SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1660 (22), Thursday, June 16, 2011
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TITLE: World Leaders Flock to City for Economic Forum
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Labeling the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum Russia’s answer to Davos, referring to the annual Swiss gathering of world leaders and business moguls, is no longer an exaggeration.
The list of politicians attending this year’s event, which opens Thursday at Lenexpo, includes President Dmitry Medvedev, Finnish President Tarja Halonen, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Hu Jintao, leader of the People’s Republic of China. The forum runs through June 18.
CEOs of top-flight international companies from 111 countries have confirmed their attendance at the forum, which is now in its 15th year. The event’s key topics this year are securing global economic growth, expanding technology horizons and building Russia’s creative capital.
According to Mikhail Oseyevsky, deputy governor of St. Petersburg, the forum’s motto this year is “Leaders for the New Era.”
“This motto sets a framework for the forum’s discussions aimed at finding solutions for the global challenges and new approaches to handling a post-crisis economy,” Oseyevsky told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday. “For St. Petersburg as a city, hosting the forum means the world, as it confirms its status as an international business destination. The forum also provides a wealth of opportunities to promote the city as a place that is attractive for foreign investment and as a tourist Mecca.”
The event’s star rose in April 2007, when then-president Vladimir Putin signaled to the Russian business elite that holding business forums abroad was not a good idea. Putin appeared to be hinting at the London Economic Forum, that has since gone downhill.
The same crowd that once headed to the U.K. capital now forms a circle of regulars at the home-grown event.
It is expected that as usual, a series of major business deals will be inked at the forum, in particular, in the sphere of pharmaceuticals and IT, Oseyevsky said. In 2010, the 47 contracts signed at the forum amounted to 338 million rubles ($12.1 million).
The development of the St. Petersburg event has proved that the foreign business community is content to go along with the new rules. But despite that, the shadow of political events in Russia looms over the forum.
Although Russia tries to present itself to investors as “a European country with Asian profits,” some potential investors say that few can live with the scale of risk that exists in Russia, or adjust to the country’s fluctuating political and economic policies.
Opponents of the Kremlin criticize its habit of frequently amending laws, thus creating fluid investment policies. This attitude, they argue, irks foreign investors, harms the country’s reputation as a business partner and deters many abroad who would otherwise be tempted to invest.
“Yes, foreign investment may flow into Russia, but respect will not arrive and investors will not stay,” said Andrei Illarionov, Putin’s rebellious former economic advisor, in a recent speech. “What Russia needs is a long-term partnership, but what it will get is a smash-and-grab raid, quick rip-off deals, and it will earn no more genuine trust than Zimbabwe.
“Russia can hold as many forums as it likes, but unless the country builds democracy at home and demonstrates a commitment to it, investors will not make long-term decisions.”
These criticisms — among others — will be voiced in St. Petersburg on Saturday at the alternative economic forum (see story, this page). The alternative forum is essentially a dissenters’ gathering, where the key speakers will include Eduard Limonov, the leader of the “Other Russia” opposition party, Viktor Tyulkin, head of the Russian Communist Worker’s Party, and political analysts Stanislav Belkovsky and Mikhail Delyagin.
Members of the opposition warn that Russia’s economic achievements are bound to be short-lived if the country fails to follow up its efforts to improve the economy with coherent political reform aimed at developing its fledgling democracy.
According to Illarionov, during his first years as president, Putin made a series of healthy moves for the Russian economy, but failed to back them up with a political foundation.
“Trust in a country is not built at forums,” Illarionov said. “And no matter how often you hold such business gatherings, trust is effectively ruined by things like the destruction of Yukos and by the state using its laws like a club against its political opponents.”
For more articles about the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, see pages 4 and 5.
TITLE: Opposition to Host ‘Alternative Forum’
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Author and oppositional politician Eduard Limonov will take part in the St. Petersburg Alternative Economic Forum, timed to be held during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum this week.
According to the organizers, the forum will be devoted to the current issues of the “Tandem’s Russia” — the tandem is the term used by the Kremlin for the joint rule of President Dmitry Medvedev and the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin — such as corruption, dependence on the natural resources and Russia’s plan to access the World Trade Organization.
Moscow-based Limonov is the leader of The Other Russia, the political party he founded last year. The authorities have continuously refused to register the party, although Limonov says that every requirement stipulated by the law in order for the party to be registered has been fulfilled.
In addition to Limonov, speakers at the Alternative Forum include political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky, The Other Russia’s local chair Andrei Dmitriyev and Viktor Tyulkin of the Russian United Labor Front (ROT Front), a political party that also failed to get registered with the authorities.
Organized by The Other Russia, the forum will be held at Pulkovskaya Park Inn Hotel on Saturday and moderated by Andrei Pesotsky, a professor at St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance and member of The Other Russia.
Alongside 10 other local members of The Other Russia, Pesotsky and Dmitriyev are currently under investigation, having been charged with organizing the activities of a banned organization. The offence is punishable by up to seven years in prison.
Investigators say that the charged activists took action as the National Bolshevik Party, Limonov’s previous party that was banned for alleged extremism in 2007. The activists object by saying that the criminal case was filed to shut down Strategy 31, the ongoing peaceful campaign to defend the right of assembly in which they played an active role.
“The opposition is frequently criticized for having no positive agenda; people say we’re only capable of shouting ‘Down with it,’ getting beaten with a baton on the head and being arrested,” Dmitriyev said by phone on Wednesday.
“During the Economic Forum, we are expected to jump out of the corner with flares, hang banners and throw cans of paint.
“We decided to make a surprise move this time, and instead of doing what is expected of us, put on suits, call a serious conference and suggest alternative ways of development for the Russian Federation, to demonstrate that we have an idea of how our state should be organized after the departure of the tandem.”
Most of the speakers will be from The Other Russia, the ROT Front and the Rodina Zdravy Smysl (Motherland Common Sense) — three unregistered “left-wing/patriotic” political parties that have recently formed a coalition called the National Salvation Front to battle falsifications expected at the upcoming State Duma and presidential elections, Dmitriyev said.
Dmitriyev said that the liberal opposition that he sees as allies in Strategy 31 and other events will not be taking part.
“Conversations about the future of Russia mostly turn into debates between liberals, when the liberals in the government such as Dvorkovich and Kudrin argue with the liberals in opposition such as Nemtsov, Milov and Kasyanov,” he said.
“We want to present an alternative point of view.”
During the Alternative Forum, a resolution on the attitude to the existing economic course and politics of the president and the government that “are leading the country to a national catastrophe” will be adopted, the organizers said in a press release.
Dmitriyev said he hopes that the authorities will not attempt to shut down the conference.
“This is not a street protest, of which the authorities are generally wary, but a purely academic event,” he said.
“Of course, we know the authorities and the police are unreasonable, and don’t exclude that they will try to stop our event, but we hope that common sense will prevail and they won’t do it.”
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Inspector Imprisoned
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A road traffic inspector who aided a gang of car thieves has been sentenced to two years in prison.
Former inspector Yevgeny Alexandrov, 33, was found guilty of abuse of authority and of knowingly purchasing illegally obtained property. The gang was formed in 2009 with the aim of stealing expensive cars, Interfax reported.
Participants scanned the cars’ alarm systems with the help of special instruments and then stole the cars. Later they either sold them or returned them to the owners in exchange for money, Interfax reported. Alexandrov’s role was to provide the criminals with information about investigations.
The gang members allegedly stole 25 cars in one year, mainly Lexuses and Toyota Land Cruisers. The other gang members were sentenced earlier, Interfax reported.
Mass Fight in Kobralovo
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A criminal case has been opened after a mass brawl in the village of Kobralovo in the Leningrad Oblast occurred on June 12 at a local nightclub, Interfax reported.
According to the police, about 10 people were involved in the fight. One wounded two people with a rubber pellet gun. The local authorities had allegedly not informed the police that a large-scale public event would be held, Interfax reported.
Secret Map Exhibited
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A secret map of Nazi Germany’s “Barbarossa” operation to invade Soviet Russia will be exhibited in St. Petersburg as part of an international project timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the attack, Interfax reported.
The map will be unveiled on June 22 in the Political History Museum, which prepared the exhibition together with Belarusian, German and Polish history museums. Two expositions at the museum will be devoted to June 22, 1941.
The center of attention of the first will be the secret map of the “Barbarossa” plan and the personal belongings of Richard “Ramsay” Sorge, a Soviet spy in Japan.
Other exhibits will include 24 biographies of war veterans from both the Soviet and German sides, as well as a document titled “12 Commandments of German Behavior in the East.”
Three-Car Crash
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — An accident involving a marshrutka taxi and two cars occurred on the embankment of the Obvodny Canal last weekend.
The minibus taxi collided with one car and then hit another before turning over, Interfax reported. One woman was taken to hospital following the accident.
The minibus was put back on its wheels by a passing tow-truck.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Hybrid Car Plant
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) —Yo-avto company launched the construction of a plant for the production of Yo-mobile hybrid cars in St. Petersburg’s industrial park of Marino last week.
The company is a joint venture between Onexim Group and Yarovit Motors.
Mikhail Prokhorov, President of Onexim Group and one of Russia’s richest men, said the project was very important and that he hoped the plant would launch “the expansion of Yo-mobiles to other regions,” Interfax reported.
St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko said it was the first construction of a plant for the production of domestic cars in a long time.
“This car will have a big future and high demand,” Matviyenko said.
Investment into the project will amount to 150 million euros at the first stage. The payback period is estimated at between three and five years.
The first Yo-mobile is to be produced in the second half of 2012. The second part of the plant is scheduled to be in operation before March 2013. The full capacity of the plant will be 10,000 cars a year.
Yo-avto has developed three models of hybrid cars.
The price of the car is to be set at 450,000 rubles ($16,000). A company named Technoeksim will produce the parts for Yo-mobiles.
The production site for Yarovit Motors trucks was also launched at the same ceremony. The company plans to produce 6,000 trucks a year.
Hotel Price Hike
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — City Hall said it had failed to completely prevent hotels from raising their prices during the annual St. Petersburg Economic Forum.
“We can’t avoid that. It happens all over the world during big events,” said Marianna Ordzhonikidze, head of the tourism department at St. Petersburg’s Investment and Strategic Projects Committee, Interfax reported.
In early May, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko ordered that hotel prices be monitored as the forum, which will take place from Thursday to Saturday, approached.
Fridge Hostage
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A St. Petersburg saleswoman was forced into a large refrigerator by thieves who stole 150,000 rubles ($5,300) from the store where she worked.
Two unknown people entered the food store on Ulitsa Lenina at about 4 a.m. on Monday. They forced the saleswoman into cold storage and stole a metal box containing the money.
The woman was hospitalized in a serious pre-heart attack condition, Interfax reported.
A criminal case has been opened.
Online Tourism
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — An electronic tourism service for St. Petersburg will soon be online, Interfax reported this week.
Visitors to the city will be able to reserve an excursion or any other tourism service in St. Petersburg and its suburbs through the service.
Cat’s Restraining Order
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The city’s Moskovsky district court last week ordered a cat owner not to let his pet out of his room in the communal apartment where he lives.
The court took the decision in order to resolve a six-year argument between the cat’s owner and his neighbors.
A family living in the same apartment had complained that the cat was always in its way, and that nobody cleaned up after the animal.
More Trains to Moscow
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russian Railways has introduced additional Sapsan trains between Moscow and St. Petersburg for the summer.
More trains were added in order to cope with heightened demand, officials said.
A Greener City
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — 22,000 new trees will be planted in the city this year, 1,000 more than last year.
