SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1677 (39), Wednesday, October 5, 2011
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TITLE: Norwegian Official Urges Municipal Sovereignty
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Active municipal councils are instrumental in building a prosperous society, believes Liv Signe Navarsete, Norway’s Minister for Local Government and Regional Development who visited St. Petersburg last week to give a lecture at the State Academy for National Economics and State Service.
Navarsete is convinced that it is possible to make use of political experience and tools from other countries, and successfully apply foreign systems in other countries.
What makes municipal councils in Norway particularly strong, according to Navarsete, is the wide range of rights and high level of authority granted by the state. For example, while in Russia, all state-run health centers are funded either directly by the federal government or by the regional authorities, in Norway, municipal health care is an integral part of the national system. Municipal clinics are something completely unheard of here. 
“As in Russia, in my country there are often long distances between villages and small towns,” Navarsete said. “For that reason, in order to make at least basic medical aid easily accessible, it was essential for us to organize health centers even in the most distant places, wherever there are people living. These centers are funded from local budgets.”
Next year, Norway will introduce even bigger responsibility for health care among municipal councils. When patients go to a state hospital for any treatment or rehabilitation, 20 percent of the costs will be covered by their local municipality, Navarsete said. 
“Ideally, we would like to have more diverse health care services available locally. This is one of the key goals for the near future. We would like to see several municipalities joining forces to build a local hospital. This would be good for both the patients and the economy.”
When a new road or key industrial project is being proposed in Norway, it is the municipal councils that have the authority and the responsibility to make a decision. There are very few exceptions in which the federal government has had to intervene.
“Municipalities in my country are responsible for all construction projects built on their territory,” Navarsete said. “It is in their own interests to resolve any arguments locally. Every municipality has a detailed plan of the development of its land, and if an investor has a proposal, they have to go directly to their local council to discuss it. Most investors in Norway respect the law — including environmental regulations — and residents, so there are rarely debates regarding an industrial project on a large scale.”
Municipalities in Norway even have their say on seemingly global issues, such as climate change and global warming. Norway’s Local Government and Regional Development Ministry joined forces with the country’s Environmental Ministry to develop nationwide programs involving all municipalities aimed at, for example, reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“The source of 40 percent of emissions are buildings that belong to or are managed by the municipalities,” Navarsete said. “It would therefore be logical to invite municipalities to search for solutions to related environmental issues together with the government.”
Navarsete’s lecture was part of the Nordic Countries Weeks that are currently taking place in St. Petersburg. 
“We strive to present our countries in as versatile a way as possible,” said Mika Bedeker, head of the regional bureau of the Nordic Council of Ministers. The Nordic Countries program also features lectures on contemporary architecture organized jointly by St. Petersburg’s Pro Arte Institute and Norway’s Snohetta architectural bureau at the Peter and Paul Fortress and film screenings during the “Message to Man” international festival of documentary and animated films.

TITLE: Okhta Loses Heritage Status
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Preservationists have appealed in an open letter to new city governor Georgy Poltavchenko asking him to prevent the demolition of a heritage site on the Okhta cape and to dismiss officials who failed to protect what they describe as “The Troy of St. Petersburg” — the remains of the Nienschanz and Landskrona medieval Swedish fortresses, as well as a Neolithic settlement discovered on the site. 
Last week, City Hall’s Heritage Protection Committee (KGIOP) lost a court case concerning the boundaries of the heritage site at Okhta to ODS Okhta, the subsidiary of state oil giant Gazprom in charge of the site, as reports emerged about Gazprom’s new plans to use the plot for commercial development.
On Sept. 28, the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Arbitration Court annulled the KGIOP’s Dec. 22, 2010 resolution, which established the zones of the heritage site at Okhta, preventing Gazprom from using the plot for commercial development.
Opponents say that work endangering the heritage site may now start at any moment, and accuse KGIOP’s head Vera Dementyeva of being ineffective in defending the site and of even acting in the interests of Gazprom. They are calling for her dismissal, along with that of several other KGIOP officials.
Preservationists propose that an archeological park should be established on the site to preserve the findings.
Gazprom said it would sell the plot and put up advertisements on the fence surrounding the site and on ODS Okhta’s web site after then-governor Valentina Matviyenko annulled her own 2009 permit to build a controversial 403-meter skyscraper on the plot. Matviyenko’s about-turn followed public protests and opposition from UNESCO and the Ministry of Culture in December.
“After the trial, virtually the entire territory of the Okhta Cape has been left unprotected,” said the Yabloko Democratic Party’s Boris Vishnevsky, a long-time opponent of the once-planned Gazprom skyscraper and author of the book “No to the Tower! St. Petersburg against Gazprom’s skyscraper,” which documented years of protests against the project.
Speaking Tuesday, Vishnevsky alleged that ODS Okhta and officials acted in cahoots in the matter. 
Vishnevsky and two activists from the preservationist group Living City are currently suing the KGIOP for “failure to act.”
“The KGIOP seems to have no desire to take these findings regarding the protection and include them in the state register of cultural heritage objects,” he said.
The next hearing in the case is due on Oct. 10.
The press officer for ODS Okhta declined to comment on the preservationists’ demands, saying that the company does not have the text of the open letter.
“No final decision has been taken and the fate of the site will be decided after all the trials regarding this site are finished and relevant expert analysis has been conducted,” she said.
She added that the realization of an investment project involving external investors and professional developers is being considered as one of the options for using the plot of land. But she said that it was too early to speak about any parameters or purpose of the project.
KGIOP declined to comment on the developments Tuesday, requesting a written inquiry for consideration later in the week. 
There had been no response from Poltavchenko to the open letter as this newspaper went to print late Tuesday.

TITLE: Mironov Says A Just Russia Tops Local Polls
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Just Russia party expects to get up to 15 percent of votes around the country and win the most votes in St. Petersburg in the upcoming parliamentary elections, Sergei Mironov, the leader of the party, said in St. Petersburg on Friday.
Mironov said that according to his information, opinion polls in St. Petersburg showed that A Just Russia is leading in pre-election ratings, leaving behind Putin’s United Russia, the Communist Party and the Liberal Democratic Party. 
“We have serious plans to win in this region,” Mironov said.
Mironov called on all Russian citizens to show up and vote in the upcoming elections, saying it would be the best way to ensure a free and fair vote.
“The easiest way to manipulate votes is to do so with the votes of those who haven’t come,” Mironov said at a press conference.
Mironov said the most vulnerable voters are students, military conscripts and prisoners, who are often pressured to vote for a particular candidate by those in authority. Cases have been reported in which students, for example, were told by their university administration to take photographs of their completed ballots with their cell phones, he said.
Mironov said the three core parts of his party’s pre-election program consisted of fighting poverty, fighting corruption and liquidating United Russia’s monopoly on political power.
To fight poverty, A Just Russia proposes changing pension legislation and introducing progressive taxes, including a luxury tax.
To fight corruption, the party proposes introducing an obligatory declaration of income for all officials. It is also calling for the authorities to confiscate the property not only of the person charged with corruption, but also that of their family members.
To challenge the political monopoly of United Russia, Mironov’s party proposes restoring gubernatorial elections, reinstating the “against all candidates” option on ballots, installing web cameras in all of the rooms where votes are counted, and having transparent voting booths.

TITLE: Festival Celebrates City’s Mythology
AUTHOR: By Vanessa Prolow
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Despite its status as a relatively young city, St. Petersburg is awash in mythology. From stories surrounding its initial construction, to the Bronze Horseman, to tales of the Revolution, St. Petersburg is full of locations that conjure up local myths, folklore, and scenes from literature. This theme was explored recently during the third annual Petersburg Text literary festival, which was held from Oct. 1 to Oct. 4. 
Held by the Live Classics International Association of Centers of Contemporary Culture, the festival brings together literary critics, academics, local historians, philosophers, and writers to present and discuss work centered on a particular theme, changed annually. This year, the theme was “Literary Natural Boundaries.” The chief goal of the festival events, discussions, and presentations was to discover the potential of Petersburg locations to inspire myths today.
One of the major festival participants this year was Naum Sindalovsky, a leading expert on the folklore and mythology of St. Petersburg. He gave a talk at Dom Knigi on Monday, where he spoke about the peculiarities of local folklore and mythology, citing examples of Petersburg-specific anecdotes, urban legends, and terms of speech. He also gave a short talk at the festival’s opening ceremony on Saturday, encouraging people to “listen while walking down the street” for newly developing legends, and reminding them that the mythology of St. Petersburg can be found not only in the historical center, but also in newer regions on the city’s outskirts. For Sindalovsky, the mythology of the city is a living, ever-changing entity. 
Another speaker at the opening ceremony was Aleksandr Melikhov, who was also one of the five recipients of the 2011 Gogol Prize for Literature. Founded by the St. Petersburg Union of Writers in 2003 to recognize talented Russian writers, this year’s awards honored Vera Kobets for “Farewell,” a collection of short stories; Ilya Boyashov for “Stone Women,” a novel about the history and character of Russian women; Natalia Sokolovskaya for “The Canon of Love,” a collection of love-themed short stories; and Andrei Stepanov and Olga Lukas for “The Elixir and Prince Sobakin,” a novel about a prince, his famous chemist grandfather and a satellite. Melikhov received his third Gogol this year for his novel “Father’s Shadow,” having also won prizes in 2003 and 2009. 
Another important part of the festival was the academic conference portion, which ran from Sunday to Tuesday and in which over thirty academics participated. The topics up for discussion included “From the Bohemia of Leningrad to the Bohemia of Petersburg: Common Spaces and the Pathos of Placelessness” (Dmitry Golynko-Volfson), “Industrial Petersburg in Russian Poetry” (Natalia Perevezentseva), and “The Petersburg Dreams of Marina Tsvetaeva” (Irina Burlakova). 
Alongside the general question of mythologized spaces and city folklore in the literary texts of St. Petersburg, hooliganism and the role it has played in city life was also a central theme of the festival. This year, hooliganism and its association with St. Petersburg marked its centenary, with the first mention of the term in the city’s press appearing sometime around 1911-1912. 
Vladimir Toporov, the late eminent Russian philologist, wrote in his book “Peterburg Text” that St. Petersburg was a “city of hooligans” and, as befits such an association, the festival that shares the name of the aforementioned book was not entirely dedicated to serious academic discussion. 
An exploration of this theme was the street performance following the round table of “Young Ladies and Hooligans,” a humorous investigation of bohemian hooliganism, its psychology, aesthetics, and historical and cultural precedents. The interactive nature of the street performance allowed for spectators to not only engage with important past instances of aesthetic hooliganism, but to become participants themselves. Other more light-hearted moments of the festival included the mini-play “Poprischin and the Outskirts of Petersburg Text” and a game called “Travels Through Petersburg Text,” played over two days by teams from St. Petersburg State University and Herzen State Pedagogical University.

