SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1665 (27), Wednesday, July 13, 2011
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TITLE: City Denies That UNESCO Criticized It
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: City Hall has dismissed the UNESCO World Heritage Committee’s criticism of the treatment of St. Petersburg’s historic center as having nothing to do with either City Governor Valentina Matviyenko or the city administration, and demanded that two Russian publications run corrections.
In a statement published on its web site Friday, City Hall’s Heritage Protection Committee (KGIOP) criticized the Moscow-based news agency Regnum for stating that the World Heritage Committee is gravely concerned by Matviyenko’s planning policy. It also censured local daily newspaper Sankt-Peterburgskiye Vedomosti’s use of the word “city” [City Hall] when writing about the assessment. 
Dismissing the published information as “false” and “biased,” the KGIOP said there “was not — and could not be — any critical remark” about the St. Petersburg authorities in the committee’s findings, because according to the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, preservation of world heritage sites such as the historic center of St. Petersburg is the responsibility of the state that signed the convention, rather than the city on whose territory the world heritage site is located.
According to KGIOP’s statement, the city of St. Petersburg has no authority regarding the world heritage site known officially as the Historic Center of St. Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments, and acts on the orders of the federal government, Russian’s UNESCO Commission and the Culture Ministry.
In a resolution regarding St. Petersburg adopted by the World Heritage Committee at its 35th session held in Paris between June 19 and 29, the committee said that it “deeply regrets” that the Russian Federation did not submit a state of conservation report or any boundary modification/clarification as requested by the World Heritage Committee, and that it did not address the World Heritage Committee’s request to extend the buffer zone of the heritage site.
Published Friday, the resolution also “expresses its grave concern” that the need to provide an overarching management framework for the site has not been addressed as requested by the World Heritage Committee at its 34th session last year.
The committee also lamented that official confirmation of the revision and change of location of Gazprom’s Okhta Center skyscraper project had not been provided to the committee, and requested that the new project proposal, as well as any new project within the site or any project that would have a potential visual impact on the site, should entail a Heritage Impact Assessment.
According to the resolution, City Hall did not submit a revised draft Statement of Outstanding Universal Value as requested by the World Heritage Committee.
The committee has now requested that the St. Petersburg authorities submit an updated report on the state of conservation of the site by February 1, 2012 for examination by the World Heritage Committee at its 36th session in 2012.
Matviyenko and City Hall have been criticized by preservationists and concerned residents for the continuing demolition of historic buildings in the center of St. Petersburg, and for the original Gazprom skyscraper project, which many feared would ruin the city’s protected skyline. 
According to the Living City preservation group, more than 100 historic buildings have been demolished to make way for business centers, shopping malls and elite residential buildings since Matviyenko took office in 2003.
The 36th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee will be held in St. Petersburg, Russia’s permanent mission to UNESCO reported late last month.
“This important decision is recognition of our achievements in the preservation of historical heritage,” Matviyenko was quoted as saying on City Hall’s web site.


TITLE: Australian Crayfish Used To Monitor City’s Waste Water  
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Six Australian red claw crayfish have been recruited to work at St. Petersburg’s southwest water treatment plants (YuZOS), Interfax reported this week. 
Scientists will assess the quality of cleaned waste water by monitoring the crayfishes’ condition and pulse before the water is discharged into the Neva Bay, said representatives of Vodokanal, the city’s municipal water utility. 
Since 2005 river crayfish have been used to monitor the quality of water from the Neva in all of the places where it flows into other bodies of water in the city. 
Earlier this year, giant African snails joined the ranks of the creatures being used to monitor environmental indicators at Vodokanal. The snails are used to monitor the quality of air at the YuZOS plant, while the Australian crayfish will examine the quality of waste water that has already been cleaned before it flows into the Gulf of Finland, said Vodokanal.
If the quality of the water is poor, the crayfish will detect it right away, and the monitoring technician will both notice a change in the crustacean’s behavior, and also receive a signal from a fiber optic sensor located on its shell monitoring its heart activity, Interfax reported.
If the pulse of all six crayfish doubles at the same time, a warning signal will be activated, and technicians will follow procedures to identify and remove the cause of the incident. 
The river crayfish that have been employed at the water facilities until now occur in water with a temperature of 22 to 23 degrees Celsius. In summer, the water here can reach 26 to 30 degrees, requiring crayfish that can withstand higher temperatures needed, Interfax reported. Australian red claw crayfish can exist in waters with a temperature of up to 36 degrees Celsius. At the end of the summer, the Australian crayfish will finish their shift and their river-inhabiting counterparts will resume their work. 

TITLE: Nocturnal Bike Ride To Focus on Petrograd Side 
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An architecture-themed mass nocturnal bike ride will take place on the Petrograd Side of the city this weekend. 
All cyclists are welcome to take part in the five-hour bike ride, during which participants will learn about the architectural masterpieces and historic monuments of the Petrograd Side and see places connected with Nobel laureates such as Joseph Brodsky, Ivan Pavlov and Pyotr Kapitsa. 
The route of the bike ride was composed by the project’s author, Sergei Nikitin, an art historian at the University of Peoples’ Friendship in Moscow. Speakers along the way will include local history specialists Maria Makogonova and Boris Kirikov.
The ride will start at midnight on Palace Square and end at 5.30 a.m. near Pionerskaya metro station, where a picnic for participants will be organized. 
The International Velonotte project is an annual event that has been held in Moscow since 2007, but this is the first year that it is being held in St. Petersburg. 
The local event, titled “Velonotte Pietrogrado,” is devoted to Mikhail Losinsky, founder of the Russian school of poetic translations and the author of the classic Russian translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. 
2011 has officially been designated the Year of Italy in Russia and vice versa, and the Italian ambassador to Russia, Antonio Zanardi Landi, is due to come to St. Petersburg with his family for the bike ride.

Participation in the bike ride is free. To register and for additional information, see www.velonotte-pietrogrado.blogspot.com.

TITLE: In Defense Of Journalists’ Right to Work
AUTHOR: By Alexander Belenky
TEXT: “The Day of Family, Love and Faithfulness, an official city event, will be celebrated in Tavrichesky Garden with various shows and entertainment,” was how last week’s event was announced in the local media. “The stars of the event will be 30 newly-wed couples and 80 couples who have celebrated their silver, golden and diamond wedding anniversaries.”
But I, despite being a photo correspondent for The St. Petersburg Times and having official accreditation from City Hall (which organized the festivities), was unable to take any photographs. The enclosed area where the ‘veteran’ couples were seated was fiercely guarded. Security demanded a piece of paper from me — some kind of pass for this particular event — and refused to let me through. I showed them all my other documents: My journalist’s ID and official accreditation from City Hall, and asked them to let me into the area where the veterans were seated and from where I could take better photos of them — to no avail. 
When I started taking photographs outside the area, one of the guards seized my camera and lens and tried to twist my arm. I was shocked. It’s a pity that my colleagues weren’t around. 
Lately, it has become harder and harder for the city’s journalists to do their job. For every event — even the most insignificant ones — the organizers demand their own petty “accreditation.” I would understand it if they were events held in tiny closed rooms that can only hold a limited number of people, but really, municipal celebrations in the open air?
What does the law say about prohibiting photography?
The law on mass media gives journalists extended rights compared to regular citizens. Article 47 of the law (paragraph 5, 6.1) allows journalists “to copy documents and also take photographs and video material in the course of their professional obligations, except in cases stipulated by the law.” I do not think that the celebration in Tavrichesky Garden was that kind of exception.
The Administrative Code has this to say about prohibiting photography: the main article that can be applied in such cases is “arbitrariness.” If the arbitrary prevention didn’t cause any significant harm, then it is an administrative violation, responsibility for which is described in article 19.1 of the Code of Administrative Violations. But if significant harm is caused, then the violation becomes a crime (article 330 of the Criminal Code).
If a private guard illegally forbids you to take photos, he can be held criminally responsible according to article 203 of the Criminal Code (“Abuse of authority by a private detective or private security organization worker who is a certified private security officer.”) If a policeman did the same thing, he would be guilty of abuse of power according to article 286 of the Criminal Code. 
Why complicate journalists’ work and conduct additional local accreditation requirements for municipal celebrations? Isn’t one overall accreditation from City Hall’s press service enough? All the more since it bears the nice phrase: “Please render assistance to the bearer of this card in the fulfillment of their professional rights.” 
What, then, should be done to secure the rights of both journalists and of the public they serve? 


TITLE: Greenpeace Says Snow Dump Polluting Gulf
AUTHOR: By Yelena Minenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The company in charge of a dumping ground for snow located near the Gulf of Finland has been fined, but continues to pollute the waters, according to the local branch of Greenpeace. 
The state enterprise Tsentr, which operated the site inside the protected area around the Gulf of Finland, was fined 335,000 rubles ($11,800) in June for violating environmental legislation. But toxic water formed from melted snow continues to run into the gulf, polluting it, environmentalists say. 
Snow from around the city was moved by snow plows and brought to a dumping point located between the Pribaltiiskaya hotel and Shkipersky Canal throughout the winter, according to Greenpeace. Activists from the environmental organization inspected the dump at the beginning of March, and discovered that the snow and ice piled up at the site contained a range of toxic substances resulting from car exhaust fumes, rubber tires, gasoline and oil, as well as salt.
Greenpeace says it appealed to the prosecutor’s office responsible for natural resources in St. Petersburg and to the state environmental watchdog, Rosprirodnadzor, at the beginning of March. Two months later, the local branch of Rosprirodnadzor and the natural resources department prosecutor carried out an inspection of the dumping site.  
Despite the fine paid by Tsentr after the state inspection, the dump remains harmful to the environment and public health, Greenpeace claims. At the beginning of July, members of the organization discovered piles of construction rubble and domestic waste left behind after the snow melted. Streams from the dump ran right into the gulf where people were swimming, according to Greenpeace. 
“If officials had acted on our statements in March and made the dump’s owners take preventive measures, the harm caused to the Gulf of Finland could have been significantly reduced,” said Dmitry Artamonov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of Greenpeace. 
Toxic substances that have already flowed into the water will continue to pollute the gulf for many years after that, environmentalists say. 
“Right now the waste needs to be removed and vegetation should be planted on the site,” said Artamonov.
“Of course we won’t do it ourselves — we don’t have any authority or money to do the work of the state administration,” said Maria Musatova, press secretary of the local Greenpeace organization. “Nor do we have any information or response from officials indicating that they plan to clean up the dump or replant it.”
The local branch of Rosprirodnadzor sounded surprised when asked by telephone Tuesday about the waste left on the site. The watchdog promised to investigate Greenpeace’s claims, but did not comment on how harmful the situation might be. 
“The decision on where to locate dumping points for snow is made by the St. Petersburg administration,” said Valentina Ivkina, press secretary of the local branch of Rosprirodnadzor. “We did point out the lack of technical equipment at dumping places to the administration. In our opinion, the best way for the city to solve this problem would be to purchase special snow-melting chambers,” she added.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Killed by Lightning</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Two people were killed when they were struck by lightning during a thunderstorm in the city center on Friday evening. 
The tragedy occurred in a courtyard at 8 Ulitsa Vosstaniya, where a man and woman were sheltering from the heavy rain under a 30-meter poplar tree that was struck by lightning, Fontanka reported. Both were killed instantly. 
An investigation into the tragedy identified the man as a 41-year-old originally from the Chechen–Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and his companion as a 31-year-old woman. 

<b>Pensioner Robbed</b> 
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A female pensioner was robbed of her money, passport and pension book by an unidentified man in the Vyborgsky district of the city on Monday. 
The criminal robbed the 65-year-old woman at about 1 p.m. in Post Office No. 295 located at 24 Prospekt Khudozhnikov, Fontanka reported. The thief took 10,500 rubles ($370) and the pensioner’s documents and fled the scene of the crime. A criminal case has been opened into the incident.  

<b>Scooter Driver Killed</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT)—A scooter driver was killed Sunday after his vehicle collided with a jeep on Bolshoi Prospekt of Vasilyevsky Island, Fontanka reported. 
The accident occurred at about 8 p.m. at the junction of Bolshoi Prospekt and the 22nd Liniya. The scooter driver was riding along Bolshoi Prospekt toward the harbor when the jeep crossed the road, Fontanka reported.
According to preliminary data, the scooter driver was thrown from his vehicle and died of severe head injuries before an ambulance arrived at the scene. 
Road traffic inspectors are investigating the fatal accident.

<b>Church Restored</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The church in the palace at Peterhof estate was opened to the public after lengthy restoration Tuesday. 
Work was completed in time to coincide with the feast day of the apostles Peter and Paul, in whose name the church was sanctified in the 18th century.
Restoration work on the church building began in 2001. During the work, the interior decoration of the church was completely reconstructed, including its carved-wood gilded iconostasis, moldings and oil paintings, Interfax reported.
Icons dating from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, baptismal equipment, priests’ vestments and other church items can be seen as part of an exposition prepared by museum staff. 
The church of the apostles Peter and Paul was sanctified in the presence of Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great. Services were held in the church on the occasion of major military victories, and the last heir to the Russian throne, the tsarevich Alexei, was baptized there.
Peterhof’s palace and its church were badly damaged during World War II, along with its park and fountains. During a fire in 1941, the gilded wooden iconostasis and all of the church’s interior were destroyed. 

