SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1637 (98), Friday, December 24, 2010
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TITLE: Kremlin Hails Senate’s Approval of Treaty
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday welcomed the U.S. Senate’s decision to ratify a landmark U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control treaty, but Russian legislators said they need to study a resolution accompanying the document before following suit.
Medvedev’s spokeswoman Natalya Timakova said that when he signed the New START treaty with President Barack Obama, they agreed that the ratification process should be conducted simultaneously.
She said that Medvedev voiced hope that both houses of Russian parliament would ratify the pact, but added that they would need some time to analyze the Senate’s conditions for its ratification before making their decision.
The New START treaty, signed by Obama and Medvedev in April, would limit each country’s strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550, down from the current ceiling of 2,200. It also would re-establish a system for monitoring and verification which ended last year with the expiration of a previous arms control deal.
Legislators in the Kremlin-controlled parliament had said before the Senate landmark ruling on Wednesday that they would approve the treaty quickly after it is ratified in the U.S.
Lower house speaker Boris Gryzlov, however, told reporters Thursday that the Senate’s ratification resolution contained some conditions and the legislators need to carefully study the text before making their decision.
He added that the State Duma may ratify the pact Friday if the text of the treaty itself remained unchanged.
“If these conditions don’t change the text of the treaty, we may pass a ratification bill even tomorrow,” Gryzlov said.
He said that the house would need more time if it finds any changes in the body of the treaty.
Conservative Republicans said the pact would limit U.S. options on missile defense, lacked sufficient procedures to verify Russia’s adherence and deserved more time for consideration.
Obama called the treaty a national security imperative and pressed strongly for its approval before Congress, with a Republican majority, assumes power in January. In recent days, he had telephoned a handful of wavering Republicans, eventually locking in their votes.
The Obama administration has argued that the United States must show credibility in its improved relations with its former Cold War foe, and the treaty was critical to any rapprochement. The White House is also counting on Russia to help pressure Iran over its nuclear ambitions.
Republicans had tried to kill the treaty by forcing changes in its language that would have sent it back for negotiations with Moscow. Democrats sought to appease some Republican senators by letting them raise these issues in legislation accompanying the treaty that would not directly affect the pact.
On Wednesday, two such amendments, one on missile defense and one on funding for the U.S. nuclear arsenal, passed with support from both parties.
Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the Duma’s foreign affairs committee, said that decision is conditioned on the analysis of the amendments.
“We realize that the process shouldn’t be delayed, but we intend to work in such a way that it doesn’t affect the quality,” he said.
Kosachev said that the Duma may quickly approve the pact Friday without any conditions, or could decide to include some conditions of its own, which could delay the vote.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that Moscow was still waiting for the official text of the resolution and refused to comment on issues raised by Republicans in the Senate resolution.
“The specific content of the Senate resolution will naturally determine the wording that our legislators will put in the Russian ratification bill,” Lavrov said at a briefing.
Retired Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, who helped negotiate previous arms deals with the United States, predicted that the Kremlin-controlled parliament will quickly ratify the New START.
“This treaty is important for the Russian leadership because it formally preserves the nuclear balance with the United States, the last attribute of a superpower,” Dvorkin said, according to the Interfax news agency.
TITLE: Belarus: 7 Candidates Face 15 Years in Jail
AUTHOR: By Yuras Karmanau
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINSK, Belarus — Seven presidential candidates who ran against the country’s authoritarian leader could face up to 15 years in prison and one was beaten so badly in the election’s aftermath he is unable to walk, his lawyer and a human rights organization said.
Pavel Sapelko said Wednesday he suspects his client, Andrei Sannikov, has a broken leg, yet he was refused an X-ray.
“He feels very bad and looks very bad,” Sapelko said. Sannikov received the most votes among the opposition candidates — 2.4 percent, compared with winner Alexander Lukashenko’s 79.6 percent.
Sannikov is one of among seven candidates who could face up to 15 years in prison in the wake of postelection violence and massive arrests, Belarusian human rights organization Vesna said Wednesday.
Lawyer Tamara Sidorenko said her client Vladimir Neklyayev, another prominent challenger, was also beaten as he tried to lead a column of supporters to the protest in central Minsk on Sunday night.
He was taken to a hospital, and an aide said men in civilian clothing wrapped him in a blanket on his hospital bed and carried him away as his wife screamed. Sidorenko said she has not been allowed to visit him since.
The former Soviet state’s security service, which is still called the KGB, has filed charges against 20 top opposition figures, including the seven candidates, for organizing mass disturbances, said Ales Belyatsky of Vesna. KGB spokesman Alexander Antonovich declined comment.
Overall, some 700 people were arrested after Sunday’s election that returned Lukashenko to a fourth term in office. International monitors called the election fraudulent.
Two of the arrested candidates were later released, but both of them — Grigory Kostusyev and Dmitry Uss — were summoned to KGB offices for further questioning on Wednesday.
Lukashenko, often called Europe’s last dictator, has been in power in Belarus for more than 16 years. He exercises overwhelming control over the politics, industry and media in this nation of 10 million, which borders Russia, Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic nations. The repression has been an embarrassment to the European Union, which had offered 3 billion euros ($3.9 billion) in aid if the elections were judged to be free and fair.
In a brief telephone interview, Kostusyev said “the regime has shown its true essence.”
“We’ve been thrown 10 years into the past,” he added.
Others charged include Sannikov’s wife Irina Khalip and the editor of an opposition website affiliated with Sannikov, Nataliya Radina, according to Vesna. The other arrested candidates are Nikolai Statkevich, Vitaly Rymashevsky and Ales Mikhalevich.
At least 25 journalists were also detained during or after the Sunday’s rally, and several of them were sentenced to up to 15 days in prison for “participation in an illegal demonstration,” a press freedom group said Wednesday.
Reporters Without Borders said two of the detained reporters face charges of “organizing or participating in a public order disturbance” punishable by up to 15 years in jail.
Also Wednesday, the Belarusian parliament ratified an agreement to create a “unified economic space” with Russia and Kazakhstan in what some observers regard as Moscow’s attempt to shore up influence among neighboring countries.
Preliminary agreement on the zone was reached 10 days before the election. As part of that agreement, Russia said it would drop tariffs on oil exported to Belarus, a concession that significantly strengthened Lukashenko’s hand.
Belarus’ quasi-Soviet state-dominated economy depends on below-market Russian oil and gas. In recent years, Lukashenko had quarreled with Moscow over its raising hydrocarbon prices and in the presidential campaign period he frequently criticized Russia.
However, after the dropping of the oil tariffs — an agreement estimated to be worth some $4 billion a year — his tone changed markedly.
TITLE: Estonian Claims $1.6 Million in Damages for Falling Ice
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Milana Kashtanova, a 22-year-old Estonian citizen who spent more than nine months in a coma after being hit by a chunk of falling ice in February, 2010, is claiming 50 million rubles ($1.6 million) in physical and moral damages.
Kashtanova, who had come to St. Petersburg to study psychology, was hit by the ice as she was passing by an apartment building at 3 Ulitsa Krasnogo Kursanta on the Petrograd Side that was being cleared of ice. She sustained severe brain traumas.
She is currently undergoing a costly rehabilitation course at the Reha Nova clinic in Cologne, Germany. At present, according to her parents, Kashtanova can only “blink, raise her eye-brows, nod and smile.”
The young woman is struggling to regain the ability to swallow - she is still on a tracheostoma protection system - and to breath through her mouth. She is unable to speak.
At the court case currently underway in St. Petersburg, Kashtanova is being represented by her lawyer Alexander Golovanov.
