SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1421 (85), Friday, October 31, 2008
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TITLE: Experts Say City Tourists Unfazed By Credit Crisis
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Although the unfolding economic crisis has led to a decline in profits for hotel operators and travel agencies worldwide, local tourism industry experts say St. Petersburg tour operators are safe and local residents continue to book vacations abroad.
“Unlike Moscow, where dozens of tour operators have recently found themselves on the verge of going bankrupt, the local travel industry is expected to withstand the blow,” said Sergei Korneyev, head of the North-Western branch of the Russian Toursim Industry Union (RST). “Most of the St. Petersburg agencies depend on two airlines, with one of them, GTK Rossija being a state enterprise, and the second one, Aeroflot, a strong veteran player.”
During RST’s monthly meeting in October, St. Petersburg travel agencies reported good sales for November and December tours, including New Year’s and Christmas packages. But the agencies also point out that there is a greater demand for cheaper accommodation and less-expensive packages than before.
“The circle of people who spend their holidays abroad has not changed drastically but the crisis has visibly affected their spending,” Korneyev said. “If the crisis is exacerbated in Russia, then we can expect a substantial damage to the travel industry in spring, from April onwards.”
However, Moscow travel agencies have reported a ten-percent decline in the most popular destinations, including Turkey, Croatia, Montenegro and Tunisia.
“Moscow agencies serve the entire country, while in St. Petersburg we have a rather small, long-established circle of companies and a stable position on the market,” Korneyev said. “Fortunately, local tour operators, even the largest ones, do not depend on any banks, which would play to their advantage in the current circumstances. The Muscovites have always accused us of being ‘static.’ Now, this stability is helping us to survive. “
Hotels in Europe’s ten leading tourist destinations have reported declines in occupancy and revenues, according to TRI Hospitality agency. Paris has suffered the biggest losses, with average 31 percent decline in profits, and a ten-percent decline in occupancy. A similar decrease in occupancy was reported in Amsterdam and Vienna. Hotel operators are expected to revise their pricing policies to avoid further decline.
According to official statistics, the five most popular destinations for Russians in 2007 were Turkey, Spain, Germany, Egypt and Finland. France and Greece were very close to the top five.
Nearly 2.5 million Russians visited Turkey in 2007, a 33-percent hike since 2006, according to RST. Russians now account for the second-largest group of foreign tourists, after Germany, and it is expected that they will lead the Turkish market by 2010, when Turkey plans to receive at least 3.5 million Russians.
In St. Petersburg, preferences are slightly different, with Finland holding the prime position, and Germany coming second, followed by Turkey, France and Spain.
Research conducted by RST shows that Russian tourists spend a minimum of $500 a week on services, amusements and souvenirs alone, excluding transportation and accommodation expenses.
Many industry professionals agree that in Europe Russian visitors are now largely seen as a partial substitute for Americans who have stayed away since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington D.C.
TITLE: Putin, Wen Sign Off on Oil Pipeline Deal
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Executives at two of the country’s largest oil producers said Wednesday that output would fall next year if prices remain low and the state doesn’t provide further tax cuts, in a sign the financial crisis has put the energy industry on edge.
LUKoil vice president Leonid Fedun went so far as to say Russia should join OPEC to help buttress global prices, which have crashed to levels that jeopardize investment. “It would be a boon for Russia,” he said on the sidelines of an investment conference.
The company, Russia’s second-largest producer and biggest private oil firm, is the first to advocate joining the organization.
A chorus of Russian and international energy analysts have said private oil companies are the biggest stumbling block on Russia’s way to joining the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, because it would be difficult for the government to influence their production plans.
Fedun, speaking at an investment conference, estimated that the country’s 2009 output would fall by up to 1.5 percent, although he said LUKoil would increase production next year.
Gazprom Neft’s vice president for finance, Vadim Yakovlev, had an even less optimistic forecast, saying output next year would decline by as much as 5 percent without better prices or new tax cuts.
The wave of pessimism comes as Russia faces its first annual decline in output in a decade, despite government efforts to engineer an increase by cutting taxes and giving investment incentives.
European spot prices for Brent crude were up 7 percent to $66.35 per barrel in Wednesday evening trading. A range of $60 to $65 will lead to a 2 percent decline in output next year, UBS said in a note Wednesday.
Rosneft is budgeting for an average 2009 price of $50 to $60 per barrel, chief financial officer Peter O’Brien said at the conference. Gazprom Neft was assuming the price would rise to $70, Yakovlev said. LUKoil’s base scenario was for a price of $65, Fedun said.
The proposal that Russia join OPEC and cut production in line with other members suggests that producers aren’t expecting demand to rise soon.
LUKoil slashed production in 1998 when prices fell to $9 per barrel and could do so again if the government agreed to help cover the costs, Fedun said. To make cuts possible, the government must lift property taxes on wells that would stop operating, he said. After a standstill, the government should pay to bring the wells back into production by lifting the mineral extraction tax on them for half a year, he added.
The government would also have to amend the law on subsoil resources use, which requires companies to maintain certain production levels set by their licenses, Fedun said.
But the proposals were not certain to face a warm welcome from the government, which has said it will maintain an independent energy policy, even as Russia looks for broader international cooperation on energy.
President Dmitry Medvedev held his first-ever meeting with OPEC’s secretary-general last week, but Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said the country would not join the body in production cuts.
Government spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that the country was not considering membership in OPEC.
Sally Jones, a spokeswoman for OPEC, said she was unable to comment immediately.
Another way to help oil companies, Fedun said, would be to further ease the tax burden on the sector.
“So far, the Finance Ministry and the government are looking at the industry as a milking cow,” Fedun said. “The cow needs to be fed. … If you put the cow under a press and push it won’t get you much milk.”
TITLE: EU, Russia Hold Icy Partnership Talks in St. Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Conor Sweeney and Denis Pinchuk
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: The European Union will discuss resuming partnership talks with Moscow at a summit next month, EU President France said Tuesday after holding talks with Russia that one diplomat described as “prickly.”
Russia’s military thrust into Georgia in August overshadowed the talks between Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and an EU delegation headed by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.
One senior diplomat described the mood of the meeting as “pretty prickly.”
But Kouchner told a joint news conference that EU and Russian leaders would meet in the French city of Nice on Nov. 13 and 14 to resume discussions on a planned partnership agreement.
“They will fix a schedule at that date for advancing the partnership agreement,” Kouchner said.
Plans for a broad agreement, a blueprint for long-term relations between Moscow and Brussels, were put on hold because of Russia’s armed intervention into Georgia to force Georgian troops out of South Ossetia, a pro-Russian enclave.
Kouchner, joined in St. Petersburg by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, said the Nice summit was expected to have a positive outcome.
Russia supplies a quarter of Europe’s gas, while the EU is Russia’s biggest trading partner.