Ecologists say that the chemicals used on the ice during the winter erode tree roots, causing many plants in the city center to rot by the spring, BaltInfo reported
Brazen Jewelry Heist
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A jewelry workshop in the Krasnogvardeisky district was robbed by five unknown men earlier this week.
Armed thieves wearing masks entered the territory of the workshop, disarmed security, took several boxes of jewelry and then fled the scene in a car, which was found burnt out later, Fontanka.ru reported. An investigation has been opened into the case.
Fears Over Forest Fires
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — About 163 forest fires have occurred in the Leningrad Oblast since the beginning of the summer, covering more than 100 hectares of land.
The greatest number of fires (74) occurred in the Vyborgsky district, BaltInfo reported.
“The highest fire risk is in the forests of the Priozersky and Vyborgsky districts, because of last year’s hurricane,” officials said.
The Ministry of Emergency Situations warns against building fires during picnics.
TITLE: Nationalist Killers Sentenced
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Two leaders of a neo-Nazi gang were sentenced Tuesday to life in jail for a rash of hate killings that terrorized minorities in St. Petersburg.
The St. Petersburg City Court said Alexei Voyevodin and Artyom Prokhorenko headed a gang that enlisted Russian supremacists and football fans aged 16 to 22 who preyed on non-Slavs with dark skin or Asian features, kicking and stabbing them to death.
The court also sentenced another 10 gang members to up to 18 years in jail for their roles in dozens of attacks over three years. Their victims included a nine-year old from the ex-Soviet republic of Tajikistan, and natives of North Korea, China and African nations.
The gang also killed two former members suspected of cooperating with police and buried their bodies in a suburban forest.
In 2004, the gang members gunned down Nikolai Girenko, a prominent expert on African ethnology and a human rights advocate who organized anti-racist conferences and helped police investigate hate crimes.
The killings rattled St. Petersburg, a city long plagued by assaults on labor migrants from ex-Soviet Central Asia and Russia’s Caucasus region, as well as natives of African and Asian nations. Critics accused police of doing little to prevent the crimes and find the culprits, and the gang was caught only after a local newspaper ran an investigative report.
Voyevodin and Prokhorenko, with shaved heads and bulging biceps covered with tattooed Celtic imagery, stood calmly in a cage in the courtroom as they listened to the verdict. At a court session last week, Voyevodin threatened the judge with “a horrible death,” Gazeta.ru online newspaper reported.
Celtic crosses are popular among Russian neo-Nazis as substitutes for swastikas.
A handful of their supporters raised their right hands in a Nazi salute and yelled “Hail Russia! Hail heroes!” Some of them were holding small, hand-drawn pictures of Adolf Hitler.
Voyevodin formed the gang in 2003 after most of the members of his previous group, the Mad Crowd, were arrested and charged with multiple killings and assaults. He ordered his followers not to name the gang, refrain from wearing Nazi and ultranationalist symbols and advertising their crimes — unlike other neo-Nazi groups that often posted videos of their attacks online.
In recent years, dozens of mostly underage neo-Nazis have stood trial and been convicted across Russia amid a surge in xenophobia and hate crimes triggered by the influx of labor migrants. Some average Russians and nationalist politicians accuse the migrants of stealing jobs and forming ethnic gangs.
Racially motivated attacks peaked in 2008, when 110 were killed and 487 wounded, independent human rights watchdog Sova said.
Since then, the number of hate crimes has dwindled, but human rights groups say neo-Nazis are increasingly resorting to bombings and arson against police and government officials, whom they accuse of condoning the influx of illegal migrants. Ultranationalist groups have also stepped up attacks on human rights activists and anti-racist youth groups.
TITLE: Muscovite Replaces Police Chief in Shuffle
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: One of the most influential figures in the city’s law enforcement authorities appears to have taken a major tumble on the career ladder. Lieutenant-General Vladislav Piotrovsky has failed to be reappointed to the position of head of the St. Petersburg police force, a job that he had held for the past four years. President Dmitry Medvedev dismissed Piotrovsky from his post and appointed a Muscovite — Colonel-General Mikhail Sukhodolsky, the former first deputy Interior Minister of Russia — to replace him.
The future looks cloudy for Piotrovsky, who has not yet been officially appointed by the president to any other job, or voiced any concrete plans about the next step in his career.
Piotrovsky’s position began to look precarious a few months ago when he published an income declaration that raised eyebrows not only in the camp of his long-standing critics, but also among some of his top-ranking counterparts. Rashid Nurgaliev, Russia’s Interior Minister, made a statement about Piotrovsky’s departure, hinting that the St. Petersburg chief of police may have made enemies in high places.
“The commission did not have any issues with Vladislav Piotrovsky’s professional performance; Mr. Piotrovsky failed to pass the reappointment procedure; he failed to provide sufficient information on several questions of a personal nature that were posed to him during the examination,” Nurgaliev said. “Therefore, the commission voted unanimously not to reappoint him.” The personal issues appear to have outweighed what Nurgaliev described as Piotrovsky’s impeccable service.
While Piotrovsky’s dismissal is one of dozens of reshuffles undertaken by Medvedev as part of his campaign to improve the performance of the country’s police, it is revealing that it was only the St. Petersburg police chief’s departure that was given a specific — and unflattering — explanation from Nurgaliev.
It is also notable that although Piotrovsky himself filed a letter of resignation in early June, Medvedev chose to officially “not reappoint” him rather than simply accept his resignation.
Both Nurgaliev and Medvedev also ignored Piotrovsky’s recommendation that an experienced local policeman, Piotrovsky’s deputy Sergei Umnov, be appointed as a replacement. Instead, St. Petersburg is getting Moscow’s Sukhodolsky, for whom the St. Petersburg placement is technically a step down from his first deputy minister position.
The future of Piotrovsky, who has kept his rank, is unclear. Some members of the local political establishment have speculated that the disgraced former head of the police might go into politics, but they stop short of suggesting with which political party he would affiliate himself.
Vyacheslav Makarov, a veteran United Russia lawmaker with the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, told reporters that Piotrovsky would make a valuable asset as a parliamentarian. “The entire career of Mr. Piotrovsky is a perfect example of admirable professionalism; it is a real pity to see him quit his post,” Makarov said.
Piotrovsky himself appears to be toying with the idea.
“I am not a man of politics, but I would not rule out the possibility of going into politics,” Piotrovsky told Kommersant newspaper.
TITLE: From Post-Soviet Shindig to Don’t-Miss Economic Event
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Belarus won a 500 billion ruble loan from Russia at the first gathering 15 years ago of what has evolved into the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
But Minsk, currently mired in a financial crisis, is unlikely to get similar treatment at the forum this week.
The annual event, sometimes referred to as the Russian Davos, has come a long way from its roots as a get-together of former countries of the Soviet Union to discuss problems of integration after the Soviet collapse.
This week, Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Hu Jintao of China will headline the three-day event, where the best from the world of business will have an opportunity to rub shoulders with powerful Russian politicians and business leaders.
“The forum provides a good communication opportunity,” said Deputy Economic Development Minister Stanislav Voskresensky, who helped organize the forum this year and last.
“There’s much uncertainty in both developed and developing countries,” he said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times. “It’s important to coordinate our positions on global problems from time to time.”
The forum has a tourist angle as well. Voskresensky said many participants are drawn by the chance to see St. Petersburg’s famous white nights, when the sun never seems to go down.
Indeed, thousands of tourists visit St. Petersburg every summer, attracted by the white nights and the view of bridges rising over the Neva River. But only for three days this week will they also likely come across senior government officials and the heads of foreign companies walking along Nevsky Prospekt.
The Beginning
It wasn’t always this way. The forum, which is overseen by the Economic Development Ministry, was first held under the auspices of the Federation Council and the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States Member Nations.
According to the forum’s web site, the agenda of the first gathering in 1997 — then known as the Nevsky Summit — focused on problems of integration after the Soviet collapse as well as economic cooperation with Russia to ensure foreign investment in other CIS countries.
As an indication of partnership, Russia agreed to provide a loan of 500 billion rubles (worth about $100 million at the time) to Belarus, signing an agreement at the forum, which took place in St. Petersburg’s Tavrichesky Palace.
The following year, then-President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree to hold the forum annually. Forum participants, including Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, gathered on June 17, two months to the day before the Russian government defaulted on its debt and the country lurched into a financial crisis.
Ways to overcome the crisis — the worst in Russia’s post-Soviet history — topped the agenda at the 1999 forum, with the participants giving Russia specific recommendations on how to tackle its problems.
In its first years, the forum was a political event rather than a venue for making business contacts, and it was attended by senior government officials from both European and CIS countries.
Most foreign businessmen didn’t include it in their annual schedules. The world business elite was represented at the Nevsky Summit in 1999 by Siemens board member Roland Koch, and in 2000 by the heads of the International Monetary Fund and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The EBRD president attended again in 2003.
Vladimir Putin, who became president in 2000, first visited the forum in 2005, signaling a significant change in its status.
Priorities Change
Putin and his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, have attended the forum annually since 2006 — the event’s 10th anniversary — and have overseen it shift away from the CIS and toward global issues and Russia’s economic development.
In 2006, the Economic Development Ministry began organizing the forum and moved it to its current venue at the Lenexpo Exhibition Center on the shore of the Gulf of Finland.
German Gref, who worked as economic development minister at that time and chaired the organizing committee, declared that a decision had been made “to bring the forum closer to Davos” — the Swiss resort that hosts the annual World Economic Forum.
The Kremlin turned to the organizers of the World Economic Forum for assistance when it started promoting the St. Petersburg forum as Russia’s key economic event in 2007. Previously, the privately organized Russian Economic Forum in London had been the largest venue for Western businessmen to meet with the Russian elite, and the London event folded after senior government officials and businesspeople skipped it in favor of St. Petersburg.
Amid criticism from the London forum organizers that the Russian government was sabotaging their event, Gref insisted that there was no competition between the two gatherings. “St. Petersburg is the main venue for us, and it is gaining popularity,” he told the St. Petersburg newspaper Nevskoye Vremya in 2007.
The forum that year saw a number of prominent guests, including Sun Group chairman Nand Khemka, Total CEO Christophe de Margerie and former World Bank president James Wolfensohn.
Notably, the forum — the last one attended by Putin as president — became a venue for setting major priorities for Russia’s future economic development.
The key goal for the next president was announced by then-First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who said Russia would become one of the world’s five largest economies by 2020. Major highlights of Ivanov’s speech at one session, including focusing on innovation and diversifying the economy away from the exports of natural resources, later appeared as part of a report on Russia’s development strategy through 2020 presented by Putin the following February.
Incidentally, at the time of the 2007 forum, Ivanov and then-First Deputy Prime Minister Medvedev were widely seen as the leading candidates to succeed Putin. The forum served as Ivanov’s introduction to foreign investors, while Medvedev had his own coming-out party at Davos five months earlier.
Today’s Forum
Voskresensky, the deputy economic development minister, said the forum aims to demonstrate Russia’s potential to foreign investors, some of whom know little about the country, and explain key issues of government policy such as immigration rules and customs union regulations.
In recent years, the event also has become a venue for signing deal agreements, some of which have amounted to billions of dollars. According to the forum’s web site, last year’s event saw 47 agreements totaling 338 billion rubles ($12 billion), including 275.6 billion rubles in investment contracts.
Among the biggest deals were an agreement with French energy company GDF Suez to join the Nord Stream project and a merger between Danone and Unimilk.
The agreements, however, only partly indicate the forum’s significance, Voskresensky said, because meeting potential business partners is no less important. Among those who attend the event annually are Deutsche Bank chairman Josef Ackermann, Telenor chief executive Jon Fredrik Baksaas, Citigroup chief executive Vikram Pandit and Siemens chairman Peter Loescher.