An earlier trial in 2010 had awarded the young woman 84,000 rubles ($2,800) in compensation for physical damages. The sum was only enough to cover a few days’ treatment. All medical expenses are being covered by the student’s family, which has been raising money from private donors, mainly in Estonia.
During the previous trial, Kashtanova’s father, Vadim Kashtanov, had demanded 10 million rubles ($320 000) in moral damages, but his claim was rejected by the St. Petersburg city court.
The trial found Tatyana Ushakova, a worker with House Maintenance Service No. 2, the organization responsible for overseeing the ice-clearing works, responsible for the tragic accident. Ushakova received a six month suspended sentence, but has kept her job.
Vadim Kashtanov was both frustrated and insulted by the outcome of the previous trial. “We are talking about the life of a young woman, who is now disabled, confined to bed, enduring a horrendous ordeal,” Kashtanov said. “The utter hypocrisy of the situation is that although the trial had established that the accident was not Milana’s fault but that of the local authorities’, both the punishment and the compensation were a joke.”
“It was a mockery of compensation,” Kashtanova’s husband, Irinei Kalachev, wrote in his blog in LiveJournal. “More than ten months have passed since the accident, and we still have not received a penny. Most importantly, we will soon face huge bills from Reha Nova, which have to be paid in full by those responsible for her condition.”
Kalachev stresses that the current trial will serve as a litmus test for the Russian judicial system. “It will show the real value of human life in Russia,” Kalachev writes in his blog. “Until now, what has been happening was that the irresponsible cowards from the House Maintenance Service felt invincible and unpunishable.”
According to official reports, in the winter St. Petersburg residents sustain injuries every day as a result of inadequate clearing of ice and snow.
TITLE: Dubai Cuts Sentences in Yamadayev Slaying
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A Dubai court on Wednesday slashed the prison terms for two men convicted in the 2009 slaying of former Chechen commander Sulim Yamadayev from life to just three years in a surprise ruling that highlighted the international intrigue surrounding the case.
The Dubai Appeals Court judge gave no immediate reason for the decision, but Yamadayev’s family had submitted a letter disavowing any desire for further punishments in connection with the killing.
Four other suspects remain at large, including State Duma Deputy Adam Delimkhanov, and it is unclear whether the family’s letter also could sway Dubai police to drop their demands for the suspects’ arrest. Delimkhanov, a relative of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, has denied any link to the slaying.
The justice system in the United Arab Emirates mixes Western codes with Islamic tenets, including giving weight to family appeals such as accepting “blood money” in exchange for leniency in murder cases.
The decision by the appeals court judge, Mustafa al-Shennawi, could allow the two inmates to go free in early 2012.
TITLE: Interpol Gives Warning On Jump in Marriage Scamps
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The head of Interpol’s Russia office warned on Wednesday of a surge in marriage scams in which Russian women posing as potential brides trick Western men out of money.
Timur Lakhonin also blamed Europe’s “policy of double standards” for Moscow’s failure to secure the extradition of wanted suspects.
The number of marriage scams has jumped in recent years, with at least 50 women involved in one criminal scheme in the Marii-El republic, a hotbed of marriage scams, Lakhonin said at an end-of-the-year news conference in Moscow.
“More than 200 foreign citizens have fallen victims of such crimes,” he said.
He said the scam involves women posing as husband-hunters but acting under the control of criminal gangs to swindle “potential foreign fiances” of money.
Seven criminal cases were opened so far, Lakhonin said, without elaborating.
Speaking of extradition issues, Lakhonin listed Britain, Austria and Sweden as countries that often deny Russian requests for suspects, and he complained that many of the suspects were actually criminals who deserved no sympathy.
“Unfortunately, these are not just isolated cases when wanted criminals are granted political asylum, citizenship or refugee status … even individuals charged with murder, terrorism, banditry and illegal arms trafficking,” Lakhonin said.
“Sometimes refusal to extradite wanted persons is linked to a policy of double standards practiced in some countries,” he said.
Lakhonin declined to identify any suspects. But at least one of them is well known: Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen insurgent wanted on murder, terrorism and other charges but granted asylum in Britain. Moscow also wants to extradite tycoon Boris Berezovsky and Yevroset founder Yevgeny Chichvarkin from Britain.
At least 37 extraditions were made to Russia this year and two more are expected next week, while 15 requests were denied, Lakhonin said, without elaborating.
Russia has extradited 19 suspects to 11 countries this year, most of them to other former Soviet republics, Lakhonin said.
A total of 1,542 suspects and convicted criminals who are currently on Interpol’s wanted list were put on it by Russia, Lakhonin said. The figure includes 108 suspects and convicts in corruption cases, almost double from last year’s 56.
TITLE: Spy Anna Chapman Tapped to Work for Young Guards
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — With flamed-haired former spy Anna Chapman and a sleek race car, Young Guard’s congress on Wednesday offered the ingredients of a James Bond thriller.
But the pro-Kremlin youth group was all business, making high-powered appointments that appeared aimed at stemming Kremlin worries that nationalist violence might overshadow State Duma elections next year and the presidential vote in early 2012.
It remained unclear, however, how Chapman — who was deported from the United States in a spy swap in July and has posed half-naked for men’s magazines — and her appointment Wednesday as a senior Young Guard member would help the group fight rising nationalism among the country’s disenchanted and bitter youth.
Thousands of youth staged violent anti-migrant riots outside the Kremlin walls earlier this month, followed by days of nationwide ethnic tensions, in what analysts said signaled the failure of the Kremlin’s youth policy. But analysts said the reshuffle at Young Guard that brought Chapman in power would not boost the group’s efficiency.
“If we want to change our future, we have to begin to change ourselves,” Chapman said in a short and uninspiring speech delivered to a sea of cell phone cameras after she was named a member of the group’s public council.
Chapman was not the only attraction to capture the eye of the 2,000 people who gathered at the event. Marussia, Russia’s first high-end racing car, was also on display.
The conference also saw other important appointments made, with Timur Prokopenko, a former spokesman for United Russia leader Boris Gryzlov, becoming Young Guard’s new leader, and Public Chamber member Andrei Tatarinov taking up the job of the group’s ideologist.
Prokopenko pledged to allow no more interracial clashes.
“We will not let the criminal rabble do whatever they want in the streets,” he said, referring to this month’s rallies to protest the Dec. 5 killing of an ethnic Russian football fan in a clash with Caucasus natives.
Neither Gryzlov nor Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, who also attended the conference, spoke publicly about the rioting, although Gryzlov praised Young Guard for helping save the country from “destruction.” He did not elaborate.
28-year-old Chapman hurried off the stage after her speech, refusing to talk to reporters or explain what her duties in Young Guard would entail.
Chapman, who was returned to Russia last summer with nine other sleeper agents betrayed by a mole, now works as an adviser to the president of FondServiceBank, or FSB. She also posed in negligee for the Maxim and Zhara (Heat) magazines this fall. Nothing is known on her experience with youth policy management.
“Anna Chapman is an example of unconditional patriotism,” Tatarinov said Wednesday, Young Guard’s web site reported.
Meanwhile, a senior Young Guard member told The St. Petersburg Times that Chapman might actually be seeking a ticket to the Duma in next year’s elections. “After this mission is achieved, she will leave [Young Guard],” the member said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Political analysts were unimpressed by the reshuffle.
Chapman was elected for “just being good looking,” said Vladimir Pribilovsky, head of Panorama think tank.
As for Prokopenko, he got the new job because “Gryzlov wants his people to be in control,” he said, adding that the new Young Guard leader “will have a direct access to Gryzlov.”
Prokopenko, a journalist, replaces Ruslan Gattarov, a Federation Council senator with reported ties to Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s youth policy chief.
