SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1651 (13), Wednesday, April 13, 2011
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TITLE: Cosmonaut’s Daughter Denounces Musical
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of Yury Gagarin becoming the first man in space (see article, page 6), the cosmonaut’s daughter Yelena has denounced a St. Petersburg musical production that uses her father’s name as its title.
“Gagarin” premiered at the St. Petersburg Music Hall on April 10 and was well received by young audiences. Ahead of the premiere, Gagarina faxed a sobering letter to the company suggesting that the venue remove the cosmonaut’s name from the posters and give the production a different title. 
Yelena Gagarina, who works as general director of the Kremlin Museums in Moscow, alleges that Music Hall’s “Gagarin” may create a distorted or incorrect image of her father. To prevent that, she is insisting that the show be renamed. Gagarina, however, stopped short of explaining what elements of the staging in particular she finds insulting or what specifically could potentially be damaging to the reputation of the world’s first cosmonaut. 
The 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s historic flight is being widely celebrated in Russia, with an enormous range of exhibitions, documentaries, publications and other events marking the anniversary. The unfortunate local production appears to be the only event to have come under fire from the pilot’s relatives and become a center of controversy.
“Gagarin” has been widely advertized as a “musical blockbuster” that is essentially a musical fairy tale bordering on a romantic comedy. The plot, which revolves around the first journey into space in human history, tells the story of a professor who is training pilots for that very special flight. 
The staging is set to the music of local composer Dmitry Saratsky.
The next show is scheduled for April 24, and the project’s authors are determined to battle on. They have officially informed Yelena Gagarina that Music Hall has no intention of redesigning the posters.
“Our production is harmless; it does not even feature Yury Gagarin as a character — the main character is simply called Cosmonaut,” said Ilya Moshchitsky, the production’s director. “We have produced a show that is very friendly and adventurous in its spirit, so really there is nothing to worry about.”   
According to Alexander Zakrzhevsky, the venue’s spokesman, the production does not follow or reconstruct any historical events and features no characters that bear physical resemblance to real people.
“There is nothing specific in the plot, no parallels at all that could even remotely be linked to the life of Yury Gagarin,” Zakrzhevsky said. “The name of Yury Gagarin only serves to declare and encapsulate the space theme. But it is not a show about the life of the Russian cosmonaut.”
In her letter to Music Hall, Gagarina also stressed that “Gagarin” is an officially registered trademark owned by the pilot’s descendants, who therefore have control over the use of his name in commercial projects. St. Petersburg’s Music Hall is a state enterprise and is funded by the local administration.


TITLE: Second Criminal Case Against Voina Art Group Filed
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The St. Petersburg Investigative Committee filed a new criminal case Thursday against Oleg Vorotnikov, an activist of the Voina art group, over his participation in the banned March on Smolny that took place on March 31.

Vorotnikov and Voina’s other activists Natalya Sokol and Leonid Nikolayev walked along Nevsky Prospekt with a group of anarchists during the rally, which was held to demand civic freedoms the dismissal of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko.

According to the web site of the Investigative Committee, Vorotnikov is now accused of three offenses that he allegedly committed during the rally: Disorderly conduct, use of violence against a police officer and insulting a police officer. The gravest of these offenses — use of violence against a police officer — can be punished by up to five years in prison.

The investigators claim that Vorotnikov seized the uniform hats of several policemen and threw them into the road on Nevsky Prospekt, and then hit a police officer in the head, “causing physical pain to him.” He then allegedly jumped on the hood of a police car and “intentionally damaged the right rear view mirror,” after which he was detained by the police.

Vorotnikov denies the accusations, saying that he and other Voina members were attacked, beaten and then detained by the police, while Vorotnikov and Sokol’s toddler son Kasper was seized from them by the officers and taken away.

Voina’s lawyer Dmitry Dinze sees the criminal case as the law enforcement bodies’ reaction to complaints about the police’s behavior during and after the incident.

“I think, first, it’s the police’s counteraction to the information about the attacks, secondly, it’s the prosecutor and police’s reaction to an inquiry from ombudsman [Vladimir] Lukin and an official enquiry from [State Duma deputy Oleg] Shein into the fact of massive violations of human rights and freedoms by police officers on March 31,” Dinze said Thursday.

“The police are attempting to put the blame for everything on Nikolayev, Kasper Vorotnikov and Koza [Sokol’s artistic name in the group].”

Dinze said that the authorities may use the new criminal case to put Vorotnikov back in prison. Vorotnikov and Nikolayev were released on bail late February after spending three months in a St. Petersburg prison after they were charged with criminal mischief in November for an art stunt that involving overturning police cars. Both face up to seven years in prison if found guilty.

“We’ll fight back; we have two items of documented material concerning the policemen’s violence against activists,” Dinze said.

Vorotikov said that by filing the new criminal case, the police are attempting to defend themselves.

“Dinze filed reports on the policemen who attacked me and Koza and stole Kasper from us, and ombudsman Lukin and deputy Shein got interested in the case,” Vorotnikov said.

“The policemen respond by using their typical scheme: File a criminal case against the activists. The policemen lie, openly and cynically claiming that it was not us who were attacked by them, but allegedly we attacked the policemen, and harmed ourselves at the same time.

“If the policemen are to believed, it turns out that Koza herself tried to break her own leg with the door of her cell at police precinct 78. And I allegedly attacked policemen while holding a baby in my arms.

“The police scheme works as following: They file cases and then spin them out. Once they’ve built up the case, they offer an ‘exchange’ — if I take back my report, they’ll close the case. It’s the most common scheme.”

Earlier this month, Voina was awarded by the Innovation prize by the Culture Ministry for its controversial art stunt “A Dick Taken Prisoner by the FSB,” in which the group painted a giant phallus on Liteiny bridge just before the bridge was raised for the night.

<i>For an interview with Vorotnikov on Voina’s art <a href="/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=33851">click here</a>.</i>

TITLE: Roof Leaks Unite Residents
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Residents, artists and anarchists united Sunday to protest the St. Petersburg authorities’ failure to deal with housing issues by celebrating the fictitious International Leaking Roofs Day in the courtyard of a 19th-century building on Kolomenskaya Ulitsa. 
The celebration, which included a discussion, an outdoor art exhibition and tea party, was organized by Verkhotura art group, one of whose members, Polina Zaslavskaya, lives in the building.
“The main idea was that people should unite and organize themselves to fight the problem, rather than deal with it alone,” Zaslavskaya said. 
“And we came up with this humorous form: An exhibition, to invite artists to unite and tackle the problem with their artistic means. The housing problem is a common one; it doesn’t matter what you do, the main thing is to do it all together.”
Called “Everything Leaks and Everything Abides,” the art exhibition featured satirical posters criticizing the city’s housing services for the lack of transparency and alleged corruption, as well as documenting the effects of leaking roofs — a problem that affects thousands of the city’s households.
Zaslavskaya painted a series of watercolors with titles such as “Roof Pierced By a Crowbar,” “Electrical Wiring Has Burnt Out” or “Leak in the Kitchen. A Hot Water Pipe Burst in the Attic.”
The anarchists — some of whom held a regular Food Not Bombs event nearby, distributing free vegan food to underprivileged and homeless people — provided vegan snacks and hot tea as well as background music. 
According to Zaslavskaya, the date was chosen to mark the first anniversary since the roof of her building, located at 38/40 Kolomenskaya Ulitsa, first started to leak. Despite promises from St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko to fix city roofs, the leaks returned last winter.
Zaslavskaya attributes this to corruption and inefficiency. “When such housing horror occurs, when things are on the verge of catastrophe, it immediately becomes clear to everybody how everything works,” she said.
“The Housing Code was issued back in 2005, but it still doesn’t work. City Hall came up with the “St. Petersburg Roofs” program in which they replaced old roofs with new ones, but it made things even worse because they were poorly made.
“It’s an example of solidarity among thieves and completely insane corruption, because incredible amounts of money are just draining away.”
The exhibition’s title, “Everything Leaks and Everything Abides,” is a play on words on Heraclitis’ quote “Everything flows and nothing abides” (in Russian, there is one word for both “leak” and “flow”), and was used on a poster that Zaslavskaya and her friends made for a rally against leaking roofs last month. 
“The residents asked us to do something like ‘Valya, Fix Our Roof,’ which was an almost supplicating tone,” she said.
“I don’t know how productive that is. Quite the opposite, I think it makes sense to say, ‘Let’s battle, let’s unite, let’s organize ourselves and take everything over.’ There should be moods like that.
Zaslavskaya believes that outdoor art events could overcome alienation and unite people — at least the residents of a specific building.
“There are severe problems now, and they can be used to try and stir up people,” she said.
“To overcome total loneliness and isolation, because I think it’s sad.”


TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Zenit Punished</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — FC Zenit St. Petersburg has been fined 300,000 rubles ($10,687) after one of its fans offered Brazilian player Roberto Carlos a banana at a recent match in St. Petersburg.
The amount was fixed at a meeting of the Control and Discipline Committee of the Russian Football Union last week.
“Zenit is to be fined for allowing a fan to insult another person regarding race and skin color and for failing to ensure public discipline,” Zenit said on its web site.
The match between Zenit and Anzhi Makhachkala, for whom Carlos plays, was held on March 21. On March 23 Zenit stated on its site that the club and the city police would investigate the incident. 
The next day, Maxim Mitrofanov, general director of Zenit, said that the identity of the fan who offered the banana to Carlos was known and that he would face a lifetime ban from attending Zenit matches, Fontanka.ru reported.

<b>More Allegro Trips</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russian Railways (RZhD) will double the number of high speed Allegro trains running between Helsinki and St. Petersburg for the summer season beginning May 29. 
Allegro trains will make four return journeys each day: In addition to the current services offered that depart from St. Petersburg at 6:40 a.m. and 3:25 p.m., two additional services leaving at 11:25 a.m. and 8:25 p.m. are to be introduced.
Correspondingly, there will be two additional return services departing Helsinki at 6 a.m. and 7 p.m., in addition to the two existing services that leave at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. The new summer schedule will be in operation until November 29 and will stop at Vyborg, Vainikkala, Kuovola, Lahti, Tikkurila and Pacile.
The journey takes three-and-a-half hours, with trains reaching a maximum speed of 200 kilometers per hour in Russia and 220 kilometers per hour in Finland.

<b>New Nokian Plant</b>
The Finnish company Nokian Tyres will build a second plant in Russia next to its current site in the Vsevolozhsk district of the Leningrad Oblast, Interfax reported last week. 
The new plant, which is planned to be launched this year, will have the capacity to produce five to six million car tires a year. 
The existing plant will also introduce new production lines in 2011 that will increase output from 13 million tires to 15 million tires a year. Investment will total 240 million euros in 2012 and 2013.
This year, the company will also decide whether or not to produce industrial tires. 
The Finnish company opened its Russian plant in 2005. In 2009, it unveiled a new housing complex built for employees of the Vsevolozhsk plant. 
By the end of 2009, more than 60 percent of the company’s tires were being made at the Vsevolozhsk plant, according to Kim Gran, president and CEO of Nokian Tyres.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Girl Froze To Death</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Three-year-old Alyona Shchipina, whose body was recently found in melting snow outside St. Petersburg, died from exposure to cold, the city’s forensic medical experts said last week, Fontanka reported.
The girl disappeared from the dacha where she was staying with her mother and stepfather on January 24 under unclear circumstances. Alyona went missing after being left home alone while stepfather Roman Polevoi went to buy cigarettes from a nearby kiosk.
Police suspected the girl had been murdered, and Polevoi was arrested but subsequently released. Last week, the girl’s body was found on the side of the road about 800 meters from her home. The toddler was wearing only a blouse, tights and other light clothing as well as valenki, traditional Russian felt boots. 
It is now assumed that the girl wandered off by herself when left alone and then died of exposure.

