SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1526 (88), Friday, November 13, 2009
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TITLE: Heads Of Governors Expected To Roll
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev’s decision to fire Sverdlovsk Governor Eduard Rossel won praise Wednesday from opposition politicians, who called for the removal of more regional leaders.
“Rossel should have been replaced long ago,” Solidarity movement leader Boris Nemtsov said, adding that the Kremlin needed to fire more regional leaders who had been in power since the early 1990s, like Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiyev and Mayor Yury Luzhkov. 
“Some of them have outlasted Brezhnev,” he said, referring to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who served 18 years as Communist general secretary until his death in 1982.
Nemtsov’s words were echoed by Communist State Duma Deputy Viktor Ilyukhin, who said “dozens of governors” needed to go.
“They sit in their chairs and do not accept that their time has run out,” Ilyukhin said.
Rossel, 72, has been in charge of the industrial Urals region since 1991, with a two-year break from 1993 to 1995. The governor, whose current four-year term ends Nov. 21, saw support start to erode within United Russia last fall when the ruling party lost a key mayoral election in the region, Vedomosti reported. In the vote Oct. 12, 2008, United Russia’s candidate finished third with just 20.2 percent of the vote in the Nizhny Tagil industrial city.
Political analysts have often placed Rossel among the Yeltsin-era governors who pose a threat to the federal government because of their high popularity at home and said they might be replaced by younger and less independent figures.
Direct elections for the country’s 83 regional leaders were abolished by President Vladimir Putin in 2004. Regional bosses like Luzhkov and Shaimiyev have demanded a return to elections, but Medvedev has vowed to keep the current system, where regional leaders are appointed by the Kremlin and confirmed by regional legislatures.
The Kremlin announced late Tuesday that Rossel would be replaced by Alexander Misharin, a 50-year-old career railway engineer who currently heads the Cabinet’s industry and infrastructure department.
The Sverdlovsk legislature will vote to confirm Misharin on Nov. 17, Interfax reported Wednesday, citing Anatoly Gaida, a senior regional lawmaker. Gaida said there was no doubt that the legislature, which is dominated by United Russia, would confirm him.
Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and governor of Nizhny Novgorod, said he has known Misharin since serving in the federal government in the late 1990s and that he was “a qualified candidate.”
Alexander Shkolnik, a Federation Council senator representing Sverdlovsk and a member of United Russia, said Misharin would give new impetus to the region. “He is a manager of a new type — and very experienced,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
Shkolnik also confirmed media reports that Rossel might become Sverdlovsk’s second senator in the Federation Council.
“Yes, there are such plans, but the decision must be made by the [regional] legislature,” he said. 
The Federation Council has two senators from each region, and Sverdlovsk’s second post has remained vacant since early summer when Senator Yury Osintsev was appointed deputy regional development minister, Shkolnik said.
Nemtsov said a move by Rossel to the Federation Council would show once again that the chamber functioned mainly as a sinecure for has-been politicians.
“The Federation Council had become a sewage pit for politics,” he said. 
With the terms of 10 percent of regional leaders expiring by early next year, analysts predicted that Medvedev would replace more governors soon.
In February, the president ousted the heads of the Oryol, Pskov and Voronezh regions and the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District. 
In a sign that Medvedev is increasing pressure on governors, he told them during a video conference last week to dig up cash for social expenses despite the economic crisis by cutting spending on “palaces” and official cars.
Kremlin spokesman Alexei Pavlov would not comment on which governors might be next in line for replacement. Primorye Governor Sergei Darkin, who has been identified by analysts as a likely candidate for replacement, is currently running a public relations campaign in national newspapers that highlights economic achievements in his Far East region.
Rossel, incidentally, was the first governor to be replaced under a new system introduced by Medvedev whereby the political party that holds the majority in a regional legislature — invariably United Russia — sends the names of three gubernatorial candidates to the president for consideration.
United Russia’s list for Sverdlovsk contained Misharin, Rossel and the local administration chairman Viktor Koksharov.
Alexei Makarkin, deputy director of the Center of Political Technologies, said Rossel’s chances for survival had been higher because he had been on the list. “I was a bit surprised to see that he has to go,” he said.
United Russia has also forwarded lists of candidates for the Altai, Komi and Marii-El republics, as well as the Primorye, Astrakhan, Kurgan and Volgograd regions.
Makarkin said Volgograd Governor Nikolai Maksyuta and Kurgan Governor Oleg Bogomolov should be especially worried about their jobs.

TITLE: Medvedev Tells Nation: Reform or Die
AUTHOR: By Lynn Berry
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev laid out his plan Thursday to move Russia’s economy into the modern age and overcome the grim industrial legacy of the Soviet Union.
In his annual state-of-the-nation address, he took a few digs at Vladimir Putin, his predecessor and mentor, but made clear that the tightly controlled political system Putin created is here to stay.
Medvedev warned the opposition that any attempts to upset the current order will not be tolerated.
He ordered a sweeping modernization of the Soviet-built military arsenals. But he also called for a “pragmatic” foreign policy aimed at attracting investment and improving living standards, rather than “chaotic actions driven by nostalgia and prejudice.”
“We mustn’t puff out our chest,” he said. “We are interested in the flow of capital, new technologies and modern ideas.”
Putin’s foreign policy was aimed at restoring Soviet-era global clout, and the often belligerent tone alarmed the West.
Putin, now prime minister, sat in the front row Thursday as Medvedev spoke to hundreds of parliament members, officials and religious leaders in an ornate Kremlin hall. As the president exceeded the 90 minutes allotted for the address, Putin was caught on camera staring at the ceiling.
As in the past, Medvedev avoided direct criticism of Putin, still seen as the more powerful figure. But he criticized parts of Putin’s legacy, including an inflated state role in the economy.
Medvedev said Russia can no longer afford to rely on an aging Soviet industrial base and to draw most of its revenues from exports of oil and gas, while trusting its security to Soviet-built nuclear arsenals.
“The nation’s prestige and welfare can’t depend forever on the achievements of the past,” he said.
Russia needs to focus on innovation, including research into new nuclear reactors and space technologies, and think about preparing for flights to other planets, Medvedev said.
He ordered the armed forces next year to commission 30 intercontinental ballistic missiles, three nuclear submarines and several dozen combat aircraft, among other new weapons. The number represents a large increase compared to past years.
Medvedev said the global economic downturn had hit Russia more severely than other countries, but he refused to shift the blame to the United States as Putin has done.
“We shouldn’t be looking for the guilty party abroad,” Medvedev said. “We have to acknowledge that in past years we didn’t do enough ourselves to resolve the problems we inherited.”
The oil- and gas-driven economy was hit hard as commodities prices plunged late last year. Russia emerged from recession in September — months after its European neighbors — with its gross domestic product still 9.4 percent below year-earlier levels.
While Putin methodically increased the state role in the economy during his eight-year presidency, Medvedev said Thursday that Russia needs to reduce the role of the state, which now controls up to 40 percent of the economy.
He singled out a key part of Putin’s legacy — giant state corporations that have been granted broad privileges and been widely criticized as inefficient. “I believe this form has no future in the long term,” Medvedev said.
He repeated his support for democracy and called for an “honest competition” of ideas. But he also suggested he shared Putin’s intolerance for dissent.
Medvedev said Russia’s political system had stabilized with the four parties voted into the Kremlin-controlled parliament having “withstood the test of time.”
“I want to underline: The strengthening of democracy does not mean a weakening of law and order,” he said. “Any attempts under democratic slogans to shake the situation, to destabilize the state, to split society, will be stopped.”
Opposition leaders were critical.
“Nothing will come of Medvedev’s plans because modernization has to start with a change of political system, the destruction of Putin’s corrupt centralized system of power,” Solidarity movement leader Boris Nemtsov wrote in a blog.
Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister, said in his blog that Medvedev’s message was clear: “There will be no changes in the country.”
Putin chose the younger Medvedev as his successor with the apparent mandate to present a more liberal face within Russia and abroad. Speculation occasionally arises of a split, but Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this week that he has never seen or heard about any disagreements between them.
“They are quite comfortable in their tandem,” Peskov said. “Their coordination ... is on a day-to-day, even sometimes hour-to-hour basis.”

