SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1620 (81), Friday, October 22, 2010
**************************************************************************
TITLE: Third Court Upholds Gay Pride Appeal
AUTHOR: By Sophie Gaitzsch
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A third St. Petersburg court ruled Tuesday that City Hall’s ban of a gay pride event last summer was illegal, two days before the European Court of Human Rights ordered Russia to pay damages to a gay rights activist.
The city’s Petrogradsky district court followed the examples set earlier this month by the city’s Moskovsky and Admiralteisky district courts to rule in favor of the gay community.
“The court has upheld our complaint and called the conduct of the authorities illegal,” Maria Yefremenkova, head of the St. Petersburg Gay Pride organizing committee, told The St. Petersburg Times on Thursday. “The judgment also obliges the Petrogradsky district authorities to allocate us a place and time to hold a demonstration.”
According to Nikolai Alexeyev, a leading activist in Russia’s gay movement, the rulings upholding the activists’ appeal are “the first [of their kind] in the history of Russia,” Interfax reported.
The committee had wanted to hold a gay pride event on June 26, but its applications for permission to organize the meeting were repeatedly turned down by City Hall. Despite the interdiction, activists tried to go ahead with their march on Palace Square, but were stopped by the police.
“Those rulings mean for us that justice in the districts is independent and that the decisions were not taken under the influence of politics or the church,” said Yefremenkova. “They give us hope and the will to go forward in our fight. We also see it as a first step for the acceptance of the LGBT community in public and political life.”
Such optimistic observations were however difficult to find Thursday among other human rights activists. Several human rights lawyers declined to comment on the judgment.
“Of course it is a step forward and we hope that the authorities will follow the line of this decision,” said Frederica Behr from Amnesty International’s Moscow office. “But it is not our job to interpret the impact of these rulings for the future. We will have to see what happens. In any case, we will continue to campaign to make sure that the authorities respect everyone’s rights, especially those of minorities,” she added.
After its string of legal victories, the St. Petersburg gay and lesbian community is determined to keep a high profile. The group is planning to hold an outdoor event to draw the public’s attention to the situation of LGBT people near the St. Petersburg Sports and Concert Complex (SKK) in the Moskovsky district. The rally, in which about 40 people are expected to take part, is due to take place on Nov. 6 or 7.
How the Moskovsky district authorities will react is not yet clear. “We will notify the authorities of the rally on Monday,” Yefremkova said Thursday. “For now, it is difficult to predict what their intentions are. But it’s possible that they got scared. Maybe the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECHR) condemnation of Russia for not allowing gay pride events in Moscow will have an influence,” she said, referring to a ruling by the Strasburg-based tribunal that was made public Thursday.
According to the ECHR, Russia has violated article 11, 13 and 14 — freedom of assembly and association, right to an effective remedy, and prohibition of discrimination — of the European Convention on Human Rights by rejecting the requests of activists to organize gay marches in 2006, 2007 and 2008 in Moscow. Russia is to pay Alexeyev, the plaintiff in the case, 12,000 euros ($16,800) for non-pecuniary damages and 17,510 euros ($24,500) for costs and expenses, the court announced on its web site Thursday.
In addition to the organization of the event in early November, the St. Petersburg gay rights movement has another deadline on which it is keeping an eye. A fourth district court must still give its ruling on the issue of the gay pride event ban.
“We are waiting for a final court ruling from the Vasilieostrovsky district, which we very much hope will be positive. The first hearing will take place on Nov. 19,” said Yefremkova.
TITLE: Nobel Winners Unlikely to Be Lured Back
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: LONDON — The Russian-born physicists who won this year’s Nobel Prize say their education in Moscow was among the best in the world, but they have no desire to return to the land of their birth or be involved in the Kremlin’s Skolkovo innovation center.
The physicists, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, said the Kremlin could throw money at science, but research would still be stymied by corruption, red tape and a lack of the vital international teams and facilities needed to engage in groundbreaking work.
Asked whether he could envisage a scenario in which he would go back to Russia, Geim spared no words. “Reincarnation,” he said.
Geim, 51, and Novoselov, 37, are the breed of scientists that the Kremlin needs to kick-start the development of Russian science with Skolkovo, the state-owned nanotechnology corporation Rusnano and other projects. But the two physicists, in separate telephone interviews, highlighted the towering hurdles that the Kremlin faces in its efforts by describing their own reservations about working in Russia.
The Nobel Prize in physics, valued at $1.5 million, was awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Oct. 4 for Geim and Novoselov’s cutting-edge research on the new, two-dimensional material graphene in a British lab.
Only six years after their 2004 breakthrough, the award arrived much more quickly than is usual for Nobel Prizes. Geim recalled jokes about his possible candidature at a conference in 2004, but Novoselov, the youngest Nobel laureate since 1973, said the thought had not crossed his mind until speculation began three years ago.
While they recognized many contributions from different people to their work on graphene, both Geim and Novoselov only thinly disguised their contempt at the mention of Viktor Petrik, a self-styled inventor with ties to United Russia. (See related article, this page.)
Petrik, 65, claimed after the announcement of this year’s physics laureates that he had been the first to describe a method of producing graphene.
“Every country has its clowns and philistines,” Geim said. “The less they do, the more they advertise.”
Novoselov was more blunt. “Many people contributed to the inventing of graphene. He is not one of them,” he said.
Geim, a Dutch national, was born in Sochi and educated at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Novoselov, who holds British and Russian citizenship, was born in Nizhny Tagil, in the Sverdlovsk region, and was also educated in Moscow before moving to join Geim as a research student at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. When Geim moved to Manchester, Britain, in 2001 to become a professor of physics, Novoselov followed him.
Novoselov described the education he had received in the Soviet Union as “one of the best in the world,” but both physicists said they moved away from the land of their birth for professional reasons. Happy with their well-oiled research laboratory in Britain, neither has any desire to return.
Russia has “neither the facilities nor the conditions,” Geim said, adding that there was an unacceptable “level of bureaucracy, corruption and idiocracy.”
Novoselov questioned whether a scientist could find truly international research teams working in Russia. “I wouldn’t be able to attract the best students and scientists [in Russia],” he said.
Even the lure of Russia’s version of Silicon Valley at Skolkovo holds few temptations for either scientist.
Novoselov doubted that it could accommodate his preferred style of work in a “small dynamic lab.”
Geim, who has already publicly refused an invitation to work there, was reluctant to castigate any investment in scientific research but was not confident of Skolkovo’s success. He bastardized a quote by Mayakovsky, the futurist poet who killed himself in 1930, on the subject: “I know that Skolkovo will be / I know that the garden will blossom / When such Nobel Prize winners / Are in our Soviet country!”
Geim also said former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin’s famous remark springs to mind when he thinks of Skolkovo: “We tried our best, but it turned out as usual.”
Neither man likes to label himself a Russian or, indeed, a British scientist. Novoselov is particularly vehement that such national labels have no meaning. In the Manchester laboratory where he works there are 12 people, all from different countries. Modern science is “so international” that it makes no sense to talk about nationalities, he said.
Geim, who has German parents, is more conciliatory, allowing that he could be called a “European scientist.”
“Every nation now claims me,” he said, “and they have a right to do so.”
Both men cited their flexibility and willingness to experiment as the most important factors in their scientific accomplishments. “Only successes are recorded in history,” Geim said, emphasizing that there were also many failures on a “scattered and diffusive trajectory” toward the discovery of graphene.
A single sheet of carbon, one atom thick, graphene is very strong, very light and a good conductor of heat and electricity. It has a huge number of possible applications, with the award citation mentioning its potential role in the development of touch screens, solar cells, bendable electronics, gas sensors and DNA sequencing.
Some scientists have predicted that the unusual properties of graphene at a molecular level eventually mean that it could be used in ultra-fast transistors, replacing the current material of choice, silicon.
