SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1609 (70), Tuesday, September 14, 2010
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TITLE: Speculation Mounts As Reiman Quits Job
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova and Justin Lifflander
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev’s telecoms and IT adviser Leonid Reiman abruptly resigned Friday, saying he was going to “focus on using his expertise” outside the government sector.
The move followed the resignation by the chief executive of state-controlled telecoms giant Svyazinvest, causing industry players to speculate whether Reiman is among the candidates to take over the holding.
“I made a difficult decision to finish a big stage of my life — service to the state. The industry, to which I have devoted so many years, has become a dynamically developing economic segment during this time,” Reiman said in a statement Friday, adding that he was grateful to Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for support.
He said, however, that his future work would not involve government projects.
“I will try to focus on using my expertise,” Reiman said.
Reiman was let go “at his own request,” Medvedev’s spokeswoman Natalya Timakova told reporters.
“As far as I know, he is going to get back into business,” she said.
Svyazinvest CEO Yevgeny Yurchenko submitted his resignation late Thursday because of disagreements over the future management of a merged company that will be created after the restructuring of Svyazinvest, Kommersant reported.
“I’m totally opposed to allowing one private individual to manage a state asset, regardless of what a great raider of Russia he is,” Yurchenko said, without elaborating, Kommersant reported.
The government plans to restructure Svyazinvest, merging its seven regional fixed-line operators into Rostelecom, by May 2011.
Yurchenko also decided to quit because he opposed the conditions of Svyazinvest’s purchase of Moscow cable television and broadband Internet operator Akado, Vedomosti reported.
He changed his mind, however, and tried to retract his resignation Friday morning.
“There were indications that part of the discrepancies may be removed. In particular, conditions of the deal to buy Akado may be improved,” Yurchenko told Vedomosti.
But it’s still unclear whether Yurchenko will ultimately stay in his position, since the resignation procedure has already started, said Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
“It’s unclear at the moment how Yurchenko’s petition may be withdrawn because it has been formalized,” Peskov told RIA-Novosti.
A spokeswoman for Communications Minister Igor Shchyogolev confirmed Friday that the minister had accepted Yurchenko’s resignation.
Sources close to Svyazinvest told newswires that Shchyogolev plans to file a list of candidates to run the company to the Federal Property Management Agency on Monday.
Reiman is among the possible candidates to head Svyazinvest, the sources said.
Among other possible candidates are two deputy heads of Svyazinvest, Mikhail Leshchenko and Viktor Savchenko; Rostelecom deputy director Vadim Semyonov; the chief executives of two Svyazinvest subsidiaries, UTK and Central Telegraph; and Comstar-OTS head Sergei Pridantsev.
Svyazinvest’s board of directors may consider Yurchenko’s resignation and the appointment of a temporary CEO as early as Sept. 29, a source told Interfax.
Reiman worked his way up through the ranks of the Leningrad City Telephone Company in the late 1980s. He was one of the founders and a board member of Telecominvest, the holding company that started MegaFon.
In late August 1999, newly appointed Prime Minister Putin named him to the Communications Ministry, which he headed until 2008.
Reiman’s tenure as minister was marked by both progress and scandal. One of his first moves as minister was to eliminate a rule requiring mobile phone subscribers to obtain an individual license for their handsets.
Reiman raised the status of IT, creating a dedicated agency to work with the sector. He also had some success in keeping telecoms excluded from the list of strategic industries that limited foreign investment participation.
His ministry was frequently criticized for its approach to frequency distribution for mobile operators. He himself was accused of malfeasance, and embroiled in scandals around alleged ownership of offshore companies that held stakes in telecoms operators. In the nine years that he served, the telecom services sector in Russia grew more than 10 times, reaching more than $40 billion by the end of 2007.

TITLE: NTV and Medvedev Target Luzhkov
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A simmering conflict between Mayor Yury Luzhkov and President Dmitry Medvedev broke into the open over the weekend as Medvedev criticized the mayor and major television channels aired unprecedented critical reports.
NTV got the ball rolling with “Delo v Kepke,” a 20-minute report aired in prime time Friday evening that accused Luzhkov of helping his wife, Yelena Baturina, become the country’s richest woman and of neglecting his duties when Moscow was choking in smog during this summer’s wildfires.
The program, whose title roughly translates as “The Cap Affair” in an allusion to the mayor’s trademark flat cap, contained few new allegations, but it marks the first instance in a decade that national television has directed open criticism against a high-ranking official like Luzhkov.
While the broadcast and other television reports Sunday resembled the “television wars” of the 1990s, they also revealed that Medvedev is too weak to use his constitutional authority to fire the powerful mayor, an opposition politician said.
Luzhkov sparred openly with the Kremlin last week when he backed a highway through the Khimki forest outside Moscow and criticized Medvedev’s decision to suspend construction work following environmentalists’ protests.
Medvedev retorted Friday at a conference in Yaroslavl that he disagreed with Luzhkov’s position and that “officials should either participate in building institutions or join the opposition.”
On Wednesday, an anonymous Kremlin source told national news agencies that City Hall was trying to “drive a wedge” between Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Luzhkov fought back Friday, saying he would not step down before his term runs out next year and denying any conflict with the Kremlin, just differing opinions.
On Sunday, Channel One took aim at Luzhkov on its evening summary of the week’s news, criticizing Baturina’s construction company, Inteko, and interviewing drivers upset over Moscow’s notoriously bad traffic. The report ended with footage from opposition web site Gzt.ru of Luzhkov nodding off during a recent presentation of a book on how to improve Moscow’s traffic situation.
Meanwhile, the news channel Rossia-24, which belongs to the same state holding as Rossia One, on Sunday showed a report critical of City Hall’s failure to preserve the capital’s historic buildings, while NTV carried another report about Baturina’s business interests.
Outside City Hall, police on Sunday broke up an unsanctioned anti-Luzhkov rally, detaining 31 opposition activists, including Konstantin Kosyakin and Sergei Udaltsov, Interfax reported. Organizers of the so-called “Day of Wrath” protest said it targeted the federal government as well as Luzhkov.
Luzhkov, who turns 74 on Sept. 21, has run the capital since 1992, making him the last of the long-serving regional bosses after Kalmykia’s leader, who had held office since 1993, announced earlier this month that he would step down when his term ends in October. (Because of Moscow’s federal status, the mayor is also a governor.)
Medvedev has said regional bosses should not serve more than three terms and recently replaced many so-called dinosaur governors, raising speculation that Luzhkov’s days are numbered. Luzhkov drew a barrage of criticism for only hesitantly interrupting his vacation during last month’s smog, which caused a sharp rise in the city’s death rate.
Friday’s television program rehashed a Lifenews.ru report that the mayor, an avid beekeeper, gave more attention to his bees than to Muscovites choking from smog. Returning from his vacation, Luzhkov signed two decrees: one allocating 105 million rubles ($3.4 million) for disabled Muscovites suffering from smog, and the other allocating 256 million rubles ($8.3 million) to an agriculture company owned by City Hall that, among other things, produces honey. The NTV report said Luzhkov wanted to move his bees into areas not affected by fires.
Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin, a veteran in city politics, said there was no doubt that the program had been ordered by the Kremlin. “It shows how unhappy they are with Luzhkov’s statements on Khimki,” he said by phone.
He added that it also showed Medvedev’s weakness. “If he were a strong president, he would fire Luzhkov straight away,” he said.
One of the most interviewed people in the report was journalist Sergei Dorenko, a long-standing critic of Luzhkov and Putin who, incidentally, anchored the last program to openly criticize Luzhkov, in 1999 on ORT, now Channel One. Dorenko aired his report, which tried to link Luzhkov to the 1996 murder of U.S. businessman Paul Tatum, at a time when Luzhkov was co-leading a party that presented a serious threat in State Duma elections that fall to the Unity party, which backed then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Luzhkov’s party ended up merging with Unity to form United Russia, where Luzhkov is a member of the party’s supreme council.
Dorenko, who has served as editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-friendly radio station Russian News Service since 2008, denied that he had taken part in politically ordered journalism with the NTV report.
“I’m not naive. I think there was an instruction to do this — but [NTV] wanted to do this for a long time … openly criticize a billionaire with 100,000 cops,” he wrote on his blog, referring to Luzhkov and his control over the city’s large police force.
Once-privately owned NTV was a pioneer in critical reporting in the 1990s, but it saw a political turnaround after being seized by creditor Gazprom in 2001. Medvedev chaired Gazprom before he became president in 2008.
Friday’s program, which was only announced by NTV the same day, was produced by the same team responsible for “Kryostny Batka,” a report aired in July about Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko that depicted him as Europe’s last dictator. Belarus is locked in a constant battle with Gazprom about energy prices.
Like “Kryostny Batka,” the Luzhkov report resembled a systematic attack rather than balanced journalism, and the authors made no attempt to quote any Luzhkov allies or to get a comment from the mayor or City Hall.
Notably, they also quote nobody from United Russia and make no mention of Luzhkov’s position on its supreme council.
Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, United Russia’s No. 2 leader after Putin, described the film as simplistic but said it would be discussed with the party’s hierarchy. “I will speak with Yury Mikhailovich [Luzhkov]. We must evaluate the situation inside the party’s supreme council. It’s not that simple,” he said in a statement Saturday on the party’s web site.
Andrei Richter, a journalism professor at Moscow State University, dismissed some media reports that the program marked a return to the 1990s, when politicians-turned-businessmen attacked each other via the media organizations they owned.
He said Luzhkov could hardly retaliate by ordering a similarly damning report about Medvedev — if indeed Medvedev was behind it.
TV Center, the television channel controlled by City Hall, aired a report Saturday in which anchor Alexei Pushkov did little more than belittle the “media campaign” against Luzhkov.
“Now it has reached television, but nobody authoritative has appeared on air so far — just those who have attacked the mayor with an amazing frenzy for 10 years,” he said, the Newsru.com web site reported.
Among others, Luzhkov’s critics in the program are eccentric entrepreneur and barter proponent German Sterligov, and Duma Deputy Anton Belyakov, a member of the Kremlin-friendly Just Russia party who has criticized City Hall before, like during the controversial razing of houses in Moscow’s Rechnik neighborhood in January.
Moskovsky Komsomolets, a popular tabloid that is fiercely loyal to Luzhkov, does not have a weekend edition, but an announcement that it had published about the upcoming NTV report was missing from its web site. The announcement could still be found via Google cache.
Luzhkov has been hit by a string of scandals over the past year as authorities opened corruption cases against several senior City Hall officials. Analysts have said the cases were probably orchestrated by the Kremlin.
Some observers have suggested that Luzhkov is being protected by Putin, who as president in 2007 reappointed the mayor for a fourth four-year term, and that the struggle reflects increasing rivalry within the country’s ruling tandem in the run-up to a decision about who is going to run in the 2012 presidential election.
But speculation that the mayor’s star was sinking began last year after Putin called for a crackdown on Cherkizovsky Market, effectively forcing Luzhkov to close it.
In April, Luzhkov was for the first time openly accused of corruption in the Duma when Liberal Democrat leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky lambasted him while a smiling Putin presided over the Duma session. Luzhkov sued Zhirinovsky for defamation, and a Moscow court has ordered Zhirinovsky to pay 500,000 rubles ($16,000) in damages.
The mayor and his wife regularly sue critics who claim that Inteko is favored by City Hall when it allocates lucrative deals. Baturina is ranked as Russia’s wealthiest woman by Forbes’ Russian edition, which estimated her wealth at $2.9 billion earlier this year.
Some NTV viewers in Moscow did not see Friday’s program in its entirety. Television screens went dark for two minutes of the report that dealt with the relationship between Luzhkov and businessman Telman Ismailov, owner of Cherkizovsky Market, Russian News Service reported. The segment was also missing from the online version of the program, which NTV placed prominently on its web site over the weekend.
NTV blamed the blackout on a technical glitch but did not explain why the segment was also missing from the online version, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Nashi, Mitvol Quarrel Over Tots, Prostitutes
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A feud between Nashi and Moscow prefect Oleg Mitvol is escalating, with the pro-Kremlin youth group demanding that Mitvol’s staff vacate an office and the prefect seeking criminal charges against a Nashi spokeswoman who said he protected brothels in his district.
Nashi activists rallied Friday outside the headquarters for Moscow’s Northern Administrative District, which Mitvol runs, to demand that Timiryazevsky District authorities vacate their office in a building originally meant to house a kindergarten, Nashi said in a statement.
Nashi left a wooden plank at the door to Mitvol’s office in a literal interpretation of Jesus’ saying in Matthew 7:3 that the person who judges others for having specks in their eyes should first remove the plank from his own eye.
Mitvol earlier asked Nashi to vacate its headquarters so the building could be reverted to a kindergarten as originally intended by builders.
Both Mitvol and Nashi sought to portray their demands as having the backing of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has asked that former kindergartens be reopened to deal with a national shortage.
Police detained two Nashi activists at the rally after they started shouting slogans that hadn’t been authorized by city authorities for the rally, including, “Mitvol, come out,” Interfax reported.
Meanwhile, Mitvol asked district police to open a criminal investigation into possible defamation charges against Nashi spokeswoman Kristina Potupchik, who accused Mitvol in a blog post Thursday of taking local brothels “under his wing,” Interfax reported.
Potupchik, speaking by telephone, called Mitvol’s complaint “revenge” after Nashi discovered more than 30 brothels, as well as the former kindergarten occupied by Timiryazevsky authorities in his district.
If charged and convicted of defamation, Potupchik could face up to three years in prison.
Nashi complained last week that Mitvol had ignored their findings about brothels in his district and said his silence had forced them to hang a giant poster of Mitvol outside one of the buildings supposedly housing a brothel. The poster said Mitvol was providing brothels for local residents.
Mitvol denied receiving information about brothels from Nashi.
Mitvol also has asked Vasily Yakemenko, head of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs and a former Nashi leader, to cut financing for Nashi from the federal budget because of the “vandalism prank” with the poster that “couldn’t have been pulled off without adequate financial backing,” Interfax reported.
Potupchik said Mitvol “has no idea where Nashi gets its finances.” She refused to elaborate.
Rostislav Turovsky, an independent analyst, said Nashi’s campaign against Mitvol might be a warning against him harboring mayoral ambitions or revenge for his support for an alternative route for an $8 billion highway that is supposed to run through the Khimki forest.
Turovsky said Nashi’s campaign clearly had been ordered by someone outside of the group, possibly by people close to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the Moscow region authorities or City Hall.
“Nashi acted as a force tasked to show Mitvol who is the master in the house,” Turovsky said.

