SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1545 (6), Friday, February 5, 2010
**************************************************************************
TITLE: Medvedev’s Institute Backs Major Reforms
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia will join NATO and the EU, reduce its military, reintroduce gubernatorial elections and four-year presidential terms and disband its Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service, according to a paper released Wednesday by a think tank close to President Dmitry Medvedev.
The essay, “21st-Century Russia: Reflections on an Attractive Tomorrow,” published by the Institute of Contemporary Development, calls for drastic measures but also embraces modernization appeals formulated by Medvedev last fall in his “Go, Russia!” article and his state-of-the-nation address.
Medvedev chairs the institute’s board of trustees.
Analysts cautioned that the proposals were far from realistic and most likely an attempt to rally public opinion behind Medvedev’s modernization drive.
United Russia, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, accused the think tank of advocating a return to the turbulent 1990s. A number of its proposals contradict key elements of United Russia’s “Strategy 2020,” also known as “Putin’s Plan.”
The 23,000-word essay — published on the institute’s web site, Insor-Russia.ru, and signed by its chairman, Igor Yurgens, and sociologist Yevgeny Gontmakher — argues that economic modernization cannot be achieved without political modernization.
Medvedev has regularly promised political reforms, which critics say have so far been largely cosmetic.
Among the paper’s more radical contents is a sweeping reform of the law enforcement authorities, which are often seen as a haven for the country’s conservative hard-liners, the so-called siloviki.
The authors propose that the Interior Ministry be disbanded and replaced with a Federal Criminal Police Service. Simpler police duties like road traffic would be carried out by a new force subordinated to regional leaders.
Calls to drastically reform the police have become louder after a series of violent incidents embarrassed the Interior Ministry in recent months.
The paper also proposes to replace the Federal Security Service with a Counterintelligence Service and a Service for the Protection of the Constitution, the latter of which would be responsible for fighting terrorism and separatism — a model that seemingly mimics the intelligence organization of present-day Germany.
The military is to be slashed in half to 500,000 to 600,000 servicemen in peacetime.
The paper says the country should consider joining both the European Union and NATO. “This will stimulate [Russia’s] further positive transformation, it says.
It also calls for the return of popularly elected governors and reducing the presidential term to five years. A Medvedev-backed amendment extended the term to six years, from four previously.
The decision to abolish gubernatorial elections in 2004 has been criticized as a leading example of Putin rolling back democracy during his presidency, which ended in 2008. Medvedev, Putin’s handpicked successor, has said he personally participated in this decision and that it should remain intact for the next 100 years.
Medvedev received a draft of the paper a few weeks ago and has yet to comment, Arkady Dvorkovich, the president’s economic adviser, told Vedomosti in an interview published Wednesday.
A Kremlin spokesman said Wednesday that he had nothing to add to Dvorkovich’s statement.
Gontmakher, one of the paper’s authors, told Vedomosti that the report was not written for Medvedev but to initiate public debate.
United Russia officials condemned the paper as idealizing the 1990s. “Their mistake is that they think that there was an ideal democracy then. But it was in the 1990s that the system of social security and many other civil rights were destroyed,” State Duma Deputy Sergei Markov said in a statement.
Pavel Danilin, an analyst
of the Fund for Effective Politics,
a pro-Kremlin think tank, said that the paper reflected “myths” traditionally held by the country’s liberals.
“If their key proposals were met, we would have a revolution — and I do not see any need for a revolution,” he told The Moscow Times.
Alexei Mukhin, an analyst at the Center for Political Information, said that describing a “golden paradise” in which the siloviki had little influence reflected efforts by political forces close to Medvedev to secure their political future.
“These are dangerous dreams for United Russia promoted by Medvedev’s neo-liberals,” he said.
Stanislav Belkovsky, an independent analyst and former Kremlin insider, wrote off the paper as part of a Kremlin PR effort aimed at foreign audiences. “This was written to bolster Medvedev’s positive image in the West,” he said.
Belkovsky said Medvedev and Putin believed that real democracy was not good for the country. “They know that past democratic experiments ended in failure — Nicholas II was executed, and Gorbachev lost his job and his state,” he said.
TITLE: Governor Pushes for New Tax on Tourists
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko is campaigning for the introduction of a two-euro city tax to be paid by tourists visiting St. Petersburg.
The idea of imposing a tourist tax, which Matviyenko suggested should be obligatory, provoked mixed reactions among the hospitality industry players.
City Hall has not finalized the tax collection scheme, but suggested it would be logical to include it in hotel bills.
“Two euros is not a vast sum of money; those who travel here would easily be able to afford it,” said Matviyenko. “By the end of the year, though, the city should be able to raise a substantial amount of money through the tax.”
According to official statistics, 4.8 million people visited the city in 2009, including 2.3 million foreign tourists.
Yelena Kalnitskaya, director of the Peterhof museum estate, welcomed the plan. “St. Petersburg is a very special city, very attractive to visitors, and is in a strong position to introduce a tourist tax,” she said. “I expect, however, that there might be difficulties in collecting the tax. Perhaps it would be wise to impose the tax on local tour operators who work with incoming tourists and make a lot of money.”
Kalnitskaya’s view is shared by Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the State Hermitage Museum, who had earlier expressed the idea that local tour operators should make donations to restoration projects in the city.
Piotrovsky also suggested launching a lottery that would raise funds for the restoration of the city’s crumbling historic monuments.
Tatyana Demeneva, spokeswoman for the northwestern branch of the Russian Tourism Industry Union, said her organization was not against the tax in general, but said that members are concerned that the money raised would not be used rationally.
“Tourist taxes exist in many cities in the U.S. and Europe, so the idea is not unique,” she said. “The only thing is that in Russia, there is no guarantee that the money will not be misappropriated, as happens here all too often.”
Vladimir Gusev, director of the State Russian Museum, expressed doubts about the future of the governor’s initiative. He said he believed that the tax would work against the city, as it is likely to be viewed as yet another piece of bad news from Russia.
“Tourism is not really thriving in the city, which is infamous for its high prices,” Gusev said. “Infrastructure in the hospitality sphere leaves much to be desired: there is a shortage of mid-range hotels, not enough parking space and affordable places to eat, especially in the historic center.”
No city in Russia, however, is at liberty to impose a tourist tax without approval from the federal authorities. Matviyenko has asked her staff to produce an official draft document on the subject for the State Duma, which would have to pass a special law that would allow a tourist tax to be introduced. Alexei Chichkanov, head of City Hall’s committee for investment and strategic projects, said the draft would be sent to the Russian parliament before the end of April.
TITLE: United Russia Leader Calls Mironov a ‘Rat’
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova and Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Cautious criticism by Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov of several Putin initiatives has provoked an angry squabble between two pro-Kremlin parties in what analysts called political posturing ahead of March regional elections.
Mironov, leader of A Just Russia party, said in an interview with Channel One television host Vladimir Pozner on Monday night that his party “strongly objects” to the 2010 budget compiled by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and to several of Putin’s anti-crisis measures.
Mironov — a fierce Putin loyalist who ran against Putin in the 2004 presidential election in what he described as an effort to support Putin’s bid — also told Pozner that the idea that he and his party backed Putin in everything was “outdated,” A Just Russia said on its web site.
A senior United Russia official, State Duma Deputy Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, denounced Mironov’s remarks as “a display of [his] disrespect and inconsistency toward Putin, who has done a lot for the country, society and Mironov himself,” United Russia said in a statement published on its web site late Tuesday.
Duma Deputy Andrei Isayev, in a separate statement on United Russia’s web site late Tuesday, accused Mironov of “lying” about not supporting Putin.
He also said: “Mironov thinks that the situation has become shaky because of the crisis, and he is trying to run from the ship like a rat. But he has forgotten that the ship is not sinking.”
A Just Russia fired back Wednesday, with the leader of its Duma faction, Nikolai Levichev, suggesting that Isayev “drink less” in order to “hallucinate less about rats and cockroaches,” according to a statement on its web site.
Mironov, also in a statement on A Just Russia’s web site Wednesday, declared that his party was in the opposition and said it was “like a red rag to a bull.”
Mironov also said Thursday that “high-ranking members of United Russia were following the course of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, having the same desire to destroy and humiliate any opponent who doesn’t agree with their opinion,” adding that it was “very dangerous,” Interfax reported.
“By acting in this way, they have not done any favors for the country’s president, or for its leader and prime minister Vladimir Putin,” he said. “They both understand perfectly that there should be a constructive position and different points of view.”