Novoselov stressed that it had not all been smooth sailing. “[We] tried to invent some crazy ideas,” he said. The isolation of graphene required, in the end, “a bit of curiosity, a bit of luck.”
Geim previously received attention for using magnetic fields to levitate a live frog, a feat for which he received the prestigious spoof-science IgNobel Prize in 2000. This playful ingenuity was replicated in graphene’s discovery: The initial breakthrough was made using nothing more sophisticated than Scotch tape to strip layers off a block of graphite.
Novoselov, often perfunctory in his answers, appeared not to be enjoying his new public profile. Although he has used media interest to speak out against potential science funding cuts by the British government and criticize changes in Britain’s visa regime, he said he hopes that all the attention will die out as soon as possible. Receiving the Nobel Prize had been “life-changing,” Novoselov said, “but not necessarily in a good way.”
TITLE: Antimonopoly Service Rules Against ‘Shoigu’ Filters
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) ruled last week that the name of Russia’s Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu must be removed from the labels of water filters developed by controversial St. Petersburg scientist Viktor Petrik and produced by the Golden Formula company.
FAS said the use of the minister’s name is a clear example of unfair competition.
The use of the name of Shoigu — one of the most popular politicians in the country — had ignited widespread criticism and accusations of unethical business practices.
Andrei Semyonov, a lawyer representing the Russian Consumer Rights Society, welcomed the FAS ruling.
“Shoigu’s name and his ministry’s abbreviation is serving to create an illusion that the production of the filters is officially sponsored or supported by the state,” he said.
Moscow’s Perovsky district court on Monday began hearings on the case of Petrik, a self-proclaimed inventor who looks set to benefit from a multi-billion-dollar nationwide water purification program, which is expected to start by the end of this month.
Petrik was recently criticized by the Consumer Rights Society, which is suing the inventor for what it calls “useless water filters” and campaigning for the filters to be banned and sales stopped throughout Russia.
When the society’s experts tested the filters this summer, they declared them to be dangerous. The tests showed that the filters fail to remove any chloride and a number of organic pollutants. The experts also said that the filtration process itself is flawed and as a result the water that comes out is undrinkable.
Petrik, who failed to attend the hearings on Monday, is heavily backed by the ruling United Russia party and its leader Boris Gryzlov, but denounced by the Russian Academy of Sciences, which has denounced Petrik’s claims and argued that the man is a charlatan.
The scientist runs the Golden Formula holding that produces the water filters.
The next hearing is scheduled for Nov. 9, when the court is expected to commission its own testing of the filters.
Petrik insists his filters have the capacity to purify polluted water and make it drinkable, regardless of the level and type of pollution.
A filter for purifying radioactive water, patented jointly by Petrik and Gryzlov in 2007, does not work because it is based on an “erroneous perception” of the nature of hydrogen isotopes, the commission said.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Hooligans Trash Lobby
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Around 50 suspected football hooligans smashed up a hotel lobby and attacked a group of Croatian citizens in central St. Petersburg on Wednesday, Interfax reported Thursday, citing a police source.
According to the source, the incident occurred Wednesday night at the Dostoevsky Hotel on Vladimirsky Prospekt. Around 50 masked people entered the hotel lobby where the Croatians were staying and started throwing chairs.
As a result of the attacks, four Croatians were taken to the Alexandrovsky hospital with multiple injuries. “Since then, they have all been discharged to outpatient treatment,” the police source said.
The Croatians were reportedly visiting for the UEFA Europa League match between Croatia’s HNK Hadjuk Split and FC Zenit St. Petersburg on Thursday.
Hunger Strikers Win
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A group of St. Petersburg housing investors who were defrauded in an apartment down payment scheme are to receive housing before the end of this year, St. Petersburg Deputy Governor Roman Filimonov said at a press conference Wednesday, Interfax reported.
Thirteen of the investors held a hunger strike from Sept. 30 through Oct. 13, as a result of which five were hospitalized. The hunger strike participants were all investors in an unfinished building at 13 Prospekt Pyatiletok. They demanded a face-to-face meeting with the City Governor and the completion of the apartment building’s construction.
TITLE: Stolen Eagle Returned To Home on Palace Square
AUTHOR: By Sophie Gaitzsch
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An eagle sculpture stolen from the railings surrounding the Alexander Column on Palace Square was returned to the State Hermitage by a St. Petersburg resident Sunday, the museum announced on its web site Wednesday.
The woman, a regular visitor to the Hermitage, found the statue two weeks ago while walking in a public garden on Naberezhnaya Admirala Makarova. After her discovery, she contacted the Hermitage via email and took the sculpture back to the museum, accompanied by her son and her daughter.
The announcement is the latest episode in an ongoing saga: The eagles decorating the Alexander Column railing have continually been stolen since its reconstruction in 2003, raising questions about its security. In total, two large three-sided eagles, eighty-four smaller eagles and 46 spear-tops decorating the railings have been lost over the years.
Since 2009, twenty-four-hour surveillance cameras have been installed and a procedure established with organizers of public entertainment events taking place on the square. Although dramatically reducing the number of thefts, the system appears not to be foolproof, as three recent eagle disappearances showed.
The last problem to date seems to be the fact that the Alexander Column has officially been the property of the Hermitage since 2009, while the railing is still in the ownership of the city. At the beginning of this month, the museum complained that red tape was hampering its efforts to improve the situation.
“In order to transfer the railings to the Hermitage books, the St. Petersburg City Property Management Committee requested a great number of documents,” the museum said in a press release. “The museum will not be able to carry out restoration of the railings with vandal-proof strengthening of the eagles and other decorative elements before the gathering of the documents is complete.”
It is regrettable that the State Hermitage and security services are forced to lose a lot of time and energy to regulate a situation that would cause no problem among civilized people, the museum added.
Contacted by The St. Petersburg Times, Georgy Vilinbakhov, the deputy director of the Hermitage in charge of the matter, declined to comment on the museum’s progress in gathering the necessary papers or to comment on the dispute with City Hall.
“Unfortunately, three obligatory documents needed for the whole process to go on are still missing,” said a member of the City Property Management Committee’s press service Wednesday.
TITLE: Chechen Parliament Stormed
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A brazen attack on the Chechen parliament in Grozny killed at least six people, including Islamist insurgents, and injured 17 others Tuesday morning, a sign that post-war stability in the republic remains fragile.
“At least three attackers managed to get inside the Chechen parliament and blew themselves up,” Mariam Nalayeva, a spokeswoman for the Investigative Committee’s Chechen branch, said by telephone from Grozny.
News reports later in the day spoke of four or five rebels who got through security by following a Chechen lawmaker’s car and started a shootout.
Officials did not immediately comment on the discrepancy in numbers.
The attack began at about 9 a.m., when Chechen lawmakers were about to meet a delegation of 50 officials from the Sverdlovsk region legislature.
The assailants killed at least two police officers, as well as the parliament’s supplies manager, and injured seven policemen and 11 civilians, Nalayeva said.
She said no lawmakers were hurt in the attack, although news reports said the Chechen parliament’s chief of staff, Iskam Baikhakov, was hospitalized with unspecified injuries.
Early reports said the attackers took hostages, but that information was not confirmed. One of the attackers blew himself up near the parliament’s front entrance, and two others barricaded themselves on the first floor, where they also set off explosives, investigators said in a statement.
Televised footage showed policemen breaking glass doors of the building with the butts of their assault rifles and civilians being evacuated. Photos taken in the aftermath depicted broken windows and walls covered with bullet holes.
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov arrived at the scene soon after the attack.
“As a result of the coherent actions of the law enforcement agencies, the liquidation of the insurgents was accomplished within 15 to 20 minutes, and all the lawmakers and technical personnel were released,” Kadyrov said in a statement.