Gattarov’s removal was first announced in August. At the time, Young Guard called it a planned rotation, but political observers pointed to his clumsy actions during this summer’s wildfires. Gattarov was caught doctoring a picture of Young Guard members fighting fires.
Independent political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky said Young Guard would not be able to improve its performance under the new leaders.
“Young Guard is an organization that doesn’t have its own ideology, and it cannot create its own ideas since it is a part of United Russia,” he said by telephone.
Young Guard itself has been accused of promoting hatred, most notably over a series of articles targeting opposition activists and liberal-leaning public figures published on its web site this year.
Kommersant reporter Oleg Kashin, who was identified as a target “to be punished” in the articles, survived a savage beating last month. Some of Kashin’s supporters have implicated Anatoly Turchak, a founder of Young Guard who clashed with Kashin, in the incident. Turchak and the group have denied involvement.
Turchak attended Wednesday’s congress along with the children of several high-ranking bureaucrats, which Pribylovsky of Panorama said discredited the idea that Young Guard appealed to ordinary youth.
“It reminds more of a Brezhnev-era Komsomol,” he said, referring to the Communist youth organization.
TITLE: Gazprom Neft Rethinks Plans for Petersburg Tower
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As the head of Gazprom said for the first time this week that the plans for the controversial 403-meter-tall Okhta Center skyscraper have finally dropped and that it had no immediate plans for any large-scale construction in St. Petersburg, local preservationists launched a Christmas postcard campaign asking Stockmann to remove a tall glass structure from its new trade center on Nevsky Prospekt.
“It’s not a temporary retreat. There will be no Okhta Center project on the Okhta Cape,” Miller told the Itogi weekly magazine this week, adding that the company recently received offers to build the tower from Omsk, Vladivostok and even Yerevan, Armenia.
“I can’t positively say today that anybody needs such a large-scale project in St. Petersburg that badly,” he said to Itogi.
The project was rejected by Governor Valentina Matviyenko earlier this month, when she annulled City Hall’s 2009 decree which permitted Gazprom to override the law allowing only buildings not taller than 40 meters in the area.
The cancellation came after four years of public protests and legal action against the project which violated a number of laws and was criticized as being destructive to St. Petersburg’s UNESCO-protected skyline and archeological findings on the site.
Earlier this week, the St. Petersburg City Court ruled to ban construction of any buildings in the area taller 40 meters. It became the first court hearing against Okhta Center won by activists in St. Petersburg.
ODS Okhta (Okhta Social and Business Center), the company created by Gazprom to supervise and advertise the construction, put the Miller interview on its web site, but declined to give any comment on Thursday.
Meanwhile, preservationist organization Living City launched a Christmas postcard-mailing campaign protesting against the controversial glass structure on top of the newly-opened Stockmann department store on Nevsky Prospekt, which has affected one of the most popular views in the city.
Living City activists, who criticize the glass structure as looking out of place in the historical center, argue that by law the height of buildings in this area should not be over 28 meters, while the top of the structure is 35 meters above ground level.
Postcards printed by the organization this week show how badly the new store has affected the view of Nevsky Prospekt from Pushkinskaya Ulitsa.
The text in Finnish, English and Russian is addressed to Stockmann’s CEO Hannu Penttila and reads: “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, but please take your gift back! Yours, Friends of St. Petersburg, Russia.”
Last month, Matviyenko abruptly decided not to attend the opening of the store despite it having been previously announced that she would attend.
Speaking with Finland’s Prime Minister Mari Kiviniemi, who arrived in St. Petersburg especially for the opening, at her residence at Smolny, Matviyenko made critical remarks about the building.
“The project caused a critical reaction among the residents from the architectural point of view; the height limit has been slightly exceeded,” she was reported as saying.
TITLE: A Hotel, an Oscar-Winner and Angry Locals in Moscow
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Clashes with police, scuffles at a construction site, sieges of administration buildings and a fire that some believe was arson.
These are things residents of a downtown Moscow neighborhood had to deal with after an Oscar-winning director decided to build a hotel next to their homes.
“Some people have threatened us verbally over the telephone. Are they going to shoot us soon or what?” said Yelena Tkach, a member of the preservationist Public Coalition to Defend Moscow, which supports the locals in their fight.
Residents of Maly Kozikhinsky Pereulok, a mix of upper middle class and artistic retirees, say the construction is destroying their own houses. So far, they are fighting a losing battle against the company of Nikita Mikhalkov, a film director and friend of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The construction, which has been in the planning stages for years, was finally started in June with the razing of a 19th-century building that housed Mikhalkov’s own Trite studio. The building is to be replaced by a seven-story hotel and a two-story underground parking garage.
Local residents said extensive underground works are damaging their own apartment buildings, causing foundations to crack. They also complain that the project was initiated without their consent.
Architectural preservationists, increasingly desperate over the rampant remodeling of Moscow in recent years, said the planned building, which is three stories higher than the one it is replacing, will not fit the architectural layout of the neighborhood and will simply stick out like a sore thumb.
But although the residents have campaigned for months and have the media on their side, neither officials nor developers — including Mikhalkov himself — have found any fault with the project.
Marina Yanchevetskaya, 62, who lives on Maly Kozikhinsky just across the construction site in an apartment inherited from her grandfather, famous Soviet-era historical novelist Vasily Yan, said the works have already left cracks on the walls in her bathroom.
“I am tired of fighting. I know that we wouldn’t be able to achieve anything,” she said, wearily.
Her pessimism has its reasons. On Dec. 6, a fire flared in her apartment building, covering an area of 70,000 square meters. The officials refused to open a criminal case, blaming the blaze on an electric circuit, but some of the residents insist that it was arson.
“When big money and the interests of citizens clash with each other, a residential building is set on fire,” Yanchevetskaya’s neighbor Alexander Pleshakov told The St. Petersburg Times with a tinge of bitter irony in his voice.
“People who live in this area are losing not just peace of mind, but also a serious amount of money,” said another resident, Yelena Lobachevskaya.
Apartments in pre-revolutionary buildings on the street fetch up to $9,000 per square meter, but prices can drop up to 20 percent if the buildings’ foundations are damaged as the residents fear they will be, said Alexander Ziminsky, head of the Penny Lane real estate agency’s elite property department.
Residents clashed with construction workers several times in October, trying to stop the work, and petitioned City Hall and even President Dmitry Medvedev, who has not reacted. Construction was put on hold Oct. 27 but resumed in November.
Mikhalkov said he sees no reason to halt construction because it has all necessary clearance.
He visited former Mayor Yury Luzhkov “almost 12 times” in order to obtain signatures for all paperwork concerning the project, Mikhalkov said in an interview with Izvestia earlier this month.
“I am really concerned about the architectural face of Moscow. … In the end, everything was done for the hotel to become part of the Moscow’s architectural tradition,” he said.
Current Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has kept silent about the conflict so far.
A spokeswomen for developer Bel Development denied in a statement to The St. Petersburg Times all allegations about hazards caused by the project, which will cost about $20 million to build.
“The construction in Maly Kozikhinsky Pereulok is not threatening surrounding buildings and will be continued,” said the company, formerly controlled by Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element and now listing the Cyprus-based WTT Hotels One Limited as owner.
Bel Development said several examinations confirmed that the project posed no danger. Among the checks cited by the company was a ruling by the Moscow State Non-Departmental Expertise watchdog, which preservationists said actually contained no conclusion on the project’s safety and only stated that wooden ceiling beams in nearby buildings have been replaced by concrete ones.
The company also kept quiet on another accusation by residents: that they were not informed about public hearings on the project in April 2008, which were attended by only six people.
“Nobody has informed us about the hearings,” Yanchevetskaya said.
