SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1643 (5), Wednesday, February 16, 2011
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TITLE: New Road Treatment Promises End to Corrosion Misery
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An innovative, Russian-made abrasive substance that could become an alternative to the notorious mixture of sand and salt — the cause of huge puddles of slush on St. Petersburg’s roads and sidewalks — is being tested on local roads.
Titled Eco-Khors-2, this new environmentally friendly blend consists of crushed marble sand and dolomite powder and is similar in its ingredients and effects to abrasive mixtures used in Scandinavian countries and neighboring Finland, where a crushed granite sand mix is used.
“Our material has already been tested successfully in Novgorod and the village of Razmetelevo in the Vsevolozhsky district of the Leningrad Oblast,” said Maria Guz, chairman of the board of directors of Stone House, the company that produces the innovative material. “We have received an official request from the Novgorod authorities to supply the city with our substance but we are waiting to hear from St. Petersburg’s City Hall first — because our capacities won’t be enough to supply both cities.”
Eco-Khorst-2 costs twice as much to produce as the current sand and salt mixture, which costs 1,335 rubles ($46) per ton, but the new product is twice as cost-efficient.
“One hundred and fifty grams of sand and salt mixture is required per square meter, while only half that amount of our material would be necessary,” said Sergei Kokorev, a representative of Stone House and a member of the research group that developed the product. “At present, the sand and salt mix is spread on the roads once a month, while if our material is used it would last for two months. Importantly, most of our mixture would dissolve in the soil, causing no environmental hazards.”
The marble comes from nearby deposits in Karelia.
Guz said the company is fully equipped to provide St. Petersburg with 1.5 million tons of the new mixture per year, the amount that would cover the city’s needs.
On Feb. 10, Stone House held a trial of the new substance on Repninskaya Ulitsa in the Kalininsky district, not far from the Piskaryovskoye Cemetery. The experiment was attended by officials from City Hall, who welcomed the new substance but said that state regulations for road clearing currently do not allow such methods to be implemented.
“We could all see that the new substance works well but, according to the existing regulations for clearing roads of snow and providing de-icing care, the roads must be cleaned down to dry road cover before the sand and salt mixture is sprinkled on it, whereas in Finland, Sweden and other countries the requirements are different: The de-icing mixture can be put on a thin layer of snow,” explained Vadim Mizyukin, a representative of City Hall’s Housing and Maintenance Committee. “To allow this new substance to be used, we would have to contact the State Duma about changing the law — and nobody would really want to take the huge responsibility of ultimately changing the whole system of de-icing treatment in the country.”
Mizyukin said that if small pieces of marble are put on the bare asphalt, there is a risk of those pieces “shooting out” and damaging car windows.
He said however that the new mixture could be used on pedestrian streets and areas around apartment blocks, because there are no strict standards for de-icing treatment in those areas. The official stopped short of estimating how long it could take before salt and sand would fall out of use. He said at least one more test is needed — to see how the new substance works under a heavy snowfall.
Every winter, hundreds of tons of salt and sand are spread on the roads of St. Petersburg, causing protests from ordinary citizens and ecologists alike.
“Nobody has ever tried to calculate how many pairs of winter boots are destroyed every winter by this “cheap and cheerful” de-icing solution,” said Marina Sergeyeva of the www.razrukha.ru online project, which documents the miseries of living in Russia, from starvation to poor housing standards to inadequate snow clearing.
“Look at our neighboring countries: They do not use the backward salt and sand mix, and their roads are safe, and their streets are clean,” Sergeyeva said. “It’s a shame that our authorities seem to be afraid of changing a backward way of doing things.”
TITLE: City Counts Cost of Cold Snap
AUTHOR: By Philip Parker
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As temperatures dropped below -20 degrees Celsius at the beginning of this week, extreme weather conditions have once again been playing havoc with the plans of St. Petersburgers, even, it would appear, thwarting one local man’s suicide attempt.
According to Fontanka.ru, a 34-year-old jumped from a 13th-floor window on Repishchevaya Ulitsa in the Primorsky district on Sunday evening, but found his path to oblivion blocked by a particularly dense pile of snow. So soft was his landing that he was able to get up and return to his apartment, before eventually being taken to hospital.
Earlier the same day, low temperatures caused the postponement of the St. Petersburg section of Ski-Run of Russia 2011, a nationwide mass ski race that was set to attract more than 500,000 participants, including an estimated 15,000 from St. Petersburg. While skiers came out in force in Murmansk (where the average temperature was -26 degrees) and all across Siberia, St. Petersburg was one of several regions in the northwest obliged to postpone the event indefinitely due to the freeze.
The unexpected cold snap also brought a premature end to a widely reported publicity stunt by so-called “women’s movement” XZ, which claims to want to change the world with the power of feminine beauty. The mysterious organization is apparently a project of local PR company Provokatsiya, which calls itself a “News Creation Center” and has previously arranged rallies against abortion and illegal gambling.
The event last Thursday, which involved a gathering of young women in miniskirts attempting to clear snow around Kazan Cathedral, had the dual aim of drawing attention to the state of snow-clearing in the city and attracting potential foreign husbands to St. Petersburg, but was declared a shambles by Rosbalt.ru.
The news web site reported that after 40 minutes of not particularly effective shoveling, the young women decided the cold was too much for them. They had cleared very little snow, but had however attracted the attention of a group of U.S. students and a tourist from Angola, whom they presented with a hard hat and a shovel. The large posse of journalists and photographers who turned up to cover the event left frozen and disgruntled, if the tone of the reports is anything to go by.
Reporters — and a number of bureaucrats — were also left out in the cold on Monday when they came to the Moscow Railway Station to see Governor Valentina Matviyenko test the metal detectors that have been installed at the main entrance as part of new anti-terrorist measures on public transport.
The governor was several minutes late, according to Rosbalt.ru, by which time those in attendance had already worked out that the detectors were of little practical use. As they are set off by almost anybody dressed normally and carrying a bag, the police will still only stop travelers whom they think look suspicious. Matviyenko later established that there were normally only four members of the transport police on duty at the station at any one time. There are also, it should be noted, several unguarded entrances to the station still open.
The city governor’s other activities last week included berating leaders in the construction industry for giving presents to bureaucrats on public holidays. “Don’t bring flowers, cognac or chocolates,” said Matviyenko. “People are different, and some may not be able to resist the temptation,” Fontanka.ru reported.
While many concentrated on this part of her speech to the Consulting Council on Issues of City Planning Development, less attention was paid to her subtle re-setting of the borders in the war on corruption when she told attendees: “Who the corruptors are, you or the bureaucrats, remains to be seen… Don’t give bribes, and there won’t be any corruption.” What effect her words will have on the number of gifts the governor herself receives come 8 March — International Women’s Day — will probably never be known.
TITLE: Preservationists Face Jail Time on Traffic Charges
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Seven preservationists face up to 15 days in custody on charges of violating traffic rules and failure to obey a police officer’s orders after they were detained Saturday for blocking trucks near the Literary House at 68 Nevsky Prospekt. They were attempting to draw attention to the demolition of the historic building, which they claim is illegal.
Their cases were due to be heard in court on Wednesday, Feb 16.
Living City coordinator Pyotr Zabirokhin, who was also detained Saturday, said the preservationists were first pushed into the road by police officers, who then detained them for traffic rule violations. He said the activists were held for four hours in a police precinct.
Although the building has been virtually demolished since work began on Jan. 7, Zabirokhin said the activists were now trying to save the adjoining buildings.
“The developer continues to commit violations, now of construction work regulations, inflicting damage to the adjoining buildings by using heavy vehicles,” Zabirokhin said by phone Tuesday.
“On the other hand, we want other developers in future to know that they won’t get away with such obvious violations of the law.”
The preservationists say the large Kamaz trucks used by the developer Avtokombalt to take out construction trash from the site are banned in central St. Petersburg, were dirty and did not have the required documents.
In addition, the driver of one of the trucks was reported to have produced a document stating that it was employed to transport snow away from Palace Square. On photographs showing Saturday’s incident, one truck has a sign reading “Snow” on its front window.
During a similar event on Feb. 6, participants said they were attacked by construction workers and employers of a private security firm hired by the developer Avtokombalt while the police stood by and failed to intervene, they said.
Journalist Ilya Shmakov, who was present at the scene, wrote a report to the central district’s police chief, complaining that one of the attackers had damaged his video camera by pulling off the folding display and throwing it into the Fontanka River. Avtokombalt denied the attack.
The St. Petersburg law allows the demolition of buildings in the center only in the event that they are “in an irreversibly poor state,” which the building was not, preservationists say.
Avtokombalt received a permit from the authorities on Dec. 30.
TITLE: British Pupils Honor Siege Survivors
AUTHOR: By Jacob Gordon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A group of British schoolchildren visited St. Petersburg this week to present a book they have compiled devoted to the Siege of Leningrad. Pupils from Calday Grange Grammar School, accompanied by their Russian teacher, went to the city’s Siege Museum on Monday to meet with siege survivors and present the book, titled “The Siege of Leningrad Through the Eyes of a Child.”
Few events loom larger in St. Petersburg’s history than the so-called 900 days. From September 1941 to January 1944, the city (then called Leningrad) was under siege by Nazi Germany. In addition to constant bombardment, Leningraders had to endure devastating food and water shortages. Those who survived got by on 125 grams of bread a day, if they were lucky; many were reduced to eating tree bark or pets. Modern historians estimate that about 1.5 million — a third of the city’s prewar population — perished.
One of the cruelest episodes of Nazi Germany’s war on the Soviet Union, the Siege of Leningrad left an indelible mark on the city and its people. Petersburgers have long been known for their fierce attachment to their native city, and the sheer fortitude of the survivors has inspired a deep sense of pride among their descendents. Nevertheless, the siege of Leningrad scarcely exists in the West’s collective memory. The reasons for Westerners’ ignorance of the siege are complicated, but the horrific nature of the event is certainly a factor. Most people simply cannot begin to contemplate what it must have been like to live through the 900 days.
But Yekaterina Hughes, head of the Russian Department at England’s Calday Grange Grammar School, is determined to keep memories of the siege alive. Her students, working with Russian schoolchildren — descendants of siege survivors — have produced a book titled “The Siege of Leningrad Through the Eyes of a Child.” The book contains siege survivors’ remembrances contributed by the Russians alongside artistic responses, such as drawings and poetry, to the siege by their British counterparts. Though the book features some basic history, its aim is not to provide a comprehensive overview of the siege, but to produce an emotional response.
By and large, it succeeds brilliantly. Even a general knowledge of what happened during the siege hardly prepares one for the emotional impact of personal experience. Many of the stories, poems, and drawings in the book are extremely moving. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, its overall tone is not one of despair. Along with all the suffering, moments of random kindness are also recalled: In one of the most touching stories, a woman gives her bread ration to a dying neighbor. The book as a whole conveys the belief that our common humanity can overcome any cruelty.