Russia’s five-day war in Georgia, its brief occupation of parts of Georgian territory and prompt recognition of South Ossetia and another rebel region, Abkhazia, as independent states have drawn harsh criticism from the West.
Despite efforts to project a light-hearted mood at the news conference, one official said there had been little movement on other topics discussed, apart from the partnership talks.
These included Russia’s plan for a new security architecture on the continent to replace umbrella treaties covering European security. Lavrov raised the Russian plan again at the news conference.
Lavrov also stood by Russia’s position that under Moscow’s interpretation of a cease-fire agreement, EU monitors were entitled only to operate in Georgian territory adjacent to South Ossetia but not inside the breakaway region itself, as the EU had requested.
“The security in South Ossetia and Abkhazia after Russia’s recognition is secured by the presence on their territory of Russian military contingents in response to requests from the leaderships of South Ossetia and Abkhazia,” Lavrov said.
Western states condemned Russia’s action in Georgia in August as disproportionate. Russia said it had been obliged to act to prevent a genocide of separatists in South Ossetia by Georgia.
Before the French presidency of the EU can initiate moves to restart the partnership talks, it has to get the go-ahead from EU foreign ministers, who will meet on Nov. 10.
Member states disagree over whether Russia has done enough to merit restarting the talks.
But some EU diplomats traveling with the delegation to St. Petersburg said they were hopeful that no country would try to block the resumption of negotiations.
TITLE: Mandelson Says Russia Riding High in Crisis
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia is well-equipped to withstand the financial crisis, and foreign investors are not jumping ship, British Business Secretary Peter Mandelson said Wednesday as he wrapped up a four-day visit that showed significant improvement in London’s troubled ties with Moscow.
Thanks to its oil- and gas-financed surplus, “Russia is better placed than others to weather the storm,” Mandelson told reporters, adding that he felt common sense prevailed in the government.
Mandelson also said he hoped that “my visit will intensify a thawing of the difficult political relationship that we have experienced.”
In the first visit of a British Cabinet member since February 2007, Mandelson on Tuesday held talks with First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, with whom he revived a steering committee for Russian-British investment that he said had been defunct for six years.
In a softening of its rhetoric, the Foreign Ministry said after Mandelson met Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday that both countries needed to overcome their political differences.
“We could not have wished for a better reception,” Mandelson said of his Moscow visit.
Russian-British relations have been in a downward spiral unseen since the end of the Cold War after the 2006 poisoning death of former security services agent Alexander Litvinenko, the forced closure of British Council offices in Russia and London’s tough stance on Russia’s actions in the brief war in Georgia.
Mandelson said there were no signs of a drop in confidence among his country’s business community. “There is no sign that U.K. investors are pulling back from Russia or downscaling their plans,” he said.
Rather, he argued, both countries are being driven together by a common need to fight the crisis, which threatens to damage Britain’s position as a top source of foreign direct investment in Russia.
“The importance of those investment relations is only increased by the current crisis,” he said.
Both countries will embark on high-level cooperation to solve the situation, with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Dmitry Medvedev meeting at an anti-crisis summit in Washington in the upcoming weeks.
Yet in a sign that even during a trip abroad Mandelson was not immune to a political storm back home, some British newspapers reported that the cost of Mandelson’s suite in the Baltschug Kempinski Hotel is advertised for 150,500 rubles ($5,570) per night.
The headline in the Daily Mail read “Fit for an Oligarch,” although the accompanying article quoted a spokeswoman for Mandelson as saying the hotel was charging only $1,380 at a discount rate.
British media and the Conservative opposition have hounded Mandelson over the past two weeks over allegations that he lowered aluminum tariffs in favor of oligarch and metals tycoon Oleg Deripaska during his tenure as the European Union’s trade commissioner. Mandelson, who was appointed business secretary earlier this month despite having resigned from Cabinet posts twice in a political career dogged by scandal, has denied any wrongdoing. He has acknowledged meeting Deripaska several times since 2004, most recently as a guest on the billionaire’s yacht off the Greek island of Corfu in August.
Speaking at a news conference in the British Embassy, he angrily refused to answer a reporter’s question about his relationship with Deripaska. “You have wasted your question,” he said.
George Osborne, a British lawmaker in charge of treasury policy for the Conservatives, apologized Monday for his own visit to Deripaska’s yacht during his vacation on Corfu, saying it “didn’t look very good.”
The opposition party is now demanding that Mandelson provide a full account of his dealings with Deripaska.
However, Mandelson took pains to explain Wednesday that the ability to build relationships with business leaders was important in international politics and one of his main qualifications for his Cabinet post. “That is what I have been bringing to this job, and I will continue to stand up for British interests and British jobs,” he said.
He said his four-year tenure as EU commissioner made him the right man for the job because he had established good ties with government officials, including Shuvalov, Kudrin and State Nanotechnology Corporation head Anatoly Chubais.
TITLE: Frenkel Found Guilty Of Central Banker’s Murder
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A jury on Tuesday found banker Alexei Frenkel guilty of ordering the 2006 killing of central banker Andrei Kozlov after an eight-month trial mired in scandal.
The verdict apparently came as a surprise to Frenkel, who smiled and waved to waiting relatives right before the verdict was announced. He also ordered a taxi to take him home, state television reported.
After 5 1/2 hours of deliberations, the Moscow City Court jury convicted Frenkel and six other suspects in connection with Kozlov’s contract-style murder, which sent shockwaves through the financial community.
Kozlov, first deputy head of the Central Bank, had led a campaign against money laundering and stripped hundreds of banks of their licenses, including four banks linked to Frenkel, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Court spokeswoman Anna Usachyova said the court would convene Thursday to hand down sentences. Frenkel, 36, who has maintained his innocence, faces a sentence of up to life in prison.
The jury convicted four Ukrainians — Bogdan Pogorzhevsky, Alexander Belokopytov, Alexei Polovinkin and Maxim Proglyada — of carrying out the killing and illegal weapon possession, and Moscow residents Liana Askerova and Boris Shafrai of being accessories to the murder. The jury asked for leniency for Pogorzhevsky, who admitted his guilt and testified against the other suspects, and Belokopytov, who they said played a minor role in the killing.
Prosecutor Gyulchakhra Ibragimova expressed satisfaction with the verdict. “Frenkel wanted to be tried by a jury. The jury said clearly that he was guilty of organizing Kozlov’s murder,” Ibragimova told reporters.
“The motive for the crime was revenge,” she added.
Frenkel’s lawyer, Ruslan Koblev, promised to appeal. “We’ll file an appeal to the European court in any case irrespective of the verdict, because in our opinion the violations made by the court and the prosecution in this process have surpassed all possible limits,” Koblev said in televised remarks outside the courtroom.
