SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1657 (19), Wednesday, May 25, 2011
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TITLE: Concert Canceled Over Name
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Prosecutors have forced a local club to cancel a pop concert because of the band’s name, St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office said on its web site Monday.
A concert by the popular Moscow-based rappers Narkotiki (drugs) scheduled for Sunday was canceled two days beforehand when prosecutors warned the director of the club Zal Ozhidaniya that it would violate three Russian laws, including the law on drugs and the law on advertising, if the concert went ahead.
Narkotiki intended the show to be the band’s “final concert of the spring season,” during which it was planning to showcase its new music video.
According to the prosecutors’ statement, the Admiralteisky District Prosecutor’s Office “found that the band’s name [...] contains a direct reference to a narcotic” while examining whether the concert complied with the federal law.
They added that the “publishing of information about the performance of the given band at the Zal Ozhidaniya club, including on the Internet, […] has in itself effectively amounted to the propaganda of drugs among the population.”
“Such advertising of a narcotic oriented at mass audiences is unacceptable and constitutes a violation of the federal law,” the prosecutors continued.
According to the band, the prosecutors warned that the venue would face “problems” if it went ahead with the concert and the musicians would find themselves in a pre-trial detention cell.
A caller from the prosecutor’s office also allegedly said that “we have been watching the band closely for a long time and are wary of its name and general message,” musician Yevgeny Gorbunov wrote on the Lookatme.ru web site.
The band, which spells its name in Latin letters or uses the abbreviation NRKTK on concert posters, said it has never had any problems performing at clubs before.
Formed in 2007, Narkotiki gained popularity two years later, after releasing its debut and so far only full-length album “Planeta Lyubov” (Planet Called Love) as a free download.
The band has performed at clubs across Russia and abroad since then.
The band is known for touching on social issues. Its song “Menty Veselyatsya” (“The Cops Are Having Fun”) deals with arbitrariness and torture by the Russian police.
Narkotiki’s members have spoken against using drugs in interviews and stressed that the band’s name has nothing to do with promoting drugs.
“Narkotiki is a funny word, it’s used to scare kids,” Gorbunov has been quoted as saying in the band’s biography on Lastfm.ru web site.
“Real junkies say ‘speed,’ ‘crack;’ they have a language of their own. Narkotiki is a word from our childhood.”
Narkotiki’s director Diana Novichikhina said the band had performed more than 100 concerts and had never experienced any problems resulting from its name.
“What can we say? We are saddened, upset, stunned and disappointed once again about how the system works in Russia,” Novichikhina said by phone from Spain on Tuesday.
The venue, Zal Ozhidaniya, announced the cancelation on its web site Friday without giving any reason for it. Speaking on Tuesday, the club’s art director Sergei Belyakov declined to comment.
“I really don’t want to elaborate on this subject, because I know what kind of state I live in,” he said.
TITLE: Jury Finds Nationalist Gang Members Guilty
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A jury at St. Petersburg City Court last week found guilty 12 of 14 members of a nationalist gang charged with about 20 hate crimes, including the murders of African students and local ethnographer Nikolai Girenko.
The organizer of the Borovikov-Voyevodin gang Alexei Voyevodin, nicknamed SVR (the Russian initials of the phrase Made In Russia), was found guilty by the majority of the jury of 20 crimes, including gangsterism, murder, inciting national hatred and illegal weapons distribution, and may face a life sentence, Kommersant daily reported.
Voyevodin founded the gang in 2003 together with another known city nationalist, Dmitry Borovikov, (nicknamed “Kisly” (Sour). The gang members were detained three years later. Borovikov was shot dead when he resisted arrest.
The group was charged with a series of attacks on natives of Central Asia, the North Caucasus and Africa, as well as a number of murders, including those of two close acquaintances of the gang’s leaders.
The gang was charged with killing students from Senegal and Korea, a citizen of Uzbekistan, and Russian academic Girenko, who had acted as an expert witness on nationalism and hate crimes for the prosecution during earlier trials of neo-Nazis.
Girenko was killed in June 2004 when he was shot through the door of his apartment.
The gang members also killed two of their acquaintances, Rostislav Gofman and Alexei Golovchenko, whom the group decided to get rid of, fearing the two could turn them in to the police and implicate all the gang members in their crimes, Kommersant reported.
The city court began hearing the case in 2009, but the trial was interrupted in 2010 when Voyevodin attempted suicide by cutting his throat with an emery board. Voyevodin was subsequently sent to a psychiatric commission that found him mentally competent.
The jury acquitted two defendants: Pavel Gusev and Andrei Malyugin. Gusev was charged with participating in an attempt on the life of a Nigerian citizen, and Malyugin was charged with one of the most notorious murders committed by the gang. The investigation alleged that in April 2006, Malyugin, armed with a rifle inscribed with a swastika and the words “skinhead” and “death to Negroes,” hid in the entrance arch of a building. When a group of Africans returning from Apollo club approached the archway, Borovikov gave a signal to Malyugin, who fatally shot a student from Senegal. Malyugin was also charged with the murder of an Uzbek citizen who worked as a driver, Kommersant reported.
The jury also acquitted two other defendants, Sergei Rumyantsev and Roman Orlov, of charges of gangsterism and an attack on a Nigerian citizen, but found them guilty of the murder of the Korean citizen and of their former gang co-members Gofman and Golovchenko.
Orlov confessed to the murder of Gofman and Golovchenko, but said he had only committed the crime because he feared punishment from the gang if he failed to do so. The jury was convinced by his argument that he had committed the crime under pressure and agreed that he deserved leniency, Kommersant reported.
The Borovikov-Voyevodin nationalist gang consisted of members aged from 16 to 22 years old. Some of them had previous convictions, the Prosecutor General said earlier.
The final verdict on the case and the sentences are to be announced at the St. Petersburg City Court in mid June, the court’s press service said Monday.
TITLE: Fashion Week Gets Underway
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Savenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The third Aurora Fashion Week kicked off in the city Monday, heralding the start of a week packed with shows, seminars and exhibitions devoted to the art of fashion.
The program of Aurora Fashion Week comprises both elements for professionals of the fashion industry as well as a wide range of events for the general public. The organizers hope this approach will ensure that the fashion week has an educational and cultural value as well as giving fashion professionals a sphere in which to interact and exchange ideas. By including diverse events, the organizers hope to demonstrate the scale and significance of the fashion industry and attract interest from a broad specter of the public, and not only die-hard fashionistas.
The third installment of Aurora Fashion Week is in fact far more than seven days of events. Petersburgers got a taste of the project back in April, when a festival of films devoted to legendary clothes designers was held at the city’s movie theaters, and during the International Economic Forum in June, the organizers have found an original way to promote the advice of American Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour: “Let’s shop, shop, shop!” by inviting people to take part in the “White Night Shopping” event. The latter event is part of the strategy of the organizers of the Aurora Fashion Week to achieve their aim of developing the designer clothes sector of the St. Petersburg economy and of the Russian economy as a whole.
This week, during the fashion week itself, audiences can watch 14 shows by designers including Arngoldt, Sergei Grinko, Tatiana Parfionova, Alexander Terekhov (Atelier Moscow), Angels At Home, Ndombi Stella and others. Ennio Capasa, a designer for the legendary label Costume National, will bring his C’N’C collection to St. Petersburg for the first time as part of the event. This year, Aurora Fashion Week is part of the official program of the Year of Italy in Russia, and the organizers promise an explosive program by designers who embody the renowned impeccable Italian style in their work.
In addition to traditional catwalk shows at the Manezh exhibition center, this season’s event incorporates exhibitions, installations and a show room, as well as seminars.
An exhibition by the eminent fashion photographer Andrea Varani will be held at the Manezh, while fans of local fashion queen Tatiana Parfionova will be able to get their hands on her new book and ask the designer questions at Dom Knigi on Wednesday, May 25 at 7 p.m.
Events will continue well into the summer. In July, an exhibition titled “Fashion 80” focusing on the eccentric trends of the 1980s and created especially for Aurora Fashion Week by the eminent fashion critic Alexander Vassiliev will open at Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibition runs from July 11 through Sept. 10 and will pay homage to what is known as the most ironic era of the fashion industry, showcasing creations by Terry Mugler, Issey Miyake, Jean Paul Gaultier and others. The show will be completed by music, film and conceptual video from the ’80s, enabling visitors to fully immerse themselves in the atmosphere of this iconic decade.
Artyom Balaev, Aurora Fashion Week’s producer, said at a press conference Monday that he hoped that such exhibitions would become a regular occurrence and would help to lay the foundation for the opening of a Fashion Museum in St. Petersburg.
In addition to the catwalk shows and exhibitions, a workshop program titled “Fashion and Web” is currently being held, exploring the themes of the convergence of fashion and the Internet, techniques of cooperation and mutual influence between the two. Fashion and consumers have been brought closer to one another by the Internet, said Balaev, explaining the inspiration for the workshop.
Participants of the “Fashion and Web” workshop will be eligible to win special prizes from the Domus Academy: Two summer study courses in Milan worth 3,000 euros each. The winners will receive their prizes on May 28 at the Manezh during the official closing ceremony of the workshop.
The prizes will be awarded by designers from the Frankie Morello fashion house, Maurizio Modica and Pierfrancesco Giglotti.
TITLE: Hair Awards to Help Raise Money for Kids
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Alternative Hair Show Visionary Award 2011, the culmination of the International Alternative Hair show in Russia aimed at supporting children suffering from leukemia, will be held in St. Petersburg on Saturday.
The event is being held with the aim of raising money for children suffering from leukemia as well as other blood-related cancers.
Visionary Award 2011 Russia is the final stage of a competition between Russian hairdressers and stylists, and will take place at 6 p.m. at the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace. The winners will go on to take part in the Alternative Hair Show 2011 World Show to be held in the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow on September 28.
All the money collected from ticket sales and from the sale of souvenirs purchased during the events will go to Gift of Life, a charity that under the patronage of the prominent Russian actresses Chulpan Khamatova and Dina Korzun helps children in St. Petersburg who are suffering from leukemia.
The event aims to attract attention to cancers that affect children and to help compile blood and bone marrow databases. The event also highlights the importance of regular examinations in order to diagnose cancer as early as possible. Arina Gaba, deputy executive director of the Gift of Life foundation, said the charity has already decided who will receive the money raised.
“One of the children whom this money will help is a boy from St. Petersburg who needs a bone marrow transplant, ” Gaba told The St. Petersburg Times. “The money will be used to help find a donor and to pay for the operation.”
Since its launch in 1983, the Alternative Hair Show has raised more than £8 million ($12.9 million) for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Research charity.
The money donated goes toward funding research projects that are carefully selected on the basis of advice from independent specialists in medical and scientific research.
The Alternative Hair Show enables eminent hairdressers and new emerging talents to demonstrate their skill and imagination. On show on Saturday will be work by specialists including Andrew Collinge, Angus Mitchel, Vidal Sassoon, TIGI and Dmitry Vinokurov.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Women’s Work
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The majority of housework is done by women in the average Russian family, according to recent research carried out by the VTsIOM polling agency.