A copy of the protocol of the public hearing, obtained by The St. Petersburg Times through the preservationists, contains no signatures of residents and does not list their names.
The protesters have got a celebrity on their side, with the actress Tatyana Dogileva, who lives on the nearby Tryokhprudny Pereulok, joining the protests. But even that did not help.
“I am living a quiet life and not trying to put my nose anywhere. But now I am not just in shock, I am devastated,” Dogileva told The St. Petersburg Times just before she and some 20 other protesters were whisked away by the police from the office of the prefect of Moscow’s Central Administrative District, Sergei Baidakov, earlier this month.
Baidakov made an appointment with the protesters but refused to meet them, and when they stormed into his office, police threw them out. Baidakov gave no explanation for his refusal but told reporters later that a new independent commission would conduct a check into the project — while the construction goes on.
Political activists have also lent a hand, with the head of the Left Front opposition group, Sergei Udaltsov, rallying against the construction until his incarceration last week at a protest rally. “If authorities do not pay attention to that situation, the problem might get into the political level,” he told The St. Petersburg Times in an interview before his arrest.
Roman Tkach, a local resident and a member of the Public Coalition for Defense of Moscow, said the activists planned to sue the developers but doubted it would help.
“Before we win any court case, they will already have built a hotel,” he said.
There is an overall lack of hotels in Moscow, and a new one could be welcome news to visitors. Moscow is also experiencing problems with apartment hotels of the kind being built in Maly Kozikhinsky Pereulok. Research by the real estate consulting company Blackwood this year indicated that only 1,500 of the city’s hotel suites, or 5 percent of the total, are available for long-term lease.
Residents began to lower their demands recently, saying they would approve the construction if the developers abandoned the underground garage, which they consider the most dangerous part of the project.
“We are not saying that they shouldn’t build the hotel. We want them to hear us,” Tkach said.
But Bel Development has not commented on a possible compromise.
Locals see Mikhalkov’s political connections as the source of the problem, saying his friendship with the authorities has turned him into an untouchable figure.
“He probably thinks that he is some sort of god,” said Marina Ozhiganova, a public activist and a resident of the nearby Patriarch’s Ponds area.
Mikhalkov, who in 1994 won a best foreign film Oscar for his “Burnt by the Sun” tragedy, set in times of Stalin’s terror, made a documentary to congratulate Putin on his 55th birthday in 2007 and penned a political manifesto in October, advocating for stronger presidential powers and abolishment of direct mayoral elections.
Yanchevetskaya, the local resident, said she has changed her opinion about Mikhalkov after the hotel dispute. “I’ve nothing against him as an actor and director, but he is a disgusting person,” she said.
Yanchevetskaya recalled how Mikhalkov visited her apartment in the early 2000s to film an interview with her father, architect Mikhail Yanchevetsky, for the documentary “Russians Without Russia” on emigrants exiled from their homes by the Bolshevik Revolution.
“That time he said many good things about our family. I would like to look him in the eyes now,” she said.
TITLE: Naibullina Disputes Need for Tax Hikes
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Plans to plug a budget gap by raising the value added tax level and pension age are “unacceptable,” Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina said Wednesday, reopening a war of words with Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.
The Finance Ministry has proposed such measures to narrow the budget deficit that it expects to swell to 4.3 to 4.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2010.
Using a hike in VAT to narrow the budget deficit is “an absolutely dead-end solution,” Nabiullina said. “I am categorically opposed.” Raising the pension age, another option that has been brought up by Kudrin, would be “unacceptable to our society,” she said.
Nabiullina, whose ministry is devoted to long-term growth and investment, has a history of confrontation with more fiscally conservative Kudrin. Their boss, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said during his marathon question-and-answer show last week that there are no plans to raise the pension age.
On Monday, Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov said in an interview with Reuters that a tax hike was inevitable and that VAT was likely to be raised first. Social security contributions are set to increase from Jan. 1.
The maximum VAT rate is set at 18 percent, although some goods are exempt and others subject to a lower levy. VAT revenue accounts for about 30 percent of budget income, making it second only to taxes paid by the oil and gas sector.
But Nabiullina said any tax rise would kill economic growth, and called instead for an expansion of the tax base, optimized spending and less passive government policies in reforming the economy.
“To balance the budget the first priority is to optimize spending, including through public procurement though the creation of a federal contracting system,” she said.
“We need more focus on the structure of the economy, on its diversification and modernization priorities,” she said, singling out education, health care and infrastructure as key areas for investment.
Kudrin first floated the idea of raising the retirement age at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in June.
He told delegates that a higher pension age could narrow the pension fund’s deficit and increase the average pension allowance from 7300 rubles ($237) to 10,000 ($325).
Nabiullina came out strongly against the idea Wednesday. “You can’t adopt solutions that are absolutely rejected by society,” she said, adding that average life expectancy would have to increase significantly before the matter could even be discussed.
The current retirement age is 60 for men and 55 for women. Life expectancy in 2008 was 61.8 for men and 74.1 for women, according to a United Nations report released in October.
Pensions are an attractive target because the value of the annual state outlay closely matches the value of the deficit.
TITLE: Prosecutor’s Office Blocks ‘13th Invoice’
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office has deemed a controversial recalculation of payments for heating last winter illegal, the organization reported on its Internet site on Tuesday.
The Prosecutor’s Office said communal services companies had violated existing legislation covering the calculation of communal services payments.
“The management companies had no grounds to send the so-called ‘13th invoice’ that required the city residents to pay a recalculated total for heat and hot water supplies,” the Prosecutor’s Office wrote its website.
The residents of more than 7,000 apartment buildings began receiving the additional invoices in November, the announcement stated.
Following complaints, the Prosecutor’s Office began examining the contracts covering the provision of communal services and the legal basis for the recalculation.
City Authorities in November announced plans for the recalculation of the payments for last winter’s heating.
Vice Governor Aleksei Sergeyev said in mid-November that due to the severity of the winter of 2009/2010, more money was spent than had been planned.
The City Administration said that city residents owed a total of 1.625 billion rubles ($53 million) for the additional heating. Sergeyev said that extra payments were due from buildings where meters had not been fitted. There are 7,700 such buildings in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported.
“The residents in those buildings pay for heat on the basis of average tariffs calculated on the basis of average winters,” Sergeyev said.
TITLE: Firm Linked to Putin Eyes Moscow Traffic
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A company linked to a friend of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is saying it is confident to win any tenders to build a citywide traffic control system for Moscow.
Representatives of Tolltec told reporters Wednesday that their firm offers an integrated solution unrivaled by competitors.
“We are a Russian firm and therefore we believe that our chances for winning future tenders are the best,” the firm’s business development director, Alexei Grishechkin, told The St. Petersburg Times on the sidelines of a news conference Wednesday.
Tolltec was set up by executives of Neftegazoptimizatsiya, a company linked to St. Petersburg businessman Arkady Rotenberg, a close ally of Putin.
The firm’s original mandate is toll roads, such as the much-disputed Moscow-St. Petersburg highway, for which Tolltec is currently doing the project conception, Grishechkin said.
Tolltec’s system is already working on St. Petersburg’s major ring road, known as KAD, where a test phase was started earlier this month.
Now the company is eyeing Moscow City Hall’s plans to propel the capital’s traffic control system into the 21st century.
A plan to revamp the city’s catastrophic traffic jams, unveiled by Mayor Sergei Sobyanin last month, calls for an “intellectual traffic control system” that covers the whole capital.
Under the plan, control of the city’s traffic lights would pass from the traffic police to City Hall.
So far, police officers often manage traffic at major crossroads by hand. Some 400 traffic lights are controlled by a Soviet-era system called Start, which also belongs to police.
