SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1662 (24), Wednesday, June 22, 2011
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TITLE: Metro Closes Its Doors To Passengers in Wheelchairs
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: When Yevgenia Gurova, a 21-year-old student of the Northwest Institute of Publishing, reached the nearest metro station on June 16 to travel back home after taking an exam — Gurova is in the middle of her end-of-year exams — she discovered she was banned from using the metro. For Gurova is disabled, and moves around the city in a wheelchair — something that suddenly became a concern for the local metro management, which issued an order banning all wheelchair-bound people from the metro because “its elevators are not equipped for wheelchairs and are therefore potentially dangerous.”
For Gurova, the officials’ concerns are nonsensical.
“I find the metro the only accessible means of transportation: You get in, you get on the elevator and put on the brakes on your wheelchair, and then get off safely,” Gurova wrote in her blog at http://jenianm.livejournal.com/14077.html. “Just try and imagine what it feels like squeezing yourself into a full trolleybus or bus, which in most cases are not even equipped with an access ramp!”
Gurova’s post provoked an avalanche of commentary on the Internet, and within days city officials up to City Governor Valentina Matviyenko were facing tough questions from local media.
Deputy Governor Yury Molchanov told reporters that City Hall has requested that a new type of safety device for elevators, designed with wheelchair users in mind, be developed and installed at local stations. The official stopped short of estimating how much the new technology would cost and how long the initiative might take to implement. 
“A tender for the development of the safety device will be organized by City Hall in the near future,” Molchanov promised. 
The management of the St. Petersburg Metropolitan defended its actions by issuing a statement in which its representatives claimed that “it is international practice not to allow people in wheelchairs on the metro for safety reasons.”
As Molchanov pointed out, all new metro stations currently being built or developed are equipped with access ramps, slopes and other facilities for disabled people.
According to City Hall’s press office, the St. Petersburg metro is currently implementing a new safety system for blind people that includes the installation of special floor lines with a rutted surface that can easily be detected by blind people using sticks and used to help them find their way.
In the meantime, Russia’s ombudsman Vladimir Lukin has called for the creation of an expert council that would develop a series of measures to protect the rights of disabled people and ensure that they have equal access to public transport.
“Disabled people are banned from using the metro not only in St. Petersburg, but also in Moscow and other Russian cities,” Lukin told reporters in St. Petersburg on Tuesday. “It is high time that we found a solution to this very unfair situation.”
According to official statistics, there are about 800,000 disabled people in St. Petersburg, including 15,000 children. 

TITLE: Did Police Taser Soccer Player?
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko has appealed to Russian Interior Affairs Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev regarding the Nizhny Novgorod riot police’s alleged tasering of one of St. Petersburg’s FC Zenit players.
Matviyenko asked Nurgaliyev to investigate the incident.
“We need to do everything possible to make our players and fans feel safe,” the governor was quoted as saying by Interfax.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Investigative Committee has begun an investigation into the tasering of Zenit player Danko Lazovic during a match in Nizhny Novgorod.
According to preliminary information, an unidentified policeman tasered Lazovich after the match between Zenit and FC Volga that was held in Nizhny Novgorod on Saturday night.
Lazovic, who assisted one goal, said he wanted to give his shirt to fans in a stand after the match, but was attacked from behind by an unidentified policeman. 
“I don’t know what happened — maybe he thought I was one of the fans,” Lazovic, who scored nine goals in 14 games this season, said in a statement posted Sunday on his team’s web site, FC-zenit.ru.
Yury Fedotov, head of Zenit’s security service, said earlier that Nizhny Novgorod police had used tasers against Zenit’s soccer players and fans, and that police officers had ignored the regulations of Russia’s Soccer Premier League.
Upon Lazovic’s return to St. Petersburg, local doctors diagnosed him with “electric shock injuries and a first-degree burn on the right subscapular region as a result of tasering,” Interfax reported.
Nizhny Novgorod police have denied the accusations.


TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Traffic Cop In Accident</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A 17-year-old girl died and her pregnant mother was injuried when a local traffic policeman lost control of his car on the city’s ring road. The officer hit the woman’s Ford Mondeo car, which was stationary in one of the lanes due to problems with one of its wheels, Interfax reported.
The officer attempted to give medical assistance before paramedics arrived at the scene.
The city’s traffic police department said the officer had served in the police force since 1997 and had a spotless record.
The driver of the car had not put an emergency sign on the road to warn other drivers, which could have prevented the collision, police said.

<b>Deputy Pedophile</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Andrei Smirnov, a deputy on one of St. Petersburg’s municipal councils, was sentenced to 12 years in a penal colony this week after being convicted of sexual assault against a minor.
Smirnov is also the head and one of the founders of the Tsarskoye Selo Historic Scouts Center, Interfax reported. There were over 200 children involved in the organization. Smirnov was convicted of committing four sexual assaults against a teenager born in 1991. The incidents occurred in Smirnov’s apartment and car, at the Children’s Creativity Work Center in the Primorsky district, and in a school, Interfax reported.
Smirnov was arrested in February 2010. During the investigation, pornographic photos and video materials featuring children and teenagers were found among his belongings. Smirnov was running for local municipal elections on United Russia’s party list, but he is not a party member, Interfax reported.

<b>City Destroyed</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Vandals destroyed parts of the recently opened mini-St. Petersburg sculpture complex just five days after it opened, Fontanka reported.
Unidentified people broke off the crosses on models of the Alexander Column, the Church on the Spilled Blood, and a sculpture of the Winter Palace.
Officials are currently considering having police guard the park.
The model city was opened in the city’s central Alexandrovsky Park near Gorkovskaya metro station at the initiative of Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, who is a native of St. Petersburg.

<b>Statue Vandalized</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A watchman from the Cadet Artillery Corps broke the tip of a spear on the monument to Tsar Nicholas I on St. Isaac’s Square on Saturday. 
A special committee will assess the damage caused by the vandalism and determine the cost of restoration, Interfax reported. “After that, we have to find money for the restoration, which isn’t included in this year’s budget,” said Vladimir Timofeyev, director of the City Sculpture Museum. 
He said it is unjust that vandals who destroy historic monuments go unpunished while the government has to pay to restore them. “The question should be posed differently: Not when will the monument be restored, but how long will this go on?” he said. “If the vandal is put on trial, it should be as open to the public and press as possible, in order to discourage others,” he was quoted by Interfax as saying.

<b>St. Petersburg to Grow?</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The border separating St. Petersburg from the Leningrad Oblast will be redrawn in the future, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum last week.
“I’m sure St. Petersburg is expecting changes similar to Moscow’s,” she said. “It’s not clear whether it will happen next year or later, but it will definitely happen,” Interfax cited the governor as saying. President Dmitry Medvedev announced plans for the expansion of Moscow city boundaries at the forum.
Many people who work in St. Petersburg live outside the city on territory that is technically part of the Leningrad Oblast. Since people’s access to medical treatment and other social services remains dependent on the area in which they are officially registered as living, gaining access to city services can be difficult for them.


TITLE: Journalist Who Criticized Matviyenko Erased From TV 
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A prominent journalist has been censored out of a family show he co-hosted on Rossia One television, months after he lost another job with the channel’s owner for comparing St. Petersburg’s governor to Adolf Hitler.
Dmitry Gubin confirmed to The St. Petersburg Times by telephone that he was edited out of three episodes of “Large Family,” a show in which he and film star Dmitry Kharatyan interview celebrity families and their friends.
The episodes in question were shot in the winter but only aired this month — with Gubin carefully removed from some five hours of footage produced by ATV company for Rossia One, which is owned by state holding VGTRK.
“I can only assume this is revenge by VGTRK’s people,” Gubin said Friday.
The story was first reported by Ekho Moskvy radio host Ksenia Larina, who appeared in one of the edited episodes.
“Cutting out the host of a peaceful … family-oriented program just because he was fired from the holding company — isn’t this the embodiment of savagely dumb idiocy?” Larina wrote on her blog.
Gubin, 47, who writes columns for Ogonyok, GQ and Kommersant, was fired in March from VGTRK’s Vesti FM radio over his acrid remarks about St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, who he said was continuing Hitler’s work in destroying St. Petersburg. Hitler’s forces besieged the city and heavily bombarded it during World War II. Gubin said Matviyenko was inflicting similar damage to St. Petersburg by neglecting its development and letting it fall into ruin.
Vesti FM’s general producer, Anatoly Kuzichev, said at the time that Gubin was sacked for “hysterics” and “unacceptable” language on air.
The edited episodes of “Large Family” feature actor Dmitry Peskov, pop singer and songwriter Igor Nikolayev and a couple, movie star Andrei Derzhavin and Soviet-era pop star Roxana Babayan. None has commented on the episodes.
Both VGTRK and ATV spokespeople refused to comment. ATV’s web site lists Kharatyan as the sole host of “Large Family.”
“I feel like I am in the company of Trotsky, Kamenev and Bukharin,” Gubin said, referring to Bolshevik bosses whose images were edited out of photographs after they were purged by Soviet leader Josef Stalin in the 1930s.
This is not the first time ATV has been accused of censorship. The company, known in the late 1980s and 1990s for its liberal-leaning shows, cut economist Mikhail Delyagin from an episode of its “People Want to Know” show after he criticized then-President Vladimir Putin in 2007. Humorously, Delyagin’s legs could still be seen in the show, although his torso and head weren’t.

TITLE: Anti-Putin Report Confiscated
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In an apparent clampdown on political opposition during the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, the authorities made what looked like mass preventive arrests, following and harassing opposition activists. The police also seized 5,000 copies of the investigative report “Putin. Corruption” co-written by opposition politicians and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov that was intended to be distributed during the forum.
On Friday, 20 people — mostly members of The Other Russia, some with their spouses — were detained as they were leaving the Russian National Library, where author Igor Boikov, a member of The Other Russia and the Russian Union of Authors, held a showcase event for his book of short stories.
Those detained, including Boikov, were taken to a police precinct and charged with using obscene language in public, an offense punishable with a fine of up to 1,000 rubles ($36) or up to 15 days in prison.
After being held overnight at the precinct, they were taken to court on Saturday afternoon. Their cases were subsequently sent to their local courts for later hearings.
The arrests were made after the police failed to persuade the organizers to cancel the event at the National Library. According to The Other Russia’s local chair Andrei Dmitriyev, the police told organizers that “Boikov” was in reality a pseudonym used by Nemtsov, who would attempt to promote his report “Putin. Corruption” there instead.
“The organizers said, ‘No, Boikov is Boikov;’ they called Boikov and asked him to come along, it was absolutely ridiculous,” Dmitriyev said.
Dmitriyev said the OMON special-task police stationed itself near the National Library on Friday morning, despite the fact that the event was scheduled to be held at 6 p.m. that day.
Boikov, who comes from Dagestan, based his book, called “A Life Lived Not in Vain,” on his experiences in the North Caucasus.
Earlier Friday, The Other Russia’s Igor Chepkasov and Solidarity Democratic Movement’s Marina Kuznetsova were detained near the Primorskaya metro station on their way back from an appointment to collect a banner for the National Development Forum, organized by The Other Russia as an alternative to the Economic Forum at the Park Inn Pribaltiiskaya Hotel on Saturday.
Chepkasov said that soon after they had collected the banner, they were approached by plainclothes men who introduced themselves as operatives of the counter-extremism Center E, and were taken to a police precinct.
Chepkasov, who was also held at the precinct overnight and taken to court the next afternoon, said he was charged with “talking loudly, waving his arms and using obscene language.”
According to the activists, the arrests were possibly made in an attempt to prevent Saturday’s conference, which featured the party’s leader Eduard Limonov.
Moscow-based Limonov said a car carrying him and three other party members was stopped by the traffic police on the border of the Leningrad Oblast for a document and vehicle check. It looked like a routine check, he said, but one of the activists heard a policeman reporting by phone that the passengers “fit the description.”
Limonov also said he was followed by plainclothes men in cars while in St. Petersburg.
Although the OMON truck and several police vehicles, including a bus used for the detainees, were parked near the hotel, the conference proceeded with no arrests made. Later in the evening, the police attempted to enter an apartment where 25 participants in the conference had gathered.
According to the activists, the police ordered them to open up, knocking on the door and threatening to break it down without giving a reason for their arrival. When the activists refused to open the door, the police retreated.
Three activists of the Solidarity Democratic Movement, the People’s Freedom Party (Parnas) and the Russian People’s Labor Union (RNDS) were detained while distributing “Putin. Corruption” near the site of the Economic Forum on Friday. They were charged with harassing passers-by and using obscene language in public.
“The arrests are absolutely illegal, because distributing reports doesn’t require any notification or authorization from the authorities,” Nemtsov wrote in his blog.
Also Friday, plainclothes policemen seized 5,000 copies of the report brought to the city, the RNDS movement said in a news release.
The same day, Nemtsov wrote a letter to Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, where he described the seizure of the reports as a “theft” and called for the officers responsible to be punished.


TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Biker Fest in City</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg’s first Harley-Davidson festival will be held from June 24 to 26. Owners of Harley-Davidson motorcycles in St. Petersburg will take part in a large-scale motorcycle parade and festival along with bikers from all over Russia and abroad, Interfax reported.
The parade will begin on Palace Square on June 25 and proceed through the center of the city to Ploshchad Pobedy and Krestovsky Island. The St. Petersburg government has given its full support to the event and Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the State Hermitage Museum, allowed the parade to begin on Palace Square, where the Hermitage is located, said Igor Shcherbakov, coordinator of the festival and chairman of the Laura group of companies that is sponsoring the festival.
“Anyone who has a motorcycle is free to take part in the festival and the parade. It is free for everybody,” said Yevgeny Pashin, deputy head of the Harley Owners Group in St. Petersburg. “Today, we have 324 approved requests from groups of motorcyclists and individual bikers on our web site. We are expecting 800 people plus a large delegation from Moscow.” 
About 1,500 people are expected to attend the festival in total, Interfax reported.

<b>Fake Diplomas</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Every fifth Russian considers that it is normal to buy a fake diploma in order to find a well-paid job or get promoted, according to the results of an online survey. 
Of the Russians who took part in the survey, which was conducted by the web site Joblist.ru, 8 percent have bought fake diplomas in order to get a job, 10 percent of respondents are thinking about getting one, 82 percent said they would not buy one, 36 percent are satisfied with their job and do not need one, 28 percent are satisfied with their education, and 18 percent are afraid of the law.
The survey indicated that employers are mainly interested in whether candidates have a university degree or not. Forty-five percent of employers only checked for a degree certificate, while 24 percent examined applicants’ grades and the name of their university. Every tenth Russian had their diploma checked by government services, according to the survey. Seven percent of Russians confessed to either being caught using a fake diploma while applying for a job or knowing someone who had.
The survey questioned 3,000 working Russians with a degree from a higher education institute.

<b>Remembering the War</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Early in the morning on June 22, Yabloko party members and activists will light candles in Moscow and St. Petersburg in remembrance of the Russians who lost their lives in World War II. The ceremony is one of the events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Russia’s entry into the war. 
In St. Petersburg, candles will be lit at 4 a.m. on the Fontanka River embankment near the monument dedicated to the siege of the city during the war, Interfax reported. The ceremony has taken place for several years now on June 22.
In addition to the candles, many other events and commemorative ceremonies will take place in St. Petersburg on June 22. The city’s Legislative Assembly will not hold its regular session on that day, said Vitaly Milonov, head of the Legislation Committee. According to him, deputies will spend the day participating in various events dedicated to the anniversary.

TITLE: Plane Crash in Petrozavodsk Leaves 44 Dead
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: A Russian airliner crashed in heavy fog and burst into flames just short of a runway in northwestern Russia, killing 44 people, officials said. Eight people survived, dragged from the burning wreckage by locals. 
The RusAir Tu-134 plane had taken off from Moscow and was moments from landing at the Petrozavodsk airport when it slammed into a nearby highway just before midnight Monday, Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman Oksana Semyonova told The Associated Press. 
Russia’s top investigative agency said bad weather, human error or a technical malfunction might have contributed to the crash. There were no suspicions of foul play.   
The plane’s approach was too low, so it clipped a tree and then hit a high-power line — causing the airport’s runway lights to go off for 10 seconds — before slamming into the ground, Sergei Izvolsky, a spokesman for the Russian air transport agency, told the AP. 
The emergencies ministry said 44 people were killed, including four with dual U.S. and Russian citizenship. Local Russians rescued the eight survivors, including a mother, her 9-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter. They were hospitalized in critical condition in Petrozavodsk. 
Petrozavodsk is in the Republic of Karelia near the Finnish border, about 305 kilometers northeast of St. Petersburg. The plane crashed about 100 meters from a small village, but no casualties were reported on the ground. 
The federal air transport agency chief, Alexander Neradko, speaking from the crash site, said that preliminary information indicated the plane appeared to be intact when it hit a 15-meter (49-foot) pine tree. “There is no sign of a fire or explosion on board the plane before the impact,” he said. 
Sergei Shmatkov, an air traffic controller who oversaw the plane’s approach, was quoted by the lifenews.ru online newspaper as saying the visibility near the airport was close to the minimum admissible level at the time of the crash, but the pilot still decided to land. 
“The crew continued their descent at a moment when they should already have begun a second run,” he was quoted as saying. 
Shmatkov said he ordered the crew to abort the landing the moment the runway lights went off, but it was already too late. 
RusAir said the plane was in good working order. 
The Tu-134, along with its larger sibling the Tu-154, has been the workhorse of Soviet and Russian civil aviation since the 1960s with more than 800 planes built. The model that crashed was built in 1980, had a capacity of 68 people and a range of about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles). 
A respected aviation expert and veteran pilot said pilot error appeared to be the likely cause. 
“There is a strict rule — if you are on a glide path and you cannot clearly see the lights on the ground, there is no choice but to put the engines at full throttle and make another run,” said Oleg Smirnov, a former deputy civil aviation minister during Soviet times who now heads the nonprofit Partner of Civil Aviation Foundation. 
Magomed Tolboyev, a highly decorated veteran Russian pilot, said the Tu-134, while outdated, has a good reputation for reliability and agreed that human error was the most likely cause. 
“The human factor is always key, especially now when the level of crew training is very low and not controlled by the government,” Tolboyev said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Video footage showed charred plane fragments, including engines and landing gear, strewn around the highway less than one kilometer short of the runway. Amateur video showed the plane consumed by flames in the dark night. 
The plane was carrying 52 people, including nine crew members, according to the Emergencies Ministry. Four of the dead had dual U.S. and Russian citizenship — Lyudmila Simanova, Alexander Simanov, Yelizaveta Simanova and Yekaterina Simanov. The U.S. Embassy had no immediate information on them.
The official list of victims included a Swedish citizen, a Dutchman, two Ukrainians and Russian Premier League soccer referee Vladimir Pettay. The German Foreign Ministry said one victim had dual Russian-German citizenship, but didn’t identify him.
The Karelia branch of the Emergencies Ministry said radio contact with the pilot was lost at 11:40 p.m. local time. The plane’s flight data recorders have been recovered.
President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin offered condolences to the victims’ families, and the nation’s transport minister flew to the crash site to oversee the investigation. Putin was attending the Paris Air Show on Tuesday to support dozens of Russian firms seeking sales contracts.
In recent years, Russia and the other former Soviet republics have had some of the world’s worst air traffic safety records, according to official statistics. Experts blame the poor safety record on the age of aircraft used, weak government controls, poor pilot training and a cost-cutting mentality.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski was among 96 people killed when his Tu-154 crashed in heavy fog while trying to land near the western Russian city of Smolensk in April 2010. 
In 2006, three crashes — two in Russia and one in Ukraine — killed more than 400 people.
The International Air Transport Association noted that Russia has recently made progress on air safety, with none of Russia’s 13 largest air carriers suffering a deadly accident over the past three years. 


TITLE: Pacific Nation’s Turmoil Leaves Abkhazia in Limbo
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Confusion over Abkhazia’s ties with Vanuatu reached new heights Monday when reports from the Pacific island nation said a new government had withdrawn an earlier recognition of the breakaway Georgian republic’s independence.
Edward Natapei, who was declared Vanuatu’s acting prime minister last week, issued a statement saying Abkhazia was an “autonomous province of the republic of Georgia,” the Vanuatu Daily Post reported Monday.
Natapei instructed Vanuatu’s UN ambassador, Donald Kalpokas, to establish relations with Georgia, the report said, adding that the decision brings the Pacific state back in line with the majority of the international community.
Kalpokas became the center of confusion about Vanuatu’s stance earlier this month when he repeatedly denied reports that the government of Prime Minister Sato Kilman had recognized Abkhazia.
Kilman was deposed last week after Vanuatu’s Supreme Court ruled that his election by the parliament last November was unconstitutional because it was conducted by a show of hands and not a confidential ballot.
But Abkhazia’s foreign minister, Maxim Gvindzhia, said Monday that he had not received the statement officially and that he would not recognize it anyway.
“Mr. Natapei is an acting prime minister. We will only deal with a government fully in office,” Gvindzhia said by telephone from Sukhumi.
He said reports of Vanuatu’s about-face had emanated from Georgia and that Natapei’s statement was seemingly written in haste and contained stark factual errors.
According to a scan published by LiveJournal blogger Suresnois, the statement was signed by Natapei on June 17, just a day after he was appointed prime minister by the country’s chief justice. The text is in ungrammatical English and contains gaffes like placing the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1980 instead of 1991.
“It seems strange that he would do this as the first thing after coming to office,” Gvindzhia said.
The statement had not been published on the Vanuatu government’s web site, www.gov.vu, by Monday. 
The web site announced Natapei’s appointment Thursday, but a day later published a statement in which Foreign Minister Alfred Carlot confirmed Vanuatu’s recognition of Abkhazia. However, Carlot’s statement was already one week old, and it was unclear Monday whether he was still in office.
Vanuatu politics have been beset by turbulence for some time, and the latest leadership change is the fifth in less than one year.
The country’s parliament is to vote for a new prime minister on Thursday, and Natapei said through a spokesman that he would not stand, Radio Australia reported Monday.
The contest is likely to be between Kilman and his rival Serge Vohor, who has already held the top job five times before, the report said. But the new government will remain shaky as parliament remains divided 50-50.