Three quarters (74 percent) of Russian women are in charge of washing and ironing, 65 percent of them do the cooking, 60 percent clean the house, 57 percent wash the dishes and 44 percent of women pay the bills.
Men in Russia are mainly (56 percent) in charge of DIY. Their second major responsibility is paying the bills (16 percent).
Only 3 percent of men do the washing and ironing, about 4 percent do the cooking and cleaning, and 5 percent wash the dishes.
All the other chores around the house are done by men and women together, including shopping for food (51 percent), organizing leisure time (56 percent), buying gifts (56 percent) and looking after pets (31 percent).
Baltika in Turkey
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg-based Baltika Breweries has begun delivering beer to Turkey, Interfax reported.
The first delivery was of 10,000 liters of Baltika 7 Export.
Beer will go on sale in Ankara, Izmir, on the Antalya coast and in Istanbul and its suburbs.
Baltika intends to expand the number of beers available for delivery to include the non-alcoholic beer Baltika 0 and Baltika No 3 Classic.
Baltika has 11 breweries spread across nine regions in Russia as well as a brewery in Azerbaijan. The majority of the company’s shares (85.6 percent) are owned by Baltic Beverages Holding (BBH) owned by Carlsberg.
Board Of Contention
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg’s Human Rights Council was outraged to find that a memorial plaque had been unveiled to Grigory Romanov, the First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Communist Party, from 1970 to 1985, Interfax reported.
“Romanov was a real Stalin follower, an executioner of culture and art, a pathological racist who persecuted people like Georgy Tovstonogov [former head of the Bolshoi Drama Theater in St. Petersburg], Dmitry Likhachyov [an academic], Daniil Granin [a writer], Arkady Raikin [an actor and comedian], Olga Bergolts [a poet] and who expelled from the city Joseph Brodsky and Sergei Dovlatov, the pride of Russian literature,” the declaration of the council said.
“Putting up that plaque is a slap in the face of St. Petersburg, a city that suffered so much at the hands of Bolshevik power,” it said.
The human rights representatives said such memorial plaques harm the city’s reputation and turn it into “a center of propagation for revanche Communist ideas.”
The memorial plaque to Romanov was unveiled on May 17 on the facade of building 1/5 on Ulitsa Kuibysheva where Romanov lived.
Family Reunited
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — All four children will be returned from an orphanage to Vera Kamkina, a St. Petersburg woman whose parental rights had been temporarily restricted over concerns she was financially unable to care for them.
The ruling was made by St. Petersburg’s City Court, Interfax reported.
“For the moment, we have nothing against the family,” the city’s children’s ombudsman was quoted as saying. “The children love their mother and they want to go back to living with her. What is also important is that Kamkina has found a job and so can support her family financially.”
The Kolpino district court limited Kamkina’s parental rights in May 2010, taking her children into care at an orphanage for failing to provide for them. Kamkina was asked to pay 50 percent of her income in orphanage fees, but was allowed to visit her children, the youngest of whom was only 1 year and 8 months old.
TITLE: Liberals Hope to Register Party
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Four liberal opposition politicians asked the Justice Ministry on Monday to register a new political party that would seek to revert the presidential term to four years, free jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and, perhaps unsurprisingly, ease the rules for registering parties.
Keeping in mind that the ministry has only registered two parties in eight years, the leaders of the Party of People’s Freedom even notified the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe about their application, hoping that the added attention would increase their chances of being allowed to run in upcoming State Duma elections, said one of the leaders, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.
“A failure to register our party would mean illegitimate elections because elections without the opposition are … a special operation to seize and keep power,” another co-leader, former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, told reporters.
The other two co-leaders are former Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov and former Deputy Energy Minister Vladimir Milov.
Ryzhkov said the party counted a potential constituency of 10 million to 15 million voters, mostly educated residents in midsized and large cities.
The Party of People’s Freedom has branches in 53 of Russia’s 83 regions and more than 46,000 members, which means it fulfills the minimal legal requirements to qualify for a party, it said in a statement on its web site.
The Justice Ministry had no immediate comment on the application, which it has 30 days to consider. An analyst said the party had little hope of winning any Duma seats in December even if it were registered.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has called for a two-party system, similar to the one in the United States. Russia seemed to take a step in that direction last week with a shakeup at A Just Russia, which could leave the Duma, where four parties are now represented, with only three after the elections.
A Just Russia, a pro-Kremlin party that once tried to merge with the Communists, is one of two parties that the Justice Ministry has registered since 2003.
The other is the pro-business Right Cause party, which was registered in 2009 and won a new lease on life last week with billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov’s announcement that he would assume its helm.
Kasyanov acknowledged that Right Cause posed a potential threat to his party but dismissed it as an “imitational project” organized by the Kremlin. Right Cause is the only party so far that has called for President Dmitry Medvedev to run for a second term next year.
In a sign of the Kremlin’s support, Medvedev predicted last week that Right Cause would do well in the vote by “consolidating the right.”
Prokhorov, meanwhile, unveiled a tax- and bureaucracy-cutting platform for Right Cause over the weekend that he promised would help it place second in the Duma elections, behind Putin’s United Russia.
The Party of People’s Freedom wants to roll back some of the reforms supported by Putin and Medvedev, and it has prepared 12 bills that it plans to introduce in the Duma. These include softening legislation on political parties, slashing the presidential term to four years from the current six, releasing “political prisoners” Khodorkovsky and his partner Platon Lebedev, reforming the pension system and creating a professional, not conscript-based, army, Interfax reported.
The party will also field a candidate in the presidential election in March. The nominee will be elected through secret ballot at a party congress, Ryzhkov said.
TITLE: Presidential Candidates Receive Light Sentences
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINSK — Two former Belarusian presidential candidates were handed suspended sentences Friday on charges of organizing riots after last year’s disputed election.
The unexpectedly soft penalty suggests that President Alexander Lukashenko’s government may be sensitive to Western criticism of its crackdown on dissent.
A district court in the Belarussian capital sentenced Vladimir Neklyayev and Vitaly Rymashevsky to two years in prison each with a two-year suspension. Another four opposition activists were given suspended sentences of one and two years.
Prosecutors had asked the court to give Neklyayev and Rymashevsky actual prison terms. Friday’s ruling led to immediate speculation that Lukashenko’s government is responding to strong condemnation from the West after another presidential candidate, Andrei Sannikov, was sentenced to five years in prison a week earlier.
Two other candidates are still on trial awaiting a verdict, and another one has fled the country.
The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions, including a travel ban on Lukashenko and his officials, in response to his crackdown on the opposition.
About 700 people, including seven presidential candidates, were arrested when police broke up a protest against alleged fraud after the polls closed in last December’s election.
International observers strongly criticized the vote in which Lukashenko was declared the winner.
“Massive repressions and tough sentences are aimed to discourage people from going to the polls,” Rymashevsky said in court. “But I’m sure that even more people will come to the square after the next election.”
The 65-year-old Neklyayev said in his final words before the verdict that he wanted to “sweep away the rubble of dictatorship and was waiting for our neighbors from east and west, Russia and the European Union, to help us.”
Neklyayev was beaten by security agents during his arrest and later taken from a hospital bed to prison.
TITLE: City Hall Proposes Lie Tests
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow’s City Hall plans to introduce mandatory polygraph testing for all employees, legally requiring all Moscow government staff to follow members of its state tender commissions who take the tests on a voluntary basis.
Some 70 percent of tender commission staff have taken the polygraph test recently, and the city plans to amend its legislation to make the rest of its officials follow suit, department head Gennady Degtyov said, Interfax reported.
“I believe that officials whose work involves some kind of risk should undergo mandatory testing,” Degtyov said.
He said the bureaucrats will have to face the testing when taking a job at City Hall. The legislation making testing mandatory will be passed “soon,” Degtyov added.
Deputy Mayor Andrei Sharonov said Monday that lie detector testing for tender commission members is aimed to curb rampant graft. He pledged that more measures to step up transparency are to follow, but did not elaborate.
State tenders remain a corruption-ridden practice nationwide, including in the capital. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin personally ordered in December a suspension of city tenders for medical drugs over suspicions that some of them were rigged, though no criminal cases followed.
Law enforcement agencies such as the Federal Drug Control Service and the Interior Ministry subject employees to polygraph testing, but there is no federal legislation regulating such tests for all agencies — a related draft bill is still stuck in the Duma.
TITLE: Prokhorov Vows to Raise Right Cause to 2nd Place
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov promised Saturday to turn Right Cause into Russia’s second-largest party in the country with a pro-business platform that would change the country’s landscape over the next decade.
Prokhorov, worth an estimated $18 billion by Forbes in April, promised to push through measures to reduce bureaucracy and the social tax by capturing the second-largest majority after United Russia in State Duma elections in December.
“We have got to return to a 14 percent tax, leave small business alone, simplify paperwork and let small business work in peace,” he said on Rossia-1 state television, Interfax reported. “I think we won’t recognize the country in five to 10 years.”
He backtracked from a deeply unpopular proposal that he raised in November to expand the legal workweek to 60 hours, from the current 40.
Prokhorov announced last Monday that he would lead Right Cause, the only party to endorse President Dmitry Medvedev for a second term so far. Medvedev on Wednesday predicted that the party would do well in the elections by “consolidating the right.”
The party was formed in 2009 with the Kremlin’s blessing. It has 14 seats in regional legislatures nationwide and none in the Duma.
The revamp of the Right Cause party picked steam last week, as its ruling triumvirate said it was ready to clear out of the way for the charismatic billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, recently tapped for new party head.
Party co-leader Leonid Gozman said Friday that he and fellow co-leader Georgy Bovt would support a vote for Prokhohov to take the helm at a party meeting in June.
The party’s third co-leader, Boris Titov, also supports Prokhorov’s bid but might leave Right Cause, Kommersant reported.
Gozman said he would not seek re-election to Right Cause’s ruling council but would remain a party member.
He said by telephone that the three-leader structure was always viewed as a temporary compromise needed to create a right-leaning liberal-democratic party capable of “challenging United Russia’s monopoly on power.”
“The fact that we have come to terms with a first-rate businessman and that he has taken the risk [to head the party] means that the serfdom of Russia’s elite under United Russia will be destroyed,” Gozman said.
Bovt, a journalist by profession, said by telephone that he would “be glad to stay in the party if I may be of use.”
Prokhorov is unlikely to collect enough votes to replace the Communist Party as the second-largest duma faction, said Olga Mefodyeva, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies.
“There is no time to consolidate … the 20 to 30 percent of liberal voters,” Mefodyeva said by telephone.
A recent poll by state-run VTsIOM put the party’s public support far below the threshold for Duma elections.
TITLE: Billionaire Joins Putin’s All-Russia People’s Front
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Billionaire Alexander Lebedev announced Friday that he would give up his banking business because of harassment from the Federal Security Service and team up with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s All-Russia People’s Front.
