SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1622 (83), Friday, October 29, 2010
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TITLE: Director Takes Jab At President In Manifesto
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Nikita Mikhalkov, the Oscar-winning film director and a monarchist with close ties to the ruling elite, set the political classes chattering Wednesday with the release of a nearly 10,000-word political manifesto promoting “enlightened conservatism.”
The document, written in a flowery language and titled “Right and Truth,” attacks Western-styled democracy in an indirect dig at President Dmitry Medvedev, but stops short of outright condemning the capitalist reforms of the past two decades.
“Euphoria of liberal democracy has come to an end. Now it is time to do the job,” Mikhalkov said in the manifesto, copies of which were provided to “state leaders,” Ekho Moskvy radio reported.
The manifesto, which cites pre-revolutionary conservative thinkers such as Pyotr Struve and Konstantin Pobedonostsev to support its theses, describes the current state of affairs in the country as “a mix of West-chasing liberal modernization, nepotism of local authorities and widespread corruption.”
Mikhalkov gives lengthy guidelines for fighting social ills, including combining elements of market and planned economies, promoting “traditional religions,” strengthening the “power vertical,” protecting the rights of nationalities and individual citizens within the state and revising current modernization programs.
Only three political parties — a conservative, liberal and socialist one — should remain in the country, Mikhalkov said, without explaining whether he is referring to existing parties or seeking the creation of new ones.
Local self-government should be boosted, but governors and mayors of “cities of federal significance” should be nominated to their posts by the president, the manifesto says.
The document also sports a number of odder ideas, such as basing its ideology in part on “the sinfulness of man’s nature” and its description of Russia as the “geopolitical and spiritual center of the world.”
The manifesto caused a flurry of reactions but left many politicians and analysts skeptical, with some calling it an attack on the liberal-leaning President Dmitry Medvedev and others an attempt to distract the public from Mikhalkov’s recent controversial business dealings.
The ruling United Russia party, which has previously adopted conservatism as its own ideology, but does not count Mikhalkov as a member, praised the manifesto. But the leader of the liberal Yabloko party, Sergei Mitrokhin, said the document was essentially an attempt by Mikhalkov to make up for United Russia’s ideological blandness.
“United Russia has promised us ideological ideas but failed, so Mikhalkov is trying to fill the vacuum,” Mitrokhin said by telephone.
Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the pro-Kremlin Politika foundation, agreed that Mikhalkov “is trying to play the role of ideologist,” a sentiment shared by independent political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky, who said Mikhalkov is “trying to present himself to the Kremlin as a conservative leader.”
Belkovsky also said Mikhalkov, who was considered by President Boris Yeltsin as a potential challenger in the 1990s, retains political aspirations, but added that the manifesto cannot be viewed as a serious political agenda.
“He would certainly make a better talking head than many of the United Russia functionaries, but this manifesto is just a compilation of various ideas. I personally saw nothing new,” Belkovsky said.
Mitrokhin said the document, which criticizes the Kremlin’s ongoing modernization program, has “certain elements” that may be considered criticism of Medvedev, who has made modernization a key point of his agenda.
Pro-Kremlin political pundit Gleb Pavlovsky also said the manifesto was an attack on the president. “Politically, it is an attempt to start a counterattack on Medvedev’s cause,” he said, Interfax reported.
Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov told reporters that the document shares some provisions with the party’s program, but another prominent Communist, Viktor Ilukhin, said Mikhalkov was “trying to force his way of life on people.”

TITLE: State to Give Fishing a $13Bln Overhaul
AUTHOR: By Derek Andersen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The commercial shipbuilding industry is in dire straits — with a shrinking fleet and little domestic manufacturing — and requires $12.8 billion in investment over the next 10 years to maintain the country’s fishing fleet, the government said Wednesday.
Less than 10 percent of newly purchased fishing ships were made domestically, and the government plans to continue to look outside the country to shore up the fleet.
Fishing and shipbuilding were the topics of Wednesday’s session of the newly established subcommission on fishery and aquatic farming of the Union of Entrepreneurs and Industrialists.
Igor Orlov, chief executive of the Yantar Baltic Shipbuilding Plant, acknowledged that the shipbuilding industry was in disarray but emphasized its potential to make a comeback.
“The Baltic plant builds the world’s most sophisticated warships. It is capable of building fishing ships too,” Orlov said.
“Fishing needs state help in any case,” he added. “It is logical to spend the money within the Russian Federation.”
The industry is in crisis because of the state of its fleet and declining resources, said Andrei Krainy, head of the Federal Fisheries Agency.
As of last year, the fleet consisted of 2,419 ships, many of which were built during Soviet times. The number has shrunk by 26 percent since 1992, with a corresponding reduction in qualified personnel.
Krainy opposed the “quota for a keel” proposal made by United Shipbuilding head Roman Trotsenko, who wants to see a system whereby ship owners would receive better fishing rights in exchange for buying Russian-built vessels.
Krainy argued that Trotsenko’s proposal is impractical, since domestic shipyards are not designed for the production of fishing ships and local shipbuilding technology cannot produce modern trawlers quickly or cheaply enough.
German Zverev, member of the subcommission and president of the Association of Pollack Producers, said the nature of the fishing industry is changing.
To maintain current levels of production, less profitable marine bio-resources will have to exploited, fishing ships will have to expand further into international waters and fish farming needs be developed, Zverev said.
Russia currently produces about 114,000 tons of farmed fish a year, which is less than 5 percent of the total harvest. Worldwide, 38 percent of harvested fish come from farms.
Although the country’s cold waters are a challenge for fish farming, it is estimated that oyster farming could be done in the Far East and be worth more than $10 million per year. Salmon, sturgeon and seaweed are also viable for farming in Russian waters.
Price fluctuations make economic modeling difficult and complicate planning, Zverev said. He said prices for seafood are considerably lower today than they were in the 1970s, 
when the Soviet fishing fleet was at its peak of capacity.
Speaking Tuesday at a round-table discussion on investment in the fishing industry, First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov presented a more positive picture. The total harvest has risen by 12 percent in the last three years to 3.8 million tons this year, he said, and sales have increased by 21 percent in the same period, to reach $3.3 billion.
Zubkov credited the state for much of that success.
The fishing industry received $457.8 million in government support this year and will receive the same amount next year, Zubkov said. The industry can also look forward to a program of low-interest credit, loans with subsidized interest and lower fees for resource use.
Zubkov said 50 ships have been overhauled in the last two years, and 32 new ones have been ordered. Of those 32, only three were Russian-made. Eleven seaports that serve the fishing industry are being reconstructed under a federal targeted program.
Legislative measures will also work to the industry’s advantage. New quality standards for fish products came into force at the beginning of this month, which will encourage consumption. A strategic plan for the development of the fishing ship industry will be submitted to the State Duma at its spring session next year. The draft of the plan estimates the need for investment in the shipbuilding industry through 2020 at $12.8 billion. It sets investment in fishing, market development and resource management for the same period at $410 million to $780 million. The development plan foresees the use of foreign shipbuilders to fortify the Russian fleet. Business owners will be offered attractive purchase conditions and lease agreements.

TITLE: President Medvedev Gets Serious on Energy Efficiency
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that the country needs to start thinking seriously about energy efficiency in the housing sector and promised that he would deal with governors who are “irresponsible” in delaying installation of modern utility metering equipment.
He also said he expects private investment to follow as modernization of energy transmission and measurement equipment takes place.
“[Municipal utility] organizations should have the opportunity to attract private investment — which is why we need to lift barriers to implementing energy service contracts,” Medvedev said at a modernization commission session in Naberezhniye Chelny, Tatarstan.
Promoting energy efficiency is one of the priorities of Medvedev’s modernization program and includes a goal to cut the amount of energy spent per unit of economic output by 40 percent by 2020.
The country is estimated to use 2.5 times more energy to produce a given amount of goods and services than the world average.
On Tuesday, the president also highlighted some of the problems that people, companies and municipalities encounter when trying to abide by recent legislation aimed at saving energy and improving efficiency. One element of the program foresees the installation of modern “smart” electricity meters that are highly accurate and allow for differentiated charging depending on the time of day.
“The law determines the deadlines for installing meters, but we do not yet have strict requirements for the quality of the meters,” Medvedev said, Interfax reported.
The Interregional Distribution Grid Companies holding has the mandate to work with the regions and install smart meters. Company head Nikolai Shvets said that of the regions that have signed agreements to have smart meters installed, not all are meeting their obligations.
The company has met with governors of 45 out of 69 regions and signed agreements with 28 of them.
“Where [the governors are being] irresponsible, give me a list of those governors so that I understand who is irresponsible and is not meeting with you … who does not sign agreements,” Medvedev told Shvets.
Shvets said his company was planning to spend 39 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) by 2015 to install 13 million meters over the course of 10 years.
As a result, electricity will be saved in an an amount equal to that currently consumed by Tatarstan every six months, Shvets said.
“In 2011, investment to implement the program of installing smart meters is estimated at 5.5 billion rubles,” Shvets said, Interfax reported.
Shvets’ company will install 50,000 meters in the Perm region as part of a pilot project.
Tatarstan’s efforts to promote energy efficiency were highly praised by Medvedev, who wished to see other regions follow the example of Naberezhniye Chelny and its “progressive people.”
Russia is very far behind in terms of energy efficiency, compared with most industrialized countries.
Energy losses are an acute problem for the North Caucasus: Dagestan wastes about 33 percent, and Chechnya 34 percent, according to Shvets’ estimates.
But modernization alone will not solve the country’s energy efficiency problems, Medvedev said. There has to be an active promotional campaign for the government’s efforts to succeed.
“People think that energy efficiency — all our talking about it — is some kind of bureaucratic fuss. They need to understand that we are doing it so that they spend less, and this needs to be repeated on TV screens and via other media outlets practically every day,” Medvedev said.
Though Medvedev mentioned private investment, he did not comment specifically on how it could help improve energy efficiency or which companies may potentially be interested in investing in related projects in the housing and public utilities sectors, which are notorious for red tape.