On Wednesday, Isayev, Volodin and Duma Deputy Andrei Vorobyov called on the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, which Mironov represents in the Federation Council, to dismiss Mironov, but local United Russia and A Just Russia leaders said the assembly lacked the legal authority to act, Interfax reported.
Vatanyar Yagya, a United Russia deputy in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, said the party’s branch in the parliament had not requested the removal of Mironov from the Federation Council.
“We just pointed out that while occupying the post of the third highest-ranking official in the country, Mironov should show more political acumen,” Yagya told The St. Petersburg Times.
“Ultimately, any person or member of a party has the right to criticize. However, if that person is a state official, they should be aware of what is and is not appropriate,” Yagya said.
Vadim Tyulpanov, leader of United Russia in St. Petersburg’s parliament, said its branch would take Mironov‘s latest statement into consideration when voting for the parliament’s representative in the Federation Council in 2012, Interfax reported.
“It will definitely leave an unpleasant aftertaste,” said Tyulpanov.
Yagya said that the strongest criticism of Mironov had come from United Russia’s representatives in Moscow, but he doubted that Putin himself would react so strongly to the situation.
“I’ve known Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] for many years and I think he personally would not have such sharp criticism of Mironov in this instance,” Yagya said.
Oleg Nilov, head of A Just Russia in the city’s parliament, said he “was sure the majority of Russian people shared the point made by Mironov” in the interview, Interfax reported.
While political analysts were divided over whether Mironov had really joined the opposition, they agreed that his statements Monday were an attempt to attract the protest vote ahead of regional elections on March 14.
Alexei Mukhin, an analyst with the Center for Political Information, said Mironov had launched his election campaign but still supported Putin.
Alexander Morozov, a former spokesman for A Just Russia, said Mironov was hoping to steal votes from United Russia in both the March elections as well as October regional elections and the 2011 Duma election.
United Russia swept the last regional elections on Oct. 11 in a victory that opposition parties — and Mironov — have criticized as unfair.
Leaders of the country’s Communist Party said that Mironov was merely feigning criticism of the authorities.
“Both of those parties — United Russia and A Just Russia — have been long seen as the left and right legs of the current authorities,” said Sergei Obukhov, head of the communist Central Committee, Interfax reported. “Therefore, Mironov’s criticism of United Russia’s leader is just an imitation of a fight.”
United Russia, headed by Putin, dominates the State Duma and most regional legislatures. A Just Russia was created in 2006 in what is widely believed to be a Kremlin project aimed at stealing votes from the Communist Party.
TITLE: Blast Injures One on Rail Tracks
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A homemade bomb exploded on a railroad track in St. Petersburg on Tuesday, slightly injuring a driver, in what investigators said they suspected was a terrorist attack, Reuters reported.
The bomb detonated near the Bronevaya Station at about 4:15 a.m. as an inspection train passed, leaving a 1-meter-wide crater, the Investigative Committee said on its web site.
“We consider it a terrorist act. That’s the main theory,” said Anatoly Kvashnin, head of a regional investigative department for transportation systems, Interfax reported.
There was no word on possible suspects.
In November, a bomb exploded on the tracks between St. Petersburg and Moscow, killing 27 people on the Nevsky Express train in Russia’s worst terror attack outside the North Caucasus since 2004.
Islamic militants from the North Caucasus claimed responsibility for the attack on the Nevsky Express and vowed further “acts of sabotage,” but no major attacks have followed so far.
The force of Tuesday’s blast was equivalent to 200 grams to 400 grams of TNT, news reports said.
The driver was hospitalized with a leg injury, investigators said.
Traffic was halted Tuesday on part of the line near the blast site, Russian Railways said.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Jewish Agency Barred
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russia has barred the Jewish Agency, which deals with the Jewish Diaspora and immigration issues, from meeting in St. Petersburg because former Yukos executive Leonid Nevzlin is a member, the Haaretz newspaper reported Thursday.
The agency’s board meeting was scheduled for later this month with hundreds of participants from around the world, but the Israeli Embassy in Moscow was told Wednesday that the event could not take place, the report said.
Diplomatic sources told the paper that the ban was because of Nevzlin’s membership on the board. The Russian-born businessman lives in Israel and was convicted in absentia in August 2008 to life in prison by a Russian court for ordering murders while working at Yukos.
Putin’s Friend Gets Job
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Sergei Fursenko, a brother of the education and science minister and an old friend of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has been elected president of the Russian Football Union.
Fursenko, a former head of a division of Gazprom, overwhelmingly won a vote by the Russian Football Union at a Wednesday meeting.
His only opponent was businessman Alisher Aminov.
Fursenko, 55, replaces Vitaly Mutko, who resigned in November after four years in the position.
Fursenko, a former president of the Zenit St. Petersburg football team, promised Russia will win the World Cup in 2018.
Al-Qaeda Leader Killed
MOSCOW (AP) — A top regional al-Qaida figure was one of two gunmen killed by police in Dagestan, the Federal Security Service said Wednesday.
Police say the two men were killed Tuesday night after they opened fire on officers who had stopped their car.
The FSB’s regional office identified one of those killed as Mokhmad Mokhamad Shakhban of Egypt and said he was a founder of al-Qaida’s local network.
‘Gangster’ Released
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES (SPT) — A reputed leader of the powerful Tambov crime group charged with fraud in Spain has been released on bail, Gazeta.ru reported Wednesday.
Gennady Petrov has returned to his villa on Majorca island after posting bail of 600,000 euros ($840,000), the report said. Petrov has to register with a local police station daily while he is on bail.
Another Tambov suspect, Alexander Malyshev, was freed on bail of 500,000 euros.
The two have been linked to reputed St. Petersburg crime boss Vladimir Barsukov, another suspected leader of the Tambov gang who was sentenced to 14 years in prison in November for fraud and money laundering.
TITLE: Bus Crashes Into Crowd On Nevsky, Two Killed
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Two people died and eight were injured when a bus careered into a crowd of people waiting at a bus stop on Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s central thoroughfare, on Wednesday afternoon.
A 26-year-old woman who was injured in the accident remained in serious condition on Thursday. A six-year-old boy was also in intensive care with head injuries.
A three-year-old girl and 19-year-old male were also hospitalized, while a 22-year-old pregnant woman suffered minor injuries but was already at home on Thursday, Interfax reported.
According to preliminary information, the number 15 bus veered onto the sidewalk in front of numbers 106 to 108 Nevsky Prospekt, near Ploshchad Vosstaniya, as the result of mechanical failure of the gas pedal or brakes.
The weather conditions were cited as another possible reason for the accident, as it was snowing heavily on Wednesday. Interfax reported that a car had been illegally parked near the bus stop.
Sergei Bugrov, head of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast traffic police, said all the technical safety inspection documents for the vehicle were in order. The driver was healthy, had 32 years of driving experience, and was not under the influence of alcohol, according to Interfax.
Criminal proceedings have already been opened under article 264 (violation of traffic rules and using a transport vehicle to unintentionally cause the death of two or more people.)
The tragic accident has prompted the city’s police to organize a full inspection of passenger transport organizations operating in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported.
Vladislav Piotrovsky, head of the city’s police, said the automobile inspectorate would take tough measures against those found to be violating the rules, including taking such vehicles off the roads if necessary.
Last year, St. Petersburg police registered 477 traffic accidents involving public transport vehicles. At least 131 of them were determined to have been the fault of the bus drivers.
TITLE: Eleven Fired Over Snow Clearing
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko fired 11 City Hall officials on Tuesday for unsatisfactory work in clearing the city of snow.
Among those fired were Boris Chernyashenko, first deputy of the city’s Road Maintenance Committee; Valentin Schemelyev, head of the committee’s road and bridge department; and the deputy heads of the Central, Kirovsky and Krasnoselsky district administrations.
A further 125 officials will face disciplinary penalties, according to City Hall’s web site.
In making the dismissals, the governor appeared to fulfill her earlier threat of sending those responsible for the slow cleanup of the city “home to knit socks.”
Alexander Vakhmistrov, head of the city’s headquarters for the snowfall cleanup operation, said at a City Hall meeting that the snowfall had revealed serious problems in the city’s clearing system.
Problems were evident in the absence of a systematic approach to clearing courtyards, streets and roads, in the constant violation of winter car-parking rules, the absence of small-scale cleaning equipment and lack of street cleaners.