<b>Newborn Jaguars</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Three jaguar cubs of different colors were born in the Leningrad Zoo in St. Petersburg last month, the Zoo’s press service announced Tuesday.
The cubs were born to the zoo’s well known jaguar couple, Rock and Agnesse. This time, Agnesse gave birth to two male and one female cub. Agnesse and Rock have different colored coats, and of their young, one is black and the other two are spotty.
The baby jaguars already know how to spit, show their claws and scratch, the zoo announced.

<b>Ex-Cop Sentenced</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Former policeman Andrei Petrov, who was found guilty of assaulting his stepdaughter Olga’s teacher at her school in October last year, has been sentenced to four years in a penal colony by the Nevsky district magistrates court.
Petrov repeatedly punched the teacher in the head and continued even after she had fallen to the ground, following with kicks to the stomach. Petrov also threatened to murder the teacher.

<b>Mall’s ‘Crazy Days’</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Finnish shopping center Stockmann will hold its “Crazy Days” sales for the first time in St. Petersburg from Wednesday through Sunday, during which time known brands and even air tickets will be on sale at reduced prices.
Held biannually in April and October in order to attract clients and boost sales, Stockmann has been holding its “Crazy Days” sales in Finland since 1986. This will be the 50th time the event has been organized in a number of countries.
The event logo is a yellow ghost, symbolizing the secretive way in which the organizers leave revealing what exactly will be on sale until the very last day. 


TITLE: Belarus Subway Blast Kills 11
AUTHOR: By Yuras Kurmanau
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINSK, Belarus – An explosion tore through a key subway station in the Belarusian capital of Minsk during evening rush hour Monday killing 11 people and wounding 126. An official said the blast was a terrorist act.
President Alexander Lukashenko did not say what caused the explosion at the Oktyabrskaya station, but suggested outside forces could be behind it.
“I do not rule out that this gift could have been brought from outside,” Lukashenko said. The authoritarian leader, under strong pressure from the West over his suppression of the opposition, has frequently alleged outside forces seek to destabilize his regime.
Deputy prosecutor-general Andrei Shved said the blast was a terrorist act, but did not give further details.
An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw heavily wounded people being carried out of the station, including one person with missing legs.
Several witnesses told The Associated Press that the explosion hit just as passengers were stepping off a train at about 6 p.m. (1500 GMT). The Oktyabrskaya station, where Minsk’s two subway lines intersect, was crowded with passengers at the end of the work day.
The station is within 100 meters of the presidential administration building and the Palace of the Republic, a concert hall often used for government ceremonies.
Lukashenko visited the site about two hours after the blast and left without comment. He later ordered the country’s feared police to “call in all forces and turn everything inside-out” to investigate the blast.
About five hours after the blast, Health Minister Vasily Zharko said 11 people were killed and 126 people were wounded, 22 of them severely.
One witness, Alexei Kiklevich, said at least part of the station’s ceiling collapsed after the explosion.
Igor Tumash, 52, said he was getting off a train when “there was a large flash, an explosion and heavy smoke. I fell on my knees and crawled ... bodies were piled on each other.”
He said he saw a man with a severed leg and rushed to help him. “But then I saw he was dead,” Tumash said.
Political tensions have been rising in Belarus since December, when a massive demonstration against a disputed presidential election sparked a harsh crackdown by police in which more than 700 people were arrested, including seven presidential candidates.
The opposition Belarusian Popular Front late Monday issued a statement calling on authoriites “to refrain from using this incident as grounds for a new wave of political represssion,” the Interfax news agency reported.
Lukashenko, who was declared the overwhelming winner of the disputed Dec. 19 election, has run Belarus, a former Soviet republic, with an iron fist since 1994. He exercises overwhelming control over the politics, industry and media in this nation of 10 million.
Belarus’ beleaguered opposition has been largely peaceful for years, with only a few clashes with police.
In July 2008, a bomb blast at a concert attended by Lukashenko injured about 50 people in Minsk. No arrests in the case were reported.
But Lukashenko said Monday that the subway blast could have been connected to that bombing.


TITLE: Putin Still Makes More Money Than President
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova 
and Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s income rose last year to $180,000, again surpassing that of President Dmitry Medvedev but far behind the $13 million declared by the wife of First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, according to income declarations released Monday.
Medvedev earned 3.3 million rubles ($120,000) last year, while Putin raked in 5 million rubles ($180,000) — a boost of more than 1 million rubles from 2009, when he reported 3.9 million rubles.
Officials and their families are releasing declarations for the third year in a row, but anti-corruption experts said the disclosures still amounted to little more than a publicity stunt because officials do not have to report their spending and face no punishment for lying. The declarations also do not provide sources of income, so it is unclear why Putin’s earnings grew.
Still, the declarations contain eye-grabbing trivia, revealing, for example, that Putin’s wife suddenly started earning money last year. Lyudmila Putina reported a housewife’s income of 582 rubles in 2009, but made 146,000 rubles in 2010.
Putina, who is rarely seen in the public eye, raising questions about how she spends her time, listed no assets, the same as she did the previous year.
“It’s clear that the sum is laughable and has nothing to do with Lyudmila Putina’s real income,” Stanislav Belkovsky, an independent political analyst, said by telephone Monday.
He suggested that Putina might have been paid for organizing charity events, while Putin’s own income might have grown because the improving economic situation might have boosted his official salary and bonuses.
Putin’s spokesman could not be reached for comment on Monday.
First lady Svetlana Medvedeva, known for her charity activities, reported no earnings in 2010 and said she still drives an old 1999 Volkswagen Golf car.
Putin reported owning three Russian-made vehicles — two vintage Volga sedans and a Niva — as well as an old Skif trailer inherited from his father. Putin also has an apartment covering a modest 77 square meters. He declared the same property in previous years as well.
Medvedev has a sole car, a vintage Pobeda, and co-owns a 367-square-meter apartment with his wife.
The ruling tandem has little compared with some of their subordinates, however. The Cabinet’s top earner, Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev, reported an income of 114 million rubles ($4 million).
But even he was trumped by Shuvalov’s wife, businesswoman Olga Shuvalova, who declared 373 million rubles ($13.3 million). Her husband added another 14 million rubles to the family budget, and the couple own seven cars, including a Jaguar.
Income declarations have been published since 2009 as part of a Medvedev-ordered campaign to crack down on corruption. But so far only one official has been fired for providing incorrect information: Army General Viktor Gaidukov was sacked by Medvedev in September for not listing all his bank accounts.
The Prosecutor General’s Office reported discovering 41,000 violations in declarations submitted in 2009. Some 6,000 officials were reprimanded over them, but only Gaidukov faced harsher sanctions.
Moreover, officials do not have to report their spending — which can exceed earnings by several dozen times. Even Putin and Medvedev are regularly seen riding in luxury limousines and sporting wristwatches worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Last month, Putin ordered the State Duma to draft a bill requiring officials to disclose spending, but no bill has surfaced since.
Russia accepted the obligation to look into officials’ incomes in 2003, when it signed the UN Anti-Corruption Convention. But, incidentally, it has refused to ratify a chapter of the convention about cracking down on bureaucrats’ illegally obtained assets or spending that they cannot account for.
By personally submitting declarations, Putin and Medvedev indicate to bureaucracy that the move is mandatory, corruption analyst Kirill Kabanov said by telephone. But he added that the effort is not enforced.

TITLE: 75-Year-Old    Switches Off Nation’s Internet 

PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — An elderly Georgian woman who purportedly shut off Internet service in her country and neighboring Armenia while scavenging for copper cable is facing charges that could lead to three years in prison. 
Authorities say 75-year-old Aiyastan Shakaryan severed a fiber-optic cable on March 28, shutting off the information highway in much of Georgia and all of Armenia for several hours. The cable ran parallel to a railroad track in eastern Georgia where she was purportedly scavenging. 
Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Zurab Gvenetadze said late last week that she has been charged with property destruction, which carries a sentence of up to three years, but it’s probable she would get a lighter sentence because of her age. 
The 600-kilometer fiber-optic cable belongs to Georgian Railway Telecoms, an offshoot of the state railroad company responsible for their security. 


TITLE: FSB Backtracks From Ban On Gmail
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova 
and Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Federal Security Service called for a ban on Skype, Gmail and Hotmail as major threats to national security — but quickly backtracked after a squabble erupted between the camps of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Analysts speculated that the FSB was simply looking to access the encryption codes for the three communication services — while a Gmail representative said if officials needed information on suspects, they could just ask.
The incident began when senior FSB official Alexander Andreyechkin voiced distrust Friday of foreign-based services using cryptographic algorithms that Russian security services could not access.
“The uncontrollable use of such services can lead to a major threat to Russia’s security,” Andreyechkin said at the beginning of a government meeting, RIA-Novosti reported. 
Andreyechkin explicitly proposed a ban on Skype, Gmail and Hotmail during the second part of the meeting, which was closed to the media, Deputy Communications and Press Minister Ilya Massukh told RIA-Novosti.
No official identified the types of wrongdoers targeted by the proposal. Terrorists and ultranationalists are the authorities’ usual suspects, but online media have also contributed much to recent popular uprisings against authoritarian regimes in the Arab world.
A stream of conflicting comments by officials and legal bodies followed the leak about the proposed ban, beginning with Massukh’s own ministry, which said Andreyechkin had only proposed to draft regulations for the online communication services, not to ban them.
The Kremlin kept official silence on the matter, but an unidentified official in the presidential administration told RIA-Novosti that Andreyechkin had only voiced his “personal opinion” that “doesn’t reflect state policy on Internet development.”
Andreyechkin went “beyond his authority” because security services have no right to “define state policy in the sphere of Internet technologies,” the official said.
The Kremlin official’s comments were soon discredited by Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who said Andreyechkin was voicing the FSB’s official position on the matter.
Under the law, the FSB reports to the president, not the prime minister, but Putin, himself a former KGB officer and patron of Medvedev, is believed to still hold much sway over the agency.
In the end, the FSB itself backed down, officially denying Saturday that it had any plans to control Skype, Gmail or Hotmail. “On the contrary, the development of modern technologies is a natural process that needs to be assisted,” not limited, an FSB spokesman told RIA-Novosti.
Still, new legislation to regulate cryptography in public communication networks such as Skype, Gmail and Hotmail will be drafted by October, Massukh said.
Regular users “will probably not be restricted in any technical way,” he said, adding that telecom operators would not be invited to help draft the bill.
This is the first time that e-mail services Gmail and Hotmail have faced the threat of a ban in Russia, but the Skype voice call service has come under fire since at least 2009, when the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs proposed outlawing it. The business lobby cited the fact that security services could not access the program’s encrypted traffic, but critics said at the time that the move was actually lobbied by cell phone operators losing clients to Skype. Nothing came of the proposal.
A 2000 law authorizes the FSB and other security agencies to monitor the telephone and Internet conversations of suspects without a court ruling. But encrypted traffic remains de-facto out of their reach.
It is not impossible to crack the encryption algorithms of public communication networks, but the procedure may take too long, rendering the obtained information obsolete, Alexander Nemoshkalov, a manager with the Security Code information security firm, told The St. Petersburg Times.
His stance was echoed by Ilya Ponomaryov, a member of the State Duma’s Committee for Information Policy, who said by telephone that the FSB was capable of cracking Skype and other services but that would require “much effort, which they, of course, don’t want to expend.”
But the authorities also have the option to contact the communication services directly to request access to communication by suspects — although this is apparently a rarely used option.
“Experience shows that when a cipher is sophisticated, the appropriate authorities ask its producers for the key to it,” said Andrei Richter, head of the Moscow Media Law and Policy Institute.
Google, which owns Gmail, said Friday that it was willing to cooperate with Russian law enforcement agencies. But company spokeswoman Alla Zabrovskaya also said the FSB has never filed a request for information about users. By contrast, U.S. security services filed more than 4,200 data requests last year, and 83 percent of them were granted, according to the Google Transparency Report, released online.