TITLE: 99 Percent of St. Petersburg Counted in Census
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A senior St. Petersburg statistics official said Tuesday that 99 percent of the city’s residents took part in this year’s census, despite widespread reports of apathy and even hostility toward the nationwide headcount.
“There were cases where census workers did not make it to several buildings, we’re not denying that at all,” Dmitry Dorofeyev, deputy head of the city branch of the State Statistics Service, told Interfax.
“All complaints will be carefully considered, and stationary census points will remain open for another four days,” he said.
Residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg demonstrated “the least willingness” to participate in the census, according to a VTsIOM poll of 1,600 people released Monday.
Nationwide, just 5 percent of respondents said they were unlikely to respond when workers came to their homes. One-third said they were unlikely to go to a census station on their own, the poll found.
Dorofeyev said census workers reported that some residents intentionally avoided them, while in a few instances they even threatened physical violence.
“All of those questions are being settled at the district level,” he said. “Later, we’ll provide statistics on how many incidents there were.”
Governor Valentina Matviyenko thanked St. Petersburg residents for their active participation this year, which she said was “much higher” than in the previous census in 2002, according a statement posted Monday on her government’s web site.
But Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, who represents St. Petersburg in the upper chamber of parliament, called on the statistics service to provide a full report on citizens’ complaints.
St. Petersburg media and blogs reported numerous instances of manipulated data, violations of confidentiality, and students being forced to help conduct the census, he said.
The two-week census, which ended Monday, cost an estimated 17 billion rubles ($562 million). Opposition groups including The Other Russia had called for a boycott to protest state policies, while demographers said the data was vital for their research.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>Teacher Beaten in Class</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A St. Petersburg schoolteacher was beaten by a man in front of a group of first graders in School No. 339 during class on Wednesday, Interfax reported Thursday.
“The man, an unauthorized representative of one of the first graders, burst into the group’s classroom during an extended day session, proceeding to knock over the young teacher and kick her on the ground repeatedly,” Nadezhda Spiridonova, head of the Nevsky district department of education, was cited by Interfax as saying.
The attack was reportedly captured on a security camera placed in the classroom.
The teacher was taken to the Alexandrovskaya hospital, though she has since been discharged onto an outpatient basis.
“As far as I know, the victim had just started working at the school after graduating from university, but will now most likely be submitting her resignation,” Spiridonova added.
A preliminary investigation has begun into the incident. The man has identified himself as the father of a schoolgirl who had come home with a cut lip, claiming that she had fallen, the police source was cited by Interfax as saying.

<strong>Road Safety Stats</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Around 700 minors were killed on Russia’s roads during the first three quarters of this year, with more than 16,000 accompanying casualties.
“In the first nine months of 2010, 15,548 accidents involving minors were registered with the department of transportation, as a result of which 698 died and 16,240 were injured,” according to a statement from the department of road safety.
Earlier, the agency reported that in the first seven months of this year, before the start of the annual “Attention! Children” road safety program, over 500 minors had died on the roads.

<strong>‘Anti-Bourgeois’ Graffiti</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A criminal case has been opened in St. Petersburg regarding vandalism near a local McDonald’s, Interfax reported Thursday, citing the city prosecutor’s web site.
According to a statement on the web site, police detained a group of youths on Oct. 16 as they allegedly daubed the phrase “Death to the Bourgeoisie” on the wall of number 43 Zagorodny Prospekt, opposite a branch of the fast-food chain. 
The detainees reportedly explained that their actions were part of “Fight Against McDonald’s Day,” Interfax reported.

TITLE: Victims: ‘Animal Cop’ Denying Allegations
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The police officer under investigation for beating up and insulting protesters at an unsanctioned rally held on July 31 in defense of freedom of assembly denies all the charges, the victims said this week.
Svetlana Pavlushina and Eduard Balagurov, who were beaten and harassed by the officer, later identified as Vadim Boiko, were called in by investigators for a face-to-face meeting with Boiko on Monday.
Pavlushina can be seen in videos and photographs being dragged by her hair by the officer at the rally. Balagurov has said that he was beaten by Boiko when he tried to defend Pavlushina. Photographs of Balagurov’s beaten face and body covered with bruises had previously been submitted to the investigators.
Called an “ochnaya stavka,” face-to-face meetings of this kind are a legal procedure in Russia, comprising the simultaneous interrogation of two previously questioned persons whose testimonies contain “significant contradictions,” according to the Russian Criminal Code.
Boiko, 35, created uproar on the web and in the media when a video showing him addressing protesters as “animals” and hitting a man in the face with his police baton was uploaded to YouTube after the July 31 pro-constitution event held near Gostiny Dvor on Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main street. 
Four people filed complaints with the prosecutor, resulting in a criminal case being opened in August. In September, Boiko was officially charged with “exceeding his authority with the use of violence and tactical police equipment.” The offense is punishable by three to ten years in prison.
Boiko was hospitalized last month after allegedly being “hit on the head with a heavy object” by an unknown man on Sept. 15. The investigation, which was due to be completed on Oct. 25, has been extended for another month, Interfax reported.
Pavlushina said Boiko denied dragging her by the hair, saying he held her by the hair “by accident.” 
“[Boiko] said that he was not dragging me by my hair, that I was an active protester, running around and shouting slogans, insulting police officers, preventing those detained from being put in a bus, and throwing myself under the officers’ feet,” Pavlushina said by phone Thursday.
“He said he saw all this and decided to help them detain me. He wanted to just push me a little on the back, but his hand perhaps slipped and got caught in my hair. But [he said] it was not him who was detaining me, but the other policemen, and he is ready to name them.”
Pavlushina said she was targeted by Boiko when he saw her filming arrests on a video camera. 
According to Balagurov, Boiko accused him of grabbing the officer and kicking him under the knee from behind.
“[Boiko] said that he started to fall backward while accidentally holding Svetlana’s hair and his concern was that he shouldn’t hurt her and that he shouldn’t fall on me, so as not to harm anybody, to keep everybody safe,” Balagurov said Thursday.
Boiko denied beating Balagurov, claiming that he walked away and let other officers detain him. “He said there was a distance between us and that it was simply physically impossible,” Balagurov said.
Both Boiko and his lawyer were unavailable for comment Thursday.
The next protest of the Strategy 31 campaign in defense of the freedom of assembly will be held near Gostiny Dvor at 6 p.m. on Sunday, the organizers said this week. 
Last week, City Hall refused to authorize the event, saying that “planned improvement works” would be underway at the site. The earlier Strategy 31 protests have been refused authorization on the grounds that the site was too close to the metro.

