rid of them now,” many South Ossetians say.
But South Ossetians will probably never concede that tens of thousands of Ossetians live peacefully in Georgia proper. Has it ever occurred to them that the notoriously bloodthirsty Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili hasn’t attacked Ossetians in Gori, Tbilisi or Poti, where they are vulnerable and unprotected by South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity?
It would seem that enclaves like South Ossetia and Abkhazia cannot be defeated. Relying on the full support of their populations — at least those people who did not run away — these statelets can survive indefinitely. But there is no rational reason for Russia to support these enclaves — or for turning itself into a terrorist enclave.

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

TITLE: Trouble at the museum
AUTHOR: By Mark Trevelyan
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: GORI, Georgia — When Russian bombs began falling on Gori, Robert Maglakelidze took a desperate decision: he loaded his car with a precious consignment and fled along the dangerous road to Tbilisi.
Stowed inside were the personal effects of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin: his military greatcoat, peaked cap, pen, glasses, silver sword and pipe — in total some 50 unique items.
Maglakelidze, director of the Stalin museum in Gori, says bringing them for safekeeping in the Georgian capital was the only way to ensure their survival.
“I had to take the risk,” he said. “Thank God, they didn’t bomb the museum, but there was no guarantee. We said ‘let’s preserve these things for future generations’. These personal things can’t be replaced.”
Gori, Stalin’s birthplace, was first bombed and then occupied by Russian troops in the short war that followed Georgia’s ill-fated attempt on Aug. 7-8 to recapture its rebel, pro-Russian province of South Ossetia, just north of the town.
The Russians have left Gori now, but scars from the fighting remain. At the weekend, workmen were clearing rubble and glass from several large apartment blocks heavily damaged by bombing.
Yet the Stalin museum — an imposing, pale stone building with a colonnade and a tall rectangular tower, crowned with a red and white Georgian flag — escaped virtually unscathed.
“We’re clearing up, there is a lot of dirt. There was thick dust, the halls are filthy,” said a museum official, Mziya Naochashvili.
The museum was closed on Saturday, but managers allowed reporters to look inside parts of it.
One window was smashed by the entrance, and three more above the red-carpeted stairs leading to a white marble statue of the dictator, Lenin’s successor and Georgia’s most notorious son.
Paintings nearby show him in his various roles: the bearded young revolutionary fronting a 1905 workers’ demonstration; the pensive leader reading papers by a desk; the dutiful son alongside his mother.
Two marble busts survey a landing with more paintings: an idealized portrait of a boy Stalin sitting outside with friends, and Stalin the party leader greeting Communist officials.
The double doors to the galleries were sealed. But outside are the tiny brick and wood house in which the young Iosif Dzhugashvili was born in 1878, and the green railway carriage — formerly belonging to the Tsar — in which he traveled to the Yalta, Potsdam and Tehran conferences in World War II.
You can even buy a replica Stalin pipe for 12 lari ($8.60), a small silver bust for 25, or a bottle of Georgian wine with his portrait on the label for 20.
“Until the collapse of the Soviet Union there were lots of visitors from the whole world, about half a million a year. Today it’s 18 to 25,000 a year,” said Naochashvili, whose own home was damaged in the bombing.
After 33 years working there, she said, “the museum is virtually my life.”
How does she feel personally towards the man whose shrine she protects, and whom many in the former Soviet Union still admire as a strong national leader and World War II savior?
“I respect him for his intelligence, for his talent ... He was a statesman. He didn’t do anything against Georgia.”
But she also acknowledges “all these troubles” — a euphemistic reference to Stalin’s purges which caused the deaths of millions of people, some after show trials and many after suffering exile and forced labor in the camps of the Gulag.
For regional governor Lado Vardzelashvili, Stalin’s shadow lies over even today’s events, shaping the actions of his distant successors in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev.
“I think what is happening here is part of Stalin’s legacy, because Putin and Medvedev think exactly the same way as Stalin,” said the young governor, whose office overlooks the central square dominated by a giant statue of the dictator.
During the conflict, he says, he tried to do a deal with a Russian general over the monument.
“I made him an offer: take it with you and never come back.” But the proposal was declined.
Director Maglakelidze says the museum aims to reopen on Sept. 8. He will return the precious items now being stored in a Tbilisi museum once parliament has taken a decision to lift the official state of war with Russia.
And he sounds a note of optimism on the museum’s future and the prospect of attracting visitors from around the globe again.
“I think there will be big interest, for the sake of the town. The whole world knows about Gori now.”