Frenkel’s relatives eagerly clustered outside the court Tuesday to wait for the verdict in the closed-door trial. When the door was opened just before the jury delivered its verdict, Frenkel smiled and waved to his relatives from the glass-enclosed defendant’s cage, apparently confident that he would be freed.
“I think the jury will acquit him on the basis of their humanity,” Frenkel’s brother Mikhail said. “They wouldn’t put such a sin on their souls.”
Kozlov’s widow read a book in the hall as she waited for the verdict. She refused to speak to reporters.
It was unclear how the jury had voted; by law, only a majority is needed to reach a verdict. The court spokeswoman said the verdict had been “nearly unanimous,” while the prosecutor said later that it had been unanimous.
Three jurors were removed and charged with wrongdoing in July in what defense lawyers have denounced as a move by prosecutors to tip the jury in their favor. One of the unidentified jurors was charged with attempted obstruction of justice after he tried to bribe fellow jurors to declare Frenkel not guilty, while the others were charged with drinking in public and talking about the case, respectively.
The judge excused the jury from the courtroom several times while Frenkel made his closing remarks Thursday.
Frenkel accused prosecutors and the court of not giving him a chance to prove his innocence. “I haven’t even been given a possibility to present proof of my innocence, which I have a lot of,” Frenkel said Thursday.
Investigators said Frenkel, whose banks included Sodbiznesbank and VIP-Bank, lost billions of rubles as a result of Kozlov’s decisions to revoke their licenses. Frenkel was arrested in January 2007.
The Central Bank’s actions prompted some State Duma deputies to complain in February 2007 that licenses had been revoked without just cause in some cases and to call for the Central Bank’s powers to be curbed. Their request was formally reviewed but later dropped.
Kozlov, 41, and his driver were shot dead by two gunmen with automatic pistols as Kozlov was exiting the Spartak sports complex in Moscow on Sept. 13, 2006.
TITLE: 2 Jesuit Priests Beaten to Death
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Two Jesuit priests were found beaten to death in an apartment just meters away from Moscow police headquarters, investigators said Wednesday.
Otto Messmer, 47, a Russian citizen and top Jesuit figure in Russia, and Victor Betancourt, a 42-year-old Ecuadorian citizen, were found dead with battered skulls at 10 p.m. Tuesday in an apartment at 19 Ulitsa Petrovka, investigators and Catholic officials said. Police headquarters is located at 38 Ulitsa Petrovka.
“They didn’t answer phone calls, so their fellow brothers in the order went to the apartment, where they found them dead,” said Igor Kovalevsky, general secretary of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Russia, RIA-Novosti reported.
The priests were believed to have been dead for about 24 hours before they were found, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
Investigators are exploring all possible motives for the killings, including the possibility of a quarrel, since “there were traces of a party in the room,” the statement said.
Investigator Yury Sukharev told Gazeta.ru that there were glasses and open bottles of wine and absinthe in the kitchen.
The door of the apartment was open when the bodies were found, but it was unclear whether any valuables had been stolen. The five-room apartment belongs to the Jesuits, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Russia said.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office said she could give no more information than was in the Investigative Committee’s statement.
Early media reports said police were called to the apartment after a fight and that they were looking for a Latin American man who had fled the scene.
A police spokesman could not confirm the reports Wednesday.
The Catholic Church expressed hope that the perpetrators would be brought to justice. “The church hopes that the Russian law enforcement organs will be able to find the criminals and the court and society will give an objective legal and moral judgment of their misdeeds,” the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Russia said in the statement.
Both men carried out pastoral work at the St. Louis Catholic Church on Ulitsa Malaya Lubyanka, the statement said.
Messmer, whose title was Superior of the Russian Independent Region of the Society of Jesus, was born to an ethnic German family in Kazakhstan that kept its Catholic faith alive despite Soviet repression, the statement said. His brother, Bishop Nikolaus Messmer, is the Apostolic Administrator of Kyrgyzstan.
Betancourt had been working in Russia since 2001. This year, he began working at the St. Thomas Institute of Philosophy, Theology and History, a private Jesuit institution in Moscow.
The Jesuits have been active in Russia since 1992, when the Russian Independent Region of the Society of Jesus was officially registered.
A requiem mass for the two priests was held at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral on Wednesday evening.
TITLE: Putin, Wen Sign Off on Oil Pipeline Deal
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao agreed to build an oil pipeline to China and signed off on a raft of other agreements Tuesday.
The leaders also discussed ways to jointly counter the global financial crisis, just three weeks before leaders from Russia, China and other countries gather for an emergency summit in Washington to grapple with the same problem.
“It’s hard to find another country in the world that is our partner with such a wide range of interaction,” Putin said after the talks.
The filling of the new pipeline remained a question however, as Rosneft and Transneft will have to continue talks with China’s state-owned CNPC and Chinese banks for another four weeks. The companies have until Nov. 25 to sign the final long-term oil supply deal that would give the Russian companies access to large Chinese loans, said Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who oversees energy policy.
“All aspects of cooperation have been discussed in the course of negotiations with the Chinese side, including the financial ones,” Sechin said, Interfax reported. “We don’t have any disagreements.”
The Russian companies could take out export-backed loans from Chinese banks to finance their investment, Sechin said.
“The amount of the credit will be defined depending on the cost of the projects that the companies will implement. It is considerable,” Sechin said.
Rosneft spokesman Nikolai Manvelov said the company would not comment on ongoing talks. Transneft spokesman Mikhail Barkov was busy and unavailable for comment Tuesday afternoon, his secretary said.
Transneft, the national oil pipeline monopoly that would carry the oil, signed an agreement with CNPC that sets the principles of constructing and operating the oil pipeline to China. It would begin at Skovorodino, some 70 kilometers from the Chinese border, and would be an offshoot of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline that Russia is building to supply Asian markets.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Putin, denied that Russia and China were supposed to clinch the oil-for-loans deal Tuesday. “The issue is still being worked on,” he said. “There was no goal to make this decision on any concrete date.”
Industry sources said Monday that Russia and China would sign the deal Tuesday, Reuters reported. Under the deal, Rosneft would commit to shipping 300 million tons of oil over the next 20 years, 4 percent of China’s current annual demand. Chinese banks would lend Rosneft and Transneft a total of $20 billion to $25 billion, at a time when the liquidity crunch is making borrowing harder. If the loan were agreed, Russia’s state-run oil major Rosneft would get three-fifths of the funds, while state pipeline monopoly Transneft would obtain the other two-fifths.
In other areas of possible cooperation, Russia and China should join forces to fight the global crisis and reform the global financial order, Wen said.
Speaking after his talks with Putin, Wen said the two had discussed an “opportunity to jointly counter a financial and economic crisis and strengthen our financial cooperation.”