TITLE: Khodorkovsky: Case Is ‘Rubbish’
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky said Wednesday that an embezzlement case against him was “utter rubbish” and urged that it be thrown it out as he made an impassioned, three-hour closing statement in his second trial.
“I am sure that you are competent enough to understand that the allegations made by the prosecution are utter rubbish and you are not going to include utter rubbish in your ruling,” Khodorkovsky, composed but pale, told Judge Viktor Danilkin.
Khodorkovsky accused the prosecutors of following political orders to keep him and business associate Platon Lebedev behind bars, but said the evidence the prosecutors presented makes clear the two of them are not guilty.
“Please appreciate their [prosecutors’] efforts,” he said to the judge with a note of sarcasm. “Otherwise, next time they could just spit on a piece of paper stamped by the prosecutor’s office and come to you asking for another 14-year sentence. Nearly the same thing is already happening in this court.”
Prosecutors last week requested a 14-year sentence, which lawyers said would include time already served.
Khodorkovsky, 47, was Russia’s richest man when he was arrested in 2003 on charges of tax evasion by his now-defunct oil company, Yukos. The charges were considered punishment for challenging then-President Vladimir Putin, including by funding opposition parties.
Khodorkovsky’s eight-year sentence from that trial is a year from completion, but the second raft of fraud and embezzlement charges filed against him could keep him behind bars until 2017.
Critics charge that the second case is designed to keep Khodorkovsky incarcerated until after the 2012 presidential election, in which Putin could take part. The case is being closely watched to gauge whether Russia has strengthened its commitment to the rule of law as President Dmitry Medvedev has promised.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are accused of stealing more than 218 million tons of oil — worth some $27 billion — produced by Yukos from 1998 to 2003. Khodorkovsky said that if this amount of oil were placed in freight trains, they would circle the equator twice.
Several dozen supporters cheered and chanted “Freedom, freedom!” when court marshals led a handcuffed Khodorkovsky into the courtroom, which was crammed with the defendants’ relatives and prominent opposition figures.
Among them was former chess champion Garry Kasparov, who predicted that this “political trial will determine the configuration of the future government in Russia.”
Khodorkovsky’s 76-year-old father told reporters that he was afraid he would not live to see his son walk free.
“I’m old and I’m scared that I may never see him again because of this trial,” Boris Khodorkovsky said.
Closing arguments are scheduled to continue into early next week. The judge is then expected to call a recess before issuing a ruling.

TITLE: Famished Bears Dig Up Graves In Search of Food
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Famished bears in northern Russia have resorted to digging up graves in cemeteries — and reportedly eating at least one body — after a scorching summer destroyed their natural food sources of forest berries and mushrooms, officials said Thursday.
The brown bears’ grisly habit is forcing locals in the Arctic Circle region of Komi to mount 24-hour patrols, protecting their families and livestock with the concern that the bears might get a taste for fresher human flesh, said Pyotr Lobanov, a regional spokesman for the Emergencies Ministry.
Last summer was Russia’s hottest on record, with raging forest fires and droughts wiping out woodland and crops, forcing the bears to forage closer and closer to human settlements as the winter hibernation period approaches.
A top-selling daily newspaper, Moskovsky Komsomolets, reported that one body was devoured in the village of Verkhnyaya Chova over the weekend. Two visitors to the cemetery shrieked at the shocking sight of the animal tearing into half-decomposed flesh, scaring the bear away, the paper reported.
Domestic pets, goats and cattle have all fallen prey to the bears since the summer, prompting unsightly fences to go up around farmland and more thoughtful disposal of garbage.
And the signs are that locals are right to be more diligent: A man in his 20s barely escaped with his life when he was mauled by an aggressive bear in early September on the fringes of the regional capital city, Syktyvkar, the main local news channel reported.
Komi, about the size of California with the climate of Alaska, carries the nickname “Bear’s Corner” because, covered 70 percent by coniferous Taiga woodland, it is ideal bear habitat.
Encounters with bears in urban areas are not common in the sparsely populated region, but becoming more frequent, officials say.
“This year is far worse than others,” Lobanov said. “But people in the republic all know how to deal with this and know what can happen,” he said.
Attacks on people by some of Russia’s 140,000 bears are on the rise nationwide, and concentrated in the country’s Far East, where rampant fish poaching often forces the bears to seek other sources of food, such as garbage.
In the most notorious incident, in 2008 a pack of up to 30 Kamchatka bears — which are similar to grizzlies — prowled around two mines of a local platinum mining company where they killed the two guards and laid siege to workers inside company premises.
Campers shot dead a bear that attacked and killed their friend off the Far East coast in 2007.

TITLE: Moscow, Kiev Agree New Oil Transit Deal
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia and Ukraine initialed a new oil transit agreement Wednesday as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hailed a blossoming of trade between the neighbors since President Viktor Yanukovych’s election in February.
“I hate to disappoint you [reporters], but we’ve initialed an agreement on the transit of oil,” Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said at a news conference in Kiev, Interfax reported.
Shmatko’s Ukrainian colleague said the five-year deal envisions a volume of 25 million tons but other details remain to be decided, Interfax reported.
Shmatko indicated that Moscow was in no hurry to reassess its gas supply contracts with Ukraine, however, which Kiev had stressed as a priority ahead of Wednesday’s talks.
“Everything happens in its own time,” he told Bloomberg. “No good agreements can be made if we are forced.”
The oil deal was one of several to be signed by a Russian delegation headed by Putin in Kiev for the latest round of the Russian-Ukrainian intergovernmental trade commission.
“As a result of the policy that you adopted toward Russia, this political component is being transformed into economic results,” Putin said ahead of a meeting with Yanukovych. “In January-September this year, trade grew by 77 percent. We are practically at pre-crisis levels.”
The talks were set to focus on building ties between state-owned firms. Apart from the oil transit deal, Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation and Ukraine’s Antonov signed a deal on creating a 50-50 joint venture called Civil Aircraft.
Putin and Yanukovych were also expected to discuss nuclear energy, agriculture, transport and space exploration.
But the differences over gas mean that the holy grail for the Russians — a merger of Naftogaz Ukrainy with the vastly larger Gazprom — continues to remain elusive.

TITLE: GPS-Only Devices To Be Hit With Special Customs Duty
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government plans to levy a customs duty on devices that only support the Global Positioning System navigation standard, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Wednesday, calling the measure “motivation.”
No duty will be charged for devices that support both Glonass — the Russian standard — and GPS, he said. Interfax reported.
“We have already received signals from mobile phone manufacturers that when we introduce [the duty] they are ready to supply telephones supporting both Glonass and GPS,” Ivanov said.
There is no indication how much the duty will be.
Ivanov said the measure is “not coercion, but motivation” to promote Glonass, Russia’s answer to American GPS, on the local market. Now between $4 billion and $5 billion worth of GPS devices are sold in Russia, Ivanov said, and Russia wants in.
The move comes not long after AFK Sistema head Vladimir Yevtushenkov lobbied for banning GPS-based devices in Russia at a meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last summer.
Ivanov also promised to mandate by the end of 2010 the installation of Glonass devices by domestic automakers on models they equip with navigation systems.
AvtoVAZ has begun to install Glonass receivers, but other manufacturers are balking and will only do it if there is legislation forcing them, Ivanov said.

TITLE: Apraksin Developer Surveys New Site
AUTHOR: By Nadezhda Zaitseva and Maria Buravtseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The St. Petersburg City Administration will consider plans for the authorization of surveying works by the Agency for the Reconstruction and Development of Apraksin Dvor (ARDAD) on an 11-hectare plot on Moskovskoye Shosse, in the southern outskirts of the city, for the development of wholesale and retail shopping facilities.
The agency was selected for the allocation of the plot, which lies to the north of 13 Moskovskoye Shosse,  as the largest owner and tenant of Apraksin Dvor, a spokesperson for the City Property Management Committee (KUGI) said.
KUGI rents out approximately 50,000 square meters in Apraksin Dvor, and about the same amount is owned by ARDAD. The Piter Commercial Center, which owns 50 percent of ARDAD, and a company linked to it rent several buildings on the site with a total area of about 8,000 square meters, and they own about another 10,000 square meters, said Ivan Berkoltsev, development director at Piter. The other co-owners of ARDAD own 3,000 more square meters and rent another 14,000 square meters at the site, a source close to the company said.
In 2009, a 25-percent stake in ARDAD was purchased at auction for 88,750 rubles ($2,885) by the Apraksin Dvor Departmental Advertising Agency. The firm could not be reached for comment.
In 2008, Glavstroi SPB won the rights to the reconstruction of Apraksin Dvor at auction, proposing a 40-billion ruble ($1.3 billion) project. Since then, City Hall has been trying to remove tenants from the territory.
According to the head of the City Property Management Commitee, ARDAD will be responsible for the legal settlement of property issues arising from the transfer of the premises.
The release of the land will only take place after the construction of a new complex that can be offered to the other tenants at Apraksin Dvor, Berkoltsev said. The issue of funding and detailed plans for the development project have yet to be decided, he said.
Between 20,000 and 50,000 square meters of retail space can be built on the 11-hectare site, with an investment cost of from $15 million to $50 million, estimates Igor Gorsky, managing partner of St. Petersburg Development and Real Estate Agency. According to Gorsky, Apraksin Dvor isn’t fit for modern retail, lacking both truck acess and parking.