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: The musicians and oppositional political activists who organized an outdoor event called “Rock for Freedom” last month assumed that rock music and freedom are synonymous.
But <b>Boris Grebenshchikov</b> of local band <b>Akvarium</b>, seen by many as Russia’s top rock guru, has a different opinion.
“It is nobodies who complain about the lack of freedom,” he said in an interview with daily Delovoi Peterburg last week. 
Grebenshchikov said he had  enough freedom to do what he wanted, yet also used the example of 19th-century Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. “[The lack of freedom] did not prevent him from writing good poems and quality prose,” he said.
In saying so, Grebenshchikov, who has been on friendly terms with the Kremlin lately and received a state medal in 2003, implicitly admits that there is a lack of freedom in today’s Russia. But should musicians and artists keep silent about this situation?
Speaking about those who do protest, Grebenshchikov suggested they do so for publicity.
“I have profound respect for colleagues who bravely express their political views and oppose injustice,” he said.
“But I have a counter-question; are they interested if anybody listens to their words? Or are they speaking just for the sake of speaking and drawing attention to themselves?”
Even being “free to do what he wants,” as he claims he is, Grebenshchikov declined to comment on the war between Russia and Georgia, although it is the most pressing question of the day.
“I can’t evaluate the events of the last few weeks. Yes, I’m sad that there’s a war, and that people died in this war. No victory is worthy when it’s marked with a funeral procession. But I can’t say that I have any standpoint about this.”
Like many Kremlin supporters, Grebenshchikov sounds Russophobic when speaking about freedom in Russia — something they accuse their opponents of.
“Unfortunately, freedom in Russia is understood either as the unlimited possibility to throw dirt at the authorities, or as permission to use obscene language openly.”
This last part is especially revealing — it suggests that Grebenshchikov might draw his knowledge from police reports.
The majority of protesters detained by the police during peaceful political rallies this year and last year were officially charged with “using obscene language in a public place.”
Whether or not Grebenshchikov has an opinion on current events, <b>Yury Shevchuk</b>, meanwhile, certainly does. His band <b>DDT</b>  is due to perform on Sept. 24 in Moscow and Sept. 26 in St. Petersburg, and the concerts are called “Don’t Shoot” — after Shevchuk’s 1980s anti-war song written during the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
Will Grebenshchikov say DDT are doing this to draw attraction to themselves? 
Hardly. DDT is much more popular than today’s version of Akvarium and does not need to indulge in publicity stunts.
<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: New school year, new Stalin
AUTHOR: By Svetlana Osadchuk
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Last year, a controversial teachers’ manual described him as an “effective manager.” Now a new manual explains that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin acted rationally in conducting a campaign of terror to ensure the country’s modernization.
The new manual, titled “A History of Russia, 1900-1945,” is part of a series of education materials the authors say will help promote patriotism in young people. Critics have taken exception, however, to numerous excerpts, which they say are essentially attempts to whitewash Stalin’s crimes.
A textbook to accompany the teachers’ manual has not yet been finalized, so it was not in classrooms when the school year began on Monday. The textbook is expected to be completed in March and there is no guarantee that the assessment of Stalin will remain.
Hundreds of thousands of people were executed and millions imprisoned in gulag camps under Stalin. 
But the manual says the Great Terror of the 1930s came about because “Stalin did not know who would deal the next blow, and for that reason he attacked every known group and movement, as well as those who were not his allies or of his mindset.”
The manual, which the authors have posted on the Internet, stresses to teachers that “it is important to show that Stalin acted in a concrete historical situation” and that he acted “entirely rationally — as the guardian of a system, as a consistent supporter of reshaping the country into an industrialized state.”
Although a teachers’ manual last year described Stalin as an “effective manager,” this was eventually removed from the final version of the textbook, “A Modern History of Russia, 1945-2006,” said Larisa Alexeyeva, a senior editor with the Prosveshcheniye publishing house, which is printing the textbooks.
That book, Alexeyeva said, was available for teachers to use in the classroom Monday and does retain a chapter on “sovereign democracy” under former President Vladimir Putin — now the powerful prime minister. 
Kremlin deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov — known as the Kremlin’s chief ideologist — is credited with coming up with the term “sovereign democracy.”
The editor of the new book, Alexander Danilov, defended characterizing Stalin’s actions as “rational.” 
“We are not defending Stalin,” Danilov said. “We are just exploring his personality, explaining his motives and showing what he really achieved.” 
Prominent Russian historian Roy Medvedev said, however, that such an approach “only formally appears to be objective.”
“It is, in fact, falsification,” Medvedev said. “Stalin by no means acted rationally all of the time, and many of his actions damaged the country.”
Before World War II, he said, “many in the military ranks were arrested — like my father, for example — and their children, little boys, were sent to the front.”
According to an editor of the manual, Anatoly Utkin  — who is director of the Center for International Research at the Institute of U.S.A. and Canada Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences — Stalin made several ingenious decisions during World War II, including moving Soviet war factories east, out of the reach of invading Nazi forces.
“I have no personal affection for him, but I am a historian and I work with facts,” Utkin said.
Students should learn of all aspects of Stalin’s personality, like the fact he had 10,000 books in his library that he had personally marked up. “Can you tell me of any other leader, an American president, for example, who read 10,000 books?” Utkin said.
Alexander Kondakov, head of Prosveshcheniye, said modern educational standards “demand the whole of society have its say about the most painful pages of our history,” adding that the authors were “bold” people for putting forth such controversial theses.
Alexander Kamensky, head of the history department at the Russia State University for the Humanities, said the manual was, “sadly,” a sign that teaching history in schools has become “an ideological instrument.”
Meeting with a group of history teachers in June 2007, Putin said that while Stalin’s purges were one of the darkest periods of the country’s history, “others cannot be allowed to impose a feeling of guilt on us.”
While he did not directly name the United States, Putin made an obvious reference to the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and cited the Vietnam War in defending Russia’s past.

TITLE: Water on the tracks
AUTHOR: By Marina Kamenev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — With his neatly ironed suit and thick-rimmed glasses, Yevgeny Pashkin, 75, looked out of place in the hustle and bustle of the Mayakovskaya metro station. But in fact, he has known the metro station since he was a five-year-old boy and even attended its grand opening in 1938. Now a professor at the Moscow State University of Geological Exploration, he has been trying to raise the alarm about problems at the station for three years. 
The Moscow metro is the most-used metro in the world, with 9 million passengers standing on the long escalators and shuffling through the sliding doors every day. Pashkin says the number of passengers is twice that which the metro was designed for — a problem that is exacerbated at stations like Mayakovskaya by unusual soil conditions. As a result of the overuse, water has been slowly but steadily dripping through the station walls and ceilings for 30 years, and could be a sign of worse things to come.
Riding on the metro, Pashkin was nostalgic about the good old days. “We didn’t need these signs,” he said about text on a window asking people to vacate their seats for the elderly, behind a teenager who was sitting with no intention of moving for Pashkin. “Half the train wagon was divided by a chain which was for the elderly and mothers and their children,” Pashkin sighed. “Sometimes the rest of the wagon was full but still no one would dare sit in those sections.”
When the metro opened there were only four wagons on the trains, which ran at five-minute intervals. “We used to play football here every time we had to change train lines,” he said at the long underpass between Teatralnaya and Okhotny Ryad, where these days the crowds make it impossible even to pause for thought. Now the length of the train has doubled, with trains often arriving every minute. 
Pashkin’s fondness for the metro is especially evident when he speaks about the Mayakovskaya station. 
“This was the station nearest to my house when I was a boy. Foreign experts consulted Russians on building the metro; the French, the Germans — everyone was invited here in the ‘30s to give the Russians advice, but they were put off [by the difficult conditions]. But Russian engineers prevailed and solved these technicalities,” he said proudly.
Originally, it was thought that the ground under the station was firm, and engineer Sergei Kravots designed the station on that basis. His design featured metal supports as opposed to thick columns, an unusual achievement for a station that was so deep underground. Cracks started to show, however, and architect Alexei Dushkin was invited to see what he could do. Dushkin reduced the height of the main vault and redesigned the metal supports using steel that was engineered in an airship plant. Later, 35 delightful mosaics by Alexander Daneika, which are ordered by the time of the day, were added between the two support columns.
The Mayakovskaya station was opened on Sept. 11, 1938, after overcoming a series of problems. Shortly after its completion, the station was awarded the grand prix at the New York World Fair in 1938. During the war it was used as an air-raid shelter, but it remained untouched until relatively recently.
In the ‘90s it was decided that the old escalators needed to be replaced, and to achieve this, another exit was created. This was opened in September 2005 to the dismay of many preservationists. 
Natalia Dushkina, the granddaughter of the architect of the metro station and a vocal preservationist, was dismayed when she saw the changes that accompanied this exit.
“They replaced some of the marble floor plates with granite. They saw how awful this looked and thankfully stopped, but 50 meters of it is still there,” she said. Another problem was that rhodonite, a pink, semiprecious stone that used to adorn the station, was disappearing in chunks because of its value. At one point, the stone was completely stripped and replaced. “They have some new material in its place, but we have no idea where the original went,” she said. 
Dushkina said the whole project had not been approved by the Moscow Heritage Committee prior to the start of the renovation.
In an interview at the headquarters of the Moscow metro, the director of the metro, Dmitry Gayev, denied this. “When we were doing our consultation, there was a person there from the Moscow Heritage Committee checking every step.”
It is not just the aesthetics that Dushkina finds problematic. In a widely circulated paper from 2002, she wrote of some of the problems at Mayakovskaya station: “The last investigation of its hidden construction (1996) revealed practically total destruction of the ventilation and drainage systems (both of vital importance for underground structures) leading to significant erosion of the metal skeleton.”
“I wanted to take you here because it is in these specific places where the train accelerates and decelerates,” said Pashkin, standing at the end of the platform. “The constant pressure means that cracks have formed on either side of the platform, and this is where the water leaks.” 
“Thirty years ago, they tried to fix the drain problem. It obviously didn’t work,” he said, pointing to a dribble of water. “There is a layer of water there, which under pressure will come out through the station.” 
“Pashkin should stick to geology,” Gayev said. “Any underground structure that has been underground for a certain amount of time will leak,” he continued, adding that the station’s life span was 300 years.
“We have a project in place that will divert all the water away from the walls and columns and into the drains. If there are three buckets of water there then you are lucky. There is no more water. Apart from the hysterics of Mr. Pashkin, there is nothing else.” 
Pashkin disagrees, and says that without proper investigation it is unknown where the water has come from, where it has gone or the extent of the damage. “If the water is getting through to the steel columns they will rust. The station is deep underground and the columns are carrying a large load. I am not saying it will collapse, but it’s not something we want to risk.” 
“Imagine you are a doctor and I have a high temperature and a headache. Instead of measuring my blood pressure or talking to me, you just give me an aspirin,” Pashkin said. “That is what Gayev is doing, he is not looking at the cause of the problem.”