TITLE: Unborn Babies Get First Taste of Art at Russian Museum
AUTHOR: By Maria Kiselyova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Staff at St. Petersburg’s State Russian Museum hope to create generations of children who will appreciate art from birth, with special excursions for pregnant women.
For three years now, Natalya Kuznetsova, senior researcher at the museum, has organized excursions there for expectant mothers. Every tour has a theme, for example, the image of water as an element, or the Virgin Mary. During the former, the women look at and learn about paintings by the famous seascape painter Aivazovsky, while the excursion focusing on the Virgin Mary takes place in the room devoted to icons from medieval Rus. 
The program was created together with Dr. Marina Komova, an obstetrician and gynecologist who first came up with the idea for the excursions. Komova, who has practiced prenatal psychology since 1992, believes that before being born, children should receive some information about the world— both positive and negative. She believes this information can easily be received in a coded form via art. 
There is however a limit to how much babies should be exposed to while still in the womb. On the excursions for pregnant women, Kuznetsova tells them everything she tells “ordinary” visitors, but doesn’t show them pieces of art featuring death, blood or illness. 
“I wouldn’t include ‘The Last Day of Pompeii’ by Karl Bryullov in the tour, or ‘The Death of Nero’ by Vasily Smirnov — it would provoke negative emotions in the woman and the baby would get frightened, too,” said Kuznetsova. 
The women are allowed to listen to the excursion seated, which is not usually the case with other visitors.
Antenatal excursions currently take place twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 11 a.m. On Saturdays, Komova comes to the museum, and after looking at the pieces of art, the expectant mothers meet her to discuss the theme of the tour. The Saturday meetings are particularly popular, with up to 50 women gathering at the museum. 
Gayane Markaryan, 25, visited the special excursion for the first time this week. She said she would continue to attend, since she believes that simply looking at beautiful things has a positive influence on the child’s development. “The weather is no good for taking walks right now, so the museum is a good option,” she said.
Natalya Petsh, 24, said she had been on about 10 excursions since she found out about the tours several months ago. 
Some women continue to attend the prenatal tours at the Russian museum even after giving birth, bringing with them children aged from four months to two years old. Komova says these babies and toddlers react to the art with even more understanding than older children — they are quiet and listen attentively to the excursion . She believes this is because they remember having heard Kuznetsova’s voice before they were born, and have received positive emotions about it from their mothers.

TITLE: Moscow Police Officers Go on Hunger Strike
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Two Moscow police officers have started a hunger strike after being accused of abuse of authority during the detention of a senator’s nephew, who was allegedly involved in a drunken brawl, a lawyer for one of them said Wednesday.
A criminal case against four police officers who broke up a January altercation could be sent to Moscow’s Tushinsky District Court in early December, Dmitry Bakharev, a lawyer for defendant Ruslan Kayumov, told The St. Petersburg Times.
He said Kayumov and another officer, Yevgeny Stepanov, began an indefinite hunger strike Nov. 5 to protest the “fabricated” charges against them.
Kayumov, Stepanov and the other two officers, Alexei Vinogradov and Yury Uvarov, face up to 10 years in prison if charged and convicted. The Tushinsky District Court initially approved their arrests, but the decision was later overturned by Moscow City Court.
They are now on orders not to leave the city.
Prosecutors from Moscow’s Northwest Administrative District say the officers exceeded their authority when detaining Mansur Aslakhanov, son of Omsk Senator Aslambek Aslakhanov.
The younger Aslakhanov is an officer with the Moscow police’s criminal investigation department, Valery Glushakov, a lawyer for Vinogradov, said by telephone.
Aslakhanov and several other people were detained at a Moscow cafe on the night of Jan. 23 during a fight between Chechens and Armenians, after which Aslakhanov threatened participants of the fight with a gun, Glushakov said by phone.
Aslakhanov and several of the others later filed complaints at the officers’ precinct, claiming that they were illegally detained and that the officers had beaten them, Glushakov said. The four say Aslakhanov resisted the detention and pushed Uvarov, who fell and suffered a concussion.
Nikolai Myulberg, a deputy head of the investigation department at the Mitino police precinct, released several participants in the fight, including Aslakhanov, whom he had known as a former officer of the Mitino police precinct, without charges, Glushakov said.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>Russia Is Victim of Hoax</strong>
NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — Russia became the seventh foreign mission to the United Nations to receive an envelope containing a white powder, later identified as flour, the Russian ambassador and New York police said.
Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland and Uzbekistan are the other governments with UN offices in Manhattan that were sent small quantities of flour, according to the New York Police Department and the missions.
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin called the mailings a “sick joke.”
The envelopes were postmarked in Texas and some contained handwritten notes that mentioned al-Qaida and the FBI, police said.  

<strong>8 More Die of Swine Flu</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — Eight more people have died of swine flu, including seven in Moscow, bringing Russia’s death toll in the worldwide epidemic to at least 31, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Seven deaths were confirmed in Moscow on Wednesday, Interfax said, citing an unidentified health official.
Also Wednesday, a 29-year-old woman died of swine flu in the Kaluga region, Interfax reported.
The official toll stands at 19, according to figures released last Friday by the Federal Consumer Protective Service. Interfax reported four other deaths Monday. More than 4,560 people have been registered with swine flu, also known as the H1NI virus.

<strong>Engine Blamed in Crash</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — Engine failure is the most likely cause of the crash of a Tu-142 anti-submarine plane that went down in the Pacific Ocean with 11 crew members last week, a top general said Wednesday.
“They’re blaming engine malfunction now. The commission will finish the investigation and find out [the cause],” said General Nikolai Makarov, head of the armed forces General Staff.
Makarov said the results of the investigation would be open to the media.
The four-engine turboprop crashed in the Tatar Strait, which separates the Russian mainland and Sakhalin Island, during a training flight late Friday.
The Tu-142 fleet has been grounded until the cause of the crash is found.

TITLE: Russia Plans Summit To Boost Tiger Population
AUTHOR: By Gary Peach
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Vladimir Putin has made headlines by championing the endangered Siberian tiger — posing with a cuddly cub and placing a tracking collar on a full-grown female in the wilds of his country’s Far East. Now Russia is helping plan an ambitious program it hopes can double the global tiger population by 2022.
Russia hopes to hold a “tiger summit” in the Far East city of Vladivostok in September to coordinate multinational efforts to protect the Amur tiger, its habitats and increasingly scarce food sources, representatives of Russia’s Natural Resources Ministry, the World Bank and the World Wildlife Fund said Wednesday.
“We decided that this time we should do something serious in order to preserve tigers on our planet,” said Igor Chestin, director of the Russian branch of the World Wildlife Fund. “The situation is catastrophic.”
The meeting would be hosted by Putin, Russia’s powerful prime minister, and include leaders of countries such as India and China, according to Chestin and Deputy Natural Resources Minister Igor Maidanov.
The goal of the program, which could involve as many as 13 countries, would be to double the number of tigers worldwide to some 6,500 by 2022. Chestin said this would require a total $1 billion (euro0.67 billion) from all participating countries — a target he said could be met with both government funds and private sponsorship.
Putin’s support, which Maidanov said was expected, would likely give the effort a major boost.
Last year, Putin was given an Amur cub on his birthday and showed it off to journalists inside his home before putting it in other hands. Months earlier, Russian television networks showed him patting a grown female on the cheek after shooting it with a tranquilizer gun as part of a program to track the rare cats on a Russian wildlife preserve.
His web site contains a section dedicated to the protection of the Amur tiger — also known as the Siberian or Ussuri tiger — and one page tracks his tiger’s movements as it prowls around the Far East.
The overall tiger population worldwide is believed to be 3,200 worldwide, according to the WWF.
Hunters kill tigers for their prized pelts and body parts, some of which are used in traditional Chinese medicines, while logging and housing developments have encroached on tiger habitats.
Funds raised in the program would be used to improve these habitats by providing more park rangers and protecting deer and boar that the tiger hunts for food.
Chestin said that in most countries where the tiger lives conditions for survival are “extremely unfavorable,” though the situation in Russia — where some 450 adult Amur tigers live in the Far East — has stabilized in recent years. Still, WWF-Russia estimates that 30 to 50 Amur tigers are killed every year.
Chestin said that tigers’ survival requires vast protected territories, a large food base — mainly hoofed animals such as deer and boar — and a crackdown on the trade in tiger body parts.
India, for instance, has the necessary food resources but lacks clearly marked territories where its tigers can roam free, he said. Russia, by contrast, has designated three territories as habitats for the Amur tiger, though there is a growing problem with food.
Maidanov said that overhunting of deer and boar in Russia’s Far East left the Amur tigers without adequate food supplies — an adult tiger must devour up to 70 hoofed animals a year to survive — and forced them to rummage in garbage cans and waste dumps for subsistence. This brought them closer to residential areas, with sometimes tragic results for both the tigers and humans.