TITLE: SKA Loses to Dinamo Riga in Season Opener
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: SKA St. Petersburg suffered a heartbreaking 5-4 overtime loss to Dinamo Riga in its Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) season opener at the Ice Palace last Thursday night. 
Dinamo stalwart defenseman Sandis Ozolins fed the puck to forward Alexanders Nizivijs, who knocked it past SKA goalkeeper Evgeny Nabokov with five seconds remaining in overtime to seal the win. 
With just 10 seconds before regulation expired, SKA miraculously avoided outright defeat when Swedish forward Mattias Weinhandl evened the score at 4 on a pass threaded through heavy traffic by Maxim Sushinsky in a six-on-five situation.  
The Petersburg team squandered a 2-0 lead in a game that was hyped as a revenge match. Dinamo Riga eliminated SKA, who dominated last season, in the first round of the play-offs. 
“I was very happy to tie the game,” said SKA head coach Ivan Zanatta. “But it’s not talent that wins games. It’s discipline, hard work and teamwork. You just can’t play if you lose your discipline. Sure there’s a lot of bad feelings here. Last year is over. We had 122 points – a great season that ended quick because of these guys. There was a lot of emotion on the ice. But you have to control you emotion and not let it control you. This is a new season and we have to take everything one game at a time.”
Indeed, it’s a new season and a new team with a new coaching staff. Zanatta replaced Barry Smith last spring, with Vladimir Yurzinov Jr. as assistant coach. Darius Kasperitis, who was on the team last year, but sidelined due to injury, made his coaching debut. SKA picked up a number of high profile veteran NHL players during the off-season including Alexey Yashin, Maxim Afinogenov, Vitaly Vishnevsky and Nabokov. The team also signed three new internationals: Swedish national team players Tony Martensson and Weinhandl, as well as Czech netminder Jakub Stepanek.
The KHL also instituted a number of new rules, most noticeably a second referee on the ice. 
SKA defeated HC Yugra 6-2 in Khanty-Mansiysk on Saturday. Their road trip continues against Barys in Astana, Kazakhstan on Monday and Avangard Omsk on Wednesday. Their next home game is Friday against Severstal Cherepovets at the Ice Palace.

TITLE: Medvedev Attends Forum
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: YAROSLAVL — With a little more than a year left in his first presidential term, Dmitry Medvedev said Russia has achieved democracy but democratic institutions remain so weak that citizens prefer to appeal to him directly.
Medvedev, speaking at a state-sponsored modernization forum in Yaroslavl on Friday, also cautiously praised the often-criticized 1990s and linked national prosperity and the propagation of the Internet to the growth of democracy.
But he avoided talking about whether he would run in the 2012 presidential election and offered few new insights into Kremlin policy, analysts said.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had his own forum earlier in the week, meeting with the Valdai Club of Russia experts in Sochi on Monday. He also sidestepped questions about 2012.
While Kremlin opponents accuse it of silencing critics and suppressing media freedom, Medvedev said in Yaroslavl that he did not see any authoritarian tendencies in Russia.
“What we have today is better than what we had five years ago, and what we had five years ago is better than what we had 12 years ago,” Medvedev said.
He listed five key principles of a democratic society — rule of law, the safety of citizens, cultural development, individual freedom and prosperity — and highlighted prosperity as the most crucial.
It was the widespread poverty of the 1990s that turned people away from democratic reforms, Medvedev said.
“In the age of mass poverty during the ‘90s, democracy was given a bad name in Russia,” he said.

TITLE: Experts: Ioann VI’s Remains Found
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian researchers claim that they have found the remains of Tsar Ioann VI, the only Russian emperor  whose place of burial has been hitherto unknown, and who had one of the most tragic life stories in the history of the Romanov dynasty.
“Experts say the probability that the remains are authentic is very high,” said Anatoly Karanin, head of the research group, Interfax reported on Monday.
The remains were found during a search for the secret burial site of Generalissimo Anton Ulrich Herzog von Braunschweig, who was buried near the Assumption of Virgin Mary church in the village of Kholmogory in Arkhangelsk Oblast in 1776.
The search was organized due to fears that the remains would be lost, as a water tower built on the site of his burial was to be demolished.
In the Arkhangelsk burial sites, archaeologists discovered a sarcophagus containing the remains of a young man with a rapier puncture on his left shoulder blade. 
Taking into account the state of the sarcophagus and archive data, the scientists realized they might have found the burial site of the generalissimo’s elder son — Ioann Antonovich or Ioann VI, who was possibly brought to Kholmogory where his family was being held. Twenty-five further tests confirmed the hypothesis. 
The remains were quickly sent to Moscow on the request of Viktor Zvyagin, head of the personal identification laboratory at the Russian Legal and Medical Testing Center, Interfax reported.
The analysis conducted there showed that the height and age of the murdered young man coincided with those of Ioann VI, and also displayed signs of the illnesses Ioann had suffered from during his life.
The rapier wound coincided with the one described in historical accounts of his death. Wood-dating analysis of the sarcophagus also showed that it shared the date of Ioann VI’s death. 
“Currently there are no facts that rule out our assumption that these are the authentic remains of Ioann VI. The number of facts and coincidences just keeps growing,” said Vladimir Stanulevich, secretary of the board of guardians of the Imperator fund, Interfax reported.
The archaeologists have asked the state to help with DNA analysis of the remains in order to complete the identification process.
“There is a need to complete the identification of the person on a legal level through DNA tests. However, that requires a certain amount of federal support and federal resources,” Stanulevich said at a press conference in Moscow.
The brothers and sisters of Ioann VI are buried in Denmark. Such an analysis would require a special request from the Russian authorities and that agreements be reached on an international level, he said.
Meanwhile, representatives of the Romanov dynasty also said that additional research was needed to confirm the authenticity of the remains, said Alexander Zakatov, director of the Romanov House office, Interfax reported.
Zakatov said if the remains prove to belong to Ioann VI, there would be a reasonable argument for their being moved to the Romanov vault at the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg.
Ivan Artsishevsky, Russia’s representative of the Romanov Dynasty Association, said the possible finding of the remains of Ioann VI was “very important from a historical point of view as another confirmation of all the historical information known” about him and his life.
At the same time, Artsishevsky said that “from the Romanovs family’s point of view” it would also be important “to maintain the sequence of actions in regards to paying last honors to members of the dynasty”.
The remains of Tsarevich Alexei and his sister Maria — children of the last Russian tsar Nicholas II — found in Yekaterinburg several years ago, are still located in refrigerators in Yekaterinburg and have not yet been re-buried, Artsishevsky told the St. Petersburg Times.
Artsishevsky said groups of American, British and Russian researchers have already fully confirmed the authenticity of the remains but “they are not being re-buried because the Russian Orthodox Church still doubts the results of the tests.”
“I contacted the family about the news on Ioann VI, and they said it is crucial that the re-burial of Alexei and Maria’s remains be dealt with first. And then, of course, that a proper burial ceremony be held for Ioann VI if the authenticity of his remains is confirmed,” Artsishevsky said.
“Of course, it is important that the entire Romanov tsarist dynasty be united in one burial ground at the Peter and Paul Fortress,” he said.
Ioann VI, head of the Romanov dynasty, was born in St. Petersburg on Aug. 23, 1740. 
After the death of Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna, the two-month old son of Princess Anna Leopoldovna and Prince Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig — who was also the great-great-grandson of the first Russian Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich — was proclaimed Russia’s emperor Ioann VI. Duke Biron was appointed as regent for the baby emperor.
However, the reign of the Ioann VI was short-lived; after 404 days, the daughter of Tsar Peter the Great, Elizabeth, took the throne in a coup d’?tat, and all of the young emperor’s family was exiled to the village of Kholmogory. There, Ioann VI was forever separated from his parents.
He lived in solitary confinement in Kholmogory for 12 years. In early 1756, he was taken to the Schlisselburg fortress outside St. Petersburg. Soldiers and officers assigned to guard the dethroned monarch treated him with sympathy and even taught him how to read and to write, despite being prohibited from doing so.
At the age of 16, Ioann was confined in a single cell in the Schlisselburg fortress due to fears that he might be put back on the throne. In 1764, when Catherine the Great was in power, Lieutenant Vasily Mirovich made an attempt to free the young man. However, during the escape Ioann VI was stabbed to death by his warders.
After the funeral ceremony, the body of the prisoner was removed to an unknown location.