Vakhmistrov said that the city had mainly completed the task of clearing the city of the December and January snowfalls this week, but that it hadn’t yet completely solved the problem of clearing snow from courtyards.
Matviyenko demanded that City Hall analyze the snow cleanup operation carefully, establish why it was not done on time, and define who was personally responsible for that work.
“We need a result; the system should work. Otherwise, no amount of heroic labor can help,” Matvieynko said.
At the meeting, the city authorities also decided to purchase the necessary equipment, start monitoring the cleanup operation, hire the required number of street cleaners, and enforce the winter parking rules, which require drivers to avoid parking on one side of the road on certain days to enable snow to be cleared.
The governor also said that the city should use new technology to prevent icicles forming on the city’s buildings.
“Breaking icicles with a crowbar is a Stone Age method,” Matviyenko said, calling on local scientists to think about new ways of removing them, including nanotechnology.
Snowfalls in December and January left the city covered in snow deeper than it has seen for the last 130 years. The cleanup operation of the city was extremely slow to get underway, resulting in people injuring themselves by falling over on the ice, as well as to severe traffic jams and a lack of parking spaces for cars.
Icicles up to several meters long formed on many buildings in the center, creating yet another hazard for pedestrians. One woman was killed by falling ice, and many others injured.
TITLE: Russia, U.S. Agree to Step Up Drug Fight
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia on Thursday hailed a new agreement with the United States intended to boost joint anti-drug efforts, but urged the U.S. and NATO to do more to stem a flow of drugs from Afghanistan that has sickened millions of Russians.
The deal signed by Gil Kerlikowske, director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, and Russia’s drug control chief Viktor Ivanov, envisages setting up groups of experts to plan joint action in combatting drugs and also steps to curb demand for drugs and toughen law enforcement and coordinate legislation.
Kerlikowske told reporters after the meeting that he promised Ivanov to monitor and assess the U.S. and Afghan governments’ efforts to “interdict drug supplies, particularly those drug supplies headed to Russia,” combat drug laboratories and drug storage facilities. He added the U.S. and Russia will also “work cooperatively on drug traffickers and financiers.”
Ivanov hailed the agreement as a key component of U.S.-Russian efforts to “reset” relations that became strained under the previous U.S. administration.
But he also urged the U.S. and NATO forces to do more to combat Afghan drugs which have become a major threat to Russia’s security.
“The efficiency of international drug-fighting efforts in Afghanistan needs to be strengthened,” Ivanov said. “We agreed that the result of our work should be a significant reduction in drug production in Afghanistan.”
Afghanistan provides more than 90 percent of the heroin consumed in the world, and the bulk of it flows through ex-Soviet Central Asia and Russia.
Ivanov said in an interview published Thursday that there are about 2 million opium and heroin addicts in Russia.
TITLE: Police Backs ‘Graft’ Commander
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow’s OMON riot police rallied around one of their commanders on Tuesday after a media report based on his subordinates’ accounts accused him of corruption.
OMON officers unanimously supported Colonel Sergei Yevtikov, head of the city’s 2nd battalion, at a staff meeting Tuesday, the Moscow police force said in a furious statement posted on its web site, Petrovka-38.org.
“Police Colonel Yevtikov has received 27 awards, including the Order of Courage and honorary weapons. He enjoys the authority and respect of his units,” the statement said, citing a motion adopted at the meeting.
Even the motion sparked controversy, with news reports saying some signatures on the motion had been falsified.
Yevtikov, speaking later on Ekho Moskvy radio, denied the claims, explaining that “some declarations were made without full names but with handwritten signatures.”
Yevtikov is under the spotlight after the New Times magazine published a report Monday that said the Moscow OMON is riddled with corruption like officers working on the side as security guards for businesses and organized crime. The report was based on accounts from current and former OMON officers.
The Interior Ministry has promised to investigate the allegations, but Moscow police have downright rejected them as slander from former officers fired for various offenses.
“The Moscow OMON has never ducked difficulties. That is why today we decided to react to those who attempt to cover our units with dirt,” the Moscow police statement said Tuesday.
To protect “the honor and accomplishments of the force and Colonel Yevtikov, the police will file a lawsuit against the magazine,” the statement said.
The New Times said it was not worried about a possible lawsuit. “It is their right to defend their honor, and it is our right to give people a chance to tell the truth,” publisher Irena Lesnyevskaya told Ekho Moskvy.
Lesnyevskaya stressed that all the conversations with the officers had been recorded.
The whistleblowers’ report was highly unusual because they named their battalion commander, Yevtikov, whom they accused of taking bribes from moonlighting subordinates, among other things.
Some officers appealed to the magazine after they got no reaction to written complaints sent to the Kremlin.
President Dmitry Medvedev has promised to reform the country’s law enforcement and to liberalize the criminal justice system.
Two of the signatories of the letters to the Kremlin, former OMON officers Sergei Taran and Alexei Volnushkin, lost an appeal to be reinstated in their jobs Tuesday. The Moscow court took just 10 minutes to throw out the appeal, the Gazeta newspaper reported on its web site.
New Times reporter Nikita Aronov, who co-authored the critical article, said Tuesday that he knew that some of his informants had been fired. “We did not write this so that we would not jeopardize their legal situation,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: State to Choose Banks for Bond Sale
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government will choose banks to manage its first foreign bond sale in more than a decade as early as this week, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Wednesday.
The decision will be made in the “next few days,” Kudrin said. The country is seeking to raise as much as $17.8 billion of notes, sold in several installments through 2010, in the first offering of new international debt since its 1998 debt default.
The government on Dec. 24 named 22 banks including Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs Group, Renaissance Capital and VTB Capital in its shortlist for organizing the sales. The government plans to use the money that it raises to plug a budget gap that may swell to 6.8 percent of gross domestic product, Kudrin said.
“The sale will be an important world event,” Troika chairman Ruben Vardanyan said in an interview. There’s a “big appetite” for Russian debt among investors, Vardanyan said.
The government had $19.8 billion of foreign-currency bonds outstanding, compared with $435.6 billion in international reserves, according to Central Bank data last month. The government exchanged its Soviet-era debt in 2000 for $21.2 billion of bonds maturing in 2010 and 2030 in its only offering of foreign-currency debt since 1998.
The yield on Russia’s 30-year benchmark dollar bonds maturing in 2030 dropped two basis points to 5.381 percent. Bond yields move inversely to prices.
Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin last month said it will not be “technically” possible to complete the first sale of foreign bonds until at least April. Russia is rated Baa1, three levels above noninvestment grade, by Moody’s Investors Service and one rank lower at BBB by Standard & Poor’s.
TITLE: Crisis Taught Firms About Consumers
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Executives at some of the country’s top consumer goods companies said Wednesday that while the crisis took a toll on their business, it also provided a number of valuable lessons about Russian consumers.
But a panel at Troika Dialog’s annual Russia Forum found that the lessons learned were as varied as the goods they sell.
The recession taught businesses to look at their products more precisely, said Stefan de Loecker, CEO of Nestle for Russia and the Eurasia region.
“Many businessmen blamed the crisis for the sales drops, but it was not always the case,” he said. “The crisis showed the weakness of some brands and products. It revealed that some goods don’t offer enough value for money to the consumer and made businessmen improve their assortment.”
Consumers here are quite quality-dependent and will not switch to cheap brands so easily, said Mikhail Kusnirovich, chairman of the board at Bosco di Ciliegi, a major sports clothing manufacturer and retailer.
“In this country, people have a sane consumer mentality, and their consumption depends on the overall mood,” he said. “As you can see, people have not switched from toothpaste to dental powder.”
The key for building a successful business, then, while demand is floating near bottom is to enhance your offer, Kusnirovich said.
“Imagine that you are a restaurateur and you have fewer clients, and all of a sudden you decide to cut 70 percent of the items on your menu. You can easily guess what business results you’ll achieve,” he said. “You need to dance for your consumer. You should make the consumer fall in love with you. Only then will you be a success!”
Others on the panel said they learned that even emerging markets could some day retreat.
“I remember sitting in my office 18 months ago, with oil prices at $150 per barrel and the ruble feeling historically strong against the dollar,” said Richard Smyth, president of Mars for Europe and the CIS. “We had a ninth year of consecutive growth, and I could never believe things would go as wrong as they did.”
The recession made plenty of businessmen think of closing up shop, said Rostislav Ordovsky-Tanayevsky Blanco, president of Rostik Group, which owns and operates a number of restaurant chains.