TITLE: Kalashnikov Lauded at Ninety
AUTHOR: By Alexander Osipovich
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: MOSCOW — Mikhail Kalashnikov, the Russian inventor of the globally popular AK-47 assault rifle, on Tuesday declared himself a “happy man” as he celebrated his 90th birthday with a burst of poetry.
Lavished with honors for designing the iconic rifle, Kalashnikov said he had never intended for it to become the preferred weapon in conflicts around the world.
“I created a weapon to defend the fatherland’s borders. It’s not my fault that it was sometimes used where it shouldn’t have been. This is the fault of politicians,” he said during an award ceremony at the Kremlin.
Kalashnikov was handed the prestigious Hero of Russia prize by President Dmitry Medvedev, who hailed the AK-47 as “a brilliant example of Russian weaponry” and “a national brand which evokes pride in each citizen.”
The white-haired Kalashnikov — who is an amateur poet and the author of six books, as well as a weapons designer — also read aloud a brief patriotic poem that he penned himself.
“I wrote poetry in my youth, and people thought I would become a poet. But I didn’t become one. There are many bad poets out there without me. I went along a different path,” he told reporters at the Kremlin.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin praised Kalashnikov as a “truly legendary” figure while state television was filled with tributes to the 90-year-old inventor.
In one tribute, two Russian cosmonauts congratulated Kalashnikov by video link from the International Space Station (ISS).
“Your name, like that of the first cosmonaut, Yury Gagarin, became a symbol of our country in the 20th century,” ISS crew member Maxim Surayev said in the video message.
Kalashnikov is considered a national hero in Russia for designing the AK-47, a rifle whose name stands for “Kalashnikov’s Automatic” and the year it was designed, 1947.
Also called the “Kalashnikov,” the rifle and its variants are the weapons of choice for dozens of armies and guerrilla groups around the world.
More than 100 million Kalashnikov rifles have been sold worldwide and they are wielded by fighters in such far-flung conflict zones as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.
But their inventor, a World War II veteran, has barely profited financially from them and lives modestly in Izhevsk, an industrial town 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) east of Moscow.
Part of the problem, according to Izhmash, is that “counterfeit” AK-47s are produced in Bulgaria, China, Poland and the United States, costing the company $360 million annually.
Born in a Siberian village on November 10, 1919, Kalashnikov had a tragic childhood during which his father was deported under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1930.
Wounded during combat in 1941, Kalashnikov started working on his rifle in 1947, driven to design by Soviet defeats in the early years of World War II at the hands of far better armed German soldiers.
The rifle quickly became prized for its sturdy reliability in difficult field conditions.
Kalashnikov remains surprisingly healthy for his age, speaking regularly at conferences devoted to Russian weapons. 
He told Rossiiskaya Gazeta that he had slowed down recently, but still goes moose hunting once a year.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>City Prepares for Flu Jab</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The city’s Health Committee has ordered vaccines against the A(H1N1) virus, or swine flu, and vaccinations will begin next week, Interfax reported Thursday. 
The vaccine will arrive in the city next week, according to Marianna Yerofeyeva, head of the influenza prevention laboratory testing, the news agency reported..
“First and foremost will be vaccinations for staff at citizen’s welfare services — the vaccination will be given at medical institutes,” said Yerofeyeva. She said that the vaccine would not be sold, but given to city residents for free.
Yerofeyeva added that children in St. Petersburg would start being vaccinated in December. “We have already begun testing a pediatric vaccine in Smolensk and Perm, and as soon as we receive the first results, we can start to vaccinate children,” she said.

<strong>Smuggler Given 9 Years</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A St. Petersburg court has sentenced a 45-year-old Uzbekistan citizen to nine years in prison for attempting to smuggle heroin, Interfax reported Thursday, citing the web site of the St. Petersburg prosecutor’s office. 
“Abdusalom Narkulov attempted to smuggle 370 plastic bags packed with heroin from Tashkent (Uzbekistan) into St. Petersburg,” read the statement on the web site. “In November 2008, he bought a ticket to St. Petersburg and swallowed packets of the drug with the aim of transporting it across the border. Upon his arrival at the airport in St. Petersburg, he was detained at customs.”

<strong>Dogs Face Stricter Laws</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Owners of large dogs in St. Petersburg will only be allowed to let their pets off the leash at night, after City Hall approved some 30 amendments to the local laws regarding dogs on Wednesday, Interfax reported Thursday. 
According to the amended law, taking a dog (whether large or small) on public transport without either a special bag (for small dogs) or a leash and muzzle (for large dogs) is an offence. Fines for walking dogs without a leash, and for walking dogs with a shoulder height of more than 40 cm without a leash and muzzle vary from 2,000 to 4,000 rubles ($70 to $140). 
Other offences established by the amendments to the law include walking dogs in children’s areas and on sports grounds; walking dogs close to educational or health institutions; walking dogs in a drunken state and leaving dogs unattended, Interfax reported.
If, as a result of any violations to these laws, injury or damage to property is caused, fines can be issued of up to 5,000 rubles. 

<strong>Minibus Stabber Found</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Police have detained a man suspected of wounding a man and a teenager on public transport last month. 
The suspect is an Armenian citizen born in 1981, Fontanka.ru reported, citing a report from the Agency of Journalist Investigation (AZhuR). According to the report, at around midnight on Oct. 4, a fight broke out on a marshrutka minibus. As the vehicle passed number 4 on Parashutnaya Ulitsa, one of the passengers attacked two others with a knife. The victims were taken to the Military Medical Academy in grave condition with knife-wounds to the chest and stomach. 
Proceedings have now been instigated for attempted murder.

TITLE: Pipeline Talks to Pick Up Pace
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia and Austria agreed to work fast to complete talks to lay the South Stream pipeline, which would make Russian gas exports to Europe more reliable, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Wednesday, marking further progress for the ambitious project.
He made the statement after a meeting in Moscow with his Austrian counterpart, Federal Chancellor Werner Faymann, where they also reached agreements in oil trade and on air flights.
Gazprom and Italy’s Eni, which back the South Stream pipeline, plan for it to terminate in Austria, but talks with Vienna have taken longer than they did with most other partner countries. Putin said the chancellor agreed to set the “tightest deadline” to strike a deal.
Faymann said the Austrian government regarded South Stream as meeting the country’s national interests and authorized such talks two weeks ago.
The chancellor also said the pipeline was not a competitor to Nabucco, a project to import gas from the Caspian Sea and Central Asia to alleviate the continent’s dependency on Russian energy. Privately controlled Austrian energy company OMV leads the Nabucco effort.
Slovenia is the only other transit country that has not yet signed up to take part in South Stream. Putin is scheduled to meet with Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor on Saturday.
South Stream, which will have the capacity to transport 63 billion cubic meters of gas per year, will run from the Russian coast under the Black Sea to Bulgaria, then bifurcate to cross several other countries for Italy and Austria.
Russia wants the pipeline to circumvent Ukraine, which currently transits 80 percent of Gazprom’s Europe-bound exports. Gas trade spats between the countries have disrupted the transit several times, most badly and recently in January.
One of the goals for South Stream is to “discipline” current transit countries, Putin said.
“I very much count on our main transit partner, Ukraine, to execute all of its contract obligations,” he said at a news conference after the meeting.
Putin said he could not rule out a repetition of last winter’s standoff, which interrupted gas supplies to Europe for almost three weeks. 
On other issues, Putin said he supported extending the Druzhba pipeline, a major export route for Russian oil, to an Austrian refinery from its current terminus in the Slovak capital, Bratislava.
The idea to build another stretch came from Austria and Slovakia and would require additional oil supplies from Russia.
Faymann said Russian air traffic authorities extended the terms of flights to Russia for Austrian Airlines, which has recently been a stumbling block in relations. The extension is valid to Feb. 1 and will be used to renegotiate the current deal, he said.
The airline has been flying to Russia under an agreement between the two governments. But it was taken over by Germany’s Lufthansa earlier this year, prompting Russia to question the agreement with Austria.

