SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1654 (16), Wednesday, May 4, 2011
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TITLE: Anarchists Arrested Ahead of May Day Celebrations 
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg authorities arrested dozens of anarchists and left-wing activists to prevent them from marching as part of the May Day demonstrations on Nevsky Prospekt on Sunday.
Spearheaded by St. Petersburg Governor and pro-Kremlin party United Russia member Valentina Matviyenko, a wide range of political parties and movements, trade unions and pressure groups took part in the demonstrations.
The main demands of the opposition in St. Petersburg were the dismissal of Matviyenko and the restoration of gubernatorial elections that were abolished by then-President Vladimir Putin in 2005.
More than 50 anarchists, including 14 minors, were approached by the police at the assembly point on Ligovsky Prospekt and arrested without any reason given, they say. Videos uploaded on anarchists’ web sites show them being dragged roughly into a police bus while trying to raise an anti-Nazi banner and shouting, “Down with the police state!”
The arrested activists were due to march as part of a column of leftist groups led by the Center for Workers’ Mutual Aid (TsVR), which had been authorized by City Hall. The other activists in the column refused to march until the anarchists were released, and remained at the gathering point, preventing columns of democrats and nationalists from moving forward for some time.
In a report on the TsVR Livejournal.com community, they said they stood on the spot for an hour and a half and left only when police threatened to disperse and arrest them.
According to Tatyana, an anarchist who did not wish her last name to appear in print, the arrested activists were charged with violating the regulations on holding public events and failing to obey police orders.
Later, seven more anarchists were arrested when they attempted to block the United Russia column — the largest group in the march, estimated by officials to number between 15,000 and 20,000 supporters — on Nevsky Prospekt. The police promptly dragged the anarchists away after they lay down on the ground and interlocked their arms. Later, two managed to escape from the police precinct they were taken to, while another two were sentenced to two and three days in prison, respectively.
Two years ago, more than 100 anarchists were arrested in a similar manner — despite having a permit from City Hall — before they started their May Day march, but last year they were allowed to march on Nevsky Prospekt. They moved down the street in a close group wrapped in banners, with their arms interlocked to counteract possible arrests.
Commenting on the arrests on 100 TV channel the same day, Matviyenko claimed that “every political party or group that was legal was allowed to march on Nevsky.”
Under the Soviets, people were asked to participate in marches to demonstrate their support for the state and the party either to obtain benefits or under mild threat. In modern Russia, the holiday has remained, though it has been renamed from International Workers’ Solidarity Day to Spring and Labor Day.
Although the ultranationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) was banned by Moscow City Court a week ahead of May Day, the nationalists had no problem in marching in St. Petersburg on Sunday. City Hall had authorized their demo when they applied as private citizens.
In the same television interview, Matviyenko denied that nationalists had taken part in the rallies, despite the fact that they marched on Nevsky with “imperial” Russian flags and nationalist banners.
LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual and Transgender) activists were not authorized to take part in the marches by City Hall. They were invited to hold a standup meeting instead in a distant park, but late last week they were told that the site would be occupied by a different event. 
City Hall’s new suggestion for the LGBT group Ravnopraviye (Equality) was to hold a meeting outside the city, at a location described by an activist as a field between a forest and a lake.
Eventually, a small group of LGBT activists joined the democratic group featuring the Yabloko Democratic Party and Solidarity Democratic Movement, marching with rainbow flags and posters.
One hundred and eighty activists of The Other Russia party, twelve members of which are under criminal investigation for alleged extremism, marched with the banner “You Can’t Jail Everybody” and shouted slogans against Putin and Matviyenko. No one was arrested.


TITLE: More Russians Choose To Have Second Child
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: More Russians want to have two children in their families now than they did five years ago, a sociological survey carried out by the Public Opinion foundation has showed, Interfax reported.
At least 41 percent of Russians want to have two children, 13 percent plan to have only one child, and 13 percent dream of having three children. Only five percent of Russian citizens would like to have four or more children.
Every fifth Russian, or 19 percent, said they did not plan to have children at all.
About 16 percent of people said they had doubts about starting a family due to an unstable income. Another 15 percent could not afford to do so because bringing up a child entails a lot of expense, 12 percent said they didn’t have a partner, and 11 percent cited unsuitable living conditions as an obstacle.
About 10 percent said they could not have a second child because they simply didn’t have enough room at home.
The survey showed that during the last five years, the number of families with two children grew from 33 to 36 percent. At least 30 percent of respondents said they had one child, compared to 31 percent in 2006.  Eight percent said they had three children, a figure that remained unchanged from 2006. The number of families with four or more children had decreased from four to three percent, and the number of families who had no children decreased from 25 to 22 percent.
The survey also showed that 81 percent of Russians believe that the government should take extra measures to increase the birth rate in the country, including raising salaries (29 percent of respondents), providing better living conditions (27 percent), and introducing more privileges and payments for childcare.

TITLE: Veterans to Ride Metro For Free on Victory Anniversary
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: All Russian war veterans will be able to use the St. Petersburg metro system free of charge on May 8 and 9 during celebrations of the 66th anniversary of the country’s victory in World War II.
Metro rides will be free not only for the city’s veterans, but also for veterans from other regions of the country, the St. Petersburg Metropolitan company said. One person accompanying a veteran will also be able to travel by metro for free.
To enter the metro free of charge, veterans will have to show documents proving that they served in the war.

TITLE: LSR Faces Disgruntled Minority Shareholder
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: A former minority shareholder in the Yekaterinburg-based Betfor company, a maker of reinforced concrete units, has challenged a secondary share issue that allowed major developer LSR to consolidate 100 percent ownership of the company.
According to information made available on the web sites of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Arbitration courts, Betfor shareholder Viktor Nikitenko filed suit against LSR and the Kant company on April 18.
LSR acquired 87 percent of the shares in Betfor from Nova Group for 57 million euros ($89 million) in April 2008, at 318 euros a share. In the fall of that year, LSR made a buyout offer to minority shareholders of the company, after it had raised its share, along with affiliated companies, to 88.05 percent.
In August 2009, Betfor issued 1,054,126 preferred shares. LSR bought 928,000 of them and Kant bought 126,126, according to Nikitenko’s suit. Nikitenko’s share of the company’s charter capital was reduced from 0.1 percent to 0.0001 percent by the share issue.
According to Nikitenko, that move was followed by a number of deals involving LSR and Kant designed to raise LSR’s shareholding in Betfor to 95 percent, giving it the right to forcibly buy out minority shareholders.
Nikitenko is demanding that the acquisition of shares by LSR and Kant in the secondary issue be voided.
LSR regional legal director in Yekaterinburg Dmitry Letyagin said the deals were legal and Kant is not affiliated with LSR. A company with the same name acquired 10 percent of the LSR-owned company Obyedinenie 45 in 2007 and 10 percent of the Pobeda LSR company in 2008, however. The company was dissolved on March 31, according to Interfax-SPARK.

TITLE: Georgian Citizen Charged With Killing Businessman
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A Georgian citizen has been arrested in St. Petersburg on suspicion of shooting a businessman to death in the center of the city in 2005, Interfax reported.
The suspect has been charged with robbing and murdering the businessman, the Petersburg department of the Investigative Committee reported on its web site Tuesday.
A criminal investigation into the case was opened in November 2005, when the body of the deputy general director of Vostok-Invest was found in the courtyard of a building on Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa.
The investigation alleges that the murder was carried out by David Meladze, a 37-year-old citizen of Georgia and member of an organized crime group. Meladze was on the police’s wanted persons list.
“On April 28, 2011, D. Meladze was detained and charged with conspiring with previously convicted Yerov and Belyakov to murder the victim with the aim of stealing the financial resources that he was carrying,” read a report on the web site of the Investigative Committee.
According to investigators, the perpetrators attacked the businessman, who fought back. Meladze and unidentified individuals then killed the victim, shooting him eight times.
“The accomplices took money and possessions amounting to a total of 30,000 rubles ($1,100), as well as Russky Standart, Delta Bank and Sberbank Rossii credit cards,” the report said.
Meladze is being held on remand while the search for his accomplices continues, investigators reported.

TITLE: The Man Who Refused $1M
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Legendary mathematician Grigory Perelman, a notorious recluse, explained in a one-off interview why he has rejected a $1 million cash prize for solving a century-old mathematical problem.
His research is too interesting due to its vast implications — both practical and philosophical — to spend time on other matters, Perelman said in an interview published Thursday in Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Applications for his studies range from space industry and nanotechnologies to social sciences and fundamental questions about the nature of the universe, Perelman said.
“I know how to control the universe. Tell me, why would I need to chase a million [dollars]?” he said.
Perelman, 44, was awarded the cash by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in March for proving a theorem known as the Poincare conjecture, but turned down the award, saying the institute ignored the equally important input of another mathematician, Richard Hamilton.
Perelman, who lives with his mother in a rundown apartment in St. Petersburg, had not given any interviews, but broke his silence for a producer of the Moscow-based movie company President Film, Alexander Zabrovsky, who is planning to shoot a documentary about the world’s leading mathematicians.
Perelman also blamed the bad manners of journalists, not an aversion to publicity, as the reason why he has stayed away from the media. He cited the popular habit of shortening his first name to an unceremonious “Grisha” in publications as an example of their disrespect.
Zabrovsky described the mathematician as “a sensible man” with no trace of eccentricity in his own interview to Komsomolskaya Pravda.


TITLE: Experts Worry About Summer Garden
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Two of the city’s cultural heritage experts have asked the Russian Culture Ministry to save St. Petersburg’s historic Summer Garden from innovations, Fontanka reported.
Alexander Margolis and Mikhail Milchik wrote to Culture Minister Alexander Avdeyev, saying that while it was too late to save the southern part of the garden from alterations, the northern part could still be protected.
The experts said the recent renovation work in the park bore more resemblance to destruction or reconstruction.
The Russian State Museum, of which the Summer Garden constitutes a part, said the work was being carried out successfully and the garden would reopen in May 2012.
Vladimir Bazhenov, deputy head of the Russian Museum’s department for reconstruction and repair, said they were creating “a combination of what the garden looked like before and what the specialists had proposed.”
The restoration of the Summer Garden began in 2008.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Tank Found in Neva</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A KV-1 tank, the remains of military personnel and more than 30 mines and shells dating from the time of World War II have been discovered by soldiers of the 90th special battalion of the western military district, Interfax reported.
“Together with a group of amateur enthusiasts, soldiers discovered a KV-1 tank that sank in the Neva River in the vicinity of Nevsky Pytachok in 1941. In the near future, divers will be taken to the bottom on reconnaissance missions, and a decision will be taken about the possible raising of the tank,” Colonel Vladimir Mansurov, the battalion’s commander, told Interfax.
“Since the beginning of this year’s search operations, the remains of 18 Soviet soldiers and one German soldier killed during World War II have been discovered, along with more than 30 mines and shells,” Interfax cited Mansurov as saying.
The colonel also announced that on May 6, the 90th battalion, together with amateur search organizations, will hold a reburial ceremony for 535 fallen servicemen at Sinyavsky Heights.
“During the five years of its existence, the battalion has found and reburied with full honors the remains of 5,417 soldiers, and found and disposed of about 6,000 explosive devices, not counting rifle rounds, and about 200 small arms,” Mansurov said.
The KV-1 is a Soviet tank first produced in 1940. They were used in the Winter War with Finland and in World War II. 