<b>Lakhta Deadline</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Gazprom Neft’s Lakhta Center complex will be completed by the spring of 2018, according to Alexander Bobkov, CEO of Okhta Public and Business Center, a subsidiary of Gazprom created to deal with the design and construction of the business center. Construction work on the skyscraper is due to begin at the end of next year, Bobkov was cited by Interfax as saying. 
The investor plans on obtaining all the necessary permits to start construction work by September 2012, Bobkov said in an interview with Gazeta.ru.
The complex in the Lakhta district on the outskirts of the city will mainly house the offices of Gazprom enterprises that have been relocated from Moscow to St. Petersburg, Interfax reported. The first tenant will be Gazprom Neft, which has been registered in St. Petersburg since 2006. Recently, the relocation of Gazprom Export was also announced.
The business center project was originally planned to be built in the Okhta district close to the center of St. Petersburg and was canceled at the end of last year after years of controversy over the planned skyscraper.

TITLE: One Held Over Boat Tragedy
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Police on Tuesday detained the head of the company that leased the Bulgaria riverboat for a weekend cruise on the Volga River, where more than 120 people drowned when it sank.
But the ship’s Canadian-based owner said it could only assume “moral responsibility” for the worst disaster in Russian waters in post-Soviet history.
Officials avoided commenting on persistent reports that the 55-year-old ship was literally falling apart.
Meanwhile, divers worked at the riverbed where the Bulgaria is resting, bringing bodies to the surface. Among them was the captain, Alexander Ostrovsky, who refused to leave the ship and worked until the last minute to save passengers, Itar-Tass reported.
Sixty-six bodies had been retrieved by late Tuesday, the Emergency Situations Ministry said. Forty-four of them had been identified.
Estimates of how many people were on board varied from 205 to 209 on Tuesday. Seventy-nine of them survived the disaster, which saw the ship flooded by waves and sink in just three minutes during a storm Sunday.
The ship sunk at lunchtime, and most of the dead were trapped in its restaurant. Thirty to 50 children crowded into the playroom, also inside the ship, shortly before the disaster, and died as well.
Two cranes will lift the Bulgaria to the surface by the end of the week, Alexander Davydenko, head of the Federal Sea and River Transportation Agency, told reporters. Emergency officials said earlier that some bodies could only be recovered by raising the ship.
The federal government will pay 1 million rubles ($35,000) in compensation to families of those who died on the Bulgaria, and 200,000 to 400,000 rubles to those injured in the accident, depending on the gravity of their injuries, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday. The administration of Tatarstan, where the accident took place, will add another 300,000 rubles to the families of the dead and up to 100,000 rubles to the injured, Interfax said.
The Investigative Committee said in a statement that it has opened a case into the ship’s operator, Argorechtur, which it said has no license to transport passengers. The company’s head, Svetlana Inyakina, was arrested and may face charges of providing unsafe services that resulted in deaths. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison.
Also detained was Yakov Ivashov, a senior inspector with the Kama branch of the Russian River Register, a federal agency that handles the licensing of riverboats. Ivashov faces the same charges as Inyakina for authorizing the Bulgaria’s operations a mere three weeks before the tragedy, Rossia One television said.
The Bulgaria appears to have been flooded through open portholes by an incoming wave, but analysts and bloggers suggested that poor maintenance also contributed to its sinking.
River ships undergo checks before each voyage, as well as thorough inspections by the Russian River Register every two years. But inspection rules explicitly allow inspectors to authorize the operation of ships that do not fit formal safety guidelines if shipowners can provide data proving the vessel is nevertheless safe.
Moreover, a thriving institution of middlemen offer to handle the checks on behalf of the shipowners every two years — a corruption-prone practice that has analogies in other Russian industries, including construction.
Officials with the Russian River Register were unavailable for comment Tuesday, as were those at its supervising agency, the Transportation Ministry.
Reports about the Bulgaria’s dismal state were confirmed by Roman Kalmykov, head of the Tatarstan-based ship company Farvater. He told Komsomolskaya Pravda in an interview published Tuesday that his company considered leasing the ship but ultimately backed away after realizing that it would cost 7 million rubles ($247,000) to repair it.
Investigators on Tuesday searched the office of Bulgaria’s owner, Kamskoye Rechnoye Parokhodstvo, but did not detain or charge anyone, news reports said. The majority stake in Kamskoye Rechnoye Parokhodstvo belongs to Canadian-based Antonov Canada Corp., controlled by Perm businessman Mikhail Antonov.
Antonov, 46, a card-carrying member of United Russia, was unavailable for comment, but Kamskoye Rechnoye Parokhodstvo general director Valery Kirchanov denied blog reports that his boss had fled abroad.
“It’s a lie. He never was there, and he’s not there now,” Kirchanov said, according to Interfax. He did not specify where Antonov was but said there was no need for him to flee because the company had simply leased out the Bulgaria without a crew, which he said cleared Kamskoye Rechnoye Parokhodstvo of responsibility.
“We are only morally, not legally, responsible for the deaths of the passengers,” Kirchanov said.
Another investigation was opened into the captains of two barges that were reported to have passed by the Bulgaria’s survivors without rescuing them, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said.
But the cases may prove unfounded because the captain of a ship that did stop to pick up the survivors said he had asked a barge not to intervene.
“I understood that my ship would do it faster than the barge,” captain Roman Lizalin told Rossia-24 television. His cruise ship, the Arabella, picked up 77 survivors. The remaining two survivors apparently swam to shore.
Lizalin, 30, told Channel One television that his men had struggled to tell people from the debris floating on the stormy water but added that “his crew acted as one team.”
President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered sweeping checks into passenger transportation nationwide following the tragedy. But it remained unclear whether the checks would benefit the ship industry, which one expert said has been in “complete chaos” since the Soviet collapse.
“Ports are in one set of hands, ships in another, and the prices for boat trips are skyrocketing,” said Mikhail Kobranov, editor of the Rechnoi Transport (River Transport) industry magazine.
Most Russian river ships are operating past their expected life spans and “ought to have been scrapped long ago,” he said by telephone.
The checks will likely result in bans on old ships, not a broad reform that would revamp the industry, said Andrei Novgorodsky, head of the National Shipowners Association.
“It is easier for bureaucrats on the ground to take prohibitive measures than to set transparent rules of the game,” Novgorodsky said by telephone.

TITLE: 7 Killed After Airplane Crash-Lands on River
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A twin turboprop passenger plane carrying 37 people made a crash-landing on the Ob River on Monday after one of its engines caught fire, killing seven.
The An-24 plane operated by Angara Airlines was cruising at an altitude of 6,000 meters when the fire engulfed the left engine about 30 minutes into a flight from Tomsk to Surgut, Interfax reported.
Pictures from the crash scene indicate that the plane came down hard, with the tail and back part of the fuselage ripping off.
“The plane glided smoothly right over our boat and toward the shore,” said a crew member of the TNG-208 ferry who witnessed the landing, Interfax reported. “Its left engine was on fire. When it hit the water, its tail tore off the fuselage.”
The plane came down at 11:50 a.m. about one kilometer from the village of Medvedevo in the Tomsk region and 65 kilometers from the nearest airport in Nizhnevartovsk, a city in the Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous district, news reports said.
Vesti television said seven passengers were killed, two were missing and the other 24 were hospitalized, including an infant girl and her mother and a 13-year-old boy.
Vesti said the four crew members survived the crash and were hospitalized.
The cause of the fire also remained unclear.
The crash is the second involving an aging Soviet-build passenger plane in less than a month. A Tu-134 jet operated by another small airline, RusAir, crashed short of the runway while trying to land in poor weather in Petrozavodsk on June 20, killing 47 of the 52 people on board.
After that crash, President Dmitry Medvedev said airlines should start phasing out Tu-134s from their fleets. On Monday, Medvedev said An-24s also should be grounded. “Everything I said about Tu-134 planes must be applied equally to An-24s,” he said during a meeting with government ministers.

TITLE: Officials Say Mass Brawl Was Not Ethnic Violence 
AUTHOR: By Alexey Eremenko

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Investigators denied on Saturday that ethnic tensions were behind a mass brawl in a Sverdlovsk region village where locals fended off an attack by visitors from Yekaterinburg, most of them purportedly Caucasus natives.
Residents of the Sagra village said they had to fight thugs, who arrived July 1 in a column of 10 to 15 cars, armed with knives, chains and guns, to punish them for forcing a Gypsy drug dealer to move to the village outskirts, RIA-Novosti reported.
Local prosecutors said about 30 people participated in a brawl, in which one attacker, identified by news reports as Faig Musayev, a Yekaterinburg-based ethnic Azeri, was shot dead. The nongovernmental anti-drug group City Without Drugs, whose help was sought by the locals, said there were at least 60 participants, Interfax said.
Local residents told RIA-Novosti that nine of their own managed to scare away the attackers, who did not expect resistance.
A senior official with the Sverdlovsk branch of the Investigative Committee, Valery Zadorin, said the clash was not an ethnic conflict because the attackers were “a ragtag bunch of both Caucasus natives and our Slavic people.”
The regional branch of the Federal Drug Control Agency denied reports about a drug dealer in the village.
Three locals, including the suspect in Musayev’s shooting, have been detained, but Zadorin said no arrests have been made among the attackers because “none are trying to hide.”
The Sagra incident caused much discussion across the country’s blogs and media, drawing comparisons to a 2010 incident in the Krasnodar region’s Kushchyovskaya village where the brutal murder of 12 exposed a gang that had terrorized locals for years, and ethnic violence in Karelia’s town of Kondopoga in 2006.


TITLE: Russian Cyclist Fails Drugs Test  
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: AURILLAC, France — A French official said police didn’t find doping evidence in a search of Russian rider Alexandr Kolobnev’s hotel room.
Jean-Pascal Violet, the public prosecutor for the town of Aurillac, told The Associated Press that he has opened an investigation in connection with Kolobnev’s failed Tour de France doping test.
The rider dropped out of the Tour on Monday after the International Cycling Union said a urine sample collected from Kolobnev last Wednesday tested positive for Hydrochlorothiazide, a diuretic that can also be used as a masking agent.
Kolobnev was in 69th place heading into Tuesday’s 10th stage, but his Katusha team issued a statement late Monday saying he is out of the Tour after deciding to “suspend himself according to UCI rules.”
The Russian issued his own statement Tuesday in which he said he wouldn’t comment on the situation “for respect to the race organizers and cycling in general.”
Kolobnev said he doesn’t know how the banned diuretic got into his urine sample. He said he was waiting for the results of a test of his `B’ sample.
Katusha manager Andrei Tchmil said Kolobnev has been temporarily suspended until the team receives the results of his “B” sample analysis.
“We need to take into account a lot of things, then we’ll look at the rules,” Tchmil said Tuesday. “He is claiming his innocence and says he can’t give any explanation for his positive test. Of course we were surprised.”
Monday evening Katusha sports director Bart Leysen said Kolobnev met team management then left the team hotel with police officers to be questioned at the police station, adding that they “just want to check some things with him, papers, and normally they will bring him back later.” Kolobnev returned late in the evening and spent the night in the team hotel.


TITLE: Georgian Photographer Confesses to Being a Spy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — The personal photographer to the Georgian president was shown on television Saturday confessing to supplying a colleague with secret information that was then sent to Russian military intelligence.
Irakli Gedenidze confessed to giving another photographer, Zurab Kurtsikidze of the European Pressphoto Agency, details of the president’s itinerary, motorcade route and offices for unspecified remuneration. His wife, Natia, said she knew her husband was friends with Kurtsikidze and sent him the details of his bank account, but she did not confess to taking part in their dealings.
Irakli Gedenidze, Kurtsikidze and photographer Georgy Abdaladze were charged with espionage early Saturday. Natia Gedenidze was accused of abetting espionage and was released on bail, according to a statement from the Georgian government late Saturday.
Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Georgy Bukhrashvili told reporters Saturday that investigators believe Kurtsikidze had “connections” with Russia’s military intelligence unit, GRU, and hired the other two photographers to provide the secret information.
Bukhrashvili said the two men had taken pictures of the secret documents and then sent them to Kurtsikidze to dispatch to Moscow. The photographs were found in the two men’s apartments, he said. The Georgian government said Kurtsikidze had contacts with two Russians, Anatoly Sinitsin and Sergei Okrokov, who are wanted for espionage.
The government said investigators found classified images on the computers of Kurtsikidze, Gedenidze and Abdaladze including floor plans of the Presidential Palace and information about the president’s itinerary, visits and meetings.
The Interior Ministry said Kurtsikidze asked his colleagues for their banking details to wire fees for providing sensitive information.
European Pressphoto Agency vehemently denied the accusations. EPA editor-in-chief Cengiz Seren said that as part of his work Kurtsikidze “would have had programs of the president’s visit and things like that.”
Seren that Kurtsikidze was asking his fellow photographers for their banking details so that the agency could wire them money for the photos they took for EPA.
Some photographers in Georgia have worked out a pool system where they can pay a colleague for permission to use a photo taken at an event they were not able to attend. They routinely exchange banking details.
Seren said EPA’s accountants are going to find all the documents related to any money that was transferred to Kurtsikidze and to other photographers through him. EPA is going to submit them to the appropriate authority, Seren said in a phone interview from Frankfurt.
The presidential photographer said he had to agree to Kurtsikidze’s final request to find information on Georgian secret services after the EPA photographer had started blackmailing him, threatening to make public their earlier dealings.
“I got scared and kept on working with him,” he said.
Neither Irakli Gedenidze nor his wife mentioned Abdaladze in their testimony. Abdaladze, who works with the Georgian Foreign Ministry and has freelanced for The Associated Press, denies the espionage charge. The Georgian Interior Ministry, however, played a recording of what they say is a phone conversation between Abdaladze and the EPA photographer, where Kurtsikidze asks him to provide the details of his bank account.
Seren said the agency owed Abdaladze money and wanted to pay him for the pictures he had taken for them.
“Can you imagine a spy network working like this?” he said.
President Mikheil Saakashvili said in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio on Friday that he learned about the spy ring half an hour before the arrests.
“This is not paranoia but it’s about the rule of law and equality of everyone,” he said of the operation to arrest the journalists. “As for the personal photographer, I got very upset about it and I am still.”
Seren said EPA would ask its shareholders, major European news agencies, as well as European institutions to help prove the photographer’s innocence.
Neither the Russian Defense Ministry, nor its intelligence unit was available for comment on Saturday.
Several people have been convicted recently by Georgian courts on charges of spying for Russia. In the most recent such ruling on Wednesday, a court in the Black Sea port of Batumi convicted a Russian citizen and eight Georgians of espionage and gave them prison sentences ranging from 11 to 14 years.
The spy flaps have aggravated already tense relations between the two former Soviet republics. Russia has dismissed the spy arrests in Georgia as a fabrication.
The three Georgian photographers are expected to face trial on Sept. 1.