“In March [2009], we all thought we’re going to die,” he said. “The crises in Russia have a national peculiarity: They are much stronger and much shorter, and on top of that we all have a short memory.”
Alcohol — and especially the vodka market — fell amid the recession as the share of counterfeit trade increased, said Alexander Mechetin, chairman of Synergy, a major vodka producer.
“Sales of cheaper vodka brands fell most significantly, as more low-income consumers preferred to buy counterfeit vodka and save money,” he said. “As for premium-priced vodkas, our company had a surprise sales upturn of 20 percent for our Beluga premium brand.”
He attributed the growth to middle-class consumers who used to drink imported whisky or cognac before the crisis but switched to high-end domestic brands. The swap allowed them to feel like they were maintaining their quality of life while saving money, especially as import prices rose because of the ruble devaluation, he said.
But cutting prices, a tactic used by many Russian clothing retailers in 2008 and 2009, drastically decreases the goods’ perceived value for consumers and the image of retailers, said Kusnirovich, of Bosco.
“Those who could buy a jacket for full price want to feel they can afford it at 100 percent and not at a 70 percent discount,” he said. “Consumers who only can afford quality clothes at 70 to 80 percent discounts, will think: Look how much these retailers overpriced their stuff during good times — even with these discounts they make fair margins!”
TITLE: Aeroflot Fends Off Challenge From Rosavia
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — State-run Aeroflot will absorb the regional aviation assets controlled by Russian Technologies to help make the country’s flag carrier more competitive on the global market, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday.
The decision essentially buries a two-year effort by Russian Technologies chief Sergei Chemezov to merge the state corporation’s regional carriers with Atlant-Soyuz, an airline controlled by the Moscow city government. Aeroflot opposed the creation of a new competitor, to be called Rosavia, and many analysts questioned the logic of having competing state-run airlines.
Russian Technologies took over the carriers that formed the AiRUnion alliance in September 2008 after soaring fuel prices left the alliance members heavily in debt. Dozens of flights were interrupted after the companies were grounded for unpaid fuel.
“We need to take all the necessary steps for reliable, from the point of view of serving passengers’ interests, self-sufficient, in the economic sense, and internationally competitive carriers to appear,” Putin said at a meeting with Transportation Minister Igor Levitin, who proposed the merger.
Under the plan, the state will transform three airlines — Rossia, Kavminvodyavia and Orenburgskiye Avialinii — from federal state unitary enterprises into joint stock companies so that they can be merged with Aeroflot.
Levitin said the process would be completed this year.
Rossia, the largest airline involved in the merger, will be registered in St. Petersburg with the help of Governor Valentina Matviyenko, Levitin said. The airline operates planes that carry senior government and Kremlin officials.
Once all of the airlines have become joint stock companies, Aeroflot and Russian Technologies will jointly manage the group and eventually they will be merged with Aeroflot, Levitin said, without elaborating on a time frame.
Russian Technologies’ three other aviation assets — Vladivostokavia, Saratovskiye Avialinii and Sakhalinskiye Aviatrassy — are already joint stock companies.
Putin said he was “ready to agree,” but wanted to know whether the deal would require anti-monopoly approval. Levitin said Aeroflot’s domestic air traffic would increase from the current 15 percent to between 30 percent and 35 percent after the full merger.
“It’s compatible with the anti-monopoly regulations, and we can think along with the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service about a permanent way to oversee these regulations in the future,” Levitin said, according to a transcript on the government web site.
Aeroflot’s shares closed up 0.9 percent on the MICEX, slightly lagging the broader index’s gain of 1.4 percent.
The announcement puts an end to Chemezov’s ambitions to create Rosavia, which had already become an uphill battle in the past half year.
The Transportation Ministry said in early January that it was reconsidering the plan to create Rosavia altogether, and both Russian Technologies and Moscow had suggested that they had cold feet about the merger because of the airlines’ heavy debt.
But on Jan. 13 the Moscow government said it would take full control of Atlant-Soyuz after clearing the airline’s debt and that it was planning to sign a $1.2 billion contract to purchase planes in the first three months of 2010. The move was seen as a renewed sign of interest from Mayor Yury Luzhkov after Chemezov said Moscow must improve Atlant-Soyuz’s financial health to receive a 49 percent stake in Rosavia.
A source close to Rosavia told Interfax on Tuesday that the airline would likely cancel a tender to buy up to 65 planes. In August, Chemezov invited Airbus, Boeing and Irkut to participate in a $2.5 billion tender for 50 narrow-aisle jets with an option of purchasing 15 more.
Analysts saw at least two obvious benefits from the merger for Aeroflot.
“The first benefit is the increase of Aeroflot’s presence in Siberia and the Far East, since the company will be able to use the air base of Vladivostokavia,” said Andrei Rozhkov, a transportation analyst at Metropol. “The second is the increase of Aeroflot’s passenger load factor, since the increase of connection flights on the company’s international routes will result in a larger passenger turnover,” he said.
Aeroflot’s current passenger load — a measure of capacity utilization — was 68 to 69 percent, while that of European airlines amounted to 82 to 85 percent, Rozhkov said.
The merger will not, however, mean a step back toward a Soviet monopoly carrier.
“The number of airlines in the world is decreasing thanks to acquisitions of companies by others. Aeroflot is moving in this direction and as a result we’ll see a global carrier in Russia, which will compete on the global market in five to seven years,” Rozhkov said.
Aeroflot carried 45 million passengers last year, a decrease by 9.8 percent from 2008, Levitin said.
TITLE: A War Veteran in Moscow Fights a New Battle
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — In the troubled Rechnik neighborhood, a 90-year-old veteran of World War II has become a local celebrity and a symbol of civil resistance.
“If I hadn’t fought in the war, Luzhkov wouldn’t be the city’s mayor but Hitler’s slave. Now he wants to make me homeless,” said Filipp Tsiglakov, the oldest resident in Rechnik.
Like most Rechnik residents, Tsiglakov is angry about Mayor Yury Luzhkov’s efforts to demolish the neighborhood, located on a bank of the Moscow River in western Moscow. Luzhkov says the houses owned by Tsiglakov and other residents were built illegally.
The first houses came down Jan. 21 when court marshals brought bulldozers into the sleeping neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning. A total of 22 houses — both humble shacks and posh mansions — have been destroyed, and a similar number have been targeted for destruction over the next 10 days.
The residents have wept and pleaded, threatened to set themselves and their Russian passports on fire, promised lawsuits, petitioned President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and appealed to foreign embassies for asylum — but found little mainstream support in their efforts to stop the bulldozers.
The demolition, however, has united opposition activists, nationalists and radicals in accusing the authorities of violating property rights and committing human rights abuses by evicting people during the bitter cold of winter.
Luzhkov has proclaimed the razings a triumph of the law.
For Tsiglakov, the “triumph of the law” means losing the modest house that he built with his bare hands more than 50 years ago.
“It was just sand here and nothing else. I had to bring a lot of black dirt over 10 to 15 years to grow apple trees here. Then I built a small cabin to live in because I had no money to build a palace,” he said.
Many of the luxury houses surrounding Tsiglakov’s small home are estimated by property consultants to be worth upward of $1 million. Among Tsiglakov’s neighbors are several State Duma deputies, including Dmitry Svishyov of the Liberal Democratic Party. Svishyov visited Rechnik on Saturday to support his neighbors in their standoff with the authorities.
The affluent homeowners have found themselves in the same situation as those who live in plywood cabins: Most of them lack proper deeds for their land plots and documentation for the construction of the houses. The homeowners blame their paperwork problems on the complicated laws that regulated the use of land during Soviet times and land ownership in post-Soviet Russia. Many of the Rechnik plots were provided to their initial owners by their state employer for “indefinite use,” without any documents that could be used to register the plots and the houses in the new Russia.
The residents have complained that their attempts to obtain new documents for the plots had been firmly and systematically rejected by city officials and city courts. This left them in legal limbo, with the demolition of the neighborhood being just a matter of time.
Tsiglakov showed a letter from the prefect of the city’s western district, Yury Alpatov, saying the decision to raze Rechnik dated back to the late years of the Soviet Union and that it could still be carried out by the authorities of modern Russia. “We ask for your understanding as you accept the current situation,” the letter said.
This letter was a response to an appeal that Tsiglakov had earlier sent to Medvedev, asking for him to intervene.