“We don’t measure the forum’s success by the number of agreements, but it’s important that partnership ideas appear during the forum,” Voskresensky said.
He said, however, that it would be wrong to compare the St. Petersburg forum with Davos.
St. Petersburg focuses on the prospects of Russia and other developing countries whose role in the global economy is increasing, Voskresensky said, adding that the presence of Chinese leader Hu at the forum’s opening ceremony Friday indicates the event’s focus on the BRICS nations.
He said participants also appreciate the forum as an opportunity to combine business with pleasure, with the chance to see white nights and take in St. Petersburg’s rich heritage.
TITLE: Not All Work and No Play at the Economic Forum
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A regatta, a concert by Sting, culinary classes and a plethora of opera and ballet performances will inject a dose of culture into the program of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that takes place from June 16 to 18. Not all of the fun is restricted to those taking part in the forum itself, however, as city residents will be able to take advantage of many of the events on offer.
Thursday, June 16
While those taking part in the briefings and roundtables get down to business on Thursday morning before the official opening of the forum, their spouses will travel to the city’s historic suburb of Pushkin (formerly Tsarskoye Selo) for an excursion around the Catherine Palace, including its iconic Amber Room.
At 3 p.m. on Thursday, a regatta will be held at the Krestovsky Yacht Club, in which participants of the forum will have the chance to sail together with international sailing professionals. The program includes a competition, reception and awards ceremony for the winners. The regatta will take place at 4 Yuzhnaya Doroga on Krestovsky Island.
On Thursday evening, British pop, blues and rock singer Sting will perform a free concert right in the heart of the city on Palace Square. Sting will perform a program called Symphonicity together with a symphony orchestra. The concert is scheduled from 8 p.m. through 11 p.m.
For ballet lovers, the city’s Mariinsky Theater will perform the ballet "Jewels," set to music by Faure, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky, and choreographed by George Balanchine. The performance starts at 7 p.m.
Down the road at the Mariinsky’s concert hall (37 Ulitsa Dekabristov), violinist Leonidas Kavakos will perform with the Mariinsky Theater Symphony Orchestra. The theater's artistic director, Valery Gergiev, will conduct a program featuring music by Mendelssohn, Sibelius and Shostakovich from 6 p.m.
Two more ballets can be seen at the Alexandriinsky Theater (2 Ploshchad Ostrovskogo) where "La Bayadere" will be performed at 8 p.m., and at the Theater of Musical Comedy
(13 Italianskaya Ulitsa), which will present "Swan Lake," performed by the Konstantin Tachkin Ballet Theater at 8 p.m.
At the Tauride Palace (47 Ulitsa Shpalernaya), the Soloists of the Catherine the Great ensemble and the Russian Horn Orchestra will play 18th-century Russian music and European baroque at 8 p.m.
Tickets can be purchased at the Cultural Program information booth in Pavilion 4 of LenExpo center, where the forum takes place.
Friday, June 18
On Friday morning, the spouses of forum participants have the chance to go on an excursion to another St. Petersburg suburb, Peterhof.
On the same day, participants can attend a cookery master class given by the chef of St. Petersburg’s brand new W Hotel. This event requires prior registration.
Friday also sees the traditional forum reception in the Mikhailovsky Gardens, to which guests of the forum are invited on behalf of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko. The reception, which also requires prior registration, will feature theatrical and comedy performances, as well as a concert program by young jazz musicians. The event starts at 7 p.m.
On Friday night, the Mariinsky Theater presents the one-act ballet "Carmen Suite," starring Svetlana Zakharova of Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet Theater, followed by the four-act ballet "Symphony in C Major" featuring the Mariinsky’s leading dancers: Ulyana Lopatkina, Alina Somova, Olesya Novikova and Yevgenia Obraztsova. The performance will start at 8 p.m.
Kavakos will take to the stage of the Mariinsky Concert Hall for the second night running, for a program of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, once again conducted by Gergiev. The concert starts at 6 p.m.
The indefatigable Mariinsky orchestra — and Gergiev — will return to the stage of the concert hall at 10 p.m. for a second concert titled "New Voices of Montblanc." The orchestra will also play Giuseppe Verdi’s "Requiem."
Not to be outdone, the Shostakovich Philharmonic will host the Andreyev State Russian Orchestra playing a concert titled "Music of the White Nights." The lead singers of the Mariinsky Theater, Irina Mataeva and Viktor Chernomortsev, will also perform during the concert, which begins at 7 p.m.
Also Friday, it’s the turn of the Alexandriinsky Theater to show "Swan Lake" performed by the Konstantin Tachkin Ballet Theater at 8 p.m.
Jazz lovers will head down to the State Academic Cappella (20 Naberezhnaya Reki Moiki) to see "Masterpieces of World Jazz" featuring Igor Butman, David Goloschekin and Anatoly Kalvarsky at 10.30 p.m.
Saturday, June 19
On Saturday, the Mariinsky Theater will present graduation performances by the prestigious Vaganova Ballet Academy at 12 p.m., followed by Tchaikovsky's ballet "Swan Lake" at 7 p.m.
The day — and the forum — will culminate in the annual school-leavers’ celebration, Alye Parusa (Scarlet Sails). At 1.30 a.m., a ship with scarlet sails will sail down the River Neva, preceded by a concert on Palace Square for classes of 2011. There will also be a multimedia light and pyrotechnical show over the Neva.
TITLE: Investors Lured With Figures
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Transparency and investor interest will increase for domestic companies reporting consolidated earnings after they are required to implement international accounting standards next year, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Tuesday at a Presidium meeting chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Companies with consolidated accounts will switch to International Financial Reporting Standards by Jan. 1 and will be able to report their 2012 financial results according to the new rules, Kudrin said.
“In case we complete this procedure by the end of this year, all the companies with consolidated accounts will report their results for 2012 according to the IFRS,” Kudrin said. “That means all consolidated groups will compulsorily use these standards in 2013 for the first time to report their results for 2012.”
Other firms, including public companies and small and medium-sized businesses, will have to follow suit shortly afterward, switching to international accounting standards “during the transition period,” he said.
A law on consolidated financial accounting, passed last year, stipulates the switch to the international accounting standards. In April, the government signed an agreement with the IFRS Foundation, allowing it to use these standards locally.
Under the agreement, the government obtained the copyright for the Russian translation of the IFRS requirements, enabling the use of the international standards in all Russian-speaking countries.
Putin said that adopting such standards was “an important step in developing our financial system, increasing its transparency.”
Analysts agreed the switch was a positive step that would increase the attractiveness of Russian companies.
“It is a positive step for the investment climate to mandate the use of accounting standards that are recognized and understood across the globe,” said Andrew Cranston, senior partner at KPMG in Russia and the former Soviet Union.
“Many large companies have already been using IFRS for a number of years to enable them to access international financing, therefore there is already a very strong body of experience in Russia in using these standards,” he said in e-mailed comments. “For those that have not used IFRS before, there is quite a steep learning curve.”
Adopting international standards in such a short period could prove challenging for some companies, said Galina Ryltsova, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. “Switching to IFRS is a complex task for any firm and includes different aspects like hiring qualified personnel, working out a registration policy according to IFRS and reconfiguring the accounting system to prepare for the switch to IFRS,” she said.
Ryltsova said, however, that it’s a manageable task because some domestic companies already have experience with IFRS.
Kudrin said earlier this year that about 160 of the country’s top 400 companies are already using international accounting standards.
The banking sector was required to adopt the standards a couple of years ago to mixed results. The transition was not successful because, in practice, a mixed system was adopted that did not effectively increase transparency, Alfa Bank chief economist Natalya Orlova said. In addition, “monitoring is still based on Russian standards,” she said.
“It is an additional burden for companies — but the information cannot be used by the market,” she said.
Among other issues discussed at the Presidium meeting were government measures to support employment in the regions. A total of 28 billion rubles (about $1 billion) has been set aside in this year’s budget to stimulate employment, Putin said, adding that “the situation on the labor market is rather stable.”
Only 17.6 billion rubles of the funds has been spent, with the rest put in reserves that might be used later this year if the situation changes, said Health and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova.
The measures to stimulate employment in the regions include supporting employment in single-factory towns, providing grants for startups, personnel training and organizing internships for university graduates.
In addition, the government has earmarked more than 70 billion rubles this year for unemployment benefits in the regions, Golikova told reporters after the Presidium meeting.
The number of unemployed stands at 5.4 million people, which is still too many compared with the pre-crisis April 2008 figure of 4.5 million, she said.
TITLE: Traffic Police Chief, Interpol Head Replaced
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday replaced the chief of the traffic police and the head of the Russian branch of Interpol, ramping up a police reform that started in March by dismissing the most high-profile officials yet.
Career police official Viktor Nilov, 56, was appointed to replace Viktor Kiryanov at the helm of the traffic police, while Alexander Prokupchik, 50, deputy head at the country’s Interpol bureau, was promoted to head the agency, the Kremlin said on its web site.
The statement did not specify whether Kiryanov and Prokupchik’s predecessor, Viktor Lakhonin, were offered new state jobs.
Nilov has served in the traffic police since the late 1970s. He worked in St. Petersburg — where both Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Medvedev began their political careers — before moving to the agency’s central office in Moscow in the mid-2000s. He had served as deputy chief of the national traffic police since 2008.
The appointment spells no changes for the notoriously corrupt traffic police, said motorist rights champion Leonid Olshansky. “Nothing will change. He was a member of the old team,” Olshansky said on Rusnovosti.ru radio.
TITLE: Medvedev Promises To Lift EU Vegetable Ban
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow will lift a ban on European vegetables in exchange for extra guarantees from Brussels on the products’ origin, thus removing a major trade relations headache just days before the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
The decision, announced by President Dmitry Medvedev after Friday’s summit with EU leaders, was not implemented by Monday, a public holiday, but European officials said they expected results soon.
Specialists from both sides will agree on a food safety certificate “very soon,” Medvedev said at a news briefing after the summit in Nizhny Novgorod, according to a Kremlin transcript.
Moscow imposed the ban two weeks ago after a mysterious outbreak of E. coli in northern Germany killed 36 people by Monday and sickened more than 2,000.
The ban, which excludes potatoes, angered EU officials, who argued that it was disproportionate and unnecessarily jeopardized both vegetable trade with Europe and Moscow’s hopes to join the World Trade Organization.
Medvedev announced the decision when asked by a reporter whether summit leaders had eaten vegetables.
He replied that they had vegetables both at the summit’s opening Thursday evening and on Friday. “There were different kinds of tomatoes on the menu. I don’t know where they came from. Let’s wait and see,” he quipped.
Denis Daniilidis, the spokesman for the EU’s delegation to Moscow, said the certificates, which guarantee a product’s origin, were a mere technicality.
“The certificates are those used already by the EU domestically and do not present any additional work for us,” Daniilidis said by telephone Monday.
He said samples should have been sent to the Federal Consumer Protection Service on Sunday or Monday.
The service’s spokespeople were unavailable for comment Monday.
Agency head Gennady Onishchenko has promised to heed Friday’s decision but warned that Russia must continue to tread carefully until the outbreak is over.
“The epidemic in Europe is not over, and therefore we will not allow any inappropriate carelessness,” Onishchenko told Interfax on Saturday.
TITLE: Punishment For White-Collar Crime Softened
AUTHOR: By Alexei Nikolsky,
Natalya Kostenko
and Lilia Biryukova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — New changes to the Criminal Code will enable white-collar criminals to buy their way out of trouble. The cost: five times the amount of damages inflicted, capped at 15 million rubles ($535,000), from each convicted person, paid to the federal budget.