<b>Man Drowns in Lake</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT)— A fisherman drowned after a motorboat carrying four St. Petersburg residents capsized on Lake Ladoga, Interfax reported.
According to sources, the motorboat capsized near the shore, not far from the village of Tiurula in Karelia, and the fishermen attempted to swim to dry land.
Three were able to reach the shore on their own, but their 50-year-old companion reportedly drowned just five meters from the shore. His companions dragged him ashore, but he was already dead.
The survivors’ cell phones were not functioning, and they spent the night on the shore. In the morning, passing fishermen noticed them and summoned help, Interfax reported. 
The body of the deceased Petersburger was taken to the city of Sortavala for examination. According to preliminary information, the cause of death was hypothermia. Lake Ladoga’s water temperature is currently below three degrees Celsius.

<b>Dogs Roam Hospital</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Groups of stray dogs are roaming the city’s Botkin Hospital and attacking people, Fontanka reported this week. On Monday, the dogs bit a young woman walking in the territory of the hospital.
Spetstrans, the service in charge of checking stray animals, said all the dogs had had vaccinations and identification chips, but the service does not have the right to put the animals down or transport them to other places.
It is believed that the dogs have settled in the area because some of the hospital’s personnel feed them. There had been no previous reports of the animals biting people before.
The number of dogs in the area may reach up to 20, Fontanka reported.

TITLE: Kremlin Given Tip on Bin Laden’s Death
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Vladimir Putin was the first international leader to call George W. Bush after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Now President Barack Obama has returned the favor, notifying the Kremlin that U.S. forces killed 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden before making the public announcement.
“We appreciate it that the Russian authorities were sufficiently informed before the official statement by U.S. President Barack Obama,” the Foreign Ministry said Monday in a brief statement.
The ministry did not elaborate on the U.S. tip-off, and the Kremlin made no comment about it in a separate statement, where it pledged to expand cooperation with the United States in the fight against terrorism.
Russian officials have made numerous claims about al-Qaida’s involvement in the insurgency in the North Caucasus, and the man tipped as bin Laden’s likely successor even spent several months in a Dagestani prison in the 1990s. But, security experts said Monday, the link between al-Qaida and the North Caucasus is largely symbolic, and bin Laden’s death will have little impact on the Russian insurgency.
Obama announced just before midnight Sunday in Washington that bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces in a special operation outside the Pakistani city of Islamabad. The manhunt had lasted for nearly a decade after bin Laden claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. Despite the late hour, thousands of people converged on the White House and took to the streets in major U.S. cities to celebrate the news.
“The Kremlin welcomes the serious success achieved by the United States in the fight against international terrorism,” the Kremlin said. “Russia … regretfully knows what al-Qaida is from experience.”
The Kremlin statement said that only unified efforts could fight global terrorism successfully and pledged to expand cooperation toward that end — a promise similar to one made by then-President Putin when he called then-President Bush shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The phone call marked a turning point in U.S.-Russian relations at the time.
In its statement Monday, the Foreign Ministry likened bin Laden to slain Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev and the U.S. anti-terrorism operations in Pakistan to Russian security services’ own operations in the North Caucasus, where, it said, a hunt continues for al-Qaida emissaries.
Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, said Monday that bin Laden had been involved in attacks on Russian soil. “We have grounds to believe that Osama bin Laden was involved in several terrorist attacks that took place in our country,” the senior United Russia lawmaker said, without elaborating, in a statement published on United Russia’s web site.
Kosachyov also warned that bin Laden’s death might spur a series of retaliation attacks by international terrorists.
Moscow police boosted security around the U.S. Embassy on Monday.
North Caucasus insurgents have several times attacked public venues in Moscow, but they’ve never specifically targeted U.S. or other foreign buildings here. Only one U.S. citizen has died at the hands of Chechen rebels — during the 2002 Nord-Ost hostage siege in a Moscow theater.
Interestingly, it was after the Nord-Ost drama that bin Laden for the first and only time spoke of North Caucasus rebels in one of his many public addresses, describing them as victims of Russian aggression and a group in need of assistance.
The first known links between bin Laden and the North Caucasus conflict date back to 1995, when bin Laden offered $1,500 toward a Kalashnikov assault rifle and travel expenses for each volunteer ready to fight in Chechnya, a Sudanese defector from al-Qaida told a U.S. court in 2001.
Curiously, bin Laden was often filmed and photographed with a Kalashnikov in his hands or within reach. He claimed that the Kalashnikov belonged to a Russian soldier that he had killed while fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
In late 1996, al-Qaida’s No. 2 and the most probable successor of bin Laden, Egyptian Ayman al Zawahiri, traveled to the North Caucasus in search of a new home for the terrorist organization after it was expelled from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He was arrested in Dagestan for illegally crossing the border and spent several months in a local prison before being expelled. After that, al-Qaida made Afghanistan its base of operations.
Following the 9/11 attacks, several reports surfaced that two of the plane hijackers had fought in Chechnya and a third had told friends prior to the attacks that he was going to train in an al-Qaida camp in Chechnya or Afghanistan.
Several al-Qaida operatives arrested over the past decade, including suspects nabbed in London in 2003 for trying to produce the powerful poison ricin in their apartment, either fought or trained in Chechnya or Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, which is predominantly inhabited by ethnic Chechens.
Any foreign insurgent killed by the police or security services in the North Caucasus — including most recently on April 21 in Chechnya — is automatically labeled as an al-Qaida representative by Russian officials.
Still, not a single Chechen has ever been arrested outside Russia for involvement in al-Qaida. The few Russian citizens arrested by coalition forces in Afghanistan and then jailed in the Guantanamo prison comprised natives of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Kabardino-Balkaria. All were later sent back to Russia, where they were released.


TITLE: President Offers Drivers Hope
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Motorists may be spared the notoriously cumbersome and corruption-ridden procedure of mandatory car inspections, with President Dmitry Medvedev suggesting that the practice be abolished.
The proposal, which promises to win the Kremlin the support of millions of car owners, follows a wave of complaints over changes in inspection rules. Disgruntled car owners have complained in recent months that they have spent days waiting in line at inspection checkpoints in Moscow.
The lines appeared after traffic police stepped up an anti-corruption campaign linked to the Kremlin’s sweeping police reform in March. Illegally passing the inspection became impossible, but it turned out that the city police was unequipped and understaffed to properly handle all motorists in need of the check, which has to be passed every one or two years, depending on the age of the car, Novaya Gazeta reported.
Medvedev called the certificate obtained during the car inspection “a worthless slip of paper” because new cars did not need it and owners of old “screw nut buckets” could purchase it illegally, the Kremlin web site said Thursday.
He later gave the government until July to draft proposals to simplify or cancel the car checks, the Kremlin web site said Saturday.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin echoed the president Friday, sacking a top official in charge of car inspections, RIA-Novosti reported. He also ordered proposals on how to “improve” the inspections to be presented within two days.
The sacked official, Igor Klimakov, allowed his subordinates to turn the inspections into a “feed trough” by “uniformly taking bribes,” Sobyanin said.
City prosecutors hurried to open a check into traffic police procedures for car inspections, acting on “multiple media reports about violations of people’s rights during technical inspections,” a spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General’s Office told RIA-Novosti on Friday.
There are 4.9 million cars in Moscow, an increase of 240,000 vehicles over the last year, city traffic police chief Alexander Ilyin said Thursday.


TITLE: Navalny Donors 
Fret Over  Leaked Info
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Federal Security Service has collected personal data on people who donated to whistleblower Alexei Navalny, and the information was later leaked to third parties, including possibly a pro-Kremlin youth movement, bloggers said.
Yandex confirmed on April 2 that the FSB had requested information on people who used its web money system to donate to Navalny’s Rospil.info project, an online watchdog monitoring murky state tenders.
A company spokeswoman told The St. Petersburg Times that Yandex was obliged to comply by law.
Neither the company nor the FSB explained why the data were collected.
But at least three bloggers reported that they had received cell phone inquiries about their ties to Rospil.info, and the caller had cited confidential information about their Yandex.Money payments.
The caller’s cell phone number is listed on the Vkontakte.ru page of Yulia Dikhtyar, a Voronezh-based member of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi, wrote a LiveJournal blogger identified as Nykolaich.
The blogger, who said he was one of those asked about his donation, posted a screenshot of Dikhtyar’s page on the popular social networking site.
The number was out of service Monday.
The three bloggers said the caller, who identified herself as Yulia Ivashova, had posed as a journalist and asked why they had donated to Navalny. Each time, the caller said she represented a different regional media outlet.
The caller knew details about the personal Yandex.Money accounts and the transactions, the bloggers said. Prominent Internet expert Anton Nosik wrote in his blog Monday that the data “couldn’t have been legally obtained by third parties.”
Navalny confirmed that data on contributors had been leaked to third parties and said he believed that the FSB has handed over the information to Nashi.
“Instead of conducting investigations into corrupt officials exposed by our work they have collected information on our donors,” Navalny said by telephone.
“I could have understood if they just collected the information for themselves, but sharing it with Nashi passes all boundaries,” Navalny said.
He said he would ask the Prosecutor General’s Office to open a check into the leak.
Nashi, which has a history of harassing critics of the authorities, has not commented on the allegations. 

TITLE: Court Convicts ‘Patriotic Bonnie and Clyde’
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — An ultranationalist couple was convicted Thursday of gunning down a rights lawyer and a journalist, the verdict ending a court process fraught with accusations of publicity manipulations.
Nationalist sympathizers presented the couple as a patriotic version of Bonnie and Clyde, but the two pleaded not guilty of gunning down rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and Novaya Gazeta freelance reporter Anastasia Baburova in downtown Moscow in January 2009.
The prosecution said the murders were carried out by Nikita Tikhonov, 30 — Markelov was killed for representing victims of nationalists, while Baburova was shot dead when she tried to stop the killer.
Tikhonov’s girlfriend Yevgenia Khasis, 25, was accused of aiding Markelov’s murder. The couple, which had been on the run until their arrest in November 2009, was also charged with illegal firearms possession and document forgery.
The first version of the verdict was rejected by the judge as “unclear,” with the jury ordered late Thursday to rewrite it, Interfax reported. The second version, announced later Thursday, convicted Tikhonov of both murders and Khasis of aiding the killing, and added, without elaborating, that they could have had “unidentified accomplices.”
Tikhonov and Khasis have repeatedly pleaded not guilty to murder — and have even attempted suicide to prove their integrity, slashing their veins before the Wednesday hearing.
Doctors found their injuries not life-threatening, and the two were brought to deliver their last statement before the Moscow City Court sporting bandages on their forearms and, in Tikhonov’s case, neck. A lawyer for the victims’ families, Vladimir Zherebenkov, told RAPSI that the suspects only intended to impress the jury, not to take their lives.
This is not the first time they have been accused of publicity stunts. The couple requested a license to marry in prison ahead of the trial’s start last year, but were refused, with media saying the investigator saw it as an attempt to get on the jury’s soft side.
“I’m no innocent sheep,” Tikhonov said Wednesday, Interfax reported. “I was selling weapons and used forged documents, but I didn’t kill Markelov and Baburova.”
Khasis also said in her final statement that she and Tikhonov were innocent and called the case against them fabrication by law enforcement agencies who went looking for scapegoats after failing to find the real murderers in a high-profile case.
At the same time she implicated security services in Markelov’s murder, saying he often confronted law enforcement officers in the North Caucasus, defending victims of their abuse.
The couple never denied nationalist views, with Khasis maintaining in her brief autobiography that she was an ethnic Russian despite her unusual-sounding name. But both said they did not support patriotic violence.
In her biography, written in detention and released online, Khasis said she never managed to get into college because she had to cater to her gravely ill mother since the age of 14. She was a sales manager at the time of arrest.
Tikhonov, son of a former intelligence officer, is a graduate of the prestigious Moscow State University. He has worked as a journalist and political speechwriter, but was unemployed at the time of arrest, which he claimed was the sole reason he dabbled in illegal weapons trading.
The charges against the two were based on testimonies from their friends from nationalist groups, including Blood and Honor and Russky Obraz. The head of Russky Obraz, Ilya Goryachev, a key witness for the prosecution, fled to Germany during the trial and attempted to retract his testimony, saying he was pressured into it, but his claims were dismissed by the judge on the grounds that he was not present in the courtroom to voice his stance.
Khasis was not the only one to speak of meddling with the trial. A former juror in the process told Moskovsky Komsomolets earlier this month that the jury faced pressure to convict Tikhonov and Khasis.
At least two jurors have been constantly smearing the suspects and insisting that they are guilty, and attempted to impose this stance on the rest of the jury, Anna Dobrachyova, who voluntarily resigned from the case, told the daily.
She did not identify them by full names, but said one of the two, a professional psychologist, has been “deliberately brainwashing” the jurors.
The other juror regularly read out to them media reports on the trial, which was a direct violation of trial procedures, but went ignored by the judge.
Court officials have not commented on the accusations.

