SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1626 (87), Tuesday, November 16, 2010
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TITLE: Police Deny Zenit Fans Went on Victory Rampage
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: While thousands of St. Petersburg residents celebrated FC Zenit’s early victory in the National Champions’ League on Sunday night, a number of Zenit fans wreaked havoc and violence in the center of the city, though the city’s police later denied that there had been any trouble.
Witnesses said that Zenit fans were involved in a number of conflicts with local OMON special task police officers around the city center.
The first major fight broke out at Manezhnaya Ploshchad, where about 200 fans threw bottles and flares at about 30 OMON policemen, RIA Novosti reported. The same crowd then joined other fans on the city’s central street, Nevsky Prospekt, creating a crowd of about 1,000 people. Another fight ensued with OMON officers, who were attempting to keep them out of the way of road traffic. Witnesses said that some fans knocked down an OMON policeman and beat him. Another policeman lay on the pavement unable to move, RIA Novosti reported.
But in a bizarre twist of events, St. Petersburg police denied Monday that there had been fights between Zenit fans and the police. A police spokesman told local news agencies that the officer seen lying on the pavement had simply fallen over in the crowd and hit his head, but did not have any serious injuries.
The city’s police press service did not answer the phone when called repeatedly by The St. Petersburg Times on Monday.
Zenit won the national championship when it scored 5:0 in its match against FC Rostov, and Moscow’s TsSKA failed to beat FC Spartak Nalchik, drawing at 1:1.
Zenit’s Italian head coach Luciano Spalletti, who took over as the team’s manager in December last year, and under whom Zenit also won the Russia Cup earlier this year, said he dedicated the victory to Zenit players, the club’s authorities, St. Petersburg and Zenit fans.
“From the very beginning, you made me feel at home here,” Spalletti said at a press conference after the match, Interfax reported. “[St. Petersburg] is a very warm city, which allowed me to work here in a calm atmosphere. I feel the warm attitude of people toward me. I feel that people here love me.”
Commenting on rumors that he had been offered jobs back in Italy, Spalletti said that he had not received such invitations, and that he would stay to work in St. Petersburg if he was allowed to do so.
St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko said it was “the best season in the history of the club.”
“It’s a striking result,” Matviyenko said via City Hall’s press service. “Zenit has never before played like it has this season.”
Matviyenko was keen to draw attention to the support of Zenit’s main sponsor, state gas behemoth Gazprom.
“Without such a mighty team as Gazprom, it would be difficult to expect such excellent results,” she said.
Meanwhile, Gazprom’s head Alexei Miller joined Zenit fans — away from the brawling — briefly on Nevsky Prospekt. After the match, his motorcade stopped near the building of the Russian National Library, and Miller shouted Zenit chants together with fans and spoke to them for a while, Interfax reported.
The first goal was scored Sunday by Zenit’s Serbian player Danko Lazovich in a penalty in the 40th minute. The second came from Sergei Semak at the 75th minute, followed by another in the 82nd minute from Zenit’s top striker Alexander Kerzhakov. Alexander Bukharov scored the last two goals in the 90th minute and during extra time.
As a result, Zenit won the tournament two rounds before the end of the championship. Zenit’s closest competitor, Moscow’s TsSKA, lost in Nalchik just one minute before the end of the game.
Zenit last won the National Champions’ League in 2007. It has won the Russia Cup twice — in 1999 and 2010. In 2008, the team won the UEFA Cup.
TITLE: Matviyenko Reaches Out To Living City Activist
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In a surprising, apparently conciliatory gesture, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko has offered one of her fiercest critics a key position at City Hall.
Yulia Minutina of the Living City movement, which campaigns for the preservation of the historic center of St. Petersburg and is extremely critical of City Hall’s construction policies, has been invited to become deputy head of the Committee for the Protection and Preservation of Historic Monuments.
The job offer followed after a meeting on Nov. 10 that Matviyenko held with opposition politicians and members of non-governmental organizations campaigning for the preservation of the historic center of St. Petersburg.
Speaking to reporters Friday, Matviyenko said she meant business. “I am absolutely serious about inviting Minutina; I am convinced that people like her would be most useful in top positions,” the governor said.
Minutina, however, expressed caution.
“It is a good sign for the local community of pressure groups that such an offer has come,” the activist said. “I understand, however, that the offer has been made not so much to me personally but to me as someone who represents the more critically-minded part of society. I have to consult my fellow activists before I make a decision.”
During the meeting, the city governor also showed unexpected and rare courtesy toward members of the democratic party Yabloko.
“It would be really good to see your party represented in the next city parliament; I also hope that you will head the list of candidates,” Matviyenko told Maxim Reznik, the leader of the St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko, and one of the governor’s most outspoken and long-standing opponents. “Feudalist,” “liar,” “autocrat” and “coarse market trader” are some of the names the politician has called Matviyenko during the years of their confrontation.
Reznik is also one of the driving forces behind the “St. Petersburg Without Matviyenko” protest campaign that has been running since this spring.
Commenting on possible reasons for Matviyenko’s change in attitude toward her critics, Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the political council of the local branch of Yabloko, suggested the governor’s key motive is fear of losing her position, induced by the recent dismissal of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.
“It is highly likely that Matviyenko has learnt from Yury Luzhkov’s dismissal; clearly, she does not want to find herself in the unenviable position of the ex-Moscow mayor, who made his life difficult by refusing to compromise and behaving like a feudal leader who never listens to criticism,” Vishnevsky said.
“St. Petersburg’s rampant construction policies and damage to its precious skyline have apparently irked some of the most influential politicians in Moscow, and life is perhaps becoming less comfortable for Matviyenko.”
Whatever the reasons behind the gestures, some within the opposition movement who are ready to compromise appear to be keen to respond in kind. Yabloko members are currently busy developing proposals for City Hall on construction policy guidelines, while Living City and Minutina are weighing the pros and cons of the job offer.
Matviyenko’s flirtation with some members of the opposition, however, makes for a stark contrast with the repressive methods employed in City Hall’s dealings with other opposition groups.
“The protests as part of the Strategy 31 campaign outside the Gostiny Dvor metro station that we launched in January, 2010, have been dealt with brutally,” said Andrei Dmitriyev, the leader of the local branch of opposition coalition The Other Russia. On Nov. 12, Dmitriyev and several of his fellow activists were charged with having created an extremist organization. If proved, the charges may result in up to three years in jail for the activists.
“This criminal case is nothing other than a bold attempt to intimidate the more challenging wing of the opposition,” Dmitriyev said. “Protest moods in society are very strong, and those in Smolny know it. They do not like us having meetings in the very center of the city, where we attract a lot of attention.”
Dmitriyev said it was no coincidence that the case against the members of The Other Russia was launched almost simultaneously with the offer made to Minutina.
“City Hall is trying to make use of the ancient ‘divide and rule’ principle,” Dmitriyev said. “As the next elections approach, the authorities are seeking to further split the already fragmented opposition.”
“In the worst-case scenario, our ideas and proposals will be shelved,” Vishnevsky said. “But, who knows, maybe some of them will be accepted. So all we can do in this situation is have our say directly to those in power — even if it turns out that they are only pretending to be listening.”
Matviyenko said her meetings with the representatives of local protest groups will become a regular event.
TITLE: Police: Lawyer Who Died in Jail Stole $230 Million
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian authorities claimed Monday that a Russian lawyer who was left to die in jail after exposing police corruption is suspected of stealing the $230 million that he said Interior Ministry officers had defrauded from the state.
The case of Sergei Magnitsky — who died last year at age 37 when the pancreatitis he developed in jail was left untreated — is being scrutinized as a barometer of President Dmitry Medvedev’s commitment to the rule of law and also of investment-hungry Russia’s true openness to foreign capital.
Monday’s announcement switching the blame for the 2007 theft of 5.4 billion rubles from the state budget to Magnitsky was made on the eve of the first anniversary of his death.
Legislators in the U.S. and the U.K. are to be shown a documentary film on Tuesday made by Magnitsky’s supporters, who hope to ramp up the pressure on Russian authorities to prosecute those responsible for his death and punish the officials they allege defrauded the state.
Magnitsky had been charged with tax evasion linked to his defense of Hermitage Capital Management, a multibillion-dollar fund headed by U.S.-born British investor William Browder. Hermitage accuses Interior Ministry officers of illegally seizing assets it managed and using them to fraudulently reclaim $230 million in taxes.
But Interior Ministry spokeswoman Irina Dudukina said Monday that two suspected accomplices had been arrested and implicated Magnitsky in a scheme to steal the money by illegally filing tax reclaim forms.
Browder, who has been deported from Russia as a national security threat, scoffed at the report.
The accusations are “complete nonsense and total fabrication made by people in the Interior Ministry who participated in the crime and tortured and murdered Sergei Magnitsky,” Browder told The Associated Press from London.
“Sergei was not only innocent, but he was the person who discovered the crime and who was courageous enough to testify about it,” he added.
Browder said he used Magnitsky’s findings to warn the Prosecutor General’s Office of the impending theft. Dudukina insisted that the Interior Ministry had not received any warnings from Hermitage and described Browder’s claim as “defense tactics.”
Magnitsky originally testified against Interior Ministry officers Pavel Karpov and Artyom Kuznetsov, accusing them of stealing the money before the same officers initiated proceedings against him.
No action has been taken against any of the officers, some of whom last week received state awards for their work.
Medvedev fired several top prison officials over Magnitsky’s death and has pledged a full investgation. No one has been prosecuted over his death.
TITLE: United Russia Kicks Out Mayor of Tula
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Tula’s mayor has rebelled against United Russia after being kicked out of the party’s faction in the local legislature during an emergency session Saturday.
“I intend to continue to work in this high and respectable post, preserving the legal rights and interests of the Tula people,” Alisa Tolkacheva, who also heads the city’s legislation, told Interfax on Sunday.
Tolkacheva was ousted for “ignoring decisions of the party,” United Russia’s Tula branch said on its web site. It controls the legislature.
But Tolkacheva, 43, who remains a party member, criticized the decision to oust her as illegal. She said the emergency meeting lacked the necessary quorum of 12 deputies. She did not attend the meeting.
United Russia, the Communist Party and A Just Russia backed Tolkacheva when she was elected in March as the mayor of Tula, a city of 560,000 people located 200 kilometers south of Moscow and known for its weapons production.
Local media reported that the pretext for the emergency meeting was a citywide water shutoff last Wednesday because of the local state-run water company’s debt to an electricity provider. Tolkacheva blamed Tula city manager Mikhail Ivantsov for the problem.
Ivantsov resigned voluntarily during the meeting, Interfax reported.
Tula City Hall is accepting applications for city manager through Monday. Ivantsov is expected to reapply for the job.
TITLE: No Penalties For Kefir Driving
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Motorists can consume kefir and kvas without having to worry about the zero-tolerance policy on drunk driving, the country’s top traffic cop said.
There is no scientific evidence that lightly fermented drinks lead to intoxication, but even if it does, such “endogenous alcohol” vanishes after a short time, traffic police chief Viktor Kiryanov told Interfax in an interview published Saturday.
According to new rules in effect since Nov. 1, police can only use breath tests to inspect suspected drunk drivers.
TITLE: Putin Leaves Sofia With Deal on Pipeline, Puppy
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin returned from a trip to Sofia, Bulgaria, on Saturday with an agreement on starting construction of the South Stream gas pipeline and a puppy from his Bulgarian counterpart.