TITLE: The real lives of others
AUTHOR: By Erik Kirschbaum
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BERLIN — Two years after the release of Oscar-winning movie “The Lives of Others”, communist East Germany and its Stasi secret police are back in the spotlight in a new film that examines the persecution of a top cyclist.
While the 2006 international hit was a fictional tale of a Stasi officer who develops feelings of compassion for his victims, documentary “Sportsfreund Loetzsch” recounts a true story.
Wolfgang Loetzsch, once feted as the most talented cyclist of his generation, was booted off the national team, ostracized, persecuted and even imprisoned for refusing to join the Communist party.
“Loetzsch’s story is a snapshot of the Cold War,” said director Sascha Hilpert, who hopes to secure foreign rights deals when the movie is screened later this month at the Split film festival in Croatia.
“He was a hero for the little people in East Germany. What was the film ‘The Lives of Others’ all about? I think real-life stories are sometimes more incredible than the fictional ones,” he said.
Hilpert said the tragic story of Loetzsch should enlighten those with nostalgic pangs for East Germany.
Born in 1952, he won 500 cycling races in the late 1960s and early 1970s, achieving such dominance that he was spoken of as a future world and Olympic champion.
But he refused to join the Communist Party that ruled East Germany and was therefore barred from going to the 1972 Olympics in Munich. He said he was not interested in politics and refused to join the party on principle.
“I just didn’t want to join the party,” said Loetzsch, who admits in the film he is naturally stubborn and difficult. “I was naive to think they would not dream of preventing me going to the Olympics only because I was the best cyclist.”
Fifty Stasi officials were put on his case but he continued training on his own and still beat the best cyclists in East German races where he was allowed to compete.
After a West German newspaper published an article on Loetzsch, he was sent to jail for 10 months in 1977 as an “enemy of the state”. After being released he still outclassed other riders in races and became a cult figure for East Germans.
The film, a remarkably balanced production that includes interview excerpts from the Stasi major who ran his case, has had a strong run in German cinemas since its release last month.
“It wasn’t easy to get him to agree to take part,” said Hilpert, who co-directed the film with Sandra Prechtel. “But at the end of the day he did and I think he deserves a lot of respect for that.”

TITLE: Salon
AUTHOR: By Victor Sonkin
TEXT: Vladimir Sorokin is one of the most well-known Russian authors today, and one of the handful known and respected outside Russia. His popularity started with perestroika, when his first novels obliquely described the horrors and perplexity of Soviet life. In “Marina’s Last Love,” a seemingly unpretentious love story disintegrates into an endless parody of newspaper-style political statements, while in “The Norm,” mundane life is punctuated by the requirement for all party members to eat a piece of human excrement every day. If there ever was a better metaphor for having to serve any regime, I haven’t seen it.
Sorokin is known as a master of stylistic experiment: He has successfully parodied almost every genre of Russian literature. In “Blue Lard,” scientists create clones of famous Russian writers, who write, each in his or her characteristic style, suitably absurd texts. There is one trick he uses very often: Creating a peculiar universe and writing a series of loosely connected stories, which take place in this invented world.
His previous novel, “The Oprichnik Day” (oprichniks were the henchmen of Ivan the Terrible), portrayed Russia in 2028, with an emperor in the Kremlin, the Russian language peppered with Chinese words and a huge wall separating Russia from wicked neighbors. This dystopian image was, curiously enough, taken by many to be rather desirable. In the recently published sequel, “The Sugar Kremlin,” Sorokin apparently wanted to dispel such notions. In any case, the scenes of inexplicable and brutal cruelty, executions, horrible accidents and other disasters make the new book even more gruesome than the previous one. One of the traditional topics of anti-utopian literature, the death of culture, is barely touched upon. Culture seems to have died of its own accord, and in this new Russia, both the elite and the general public are quite content with the widely available cocaine and the New Year’s treat which gives the book its title: a sugar Kremlin effigy.
As always, Sorokin shows his unique stylistic dexterity, easily creating new types of language. The Russian of 2028, apart from the addition of Chinese words, is purged of Westernisms, heavily archaic and dense. The vivid pictures, such as the one of the empresses’ dream when she sees an absolutely empty Kremlin and understands that it’s all made of cocaine, are rather funny, but the humor is mixed with horror and leaves an uneasy feeling.
Unlike most Russian writers, Sorokin is a keen businessman. Not only does he know what tales the time wants, he knows when it wants them. It is no surprise that he chose one of the most surefire commercial enterprises, a sequel, for his new and impressive book.