TITLE: Newspaper’s Site Attacked
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: A cyber attack paralyzed the web site of Novaya Gazeta on Friday, days after similar attacks knocked out LiveJournal, Russia’s most popular blogging site. 
Novaya Gazeta’s web site went down early Friday after a massive denial-of-service attack, said Dmitry Muratov, the newspaper’s editor. 
The attacks involved a flood of computers all trying to connect to a single site at the same time, which overwhelm the server that handles the traffic. 
Novaya Gazeta’s web site typically receives 70,000 to 120,000 unique visitors every day, Muratov said. But the attack was so strong that at one point the web site got 70,000 visit requests every 14 seconds.
The newspaper’s web site was working like normal on Sunday. An article on the site said service had been fully restored Saturday.
Muratov said the attacks aim to “discredit the public platforms that express alternative points of view.” 


TITLE: Polish Plane Crash Eased Relationship
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski a year ago has managed to improve Moscow’s troubled relations with Warsaw — but it has opened new divisions in Poland.
While Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Bronislaw Komorowski on Monday commemorated the first anniversary of the tragedy in Smolensk, officials and analysts in Moscow brushed aside squabbles like that over the removal of a Polish-language memorial plaque at the crash site.
“The atmosphere has clearly improved a lot,” said Vladislav Belov, an analyst with the European Studies Institute at the Moscow State International Relations Institute. 
As an example that this has already led to tentative results, he pointed to Warsaw’s decision last year to let Moscow partake in the Weimar meetings, a format for regular consultations between Poland, Germany and France.
Belov conceded that problems remain, exemplified by the plaque, which Smolensk authorities replaced over the weekend with a terse bilingual sign that omitted mention of what the Polish text had called the Katyn “genocide.”
But he suggested that such incidents would be easily resolved. “I hope such reports will vanish quickly,” he said.
The investigation into the crash, which killed 96 people, many of them high-ranking Polish officials, has also created fresh tensions as Warsaw accused Moscow of laying the blame solely on the Polish pilots while absolving Russian air traffic controllers.
Ruslan Kondratov, a State Duma deputy with United Russia, said these differences could be overcome since both sides had no choice but to revise their rocky relationship, which had become an “anachronism” compared with other European states.
Kondratov, a member of the International Affairs Committee, gleefully said he detected a recent shift in Warsaw’s foreign policies away from the United States back to Russia. “Poland has understood that it should not build its foreign policy around just one country — the United States,” he said in comments published on the party’s web site.
But others in United Russia, the country’s dominant party headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said ties with Poland would probably remain difficult.
“There was no turnaround yet, and Russophobia is still alive and well in Poland as was shown this weekend,” Duma Deputy Sergei Markov said by telephone.
At a rally in Warsaw, people carried anti-Russian posters, and Polish police on Monday charged a man for burning an effigy of Putin.
“This is a very good example of the extreme irrational xenophobia still present there,” Markov said.


TITLE: Laborers In Demand
AUTHOR: By Maria Buravtseva 
and Yelena Dombrova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: St. Petersburg manufacturing enterprises are in desperate need of workers, and new research conducted by Ancor recruitment agency has shown that employees in this category value professional growth and an official salary over bonus systems.
The number of vacancies in manufacturing has increased: According to the press service of Silovye Mashiny manufacturing company, core manufacturing plants are already constantly overworked, and there are plans this year to launch the first production line of Metallostroi’s new factory.
At the beginning of 2012, BSK Bytovye Pribory (Household Applicances) will announce 200 new job vacancies for laborers and engineers at its washing machine factory, Natalya Platonova, head of the staffing department, said via the company’s press service. 
The local Nissan plant was actively looking for manufacturing staff for its third shift from December to March, according to Tatiana Natarova, communications director at Nissan Motor Rus. 
Every second request for staff received by the Ancor is for blue-collar workers — many companies are planning to launch new manufacturing sites and many existing sites want to increase the number of shifts, said Svetlana Yakovleva, head of the Ancor’s northwest region. 
There are now three times as many such vacancies compared with 2010, said Alina Belinskaya, staffing project manager for Kelly Services recruitment agency. 
Requests for skilled laborers are the second most popular, exceeded only by requests for sales managers, said Alexei Zakharov, president of the recruitment portal Superjob.ru. According to figures from Adecco Group, automobile producers, consumer goods manufacturers and the retail industry are all currently recruiting.
In February and March this year, recruitment specialists at Ancor questioned 460 seniors at St. Petersburg technical colleges and 431 specialists with experience working in manufacturing. Two-thirds of those still studying had their sights set on a specific field. As they gain experience, job seekers expand their options — finding work in a specific field is only important to 29 percent of specialists, whereas 58 percent stated that being officially registered on the company’s books was a priority. Both seniors and specialists alike answered that the possibility of training and professional or 	career growth were important. 
Many specialists clearly expressed their ambition, saying that if within the first year, they see that there is no room for career growth, then they start looking for new positions, said Vyacheslav Shaposhnikov, development director for Staffwell recruitment company. 
Until very recently, of the various bonuses and incentives offered by companies, salary and other financial benefits were valued the most. Now, however, career progression is becoming more important to employees, said Yulia Pakhomova, head of recruitment, evaluation and adaptation at Baltika breweries. 

TITLE: Mortgage Lending Rises
AUTHOR: By Alla Tokareva

PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Between January and March this year, Petersburg residents took out 2,718 mortgages — twice as many as the corresponding period in 2010, according to the St. Petersburg Mortgage Agency. 
The combined value of mortgages issued almost tripled to 5.9 billion rubles ($210 million), more than in the first quarter in 2007 (when mortgages worth 5.1 billion rubles or $181.7 million were issued) but not as much as the 2008 record high for borrowing of 13.9 billion rubles ($495.2 million).
Sergei Milyutin, head of the development department of the St. Petersburg Mortgage Agency, links the growth in mortgages to an increase in the number of places where they’re being offered. According to Milyutin, last year, five or six banks offered mortgages at 10 to 15 individual branches. This year, a further 17 to 18 banks — including international banks — joined their ranks, boosting the total number of branches offering mortgages up to 30. Barclays Bank, Baltinvestbank, Absolut bank, Fininvest bank, Ak Bars and Vozrozhdenie have all reentered the market, said Milyutin. There is a backlog of buyers, and borrowing money has become easier, he added, 
The average amount borrowed has increased from 1.6 million rubles ($57,000) to 2.2 million rubles ($78,000). 
The appearance of new banks has blunted the leading edge previously enjoyed by other banks. During the economic crisis, Sberbank increased its share of the city’s mortgage market from 17.8 percent to 60 percent and now has a 44.3 percent share. Banks operating within the Agency for Home Mortgage Lending program have seen their share decrease from 15.4 percent to 3.3 percent. 
BaltInvestbank began offering mortgages only in the second half of 2010; before then there was virtually no demand, said Igor Kirillovykh, chairman of the bank’s board of directors. Now the returns from lending money are quite satisfactory and the risks are acceptable to banks, he added. 
The competition for clients is enourmous, higher than before the crisis, said Olga Dragomiretskaya, managing director at Gazprombank’s St. Petersburg branch. 
A similar boom in demand hasn’t been seen for new developments, said Milyutin. Apart from the general lack of real estate development, the market is further held back by cumbersome bureaucratic procedures, said Olga Bazhutina, regional director for DeltaCredit. At VTB 24, only 15 percent of mortgage agreements are for first time buyers, which is far less than before the crisis, according to Mikhail Ioffe, manager of the bank’s St. Petersburg branch.
At Setl City, 15 percent of all agreements are loan agreements, twice as many as at the beginning of 2010, and this figure will increase to 20 percent toward the summer, said Ilya Yeremenko, the deputy managing director for Setl City. The number of mortgage agreements at LenSpetsSMU developer rose from 5 percent to 10 or 12 percent, according to Viktor Vasenev, the company’s deputy finance director. But the instalment plans offered by real estate developers that helped out buyers in 2009 are still popular — loans still cannot replace these “internal repayment plans,” as they are more beneficial to the client, said Viktor. 
According to Milyutin, the APR for mortgages set in rubles is 13 percent, 1.5 percent lower than in 2010 and not as high as in 2009 when it reached 16 percent.


TITLE: Putin Exhorts Pension Fund to Excel
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday urged the Pension Fund to be a showcase of the government’s efficiency as national elections loom.
“Almost one-third of our country’s citizens judge the quality of the work of government agencies by the quality with which you operate,” Putin said on a conference call with the fund’s regional chiefs to discuss last year’s performance.
Russian retirees number more than 40 million — a substantial portion of voters in a country whose total population is 140 million people.
Pension Fund officials on the call indicated — in language that was sometimes reminiscent of Soviet-era celebratory speeches — that they have already made every effort to comply with the prime minister’s exhortations.
“Our work is based on the principle of being closer to the people,” said the fund’s Khabarovsk regional chief, Irina Zverzheyeva.
The Pension Fund will spend at least an additional 20 billion rubles ($715 million) to pay higher social pensions this year, Putin said.
The federal government raised social pensions, paid to the handicapped and other disadvantaged groups, by 10 percent as of April 1, following an 8.8 percent raise in retirement pensions in February, and it could further increase the payments in August should inflation grow more than 6 percent in the year’s first half.
Retirement pensions went up a record 45 percent last year.
Another, longer-term target set by the government for pensions is that they should reach 40 percent of a person’s wage. According to the Economic Development Ministry, the average wage now amounts to 20,000 rubles, which makes the current average pension of 8,865 rubles even higher than the desired proportion.
To raise more money for pensions and other social payments, the government had to increase its payroll tax to 34 percent from 26 percent starting this year. Officials are now looking for ways to reverse that decision because of fears that many businesses would try to evade the higher levy.
Still, the government will tap the federal budget to replenish the Pension Fund with 876 billion rubles this year, said Pension Fund chief Anton Drozdov. That would represent almost a fifth of the fund’s 5 trillion rubles in planned spending, but will be less than last year’s 1.3 trillion ruble federal subsidy.
Health and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova, who was also on the line with Putin, said the tentative results of the first quarter showed the authorities collected the higher tax “sufficiently well.”
Golikova urged the removal of discounts on the payroll tax for some payers. Only about 50 percent of companies pay the full rate, she said, while certain industries, such as software developers, enjoy lower rates.
“It’s not important to the citizen what field his employer operates in,” she said. “It’s important for him to have his pension rights guaranteed.”
Putin didn’t respond to the proposal immediately during the call.