Sverdlovsk lawmaker Igor Danilov, one of the people trapped in the parliament during the attack, told Rossia One television that shooting lasted about 1 1/2 hours outside the building.
“We were inside the building when we heard a very powerful explosion,” Danilov said, adding that there was no panic during the shootout.
The attack coincided with a visit by Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to Grozny. Nurgaliyev met with Kadyrov soon after police regained control of the parliament and praised the actions of law enforcement officers.
A parliamentary session over Chechnya’s 2011 budget, attended by Kadyrov, was held in the building after the assault.
Tuesday’s attack is the second high-profile assault in Chechnya in three months. A shootout in Kadyrov’s home village in August killed 19 people, including five civilians, and fueled fears of reviving insurgency.
Kadyrov blamed Akhmed Zakayev, a former Chechen rebel granted British asylum in 2003, and his “patrons in other Western countries” for the latest attack, which followed a recent split in the militants’ ranks.
Zakayev last month backed Chechen warlord Khusein Gakayev, who said in August that he would not follow orders from Doku Umarov, once considered the leader of all North Caucasus rebels.
Tuesday’s attack appeared to be a rebel attempt to kill Chechen lawmakers and possibly Nurgaliyev and Kadyrov as well, said Maxim Agarkov, an analyst with the SK-Strategia think tank.
TITLE: Census Protesters Detained
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The police thwarted an unauthorized rally in St. Petersburg against the general census Wednesday, arresting all the participants seconds after it started.
“Don’t let yourself be counted,” read the banner held up by five members of The Other Russia, the newly formed party led by author and oppositional politician Eduard Limonov.
The activists also held up a The Other Russia tricolor flag and lit flares.
The protest was timed to coincide with the first World Statistics Day (Oct. 20), proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly to “recognize the importance of statistics in shaping our societies,” according to the UN’s web site.
It was held near the offices of the local branch of the Federal Statistics Service at 39 Ulitsa Professora Popova on the Petrograd Side.
The protesters said that in societies that are not free, citizens should boycott censuses until their constitutional rights, such as the freedoms to elect and assemble, are recognized.
International observers were banned from the latest Russian presidential elections in 2008, while all the would-be oppositional candidates failed to be registered as such.
“The Kremlin (i.e. the authorities) totally ignores its obligations toward citizens,” wrote Limonov in a statement Tuesday.
He also said that the laws that the Kremlin had instigated lately were “exclusively forbidding and repressive toward citizens.”
The rally lasted a mere 90 seconds before the police arrived and took away the activists in two police vans to police precinct No. 18.
The detained activists were charged with violating the rules of holding public events, said Andrei Dmitriyev, The Other Russia’s local leader. Such an offense is punishable by a fine of 500 to 1,000 rubles ($16-$33).
The general census is being held in Russia from Oct. 14 through Oct. 25.
TITLE: Sarkozy: Visa-Free by 2025
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Europe and Russia can build a visa-free zone with common economic and security spaces before 2025, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday.
“From my point of view, in 10 to 15 years the vision that we should have is a common economic EU-Russia space, end of visa requirements and a common security concept,” Sarkozy told reporters after talks with President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in France.
The two-day tripartite summit in the northern French sea resort of Deauville was seen as an attempt by two of Europe’s key players to move forward both the EU’s and NATO’s often difficult relations with Moscow.
Medvedev has touted a new European security architecture since becoming president in 2008 and pushed for visa-free travel with the EU over the past months.
TITLE: Tajikistan Hunts for an Elusive Islamist Militant
AUTHOR: By Peter Leonard
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — They call him Tajikistan’s Osama bin Laden.
In the wild mountains east of the capital, Dushanbe, thousands of soldiers are on the hunt for a man authorities say is masterminding a plot to turn this impoverished and unstable country on Afghanistan’s northern border into a haven for Islamist terrorists.
Tajikistan holds great strategic importance in the NATO military campaign in Afghanistan, serving as a link in supply routes — and news of an uncontained conflict here in the pursuit of a purported terrorist chieftain is causing alarm in Western capitals.
Tajikistan’s value as a supply channel has only increased in recent weeks as the main route through Pakistan has come under pressure by repeated militant attacks on tanker trucks carrying fuel.
An Islamist insurgency in Tajikistan led by Mullo Abdullo would therefore have deep consequences for the U.S.-led campaign against terror.
Many observers, however, compare Mullo Abdullo to bin Laden for reasons other than purported terror prowess: Like the al-Qaida leader, the Tajik is legendary for his elusiveness. Some believe that Mullo Abdullo has been dead for years and that his specter has been resurrected as an excuse to quash the remnants of armed resistance to the government.
“Mullo Abdullo has become the bin Laden of Tajikistan — now you see him, now you don’t,” said Rakhmatullo Zoirov, chairman of the opposition Social Democratic Party.
Telephone communication with the area where the manhunt is being carried out has been severed for weeks, and only unreliable government reports are available about the number of casualties among government troops.
Security sweeps have been taking place for several weeks in Tajikistan’s Rasht Valley, a winding cleft surrounded on both sides by rugged mountains, to flush out what the government has described as Islamist terrorists.
Recent incidents in Tajikistan certainly bear all the hallmarks of an Islamist insurgency.
An ambush on a military convoy last month left at least 26 soldiers dead in a gorge along the Rasht Valley. That came in the wake of two terrorist blasts and a daring prison escape by 25 convicted Islamist militants and government opponents.
The Defense Ministry swiftly blamed the mountain ambush on Mullo Abdullo — the nom de guerre of Abdullo Rakhimov, a leading commander during Tajikistan’s 1992-97 civil war between President Emomali Rakhmon’s government of former Soviet loyalists and the mostly Islamic opposition.
The government led by Rakhmon, like those of many countries in the region, is deeply authoritarian and allows for no real dissent. Authorities waver in their loyalties to Moscow and Washington.
As part of a peace deal that ended the civil conflict, which left more than 100,000 dead, several major opposition figures joined the government. But the radical wing of the United Tajik Opposition refused to participate in the power-sharing agreement and many, including Mullo Abdullo, are believed to have taken refuge in Afghanistan.
According to vague and wildly contradictory accounts, Mullo Abdullo is believed either to have allied himself with the Taliban in Afghanistan or joined forces with their bitter opponent, ethnic Tajik warlord Shah Ahmad Massoud.
From that point onward, almost nothing is known of Mullo Abdullo’s fate.
Last year, Tajik authorities announced that he had returned to his home country with a gang of foreign fighters in tow.
Leaflets posted on notice boards around the country featured a grainy picture of Mullo Abdullo, a list of his offenses and the year of his birth, 1950.
His wife, who still lives in a village near the capital, told local newspaper Asia-Plus in a recent interview that when she last saw Mullo Abdullo two decades ago, he was missing a lung and suffered from ailments in his liver and kidneys.
Under the guise of a drug eradication drive, the army launched a military operation to nab Mullo Abdullo in the Rasht district that culminated last July in the capture of several foreign fighters and the killing of former opposition commander Mirzo Ziyoyev.
It was the death of Ziyoyev, accused by police of being a major drug-runner, which aroused suspicions that the authorities were actually pursuing government opponents under the pretext of fighting Islamist radicals.
“They said the operation in which they got Ziyoyev was aimed at Mullo Abdullo,” said Khikmatullo Saifullozoda, a leading figure in the prominent opposition Islamic Revival Party. “But why did they call the hunt off as soon as Ziyoyev was out of the picture?”
Although the government opposition during the civil war largely constituted Islamist fighters, most commanders eschewed the nihilist extremism of terrorist groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has been linked to Mullo Abdullo. Some experts believe, though, that the government’s crude security policy could serve to drive them into the arms of unlikely bedfellows.