TITLE: Moscow May Double in Size  
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday reviewed a plan that would more than double the size of the capital and establish an international financial district west of the current city limits.
Medvedev ordered Moscow’s mayor and the governor of the Moscow region to draft the plan aimed at reducing traffic jams and turning the city into an international financial center at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum last month.
Medvedev, who also wants to move federal government agencies out of the city center, gave the two officials until July 10 to deliver a proposal.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin told reporters Monday that their proposal would see Moscow grow to cover 251,000 hectares, up 2.4 times from its current 107,000 hectares.
The expansion would scoop up large swathes of the Moscow region, mainly in areas to the west, southwest and south of the city.
“The place in question is a large strip of land from Varshavskoye Shosse to Kievskoye Shosse and to the railway ring line in the southwest,” Sobyanin said after meeting with Medvedev and Moscow region Governor Boris Gromov, Interfax reported.
Gromov said an international financial center might be set up in the Rublyovo-Arkhangelskoye district west of Moscow. “An initial proposal was made to move in that direction,” he told reporters.
Sobyanin stressed that the plans were preliminary and no financial figures were available. He also said it remained unclear where government agencies might be relocated to.
The proposal also envisages a metro station being opened at the Skolkovo innovation center.


TITLE: Nationalists Given Sentences
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Russian court on Monday handed down sentences ranging from 10 years to life in prison to 12 members of the country’s most vicious neo-Nazi gang convicted of 27 hate killings, which included a videotaped decapitation of one of their own gang members and other crimes.
The Moscow City Court sentenced five members of the group, the National Socialist Society North, to life, giving another seven members between 10 and 23 years. One was handed an eight-year suspended sentence.
The defendants were mostly men in their 20s and one woman. Most of the gang members had pleaded partial guilt but requested leniency after their lawyers say they were coerced into committing the crimes.
“Irrespective of whether they were fooled or mentally lost, they are evil killers who will never get back to a normal life,” said Alexander Kolodkin, an ethnic Russian whose son, also named Alexander, was stabbed to death in February 2008. “They should be isolated.”
Sergei Stashevsky, a lawyer for Vasilisa Kovolyova, who was sentenced to 19 years, claimed that his client’s confession was “beaten out” of her “through torture.”
“The trial is definitely political,” he said.
Maria Malakhovskaya, lawyer for Konstantin Nikiforenko, who received a 20-year sentence, blamed the websites of neo-Nazis and Russian supremacists for brainwashing the defendants with far-right ideology.
During the 18-month trial, the court heard that the gang hunted mostly darker-skinned labor migrants from Russia’s Caucasus region, ex-Soviet Central Asia, as well as Africans and South East Asians in a chilling series of rampages that climaxed in February and March of 2008.
The youths ganged up on apparent foreigners and stabbed them with knives, metal rods and sharpened screwdrivers, the court heard, in brutal attacks coordinated by the gang’s scrawny leader, Lev Molotkov. He gave fellow assailants a few rubles for the train and cigarettes. According to court papers, Molotkov, who’s in his mid-twenties, testified that that during a New Year’s toast on Dec. 31, 2007, he proclaimed 2008 to be “the year of white terror” in Russia.
Molotkov’s gang is estimated to have hundreds of supporters nationwide.
They were also convicted of strangling and decapitating one of their comrades whom they suspected of being a police informant and stealing $112,000 from the gang’s funds. The decapitation, during which they donned clown masks and sang a patriotic song, was videotaped and posted online.
During the trial, the defendants mocked the judge, shouting curse words and performing the Nazi salute. They cracked jokes and demonstratively ignored the judge when he spoke to them. Some wore white masks. After the sentences were handed down, one could be heard to yell “our conscience is higher than your laws.”
The group’s leader and ideologue Maxim Bazylyev, nicknamed Adolf, committed suicide by slitting his wrists and neck in April 2009. Shortly after his suicide another of the group’s activist shot himself.
Their friends and supporters claimed both were killed by police.
The sentencing came as a loose group of nationalists announced a coalition with the country’s third-largest political party, potentially giving a growing nationalists movement a louder voice in the country’s parliament.
The LDPR party and a group of nationalist politicians and activists said their union would “protect the Russian people and (Russia’s) interests.”
LDPR stands for the Liberal Democrat Party, but the party has a strong nationalist manifesto and rejects liberal policy. The coalition gives the party access to more a hardline nationalist electorate, which is growing as Russia grapples with heightened tensions among ethnic communities. Parliamentary elections are set for December. The LDPR is represented in the parliament that is dominated by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. Critics say all four parliamentary parties tow the official line, though to varying degrees.
Since its inception in 2004, the National Socialist Society was part of a broader network of neo-Nazi organizations that advocated for an ultranationalist government that would grant exclusive rights to ethnic Russians. In 2007 the group split in two, and the extremist North faction appeared.
Ethnic Russians comprise two thirds of the country’s population of 142 million, while more than 100 ethnicities account for the remaining third.
The group recruited new members online and through a network of sports clubs that were labeled centers of patriotic education.
During the trial, one of the defendants said he killed three people in 24 hours, according to court papers.
In recent years, dozens of mostly underage neo-Nazis have been convicted across Russia.
Plummeting birth rates among ethnic Russians, economic woes and an unprecedented influx of labor migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia triggered widespread xenophobia and a spike in hate crimes. Some Russians and nationalist politicians accuse the migrants of stealing jobs and forming ethnic gangs.
Racially motivated attacks peaked in 2008, when 110 people were killed and 487 wounded, independent human rights watchdog Sova said.
Since then, the number of hate crimes have gone down, but human rights groups say neo-Nazis are increasingly resorting to bombings and arson against police and government officials, whom they accuse of condoning the influx of illegal migrants. Ultranationalist groups have also stepped up attacks on human rights activists and anti-racist youth groups.
In early May, a member of an ultranationalist group got a life sentence for the Jan. 2009 killing of a human rights advocate and a journalist, his girlfriend and accomplice was sentenced to 18 years in jail.
In April 2010, a federal judge who presided over trials of White Wolves, a mostly teenage group of skinheads convicted of killing and assaulting non-Slavs, was gunned down contract-style outside his Moscow apartment.


TITLE: No Beer to Be Sold After 11 
AUTHOR: By Lena Smirnova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma approved additional restrictions on alcohol sales in the country Thursday that will end sales of beer at night and from kiosks.
The law is expected to fully enter into force by January 2013, but it is already causing shock waves in the industry. Danish brewer Carlsberg, which owns local market leader Baltika, saw its stock fall to a near four-month low on Wednesday.
Under the proposed law, stores will be banned from selling drinks that contain more than 0.5 percent alcohol between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m. Currently, the threshold is beverages containing 15 percent alcohol or more.
Experts said it is unlikely that the restrictions will have an impact on alcohol consumption because people will simply buy the products earlier or illegally.
“This bill won’t reduce alcoholism in the average citizen, but it won’t harm the consumer and the producer either,” said Vadim Drobiz, director of the Research Center for Federal and Regional Alcohol Markets. “Nighttime crime will be reduced as well as nighttime hooliganism.”
The bill also expands the number of places where alcohol consumption is prohibited. These places will now include courtyards, elevators, building entryways, playgrounds, forests, parks and beaches.
Current laws punish drinking in restricted areas with a fine of 100 to 700 rubles ($3.57 to $28), while being drunk in these areas can lead to a prison stay of up to 15 days, Vedomosti reported.
Train stations and kiosks will be banned from selling any alcohol under the new bill. These semi-permanent outlets now account for one-third of Russia’s beer sales — or about $6 billion, Reuters reported.
Some industry representatives welcomed the restrictions.
“Kiosks are a humiliating presence for a large city such as Moscow,” said Alexander Romanov, general director of the Alcohol Manufacturers Committee. “Kiosks that sell alcohol should not exist.”
“None of these kiosks have up-to-date permits for making sales if they ever had them,” he said.
But other industry representatives fear that the ban on alcohol sales will make kiosks unprofitable and will force them to close. Alcohol sales account for almost half of the profits for kiosks, SABMiller’s Kirill Bolmatov told Vedomosti.
Vyacheslav Kuzmin from the Union of Russian Brewers warned about the disappearance of kiosks from rural areas.
“They are often the only source where people can buy food products,” Kuzmin said. “It will hit people hard.”
Earlier reports indicating that kvas, which typically contains 1.2 percent alcohol, could be classified as alcoholic and also banned, sparked fears among consumers and producers. The Federal Alcohol Market Regulatory Service quickly reassured that the traditional fermented-bread drink — as well as kefir — is not covered by the new bill.
“Nobody is going to label kvas or kefir as alcoholic products,” the service’s press office said.
Kvas has seen a spike in demand in recent years with sales of the drink rising seven to eight times since 2005, according to an estimate by beverage company Deka.


TITLE: Taxes Being Cut, But Not Medical Funding
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government will not abandon or trim down its $16.5 billion plan to buy medical equipment and raise doctors’ salaries, even as it reduces the tax that was intended to fund the move, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
“We are not renouncing the commitments we made to modernize health care,” he said at the Cabinet session that approved the key parameters of next year’s federal budget.
The decision will likely cheer up producers of such equipment, who are predominantly foreign.
The payroll tax collected by the Federal Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund and the regional Territorial Compulsory Medical Insurance Funds went up a total of 2 percent this year. Putin has said the additional revenues will flow into a specially created fund to accelerate the health care upgrade.
But the recent decision to roll back social taxes, which include the medical insurance tax, from a total of 34 percent to 30 percent put the plan in limbo. It’s not yet clear, however, if the reduction will affect the medical tax at all.
Putin’s remark at least assured the sector and its potential contractors that the spending, which has yet to start, remained on track.
Putin dubbed the budget, which stipulates a 10.5 percent increase in spending to 12.2 trillion rubles ($435 billion), a tool for developing the economy, rather than a set of measures to combat an economic slump.
“This is the first really post-crisis Russian budget,” he said. “It’s a development budget designed to stimulate qualitative growth and modernize the economy.”
The anticipated deficit of 2.7 percent of gross domestic product next year will hopefully not reach that level, Putin said.
“We are counting on the deficit again in fact being lower next year than what we plan,” he said.
This year’s deficit is expected to slide down to 1 percent of GDP, whereas initially it was projected to amount to 3.6 percent. Higher than expected oil prices helped bring the figure down.
The government is still aiming for a zero deficit, Putin said. This time, he didn’t state the usual deadline of 2015, and named no date at all.
“The policy line toward a deficit-free budget must continue,” he said.
<hr>
CHANGES
- Social tax, charged on employers’ payroll funds, will drop from 34 percent of payroll to 20 percent for small businesses and 30 percent for all others, making a 460 billion ruble ($16.5 billion) dent in federal revenues, Putin reiterated Thursday.
- There’s a plan to charge employers a social tax on salaries higher than 512,000 rubles a year, which are now exempt. The rate is to be determined but will not go over 10 percent, Putin said.
- Gazprom will generate an additional 150 billion rubles in taxes, the government plans. Most — or all — of the money will come from an increase in the gas extraction tax, while some of it could come from applying an export tax on supplies to Turkey, which have been exempt since 2003 under an agreement between the governments. There haven’t been any news reports about any negotiations between Moscow and Ankara on the subject yet.
- Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Thursday that the government had until September to conclude talks with Turkey.
- Higher excise duties on alcohol and tobacco will come into force.