TITLE: Chaika Defends Prosecution Record
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prosecutor General Yury Chaika vigorously defended his record on April 27, as his tenure nears an end amid a turf war that has engulfed his own son.
Chaika told the Federation Council that his office was not engaged in a power struggle with the Investigative Committee and, seemingly contradicting himself moments later, asked for more power to control the actions of investigators.
“We don’t have any smear campaign with the Investigative Committee,” Chaika said in an annual speech to senators. “We have had some difficulties because of a lack of a clear balance of responsibilities, but they are being resolved since we work for a common cause.”
Chaika needs the Federation Council’s approval to remain in office once his term ends in June.
President Dmitry Medvedev, who will need to sign off on the Federation Council’s decision, has been embarrassed after a dispute between prosecutors and investigators, whose activities were split into two independent agencies a month earlier, hit the public spotlight.
At the center of the dispute is a criminal case into an illegal gambling ring in the Moscow region that the Investigative Committee says had the support of local prosecutors. Chaika has said he personally reviewed case documents provided by investigators, but his office has refused to bring charges against Moscow region prosecutors, although several were ultimately dismissed.
“This is not about defending one’s honor and pride,” Chaika said Wednesday, RIA-Novosti reported. “That would be completely out of the question.”
But Chaika’s own reputation was put in jeopardy after the Investigative Committee said in late March that it wanted to question his son, Artyom, in connection with the gambling case. People working for Artyom Chaika are suspected of acting as middlemen between prosecutors and the gambling ring’s owners, Kommersant said March 30. Artyom Chaika, 35, has pursued multiple business interests, co-founding two law firms, a now-defunct wholesaler and an equestrian club.
Chaika requested a meeting with Medvedev after his son was implicated in the case, and Medvedev cautioned him and Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin to keep their squabble out of the public eye, Kommersant said April 1.
In his speech, Chaika did not mention his son, but, referring to the prosecutors implicated in the case, he said, “Some feel nervous when their children or family are involved.”
He also criticized an amendment backed by Bastrykin that would allow the Investigative Committee to file a complaint if prosecutors closed a case submitted by investigators. His office lost its right to open investigations in January when the Investigative Committee was spun off into an independent agency.
“I am strictly against this. I believe that investigators have too much power anyway,” Chaika said.
He said prosecutors should have control over investigators. “It is the prosecutor who should control the process of a criminal investigation,” he said.
Chaika’s plea fell flat with State Duma Deputy Mikhail Grishankov, who said in a telephone interview that such a change would make the prosecutor general an “untouchable figure.”
Grishankov, a United Russia member of the Duma’s Security Committee, also said independent prosecutors were needed to press charges against crimes committed by prosecutors.
Chaika, meanwhile, complained that prosecutors faced difficulties checking the income declarations of government officials because of a lack of legislation giving them powers to access information about bank accounts and other assets.
“If we want to create order, these measures should be given to the prosecutors by law,” Chaika said.
Medvedev ordered officials and their families to release annual income declarations as part of his drive against corruption, and he put the prosecutor’s office in charge of checking their accuracy. Only one person, a relatively low-ranking military officer, has lost his job over an income declaration in the three years since the initiative was introduced.
Grishankov, the Duma deputy, said Chaika missed an opportunity to say he supported Russia’s adoption of Article 20 of the United Nations anti-corruption convention, which makes it a criminal offense for an official to obtain wealth whose origins cannot be explained. “This would be more effective,” Grishankov said.
Prosecutor General’s Office spokesman Viktor Potapov told Finam radio that 6,000 government officials have faced disciplinary action over the past year, and 40,000 violations were uncovered, half of them connected to municipal officials.
Alexei Mukhin, a political analyst with the Center for Political Information, said Chaika was trying to convince Medvedev to reappoint him. “But despite his efforts, his statements about a constructive relationship with the Investigative Committee aren’t credible,” he said. 

TITLE: Audit Chamber Lashes Out 
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Audit Chamber has threatened to sue liberal activist Marina Litvinovich for implicating its head and his family in a report on government corruption.
But Litvinovich stuck to her findings, saying she relied on various media reports that had never been challenged in court — implying that they were true.
Her report, posted on April 22 on the web site Election2012.ru, is titled “Power of Families. The Government. Part 1.” It targets the families of 18 senior officials, including Audit Chamber head Sergei Stepashin.
The report, which took three months to produce and had five co-authors, never directly accuses anyone of corruption but claims that officials along with friends and families “are controlling cash flows that go from the state budget to private, mainly offshore, coffers.”
As for Stepashin, his family is involved in businesses that have benefited from the activities of the Audit Chamber, the report says.
One example it gives is this year’s acquisition of Bank of Moscow by VTB, where Stepashin’s wife, Tamara, is a senior vice president. It says Bank of Moscow, which tried to fight off the merger, faced a check by the Audit Chamber last year.
Stepashin’s son Viktor allegedly received a stake in unspecified Cyprus-based companies affiliated with East Line group, which owns Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. The report says he acquired the stake after the Audit Chamber opened a check into East Line in 2001.
It also says a longtime associate of Tamara Stepashina, Moscow Metrostroi head Vladimir Kogan, had a business dispute with former Moscow metro chief Dmitry Gayev in 2010. Gayev was fired in February and is under investigation following a check by the Audit Chamber.
Another bank linked to Tamara Stepashina, Promstroibank, received cut-rate leases on three buildings on Ulitsa Bolshaya Lubyanka in downtown Moscow in 1999, when her husband became prime minister, the report says.
The Audit Chamber admitted in a statement Tuesday that Stepashin’s family members have business interests but denied nepotism.


TITLE: Hotel Experts Say Internet, Economy Key
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Efficient Internet marketing, highly qualified personal and an effective economy are the key factors for the successful development of the hotel industry, hotel experts said at the 39th general assembly of the European Hotel Managers Association (EHMA) in St. Petersburg last week.
The EHMA assembly, which gathered 450 of the most influential representatives of at least 350 leading European hotels from 28 European countries at the city’s Grand Hotel Europe, met to discuss the trends and problems of the hotel and tourism business in the post-crisis period.
Participants in the meeting, which was held in Russia for the first time, agreed that the Internet and social networks had become one of the major instruments for the world’s tourism and hotel business in recent years, and concluded that the future of tourism marketing belongs to new technologies. 
“Surveys show that up to 80 percent of people look for information on the Internet when planning a trip. About 40 percent of people also gather tour information from their friends on Facebook or other social networks,” Sergei Korneyev, head of the Russian Tourism Industry Union, said at a press conference dedicated to the meeting. 
“We can say that the Internet has completely changed tourism marketing, and we should do our best to use those tools for our work,” Korneyev said.
Pieter Bierwirth, President of the EHMA, also said that computers, the Internet and modern technologies embody a new stage in the hotel industry development, and compared them to the appearance of automobiles and planes.
In addition to Internet marketing, the other top priorities for the successful development of Russia and St. Petersburg’s tourism and hotel business in the post-crisis period will be high quality service, an effective economy and qualified personal, Korneyev said. 
“These factors seem to be the most important ones, at least for the local hotel business today,” he said.
Korneyev said Russia’s hotel industry, which is undergoing a boom in the construction of new hotels, “needs to take care of providing more well-trained personnel for those new hotels.”
“In recent years, St. Petersburg, for instance, got many new hotels, new hotel chains; the competition grew. But we need to think about how to provide all those hotels with highly qualified staff,” he said.
Korneyev said the tourism industry was coming out of recession faster than many other fields, and had grown by 7 percent in 2010. 
“However, in this situation our main task is not to give way on quality and economic effectiveness. We hope to learn a lot about those aspects from our international colleagues at the [EHMA] meeting,” he said.
Bierwirth said that although the hotel industry was highly dependent on the political and economic situation, and could not therefore solve every problem on its own, it still should be able to take certain effective anti-crisis measures.
In general, “the key to a hotel’s success includes three major components: The product, the price and good marketing,” Bierwirth said.
“Another important factor is getting the right people to work at the right place,” Bierwirth said.
Bierwirth said the global crisis had affected the hotel industry in different countries to varying extents.
“For instance, in countries and cities that offer both leisure and business tourism, hotels suffered less during the slump in the economy. At the same time, countries located a little outside the center of Europe, like Portugal, also suffered more,” Bierwirth said.
“In fact, there are good aspects in any crisis, because it makes you think how to improve,” he said.
Michel Fernet, first vice president of the EHMA, said hotels should always be ready to react quickly to any challenges.
“For instance, a key issue for many hotels in today’s restless times is security. When in India, there were bombings in hotels, they stationed more police there and tourists came back,” Fernet said.
Bierwirth said the EHMA delegation, which was meeting for the first time in a non-EU country, “was amazed to see the local development” of the hotel industry.
“Russia is obviously ready for a big leap forward,” Bierwirth said.
EHMA was founded in Rome in 1974 as a non-commercial association that unites professional managers of top-class hotels.  Its members stated aim is to strive to improve the quality of service and to promote Europe as a tourism destination. The association includes eight Russian members.

