SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1644 (6), Tuesday, February 22, 2011
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TITLE: EU Center Receives Funding Boost for Training Projects
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The newly opened EU Center in St. Petersburg is due to receive nearly half a million euros for its projects in the next three years. The center, which started operating this month, is the first of its kind in Russia and the 27th outside the EU. 
Michael Webb, deputy head of the Delegation of the European Union to Russia, said a further 100,000 euros of funding will come from the city’s European University — the school’s Center for European Studies serves as a base for the new organization — and its partners.
Most of the money will be spent on training programs targeting a wide range of groups, from students to civil servants. The first upcoming project is a training course for municipal workers in the Arkhangelsk region — the center’s activities cover the whole of the northwest region of Russia.
“We have no intention of influencing the political process in Russia,” said Maria Nozhenko, head of the EU Center in St. Petersburg. “What we will attempt to do is to change the mentality of the people here to make it more European, especially in such areas as management and governance.”
Illegal immigration, corruption and widespread violations of people’s rights were the three core topics that Webb said present the highest concern for his organization. It is these specific areas that will constitute the focus of the EU Center’s activities in the country.
One of the most heavily discussed and most sensitive issues between Russia and the EU has been the possible introduction of a visa-free regime.
Moscow has been pushing strongly for the introduction of visa-free travel between Russia and the European Union for the last few years. These efforts have intensified since January 2010, when Spain proposed getting rid of visas altogether.
However, reaching an agreement with the EU requires the consent of all its member states. And, while Russia has Spain and Italy on its side, Germany and France remain cool to the idea, citing what they see as the risk of illegal immigration.
“Both Germany and France have seen several waves of Russian immigration,” said Vera Obolenskaya, the director of ODI Voyagem, a travel agency in St. Petersburg. “In these countries, Russia is still seen as a totalitarian regime, and in the eyes of German and French politicians it would only be natural for any sane Russian to want to escape from an autocracy to a democratic country.”
However, Francesco Bigazzi, a retired Italian diplomat and currently president of the Viva Italia association, which is involved in cultural cooperation between Italy and Russia, says the real reason why certain EU states refuse to follow the path of visa-free travel is not the fear of a “Russian wave” of immigrants.
“I know the statistics. The Russians who come here want to have a holiday and do some good shopping. Illegal immigration attempts are rare,” he said. “What is a bit of a problem though, if visa-free travel does start, is Russia’s loose borders with Central Asia and the Caucasus. And this is the issue on which Russia does not want to compromise. The Kremlin wants these borders loose to keep as much of those territories under control as it can manage.”
Speaking to reporters at the center’s presentation Thursday, Webb sounded cautious on the matter, stressing that the transition towards visa-free travel must be gradual and the process should not be rushed, as a premature opening of the borders would lead to trouble.
During the next three years the center is planning to organize a series of 18 events under the title “Days of the EU in Russia.” The events will feature discussions of hot topics relevant to relations between Russia and the EU.
The first debate in the series will take place in August and will be devoted to the environmental plight of the Baltic Sea.
In the near future Russia will see the arrival of two more similar centers — to be based at the Kant Russian State University in Kaliningrad and Tomsk State University. By 2014, Russia will become home to a total of six EU Centers.

TITLE: Bomb Hysteria and Brutal Truths
AUTHOR: By Philip Parker
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A man walked into a police station in northern St. Petersburg last Thursday with the news that there was a bomb under an elite apartment building a few steps from Pionerskaya metro station. According to the unnamed 34-year-old, the explosive device was placed there in 1998 during the construction of the building, and for the last decade, the residents have been living “on a powder keg,” Fontanka.ru reported. 
The man claims to have been part of the construction team that laid the foundations of the building at 26 Kolomyazhsky Prospekt for local construction company LenSpetsSMU He alleges that he saw an object resembling a bomb in a truckload of sand brought to the site, but kept quiet because he didn’t want to lose his job. Now, however, his sense of civic duty has prompted him to inform the police.
Preposterous as his story may sound, OMON explosives specialists have visited the site and found an unidentified metal object in the foundations. As the building has not been evacuated and there have been no further reports since Thursday, however, it seems safe to assume that this is merely one more in a growing series of bomb scares following the terrorist attack on Domodedovo Airport in January. 
More typically, the city’s Moscow Railway Station was briefly evacuated early on Saturday evening after an anonymous call to the police warned that a bomb would be detonated in the station in the next 30 minutes. Nothing suspicious was found in the ensuing search. It seems that some St. Petersburgers are having difficulty killing time in these long winter evenings. 
Another subterranean mystery this week was the steady drip of reports of geriatrics dying in the metro. This came to a head last Thursday morning, when Fontanka.ru reported three incidents, at different metro stations, of men suffering fatal heart attacks. Given the frequency of reports during the last fortnight, some are speculating whether it is linked to the extreme temperatures St. Petersburg is still experiencing. 
The death that grabbed the most headlines last week, however, was that of Grigory Rasputin, an octopus at the St. Petersburg Oceanarium. Acclaimed as the Russian equivalent of his more famous German counterpart Paul, Grigory lived in the city for about a year, and managed to “predict” the results of two friendlies for the Russian international soccer team, though he had more mixed success with results for Zenit FC. 
Grigory had recently been mated with a female called Vasilisa, so he leaves a widow and about a thousand young children, many news sources were eager to report. According to Rosbalt.ru, the pair “interacted tenderly and even managed to bring new life into the world.” Scientists at the Oceanarium assured reporters that there was no sub-aquatic mystery to Grigory’s passing — 18 months is the average lifespan of octopi in captivity — but Komsomolskaya Pravda chose to dig deeper and, “in a drama worthy of the pen of Shakespeare,” got the Oceanarium’s chief ichthyopathologist, Oleg Yunsich, to admit that Vasilisa might in fact have murdered Grigory while protecting her young. 
“She could have just thwacked him over the head with a tentacle in the night. It’s actually very difficult to identify wounds like that on an octopus,” said Yunsich.  
Elsewhere in the world, the so-called “Ginger Tarzan” — the former mixed fighter, fascist activist and armed robber Vyacheslav Datsik — was back in court in Norway appealing his extradition to Russia on the grounds that he faces torture and possibly death in a Russian prison. Datsik escaped from a psychiatric hospital in the Leningrad Oblast last August, where he had been held since 2007 for his part in a string of robberies of mobile phone and jewelry stores. He surfaced a month later in Norway, having traveled illegally via Estonia, and turned himself (and a Makarov automatic pistol) in to police in Oslo, requesting political asylum. He is currently due to be returned to Russia in May after serving eight months in Norwegian prison, but his lawyers are protesting his deportation, partly on the grounds that Norwegian Minister of Justice Knut Storberget is a Russophobe, Rosbalt.ru reported, seemingly without a trace of irony. 
Considering that each time a court decision goes against him, Datsik starts a prison brawl, it’s unclear who is really most at risk from his imprisonment. There were, however, touching pictures on Rosbalt.ru of Datsik’s mother, Svetlana, who was in Norway to support her son last week. 
“She said that when he was a child, he stole meat on the farm to feed to abandoned animals,” said his unofficial representative in Norway, Yevgeny Dyakov. His mother is one of the few supporters Datsik has left, however. Even Slavic Union, the outlawed fascist group that once counted him as a member, is now keen to distance itself, although more than happy in the past to be associated with Hitler.


TITLE: Foreign Tourist Receives Treatment for Cold Wait
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: after suffering exposure to extreme cold in the line outside the departure terminal at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport on Friday. 
Long lines have been a regular feature at Pulkovo since the recent introduction of increased security measures, and the tourist had to spend considerable time outside the terminal entrance in temperatures between –18 and –20 degrees Celsius. Once inside, he appealed to the airport’s medical staff, who called an ambulance to take him to a private clinic in St. Petersburg.
An hour and a half later the tourist came back to the airport and left for his destination on the next flight, according to the press service of Northern Capital Gateway, Pulkovo’s management company.
Long lines outside Pulkovo have followed January’s terrorist attack on Domodedovo Airport in Moscow. In the aftermath, Pulkovo, along with many other Russian airports, hurried to install additional metal detectors and examination procedures at terminal entrances. A spokesperson for Northern Capital Gateway’s press service said that the length of lines had been varying depending on the time of day.
In addition, beginning Friday national airports will be increasing security measures even further, as the assessment of the terrorist threat level rose due to the murder of Russian tourists and the explosion of a ski lift in Kabardino-Balkaria in the Caucasus.
On Friday, Northern Capital Gateway said it would increase the number of security points at Pulkovo. By the end of February, it plans to install two additional points at Pulkovo-2, the international terminal, and another point at the entrance to the domestic terminal, Pulkovo 1, in March.
“We ordered all the necessary equipment in early February, so we’re expecting the delivery now,” Northern Capital Gateway’s spokesperson said.
“This equipment will help to avoid long lines at the entrance to the airports,” the press service said.
Unusually low temperatures have spread across large areas of Russia in the past two weeks, causing cases of frostbite, as well as a number of changes in everyday life.
In one example, the Western Military District minimized the time spent in the open air for its staff. It also canceled traditional songs held during morning drill and changed the morning run to a walk. Soldiers have also been given onions and garlic during their meals to strengthen their immune system.
Meteorologists forecast that temperatures will rise to around –7 degrees by the weekend.

TITLE: Allegro
Passengers
Stranded
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Allegro, the new St. Petersburg-Helsinki high-speed train, broke down again Saturday at the station of Vainikkala on the Finnish border.
Passengers spent three hours in icy wagons with no electricity and no heating. Temperatures at that time in the area reached around –20 degrees Celsius. To add to passenger discomfort, the toilets and restaurant were closed, and the doors of the train were closed, Fontanka reported.
Only after 90 minutes were passengers of the supposedly luxurious Allegro allowed to get out and use the station’s toilet, immediately forming long lines.
After three hours the Leo Tolstoy, a regular train service between Moscow and Helsinki, picked up all of the about 200 desperate passengers.
This was not the first of the Allegro’s teething troubles. Launched to a great fanfare in early December with a joint journey by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Finnish President Tarja Halonen, the high-speed service has been plagued by delays. On Jan. 25, its safety and motion control systems were defective, the Helsinki-bound train was forced to stop at Vainikkala, and it was again the slower Leo Tolstoy that rescued Allegro passengers.
In addition, the service is regularly delayed by between 15 and 90 minutes, Fontanka reported. In theory, the journey from St. Petersburg to Helsinki should take 3.5 hours.
These negative episodes with the Allegro may damage its reputation among passengers, who pay from 80 to 130 euros for what is billed as a comfortable and fast journey to Helsinki and back.
Russian Railways this week considered whether to offer compensation to passengers on the faulty service, Fontanka said. However, this question was to some extent complicated by the fact that Allegro is an international train, and the responsibility for its faults belonged to both sides.
The new train has cut journey times for passengers traveling between St. Petersburg and Helsinki by three hours. For speed, this puts it in competition with flights, once journey time to and from airports has been factored in.