President Dmitry Medvedev announced at a meeting with Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov earlier this week that he had submitted the amendments to the State Duma. In the justice minister’s opinion, the changes are not a liberalization but an effort to make the Criminal Code more practical.
Serious alteration of the Criminal Code began last year. Two previous groups of amendments — abolition of pretrial arrests for economic crimes and cancellation of the lower limits of punishments for minor crimes — are already in effect.
According to the text of the amendments obtained by Vedomosti, punishment for economic crimes can be avoided if it is the first time the offender has committed such crimes, the crimes are not grievous, and the offender is ready to pay the government five times the amount of damages inflicted.
An employee at the Interior Ministry’s economic crime department noted that the changes will affect crimes that do not directly harm the state, and in such cases, according to the bill, the offending party will have to pay back the damages to the victim (whether a person or a legal entity) and pay to the federal budget five times the amount of the damages.
According to the articles listed in the amendments, the damages cannot exceed 3 million rubles, so the payment to the state cannot surpass 15 million rubles, the source said.
The most significant of the amendments concern articles on engaging in illegal business and banking activities, selling unlicensed goods and evading customs payments, the source said. The average damage for the majority of such cases amounts to 1 million to 2 million rubles.
People rarely go to jail for these crimes now, lawyer Vladimir Zherebenkov said. The requirement to pay the government will only make things worse for businesses. The damage will be decided by state officials, who will decide it in their own favor, he said.
According to the bill, the amended articles of the Criminal Code will affect cases opened after Jan. 1, 2012.
TITLE: Sberbank Online Tax System Goes Live
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — An online tax payment service, a Russian first, went live Tuesday giving millions of taxpayers the option of avoiding lengthy lines — but only if they have an account with the country’s biggest lender, state-owned Sberbank.
Under a new section of the Federal Tax Service’s web site, a “personal office for taxpayers” allows users to pay transport, property and land tax obligations online.
Once they have specified which payments they would like to make, taxpayers are transferred to “Sberbank online,” Sberbank’s Internet platform where the financial transaction is concluded.
Head of Sberbank and former Economic Development Minister German Gref, present at the launch of the new facility alongside Federal Tax Service director Mikhail Mishustin, said the new process simply replicated in an online format the current system, which requires the payer’s presence in a tax office. No additional personal data would be required by Sberbank or the Federal Tax Service, he said.
Gref added that it could prove particularly helpful to small and medium-sized businesses.
Mishustin said that while Sberbank was currently the only bank through which online tax payments could be made, the Federal Tax Service was “actively encouraging” other big banks to participate in the project.
President Dmitry Medvedev has said he wants all state services to be available online by 2015.
Although numbers are growing fast, the majority of Russian citizens do not have regular online access — Internet penetration at the end of 2010 was 43.6 percent. There is a sharp disparity between urban centers and the regions. Broadband penetration in Moscow is 55 percent, compared with 20 percent in households outside the country’s two biggest cities.
Mishustin said he did not know what level of interest the new service would stimulate.
The Federal Tax Service has 18 electronic initiatives but levels of use are mixed. One launched last month, he said, “has unfortunately not seen a large amount of activity.”
The Central Bank picked Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Troika Dialog on Tuesday to manage its sale of a 7.58 percent stake in Sberbank, Bloomberg reported.
The five investment banks were chosen from 17 applicants based on criteria including experience in organizing initial public offerings, rankings in capital market league tables, overall competency and the amount of fees charged, the Central Bank said in a statement on its web site Tuesday.
Troika Dialog — currently being acquired by Sberbank — was the only Russian bank selected, beating big players Renaissance Capital and VTB Capital.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s government plans to raise at least 1 trillion rubles ($36 billion) in privatization over the next three years. The Central Bank, Sberbank’s biggest shareholder, is seeking to raise as much as $7 billion.
TITLE: Georgia Opposition Foresees Deal on WTO Entry
AUTHOR: By Lena Smirnova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Georgia will announce within days that it is removing its conditions on Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization, the leader of the Georgian opposition party said, citing a source close to President Mikheil Saakashvili’s administration.
Manana Manjgaladze, Saakashvili’s press secretary, denied the rumor in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio on Wednesday. Georgia’s position on Russian accession to the 153-member organization remains unchanged, she said.
Georgian authorities have demanded since the August 2008 war that Russia allow Georgian border guards at customs checkpoints on the Abkhaz and South Ossetian sections of the Russian-Georgian border.
Moscow opposed the demands as incompatible with its recognition of the regions’ sovereignty.
A withdrawal of the demands would be a major concession from the Georgians, said Alexei Portansky, a professor at the Higher School of Economics’ department of trade policy.
“Georgia naturally considers Abkhazia and South Ossetia its own,” he said. “[The withdrawal of the demands] would be a difficult decision for the Georgians.”
Kakha Kukava, leader of the Free Georgia party, said Saakashvili decided to withdraw the demands after he met U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in Rome on June 1.
Biden said publicly after the meeting that the United States will not pressure Georgia to change its position, but Kukava speculated that this statement was only made to maintain Georgia’s appearance of sovereignty.
TITLE: PhosAgro Starts IPO Roadshow
AUTHOR: By Lena Smirnova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — PhosAgro, the world’s second-largest maker of phosphate fertilizers, confirmed that it will hold an initial public offering in London and Moscow, the company’s general director announced at a news conference Tuesday.
The roadshow is expected to start June 29 and pricing is due July 15, a banking sector representative told Interfax.
The company also announced that it is in discussions to create a joint venture with holding Basic Element, which controls the BaselCement-Pikalyovo plant in the Leningrad region.
General director Maxim Volkov said the company could sell 10 percent to 15 percent of its shares at the IPO. Russian investors will be able to buy existing ordinary shares and foreign investors can buy Global Depositary Receipts, each one worth 30 shares.
The company hopes to raise $500 million from the float, sources told Reuters. The revenues will go to those selling the shares.
Volkov said IPO proceeds could be used for potential mergers and acquisitions although the company is not discussing specific deals at this time, Interfax reported.
“We are not considering global M&A currently,” Volkov said. “In the future we will look at possibilities to raise PhosAgro’s value.”
Experts did not rule out that PhosAgro could postpone the public offering if there is a lack of demand for the shares since the company is not desperate for a cash injection.
“The situation is quite favorable in the fertilizer sector,” Vladimir Dorogov, an analyst at Alfa Bank, told The St. Petersburg Times. “The market is growing. The demand for different kinds of fertilizer is growing. The summer is usually the time when there is a drop in demand, but we are not seeing this now.”
Several Russian companies have announced plans to hold IPOs this year, but only four have gone through with a listing. At least seven firms canceled their listings because they had been undervalued by investors.
PhosAgro executives are confident that the demand for the company’s shares will meet expectations.
“Considering the quality of our holdings, our position in the world fertilizer industry and the history of our development, we are confident that the investors’ will show sufficient interest in our float,” PhosAgro’s press office told The St. Petersburg Times.
Analysts say that regardless of the valuation, transparency will have to increase as a result of the IPO. “The IPO would require the company to be more transparent if it wants to get a warm welcome from investors,” Alfa Bank’s Dorogov said.
TITLE: Two Heads Are Better Than One
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: Russian business has always been highly dependent on the government and good relations with authorities. This interrelationship between business and the state is nothing new. It even existed in imperial Russia, when private business grew not so much as the result of personal initiative and skill as it did by permission of the tsar.
Russian business is just as scared of the state and government officials as it is dependent on them. Businesspeople in most countries are careful to avoid doing anything that would bring harm to the state, but in those countries with an effective legal system, they at least feel protected from abuses by government officials.
But these protections do not exist in Russia. If a businessperson tries to take a mayor or governor to court, he knows he might lose his business and even end up behind bars himself. In Russia, any sizable business has traditionally sought protection not with the courts or the state, but by following direct instructions from the chief executives of the country.
Under the tandem, however, Russia has two “chief executives” — President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Which of them would business owners prefer as the next president, and which could they rely on to protect their interests?
It would seem that Medvedev is the obvious answer. After all, he is the one who said that “freedom is better than a lack of freedom,” that the authorities should stop “nightmarizing” businesses by harassing them with onerous, unnecessary inspections. It was Medvedev who suggested that criminal punishments for economic crimes be mitigated and who has made the battle against corruption one of his top objectives. In addition, Medvedev has never waged a personal attack against an oligarch.
In recent weeks, the Kremlin has disagreed with the White House about the need to reduce taxes on business. The presidential administration believes that the government’s decision to raise the social tax from 26 percent to 34 percent will suffocate business and has demanded that the government find a way to lower the tax. The government has all but ignored the demand. At the same time, the two sides can’t agree on a compromise proposal to raise the tax on profit by 4 percent in exchange for lowering the social tax to 26 percent.
Meanwhile, Putin has been quite active in the past few months meeting with small and medium-sized business groups and attending business forums. Judging by his remarks at these meetings, Putin sounds very much like a liberal who supports the market economy. What’s more, Putin has commissioned a team of prominent liberal economists headed by Vladimir Mau and Higher School of Economics president Yaroslav Kuzminov. Ironically, the country’s economy is being entrusted to people whom the authorities not long ago labeled as “modern-day Yegor Gaidars.”
It looks like both tandem members are campaigning and trying to position themselves as “business-friendly” candidates. So, which of the two is better for business?
Probably the best answer is neither. The main reason is that neither Putin, as president and prime minister, nor Medvedev has succeeded in curbing corruption. Both have proven powerless to defeat — or even tame — a corrupt bureaucratic leviathan that, more often than not, simply ignores instructions from above, including direct orders from the president and prime minister.
Neither Medvedev nor Putin is able to break the existing system without radically reforming and restructuring the entire system of governance by introducing more competition and establishing an independent judiciary. Neither of them has the political will — or the necessary tools — to implement such reforms.
Because neither Putin nor Medvedev is better than the other for business, the private sector would probably benefit most if the current tandem continued intact in one form or another. That is because competition between the president and prime minister gives business a taste of freedom that neither of the tandem partners could provide separately. Even when the competition is staged, competition still motivates each tandem member to outdo each other in winning voter support.
In reality, however, the tandem will not survive past the State Duma elections in December, much less the presidential election in March. Soon we will find out who will drop out of the tandem and who will remain as the presidential candidate. Unfortunately, the business community will play only a minor role at best in determining who that candidate will be.
Georgy Bovt is a co-founder of the Right Cause party.
TITLE: ALWAYS A DISSIDENT An August 1998 Default on a Global Scale
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: On June 1, U.S. Congress rejected a bill to increase the debt limit by $2.4 trillion, delivering a humiliating defeat to President Barack Obama.
For now, there is no immediate threat of a U.S. default on its debt, but the government will have to dramatically cut costs or go back to Congress with new proposals. Obama will be forced to reach a compromise with the Republicans in Congress, and the only question now is the price he will have to pay for it.
Republicans are demanding fundamental changes to U.S. financial policy and limits to the emission of dollars and to the endless government borrowing on financial markets that threatens to put the United States in the same position that Russia found itself at the end of President Boris Yeltsin’s rule. During Russia’s crisis, government bonds essentially became a financial pyramid that finally collapsed during the default of August 1998.
Now Washington finds itself in a similar position. But in contrast to the Yeltsin government, which limited the money supply so sharply that people did not receive salaries for months, U.S. authorities have resorted to borrowing actively on the credit market and printing dollars, otherwise known as “quantitative easing.” Those dollars have spread like wildfire throughout the world economy, fueling speculative investment and keeping oil prices high.