TITLE: Chinese to Lend $6 Billion for Coal Deposits
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government will unveil coal deposits that Russian companies will develop using $6 billion in Chinese loans by the year’s end, Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Yanovsky said Monday.
The deposits may include assets owned by Sakhalinugol on Sakhalin Island and the Elegest coal field in eastern Siberia, Yanovsky said on the sidelines of the annual International Energy Week conference.
The announcement comes as Russia and China have stepped up cooperation in developing trade in oil and gas. Russian oil is scheduled to start flowing across the Chinese border in a new pipeline in January, and the governments expect an agreement on gas sales by July so they can start building another pipeline.
Yanovsky said it was for the Russian companies and Chinese banks to negotiate the coal deposits and was not for the Energy Ministry to decide. He didn’t name the companies that were in talks.
Russian coal producers will use the Chinese loans to finance investments in return for a guarantee to increase supplies to China, where demand is rising for coal used in making steel and fueling 80 percent of its power plants.
Federation Council member and businessman Sergei Pugachyov’s United Industrial Corporation has the permit to the Elegest coal field with reserves of 946 million metric tons of coal. In early September, the company hired Credit Suisse Group to privately place 75 percent of its shares.
Another major player, Mechel, obtained local financing to develop coal deposits and won’t use Chinese money, Yanovsky said, Bloomberg reported. The company is currently developing the Elga mining project in eastern Siberia.
Nikolai Sosnovsky, a metals and mining analyst at UralSib Capital, said Evraz and Severstal might be vying to develop coal deposits if those sites held metallurgical coal.
He suggested that perhaps the government has to offer licenses in Tuva, where potential is high to discover coal reserves.
The loan is aimed at Russian — not Chinese — coal producers, in a diversion from China’s traditional policy of giving loans to its own.
China, the world’s biggest coal consumer, plans to increase its annual coal imports from Russia to 15 million tons in the next five years and raise that to at least 20 million tons in 20 years, according to the statement posted on the Russian Industry and Trade Ministry last month.
China presents itself as an increasingly attractive market for oil, gas and mining companies, especially after demand for fossil fuel on the European market decreased.
Gazprom appears to be moving forward in its bid to gain a larger footprint on the Chinese market, where it has been selling only scant shipments of liquefied natural gas from its Sakhalin project.
China is at the top of the strategic partners list in Asia for the company, Stanislav Tsygankov, Gazprom’s head of international business, said during the conference.
“Today the European market is not the only market for us,” Tsygankov said.
Russia expects to sign a gas supplies agreement with China in 2011 and will be ready to begin deliveries in 2015, Tsygankov said.
China’s yearly demand for gas in 2020 will be about 300 billion cubic meters, Tsygankov estimated. China now produces 80 bcm of gas domestically.

TITLE: Russia’s Corruption Rating Barely Changed
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Despite President Dmitry Medvedev’s efforts to fight corruption, the country remains firmly rooted in the bottom league of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, which was released Tuesday.
Russia made it only to 154th place on the 178-country survey, scoring evenly with nine other countries ranging from Cambodia to Tajikistan that scored 2.1 points from a possible 10.
The result was the worst among the Group of 20 nations, with the next-worst performing member Indonesia in 110th place, making Russia the most corrupt major economy.
Among post-Soviet countries, only Kyrgyzstan (164th), Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (both at 172nd) fared worse, while the Baltic countries were in the lead.
The index, based on surveys of businesspeople and governance experts, is published annually by the Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog and is among the world’s most-quoted surveys on corruption.
Russia’s performance was only slightly worse than the 2.2 points it scored in 2009. The resulting eight-spot drop in the overall rankings, from last year’s 146th, was mainly because so many countries scored similarly, Transparency said.
“There are no significant changes. Regarding corruption, everything remains just as bad as it was,” the organization’s Moscow office said in an e-mailed press release.
Transparency’s country representative, Yelena Panfilova, said the Kremlin’s anti-corruption efforts continued to impress on paper but rang hollow in practice.
“Yes, corrupt officials are exposed and cases investigated, but the real number of sentences has not risen,” she said in the statement.
Panfilova, who is also a member of Medvedev’s Human Rights Council, said two high-profile corruption cases should show in the near future whether the country was able break through what she called “a wall of untouchables.”
She said she hoped that authorities would show resolve to investigate both the Daimler and Magnitsky cases without protecting high-level officials who may have been involved.
German carmaker Daimler admitted in April to paying more than $6.4 million in kickbacks to state-connected firms and officials. Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for the Hermitage Capital fund, died in detention last year after being accused of tax evasion — charges that his supporters say were politically motivated.
Mikhail Fedotov, the newly appointed head of the presidential human rights council, told The St. Petersburg Times that the fight against corruption would continue in full force, but that quick changes could not be expected as long as key elements for success were missing.
“We need an independent judiciary and independent law enforcement agencies,” he said. 
Medvedev has given priority to both points this year, but his bill for a wide-ranging police reform has been subject to much criticism and has yet to reach the State Duma.
Fedotov added that while there was political will on Medvedev’s part, another shortcoming was a lack of real political competition.
But Sergei Markov, a Duma deputy for United Russia and political pundit, said Transparency’s methods were doubtful.
“Russia always fares bad in those surveys because Russia’s image is bad,” he said.
Yet he added that the country could learn from some of its strongest critics, saying Georgia has done well in reforming its police.
“[Georgian] President Mikheil Saakashvili may be a war criminal, but he has fought corruption effectively,” Markov said.
Georgia made it to 68th place in the Transparency Index, scoring 3.8 points.

TITLE: Metalloinvest Co-Owner Vasily Anisimov May Sell His Stake
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Terentyova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — One of the co-owners of Metalloinvest, Vasily Anisimov, may sell his share of the company, and if the deal goes through, the entrepreneur could make about $4 billion.
Anisimov is exploring the possibility of selling a 20 percent stake in Metalloinvest — the largest iron ore holding in the Commonwealth of Independent States — Vedomosti was told by various sources, including one close to the company, a senior manager of the bank that was consulted on the sale, and an acquaintance of the co-owners.
Two of the sources told Vedomosti that a buyer has not yet been found. The banker said Alisher Usmanov, Metalloinvest’s controlling shareholder with 50 percent, is personally overseeing the search.
“All assets are bought and sold,” Anisimov told Vedomosti. “As of today, I have not made a definite decision about my Metalloinvest shares, but I am always thinking about my next steps,” he said. “I am 59 years old, and I work 18 hours a day. I would like to spend more time with my family.” Anisimov has four children and two grandchildren.
Usmanov told Vedomosti through his spokesman that he cannot comment since there is no deal, but added that he considers Metalloinvest a quality asset with big growth potential and shares he highly recommends buying.
Neither Usmanov nor the third co-owner of the holding — State Duma Deputy Andrei Skoch, who owns the remaining 30 percent in the name of his father, Vladimir — is likely to buy Anisimov’s stake, said a source close to Metalloinvest. They don’t have enough money.
“I’ve discussed the issue [of selling my shares] with my partners, the other shareholders in Metalloinvest,” Anisimov said. “There is complete trust and understanding among us, which leaves each of us complete freedom to act.” The businessman said that if he decides to sell, it would be for the best price he can get.
Anisimov also has interests in real estate through Coalco International, whose major projects include Great Domodedovo and the White Square office center. Additionally, he controls 11 former companies of Rosspirtprom, including the Moscow distillery Kristall. Anisimov said he enjoys development and would like to devote more time to that business.
Theoretically, Anisimov could sell his shares as part of the company’s upcoming IPO, which could take place early next year. Investors might be offered 20 to 30 percent of the company. As of now, Metalloinvest is valued at about $20 billion, a source close to the holding told Vedomosti, meaning that Anisimov’s stake could be worth $4 billion.
Japan’s Mitsui is interested in buying a 10 to 15 percent stake in one of the company’s assets — the Lebedinsky ore enrichment plant, said a source acquainted with Metalloinvest’s owners and another source close to the company. Its goal is to get the right to buy iron ore in proportion to its share of the company.
Mitsui — one of the largest steel companies in the world — is actively investing in iron ore and coal assets. Vertical integration has become particularly important for Mitsui this year, as the largest producers of raw materials for steel production — BHP Billiton and Vale — began to move from long to spot contracts.
Anisimov is no stranger to the metallurgical industry. In the early 1990s, he participated in the privatization of aluminum plants. By the end of the decade, he owned 28 percent of the Krasnoyarsk aluminum plant, as well as the Bogoslovsky and Kandalakshsky plants.
In 2000, he sold his share of Krasnoyarsk to Roman Abramovich, and the other factories merged with Viktor Vekselberg’s SUAL. Within a few months, Anisimov sold his 50 percent of SUAL. At the time, Anisimov also said he was getting out of the business to devote more time to his family.
For several years Anisimov was out of the limelight. Then in 2005 he triumphantly returned to the forefront of big business, purchasing along with Usmanov a 97 percent stake in the Mikhailovsky ore enrichment plant for $1.65 billion from Boris Ivanishvili.
Usmanov already owned Ural Steel, and together with Skoch he controlled Oskol Electric Steel Works and the Lebedinsky plant. All four companies were subsequently merged into Metalloinvest.
Since March 2009, Boris Berezovsky has been claiming part of Anisimov’s stake in the holding. In London’s High Court, Berezovsky has been trying to prove that he and his late partner, Badri Patarkatsishvili, transferred about $500 million to bank accounts belonging to Anisimov’s companies to pay for the purchase of 25 percent of the Mikhailovsky plant. According to the claim, after the consolidation of assets Anisimov was supposed to give Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili each 5 percent of the company. Usmanov maintained that the assets were bought using VTB’s money.
Anisimov’s acquaintance told Vedomosti that Berezovsky’s lawsuit was one of the reasons that the businessman decided to get out of the metals industry. Vedomosti was unable to clarify the status of the case. The court’s office said the case was confidential and no information could be disclosed.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>‘Mikhalkov’s Hotel’</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — Construction work in downtown Moscow, where a developer linked to famed film director Nikita Mikhalkov was building a seven-story hotel, was suspended Wednesday and equipment was being removed from the site, Interfax reported.
Local residents have stormed the site several times since Friday to stop the ongoing construction, which they say endangers their nearby 19th-century houses.
Residents have accused the developer, Studia Trite, of faking the paperwork needed to obtain the construction license for the project. A representative for the protesters told Interfax hours before construction was halted Tuesday that city officials had promised to revoke permits for the project.