TITLE: Symbol of Estonian Resistance Reopened
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Estonia’s St. John’s Church in St. Petersburg, one of the symbols of the country’s struggle for independence, was reopened Sunday after years of neglect and decay under the Soviets. The re-consecration ceremony, conducted by Andres Poder, Archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Estonia, was attended by the President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves.
It was in this church in 1888 that the minister of St. John’s congregation, Jakob Hurt, made his “Call for the Nation to Collect Intellectual Heritage.” This speech played an important role in resisting the Tsarist government’s Russification policy, helping Estonians to preserve their national integrity and historical heritage. It was also from the church that, on March 26 1917, 40,000 Estonians marched with songs and national tricolor flags to St. Petersburg’s Tauride Palace, where the Provisional Government sat, to demand autonomy for their country.
When the group, which featured brass bands and choirs as well as 12,000 Estonian soldiers of the St. Petersburg garrison, arrived at the palace, a 600-strong choir directed by Estonian composer Mihkel Ludig sang “My Fatherland, My Happiness and Joy,” which would become the anthem of the Republic of Estonia in 1920, and then again in 1990.
In his opening speech, Ilves said that St. John’s Church in St. Petersburg had served as a symbol of the thriving community life of Estonians in St. Petersburg both during its active years and its period of forced inactivity.
“The Estonian community in St. Petersburg and its autonomous community activities made a contribution to the birth of the Estonian state and formed a part of our national movement,” he said.
“Along with Tartu and Riga, St. Petersburg was among the places where our emerging intellectuals gained knowledge and experience... Many men and women received their education here and then started to construct the Estonian state.”
Ilves added that his family history is also connected with St. Petersburg. “This was the city where my grandfather Peeter Rebane worked at the very beginning of the 20th century before the state of Estonia was established, and where he met his wife,” he said.
St. John’s Church in St. Petersburg was founded in 1859 on St. John’s Day (June 24), one of the most important holidays in the Estonian calendar and now Estonia’s national holiday, and consecrated on November 27 1859. The building, designed by architects Ziegler von Schaffhausen and Harald Julius von Bosse, was fully completed in 1863.
In 1893, an orphanage and a school were set up in the church building.
Shut down and looted by the Soviets in 1930, the church building, with its belfry and portal demolished, was rebuilt for state use, housing warehouses, workshops and a state construction company. Its architecture was distorted by construction additions to disguise its original purpose.
The parish counted 22,000 members at the beginning of the 20th century, but that number shrank drastically during the course of repressions and the second Soviet Russification. By the 1950s, there were only 5,000 Estonians in Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then called.
After numerous negotiations and authorizations, the decaying building was returned to the Estonian parish in 1997. The final construction permit was issued in July 2009.
The thorough renovation of the redbrick building, which has been restored to its original design, cost 101 million Estonian kroons ($8.61 million), and was mostly paid for by the Republic of Estonia.
With its 400-seat hall, the church was once famous for its excellent acoustics, and has been equipped with state-of-the-art sound, lighting and video systems. Initially it will use a digital organ instead of the original pipe organ, which disappeared under the Soviets, until enough funds are collected to install a real pipe organ again. 
St. John’s Church is located at 54 Ulitsa Dekabristov, close to the Mariinsky Theater and the Conservatory. As well as hosting services of worship, it will also serve as a venue for Estonian music concerts that Eesti Kontsert, Estonia’s state concert agency, is planning to promote on a weekly basis.
The gala concert held Sunday evening featured the Estonian National Opera Symphony Orchestra and the Estonian National Male Choir. They performed pieces by Estonian composers Arvo Part, Rudolf Tobias, Villem Kapp and Rene Eespere, as well as an international repertoire, launching a music festival that will be held on the church’s premises through May.

TITLE: Law Enforcers Go Head to Head
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A turf war between law enforcement agencies, the likes of which has not been seen for many years, flared up last week after the newly independent Investigative Committee launched an attack on its former patron, the Prosecutor General’s Office.
A case against an illegal gambling network in the Moscow region has served as the pretext, with investigators claiming the owners had ties to local officials, while prosecutors tried to close the case.
The latest round of the spat saw a top prosecutor hinting at fabrications and speaking about “abuse of the Constitution and lack of professionalism” on the part of the investigators.
The gambling case had been in the works since 2009, but the Investigative Committee publicly disclosed the suspects only this month, saying businessman Ivan Nazarov was running an illegal gambling ring under the protection of the region’s top police and prosecutor’s office officials.
Nazarov allegedly paid for overseas trips of Moscow region Prosecutor General Alexander Mokhov, his family members and subordinates, the committee said last Wednesday.
Other reports in the media have suggested that Nazarov was also responsible financing the lavish birthday celebrations of Mokhov and his deputy Alexander Ignatenko, complete with performances by high-profile Russian pop artists.
A case against Nazarov was closed last Monday on the order of Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Malinovsky, who cited insufficient evidence of wrongdoing, Interfax said.
But the Investigative Committee immediately opened a new case on related charges and arrested Nazarov again before he even managed to step out of the pretrial detention center.
Six people, including Nazarov, his aide and his business partner, as well as three police officers, were placed in pretrial detention for two months by a court in the Moscow region town of Pushkino last Thursday.
Failure to release Nazarov after a prosecutor ordered him set free was “unprecedented” for modern Russia, and opening a new case against him is “abuse of Constitution,” Andrey Nekrasov, a senior official of the Prosecutor General’s Office said Friday, according to Interfax.
Nazarov’s arrest was also illegal because it was done on charges of illegal business practice, which do not allow for pretrial detention, the prosecutor said, adding that his agency will appeal the move.
The Prosecutor General’s Office also ordered an inquiry into the Moscow region prosecutors, but no results were reported over the weekend.
The clash between the committee and the prosecutors came not long after President Dmitry Medvedev separated the two agencies in December.
The committee, which was previously part of the Prosecutor General’s Office, now handles investigation of grave crimes, including murders, while prosecutors only oversee the investigations and handle inquiries into violations by investigators.
The two state bodies have a history of bad blood between them, as committee head Alexander Bastrykin had disputed Prosecutor General Yury Chaika’s authority until the Supreme Court confirmed it in a 2009 ruling. Chaika’s deputy fired Bastrykin’s deputy Anatoly Bagmet over a fake diploma the same year, a move later overturned by Chaika, who allowed Bastrykin to keep and promote Bagmet.
The attack may be an attempt to undermine the power of the prosecutor general, who faces reappointment in June 2012, independent political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky told the St. Petersburg Times.
He said Nazarov has business ties to one of Chaika’s sons. “He is not just some regular gambling businessman,” Belkovsky added.
The story may reflect the growing conflict in the ruling elite ahead of the presidential vote of 2012, said Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Moscow-based Panorama think tank, with the different agencies supporting the two potential candidates.
Former Justice Minister Chaika has ties to incumbent president Dmitry Medvedev and supports his re-election, while Bastrykin is in favor of Prime Minster Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin, after his two terms in office from 2000 to 2008.
“They don’t intend to fight corruption, they are more preoccupied with fighting each other,” Pribylovsky said by telephone, The battle will probably continue, said Viktor Ilyukhin, a State Duma member and former prosecutor, adding that the agencies should never have been separated.
“They are not the ones to blame. The responsibility lies with both parliament and the president, who have created a mockery of a law enforcement agency,” Ilyukhin said in reference to the Investigative Committee.
“The more law enforcement agencies there are in the country, the more controversy is created,” Ilyukhin said.

TITLE: Baturina Tied to Bank Of Moscow Millions
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — About 13 billion rubles ($440 million) illegally obtained from the Bank of Moscow was discovered in the personal account of Yelena Baturina, the billionaire wife of ex-Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, investigators said last Thursday.
Analysts say the move is likely aimed to pressure Baturina into selling her Inteko development company, the office of which was searched by investigators accompanied by riot police early last Thursday, Interfax said.
The Interior Ministry’s Investigative Committee announced hours after the Inteko search that the funds had been illegally obtained by “unidentified employes of the bank” and then transferred to Baturina’s personal bank account.
Earlier reports said investigators suspect that the money was payment for 58 hectares of land in the capital that a company affiliated with the Bank of Moscow purchased from Baturina in 2009.
The land deal took place after the Moscow government approved the transfer of 15 billion rubles to the bank, so the city budget may be the funding source for the lucrative deal, investigators have said.
Baturina, currently in Austria with her husband, denied all allegations last Thursday, telling Interfax that the search was an attempt to “exert pressure on her.” Her company said in a separate statement that all money in her accounts was “obtained legally.” Bank of Moscow also denied the allegations.
Luzhkov has in the past denied that there is any link between the loan handed out by Bank of Moscow in 2009 and the transfer of city funds into the bank.
Nevertheless, an unidentified law enforcement source told Interfax last Thursday that a case may “soon” be opened against Baturina.
The Audit Chamber said it is conducting its own probe into Bank of Moscow and its connections to city agencies and private companies, including Inteko.
The investigation, which is to be finished by March, shows that loans obtained by Inteko from Bank of Moscow “were much bigger than the currently reported 13 billion rubles,” auditor Mikhail Beskhmelnitsyn told Interfax.
Baturina, whose net worth was put at $1.1 billion by Finans magazine earlier this week, has managed to keep her business afloat after President Dmitry Medvedev ousted her husband last fall.
Inteko was slapped with tax claims worth 366 million rubles ($12 million) in a separate case last year, but managed to fight them off, with the Moscow region’s Arbitration Court cutting the sum to 10 million rubles last Thursday, Interfax said.
Luzhkov. who criticized the federal government shortly after his ouster, may be the actual target of the attack on Baturina, but Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin told the St. Petersburg Times this was unlikely.
“He wanted to create his party, but failed to do that, so I don’t see any political connections. It is more likely that Baturina is being pressured to sell her business,” Mitrokhin said

TITLE: Kadyrov Nominated Again 

AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The United Russia party nominated incumbent Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov for a second four-year term at the helm of the once war-ravaged North Caucasus republic — along with two other candidates.
Grozny Mayor Muslim Khuchiyev and Shaid Zhamaldayev, head of the region surrounding the Chechen capital, were also tapped as possible republican leaders by the party, which submitted the list to President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday.
Medvedev, who may now pick a name from it or choose an alternative for confirmation by the local legislature, did not name the candidate he preferred over the weekend.
But analysts said Friday that Khuchiyev and Zhamaldayev were only on the list so that it contains the required three names.
“As long as Kadyrov lives, there will be no alternative to him,” said Maxim Agarkov, a Caucasus analyst with the SK-Strategia think tank.
But Kadyrov’s political survival rests on his ability to control violence in his republic, said Alexei Malashenko of the Carnegie Moscow Center.
“As long as he controls all armed formations in the republic, he can carry on his rule,” he said.
Kadyrov’s strength was challenged last year when rebels staged two high-profile attacks in the republic.
In August, a shootout in his home village of Tsentoroi killed 19 people.Then, in October, three attackers blew themselves up inside the Chechen parliament, killing three other people. 
Suicide bombers have also returned to the streets of Grozny, with the latest instance reported last Tuesday, when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a downtown apartment block as police tried to arrest them.
Malashenko said Kadyrov’s future reign depends largely on who governs in the Kremlin.
“If Medvedev stays, he will have to build better ties with him,” Malashenko said of the Chechen leader.
While appearing loyal to Medvedev, Kadyrov has in the past reserved his highest praise for Putin, calling him the man he loves and naming a main street in Grozny after him.


TITLE: Action Taken Against Aeroflot

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Trapped for 28 hours in Sheremetyevo Airport at New Year, and frustrated by the lack of information, lawyer Sergei Litvintsev decided to get even with Aeroflot, Russia’s largest airline. 
With fellow lawyer Kristina Kameneva, whom he met at Sheremetyevo, he is demanding compensation for a group of 600 passengers for emotional stress and financial damages while stranded. The pair gathered names during their flight to Egypt and via Facebook.
The group is demanding a payment of 100,000 rubles to 150,000 rubles ($3,420 to $5,130) for each member, depending on the hours spent waiting. 
They also want a public apology from the airline because it failed to provide them with adequate meals or any hotel rooms.
If Aeroflot rejects the demands, the group will take the matter to court, Litvintsev said.
Aeroflot spokeswoman Irina Dannenberg said Friday that the company would consider the petition.