Gazprom and Bulgarian Energy Holding signed an agreement on forming a 50-50 joint venture that will build and operate the stretch of the pipeline running though Bulgaria. The venture will be registered in Bulgaria by the end of the month.
“As far as Bulgaria’s material benefit is concerned — it’s obvious. Bulgaria currently gets about 600 million euros … from Russia for transit of a small amount of gas to other countries,” Putin told a news conference, according to a transcript on his government’s web site.
“If we implement the South Stream project, Bulgaria will get almost 2.5 billion [euros] only for a pipeline going through its territory,” he said.
The 20 billion euro ($27.4 billion) South Stream project is run by Gazprom and Italy’s Eni. In June, Russia signed a memorandum of understanding giving France’s EDF a minimum 10 percent stake in the project, to be taken from the Italian share.
Bulgaria became the eighth country to sign on to the 900-kilometer South Stream pipeline, following Austria, Croatia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Greece and Slovenia.
In a final move indicating friendship between the two countries, Borissov gave Putin a Bulgarian shepherd dog puppy.
“I gave a Bulgarian dog to Vladimir Putin and hope that he will enjoy this typical Bulgarian dog,” Borissov said, RIA-Novosti reported.
TITLE: Five Years On, Antifascists Mourn Kacharava’s Death
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As antifascist activists marked the fifth anniversary of the murder of the 20-year-old antifascist activist and punk musician Timur Kacharava on Saturday, they claimed that they are under increasing pressure from the police, while the threat of attacks from nationalist radicals has not decreased.
Antifascist Filipp Kostenko filed a lawsuit against the Prosecutor’s Investigative Committee last week after four anti-extremism Center E operatives broke into his apartment, searched it and arrested an activist, Rinat Sultanov, who was there at the time.
The investigators had called the fire brigade to break down the metal door to get into the apartment. The three activists who were in the apartment were thrown on the floor and kicked in the stomach, Kostenko said Thursday.
“When I came 15 or 20 minutes later, they were still lying on the floor, but I asked the [officers] to stop this and they put [the activists] into different corners,” he said.
“But they didn’t beat anybody when I was there.”
Kostenko said it was done to intimidate the activists on the eve of the Nov. 4 antifascist rally and prevent the rally, of which he was one of the organizers, from taking place.
The rally, called “Defend the City from Fascism,” was held to counter the extreme nationalist Russian March that took place on the same day, and was authorized by City Hall.
“They arrested Sultanov for an old fight that took place two years ago and seized a lot of things that don’t even belong to him,” Kostenko said. “If they had just wanted to arrest him, it could have been done in some other manner.”
Sultanov has been charged with “inflicting grievous bodily harm” during an incident that took place on the Russian March on Nov. 4, 2008.
According to Kostenko, the investigators took computers, magazines and banners for the rally, among other things.
Lawyer Iosif Gabuniya said Thursday that a complaint against the actions of the investigator who conducted the search, and an application for the opening of a criminal case against the investigator have been filed.
According to Gabuniya, the investigators committed a number of violations during the search, including refusing to allow him to enter the apartment to observe how the search was being conducted.
“I think the actions were illegal and the rights of my client were violated, and that’s why I believe that the court will find them illegal,” Gabuniya said.
“There was also material damage; the door has been broken. We’ll also be suing for the material damages to be compensated.”
Kostenko said that the authorities turn a blind eye to the activities of nationalist organizations in St. Petersburg.
“They do arrest neo-Nazis who are directly involved in terrorism, but many nationalist organizations are aimed at cooperation with the authorities,” Kostenko said.
According to Kostenko, the threat of attacks committed by nationalist radicals against antifascist activists is still high, as an attack on the fans of the Karelia-Discovery Soccer Club at a soccer match in the town of Pushkin in August demonstrated. Dozens of fans of the club, who are widely regarded as sharing antifascist views, were beaten.
“At some point it appeared to be decreasing, but after the attack in Pushkin it became clear that the threat is still here,” Kostenko said.
“They have even progressed to the next level, because to attack a full stadium of fans, that’s quite a well planned action, and it shows that nationalists, although in the underground, are getting ready for some very decisive actions and are capable of carrying them out,” he said.
“Perhaps they coordinate their actions with the authorities, because there were only ten policemen at that match. Soccer matches are events that are widely regarded as having the potential for conflict, and yet there were only ten policemen providing security.”
For the murder of Kacharava, four extreme nationalists were sentenced to 2 to 12 years in prison and three received suspended sentences in 2007.
Dozens brought candles and flowers Saturday to an annual vigil near the Bukvoyed bookstore on Ligovsky Prospekt where Kacharava was stabbed to death.
TITLE: Officials Call For Two-Way Tolerance
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: With the number of immigrants in St. Petersburg increasing every year, the city needs to focus on programs to help migrant workers and their children adapt to the local environment and to promote tolerance in society, city officials said last week.
“If we take care of the people who come to our city from other countries to live and work, our own lives will become safer,” Yelena Dunayeva, head of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Federal Migration Service, said last week at a press conference dedicated to International Tolerance Day, which is celebrated on Nov. 16.
Dunayeva said that the main aim of most immigrants who come to St. Petersburg is to find a job and a place to live, and not to commit crimes. However, the people in charge of providing legal status and social guarantees to immigrants often do not do their duty, and in such cases, immigrants may resort to illegal activities, she said.
“For instance, employers who hire migrant workers but do not sign a contract with them, don’t pay them their full wages and don’t provide social benefits such as medical insurance may cause negative feelings in those people and provoke them to commit crime,” Dunayeva said.
City residents who provide immigrants with fake registration documents also make the situation worse. If they don’t have a fixed address or a job, immigrants may commit a crime just to obtain food, for instance, she said.
“Therefore it is important that city residents treat the issue of labor migration responsibly,” Dunayeva said.
Dunayeva said that the city needs a special recruitment agency for migrant workers.
“With information on the number of migrant workers that an employer needs, such an agency could define the work conditions, social benefits and medical insurance the employer would provide while the prospective migrant workers are still in their home countries,” she said.
Alexander Prokhorenko, head of the city’s External Affairs Committee, said that St. Petersburg, which is home to at least 130 different nationalities, has developed a second program devoted to national tolerance due to run from 2011 through 2016.
“The aim of the program is to answer new challenges in the country regarding the growing issue of national self-identification,” he said.
“Here we are not only talking about the education of the country’s Russian majority to accept other nations, but about teaching tolerance among the migrants coming to the city,” Prokhorenko said.
It is especially important to instill tolerance in children, who must learn to respect the traditions of their new homeland, he said.
Prokhorenko said the current program on tolerance, which was launched in the city in 2006, promotes such an attitude, and includes a number of measures designed to help the children of immigrants to learn Russian.
According to data presented at last week’s event, last year the number of St. Petersburg schoolchildren who don’t consider Russian to be their native language increased to eight percent.
Boris Pustyntsev, head of the city’s Civil Watch human rights organization, said the city’s new tolerance program would include the production of cartoons promoting tolerance that would be shown to kindergarten children.
“It is important to begin teaching tolerance from a very young age, since an increasing number of children whose parents are migrants go to local kindergartens and schools,” Pustyntsev said.
The safety of ethnic minorities has improved in St. Petersburg during the last few years, he added.
“Just five or six years ago, a spate of race-related crimes struck the city and made it look like the capital of national hatred, but the city has done a lot to solve this problem,” Pustyntsev said.
The St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office registered nine crimes of extremist character in 2008, including four cases of extremist literature being distributed and five attacks. In 2009, five crimes — four cases of extremist literature being distributed and one attack — were recorded.
In 2009, the Federal Migration Service said Russia had about 10 million immigrants, though independent experts have said the number of migrants may reach 15 million people.
TITLE: Hundreds Beat Drums for Kashin
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Taranova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Hundreds of people beat drums, blew whistles and sounded other instruments Sunday at a central Moscow rally to protest the brutal beatings of Kommersant journalist Oleg Kashin and Khimki forest defender Konstantin Fetisov this month.
More than 500 people “armed” with drums, whistles, horns and pipes attended the rally near the Chistiye Prudy metro station, which was authorized by City Hall and ended peacefully, said Yevgenia Chirikova, a rally co-organizer and a leading defender of the Khimki forest.
“The rally was very noisy, dynamic, but civilized,” she said by telephone.
Kashin, who was beaten by two unidentified assailants on Nov. 6, remained in serious condition in an intensive care ward through the weekend, and his colleagues from the Kommersant daily distributed a mock newspaper called ÊàøèíÚ (Kashin) at the rally. With 10,000 copies printed, the newspaper carried articles about attacks on Russian journalists and about the versions behind the attack on Kashin.
A police spokesman confirmed to The St. Petersburg Times that no violations occurred during the rally, which was watched by 90 policemen. But the spokesman estimated the number of participants at 300 people.
The protesters also demanded the ouster of the Khimki city administration and justice in the case of Fetisov, who was also badly beaten two days before the attack on Kashin. Kashin also wrote about the Khimki administration’s support for the construction of a federal Moscow-St. Petersburg highway through the local forest.
Another rally was held Sunday in the Moscow region town of Zhukovsky against a local plan to cut down the Tsagovsky forest southeast of Moscow in order to build a road between the capital and Zhukovsky. Police said 500 people attended the rally, while organizers claimed to have gathered 1,500 protesters, Interfax reported.
TITLE: Election Stakes High for Alexander Lukashenko
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MINSK — Alexander Lukashenko knows he will win a fourth term as president of Belarus when voters cast their ballots next month. He also knows that this election will be the pivot — or the pothole — that defines his rule.
After more than a decade quashing political opposition and maintaining many elements of the Soviet planned economy, Lukashenko, 56, has lost the patronage of his traditional allies in Moscow without yet earning the respect of Europe.
Now, opponents say, Lukashenko faces greater pressure than ever before to hold a transparent and fair election. Otherwise, they say, he faces the prospect of a Moscow-backed political challenge coupled with tighter restrictions on the cheap Russian oil that fuels the Belarussian economy.
“Much will depend upon one man, who must clarify whether he is in the modernization camp or in the stagnation camp,” said Yaroslavl Romanchuk, a Belarussian economist who will challenge Lukashenko in the Dec. 19 poll.
Speaking at last week’s Minsk Forum, an annual forum for politicians and businessmen to discuss investment, Romanchuk was clear that he did not expect to win.
“What will come after the first of January? It will be the second of January,” Romanchuk said with a resigned smile, referring to the day when results of the presidential election are announced.
Romanchuk, 44, is one of 10 candidates still in the running .
One candidate, businessman Vladimir Provalsky, was removed last week because most of the 100,000 signatures he collected were forged, commission secretary Nikolai Lozovik told RIA-Novosti.
Romanchuk, former deputy foreign minister Andrei Sannikov and poet Vladimir Neklyayev have the most support, according to a poll by the Ukraine-based Socium research center.
None is expected to come close to defeating Lukashenko, who still has wide support in rural parts of the country. But they do expect less electioneering.
“Europe is giving the signal that if Lukashenko conducts elections in a significantly freer way, they will deal with him, because they want to drive him away from Moscow,” prominent opposition politician Pavel Severinets told The St. Petersburg Times.
Lukashenko, whose government Washington has called “the last dictatorship in Europe,” still faces regular accusations of suppressing dissent and jailing opponents.
The most recent scandal was the death of opposition journalist Oleg Bebenin, who was found hanged at his home outside Minsk in September. Police initially called the death a suicide, but his friends and relatives say he was killed.
Lukashenko promised to investigate Bebenin’s death and even invited foreign criminal experts to assist in the investigation.