Rechnik was founded in 1956 as a gardening-only area covering 200,000 square meters on plots given to workers of the nearby Moscow Canal state water management company. Soviet authorities only permitted the construction of summer cabins, but after the Soviet collapse Rechnik evolved into a mix of elite houses and old-fashioned wooden houses belonging to the offspring of the plots’ initial owners.
In 1998, Rechnik became part of an environmentally protected area that included the nearby Moskvoretsky Park. In 2006, its land was registered as the property of Moscow Canal, a federally owned company providing water transportation, among other things.
Calls to Moscow Canal went unanswered Friday.
Also in 2006, Rechnik residents received a wake-up call from Oleg Mitvol, then-deputy head of the Federal Inspection Service for Natural Resources Use, the government’s environmental watchdog. Mitvol claimed that some residents had built their houses too close to the riverbank and had violated environmental rules.
Residents said municipal officials have long pushed them to leave, going so far as to cut electricity and heating to the houses nearly three years ago. Many of them have installed their own power generators and water pumps since then. But the electricity cuts forced Alexander, 46, who said he did not have money to buy the equipment, to move out of his wooden-plank house with his 10-year-old child and only return during the summer months.
Alexander, who asked that his last name be withheld to protect his family, said he inherited the land plot at Rechnik from his father, who had worked for the Soviet Water Transportation Ministry.
“If they want to take the house, they should compensate us for our labor,” he said.
“We are not oligarchs. We are just simple, working-class people,” said his neighbor Valentina Neskuchayeva, standing nearby outside her one-story house.
Luzhkov has no plans to offer any compensation and has said Rechnik residents will be billed for the cost of demolishing their homes, a sum that could run into the tens of thousands of dollars per house.
The head of City Hall’s environmental department, Valery Bochin, has said the authorities plan to transform the place into a recreational park. Residents, however, fear that they are being driven out to make room for a golf club or wealthy town-house community, similar to the neighboring Fantasy Island residential complex, which boasts apartments and houses worth millions of dollars each. Luzhkov, incidentally, said last week that Fantasy Island would also be demolished because it was built illegally.
Dozens of Rechnik residents gathered on Saturday afternoon near a press center set up by the community’s leader to discuss their plans to save their homes. Sipping instant coffee from plastic cups, they shared newspaper clippings with one another and discussed the latest news.
The previous day, several dozen residents organized a car protest drive from Rechnik to the Mayor’s Office at 13 Tverskaya Ulitsa. Police stopped the procession near Pushkin Square, briefly detaining several drivers.
A Public Chamber committee dedicated a session to Rechnik on Monday, but no City Hall officials showed up as requested. Lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, who heads the chamber’s committee overseeing the work of law enforcement officials, said the head of City Hall’s department for land resources, Viktor Damurchev, and the head of its department for natural resources, Leonid Bochin, cited work-related conflicts for their absence, RIA-Novosti reported. Alpatov, prefect for western Moscow, gave no reason for his nonattendance, Kucherena said.
Kucherena said his committee had wanted to ask the officials why they had not stopped construction of the houses from the beginning if they were built illegally.
Kucherena added that his committee would ask the Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate the actions of the court marshals who are overseeing the demolition.
Rechnik residents also want to know why they were allowed to build. Among their staunchest defenders is Spravedlivost, or Justice, a small public organization supporting civil rights. Its head, lawyer Andrei Stolbunov, has opened a makeshift office in the neighborhood. As Stolbunov videotaped Saturday’s meeting to post on Spravedlivost’s web site, his assistants collected documents from residents in preparation for a lawsuit to the Supreme Court.
“I think we have developed the right strategy,” Stolbunov said. “We have to collect all the information about the houses so we can defend the rights of the residents.”
Meanwhile, some residents have painted graffiti reading, “No court decision yet” on the walls of their houses in a protest against the demolition. But many residents have already lost their court battles.
One who hasn’t had his day in court yet, Boris Piskunov, has already lost his house. It was one of the first to be razed last month. Piskunov, who is in his 30s, was inside the house when bulldozers arrived to demolish it at 3:30 a.m. in weather of minus 27 deg. Celsius.
“The year that I was born, my parents planted an oak tree and an elm tree near our house,” Piskunov said. “They [the demolishers] have destroyed the elm tree, but the oak tree is still standing. That means they have destroyed me only halfway.”
TITLE: Obama’s Pro-Russia Policy
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Zlobin
TEXT: The one-year anniversary of U.S. President Barack Obama in office has been noted all over the world. Of particular importance is the fact that almost one-third of Obama’s supporters have abandoned him as they change their view of him from president of hope to president of disappointment. And it’s true: Obama’s position is extremely difficult now. He is spending his political capital rapidly, pressure from the Republican Party is mounting as it re-establishes its position, and the array of problems facing him is growing.
Republican Scott Brown’s successful bid to replace the late Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts now means that Democrats no longer have 60 seats in the Senate — the threshold that allows a party to pass legislation on a “fast track” by depriving the opposing party of its ability to filibuster. This means that it will be far more difficult for Obama to win congressional support for his policies.
At the same time, however, the Brown victory restores the balance of powers in Congress. This balance is healthy for the U.S. political system because it forces both parties to compromise. Obama’s greatest challenge now is to find his new place in the U.S. political spectrum, because protest against former President George W. Bush — something that helped Obama win the presidential vote in 2008 against Senator John McCain — is no longer synonymous with a mandate for his “radical” liberal agenda.
National security continues to be the No. 1 foreign policy concern for most Americans. Obama promised to maintain the same level of security that Bush achieved, but Obama wants to use entirely different methods. The terrorist close-call on Christmas Day revealed glaring oversights in the country’s security and intelligence operations. Obama’s political capital in the global arena will depend on the extent to which he is able to depart from the methods of his predecessor while at the same time ensure a high level of U.S. security.
Obama has improved U.S.-Russian relations on many fronts — above all, canceling plans to deploy a U.S. missile shield in Central Europe, putting a hold on plans to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and sharply reducing its criticism of Russia’s human rights record.
But building an agenda for bilateral relations requires initiatives and compromises from both sides. Russia itself should take advantage of the U.S. president’s sincere desire to “reset” relations. Moscow definitely needs to have stable and friendly relations with Washington based on equality and mutual respect. Russia needs this relationship far more than the United States does.
Most important, Obama’s overtures toward Russia create new opportunities for the Kremlin to strengthen and institutionalize its relations with the United States. This would be clearly more productive and efficient than the ad hoc, improvisational style that defined bilateral relations in the past.
In addition, Moscow could take steps to bring Russian and U.S. civil societies closer together and to strengthen civil institutions. The U.S.-Russian governmental commission on civil society headed by Michael McFaul, director of Russian and Eurasian Affairs on the U.S. National Security Council, and Vyacheslav Surkov, deputy head of the presidential administration, is an excellent platform for making civil society an important component of U.S.-Russian relations. On Jan. 27, the commission met in Washington and discussed ways to jointly battle corruption and how to better monitor the process of adopting Russian children.
For cooperation measures of these types to work, however, Russian authorities would have to make a firm commitment to curtail its anti-U.S. propaganda that has a direct impact on the country’s public opinion, political culture, the media and the political elite. Moscow needs to maintain a position that protects its national and strategic interests, but it need to be based on cooperation — and not confrontation — with Washington, while understanding that the United States will insist on defending its own national interests, just as it always has.
The balance that the two countries would strike as they uphold their respective interests is likely to make them partners and not adversaries. That, in turn, would increase Russia’s influence in the world, and in particular, in the former Soviet republics.
Nikolai Zlobin is director of the Russia and Eurasia Project at the World Security Institute in Washington. This comment appeared in Vedomosti.
TITLE: The Cost of Human Life in Haiti
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Haitian police have detained 10 Baptists from the United States who had planned to evacuate 33 orphans to a shelter in the Dominican Republic. The Haitian authorities claim that the group took the children illegally and hinted that the Yankees were involved in an illegal adoption scheme, child trafficking or even organ trafficking.
I asked Moskovsky Komsomolets journalist Alexander Kots, who had been on assignment with Russian rescue workers in Haiti, why it took 15 days to find the last survivors. “They were found long before that, but nobody pulled them out,” Kots answered.
That is, a person is lying in the ruins, crying out for help — he is even visible through a hole to the outside — but he is left to suffer in terrible conditions. Sometimes workers bring him food and water, but they report that all survivors have been pulled out of the wreckage.
