SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1624 (85), Tuesday, November 9, 2010
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TITLE: Activists Released, Persecution Continues
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Strategy 31 activists who were sentenced to time in jail after the Oct. 31 attempted demonstration in defense of the right of assembly have been released on appeal, but the persecution continued with apartment searches and interrogations.
Activists described the sentences and a criminal case opened against members of author and oppositional politician Eduard Limonov’s newly-formed party The Other Russia by the Prosecutor’s Investigative Committee on Oct. 25 as “political repressions.”
At appeal hearings on Wednesday and Thursday last week, the Kuibyshevsky district court overruled the verdicts of Judge Alexei Kuznetsov, who sentenced Andrei Pivovarov of the People’s Democratic Union (RNDS) to 29 days in prison, and The Other Russia activists Andrei Pesotsky and Andrei Dmitriyev to 14 and five days in prison, respectively.
The judges ruled that Judge Kuznetsov had deprived the activists of their right to legal defense by denying them the opportunity to use the services of their own lawyers, and sent their cases back to the original court for revision.
According to Pivovarov, Judge Kuznetsov was acting on orders from the authorities and committed a number of other violations. Pivovarov’s lawyers are currently preparing a complaint about Judge Kuznetsov’s actions, he said.
“The main point is that there was an order to arrest all the organizers [of the rally],” Pivovarov said.
Pivovarov, Dmitriyev and Pesotsky were among the organizers of or active participants in the Strategy 31 events — named after Article 31 of the Russian Constitution that guarantees the right of assembly, and held on the 31st day of months that have 31 days — that have been held since July 31, 2009 in Moscow and Jan. 31 in St. Petersburg.
Pivovarov, who opened the Oct. 31 rally, spoke for just 40 seconds before a group of policemen charged the crowd, seized him and put him in a police bus. Dmitriyev, who was standing next to Pivovarov, was detained at the same moment and had no chance to speak. Pesotsky was detained several minutes later.
Pivovarov, whose 29-day sentence was a combination of 14 days given for the Aug. 31 rally and another 15 days for the Oct. 31 rally, spent four days in custody, while Pesotsky and Dmitriyev both spent three nights in custody. 
Released straight from the courtroom Wednesday, Dmitriyev and Pesotsky were then promptly handcuffed by Center E plainclothes operatives who had been waiting in the corridor and taken away for interrogations and home searches that lasted for between six and eight hours.
The activists qualified as “suspects” by the interrogators include Dmitriyev, Pesotsky, Alexander Yashin, Oleg Petrov and Igor Boikov. They were ordered to give swear in writing not to leave the city or disclose the details of the investigation. By law, any charges against them must be pressed within 10 days. If found guilty, they face up to three years in prison.
The interrogations and searches were part of an “extremism” criminal case opened by the Prosecutor’s Investigative Committee on Oct. 25. The committee said in the statement that the case was about “the organization of activities of an extremist organization.”
It said that Limonov’s banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP) had not stopped its activities in St. Petersburg when the party was banned as “extremist” by a Moscow city court in 2007, but had continued to hold party meetings and collect membership fees from July 2009 until now. The statement added that a “large quantity of extremist literature and NBP paraphernalia” was confiscated during the Nov. 1 searches.
According to Dmitriyev’s girlfriend, Natalya Sidoreyeva, the confiscated books and videos were legal publications and contained no extremism. Speaking by phone Monday, she said the investigators took four books by Limonov, including “Diary of a Loser,” the novel Limonov originally published as an ?migr? in New York in 1982, as well as a DVD of Clint Eastwood’s film “Flags of Our Fathers,” political dictionaries and holiday photographs, among other things.
Sidoreyeva said that a list of clients from her job as a travel agent was also confiscated. “They said it contained some ‘very interesting names,’” she said.
Dmitriyev said that the activists had acted legally as members of The Other Russia, the party that Limonov formed in July. Its local branch was established at a conference at the Angleterre Hotel in October.
He said the imprisonments and criminal case were a reaction to the success of the Strategy 31 campaign.
“Strategy 31 is a thorn in the side for the city authorities, and, if the new authorities in Moscow have agreed to enter into a dialogue and tried to find a compromise, Smolny [the home of City Hall in St. Petersburg] remains blind and deaf to our suggestions,” Dmitriyev said.
“And as The Other Russia is the active nucleus of Strategy 31 and street protests in general, it’s us against whom the repressions are directed. I see it as a high appraisal of our work,” Dmitriyev said by phone Monday.
According to Dmitriyev, the objective of the criminal case is to stop the activities of The Other Russia.
“For instance, while under investigation, I cannot go to unsanctioned protests and get detained — it would mean that I would immediately be taken to Kresty prison; that’s how they are trying to neutralize some key people and nullify our activities, especially the Strategy 31 campaign,” Dmitriyev said.
“But they will fail — different people will submit the application for a rally, and different people will come to the demonstration. We have a long substitutes’ bench.”
Daily protests against the imprisonments were held last week near the prison on Zakharyevskaya Ulitsa where the activists were being held, as well as at the site of the Strategy 31 rallies near Gostiny Dvor. A protest was also held in Moscow on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Moscow-based former deputy prime minister and Solidarity Democratic Movement leader Boris Nemtsov took part in a St. Petersburg picket near the prison, holding a poster reading “Freedom for Defenders of the Constitution! Freedom for Andrei Pivovarov!”
“I think that the repressions organized in St. Petersburg have had no precedent in Moscow,” Nemtsov said while showcasing his book, “Luzhkov. The Results” at a Bukvoyed book store later that day.
“Pivovarov, Dmitriyev and the other guys, they’re fighting not for their rights; it’s our rights that they’re fighting for.”
A Rally Against Political Repression organized in response to the detentions in St. Petersburg is scheduled to be held at Pionerskaya Ploshchad on Nov. 14.

TITLE: CCTV Images of Journalist’s Beating Leaked
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — One of Russia’s best-known reporters, Oleg Kashin, remained hospitalized in critical condition on Monday as journalists and activists increased pressure on the authorities to investigate the savage weekend beating that broke his jaw, fingers and a leg.
Kashin, a 30-year-old journalist with Kommersant and one of the country’s most prolific and popular bloggers, was attacked by two unidentified men early Saturday near his home at 28 Pyatnitskaya Ulitsa in downtown Moscow.
Videos from the surveillance camera in the yard of Yashin’s apartment building were obtained by LifeNews.ru and published online, one revealing violent images of Kashin being bludgeoned by two assailants. A second shows Kashin crawling into the yard and ambulance workers assisting him.
The two assailants broke his upper and lower jaw, fractured the base of his skull, broke his leg and several fingers, and severed part of a pinky finger. After undergoing several surgeries over the weekend, Kashin remained in a drug-induced coma in the intensive-care ward in a Moscow hospital, and doctors said his condition was grave, Itar-Tass reported.
The attack, which has stunned the Russian blogosphere, is the latest in a string of assaults on journalists and activists but the first to galvanize journalists with both independent and state-run media.
President Dmitry Medvedev, writing on his blog, wished Kashin a quick recovery and ordered Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to investigate the attack.
“The criminals should be found and punished,” Medvedev wrote.
Investigators said Sunday that they were investigating footage from the two surveillance cameras that captured the incident. Moscow police spokesman Viktor Biryukov told journalists Sunday that a special task force of top investigators had been created to investigate the attack.
No one had claimed responsibility by Sunday night. Anyone arrested in the attack will face up to 20 years in prison on charges of attempted murder committed by a group.
Singer Yelena Pogrebizhskaya, who lives next door to Kashin, wrote on her blog about an hour after the attack that the cleaner for their courtyard saw two men waiting late Friday outside their apartment building, one of whom was carrying a bouquet of flowers.
About 200 journalists had signed an online petition by late Sunday urging Medvedev to protect journalists and to ensure that the investigation into this assault, as well as the murder of investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 and the serious assault of Khimkinskaya Pravda newspaper editor Mikhail Beketov in 2008, be completed and the culprits punished.
Journalists took turns staging one-person pickets outside the Moscow police headquarters at 38 Ulitsa Petrovka throughout most of Saturday and Sunday, demanding a proper investigation into Kashin’s beating.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists and Paris-based Reporters Without Borders joined Russian journalists demanding a thorough investigation.
RuNet overflowed with expressions of compassion toward Kashin and theories about who might have been behind such a brutal beating.
Yulia Lyubimova, an editor at the Openspace.ru media portal who used to work with Kashin, said Kashin could not be described as an opposition journalist in the sense that he blamed the powers-that-be for all the country’s troubles. But, she said, he is a real investigative reporter who digs to the core, and this makes him dangerous for the subjects of his investigations.
“As a journalist and a blogger, he is a huge irritant for many. And everyone knows about his personal life,” she said, explaining the unusually broad and intense public reaction to the attack.
Kashin has written about key topics in Russian politics and social life for a variety of publications, including the cutting down of the Khimki forest, anti-fascist youth groups and the pro-Kremlin youth movements. One of the pro-Kremlin groups, United Russia’s Young Guard, called him a traitor on its web site in August and demanded that he should be punished. On Saturday, the group issued a statement that it “feels indignant about the barbaric attack” on Kashin.
Shortly after the beating, Kashin’s editor at Kommersant, Mikhail Mikhailin, told Ekho Moskvy radio that he was sure that the attack was linked to Kashin’s work as a journalist.
“They broke his fingers. It is completely obvious that the people who did this did not like what he was saying and what he was writing,” Mikhailin said.
Kashin is among the most prolific Russian Twitter users. On Friday alone, he fired off 49 messages on Twitter — and this was not an extraordinary number for him.
His posts on Twitter and his LiveJournal blog often contain foul language, sometimes provocative, more often trivial. Many prominent and not-so-prominent bloggers have argued with him, and he was punched in the face by writer Eduard Bagirov in 2008 after an online quarrel. Kashin never pressed charges, and Bagirov faced no punishment.
In September, Kashin was a leading force in circulating a rumor on RuNet about Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s wife, Lyudmila, retreating to a monastery. Kashin said that even if the rumor was not true, people should know details about the private life of the country’s leaders. Putin’s private life is taboo for Russian media.
In August, Kashin used coarse language to criticize Pskov Governor Andrei Turchak, a former top official with Young Guard, in his blog. Turchak demanded that Kashin apologize. “What will happen if I don’t apologize?” Kashin wrote in response on his blog. Turchak has not replied.
Last month, Kashin was not allowed to attend a meeting of Medvedev with prominent Russian rock musicians. The Kremlin’s press service said that he has been blacklisted by the Federal Guard Service, which provides security for the president and other top officials.
Kashin sued the Federal Guard Service after he was beaten up in 2004 by men who demanded his camera’s memory card while he was researching a report for Kommersant. Kashin, who suffered a concussion and multiple bruises, accused Federal Guard Service officers of attacking him, but courts sided with the guard service in two separate rulings, saying Kashin had fallen down on his own and the officers had offered him first aid.
Kashin, a Kaliningrad native and graduate of the local naval academy, often played up his background. “Russian sailor Kashin is having yet another burger,” he tweeted from a McDonald’s earlier this year.
After a long day, he typically sent as his last tweet “Spat” (sleep) before going to bed. His followers learned that Kashin did not need much rest because he was usually back on Twitter after only a few hours.
The main RuNet theories behind the beating center around the conflict with Turchak, the Young Guard’s call to punish the journalist and the conflict about the Khimki forest.
Two days before the attack, unidentified assailants beat up Konstantin Fetisov, a Khimki forest defender, fracturing his skull, shortly after he was questioned by Khimki police over the protests against plans to raze part of the forest for a new Moscow-St. Petersburg highway.
The brutality of the attack against Kashin matches the one against Khimkinskaya Pravda’s Beketov, which is believed to be linked with his defense of the forest.
Some commentators portrayed the attack on Kashin as a general crackdown on independent journalism and activism in Russia, with Kashin being selected as a symbolic figure.
Alexander Morozov, an analyst with the Center for Media Studies, a Moscow think tank, said the Kremlin paved the way for the attack by directly and indirectly blessing the growth of violent street youth groups in order to fight with and scare opposition activists, mainly those with the banned National Bolshevik Party.
“The Kremlin dumped them after Medvedev was elected in 2008, but the atmosphere and the notion of violence against journalists and activists is allowed to remain,” he said.
The cruelty of Kashin’s beating suggests the involvement of people with experience in street violence rather than professional hit men, he said.
Stanislav Kuvaldin, a journalist with Expert magazine who used to work with Kashin at the Russky Mir magazine, said public outrage was stirred by Kashin’s status as one of the country’s most prominent journalists but also by disgust over its barbarity.