TITLE: Muslim Headdresses Test Faith, Tolerance
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — After twin attacks by female suicide bombers killed 40 people in the Moscow metro last March, media reports warned that women sporting a Muslim headdress in public may face verbal or even physical attacks.
The warnings were far from baseless, as several hate-related incidents took place hours after the bombing. One saw angry passengers throwing two scarf-wearing women off a metro train.
Attacks associated with radical Islamists make wearing a hijab — the piece of female attire that covers the head and is obligated by the religion — an everyday challenge for female Muslims in Moscow.
But most who make the decision to follow Islam’s guidelines put up with occasional harassment — and rights activists say Muscovites may actually be growing more tolerant toward women in hijabs.
“I’ve been wearing a headscarf for four years now, and in the beginning it was quite a novel experience,” Dana Akhilgova, a 20-year-old Moscow student, said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
“It was drawing attention, and there were people who even stopped talking to me,” she said.
But Akhilgova said she has no regrets because she eventually learned to “take it easier,” and unfaithful old friends were replaced by new, “even better ones.”
A spokeswoman for the Russian Council of Muftis, Gulnur-Khanum Gaziyeva, said that “in Russia, the attitude has recently become more negative to women wearing the hijab because Islam is often associated with terrorism.”
But Gaziyeva admitted that she personally did not feel any pressure.
“The police don’t stop me, and people around me don’t insult me,” Gaziyeva, who wears a hijab and a long-sleeve dress, told The St. Petersburg Times. “I believe that a lot depends on my own inner attitude.”
The number of attacks on hijab-wearing women is limited to “a few cases a year,” said Alexander Verkhovsky, head of the Sova xenophobia watchdog.
“Most of the attackers are not radicals, but just mentally unbalanced individuals,” Verkhovsky said.
Gaziyeva and Akhilgova also said people who react inappropriately to the hijab are driven by stereotypes, often generated by the media. Gaziyeva added that “terrorism has no nation and no religion.”
For a Muslim woman, wearing a hijab means modesty, as she is supposed to only show her hair to her husband, not to strangers, Gaziyeva said. “For a Muslim woman, hijab means inner freedom,” she said. 
An early wave of hate and suspicion toward women in headscarves was triggered by a 2003 attack at a rock festival in Moscow’s Tushino airfield, where two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the crowd, killing 16.
But the bombers actually wore no hijabs and even sported short skirts, witnesses said.
After the March metro blasts, the media circulated a photo of one of the bombers, the 17-year-old Dzhanet Abdullayeva, standing in a forest with a machine gun and wearing a black hijab. But the other attacker, Mariam Sharipova, described as Slavic-looking, was bareheaded in the only publicly available photo of her.
Sova watchdog’s Verkhovsky said the metro bombings were followed by a certain surge in intolerance toward women with an “Islamic” appearance. Even one native of Armenia, a country in the Caucasus with a predominantly Christian population, was reportedly attacked.
But there was less violence than after the 2003 Tushino blasts, he said. “Maybe people are getting used to” women in headscarves, Verkhovsky said.
Earlier this month — shortly after another suicide bombing carried out by a male killed 36 in Domodedovo Airport — a Moskovsky Komsomolets reporter traveled around Moscow in a niqab, which is a more austere variation of an Islamic headdress that covers not just the hair, but the face as well, leaving only a slit for the eyes.
Some metro passengers were scared off by the niqab, while others reacted aggressively, shouting insults and forcing the guard accompanying the reporter to interfere, the newspaper said.
But the harsh reaction may be due to the fact that the niqab belongs to the Arabic tradition and, unlike the hijab, is very rare in Moscow.
“Most women wearing niqabs in Moscow are from abroad, and they are always accompanied by their husbands,” Gaziyeva said.
Recent clashes over headscarves in Western Europe may also contribute to the negative attitude to the hijab in Russia, she said.
France banned hijabs in schools nationwide in 2004, and several German provinces have also introduced restrictions on wearing headscarves in public. Limitations are under consideration by several other European countries, and polls indicate high public support for the move.
The Russian Constitution guarantees freedom of expression of national and cultural identity. There is no ban on the hijab in Moscow, though some precedents are to be found in regions with a higher percentage of Muslims in the populace.


TITLE: Russians Not Biggest Drinkers
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A longstanding myth about Russia has been debunked by the World Health Organization, which ranked the country only fourth in the world by alcohol consumption — though the first for alcohol-related deaths.
The world’s most drink-prone place is Moldova, with 18.2 liters of pure alcohol consumed annually per capita, the UN health watchdog said in this month’s Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health 2011.
The Czech Republic was second with 16.4 liters per capita, and Hungary third with 16.2 liters, trailed by Russia with 15.7 liters, the report said.
But the number of deaths attributable to alcohol stood in Russia at a record 20 percent for men and six percent for women.
The report, released Feb. 11, used the data for 2005 and took into account only the population aged 15 or older.
Russia’s dismal record on alcohol mortality is to be blamed on the predominance of strong spirits, not wine or beer, and the low quality of available alcohol, Igor Beloborodov, head of the Institute for Demographic Studies, said.
Spirits account for 63 percent of pure alcohol consumed by Russians, compared with 33 percent for beer, a meager 1 percent for wine and 3 percent for all other types of alcoholic beverages, the UN report said.
In Moldovan alcohol consumption, wine, beer and spirits account for about a third each. Beer leads with the Czechs at 57 percent, and Hungarians obtain 40 percent of their alcohol from wine.

TITLE: New Migration Rules to Be Eased, More Reforms Planned
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — New registration rules for expatriates are intended to reduce bureaucracy, and the government is working on more reforms to bring conditions for foreign employees in the country in line with Europe, the Federal Migration Service said Thursday.
“We are working on a whole set of laws that will make the whole registration system obsolete,” the service’s spokesman Konstantin Poltoranin told The St. Petersburg Times.
Poltoranin admitted that some of the changes enacted last Tuesday were not helpful for businesses, which now have to register foreign employees at the latter’s home addresses, not an employer’s address.
“We were against this, but the responsible State Duma committee insisted on it,” he said.
Foreign businesses have expressed bewilderment at the reform, which effectively requires landlords to stand in line to register foreign tenants each time foreigners return from abroad.
The Association of European Businesses said the changes actually worsen conditions for foreign employees and contradict the government’s objectives to modernize the economy and liberalize migration legislation.
The association even sent a written complaint to President Dmitry Medvedev earlier this week.
Frank Schauff, the group’s chief executive, said that authorities seemed to listen to the concerns. “We had three meetings since the letter was sent to the Kremlin on Tuesday,” he said last Thursday, having just completed a round of talks at the Economic Development Ministry.
Asked about the meeting’s result, Schauff merely said that ministry officials and business representatives agreed “to solve the problem as quickly as possible.”
The Kremlin press service refused to comment Thursday.
But Valery Fedoreyev, a labor law expert at Baker & McKenzie’s Moscow office, who also participated in the meeting, said his firm and the American Chamber of Commerce are already working on a draft amendment to allow employers to register employees at their workplace.
The text will be sent to the Ministry on Friday or Monday, Fedoreyev said in e-mailed comments.
Ministry spokespeople did not answer calls for comment Thursday.
Faced with a multitude of complaints, the Federal Migration Service promised last week to let employers, not landlords, register their staff — on the condition that the home address is used and a notarized power of attorney from the landlord is produced.
Experts confirmed that migration authorities showed flexibility when handling the first registrations under the new rules. “Right now, registrations at home addresses handed in by employers without powers of attorney are accepted,” said Tatyana Bondareva of the Visa Delight agency.
But companies will have to produce the power of attorneys if facing an inspection, Bondareva explained. 
The compromise triggered concerns that many apartment owners will refuse to cooperate — because of fears concerning the disclosure of rental payments to tax authorities.
Bondareva said no rental agreements would have to be produced with the power of attorney.

TITLE: Punishments Sought for Businesses
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia may introduce criminal punishment for legal entities, Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin said last Thursday, claiming that the move is needed to lure foreign investors — though experts believe it will have the opposite effect.
The move appears to be Bastrykin’s attempt to expand authority of his newly independent agency and will produce another harassment tool to be used against businesses, analysts said.
The committee submitted a draft law to the Kremlin, Bastrykin said at the agency’s meeting in Moscow, Interfax reported.
He did not elaborate on details of the draft, but said the country sees a great increase in crimes “committed by or with the use of legal entities.”
However, current legislature does not allow criminal investigation of a legal entity, he said.
The situation “has a negative effect on Russia’s investment attractiveness,” Bastrykin said, explaining the reason behind the proposal.
Legal experts questioned by The St. Petersburg Times said similar laws exist worldwide but are rarely used, and that the current domestic legislation allows punishing legal entities for wrongdoing — only not by the Investigative Committee.
A number of countries, including Britain, France and the United States, allow criminal charges for legal entities over corruption, terrorism sponsorship and economic crimes, said Viktoria Burkovskaya, senior lawyer with Yegorov, Puginsky, Afanasyev & Partners.
But the number of such cases is very low because litigation often drags on for long periods, she said.
The Investigative Committee requested the power to fine or ban a legal entity, but this is already possible as part of the Administrative Code, said Andrei Zelenin, a partner with the Lidings law firm, which provides consulting to foreign companies.
However, the committee — which was separated from the Prosecutor General’s Office last month — only handles criminal, not administrative, cases.
“There are quite enough existing laws. The problem is the work of law enforcement agencies,” Zelenin said, calling Bastrykin’s proposal a “PR or political trick” rather than a necessary measure.
Raids and surprise checks on various pretexts are often used by law enforcement agencies as means to crack down on businesses, mainly in corruption cases, and the new rule is likely to be abused as well, analysts said.
“In Russia, it looks more like an act of intimidation,” Zelenin said. “If the prosecutors and courts continue working the same way, it won’t be efficient.”
The move “won’t improve the investment climate in Russia, but will become a new tool for pressuring business,” Burkovskaya said.
“For companies, it will result in endless searches and extortion of money,” she said.


TITLE: High End Living on London’s High Street for Russians
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: LONDON — A short walk from Harrods, one of London’s most prestigious department stores, and buried deep in the plush backstreets of Kensington and Chelsea, is Britain’s oldest Orthodox cathedral. 
Converted from an Anglican church in the 1950s, the Cathedral of the Dormition and All Saints has an icon screen salvaged from the chapel of the imperial Russian Embassy in London in 1918. On a mild Thursday evening in February the daily service — conducted in Church Slavonic and English — attracted a congregation of about 20, mainly well-dressed, young and middle-aged women. 
In Kensington and Chelsea, the London borough with the country’s highest property prices, the cathedral is well placed to serve London’s high profile population of wealthy Russians. Stratford, the hub for more humble economic migrants, is an hour’s journey away by public transport.
There are no reliable figures for the total number of Russians in London but Natalya Chouvaeva, editor of the Russian-language London Courier newspaper, put the quantity of Russian-speakers in Britain at about half a million — a figure that has more than doubled in the last 10 years.
London’s well-heeled ethnic Russians, however, make up a fraction of this total that is principally made up of less affluent migrants from Eastern Europe and Russia itself. 
The community of rich Russians in London, however, has a profile out of all proportion to its numerical size. 
One of Britain’s biggest estate agents, Knight Frank, has a dedicated Russia and CIS desk. Elena Norton, the desk’s head, said the firm’s clients are typically looking for large apartments, with porters and parking, in purpose-built buildings costing upward of ?5 million ($8 million) — or large detached houses in prestigious London suburbs, like Hampstead, with a price tag of at least ?10 million ($16 million). 
“They are totally self-made,” said Norton of her Russian clients. “And they are very, very realistic.”
London has been well known as a destination of choice for wealthy Russians for many years, but the demand for luxury properties shows no sign of falling. In 2008, Russian and CIS clients made up 12 percent of Knight Frank’s customers for prime central London real estate; in 2010 this figure rose to 17 percent. 
Sought-after properties — which can be expected to double in value within 8 to 10 years — are not the only reason rich Russians are drawn to Britain. 
“The Russian community in the U.K.,” said Ivanna Chevliakova, managing director of Law Firm, which specializes in immigration issues, “is mainly highly skilled workers and business people.” 
Unsurprisingly, such immigrants are attracted by Britain’s favorable tax regime, world-class banking facilities, clear immigration laws and central location for accessing European, American and Asian markets. London is also a global financial center, and Russian firms regularly conduct international public offerings on the London Stock Exchange. Analysts predict that 2011 may see Russian companies raise up to $30 billion in London.
In recent years, Britain’s Russian community has not just been confined to London but has started to spread out to the Home Counties — the countryside regions surrounding the capital. Manchester and Edinburgh also have very large Russian presences. 
The education system in Britain, particularly its private schools, is another big draw for wealthy Russians. The offspring of such Russian luminaries in London as exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky and poisoned former KGB-agent Alexander Litvinenko have attended prestigious London private schools. 
Muscovite Levy Andrachnikov, 14, joined the ?88,290 ($141,734) a year Charterhouse school, where he will study until he is 18, in 2009. Although the transition to a British school was difficult, he said, it was “made much easier because of my very close [Russian] friends studying at other U.K. schools with whom I keep in touch.”
He added that more than 50 Russian children have applied to join Charterhouse in 2011, out of a total school population of 775. 
His reception among the other boarders had been friendly, Andrachnikov said, but “Russia for the British is mostly a large area of land associated with communism, [Arsenal football player Andrei] Arshavin and vodka.”
Not all Russian residents of the British capital, however, have left their homeland by choice. “Since Putin came to power,” said Michael O’Kane, a partner at the Peters & Peters law firm, “there has been a steady stream of individuals seeking refuge in London against politically motivated extradition cases.”
Peters & Peters has represented many clients who have fought extradition to Russia, including the former owner of Yevroset, Yevgeny Chichvarkin, against whom charges of kidnapping and extortion were dropped by Russian prosecutors in January.
British courts have repeatedly thrown out extradition requests from Moscow on the basis that the accused would not receive a fair trial in Russia. Other high-profile figures who have won political asylum in Britain include Chechen separatist Akhmed Zakayev and Berezovsky. 
Just as the wider population of wealthy Russians in London shows every sign of continuing to grow, so the number of business and political exiles is unlikely to shrink. “With the 2012 election we’re not expecting any decrease,” O’Kane said. “It may well increase.”