TITLE: The waiting game
AUTHOR: By Saul Austerlitz
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Men are worthless. Young and old, American and Russian, rich and poor — it matters not to the women who people Sana Krasikov’s debut collection of stories, “One More Year.” Regardless of educational background, personality type or other qualifications, these men prove themselves deficient in every measurable way, leaving their women — wives, girlfriends, mothers — alone to piece through the rubble, assess the damage, salvage the fragments of their shattered lives. 
Which is not to say that the women are free of blame, either. It is their delusions — their relentless insistence on controlling their narratives, on telling us a particular story even as all indicators point elsewhere — that contribute to the collapse of their lives, like a souffle that deflates of its own excess weight. “One More Year” is a chronicle of their disappointments and a somber parade of their mistakes, each story building off the one that precedes it and anticipating the one that follows. The result is solemn, and sobering.
If each character here has a motto, a mantra they repeat to themselves to stay sane, it is “one more year.” One more year to happiness, to success, to stability, wealth and security. “One more year” is what allows Krasikov’s women, stuck in untenable situations, to endure against all odds. “Every year, you say ‘It’s one more year, one more year’!” Maia’s teenage son screams at her in “Maia in Yonkers,” turning a promise into an unfulfillable curse. Maia has left her son Gogi in Georgia while she takes care of an elderly American woman. But her efforts at achieving American success have only succeeded in driving a wedge between the American and Georgian halves of herself, and between herself and her son. Gogi’s brief New York sojourn is plagued by his commodity-lust — he practically demands a $300 jacket from his mother — and his inability to be properly grateful for the luxuries she has provided for him. Gogi at least has the benefit of his youth to explain his callow, shabby behavior. The other men of “One More Year,” being older, have no such justification.
Resurgent Russian nationalism, and its embrace of brutish manliness as an ideal, serves as a partial explanation for the egregious behavior of Grisha in “The Repatriates.” Having dragged his wife Lera from New York’s Westchester County suburbs back to Moscow, where big-box stores have advanced further into the city than the Nazis were ever able to, he promptly reveals his intentions to abandon her: “You’re not among your americaners. Here they don’t eviscerate a man for the crime of having a job.” Her armor is easily dented by his assaults on the life they had jointly assembled in New York. “The house,” he informs her, “was mine. I paid for it while you slept till noon.” Lera pities a friend for “living too long inside a fantasyland of your own hopefulness,” but she too has failed to protect herself from her own fantasies of placid, unchanging domesticity. Moscow itself is partially to blame; its ethos of “no decency and no fair play,” as Lera sees it, contributes to her husband’s slide into callousness.
None of the book’s other men is much gentler, or kinder. Ryan, the newlywed husband of immigrant Anya in “Better Half,” slaps her around and behaves like “a child who got all his power from being unpredictable and erratic.” Rashid, whom Gulia has left behind in “Asal” because he refused to leave his wife, promises a fidelity he cannot possibly deliver. In “The Alternate,” Victor calls Alina, daughter of his onetime flame, to revisit the decision he made to marry for a St. Petersburg housing permit, instead of for true love with her mother; in “There Will Be No Fourth Rome,” Regina, who fled the United States for Russia after her lover cajoled her into a workplace indiscretion, warns her friend Nona not to toss away her medical training to serve as a glorified secretary for her married German lover’s business, and almost destroys their friendship in the process. Men are always telling their women to take it easy — along with “love” and “waiting,” one of the most regularly recurring words in “One More Year” is “relax” — even as they plan their getaways, or scheme to cheat the women out of what is rightfully theirs. Vigilance, not relaxation, is what is needed. 
Waiting is the name of the game — waiting for green cards, waiting for a better job, waiting for men to leave their wives, waiting for them to grow up. Anya lives in a shabby apartment with fellow-transients, no longer at home but also not fully present in her adopted country. “She’d have to wait to pee. Everything in her life was about waiting,” Anya thinks as the shower runs in the bathroom. 
The other constant is storytelling; the women of “One More Year” insist on telling their own stories in their own fashion, even when conventional facts might indicate another tale altogether. “We weren’t like other couples. We were obsessed with each other,” the middle-aged Larisa tells her niece Regina in “There Will Be No Fourth Rome.” “We were one of those couples who didn’t need anybody else. That was the kind of love we had.” All Regina can do is point out the obvious: “But he left you.”
Krasikov has a compact set of concerns — immigrants, the yawning gulf between the United States and the former Soviet Union, jerks and the women who love them, the sweet ache of memory — and reshuffles her deck between deals. The cards themselves never change, only their order and frequency. Krasikov treats her story collection like a novel, each story piling a few more bricks, and a little more mortar, onto the edifice being constructed. The end result is impressively consistent and a bit uniform; the characters change names, and their biographies differ from story to story, but the basic setup never fluctuates. It is Regina who has the following thought, but it could just as easily have emerged from any other character in “One More Year”: “People, when you got down to it, always ended up being so disappointing. Sooner or later you discovered something about them that would make you ashamed of what you had felt for them.” The eternal disappointment of other people, and the effort to move past anger and confusion, are the fundamental motivating factors of the promising “One More Year.” To become a superlative storyteller, and not merely a very good one, Krasikov must learn how to move past the disappointment herself and work in multiple registers. Without it, readers may seek to take her male characters’ example and leave her behind. 

Saul Austerlitz is a writer in New York.