TITLE: Industrial Land Ripe For Redevelopment
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson 
and Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: There are currently 48 industrial zones in St. Petersburg, covering a total of 10,500 hectares — land that is ripe for developing into mixed-use projects, according to one local real estate consultant.
St. Petersburg is a suitable place for the development of mixed-use projects, says Kyle Patching, business development director at Maris CB Richard Ellis consulting company, because industrial zones are being moved out of the city center to its outskirts, leaving dozens of industrial premises — often in prime locations — that could be turned into complexes containing both residential and commercial real estate, as well as educational centers, retail space and entertainment facilities.
Such a trend on the local development market would, however, be greatly dependent on the support of the local authorities, including the simplification of construction permit procedures, provision of favorable tax rates and sale of industrial sites at discounted prices, Patching said at a presentation of the mixed-use concept last week. 
City Hall would also have to amend current legislation to simplify the procedure for reclassifying land plots and buildings from one category into another, for example, from industrial to residential, and guarantee the construction of transport infrastructure and services. 
In exchange, Patching said, City Hall would see the creation of new complexes, new jobs and increased tax payments to the city budget.
The developers of such projects would in turn have to guarantee the restoration of cultural heritage sites and the creation of non-commercial and social premises where necessary, he said. 
Patching, a native of Canada, drew on foreign projects as examples of successful mixed-use complexes, but added that the experience of international architects would have to be “Russified” by working with Russian partners to make it appropriate and effective on the local market.
Mixed-use projects often incorporate social programs, such as kindergartens, schools and colleges, economy-class housing and social housing for students, young families, pensioners and former residents of communal apartments. 
The construction of mixed-use projects would also ease one of the city’s most pressing problems, according to Patching — its traffic jams. 
“With the appearance of mixed-use complexes, there will no longer be any need to drive to work or to a store at the other end of the city, so the traffic on the city’s roads will be considerably lighter,” he said, while admitting that such initiatives require investment in infrastructure and a well thought through approach to prevent misjudgements in selecting the function of such complexes and in their adaptation. 
Olesya Ruslyakova, a representative of the public-private-partnerships department of City Hall’s Committee for Investment and Strategic Projects, said at the meeting last week that the administration was in theory interested in such projects, but that the developer would have to take responsibility for managing the complexes for 10 years after their completion to ensure that construction work was carried out properly. 
Mixed-use development projects on industrial sites have not had much luck so far in St. Petersburg.
Irina Anisimova, real estate development director at Sestra River Developments, the company in charge of the construction of the Petrovsky Arsenal mixed-use complex, said the project was being delayed due to difficulties in obtaining permits.
“Our main difficulty is getting approval for architectural views of our project from St. Petersburg’s chief architect,” she said.
Anisimova said the complex, to be built on the territory of an old weapons and tools factory located in the center of St. Petersburg’s resort suburb of Sestroretsk, would comprise 20 buildings that will combine both residential and commercial functions. However, the city’s chief architect has repeatedly delayed approval for the construction of a 20-story residential building to be located outside the area.
“We don’t know the exact reasons for the delay, which is dragging on for a second year now. However, it is preventing us from providing the project design documents for official state analysis and from beginning construction,” she said.
Anisimova said the company’s efforts to obtain all the permits and documents legally had already made the project’s development take much longer than they had expected, adding that the project’s investors were dissatisfied with the situation.
So far, the American investors in the project have already invested $42 million. Ultimately, the project will see $350 million in investment, she said.


TITLE: Gasoline Retained For Domestic Motorists
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant 
and Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government banned exports of refined petroleum products on April 28, as the country grapples with fuel shortages in several regions.
“I think that in May we must satisfy our own demand with the help of export cutbacks. As of today we have made an agreement that oil companies will deliver all volumes [of gasoline] to the domestic market,” Deputy Energy Minister Sergei Kudryashov said at an emergency meeting with oil companies.
The Energy Ministry and several major oil firms agreed at the meeting to “completely halt” exports of refined oil products in May.
Gasoline prices are not likely to increase by more than 5 percent in the medium term, Kudryashov told journalists after the meeting.
Russia exported only about three million tons of refined oil products in 2010 — a fraction of total oil and gas exports, which are mostly made up of unrefined products.
Officials have reported scenes of “panic” at filling stations in the Tomsk, Belgorod and Voronezh regions in western Russia, which have been hardest hit by gasoline shortages.
Kudryashov said the Belgorod region is the worst hit. Officials from the region revealed Thursday that Rosneft had temporarily imposed fuel rationing at its stations in April, limiting sales of gasoline to 20 liters per vehicle.
Shortages have been building since Prime Minister Putin told oil firms in February to restrain retail prices. The situation came to a head last weekend, when almost all independently owned gas stations in the Altai region, on the border with Kazakhstan and Mongolia, ran out of fuel.
The Energy Ministry said in a statement Thursday that supplies had been restored in the Altai region, but shortages have also been felt in Lipetsk, Kemerovo and Tula, where supplies of high-octane gasoline are down to three to five days, the ministry said.
Other affected regions include Novosibirsk and Sakhalin. Interfax reported that some fuel blends had begun to run out in Smolensk on Thursday.
Oil companies have blamed the shortages on government support for car sales, which resulted in a boom of 1.91 million units sold in 2010, up 30 percent on 2009, and a simultaneous policy of suppressing gasoline retail prices.
LUKoil vice president Leonid Fedun said in comments posted on the company’s web site Wednesday that the “stocks have been eroded not because of exports, but because of high demand.”
He said the government’s successful cash-for-clunkers program — introduced to help the auto industry recover from a 50 percent crash in sales in 2009 — “threw millions of cars onto the market that want gasoline.”
But Kudryashov said at a Cabinet meeting attended by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday that the export of high-octane gasoline had gone up 67 percent, causing the deficit on the home market.
In response, Putin told Kudryashov to prepare a decree to hike export customs duties by the end of the day Thursday.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, following the cabinet ministry briefing also said that, starting May 1, export duties on gasoline would increase.
“[Putin] meant gasoline. By the end of the day, concrete instructions [on the increase of duties] will be given.”
Putin said Kudryashov had some explaining to do as to why the world’s largest oil producer has problems with gasoline.
“Last year we produced 505 million tons of oil — more than Saudi Arabia. So we cannot be experiencing any shortages. I am asking you to look into it carefully,” he told Kudryashov.
Kudryashov also said that not all Russian producers were prepared to make the switch to a more modern emissions standard, Euro 3, originally scheduled for Jan. 1 of this year.
Putin asked ministers to keep the switch to Euro 3 on track and coordinate the move with fellow customs union members Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Putin also tried to appease the oil companies, asking Kudryashov at the Cabinet session to look into ways of lowering the tax burden on oil companies and fixing gasoline shortages in Russian regions.


TITLE: Sberbank Raises Corporate Loan Portfolio, Aids Startups
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Sberbank said Wednesday that its total corporate loan portfolio had expanded 2.1 percent in the first quarter of 2011 to reach 4.9 trillion rubles ($176 billion), and announced the launch of a new product aimed at supporting first-time entrepreneurs.
“We want to create a system that will simplify the lives of small-scale entrepreneurs and stimulate them to do business,” said Sberbank’s deputy chief executive officer, Andrei Donskikh.
The program to finance startups — aimed at those without business experience — will be customized according to demand and piloted this year, Donskikh said. “Unfortunately nobody else in the country offers this service at the moment.”
He admitted, however, that those looking to create a business from scratch faced a whole variety of administrative hurdles — which they often did not have the education to overcome — and that it was only within Sberbank’s scope to address a fraction of those.
Donskikh said Sberbank’s acquisition of private investment bank Troika Dialog, announced in March, was boosting the institution’s position in some sectors of the market.
The legal agreements finalizing the tie-up will be signed in May, he added, before consultations with regulators in different countries will allow Troika Dialog to become a “100 percent daughter company of Sberbank” in the fourth quarter.


TITLE: Experts Defend Price of Roads
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A panel of government officials and experts met for the first time last Wednesday in an attempt to dispel the idea that road building is so corrupt that Russia’s notoriously bad roads are much more expensive than in Europe and the United States.
“When roads are badly built, people blame corruption. You have to separate the flies from the meat patties; it’s not so simple,” said government road technology expert Mikhail Pozdnyakov.
The Russian version of Esquire magazine calculated last summer that a new 48-kilometer road being built in Sochi, at nearly $8 billion, might be built for the same price out of foie gras or caviar.
The perception of road building as synonymous with graft is not completely unfounded.
Road building is one of the most corrupt sectors, according to  recent analysis by the National Anti-Corruption Committee. Research showed that, while the budget for roads has significantly increased and the price of materials has gone down, new roads continue to be of poor quality and old roads are not being repaired, committee chairman Kirill Kabanov said.
“We are at the level of the early 20th century,” Kabanov said. “We have some of the most expensive roads, but even the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway is full of potholes.”
Russia’s roads cost about the same as in some European countries, or even less, according to research by a branch of the Transportation Ministry. The most common price of one kilometer of one lane for one car is 8 million rubles in Russia, while in Germany that price is 43 million rubles, the research found.
Roads may seem more expensive because the price of the land, about 30 percent of the cost, is included in the price tag; in Europe, the cost of land is not.
For the last 20 years, very little funding has been allocated to road maintenance, and small problems escalated into large ones, Pozdnyakov said. Small cracks became gaping potholes.
Plans for roads and technologies are outdated, and there are not enough resources to develop new methods. High prices for electricity, ineffective bureaucracy, lack of infrastructure and the vast size of the country contribute to the high price and bad conditions of motorways.
Truckers who carry much heavier loads than they should contribute to the disintegration of roads.
The Transportation Ministry has plans in the works that include a web site that will document road expenses, road repairs and the organization of stricter regulatory systems.
“There is a whole set of hardships; something needs to be done,” said Moscow State Automobile and Road Technical University professor Eduard Kotlyarsky.
A bill recently submitted to the State Duma might make quality guarantees necessary for all state projects.

TITLE: Women More Likely to Default on Loans
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Cars, apartments and refrigerators are what Russians most often look to finance, data collected by the Mail.ru search engine Go.mail.ru indicate.
According to the State Statistics Service, the average monthly salary in the country last year was 20,383 rubles ($743), received by about one-third of all Russians, which makes these items a luxury for the majority of people.
Despite high interest rates and rigid and inconvenient repayment plans, some Russians still take advantage of growing opportunities to borrow money.
Some look for loans with one eye on the option of defaulting.
The Mail.ru study suggests that women are more interested in loan products than men and are more likely to look for ways to avoid returning the money they have borrowed.
Last year was marked by a strong interest in car loans, which, with 37 percent of all searches, were the leader among the five most popular items for which Russians needed to borrow money.
Market statistics support the findings of the study. Last year, the car market grew 31.4 percent to reach 1.9 million vehicles, with production also doubling to 1.2 million vehicles.
Second most popular on the list of things Russians would like to buy but do not have enough money for are apartments: 25 percent of all searches for loans are those for apartments. This is despite the fact that real estate prices, especially in Moscow, continue to grow and, according to some experts, may reach pre-crisis levels by the end of the year.
The study also says that, compared with 2009, interest in car loans had grown by 15 percent in 2010 and interest in mortgages had grown by 93 percent.
Consumer loans were the third most popular loan among Russians, Mail.ru said. About 20 percent of all searches are targeted to them.
Russians are also interested in ways to finance their own houses and businesses, the study suggests. More men than women search for these types of loans, according to the data from Mail.ru.
Among the ways people prefer to receive loans, according to their search habits, are cash (38 percent), loans that require no paperwork (30 percent) and urgent loans (20 percent).