TITLE: Architects Tackle Provincial Town at Venice Expo
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: “People Meet in Architecture” was the manifesto of the 12th Architecture Biennale in Venice. The topic came from Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima and was an attempt to search for links between humans and their surrounding space.
The Russian pavilion’s exhibit fit well into the biennale’s theme with a human scale that was far from the skyscrapers on display in last year’s exhibit. The pavilion showed a proposed renovation of the small town of Vyshny Volochyok in the Tver region, as designed by a group of leading local architects headed by Moscow-based architect Sergei Choban.
“Nobody knows what to do with small towns,” said Grigory Revzin, the pavilion’s curator. “In 1993, Vyshny Volochyok was a town with a population of 78,000. Now there are 50,000 people there. Over 10 to 15 years, the population has shrunk by a third — a catastrophic situation.”
The Russian pavilion’s building was constructed by Alexei Shchusev in 1913. He would go on to design Lenin’s mausoleum later that year, and it is Lenin’s legacy that the architects were looking at in the biennale. Titled “Factories of Russia,” it looked at the ways that the now-defunct industrial life of small towns could be reinvented for the revival of such towns — and in particular, Vyshny Volochyok.
Choban and his colleagues in their designs are not so much thinking about the artistry of the buildings as about their functionality and role in creating a suitable environment. The local Aelita factory becomes a textile shop in the group’s design, and there is a neighborhood of budget homes for workers.
They kept their promise not to transform abandoned industrial constructions into contemporary art centers, as has happened in Perm. Instead, they suggested a bridge where giant clubs for Russian designers’ shows could be located.
Another Moscow-based architect, Sergei Skuratov, showed a design for a whole island near the town. It has a 2,000-seat concert hall built into the landscape, a lot of open green public spaces, a bridge and a beach.
Architect Vladimir Plotkin looks at ecology and agriculture, proposing to lay out flower and vegetable gardens all around a factory and create a network of public spaces inside, with cafes and kids’ zones.
Nikita Yavein worked with water — the main natural resource of Vyshny Volochyok, which stands between the Tvertsa and Tsna rivers. He designed new routes and boat stations around the Tabolka factory, and there is a hotel, a yacht club, an entertainment center and a water museum connected by a number of sailing canals and pools.
Visitors can see how these projects combine with the town’s charming old churches and two-story buildings in a vast diorama. There is also a video about the town, though at times the sequence gives the impression that the areas around the factory are some sort of poetic ruins. Nevertheless, the project’s humanistic nature — so rare in this country — makes up for everything.

TITLE: Duma to Work on Antitrust Law
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova and Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma opened its fall session last week looking to pass economic legislation that clarifies tough anti-monopoly regulations and puts further pressure on the country’s rampant alcohol consumption.
In a bid to upgrade the country’s antitrust practices, the Duma plans to pass the so-called third anti-monopoly package, which clarifies the previous, one-year set of laws in the field.
“This package is liberal compared with the second anti-monopoly package,” said Sergei Puzyrevsky, head of the legal department at the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service.
It would relieve companies of some liabilities that they are facing under the current legislation, he said. Rival companies that raise prices at about the same time without publicly announcing the move would avoid responsibility for concerted action, he said.
The new amendments will also carry clearer definitions of terms, including what constitutes a cartel, he said.
In addition, the third package would bind companies that the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service deems monopolies to hold tenders for any kind of purchase, said Yevgeny Fyodorov, chairman of the Duma’s Economic Policy and Entrepreneurship Committee.
As far as the alcohol market is concerned, the pro-government Duma will try to curb consumption — a goal set by President Dmitry Medvedev — by helping crack down on cheap, illegal vodka, said Viktor Zvagelsky, a member of the Economic Policy and Entrepreneurship Committee.
The legislation will put a heavier emphasis on weeding out illegal liquor from retail sales, whereas previous efforts focused on wholesale and producers, he said.
The measure would make it possible to track down illicit alcohol producers and reduce the amount of illegally produced vodka on store shelves to no more than 12 percent, compared with the current 50 percent, he said.
The goal of drastically reducing sales of illicit vodka in stores looks unrealistic, said Vadim Drobiz, director of the Research Center for Federal and Regional Alcohol Markets.
“I think it’s impossible,” he said, adding that most vodka consumers are interested in whatever is cheapest, rather than legal production, which is subject to excise taxes. “Much depends on the consumer and his financial footing.”
Vodka producers now pay 75 percent of the excise duty, leaving the pure alcohol makers to pay 25 percent, Drobiz said. As part of the anti-alcohol campaign, the Duma plans to shift the responsibility for paying the excise duty on alcohol to the producers of pure alcohol from the producers of vodka, he said.
In another move, the Duma plans to classify beer as an alcoholic beverage, which means that beer with an alcohol content of more than 5 percent by volume would be banned from sale at the country’s ubiquitous street kiosks, Zvagelsky said.
Under further amendments that the Duma plans to approve, producers of liquor, wine, beer and low alcohol-content drinks will pay a single excise duty on their products as of July next year, he said.
The Duma also plans to consider bills that would help modernize the Russian economy, another key Kremlin priority. One of them would give tax breaks and easier customs procedures to companies that do business in the Skolkovo innovation city, which is designed to become Russia’s answer to Silicon Valley, Fyodorov said.

TITLE: Russian Banks to Take 
Business to Ukraine
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — VTB Capital on Thursday announced that it will open an investment banking division in Ukraine, as it sees more deal making with the country after the election of a pro-Moscow president there.
“We see strong development potential for Ukraine-Russia economic relations,” VTB Capital president Yury Solovyov said in a statement. “VTB Capital is planning to take an active role in building a long-term partnership and business dialogue between the two nations.”
Brokerage house Otkritie made a similar announcement Wednesday, saying it will complete buying into a Ukrainian securities trader before the end of this year to offer a range of investment services.
Elected in February, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych replaced Viktor Yushchenko, who angered Moscow with his nationalist rhetoric.
The two new players will join the ranks of three other major Russian investment banks present in Kiev: Alfa Bank, Troika Dialog and Renaissance Capital. The expansion by the Russian investment banks testifies to better prospects for bilateral economic relations, said Denis Shavruk, an analyst at Alfa Capital, the Kiev branch of Alfa Bank.
It also means that Russian banks are more eager than their Western rivals to operate on Ukraine’s fledgling financial market, which is in need of outside expertise to grow further, he said.

TITLE: Putin Praises Rusnano Changes
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The upcoming reorganization of state nanotechnology giant Rusnano into a joint-stock company will enable it to purchase assets of companies with foreign ownership, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday, Interfax reported.
“The state nanotechnology corporation will act in a new capacity soon. Rusnano’s transformation into an open joint-stock society should provide it with new development tools,” Putin said at a conference in Moscow on the results of Rusnano’s work.
“Certainly, this is acceptable only with regard to assets that improve efficiency of Rusnano itself and stimulate the building of efficient technological chains,” he said.
At the same time, Rusnano’s key goals will remain the same, Putin said. “This includes the drawing of private investment in the domestic nano-industry and the building of a competitive market of nano-products,” he said.

TITLE: Bank Wants Clients to Cover Losses
AUTHOR: By Daniil Zhelobanov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — A bank in the republic of Udmurtia lost 98.68 percent of its clients’ money last month, but the lender is asking clients to deposit more funds so it can cover the losses.
Udmurtinveststroibank’s “Bazovy” investment fund was overseeing 112.6 million rubles ($3.65 million), but its assets plummeted to 1.3 million rubles by Aug. 29, according to information on the bank’s web site.
On Aug. 20, “a loss equivalent to 98.68 percent of the fund’s value was recorded,” the statement said, without elaborating.
That tops the losses suffered by clients of Uniastrum Bank’s investment funds, which posted declines of 80 percent to 90 percent in fall 2008. “Even 90 percent in one day is baffling, but this ...” said Garegin Tosunyan, president of the Association of Russian Banks.
“I had hoped that the scandals with bank-managed funds was over with Uniastrum, but here we go again,” said Sergei Matyushin, deputy head of Zenit bank’s investment department.
Udmurtinveststroibank spokeswoman Yulia Lebedeva had no further comment on the losses.
The Bazovy fund’s investment policy allows managers to use virtually any instruments, with limits placed on investments in promissory notes (no more than 70 percent of assets) and bank deposits (no more than 90 percent). The fund also cannot hold more than 70 percent of its funds in shares from one industry.
Shares in the Bazovy fund were advertised on the now-defunct web site of the firm Aktiv-Invest. On a number of sites, the fund was promoted as a “multilevel marketing” instrument, under which the agent would receive part of the revenue from clients they recruited.
According to one of those sites, the Bazovy fund returned 56.5 percent from April 19, 2009, through Feb. 28, 2010.
The president of Aktiv-Invest Group is Alexander Brylyakov, a shareholder and member of the board of directors at Udmurtinveststroibank. In an interview to E1.ru, he called the Bazovy fund the group’s primary investment asset.
The Bazovy fund managers, meanwhile, believe that they can return investors’ losses in three to five years, and possibly as little as two, Udmurtinveststroibank’s statement said.
The recovery will be achieved “with the help of a complex of trading strategies, which over the course of half a year have provided a stable average return of 10 percent to 20 percent per month,” the bank said. “The potential return from this strategic complex is much higher — as much as 50 percent.”
To take advantage of this opportunity, the bank proposed that investors “accelerate the restoration of their shares by making additional cash deposits to the fund.”