TITLE: Sollers and Ford Agree Joint Venture
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
and Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Sollers and Ford Motor said Friday that they tentatively agreed to combine their Russian plants into a joint venture to produce Ford cars, vans and pickup trucks in a plan that could boost sales to at least 300,000 by 2015.
Earlier that day, Sollers announced that it decided not to partner with Fiat in a $3.3 billion domestic car assembly project. The government had said the Russian-Italian alliance would be one of the two mainstays of the local car industry.
Having begun local production in 2002, Ford now appears to have replaced the Italians as one of the leading foreign automakers working in Russia. Sollers made the announcements a day after President Dmitry Medvedev ended his visit to Italy.
The government is also counting on the AvtoVAZ venture with France’s Renault to help bring the industry to the next level of modernization.
The joining of forces by Sollers and Ford is in line with the government strategy to develop the domestic car industry through 2020, which is largely based on establishing “strong alliances” with foreign carmakers, a spokeswoman for the Industry and Trade Ministry said. 
Ford and Sollers said they were seeking to sign an assembly agreement with the government — a formal commitment that would require them to increase output over the next four years in exchange for reduced import duties on car parts.
Though Ford declined to name the production target of the joint venture, manufacturers have to reach a target of least 300,000 vehicles per year under such an agreement to qualify for government benefits.
Carmakers that want to take advantage of this benefit have until Feb. 28 to sign up.
The 50-50 venture between Ford and Sollers will include the Ford plant in Vsevolozhsk, outside St. Petersburg, and two Sollers facilities in the Tatarstan republic, the companies said in a joint statement that announced their memorandum of understanding. 
Expected to start operations by the end of this year, the company will manufacture and distribute “a range of Ford passenger cars and light commercial vehicles,” the carmakers said.
The Ford St. Petersburg plant produced 80,000 Mondeo and Focus models last year, but has the capacity to produce 125,000 cars per year. Sollers has the capacity to make 195,000 vehicles in Tatarstan.
“We are delighted to be taking this next step for Ford in Russia,” Ford Europe chief executive Stephen Odell said in the statement.
Sollers chief Vadim Shvetsov was quoted in the statement as saying he was “inspired” by the chance to team up with Ford and confident that their joint efforts would ensure them a leading position on the Russian market.
Ford brings to the proposed joint venture its manufacturing experience, an extensive existing dealer network and access to the global range of Ford’s latest products, the statement said.
Sollers would contribute an “invaluable knowledge of the market and state-of-the-art manufacturing capacity,” said Ford spokeswoman Yekaterina Kulinenko.
Car sales have been bouncing back in Russia, fueled by the government’s cash-for-clunkers program, which is expected to end this spring. The government is considering a similar program for commercial vehicles.
In addition to vehicles, the Ford-Sollers joint venture would produce engines, operate a stamping facility to provide more local parts and establish research and development activities.
It will also handle the import and distribution of Ford brand products, parts and accessories in Russia.
Ford slid one notch to become No. 5 carmaker worldwide last year, according to the Truthaboutcars.com portal.
Fiat will not abandon plans to expand in Russia, it said in a joint statement with Sollers.
“Fiat and Sollers have now determined to pursue independent strategies to further develop their respective presence in Russia,” the companies said. 
A Fiat spokesman in Italy contacted by The St. Petersburg Times declined to elaborate on the issue. Reuters reported that the company planned to build a plant in Russia on its own with an annual capacity of 500,000 vehicles.


TITLE: Foreign Workers Not Welcome
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Tyomkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: It is necessary to decrease the number of foreign workers in St. Petersburg, Governor Valentina Matviyenko told a session of the city government last week. 
“There’s no need to bring in just anybody, and then deal with illegal immigrants, crime, and living conditions,” said the governor, explaining her position. She went on to clarify that this does not concern managers and experts invited from abroad by companies for their experience. Before approving companies’ requests to import labor, it is necessary to thoroughly investigate whether or not local workers could be used to fill vacancies, Matviyenko instructed Pavel Pankratov, chairman of the city’s Labor and Employment Committee. Pankratov said that quotas for foreign labor were shrinking annually. 
According to data from the Office of Federal Migration Service for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, the quota for foreign workers in 2009 was 213,000 people. In 2010 the figure was 210,066, and this year it has been reduced to 197,253. However, companies are not even filling those quotas, said Darya Novikova, a spokesperson for the FMS. Due to the financial crisis, since 2009 the demand for labor has significantly decreased. 
According to statistics from state statistics office Petrostat, St. Petersburg had a total of 16,800 unemployed citizens in 2010 — 0.6 percent of the economically active population.

TITLE: Eberspaecher to Open Factory
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Tyomkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: German company Eberspaecher will open a factory producing automobile exhaust systems later this year, said Dmitry Osipov, general director of the company’s Russian offices. 
The company has rented around 3,000 square meters of factory space at the Elektropult plant in the Rzhevka district of St. Petersburg, said Osipov. He said that the enterprise would initially assemble systems from imported parts for the St. Petersburg Nissan factory, but in the future hopes to find a partner to press components locally. Eberspaecher’s European and Japanese factories already produce exhaust systems for Nissan. Investment in the project could reach $10 million, Osipov added. 
Gennady Lokotkov, president of REP-Holding, which manages the plant, confirmed that Elektropult had leased part of its workshops to Eberspaecher. 
Last year, Nissan’s Petersburg plant produced 24,500 Teana and X-Trail automobiles. This year, the Murano crossover model has been added to the range, and from April the plant will change to a three-shift regime, aiming to produce around 47,000 automobiles this year. 


TITLE: Choosing Between Arms and Allies
AUTHOR: By Imants Liegis
TEXT: It should surprise no one that many in Latvia view the sale by France of fully equipped assault warships to Russia with grave concern. Other European Union member states seem to be looking increasingly toward Russia as a potential purchaser of military equipment. But is it wise for EU and NATO members to enhance the capacity of non-allies to project their military power? After all, only 2 1/2 years ago, Russia invaded Georgia, a country that NATO had named as a potential future member, and has occupied part of it ever since.
The EU Council’s common position on arms exports is legally binding on all EU states. Of course, competence and responsibility for arms-export controls and licensing rests with member states, not EU institutions. Indeed, under the Wassenaar Arrangement, a decision on exports is the sole responsibility of each participating state.
Implementation of the common EU position on arms exports has led to more exchanges of information, greater transparency and closer consultation. It has also harmonized export-control arrangements and procedures. But there are obvious limits to what can be achieved. Consultations are currently a bilateral matter, with no rules governing how they should be conducted — and no requirement that any final agreement on arms-export decisions be reached.
The effectiveness of this consultation mechanism is difficult to evaluate. According to the common position’s provisions, before a member state grants an export license, it should consult with any member state that has previously denied a similar license. But the common position does not specify the extent to which another member state should be consulted. More importantly, it does not require the arms-exporting member state to consult with any other member state that might have concerns.
As a result, arms exports to third countries remain a contentious issue within the European Union. At the heart of the matter is a conflict between the individual member states’ national interests — the competitiveness of European defense-related companies and the strategic importance of defense markets when linked to national foreign policy — and the Lisbon Treaty, which refers specifically to enhanced solidarity and consultation.
If the Lisbon Treaty is to be respected, solidarity must be viewed as a political tool for moving toward a European defense policy that works for the common good. Pursuing solely national policies on technology transfer runs contrary to that goal. Clearer rules for the consultation mechanism need to be elaborated, and arms-exporting EU member states should consult all other member governments that might have concerns, not only those that have previously issued or denied an export license.
The European Union could work toward a common arms-export policy by seeking a shared understanding of the predictability and stability of third-party countries. Developing a common policy on arms exports to such countries should go hand in hand with the creation of a common and internationally competitive European defense-equipment market.
This means that cooperation with non-EU countries should not be to the detriment of solidarity and common rules within the European Union. Consulting at an early stage would help manage misperceptions — often fueled by reports in the media long before deals are concluded — and thus strengthen convergence and unity among EU member states.
Giving the EU a greater role in situations where member states’ views differ should also be considered. For example, member states could consult on sensitive or contentious issues within the Political and Security Committee. This would strengthen the EU Council’s common position, which already defines general rules for the control of exports of military technology and equipment.
As for NATO, the question of consultations among allies is addressed in Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that “the parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence, or security of any of the parties is threatened.”
But Article 4 does not relate only to imminent threats. Decisions taken by a NATO country can have implications for other allies. The transfer of military equipment and technology to third countries could affect regional security and prompt a revision of threat assessments.
The North Atlantic Council would seem an obvious forum within which to enhance solidarity among members, reassure member states that have perceptions of greater vulnerability, and avoid misperceptions. At a lower level, the Political and Partnership Committee and/or the Conference of National Armaments Directors could be used for initial consultations. These issues are of concern to all allies, so discussions should not be confined to bilateral agendas.
Arms sales and technology transfers inevitably raise complex moral and ethical questions. That is all the more reason to seek open, confidence-reinforcing discussions among allies. Solidarity cannot be achieved when our most important institutions are excluded. Indeed, some of the most dangerous decisions made in both the EU and NATO are those that are not openly discussed beforehand.