<I>For more information on the festival, Live Classics, and the Gogol Prize, see www.liveclassics.ru.</I>

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Radiation Fears</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — An exhibition of Russian glass from the Romanov imperial dynasty will continue to be shown in Japanese cities that have no danger of radioactive pollution from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Interfax reported.
The State Hermitage Museum canceled its exhibition in the Japanese city of Takasaki due to its location 200 kilometers away from the power plant.
The exhibits will not be returned directly to Russia, however. Instead they will be shown in other cities, the museum’s press service said.
The Hermitage has already shown the exhibition in the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art in the city of Sapporo, in the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum and in the Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art. 
The exhibition comprises 327 works of art.

<b>Island Tender</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A tender for the redevelopment of Novoadmiralteisky island, which currently houses part of the Admiralteiskiye Verfi shipyard, may be announced in June or July of next year.
The tender will be run by the city administration, Roman Trotsenko, president of United Shipbuilding Corporation (OSK), was quoted as saying by Interfax. 
The transfer of Admiralteiskiye Verfi to Kotlin island, on which the town of Kronshtadt is located, is set to begin after the completion of the project’s final stages. The construction of the new shipyard will take 26 months, Trotsenko said.
Shipbuilding at Admiralteiskiye Verfi will continue on the nearby Matisov island.
“Production in the center of the city will continue for at least eight more years,” Trotsenko said, adding that the plant will produce diesel-electric submarines at those facilities.
Last summer OSK signed an agreement with South Korean STX that launched a joint venture for construction of the shipyard on Kotlin island. The cost of the project is estimated at $720 million. The South Korean side will receive a 25 percent share in the joint venture.
The agreement with STX includes the transfer of Admiralteiskiye Verfi from Novoadmiralteisky island. The territory of 16.8 hectares is to be sold at auction. 

<b>Bridge Opens for Fire</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Emergency services were forced to lower the Tuchkov bridge to allow fire engines to cross the Neva in order to put out a fire that broke out in the barracks of the Kronshtadt garrison on Vasilyevsky Island early last Thursday morning. 
The bridge is raised on a nightly basis during the navigation season to allow ships to pass underneath it, cutting it off from the central district of the city for several hours each night. 
The fire broke out at 3 a.m. on the roof of the five-story building, which was constructed in 1932. The building houses a cafeteria, classrooms and residential accommodation. Nobody was on the fifth floor where the fire began. More than 200 people were evacuated but no injuries were reported.
Preliminary information suggests the fire broke out in a location where repairs and welding work were being done the night before, Interfax reported.

<b>Businessman Arrested</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Police detained five people, including a client and a contractor of the victim, in the death of murdered businessman Sergei Sosnovtsev, who was shot dead in St. Petersburg last week, Interfax reported.
Sosnovtsev, who was general director of City Wholesale Market Salova 52, was shot dead by gunmen driving a Mercedes on Sept. 26. One of the attackers shot at him 20 times with a Kalashnikov rifle. 
Among those detained in connection with the murder is prominent St. Petersburg businessman Maarif Alekperov, who was Sosnovtsev’s partner and is the owner of the Kontinent shopping mall. Alekperov allegedly ordered the murder, the St. Petersburg Investigation Committee said.
The contract killers were found in Moscow and some of those detained have confessed to the crime. The investigators have also found the weapon and car used in the killing.
Sergei Strelin, deputy head of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast police, said that according to investigators, the murderers received about $50,000 for the job.

TITLE: Budget Airline Avianova Files for Bankruptcy
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Budget airline Avianova, which has been embroiled in a bitter shareholder dispute between its U.S. and Russian partners, issued a statement late Sunday saying that it would cancel all flights from Monday and file for bankruptcy. The airline went on to say it could not pay airports or meet licensing fees for its aircraft after minority American shareholder Indigo Partners cut off funding.
Confusion surrounded the fate of the airline on Monday as flights continued to take off and land at Sheremetyevo Airport, the budget airline’s hub, despite Sunday night’s statement.
The airline’s web site had ceased accepting bookings late Sunday, but about 67,800 tickets have been sold for flights scheduled between Oct. 3 and 29, according to news agencies citing sources at the company.
An operator reached via the airline’s hotline said passengers would be informed of their flight status by e-mail, and refused to give further information without a booking reference.
Avianova had not responded to e-mailed enquiries by Monday evening.
Avianova and its shareholders ought to meet obligations to passengers “at their own expense,” Federal Air Transportation Agency chief Alexander Neradko said Monday after a meeting with the airline’s management.
But Neradko said the airline’s bosses had been unable to tell him whether they would continue flying or not until they “consulted with their shareholders.”
Avianova was founded in 2007 as a joint venture between Arizona-based investment firm Indigo Partners, which holds a 49 percent stake, and A1, part of Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group, with the remaining 51 percent.
Based at Sheremetyevo Airport, the airline proved a hit with students and other budget travelers. It grew to serve destinations from Arkhangelsk in the north to Sochi in the south, and from Surgut in the east to Kaliningrad in the west.
It carried 866,000 passengers between January and August this year alone, according to the Federal Air Transportation Agency. But the partners fell out dramatically in June, with A1 effectively accusing Indigo of appointing the expat managers without their consent, and with the intention of running the airline without A1’s oversight.
In scenes that were likened to the corporate raids of the 1990s, several expat managers and Russian employees, including Pyne, Hayden and chief operating officer Guy Maclean, were evicted from the airline’s Moscow headquarters by security guards when they showed up for work on June 24.
At the time, new managers — Konstanin Teterin and Vladimir Gorbunov — accused Pyne of whimsical cancellation of flights, embezzlement and general mismanagement that they said cost the airline millions of dollars.
The evicted managers denied the charges and accused A1 of attempting a “coup” at the airline.
Both shareholders remained tightlipped about the round of negotiations that followed, though it now seems clear that they failed — and both sides have made it clear that it was the other’s fault. 
Avianova’s management accused Indigo of lying about its reasons for opening the airline and accused the U.S. shareholders of sabotaging expansion plans that would have led to competition with Central Europe-based budget airline Wizz Air.
“This conflict of interest led the Indigo Partners’ leadership to repeatedly block expansion of the Avianova fleet and the launching of new destinations in Eastern Europe, while increasing the Wizz Air fleet of 35 new Airbus aircraft,” the Avianova statement said.
“This has caused irreparable harm to the development and economic results of the company and the development of the Russian aviation industry as a whole,” it said.
The St. Petersburg Times was unable to confirm Indigo’s relation to Wizz Air on Monday.
The statement repeated the accusation that Pyne, Hayden and Maclean were installed as “unqualified but loyal” placemen to secure control of the airline’s cash flow for Indigo.
Among other things, they accused the three of “practically forcing” the airline to lease two Airbus A320s from International Lease Finance Corp.
Last week, ILFC asked a Moscow arbitration court to seize the two aircraft as security for the $320 million it is owed by the airline. Indigo Partners in response blamed the bankruptcy on “reasons outside Indigo Partners’ control,” adding that their “oversight and control” of the airline had been cut off since the expulsion of the expat managers in June.
“Since that time, Indigo’s efforts to regain its influence and save the airline have been to no avail,” the company said in an e-mailed statement.
The counterclaims continued to swirl Monday. Hayden and Pyne said in an e-mailed statement that A1 had “declined to engage seriously with prospective investors who were willing to recapitalize the airline and support its  continued operations.”
Elaborating, Hayden said A1 decided to accept an offer from a third party backed by Indigo that it had at first rejected about two weeks ago, but that it was “already too late” for Indigo, and the American firm decided to cut its losses and file for bankruptcy. Indigo was unable to make an offer directly because it would breach ownership laws.
But A1 flatly denied any such negotiations, saying by e-mail that it had “not received any official offers from any authorized structures” to buy its 51 percent share in the airline.
The expat managers at the heart of the storm say they intend to stay in Russia and have had “several job offers” from Moscow-based aviation firms.
“Personally I like Moscow — I want to stay,” Hayden said. “Hopefully I’ll be able to go on leading a normal life, even if it is with a few more gray hairs.”
Avianova’s management has suggested Hayden may face criminal investigation for deliberately deleting information from the airline’s booking system, costing the airline $20 million.
In the newest development, accounting firm KPMG has been drawn into the controversy after Pyne and Hayden accused the accountants of “gross distortion” in a report of the airline’s finances.
The pair have initiated legal action against KPMG for “libelous” statements in a report that the firm drew up on their time management of the airline.
The managers began the legal process “about two weeks ago,” Hayden said by telephone Monday. He did not say how much compensation they were seeking.
KPMG declined to respond to the accusations, saying by e-mail that the company does not comment on client matters.