TITLE: Indebted Car Dealer Vanishes for 4 Days
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The heavily indebted owner of one of Russia’s largest car dealers disappeared from Moscow last week, sparking worries that he had been kidnapped, but it turned out that he had been whisked away by Dagestani police officers and freed after four days.
Dmitry Kozlovsky, head of Inkom-Avto, which media reports say owes $580 million, arrived in Moscow on a flight from Makhachkala on Friday after being released from a pretrial detention center in the Dagestani city of Derbent, his brother Sergei Kozlovsky said, RIA-Novosti reported.
Sergei Kozlovsky earlier said the officers who held his brother had demanded $20 million in cash and assets worth $35 million for his release, Kommersant reported. He said both he and his brother have been threatened by Dagestani creditors.
Dagestani police dismissed the accusations of a ransom demand as “absurd,” Interfax reported. Investigator Ismail Mardanov, who detained Dmitry Kozlovsky in Moscow, said the businessman was a suspect in a fraud case involving land.
Mardanov did not elaborate, but a Dagestani police source told Gazeta.ru that Kozlovsky was accused of not repaying 1.5 million rubles ($48,500) that he had borrowed from a Derbent resident.

TITLE: Transstroi Fires CEO On Theft Allegations
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Oleg Deripaska’s construction company Transstroi fired its chief executive for embezzlement, the billionaire’s investment vehicle said last Monday, in a rare public dismissal of a major Russian firm’s CEO.
Ivan Kuznetsov lost his job because of his “extremely unsatisfactory work” and his involvement in “illegal transfers of shareholder money,” Deripaska’s Basic Element holding said in a statement.
Kuznetsov illegally transferred “hundreds of millions of rubles,” or millions of dollars worth of funds out of Transstroi, Basic Element said. Transstroi reported the findings to law enforcement agencies, the statement said, without naming specific agencies.
Kuznetsov could not be reached, and law enforcement agencies had not commented on the case by Monday evening.
Transstroi is a nationwide builder of roads and ports, and its current contracts include construction of a seaport in Sochi to help the city host the 2014 Olympics. The company has also won the rights to build a football stadium in St. Petersburg that may eventually host World Cup games in 2018 or 2022 if a Russian bid to host them is successful.
Transstroi’s board expressed confidence that the company would complete its projects on time and with proper quality “regardless of any circumstances,” it said in the statement.
The public sacking was “very uncharacteristic” of big corporations, said Yelena Panfilova, Moscow chief of Germany-based international anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International. But it represents the trend for major companies to get rid of corrupt executives to avoid damage to their reputations — a practice that has tended to be quiet so far, she said.
“The fashion gradually catches on more and more,” she said.
Basic Element’s deputy chief executive Andrei Yelinson said the publicity was to show that state contracts were a priority.
“We want the execution of these state contracts to be on target,” he said, Interfax reported.
A Basic Element spokeswoman referred all questions to a Transstroi spokesman, who was not answering his phone.
The government’s Audit Chamber may at any time uncover and publicize wrongdoing at companies that work for the state, reducing the prospects of future contracts, Panfilova said.
Citing reports made by the company’s internal auditing department, Yelinson said that under Kuznetsov, Transstroi signed fictitious contracts or agreed to pay more than the market price for the work it wanted done. As an example, he cited an unnecessary consulting contract worth at least 100 million rubles, or $3.6 million.
Transstroi will attempt to recover the funds it considers illegally spent, Yelinson said.
Basic Element is seeking charges under Article 160, Part 4, of the Criminal Code, which is for embezzlement of large sums or as part of a criminal group. The charge carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
Basic Element turned its sights on Transstroi after making a more transparent business out of Glavstroi, which is another of Basic Element’s construction assets, he said.
Alexei Barantsev, who runs the entire Basic Element construction division, will manage Transstroi as its chief executive, the statement said. Kuznetsov had run the company since March 2009, before which he was chief of the company’s engineering unit.
Companies began cleaning their ranks more rigorously about 18 months ago, Panfilova said, basing her conclusion on the watchdog’s ties with the corporate world. She declined to name examples, citing confidentiality of the information.

TITLE: Baturina Buys Land for Golf Course
AUTHOR: By Tatyana Romanova and Bela Lyauv
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Yelena Baturina’s building conglomerate Inteko has acquired a 35-hectare plot in western Moscow to build a golf club, possibly to be designed by U.S. golf legend Jack Nicklaus, Vedomosti has learned.
“The deal went through last year,” a spokesperson at Inteko confirmed. Reno Immobilienhandels, which handles Inteko’s foreign projects, bought the land from a private owner, he said. The plot was part of the Teplichi farm, located near Ulitsa Nizhniye Mnyovniki, in the western part of the city.
Although the value of the deal was not revealed, market analysts estimate the land at $175 million to $250 million.
“It’s a great plot, with a hill and access to the river, “ said a spokesperson for a real estate consulting company. The project will consist of a world-class 18-hole golf course, cottages and low-rise buildings, several consultants said.
“There cannot be any housing on the property. Given the landscape, it’s an optimal place to put a golf course,” the Inteko spokesperson said.
According to the master plan of the city of Moscow, the territory is approved for  “specialized sports and public recreation.”
How much Inteko plans to invest is not clear, and the design is not ready. The developer has invited one of the most famous golfers in the world, Jack Nicklaus, to design the project, the company spokesperson said.
Nicklaus is the only golfer in history to win 18 major championships. His current company, Nicklaus Design, has created more than 350 golf courses around the world. In Russia, Nicklaus designed the Tseleevo golf course, belonging to Oleg Deripaska.
Bloomberg has reported that project cost $30 million to build. Nicklaus Design did not respond to questions from Vedomosti.
Back in the 1990s, more than 300 hectares in Nizhniye Mnyovniki were allocated to build Wonderland Park, a Russian equivalent of Disneyland, organized by sculptor Zurab Tsereteli. But in 2007, the city government terminated land-use rights when it uncovered cement factories, commercial garages and automobile repair stations on the park’s territory.  
At the time, chief city architect Alexander Kuzmin announced that a multifunctional complex, including a world-class golf course, would be built in Nizhniye Mnyovniki. South Korean company Lotte Group was to design the project.
A source in the Mayor’s Office told Vedomosti that the city has always planned to put a golf course in Nizhniye Mnyovniki, but he was unaware of Baturina’s project. He said Baturina could own land in Wonderland Park because there was a lot of property belonging to many different owners when the project began.
Both Baturina and her husband, Mayor Yury Luzhkov, have said they enjoy golfing. Her company already owns a golf course in Austria.
“If Inteko can bring the project to fruition, it will become one of the city’s most expensive, as there is nothing similar now, and the presence of a golf course increases the value of any project,” said Maria Litinetskaya, general director of Miel-Novostroiki.
In Moscow and the Moscow region, there are more than a dozen golf courses, but only four are 18-hole championship courses: Nakhabino, Pestovo, Tseleevo and Agalarov Estate.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>HP Bribery Case</b>
MOSCOW (SPT) — A bribery investigation into a Hewlett-Packard government contract in Russia has broadened to include more deals dating back to 2000, the U.S. computer giant said in a statement Friday, Reuters reported.
HP said it was cooperating with authorities, “who have now expanded their investigations beyond” a transaction with the Prosecutor General’s Office.
In April, it emerged that U.S. and German authorities were investigating whether HP employees in a German subsidiary had engaged in a bribery scheme involving a $44.5 million contract to provide IT equipment to the office. The contract ran from 2001 to 2006.
Russian authorities in April raided HP’s Moscow offices at the behest of German prosecutors.
The U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been probing the Russia deal and possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
“HP does not give bribes. For us, it is a matter of principle,” Alexander Mikoyan, managing director at HP Russia, said Friday in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times.

TITLE: RusAl
Web Site Courts Minorities
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — United Company RusAl unveiled a web portal Wednesday detailing its complaints against Norilsk Nickel’s management and Vladimir Potanin’s Interros Holding, a rival shareholder in the miner, in what analysts said was a long-shot bid to win support from minority owners.
The unusual move comes as both sides are courting small-time Norilsk owners ahead of an extraordinary shareholders meeting expected in October. The web site, Save Norilsk Nickel, repeats a number of RusAl’s allegations about ineffective management at the world’s largest nickel producer.
In particular, the site accuses Norilsk managers, including CEO Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, of lacking adequate experience in the mining industry.
“We hope that by presenting the facts and figures that illustrate the inefficient use of resources by Norilsk Nickel’s management and its inability to ensure the dynamic development of the company … we will be able to convince the shareholders to vote for the election of a new board of directors,” RusAl CEO Oleg Deripaska said in a statement.
Deripaska and Potanin, whose companies each control 25 percent stakes in Norilsk, have been battling intermittently since RusAl became a shareholder in 2008. RusAl lost its parity with Interros after a contested board election earlier this year.
A Norilsk spokeswoman said the company did not “see concrete proposals or even constructive criticism on this web site.”
Interros brushed off the latest criticism, saying it would not respond in kind.
“Deripaska could have drawn other conclusions on how to use his energy after the meeting with the prime minister in Norilsk,” an Interros spokesman said.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has regularly said the shareholders must settle their dispute amicably to avoid harming Norilsk.
During a visit to the Arctic city late last month, Putin suggested that RusAl should stop seeking excessive dividends. He also ordered both owners to re-invest more of Norilsk’s profit in the business and the heavily polluted city of Norilsk.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said he was aware of the web site but that “it wasn’t of any interest” to the government.
“We have no right to intervene in the shareholders’ relations. But in any event, actions like this by shareholders must not damage the company’s operations or negatively affect the implementation of what was decided at the meeting in Norilsk two weeks ago,” he told The Moscow Times.
At the meeting, Putin praised RusAl and Interros for moving to settle their feud but did not offer any guidance on how they should proceed.