<strong>Monastery Abuse Case</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — The Investigative Committee said Wednesday that it has opened a criminal case into complaints by several underage boarders at the Vladimir region’s Svyato-Bogolyubsky Monastery that they were regularly abused by staff.
Three teenagers spoke of beatings, sleep deprivation and forced labor in an interview with Izvestia last week. Similar accusations were voiced by another boarder last year, but no one was charged.
The committee said in a statement on its web site that no suspects have been identified. It said possible charges could include deprivation of freedom, while children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said torture charges might follow.

TITLE: Investors Need Independent Judiciary
AUTHOR: By Yana Yakovleva
TEXT: Throughout October, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has personally met with potential foreign investors to calm their fears about doing business in Russia. He has described Russia as an enormous market awaiting money and technology from developed countries. And that’s true: Russia is a huge and unique market with vast potential for modernization and the introduction of new technologies — and not just in the planned Skolkovo innovation hub.
We do need new standards and more efficient production. But how do we resolve the obvious problem of ensuring the safety of future investments? How can potential investors be guaranteed that the assets they create in Russia will remain theirs?
Without first resolving the situation for Russian businesses, there’s no way to attract foreign investors. It is impossible to trample domestic businesses while creating attractive conditions for foreign firms. Likewise, foreigners will only feel secure once Russia reforms its judicial system and passes legislation favorable to business. Raiders have attacked not only private property in Russia, but the entire judicial system. Property seizures of everything from individual plots of land and small buildings to major companies have become commonplace throughout the country.
Generally speaking, there are several clear categories of people ordering raids and actually conducting them. The people ordering the raids are, as a rule: a) monopolistic companies that seize ownership of independent businesses to swallow up their assets and neutralize any nascent competition; b) officials seeking property at practically no cost, which they then register in the name of a wife or other relative; c) former business partners who, lacking a legal tradition of civilized asset splits, opt to “eliminate their opponent”; or d) law enforcement agents who open criminal proceedings against businesspeople to coerce them into a forced takeover or as a means of confiscating goods or property that can be resold on the market.
State officials also go after entrepreneurs to punish them for not cooperating in corrupt schemes, which could mean interfering in the business or even initiating trumped-up criminal proceedings against the individual who refused to “cooperate.” Falsified evidence is widely used by the state to make its case, which is possible because of the complete absence of an independent judiciary. As a rule, judges at all levels side with the prosecution.
In many cases, rulings by corrupt judges are used to expropriate property and serve as the basis for future criminal proceedings against the targeted individual or company. The authorities conduct surprise searches of corporate offices and seize records for a criminal case in which the results are rigged in advance. Employees are interrogated and threatened with criminal charges unless they sign off on fabricated testimony to be used against their employer.
Criminal courts are not directly dependent on corrupt dealings, but it has been shown repeatedly that they are wholly subordinate to law enforcement agencies. Judges routinely rule in favor of the prosecution out of fear and an inability to make a decision differing from the position of the court chairman, who in turn takes his position from his superiors, and so on.
The general practice in Russian courts is to avoid acquittals at all costs. As a result, no weight is given to potentially exonerating evidence, motions by defense lawyers are denied, and witnesses for the defense are either never cross-examined or their testimony is discounted. The verdict usually does not take into account the position of the defense and is simply a copy of the indictment, written by the prosecutor when the criminal case was first opened.
The bureaucratic system is set up in such a way that any appeal against the actions of a representative of the state is sent to the very person against whom the complaint was lodged. For example, an appeal for a redress of wrongs sent to the prosecutor general is forwarded to the regional prosecutor’s office, which in turn hands it to the prosecutor named as the wrongdoer. That individual responds that all of his actions were justified and legitimate, which is then sent to the citizen who filed the complaint and back to the prosecutor general.
Of course, not all Russian businesses fall victim to this steamroller of extortion and intimidation. Some manage to work out a deal enabling them to survive, but at the cost of their independence.
Only a working system that can defend real owners’ rights — that is, an independent judiciary — will be able to attract investors to Russia. These problems are hardly new, but they are the ones that need to be solved before the country’s business climate can improve.

Yana Yakovleva is chairwoman of the Business Solidarity partnership, a pressure group for judicial reform and for defense of the rights of entrepreneurs. This comment appeared in Vedomosti.

TITLE: Fires? What Fires?
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Any government that is accountable to the people dedicates a substantial amount of time analyzing and reporting on its actions and mistakes. Visitors to the U.S. government and Senate web sites will find hundreds, even thousands, of such reports. An unaccountable government behaves in exactly the opposite way. Rather than analyzing its mistakes, it makes empty promises, and instead of holding past actions up to scrutiny, it draws attention with predictions about the future.
Nowhere is this unaccountability of the Russian authorities more evident than in this past summer’s wildfires. Three months after much of European Russia was engulfed in toxic smoke, villages burned and people lost their lives, we have no more information about what happened than what was offered at the very outset.
The State Duma, the Federation Council and the government have not made even the slightest attempt to analyze what happened. They have forgotten the fires as if they never occurred, which raises a number of critical questions.
1. We still don’t know how many people burned to death. The official number cited Aug. 2 was 34 victims. On Aug. 4 the figure rose to 48 and on Aug. 6 to 52. After that, the authorities apparently stopped counting the bodies. Thus, 52 is not the final or even an approximate count. It’s just the total number of bodies that had been found as of Aug. 6.
2. The number of people who died as an indirect result of the fires is also unclear. According to Andrei Illarionov, a former economic adviser to then-President Vladimir Putin, anywhere from 56,000 to 64,000 more people than usual died this July and August. That’s only slightly fewer than all Soviet casualties from the war in Afghanistan. On Monday, the Economic Development Ministry reported — in passing, in an otherwise unrelated report — that 14,500 and 41,300 more people than average died in July and August, respectively.
3. The authorities have yet to report on the long-term effects of toxic smoke exposure, particularly on infants and pregnant women.
4. The authorities have never given a figure for total losses from the fires.
5. Neither the government nor parliament has made any attempt to analyze the causes of this catastrophe. The only reason offered was the unusual heat. But nobody has explained why the Bryansk region went up in flames while the immediately adjacent areas of Belarus and Ukraine did not. If the heat was the only cause, why was it confined to Russia’s borders? Was it denied a visa?
6. Experts and the media were unanimous in saying the new Forest Code, which largely dismantled the sprawling Soviet-era network of forest protection, was one of the causes of the fires. But no changes to the Forest Code have been made.
7. One reason for the casualties was the ineffective response by authorities at all levels. Russia was already burning when Putin traveled to Crimea to ride a three-wheeled Harley-Davidson. People had already burned to death in the Nizhny Novgorod region when Governor Valery Shantsev reported that he didn’t need any help from Moscow. Not only did almost all of the villages that burned lack their own fire engines, but none were sent in from neighboring municipalities. Nizhny Novgorod authorities went so far as to threaten criminal charges against people who tried to save their homes from burning. Now we have not seen any analysis whatsoever from the authorities concerning what happened — or more accurately, what didn’t happen.
Accountable governments analyze their mistakes to learn from them. Unaccountable governments bury the past with visions of the future.