TITLE: Sukhoi Says Delivery Of Superjet Will Be Delayed
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Sukhoi Civil Aircraft announced Tuesday that it would delay the first delivery of its Superjet 100 to Aeroflot, in the latest in a string of postponements.
Sukhoi won’t be able to deliver the jets by the end of this year as had been expected, Sukhoi head Mikhail Pogosyan told a news conference. He did not specify when the aircraft would be completed.
Earlier this month, Aeroflot head Vitaly Savelyev said the company expected to get its first delivery of Superjet aircraft by the end of the year. The company was supposed to receive one new jet per month starting in December, for a total of 30 aircraft.
Industry sources said that a delay in certification was holding up the first unit’s delivery, Interfax reported. Pogosyan said at the annual MAKS Aviation Salon in August that certification would be finished this year.
Alexei Fyodorov, head of the United Aircraft Corporation, Sukhoi’s parent company, warned in August that there might be problems making the 2009 deadline and that the first jets may not be delivered before 2010.
Aeroflot ordered 30 Superjets at the discounted price of $21 million, which was later increased to $22.4 million because of additional equipment expenses. The airline has an option to buy an additional 15 jets.
Aeroflot, which hopes to replace its old Tu-134 jets with Superjets, has said it will not seek fines for Sukhoi, Vedomosti reported in October.
In return, Sukhoi Civil Aircraft provided a temporary cancel of customs fees for the jets imported by the carrier.
Armenian airline Armavia, which previously expected a 2009 delivery, said last month that it was now expecting its first jet in April.  
Armavia head Mikhail Bagdasarov said the delivery of new jets would be delayed till April because of certification problems. He added that Armavia would benefit from the delay, as the passenger flow was lower in the winter months.
Sukhoi currently has orders for 122 Superjets.
The aircraft made its maiden flight, initially planned for 2007, in May 2008 and its first public flight in June this year. It is still undergoing tests.
The industry has high hopes for the medium-range Superjet, which Sukhoi hopes will snap up 20 percent of the world’s regional jet market.
In international markets, the Superjet will compete with Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer and Canada’s Bombardier, which currently dominate the sector.
The Superjet, the country’s first new passenger aircraft in nearly 20 years, was developed with Italy’s Finmeccanica and can carry from 75 to 95 passengers.

TITLE: Economic Slowdown Eases As Prices Recover in Q3
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s economic decline eased last quarter from a record slump in the previous three months as oil, gas and metals prices rebounded and stimulus measures helped offset the impact of the global recession.
Output of the world’s biggest energy exporter shrank 8.9 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, after contracting a record 10.9 percent in the previous period, the State Statistics Service said in a preliminary estimate on its web site Thursday. From the second quarter, output grew a non-seasonally adjusted 13.9 percent. The office didn’t give a breakdown of the figures.
“It’s good growth, but it’s caused by the inventory cycle and the recovery of external demand for Russian products, primarily gas and metals,” said Maxim Oreshkin, head of research at Rosbank. “For growth to continue you need end-consumer demand to recover and investment demand to recover. So far there has been no clear recovery in these sectors.”
This year’s 80 percent rebound in the price of Urals crude, Russia’s biggest export, is pushing the former communist superpower to recovery even as President Dmitry Medvedev calls for an end to its “humiliating” reliance on commodities. The economy may grow 3.2 percent in 2010 after slumping 8.7 percent this year, the World Bank said on Tuesday, marking a bigger turnaround than Russia achieved after its 1998 debt default and devaluation.
The ruble was 0.5 percent weaker against the dollar at 28.8030 and little changed against the euro at 42.0051.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has pledged 2.5 trillion rubles ($87 billion) in fiscal stimulus to offset the impact of the global recession on the commodity-reliant economy, where energy accounts for 70 percent of export revenue. The central bank has cut the key refinancing rate to a record low 9.5 percent as inflation eased.
The Economy Ministry last month said the decline eased to an annual 9.4 percent. According to the ministry, gross domestic product grew a seasonally adjusted 0.6 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months, and gained a seasonally-adjusted 0.5 percent in September from August.
Oil prices in excess of government estimates will help narrow this year’s budget deficit to 7.5 percent of GDP from an earlier forecast of 8.3 percent, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Oct. 21, enabling the government to maintain the stimulus. Its 2010 budget deficit outlook assumes crude will average $58 a barrel and rise to $60 in 2012. 
The World Bank on Tuesday estimated oil will average $61.4 a barrel this year, rising to $75.3 next year. Higher oil revenue means the government has less need to dip into its $77.2 billion Reserve Fund, which was created to shield the budget from a drop in oil prices.
The fund gained in dollar terms last month for the first time since January as the Finance Ministry held off on transferring money to the budget.
Rising oil prices have also helped exports recover with sales abroad up 7.6 percent in September from August. From a year earlier, exports are down 33 percent, according to central bank data.
“We doubt that Russia’s GDP will resume growth without a continuing rise in exports,” Orlova said in the report. “Until the lack of investment is addressed, we believe there is a high risk that output will remain stagnant.”

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>City to Get $1.3 Billion</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Sberbank Head German Gref signed an agreement with St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko to invest at least 38 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) to help develop infrastructure in the region through 2020, the Moscow-based bank said on its web site Thursday.

<strong>Domestic Drugs Boost</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — President Dmitry Medvedev said Russian drugmakers should increase their share of the domestic market to 25 percent within five years and to half by 2020. He was speaking to lawmakers and ministers in the Kremlin on Thursday.

<strong>Import Taxes May Fall</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia may ease import duties on foreign products such as farm machinery that were imposed as part of the government’s anti-crisis program, Deputy Economy Minister Andrei Slepnyov said.
Slepnyov was speaking Thursday after a meeting of the commission on protective measures for foreign trade.

TITLE: A Flu for All Seasons
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: Who would have thought that the flu would be grabbing bigger headlines this fall than the economic crisis? The whole world has learned how Mexico decided to erect a monument to its dozens of swine flu victims. What we don’t hear about is how many people die every year in Mexico from other illnesses or from simple hunger, or how many fall victim to violent crime or drug addiction. Why? Because that isn’t interesting.
A few radical voices claim that the swine flu epidemic was caused by the inhumane treatment of pigs on large farm — places that have grown into major corporations resembling concentration camps. The same cruel methods once used against people were applied to the pigs, but their bodies could not withstand such treatment. With an enormous number of pigs confined to a small space and living under unsanitary conditions, an epidemic broke out. According to this theory, the pigs first caught the flu virus from humans. Later, the virus mutated and was passed back to humans.
The revenge of the pigs was born.
It has since come to light that swine flu does not differ greatly from ordinary seasonal flu, with roughly the same number of victims developing complications with both illnesses. Even so, Russia’s chief public health official, Gennady Onishchenko, unexpectedly became a prominent political figure when he issued a few simple orders that greatly complicated the lives of tens of thousands of people. For example, collective trips by schoolchildren to Spain and Britain were banned. Worse, the prohibition was announced at the last minute, when the trips had been paid for, visa applications had been prepared and travel plans set. The decision inflicted the maximum possible losses to tour agencies, disrupted the work of schools and upset the summer plans of countless families.
Passengers flying in from abroad are obliged to fill out detailed questionnaires that are reviewed by Onishchenko’s agency, although the forms are undergoing continual upgrades. It remains a mystery as to what exactly is done with these forms and how the information is used. Other agencies will probably have to be brought on board to process all the data. Airports also measure passengers’ temperatures with the help of a high-tech device of questionable effectiveness — but unquestionably very expensive price tag. All airports are required to install the equipment.
Onishchenko also proposed leveling a fine against anyone with the flu who appears in public without wearing a sanitary mask. The initiative is very profitable. While other manufacturing sectors are in a slump, the production of sanitary masks is booming. And, considering the money pouring into state coffers from flu sufferers caught bare-faced in public, it will soon become necessary to transfer the chief public health official to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry or the Finance Ministry, where his creative ideas will reap even greater dividends.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian presidential aide Igor Popov announced that a state of emergency might be declared because of his country’s flu epidemic, and that the presidential election might be pushed back from January to May. It turns out that this flu virus is even capable of extending a presidential term! I can just imagine how, after hearing the news from Ukraine, officials at the Health and Social Development Ministry in Moscow turned green with envy. For all of its size and scope, Moscow’s anti-flu campaign doesn’t pack anywhere near the same punch as the measures in Kiev.
It is interesting that Popov claimed it might be necessary to postpone elections in order to protect the interests of the opposition. It turns out that, with a flu epidemic raging, it is impossible to provide “equal opportunities to presidential candidates and to uphold voters’ rights.” In fact, “the ban on mass gatherings during the quarantine has hit the opposition presidential candidates hardest because the candidate in power can visit regions under quarantine as well as meet with supporters and the press, while other candidates feel that they are subject to discrimination.”
With or without the flu, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko can expect nothing good from the upcoming election, and the tactic of declaring a state of emergency could be used in cases other than fighting a flu epidemic. It might also come in handy next spring, by which time something else bad is bound to happen — rivers overflowing their banks, a financial default or even an outbreak of the common cold.  

Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.