TITLE: Businessman Shot Dead In Contract-Style Killing
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Russian businessman suspected of using $56 million in embezzled funds to buy a German shipyard died after being shot by a gunman at a Moscow restaurant in what appeared to be a contract killing.
The unidentified attacker fired five bullets at Andrei Burlakov and his common-law wife and business partner Anna Etkina as they dined at 5:20 p.m. last Thursday at the Khutorok cafe at 3 Leningradsky Prospekt, near the Dinamo metro station, news reports said.
Burlakov, who reportedly underwent a heart stent operation recently, was hit in the left shoulder and pronounced dead of a heart attack at the hospital.
Etkina, a former Mir Bank deputy chairwoman who suffered gun wounds to her jaw, head and chest, underwent surgery Saturday and remained in serious condition Sunday, Interfax said. 
The gunman fled with his weapon, which police say might have been an air gun modified to shoot real bullets. The killer was caught on surveillance cameras, and police described him as having a Slavic appearance and being of medium height with a black beard.
Unidentified police officials speculated to Russian news agencies that Burlakov was targeted by creditors who wanted him to repay the 50 million rubles in bail money that he posted to be freed from custody last year.
RIA-Novosti, citing a police source, reported that the 50 million rubles would be returned to Burlakov’s widow and the case against him closed. The case against Etkina remains open.
Burlakov was arrested in 2009 on suspicion of embezzling 1.8 billion rubles ($56 million) from state-owned Financial Leasing Company, a subsidiary of United Aircraft Corporation, where he worked from 2002 to 2009 and served as its first deputy general director for the last four years. He was believed to have used the money to acquire Germany’s Wadan Yards, whose board of directors he headed. Etkina, who was also arrested in 2009 and released last year, served as the president of Wadan Yards.
Burlakov sold the shipyard in 2009 to businessman Vitaly Yusufov, son of former Energy Minister Igor Yusufov. Curiously, Yusufov has since put up the shipyard as collateral for a $1.1 billion loan from Bank of Moscow to buy a 19.9 percent stake in the bank owned by its former president, Andrei Borodin.

TITLE: ‘Revolution Averted’ in South Ossetia
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Turmoil is growing in South Ossetia after the election commission of the breakaway Georgian province refused to register opposition politician Dzambolat Tedeyev as a presidential candidate.
South Ossetia’s president, Eduard Kokoity, said Monday that the authorities had prevented a “color revolution” and that Tedeyev has “no legal and no moral right” to run in the Nov. 13 election, according to a report by the region’s official news agency.
Tension has been brewing in the small mountainous republic since Tedeyev’s supporters on Friday attempted to storm the election commission, which was to decide on his application.
The standoff was defused by commission guards after shots were fired, and Tedeyev was allowed to be present during the commission’s vote on his candidacy the same evening, Kommersant reported Monday.
The commission voted 7-6 against Tedeyev on the grounds that he has not lived in South Ossetia continuously, the report said. 
Tedeyev is a former Soviet wrestling champion who serves as trainer of the Russian national wrestling team. Curiously, Kokoity is also a former wrestler.
On Sunday, Tedeyev reportedly refused an order by the republic’s prosecutor general to appear for questioning by publicly tearing the document apart. Police detained 14 of his supporters over the weekend, Interfax reported, citing the region’s deputy prosecutor Eldar Kokoyev.
Kokoity told a meeting with election commission members on Monday that the incident was “a provocation aimed to put pressure on the commission and to disrupt the elections and discredit the republic.”
The political situation in South Ossetia has been tense for months as uncertainty mounts over who will become the region’s next leader. Kokoity, who has served two five-year terms since 2001, is barred by the constitution from running a third time.
The elections commission has so far denied registration to three candidates, including Tedeyev, and registered three candidates, Inal Pliyev, a government spokesman, said by telephone Monday. He said decisions about 23 other applicants were pending.

TITLE: Portrait of Putin Sells for 200,000 Euros
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — An anonymous Russian businessman spent 200,000 euros ($269,000) on a pop-art portrait of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
“Putin-Mona Lisa,” by Georgian-American neo-pop artist David Datuna, had been on sale at the Art Moscow festival, which ran from Sept. 21 to 25.
Stronger-than-expected interest among collectors doubled the original list price of 100,000 euros, said Vera Chernysh, spokeswoman for the Mironova Gallery, which represents Datuna in Europe, Interfax reported Friday.
Art critic Tatyana Mironova speculated that last week’s announcement that Putin would run for president in the March election fueled the interest.
Chinese-American artist Alex Guofeng Cao worked with Datuna on the portrait.
Datuna’s background — he became a permanent resident of the United States in 1999 — is a curious detail, given Putin’s strained relations with Georgia and, at times, the United States.
Other works by Datuna are on display at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.

TITLE: Medvedev Says Putin Presidency Will Benefit Russia
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has defended his decision to shelve his political ambitions in favor of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, saying Putin deserved to become the next president because he is “the most authoritative politician” in the country. 
Speaking to the directors of Russia’s top three television channels, Channel One, Rossia and NTV, Medvedev said the decision to swap jobs with Putin was made for the sake of Russians’ welfare.
“What is your ambition in making this decision?” asked long-serving Channel One head Konstantin Ernst. 
“To bring benefit to my country and my people,” Medvedev replied. 
But speaking on, he compared his situation with Putin to the 2008 primaries in the United States when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton contested the Democratic Party’s nomination for the presidency.
“Can you imagine if, for example, Barack Obama had started to compete with Hillary Clinton?” he said, meaning that if they had both run for the presidency. “Well, it’s impossible for you to imagine this! They’re both from the Democratic Party, so they made a decision based on who was capable of bringing the best result.”
Unlike in the United States, however, neither Putin nor Medvedev participated in United Russia’s recent primaries or have held any open debates.
Putin is “the most authoritative politician at the moment in our country. His rating is somewhat higher,” Medvedev said.
Notably, according to the independent Levada Center pollster, Putin’s rating has been stable at 68 percent over the past three months, while Medvedev’s has ranged from 66 percent in July to 62 percent in September. 
The state-run VTsIOM pollster found an even smaller gap of only 1 percent in a survey released Friday. 
The difference between Medvedev and Putin in both polls is minuscule, considering that the margin of error for each was 3.4 percentage points. 
Medvedev gave the interview, which was aired on the three channels during primetime Friday night, because he had no choice but to explain why he had stepped aside, said Alexei Makarkin, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies.
“A motivation explaining the decision had to be announced,” he said. “For voters who support United Russia, this will be enough.”
Medvedev also addressed criticism over his declaration at a Sept. 24 United Russia convention, where he announced that he would pass the baton to Putin, that the swap had been tentatively decided before he ran for president in 2008. The acknowledgement prompted complaints that his presidency had been little more than a charade.
Medvedev said Friday that he and Putin had kept silent about the swap plan because of possible changes in voters’ preferences.
Medvedev insisted that the results of the 2012 presidential election have not been prearranged. “The choice will be made by the people. These are not empty words,” Medvedev said. “Any politician can lose during elections, as well as his political force. … What kind of predestiny?”
But if Medvedev is aware of Putin’s popular rating, he should also know that no other party stands a fighting chance against United Russia. In its latest poll, VTsIOM put the ruling party’s rating at 41 percent, followed by the Communist Party with 13 percent and the other two parties with seats in the State Duma with even less.
Medvedev was chosen at the United Russia convention to lead the party’s electoral list of candidates for the Duma elections.
In addition, the Justice Ministry has repeatedly refused to register any opposition party for years over technicalities, thus banning them from running in the elections.
What is more, no other political force has such unlimited access to the Kremlin’s propaganda machine as Medvedev and Putin. The president’s 25-minute primetime interview caused the rescheduling of popular shows on the three national channels — a privilege the opposition is unlikely to get.
In his remarks, Medvedev emphasized that he remains a leader and will continue to lead even after the presidential election. 
“The government must be renewed,” Medvedev said, suggesting that his presidential policies have led to an overhaul of the governors and police force.
Last Monday, Medvedev ousted Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who criticized Medvedev’s defense spending and said he would not work in his Cabinet. The dismissal was formally approved by Putin.
In his Friday interview, Medvedev said Kudrin’s resignation was “a case of state discipline and nothing else.” Kudrin “overstayed his time in office and had become bored,” seeking to resign back in February or March, Medvedev said. Kudrin said last week that Putin had rejected his request to quit earlier this year. 
The jury was out Sunday on whether Medvedev had succeeded in proving his case.
“Medvedev has to prove now that he is a strong figure and signal that nothing will change after they swap jobs,” Makarkin said, adding that the president faces a serious task in leading United Russia into the elections.

TITLE: Yukos Vice President Aleksanyan Dies
AUTHOR: By Andrew McChesney
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Former Yukos vice president Vasily Aleksanyan, who fought a protracted legal battle with the authorities before finally being freed on bail in 2009 to seek treatment for AIDS-related illnesses, died Monday, Dozhd television reported late Monday, citing his family. He was 39.
Aleksanyan “lived as if on a volcano” during his final years, said Yury Shmidt, a lawyer for former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
“I was talking with a friend of Aleksanyan’s three days ago. He told me that Vasily feels absolutely fine — he can eat, he can drink,” Shmidt told Izvestia. “But he lived all the time in such a state that if the slightest infection occurs, he could die in a second.”
Human rights veteran Lev Ponomarev said Aleksanyan would have lived longer if the authorities had not kept him in prison for nearly three years on charges of embezzlement and tax evasion.
“Aleksanyan’s death, no doubt, was hastened by the fact that he was kept in prison for a long time while he was seriously sick. He went blind in prison,” Ponomarev said, Interfax reported. “We have cruel system. And people are cruel, not only the system.”
He reiterated the belief of many supporters of Aleksanyan and his former boss, Khodorkovsky, that the case against Aleksanyan amounted to Kremlin punishment for Khodorkovsky’s political and commercial ambitions.
Aleksanyan, who long served as Yukos’ top lawyer, quit the company after Khodorkovsky’s arrest in 2003 but returned in March 2006 as an executive vice president to work with Yukos’ court-appointed bankruptcy manager, Eduard Rebgun. A month later, he was arrested.
A few months after his detention, Aleksanyan learned he was HIV-positive. He also began to lose eyesight in his one good eye. The other eye had been blind since a childhood accident.
Aleksanyan and his lawyers said the authorities used his illness as a bargaining chip, threatening to withhold treatment unless he agreed to testify against Khodorkovsky and his jailed business partner Platon Lebedev.
Aleksanyan’s AIDS only became public knowledge in early 2008 after Prosecutor Vladimir Khomutovsky controversially revealed it during a Supreme Court hearing.
International pressure grew throughout the year to release Aleksanyan on bail for health reasons. In addition to full-blown AIDS and fading eyesight, he suffered from liver cancer, lymphoma and tuberculosis.
In December 2008, the Moscow City Court ordered his release on bail of 50 million rubles. He posted the money and was freed in January 2009.
The case against him was dropped only last year as the statute of limitations ran out.
Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.