The real danger to Lukashenko, however, is not coming from internal challenges, analysts and Belarussian politicians said.
Belarus had already been drifting toward Europe when its relationship with Russia nosedived in 2008. Lukashenko angered the Kremlin by refusing to support Russia in its recognition of Georgia’s breakaway provinces Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.
The ensuing economic crisis led to more harsh words as Moscow demanded fealty in exchange for cheap loans and subsidized oil, which Belarussian factories refine and then resell at a big profit. Russian political analysts say Lukashenko’s relationship with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has become strained, while he has never found as much common ground with the more liberal President Dmitry Medvedev.
From July through October, the Gazprom-owned NTV television station has aired a four-part documentary series attacking Lukashenko and accusing him political repression. Medvedev wrote in a blog post last month that Lukashenko was failing to maintain “basic human dignity” in his policy.
The anti-Lukashenko documentaries, banned in Belarus but available online, did not have the intended effect among Belarussians, said Sergei Musiyenko, head of the Belarussian EcooM think tank, a Lukashenko adviser.
“When the leader of your country is insulted by outsiders, his support increases, regardless of what you think about him. It’s support for the country,” Musiyenko told The St. Petersburg Times.
Others believe that the criticism has been a message to Lukashenko, warning him that Moscow may seek to break off its relationship with him after the elections.
“Moscow most probably now feels it’s very important that there’s another president instead of Lukashenko who would be ready or open to put the country fully under Russian control,” Alexander Milinkevich, the main opposition candidate in the 2006 presidential elections, told Bloomberg on Friday.
The Kremlin’s first move may be a refusal to recognize the results of the upcoming vote, a landmark change from previous policy of accepting the outcome of Belarussian elections despite criticism by Western observers, said Konstantin Zatulin, first deputy chairman of the State Duma’s CIS Affairs and Relations with Russian Nationals Abroad Committee.
“While Belarus has gotten used to the Western attitude toward the elections, Russia not recognizing them would be a shocking move,” Zatulin told The St. Petersburg Times.
But even that attack may backfire if the results are recognized by Western observers, said Musiyenko, of the EcooM think tank. A politically based refusal to recognize the vote would put the the Kremlin in a “stupid situation,” he said.
Lukashenko appears to understand the threat and said Friday that his country would not “insist” on Russia recognizing the elections.
“By our legislation, we need no recognition,” he said in comments to German media, Interfax reported. Europe has also “denied the very existence of Belarus for 15 years when talking about our elections. So what? Did I die of that?” he said.
Lukashenko went far enough in softening his stance on opposition to even praise his bitter political enemy, nationalist leader Zenon Posdnyak, who was forced to emigrate in 1996. “We respected each over and found common ground,” he told Polish media last week.
He also won a bit of praise from Serbian director Emir Kusturitsa, who called him a “strong leader” during a press conference earlier this week in Minsk for a local film festival. “I’m glad there is a country that has its own vision, independent from others. Democracy in Belarus couldn’t be the same as democracy in Holland,” he told reporters.
European politicians have also been suggesting that the West could support Lukashenko in a more democratic Belarus. German Foreign Minister Gido Vestervele and his Polish counterpart, Radoslav Sikorsky, attended the Minsk Forum and secured from Lukashenko a promise to hold a fair vote.
Lithuania’s president, Dalia Grybauskaite, was cited Friday as saying a victory for Alexander Lukashenko would safeguard stability and limit Russian influence in the country.
“These elections will be life-changing. After Europe has understood that isolating us is a useless thing, they will be more careful,” said Musiyenko, the Lukashenko adviser.
Relations with Russia “will never be the same,” he said, referring to the Kremlin’s toughening stance on oil and gas transit through Belarus.
Lukashenko said he plans to get crude from other markets including Venezuela to cut Russian crude to less than 50 percent of his country’s needs next year.
If ties to the West improve, the Belarussian state may slowly start to release its grip on the economy.
Western businesses have signaled interest in helping privatize state assets, but the program is moving slowly because the government is reluctant to give up control over key property — at least, cheaply.
“We don’t have natural resources, but we have property and we need to sell this property more effectively,” Andrei Tur, a deputy economy minister, said during a Minsk Forum panel.
Tur even started a heated but amiable debate with presidential candidate Romanchuk, calling his plans to create 1 million new jobs in the country of nearly 10 million “romantic.”
The debate, an integral element of the democratization expected by the West, was closed to the general public, however. All Belarussians can expect in the current campaign are two 30-minute televised addresses to be delivered by each candidate.
TITLE: Abramovich Wins New Holland Tender
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Tyomkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Roman Abramovich’s Millhouse company is to invest at least 12 billion rubles in construction on New Holland island after it won a tender Monday.
The committee in charge of the tender to redevelop the island, situated in the center of the city, opened the envelope containing applications for the reconstruction of the island Thursday. Applications were submitted by two companies: Novaya Gollandiya Development (NGD) and Meridian.
According to the terms and conditions of the tender, applicants had to propose no less than 300 million rubles ($9.7 million) for the right to sign a contract and no less than $300 million to invest in the construction of a multifunctional complex on the 7.8-hectare island. Construction must be completed within seven years.
NGD, which is affiliated to oligarch Abramovich’s Millhouse private investment company, offered to invest more than 12 billion rubles ($388 million), according to Alexei Chichkanov, chairman of the city’s Committee for Investments and Strategic Projects. Millhouse spokesman John Mann confirmed that the companies are connected, but declined to give further comment.
Meridian offered to invest $350 million in the reconstruction of New Holland, Chichkanov said. According to Chichkanov, both companies offered the same minimum price to settle a contract, but the volume of investment was the key criterion in the tender.
The officials do not know who owns Meridian, he added.
According to SPARK Interfax data, the company was established in St. Petersburg in 2008 by Anna Gubar, who could not be contacted. Darya Filina, a lawyer representing Meridian who attended the opening of the applications, declined to comment.
A second application was needed to create the illusion of a tender being held, one local consultant alleged. The commission handed over the applications for expert analysis by Knight Frank last week, said Igor Metelsky, deputy governor of St. Petersburg. NGD was announced by the commission to be the winner Monday.
The first tender for the reconstruction of New Holland was held in 2006. It was won by the company ST Novaya Gollandiya, belonging to Shalva Chigirinsky and Igor Kesayev. The company was due to spend $320 million, but invested only $70 million before abandoning the project (see related story, this page).
TITLE: Finnish Flagship Store Opens in City
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia’s largest Stockmann department store — and the second largest in the world — opened its doors on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Ulitsa Vosstaniya on Friday.
The Finnish concern acquired the plot of land to build a new department store back in 2006. The Stockmann Nevsky Center flagship store is 98,000 square meters in area and has seven floors.
The shopping center became an object of controversy when two historic buildings were demolished to make way for it. It was announced that the buildings would be rebuilt with exact replicas of their facades, but preservationists denounced the addition of glass extensions to the buildings’ roofs, which they claim now contravene local building regulations regarding height.
Apart from Stockmann itself, brands including Dior, Shiseido, H&M, Vero Moda and Jack&Jones are represented in the new mall, which also houses 14 cafes and restaurants, a dance school and a yoga center. Part of the premises is occupied by office space.
Investment in the project totaled around 185 million euros. The next Stockmann department store in Russia is due to open next spring in Yekaterinburg.
TITLE: Tax Evasion Charges Against Shalva Chigirinsky Closed
AUTHOR: By Bela Lyauv, Alexei Nikolsky and Alexander Titushkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Real estate developer Shalva Chigirinsky may return to Russia now that criminal investigations targeting him for tax evasion have been closed, Vedomosti has learned.
Two energy companies Chigirinsky headed, Moskovskaya Neftyanaya Kompania, or MNK, and its successor Moskovskaya Neftegazovaya Kompania, or MNGK, were investigated for criminal tax evasion, but the cases have been closed, a source close to the businessman told Vedomosti.
A source in the Interior Ministry confirmed that the cases were closed several months ago. A spokesperson for MNGK declined to comment.
Chigirinsky’s troubles began in fall 2008 with margin calls on a loan backed by 23.3 percent of London-traded oil company Sibir Energy. Several months later, it became known that Chigirinsky had “borrowed” about $400 million from Sibir, and the company began an internal investigation.
Last summer, criminal cases were opened against MNK and MNGK, which were accused of not paying more than 600 million rubles ($19.5 million) in taxes. The main investigative department of the Moscow city police said MNK made false statements about expenses in 2002 and 2003, while MNGK was accused of evading taxes in 2006 by selling fuel to Mosenergo through a series of middlemen.
Chigirinsky, who faced up to six years in prison on the charges, was forced to leave Russia. But the cases never included specific suspects, a source close to MNGK said.
MNK was founded in 1999 by the Moscow city government to operate on the oil products market. It was replaced in January 2004 by MNGK, which was created a year earlier.
Initially, MNGK’s owners were the city government and Sibir Energy, which Chigirinsky founded. In September 2007, Sibir became the sole owner of MNGK, and City Hall received an 18 percent stake in Sibir. MNGK’s largest assets are a 50 percent stake in the Moscow Oil Refinery, Mosnefteprodukt and Moskovskaya Toplivaya Kompania.
As the companies’ CEO, Chigirinsky could have been liable, said Yury Vorobyov, a lawyer at Pepeliaev Group. The cases may have been closed because the allegations did not hold up or because the statute of limitations expired, he said.
The conflict led to the collapse of Chigirinsky’s development business as well. Chigirinsky alleged that Inteko owner Yelena Baturina, the wife of then-Mayor Yury Luzhkov, had secretly been given half of his stake in Sibir Energy and his development projects in exchange for her assistance with “bureaucratic procedures.”
Baturina denied the claim.
Chigirinsky’s firm Russian Land owned 16 projects around the country. Among the largest were the Russia Tower in the Moskva-City district of Moscow, the reconstruction of the Rossia and Sovietsky hotels in Moscow, and the construction of a multifunctional complex on New Holland island in St. Petersburg (see related story, this page).
He has since lost all of them and only controls a few small projects in the regions, said a Moscow developer. They are managed by Chigirinsky’s younger brother, Alexander Chigirinsky, through the company Snegiri, he said.
TITLE: Businesses May Get Reprieve
AUTHOR: By Lilia Biryukova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Entrepreneurs would no longer face prison sentences for incorrect paperwork if a bill proposed on Saturday by top United Russia lawmakers is approved.
Three State Duma deputies sent the bill to the government and the Supreme Court for their positions on the changes in Article 171 of the Criminal Code, which deals with illegal entrepreneurship.
The bill’s authors — Legislation Committee Chairman Pavel Krasheninnikov and his two deputies, Vladimir Gruzdev and Andrei Nazarov — want to liberalize how violations of the article are punished.
Gruzdev said the bill could be submitted to the Duma within a month.
Doing business without registration or license that damages the public or the state can be punished by a fine of up to 300,000 rubles ($9,700) or administrative arrest for up to half a year. Under the article’s second part, covering illegal entrepreneurship as part of a group, business people face as much as five years in prison.
The lawmakers proposed leaving just the fine in the first part of the article and making administrative arrest for up to half a year the top punishment in the second part.
People shouldn’t be sent to prison just because of paperwork problems, Nazarov said.
About 1,000 businessmen are jailed annually for illegal entrepreneurship, according to statistics from Krasheninnikov’s committee.
Deputies first said the law needed to be changed in 2009, and initially they planned to move the article from the Criminal Code to the Administrative Code while increasing the possible fine, Nazarov said.