TITLE: Skyscraper Funding Reviewed
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The chairman of St. Petersburg’s budget and finances committee, Vladimir Barkanov, told Interfax on Thursday that the city’s participation in the controversial Okhta Center skyscraper project would be reviewed as part of amendments to the city’s 2009 budget necessitated by the global financial crisis.
“Firstly, we are postponing the project’s financing for the first half of the year until the project’s budget documentation is ready. Secondly, negotiations are currently being held between the St. Petersburg government and Gazprom about changes to the project’s financing,” Barkanov told Interfax.
The evening before, Barkanov told STO television channel that “the city was confident that the construction project would be realized,” Interfax reported. “The city is not anxious on this front, but different forms of financing will be found,” the news agency quoted him as saying.
Natalya Vyalkina, a spokeswoman for Gazprom Neft whose headquarters would be housed in the planned complex, told Interfax that the company had not received any documentation stating that the city would not after all be co-financing the project.
The city had planned to allocate 2.9 billion rubles ($108.2 million) from next year’s budget for the construction of the 397-meter high skyscraper, which will cost an estimated 60 billion rubles ($2.24 billion), Vedomosti reported Wednesday. Forty-nine percent of that amount was due to be financed by the city, and 51 percent by Gazprom. The project is due to be completed by 2016.
The funds made available by the amendment to the city budget may be directed to the construction of the new stadium on Krestovsky Island, a high-ranking City Hall official told Vedomosti on Tuesday. He said then that the decision had almost been made and that the city was pulling out of the Okhta Center project, Vedomosti reported.
Alexander Vakhmistrov, deputy governor of St. Petersburg, said that next year, 10-12 billion rubles ($373.4 million) will be allocated from the city’s budget for the construction of the new stadium, the newspaper reported.
City Hall announced a new stadium would be built in 2004. In 2005, funds for its construction were allocated from the city budget, which grew after Sibneft (now Gazprom Neft) and Sibur re-registered in St. Petersburg, boosting the budget with tax payments. After construction costs soared, City Hall began negotiations with Gazprom about joint financing, but the energy giant declined to take part, Vedomosti reported.
“During the last three years, we have brought about 56 billion rubles ($2 billion) to the St. Petersburg budget. That is enough to build two stadiums,” Sergei Kupriyanov, press secretary to Gazprom head Alexei Miller, was quoted by the paper as saying.
TITLE: RusAl Secures $4.5Bln Bailout Loan
AUTHOR: By Maria Levina
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In the biggest state bailout yet, United Company RusAl will receive $4.5 billion to refinance a Western loan coming due this week, news reports said late Wednesday.
Vneshekonombank announced earlier in the day that it had approved nearly $10 billion in loans to help companies refinance their foreign debts, meaning that the funds for RusAl would represent almost half of that amount.
The news came as the realities of the global financial crisis seemed to sink in with the government, as the Economic Development Ministry trimmed its forecast for 2008 economic growth and a senior finance official cautioned that federal spending for 2010 might need to be revised because of low oil prices.
Still, the stock market surged by 12 percent.
RusAl notified the Western banks that lent it the $4.5 billion last spring that it had secured a similar amount from VEB on Wednesday to refinance the debt, Interfax reported, citing a banking source.
“The company sent notification to the banks in the syndicate six hours ago that it has reached an agreement with VEB on a loan of $4.5 billion,” the source said.
Bloomberg carried a similar report, citing two unidentified bankers.
RusAl declined to comment on the reports.
A bailout for RusAl had been widely anticipated. RusAl took out a two-year loan in April to acquire a 25 percent stake in Norilsk Nickel. If it had defaulted, it would have had to hand over to Western creditors the stake in Norilsk, which the state considers a strategic asset.
VEB did not specify which companies had qualified for funds in the $10 billion bailout, saying only that they needed to repay loans soon.
“Our supervisory board approved a decision on a range of borrowers whose debts must be refinanced,” VEB chief Vladimir Dmitriyev said on Vesti-24 television. “The amount is a little less than $10 billion. These are first-class borrowers that, because of the unfavorable situation on world markets, face the threat of losing their assets.”
Meanwhile, the Economic Development Ministry lowered its 2008 GDP forecast by half a percentage point on expectations that the financial crisis would cause a slowdown in the fourth quarter, but it emphasized that economic growth would still be 7.3 percent.
In an indication that the prospect of falling oil prices is a major concern for the government, Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin warned that the 2010 budget would fall into deficit with oil at $60 per barrel, and he mentioned several measures that the government could take to address this.
“At $60 a barrel, the 2009 budget will be balanced, but probably not in 2010,” he said at a UBS investment conference. “One option the government has is to use the Reserve Fund, while another one is to reconsider the budget.”
The 2009 budget originally assumed an oil price of $95 per barrel, which currently seems optimistic given that oil prices have fallen more than 50 percent since July.
In the interim, the government is continuing to look for options to ease the blow on real sectors of the economy. Kremlin economic adviser Arkady Dvorkovich told the same investment conference that the government was evaluating a proposal to introduce longer installments on value-added tax payments. Earlier this month, the government passed a law allowing companies to break quarterly VAT payments into three-month installments.
Dvorkovich said the government might now introduce VAT deductions on advances paid by companies for goods and services.
TITLE: Vodafone Teams With MTS to Enter Russia
AUTHOR: By Simon Thiel and Lyubov Pronina
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Vodafone Group, the world’s largest wireless company, will enter an agreement with Russia’s Mobile TeleSystems to jointly promote products and services.
Mobile TeleSystems will market a range of products, services and devices from Vodafone in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Armenia, Newbury, England-based Vodafone said in an e-mailed statement Thursday. The U.K. company will also help Mobile TeleSystems develop high-speed Internet networks and mobile broadband products.
The collaboration will allow Vodafone to tap growth in Russia, where Mobile TeleSystems is the largest mobile-phone company. Vodafone has expanded in emerging markets with acquisitions in Turkey, India and Ghana to make up for slower growth in Western Europe. The company scaled back its sales forecast in July, saying it faced a “more challenging” environment as Spain’s economy cooled and call prices dropped.
“Our agreement with MTS is an opportunity for Vodafone to build its presence and work with the leading operator in these important markets,” Vodafone Chief Executive officer Vittorio Colao said Thursday. “By combining the geographical reach of the company’s respective networks, we can give customers greater roaming capabilities and extended coverage.”
Mobile TeleSystems jumped 11 percent in Moscow trading, Vodafone fell 0.9 pence in London trading Thursday.
So-called partner market agreements allow Vodafone products and services to be available through partnerships with operators the U.K. company doesn’t own. In May, Vodafone announced a similar agreement with Chile’s Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones.
The Mobile TeleSystems deal comes after Vodafone revamped its organization structure to work in emerging markets more efficiently. Management of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia will be split in two beginning Jan. 1, the company said in September.