By trying to keep its own financial system afloat, the United States is essentially financing Russian raw materials companies, Chinese exporters and European bankers.
The flip side of the U.S. monetary expansion is a ubiquitous rise in the price of food and housing (except for in the United States) and the transformation of many ordinary consumer goods into unaffordable luxuries for a significant percentage of the world’s population. These dangerous tendencies could easily result in serious political upheavals across the globe, including Russia, if they continue unabated.
No matter how the conflict between Congress and the Obama administration is resolved, it will inevitably affect the fate of the international economy. A sharp cut in government spending and a limit on the emission of dollars threatens to send the U.S. economy back into another recession.
For Russia, the looming second wave of a global recession threatens to become a full-blown social catastrophe. Russian leaders escaped this kind of disaster in 2009 with almost no effort. They were saved only when the U.S. Federal Reserve began printing dollars. But they won’t be saved in the next crisis, which may hit the country before the March presidential election.
Russian leaders are probably well aware of these dangers. But this hardly means that they will change their policies and take measures now to help control the damage. Instead, they have proposed commercializing education and selling off state property.
There is a fierce battle for power among the ruling elite, but there is no battle of ideas. The result is that all the major decisions have already been made, and they are devoid of common sense. To have a true battle of ideas, you have to have prudent and forward-thinking ideas in the first place.
Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.
TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Vasily Shumov, the frontman of the Moscow band Center, is in charge of the music program of Anti-Seliger, a civic forum comprising ecological and human rights activists, musicians, artists and concerned citizens who will live in tents at a temporary campsite in the Khimki forest near Moscow.
The four-day event, which runs from Friday through Monday, will feature seminars, debates and forest walks.
The main objective is to defend the Khimki forest from deforestation resulting from a Kremlin-backed plan to build a highway through the forest. The activists have sworn to defend the forest despite the threat of arrests and attacks from unidentified thugs.
Acts such as Televizor, Center, Nik Rok-n-Roll and Zakhar Mai have been announced as performing at the event. Around 1,000 people are expected to participate.
On Wednesday, the organizers wrote an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev asking him not to disperse the forum. See www.antiseliger.ru for a full schedule and whereabouts.
The name of the event is a swipe at Seliger, the Kremlin-promoted summer camp for pro-Putin youth groups, at which participants are taught how to promote the Kremlin’s politics in blogs and how to physically confront street protests.
The true nature of gatherings such as Seliger was demonstrated last year when pro-Kremlin activists made an installation called “You’re Not Welcome Here,” featuring a stick topped with a plastic head of DDT’s Yury Shevchuk wearing a Nazi cap.
The Shevchuk figure was seen as the Kremlin’s reaction to the musician’s prior confrontation with Vladimir Putin, when the prime minister met artists after a charity event.
In fact, the Nazi caps are revealing, because it is the Kremlin-backed youth organizations that have been dubbed “Putinjugend” or “Putin Youth” (after the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany).
Locally, Magerfest, a two-day outdoor festival of independent breweries and music, could be a fun event to visit this weekend.
The festival is an alternative to the city’s massive beer festival, which is notorious for its drunken crowds and some big but largely uninteresting acts. Instead, Magerfest — with Auktyon’s manager Sergei Vasilyev in charge of the music program — offers some of the best acts on the Russian indie scene.
Although there will be no international acts this year (last year’s event hosted The Tiger Lillies and The Real Tuesday Weld), the lineup includes Zorge and La Minor on Friday and Iva Nova, Skazy Lesa and Tres Muchachos y Companeros on Saturday. For more acts, see Gigs.
Magerfest is held in one of the courtyards of a former rubber factory and is as such somewhat dependent of the weather. Forecasts promise partly cloudy skies, with some rain on Saturday. Temperatures are predicted to reach about 18 degrees Celcius.
Doors open at 12 p.m., and music programs begin at 4 p.m.
TITLE: Sent from up above?
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Friday’s concert in support of Artyom (Artemy) Troitsky, arguably Russia’s leading music critic who is facing hefty fines and even a prison sentence for allegedly defaming a former traffic policeman and a pro-Kremlin rock musician, seemed to reveal that the lawsuits were orchestrated by the Kremlin when the authorities tried to stop it from going ahead.
Canceled by the state-owned Moscow House of Artists after its director received calls from organizations he did not wish to name, the show — which was finally moved to the Moscow club Hleb — also proved that it could have gone ahead as planned if the venue had not taken fright but had resisted pressure from the state bodies.
“The lasting impression is a great atmosphere of general enthusiasm, solidarity and nobility,” said Troitsky, speaking by phone from his Moscow home on Monday.
“The second, very important thing is that the club stayed calm and held the concert despite pressure from the authorities.”
Organized by Vasily Shumov, frontman of the 1980s band Center and a longtime friend of Troitsky’s, who asked fellow musicians to support Troitsky with a free concert, the show was dropped by several other venues who at first agreed to host it, according to Troitsky.
“It turned out that the cancelation at the Central House of Artists and the fact that it did not take place at several other venues that offered to hold it at first turned out to be primarily the problem of the people who ran those venues, rather than anybody else,” Troitsky said.
“Because the authorities bluffed and scared them, even though there were no legal grounds for that at all. Because our people, whether they are public sector workers or businessmen, are easily intimidated; it’s enough to raise your voice at them a little or hint at possible trouble, and they give in at once.
“But it turned out that people can act differently and not submit to these totally illegal demands, saying perfectly calmly: Everything’s OK with us, what’s your problem? If you want this document, here you are, if you want that document, have a look at it, and that’s all! Of course, it’s been a very good lesson.”
The concert featured DDT’s outspoken frontman Yury Shevchuk and Center as well as non-musical guests such as oppositional politician Boris Nemtsov, and was described by Troitsky as “eclectic to the maximum.”
“There was everything, from poetry to punk rock, from avant-garde to folk; it resembled a musical Noah’s Ark,” he said.
Troitsky is being sued by former traffic policeman Nikolai Khovansky, whom Troitsky awarded the title of “worst cop” at a DDT concert in Moscow in November, and by pro-Kremlin rock musician Vadim Samoilov, who is also a friend of the Kremlin’s grey cardinal Vladislav Surkov and a member of the Public Chamber. In January, Troitsky described him as “Surkov’s performing poodle.”
The two filed both civic and criminal lawsuits against him.
Late last week, a fifth lawsuit was filed against Troitsky by Vladimir Kisilyov, head of the Federation Foundation and the organizer of the notorious cancer charity fundraiser that featured Prime Minister Vladimir Putin performing “Blueberry Hill” in front of a host of Western celebrities such as Sharon Stone and Mickey Rourke in St. Petersburg in December.
Troitsky commented on the controversy in Novaya Gazeta newspaper in March, when it became known that the medical equipment the show was allegedly supposed to raise money for had not reached the hospitals. At that time, Kiselyov — reportedly a friend of Putin’s — said that the aim of the event had been to draw attention to the issue, rather than to raise funds. (A month after the scandal broke, three local hospitals said they received substantial sums of money.)
“The thing is that when I was hit by four lawsuits all at once, it gave rise to logical enough suspicions that it hadn’t happened all by itself because such ‘coincidences’ are the same as four airplanes in the sky over New York,” he said.
“But there was no direct proof. As soon as pressure was applied on the Central House of Artists, we had direct proof. Because it was not my plaintiffs, Khovansky and Samoilov, and not their lawyers who called the Central House of Artists, but officials from the presidential administration — from Surkov, I think — and from the Public Chamber. Naturally enough, it sends a direct message that this whole business came from above.”
Khovansky came under fire for publicly putting the blame for a traffic incident involving state oil company LukOil’s vice president Anatoly Barkov on two women who were killed when their Citroen collided with Barkov’s Mercedes, which was equipped with flashing lights. The traffic police officer made his comments to the media at the site of the accident.
Troitsky sees the charges being pressed against him by Khovansky and Samoilov as absurd and not reasonable enough to be even accepted by a court. According to him, Khovansky claims his feelings were hurt by a phrase that Troitsky did not even say, and by a reference to rapper Noize MC’s song whose lyrics mention Satan. In turn, Samoilov cited dictionaries to prove that a “poodle is a dog” and that calling a person a “dog” is an insult.
“The accusations are completely absurd and far-fetched, and even the judges are sometimes evidently struggling to hide a smile when these claims are being heard,” he said.
“Nevertheless, they’ve been assigned to do the job.”
Earlier, Khovansky won his civic lawsuit against Troitsky, who was ordered to pay him 130,000 rubles ($4,657) in damages. Troitsky appealed, and his case is due to be heard Thursday. Samoilov, who wants 1 million rubles ($35,821) in damages, dropped one of his demands late last month.
“Samoilov dropped one of his most absurd demands, namely that the phrase about him being ‘Surkov’s performing poodle’ be retracted,” Troitsky said.
“The thing is that it is impossible to retract this phrase; it would get even funnier. I mean, you can imagine a phrase saying that Vadim Samoilov is not a poodle, that he is not a performing animal, but a wild one, and also that he is not Surkov’s. Thankfully, the plaintiff realized the absurdity of his claims at some point and partially dropped them.”
Troitsky said he can only guess why he was targeted.
“I don’t know why they singled me out, because I consider myself to be a completely harmless person,” he said.
“I am not a practicing politician or a businessman. I think they usually target people who can be deprived of a large amount of money along the way or people involved in oppositional political activities. I don’t belong to either category.
“Perhaps the authorities have started to dig a bit deeper now, and want to send a message to all dissidents to keep their mouths shut. This is a sign of a totalitarian, not just authoritarian system.”
Last August, Troitsky co-organized and emceed a protest rally-cum-concert in defense of the Khimki forest, much of which was set to be cut down to make way for the Putin-backed Moscow-St. Petersburg highway. Barto, one of the bands that took part, later found itself under investigation for alleged “extremism” for a song lyric performed at the rally.
The problems that Troitsky is facing now may have stemmed from the same concert, which the authorities seemingly tried to stop by having the police block a truck carrying the PA system and prevent many musicians with musical instruments from entering the square where it was held.
“It’s possible that it was not only Barto who were affected by the Khimki Concert — perhaps some threads in my case come from there,” he said.
“We touched some important people with this event, like Arkady Rotenberg, who is Putin’s judo partner and also the main developer of the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway. There are some risky interests involved here.”
Despite pressure from the authorities, Troitsky said the number of socially-conscious bands and protest songs have been increasing drastically during the past 18 months.
“The situation is changing — and very fast,” he said.
“On the one hand, there are the 1980s heroes who have got back down from the shelf — Mikhail Borzykin of Televizor, Vasily Shumov of Center and, first and foremost, Shevchuk.
“On the other hand, there is a very likeable and angry young crop, such as Noize MC and one more great rapper, Dino MC47, who has recently launched a series of topical raps that he uploads on the Internet every week — a sort of chronicle of current events.
“Plus all sorts of other bands, the best known being Barto and Posledniye Tanki v Parizhe, and many more.”
Troitsky says he sees no threat from rock musicians loyal to the Kremlin and seen at televised meetings or pro-Kremlin outdoor events with President Dmitry Medvedev and Surkov, or from songs written to spoof the opposition or dissident musicians.
“I think it’s not bad at all, I like when there is a poetic discussion between artists going on,” he said.
“I’m all for discussion, because it’s a sign that there is still some life, that people haven’t gone stale in their indifference once and for all.”
However, he criticized Leningrad’s song “Khimki Forest,” released as an Internet video soon after the August rally.
“The only thing is that the polemics should be conducted justly, because, in [Leningrad frontman Sergei] Shnurov’s song about the Khimki forest I was very unpleasantly surprised by one line — if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t say a word against the song,” Troitsky said.