The outspoken Lebedev would be the first Kremlin critic to join the front, which has been widely derided as a stunt to revitalize Putin-led United Russia before December’s State Duma elections.
He is also the second billionaire businessman to announce plans to enter politics after Mikhail Prokhorov said earlier in the week that he would lead the pro-business Right Cause party into the elections.
Lebedev’s decision met immediate suspicion from skeptics that he was trying to protect his business interests, although Putin’s spokesman quickly welcomed it.
Lebedev said on his blog that Our Capital, a little-known movement that he founded to oppose former Mayor Yury Luzhkov, would join Putin’s front to strengthen its anti-corruption dimension. “Our Capital has ample experience in uncovering graft, including at the federal level,” he wrote.
He also said harassment from the Federal Security Service, or FSB, had made it impossible to continue his banking business. “Why engage in business when it exists only under the condition of fighting the FSB?” he asked in an interview with Gazeta.ru.
Lebedev on Thursday uploaded a video to his site in which he accused FSB officers of money laundering. He removed the video shortly afterward, saying it was a preliminary version published by mistake. The 15-minute film has since surfaced on YouTube.
Lebedev, himself a former KGB official, has accused corrupt FSB and Interior Ministry officers of orchestrating a police raid on his National Reserve Bank last fall. In February, he published an open letter to Putin, saying he believed that a mafia group was raiding his business “under the guise of ‘carrying out orders from above.’”
Putin, who rose from the position of KGB agent in the 1980s to head of the FSB in 1998, is seen as the leader of the country’s security agencies.
Lebedev has styled himself as a liberal Kremlin critic, although he has never seriously challenged Putin or President Dmitry Medvedev. In 2006 he teamed up with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to buy a 49 percent stake in the country’s leading opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta. (The remaining controlling stake is held by the newspaper’s journalists.) In 2008, the two founded the Independent Democratic Party of Russia.
While the party has remained defunct, Lebedev, who is worth $2.1 billion according to Forbes magazine, has expanded his foreign media interests by buying London’s ailing Independent and Evening Standard newspapers.
Ilya Yashin, co-leader of the Solidarity opposition group, was stunned by Lebedev’s plans to join Putin’s front. “I know Lebedev is a decent man, and I do not understand why he would tarnish his reputation by joining a front of crooks and thieves,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
“The party of crooks and thieves” has recently become a catchphrase used by Kremlin critics to describe United Russia. The people’s front was assembled two weeks ago by clustering interest groups around it. Its 16 founding organizations include trade unions, business associations and veterans’ groups that are all largely pro-Putin. Putin has said the front will allow candidates to enter the Duma in the December elections without joining United Russia.
Ilya Ponomaryov, a Duma deputy with the Kremlin-friendly Just Russia party, suggested that Lebedev was probably just trying to protect his business. “An extravagant businessman like him will switch sides whenever its suits him,” he said by telephone.
Lebedev referred callers Friday to his spokespeople, who declined to comment. But the businessman has made several seemingly opportunistic political decisions in the past. After unsuccessfully running against Luzhkov in mayoral elections in 2003, he won a State Duma seat the same year with Rodina, a Kremlin-backed party formed just two months before the elections to take votes from the Communists. Once in the Duma, he joined United Russia but later left it for A Just Russia, which was created by a merger of Rodina and two other parties for the 2007 Duma elections.
He did not return to the Duma after the 2007 vote and announced the creation of the new party with Gorbachev the following year.
Also in 2008, Lebedev closed another newspaper he owned, Moskovsky Korrespondent, after it published an article alleging that Putin had an affair with an Olympic gymnast half his age.
He regained political office in March, when he was elected as an independent deputy to a district legislature in the Kirov region.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov reacted positively to the 51-year-old businessman’s plans to join the people’s front. “We can only welcome any new members to the front,” he told Interfax, adding that there were similar applications from “practically every region” in the country.
Peskov said any organization could join if it shared the basic goals “to push forward the country’s development as formulated by Vladimir Putin and United Russia.”
But not everyone was so welcoming. Boris Titov, a founding member of the people’s front who heads the Delovaya Rossia business association and co-leads Right Cause, cautioned that Lebedev’s application would have to be “studied very carefully.” Titov characterized Lebedev’s decision to join the front as suspicious and suggested that it meant he was facing financial troubles linked to the National Reserve Bank.
“I do not know the financial conditions of the bank, but I know how it was created and what were its main assets,” he said on Kommersant FM radio.
“It’s not so smooth and maybe that is why he decided to try out being a politician,” he said.
Whatever Lebedev’s political motives might be, they won’t affect Novaya Gazeta, the paper’s deputy editor-in-chief Andrei Lipsky said by telephone.
“There has never been a case where he meddled with our editorial policies, and there never will be,” he said.
TITLE: Yandex Raises $1.3 Billion in U.S. IPO
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The country’s most popular search engine Yandex raised $1.3 billion in a U.S. initial public offering Tuesday, pricing its shares above the sale’s marketed range.
Success on Wall Street is a key indicator of foreign investors’ infatuation with Russia’s tech sector against the backdrop of several canceled IPOs for non-technology companies in recent months.
Yandex, which generates 64 percent of all search traffic in Russia and is currently the largest Russian Internet company by revenue, sold 52.5 million shares, or a 16.2 percent stake, at $25 each, valuing the company at about $8 billion, Yandex said Tuesday in an emailed statement.
The share price was above the original $20 to $22 range estimated. Yandex will list its shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol YNDX.
The order book was closed Friday, earlier than expected, due to a surge of interest.
Yandex intends to use the net proceeds from the IPO — which the company estimated at up to $336.4 million — for investments in technology infrastructure, particularly new servers and data centers.
“We may also use a portion of the net proceeds for the acquisition of, or investments in, technologies, teams or businesses that complement our business, although we have no present commitments or agreements to enter into any acquisitions or make any such investments,” the company’s profile on NASDAQ says.
The co-owners — which include U.S. investment fund Tiger Global, Baring Vostok, Roth Advisors, the World Bank’s IFC and company founders Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich — were expected to earn $883 million to $919.4 million from the sale, Interfax reported.
The listing comes just over six months after an IPO of Russia’s Mail.Ru Group on the London Stock Exchange, which raised $912 million, and another one less than a week ago by California-based social media company LinkedIn, which raised $352.8 million.
Expectations from the Yandex IPO were high, buoyed by the success of the Mail.Ru IPO in November and the ongoing Kremlin rhetoric about weaning the economy off its dependence on natural resources.
Russia’s Internet economy — Europe’s second-largest Internet market after Germany — will potentially account for up to 3.7 percent of its gross domestic product by 2015, a recent report by the Boston Consulting Group predicts, up from 1.6 percent of GDP in 2009 when it was valued at $19 billion.
Domestic Internet companies are seen on par with their international counterparts, and investors are ready to bet on them.
This is not the case with non-technology IPOs that have recently been canceled: Five Russian companies including Russian Helicopters, pipe maker Chelpipe and coal miner SUEK, decided not to go through with planned listings on the London Stock Exchange this year because of weak demand.
“I am not sure I will be able to say why [Russian] companies outside the Internet sector fail expectations. … But as far as the Internet companies go, here the success is predictable because the Internet is developing really quickly and has far from exhausted its growth opportunities,” Vladimir Dolgov, head of Google Russia, told The St. Petersburg Times.
Troika Dialog analyst Anna Lepetukhina said the interest in Internet companies was reignited about half a year ago with the IPO of Mail.Ru and the beginning of Chinese IPO euphoria, especially that of Qihoo 360 Technology Co., China’s third-most-popular Internet company.
This enthusiasm makes some investors worry that a second Internet bubble may be on its way, while others see significant differences between the current wave and past disappointments.
“We believe that there are no reasons to be afraid of another bubble because today Internet companies go for an IPO with coherent business models, and not [just] potential audiences that one day could be turned into money,” Dolgov said.
Yandex is also showing good fundamental results. Yandex posted a net profit of $134 million in 2010 and $28.8 million in the first quarter of 2011, on revenue of $439.7 million and $137 million respectively.
After the trading of the new stock begins, all eyes will be on the competition between Mail.Ru Group and Yandex shares.
TITLE: Ombudsman Calls on Government To Classify Katyn as Political Purge
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin has called for the government to acknowledge that 22,000 Poles executed in Katyn forest and elsewhere by Josef Stalin’s henchmen in 1940 were victims of political purges — if relatives don’t sue.
“We’ve got to put an end to it through complete transparency and the refusal of material claims,” Lukin said Friday, Interfax reported.
He said Russia must declassify and hand over to Poland all documents concerning the killings, which have strained Russian-Polish relations for decades.
“We must publish all the data we have once and for all,” he said.
Thousands of members of the Polish military and elite were executed in the Katyn forest after the Soviet Union invaded Poland in World War II. Moscow blamed the executions on Nazi Germany, which took over the area in 1941, but the State Duma acknowledged last year that the killings were done by the Soviet secret service NKVD on Stalin’s order.
Nevertheless, Russia has not formally recognized the slaughter as political repression. The Military Prosecutor General’s Office closed an inquiry in 2004 and classified its reasons for doing so.
Many Soviet documents on the issue also remain secret, although Moscow began to declassify them following a political thaw prompted by the Katyn tragedy last year when Polish President Lech Kaczynski died in a plane crash en route to the forest.
In all, 148 of 183 volumes on the Katyn killings have been handed over to Poland, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika said Thursday, without elaborating why the rest remain under wraps and whether they might be released.
TITLE: Yegiazaryan Is Placed On Interpol List
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — State Duma Deputy Ashot Yegiazaryan, who is living in California, has been placed on Interpol’s wanted list in connection with fraud charges in Moscow.
Yegiazaryan’s name and photograph appeared on the organization’s international search base late last week, saying he is wanted by Moscow’s Basmanny District Court over fraud charges.
Yegiazaryan’s lawyers said in an e-mailed statement Friday that the court-sanctioned arrest warrant was issued on fabricated charges and noted that Interpol itself does not search for anyone but only circulates notices at the request of member states.
Prosecutors want Yegiazaryan in connection with a 1.5 billion ruble ($53 million) fraud case surrounding the Hotel Moskva development. He moved to the United States last year and has said he won’t return to Russia for fear of his safety.
TITLE: Medvedev Takes Step Toward Court Reform at Forum
AUTHOR: By Khristina Narizhnaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday that he has signed a decree ordering the Justice Ministry to monitor law enforcement and the execution of court decisions and to provide annual progress reports, making a direct link between the quality of the legal environment and Moscow’s ambition to become a global financial center.
“Problems with enforcing laws, lack of respect for the courts, and corruption are not just issues affecting our public life but are macroeconomic factors holding back our national wealth growth and putting a brake on our efforts to carry out economic decisions and social initiatives,” the president said at the opening of the first International Legal Forum in St. Petersburg.