TITLE: Meat Importer to Build Hothouses in Pikalyovo 
AUTHOR: By Maria Buravtseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Meat importer Agro-Line will invest 1.7 billion rubles ($60 million) in a hothouse complex in the Leningrad Oblast town of Pikalyovo. 
In fall 2012, a 12-hectare hothouse complex for growing vegetables will be launched in Pikalyovo, said Konstantin Grankin, the project’s manager. We plan on producing 10,000 tons of vegetables per year, he said. For this project, Agro-Line will register a daughter company, Krugly God, employing 200 members of staff. The priority markets are St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, and Agro-line plans to work directly with chains and large-scale wholesalers. 
Seventy-five percent of the 1.7 billion-ruble investment is comprised of loans under federal and regional programs to support agricultural enterprises, said Grankin. The subsidies granted start at two thirds of the Central Bank’s refinancing rate. The company expects the payback period to be five years, he said. 
According to Grankin, Agro-Line decided to launch a new area of business with the aim of diversifying the company, because importing meat is subject to the market’s prohibitions and fluctuations. The company is also considering opening its own pig and cattle-breeding center, he said. 
Building the hothouse complex in Pikalyovo has become possible due to a program aimed at supporting single-industry towns that depend largely on one plant or industry. The district authorities will provide infrastructure for the complex at their own expense, said Grankin. 
Pikalyovo attracted nationwide attention two years ago when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin publicly scolded Oleg Deripaska, owner and chief executive of Basic Element, for poor business practices at his Pikalyovo-based cement company, which resulted in unemployment and protests.
Setting up electricity and other utilities costs up to 211 million rubles, according to a web site devoted to state commissions. A tender for the construction of infrastructure will soon be announced, said Sergei Veber, head of the Pikalyovo administration. 
Hothouses for cucumbers and tomatoes are already being constructed at a cost of 5 billion rubles ($176,000) in the Utkina Zavod part of the city by the Severniye Tsvety corporation, which owns a floristry enterprise in the Vyborgsky district. 
Since the ban on importing EU vegetables in the wake of a health scare in Europe, demand for domestic vegetables has increased, said Vladimir Volkov, CEO of Severniye Tsvety. 
Vyborzhets, one of the biggest vegetable-growing complexes in the Leningrad Oblast, also has plans to expand, and plans to build a warehouse complex and hothouses on a territory covering 10 hectares that will produce 11,000 tons of vegetables (mainly cucumbers) per year, according to the regional administration’s press service. Vyborzhets representatives declined to comment. 
During the last four years, importers have invested about $3 billion in the development of livestock husbandry and meat-processing enterprises, said Sergei Yushin, head of the executive committee of the National Meat Association.

TITLE: Russia’s Rich Keep Home Life Separate From Work  
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia’s richest are more focused on the opportunities generated by the financial crisis than its downside. They look to separate their personal wealth from their business interests and are largely opposed to involving their families in their business activities.
Nineteen businessmen domiciled in Russia, each with more than $50 million in personal assets and businesses with annual turnovers above $50 million, were surveyed for a new report that confirmed Russia remains broadly in line with many of the wealth-holding trends in emerging markets.
The survey pointed to a focus on wealth creation rather than preservation and internal cash flows as the primary drivers of business. Ninety percent of respondents said they did not have a succession plan for their business, and 74 percent said they would not want to involve an immediate family member.
Dominic Sanderson, a managing director at Campden Research, which conducted the survey in collaboration with UBS, said this differed sharply from mature capital markets in the United States and Europe where a majority of the very wealthy wanted their children to carry on the family firm.
All of the people interviewed in detail for the survey said they separated their business assets from their private assets — a sharp increase from only 64 percent in 2009. Eighty-four percent said they had not developed long-term personal wealth plans.
Questions about uncertainty ahead of the 2011 State Duma and 2012 presidential elections were excluded, but worries over Russia’s political future have already had an impact on the business climate, with $43 billion leaving the country in the six months during which the survey was conducted — October 2010 to March 2011.
However, the report confirmed that the attractiveness of international investments for Russia’s wealthiest was growing. There was a burgeoning interest in real estate acquisition. Every respondent owned at least one international property, only one of which was in the United States, while the rest were in Europe. Twenty-one percent had invested in land.
The dollar, Swiss franc and pound sterling were the most favored currencies. Only 25 percent of respondents held liquid assets in rubles.
Sixty-three percent said Switzerland was their offshore destination of choice. London came in second with 53 percent, but Britain was overwhelmingly popular for rich Russians seeking a place to educate their children.
There are currently 101 billionaires in Russia, according to Forbes magazine’s annual ranking, including 15 of the world’s 100 richest people. The 2011 BCG global wealth report released in May said there were 561 households in Russia with assets of more than $100 million.
The State Statistics Service said last week that 23 million Russians earn less than $231 a month.

TITLE: 51% Stake in Discount Airline Avianova Up for Sale
AUTHOR: By Anastasia Dagayeva 
and Grigory Milov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Alfa Group’s investment arm A1 decided to sell its 51 percent stake in Avianova in late 2010, said Dmitry Chernyak, former managing director of the investment group, who quit in March this year.
The discount airline, which is involved in a scandal concerning locked-out foreign employees, has been on the block for several months, a source close to the carrier confirmed.
The stake has been offered to Aeroflot, the source said. But Aeroflot management decided not to buy it. The company’s attention is focused elsewhere — Aeroflot is preoccupied integrating six regional airlines it is getting from Russian Technologies, the source said. Spokespeople from A1 and Aeroflot declined to comment.
A1 wants $70 million for the Avianova stake, said one manager of an investment company. A source close to A1 says the entire airline is valued at $150 million.
Chernyak told Vedomosti that he is willing to buy into the project. He said he and a “first-class institutional investor,” which he declined to name, could finance the purchase themselves.
Chernyak also wouldn’t say how much he is willing to offer for the stake. He maintains that it will be profitable for A1. One of Chernyak’s acquaintances says he is talking about an offer of $35 million.
Avianova is not yet two years old, having started flying in August 2009, but it is already in 11th place in terms of passenger traffic. It flies exclusively domestic routes, except for Moscow-Simferopol. At its start, the budget airline launched a massive advertising campaign, promoting its base fare of 250 rubles (about $9) — not including taxes and fees.
A1 and its partner American fund Indigo Partners — which has 49 percent — invested $65 million in the project, according to sources close to Avianova. Those funds have already been spent, and the company needs another $30 million to $40 million.
A1 is not in the mood to invest more, a source told Vedomosti. As a result, the company has not been getting any investment for the last few months, and has been surviving on its own income. According to forecasts, the company should be out of the red by 2012.
But as a result of the current situation, Avianova had to cancel plans to expand its existing fleet of six Airbus A320s to 10.
This could be the reason why its market share has dropped. The drop in passenger volume is also due to the reduced number of seats in the aircraft. The craft can carry 180 passengers, but, like most foreign aircraft, were liable for a 20 percent customs duty.
This worked out to an annual additional expense per aircraft of $10 million, including VAT, said former Avianova head Andrew Pyne.
In 2010 the Russian government canceled the duty on aircraft with up to 160 seats. The extra seats were removed at the expense of passenger capacity. Now, the customs rules have been tweaked to allow up to 170 seats.
Also, this year Avianova planned to start charter flights on international routes. But the company scrapped that after a check by the federal aviation regulator concerning passenger complaints about frequent flight delays and cancellations.
All of these complications led to Pyne’s removal from the company. It is legally forbidden for a foreigner to be general manager of an airline, so Pyne held the post of general manager of an offshore company called Whitefish Aviation, founded by A1 and Indigo. He also headed Alaved, which provided consulting services to Avianova.
Pyne was recently refused admittance to the office of Avianova, with the excuse that he is not an employee of the company, said a source close to the airline. Another three foreign executives at the company allegedly suffered the same fate.
Avianova announced an internal investigation “concerning a number of foreigners who were working” with the company. On July 18 the board of directors will discuss the question of “ending work” with those people.
Don’t expect a profit from Avianova for some time, said Ingosstrakh-Investitsia analyst Yevgeny Shago. The airline business is not considered to be very profitable overall. From this perspective, A1’s departure from the project seems logical, the expert said. Moreover, Alfa Group is used to big and profitable business projects.

TITLE: How Russia Can Copy China’s Success
AUTHOR: By Dieter Wermuth
TEXT: The theory that free trade and free capital flows are always good is increasingly under attack. Even at the International Monetary Fund, the old orthodoxy is on the way out.
Markets usually produce desirable results, but not all the time. In some situations, it pays to control them. No one believes anymore that the financial sector should regulate itself, that financial innovation will necessarily boost productivity, or that globalization benefits everybody. If left to themselves, market forces often lead to monopolistic structures, an unfair income distribution, corruption, a destruction of the environment and, most important, suboptimal economic growth.
In the case of Russia, I have increasingly begun to wonder whether some trade restrictions and capital controls are actually desirable. Could it be that the vast difference in medium-term growth rates in gross domestic product of China and Russia has something to do with the fact that China tightly controls its exchange rate as well as capital flows in general? China’s economy expands rather steadily at a rate of almost 10 percent, while Russia chugs along at less than 5 percent.
China’s success story is mainly the result of its high investment ratio. At about 45 percent of gross domestic product, it is twice as high as Russia’s. This means that the capital stock rises much faster and that there are almost no bottlenecks in production. This, in turn, keeps down inflation, permits easy monetary policies and boosts growth. Based on present trends of 9 percent real growth, 4 percent inflation and a 5 percent annual appreciation of the renminbi against the dollar, China’s GDP will exceed the United States’ in just seven or eight years, at which point it will be 10 times larger than Russia’s.
So the question I have is whether China’s record-high saving and investment ratios are a direct or indirect result of making it difficult for the private sector to export capital, as well as a policy that discourages investment abroad while giving Chinese large incentives to invest at home. Net capital exports are, by definition, equivalent to the surplus in a country’s current account.
In 2011, both the Chinese and the Russian surpluses will be about 5 percent of GDP. The difference is that the People’s Bank does the capital exporting in the form of an accumulation of foreign currency reserves, mostly dollar-denominated, whereas Russia’s Central Bank largely refrains from intervening in foreign-exchange markets. Its reserves are more or less constant at about $500 billion.
The implication is that Russia’s private sector will be a net capital exporter of more than $70 billion this year. Given the poor state of the country’s capital stock, wouldn’t it be better to keep some of the money at home? If I cannot buy foreign assets — because it is forbidden or tightly controlled — I have to invest the money domestically. In this way the supply of monetary capital rises and real interest rates fall. The capital stock and potential GDP will thus grow at a faster rate than before. Just as the doctor ordered.
It is obviously easier to restrain capital inflows than outflows. China successfully keeps out undesirable inflows, while Russia has the opposite problem: It must act against capital flight. There are many ways in which people and firms can circumvent capital export controls. One method is to export goods at below-market prices. Another is to import at above-market prices. The differences can then be parked in foreign accounts. The administrative effort to follow the flow of money is considerable and will work only partially. Longer term, it is clearly a better strategy to improve the domestic business climate.
A stabilization of the ruble exchange rate will also help. Since large ups and downs are confusing market participants, investors will hesitate to invest in Russia, or, at the very least, they will demand higher risk premiums. Both effects reduce economic growth.
Since the external value of the ruble has often changed dramatically in response to equally dramatic changes in commodity prices, the administration should consider adopting the Chinese model of a structurally undervalued and fairly stable exchange rate against the euro. A large appreciation of the ruble in the wake of the new commodity boom would inevitably lead to a big increase in imports and thus destroy a part of the domestic production base. This is the so-called Dutch disease. When the ruble declines again, the companies that might benefit from the improved international competitiveness will simply not exist any more.

Dieter Wermuth is a partner of Wermuth Asset Management.

TITLE: A Tale of 2 Industrial Declines
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, some political scientists predicted that the Soviet Union and the United States would eventually come to resemble each other. The role of the state in capitalism was expanding, while communism seemed to be mellowing and liberalizing. Strangely, Russia and the United States did become more similar, but only after the end of the Cold War — and in ways those pundits would have probably found disturbing.
Take, for example, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, once home of one of the world’s largest steel mills. In its heyday, Bethlehem Steel employed more than 300,000 people. It helped the United States win World War II, producing armor for some 400 Navy ships. It was what made the United States a leading global economic power and marvel of civil engineering. It made steel beams for the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge. But the company went bankrupt in the 1990s and closed in 2003. Its multistory blast furnaces loom like rusty dinosaurs over the city, and its grounds have been taken over by a new hotel and casino. In Bethlehem, as elsewhere in the U.S. heartland, once proud, productive and prosperous workers have sunk into poverty and irrelevance.
The decline of Russia’s vast hinterland is also well documented. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has effectively abandoned hope of becoming a leading industrial nation. Its factories are uncompetitive globally, and people who still work there are poor and have few prospects for the future.
The U.S. government actively promoted the hollowing out of its own industrial base. Corporations relocated production abroad and saw their profits soar. Tax policies favored the rich, while money for social programs designed to help the middle classes was cut. The cost of capital was kept artificially low, encouraging the growth of the financial services industry on the East Coast and technology startups on the West Coast. There has been a lot of technological and financial innovation, but the gap between the rich and the poor has widened dramatically.
In Russia, oil, gas and other natural resources once used by the Soviet industrial base were redirected to export markets. The petrodollars, which began to flow freely once oil prices rose in the late 1990s, lined the pockets of corrupt bureaucracy and subservient oligarchs.
The political process as it has emerged in the two countries is also quite similar. In the United States, liberal and conservative elites are locked in pointless ideological combat over the role of the state and its right to tax citizens, even as many regions of the country are still mired in persistent unemployment approaching, and often surpassing, 10 percent. Millions of Americans have been evicted from their homes, while others are fighting to avoid eviction. In Russia, the government controls the inane official media, which means that the three-way ideological battle featuring the government, the liberal opposition and right-wing nationalist extremists rages on the Internet. Just as in the United States, this battle goes over the heads of most ordinary Russians.
In both countries the state is becoming dysfunctional and decrepit, unable to serve its citizens. For now, the dispossessed and marginalized majorities seem to be resigned to their fate. The question is for how long, and how they will voice their discontent when they have truly had enough.