TITLE: At ‘Anti-Seliger Camp,’ Opposition Seeks a Voice
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: KHIMKI, Moscow Region — Not even the organizers could really explain what the four-day Anti-Seliger camp was all about. But something was in the air, with even Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption blogger whose political star is rising, dropping by for a presentation.
The Khimki forest campout, which wrapped up Monday, attracted a motley crew of activists, including liberal-leaning celebrities like rock critic Artemy Troitsky and television star Leonid Parfyonov.
The event reflects an ongoing shift in the country’s public landscape, where the marginalized political opposition is gradually being replaced by grassroots civil society activists such as Navalny, whistleblower par excellence.
Whether this evolution will spill over into political mainstream remains to be seen, however. If Anti-Seliger is any indication, the new activists still have a ways to go because only 2,000 attended the event. 
The campout was organized by environmental activists led by Yevgenia Chirikova, who headed the unsuccessful campaign to save the Khimki forest from partial destruction to make way for an $8 billion federal highway. The Kremlin ordered that the road proceed in December after months of rumination.
An environmental slant was evident at the camp last week, with visitors at one point “chasing away” a bulldozer attempting to destroy some trees nearby. But the event was vaguely billed as a place for “everyone supporting the protection of nature and the development of civil society,” according to its web site.
Still, its name provided a good hint of what to expect. Seliger is the state-funded youth camp at the Tver region’s Lake Seliger, a posh annual event that educates pro-Kremlin youth on innovation, healthy lifestyle and effective ways to support the government. This year’s camp has a budget of 178 million rubles ($6.3 million) and expects to see 15,000 visitors.
Anti-Seliger’s budget stood at a measly 600,000 rubles, Chirikova told Gazeta.ru on Monday, adding that food was provided free of charge by the opposition Yabloko party. Contributors ranged from pensioners to businessmen, she said in a separate interview with the news site.
The cash covered transportation costs and accommodations for hundreds of people, including environmentalists, bloggers, musicians, students, politicians and artists. Chirikova put the number of guests at 2,000, although media estimates ranged from 500 to 3,000.
Fears that the authorities — known for banning opposition events on bureaucratic pretexts — would break up the camp proved unfounded. Police officers deployed to the site maintained order without cracking down on the activists, and even fraternized a bit when their superiors weren’t looking.
Speculation swirled at the camp that Kremlin deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov had personally instructed Moscow region authorities to leave the camp alone. The Kremlin had no immediate comment on the issue — or on the camp itself. But Stanislav Belkovsky, a one-time Kremlin insider, dismissed the rumor.
Chirikova conceded that the camp was no match for Seliger, but said it was only the start.
“It is not a short-term goal. The war can’t be won overnight. In 1941, many believed that Moscow would fall, but who won?” she said in an interview at the camp, referring to the battle for Moscow during World War II.
Navalny’s visit was, perhaps, most telling of all, because this was the first time he participated in a major public event since making a name for himself with his anti-corruption efforts last year.
Navalny, a former Yabloko member who has toyed with moderate nationalism, has left the door open to engaging in politics and has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. The visit to the Khimki forest was another link in the chain for him, said Belkovsky, an independent political analyst who attended the camp.
“There weren’t too many people at Anti-Seliger, but those who came were significant. He’d lose the respect of his fan base if he stayed away,” Belkovsky said by telephone Monday.
He added that Navalny had no chance of participating in the 2012 presidential election but might run in the next one in 2018.
Navalny, who, perhaps predictably, gave a lecture to the campers on how to fight corruption, praised the camp on his blog, writing that “Anti-Seliger was clean, had a high level of organization and was filled with lots of good people.” 
Gatherings like the Khimki forest event are the way to unite now-isolated civil society groups, Belkovsky said. 
The organizers may have succeeded all too well, because some right-wing activists, including nationalism champion Alexander Potkin, also dropped by, despite being personae non grata in the liberal and leftist communities.
But the atmosphere remained charged and amiable enough to lead some visitors to dub the event the “Russian Woodstock.” Concerts by several rock bands, including Vasily Shumov’s Tsentr and Gleb Samoilov’s Matrix, gave credence to the comparison.
Among the more unexpected guests was A Just Russia head Sergei Mironov, the long-time Federation Council speaker who fell from grace last month, being forced to trade the speaker’s position for a regular seat in the State Duma.
Mironov showed a loyalist streak, urging participants to join in a dialogue with the authorities. His Sunday speech, however, roused less enthusiasm than that of television host Parfyonov, who was greeted by loud applause even before he spoke.
Parfyonov said in an interview that he did not come to the forest for political reasons. Nevertheless, he gave a presentation on the lack of media freedom in the country.
Parfyonov was joined on stage by Dozhd television host Valery Panyushkin and Kommersant reporter Oleg Kashin, whose history is a case study on the problems of Russian journalism. In November, Kashin was beaten up by unidentified thugs and spent days in a coma. Investigators say he was beaten for his critical articles, which included several about the destruction of the Khimki forest, and President Dmitry Medvedev personally promised him to bring the attackers to justice. No one has been arrested, and Kashin has been sued by people linked to the Seliger camp after he implicated them in the attack.
Parfyonov said he did not believe that the Khimki forest could be saved. Many participants seemed to share his pessimism, both on the forest and grassroots activism in general.
“While some people like to make victory cheers, the circle of civil society activists in Russia is rather small,” said Ella Pamfilova, head of the Russia office of Transparency International. 
“You have to get at least 50,000 people on the street to get attention,” said opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. 
But Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank, predicted that this year’s camp was only the beginning. “It reminds me of 1985, not 1989,” he said, in reference to the start of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, which had swept the nation by 1989 and led to the Soviet collapse and Russia’s rebirth two years later.

TITLE: Minister: Ease Rules for Political Parties
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov said political parties and other nonprofit organizations should not be required to register with his ministry, only notify it of their existence.
Konovalov’s comments, published in Profil on Monday, came in stark contrast to his ministry’s refusal in recent years to register all opposition parties for purported technical mistakes in their applications. 
An unregistered political party cannot take part in elections, and the ministry is under close watch as a deadline to respond to a registration request from the opposition approaches this week.
Konovalov said notification rather than registration would be better for parties and other organizations.
“We must respond to actual legal violations in their activities, but not to the hypothetical possibility” that they might break the law, Konovalov added.
The European Court for Human Rights recently ruled against the Justice Ministry over its refusal to register the opposition Republican Party several years ago.
Meanwhile, Federation Council Deputy Speaker Alexander Torshin and Constitutional Court Chief Justice Valery Zorkin have submitted a bill to the State Duma allowing the government to ignore rulings by the European Court for Human Rights in order to “protect national sovereignty,” Kommersant reported Monday.
Political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky said Medvedev “wants to weaken the clout of United Russia” by allowing opposition parties in the political arena and “to boost the independence of the Russian courts” by “showing that European court rulings are not binding.”


TITLE: Khodorkovsky Tapped to Repair Toilets
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky will fix toilets and repair windows at the Karelian prison where he was sent last week, RIA-Novosti reported Monday. 
Khodorkovsky has been assigned to a maintenance squad, comprised of fellow inmates, the report said, citing a source at the prison service. During his first prison stint, which he served in Eastern Siberia, Khodorkovsky worked as a sewing machine operator. 
Meanwhile, the Investigative Committee said it had failed to confirm a claim that the December verdict to keep Khodorkovsky in jail until 2016 was imposed on Moscow Judge Viktor Danilkin by his superiors. 
The allegation was made by Danilkin’s aide Natalya Vasilyeva, who presented investigators with a milder draft of the ruling that she said he was forced to discard. But the committee said on its web site Monday that the document might have been fabricated as a “provocation.” It did not elaborate. 


TITLE: New Pulkovo Terminal To Take 3 Years to Build
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Tyomkin 
and Maria Buravtseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The new terminal due to be built at Pulkovo Airport at a cost of 1.2 billion rubles ($43 million) will only appear in three years, and the airport’s management company has begun to change the rental agreements for retail tenants at the airport in order to gain maximum income from the existing terminals.  
The territory of the airport should be used as effectively as possible, Sergei Emdin, general director of the VVSS (Vozdushnye Vorota Severnoi Stolitsy) consortium that manages the airport, said back in April. VVSS was last year given the airport to manage for 30 years after winning a tender to build a new terminal at Pulkovo the year before. The company pledged to invest 1.2 billion rubles in the construction.
According to Emdin, since Dec. 1 last year, rental rates have been dependent on the tenant’s turnover, and VVSS has started to take “up to several dozen percent” of tenants’ revenues. The income from Pulkovo’s non-aviation activities make up 17 percent of its total revenue, but the company’s aim is to increase that figure to 25 percent. 
Previously, the airport’s passenger traffic was not large enough to generate the necessary sum of money to expand the airport’s retail premises. Today, airport traffic is only increasing by a little every year and it is only possible to set up a maximum of three new premises for rent occupying five to ten square meters each, said Fyodor Murygin, deputy director of VVSS’s non-aviation activities. 
The airport contains 5,000 square meters of rental premises, which could bring the company $100 per square meter per month, estimated Nikolai Kazansky, chief manager of Colliers International in St. Petersburg.
The first food chain retailer at the airport, Rosinter, which arrived in 2007, has for a long time paid a percent of its revenue as well as a fixed rental rate, so the changes have had hardly any effect on the company, said Valeriya Silina, PR manager at Rosinter.
During the last five years, the percent of revenue payable has increased, but so has the restaurant’s turnover, she said. 
For the pharmacy chain Pervaya Pomoshch, which had two outlets in Pulkovo, the new conditions turned out to be less profitable than the previous ones. The company has lost one of its outlets, which was given to another pharmacy, but it doesn’t plan on leaving the airport for good.
The new rules affect taxi drivers too. From May, they have been obliged to pay 20 percent of the value of each order to the Taxi Pulkovo management company. Those who don’t pay are not allowed to pick up or drop off their passengers within a 50-meter security zone. New Transport Company, which operates under the name New Yellow Taxi, declined to sign a contract with Pulkovo on such terms, said its director Felix Margaryan. He said he had not ruled out the possibility of appealing to the antimonopoly authorities. 
Airports want their earnings from non-aviation activities to constitute more than 50 percent of their income, said a senior manager at one regional airport management company. Airport architecture can become an obstacle, however, as most airport buildings were constructed in Soviet times and were not designed to make a profit. 
In Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, additional businesses (the sale of fuel and onboard catering) account for about 60 percent of total revenue. Aviation activities bring in 20 percent of revenue, and the remainder is generated by leasing out sections of the airport’s territory.
In 2009, non-aviation activities brought Pulkovo 770 million rubles ($27.5 million), or 16 percent of the airport’s revenue. Later reports have not been published. 
In April last year, VVSS signed a loan contract with a group of banks including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Vneshekonombank, International Finance Corporation and Nordic Bank, which pledged 715 million euros for the construction of the new Pulkovo terminal. The airport management company has to put up the rest of the amount itself, which is why it needs to boost its revenue, said an employee of one of the banks. He also said that VVSS has fulfilled one of the conditions of the loan agreement — though several months later than agreed — which is to choose a chief constructor. VVSS selected a consortium of Italy’s Astaldi and Turkey’s Ictas Insaat. A VVSS representative declined to comment on the terms of the construction agreement. 


TITLE: TPV Technology Opens LCD Screen Factory in Shushary
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: TPV Technology opened an LCD television and screens plant at an estimated value of $30 million in the Shushary district outside St. Petersburg on Tuesday. 
This year, the plant plans to produce about 500,000 Philips television sets, Interfax reported. Jason Hsuan, the company’s CEO, said that it was concentrating on TV sets for now, and that the decision about manufacturing monitors would be made next year. The company plans to gain 20 to 30 percent of the Russian TV and monitors market during the next two years. 
Investment in the plant comes to $25 million, and next year, the company is going to invest a further $5 million in order to improve its level of technology, the plant’s director, Blazej Bernard Reiss, was quoted by Interfax as saying. The company is currently negotiating with Sharp, Panasonic and Sony, and the plant will start producing a second brand by the end of the year, he added.
The territory of the plant is being rented from AKM Logistic company on a five-year contract, Rice said. “We will see how sales develop and then consider building our own plant,” he said, Interfax reported. According to Rice, the plant’s current capacity is about 2 million TV sets per year. In September it will increase to 3.5 million. The actual production volume is dependent on how many orders the company receives. 