Vladimir Kryuchkov, who heads Intellectual Transport Systems, an industry association, told the news conference that the national market for such systems was worth $390 million and that among the 22 market players Tolltec was the only one capable of doing the job.
“Nobody else can offer such a comprehensive solution,” he said.
Kryuchkov acknowledged that the plan poses challenges because it needs to integrate existing systems.
The single biggest control system in place in the capital — the system managing traffic on the third ring road — was completed in 2009 by Siemens under a $35 million deal signed under former Mayor Yury Luzhkov in 2006.
No tender for a new system has been announced.
Asked whether Siemens was hoping to participate in Sobyanin’s plans, spokeswoman Kristina Nevskaya said the company principally does not comment on its participation in public tenders.
TITLE: Kremlin’s Imperial Ambitions Ended in 2010
AUTHOR: By Fyodor Lukyanov
TEXT: Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and there will certainly be plenty of analyses about what that meant and where the country stands two decades later. But one of the most important results became apparent in 2010: Russia made a psychological break with its past and its former status as an empire.
Former Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin — and until recently President Dmitry Medvedev — tried to restore Russia’s former status as a major world player and regional power center among the former Soviet republics. Russia’s foreign policy attempted to convince the West that the country’s weakness throughout the 1990s was a historical accident and that the ascendancy of the West in relation to Russia was a mere coincidence. Until recently, the Soviet collapse served as the main prism through which the country’s identity was defined, and the foreign policy of the first three presidents focused on the West.
But the Russia-Georgia war in August 2008 was the turning point in this process. It demonstrated Russia’s ability to stop what had appeared to be NATO’s creeping, eastward expansion and clearly defined Moscow’s sphere of influence in the North Caucasus.
After the conflict, the Kremlin had two basic choices: Either it could build on the military and political success and try to project its power in new areas, or it could be content with the fact that it had given Georgia’s largest supporter, the United States, a slap on the wrist and continue the process of walking away from its imperial ambitions. In 2010, it became clear that Russia had chosen the second option.
At the same time, Moscow has taken a decisive turn toward Asia. Although past Russian policy toward Asia was meant to show the West that Moscow had an alternative partner, now that policy is independent of other considerations. The problem is that in its relations with Asia, Russia must essentially start from scratch. Even when Russia was at its weakest in the 1990s, it still held considerable political significance for Europe. But for most Asian countries, Russia practically never existed as a regional strategic factor, and this remained true even when it became more powerful in the global arena in the 2000s.
The reduction in tensions between Russia and both NATO and the EU is linked to their gradual declines. Although Russia continues to see Europe as a source of modernization, Moscow no longer views it as the sole source.
The stakes in European politics have fallen sharply. Two years ago, it seemed as if the question of keeping the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol was almost worth going to war over. But when leaders reached an agreement last spring to keep the fleet in place for many more years, the world hardly noticed.
The New START treaty will probably be the last in the series of Cold War-style disarmament treaties. Most likely, Russia’s nuclear strategy in the future will no longer be based on maintaining nuclear parity with the United States. Moscow is beginning to understand that it needs a nuclear arsenal of sufficient size to deter threats from other countries.
Another significant event in 2010 was Russia’s decision to not intervene in the Kyrgyz riots in April or in the coup that followed. True, the decision was strongly driven by pragmatism since the risks of intervention far outweighed the chance for success in resolving the situation in Bishkek. But it was also another example that the Kremlin is not willing to take advantage of instability in its backyard to restore — even in part — its lost empire.
Russia’s policy of noninterference extended to other former Soviet republics as well. The Orange forces backing former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko have only themselves to blame for their defeat during the presidential election in January. Moreover, President Viktor Yanukovych shows no signs of cozying up to Moscow. Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko had no problem securing his re-election on Sunday despite having differed sharply with the Kremlin throughout 2010. Although Moscow did take an interest in parliamentary elections in Moldova, the outcome reflects the result of a purely internal balance of power. Even the success enjoyed by the seemingly pro-Russia party in Latvia was due more to the severe economic crisis in the country than to any effort by Russia.
All of these events benefit Russia. The former Soviet republics are now just neighbors that are on more or less good terms and dependent on one another. When Moscow does attempt to influence them, it is with the intention of creating more favorable conditions for its own economy and not to throw its weight around or to achieve geopolitical gain.
There is still competition between Russia and its neighbors, but it is largely connected with China. This rivalry is all business and nothing personal, in contrast to Russian-European relations.
The violence this month by ultranationalist groups in Moscow has also signaled a change in the Kremlin’s thinking. Following the Soviet collapse, Russia has waged three wars in the Caucasus — two in Chechnya and one in South Ossetia — to keep the region under Kremlin control. Paradoxically, it now turns out that a significant portion of the population — and not only violent mobs chanting racist slogans — has little desire to consider people from the Caucasus as their fellow citizens.
Ethnic nationalism and xenophobia, which have increased in the 2000s, are the opposite of an imperial mindset, which, by definition, is multicultural and tries to co-opt foreign groups to project its power.
Ever since the 1990s, we have often heard the argument that the new Russia will truly appear only when it changes from an empire into a “normal country.” 2010 showed that this transformation has made significant progress. The question is to what degree that country will remain normal and stable over the long term.
While Russia has left its imperial ambitions behind, the main reference point for defining itself is no longer rooted in the Soviet collapse but somewhere in the uncertain future. The main task facing the country is to do everything it can so this future will be stable and prosperous.
Fyodor Lukyanov is editor of Russia in Global Affairs.
TITLE: Putin’s Fascism Lite
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: There are two reasons for the outbreak of ultranationalist violence in Russia. The first is Caucasus fascism, which is a serious problem for Russia in the same way that Islamic fascism is for the West.
Chechnya is taking revenge on Russia for the war and genocide the Kremlin has waged against it over the past 20 years and beyond. That revenge has taken the form of lawlessness and violence on Moscow’s streets.
Recall the recent incident at Moscow’s Yevropeisky shopping center when a security guard refused entry to an armed 32-year-old man from the Chechen city of Shali. The man later returned with a group of friends and beat the guards with baseball bats.
The main difference between Russian and Chechen fascism is that 99 percent of the Russian elite consider the statement “I am Russian and therefore better than others” to be anathema, whereas for the Chechen elite the declaration “I am Chechen and therefore better than others” is accepted as fact.
Modern liberals refuse to discuss or even acknowledge the problem of nationalism because they are afraid of appearing politically incorrect, and they believe in the Pollyannish principle that all people are equal.
The problem is that Nazism is a natural phenomenon for any traditional society — especially when it clashes with a more civilized open society. “I am a Somali or Chechen or Arab,” they say. “I have a family and honor. I keep a tight hold on my women and will kill any daughter who soils her virtue before marriage. That is why I am better than those dirty, infidel pigs that have no sense of honor.”
Savages always outdo civilized men in terms of violence. The trouble is that rather than trying to make savages more civilized, civilized societies all too often find excuses for their savagery and justify it as a “local cultural trait.”
Russian fascism is the second reason for the surge in violence. If Nazism is natural for tribal peoples, then for Russians, Nazism should be a marginal phenomenon.
Nazism was marginal under President Boris Yeltsin. Even when most Russians were poor and miserable during the “wild 1990s,” Nazism was marginal. But under the 10-year rule of Vladimir Putin, racially based violence — often murder — became commonplace.
This is happening because the ideology of the Putin regime is essentially “fascism lite.” This is when the people responsible for legitimizing the ruling kleptocracy splurge on a luxury shopping weekend in London or Rome, and then they come back to Russia and speak at a pro-Putin rally at Lake Seliger, telling the poor and disenfranchised rabble that a great nation like Russia needs a great leader like Putin. They also remind everyone how the West is trying to undermine and weaken Russia.