“We will continue to develop our legal system. This is beyond any doubt. We will continue to improve our court system and keep watch over what is happening,” he said.
The announcement about the presidential decree came two days after Medvedev declared that Russia would honor its obligations to the European Court of Human Rights, even if Moscow viewed the decisions as politically motivated.
The three-day legal forum, which is planned as an annual event, took place at the historic Mikhailovsky Castle, where Emperor Paul I was assassinated in the early 19th century. Nearly 500 legal experts attended, including former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder; Hans van Loon, secretary general of the Hague Conference on Private International Law; and International Bar Association president Akira Kawamura.
Russian courts lack resources and qualified judges and lawyers, experts said. This makes the caseload overwhelming, said Anton Ivanov, chief justice at the Supreme Arbitration Court, which handles business disputes.
The average judge is overwhelmed by 59 cases a month, about double the acceptable amount, Ivanov said.
“The Justice Ministry is economizing on judges,” Ivanov said.
He said more funds should be earmarked for salaries in order to hire more judges. Other experts said judicial salaries should be boosted to a level that bribes would not seem so attractive.
Problems that arise from the lack of resources include judges accepting bribes and hastily made decisions that allow them to move on to the next case, experts said.
Establishing alternative arbitrationfor commercial disputes where two sides pick a judge to hash out their differences in private could also lighten the caseload for conventional courts, said Tatyana Andreyeva, deputy chief justice of the Supreme Arbitration Court.
Alternative arbitration, or courts independent of the state, currently exist in Russia, but because of a lack of regulation, there are many unqualified courts and judges are not liable for bad decisions.
Recently the Supreme Arbitration Court started allowing cases to be filed electronically, publishing court materials and broadcasting sessions online.
In addition to legal reform itself, forum participants discussed how the legal climate affects the investment climate.
Reworking legislation to curb bureaucrats’ power should decrease corruption, said Alexander Voloshin, head of an advisory group that Medvedev has created to make Moscow an international financial center.
Other ways to make Moscow more attractive to international investors include making the city more multilingual and easing immigration restrictions for qualified specialists, participants said.
Developing a more modern financial and legal infrastructure and reforming tax law should also help, they said.
But many things need to be overcome first.
“The Soviet mentality, the corruption — these problems aren’t solved so quickly,” Voloshin said.
Kawamura, of the International Bar Association, said speedy trials would attract businessmen to the Russian legal system. A standard business case should take from three months to a year, with three years being the ceiling in extreme cases, he said. Cases in Russia can take more than 10 years.
Event participants agreed that no single country could be used as a model.
“Every country has something interesting we can use for our system,” Ivanov said.
Johan Gernandt, who serves as chairman of the board of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, commended Friday’s forum as a first step but said the problem should be dealt with as a serious crisis.
Laws and regulations need to be reworked and a regulatory system should be established under the supervision of financial and legal authorities, he said.
“Russian courts aren’t fully trusted. Independence of the court system is necessary to convince international investors to come to this country,” he said, citing pressure from the executive branch and corruption as factors that made the courts not independent.
Legal reform is a key factor for attracting investors, Deutsche Bank Russia chief economist Yaroslav Lissovolik said.
The forum needs to be backed up by real reforms, namely laws that increase officials’ salaries and tighten sanctions for violations, he said.
“It’s a myth that it’s such a large country and it’s not possible,” Lissovolik said. “It can be done quickly.”
TITLE: Paid Parking Could Hit City by Year’s End
AUTHOR: By Maria Buravtseva
and Nadezhda Zaitseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Parking in the city center may cease to be free of charge by the end of this year.
The Municipal Services Commission of the Legislative Assembly last week approved amendments to the bill “On the introduction of changes to St. Petersburg legislation for the distinction of authority between the legislative assembly and the St. Petersburg government for activities relating to roads and other road activities within St. Petersburg.”
The document was put forward by St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko in April. In accordance with federal law No. 69: “On the introduction of changes to Russian Federation legislation,” dated 21 April 2011, the bill would grant City Hall the authority to set up paid parking on regional public streets. Local authorities will be able to set prices for parking. Deputies passed the first reading on Wednesday.
“Deputies would like to retain their right to decide on a tariff system for parking,” said commission member Alexei Belousov.
Deputy Vitaly Milonov said that the government has guaranteed members of parliament reductions for subsidized households and that payment will be carried out using parking meters and not car parking attendants.
City Hall could begin charging for car parks by the end of this year, with a pilot scheme set to take place in the central district, said Alexei Bakirei, deputy head of St. Petersburg’s Committee for Transport and Transit policy, speaking via its press service. According to Bakirei, the cost of parking has not yet been decided and a payment system is still being developed.
Milonov believes that the price should be reasonable. “For the first three hours, no more than 100 rubles ($3.50) per hour,” he said.
Denis Shubin, head of the motoring organization A24, said the optimal price would be 30 rubles ($1.10) per hour for the first few hours. According to Shubin, if the price is any higher, City Hall will receive nothing but non-payments.
Parking a car in New York costs $0.75 an hour (except in Manhattan where parking costs $1.50). In Dublin, depending on the area, prices vary from $0.85 to $4, in Seattle parking costs from $1 to $4 an hour and in Paris from $1.40 to $4.20 per hour. Parking at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport costs 100 rubles ($3.50) per hour for the first three hours.
Car parks at the city’s shopping malls charge about 200 rubles to 300 rubles ($7 to $10.50) for two hours, said Sergei Fyodorov, general director of Praktis CB. “Having paid street parking is a sound idea but a lot will depend on how car users are supposed to pay, whether or not parking meters will be available and who will monitor how long cars are left for,” said Fyodorov.
In order to avoid corruption, parking should be controlled without any human input — i.e., by using parking meters and video cameras, and fines should then be issued by post, said Shubin.
TITLE: Auction of Astoria Building Canceled Due to Lack of Bids
AUTHOR: By Nadezhda Zaitseva
and Alla Tokareva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The deadline for the submission of bids in the auction of the Astoria Hotel building passed on Monday. The starting price for the building, which has an area of 17,000 square meters and covers 0.3 hectares, was set at 2.18 billion rubles ($77 million). The auction will not take place, however, due to a shortage of bids, two sources involved in the auction process informed Vedomosti. A decision on the fate of the building is expected in the next few days, one of them added.
The press service of the City Property Management Committee (KUGI) and the Property Fund declined to comment, stating that an official announcement would be made in the near future. According to the conditions of the sale, in the event of only one bid being made the auction is deemed invalid. The building, which has been accorded federal significance as an architectural monument, will now be reevaluated with a subsequent lowering of the price, one of the sources said.
This is the second time an attempt to sell the Astoria building has failed. The first auction was planned for November, but the Property Fund rescheduled it to May 25. A representative of the fund said at the time of the rescheduling that a prolonged sale period would raise the investment attractiveness of the site.
The building is currently rented to the Astoria Hotel Complex at a fixed rate through 2046 (from November 2009 to August 2011 the rate is set at 3.45 million rubles ($121,500) per month. The controlling stake in the company belongs to the British company Rocco Forte & Family, which manages 13 luxury class European hotels. The Astoria has 210 rooms.
In November of last year, a representative of the tenant told Vedomosti that the company was interested in buying the building, but that the starting price was too high.
Representatives of Rocco Forte & Family declined to comment Monday.
A site like the Astoria is interesting, but requires not only money but also the resolution of issues concerning ongoing encumbrances, said Igor Luchkov, head of the evaluation, consulting and analysis department of Becar group. It is often the case that key sites such as this don’t immediately find a buyer, he added.
TITLE: Transneft Fights Decision on Minutes
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
and Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Pipeline monopoly Transneft said Friday that it would fight the court ruling mandating it to release minutes from its board meetings, accusing whistleblowing anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny of conspiring against Russia and using the minutes for commercial interests.
In February, Navalny won a lawsuit against Transneft to make board meeting minutes available to holders of the company’s preferred shares.
According to Navalny, the minutes could contain information that would prove Transneft embezzled $4 billion during the construction of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline.
“We are not going to hand anything over to crooks,” Transneft chief executive Nikolai Tokarev told the Izvestia newspaper.
“Why newspapers pay this gentleman [Navalny] so much attention — it’s difficult to say,” Transneft spokesman Igor Dyomin told The St. Petersburg Times. “We haven’t taken him to court, and we won’t do it. We understand that it’s his style of behavior.”
“It’s like being annoyed by a tick when it bites you — it’s just his nature,” Dyomin said.
Transneft executives say Navalny was trying to get hold of the minutes out of commercial interest and not because he is fighting for a cause.
In the interview with Izvestia, Tokarev also accused Navalny of being backed by John McCain, a U.S. Republican senator from Arizona who opposed President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential elections.
“Let him harass somebody else. We will always be able to protect ourselves,” Tokarev told Izvestia.
According to Tokarev, Navalny also had backing from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
“This man is being licked by Madeleine Albright’s National Democratic Institute,” Tokarev was quoted as saying in an interview that ran on the front page of Izvestia.
Navalny jokingly shrugged off Tokarev’s allegations on his blog later Friday. “What can I say? All of it is true. After I had been licked by Madeleine Albright, I spent 90 million [rubles] of SPS’s [the Union of the Right Forces] money, gathered a bunch of skinheads and began shooting people with the gun that was given to me by McCain. … But the court decision has taken force. They must provide the documents,” Navalny wrote.
“Of course, we plan to comply with the court’s decision. But within the boundaries of the law, we will try not to give the documents,” Transneft vice president Mikhail Barkov told Izvestia.
Navalny is currently under investigation himself, facing up to five years in prison for allegedly forcing Kirovles, a state-owned timber company based in the Kirov region, into a disadvantageous contract in 2009, when he served as an unpaid adviser to Kirov region Governor Nikita Belykh.
The Investigative Committee said in mid-May that the blogger involved Kirovles in a contract that cost the company 1.3 million rubles ($46,000) under a false pretense.
TITLE: Shoes, Metal Right For Hong Kong
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian companies that export commodities to China or import Chinese-made shoes and clothes are the best candidates to float their shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Hong Kong-based investor Sergio Men said Monday.
“It would be absolutely irrational for companies whose business is totally unrelated to China or Southeast Asia to move toward the Hong Kong stock exchange,” Men, who is managing partner at Eurasia Capital Partners, told reporters.
In agreement with that statement, Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum company RusAl was the first Russian company to list its stock in Hong Kong in January of last year, while Tsentrobuv — which bills itself as the country’s largest shoe retailer — said in February that it was considering a share offer there next year.
One of the earliest Russian companies that expressed interest in floating in Hong Kong was Deripaska’s Strikeforce Mining & Resources. It scheduled the listing for fall 2008 but canceled when the crisis hit. The company delayed the IPO again last year.
A source close to Strikeforce said Monday that an IPO was no longer a priority because the company was looking to diversify its business and form alliances with strategic partners first.