TITLE: Mergers & Acquisitions Increase by $45.8 Billion
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The volume of mergers and acquisitions on the Russian market showed annual growth in 2010 of $46.8 billion, but no structural changes were seen in the field, which remains skewed by a few big foreign deals.
“The first impression of a balanced market with a strong share of cross-border transaction does not reflect the underlying deal activity,” said a report released by the international accounting and consulting firm KPMG.
The price tag attached to M&A activity in 2010 was $95.6 billion, up from $48.8 billion in 2009 — but still well shy of the 2007 pre-crisis high of $159.4 billion.
The three largest transactions in 2010 and the first quarter of 2011 — VimpelCom’s purchase of Wind Investments, LUKoil’s buyback of 19.2 percent of its shares owned by Conoco Phillips and BP’s 9.5 percent purchase of Rosneft as part of a $16 billion share swap — represented about one-third of total M&A value.
The communications and media sector accounted for 35 percent ($33.5 billion) of all deals, the oil and gas sector for 21.2 percent ($20.3 billion) and the metals and mining sector for 10.3 percent ($9.8 billion).
However, Russia accounts for less than four percent of the global volume of M&A — and, without a few big foreign deals, the sphere would consist almost entirely of domestic activity.
The KPMG report highlights that, of the M&A activity recorded in the first quarter of 2011, 47 percent was inbound — foreign companies acquiring Russian assets. This is a significant upsurge on the 2010 figure when only 14 percent of total activity was inbound.
The BP-Rosneft share swap, included in the figures, however, has not been finalized and is facing a slew of legal challenges from BP’s billionaire partners in TNK-BP.
KPMG said they expected M&A activity in Russia to continue to grow through 2011. The fulfillment of the promised privatizations of state-controlled companies will play a significant part in this process, the report said.


TITLE: English Taught For Sochi 2014
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee on Wednesday hired EF English First to teach the language to an astounding 70,000 people as part of preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Under the contract, the international firm will educate athletes, Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee staff, service providers — including taxi drivers and hotel maids — judges and volunteers. Most of the training will be carried out online.
“With our help, the Olympians will master modern spoken English,” English First vice president Bernard Shearer said at a news conference.
Headquartered in Switzerland, English First beat six other contenders for the contract, whose value wasn’t disclosed, organizing committee president Dmitry Chernyshenko said. He didn’t name the competitors.
One reason for the choice, Chernyshenko said, was the firm’s experience in giving language training for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
English First will provide training on a much larger scale at the games in the Black Sea resort of Sochi than in Beijing, where, according to Shearer, the company helped improve the English of 6,000 of the organizing staff.
The firm’s global operations encompass 500,000 students every year, said its chief learning officer Christopher McCormick.
Online classes with live teachers and access to online educational content will hopefully be available in May 2012 and end with the opening of the games in February 2014, Shearer said.
The Olympics language courses come on the heels of government plans to create a more multilingual federal bureaucracy.
The Economic Development Ministry unveiled a strategy for innovative development in December that calls for 20 percent of federal officials to be fluent in foreign languages by 2020 — a group that would number 140,000 people.
A ministry spokesman was unable to say Wednesday whether the strategy, which was scheduled to be submitted to the Cabinet in February, was actually handed in.
The ministry’s plan establishes fluency in English as a requirement for newly hired civil servants starting next year.
President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are able to communicate in the language. The Olympics organizing committee’s Chernyshenko is a “good” speaker, Shearer said.
But some top federal ministers, such as Sports and Tourism Minister Vitaly Mutko and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, are largely confined to Russian.
Career bureaucrats have the option of enrolling at the presidential Academy for Civil Service for language classes.


TITLE: Medvedev’s New U.S. Role Model
AUTHOR: By Mark Feygin
TEXT: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin clearly had the most influence on Dmitry Medvedev in the beginning of Medvedev’s presidential term in 2008. But starting a year or so later, Medvedev’s political role model began to shift away from Putin and toward U.S. President Barack Obama when Medvedev started adopting Obama’s style, language and, most importantly, many of his political views.
It is fully possible that Obama’s decision to run for re-election inspired Medvedev to seriously consider doing the same. During an interview on Chinese television on April 12, Medvedev promised to make an official announcement about his intentions in the nearest future.
A day later, Putin said an early announcement on the 2012 race could  inhibit the work of government employees. “If we now send out some nervous signals, half of the administration and the bigger half of the government will stop working because they expect some change,” Putin said.
Many analysts concluded that this disagreement was a sign of a more intense struggle among Kremlin and business clans. But for the oligarchs, who remain the only real source of power in Russia, the choice between Medvedev and Putin is not of fundamental concern. They know that either candidate will defend their main corporate interests in exchange for loyalty.
Therefore, personality differences between the two leaders are largely irrelevant. Of course, Medvedev’s strong points are his young age, modernization program and his better reputation in the West. Medvedev has been more successful than Putin at exporting a liberal image of a new generation of Russians and is therefore in a better position to satisfy the oligarchs’ desire to keep their assets in the West secure, as well as helping to whitewash their own questionable reputations.
Another factor in Medvedev’s favor is that Putin is showing unsettling signs of excessive narcissism and an almost obsessive desire to remain in power indefinitely.
But there may be another reason to explain why Medvedev has come out of his shell in recent weeks. Medvedev, by nature, tends to be very dependent on others, a trait that was typical of the Soviet intelligentsia. He has been strongly influenced by a range of people throughout his career, from his wife, Svetlana, to his political benefactor, Putin.
Incidentally, Obama has already started forming his campaign staff and starting fundraising activities. In a sense, that sets an example of the West’s commonly accepted standards for political practice that Medvedev can try to emulate. According to Medvedev’s understanding, Russia can only become a respected member on the global arena if it plays the game according to generally accepted rules, with the main principles being free and fair elections and a limit to the number of terms a leader can serve in office.
One can assume that Medvedev was not particularly delighted to learn that Western diplomats compared to him Robin rather than Batman. He is also visibly frustrated by the inability to turn his proposals into reality and his powerlessness to run a proper and legitimate Western-style election campaign. His desire to play the leading role, like Obama, rather than to be perpetually cast as a sidekick will prod him into taking actions that challenge Putin’s vanity and seniority status in the tandem.
Nonetheless, Putin is unlikely to put up strong resistance to Medvedev’s candidacy. This approach could win points for Putin, adding credence to the myth that he actually supports political competition. It also dovetails nicely with Medvedev’s passion for modernizing, however superficially, Russia’s political process. Instead of following Putin’s lead, Medvedev will likely try to run a Western-style presidential election campaign, replete with pseudo-debates, Internet campaign ads, fundraisers and even campaign rallies with cheerleaders.
You can see Medvedev’s admiration for modernization when he shows an almost childlike delight with the Internet and techno gadgets of every type. His eyes light up when he talks about implementing a new technology or approach that would take Russia out of the “analog” 20th century and into the “digital” 21st century, with Skolkovo leading the way.
Modern election campaign tactics and practices are no exception. Medvedev will seek to duplicate Obama’s own campaign as much as possible from start to finish. But these are only superficial similarities and do not reflect the fundamental difference between the two political systems. Ultimately, it will likely be just another inept attempt by Russia to copy the West.

Mark Feygin, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 1995, is a political analyst.

TITLE: From Silver Age to Stupidity
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: Last week, there was an unmarked anniversary: 120 years since the birth of an extraordinary Russian, Nikolai Bruni. The only reason he is remembered at all is because he belonged to an illustrious family descending from a Swiss-Italian nobleman who moved to Russia in the early 19th century. It is an artistic dynasty whose members remain active on the Russian arts scene to this day.
Bruni was 47 when he was killed in 1938. His life puts a human face both on Russia’s artistic, cultural and technological efflorescence in the early 20th century and, in one of history’s strangest twists, on a deliberate destruction of the nation’s best and brightest and a senseless squandering of its potential.
Bruni was one of the first graduates of a St. Petersburg lyceum founded by Prince Vyacheslav Tenishev. Its other students included writer Vladimir Nabokov and poet Osip Mandelstam. Bruni spoke several languages, finished the St. Petersburg Conservatory and in his early 20s became an accomplished poet in a fertile artistic movement known as Russia’s Silver Age.
Today, the country’s culture is a provincial backwater. Few people in the world know any Russian actors, watch Russian films, listen to Russian music, give high-profile commissions to Russian architects or are aware of Russian visual arts. Russian writers have a marginal presence, at best, in world literature.
It was not so at the start of the 20th century. Leo Tolstoy was a worldwide literary giant, plays by Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky were staged in theaters around the world, Igor Stravinsky shined in music, and the artistic achievements of Vasily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich, among others, determined the course of development in visual arts.
According to Karl Marx, culture is but the tip of a firmament comprised of economics, science and technology. In these areas, too, Russia excelled and was poised for greatness. It started developing later than the United States and Germany, but after its 1905 defeat in the Russian-Japanese war it covered a lot of ground in less than 10 years. It was a continent-sized country with boundless natural resources and a large population and offered excellent education for those who had a chance to go to school.
It was also a melting pot not unlike the United States, in which numerous nationalities from the periphery of its empire assimilated into Russian culture. When World War I broke out in 1914, Bruni volunteered and was eventually sent to a flight school. He became a hero pilot, earning a St. George’s Cross for exceptional bravery and flying skills. He learned enough about airplanes to become an engineer and designer, working on early helicopters and teaching at the Moscow Aviation Institute.
During the 1930s, Bruni was repeatedly arrested and exiled, first on charges of espionage and then, when he was ordained as an Orthodox priest, for his religious beliefs. He was executed in the gulag, and the fact that he had been a pioneer of Soviet aviation and had fought for the Reds during the Civil War didn’t help him. His wife and six children lived in exile, not learning about his fate until 1956. Actually, they were never told that he had been shot, only that he died at a labor camp.
Bruni came of age in a country that had all the potential of becoming a leading world power. Why it decided to turn upon itself and destroy this enormous potential will probably always remain a mystery. Bruni was one of tens of thousands of brilliant, educated and accomplished young men who fell victim to Russia’s own criminal stupidity.

Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.


TITLE: The curse of humppa
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Elakelaiset (Pensioners) is the band responsible for resurrecting Finnish pre-war “humppa” music — which before them was loved only by old men in Finland — and making it popular in its native country and beyond. They take Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and turn it into “Smells Like Humppa” or make “Jaakarihumppa” (Infantry Soldier Humppa) out of Europe’s “The Final Countdown.”
Formed as a side project of Kumikameli, a hardcore punk/metal band, the musicians take nicknames based on their mothers’ maiden names, dress in old suits picked up at flea markets and get the audience dancing with their 200-beats-per-minute humppa songs.
Singer and guitarist Jarmo “Toppo” Koponen, known in Elakelaiset as Onni Waris, spoke to The St. Petersburg Times by phone ahead of the group’s first local concert this weekend.

<b><i>What was the idea of the band and how did it start?</b></i>
Elakelaiset was founded in 1993, so we are about 18 years old. We were playing as Kumikameli, another band, and we were at a bar one night when the owner said we could drink as much as we wanted. So we drank like maniacs and at some point in the night we started to jam, and we were too drunk to play anything but blues and humppa!
The next day we started to think, “How about forming a band that dresses like old people and makes humppa versions of rock and roll classics? 
That started the whole thing. The first gig was the same summer at the Provinssirock festival. We invented the band in May, and the first gig was in June. 