TITLE: Time Is Ripe to Develop Agribusiness
AUTHOR: By Jenia Ustinova
TEXT: Russia’s worst drought in a century has turned fresh attention to agriculture’s vital importance for the country’s economy and society. With food prices spiraling and lines for buckwheat growing longer by the day, the authorities are frantically working out schemes to contain inflation and reassure the population that no real food shortages are looming.
But these are short-term measures with short-term consequences. The broader lesson of Russia’s current agricultural woes is that sustainable growth and vitality of the sector will depend on increased investment and accelerated modernization. Will Russia seize the opportunity to become a global agricultural power?
Over the past decade, Russia’s grain sector has made remarkable strides. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia was a net grain importer. Today, it is the third-largest wheat exporter behind the United States and Canada. This dynamic growth was driven initially by falling demand for feed grains as the livestock sector contracted, but starting in the 2000s, the sector benefited from favorable weather patterns and investors who were drawn in by cheap land, higher global grain prices, domestic economic growth and export potential.
The agriculture sector received an additional boost when investors introduced commercial principles and technology to the management of Russia’s farms. Although successor enterprises to Soviet collective farms control most of the arable land, large private agroholdings have been making steady gains and now cultivate about 20 percent of employed land. Foreign investment in Russian agriculture went up from a paltry $156 million in 2005 to $862 million in 2008.
There remains substantial potential for even more investment and productivity increases. Russia has the world’s largest repository of black earth, a soil rich in organic matter that produces strong agricultural yields. According to some estimates, as much as 60 percent, or about 49 million hectares, of Russian black earth is idle. Russia’s total arable land reserves, suitable for cultivation, are even larger. Additionally, grain yields on existing farmland could be increased two to three times with technological modernization. In short, Russia has scope to increase both harvested area as well as efficiency of its yields and to become a global grain-market powerhouse.
In the past, poor infrastructure and transportation networks, as well as complex legal procedures to secure ownership and lease land, were major barriers to attracting private investment in the Russian grain sector. But the drought could potentially open a larger window of opportunity for investors.
In a way, the drought came at a fortunate time for Russia’s agriculture sector. It coincided with a broader government push to attract Western investors to help revamp Russian industries to modernize and diversify the national economy. The extreme weather exposed the dire need for modern technology and equipment on farms and the necessity of massive investments in infrastructure for storage, transport and loading of grains for export. The political context for increasing the productivity and quality of Russian agriculture was set, most recently, by President Dmitry Medvedev’s approval in February of a national food security doctrine, which sets minimum self-sufficiency production goals as well as quality targets in all main food production categories.
But, of course, not all of Russia’s pastures are green. While, the government’s stated goals and pressing needs present real opportunities for foreign investment, the political and social significance of the agricultural sector heightens the potential for government intervention. As foreign investors in Russia are all too aware, there is a perennial conflict within the country’s political elite on how to balance the need for foreign investment and outside technology with an impulse to maximize state control over sectors that carry outsized economic or social significance.
In agriculture, investors are faced with the possibility that the government may one day move to tighten restrictions on foreign cultivation of land. The government prevents foreign investors from owning land, although they have been able to lease arable land, citing national security concerns and the social importance of agriculture to the nation. Moscow’s challenge now is not only to convince investors that transportation systems and export terminals will continue to be revamped and built and that the lengthy bureaucratic process to secure arable land will be worth the investment. To attract broad interest and substantial investments, the Kremlin must also convince private businesses that their investments in Russia’s agricultural sector won’t come under attack from the government.

Jenia Ustinova is an associate specializing in agriculture at New York-based Eurasia Group.

TITLE: Sell 4G in Closed-Bid Auction
AUTHOR: By Konstantin Sonin
TEXT: One reason Russia’s economic policy often falls short of the mark is because the government believes that it is unable to carry out the recommendations it receives from economists. It decides that ignoring the recommendations is better than implementing half-measures. For example, in winter and spring 2009, the government considered a range of infrastructure investment projects similar to the “financial stimulus” measures in China that would have eased the burden of the financial crisis. However, those projects never got off the ground, in part because the government had no illusions about its own limited capabilities.
Perhaps this is the reason Prime Minister Vladimir Putin decided not to hold an auction to allocate frequencies for Russia’s fourth-generation radio networks. After all, everybody knows that participants reach secret agreements beforehand, eliminating the competitive aspect of the bidding.
In fact, with only one exception, all major privatization auctions have suffered from this problem. These auctions were carried out English-style, not through sealed bids, and the item on the block went to the person who made the highest verbal bid. Controlling stakes in the two main production assets of the former Yukos oil company — Slavneft and Yuganskneftgaz — were sold at auction this way in 2000. Neither auction was competitive.
What is the problem with English auctions if bidders can theoretically reach agreements before any type of auction? The bids are made in the open, and each participant is able to make sure that the others are upholding their end of the bargain. But if one buyer breaks the prior agreement and raises the bid above the agreed limit, the others can join the fray and drive the price through the ceiling just for spite. Whoever finally does win will have to pay far more than was planned. Knowing that, participants tend to uphold the terms of their secret agreements and bid low.
But when the bids are submitted in sealed envelopes, all bets are off. The temptation to break prior agreements is much greater because the high bidder’s real intentions become known only later. This kind of auction makes it much harder for participants to “fix” the results in advance.
The only example of a successful privatization auction in Russia took place in 1997 when a blocking stake in Svyazinvest was auctioned off through closed bids. The winner, George Soros, offered $2 billion, an enormous sum for that time, and later bitterly regretted having overpaid.
But if the government — or in a broader sense, the public — is the auctioneer, we should be glad to have put so much money in state coffers. Another proof that the auction was truly competitive is that the losing bidders proceeded to unleash a media campaign against the government aimed primarily at former First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais.
Conducting such an auction for 4G networks would require political courage. But without such courage, effective government is impossible.

Konstantin Sonin is a professor at the New Economic School in Moscow and a columnist for Vedomosti.

TITLE: Modernizing Russia’s Tragic History
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
TEXT: In the Svirstroi village in the Leningrad region, there is a large bronze statue of a strong, stocky man in a long coat and cap on a high red granite pedestal, located behind brightly colored tents where the locals do a brisk business selling souvenirs at the Vepskoi market. The inscription reveals that this is a monument to Sergei Kirov, the leader of the Leningrad Communists who was killed under mysterious circumstances in 1934. It was his murder that gave Josef Stalin an excuse to unleash the Great Terror during the second half of the 1930s.
Higher up, beyond the statue of Kirov, stands the Svirskoi hydroelectric plant, built during Stalin’s reign by gulag prisoners, at least half of whom were imprisoned for political crimes. Estimates indicate that no fewer than 480,000 people in the northwestern region of the Soviet Union suffered during those horrendous years of repression, and tens of thousands of those — including a part of the workers who built the hydroelectric plant — were shot and killed. But the Leningrad region has only a few memorial cemeteries and monuments to those victims, while there are hundreds of monuments and streets dedicated to Lenin, Kirov, Bolshevik leader Moisei Uritsky and other Communist leaders.
The Svirskoi hydroelectric plant — and the entire town built around it — was built on bones and blood of political prisoners of the Soviet regime. And although at the nearby Alexander-Svirsky Monastery, founded in the late 15th century, visitors are occasionally told that during the Soviet period the monastery was closed and handed over to the local forced labor camps and was almost certainly the site of mass shootings, any mention or memory of the victims of state terror is barely discernible through the countless references to Soviet geographical names and pictures of the Soviet past.
Anatoly Razumov is a bibliographer and historian of the Leningrad region who pursues his task with almost religious devotion. Day after day, he has worked since 1991 to recover the names of the people shot and killed in the camps and prisons of northwest Russia. He and his colleagues have already assembled nine of the 15 volumes that will contain a list of the people shot in the Leningrad region. The Levashenskoye Cemetery near St. Petersburg alone holds the bodies of about 50,000 people who were shot by the NKVD between 1937 and 1954 and secretly buried there.
Razumov’s story about the bloody repression that affected every strata of the population and every city and town in the region without exception — and the attempt to “build socialism” at the cost of the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of people — served as an eerie backdrop for the annual Valdai Club meeting of Russia experts. At one of the Valdai functions, participants gathered on the Kronstadt ship and sailed down the waters of the Neva, Svir, Ladoga and Onega, passing by numerous gulags along the way, although few were aware of this fact.
Is modernization of Russia possible without revealing the whole truth about the Soviet period of Russian history, and without erecting monuments and memorial plaques to the victims of repression in every city and village? Most of the Valdai Club experts are convinced that it would it be impossible.
Russia has not fully examined this tragic period of its history, so it continues to block even basic progress, not to mention any hope of modernization. The legacy of government oppression continues in today’s Russia. The authorities continue to be unaccountable to the public, and law enforcement agencies continue to abuse basic human rights.
The pessimists among the Valdai Club members believe that the roots of state-sponsored terror and curtailment of freedoms go back way beyond the Soviet period, and that Stalin only brought terror to new levels. They believe that Russia’s leaders will never move beyond a mindset of control and violence and a disregard for human rights, checks and balances and democracy. At the same time, the Valdai optimists believe that there are precedents in Russian history when the country managed to carry out large-scale and successful liberal reforms, such as those of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. They also point to numerous examples of successful modernization programs in autocratic countries, such as China, Singapore and South Korea.
At the same time, neither group takes a serious view of President Dmitry Medvedev’s attempts to impose modernization from above. The government has no real modernization plan or strategy. Neither are there plans for serious institutional reforms, in contrast to those implemented under the rule of Tsars Alexander II and Nicholas II. Leaders have expressed no willingness to change the basic relationship between the government and the people. The president himself does not clarify the situation, having refused to meet with the Valdai Club. As for Putin, he has always preferred to avoid the topic of modernization, thus showing his clear preference for status quo power vertical and state capitalism models.
During a session on modernization, the condition of the country was best described by one of the participants, who said: “Many write about Russia’s growing power — its military power, economic power and political power. But even with all that power, for some reason it can’t take a single step forward.”

Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: Smokers Seeing the Warning Signs
AUTHOR: By Zsuzsanna Jakab
TEXT: For the past year, the World Health Organization has been working on the first-ever comprehensive tobacco survey for Russia, the Global Adult Tobacco Survey 2009. The report, planned for release later in the year, will reveal a lot of interesting new statistics on smoking trends in the country.
Statistics that can already be released confirm that the number of smokers continues to be high. A total of 33.8 percent of Russian adults smoke on a daily basis. Among men, this figure is 60.2 percent (30.6 million), while women are steadily catching up at a current rate of 21.7 percent (13.3 million). Moreover, 51.4 percent of all adults reported having been exposed to second-hand smoke in public places in the preceding 30 days of the survey.
These are disconcerting figures for the overall health of the population. It is a cause for optimism nevertheless that despite the high smoking rates, there is growing awareness among the population of the various dangers of tobacco smoke. More than 60 percent of current smokers are interested in quitting, and 81.9 percent of adults know that exposure to second-hand smoke causes serious illness in nonsmokers.
While in most West European countries the prevalence of smoking among both men and women has stabilized or is falling, in Russia it has shown an upward trend since 1991. Smoking among boys and girls is also high and rising, with over a third of adolescents using tobacco products. The diminishing gender gap in smoking habits is especially evident in this younger generation of smokers: Smoking prevalence among boys 13 to 15 years of age is close to 30 percent, while among girls of the same age it is close to 25 percent.
The National Tobacco Control Strategy is close to being finalized. The survey will — for the first time — provide evidence-based nationally representative data on adult smoking and related patterns in Russia. The survey targeted all Russian adults at 15 years or older, and was conducted in 60 out of the 83 regions, resulting in a 91.1 percent coverage of the total population. It was conducted in close collaboration with the State Statistics Service, the Pulmonary Research Institute and the Health and Social Development Ministry.
The damaging impact of Russia’s high rates of tobacco use is clear. Tobacco is the second-highest risk factor — after alcohol — for men, contributing to an average life expectancy that is below the average of the 53 countries of the WHO European region. Russia has one of the highest cancer mortality rates in the European region, and it is also one of the 22 countries in the world with a high burden of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, a disease that is closely associated with tobacco use.
Tobacco-related harm has also contributed to the low birth rate recorded in Russia in recent years. Smoking reduces fertility and is a leading cause of poor pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriage, low birth weight, complications during labor and prenatal death.
There is thus a clear need, and ample opportunity, to significantly improve public health in Russia through targeted and comprehensive interventions to reduce tobacco use. The Russian government has made a serious commitment to tobacco control, among others by ratifying the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2008.
Parties to the convention are obliged to implement evidence-based measures to reduce tobacco use and its terrible toll in health, lives and money. Russia has already taken many steps to amend its current tobacco control legislation, and a further strengthening of it is needed.