TITLE: Perelman Snubs Academy
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Reclusive math genius Grigory Perelman has refused to join the ranks of the Russian Academy of Sciences by not replying to a membership invitation, Interfax reported Monday.
“He hasn’t responded to our telegrams or phone calls. And he has not made any attempt to communicate with us either,” said an official with the St. Petersburg-based Steklov Institute of Mathematics, which proposed Perelman’s candidacy. 
Perelman, 44, worked for the institute in the mid-1980s before traveling to the United States for postdoctoral research. In 2002, he proved the Poincare conjecture, and the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, recognized this with a $1 million prize in 2006. But Perelman refused to collect it. 
The institute official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Interfax that the list of candidates to the academy had to be submitted by Tuesday.

TITLE: Russian Oligarchs Face Off in British Court
AUTHOR: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TEXT: LONDON — Self-exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky accused fellow tycoon Roman Abramovich of betraying and blackmailing him, as the two former business partners squared off Monday in a London courtroom in a multibillion dollar lawsuit over an oil deal.
Berezovsky’s 3.2 billion pound ($5 billion) lawsuit claims Abramovich intimidated him into selling shares in Russian oil company Sibneft at a fraction of their value. Berezovsky is alleging breach of trust and breach of contract.
The Russian tycoons became friends while working together to acquire Sibneft, said Laurence Rabinowitz, the lawyer representing Berezovsky.
“This is a case about two men who ... worked together to acquire an asset — that is Sibneft — that would make them wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of most people,” Rabinowitz told the High Court.
But their relations turned sour after Berezovsky fell out with Russian political leaders, he said, claiming that Abramovich then betrayed him in return for wealth and influence.
“It is our case that Mr. Abramovich at that point demonstrated that he was a man to whom wealth and influence mattered more than friendship and loyalty,” the lawyer alleged.
The case opened Monday and is expected to last two months. Both men appeared in court, sitting on opposite sides of the packed room.
Lawyers representing Abramovich have not outlined their case in court yet. But in written arguments, lawyer Jonathan Sumption called Berezovsky’s allegations “devoid of merit.” 
Berezovsky, a former Kremlin insider, fled to Britain in 2001 after Russian President Vladimir Putin tightened his grip on power. He has since been a vocal critic of the Kremlin.

TITLE: City Hall Reconsiders Trio of Investment Projects
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova and Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Plans to build a tunnel under the River Neva have been scrapped and the fate of two more of the city’s biggest investment projects hangs in the balance after the new city governor, Georgy Poltavchenko, questioned the need to realize the schemes.
Plans for the Novoadmiralteisky Bridge and the Palace of Arts on Vasilyevsky Island may be abandoned along with the Orlov Tunnel after City Hall’s new deputy governor in charge of finance, Sergei Vyazalov, proposed canceling the allocation of budget funds to the public-private partnership projects that were all launched under former city governor Valentina Matviyenko.
Poltavchenko said Tuesday that he had taken the decision to cancel plans for the tunnel, Interfax reported. The governor said last week that City Hall needed to establish “how rational and urgent the projects are today.” 
The Orlov Tunnel under the Neva was due to connect the Smolnaya and Sverdlovskaya embankments at the beginning of Piskaryovsky Prospekt. The project was to cost about $2 billion rubles, and preparatory work had already begun.
Igor Rimmer, a Legislative Assembly member, said Monday at a roundtable devoted to the projects that he could not help but agree with the decision to withdraw financing for the mammoth projects. 
“There are more important issues such as social problems, which can’t wait any longer for a solution, whereas building projects are not urgent at the moment,” he said. Rimmer argued that hard times lie ahead and it would be a crime to invest budget money into projects other than social ones.
Other participants in the roundtable discussion disagreed.
Igor Ivanov, head of the Roads and Bridges Association of Enterprises, argued that projects that have already been approved should not be stopped. He said the construction of the Orlov Tunnel and the Novoadmiralteisky Bridge, alongside repair work on the Palace and Tuchkov bridges, was crucial to the city’s infrastructure and residents’ comfort. When money is invested in material projects such as building ones, it can be clearly verified whether the costs are justified, while the value of social programs is not always evident, Ivanov added. 
Ivanov said that the Palace of Arts on Vasilyevsky Island was initially due to be entirely funded by private investment, but later it was announced that city budget funds would be allocated as well.  
“The problem is apparently with the investor itself, and that’s why the question of finding another one could be underway,” Ivanov said.
Nina Oding, senior economist at the Leontieff Social and Economic Research Center, said the decision to at least postpone the three projects was “excellent.” 
“The number of gigantic projects started in St. Petersburg was excessive, though they were no threat to the budget at the time they were initiated,” Oding told The St. Petersburg Times.
“The unrestrained number of projects sometimes affected their quality. Some projects were not very well developed,” she said.
Oding said that given the current situation surrounding the federal budget and risks on the global markets, it made sense to consider projects whose completion could take many years.
“Perhaps they will find less expensive and more short-term projects instead,” Oding said.
Oding said that all of the projects under discussion were aimed at easing traffic flow in and out of the city, rather than at solving congestion inside the city itself. 
“Meanwhile, the main transportation priorities of city residents are problems with parking inside the city and the lack of metro stations. The distance between most of the city’s metro stations is too long and it is inconvenient for people,” she said.
“If there were more metro stations, like in Moscow, quite a number of car owners would choose to take the metro instead of their cars inside the city,” Oding said.
Other analysts expressed concern that an unclear and changeable government policy will scare off potential investors. Alexander Khonfisakhor, a political scientist, said that illogical and unpredictable decisions by City Hall would dampen the city’s investment prospects. 
“At the same time, there was a real need to postpone some projects, because they weren’t well thought through from the very beginning,” Khonfisakhor said.
The backtracking was also interpreted as a sign that the investment problem lies deeper, in the economic and political instability of the country. Rimmer said that investments are not safe because money is subject to governmental influence in Russia, and therefore the result often doesn’t equal the cost. 
“St. Petersburg needs to develop, but the rationality of proposed projects needs to be very carefully verified,” he added. 
All of the experts at the roundtable agreed that the investment potential of St. Petersburg must be built comprehensively, taking into account Russia’s demographic crisis. Training and education programs for blue-collar workers are in decline, and there might not be sufficient labor power in the city to carry out the building of the projects under discussion. 
“If there is no one to work on the projects, what’s the point in launching them?” said Khonfisakhor.
“What the policy of the new administration will be like is too early to talk about, but it’s clear that the ambitious policy era has passed with [the departure of] Valentina Matviyenko,” said Ivanov. 
“It is necessary to create an ideology of further development. St. Petersburg must choose its future image,” said Rimmer.

TITLE: Filling Kudrin’s Shoes Will Be Hard
AUTHOR: By Martin Gilman
TEXT: Poor Anton Siluanov, Russia’s new acting finance minister. Siluanov, following in the footsteps of Alexei Kudrin, who resigned a week ago, is not to be envied. Without his predecessor’s expertise and experience, Siluanov may have been handed the proverbial poisoned chalice.
Without questioning Siluanov’s qualifications to head the Finance Ministry, it is only necessary to focus on the man whose shoes he is deigned to fill. Even Kudrin, it should not be forgotten, was not an overnight success. Few people are born with the qualities to be a good finance minister. Most, if they have the luxury of time in the job, acquire the skills, and some, like Kudrin, even develop a vision. But Kudrin’s apprenticeship to become a world-class finance minister was long. After a brief stint as a bean counter as head of the Kremlin’s control office, Anatoly Chubais brought him to the Finance Ministry in March 1997 as his first deputy. He became the finance minister himself in May 2000 and remained in this post until last Monday.
The learning curve was steep, but Kudrin was an avid student. For example, in his enthusiasm to bring costs under control as a political novice, he embarrassed the government in late March 1998, when the Financial Times quoted him out of context as trying to eliminate a large number of teachers and health workers in the budget. His earnest steps to impose spending controls on ministries and eliminate wage arrears, conceived in narrow accounting terms, initially complicated the payments situation.
While heeding the lessons of Russia’s 1998 government default in his early days as minister, he continued to focus narrowly on budget matters and often felt out of his depth when dealing with broader economic questions. In fact, during the first administration of President Vladimir Putin, he played a relatively minor role in the early economic reforms. Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov was more of a driving force until he was forced to resign in early 2004.
But Kudrin grew on the job. Perhaps his singular achievement was his insistence on creating the oil stabilization fund in 2004, which was split into the Reserve Fund and the National Wealth Fund in 2008. Even the International Monetary Fund, at least initially, inveighed against him. Haunted by the lessons of the 1998 crisis, Kudrin persevered and thus prevented a sharp appreciation of the ruble exchange rate as oil prices and capital inflows were offset by the financial wedge he created, which then cushioned the shock of the global contraction in early 2009. He also prepaid foreign public debt to the IMF and Russia’s Paris Club creditors, making the country’s debt ratio the lowest among major economies before that shock.
His instinct was to be conservative because he learned the hard way that neither high oil prices nor capital inflows could be taken for granted. Indeed, he was often worried that high oil prices would undermine his efforts to bring the non-oil deficit, now running at 6 percent of gross domestic product, under control because of spending pressures within the government. And of course he was right to be worried.
Kudrin was the longest-serving finance minister in the Group of Eight, winning the respect of his international peers and the admiration of Russian and foreign investors for his consistent efforts to pursue macroeconomic stability. His primary focus always remained constraining budgetary spending, since he understood that the private sector, not the state, had to be the engine of productive investment. Until the global financial crisis, his thinking dominated within the government.
These achievements were not obvious, since often he had to compromise against his better instincts in a government where he did not make the final decisions — although his judgment was appreciated and trusted by Putin, even when Kudrin was overruled. The fact, however, that spending nevertheless splurged under Kudrin’s watch — fueling inflation rather than growth — reflects the pressures that high oil prices make irresistible. At least Kudrin prevented it from becoming even worse.
The key point is that Kudrin evolved in his 11 years on the job and gained in stature as time went on. This experience cannot be easily replicated. In the case of Kudrin, this experience was built upon a foundation of a strong character that could stand up to pressure. This combination transformed him into a world-class finance minister, as recognized by Euromoney magazine last year.
Despite the almost farcical nature of his departure, Kudrin’s reputation stands. Unfortunately, President Dmitry Medvedev comes off looking somewhat churlish and vindictive. Siluanov is no Kudrin, and since Russia faces extraordinary challenges in both the global and domestic spheres, the economic future of the country seems dimmer than it was a week ago. Despite First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov’s support on broader fiscal issues, Siluanov will still confront a Sisyphean task, even if his appointment is a temporary measure until a new government is formed.
In the meantime, will Kudrin continue to play a role behind the scenes in the Finance Ministry, acting through his well-honed staff? Maybe, perhaps, but this is still not very reassuring.