Hughes and her students presented the book at the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad on Feb. 14. Four siege survivors were also present. Like that of the book itself, the tone of their remembrances was surprisingly optimistic. One of them emphasized the extent to which ordinary life continued to go on: Movie theaters and concert halls remained open. Another spoke of the resolve of those who remained alive. “We always knew victory would come,” she said.
TITLE: ‘Animal Cop’ Denied Further Investigation
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A judge rejected a request from the lawyer of police officer Vadim Boiko, who is on trial for “exceeding authority using police tactical equipment,” to send the case back to the prosecutor’s office for further investigation at the second hearing of the case Tuesday.
Boiko was one of the officers who dispersed a Strategy 31 rally in defense of the right of assembly on July 31. Although police beatings have been frequently reported during the rallies, no other officer has yet been charged with the offence, which is punishable by five to 10 years in prison.
Boiko’s lawyer Anna Myurrei said that the charges were “formalistic or absent altogether,” Interfax reported. She said that the prosecutors had failed to indicate what the illegal nature of the use of police tactical weapons was, and described the rally as “illegal.”
Myurrei also said it was not clear from the prosecutors’ indictment which actions had caused pain to the victim and what consequences they had had for him. She said that “defects in the indictment” could influence the objectivity of the court’s decision.
Judge Yevgeny Didyk disagreed, however, and refused to send the case back, setting the next hearing for Feb. 24.
Boiko, who insists he is innocent, refused to speak to the press.
In December, Boiko appeared alongside Dmitry Semyonov on a talk show on NTV Television, when Semyonov, who was hit in the face by Boiko at the rally, cited police regulations banning officers from beating people with a baton on the head or genitals. “Sometimes you have to,” Boiko replied.
The criminal case against Boiko was filed by the prosecutor’s office after videos and photographs of the officer swearing, calling protesters “animals,” hitting Semyonov across the face with his baton and dragging a woman by her hair spread across the Internet and media.
Semyonov said Boiko seized him by his hair and hit him with a baton during the rally after he told Boiko that it was inappropriate to swear. After he was hit, Semyonov, who said he was an onlooker rather than a participant of the rally, was detained and charged with violating the rules on holding public events.
Although the St. Petersburg department of the Interior Affairs Ministry (GUVD) said in September that its own probe did not find “any violations of the law” on the part of the police, the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor’s Office continued an investigation into Boiko’s actions.
Although three other people reported being beaten and harassed by Boiko during the July 31 rally, they were not officially recognized as victims in the case.
Alexander Karpushkin, who received several blows to the head from a baton and was put into a police bus with his face covered with blood and later taken to hospital, is suing the Investigative Committee over the decision not to include him in the trial.
Svetlana Pavlushina, who was dragged by Boiko by her hair, said that neither she nor Eduard Balagurov, whose face and body were left bruised after he was beaten during the rally, have received no summons or answers to their complaint since they were brought to a face-to-face interrogation with Boiko at the investigator’s offices in October.
Since the Boiko controversy, the police have started wearing ski masks to disperse the Strategy 31 rallies that take place on Nevsky Prospekt on every 31st day of months that have 31 days.
After the most recent rally on Jan. 31, Maria Shariya was taken from a police precinct in an ambulance and diagnosed with concussion after being punched several times by a masked officer at the demonstration. She had been detained for holding a poster featuring the words “Constitution of the RF (Russian Federation).”
TITLE: City’s Fish Face Freezing Fight for Life
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: As the long winter drags on, fish in the ponds of St. Petersburg have become increasingly desperate for oxygen, clustering in vast, thrashing masses at shrinking holes in the ice.
Swimmers who brave the frigid temperatures for an invigorating dip find themselves stroking through swarms of fish that flock to the open water. The fish are so dense in number that humans can easily reach out and catch them with their hands.
Not only does ice block oxygen that could be diffused into the water from the air, but it also impedes sunlight from reaching oxygen-generating plants and algae in the water.
“The only way to help the fish in this situation is to make more holes in the ice,” says Sergei Titov of St. Petersburg’s Lakes and Rivers Fish Sector Institute.
TITLE: New Documents Link ‘Palace’ to Putin
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — New documents confirm that the Kremlin property chief approved construction of a posh seaside palace rumored to be a residence for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, despite his explicit denial of any link to the project, a newspaper said.
Vladimir Kozhin, chief of the Office for Presidential Affairs, said last week that his agency is not involved with the construction of a mansion in the Krasnodar region that whistleblowers linked to Putin.
But Kozhin had his deputy authorize the construction, and even personally signed relevant papers, copies of which were made public by Novaya Gazeta on Friday.
The first reports about “Putin’s Palace,” allegedly worth $1 billion, appeared in December, when St. Petersburg-based businessman Sergei Kolesnikov complained about the project in an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev.
An investment contract released by the newspaper lists the Office for Presidential Affairs and a company called Lirus as parties involved in the construction of a resort complex occupying some 740,000 square meters in the Krasnodar region city of Gelendzhik.
Lirus was to invest 400 million rubles ($13 million) in the project, scheduled for completion in 2008, and was to own 70 percent of the developed area, with the rest going to the Office for Presidential Affairs.
The document is dated 2005 — when Putin was the president — and was signed by Kozhin’s deputy, Sergei Kovalyov. A supplement to the contract, also available on the newspaper’s web site, lists the Federal Guard Service as developer and is signed by Kozhin.
Kolesnikov told Novaya Gazeta that Lirus, a subsidiary of Rosinvest, was established in 2005 “on the order of Putin” by Nikolai Shamalov, a long-time friend of the prime minister.
Another company mentioned in the leaked documents, Indokopas, belongs to a firm called Rirus and is co-owned by Shamalov, according to Spark Interfax business database. Rirus and Lirus have the same St. Petersburg address in the database.
A spokesman for the Office for Presidential Affairs, Viktor Khrekov, declined to comment Monday, saying that Kozhin has “spoken exhaustingly on the matter,” RIA-Novosti reported.
The Black Sea project “has nothing to do with our office or the head of the government. We never did any construction there and aren’t planning any,” Kozhin was quoted as saying earlier.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also denied reports about Putin’s link to the project.
A set of photos of the alleged palace was published last month by RuLeaks.org, a Russian offshoot of WikiLeaks. More photos were released by the Environment Watch North Caucasus group, members of which visited the site on Saturday.
The photographs, available at the group’s web site, show a cream-colored two-story building in a classical style, with walkways and a neat formal garden. The Russian coat of arms, a gold-plated double-headed eagle, is installed above the main gates.
Activists, who were accompanied by Sobesednik magazine reporter Rimma Akhmetova, were briefly detained by officers of the Federal Guard Service while taking pictures of the mansion, group member Dmitry Shevchenko told The St. Petersburg Times on Sunday.
Environment Watch North Caucasus is investigating the palace because it is being built illegally on protected forestland, Shevchenko said.
The site was patrolled by private security guards, who called police and Federal Guard Service officers after encountering the activists, he said.
“At first they behaved correctly, but blocked our way when we wanted to leave the place,” Shevchenko said.
But then a private security guard forcibly took away a modem one of the activists attempted to use to send photos he took, he said.
The group’s personal belongings were also confiscated, and neither the belongings nor the gadget were returned despite their protests, the activist added.
No officials commented on the story Monday.
“We will continue our efforts to raise public awareness of the situation,” Shevchenko said. “This is the only thing we can do.”
TITLE: New Rules For Expats Will Have Mixed Effect
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — New rules supposed to make expatriates’ lives easier are to come into force Tuesday, but experts fear that they will actually produce new headaches.
The positive news is that foreigners will no longer be required to de-register when they leave their place of residence for more than three working days.
The Border Guard Service will automatically inform the migration authorities when a foreigner is leaving the country, and a local office of the Federal Migration Service will do the same for those who travel domestically, lawyers said Monday.
“Basically, de-registering can be deleted from expatriates’ vocabulary,” said Valery Fedoreyev of Baker & McKenzie’s Moscow office.
The reform, spelled out in a legal alert published on the law firm’s site, removes a major hassle for businesses employing foreigners, which in the past resulted in fines of up to 800,000 rubles ($27,300), when staff forgot to de-register before departure.
On the downside, the reform abolishes the current practice of registering foreigners at their employers’ address.
Instead, authorities now only accept addresses that correspond with a person’s real place of residence.
Consequently, landlords will have to go through long lines at post offices or Migration Service offices to register their tenants every time they return from trips longer than three working days.
Faced with complaints from foreign business associations, the Federal Migration Service agreed last week to accept registrations from third parties, if they have notarized power of attorney from the landlord.
This means landlords will be able to delegate registering foreign tenants to the employers.
Migration Service spokespeople did not answer repeated calls for comment on Monday.
But experts interviewed by The St. Petersburg Times said that the compromise raised more questions than answers.
“What if a landlord refuses to cooperate or lives abroad?” asked one representative of a Western business association who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
Most foreigners are obliged to register within three working days of arrival. Failure to produce valid registration when stopped by police may result in a fine of up to 5,000 rubles ($170).
The cumbersome registration rules have recently been relaxed for highly skilled specialists. Members of this group, defined by a 2 million ruble ($66,000) per annum minimum salary, need to register only 90 days after arrival in the country and re-register a new address only if they stay there for more than 30 days.
Still unresolved is another painful reform for expats — a $5 tariff on each kilogram of household goods brought into the country.
The rule, introduced with the Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan last summer, regularly levies bills of tens of thousands of dollars on families relocating to Russia.
TITLE: Russia Sees Increase in Billionaires Following Crisis
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Vladimir Lisin earned the most among the country’s billionaires last year, retaining his top spot in the latest ranking of the richest Russians, released Monday by Finans magazine.
Novolipetsk Steel chairman and controlling shareholder Lisin increased his wealth 50 percent to $28.3 billion, according to the 2011 ranking.
His fortune, which increased in line with the value of his company as the stock market and the economy rebounded, is comparable to the budget of oil-rich Nigeria or Pennsylvania for this year.
“Full and unconditional victory!” Finans said about Lisin in presenting the ranking, where the next most affluent Russian, Mikhail Prokhorov, was worth $22.7 billion.
Lisin held the title for a second straight year. The Russian edition of Forbes also awarded him the top spot last year in a similar ranking that usually comes out in the magazine’s May issue.
Steel stocks rose more than the broader market last year, Finans reported. The MICEX Index of 30 stocks grew 22 percent.
Another steelmaking investor, Alisher Usmanov, knocked Roman Abramovich out of the third spot in the ranking, showing $19.9 billion in personal wealth. It’s the first time Abramovich, now valued at $17.1 billion, sank below the top three since the magazine began compiling the rich list seven years ago.
As one more reason for Usmanov’s surge through the ranks, the telecom company MegaFon — where he owns a 39-percent stake — overtook VimpelCom as No. 2 in terms of revenue from cellular communication services last year, Finans said. Also, Internet firm Mail.ru Group, part-owned by Usmanov, had a successful share float last year, raising $900 million in London.
Abramovich, whose almost unchanged wealth puts him in fifth place, lost some ground because his holdings include a lot of real estate, a sector that returned to growth slowly in Russia and still looked unstable in Europe, the magazine reported.