The strategy of Strikeforce’s parent company, En+, says all its units should eventually offer shares to the public, but an En+ spokesman said it didn’t comment on IPO prospects of its specific companies.
Eurasia Capital is sponsoring the second Russia Capital Raising and Investment Summit in Hong Kong next month.
Organized by two regional business publications owned by Haymarket Publishing, the largest United Kingdom private publisher, the event aims to bring together Russian executives and investors from around Southeast Asia, including China, India and Korea.
Men said he thinks that Sportmaster, one of the country’s largest retail chains of sporting goods, would eventually offer its stock to investors in Hong Kong. Sportmaster could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.
TITLE: 3G Mobile Coverage Varies Depending on Network
AUTHOR: By Valery Kodachigov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The quality of third-generation, or 3G, mobile Internet services in Moscow varies greatly among the big three carriers, according to recent analysis by Telecomdaily, with MegaFon showing the best results for areas outside the city limits.
Measurements were carried out in April and May 2011 in Moscow and in towns of 10,000 people or more in the Moscow region — which represents about 90 percent of the population, Telecomdaily CEO Denis Kuskov said.
The company used a special device to load files of a standard size from the Internet at regular intervals in order to test the average and maximum speed of access to mobile operators, as well as the area of their coverage.
MegaFon scored the highest average and maximum speed at three and seven megabits per second, or Mbps, respectively. In second place was Mobile TeleSystems with an average speed of 2.1 Mbps and maximum of 5.2 Mbps, while VimpelCom took third at 1.7 Mbps and 4.6 Mbps.
TITLE: $472 Million Spent on Foreign Aid in 2010
AUTHOR: By Lena Smirnova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia spent more than $80 million in 2010 to improve health care in developing countries, according to a report the Finance Ministry released Friday.
The report highlights how the country is meeting its G8 commitments ahead of the upcoming summit in Deauville, France.
“Health has become for Russia quite a traditional area for contributing to international development,” said Andrei Bokarev, head of the Finance Ministry’s international financial relations department.
Russia’s contributions to G8 initiatives have helped pay for vaccine research and subsidies, as well as upgrades to 10 anti-epidemic response teams that could be used in humanitarian emergencies.
The G8 funnels its vaccine assistance through the Advance Market Commitment initiative, which claims “to stimulate industry investment in global health product development.” Russia pledged to pay $80 million into the initiative by 2018 and has already disbursed $16 million.
The first Russia-subsidized vaccines were delivered to Nicaragua, Kenya, Yemen, Congo and Guyana at the beginning of 2011, Bokarev said.
The report also lists food security as a main priority. According to the report, Russia spent $98.2 million last year to train farm specialists and supply technology and resistant seed cultures to Africa. This year’s spending on food security is expected to stay the same, Bokarev said.
G20 countries plan to approve a food security strategy in Cannes this November.
Russia’s contribution to international assistance programs is growing faster than that of its G8 partners, said Ambassador-at-Large Vadim Lukov. The country funded roughly $432 million per year between 2007 and 2010, compared with the $101 million it had paid annually in the three years prior, Lukov said.
“It is the highest growth rate among the G8 countries,” Lukov said. “Whereas for the other donors — our Western partners — the main task right now is to maintain the levels they’ve already reached.”
But Bokarev did not overplay Russia’s role in the G8 initiatives. The country is still the smallest donor despite the higher growth rate, he said.
“We are still far, as are many of our partners in the G8, from the achievements of the levels made in the 1960s and 1970s when annual assistance amounted to 0.7 percent of gross national product,” Bokarev said.
Russia spent a total of $472.32 million on international development assistance in 2010, nearly meeting its annual target rate of $500 million. This is down from the $785 million given in 2009 due to greater domestic needs during the global financial crisis, Bokarev said.
TITLE: Swapping Jackson-Vanik for Magnitsky
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
TEXT: Relations between Cold War-era foes Moscow and Washington have long been distrustful, hypocritical, peppered with mutual insinuations and patched together with the most tenuous of threads. But now, on the eve of State Duma and presidential elections, an inevitable crisis in relations is nearing that threatens to tear them apart at the seams.
Last week, a group of 15 U.S. senators formally introduced a bill targeting Russians for human rights violations and corruption, including 60 officials connected to the jail death of Hermitage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The bill would ban them from entering the United States and freeze any U.S.-based assets.
Chances are high that the bill will be passed. The sanctions against corrupt officials and criminals-cum-politicians could serve as a replacement for the Jackson-Vanik amendment that has long been in need of repeal. When U.S. Vice President Joe Biden met with Russian opposition leaders during his visit to Moscow in March, he told us that support was growing on Capitol Hill for new sanctions against Russian crooks and thieves that could replace the old Cold War-era law.
An important precedent of this type was recently enacted in Europe. Swiss authorities froze a bank account and started an investigation into a former Russian tax official implicated in Magnitsky’s death.
Relatively new anti-corruption legislation in the United States, Britain and a number of other European Union countries that are now in the early stages of implementation open up new opportunities for prosecuting Russians involved in corrupt dealings.
It is inevitable that a conflict will erupt late this year or in early 2012 between Russian authorities and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — and in particular with its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. Four years ago, the OSCE refused to send observers to the 2007 State Duma elections because of conditions set by the Russian side. The Kremlin, the Foreign Ministry and Central Election Commission chief Vladimir Churov created obstacles like reducing the number of observers from 450 to 70 and prohibiting Russian citizens from acting as observers.
Although United Russia swept the dubious elections, the party’s popularity now has fallen to a record low. That means the ruling authorities will have to resort to even greater shenanigans this year to ensure the same landslide results. They will most likely keep international election observers out again or make it impossible for them to ascertain what is really happening at the ballot boxes.
A conflict is also brewing at the Council of Europe over Russia’s open non-compliance of commitments it undertook when it ratified European democracy and human rights conventions.
The Russian government has recently suffered a series of highly embarrassing defeats in the European Court of Human Rights, including cases concerning former arms control researcher Igor Sutyagin and my disbanded Republican Party.
In the near future, the court might make a ruling on the case concerning former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Considering that the Russian government loses almost all of the cases that come before the court, the outcome of this one is obvious. A defeat could lead to defeat in European arbitration courts, forcing the Kremlin to pay billions of dollars in fines and damages.
The Russian government behaves like a hardened offender, paying fines to its citizens based on European court rulings and yet repeating the same offenses and refusing to change the law or its practices.
The Council of Europe requires that court rulings be implemented and that poor laws and practices be changed.
But Russian leaders like Constitutional Court chief justice Valery Zorkin have increasingly spoken of a “threat to Russian sovereignty” posed by the rulings and even of the possibility of withdrawing from the Council of Europe. They have voiced outrageous proposals to impose fees on filing appeals to the European court and prohibit appeals until after a ruling by Russia’s Supreme Court. Meanwhile, with 33,000 appeals pending, Russia leads all other countries in the number of cases put before the European court.
Whether it comes through a new U.S. law, the OSCE or the Council of Europe, corrupt Russian officials are being served notice that the world is becoming less inclined to close its eyes to criminal activity in Russia. The rug is being pulled out from under their feet both in Russia and abroad.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio and is a co-founder of the opposition Party of People’s Freedom.
TITLE: No Place Left for Medvedev
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: Instead of campaigning, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have stepped up their political maneuvering in the run-up to State Duma and presidential elections, releasing major statements within two weeks of each other. First, Putin announced the formation of his All-Russia People’s Front; then Medvedev demonstrated his complete loyalty to Putin with a major news conference.
During the interval between those two statements, the Justice Ministry confirmed the registration of the Congress of Russian Communities, a nationalist public association without party affiliation, and billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov said he would lead the Right Cause party, giving him a status that almost rivals that of the ruling tandem of Putin and Medvedev.
Complicating matters, as Medvedev held his news conference, A Just Russia’s former leader Sergei Mironov was fired as Federation Council speaker.
Why all the sudden political activity? The problem is that interest is already waning over who will serve a six-year term as Russia’s next president. While at one time it was the most intriguing question in politics, it now seems to have lost any special meaning, with pure inertia driving the buzz among journalists and observers over the issue.
The fact is that Putin has given no signs of planning to leave power. In any system built on the personal authority of a single individual, the leader only makes an unexpected departure as a result of a revolution or coup d’etat.
Is there any reason to believe that the business and political elite are worried enough over the country’s economic future to give up their current comforts and risk full-scale modernization? They might have been scared two years ago. But with oil prices at over $100 a barrel, there is no reason to worry anymore. Given a choice between divvying up the country’s natural resource wealth or doing the work necessary to modernize the country, the elite would definitely prefer the former. The best proof of this is a huge state project to build oil pipelines in all directions and a pledge to spend 20 trillion rubles ($710 billion) on re-equipping the army.
With Putin fixed firmly in place, the political and economic model also remains unchanged. The only real question remaining is whether it would make political sense to retain the ruling tandem. The answer is probably not. The tandem has already played out its role of boosting Russia’s image at home and abroad. Serious political reforms — either democratic or authoritarian — are practically impossible as long as you have two leaders, one nominal and one de facto.
The tandem was only able to accomplish a portion of the unpleasant tasks that it had planned. It did manage to retire the most powerful and relatively independent regional governors last year. But fearing the possibility of widespread protests, it postponed implementing planned but painful social reforms to the pension system, health care and budgetary affairs. But now the time has come to tackle those reforms. Rather than take full responsibility for unpopular measures, Putin would prefer to find someone to do the dirty work and then step down. At least four people are suitable for this role: Prokhorov, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, Rusnano CEO Anatoly Chubais and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.
Here’s how it could play out: Putin returns to the Kremlin and concerns himself with political matters, only to express “shock” one day that his liberal prime minister has gone too far. Putin summarily dismisses him, makes a show of trying to put things back in order, but then declares that “what’s done is done.”
Of course, other variations on this theme are also an option. But none of them includes a role for Medvedev. From the beginning, his job was to play the “disposable president,” and it would seem that nothing has happened to alter that fate.
Medvedev’s supporters can console themselves with the knowledge that the country would not develop even if Putin were to retain him. Modernization can never come from above at the initiative of a “benevolent tsar.” What we will see instead is reactionary modernization — increasing the sophistication of the still-primitive political system for the sake of the authorities’ survival, not for the sake of the people.
Nikolai Petrov is a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
TITLE: Images of imperial Russia
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — When Cornelius Kingsley Garrison Billings, the millionaire founder of petrochemical giant Union Carbide, took his prize-winning trotters on a goodwill tour of Eastern Europe in 1909, he brought along horse-racing journalist Murray Howe to chronicle the trip in weekly dispatches to The Horse Review magazine.
In addition to being an able and witty journalist — his wry trotting classics “Stable Conversation” and “The Trotting Horse Excuse Book” are still read in trotting circles — Howe was also an amateur photographer.