TITLE: Auto Firms Face Staff Deficit
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Tyomkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The region’s automobile plants need to find 3,000 new employees during the next three years, and this recent addition to St. Petersburg’s economic sector is close to exhausting its personnel reserves. 
General Motors plans to hire 600 new workers to operate its third shift by the end of the year, said Romuald Rytwinski, the company’s CEO. There are currently 1,800 people working at the plant, but in five years its capacity will have quadrupled and another 1,500 workers will be needed.
For the Yo-Avto and Yarovit plants, construction of which was launched in the Marino industrial park at the beginning of this month, 1,400 workers will be needed by the end of 2012: 700 at each plant, Andrei Biryukov, CEO of Yo-Avto and president of Yarovit, said at the plants’ groundbreaking ceremony. 
This year, Nissan recruited 600 workers for the third shift at its plant in Kamenka. About 2,100 employees currently work there, said a representative of the company. Hyundai is also hiring 600 people for its third shift, which is due to be launched in the autumn. The company is still looking for 200 people, said a representative of the plant. According to him, the company has not experienced any problems in finding candidates — there are a plenty of applicants — but right now, it is seeing a seasonal slump on the market. 
When Toyota, the first automobile plant to open in St. Petersburg, announced it was recruiting for 450 vacancies at the end of 2006, it received about 20,000 resumes in the space of less than six months. “We have many options,” Ichiro Chiba, then-vice-president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Russia, said back then. The automakers that followed Toyota could not rely on such a generous market however, said an employee in the HR department of one of the plants. Today, there are between 10 and 20 applicants for each vacancy, and candidates have realized that auto manufacturers don’t simply hire anyone who applies, he said. The HR specialist estimated the average salary of auto industry workers at 20,000 to 25,000 rubles per month, which he described as the “market average.”
It can be difficult to find laborers in St. Petersburg, said Deputy Governor Mikhail Oseyevsky. A possible solution is to increase the level of technical equipment at the plants, which would require more engineers rather than manual laborers, he said. Automation is the way forward, agreed Yo-Avto’s Biryukov. The plants currently being constructed will be equipped with cutting-edge technology, partly in order to decrease the volume of manual labor necessary, he said. 
In general, the market for well-paid permanent vacancies is not saturated. Mostly, only unskilled work is offered, which is not popular among Petersburgers, said Alexander Khodachek, director of the Higher School of Economics at St. Petersburg State University. 

TITLE: Medvedev Inspires Investors
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A bullish Dmitry Medvedev left investors so enthusiastic at last weekend’s St. Petersburg forum that even his biggest shortcoming could not spoil the mood: He refused to say whether he would address the forum as president again next year.
After the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum proceeded from highlight to highlight for three days, Medvedev was forced to admit at the very end of Saturday’s closing session that he still could not promise to stand for re-election.
“Can I ask one puckish question? … Are you going to run for president next year?” asked an awkwardly chortling Wall Street Journal editor, Robert Thomson, adding that this might be “the perfect moment” for Medvedev to make public his thoughts.
The president, however, jovially crushed all hopes that he would solve the country’s most pressing political puzzle.
“When I believe the moment is right to say directly whether I will or will not run, I will do so,” he said. “But this forum is not the best venue for that.”
With a wink, he added that it would not be long until he announced his decision, but “every story should have its own intrigue, otherwise life would be boring, so let’s enjoy it a little longer.” 
The question of who will run the country after the State Duma elections in December and the presidential vote next March has become ever more vexing since Medvedev and his prime minister and predecessor, Vladimir Putin, have both said they might stand, while seemingly drifting further apart in their policies.
Medvedev fueled talk of a rift in the tandem that has governed the country since 2008 when he lit a blaze of liberal policies in his keynote speech Friday.
As a central theme, he touted an end to government intervention in the economy, which he described both as state capitalism and “manual control” — a definition closely associated with Putin’s habit of personally intervening in industry decision making. 
The president’s repudiation of what is seen as Putin’s style was perhaps the most striking moment in his 35-minute address. “This is not my choice — my choice is something else,” he said slowly, adding that private entrepreneurs and investors should play the dominant role, while the state should protect them.
Medvedev also suggested harsher punishment for corrupt officials, saying they could be fired for “loss of confidence” when evidence of bribery does not allow pressing criminal charges. Medvedev fired Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov after 18 years for “loss of confidence” last September and has never elaborated on the reason.
The president also told his audience, which included scores of governors, that his sacking of long-serving regional bosses often resulted in improved local business climates. He picked Moscow as an example, saying that under Mayor Sergei Sobyanin the amount of documents necessary to start construction projects has decreased.
Afterward, forum participants said without hesitation that Medvedev’s remarks bordered on a campaign speech.
“A pretty presidential speech,” said Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia.
Medvedev was trying to win the support of “his colleagues in power and the Russian elite” ahead of the election, said Darrell Stanaford, managing director of real estate agency CB Richard Ellis in Russia.
Stanaford said both foreign and Russian business agree that the government should not dictate from above but rather provide conditions for them to thrive. “This is the format which is necessary,” he said.
Others noted Medvedev’s frequent use of the word “choice,” which in Russian is the same as the word for election.
By reiterating “my choice,” Medvedev has indicated that he personally backs his promises, said Klaus Kleinfeld, CEO of U.S. aluminum giant Alcoa.
“It is the same language that a U.S. president would use,” Kleinfeld, who chairs the U.S.-Russia Business Council, said in an interview on the sidelines of the forum.
“It was an excellent speech, and I haven’t heard a single criticism,” he said.


TITLE: Contract for Mistrals Worth Over 1 Bln Euros
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Russia signed a contract worth more than 1 billion euros ($1.43 billion) Friday to buy two French warships — the largest military deal between a NATO country and Moscow to date that will likely worry some of Russia’s neighbors.
President Dmitry Medvedev oversaw the signing ceremony in St. Petersburg, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy welcomed the deal in a statement released by his office.
The statement said the Mistral-class assault ships would be made in France by DCNS and STX companies at a shipbuilding plant in town of Saint-Nazaire, creating 1,000 jobs in France over four years. The contract signing “testifies to the strategic dimension of this cooperation between France and Russia,” it said.
The United States has expressed concerns that a sale would send the wrong message to American allies in Central and Eastern Europe and Russian neighbors who are alarmed by the plan.
French Trade Minister Pierre Lellouche told reporters that the deal was worth 1.12 billion euros, but Anatoly Isaikin, chief of the state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, put it at 1.2 billion euros.
The discrepancy couldn’t be immediately explained.
Under a preliminary agreement in December, two more ships will be constructed jointly by French and Russian shipbuilders, but Lellouche said “the third and the fourth ships are still the subject of further contract.”
The talks on the deal have dragged on for months amid disputes about how many ships would be built and where, and how much sensitive technology France would share.
Roman Trotsenko, spokesman for the state-controlled United Shipbuilding Corp., told Rossia 24 television that Russian industries will produce about 40 percent of the components for the first two ships.
Trotsenko said France also has agreed to provide Russia with a proprietary state-of-the-art command and control system for the ships, which are more advanced than the technology that the Russian navy currently has.
“The French side has agreed to an unprecedented level of cooperation in the technology transfer,” he said.
The first ship will be supplied in 2014, and the second one will follow the next year, Russian news reports said.


TITLE: EU Envoys Coming For Talks on Vegetable Ban
AUTHOR: By Khristina Narizhnaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A European Commission delegation, headed by health and consumer policy commissioner John Dalli, will visit Moscow in the coming days to negotiate the lifting of Russia’s ban on EU vegetables, spokesman for the European Union delegation to Moscow Denis Daniilidis said. 
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso sent a letter to President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday expressing surprise that the issue has not yet been resolved following European Union measures dealing with the E. coli epidemic, Daniilidis said. 
Medvedev announced at a meeting with EU officials in Nizhny Novgorod earlier this month that vegetable imports could resume if the European Union provides certificates guaranteeing the health safety of the shipments.
The conflict comes from how each side defines a proper guarantee.
The European Union proposed a sample document last week that certified the origin of the shipment and confirmed that that region is E. coli-free. 
But the Federal Consumer Protection Service rejected the offer three days later as not sufficient, demanding that every shipment be tested for the bacteria, Daniilidis said. 
The Federal Consumer Protection Service declined to comment for this story. 
The certifications that Russia demands hamper the European producers’ position on the market because of the high cost and the administrative hurdles such testing would involve, Daniilidis said. 
“It is not fair to us,” Daniilidis said. 
It is not clear how much money the European Union has lost since the ban went into effect June 2, but about a quarter of the total EU vegetable harvest is shipped to Russia. European vegetables worth $854 million were sold domestically last year. 
The E. coli epidemic infected several thousand people and killed at least 39 in Europe. The ban incited loud protests from the European Union. 
Russia is the only country to maintain the ban on EU vegetables. The source of bacteria has been traced to bean sprouts in north Germany.
Illegal imports of European vegetables are a possibility, said Gennady Onishchenko, head of the Federal Consumer Protection Service, RBK Daily reported. 
Some outdoor markets, small stores and kiosks have been selling European vegetables masquerading as non-European, Vedomosti reported. 
Embargoes of foreign foodstuffs are not unusual. Recently, Russia limited a large portion of meat exports from Brazil, and last year poultry imports from the United States were stopped because of safety concerns. 
The vegetable ban conflict is an international public relations stunt, said UralSib bank consumer market analyst Tigran Hovhannisyan. 
“Russia has to show it protects its citizens before the elections; Europe has to show it cares about its business interests,” he said.
Hovhannisyan said he predicts the issue will be resolved and exports will resume in about a month.

TITLE: Khloponin Seeks $16 Bln For Caucasus Ski Resorts
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Kremlin’s envoy to the restive North Caucasus oversaw the signing of a $1.8 billion French deal at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum as he tried to persuade business leaders to back a $16 billion plan to build a chain of ski resorts in the Caucasus mountains, Reuters reported. 
Under Friday’s deal, France will provide 840 million euros ($1.2 billion), mostly in ski lift equipment, and the Russian government will invest 400 million euros ($572 million) in infrastructure, said Alexander Khloponin, Medvedev’s envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District. 
The framework agreement between French bank Caisse des Depots et Consignations and the Russian state-owned North Caucasus Resorts Company was forged during a meeting between Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Nicolas Sarkozy of France on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit in France last month. 
Much of the infrastructure is rudimentary at ski areas around Mount Elbrus, the hub of the planned resort clusters, and elsewhere in the western part of the North Caucasus, and few foreigners visit. 
Khloponin said Saturday that the Kremlin was learning from Turkey’s experience in its Kurdish areas how to create industrial parks and private-public partnerships in the North Caucasus. 
He said 60 billion rubles ($1.93 billion) of the $16 billion he is seeking would come from the state and the remainder from other investors. 
He acknowledged that risks were high and investment into the North Caucasus was “scary” because of corruption, violence and administrative barriers, but said the government was ready to guarantee 70 percent on investment. 
“We must take investors by the hand, like a woman, and help them carry out these projects,” he said in an interview with Reuters. 
“She has to believe she is safe with you. That is why I am sure that we will attract this money because we are ready to share investors’ risks, to protect them and ensure their money doesn’t go missing,” he said. 
Just days after the government unveiled its ski resort plans in January, a suicide bombing killed 37 people at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport and masked gunmen shot dead three Russian tourists heading for the ski slopes of Mount Elbrus. 
This was a new tactic by the militants that sounded a warning to Russia before it hosts the Winter Olympics in Sochi, 190 kilometers west of Elbrus’ slopes. 
“I am worried of course. … As long as there are bandits in the Caucasus, it will stall economic development,” Khloponin said. 
Khloponin accused Georgia, with which Russia fought a brief war in 2008, of trying to stir ethnic tensions before the Sochi Games. 