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: ...And in with the new
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Opera singer Emilia Marty oozes so much enigma and drama that men fall at her feet after one glance, regardless of their age. It is not so much her stunning looks that they find attractive, or even her beautiful voice; it is what one of her admirers describes as “a terrible secret” and “a sense of danger.” His compliments begin to make sense when the audience discovers that the heroine is 337 years old.
The story of the never-aging singer is at the heart of Leos Janacek’s opera, “The Makropulos Affair,” which saw its premiere at the Mariinsky Theater last Friday. The creative force behind the production was renowned British director Graham Vick, who runs the Birmingham Opera Theater and has a wealth of experience in both opera and drama.
The director successfully created an eerie atmosphere, transporting the audience to a Miss Marple-like realm. The intentionally bland, if not deadly dull stage design — a plain-looking lawyer’s office in which desks and shelves up to the ceiling represent the only furnishings in Act 1, or a single chair standing next to the stage entrance in Act 2 — works to the production’s advantage, focusing the attention on the acting and Janacek’s sensuous, expressionist score rendered magnificently by the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra.
In the absence of Valery Gergiev, the company’s artistic director, who was on tour in the United States, the premiere was conducted by aspiring young conductor Mikhail Tatarnikov, already a regular with the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra and one of the most promising up-and-coming conductors in the country. Tatarnikov makes the most of the orchestra in Janacek’s neurotic and figdeting score, which provides a striking contract to the Czech composer’s other exuberantly melodic operas born out of his fascination with Moravian folklore. 
The musicians took the audience on an eerie journey into the emotional world of a woman who has had more love in her life than she could bear, and enjoyed too little happiness to wish to stay alive. Nothing appears to touch Emilia’s heart any longer — even the news of the suicide of her young admirer, clumsy Janek Prus (Andrei Ilyushnikov) who has forsaken his lover, the young singer Christa (Marina Aleshonkova) only to find out about Emilia’s affair with his own father Jaroslav (Sergei Romanov).
“The Makropulos Affair,” or Vec Makropulos, takes its name from the title of a legal battle over a disputed inheritance that has been going on for almost a century by the time the opera’s story unfolds in Prague, 
in 1922. As the Prus and Gregor families fight over the money, and Albert Gregor (Sergei Semishkur) humbly awaits his defeat in the case, he is stunned by the sudden appearance of a mysterious and striking opera diva (Yekaterina Popova), whose knowledge of the case is almost frightening. 
The diva offers an unexpected helping hand to Albert by telling his lawyer where to find the last will of the deceased baron Prus, who left everything to Albert’s ancestors. What the singer wants in return is a very old document in Greek, which, as the public learns later, is nothing less than a mysterious recipe for immortality that was created back in the 16th century for Emperor Rudolf II von Habsburg by his personal doctor, the royal alchemist Hieronymus Makropulos. 
The doctor is ordered to test his elixir on his 16-year-old daughter, Elina, who falls into a long fever that unnerves the emperor but enables the girl to live for a full 337 years. But as the heroine points out, it is not easy to live that long while remaining in the public eye. Elina Makropulos has had to regularly change identities — Elsa Mueller, Ellian MacGregor, Yekaterina Myshkina, Eugenia Montez and finally, Emilia Marty. 
In 1922, the effects of the elixir are fading, and Emilia needs another dose in order to stay alive. 
The composer’s most enigmatic opera, “The Makropulos Affair” is loosely based on the eponymous utopian play by Karel Capek.
Vick’s production offers a strong focus on drama, with Popova as Emilia Marty confidence personified, resembling Julia Lambert from William Somerset Maugham’s novel “Theatre.”
“The tragedy of life is that sometimes we get what we want” — this phrase from Maugham’s book says much to understand Emilia’s eternal fatigue and her ultimate decision not to take another dose of the elixir.
In the final scene, the singer sinks slowly down onto the prompter’s box, overwhelmed by exhaustion.
While in the original libretto, the dying Emilia bequeaths the manuscript to Christa, who then burns it, Vick made a good call by getting the singer to throw the recipe at the orchestra pit in a gesture of despair. The more caustic members of the audience were quick to suggest that the indefatigable Gergiev had clearly missed out on a great opportunity.
“The Makropulos Affair” was a predictable addition to the Mariinsky’s repertoire. Maestro Gergiev has declared it part of the company’s policy to introduce Russian audiences to the finest operas of the 20th century that had for many decades been a missing link in the Mariinsky’s repertoire — as well as on the bills of other Russian theaters.
During the last five years, the Mariinsky has seen premieres of 20th-century operatic gems as Richard Strauss’s “Elektra” and “The Woman Without a Shadow,” Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw” and Janacek’s “Jenufa.”
20th-century operas by foreign composers found their way into the repertoires of Russian opera companies only after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Russian audiences are still somewhat estranged to such productions, which usually fail to attract a full house, no matter how fresh and bold the show or how famous the conductor and cast members.
Russia only saw its first production of “The Makropulos Affair” in 2003, when Dmitry Bertman staged it at Moscow’s Helicon Opera Theater, one of the country’s leading experimental opera troupes, where he is artistic director.
“The Makropulos Affair” is the second Janacek opera to enter the Mariinsky repertoire. “Jenufa,” the composer’s best-known opera, saw its premiere in April 2007. Based on “Jeji Pastorkyna” (Her Stepdaughter), a story by Janacek’s contemporary Gabriela Preissova, “Jenufa” is a domestic drama about a Moravian family.
With “Jenufa,” which was performed again on the Mariinsky’s stage after a many-month absence two weeks before the premiere of “The Makropulos Affair,” Moscow director Vasily Barkhatov created a spectacular show in which a visually unchanging landscape that resembles a settlement or unfinished construction site is contrasted with razor-sharp, noir-flavored dramatic acting.  
The Mariinsky’s collection of 20th-century opera will be further expanded later this season with the premieres of Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Raskatov’s “Heart of a Dog.”

“The Makropulos Affair” next shows at the Mariinsky Theater at 7 p.m. on 
Nov. 1 and 12 at the Mariinsky Theater, 1 Teatralnaya Ploshchad, tel: 326 4141. www.mariinsky.ru

TITLE: Word’s  worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Âêëþ÷àòü: to turn on, include, insert
I know we’re heading into the long Moscow winter when I have every light on in the apartment at noon and it’s still dark and gloomy. So I turn stuff on — the lights, the radio, the television — anything to cheer things up.
The Russian verb pair for turning stuff on is âêëþ÷àòü/âêëþ÷èòü. Âêëþ÷è ìîòîð! (Turn on the engine!) It’s also the verb to use when plugging things in. Every time I have a problem with my computer, my êîìïüþòåðùèê (computer guy) first asks: Îí âêëþ÷¸í? (Is it plugged in?)
You also use âêëþ÷àòü/âêëþ-÷èòü when talking about inserting something, like information into a document. Áþðî îòêàçàëîñü âêëþ÷àòü ýòîò âîïðîñ â ïîâåñòêó äíÿ (The bureau declined to put that question on the agenda). Or when you are including a person into some kind of group: Îí íàñòàèâàë, ÷òîáû ïàðòèÿ âêëþ÷èëà åãî â ñïèñîê êàíäèäàòîâ â ìýðû Ìîñêâû (He demanded that the party include him in the list of candidates for Moscow mayor). 
Lately, âêëþ÷àòü/âêëþ÷èòü is being used figuratively in a number of slang expressions. In the old days, âêëþ÷èòü ñ÷¸ò÷èê was what a cab driver did: He turned on the meter. Then it was slang for setting the percent on a loan. But now it means starting the clock from the moment a loan is given to when it’s due. If some no-neck guy with tattoos and a nasty nickname says: Ñ íîëü-íîëü ÷àñîâ âòîðíèêà âêëþ÷¸í ñ÷¸ò÷èê, he means: As of midnight on Tuesday, the meter is running. That is: Pay up on time, or face the consequences.
Kids say âêëþ÷àòü äóðàêà (literally, “to turn on the fool”) about someone who is pretending that he doesn’t know what’s going on. ×òî òû ìíå òóò äóðàêà âêëþ÷àåøü? Ñêàæè, ÷òî áðàë äåíüãè. (Why are you acting all innocent? Just say you took the money.) 
What do actors and singers do when their fame goes to their head? In standard Russian, this is called çâ¸çäíàÿ áîëåçíü (literally, “star sickness”). Today, kids say âêëþ÷àòü çâåçäó (literally, “to turn on the star”). One young journalist was offended when a singer didn’t mingle with the press and fans. Êàê ñêàçàëè îðãàíèçàòîðû, îí âêëþ÷èë çâåçäó, è èìåííî ïîýòîìó îòêàçàëñÿ ñ íàìè îáùàòüñÿ (Like the concert organizers said, he acted like a big star and that’s why he refused to meet with us).
Âêëþ÷àòü/âêëþ÷èòü çàäíþþ (ñêîðîñòü) is what you do when you want to back out of your parking place: You put the car into reverse. It’s also a slangy way of saying “to reverse a decision.” The kids protesting the cutting of the Khimki forest said they didn’t expect Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to change his mind and halt the work: Îí çàäíþþ ïî æèçíè íå âêëþ÷àåò (He never reverses a decision).
Âêëþ÷è ìîòîð! (Let ’er rip!)
 