Finans recorded a significant improvement in the value of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s acquaintances and former neighbors.
His judo sparring partner from youth, Arkady Rotenberg, who now controls energy contractor Stroigazmontazh, shot up 17 levels to rank as the 63rd richest person with an estimated fortune of $1.75 billion. He also holds a stake in road and bridge builder Mostotrest, one of the biggest contractors in the preparations to hold the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The firm sold shares to the public last year for $388 million.
Rotenberg shares the rank with his younger brother and business partner Boris.
Yury Kovalchuk, Putin’s neighbor at his dacha in the 1990s, bagged the position of the country’s 115th richest person after soaring upward 20 places. Kovalchuk, the majority owner of Bank Rossiya and National Media Group, owns assets worth an estimated $970 million. The media group said earlier this month that it had acquired 25 percent in Russia’s most popular television station, Channel One, from Abramovich for a mere $150 million.
Nikolai Shamalov, another dacha neighbor and Bank Rossiya co-owner, surged 120 places to 184th place. He is worth $590 million, according to the ranking.
Oil trader Gennady Timchenko, who has described himself as Putin’s acquaintance, holds 17th place, up six places from the previous ranking. A co-owner of Gunvor, one of the world’s largest crude traders, Timchenko is worth $8.9 billion, Finans said. The businessman also owns almost a quarter of gas producer Novatek and — sources have said — is buying the Murmansk Commercial Sea Port.
Yelena Baturina, wife of former Mayor Yury Luzhkov, tumbled to 94th place, down 47 spots in this first ranking after President Dmitry Medvedev fired her husband over loss of confidence last fall. The past year erased half of her wealth, which Finans has now estimated at $1.1 billion.
The number of billionaires surpassed the pre-crisis level for the first time, reaching 114 last year, the magazine said. There were 101 of them in 2007, it said.
TITLE: Assistant: Judge Was Pressured Over Yukos
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Moscow judge who sentenced ex-Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner to jail in December was pressured and did not even write the verdict he read, the judge’s assistant said.
Analysts and Khodorkovsky’s supporters alike have long been calling the trial politically motivated, but this is the first time a court employee has added to the allegations.
The report could prompt a reinvestigation of the case, which is pending appeal, but it is unclear whether that will actually happen. The judge in the case, Viktor Danilkin, was quick to dismiss the story as “slander.”
Natalya Vasilyeva, Danilkin’s assistant and spokeswoman during the 20-month-long trial, made her sensational statement in an interview with Gazeta.ru released Monday.
The text of the verdict that extended the sentences of Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, already serving eight-year prison terms on economic charges, until 2017, was written by Danilkin’s superiors, she said.
“The verdict was brought from the Moscow City Court, I know it for sure,” Vasilyeva said. “It’s absolutely obvious.”
She said she knows the names of the judges who penned the text, but preferred to withhold them for now.
Danilkin had to report to the Moscow City Court on the inner workings of the trial, Vasilyeva said, adding that the outcome of “political cases” is usually decided in advance, and a judge who refuses to go along with it usually faces dismissal.
Danilkin is likely to be sacked anyway because his superiors are unhappy with his handling of the case, which he allowed to drag on for too long, Vasilyeva, who claimed to have worked with the judge and his court circle on a daily basis during the trial, said in the interview.
She also expressed sympathy for her boss, saying constant pressure has made him “glum, depressed and sad.”
The experience also disillusioned her, which was what prompted her to report the story to the media despite the fact that she was likely to lose her job over the scandal, Vasilyeva said.
“I wanted to become a judge, but the law has turned into a fairy tale for me,” she said. “I realized that it’s not true that a judge is subject only to the law. A judge obeys higher authorities.”
Court officials vehemently denied the report.
Danilkin himself said Vasilyeva’s report was false and did not rule out suing her, Interfax reported.
Moscow City Court spokeswoman Anna Usachyova called the interview a “provocation before the appeal hearing,” the date of which is not set.
“I’m sure that Vasilyeva will backtrack on her comments: There have been such cases before. Witnesses testify and later say they were forced to,” Usachyova said.
Usachyova also said Vasilyeva has already filed a resignation request, but Danilkin’s aide said later that she has only gone on vacation, not quit her job, RIA-Novosti reported.
TITLE: Pizza Chain Unveils Ambitious Plans
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: WorldWide Papa’s, the exclusive regional developer of Papa John’s pizza restaurants, is planning to open up to 40 new locations over the next three years in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast. Eventually, the company intends to expand its presence to up to 200 restaurants in the area.
“By 2012, we plan to be the biggest pizza chain in this city,” Darrin Stock, CEO and founder of the company, said in a telephone interview Monday.
Stock said WWP was inspired to come up with the major expansion plan on the St. Petersburg pizza restaurant market when they realized that existing restaurants in the city “generated some of the top revenues” among the company’s 3,000 restaurants worldwide, with an average turnover of 1.2 million euros.
“To match Russian culture, WWP transitioned the Papa John’s deliver and take-out presence, common to the U.S. market, to also include a more traditional, family-style ‘dine-in’ concept. Based on this proven successful mode, WWP plans an eventual expansion up to 200 restaurants with an initial build out of 40 locations,” Stock said.
“In St. Petersburg we’ll also be more focused on the speed of pizza delivery and the quality of the product, which Russians traditionally value a lot,” Stock said.
WorldWide Papa’s opened its first dine-in restaurant in St. Petersburg in September 2005. It broke even in terms of revenue in just 15 months. Since then three more new restaurants have been opened, the last restaurant becoming profitable in just one month of operation, the company said.
“With the fifth restaurant already under development (scheduled to open on March 5), WWP will use the bulk of the proceeds to open an additional nine new Papa John’s restaurants in 2011 and up to 40 locations by 2014 in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast,” it said.
Alexander Dubkov, regional manager of Pizza Hut in St. Petersburg, said “the market for casual dining in the city was not full enough and could provide good opportunities for business expansion.”
“I think Papa John’s has a good chance of opening 40 or more restaurants of this kind. The only problem could be difficulties renting appropriate locations,” Dubkov said.
Dubkov said Pizza Hut had 11 restaurants of that kind in St. Petersburg and no plans to open new Pizza Huts in the city this year. The company, which also has fast food chains Burger King and KFC in its portfolio, is currently focusing on the expansion of KFC, Dubkov said.
Andrei Petrakov, executive director of restaurant consulting company Restcon, said it was hard to predict how successfully the plans of WWP could be implemented.
“I think there’s space for 40 new pizza restaurants or even more on the market in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast. However, I doubt there is a necessity for 200 venues of the kind, even in the next 10 years,” Petrakov said.
“At the same time, we can say that pizza restaurants and services are very popular in Russia. I’d say this product has even acquired the status of a national one by now. It mainly has to do with the fact that pizzas are usually a good quality product sold at reasonable prices,” Petrakov said.
Papa John’s International, Inc., based in the United States, is the world’s third largest take-out and pizza delivery company, with more than 3,600 restaurants operating in 32 countries throughout the world. The U.S. company developed into one of the largest providers of pizza to consumers through a strict adherence to a concept of ‘Better Quality — Better Ingredients’, distinguishing itself from competitors, the company said.
Beginning Monday, WWP began trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on the First Quotation Board. The public offering includes 29 million new shares at 50 to 70 Eurocents.
TITLE: EU-Russia Forum Due
To Attract VIPs to Finland
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Second EU-Russia Innovation Forum, which will be held in the Finnish town of Lappeenranta on May 25-26, looks set to attract top-flight politicians as well as more than 100 Russian and 200 European companies, representing some of the most important businesses on the continent. One confirmed participant of the event is Finnish President Tarja Halonen, while confirmation is pending from the Kremlin concerning Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s attendance.
Innovation is a pet topic for Medvedev, mentioned at just about any business conference happening in the country, with or without the presence of the Russian leader.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who attended the first forum in Lappeenranta last year, has retained his pet topic — energy security and energy efficiency — since his tenure as president.
In this respect, the program of the forum, which covers both of these areas, can indeed be complimented for a graceful diplomatic effort. The major themes of the Second EU-Russia Innovation Forum include innovation in management, energy efficiency and renewable energy, information and communication technologies, partnerships for modernization, and healthcare.
“These very topics have been among the core subjects discussed at the highest level between Russia and EU countries during the course of the past year,” said Tom Hultin, the deputy mayor of Lappeenranta, who oversees, in particular, economic development and marketing issues. “A list of more specific issues is currently being developed.”
The First EU-Russia Innovation Forum took place in May last year and drew more than 500 delegates from 20 European countries.
The participation fee for this year’s event is currently 375 euros before the end of March, and 500 euros afterward.
According to Seppo Miettinen, the mayor of Lappeenranta, the city was chosen as a host for the EU-Russia Innovation Forum thanks to its prime location on the Russian-Finnish border and its thriving position as a busy center for economic cooperation between Russia and the European Union.
The city is home to the Lappeenranta University of Technology, or LUT, one of the most important centers in this field in Finland.
In 2010, Lappeenranta received 700,000 visitors from Russia. This year, the city expects a 15-percent rise in the number of Russian travelers and, by 2013, the city is hoping to attract one million Russian visitors per year.
Hultin said Lappeenranta would very much welcome branch offices of Russian companies, including those working in the innovations sector. At present, most of the Russian businesses represented in the city are focused primarily on computer programming and the production of components.
On a more casual note, the deputy mayor mentioned the absence of a good Russian restaurant in Lapeenranta, which he said offered a superb business opportunity. “There is a huge appetite for such a venue in the city - I can absolutely guarantee full occupancy,” Hultin said, advertising himself as one potential regular customer.
For more information on the Second EU-Russia Innovation Forum, visit the event’s website at: www.eurussiainnoforum.com
TITLE: Petersburg ‘Guest Card’ Tested
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Tests have begun on an electronic “guest card” for visitors to St. Petersburg. Since November, the card has been available in kiosks of the City Tourist Information Center, and through the web site of the company Guest Card, said the director of the project, Viktor Kurtyshev.
The card costs 1,100 rubles ($37.50), and gives free admission to St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood, the Russian Museum and the Peter and Paul Fortress. The price also includes a bus tour of the city from City-Tour, and is valid for discounts of 10 percent at a number of hotels, restaurants, and shops.
TITLE: Court Rules on Shareholder Rights
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Kazmin and Filipp Stepkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Supreme Arbitration Court has ruled that minority shareholders have the right to request any document, including agreements with contractors, from a company they have shares in — but not from its subsidiaries.
Vedomosti has obtained a copy of the final draft of the Supreme Arbitration Court’s clarifications on shareholders’ rights to information.
The court approved the document in full at a December presidium. Soon a memorandum will be signed, Chairman Anton Ivanov told Vedomosti. Supreme Arbitration Court memorandums are legally binding for all courts, said Dmitry Stepanov, a partner at the Yegorov, Puginsky, Afanasyev & Partners law firm.