Imants Liegis, Latvia’s defense minister until November last year, is now chairman of the European Affairs Committee of Parliament. © Project Syndicate

TITLE: Corruption Is a Mental Health Issue
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Using a mobile phone is forbidden, as is walking outside. Showers are once a week for 10 minutes. People are routinely sworn at, and it’s not unheard of for them to be tied to their beds. Patients are not informed about their conditions, the details of their treatment and have no right to change doctor.
It may sound like a penal colony or gulag, but this is life inside Russia’s psychiatric clinics. It may sound like an unlikely subject for a column about graft, but corruption has many faces, and Russia’s prison-like, state-run psychiatric hospitals constitute a completely nontransparent system, in which cynicism and violations of people’s rights thrive and in most cases stay unpunished.
Irina, a former patient, remembers a time when an elderly patient began to choke on a slice of tangerine. “The nurse rushed up to her and began to restrain her so roughly that she broke the poor woman’s arm. And the nurse was swearing loudly throughout. The staff were really awful. They treated us all like human waste.”
Needless to say, the nurse who broke the patient’s arm has kept her job, Irina said.
Another former patient, Natalya, 26, who was admitted to a mental clinic after a traumatic divorce and a nervous breakdown, tells a horrifying story. Although Russian law obliges doctors to inform patients about their condition and treatment, she only realized she was in a psychiatric unit when she saw a hospital label on her pillow.
When she arrived at the clinic, she was crying frantically. To quiet her, she said, staff covered her head with a pillowcase.
“I was scared, I was literally suffocating, and I had no idea what was going on, and the nurses just smothered me until I fainted. They were rude as hell,” she recalls. Even when she came to her senses, things did not improve immediately. She was tied to her bed with old cotton stockings.
“The next morning I woke up and saw a doctor, who was going around the room asking everyone the same questions, like, ‘What date is it today?’ ‘What is your name?’ and ‘How did you sleep?’
“He didn’t stay with any patient for longer than a minute,” Natalya recalls. “Then he came up to me and asked if I knew where I was. I said I was in a hospital, but I was too weak and too drugged to move. At the time I actually had no idea it was a mental ward. I thought at first I’d had a stroke or something. And the man just walked away. And this was it, the same routine every morning. I realized after a while that nobody was going to discuss my condition with me.”
When Natalya asked to change her doctor, she was ignored. One of the head managers of the clinic then hinted that a hefty bribe would perhaps solve it. Natalya and her family, who had neither the money, nor the intention of paying a bribe, soon realized they had nowhere they could go to complain.
Although such tragic incidents have been happening here for years, it was not until several months ago that the St. Petersburg Human Rights Council — an umbrella group of most of the city’s human rights organizations — added a section on the rights of psychiatric clinic patients to its annual report.
The council is now campaigning for the creation of an independent body to oversee conditions in the city’s psychiatric clinics and to ensure that patients receive adequate medical treatment, under humane conditions, followed by help with rehabilitation.
According to official statistics, there are more than four million mental health patients and more than eight million people suffering “borderline conditions” in Russia. Independent experts believe the true figures may be twice as high, considering the likelihood of many undiagnosed or untreated cases.
One way to begin to eradicate corruption in mental clinics is to make the system transparent and the staff accountable. It is encouraging to see people starting to tell their stories to the Human Rights Council. It suggests that popular discontent over standards of mental health care is mounting.
It is time for the doctors themselves — at least those who are honest and respect their patients — to join forces and take their case to the Health Ministry to say they refuse to treat their patients like prisoners any longer, and suggest disqualifying those of their colleagues who take financial advantage of their very vulnerable patients or treat them roughly in order to milk their relatives.

TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Local punk band PTVP packed Shum club Friday, pumping out their songs about sex, drugs and revolution for nearly two hours. Singer and songwriter Alexei Nikonov dedicated one song with the chorus “It Rains in California, it Snows in Magadan” to political prisoners, “whom they say don’t exist in Russia,” and urged the audience to show their solidarity. Introducing his anti-Kremlin anthem “God Save Putin,” Nikonov advised fans not to cooperate with the authorities and “not to sign any official papers,” and called for anarchists and left-wingers to stop fighting and unite in the face of the bleak current situation, dedicating “Morning of the Workers” to the German left-wing militant Ulrike Meinhof of the Red Army Faction (RAF).
The letters RAF were shown on the backdrop during the final song “Happy End,” the lyrics being — of course — “This is not a happy end.”
Political content aside, it was simply a great rock concert, with excellent music and sound, “leaps of faith” and a huge black flag reading “PTVP: My Revolution” brought by one female fan. 
Launched in September, Shum (Noise) is a cool new club, perfect for concerts, even if it’s a little to small for bands such as PTVP, but worth visiting more often for smaller gigs. 
This week, the Ilosaarirock Festival comes to the city. But if the real thing is a three-day, five-stage major rock event that has drawn thousands since the festival was launched in the Finnish city of Joensuu in 1971, St. Petersburg will see a small event, featuring four bands, two Finnish and two local. 
The Finnish bands are the punk veterans Kumikameli (see interview, this page) and Dusha Pitera, an unlikely band formed by Finns in St. Petersburg and performing their own songs in Russian, while the local Russian bands will be Skvortsy Stepanova and Feddy. It will be held at Mod on Saturday, Feb. 26. 
The other concerts to check out this week are Auctyon, the veteran local art-rock band that will celebrate its showman Oleg Garkusha’s 50th birthday with a large concert featuring Yury Shevchuk and other Russian rock luminaries at Lensoviet Palace of Culture on Thursday, Feb. 24, and U.S. pop punk band Yellowcard performing at Glavclub on Friday, Feb. 25.
“Perestroika rock” band AVIA will reunite for a large show complete with Derevo’s Anton Adasinsky and a gymnastic group at Kosmonavt on Saturday, Feb. 26.
Two memorial events will be held at local clubs this week. A homage to Eduard Starkov, the frontman of the innovative punk band Khimera, who died in 1997, will be held at Manhattan on Saturday, Feb. 26, while Stranniye Igry bassist/vocalist Grigory Sologub will be remembered with a screening of Alexander Lipnitsky’s documentary at Chinese Pilot Jao Da on Sunday, Feb. 27.


TITLE: Loud, fast and Finnish
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Finnish hardcore punk/metal legends Kumikameli perform loud guitar music now, but they deliberately avoided guitars and performed what were described as “children’s songs” when they started out 25 years and ten albums ago in Joensuu, a North Karelian city 80 kilometers from the Finnish-Russian border. 
“We started out in 1986 as a protest against guitar bands,” vocalist and songwriter Jarmo “Toppo” Koponen said in a phone interview Friday with The St. Petersburg Times, mentioning that just before the conversation, he had listened to a Motorhead album and started to explore a new PJ Harvey record — to find “a relaxed mood for the weekend.”
“During that era in Finnish music, they were all guitar bands, and a kind of guitar hero worship was going on, and we decided to make a band that would be totally different. 
“I had been playing guitar for ten years by then, and I was totally bored and pissed off with guitar playing. So I switched to bass, and our lineup was  bass, drums and keyboards — and we also did a lot of acoustic gigs with a banjo or mandolin, and accordion, and just a tambourine as a drum.”
It all changed when the keyboard player quit and the band was unable to find a replacement, so Koponen had to go back to guitar-playing and a new bassist was recruited. 
“Since then we have been going toward punk and metal style,” Koponen said.
“Nowadays we play kind of oriental punk; short songs, fast songs, and also some very slow, very ‘doomish’ ones — but with an oriental twist... Loud, stupid, Finnish music.”
Koponen is the only founding member in today’s Kumikameli, a band still noted for its humor — if dark — both in its lyrics and stage antics, such as performing dressed as clowns at the Ilosaarirock festival last year. Bassist Jouni “Joppe” Vento joined in 1990, guitarist Jussi “Jute” Musikka in 1996, and drummer Olli-Matti Wahlstrom has played with the band since 2000. 
Koponen switched from guitar to keyboards after an accident at a concert in 2006 when he fell off stage and broke his left arm in two places. “I totally lost the ability to play the guitar at gigs — I can write songs with it, but I can’t play at gigs,” he said.
The band’s original influences — “not directly, maybe in approach or whatever” — were everything from The Ramones (“the reason why we ever started to play anything”) to KISS and Dead Kennedys. Koponen also cited The Cure (“one song that triggered the whole Kumikameli thing was ‘Killing an Arab’”) and Dutch band The Nits, “which shows that you can make beautiful music with a minimalist approach. They have a lot of calm, beautiful music, which is done very delicately.”
The Cure’s “Killing an Arab” also perhaps influenced the band’s name, which means “rubber camel” in Finnish, Koponen admitted. “We wanted to make some kind of oriental thing — desert music, and a camel is a desert animal,” he said. “And a rubber camel is the ultimate desert animal. That kind of logic.”
Kumikameli’s contemporary music may be different from its early joyous, childish songs, but Koponen’s approach to his darkly humorous Finnish-language lyrics that the band is acclaimed for is pretty much the same. 
“The first level of the lyrics was very childish; we were singing about Indians and imaginary animals,” Koponen said.
“But at the second level, the imaginary animals were kind of references to real physical events, like children’s fables. It’s still going on, though we play music [that is different] from children’s music. 
“We sing about ants — how you can overlook one ant in your yard or house or factory, but if there are ten zillion ants, they can destroy your yard, house, or factory. How one person cannot do much, but if there’s one zillion people, then you can do anything. The same with rats; we sing about rats, but we mean dishonest people.”
Koponen applies his writing method to many things, from everyday life to politics, making his point in an indirect way.
“We disguise our opinions in those stories about small animals, like mammoths and ants and rats,” he said.
“We work with open eyes and write facts down, and then we change the facts into children’s stories about animals.”
He chooses to write in Finnish, because he said the lyrics were of great importance to Kumikameli’s music.
“It can be easier to write songs in English, because you can put some bullshit and nobody pays attention to it. Why bother? If you write lyrics in your own language, then you know what you’re saying and you can stand behind your words.”
The nature of the Finnish language contributes to Koponen’s freedom as a lyricist, while simultaneously making the lyrics difficult to translate because of the many Finnish cultural references and puns.
“I write the lyrics, so I can translate them, but not word for word. Because I know the story behind the words, I can translate the idea,” he said.
“But there is a lot of wordplay that cannot be translated. In Finland, we have one word that can have seven meanings, and the meaning changes depending on the word before or after it. 
“The same word can mean anything, like astua, which could mean you take a step, or could mean you have sex with a cow or horse. The same word, but the meaning is changed totally by the words around that word. So we cannot translate it word for word, we have to understand the story and then translate it, so it’s rather difficult for other people to translate it.”
Koponen and bassist Vento also perform with Elakelaiset, a band that takes international rock and pop hits and transforms them into humppa, an old Finnish dance music style. Formed in 1993, Elakelaiset is due to perform its first St. Petersburg concert at Zal Ozhidaniya on May 7.
Translated as “pensioners,” the band grew out of one of Kumikameli’s early jocular projects and enjoys a following of its own in and outside Finland, including Russia.
“In the first years of Kumikameli, when there was no guitar, we sounded a lot like Elakelaiset,’ Koponen said.
“We made a special project for Provinssirock and Down by the Laituri festivals for several years. We had been playing Black Sabbath’s first three albums under the name Sement, or Cement. Our bass player sang and had a mike stand made from a real scythe, with the blade pointing downwards. Dangerous but fun.”
Kumikameli’s other projects included Papillons, a band whose name was inspired by the book by Henri Charriere. The band members dressed like prisoners and performed prison-themed songs, from “Riot in Cell Block #9” to “Jailhouse Rock.” 
“The sound engineer dressed as a prison guard and took us on stage in handcuffs and chains,” Koponen said. 
“The Papillons did some gigs playing inside an old Volkswagen Kleinbuss that was painted to look like a brick wall and had iron bars at the windows. 
“So Elakelaiset is one of those jokes that got kind of out of hand.”
Switching between the two bands is easy, because the music is completely different, according to Koponen. 
“If you put your grandfather’s suit on and take your cheapest Yamaha keyboard out of its cardboard box, then you are Elakelaiset, and if you put your normal clothes and take your Korg synthesizer, then you’re Kumikameli,” he said.
Kumikameli’s audience is “a funny mixture of guys of our age who have been with us from 1986, and young people,” Koponen said.
“There’s a lot of young people who have got interested in the roots of weird music in Finland, so young boys and girls come and check out what the hell this one is.
“They stumble upon a Kumikameli song on YouTube or Spotify, and then they notice, ‘OK, they are playing in our town,’ and then they go to see us. So it’s all ages from 18 to 45.”
Finland still has a lot of offbeat music outside the mainstream to offer, Koponen said. 
“I think it’s the spirit of the Finnish people; we don’t go for this mass production. 
“Radios play the same songs on every channel, like Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga and things like that all day long. So people form their own bands to make music they like, because they cannot hear decent music on the radio, I think. Many small clubs have died, but still there are a lot of places to play, big university cities where students have parties and bands come to play. So we have an open mind to different styles of music.”