But the deputies eventually decided to leave the article in the Criminal Code and raise the fine — which does not always make sense given the size of the crime. Entrepreneurship without state registration will draw fines of 1,000 to 3,000 rubles, up from 500 to 2,000 now. Operating without a license will be raised to 3,000 rubles to 4,000 rubles, from 2,000 to 3,000 rubles now.
Legal entities will also face higher fines of up to 70,000 rubles, from 40,000 rubles previously. In severe cases, the fine can be up to 100,000 rubles.
President Dmitry Medvedev introduced changes to Article 171 of the Criminal Code with a number of amendments in April, including the elimination of punishment for “violating licensing requirements and conditions,” said Yana Yakovleva, head of Business Solidarity.
As the law stands now, it is still possible to extort bribes from small businesses under the threat of prison, so the changes should be beneficial, she said. After Medvedev’s amendments, the number of arrests and cases opened under the article declined, Yakovleva said.
TITLE: Barack Obama Says New START Remains ‘Top Priority’
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: YOKOHAMA, Japan — U.S. President Barack Obama commended President Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday for moving Russia forward and for condemning attacks on journalists and offered assurances that getting the Senate to ratify the New START nuclear weapons treaty is a “top priority” of his administration, Reuters reported.
“I reiterated my commitment to getting the START treaty done during the lame-duck session,” Obama said, noting that Congress returns in days for its post-election session.
In talks with Medvedev on the sidelines of the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Obama also reiterated his support for bringing Russia into the World Trade Organization, calling Russia “an excellent partner.”
His one-on-one talks with Medvedev took place on the final day of Obama’s 10-day Asian tour, his longest trip away from the White House. He left Washington still reeling from a stunning electoral defeat on Nov. 2 in balloting that allowed the Republicans to recapture control of the House from Obama’s Democratic Party.
Obama and Medvedev discussed the plodding pace of the treaty ratification process, a problem that threatens to undermine U.S.-Russian relations and bleed into other issues, a senior Obama official told reporters shortly after the meeting.
There is an uneasiness within Russia on this issue, and Medvedev is being well briefed about the dynamic of the Senate, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the closed-door meeting. The official said that if there is progress in the lame-duck session, Russian lawmakers would be likely to quickly follow suit.
The treaty has drawn resistance, principally from minority Republicans. A congressional aide briefed on White House plans for getting it ratified said last week that the White House was adding $4.1 billion in funding for the U.S. nuclear arsenal in an effort to pick up the necessary votes.
Asked during his picture-taking session with Medvedev whether his administration was putting more money on the table for the nuclear program to get New START through the Senate, Obama declined to answer.
On other issues, Obama praised Medvedev for strongly condemning the beatings of journalists in Russia, and the U.S. president pushed for prosecution. The two leaders also discussed containment of Iran in its purported pursuit of nuclear weapons, and Obama and Medvedev have no disagreement about how to proceed, according to the Obama official’s account.
Obama said, on another matter, he believes that Medvedev is bringing about reforms and is moving the country forward.
He said he supports Medvedev’s pursuit of membership in the World Trade Organization, where negotiations face an impasse over a possible Georgian veto.
Georgia, whose relations with Russia are tense since the two fought a brief war in 2008, is a member of the WTO accession working group for Russia and has publicly said it wanted to block Russia’s entry.
WTO members cannot execute veto rights for political reasons, but Georgia says it wants to station its own customs officials at the border between Russia and two Georgian breakaway regions that declared independence after the 2008 war.
Kremlin economic aide Arkady Dvorkovich said Medvedev and Obama discussed the Georgian veto issue. Russian officials said they believed that the United States could push Georgia into backing away from its demands.
Dvorkovich said the working group report, which will serve as a foundation for membership, would be ready next spring and Russia aimed to become a member next year.
Both Obama and Medvedev touted a close working relationship and friendship.
Obama extended thanks to Moscow for cooperation on Afghanistan and on a host of international issues ranging from the Middle East to Sudan.
Medvedev said: “It has been very pleasant for me to have this meeting and discuss a whole range of bilateral and multilateral issues with my colleague. Indeed, we have a very good relationship. We understand each other very well. It’s very important to attain agreement on a whole range of issues.”
At the photo session with Medvedev, Obama said he looked forward to seeing him at a NATO summit in Portugal within days and said the pair has scheduled “a host of consultations so that we can reduce tensions and increase cooperation on various security matters in the European theater.”
“Both he and I are racking up a lot of miles on our aircraft these days,” Obama said, “but there’s a lot of work to do, and I’m glad to have him as an excellent partner on a whole range of these issues.”
Medvedev told reporters he wishes Obama “success” in reinvigorating the ailing U.S. economy, saying, “the status of the U.S. economy quickly affects the general state of the international economy.”
(AP, SPT)
TITLE: Chicken Threat Dropped
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Top sanitary doctor Gennady Onishchenko said Saturday that the government would not ban sales of all frozen chicken starting next year, backtracking on his previous statement earlier this month.
Current restrictions on frozen chicken would only expand next year to ban its use for manufacturing “best quality” foods, he said after talks with European Union trade experts, RIA-Novosti reported.
A market source and an official said Saturday that the new restrictions would ban manufacturers from using frozen chicken in products unless they subject these products to heat treatment afterward, Interfax reported.
Frozen chicken currently cannot be an ingredient in baby food and diet food, Onishchenko said. He warned earlier this month that the authorities would halt sales of frozen chicken next year in a move that could hurt domestic suppliers and imports, including from the United States.
The measure was to spur the sales of chilled chicken, which Onishchenko said was healthier. He said Friday that the authorities wanted chilled chicken to account for 75 percent of the market next year, up from 60 percent this year.
TITLE: Medvedev Defiant After Japan Assails Island Visit
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: YOKOHAMA, Japan — Japan’s prime minister strongly protested President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to a disputed island and said in a meeting on the sidelines of a Pacific Rim leaders’ conference Saturday that the two nations must build mutual trust.
Medvedev reportedly responded that he would return to the island whenever he pleases.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan told Medvedev that the Nov. 1 visit was unacceptable and inflamed the feelings of the Japanese people, Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Tetsuro Fukuyama said. Kan said the two nations, which have never signed a treaty formally ending their World War II hostilities because of the territorial dispute, must work to develop trust.
The talks Saturday — which Japanese officials said began in a “tense mood” — were their first since Medvedev’s trip to the island, known as Kunashiri in Japan and Kunashir in Russia. Russia captured the island and several others in the closing days of World War II.
The meeting also comes as Japan’s relations with China have soured over another territorial dispute involving islands to the south.
Fukuyama said Medvedev told Kan that bolstered economic relations would improve the atmosphere between the two nations.
Russian media portrayed Medvedev’s reaction as forceful. RIA-Novosti reported that Medvedev underlined Russia’s claims to the islands and said he reserves the right to visit whenever he chooses.
“Kan expressed regret about President Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev’s visit to the island of Kunashir, but our position is as follows: The president will decide for himself which region of Russia to visit,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying.
“It is our territory, and that’s how it will stay,” he said. “Our Japanese colleagues, I hope, will adopt a more appropriate attitude toward this.”
Lavrov said the two agreed that economic ties should be put ahead of the territorial spat.
Kan, however, accepted an invitation to visit Russia, Lavrov said.
Underscoring efforts to develop economic ties despite Japan’s unhappiness with Medvedev, the two sides joined in signing a $1 billion deal to build a large fertilizer plant at Mendeleyevsk, Tatarstan.
The deal with Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Sojitz Corp. and China National Chemical Engineering Corp. calls for a factory that will produce both ammonia and methanol from natural gas, using technologies from Denmark and the Netherlands, the companies said in a statement.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: ‘Bomb Cat’ Charges?
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A St. Petersburg resident could face three years in prison on charges of filing a fraudulent terrorism report for claiming that a bomb was planted in her cat, Interfax reported Friday, citing a law enforcement source.
The unidentified woman was drunk when she placed a call to police early Friday, the report said. A bomb squad dispatched to her apartment found no explosives in the animal.
Gays Win Right to Picket
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russia’s first authorized gay rights picket is to take place in St. Petersburg on Nov. 20, Interfax reported Monday, citing Nikolai Alexeyev, a leading activist in Russia’s gay rights movement.
Alexeyev said that a local court had ruled that the local authorities’ refusal to grant permission for a gay rights picket was illegal, and that the authorities had not appealed the ruling, the news wire reported.
Two Shot in Nightclub
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Two nightclub employees in the satellite town of Gatchina in the Leningrad Oblast were injured at the weekend when they were shot by visitors to the club, the 47news.ru web site reported.
According to a police statement, the offenders used a gun firing rubber bullets. The incident took place at about 5.30 a.m. Sunday in the Kardinal club.
The offenders were detained by the police and taken to the police station, while the victims were taken to hospital.
Arrests Over ‘12’ Killings
MOSCOW (SPT) — Four men implicated in a mass killing that left 12 dead in the Krasnodar region village of Kushchyovskaya were arrested by a local court Friday, RIA-Novosti reported, citing an Investigative Committee spokesman.
The suspects were earlier identified as brothers Alexei Gurov, 24, and Yevgeny Gurov, 20, as well as Igor Maidanyuk, 16, and Vyacheslav Skachedub, 17, all local residents. Investigators have not given a motive but said there was evidence of the four’s involvement.
‘Ax’ Murder Arrests
MOSCOW (SPT) — Samara police have detained a 26-year-old teacher at a local college who is suspected of killing several women with an ax on the streets, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported Friday.
Mikhail Tarabardin, a computer science teacher with a doctorate degree, was detained Tuesday carrying a bloodied ax in his briefcase not far from a murder site in Samara, investigators said, adding that he was recognized by witnesses.
TITLE: Footwear Retailers Losing Interest in Men
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Kreknina
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Shoe retailers in Russia including Ekonika and Ralf Ringer are focusing on women because male clients are buying less than half as much footwear as their female counterparts — and at lower prices.
The footwear chain Ekonika decided to stop carrying men’s shoes starting next year. “The share of men’s footwear in our stores has fallen. Three years ago it was 30-to-70, while over the last year it has been 20-to-80,” said Sergei Sarkisov, a vice president at Ekonika.
In 2008, the company was looking for ways to boost efficiency and conducted an experiment. The chain stopped carrying part of its men’s line and found that the smaller selection had no effect on sales, Sarkisov said. By eliminating men’s shoes altogether, Ekonika hopes to focus on its key clients and expand its offering of accessories, particularly purses.
Women are better shoppers because they buy more expensive shoes and far more often than men, he said. Thanks to female customers, Ekonika’s sales volume fell just 7 percent last year, while the overall market dropped by 15 to 20 percent, Sarkisov said. This year, same-store sales volumes are expected to grow about 5 to 6 percent, he added.
Sales of women’s footwear is 100 to 150 percent higher than men’s shoes, said Andrei Berezhnoi, chief executive of Ralf Ringer.
Demand among men fell less during the crisis because male customers usually look to buy new shoes when their old ones have worn out. Researchers from the company Komkon found that women significantly cut back on their shoe purchases during the downturn.
In 2008, 27.9 percent of women bought new shoes and 23 percent purchased winter boots, while a year later the figures fell to 22.5 percent and 21.1 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the number of men purchasing shoes fell from 24.3 percent to 20.6 percent and the number of those purchasing boots was virtually unchanged, falling to 15 percent from 15.1 percent.
But women are still buying more footwear, and the margin on women’s shoes is higher than for men’s shoes, Berezhnoi said, declining to elaborate.