TITLE: Apple To Consider New Store
AUTHOR: By Anastasia Golitsina
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Apple is exploring the possibility of opening its first retail store in Moscow, according to media reports. The web site ifoAppleStore.com reported last week that an official Apple store could be coming to Moscow. According to the site, the senior vice president of Apple’s retail business Ron Johnson and vice president of real estate Bob Bridger visited the city last month. 
The purpose of their visit was to review space for the new store. According to the web site, they settled on 1,500 square meters in the yet-to-be opened Hotel Moskva, but a lease agreement has not yet been signed.
The visit was confirmed by a source in one of the city’s leading electronics retailers, as well as a real estate company. Apparently, Apple management visited several possible store sites.
According to one source, Apple has engaged Cushman & Wakefield as consultants for the retail space selection. A spokesman for Cushman & Wakefield declined to comment to Vedomosti, as did a spokesman for Apple.
Apple is looking for space in the prestigious stretch from Okhotny Ryad to Pushkin Square, said Anna Savenko, deputy director at Jones Lang LaSalle. Savenko said the Apple Store could open later this year or in 2012. But another source pointed out that Apple currently only performs a corporate marketing function in Russia and in order to run its own retail outlet it would need to have the right to conduct full-scale business.

TITLE: Kerimov Has $1.44 Bln For Youth Sports 
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Dagestani billionaire Suleiman Kerimov is ready to invest 1 billion euros ($1.44 billion) in a new stadium if Russia wins a bid to host the 2018 Summer Youth Olympic Games in Dagestan.
The decision to bid for the games was made by Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, Russian Olympic Committee vice president Akhmed Bilalov and the president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, during a meeting last week, the Russian committee said.
Bilalov said the cost of the youth games would be similar to that of the inaugural games held in Singapore last year, which cost $387 million and involved the construction of 18 sporting facilities.
Bilalov said state company Kurorty Severnogo Kavkaza, which is developing the local tourism industry, would create the infrastructure and Dagestani private businessmen would be happy to participate.
Kerimov, a senator in the Federation Council who made his fortune in oil and metals, is willing to sink 1 billion euros into a 42,000-seat stadium, said a source close to the Dagestani administration.


TITLE: Limiting Russia’s Sovereign Democracy
AUTHOR: By Michael Bohm
TEXT: Ever since Kremlin first deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov introduced the term “sovereign democracy” in 2006, senior government officials have claimed that the West does not have a right to meddle in Russia’s domestic affairs, particularly regarding human rights issues. But according to the post-World War II paradigm governing international law, gross human rights abuses are a global concern, regardless of where they occur.
Russia’s interpretation of national sovereignty is back in the spotlight after the Western coalition started bombing Libya last month. Although the military intervention was approved by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, with Russia abstaining, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin likened it to medieval crusades and said the West should not interfere in “internal political conflicts.”
This view directly contradicts a foundation of international law that is enshrined in the UN Charter. Article 42 of the charter allows the Security Council to approve military actions against sovereign states if peaceful means such as economic sanctions prove inadequate and if military intervention is “necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.”  
Why is the Libyan conflict an issue of “international peace and security”?
First, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has been accused of hiring mercenaries, using land mines against civilians and sanctioning the torture and deliberate killing of civilians in the current conflict. UN Security Council Resolution 1970, which was approved unanimously by Russia and the other 14 members of the council last month, recommended that the International Criminal Court investigate charges that Gadhafi committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. These allegations bring the seemingly internal Libyan conflict into the global jurisdiction, a priori making it an issue of international peace and security.
Second, more than 100,000 Libyan refugees have fled or are trying to flee to other countries, creating a humanitarian crisis.
Third, given Gadhafi’s past criminal and terrorist record over his brutal 40-year reign, as well as his promise in February to “join forces with al-Qaeda and declare a holy war,” the Libyan conflict is clearly a threat to international peace and security.  
The post-World War II paradigm defining a country’s sovereignty is clear: The global community under the auspices of the UN has the right to intervene under international law and the Responsibility to Protect doctrine when a county commits war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide or ethnic cleansing. It was in this context that former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold famously said, “The UN was not created to take mankind to heaven but to save humanity from hell.”
Russia is correct, however, when it points out the U.S. double standard regarding this paradigm — particularly, the laws that protect U.S. military personnel and public officials from prosecution for war crimes in non-U.S. courts and Washington’s nonmembership in the International Criminal Court, although Russia hasn’t joined the court either.
Indeed, limited sovereignty cuts both ways, and Russia has the same right to criticize the United States, for example, for its purported human rights abuses in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Putin and other critics are also correct about the selective application of the UN-sanctioned military operation in Libya, officially classified as a humanitarian intervention. Where was the global “responsibility to act” in Darfur, Congo, Somalia, Ivory Coast or Rwanda, for example, where more than 800,000 civilians were killed during the 1994 genocide? As columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote in The New York Times, the West loves to cherry-pick its humanitarian interventions.
Strangely enough, there is even an uncanny resemblance between Gadhafi and jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky in terms of the selective application of the law: Gadhafi was singled out largely for geopolitical reasons, and Khodorkovsky for political and economic ones.
But the issue of sovereignty and human rights abuses is much broader than war crimes and genocide. This is an ongoing subject of debate — and source of irritation — in Russia, particularly when the West protests Moscow’s failure to properly investigate and prosecute government-linked killings, arbitrary detentions and human rights violations. The Sergei Magnitsky and Khodorkovsky cases, of course, are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to rights abuses and the selective application of the law.
Under Surkov’s interpretation of “sovereign democracy,” the West should not meddle in Russia’s domestic affairs. Russia, we are told, is building its own type of democracy and doesn’t need lectures from the West about human rights.
“Don’t poke your noses in our internal affairs,” is how Putin succinctly put it during his December interview with CNN’s Larry King. It is no wonder that Russia’s leaders, so intolerant of dissension within the country, are so sensitive to criticism from the West.
Strangely enough, Surkov’s and Putin’s views on sovereignty directly contradict Russia’s own official policy. When Russia joined the Council of Europe and by extension the European Court of Human Rights during Boris Yeltsin’s presidency in 1996, it forfeited a significant part of its legal sovereignty to the European court, located in Strasbourg. In fact, every time Moscow pays compensation to a Russian citizen who wins a human rights case against the Russian government in the European court, the Kremlin confirms the modern concept of limited national sovereignty.
One can assume that Putin and Surkov — as well as Constitutional Court chief justice Valery Zorkin, an outspoken critic of the European Court of Human Rights’ decisions against Russia — deeply regret Yeltsin’s decision to surrender part of the country’s legal sovereignty to the European court, considering that claims from Russia now make up about 30 percent of all cases brought before the court — more than any other country — and the government loses about 95 percent of these cases. The real sovereignty showdown will occur if the European court rules in favor of Yukos in its $98 billion suit against the government, in which case Russia may seriously consider withdrawing its membership from the Council of Europe.
But there is one large group of people who are surely grateful to Yeltsin — the nearly 40,000 Russians who have been able to file their claims in Strasbourg because they couldn’t get justice at home. This shows that limiting Russia’s “sovereign democracy” is a moral imperative.

Michael Bohm is opinion page editor of The Moscow Times.

TITLE: Hungry and Humiliated

AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova

TEXT: Toward the end of March, Nina Martynova, a 70-year-old pensioner from Voronezh, paid for a loaf of bread and a carton of milk at her local grocery store and then walked toward the door. She had taken only a few steps when she was stopped by security guards and ordered to follow them.
She was ushered into a small storeroom and searched. In Martynova’s pocket, the guards found two small chocolate bars. She hadn’t paid for them.
It seems the guards had ample evidence to detain her. A recording by the shop’s security cameras, part of which has been posted online, showed the elderly woman sneaking the bars into her pocket.
On the tape, Martynova seemed so shocked that she slowly fainted when the items from her pockets were laid on the table in front of her.
She at once went into cardiac arrest. An ambulance was called, but by the time it arrived she was dead.  
Until her retirement a few years ago, Martynova worked as a maternity nurse at a local hospital. Her neighbors, interviewed by the regional media, said they often contacted her for medical help, which she was always willing to give. Martynova was also an enthusiastic member of her local community and campaigned on environmental issues.
“Nina was very poor and tried her best to make ends meet; she saved every kopeck,” a neighbor told Komsomolskaya Pravda Radio in Voronezh. “Before she went to that godforsaken shop, she told me a friend was coming to visit her to celebrate Nina’s recent birthday.”
Martynova’s tragedy was not only that at the end of her life she was granted a pension too small to keep her from going hungry, but also that, as she descended into petty theft, she was in all other respects a decent, good-hearted citizen with strong morals and social values.
As of March 31, an average old-age pension in Russia comes to 5,600 rubles ($193) a month, according to government figures. A kilogram of potatoes costs around 40 rubles, a kilogram of beef costs 250 to 400 rubles, a kilogram of sugar is 40 rubles. A 200-gram pack of butter is 50 rubles, and half a liter of sunflower oil is 70 rubles. By the time most pensioners have bought food for a month, there can’t be much left to pay heating and electricity bills and buy medication.
A cashier at my local fruit and vegetable store tells me she has to deal with “old cheaters,” as she calls them, every day. In this shop, fruit and vegetables are on open display, and customers bag up what they want and weigh it themselves. 
“For example,” says the cashier, “today, there was an old lady who was buying three bananas. When I saw the sticker with the price, I could immediately see that the woman had cheated. She had weighed two bananas, got the sticker, and then added another one.”
“Personally, I feel sorry for her. But if I forgive them all, and if there were, say, a dozen of them every day, I’d end up paying half of my salary to cover the shop’s losses. So I tell them – as gently as I can – that they probably made a mistake, and I go to the scales with them to weigh the stuff all over again.”
Martynova’s case has gained considerable media attention and caused some public soul-searching. Russia’s Investigative Committee, which is part of the General Prosecutor’s Office, is now looking into the circumstances of her death – to see if the guards did anything unwarranted that could have brought on her heart attack.
The video from the store showed that the guards did not physically harass her. One of them even offered her some medicine when she began to collapse, while the other rang for an ambulance. But for the woman, apparently, the very fact of the search was too much to bear.
Martynova’s case illustrates a deep conflict between social justice and law in Russia. The officials responsible for calculating a survival-level minimum food requirement and those who administer the social security system will remain unpunished. And so will the political leaders and parliamentarians who ultimately determine what is spent on social security.
At the same time, many Russian pensioners, unwillingly forced into theft to stay alive, will face charges and a terrifying court ordeal. And in some extreme cases such as this, no doubt their humiliation will lead to their deaths.