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

TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As Nashi’s Seliger camp continued its activities this week, another rock band found its reputation in tatters after performing for the pro-Kremlin movement gathered at Lake Seliger near Tver.
Last week, Mumiy Troll reluctantly rejected a seemingly lucrative offer from Seliger’s organizers, albeit after some consideration: It appears that the band, which once refused to perform at a concert promoting Putin’s United Russia party, decided its reputation was more valuable.
Meanwhile, Alexei Kortnev, frontman of the Moscow band Neschastny Sluchai that did perform at Seliger last week, proclaimed that performing for the various youth movements was “right,” going as far as to describe the pro-Kremlin activists as “the cream of today’s Russia.”
“I think it’s not shameful, but right to go to Seliger,” Kortnev told Radio Liberty.
“You can agree or disagree with Putin and Medvedev’s politics, but you can’t put yourself in an ivory tower and refuse to communicate with those who will come to power after a while in any case.”
Kortnev argued that by refusing to communicate with Nashi (dubbed the Nashists and the Putin Youth), the band would not be able to present its “civic and artistic stance.”
“Neschastny Sluchai plays at corporate parties,” he went on.
“The money we make is quite enough to make a living. But we also play in the town of Krapivna, where we perform to 500 alcoholics who do not understand anything at the concert but feel that they’re not forgotten. And we also play at Seliger.”
Last year, Kortnev was more direct when talking about Neschastny Sluchai’s first trip to Seliger to Kommersant newspaper.
“On the way there we started moaning, ‘Why on earth are we going there?’ But with an advance fee already in the pocket, it’s too late to pretend to be an innocent girl.”
Created by the Kremlin’s gray cardinal Vladislav Surkov to harass oppositional activists and dissidents such as politician Boris Nemtsov or author Vladimir Sorokin, Nashi’s most recent feat was preventing the presentation of a new book by dissident author and oppositional leader Eduard Limonov in Moscow.
Called “Kniga Myortvykh 2” (The Book of the Dead 2), it is a follow-up to Limonov’s collection of obituaries. Speaking to Radio Liberty, Limonov said that the management of the bookstore where the presentation was due to be held canceled the event after several hundred Nashi activists were taken in buses to Moscow and arrived at the bookstore.
“The presentation was not canceled at my request, as the Nashists keep saying, but at the request of the bookstore’s management, because they didn’t want fights, broken furniture and ripped-up books in their store,” Limonov was quoted as saying.
Luckily for the Russian rock music scene, people like Kortnev are in an absolute minority, as Seliger’s lame music program demonstrates every year.


TITLE: Modus operandi
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Mod is a rarity in St. Petersburg: A club that combines live music and a relaxed atmosphere. It’s a place for people to feel comfortable in and free, says its owner Denis Cherevichny.
Hidden in a long courtyard off the Griboyedov Canal, a five-minute walk from Nevsky Prospekt, the premises include a large concert room with a capacity of some 700 people and — particularly popular during the recent hot days and nights — an open terrace overlooking old buildings now occupied by offices, behind which the crosses of the Church on the Spilled Blood can be seen.
On Friday, when reggae band Alai Oli from Yekaterinburg performed, the terrace was packed with 400 paying fans, all dancing and singing along, Cherevichny says. More fans were unable to fit onto the terrace and had to stand on the staircase.
But on Sunday night, entrance was free and the atmosphere was relaxed, with a couple of dozen people on the terrace, sitting at the bar or tables, some playing Novus — a Latvian table game that is the place’s specialty.
The name Mod stands for “modern” as opposed to “traditional,” according to Cherevichny.
“I didn’t want to support the traditionalism that existed in clubs and bars here,” he says.
“I wanted music to be at the forefront, no matter what kind of music, be it DJs or live gigs. What’s important is that the music should be good and have a soul.” 
True to its name, Mod does host some 1960s-influenced garage-rock bands such as The Incredible Staggers from Austria and The Urges from Ireland, but its music repertoire is not limited to one or two genres. 
This week, for instance, will see both Jenia Lubich, a local indie-pop singer best known for her work with the French band Nouvelle Vague (Wednesday, July 13), the outspoken punk/alt-rock band PTVP (Friday, July 15) and The St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review (Saturday, July 16).
But Cherevichny himself sees a May concert at Mod by the French electro-rock band Success — attended by the Chemical Brothers, who had played the same night at a local stadium — as the best the venue has held.
“Success was probably the best gig I’ve ever seen,” he says.
“It was impossible to stand still, impossible. The downstairs bar was virtually empty, because everybody was near the stage.”
In addition to his managerial responsibilities, Cherevichny can sometimes be seen in Mod behind the turntables as DJ 812.
“I play French music quite often, but it’s not always French chanson (although there might be some French chanson, too),” he says.
“It’s eclectic: It could be Plastic Bernard, [a Belgian musician] who was popular in the 1970s, or some contemporary music, like French rap. 
“But I also like American music and play it a lot — including even Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ I like music with good vocals, a good beat, mood and soul, with no stylistic restrictions, so that people feel free.”
Mod comprises four bars, serving barbequed meat and sandwiches made before customers’ eyes on the terrace, and plans to launch its own pizzeria by the end of the summer.
“Many bands like to play here, because the public doesn’t leave after the gig, but goes to hang out at the DJ bar, on the roof or in the ‘art space’ downstairs,” Cherevichny says.
“We try to make tickets as cheap as possible, which is sometimes difficult because bands usually want a high guarantee or simply high ticket prices. But there are bands who want to play not only for the money, but for young people who can’t afford to pay 600 or 1,000 rubles ($21 to $36) to see them.”
With the rooftop terrace and more organized space inside, Mod’s current incarnation is quite a development in both size and quality compared to its first location around the corner on Konyushennaya Ploshchad. Historically, the first venue had been home to stables, followed by a taxi depot workshop in the Soviet era.
Cherevichny said a horse skull was unearthed during repair work on the new building, which is also located on the site of the former imperial stables.
Mod’s new location is the fourth enterprise for Cherevichny, the first having been an underground bar in a former factory in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, New York that he launched in May 2002 during his stay in the U.S. as a Green Card holder.
Cherevichny rented the space for a rehearsal studio, but ended up living in it unofficially and transforming it into an illegal music bar that secretly sold canned beer and hosted concerts by bands, mostly those formed by Russian emigres. The idea of the open terrace came from there, he says.
Known unofficially as “Corridor,” the place closed in October when the rain began and the money earned stopped being enough to cover the rent and expenses. In December 2002, Cherevichny returned to his native St. Petersburg and resumed his activities here.
His first local venue, Novus, was a DJ bar situated above a cheap cafe next to the arch of the General Staff Building by Palace Square that operated between July 2005 and October 2006.
According to Cherevichny, Novus attracted some revelers from the ever-packed bar Datscha.
“Datscha was always packed and there were even more people outside, and of course they wanted to go somewhere,” he says.
“If Datshcha was more Western, then Novus was a hybrid between the Soviet Union (because it had a canteen on the first floor) and today. [The canteen] had a room upstairs they didn’t need, so we launched a bar there. 
“We set up the ventilation and air conditioning ourselves, bought the cheapest wallpaper and brought furniture from somebody’s dacha. But there was a positive feel to it. We even had a flag of East Germany hanging there.”
Novus is remembered for a lot of parties, the live debut of The Uniquetunes and poetry readings by Stas Baretsky, who went on to become a member of the rock band Leningrad.
“They sensed that something hip was going on there and wanted to join in,” Cherevichny said.
Novus closed a month after the first Mod opened in September 2006.
Cherevichny said that the original Mod, which closed in January 2010 along with several other clubs located in the building, closed when the building’s owners received a much more lucrative offer.
“Somebody saw that business was going great and wanted to rent the entire first floor of the building, so the owners got rid of us. Now, 18 months later, the premises formerly occupied by Mod are still empty, even though I think they are the best in the building.”
Mod opened its doors at its current location on July 2 last year when the terrace was launched, while the main rooms were still undergoing renovation work. The DJ bar opened in late September 2010, and the concert room opened on Oct. 31, 2010 with a Halloween party.
According to Cherevichny, Mod’s audience is totally eclectic.
“Everything corresponds to our style; the main thing is that there are no thugs because we don’t let them in, and there are no rich people throwing their money around — the kind who think that everybody should get down on their hands and knees before them — we don’t like that either,” he says.
“The main thing is for the public and the personnel to be on the same wavelength.”
The table game Novus has been Cherevichny’s trademark since he launched the DJ bar Novus in 2004. The game is similar to billiards, but played with wooden counters rather than with balls.
“My relatives on my father’s side lived in Latvia, so I know Novus from my childhood. I often spent the summer in Latvia and started playing Novus before I even went to school,” he said. 
Since the opening of the first Mod, a working Wurlitzer Princess CD jukebox has been added to the club’s icons.
Cherevichny said he had had to stop holding loud all-night DJ parties on the terrace due to complaints from residents living in another part of the courtyard.
Mod’s latest addition is weekly screenings of low-budget shorts or arthouse films on the terrace, which start at 10 p.m. on Wednesdays.

<i>Mod is located at 7 Naberezhnaya Kanala Griboyedova. Metro Nevsky Prospekt. Tel. 712 0734.</i>

TITLE: Vive la France!
AUTHOR: By Yelena Minenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Rivers of wine and mounds of delectable French cheese and crispy baguette, as well as haute couture and chanson music will be brought to the city’s Yusupov Garden on Thursday as part of local Bastille Day celebrations.
July 14 — France’s national holiday — has been designated a day of French culture in the city, and a picnic accompanied by musical entertainment dedicated to the holiday aims to create the atmosphere of an authentic French street party.
The Yusupovsky Garden on Sadovaya Ulitsa was selected as a place in which the atmosphere of 18-century France could easily be recreated, according to the event’s organizers: The park was laid out in the traditional French style, with manicured trees and bushes, and flowerbeds arranged in a symmetrical pattern dominated by geometric lines.
Under the shelter of the park’s trees, visitors will be able not only to sample French food, but also to make it themselves while taking part in master-classes in French cuisine, conducted by some of the city’s leading chefs. 
Traditional games of petanque — the national sport of Provence in which players throw metal balls at a smaller wooden ball known as the cochonnet with the aim of getting their ball as close as possible to the cochonnet, while knocking aside the balls of their opponents — will be set up for the occasion in the park. Petanque is popular not only in France, but also in many other countries, which has led to the creation of several national petanque federations. 
Also Thursday, two young St. Petersburg designers — MANka and TaraGinz — together with Mr. Pejo’s Wandering Dolls street theater troupe will give a performance titled “Inside” that will include body theater, a fashion show, video and animated art. In an attempt to visually represent the internal and external elements of human nature, the designers have made French fashion traditions the basis of their performance.
All of this will be accompanied by French chanson music performed by the local ensemble “Le Quartet de Julie” and French guests Jean Viltar and Feloche. 
Viltar, a former member of the band Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, now performs independently, combining the styles of the Velvet Underground rock group and heavy metal band Johnny Crash with traditional French chanson music. 
The headliner of the musical picnic will be Parisian band Feloche, named after its lead member Fele Feloche, who, before founding the band, participated in many different projects including the Ukranian group Vopli Vidoplyasova during the group’s five-year sojourn in Paris in the mid-90s. In 2007, Feloche released his first album, consisting of impressive mandolin compositions. 
Today the band also includes Lea Bulle, who plays button accordion, trumpet, samples and “odd stuff,” according to the band’s Myspace page, and Christophe Malherbe, who plays double bass. Together they perform electro-Cajun music with a French urban flavor. Transformed with the help of digital technology, Feloche’s songs are both wild and charming. The group’s best known song, “La Vie Cajun” owes its success to its mind-blowing video, which spread around the world with viral speed, resulting in a huge fan-base for Feloche in many European countries, including Russia.