Nikolaus von Twickel contributed to this report.

TITLE: HIV Patients Protest Against Denial of Access to Treatment
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As Russia faces a serious crisis in the supply of HIV medication, HIV-positive patients across Russia have been staging protests since the end of October to try and make their voices heard.
“Not a single official from City Hall’s Health Committee came out to speak to us, even though we held our protest meeting outside their headquarters,” said Irina Maslova, one of the participants of a flash-mob that was held in St. Petersburg on Oct. 28 as one of more than a dozen similar protests currently being held in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Orenburg, Kaliningrad, Saratov, Tula, Bryansk and other cities. The protests are scheduled to continue through November.
During the event, the participants, dressed as medical nurses and bears, carried banners reading “Unfulfilled Promises Kill,” “Half Treatment Means Half of the Law,” “Our Deaths Are Your Shame” and “Hand Over HIV Treatment to the Emergency Situations Ministry.”
“Even though in theory all HIV-positive patients in Russia should be getting free medication, in reality, the supply is very irregular,” said Maria Alexeyeva, a media officer with the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC) in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. 
“In some regions doctors simply tell the patients to go and earn money for the treatment, as there is no more than a remote chance of them getting the drugs from the state with much regularity.”
Alexeyeva said that St. Petersburg is one of the cities to have been affected by the irregular medical supply. Local clinics stopped providing the drug Zidovudine, a type of antiretroviral medicine, to patients in July, she said.
According to official statistics, at the beginning of this year, St. Petersburg had around 43,000 HIV-positive patients. This means that 625 people are infected per 100,000 people, which is about 2.5 times higher than the national average. Every tenth HIV-positive person in Russia lives in St. Petersburg. Independent experts say the real figures are two or even three times higher, as most people avoid getting blood tests until they develop severe symptoms.
Many Russians choose not to get tested because the social isolation of HIV-positive people remains an acute problem. Doctors often fail to keep the diagnosis a secret, and as a result, it is not uncommon for HIV-positive people to lose their jobs. Furthermore, the children of HIV-positive parents — even if they themselves test negative for HIV — are routinely denied access to many public facilities such as swimming pools, sports clubs and health centers, activists say. 
The adoption of an HIV-positive child in Russia is extremely rare, and when it happens, the adoptive parents are usually foreigners.
Both doctors and volunteers agree that Russian society is still poorly informed about the disease, and the majority of people are driven by fear that is rooted in prejudice.
“The degree of discrimination is horrendous; even the doctors who inform you about the diagnosis or are supposed to give you therapy often act in the most unpleasant way,” said Alexandra Volgina, head of the northwestern branch of the Russian Coordination Council for HIV-Positive People, and a co-organizer of the protest events. 
“When I was diagnosed with HIV in 2000, nobody even told me about the existence of therapy.”
Volgina said that the doctors themselves are not always immune to certain prejudices. 
“Our organization has collected a number of examples of ambulance paramedics refusing to help HIV-positive people,” she said. “When doctors arrive on the scene and find out a patient has HIV, not all of them stay to provide medical assistance.”
Experts predict that the virus could decimate the Russian population by a third during the next 50 years, but stereotypes about the disease persist in Russia, despite all efforts to raise public awareness.

TITLE: St. Isaac’s to End Higher Prices for Foreigners
AUTHOR: By Sophie Gaitzsch
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The price for entrance tickets to St. Isaac’s Cathedral will be the same for foreigners and Russians from Jan. 1, 2011, said Natalya Koreneva, deputy director of the St. Isaac’s Cathedral State Museum and Monument Complex on Monday. 
Koreneva confirmed information about the price change published by Vedomosti at the end of October. The changes will also apply to the Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood, which belongs to the same group of museums.
The new entrance fee will be 200 rubles ($6.50) for all visitors, according to Koreneva. Tickets currently cost 130 rubles ($4.20) for Russians and 320 ($10.40) for foreigners. 
Apart from the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg housed in the Peter and Paul Fortress, all of the city’s state-run museums retain the Soviet system of requiring foreigners to pay more than Russian visitors, while private museums usually have one fixed rate.
“This is a very good decision,” said Sergei Korneyev, director of the northwest branch of the Russian Tourism Industry Union. 
“We have been discussing this issue with St. Petersburg museums for a long time. The price difference is a problem for our foreign partners, who find the situation difficult to understand and often complain about it. It will certainly have a positive influence on tourism in St. Petersburg.”
“Of course, the price for Russian citizens will rise, but we think that 200 rubles is fair. Going to the theater, for instance, costs a lot more. And the museum will maintain its current discounts for some categories of people such as pensioners and schoolchildren. It is not such a cardinal change; it will not scare Russian tourists or attract more foreign tourists. It was simply the right time to take the right decision,” he added.
Another popular attraction, the imperial summer residence of Tsarskoye Selo located 25 kilometers south of the city, also plans to follow suit. According to its press service, Tsarskoye Selo will have a “unified ticket price system for individual visitors in the near future, probably from next January.” The press service was not able, however, to give further price details or a precise date for the change.  
The State Hermitage Museum and Peterhof estate, on the other hand, do not intend to follow the example of their counterparts. 
“We also met with the management of both those cultural institutions, and the union has made clear its point of view, but they are not yet willing to take that step,” said Korneyev.  Both museums expressed concern about the fact that such a change would necessitate an increase in the prices for Russian citizens. 
“The process will be long and comprise many stages,” representatives of Peterhof’s management wrote in a press release after a meeting with Korneyev this summer. 
The State Russian Museum also intends to maintain its current prices, its press service said Monday. The press service of the Mariinsky Theater, whose ticket pricing policy is one of the most punitive to foreigners, declined to comment when contacted by The St. Petersburg Times on Monday.
St. Petersburg museums reject criticism that the current system discriminates against foreign visitors, saying that prices for Russians and foreigners are in fact equal, but that Russian visitors can take advantage of a discounted price that also applies to foreigners living in Russia. Museums argue that the discount is justified by the fact that Russians pay taxes to support cultural institutions.

TITLE: 12 Killed In Knife Attack In Village
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROSTOV-ON-DON — Unidentified attackers armed with knives killed 12 people, including three children and a newborn, who had gathered Friday for a celebration at a home in a Krasnodar region village, authorities said. The attackers then tried to burn the bodies.
The motive for the brazen killings in Kushchyovskaya, a farming village of about 100 homes, was unclear. Prosecutors from Moscow have been sent to help investigate.
Prosecutors said one of the children was strangled and another died of smoke inhalation. The other two children and all eight adults died of stab wounds, with some of them stabbed as many as 10 times.
Two families were visiting the host family, a farmer and his wife, Krasnodar emergency services spokesman Alexander Tabakov said.
“The three families were going to celebrate some holiday because there was a lot of food and drinks on the table,” he said.
Tabakov said the killers tried to hide the crime by moving the bodies to the second floor of the house and then setting the house on fire. The bodies were doused with kerosene, with a trail of kerosene leading downstairs, but a fire set on the first floor fizzled out before reaching the second floor.
Nothing was stolen from the house, he said.

TITLE: Fines for English Words in Ads
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Stores that use English words in banners outside their establishments are facing a crackdown by antitrust authorities.
The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service has opened investigations into a chain of fast-food restaurants, a cafe and a sportswear store, all of which face fines for using English words in their advertising banners.
The companies targeted include Yaposhka-City, which owns Yaposha, a chain of Japanese fast-food restaurants; Trade Retail, owner of Bogner sportswear store; and Potential, owner of Bar BQ Cafe, the Moscow branch of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service said in a statement Monday.
Yaposha faces punishment over a banner reading “Happy New Menu,” which only had the last word — Menu — in Russian. Trade Retail’s English-language banner read “Bogner New Collection,” and Potential’s October advertisement for Bar BQ Cafe used the English word “Halloween.”
Federal law bans the use of foreign words in advertising. The companies face fines of 100,000 to 500,000 rubles ($3,250 to $16,250), a spokeswoman for the anti-monopoly service told The St. Petersburg Times.
The service will consider punishment against Yaposhka-City on Nov. 24, Trade Retail on Nov. 25, and Potential on Nov. 29.
The companies had no immediate comment on the banners.

TITLE: NATO Chided for Afghan Tactics
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS — Russia and six former Soviet republics have urged NATO-led forces in Afghanistan to end their “ineffective tactics” of pushing militants from combat zones in the south to other areas, including the once relatively peaceful north.
Russia’s UN ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, speaking on behalf of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, said the alliance believes that anti-terrorism efforts should be aimed primarily at eliminating terrorists and extremists.
Churkin told the UN General Assembly on Thursday that four of the organization’s members — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan — are concerned about the growing instability in the north.
Churkin said the campaign by international and Afghan forces against Taliban and al-Qaeda strongholds is ineffective because it is “squeezing militants from the combat zones, which allows them to maintain their combat power and relocate to other parts of the country, including northbound.”
The General Assembly was debating the situation in Afghanistan ahead of the expected adoption of a nonbinding resolution renewing the international community’s commitment to the Afghan government’s plan for a phased transition to full responsibility for the country’s security. The draft also expresses support for an Afghan government-led process of peace and reconciliation.
Germany’s UN ambassador, Peter Wittig, who introduced the resolution, said with its adoption the 192 UN member states will “strongly renew the message of international solidarity with the Afghan people and underline that transition is not a synonym for withdrawal.”