Mobile TeleSystems, based in Moscow, is controlled by billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s AFK Sistema holding company.
Russia had almost 180 million wireless subscribers at the end of September, according to Moscow-based researcher Advanced Communications & Media.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Bank Deposits Down
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russians will withdraw more money from banks this month compared with September, Interfax reported, citing Mikhail Zadornov, chief of lender VTB-24, VTB Group’s retail unit.
Personal deposits declined 1.5 percent in September and will fall more than that in October, the Moscow-based news service quoted Zadornov as saying Thursday.
People are also transferring money that remains in bank accounts from rubles into foreign currencies at a faster pace, according to Interfax.
X5 in Acquisition Talks
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — X5 Retail Group, Russia’s largest food retailer, is in acquisition talks with “several” companies, Chief Executive Officer Lev Khasis said.
Smaller competitors are being hit hard by the credit squeeze and some can be bought basically for the price of their debt, Khasis said at an investment conference in Moscow Thursday, without being more specific.
TITLE: The Looming Depression
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: The Kremlin still frowns on the use of the word “crisis” to describe Russia’s financial markets. But no such taboo exists in the United States. As the election campaign enters its final days, Democratic front-runner Barack Obama appears to understand the seriousness of the situation. He has proposed measures to boost government spending and to stimulate demand in the spirit of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. It is a good thing, since the words “Great Depression” have started to echo in the financial press.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spent much of his academic career studying the causes of the Depression. He shares the view of the late Nobel Prize economist Milton Friedman — that the Depression occurred because the Federal Reserve not only failed to pump money into the financial system after the 1929 stock market crash, but it raised interest rates to boot. In 2002, at an event marking Friedman’s 90th birthday, Bernanke assured the father of monetarism that the Federal Reserve understood its mistakes and that another Depression would never happen again.
The current financial crisis gives Bernanke a chance to test this theory. The Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates and provided hundreds of billions of dollars to U.S. banks. But sell-offs on Wall Street continue and a major recession seems unavoidable.
In reality, the Depression had less to do with lack of liquidity and more with economic fundamentals and imbalances between supply and demand. Starting in the early 1920s, the U.S. economy was driven by a post-World War I burst in consumer demand. This boom benefited from the introduction of new products such as automobiles and radio sets. The economy also thrived by providing infrastructure for those new products. This is when electric utilities and the oil industry experienced explosive growth.
Productive capacities expanded rapidly. Just as companies geared up to produce more by the late 1920s, the market became saturated. When the economy spiraled downward, the magnitude of the crisis intensified with a snowball effect. Shrinking demand led to layoffs, which in turn reduced consumers’ ability to buy even basic necessities. Economic activity in the United States shrank by 8.6 percent in 1930, then by 6.1 percent in 1931 and 13 percent in 1932.
The authorities found that existing tools for reviving demand no longer worked. A depression is not merely a severe, prolonged cyclical downturn. It is when the old growth model fails in such a way that the economy cannot be revived with fiscal and monetary stimuli. A fundamental shift in the economic paradigm was the only way out of the Depression, and Roosevelt’s New Deal filled this role. It entailed instituting new government programs, public works, pensions, unemployment insurance and other measures to increase aggregate demand.
In this analysis, the Wall Street crash was a leading indicator of impending doom, not its cause. The stock market is a fine barometer of future economic trends and the current bout of selling on global stock markets reflects the fear of a coming economic slump. Just as in the early 1930s, the existing model of economic growth has suddenly started to disintegrate. This is why even consumer goods companies and oil conglomerates — both of which are currently profitable — have been dumped by investors.
Over the past 15 years, global economic growth has been sustained by U.S. consumers. U.S. imports measure almost $2 trillion and the trade deficit totals some $850 billion. The sheer volume of U.S. imports and the pace of their expansion provided a boost to other countries. The dollars the United States sent abroad have spurred consumption and investment in China, Russia and dozens of other emerging economies.
This burst of consumption was sustained not so much by wage growth, but by borrowing. Actually, there have been three mutually reinforcing credit bubbles. The U.S. housing boom was built on a mortgage bubble, as home mortgages grew by more than 50 percent from 2003 to 2007. Rising home prices led to a consumer credit bubble, with homeowners using their appreciating houses as collateral. Government debt also ballooned as Washington refused to raise taxes to close the federal budget gap. These three types of debt amount to more than $10 trillion each, which means that together they measure more than twice the size of the U.S. economy.
The housing bubble has popped, but this is only the first stage of the crisis. The second bubble, consumer spending, is starting to pop as well. Banks are starting to lend to each other once more and the credit crunch may be at an end. But it will be a very long time until they resume lending to the U.S. homeowner. Americans will have to stop living beyond their means, which could shrink consumption by as much as 20 percent.
Falling U.S. consumption has already been felt by countries that sell goods, services and oil to the United States. They will, in turn, curb their own consumption and production. The situation has a downward spiral written all over it, and foreign countries will suffer even more than the United States. In the Depression, the U.S. economy shrank by almost 50 percent. But the impact on the rest of the world was more severe, as the global economy contracted by 65 percent.
The third bubble, the U.S. government debt, will burst when countries like China and Russia stop running enormous current account surpluses and their central banks are no longer able to buy dollars. On the contrary, some central banks have started to sell their dollar reserves to support their currencies, economies and financial markets.
The crisis is at its early stages. No bottom is yet in sight, and it is unclear how deep it will go and how long it will last. Just as in the Depression, a new economic paradigm will be required to pull the economy out of the slump. It is testimony to the flexibility and resilience of the U.S. political system that, just as the economy started to tank, a president is about to be elected who understands what needs to be done.
Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.
TITLE: Peeved but Not Protesting
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: When there is a financial crisis in any country, it is usually bad for the ruling party but good for the opposition. In this regard, Russia’s crisis promises to become an economic disaster on a grand scale. True, it hasn’t peaked yet, but we don’t have long to wait.
Although the crisis is developing quite nicely, the same cannot be said for the opposition. Although opposition groups previously criticized the government relentlessly on various issues, we have heard little from them lately. One reason may be because the “liberal bloc” in the government, which is headed by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, has taken much of the wind out of the liberal opposition’s sails.
Take, for example, the radically libertarian Andrei Illarionov, who served as the economic adviser to then-President Vladimir Putin until he resigned in 2005 over Putin’s unwillingness to adopt his liberal economic reforms. There wasn’t much Illarionov could say against Kudrin’s sound idea to create a stabilization fund or against Kudrin’s persistent opposition to spending these funds domestically.
And what about the public at large? After all, Russia’s population consists of more than just state officials and their liberal opponents. Most people don’t belong to either category.