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter. A collection of her columns, “The Russian Word’s Worth,” has been published by Glas.

TITLE: Celebrating the animal kingdom
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: An exhibition calling for the ethical treatment of animals opens in the city Sunday on the eve of World Vegan Day, an annual event celebrated on Nov. 1 by vegans around the world.
The event will be held at V-Club, a focal point for the city’s small vegan population that opened back in August. Vegans eschew the consumption or use of all kinds of animal products. This distinguishes them from vegetarians, who do not eat meat or fish but may eat eggs and dairy products and wear leather.
Called “Bioethics Through Art,” the exhibition will feature more than 100 photographs and artworks by independent artists and animal-rights activists. Friday’s opening will also include film screenings, live and DJ music and a vegan buffet.
“There are photographs, drawings and artworks by people who help animals and have some creative potential; some of them take photographs, some paint,” said organizer Dmitry, who asked to be called by his first name.
“The themes of the works are different; some are interesting from the artistic aspect, for instance some beautifully shot photographs, while some touch on social and ecological issues, such as a number of black-and-white drawings at the exhibition. Some works show the conditions of how animals are treated at farms. It’s directed at making people reevaluate their attitudes toward animals and the environment as a whole.”
The exhibition has been organized by the Alliance for Animal Rights, an animal rights movement that exists in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Petrozavodsk, and the Baltic Care for the Animals, a registered charity that works with stray animals and provides legal help in cruelty cases.
“There are two approaches: the welfare approach, which is people who look after stray cats and dogs, and animal rights people who believe animals should be left to their own devices and that people and animals should live in harmony,” Dmitry said.
Dmitry contested the view that human rights should come first.
“Many think that human rights should be a priority, but the treatment of animals — excluding pets, for which there are dog hairdressers — those that are ruthlessly exploited in agriculture such as cows that are used for food, they are not seen as a living being,” he said.
“But in reality all of them have an intellect of their own, and there is also the expression ‘Freedom of animals means freedom of humans.’ The animal rights movement is frequently interconnected with the human rights movement, and the same people often participate in both.”
Some of the people involved with the Alliance for Animal Rights are also activists with Food Not Bombs (FNB), the group that distributes free vegan food to homeless people.
According to Dmitry, animal rights activists are affiliated to various political movements.
“Vegan ideas are popular in punk culture, among anarchists and antifascists, but there are of course a lot of people who don’t manifest any political views but also take part in events and work with stray animals,” he said.
A buffet of vegan food, where visitors can pay as much as they see fit to sample vegan dishes, will also be available at the exhibition opening. “It will be based on the principle of school breakfasts, where anybody can bring any food from home,” said Dmitry.
The music program at the opening will feature a concert by the dance-rock band Orekhi and a DJ set.
Films and videos to be shown at the opening include “A Life Connected…For the Planet…For the People…for the Animals,” a 12-minute video created by U.S. activist Matt Bear of Nonviolenceunited.org that explains how vegan choices can help build a better world.
World Vegan Day was established in 1994 by Louise Wallis, then-president of The Vegan Society U.K. to mark the 50th anniversary of the charity that promotes veganism. Founded in the U.K. in 1944, it was the first society for vegans. Its founder, Donald Watson, also coined the word “vegan” for “non-dairy vegetarians.”

Bioethics Through Art opens at 3 p.m. on Sunday at V-Club, 50 Ligovsky Prospekt, korpus 16. It will run daily from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. through Nov. 6.

TITLE: Viva Cuba!
AUTHOR: By Thomas Burr
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “Oh great, Mexican food!” said my Russian friend when I told her we would be going to a Cuban restaurant.
Having mulled over that comment and the geographical distance between Russia and the Caribbean for a few hours, I was fully expecting a Mariachi band and a plate of tacos by the time we got to O! Cuba.
It didn’t take long to assuage these fears, as O! Cuba truly lives up to its billing as a “Cuban lifestyle restaurant.”
Coming in from a gray, torn-up section of Ulitsa Rubinshteina, visitors will first be struck by how effectively O! Cuba uses empty space and pastels to create an immediately believable island atmosphere.
The coat check, stylized as a shutter-less window, deepens the illusion of being outside.
This is only an immediate impression, however, and it soon becomes clear O! Cuba has done more than just recreate a generic island locale, instead taking inspiration from the Fidel Castro quote printed on a stained, faded blue stucco wall: “Revolucion es el sentido del momento historico” (Revolution is to feel the historical moment).
Ostrov Svobody (Island of Freedom), the firm behind O! Cuba, clearly captures the historical moment that is post-revolutionary Havana, a place that became stuck in time when Castro, Che Guevara and the July 26 movement ousted the American-backed Batista government in 1959.
The walls of the restaurant’s restrooms are lined with old Cuban newspapers, and a loudspeaker projects cold war speeches by John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson.
Across the hall, a young couple sat in the restaurant’s centerpiece and king table: A powder blue ‘56 Buick Special Convertible.
Throw in the complimentary Mojitos (200 rubles, $6.50 after the first) for each guest, and O! Cuba is sure to win most over before menus have even hit the table.
Having all but forgotten the bitter wintry gale that blew us in to O! Cuba, my guest and I chose to start with dishes more suitable to the tropical atmosphere than to autumn in St. Petersburg: gazpacho soup (160 rubles, $5.20) and a seafood seviche (260 rubles, $8.50).
The gazpacho was cool and refreshing, prepared Cuban-style, which is to say closer to the salsa family than tomato bisque, with cucumbers, onions, and tomato diced instead of blended.
The seviche, a seafood medley, was also impressive, with each piece of shrimp, calamari, mussels and salmon having a much stronger, wild taste than the tame, insipid seafood many restaurants have been trained to plate.
Between courses, a live salsa band drew many diners out of their seats.
We moved on to a barbeque plating that ended up being the highlight of the night, sharing the chicken wings (290 rubles, $9.50) and pork ribs (330 rubles, $10.80).  
The pork was succulent, offering just the right amount of resistance to chunks being torn off the bone, and while the chicken was standard fare, both selections came smothered in a sweet, smoky sauce that was addictive enough to illicit poor table manners from even the most high-born diner.
With the possible caveat that my companion and I were already quite satisfied at this point, the main dishes simply weren’t as inspired as the appetizers. A grand quesadilla filled with beef, pork and chicken (490 rubles, $16) was big enough for four but generally unremarkable and, for lack of a better reason, may simply be a more traditionally bland dish in Cuban cuisine than in other preparations.
The seafood paella (430 rubles, $14) was no worse, but the previously powerful calamari, shrimp, and mussels lost their individual character in the rice dish, once again possibly just the tendency of the dish itself rather than the result of any real misstep by the restaurant. 
There is something about O! Cuba, however, that makes even the less impressive dishes worthwhile. Any reason to stay longer was a welcome one, leaning back in the spacious wooden chairs and soaking in the music.
As a final stop for those inclined, the smoking section of the restaurant, conveniently located approximately two meters away from the non-smoking section, provides guests with a diminutive, but appropriate cigar selection. 
Prices range from 260 rubles ($8.50) for a mild Guantanamera to 1,500 rubles ($49) for a Cohibo Robusto. 
As neophytes we went with the former, and enjoyed spending another hour admiring O! Cuba’s character, watching bartenders shovel mint hand over fist as customers continued to stream into the already deservedly popular nightspot.