Except for the 48 hours immediately after the earthquake hit, rescuers never worked at night in Haiti. The streets became very dangerous. There were armed bandits roaming the streets, not to mention cannibals looking for prey. Even the police stayed home. But there was one area where law enforcement officials showed amazing diligence: detaining U.S. citizens for taking orphans without the proper documents.
I have two main questions. First, is it even possible to obtain the proper documents in a country where the president still doesn’t know how many people have died? Second, considering that Haiti had the highest infant mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere even before the earthquake, why are they suddenly so concerned about the fate of these, or any other, children?
The United States has collected more aid for Haiti than any other country. And in return for their generous assistance, the Americans have received an avalanche of criticism from the international community and even from the very people whom they are rescuing. The Haitian Internet is full of comments saying U.S. aid — above all, military personnel on the ground — is just a pretext for yet another invasion.
In reality, the United States has reacted to the 200,000 deaths in Haiti as if its own people had suffered. But the Haitian authorities do not view the deaths of their own citizens in the same way. Human life in Haiti has a very different value. It cannot have a high value in a country where voodoo is the national religion.
Moreover, the authorities for so many years ignored the fact that 99 percent of Haitians lived in homes made from substandard concrete. It is no surprise that they collapsed like a house of cards by an earthquake with a magnitude of only 7.1, which would never be catastrophic in other countries where homes are built from normal materials.
There is nothing unusual in looters sacking Haitian stores after the disaster. Looting would have happened in any country under these circumstances. I can also understand why the Haitian police don’t dare go on the streets at night.
But what I can’t understand for the life of me is why police detain Baptists for wanting to save orphans from hell. Instead of thanking the Baptists, they hint that they are involved in organ trafficking.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Chinese pilot lands in St. Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Seva Gakkel, the man responsible for the first proper Russian music club that spawned many indie rock talents and influenced a generation of musicians and fans, is back on the club scene.
From playing cello in the ’80s in Akvarium, a leading Soviet band of that era, Gakkel went on to manage TaMtAm club, which he founded in 1991 and closed in 1996 after a clash with raiders who had the backing of the authorities. Since then, he had been busy promoting occasional concerts, booking international acts and helping out at concerts — until late last year when he took the job of art director at the newly opened club Chinese Pilot Jao Da (Kitaisky Lyotchik Dzhao Da), the St. Petersburg branch of Moscow’s renowned indie-rock venue.
A lot has changed since the punk days of TaMtAm club. Unlike the now-defunct rowdy alternative venue, which was no stranger to fights, drug use or police raids, Chinese Pilot Jao Da is a cozy, cafe-type place decorated with pictures of wild birds and WWII fighter planes, complete with a replica of a small plane with a clock for the propeller hanging from the ceiling.
The club was designed by Pyotr Pasternak, who also designed the Moscow club — which opened in 1999 — and its branch in Kotor, Montenegro, which was launched last May.
“TaMtAm is a different story altogether,” said Gakkel, sitting in the new club.
“I don’t even try to compare it, because it was a totally different country, it was the Soviet Union and Gorbachev. We opened in the summer of 1991, even before the GKChP [the party hardliners’ attempted coup in August 1991.]”
There were no music clubs in the city at that time. Music activities were limited to people’s homes and rare public concerts as far as newer bands were concerned, but Gakkel was obsessed with the idea of launching a proper music club.
“In many ways I acted without thinking, but I recreated the Western model of a music club pretty well — that’s what I wanted and to a certain extent managed to achieve,” he said.
“I have no ideas now, no revolutionary tendencies. There are plenty of clubs in the city, on very different levels — from bars and cafes like this one to narrow holes like Fidel and Datscha and huge clubs like Glavclub, Tantsy, Zal Ozhidaniya and Orlandina. The scene was formed long ago; one kind of band plays here, other kinds of bands play there. There are differences in style, capacity, comfort and so on.”
In agreeing to the job, suggested first by Artyom Troitsky, an influential Moscow journalist and promoter, and then by Vladimir Dzhao, the owner of the Moscow venue whose last name is used in the club’s name, Gakkel said he acted “practically.”
“I tried not to think about it for a long time; I couldn’t see myself in this role, but because I was pressed by time, age and opportunities (I’m afraid I won’t find another job at my age,) I had to take a practical decision— for once in my life,” he said.
“Usually I act on impulses, and as a rule, do things that may seem illogical from generally accepted viewpoints. But this time I agreed to it, and so here we are.”
Located in an upscale central district at 7A Ulitsa Pestelya, across the Fontanka River from the Mikhailovsky (Engineers’) Castle and the Summer Gardens, the new club, whose windows overlook the St. Panteleimon Church, replaced a television store.
“When I first saw it, there was already a balcony there, but no furniture, no plane and the stage half the size it is now. The first condition I presented my future boss with was that the stage should be extended to a reasonable size and that two windows, one of which was right on the stage, should be walled up,” he said.
“They resisted for a long time, but then, to my surprise, they agreed to it just two weeks before the opening.”
Launched with a concert by the French act Electronicat, the club has developed a quality indie music program, with acts carefully selected by Gakkel. As well as international acts such as Russian-Dutch singer-musician Marynka Nicolai, who performed with Yakutian world-music performer Albina Degtyaryova in December, and Noblesse Oblige, which performed at the club’s New Year’s Eve party, a number of home-grown talents have performed there too.
In contrast with TaMtAm, which Gakkel says was at the time his idee fixe, the musician said he was free of any big ideas with Chinese Pilot Jao Da.
“As a person whose name is associated with the TaMtAm club, the first thing that people expect to find out is what I’m doing it for; like perhaps I have some new idea,” Gakkel said.
“None! No thoughts, no ideas. Twenty years have passed. When I started TaMtAm, I still had some spirit; I was not that young, but still, 38 is not 57. I don’t expect anything from people of my age anymore, so I can’t pretend that I’m capable of something. People retire at that age, and it’s the right time to do so.”
“Of course, I’ve acquired a wealth of experience and worked with all kinds of music, from Jethro Tull and King Crimson to the Sex Pistols. It’s an interesting range — two opposing poles that I represented in my activities [as a musician in Akvarium, which performed folk rock and art rock, and the manager of punk club TaMtAm.] But it’s all so far back in the past that it’s nothing but experience.”
However, since getting involved with the new club, Gakkel has made some discoveries, he said.
“I try to listen to contemporary music; I like the bands that have already played in the club,” he said.
“Sometimes I’m glad that I’m still capable of reacting. What I feared most of all was that I’d remain indifferent. But the very first band that played here, 188910, I found totally fascinating. Now I listen to demos, and there are several groups that have caught my attention, such as Bye-Bye Violet Tapes and Kyronkoskor. The very fact that I listen to these recordings at home allows me to believe in tomorrow. That in this field I still can still notice instances of compassion and joy. That everything is not as hopeless, boring and routine as the general club scene implies.”
Two of Russia’s leading alt-rock bands, Tequilajazzz and Markscheider Kunst, which developed around TaMtAm in the 1990s, performed in the new club in the first week of its existence.
“After performing in the club, both bands said they would be happy to perform here. I’m glad that this place is starting to appeal to musicians. I hope we’ll manage to form a vibrant scene here as time goes on.”
Chinese Pilot Jao Da is open daily from noon through midnight. It is located at 7A Ulitsa Pestelya. Tel: 273 7487.
TITLE: The Word’s worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy and Michael Paulauskas
TEXT: An elegant translation may not always be possible, but the diligent translator can always can get the message across.
Íåïåðåâîäèìîå: the untranslatable. My library is filled with books about untranslatable words. But after an evening flipping through them, I’ve begun to think of them as “so-called untranslatable words,” because one way or another, they can all be translated. I mean, you can’t exactly leave a blank space in a translation and claim: Ýòî íåïåðåâîäèìîå (That’s not translatable). Besides, many authors consider a word untranslatable when there isn’t an exact one-word equivalent. But if that’s the criterion, then my Ozhegov Russian dictionary should be called the “Dictionary of Untranslatable Words.”
True, there is a small category of Russian words that express concepts that we don’t quite have in English, like àâîñü (the hope or near expectation that a bad/dangerous/unfortunate/unsatisfying situation will have a miraculously happy ending). Even here it’s not that English speakers don’t sometimes experience this; I mean, what was U.S. fraud artist Bernie Madoff counting on if not àâîñü?