Ralf Ringer, which for more than 10 years was exclusively focused on men, has given in and began selling women’s shoes and boots in September, although for now just eight models. Berezhnoi said he hoped to eventually turn Ralf Ringer into a full-fledged shoe chain, with the women’s collection accounting for up to 70 percent of stores’ assortments.
Men’s footwear is not always less profitable than women’s, said Anton Titov, chief executive of Obuv Rossii.
“The men’s collection doesn’t have to be completely changed four times a year, and one model may sell well for several years. That means you can order a large shipment and reap savings that way,” he said.
Titov said the Vestfalika chain, which is owned by Obuv Rossii, carries about 20 percent men’s footwear. “But we’re strengthening in this segment and hope to raise the share to 30 percent,” he said.
Russians still buy fewer shoes than Europeans. According to data from the Russian Leather and Shoe Workers Union, the market fell 20 percent last year to 280 million pairs of shoes, or roughly two pairs for each person in Russia. The union noted that Europeans annually buy an average of 4.5 pairs, while Americans take home 6.5 pairs per year.
TITLE: Police Raid Set Back Bank $49 Million, Says Lebedev
AUTHOR: By Vasily Kudinov and Yelena Shushunova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Clients at National Reserve Bank withdrew 1.5 billion rubles ($49 million) in the two days after a raid by police and investigators, more than the lender lost on the rescue of Rossiisky Kapital, owner Alexander Lebedev said in a letter to prosecutors.
Lebedev sent a letter dated Wednesday to Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to complain about the so-called “masks show,” when armed and masked officers conducted a raid Nov. 2 on his bank’s headquarters.
“In the two business days after the ‘masks show,’ individuals and companies pulled more than 1.5 billion rubles from the bank,” Lebedev said in the letter. “If NRB were a retail bank, it would have simply collapsed after events like that.”
Lebedev also drew Chaika’s attention to the fact that the investigation was related to Rossiisky Kapital’s withdrawal of funds from his bank, something NBR repeatedly reported to the authorities.
The search was also conducted “with support from armed troops in masks,” which paralyzed work at the bank, Lebedev said. Searches conducted in another office on Varshavskoye Shosse violated an order from Tverskoi District Court, he said.
NRB was rescuing Rossiisky Kapital in late 2008 and early 2009 when it discovered that the lender was pulling out funds. After that, NRB left as a shareholder of the problem bank, and the Deposit Insurance Agency completed the bailout of Rossiisky Kapital.
Lebedev said that more than 5 billion rubles was pulled from Rossiisky Kapital, with “high-ranking officials in law enforcement agencies” helping the bank’s former managers and owners cover up the scandal.
NRB lost 1 billion rubles on the project, Lebedev said, referring to funds spent to bring Rossiisky Kapital back into compliance with liquidity requirements.
Lebedev declined to identify which clients had pulled money from his bank. A banker who works with NRB said he doubted that panicking clients withdrew that much money and that NRB should not face difficulties as a result.
“We’ve taken a contemplative, wait-and-see position. There is no forced withdrawal of funds” from NRB, said the chief financial officer of one of NRB’s clients.
An outflow of 1.5 billion rubles is not critical for NRB’s credit ratings, since the lender has traditionally been conservative in its liquidity policy, said Yelena Redko, an analyst at Moody’s.
As of Oct. 1, the bank’s capital was 26.2 billion rubles, equivalent to nearly half of its assets and five times above the minimum level.
NRB says on its web site that NRB was among the top 25 banks globally last year for return on assets, according to The Banker magazine.
TITLE: International Hotel Chains Eye Russian Market
AUTHOR: By Olga Childs
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Finding a hotel room built to international standards and priced at Western rates is a challenge in the nation’s high-cost capital. This begs the question: Why are Western hotel chains hesitant to fill the gap in Moscow — and why are some rushing to open in Russia’s smaller cities?
The answer comes straight from the Western hotel playbook. A Russian city with a population of several hundred thousand people is a prime destination for hotel development, said international and regional executives of Western hotel companies. At the same time, however, hotel chains’ plans to open and rebrand hotels in Moscow just have not borne fruit yet.
The strategy of matching hotel counts to headcounts is common with various chains from the United States and Western Europe. And big hotel operators are trying a similar policy in Russia.
Rezidor Hotel Group, which operates Radisson and Park Inn, and Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, the owner of Sheraton, plan to open hotels in all Russian cities with a population of 500,000 or more, Rezidor chief executive Kurt Ritter and Starwood CIS development director Anatoly Kondratenko said in separate interviews.
But InterContinental Hotels Group, which operates five Holiday Inns and a Crowne Plaza in Moscow, is looking at a somewhat narrower market. Its corporate strategy in Russia is to target a select number of cities with populations of more than 1 million and substantial infrastructure and industry.
“Our strategy for the past five years, and recently reconfirmed for the next five, is to stay very focused on a small number of cities with populations above 1 million; infrastructure; international airport access; and identifiable light, service and heavy industry present and growing,” said Michael Cooper, the company’s vice president for strategic development in Russia and the CIS.
A similar strategy is being followed by Accor Hospitality, which owns the brands Sofitel, Novotel, Ibis and Etap. It is interested in Murmansk and other cities with more than 1 million people.
Moscow is both an opportunity and a puzzle. The city has slightly more than 13,000 hotel rooms consistent with international standards, with only 3,300 more in the development pipeline for the next three years, according to a report by Jones Lang LaSalle, the Chicago-based global real estate consultancy. That’s in a city of 10 million to 15 million people that receives about 4 million foreign tourists per year. It sounds like a perfect market in which to develop — so why aren’t hotel operators quick to catch up?
“Development is not a science — it is all about opportunity,” said Mike Collini, Hilton Worldwide’s vice president of development for Northern Europe.
He said in an interview that his company is anticipating substantial growth in cities other than Moscow and St. Petersburg because, according to a Western model, “you usually get a variety of hotels” in a city of 300,000 people.
Moscow Madness
Figures for Moscow’s hotel market are an odd mix. Overall, it appears that the capital has low occupancy rates compared with Western European capitals. The average occupancy of hotels in Moscow was 58.5 percent during the second quarter, compared with 75.4 percent in Paris, 84.7 percent in London, and 65.8 percent in Warsaw, according to research by real estate consultancy Knight Frank.
But some hotels report full rooms. Alexis Delaroff, managing director in Russia and the CIS for Accor, said the Ibis hotel in Moscow that opened this year hasn’t seen the occupancy rate fall below 80 percent in its entire time in operation. In September, occupancy stood at 90 percent.
Delaroff said occupancy in Novotel Sheremetyevo, next to Sheremetyevo Airport’s Terminal E, often exceeds 100 percent, as rooms are sold more than once in a 24-hour period to customers with long layovers.
There is one definite deficit: hotel rooms priced in the mid-range. Booking a room considered economy class in Moscow will remove far more money from your bank account than similar hotels in large cities elsewhere in the world.
Typically, a city’s hotel market is like a pyramid: Luxury rooms are fewest in number, making up the tip of the pyramid. There are a number of business-class rooms and a wider base of economy rooms, often booked by rank-and-file business travelers. But the widest selection of hotel rooms in any Western market is traditionally in the budget hotel sector, to be booked by thrifty tourists.
In Russia, though, budget brands of Western hotel chains are not represented. In Moscow, the demand for hotel rooms is different from any other major travel destination city, said Cooper of InterContinental. While Moscow’s weekday demand from businesspeople is high, weekends and holidays actually show a dip, because there aren’t as many tourists. Cooper blames this trend on the difficulty of obtaining a Russian tourist visa, deterring many would-be visitors from choosing Moscow for a vacation.
Another factor is that the cost structure of operating a hotel in Russia is different from that in Europe, Delaroff said. Accor does the bulk of its business in Europe and the United States under its budget brands: Etap and Formule 1 in Europe and Motel 6 in the United States and Canada. But it hasn’t brought any of those brands to Russia, and it is hesitant to do so.
“In Europe, Formule 1 hotels often don’t have a receptionist at all, and Etap hotels are staffed only during certain hours, while the rest of the time they operate automatically on a credit-card basis,” Delaroff said.
In Russia, that would not be possible in the near future because of hindrances like personal security, he said, noting that that has remained a major concern for guests in Moscow, as well as across Russia, and hotels are forced to hire extra personnel. In addition, the country’s wintry climate demands more heating and lighting than much of Europe and the United States.
Delaroff said those factors make the standard European budget-hotel model impossible to implement in Russia: Operating costs would be so high that hotels would need to charge higher prices — eliminating the budget part of the formula.
Accor has one project under review for Moscow that would combine an economy-class Ibis hotel and a budget Etap hotel under the same roof. If the project, whose fate remains up in the air, goes ahead, it will be the first attempt to introduce a budget brand in Russia.
A Haphazard Invasion?
Despite the hurdles, a number of Western hotel operators want to enter the market, and many have plans to do so. Rezidor is the most prolific player in Russia, followed by Marriott, InterContinental and Accor. Meanwhile, Hilton, Starwood and Hyatt have opened development and sales offices in Moscow in an effort to catch up.
In the portfolios of the chains operating today in Russia, there are more hotels in various stages of development than in operation. A construction and real estate boom was halted by the 2008 financial crisis, but the hotel industry overall is showing signs of emerging from the economic downturn. Many hotel operators said developers from across the country are now approaching them, seeking to redesign various projects into hotels.
This has produced what looks like a haphazard approach to brand development across Russia. The chains themselves have said many of their new hotels in small or obscure cities were developer-driven, with the chain reviewing and then accepting an offer from a land owner, a building owner, an investor or even an existing hotel operator.
Accor said it looks to cities where a Western-owned enterprise exists, such as the car and car-parts factories in Kaluga or the anticipated Shtokmann gas field development near Murmansk.
None of the brands, however, plan to open their doors in Vladivostok, the far eastern city with a population of 600,000, or in Sakhalin Island’s capital, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, where ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell projects draw a stream of Westerners.
Both cities are popular destinations for business travelers, said Vadim Zelensky, chairman of the Business Travel Agencies Association. But Zelensky said the Far East is a territory where Asian brands are trying to expand, and South Korea’s Hotel Hyundai opened a hotel in Vladivostok more than a decade ago.
As for the Western brands, most said Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and Vladivostok are just too far-flung. Currently, Novosibirsk and Irkutsk are the easternmost destinations on any hotel chain’s future development map.
In regions within easier reach of Moscow, new and sometimes surprising development locations for Western brands have recently sprouted up.
Leading travel companies named Voronezh, Astrakhan, Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnodar, Saratov and Volgograd as regional destinations underserved by quality hotels. In fact, major hotel brands have charted four of those cities in their development plans for the near future.
In all, 88 international-brand hotels are due to open in Russia from 2011 to 2014, according to a report published in September by Ernst & Young.
The Game in Sochi
Quite a few of those 88 planned hotels are intended for Sochi, where a construction boom is unfolding as Russia prepares to host the 2014 Winter Olympics there and in surrounding towns. State corporation Olimpstroi is directing construction and development.
At a recent hotel investment conference in Moscow, Olimpstroi placement director Dmitry Kanunov described the perks that the corporation would give hotel developers to make sure that “Sochi in 2014 will be a very different city from Sochi today.”
The developers who take on hotel projects in Sochi and guarantee their opening for the 2014 Olympics will basically get a plot for free, Kanunov said. Olimpstroi also will handle all communications for those who build a hotel and will ensure the hotel’s functioning during the Olympics, he said.