Howe snapped more than 400 photographs in Moscow and St. Petersburg with his handheld Graflex camera, a state-of-the-art device that allowed its user to shoot without a tripod. His photographs of pedestrians, street venders and aristocrats are rare glimpses of everyday life before the upheavals of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution — and sparked huge interest in Russia among history buffs and local museums.
The photographs re-emerged a few months ago when Howe’s great-grandson, Andrew Howe V of Atlantic Beach, Florida, posted about 75 of them on his Flickr account. A link soon appeared on the popular EnglishRussia blog, and the photographs started popping up in the Russian blogosphere. “I never thought it would go this berserk,” Howe said by telephone from Florida, where he works as a real estate developer. The Flickr page has had more than 100,000 hits.
“They’re rare, they’re especially high quality, simply super-quality,” said Irina Levina, an amateur historian, who posted a link to the photos on her LiveJournal blog.
Howe focused on people at a time when most Russian photographers were shooting buildings and monuments. “He loved the people most. … He thought the people of Russia were the most quality people in the world,” his great-grandson said.
In one image, a shoe repairmen dressed in rags cheekily mimes his craft to the delight of nearby children against the Kremlin’s soaring spires. Others capture various venders and vagabonds, while still others are devoted to the aristocrats that filled Moscow’s hippodrome to see Lou Dillon — the first horse to trot a mile in less than two minutes — and C.K.G. Billings’ other prize horses run. (In trotting, horses racing at a trot pull a driven two-wheeled vehicle called a sulky around a track.)
“When I look at these photographs, I want to get in there and talk to these people. Just have normal, everyday conversations with them. It’s easy to imagine,” said Alexander Frolov, a historian with the architecture preservation organization Arkhnadzor.
There are also photographs of buildings, including one of the original Christ the Savior Cathedral with a handwritten remark about how expensive it was to build. Another shows soldiers marching through a much grimier Red Square than the one we know today; a layer of soot covers the iconic onion domes on St. Basil’s Cathedral.
“We don’t have anything quite like these photographs,” said Vladimir Kuznetsov, head of exhibitions at the Moscow City Museum, referring to his museum’s collection of more than 100,000 images. “The photographers featured in our collection were typically on contract to photograph monuments, architecture, because they knew the city was growing — capitalism — old estates and houses were being destroyed.”
In addition to 400 photographs, some annotated, Murray Howe left behind letters to home, articles, negatives and a scrapbook.
Some of Howe’s dispatches could have been written yesterday: “The only people were afraid of the camera were the police, and they made me put the machine back in its case. … It was easy sailing however, as I always got the picture I was after before the nearest cop would get his eye on me,” he wrote.
Andrew Howe’s dream is to exhibit the images in Russia. But despite the buzz and gushing appraisals, no museums or galleries have offered to pay for an exhibition.
“I love the idea of having these things accessible to the same cross-section of Moscow that he was so in love with,” Howe said.
76 of the Moscow series are on Flickr at www.flickr.com/photos/cranewoods/sets/72157626191454674/. For more information about the collection, contact Andrew Howe V at Ahowe@cranewoods.com.
TITLE: The ultimate road trip
AUTHOR: By Olga Khrustaleva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As soon as the last of the snow melts, dedicated cyclists across Russia wheel out their iron horses and take to the road. Although bikes are an increasingly popular means of transport and perfect for a city often paralyzed by traffic jams, there aren’t many people who would consider attempting to cover a distance of around 3,000 miles on something with only two wheels.
“I love traveling and was thinking about doing something like this when I left Russia,” says Edward Bentley, a Moscow-based journalist who has chosen an unusual way to get back home to England. “At first I thought about buying a beat-up Lada and driving it home, but then I decided on cycling. My sister told me it was a good idea and that I should do it for Cancer Research, a charity that she had raised money for by abseiling down Guy’s Hospital in London. With that, my mind was made up.”
Inspired by his sister and taking her advice, Bentley decided to combine business with pleasure, and is aiming to raise £5,000 ($8,063) from his bike trip to England for the U.K.-based charity Cancer Research.
“Rowena, my sister, had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which is a type of cancer,” he said. “Survival rates are improving thanks to organizations like Cancer Research and luckily she’s got the all-clear now. But she’s not alone, and the cancer can return, so more and more money should be going to research.”
Such methods of fundraising aren’t always received well in Russia. Bentley believes this is because “in Russia people aren’t sure where the money is going.” Charity concerts are considered to be more transparent, but even an event held in St. Petersburg at which Putin sang “Blueberry Hill” was later dogged by allegations that the children for whom it was intended had not benefited at all from the concert. Such incidents have only strengthened the idea that donating in Russia can be almost as risky as cycling here.
Bentley’s route began on May 10 in the northern capital. “Getting out of St. Petersburg was always going to be the worst part,” he wrote in his blog. “Russia, vast as it is, is mostly empty. Riding the R-35 made me realize that, in fact, there is nowhere for anyone to go except from Moscow to St. Petersburg and the Golden Ring. And the condition of the road was so bad that anyone wanting to take it would probably just shuffle off and find something better to do anyway.”
According to Bentley, the biggest difficulty with traveling long distances by bike is that “Russia doesn’t have this network or culture of cycling, which is a real shame. A good friend of mine explained how he had done tours near Sochi and on the Golden Ring and got these weird looks in babushka towns when they rocked up in their cycling gear. But he said it was amazing, and that really helped me.”
Riding through often almost completely deserted villages is an opportunity to meet locals who represent the other Russia that most of the population only know about from hearsay. “As usual, a few guys were fishing and drinking down by the water, but I pitched my tent and chilled out,” Bentley wrote in his blog. “Before driving back absolutely off his face, one guy had a conversation with me that went round in circles as he insisted he was a bandit and that someone would steal my bike in the middle of the night. Some youths, he reckoned, though all the young people seemed to have evacuated the desolate countryside already.”
As part of his EuroVelo route, Bentley’s journey will take him through nine European countries. The most enthralling aspect of the trip, he says, is the opportunity to visit a lot of beautiful places, some of which are not even on tourist maps. “I’m really looking forward to the Baltics and Berlin,” Bentley told The St. Petersburg Times. “I’ve been to Riga for a day, but never seen the small towns and the forests. The other place is the spit at Kaliningrad. It looks absolutely beautiful, but the whole visa thing could be a nightmare.”
One of the most daunting aspects of the challenge is the prospect of the solitude. “The trouble is not going to be the daily distance; it’ll be a mental thing,” said Bentley. “Especially at the beginning, there will be a lot of time on my own on the road. Keeping going, and keeping active in the evening is really important. A friend might join me for a short leg, but traveling alone is fun. Certainly in Europe it gives you great opportunities to meet new and interesting people.”
Bentley hopes to arrive home by mid-July, after more than two months of pedaling through Europe. “Once I hit Germany there is a much bigger network of cycle paths and cyclists,” he said. “There will be people out on the trail you can chat to, share experiences with and even tag along with — hopefully in their slip stream, by that point.”
To make a donation, please visit
www.justgiving.com/edwardbentley. Bentley’s travel blog can be read at http://stpetetolondon.blogspot.com.
TITLE: Medvedev is So Duly Diligent
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: As I watched President Dmitry Medvedev’s news conference and then pored over the transcript, looking for linguistic signs of his future and the future of the country, I found it hard to keep my pseudo-Kremlinologist hat on. I kept turning into a mother hen, muttering: Must you always sound so tentative? Do you know that you said ÿ ñ÷èòàþ (I think) 37 times?
It was all pretty bland. No sensational revelations of rifts in the tandem, no announcement of candidacy and a lot of platitudes like this: Áîëüøèå öåëè çàêëþ÷àþòñÿ â òîì, ÷òîáû èçìåíèòü æèçíü, èçìåíèòü íàøó æèçíü ê ëó÷øåìó, ÷òîáû ëþäè ñåáÿ ëó÷øå ÷óâñòâîâàëè, ÷òîáû óðîâåíü äîõîäîâ ïîäíèìàëñÿ, ÷òîáû ñîöèàëüíûå ïðîãðàììû âûïîëíÿëèñü (Our major goals consist of improving life, changing life for the better, so that people feel better, their incomes rise and social programs are carried out).
True, some of the journalists were a kick. I liked the chutzpa of the fellow who wanted the president’s parking space: ß çíàþ, ÷òî ó Âàøåé ñóïðóãè åñòü äâà ìàøèíîìåñòà, à ìíå ìàøèíó ïîñòàâèòü íåãäå. Íå ñäàäèòå ëè ñëó÷àåì ìàøèíîìåñòî â àðåíäó? (I know that your wife has two parking spaces, but I don’t have any place to park. Would you mind renting me one of your spaces?)
Sometimes Medvedev spoke without hemming and hawing, like his response to a question about the possible threat that former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky posed to society: Âîïðîñ êîðîòêèé è îòâåò òîæå êîðîòêèé — àáñîëþòíî íè÷åì íå îïàñåí (The question was to the point and so is the answer: He poses absolutely no danger).
And he certainly peppered his speech with interesting loanwords and professional slang, like èíâåñòêëèìàò (investment climate), àéïàä (iPad) and the spectacular äüþ-äèëèäæåíñ (due diligence). When asked about using filler words, he joked: Çíàåòå, ÿ êîãäà äóìàë, ÷òî ñêàçàòü, ðåøèë, ÷òî ñêàæó, ÷òî åñòü, êîíêðåòíî, òèïà, òàêèå ñëîâà, êîòîðûå ìíå ìåøàþò æèòü, è ñîâåðøåííî î÷åâèäíî, ÿ îò íèõ áóäó èçáàâëÿòüñÿ (You know, when I thought about what to say, I decided that I’d say there is, for sure, like, these words that mess up my life and it’s absolutely obvious that I’m going to get rid of them).
But all the same he defended good speaking habits: Î÷åíü âàæíî, ÷òîáû âñå ìû ñòàðàëèñü èñïîëüçîâàòü ãðàìîòíóþ è î÷åíü êðàñèâóþ ðîññèéñêóþ ðå÷ü (It’s very important that we all try to use literate and very eloquent Russian speech). This should clearly be done with äüþ-äèëèäæåíñ.
But the president’s directness broke down every time he talked about his plans for re-election (or not). You don’t have to be a Freudian to pick up on the convoluted replies filled with clauses and pauses: “Òàêîãî ðîäà ðåøåíèÿ äîëæíû äåëàòüñÿ èìåííî â òîò ìîìåíò, êîãäà óæå ñîçðåëè äëÿ ýòîãî âñå ïðåäïîñûëêè, êîãäà ýòî áóäåò èìåòü îêîí÷àòåëüíûé ïîëèòè÷åñêèé ýôôåêò” (This kind of decision should be made at exactly the moment when all the preconditions for it have been met, when it will have an ultimate political effect).
Say again?
“Åù¸ ðàç ïîä÷¸ðêèâàþ: Âñ¸ ýòî äîëæíî ïîä÷èíÿòüñÿ îïðåäåë¸ííîìó, âïîëíå ðàçóìíîìó ñöåíàðèþ” (I’d like to stress again that everything must go according to a specific, rational script).