TITLE: Promises, Promises
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Zlobin
TEXT: During his perfunctory election campaign, President Dmitry Medvedev made no mention of the need to modernize Russia, nor did he promise to become a popular video blogger or to set any world records for compassion by providing apartments to World War II veterans. No, Medvedev called for a battle against corruption and promised to do so much in establishing law and order that everyone would understand that he was not just keeping the presidential seat warm until Prime Minister Vladimir Putin returned to it in 2012.
Russians — tired of small-scale corruption that has become a way of life and daily injustice on the part of government officials — were ready to believe the anti-corruption pluck of the young leader who promised to “finally put an end” to the problem.
However, Medvedev’s call to battle corruption has gone unheeded. All surveys, statistics and personal observations indicate that, during Medvedev’s 18 months in office, corruption has actually increased. Now the question is: Will Medvedev continue just talking about the problem or is he prepared to finally take action?
After all, Medvedev is not only the president of all Russians — he is the leader of all bureaucrats, who act as his representatives at every level government. He is the only person in the country who has the power to remove anybody at any time. Why, then, doesn’t Medvedev change the criteria for measuring success from governors’ and mayors’ ability to finagle high election results for United Russia to their ability to control corruption? He could fire a dozen or so local leaders as a signal to the others. Many ministries suffer from high levels of corruption. The fact that Medvedev has yet to remove any of the most flagrantly corrupt officials speaks volumes.
Russia should not follow the Western model for fighting corruption. In those countries, corruption is the exception, and is dealt with by the criminal justice system like any other crime. In Russia, corruption has become so widespread that it is undermining both the state and the economy and is creating a deep distrust toward all authorities, including the president. In Russia, corruption is not a criminal but a political program, with rigged elections being the clearest example. A single party’s monopoly on power coupled with the absence of a free media is a classic breeding ground for corruption.
Any official who attempts to influence a judge’s decision should be considered a state criminal. A country in which corrupt officials channel their illicit wealth into their wives’ bank accounts to escape punishment and where entire families are listed on the payrolls of ministries is incapable of developing or modernizing. It is impossible to overcome the legal nihilism of the Russian people as long as the only law that the president, prime minister and the people generally obey is the need to stop at a red light.
Medvedev’s comment regarding Soviet leader Josef Stalin that “the ruling authority should be honest” would be better applied to his own conduct and that of his subordinates. Any unfettered corrupt official instantly makes the president appear dishonest in the eyes of the people. Are we to believe that Medvedev is honest and incorruptible and that he will fulfill his promise to modernize the country just like he has fulfilled his promise to fight corruption and establish the rule of law?

Nikolai Zlobin is director of Russian and Asian programs at the Institute for World Security in Washington. This comment appeared in Vedomosti.

TITLE: The sound of Britain
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Second St. Petersburg Festival of British Music that kicks off on Sunday at the State Academic Cappella will treat audiences to gems of British classical music spanning the past four centuries.
Aimed at showcasing British classical music in its diversity, the festival was launched in November 2007 by Rudi Eastwood, an aspiring British conductor and graduate of the U.K.’s prestigious Royal Academy of Music, who feels that British classical music remains a missing link in the repertoires of many Russian orchestras.
Running through Nov. 25, the festival juxtaposes some of the best-known names in British classical music, including Benjamin Britten, Edward Elgar and John Ireland with a special emphasis on the music of William Alwyn, one of the most prolific but less well-known British composers of the 20th century.
In total, this year’s event features works of nearly 20 British composers from different eras.
“We wanted to get as much variety as possible,” said Eastwood, who will take part in two performances, one as conductor and the other as a pianist.
“British music isn’t played often here in St. Petersburg and the music students at the conservatoire were keen to know more about British music.” 
Alwyn (1905-1985) was a man of many talents — artist, musician, poet and polyglot. His composing legacy features five symponies, four operas, several concertos and string quartets as well as more than 70 film scores. The concert on Nov. 16 at the St. Petersburg Association for International Cooperation/Friendship House includes Alwyn’s Sonatina and Elgar’s Sonata with works by James Macmillan, Frank Bridge and Alan Rawsthorne also on the program. Alwyn’s work Mirages and his Concerto for flute and eight wind instruments will be featured at the festival’s closing performance on Nov. 25 at the Sheremetev Palace.
“Britain possesses an exceptionally rich musical heritage, which since the early masters of Tallis and Byrd has evolved into a unique sound-world, capable of portraying a character and landscape found nowhere else in the world,” Eastwood said.
Another composer to look out for in the festival’s program is Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose Tallis Fantasia and The Lark Ascending will be performed on Nov. 18 at the Glinka Philharmonic Hall. Born in 1872 in the Cotswold village of Down Ampney, at the turn of the 20th century the composer was one of the first modern musicians to travel around the countryside collecting folk songs and carols. The composer’s musical legacy is extremely varied as he tried his talented hand at many different genres with genuine success.
The festival’s organisers believe the project to be unique.
“Not only does the festival provide a much needed concert platform for young British musicians at the outset of their professional careers, but it will also introduce a Russian audience to British culture,” Eastwood said. “The festival exists to showcase the best of British music and we hope that it will eventually possess the capacity to attract music lovers from around the world.”
Before coming to Russia, Eastwood studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music in London. During this time he performed as a soloist and chamber musician at Wigmore Hall, St. Martin-in-the-Fields church and in various music festivals throughout Europe. But his professional interests shifted after an unfortunate injury.
“I turned to conducting after suffering an injury to my arm, which meant that I could no longer put in the hours of practice required for a concert pianist,” Eastwood recalls. “After the injury, I founded the Karelian Sinfonia, an orchestra comprised of students from the top music colleges in London.”
In 2006, Eastwood’s conducting studies brought him to St. Petersburg. The musician’s teachers at the respected Philharmonic Society include Pyotr Gribanov and Georgy Yerzhemsky. 
Russian musicians have been very receptive to the idea of the festival, he said. 
“They would be very keen to participate and play this new music,” Eastwood added. 
The festival’s concerts will be held in some of St. Petersburg’s most prestigious venues, including the State Academic Capella, the Glazunov Hall of the State Conservatory, the Peter and Paul Lutheran Cathedral and the Sheremetev Palace. Orchestras performing at the festival include the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and the State Capella Orchestra. 
Joining them will be the St. Petersburg Chamber Choir under the baton of Nikolai Kornev.
www.britishmusicfest.co.uk

TITLE: The word’s 
worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: <em>Òðàíæèðà</em>: spendthrift, wastrel, big spender, high roller.
The thing about <em>ðåìîíò êâàðòèðû</em> (apartment remodeling) is that it’s expensive. After a month of trips to the building supply markets, tile stores, kitchen stores, bathroom stores, lighting stores and big box home repair stores, you begin to feel like a human ATM. It’s gotten to the point that as soon as I see my contractor, I reach for my wallet. <em>Äåíüãè óõîäÿò êàê ïåñîê ñêâîçü ïàëüöû!</em> (Money flows through my fingers like sand!)
But because every experience is grist for the learning-Russian mill, this got me thinking about Russian terms for spending money.
In Russian, <em>ðàñòî÷èòåëü</em> is a spendthrift. In the 19th and early 20th century, it seems to have been a rather common word, but today my friends say it is slightly bookish. They would be more likely to use the adjectival form — <em>ðàñòî÷èòåëüíûé</em> (profligate) — in reference to, say, state spending: <em>Ãåíåðàëüíàÿ ïðîêóðàòóðà âûÿâèëà ôàêòû ðàñòî÷èòåëüíîãî ðàñõîäîâàíèÿ áþäæåòíûõ ñðåäñòâ</em> (The prosecutor general uncovered evidence of wasteful spending of budgetary funds).
Today if you want to describe a spendthrift, you might use the word <em>òðàíæèðà</em>. This noun is derived from the verb <em>òðàíæèðèòü</em> (to spend wastefully) and came to Russian from the French. It can be applied to both sexes. <em>Òðàíæèðà — èäåàëüíûé óõàæ¸ð, íî ïðîáëåìíûé ìóæ</em> (A big spender is an ideal boyfriend, but a problematic husband). <em>ß òðàíæèðà, ïðè÷¸ì íåèñïðàâèìàÿ! Ëþáëþ ÿ òóôëè.</em> (I spend money like water, and I can’t change! I just love shoes.)
You might also call this kind of person <em>ìîò</em> (lavish spender), from the verb <em>ìîòàòü</em> (among several meanings: to spend money extravagantly). The poet Alexander Pushkin once wrote: <em>ß íå ìîò; ÿ çíàþ öåíó äåíüãàì</em>. (I don’t squander money; I know its worth.) Judging by his life-long debts, this wasn’t true. But who wants to admit that they spend money like it was going out of style?
If someone spends money foolishly on things that he doesn’t need or even want, you might say: <em>Îí áðîñàåò äåíüãè íà âåòåð</em> (He flushes money down the drain; literally, “He throws money to the wind”). You can also use a phrase with an English analog: <em>Îíà ðàçáðàñûâàåò äåíüãè íàëåâî è íàïðàâî</em> (She spends money right and left).
What if you don’t generally blow money but are prepared to pay whatever it takes to get, say, your roof repaired? You might say: <em>ß çàïëà÷ó ëþáûå äåíüãè!</em> (I’ll pay whatever it costs!) Or: <em>ß çà öåíîé íå ïîñòîþ</em> (literally, I won’t stand on the price): I don’t care what the cost is.
In Russian glossy women’s magazines, you can also find the loan word <em>øîïîãîëèê</em> (shopaholic). Soon I’m sure there will also be self-help groups called <em>àíîíèìíûå øîïîãîëèêè</em> (Shopaholics Anonymous).