Kremlin first deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov is now facing the same problem that most Arab states are facing. As in Russia, Arab leaders did not implement reforms and became multibillionaires at the people’s expense. They justify their strong hold on power on the grounds that they are devout Muslims and have the people’s best interests in mind. But then along came Osama bin Laden who said, “I and my brothers-in-arms are true Muslims, and all the rest are infidels and scum.”
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Breaking new ground
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The heartbreaking powers of Leos Janacek’s “Katya Kabanova” rival those of Jacomo Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” and the Mikhailovsky Theater Symphony Orchestra reached the heights of those powers on Dec. 16, the opening night of the premiere of this masterpiece of expressiveness and melody.
The company has made a bold move with the premiere of “Katya Kabanova,” stepping onto Janacek’s territory, not an easy field for any opera company. Besides, the company’s great rival, the Mariinsky Theater has already established itself on that territory, with the premiere of “The Makropulos Affair” earlier this fall and a rendition of “Jenufa” in 2007.
Both musically and vocally, the production was an overwhelming success, showcasing a wealth of singing talent, led by the Mikhailovsky’s up-and-coming diva, Tatyana Ryaguzova, a recent graduate of the St. Petersburg State Conservatory and a commendable orchestral finesse.
The Mikhailovsky symphony orchestra under the baton of its music director Peter Feranec, a Slovak, captivated with elemental might.
Inspired by Nikolai Ostrovsky’s work “The Storm,” the opera revolves around the drama of a married woman who throws herself into the waters of the Volga River, destroyed by an overwhelming sense of guilt over her forbidden love affair with another man.
“In the mood of love”, the title of the famous Wong Kar Wai classic, could probably serve as a subtitle for the Mikhailovsky’s show. German director Niels-Peter Rudolph, who made a name for himself staging Chekhov’s plays but has limited exposure in the field of opera, offered a minimalist and poignant take on the story, muffling down its social context. In contrast to most of the domestic drama versions of “The Storm,” where Katya’s wayward and dominant mother-in-law Kabanikha and her “dark kingdom” make the production tick, here it is all Katerina’s show. Ryaguzova is the real star of the production, portraying an emotionally generous woman, going for her feelings wholeheartedly, only to be disappointed by the smug shallowness of her beloved Boris and the weakness of her husband Tikhon.
The singer hypnotized the audiences with her deep and mellow, if at times somewhat languid voice, an astounding dramatic range, pulsating from serenity to exultation, and a mesmerizing stage presence that suggested that a new international star is on the rise.
The director also opted not to use a claustrophobic setting that would serve to illustrate Katya’s being cornered, hopelessly trapped in her tragic circumstances. Instead, it is her loneliness that is being emphasized by the vastness of the almost-empty stage, the random sparks of fluorescent lighting and a pile of broken chairs serving as the centerpiece of the stage’s furnishings throughout the show.
Mezzo-soprano Natalya Biryukova offered a grotesque portrayal of Kabanikha, bearing an interesting resemblance to the old countess from Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades,” with which Janacek’s opera has a number of parallels, complete with the scene of a thunderstorm, the heroine committing suicide by throwing herself into the river out of her love for an unworthy man and the omnipresent elderly domestic tyrant. Every appearance on stage of Biryukova’s Kabanikha, combining the features of a former femme fatale and a crippled monster, created much comic relief.
Soprano Sofia Fainberg was convincing as Varya, Katerina’s coquettish, and somewhat light-hearted, romantic friend, while tenor Dmitry Popov, the only singer imported for the production, excelled as a superficial and somewhat narcissistic Boris.
Rudolph’s compatriot, sets designer Folker Hintermeier, downplayed the show’s ethnographic element, creating a minimalist design that featured video projections of a female eye, cloudy skies and, in the finale, a bright ray of light dissecting the darkness — a literal take on one of the final lines of Ostrovsky’s drama, where Katya’s body is found in the waters of Volga with the help of a torch.
Somewhat surprisingly, the opera with its gorgeous exuberant scores capturing the essence of the unruly and unrestrained character of Volga, Russia’s greatest river which many people in the country identify or associate with, has never been staged locally until now and is a rarity in the repertoires of Russian opera companies.
In view of this and the brilliance of the company’s musical talent, The Mikhailovsky Theater is sure to have the house packed for every show.
TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: A memory that may remain painfully seared into the interior of our craniums from the year 2010 is the sight and sound of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin performing “Blueberry Hill” on television earlier the month.
Russia’s corruption rate soared ever higher, freedom of the press plunged ever lower, with ever more journalists beaten or investigated and the Wikileaks’ memos described the country as a “virtual mafia state.”
But the former KGB officer crooned at a charity event, while a group of Western celebrities – featuring Paul Anka, Kurt Russel and Sharon Stone – clapped and cheered, as if everything was fine.
With Putin’s trademark chilling humor, he tried to follow “Blueberry Hill” with a song from a Soviet propaganda spy movie, started with a wrong note and then quickly stopped. (Earlier this year, it was reported that he’d sung the same song, “From Where the Motherland Begins,” with a group of Russian sleeper agents featuring Anna Chapman after they were expelled from the U.S. in July.)
Russian leaders kept flirting with music and musicians, most notably President Dmitry Medvedev, who was seen strolling the empty Sochi beach with U2’s Bono in August, and then meeting over beers with a group of loyal Russian rock musicians featuring Mashina Vremeni’s Andrei Makarevich and Akvarium’s Boris Grebenshchikov at a Moscow club in front of the cameras in October.
Commenting on the meeting, Grebenshchikov said that rock music has become nice and unchallenging, so the meeting was nice and unchallenging. Luckily, there were other musicians who proved that this isn’t the case.
Putin’s major PR flop came when he met with Yury Shevchuk after another charity event in May. The DDT frontman enraged Putin when he confronted him over the authorities’ thwarting of peaceful rallies and the lack of freedom of speech.
Shevchuk was also seen – with the other musicians – at rallies protesting plans to build Gazprom’s Okhta Center skyscraper in St. Petersburg and to build a toll highway through the Khimki forest. During the past year, the police also started to harass musicians, briefly arresting two members of Padla Bear Outfit, summoning the Barto singer to interrogations and imprisoning rapper Noize MC for 10 days in Volgograd.
In December, plans for a 403-meter tower, after four years of struggle, were finally buried – an event seen as a major victory for civil society. The Khimki forest appears to be doomed, as Medvedev approved plans for the highway in December after temporarily vetoing the project in August.
Towards the end of the year things continued to change, as even loyal musicians such as Makarevich and Grebenshchikov wrote a letter in defense of the imprisoned businessman and Putin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It’s better late than never. Happy New Year!
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: The sands of time
AUTHOR: By Larisa Doctorow
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Drawings by the St. Petersburg poet Joseph Brodsky, who was famously expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 for “social parasitism,” are on display at the Russian National Library to celebrate the 70th anniversary of his birth. In addition to the poet’s drawings, “The Hourglass” comprises a selection of the Nobel Prize in Literature laureate’s letters, manuscripts, diaries and photos assembled from private collections, archives and trusts.
The image of the hourglass appears frequently in Brodsky’s poems, such as this verse written in 1991 when the poet was seriously ill and knew death was not far away:
“Talisman of a desert
Sand granules rustle
Inside my hourglass.”
Natalya Kraineva, the exhibition’s head curator, sees a connection between Brodsky’s poetry and the ephemeral nature of life, which prompted her to use the motif for the exhibition.