TITLE: Former Prime Minister Chernomyrdin Dies, Aged 72
AUTHOR: By Lynn Berry
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who served as prime minister in the turbulent 1990s as the country was throwing off communism and developing as a market economy, was laid to rest Friday after an emotional eulogy by Vladimir Putin.
No cause of death has been released, but Chernomyrdin, 72, had grown thin in recent years and was reported to have been ill. His wife of nearly 50 years had died early this year. 
The usually tough and sharp-tongued Putin, the current prime minister, spoke at his funeral service, and at one point he paused and appeared to be struggling to hold back tears. His voice trembled as he said: “We will miss Viktor Stepanovich. We will hold his memory in our hearts and in our work.”
Chernomyrdin engineered the creation of Gazprom, now the world’s biggest gas company, and served as prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin from 1992 to 1998.
Alexei Miller, the current Gazprom chief executive, praised him for resisting calls to split up the gas supply system and sell off its parts at a time when the country “needed loans like air.”
President Dmitry Medvedev also spoke at the service, where much of Russia’s leadership joined Chernomyrdin’s many relatives in saying their farewells.
Putin, who appeared tired, talked about how hard Chernomyrdin had worked, “without any swaggering or desire for stardom.” Putin ended by calling him “an example for us all.”
Chernomyrdin helped see Russia through some difficult times, including the economic devastation that followed the Soviet collapse and the war in Chechnya, where he once played a critical if unlikely role as peace negotiator.
Over the years he grew on his countrymen, who came to appreciate his everyman’s charms and sense of humor.
He had a knack for bursting out with colorful, nongrammatical expressions, such as “we wanted the best, but things turned out as always,” a phrase that has become part of Russian culture.
Born in the village of Cherny Ostrog in the Orenburg region, he was a bear of a man who rose through the ranks of the Communist Party to head the Soviet oil and gas ministry from 1985 to 1989. Chernomyrdin then engineered the transformation of the ministry into a state gas company, Gazprom, which is now the bedrock of Russia’s economy.
In late 1992, he was appointed prime minister by Yeltsin and surprised the young liberal economists leading Russia’s transformation by pushing ahead with market reforms.
In 1995, in the middle of the first Chechen war, he held negotiations over the telephone with rebel leader Shamil Basayev, whose forces were holding more than 1,500 people hostage in a hospital in Budyonnovsk. The hostages were freed in exchange for government promises to begin negotiating a peaceful settlement, but Chernomyrdin took heat for allowing the hostage takers to escape.
His phrase “Shamil Basayev, we can’t hear you, speak louder,” a plea made during the televised negotiations, became a symbol of the war. For some, it showed the government’s helplessness against the rebels, but others saw in it a rare and admirable willingness to compromise for the sake of saving lives.
Chernomyrdin was fired in March 1998, but following the financial crash in August of that year, when Russia defaulted on its debts and devalued its currency, Yeltsin asked him to return as prime minister. The State Duma, however, refused to confirm him.
In 2001, a year after Putin had been elected president, he appointed Chernomyrdin as ambassador to Ukraine. Chernomyrdin had been elected to the Duma, and his diplomatic posting was seen as an effort to distance a political heavyweight from Moscow. Chernomyrdin remained ambassador until last year.
During his eight years in Ukraine, his colorful language and unflattering comments about Ukraine’s leaders won him few friends. He once suggested that then-President Viktor Yushchenko was acting on orders of the U.S. government, saying, “American ears are sticking out everywhere.”
Putin characterized him Wednesday as a “real patriot,” praising his contributions to the development of Russia but most of all his character.
“Behind his seeming simplicity, his jokes, his playing on his own aphorisms … was in fact hidden a subtle, wise and decent man,” Putin said at a televised Cabinet meeting. He concluded by asking the ministers to rise to pay their respects.
Chernomyrdin was buried Friday beside his wife in Moscow’s Novodevichye Cemetery, the final resting place of Yeltsin, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and many of Russia’s most notable cultural and military figures.
Chernomyrdin is survived by two sons and four grandchildren.

TITLE: Foreigners Take the Lead in Making Russia Environmentally Friendly
AUTHOR: By Derek Andersen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Western companies are a major force behind the spread of corporate ecological consciousness in Russia, as they try to apply their global standards in local operations.
Green practices that they breed in the country range from responsible timber harvesting to recycling of used appliances and packaging.
“There is progress in Russia,” said Yelena Kopylova, a World Wildlife Fund representative. “The steps may not be as large as we would like, but awareness and interest are growing, and more and more companies are joining in.”
“Western companies are playing a leading role,” she added.
Kimberly-Clark, which opened a plant near Moscow in June, will promote responsible management of raw materials in Russia, Cecilia Ortlieb, strategy leader for global sustainability, said at a recent round-table discussion.
The U.S.-based producer of personal care products is the world’s largest buyer of paper pulp, and it exerts a powerful effect on the global market by insisting on having certified product, Ortlieb said. The Russian plant so far imports raw materials to make diapers, she said.
Green companies can seek certification from the Forest Stewardship Council for their timber-based products such as paper pulp. The council gives its approval to companies that meet its standards for responsible harvesting of trees and handling of raw materials along the chain of supply. A total of 122 such certificates have been granted to Russian companies, mostly pulp and paper mills, since 2005.
Tetra Pak Russia gets most of the paperboard to produce its packaging in Russia from a local Forest Stewardship Council-certified supplier, International Paper Svetogorsk. The packaging producer is now on a mission to recycle more of its products, said Alexander Barsukov, the company’s vice president for environmental conservation.
Recycling of Tetra Pak packaging is not difficult or expensive, but its recycling in Russia began only three years ago, later than in many other countries, he said. The number of recyclers willing to work with Tetra Pak material is limited, but collecting that material is the biggest challenge, Barsukov said.
As impediments to recycling in Russia, Barsukov noted a lack of a legislative basis and tax incentives for the activity. Systematic collection of material is a problem, and there are few specialists in the field, he said. Banks are hesitant to loan money to recyclers because of the limited scale of their operations, he added.
Those operations are expanding nonetheless, and foreign companies are in on the act. A tender for a public-private garbage recycling project in St. Petersburg received bids from three foreign companies and the Russian subsidiaries of two others. Austria’s Strabag and a Greek consortium are the remaining contenders for the $420 million project. The winner of the tender is expected to be announced on Nov. 26, according to RIA-Novosti.
The Swiss company TDF Ecotech entered into negotiations with the area of Kavkazskiye Mineralniye Vody last year for a $126 million recycling plant, said Andrei Zodin, head of the company’s Russian office. The fate of the project depends on local funding, he said.
“We are optimistic about the Russian market,” Zodin said. “But there are problems with legislation and budgeting in some regions.”
Foreign digital equipment makers also extend their international recycling programs to Russia. The Russian Dell web site has a “recycling” button on its home page that redirects the user to the U.S. web site’s English-language information about its American recycling program. But their service center in Moscow was prepared to accept old computers at their office when a reporter called.
According to the Philips Russia office, that company’s products can be dropped off at any of 180 service centers nationwide for recycling by local companies with which Philips has contracts.
McDonald’s Russia said it uses “green technology” in building and managing restaurants. The Russian restaurants comply with the so-called silver level of ecology, which is the required minimum for all new restaurants around the world, said spokeswoman Nina Prasolova.
The silver standard includes the exclusive use of energy-saving lighting, automatic faucets in the restrooms, movement sensors in service areas and restrooms to turn lights off and on and light sensors to turn lighting off outside and near windows, she said. This standard has been in place in Russia since 2009.
In January, McDonald’s Russia plans to introduce elements of the gold standard: use of heat from kitchen equipment to warm the dining area, transition to a new generation of air conditioners with much higher efficiency and installation of a computer system for central management of the building’s energy system, Prasolova said.
The platinum standard includes more innovative measures such as solar batteries and wind generators to provide electricity and collection of rainwater to use for cleaning outlying areas around the restaurant, she said.
“Unfortunately, it is difficult to apply the platinum standard in Russia, partially because of the climate,” Prasolova said by e-mail. “Therefore, elements of the platinum standard will be implemented only selectively, possibly in the south of the country.”
McDonald’s also uses its influence over partners for the good of the Earth, said another company spokeswoman, Olga Shilkova.
A spokeswoman for French retailer Auchan, which has ecologically friendly policies internationally, said she couldn’t comment on the company’s Russia operations in the area. French DIY suppliers Castorama and Leroy Merlin could not be reached for comment.
The efforts pointed out by Western companies to keep up their green policies in Russia didn’t win recognition from all environmentalists. For one, Greenpeace representative Ivan Blokov was unimpressed.
“I don’t see any difference between Western or Western-oriented companies and Russian companies,” he said, adding that Western companies are generally quite willing to relax their standards in Russia when they see that it is possible.

TITLE: Communists Celebrate as Veterans Protest Against Serdyukov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — About 3,000 Communist supporters commemorated the 1917 Revolution by marching from the Finland Station to the Avrora Cruiser in central St. Petersburg on Thursday.
In Moscow, 4,000 attended a similar gathering tarnished by scuffles, while 1,300 former paratroopers demanded the ouster of Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov across town, The Associated Press reported.
Communist leader Gennady Zyu- ganov told Ekho Moskvy radio that 30,000 participants would show up at the downtown Tverskaya Ploshchad, but a city police spokesman said by telephone that only 4,000 attended.
Members of the radical Left Front group tried to force their way into the Communist rally but were beaten back by Communist supporters, with riot po-lice briefly detaining 10 activists, including group coordinator Sergei Udaltsov, the police spokesman said.
Udaltsov said several detainees sus- tained minor injuries during their detention and were charged with administrative offenses. He called the incident an “outrageous situation.”
“We were willing to rally together, but the Communists sicced the riot police on us,” he said by telephone from the Tverskoi police precinct, where he was being held. “The Communists acted like traitors, not allies.”
The Communists had no immediate comment about the scuffle.
A World War II parade held on Nov. 7, 1941, on Red Square was re-enacted in the same place Sunday. Thousands of army soldiers and history enthusiasts in old military uniforms took part in the event, attended by city officials, The Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, paratrooper veterans rallied by the war memorial at Poklon- naya Gora in western Moscow to de- mand the dismissal of Serdyukov. But the event was only attended by about 1,300 people instead of the 5,000 promised by organizers, the police spokesman said, adding that the rally ended without any disturbances.
Serdyukov’s spat with the paratroop- ers stems from his September visit to a paratrooper academy in the Ryazan re- gion, where he reportedly insulted the school’s head and ordered the removal of a church from the premises.
The rally was organized by veterans from the Airborne Forces, considered the most professional and proud branch of the military. But members of other branches also took part, as well as monarchists, nationalists and hardline Orthodox Christians.

