SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1645 (7), Wednesday, March 2, 2011
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TITLE: University Refuses to Report On Students’ Politics
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg State University, the city’s top higher educational institution, has refused to provide prosecutors with information about its students’ political activities amid controversy and protests, although earlier several faculties had started to collect the information following orders from Nikolai Kaledin, Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs. Critics said that such actions were illegal, contradicting both the constitution and the federal privacy law.
On Feb. 15, Kaledin ordered the heads of faculties to provide information about students who either belonged to “unofficial youth groups of an extremist nature” or were “subject to administrative punishment for participating in unauthorized public events” as soon as possible. In his memorandum he referred to a letter from the prosecutor’s office of the central district dated Feb. 7.
The term “extremist” has been criticized for being vague and frequently applied to any pressure group or political opposition activist. The orders did not explain what “unofficial youth groups of an extremist nature” were.
At least one faculty asked their students to write reports stating whether they comply or not and submit them to the offices. The university’s Graduate School of Management went even further, asking students to report not only about themselves, but also about their acquaintances. 
On Monday, after a small picket in which a group of students stood holding posters with slogans such as “Prosecutors! The University Is Not the Place for Police Raids” near one of the entrances to the university, a meeting of the academic board was held during which Rector Nikolai Kropachyov condemned the practice and said that the people responsible for organizing it would be punished.
“I think such inquiries to the university have little to do with the law, which the rector actually confirmed after our demo — it’s a pity that he didn’t do so before,” said Viktor Vorobyov, spokesman for the university’s student council.
The psychology faculty’s senior teacher, Vladimir Volokhonsky, compared the situation to the Milgram experiment into obedience to authority, when “people followed meaningless orders, often even without thinking what they were doing.”
 “I am ashamed for the university that such things have started happening here; even if it did not last long, the fact that it has become possible makes me sad,” he said.
Two letters from different prosecutor’s offices came to the university in early February. As Ilya Dementyev, Vice-Rector for Innovative Development Projects, revealed Monday in a video posted on Grani-tv.ru, the letter from the prosecutor’s office of the Vasileostrovsky district was answered promptly by Kropachyov, who said that the university’s activities did not include collecting data about whether students belong to such groups. 
But the letter from the prosecutor’s office of the central district ended up on the desk of Kaledin, who ordered vice-rectors in charge of faculties to collect the data. 
“Some vice-rectors took it as yet another meaningless piece of paper to be put somewhere far away or replied to unintelligibly,” Volokhonsky said.
“But Valery Katkalo, for example, a vice-rector in charge of geology and management, took it seriously and ordered his subordinates to collect data about the students in the form of stupid notes stating that they were not extremists.” 
According to Volokhonsky, at the meeting of the academic board on Monday, Kropachyov pronounced a “ten-minute, heartfelt” speech saying that students should be treated with respect so that mutual respect could be expected from them in the future. On the same day, Kropachyov wrote an answer to the prosecutor’s office of the Vasileostrovsky district stating that collecting political information “is not and I am sure will never be within the competence of educational institutions.”
While St. Petersburg State University refused to provide data about its students, it is very likely that similar letters from prosecutor’s offices were sent to other higher educational institutions that might have chosen to cooperate with the prosecutors.
“Perhaps we are approaching the point when all this will end one way or another; the state bodies that send such strange messages are not up to it,” Volokhonsky said.
“Who in their right mind would demand that schools provide lists of students who have been subject to administrative penalties, especially if the schools don’t collect such data? What do they mean by “unofficial groups” – goths or punks? Collecting information about political views contradicts the federal privacy law, which means that the prosecutor’s offices are incompetent if they cannot act within the framework of the law.”
Yelena Ordynskaya, press officer of the St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office, declined to comment when called Tuesday.


TITLE: The Art of Protest
AUTHOR: By Philip Parker
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Regular readers of this newspaper will be aware that St. Petersburg has a small but extremely active protest movement, ready to take to the streets in all kinds of weather and brave rotten treatment by the authorities in order to make themselves heard. Recently, it has been the destruction of historic buildings and infringement of the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of assembly that have brought out the greatest numbers of disgruntled activists on the streets of St. Petersburg, but protests rarely make it beyond the local news. A group of artists, however, may be changing that trend.  
Voina, the Petersburg-based “art-group” responsible for some of last year’s most scandalous protests, were back in the headlines this week. On Thursday, two members of the group, Leonid Nikolayev and Oleg Vorotnikov, were released from the city’s infamous Kresty Prison on bail of 300,000 rubles ($10,000). They had been held since November for their alleged part in an event called “Palace Revolution,” which took place on Sept. 6, 2010 and involved flipping police cars onto their roofs on streets near Palace Square. At a press conference Saturday, the pair talked of the friendships they had made while incarcerated, their plans for a new event based on their experience, and (presumably ironically) their delight with prison conditions. 
News web site Fontanka.ru had earlier reported that Nikolayev would soon be working as a sales manager at Poryadok Slov, an independent bookstore in the city, to meet the terms of his bail. He will also be appealing his arrest at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. His appeal rests on the grounds that he was held for more than 48 hours before he was officially arrested, and on a second claim that his incarceration was “groundless.” A date has yet to be set for the trial of the two artists for “hooliganism,” an offense with a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, the organizers of the Innovatsiya All-Russian contemporary art competition announced that Voina’s other headline-grabbing 2010 event, the drawing of an enormous phallus on Liteiny Bridge in front of the St. Petersburg headquarters of the FSB, had been removed from the shortlist of nominations. The members of the competition’s expert committee who nominated the work had apparently not gained the group’s permission to do so, and the organizers had received no answer from Alexei Pultser-Sarno, Voina’s “ideologist,” to their requests for “visual documentation” of the work. Earlier, Pultser-Sarno had said in an interview that the competition was funded “with money from mafia authorities, who throw it like a handout into the artists’ trough,” which may have seemed like answer enough. 
The organizers may have been surprised, then, that Pultser-Sarno and the group reacted so heatedly to news that the nomination had been rescinded. But, on his web site on Sunday, the latter declared that: “The repressive act of removing the Voina group from the award brings shame on the [organizers] and the Ministry of Culture.” Back the group went into the headlines, and this time not just in Russia. 
And then, just to make sure the group’s public profile didn’t dip, they organized another event on Tuesday, March 1, in which female members of the group were videoed making sometimes violent efforts to kiss female police officers on St. Petersburg’s metro. Speaking to Fontanka.ru, one of the activists claimed that the police officers were more shocked by the gender aspect of the attack than by criminality, and were thus not quick enough to respond, so “all the activists are currently safe, in the underground.” The video showed that one officer was at least quick enough to get in a powerful right hook, however. 
Also appealing to Strasbourg this week were activists from Ravnopraviye (“Equal rights”), a local LGBT organization that is lodging an official complaint against the Russian authorities for their refusal to allow a gay pride event in St. Petersburg. Their request to hold the event on June 26, 2010 was turned down by the Committee on Legality, Enforcement, and Order, and their appeal was rejected by the Smolninsky District Court and City Court of St. Petersburg. In a separate case, however, the group’s requests to hold pickets on the same day in four districts of St. Petersburg were rejected by district administrations, but these decisions were declared illegal by all four district courts to which Ravnopraviye appealed. 
It will take some time for the decision to come through from Strasbourg, but the plaintiffs hope that it will be another small step toward a better legal climate for minorities in St. Petersburg. 


TITLE: Petersburg Rated Russia’s Best City for Living
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia’s “second capital” has made the grade. For the first time in many years, St. Petersburg finds itself ahead of Moscow, and in a rating that is not for “criminal capital” or “most polluted city” status (the fields in which the city, fairly or not, has reigned for a number of years). 
In its freshly released quality-of-life index, the influential U.K. research agency, Economist Intelligence Unit, chose St. Petersburg as the city with the best quality of life anywhere in Russia.
While the city’s real position in the ratings was 68 out of 140 of the world’s largest cities, far below nearby Helsinki (no. 6), or Vienna (no. 3), Paris (no. 16), Toronto (no. 4) or Osaka (no. 12), it was still two places above the Russian capital.
The experts who compiled the ratings evaluated residents’ economic, social and personal well-being based on 30 major criteria. These include GDP per capita, security, employment, health care standards, transport infrastructure, the level of environmental pollution and divorce rates.
Canada’s Vancouver holds the first position in the rating, while Zimbabwe’s Harare is at the bottom of the list.
City Hall welcomed the rating’s results. Yevgeny Yelin, head of Smolny’s Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade, could not help complimenting himself and his counterparts on what he clearly believes is a good job.
“St. Petersburg is a comfortable and attractive place in which to live, do business, study and relax. Its prime position is no coincidence, it is well-deserved,” Yelin told reporters this week.
Not everyone in town is so sure. The rating sparked a fierce debate that has already cost a plum job for a talk show host, who likened St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko to Adolf Hitler in his on-air comments on Monday on Vesti FM. 
Apparently astonished by the rating’s results, the host, Dmitry Gubin, gleefully poured malice over the subject, branding St. Petersburg “the hole of a rural loo instead of the window to Europe,” and accusing Matviyenko of “continuing Hitler’s business because she is destroying the city.” 
Within a few hours of the end of the show, the host was informed that he had been fired for what his bosses have described as an “impermissable on-air style.” (See article on page 5.)
What does sound amazing to the report’s critics is that St. Petersburg is not ranked so very far from London, which was ranked 57th, or New York, placed at 56th position.
The local blogosphere has exploded with scathing commentary, in which deaths from falling ice, hazing in the army and the corridors of dilapidated hospitals featured prominently.
“How on earth can you objectively assess the level of healthcare in St. Petersburg, where conditions vary drastically in both the private sector and state hospitals alike?” wrote one blogger. “I do not need to look at the ratings. As someone who has been to a state clinic, I can testify that it is pure hell, with hardly any medication available, and the manner of many of the staff borders on sadism.”
“One thought that comes to mind almost immediately is what hell life has become in other cities if ours is considered best,” said Maria Matskevich, a leading researcher with the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “Another thing is the sources that the experts have used. For example, to assess the level of water pollution, anyone would automatically contact Vodokanal, our sewage and water treatment monopolist. If you listen to them and go with them to test the water when it comes out from the water treatment plant, you get a rosy picture. However, if you go with Greenpeace to test the local rivers for pollution, or ring the bell of a randomly chosen apartment in town to test the water in their sink, the results would be devastatingly different.” 
On a more philosophical note, Matskevich was sad to note the high emotional degree of the debate surrounding the ratings, complete with the firing of a commentator. 
“After all, this is just one of many ratings. You can learn from it or you can ignore it, but indulging in fervored discussion — which is essentially about “are we better than our bigger brother” after all — just betrays the deep dissatisfaction of local residents both with the provincial status of their city and the living standards, too,” Matskevich said.

TITLE: Concert  Aims to Defend Site of ‘Onegin’ Premiere
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A classical music concert will be held in March to draw attention to the plight of another endangered historic building in the city center known as the Abaza Mansion, after Alexander Abaza (1821-1895), a statesman and one-time minister of finance who lived there from the 1840s until the 1917 revolution. 
In 2007, City Hall handed over the building to developer Fontanka-Otel, which is planning to demolish the building to make space for a 250-room hotel with an underground parking lot.
Located at number 23 on the Fontanka embankment, the Abaza Mansion was built in 1790. In the 1870s and 80s, the building saw musical evenings held by Abaza’s wife, singer Yulia Abaza, during one of which Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s opera “Yevgeny Onegin” was premiered. The evenings’ famous visitors included Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Last month, 117 descendents of Abaza, members of their families and members of the Russian Assembly of the Nobility from around the world wrote a letter to President Dmitry Medvedev asking him to prevent the demolition.
The petitioners suggested that a music museum could be established in the building, but called for the building to be saved even if the plans to build a hotel cannot be canceled.
“In Paris, Rome, Amsterdam and other European cities, they realized a long time ago that a hotel in an ancient mansion in the center is no less attractive to tourists than a modern building without history,” they wrote.
“It is pleasant and prestigious for people to stay in a small hotel with authentic 18th-century walls, and they don’t need an underground parking lot at all. There is no doubt that this understanding will come to St. Petersburg as well. However, it will be an unacceptable loss if the mansion of Abaza’s glorious family does not survive until those times.”
The planned demolition also endangers three historic buildings surrounding the Abaza Mansion, the petitioners said.
According to Living City coordinator Pyotr Zabirokhin, the preservationist group is focusing on the Abaza Mansion because it is the most valuable and significant of the endangered buildings, but demolitions are also planned on Gorokhovaya Ulitsa and 1aya Sovietskaya Ulitsa.
Living City runs a continuously expanding register of more than 100 historic buildings in the city that have been destroyed since City Governor Valentina Matviyenko took office in 2003. Last month, the 19th-century Literary House at 68 Nevsky Prospekt was demolished, despite protests, complaints and lawsuits.
In the wake of the recent demolitions, a major preservationist rally, the March for the Preservation of St. Petersburg, has been scheduled for April 4. 
Held since 2007, the rally focused on Gazprom’s planned Okhta Center skyscraper until the plans were discarded late last year. This year’s rally will highlight a broad range of subjects, from demolitions to utilities issues.