Martin Gilman, former senior representative of the International Monetary Fund in Russia, is a professor at the Higher School of Economics.

TITLE: between the lines: Kudrin’s Wise Advice to Curb Defense Costs
AUTHOR: By Alexei Pankin
TEXT: The Russian media discussed Kudrin’s dismissal even more enthusiastically than it did the news of the tandem switch announced at United Russia’s convention on Sept. 24.
Among the many accusations leveled at Kudrin was that he had withheld the government’s oil and gas windfall in conservative savings instruments rather than pumping those funds into the economy to fund infrastructure projects.
But as one member from the early team of young reformers in the 1990s told me: “Those accusations are groundless. Kudrin is a liberal, and that means he is opposed in principle to state investments. Since he retained his post for 11 years, that means the top leadership needed such a finance minister. Perhaps the economic priorities have changed.”
In the wake of the castling move in the ruling tandem and Kudrin’s resignation, Odnako magazine released three special issues dedicated to the theme of Russia’s “new industrialization.” Odnako is edited by journalist and analyst Mikhail Leontyev, who also anchors a television program by the same name on government-controlled Channel One.
Russians, having become acquainted in the 2000s with the now-conservative Leontyev, easily forget that he was actually one of the country’s most radically liberal economic journalists of the late 1980s and 1990s.
It sometimes seems to me that Leontyev’s words express exactly what Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is thinking, although in a more caustic and polemical form. The three special issues of Odnako represent a fundamental ideological argument in favor of changing Russia’s liberal economic course to dirigisme and shifting from free trade to protectionism. These arguments are devoid of sentimental nostalgia or Communist rhetoric. On the contrary, they are very pragmatic.
Leontyev’s stance is a reflection of a larger popular mandate to support a long overdue rejection of neoliberal economic policy. But as everyone knows, the devil is in the details.
In a round-table interview with several regional newspapers, Vitaly Shlykov, the country’s leading expert on military economics, called Kudrin’s dismissal “a courageous act of self-sacrifice protesting mindless government spending, primarily for defense.” In the early 1990s, as deputy defense minister in the first Yeltsin administration, Shlykov developed a program of radical market reforms — diametrically opposed to those proposed by then-Deputy Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar — for converting the military-industrial complex. Shlykov resigned after Yeltsin adopted a program put forward by the young reformers that he considered sheer folly.
Today, Shlykov supports Kudrin’s position because the Kremlin’s plan to double military expenditures over the next three years is unprecedented. This kind of increase is normally seen only during wartime. But President Dmitry Medvedev has not explained how the budget can support such an increase.
Instead, the increase in military spending is motivated by a populist desire to show Russians and the West that Russia can still build lots of rockets, just like in the Soviet era. But nobody discusses whether those rockets are needed or which weapons are actually required to restore the country’s defensive capabilities. For Shlykov, Kudrin’s protest generates hope that a serious and professional debate on these issues will be held and that sober, prudent minds will prevail.
This military question has become mixed with the wider issue of Russia’s future economic course. This would be an excellent topic for serious political and economic discussion during this election campaign.

<I>Alexei Pankin is the editor of WAN-IFRA-GIPP Magazine for publishing business professionals.</I>

TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: There’s plenty going on in St. Petersburg this week. <b>Zoccolo</b>, the underground music club launched to replace the now-defunct legendary Moloko, will mark its fifth anniversary with a concert on Friday, Oct. 7.
Morekorabli, Polyusa and Skafandr featuring Kirpichi frontman Vasya V., aka Vasily Vasin, will perform.
Zoccolo was launched with a concert by St. Petersburg’s seminal band Tequilajazzz in 2006.
The club was formed by the same team that managed Moloko club. Moloko was seen as the successor to TaMtAm, the city’s pioneering and extremely influential alternative rock club that helped a new generation of the city’s rock bands to emerge.
“We understood that it would be impossible to recreate Moloko,” Moloko and Zoccolo founder Yury Ugryumov told this paper back in 2006. “It’s more honest to leave Moloko in the past. We’ll take something from it, some traditions will remain, but ultimately, it will be a new place,” he said.
The city will see two pretty unusual reggae concerts this week. American musician <b>Matisyahu</b>, whose music has been described as “Hasidic Jewish reggae,” will perform at Kosmonavt on Saturday, Oct. 8.
“In terms of lyrics and themes, I’ve always approached my music as an exploration of my faith,” Matisyahu told Slant Magazine in 2009.
“My personal struggles and my spiritual questions always show up there, and music has been an important part of my search.”
Thirty-two-year-old Matisyahu (born Matthew Paul Miller in West Chester, Pennsylvania) cites Bob Marley as his first serious music interest. He sings mainly in English, with bits in Hebrew and Yiddish.
From Iceland comes a very different reggae band. Called <b>Hjalmar</b>, it describes its music as a “unique blend of warm, old-school reggae, sung entirely in Icelandic.” Hjalmar will perform at the Beatles-themed bar Liverpool on Friday, Oct. 7.
The fourth <b>Ethno Mekhanika</b> music event, specializing in world music, will bring a number of musicians — most importantly, <b>Mulatu Astatke</b>, the veteran jazz musician known as the father of “Ethio jazz” — to Russia for the first time ever.
Astatke, whose music was featured in Jim Jarmusch’s 2005 film “Broken Flowers,” was born in Jimma, Ethiopia in 1943. He studied at Trinity College of Music in London and Berklee College of Music in Boston, and pioneered Ethio-jazz in the late 1960s by combining jazz and Latin music with traditional Ethiopian music.
The rest of the international acts all appear to be DJs. Montreal DJ and producer Poirier, Dutch-Dominican DJ Munchi from Rotterdam, The Netherlands, DJ trio Schlachthofbronx from Munich, Germany, and Awesome Tapes from Africa (stage name for American Brian Shimkovitz) will all take part.
All of them incorporate some kind of exotic sound into their work.
Ethno Mekhanika will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 8 at the Sergei Kuryokhin Modern Art Center.