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: Controversial art
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The controversial “Dick Taken Prisoner by the FSB” — a 65-meter penis painted on Liteiny bridge to face the FSB (former KGB) headquarters in St. Petersburg when the bridge was raised — won the Culture Ministry-backed Innovation prize at a glitzy ceremony in Moscow on Thursday.
The night of the ceremony, the key members of the radical art collective Voina, which was responsible for the art stunt, wrote a petition in defense of a recently imprisoned anarchist, ate some stolen food and were bitten by bedbugs at a secret anarchist hideout in St. Petersburg.
The 400,000-ruble ($14,288) award was given to them after weeks of a tug-of-war between culture bureaucrats, who at one point canceled Voina’s nomination, and art experts on the jury, who threatened to walk out if the art group were excluded from the competition.
“The award is our carte blanche,” said Oleg Vorotnikov, whom the group describes as its ideologist.
“Now we’ll take the mission entrusted to us by the state with full responsibility and continue to bash cops with the Liteiny Dick in a big way. As laureates of a state award, we’re allowed to do just anything!”
On Tuesday, national state bodies reacted to the award. The Public Chamber issued a statement describing giving the award to Voina as a “slap in the face of common sense and those citizens who consider the image on the Liteiny Bridge in St. Petersburg to be banal hooliganism”  and accusing the Culture Ministry of “inappropriate and unprofessional behavior.”
The Culture Ministry responded that it was against nominating Voina’s artwork from the very start and that it viewed it as “hooliganish, provocative and unworthy, from both an artistic and moral point of view,” but chose not to interfere with the work of the jury, Interfax reported.
Vorotnikov, his artist wife Natalya Sokol, their toddler son Kasper and Leonid Nikolayev, the group’s “president,” do not use cell phones or even Skype in order not to be traced by counter-extremism Center E operatives. Its agents, they say, followed the artists and attacked them after a press conference they held upon the release on bail of Vorotnikov and Nikolayev, who spent three months in jail on charges of criminal mischief for another art stunt.
That offense — overturning police cars as part of a stunt titled “Palace Coup” — is complicated by accusations that their goal was to incite hatred of the police “as a social group,” and could be punished by up to seven years in prison.
Voina (War) was formed by Vorotnikov and Sokol, graduates from Moscow State University (in philosophy and physics, respectively) and installation and photo artists, in 2007.
“We came to Moscow from the provinces, graduated from university and looked around: What’s happening? What’s about to happen?” Vorotnikov said.
“But it looked like nothing was happening or about to happen. Pus and vomit. We don’t want to live our lives like this.”
Vorotnikov compared Voina to Renaissance men.
“What’s the phenomenon of the Renaissance? The monks left their classrooms and cells and went out into the real world. Throughout the Middle Ages, they accumulated knowledge within monasteries and became scholars, far more educated than the aristocracy. Then they stopped hiding, went outside and impressed the world with their intellectual brilliance and many talents.
“As for us, we have gone out from art into the public sphere, into the environment of social troubles and political struggle.”
Voina’s daring and uncompromising activities have been compared to the impact once produced by punk rock.
“Punk has influenced me a lot, even if I was an A-grader in humanitarian disciplines in school (but didn’t care about math or sciences),” Vorotnikov said.
“I mean I wasn’t a punk, but I got very excited about punk, so the parallel is relevant. The only difference is that punk was about self-destruction to show that there was no future. With us it’s just the opposite, we believe that there is a future, that the future is with us and we’re creating this future for you right now.”
Both the “Palace Coup” stunt, referring to the murder of Tsar Paul I in the Mikhailovsky Castle, and the “Dick Taken Prisoner by the FSB” that was drawn near the notorious Bolshoi Dom  (Big House) that was built in the 1930s to house the headquarters of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) and was a symbol of fear during the Stalin era of repressions and through to the current day, were inextricably linked to St. Petersburg.
Voina originally moved to the city after Nikolayev started to experience problems with the state security services following a political stunt in Moscow, up to the point where his mother witnessed him being seized near the entrance to his home. According to Vorotnikov, Nikolayev had a bag pulled over his head, and was pushed into a car and told he was being taken “to a forest to be liquidated.” 
Vorotnikov said the art group came to St. Petersburg to participate in the banned May 31 Strategy 31 rally last year in defense of the right of assembly, and ended up staying in the city for months, having decided to make a “new career in a new town.”
“Every Voina stunt is concrete,” Vorotnikov said.
“They are born from the surrounding reality. St. Petersburg is the best city for actionism that I’ve been to, and I was happy to be put in prison in the city, which is the cradle of three revolutions. The prison gave me a permanent residence here — now I’m a Petersburger.”
Vorotnikov sees Voina’s lifestyle, which includes refusing to work and living on food stolen from supermarkets, as part of the group’s art.
“Our principal position is that art doesn’t finish anywhere, because a work of art is an expansive act in its nature; it includes things, it doesn’t exclude them,” he said.
“You can’t separate works of art and hooliganism. There’s no border between them. Works of art easily include hooliganism. 
“I can’t say what drives culture forward more effectively — drunk hooligans or uptight housewives. My view is an avant-garde one: We’ll build culture together.”
The decision of the jury — comprised of leading contemporary art experts — to award the prize to Voina caused backlash from a local culture official. 
Speaking at the City Hall-sponsored Sergei Kuryokhin Awards ceremony in the city on Friday, the St. Petersburg culture committee chairman Anton Gubankov used the opportunity to denounce Voina.
“This is real art, while Voina is a crappy publicity stunt,” Gubankov was quoted by Fontanka.ru as saying during the ceremony.
“It’s not what Gubankov should be thinking about — his attitude to Voina, I mean,” said Vorotnikov. 
“He should be thinking about where he will run away to from the people when his bosses betray him, because the people have been wishing death to officials for centuries, and now the situation has become ripe once again.”
Nikolayev and Vorotnikov were released on bail in late February after paying 300,000 rubles ($10,715) each out of the 4.5 million rubles ($160,735) donated to them by British street artist Banksy, who heard about their imprisonment on the BBC and whom they now describe as an honorary member of Voina.
Now that they are free, they say they intend to spend the Innovation prize and the rest of the money donated by Banksy on helping political prisoners.
“That’s a very important issue to us; we’ll add the Innovation money to Banksy’s millions and put it at the disposal of Russian political prisoners,” Vorotnikov said.
“Now we’re campaigning in support of Taisia Osipova, on whom Center E planted drugs and who has been in prison for five months now with a severe form of diabetes, which contravenes the law. But even that is not seemingly enough for the Center E men; now they’re taking Taisia’s five-year-old daughter Katrina away from her. The mechanism of depriving her of parental rights has been put in motion.
“There are quite a few situations like this in Russia. The state makes activists rot in prisons for their political position. An end should be put to such practices!”
The Voina artists have no doubt that the current political regime in Russia will fall, but admit that the problem is bigger than that.
“We’ll get rid of the regime, it’s a little, specific problem of Russia as a whole,” Vorotnikov said.
“But what should be done with philistines who have fallen slavishly in love with the police? We don’t believe that police officers can change for the better — and inside every philistine, there’s an entire police precinct!
“We promote a heroic lifestyle, freedom in everything, a totally uncompromising stance, and the lofty ideals of the first Russian revolutionaries — the Decembrists. There are more than 200 activists in our group. The best part of society is with us forever.”


TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Music and politics meet again in Belarus, where dissidents are calling on Western music artists to cancel their concerts in Belarus after hundreds were beaten and detained following the December presidential election, and dozens face lengthy terms in prisons. 
Among the artists in question are Moby and Shakira, who are considered to be “progressive” for their involvement in various rights campaigns. Both are scheduled to perform in Belarus during the next couple of months.
Natasha Kolyada, of the group Free Belarus Now, which represents the families of those who have been arrested by the Belarusian authorities, appealed to the artists in an interview with British newspaper The Independent.
“We appeal to these artists to cancel their concerts in Belarus because any visit would give a sign to the dictator Alexander Lukashenko that kidnappings, murders and torture in KGB jails are acceptable,” Kolyada said.
“Every time a Western artist plays a concert in Belarus, the authorities use this as propaganda to prove that their regime isn’t a dictatorship,” The Independent quoted Mike Harris, head of public affairs at the Index on Censorship, as saying.
“Yet the disappearances, suspicious suicides and detention of 42 prisoners of conscience tell a different story. If Moby and Shakira genuinely do care about human rights they’ll donate the proceeds of their concerts to the families of the detained and missing, or speak out against free expression violations while they are there.”
It appears that the Pet Shop Boys will be unable to perform in Belarus, even if they wished. Last month they found themselves on the same blacklist as socially-conscious Belarusian bands such as Lyapis Trubetskoy and some international celebrities like Jude Law and Kevin Spacey. 
Law and Spacey were seen last month protesting against Lukashenko in London, but it’s not immediately clear how the Pet Shop Boys managed to upset the Belarusian authorities.
There has been no comment from the band, although they have posted a scan of the blacklist on their web site.
Don’t speak about the cultural boycott to Bob Dylan, who agreed not to perform some of his most famous songs, including “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin” in China, because the Chinese authorities found them inappropriate.
While the world is campaigning for the release of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, arrested three days before the singer-songwriter’s Beijing show, Dylan chose not to speak about it during the concert, opening his mouth between songs only once — to introduce the band members.
“Dylan without protest songs sounds about as useful as Hamlet without the soliloquy,” wrote The Telegraph.
“I don’t believe in Zimmerman,” John Lennon sang in his song “God” as early as in 1970. Nowadays it looks as though he was absolutely right.