“But there was a line suggesting that we are paid for these [dissident] activities, and in the video at that point Uncle Sam or Washington’s Capitol was shown with dollars falling out of it. Now that is a really mean trick, because I have no doubt that Shnurov knows perfectly that both Shevchuk and I are people who are not remotely mercenary.
“So if they want to debate whether it’s necessary or not, whether it’s good or bad for the country, etc. etc. — go ahead. But sticking in all kinds of banal and utterly false labels, like we’re hirelings of the world’s behind-the-scenes government — this is really not the level of sane, cultured and honest people.”
To promote independently-minded, daring artists, Troitsky has established the Stepnoi Volk (Steppenwolf) Awards. This year’s ceremony and concert is due be held at the St. Petersburg venue Kosmonavt on July 7.
“There are not so many veterans nominated this year, except for Lyapis Trubetskoi for best video, Yury Shevchuk for ‘something remarkable’ and Mumii Troll for the Internet. All the rest are new eras and fresh names. That’s why I think everything will be just great.”
TITLE: Seven nights of Beethoven
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The ability to perform every one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 32 sonatas qualifies a pianist for a place in a very narrow circle of musicians. No connections will open the doors of this prestigious club; talent and skill are the only criteria. Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder won the precious right to membership many years ago. His renditions of Beethoven sonatas stand out for the remarkable intensity of their interpretation and purity of sound.
This month, the pianist comes to St. Petersburg for a unique series of concerts in which he will perform all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas during the course of seven evenings. The concerts will take place on June 24, 25 and 25, and on July 6, 7, 9 and 10 at the Mariinsky Theater Concert Hall as part of the annual Stars of the White Nights festival.
Buchbinder has gained worldwide recognition for his Beethoven interpretations, both in the concert hall and on record. The musician has recorded more than 100 releases, including the complete Beethoven sonatas, as well as works by Brahms, Mozart and Haydn. This year, the musician is releasing the complete Beethoven piano sonatas on CD, and complete Beethoven piano concertos with the Vienna Philharmonic on DVD — both recorded live.
Buchbinder’s personal connection with Beethoven goes back many decades, when as a five-year-old prodigy he performed Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto at the world-renowned Musikverein concert hall in Vienna. “I still do not know exactly how I managed it; the whole experience felt like something completely surreal,” he remembers.
At the same tender age, he became the youngest student in history to be admitted to the prestigious Vienna Music Academy (Vienna Musik Hochschule). Today, the distinguished musician performs alongside some of the world’s leading orchestras in the caliber of the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France and London Philharmonic Orchestra. He collaborates with the most sought-after conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel and Kurt Masur. Since 2007, the musician has been the artistic director of his own classical music festival in Grafenegg, Austria.
Read a typical biography of Buchbinder, and you will inevitably read that the artist’s core repertoire is the so-called Viennese classics — a term that usually encompasses Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn. Speak to the musician himself, and he will tell you that he thoroughly detests the phrase “Viennese classics” and cannot stomach it.
“I cannot stand this utterly stupid phrase,” he explains. “It is absolutely nonsensical and was seemingly invented by some kind of music bureaucrat who researches music but fails to see the heart and soul behind the score. They have simply assigned the title of ‘classic’ composers to these very different composers and put them in a group.”
For Buchbinder, the core element of Mozart’s art is drama, while the music of Beethoven is synonymous with lyricism and delicacy. “Beethoven is the only composer in the history of music who writes espressivo followed by a tempo — it’s in his Piano Sonata, Opus 109. This is the epitome of Romantic playing.”
Buchbinder devotes attention to the intensely scrupulous study of musical scores and the musical material that he performs. The musician has an impressive collection of rare editions of Beethoven’s sonatas, as well as autographed scores, first editions, and original documents.
“The more knowledge you acquire about a piece of music you are going to perform, the more liberty it gives you,” Buchbinder believes. “Research helps you to get closer to the composer, his feelings and ideas, his motivation and his life itself at that moment.”
Buchbinder’s approach to music is anything except mechanical or monotonous.
“Only once in my career did I play the Beethoven sonatas in chronological order; then, having listened to the cycles performed by the world’s best interpreters of his sonatas, I saw that they all create their own structure of the series,” Buchbinder said. “Indeed, it is more exciting for the audiences to compare within one concert the different periods of Beethoven’s work. A pianist can thus create the atmosphere of a confrontation on stage. As for the chronological approach, that is plain boring.”
“In Beethoven’s time, his most popular piece was the Moonlight Sonata. As ridiculous and paradoxical as this may be, the character of this particular work has nothing to do with Beethoven as a composer — it does not communicate much about him,” Buchbinder said. “The truth is that the popularity of the Moonlight made Beethoven furious, as he felt that audiences were missing the point of his art.”
In Buchbinder’s opinion, it is the composer’s tour de force sonatas that convey the genuine Beethoven spirit. To understand what Beethoven’s piano music is really about, one needs to listen to the Appassionata Sonata with its amazing contrasts of forte and piano, or the Sonata Pathetique with its tragic sonorities, Buchbinder feels.
The pianist is a regular with the International Beethoven Festival that is held every year in the composer’s birthplace, Bonn. The city successfully markets Beethoven as its top “brand,” as do the festival’s heavyweight sponsors, allowing the festival to run for a month, featuring dozens of concerts by some of the world’s most distinguished musicians. Russia has not yet used the opportunity to create an annual international festival built around the figure of a Russian composer of global importance, and one idea that Buchbinder personally finds worth exploring is a Sergei Rachmaninov festival.
“There is such a wealth of Rachmaninov’s masterpieces that are hardly ever performed: For example, how often do you get to listen to the composer’s magnificent romances?” Buchbinder said. “This Russian composer left a stunning and remarkably diverse legacy, from choral music to piano concertos to symphonies to songs that I admire. I would be honored to attend a Rachmaninov festival — if such a project is ever conceived.”
Rudolf Buchbinder will perform the Beethoven Sonatas Cycle on June 24, 25 and 25, and July 6, 7, 9 and 10 at the Mariinsky Theater Concert Hall,
37 Ulitsa Dekabristov. Tel: 326 4141. For a full schedule, visit the theater’s web site at www.mariinsky.ru.
TITLE: the word’s worth Bad Russian Can Be Dangerous for Children
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Ãóñûíÿ: goose (female)
One thing that makes learning Russian harder today than it was 20 years ago is the preponderance of bad Russian that we foreigners are exposed to.
By “bad” Russian I mean spelling, sentence construction, word use and stress that are nonstandard and considered by the Russian language pooh-bahs to be ungrammatical — that is, about half the Russian you read on blogs and in newspapers.
People might complain about the prescriptivist bent in Russia, but the fact is that speaking and writing “correct Russian” is of high value here, and, as they say: Â ÷óæîé ìîíàñòûðü ñî ñâîèì óñòàâîì íå õîäÿò (when in Rome do as the Romans do). That is, whether we like it or not, we foreigners are going to be judged by our grammatical or ungrammatical Russian.
But figuring out what is “grammatical” Russian has gotten tough. Editorial control seems to have gone out the window. I recently bought a pair of slippers made in Podolsk and labeled òàïà÷êè (that is, òàïî÷êè).
And a friend sent me a collection of signs and announcements that make native Russian speakers cringe or hoot with laughter and leave us non-native speakers scratching our heads.
For example, take this notice on the entrance of an apartment building:  ñåìü âå÷åðà â ñðåäó â òðåòüåì ïîäúåçäå ñîñòîèòñÿ ñîáðàíèå. Ïîâåñòêà äíÿ: âûáîðû äîìîâîãî. (There will be a meeting at 7 p.m. on Wednesday in the third entrance. Agenda: election of the house spirit.)
Wait a minute. That can’t be right. Perhaps the writer meant äîìîâîé êîìèòåò (the resident’s committee). Or maybe Russia has become so democratic that a äîìîâîé (house spirit) can run for office?
Sometimes the problem is professional slang, which translates badly on paper. In a hospital, someone spotted this disconcerting notification:  âèäó õîëîäà â ðåíòãåíîâñêîì êàáèíåòå äåëàåì òîëüêî ñðî÷íûå ïåðåëîìû (Considering the cold temperature in the X-ray room, we are only doing rush breaks). This is similar to the way English-speaking doctors refer to the “liver in Room 406.” But I don’t think they mean that the doctors will quickly break some bones in the frigid X-ray room.
The sign should have read something like this: Ïî ïðè÷èíå õîëîäà äåëàþòñÿ ñíèìêè òîëüêî òåõ ïåðåëîìîâ, êîòîðûå íóæäàþòñÿ â ñðî÷íîì ëå÷åíèè (Due to the cold, X-rays are only being done of broken bones that require immediate attention).
The language of advertisements can also get mighty confusing. Here it sounds like a company produces knitted clothes for the children of werewolves: Âÿæåì äåòñêèå êîôòî÷êè èç øåðñòè ðîäèòåëåé (We knit children’s tops from the parental wool).
This company makes human-sized bags: Äåëàåì ïîëèýòèëåíîâûå ìåøêè ïî ðàçìåðó çàêàç÷èêà (We make plastic bags the size of the client).
And this vendor is unlikely to find a buyer for his product: Ïðîäàþ êîëÿñêó äëÿ íîâîðîæä¸ííîãî ñèíåãî öâåòà (I’m selling a carriage for a blue-colored newborn). Watch that word order!
Judging by some ads, life in the countryside is more interesting than I imagined. Ïðîäàþòñÿ òðè ïîðîñ¸íêà, âñå ðàçíîãî ïîëà. (Three piglets for sale — all of different genders.) Ïðîäàþòñÿ ÷åòûðå ãóñûíè è ãóñàê. Âñå íåñóòñÿ. (Four geese and one gander for sale. All are good egg-layers.) Ïðîäàåòñÿ íåìåöêàÿ îâ÷àðêà. Íåäîðîãî. Åñò ëþáîå ìÿñî. Îñîáåííî ëþáèò ìàëåíüêèõ äåòåé. (German shepherd for sale. Not expensive. Eats any kind of meat. Especially loves little children.)
I think I’ll stick with the egg-laying gander.
Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.
TITLE: Brazilian flavors
AUTHOR: By Olga Khrustaleva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg and Rio de Janeiro may not seem to have much in common on the surface. But the desire for freedom and peace of body and mind are natural for people all over the world, regardless of nationality, religion and occupation, and accordingly, samba and capoeira have proved popular far beyond Brazil’s borders.
This week, the Mundo Capoeira team invites Petersburgers to embark on a thrilling journey around the magical world of capoeira, guided by experienced teachers from Brazil and Europe at the Sixth Festival of Brazilian National Arts. The festival will be fascinating for both people familiar with capoeira and other Brazilian arts, and for those who have only heard about it, organizers promise.
Only a couple of centuries old, capoeira has already traveled a long way, from being a prohibited activity to a Brazilian national sport and part of its identity. Back in the 1820s, slaves in Brazil devised capoeira — a mixture of martial arts and dance — to brighten up their grueling working days and to prepare for escape from their owners. Today, people all over the world practice the sport to escape from mundane daily life and test the limits of the human body.
The journey begins with batizado, the initiation ceremony. Batizado is a game in itself, in which a newcomer takes on an experienced teacher. At the end of the game, the master gently takes down the junior capoeirista which symbolizes the start of a long and often difficult journey into the world of capoeira.
Another important thing that every capoeirista should have is an apelido or nickname.
“My name is Linguado. It translates from Portuguese as flat fish,” says Nikolai Pchelin, a capoeira teacher in St. Petersburg. “This name was given to me by my master.”