Kumikameli will perform at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 26 at Mod, 7 Naberezhnaya Kanala Griboyedova. Metro Nevsky Prospekt. Tel. 712 0734.

TITLE: In celebration of Djangology
AUTHOR: By Olga Khrustaleva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: JFC Jazz Club is preparing to host the 16th Guitar Jazz festival, which this year is dedicated to the centenary of Django Reinhardt, the legendary father of gypsy jazz, or manouche. 
  The composer of jazz hits such as “Djangology,” “Minor Swing” and “Nuages,” Reinhardt left an indelible imprint on the development of jazz.
  One of the few jazz styles to originate outside of America, manouche was born on the streets of Paris out of classical music, and is influenced by jazz and gypsy folk melodies. Reinhardt, the father of manouche and a guru for many contemporary jazz musicians, was a self-trained musician who came from a family of Romany gypsies living in France. Having never studied music, he defied all expectations and career forecasts when he went on to become a guitar virtuoso despite injuring his hand in a fire at the age of 18. 
  “He was the first really brilliant solo guitarist I ever became aware of,” wrote the eminent American guitarist Charlie Byrd. “I had records of his when I was 10 years old. It just blew my mind that anyone could play a guitar like that. Still does.” 
  Although Reinhardt was notoriously unreliable, especially in later life — a passionate gambler, egotistic, and often late for his own performances — these imperfections were eclipsed by his talent. 
  “It was Reinhardt’s guitar playing that stimulated me so much musically that I was drawn to the guitar like a magnet,” said Julian Bream, an English classical guitarist and lutenist. “I felt his playing was so evocative, so powerful at times, so dramatic, and then other times so lyrical, that he seemed to hold within his musical grasp the whole gamut of human expression.” 
  The festival brings together very different musicians who will include Reinhardt’s compositions in their programs as tribute to his memory, but play them in their own way — in not only gypsy jazz, but also funk and fusion styles. Local bands “Swing Couture,” “Terminator Trio” and “Monsieur Manouche” are among the festival’s participants, together with Ilya Lushtak’s band from the U.S. and many others. What unites all of them is respect and the desire to pay homage to the father of gypsy jazz. 
  “Django Reinhardt was a genius composer and his music is still in demand, though not all of us are aware of it,” said Alexei Stankov, the leader of “Swing Couture.” 
  “His compositions comprise the soundtrack for the computer game ‘Mafia,’ for example, and the famous film director Woody Allen often uses his music in his films.” 
Music can never be separated from the period when it was created, and Reinhardt’s compositions form an excellent representation of his epoch — the time of optimism and great expectations between the two world wars — which continues to fascinate many contemporary figures.
 
The Gypsy jazz festival runs from Tuesday, Feb. 22 through Monday, Feb. 28 at JFC club, 33 Shpalernaya Ulitsa. 
Tel. 272 9850. Metro Chernyshevskaya. For a full program, 
see www.jfc-club.spb.ru.

TITLE: Volochkova vs. Groundhogs
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: This week, ballerina Anastasia Volochkova was once again the subject of earnest political commentary, as she alleged in her blog that the shadowy Kremlin adviser Vladislav Surkov personally ordered Channel One to take off the air a trashy talk show about her birthday.
Absurd though this sounded, it was true that the channel pulled the show at the last moment on Friday, after airing it in the Far East, and that NTV also pulled a talk show with Volochkova on the same day, in what looked like a joint decision to cut off her oxygen. And the reason would seem clear: her surreal transformation into a political hot potato, after she called the United Russia party “shit” in an interview with Radio Liberty, and vowed to walk out, saying the party forced her to sign a letter against jailed oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Channel One told Kommersant that the show was pulled because it did not meet “ethical standards,” and another reported reason was that Volochkova once used the word “shit.” Russian television is still pretty prudish, but this did not hold water, as a bleep or edit would have fixed it. And anyone familiar with “Let Them Talk” would be surprised to hear it was overly concerned about ethical standards.
It’s a tabloid of a talk show, recently moved to prime time because of its high ratings. Its first television interview with spy Anna Chapman was a real coup in December. It never misses an opportunity for tears, however nasty the undertones. In a recent show, it forced a Russian girl who was adopted by a loving Irish family and had no wish to meet her birth family, to watch a harrowing video of her babbling, alcoholic wreck of a mother.
The show with Volochkova, posted on YouTube, is the usual mixture of sentimentality, with her small daughter lisping a poem; titillation, with her nude photographs blown up on a huge screen; and bitchiness, with arch-enemy, it-girl Ksenia Sobchak making a surprise appearance and exaggeratedly air-kissing her.
Sobchak mocked Volochkova for posting nude photographs on her blog and explaining that she wanted to prove her breasts were not silicone. As a ballerina, “Nastya” should be thinking about the latest ballet stagings or “a new way of life,” Ksyusha advised affectionately.
Yelena Drapeko, a State Duma deputy for the Just Russia party, in turn attacked Volochkova for claiming that she was dropped from the Bolshoi because she refused to get roles via the casting couch. “They’re all gay, there’s no one to sleep with there,” scoffed Drapeko, telling Volochkova that she had ruined pure young girls’ dreams of dancing at the “temple” of ballet.
Actually, the bizarre thing is that Volochkova should be so upset about the show being pulled, since most people would class it as humiliating.
I spoke to Volochkova this week and she seemed most upset that Channel One was now likely not to show a concert for her 35th birthday that it filmed at the Kremlin Palace, featuring pop stars such as Filipp Kirkorov. She was rather sweet. What I liked most was her assistant asking me to wait on the line because “Anastasia is getting dressed.”
Volochkova has revealed herself as a surprisingly entertaining blogger, in a step away from her usual frilly public persona. This week, she tried her hand at satire, with an entry about going to a hunting lodge where you can go on a groundhog shoot — or okhota na surkov in Russian, nudge, nudge. Groundhogs, presumably the derivation of Surkov’s surname, are “very cowardly animals” and their meat has a “characteristic, horrible smell,” she wrote pointedly, adding with regret that it wasn’t the season so she wasn’t allowed to shoot any.

TITLE: Bach reinvented
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: They adapt inviolable classical jewels such as Chopin’s nocturnes and Schubert’s “Ave Maria” for a quartet of Russian folk instruments. They mix J. S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor with Russian folk tunes. They make their audiences’ jaws drop — and the applause from the stunned audience is deafening.
The musicians in question are the Terem Quartet, and now they have a couple of new aces up their collective sleeve.
The ensemble’s next concert at the State Academic Cappella on March 3 celebrates the release of two new CDs, “MyBach” and “Russian Schubert.” The philosophy behind the titles — and behind both discs — is simple enough. The releases are meant as tributes to these composers.
The quartet, which will celebrate a venerable 25th birthday in November this year, will present a concert fusing arrangements from both recordings, which came to life thanks to the group’s cooperation since 2006 with the internationally established classical music festival La Folle Journee. The festival’s founder Rene Martin, who established the event in 1995, made it the project’s mission “to overcome the prejudice that surrounds classical music, without deforming its values, in bringing the audience close to the music and the musicians without diminishing their stature, and in opening new horizons, while retaining the freedom of choice.”
With events that last no more than 45 minutes, and audiences being free to move between various halls when they choose, the festival creates an unusual environment for listening to the musical program.
The concert on March 5 will also mark the beginning of a marathon of jubilee concerts that will be held across the country during the year.
Bach is a key composer for the Terem Quartet. The group’s biggest-ever hit was the “Russian Sufferings on J. S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue” that also served as the title for their best-selling CD recording “Russkiye Stradaniya,” (“Russian Sufferings”).
The Russian folk tunes that the quartet uses on the CD are signposts to historical Russian sufferers.
“Dostoyevsky wrote about these people ... They seek the truth, and every one of them has a dramatic background,” says the quartet’s Andrei Konstantinov, who plays the domra, a mandolin-like instrument. “Some of them are happy, some sad, and some desperate — but all of them seek universal happiness.”
The Bach toccata arrangement was born out of a spontaneous and casual gathering between the quartet’s members with baritone Vladimir Chernov.
“We were just joking and fooling around,” said Andrei Smirnov, the group’s bayan (a Russian accordion) player. “One of us wondered if Bach, or anyone from his family, had ever been to Russia, and then we started fantasizing about what would have happened if Bach had discovered Russian folk tunes.”
The Terem Quartet’s lineup is slightly different from what it was when the group made its debut on Nov. 26, 1986. In 2000, alto domra player Igor Ponomarenko left to establish his own quartet, Magrigal. Konstantinov, Smirnov and bass balalaika player Nikolai Dzyudze found a replacement in the form of St. Petersburg Academy of Culture graduate Alexei Barshchev, who is now fully at home in his new surroundings.
Despite the fact that the group has been performing for nearly 25 years, its music has still not been properly classified. The usual descriptions — “world music,” “fusion,” “postmodernism” — are all reasonable enough, but do not entirely ring true. The four are most happy with the term coined by composer Alexander Chaikovsky, who described them as “instrumental theater.”
The musicians’ performance style has always been highly interactive, involving the audience as much as possible: They strut the stage, puff out their cheeks, wink at the audience, snap their fingers, jump and twist — and never fail to make an impression.
Throughout the quartet’s impressive history, the group has traveled widely, performing for the Pope, Mother Theresa and Queen Elizabeth II. At one stage, the restless “truth seekers” even made some appearances in maternity wards, playing to pregnant women. Those performances were sponsored by no less of an authority than Russia’s Health Ministry, which expressed an interest in studying the effects of music on pregnancy and embryo development. As the group played, the mothers-to-be made notes describing their emotions. After studying the notes, the doctors then gave the musicians recommendations for further work.


TITLE: The Business of First-Class Partying
TEXT: the morning run in the park. Their one-word explanation for their hangovers: Êîðïîðàòèâ! It wasn’t hard to figure out that this word meant “office party,” especially when the sufferers regaled us with stories of the spread (lavish), the booze (abundant) and their co-workers’ behavior (deliciously scandalous). Almost made me want to join the corporate world again.
As far as I can tell, êîðïîðàòèâ (or êîðïîðàòèâ÷èê) is a newish addition to the Russian language, a slangy version of êîðïîðàòèâíàÿ âå÷åðèíêà (office/business party). Runet is filled with thousands of companies advertising their ability to organize the absolute best office parties, complete with âåäóùèé (master of ceremonies) or òàìàäà (toastmaster). True, they tend to overpromise. One company maintains that their office parties “ïîâûøàþò êîðïîðàòèâíûé äóõ, ñíèìàþò ñòðåññû è íàïðÿæåíèå, íîñÿò ïðîñâåòèòåëüñêóþ ôóíêöèþ, ïðè ýòîì ïîâûøàÿ èíòåëëåêòóàëüíûé óðîâåíü ñîòðóäíèêîâ” (raise company morale, relieve stress and tension, and are enlightening, while at the same time raising the intellectual level of the staff). Right. That certainly describes the office parties I’ve attended.
In some contexts, the adjective êîðïîðàòèâíûé (corporate) from the noun êîðïîðàöèÿ (corporation) can simply mean “relating to the business.” For example, you may read about êîðïîðàòèâíàÿ ñîöèàëüíàÿ îòâåòñòâåííîñòü (corporate social responsibility) or êîðïîðàòèâíûé èìèäæ (corporate identity). But, like English, in Russian êîðïîðàòèâíûé can refer to any group connected by professional or other ties, not just a commercial enterprise. For example:  Ðîññèè äåéñòâîâàëè ïðàâèëà, êîòîðûå îáåðåãàëè êîðïîðàòèâíûå èíòåðåñû ñóäåáíîãî ñîîáùåñòâà è äåëàëè ñóäåé ïðàêòè÷åñêè íåäîñòóïíûìè äëÿ îòâåòñòâåííîñòè ïåðåä ãðàæäàíàìè. (In Russia there were rules that protected the corporate interests of the judicial community and virtually stripped judges of their responsibility before citizens.) Of course, Russia being Russia, sometimes it’s hard to distinguish “commercial” from “group” interests: Äåïóòàòû ïðèíèìàþò çàêîíû, êîòîðûå îòâå÷àþò èõ êîðïîðàòèâíûì èíòåðåñàì. (Parliamentarians pass laws that serve their corporate interests.)
Another commercial entity, ôèðìà (firm, company), has an adjectival form — ôèðìåííûé — with a range of meanings. Sometimes it’s straightforward: ôèðìåííûé can mean “having to do with the company,” as in ôèðìåííûé áëàíê (letterhead), ôèðìåííûé çíàê (trademark), or that Moscow PR obsession — ôèðìåííûé ñòèëü (corporate identity, branding). Sometimes English demands a bit of specification: Ìû ðàçäàëè íàøèì òàêñèñòàì ñïåöèàëüíûå ôèðìåííûå êåïêè. (We gave our taxi drivers special caps with the company logo on them.) But beware of false firm friends: ôèðìåííûé ìàãàçèí — a store that only sells one company’s products — is not a company store. That’s a shop for employees inside a factory or business.
Ôèðìåííûé can also mean “what the manufacturer is famous for.” So ôèðìåííîå áëþäî is a restaurant’s specialty of the house. Somewhat confusingly, in a private home, ôèðìåííîå áëþäî is not a store-bought, brand-name treat, but the hostess’ homemade specialty. This can also be called “trademark.”
Then, companies being companies, the notion of “trademark” can morph into the notion of “the best.” Ôèðìåííûé ïîåçä is a premium-class train — a very good venue for your next êîðïîðàòèâ÷èê.