“The lines dividing Islamists from Islamic-rooted opposition remain blurred and Rakhmon’s heavy-handed approach may tilt many who previously were neutral toward the IMU to join forces against the Tajik president,” IHS Global Insight analyst Lilit Gevorgyan wrote in a recent report.
The campaign to hunt down Mullo Abdullo resumed this summer, but was disastrously derailed when two trucks packed with young soldiers came under heavy fire in the Komarob gorge, leaving dozens dead.
Days after naming Mullo Abdullo as the most likely culprit, authorities declared a manhunt for another former opposition warlord, Mirzokhodzha Akhmadov, in connection with the ambush.
Akhmadov was one of the former opposition commanders who opted to take up a government post as a result of peace talks, although he still strenuously resisted the government’s attempt to assert its authority over his native Rasht district. The definitive split with the government came in 2008, when Akhmadov was accused of murdering a visiting top Interior Ministry official.
Suggestions that he has been actively engaged with terrorist organizations are met with skepticism.
“The government is in a perennial search for new enemies and terrorists,” said Zoirov of the opposition Social Democratic Party.
In the search for Mullo Abdullo, Akhmadov and others, the Tajik armed forces deployed thousands of soldiers in the mountains around the Rasht Valley.
Numerous checkpoints manned by machine gun-wielding soldiers have been erected leading east out of Dushanbe. Truckloads of young conscripts regularly rumble into the valley, and locals say military helicopters have been hovering over the mountains with increasing regularity.
There has been little official information about the fighting, and police have barred access for foreign journalists, citing security concerns.
On the eve of taking flight after a botched operation to capture him left five of his men dead, Akhmadov told an Associated Press reporter that at least 50 former fellow fighters had taken shelter in the mountains over concern that they would be arrested.
What has the West worried is the prospect of an long-term insurgency, inspired by Islamist radicalism or otherwise.
Western diplomats in Tajikistan fear that the government’s inability to neutralize Akhmadov could undermine its authority and in turn threaten the future stability of the country, which acts as the first line of defense against the flood of Afghan heroin pouring into the West.
Domestically, many are concerned that amid justified concern over an upsurge in militant activity, which some military analysts believe may be a spillover of violence from Afghanistan, the government has sought to stamp out even the legitimate opposition.
Saifullozoda of the Islamic Revival Party, the only legally registered Islamic political party in Central Asia, said his own group has come under pressure since the start of military operations.
The decision to allow the registration of the Islamic Revival Party, formerly the main constituent component of the United Tajik Opposition, was hailed as a sign of moderation that would ensure peace and prevent a renewed descent into civil conflict. In recent years, however, the party has come under growing pressure and it was deprived of any significant representation in a parliamentary election earlier this year that was deemed as flawed by international monitors.
Party officials also complain that its moderating influence has been dashed by the government’s heavy-handed approach to stamping out any traces of radical Islam. This year alone, hundreds of young men have been handed sentences of up to 15 years in jail for belonging to banned Islamist groups.
President Rakhmon has also angered many by speaking out against Islamic head dress and calling for the return home of pupils at religious schools overseas.
“If we are now seeing religious extremism, it is simply a consequence of secular radicalism,” said Saifullozoda of the Islamic Revival Party.
TITLE: Attackers of Astrakhan Police ‘Not Vigilantes’
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A string of attacks on policemen in Astrakhan this summer was carried out by radical Islamists whose leader was killed Tuesday after being identified by his detained followers, investigators said in a statement.
Gaini Zhumagaziyev, 39, was trapped in a house in Astrakhan by law enforcement officers who shot him dead after he refused to surrender, the local branch of the Investigative Committee said on its web site.
Zhumagaziyev, already on a federal wanted list for unspecified charges, was named by two other suspects, Saipula Badrudinov, 30, and Nail Kafarov, 35, who were detained Sunday and Monday, respectively, the statement said. Additional suspected accomplices remain on the run.
Pistols and machine guns — some of them taken from police officers — were found on the three suspects along with explosives, the committee said. The men followed the Wahhabi sect of Islam, which is popular among extremists in the North Caucasus.
Three police officers were killed and four more hospitalized in three attacks in July and August in Astrakhan. The city and surrounding region are near the volatile Caucasus region in southern Russia, but Islamist violence is uncommon there, leading police to suspect initially that gangsters or vigilantes were behind the killings.
The suspects are also linked to two other assaults, the committee said.
Last month, police said they identified the suspects as two brothers from Kazakhstan, aged 36 and 38, and a 20-year-old ethnic Tatar. No names were released at the time.
This spring, a gang of six young men in the far eastern Primorye region began launching guerrilla attacks on police in revenge for “lawlessness.” In June, two of the men were killed, while the remaining four were captured and are being tried for murder and other crimes.
TITLE: Shuvalov Proposes New Timelines for Privatization
AUTHOR: By Scott Rose
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government expects to drum up 1.8 trillion rubles ($58.5 billion) by 2015 from privatizations of federal property, including stakes in some 900 companies, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Wednesday.
Some of the funds raised will go into the federal budget, but cash will also be used to develop the companies, Shuvalov said after a closed-door meeting on state property with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and several other ministers.
The government will continue with its privatization plan for 2011-13, while “pushing back the horizon” to continue asset sell-offs through 2015, Shuvalov said, Interfax reported.
If the plan wins President Dmitry Medvedev’s approval, he said, the government will immediately start working to implement it.
Among the early targets Shuvalov mentioned were a 100 percent stake in the United Grain Company and 50 percent minus one share in shipping giant Sovkomflot — both of which should be sold by 2013.
The Sovkomflot stake will likely be sold in two transactions, with 25 percent going in 2012 and 25 percent minus one share sold the year after, he said.
“We’re sending investors a clear signal for the next three years, and we’re prepared to discuss the sale of even larger stakes,” said Shuvalov, who was tapped this week to spearhead the government’s drive to improve Russia’s investment climate.
The state will also seek to wind down its massive hand in the banking sector, with sales of stakes in Sberbank, VTB and Rosselkhozbank.
The state’s stake in Sberbank, the country’s largest lender, should be reduced to a controlling 50 percent by 2014, Shuvalov said. The Central Bank is the lender’s controlling shareholder, with 60.3 percent, and Sberbank CEO German Gref has said he would prefer to see the shares sold on the open market.
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has said the state could eventually give up control of Sberbank and other key state assets if that would strengthen the companies and the economy.
The state may also give up control of No. 2 lender VTB Group, Shuvalov said. In addition to the 10 percent stake the government is seeking to sell this year, it could offer 10 percent in 2011 and then 10 percent to 15 percent the following year.
“We have specific plans on sales for three years, and we’ll be ready to give up control [in VTB] if investors show interest,” he said.
He was less specific on agricultural lender Rosselkhozbank, the country’s fourth lender by assets. Shuvalov said the state could sell 25 percent of its 100 percent stake before 2015.
The state’s holding in Aeroflot could be whittled back down to a controlling 50 percent — “but only if that will improve the health of the company and, for passengers, the quality of flights,” Shuvalov said.
Aeroflot’s shares jumped to a two-year high on Tuesday after Kudrin suggested that the state offload shares.
The airline bought back about 6 percent of its shares from Alexander Lebedev’s National Reserve Bank earlier this year, but the billionaire said last month that he would hang on to his remaining stake of about 20 percent.
Other major stakes mentioned by Shuvalov included up to 15 percent of Rosneft and 25 percent minus one share in Russian Railways.
A 15 percent stake in Rosneft would be worth $10.8 billion based on its market capitalization Wednesday of $71.9 billion. Shuvalov said the stake would be offered between 2012 and 2015, depending on market conditions.
“Beyond the horizon of 2015, the state’s participation as a Rosneft shareholder could be reduced, and the state could give up control. However, that’s a question for the future,” he said.
The stake in Russian Railways would be offered between 2013 and 2015, he said.