What does this mean exactly? “Åñëè ÿ îïðåäåëþñü ñäåëàòü òàêîå çàÿâëåíèå, ÿ åãî ñäåëàþ.” (If I determine to make such an announcement, then I’ll do it.)
And when might that be? “Óæå îñòàëîñü æäàòü íå òàê ìíîãî” (There isn’t that long to wait).
Æä¸ì-ñ (We’re waiting).
Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.
TITLE: From metal scrap to cutting-edge art
AUTHOR: By Olga Khrustaleva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: How is it possible to give objects that appear to have served their natural working life a new and even better existence? The organizers of the Prolom industrial exhibition at Loft Project Etazhi may hold the key to this secret.
“We were working with metal, taking different scrap metal objects,” said Vitaly Yakovlev, the project’s curator. “But I didn’t want to throw some of the objects away, because I saw certain artistic value in them, and was sure that they could still be useful. That’s how it all started.”
Yakovlev set up the Jacob’s Machines creative factory, which presents the most large-scale objects at the exhibition.
Old Soviet transformers and other aged machines are barely recognizable in the “Spider” chandelier or “Harsomtus” sound system for iPod and iPhone.
“My favorite object is the organ DJ table,” said Yakovlev. “It was our factory’s first invention.” Made from an old Soviet transformer that lived out its days at one of Leningrad’s numerous factories, the DJ unit would make an enviously original addition to any nightclub. Built-in functions such as split-level backlighting and a smoke machine that pumps dry ice out of the 48 offtake pipes allows DJs to easily manage visual effects as well as satisfy the crowd’s musical appetite.
Yakovlev says he is inspired by “the uniqueness of every object, which not everybody can usually see.” However, the main rule of his Jacob’s Machines project is that besides artistic value, each object should continue to be useful to people.
“I see an object and imagine a future product that could find an application in the modern world right away,” Yakovlev says. “And then the process itself of bringing the idea to life begins.”
Another company showcasing enormous objects at the Prolom exhibition is Dmitry Tikhonenko’s handicraft workshop. Its trademark skill is crafting exclusive interior items such as an old-fashioned red microwave oven with small carved legs, or a plasma TV set adorned by a heavy antique frame that would certainly not look out of place on the bare wall of a modern apartment.
Smaller but no less fascinating objects made by the artist Andrei Sazonov, designer Vasily Chuikov and other creative artisans can be seen at the exhibition and even touched. The exhibits mostly comprise pictures and sculptures made of various kinds of trash metal: Nails, bicycle spokes, pins and whatever else the masters’ imagination adopts as its muse. These objects may lack a practical application, but compensate for this with intriguing titles and thoughtful, philosophical meaning.
In this respect, the exhibition’s title, “Prolom,” is particularly fitting. Spelled in one word in Russian it means “breakthrough,” which essentially is what the exhibition is, as nothing of this kind has appeared in Russia so far. At the same time, the two separate words “pro lom” are literally translated as “about metal scrap,” reflecting the exhibition’s main theme.
After St. Petersburg, the Prolom show will travel to Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and other Russian cities. From there, the organizers have ambitious plans to take the items to Paris and New York, where such events are a more common sight, yet no less appreciated for being so.
The “Prolom” exhibition runs through June 5 at Loft Project Etazhi, 74 Ligovsky Prospekt, 5th floor. Tel. 458 5005. www.loftprojectetagi.ru
TITLE: Russia’s Foulmouthed Eurovision Entry
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, Russia’s Alexei Vorobyov only came in 16th place in the Eurovision song contest, prompting grumpy comments that Russia was represented by a “gopnik,” or yob, who swore live on television.
Vorobyov was picked by Channel One as a safe pair of hands for the contest, instead of putting it up to public vote, in a clear sign that Russia just wanted to put in a respectable presence rather than have to repaint Olimpiisky again. His placing was seen as a failure in Russia, even if it was better than “king of pop” Filipp Kirkorov’s 17th place in 1995, when Russia was still getting to grips with europop.
Vorobyov comes from the blue-collar town of Tula, and his site says his father is a security guard. He won a talent show on the Rossia channel called “The Secret of Your Success,” skated in the celebrity show “Ice and Fire” with Olympic champion Tatyana Navka and went on Channel One’s “Cruel Games,” one of those shows where famous people have to try not to fall into the water while climbing over foam rubber obstacles.
Vorobyov blamed politics for his placing in a message on his web site, saying “I realized that this year would be very hard because Russia has no friends in Europe today, but I believed that I could break through this with a high quality performance. But politics turned out to be stronger than music.”
Oddly enough, Azerbaijan won, despite hardly having a spotless political reputation.
When Vorobyov got through his semifinal, he was shown on television in a white wife-beater vest, waving a flag and shouting audibly: “This is Russia, [expletive]. Come here, [expletive]. Look in my eyes, [expletive].” He said later he did not realize the microphone was switched on. “Any normal Russian person when he is filled with emotions can let words out,” he told Izvestia.
Admittedly, this would not have offended most of the audience and is unlikely to have influenced the result outside the ex-Soviet Union. But it was not going to win him fans in Russia, where the word may be heard on every street corner but is still taboo on television.
“Alexei Vorobyov hardly embodied aristocratic manners and education,” music critic Boris Barabanov wrote in Kommersant. “Live on air after the semifinal he showed himself in the image of a jubilant gopnik.”
Vedomosti compared Vorobyov to a Russian footballer who let the nation down by swearing into a camera while playing in an international match, saying he had gone further. “He pronounced several times a word of five letters starting with the second letter of the Russian alphabet,” it wrote cryptically. “What’s more, he combined it with the name of his own country. It came across, to put it mildly, as not very patriotic.”
“His swearing and inability to behave appropriately significantly lowered his chances of getting a decent place,” Vedomosti wrote.
Izvestia laid into him for another gaffe — saying his decision to wish the audience a happy Victory Day in the semifinal was somewhat inappropriate, since the contest was being held in Germany.
Russian celebrities hurried to distance themselves from Vorobyov with quips about swearing. “Ultimately, the Russian proverb is right, don’t say ‘[expletive]’ before your eggs are hatched,” voluptuous television host Anfisa Chekhova wrote on Twitter.
“You shouldn’t be in a hurry to say ‘[expletive] you,’” wrote pop producer Iosif Prigozhin (whose wife and protege Valeriya failed to get through the Russia heat in 2009). “Get it done first, and then celebrate.”
“I think this will be the most memorable hit from Vorobyov, representing our cultured country,” pop singer Sergei Lazarev (who failed to win the Russia heat in 2008) commented acidly. “Lyokha, stick to singing. Don’t talk!”
TITLE: No Country for Bodyguards
AUTHOR: By Sam Marriott
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Barbaresco is another addition to the streak of trendy new bar-cum-restaurants in what used to be the imperial stables on Konnyushennaya Ploshchad. Peckish passersby may find selecting a dining spot somewhat of a dilemma: Barbaresco is land-locked by two structurally identical restaurants that each have as many ostentatious vehicles parked outside them as each other. The only exterior selling point to differentiate it from the others is its outdoor seating.
The first floor is spacious and filled with the heady aromas of fine wine and homemade bread (140 rubles, $5 per basket). A large trattoria-style bar stands as the centerpiece of the room, adorned with row-upon-row of deep brown and green bottles, containing whiskeys and liqueurs from the far reaches of Piedmont and Venetia.
The restaurant’s upper floor is a balcony running around the edges of the interior, incorporating smaller, low-set tables for loungers: Certainly dining is not the only thing on the cards. A glance around revealed many a group of expectant girls reveling in the retro-Italian vibe of the upper level. Through the windows, a vista of the neoclassical imperial barracks opens up across the square. The blue and white tiled bar could have come from a Lavazza coffee ad, as could the barman himself. The walls are graced with many grainy photographs of French luvvie Gerard Depardieu, whom the restaurant affectionately claims is a frequent customer.
We were led to our green-velvet clad dining space by a maitre d’ whose beauty matched that of most of the wait staff, and drinks were accompanied by a selection of olives from regions ranging from Sicily to Tuscany (190 rubles, $6.80). The olives were unprecedentedly fresh and kissed the palette with an almost sweet twang.
From the starters we decided against a choice from the wide cheese selection which boasted 24 month old Gran Padano and Sicilian Saffron Pecorino, both complete with walnuts, honey and celery, and opted for the zucchini flan with goat’s cheese sauce and the somewhat overpriced homemade Mozzarella with marinated tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and eggplant (850 rubles, $30). These, like the later dishes, were a little slow to arrive, a foible that betrayed Barbaresco’s Muscovite aspirations. The flan was hearty and filling, with the zucchini and goat’s cheese melting in the mouth, though its presentation was not on par with its content. The Mozzarella was approached with as much caution as a Beef Stroganoff made in Liberia, but it triumphantly won over the table with its fresh, simple but instantly reconcilable components.
Curveballing the pricier mains such as the green tagliatelle with lobster and asparagus (1,900 rubles, $68) and the marble (Wagu) beef (1,100 rubles, $40), we opted for the ‘M’Petata’ seafood stew (520 rubles, $18.60), duck “anialotti” with Marscapone sauce and black truffle (730 rubles, $26.10) and veal with porcini mushroom sauce and rye toast (650 rubles, $23.20).
When they eventually arrived, all three were rather cold. The fish stew was no regular stew, and had more of a pasta-sauce consistency to it. The seafood was all cooked to perfection, but its flavor was drowned by the sheer amount of tomato. The duck dish was more successful, as the tender duck meat infused wonderfully with the sweetness of the Marscapone and rarified extract of truffle. The veal was very well prepared but did not really amount to anything out of the ordinary.
The wine list reflects the expensive side of the establishment, with most coming in at more than 2,000 rubles ($70). We chose a more moderate Chenin Blanc from South Africa (2,050 rubles, $73) which was satisfying enough, but somewhat simple for its price. The cellar is eclectic and tempting, containing specialties for those who are passionate either about wine or about spending money.
Both desserts sampled were delicious: the Piedmontese Panna Cotta with mint was a winner, perfectly presented and reminiscent of minty angel hair. The cheesecake was Italian-style rather than New York-style, so the cheesy center was gorgeous, but somewhat fell apart for lack of a biscuit base. It was saved by the berry coulis and accompanying forest fruits, and was ultimately delightful.
Despite its exclusive tone, Barbaresco has kept aside a kids’ corner to recue parents whose restless children have begun to ruin the meal. While kids may be welcome, a telling message in the menu, presumably written in jest, reads: “Please leave bodyguards outside.” Unsurprisingly, there is already a branch of Barberesco in the Russian capital.
Equine Eateries
The area around the former imperial stables — Konyushennaya Ploshchad and both Konyushennaya Ulitsas — are rapidly becoming an upscale culinary hub to contend with the more democratic gastro-street, Ulitsa Rubinshteina.