TITLE: Medvedev Vetoes Bill Restricting Protests
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — In a new sign of the Kremlin’s changing stance on the opposition, President Dmitry Medvedev unexpectedly vetoed on Saturday a bill cracking down on rallies that had sailed through both chambers of parliament.
Medvedev criticized the bill for “provisions hindering the freedom of citizens’ constitutional right to hold assemblies, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets,” the Kremlin said on its web site.
His remarks were addressed to State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov and Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov. Both chambers approved the bill, widely criticized by human rights activists and opposition groups, in October.
Gryzlov’s United Russia party, which co-wrote the legislation with Mironov’s A Just Russia, indicated that it was ready to revise the bill.
“We will act in logical accordance with the president’s decision,” Andrei Vorobyov, a senior United Russia member, said in a statement Saturday. “We will consider his remarks as part of our regular work. The bill might face a revision.”
The rejected bill banned individuals and legal bodies, including political parties, from organizing public gatherings if convicted of an administrative offense — a wide range of minor violations that includes ignoring a red traffic light.
It also said rally organizers could not inform the public about their plans, including the theme of a rally, until local authorities approved the date and place of the event.
The bill proposed that local authorities set rules for rallies involving cars — a measure that appeared to target so-called “blue bucket” car rallies held by motorists opposing the use of flashing blue lights by top officials. The new bill could give local authorities the power to ban motorists from placing the buckets imitating such lights atop of their cars.
It was unclear what revisions to the bill might follow.
Medvedev’s veto aims at “giving a signal to the civil society,” said Alexei Makarkin, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies.
“At the same time, the final version is likely to end up with a compromise,” Makarkin said in a telephone interview Sunday.
He said lawmakers might remove the provision on administrative offenders as “the most annoying” to the general public but keep the one on motorists’ rallies.
In any case, much will depend on how the bill is implemented, Makarkin said.
Medvedev’s veto follows the first authorized opposition rally in defense of the right of free assembly, which was organized Oct. 31, after being banned by Moscow City Hall for about 15 months.
In another sign of a possible softening of policy on public protests, a St. Petersburg court on Thursday canceled the jail sentence of opposition activist Andrei Pivovarov, who was handed an unprecedented 27 days for resisting arrest at an unauthorized rally on Oct. 31. A reinvestigation was ordered on technicalities, Interfax reported.
But about 100 activists with the Other Russia opposition movement were detained Sunday for trying to join a sanctioned rally by the Communist Party in St. Petersburg, the Other Russia said.

TITLE: Real Estate Market Braces for New Mall Openings
AUTHOR: By Nadezhda Zaitseva and Yelena Dombrova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The opening of two large retail centers in the center of St. Petersburg could redefine the city’s commercial real estate market.
Galeria, located on Ligovsky Prospekt with a total area of 192,000 square meters, is due to open on Nov. 25, while Stockmann Nevsky Center, which occupies 100,000 square meters at 114 Nevsky Prospekt, is set to open its doors on Thursday.
All the retail space in Nevsky Center has been let, according to Natalya Borets, Stockmann’s manager for corporate real estate. Galeria has let 97 percent of its premises, and a waiting list is already forming, said Stanislav Bilen, a senior consultant at the retail premises department of Jones Lang LaSalle, the project’s broker. The maximum rent in Nevsky Center is 1,620 euros per square meter, according to Borets. Bilen declined to disclose the rental rates at Galeria.
The rates are most likely the same at both complexes — from a minimum of $20 per square meter per month for the anchor tenants, said Yekaterina Lapina, director of the commercial real estate department at ARIN real estate agency.
In terms of their size, the new shopping centers are comparable to the out-of-town malls Mega and Raduga, but there are no malls on such a large scale in the city center.  In the space of just one month, the construction will be completed of retail space comparable to the total annual volume of new retail real estate in the city, said Lyudmila Reva, business development director at Astera commercial real estate company. According to data from NAI Becar, another commercial real estate company, the total volume of quality retail premises in St. Petersburg currently stands at 3.4 million square meters.
The simultaneous opening of two retail centers in one district is a significant event, though it is still difficult to predict the overall impact, said Irina Staroverova, PR manager at Melon Fashion Group, which is opening several stores of its various clothes brands in Galeria, adding that the area could become a major draw for shoppers. 
Electronics retails M.video will open outlets in both shopping centers — geographically the malls are close to each other, but their target audiences are different, said Andrei Solonenko, the company’s northwest regional director. According to him, the average check at the company’s store in Galeria will be about 3,700 to 3,800 rubles ($120 to $124) — the average amount spent at the chain’s other stores — while at Stockmann, the company expects the average check to be bigger due to the higher income of people who shop on Nevsky Prospekt. 
H&M stores will also open at both centers. There will be no competition between them, said Yekaterina Prosvirkina, a representative of H&M in Russia.
Other retail centers in the city center risk seeing shopper volumes drop; and if stores at other malls see a major fall in turnover, their tenants could ask for reduced rent prices, said Bilen. 
The Sennaya shopping mall is not at risk of losing shoppers after the opening of Nevsky Center and Galeria; all its premises are occupied, and there is a waiting list, said Ivan Berkoltsev, the development director at Piter, the company that manages the mall.
A growth in competition is a positive sign for the market’s development, and the appearance of new players will facilitate growth and development of the retail business, IKEA’s press service said. IKEA is an anchor tenant at both Mega malls on the outskirts of the city.  Location is not the only important factor — a strong concept, the attractiveness of tenant stores and offers for shoppers are also important; for example, the Mega stores in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Kazan are developing a customer loyalty scheme, the company added.
The new projects will create additional demand for premises in the street retail segment on Nevsky Prospekt and Ligovsky Prospekt, and the district will attract shoppers from all areas of the city, as well as tourists, said ARIN’s Lapina. The rent prices for premises located on nearby streets will rise, as there will be a synergic effect, said Astera’s Reva. 
H&M’s Prosvirkina said that the rent agreement for the company’s store at 80 Nevsky Prospekt would not change with the opening of the two malls. 
Astera’s Reva said that it is not property owners and retailers who should fear the opening of the centers, but drivers and passengers: Even without the opening of the two malls, the traffic bottleneck at the junction of Nevsky Prospekt and Ligovsky Prospekt could see a total transport meltdown.

TITLE: Russia Drops Lower In Rankings for Friendliness
AUTHOR: By Derek Andersen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia slipped in the latest annual ranking of business-friendly countries because its neighbors were more vigorous in improving conditions for businesses, said a report by the investment arm of the World Bank.
Russia slid from 120th place last year to 123rd in the new report by the International Finance Corporation, which examines a total of 183 economies in terms of laws and regulations that affect small and medium-sized companies.
Singapore topped the rating, while Chad was in last place.
Russia’s slippage in the ranking is not indicative of new problems, said Svetlana Bagaudinova, co-author of the 2011 Doing Business report. Neighboring countries are reforming faster, which negatively impacts Russia’s position, she said.
In fact, Russia warmed up to businesses compared with last year, she said.
“We should look at content and quality over ranking,” Bagaudinova said. “There has been significant improvement, including in confidence.”
In one of the good signs, the time necessary to receive a construction permit in Russia shortened from 704 days to 540 days in the past year, the report said. The task now requires 53 procedures, down from 54 last year, it said.
On the other hand, the cost of acquiring a permit went up to 4,141 percent of the average annual income in the country, almost doubling from last year, according to the report.
The International Finance Corporation also noted new creditor rights and insolvency legislation as improvements.
Nevertheless, Russia still lags behind its neighbors in those areas. It remains near the bottom of the regional rankings for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, with only Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan beneath it.
As was the case last year, Tajikistan was rated one of the world’s top-10 reform leaders, jumping to 139th place from 152nd.
“Tajikistan is a post-Soviet, post-civil war government. That is a significant improvement, and it increases confidence,” Bagaudinova said.
Belarus failed to retain its place in the august company of top reformers, after a meteoric climb from 82nd to 58th place in the previous report. It fell to 68th place this year. Nonetheless, Bagaudinova pointed to reforms in credit rights, taxation, cross-border trading and bankruptcy in that country.
The report, whose stated goal is to be a “benchmark” for overall economic health, analyzed the life cycle of a business — including government registration, obtaining credit, protecting investors and closing a business — to evaluate conditions for small to midsize, locally run businesses. It compared strictly quantifiable factors, without consideration of perception-based indicators.
When asked by The St. Petersburg Times about the effects of corruption on the report’s findings, Bagaudinova said “the aspect of informality” can be detected in the report.
The report, released last week, describes real time and costs for procedures without corrupt payments. Their influence can be judged by the variance of the report’s findings from what is mandated by law, Bagaudinova said.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>2011 City Budget</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (Vedomosti) — St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko is proposing to increase the city’s budget spending in 2011 by 10.5 billion rubles to 380.7 billion rubles, and revenue by six billion rubles to 351.1 billion rubles.  
The budget deficit will increase to 29.6 billion rubles. The legislature’s budget and finance committee was due to consider the relevant amendments Monday.

<strong>PNT Reservoir</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (Vedomosti) — The Petersburg Oil Terminal (PNT) is beginning the construction of a reservoir with a capacity of 40,000 cubic meters for the storage of petroleum products for export.  The project represents an investment of about $25 million. 
The launch of the reservoir is scheduled for April or May 2012. After the completion of the project, PNT will be able to store up to 400,000 cubic meters of petroleum products at any given time.

<strong>Tuna Impounded</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (Vedomosti) — The St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast office of the Russian Agriculture Watchdog impounded more than 51 tons of canned tuna at the city’s sea port. The tuna, made by manufacturers in the Seychelles and the Philippines, did not have the permission from the Russian Agriculture Watchdog required to import goods onto the territory of the Russian Federation.

<strong>Sea Port Investment</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (Vedomosti) — The Morskoy Port Sankt Peterburg (St. Petersburg Sea Port) group of companies invested 826 million rubles ($26.8 million) in the reconstruction and development of its output capacity during the first nine months of this year. 
A container terminal that saw about 731 million rubles ($23.8 million) of investment this year will open at the end of November on the premises of the Fourth Stevedoring company, where cargo is loaded on and off ships. 
St. Petersburg Sea Port has invested another 69 million rubles in the technical re-equipment of the First, Second and Third Stevedoring companies. 