TITLE: A bridge between nations
AUTHOR: By Olga Khrustaleva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Every April, Germany traditionally comes closer to St. Petersburg, but for one week only. During the annual German Week, those interested in exploring this country should prepare to immerse themselves in German culture, lifestyle and language via the rich and diverse program, which ranges from classical music concerts to classic German beer tasting.  
The tradition of holding German Week in the city dates back to 2003, and each year has held something special in store for visitors. This year, the week has a distinctive green color to it: Many of the events are dedicated to ecology. This issue is an urgent one for Russia, as according to research conducted by the Levada Center, despite the country’s numerous ecological problems, only 5 percent of its citizens consider environmental problems to be the most important facing the country, and only 17 and 13 percent, respectively, would not mind higher prices and taxes being imposed if they would improve the situation. 
Germany is famous around the world for the example its citizens set in living a more eco-friendly lifestyle. The exhibition “Ecology, design, synergy” at Loft Project Etazhi will introduce visitors to the basics of ecological building, showcasing projects that show how living conditions can be improved and natural resources saved using new technologies in architecture. Accompanying conferences and debates dedicated to different environmental issues such as climate change and ecological farming will attempt to convince St. Petersburg businessmen and residents of all the benefits that an environment-oriented way of life can bring.
 The primary focus of German Week is on sharing experience between the two countries. One of the conferences is dedicated to a problem that is all too topical for Russia — corruption. Germany’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Guido Westerwelle, and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov recently decided to develop bilateral initiatives in this sphere as part of a joint project titled “Partnership for modernization.”
Continuing this theme, the city’s Derzhavin memorial museum will host an exhibition titled “Derzhavin. Poet and Statesman Fighting Corruption,” relating the role of Gavrila Derzhavin in Russia’s political life during the era of Catherine the Great. The teacher of Alexander Pushkin, Derzhavin considered his civil service to be more important than anything else, and was unmerciful in his war on bribery. The exhibits include paintings, antique books and rare documents highlighting little-known episodes of the poet’s life.
 Dual education will be the topic of another interesting discussion in the context of the Russian government’s recent attempts to reform the education system. The term “dual education” refers to when students study at two places simultaneously, learning theoretical and general subjects at school or college, and acquiring practical skills at plants and factories. As a country that is badly in need of working men, Russia could undoubtedly learn from German experience, and finally overcome the stereotype with which less studious children are threatened: “If you study badly, you’d go to a PTU (a Russian vocational-technical school).”
 The culture section of the week is no less rich in events. The week opens with a concert by Die 4 Hinterberger Musikanten (Four Hinterberg Musicians), whose music is described as a fusion of traditional German melodies with folk and jazz. Professional and amateur theatrical performances will be put on for both children and adults.
On April 14, the city’s Goethe center of German culture will play host to an intriguing photography exhibition and accompanying debate titled “Voices of Freedom.” Visitors will have the opportunity to learn about the lives of dissidents in the Soviet Union and East Germany and even ask former dissidents questions during the debate. One of the German participants is Harald Hauswald, a photographer from the former German Democratic Republic who, as the authors of the “Overcoming Dictatorship” blog put it, “remained true to his artistic principles of depicting the country and its citizens in its actual condition.”
 The partner of this year’s German Week is the state of Bavaria, famous not only for its beer, which will be available for tasting during the week, but also for its film studios. Founded in 1919, Bavaria Film has served as a working set for the legendary directors John Huston, Ingmar Bergman, Robert Aldrich and Wim Wenders. This year, directors Philip Koch and Meike Kordes are bringing two recent works to St. Petersburg: “Picco” and “Poll Diaries.”
Both films tell the story of two teenagers and their journey from innocence to knowledge, though in very different circumstances.
The word “picco” is a nickname for a newcomer in a youth prison. Upon finding himself in jail, Kevin has to establish his role in the cruel world of young criminals, where people are either aggressors or victims, there are no exceptions and the only way to survive is to become brutal and merge with the crowd. Based on a true story, the film seems to tell just one of many real stories, drawing the audience’s attention to the problem of teenage violence and failures in the justice system.
 “Poll Diaries,” on the contrary, carries viewers away to the seemingly calm days of the pre-World War I era. After experiencing a wealth of adventures during just one summer, 14-year-old Oda realizes she is no longer a child. But the film is not only the story of Oda growing up. The pre-war tension in the air is masterly rendered by Kordes. “The film sumptuously captures a very particular moment in time just before the outbreak of World War I, a particular place in rural Estonia, and the very special people who lived through that doomed moment,” wrote a reviewer from the Hollywood Reporter.

German Week runs from April 13 to 21. For a full timetable of events, 
visit www.deutsche-woche.ru.

TITLE: <i>the word’s worth</i> A Hidden Talent
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Òàëàíò: talent

Like the vast majority of my fellow Americans, I’m great at making New Year’s resolutions and horrible at keeping them. But there is one resolution I’d like to keep.
A while back, I realized that I always complain about translation goofs and gaffes, so I resolved to celebrate translation successes from time to time. As we blunder our way through a foreign language, it’s heartening to remember that with time, effort and talent, it is possible to make translations that sing.
And when I say “time,” I mean a really long, long time. Stanley Mitchell worked on his translation of Alexander Pushkin’s “Åâãåíèé Îíåãèí” (“Eugene Onegin”) for about 25 years. And we can be grateful that he didn’t give up. If you have struggled through Nabokov’s clunky literal translation or versions in verse with antiquated language and padded phrases to make the rhymes, you may have thought that the genius of Pushkin is just another of Russia’s impenetrable mysteries. But when you read Mitchell’s translation, you can finally hear Pushkin’s voice. Somehow he has kept Pushkin’s short (by English poetic standards) meter and rhyme scheme, without mangling the word order, straying from the meaning, or introducing extraneous images so that moon rhymes with swoon.
He conveys the fey and colloquial tone of some stanzas perfectly (reading aloud recommended). Ãì! Ãì! ×èòàòåëü áëàãîðîäíûé, / Çäîðîâà ëü âàøà âñÿ ðîäíÿ? … (Hm! Hm! I ask you, noble reader, / Are all your kindred healthy, well?). And he shines on the more lyrical passages, like this often quoted ode to Moscow: Ìîñêâà … êàê ìíîãî â ýòîì çâóêå / Äëÿ ñåðäöà ðóññêîãî ñëèëîñü! / Êàê ìíîãî â í¸ì îòîçâàëîñü! (Moscow, whose name reverberated / In every Russian heart! I heard / So many echoes in that word!) It goes to show what half a lifetime and a bucket of talent can do.
Another Russian classic rarely read by foreigners is Pushkin’s friend, Ivan Krylov, whose fables in verse with their witty morals are part of the vast baggage of Russian culture. For us foreigners, they are an excellent (that is to say, taxing) way to learn the names of animals, insects and birds in Russian. But the old-fashioned language and poetic idiom are hard going for expats used to modern Moscow slang.
But along came Lydia Razran Stone. In her collection of 62 fables (“The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar”), she took what she calls an unorthodox approach. Since Krylov (unlike Pushkin) varied meter, rhyme and line length greatly in his poems, some of which were adapted translations of Aesop and La Fontaine, she decided not to replicate each line.
This freed her to recreate the poems in English to please small (or large) English speakers, while keeping the sense and the variety of language. For example, in the short verse called “Êîìàð è Ïàñòóõ” (“The Mosquito and the Shepherd”), a snoozing shepherd is about to be bitten by a snake, but a mosquito bites him to wake him up. He awakens, kills the snake — and the mosquito, too. The moral? Òàêèõ ïðèìåðîâ åñòü íåìàëî: / Êîëü ñëàáûé ñèëüíîìó, õîòü äâèæèìûé äîáðîì. / Îòêðûòü ãëàçà íà ïðàâäó ïîêóñèòñÿ, / Òîãî è æäè, ÷òî òî æå ñ íèì ñëó÷èòñÿ, / ×òî ñ Êîìàðîì. (You must exert the greatest care / In warning big shots to beware. / If you’re a man of low estate, / You’re apt to share Mosquito’s fate.)
Excellent advice, brought to you by the pen of a translator.

Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.

TITLE: Romantic intrigues at the Mariinsky
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “Le Parc,” an iconic ballet by the legendary French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj that became an instant hit when it was unveiled by the Paris Opera Ballet in 1994, enjoys its Russian premiere at the Mariinsky Theater on April 14, 15 and 22.
The premiere of “Le Parc” opens this year’s International Mariinsky Ballet Festival that runs through April 24. The festival came into being in 2001 thanks to the Mariinsky’s artistic director, the indefatigable maestro Valery Gergiev. The event’s aim is to enable Russian audiences to see Western ballet stars, but in addition, it showcases the best of the theater’s own considerable talent. It also provides a counterweight to Gergiev’s other brainchild, the “Stars of the White Nights” festival, which takes place every June and is almost entirely devoted to opera and instrumental music.
While the choreography in the first few festivals highlighted the glories of the imperial ballet and was heavily dominated by the venerable Marius Petipa, eventually the festival evolved into a stylistically diverse event, with the work of Michel Fokine, George Balanchine, Leonid Lavrovsky, Kenneth MacMillan, John Neumeier and William Forsythe featuring on its programs. Furthermore, the festival swiftly developed a tradition of presenting a full-scale premiere of either a work by an eminent living choreographer, or a scrupulous reconstruction of a classical masterpiece.
This time, the festival’s main dish is “Le Parc,” a romantic creation inspired by 17th and 18th-century French art and literature and set to some of Mozart’s most beautiful adagios from the composer’s piano concertos, blended with the sounds of electronic music. 
Exploring the quest for the art of loving and sensuality, the choreographer — who is renowned as one of Europe’s most provocative and intriguing ballet masters — took inspiration from Madame de La Fayette’s novel “La Princesse de Cleves,” published in 1678, and Laclos’ epistolary novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” published in 1782, to concoct a three-act ballet drama of amorous intrigues. 
Faithful to its name, the action takes place in a park. The story begins with a light-hearted, flirtatious game, before Preljocaj takes the audience on a thrilling journey through episodes of seduction, resistance, consummation, conquest, manipulation and surrenders that at some stage miraculously transform into what seems to the characters to be true love. The scene depicting the culmination of love in this very refined ballet has become known as one of the most emotionally overwhelming pas de deux in the history of neo-classical ballet.
Rehearsing the roles are three pairs of soloists — Diana Vishneva and Konstantin Zverev; Yekaterina Kondaurova and Yury Smekalov; and Viktoria Teryeshkina and Alexander Sergeyev. 
The festival’s list of premieres is not limited to “Le Parc,” however. April 19 sees the first performance of Benjamin Millepied’s one-act ballet “Without,” set to the music of Chopin, that the choreographer created for the New York City Ballet in 2008. Millepied has himself recently become somewhat of a celebrity after choreographing Darren Aronofsky’s thriller “Black Swan” and partnering the Oscar-winning Natalie Portman in the film. Millepied and Portman are now engaged and are expecting a child this summer.
As always, the list of international stars appearing at the International Mariinsky Ballet Festival is impressive, featuring a number of foreign draws, including Alina Cojocaru, Roberta Marquez and Johan Kobborg from the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), David Hallberg of the American Ballet Theater, Friedeman Vogel of the Stuttgart Ballet and Ashley Bouder of the New York City Ballet.
The guest soloists will perform alongside Mariinsky favorites such as Diana Vishneva, Ulyana Lopatkina, Yekaterina Kondaurova, Viktoria Tereshkina and Konstantin Zverev.
Some of the most intriguing duos include Marquez alongside the Mariinsky’s Vladimir Shklyarov in “La Bayadere” on April 16; Kondaurova and Hallberg in “Swan Lake” on April 17; and Tereshkina and Vogel in “The Sleeping Beauty” on April 20.
Kobborg and Cojocaru will treat audiences to their signature performance of “Giselle” on April 23.
Those eager to see all the stars at once should not miss the festival’s concluding gala concert on April 24.