Bastille Day celebrations will take place on July 14 from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. in the <i>Yusupovsky Garden on Sadovaya Ulitsa. M. Sadovaya / Sennaya Ploshchad / Spasskaya. Tickets cost 400 to 450 rubles ($14 to $16) and are available at the city’s tickets offices or at the French Institute located at 12 Nevsky Prospekt.</i>

TITLE: The return of the ’80s
AUTHOR: By Yelena Minenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An exhibition devoted to fashion from the 1980s comprising pieces from the private collection of Alexander Vasiliev opened at the Erarta museum of modern art Monday. 
The items of clothing collected by the eminent fashion historian are on show to the public for the first time. “It is a world premiere; these dresses have not been shown to anyone yet,” said Vasiliev. 
The exposition comprises about 50 women’s outfits and accessories that were made and worn in the 1980s, and occupies two floors of the five-story building that houses Erarta. 
“The theme of the exhibition is very close to many of us, because we lived through that era,” said Vasiliev. “But 30 years have passed already, and that is a whole generation; today ’80s fashion has started reappearing on haute couture podiums, and young girls want to know how their mothers dressed, how they did their hair, and why they didn’t pluck their eyebrows.”
Eighties fashion was the last major style of the Cold War epoch, according to the historian, who says that the gaping differences between lifestyles in the East and West characterize the period. “The West was rich, and the East was poor; today it’s the other way around,” said Vasiliev. 
“The image of a business-woman was quite popular at that time. It had to be the conquering, powerful woman, like Margaret Thatcher was,” he said. This is reflected in the prevalence of shoulder pads in the exhibited outfits: Women attempted to demonstrate that they could bear heavy loads on their shoulders by wearing tight jackets with shoulder pads. Both Britain’s “Iron Lady” prime minister and Diana, Princess of Wales were considered style icons of the era, along with the images shown by television. 
“Cinema wasn’t so important anymore,” said Vasiliev. “TV had got all the power; television series such as Dallas and Dynasty influenced American designers and they started popularizing really vivid and rich fashion.” This brought everything extraordinary and “over the top” into the fashion industry. Bright, unnatural, contrasting colors, awkward forms, giant colorful beads, geometric bijouterie, large expressive buttons with jewels set in them, and shocking hairstyles spread from the West all over the world. 
“The ’80s were the last hymn to luxury and wealth,” said Vasiliev. 
The first exhibition hall strikes visitors with its pink, yellow and purple items of clothing with giant sleeves and tiny waists, more reminiscent of theatrical costumes than of something someone would wear in everyday life. Oversized black-and-white hats and matching shoes illustrate the contemporary craving for bold contrasts. The other exhibition room on the fifth floor mostly contains evening gowns and cocktail dresses, which almost blind visitors with their glittering sequins, rhinestones and beads covering black, gold and silver dresses. 
Each exposition room contains that distinctive luxurious atmosphere of the decadent ’80s, created not only by the dresses themselves, but also by photographs of models from the ’80s hanging on the walls and, even more subtly, by the scent of perfume sprayed on each outfit especially for the exhibition. 
“Each room is saturated with the aroma of the ’80s, so that when you enter, you feel like you are in the most luxurious boutique of that time,” said Vasiliev. 
Among the designers whose work from the 1980s is on show are Christian Dior, Balmain, Nina Ricci, Chanel, Jean Paul Gaultier and others. The backbone of the collection is American fashion, while Japanese modelers such as Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto represent the alternative fashion of the ’80s. 
“Japan was at the peak of its technological development at that time, which attracted interest in new technological design,” said Vasiliev. “This was reflected in Yamamoto’s misshapen dresses, which suited slender Japanese women.” 
The exhibition runs through the end of August, and then will likely travel to Moscow, Vasiliev said. “The main difficulty is the transportation of the dresses: You have to pack up every single one, then unpack it, clean and steam it — it is really hard work,” he said.
“The exhibition is the first step in setting up a fashion museum in Russia,” said Artyom Balaev, producer of the Aurora Fashion Week, under whose auspices the exhibition has been organized. 
“Tiny Spain has got three museums of fashion, and our huge country has none,” added Vasiliev. 

“Fashion of the ’80s” runs through August 28 at Erarta museum of modern art, located at 2, 29th Liniya of Vasilyevsky Island. Metro: Primorskaya, Vasileostrovskaya.

TITLE: The word’s worth: Stop at Nothing 
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Êóäà óæ òóò: not likely!

At a dacha outside Moscow on a sunny afternoon, a group of friends are sitting around a table, telling áàéêè (tall tales) and bragging about their financial acumen. You don’t believe a word of it. So what do you say?
Thank goodness, you’re all speaking Russian, which has a plethora of phrases and exclamations to express extreme doubt, refusal or absolute negation.
Let’s say you’re listening to a pitch to put your life savings in a no-risk, high-yield investment. The pitchman is your neighbor who has gone through three fortunes in 10 years and is occasionally visited by minions of either the mafia or law enforcement (so hard to tell the difference, they all dress alike). Your reply to the pitch? Íè çà ÷òî! (Not for anything!) Íè â êîåì ñëó÷àå! (Under no circumstances!) Íè çà êàêèå äåíüãè! (Not for all the money in the world!)
If Vasya-the-pitchman doesn’t get the message, you can take a page from military jargon and insist: Íèêàê íåò! (In no way!) If he takes it as a joke coming from someone in civvies, you can try sputtering: Íè â êàêóþ! (Not for the world!). Or blurt out: Íè-íè-íè-íè-íè, which means: No, no, forget it, no way, man. Feel free to say íè as many times as you want — the more, the less merrier.
If that doesn’t work, try using a word that in this context means “nothing”: Ôèã! (Zilch!) or Ôèã îò ìåíÿ ïîëó÷èøü! (You ain’t getting nothing from me!) If Vasya’s pitch has left you speechless, put your thumb between your index and middle fingers and wave it under his nose to convey: Zip. Zero. Nada.
Then there’s the KamAZ-sized fish-that-got-away story. The problem is that you were in the boat and that little perch that wiggled off the hook definitely wasn’t Jaws III. You can object politely: Íè÷åãî ïîäîáíîãî! (Nothing of the sort!) Or you can point out that the story is false from start to finish: Íåò íè êàïëè or êàïåëüêè (there isn’t a drop), íè êðîøå÷êè (not a grain), íè ÷óòî÷êè (not a bit) or íè êðîøêè (not a crumb) ïðàâäû (of truth).
If you want to assert that something — like truth — is totally missing from the story, you can use the charming phrase è íå íî÷åâàëî (literally, “and never even slept here”). The idea is that something is so not there, it didn’t even pass through during the night. Íàø íà÷àëüíèê — ÷åñòíûé?!  íàøåé ôèðìå ÷åñòíîñòü è íå íî÷åâàëà. (Our boss — honest? The company doesn’t even know the meaning of the word!)
Or let’s say one of your dacha-mates thinks his boss will give him a promotion, a raise and an extra week’s vacation. You think this is as likely as pigs sprouting wings and flying around the office in pink tutus. In this case, you can use the curious expression êóäà òàì (literally, “to where there”) or one of its variants: êóäà òóò, êóäà óæ, êóäà óæ òóò. They all mean: Too bad, but not likely.
You can also use êóäà by itself to express a kind of snorted negation:
“Ñêîðî âñå ñîòðóäíèêè ïîëó÷àò ïðåìèþ!”
“Êóäà ïîëó÷àò! Äåíåã íåò ó ôèðìû!”
(“Soon all the employees are going to get bonuses.”
“Like hell they are! The company doesn’t have any money!”)
And then you can add: ÷åãî íåò, òîãî íåò (you can’t squeeze blood from a stone).

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

TITLE: Jazz on the beach
AUTHOR: By Yelena Minenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This weekend’s 7th annual PetroJazz festival will continue the series of summer music events being held in St. Petersburg, showcasing musicians from all over the world, as well as some of the city’s finest local jazz talent. 
In keeping with tradition, the festival will take place on the beach of the Peter and Paul Fortress, a venue that is not only suitable for recreation, but also has a long history and offers magnificent views.
“The PetroJazz festival is very lucky because it is held in an exquisitely beautiful place,” said Vladimir Feyertag, a music critic and the festival’s presenter for several years now. “When I invited musicians on stage at previous festivals, many of them asked for another minute to allow them to enjoy the view of the River Neva, the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island and the palaces for just a little longer,” Feyertag was quoted as saying by Time Out magazine. 
Enjoying the view this year will be musicians from more than five different countries. Jazz bands from Israel, Finland, Denmark, France and others will perform a diverse range of modern jazz-based music. 
Classical jazz traditions will be combined with modern emotional improvisation in a performance by the Francois Corneloup Trio, which brings its new album, “Noir Lumiere,” to St. Petersburg from France. Self-taught virtuoso saxophone player and composer Francois Corneloup is famous in Europe for his experimental performances accompanied by guitar and drums, played by Marc Ducret and Martin France, respectively. The trio, which is not yet well known in Russia, will perform in front of a local audience for the first time on Sunday.
“The organizers have chosen an interesting approach: They rely on performers who are little known on an international level, but who are popular in their homelands, instead of recruiting expensive stars,” said Feyertag. “The Indonesian and French bands, which we wouldn’t have the chance to listen to if it weren’t for the festival, sound very interesting.”
A performance by Indonesian band Indro Hardjodikoro and the Fingers looks set to be one of the highlights of the festival, which is usually very European-centric. The band’s frontman, high-speed bass-guitarist Indro Hardjodikoro, has worked with many famous Asian jazz musicians and pop stars during his 20-year career, and only recently got round to organizing a band, which released its first album, “Feels Free,” about a year ago. The band’s latest lineup includes bassist Fajar Adi Nugroho, drummer Yesaya Sumantri and Andy Setiawan on electric piano. At their first appearance at an international jazz festival this Sunday, Indro Hardjodikoro and the Fingers will present mainly fusion music mixed with some ethnic elements.
National color and ethnic flavors will also be injected into the festival by “music from the streets of Jerusalem,” as members of the Israeli band AndraLaMoussia define their work. The name AndraLaMoussia means “chaos” in ancient Hebrew, and according to the band was chosen because it reflects diverse cultural reality as well as the band’s music. By mixing Turkish, Jewish, Arabic and gypsy melodies, the musicians try to accentuate the variety of traditions that coexist in the Middle East and to create unity and true dialogue between them. Upbeat dance music combining jazz, Balkan-beat and acoustic blues performed on the saxophone, clarinet, guitars and percussion will be played this Saturday. 
The acts are not all exotic stars from around the world, however. Local jazz bands such as Apple.Sin, with its hard fusion and funk music, and classical jazz band the Dmitry Gurovich Trio (piano, double bass and drums) will also perform at the festival. 
From Moscow, the group Bright Core fronted by singer, composer and pianist Rada Pokarzhevskaya will perform rock and jazz hits by artists ranging from Pink Floyd to Bjork and even Rammstein, as well as their own music. 
The festival ends Sunday with a Total Jam by all the acts who took part in one of the region’s biggest and oldest international jazz festivals that is held annually in the Finnish town of Pori. The special guest at the jam will be Jyrki Kangas, founder of the Pori Jazz festival. 
“The organizers have always succeeded in constructing a dramatic concept for the show,” said Feyertag. “Accordingly, the final jam session will undoubtedly be a great culmination of the festival.”

<i>The PetroJazz festival takes place from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. on July 16 and 17 on the beach of the Peter and Paul Fortress (entrance from the Nevskiye Vorota near Kronverksky Bridge). M. Gorkovskaya. Tickets cost 500 rubles per day. For a full program, visit www.petrojazz.ru.</i>

TITLE: in the spotlight: Celebrity Charity: The Sequel
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: The charity fund that persuaded Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to sing “Blueberry Hill” — and prompted those awkward questions about money — did it again at the weekend, this time with Moscow concerts at which they promised Woody Allen would play jazz.
Billboards went up a few weeks ago, just listing famous people — Allen, Larry King, Dustin Hoffman, Jose Carreras, Francis Ford Coppola and Kevin Costner among them — and saying the concerts would be “broadcast” in Gorky Park on Saturday and Sunday. It said it was to support the fight with children’s cancer and eye diseases.
The Federation fund invited Putin to its concert in December, which initially seemed an amazing coup with big Hollywood names such as Sharon Stone and Mickey Rourke. And Putin sang and bashed out a tune on the piano — “Where does the motherland begin?” — the same as he sang with spy ring member Anna Chapman. Could it get any more perfect? 
But then the mother of a girl visited by Stone through the fund complained that she had received nothing more concrete. A spokeswoman for the fund was quoted as saying it did not raise money directly but encouraged wealthy guests to donate to hospitals — which was not what an earlier press release said. 
The fund’s head, Vladimir Kiselyov, former drummer of the mildly famous 1980s band Zemlyane, held an irascible news conference to deny that anything fishy was going on. At one point, he asked a bothersome Kommersant journalist to “step outside.” 
Kommersant reported that Kiselyov told the same reporter this week: “You hear me, Chernykh, this is the last time that you call me.”
Kiselyov is rumored to be a friend of Putin’s, which might explain the fund’s meteoric rise. He used to head a federal enterprise that runs tourist and entertainment events in the Kremlin and on Red Square, Kommersant reported.
In the end the fund announced donations of costly equipment to hospitals. But it was a PR disaster, and the latest event has prompted a lot of speculation and media investigation. 
The fund’s web site does not say a word about the concert, but it lists some donations. French actor Gerard Depardieu gave equipment worth about 2 million rubles ($71,450), and Moscow and St. Petersburg hospitals received equipment and children’s playrooms.
The city government gave the event free use of 60 video screens and up to 200 billboards, Moskovskiye Novosti reported, citing an official. Which is nice, although the benefit is unclear for advertising an event that isn’t open to the public. 
A Moskovskiye Novosti reporter phoned the fund claiming to be the assistant of a wealthy businessman and asked how much he would have to donate to get an invite. A touch unethical, but informative, as the newspaper obtained the figure of $100,000.
It also called Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, who said the prime minister was not planning to go to the concerts.
It called 20 hospitals listed on the site as accepting donations and found that nine did not know of the fund. Two said they had received costly equipment. Four said they had received children’s gifts, and one said it had received a large donation but did not know its origins. The remaining four did not pick up.
Kommersant called three hospitals, one of which said it had no dealings with the fund, another said it had organized a concert, and the other said Steven Seagal had visited.
There is also a mystery surrounding a denim-jacketed woman who appears on billboards, named as the fund’s “patroness,” Yelena Sever, and is photographed on the web site sitting next to Putin.
Moskovskiye Novosti cited Kiselyov’s former band mate as saying she is Kiselyov’s wife, but Sever is not her real name.