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: Dining: Literary feast
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It may seem like a fairly unlikely marketing decision to name a restaurant after a writer who famously starved himself to death. But the management behind the new restaurant Gogol clearly decided that the legacy of the writer, who set some of his most famous works in St. Petersburg, eclipsed the unsettling nature of his death. Now the melancholy satirical writer is remembered not only in the monument to him on Malaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa and that to the eponymous hero of his satirical tale ‘The Nose’ on Prospekt Rimskogo-Korsakova, but in a culinary establishment serving traditional Russian cuisine that, given its prime location just off Nevsky on the mini-hotel-peppered Malaya Morskaya Ulitsa, looks set to reel in the tourists.
The restaurant’s namesake is referenced throughout the interior, at times overtly, as with the large overcoat hanging inside the entrance, at other times more subtly, as with the historical prints of cities in which Gogol also lived, such as Rome.
The main emphasis, however, is not really on the writer himself, but on the period in which he lived. Accordingly, the restaurant is designed to resemble an apartment of the early 19th century. To the left of the entrance lies a homely dining room decorated in a simple, rural style with pale colors, wooden furniture and white tablecloths. To the other side of the entrance door are the smoking rooms: a living room and finally, a study, complete with dark oak furniture, bookshelves and a card table, but dominated by the restaurant’s piece de resistance — a working Russian tiled stove. 
All three of the rooms are compact and are decorated in an understated, elegant way, and despite attributes such as quill pens, the interior avoids taking its theme too far. The harmonious ambience is enhanced by the strains of classical music playing at just the right level and by the commendably professional service. Gogol’s wait staff — never further away than a quick ring of the bell placed on every table — have accomplished a measured combination of welcoming, pleasant, informed and unintrusive.
Everything about Gogol oozes quality, from the oak furnishings to the menu itself, which is in the form of a small hardback book complete with quotes about food taken from Gogol’s writings. While in the English version, some of the translations are somewhat eccentric — take for example, “soup of dried cepe mushrooms after the old fashion, of fascinating flavor” (290 rubles, $10) — the dishes themselves match the high standards set by the interior and service, and the menu-book is after all a first edition. That same “fascinating” dish was a large bowl of thick broth with an abundance of chunky pieces of rich mushroom and strong yet natural flavors.
A salad of arugula, cherry tomatoes and feta cheese (290 rubles, $10) confirmed that only topnotch, fresh ingredients go into Gogol’s kitchen. If during the last days of Nikolai Vasilyevich’s life, he had not refused all food apart from a watery cabbage broth, but had, say, broadened his horizons to the creamy, sapid cauliflower veloute with salmon caviar (150 rubles, $5.15) served at the restaurant named after him, he would surely have lived to leave the world a few more literary masterpieces.
“Succulent meat cutlet with fried potatoes a-la Pushkin” was not cheap at 460 rubles ($16) for what is a fairly humble and common Russian dish. Unlike at many of the cafes around the city offering this dish, at Gogol the potatoes were fresh, refreshingly lacking in oil, and had an enjoyable crunch to them. The meat cutlet was stuffed with diced mushrooms and, as another element that managed to be filling while avoiding an oil slick, was another success.
No less impressive were the pelmeni stuffed with white fish and served with sour cream with pesto (410 rubles, $14). While on paper, sour cream and pesto may not seem like the most promising combination, in fact the sour cream eclipsed the pesto almost entirely. What made the dish truly memorable was the expert preparation of the pelmeni themselves. The fish had a mild flavor that was just strong enough to stand out against the sauce and dough, and the consistency was soft without being mushy.
One of the pricier dishes on offer is venison with gratin dauphinois garnished with fried chanterelles in red bilberry sauce (750 rubles, $26). The meat was decent, if just a little lacking in flavor, and was graciously complemented by the bilberry sauce. The accompanying gratin, however, was outstanding: The potatoes were moist, and there was just enough cheese to add flavor without making the dish too heavy. The chanterelles provided a pleasantly salty finish.

TITLE: Scientists: Employee Happiness Boosts Productivity
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: British scientists have proved that happy employees have a positive influence on the production and profit of their company. According to research by Professor Andrew Oswald titled “Happiness and Productivity,” happy employees work 12 percent more efficiently compared to average employees, while unhappy ones have 10-percent lower productivity. In other words, happiness is profitable for businesses. 
“Job satisfaction is reflected in behavior at work,” writes Michael Argyle in his book “The Psychology of Happiness.” 
“Happy people work more efficiently. Job satisfaction also has a positive influence in decreasing staff turnover and reducing absences.”
The happier employees are, the better they work, and as a result the profit of the company is higher. But financial reward alone may not be enough to achieve this effect. According to the St. Petersburg branch of HeadHunter web site, only 62 percent of employees can be persuaded to stick to a job they don’t enjoy in exchange for more money. 
“During the crisis, we introduced voluntary health insurance, but people didn’t become happier. Financial motivation didn’t make people more positive, but that’s what we needed, as our sales reps need to transmit a positive mood to others,” said Viktoria Panchenko, PR specialist at United Elements Group.
“Remuneration for labor is not the only factor that motivates employees to work effectively,” said Olga Serebrennaya, head of Ancor office in St. Petersburg.
“A strictly organized structure, clearly defined rights and duties of employees, and formulation of tasks aimed at a result — these are the integral basics of effective staff action,” she said.
On the one hand, some methods of non-salary motivation still require financial input from the company.
“Methods of motivation vary from simple praise, which has a powerful effect, to gifts, that can even include cars for surpassing a financial plan or KPIs. Team building, corporate parties, special conditions for mortgage payments, education, fruit and drinks in the office are also ways of increasing staff loyalty,” said Yevgenia Lanichkina, head of the department of production recruitment at Antal Russia.
On the other hand, there are a great number of motivation factors that are free. For example, for managers, it is important to have the opportunity to realize difficult and ambitious tasks. Independence in the methods of solving tasks and having minimum control from the business owner and shareholders are a good motivation.
“Developing a career path is much harder for us than for a big company with multiple layers of management,”  said Walter Denz, owner of Liden & Denz Language Centres. “What we offer is the thrill of experiencing real responsibility. Our employees enjoy the power to take decisions.” 
“For highly qualified specialists, a motivating factor is the recognition and respect of colleagues and management, and the opportunity for professional growth and development, and to share their experience and knowledge with junior specialists,” said Serebrennaya.
“A good team, a pleasant atmosphere in the office, the opportunity to communicate with colleagues and get involved in the process, and the understanding that you’re appreciated by those in charge is also important for many employees,” she added.
According to the St. Petersburg branch of HeadHunter, a good team is in second position after salary in terms of factors that can persuade an employee to stay at their current job. 
“The key to productive work is that everybody understands that they are working in a team,” said Denz. “For efficient teamwork, you need extremely good communication channels. This is something that can always be improved and always needs to be worked on. ‘You didn’t say’ or ‘you didn’t ask’ has no place in our company.”
“Investing in an atmosphere of harmony is more effective than investing in medical insurance and salaries,” said Marina Gershovich, financial director of Avrora commercial and industrial group. “Everyone needs to feel that the boss notices that they are bringing something special to the company. Increasing employees’ feeling of self-value is a non-financial motivation.” 
In Russia, non-financial motivation is highly developed. Many companies have web sites and corporate magazines, or information desks displaying photographs of the best employees, competitions to determine the “employee of the month” or year, as well as corporate events and team building exercises. There are also some aspects specific to Russia that can influence employees, analysts say.
“One effective method concerns the job title,” said Lanichkina. “Experience shows that candidates do not understand that the word ‘manager’ in its classical meaning means someone whose job is to manage part or all of the company. And they ask for the job title to be changed to include the word ‘head.’ This kind of motivation really works.”

TITLE: ‘One-Size-Fits-All’ Approach Not Suited to Russian Training Market
AUTHOR: By Olga Sharapova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The training market in Russia appeared at the same time as capitalism in the country: At the beginning of the 1990s. But even in the Soviet Union, there was a school that offered training programs for the heads of Soviet construction and other organizations. The first business game was set up in 1984 in Tallinn. These previously unknown interactive training sessions became very popular in the 1980s, and now the Tallinn School of Management is well-known in the former Soviet bloc. 
But when the new Russia opened its doors for international business, a lot of foreign training gurus came here. For the young and enterprising local market, it was a revelation to discover the concept of motivational training and how to increase sales in a short time. 
“People believed in a magic wand that could help them discover how to be successful in business instantly,” said Elena Eybshits, managing director of Fintra Russia, a Finnish training company that has been operating in Russia since 2005. “But now we understand that there is no magic wand, and that we need to systematically work to improve so-called human capital. The time of gurus has passed. Now high estimation is given to business trainers who can facilitate and help participants of training sessions to form their own knowledge and utilize their own experience.” 
Most trainers agree that the crisis has sifted out the unprofessional and noncompetitive participants of the market. 
“In a situation when companies understood the potential of the crisis, they tended to use consulting services to assist them in optimizing change needed to effectively manage this period, as well as to be ready for the end of the crisis,” said Rachel Shackleton, trainer and general director of Concept training and HR-consulting company. “Therefore we experienced an increase in consulting services to steer and support change, assess risk, and in projects related to mergers and buy-outs. As a result, new trends on the market for human resource solutions emerged.” 
Shackleton identified several trends as the most popular during the crisis: programs focused on developing the loyalty, trust and wellbeing of personnel during this difficult period, the reassessment of education in business processes as well as budgets for training and personnel development, more precision in choosing a provider, and the elimination of poor-quality providers from the market. She said that the customization of products had also been observed, along with changes to the ratio and roles of the main methods and instruments, such as training, consulting, coaching and personnel assessment.
In the opinion of foreign trainers working in Russia, strong competition on the local training market is a key feature. 
“It is very much market based compared to many Western European countries,” said Jesus Belle, a Fintra Russia trainer and consultant from Finland, where a large share of the training industry gets government, regional or EU funding. “In Russia most training takes place in the private sector, and to be successful in this market, companies have to constantly keep up with new trends and regularly update their programs.”
But even in this situation, companies seeking professional, high-level training need to focus on many aspects to find the right trainer or training company for their needs. When selecting a strategic partner to provide professional and effective services, Shackleton advises companies to look for positive feedback and recommendations from clients. Other factors to look out for are how long the training company has been successfully operating on the market, and the trainer or consultant’s level of experience. 
“Overall, what is the provider’s approach? Short term suggestions or a medium to long-term strategic partnership, a client-oriented approach, flexibility and result-oriented thinking,” said Shackleton.
Understanding the client’s specific challenges is a highly competitive advantage of a successful training company. 
“Companies do not need a course in this or that topic,” said Belle. “Every company is different and it is going through a very particular situation. The priorities are totally unique to each company in every case. That understanding is a very valuable skill, and very few training providers have it. Like a good doctor who is able to diagnose a patient’s illness after a few talks and assessments, a good training provider has the skill of understanding the situation that the company is facing after just one or two meetings.”
In this respect, the Finnish trainer agrees with Mark Kukushkin, one of Russia’s most prominent trainers and the founder of many training projects. Kukushkin believes that today, the old-fashioned approach — when an expert comes to a company and simply “reads” them a training course — does not work. Today, the trainer must solve the client’s task. 
“The problem today is not lack of knowledge,” said Belle. “There is a tremendous amount of information on the Internet, for example. Unfortunately, many training providers try to ‘copy and paste’ existing programs in order to save costs, even though most of the content is of little relevance, or use expensive trainers with a good reputation who repeat the same stories to every customer. A really good training provider is able to customize the program contents to the specific situation of the company, adapting materials, incorporating company cases and formulating specific discussion around the key issues.” 