Shuvalov also struck two companies off the list of likely privatization targets through 2015: oil pipeline operator Transneft and oil producer Zarubezhneft.
Transneft president Nikolai Tokarev has said that privatizing a stake in the company would be the “worst thing” that could happen to it. Shuvalov said selling the stake would have an influence “structurally, on some of the company’s plans and on some of the government’s plans.” He did not elaborate.
TITLE: U.S.: WTO Entry in One Year
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — U.S. President Barack Obama’s senior economic adviser says Russia will join the World Trade Organization within the next 12 months.
Lawrence Summers, the director of Obama’s National Economic Council, said at a briefing Wednesday that the objections of U.S ally Georgia, which fought a war with Russia in 2008, will not impact U.S. support for Russia’s entry into the organization.
Summers said that Russia’s quotas on U.S. meat imports is one of the outstanding issues that will need to be addressed.
After 17 years of negotiations, Russia is still by far the largest economy outside the WTO, which regulates trade between its 153 member states.
TITLE: Yukos Assets Under Dispute Following Amsterdam Ruling
AUTHOR: By Derek Andersen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Amsterdam Court of Appeals has ruled that it would not recognize the 2007 sale of Yukos Finance BV, a Dutch corporation, by Russian court-appointed receiver Eduard Rebgun. As a result, $800 million in cash assets remains in limbo.
The court on Tuesday upheld a district court ruling made on Oct. 31, 2007, that said the transaction did not meet the criteria for recognizable foreign legal actions.
Yukos Finance BV stock was auctioned in Russia in August 2007 for $308 million to Promneftstroi, which, until that summer, had been a subsidiary of state-owned Rosneft. Renaissance Capital, U.S. investment advisory company VR Capital and Monte Valle, a company owned by U.S. citizen Steven Lynch, purchased Promneftstroi shortly before the auction.
Promneftstroi lawyer Peter Meijer said the ruling would be appealed in the Dutch Supreme Court, making reference to a decision of that court on Dec. 19, 2008, rejecting the “territoriality” principle for recognizing court judgments.
“The ruling is wrong because it states that Promneftstroi could not have validly bought the Yukos Finance shares,” Meijer said. “That kind of transfer is perfectly valid in the Netherlands. The Supreme Court made this perfectly clear in 2008.”
Yukos Finance sold its main properties in 2006 — a 49 percent stake of Slovakian oil pipeline operator Transpetrol and 53.7 percent of the Lithuanian oil refinery Mazeikiu Nafta. According to a VR Capital spokesman, net proceeds from the sale were about $800 million, and are now held in a frozen account at Fortis Bank in Belgium.
Claire Davidson, who represents the interests of Yukos shareholders, was pleased with Tuesday’s decision.
TITLE: Prices for O’Key Shares Announced
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg-based supermarket chain O’Key on Tuesday announced the price of its global depositary receipts (GDRs) on the London Stock Exchange.
The shares will be sold at from $9.90 to $12.90 per GDR, the company said in a press release.
“The IPO is an important step forward for us, as it will provide a strong platform for the continued profitable growth of our business throughout Russia,” said Patrick Longuet, Chief Executive Officer of O’Key Group.
The company said it would use the proceeds from the IPO to finance its further expansion around Russia.
The company opened its first hypermarket in St. Petersburg in 2002, began expanding to other parts of Russia in 2005, and as of June 30 this year, operated 52 stores in 18 Russian cities.
TITLE: Mobile Firms to Reduce Roaming Charges
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s big three mobile operators — MTS, VimpelCom and MegaFon — will “voluntarily” decrease prices on both international and domestic roaming services by as much as 30 to 50 percent before Dec. 1, Federal Anti-Monopoly Service chief Igor Artemyev said Wednesday.
Artemyev made the statement at a meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Press and Communications Minister Igor Shchyogolev.
The cuts will come after an almost yearlong battle of the service against the three companies, which it accused of setting monopoly prices for mobile roaming services after a critical remark on the issue by Putin.
Shchyogolev said the ministry analyzed the experience of European Union regulation on this issue and looked at the experience of the former Soviet republics before concluding that “the tariffs were indeed substantially higher than they could be and what would be economically justified.”
In March 2010, the anti-monopoly service estimated the three companies’ joint market share at 85 percent.
TITLE: Rumors of Capitalism’s Death Much Exaggerated
AUTHOR: By Yevgeny Bazhanov
TEXT: Ever since the global economic crisis shook the world in 2008, we have been hearing dire warnings about the imminent end of capitalism. In Russia, these warnings have particular significance since the Soviet Union predicted the downfall of capitalism ever since the country’s ideological idol, Karl Marx, wrote his famous words about capitalism sowing the seeds of its own destruction.
To be sure, the early stages of capitalism in the mid-1800s were “imperfect,” to put it lightly. The Soviet Union rejected capitalism outright and tried to build a fundamentally new classless society in which nobody would be exploited. With assistance and guidance from Moscow, many countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa followed the same course.
But some 70 years after the “great communist experiment” started, Soviet communism — as well as the Soviet Union itself — collapsed like a house of cards. This was followed by the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world. In Cambodia, for example, Communist leaders of the bloody Pol Pot regime were tried from 2006 to 2009 and sentenced for crimes against humanity, having killed about 2 million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979.
Those countries that have remained nominally “communist” — above all, China — have adopted market economies. The violent, revolutionary days of the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution are long gone. Now their chief slogan is: “Make a lot of money!” As the Chinese like to say, “We have socialist capitalism: socialism in word — capitalism in practice.”
Russia’s Communists and other opponents of Western capitalism love to praise the Chinese economic model, arguing that it successfully combines a market-based economy with autocratic rule. But even Chinese leaders sometimes hedge their bets, acknowledging that they have yet to create a stable, long-term economic system. To be sure, China is still instituting the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, who first laid the foundation in 1978 for China’s path toward a market economy. Deng’s expression, “Cross the river by feeling the stones underfoot as you go,” has relevance today. Beijing is still moving forward by experimenting, occasionally making mistakes — cutting itself on sharp stones as it were — backtracking and correcting the course of its reforms.
The Chinese Communist leadership has always stressed that the dominant role of the Communist Party is necessary to manage and preserve the country’s development and economic growth, that “unlimited democratization” would plunge the country into chaos, disorder, ethnic strife and economic downfall. On the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution and other periods of turmoil and violence — although these periods had nothing to do with “unlimited democratization,” of course — modern China’s version of autocratic capitalism for many Chinese looks like a blessing from heaven.
According to the Chinese model, gradual democratization is possible only after the economy has first reached a certain level of development and the middle class has grown to become a large, secure social and political buffer. That is what happened in South Korea and Taiwan, both gradually evolving into democratic and prosperous countries. This is apparently the path the Chinese leaders would like to follow, although there is more evidence over the past 10 years that they are taking the directly opposite path — toward increased political repression.
Contrary to a popularly held opinion among critics of Western liberalism and capitalism, in reality China does not offer a viable alternative to the modern Western model. At the same time, the Western model is by no means ideal and self-sustaining; it must be continually improved and properly regulated to avoid abuses.
The huge challenge for Russia as it tries to find an economic and political model that works the best — whether it be Chinese, Western or some combination of the two — is to overcome the backwardness of its health care, pension and education systems and to somehow reduce the country’s rampant crime and corruption.
Russia’s passionate admirers of the Chinese model should not have any illusions: China’s economic miracle is not applicable to Russia. For thousands of years, Chinese have been accustomed to working hard for meager pay. What’s more, China’s authoritarian leaders feel obliged to uphold the principles of morality and duty, restraint and moderation to maintain the “mandate of heaven.” For these two reasons alone, it is clear that the Chinese model doesn’t fit Russia.
Yevgeny Bazhanov is vice chancellor of research and international relations at the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy in Moscow.