Zsuzsanna Jakab is director of the Copenhagen-based WHO regional office for Europe.

TITLE: Mariinsky Theater Prepares to Open Season
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The world-renowned Mariinsky Theater opens its new 228th season on Tuesday with a performance of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina” with mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina and tenor Vladimir Galuzin in the lead roles, and Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky symphony orchestra.
In the new season, the Mariinsky will be presenting its new guest conductor, Nikolai Znajder, who originally carved out a career as a violinist. On Oct.1, Znajder will lead the Mariinsky symphony orchestra in a program of Mahler and Beethoven.
On Oct. 6, the conductor will appear with the orchestra for an all-Mendelssohn program.
The company continues the first week of the new season with a must-see concert-performance by celebrated French soprano Natalie Dessay in the title role in Donizetti’s opera “Lucia di Lammermoor.” Dessay, the internationally famed queen of the belcanto repertoire, renowned for turning her concert programs into full-scale shows and injecting a heavy dose of drama into her every entrance, is also working on a recording of the opera with the Mariinsky symphony orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev.
Dessay, who made her first performance in Russia on June 18 with a gala concert at the Mariinsky concert hall, has a great admiration for the Russian repertoire, and her connection with the Mariinsky Theater looks set to develop in the future.
“In my opinion, there is a perfect opera in the international repertoire with regard to the music and the drama — Tchaikovsky’s opera “Eugene Onegin,” Dessay told The St. Petersburg Times. “It is a story of how you can never regain the past. As a person, I identify with [the central character] Tatyana Larina, and would behave exactly the same way as she does if I were in similar circumstances.
“I am an emotional and frank person, and I do not find her behavior old-fashioned — I don’t see anything bad in that,” the singer added. “And I could also drive away my own Onegin — and for the same reasons. ‘Eugene Onegin’ will never lose its value: It’s the story of a man who has come back to the woman who loved him but is too late. Alas, such stories will be around for as long as the world exists. It’s a pity, but I will never sing the role of Tatyana — my voice isn’t suited to the role.”
Oct. 18 will see a solo-recital by the prominent soprano Maria Guleghina, who gained international fame in the Russian and Italian repertoires. The first operatic premiere of the season, Leos Janacek’s “Vec Makropulos” (The Makropulos Case), will take place on Oct. 23, with a repeat performance the following day, in a co-production with the Copenhagen Opera House. 
In the meantime, the Mariinsky label’s latest recording — a rendition of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal, which will be release on Sept. 20 — has already been hailed by Britain’s authoritative BBC Music Magazine as its “disc of the month.” 
Parsifal is the label’s first recording of a work by Wagner. Both internationally acclaimed stars including Ren? Pape as Gurnemanz, Violetta Urmana as Kundry and Gary Lehman as Parsifal and the Mariinsky Opera Company’s leading Wagnerian singers including Yevgeny Nikitin as Amfortas, Nikolai Putilin as Klingsor and Alexei Tanovitsky as Titurel took part in the recordings for the disc. The recording was made at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theater during the Stars of the White Nights festival in the summer of 2009. 
 “The fact that this recording is so memorable is due, first and foremost, to Valery Gergiev,” wrote Michael Scott Rohan in his review for the BBC Music Magazine. “His interpretation is lively, vivid and expansive, yet at the same time it has a smoothly changing tempo, and this makes the opera ‘excitingly theatrical.’ It depicts that which draws genuine admiration and allows the team to convey the genuine theatricality of the work – probably it is here that the passionate ‘Russian soul’ and not the gloomy Germanic immersion in contemplation comes out – and so much the better. Many conductors have tried, to varying degrees of success, to free Parsifal from any kind of Teutonic associations that are generally – mistakenly – considered to be the composer’s ideal. In his Bayreuth recording, Pierre Boulez chose stormy tempi, sacrificing too many details of the music and the general atmosphere of the work. 
As the critic points out, Gergiev and his powerful Mariinsky Theatre Chorus and Orchestra “have achieved the holiest warmth and semi-transparency in both the choral and orchestral textures – beautifully conveyed with extremely precise SACD recording.” The British critics said that Gergiev has succeeded in igniting the inner light of Parsifal better than Boulez and Jordan, and although it does not replace Knappertsbusch I will listen to it just as often.” 
Hugh Canning from the International Record Review states similarly in his review that Nikitin and Putilin have created an impressive pair of true antagonists. “The nobility of the fatally wounded Amfortas, in whose every phrase shine through both pain and merit, forms a magnificent contrast to Putilin’s Klingsor, who shamelessly and indulgently relishes the rotting fruits of his sorcery,” Canning said. 
The International Record Review recommends that lovers of Wagner’s operas simply must have this recording in their collection. The publication argues that Gergiev’s Parsifal is especially worthy because of its vivid theatricality and the enchanting performance by the Mariinsky symphony orchestra, which played without any exaggeration, at the height of its powers. 
“This Wagnerian mystery with a religious nuance resonates, much more than the composer’s other works, Gergiev’s beloved operas by 19th century Russian composers, in which the symbolism of spiritual traditions is also tremendously strong,” Canning wrote. “First and foremost this refers to Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia, which is often called ‘the Russian Parsifal,’ as well as the opera Kashchei the Immortal. The image of the enchanted gardens in Rimsky-Korsakov’s realm of Kashchei is clearly taken from the image of Wagner’s Klingsor.”

TITLE: An Englishman in Moscow
AUTHOR: By Tobin Auber
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The title of John Miller’s new book, “All Them Cornfields and Ballet in the Evening,” is a fitting illustration of the fact that until recently Russia was (and perhaps remains) another planet. In the classic British trade-union satire “I’m Alright, Jack,” Peter Sellers, playing a tragi-comic, radical trade unionist, imagines the Soviet Union as a worker’s paradise. Asked if he’s ever been to Russia, he replies wistfully that he hasn’t: “I’ve always wanted to though … all them cornfields and ballet in the evening.”
As Miller makes clear in this excellent memoir of decades spent in the Soviet Union, it’s easy to forget how far western impressions of Soviet Russia differed from the grim and at times bizarre reality. Foreigners visiting Russia for the first time in the early 1990s, seeing the organizational decay and general dilapidation of the country, could be seen scratching their heads and wondering how the CIA and its counterparts had managed to keep the West petrified about the Soviet threat for so long. In the Internet and post-Kurnikova, post-Sharapova age, it’s also easy to forget that not so long ago the dominant images of Russian women were not lithe, long-legged blonde beauties. Instead, harrowing images of hairy, muscled creatures pumped up on anabolic steroids, occasionally glimpsed putting the shot or hurling javelins at the Olympic Games would spring to mind. For many years, it was the first-manned spaceflight, piloted by the heroic Yuri Gagarin that symbolized the awesome and largely imagined achievements of Soviet industry and technology to the West, rather than the make-do, bodged and backward reality of daily life in Russia. 
As a foreign correspondent in the USSR for more than 40 years, predominantly in Moscow and predominantly with the Reuters news agency, Miller was perfectly placed to chronicle this discrepancy, and his idiosyncratic reminiscences of life in the Russian capital and the key political figures of the day, all delivered in a brisk, cheerful, no-nonsense style, make for an engaging read. 
Miller began his reporting career in Moscow during the reign of Nikita Khrushchev (“a wonderful old windbag”), and his journalistic eye and ear for juicy gossip soon has him giving eye-witness reports of gems such as the paunchy Soviet leader’s very diplomatic observation to a high-powered delegation from Paris: “Our women do work, and they do honest work. Not like women in France who, I’m told, are all whores.”
Delightful snippets such as this come thick and fast. There is his description of Khrushchev’s anti-alcoholism campaign, undertaken to safeguard Russia’s image in the eyes of foreign tourists as the country opened during the Thaw, with police officers being sent out across Moscow in squadrons of motorbikes, strapping the inebriated into their sidecars and hauling them off the streets. His description of the pained, protracted and entirely illogical dealings with Soviet censors is worthy of Kafka, as are the misfortunes of committed western socialists and communists who moved to the Soviet Union in search of an ideological paradise. As they quickly discovered, some in labor camps, it was very far from being a promised land of endless cornfields and ballet in the evening. 
In the latter category, Miller’s meetings with the Cambridge spies Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby are rich in first-hand, powerful observations of telling details. Although Miller himself, in his typically blunt style, questions their importance in the grand scheme of things (“who cares that a couple of often drunken diplomats took up with Uncle Joe and flogged a few secrets to his police force?”), he readily admits that at the time “it was a hell of a ‘Story,’ part and parcel of the Cold War, material for a thousand thrillers.” 
Miller clearly has little sympathy with these men, regarding them as misguided traitors, but there is a grim poignancy in his description of Philby’s personal betrayal of Maclean (he ran off with his wife) and Burgess’s shady demise: “Burgess, offered male lovers, said he preferred to find his own. But on his first expedition he was badly beaten up and lost most of his teeth. His hosts [the security services] found his experience amusing, but had dentures made and fitted for him. Unfortunately, they were so stained and uneven that Burgess hated them for the rest of his days.” 
Miller’s account of meetings with Burgess, his perpetual cadging of drinks and his general seediness, segues nicely into another of this book’s great strength — its description of the life of expats, predominantly journalists and diplomats, in Moscow. “At the end, Burgess was probably the loneliest man in the Soviet Union,” Miller tells us. “He didn’t like Russians, because they couldn’t talk about the Reform Club and the bars of London. His friends could be counted on one hand, and some of them were British correspondents.” That’s how low he’d sunk.
Miller, clearly not one to pull his punches, gives some wonderfully juicy character sketches of notable figures in the hack pack of journalists that lived on “Sad Sam” (“Sadova-Samotyochnaya Ulitsa, a ghetto for Westerners”), and is particularly unsparing in his treatment of British diplomats. 
Former British ambassador Sir Geoffrey Harrison got off on the wrong foot with Miller when he barred journalists from using the embassy shop, where they had been able to stock up on cornflakes, toilet paper and other items that were hard to come by in Soviet Russia. The duty-free Scotch was particularly sorely missed. 
Miller is clearly somebody you should avoid getting on the wrong side of, and Russia’s current crop of British diplomats would do well to read this book and learn one golden rule: Beware the wrath of British journalists, especially if you have deprived them of their kippers and duty-free Scotch. Miller takes wicked delight in informing us that Sir Geoffrey (“tall, suave, chinless”) later confessed to his Foreign Office masters that he had fallen for a classic KGB honey-trap and had been having an affair with his embassy maid, a KGB agent. They had even been photographed making love in the residence’s laundry. Although the matter was hushed up, only coming out years later, he returned to England in disgrace.
In his general outlook and comments on Russia and Russians, Miller avoids any romantic idealization of the country’s soul, soil or citizens, but also avoids plunging into the resigned pessimism that overcomes many in the expat community here. “They [the Russians] have done some dreadful things to each other and to others,” he concludes, “and I fear they will behave badly again… Putin’s Russia lacks any ideology except a crude notion of Capitalism. But I am convinced that the day is coming when Russia will be an ordinary, normal, and — heaven forbid — boring country.” Some will agree with the diagnosis here and elsewhere in the book, without being entirely convinced of the prognosis.
The book is not without its faults. Firstly, compressing forty years’ experience into just over 300 pages in a fairly impressionistic style and with almost no reference to dates can lead to confusion, with lines between the’60s, ’70s, ’80s  and ’90s frequently blurring. 
Secondly, although the book provides informed insights into spies and spying, being liberally littered with references to these dark arts, you can’t help wondering if Miller is being entirely candid when he says he was in no way linked to the British secret services during his time in Russia, even turning down a job offer when approached by them. Taught Russian by the British military and having served in MI10 (the intelligence branch dealing with Soviet military equipment), the son of an intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force, he would have been an ideal candidate, and it’s hard to imagine that he entirely slipped through the net.
Another complaint is the plethora of typos, grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, for which the book’s proofreaders should be given a good spanking  — very much in the spirit of Miller’s book, I can tell you that there’s one member of the current diplomatic community in Petersburg who would particularly relish this task.
These, however, are all minor quibbles that actually add yet more character and color to a book that is already packed with rich and distinctive impressions. Miller was here for over 40 years as a professional observer, and reading his excellent memoir you can’t help feeling that it was time well spent.