Russians have been largely silent on the country’s financial crisis. This is not so much tacit consent as it is concealed anger. Whatever it is, Russians haven’t voiced their concerns. Attempts by opposition groups to rally the masses on Oct. 25 by organizing protests on the so-called Day of Outrage were a resounding failure. The event’s organizers showed up on the appointed day, but the public stayed home.
The occasional speech by an opposition leader might make for a good photo op, but to exert any serious influence, people must hit the streets — not in the hundreds as we have now, but in the tens of thousands. Yet the people’s pervasive discontent never boils over into open protest. In a country where civil protest is chalked up as careerism or considered folly, people think such activists are crazy and they try to keep a safe distance from opposition activists.
Moreover, the dogmatic ideology of the opposition forces, which ranges from the ultraliberalism of Valeria Novodvorskaya and Garry Kasparov to the antiquated Stalinism and Bolshevism of Eduard Limonov and Sergei Udaltsov, is a discrediting factor that alienates people.
At the same time, the many initiative groups and grassroots movements that sprung up in 2005 over the monetization of pension benefits were heavily politicized. When the flag-toting political activists show up at these protests, mainstream Russians felt uncomfortable in their presence.
But, despite their attempts to avoid politics like the plague, leaders of these social groups repeatedly discover that they cannot fully escape it, however hard they try. Their challenge is not how to remain outside of politics, but how to formulate policies that can better promote their own interests in political and organizational circles. This kind of political savvy only comes with experience, however, and experience comes from making a long string of painful but edifying errors.
Now, all that is left is to hope that the crisis will offer useful — albeit painful — lessons. It will force society and the political system to initiate fundamental changes — whether they want to or not.
Boris Kagarlitsky is the director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.
TITLE: Modern master
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Michael Nyman, the distinguished British composer of such film soundtracks as “The Draughtsman’s Contract” (1982) and “The Piano” (1993) performs in St. Petersburg on Sunday with the Michael Nyman Band and Marie Angel.
Nyman’s distinctive reworking of complex Baroque themes and minimalist, rhythmic scores have earned him a solid following since the 1970s, and he was recently made Commander of the British Empire, one of the U.K.’s highest state honors. Asked how he felt about it in an interview this week with The St. Petersburg Times by telephone from his home in London, Nyman expressed “great pride and cynicism, combined.”
Next year to celebrate his 65th birtday, Nyman is rereleasing a lot of his back catalogue, including, he said “the very first Michael Nyman Band album, which very few people have heard; it’s been unavailable since 1981.”
Nyman’s 12-piece band, with whom he has performed for the last 15 years, is comprised of three saxophonists, three brass instrumentalists, a string quartet, a piano and bass. For Sunday’s concert at the Shostakovich Philharmonic, the group plans to perform works from recent releases on Nyman’s label including “8 Lust Songs” and “Mozart 252” — a compilation that includes what Nyman calls his signature tune, “In Re Don Giovanni,” and music from the Peter Greenaway film “Drowning by Numbers” (1988).
Q: You toured Russia last time, I think, in 2006…
A: Well, it wasn’t really a tour, it was only in Moscow and St. Petersburg… but that’s good enough!
Q: As far as I remember, it was based on your famous film scores…
A: That’s correct, yes.
Q: What are you going to perform this time?
A: Well, actually I’m connecting the concert with the two most recent CDs that I have released on MN Records. One is called “Mozart 252,” and the other is called “8 Lust Songs,” which is a song-cycle sung very brilliantly by [Australian-born opera singer] Marie Angel. [It is] settings of 16th century Italian pornographic texts by a fantastic writer called Pietro Aretino, so these are very sexual, very sensuous, powerful, lustful songs — which I think might be interesting to sophisticated Russian audiences.
Q: You have done quite a few things over the past few years. What was most important or interesting for you?
A: Well, I think the most interesting negative effect is that I, er, seem to have given up writing film music or rather the film industry, the “culture-business-film world,” has given up on me — for whatever reason — you should ask the directors and producers.
So basically I’m writing solely the music that I seriously love writing, which is making songs out of poems from the 16th century to 20th century. I’m writing operas. I’m currently doing music for big kind of circus-type show in Spain.
I’m writing music for two new — well, new to me — Dziga Vertov movies: “The Sixth Part of the World” [Shestaya chast mira, 1926]; and “The Eleventh Year” [Odinnadtsaty, 1928, both Soviet avant garde silent films]. I’ve got a video game. I’m also writing music for a collaboration with a fantastic electronic composer in Berlin called Carsten Nicolai, etc., etc.
And the other thing that’s even more interesting, now that I come to think of it, is that I have now become a photographer. I have a book of photos called “Sublime,” that was published in Italy in June. And also, over the last year or so, or two years, really, I’ve been editing a series of maybe 26 or maybe 30 videos of 2 minutes to 45 minutes, which I show in galleries and art spaces and sometimes in cinemas. So I think next time I come back to Russia it would be as much as a video artist as a composer.
Q: What kind of photos does the book include?
A: Since I’m concerned with music, and with time-based narrative art, I suppose, a lot of my photographs are kind of narratives in the sense that I tend to take long sequences of photos rather like a film camera, but obviously it’s separated into individual shots, which sometimes now I can rearticulate into videos. So there are various ways of playing with separate, continuous images.
So the book presents chains of images, images in series, rather than individual images, and the book — which unfortunately I’m unable to sell at the concert for some reason — is a compelling, compulsive, visual narrative that has been very well designed by Volumina, which is the company in Turin that published it. I’m really very proud of it. It comes in a box, it’s kind of an artwork, an art object, and that’s something that preoccupies me more and more, while still spending time writing music…
In a way, er, writing film scores… was a very time-consuming process — not because the music took a long time to write, but the discussion, the exchange of ideas, and the controlled methodology took a long time.
So the time that I don’t spend writing film music is filled with making my own films — which is much more satisfying — and taking, cataloguing, processing photographs which are then put into, as I said, a kind of film form, and then put on stage and used as a subject of a piece of music. So they’ve become performance pieces.
The subjects of the films ranges from a humorous birds-eye view of me filming myself being interviewed in this Moscow radio station to the latest film I made, which was out of a series of stills that I shot in Auschwitz ten days ago. So there’s great diversity.
Q: You have gotten involved in sort of social, political events by performing as part of the Live Earth global environmental awareness musical event in Kyoto, Japan last year.
A: Yeah, yeah. I mean it’s difficult not to want to participate in those things, when one gets the chance. And I also, at the beginning of the last year, wrote I think a rather powerful anti-war piece, which was based on poems written by an Iraqi poet about the loss of his brother during the first Gulf War [in 1990-91].
But, in a way, it is very difficult for this music to really have any effect on the political change, unfortunately. To write a piece for a large chorus and a large orchestra — even if it’s a war requiem… you know, it’s very difficult to get some subsequent performances. So in a way, doing small things rather like appearing as a soloist or maybe writing a song, which is very, very portable, is a more [practical] approach to political activism than these big anti-war statements.