A minority shareholder does not need to explain why he is requesting information, the memorandum states, and he can demand documents even from a time before he was a shareholder. At the shareholder’s request, the company is required to provide documents by mail, charging a “reasonable” copying fee.
But there are a number of situations where the company can deny the request, such as a repeat inquiry requesting old documentation that does not offer value for analysis — because the statute of limitations has expired, for example, or when the minority shareholder is acting in the interest of a competitor.
The shareholder can request any document from the company, including contracts and documents containing commercial or other types of secrets. The company can have the recipient sign a nondisclosure agreement or delete the secret information in documents.
In this respect, the court’s clarifications alter judicial practice, said Roman Bevzenko, head of the court’s private law department. For instance, minority shareholders in Ingosstrakh requested copies of labor contracts, but the company refused to provide the documents, and the courts ruled this legal, Bevzenko said.
Subsidiaries’ documents cannot be requested by someone who is a shareholder only in the parent company, the memorandum says.
Oleg Zaitsev, chief counselor at the Supreme Arbitration Court, noted while discussing the memorandum at the presidium that often a company’s assets are often placed in subsidiaries, so shareholders need information about them as well.
If lawmakers choose to, they can require subsidiaries to provide information to the parent company’s shareholders, Ivanov explained. But subsidiaries are considered independent legal entities.
Well-known Rosneft minority shareholder Alexei Navalny took a positive view of the memorandum. For basic documents, such as protocols by a board of directors, the court fully supports minority shareholders, he said. Right now companies refuse to provide even that type of document or demand that it be picked up in person — in Surgut, for instance.
Rosneft refused to provide Navalny with protocols, citing commercial secrets, among other reasons. The company lost that dispute in its first hearing. The case is now being appealed.
A Rosneft spokesman declined to comment on the memorandum, which he had not seen.
United Company RusAl, which owns 25.13 percent of Norilsk Nickel, has not been able to obtain protocols from Norilsk’s board of directors. RusAl is pleased with the court’s conclusions, a RusAl spokesman said. A Norilsk spokesperson declined to comment.
TITLE: France’s Alstom Signs $675M Turbine Venture
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: RusHydro and France’s Alstom signed a deal Friday to build a 500 million euro ($677 million) turbine plant in the republic of Bashkortostan.
The two companies will finalize the joint venture before the end of February, the companies’ chief executives said Friday.
RusHydro chief Yevgeny Dodd and Alstom head Phillipe Cochet inked the deal at a ceremony attended by President Dmitry Medvedev in the Bashkir capital of Ufa.
“Final conditions of the partnership will be agreed by the end of February,” Dodd told reporters Friday.
Neither Dodd nor Cochet was prepared to reveal who would take the controlling stake in the new firm when asked by reporters about financing they responded that “each will finance his stake.”
The two sides did not reveal any other financial details of the project.
“The factory will be oriented to the production of hydroelectric equipment for small hydro plants with a capacity of up to 25 megawatts, and also automatic control and complex security systems,” RusHydro said in a statement.
Eventually, the plant will produce parts for 100 megawatt and 150 megawatt stations, according to the company’s statement.
Construction work will begin in April 2011, and the plant will begin production in 2013, the two companies said. The first items off the line will be two turbine units for the Kubanskiye Cascade, a series of nine hydro-electric stations on the Kuban river in the Karachayevo-Cherkessia republic and Stavropol region.
Alstom signed a deal to upgrade the Kubanskiye Cascade plants in December during a visit to Russia by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon.
The new plant will eventually turn out 12 sets of equipment for the Kubanskiye Cascade, Interfax reported.
Alstom, which regards itself as a global leader in power generation and transmission and rail infrastructure, will bring cash, technology and know-how to the new venture, Cochet said.
Dodd said he believed that the management side of the business should be run by Alstom, “because they are builders — we have more operators and marketers.”
The two sides eventually hope to sell production from the new plant to customers across the former Soviet Union.
RusHydro characterized the Alstom deal as a pilot project for a future “industrial technopark” in Bashkortostan that the company has agreed to build with the republic’s government.
TITLE: Orthodox Church Now Dabbling in Technology
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Adynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: While President Dmitry Medvedev is reverently pushing the country toward his sacred goal of “modernization,” the clergy has launched its own quest for new ways to reach the flock — offering believers special cell phone tariffs and Bible quotations via text messages.
Last year, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, said priests should go online and use social networks to preach to Internet users. He did not mention mobile services specifically, but church presence is becoming ever more felt in the handset lately.
This year, a Moscow-based Orthodox movement started a messaging service providing sayings taken from the Holy Scriptures in a bid to help people learn the Bible and feel unity.
The “Good Word” service, launched by the Voskreseniye (Resurrection) community, offers quotations from the Bible and writings of the Orthodox saints, abbot Ioasaph Sorokin of the Church of the Resurrection in Kadashi, the priest behind the project, said.
Every morning, Sorokin personally selects two quotations to be sent to believers across the country — some of whom write back.
“One woman got back to me texting that she wished she could receive my messages 10 times a day, in order to sin less,” Sorokin said in a telephone interview.
While Sorokin is offering spiritual services for free, a number of companies use new-generation technologies aimed at believers in a more profitable way.
The regional mobile operator Smarts, for one, provides a range of spiritual services and tariffs for Orthodox believers.
TITLE: 25% in Channel One Sold
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Roman Abramovich has sold a 25 percent stake in Channel One television to Yury Kovalchuk, majority shareholder in Bank Rossiya, making the latter a new major player on the Russian media market.
The National Media Group, Kovalchuk’s media holding, has completed a deal to purchase a 100 percent stake of RastrKom-2002, which owns 25 percent of Channel One, Bank Rossiya’s press service confirmed in an e-mailed statement to The St. Petersburg Times.
Kommersant, which broke the story last Wednesday, cited a source close to the deal who estimated the value of the stake sold at $150 million and pointed out that the deal was completed late last year.
TITLE: ChelPipe Halts IPO
In London
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Steel pipe maker ChelPipe postponed its initial public offering in London last Thursday, making it the second Russian company in the last two weeks to scrap listing plans and further darkening what was expected to be a bright horizon of share offerings this year.
ChelPipe, one of the biggest suppliers of pipes for the oil and gas and other industries, said it had decided to cancel the IPO because of the “current unusual market sentiment.”
The decision was made to postpone the IPO because “the market hadn’t valued the company’s potential in full,” a source in the company told The St. Petersburg Times, declining to be identified.
ChelPipe became the second company to cancel its IPO plans following pig-iron and coking coal producer Koks, which postponed its $480 million London listing earlier this month “as a result of market conditions.”
Marina Shestakova, of Wermuth Asset Management, an investment company focusing on Russia, said investors got nervous after the Koks postponement, which resulted in reduced interest in ChelPipe.
The company’s order book, which was closed late last Wednesday, was reportedly covered at the bottom limit of the price range, although ChelPipe didn’t confirm the information.
The range for ChelPipe’s offering was set at $3.50 to $4.60 per ordinary share, which would bring its market capitalization to $2 billion to $2.7 billion, the company said in a statement late last month.
The pipe maker was seeking to reduce debt by raising $472.5 million to $621 million from the IPO.
“The company appreciates the interest shown by the investor community and wishes to thank investors for taking the time to meet with management over the last few weeks,” ChelPipe said in a statement posted on the London Stock Exchange web site.
This year was expected to be very fruitful in terms of listings by Russian companies, said Maxim Rozenblit, business development director of corporate finance at Metropol.
“But one can hardly expect anything good in such an … environment, with the market demonstrating a declining trend in recent weeks,” he said, adding that ChelPipe’s expectations could have been too rosy.
ChelPipe got caught in difficult market conditions, as China’s central bank raised its interest rate earlier this week, said Dmitry Smolin, metals and mining analyst at UralSib Capital.
“As a result, shares of commodity companies, especially those in emerging markets, got under pressure,” he said.
Smolin also said the pipe maker could have listed shares as planned if it gave a discount, adding, however, that ChelPipe is likely to try the offering again in the fall.
TITLE: Force-Feeding Political Indoctrination
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
TEXT: The Education and Science Ministry headed by Andrei Fursenko has a good shot at winning the dubious title of Least-Loved Federal Agency, an honor once incontestably held by the Health and Social Development Ministry when it was headed by Mikhail Zurabov. He was disgraced after trying to monetize pensioners’ benefits, which sparked widespread protests in 2005.
Criticism has not subsided over standardized university-entrance exams that were intended to end corruption by leveling the educational playing field for rich and poor, urbanites and people from the provinces. But the exams have only given the advantage to the most corrupt regions and turned the educational process into a mindless rote process of memorizing facts instead of testing students’ intellectual ability.
Criticism is also growing over reforms to science education, as another scandal unfolds over proposed changes to the curriculum for upper classes. It is difficult to recall a faster growing or larger-scale public backlash to a proposal by the authorities. And no wonder: The proposed changes would affect every Russian citizen and the very future of the country.
A closer look at the proposed reforms — already approved by the standards council of the Education and Science Ministry and debated in the State Duma and Public Chamber — is enough to send any rational person into shock.
According to the plan, starting in 2012, schoolchildren will study only four required subjects, and of those, only two are clearly defined: physical education and general safety. The remaining two are the cryptic “individual project” and the highly suspicious Russia in the World.
Thus, for the sake of physical education, general safety and “Russia in the World” — a subject dreamed up by “patriots” who are determined to raise the level of “patriotic education” among schoolchildren — the authorities are set to destroy the very foundation of the education system. This threatens developments dating from its earliest beginnings through the famous reforms by Tsar Alexander II and into the modern period when education served as the cornerstone that helped define Russia’s leading role in the world.
The approach endorsed by the Education and Science Ministry and United Russia will inevitably lead to the further deterioration of Russia’s high school educational system and its continued low standing in the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA. On the positive side, the new standards will make Russian schools ideally suited for churning out young men ready to serve in the armed forces by training them to identify Russia’s numerous internal and external enemies and to defend the motherland. Russia in the World, a subject that rumor has it was developed at the personal request of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, will most likely force-feed political indoctrination in the spirit of ideologist Alexander Dugin and other arch-conservative dinosaurs to see Russia as a “besieged fortress” and to glorify Russia as a “powerful state” around which all must rally to defend it from enemies.
After the scandal broke, Fursenko slowed confirmation of the new standards, and Putin even criticized the Education and Science Ministry’s proposals as having gone too far. But this delay means little. After all, the disagreement is not over a few technical details but over the strategic path of the country’s future.
An alternative approach to the ministry’s proposal would preserve and develop Russia’s comprehensive curriculum, as well as help foster interethnic unity and societal integration by drawing on the great heritage of Russian culture. At the very least, it would preserve the emphasis on engineering and the natural sciences.
The final decision on the education reform proposal will reveal a great deal about how the top leadership sees Russia’s future — as a closed and militaristic, economically and technologically underdeveloped authoritarian power, or as an open democratic society focusing on innovation and standing on par with the leading countries of the world.