TITLE: Not Riding Tandem
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: Some commentators were quick to claim that President Dmitry Medvedev’s speech Friday at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum was his most important since he was elected president in 2008.  
In the speech, Medvedev tried to position himself as a leader, but he spoke more in the future tense than the present. Thus, he reinforced his image as a president who postures a lot but takes little action.
Just to be on the safe side and to not feed the rumor mill of a “schism” in the tandem, Medvedev was shown several days before the forum in a special voiceless photoshoot smiling and riding a bicycle with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Needless to say, they didn’t ride tandem.
As is customary among Russian leaders, Medvedev used his speech to make a number of important statements directed primarily at the forum’s foreign guests and less at the Russian audience whom he already addressed during an expanded news conference in May.
With less than one year of his term remaining, the proposals Medvedev put forward in his speech were new and original. Perhaps the most interesting proposal was to expand the Moscow city limits by creating a new Capital Federal District. Medvedev also proposed relocating many of the federal agencies that are located in Moscow to areas outside of the Moscow Ring Road.
This proposal caught the media’s attention and eclipsed other initiatives proposed at the forum that would affect many more Russians. Take, for example, a proposal to rapidly increase excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol. The media are focused on discussing the extremely high costs of creating the  Capital Federal District while ignoring the fact that the majority of Russian adults would be paying significantly higher prices for cigarettes, beer and vodka.
The real purpose seems to be not so much to extend Moscow’s boundaries and relocate federal agencies as to reduce the autonomy of the largest and wealthiest region of the country. If this is the case, then the mission of Mayor Sergei Sobyanin is not simply to replace his disgraced predecessor, Yury Luzhkov, but to dismantle the entire political machine that Luzhkov built.
In other words, Medvedev wants to put more power in the hands of the federal government so that no future mayor could ever pose a threat to the Kremlin. In this way, future Moscow mayors will be relegated to the status of functionaries rather than true political heavyweights.
To be sure, the physical relocation of government agencies is a long-term project at best that will extend beyond not just Medvedev’s current term, but even the six-year term of the next president. Just consider how long it has taken Mosvka-City — Luzkhov’s pet project to develop a large financial district 4 kilometers west of the Kremlin — to get off the ground and how long it has taken to put up the buildings to house the government of the Moscow region.
By contrast, the creation of the Capital Federal District can be carried out very quickly — at least on paper. As always, projects backed by large business and political groups are always the first to be implemented.
What’s more, the creation of this new district is a way to generate enormous sums of money out of thin air. This is accomplished not only by constructing new expensive federal buildings — from which Putin’s friends in the construction business have much to gain — but also by bestowing federal status on a significant chunk of the country’s most expensive real estate.
It is noteworthy that Medvedev introduced the Capital Federal District proposal at the same time that he promised to decentralize federal powers and reduce the role of government in business. This puts the authorities in a good position to negotiate with the leading political and business clans on the eve of the State Duma and presidential elections.
It could also lead to a shakeup among these clans. Medvedev could come out a big winner from this shakeup if, as result, his latest proposals are brought to fruition.

Nikolai Petrov is a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

TITLE: Building Barriers for the Disabled
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
TEXT: Parents of disabled children have become the targets of a new bureaucratic rule that is advertised as an anti-corruption tool but looks more like a torture device.
To prevent parents from stealing their children’s allowances from the state, city officials have introduced a procedure that requires parents to get permission before they spend the funds. To do so, parents must provide dozens of documents, with the exact ones depending on what proof a particular bureaucrat would like to see to become convinced of a parent’s credibility.
Once they get access to the pension, parents are now obliged to keep a record of all purchases they make with that money, including every loaf of bread. They must also be able to prove, on demand, that they did not spend a kopeck of that money on themselves.
The officials enforcing these measures argue that they go a long way to preventing the parents from stealing or misappropriating their children’s money.
The parents, in turn, describe the system as containing a presumption of guilt, deeply offensive for people who are already undergoing a considerable ordeal. It was enough of a challenge already, they say, to bring up disabled children in a country with an anemic state social care system and no charities to speak of.
The chairwoman of the St. Petersburg association of organizations helping disabled children, Margarita Urmancheyeva, said in recent weeks she has been bombarded with phone calls from bewildered parents.
“The procedure is extremely humiliating,” she said.
Corruption and misappropriation of state funds in Russia is rife, but the mothers of disabled children are hardly the problem. Considering the kind of money that is at stake in state support for disabled children, the ruling made by the St. Petersburg authorities borders on sadism.
A child’s disability pension typically amounts to about 5,000 rubles ($172) per month. Hardly enough for a shopping spree for dresses, jewelry, or perfumes. Indeed this miserable sum – even if stolen from the child over a year — would hardly provide enough cash to buy a dishonest parent a vacation in the Canary Islands.
To fully understand the unfair approach of the St. Petersburg bureaucrats, it is essential to understand what sort of lives families with disabled children lead in Russia. In many cases, we are talking about single mothers bringing up a child on their own.
Although no official statistics exist, social psychologists in St. Petersburg estimate that in two-thirds of families, the father leaves as soon as a child is diagnosed with a serious illness.
“It is perhaps most shocking with cancer cases: cancer is an illness that often comes out of the blue, and with the arrival of the child’s illness the mother often faces the disintegration of the family as well,” said one psychologist. “Fathers typically make the same complaint: That the wife neglects them or has become indifferent. And so they flee the nest, in the hope of being better looked after elsewhere.”
Bringing up a disabled child in Russia almost always results in the mother becoming a full-time nurse and having to give up her regular job. Take the case of Nadezhda, the mother of 12-year-old Artyom, who has cerebral palsy.
“It is unfair that the state doesn’t compensate me for working as a nurse for my son. If I asked a professional nurse to do this for me, I would have to pay her, wouldn’t I?” Nadezhda said. “I can’t afford a nurse and I gave up my own job to provide adequate care for my child. So why does the state take this for granted? And how does it come about that by making this sacrifice I have to prove to some dumb bureaucrat that I’m honest enough to decide how to spend my son’s pittance of a pension?”
Obtaining schooling for a disabled child without placing him or her in a prisonlike “correction school” is also a Herculean struggle. Home schooling can in theory be provided by the state free of charge but bureaucratic hurdles make it almost impossible in practice. Too often, a family with a disabled child falls into poverty and misery.
So why pick on the parents of disabled children and make them a target for a clearly ill-conceived anti-fraud exercise?
Suppose we try to visualize the scenario that the St. Petersburg officials apparently had in mind when drawing up this new rule:
One day an exhausted and desperate mother of a disabled child has had enough. At her wits’ end, one day she opens her wallet and buys herself a bottle of brandy without realizing it’s the child’s money she is spending. Then — under the rules set out by the city authorities — the watchful guards pounce and nail the wicked parent. Social justice, Russian style.
Of course safeguarding the interests of disadvantaged children is important. But so is preventing overzealous bureaucrats from further degrading the lives of some of Russia’s most vulnerable groups.
Surely the tables should be turned on the bureaucrats, forcing the people who dreamed up such absurd social security rules to prove that they deserve the positions they occupy.
And, while we’re at it, we could ask them to account day by day for the hours they work, and for the expenses and salaries they receive. Now that would be a worthwhile anti-fraud scheme. 

A full version of this commentary is available at Transitions Online, an award-winning analytical online magazine covering Eastern Europe and CIS countries, at www.tol.org.

TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This weekend is perhaps the hottest from the point of view of major music events. Although more concerts have been scheduled for the rest of the summer, attendance will inevitably start to drop as people leave the city to take advantage of the good weather.
Stereoleto, the summer’s main outdoor music event, is marking its 10th anniversary this year. During its history, it has brought a number of great acts — perhaps most notably Sparks, who came while touring in support of the band’s surprisingly awesome 2006 album “Hello Young Lovers.”
Though originally held in the pleasant gardens belonging to the Molodyozhny Theater, close to the Fontanka, the event has since moved and is now held on Krestovsky Ostrov — an island in the Neva Delta in western St. Petersburg.
This year, Stereoleto has been split into two Saturday nights, June 25 and July 2.
This Saturday’s event — called “Vozdukh” (Air) — is due to be headlined by Keta, an electronic project featuring Mumii Troll’s frontman Ilya Lagutenko. International acts include Chinawoman (see interview, this page), Germany’s Club des Belugas and France’s Zenzile. 
Stereoleto’s second night — called “Stereofuture” and due on July 2 — will feature Germany’s Apparat Band, Austria’s Architecture in Helsinki, Norway’s Casiokids and Finland’s Uusi Fantasia. A number of Russian bands will also be performing on both nights.
Last year, the event’s founder Ilya Bortnyuk launched Helsinkibar, where a pre-party for Stereoleto will be thrown at 9 p.m. on Friday. Helsinkibar is located at 31 Kadetskaya Liniya (Vasilyevsky Island). Entrance is free of charge.
Stereoleto mostly features funk and soul and relaxed downtempo electronic music styles.
More straightforward Russian rock music can be heard at Open Your Windows, the biggest local outdoor rock festival, which is being held for the 11th time this year.
Apart from the more obvious stadium rockers who feature in every major event of this kind, this year’s festival will bring, for instance, Lyapis Trubetskoy, the Minsk-based band that recently found itself on Belarusian blacklists, with their concerts in their home country having been banned.
The lineup also features Electric Guerillas, Razniye Lyudi and Chistyakov Band.
The 12-hour rock festival will be held on the site in front of the Peterburgsky Sports and Concert Complex, starting from noon on Sunday.
Led by St. Petersburg jazz patriarch David Goloshchyokin, the Jazz Philharmonic Hall will be holding White Night’s Swing, an annual jazz festival. Opening on Thursday, the festival will run at the venue nightly through Sunday, when it will culminate with a free daytime outdoor event on Ploshchad Iskusstv at 1 p.m.
Californian rockers Papa Roach will perform at Glavclub on Wednesday, while on Saturday the same venue will host the first local concert by Irish singer/songwriter Sinead O’Connor.


TITLE: Chinawoman’s touch
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Chinawoman is Michelle, an elusive Canada-born, Berlin-based singer-songwriter with Russian roots. 
Not much is known about her, except for a few scarce facts disclosed by the singer since her first album, “Party Girl,” was released in 2007.
Her mother danced with the Kirov (Mariinsky) Ballet in the 1970s, a fact reflected in Chinawoman’s song “Russian Ballerina,” which was intended as her gift to her mother.
Raised in a Russian neighborhood in Toronto, she grew up on a mix of Russian and European music, and lists Soviet gypsy singer Nikolai Slichenko and Soviet-Russian pop star Alla Pugachyova among her influences, together with PJ Harvey, Hole and Peaches.
She spent some time as a television director and is into classical films, listing her favorite director as Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. 
Last year, Chinawoman followed “Party Girl” with “Show Me the Face,” which she described as “classical European ballads, sentimental melodrama, euro beats, sultry mysticism and one-woman rantings.” Its songs include “God Bless My Socially Retarded Friends” and “Woman’s Touch.”
Earlier this month, she made her Russian debut in St. Petersburg. 
Backed by guitarist Diego Ferri and drummer Robin Thomson, Chinawoman, who plays guitar and keyboards, performed a one-hour set of her strangely touching, sad songs sung in her unusual, low voice at the Avant Piter music event at Kosmonavt. 
She returns this weekend to participate in the first night of Stereoleto on Krestovsky Island.
This week, Chinawoman — whose recent Eastern European tour was called “Seeking Russian Bride” — took time to answer a few questions from The St. Petersburg Times.

<b><i>Q: You played your first concert in St. Petersburg (and Russia) earlier this month and now you’re coming back to perform at Stereoleto. What were your impressions of the audience?</i></b>
A: Based on the rowdiness of the crowd in most of the other Eastern European countries I’ve been to, I was a bit surprised to find the people in Piter kind of reserved. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; I myself am typically reserved when in the audience.  
But then it was also a festival show, and therefore less intimate. Because of my roots and all the emotions and nostalgia surrounding my performing in Russia, I think it would be appropriate to do something more solo where the sentiment and vibe could be fully indulged.

<b><i>Q: What were your impressions of Russia and St. Petersburg? Did anything surprise you?</i></b>
A: It was my second time in Piter and first time in Moscow. Unfortunately, I find that when touring, it’s all about being in the best physical and mental shape possible, so exploring the city isn’t a priority.  
However, we did get a full day in Piter before our show, and a good friend of mine who writes the St. Petersburg Lonely Planet guide was in town and took us around to some great spots. 
Definitely the city’s rift between people with money and people without got my attention again, particularly while we were eating in a fancy garden restaurant, which felt kind of strange to me.

<b><i>Q: Perhaps I should ask you about your reasons for staying incognito, because it’s one of the first questions a lot of people have.</i></b>
A: Like I’ve said before, going incognito was never an intentional decision. I simply made my music available online, and never made a point of writing about my personal life in a bio or anything, simply because it never seemed relevant to me. 