In my mental filing system, there is another category of Russian words that make a distinction we don’t make in English. Take the notion of pouring. In Russian you use the verb ëèòü to describe pouring anything liquid, but the verb ñûïàòü for pouring solid particles. We don’t have a separate verb for the latter in English, but that doesn’t impede clear translation: ñûïàòü ñàõàðíûé ïåñîê â ñàõàðíèöó (to pour sugar into the sugar bowl); ñûïàòü êàêàî íà òîðò (to sprinkle cocoa on the cake).
Then there is a larger category of Russian words that are expressed in English quite easily, but with several words instead of just one. For example, you see a guy at a bar at 11 a.m., his hands shaking as he gulps down a shot of something strongly alcoholic. If this scene is in Moscow, you ask: Îïîõìåëÿåøüñÿ? If the scene is in New York, you say: Hair of the dog? Other words like this are ñóòêè (a 24-hour period) and êèïÿòîê (boiling-hot water).
There are also many Russian nouns, especially those conveying the absence of something, which often don’t have elegant equivalents in English. Some do, like áåçíðàâñòâåí-íîñòü (immorality), but others are awkward, like áåçäåòíîñòü (childlessness), and others still are impossible to convey with a single English word, like áåççëîáíîñòü (absence of malice). Here the problem in English is the convention of word formation: malicelessness is an unacceptable mouthful. But you can fiddle the English grammar a bit to come up with an acceptable equivalent: Ó íåãî òà æå áåççëîáíîñòü, êàê ó îòöà (He didn’t have an ounce of malice in him, just like his father).
The most difficult Russian words to translate are those that combine many meanings that are distinct in English. A fine (read: miserable) example of this is the adjective àçàðòíûé, which, when describing a person, includes the notions of being adventurous, passionate, competitive, eager; someone who takes risks, gets caught up in something and plays to win — whether at the gaming table, in the boardroom or in love. Here it is truly hard to capture the whole Russian word with one English adjective: Îí î÷åíü àçàðòíûé èãðîê (He’s a very competitive player). Are these untranslatable words? Well, they are definitely words that make you earn your fee.
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
TITLE: Museum for the masses
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Konchalovsky and the Russian Avant Garde; the landscape painter Levitan; French parks and gardens in Russian art; Russian advertising posters; and contemporary Japanese art will be among the themes of exhibitions opening this year at St.Petersburg’s State Russian Museum.
The museum’s plans for 2010 were unveiled by its director, Vladimir Gusev, at a press conference on Wednesday, along with its new “virtual branch” multimedia center housed in the Stroganov Palace.
Gusev said that despite receiving less state funding this year, the Russian Museum will continue to present new exhibitions, both at home and abroad.
“People say that exhibitions risk damaging the items on display, but they are the main activity of a museum!” he said.
In addition to the local exhibitions, which will be housed in the various buildings that comprise the Russian Museum, including the Mikhailovsky Palace, Stroganov Palace, Mikhailovsky Castle and Summer Gardens complex, an exhibition titled “Sacred Rus” will be shown this year at the Louvre in Paris, while another titled “Russian Winter,” will be displayed, fittingly, in India’s sweltering capital, Delhi.
Museum staff also took the opportunity on Wednesday to show off the new Virtual Branch of the Russian Museum, a network of sixty educational and multimedia centers located both in Russia and abroad. The aim of the virtual branches is to create an electronic version of the Russian Museum, allowing users located far from St. Petersburg and even Russia to see the treasures kept at the museum. Visitors to the multimedia centers can take virtual tours of the palaces and gardens, access information about the work and biographies of Russian artists whose work is displayed at the museum, and explore some particularly fascinating computer-generated images of lost palace interiors.
In St. Petersburg, a virtual branch opened in November in the Stroganov Palace, while the most recent branch to open further afield was in Thessaloniki, Greece, at the beginning of this year. The other branches are located in cultural and educational institutions such as museums, universities, libraries and schools all over Russia and in countries including Finland, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
Gusev said that the museum will also continue its art therapy sessions, which are mostly held for disabled children with the aim of developing the children’s social skills. Held regularly for children who are deaf, vision-impaired or have learning difficulties, there are also sessions for adults and elderly people, including recovering drug addicts and their parents, and adults with prosthetic limbs.
Every year, about 300 children regularly attend art therapy at the museum, where the therapists are also trained.
The Russian Museum also organizes special excursions for pregnant women around paintings in the Mikhailovsky Palace expected to have a beneficial effect on both expectant mothers and their unborn children. Like the art therapy program, these unusual excursions have proved popular.
Gusev also mentioned the museum’s intention to continue to make all the palaces and buildings that constitute the Russian Museum accessible to disabled visitors.
“This should become a reality, and not just a slogan,” said Gusev.
TITLE: Pulling mussels
AUTHOR: By Hardie Duncan
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: At a bustling intersection not far from the Vityebsky Railway Station, among a sea of headlights and traffic signals, a new beacon beckons.
Massmidiya, a recently opened Belgian restaurant, is an exciting addition to the city’s developing culinary landscape. And with strong service and an engrossing menu, it’s hopefully one that will last.
The restaurant’s name is a play on “mass media” and the Russian word for “mussels” (midiya). While the combination is somewhat perplexing, the emphasis is on the latter word as mussels are the restaurant’s central fare. The menu features a glut of variations on the traditionally working class dish moules frites, mussels and fries, from the simple pot with leek, onions, and herbs (450 rubles, $15) to the more elaborate mussels Ardenez (510 rubles, $17), with bacon, mushrooms, white wine, cream, and herbs, or mussels Roquefort (535 rubles, $18) with shallots, white wine, fluffed cream, herbs, and, of course, Roquefort cheese.
The restaurant also features a wide variety of toasted breads and kashas for breakfast, croquettes and sandwiches for lunch, and even a children’s menu. On top of that, Massmidiya boasts a respectable wine list, ranging from the economical French Sieur de Trinquelage VdP de Vaucluse (160 rubles, $5.25 a glass) to the pricier Italian Vajra Barolo DOGG Albe (4500 rubles, $150 a bottle), as well as a full cocktail menu.
Massmidiya’s shape, a long narrow crescent wrapping around the corner of Gorokhovaya Ulitsa and Zagorodny Prospekt, coupled with its bright lighting, creates the impression that you’re on a cruise ship, albeit an elegant one bereft of outbreaks of mysterious infectious diseases. The interior is resplendent in milky colors and golden chandeliers.
Our young waiter was friendly and helpful, and the food arrived promptly, further courses following on at a steady pace.
The rabbit terrine with prunes (400 rubles, $13) was nicely prepared and plated with a small salad, and the prunes presented a needed bittersweet complexity to the meat. But the rabbit lacked distinction, and the dish ultimately fell somewhat short. The Flemish leek pie (210 rubles, $7), meanwhile, was suprisingly nuanced and exquisite. The flaky warm slice was covered in a rich cheese sauce, all the varied flavors and textures coming together perfectly to create a wonderfully united plate.
The mussels Provencal (260 rubles, $8.50 half order), covered in olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, olives, white wine, and spices were enjoyable with a clean flavor, but not overly complex. The mussels a la Plancha (300 rubles, $10 half order) on the other hand were a zesty and delightful mosaic. Coupled with shrimp and calamari, in a tomatoe, garlic, basil, and herb sauce, the dish bore a striking resemblance to the Italian fish stew Cioppino in regards to its crimson coloring and wonderfully piquant and garlic flavors. Paired perfectly with an unfiltered Belgian beer like the Blanche de Namur (250 rubles, $8), the flavors reached new heights. Both dishes came with a side of thick fries packed with taste, accompanied by a creamy mayonnaise and mustard dipping sauce.
Unfortunately, the kitchen had run out of the Belgian waffle dishes, so we had to select our second choice for dessert. Luckily, the warm apple tartlet, topped with caramel and rich creamy fresh vanilla ice cream(190 rubles, $6), was a wholly realized and opulent dish, and the perfect finish to a memorable meal.
TITLE: Australian Writer Thomas Keneally Chooses 5 Books About Russia
AUTHOR: By Anna Blundy
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An Australian writer best known for his historical novels, Thomas Keneally portrays characters who are gripped by their historical and personal past, decent individuals often at odds with systems of authority. At age 17, Keneally entered a Roman Catholic seminary, but he left before ordination. His best-known work, “Schindler’s Ark,” adapted into the film “Schindler’s List,” tells the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved more than 1,300 Jews from the Nazis. It won the Booker Prize in 1982. His latest novel, “The People’s Train,” is partly set in Russia. Keneally explains which books inspired him.