Putin and United Russia’s attempt to indoctrinate high school students is only one example of how the Kremlin is degrading the country’s future human capital. Moscow is actively increasing expenditures on state machinery, law enforcement and defense while cutting spending on developing the country’s human capital — health care, science and education. Only recently, the Higher School of Economics published findings indicating that in many regions last year teachers’ salaries actually fell after inflation. Worse, their salaries were already five to 10 times lower on average than their colleagues in economically developed countries and even significantly lower than those in China. What’s more, many schools are being closed in many cities and rural areas. Implementing the new standards could result in parents having to pay a fee for their children to receive instruction in subjects that were previously part of the standard curriculum, thereby shifting even more of the economic burden for education away from the state and onto the shoulders of citizens.
What’s more, President Dmitry Medvedev’s budget message for 2011-13 calls for cutting the share of federal spending on education from 1.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2009 to 0.5 percent in 2013. It also includes spending cuts in other such key areas as culture, health care and payments to the regions, of which a large part goes to grammar school education. The little money that remains should be just enough to teach young people the most important skills of how to identify the country’s enemies and love Putin’s autocracy.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Blind Teaching the Blind
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
TEXT: Olga Pisarenko spends many of her daytime hours in her daughter Natasha’s high school. It’s not that she is over-protective. For Natasha Pisarenko, an eighth-grader in a small town in the Rostov Region, is blind.
Her mother sits with her through her classes, taking careful notes on what’s being taught. After lessons she helps Natasha pack up her exercise books and makes sure she gets to physical education and sports sessions.
But it’s only after the end of Natasha’s school day that the really hard work begins for her mom. For she then has to put in her own night shift, transcribing into Braille chapters from her daughter’s textbooks.
The only way for the girl to receive a high school education is through her mother’s constant sacrifice of her own night’s sleep. Because of all the strain, Olga had to give up her own job in a pharmacy some time ago.
Russia’s education system stipulates that disabled children study in specialized schools or boarding homes, which means there’s an official line segregating children with disabilities from children who are “normal.” Specialized schools don’t exist in most smaller towns, and many parents cannot bear the idea of sending their children far away to a boarding home. Some mainstream schools help parents to get around this problem by accepting a disabled or blind child and simply overlooking their disability. But these schools have no budget for helping such children to function in this environment. Hence Olga’s decision to accompany her daughter to school and attend to her needs.
To highlight the family’s predicament, the girl’s father, Nikolai Pisarenko, began knocking on every door he could to get help from the state. And finally, somehow, he managed to attract the attention of a no lesser figure than President Dmitry Medvedev himself.
Initially the family was overjoyed to hear that their case had caught the attention of the Russian supremo. Yet delight was soon overtaken by disappointment and frustration, because Medvedev’s response to the family’s plea was vague and noncommittal.
Medvedev simply issued an instruction to the Education Ministry requesting that its officials “look into the situation regarding education for blind people.”
There is an unwritten rule among Russian petition writers. Never appeal to those in authority to “take measures.” If you do, you are likely to receive a promise that “measures will be taken.” It’s just the kind of feedback you don’t want to hear.
Natasha Pisarenko’s parents were eventually advised to contact the regional authorities about getting a place on a “distance learning” course. This requires the child to have special equipment, including a computer and printer programmed to convert regular Russian text into Braille. Alas, such equipment is apparently not available, not only in her own small town but throughout the entire Rostov region.
The Russian constitution guarantees everyone the right to a free high school education. And disabled people are given guarantees of help with social adaptation, including medical equipment and employment assistance.
That’s the theory. The reality is rather different. In just a handful of Russia’s biggest cities is it possible to attend a Braille school, free of charge. But in most Russian towns the situation is very different.
One option is for parents to send a blind child to a state-run boarding school, which is often many miles from home and essentially means separation of the child from the parents for much of the year.
Or they can relocate to a big city where a Braille school is available. The same goes for children with other disabilities. But such a move is beyond the means of most families, so parents muddle through as best they can, falling back on their own limited resources. In Natasha Pisarenko’s case, that meant her mother turning into a Braille typist and the father into a social campaigner.
“The presidential order was simply swallowed up by the discriminatory and tremendously powerful Russian state education system,” Nikolai Pisarenko wrote on his Livejournal blog.
“The attitude of the state leaves us with no option but to send our daughter away to one of those boarding schools, God knows how far from our town, which would be incredibly cruel, or to continue as we have been doing, which is utterly exhausting and absolutely unjust. Such a daily struggle is like torture for both our poor child and for us.”
Despite the order from Medvedev there is apparently nothing that obliges the Education Ministry to deliver specific results in Natasha’s case. Nor have the regional officials been ordered, for example, to demonstrate, within a given time, that Natasha Pisarenko is receiving a state-funded Braille education.
Is Natasha’s case exceptional? Hardly. Russia has more than 550,000 disabled children. Around 13 percent of them live in boarding schools in enforced separation from home, family and friends, because of utterly inadequate support in their local towns and villages.
The response to Natasha’s case by Medvedev was little more than a token gesture. What he should have done was to start work on creating an inclusive education system, requiring blind, deaf, and disabled pupils to be educated to the same standards as other children, and wherever possible in the same or similar schools, as close as possible to where they live, throughout Russia.
That is the only humane way out of a situation where disabled people can be sent away, hidden from view, and to all intents and purposes treated as outcasts.
A full version of this commentary is available at Transitions Online, an award-winning analytical online magazine covering Eastern Europe and CIS countries, at www.tol.org.
TITLE: Punk turned pop
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While many Russian bands went political last year, PTVP, or Posledniye Tanki v Parizhe (Last Tanks in Paris), one of Russia’s most political bands of the past decade, has come up with what its frontman, Alexei Nikonov, describes as a “pop album.”
“In my view, a pop album is simply an album with simple melodies, typical songs, memorable, simple guitar licks and simple words,” said Nikonov, the band’s singer and songwriter, during an interview last weekend.
Called “Poryadok Veshchei” (The Way Things Are), the ten-track album is the band’s tenth, and the first made entirely by the band itself.
“Recently, we came up with the idea that we could do everything ourselves; we have discovered many things about arrangement. We’re learning, and it’s interesting,” Nikonov said.
“It’s our first album not recorded live in a studio. Of course this is a drawback, because we’re a punk band and we play live. But this drawback gave us a lot of room for maneuver. Cut here, paste there — we’ve never done that and we got interested.
“We sat in the kitchen for a week moving bits around. That’s exactly what you might call ‘arrangement,’ which we had no idea about, even though we’ve been playing for 12 years now.”
According to Nikonov, as soon as the band started mixing the album, the recording studio was ordered to halt its operations over an unpaid electricity bill.
“It was tough; we had to disguise our sound engineer, shave his beard off and make him wear a hat [so that] he could get past the security guards, after which he locked himself in the studio for four days in a row, and we mixed it via Skype,” he said, adding that the entire cost of making the album was just 20,000 rubles ($682).
PTVP would not be PTVP if there was not one hard-hitting, revolutionary track in the otherwise “pop” album. Called “The Last Internationale” (Posledny Internatsional), the song, whose refrain consists of the words “My Revolution,” mentions “shooting at cops and hucksters” and “swamping students with drugs and forbidden books.”
“I deliberately created a sort of tough street utopia in the first refrain; it could be interpreted as a call to rise up, but it is not,” Nikonov said.
“I’ve never been involved in politics; politics for me is a matter of style. ‘Revolution is made in people’s hearts’ — that’s what I wanted to say. I sing ‘My revolution’ rather than ‘Our revolution’ because I think that perhaps the way out is individual independence. It’s the right given to people by nature but taken away by the state — along with freedom of discussion, freedom of assembly and a thousand other things that we can only have in our private lives.”
“Cops and hucksters” have been mentioned in more than one PTVP song and appear to be Nikonov’s archenemies.
“‘Hucksters’ are record labels, they killed Tupac — how many talents have they destroyed, those music managers who haven’t done anything themselves except put barriers between audiences and musicians,” he said.
“But who needs Sony Music now, when I can take my songs and upload them onto the Internet and say ‘Fuck off, guys.’ I am happy about this situation.
“Hucksters are also those who sell ideals. Ideals are not only the daydreams of some ridiculous dreamers or revolutionaries. Ideals are materialized dignity. Without them, you’re not a human being. The buy-and-sell system kills the desire to cooperate in a person, and the person becomes either a pawn in somebody else’s game or a little screw in the state machine. I think people deserve bigger things.”
PTVP turned its back on record labels definitively with “Notes from the Gallows,” the nine-track EP that it uploaded onto the Internet in 2009.
“When we released it, we realized that we don’t need any labels, and nor does anyone else,” Nikonov said.
“You can make music and upload it yourself, and this whole superstructure — the extra cost between the listener and the musician — disappears. It’s a Marxist thing, actually; I applied it to music and I want to release all the albums this way.”
Nikonov admitted that a number of homemade tapes of the new album have been released. “Some people want to have something physical, it’s a sort of fetishism,” he said. “We did a special photo session, around a hundred different photos, with a Zenith [Soviet] camera. Dan [drummer Denis Krivtsov] made about 50 tapes and sold or gave them away at gigs.”
Having published four samizdat collections of his poetry, Nikonov said he makes a living mainly from reciting his poetry at clubs. “I don’t know any other poet who lives off his poems,” he said, adding that from 150 to 300 people usually come to his recitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and about 100 in the provinces. Last year, he also wrote a libretto for Zurich-born, St. Petersburg-based director Giuliano Di Capua’s theatrical production “Medea,” described on the posters as a “punk opera.”
Nikonov said he decided not to launch a second edition of his most recent poetry collection “The Noughties” (Nuleviye) after the original 2,000-copy print run sold out in a year.
“It had started to turn into business, it wasn’t fun,” he said.
“I was given a box of books, and I went around with this box of books, selling them five times as expensive at concerts. I remembered that I used to sell weed a long time ago and the profit was less. ‘How cool,’ I thought. And just as I thought it, I realized: ‘That’s a bad thought.’”
“The Way Things Are” might be a pop album, but the follow-up will be something more radical, according to Nikonov.
“I want to make the next album different; it will be a nonconformist album — both in sound and in lyrics.”
“I’ve always criticized the regime, but now it has become fashionable [to do so]. That’s precisely why we released an album on which only one song, ‘The Last Internationale,’ touches on social issues. But then we toured the country, and I saw again how people live. I don’t want this nonconformist album to touch only burning political topics; I’d like to critically show all aspects of life around us.
“There is a suspicion that this situation of tyranny, of increasing slavery and feudalism stems not from the evil will of concrete individuals, but from living conditions, relationships between people and debates between Slavophiles and Westernizers.
“Fascists and Antifa — who are they? They are the same old Slavophiles and Westernizers. Nothing has changed in 300 years.”
Nikonov, who has been a harsh critic of former president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin since 2001, is skeptical about the televised confrontation of Yury Shevchuk of the rock band DDT and Putin. “An organ grinder came to the king and told him the truth,” he said. “But did it change anything?”
Nikonov did however sign a letter in defense of Noize MC when the rapper was jailed for 10 days after police in Volgograd took offense at his song during an open-air concert there last year.