As I say, that [anti-war piece written in 2007], “A Handshake in the Dark,” has only ever been performed once, so there’s no way that it will ever have any political effect.
Q: This anti-war piece was about Iraq. May I ask you what you think about the recent war in Georgia?
A: I don’t think we actually know enough about it. I mean it seems that there’s kind of propaganda on both sides. From this distance, I don’t think we’re qualified to know who did what, why, who did it first, who overreacted, it’s very, very confusing… I’m actually too ignorant of all the issues, historical issues and the current issues to offer anything but a kind of superficial response, so there won’t be any response at all.
Q: But you’re coming to Russia, and now the relations between Russia and the rest of the world seem to be worse than ever in recent years…
A: Yeah, well… that doesn’t stop me from coming.
And the sad thing is that I think Russia will become, I mean more than China, or could become one of the most powerful forces in world politics...
On the day of the concert in Moscow, I’m flying from Italy to Russia, to Moscow, and it takes me all day to fly. I’ll arrive for the sound-check, do a concert and then I get on the train and go to St. Petersburg, and spend the following day doing interviews and the concert, etc., etc.
It’s very difficult with that kind of schedule to do anything rather than just be a musician. You know, it would be nice to kind of sit and talk to real Russians directly about what’s going on, how they perceive the world, how they perceive the role of Russia, and about the Russian political system within global politics. But, you know, there isn’t time.
Q: You are a contemporary artist with a classical aesthetic. What’s your opinion about old historical buildings – should they be kept or should they be demolished to give space for new ones? This is an issue in St. Petersburg and, even to a larger degree, in Moscow. I hear this problem also exists in London.
A: Well, I don’t think it does in London, I think London is rather well balanced between preserving history and creating new buildings.
And there are very, very, very strict rules, heritage rules, about which buildings you can demolish, which buildings you can’t, which ones you should treat with a huge amount of historical care, and, you know, the relationship between new building and old building is very crucial.
You know, I think in some societies, in some cultures there’s not that kind of control and — I’m not saying there’s corruption but you know — the combination of land values and property deals and corrupt officials maybe makes it easier in countries that have less stringent, zoning systems to create money-making opportunities, which have very little architectural value and very little relationship to the environment that they are built in…
I mean in the 1960s and the 1970s there were buildings that were demolished and replaced by shit modern architecture in a way that couldn’t happen now, so I think we’re in a good position, and maybe the Moscow position is where we were in the 1960s and the 1970s — where an old building seems to have no value, and a new building, whether it’s, you know, crap design or not, is automatically an improvement.
Q: In St. Petersburg you’ll notice several classical buildings on Nevsky Prospekt have been destroyed over the past three years.
A: Right, well. I can understand it, but I will never agree with it.
I think if even the most amazing contemporary architects were invited to design new buildings, I mean if they take the place of serious classical buildings that help to define the nature of a culture, the nature of a city, then that can’t be good.
And obviously there are considerations at play which are considerations other than aesthetic considerations: finance, moneymaking, land grabbing are involved. But, you know, I don’t know the details, so it’s kind of a bit stupid of me to even pass an opinion on it.
But it seems sad, and I’m sure that I’ll notice that those buildings are missing. Because I’m sure my memory of those parts of St. Petersburg is still intact, even though I haven’t spent a long time in St. Petersburg for about ten years or so.
The Michael Nyman Band and Marie Angel will perform at the Shostakovich Philharmonic on Sunday. www.michaelnyman.com, www.philharmonia.spb.ru
TITLE: A match made in music
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Rodion Shchedrin, one of the most acclaimed Russian composers, is obviously winning the heart of Valery Gergiev, the artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater.
The Second New Horizons festival opened Thursday with a performance by the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra of the second act of Shchedrin’s opera “Lolita” (as well as Olivier Messiaen’s “L’Ascention” and Pierre Boulez’s “Four Notations”) conducted by Gergiev.
For Shchedrin, the plot of “Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 tragicomic novel, is “a wonderful thriller begging to be transformed into an opera.”
“Some years ago I was approached by French managers and asked to compose an opera set to a Russian novel for the then newly inaugurated Opera Bastille,” Shchedrin recalls. “[The late cellist] Mstislav Rostropovich was invited to be the musical director of the production. This Nabokov novel has tangible allusions with the story lines of ‘Carmen’.”
Shchedrin’s “Carmen-Suite” is arguably Shchedrin’s greatest success and most frequently performed work, so he was keen to develop similar themes.
The composer perceives Nabokov’s novel, in which a middle-aged man, Humbert Humbert, connives to kidnap and sexually abuse Lolita, a 12-year-old girl, as a story of stolen beauty.
“It feels like a nostalgia for beauty; it is a symbol, really,” Shchedrin said. “For me personally, Lolita as a character is less of a human being but rather an archetype, a symbol of beauty but a fleeting beauty.”
While no specific plans to produce a full stage rendition of “Lolita” have yet been voiced, Gergiev announced that other works by Shchedrin are on their way into the Mariinsky’s repertoire.
Speaking to reporters earlier this month, Gergiev sounded enthusiastic when unveiling plans to rehearse Shchedrin’s opera “Dead Souls” and stage the composer’s ballet “The Little Humpbacked Horse.”
The ballet looks set to premiere during the current season and be choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky, formerly the artistic director of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and now with the New York City Ballet. Gergiev said he has already secured an agreement with Yury Temirkanov, the artistic director of Shostakovich Philharmonic, to conduct “Dead Souls.”
Gergiev devotes special attention to contemporary music and is especially interested in the works of living composers. His recent presentations to St. Petersburg audiences have included, in addition to Shchedrin’s opera, Thomas Ades’ “Powder Her Face” and a series of symphonic pieces and concertos by Henri Dutilleux.
Shchedrin’s musical vision of the famed Russian soul received its first stage incarnation with the premiere of “The Enchanted Wanderer” at the Mariinsky Theater Concert Hall during the Stars of the White Nights Festival in July 2008.
“The success of ‘The Enchanted Wanderer’ was overwhelming,” Gergiev said. “We are thrilled to continue working with Rodion Shchedrin, and there are many plans, indeed. With the performance of the second act of ‘Lolita’ we send a clear signal that there is more to come on the Mariinsky stage from Shchedrin.”
Rooted in Russian spiritual music, “The Enchanted Wanderer” was clearly inspired by the traditional choral chants and bell-ringing of the Russian Orthodox Church, gypsy romances and folk tunes, and has a distinctly Russian character. The opera rings with Russian spirituality, attuned by avant garde minimalism.
Commissioned by Lorin Maazel for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and originally premiered in 2002, “The Enchanted Wanderer” saw its Russian premiere, albeit in concert version, under the baton of Gergiev during the Stars of the White Nights Festival in 2007.