This tradition dates back to the times when capoeira was prohibited. To avoid problems with the law, capoeiristas introduced themselves in the community only by their apelido, so that if a member were captured by the police, they would not be able to give the names of their fellow capoeiristas, even under torture. Today it is simply a tribute to tradition, but it remains very popular among practitioners.
“Russians study the history, philosophy and fighting technique of capoeira very seriously,” said Mestre Dende, a master of capoeira from Brazil who is visiting St. Petersburg this week to take part in the festival. “This is very pleasant, and we pay them back in kind by learning the Russian language.”
Artyom “Axe,” a capoeira teacher from St. Petersburg, has visited many countries in order to practice capoeira. “In Brazil, capoeira is played more craftily, with tricks, dodges and cunning moves,” he said. “In Europe, the focus is more on the spectators — more acrobatics and aesthetic elements,” he said.
His apelido “Axe” was given to him by a Brazilian mestre, and has an intriguing meaning. “It is quite difficult to translate,” he said. “It’s a state reached when training and playing capoeira. If the roda (the round) in capoeira is good, you can feel it, because all the people there form a whole, singing and playing. It’s a state of euphoria.”
A mixture of martial arts and dance, capoeira’s third key element is music. The traditional accompanying musical instrument is the berimbau, which is believed to have originated in Africa, and consists of a wooden bow with a steel string and a dried hollowed-out gourd.
Lively rhythms, dance and a friendly atmosphere are guaranteed at the Brazilian National Arts festival this weekend. An Afro-Brazil show will instill a carnival atmosphere among spectators with passionate samba, wild maculele dancing, fishermen’s tales of the town of Salvador, and, of course, capoeira performed by people who seem to be immune to the laws of gravity.
The festival will continue with an Afro-Brazil party on Sunday with live music, Brazilian drums, samba and reggae.
The festival runs from June 17 through June 20. The Afro-Brazil show takes place on Saturday, June 18 at 8 p.m. at the Troitsky concert hall, 223 Prospekt Obukhovskoi Oborony. M: Proletarskaya. The Afro-Brazil party will take place at 11 p.m. on Sunday, June 19 at Dusche nightclub, 50 Ligovsky Prospekt.
TITLE: Vanya Versus Anya
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, Moskovsky Komsomolets published a bizarre kiss-and-tell story about Spanish pop singer Enrique Iglesias, alleging that his long-term romance with the delectable blonde tennis player Anna Kournikova is not the real thing.
The story is told by a 23-year-old Russian, whose name is given as Ivan Irbis, and is memorably headlined: “Iglesias loves Vanya not Anya.”
The journalist describes how Irbis met for an interview in a courtyard at the Belorusskaya metro station in Moscow, wearing a T-shirt saying “I am the most beautiful” and holding a can of beer.
The key — or rather the only — piece of evidence in the article is a photo showing Iglesias in a nightclub with his arm around Ivan’s shoulder and kissing him on the cheek — not exactly super-injunction territory.
Irbis alleges that Iglesias initially pretended to have a relationship with Kournikova so he could break Russia and make lots of money from performing at private parties.
Their romance “is all PR dreamed up by Iglesias,” Irbis alleges, and hints that he himself is Iglesias’ partner.
“Now I can say openly, I love him,” he says. He alleges that Iglesias bought him cars and an apartment in Moscow.
The journalist writes that Irbis even showed off what he called an “engagement ring,” alleging it was from Iglesias.
Enrique decided to promote his love affair with Kournikova because he “needed to conquer not only America and Europe but also the Russian market. It was easier to do it as a couple with Anya,” Irbis alleges.
The strategy worked out, Irbis claimed, with Iglesias getting paid about a million dollars for performing at parties on the Rublyovka billionaire strip. Apparently he usually sings at the birthday parties of oligarchs’ daughters.
Iglesias’ legendary crooner father, Julio, is also a regular visitor, recently including Russia in a “world” tour that otherwise only included the United States, Canada, Spain and Portugal.
The idea that having a relationship with Kournikova would increase the younger Iglesias’ popularity in Russia is somewhat strange, though. Long retired from tennis, she is rarely seen in public here and has clearly made her home in the United States — something that hardly makes for mass popularity.
And it is even more improbable that Kournikova, who at the peak of her fame topped all the sexiest woman ratings and is hardly past it at 30, would stay in a fake relationship.
The interview comes across as an act of revenge. Irbis talks of his strained relations with Kournikova, saying she “hates” him.
He says they quarreled when Iglesias last played in Moscow because Kournikova wanted him to arrange paid appearances for the couple at nightclubs and he only managed to arrange one gig.
He claims that Kournikova’s financial affairs are not going too well, citing the fact that she is selling a villa in Miami. To put that financial penury in proportion, she is reportedly asking for $9.4 million for the house.
Kournikova also recently announced a breakthrough into reality television. She is going to be a trainer on “The Biggest Loser,” an NBC show where obese contestants compete to lose the most weight. I could see her being an ultra-strict dominatrix type, based on her Russian tennis training.
Everything has to be taken with a large pinch of salt, however, because Irbis sounds like a poisonous type, biting the hand that fed him.
He says he got a job working with Iglesias through Kournikova’s family, after he became friends with her stepmother. He says he spent more than a year in Miami before returning to Moscow three months ago.
TITLE: High-Altitude Dining
AUTHOR: By Tobin Auber
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The trend for rooftop restaurants in St. Petersburg, making the most of the flat skyline (the buildings aren’t supposed to be any higher than the gables of the Winter Palace, for those who haven’t been taking notes) continues unabated. So far, Ginza Project’s restaurants have been leading the way, with Mansarda on Pochtamtskaya undoubtedly the leader of the pack — its view of St. Isaac’s Cathedral is a cracker. Mansarda, however, is hampered by its idiotic policy of claiming that the window seats are always booked when they clearly aren’t (nice way to insult all your customers), and by Ginza’s staffing policy — the trick of hiring a bevy of attractive, dolled up girls to work as “managers” in the reception area is worn out and severely undermined by the fact that they are incompetent and ill-mannered. Even if their hair is nice. And last week’s opening of the brilliant cafe and bar area on the top of the W hotel, complete with an even more breathtaking view of St. Isaac’s, indicates that there could be a new kid on the block.
With Makaronniki, the Petrograd Side has made a cautious entry into this high-altitude market, and in terms of atmosphere it’s a success, although the food itself is something of a hit and miss affair.
The restaurant stands on top of a business center on Dobrolyubova, and it has to be admitted that the view is impaired by the surrounding buildings. Nevertheless, the vast windows do wonders with the light, and the distressed wood, natural materials and open kitchen create the impression of being in a trendy beach shack in the sky: As you sit in the window booths that are ranged round the central bar, you’ll find that there’s a relaxed youth and vitality here that you won’t find in the city’s other rooftop restaurants. On a visit several weeks ago, the outdoor area was just being completed, and is now open for business.
The cuisine is Italian, with a range of reasonably priced pastas, pizzas and risottos running from about 300 rubles up to 500 rubles ($10.75 to $18), and again that’s something that puts it in the lead over the city’s other rooftop restaurants, which are generally overpriced (Ginza people, hang your heads in shame).
We started with the lentil soup with black truffle sauce (350 rubles, $12.50), a rich concoction that risked being too oily, but somehow managed to pull it off. The seafood soup (390 rubles, $14) was on the same par, drenched in Mediterranean flavors.
The tuna fish pizza (410 rubles, $14.70) was a good effort and great option for the summer — the thin base was by no means overly heavy, and the topping was generous.
A slight disappointment was the arugula salad with prawns (370 rubles, $13.25), where someone had been far too liberal with the salt in the dressing, making it almost inedible — a shame as the prawns looked mouthwatering.
The hot drinks section is worthy of a special mention, indicating that this place might last past the end of the summer. The cranberry with lime leaf brew (150 rubles, $5.40) and the very sweet and filling milky spiced orange tea look likely to keep visitors coming back for winter warmers.
THE GUIDE
On Top of the World
Now that the summer and the White Nights are well and truly here, the city’s rooftop restaurants with outdoor seating really come into their own.
Bellevue Brasserie
The rooftop restaurant of the Kempinski Moika 22 hotel has two very pleasant open-air sections offering fantastic views over the Hermitage, Palace Square and surrounding area. The food is what you would expect from a 5-star hotel.
22 Nab. Reki Moiki. Tel: 335 9111
Terrassa
In addition to its spacious interior, the glam crowd’s favorite eatery has extensive outdoor seating running around the edge of its roof, overlooking the Kazan Cathedral. On warm nights Terrassa is wildly popular, so booking ahead is recommended.
3A Kazanskaya Ulitsa. Tel: 937 6837
Sixth Floor Terrace at the Renaissance Baltic Hotel
Neighboring Mansarda has a contender for the best views of St. Isaac’s Cathedral now that the Renaissance’s summer terrace is open. The compact terrace is not huge, so it’s best to book ahead here too.
4 Pochtamtskaya Ulitsa. Tel: 380 4000
TITLE: No Lack of Suspects in Assassination of Budanov
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — It remains a mystery who brazenly killed former tank commander Yury Budanov by pumping four bullets into his head as he left a downtown Moscow building for a smoke Friday.
But one thing is clear: Investigators have their work cut out for them because Budanov had a lot of enemies.
Initial fears proved unfounded that the killing would spark ethnic rioting by ultranationalists, who see Budanov as a hero for killing a Chechen girl whom he suspected of being a rebel sniper in 2000.
But ethnic tensions have been simmering for months, and Budanov’s killing on Friday threatens to shatter the fragile ethnic peace in the country.
Two senior United Russia members and Public Chamber member Nikolai Svanidze speculated that nationalists were looking to disrupt stability before December’s State Duma vote and the presidential election next March. Others said the killing gave the Kremlin a chance to score with the voters ahead of the elections.
Budanov, 47, was shot dead in broad daylight as he came out of a notary’s office on Komsomolsky Prospekt. He wanted to smoke, Gazeta.ru said.
The unidentified assailant fired four gunshots to his head in front of his wife and walked away, RIA-Novosti said. Svetlana Budanova was unharmed but required psychological help to deal with the shock, Gazeta.ru said.
Television footage showed Budanov’s crumpled body lying facedown on the sidewalk as people walked by indifferently or watched from the balconies of nearby apartment buildings.
The gunman had two accomplices, one of whom, a man of Slavic appearance, drove him away in a Mitsubishi Lancer, the Investigative Committee said in a statement. The car was later found half-burned on a nearby street along with the handgun and silencer used in the shooting.
Investigators provided city police with a composite picture of the killer but did not make it public or provide any details about his identity, including his ethnicity.
Anyone charged and convicted over the killing faces up to life in prison, investigators said.
Budanov became one of the most divisive figures in recent Russian history after being arrested in 2000 for strangling to death Elza Kungayeva, 18. He was also accused of raping her, but the court cleared him on that count despite protests from her relatives.
Budanov pleaded guilty to murder but said he believed that Kungayeva was a sniper for the insurgents and said he had strangled her in a fit of rage during interrogations.
Budanov, who sustained brain injuries during his service in Chechnya from 1998 to 2000, was handed a 10-year prison term for murder and stripped of his rank of colonel by the North Caucasus District Military Court.
He walked free on parole in 2009. Although he served a total of eight years behind bars, including pretrial detention, his release angered Chechen officials and was criticized by the Kungayevs, who moved to Norway in 2003.
Investigators were inclined to see Budanov’s killing as a “provocation,” Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said, Interfax reported. He did not name the provocateurs but added that “the investigators have no information about ethnic groups being behind the killing.”