The 11th International Mariinsky Ballet Festival runs from April 14 to 24 at the Mariinsky Theater, 1 Teatralnaya Ploshchad. Tel: 326 4141. www.mariinsky.ru

TITLE: Russia’s Next Top Model?
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, MuzTV started a show called “Top Model po-Russki,” a reality show in which a group of would-be models live together and go through tests until they are whittled down to the most lissome one, who wins a modeling contract.
It’s a local version of the U.S. reality show, “America’s Next Top Model,” which is shown on MuzTV’s rival, MTV Russia, with dubbing. Its judges have included the terrifying ex-model Janice Dickinson, with her barking comments at contestants and radical cosmetic surgery.
It is a glossy show with the models running around Los Angeles, and some of the 15 winners so far have used the exposure to break into show business as much as modeling.
Meanwhile back in Russia, the show is hosted by ubiquitous it-girl Ksenia Sobchak, who has done a bit of modeling for a Russian casual clothing brand, but is more someone who has made it in show business despite lacking standard model looks.
The first batch of 34 women arrived at Cosmos Hotel, dragging huge suitcases.
In the first round, they had to pull out an outfit on the spot and parade in front of Sobchak and Maxim Rappaport, a man described as a stylist and designer, and model Inna Zobova, who was Miss Russia in 1994 and has done a lot of catwalk and magazine work. The contestants did not have a changing room, so were just ripping off their clothes in front of the cameras.
Sobchak was mean about their first try. “I saw a lot of goddesses of the Leningradka to be honest,” she said, referring to the Leningradskoye Shosse highway notorious for its low-cost hookers. Model Zobova said more charitably that she liked two or three but the women did not know how to present themselves.
The first unlucky contestants were sent home, some in tears. Anastasia, 18, a dark-haired student with hoop earrings, was told she was “not ready to learn.” She said afterward that she had rearranged her studies and traveled from Yekaterinburg in the Urals to take part and it was “all pointless.”
“They did not even feed me, I’m hungry,” she said, stamping out, showing she perhaps had the wrong attitude for a model.
So far, you can see the makers going for interesting characters likely to create conflict. There’s the tough blonde Valeria, who taught dance at a woman’s prison and had to be dissuaded from stripping to a tiny leather bikini in her first photoshoot. “You don’t have to show everything at once,” the stylists advised her.
Then there’s over-privileged oligarch girlfriend Arina, whose boyfriend has given her a Bentley Continental and copious diamonds, some of which she showed off. “Why don’t you just enjoy living in his mansion?” a judge asked. “I got bored,” she said.
Far less fortunate is teenage mother Yevgenia, 18, who said she suffered from anorexia after her mother gave up raising her and her grandfather died. She was told in the hospital that she would not survive. “I wanted to live after all, so I started eating,” she told the judges.
The problem with the licensed local remake is that it does not look glamorous at all. With all due respect, Cosmos Hotel is not redolent of 21st-century style.
And there was a distinct lack of Russia’s most famous models, such as Alyona Vodonayeva from Nizhny Novgorod, or Irina Shayk, the swimsuit model from the Chelyabinsk region who has been romantically linked to footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. And where is Naomi Campbell when you need her?
The show was also rather cagey about the exact nature of the main prize, saying only that it included a magazine shoot, a yearlong contract with a makeup brand and working for a big agency. While Russia has produced more than its fair share of leggy, high-cheek-boned models, all of them have hit the big time by going abroad.


TITLE: Gallic gastronomy
AUTHOR: By Sam Marriott
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Beaujolais wine hails from the thick-skinned Gamay grape, an attribute that aptly lends itself to fine French cuisine being served up from the construction-ridden Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa. The restaurant’s desirable window seats beg for a better landscape than the muddy trenches and hard-hats that have blighted the street since the end of last year, and one can only sympathize with the many restaurants on the building site — both new ones such as Beaujolais, and older representatives of the dining scene.
The restaurant’s more refined, Parisian-style eatery on the first floor stands in contrast to the warm, rustic basement with its more rough-hewn decor, from which the cheerful strains of live accordion music drifted: popular Parisian melodies are performed, complete with a tawdry drum-machine in support, from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. every evening. 
The service at Beaujolais was superb, at points verging on over-zealous; and we welcomed the comprehensive selection of French wines, ranging in price from 750 rubles ($22) to close to infinity. The food is non-specifically French, at odds with the decor’s affectations; this however allows for an accommodating array of dishes. The decor attempts to evoke pastoral France with shelves of dusty wine bottles, which might have been successful, were it not for the smoothly integrated TV screens, mutely displaying Russian soaps.
From the selection of starters, an Italian sausage platter (390 rubles, $7.50) and Bouillebaisse (310 rubles, $6.50) proved, in the first case, rather bland — perhaps only due to the lack of any accompaniment (the impressive bread basket was offered only with the main course). The Bouillebaisse, however, was a real number, generously proportioning tender fish meat and seafood with subtle suggestions of citrus and tomato, making the dish well worth its price and position at the top of the French menu. 
The three versions of the menu available (in English, French and Russian) — which rather strangely, differed entirely from one another — comprise a wide variety of European dishes punctuated by a number of local classics. The meat section ranged from pork a la Portugese with potatoes (390 rubles, $7.50) to a more expensive grilled veal in whiskey sauce (890 rubles, $18.30).  
The mains arrived slightly late, but excused themselves in both presentation and body. The chicken breast with jamon and Dorblu, priced at a reasonable 350 rubles ($7.50), was a generous portion of tenderly prepared breast, and the center of blue cheese made for a wonderful, creamy texture with a rewarding zest. 
The accompanying grilled vegetables were refreshing, and the eggplant and bell peppers complimented the simpler flavors of the centerpiece. They were served with a tangy tomato sauce, which added a necessary spice to the dish. The seafood tagliatelle (390 rubles, $7.50) was not such a hit: It arrived somewhat colder than expected and in a disappointingly small portion. The pasta itself was well cooked, but the tiny dollop of rich seafood sauce suffused with Parmesan simply wasn’t enough. The ingredients were disproportionate, and after enjoying the sauce, much of the plain pasta was left uneaten. 
Among the extensive selection of beers and spirits, we opted for a lower-mid range Beaujolais (1,150 rubles, $37). This was selected in honor of the restaurant’s name, and we were not let down. It was a full-bodied and fruity red, served with much decorum. Our bucket-sized glasses were diligently refilled at every opportunity, and our meal was accompanied by warm rustic breads and flavored butters.
The atmosphere of a French bistro was an interesting counterpart to the Russian components of the menu. Alongside the substantial cellar and fantastic service, the restaurant has another string to its bow: The local celebrity chef Serge Ferie has lent his name and recipe to the restaurant’s creme brulee. Priced at a reasonable 150 rubles ($4.50), it was the finishing touch in an altogether convincingly French and enjoyable evening.
<div class="divider">&nbsp;</div>
<h1>THE GUIDE</h1>
<b>France’s Finest</b>

St. Petersburg has not forgotten its historical ties with French culture, and Gallic cuisine is well represented in the city, though it often tends to be at the upper end of the price scale.

<b>Jean-Jacques Rousseau</b>

This chain of cheerful bistros is represented by a couple of outlets in St. Petersburg — one on Ulitsa Marata and another on the Petrograd Side — as well as by several in Moscow. The menu comprises a range of classic French snacks and meals. <i>10 Ulitsa Marata, tel: 315 4903</i>

<b>Kukhnya</b>
 
Kukhnya boasts separate afternoon and evening menus featuring French classics as well as sandwiches and atypical “fusion pizzas” topped with Gorgonzola, salmon and other little luxuries. Portions are generous, and the dishes are delectable. The three rooms are spacious and uncluttered, and the overall impression is one of simplicity and extreme understatement. <i>77 Nab. Reki Fontanki, tel: 310 5280</i>

<b>Le Paris</b>
 
Le Paris is most of the most upscale restaurants in St. Petersburg. The haute cuisine and wine list at this discreet, tasteful establishment are flawless, and are priced accordingly. <i>63 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa, tel: 571 9545</i> 


TITLE: First Man in Space Is Celebrated, 50 Years On
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STAR CITY, Moscow Region — It was the Soviet Union’s own giant leap for mankind, one that would spur a humiliated United States to race for the moon. It happened 50 years ago on Tuesday, when an Air Force pilot named Yury Gagarin became the first human in space.
The 27-year-old cosmonaut’s mission lasted just 108 minutes and was fraught with drama: a break in data transmission, glitches involving antennas, a retrorocket and the separation of modules. And there was an overarching question that science had yet to answer: What would weightlessness do to a human being?
“There were all kinds of wild fears that a man could lose his mind in zero gravity, lose his ability to make rational decisions,” recalled Oleg Ivanovsky, who oversaw the construction and launch of the Vostok spacecraft that carried Gagarin.
The flight was to be fully automatic, but what if weightlessness caused Gagarin to go mad and override the programmed controls? The engineers’ solution was to add a three-digit security code that the cosmonaut would have to enter to gain command of the spacecraft.
It proved unnecessary. The flight went off safely, and the handsome Russian with the big smile became a poster boy for the communist world, still a national idol 43 years after his death in a jet training accident and remembered with enormous affection by the last surviving pioneers of the Soviet space program at Star City outside Moscow, where he trained.
From the stern and uncompromising chief designer, Sergei Korolyov, to young nurses and rank-and-file launch pad workers, “people loved, really loved him,” Ivanovsky said in a telephone interview.
Korolyov was eager to cement the Soviet edge in space after the October 1957 launch of Sputnik, the world’s first manmade satellite, and he wanted to move to human spaceflight and score another victory in the race against the Americans.
But after a series of botched experimental flights throughout 1960 and a launch pad explosion that killed 126 people, safety was an overriding priority, Ivanovsky said.
The flight was limited to a single orbit because of the questions about weightlessness, and Gagarin was supposed to parachute out of the capsule on return because a soft-landing system was not ready yet.
Even so, Ivanovsky said, the risk was assessed as high. A top design official at the time, Boris Chertok, wrote in his memoirs that “Judging by modern standards of rockets reliability, we had no reasons for optimism by April 1961.”
However, James Oberg, a NASA veteran and currently a space consultant who has studied the Soviet space program extensively, said Korolyov and his men did all they could to make the flight safe.
“I don’t see any dangerous shortcuts in their approach to the Vostok,” he said, adding that the two final launches before Gagarin’s flight were fully successful.
Despite the risks, competition for the mission was strong among the 20 young pilots on the shortlist, and Gagarin was the favorite. He was a man who made people feel at ease and radiated kindness, former cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov, now 83, recalled at the Star City training center, which he headed for 20 years.
Just three days before blastoff from what would later be known as the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Gagarin was told that he was chosen for the mission. In a letter to his wife, Valentina, he asked her to raise their daughters “not as little princesses, but as real people,” and to feel free to remarry if his mission proved fatal.
“My letter seems like a final will. But I don’t think so and I hope you will never see this letter and I will feel shame later for that brief moment of weakness,” he wrote.
“Gagarin was aware of the fears concerning zero gravity, and he also knew about all failed launches preceding his flight,” but he never showed any fear or doubt, Ivanovsky said.
On the eve of the flight, Gagarin and his backup, German Titov, went to bed early and were awakened at 5:30 a.m. Gagarin was joking, his pulse was an exemplary 64 beats a minute, and it remained the same after he took his seat in the Vostok.
Before boarding, Gagarin saw Korolyov looking haggard after a sleepless night. “Don’t you worry, Sergei Pavlovich,” he told the chief designer, “everything will be just fine.”
“It was he who was comforting me!” Korolyov would marvel later. He thought of Gagarin as a son, and Gagarin carried Korolyov’s picture in his wallet.
The security code for use in an emergency was supposed to stay in a sealed envelope for the cosmonaut to open only if necessary, but Ivanovsky was too nervous to stick with protocol. As he escorted Gagarin to the capsule, he whispered the code to him: 1-2-5. Gagarin smiled and said he already knew; his instructor, equally protective, had already let him in on the secret.
Ivanovsky helped Gagarin up the ladder and into the cockpit, patted him on the helmet and wished him luck before closing the hatch, only to hear Korolyov telling him from the control room that a light that was meant to indicate the hatch was hermetically closed had failed to turn on. Ivanovsky and his two assistants had to remove all 32 screws sealing the hatch and then put them back at a frantic pace.
Inside the capsule, Gagarin was whistling a tune. Later he would joke to Ivanovsky: “You should have seen yourself while you were working on the hatch; your face had all the colors of tarnished metal.”
Gagarin’s rocket lifted off as scheduled on April 12, 1961, at 9:07 a.m. Moscow time. “Poyekhali!” (Let’s go!), the cosmonaut shouted as he took off.
Korolyov and his engineers quickly got their first jolt: a signal suggesting a problem with the booster. It turned out to be just a break of a few seconds in data transmission. Gagarin’s confident reports from orbit eased the tension, and only after the flight did it emerge that an antenna malfunction had put the Vostok into a much higher and riskier orbit.
On re-entry, a glitch involving a retrorocket made the ship rotate swiftly, and the landing capsule was slow to jettison the service module. Scientists had to take a deep breath as they lost contact with the ship during its fiery earthward plunge.
Gagarin bailed out as planned and parachuted onto a field near the Volga River about 720 kilometers southeast of Moscow. There he was spotted by a forester’s wife and her granddaughter who tried to run away from the stranger in his bright orange space suit and white helmet. They may have thought he was a U.S. spy, given that less than a year before, U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers had been shot down over the Soviet Union in his U-2 spy plane, an incident that had badly strained U.S.-Soviet relations.
“Hey, where are you running? I’m one of us!” Gagarin shouted. Then others arrived, realizing he was the cosmonaut they had just heard about on the radio.
Gagarin learned to his great surprise that while aloft, he was being promoted two levels higher, to major. Korolyov and others flew to the landing area and met with Gagarin at a Communist Party guesthouse. Their raucous reunion lasted late into the night. On April 14 Gagarin was flown to Moscow, where he was greeted by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and driven into town on a highway lined with cheering Russians.
“People took to the streets; everybody felt excited, it felt like V-Day,” Korolyov’s daughter Natalya recalled.