TITLE: On view in Venice
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: VENICE — Jurors at the Venice film festival on Wednesday had only three days left to make their pick for the coveted Golden Lion after many of the 21 movies in competition failed to live up to expectations.
“There are too many films that have disappointed, too few crammed with Hollywood stars, fewer people in the theatres, fewer parties,” lamented Wednesday’s Corriere della Sera.
After the festival opened Aug. 27 with the glam duo George Clooney and Brad Pitt in the out-of-competition comedy by Joel and Ethan “Burn After Reading,” most of the films in this year’s lineup “seemed like plain porridge without sugar,” in the words of Guardian film critic Andrew Pulver.
“What a disaster this year!” fumed Lietta Tornabuoni of the Italian daily La Stampa. “Of the many films I’ve seen, I liked only the Coen brothers’.”
Festival director Marco Mueller defended the selection before the jury headed by German director Wim Wenders, saying: “The films are the best that are out there.”
Mueller noted that Toronto film festival, opening Thursday, planned to screen 23 of the films being shown here, compared with 11 from the Cannes film festival in May.
The Italian daily La Repubblica fretted that the world’s oldest film festival has become “so tired.”
The Golden Lion and other prizes at Venice “no longer seem important to anyone,” wrote La Repubblica’s Natalia Aspesi. “In the past ... the jurors’ every bat of an eye was scrutinised.”
French director Barbet Schroeder’s American-style thriller set in Japan, “Inju, the Beast in the Shadow,” and Hong Kong director’s triad drama “Plastic City” in particular fell short of expectations.
International Herald Tribune reviewer Roderick Conway Morris faulted Schroeder for being “so submerged in local colour ... that he loses the plot,” while the Hollywood Reporter’s Ray Bennett blasted “Plastic City,” set in Brazil, as a “silly fantasy.”
Things began looking up this week with Argentine-Italian director Marco Bechis’ “BirdWatchers” exposing the plight of Brazil’s Guarani Indians in the face of the biofuels boom and “Teza” by Ethiopia’s Haile Gerima in which he revisits his homeland under the dictator Mengistu.
And on Wednesday, US “Silence of the Lambs” director Jonathan Demme unveiled “Rachel Getting Married,” an emotion-packed family drama starring Anne Hathaway as a recovering drug addict who shakes up her sister’s wedding with an overdose of honesty about their dysfunctional family.
Two Japanese films have also stood out — Takeshi Kitano’s whimsical “Achilles and the Tortoise” and Hayao Miyazaki’s latest animated children’s fantasy “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.”
Still to come among the 21 films vying for the prestigious Golden Lion on Saturday are Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” and Darren Aronotsky’s “The Wrestler.”
Venice finds itself squeezed in the festival calendar between Toronto and Rome, whose third edition comes next month, but it is also hampered by the high costs of the lagoon city and the ageing infrastructure of the world’s oldest film competition.
A new hall, whose first stone was laid last week, is planned for completion by 2011 at a cost of 75 million euros ($100 million).
Ticket sales are down 12 percent, according to Biennale president Paolo Baratta, and the Italian paper L’Unita said hotels and restaurants on the Lido, the festival’s island venue, were reporting a 20 percent dip in turnover compared with last year.
On Tuesday, Mengistu’s blood-drenched Ethiopia was the backdrop for filmmaker Haile Gerima’s “Teza,” his attempt to reconcile an idyllic childhood with modern realities.
“I dream my past, but the present is so powerful that it continues to hijack my sentimental journey to my childhood,” Gerima told a news conference.
In the film, Aron Arefe plays Anberber, an idealistic Ethiopian intellectual who studies medicine in Germany, then returns to his home village under Haile Mariam Mengistu’s brutal 1970s-80s regime.
Unable to put his expertise to good use, Anberber also faces an identity crisis arising from his “displacement between the village and the modern world,” said Gerima, who won a lifetime achievement award at the Washington Independent Film Festival in 2003.
“Contemporary reality continues to interfere, with silent violence as well as obvious violence,” he added.
A central challenge was harnessing the wealth inherited from generations of oral tradition, Gerima said, calling handed-down stories “our monuments.”
“My grandmother told stories around the fire. My father was a playwright. How do you reconcile that tradition with filmmaking? How is the form culminating my personal identity?” he asked.
“Teza” is one of two African films in the selection of 21 vying for the coveted Golden Lion here, along with “Gabbla” by Algeria’s Tariq Teguia, set in the north African country as it emerged from its civil war of the 1990s.
Also Tuesday, Russian director Aleksei German jr. presented “Paper Soldier,” a recreation of the Soviet effort to put the first man in space in 1961 — Yury Gagarin — centring on the cosmonaut squad’s chief doctor.
Set mainly in desolate Kazakhstan but far from the high-tech control centre and launchpad, the film shows behind-the-scenes hardships and follies, becoming a parable of Soviet nationalism while unmasking a yearning for a grander past.
“The movie is about the generation of my parents, their idealism, about how the times have dramatically changed,” said Merab Ninidze, who plays the doctor.
“They had their poetry, books, everything connecting them to the past, a paradise kind of lost,” he said.
A third film on Tuesday, “set in no particular time or place,” according to German director Werner Schroeter, shows “the destruction of a society where utopia is not possible.”
The hero, a doctor and potential political leader played by Pascal Greggory, “wants to be honest in a society where you cannot be honest,” Schroeter said.
The action, full of brutality, is in a city being terrorised by a violent militia, opposed by rival factions.
Gilles Taurand, who wrote the screenplay alongside Schroeter drawing from a novel by Uruguayan author Juan Carlos Onetti, said it was a Kafkaesque search “for the meaning of life.”
After more than half the films in competition have been screened ahead of the prize ceremony on Saturday, two have emerged as front-runners in the Italian press, and they are both Japanese.

They are Takeshi Kitano’s whimsical “Achilles and the Tortoise” and Hayao Miyazaki’s latest animated children’s fantasy “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.”

TITLE: Water, water everywhere
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: What is claimed as St. Petersburg’s first international exhibition of contemporary public art, “H2O: Nordic and Russian Art in Public Spaces,” opened Monday at the Peter and Paul Fortress with works by leading artists from Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and St. Petersburg.
The exhibition, which is dedicated to the theme of water, runs through Sept. 14.
“The project promises to be one of the largest and wide-reaching public events this autumn,” organisers CEC ArtsLink said in a press release. “Interactive objects, sculptures, video and sound installations, all elucidating the theme of water in different ways, will be shown at the exhibition.  The exhibition marks the first major international exhibition of contemporary art on the grounds of the Peter and Paul Fortress.”
The organisers also explained the selection of “water” as the theme for the ambitious event.
“Water has always been not only a natural component of St. Petersburg, but also one of the most important parts of the city’s visual image. Water plays an important role in St. Petersburg’s identity and serves as a geographic and unifying element, connecting the Northwest of Russia with neighboring northern countries. For this reason, St. Petersburg is ideally appropriate for an open intercultural visual discussion of the theme of water and the definition of public space using the language of contemporary art.”
The works on display utilise architectural and sculptural elements such as glass and mirrors to elaborate on the watery theme. Seven well-known artists with significant experience in the field of public art from five northern countries will exhibit new «site specific» works at the Peter and Paul Fortress.
They include Denmark’s Kaspar Bonnen with his floating slogan “I will always love you,” and Finnish duo Tommi Gronlund  and Petteri Nisunen with a series of sunken pools. Two St. Petersburg artists, Yury Shtapakov and Pavel Shugurov 33+1, have also created new works for the exhibition. 
A parallel project will feature the work of young St. Petersburg artists, who have created public art works as part of a workshop conducted by New York public art specialist Kendal Henry. The works are on show exhibited in the garden of the Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fontanny Dom.  This exhibition, called “Fountain” is also dedicated to the theme of water.  

“H2O: Nordic and Russian Art in Public Spaces” at the Peter and Paul Fortress and “Fountain” in the garden of the Anna Akhmatova Museum until Sept.14. www.h2oexhibition.ru

TITLE: Happy days
AUTHOR: By Bruce Collinson
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Schastye (Happiness) // 15 Ulitsa Rubinshteina // Tel: 572 2675 // Open Mon to Thurs 9 a.m.- midnight, Fri 9 a.m.-7 a.m., Sat 10 a.m.-7 a.m, Sun 10 a.m.- midnight. // Menu in Russian and English // Dinner for four with alcohol: 4,800 rubles ($226)