<b><i>Q: Could you tell us as much as you can about yourself? What did your parents do, and when did they leave the Soviet Union? Was your mother really a dancer with the Kirov Ballet?</i></b>
A: Yes, my mother danced with the Kirov and also worked as a choreographer and ballet mistress after receiving a masters in choreography from the Leningrad State Conservatory. My father is an electrical engineer from Leningrad. The two met at a food market in Leningrad, and lived there until they left for Canada via Italy in 1975.

<b><i>Q: I read that you grew up in the Russian neighborhood in Toronto. What was that like? What language did you speak with your family?</i></b>
A: I grew up speaking Russian with my parents at home and also went to Russian Sunday school where I acquired some basic writing and reading skills. There’s a big Russian community in Toronto; you can drive 20 minutes down the main strip (Bathurst Street) through neighborhoods populated by Russians. I always enjoyed the Russian restaurants, markets and parties, and generally felt sentimental about my family’s culture — more so than most other children of immigrants did.

<b><i>Q: What made you start writing music? What music did you listen to when you were growing up?</i></b>
A: I never would have imagined I’d be working in music, as it was never my interest or intention. 
I always had a good ear, however, and would figure things out by ear on the keyboard we had at home. 
We had an old Kimball organ in the basement of the house where I grew up, and I must have been a few years old when my mother taught me how to play a very rudimentary version of “Listya Zhyoltiye” [“Yellow Leafs,” a Soviet pop hit from the early 1980s].
It was only in 2005 that I started hanging out with musicians and became curious about the songwriting process. It was my best friend who told me to create a MySpace music page while we were browsing the site. He said, “Make a page and then maybe it will motivate you to write a song.” So a week later I had written and recorded my first song, and it was a few core friends and family who responded really positively who pushed me to write more.
The music I grew up with at home — Russian, French and Italian from the ’70s and ’80s — is my formative music.
I’ve been into many kinds of music and continue to expand my tastes, but old European ballads are home for me.

<b><i>Q: Where did the influence of Soviet pop come from, and is it really that significant in your work?</i></b>
A: My parents didn’t have many Soviet records actually. Mostly there were a series of “mixed tapes” that got passed around the Russian community and of which every household had a copy.  
So I grew up with a number of cassette tapes labeled only “pesni” [songs], which I must have listened to thousands of times. Like I said, I only attempted to write my first song many years later in my mid-twenties, at which point the influence of that formative music became apparent. 

<b><i>Q: In interviews, you have mentioned you were a television director and wanted to be a film director. Did you make your videos yourself?</i></b>
A: Yes, all my YouTube videos I made myself. I’ve worked in film and television in several professional capacities, where my job was to make something that looks really polished, using high-end motion graphics, fast-pace, etc. So when it comes to my own videos, in a sense I go for an anti-pro approach, for the homemade style that I’ve always loved, using loops, simple cuts, etc.

<b><i>Q: For how long have you lived in Berlin? Why did you move there? </i></b>
A: I’ve been living in Berlin for eight months and it has provided a great base from which to tour while living affordably in Europe. It has ultimately allowed music to become my primary career, and allowed Chinawoman to evolve from what was predominantly a recording project to also being a live act.

<b><i>Q: From “Party Girl” to “Show Me the Face” — is there an element of growing up? Where are you moving to, musically?</i></b>
A: The songs on “Party Girl” do capture that youthful angsty lovelorn disillusionment, whereas “Show Me the Face” moves toward a broader adult disillusionment. I’m not sure that “Show Me the Face” is necessarily a moving forward as there are elements from both albums that I prefer.  I don’t know where I’m headed, and I’ve learned that what is best is that I continue to surprise myself. Therefore the less I know about what’s coming, the better.

<i>Chinawoman will perform alongside Ilya Lagutenko’s Keta, Club des Belugas and Zenzile, at 10 p.m. on Saturday at the Stereoleto music event on Krestovsky Island, at 6 Yuzhnaya Doroga.</i>

TITLE: A photographer’s life
AUTHOR: By Chris Gordon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Sitting in the apartments of Tsar Alexander I in the State Hermitage Museum, Annie Leibovitz is a generous presence in an otherwise daunting enfilade of staterooms. At 62, she is possibly the world’s most famous photographer, and during the past four decades has trained her lens on the great and the good — and on a fair share of monsters too. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that few photographers can lay claim to quite as much psychic real estate as Leibovitz. From the Rolling Stones to the Clintons, she has photographed just about anyone who is anybody, creating some of the 20th century’s most memorable portraits in the process.
The survey exhibition now on view at the Hermitage brings together a selection of Leibovitz’s photography from between 1990 and 2005: 15 years that saw important changes in her personal life. “It was a book before it was a show, and that’s probably the reason I felt comfortable with the imagery going into it,” she said Tuesday in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times ahead of the exhibition’s opening. 
“Some of the images makes it seem like, ‘are we trespassing?’ But in the shelter of the book covers, it felt protected. So it was interesting to translate it into a show.” 
Now out in the world, and hung against the pastel walls of the Winter Palace, it becomes clear that this multifaceted body of work is held together by the sheer force of her personality, her distinctive voice, a relentless pursuit of the telling moment, and a deep, almost melancholic, understanding of the transience of life. 
“On some level I like the book more,” she says. “But on another level it’s exciting to see it come to life. And the show changes wherever it’s mounted.” 
The personal work is printed far smaller than the assignment works, she explains, “because it was designed to be intimate.”
The Connecticut-born, New York-based artist began her journey in the crucible of late 1960s San Francisco  and has been at the epicenter of the entertainment industry ever since. Her uniquely American vision has made her one of the most important chroniclers of what fascinates the nation, and has earned her a place among its most eloquent raconteurs. 
Leibovitz started out at Rolling Stone magazine in 1970, where she created portraits of a generation that still resonate today. In the ’80s she moved to Vanity Fair, going on to define that decade and the next with her take on everything from the O. J. Simpson murder trial to a portrait of a naked and very pregnant Demi Moore. Most recently, her photographs for Vogue have taken fashion photography from the merely glamorous to the downright operatic. 
“I try to do what’s appropriate,” she says. “The fashion for Vogue I’ve done is a really great outlet for a lot of those more story-like set-ups. With the cover shoots, they are really trying to sell magazines and they want glamour. The portrait has kind of been lost along the way.”
With the change in focus from straight reportage to over-the-top fashion shoots, Leibovitz’s working methods have also changed — but perhaps not all that much. 
“A portrait session is a kind of performance. Even in the most unset-up looking situations, it’s still a set-up.” These days, however, she’s more likely to be found creating elaborate tableaux that require meticulous preparation, a small army of assistants and the latest technology. 
“I only work with digital now. I love it,” she says. “I never was a technical photographer, although I eventually had to learn to get better. I’m more about content. The biggest problem for me right now with digital is that I love what I see on the screen and I can’t get it to translate onto paper. I think in the long run it’s going to end up on the screen. You’re not going to see it on paper.”
One thing that will probably never change is her bravery in facing the world head on, and the need to bear witness — whether at the final moments in power of disgraced U.S. president Richard Nixon, on assignment in Sarajevo, or documenting the final days of her long-term partner Susan Sontag, one of America’s greatest intellectuals. 
“It’s how I started,” says Leibovitz. “And you only have a few places that you can do it. What’s interesting is that, after Susan died, I started to look through some pictures for a memorial book, and I saw all these other pictures and started to dig it all out. And you start to realize that you won’t stop taking pictures.”
The rapport she builds with her subjects is an important aspect of Leibovitz’s practice and often results in pictures that seem to uncover hidden aspects of the sitters. 
“I think it depends a lot on the subject. You know, you leave the door open and sometimes they walk through it.” 
The significance of relationships continues to this day with her photographs — especially those of loved ones and her extended photo essays — being a record of that truth. “If I was forced to pick out a favorite, it would probably be a picture of my mother. And one of the reasons it is so good is that the camera is not there. And all of her complexities come out in that picture. It’s a good picture.” 
Of the multiple pleasures on offer at the exhibition, possibly the most refreshing is the chance to contemplate Leibovitz’s work isolated from the distraction of language. And with the images allowed room to breathe and interact, they take on a life beyond illustration, offering a unique glimpse into this photographer’s life.

“Annie Leibovitz. A Photographer’s Life 1990–2005” is on view through Sept. 21 at the State Hermitage Museum, 34 Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya. Tel: 571 3420. www.hermitagemuseum.org


TITLE: <i>the word’s worth</i> Protecting Medvedev’s Rear
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Òûë: home front, back, support system

One of the guilty pleasures of translating is hooting over fabulous flubs — those dreadful translation gaffes that distort meaning or introduce a double entendre. This is uncharitable, childish and not at all nice, and I’m always deeply ashamed of myself afterward. But man, how can you help laughing over this translated headline: “Long Live Dmitry Medvedev, or the All-Russia People’s Rear”?
Come on, folks, isn’t there an English-language editor in the house?
It was easy to guess what the original Russian had been: Äà çäðàâñòâóåò Äìèòðèé Ìåäâåäåâ, èëè Îáùåðîññèéñêèé íàðîäíûé òûë. The word that defeated the translator was òûë, which, to be fair, is often a hard word to translate.
The basic meaning of òûë is the back of something, which you probably already know from the word çàòûëîê (back of the head). Òûë can be used with ëàäîíü (palm of the hand) to refer to the back of a hand. ßñòðåá âöåïèëñÿ êëþâîì â òûë ëàäîíè ïàðíÿ (The hawk dug his beak into the back of the boy’s hand). Sometimes the adjective òûëüíûé is used: Îí ïîöåëîâàë íå â òûëüíóþ ñòîðîíó ëàäîíè, à â ëàäîíü (He didn’t kiss the back of her hand, but her palm).
Òûë can also be used to describe a location at the back of something. This isn’t very common today, but you still might come across this usage: Ñàðàé íàõîäèòñÿ â òûëó äâîðà (The shed is at the end of the yard). You might also hear someone say he came up to someone ñ òûëà or ñ òûëó (from behind), which has the sense of sneaking up without being seen or heard.
Sometimes this is used figuratively. An article about competition between two companies noted that while one was busy building a factory, the other çàøëà ñ òûëó è êóïèëà ñòàðûé çàâîä (snuck up and bought an old factory).
Probably the most common usage of òûë has to do with wartime. Òûë (sometimes the plural òûëû) is essentially any part of the country or war effort that is not on the front lines. Sometimes it means the troops providing logistics and support for the front: Òûëû îòñòàëè (The logistic support? units fell behind). Sometimes it means the part of the country untouched by fighting: Îíà ñèäèò ñåáå â ãëóáîêîì òûëó è ïîíÿòü íå ìîæåò, ÷òî íà ïåðåäîâîé (She is sitting there, far from the fighting, and has no idea what’s it’s like on the front lines). In other contexts, it can refer to all the production and activities to support the war effort, as in this quote from Stalin: ×òî òàêîå àðìèÿ áåç êðåïêîãî òûëà? Íè÷òî. (What is an army without a strong behind-the-lines support system? Nothing.)
This notion of òûë (or òûëû) as a support system can be used metaphorically to refer to someone’s family and friends. Îíà ñ÷èòàëà, ÷òî ìàìà — ñàìûé íàä¸æíûé òûë (She could count on her mother to hold down the fort).
In the case of the hilarious headline, the author of the Russian original text was playing with two meanings of the word ôðîíò — the front line in a war and a political organization — and contrasting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s newly formed Îáùåðîññèéñêèé íàðîäíûé ôðîíò (All-Russia People’s Front) with Medvedev’s informal òûë.
I think I would have called it Medvedev’s Home Front. It’s not great, but at least it’s not insulting.

Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.