TITLE: The Electronic Future of Russia’s Library Network
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: With the history of the Russian state comprising the core theme of its collection, the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library in St. Petersburg may sound like a project meant for a very narrow audience. Yet this vast archive located in the majestic Synod building on Senatskaya Ploshchad has become Russia’s premier project showcasing innovative archiving technologies — and it is eagerly going global.
With its collections consisting entirely of electronic resources, the library represents a new breed of archives moving away from piles of paper documents, while making ancient manuscripts from the early 11th century onwards accessible to wider audiences through their scanned versions. Readers across the globe can now get access to almost the same files — although with some restrictions — as those who visit the headquarters in St. Petersburg.
The library opened its doors to visitors on Sept. 1, 2009. Predictably, the first membership card was issued to President Dmitry Medvedev, who attended the inauguration of the prestigious center.
Medvedev, who once noted to reporters that he finds it impossible to get his son to read printed books — the teenager reportedly prefers e-books — did not shelve his Presidential Library membership card. He regularly visits the portal, most recently in February, when Medvedev explored an online exhibition of historical documents devoted to the 150th anniversary of Tsar Alexander II’s act of abolishing serfdom in Russia.
True to its name, the Presidential Library team maintains a close connection to the head of the country. Its Moscow-based crew maintains Medvedev’s blog on the Kremlin.ru web site, filtering the many thousands of posts that are sent to the president every day. 
“Dmitry Medvedev has more than 200,000 subscribers on Twitter, so you can get some idea about the amount of work we do,” said Alexander Vershinin, director of the Presidential Library. “In some ways, it resembles the work with written letters that were sent to the government back in the Soviet era.”
The library hopes to revive library services in Russia and to become a hub for all other libraries in the country. Its main goal is to link up with all the libraries and specialized archives in the regions. For example, it is expected that in the future, the dissertations of scientists from the country’s universities or historical documents from provincial archives will all be available in electronic versions at the hub.
So far, the library has signed agreements with the Tyumen, Omsk, Kirov, Volgograd, Ryazan, Kamchatka, Chukotka and Magadan regions, as well as with the republics of Tatarstan, Karelia, Buryatia and Chuvashia. Deals are set to be made in the near future with the Moscow, Novosibirsk, Sakhalin, Amur, Khabarovsk, Tver, Primorye and Nenets regions.
One of three national libraries in the Russian Federation, the center provides access to more than 9 million scans, including the contents of the Russian State Historical Archive.
Every academic year, the library announces a key theme that it will explore during the following 12 months through exhibitions, conferences, competitions, lectures and other events.  
“We began on September 1, 2009 with the history of Russia as our main theme,” said Vershinin. “The system of governing should be based on the history of the country. For the first time in Russia, we compiled and put on a digital display of a very full collection of history textbooks that have been published in the country. Such a collection provided an extremely valuable insight into the development of the Russian state.”
This year’s topic is the Russian territory, while the theme of the 2011/2012 academic year will be the Russian government, and then, in 2012/2013, the Russian people.
Foreigners currently comprise a tiny fraction of the library’s total readership: Only 2.6 percent of readers come from outside of Russia, mainly from Ukraine, Belarus, Japan, Germany, Italy and China.
The Presidential Library is up for a global expansion, with representative offices — effectively reading rooms — already operating in Beijing, Minsk and Baku.
The next one is due to open in Helsinki in the next few months.
When it was being created, Russia’s Presidential Library was modeled on the library of the U.S. Congress, which has a similar function.
“The U.S. Congress library was originally created as an information and analysis resource meant exclusively for members of Congress; similarly, our library, as part of the presidential administration, caters a large extent to the Kremlin and various state bodies,” said Vershinin. “What makes us different is that the U.S. Congress Library contains large volumes of printed material, whereas our collection is limited to electronic documents.”
In the Middle Ages, the most expansive libraries belonged to monasteries, and were as carefully protected from outsiders as sacred relics. Reading was the privilege of the elite, and each country guarded its libraries as closely as its most precious treasures.
Today, the idea of an international electronic hub that would encompass the resources of national archives of many countries is already in the air. The library of the future is an electronic library.
“Newspapers are going online, e-books are becoming increasingly popular; an electronic document is much easier to deal with,” Vershinin said. 
The possibility of an international alliance between the world’s leading libraries that would make their electronic archives accessible through a unified umbrella hub for users from any country is already under discussion, although such plans remain vague.
Many international players are cautious about creating a universal archive, and would prefer to try out various forms of cooperation on a much smaller scale. The idea, however, is in the air.
 “The U.S. Congress has already started working on the so-called world library — an electronic archive that aims to unite materials that they have received from all continents. This is one example that we find very interesting to look at and be inspired by,” said Vershinin.


TITLE: Russian Performers Shine at the Abu Dhabi Festival
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The legendary Russian romance “Dark Eyes,” with its passionate lyrics and soaring spirits, may sound like an unlikely item for an arts festival held in the Persian Gulf region. Yet this was the triumphant finale of the closing concert of the Eighth Abu Dhabi Festival that ended on April 4 with a performance of the song by renowned Russian baritone Dmitry Hvorostovsky and soprano Yekaterina Syurina. Hvorostovsky’s spontaneous emotional choice was a sweeping success, rewarded by a ten-minute standing ovation. 
This year’s festival saw the charismatic baritone’s first-ever performance in the Emirates.
“We cannot predict the reaction of a public that is virtually uninitiated, so we didn’t want to stage a heavy program,” Hvorostovsky said of the program, which fused arias and scenes from the operas of Verdi, Mozart and Rossini. “What I sought was for the Arab audiences to experience the widest emotional range that the art of opera can give, from serene sadness to bravado to cheer. I really hope that the public that has not really had much exposure to classic operatic art will enjoy itself.” 
With this winning strategy, Hvorostovsky appeared very much in tune with the festival’s own philosophy of exploring cross-cultural connections, pushing creative boundaries and providing new insights while celebrating national heritage.
“The UAE is a country of tolerance and respect,” said Her Excellency Mrs. Hoda Ibrahim Al Khamis Kanoo, the founder and artistic director of the Abu Dhabi Festival. 
“It is a place where people from diverse backgrounds and cultures have made their home… Bringing alive our cultural assets is imperative to their long term survival and we hope that our exciting program will engage a new generation of art lovers.” 
The festival thrives on cultural diversity. On April 3, the night before Hvorostovsky’s appearance, audiences were treated to a heartfelt performance by one of the world’s greatest jazz vocalists Al Jarreau — one of only two musicians in history (the other being the late Michael Jackson) to have claimed Grammy awards in the jazz, pop and R&B categories. Within minutes, the audience was clapping along, and halfway through the concert, the public was singing along, too.
Spanning three weeks — this time, from March 19 through April 4 — every year, the festival brings together musical and dramatic talent from all over the globe. This year’s event featured a tour of London’s Sadler’s Wells theater with a production of cutting-edge contemporary dance staging, “PUSH,” choreographed by the ground-breaking ballet master Russel Maliphant and starring Sylvie Guillem of the Paris Opera Ballet. 
The Russian element was by no means small, with the Russian National Orchestra under the baton of Italian conductor Nicola Luisotti serving as the festival’s orchestra in residence, meaning they gave several performances during the course of the event, including the Hvorostovsky and Syurina concert and a “Bronfman and Brahms” concert on April 2 featuring the outstanding pianist Yefim Bronfman performing a program of Brahms, Verdi and Beethoven.
The festival also saw a performance by the world-famous Lebanese composer and singer Abdel Rahman El Bacha, and a visit from London’s Shakespeare’s Globe Theater with a production of “Macbeth.” Turning the event into a festivity for literally all residents, Kanoo and her team decided not to limit the festival to a traditional series of performances in classical venues. Rather, the concerts spilled out into some unorthodox venues such as hospitals and orphanages. 
The “Music in Hospitals” tour brought together a group of talented professional and amateur musicians to play for patients at Mafraq Hospital in Abu Dhabi and Tawam Hospital in Al Ain. The tour was inspired by research that has explored the healing effects of music on the human body and the positive impact music has on the patient’s recovery process. 
“Reaching out to hospitals and community organisations across Abu Dhabi shares in the spirit of ‘Bilad Al Khayr’ — the land of blessings,” Kanoo said. “The link between the arts and healing has been explored for generations, and we are proud to continue this important work alongside our partners throughout the Abu Dhabi Festival this year.”
Abu Dhabi is the largest and wealthiest of the seven emirates that comprise the UAE, and is responsible for 80 percent of the country’s oil production — a titanic asset, considering that UAE  supplies nearly 10 percent of the world’s oil.
The festival is funded entirely by the Abu Dhabi Arts&Music Foundation (ADMAF), a non-profit organization of which Kanoo is the founder.
As another powerful oil empire, Russia could follow the example of the Abu Dhabi Festival in the noble use of oil profits. For the Russian state, funding a classical arts event on that scale is unheard of. Arts sponsorship in the country remains in an embryonic condition, with the only exception being Russia’s own premier classical arts event, Valery Gergiev’s Stars of the White Nights Festival, which is funded through a string of private enterprises and arts patrons coming from both Russia and abroad.
Most symbolically, the Abu Dhabi Festival’s key stage is the magnificent Zaha Hadid Pavilion at the Emirates Palace Hotel. Designed by Baghdad-born British designer Zaha Hadid, a recipient of the world’s top architectural award the Pritzker Prize, the ground-breaking hall creates a spectacular backdrop for the entire festival, serving as its artistic tuning fork.
Daring contemporary architecture is key to Abu Dhabi. By 2015, the emirate looks set to complete its most ambitious project, Saadiyat Island, an entire cultural district that will host the first Louvre Museum outside France with designs from another Pritzker-winner, Jean Nouvel, as well as a new branch of the Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry, and the Zayed National Museum designed by Norman Foster.
With such a wealth of international talent attracted to shape up the Abu Dhabi vision, the world is certainly on its way to getting a new cultural Mecca in its own right.