The great English restaurant critic, Paul Rhodes, summed it up very neatly: was it good value, and would we go back?
It was worth booking ahead for Schastye, another addition to the myriad dining spots on Ulitsa Rubinshteina, if only because it secured a prime six-cover table in the window (for four people), and in an instant the persistent drizzle and dead bus on the other side of the glass were erased by a warm and cheerful atmosphere.
Schastye has been open for about six months, and its cuisine can best be categorised as “eclectic European.” The decor is understated, pleasantly so, in a post-modern, minimalist style but with concessions toward diners’ comfort. An early test of customer service was passed when the muzak was turned down sufficiently to achieve a better balance with the cherubic theme and the discreet wrought iron trellis screens of Schastye’s interior. 
A short but adequate wine list (good on white burgundies, at a price) yielded perfectly drinkable Pinot Grigiot (900 rubles, $36, a bottle) and Valpolicella for the same price, but a gentle reminder was needed to procure an ice-bucket. Competent wine service was missing and not entirely compensated for by the excessive decolletage favored by the waitress.
The lighting was good for eating, but not for the “join-the-dots” party game given to guests — read the instructions fully. 
The starters promised great things, particularly the beef Carpaccio (290 rubles, $11.50) — rich and succulent — and deep-fried creamy Camembert (230 rubles, $9), offset perfectly by a tart cranberry sauce that accompanied it. The bread basket (135 rubles, $5.40) was excellent. The timing of the service was comfortable and the main courses reflected the starters. 
A request for carbonara sauce on penne instead of spaghetti (260 rubles, $10) was met, with a very rich carbonara, whereas tagliatelle with “basil paste” turned out not to be pesto, as might have been assumed, but a disappointingly bland mixture of olive oil and dried basil. A chicken fillet with mushroom julienne (290 rubles $11.50) disappeared rapidly. Steak cutlets steamed in cream sauce (390 rubles, $15) looked good, then disappointed by virtue of a slightly dry texture, but ultimately satisfied with their strong flavor and plentiful sauce that offset the problem of the dish having been overcooked.  A side order of French fries (90 rubles, $3.60) was piping hot but a little too al dente.
For dessert, warm apple strudel with French vanilla ice cream (190 rubles, $7.50) was well received.
A small but discreet private dining room towards the rear looked intimate and welcoming — ideal for hosting a birthday party. The toilets were original and exemplary — one even contained a copy of Good Housekeeping in English.
Schastye’s breakfast menu looked especially appealing: a range of omelettes and blini at extremely reasonable prices — a highly convenient superior late night/early morning alternative to a shaverma (kebab), given the restaurant’s opening times and prime downtown location. 
To apply the Rhodes acid test: It was good value (not that it was cheap; so often mistaken for each other), and we would go back.
Or, as he would undoubtedly have concluded if he’d been at Schastye and not in Yorkshire, “I enjoyed my tea.”

TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: This week, Rossia television started a new show called “Phenomenon,” which is hosted by the spoon-bender Uri Geller. It’s a competition between various mystical performers, who channel their psychic energy into winning a car. In addition, Geller gets his spoons out again, for old times’ sake. 
The show was first broadcast on NBC, and the format has now been sold to other countries. In the Russian version, Geller says a few words of Russian, but mainly speaks through a translator. He also has a Russian co-host, Denis Semenikhin, who used to present an exercise show on Domashny channel — suggesting that none of the big-name presenters wanted to be upstaged by a spoon.
For those who haven’t seen Geller for a few decades, he looks exactly the same. And his spiel hasn’t changed much, either. At one point, he asked the viewers to place spoons on their televisions and then call in (35 rubles per minute) if anything happened. The camera cut to some pretty girls who were frantically scribbling down messages, although the most exciting thing that they reported was that one 6-year-old boy managed to bend his spoon. It was all a bit of a throwback to the late 1980s, when a man called Allan Chumak used to appear on Soviet television and “charge” jars of water with healing powers. 
In any case, my spoon refused to bend to Geller’s will, although it did get quite hot from sitting on top of the television. 
After some people took a long, hard look at his spoon tricks, Geller started calling himself a “mystifier” in the West. But he apparently didn’t tell that to Rossia, which calls him a magician and a parapsychologist on its website. And during the show, he talked about believing in miracles and how “everyone has the sixth sense.” To be fair though, when he discussed the competitors, he talked about their presentation skills, not any supernatural powers.
The Russian performers were a strange bunch. There was one called Sergei, who looked like an accountant and asked actress Zhanna Epple to wind yards of tape around his eyes before he held her wrist and guessed what she was holding. The items were donated by audience members sitting in the front rows, so he probably had a good look at them first; but in any case, he got two out of three right.
Then there was a woman called Yelena, who read an actor’s brain waves to tell what song title he had written on a piece of paper. She then played it on the piano, so luckily it wasn’t anything by Napalm Death. She was followed by a man called Roman, who guessed numbers and wore a Moschino suit that redefined loud. After that it started dragging a bit, so I only caught glimpses of some knife tricks and an act involving lots of girls in bikinis.
The show lasts 1 1/2 hours and has only five competitors in each episode, so it’s not exactly enthralling, even with girls in bikinis. Still, never mind, only eight weeks to go.
The audience included some famous people, who were supposed to check for any trickery and provide a voice of reason. They included actor Mikhail Dorozhkin, who said straight away that, “I have believed in miracles since my childhood,” and a former Miss Universe, Oksana Fyodorova, who hyperventilated as Geller promised to stamp his fingerprint on a spoon. “If you do that, I’m going to faint,” she warned. She didn’t, but Uri revived her anyway with a quick kiss.

TITLE: Sarah Palin Launches Fight to Win Over U.S. Voters
AUTHOR: By Steve Holland
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ST. PAUL — Republican presidential nominee John McCain has a new attack dog. Her name is Sarah Palin, and she bites hard.
Palin’s mocking critique of Democrat Barack Obama and the Washington elite charged up Republicans looking for signs of hope that she and McCain can win the White House on November 4.
Palin, 44, Alaska’s governor and McCain’s vice presidential running mate, drew shouts of “Sarah, Sarah” on Wednesday in her national political debut, unleashing red-meat rhetoric against Obama that had been largely lacking from this four-day event.
She cheerfully shot down criticism from Democrats that her experience as governor and ex-mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska, did not match Obama’s as leader of a large presidential campaign.
“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities,” she said in a swipe at Obama’s own early career in Chicago.
Democrats argue that McCain, by picking the relatively untested and unknown Palin, had ceded his argument that Obama was too inexperienced to be president.
Palin also found Obama’s lofty style of rhetoric wanting and devoid of details as to where he would take the country if elected, although she offered few policy specifics of her own.
“Listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the [Illinois] state senate ... What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet?” she asked.
She resurrected Obama’s comment from his primary battle with Democrat Hillary Clinton that people in small towns are bitter and cling to guns and religion.
“I might add that in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening,” she said.
The crowd loved it, roaring with approval and waving signs that said “Palin Power.” They especially responded when Palin dismissed the “Washington elite” — pundits and commentators she said had questioned whether she should be on the ticket.
Experts said Palin, only the second woman to be a vice presidential nominee of a major political party, was a plus for the Republican ticket, especially in attracting the conservative base that has sometimes been at odds with McCain.
They say she could be a huge advantage in helping Republicans hold Western states like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico that are flirting with voting for Obama this year.
“She is immediately going to be a huge attraction,” said Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta. 
“She will draw huge crowds wherever she goes. She really has excited the base of the Republican Party in a way that probably nobody has done since Ronald Reagan,” Black said.
Her Democratic vice presidential counterpart, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, took what was likely to be his party’s line — praise her speaking but not her message.
“I was impressed by that,” Biden said of the speech on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I also was impressed with what I didn’t hear. I didn’t hear a word mentioned about the middle class or health care or how people are going to fill up their tanks. I didn’t hear a single word about how you’re going to get a kid through college. So I was impressed by the speech but also about what I didn’t hear spoken.”
McCain is slightly behind Obama in public opinion polls following the Democrats’ rousing convention last week and is facing Americans in the mood for change after nearly eight years under unpopular Republican President George W. Bush.
Palin came into her big week having to make an uncomfortable disclosure, that her unmarried daughter Bristol, 17, was pregnant and planned to marry the high-school classmate who is the father, Levi Johnston, 18.
The Palins took the issue head on with no big fuss. Both Bristol and Johnston appeared on stage with the rest of the family after her speech. Johnston had the word “Bristol” tattooed on his ring finger.
“From the inside, no family ever seems typical. That’s how it is with us. Our family has the same ups and downs as any other ... the same challenges and the same joys,” Palin said.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani branded as sexism the questions of some commentators who wondered how Palin could be vice president with five children, including an infant with Down syndrome.
“How dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time to be vice president and spend enough time with her children. How dare they do that. When have they ever asked a man that question?” Giuliani said.