<strong>Savushkina Delay</strong>
ST. PETERSBURG (Vedomosti) — City Hall is expected to postpone the deadline for the reconstruction of the building at 104 Ulitsa Savushkina, which is due to be turned into a hotel, from September this year to March 2012. 
The extension is linked to the postponement of deadlines for fulfilling investment requirements — the construction of a building on Bogatyrsky Prospekt, said Irina Semyonova, project manager at Atlantic, the parent company of Biokor. 
The city’s dermatology and venerology dispensary no. 4 will move there this month from its current premises at 104 Ulitsa Savushkina, after which Biokor will begin reconstruction.

TITLE: Former Adviser Reiman To Develop Free Software
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Former presidential IT and telecommunications adviser Leonid Reiman has started a new company, ROSA, that will develop free software.
When Reiman worked for the Kremlin, President Dmitry Medvedev often said Russia badly needed its own software for the sake of national security and cost savings.
Reiman’s new initiative — which his representative announced last week, RIA-Novosti reported — comes as his first public move after he abruptly resigned in early September. He said at the time that he would focus on using his expertise and not take any government jobs.
According to the ROSA web site, the company is planning to work with medium-sized to large companies “fully or partially migrating to free software use.” Its potential customers may also include original equipment manufacturers to sell them desktop and server operating systems.
Free software, such as the popular OpenOffice.org office suite, is the opposite of proprietary software and allows for penalty-free distribution. It came into vogue in the United States not long after it began as a movement 15 years ago.
In Russia, which President Dmitry Medvedev hopes will soon be home to a Silicon Valley of its own, the use of free software has been a subject of controversy: Companies contracted to distribute CDs with operating systems in schools had failed to do so without errors.
Reiman’s representative, whom RIA-Novosti didn’t identify, said ROSA would develop free software for the Russian market and then work with foreign companies, such as Mandriva, a free software distributions developer that is controlled by the NGI fund. Reiman, who also served as communications minister between 1999 and 2008, is an investor of the 20 million euro ($28 million) fund, his representative said.
Yevgeny Savin, who heads UNOVA, a web site that specializes in innovations and venture capital news, said ways of monetizing free software include advertising and creating free and proprietary versions of the program.
“This market is growing and with telecoms, well, its boom days are gone,” Savin said, referring to Reiman’s telecoms background.
Reiman could tap into the market for free software for mobile phones, possibly developing a project similar to Google’s Android operating system, Savin said.
According to National Purchase Diary’s Mobile Phone Track, Android is installed on 44 percent of all smartphones that were sold in the United States in the third quarter of 2010, up from 33 percent three months earlier.

TITLE: Frozen Chicken Under Threat
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Chief sanitary doctor Gennady Onishchenko has reiterated that the government will ban sales of frozen chicken Jan. 1 in a move that will hurt imports from the United States.
Practically all chicken meat now imported into Russia, including from the United States, is frozen.
Onishchenko, chief of the Federal Consumer Protection Service, told news agencies last week that chicken meat loses a significant amount of its nutritional value when frozen, according to research conducted in Russia.
The decision to ban the use of frozen chicken for the manufacture of all processed products dates back to March 2008, Onishchenko said. The ban now applies only to the production of baby food.
U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Katie Gorscak said in a statement that the ban had “no scientific basis or food safety rationale.”
Russian chief negotiator in the talks to join the WTO, Maxim Medvedkov, said the organization’s members had already called the ban ungrounded and indicated that it did not conform to its standards, Interfax reported.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last month that Russia might “practically do without” imports of poultry in 2011. American imports of chicken meat fell from a one-time high of 1.5 million tons to 300,000 tons this year, Putin said.

TITLE: Study: Online Spending to Soar
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russians will spend $19.5 billion online this year mostly to pay for plane and train tickets, mobile services and music, according to the first major research of the market’s value, released Tuesday.
Spending by online shoppers, mostly Muscovites, will grow to 800 billion rubles ($26 billion) in 2012 from the 600 billion rubles anticipated this year, the study by Google Russia and Citibank found.
This still leaves Russia with a way to go: Spending over the Internet accounts for less than 0.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product compared with 7 percent in Britain, said Konstantin Kuzmin, marketing director at Google Russia.
More than 40 million Russians are using the Internet, and almost all of them browse the network in search of products and services, he said.
“At the same time, the e-commerce market is also rapidly growing,” Kuzmin said.
Andrei Oberemok of Citibank noted that the recent economic meltdown had a stimulating effect on the market.
“The volume of online purchases has not only failed to drop, but actually continued to grow during the crisis,” he said, adding that many Russian companies moved their businesses online because they realized that costs were significantly lower on the Internet.
Since January 2008, most online transactions — 29 percent — were to pay for mobile services, and the average bill was 548 rubles, the study said. The second highest proportion of people, 14 percent, bought train tickets, while 10 percent left their money in online music stores.
In terms of money spent, plane tickets represented the biggest share of the market, accounting for 35 percent of the expenses, the study showed. They were followed by train tickets with 13 percent. Payments to tourist agencies came at 7 percent, and mobile services were next.
The study, which the authors said covered the period between January 2008 and September 2010, also suggested that single, young, well-educated and well-to-do men residing in Moscow are the most active Internet buyers. On average, the study said, men frequent Internet stores twice as much as women do.
To conduct the study, Citibank analyzed the data from 450,000 of its clients across Russia on their use of plastic cards. It also used information from its partners and researched publicly available sources to estimate the present and future volumes of the market.
Anna Lepetukhina, a Troika Dialog analyst, said online spending might be larger than the study found because it didn’t take into account purchases made through electronic payment systems such as Yandex.Dengi.
Lack of trust in online purchases remains a weak point of this market, she added.
“The comfort level of Russian consumers purchasing goods online lags behind that of foreigners’ but probably not by much,” she told The St. Petersburg Times.
“Buy uggs” remains the most popular request on Google in Moscow, while St. Petersburg buyers are mostly interested in getting a bicycle, the study said. In contrast, residents of the Vologda region in central Russia dream of purchasing furniture.

TITLE: Lebedev’s Bank Raided by Masked Police
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow police investigators raided the headquarters of billionaire Alexander Lebedev’s National Reserve Bank last Tuesday in what they said was a probe into one of the bank’s clients.
About 15 masked riot police armed with automatic rifles rushed into the bank’s office on Prospekt 60 Let Oktyabrya followed by investigators, who initially declined to explain the purpose of the search, said Artyom Artyomov, a spokesman for Lebedev.
“People wearing black sacks on their heads and carrying automatic guns have shown up. Apparently, this idea got into their heads after Halloween,” Artyomov told The St. Petersburg Times by telephone from the bank’s office.  
Lebedev, writing on his Twitter account, called the demonstrative use of force a “masks show,” referring to similar raids carried out against high-profile businessmen in the 1990s. 
The Twitter post linked to a blog entry on the raid, which was quickly deleted.
The bank’s press service later reported that investigators had visited a second office on Varshavskoye Shosse.
The raid was part of a probe into operations in 2008 by one of the bank’s clients, and investigators were carrying a ruling from the Tverskoi District Court, National Reserve Bank said in a statement after the raid. The statement did not identify the client.
“National Reserve Bank is assisting law enforcement officers. The investigation issues do not affect National Reserve Bank’s current operations. All payments are being made without issue, as planned,” the statement said.
A city police spokesman declined to comment on the issue when contacted by The St. Petersburg Times.
The head of the city police’s press service, Viktor Biryukov, confirmed to Interfax that Moscow police and investigators were raiding an office building on Prospekt 60 Let Oktyabrya but did not specify the target.
The investigation is being held “as part of a criminal case, which was opened earlier,” he said, declining to elaborate.
The building also includes the offices of state corporation Rusnano, which said in a statement that its offices were not investigated.
Novaya Gazeta, an opposition newspaper co-owned by Lebedev and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, said Tuesday on its blog that investigators had found some documents at the bank’s office.
Investigators were interested in the documents related to Rossiisky Kapital bank, which National Reserve Bank was about to rescue during the financial crisis, the newspaper said in a post.
Lebedev’s National Reserve Bank, currently the country’s 68th largest lender by assets according to Interfax, was the only private bank asked by the government to help rescue failing lenders during the financial crisis in late 2008 and early 2009. Rossiisky Kapital is listed at 96th.
“It turned out that during the rescue measures, Rossiisky Kapital’s former owners had withdrawn a significant amount of money (several billions), which Lebedev publicly announced and informed law enforcement bodies about,” the post said.

TITLE: Ballmer Pledges Millions to Skolkovo
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer signed off on a plan last Monday to join the government’s Skolkovo innovation hub, which could see the U.S. software giant investing “tens of millions of dollars” in the project and nascent Russian tech ventures.
Ballmer signed a memorandum of understanding with billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, whom President Dmitry Medvedev has tasked with overseeing the project and attracting big-name foreign investors. U.S. hardware giant Cisco Systems agreed in June to invest $1 billion over a decade in the project.
“The timing could not be better,” Ballmer told a room full of reporters, referring to Microsoft’s decision to come to Skolkovo. “The opportunities are fantastic. That’s why we’re here.”
Microsoft is aware of the skeptics who want to “look for the downside” and the obstacles to investing in Russia, but Ballmer said he was undeterred.
“Mostly I see the upside,” he said.
The Seattle-based IT giant intends to make five major contributions to Skolkovo, all of which will bring “tens of millions of dollars a year” to the project, Ballmer said.
Microsoft will expand its program to support innovation startups, offering 100 new Russian companies anywhere from $50,000 to $500,000 to get off the ground, said Nikolai Pryanishnikov, head of Microsoft Russia.
An expert committee from Microsoft and “representatives of various Russian seed investment funds” will select the startups, Ballmer said. Pryanishnikov said technology and the business plan would be the primary criteria in the selection process.
Ballmer promised not to take away from venture capitalists.
“We’re not trying to pick winners and losers here.  We’re just trying to support people,” Ballmer said.
Microsoft will also start a research and development center at Skolkovo to work on mathematics-heavy technical computing. The company may use Russian firms as subcontractors and sell the end product outside of Russia.
“We are establishing a software development R&D center in Skolkovo and it will be the focal point for managing the development of Microsoft’s global products based upon expertise that we hire and people we employ here in Russia,” Ballmer said.
Under the agreement with Skolkovo, Microsoft will also do joint research with local universities, create a center for access to IT, and participate in the creation of a technological university at Skolkovo. Microsoft also promised to offer additional IT internships, including at Microsoft’s research center in Cambridge, England.
The initiatives will require “tens of millions of dollars” over several years, Ballmer said.
“Skolkovo is really a clear sign that the Russian government understands that the future belongs to those countries that commit to building economies based on innovation and new ideas, which certainly is the heart and soul of Microsoft and of the information technology industry,” Ballmer said.
“The jeweled crown that we would want [Skolkovo] to be would have been impossible without Microsoft,” Vekselberg said.
The Skolkovo Development Foundation is planning to announce additional deals soon, including in energy efficiency, he said.
“The IT sector arouses great interest for objective reasons,” Vekselberg said, noting in particular Russians’ strong education in mathematics.
Microsoft’s entry to Skolkovo comes only weeks after the departure of a Silicon Valley trade mission led by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who called the country a “gold mine” for foreign investment.
The software maker has faced its share of challenges in Russia, primarily involving rampant piracy.
Microsoft said in May that employees posing as customers found illegal software at 22 percent of 3,000 randomly selected stores in 53 cities across the country.
In September, the company announced that it was issuing a temporary license to pirated versions of its software — including the dominant Windows operating system and office staples such as Word and Excel — to Russian nongovernmental organizations and independent media to prevent politically motivated piracy crackdowns.
Microsoft also agreed this year to open more of its highly sensitive source code, including for Windows 7, to Russia’s intelligence services over security concerns, Vedomosti reported. The business daily has also reported that the government is planning to develop a Russian-built operating system to run on state computers.
“Honestly speaking, when we’re talking about software companies, these investments are artificial … since the money you’re spending goes to give out salaries and purchase servers,” Alexei Krivoshapko, a director at Prosperity Capital Management, told The St. Petersburg Times.
“When we’re talking about purchasing startups, then, yes, this is serious money. As for the rest, this is kopeks, a drop in the bucket. Microsoft only does a small percentage of its business in Russia,” he said. “This is just another case of political yes-manship. You wanted innovations, you got it.”