“I signed a letter calling for him to be released, even though I’m very skeptical about his work,” he said.
“I signed it exclusively on the basis of my anarchist beliefs, because support from the bottom is very important. I think any self-respecting musician should have signed it, because they’re starting to imprison people within our ranks.”
Nikonov also expressed solidarity with the Voina (War) art group, two of whose members have been in a St. Petersburg jail since November awaiting trial on extremism-related charges for a stunt titled “The Palace Revolution” in which several police cars were overturned in September.
Nikonov considers the art group’s best-known stunt, “A Cock Captured by the FSB” in which the artists hastily painted a 65-meter phallus on Liteiny Bridge near the FSB’s headquarters in St. Petersburg just before the bridge was raised, was also Voina’s best.
“The stunt on Liteiny Bridge was great,” he said.
“That stunt was democratically presented and clear to the people — that’s very important. You should find an idea and give it a slogan that will be clear to the masses — Lenin said that. And this stunt was clear to the masses, even if I’m not a fan of installations.”
Nikonov does not subscribe to the opinion that the Russian people are characterized by apathy.
“People understand everything,” he said.
“Even now, look at people’s attitude to Putin. Compare it to what it was ten years ago, it has changed drastically, even among old women who voted for him.
“The issue of the revolutionary situation in this country appears to be permanent. Even the revolutionaries themselves could not predict it.
“Remember what Lenin said in Geneva two months before February 1917? He said that we, the old generation of revolutionaries, will not see the future revolution. Two months later he was on an armored car making a speech.”
PTVP will perform at 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 18 at Shum, 45 5aya Sovietskaya Ulitsa. Metro Ploshchad Vosstaniya. Tel. 946 8969.
TITLE: Chernov's choice
TEXT: Yury Shevchuk has been in the limelight this week. But the frontman of the leading Russian rock band DDT was speaking up for political prisoners rather than playing concerts or releasing albums.
On Thursday, Feb. 10, Shevchuk opened the first event of a charity project titled “Children of Contemporary Russia’s Political Prisoners.”
DDT’s studios were visited by Guzel and Alina Sokolov, the wife and daughter of the imprisoned Yekaterinburg rights defender Alexei Sokolov, for a photo session with Shevchuk.
Shevchuk also signed a book for Sokolov, expressed the hope that he would soon be released and recorded a video statement.
Sokolov, a rights activist who has campaigned against alleged torture and corruption in law enforcement agencies, was jailed for five years in May 2010 on charges of theft and robbery.
Amnesty International has said it believes that Sokolov may be a prisoner of conscience, detained for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression in the course of his lawful human rights activities.
The Children of Contemporary Russia’s Political Prisoners charity was launched by Maxim Gromov, the chair of the Union of Prisoners rights organization, with the goal of supporting people who have been imprisoned for defending civic, political and constitutional rights and freedoms.
Gromov was one of those detained during the Strategy 31 rally in St. Petersburg on Jan. 31, when he recited the Soviet dissident author Alexander Galich’s poem “I Choose Freedom.”
Shevchuk also found time to speak up for the two imprisoned members of the Voina art group currently in pre-trial detention in St. Petersburg for a stunt mocking the police.
In a video uploaded on YouTube, Shevchuk described the art group as “young, reckless anarchist artists.”
“The guys look for sore points in society,” he said.
“They take philistines by the scruff of the neck and shove their face into their own reflection.”
Last month, the Moskovsky District Court refused to release artists Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolayev on bail — four million rubles ($136,392) offered by the prominent British grafitti artist Banksy — on the grounds that it was unclear who was offering to put up the money.
Vorotnikov and Nikolayev have been in custody since Nov. 15 last year, when they were arrested in Moscow.
Gig-wise, this week will see God Is an Astronaut, a post-rock band from Glen of the Downs, Ireland due to perform at Glavclub on Friday, Feb. 18. Their bio describes them as “one of the world’s biggest instrumental bands” and “epic.”
Other international talent this week includes Israeli psychedelic trance band Infected Mushroom (Avrora, Thursday, Feb. 17), Japanese visual kei band The Fool (Arctica, Sunday, Feb. 20) and Swiss sludge-metal/post-hardcore/mathcore band Knut (Tuesday, Feb. 22).
For a great local punk band, catch PTVP at Shum on Friday, Feb. 18 (see interview, this page).
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: The dark side of Hollywood
AUTHOR: By Olga Khrustaleva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A homage to film noir is being held at the city’s Rodina movie theater this week in the form of the “Film Noir. The Other Side of Hollywood” festival.
A succinct and expressive phrase by the American writer and film noir expert Eddie Muller illustrates the very essence of the genre. “The flip side of the all-American success story,” as he put it, noir is a child of post–war America. The euphoric patriotic and inspired attitude was soon forced out by a cultural and existential vacuum together with a realization of the vast scale of the tragedy. Writers, directors and other artistic figures turned their heads as one to the “American dream” backyard and the spiritual ordeals of the so-called lost generation.
Some experts believe that noir could have originated earlier but for the war. The somber, cheerless times of the Great Depression eminently suited the requirements of noir. The world depicted in noir films knows no law, just as virtually no such films have a happy ending. This is the essence of film noir.
“This is a world in which nobody can be trusted, in which anybody can sell you or use you as a pawn in their game,” says film expert Angelika Artukh. “It’s a cynical and capitalistic world, in which money is considered to be the key to freedom.”
The low-key technique in which most of the films are shot only heightens the tension. A lack of light, half-shade and dusk are the key attributes of film noir, transporting the audience to the hostile streets of New York and San Francisco, making us witnesses to crimes. Many films of the noir genre were based on detective stories. There is, however, a clear distinction between an ordinary detective film and a film noir, described by Muller in a humorous but precise way: “If a private eye is hired by an old geezer to prove his wife’s cheating on him and the shamus discovers long-buried family secrets and solves a couple of murders before returning to his lonely office — that’s detective fiction. If the same private eye gets seduced by the geezer’s wife, kills the old coot for her, gets double-crossed by his lover and ends up shot to death by his old partner from the police force — I can say with complete assurance: You are wallowing in noir.”
Women, more often than not embodying the ultimate femme fatale, are also part and parcel of noir. “They are a whole lot of men’s fantasies personified and can hardly be found in real life,” says Artukh. Yet these perfect, cold-blooded blondes and brunettes play a pivotal role in the directors’ conception.
The festival’s program includes only the cream of the noir genre, according to Artukh. It opens with Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard,” (1950) one of the first “Hollywood about Hollywood” movies.
“‘Sunset Boulevard’ is interesting because it shows us different epochs in Hollywood history, from the era of classic silent films, each of them being a masterpiece, to the emergence of a good supply of average motion pictures,” said Artukh.
“The Asphalt Jungle,” (1950) with Marilyn Monroe in her breakthrough role, is often described as one of the most influential films of the 1950s. “The robbery is among the best-staged heists in noir,” wrote film writer David M. Meyer. “The simple visual treatment, the precise movements of the actors, and the absence of music on the soundtrack raise the tension to boiling point.”
“Kiss Me Deadly” by Robert Aldrich stands apart from other films. Shot in 1955, it’s a cold war era noir, raising the issue of nuclear confrontation. “The director artistically interlaces the theme of noir with the fear of nuclear weapons. It is woven into the plot line,” said Artukh.
Another legendary film, “The Maltese Falcon” shot in 1941 by John Huston on based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett, is generally acclaimed as the first film noir and a classic of the genre. The actual term “film noir” was first mentioned by critic Nino Frank in 1946. “Trust me, no one in 1940s Hollywood thought they were making films noir,” according to Muller.
Although noir is not considered to be a genre by some critics, it can never be ignored, not least because it really does represent “The other side of Hollywood,” as the festival is titled. “It depends on your own philosophy,” writes Muller. “If you think movies are defined by their themes, then you probably think of noir as a genre. If you define films by their visual look and tone, then to you noir is definitely a style.”
What is incontestable, however, is the fact that noir has its own unique atmosphere that viewers alternately find repulsive and compelling all at the same time.
“Film Noir. The Other Side of Hollywood.” runs from Feb. 17 through Feb. 27 at Rodina movie theater, 12 Karavannaya Ulitsa. Tel: 314 2827. For a full program, see www.rodinakino.ru.
TITLE: Word's Worth: The Essence of Getting Off to a Flying Start
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Íà÷àëî: beginning, essence, basics,
basis, origin
Thinking about êîíåö (end) awhile back got me thinking about íà÷àëî (beginning) and íà÷àòü (to begin). After all, when you are thinking about words, ëó÷øå íà÷àòü ñ íà÷àëà (it’s best to start from the beginning). Besides, we all know that õîðîøåå íà÷àëî — ïîëîâèíà äåëà (well begun is half done).
Íå çíàþ, ñ ÷åãî íà÷àòü (I don’t know where to start). How about with stress, since the verb íà÷àòü is very stressful for non-native speakers of Russian — and some native speakers as well. Unless you are doing a Gorbachev imitation, keep in mind that the stress in íà÷àòü is on the end: íà÷Àòü. In the past tense, if you’re female, keep the stress on the last syllable (íà÷àëÀ). If you’re male, put the stress on the first syllable (íÀ÷àë). Got it? Ýòî îòëè÷íîå íà÷àëà íàøåìó äåëó (We’re off to a flying start).
Íà÷àëî can refer to the start of something. Æèëûå äîìà â íà÷àëå óëèöû ñòðîèëèñü â êîíöå 40-õ è â íà÷àëå 50-õ ãîäîâ ïðîøëîãî âåêà (The apartment houses at the beginning of the street were built in the late 1940s and early 1950s). Íà÷àëî ôèëüìà ìíå ïîíðàâèëîñü, à ê êîíöó ìíå ñòàëî ñêó÷íî (I liked the beginning of the film, but toward the end I found it boring).
Íà÷àëî can also refer to the source or origin of something. This might be something bad, like áîëåçíåòâîðíîå íà÷àëî (pathogenic source — that is, what makes you sick). Or something good, like îðãàíèçóþùåå íà÷àëî (organizing principle — that is, what managers are always trying to introduce in the workplace).
In other contexts, íà÷àëî can mean the essence of something or someone. This is often used in discussions about gender. I find this hard to translate, largely because I don’t know what people are talking about. If a woman has ñèëüíîå æåíñêîå íà÷àëî (strong female essence), what does that mean? High pheromone count? Curvy shape? Ability to whip up a tasty dinner in 15 minutes flat? This is yet another mystery of Russian culture.
In the plural, íà÷àëà refers to the basics of something, the fundamental principles. For example, private tutors advertise their ability to take little mud-pie-making Sasha and, after a few weeks of astronomically expensive schooling, give you back little Sasha with îâëàäåíèå íà÷àëàìè õóäîæåñòâåííîãî òâîð÷åñòâà (mastery of the basic principles of artistic creativity). In just a few short weeks, they promise to ðàñêðûòü õóäîæåñòâåííîå íà÷àëî âàøåãî ðåá¸íêà (reveal the artistic nature of your child).