<b><i>So you came up with a full repertoire in one month?</b></i>
We forgot all about Elakelaiset, and when Provinssirock was approaching, we started discussing it. “OK, I’ve made this version of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Living Loving Maid.’” And my friend said, “I’ve made a version of [Europe’s] ‘The Final Countdown,’ and another guy said, “I’ve made a version of The Clash’s ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go.’ 
Then we started playing and noticed that it sounded stupid when we played in a normal lineup — two guitars, bass and drums — so we changed instruments, and I kind of lost the competition and was forced to play the keyboards, which I had never ever played before. 
It was supposed to be a joke for one summer only; we would play Provinssirock and some other festivals and kill the project in the autumn. 
But people wanted more and more, so we revived it for a few years, and then committed suicide again. We killed the band twice, in 1993 and 1996 I think, and in 2007 we had the whole year off, because it’s a hard and dangerous game, because everything is based on drinking.
We always drink like maniacs and then we break instruments and ourselves — hands and legs and heads, and somebody’s always covered in bandages or in hospital. So we had to take those breaks to survive from the curse of humppa.

<b><i>What’s the history of humppa?</b></i>
It’s pre-war music. I’ve been reading all these books about the history of Finnish music, jazz and things like that, and after the swing era, in the 1920s or something like that, Finnish musicians made their own version with their own instruments, which were accordion and violin and things like that from American jazz music, and it mutated into humppa and jenka, which is like humppa, but a bit slower.
So [the Finns] made a hillbilly version of American jazz, and that became jenka and humppa.
It’s old people’s music here. That’s the whole idea of the band — it means “old people” or “pensioners.” So we dress like old people and play old people’s music, but the music is cover versions of rock and roll classics.

<b><i>How do you come up with the lyrics?</b></i>
The lyrics are mostly stories about old people’s lifestyles. When we formed the band, we were all in our thirties and had no idea about how old people lived. We thought their life was all about taking medicines and having difficulties with getting an erection, and alcohol, and things like that. All the songs were about that, and they’re still almost the same, but slowly, as we ourselves  are getting older, the lyrics have changed a bit. We now make fun of how old people are treated in Finland — because they are treated very badly.
Old people and veterans are put in old people’s homes and all their relatives forget about them there and try to get their money. So we mix these funny alcohol stories with this darker side of old people’s lives.

In Russia, Finland is seen as a social paradise.
No. If you have a good job, then you are OK. A lot of my friends have fallen through the cracks of the Finnish social system. They are unemployed, and unable to study more or change their occupation. A lot of my friends are in their forties, and they are pensioners because of mental problems or an injured mouse hand or injured neck from sitting all day, so it’s not a paradise.

<b><i>How do you choose your songs?</b></i>
The process of choosing the humppa songs was very easy when we were unknown. We got permission to use the translations quite easily. So we wrote Finnish lyrics, the “humppa lyrics,” and then we translated them into English and then we sent those to copyright owners, and waited for a “yes” or “no.”
But now we have grown bigger, the record companies know how we treat the songs, like Bon Jovi or Iggy Pop. It’s getting more and more difficult, because the original artists think that we  are making fun of them and trying to make them look ridiculous, and it’s very hard to get permission for their songs.
When we made our last full album, “Humppa United,” which has 15 songs, we translated more than 70 songs and got permission for only 19, of which we recorded 16. It was the same problem with “Humppasirkus,” the album before that.
At the moment we’re trying desperately to make a new album, and I think there’s more than 80 songs in circulation. We’re trying to get translation permission through Scandinavian companies, and our German record company is also trying to get permission through companies in Germany, France and England. It’s very difficult.
The songs come all the time. We listen to the radio, or a guy might send me some links, like: “Edwyn Collins’ ‘A Girl Like You’ is a perfect song for humppa” or “A-Ha’s ‘Take on Me’ would be a nice song.” So I write the lyrics and then translate them, then we try to get permission. 
It could be our favorite song, like Deep Purple’s “Burn” or “Smoke on the Water,” or it could be a song that we totally hate, like “Barbie Girl.” Even a shitty song can make a very good humppa version. It’s just pure luck if it works.
So we have to have a lot of songs to get good ones.

<b><i>Does that mean that a lot of your work remains unrecorded?</b></i>
Yes. We used to record the songs and then try to get permission. And we had a situation when we almost made a double album called “Speed of Sound” and couldn’t release it.
But luckily someone leaked it onto a torrent network. It has some of the best songs we’ve ever recorded — like R.E.M.’s “Man on the Moon,” the Ramones’ “Pet Sematary” and AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” — but never officially released. So after that we decided, “First we get the permission, and then we get the studio and try to make the songs work.”

<b><i>But can you perform those songs in concert?</b></i>
We can perform some, but not all of them. We got some nays, like “American Jesus,” a Bad Religion song, that we used to play all the time but got a letter saying that we are not allowed to perform this song anywhere.
Another funny situation was when we made Scorpions’ “The Wind of Change.” Our version was “Sauerkrauthumppa” which was about problems after eating a lot of sauerkraut, like farting and things like that. We got a letter saying that we are not allowed to record it or play it ever: Forget the song totally.
Of course, we performed it at the first concert of our German tour, and their lawyer was at the gig and they tried to sue us. But luckily we’re all virtual characters. Onni Varis, which is me in Elakelaiset, does not exist. We’re only make-believe persons.
But our German and Scandinavian record companies were in trouble. If they had sued us, they would have gone down because of the huge sum of money they wanted from us. We got away with a very serious warning. “Don’t do anything like that again,” [they said]. “OK,” we lied, and we played the song every night.

<b><i>You were one of the nominees to represent Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest last year. How did that happen?</b></i>
A Finnish television company sent us an email asking whether we would be interested in trying to make the Eurovision Song Contest, and we said, “OK, we can do it,” and then we made this song called “Hulluna Humpasta,” stealing bits and pieces from here and there, and luckily we didn’t go through. We came third, which was perfect for us.
If we had gone through, we would have been in real trouble, with our banned songs and ripping off other artists. It could have been a disaster for the whole band and the Eurovision system.
It was very funny; people are very serious about this happening, but here it’s a kind of gayish joke. In Eurovision forums we were almost lynched, people were threatening to pour ashes over their head and destroy their televisions if we were chosen to represent the country.

<i>Elakelaiset will perform on Saturday, May 7 at Zal Ozhidaniya, 118 Naberezhnaya Obvodnogo Kanala. Tel. 333 1069. Metro Frunzenskaya / Baltiiskaya.</i>

TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Sting will perform at the upcoming St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in June. 
The announcement came from Deputy Governor Mikhail Oseyevsky via his Twitter account late last week, Fontanka reported.
“A great gift for residents!” Oseyevsky tweeted.
During the SPIEF, presidents and oligarchs congregate while the city is largely blocked off by the police. 
Local residents will certainly be in need of some kind of gift due to the harassment they endure every year from officials, who close the roads, and the police, who refuse to let residents into districts near the SPIEF’s venues unless they can show a passport proving they are registered in the area.
In 2008, billionaire Roman Abramovich arrived at the forum in his luxury yacht, reported to be worth $300 million.
Abramovich came to Palace Square to enjoy a show by ex-Pink Floyd member Roger Waters — reputed to be a harsh critic of capitalism — complete with the iconic Pink Floyd inflatable pig, which is seen as embodying capitalism.
Waters’ show was also broadly advertized as a gift to St. Petersburg from the SPIEF, though Waters said he knew nothing about the forum. Local organizers denied Waters’ words, saying that all the information had been sent to the singer long before the show. 
Unlike Waters, Sting is not hiding the circumstances of the concert, proudly announcing that it is “the opening of the 15th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum at Palace Square in St. Petersburg, Russia.”
Nor does he need to be coy. Sting’s reputation has been odious since the news of his November 2009 secret gig for Gulnara Karimova, the daughter and heir of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, was leaked to the press in February 2010.
Sting, who is believed to have been paid between $1.5 million and $3 million for the gig, told The Guardian that he thought the show in Tashkent had been organized by UNICEF. UNICEF said this was not the case.
“Dictatorship” was how Mariya Lyubicheva, the singer with the electro-punk band Barto, described the current Russian political regime when speaking in Smolensk late last week. 
While there, she found time to speak in support of the imprisoned local political activist Taisiya Osipova. Osipova has been imprisoned for alleged drug possession since November when she was seized by counter-extremism Center E operatives.
Few people believe that Osipova, who suffers from diabetes, was actually in possession of drugs. Planting illegal substances or ammunition on people is said to be common practice to crush dissent in the Russian provinces.
Lyubicheva herself was under investigation by Center E for six months for a song line that mentioned “burning police cars.” In Smolensk, she dedicated this song — called “Gotov” (Ready) — to Osipova.


TITLE: Life as an astronaut’s wife
AUTHOR: By Joy Neumeyer
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — In May 2009, Lena De Winne stood on a barren steppe in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, as she watched her husband, Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne, launch into space. Struggling to remain the composed wife amid cameras and a crowd of observers, she alighted on an unexpected source of emotional support: 1980s power ballad “The Final Countdown,” which she played on her iPod as the shuttle disappeared into the atmosphere.
“I created for myself an alternative reality, because if you take it too seriously, you can go completely crazy,” she said.
Russia’s recent celebrations commemorating the 50th anniversary of Yury Gagarin’s first human spaceflight gave little hint of the wives who watch astronauts back on Earth. According to De Winne, women’s absence from the most recent reprisal of the country’s love affair with cosmonautics is unsurprising. As she recounts in her new book “My Countdown: The Story Behind My Husband’s Space Flight,” the Russian space program has long failed to take into account the human relationships that ground cosmic achievements.
“In the Russian space tradition women aren’t welcomed. They’re marginally tolerated,” she said. Frank De Winne’s flight marked the first time that wives were allowed to attend the launch at Baikonur.
The book is the first time an astronaut’s wife has opened up about her experiences.
“No one has ever shared these impressions, no one had the strength for it,” said Yulia Romanenko, who is married to Frank’s crewmate Roman Romanenko. “[The wives] always lived through this in a very small group and didn’t want to share those worries they had to encounter during their husbands’ flight.”
Even astronauts themselves haven’t always been privy to their wives’ perspectives. “I understood the worries of our relatives and dear ones … but it was a male point of view,” said Gennady Padalka, another of Frank’s crewmates.
Lena, who grew up in Moscow, didn’t plan on marrying a man whose job involved periodic stints away from Earth. “I’m not a space fan. I haven’t been since the age of 7,” she said. At that time, like all her school friends, she idolized the Soviet Union’s space program and its great hero, Gagarin. She went on to earn a master’s degree in electrical engineering at Moscow’s Power Engineering University, and later an MBA in the Netherlands and a Ph.D. in psychology in the United States.
She met Frank in 2000 at the European Space Agency in Holland, where she was working as an interpreter. She tends to shrug off the aura of celebrity surrounding her husband’s profession, which brings frequent requests for autographs and eager questions of how astronauts urinate in space.
“It’s an industry like any other,” she said. “They are intelligent people, they’re focused people, they’re capable people, they’re healthy people, but they’re humans nevertheless.”
After all, Frank “can fix computers, but he can’t change a roll of toilet paper,” she said.
For Lena the idea of shedding light on her and fellow wives’ experiences came as she video-chatted with her husband one day while he was on board the International Space Station. As she complained about a writing project she was working on, Frank’s crewmate Bob Thirsk “floated by” the screen and suggested that she try writing about the mission.
“And you don’t say ‘no’ to an astronaut in space,” she said.
Lena notes that being married to an astronaut is not necessarily the most difficult of “long-suffering spouse” positions. “To my mind [being the wife of] a submarine captain is much worse, because they disappear for six months and you can’t even be in touch.” During his mission, Frank says he and Lena talked on the phone “several times a day,” in addition to once-weekly family videoconferences and e-mails.
Video also allowed the crew and their families to enjoy morale-boosting events such as a call with actor Patrick Stewart, stalwart captain of the Starship Enterprise on the television series “Star Trek.” But frequent communication brought its own difficulties.
For some of the crew’s wives, daily routines served as the best antidote to fear or loneliness. “The thing is, I have two children, so I had no time to miss [Roman]. I also have an interesting job,” said Yulia Romanenko, who heads the economic planning department at Star City.
But no spouse could fully relax until the entire mission had been completed. For Yulia, the most worrisome moment of the voyage was the landing, which her husband told her was “the most crucial moment”: “My heart simply jumped out of my chest.”
For Lena, the most difficult experience was not takeoff or landing, but the disregard she says the families received from Russian authorities in the days before the launch. At Baikonur, the couples were housed in different hotels and allowed little contact beyond stiff news conferences. Officials justify such separation as a necessary precaution against germs and distraction, but in the book Lena likens it to “emotional rape.”
“The whole attitude towards families is that it’s something to the side,” she said. “According to the Russian mentality, they’re all heroes, and when you’re a hero you need to suffer.”
Lena and Yulia see wives’ recent attendance at Baikonur as a hopeful sign that Russia is beginning to acknowledge the earthly women behind its cosmic idols.
“Maybe in the future we’ll even be able to live together,” Yulia said, laughing. “But there’s little chance of that.”