TITLE: THE DISH: Grand Cafe Bazilik
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>Illusions of Grandeur</b><br />There is nothing very grand about Grand Cafe Bazilik (Basil). 
It may have aspirations above its simplicity, such as a pork dish rather extravagantly titled “Madame Bovary,” yet on a recent Friday evening, it was entirely lacking in the staple part of any Caucasian cuisine (the cafe’s supposed speciality): Meat shashlyk.
Service at Bazilik came in the form of a motherly waitress keen to dispense advice in the finest of Russian traditions, and who herself might not have been out of place in a supporting role in “Madame Bovary.” Having established the ages of our party and expressed professional approval regarding the condition of its members’ skin, and steered us firmly away from beer and onto wine (600 rubles, $21, per 750 milliliters), she was replaced by a younger member of staff who was chronically apologetic. There was, it must be said, reason for such a tone, give the lack of shashlyk and vaguely haphazard service.
Some restaurateurs spare no expense when fitting out their eateries. Bazilik does not fall into this category, with its standard, economical design — dark wooden booths, green leather seats — and nor can it be said to have any real atmosphere, thanks to its bright lighting, unappealing music and flat-screen TV tuned, inexplicably, into a business news channel. All of this, however, could be forgiven if the cafe were an unexpected treasure trove of humbly presented yet decadently delectable Caucasian fare.
Sadly, this is not the case. The khachapuri (350 rubles, $12.30) — the touchstone of any establishment claiming to serve Georgian cuisine — was a worrying sign. Having arrived suspiciously quickly, the dish had a tell-tale crispy edge that whispered of having been fried to reheat it. The cheese lacked the distinctive salty taste of suluguni, giving rise to a theory that a cheaper cheese had been substituted for it. Ironically listed as “special khachapuri,” it was in reality anything but. 
Regrettably, the khachapuri set the tone for the rest of the meal. A low point was undeniably the eggplant rolls stuffed with cheese and garlic (150 rubles, $5.30), another classic Caucasian dish and usually a popular appetizer. No so at Bazilik, alas, where the rolls tasted like they had been stuffed with that curious British culinary invention beloved of dinner ladies in that country: Sandwich filling — a ready-made paste in which the main ingredient invariably seems to be mayonnaise, frequently fed to unsuspecting schoolchildren. In this instance, the filling du jour appeared to be mayonnaise with garlic. 
Lobio (also 150 rubles), a bean stew usually deep red in color, or at least brown, and pepped up with onion and fresh herbs, turned out to be a somewhat anemic version of its usual self at Bazilik. In both color and taste it was disappointingly bland, though as filling as always. 
Kharcho soup (220 rubles, $7.75) was served piping hot — once again, the phantom ping of the microwave echoed in our ears, though this may have been cynical paranoia. While it was not blighted by the layer of grease often seen crowning this soup, and the meat was tender, it lacked any trace of spice, confirming the impression that this was Caucasian food censored for spice-intolerant taste buds. 
The chanakhi lamb stew (250 rubles, $8.80) was at least a little spicier than the kharcho, but it was also fattier.
While there is no risk of sharing the fate of Emma Bovary with a visit to Bazilik, it is unlikely to satisfy gourmands or romantic souls, and may be more appreciated by the Charles Bovarys of this world. 

TITLE: Salty Ears and Salient Culture
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
TEXT: PERM — The picture on a city sign shows a white stick figure wielding a baseball bat, clearly on the verge of doing some hideous violence to an unseen victim.
In case you don’t quite understand, there is a black line drawn through the club, as in a “no smoking” sign.
The message is unmistakable. It’s a disturbing sight for a visitor to come across in a city center late at night.
But after a glance over one’s shoulder and a cautious visual check of passers-by, it produces a question. Just what kind of a city needs to tell its public not to behave like that?
After all, Perm is not actually a menacing place. Its wide but congested streets slope downhill to the banks of the Kama River, and there is an air of quiet bustling ambition about.
While industrial — and perhaps wild around the edges — there is no feel of decay or abandonment.
Perm was immortalized in Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” as the genteel but provincial backwater the Prozorovas were so desperate to escape. A little boring, perhaps, but no hotbed of iniquity.
Like its sister cities in the Urals, Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk, Perm grew up on the mountains’ rich mineral wealth — especially salt — in the 18th and 19th centuries. Perm residents are still said to have “salty ears,” in reference to the prodigious quantities of sodium chloride the area produced.
There’s been a settlement on the site at least since the 17th century, which grew into a town when an artillery officer founded a bronze and silver smelter there.
A clue to its mineral heritage can be seen at the airport souvenir booths that sell jade and malachite boxes decorated with a statue of a lizard wearing a crown.
This is the legendary Lizard Queen — a mythical character who miners and stone workers encounter in folk tales recorded by Pavel Bazhov in his children’s classic “The Malachite Box.”
Later the town grew by taking advantage of its position on the Kama River to export paper, steamboats and munitions — which made it a key strategic battleground during the Russian Civil War.
After it churned out artillery during World War II, it graduated to become a center of Cold War-era missile production — and disappeared from the map, as the Soviets declared it a closed city. It was renamed Molotov, after Stalin’s foreign minister.
Perm also had a darker role in this period — as one of the main “islands” of the gulag archipelago. A well-preserved camp outside the city is a moving memorial to victims.
Today Perm is open, the missile factories build rockets for Russia’s civilian space program, and the oil and mining industries are still going strong.
But it is still easy to see why Chekhov’s sisters wanted to escape from the nondescript, provincial industrial center.
And that’s what those menacing posters are really about, says Perm Governor Oleg Chirkunov — a future that demands change.
“We live pretty well, but like the rest of Russia most of our wealth comes from just a few different sources — oil extraction and refining, the chemical industry, and, of course, spaceships,” he said.
“So like the rest of the country, we’ve got to understand how we’re going to live if the oil price falls,” he said.
Perm also faces another problem that has been causing headaches in the Kremlin: a shrinking population.
The city’s population fell by almost 10 percent since the census of 2002, when it stood at just over a million, to about 900,500 in 2010, according to the State Statistics Service. Although the latest census shows a slight recovery from that low, Chirkunov says the resulting work force deficit is his biggest headache as governor.
But while most regional governors like to talk about setting up special economic zones and boast of attracting foreign investment, Chirkunov has another vision — of putting Perm on the map as a new cultural capital not only of Russia, but of Europe.
The logic is simple — reliable electricity supplies, tax breaks and free land for factories are all very well, but businesses also need talented employees — not to mention a comfortable environment for the bosses themselves. “And to persuade talented people who businesses want to employ to live in Perm, you’ve got to make life comfortable,” he said.
The Prozorova sisters would be thrilled. To stop them pining for the culture and refinement of far-away Moscow, the local authorities are determined to bring it to Perm.
Inspired by the regeneration of rundown industrial centers like Bilbao and Manchester, Chirkunov wants to turn the city into Russia’s No. 1 center for theater, dance and painting. He’s even got his eyes set on the rotating title of a cultural capital of Europe — brushing off the fact that Russian cities are not eligible for the award, as he points out, “yet.”
Artistic impresarios including Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis, doyen of Russia’s modern art scene Marat Gelman and director Eduard Boyakov have been lured to the city to lend credence to the claims.
A trendy arts and lifestyle magazine called Sol — a quip on the salt Perm locals carry on their ears — edited by Gelman, is now available in trendy supermarkets and newsstands across Russia.
Looking to co-opt competition it could not defeat, the city has cunningly signed a cooperation agreement with Russia’s undisputed cultural capital St. Petersburg.
Meanwhile, a series of drama, dance and art festivals are intended to flood the city’s streets with Russian and foreign visitors all summer.
The Perm White Nights festival, which ran for most of June, combined performing arts, photography and public lectures, and turned the city into a month-long extravaganza of creativity reminiscent of the Edinburgh Fringe.
The local government also wants to build infrastructure and cultural institutions. Prominent architects have been recruited to design a new modern art gallery (Gelman’s museum is currently housed in the old ferry terminal on the banks of the Kama) and a ballet theater. The small, rundown airport is scheduled for renovation.
Weaning citizens off the joys of casual violence and other antisocial pastimes — similar posters feature stick figures swigging from bottles, littering and urinating — is a finer element of the strategy.
Hence, the subtitle beneath the antisocial stick figures: “We are a cultural capital.”
What to do if you have 
two hours
The center of Perm is relatively small and easy enough to get around on foot. The town has a navigable grid layout that slopes down on a gradient to the banks of the Kama River — which is the main tributary of the Volga and more than three kilometers wide next to the city.
A walking tour called the Green Line (helpfully marked by a continuous green line painted along the pavement) is one of the best ways to see the city.
Marat Gelman’s much vaunted PERMM modern art museum (2 Ulitsa Ordzhonikidze; +7 342-2199172; permm.ru) claims to be “Russia’s only modern art museum outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg.” It has certainly gone from strength to strength since it opened in 2008 in the former ferry terminal with the exhibition Russian Poor, which recently opened in Milan. It also likes to think of itself as an “interactive space for collective actions by artists, audience and curators, political activists and sociologists,” so check the web site for events when you’re in town.
The Green Line walk guides you from the gallery on the promenade next to the river, up the hill to the Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theater and through the main square still dominated by a statue of Lenin — he remains the place of choice for newlyweds to lay flowers.
You can also see venues that inspired Chekhov and Pasternak, whose famous Dr. Zhivago spent a great deal of time in a city based on Perm.
Further up Komsomolsky Prospekt just past the Hotel Ural you will find a strange bronze sculpture consisting of an oval frame with two “ears” — a monument to the Permyaks’ (as the locals call themselves) reputation for having “salty ears.” Tradition is to have your picture taken through the frame.
What to do if you have 
two days
Nikolai Novikov, Perm’s top culture official, recommends two must-see trips outside the city itself: the Khokhlovka ethnographic museum and Perm 36 — the last and best-preserved camp in the gulag archipelago.
Perm 36 (Kuchino village; +7 342-212-6129; perm36.ru) is the only fully preserved gulag-era labor camp in the country. Entrance fees start from 50 rubles, and you can pay a bit more for guided tours.
Established in 1946 and closed in 1988, the camp held political prisoners — including poets, artists and scientists — considered dangerous to the regime. But in an ironic twist it was also chosen as the place for law enforcement officials convicted of crimes — including the small handful held accountable for their role in Stalin-era atrocities.
Chusovskoi is about 100 kilometers east of the city, and therefore takes the best part of a day to reach by bus or car. Tours are available from Perm.
The Ethnographic Museum (village of Khokhlovka, Perm District; +7 342-299-7181; heritage.perm.ru/hohlovka/hohlov02.htm) is an altogether less taxing experience, showing off traditional architecture from a couple of centuries ago.
Built on a hilltop surrounded on three sides by water 45 kilometers east of the city, the outdoor museum includes wooden churches, traditional huts and other municipal buildings that would have been at the heart of city life when Perm was founded in the 18th century.

Nightlife
The Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theater (25a Petropavlovskaya Ulitsa; ticket office +7 342-212-3087; operatheatre.perm.ru/ru/) specializes in the works of its namesake, who was a native of neighboring Udmurtia, but is by no means confined to his pieces. The hand-picked and relatively young orchestra headed by Greek conductor and creative director Teodor Currentzis is truly impressive. The next season opens Sept. 11 with Swan Lake.