The poet’s drawings, on display at the National Library for the first time, are surprisingly professional and are consciously reminiscent of the sketches and doodles found in the notebooks of Russia’s best loved poet, Alexander Pushkin. They have never been published and are largely unknown to the general public. The exhibition shows that they are not simply entertaining, but also constitute an important source of information about the poet, who settled in the U.S. after his expulsion from the Soviet Union, teaching at universities including Yale. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987.
The exhibition, which was organized with the support of the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg, is particularly valuable thanks to the participation of the Beinecke Library of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Yale University and the American Brodsky Trust. This has made it possible to bring together for the show the parts of the Brodsky archive held in Russia with those in America from the time of Brodsky’s exile, making his life a continuum once again.
The Beinecke Library possesses 241 boxes of documents and manuscripts related to Brodsky, while in St. Petersburg, the biggest archival collection on Brodsky is kept at the Russian National Library. A smaller part is in the city’s museum devoted to the poet Anna Akhmatova, the younger poet’s close friend and mentor. Some materials are in the private hands of the poet’s other St. Petersburg friends and acquaintances.
The materials on display are grouped according to their owners: Those from the Russian National Library and other local collections are shown in glass cases, while the Yale University materials adorn the walls of the library’s newly restored Baron Korf Hall.
Drawing played an important role in the poet’s life. The sketches reflect events in Brodsky’s life, his interests, passions, travel and people he met. Some of them were executed quickly, others appear to be more elaborate, even including multi-figure compositions.
Brodsky began drawing at an early age, well before he began composing poetry. In a school report card from this period, the teacher confirms to Brodsky’s parents: “Your son draws well.”
The poet worked with pen, pencils and crayons. The subjects of drawings in the show are as diverse as his poems, and frequently go hand by hand. Some are serious and melancholy; others were intended as jokes and were sent to his friends.
The sketches appear on letters, envelopes, page margins and draft poems. As with Pushkin’s sketches, there are many self-portraits and portraits of Brodsky’s friends and acquaintances.
Cats occupied a special place in his life and subsequently in his graphic art. He admired their grace and intelligence. A portrait photograph taken in the poet’s later years shows Brodsky embracing a gray-and-white cat.
Brodsky depicted felines snoozing, jumping or strolling. One drawing could serve as an illustration to Perrot’s fairytale, “Puss-in-Boots.” It is a large work executed in crayon. A cat in boots is depicted walking, a cunning smile revealed under his forest of a mustache.
Brodsky’s rendering of a tugboat is another impressive drawing that could serve as an illustration for a children’s book. Next to it is a poem on the same subject.
The sea is another recurring theme in Brodsky’s graphic art, reflecting the fact that the artist grew up in a city port and was not indifferent to its atmosphere.
One of the local collectors who contributed to the exhibition, St. Petersburg author and publisher Yakov Gordin, explained how he acquired his own Brodsky drawings: The first was sent to him by the poet in 1964 from the Arkhangelsk region, where Brodsky was serving a five-year hard labor sentence for “social parasitism.” Another he was given as a birthday present.
Together, the sketches constitute a graphic autobiography of Brodsky, depicting his childhood and adolescence in St. Petersburg, his travels around Russia later in life, and his years in exile in Arkhangelsk, during which he depicted the village of Norinskaya and house in which he lived, and profiles of the friends who visited him.
Artistic influences can also be detected in Brodsky’s graphic art. For example, his cityscapes with courtyards, street corners or views of St. Petersburg’s bridges are reminiscent of Dobuzinsky’s art, while his seascapes bring to mind Matisse or Albert Marquet.
The show concludes with photographs, many of which were taken by Mikhail Milchik, a St. Petersburg scientist and friend of the poet.
“The Hourglass” exhibition is open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday to Friday and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends through Dec. 29 at the Russian National Library, 18 Sadovaya Ulitsa. M: Gostiny Dvor. Tel: 310 3076
TITLE: Room at the Top
AUTHOR: By Tobin Auber
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The location for this new eatery from the Ginza restaurant group is truly spectacular, and recent developments at City Hall may soon be putting it in the news. With the cancellation of plans to build the controversial Gazprom Tower aka Okhta Center, we reported on Tuesday that Gazprom Neft, the intended occupants of the tower, are considering moving to the Quattro Corti business center on Pochtamtskaya Ulitsa, atop which sits the Mansard restaurant. Gazprom Neft subsidiaries have already leased premises in the building, and some have said that it’s about to rent the entire building — does that mean that Mansard is about to become the office canteen? And what about the theory that a certain senior politician and Judo enthusiast may one day head the Constitutional Court, located in stupendously renovated premises just round the corner, and also head the management team at Gazprom? Commuting between the two jobs would be wonderfully easy. Well, it’s just a theory.
Mansard, however, would make the ideal office canteen, with massive floor to ceiling windows, a summer terrace, an interior design by Pluarch, a studio perhaps best known for working with the Dolce&Gabbana fashion house, spectacular views out onto the St. Isaac’s Cathedral and across the entire city, and another no-nonsense Ginza menu (not cheap, but not astronomic either), featuring some very good, albeit unexceptional cooking. All this would certainly help the working day go by.
The restaurant is reached by its own dedicated lift, and stretches round the entire roof of the building — three sides are enclosed by wall-to-ceiling windows, while the fourth will serve as an open air terrace in the summer. Roof-top restaurants have become something of a phenomenon in St. Petersburg, thanks to the flat skyline, but this is easily the pick of the bunch. We ate in incredibly atmospheric twilight (it’s difficult to find any other kind of light at this time of year), and the snow-topped roofs looked eerily beautiful.
And there’s the usual Ginza touch when you come in – a stunning greeter and a group of about four stylishly but casually attired female managers, sitting around examining bits of management paper and pacing back and forth (where do they go?) to check on something important (what, exactly?). This is a characteristic trait at Ginza restaurants that is taken to an almost comical extreme at Mansard. The open kitchens are located in one corner and you have to walk through the entire length of the restaurant to reach the bar. This means that the eye-candy waitstaff and above-mentioned managers are forever quietly pacing back and forth on some crucial errand, creating a hushed buzz. Unfortunate, then, that when we asked one of the managers to actually do something specific she turned out to be about as useful as the proverbial porkpie at a Jewish wedding, and about as tactful and polite into the bargain.
What about the food then? The menu features pasta dishes (170 rubles to 720, $5.50 to $23.50), pizzas (about 300 rubles ($10), although the smoked salmon and red caviar pizza will set you back 590 rubles ($19.25)), a grill section (ranging from pork and vegetable shashlyk (390 rubles, $12.75), to a marble mignon steak with pear and foie gras (1,590 rubles, $52). There are also sandwiches for about 250 rubles ($8), and, of course, it wouldn’t be an authentic Russian restaurant without the ubiquitous sushi and sashimi options.
We started with the baked aubergine with parmesan (250 rubles, $8), which my vegetarian colleague deemed very good, and the homemade Olivier salad with tongue (220 rubles, $7.20), which was mercifully easy on the mayonnaise.
For our main courses we had the mushroom risotto (490 rubles, $16), again deemed well above average by our vegetarian, and the Beef Stroganoff (490 rubles, $16), a well-polished Ginza standard.
As we sat back, sated, and looked out at St. Isaac’s in a twilight snowfall, manageresses quietly shuffling to and fro behind us, we found ourselves wondering if there might be any openings at Gazprom Neft in the near future.
TITLE: 2010: A Quake, a Meltdown, and a Dramatic Rescue
AUTHOR: By Marcus Eliason
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: The disruptions of earthly existence came from some unlikely places in 2010: ash from an Icelandic volcano; the contents of an airline passenger’s underwear; a website called WikiLeaks spilling the secret cables of international diplomacy onto front pages across the world.