TITLE: Renault May Gain Control 
Of AvtoVaz
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Automaker Renault and its partner Nissan are in talks with the government on raising their stake in AvtoVAZ to a controlling 50 percent, Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn said Tuesday after talks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
“The prime minister informed us that he agrees that Renault-Nissan’s stake in AvtoVAZ’s share capital could increase to as much as 50 percent,” Ghosn said, Interfax reported.
“For Renault-Nissan, that is absolutely logical, and we understand this proposal. We will gladly consider the possibility,” he said.
AvtoVAZ’s three main shareholders — state-run Russian Technologies, the Renault-Nissan alliance and Troika Dialog — each hold blocking stakes of 25 percent.
In July, they signed an agreement on restructuring that would see the state holding’s stake increase, while Renault would maintain 25 percent and Troika Dialog’s stake would be diluted.
The restructuring takes into account the 75 billion rubles ($2.4 billion) the state gave AvtoVAZ to help it survive plunging demand for cars last year. In his meeting with Ghosn, Putin said that bailout and other emergency measures were already bearing fruit.
“Last year, the company’s capitalization was at $670 million, but this year, today, it is already at $1.7 billion,” Putin said, according to a transcript on the government web site.
Sergei Chemezov, the chief of Russian Technologies, said the state corporation would maintain a blocking stake of 25 percent but saw “absolutely no sense” in holding more if Renault-Nissan wanted control, RIA-Novosti reported.

TITLE: O’Key Owners Buy Land Before IPO
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Kreknina
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — On the eve of its initial public offering, the retail chain O’Key has agreed to sell real estate and land plots to shareholders for about 3 billion rubles ($97 million), although the assets’ value on the company’s balance sheet is 5.66 billion rubles.
O’Key Group, the management company for the O’Key supermarket chain, agreed to sell several assets to firms controlled by its shareholders, according to the company’s IPO prospectus, a copy of which was obtained by Vedomosti.
The deal includes three empty plots of land, two unfinished shopping centers and three operating stores, as well as several companies with no assets but a debt to the group of 646 million rubles, the prospectus said. No further details on the assets were given.
The buildings have a total of 123,600 square meters of space, while the land beneath them covers 182,500 square meters, a source close to O’Key said. Based on those figures, the assets — not including the empty plots — could be worth 6.3 billion rubles to 9 billion rubles, said Konstantin Lebedev, head of Cushman & Wakefield’s valuations department.
As of June 30, the assets had a book value of 5.66 billion rubles, the prospectus said.
But the shareholders will not pay the 3.03 billion rubles to O’Key immediately. The retailer will get 1.63 billion rubles in cash, while the remaining 1.4 billion rubles will go toward rental payments. The company plans to lease back the properties.
Additionally, the group could end up guaranteeing a 1.63 billion ruble loan for its shareholders, which will be used to fund the deal. An O’Key spokesperson declined to comment on the difference between the pricing for the deal and the assets’ book value.
“These plots are a non-core asset; they’re deadweight requiring considerable investment for development,” a second source close to O’Key said.
Selling a non-core property development businesses is standard practice for retailers, said Alexei Krivoshapko, a director at Prosperity Capital Management.
The Kopeika grocery store chain conducted a similar lease-back deal in 2008. The retailer sold 19 grocery stores with the right to rent them and buy them back for 1.5 billion rubles to Uralsib-Arenda, managed by Kopeika owner Nikolai Tsvetkov’s UralSib.
A considerable discount is possible when selling property to a management company with the idea of renting it back, said Alexander Tarasov, Kopeika’s chief financial officer.
Assets’ book value can be both higher and lower than the sale price, said Yelena Khromova, a partner at the audit firm BDO.
But potential investors in O’Key said they were concerned about the difference in price.
“O’Key will have to write off a sum roughly equivalent to the difference in the assets’ book value and the price of the deal. For the company, this sort of transaction represents a likely loss in value,” said Olga Izyumova, a portfolio manager at Kapital Asset Management.
The retailer could possibly be leaving several important parameters of the deal undisclosed, she said. 
“The 1.4 billion rubles are counted as prepayment for rent, but the [future] rental rates are not disclosed. It’s unclear how the company will take assets off its balance sheet if it’s a sale to affiliated entities for lease-back,” Izyumova said.
The deal will increase O’Key’s percentage of rented space to 36 percent, from 21 percent now. According to VTB Capital, Magnit rents 41 percent of its property, while X5 Retail Group rents 53 percent and Dixy leases as much as 65 percent of its stores.
O’Key’s rental costs in the first half were 1.2 percent of revenue, compared with 2.1 percent for Magnit and 3.3 percent for X5.
A source close to O’Key said the assets included land in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and St. Petersburg; two unfinished buildings (15,400 and 31,200 square meters) in St. Petersburg; two existing hypermarkets in the northern capital and one in Murmansk; retail equipment; and the right to rent the land beneath the stores.
O’Key’s shareholders are Dmitry Korzhev (32 percent), Dmitry Troitsky (32 percent), Boris Volchek (25 percent) and Hillar Teder (11 percent).

TITLE: Russians Outstrip Expats Over High-End Property
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — More Russians than foreigners rent high-end apartments in Moscow for the first time since at least 2007 as an effect of policy changes by multinational corporations, a survey said.
Foreign companies either closed their Moscow offices in the rough times of the global financial crisis or hired Russians to replace foreign staff, Penny Lane Realty said in a survey. As a result, the share of foreigners seeking luxury homes dropped to 49 percent last month.
“Despite the fact that the expensive high-end housing market has traditionally targeted foreigners, who have basically formed this market, the demand from Russian customers today is higher,” Vadim Lamin, head of the segment at Penny Lane Realty, said Monday.
Foreign interest in upscale housing edged up 2 percent in 2008 from the previous year to represent 64 percent of total demand, the survey showed. But it dropped in 2009 when expats accounted for 54 percent of the deals.
Month-on-month comparison indicated that the number of foreign tenants of high-end apartments slid by 25 percent in October when compared with the same period in 2008, according to the survey.
The reason is that many foreign companies replaced foreign middle-level managers at their Moscow offices with Russian specialists, who have their own housing in the capital, Lamin said.
“It’s easier and cheaper to find a Muscovite who owns an apartment than to rent housing for a foreign employee,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
Many international firms also closed their local offices after the economic crisis broke out, the survey said. But even as Russia’s economy is rebounding after the crisis, companies are still wary of sending their employees to Moscow, it added.
Natalya Kats, managing director of real estate company Usadba, said she  also noted a slight drop in foreign clients. The number of rentals involving foreigners decreased by no more than 10 percent this year when compared to the pre-crisis 2008, she said.
But Kats insisted that it was a temporary slide rather than a trend because the economy is picking up steam again and beckons as many foreigners as before. Moreover, foreigners now tend to rely on relocation companies that represent them in rentals and this may distort the survey’s statistics, she said.
In addition to seeking fewer deals, foreigners aren’t ready to pay as much as they used to, the survey said. Most international companies cut their rental budgets to allow for monthly rent that starts at $3,000 and doesn’t exceed $8,000 per apartment, Lamin said. Russian tenants are willing to fork out $7,000 to $10,000 per month, he said.

TITLE: Prada to Enter Russian Market Independently
AUTHOR: By Yelena Vinogradova and Maria Dranishnikova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Italian fashion house Prada Group is planning to make an independent entrance onto the Russian market and has already leased two locations in Moscow to house its boutiques.
Prada has rented the locations from Aras Agalarov’s Crocus Group. The larger store, at more than 1,700 square meters, will be on the intersection of Ulitsa Bolshaya Dmitrovka and Stoleshnikov Pereulok, a Crocus spokesperson said. Prada will also occupy 600 square meters in Crocus City Mall.
The stores are expected to open in fall 2011, the spokesman said.
On Stoleshnikov, Prada will have 1,371 square meters used now as a Crocus boutique with numerous brands. Prada Group’s Miu Miu brand will also open a store in the 400 square meters now occupied at the mall by Ungaro.
Crocus Group, which has decided to reduce its retail operations, has rented the space to Prada for 10 years, the spokesperson said.
The franchise restaurant Nobu, which belongs to Crocus, will continue to work in the building and will actually be expanded through additional space on the rooftop.
Prada’s administrative office in Russia will open soon, a source at Crocus said.
Since 2002, the fashion house’s exclusive distributor in Russia has been Mercury, which is controlled by Leonid Fridlyand and Leonid Strunin.
A Mercury spokesperson said last week that under a joint agreement between the companies, “Mercury and Prada are not commenting on the situation.”
A source in the group said, however, that in the first half of next year Mercury will represent Prada’s brands in Russia. Recently, Mercury presented Prada collections for Spring/Summer 2011.