TITLE: Direct Elections Give Excellent Feedback
AUTHOR: By Konstantin Sonin
TEXT: Sergei Sobyanin occupies the second-highest post in the country after being sworn in as mayor of Moscow on Thursday. The first is either the president or the prime minister, depending on which of them is calling the shots.
Because the Moscow mayor is appointed, it will take him time to win Muscovites’ support. In a normal situation, the campaign and election process reveal which candidates have the greatest political support. Boris Yeltsin was appointed first secretary of the Communist Party in early 1986, and Yury Luzhkov was appointed mayor to replace outgoing Mayor Gavriil Popov. Neither was elected, but both managed to gain popularity and legitimacy. Yeltsin was pulled from his post in fall 1987, but already by spring 1989 he received 91.3 percent of the vote with a 90 percent turnout in Moscow region elections for the Congress of People’s Deputies. Luzhkov first stood in elections four years after his appointment as mayor and garnered 87.5 percent of the vote.
The main problem the new mayor will face in managing Moscow is that without elections, there is no feedback mechanism. Now-scrapped elections on the regional level and for single-mandate districts in the Moscow City Duma provided exactly the information Luzhkov needed to continually adapt to Muscovites’ shifting moods. A careful reading of Luzhkov’s stint as mayor indicates that he was not the bull-headed cartoonish figure ridiculed in the columns of intellectual and cultural commentators, but a politician who knew how make use of information about the mood of the “silent majority” of Muscovites.
Without that information, it would have been impossible for him to win elections or govern the enormous city. That information cannot be obtained from opinion polls or artificial structures such as the Public Chamber. Of course, the mood of the people can be easily ascertained from mass demonstrations and revolutions, but as interesting as those events might be for historians, experience shows that they come at a very high price for citizens and politicians. That is precisely why the holding of free elections in the regions is advocated not only by those who value democracy for its own sake, but also by those who see elections as a necessary feedback mechanism enabling leaders to govern more effectively.
Sobyanin has no choice but to try to build his own system for obtaining feedback, even though Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has done everything in his power over the last 10 years to dismantle the mechanism that existed. But some highly placed official will eventually have to buck that trend. The political system our leaders are trying to construct is ineffective and completely unsustainable. The Soviet Union was the only country in history to have built a political system devoid of competition at almost every level. It attained that condition in the mid-1970s and maintained it for only a brief period before it collapsed — not least because leaders lacked the means of obtaining feedback from society.
Ultimately, Sobyanin will have to think seriously about creating a feedback mechanism, and the best way would be to reinstate direct elections in Moscow with United Russia candidates running head-to-head against opposition candidates, including those from parties that have been denied registration on doubtful grounds over the past decade. In that way, he could improve the lives of Moscow’s residents and improve an institution that is so important for any democracy to function.
Konstantin Sonin is a professor at the New Economic School in Moscow and a columnist for Vedomosti.
TITLE: Magic and mystery at the Mariinsky
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An operatic thriller, Agatha Christie-style, with overtones of Bulgakov is how the renowned British stage director Graham Vick perceives Leos Janacek’s opera “The Makropulos Affair.”
The director is preparing to present his version of one of the most enigmatic operas of the 20th century at the Mariinsky Theater on Oct. 23 and 24 and Nov. 1 and 12.
“The Makropulos Affair” is one of the most complex operas a stage director can face, Vick says. According to the director, this particular work by the Czech composer is further than any other from Russian culture. At the same time, the black humor and grotesque elements in it bring it close to works by Bulgakov, the director believes.
The internationally acclaimed stage director, artistic director of the Birmingham Opera Company, recipient of numerous theater prizes and a Commandor of Order of the British Empire spoke of his concept for the production during a meeting with members of the public at the Mariinsky Theater on Oct. 15.
“For me as a stage director it is crucially important to underline the particularly satirical aspect of this opera,” Vick said, contrasting his words by adding that what he values most in Russian culture — and what he appreciates most about working with Russian artists — is the seriousness.
“The staff entrance is called the ‘artistic entrance’ in Russian theaters, while in Britain it is called the stage entrance,” Vick said to illustrate his point. “This is a good indication of the attitude toward artists in Russian society. Art is taken seriously here.”
There is a tradition of staging Janacek as an expressionistic composer, and so stage versions of his operas — and productions of “The Makropulos Affair” in particular — visually often turn out to be futurist-style experiments. Vick decided to refrain from attempting that popular approach.
“The structure of the opera is built on the laws of a thriller and brings to mind the dramas of Agatha Christie,” the stage director explained. “The story begins in a typical lawyer’s office and quite some time passes before the audience is faced with the idea that it is possible that the heroine is 300 years old.”
The sets for the production will be as traditional, ordinary and unexciting as possible, deprived of any symbolic meaning, the director said.
“The emphasized everyday nature of the design and absence of hi-tech special effects will focus attention on the mystical subtext and the strangeness of the plot,” Vick said.
When working on a production, the director typically takes as his starting point the fact that most people in the auditorium will have little or no knowledge of the subject.
Moreover, the stage director is skeptical about traditional operatic audiences and always strives to reach far beyond the dedicated opera crowd. “To seek out my audience, in the direct sense of the word, I went onto the streets,” Vick recalls. “I just think of the places I haven’t used for improvised stage arenas for my productions, for example I staged Beethoven’s Fidelio in a tent not far from a football pitch. I have staged operas on an abandoned skating rink and in industrial buildings.”
For his production of the opera “Otello,” Vick used amateur choral singers — quite literally people off the street — many of whom were singing in a choir for the first time.
The stage director is convinced that “the luxuriance of classical theater interiors scares away the ‘uninitiated.’ Newcomers, unlike those whose parents have taken them to the theater since their childhood, feel lost in the sumptuous interiors, which they sometimes find suffocating. When I chose an old factory or woodland clearing for my stage, I was first and foremost driven by the wish to remove this psychological barrier.”
When Vick tries his hand at a new opera, he always begins with the words — not the music, he admits. “Put simply, I start with the words because this is exactly where the composer started their work,” he explains. “So I study the words first, then I move on to see where these words took the composer. It is a very detailed study of words and music before rehearsal. And only later I move on to the design aspect.”
The essential aspect for the British director in terms of design is to “find the right world for the characters.” Vick does not have a specific theatrical style that can be traced through his stagings. In this respect, many critics find him unpredictable. “Yes, I am unpredictable, but this is because I am always looking into the opera itself to tell me what it was and what it needs,” he said.
According to Vick, a damaging stereotype has evolved with regard to “The Makropulos Affair”: A magical story about an elixir of youth is something that many could be tempted to read as something akin to science fiction, a story about the work of an alchemist. The main theme of this detective story-like plot based on a true story has however nothing to do with science and everything to do with human life, the ethical side of its artificial continuation and the question of attitudes to death.
“There are now quite a large number of old people with comparatively young bodies suffering from senility and dementia,” says Vick. “This is a tragic situation: bodies are lasting longer than minds. People have learned to transplant almost any organ, and methods of rejuvenation have created a revolution in science, but it is impossible to give a person a new brain, and so we are faced with an army of tolerably well-functioning senile people.” How we value human life when it is naturally over — this discussion is at the heart of Vick’s rendition of the opera.
“Live each day as if it were the last; fill every moment of your life to the maximum,” the stage director comments on his perception of the opera’s main theme. “And remember that death is not a nightmare. It is a privilege.”
“The Makropulos Affair” premieres at the Mariinsky Theater, 1 Teatralnaya Ploshchad on Saturday and Sunday.
Tel: 326 4141. www.mariinsky.ru
TITLE: Word’s worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Æäó íå äîæäóñü!: I can’t wait!