Some players, such as Rezidor, which has been running Sochi’s flagship hotel, Lazurnaya, under the Radisson brand for a number of years, just cannot get enough of Sochi. Others are climbing on the bandwagon reluctantly.
Accor this fall was finalizing a contract for gaining control of two hotels in the Roza Khutor ski resort in Sochi. It had done so only at the insistence of previous business partners from other markets, Delaroff said. He also said Sochi was not a priority market for Accor because resorts take too long to break even in localities where they cannot operate year-round.
Hilton, which has a Doubletree hotel under construction in Sochi, is cautiously optimistic. While Hilton executive Collini is confident about Sochi’s success as a venue for 2014 Olympics, he is concerned about its long-term development as a travel destination.
InterContinental is taking an even tougher stance on Sochi. Cooper said the chain considers itself primarily a city player in the business segment and was not interested in Sochi because it is a resort.
Local Competition
Western hotel chains face a new and somewhat unexpected competitor in Russia. Azimut Hotels, the country’s largest homegrown hotel chain with a strategy largely based on Western business principles, operates hotels in popular Russian hotel markets and has even gained some traction in Europe, with 18 hotels in Austria and Germany.
What’s more, Azimut has hotels in the North Caucasus city of Stavropol and in Vladivostok. CEO Alexander Gendelsman said his company has had to adjust the hotel chain business model to compete with worldwide brands in Russia. For example, he said in an interview, Azimut is more flexible in its approach to older or Soviet-era hotels and is not afraid to renovate those hotels that Western brands wouldn’t bother to do.
Even though Vladivostok has raised little interest from Western competitors, local demand for hotel rooms should grow 30 percent by the time it hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in 2012, Gendelsman said.
In terms of general development strategy, Azimut plans to focus on cities with more than 1 million residents, he said.
Gendelsman also said the arrival of chain hotels in smaller cities is justified only where there is substantial industrial investment by a foreign company — such as in Samara, Kaluga or Lipetsk — that brings an influx of foreign high-skilled labor and visiting managers.
Even that does not guarantee sufficient demand, though. At a pitch session at a recent hotel conference, Gendelsman got a lukewarm reception from an audience of investors when he pitched plans to renovate the landmark Arktika hotel in Murmansk, which was built in 1983 and most recently reconstructed in 1991.
Despite the planned Shtokmann gas project and the city’s successfully operating Park Inn by Rezidor, investors expressed skepticism that the hotel’s 635 rooms could be filled.
The same investors expressed considerably more interest in a pitch by a Moscow-based developer raising funds for the proposed Ibis-Etap in southern Moscow. They asked about the return on investment, retail components, parking and even the career history of the people involved in the project.
An Image Problem
Attracting tourists to Moscow, though, is a challenge, to say nothing of Murmansk, Novosibirsk and other cities. Moscow still has an image problem as a destination, said Ritter, the Rezidor CEO.
Radisson opened the Radisson SAS Slavyanskaya hotel in 1990. But after 20 years on the Russian market, Rezidor only opened its second Radisson in Moscow in April after taking over the landmark Hotel Ukraina last year.
Before the Ukraina re-opened as the Radisson Royal, the number of rooms in the once middle-class Soviet hotel was cut to just 500 from more than 1,000 in order to double the size of the rooms. Now the historic building — one of Moscow’s seven so-called Stalin skyscrapers — is being marketed as a luxury hotel.
Ritter said filling the hotel at upmarket rates is a challenge, but he voiced confidence that occupancy would grow over time. He said weak demand should not lead to cut rates. “Selling these rooms at 100 euros per night would be just a waste,” he said.
A Swiss native, Ritter believes that many Westerners view Moscow as a potentially unsafe place to do business or spend vacations. He said the city could draw substantially more travel in the executive business and luxury leisure segments if the government invested in an advertising campaign in the West to increase Russia’s appeal. Ritter said Rezidor would consider partnering with the government in such a campaign.
While it waits, Rezidor is taking matters into its own hands with plans to run ads in a number of European countries, including Britain, that tout Moscow as a destination spot, Ritter said.
TITLE: U.S. Pizza Chain Papa John’s Looks to Deliver
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY — Unlike in the United States where the pizza delivery industry is more than 50 years old, the Russian market started developing only in the 1990s and will demonstrate stable growth in the coming years with more customers ordering pizzas to homes and offices, a U.S. pizza delivery chain said.
Papa John’s Russia, one of Moscow’s pizza delivery chains that is capitalizing on a growing demand for the product, said that more and more Russians can afford to give up on their cooking routines, despite a setback for the market from the crisis.
“People are working 12-hour days and spending one to two hours in traffic every day, and they are accustomed to going out and eating in restaurants,” Christopher Wynne, chief executive of Papa John’s Russia said in an interview. “This leads them to accepting delivery as an option.”
Wynne, who flew reporters to the company’s headquarters in Louisville, said he expected the company’s same-store sales by delivery in Russia to increase 35 percent this year from last year.
The number of calls from customers ordering pizza to homes and offices is higher with every year, said restaurant chain Sbarro, which generates up to 10 percent of its revenue from delivery sales. A year-on-year increase in the number of such orders was 22 percent in January through September this year, the company said in e-mailed comments.
Orders to offices and homes accounted for 44 percent and 56 percent, respectively, it said.
“Many customers have started to understand that it’s better to order a pizza made of fresh products than to buy frozen convenience foods,” Sbarro said. “Big city dynamics and rhythm also affect the growing popularity of pizza delivery. … Consumers have time only for having a bite.”
Pizza delivery is growing thanks to improving service, said Yelena Lagutina, chief executive of another chain on the market, Pizza Fabrika. The company has seen sales — primarily by delivery — grow by 3 percent to 4 percent annually in the past few years, she said.
Although bigger chains enjoy better business, the overall pizza market took a hit last year amid a crisis-driven plunge in consumer confidence that forced small pizza companies to shut down, said Andrei Lumpov, president of consulting center Invest-Project. The Moscow pizza market dropped by 12.4 percent to $161 million last year, he said. It will probably expand by 0.5 percent this year and resume fast growth in early 2012, he said.
Lumpov predicted that existing pizza companies would meet 81 percent of demand by the end of next year.
Comparison with other big cities, however, suggests that competition is low in the delivery segment and there will be room for many more pizza outlets. Moscow, with its 10.6 million people, has just about 300 pizzerias focusing on delivery, Wynne said, while there are more than 3,000 pizzerias for 8 million New Yorkers.
“The delivery market is absolutely underdeveloped, with people becoming more and more accustomed to ordering delivery each year,” said Wynne, who controls 51 percent of Papa John’s Russia, a franchise of the U.S. company.
In an attempt to meet the growing demand, pizza delivery chains are expanding in Russia.
Papa John’s has invested a total of $11 million in Russia over the past seven years into stores and a production center and plans to open more restaurants across the country in the coming years, Wynne said. The company plans to have 40 to 50 restaurants in Moscow and the Moscow region by the end of 2013, up from the current 13.
Following the expansion, Wynne said the company planned to float shares on a stock exchange over the coming three to five years. He didn’t specify where it would seek to list.
Papa John’s accounted for 2.7 percent of the overall pizza sales market last year, according to Invest-Project. The market leader is Il Patio, with 41.9 percent, followed by Sbarro, whose share is 19.3 percent. Pizza Fabrika has 8.2 percent.
Many of the Western franchise businesses say they have to adapt to Russia’s eating culture.
Papa John’s offers its customers a “To Russia With Love” pizza with mashed potatoes, which was created six years ago specially for the Russian market and was approved by the company’s top management in Louisville.
“It sells well; people enjoy it,” Wynne said.
Taking into account the Russian soup-eating habit, the company has introduced soups, which are also good sellers, he said.
Sbarro said it offers a number of traditional Russian dishes with pork, potatoes and beets, as well as traditional Russian drinks kvas and mors.
In another difference, customers in traffic-choked Moscow worry less about waiting extra time for delivery, Wynne said. Moscow delivery staff take at least 45 minutes to get an order to the door, while U.S. consumers “are not happy” to wait for their pizza for more than 30 minutes, he said.
Delivery time remains a sore point in the pizza business, said Maxim Klyagin, a consumer analyst at Finam.
Restaurant chains have said they divided Moscow into several delivery areas and assigned them to specific restaurants. Klyagin suggested increasing the number of stores or beating traffic by having delivery staff use motorbikes, rather than cars.
TITLE: Currency Booths Flout Banking Requirements
AUTHOR: By Asmik Babayan
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — As per the Central Bank’s requirement, the majority of the city’s exchange points have renamed themselves operkassy, or operational cashiers, the legal equivalent of a full-fledged bank office. But in practice, most are still only exchanging currency.
Currency exchange offices became illegal as of Oct. 1. By that time, they should have become bank offices or shut down. Legitimate exchange points are now obligated to not only buy and sell currencies, but also to make money transfers and process payments for utility and other bills.
The rules forbid them from using the name “exchange point” or “currency exchange,” and the offices must clearly state on their sign which bank they belong to.
New signs are the main differentiator between old and new exchange booths. Most continue to operate as they always did, but where they once advertised as a “currency exchange,” they now call themselves operational cashiers.
It is still easy to find exchange points with a display board outside promising a flexible rate, though the offering inside is something entirely different.
Attempts by a Vedomosti reporter to pay bills and transfer money at new operational cashiers failed. Employees of several booths claimed that they offer services other than changing money, but completing a transaction turned out to be impossible.
The explanations given varied greatly: “Our Internet is broken,” or, “The software has frozen.” Some tellers advised coming back after lunch, or tomorrow, or next week.
Many of the exchange booths did not even re-register as operational cashiers. Of the more than 10 exchange points near the Arbatskaya metro station, three of them were unable to tell Vedomosti which bank they represent.
There was no written information, and the staff could not answer the question, though one of them gave the telephone number of a manager. They all said they were engaged exclusively in currency exchange, but added that the situation was temporary.
The city center is still populated by many exchange booths, with bright displays of the day’s rates but lacking full information about the bank they represent. Several even retained their “currency exchange” signs.
A formal inquiry by Vedomosti to the Central Bank went unanswered. Some of the Central Bank’s managers explained that the bank regulates official operational cashiers and that those not registered are dealt with by the police.
TITLE: Russian Standard Buys Ukraine’s Nemiroff
AUTHOR: By Irina Skrynnik and Maria Dranishnikova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Rustam Tariko’s Russian Standard has agreed to purchase Nemiroff, one of Ukraine’s largest alcohol producers, an acquaintance of both companies’ management and a distributor for one of the companies told Vedomosti.
A source close to one side of the talks confirmed that Nemiroff has found a buyer and that the company is “from Russia.” None of Vedomosti’s sources would name the size of the stake to be sold or the value of the deal.
A spokesperson for Nemiroff said talks had not yet been completed. A spokesperson for Russian Standard said the company would have no comment on the matter until this week.
In February, Kommersant wrote that Nemiroff co-owners Yakov Gribov (who owns about 40 percent) and Anatoly Kipish (30 percent) are ready to part with their stakes, while founder Stepan Glus (about 30 percent) plans to remain a shareholder.
A source close to Nemiroff confirmed to Vedomosti that Glus was not planning to leave the business completely.
There were initially several suitors for Nemiroff, including Britain’s Stock Spirits, Poland’s Central European Distribution Corporation, or CEDC, and Russian Standard.
CEDC stepped out of contention in July, with a senior executive from the Polish company saying the price was too high. In September, Stock Spirits also announced that it was ending talks.