TITLE: Forbidden art
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Censorship is forbidden by the constitution in Russia, although the past decade saw attempts to partly reintroduce a censorship body governed by the state or the church, or both. In the most recent claim last week, Vsevolod Chaplin, the Russian Orthodox Church’s top cleric for public affairs, said classic works by Vladimir Nabokov and Gabriel Garcia Marquez should be examined to see whether they condone pedophilia.
“Forbidden Art” (Zapretnoye Iskusstvo), a 158-page documentary graphic novel published by Boomkniga Publishers in St. Petersburg last week, deals with a situation in which the state and church joined forces to suppress dissent in present-day Russia. 
With drawings by artist Viktoria Lomasko and text written mostly by artist and former political journalist Anton Nikolayev, both from Moscow, the book documents the legal trial of the organizers of the “Forbidden Art 2006” exhibition held at the Andrei Sakharov museum and community center in Moscow in 2008. The trial was brought by the Orthodox Christian nationalist movement Narodny Sobor (People’s Council).
During the trial, critics found similarities with the Soviet show trials held under Joseph Stalin in the 1930s.
“Forbidden Art 2006” featured works that were rejected by Russian galleries and museums because of political or religious reasons. The works of art were put behind a false wall with peep holes in it high above the floor, and visitors had to climb up onto a bench in order to peep at the works through the holes. 
Originally, curator Andrei Yerofeyev had planned to hold the exhibition as part of the Second Biennale of Contemporary Art in Moscow in 2007, but failed to find a venue, as every gallery or museum that he approached refused to have the collection on its premises.
In 2010, Yerofeyev and his co-organizer Yury Samodurov were found guilty of inciting religious hatred and were given substantial fines (the state prosecutor had called for three-year prison sentences for both).
Additionally, both lost their jobs during the course of the trial, while a strong message was sent to galleries and museums, warning them to avoid dealing with controversial subjects, either political or religious.
A similar exhibition had previously been held at the Sakharov Center in January 2003. Called “Caution, Religion” — an ironic reference to the Soviet anti-religious clich&#233; — it comprised artworks dealing with religion, and was vandalized by a group of Orthodox Christian nationalists, who destroyed a number of the exhibits four days after the opening. The event’s organizers filed a lawsuit against the vandals, who they said caused $15,000 of damages.
The criminal investigation into the incident took a bizarre twist later that year, when a Moscow court dismissed the case against the vandals as “illegal,” and a case against the exhibition’s organizers was filed instead. In 2005, organizers Samodurov and Lyudmila Vasilovskaya, an employee of the Sakharov Center, were found guilty of inciting national and religious hatred and fined 100,000 rubles (approx. $3,080) each.
Speaking at a presentation of the book at the bookstore Vse Svobodny, Nikolayev said that he had the idea of documenting Yerofeyev and Samodurov’s trial, which he described as a “social comedy,” because he felt it would expose the characters of the people involved as well as new social trends.
“Anton used to be a political journalist, while I was an illustrator for political publications, and we got together some time before the trial to make ‘graphic reports,’” said Lomasko, who co-authored a small book called “Province” (Provintsiya) with Nikolayev in 2010.
“We wanted to achieve a synthesis of text and imagery that would be so solid and aesthetically beautiful that it could make the grade as a work of art.” 
According to Lomasko, the two went to the hearings against Samodurov and Vasilovskaya, where Lomasko made live sketches, while Nikolayev recorded the developments and his own thoughts. Both recorded remarks made by participants during the trial.
“We sat next to each other and said, ‘What a scene. It should be drawn,” Lomasko said.
At times, the trial resembled a farce. One illustration shows an improbable scene in which the female judge sprays a group of old religious women who have come to support the prosecution with a bottle of French perfume.
“When the trial was coming to a close, it was summer and it was abnormally hot, almost 39 degrees, while the courtrooms are small rooms that they hardly ever air, and it stank horribly of sweat in there,” Lomasko said.
“Suddenly, Judge Alexandrova produced her French perfume and started spraying the Orthodox women with the words ‘People should wash.’ And they replied, ‘You go and get washed.’”
Lomasko said that she had heard opinions that such scenes could only be artistic devices or fantasies.
“No, they are all genuine incidents,” she said. “As to the comments, we simply shortened them and chose the most significant ones.”
Lomasko said she was not sure whether it was correct to call them Orthodox Christians.
“They don’t follow Orthodox Christian ideology — quite the opposite, they’re very aggressive, they don’t want to understand other people and they call for physical punishment,” she said.
“But in fact, we even grew to love them a little. Their appearances were very interesting to me as an artist — how they looked, how they were dressed, their gestures, their faces.”
Lomasko said that she and Nikolayev were not biased when they started working on the series.
“We didn’t come there thinking that the artists were cool and that the Orthodox Christians were bad; maybe they were sincere in believing that they had been insulted [by the exhibition],” she said.
According to Nikolayev, the majority of those who supported the prosecution were in fact deceived. 
“They were set up by the court system and by the FSB (Federal Security Service) men, who set them upon the artists,” he said.
“[The authorities] often scare the intelligentsia by hounding certain marginal groups that seem threatening to them. It’s simply a tool. This trial was set up to scare the intelligentsia.”
In July 2010, Samodurov and Yerofeyev were found guilty of inciting religious hatred and fined 200,000 rubles ($6,160) and 150,000 rubles ($4,620), respectively.
In June, Yerofeyev was fired from his job as the head of the contemporary art department of the State Tretyakov Gallery. In August, Samodurov resigned from his position as the director of the Sakharov Center, citing disagreements with the U.S.- based Sakharov Foundation board of directors, who reduced funding drastically in the wake of the 2008 presentation of “Forbidden Art  2006.”
Soon after the verdict, Patriarch Kirill I, who has headed the Russian Orthodox Church since February 2009, condemned the exhibition’s organizers, saying they were involved in “demonic activities.”

<I>“Forbidden Art” by Viktoria Lomasko and Anton Nikolayev is available at selected bookstores.</I>

TITLE: Renaissance man
AUTHOR: By Kristina Aleksandrova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Leonardo da Vinci may be best known as the creator of the Mona Lisa and her enigmatic smile, but the artist and inventor’s boundlessly diverse repertoire had a darker side too, stretching to designs for military machines designed to kill a maximum number of people. 
The multiple talents of the ultimate Renaissance man and one of the art world’s most mysterious figures are now on display at the Artillery Museum, including fascinating machines built using sketches made by da Vinci for inventions that until recently remained on paper.
The “Da Vinci: The Genius” exhibition, which opened at the weekend, gives visitors a chance not only to see many of the devices that the artist dreamed of bringing to life, but also to touch them. Until now, most of his ideas were no more than sketches between the lines of his legendary codices. For more than ten years, the Italian expert Modesto Veccia, president of the Fondazione Anthropos and curator of the Il Genio di Leonardo da Vinci museum in Italy, has devoted his time to painstakingly reconstructing ingenious machines according to da Vinci’s drawings. Along with a group of colleagues, Veccia analyzed about 6,000 pages of manuscripts — a task that was even more challenging than it was time-consuming, for in a cunning 15th-century way of securing his copyright, da Vinci deliberately made mistakes in some of his designs in order to stop them from being stolen.
By piecing together all the necessary information chaotically spread out among the codices, Veccia managed to unravel the artist’s complex designs. On their basis, 120 different machines and devices were eventually created. 
“In making this exhibition, we wanted to show the different sides of the genius of da Vinci,” said Bruce Peterson, the exhibition’s organizer. 
“The exposition is extremely educative due to the great variety of information you can see here. Moreover, you can interact with all the inventions on show.”
The exhibition begins with a collection of small books with yellowed pages — exact copies of da Vinci’s priceless codices. Even a cursory glance at the notebooks of da Vinci, packed with weird and wonderful sketches, creates the impression that their author knew all the secrets of the universe. The script is unintelligible, even to Italian speakers: The artist was famous for his mirror writing, perhaps another way of safeguarding his inventions.
Luckily, the exhibition includes a touch screen display where visitors can look through all of the codices and find detailed information about all of the machines on show. This is sometimes essential, as it can be difficult to understand what exactly da Vinci intended his contraptions to do. In others, however, it is easy to see in the outlandish wooden models the prototype of modern equipment.
Da Vinci foresaw the invention of both the clock and the automobile as far back as the 15th century. His lack of formal education did not prevent him from dreaming of — and designing — flying apparatus. As a child, he was fascinated by birds, and he devoted a considerable amount of time to examining the world around him and teaching himself the principles of aerodynamics.
“I think that the most fascinating thing created by da Vinci is scuba diving equipment,” said Peterson. 
“He accurately developed a special breathing apparatus that humans could use to stay underwater.”
Da Vinci’s proposed application for diving equipment was to defend territories from enemies underwater. Another of his military machines on display is a prototype of a modern tank. The compact wooden machine equipped with cannons was designed to cause mass destruction.
It is difficult to reconcile some of these plans for deadly machines with the polymath’s more beautiful works of art, which are also featured in the exhibition. Indeed, no exposition of da Vinci is complete without his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, a replica of which hangs in the middle of the hall. Unlike in the Louvre, however, where the original is kept, visitors can see both the front and back of the iconic masterpiece. All the wear the painting has sustained, every mark and crack of the original have been copied.
The small painting is dwarfed by the accompanying information boards devoted to some of the mysteries that La Gioconda may conceal. For example, in the middle of the back panel of the portrait is the number 29. This in itself is no mystery: It is the number in a series of masterpieces that were moved from Versailles to the Louvre after the French Revolution. But above the number, the letter H has been scribbled. Nobody knows what it stands for, or when it appeared on the back of the painting.
Other riddles are little by little revealed by fine art photographer and scientist Pascal Cotte’s powerful 3D replica. Numerous close-ups of the Mona Lisa’s smile, hands and eyes are exhibited, with the aim of showing how the project developed and changed in the artist’s mind. Cotte’s camera also reveals the original pigment colors of the painting. 
The exposition ends with an entertaining documentary about The Last Supper, da Vinci’s other best known painting.
The extravaganza of talent on display may well leave visitors surprised that da Vinci, who once said that “We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God,” reproached himself at the end of his life for having offended both God and mankind because he had not “labored in art as he ought to have done.”

<I>“Da Vinci: The Genius” runs through Jan. 10 at the Artillery Museum, 7 Alexandrovsky Park. Tel. 232 0296. M. Gorkovskaya. www.davincithegenuis.com.</I>

TITLE: the word’s worth: Hardcore and Awesome!
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: <I>Î÷êîâàòü: to be scared, to turn tail</I>