<em>Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.</em>

TITLE: Casting a shadow
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” (“The Woman Without a Shadow,”) believed to be Richard Strauss’s favorite and most musically challenging opera, is coming to the Russian stage for the first time. Internationally acclaimed British director Jonathan Kent is staging the work at the Mariinsky Theater, with premieres scheduled for Nov. 16 and 18.
“Die Frau Ohne Schatten,” set to a sophisticated libretto by poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, is rich in symbolism and bears countless philosophical reverences. The ideas of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche were instrumental in devising the plot.
“You really see a lot of Nietzsche in the libretto; it bears references to Jung’s concept of the shadow — everything that is repressed and unconscious,” Kent said. “And, of course, Schopenhauer’s idea that the mainspring of all human action is the will to live and create life is central to the plot.”
Although the opera is generally regarded by the musical world as the composer’s most fascinating work, “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” is noticeably less often staged than Strauss’s other operas, including “Salome” and “Elektra,” which are already part of the Mariinsky repertoire. Very few opera companies worldwide dare to touch this gem, as the work throws up titanic challenges to the director and set designer, who have to cope with all the elements of magic and symbolism. The opera is no less demanding vocally, featuring five main characters who have to master elaborate passages and have the stamina to compete with the heavy orchestration.
Jonathan Kent gained international fame during his reign as one of the directors of London’s Almeida Theater from 1990 to 2002.
 “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” marks Kent’s second collaboration with the Mariinsky, following a highly successful rendition of Strauss’s “Elektra” in 2007.
Upon his departure from the Almeida, which focuses on drama, Kent turned his hand to opera. His debut came in 2003 when he produced Leos Janacek’s “Katya Kabanova” for the Santa Fe Opera, receiving plaudits from critics. 
“The huge difference between staging an opera and producing a drama is that in the opera, the rhythm of the production is given; it is dictated by the music,” said Kent. “In a drama production you have to find the right rhythm during the rehearsals. Both opera and drama have narratives and tell stories. The narrative creates some sort of skeleton, and opera requires adding some flesh to that skeleton.”
One of the director’s biggest successes in opera was a rendition of Puccini’s “Tosca,” which he created for Covent Garden in 2006 with glamorous Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu in the lead role. The stakes were high for Kent — the show replaced a renowned Franco Zeffirelli production originally designed for Maria Callas in 1964 that had been running for 42 years. 
The fairy-tale libretto of “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” revolves around an empress who must acquire a shadow — a symbol of motherhood — or else the emperor will be turned into stone. With the assistance of her nurse, the empress travels from the spirit world to the world of humans. She faces the difficult dilemma of striking a questionable deal with the dyer’s wife, whose shadow she would receive. Although the dyer is passionate about having children, his wife is afraid of the responsibility, and has secretly sworn never to have children. Both women find themselves on the verge of betrayal, yet ultimately manage to find a positive and honest solution to their situations.
“This opera tells a story about the search for identity: The empress and the dyer’s wife are both desperately seeking that which, as it eventually turns out, they had all along,” Kent said. “Both women are striving to find their identities through relationships with their men, and through relation to the motherhood issue.”
Visually, the production, which requires the characters to move freely and swiftly between earth and the spirit world, will juxtapose elements of traditional operatic designs and contemporary technology.  The sets are the handiwork of British designer Paul Brown, who will make much use of video projections — or contemporary dreaming.
The Mariinsky soloists began rehearsing the arias back in autumn last year, under the guidance of prominent European coach Richard Trimborn, who specializes in German opera and is a regular with the Mariinsky Theater, helping the singers with Wagner and Strauss.

“Die Frau Ohne Schatten” premieres at the Mariinsky Theater on Nov. 16 and 18. www.mariinsky.ru

TITLE: Pass it on
AUTHOR: By Sasha de Vogel
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Everyone knows that the best part about having secrets is sharing them, and Secrets is an ideal restaurant for those who take their gossip seriously. Soft lighting and relaxing music create the perfect setting for a long, juicy conversation over dinner, while the partitioned main dining room and cozy banquettes offer a more intimate experience for diners seeking privacy. Puzzlingly, the otherwise mellow and sophisticated atmosphere is marred by several large paintings clearly inspired by pornography and space travel—perhaps meant to inspire fodder for future gossip sessions. 
Believers of the adage, In vino veritas, will be pleased by the comprehensive wine list with bottles priced between 1,500 and 14,000 rubles ($51-$480) a bottle, with several options available by the glass that are priced more reasonably. As beer was priced rather steeply at 200 rubles ($6.90) for a Carlsberg, wine seemed overwhelmingly to be the libation of choice. Unfortunately, a glass of Cote du Rhone (350 rubles a glass, $12) was served so cold that it was almost impossible to taste. 
Although the menu claims that Secrets offers a marriage between an “intimate understanding of Italian cuisine” and “the authenticity of [the] ancient Lebanese kitchen,” the majority of the offerings were classic Italian fare. The familiar favorites vacillated from traditional to boring, but consistently relied on the freshest ingredients. A dash of Lebanese influence would have been a welcome addition.
The selection of appetizers was the high point of the meal. Piping hot and oozing cheese, the eggplant Parmesan at 300 rubles ($10) is the perfect comfort food for a cold day, and the portion was easily large enough to satisfy as a main course. A mozzarella salad (350 rubles, $12) paired a generous portion of tender mozzarella with tomato and basil and would make a perfect starter for two or three people to share. The sound of pounding from the kitchen proved that the beef Carpaccio, 400 rubles ($14), was as freshly prepared as it tasted. Delicate yet rich, it made for an ideal carnal indulgence. The menu also includes several meat and cheese platters priced around 400 rubles ($14).
After such satisfying, well-executed appetizers, the entrees proved disappointing. The meat and mushroom cannelloni for 400 rubles ($14) that we chose from a wide selection of pastas and risottos, was presented atop of a drizzled puddle of sauces that resembled a curdled Italian flag. Bereft of cheese and tomato sauce, the slippery pasta tubes and cold, bland ground beef filling tasted as perplexingly slimy as they looked. Noting our displeasure, the waitress tactfully removed them.
In the interest of exploring the Lebanese side of Secrets, we opted for kebabs with hummus and vegetables at 550 rubles ($19) over the assortment of pizzas (around 400 rubles, $14), the veal cutlets (850 rubles, $30) or the sea bass (1,100 rubles, $38). Though the hummus was missing, the three grilled nuggets of ground beef were served with lavash and were juicy and well-seasoned, and ironically accompanied by a warm tomato sauce which may have benefited the inedible cannelloni. 
Appropriately for an establishment devoted to bacchanalia, the dessert menu at Secrets is lengthy. Our attentive and helpful waitress informed us that all the desserts are prepared in-house and suggested the creme brulee at 150 rubles ($5), done Italian-style with a dash of Sambuca. The licorice twist was an enticing addition to a classic dessert and left a much-needed pleasant aftertaste in our mouths.