TITLE: China-Japan Row Boils Despite Crew Release
AUTHOR: By Harumi Ozawa
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: TOKYO — Japan on Monday released the 14-strong crew of a Chinese fishing trawler seized last week but kept its captain in custody, doing little to soothe Beijing’s fury in a bitter row between the Asian rivals.
The diplomatic spat centers on a disputed island chain in the East China Sea, where Japan says the Chinese boat was fishing illegally last week and, when ordered to leave, rammed two Japanese coastguard vessels during a chase.
Since Tokyo arrested the skipper last Wednesday, Beijing has reacted angrily, repeatedly summoning Japan’s ambassador, cancelling talks on joint energy exploration and confronting two Japanese survey ships at sea.
On Monday, China -- where the issue has sparked strong patriotic passions -- again demanded that Japan immediately release the vessel’s captain, 41-year-old Zhan Qixiong, who it said was being illegally detained.
“All the people of China... condemn the illegal Japanese behavior in one voice and fully embody the staunch will and determination of the Chinese government and people to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.
The uninhabited islands where the incident took place -- called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China -- lie in an area believed to contain rich seafloor energy deposits, and have been a frequent focus of regional tensions.
The latest Beijing-Tokyo flare-up comes at a time when Japan is voicing concern over China’s military rise, including its naval reach deeper into the Pacific, and has demanded more transparency in Beijing’s defense spending.
The rivalry between Japan, Asia’s post-war economic engine room, and the population giant next door is, meanwhile, reaching a turning point, after China just unseated Japan as the world’s second-biggest economy.
The arrest of the Chinese skipper has ignited nationalistic passions in China, where a small protest was permitted outside the Japanese embassy last week and both state media and bloggers have condemned the arrest.
In Taiwan, which also claims the islands, anti-Japanese protesters Monday set sail for the rocky outcrops. Only two activists and three crew were on board, and Taiwan’s coastguard barred another seven Hong Kong and Macau activists from joining the high-profile journey in another vessel.
In Japan, authorities Monday allowed the Chinese trawler’s 14-strong crew to fly home to the southeastern city of Fuzhou aboard a chartered Chinese government jet. State television showed images of the crew smiling as they disembarked.
“Our safe return is due to the work of Chinese society, including the Party, the government and compatriots from all walks of life,” said Wang Guohua, one of the crew members, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
He said the islands are Chinese territory and their detention by the Japanese authorities was illegal. “For generations, we have fished in those waters and so how could they seize us?” he said.
The vessel’s captain, Zhan, is being held in Japan on suspicion of obstructing officers on duty, a charge that carries a penalty of up to three years in prison. He has so far not been indicted, the step before a trial.
Japan’s top government spokesman, Yoshito Sengoku, said that questioning of the crew had been completed, meaning there was no reason to keep them, and that prosecutors had also finished collecting evidence from the ship.
“We will handle this as a criminal case based on Japanese domestic law,” Sengoku told a regular press briefing, reiterating Tokyo’s position that there is no territorial dispute over the islands.
Speaking about the latest time Japan’s ambassador was called in, in the early hours of Sunday, he said, “It was regrettable that China summoned the ambassador at such hours. But we are handling this issue calmly.”
He added that “we are puzzled by China’s announcement to call off the talks on joint development of gas fields due to this issue,” referring to cancelled talks about jointly developing East China Sea energy deposits.

TITLE: Turkish Vote Boosts PM’s Chances Of Re-election
AUTHOR: By Hande Culpan
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: ANKARA — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Monday celebrated an emphatic victory in a referendum on constitutional changes that analysts said strengthened his Islamist-rooted party’s chances of winning a third term in elections next year.
Official provisional results showed that 57.88 percent of the voters backed the amendments with 42.12 percent against, giving Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) a better-than-expected margin of victory. Turnout was 73.7 percent.
“The result... indicates that the AKP remains the dominant party,” in EU-candidate Turkey, said Wolgango Piccoli, an analyst with the risk consultancy group Eurasia, in a note to investors.
“The comfortable margin of the “yes” vote is market positive as it indicates that the AKP has good prospects of winning a third term at the general elections due by July 2011,” he added.
The AKP, which has its roots in a banned Islamist movement, has been in power on its own since 2002, reigning over strong economic growth while introducing business-friendly policies and reforms designed to bring the country closer to the European Union.
Turkish shares surged by two percent in Monday morning trading in expectation of continuing political stability under a fresh AKP government after the 2011 elections.
But the party is also suspected by many of harboring a hidden Islamist agenda and has frequently clashed with the military and the judiciary which see themselves as defenders of the country’s strict secular system.
The constitutional amendments approved in Sunday’s vote were aimed at restructuring the country’s top courts and curbing the military’s influence, steps that opponents fear mask an AKP drive to tighten its grip on power and gain a free hand to raise the profile of Islam in the country.
The AKP, which denies the allegations, argues that the changes to the constitution, the legacy of the 1980 military coup, would raise democratic standards and draw Turkey closer to its goal of EU membership.
In his victory speech Sunday night, Erdogan hailed the vote a “turning point” for Turkish democracy and announced that his party would start work on a brand new constitution.
The government’s intention to fully rewrite the constitution “could be the new source of tension,” Finansbank chief economist Inan Demir warned. “The referendum and the general election will not spell the end of the political noise.”
Political commentators agreed that the referendum result pointed at a public appetite for democratic change, but warned Erdogan not to overlook the substantial “no” votes in the referendum as he moves ahead with his plan.
Some analysts warned that Erdogan had attained immeasurable power with the vote result, underlining his pre-referendum proposal of introducing a presidential system in Turkey.

TITLE: Iran to Release U.S. Detainee on $500k Bail
AUTHOR: By Hiedeh Farmani
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: TEHRAN — A senior prosecutor said on Sunday that Iran will release US hiker Sarah Shourd on bail, as he criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government for interfering in judicial issues.
Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said Shourd, one of three US hikers detained in the Islamic republic for more than a year, had been granted bail on health grounds on a surety of about 500,000 dollars.
“For the female defendant (Shourd), bail has been set at five billion Iranian rials (about 500,000 US dollars),” the official IRNA news agency quoted Dolatabadi as saying.
“She can be freed by posting the bail,” he said, adding the decision was taken after a “judge confirmed Ms. Shourd’s illness.”
Shourd’s mother Nora said last month her 32-year-old daughter was being held in solitary confinement despite suffering from a pre-cancerous cervical condition, a lump in her breast and depression.
Shourd, arrested along with fellow hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal on July 31, 2009 after straying into Iran from Iraq, was expected to have been freed on Saturday, but those hopes were dashed by legal technicalities.
The U.S. on Sunday voiced cautious optimism Iran would free Shourd.
“Obviously we’re hopeful and encouraged by this news but there have been starts and stops in this before and until that actually happens, you know, we’re on a wait-and-see basis,” White House adviser David Axelrod said.
But he declined to comment on the fate of Bauer and Fattal.
State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said meanwhile that US diplomats were working to bring all three hikers home. “We continue to hope and work for the release of all the hikers,” he said.
Earlier the lawyer acting for the hikers, Masoud Shafii, told Iran’s ISNA news agency Shourd could be freed later Sunday.
He said his clients had been charged with “espionage and illegal entry,” which they “rejected.”
The three previously insisted they entered Iran by mistake after getting lost during a trek in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The hikers’ families declined to comment on the latest developments. “The families are not making any comment at this stage,” family spokesman Paul Holmes said on their behalf.
Shourd’s release could ease tensions between Washington and Tehran, which have heightened in recent months over Iran’s controversial uranium enrichment program.
Her case has highlighted deep divisions between Ahmadinejad’s government and conservative-run institutions like the judiciary.