Lately, I’ve been indulging in my favorite procrastination pastime — reading Russian blogs. When the posters are young and snarky — and the posters are almost always young and snarky — this is a humbling experience. Four decades of Russian-language competence go out the window. Once again, I’m a first-year Russian student, reading a sentence four times, recognizing half the words, guessing at others by their roots and totally baffled by the rest. Either the poster is terrified, or he can’t see, or maybe he won something. The last comment was really funny. Or it was awful. Or it was awfully funny.
Why can you people speak Russian?
After hours of googling, pouring over online and print dictionaries and interrogating young people of my acquaintance, I’ve managed to translate some frequently recurring words from <I>ìîëîä¸æíûé ñëåíã</I> (youth slang) into <I>ëèòåðàòóðíûé ÿçûê</I> (standard Russian).
My first new word was æåñòü. If you look it up in a standard dictionary, you’ll see that it means sheet metal or tinplate. Only it’s hard to imagine that in a discussion about some dreadful event someone would respond with an emphatic “Sheet metal!” <I>Æåñòü</I> apparently comes from <I>æåñòîêî</I> (harsh, cruel), and in slang it can refer to something horrible:  <I>Âîò òàêóþ æèâóþ æåñòü îáíàðóæèëè â êàíàëèçàöèè: êîëîíèÿ îãðîìíûõ ÷åðâåé</I> (A real horror show was discovered in the sewer system: a colony of huge worms).  <I>Æèòü è ðàñòèòü äåòåé â òàêîì ñîñòîÿíèè âîéíû è àäà — ýòî ïîëíàÿ æåñòü</I> (Living and raising kids in this state of war and hell — it’s just rotten). <I>Òû ñëûøàë, ÷òî îí åé ãîâîðèë? Æåñòü!</I> (Did you hear what he said to her? Harsh!)
Æåñòü can also refer to something dangerous — for example, in sports: <I>Àëüïèíèñòû íî÷åâàëè â ìåøêàõ íà ñòåíàõ. Íàñòîÿùàÿ æåñòü!</I> (The mountain climbers slept in bags hanging from the walls. Now that’s what I call extreme sports!) In another medium, it can refer to something violent and obscene: <I>Ñëîâà â ïåñíå — æåñòü!</I> (Those song lyrics are hardcore!)
It can also be used to describe something violent and funny. Here “funny” is in the eye of the beholder: <I> êëèïå òðîå äåâóøåê èçáèâàþò ìàëü÷èêà — ïðèêîëüíî! Æåñòü!</I> (In the video three girls beat up a boy. It’s a riot — hardcore!)
When confronted with <I>æåñòü</I>, the normal human reaction is <I>î÷êîâàòü</I> (to be frightened). <I>Î÷êîâàòü</I> seems to have started its slangy life in the camps, where it meant to be scared witless. As so often happens, <I>î÷êîâàòü</I> became a bit tamer as it entered the language of the general population, and is now used to describe someone behaving like a coward or feeling apprehensive about something. As two guys get ready for a B&E, one might say: <I>×òî-òî î÷êóþ. Òî÷íî îõðàííèêà íåò?</I> (This is starting to spook me. You sure there’s no guard?)  
Another popular bit of slang is the evocative <I>ëàáçäà</I>, which means busy-work or any kind of senseless activity. When Mom tells Vanya Junior to clean his room, he might mutter: <I>Ëàáçäà òàêàÿ</I>. (What a waste of time).
And then there’s <I>çèõåð</I> (or <I>çåõåð</I>), which appears to be less widely used. It refers either to a person or an action that is underhanded, mean or vile. When a kid trips the guy speeding by on his roller blades, his friend with a conscience might say: <I>Ýòî êîíêðåòíî çèõåð</I>  (That was, like, real low, man.)
But his snarky friend just laughs and says: <I>Æåñòü!</I>

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

TITLE: Sensational color
AUTHOR: By Olga Panova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “The Sense of Color” exhibition that opened its doors Monday at the Academy of Arts gives Petersburgers a unique opportunity to appreciate the work of the Italian artist Gianni Maimeri.
The exposition, which comprises about 300 works, is the biggest exhibition of the artist’s works since 1919, when Maimeri’s work was showcased in his hometown of Milan. 
“St. Petersburg and Milan, as we know, are sister cities,” said Gianni Cervetti, president of the Italy Russia Foundation that oversees the Year of Italian Culture in Russia events.
“This is no coincidence. They have both been and continue to be the driving force of modernity in their respective countries: Russia and Italy.” 
Maimeri (1884-1951) was an extremely eclectic artist who managed to continue a long line of both cultural and artistic fine art traditions in an independent manner, having declined to follow the Vanguards of the early 20th century. He strived to depict reality based on information received through the senses, neglecting logic, formalities and the uniform stylistic shapes that dominated his epoch. 
The exhibition, according to its organizers, is primarily aimed at “giving Gianni Maimeri the recognition he so fully deserves,” as well as focusing on the life, ideas and actions of the artist. 
The exhibition, which comprises oil paintings, drawings and pastels, is divided into themes. It opens with the celebrated “The Tabarin” (1914), inspired by the famous cabaret of the same name. Maimeri was “struck by the green clothing on the dancer, something alive and green in an ambiguous and smoky atmosphere,” he wrote, describing the genesis of the painting in his diaries. The painting was described by the Italian art critic Raffaele De Grada as “the picture that best represents the culture, colors and sensations of life at the beginning of the 20th century.”  
The cycle “Musicians and Nocturnes” evokes life in Milan in the 1920s to 1930s, a time when all the greatest musicians of the world, including many Russians, performed in the theaters of Milan. Inspired by the world of music in general and the atmosphere of the theaters in particular, the cycle includes a series of drawings of eminent musicians, including Toscanini, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, that have been shown only once before, in 1992 in Milan’s La Scala theater. 
“My grandfather had a strong passion for music,” said Gianni Maimeri Junior, president of the Maimeri Foundation and one of the organizers of the exhibition. 
“Every time he went to a concert, he hid a notebook and pencil in a small pocket. He would listen while fixing on the paper what he was hearing, with the intention of making the sound visible.” 
The third hall of the exhibition houses the “Figures, Flowers, Still Lifes and Interiors” series, comprising a diverse selection of oil paintings and six works made using tempera grassa on masonite and wool, illustrating Maimeri’s passion for color, which is also reflected in the name of the exhibition, “The Sense of Color”. 
“All the works are united by a common vision of life, and by sentiment as the defining element of emotions and attitudes to human beings,” said Maimeri’s grandson.
The “Marine” series was inspired by trips around Lombardy, Venice, Rome and other regions and cities, while the “Navigli” cycle depicting a Milan dominated by waterways is the painter’s protest against the initiative of the Milanese government to fill in the canals in 1929 in the name of progress and development. The series is a fascinating insight into a Milan that no longer exists. 
The final part of the exhibition demonstrates the development of the artist’s technical and entrepreneurial dream. In 1923, Maimeri, together with his brother Carlo, a chemist, founded a company producing fine art paints, launching a brand that is now known all over the world. This section of the exhibition is devoted to the history of the artist’s family, as well as to the origin and development of the factory, demonstrating an entrepreneurial model in which products, passion and respect combine to create a positive ethical and social role, according to Maimeri Junior. 
“Similarly, these values are to be found in Gianni Maimeri’s paintings, especially in the figures animated by a strong and decent sentiment, in landscapes where nature and his deep respect for it emerge with exuberance and balance, in the musicians in which the ‘product’ resonates and imposes some kind of rightful attention similar to that which the author himself considered due to every human being based on what they can produce, and not on what they own,” said Maimeri.

<I>“The Sense of Color. Gianni Maimeri” runs through Nov. 6 at the Academy of Arts, 17 Universitetskaya Naberezhnaya. Tel. 323 6496. M. Vasileostrovskaya.</I>

TITLE: The king of surrealism: Dali in Moscow
AUTHOR: By Jekaterina Tchekourda
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As part of the Spanish-Russian year of cultural exchange, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts on Friday opened its doors to the largest exhibition of Salvador Dali artworks in Russia.
Until Nov. 13, “Salvador Dali: a Retrospective” showcases more than a hundred pieces, including 25 oil paintings, 20 watercolors, 70 drawings, and many personal items and photographs of the young Dali. “Napoleon’s Nose, Transformed Into a Pregnant Woman, Strolling His Shadow With Melancholia Amongst Original Ruins,” a surrealistic masterpiece drawn in 1945, is a centerpiece.
“Dali’s talent had many facets. He was a charismatic person who dared to make shocking statements. His personality corresponds to today’s information age. If Dali had not existed, we would have invented him,” curator Alexei Petukhov said in opening remarks.
The grand opening was attended by first lady Svetlana Medvedeva and Spanish Ambassador Luis Felipe Fernandez de la Pena.
The Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation provided the loans, part of the collection of the Teatro-Museo Dali in the artist’s rural hometown, Figueres, Spain. The Teatro-Museo is a former town theater that Dali remodeled in 1974 and, as he wished, contains his crypt.
“I needed to travel to Dali’s roots, and I was indeed inspired by the artist’s hometown and birthplace, and the incredible setup of the Teatro-Museo,” said designer Boris Messerer, when asked about his inspiration for the show’s layout.
Meant to evoke the feeling of entering Dali’s surrealistic world, Messerer’s design places giant egg sculptures along the stairs leading to the two main exhibition rooms. In one room, a film of the artist’s life is screened.
The retrospective begins with works Dali created in his 20s. An idee fixe is Dali’s wife and longtime muse, Gala. She appears in many of the oil paintings and aquarelles.
Born Yelena Dyakonova in Kazan, Gala traveled to Switzerland in 1913, where she met her first husband, French surrealist poet Paul Eluard. In 1929, the couple traveled to Spain to meet an aspiring young painter — 25-year-old Dali. After a longtime affair, Dali and Gala wed in 1934.
“Portrait of Gala With Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder” epitomizes Dali’s particular love for Gala as well as for detail. A miniature, 6-by-8-centimeter canvas reveals an intricate beauty — to the closely standing observer.
Gala is Dali’s special link to Russia, and even though he never spoke his wife’s mother tongue, he enjoyed the sound of the language and asked Gala to read to him in Russian.
Dali was born Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech on May 11, 1904, in the small agricultural town of Figueres. He attended the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, and early recognition of his talent came with his first solo show in Barcelona in 1925.
Though Dali was one of the main figures in the surrealistic movement, his political clashes with other surrealists led to ostracism in 1934. During World War II, Dali and Gala emigrated to the United States, where they lived until 1948.
After the war, the couple returned to Spain, where Dali began to employ more religious and scientific themes in his work.
“Dali is special to the art world because he’s an artist of the modern age. His whole life was an art object in itself,” curator Petukhov told reporters.
Pushkin Museum director Irina Antonova emphasized the friendly cooperation between the Russian and Spanish museums that made the project possible, and noted that Russian visitors to the Dali museum in Figueres have for years been one of the largest international groups.