TITLE: Luxury Housing Demand Falls 30%
AUTHOR: By Svetlana Danilova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — The jump in demand for high-end housing, which had been forecast by many, has failed to materialize, real estate firm Evans said in a report.
Rental demand for luxury housing remained unchanged in the third quarter, compared with the preceding three months, while demand to purchase such properties fell by 30 percent over the same period.
Even last year, 5 percent more deals on the elite housing market were signed than in July to September of this year, the report said.
Yekaterina Batynkova, director of luxury property at Est-a-Tet, said demand has been improving lately. She said that at the recent DomExpo real estate fair, Est-a-Tet held more than 40 consultations with potential buyers.
Blackwood said it was hoping for the luxury housing market to begin recovering in the fourth quarter as sales of new developments are slated to start.
Supply of luxury apartments, however, began to take off in the third quarter, rising 20 percent from the preceding three months, Evans said. According to Est-a-Tet, there are 2,400 newly built luxury apartments on the market, with prices varying from $12,630 to $43,817 per square meter.

TITLE: Lots of Russia Items on U.S. Congress Agenda
AUTHOR: By Matthew Rojansky
TEXT: When U.S. voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots Tuesday in favor of a divided government, they did so largely on the basis of domestic issues, such as the economy, taxes and health care reform. But their votes will also have a significant impact on international relations, particularly with regard to Russia, a country that is high on U.S. President Barack Obama’s foreign policy priority list.
In the new 112th Congress, Democrats will still control the Senate, but only by a slim margin, and Republicans will enjoy a comfortable majority in the House. This could mean delay or reversal for the Obama administration’s Russia agenda.
Item No. 1 on the U.S.-Russian agenda is the New START treaty, which Presidents Obama and Dmitry Medvedev signed in April to reduce both countries’ nuclear arsenals and resume bilateral inspections. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the bill in September by a vote of 14-4 (11 Democrats and three Republicans supported it), but the full Senate has not yet started proceedings on ratifying the treaty.
With their post-election Senate majority, Democrats may try to push through a vote on New START during the lame duck session. But there will be an even stronger push to wait for the new Congress from Republican leaders, who will have more votes in January and a better chance of blocking the treaty altogether.
Regardless of when the Senate considers the treaty, it is not likely to be approved by the wide, bipartisan margin enjoyed by past arms control treaties, such as START I (93-6) in 1992 or SORT (95-0) in 2002. The path to 67 “yes” votes for the administration — the minimum needed to ratify New START — could become even harder if newly elected Republicans decide to automatically oppose any Obama administration priority. This will be less of a concern for the White House if these new members are open to joining the small group of bipartisan national security pragmatists led by Republican Senator Richard Lugar.
A second major priority for U.S.-Russian relations currently before Congress is the “123 agreement” on civilian nuclear cooperation. This agreement will allow U.S. and Russian companies to exchange nuclear technology and materials, conduct joint research and development programs and bid together on nuclear energy projects in other countries.
The United States already has this type of civilian nuclear agreement with Australia, South Korea and 19 other countries. If 123 is approved, it will be beneficial for both sides. Among other things, the agreement will enable Russian firms to store and reprocess spent fuel from U.S. reactors, which Congress has traditionally opposed doing anywhere in the United States. The agreement is not a treaty, but rather a waiver of the federal Atomic Energy Act of 1954. (Federal law only requires that the agreement be submitted for congressional consideration for a period of 90 days of continuous session.)
Since the Obama administration submitted the agreement on May 10, the clock has run for 75 days. While the Democratic-controlled Senate could stay in session for a longer period of time, it is highly unlikely that the lame duck Democratic leadership will be able to keep the House in session for more than a few days before January. This means that the prospects of reaching 90 days of continuous session for the 123 agreement are low. As a result, the entire process resets for the new Congress, and Obama must resubmit the agreement in January to start the clock again.
Another potential obstacle is the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which will most likely be chaired by Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. She co-sponsored a resolution opposing the 123 agreement because of Russia’s alleged nuclear cooperation with Iran. But this move came before Russia supported United Nations Security Council Resolution 1929, which imposes sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program and before Russia canceled the sale of the S-300 air defense system to Tehran.
A third issue involves trade relations with Russia. While the U.S. and Russian governments have resolved outstanding bilateral issues clearing the path for Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization, Congress also plays an essential role because it must approve permanent normal trade relations with all WTO members. To do so with Russia, Congress would also have to terminate application of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which was designed to aid Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union.
Many observers believe that this step is overdue because today Russia enjoys visa-free travel with Israel. But because some lawmakers still want to use Jackson-Vanik to pressure Moscow on human rights, Congress will likely delay serious consideration of the issue until Russia’s WTO membership forces a decision.
Congress will also remain involved in other matters that are central to the U.S.-Russian relationship. The House and Senate, for example, share the power to approve or reject funding for all federal programs, including the foreign relations and defense budgets. Finally, committees and subcommittees in either chamber may hold hearings and investigate any matter that falls under their broad oversight authority, including the president’s relations with foreign governments.
Each of these issues is likely to have important consequences for U.S.-Russian relations long past Election Day. Just how the newly divided Congress approaches them is something observers in both Washington and Moscow will watch closely.

Matthew Rojansky is deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

TITLE: Census Doesn’t Count
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: China has been taking a periodic census of its population for more than 2,000 years, sometimes as frequently as once every 10 to 20 years. Those records reveal an interesting picture. For example, in the year A.D. 175 — nine years before the Yellow Turban Rebellion that led to the end of the Late Han Dynasty — the population amounted to about 62 million people. In 220, that number fell to 13 million. In 755, during the Tang Dynasty and right on the eve of the An Lushan Rebellion, 53 million people were recorded, and nine years later the census showed only 16.9 million people.
Now, these figures do not mean that the An Lushan Rebellion claimed 36 million lives or that the Yellow Turban Rebellion wiped out nearly 50 million people. In fact, they reflect the ability of the state to accurately count the population at any given time. Following the uprisings and revolts, the Chinese people fled in all directions and refused to cooperate with the authorities.
What about Russia’s recent nationwide census? To begin with, there is no need for one in a post-industrial society. The census is a tool for an empire or a national monarchy to control its tax-paying population. The main object is for the census takers to record as many taxpayers as possible, while the taxpayers themselves do their best to avoid being counted — their success depending on the severity of societal controls in place. Economically developed countries have replaced the traditional method of collecting census data with surveys or, as in the United States, sending questionnaires to each household.
The scope of the fraud in Russia’s recent census even surpassed the extent of election fraud regularly seen here. According to a survey of 5,253 people by Fontanka.ru, only 38 percent of the population took part in the census. Of those who were not counted, 8.6 percent “intentionally did not participate,” 33.9 percent said that “maybe someone knocked on their door but they were not home at the time,” and another 19.7 percent responded, “Why should I take part?”
Considering that Russians who participated in this census were not threatened with having to pay tribute like the Chinese households of the Tang Dynasty, the results are quite similar to those of China’s census of 764. The social disintegration characterizing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s power vertical exceeds the confusion that reigned in China’s Hebei province after the An Lushan Rebellion more than 1,200 years ago. By the way, no census takers came to my door or to my parents’ either. In fact, not a single census taker came to the whole suburban district where they live. It was the same story with friends living in posh neighborhoods in the Moscow suburbs. Other friends living in gated communities told me that they had instructed the guards not to even let the census takers in.
This raises a question: If this census did not obtain a tally of Russia’s wealthier citizens, how can the government calculate the ratio of rich to poor?
Where and when is it possible to conduct an accurate census? The answer: In 755 during China’s Tang Dynasty; in 19th-century Russia, when every peasant could be found at home; and in the modern United States, where people actually respond to government surveys.
On the other hand, it is impossible to organize even a moderately reasonable count in the Congo, where either the respondent or the census taker might be a cannibal; in Afghanistan, where census workers could get their ears sliced off on suspicion of being U.S. spies; in England during the 1139-53 Civil War; in Byzantium after the 532 Nika riots; and in Putin’s Russia.

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

TITLE: Remembering the Pain of Shtetl Life Under Seige
AUTHOR: By Joy Neumeyer
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The long-lost way of life of Jews in the Russian empire at the start of the 20th century was thrown in the spotlight by a recent exhibition at  Winzavod’s Proun Gallery in Moscow focusing on drawings by artist Meir Axelrod.
Combining drawings with photographs, material artifacts and film footage, the exhibit, which closed Sunday, allowed visitors to experience the sights and sounds of the shtetls, or Jewish market towns, before they were torn apart by pogroms.
Axelrod was born in 1902 in a shtetl in Maladzyechna, Belarus, which was destroyed by a pogrom in the 1910s.
As shtetl life fell apart, Axelrod moved to Moscow, where he studied at the state Higher Art and Technical Studios, or Vkhutemas.
The recent exhibition gave focus to the sketches Axelrod produced in the 1920s, which documented the rapidly disappearing shtetls.
Axelrod’s simple pencil-and-paper drawings capture both his subjects’ exhaustion and their resilience. Individual portraits of adults and children, such as “Sullen Boy” (1924), feature gaunt figures with lowered gazes and slumping shoulders. Group drawings like “Community Bazaar in the Shtetl” (1926) balance the portraits’ desperate isolation with the small joys of community life, as groups eat, dance and do business in the bustling markets that were the heart of the shtetls.
But exhaustion and dislocation continue to haunt Axelrod’s group scenes. In “Expulsion of the Jews” (1927), officials on horses lead a huddled mass of people away from the market toward an unknown fate.
The first wave of pogroms in the Russian empire broke out in the early 1880s, when many blamed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II on a Jewish plot. Local police and tsarist authorities encouraged the popular riots that destroyed Jewish homes and businesses across Ukraine and Poland.
While scattered violence continued for decades, the onset of World War I brought unprecedented persecution. As Jews were accused of treason, communities such as Maladzyechna were forced to relocate away from the front. The Russian Civil War and the Soviet-Polish War of the early 1920s brought still more attacks.
The combined effects were devastating. Deborah Yalen, a historian of the shtetl, said official Soviet reports found post-war Jewish communities “economically and socially ravaged,” inhabited only by the very young, the sick and the elderly.
The Soviet collectivization campaign in the late ’20s “effectively ended the shtetl’s historical role as a market town,” Yalen said. Bolshevik discrimination against the bourgeoisie further deteriorated Jewish culture. Paradoxically, however, state policy in the ’20s promoting ethnic minorities helped preserve some Yiddish educational and cultural institutions.
Short documentary films playing in Winzavod’s Proun Gallery testified to this mixed legacy of loss and endurance. In “Times are Changing,” an old woman writes out the Hebrew alphabet she was taught as a child and never used again, smiling as her shaky hands form the letters.
Gallery director Marina Loshak said that while the exhibition “underlined the tragic aspects of the situation,” the curators also wanted viewers to appreciate the “humor” and “specific sound” of its subjects. The “modest, everyday” objects scattered throughout the gallery — including a woven basket, a record book of births and deaths, and a collection of offering pots — were selected to help viewers “emotionally connect” to the communities in the drawings.
While studying at Vkhutemas, Axelrod met leaders of the Russian avant-garde, including artist Daniel Shternberg, who encouraged his work. After persecution under Stalin’s “anti-formalism” campaign of the ’30s temporarily restricted him to illustration and theater design, Axelrod continued painting until his death in 1970.
The recent exhibition also featured graphic works by Shternberg and another avant-garde artist, Nathan Altman.
Throughout his career, Axelrod often created portraits of his family, who survived the pogroms and relocated to Minsk (with the exception of his brother, the poet Zelik, who in 1941 was shot outside Minsk by the secret police during a wave of repression of Jewish writers).
At the Proun Gallery, Axelrod’s family appeared in photographs donated by his daughter Yelena, a poet, and son, artist Mikhail Yakhilevich, who live in Israel.
Although the culture displayed in the recent exhibition was often overlooked in the Soviet Union, Loshak said “a lot has changed” since its collapse. Now, organizations such as the Jewish Congress draw public attention to the Jewish experience; popular galleries such as the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture showcase a wide variety of Jewish artists.
Loshak acknowledged that the painful expulsion Axelrod and his peers experienced a century ago served as an important “theme of their creative work.” But she said that in the end, their art was “entirely assimilated to the heart of Russian culture,” and wholly accessible to an international audience — even those who will never know the shtetl’s forgotten world.