 The concert in defense of the Abaza Mansion is due to take place at the Kochneva House at 41 Fontanka at 4 p.m. on March 7. Works by Tchaikovsky will be performed. Tickets can be ordered by calling +7 962 700 2216.

TITLE: Putin’s Favorite Selected as  Olympic Mascot
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A snowboarding leopard backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been selected as one of three official mascots for the 2014 Sochi Olympics, trouncing a popular blue frog that made organizers shudder and a cartoon saw favored by bloggers as a symbol of Olympic corruption.
Leopard was chosen together with Polar Bear and a white Bunny on Saturday at the conclusion of a much-touted telephone and online vote of more than 1 million people, organizers said. The three swept more than 60 percent of the total vote, which started Feb. 7.
Two other contestants, Ray of Light and Snowflake, were named symbols of the Sochi Paralympics. 
Criticism about the winners erupted almost immediately, with the creator of the mascot for the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics complaining that his work had been stolen and Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky mocking all the mascots. 
Speculation also circulated that the contest had been rigged.
The most popular mascot, with 28 percent of the vote, was Leopard, which Putin called a “mighty, fast and beautiful” animal in a meeting with students in Sochi just hours ahead of the announcement on Saturday, Interfax reported.
The bear mascot was the favorite of President Dmitry Medvedev, Ekho Moskvy radio reported, citing Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov. The last name “Medvedev” stems from the word “bear.”
With more than 1 million callers, the televised poll was the largest since the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow, organizers said.
Voters got to choose from 11 finalists selected by a professional jury headed by Channel One television’s chief, Konstantin Ernst. 
The finalists were pared down from the first round of 24,000-plus submissions that was open to everyone.
Among the more notable entrants that gained popularity in the blogosphere was “Pila,” or “Saw,” which poked fun at the rampant corruption that critics expect to plague Olympic construction. In Russian, stealing state money is described literally as “sawing the budget.”
Another contender was “Stakasha,” whose name derives from the word for “glass” and satirizes stereotypical Russian alcoholism.
Both Pila and Stakasha fell out of the race early on, but another unexpected contestant lingered much longer — “Zoich,” a psychedelic blue frog with a ski stick in its mouth that led online voting for weeks.
Eventually, the professional jury simply refused to include Zoich, whom designer Yegor Zhigun based on the character “Hypnotoad” from the U.S. cartoon series “Futurama,” on the list of finalists. The decision was in line with selection rules but de-facto voided the purpose of online voting.
“Zoich was absolutely out of consideration,” a source within the Russian Olympic Committee told The St. Petersburg Times on Sunday. “It was very depressing.”
“The mascot should symbolize Russia, but imagine the impression people around the world would have when they looked at this blue toad?” said the source, who asked not to be identified because she was not authorized to speak to the media.
Another finalist, Ded Moroz, Russia’s answer to Santa Claus, was removed before the vote’s closing because Russia would have lost the copyright for it to the International Olympic Committee had it won.
The decision to have several mascots is not unheard of; the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics had five patrons. 
Organizers denied any link between Putin’s endorsement and the outcome of the public vote, but observers were not so sure.
Putin’s choice “influenced the public’s choice, willingly or not,” opposition politician Georgy Bovt said by telephone.
“If he said the symbol would be Leopard, it would be Leopard,” said Kiril Andreyev, a member of the boy band Ivanushki International. 
He added that Putin’s selection had “good taste,” but said he personally had rooted for a robin mascot that failed to score in the finals.
Political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin told Ekho Moskvy that the vote was a test of public loyalty, and he hinted that the outcome might have been rigged.
Medvedev’s favorite took some flak from a different side, with Viktor Chizhikov, creator of the 1980 mascot, a brown bear, calling Polar Bear a ripoff.
“Everything about this bear is swiped from my artwork — the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the smile — though everything’s distorted,” Chizhikov said on Ekho Mosvky.
He added sourly that all the Sochi submissions were “unprofessional.”
Zhirinovsky, who serves as a Duma deputy speaker, complained that the mascots would not bring any luck to the games, Interfax reported. “The bear is the dumbest animal,” he said, “the leopard is bloodthirsty, and the hare a coward who always runs away.”

TITLE: Medvedev Dismisses Leaders of 2 Regions
AUTHOR: By Natalia Krainova and 
Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has fired two regional leaders in a surprise move that hints of a Kremlin housecleaning aimed at ditching underperformers before December’s State Duma elections.
The leaders of Kamchatka in the Far East and Karachayevo-Cherkessia in the restive North Caucasus submitted their resignations without explanation to Medvedev — a practice widely viewed as a formality that allows an outgoing official to save face.
Kamchatka Governor Alexei Kuzmitsky was the first to go, with Medvedev approving his resignation on Friday, while Karachayevo-Cherkessia leader Boris Ebzeyev followed suit Saturday, apparently as punishment for quarreling with the local elite.
Kuzmitsky was temporarily replaced by Vladimir Ilyukhin, the region’s chief federal inspector, while Rashid Temrezov, 34, a local lawmaker with the ruling United Russia party, was made the acting leader of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, the Kremlin said.
Neither Ebzeyev, 61, nor Kuzmitsky, 43, commented on their resignations over the weekend.
Unidentified Kremlin sources in separate comments to Russian news agencies linked their dismissals to below-par work.
Kuzmitsky “failed to use the existing possibilities” to develop Kamchatka, in part because of his poor knowledge of the region, a source told RIA-Novosti on Friday.
Ebzeyev was removed because he failed to boost Karachayevo-Cherkessia’s economic and social development, Interfax reported Saturday, also citing a Kremlin source.
Alexei Titkov, a regional analyst with the Institute of Regional Politics, said Medvedev was targeting “weak governors” in preparation for the upcoming Duma vote and the 2012 presidential election.
Former Kamchatka Governor Mikhail Mashkovtsev told The St. Petersburg Times that Kuzmitsky had failed to deal with the region’s health care and communal services and improve dilapidated housing.
“Everything was handed over to unqualified experts and set adrift,” Mashkovtsev said by telephone, in a reference to several reshuffles in the regional administration.
Nikolai Petrov, a regional analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said Kuzmitsky was not fit for the job because of his poor knowledge of the region and a lack of public support.
Kuzmitsky, a Kemerovo region native, completed his higher education in St. Petersburg and worked in finance at various state and private companies in Moscow and St. Petersburg before moving to Kamchatka in 2005 to serve as deputy governor on orders from then-President Vladimir Putin, according to the official Kamchatka web site. Putin appointed him governor in 2007.
Kuzminsky’s prospects of staying had looked bleak for months, after he was scolded by Putin, now the prime minister, in August and Medvedev in September.
Putin and Medvedev complained that he had failed to speed up the resettlement of people living in rundown buildings in the earthquake-prone region, a program that the federal government injected 3.5 billion rubles ($115 million) into in 2008.
About 65 percent of the population of the region’s capital, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, or 80,000 people, need to be relocated from dilapidated housing, but the regional relocation program covers only 4,000 people, said Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.
In an article published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta on Friday, Kagarlitsky also criticized Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky for having a large budget deficit and the region for offering low wages to state employees.
Former Governor Mashkovtsev described Kuzmitsky as a person with a “big ego” and “inability to accept criticism,” adding that Kuzmitsky had asked him several times how to govern but never followed the advice.


TITLE: Police Given New  Authority
To Close Down Internet Sites

AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A new police law coming into force Tuesday will give officers the right to take down web sites without a court order, media reported — although industry representatives said police can already do that under existing legislation.
The police’s right is mentioned in a report on intellectual piracy submitted last Tuesday by the Economic Development Ministry to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which is preparing its own annual piracy survey, Vedomosti reported Monday on its web site.
The ministry report, first leaked on the Marker.ru news web site, lists the police’s right to shut down web sites among measures intended to help crack down on copyright infringement.
The police law provides officers with “an instrument to terminate the activity of Internet resources that infringe on Russian and international copyright law, which was previously possible only with the judicial order or during investigation,” the ministry said in the report.
The actual police legislation does not mention web sites, but contains vague wording that authorizes the police to order any organization to change or stop operations that contribute to criminal activity in any way.
Repeated calls to a ministry spokesman went unanswered Monday, but an industry representative said the new law offered no surprises.
Existing legislation already allows law enforcement agencies to close down a web site without a court order, Diana Dymolazova, a spokeswoman for Agava hosting company, said by e-mail.
She said she referred to the federal law on communication, which allows the shutdown of web sites on the written order of a senior official of an investigative body.
Agava has received orders to close down web sites in the past, and complied, Dymolazova said, adding that the requests usually referred to pornography, including pictures depicting minors.
“In most cases we deal with well-motivated requests, so clients rarely complain about the unlawful closure of their web sites,” she said. 
“We don’t think that the new law will change the situation significantly,” she said.
But she said more trouble might arise if police targeted sites with allegedly pirated goods instead of pornography.


TITLE: Talk Show Host Claims Politics Led to Dismissal
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A talk show host who lost his job on state radio after likening St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler stood by his on-air comments Monday, telling The St. Petersburg Times that a groundswell of support for him showed the public was “fed up” with the authorities.
The dismissal may raise new fears about free speech in a country where the state holds a tight monopoly on national media.
Dmitry Gubin, host of a three-hour morning show on Vesti FM, said he told listeners on Friday that Matviyenko was “continuing Hitler’s business because she is destroying the city.” 
Gubin, who had returned to Moscow after a visit to St. Petersburg earlier in the week, also accused Matviyenko of failing to maintain the city “in a decent condition.”
Two hours after his show ended, one of his superiors informed him that he had been fired, Gubin said by telephone. He declined to identify the superior.
Anatoly Kuzichev, Vesti FM’s general producer, said by telephone that Gubin was fired for “impermissible on-air style.”
Many Vesti FM journalists use critical rhetoric, he said, but they speak more politely.
Asked what Gubin had said that particularly angered station management, he pinpointed Gubin’s description of St. Petersburg as “the hole of a rural loo instead of the window to Europe” and his remark, “Sieg Heil, dear Valentina Ivanovna [Matviyenko].”
Kuzichev refused to say who decided to fire Gubin.
A request for comment left with a secretary at Matviyenko’s press office went unanswered Monday.
A video record of his Friday show was not available on the radio station’s web site Monday, and a blogger wrote where it formerly had been posted that the show had been edited.
Gubin has made two posts on his LiveJournal blog about his dismissal and received more than 1,000 comments, most of them sympathetic.
“The uproar provoked by my case shows that the people are fed up and they are using my case as a mouthpiece to express their discontent,” Gubin said.
On his blog, he wrote that St. Petersburg is “dirt,” has “no sidewalks” and is covered in the “[expletive] of road works.”
“Housewifely governor-woman, wipe up your household,” Gubin wrote to Matviyenko. 
Gubin, 46, who had hosted the show from late August, said he had criticized Matviyenko on previous shows. He said station management had warned him a couple times against “cursing” at the governor and asked him to “use constructive criticism.”
“Is it possible to constructively criticize Adolf?” Gubin retorted on his blog over the weekend. 