There’s yet another meaning of íà÷àëà (plural) that seems a bit puzzling to English-speakers. Sometimes these beginnings refer to the way something is done. For example, work might be done íà êîëëåêòèâíûõ íà÷àëàõ (collectively, jointly, literally “on a collective basis”) or íà îáùåñòâåííûõ íà÷àëàõ (as a volunteer; literally, “on a public basis”). The latter seems to have its origins in the notion of work done for the benefit of society, not the individual, company or state. But the notion of societal benefit can get fuzzy. When a nurse friend doesn’t get paid for three months, she sighs: Îêàçûâàåòñÿ, ÷òî ìû òåïåðü ðàáîòàåì íà îáùåñòâåííûõ íà÷àëàõ (It turns out that now we’re unpaid volunteers).
In this case, you might describe the problem using the old-fashioned phrase ïîä íà÷àëîì (under someone): Ìû ðàáîòàåì ïîä íà÷àëîì ó æóëèêà (We work under a crook). Or you might complain about your íà÷àëüíèê (the boss), who is the ultimate source of good and bad in the workplace.
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, whose collection of columns, “The Russian Word’s Worth,” has been published by Glas.
TITLE: La Scala at your local movie theater
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “I love the feeling of sitting in a glamorous place, sipping coffee with cognac in front of a large screen and watching Placido Domingo or Natalie Dessay performing live, miles and miles away,” says Olga Nikolayeva, a local bank clerk and one of the dedicated fans of the Opera High Definition Live project that runs at the Jam Hall Cinema Center. “I can indulge in the feeling of actually attending the premiere while being very far away.”
The Opera HD Live project had its first experimental broadcast in October 2009, and has now grown into a virtual club of dedicated fans, with two or three live broadcasts of opera premieres from some of the world’s leading theaters every month.
Some of the highlights have included the premieres of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare” at L’Opera National de Paris with Natalie Dessay as Cleopatra, Verdi’s “Don Carlos” at London’s Royal Opera House with Ferruccio Furlanetto as Filippo II, and Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala with Placido Domingo in the title role.
“Although in Russia the art of opera clearly does not have the prestige that it enjoys in the U.S., Europe and Japan, where an opera premiere is always a major social event as well, we have managed to form a circle of dedicated opera lovers around this project,” said Vadim Kondratenko, the director of Jam Hall.
Despite the fact that some of the broadcasts take place at odd times — sometime as late as 10 p.m. — the screenings never play to an empty hall. The spectators appreciate the chance to see recent premieres by the best opera companies on the planet — a trip there would be beyond most people’s budget. And they like the relaxed atmosphere of a comfortable, upscale movie theater, where they can always order a drink or leave for a cigarette at any given time.
“When my musician husband and I go to the Mariinsky Theater to see a Wagner opera or sit through the five hours of Berlioz’s ‘Les Troyens,’ we always joke that we really should sneak in a large Thermos flask of coffee,” Nikolayeva said. “But really, it is not the coffee element that is core to the Opera HD experience — the laid-back atmosphere at the film center is indeed very different to that of the theater, with its hard chairs and formal dress-code.”
The Opera HD Live project was started by New York’s Metropolitan Opera more than three years ago, and many other theaters in Europe and beyond soon took up the popular idea, giving vast numbers of opera lovers from other cities the opportunity to enjoy opera productions from some of the world’s finest companies.
In the U.S., where opera is the most expensive of all the performing arts, productions from New York’s Metropolitan Opera are regularly broadcast to hundreds of movie theaters, where tickets are a bargain at $10 to $20. Such broadcasts take place about once a month.
Prices at Jam Hall vary from between 700 and 1,000 rubles ($24 to $34) per ticket: Not cheap, but far less than one would pay for a live opera performance or a recital by any of the opera stars featured in the broadcasts.
In the U.S., such broadcasts have become important social events. World-renowned soprano Renee Fleming was one of the first performers to support the idea, and she frequently fronts some of the premieres, introducing them to the audience. She presents some of the live broadcasts to cinemas from the Met, interviewing soloists and providing commentary.
“It is a huge challenge, but this new role is both intriguing and exciting,” Fleming says of the experience.
The celebrated Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto is another supporter of the idea. At a recent news conference in St. Petersburg, the singer spoke with great enthusiasm about Opera HD Live.
“I believe that little by little, it could also be an important instrument in enlarging the number of people who could be attracted by this kind of theater,” Furlanetto said.
“For us it is of course very important, but it is adding a considerable amount of risk, since we must always be quite fit and ready to deliver a good live performance — something that doesn’t happen anymore today in any kind of show business, where everything is based on very safe play-back. It is important to enlarge audiences, but what is perhaps even more significant is that these new people will eventually come to the theater because that is the place where opera really lives.”
In the meantime, in the wake of the popularity of some of the shows, Jam Hall is organizing screenings of recorded versions of the premieres. Feb. 22 will see a screening of Gaetano Donizetti’s “La Fille du Regiment” with Natalie Dessay in the title role. The premiere of the opera at the Royal Opera House in London in May 2010 was broadcasted live and was a huge success.
Jam Hall’s plans for 2011 include live broadcasts of Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” from Teatro alla Scala on March 24, Delibes’ ballet “Coppelia” from Grand Opera Paris on March 28, and Verdi’s opera “Macbeth” from the Royal Opera House on June 15.
For more information about upcoming opera screenings, visit www.jamhall.ru
TITLE: Backdated Apologies II
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: This week, a few more showbiz stars awkwardly explained why they signed a letter backing the first jail sentence for former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky — but did not really mean it.
In a brilliantly simple idea, Radio Liberty is asking all of the 50 public figures who five years ago signed an open letter saying Khodorkovsky’s sentence was not politically motivated whether they have changed their minds.
Ballerina Anastasia Volochkova has already withdrawn her support for the letter in a slightly deranged obscenity-strewn interview.
She was followed by veteran film actress Svetlana Svetlichnaya, who flatly denied she ever signed the letter, and ice skater Irina Rodnina, who said she couldn’t have signed it because she was abroad. Some have defended themselves defiantly, such as luxuriantly locked society portrait painter Nikas Safronov, who told Gazeta.ru that he signed the letter and never denies his words. “I understood that it was a political step but I think we need order,” he said.
This week’s unlikely dissident was Alexander Buinov, a 60-year-old pop star who likes showing off his muscles in tight black T-shirts. His patriotic hits include a song called “Special Forces.”
He told the radio station that he now feels awkward about his decision to sign the letter without doing any research. “I did not have a clue about the economic and political situation. You could say there are a lot of idiots about. In this case, it was me,” he said. Buinov is a member of United Russia, and his words were quite brave, since he may now miss out on invitations to patriotic concerts for police and army holidays at the Kremlin Palace.
In another turn up for the books, Vladivostok customs officers showed a surprisingly endearing side this week. A video presumably intended for their personal consumption was posted on YouTube. It shows staff letting their hair down at a party and has been viewed more than 350,000 times in two days.
A woman tosses her blond hair around as she dances on a desk, and grinning uniformed men toss each other in the air and spray a bottle of Sovietskoye Shampanskoye. One dramatically slides along the office floor on his stomach, the gold stars indicating his rank gleaming on his shoulders.
It’s an almost shocking glimpse into a hidden world of customs in-jokes. And the staff look a far cry from the hard-faced types I usually see at Sheremetyevo, beadily eyeing the bulging suitcases full of undeclared Harrods shopping.
The video is set to a song about the customs service, sung to the tune of an irritating Russian R&B song, “Columbia Pictures Does Not Present.” It certainly improves on the original lyrics. I liked the bit about the rather pudgy boss: “You can only get on maternity leave through him,” it leers. Then there is the twinkly head of the brutally named “search department,” who rubs a huge knife against his stubble.
The film was reportedly made for an office New Year’s party and does look rather costly, what with hiring some models (unless that topless woman really is a customs officer) and a Rolls-Royce.
With a complete lack of imagination or sense of humor, the customs service reacted with horror to the viral hit they had on their hands — it even got shown on Channel One news, for goodness sake. They called it a “disgrace” and threatened to sack the staff involved.
But, in fact, it looks a lot like the kind of artfully warm and quirky commercials that chilly corporations spend millions concocting to improve their images. After all, what’s not to love about a topless woman nibbling a customs declaration form.
TITLE: Dining: Supremacist supper
AUTHOR: By Piper Wheeler
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Walking into Malevich Cafe-Club on Ulitsa Zhukovskogo does feel a bit like entering a Supremacist painting. The high-contrast decor in black, white and red was made more striking by the dining room’s near emptiness on a Wednesday evening. The carefully designed interior is saved from coldness by comfortable, wide leather benches and several cozy booths, and by an unusually welcoming waiter who managed quite nicely as the only staff on duty. Above the bar, three flat-screen televisions were tuned to the Russia-Iran soccer match, and the commentary played loudly over surround-sound speakers that must come in handy on weekends, when a DJ plays till 6 a.m.
Despite their careful presentation, it’s soon apparent that the powers-that-be behind Malevich don’t quite know what they’re going for. Most inexplicably — unless it was a fleeting reference to Malevich’s iconic “Black Square” — the massive bar that lines one wall of the restaurant was completely empty except for a scattering of schnapps. When asked for a drinks menu, the Russian-speaking waiter cheerfully replied, “Only beer!” The house beer turned out to be an undistinguished Czech-style lager, available in light and dark (100 rubles, $3.40 for a half-liter). Limited alcohol doesn’t stop Malevich from offering an extensive “beer menu” of hot and cold snacks. Guided by empty stomachs, we ordered spicy cheese-balls (220 rubles, $7.50) to accompany our drinks. Big mistake: the deep-fried balls were barely defrosted in the center, and the overly-sweet cowberry sauce failed to complement the peppery cheese.
Our hunger blunted by this disappointing appetizer, my friend and I pored over the menu in hopes of salvaging our evening. The kitchen, like the atmosphere, suffers from a lack of focus. Casual “European” cuisine with an Italian slant is rounded out by an extensive list of sandwiches that includes hamburgers and enchiladas. The strong point of the menu is a variety of vegetarian dishes, although some, such as an eggplant appetizer, were unavailable. A “classic” Caesar salad (280 rubles, $9.55) was quite good, with a generous helping of fresh greens, flavorful croutons and hard-boiled quail-eggs. My friend didn’t fare so well, and instead of the requested mushroom julienne received the fish variety (220 rubles, $7.50). Like the cheese-balls, these miniature salmon pies had been recently excavated from the deep-freeze. The tough pastry-shell contained shreds of fish in white sauce.
Undefeated, we awaited our main courses — the vegetarian tagliatelle in pesto sauce (270 rubles, $9.20) and the pepper steak (490 rubles, $16.70). My pasta was nicely prepared, although the “pesto” resembled a heavy alfredo with hints of basil. At first glance, the steak was the most attractive dish of the evening, with a nicely seared, pepper-crusted exterior, served atop potato gratin with a dish of gravy on the side. Although ordered medium, the center of the steak was nearly raw. At this point, it seemed futile to send it back. Oppressed by this series of underwhelming dishes, we forewent the dessert offerings, which included several cheesecakes and a cr?me brulee (around 220 rubles, $7.50), and headed into the night in search of a strong drink.