TITLE: A struggle that bore fruit
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: This Saturday, Yabloko, whose name is the Russian for “apple,” will mark its 30th anniversary with a concert – and also showcase its lead singer Marina Kapuro’s solo album — at a concert at Zal Ozhidaniya, the club in the former Varshavsky (Warsaw) Railroad Station.
The pioneering Soviet folk-rock act, which not only released the first (and only) quadraphonic album in the U.S.S.R., but also managed to get round censorship and print the once-forbidden words “folk,” “country” and “rock” on its cover, almost single-handedly invented Russian folk rock.
Called “Folk-rok-kantri-gruppa Yabloko” and released in 1980, the quadraphonic album was the band’s debut and the fruit of the research done by its founder, guitarist Yury Berendyukov, who was working in the field of stereophony as a postgraduate at the Bonch-Bruyevich Electrotechnical Communications Institute in Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was known then.
The Soviet Union, which invaded Afghanistan in Dec. 1979, wanted to add a certain liberal flavor to its international image in the buildup to the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, which would be eventually boycotted by 62 nations anyway. Yabloko's debut album stands as a manifestation of that brief cultural thaw.
However, it took the help of the late Dmitry Pokrovsky, a Moscow-based researcher and performer of authentic Russian folk music, to persuade the bosses at Melodiya, the sole state-run Soviet record label, to release the album.
“It was the first record that had ‘folk,’ ‘rock’ and ‘country’ on its cover in the U.S.S.R. — you could not go to prison for using such words, but you could lose your job at the very least,” Berendyukov said, sitting in a bar at the Grand Hotel Europe last week.
“But because of the Olympics, I managed to persuade the ‘artistic council’ [the committee that gave permission for a record to be released] in Moscow – which was quite an adventure – by saying that ‘there will be the Olympics, foreign visitors will come…’ Dmitry Pokrovsky helped a lot, too, he came with his whole ensemble and said, ‘I like it.’ Pokrovsky was an indisputable authority in the field of folk then.”
Quadrophony, an early, four-channel form of surround sound, was all the rage in the West at some point in the 1970s, but its popularity declined due to conflicting decoding standards and its high cost. Yabloko’s vinyl debut, which used a different, original “ABC” decoder developed by Berendyukov and his colleagues at the Institute, was fated to remain the only Soviet effort in the format.
When the record came out, at the unprecedented price of 6 Soviet rubles — with stereo albums costing between 1.90 and 2.15 Soviet rubles — there was no quadraphonic equipment to play it on.
“The record was approved by the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Light Industry and the Ministry of Communications, everything was prepared so the quadraphonic disc came out in time for the Olympics,” Berendyukov said.
“But the player, which was to include a decoder and four speakers, was sort of delayed, and then stopped — because the quadraphonic craze in the West had died down. It’s a Russian tradition to look at the West and say, if they don’t want something, why should we do it here? So I went into music as a whole, rather than into quadraphony. Russian quadraphony didn’t happen, but Yabloko did.”
Despite its hefty price and the initial run of 16,000 copies, the album did not force the Soviet state into showing any generosity toward the band, according to singer Marina Kapuro.
“We went to a record shop in Moscow with several albums we got from Melodiya as complimentary copies — and we were penniless and hungry,” she said. “There were our records on sale, so we thought that if we sold one of our albums even for half-price, we would have enough money to buy some food. But we just didn’t venture to do this — because we were ashamed to admit that it was our record and we were so poor. Poor artists from the Soviet Union.”
Berendyukov had a legendary underground rock career a decade before he launched Yabloko. He formed Nu, Pogodi!, a rock band specializing in Western covers, as was the Russian trend at the time, in 1968. Covering Jimi Hendrix, Free, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, the band mostly performed at dances in the Leningrad suburb of Pesochnoye.
“There was a decree forbidding bands from performing in the city. It had all started with a gig by [the local rock band] Flamingo at the Polytechnic, and it ended up in a scandal because of the overly ‘frivolous’ atmosphere there, which drew the attention of city and [Communist] party leadership,” Berendyukov said.
“A discreet decree was issued that rock bands couldn’t play at dances in the city — only out of the city, and they had necessarily to include songs by Soviet composers as well as have brass instruments.
“They assumed a brass section would ‘dilute’ rock, even if there were such bands as Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears [with brass sections]. The last version of Nu, Pogodi! was a Chicago-like lineup — with a trumpet, trombone and saxophone.”
But Berendyukov said his favorite acts were Simon and Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, who eventually pushed him in the direction of folk rock and forming, in 1974, the folk-rock band Akvarel (which featured the future Akvarium cellist Seva Gakkel), and, eventually, Yabloko. Formed in 1979, it made its stage debut on April 26 that year.
“There were a lot of country bands in Moscow, for instance, but they mostly played American country – they just liked it, while we looked to our roots and went on from there,” Berendyukov said.
“I listen to our first record now and think, ‘Did we really invent it ourselves, wow, incredible!’ It’s because we were seriously immersed in Slavic music, Russian and Belorussian. We managed to avoid Americanisms, even if in its form it’s real folk-rock.”

<i>Yabloko will perform on Saturday at 8 p.m. at Zal Ozhidaniya, located at 118 Naberezhnaya Obvodnogo Kanala, Tel.: 777-0505.</i>

TITLE: Former World No. 1 Marat Safin Retires in Paris
AUTHOR: By Samuel Petrequin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — Known for furious, racket-throwing rants, Marat Safin would rather be remembered for the hard work he put in during a 12-year career marked by two Grand Slam titles and a Davis Cup win.
The former No. 1 ended his career Wednesday after losing to Juan Martin del Potro 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 in the second round of the Paris Masters.
“A lot of people there really thought that I’m not a really hard worker,” Safin said. “But you can ask all my coaches how I dedicated myself to tennis. They will tell you it’s completely the opposite of what a lot of people think.”
The 29-year-old Safin first made headlines in 1998 when he reached the fourth round at the French Open with victories over Andre Agassi and Gustavo Kuerten. He won his first ATP title the year after, and claimed his first major at the 2000 U.S. Open with a victory over Pete Sampras in the final.
Safin reached No. 1 in November 2000 before injuries and other issues prevented him from a long stay at the top. He lost two major finals before adding a second Grand Slam title at the 2005 Australian Open.
Safin, who said he will miss high-level competition, is relieved he won’t have to deal with injuries and pressure anymore.
“You are completely stressed 24-7,” the 65th-ranked Russian said. “This is what I hate about it. It’s just too much. There is no rest for the brain at all. Once you are top 10, and then you can drop to 150. And it’s difficult to comeback. It’s a very tough living.”
Safin said he’d love to change the outcome of two painful defeats.
“French Open semifinals against [Juan Carlos] Ferrero and Australian Open final against [Thomas] Johansson,” said Safin, remembering losses dating back to 2002.
That year, the Russian was beaten by Johansson in four sets on his 22nd birthday, but he also gave Russia a Davis Cup win over France in Paris.
“It’s where I started and where I finished,” Safin said about the French capital. “I couldn’t have found a better place to [retire]. French people have been great to me. Great fans, great spectators. They perfectly understand tennis.”
Safin, a three-time winner at the Paris Masters, captured 15 singles titles during his career. But the charismatic Russian hasn’t won a tournament since his Australian Open victory in 2005. His best result this year was reaching the semifinals last month in St. Petersburg, Russia.
“Today I will put all my memories, all my wins and losses in a small box,” Safin said during a small ceremony where he received a special trophy. “Today a door is closed, hopefully another one will open.”
Safin was joined on the court by several current and former players, including Marc Rosset, Younes El Aynaoui and Albert Costa.
“It’s really a special feeling to see Younes, Marc and Alberto here,” Safin said. “We had some fun together. For me it means a lot that they came to say goodbye.”
Safin, known for his outspokenness, also teased some of the players who came to greet him.
“Of course it’s very nice to see all the people coming to the court,” Safin said. “And I hope the ATP people didn’t push them to do that. Because I didn’t expect some of them to be here.”
For his last match, Safin gave the Parisian crowd terrific winners from the baseline, fine touches at the net, strong first serves but also horrendous unforced errors and a tossed racket.
In the first set, he missed a chance to break Del Potro, when the fifth-seeded Argentine served a winner to even it at 3-3. Safin then lost his serve after sending a forehand wide and Del Potro ended the set with a service winner.
Safin saved a break point at 5-5 in the second set and earned three set points when Del Potro sent a forehand into the net. Del Potro survived the first one with a service winner but was left stranded by Safin’s forehand winner on the next point.
In the third, Del Potro broke for a 2-1 lead and finished Safin off on his second match point with an ace.
Del Potro congratulated Safin at the net while the audience gave the Russian a standing ovation. Safin remained unclear about his projects for the future.
“Sportsmen are great when they are sportsmen,” Safin said. “Afterwards, it’s a little bit tough for them. The transition from being a tennis player to do something else is difficult. And if time passes too much, you’re just an ex-tennis player.”