TITLE: Kremlin Rolls Out Do-It-All Card
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Imagine a piece of plastic that gets you a doctor’s appointment, pays your bills, allows you to rent a car or buy a plane ticket and even get Moscow registration faster than the sham ads in the Moscow metro. 
President Dmitry Medvedev promised Monday that three years from now all Russians will have this magic card.
He gave the government till May to make final calculations of the funds necessary to introduce the universal electronic card, or UEC, for all citizens and urged banks to not take advantage of card users at the meeting of the commission on modernization and technological development of the economy Monday.
The UEC, which will be a kind of Swiss army knife of plastic cards and serve as a combination of a state electronic ID, driver’s license, car insurance and migration cards among other possible perks, should be available to Russians by 2014, according to the federal law.
The project to create the new e-card could cost the government as much 150 billion rubles ($5.2 billion) to 170 billion rubles ($5.9 billion), Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina told reporters at the modernization commission meeting.
The project will have spanned five years, and the cost of card issuance alone will be 40 billion rubles, which puts the cost of one card at 265 rubles ($9), Nabiullina said.
The minister promised that all investments in the card would be matched by savings as the new e-card will replace the Russian version of social security cards.
While the card offers an almost infinite number of benefits, the list of them is still to be determined, and most other details of the project are still to be worked out.
Banks, for one, are not sure whether they will benefit from this innovation.
German Gref, chief executive of state-run Sberbank, which is one of the three banks that will help finance the card’s development, said banks have so far been reluctant to provide funds for the project because it’s “of little interest” commercially, Bloomberg reported.
Another danger of introducing such a card is the potential for identity fraud, which often plagues countries that have introduced systems of electronic identification and rely heavily on cards similar to the UEC, experts say. 
This is especially the case in Western countries, said Timur Aitov, executive director at the Association of Russian Banks. “Until recently, we have had nothing to steal,” he said.
But introducing a card that would hold comprehensive data on citizens could put them at high risk of identity theft.
Medvedev confessed that, to date, the government has not found a good answer to the question of protecting its citizens’ data and he admitted that personal information often circulates on the Internet.
But “on its own, protection of such information should not be an obstacle to making the decision to issue cards,” Medvedev said.
The fact that the card will use a foreign chip should also not stand in the way of the project taking off as soon as possible, Medvedev said.
“[We] will not wait till we create our own chip, otherwise it will never be made,” the president said.
While Medvedev promised that the new card “will improve the lives of tens of millions of people” by cutting through the red tape and allowing Russians to do everything from paying their gas bills to making a doctor’s appointment online, experts see ample potential for the card to turn from a magic wand into a weapon that can be used against its owner through fraud and identity theft.
Cases of fraud involving plastic debit and credit cards in Russia, according to experts, run as high as 1 percent to 1.5 percent of all cards, and not all of them are reported.
Banks, too, will have to weigh potential dangers, Aitov said.
“While it’s natural for a bank to want to promote itself and get new clients, they must keep the cost in mind,” he said.
New risks will be brought upon by many “untrustworthy” clients who have never owned a debit or credit card before coming on board, making transactions they have no financial backing for, Aitov said.
To add to banks’ headaches, Medvedev encouraged the government to think about how to regulate tariffs on transactions for commercial and state services, which are controlled by banks.
“If citizens will incur high expenses for making a transaction, this will look really bad,” he said. “This is why all who will be servicing these cards, all major banks must understand that this is, after all, a social mission and not a source of substantial income.”


TITLE: Justice Ministry Pledges Clearer Rules for NGOs
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Justice Ministry, notorious for refusing registration to anti-Kremlin groups, has promised clearer registration rules for nongovernmental organizations and called for increased public control over prisons.
NGOs should be guaranteed “qualified and lawful decisions” when applying for registration, Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov said Monday at a round table dedicated to his ministry’s 2010 work and plans for this year.
“This is also very important on the eve of national [State Duma] and presidential elections,” he said.
He did not identify any groups that had failed to obtain registration.
His ministry has denied registration to all prominent opposition leaders seeking to establish parties to run for the Duma, including Eduard Limonov, Sergei Udaltsov and the liberal quadrumvirate of Mikhail Kasyanov, Vladimir Milov, Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov.
Konovalov said refusals often have to do with the “corruption factor.” He did not elaborate.
“We shouldn’t split hairs but should react properly,” he said.
More than 71,000 registration requests were submitted to the ministry in 2010 by NGOs, religious groups and political parties, the ministry said in a statement Monday. It said the number of requests grew 18.5 percent year on year, but did not specify how many were approved.
Speaking on the prison system, Konovalov said “civil society’s control over the penitentiary system should be more widespread.”
He said groups comprising businesspeople, public figures and clergy should have a say on which convicts get released on parole — currently a corruption-ridden practice believed to allow prison officials to rake in huge bribes.
Deputy Justice Minister Alexander Smirnov said the ministry was collaborating with the Health and Social Development Ministry to allow ill inmates to be admitted into hospitals outside the prison system.
The ministry is reforming the prison health care system after the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died of health problems in pretrial detention in 2009.
The Prosecutor General’s Office reported last week that 4,423 people died in custody last year, a 9 percent increase from 2009, Gazeta.ru reported.
Among the Justice Ministry’s other activities last year, it examined 3,700 bills and found corruption loopholes in 4 percent of them and ordered the deportation of about 5,000 foreigners, many of whom were released after serving prison sentences.
The ministry was also involved in the defense of cases filed against Russia in the European Court of Human Rights, submitting about 1,300 memorandums with the Strasbourg-based court.


TITLE: Polls Track Dissent Rising With Prices
AUTHOR: By Mikhail Malykhin

PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prices are rising quickly and, in February, every second person (49 percent) was dissatisfied and ready to participate in a protest, according to a Public Opinion Foundation survey of 3,000 people from 204 towns on Feb. 19-20. 
As recently as December, that figure was only a third (32 percent).
In response to the question, “If next Sunday, there were to be a meeting, demonstration or protest where you live, would you take part?” 24 percent said yes. In December, only 16 percent said they would; in January, 18 percent.
The number of Russians who felt their financial situation worsen went from 28 percent to 34 percent over the month. The number of those expecting their finances to improve fell from 26 percent to 17 percent. Only 18 percent were proud of their personal savings (20 percent in January), and almost one-third acknowledged that their savings were shrinking.
In late February, 96 percent of Russians felt a rise in prices for basic foods, goods and services (versus 86 percent in December), according to the Public Opinion Foundation. More than four-fifths had no doubt that the inflation would continue.
According to a VTsIOM survey of 1,600 people from 138 towns, 80 percent of Russians view inflation as very high. The No. 1 factor was rising costs of utilities, noted by 81 percent of respondents. “The February inflation estimates were some of the most negative over the entire period of record,” VTsIOM analysts said. Such a critical level was also felt in June-July 2008 (78 to 81 percent).
Sixty percent of respondents said the prices of goods they usually buy increased 15 to 25 percent on average. About 13 percent said prices have more than doubled. Another 16 percent saw a 5 to 10 percent increase in the price of basic goods. No one felt that prices remained the same or decreased.
The rising cost of utilities was felt the most, according to 81 percent of respondents. Also noted were rising prices for fruits and vegetables, as well as meat and meat products (68 and 64 percent). More than half of respondents saw serious increases in the cost of milk and dairy products (57 percent) and gasoline (56 percent). For bread, 43 percent noted a slight price increase.
According to the State Statistics Service, from the beginning of the year until Feb. 21, inflation amounted to 3.1 percent, compared with 2.4 percent during the same period a year ago. 


TITLE: Royal Palace Sold to Unknown Firm
AUTHOR: By Nadezhda Zaitseva 
and Anatoly Tyomkin

PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s Property Fund on Friday sold the Palace of Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailovich located at 8 Admiralteiskaya embankment at a starting price of 520 million rubles ($18 million). 
There were two bids in the auction, and the successful buyer was a company named Palace of Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailovich. Representatives of the company declined to comment after the auction. 
The palace measures 5,030.5 square meters and includes a wing on Chernomorsky Pereulok of 3,135.9 square meters. The property, which is registered as a monument of federal importance, has been leased until 2049 to Severo-Zapadnaya Finansovaya Gruppa (Northwest Financial Group) for a rent of 3.3 million rubles ($114,600) per month. The property can be used for business and social purposes, and as a residence. 
The entrepreneur Alexander Bronshtein, a beneficiary of SZFG, is behind the buyers, according to two of Bronshtein’s acquaintances. According to data from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the buying company was registered at 8 Admiralteiskaya embankment on Feb. 10, and its only founder is Mavlida Aminova, who in 2003 was general director of Pikalyovsky Cement. That company was then a subsidiary of Mettalurg, of which Bronshtein was one of the beneficiaries. 
Bronshtein and his partners — Alexei Shmargunenko and Mikhail Shlossberg — sold Volgogradsky Aluminum, Volkhovsky Aluminum and Pikalyovsky Alumina Factories to Sual. Then, in 2005, they sold Pikalyovsky Cement to Inteko for $35 million. 
Bronshtein and Aminova were unavailable for comment. 
Mikhail Malakhov, general director of SZFG, insists that neither his company nor any organization connected to it were involved in the auction. The tenant, he says, has no intention of vacating the property. According to SPARK-Interfax, SZFG belongs to Romtrade Holdings.
SZFG subleases the property. According to Malakhov, the rental rate is 700 rubles ($24.30) per square meter per month for the space on Chernomorsky Pereulok, and about 1,500 rubles ($28.80) for the space on Admiralteiskaya embankment. Since 2001, SZFG has invested about $5 million in the property, he said.  
This is not the first time the property has been up for sale. In November last year, a starting price of 700 million rubles ($24.3 million) was announced, but the auction was abandoned. According to a representative of the Property Fund, there was only one bid. 
The buyer acquired the building for a little more than $2,000 per square meter, although the price for similar buildings can easily reach $4,000 or $5,000 per square meter, said Vladimir Sergunin, director of the investment department of Colliers International in St. Petersburg. The price was affected by the long-term rental agreement, otherwise City Hall could have sold the lot for twice as much, as the property is in a very attractive location, he said. 
Sergunin said he believed that the optimal use for such a building was as an elite apartment building or hotel. If it is possible to adapt the building for use as a hotel or residential building, its price could rise to $10,000 to $15,000 per square meter, said Sergunin.

TITLE: Foreign Investment Falling in Petersburg 
AUTHOR: By Alla Tokareva 
and Anatoly Tyomkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Foreign investment in St. Petersburg’s economy has fallen for the third year running. The construction industry has suffered most, while food manufacturing has seen growth of 11.5 percent.
In 2010, foreign investors injected $5.2 billion into the city, 5 percent less than 2009, according to the Committee for Investment and Strategic Planning, citing figures from Petrostat. Investment has been decreasing since 2008, when it fell by 6 percent. In 2009, there was a further 7-percent drop. 
Foreign direct investment was down 55 percent to $538.1 million, of which $408.8 million was made up of contributions to the charter capital of Russian subsidiaries (30 percent lower). Loans from parent companies were down 80 per cent to $127 million. According to preliminary data from the Ministry of Finance, foreign direct investment in Russia was one-and-a-half times lower last year, at between $12  billion and $14 billion. St. Petersburg’s share of overall foreign direct investment fell from 21.7 percent to 10.3 percent, while the share of loans rose from 75.8 percent to 89.6 percent. The volume of trade credit dropped by 21 percent to $1.8 billion, while other loans rose by 53 percent to $2.8 billion.  
The largest fall was in investment in construction — by 80 percent. Foreign developers in St. Petersburg are mostly concerned with commercial property, which has yet to recover from the crisis, notes Mikhail Vosiyanov, general director of YuIT-Lentek. Investment is needed at the launch of new projects, of which there weren’t any last year, he added. 
Oleg Barkov, general director of Hansa SPb Development, estimates the number of companies with foreign capital in the residential construction industry at 5 to 7 percent, and at 20 percent in commercial developments. By his estimate, investment in commercial property stayed at the same level as in the previous year, twice as low as in 2008. Last year turned out to be harder than 2009, when ongoing projects that could not feasibly be abandoned were being completed and there was still hope of a quick recovery in the economy. By 2010, that hope had been lost, said Barkov.
Investment in food production, however, rose by 11.5 percent. This was influenced by the traditionally high trade credits from Belarus for import deliveries of Belarussian produce to Russia, says Dmitry Kumanovsky, head of the analytical division of Lenmontazhstroy. Moreover, Danone has created a unified supply chain with its new asset, Unimilk, which has a factory in St. Petersburg, Kumanovsky said. France and Belarus lead the list for foreign direct investment, with 34.3 percent and 11.6 percent respectively. 
The volume of investment in vehicle manufacturing was affected by deferred consumer demand, the launch of the Hyundai factory and a second shift at Nissan’s plant, and also by the opening of components manufacturing plants, which have reduced reliance on imports, said Kumanovsky. Last year saw the main share of the investment into the opening of the Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Rus factory, with the company pumping roughly $500 million into the project, a spokesperson said. 
The Leningrad Oblast has fared considerably worse than the city, with foreign investment totaling $637 million, half as much as in 2009, according to Petrostat. Foreign direct investment in the region increased by 14 percent to $381 million, while loans fell by a factor of six to $150 million. In 2009, foreign investment rose by 30 percent in comparison with 2008. 
2010 saw the launch in the region of Gestamp’s pressing plant ($60 million investment), Atria’s meat processing plant (70 million euros), and H+H’s aircrete systems manufacturing plant (40 million euros). The main investments in these factories were made in 2009, however.
Looking forward, Denis Demin, head of the analytical division at BFA, predicted that foreign direct investment this year is unlikely to reach the level of 2009, as after the completion of major projects initiated before the crisis foreign companies will be more circumspect concerning long-term spending.