TITLE: <i>the word’s worth</i> No Pain, No Exit
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Âőîä: entrance, door, input, 
admission

Âőîä (entrance) and âűőîä (exit) are crucial words to know and among the first we foreigners master in Russia.
In the earliest stages of my Russian language acquisition, I recall being aggrieved that the words were deceptively similar, distinguished from one another solely by the little squiggle of the letter “ű.” This was after I misread them at a metro station, and the ÂŰŐÎÄ door I was trying to enter was smashed smartly in my face by a flood of departing passengers.
Pain is a great motivator. I never made that mistake again.
Like many common Russian words, âőîä and âűőîä have multiple meanings that English conveys with a variety of words. To start with the basics, âőîä, from the verb âőîäčňü (to enter), is any kind of door or entryway. It may be useful to know that what English-speakers call the front door is âőîäíŕ˙ äâĺđü, but a back door is either ÷¸đíűé or ńëóćĺáíűé âőîä. If you live in a fancier place than I do, your front door might be ďŕđŕäíűé âőîä (formal entrance), which is also the term used for the main or grand entrance to a theater or public building.
It’s very important to know that the ubiquitous âőîä âîńďđĺů¸í sign means “no admittance” or “no trespassing.” Its lengthier version, ďîńňîđîííčě âőîä âîńďđĺů¸í is usually rendered as “no admittance to unauthorized personnel” in English. I take issue with the standard metro sign íĺň âőîäŕ (literally, “no entrance”). It doesn’t sound categorical enough. If I were queen of the metro, I’d paint big ÂŰŐÎÄ signs on the door, to be mentally translated as “exit only.”
Âőîä also refers to admission or entry to a place. In English, we ask: How much do tickets cost? In Russian you might ask: Ńęîëüęî ńňîčň âőîä? (How much is admission?)
There are lots of ways to get into a place in Russian: âőîä ďëŕňíűé (there is an admission fee), âőîä ńâîáîäíűé or áĺńďëŕňíűé (entrance is free of charge), or âőîä ďî áčëĺňŕě (admission by ticket), ďî ďđčăëŕřĺíč˙ě (by invitation), ďî ďđîďóńęŕě (by pass or employee/state ID), or ńňđîăî ďî ďŕńďîđňó (only by passport).
If you’re trying to get into a nightclub, in addition to ôĺéń-ęîíňđîëü (face control) and äđĺńń-ęîä (dress code), you might be asked to pay ďëŕňŕ çŕ âőîä (cover charge).
On the computer, your e-mail program has directories for âőîä˙ůčĺ and čńőîä˙ůčĺ ńîîáůĺíč˙ (incoming and outgoing messages). In the real world of offices, these files are often notebooks marked âőîä˙ůŕ˙ and čńőîä˙ůŕ˙ with the word ęîđđĺńďîíäĺíöč˙ (correspondence) understood. In English, these all might be referred to as the inbox and outbox. In the virtual world, after typing in your ëîăčí (login) and ďŕđîëü (password) you hit a button labeled âőîä or âîéňč. This is called âőîä äë˙ çŕđĺăčńňđčđîâŕííűő ďîëüçîâŕňĺëĺé, which in English is usually “for registered users only.”
Âőîä is also used to describe any kind of arrival or entrance. When translating, it’s often easier to turn the Russian noun âőîä into an English verbal phrase. Some entrances are risky, like âőîä íŕ đűíîę íîâîé ôčđěű (a new firm getting into the market). Some are delusional, like this not-so-grammatically correct claim: Âîçěîćĺí âőîä âîéńę ÍŔŇÎ č ŃŘŔ â Ňóđęěĺíčńňŕí ďîä ďđĺäëîăîě áëîęŕäű Čđŕíŕ (NATO and U.S. troops might be deployed in Turkmenistan under the pretext of a blockade of Iran).
Oh, wait — maybe I just entered an alternative reality.

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

TITLE: Seventeen years on the shelf
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Before the premiere of “Master and Margarita,” the actors who starred in the first big screen version of the once-banned Mikhail Bulgakov novel observed a moment of silence.
They were paying respect to a number of their fellow artists, such as Soviet great Mikhail Ulyanov who played Pontius Pilate in the film, who had died in the 17 years between its filming in 1994 and its release last month.
Those 17 years in hiding have given the film an air of mystery — even if the reason for the long delay was, banally, director Yury Kara’s conflict with the producers — and its release was much awaited by critics and the actors themselves.
“I got used to the fact that this film would never appear on the screen, and you can’t return the past,” said Igor Vernik, who played the Judas figure. “There’s something unbelievable in what has happened. Something that disappeared, like water into sand, has returned.”
“It’s like the famous saying in the novel that ‘manuscripts don’t burn,’” said Vernik, who was 28 when he started making the film.
Bulgakov’s novel, a satire that tells of the devil’s visit to atheistic 1930s Moscow, interspersed with the tale of Pontius Pilate and Christ, circulated in samizdat in Soviet times, and could never have been filmed.
Kara’s was the first attempt, and the long delay in its release has had local newspapers speculating about a curse connected to the film.
Critics have not been kind to Kara’s film, saying it is kitschy with unconvincing special effects and often crude scenes. The nudity had one critic comparing Kara to Italian erotic film director Tinto Brass.
“In the beginning of his career, Kara was a very strong director who was able to make decent Soviet films. But things he does now are just below the understanding of a human being,” said Kommersant film critic Mikhail Trofimenkov.
Kara made his reputation with “There Was a War Tomorrow,” about schoolgirls finding out about Stalinist repressions on the eve of World War II, which came out in 1987. His trashy gangster saga “Thieves-in-Law,” added to his fame even if it was called “kitsch” by critics.
A 2005 television version of “Master and Margarita” by Vladimir Bortko, who made the successful version of Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog” is the only other Russian attempt to film the book. It was also panned by critics.
Kara’s film has, however, been praised for gathering together a crew of stars. Margarita is played by Anastasia Vertinskaya, daughter of the famous singer Alexander Vertinsky and former wife of Nikita Mikhalkov. Composer Alfred Schnittke wrote the soundtrack, his last one before he died in 1998.
And many have seen it as a view into the Russian 1990s. A Vedomosti critic wrote that if there were a time when the book could have been filmed then that was the time.
Actors who took part in the film said it had an influence on them even if it only came out in the next century.
Nikolai Burlyayev, who plays Yeshua in the film, is now a noted supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church.
“This role was like a gift of life for me,” Burlyayev told Komsomolskaya Pravda before the premiere.
Burlyayev did note that he wouldn’t let his kids see the film, and critics have picked out the infamous Voland’s Ball, where Hitler and Stalin look-alikes appear with lots of nudes, as particularly kitsch.
One scene, however, that did get approval at the premiere was when one of the main characters, Ivan Bezdomny, played by the now famous actor Sergei Garmash, is trying to get into the Kremlin, screaming, “The beasts are living here!”


TITLE: Explosive Reality TV
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, someone planted explosive devices on the set of the long-running reality show “Dom-2” in a bizarre incident that was the most serious in the show’s seven-year history.
Contestants are supposed to “build their love” on the show by getting together with each other. At the same time, they are halfheartedly building a house that will be the main prize. The show is routinely condemned by State Duma deputies and conservative groups as a corrosive influence on the nation’s youth.
Early on Sunday morning, security guards found a backpack filled with explosives on the set’s perimeter fence. It went off, seriously injuring one of the guards. Police later found a second unexploded device.
The show continues to air, albeit with heightened security precautions. Despite the cameras filming the contestants day and night, no one has yet been charged with the attack.
The tabloids soon named as a suspect a man from Novokuznetsk in Siberia, theorizing that he was obsessed with the show and had been turned down as a contestant.
Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote that the man, Sergei Lyapin, 38, was a junkie “hooked” on the show. It said he auditioned for the show in the winter but was rejected.
Lifenews.ru quoted a Novokuznetsk police spokeswoman speculating that Lyapin “got mad” after being turned away.
But after his reputation had been shredded by the tabloids, investigators said Lyapin was only being questioned as a witness.  
More complex theories floating around involved two current contestants on the show: a “black” wizard and a diet guru.
Moskovsky Komsomolets surmised that Lyapin may have been in love with Inna Volovicheva, a contestant since 2009, who has written a book on her dramatic weight loss.
In an extraordinary synopsis, “Dom-2’s” web site says Volovicheva went into the show hoping that a contestant who is a “white wizard” could lift a spell jinxing her love life. But then she began an affair with another contestant, who is a “black wizard” called Vladislav Kadoni. Their on-and-off relationship hit a rough patch recently after he had cosmetic surgery to increase his penis to 30 centimeters long.
Other rumors discussed on the Internet included a possible gay relationship between Lyapin and the black wizard, Lenta.ru news web site wrote, citing a forum for fans.
In a more banal explanation, journalists found a letter posted on a forum in which Lyapin apparently complained of ill-treatment by “Dom-2’s” security guards.
With its grainy footage and endless discussions of relationships, “Dom-2” is an acquired taste, although its fans say it is soothing and an escape from politics.
In 2009, “Dom-2” lost a court case brought by a group of conservative viewers who said it had “erotic” content and should be aired only after 11 p.m. Its already high ratings reportedly went up.
Not surprisingly given the enormous stream of contestants passing through — some only for days — the show has been involved in numerous crime investigations over the years.
In 2005, a fraudster wanted for a real estate scam went on the show as a contestant, only to be recognized by the victim and arrested.
In more grim incidents, in 2008 a former contestant was found strangled on a roadside outside Moscow. Last year one ex-contestant was stabbed to death and another was arrested after allegedly trying to sell African women as prostitutes.