TITLE: Serena Defeats Venus in Edge-of-Seat Quarter-Final
AUTHOR: By Larry Fine
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — Serena Williams fought off 10 set points to prevail in the greatest duel yet with sister Venus, a heart-stopping 7-6 7-6 victory that put her in the U.S. Open semi-finals Wednesday.
Played with uncommon ferocity and passion from both combatants, Serena emerged triumphant in the grueling two hour 25 minute battle to reach the final four at Flushing Meadows for the first time since her 2002 win.
The eight-times grand slam winner turned away two set points in the first 8-6 tiebreaker and eight more in the second set, including four in the final 9-7 tiebreak, which ended with a Venus forehand drive landing beyond the baseline.
“I can’t believe I won,” Serena said courtside. “Wow.”
With the victory Serena edged to a 9-8 advantage in her head-to-head sibling rivalry with Venus.
“I think we played a great match today,” Serena said. “It just boiled down to one point here and there.”
Serena put on an amazing display of athleticism, racing from corner to corner to retrieve rocket forehands from Venus, stretching, straining and even sliding into a full split along the baseline trying to run down a blast.
The win sent Serena to the semi-finals against sixth seed Dinara Safina, a 6-2 6-3 winner over Italy’s Flavia Pennetta. Friday’s other women’s semi-final will have second seed Jelena Jankovic against Olympic champion Elena Dementieva.
One of the semi-finalists will supplant Ana Ivanovic as world number one at the end of the tournament.
Top seed Rafael Nadal, looking for his first U.S. Open title to underline his new status as world number one, booked a date with Briton Andy Murray in the men’s semi-finals.
The Spaniard closed Wednesday’s marathon night session with a 3-6 6-1 6-4 6-2 victory over unseeded American Mardy Fish.
Delayed by a series of long matches, Nadal clinched his first trip to a U.S. semi-final at 2:10 a.m. with a boisterous throng of fans still on hand in the city that never sleeps.
“Thanks everyone for being here ‘til 2 o’clock,” Nadal told the crowd in a courtside interview. “The night atmosphere here is always amazing. But I prefer to finish a little earlier.”
Murray gave a roar of relief after ending the 23-match winning streak of Argentine teenager Juan Martin Del Potro 7-6 7-6 4-6 7-5 to reach his first grand slam semi-final.
The biggest buzz of the day came from the clash between the Williams sisters, which featured brilliant rallies, raw power and such unbridled effort that the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd gave them a standing ovation after one breathtaking exchange.
U.S. Open champion in 2000 and 2001, Venus failed to capitalize on serving for the first set at 5-4 and again for the second at 5-3.
Venus ripped 36 winners but had 45 unforced errors in her quest for the quick kill. Her greatest lapse came when serving for the second set at 5-3, 40-0. She squandered three set points, making five successive errors that brought the set back on serve.
“I’m a very good closer,” said Venus, a seven-times grand slam winner and like Serena a double Open champion. “I never had a match like that in my life. But I guess there’s always a first. I guess she played a little better.”
Venus led 6-3 in the second tiebreaker but three errors brought it back even. A backhand volley by Serena spoiled another Venus set point at 7-6 before two more errors by Venus ended it 9-7 in Serena’s favor.
“She played some great volleys and got a lot of balls back,” said Venus, who beat Serena in the Wimbledon final in July for her fifth All England Club title. “It’s not what I planned.”
Murray plotted his path to the semis through two dominant tiebreakers, winning the first 7-2 and the second 7-1. The Scot overcame shaky moments in an error-filled third set before ending it as Del Potro served to stay alive.
“I’m very relieved,” Murray said after the grudge match against the 19-year-old Argentine, with whom he traded on-court insults at the Rome Masters in May.
Del Potro had won his last four tournaments — on clay at Stuttgart and Kitzbuhel, and on hard courts at Los Angeles and Washington to soar from 65 to 17 in the rankings.
Safina, 22, also registered a personal first, reaching the U.S. Open semi-finals for the first time.
“It’s great,” said Safina, runner-up at the French Open and Beijing Olympics.
“I’m getting closer to reaching the same thing as my brother (Marat Safin, the 2000 champion), so I hope that one day we can have the same titles.”

TITLE: Zimbabwe Coalition Talks Hit Stalemate, Mbeki Disappoints
AUTHOR: By Nelson Banya
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: HARARE — Zimbabwe’s main opposition party has lost faith in power-sharing talks with President Robert Mugabe and will leave him to form a government alone rather than be forced into a deal, a party official said on Thursday.
The official, who asked not to be named, said the Movement for Democratic Change no longer had confidence in the mediation of South African President Thabo Mbeki and wanted the United Nations and African Union to rescue the process.
Talks are deadlocked over how to share executive power between Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, putting off any chance of rescuing Zimbabwe from its economic collapse.
“We have lost confidence in this process. They can go ahead and Mugabe can form his government, we will not be a part of that circus,” the official said.
“He (Mbeki) is trying to rush us into a deal. The unfortunate thing is that Mbeki is trying to help Mugabe achieve his ends, not to solve the crisis.”
State media said Mugabe had given Tsvangirai until Thursday to sign a deal or he would form a government himself. Mugabe, in power since 1980, was quoted as saying Zimbabwe could not afford a situation where “we will not have a cabinet forever.”
But Tsvangirai’s party said any attempts to force it into a deal would fail.
“Where on earth have you seen dialogue held on the basis of threats and ultimatum? They want to bully us into an agreement, but that’s completely unacceptable,” said MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa.
Despite the maneuvering, analysts believe neither side has much option but to agree a deal eventually.
“There are two possible outcomes, either Tsvangirai gives in or the deal collapses,” said Lovemore Madhuku, a law lecturer and chairman of political lobby group National Constitutional Assembly.
“But I don’t see Mugabe conceding any more ground than he has already done, and if Tsvangirai continues to refuse what is on the table, the MDC will have to decide on where it goes from here,” Madhuku added.
The MDC official said the opposition party had other options: “We are looking toward the African Union and the United Nations to rescue this process and take it forward.”
Tsvangirai has rejected a proposal he says gives Mugabe control of Zimbabwe’s powerful security forces.
Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in a March 29 election but fell short of enough votes to avoid a June run-off vote, which was won by Mugabe unopposed after Tsvangirai pulled out citing violence and intimidation against his supporters.