TITLE: Marriott International Wins Tender for Pulkovo Hotel 
AUTHOR: By Nadezhda Zaitseva 
and Alla Tokareva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Northern Capital Gateway, the consortium managing Pulkovo airport, has chosen an operator for the hotel at the airport, and is now negotiating the conditions of the management agreement, according to Andrei Fedorov, head of the company’s external communications department. He did not, however, reveal the name of the winner.  
Vedomosti has learned from two sources with links to the airport that Marriott International is the chosen operator. They say that there is a preliminary agreement, but no contract has yet been signed. A source at Marriott confirmed that negotiations with Northern Capital Gateway concerning the opening of a hotel were underway at an early stage. Consultants at Astera are also aware that the choice has fallen to Marriott. The contract for managing a 200-room hotel will be signed in the course of the year, said a representative of Cushman & Wakefield.
None of these sources could say under which brand the hotel would operate. Marriott has three hotels in St. Petersburg — two Courtyards and one Renaissance.  
Northern Capital Gateway, a consortium consisting of VTB, Fraport, and Greek concern Copelouzos, won the city government’s competition to reconstruct Pulkovo, promising to invest 1.2 billion euros in the project. By 2013, the company is obliged to build a hotel at the airport measuring 13,800 square meters, with a direct connection to the terminal.
Probably the hotel at Pulkovo will be under the Courtyard brand, said Alexander Voloshin, head of investment consulting at Astera, and Yelena Ignaty, managing partner at GIA Priority. 
The area around Pulkovo has great potential, and the new project has no reason to fear competition, said Anastasiya Kruchinina, of Avielen, which this year is preparing to open a 294-room Crowne Plaza at the Pulkovo-3 development.

TITLE: Advertising on Nevsky Faces Stricter Rules
AUTHOR: By Nadezhda Zaitseva 
and Yelena Dombrova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture has produced new rules for Nevsky Prospekt and the surrounding area that will forbid rooftop advertising. As well as banners and billboards, the rules dictate the color and decoration of facades and the design of outdoor cafes. 
According to the city’s chief architect, Yury Mityurev, the rules are necessary due to the negative effect of banners and advertising constructions on the visual perception of St. Petersburg’s main street. He says that new advertising will be approved according to the rules from May 2010. Advertising that has already been approved will not be reviewed, but contracts will not be extended. 
The stipulations of the new rules are still not clear, said the general director of Newsoutdoor’s St. Petersburg branch, Vladimir Ryabovol. 

TITLE: Putin and Europe Vie Over Pipeline Supplies
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the president of the European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, on Thursday clashed over EU plans to stop suppliers of oil or gas from directly managing pipelines — a move that threatens to hit Gazprom.
Putin said the plans could hurt his country’s enterprises and likened them to “property confiscation.”
But the EC president said the new energy framework was in line with World Trade Organization rules and would affect foreign and domestic companies alike.
Barroso said the so-called third energy package was “nondiscriminatory” and he ruled out any changes. For Europe, “this is now approved legislation,” Barroso said at a news conference. “It applies to Russian companies as it applies to Norwegian companies … and it applies to European companies,” he added.
The third energy package, which takes effect next month, aims to boost competition in the European gas market by separating gas production from pipeline management to prevent one company from controlling the entire supply chain in a country.
The package gives EU member states three options on how to deal with companies that both export gas to the EU and own a pipeline. The most drastic option would force a gas producer to sell its pipeline — a route only Lithuania has chosen so far.
A second option — picked by most countries — forces a gas producer to transfer the management of a pipeline to an independent entity, but allows them to continue owning it.
Under a third option, a gas producer could hold on to the pipeline, but would have to allow other companies to use it according to objective guidelines.
At the beginning of the news conference, which concluded a meeting between the European Commission and Russian government officials, Putin set out the stakes of EU-Russian relations. “Russian energy is the basis of European prosperity,” he said.
Putin said the new plans would raise energy prices in the EU, as pipeline management would have to be handled by several smaller companies that would push up transportation tariffs to be profitable.
Europe is Russia’s biggest market for gas, but Moscow has been concerned about Brussels’ plans to diversify away from its supplies. Many EU countries, including all Baltic states, Slovakia and Finland, get all their gas from Russia, which in the past has cut off supplies amid disputes over pricing.
Despite Putin’s belligerent tone, Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko appeared more conciliatory. “We do not object to the right of Europe to regulate its energy markets as it wants,” Shmatko told journalists after the news conference, adding that he still sees some room for compromise.
“The process [of implementation of the energy package] has not been finished yet,” he said, referring to Lithuania’s decision to go for the most stringent option in the package.
Because the Lithuanian market is quite small, Gazprom might have a hard time getting a fair price for its pipeline if it is forced to sell.


TITLE: New Tax Hampers Small Businesses

AUTHOR: By Khristina Narizhnaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Entrepreneurs worry that small business faces a dismal future after an increase in taxes and utilities at the start of this year. 
“It’s a sad situation,” Russian Association of Small and Medium Enterprises president Alexander Ioffe said at the National Institute of Systematic Research of Enterprise Problems’ fifth annual forum. “We are moving backwards, we should be crying.”
Many businesses are struggling to afford the 8-percentage-point social tax hike, from 26 to 34 percent, that went into effect Jan. 1. On top of the tax increase, the cost of utilities has gone up with inflation. 
Marzhanat Ibragimova, chairwoman of the enterprise council of Kizlyar, a small city in the republic of Dagestan, said 70 percent of local businesses have shut down since the beginning of the year because they cannot pay the tax. 
“Everybody is closing. We don’t make enough profit,” Ibragimova said. “Our young people are not working.”
Other regions face a similar fate. Several bakeries have shut down, and more are slated to close in the Amur region, head of the region’s enterprise council Oksana Stepanova said.
Russia has about 1.2 million small enterprises for a population of 142 million and an area of 17.1 million square kilometers. Small business provides about 20 percent of the country’s gross domestic income. This number has stayed roughly the same for nearly 20 years. 
Russia’s neighbor Poland has about 27 percent of Russia’s population, yet there are 4 million small businesses from which the country receives more than 60 percent of its GDP.
The increased tax seems to go against the government’s rhetoric about developing small business. 
The federal budget sets aside 2 billion rubles ($69 million) a year for small business development, and each region is supposed to provide additional financing. But only a small portion of business owners actually get the money. Financing for small business in Moscow has been frozen since January. 
One reason many businesses don’t get government help is a lack of information about services, institute vice president Maxim Gromov said. 
The Economic Development Ministry has offered electronic registration of land, online maps and other services on its web site since the beginning of this year. The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service has increased its web presence in an effort to stop government agencies from outsourcing their services to private firms for kickbacks. 
Nongovernmental institutions also provide information services to accelerate small business growth. The U.S. Russia Center for Entrepreneurship trains business leaders, and the National Institute of Systematic Research of Enterprise Problems conducts research on small business. Corruption is another major hurdle for companies. 
For example, the list of fire safety requirements is very long and almost impossible to fulfill. Most companies pay unofficial fines to get approved. 
Another issue is securing credit. Business owners complain about high interest or unaffordable kickbacks. 


TITLE: Aeroflot to Settle Compensation Claims After Ice
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Aeroflot is ready to settle 50 compensation claims from passengers left stranded by the transport collapse at Sheremetyevo Airport in December, a lawyer for claimants said Monday. 
Aeroflot’s offer of vouchers in exchange for missed and delayed flights to all passengers has been criticized for not equaling the full value of a ticket, and for creating a tax liability for the recipient. 
Lawyer Sergei Zhorin, representing 50 individual claims against the airline amounting to 10 million rubles ($345,000), said he received a letter on Friday inviting him to submit a register of claims in preparation for an out-of-court settlement. 
“We’re pleased at Aeroflot’s move, but we submitted these claims over a month ago and they’ve only responded now,” Zhorin said Monday. 
About 20,000 air travelers were stranded at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo airports between Dec. 26 and 29 as a result of freezing rain. 
Passengers vented anger at being left without food, information or support at Aeroflot’s Sheremetyevo hub. 
The lawyer said he would not cancel any of the lawsuits until an agreement on compensation has been reached. 
Zhorin said he had received a similar response from Transaero about claims his clients have made against the Domodedovo-based airline. 


TITLE: Pirate Software Puts Profits Under Pressure
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Small and medium-sized companies may be overlooking potential business risks from using unlicensed software, which may add up to as much as $40,000 in damages a year, the latest study done for Microsoft by the International Data Corporation, or IDC, suggests.
Small and medium-sized businesses are accustomed to linking the use of pirated software with exclusively legal responsibility, which, though relatively rare, can be quite harsh in Russia (fines and possible imprisonment), but they often overlook the financial losses they may incur from using such software.
The authors of the study surveyed 401 IT managers in small to medium-sized companies with computer parks of anywhere between 10 and 250 personal computers in five districts of Russia.
Companies that use 80 percent or more unlicensed software on their computers are 30 percent more likely to experience a costly break in their workflow because of a critical failure of software installed on their computers.


TITLE: VEB Eyes Far East Fund For Investment
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has given state development bank Vneshekonombank until May to set up a fund that would finance investment in the remote Far East region, saying that potential projects are worth $3 billion.
The fund, first mentioned by Putin in December, marks the government’s determination to focus VEB efforts on some of the country’s most depressed regions. VEB recently created a similar fund for the explosive North Caucasus. 
Putin also approved a $1.6 billion loan to a company in Tatarstan that wants to order a fertilizer plant from a Mitsubishi-led consortium. Most of the funding will come from Japanese banks, VEB chief Vladimir Dmitriyev said.
Speaking about the Far East fund, Putin said VEB was considering projects worth 88 billion rubles ($3 billion). He didn’t elaborate on the projects and it was unclear whether VEB would look for partners when investing through the fund.
“I am sure that all plans that have been outlined will be implemented,” Putin told VEB’s board, which he chairs, last week.
The fund would also cover the Lake Baikal area.
Putin said in December that the region had interesting investment opportunities in energy, metals, timber and fishing industries.
VEB has already extended loans in the region. Last year, it handed out 3 billion rubles to finance construction of a timber processing plant in the Khabarovsk region. It also lent 2.3 billion rubles for upgrading the Knevichi airport near Vladivostok as part of preparations to host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in 2012.
The fertilizer plant in Tatarstan will supply domestic farmers and export its products to the other former Soviet republics, Europe and Asia, Putin said. VEB and a state-owned investment fund of Tatarstan will have control in the Ammiak — or Ammonia — company that ordered the plant, Dmitriyev told reporters after the board meeting.
Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Sojitz Corporation and China National Chemical Engineering Corporation signed a contract late last year to build the plant, one of the largest of its type in the world. 
Dmitriyev also said VEB was “ready” to provide financing, if need be, for the joint venture between Sollers and Ford that the automakers announced a fortnight ago. 
He added that there were no formal agreements on the issue yet.