TITLE: Obama Supports India on UN Security Council
AUTHOR: By Erica Werner
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW DELHI — U.S. president Barack Obama backed India in its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council Monday, a dramatic diplomatic gesture to his hosts as he wrapped up his first visit to this burgeoning nation.
Obama made the announcement in a speech to India’s parliament on the third and final day of his visit. In doing so, he fulfilled what was perhaps India’s dearest wish for Obama’s trip here. India has been pushing for permanent Security Council membership for years.
“The just and sustainable international order that America seeks includes a United Nations that is efficient, effective, credible and legitimate,” Obama said. “That is why I can say today — in the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed UN Security Council that includes India as a permanent member.”
The announcement brought the loudest applause of Obama’s speech. But it does not mean that India will join the five permanent Security Council members anytime soon. The U.S. is backing India’s membership only in the context of unspecified reforms to the council that could take years to bring about.
That makes Obama’s announcement more of a diplomatic gesture than a concrete step. Nonetheless, it underscores the importance the U.S. places on fostering ties with this nation of 1.2 billion people, something Obama has been seeking to accomplish throughout his time here.
Obama said repeatedly throughout his three days in India — first in the financial center of Mumbai and then in the capital of New Delhi — that he views the relationship between the two countries as one of the “defining partnerships” of the 21st century. He set out to prove it by making India the first stop on a four-country tour of Asia, and then through economic announcements, cultural outreach and finally the announcement about the UN Security Council.
India has sought permanent council membership as recognition of its surging economic clout and its increased stature in world affairs. The U.S. endorsement is certain to deepen the ties between them and could also send Obama’s popularity in India skyrocketing to a level comparable to that enjoyed by George W. Bush. The former president is seen as a hero here for helping end India’s nuclear isolation.
The five permanent members of the Security Council are the U.S., China, France, the United Kingdom and Russia.
Debate has raged for years over how to change a structure that is widely seen as outdated and it is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. So it’s unclear when India’s drive for permanent membership will ever be realized. But backing it at all is a critically important move from India’s perspective.
In another important gesture to India, Obama went farther than he had previously during his stay in addressing the terror threat inside Pakistan, India’s neighbor and archrival. Obama angered some here when he visited a memorial to victims of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks but didn’t mention Pakistan, which was home to the attackers.
“We will continue to insist to Pakistan’s leaders that terrorist safe-havens within their borders are unacceptable, and that the terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks be brought to justice,” the president said in the address, to loud applause. “We must also recognize that all of us have an interest in both an Afghanistan and a Pakistan that is stable, prosperous and democratic — and none more so than India.”
Muslim-dominated Pakistan and Hindu-majority India have gone to war and remain deeply suspicious of each other. Indian officials accuse Pakistan’s intelligence service of helping orchestrate the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people and say the country has not done enough to crack down on the Pakistan-based extremists held responsible.
Pakistan views India’s ties with the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan as an effort by its old rival to encircle it.
Throughout his time here, Obama has taken pains to cast his visit as a search for U.S. jobs and benefits to people back home, portraying himself as sensitive to the priorities of U.S. voters who punished the Democratic Party in last week’s midterm elections, in part over high unemployment. He touched on the theme again Monday.
“As global partners we can promote prosperity in both our countries,” Obama said. “Together, we can create the high-tech, high-wage jobs of the future.”
Obama departs early Tuesday for Indonesia, the country where he spent four years as a boy.

TITLE: Indonesians Flee From Merapi 
Volcano
AUTHOR: By Sarah DiLorenzo
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia — Frightened residents abandoned their homes in a bustling city of 400,000 at the foot of Indonesia’s rumbling volcano Monday, cramming onto trains, buses and rented vehicles as authorities warned Mount Merapi could erupt again at any time.
A mass burial late Sunday for many of the 141 people killed in the last two weeks was a reminder of the mountain’s devastating power that culminated in its deadliest blast in 80 years, sending hot clouds of gas, rocks and debris avalanching down its slopes.
With the closest airport closed by ash, rail traffic leaving Yogyakarta has doubled in recent days, as residents — many of them students from the city’s universities — tried desperately to get out.
“My parents have been calling ... saying ‘You have to get out of there! You have to come home!’” said Linda Ervana, a 21-year-old history student who was waiting with friends at a train station.
After days of failing to get tickets — long lines stretch all the way through the main hall — they decided to rent a minibus with other classmates.
“It feels like that movie ‘2012,’” said her 22-year-old friend, Paulina Setin. “Like a disaster in a movie.”
Concerns about airborne ash after Friday’s massive eruption prompted many international airlines to cancel flights to the capital, Jakarta, just days before U.S. president Barack Obama’s planned trip to Indonesia — his second stop in a 10-day Asian tour.
All were flying again Monday, and White House officials said Obama was still scheduled to arrive Tuesday.
One of the world’s most active volcanoes, Merapi has erupted many times in the last century, killing more than 1,400. But Friday was the mountain’s deadliest day since 1930, with nearly 100 lives lost.
Islam mandates that the dead be buried quickly, so authorities gave relatives three days to identify their loved ones. To speed up the process, most families chose to have their relatives interred in a mass grave — a common practice in Indonesia following a disaster.
One by one the bodies — some too charred to be identified — were lowered into a massive trench in the shadow of the volcano.
Merapi was still issuing explosive roars Monday as it shot clouds of gas and debris up to 1 kilometer in the air and ash and pyroclastic flows poured down its slopes.
“Based on what we’re seeing now, it could erupt again any time,” said Surono, a state volcanologist.
The National Disaster Management Agency said the overall death toll from the volcano climbed from 138 to 141 on Monday after search and rescue teams found more bodies on the mountain.
The Indonesian government has put Yogyakarta, 30 kilometers away, on high alert.
The city’s airport was closed yet again on Monday with thick ash observed in the area.

TITLE: 10,000 Refugees Flee Myanmar Post-Poll Fighting
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: YANGON, Myanmar — Fighting between ethnic rebels and Myanmar government troops has sent at least 10,000 refugees across the border into Thailand after a widely criticized election expected to usher in a parliament sympathetic to the military regime.
Fighting raged Monday at key points on the frontier with Thailand, leaving at least 10 people wounded on both sides of the frontier.
In the heaviest clashes, Karen rebels reportedly seized a police station and post office Sunday in the Myanmar border town of Myawaddy. Sporadic gun and mortar fire continued into Monday afternoon. More fighting broke out further south for one hour Monday at the Three Pagodas Pass, said local Thai official Chamras Jungnoi, but there was no word on any casualties.
Groups from Myanmar’s ethnic minorities who make up some 40 percent of the population had warned in recent days that civil war could erupt if the military tries to impose its highly centralized constitution and deprive them of rights.
“There have been at least 10,000 refugees who have fled to Thailand,” said Colonel Wannatip Wongwai, commander of Thailand’s Third Army Region responsible for security in the area. He said Myanmar government troops appeared to have retaken control of Myawaddy, and the rebels of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army held just a few positions on the outskirts of the town.
“As soon as the situation is under control, we will start sending the refugees back to Myawaddy,” he said.
Samard Loyfar, governor of Thailand’s Tak province, opposite Myawaddy, said gunshots were last heard from the Myanmar side at around 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. He said the UN was helping to care for 10,000 refugees being sheltered at a makeshift camp.
Myanmar’s secretive government has billed Sunday’s poll as a step toward democracy, but most observers have rejected it as a sham engineered to solidify military control. U.S. president Barack Obama called the vote “neither free nor fair.”
Addressing parliament during a visit to India — another neighbor of Myanmar — Obama said Monday that it was unacceptable for Myanmar’s government to “steal an election” and hold its people’s aspirations hostage to the regime’s greed and paranoia.
Still, some say having a parliament could provide an opening for moves toward democracy.
There was little doubt the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party would emerge with an enormous share of the seats, despite widespread popular opposition to 48 years of military rule. It fielded 1,112 candidates for the 1,159 seats in the two-house national parliament and 14 regional parliaments. The largest anti-government party, the National Democratic Force, contested just 164 spots.
As early results trickled in Monday, state media and the Election Commission reported that 40 junta-backed candidates had already won their races, including six seats won by recently retired military generals and ministers — including Foreign Minister Nyan Win — in constituencies that were uncontested.
Detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party won a landslide victory in the last elections in 1990 but was barred from taking office, had urged a boycott of the vote. Hundreds of potential opposition candidates were either in prison or, like Suu Kyi, under house arrest.

TITLE: Yemeni Cleric Calls for Attacks
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CAIRO — A U.S.-born radical Yemeni cleric has called for the killing of Americans in a new video message posted on radical web sites Monday.
Anwar al-Awlaki said Americans are from the “party of devils,” and so no special religious permission is required to kill them.
In the 23-minute Arabic-language message, entitled “Make it known and clear to mankind,” al-Awlaki said it was “either them or us.” He also called all Arab and Yemeni leaders “corrupt” and said it was time for religious scholars to take charge.
“Kings, emirs, and presidents are not now qualified to lead the nation, or even a flock of sheep,” he said. “If the leaders are corrupt, the scholars have the responsibility to lead the nation.”
The video showed him sitting behind a desk wearing traditional Yemeni clothes with a dagger at his belt.
U.S. investigators say al-Awlaki’s sermons have been a key inspiration for a string of militants, including possibly the Pakistani man who tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square this year.