Beaujolais
Beaujolais serves up Russian and European dishes of consistently high quality and at reasonable prices. Its striking interior incorporates decor associated with Parisian high cuisine, with a basement resembling a rural French inn. The nights of live accordion music help to whisk diners away to the bistro of their imaginations.
29 Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa. Tel: 571 8151
Vesna
Located in one of the newly-renovated imperial stable houses on Konnushennaya Ploshchad, Vesna brings new life to the often precarious world of fusion dining. Combining European, Russian and even Asian cuisine with an atmosphere of quiet intimacy, Vesna is looking to be one of the trendiest joints in town.
2 Konyushennaya Ploshchad. Tel: 913 4545
22.13
22.13, which shares its owner with Barbaresco, has already found popularity, with most tables booked in advance at the weekend. Specializing in Italian food but also offering dishes from the world around, 22.13’s niche is one of travel, which is reflected in the eclectic interior decor, which features everything from Moroccan tiles to flea-market antiques hand-picked by the restaurant’s well-traveled owners.
2 Konyushennaya Ploshchad. Tel: 647 8050
TITLE: Norwegian Rope Park Caters to City’s Thrill-Seekers
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Have fun, test your courage and overcome your fears: That is the motto of the Orekh Norwegian rope park that opened last weekend in Orekhovo, a settlement in the Priozersk district 60 kilometers north of St. Petersburg.
The adventure park is situated in an ecologically clean pine forest on the shores of Bolshoye Borkovo Lake. The trees in the park range from two to 20 meters in height and are connected in a variety of ways such as by rope-and-wooden bridges, rope lines, suspension bridges, suspended logs, rope ladders and zip-lines — the latter being the most popular way to get from tree to tree, but also the most daunting. Each of the six routes around the park consists of 85 stages.
The routes are of various degrees of difficulty, from children’s courses to the most challenging: The “black” route that finishes with a 200 meter zip-line suspended at a height of 25 meters. For those who are not so keen on heights, there are similar routes situated closer to the ground.
Despite the vast volume of wood, rope and net fixtures bound to the trees, the rope park’s organizers say they have taken great care not to damage the trees or the environment.
“All the fastenings are produced using a technology specially designed to avoid harming the trees,” said Hans Christian Anderson, one of the organizers of the park. “If one day we decide to pack up and take everything down, a day later there would be no way of telling that we’d even been in this forest.”
Safety is the park’s main concern. Visitors do not necessarily need a high degree of physical fitness or prior knowledge of climbing techniques. However, before taking to the ropes, everyone must attend an induction course that goes through the basic types of activities at the park, and instructors teach visitors how to use the safety equipment.
“All the equipment is made in Norway and brought to Russia,” said Anderson. “None of it is even produced in Russia. We constantly carefully monitor our safety equipment and we’re sure that it is reliable.”
This is the first time that such a rope park has been built in Russia, and there weren’t any local specialists who could help with its construction. The idea of a Norwegian park had been around for four years, but the project only got underway when the owner of an extreme tourism company met with a Norwegian in Moscow who told him about the adventure parks.
“We had been looking for partners who could help with a site in one of St. Petersburg’s suburbs for years when the owner of the St. Petersburg Ambassador hotel offered us a plot of land at his country club, Orekh,” said Yegor Churakov, one of the park’s organizers.
“It turned out that in Russia, we lack experience in constructing adventure parks and the Norwegians had never undertaken projects in Russia, so we assembled an international team of designers from France, Norway, the Czech Republic, Finland and Sweden.”
Last autumn, the team arrived on site in the Priozersk district and chose the trees best suited for the purpose.
“Nature itself provided us with the first trail,” said Churakov. “A storm had blown down most of the trees in the area, providing us with all the wood that we needed for the adventure park. We didn’t do any felling ourselves; every tree that was standing when we arrived is still standing today,” he said.
In Europe, adventure parks are often visited as part of team building exercises, but in Russia this activity is only just starting to catch on. The opening of the park was well attended, including by the residents of dachas in the area. While most were willing to have a go, there were already some criticisms.
“These are very unusual, difficult and interesting trails, but there is room for improvement,” said Sergei, who had traveled from St. Petersburg especially for the opening of the park. “The main problem is that you can’t leave a trail once you’ve begun. Anything could happen: You might get scared, tired or feel unwell, but there’s no turning back; you have to go right to the end of the route.”
“Moreover, there are long lines of people at each platform waiting for their turn to move on to the next trail,” he said. “I did enjoy myself, however, and I think I’ll come back to try the most challenging ‘black’ route, as I didn’t have time to do it today,” he added.
TITLE: Irkutsk: Libertine Legacy on the Shores of Baikal
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: IRKUTSK — The first thing a visitor recently saw when entering the museum of exiled Prince Sergei Volkonsky in Irkutsk was a drowsy, gray-haired attendant sitting behind a table with a calendar adorned with the Yukos logo, a forest-green triangle with a yellow tip.
The parallel was coincidental, but telling.
The fate of Volkonsky, who was banished to this eastern corner of Siberia for his role in the Decembrist uprising against the monarchy in 1825, resembles that of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was locked up in an East Siberian prison after his own conflict with the government.
Khodorkovsky was shipped off far beyond Irkutsk, but this unofficial capital of the Baikal region has seen its fair share of rebels and prides itself for its libertine streak.
Granted, residents have not exercised it in years. But it surfaced in 2010 when they ousted a pro-Kremlin mayor and voted in the Communist-backed candidate.
The new mayor, Viktor Kondrashov, was quick to join the ruling United Russia party — a sine qua non of Russian politics.
But the vote signified a longing for change, long overdue in a city that has the potential to become an industrial, academic or tourist capital but does not qualify for any — yet.
But it does have ardent fans like legendary rocker Boris Grebenshchikov. “All the best about Siberia comes together here,” said Grebenshchikov, a household name in Russia who has performed with his band Akvarium many times in the city.
Irkutsk feels a lot like a Soviet city from the 1960s, thanks to the dated architecture of shabby apartment blocks and a central street still bearing the name Karl Marx. Downtown streets are lined with mammoth old poplars, and elderly couples still waltz in the parks in the summertime as they did during the glory days of native son Rudolf Nureyev, the celebrated ballet dancer who defected to the West in 1961.
But the new is creeping in, too. Old apartment blocks wage a stubborn battle against modern middle-class compounds, and Ulitsa Karla Marxa is chock full of brand-name boutiques and cozy restaurants.
Irkutsk is even developing its own business district, Irkutsk City, complete with a Class-B business center, Terra, and a recreation zone. Tenants so far largely comprise small local companies, but Japan Tobacco, the world’s third-largest cigarette maker, and Canada’s Knelson mining equipment producer have also opened offices here.
Some 3,800 researchers study earth science at the local branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which was opened in 1949 and occupies a campus on the shore of the Angara, the only river that flows out of Lake Baikal, located 70 kilometers away.
The lake is Irkutsk’s main tourist draw, attracting about 500,000 visitors a year to the city. Baikal is the world’s oldest and deepest lake with an average depth of 744.4 meters, as well as one of the clearest —although a nearby paper mill does its best to change that. Frankly, the word “lake” does not really do justice to Baikal — and any local will tell you that you have to see this vast freshwater sea to believe it.
An extra influx of tourists are expected in fall 2011 to celebrate Irkutsk’s 350th anniversary, and Marriott International, the global hotel chain, is scheduled to open a Marriott Courtyard this summer to help cope with the visitors.
Irkutsk was founded in 1661 as a Cossack fort to safeguard fur merchants trading with China.
Irkutsk City Hall has earmarked 80 million rubles ($2.8 million) to spruce up the city for the anniversary celebrations, including the renovation of its once-trademark wooden houses.
“Some of those houses have half sunk underground but, still, many of them are real masterpieces of joinery,” said Tatyana Denisova, a lawyer and a local history enthusiast.
What to See
The Sergei Volkonsky Museum (10 Pereulok Volkonskogo; +7 3952-20-88-18; Imd38.ru) offers sights beyond the Yukos calendar. The prince’s wooden mansion, itself a fine piece of joinery, is preserved from the mid-19th century and comes complete with stables, servant quarters and a piano room.
Don’t miss the exhibit dedicated to his fabled wife Maria Volkonskaya and the wives of other rebel aristocrats who followed their husbands into Siberian exile after the failure of the coup in December 1825.
Check out the impressive paintings in the Vladimir Sukachyov Museum (5 Ulitsa Lenina; +7 3952-34-01-46; Museum.irk.ru/homeengl.htm), named after an Irkutsk mayor and patron of the arts who loomed larger than life in pre-revolutionary Siberia. Sukachyov’s personal collection, which he acquired in the late 1800s and bequeathed to the city, forms the basis for the museum.
On exhibit are a solid collection of European art from the 17th to 19th centuries, an exceptional set of paintings by Russian masters and one of the best collections of Japanese and Chinese art in the country.
Finally, the Angara steam-powered icebreaker (Solnechny district; +7 3952-35-80-85; Angara.gavailer.ru), built by the British in 1898 on a tsarist government order and now turned into a museum, is the only surviving vessel of its type in the world.
For a complete version of this article, visit www.themoscowtimes.com/beyond_moscow/irkutsk.html
IRKUTSK
Population: 587,200
Main industries: military jet production, fish processing, construction
Mayor: Viktor Kondrashov
Interesting fact: The black cat on the city’s coat of arms and flag is actually a Siberian tiger still known by its 17th-century name, babr. In its mouth is a red sable, whose precious fur first attracted Russian merchants to the region.
Helpful contacts:
Mayor Viktor Kondrashov
(+7 3952-20-05-22; Admirkutsk.ru);
City Hall spokeswoman Lilia Khadyeva (+7 3952-52-00-35);
Konstantin Shavrin,
president of the Irkutsk-based East Siberian branch of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (16 Ulitsa Sukhe-Batora; +7 3952-33-50-60; Tppvs.ru).
Sister cities: Shenyang, China; the French cites of Evian-les-Bains, Grenoble and Dijon; Pforzheim, Germany; Pordenone, Italy; Kanazawa, Japan; Ulan Bator, Mongolia; Novi Sad,
Serbia; Stromsund, Sweden; Eugene, in the U.S. state Oregon.
Major Irkutsk companies
Irkut (3 Ulitsa Novatorov; +7 3952-32-29-09; Irkut.com/en/) produces Su-30 and Su-27 fighter jets and accounts for 15 percent of all Russian arms exports.
Founded as a small lab with Irkutsk State Technical University, TOMS (83/1 Ulitsa Lermontova;
+7 3952-79-87-00; Tomsgroup.ru/eng/) has grown into an industry leader in mineral separation and has constructed mineral separation factories across all of the former
Soviet Union.
Irkutsk Mineral Water Bottling Plant (17 Ulitsa Kashtakovskaya;
+7 3952-78-04-40; Irkvoda.ru/en/), is a leading mineral water producer whose goods, naturally, come from springs surrounding Lake Baikal.