TITLE: Kremlin’s Plan to Prevent a Facebook Revolution
AUTHOR: By Andrei Soldatov
TEXT: Recent events in the Arab world have sparked renewed optimism with online social networks. Many in the West are now convinced that Internet technology can create something previously impossible under authoritarian states — a strong opposition that can seize power through either elections or street demonstrations.
But how directly the Internet influenced these events is highly debatable. Many of the Western politicians who hold Twitter in high esteem are, in fact, captives of Cold War thinking, sociologist Evgeny Morozov argues in his recently released book “Net Delusion.” These politicians continue to believe that democracy will prevail whenever the people beyond the Iron Curtain gain access to free information. They point out that the Soviet Union collapsed soon after copiers and faxes appeared and information began freely circulating here.
The problem, however, is that nobody has proved a cause-effect correlation between fax machines and the Soviet collapse.
For 20 years now the global democratization process has stalled, and the West has feverishly sought a new technological gadget — a new fax machine — to free the citizens of authoritarian states. The flaw in this thinking is that many authoritarian states no longer prohibit their citizens from traveling abroad, and people who want uncensored information can usually find ways to obtain it.
Nonetheless, leading Western media outlets can’t stop glorifying the Internet and social networks as the new tools for empowering grassroots resistance movements. This point is not lost on the notoriously suspicious Kremlin, which is convinced that the West has found a new means for advancing its interests after the color revolutions of the mid-2000s. Since then, the argument goes, the opposition is much more capable of orchestrating a regime change thanks to Twitter technology.
What’s more, even weak or poorly organized opposition forces are capable of effecting regime change if their arsenals include Twitter and Facebook. As President Dmitry Medvedev said last week in Vladikavkaz: “Let’s face the truth. They have been preparing such a scenario for us, and now they will try even harder to implement it.”
Medvedev’s reaction shows that the Kremlin is taking the threat very seriously. The question now is how the authorities will respond if similar protests erupt in Russia. The siloviki and the presidential administration are the two agencies capable of responding to any Internet-based threat of revolution.
The Federal Security Service and Interior Ministry have demonstrated several times in recent years which approach they believe is best — registering every single Internet user to identify “extremists” and bring criminal charges against them.
That is precisely how the FSB and Interior Ministry reacted to the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt — by proposing Criminal Code amendments that would have made the owners of online social networks responsible for all content posted on their sites. Apparently, the idea is not to incriminate the owners of Facebook and Vkontakte of extremism personally, but to force them to pass responsibility on to individual users by requiring each to sign a contract that includes their passport information.
At the same time, the siloviki do not want to run special Internet-based operations in fear of leaving a trail. For example, when Russian nationalist hackers attacked Estonian government web sites in 2007, they left no evidence that might incriminate the Kremlin in the affair, forcing the Estonians to disavow their accusations of state involvement. Regarding computer attacks, it is preferable to maintain a safe distance from the scene of the crime.
Meanwhile, the presidential administration has traditionally preferred more adventurous methods. A couple years ago, the Kremlin opened its own “school of bloggers,” and although the school was supposedly later shut down, the same initiative was taken up by the regions.
This project was organized by the Foundation for Effective Policy, a think tank run by Kremlin-friendly political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky. Judging by the courses it offers — such as “Velvet Revolutions: A Warning” — the group is charged with a single overriding task: to resist the “subversive activity” of the West.
The head of United Russia’s political department, Alexei Chadayev, controls funding to the Kremlin school of bloggers. In February, he published an article in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta in which he wrote that “the 2011 State Duma elections will be the first in the history of our country in which the Internet-based campaign will be of equal or greater importance than the campaign in the traditional mass media.”
As mass unrest continues to shake authoritarian states in North Africa and the Middle East, the siloviki are pushing for the registration of social network users and waiting to pounce on anyone posting an extremist message and the Kremlin is funding pro-government bloggers. This will inevitably be interpreted by analysts as a new political battle between the government against the opposition.
Meanwhile, Russia’s 40 million Internet users — the country’s middle class and most active segment of the population — have shown remarkably little interest in this political struggle. This means that the Kremlin’s battle to prevent an imminent Facebook revolution will remain largely virtual.

Andrei Soldatov is an intelligence analyst at Agentura.ru and co-author of “The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State” and “The Enduring Legacy of the KGB.”

TITLE: Another Fine Mess
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: President Dmitry Medvedev is the driving force behind a new scheme to crack down on corruption. According to a statement from the Kremlin, it goes like this:
“Russia’s criminal code will set the fine for commercial bribery, the giving and taking of bribes, or the facilitating of bribes, at up to 100 times the size of the bribe.”
Fines for noncommercial corruption will be slightly lower, but none will be less than 70 times the inducement offered or paid.
Problem solved.
Except that the bill leaves plenty of escape routes: an intermediary in a corruption deal can escape punishment if they “actively cooperate with the investigation,” and both middlemen and those caught offering or paying a bribe can avoid punishment if they “prove that blackmail or pressure took place.”
Based on this approach to graft, a Russian blogger has constructed what he describes as a bribery calculator. Someone looking to pay off an official can enter the size of the planned inducement, whether or not a middleman will be required, the intended recipient of the money, and the type of service desired (for example, turning a blind eye to a certain offense). When all the boxes have been filled in, the exact amount of the fine and the length of prison sentence, if applicable, appear at the bottom. If the payer doesn’t like the look of the penalties, they can lower their sights, make some adjustments, and try again.
The bill is apparently the result of several months’ work by a team of experts, but it has become a laughingstock before even reaching the statute books.
The fines that would result would be massively higher than those typically imposed at present. In the bill, the maximum fine is 500 million rubles ($17 million). So suppose a woman running a small shop offers a bribe of $500 to a local official to stop him from destroying her business on some technicality. The fine could go as high as $50,000. The fact that an ordinary person would never be able to pay such a fine without selling their home or business does not seem to have occurred to Medvedev or his experts.
Like previous anti-corruption schemes, this one looks destined to fail because it does not attack the causes of graft.
The scale of corruption is Russia is such that top government officials are said to receive bribes running to millions of dollars. But most bribes in Russia are paid to doctors, police officers, and teachers, who can typically expect $10 to $1,000 at a time for doing someone a favor.
Importantly, the system of corruption in Russia survives partly because the authorities and politicians lack the will to change it, and partly because it has the support of ordinary people. But bribery also lives on because public services are so inadequate.
Here is a sad story of how it works. A family I know used to pride themselves on having never paid a bribe. Until last year. The family’s oldest member, an 86-year-old woman, had a sudden stomachache and dizziness. 
Her relatives called a public ambulance, which took more than two hours to arrive. By the time it did, the sick woman was feeling better. When the crew learned that her condition had improved, they left.
Less than an hour later the woman relapsed, became much worse, and was in great pain.
This time the granddaughter called a private ambulance, which arrived in less than 15 minutes. The team examined the grandmother and suggested an operation might be required. It was clear she had to go to hospital. Then the medic spoke up.
It was a Friday night, he pointed out, “and if we don’t arrange for something, your granny will be placed in a corridor and forgotten about until Monday morning — if she lasts until then,” he said.
“But I know a doctor at a state hospital very near you. He could come at once and look after her. It would come to about 15,000 rubles [$500]. I can assure you this man is a very good doctor and the lady would be safe.”
The family did not hesitate. The bribe was paid, the doctor came, and the woman was given expert treatment. The family has shrugged off their hatred of corruption and now they even think back with gratitude to the private medic who found a solution.
So how would Medvedev’s penalties work in a case like that? It’s clear that in a life or death situation most of us would risk even a hundredfold fine.
As for corrupt doctors, teachers, or police officers, the risk of professional disqualification would be a much more efficient tool than an astronomic penalty. Unless they belonged to the privileged elite, a ban from their profession would destroy them financially.
To combat the multimillion dollar corruption deals in the highest echelons, Russia should take the UN Convention Against Corruption seriously and adopt legislation to oblige public servants to explain any striking gulf between the size of their salaries and the value of their assets.
To reduce graft we need to start at the top. Only when people see that those who make and enforce the laws are serious about it is there any chance of arresting the cancer of corruption that spreads through every level of our society. 

A full version of this commentary is available at Transitions Online, an award-winning analytical online magazine covering Eastern Europe and CIS countries, at www.tol.org.


TITLE: Rap rebel
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian rapper Noize MC, who has been in the limelight during the past year for his songs protesting the impunity of top officials and police lawlessness, and for the ten-day prison sentence he served in a Volgograd detention center, was rewarded for his efforts last week. 
The Moscow radio station Serebryany Dozhd presented him with a 500-gram silver bar Friday as the prize “For Public Protest against the Lawless Behavior of the Authorities.”
Held at a Moscow restaurant, the annual awards ceremony’s audience comprised Russia’s rich and famous, while the party’s highlight was, in keeping with tradition, 25 kilograms of black caviar brought into the room for the event. 
Speaking after receiving his award, Noize MC, whose real name is Ivan Alexeyev, said that he considered rejecting it, but then thought that such a gesture would be interpreted by his critics as a PR stunt.
“Of course, it’s strange to receive awards for things like that,” Alexeyev said in a phone interview with The St. Petersburg Times. 
“I didn’t fully understand where I was going and what it would be like. The awards ceremony was quite swanky and didn’t correspond to what they were giving me the award for.”
On the positive side, Alexeyev said he saw Artyom Troitsky, the irreverent Moscow music critic and an ardent supporter of Noize MC, at the ceremony after not seeing him for months, and met Alexei Navalny, a celebrated anti-corruption campaigner who was dubbed “Russia’s Erin Brockovich” by Time Magazine.
The Moscow-based Alexeyev, who turns 26 on March 9, believes that hip-hop has replaced rock music as an outlet for social protest and expressing a personal stance.
“It’s right and natural, in my view,” he said. “What [could do it] if not hip-hop? This is almost the only music genre where attention is paid to lyrics at the moment, and I don’t see what else could occupy its place. As for rock, we should accept that it has fizzled out already.”
Alexeyev, who started out in a punk band in Belgorod and plays electric guitar with his current band, also called Noize MC, has not rejected rock music entirely, incorporating rock elements and instrumentation, sometimes inviting criticism from hip-hop purists.
“Rock’s drive and energy are great, I miss that in pop music,” he said.
“But a message in rock music has become a rare phenomenon in the past 20 years, with few exceptions.”
Alexeyev’s early idols were Nirvana. 
“I loved Nirvana when I was a kid and remain a devoted fan,” he said. “I’ve read 300,000 books about Kurt Cobain and the entire band.”
His other influences included bands that blended hip-hop and rock, such as Clawfinger, Rage Against the Machine and Limp Bizkit, as well as rappers Cypress Hill, Eminem, Nas and Tupac.
“As far as rappers are concerned, I have always preferred the approach of bands such as Beastie Boys and Run DMC when it was high-energy and upbeat music, this is what inspires me on the level of ideas,” he said.
“I understand that rapping this way, in 4/4 beats, is uncool today. But I prefer all those bands from the 1980s in terms of style and mood.”
In January, Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s alleged chief ideologist and creator of pro-Kremlin youth movements such as Nashi, summoned a sympathetic blogger to take pictures of his Kremlin office, showing that he has a framed photograph of Tupac, while Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was seen handing out hip-hop awards to rappers on a Russian music channel in November 2009.
Alexeyev finds attempts by the Kremlin to flirt with the popular youth music style laughable. 
“It was funny how Putin behaved at the Battle for Respect show on Muz TV,” he said.
“There was a great phrase that there was not only a ‘top-rock’ breakdance technique but also a ‘down-rock’ one. It was evident that Vladimir Vladimirovich had been serious about doing his homework before the visit.
“But the Premier frequently finds himself in very funny situations. I saw, for example, his speech to a group of bikers, when he said that a motorcycle is a “powerful metal thingy,” and I laughed my head off.
“The authorities want to be trendy, up-to-date and good, whatever they do. That is all understandable, but it is funny to me. But funny in a harmless way. It would be weird to get pissed about this. It is just so ridiculous that you can only laugh at it.”
The Kremlin once also had designs on Alexeyev: The pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi approached the rapper’s management to commission an anthem for the movement in 2008. Alexeyev responded with the song “Our Movement” (Nashe Dvizheniye), which slammed the movement for rent-a-crowd rallies and being motivated by investors’ money.
Alexeyev’s award was primarily for the song and video “Mercedes S666,” which blamed a high-ranking oil executive for a car crash that left two dead. 
“Mercedes S666” was devoted to a car accident that took place in Moscow on Feb. 25 last year, in which Anatoly Barkov, vice president of state-owned energy company Lukoil, was involved. Barkov’s Mercedes smashed into a Citroen carrying two women, who were both killed.
Although witnesses said that it was Barkov’s Mercedes that crossed over into oncoming traffic in an apparent attempt to overtake a traffic jam, the police were quick to put the blame on the other driver, while recordings of surveillance cameras promptly disappeared.
In the video, Barkov was depicted as a modern-day Satan and compared to Major Denis Yevsyukov, a police chief who went on a shooting spree in Moscow, killing three and injuring seven, in April 2009.
Alexeyev said he wrote the song and in such a way because one of the women killed in the crash, Olga Alexandrina, was the sister of his friend and frequent collaborator, hip-hop vocalist Staisha, whose real name is Anastasia Alexandrina. 
But Alexeyev’s social stance can be traced to his earlier songs such as “Skinhead Girl,” which spoofed Nazi skinheads, or ‘Smoke Bamboo,’ which criticized the unlawful behavior of the police.
“It’s very easy to fall into some banalities, but I have always written about what disturbed and hurt me. It doesn’t matter how popular I am, how many people listen to me, whatever.
“For instance, the infamous song ‘Smoke Bamboo,’ which created problems for us in Volgograd, was written a long time ago, in 2004 or 2005. We played it in the street, on the Arbat [in Moscow], when we were totally unknown.”
That song, along with remarks about policemen who had harassed the musicians during an open-air concert in Volgograd, landed Alexeyev in jail for 10 days while his wife was giving birth to their first child in Moscow.
While in prison, he said he was pressed to apologize under the treat that his minor offense could be changed into something more serious, punishable by up to one year of correctional labor. 
Alexeyev recited a rhymed apology filled with barely hidden sarcasm into a police camera, which the police apparently took at face value and showed on local television. “I’d like to apologize to the Volgograd police, they are great guys and they have principles,” went part of the rhyme.
But when released, Alexeyev turned the small poem into the song “10 Days (Stalingrad),” slamming the morals of the police of Volgograd (formerly known as Stalingrad), while the accompanying video featured an anthology of police violence and arrests of protesters in Russia.
“It was there (in Volgograd) that they acted so tough,” Alexeyev said. “It was not a fine, or two days in a police precinct. I don’t claim that I was completely innocent — in fact, I did my best to take the piss out of them. But that is in no way comparable to those 10 days.”
Alexeyev found support among many for “Mercedes S666,” his criticism of the police and for the prison stint served in Volgograd in August. The following month, however, Sergei Shnurov’s newly reformed band Leningrad released a song titled “Khimki Forest” that sounded like a vicious attack on Noize MC and other artists who had lent their voices to protest movements. 
Citing “Mercedes S666” and making sarcastic mention of bad cops, Shnurov’s song suggested that protest was paid well in terms of concert ticket sales. Alexeyev promptly responded with an angry song that dismissed Shnurov as a “dinosaur from the 1990s.” 
“I have always been sympathetic to the man and we have many mutual friends who said he liked our first album,” he said, adding that he was very familiar with Shnurov’s entire body of work.
“I thought that we might get acquainted, do something together, and then a pile of crap like that comes from him. Of course I was upset and depressed by it. I would not have reacted as strongly as I did if it had been a musician who I thought was crap from the beginning…
“But Sergei keeps denying he was alluding to anybody, which is a very strange position.”
Alexeyev withdrew from the outdoor concert-cum-meeting headlined by DDT’s Yury Shevchuk in defense of the Khimki Forest in Moscow in August when he found out that it was co-organized by an oppositional political movement.
“I don’t take part in any political movements, I speak on behalf of myself and am not going to stand under anybody’s flags,” he said. 
“I am trying to keep as far as possible from politics as such. An important thing is that my protest is not political, but social. I don’t care much who is left wing and who is right wing, there are things that I dislike actively, and I speak out about them.”