TITLE: Obama To ‘Revive’ U.S. Prestige in Asia
AUTHOR: By Stephen Collinson
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Barack Obama leaves on his debut presidential tour of Asia on Thursday seeking to revive America’s prestige as a regional power, on a trip much heavier on symbolism than diplomatic substance.
Obama will take a precious week out of his bid to enact an ambitious domestic agenda to show the region, and a rising China, that Washington is no longer distracted by crises elsewhere.
He is due to travel first to Japan for talks Friday with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, then attend the weekend’s APEC summit in Singapore and become the first U.S. president to sit down with all 10 leaders of ASEAN, including Myanmar (Burma).
Obama will next visit Shanghai, and fly on to Beijing for a state dinner and talks with President Hu Jintao, then wrap up his tour in South Korea.
“It’s a common perception in the region that U.S. influence has been on the decline in the last decade, while Chinese influence has been increasing,” said Obama’s top East Asia aide Jeffrey Bader.
“One of the messages that the president will be sending in his visit is that we are an Asia-Pacific nation and we are there for the long haul.”
The White House is stressing that Obama, who grew up in Hawaii and spent a number of childhood years in Indonesia, is familiar with, and to some extent shares an Asian worldview on some issues.
Obama aides say the previous Bush administration saw ties with Asia through the prism of their global war on terror, and neglected its Asian relationships.
As China expanded its clout, U.S. influence suffered from the spending and borrowing binge that triggered the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.
Yet for all the talk of a diminished role, Washington remains a player.
The United States is a guarantor of Asian security, with a combined 75,000 troops in South Korea and Japan and the Seventh Fleet prowling regional waters.
While the dollar is humbled and the US economy wounded, a consumer-led American recovery would revive vast export markets for Asian nations.
But Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner suggested that Washington is also looking to its Asian trading partners to power demand in the meantime.
“As US households save more and the US reduces its fiscal deficit, others must spur greater growth of private demand in their own economies,” Geithner said in an op-ed co-authored with his counterparsts from Indonesia and Singapore and published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal.
The Obama factor could also come into play on the trip.
Aides always try to leverage the president’s intriguing personal story and political charisma abroad, to court locals over the heads of their leaders.
Obama, on his first overseas mission since winning the Nobel Peace Prize, will stress engagement and hopes for cooperation on national security, climate change and economic issues.
But tangible results may have to wait.
Many Asian nations want Obama to reignite global trade talks, and South Korea wants action on a bilateral trade pact.
But as he pushes historic reform drives like health care, Obama lacks the political sway to dictate trade policy to Congress and with unemployment topping 10 percent, the threat from Asian economies looms large.
Significant breakthroughs are not expected on global warming in Obama’s talks with Hu. China and the United States are considered vital to fading hopes of a deal at UN climate talks in Copenhagen next month.
Shadowing Obama throughout the trip will be his looming decision on whether to deploy thousands more U.S. troops to Afghanistan — he held his latest war council on the issue in the White House on Wednesday.
Obama wants to cement ties with new Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama and draw similarities between their respective crusades for political change.

TITLE: Merkel, Sarkozy Mark Armistice Day
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — For the first time since World War I, the leaders of Germany and France appeared together at a ceremony Wednesday to commemorate the end of the conflict, saying it is now time to celebrate their countries’ reconciliation and friendship.
“French-German friendship is sealed with blood,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said under the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe, site of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel together laid a wreath of flowers at the tomb and symbolically relit the perpetual flame above it to mark the 91st anniversary of the end of World War I.
“This small flame is also... the flame of hope,” Sarkozy said.
The bold departure from traditional Armistice Day commemorations came two days after Sarkozy traveled to Germany to help fete the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“One must learn to rise above one’s history,” Merkel said in a speech. “What happened cannot be forgotten, but there is a force that can help us... the force of reconciliation.”
Tens of millions of civilians and soldiers were killed during what was labeled the Great War between Germany and allied nations France, Britain and its former colonies, including the United States, Australia and Canada.
The last of 8.4 million French who fought in the war that tore Europe apart died in March 2008, and Sarkozy wanted to use the Armistice commemoration to look to the future with the nation that was vanquished but which, with France, now has a central role in the European Union.
“For us, Nov. 11 is a day of peace in Europe and the fall of the wall is a day of freedom,” said Merkel, who herself escaped from East Germany to the West after the collapse of the wall that defined the Cold War.
With evident emotion, Sarkozy and Merkel listened as the French Army Choir sang the French and German national anthems. Together, they reviewed troops posted around the Arc de Triomphe at the top of the Champs-Elysees Avenue. Some 2,000 French and German youths were taking part in day-long ceremonies commemorating the end of World War I.
Other nations that served as World War I battlefields, notably Britain and Belgium, also were marking Armistice Day.
Wednesday’s service at Westminster Abbey in London coincides with the ritual two-minute silence that marks the end of the Great War and pays respect to all war dead.
In Belgium, which saw some of the fiercest and bloodiest trench warfare on the Western Front during the 1914-1918 war, King Albert II was leading the royal family and government officials in a solemn commemoration in Brussels at the tomb of the unknown soldier.
In Ieper, better known to soldiers by its French name, Ypres, tens of thousands of people lined the narrow streets of the town left in ruins during the 1914-1918 war and now a world symbol of peace. Ceremonies were held around the Menen Gate war memorial where the names of 55,000 missing soldiers are engraved.

TITLE: Hirohito ‘No Warmonger’ Claims Akihito
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: TOKYO — Japan’s Emperor Akihito, celebrating 20 years on the throne on Thursday, offered a rare defence of his father’s wartime record, saying Japanese aggression had been contrary to his wishes.
The 75-year-old said he thought his father Hirohito had opposed Japan’s march to war, an unusual comment on the emperor who at the time was considered divine by his people but seen as an aggressor by the Allied powers.
Akihito said that his father, posthumously called Emperor Showa in Japan after the name of his 1926-89 era, had as crown prince visited the site of the World War I battlefield of Verdun in France.
“He had taken to heart the importance of maintaining peace,” Akihito said. “It is my perception that the events that led to war must have been contrary to what he would have wished.”
The emperor has in the past talked about “difficulties” his father faced during the years when Japan took the path to war.
But the latest remark was clearer than his 2005 comment when he said “I wonder from time to time what feelings Emperor Showa harboured as he lived through the period.”
Historians are divided on whether the emperor was responsible for Japan’s aggression before and during World War II or whether he was the puppet of military and political leaders.
Hirohito was not tried at the Tokyo war tribunal that sentenced to death seven military and government leaders, including wartime premier Hideki Tojo.
Akihito was speaking to the media last week, but his comments were embargoed for publication until the celebration Thursday of his accession to the Chrysanthemum throne, in line with usual imperial household practice.
Akihito, who under the post-war constitution serves a largely ceremonial function and is barred from commenting on politics, said the events during his father’s era “taught us many lessons.”
“I believe it is essential for us to learn from the historical facts and prepare ourselves for the future,” he said.
Many Asian countries still hold bitter memories of Japanese aggression and have complained that Japan has whitewashed its past in school textbooks.
Japan’s centre-left Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who took power in September, has pledged stronger ties with Asia and said he and his cabinet ministers will not visit Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni war shrine.
Akihito again urged people to remember history when he spoke at the official anniversary ceremony before some 1,300 lawmakers, diplomats and other guests.
“I think it is important for the country’s future not to forget the fact that today’s Japan was built on the great sacrifice and to tell it correctly to people born after the war,” he said.
Hatoyama said in a speech: “We will keep in mind Your Majesty’s wish, learn from past history and build a Japan in which other countries can trust.”
Akihito’s coronation ceremony was held on Nov. 12, 1990, after the end of the mourning period for Hirohito.
More than 9,000 people visited an imperial palace gate Thursday to enter their names in special commemorative books, the palace said. 
Some 50,000 people were expected to gather for privately organized commemorative events, near the moated palace in central Tokyo for performances of traditional and modern music.

TITLE: British, Russian Men ‘Most Ugly’ Declares Beautiful People Dating Site
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: British men are among the ugliest people in the world, according to a dating website that says it only allows beautiful people to join. 
Only the male Russian and Polish applicants fared worse than British men, although Russian women had a 44 percent acceptance rate. Polish women did not appear in the table.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that fewer than one in eight British men and just three in 20 women who applied to BeautifulPeople.com have been accepted.
Existing members of the dating site rate how attractive potential members are over a 48 hour period, after applicants upload a recent photo and personal profile.
Swedish men have proved the most successful, with 65 percent being accepted, while Norwegian women are considered the most beautiful with 76 percent accepted, Reuters reported.
BeautifulPeople.com accepts new members after existing members vote whether or not to admit them, Reuters, quoting the site, said.
In response to an applicant’s photograph, members respond: “Yes definitely,” “Hmm yes, O.K,” “Hmm no, not really” or “No definitely not.”
The site was founded in 2002 in Denmark and went live across the globe last month. Since then, the site has rejected nearly 1.8 million people from 190 countries, admitting just 360,000 new members, Reuters reported.
“I would say Britain is stumbling because they don’t spend as much time polishing up their appearance and they are letting themselves down on physical fitness,” Beautiful People managing director Greg Hodge told Reuters. “Next to Brazilian and Scandinavian beauties, British people just aren’t as toned or glamorous.”
German applicants were slated for offering up unflattering photographs, which may have hindered their acceptance rates at 15 percent for men and 13 percent for women, the lowest rate in their category.
“German men and women aren’t faring well, but they are submitting stern images, they need to soften up,” Hodge said.