Pierced with poignant intensity, the opera is beautifully transparent and is reminiscent in style to prayer and confession. Based on Nikolai Leskov’s eponymous novel, “The Enchanted Wanderer” tells the life story of an aged serf-turned-novice in a monastery in Valaam.
Maazel’s wish was for Shchedrin to create an opera reflecting the Russian national character and exploring the depths of the so-called Russian soul.
“If the ‘Russian soul’ genuinely exists, then nobody better than Nikolai Leskov could respond to this fundamental issue,” Shchedrin said in an interview after the premiere.
The composer compared his work with Bach’s Passions in the sense that the main characters in “The Enchanted Wanderer,” as in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, appear both as storytellers and dramatic characters as they perform.
“The music of the most talented living composers has become a priority for the troupe, and with the new venue now available to us, the Mariinsky Concert Hall, we have received the much-needed space for experiments, without having to compromise our signature shows that are already known and loved by the audiences,” Gergiev said.
www.mariinsky.ru
TITLE: A place in the sun
AUTHOR: By Magdalena Georgieva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: If angels really exist, they surely love to play harmonies and sleep on soft clouds that melt like cotton candy under the sunshine of southern Italy. Not accidentally, the symbol of restaurant Solntse (Sun) is an angel playing a trumpet. The Italian restaurant is designed entirely in warm oak colors, decorated with blue paintings of ancient fountains and angels, and filled with the lingering tunes of mellow music.
Solntse is arranged with a certain simplicity and precision characteric of the sophistication of Italian style. This style, however, is not complemented by the songs of Eros Ramazzotti or other Italian singers. Rather, strangely enough, it is filled with the newest covers of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World?” or Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco.”
The food and wine selection, on the other hand, definitely match the Italian Renaissance interior. Visitors can pick traditional options like the Arabiata spaghetti (125 rubles / $4.50 lunch special) and the pepperoni pizza with mozzarella and hot salami salsiccia (250 rubles, $9). Or they can embrace more adventurous choices like beef medallions with truffle sauce (490 rubles, $18) and pear in red wine (160 rubles, $5.80).
The restaurant presents an ideal opportunity for small groups of three to four people to enjoy a well-served, satisfactory and not overly expensive meal.
At about 6 p.m. the waiters begin lighting all table candles one by one to bring more radiance into the restaurant’s airy atmosphere. They also light the two purple candles on top of the white piano located in the main hall. In striking unison are the brown table clothes, the chandelier light fixtures and the golden-framed wall mirrors. Both the heavy, tied-back draperies and the transparent curtains around the tables create a private atmosphere reminiscent of royal bedrooms decorated with baldachin. Although shouting to be observed longer, the restaurant’s interior fades away as the sweet aroma of garlic is carried in the air.
The menu, available in English, Russian and Italian, offers a wide assortment of salads and appetizers, but a more modest choice of soups (only four). The lack of silverware on the table might cause some confusion but the fork and knife are provided soon after the waiter brings a complimentary bruschetta (toasted baguette with tomatoes).
The avocado and tiger prawns salad with yogurt sauce and cherry tomatoes (250 rubles, $9) creates an interesting contrast between soft and firm textures. The fresh lettuce and the crispy shrimps bring an edgy taste while the combination of avocado and yogurt sauce is velvety.
Melanzane parmigiano oiubergines baked with mozzarella and tomato sauce (220 rubles, $8) consists of a layered mushroom abundantly soaked in pesto sauce. This starter goes well with a glass of Frontera Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot (120 rubles, $4) — just one of the many options available on the extensive Italian wine menu.
The main courses include a selection of classical Italian pastas and pizzas as well as various hot meat and seafood meals. A pizza permeze with extra virgin oil, Italian mozzarella and prosciutto Tiffani (290 rubles, $10) presents not only a safe, traditional option but also a portion big enough for two people to share. The pizza consists of eight slices of thin crisp dough covered with mushrooms, tomato sauce, black olives and chicken.
A more adventurous pick, however, is the beef medallions with truffle sauce and dessert wine sauce. The three round pieces of beef, layered in a pyramid shape, can be cooked according to the client’s personal preferences — dry, juicy or slightly overcooked. They are soaked in a coffee-flavored truffle sauce and covered with chocolate — definitely an exotic but pleasing choice for the connoisseur.
TITLE: Historic U.S. Presidential Race Enters Home Stretch
AUTHOR: By Edwin Chen and Julianna Goldman
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Barack Obama and John McCain sought to charge up supporters and reach out to as many undecided voters as possible in the final stretch of a presidential campaign mostly being waged in a half-dozen states.
McCain dismissed polls showing him trailing his Democratic rival nationally and in several historically Republican states that he needs to win the election on Tuesday.
“The pundits have written us off several times before. They were wrong before and they are wrong now,” McCain said in Florida, the biggest electoral prize among the battlegrounds. While Republican President George W. Bush won the state in 2000 and 2004, a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll puts Obama ahead there 50 percent to 43 percent among likely voters.
Obama spent most of his day in Florida, after a rally in another Republican-leaning state, North Carolina, where he’s in a close fight with McCain. He was in Florida in the evening as a national television audience saw a half-hour commercial his campaign ran on four broadcast networks and some cable channels.
Along with Florida, both candidates have been focusing on North Carolina, Virginia, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Ohio. The six states combined have 103 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to claim the White House. All except Pennsylvania went to Bush in the last presidential election, yet polls show Obama statistically tied or ahead of McCain in each.
Obama is also challenging McCain in four other states that went for Bush in the last two elections: Indiana, Missouri, Colorado and Nevada. He already has solid leads in the states that went for Democrat John Kerry in 2004, which have a total of 252 electoral votes.
Florida, Ohio and Iowa are among the 31 states that are allowing this year some form of early voting and there is evidence of high interest in the election. Florida Governor Charlie Crist, a Republican and McCain ally, on Tuesday ordered early voting stations to stay open an extra four hours daily, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., through the end of the week. As of Wednesday, 1.4 million Floridians had cast early ballots, representing about 18 percent of the total 2004 turnout, according to the Florida Secretary of State.
McCain sought to energize his supporters with calls to keep up the battle for the election. Obama cautioned his supporters against over-confidence. “Don’t believe for a second this election is over,” he said at an outdoor rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The Illinois senator used humor to counter suggestions by McCain and his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, that his tax proposals amounted to socialism.
“By the end of the week, he’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten,” Obama said with a laugh.
Obama is blanketing the airwaves as he makes what he calls his “closing argument” to voters. The campaign spent more than $3 million to run the half-hour commercial on the CBS network, NBC, Fox and Spanish-language network Univision. It also ran on two cable networks targeted to black audiences, BET and TV One.