TITLE: President to Shift Russia to Daylight-Saving Time
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — David Cameron should envy Dmitry Medvedev: The Russian president decided this week to move his whole country one time zone further east — something the British prime minister also wants to do, but faces stiff opposition over.
Cameron has come under fire from traditionalists who despise giving up Greenwich Mean Time or GMT for “Berlin Time,” and from Scottish lawmakers who argue that in the north the sun will rise at only 10 a.m.
But in Russia’s nine time zones, the clocks will move forward one hour to daylight-saving time on March 27 and then stay there next fall while most other countries move their clocks back to winter time.
Moscow will thus move from being three hours ahead of London and two hours from Berlin to four and three hours, respectively, aligning with Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Persian Gulf states.
When the move is implemented in the world’s largest country by landmass it will create a massive gap in the global map of states that reset their clocks twice yearly.
But it is likely to please the populace, as daylight-saving time, introduced by the Soviet Union only in 1981, has remained largely unpopular in Russia.
A Levada poll found last March that 46 percent of Russians want to scrap summer time, while only 36 percent prefer resetting clocks in the spring and fall. The rest were undecided.
Critics say the time change is harmful for health, a notion Medvedev played up when he announced the decision during a meeting with young scientists.
“We all are used to cursing this because it really hurts the human biological rhythm. We’re all annoyed when we either oversleep or wake up too early,” he was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Foreign travelers may be the ones to face inconveniences over what national media dubbed “eternal summer time,” as time differences with Russia will differ depending on the month.
For example, New York will be nine hours behind in the winter but eight hours in the summer.
The boundary with Norway, a short strip of land in the Arctic, will mark a three-hour time difference in the winter and a two-hour one in the summer because the local region of Murmansk observes Moscow time.
And people in Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, will have to adapt during the summer to being two hours ahead of their western neighbor Poland and one hour ahead of their eastern neighbor Lithuania, with whom it currently shares a time zone.
Some in Kaliningrad fear that this will further isolate the region from its neighbors, from whom they are already separated by EU visa requirements.
“I would rather be in line with Europe. Just look at the map, we are on the same meridian as Warsaw,” said Vladimir Korolyov, deputy head of the liberal Yabloko party in the region.
But he said he still supported the abolition of daylight-saving time. “This was always against nature,” Korolyov said by telephone.
Sergei Kravchenko, a Moscow-based psychologist, said Medvedev was right to keep time distances within the country at a minimum.
Kravchenko, who studies the effect of time on people, argued that the key aim should be to have as little differences as possible. “If everybody wakes up and goes to bed at the same time, it helps people feel more united,” he said.
Medvedev started his time initiative in his 2009 state-of-the-nation address, when he proposed not just abolishing daylight-saving time, but also reducing the number of time zones.
Last year, the country discarded two of its formerly 11 time zones by moving regions on the Volga and in the Far East one hour closer to Moscow time.
As a result, Russia now stretches over eight contiguous time zones from St. Petersburg to the Pacific, with Kaliningrad making an extra ninth zone.
When he introduced the changes last March, Medvedev said he would study the possibility of further reducing the number of time zones, but called scrapping daylight-saving time unlikely because this could isolate the country.
But the president apparently reversed the decision, choosing a more popular path, experts said.
“The proposals [to abolish time zones] turned out to be a dead end,” said Arkady Tishkov, deputy director of the Academy of Sciences’ Geography Institute.
Tishkov, who was part of an expert group that advised the Kremlin on the issue, said further reforms had clashed with the interest of governors in the Far East.
“Making further changes is maybe not very popular before the elections,” he said.
The country will have State Duma elections in December and the presidential election in March 2012.
A Kremlin spokeswoman refused to comment when asked whether further time zone changes were planned.
The March Levada poll found that 44 percent are in favor of keeping time zones as they are and just 33 percent prefer changing them further.
Tishkov also said moving clocks forward was better than moving them backward because it results in more daylight.
“In Moscow and St. Petersburg, we will have 8 percent more daylight for more than 10 percent of the total population,” he said.
Moving clocks backward, closer to Moscow time, triggered protests last year, most notably in Samara and in the Far East, where residents said the change threatens to boost crime rates and people’s depression.
In Kamchatka, where winter days are short, a rally of 3,000 people was held last December against the time change, and reports said last month that authorities criticized a local performance of Cinderella of triggering “unhealthy emotions,” because of the scene where the king sets the clock back an hour to keep Cinderella at the ball.
Meanwhile, it seems that the abolition of daylight-saving time is a done deal for Medvedev — and, unlike the British prime minister, he had no significant opposition to square off with over it.
The Duma last year considered a bill to abandon it, but parliamentary speaker Boris Gryzlov said Thursday that no such law was needed.
“The President has spoken — now it just needs to be done,” he was quoted as saying by Interfax.
Medvedev’s aide Arkady Dvorkovich said the change would be implemented by a governmental decree.
Still, even in the ruling party, not everybody agrees. “I personally liked daylight-saving time. You wake up, and suddenly a new world has started,” said Sergei Markov, Duma deputy for United Russia.
But Markov added that the decision also had a very positive political signal. “At last Russia has done something on its own instead of just repeating what others do,” he said.
TITLE: Mock Mission to Mars Models Landing on Red Planet in Manned Spacecraft
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KOROLYOV — After 257 days in a locked steel capsule, researchers on a mock trip to Mars ventured from their cramped quarters Monday in heavy space suits, trudging into a sand-covered room to plant flags on a simulated Red Planet.
The crew of three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese entered a network of modules at a Moscow research center last June to imitate the 520-day flight and see how they cope with the constricted, isolating conditions of space travel — minus the weightlessness.
Several participants donned 30-kilogram suits to perform Monday’s mock landing in an adjacent capsule. They planted the flags of Russia, China and the European Space Agency, took “samples” from the ground and conducted faux scientific experiments.
“All systems have been working normally. The crew are feeling fine,” said Vitaly Davydov, deputy head of the Russian space agency.
Psychologists said long confinement would put the team members under stress as they grow increasingly tired of each other’s company. Psychological conditions can even be more challenging on a mock mission than a real flight because the crew won’t experience any of the euphoria or dangers of actual space travel.
Davydov described the experiment as an important part of preparation for flight to Mars and predicted that the real mission could take place in about 20 years, but only with international cooperation.
Martin Zell, a European Space Agency official overseeing the experiment, called the mission a “really strong asset for future undertakings of mankind in space, for its ambition to fly finally to the Red Planet.”
The facility for the experiment is in western Moscow and includes living compartments the size of a bus connected with several other modules for experiments and exercise. The video footage of the landing was shown on a big screen at Russia’s Mission Control Center in Korolyov outside Moscow, which is used to handle manned missions to the international space stations.
The mission director has said the experiment could be disrupted for medical or technical reasons, or if some of the participants demand that it be stopped.
So far the crew has been doing just fine. “After a couple of weeks they were really a team, certainly with some temporary ups and downs of individual crew members,” Zell said.
“A big challenge is missing daylight, missing visual perceptions,” he said. “They also have to live with the food which they have on board and with the air which they have on board.”
The crewmen communicate with the organizers and their families via the Internet — delayed and occasionally disrupted to imitate the effects of space travel. They eat canned food similar to that currently offered on the International Space Station.
A similar experiment in 1999-2000 at the same Moscow institute went awry when a Canadian woman complained of being forcibly kissed by a Russian team captain. She also said two Russian crew members had a fist fight that left blood splattered on the walls. Russian officials downplayed the incidents, attributing them to cultural gaps and stress.
A real mission to Mars is decades away because of huge costs and massive technological challenges, particularly the task of creating a compact shield that will protect the crew from deadly space radiation. U.S. President Barack Obama said last month that he foresaw sending astronauts to orbit Mars by the mid-2030s.
The experiment is being conducted by the Moscow-based Institute for Medical and Biological Problems in cooperation with the European Space Agency and China’s space training center.
TITLE: Yury Gagarin Relaunched in Full Comic Book Incarnation
AUTHOR: By Nick Dowson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Yury Gagarin becoming the first man in space in April this year. To mark the anniversary, a British graphic novel titled “Yuri’s Day” has been released, telling the story of that famous flight.
Author Piers Bizony said he wanted a real character rather than a comic book superhero for the 64-page graphic novel.
“You can have supermen, but they don’t have the frailties of human beings, they don’t have to be brave,” Bizony said. “Gagarin had to be brave to go up there, and he had to be brave when he came down to deal with the crowds, the adulation and all the interest in him.”
The book not only follows Gagarin but also Yury Korolev, the Soviet rocket engineer and father of Russian space flight, including the years he spent in a gulag.
“Yuri’s Day” is not the first graphic novel to deal with the Soviet space industry. Four years ago, Nick Abadzis’ “Laika,” about the first animal in space, coincided with the 50th anniversary of that space launch and received very good reviews.
“I love the idea of a book like this,” Abadzis said. “Korolev in particular is a personal hero of mine. He is, I believe, the individual who should be credited with beginning the space race and kick-starting the modern age of technology.”
Bizony came to Russia to do research for the book and says all of the book is fact-based. He is the author of “2001: Filming the Future,” about the making of Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
For “Yuri’s Day,” he collaborated with designer Peter Hodkinson, who has designed a variety of materials for the public understanding of science in Britain, and the illustrator Andrew King.
The book has been well received.
“A fascinating snapshot of the space race from Russia’s point of view — the script gives you a lot to think about. The mix of text and comic strip pages is intriguing — I think it works in this context,” said John Freeman, editor of the British comics web site Downthetubes.net. “What lets the project down, in my opinion, is the lettering — the balloons are too large and characterless.”
A Russian translation of the novel will appear, Bizony said, but Russian comic artist Dasha Konopatova was not overly impressed with the book. “There is an absence of an author’s style, the book won’t be popular. The designer of the cover is good, a few of the characters maybe, but in general the graphics lose out, it doesn’t catch your attention,” she said.
”Yuri’s Day” can be ordered at www.yuri-gagarin.com for ?9.99 plus postage and packaging.
TITLE: Petersburg Connection At Grammys
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina and bass Ildar Abdrazakov, a married couple who both started out at the Mariinsky Theater and rapidly rose to worldwide fame performing at Milan’s La Scala and New York’s Metropolitan Opera, shared their first Grammy award this week.
“I am very happy that my first Grammy and Ildar’s is a family one,” Borodina told reporters at the Mariinsky Theater on Monday.
The couple won the prestigious prize in the “Best Classical Album” and “Best Choral Performance” categories for the recording of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under the baton of Riccardo Muti.
In order to see more of each other, the couple try to work together as much as possible. “We have already gotten to the stage where the managers of the world’s most acclaimed venues ask us what we would like to perform, on what date, and with which conductor,” Borodina said.