TITLE: War and peace
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A minimalist and deeply philosophical show is perhaps not quite what most people would expect from a production of Verdi’s “Aida” directed by a man who has made an international career producing shows for a circus. Yet this is exactly what Swiss-born director Daniele Finzi Pasca offered audiences at the opera’s premiere at the Mariinsky Theater Concert Hall on June 11 and 14.
Most productions of “Aida,” regardless of where they are staged, thrive on opulence and ethnic chic. The culmination of these aesthetics is usually reached in the famous march scene in Act II, in which the audience is generally offered a visual feast of a seemingly endless procession of richly dressed Egyptian warriors being greeted by figures in equally ornate dress.
There is none of that in the Mariinsky’s new “Aida,” however. As the Mariinsky symphony orchestra indulged in the bravado and pomp of the march, the sole figure moving on stage was an acrobat rolling around inside a large wheel. The opera’s characters, the army included, simply stood and watched.
Furthermore, pacifist-minded Finzi Pasca begins his show by casting sublime ridicule on the idea of war itself. At the opening of “Aida,” the audience sees a stage densely covered by small, flat wooden soldiers. Amneris easily knocks one of them over, causing the entire army to fall to the ground like dominoes. After all the soldiers have collapsed, the cast mounts the stage to pick them up and take them away, clearing the stage for the opera’s action.
The sole acrobat in the march scene can be interpreted as projecting a similar idea to that expressed by Lev Tolstoy in “War and Peace:” That of delegating one warrior from both armies to decide the fate of a war, rather than pitting thousands and thousands of soldiers against each other, in order to save lives.
What links “Aida” with Finzi Pasca’s show “Corteo,” with which Cirque du Soleil toured Russia last year, is a sense of surreal fantasy. In “Corteo,” the audience watches a clown’s dream about his death and funeral that is magically transformed into a carnival. “Aida” is designed in the same ethereal aesthetic. Firstly, the director has cleansed the production of any visual element that would link it to a particular era or ethnicity. The costumes of both the Egyptians and the Nubians border in style somewhere between circus grotesque and futuristic minimalism.
The show’s costume designer seems to have taken a deliberately light-hearted approach — take, for instance, the foil shields and swords of the guards who escort Radames to prison — that works very much to the production’s advantage, serving to contrast with the weight of the philosophical issues explored by the plot.
In terms of spirit, Pasca’s “Aida” is both humane and intimate. The director seemingly chose to make Amneris a central character. Yekaterina Semenchuk’s overwhelming performance of the role only appeared to strengthen Pasca’s ideas. Head and shoulders above the rest of the cast, Semenchuk dazzled as the pharaoh’s daughter, tormented by her jealousy, engrossed by her sorrow, troubled by her tardy remorse and devastated by her sudden loneliness. Her stage partners failed to create as emotionally captivating incarnations of their characters. Yekaterina Shimanovich was technically adroit as Aida, yet she remained unsettlingly estranged from her supposedly beloved Radames (Avgust Amonov). It did not help that Amonov chose to present a somewhat anemic portrayal of his character, as if trying to depict someone who leaves it up to the women around him to decide his fate. Aida’s emotional connection to her father (Edem Umerov) was far more compelling. Umerov created a powerful image of Aida’s father, Amonasro, the King of Nubia, at once noble and passionate.
Ultimately, the latest show to enter the Mariinsky repertoire could just as well be titled “Amneris” as “Aida.”
In an interview before the premiere, Finzi Pasca said that “Aida” was his first melodrama. The result, however, is much closer to a drama, especially the finale, in which the bitterness and self-reproach of Amneris fuse with the tender voices of the two lovers dying in the tomb.
Amneris’s last words, “peace, peace, peace, peace” are the motto of Finzi Pasca’s show, and Semenchuk could not have given them better treatment. The words were brimming with a range of emotions: A desperate plea, a mantra-like attempt at self-consolation, and a call for reconciliation that tragically comes far too late.

“Aida” next plays on July 8, 9 and 29 at the Mariinsky Theater Concert Hall, 37 Ulitsa Dekabristov. Tel: 326 4141. www.mariinsky.ru

TITLE: Litvinova’s Intolerance of Fat People
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, porn actress and former reality show contestant Yelena Berkova was convicted of drug possession in a sad comedown for the voluptuous star who once — almost — ran for mayor of Sochi.
Meanwhile, svelte actress Renata Litvinova, romantically linked to the even more rake-like rock star Zemfira, spoke of her hatred of fat people. And flamboyant television host Andrei Malakhov reportedly had a quiet little wedding at Versailles.
Berkova was given a three-year suspended sentence on Tuesday for buying amphetamines after she was arrested at a nightclub in a Moscow suburb — a concession for helping the investigation, since she could have been jailed, Gazeta.ru reported.
She was photographed outside the court in sunglasses, with unbrushed hair and dressed in dark clothes.
Ukrainian-born Berkova appeared on TNT’s long-running reality show Dom-2 back in 2004, swiftly “building love” with another contestant. But she had to leave in disgrace after two months when her double life as a porn star was exposed.
Not too downhearted, she went on to release a porn film titled “Dom 2 or How to Make Love With Yelena Berkova.”
In 2009, she announced a bid to join the Sochi mayoral race, a colorful affair with budding candidates including ballerina Anastasia Volochkova and billionaire Alexander Lebedev, both later disqualified. Berkova even released a campaign video showing her topless on the beach for a Party of Love, but she sadly pulled out of the running.
Meanwhile, the far classier actress Litvinova, known for her impeccable retro outfits, dropped a revealing line in an interview about hating fat people, posted by Kommersant journalist Natalya Radulova on her popular blog.
Dressed in a fur coat and black dress, her blonde hair crimped, Litvinova’s attention wavers when she spots someone eating. “Why is he eating so much in the morning? What is he eating, I wonder?” she muses over a stern small espresso. “If only you knew how much I hate fat people.”
Litvinova, who is divorced and has a daughter, has been linked to rock star Zemfira, who in recent years has transformed herself from slightly plump to skeletally thin. And the comment points at years of self-denial, Radulova wrote.
Another frequent target of gossip, Malakhov, host of the talk show “Let Them Talk,” wed at Versailles last weekend, Lifenews.ru reported, posting video of the couple walking hand-in-hand and watching spectacular fireworks.
Malakhov, whose love life has been the subject of speculation over the years, has had a series of well-publicized romances with blonde women. But Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that he popped the question to Elle magazine publisher Natalya Shkuleva. Her father owns the publishing house of the magazine that Malakhov, at least nominally, edits, “Star Hit!”
Oddly, the story that the couple was dating only came out when the wedding plans were announced in KP, courtesy of “friends” of the host. The tabloid excitedly calculated that the event could cost $500,000 including the hire of a minor palace at Versailles, but provided no gossipy detail.
Malakhov, who lured Russian spy Anna Chapman for her first television interview, is shown in video shot by Lifenews.ru smiling broadly with a white flower in his buttonhole, holding the hand of the bride, wearing a simple long white dress.
Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote that a Russian photographer crashed the wedding party and snapped the couple with pop star Alsu, but then had her camera confiscated by guards who said they were from the FSB. The photographer was named as Natalya Medvedeva, although I could find no other reference to her.
A few years ago, Malakhov was linked to a much older blonde, and they were regularly photographed together, in what came across as a publicity stunt in a country where bachelors over 35 raise eyebrows.


TITLE: Grape and Grain
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Pan-Asian restaurants are still a rare species in St. Petersburg, although the trend is booming and blooming across the globe. The most popular ethnic cuisine locally has long been Italian — if you discard the myriads of faceless sushi bars where just about everything tastes like paper — and the trend does not look likely to change any time soon. Still, the arrival of Vinograd (Grape) cafe is a sign that the city’s dining scene is keen to pick up on the novelty of Pan-Asian cuisine, with its appealing contrasts between sweet and sour and creamy and spicy. 
Vinograd’s chef blends ingredients from Vietnamese, Thai and Chinese cuisine to create sophisticated exotic fare such as duck breast with raspberry and maracuja (640 rubles, $22.70), black cod with miso and ginger (890 rubles, $31.50) and udon soup with three kinds of pork (240 rubles, $8.50).
The menu is not limited to Pan-Asian fare, however. Vinograd serves up portions of international bestsellers such as Caesar salad with chicken (340 rubles, $12) or salmon (360 rubles, $12.70); salad of fresh vegetables with king prawns, grapefruit and pomelo (360 rubles, $12.70); a range of carpaccios (360 to 450 rubles, or $12.70 to $15.90); Neapolitan-style tomato soup (220 rubles, $7.80); salmon steak (480 rubles, $17) and dorada with spinach (530 rubles, $18.80).
On a Saturday afternoon, the venue was surprisingly almost deserted, with the exception of a handful of couples sharing their meals. The waitress explained that the place typically fills up in the evening, with a major attraction being the cafe’s live music program that features popular local DJs from Wednesdays through Saturdays. 
The restaurant’s seating options differ greatly, from niches designed for only two diners to sleek and stylish rooms in which black and white photography adorns the walls and wrought-iron lamps are decorated with empty wine bottles.  
We chose to start with the udon soup, which turned out to be a meal in itself and would easily feed two diners. The pork came in the form of fried bacon, crispy scratchings and stewed ribs. The dark salty broth had a divine aroma and deserves special praise for lacking both oily patches and a fatty taste.
The duck breast with salad, raspberries and maracuja (520 rubles, $18.50) was warm, thinly sliced and delicately cooked with a tender texture. The zest of fresh fruit provided a pleasant contrast to the salty duck, and the dish would make an excellent choice for a summer lunch or dinner when seeking to avoid heavy and filling dishes.
The tuna steak with truffle sauce (640 rubles, $22.70) left its recipient delighted. The chef was generous with the size of the portion, and the four chunky slices of steak were fresh and lightly cooked, just as requested.
In some restaurants, chefs tend to be somewhat stingy with the truffle sauce, which can at times be almost impossible to detect, or sprinkled so sparsely over the dish that one wonders if the effort was worth the trouble. At Vinograd, the sauce — rich, thick and aromatic — is served separately in a small bowl and in a quantity that was declared “fully satisfying.”
Vinograd’s dessert menu is not to be missed, as it blends classics such as tiramisu (230 rubles, $8) and cheesecake (220 rubles, $7.80) with original dishes. Cold cappuccino (150 rubles, $5.30) was served in a large cup topped with a bottomless layer of coffee mousse and vanilla ice-cream — an unbeatable summer option.
<div class="divider">&nbsp;</div>
<h1>THE GUIDE</h1>
<b>Around Asia</b>
While there are currently few Pan-Asian eateries in the city and even fewer bastions of Thai cuisine, the former at least appear to be gaining popularity.