Russians are experts at waiting. Before the 1917 Revolution, they waited for spring, for rain, and for a good tsar. During the Soviet period, they waited in lines for food, cigarettes and newspapers. They waited for hours in hushed rooms to see party bosses. They waited for days or weeks to buy a ticket south for a vacation. And they waited for years — even decades — for a car or apartment. It’s no wonder they have a good vocabulary for being on hold.
The basic verb for waiting is æäàòü, which either means to wait or to expect something or someone. Ìû æäàëè åãî âåñü âå÷åð (We waited for him all evening). Ïîçâîíèë òîãäà, êîãäà ÿ ìåíüøå âñåãî ýòîãî æäàëà (He called when I least expected it). Çàñòàâèòü æäàòü (to keep someone waiting) can be used when a busy boss makes you cool your heels or when something expected quickly appears: Íàðóøàòü ïðàâèëà íåäîïóñòèìî, è íàêàçàíèå íå çàñòàâèëî ñåáÿ æäàòü (Breaking the rules was impermissible, and punishment swiftly followed).
Sometimes waiting for someone implies welcoming them. If you’ve issued an invitation to someone or want them to know that you’re always happy to see them, you can say: Æäó âàñ! (I look forward to seeing you!)
Sometimes events wait for you. ×òî íàñ æä¸ò â áóäóùåì? (What does the future hold for us?) But time waits for no one: Âðåìÿ íå æä¸ò! (There’s no time to lose!) Sometimes you shouldn’t wait at all: Íå æäè! (Don’t hold your breath!)
Îæèäàòü is used when we’d say “expect” in English. Ñèíîïòèêè îæèäàþò, ÷òî çèìà áóäåò õîëîäíîé (Forecasters expect a cold winter).
Âûæäàòü is most often used when a person is intentionally waiting for the right moment to do something. Åñòü ëþäè, êîòîðûå âûæèäàþò: êóäà ïîâåðí¸ò âåòåð, êòî ïîáåäèò (Some people bide their time, waiting to see which way the wind blows and who turns out on top).
Ïåðåæäàòü means to wait something out: Ëó÷øå ïîñèäè äîìà è òèõî ïåðåæäè äåïðåñíÿê (You better quietly sit out your depression at home). But sometimes it can mean waiting for so long that you no longer want what you were waiting for: Óæå íå ãîëîäíûé. Ïåðåæäàë (I waited so long I’m not hungry anymore).
Äîæäàòüñÿ is the crowning moment for someone who is waiting. It means getting what you’ve been waiting for: Äîæäàëñÿ ïèñüìà! (I finally got the letter!) The odd Russian expression æäàòü íå äîæäàòüñÿ (literally, “to wait not to wait for it”) is the equivalent of the equally odd English expression of excitement: “I can’t wait!” The negative of äîæäàòüñÿ means: Dream on, you’ll never get it. Æä¸øü îò íåãî ïîìîùè? Íå äîæä¸øüñÿ! (You expect him to help you? Get real!)
On the other hand: Êòî æä¸ò, òîò äîæä¸òñÿ (All things come to those who wait).
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
TITLE: Heroes of our time: The lens as a mirror
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The winning entry and shortlist of the 10th My Canon international photography competition are currently on display for all to see at the Central Manezh Exhibition Hall.
This year’s theme was “My Contemporary.” More than 4,000 photographs from around the world were submitted, of which 100 were then selected for the 15th St. Petersburg photo fair, which runs through Sunday at the Manezh.
There were separate categories for amateurs and professionals, but the main judging criteria were the same for both: The photos had to have been taken on a Canon camera, and should be as expressive as possible.
“We tried to look at the photographs we received as a mirror of our life and times, and the winning photos were above all the image of a person, of our contemporary,” said Alexander Belenky, photo editor at The St. Petersburg Times and a member of the competition’s jury.
“Even if this happens to be a convict with cold, transparent eyes, through which real life and a real fate can be read.”
TITLE: Flat atmosphere
AUTHOR: By Jacob Gordon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: If the name Kvartira (Apartment) No. 55 leads you to expect a converted communal apartment packed with Soviet kitsch, have no fear: European-style understatement is the byword at this modestly upscale wine bar. The color scheme is gray and white; the wallpaper features muted yellow and gray lines; and wine bottles line segments of the walls, underscoring the space’s elegance. The trouble is, the restaurant’s elegant fa?ade has a few cracks. In what is in severe danger of becoming a St. Petersburg cliche, large sheets of printing paper serve as tablecloths, and pencils are provided at each table, presumably in the hope that diners will knock out some artistic sketches while waiting for their food (as at least one couple seemed to be doing). The musical selection was also hit and miss on the evening of our visit: Pleasantly understated soft rock alternated with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and one truly bizarre techno track that the restaurant would do well to delete from its playlist.
Nor, at the end of the day, is the space’s d?cor a major draw. Its understatement feels more austere and barren than elegant. Still, even if it’s a little short on atmosphere, the restaurant avoids the extravagant bombast that plagues so many eateries in Russia, and when the lights were dimmed about halfway through our meal, a real sense of intimacy was finally present.
The menu features traditional Russian dishes alongside European ones, as well as a very extensive wine list (bottles start at 800 rubles, $26, unless you want a cheap sparkling wine). In order to test the restaurant’s versatility, we decided to sample both kinds: borsch (130 rubles, $4) and fettucini with salmon in an alfredo sauce (290 rubles, $9) to start, and then Beef Stroganoff with mushrooms (260 rubles, $8) and shrimps served with Bearnaise sauce (350 rubles, $11). By the time we ordered, the paper tablecloths and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” had put us in a skeptical mood.
But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of the restaurant business — making food and putting on the table — Kvartira No. 55 delivers. The service proved attentive: Our waitress pointed us to a wine she thought was better than the one we had selected. (Yes, it was more expensive, but its excellence convinced us her motives were altruistic). The bread was warm and had a gratifying flaky texture.
The borsch, though served just a little too hot, was satisfyingly simple, with no greasiness. The fettucini was the highlight of the meal: Two delicate flavors — salmon and alfredo sauce — complemented one another, each noticeable but neither overwhelming the other. The soft texture of the fish and pasta matched perfectly, and the fish was notably fresh.
If the main courses didn’t rise to quite the same level as the appetizers, they were good enough to leave a positive impression. The Beef Stroganoff was rather stingily served without the usual bed of pasta underneath the beef and mushrooms, but they themselves were, like the borsch, uncomplicated and satisfying, as a classic dish should be. The shrimp were wonderfully seasoned with a lemon-based sauce, and were cooked to just the right level of softness — in fact, the care taken over texture was evident throughout the meal. The Bearnaise sauce was pleasantly tangy, and though it overwhelmed the shrimp’s delicate lemon seasoning, this wasn’t a major drawback, as the sauce was served separately.
Finding ourselves full after the main courses, we decided to forgo dessert; the menu, which included cr?me brulee (110 rubles, $4) and tiramisu (160 rubles, $5), leaned in a European rather than Russian direction. For those for whom good food is enough to overcome a hit-and-miss atmosphere, Kvartira No. 55 is worth a visit.
TITLE: Mexico Strikes Major Blow in Drug War
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: TIJUANA, Mexico — Mexican authorities seized over 105 tons of marijuana in the border town of Tijuana after clashing with drug traffickers.
It was the largest seizure in years amid an increasingly brutal war on drug cartels that has claimed some 28,000 lives since President Felipe Calderon launched a nationwide crackdown in 2006, deploying some 50,000 troops who have so far failed to stem the tide of violence.
Police had seized 130 tons of marijuana over the past three years across the entire state of Baja California, home to Tijuana. This past year alone, they have also uncovered dozens of tunnels built to move drugs to California.
During Monday’s seizure, soldiers and police confiscated over 10,000 packages of marijuana in the operation across the border from San Diego, California, General Alfonso Duarte told reporters.