TITLE: Vieira to Resume Post as Iraq Coach
AUTHOR: By Martin Petty
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BANGKOK — Jorvan Vieira claimed that only a madman would take his job when he quit as Iraq coach last year after leading the side to an unlikely Asian Cup triumph.
Thirteen months and two failed coaches later, the Brazilian journeyman is back in charge of the same disorganised, rag-tag team he steered to a fairytale victory in Jakarta.
“Maybe I am crazy, I don’t know,” Vieira told Reuters by telephone from the Iraq capital Baghdad.
“But everything I’ve asked for has been guaranteed. I believe the situation is different this time.”
He had better hope so.
In May 2007, the 55-year-old Vieira inherited a team in total disarray, with slapdash preparations, no kit, few available players and ugly religious rifts between members of the squad.
Although the Asian Cup win made Vieira an instant hero in war-scarred Iraq, he rejected a lucrative contract extension, saying he feared he would need to be admitted to a mental asylum.
“They’re doing it the right way this time,” Vieira said after a meeting with the country’s sports minister.
“They promised no more headaches. I have set my conditions, my budget. I will decide how this team will be run. If not, I’ll walk,” he added.
However, little has changed since the “Lions of Mesopotamia” won the biggest prize in Asian soccer.
Three months ago, they narrowly escaped an international ban for political interference in sport, and their hopes of reaching their first World Cup in 24 years were buried when they conceded a late goal in their final qualifier against Qatar.
“It’s a shame, it was a huge disappointment for the Iraqi people,” said Vieira, who watched that match from the terraces of the Al Ahli stadium in Dubai, Iraq’s makeshift home.
“They have always asked for me to come back, everyone, the kids, the fans, even the people in the street. This is why I have returned.
“When you feel that emotion, there is only one thing to do.”
Although there will be no World Cup to contest, Vieira wants to win the upcoming Gulf Cup and the 2009 Confederations Cup, a tournament for the champions of Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and the CONCACAF region.
Despite being based in Dubai, Vieira wants to train the team and recruit new players in Baghdad, as well as other parts of the besieged country.
“This job will be exciting,” he said. “I will be reunited with the players and thousands more youngsters who want to play for their country now.
“They need a leader and I believe that person is me.”

TITLE: Oprah Winfrey Hosts Party For Victorious U.S. Athletes
AUTHOR: By Michael Conlon
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CHICAGO — Talk show host Oprah Winfrey threw a rousing welcome home party for more than 150 U.S. Olympic medal winners on Wednesday that was a salute to the athletes and a pep rally for efforts to bring the 2016 summer games to America.
Winfrey, whose program is seen in 140 countries and boasts a weekly U.S. audience of 46 million, filled an open-air concert venue on Chicago’s Lake Michigan waterfront with more than 4,000 people who jumped, shouted and cheered in swirling red, white and blue confetti as the medalists walked through the aisles and took the stage.
“Team USA, you want to make us all stand taller,” she told the athletes at the end of the program, adding that she hoped they would have a chance to return to Chicago for the 2016 games, for which the city is bidding against Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.
Swimmer Michael Phelps, who came back from last month’s games in Beijing with a record eight gold medals, told Winfrey his feat had not sunk in but “I need to get back home” to Maryland to see friends and his pet bulldog.
“One of the biggest things I want to do is grow the sport of swimming,” he added, noting that he has established a charitable foundation to promote the sport using the $1 million bonus he earned from the makers of Speedo swimwear.
Another swimming star, silver medalist Dara Torres, told Winfrey she was not done with competitive swimming at age 41.
“I kind of want to keep going for a bit,” she said, unlike past Olympic competitions after which, she said, she didn’t want to go near the water again.

TITLE: Pakistan Condemns U.S.-Led Raid
AUTHOR: By Nahal Toosi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Parliament passed resolutions Thursday condemning an American-led attack in Pakistani territory after the government summoned the U.S. ambassador to protest the unusually bold raid that officials say killed at least 15 people.
The criticism grew two days before Asif Ali Zardari is expected to be chosen as president in a vote by legislators. A spokesman said Zardari condemned Wednesday’s pre-dawn assault in the South Waziristan tribal region — the first known foreign ground assault in Pakistan against a Taliban haven. But Zardari also said Pakistan stands with the U.S. against international terrorism.
Zardari, widower of former premier Benazir Bhutto, is expected to pursue a pro-U.S. policy similar to that of former President Pervez Musharraf and continue to go after Islamic militants accused of crossing into Afghanistan to attack the U.S.-led international security force there.
An American official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of cross-border operations, confirmed to The Associated Press that U.S. troops conducted the raid about a mile from the Afghan border.
It was unclear whether any extremist leader was killed or captured. Pakistan’s border region is considered a likely hiding place for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi condemned the attack, saying “no important terrorist or high-value target” was killed.
“Innocent citizens, including women and children, have been targeted,” Qureshi said. The ministry’s spokesman said officials had no indication that U.S. forces had captured anyone.
Pakistan army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, citing witness and intelligence reports, said troops flew in on at least one big CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter, blasted their way into several houses and gunned down men they found there.
Army and intelligence officials as well as residents said 15 people died, while the provincial governor said 20 civilians, including women and children, were killed.
Pakistan’s Senate and National Assembly passed resolutions Thursday condemning the attack.
In the past, similar protests over suspected U.S. missile attacks in Pakistani territory have led to little tangible effect on America’s relationship with Pakistan, which has received billions of dollars from Washington for its aid in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
Still, the operation in South Waziristan’s Angoor Ada area threatened to complicate an already difficult relationship.
U.S. commanders have been pushing Pakistan to root out militants. American officials say destroying militant sanctuaries in Pakistani tribal regions is key to defeating Taliban-led militants in Afghanistan, whose insurgency has strengthened every year since 2001, when the fundamentalist militia was ousted for harboring bin Laden.
Suspected U.S. missile strikes killed at least two al-Qaida commanders this year in northwest Pakistan, angering many among the region’s fiercely independent tribes.
In a sign of the complex nature of the situation along the porous border, a U.S. commander told the AP that U.S. troops in Afghanistan will step up offensive operations this winter because insurgents are increasingly staying in the country to prepare for spring attacks.
Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser said 7,000 to 11,000 insurgents operate in the eastern part of Afghanistan that he oversees — a far higher estimate than given by previous U.S. commanders.
He said the U.S. military realized more militants spent last winter in Afghanistan after speaking with elders and villagers who were pushed out of their homes. The spike in violence in the spring occurred because insurgents were already in position to unleash attacks, though U.S. officials did not know it at the time, he said.
In Washington, some administration officials have pressed President Bush to direct U.S. troops in Afghanistan to be more aggressive in pursuing militants into Pakistan on foot as part of a proposed radical shift in regional counterterrorism strategy, the AP learned.
In a column Thursday in The Washington Post, Zardari described global terrorism as chief among the challenges facing his country.