“A People’s Tragedy” by Orlando Figes.
It’s the book I most admired while I was writing about Russia because it gives the tremendous overall sweep of the entire catastrophe up to the end of the civil war in 1922 and the famine. Figes has the capacity to focus on people you’ve never heard of and show them as representatives of ideologies competing for control of the Russian state, and he looks at it on an individual basis. He shows the human brutality and zeros in on the intimate experience of people on both sides in the civil war, everyone trying to requisition rations because there was nothing to eat.
There is this idea of people struggling towards the light, which is what they were doing in the Revolution of 1917, a light that was very soon snuffed out. It’s a very human story but, like most Russian stories, also very tragic. Russia is not known for its stand-up comedy, but, on the other hand, this book is not like “The Brothers Karamazov” for oppressive Russianness. It’s too fast a river for that.
“My Childhood” by Maxim Gorky.
Aah, Maxim Gorky is a wonderful writer, resister, speaker-outer. He speaks out about the various excesses of the Bolshevik uprisings, but later he lost his luster because of his complicit attitude towards Stalinism. His early works, though, are infallible. Well, not infallible, but thoroughly illuminating about the life of an autodidactic peasant, which he was. The relationship with his grandmother in “My Childhood” is very touching and shows why Russian peasants of intellect would want to get out and change things. She suffered the usual male stuff — her husband would go to the pub and get pissed and then get upset with his missus about his own shortcomings. He shows the treatment of his grandmother and just the rapidity with which the blows are thrown. I was writing about the peasant revolutionaries who escaped from Russia and came, of all places, to Brisbane, Australia, and my book involves Russians of Gorky’s sort of background.
“Young Stalin” by Simon Sebag Montefiore
This is an extensive picture of the pre-Revolutionary Bolshevik at the tougher prison-going end of the spectrum, far removed from the leafiness implicit in the pictures of Lenin and Krupskaya in exile in Switzerland. It is a much harder experience that Stalin goes through. You can see in the young Stalin considerable signals that he is a very strange man of certain twitches, but a man of great charisma. I suppose the question that Sebag Montefiore doesn’t ask is whether Stalin’s imprisonments made him worse than he would have been otherwise. Stalin was a great bank robber, the Butch Cassidy of the Bolsheviks. He was not a hugely advanced thinker, but he definitely had a sense of what was wrong with his time and place. As with Gorky, it was the behavior of men towards women, in particular his own father, feckless and wife-beating, that made him support the Revolution. You know the Australian joke? What’s foreplay to an Australian man? Saying: “Love, are you awake?” I’ll be strung up by my countrymen! But you’ve got the unjust father, the unjust grandfather and, on top of that heap, lies the tsar. This gives Stalin the motivation he needs. The Cold War biographies couldn’t afford to say that Stalin was somehow attractive, that Lenin was somehow magnetic, but they were, because otherwise people wouldn’t have followed them. Stalin was never short of women willing to help him, particularly in exile and imprisonment. This book is an important piece of work because it addresses Stalin with the Cold War colder still, but the ideology has lost its sting and can show a Stalin we can believe in — a child of working-class parents, a seminarian monster.
“The Red Cavalry” by Isaac Babel
This is largely the tale of a particular Red regiment of cavalry, bumbling through southeastern Russia and the Polish countryside. They are supposed to be fighting the Poles but, like World War I, there is this endless advance and endless retreat and a lot of fascinating ideological ambiguity, the casual brutality of the Whites and Reds, the fact that it was absolutely taken for granted that obscene things would be done to prisoners and the execution of prisoners was the norm. He shows how war made everything absurd — these people engaged in war take on a different sense of what is normal, and they become deranged. It’s a very human and fascinating book — an exceptional guide to the Russian Revolution and the feelings of the soldiers who don’t want the tsar, who want the Poles to leave them alone and who have a basic peasant attitude to land. That’s what won the Revolution — no tsar, no war, no landlords.
It’s a brilliant guide to how the Tsarist army began to become the Red Army in February 1917, and it helps us to see how the soldiers felt on the eve of Revolution. It’s brilliant stuff. He has a calm, clinical, minimalistic style, and he’s nonreactive. He’s not saying, “How horrifying!” He’s just calmly showing what it was like. He did serve himself — in 1920, he joined the Red Cossacks in a short war against Poland.
“Natasha’s Dance” by Orlando Figes.
This is an extensive picture of Russian culture, putting culture in its place as inseparable from society. He shows the Russian mind, the cosmology of belief, daily life on a cultural basis. It’s enchanting.He’s such a graceful writer. He talks about the significance of icons, dance, music, the various brands of Russian Orthodoxy and the way they impinge on the lives of the Russian villages or towns, the way the Russians give meaning to their lives through ceremonies. I read this before I wrote my book and understood that the Russian landscape is a God-struck landscape. Even the atheists are haunted. Figes touches on aspects of the sentimental agrarian socialists, the well-meaning intellectuals from cities who believed that the village commune was a social model out of which a greater social model could be made. They were greatly disillusioned, of course, when people started chucking sticks of dynamite at them. He shows the weddings, baptisms, burials, festivals, end of winter festivals, harvests, and he shows them all with references to individuals, the salient detail all firmly rooted in specific characters. Wonderful.
This interview was first published on the literary web site, www.five-books.com.
TITLE: Nasha Russia, the Movie
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Ravshan and Dzhumshud arrive at Sheremetyevo Airport packed neatly in a suitcase and are promptly set to work redecorating an oligarch’s apartment for the princely wages of 500 rubles ($16) each. Speaking broken Russian, they are forced to fend for themselves in Moscow, armed only with a plastic bag full of power tools.
The two gastarbaitery, or guest workers, from an invented but presumably Central Asian country are the heroes of “Nasha Russia: Balls of Fate,” the first feature film about Russia’s most downtrodden class. They originated as characters in TNT’s television show “Nasha Russia,” a sketch comedy similar to “Little Britain.” In the show, they are incompetently repairing an apartment for It-girl Ksenia Sobchak, although they’ve been doing it for a couple of years — and there’s no sign of her moving in yet.
The full-length film has had pretty good reviews in the broadsheets — which resolutely ignored the television show. That’s probably because although it goes for easy laughs — there are many jokes about toilets — there are some sharp points, too. And even some sympathy for the people who shovel the snow in your yard every morning.
Ravshan and Dzhumshud are working for a moustachioed Russian boss — played by Sergei Svetlakov, who also plays numerous other characters in the film — who pockets 70,000 euros ($98,000) for their job and insists on confiscating their passports. Despite this, they have misplaced devotion for him. When they believe mistakenly that he is injured in a car crash, they desert the apartment and embark on a road trip across Moscow to find him, taking in a casino (one of the few out-of-date jokes), an office party at a bloated bank (slogan: “The crisis missed us!”) and the Sklifosovsky hospital, where doctors are bleary-eyed from overdoing the medical spirit.
The gastarbaitery don’t really speak Russian — which does limit the script opportunities — although they talk to each other fluently in a made-up language that is translated. They’re naive, trusting and easily shocked by male models or massage chairs. A lot of the jokes are slapstick, such as when they gatecrash the bank’s party and short-circuit the sound system as a pop singer is performing “live,” a joke that was probably a bit old in “Singin’ in the Rain.”
There’s some topical humor, too. Discussing what they’ll do with their 500 ruble windfall from repairs, one says he’ll buy the next village, while the other confides, “I’ll invest in nanotechnology,” the hobby horse of former energy chief Anatoly Chubais and President Dmitry Medvedev.
In my least favorite joke, they encounter a gay pride parade, where the marchers run away at the sight of police, only for a po-faced journalist to say to camera: “Doesn’t this make us look terrible to the European Union?” Misguided they may be, Moscow’s defiant gay pride organizers are definitely not cowards.
The “balls of fate” of the film’s title refer to the golden balls of Genghis Khan, which the oligarch keeps in a box in his apartment. He demonstrates to his dinner guests that all he has to do is rub them and oil prices go up. While inquisitively exploring the apartment, the gastarbaitery find them and pop them into their plastic bag. The film ends with a standoff between the ludicrous oligarch — his catch-phrase is “I punish cruelly” — and an army of orange-clad gastarbaitery wielding spades and brooms around the Lenin statue on Kaluzhskaya Ploshchad.
It may not be the kind of orange revolution that keeps Prime Minister Vladimir Putin awake at nights, but the film does have a happy ending.