Noize MC will perform at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 4 at Glavclub, 2 Kremenchugskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 905 7555. Metro Ploshchad Vosstaniya / Ploshchad Alexandra Nevskogo.

TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The ongoing revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa have spawned, unsurprisingly, some powerful and inspiring music. 
Singer/songwriter Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens and currently recording simply as Yusuf, recorded “My People,” a song inspired by protests in Egypt, in a Berlin studio last week. Portions were shown on Al Jazeera television.
“My people, see them coming now / Can’t you hear them shout […] / Stop stealing from my people / Stop pointing guns at my people,” goes the song.
Previously, Islam had used his web site to invite people from around the world to contribute their voices to the chorus via the Internet.
U.K. band Asian Dub Foundation released its album “A History of Now” when the revolution was only starting to unfold in Egypt and had no time to include anything on the subject.
But an unknown person took the title song, set a montage of photos and videos from Egypt and Tunisia to it and uploaded it to YouTube.
“The song itself is about information overload, but its rhythm and sound seemed to go very well with the images and thus the song’s meaning was changed. I love that!” the group’s guitarist, Chandrasonic, told Links magazine last week.
The Israeli musician Noy Alooshe made a hit out of Muammar Gaddafi’s speech last week in which the Libyan dictator threatened his opponents, i.e. the people of Libya.
Dressed in a typically attention-grabbing outfit, Gaddafi lifts his arms and repeats the words “Zenga zenga” in the video. The word means “alley” and was taken from Gaddafi’s vow to fight “inch by inch, home by home, alley by alley.”
With upbeat music borrowed from a Pitbull and T-Pain track titled “Hey Baby,” the video has become an instant hit with the Libyan opposition, reports say, and with many people around the word. Uploaded on Feb. 22, the day of Gaddafi’s speech, the video had garnered more than 1,150,000 views early this week.
From Egypt came “Sout Al Horeya” (The Sound of Freedom) by singer/musician Amir Eid, accompanied by a video made on Tahrir Square in Cairo before the fall of president Hosni Mubarak that features singing protesters. The song has attracted more than 1,101,000 views on YouTube.
There is also a great rap on the Internet by a performer who is as yet unknown. The rap is known on YouTube as “The Egyptian Revolution Official Rap Song.”
Moscow-based rapper Noize MC, performing in the city this week, may not yet have any songs about revolutions, but he is known for his powerful protest songs (see interview, this page). 
Other notable concerts coming up include Zorge, the new band formed by former Tequilajazzz singer/songwriter Yevgeny Fyodorov, that will take place at Fish Fabrique Nouvelle on Monday, March 7. This is the band’s second concert in the city and the first featuring the full, four-member lineup.


TITLE: Building the backdrop
AUTHOR: By Olga Khrustaleva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg has always had a special relationship with both theater and architecture. In a city where every second building in the center is an architectural masterpiece, the theater, which has always been a popular field of interest and activity among the aristocracy and thinking elite, is an integral aspect of the cultural capital. 
With a great many of its best known buildings designed by Italian and French architects, St. Petersburg has a reputation as the most European of all Russian cities. 
It is symbolic that the centerpiece of the exhibition is the “theater of the future,” as the organizers describe it. The Palace of Dance, an apex of the European Embankment project, is set to spring up on the site of the Applied Chemistry Institute between the Tyuchkov and Birzhevoi bridges on the Petrograd Side of the city by 2017. The Palace of Dance project will include a permanent stage for the Boris Eifman Ballet Theater. A model of this 21st-century theater occupies a central position in one of the museum’s rooms.
Yelena Gerusova hit the mark when she wrote in Kommersant newspaper that “the exhibition, bringing together four centuries of Petersburg theatrical architecture, could have become a hit on any museum’s showbill.” It could have, if the organizers were not so desperate in their desire to fit the “theater of the future” into centuries-old St. Petersburg architectural traditions. The attempt is certainly laudable, but faced with past experience of bitter discrepancies between projects and reality, people were inevitably suspicious about how the model corresponds to the real theater that should be seen in 2017. After being assured that it will not differ from its model, the audience at the exhibition’s preview breathed a sigh of relief.
The exhibition itself is somewhat eclectic. It purportedly aims to investigate the formation of theatrical architecture in Petersburg, showing what changes theatrical exteriors and interiors underwent during several epochs. And the project succeeds in this to a certain extent, covering not just architecture, but raising up the curtain a little further into the theatrical past. The exhibits, many of which are borrowed from different city museums, are distinctive and unique — original sketches by Carlo Rossi, architect of the Alexandriinsky Theater, or theater models dating back to the 18th century. 
Costumes, playbills and old photographs share the exhibition space with models and drawings. There is even an installation showing Soviet-era press cuttings, which give visitors a hint of how it was to be a writer or indeed simply a thinker at those times. 
“Vainkop persistently directed his readers toward decadent Western bourgeois music ideals,” one newspaper wrote about the Russian scholar and musicologist Yulian Vainkop (1901 to 1974). “He worshipped his idol Stravinsky despite everything, totally ignoring the issue of the ideological and political image of this dedicated cosmopolitan. In Vainkop’s servile and slimy boos, Stravinsky is glorified as a ‘genius’ and ‘master of the epoch’.” 
Theater has always been about more than pure entertainment. It’s a litmus test of any era, rendering the mood of society with all the nuances and subtle gestures of a good actor. Equally, theatrical architecture is not only about constructing a stately building. It should be impressive and noticeable, yet still fit well into its surroundings. St. Petersburg architects in centuries past were undeniably successful in their task. The legendary imperial stages — the Mariinsky, Alexandriinsky and Mikhailovsky theaters — and the State Philharmonic are among city landmarks known far beyond Russia’s borders. It is only to be hoped that contemporary architects will maintain this noble tradition.
The exhibition is certainly fertile soil for inquisitive minds, raising more questions than it gives answers. But with the curtain raised even a little bit, visitors can sneak into this magic theatrical world and complete the picture in their minds.

The exhibition “Theatrical Architecture” runs through April 3 at the St. Petersburg Theatrical and Musical Art Museum, 6 Ploshchad Ostrovskogo. Tel: 310 1029. www.theatermuseum.ru

TITLE: Word's Worth: Foul-Mouthed and Filthy
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Ñêâåðíûé: nasty, ill-tempered, foul, filthy, grim

What do these five words have in common: ñêâåðíûé, ñêàðåäíûé, ñêóïîé, ñêóäíûé and ñêóäîóìíûé? They are all adjectives, all begin with “ñê,” and all describe something nasty or meager. Are they all related? That was a trick question. Some are, some aren’t. But it does seem that the initial hiss and kick of “ñê” evoke decidedly yucky associations among Russians.
Ñêâåðíûé (nasty), which originally meant “unclean,” is the most versatile adjective in the “ñê-” pack. It can mean gloomy, immoral, mean-tempered or miserable. Ñêâåðíàÿ ïîãîäà is foul weather. But ñêâåðíûé àíåêäîò is usually a nasty joke or story — the kind that makes you wince, not smile.
If someone is said to have ñêâåðíûé õàðàêòåð, he is ill-tempered and nasty. But if your significant other admits to suffering from ñêâåðíîå íàñòðîåíèå, it means he’s in the doldrums. If he further admits to committing ñêâåðíûé ïîñòóïîê, it means he has done something particularly disgraceful and deserves his glum mood.
Ñêâåðíî ïàõíåò means that something smells bad — filthy, rotten, putrid bad. This phrase can also be used figuratively when describing something suspicious or dubious. Ñêâåðíî ïàõíåò ýòà èñòîðèÿ, åñëè îíà ïðàâäà (That story sounds fishy if it’s true).
Ñêàðåäíûé is related etymologically to ñêâåðíûé and originally referred to excrement. Today, however, it refers to someone who is cheap — which is apparently pretty crappy in the Russian scale of values. Ðàç â íåäåëþ å¸ ñêàðåäíûé ìóæ îòñ÷èòûâàåò ðóáëè íà ùè (Once a week, her cheapskate husband counts out rubles for cabbage soup).
Since Russians prize generosity, ñêóïîé (stingy, scant) is also at the bottom of the Russian values scale. Most of the time it is used to describe a stingy person: Ñêóïîé ïëàòèò äâàæäû (A miser pays twice).
But a miser can be stingy in things other than money. For example, someone can be ñêóïîé íà ïîõâàëó (begrudging praise) or ñêóïîé íà ñëîâà (taciturn; literally, “stingy with words”).
But ñêóïîé can also be used to describe something that is the result of stinginess, as it were. For example, a short media release might be ñêóïîå ñîîáùåíèå (an uninformative piece).
Ñêóäíûé describes a pitifully small amount of something. If you have ñêóäíûå ñðåäñòâà ñóùåñòâîâàíèÿ, you’re living on a shoestring (literally, “meager means of existence”). Your empty purse and ñêóäíàÿ äèåòà (poor diet) is a result of the ñêóäíîå æàëîâàíèå (pittance) paid to you by your ñêóïîé íà÷àëüíèê (tightwad boss). And when you ask for the company’s financials, you will probably be given ñêóäíàÿ èíôîðìàöèÿ (scant information).
Ñêóäíûé can also cross the line from meager to poor and wretched. In the countryside, ñêóäíîå õîçÿéñòâî might be a wretched little farm.
Ñêóäíûé is often used to describe a paucity of knowledge or intelligence. If someone asks for your expert opinion on a subject you know little about, you can say: Âîò è âñ¸ ìî¸ î÷åíü ñêóäíîå çíàíèå (That’s the sum total of my extremely limited knowledge).
This might indicate that you lack intellectual breadth, in which case your friend might say about you: Îí ñêóäåí óìîì (literally, “he is poor in brains”). This has been turned into the word ñêóäîóìíûé, which describes someone whose knowledge base is narrow. Îí íå ãëóïûé, íî îí ñêóäîóìíûé (He’s not stupid, but he’s limited.) Which is certainly ñêóïàÿ ïîõâàëà (faint praise).

Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.

TITLE: Farce and reality combined
AUTHOR: By Nick Dowson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In the wake of the bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport that killed 36 people, Chris Morris’ film “Four Lions,” a comedy about Yorkshire suicide bombings, might seem to be the last film you would want to open in Russian cinemas.
Yet three Moscow cinemas went ahead with screenings of the film within days of the bombing last month, with 35MM cinema showing the premiere just hours after the tragedy, and the film is now showing at Dom Kino in St. Petersburg.
“The premiere was unfortunate timing. It is a difficult time for us,” said Nadya Kotova, director of programming at 35MM cinema in Moscow. “If you watch it, you will understand that it’s a good movie, about people, not just about terrorists and terrorism.”
The film follows a group of five idiotic “jihadis” as they try to plan a terror attack. Descending quickly into farce, Morris shows their mixed-up ideas and slapstick arguments as they blow themselves up, but achieve little else.
The would-be terrorists’ arguments are more confused and nihilist than fundamentalist, and the viewer comes to feel almost sorry for them for the pain they inflict on themselves through their warped ideas.
Roman Krupnov, PR director of Pioner movie theater in Moscow, said the cinema thought seriously about canceling screenings of the film, but was unable to because the film’s distributor, Ruscico, would not cancel the release of the film. “We have a contract with them. We had no way of canceling it. I think it’s a good film, with good humor, but the wrong time to show it because of the terrorist act,” Krupnov said. “We understand that some people might be upset.”
Yury Pivovarov, PR director at distributor Ruscico, told The St. Petersburg Times that when the bombing at Domodedovo happened it was too late to cancel the premiere at 35MM and that Ruscico was constrained by various commitments to its partners.
“This terrible coincidence shows that terrorism is also a major issue for our country as well as Britain,” he said. “It’s not the case that you have to be afraid and cancel everything. We did, however, refrain from much of our advertising and a few important articles about the film after the events at Domodedovo.”
“‘Four Lions’ is a very courageous response to terrorist events, in the U.K. and around the world. Though the filmmakers satirize suicide bombers and all the hysteria around terrorism, the sidesplitting jokes are contrasted with the gravity of the really terrible events described in the film. The film is not as flippant as it might seem at first.”
The film was also the choice for a showing by KinoKlub, an independent cinema club in Moscow set up by F5 magazine that staged a discussion of the film afterwards.
Olga Papernaya, artistic director of KinoKlub, admitted that “here we aren’t yet ready to talk about the problem at the level that Chris Morris proposes.”
Indeed, the debate did not discuss suicide bombing attacks in Russia in any depth at all. When one of the invited participants, journalist Nazim Nadirov, attempted to talk about what he saw as the causes of terrorism, moderators complained that he was going off topic.
“The Ingush were deported from their homes during World War II and were never given back the rights to them. No one has apologized to them,” he said before being cut off. He then walked out of the debate.
Police have identified Magomed Yevloyev from Ingushetia as the bomber at Domodedovo.

“Four Lions” is showing through March 10 at Dom Kino, 12 Karavannaya Ulitsa. Tel: 314 5614. 
www.domkino.spb.ru.

TITLE: The Hermitage wears Prado
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An unprecedented itinerant exhibition from Madrid’s Prado Museum opened at the State Hermitage Museum last week, marking the year of Spain in Russia and of Russia in Spain.
The exhibition was opened by President Dmitry Medvedev and Spanish King Juan Carlos, who came to the city on an official visit to launch the year of his country in Russia.
“Our people love the culture and art of Spain and there is no doubt they’ll be delighted to expand their knowledge of it,” Medvedev said.
Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage Museum, described the exhibition as “a historic event” for the Hermitage and said he was “very thankful that an exhibition of such high quality has arrived at the museum.”  
“At this exhibition, every picture is a masterpiece,” Piotrovsky said at a press conference devoted to the opening of the exhibition Friday. 
Miguel Sugasa, director of the Prado, said the museum was inspired to bring the exhibition to Russia after Medvedev visited the Prado in Madrid two years ago and expressed enthusiastic praise about the museum’s collection. 
“At this exhibition, we have tried to present not only the quality but also the diversity of the [Prado’s] collection, including works by Western European and Spanish artists, and pieces from the Renaissance era,” Sugasa said. 
The exhibition features more than sixty canvases from the 15th to 19th centuries by Western European artists with a focus on the Spanish, Italian and Flemish schools. The artists featured include Hieronymus Bosch, Raphael, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, El Greco, Diego Velazquez, Francisco Goya, Titian and many others.
Titian’s masterpiece “Venus and Cupid with an Organist,” which pictures a musician playing at Venus’s feet while contemplating the naked goddess, who is distracted by Cupid, is one of the works that has been brought from Madrid for the exhibition.
Some specialists consider the piece to be a straightforward erotic work, while others see its character as allegories of the senses of sight and hearing as the means for achieving knowledge of beauty and harmony.
Another canvas by Alonso Sanchez Coello depicts two girls of eight and nine years old — the much loved daughters of King Philip II of Spain. The artist painted the portraits of the Infantes in keeping with standard court portrait practices, with both of them wearing similar sumptuous clothing and wearing a detached expression. 
Caravaggio’s work “David with the Head of Goliath” features the Israelite shepherd boy defeating the Philistine giant Goliath. The artist’s work is marked by his traditional use of strong contrasts of shade and by a dramatic approach to the subject matter.
Many of the canvases from the Prado were bought by or created under the order of Spanish kings. Among them are also “Portrait of an Unknown Man” by Durer, “Holy Family with the Lamb” by Raphael, “Charles V Standing with His Dog” by Titian, three portraits by Velazquez, two still lives by Luis Melendez, and portraits of almost all the Spanish monarchs to whom Prado owes its fame.
Like the Russian tsars, the Spanish kings were known for their love of art. The royal passion for collecting art and recognizing prominent talents helped to compile the Prado’s collection.
King Carlos V and his son Philip II, for example, were the main patrons of Titian. Philip’s passion for Dutch art explains why most of Bosch’s works are located in Madrid. Philip IV, the most sophisticated connoisseur of all the Spanish kings, made Velazquez his court artist, and also patronized Rubens and Jusepe de Ribera. 
Carlos III invited Anton Raphael Mengs to work at his court, while his son and heir Carlos IV appointed Goya “the first artist of the king.”
Ferdinand VII, depicted on Goya’s canvases as prince and later as monarch, was also a collector and patron of art. It was he who made the decision to found the Royal Art and Sculpture Museum that later became known as the Prado Museum. The museum opened on Nov. 19, 1819.
The museum got its full name of Prado de San Geronimo due to its location in the district of the same name.
After the Revolution of 1868, the royal museum was nationalized and its official name changed to the National Prado Museum. The museum’s collection embraces the works from the 11th through to the 20th century.
French poet and art critic Theophile Gautier called the Prado “a museum of artists rather than a museum of art” because the museum has collections of individual artists that are unparalleled in volume: The museum has about 40 canvases by Titian, 90 works by Rubens, 50 pictures by Velazquez and 140 canvases by Goya as well as 1,000 drawings and engravings by the court painter.
Visitors to the Hermitage can buy separate tickets to the exhibition, which will stay open for additional evening hours to allow people to visit it after work.
The Hermitage is set to host a number of other Spanish exhibitions later this year, including one devoted to Baroque art of Andalusia that is set to open in June.
The dialogue between the museums will continue at the Prado Museum, which will showcase works of art from the Hermitage from Nov. 8 this year through March 26, 2012, at an exhibition titled “Hermitage Treasures.”
Piotrovsky said the Hermitage would take some of its most valuable exponents to Madrid, including Scythian gold and works by Titian, El Greco, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and Pablo Picasso, as well as Kazimir Malevich’s iconic painting “Black Square.”

“Prado at the Hermitage” runs through May 29 in the Nikolayevsky Hall of the State Hermitage Museum, 34 Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya. Tel: 571 3420. 
www.hermitagemuseum.org.

TITLE: The Race to Become a Mother
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: In MTV Russia’s new reality show, “I’m Having a Baby,” four teenage girls are expecting their first babies, with varying degrees of support from parents, boyfriends and husbands.
The girls, aged 17 and 18, vary from a few months pregnant to being on the verge of giving birth.
There’s sensible Nastya, 18, who works as a children’s entertainer at a tropical-themed resort in the Moscow region. She says she has been ready to be a mother since she was 14 and did not panic at all when she found out the news. Her boyfriend, Danila, is another matter. He lies in bed, skipping work, an ashtray propped on his stomach.
“I feel like Danila himself is a child,” Nastya complains.
The couple has managed to rear a rat in a cage, but Nastya points out to Danila that a baby will be more complex, since it won’t be able to survive on a monthly bag of food that costs 45 rubles.
In the case of Ksenia, 18, it’s pretty clear that her long-suffering mother will have to take on most of the care. Ksenia, whose face is peppered with piercings, shouts at her boyfriend Kirill for dropping his used teabags on the floor, while he argues that picking them up is “not man’s work.”
Kirill explains that the couple, living with Ksenia’s parents, “did not use condoms on principle.”
When the couple decides to say it with a shared tattoo, Kirill gets the word “true” and Ksenia gets “love,” although they manage to bicker even under the needle.
At one point, the camera shows Ksenia smoking a roll-up, a shocking moment that goes without any comment.
Even more shocking is the story of Vika from Abkhazia. She is 17, while her journalist husband, Anton, is 30. He was crowned the “best journalist in Abkhazia,” the voice-over says.
Vika has a beautiful childlike face, but her bump is enormous. She goes in for her first ever ultrasound test — her husband explains that the move and her lack of Russian citizenship means that she hasn’t had a single test, even though they have been in Moscow for eight months.
Even more disturbingly, she mentions that Anton “stole” her as a bride when she was younger than 15. Getting married was illegal, but anything is possible in Abkhazia, she adds, smiling shyly.
They are living with Anton’s parents, who hardly bother to hide their disapproval and desire for them to live separately. His mother calls Vika a “child” who does not understand love, as she lies in bed, miserably, suffering from pains.
The most settled of the girls, Antonina is a calm blonde, living in her own comfortable apartment with her chef husband. Having a baby was a logical step in her family, the voice-over says, since her mom was the same age. A very youthful grandmother-to-be while still in her 30s, her mom says that all her friends are laughing at the idea.
The show has a somewhat different flavor from MTV’s “Teen Mom,” which is very much aimed at showing unwanted pregnancies and teaching life lessons about using contraception. That’s probably because in Russia, having a baby young does not necessarily mark you out as a member of an underclass. One word I did not hear on the show was “accident.” It sounded as if all the babies were planned in some sense.
Describing all the girls’ relationships as stable might be pushing it, but they had someone at their side and it was pretty obvious that parents were ready to leap in with childcare, housing and food — even if some of the girls did not seem particularly appreciative.
The unanswered question really was why they were in such a rush.