A spokesperson for Russian Standard then said it had signed an “exclusive agreement with Nemiroff to hold talks for four weeks on the terms of a deal.” Neither side elaborated on the negotiations, and in late October sources at Russian Standard said the talks could continue into mid-November.
Yelena Khromova, a partner at BDO in Russia, valued Nemiroff at $300 million to $400 million, including debt. A representative from a Ukrainian vodka maker said Nemiroff could ultimately be sold for less — about $250 million. An executive at a Russian liquor producer, meanwhile, said Nemiroff may be worth $180 million to $200 million.
Nemiroff — whose brands include flavored vodkas — would allow Russian Standard to compete in a broader segment, thereby strengthening its position on the Russian market as well, said Ivan Kushch, an analyst at VTB Capital.
Russian Standard increased its sales volume by 4.8 percent in 2009, according to data from Euromonitor. The growth was entirely from strong gains in exports, while sales in Russia fell, it said.
Nemiroff owns two alcohol factories in Ukraine, while its production in Russia is done at Rosspirtprom’s Yaroslavsky alcohol plant. The company has 26 products under the Nemiroff label and had first half revenue of $203.8 million.
TITLE: Coming to Terms With the Soviet Past
AUTHOR: By Sarah E. Mendelson and Theodore P. Gerber
TEXT: Recently, Russia commemorated the victims of political repression, including tens of millions of innocent Soviet citizens arrested, brutalized, sent to labor camps or executed under Stalin. Until recently, the Oct. 30 date has passed with scant notice outside small groups of dedicated human rights activists. The lack of fanfare symbolizes a larger reluctance of contemporary Russia to come to terms with the horrors of the Soviet period. Russia is hardly an exception. Many societies have trouble acknowledging unpleasant aspects of their recent histories, substituting uncomfortable silence or outright denial for frank and painful discussion.
At the same time, however, the process of Russia’s recognition of its tragic Soviet past has started. For example, President Dmitry Medvedev marked Oct. 30, 2009, with a recorded video blog in which he unambiguously denounced the Stalin-era repressions: “Millions of people died as a result of terror and false accusations — millions. … There is no justification for repressions.” Medvedev also decried the lack of knowledge about this dark episode, particularly among young people. His simple message: Russia must do more to commemorate the victims of Stalinism.
Earlier this year, after decades of official denials, Russian authorities acknowledged that Soviet NKVD troops — not the Nazis — murdered 22,000 Polish officers and others at the Katyn forest massacre in 1940. They delivered secret files concerning the incident to Polish investigators.
The need for public truth and openness about the Soviet past was a main theme during the Valdai Discussion Club in September, an annual gathering of Russian and Western pundits. In addition, Sergei Karaganov, who has close ties to the authorities, characterized Russia in a comment in the July 27 issue of Russia in Global Affairs as “a big Katyn, strewn with nameless graves of the millions of victims of the regime.” Karaganov warned that silence regarding the crimes of Stalin continues to thwart Russia’s political progress.
These and other recent developments demonstrate growing support among Russia’s political and intellectual elites for a more open and far-reaching public discussion of the Stalin era, something that the country’s human rights activists have been advocating for years. But where does the public stand on this issue? To find out, we surveyed 2,009 Russians ages 20 to 59 as part of a project funded by the Ford Foundation and carried out by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Moscow polling firm, Levada Center, conducted the survey.
Our data verifies that Russians have limited knowledge about the Stalin-era repressions. Only 28 percent correctly indicated that “millions or tens of millions” suffered, 31 percent cited lower figures, 24 percent simply did not know, and 17 percent had never even heard about them. This manifestation of “absent memory” is especially pronounced among 20-year-olds: 35 percent of them have not heard of the repressions. Analogies are problematic, but imagine if 35 percent of Germans in their 20s had never heard of Hitler’s genocidal actions. The best informed are the 14 percent of respondents who knew of a relative who had been unjustly arrested — particularly the 8 percent whose relatives were sent to a camp, executed or disappeared. They know more about the Stalin era and hold more critical views.
Our data also show a robust desire to learn more. Forty-five percent agree that “it is important to learn about the Stalin era to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past,” while only 24 percent said the country should “move forward and avoid stirring up the past.” Among those who had heard of the repressions, 72 percent agreed that the government should do more to make people understand their true scale, and 83 percent agreed that the government should do more to commemorate the victims.
Overall, our survey reveals widespread public interest in starting a national conversation about the Stalin era, as Medvedev attempted one year ago. Human rights activists should take heart that their efforts to encourage such a conversation resonate with the public and have received some support from the top. Indeed, we found that the public views human rights activists on these issues with admiration and respect. All of these data suggest that a coalition of activists, scholars and officials might come together to devise national and local strategies to promote greater knowledge both about victims and perpetrators through schools, public monuments, the arts and mass media. One approach might be to encourage the 16 percent who do not know whether any relatives were victimized to obtain information about their families using the country’s freedom of information act, which came into force in January 2009.
Knowing more about what happened is a necessary first step to genuine de-Stalinization. Russia’s politicians, public and human rights activists have a great opportunity to work together to explore the truths about the Soviet past. If they seize this opportunity, Russians will be poised to teach other countries valuable lessons about both the necessity and the possibility for societies to reconcile with painful episodes of their past. Let’s hope they choose the truth over silence.
Sarah E. Mendelson is deputy assistant administrator in the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development . Theodore P. Gerber is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This comment appeared in Vedomosti.
TITLE: Russia Could Have Been China
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: A recent radio feature by Anne Garrells, a U.S. correspondent with National Public Radio in Moscow, quoted a Russian engineer who described the Moscow-Volga canal: “The Moscow River, which often dried up, could not supply the capital’s growing needs. Now, 90 percent of water for this city of 10 million comes from the Volga. Many died building this canal. I have no love for Stalin. But there was no other way to do it, given the conditions of the time.”
This view of Stalin is typical in Russia, both at the official level and among ordinary people. Stalin was brutal, they say, but he had to be to achieve economic development, industrialization and progress. He mobilized Russia, transforming it into an industrial power in a couple of decades. He fashioned its military into an efficient machine that defeated Hitler. Brutality was necessary, and those who deny the achievements of the people under his rule are often accused of Russophobia.
Such accusations are an insult to intelligence. Before World War I broke out in 1914, which marked the beginning of 40 years of historically unprecedented bloodletting in Russia, it was well on its way to becoming one of the world’s most prosperous industrial economies. The foundations for Russia’s development had been laid in the 19th century by Nicholas I’s educational reforms and the freeing of serfs by his son Alexander II. True, Russia began industrializing four decades later than the United States and three decades later than Germany, but after the shock of naval defeat at the hands of the Japanese and insurrection in 1905, it grew at rates that matched or exceeded anything seen in Germany or the United States.
With its continent-size territory, wealth of natural resources and a reservoir of rapidly urbanizing, international labor, Russia could have easily been the China of the 20th century. It had great merchants and a nascent class of industrialists. Its scientists and engineers were top-notch. Trained before the Revolution, those who emigrated prospered in the West, and those who stayed formed the backbone of Soviet industry, despite the country’s brutal repression, show trials and purges.
The Russian Empire was criticized as retrograde by Russia’s educated classes, but that in itself showed the emergence of liberal opinion in the country.
It was a promising and pleasant country, full of energy, enterprise and artistic ferment. I have known “white emigres” in Rome and New York who remain nostalgic for the glory of preBolshevik Russia, which Lenin and Stalin turned into a concentration camp. The Soviet Union did industrialize, but the quality of its industrialization was woefully low, while the price extracted from the nation was exorbitant. Today’s Russia is a poor, underpopulated vendor of natural resources. A country that could have rivaled the United States in many ways — and not only in the number of nuclear missiles — lies moribund. To celebrate Stalin’s achievements is either a sign of idiocy or extreme hatred of Russia.
Today’s Russian bureaucratic elites are marauders. Russia is dying — both physically and economically, falling behind the world’s new economies, most notably its neighbor China. But marauders are never interested in treating the wounded on the battlefield. Thus, the ruling elite is cynically celebrating the achievements of the past 100 years instead of reversing its disastrous course.
Who are the real Russophobes now?
Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.
TITLE: Myanmar’s Suu Kyi Seeks to Revive Party
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi began the nuts and bolts work of reviving her political movement Monday, consulting lawyers about having her now-disbanded party declared legal again, her spokesman said.
Suu Kyi was released at the weekend from 7 1/2 years in detention. On Sunday, she told thousands of wildly cheering supporters at the headquarters of her National League for Democracy that she would continue to fight for human rights and the rule of law in the military-controlled nation.
The 65-year-old Nobel Peace laureate must balance the expectations of the country’s pro-democracy movement with the realities of freedom that could be withdrawn any time by the regime. Although her party is officially dissolved, it has continued operating with the same structure. But without official recognition, it is in legal limbo, leaving it — and her — vulnerable to government crackdowns.
Suu Kyi, who has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years, has indicated she would continue with her political activity but not whether she would challenge the military with mass rallies and other activities.
“I believe in human rights and I believe in the rule of law. I will always fight for these things,” Suu Kyi told Sunday’s crowd. “I want to work with all democratic forces and I need the support of the people.”
Nyan Win, who is her lawyer as well as a party spokesman, said Suu Kyi met with her lawyers Monday morning and also party officials from areas outside Yangon who have been keeping her political network alive during years of repression.
He said Myanmar’s High Court this Thursday will hold a hearing to decide whether to accept a case from Suu Kyi arguing that her party’s dissolution “is not in accordance with the law.” The party was disbanded earlier this year under a new law because it failed to reregister for Nov. 7 elections, complaining conditions set by the junta were unfair and undemocratic.
Suu Kyi’s side says the new Election Commission has no right to deregister parties that were registered under a different Election Commission in 1990. The party also contends that the court is legally bound to hear their case.
Full results from the Nov. 7 elections — the first in 20 years — have yet to be released, but figures so far give a military-backed party a solid majority in both houses of parliament.
Many observers have questioned whether her release Saturday was timed by the junta to distract the world’s attention from the polls, decried by Western nations as a sham designed to perpetuate control by the military which has ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, since 1962.
The NLD won 1990 elections by a large margin but the regime barred it from taking power.
Nyan Win said Suu Kyi’s lawyers are also pursuing a separate legal case against the junta, involving an appeal to the Human Rights Council, a UN body, over her latest 18-month sentence of house arrest which has just ended.
Suu Kyi was convicted of violating conditions of a previous term of house arrest by briefly sheltering an uninvited American who swam to her home. Her legal team argues that the ruling — also applied to two women companions living with Suu Kyi — was illegal and unlawful as it was based on the 1974 Constitution, which was abrogated in 1988.
Since Myanmar’s Special Appellate Bench on Nov. 11 turned down an appeal to overturn lower court decisions in that case, Suu Kyi’s lawyers are taking her case to the UN council.
Although the junta often seems to defy critical international opinion, it has shown sensitivity to pressure from UN organizations. Past condemnation by the UN’s International Labor Organization over the junta’s use of forced labor led to the opening of a special UN office in Yangon to hear workers’ complaints.
TITLE: Ireland Talks With EU Over Debt Crisis
AUTHOR: By Shawn Pogatchnik
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DUBLIN — Debt-burdened Ireland is talking with other European Union governments about how to handle its troubled finances, officials said Monday as the continent’s debt crisis plagued markets and policymakers across Europe.
Irish officials denied the talks were aimed at getting a financial lifeline from the EU’s bailout fund, while already-bailed out Greece revealed revised figures showing a bigger budget deficit.