Not everyone was convinced. Yabloko party head Sergei Mitrokhin and Chechnya’s representative in the Federation Council, Aslanbek Aslakhanov, among others, said the murder might be revenge by Chechens or possibly Kungayeva’s relatives.
Kungayeva’s father, Visa Kungayev, denied involvement and said the killing, although well-deserved, was not masterminded by Chechens.
“A dog deserves a dog’s death, that’s what I think,” Kungayev told Lifenews.ru in one of several interviews he gave Friday.
He could not be reached for further comment, not returning repeated calls on Monday, said rights champion Svetlana Gannushkina, who refused to provide a reporter with Kungayev’s contacts without his permission.
Gennady Gudkov, deputy head of the State Duma’s Security Committee, said the killing might have been Chechen revenge or “mock revenge” staged by nationalists to provoke ethnic hatred, Dozhd radio reported.
The mention of a Slavic accomplice seemed to lend weight to the “nationalist” version, but Anton Tsvetkov of the Officers of Russia army veterans group said the suspect could have been a supporter of the North Caucasus insurgency who converted to radical Islam, Gazeta.ru reported. One such convert, Vitaly Razdobdko, has been linked by investigators to the suicide attack at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport that killed 37 in January.
Chechen authorities never hid their dislike of Budanov, who is viewed in the republic as a war criminal. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov in a 2004 interview with Izvestia vowed to “give his due” to Budanov should he be freed. He also criticized his 2009 release, but has not commented on Budanov’s death.
Shortly after his release, Budanov was questioned in connection with the kidnapping of 18 Chechens, three of whom were killed. He was not charged, and the stage of the investigation was not immediately clear Monday.
Budanov told Izvestia shortly after his release that he expected to be murdered “not for revenge but for political goals.”
He said he was prepared to die “for Russia,” adding that he only wished his future killers would spare his family. In addition to his wife, Budanov is survived by an 11-year-old daughter and a 23-year-old son, Izvestia said.
Budanov never said who might be behind his death.
Prominent journalist Alexander Minkin said the killing might be used by the Kremlin to its advantage before the elections, Radio Liberty reported. He did not elaborate, but some authorities pointed to a threat of ultranationalism during the last election season of 2007 and 2008 as a reason to keep Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin for a third term.
More murder theories were also raised, with Chechen ombudsman Nurdi Nukhazhiyev saying Budanov might have been killed by other army officers who served in Chechnya to keep him from testifying about their crimes, including the theft of army funds, Interfax said.
Liberal Democratic Party head Vladimir Zhirinovsky said Monday that he could not rule out “the London angle” — an apparent reference to self-exiled Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky who has been accused by Kremlin supporters in previous high-profile killings, including the poisoning of former security service officer Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
Investigators will no doubt also revisit the 2009 killing of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, who represented Kungayev’s family during Budanov’s trail. While initial suspicion fell on Budanov’s supporters after the lawyer’s death, two nationalists were convicted of killing him last month.
Some critics said the Kremlin must shoulder part of the blame for Budanov’s death because of its policy in Chechnya, where the government headed by Kadyrov is given complete free reign by Moscow in exchange for suppressing open insurgency.
Zhirinovsky, who attended Budanov’s funeral, said the former colonel “paid with his life for wrong state policies.”
Budanov’s death prompted fears of nationalist rioting similar to December’s event on Manezh Square, where more than 5,500 people clashed with police after the killing of football fan Yegor Sviridov by North Caucasus natives.
Indeed, nationalists voiced online calls for a new rally on Manezh Square on Saturday, Ekho Moskvy reported. Dozens of police vans and a water cannon were dispatched to the site, where 12 people were briefly detained, the report said.
Police also prepared for Budanov’s funeral, assigning some 200 officers to guard the cemetery, which was first searched by police dogs for bombs.
In addition, Interior Ministry troops and traffic police were deployed to Leningradskoye Shosse to supervise the funeral procession as it traveled from a church in Khimki just north of Moscow to a local cemetery.
The funeral ended without any incidents. The crowd numbered 300 to 600 people, including military veterans and nationalists, Interfax said. A military band played, and soldiers fired automatic rifles into the air as Budanov’s coffin was lowered into the grave.
TITLE: Summer, New Brands to Boost Beer Market
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — There’s a hiss, a rush of bubbles, golden liquid fills up the glass, and a good head of foam forms.
“This was made just two days ago. It’s fresh,” says Masaru Hemmi, chief brewer of Japan’s Kirin Ichiban, checking the side of the bottle and proffering the glass.
Hemmi was pouring at the Moscow Beer Company’s factory in Mytishchi, and the occasion was last month’s start of licensed local production of Ichiban.
Both sides feel justified in pouring a few well-earned drinks.
The Moscow Beer Company reckons it can sell Ichiban, which is one of the most popular beers in its home country, to Japanese restaurants and food enthusiasts. Ichiban is confident it has secured its foothold on the $20 billion Russian beer market, after moving production from Kaliningrad.
Despite the free-flowing optimism, these are not easy times to be a Russian brewer.
Though over the past decade the beer market surged 40 percent, growth peaked in 2008 at 110 million hectoliters — the standard for beer measurement equaling about 100 liters.
Then the global economic crisis, increased taxes on alcohol and saturation depressed the market by as much as 15 percent and saw the country slip from third to fourth place worldwide for total consumption.
“Russia has lost 12 [million] to 15 million hectoliters. That means that approximately five or six breweries like us should be closed. And it is happening — a lot of breweries have been closed and will be closed,” said Igor Dementyev, general director of midsized brewer the Moscow Beer Company, during an interview at his company’s headquarters in northern Moscow.
Foreign Branding
Domestically produced beers, like cars, carry a certain amount of stigma. Even foreign brands produced under license are widely considered to be inferior to genuine imports. Specifically, this is linked to an alleged preponderance to cause headaches.
“Abroad, drinking a six-pack of Heineken is no problem. Here, two bottles will give me a headache,” complains one beer aficionado.
One urban legend links the mysterious headaches to extra alcohol — or more sinister chemicals — added to popular brands to keep the population docile.
Another rumor has it that in a bid to save money, local breweries only change their yeast filters once in a blue moon — meaning fermentation continues long after it should have stopped.
Unlike cars, however, there’s not much choice but to buy Russian.
High import tariffs mean that imported beers make up just 0.5 percent of the market — compared with about 15 percent in the United States.
In Russia, that segment is replaced by licensed domestic production. There are more than 40 foreign brands now produced locally — ranging from classic Czech lagers like Pilsner Urquell (produced by SABMiller in Kaluga) to iconic Irish stout Guinness (produced by Heineken in St. Petersburg). Together they account for about 13 percent of nationwide sales, but represent 29 percent of market share in Moscow.
The Moscow Beer Company has seven licenses on the books, including a 40-year contract to produce German Oettinger and a 25-year contract with Denmark’s Faxe, as well as its new deal with Kirin.
Dementyev said Ichiban would be a niche beer, appealing particularly to aficionados of Japanese food or foreign beers. Retailing at about 55 rubles ($2) for a half-liter bottle — relatively expensive — it will not be elbowing out either Pilsner Urquell or local Zolotaya Bochka.
“We don’t consider ourselves as competing with the giants. We have a unique choice of products in our portfolio, and each of those is a leader in its niche,” Dementyev said.
That may explain why Kirin, whose Ichiban brand is high-end even in Japan, chose to partner with Dementyev’s company.
Giant Players and Taxes
The local beer market is a battlefield of giants with little room for small independent breweries. Carlsberg Group, AB InBev, Efes Breweries International, Heineken and SABMiller together control more than 85 percent of the market.
Baltika, which is the biggest brand and part of the Carlsberg Group, has a total brewing capacity of 5.2 million hectoliters a month.
The Moscow Beer Company, which started out as an importer of beers and soft drinks in 1994 and began producing its own brews only in 2008 — right on the cusp of the crisis, Dementyev ruefully recalls — is a minnow by comparison, turning out just 2.5 million hectoliters per year.
Market analysts now say Brazil has displaced Russia from its place as the world’s third-largest beer maker, and Germany is snapping at Russia’s heels to move into fourth. So what went wrong?
For a start, Russians are not really among the great beer drinking nations. Even after the rapid growth in consumption over the past decade, they consume just 66 liters of beer annually per capita, according to estimates by Baltika.
Czechs get through a staggering 151 liters, while Germans drink 108 liters annually. Neighboring Finns, Poles and Estonians consume about 90 liters per capita, according to a 2010 report by Carlsberg.
Experts put the peak down the three factors: The market was probably saturated anyway; the financial crisis of 2008 ate into disposable incomes; and the government has drastically ratcheted up taxes on beer.
The beer excise went up 200 percent to 9 rubles per liter in January 2010. This year the tax is up to 11 rubles, and plans exist for further hikes. The latest proposals envision jacking it up to 18 rubles per liter by 2014 — which would amount to a sixfold increase since 2009.
Consumers quickly felt the impact. The average retail price rose from 43.99 rubles per liter in March 2009 to 57.57 per liter in March 2011, according to the State Statistics Service, an increase of more than 30 percent.
Baltika, the market leader for more than a decade, reported a 0.1 percent loss of market share on the back of the price increase and a 17.5 percent fall in profits from 23.4 billion rubles ($835 million) in 2009 to 19.2 billion rubles in 2010.
The Calm Before the Storm?
Statistics show that beer production marginally recovered in the first three months of 2011 compared with the same period a year before.
Carlsberg even credited Baltika’s recent success in Russia with driving a 38 percent increase in worldwide first-quarter profits.
But the consensus in the industry remains cautious — not least because there is more legislation on the horizon designed to reduce domestic alcohol consumption.
Today, beer is not actually legally classified as alcohol.
That doesn’t mean that it can be sold to minors or that you have a few and get behind the wheel without fear of being fined, but it does mean beer is free from the much stronger controls applied to wine and spirits.
Unlike vodka, for instance, beer brands can still advertise on television — although commercials are banned from using images of humans or animals and confined to television slots between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.
But a new law currently being considered by the State Duma would finally classify beer as alcohol and could ban all beer advertising on television, radio and billboards.
In February the State Duma passed an early reading of the bill, which would ban the sale of strong beer — over 5 percent — altogether from outdoor kiosks, airports and train stations. Shops would have to stop selling it between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m.
Beer producers’ spending on television advertising soared to 1.22 billion rubles in the first quarter of 2011, up 141 percent on a year earlier, Kommersant reported last month.
The paper linked the hike to an anticipated ban, although representatives of Baltika and SUN InBev both told the paper that there had been no change in policy and credited the increased spend on rising advertising costs.
Meanwhile, export markets like Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus have begun to dry up as they open their own licensed brewing of Russian and Western brands, said Yevgeny Filimonov, editor of the Ukraine-based trade journal Pivnoye Delo.
So the feeling in the industry is that the heady days have gone for good, and the best-case scenario is that the market will remain stable — provided personal incomes remain stable and inflation under control — Dementyev said.
Local Power
The real heavy hitters are the Russian brands, which account for the remaining 85 percent of the market.
The biggest selling local brand — and the jewel in Carlsberg’s Russian crown — is the Baltika product line, which accounts for 40 percent of all beer sales in Russia. Other premium segment brands include Zolotaya Bochka (SABMiller) and Stary Melnik (Efes).
The Moscow Brewing Company’s champion, Zhiguli Barnoye, is a lager that is matured for 21 days — unique in Russia, Dementyev claims — and trades on nostalgia for the Soviet 1960s.
The new version, as well as the classic Soviet Zhigulyovskoye brew — which is now in the discount segment of Carlsberg’s portfolio and ubiquitously available at kiosks — get their name from the same region as the automobile.