TITLE: Indonesia Tsunami Toll Rises To 343
AUTHOR: By Kristen Gelineau and Achmad Ibrahim
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MENTAWAI ISLANDS, Indonesia — Rescuers searching islands ravaged by a tsunami off western Indonesia raised the death toll to 343 Thursday as more bodies were found and said the number is likely to climb higher because hundreds of missing people may have been swept away.
Elsewhere in Indonesia, the volcano that killed 33 people this week began erupting again, though there were no reports of new injuries or damage. Mourners held a mass burial Thursday during a lull in Mount Merapi’s rumblings.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was to meet Thursday with survivors of the twin catastrophes, which struck within 24 hours in different corners of the seismically charged region, severely testing the nation’s emergency response network.
Officials say a multimillion-dollar warning system installed after a monster 2004 quake and tsunami broke down one month ago because it was not being properly maintained.
In the tsunami-ravaged Mentawai islands, search and rescue teams — kept away for days by stormy seas and bad weather — found roads and beaches with swollen corpses lying on them, according to Harmensyah, head of the West Sumatra provincial disaster management center.
Some wore face masks as they wrapped corpses in black body bags on Pagai Utara, one of the four main islands in the Mentawai chain located between Sumatra and the Indian Ocean. Huge swaths of land were underwater and houses lay crumpled with tires and slabs of concrete piled on the surrounding sand.
Ferry Faisal, of the West Sumatra provincial disaster management agency, raised the official toll Thursday to 343 from 311 earlier in the day. He said 338 people are still missing.
Harmensyah said the teams were losing hope of finding those missing since the wall of water, created by a 7.8-magnitute earthquake, crashed into the islands on Monday.
“They believe many, many of the bodies were swept to sea,” he said.
On Thursday, more than 100 survivors crowded into a makeshift medical center in the town of Sikakap on Pagai Utara. Some still wept for loved ones lost to the three-meter wave as they lay on straw mats or sat on the floor, waiting for medics to treat injuries including broken limbs and cuts.
Hermansyah, a local fisheries ministry official who survived the earthquake and wave that hit Sikakap because he was on higher ground, quickly formed a rescue coordination committee and began traveling to other areas, finding several villages flattened.
“Not even the foundations of houses are standing. All of them are gone,” said Hermansyah, who like many Indonesians uses a single name.
He said the devastation he saw indicates the wave could have been higher than reported in some areas — perhaps more than six meters high.
About 1,300 kilometers to the east in central Java, Mount Merapi began spewing hot clouds of ash again at around 4:30 p.m. Thursday, according to the Indonesian vulcanology agency Subandriyo.

TITLE: Nepalese Blamed For Haiti Cholera
AUTHOR: By Johnathan Katz
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MIREBALAIS, Haiti — UN investigators took samples of foul-smelling waste trickling behind a Nepalese peacekeeping base toward an infected river system on Wednesday, following persistent accusations that excrement from the newly arrived unit caused the cholera epidemic that has sickened more than 4,000 people in the earthquake-ravaged nation.
Journalists who were visiting the base unannounced happened upon the investigators. Mission spokesman Vincenzo Pugliese confirmed after the visit that the military team was testing for cholera — the first public acknowledgment that the 12,000-member force is directly investigating allegations its base played a role in the outbreak.
Meanwhile the epidemic continued to spread, with cases confirmed in two new departments in Haiti’s north and northeast, said UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokeswoman Imogen Wall. At least 303 people have died and 4,722 been hospitalized.
International aid workers and the United Nations are focusing their efforts on stemming the spread of the outbreak, which was first noted on Oct. 20. But Haitians are increasingly turning their attention to its origins: How did a disease which has not been seen in Haiti since the early 20th century suddenly erupt in the countryside?
The mission strongly denies its base was a cause of the infection. Pugliese said civilian engineers collected samples from the base on Friday which tested negative for cholera and the mission’s military force commander ordered the additional tests to confirm. He said no members of the Nepalese battalion, whose current members arrived in early October for a six-month rotation, have the disease.
The unit’s commander declined to comment.
Local politicians including a powerful senator and the mayor of Mirebalais are pointing the finger at the Nepalese peacekeeping base, which is perched above a source of the Meille River, a tributary to the Artibonite River on Haiti’s central plateau. The Artibonite River has been the source of most infections, which remain concentrated in the rural area surrounding it — mostly down river from the mouth of the Meille.
“They are located exactly where the sickness started,” Mirebalais Mayor Laguerre Lochard, who is also running for Senate, said.

TITLE: Argentina’s Powerful Ex-President Kirchner Dies
AUTHOR: By Mayra Pertossi and Almudena Calatrava
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Former President Nestor Kirchner, who steered Argentina out of crisis and political instability with a leftist populism that thrilled the poor and exasperated the wealthy, died suddenly of a heart attack Wednesday with his wife, President Cristina Fernandez, by his side.
His death, at 60, abruptly ends a plan the couple had to keep succeeding each other and holding onto power for many years. With next year’s elections looming, Fernandez will have to run for re-election without her closest adviser, the charismatic party leader who kept a tight lid on the country’s unruly political scene.
Kirchner had a history of heart trouble, undergoing emergency surgery on his carotid artery in February and an angioplasty in September, but refused to slow down, campaigning daily to lay the political groundwork for another run at the presidency by him or his wife.
He suffered another heart attack early Wednesday and was pronounced dead at 9:15 a.m. after efforts to revive him failed, a presidential spokesman said.
The news shocked Argentines, who turned out by the thousands in Kirchner’s honor, filling the Plaza de Mayo outside the presidential palace Wednesday night.
“He’s someone who for the first time in our democracy, turned his politics toward the workers and the people. That’s why so many are here. The plaza shows that the people will support and deepen his model,” said Juan Pablo Mazzieri, 39. Fernandez, he added, “has the capacity to go it alone with all the people’s support.”
But Kirchner’s death leaves a gaping hole in Argentine politics.
While Fernandez is a powerful figure in her own right, Kirchner was seen as the heir to Argentine Gen. Juan Domingo Peron, the legendary strongman whose advocacy for workers brought generations into the middle class. Also like Peron, he tolerated few challengers, keeping in check the nation’s labor unions, activist groups, governors and mayors — political players who move thousands of voters and whose allegiance is vital to maintaining public order.
One of Kirchner’s latest campaign promises was to support a labor movement effort to require all large businesses to open their books to the unions and turn 10 percent of their profits over to the workers. Giving them half the profits would be better still, he suggested at a political rally.
“After Peron and Eva Peron, nobody has done so much for the workers as Nestor Kirchner,” said Hugo Moyano, Argentina’s most powerful union leader, who now doubles as a Peronist party leader in Buenos Aires province.
Kirchner was governor of a thinly populated southern state when he was pulled from relative obscurity to become a presidential candidate in 2003, a time when Argentina was struggling to emerge from a devastating economic crisis. He captured just 22 percent of a first-round vote despite the outgoing president’s support, and took office after his rival then dropped out.
Within just a few years, he had reestablished Argentina’s all-powerful presidency and become a major figure in Latin American politics, abandoning the “Washington consensus” of tight fiscal policies and free trade, isolating the country from foreign debt markets and imposing stringent controls on the flow of money and goods in and out of the country.
Argentina’s economy grew by more than 8 percent a year during his presidency, enabling him to cancel most of the country’s world-record debt default and pay off $9 billion in loans from the International Monetary Fund, whose guidance he blamed for ruining economies around the globe.
Then, at the height of his popularity in 2007, he stepped aside, enabling his wife to succeed him and setting the stage for what many hoped or feared would be a leftist dynasty in which husband and wife would take turns as president on into the future, sidestepping constitutional limits on re-election.
At the time, Kirchner joked that he would do nothing more than hang out in a literary cafe. Instead, he and his wife worked together to increase their hold on Argentine politics. Thanks to their skills, Fernandez has been able to rule by decree for much of her presidency, despite losing majorities in Congress in midterm elections.

TITLE: Islamic Group Executes Two Girls in Somalia
AUTHOR: By Mohamed Olad Hassan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOGADISHU, Somalia — An Islamic group that controls much of southern Somalia executed two girls by firing squad, and hundreds of residents of a town were forced to view the spectacle.
Sheik Mohamed Ibrahim on Wednesday sentenced the girls to death in the town of Belet Weyne for spying for government soldiers fighting the Islamist group al-Shabab. The local al-Shabab administration appoints judges and the only needed qualifications are that the person must be a man who knows the Quran.
Al-Shabab is linked to al-Qaida and has carried out several whippings, amputations and executions to enforce its own strict interpretation of Islam. This was the first public execution of girls in Belet Weyne, a western Somali town.
Abdiwali Aden, a witness, said by phone that al-Shabab militiamen had walked through Belet Weyne’s streets, informing residents about the pending executions by loudspeaker and ordering everyone to attend.
Ayan Mohamed Jama, 18, and Huriyo Ibrahim, 15, were brought before hundreds of residents. Ten masked men opened fire Wednesday on the girls, who were blindfolded, soon after the sentencing. As the girls were shot, they shouted “There is no God but Allah,” said a witness.