EU chiefs meeting in Brussels on Tuesday are anxious to quell market fears of an eventual Irish debt default. Those fears are driving up the borrowing costs of other EU nations saddled with red ink, notably Greece, Spain and Portugal.
Analysts said investors needed the finance ministers in Brussels to offer a clear path forward for Ireland to reduce its deficit and bear the costs of its enormous bank bailout. Otherwise markets would continue to dump the bonds of EU’s peripheral nations.
The Irish Department of Finance said in a statement it was pursuing “contacts at official level” but aides to Finance Minister Brian Lenihan emphasized Ireland has no need for emergency aid from the EU bailout fund set up after Greece needed to be rescued from bankruptcy in May amid fears other countries would need help too. Ireland says it had enough cash to last through mid-2011.
But market turmoil like that which preceded the Greek bailout won’t go away. Ireland is struggling to slash a deficit that has ballooned this year to a staggering 32 percent of GDP, a record for post-war Europe.
While Greece spent its way to disaster, much of Ireland’s 2010 deficit involves the government’s 45 billion euro ($61.4 billion) takeover of five banks that ran into trouble following the 2008 collapse of the country’s real estate boom.
Adding to the pressure on euro-zone finance ministers, the European Union’s statistics agency said Monday that Greece’s 2009 budget deficit and debt were significantly higher than previously estimated.
The revised budget deficit for 2009 of 15.4 percent of GDP will make it harder for the Greek government to reach targets specified in its 110 billion euro ($150 billion) bailout agreement in May. While Greek officials had forewarned investors of a likely rise in its deficit, it reinforced fears that the euro-zone’s most debt-troubled members — Greece, Ireland and Portugal — wouldn’t be able to turn the tide of red ink.
TITLE: Muslims on Hajj Ascend Mount
AUTHOR: By Sarah El Deeb
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOUNT ARAFAT, Saudi Arabia — Nearly 3 million Muslims performing the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia began making their way up the rocky desert Mount Arafat on Monday, chanting that they have come to answer God’s call.
The white-robed pilgrims began their ascent at the crack of dawn, covering the Mountain of Mercy at Arafat in an endless sea of white as their chants “Labyek Allah,” or “Here I am, God, answering your calling,” reverberated overhead.
The climb at Arafat is one of the cornerstones of the pilgrimage, which is required from every able-bodied Muslim at least once in their lifetime. It’s the site where Islam’s Prophet Muhammad delivered his farewell sermon and Muslims believe on this day the doors of heavens open to answer prayers and grant forgiveness.
As they began their climb from the tent-city in the valley, many of the pilgrims looked tired from lack of sleep, having spent the entire night praying. Charities and vendors along the way handed out food packages and umbrellas to shield the climbers from the harsh sun.
One of the pilgrims, Wassim Ahmad, from Mumbai, India, said this was his first hajj and that he felt like a child, reborn.
“Today is like judgment day,” said the 29-year-old. “We have come to pray to God ... a new child has been born.”
Alone and obviously on her first hajj, 46-year-old Egyptian, Um Sayed, kept asking people for directions.
“There is nothing greater than feeling that you are going to meet God,” she said. “The whole body shivers.”
Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifa are the three stops on the pilgrims’ journey during the hajj, as worshippers trace the steps of Prophet Muhammad.
The hajj draws millions of worshippers each year, the sheer numbers a challenge in preventing stampedes at holy sites, fires in pilgrim encampments and the spread of disease.
This year Saudi authorities have taken new measures to improve crowd management, including launching a new light-rail system to transport pilgrims between the shrines.
TITLE: 16th-Century Danish Astronomer’s Body Exhumed in Prague to Resolve Mystery
AUTHOR: By Karel Janicek
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PRAGUE — An international team of scientists opened the tomb of a famous 16th-century Danish astronomer Monday in an effort to shed light on his sudden and mysterious death.
Tycho Brahe, who was born in 1546, has been buried in the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn near Prague’s Old Town Square since his death in 1601.
Brahe was in Prague at the invitation of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II after he left his scientific observatory on the island of Hven over disagreements with the Danish king.
His extraordinarily accurate stellar and planetary observations, which helped lay the foundations of early modern astronomy, are well known and documented, but mystery still surrounds his sudden death.
It had been long thought he died of a bladder infection. A famous legend said it was a result of his hesitation to break court etiquette during a reception by leaving for a toilet.
But tests conducted in 1996 in Sweden and later in Denmark on samples of his mustache and hair — obtained during a previous 1901 exhumation — indicated unusually high levels of mercury, leading to a theory of mercury poisoning, even possible murder.
Jens Vellev, a professor of medieval archaeology at Aarhus University, Denmark, was leading the team of scientists from Denmark and the Czech Republic that began its work by opening the tomb in the church Monday.
Vellev said he decided nine years ago to seek permission from church and Prague authorities to open the tomb again because there had been no proper archaeological report of the 1901 exhumation and he hoped to gather better samples of mustache, hair and bones that could be analyzed by contemporary technologies.
“As a man of science, he’s important for the whole world,” Vellev said.
The scientist said the tests will include a CT-scan and an X-ray technique known as PIXE analysis and be conducted at the Nuclear Research Institute AS in Rez near Prague. Vellev said he hopes they will help establish Brahe’s intake of mercury in the last weeks of his life when he apparently was taking medicine that contained mercury to relieve pain.
“Perhaps, we will be able to come close to an answer, but I don’t think we will get a final answer to that question,” the scientist said.
The team of scientists has until Friday to exhume the remains of Brahe and his wife, who was buried by his side.
TITLE: New Yorker Author Writes of His ‘Russia-Love’
AUTHOR: By Melani Robinson
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Take an eccentric 59-year-old author with wanderlust, a dilapidated van, two intrepid Russian guides and the vastness of Siberia, and you have a small taste of Ian Frazier’s latest book, “Travels in Siberia.” In this chronicle of the author’s 17-year quest to explore areas of Russia most fear to trek, Frazier is downright smitten with what he calls “Russia-love.”
Frazier began his journey in 1993 when he arrived in Moscow for the first of five trips to the country. He did so at the urging of an artist friend, Alex Melamid, and his wife, Katya Arnold. He befriended them after writing about Russian artists for a “Talk of the Town” article in The New Yorker magazine. When they insisted that he return with them for the first time since their exile, with their new U.S. passports in hand, he couldn’t resist. “Stepping off the plane, I was charmed. Like falling in love. It was embarrassing because I was in my 40s and it had some of the aspects of a midlife swerve. Like a middle-aged man buying a new sports car.”
The author of nine books including the travelogues “On the Rez” and “Great Plains,” Frazier has a passion for Russia that’s been building since he was a boy in Ohio. “I remember listening to ‘Peter and the Wolf’ narrated by Peter Ustinov. Studying the album cover of Peter going through the woods with all the snow and trees, it was bewitching. When I was going around Lake Baikal on the train, it looked just like that.”
Frasier described his all-encompassing passion: “I have it for the place geographically, its history, architecture, its people. I’ve been told it is surprising that I love Russia so much because I complain about it all the time, but just because you complain doesn’t mean you don’t love.”
Still, grumble he did. From his breakfast oatmeal peppered with combative mosquitoes to the knee-deep trash along the roadside and the silent treatment he occasionally received from his guides-for-hire Sergei and Vladimir, Frazier did some serious carping.
The roadside trash he described in great detail came in handy while traveling southeast from Krasnoyarsk. The rutted, rocky road knocked off the tailpipe of the van. The air inside the vehicle had become a blue fog and Frazier struggled to recall the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. The guides didn’t think it was a problem, but on Frazier’s insistence they pulled over onto the shoulder and one of them meandered about kicking the rubble until he discovered a rusted tailpipe that had been discarded. Using it, he rigged the van. He told the story with wry humor, an example of the survival skills of the Russian people by which the author was so impressed.
Frazier thinks that Americans can learn a lot from the Eastern Europeans. “We complain and fuss and don’t take suffering well and don’t think we should have to. In myself, I could be more stoic,” he said, adding that “there is a weight they have to carry, and they carry it.” He finds most fascinating the survival of Russia in a global environment without the defenses of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that protect the borders of United States. “They’ve managed to become a great country despite all of these things washing over it. They’ve had people show up for its entire history. They beat Hitler and lost 20 million people doing it, and the world should thank them.” Frazier also believes that Russians deserve thanks for bearing the burden of Mongol invasions for three centuries.
The Harvard graduate includes a vast amount of Russian history in “Travels in Siberia.” On his first trip, he felt he was participating in a historical moment. A few years before, the Soviet Union had been largely closed and the kind of travel he was experiencing would not have been possible. Frazier explains why he felt it necessary to include so much history. “I entered the picture at this historical moment. Just to get an idea that what we are seeing now is only a point on a line, but to not know what’s gone before it can just seem arbitrary. Sort of like if you know people’s family you can understand them better.” The book covers the reign of Genghis Khan, the tyranny of Ivan the Terrible, and the horror of Josef Stalin. “Russian history is like falling down a flight of stairs — it’s just bam, bam, bam. Some of it is just so awful, some glorious, and much of it is awful and glorious combined.”
The New Jersey resident documented his struggle to learn the Russian language and the Cyrillic alphabet. He never mastered the spoken word completely but it was a labor of love that he wrestled with throughout the book. “When you get to places where nobody speaks English, if you try [to speak Russian], it indicates a desire to communicate, make some attempt.” Why not just hire a translator? He couldn’t afford it. Frazier spent his book advance within the first two years of the project. The last 15 years were on his own ruble, and it was an expensive adventure. A $1,000 satellite phone was a good investment, as Frazier used it to call his wife and two children at his lowest points when he needed to feel connected to the familiar. The van was another story. It was supposed to be sold so he could recoup some money, but as far as he knows it is still sitting in a far-flung city rusting.
Frazier found the stark beauty of Siberia alluring. “I like the outdoors. When I leave New York, I want space. I’ve even left crowded parties for a parking lot where I’ll lie down on the warm asphalt enjoying the openness. The wilderness of Siberia appealed to me. Such a sad place.”
There were low points along the way, but none bothered him more than when his guides weren’t speaking to him after he took a photo of a prison. Frazier felt that their disapproval might have been because of national pride. “It would be like if I took friends to Yellowstone and they wanted to go to Alcatraz.” Even at that bleakest moment he never considered quitting. “It was difficult, and I was unhappy and uncomfortable. We were camped in a cow pasture. Russia is dark. It’s a dark and scary place where you don’t know what the hell is going on.”
Another dismal experience occurred during an 800-kilometer train ride transporting the van from Chernyshevsk to the town of Magdagachi. Travel between the two locations was impossible by car because of swamps. There was in effect no road. Frazier, his guides and their van were stuffed inside a boxcar with no windows. Frazier slept in the front seat, propped against the door and the steering wheel. “The train car was sealed shut from the outside. The guy who was running it was extremely sketchy.” Safety issues were a great concern only to him, locked inside the train car, vehicles parked inches apart with gasoline in each and no fire extinguishers. “Those personal injury attorneys who advertise on the subway, their eyes would light up in Russia at all the potential lawsuits,” he said. “No side rails on the roads, no rumble strips. If the apocalypse comes, the Russians will be ready.”
A recent New York Times review succinctly stated, “Frazier peels away Russia’s solid veneer to reveal the quirkiness and humanity beneath.” The exploration of Siberia is told as only Ian Frazier, the lone two-time recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, can with bellyaching and belly laughs along his bumpy ride. Fasten your seat belt as you move along, but — since it’s not legally required in the wilds of Siberia — only if you want to.