TITLE: Analysts See New Trends on Sluggish Post-Crisis Job Market
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: While some of the city’s HR experts express cautious optimism about the revival of St. Petersburg’s labor market, other specialists still consider it to be sluggish. All local HR gurus are, however, agreed that new post-crisis trends have appeared on the market.
“The labor market has definitely become more active recently. Depending on the sphere of business, demand has grown by 25 to 35 percent,” said Yelena Kolkova, director of the local branch of Staffwell recruitment agency.
“This proves that companies are exiting the stagnation period. They are launching new projects, and international companies that froze their projects during the crisis are returning to the market,” Kolkova said.
Yury Mikhailov, managing partner at Consort St. Petersburg recruitment agency, said however that in general, the St. Petersburg economy and consequently, the labor market, was still “somnolent.”
“The market looks like it is unsure which direction to take… everyone seems to be afraid of taking long-term strategic decisions such as investing more, expanding their business or hiring more staff,” Mikhailov said.
Whether the situation is as optimistic or not as some experts say, modern reality has clearly seen the arrival of at least three new popular options practiced by local companies to continue to save staff costs.
Freelancers, professional stars and restrained salary policy have become an alternative to the large-scale staff cuts largely practiced during the peak of the economic crisis, experts said.
“While the tension on St. Petersburg’s labor market is decreasing and employers are not attracted by massive redundancies anymore, they now tend to optimize staff expenses through freelance hire,” said Inna Komar, general director of the city’s Mega Solution recruitment agency.  
“Others look for professional ‘stars’ who are able to solve the tasks of two or even three specialists at once,” Komar said.  
“Freelance labor has become one of the methods used to cut expenses on personnel and to decrease tax payments,” she said.
 “A significant proportion of Russian companies have put a lot of their personnel on a freelance basis and transferred a number of functions to outsourcing,” Komar said.
“The advantages of freelance labor are obvious for employers. Beside optimizing staff expenses, many companies realized that it was not profitable for them to maintain a large staff throughout a year. So now they use the opportunity to attract an essential number of employees for short term or temporary projects, and for seasonal work,” Komar said. 
“At the same time, it’s also hard to expect any salary raises… Today, employers offer high remuneration only to really qualified specialists,” she said.
“If salaries grow at all, then it’s only by a few percent, just to keep in line with the inflation rate,” said Yevgenia Titova, senior consultant at the local branch of Morgan Hunt recruitment agency.
Margarita Ponomareva, general director of BusinessLink Personnel recruitment agency, said that currently a trend of decreased salary offers is being observed.
“Unfortunately, due to inflation and the unstable situation on the market, the crisis maintains its position, so the level of compensation and bonuses for practically all levels of candidates is decreasing,” Ponomareva said.
Kolkova said that although Staffwell forecasts a trend of salary increases for this year, “it would still be difficult to expect any significant raise.”
“Employers are currently more interested in improving systems of motivation, influencing systems of labor effectiveness and enhancing the employer’s image, rather than raising their employees’ salaries and bonuses,” Kolkova said.
Analysts say that the situation is improving on the city’s labor market rather selectively.
“For instance, the opening of new car-making plants in the area has made the search for personnel in this field more active, especially the blue-collar professions,” said Svetlana Loseva, consultant at Consort St. Petersburg.
“There is more demand for professionals in the actively developing pharmaceutical field and in sales,” Loseva said.
Yulia Krizhevich, head of Morgan Hunt’s local branch, said the company had noticed higher demand for middle and top-level managers able to re-organize a business.
“Those people are expected to have experience in different business directions such as sales and marketing, IT, finances or HR,” she said.
Titova said that demand for specialists had also increased in some spheres that suffered the most during the economic crisis, including construction, land development and the banking sector.
Kolkova said employers are currently most interested in sales professionals, corporate lawyers, HR managers, financial experts and engineering and technical specialists.
Ponomareva said the boom in the sales sphere was linked to the fact that despite the difficult financial situation, many companies continue to actively develop their services.
“Furthermore, during the first year of the crisis, many players left the market and those who remained on it are trying to occupy the new niches,” Ponomareva said.
Ponomareva said companies also look “for client-oriented candidates who are able to attract and retain clients, the number of which is decreasing in all spheres.”
Recruitment experts also said that demand for vacancies currently exceeded the offer.
“Many worthy specialists are interested in changing their job due to the deteriorating conditions of their current job or to an unstable situation at their company,” Ponomareva said.
A survey conducted by Ancor recruitment agency showed that 44 percent of applicants were looking for new jobs due to a lack of professional development perspectives, 39 percent were dissatisfied with their salary, and 20 percent wanted to change jobs because their current responsibilities and functions were not interesting for them.
The research showed that applicants were looking for a 20 to 30-percent pay raise at their new position.
A brief look through job vacancy advertisements on the local market shows an alarming trend of age limits. The age range stipulated most frequently ranges from 27 to 35 years old. 
Recruitment experts said, however, that the situation was not that unusual or desperate.
“The age of 27 to 35 years old is a typical limit for candidates for a mid-level management position,” said Irina Babenko, senior consultant at Consort St. Petersburg.
“Here, employers may justify their preference by thinking that at the age of 27, an average candidate already has necessary work experience of two to three years, while at the age of 35, a person is still flexible enough to be able to grow within the company,” Babenko said.
“In addition, some managers simply don’t like to manage older subordinates. It’s always easer to manage those who are younger and less experienced,” she said.
Nelya Salmayeva, another consultant from Consort St. Petersburg, said a maximum age limit of 40 to 45 years old was common for jobs that involve a lot of traveling and therefore require a lot of energy. At production plants, the maximum age of employees may be set at 50 to 55 years old due to health considerations.
Lyubov Andreyeva, consultant at Consort St. Petersburg, said she had noticed that recently, employers had stopped setting formal age requirements, focusing instead on the professionalism of a candidate.
Morgan Hunt’s Krizhevich said the company had noticed that for middle and top level management positions, companies tend to look for people above 35 years old, who have both professional and life experience.
“There are also many offices of Scandinavian companies in St. Petersburg who have higher age requirements — they look for managers from 47 to 48 years old,” Krizhevich added. 

TITLE: Expats, Foreign Qualifications Still in Demand
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Fifty-two percent of Russian companies employ expats, according to the St. Petersburg branch of HeadHunter web site — 30 percent more than a year ago. 
In spite of the bureaucratic headaches involved in employing foreigners, employers see a number of advantages in expats over their Russian counterparts. First on the list is experience in doing business in developed countries, a Western management style and a progressive approach to solving problems. A degree from a Western university is also a major advantage of foreigners.
One quarter of the respondents of research conducted by the St. Petersburg branch of HeadHunter said that expats were much more qualified and experienced specialists. 
“For example, in Eastern Europe many processes have already taken place, so specialists have knowledge that just needs to be reproduced. That’s why managers and technicians from Eastern Europe come to pass on their experience to local managers,” said Mikhail Zhykov, managing director of HeadHunter.
“Expats have a lot of advantages, but it should be understood that employing an expat manager will not be a solution to every task. I think that Russian companies have started to realize that a foreign manager is not an expensive toy or a wizard, but simply an employee, whose experience can, when used correctly, result in high efficiency,” said Michael Germershausen, managing director of Antal Russia.
Although twenty years ago, when the Russian market had just started to develop, there was a serious lack of qualified specialists, a generation of experienced local specialists and managers has now formed in Russia and other CIS countries. And they do not trail behind their foreign counterparts in education nor in their approach to business. They can successfully compete with expats due to their knowledge of the local market. As a result, during the last few years, a trend has emerged of replacing expat managers with Russian ones, according to analysts from Antal Russia. Forty-two percent of respondents said that their company was looking to substitute its foreign employees. 
Companies are still far from turning their backs entirely on expat skills, however. Even the economic crisis hasn’t seriously influenced the number of foreigner employees in Russian offices.
“If the requirements for a vacancy include international experience, the company is more likely to consider an expat,” said Olga Demidova, manager at Antal-Laurence Simons recruitment company. “Employers understand that foreign managers bring with them expertise in the area of general management and also in more narrow fields, such as technology and innovations in various industries.” 
It’s is difficult to compare the efficiency of expats and Russian professionals, as foreigners usually lack experience of working in Russia and can often misunderstand the local mentality and the way of doing business in Russia. Moreover, expats are both expensive and bureaucratically challenging to recruit.
“Many company representatives believe that in spite of all these difficulties, expat managers are more effective, as they are regarded as responsible and ready to develop and introduce new business processes, and — most importantly — to strictly follow this plan,” said Maria Shwed, key account manager at Ancor in St. Petersburg.
“Many foreign specialists are prepared to study Russian language, culture and the specifics of doing business in Russia,” she said.
According to HeadHunter research, a quarter of expats working in Russia are employed in the IT sphere. Foreign businessmen, managers and economists are also popular in Russia. There are even some posts in the social sciences occupied by foreign specialists. At the beginning of the 2000s, expats mostly worked at foreign companies, while today they also occupy posts at Russian firms.
More often, expats hold management-level positions, despite the fact that most mid-level managers believe that the number of expats among them shouldn’t exceed 10 percent, according to Antal Russia experts. 
“Many expats come to Russia to open a representative office of their company, and then they often move to other organizations,” said Shwed.
“Nowadays the number of foreigners coming to Russia is quite large because the tax rate is lower than in Europe, and because of the opportunities offered by the developing Russian market and financial conditions. 
Expats are often invited not for a permanent job, but to solve some specific tasks or introduce new technologies and project work.
According to HeadHunter research, Finns make up the largest expat community in Russia. The second place goes to the Baltic states, followed by Canada, the U.K., Sweden and France.
Experienced and educated specialists from developing countries such as China, Malaysia and India are also in demand.
“The amount of their compensation is comparable to the level of salaries and bonuses of local managers and specialists,” said Gulnara Shakuova, senior consultant at Antal Kazakhstan.
But 78 percent of employees believe that their foreign colleagues get higher salaries for the same positions, according to data collated by Antal Russia. In addition, foreign companies that send representatives to Russia provide them with social benefits such as an apartment or rental expenses, children’s education, and travel expenses to return home several times a year. The amount of this compensation depends on the demand on the specialist, their knowledge, experience and skills. This, however, has become one of the main reasons for employers rejecting expats in favor of Russian employees, say HeadHunter experts.
In general, however, the differences in salaries and bonuses awarded to foreign and native employees has significantly narrowed since the mid to late ’90s. Foreign managers have become more flexible when accepting job offers, according to Antal Russa.
“It is much more profitable for [expat] senior managers to work in Russia, as there are lower taxes, while mid-level personnel earn approximately the same, it doesn’t matter whether they are a Russian citizen or not,” said Schwed.
According to data compiled by HeadHunter, 31 percent of respondents consider it much easier to find a local employee, while a third of companies plan to apply to expats for help.