TITLE: Fusion without the confusion
AUTHOR: By Jacob Gordon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s dining scene is famous — or infamous — for its many fusion restaurants. Food connoisseurs tend to look down on the idea of mixing various national cuisines at random, and they have a point: Any given chef might be comfortable with either Duck a l’Orange or Peking Duck, but probably not both. Many St. Petersburg restaurants that attempt to combine completely unrelated cuisines succeed with one but fail with the other. Scanning the menu at Vesna (Spring), an elegant eatery that offers various European and Russian dishes alongside Asian staples like spring rolls, just such considerations sprang to mind. Suspicions were enhanced by the presence of a large sushi section on the menu; the sheer volume of so-so sushi in St. Petersburg gets wearing after a while.
Happily, whatever skepticism we had proved largely unfounded. On the whole, the food at Vesna lives up to the positive first impression created by its interior, which masterfully combines intimacy and a ballroom-like showiness. The latter trait comes mainly from the huge central ceiling lamp, which is in a style suggestive of the Finnish designers Alvar and Aino Aalto. The lamp hovers over a small bar; the seating areas off to the side have a cozier feel, with divans instead of chairs against the walls and a few bookshelves here and there lined with pottery and old hardbacks. (The book selection is endearingly odd: one of the thick tomes put up for display is a 19th-century German physiology book). 
The subtle lighting also contributed to the sense of intimacy. Another section in the rear is done in a very different style, with black-and-white floor tiling, large candles on the walls, a fountain in the center of the room, and a view into the kitchen, which should please aspiring chefs. Thought and care have gone into every corner of the space, which also features small, lovely touches like peonies outside the front door and in the windows. The one caveat is the music playlist, which is set a shade too loud.
We decided to test the restaurant’s versatility by ordering both European and Asian dishes. As far as starters were concerned, the Asian one came out on top. The carpaccio of beef fillet with tomatoes, lettuce and curry sauce (360 rubles, $13) and the red tuna carpaccio with dried eggplants and sundried tomatoes (390 rubles, $14) were both ordinary: The beef and tuna were bland and flavorless, and though the curry sauce in the beef dish was appealing, the tuna carpaccio had no saving graces. The spring rolls with prawns and ginger vegetables and Teriyaki sauce (390 rules, $14), on the other hand, were marvelous. The rolls were crunchy but not tough, the prawns fresh and tender, and the classic combination of ginger and teriyaki proved particularly winning.
The main courses, in contrast, were all on the same (high) level. The salmon tornado baked in foil with mint, leeks and aniseed nectar (590 rubles, $21.50) was notable for the freshness of the fish, which had obviously been cooked in the herbs it was served with, and the inspired use of mint, rather than the ubiquitous dill. The Mediterranean dorada (780 rubles, $28), which came from a large selection of grilled dishes, was even better: The fish’s flavor was mild but pleasing, and was complemented perfectly by a cream sauce served on the side. Once again, its freshness was laudable, and the vinegary salad served on the side proved an effective contrast. 
Our Asian main course, the fried duck breast slices with vegetables, shitake mushrooms and cashew nuts marinated in soy and honey sauce with sesame seeds (590 rubles, $21.50), was also excellent. The soy and honey sauce saturated the whole dish without turning it thick or greasy, and the meat was tender and flavorful, although some might wish the fat had been removed.
Having been so impressed by our main dishes, we couldn’t resist ordering dessert, and — predictably — we weren’t disappointed. The fruit cheesecake (250 rubles, $9) was adorned with something that should be much more common in Russia than it is: fresh berries. The truffle cake (230 rubles, $8) was smooth and suitably decadent — a wonderful end to what was, on the whole, an intensely satisfying experience.
<div class="divider">&nbsp;</div>
<h1>THE GUIDE</h1>

<b>Fusion Frenzy</b>
While dubious fusion restaurants seemed to reign supreme in the ‘90s, their number has now dwindled and their quality has generally improved. 

<b>Okean</b>  
Of St. Petersburg’s many fusion restaurants, this is one of the few to justify its potpourri of cuisines: Every country that has a coastline qualifies as a supplier. Unfortunately, this does not guarantee consistency, as the food ranges from delectable to disappointing. The restaurant’s location in a ship floating on the Neva likewise has its ups and downs.
<i>14a Prospekt Dobrolyubova [next to Birzhevoi bridge]. Tel: 986 8600 </i>

<b>ParmaSushi</b>
ParmaSushi offers Italian and Japanese cuisine under the same roof. It has an original, welcoming interior and absurdly fast service, but unfortunately, the heart of the restaurant falls flat. The Italian menu is a distracting conceit, while if one sticks to the Japanese side of the menu, the restaurant is simply just another decent sushi place in a sea of less expensive alternatives.
<i>52/14 Nevsky Prospekt. Tel: 331 9090</i>

<b>Terrassa </b>
This rooftop restaurant on the top floor of the former Vanity fashion boutique offers a fusion menu that includes Italian, Georgian and Asian cuisine. It may be overpriced, but this place is more about style than substance, with great views of the city’s skyline.
<i>3 Kazanskaya Ulitsa. Tel: 937 6837</i>

TITLE: Rock Critic Troitsky Ready to ‘Protect the People’
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Life has not been easy for legendary rock critic Artemy Troitsky since he moved into public activism: He has already lost a libel suit and now faces another, this time for calling a pro-Kremlin rock star a “poodle.”
But in a recent interview, Troitsky said he would not back down.
“I don’t want to don the armor of a protector of the people, but circumstances are driving me to it,” Troitsky, 56, said last week in his Moscow apartment, holding his infant daughter Lidia in his arms.
Troitsky’s resume includes the job of founding editor of Playboy Russia, launched by Independent Media in 1995, but he has been devoting increasing amounts of time to public campaigning instead of entertainment journalism.
Last year, he supported the drive to save the Moscow region’s Khimki forest, slated for partial demolition to make way for a state-backed highway, and campaigned for justice over a road accident that left two women dead after their car collided with the sedan of a LUKoil vice president.
Troitsky’s criticism of the policeman involved in the LUKoil probe resulted in a Moscow court slapping him with a fine of 130,000 rubles ($4,700). His legal troubles continue to pile up, as now he faces a defamation lawsuit from Vladimir Samoilov, ex-member of the prominent Russian new wave band Agata Kristi.
Samoilov, who has a seat in the Public Chamber, had reason to be disgruntled, as Troitsky called him “[Vladislav] Surkov’s poodle” in a January documentary on pro-Kremlin rock stars by Ren-TV.
Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s deputy chief of staff and propaganda mastermind, has long had ties to Samoilov, who, with his brother and ex-bandmate Gleb, allegedly even produced a rock record by Surkov in 2003.
Troitsky actually compared Samoilov to British ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair, not a dog, but did so by referencing a scandalous 2002 music video by George Michael in which a cartoonish Blair was shown as a poodle following his master, then-U.S. President George W. Bush.
“I don’t think that Blair would go and file a lawsuit against George Michael,” Troitsky said, adding that he was not seeking to settle the matter out of court.
Samoilov filed two lawsuits, one civil and one criminal, over the “poodle” comment, with both to be reviewed this month, Troitsky said. The critic faces a fine of 1 million rubles ($36,000) in the civil suit and up to a year in prison in the criminal one.
It remained unclear why Samoilov waited almost four months before suing. He was unavailable for comment, and his aide told The St. Petersburg Times by telephone that the spat is a “private dispute between the two individuals.” He spoke on the condition of anonymity since he was not authorized to speak on the matter.
Troitsky said he doubted that Surkov was behind the suit, but added that he “would like him to appear in court as a witness.”
His other court battle has not gone well so far. Last month he lost a defamation suit by ex-Moscow police officer Nikolai Khovansky, who has also requested that a criminal case be opened against Troitsky on charges of slander.
Khovansky was the first to arrive on the site of a crash involving the car of LUKoil official Alexander Barkov in Moscow in February 2010. He was also the first to put the blame on the victims, doctors Olga Alexandrina and Vera Sedelnikova, who was driving the Citroen that collided with Barkov’s Mercedes.
The story sparked a scandal, with critics, including many media, accusing police of covering up for Barkov and his driver. Still, investigators cleared both men in the incident last fall.
The bitter Troitsky went on to award a prize for “the year’s worst cop” to Khovansky in absentia during a show by rock band DDT in November. But the concert, ironically, was attended by Khovansky’s daughter, who told her father of the “anti-prize,” prompting him to sue.
Khovansky, who has since resigned, said Troitsky’s actions “insulted the whole police force,” Slon.ru reported in April. But Troitsky, who has appealed the ruling of Moscow’s Gagarinsky District Court, said it had nothing to do with Khovansky’s colleagues.
Khovansky “violated presumption of innocence” when he named the perpetrators of the road accident after barely spending any time at the scene, Troitsky said. “He behaved unprofessionally and, in a certain sense, illegally.”
Troitsky said the lawsuits and the proceedings, which he described as an “utter farce,” have convinced him that legal attacks on him were punishment for activism.
He could not say who could be behind the campaign, but pointed out that he has done a lot to ruffle the feathers of state authorities.


TITLE: Mosfilm Uploads Celluloid Classics to YouTube
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian film lovers can explore a treasure trove of Soviet films as legendary movie studio Mosfilm has posted dozens of its most famous films on YouTube for anyone to watch for free.
The films, legendary for many Russians but often little known in the West, include the comedies of Georgian-Russian director Georgi Daneliya, “Gentlemen of Fortune” and “Mimino”; “The White Sun Of The Desert,” a much-loved adventure story set in Central Asia that is always watched by cosmonauts before a space launch; and classic melodramas such as Eldar Ryazanov’s “A Cruel Romance” with Nikita Mikhalkov and “A Railway Station for Two” starring the late Lyudmila Gurchenko.
Every week, the studio will upload five new films onto the channel, the studio said in an official press release, and expects to have 200 by the end of the year.
Other films uploaded include “Andrei Rublev” and “The Mirror,” two works by one of Russia’s greatest art-house directors, Andrei Tarkovsky.
“For us, the YouTube project is very important and interesting,” Karen Shakhnazarov, director of Mosfilm, said in a statement on the studio’s web site.
“The aim is to give users the possibility to legally watch high-quality video material and prevent the illegal use of our films,” he said.
The studio has worked with YouTube to remove pirated versions of their films uploaded onto the site.
“Most of the films will be uploaded with subtitles in different languages so people from different countries can watch Mosfilm pictures,” Shakhnazarov said.
At the moment, nearly all the films are up with subtitles in English, with only a couple found without any. The 1991 film “Tsareubiista,” or “Assassin of the Tsar,” starring English actor Malcolm McDowell as an insane asylum patient who claims to have killed the Tsar and Oleg Yankovsky as a doctor, is up in both English and Russian versions.
The channel has had more than 170,000 views since it started last week, and as of Monday, almost all of the films had more than 1,000 views. A few films see noticeable drops in viewing when the film is in two parts. Tarkovsky’s critically acclaimed 3-hour, 25-minute film about the great 15th-century icon painter Andrei Rublev saw 2,156 views of its first part and only 414 of the second part.
The most popular film so far is “Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession,” a 1973 comedy starring acclaimed actor Yury Yakovlev that sold 60 million tickets when in Soviet cinemas and has had more than 15,000 views on YouTube already.
The channel is already in the top 50 of Russian channels on YouTube.
Mosfilm already screens 582 of its films on its web sites for free and with subtitles in different languages, and for a small payment viewers can download the films, but the YouTube channel is a far more accessible and speedy variant.
Mosfilm acquired its present name in 1935 but the studio began working in the 1920s after the Bolsheviks nationalized film production.
The studio’s symbol, the “Worker and Collective Farm Worker” statue, is shown at the start of each film and is as well-known in Russia as the fanfare and searchlight of 20th Century Fox films.