TITLE: Dining: Retro reveling
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Dom Byta has been wildly popular with the city’s movers and shakers since it opened late last year. Opened by the same brains as those behind the floating bar Lastochka, which lived its ephemeral life in the summer of 2009, it was an instant hit with the all-night-bar-loving crowd of well-off tusovshchiki who so faithfully partied away that summer on Lastochka.
A dom byta in the Soviet Union was a department store offering practical household goods and services such as laundry, dry cleaning, key-cutting and much more. It seems that at some point in the ‘70s, a conscious effort was made to make such stores as homogenous as possible, as they are inevitably large, glass-fronted metal and concrete edifices with a distinctly Soviet feel to them. It is on the first floor of one such building (downstairs from the defunct music venue A2) that the Dom Byta cafe-bar is located.
The bar’s name and location are referenced in the 70s-style interior, which is dominated by a long bar covered in 3-D eggshell-blue tiles. The same snazzy tiles adorn two large pillars behind the bar, and six disco balls of varying sizes hanging from the ceiling complete the effect, which is, overall, one of a larger, more upscale version of Datscha — perhaps a sort of Datscha for those who have outgrown the boisterous little bar on Dumskaya Ulitsa.
During the daytime, Dom Byta functions as a sparsely populated chilled-out cafe popular with solitary MacBook Pro-users and mixed parties of young people. Only the security guard sitting between the inner and outer door, a smashed pane in the latter (the result of a Saturday-night brawl) and the chrome-coated DJ booth are evidence of the hugely popular all-night parties hosted by the bar by night.
The stratum of clientele Dom Byta is targeting is evident in the drinks prices: 290 rubles ($10) for a half-liter of imported beer (no Russian beer here) and 1,550 rubles ($54) for the cheapest bottle of wine. Even tee-totalers are not safe from the painful prices — a fruit smoothie costs even more than a Belgian beer, at 310 rubles ($10.70), while a pot of tea costs a criminal 230 rubles ($8). Admittedly, the latter may arrive in a charmingly worn and quaint retro tea set, but that is not enough to offset the added insult of a separate charge for milk (30 rubles, $1).
Fortunately for both diners and Dom Byta’s survival prospects, the food is priced more reasonably, and is, on the whole, worth every kopeck. Though food has been served here for some time, only recently was a full menu formalized, incorporating a refreshing choice of dishes from all over the world, including Mexico, India and Thailand — thus ensuring a far larger than usual range of vegetarian options — as well as some home-grown favorites. 
From the more exotic choices offered by the menu came salad with Tandoori chicken (360 rubles, $12.40) and Palak Paneer with rice (320 rubles, $11). The former was a lucky dip of deep-fried goat’s cheese and devastatingly moreish pieces of chicken served on a bed of crisp lettuce, sesame seeds and raisins, set off by a zingy dressing of yoghurt, fresh mint and lemon. The Palak Paneer was in a different league however, and lacked any real flavor, despite demonstrable evidence of coriander, cumin seeds and fine strips of chili peppers.
Pumpkin soup (320 rubles, $11), in contrast, had been given a most welcome Thai twist in the form of a generous sloshing of coconut milk and pesto made from coriander. The result was a soup exploding with flavor and perfect for warming —and filling — up on a damp winter’s day. 
A more familiar soup, borshch (240 rubles, $8.30) was served with garlic grenki (fried black bread) and was an outstanding specimen of what this soup should be, with its rich, slightly sweet flavor, vibrant pink color, generous separate portion of sour cream and fine strips of tender beef.
Dom Byta’s wait staff are clad in practical blue pinafores in another reference to the bar’s name, and the service itself was not without a (presumably unintentional) Soviet hitch. A Spanish omelette (270 rubles, $9.30) was such a long time in following the previous dishes that it was no longer really desired by the time it came. Fortunately, it was another winner — light and fluffy, and livened up with some marinated bell peppers and a side serving of arugula and cherry tomatoes — which, together with a 10-percent discount offered by our waitress on her own initiative, saved the day.  
<br><b>Kompot</b>

Kompot may well have provided some inspiration for Dom Byta, with its funky, 70s-style interior, but this quirky DJ-bar and cafe is rendered cozier than the latter thanks to a multitude of weird and wonderful furnishings. The menu is vegetarian-friendly and internationally flavored, with top-notch hummous among the treats on offer, along with Caucasian dishes — and all at enjoyably democratic prices. <i>10 Ulitsa Zhukovskogo. 
Tel: 719 6542</i>

<b>Griboedov Hill</b>

The glass extension to veteran bunker club Griboedov not only offers great views during both White Nights and winter alike to a background of quality live music. It also boasts some of the best and cheapest club grub in town. Dishes are mostly Russian and European, with once again, a refreshingly broad range of vegetarian options. A vastly superior way to beat the late-night munchies than a fast-food pit stop, and (almost) guaranteed to fuel another hour or two of partying. <i>2A Voronezhskaya Ulitsa 
Tel: 764 4355</i>

<b>Helsinki Bar</b>

This new DJ-bar-cum-restaurant on Vasilyevsky Island has already established itself as a venue for after-parties and word-of-mouth acoustic gigs. The menu has, unsurprisingly, a distinctive Finnish flavor and includes several dishes built around reindeer meat. <i>31 Kadetskaya Liniya. Tel: 995 1995</i>

TITLE: City’s Homeless Population Fights to Keep Warm
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Every night during the colder months of the year, more than 100 homeless people appear at the doorway of a local charity seeking an overnight refuge.
The charity, Nochlezhka, can host only half of that number, and two heated tents to shelter the city’s homeless people can each accommodate another couple of dozen guests. 
Viktoria Ryzhova, a spokeswoman for Nochlezhka, estimates there are about 8,000 homeless people in St. Petersburg, but statistics vary dramatically. “Every day, between 3,000 and 30,000 people are forced to spend the night on the streets,” she said.
All of St. Petersburg’s night shelters combined can only accommodate about 200 people, Ryzhova said. City Governor Valentina Matviyenko has promised to encourage the opening of shelters in every neighborhood in the city, but progress has been slow.
Nochlezhka is currently the driving force behind a campaign aimed at distributing warm clothes and toiletries among the city’s homeless. On Feb. 23 — the Defenders of the Fatherland national holiday — the charity presented local homeless people with gifts collected from the city’s residents that included warm socks, scarves and winter clothes, as well as chocolate and coffee.
On Feb. 28, the local charity shops Spasibo and Khoroshop — the latter of which gives its proceeds to the homeless charity — organized the distribution of used clothes that had been donated to the shops.
“These clothes are perfectly wearable, but we felt they would not sell very quickly, so we decided to just give them away,” said a volunteer who worked on the project.
“Nochlezhka does such a great and useful thing,” said Olga Nikolayeva, a local housewife. “My husband and I are religious, and we regularly take used clothes to the church and leave them there for those in need, but most of our friends are not religious, and they say they would feel awkward going to a church, so they just end up throwing things away.” 
Activists say far more money is needed to set up more heated shelters to help the city’s thousands of homeless people, and, more importantly, to restore homeless people’s documents and integrate them back into society.
The police do not issue figures on the number of homeless people who freeze to death every year on the streets of St. Petersburg, but according to Nochlezhka, at least 82 people died in the city from exposure last winter, and a further 100 people sustained severe injuries, some of which necessitated amputations.
Many homeless people seek refuge in the basements and attics of apartment buildings, but the installation of code locks and intercom systems is making this increasingly difficult. During the course of the winter, Nochlezhka campaigned among local residents, asking them not to throw out the homeless.
“Just imagine how unfortunate and miserable they are, and what a struggle life has become for them,” Ryzhova said. “Kicking the homeless out into the cold when it is minus 25 degrees [Celsius] outside and there are not enough shelters is inhuman.”
But such campaigns have had little success in a city where crime rates and personal safety concerns are high and security standards in most apartment buildings are less than basic. 
“We had homeless people coming and going in our basement for more than five years,” said Nadezhda Kuzmina, who lives on Varshavskaya Ulitsa in the southwest of the city. 
“The stairs reeked of urine and feces, and they [the homeless people] would often be drunk. We have a small child in our family, and this is not the sort of picture you want your kids to face on a daily basis.”
“On one occasion, the local authorities even sent a lorry up here to pack up all the rubbish and take it away. But it wasn’t until we put an intercom system on the entrance and several huge locks on the basement door that we got rid of the vagrants,” Kuzmina said. “Kicking them out took so much time and such a huge effort that we are not having them back.”
City Hall’s attitude toward homeless people was well-illustrated by a recent statement made by Matviyenko.
Amid an avalanche of criticism over casualties caused by snow and ice this winter, Matviyenko did not go as far as admitting that the entire system of clearing the city of snow and icicles needs an overhaul. Instead, she suggested recruiting homeless people to clear roofs.
Clearing snow and ice from the roofs of tall buildings in a large city requires the right equipment, sufficient training and physically fit workers. Most would agree that it is a task for which Russia’s frail and emaciated homeless are unsuited. 

TITLE: Gorbachev at 80: Russia an ‘Imitation’ of Democracy
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Approaching his 80th birthday, Mikhail Gorbachev jokes about his age but frowns when he speaks of Russia sliding back into Soviet authoritarian ways he thought he defeated.
For much of the nearly 20 years since the Soviet Union collapsed under his leadership, Gorbachev has been something of a dim figure in his homeland, mostly staying out of public view despite being lauded in the West.
These days, Gorbachev, who turns 80 on Wednesday, is becoming more visible and outspoken, even recently doling out harsh criticism of Vladimir Putin — as painful memories over the anxiety and suffering that followed the U.S.S.R.’s disintegration grow fainter.
Although his legacy remains controversial, Gorbachev is at last getting some recognition as an elder statesman, including a large photo exhibition on his years in power, displayed in a prestigious hall just outside the walls of the Kremlin that he once ruled.
And despite his years, he still shows the vigor and humor that captivated the world after a long series of sickly and tongue-tied Soviet leaders.
“I don’t believe I’m 80 and didn’t hope I’d make it (this far) — but I’m not going into physiological details here,” he joked at a recent news conference.
But his remarks on Russia’s current politics were pointed. He described the country as an “imitation” of democracy where parliament and courts lack independence from the government and the main pro-Kremlin party is a “bad copy” of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev, whose attempts to reform the Soviet system led instead to its death, says many of his democratic achievements have been reversed — and could not hide his contempt for the current leadership.
“Incredible conceit!” he snaps when asked about Prime Minister Putin and his protege, President Dmitry Medvedev, saying they will decide between them who should run for president in Russia’s March 2012 presidential vote.
Gorbachev accuses Putin, who was president from 2000 to 2008, of taking the country back to the times of a one-party state, manipulating elections, media-censorship and a crackdown on dissent. Gorbachev said his own attempt to found a political party failed when a Kremlin aide bluntly told him that authorities wouldn’t register it.
Recalling his push for liberalization of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev said he understood that it would erode his own authority but launched the reforms because the country desperately needed change.
“I could have enjoyed being in power like other politicians had done before me and are doing now,” he said in a recent interview with the liberal Novaya Gazeta newspaper, which he co-owns. “But ... I felt an enormous and impatient public demand for changes.”
Gorbachev was 54 when he took the helm as the General Secretary of the Communist Party in March 1985, his relatively young age and open manner contrasting sharply with his predecessors.
A month after his appointment, he announced sweeping political and economic reforms that were enthusiastically greeted by people striving for a change after decades of repressive Soviet rule.
He allowed dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov to return home from internal exile, quickly launched disarmament talks with the West, signing a 1987 deal to cut an entire class of nuclear missiles with President Ronald Reagan, and ended the war in Afghanistan.
But while he quickly became an icon in the West, his popularity at home took a nose-dive under the impact of hasty and ill-fated domestic reforms. His attempt to limit alcohol consumption was marred by excesses, and he failed to deliver on his promises to raise living standards.
The one area where Gorbachev quickly succeeded was his campaign of glasnost or openness, which allowed the media to criticize authorities and expose the crimes of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Changes continued in avalanche. In 1989, Gorbachev championed the first relatively free parliamentary elections in which many Kremlin critics won seats, and he didn’t stop protest movements from driving out Communist regimes across Eastern Europe.
Then Gorbachev also began losing his grip on power, facing attacks by the Communist old guard, who were accusing him of betrayal, and from liberals complaining that his reforms were not moving fast enough.
Ethnic conflicts, which had been ruthlessly suppressed by Soviet rulers over decades, flared up and secessionist movements spread quickly across all 15 Soviet republics. An attempt to free prices and ease centralized controls over the economy emptied shelves and fueled inflation, and a badly planned money reform added to public dismay.
The rising tensions culminated in the botched August 1991 hardline coup that briefly ousted Gorbachev and precipitated the Soviet collapse. Gorbachev resigned as Soviet President on Christmas Day 1991 after several leaders of republics declared the Soviet Union extinct.
Many praise Gorbachev for not resorting to military force to stay in power.
“He faced a dilemma: he could only preserve the Soviet Union by spilling a lot of blood, and he didn’t do that,” Liliya Shevtsova, an expert with Carnegie Endowment’s Moscow center, wrote in a commentary. “Gorbachev killed a Soviet leader in himself even before the Soviet collapse.”
Gorbachev doesn’t regret launching the reforms that eventually cost him his job. “I only can be grateful to destiny for giving me the opportunities that I had,” he said in a TV interview.
He still feels bitter about his mistakes — admitting that he underestimated his foes when he left for a seaside vacation days before the planned signing of a crucial agreement that could have saved the Soviet Union. Emboldened by his absence, hard-liners in the Soviet leadership launched the coup.
“I shouldn’t have left, it was exactly what they wanted,” he said last week. Asked what he can’t forgive, he answered with a terse “betrayal.”
Gorbachev was reviled at home for years after he lost power, as many held him responsible for the Soviet collapse and the economic meltdown that cost most of the population their lifetime savings. It was his wife Raisa’s death of leukemia in 1999 that melted many hearts, softening the public attitude to Gorbachev.