More than ever, for good and or bad, history became an experience shared worldwide, from the horror of Haiti’s earthquake at the start of 2010 to the thrill that coursed across the continents in October as Chilean miners trapped underground for 10 weeks were winched to safety.
The year opened with two images — one of triumph, another of tragedy. The world’s tallest skyscraper, more than 160 stories high, was inaugurated in the Persian Gulf state of Dubai, only to be eclipsed within days by the elegant white presidential palace of Haiti, collapsed in an earthquake that killed 230,000 people.
And near year’s end came another defining image, this time from a London street — Prince Charles and his wife Camilla looking shocked and frightened as a mob inflamed by Europe’s deepening financial meltdown besieged the couple’s Rolls-Royce as they headed to the theater.
Here’s a look at the things that the world saw — and will remember — from 2010.
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TERRORISM. It struck far and wide — in Kampala, the Ugandan capital; on a Stockholm street; in the Moscow subway. Other bombings claimed many more lives in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Authorities on three continents aborted a multipronged terror attack aimed at the U.S. from Yemen, seizing two explosive packages addressed to Chicago-area synagogues and packed aboard cargo jets. A car bomb was planted at Times Square in New York City but didn’t go off, and in November the FBI said it thwarted a plot by a Somali teen to bomb a crowd of thousands in Portland, Ore.
The year 2009 had closed in the shadow of the so-called Christmas Day bomber, a Nigerian student who tried to blow himself up on a Detroit-bound airliner with explosives hidden in his underwear. That made 2010 the year of the pat-down and full body scan as airport security was pushed yet another notch higher.
In Europe, attitudes toward Muslims appeared to harden. Parties advocating a crackdown on Islamic activity came off the fringes and scored wins in elections. To some degree the discourse mirrored events in the U.S., where angry confrontations arose over an imam’s plans to build a mosque and community center near the site of the 9/11 attacks.
A Christian pastor in Florida briefly grabbed the world’s attention by threatening to burn a Quran — a Muslim holy book — on Sept. 11. He didn’t, but the mere threat provoked riots in some Muslim countries.
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CONFLICT AND DEFENSE. In Afghanistan, the U.S. escalated its war on the Taliban and suffered rising casualties to more than 480 troops confirmed dead as Christmas approached, the worst year since the 2001 invasion, compared with just over 300 in 2009. In August, the last combat brigade withdrew from Iraq, with all remaining U.S military personnel to be gone by next December. But a similar broad pullback from Afghanistan looked unlikely before 2014.
Iraq’s March election ended inconclusively, and it took nine months of political haggling to swear in a government and give Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki a second term. Meanwhile the fragile calm was repeatedly broken by bombings and shootings, one of the worst of them an attack on a Christian church in Baghdad in October that left 68 dead.
U.S. President Barack Obama signed a nuclear arms reduction deal with Russia, but his effort to broker a deal between Israel and the Palestinians sank into limbo after the U.S. gave up on pressuring Israel to stop building settlements.
Israel’s alliance with the U.S. was shaken by the feud between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the settlements, and Netanyahu’s government drew more international rebuke in May because of a botched raid on a Turkish ferry trying to breach Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. Nine civilians died in the attack, and days later Israel eased the blockade.
The Middle East neared year’s end with no major flare-up of violence, but on the Korean peninsula, hostilities worsened. In March a South Korean warship was sunk with 46 lives lost — South Korea accused North Korea of torpedoing it — and in November, North Korean artillery shells hit an island, killing two South Korean marines and two construction workers, and destroying many homes and stores.
In Thailand, political strife led to a two-month standoff with soldiers and police in the heart of Bangkok. Parts of the stock exchange were torched, along with a huge shopping mall and other landmark buildings.
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DISASTERS. Natural and manmade, they took their toll. Heavy floods took some 2,000 Pakistani lives and at one point put a fifth of the country under water. Earthquakes struck not just Haiti but Turkey, China, Chile and New Zealand. Indonesia suffered deadly volcanic eruptions. In October, a deluge of toxic red sludge from an aluminum plant engulfed several Hungarian towns and burned people through their clothes. The BP oil spill in April was the worst in U.S. history.
The interlinked nature of modern life was reflected in a different way when an Icelandic volcano erupted in April, spewing so much ash that flights in northern Europe were grounded for five days and millions of passengers were stranded.
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POLITICS. In Myanmar, also called Burma, democracy campaigner and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was released after more than seven years under house arrest. It came after the military junta held an election in which neither Suu Kyi nor her party were allowed to participate.
Perhaps the worst political tragedy of the year was a plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and a host of other dignitaries as they traveled to a commemoration of a massacre that had divided Russia and Poland for nearly 70 years. But the unexpected result was a warming of relations between the stricken Polish nation and a sympathetic Kremlin.
In November it was the turn of the U.S. government to feel the heat as WikiLeaks poured out the first of some 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables, exposing the inner thinking of leaders worldwide to the mercies of the media, the Internet, Twitter and Facebook.
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MONEY CRISIS. Europe’s headlines were dominated by joblessness and the harsh remedies prescribed by its governments. Striking workers shut down much of Portugal. Ireland faced its deepest budget cuts in decades. David Cameron, elected in May as the kingdom’s first Conservative prime minister in 13 years, sharply hiked college fees, provoking the riots that reached Prince Charles and his wife.
The gloomy economic picture in Europe and the U.S. was in striking contrast to countries such as Brazil, China and India, which were once among the have-nots of the Third World and are now industrial powerhouses that registered hefty exports and growth rates in 2010.
In midyear, China officially surpassed Japan to become the world’s second biggest economy, eager to flex its newfound diplomatic muscle and showing little inclination to ease its authoritarian ways. When the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize went to Chinese human rights campaigner Liu Xiaobo, Beijing kept him in prison and pressured 16 governments into boycotting the December awards ceremony.
Brazil, on the other hand, seemed to have little trouble managing both national wealth and a flourishing democracy as its years of dictatorship fade into history. President Luiz Inacio da Silva is stepping down after two terms as a leftist-turned-free marketeer who introduced ambitious programs for the poor and became the country’s most popular leader. Elected to succeed him is another ex-leftist, Dilma Rousseff.
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UPS AND DOWNS. South Africa successfully hosted the soccer World Cup, bringing pride to the continent while introducing its global audience to the vuvuzela, the plastic horn whose exuberant braying became the hallmark of the cheerleading.
Africa’s struggle to shake off poverty and bad government had its ups and downs — a coup in Niger, a disputed election in Ivory Coast that led to violence, and a historic step forward in Guinea, where a long era of military rule ended with the West African country’s first election.
Mexico, endured another year of drug war that claimed thousands of lives, yet managed to bounce back from deep recession and celebrated its bicentennial nationwide and peacefully.
Argentina became the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage, while Colombia and Chile elected new presidents (Juan Manuel Santos and Jose Pinera).
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TRIUMPHS. 2010 was the year in which American scientists created the first functional synthetic genome, and the International Space Station set a record for a full decade of continuous human presence. a giant Swiss drill finished Earth’s longest tunnel, and the Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss-French border finally started smashing atomic particles to investigate fundamental mysteries the universe.
But the year’s most memorable drama of human ingenuity and compassion unfolded far to the south, in the Atacama Desert of Chile. There, on Oct. 13, a thin metal tube came up from the depths carrying Florencio Avalos, the first of the 33 miners to be rescued. They had been trapped 700 meters underground for 69 days, during the first 17 of which no one knew if they were alive or dead.
“We have done what the entire world was waiting for,” said foreman Luis Urzua, the last man out. “We had strength, we had spirit, we wanted to fight, we wanted to fight for our families, and that was the greatest thing.”