The drugs had a value of over 335 million dollars on the Mexican street, but their worth could double or triple if sold in the United States, which the traffickers had been attempting to enter, Duarte said. He did not confirm which of the major Mexican drug cartels owned the drugs.
The massive haul came after a shootout between Tijuana municipal police officers and gunmen in a convoy of seven vehicles. The army and state police sent reinforcements and 11 people were arrested. Some of the drugs were found aboard the trucks.
Confessions from the detainees led security forces to more of the illegal substance at a local ranch, a home and an apartment.
On the U.S. side of the border, Californians are due to vote in two weeks on a referendum over whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use.
Last year, Mexican security forces confiscated a total of 2,105 tons of marijuana, according to government figures.
Mexico’s border regions, especially the major towns directly on the U.S. frontier, have witnessed the brunt of the conflict with notable spikes in particularly gruesome violence in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, which borders Texas further to the east.
In Ciudad Juarez, gunmen burst into a private party and shot dead nine people, including six members of one family, security officials said Monday.
Four people died on the spot, two others died in hospital, and the remaining two were hunted down by the gunmen and shot dead near the airport, police said of the late Sunday slaughter.
Nine others were killed in separate attacks following the incident in Mexico’s most violent city, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, police said.
Some 6,500 people have died in Ciudad Juarez in the past three years in killings blamed on turf wars between the Juarez and Sinaloa drug gangs and their hitmen over lucrative smuggling routes into the United States.
More than 28,000 people have died nationwide in suspected drug violence since December 2006, when the government launched an offensive against the gangs with the deployment of some 50,000 troops.
TITLE: Over 70 Dead in Wave of Violence in Karachi
AUTHOR: By Mohammad Mansoor
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: KARACHI — Pakistan said Wednesday there was no need to send the army into Karachi to bring the country’s biggest city under control after politically motivated killings left more than 70 people dead in days.
The teeming city of 16 million is the country’s economic capital, home to its stock exchange and an Arabian Sea port where NATO supplies dock ready to be trucked overland to support the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan.
The city has suffered its most serious bout of political violence in years, with 85 people killed after a lawmaker was shot dead in August and more than 70 since Saturday, the eve of the vote to elect the MP’s successor.
The violence, which rival coalition partners blame on each other, has sent shockwaves through the weak central government ahead of strategic talks with the United States and as it battles to contain the fallout of massive floods.
“No decision has been taken to send the army to Karachi,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told reporters in the capital Islamabad.
“I am confident that political leadership will be able to control the situation in Karachi,” he added.
Calls for military intervention of any kind are deeply sensitive in Pakistan, which has been ruled for more than half its existence by the army and which has been subject to four military coups.
The army is the most powerful institution in Pakistan.
The most recent period of military rule ended with elections in 2008, but the government is struggling in the face of criticism, particularly from local media, alleging it is unable to cope and that heads should roll.
President Asif Ali Zardari said that a “handful of vicious elements would not be allowed to disturb peace and stability of the country’s economic hub,” official media reported.
Zardari, who discussed the law and order situation in Karachi with interior minister Rehman Malik on Wednesday, vowed that peace would be restored “at all costs.”
He directed authorities “to bring all those involved in such heinous incidents to justice regardless of their affiliations.”
Karachi shut down on Wednesday, with shops and schools closed and public transport suspended as police and paramilitary troops patrolled troubled neighborhoods.
The closures came after the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which represents the Urdu-speaking majority, called on citizens to mourn the deaths.
Its coalition partner but chief rival is the Awami National Party (ANP), whose power base is rooted in Pashtun migrants from the northwest, one of the poorest parts of the country and hard hit by Taliban violence.
Both parties blame each other for the violence, fanning tensions within Karachi that reverberate to the capital – where both factions are also members of the ruling federal coalition – and threatening the local economy.
“It is a serious situation as it could trigger a conflict among ethnic groups and lead to mass murders,” said political analyst Rasul Bakhsh Raees.
“This would have an adverse impact on Pakistan and its economy as Karachi is the country’s main financial hub,” he added, calling on civilian leaders to unite to resolve the unrest.
“Members of the ruling coalition don’t seem to be on the same page in dealing with the situation,” Raees said.
In the worst single incident, 11 people were killed by masked gunmen riding motorcycles on Tuesday, who sprayed bullets across Shershah Kabari market.
Waqar Mehdi, a special advisor to the Sindh chief minister, said a total of 35 people were killed in different parts of the city on Tuesday, raising to more than 70 the death toll since Saturday.
He said that 80 suspects were being interrogated and that a proposal to strip Karachi of weapons was ready to be implemented, although it remains unclear how such a huge task could be achieved.
City police chief Fayyaz Leghari assesed: “It is right now difficult to name any groups over involvement in the killings but I can say one thing – this is a conspiracy to destabilize Karachi.”
MQM provincial lawmaker Raza Haider was shot dead in Karachi in August, sparking the unrest that went on to claim 85 lives. MQM easily held onto his seat at Sunday’s by-election, boycotted by the ANP.
TITLE: Nine Killed By Bus Bomb In Philippines
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: OTABATO, Philippines — Nine people were killed Thursday when a bomb exploded aboard a packed passenger bus in the troubled southern Philippines, authorities said.
The military and police said Muslim militants or bandits who are known to operate on the southern island of Mindanao could have been behind the attack, with extortion a possible motive.
“The bus company has long been receiving extortion letters from armed groups operating in the region,” regional military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Randolph Cabangbang said.
The bomb was apparently hidden inside a bag placed in a luggage compartment at the back of the bus, and exploded just after a group of men who were suspected to have planted it got off the vehicle, Cabangdang said.
Bus driver Arlan Tadeo, 38, who was unharmed in the incident, said there were 60 passengers on board when the explosion occurred.
“I saw in the rear-view mirror shattered blood-stained windows,” he said.
Tadeo said he parked the bus at the roadside and looked in the mirror again, to see headless bodies and passengers raising their bloody arms as they screamed for help.
Tadeo said police and military forces arrived in about 10 minutes and organized local residents to help take the victims to hospitals.
TITLE: Britain Unveils Spending Cuts
AUTHOR: By Danny Kemp and Katherine Haddon
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LONDON — Britain’s government unveiled the harshest spending cuts for decades on Wednesday, slashing budgets by around a fifth and taking the axe to the country’s comprehensive welfare system.
Finance minister George Osborne said nearly half a million public sector jobs would go as a result of the austerity measures, and the age at which state pensions are paid to men and women would rise to 66 by 2020.
Osborne insisted that the 83-billion-pound ($130 billion) package — watched around Europe by governments with similar deficit worries — marked “the day that Britain steps back from the brink.”
“This coalition government faced the worst economic inheritance in modern history,” he added. “A stronger Britain starts here.”
Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition came to power in May saying it had to take drastic action to eliminate Britain’s record 154.7-billion-pound deficit — a legacy of the previous Labour government.
The opposition, unions and some economists say the cuts are a gamble that could plunge the world’s sixth largest economy back into recession.
Osborne confirmed the government would cut 490,000 public sector jobs over four years–from a total of around six million — adding that the job losses were “unavoidable when the country has run out of money.”
Government departments are facing average cuts of 19 percent over four years except health and overseas aid, which are ring-fenced. They are lower than the expected 25 percent.
The Foreign Office will have 24 percent slashed from its budget, police spending will fall by four percent each year and the Home Office and Ministry of Justice will each fall by six percent a year.
Some of the biggest cuts are being made in welfare, which accounts for around a third of government spending. Osborne unveiled savings of seven billion pounds a year.
He confirmed child benefit will be cut for many higher earners, while raising the state pension age is expected to save over five billion pounds a year. Public sector workers will also have to pay more into their state pensions.
The minister said the cuts were the “greatest reform to the welfare state for a generation.”