<b>Chin Chin Cafe</b>
In addition to gastronomic delights such as Cantonese duck, dim sum and wontons, Chin Chin boasts a drop-dead view over the Hermitage and the Neva River as well as an excellent wine list. 
<i>3 Mytninskaya Naberezhnaya. Tel: 232 1042.</i>

<b>King Pong Cafe</b>
The menu at King Pong encompasses Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian and Singapore cuisines, with an emphasis on spring rolls and dim sum. Ping Pong’s chef appears to have a predilection for sweet and sour, which will delight some more than others. 
<i>16 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. Tel: 315 8256</i>

<b>Mops</b>
Mops offers authentic food prepared by native Thai chefs. The service is top-notch and the decor is modern black-and-white. The signature dish here is Bangkok duck. While the spring rolls and curries are recommended, the portions are smaller than they would be in Thailand and the spicy dishes are somewhat milder. 
<i>12 Ulitsa Rubinshteina. Tel: 572 3834.<i>

TITLE: Yelena Bonner, Andrei Sakharov’s Widow, Dead at 88
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BOSTON — Yelena Bonner, a rights activist and widow of Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, has died, her daughter said Sunday. She was 88. 
Bonner died of heart failure Saturday afternoon in Boston, according to her daughter, Tatiana Yankelevich. She had been hospitalized since Feb. 21, Yankelevich said. 
Bonner grew famous through her marriage to Sakharov, the Soviet Union’s leading dissident, but she carved out her own reputation as a tireless human rights campaigner in the face of relentless hostility from Soviet authorities. 
Bonner and Sakharov’s cramped, three-room apartment in Moscow was the unofficial headquarters of the Soviet dissident movement in the 1970s, and again in the late 1980s after they returned from internal exile in the city of Gorky. 
Both suffered constant harassment, and Soviet officialdom regularly made caustic, personal attacks against Bonner, accusing her of being a foreign agent who bullied her husband, the father of the Soviet atomic bomb, into turning against his country. 
But the attacks only seemed to strengthen their resolve, and neither ever stopped calling for greater personal freedom for Soviet citizens despite the huge personal cost. 
“I hope to live out my life until the end worthy of the Russian culture in which I’ve spent my life, of the Jewish and Armenian nationalities, and I am proud that mine has been the difficult lot and happy fate to be the wife and friend of academic Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov,” Bonner wrote in her autobiography. 
After Sakharov died in 1989, and the Soviet Union collapsed two years later, Bonner continued to champion human rights, but was less and less visible, and her health began to deteriorate. She had a long history of heart and eye problems and suffered heart attacks in 1995 and 1996. 
Nonetheless, she edited her husband’s memoirs, which were released in 1997, and still occasionally spoke out against President Boris Yeltsin’s government, denouncing Russia’s bungled war in Chechnya and the shortcomings of the country’s young democracy. 
In recent years, Bonner lent the weight of her voice to those opposing the leadership of Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer who has restored many of the Soviet-era powers of the security services. In March 2010, hers was the first signature on a petition calling for Putin to go. 
In December, she sent a moving speech that was read at an opposition rally in Moscow in which she asks to be considered among those on the square: “Consider that I have come, again to save my homeland, although I cannot walk.” 
The tough-talking Bonner and her shy, physicist-philosopher husband met through their political activities, and were married in 1971, both for the second time. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975, assuring their international standing. 
For nearly two decades they were the first couple of the dissident movement, confronting the Soviet state regardless of the consequences. 
After Sakharov criticized the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was banished in 1980 to Gorky, now known as Nizhny Novgorod. Bonner was found guilty of slander against the state in 1984 and also sentenced to internal exile in Gorky. The couple shared an apartment across the street from the police station, and they were under constant scrutiny. 
She detailed their plight, often with wit and irony, in a 1986 book, “Alone Together.” 
“Whenever the authorities did not like something, it was our car that suffered. Either two tires would be punctured, or a window smashed or smeared with glue. This was how we knew that we had done something bad by their standards.” 
Under Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, the couple was allowed to return to Moscow in 1986, and together they pressed ahead with their campaign until Sakharov’s death. 
Yelena Georgievna Bonner lived a turbulent life from her birth on Feb. 15, 1923, in Merv, Turkmenistan. Her mother fled the hospital with newborn Yelena after being warned of an attack by Muslims hostile to the Communists. 
Political turmoil displaced her again in 1937, when her father, an Armenian and a member of the party elite, was arrested in Moscow. He was shot the following year. 
Her mother, a Jew and a government health worker, was also arrested and spent the next 17 years in labor camps and exile before being released. 
Bonner and her younger brother, Alexei, went to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) to live with her grandmother. 
After high school, Bonner joined the army as a nurse. Though angry over the fate of her parents, she volunteered “as a duty of the heart,” according to an autobiography. At the front in 1941, she suffered head injuries in a shelling attack that left severe, lifelong eye problems. 
After the war, she studied medicine and married a fellow student, Ivan Semyonov. They had two children, Tatiana and Alexei, but grew apart as she became more politically active. They divorced in 1965. 
She became a pediatrician and wrote for magazines, radio and medical journals. Her circle of friends, mainly Moscow intellectuals, steadily expanded. 
When the human rights movement in the Soviet Union gained momentum in the late 1960s, she was part of it, helping produce “The Chronicle of Current Events,” which reported rights violations. 
Bonner’s remains will be cremated and eventually buried in Moscow’s Vostryakovskoye Cemetery alongside her husband, mother and brothers, Yankelevich said.

TITLE: Taibbi: U.S. Finances ‘Similar’ to Russian Politics
AUTHOR: By Ksenia Galouchko
PUBLISHER: For The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Matt Taibbi, contributing editor at Rolling Stone, is known in the United States for his coverage of the financial crisis — he once memorably described Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” — but in Russia, he is remembered for his time as editor of the satirical newspaper The eXile and by some at this paper for his brief period as a journalist at The Moscow Times.
The Moscow Times, sister newspaper to The St. Petersburg Times, sat down with Taibbi in New York recently to chat about Russia’s political future, his coverage of the financial crisis and being a reporter in Russia and the United States.

Do you still follow Russian politics?
Not anymore. A lot of the Russian friends I had either aren’t in journalism anymore or have moved on to other things, so I’m not as in touch with that world anymore. When I was in Russia, I was obsessed with the corruption and scams. I loved that stuff and still followed it for 2-3 years after I left. Part of the reason for that was that I didn’t understand American politics as well. I thought there wasn’t as much to follow here. But in the last 3-4 years I’ve gotten into the finance thing here, that’s the reason I don’t follow Russian politics as much.
When the financial bubble burst here, it became a lot like the Russian story. A very small group of businessmen with financial interests captured the government and used taxpayers and the public as a kind of insurance policy to bail themselves out when they got in trouble. They limit the political influence of ordinary people by manipulating elections. That story was so similar to the Russian story, I had that same feeling that the world is falling apart and you’re searching for that corrupt inner circle, kind of like a mystery story.

What were you doing before you started writing about the financial world?
When I first came back, I tried to start The eXile in Buffalo [New York] but that was only for a year and a half. Then I started working for Rolling Stone, I was following the presidential campaign and after that I did contracting in Iraq and then went back to the election campaign. I hated the election story, I kept telling myself, it can’t be this stupid. A whole bunch of politicians getting up, saying the same stuff over and over again, and they don’t really say anything meaningful. I always thought there was something under the surface, like in Russia, who owns that newspaper, and where is this kompromat [compromise] coming from? We don’t have that here. But the finance thing is that, so until that came along, I was really frustrated.

Who, in your view, was behind the economic collapse?
It was a combination of everything, specifically the mortgage bubble. People invented financial instruments that allowed them to take crappy subprime mortgages, chop them up and sell them as AAA-rated bonds, so it was kind of like Russia with GKO [Russian government bonds issued in the 1990s], where they were worthless and they were selling them as worthwhile stuff. It was a combination of factors, it was people who invented those derivatives, it was the regulators who deregulated. There was no oversight of the derivatives. There was a law passed in 2000 that made them effectively unregulated. The banks were all obviously at fault. They went to the government in 2004, and they lobbied to remove leverage limits. So it was a combination of everybody, regulators not doing their jobs, bankers being greedy, borrowing too much.
Do you think we’ll see a change now that the Barack Obama administration is tightening the oversight of derivative trading?
I don’t think there will be a meaningful change. The basic situation is no different at all. This crash received an enormous amount of public attention, and the government had the opportunity to make changes with the Dodd-Frank bill, but they decided to not do anything. Unless there is another crash, I don’t see anything changing.

Do you see any difference between President Obama’s and President George W. Bush’s financial policies?
I think it’s absolute continuity. In the last years of Bush’s term, [Ben] Bernanke and [Timothy] Geithner were the architects of the bailout. Then Obama gets elected, he retains Geithner and he re-nominates Bernanke, so the bailout policy remains exactly the same.
I think they could’ve not repealed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1998, and then there was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that deregulated derivatives. The big thing is that everyone should’ve seen that they were selling these crazy billion-dollar deals full of subprime mortgages where people had only put 1 percent of their mortgages down, and somehow that was a AAA-rated security. Everyone should have known this stuff was really dangerous. So there was a situation when everyone, even the press, failed their job. There were reporters saying that housing prices will continue to go up forever — it’s irresponsible. Someone should’ve looked at it and said this can’t be real growth.
I think journalists should’ve done more. It’s a bit hypocritical of me to say, because I didn’t do it, I wasn’t a business reporter back then.

What inspired The eXile?
Spy was a prototype for The eXile. We tried to do a Russian Spy magazine. In 1998 Mark [Ames] and I approached Psychology Today, which actually owned Spy back then, we did a mock-up of a Russian version of it. But Spy itself had a pretty limited natural readership, too intellectual, great magazine though. [Spy ceased publication in 1998 after 12 years.]
What did you think about the Vanity Fair piece about The eXile? [In 2010, Vanity Fair published an article about the creation and closure of The eXile. During the interview with the reporter, Taibbi threw coffee at him.]
No comment. That reporter [James Verini] was extremely obnoxious and very intrusive. Never talk to a journalist who is going to do a hit piece on you.

Why did you come to Russia?
My favorite writers were Russian as I was growing up — [Mikhail] Zoshenko, [Nikolai] Gogol, [Sergei] Dovlatov — all the comics. I wanted to read in Russian, that’s why I went to St. Petersburg, Leningrad Technical University to do a private program.

One of the main problems foreign publications face in Russia is that most Russians don’t read English. How did The eXile approach this issue?
I wrote in Russian for the Stringer, for Komsomolskaya Pravda, Trud, but that was just PR to get people to read The eXile. We marketed The eXile toward young, educated Russians, people who went to clubs, and we were a bit successful at doing that. We also tried to do things that would get us in the news in the Russian media, like being involved in a political protest, doing a prank. The idea was to get us on the Russian television, to get other people to cover us — that was a way of drawing Russian readers.

You worked as a freelance journalist in Uzbekistan, in Russia at The Moscow Times and at The eXile. What were the stories you did that you were most proud of, and do you miss anything from being a journalist in the post-Soviet Union.
I think I’m most proud of those long provincial features I did at The eXile, like the thing I did about Vorkuta coal miners, or the bit about cattle thieves in Siberia, or maybe the High School 666 piece, which were all about getting to know people in strange places going through hard-to-imagine problems. Those stories were really fun. My current work is not so much about that kind of reciprocal discovery, i.e. there’s not much of an emotional payoff in getting to know Goldman Sachs (not for me and definitely not for them). I really loved Russia, and I’m sure that came through in those stories — definitely it’s not the same for me now.

In retrospect, do you wish you had covered any topics more extensively?
Looking back, I didn’t understand a lot of the financial stuff that was going on in Russia. I tried, I had some friends who worked as investment bankers over there, and I’m sure there was a lot of corruption that went on that I just didn’t catch, because I didn’t understand it. It’s hard enough to follow Russian politics in a foreign-language newspaper. We did catch a bit of the 1998 default, we actually were the only paper that predicted it, but I didn’t understand it all that well.

Did you realize, when [President Vladimir] Putin came to power, that freedom of the press was going to be curtailed?
Freedom of the press was very negligible under [President Boris] Yeltsin, too. I had friends in the Russian media who were attacked. The problem under Yeltsin wasn’t government repression; the problem was mafia ownership of the newspapers. The issue you had as a journalist back then wasn’t being afraid of the government, it was which gangster am I going to offend by doing this story.
Back then, the Russian press was freer than American journalism. Here it’s very monolithic, a few companies control most of the media. But Yeltsin had many other highly negative qualities, and he ran the state much more like a mafia don. What does a mafia don do? He is not a dictator, but he allows freelance criminals to operate, and then he takes tribute from each one of them, takes taxes. Putin has consolidated power. Under Yeltsin it was criminal federalism, and now it’s a centralized autocracy.

Do you think Russia will ever be truly democratic?
I actually heard this more from Russians than I did from Americans when I was over there: that it’s not in our character, we just have an autocratic society, that’s the way we think. The evidence suggests that it’s always been that way, in one form or another. I’m not terribly hopeful.