Where to Eat
Preferred drinking dens for businessmen depend on the business you’re in, but locals say the best place to rub shoulders with the local economic and political elite is the Havana Cup cigar club (45 Gazeta Zvezda Ulitsa; +7 342-244-0963; havana-cup.ru), filled with white rum, Che Guevara kitsch and the inevitable cigars.
Restaurant Zhivago (37 Ulitsa Lenina; +7 342-235-1716) — named after Pasternak’s famous doctor — serves fancy experimental dishes at appropriately fashionable prices (the average bill comes to 2,000 rubles). It’s a fusion menu, offering French, Italian, Russian and Japanese dishes, but the management recommends that visitors try the spinach pastry pelmeni with pike, perch and carp from local rivers. It is also a favorite venue for the local bigwigs to entertain foreign guests as well as visitors from Moscow. Previous diners include President Dmitry Medvedev, conductor Vladimir Spivakov and Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev.
The Porta cafe and bar (Komsomolsky Prospekt 20; +7 342-217-1107; portacafe.ru) is an Italian restaurant that arrived in Perm via the cosmopolitan and self-conscious crucible of Moscow. Favored by Perm’s smart but creative set, it runs a four-week Italian food festival in October and is seriously devoted to gastronomic enjoyment. Management recommends the steak with roast potatoes and pepper. An average bill runs from 800 to 1,000 rubles.
For the intellectually snooty there is club Pravila (+7 342-212-9008), whose motto is “for those who know.” In the interests of exclusivity its web site is out of commission, and it lists no address.
The Stroganov restaurant at the basement of the Ural Hotel (58Ulitsa Lenina; +7 342-218-6050; stroganov-ural.ru) offers decent Russian fare as well as bear meat pelmeni, bear meat pirogi and other ursine and fungi-based variations of “Ural cuisine” at eye-watering prices that are barely justified by service, presentation or ambience.

Where to stay
Locals view the 187-room AMAKS Perm (43 Ulitsa Ordzhonikidze; +7 342-220-6060; perm.amaks-hotels.ru) as probably one of the most prestigious homes away from home for visitors to the city. Located in the historic center just a short walk from the river and a stone’s throw from the modern art museum, it offers extensive conference facilities and a business center. Rooms start from 2,755 rubles a night.
The Hotel Ural (58 Ulitsa Lenina; +7 342-218-6261; en.hotel-ural.com) proudly claims the title of biggest hotel in the Western Urals and dominates the skyline at Ulitsa Lenina’s intersection with Komsomolsky Prospekt — the main artery running down to the river bank.
It offers drab but clean rooms from 2,000 rubles a night with breakfast included.
Newer establishments include the Zhemchuzhina Hotel (65a Bulvar Gagarina; +7 342-261-9091, 261-7633; e-mail: book@hotel-gem.com), a 10-story, four-star tourist hotel opened in 2008. It is attached to an entertainment complex and tailors its services toward relaxation rather than work. Double rooms start from 4,900 rubles a night.
The very comfortable Hilton Garden Inn (45b Ulitsa Mira; +7 342-227-6787; hi-perm.ru) is just 15 minutes from the airport and like the AMAKS is a primary place to stay for business travelers, with two conference rooms, a suite for high-end relaxation, and a 24-hour business center. Standard rooms start from 3,190 rubles on weekends and 4,543 rubles during the week.

Conversation starters
The administration’s cultural plans are not universally popular. About 200 local intellectuals (or “poets, communists and Cossacks,” as Gelman helpfully dubbed them in a blog post) protested the plans on June 30 — largely because they feel the plans benefit glamorous Muscovites rather than homegrown talent. Those on the other side of the fence have accused the discontented of being stick-in-the-mud conservatives with an irrational aversion to contemporary culture — or simply at odds over money. Either way, in the right circles it could cause an animated discussion.

Other helpful hints
The highlight of the year is the White Nights festival in June, but a proliferation of festivals of all kinds means the event calendar is busy most of the year. Check out the city web site (visitperm.ru/entertainment/festivals/) to see what’s on during your visit. One upcoming highlight is the international photography biennial that will open on Sept. 23 and run till Oct. 7.

How to get there
Perm’s Bolshoye Savino Airport (+7 342-294-9825; aviaperm.ru), 18 kilometers southwest of the city center, is connected to St. Petersburg by six flights daily operated by Rossiya, Nordavia and Aeroflot. There are also less regular connections with Sochi and Yerevan.
Perm Railway Station No. 2 (89 Ulitsa Lenina; +7 342-219-2957; perm-2.ru) is the city’s main station (the much smaller Perm 1 is used only for local and suburban trains). A busy junction on the trans-Siberian route, it offers direct links to Beijing in China or even Adler on the Black Sea Coast, as well as Moscow and Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg and Kazan. The journey from St. Petersburg takes about 31 hours, and usually departs from Ladozhsky Station, though there are also connections from the Moscow Train Station.
The river terminal may have turned into a modern art museum, but several tour companies still operate cruises calling at Perm in spring and summer. The local Okhotnik tour agency (Hotel Dinamo, 1 Ulitsa Krasnova, Office 106; +7 342-270-1414) operates two vessels on routes up and down the Kama-Volga river system as far as Astrakhan (12 days round trip) and Kazan (five days).
<hr>
<b>Perm</b>

Population: 991,500

Main industries: Chemicals and petrochemicals, food, forestry processing,  machine building, oil and gas refining, printing 

Mayor: Igor Sapko

Founded in May 15, 1723

Interesting fact: Perm takes its name from the medieval Principality of Great Perm, an ethnic Komi state that enjoyed a large degree of independence until it was subdued by Muscovy in the 15th century. Today there are about 183,000 Finno-Ugric Komi in the Perm region — about 5.7 percent of the population.

Sister cities: Oxford, U.K.; Quingdao, China; Duisburg, Germany; Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.

Helpful contacts: 
	Governor Oleg Chirkunov (+7 342-217-7158, 217-7458; perm.ru/power/gubernator; blog: chirkunov.livejournal.com); 
	Anatoly Makhovikov, executive in charge of city hall’s relations with investors (+7 342-212-7167; dip.perm.ru); 
	Galina Popova, head of the Department for Industrial Policy and Investment (+7 342-212-4538; dip.perm.ru); 
	Marat Bimatov, president of the Perm Chamber of Trade and Industry (+7 342-212-2811, 210-1000; permtpp.ru); 
	Mayor Igor Sapko (+7 342-205-9059; glava.perm.ru). 


Major Perm 
Businesses 

	LUKoil Perm (62 Ulitsa Lenina; +7 342-235-6648, 235-6101; lukoil-perm.ru), the regional representative of LUKoil, which runs the biggest oil and gas business in the Perm region.
	Proton PM (93 Komsomolsky Prospekt; +7 342-211-3501; protonpm.ru), producer of the world famous Proton M space rockets and now turning out engines for Russia’s new Angara family of launch vehicles.
	Port Perm (1 Ulitsa Reshetnikovsky Spusk; +7 342-256-5011; portperm.com) is the easternmost European port in Russia’s deepwater systems and has access to five seas, handling freight shipments to and from CIS countries, the Mediterranean Sea and Western Europe.
<hr>
<b>Oleg Chirkunov, Perm governor</b>

Q: What are you doing to attract investors? 
A: The long-term problem we’re facing is a work force deficit. In the past, people used to move to where the jobs are; today, jobs come to where the people are. So we’re trying to make it not so that this is a good place to produce, say, medicines, but so people who make medicine come here and say “this works for me.” To do that we need to create infrastructure, cultural venues and to build up the city, generally. And if we understand this properly now, we’ll be in a great position three or four years from now.
Q: How long is this going to take? 
A: It’s a 20-year project. The task is to fill the city so that a person who lives in the city doesn’t think that the most interesting things are somewhere else. A great part of culture is people’s belief that they’re in the right place, that they’re doing the right things, and that things are interesting here in their home city.
Q: Will Perm become a center of business innovation — like Skolkovo? 
A: We’re probably not going to compete with Skolkovo, which is really better compared with Novosibirsk’s Akademgorodok. But we do have innovative businesses. Proton PM, our rocket builder, is producing parts for the new Angara range of space rockets. Also we have Ural Telecom, a company that was founded a few years ago to make use of modern communications technology and now works all over Russia. And we also started supporting students working on new ideas — and in a few years they will be able to set up their own businesses. So this is not just in the future — it is happening now.
<i>— Roland Oliphant</i>

TITLE: Iconic Cathedral Turns 450
AUTHOR: By Mansur Mirovalev
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia celebrated the 450th anniversary of St. Basil’s Cathedral on Tuesday by opening an exhibition dedicated to the so-called “holy fool” who gave his name to the soaring structure of bright-hued onion domes that is a quintessential image of Russia.
The eccentrically devout St. Basil wore no clothes even during the harsh Russian winters and was one of the very few Muscovites who dared to lambast tyrannical Tsar Ivan the Terrible.
Ivan, whose gory purges claimed tens of thousands of lives, feared St. Basil as “a seer of people’s hearts and minds,” according to one chronicle. He personally carried St. Basil’s coffin to a grave right outside the Kremlin. The cathedral, constructed to commemorate Ivan’s victory over Mongol rulers, was built on the burial site.
Deputy Culture Minister Andrei Busygin said Friday that the exhibition was being held as part of anniversary celebrations in the cathedral after a decade-long restoration that cost 390 million rubles ($14 million). The exhibition will display relics and icons of St. Basil and other religious eccentrics, who were known as “holy fools.”
The exhibition is part of large-scale celebrations of St. Basil’s anniversary that were also due to include a service to be held by Russia Orthodox Patriarch Kirill and a late-night church bell concert.
“This cathedral is a shrine and a symbol of Russia,” Busygin added. “It’s a miracle it survived at all.”
The building was severely shelled during the 1917 Bolshevik takeover of the Kremlin and was patched up during the subsequent civil war and famine. “Those gaping wounds were stuffed with whatever was at hand,” said Andrei Batalov, deputy director of the State Kremlin Museums.
Early Communist leaders — who persecuted countless clerics of all faiths and destroyed tens of thousands of religious buildings — wanted St. Basil’s dynamited as it blocked the way to military parades, and only the cathedral’s conversion into a museum saved it.
A century earlier, Napoleon Bonaparte also ordered St. Basil’s blown up during his army’s hasty retreat from Moscow in 1812, but a heavy rain put out the burning fuses.
Originally named the Holy Trinity Cathedral, over the centuries it became known as the place where St. Basil is buried.
The design of its nine onion-shaped, multicolored domes combine the traditions of Russian wooden architecture with Byzantine and Islamic influences into a unique structure.
Batalov said the restoration focused on recreating the way the building looked by the late 17th century, when the nine domes were united by a wraparound floor.
By that time, St. Basil’s had become a symbolic New Jerusalem and the center of Palm Sunday walks, when the Moscow Patriarch approached it sitting on a donkey to recreate Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem.


TITLE: Banker’s Gift Spurs Blind Entrepreneur’s Vision
AUTHOR: By Olga Razumovskaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — “I used to think, what can the blind do? But then they fixed my back,” said Sergei Ogarkov, finance manager of the Lights of the Lighthouse, a grocery store in northern Moscow.
Ogarkov is talking about blind masseurs who after three sessions eliminated back pain that he had endured for 15 years.
The Lights of the Lighthouse, too, is not a simple grocery store. It’s a man’s dream, however small, to help those who cannot see.
The man’s name is Nikolai Litvinov. He is blind.
“People look at him with a jaundiced eye,” Ogarkov said of Litvinov, who is also general director of the store and the man who came up with the name for it.
“We live our lives as if it were a sea. And in Russia it is also a stormy sea, hence the name,” Litvinov said.
The grocery store is a byproduct of Litvinov’s brainchild — a medical center for blind masseurs that would serve as a form of occupational therapy for the blind and help them earn a living.
Litvinov dreamed for about 15 years about creating the center, until he turned to former banker Marlen Manasov in hope of raising money for his cause.
Manasov had known Litvinov for a long time, and used his help to assemble a team of blind and sighted computer programmers to create a special program for stock exchange traders.
Litvinov came to Manasov again about six months ago with a business plan to execute his dream, which Ogarkov helped him draft.
According to the plan, the medical massage center was to cost 2 million rubles ($72,000) and employ five sighted doctors and 10 trained blind masseurs.
Manasov, whom friends call a shy and generous man, was in the process of ending his banking career in Russia in order to focus on a project of his own — doing business in Cuba, which he hopes will, after the fall of communism, become a land of opportunity for entrepreneurs.
Busy with his plans and supporting several causes, Manasov said he would help Litvinov one last time and gave him about a half of the sum he needed to open the center.
The rest he would have to find on his own.
“You can just give someone a fish or you can hand them a fishing rod and show them how to fish,” Manasov said in a telephone interview. “And this is the kind of man [Litvinov] is.”
Manasov has an eye for spotting promising people and projects.
A gifted businessman, he helped found Downside Up, a nonprofit organization that assists parents raising children with Down syndrome and raises awareness of the condition in Russia.
Manasov founded the organization 12 years ago along with his colleague Jeremy Barnes from UBS Brunswick and others. Today, it is the only NGO in Russia exclusively focused on the condition.
Litvinov did not want Manasov’s final 32,000 euro ($45,000) donation to sit idly in his pocket. He came up with a new business plan to create the Lights of the Lighthouse, a small grocery store whose eventual profits would allow him to open the massage center staffed by blind masseurs.
The store broke even after only about two months of work.
Litvinov says that once the Muscovites start coming back from their summer houses and vacations to faraway lands, demand will grow and he will be able to start saving up for a packaging facility where more blind workers, using their heightened sense of touch, will be able to make a living.
Litvinov hopes that by end of September he will be able to put away about 10 percent of the monthly turnover, and eventually hire 10 blind people.
Meanwhile, the dream of the massage center has been put on hold as he tries to find sponsors.
“Soon we will be approaching the World Bank. Maybe they can help us,” Litvinov said hopefully.