TITLE: U.S. Takes First FIBA Worlds Title Since ’94
AUTHOR: By Jared Grellet
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: ISTANBUL — The United States captured their first world basketball title since 1994 on Sunday when they defeated Turkey 81-64 in the gold medal match.
It was the Americans’ fourth world crown and comes two years after they won the Olympic title in Beijing.
Even without 12 of the squad who triumphed in China, they were still too strong for the competition here with Oklahoma City star Kevin Durant again showing off his outstanding talents.
Having scored 38 points in the semi-final win over Lithuania, he added 28 more against Turkey to repay coach Mike Krzyzewski’s faith in him.
“It was a great challenge for us,” said US captain Chauncey Billups.
“We are a very young team and inexperienced, but we have been really close since the start of the tournament. Kevin Durant was huge. He was the best player of the tournament.”
Turkey player Cenk Akyol said the whole country could be proud of the home team.
“Just to be in the final is a great accomplishment and we can be very proud,” said Akyol.
“It’s an historic moment, but we went down to a very athletic, very talented team.”

TITLE: Mexico Nabs Drug Kingpin Sergio Villarreal
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: MEXICO CITY — Authorities have arrested one of Mexico’s most wanted men, alleged drug trafficker Sergio Villarreal, who is said to work for the Beltran Leyva cartel, a military source said on Sunday.
“Sergio Villarreal, ‘El Grande,’ was arrested with two other people in a non-violent operation in the (central) city of Puebla,” the source said on condition of anonymity.
According to authorities, Villarreal was a key participant in a bloody struggle for the leadership of the Beltran-Leyva cartel that began after former chief Arturo Beltran Leyva was killed last year.
Villarreal and Hector Beltran Leyva, Arturo’s brother, were feuding with would-be cartel leaders including Edgar Valdez, also known as “La Barbie,” who was captured by authorities on August 30.
“La Barbie,” so-called for his fair complexion and light colored eyes, is accused by both Mexican and US authorities of drug trafficking and murders.
Villarreal is similarly accused by Mexican authorities of trafficking and carrying out murders for several of the country’s brutal drug cartels, which have killed tens of thousands of people in bloody turf battles with each other and confrontations with Mexican authorities.

TITLE: Zen and the Art of the Montreux Riviera
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The last thing you would call the Montreux Riviera is monotonous: It’s home to a world-famous jazz festival, boasts a spectacular lakeside, one of the world’s most renowned vineyards, some of the world’s most respected health and beauty clinics and an unrivaled reputation as a haven of tranquility that has even hosted the meditation sessions of an Indian maharaja.
Located at the foot of the Alps, by serene Lake Geneva, Montreux, with its idyllic Alpine landscapes, has been a darling of the world’s bohemians and cultural elite when in search of serenity and a peaceful state of mind.
 
BOHEMIAN CONNECTIONS
“If you want peace for your soul, come to Montreux,” to quote the late lead singer of Queen, Freddie Mercury, who spent the last months of his life in the city before he died of AIDS in 1991.
Queen recorded their last albums in their Montreux studio, where they produced some of their greatest hits, while Montreux Riviera views appeared on the cover of their album Made in Heaven.
A statue of Mercury overlooking the bay installed in 1996 has become one of the new symbols of the city.
Montreux, which emerged as a small settlement back in the Ancient Roman era, is closely linked to the names of composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Igor Stravinsky, actor Charlie Chaplin — a private chocolaterie in Vevey made an international name for itself with its signature chocolate shaped as Chaplin’s famous boots — and writers Francis Scott Fitzgerald and Vladimir Nabokov, the latter’s former room on the top floor of the luxurious Montreux Palace Hotel now booked for decades in advance.
Much of the antique furnishing has remained unchanged in the Nabokov suite, designed in soft and light pastel colors. The staff have even retained the trace an ink puddle in a drawer of his writing desk. Nabokov lived at the hotel for 15 years. The hotel managers say the writer never received visitors in his room and had a favorite sofa in one of the hotel’s dining rooms for that purpose.
Another strong association with Montreux is “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple. Its lyrics were based on a true story of a fire that destroyed the Montreux Casino —named “the gambling house” in the song — in December 1971. The fire broke out when a member of the audience fired a flare gun at the venue’s covered ceiling. The musicians, who had came to town that winter to record an album, watched the massive fire from their hotel rooms.
The casino, which was later rebuilt, now provides the lion’s share of the city’s revenues and is a key venue for the renowned Montreux Jazz Festival which has attracted some of the leading lights on the international jazz scene since it was established in 1967.

ANCIENT VINEYARDS 
OF LAVAUX 
It would be a crime to leave the region without a bottle of wine from a private wine-grower from Lavaux, the picturesque Lavaux wine-growing region on Lake Geneva, which has been recognised as a world heritage site by UNESCO. The gorgeous-looking 800-year-old terraced wine region enjoys the same status as The Great Wall of China and Taj Mahal of India.
Stretching between Lausanne and Vevey along the Lake Geneva, the ancient vineyards boast a breathtaking alpine panorama, and produce some of Switzerland’s most celebrated wines, including Calamin, Dezaley and St. Saphorin.
A bottle of Chassela, a famous regional specialty, costs around CHF20 ($20).
The region has one very special wine in stock, the Plant Robert, which is made from a red grape, which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. The grapes were originally grown on the other side of Lake Leman, but an adventurous Swiss wine-maker once stole some samples from the French, who soon stopped cultivating the grape for reasons no longer known.
Renowned for its exquisite, full-bodied taste, which the locals proudly describe as a bravura achievement, the wine is made by several local producers who spell the name differently — Plant Robert or Plant Robez — but the meaning is essentially the same: “the stolen fruit.”

A ROYAL CONFISERIE
On the gastronomic side, one absolute must venue is the historic Zurcher Confiserie. Founded in 1879, this charming caf?, serving outstanding chocolate, has had members of several European royal families among its most loyal customers.
Franz Joseph I, the Emperor of Austria, who would visit Montreux with his wife, Princess Sophie of Bavaria, was very fond of the caf?’s delicacies, ordering them every time he holidayed in the region.
“During their trips, the royal couple, who were both very private people, kept a low profile, did not really go out and sat in the caf?; the owner would send his son with a special parcel to the Majestic Grand Hotel, the oldest in town, where they always stayed,” recounts Jacqueline, a local resident in her 60s. “My grandmother knew the founders of Zurcher, and when I was a child she loved to tell me the story of how the owner’s son was scared on his first important mission to the hotel. When he knocked on the door of the Emperor’s room, he was shaking all over, and nearly dropped the bag of cakes, but the Emperor was very friendly, let the boy in, and chatted with him.”
The owner of Zurcher was as modest a person as he was talented as a chocolatier, so he never tried to capitalize on his noble clients to boost his reputation. In fact, to this day the walls at the establishment are refreshingly free of former patrons such as Franz Joseph or anything of the kind. 
“Eventually, the people found out about the ‘royal deliveries’, of course, and they thought, ‘well, if it is good enough for the Austrian emperor, it should be good enough for us as well’, and the venue grew incredibly popular,” Jacqueline said.
Today, some of the Zurcher’s most attractive products include dark hand-made chocolate with crystallized orange slices, and colored marzipan signets with antique ornaments.

BEAUTY CLINICS
Travelers flock to the region’s internationally established health and beauty clinics which specialize in rejuvenation, recuperation, cosmetic surgery and dietology.
Clinic La Prairie has a solid reputation as one of the world’s best medical spa. Its surgeons operate on all parts of the human body, except for the brain and heart, but the clinic’s own know-how and signature technique is a unique cellular therapy rejuvenation program.
In 1931, the clinic’s founder, Dr Paul Niehans, who created the famous La Prarie and Swiss Perfection cosmetic lines, became the first medic in the world to offer his patients rejuvenation in the form of injections of cellular extracts.
The formula of the special CLP is kept under strict secret. What is known is that the “youth elixir” is received from the liver of embryo lambs grown at a special farm in Fribourg. The clinic’s clientele has included Winston Churchill, Conrad Adenhauer, Marlene Dietrich and Charlie Chaplin. Today, the facility remains popular, and when it comes to cellular rejuvenation programs, Russian clients — politicians, businessmen, actors — are among the top three client groups, along with Chinese and Latin American patients.
“It is hard to generalize, but the Russian patients do have a few things in common that make them rather special,” said Dr Adrian Heini, one of the clinic’s leading specialists. According to Heini, a typical Russian client is a successful middle-aged politician or entrepreneur, whose body is half-destroyed by bad habits and an erratic lifestyle.
“Nervous exhaustion, insomnia and that infamous habit to stimulate themselves with a mighty dose of alcohol, regardless of the time of day — it can all be seen on their faces,” Heini said. “Naturally, they benefit from the treatments they get here, but our task as doctors is to explain to the patients how what they were doing wrong in their lives led to their problems and how to best use their own resources. And the Russian patients, I have to say, find it especially hard to give up bad habits and change their mentality. They prefer to come to a clinic and ask us to clear up the consequences.”

CHILLON CASTLE 
Montreux is home to Switzerland’s most visited historic monument. The stately Chillon Castle, built on a tiny rocky island which creates the magical impression that it is arising straight from the water, is nearly 1,000 years old. Once serving as a jail, the place had Lord Byron — who described it in its poem “The Prisoner of Chillon” — as perhaps its most famous prisoner. Four of its chilly halls are now available for rent for business meetings or social events.
For a splendid view over Montreux, take a rack railway train to Les Rochers-des-Naye, where it is fun to observe dozens of lively marmots from Europe, Asia, South and North America play and fight in the brand new Marmots Paradise Center.

HOW TO GET THERE
Swiss International Airlines (www.swiss.com) flies daily from St. Petersburg to Zurich and twice daily from Moscow to Zurich. The company also operates a direct daily flight from Moscow to Geneva.
Within Switzerland the public transport system is legendarily efficient, and provides an amazingly easy way to get around the country. For train travel within the country, you can save up to 70 percent with a Swiss Pass, which provides unlimited rail transport for 4, 8, 15 or 22 days, or 1 month. The passes are valid on all of Switzerland’s fabled scenic routes, and also good for the public-transport systems of 35 Swiss cities. Swiss Pass holders also receive many discounts on mountain excursions and other services.
Another option is the Swiss Flexi Pass, which is ideal for anyone not planning to travel every day. It is valid for a certain number of days within one month, which do not have to be consecutive. On travel days, Swiss Flexi Pass holders enjoy the same advantages as Swiss Pass holders. Trains between Switzerland’s main towns depart every 30 minutes. All the schedules and other information are on the Web site www.rail.ch
To get to Montreux, take a train from Zurich to Lausanne, then change onto a regional train to Montreux.
To get to Geneva, take a train from Montreux. Alternatively, during warmer seasons, take a boat.

USEFUL LINKS:
www.myswitzerland.ru
www.swissworld.org
www.swissinfo.ch www.swiss.com www.montreuxriviera.com
www.lavaux-vinorama.ch
www.laprairie.ch www.chillon.ch 
www.confiserie-zurcher.ch