<I>“Salvador Dali: a Retrospective” runs through Nov. 13 at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, 12 Ulitsa Volkhonka. Metro Kropotkinskaya. 
Tel. (495) 697 9578, www.museum.ru/gmii/.</I>

TITLE: THE DISH: Comme Il Faut
AUTHOR: By Ronan Loughney
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>Costly Indifference</b>
The covert positioning of expensive restaurants on the upper floors of hotels and malls is a peculiar phenomenon in St. Petersburg, a trend that Comme Il Faut unfortunately perpetuates. Although located on the second floor inside a shopping complex, there is actually no clear sign for the restaurant either outside or once you reach the restaurant itself, a confusion added to by an entrance which on first glance may or may not be a door. The staff don’t seem particularly perturbed by the labyrinthine journey, with one waitress asking in pleasant surprise (in English) “So how did you even find us?” And it is this willingness to exist in the background, to be and not to thrive, that characterizes Comme Il Faut, jarring though such a philosophy is for a restaurant presenting itself as inspired by France, a country that traditionally leads the cultural and culinary avant-garde.
Unsurprisingly, in light of this attitude, the restaurant was empty, and the waiter explained that most business comes from weddings and business functions, which explains the stage and speakers tacked on at the back of the room. It was somewhat perplexing that our party of two was seated at a table for eight, and inexcusable that although pre-booked, the staff only then set the table, though there were plenty of ready-set two-person places. Other than this oversight, the general feel of the restaurant did in fact do much to combat the awkwardness of dining in a large space in a small party. Sunlight filters in to the restaurant through amber and burgundy stained glass, imbuing the interior with a peaceful warmth and making the muted maroon and cream interior tasteful rather than prim, while bouncy though bland lounge jazz/acoustic pop fills the silence: Nice, but nothing new.
But, this being a French restaurant, the proof was always going to be in le pudding. On the face of it, the menu suggests that it is here that the real ambition lies, offering a combination of French, Russian and Asian cuisine. 
The menu attempts to straddle the line between fusion and functional cuisine, but sitting on the fence means not tasting the fruit from either garden. The fish solyanka (390 rubles, $11.80) seemed to have been prepared solely with the aim of not offending the palette. Its timidity was especially detrimental given that the dish is renowned for its sour and spicy kick, which at Comme Il Faut was distinctly lacking. Though served quickly, it was lukewarm, and disappointingly for a soup made up of three different kinds of fish, its main substance was provided by vegetables. 
The Thai salad with pork (440 rubles, $13.40) was much better, served on fresh, crunchy vegetables with a spicy-sweet sauce, though it could never be the kind of dish with which a restaurant distinguishes itself.
The overall impression of indifference was most completely encapsulated in the duck with sweet and sour sauce (750 rubles, $22.90), a cautious attempt at a synthesis of French-style roast duck and an Asian-style sauce. The meat was on the right side of chewy and was complemented well enough by the sauce, but there was nothing at all striking about it. Furthermore, in the menu, no side dish is listed as accompanying this meal — or indeed several others — yet there is no provision on the menu to add one. Though the waiter acquiesced to the “specialist” suggestion of a side of fries, they eventually came instead of the spinach-bed advertised in the menu, rather than in addition to it, even though they then appeared on the bill for an additional 150 rubles ($4.60). 
The veal fillet with chanterelles (790 rubles, $24) was flavorsome if unimaginative, and the meat itself was slightly overcooked.
Such a lack of passion is not perhaps unique, but the prices here demand something extra, something that distinguishes the restaurant and justifies the cost. However, the failure to prepare even simple dishes well, to be not only unambitious but also uninterested, is Comme Il Faut’s real downfall. C’est la vie perhaps, but that’s no excuse.

TITLE: A City of Bridges and Caves
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ORYOL — A city of bridges, Oryol is spread out on the banks of the Oka River and its tributary, the Orlik, which flow through the city center and are dotted with fishermen.
But there’s another Oryol associated with legends and mysteries that are known to just a handful of residents. Walking along the compact and tidy streets, with red-and-yellow trams passing by squat houses, you would hardly think that you are walking above kilometers of underground caves and lakes.
There are two major caves under the town, which the adventurous visitor can access through narrow holes, while a number of other caves remain undiscovered, said Mikhail Sakharov, a speleologist who also teaches history at a local school.
The caves and tunnels were dug in the 18th century, when locals started to mine limestone for construction works. But few Oryol residents dare to explore the underground landscapes.
“There are very few romantics who want to see them,” Sakharov said.
Still, there are adventurers like him who are ready to spend hours wandering along the dark underground passageways with a flashlight, despite mysterious legends associated with the place.
One legend, which dates back to the early 20th century, says a young woman dressed in white suddenly appeared in front of a man on the street and tried to seduce him. When he refused, he found himself in the underground passageways.
Another mystery, which puzzles local speleologists, are the unidentified white spots floating in the air of the caves that are invisible to the human eye but can be seen in photographs taken underground.
But no one questions Oryol’s origins. The city was founded in 1566, when Ivan the Terrible ordered a fortress built at the two rivers’ meeting point to protect Muscovy’s southern boundaries.
Most people believe the city got its name from the Orleya River, which was subsequently renamed Orlik. But romantics argue that the name, which means “eagle” in Russian, is associated with the proud bird. One old legend says Ivan the Terrible decided to call the town Oryol after a large eagle flew off the top of an oak tree when peasants started to cut it down to make way for the foundation of the fortress.
The bird is the unofficial symbol of the city, and a large statue made of branches and depicting an eagle with its wings spread stands near the railway station.
No matter how Oryol got its name, the city has repeatedly proved its ability to block the country’s enemies. Severe battles broke out here during World War II when Oryol was occupied by Nazi troops in 1941 and badly destroyed during bombings.
The city was liberated two years later during the famous Kursk Bulge battle, with Moscow celebrating the victory with fireworks for the first time in the history of the Great Patriotic War. Oryol, which subsequently was awarded the title of “city of war glory,” has frequently been called “the city of the first fireworks.”
The city acquired its current appearance largely after the war, with many of its destroyed houses reconstructed in the 1950s. Indeed, with its two- and three-story pale-yellow houses with wooden staircases inside, Oryol has preserved the atmosphere of that time, making visitors feel like a character in a Soviet movie.
The old houses stand next to newer apartment buildings built in the 1970s that resemble cardboard boxes. But some corners of the city bring you back to the pre-revolutionary era when Oryol saw outstanding writers of the 19th century walking along its leafy, green streets.
The town where Ivan Turgenev and Leonid Andreyev were born and where Nikolai Leskov spent his early childhood has rightly earned the reputation of a literary mecca, with thousands of tourists visiting local museums devoted to the writers every year.
Ivan Bunin, who came to the town in 1889 to work at a local newspaper as a copy editor, later provided a precise description of Oryol in one of his novels. A public garden with an arbor on the left bank of the Orlik is widely believed to be part of the former estate described in Turgenev’s novel “Home of the Gentry.” The garden is a favorite place for Oryol residents to take a walk.
Meanwhile, preserving historical traditions has not prevented the city from moving forward in its economic development.
The city’s economy largely relies on manufacturing, which provides almost a quarter of all jobs. Among the key industries are the production of machinery and equipment, food production and metalware manufacturing.
Big domestic companies represented here include the diamond monopoly Alrosa, dairy producer Unimilk and one of Russia’s biggest steelmakers, Severstal.
Oryol is also attracting big foreign companies. Among the city’s oldest investors is Coca-Cola, whose local plant opened 15 years ago and is one of the company’s biggest facilities in Russia. In 2009, French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis acquired a local pharmaceutical plant to produce and pack insulin. Italian tile maker Marazzi Group and Greek refrigerator producer Frigoglass also have factories here.
<b>What to see if you have two hours</b>
Oryol has 17 bridges scattered across the city that provide breathtaking views, particularly from locations in the city center. One of the best is from a small bridge near the Bogoyavlensky Cathedral, currently under reconstruction, where you can watch the Orlik quietly flowing in the cradle of its steep banks.
Another church — the majestic Mikhail Archangel Cathedral, with its huge golden dome rising above the surrounding trees and reflected in the waters of Orlik — is located almost on the riverbank.
Walk down along the embankment to have a short chat with the local fishermen and then across the big Alexandrovsky Bridge decorated with eagle figures to get to Ulitsa Lenina, where local artists display their paintings. The still-life paintings and landscapes sell for an average of 3,000 rubles ($90), although the price for some reaches 12,000 rubles.
On a hot day, take a trip along the Oka by river taxi, which departs from the central lifeboat station just a short walk from the city center. The river taxi passes by the junction of the Oka and Orlik — the place where the city started, locals like to relax on the weekends and where a huge stele erected for the city’s 400th anniversary in 1966 commemorates the most important events in its history.
The 40-minute trip costs about 150 rubles. Tickets are available from a small blue booth near the quay, but note that the river taxi only departs if 10 passengers are willing to take the trip.
<b>What to do if you have two days</b>
For those interested in Russian literature, there’s no better place to learn than in Oryol, which has five museums devoted to the famous writers Turgenev, Leskov, Andreyev and Bunin. You can easily spend a day moving from one mansion to another and looking at the writers’ personal items.
But if you want to spend time outside the town, one option is to visit Turgenev’s ancestral home in the village of Spasskoye-Lutovinovo located 50 kilometers northeast of Oryol. The estate, where Turgenev spent his childhood and where he later came in search of inspiration, is now a museum preserving the writer’s belongings.
A wooden mezzanine house with carved terraces — the heart of the estate — has hosted many notable guests, like writers Nikolai Nekrasov and Leo Tolstoy.
Check out the original interior and a Turgenev family heirloom — the Vernicle Icon — and take a walk in the park surrounding the house, with its linden alleys and romantic paths leading to a pond.
 (Spasskoye-Lutovinovo Museum-Reserve, 3 Muzeinaya Ulitsa, Spasskoye-Lutovinovo village, Mtsensk district, the Oryol region, +7 4864-66-72-14, spasskoye-lutovinovo.ru. To get there, take a bus from the Oryol bus station to Mtsensk (departs every 30 minutes), and daily buses from Mtsensk to Spasskoye-Lutovinovo are available at 5:40 a.m., 6:40 a.m., 8:15 a.m., 1:50 p.m., 4:30 p.m. and 6:50 p.m.)
Another possible out-of-town destination is the Orlovskoye Polesye National Park (polesie.ru). Walk around the forest, rent a boat for a ride across one of its lakes, or sit quietly with fishing tackle. Accommodation is available in the Dom Lesnika hotel located on the park (Dom Lesnika, Radovishche village, Khotynetsky district, the Oryol region, +7 9208-15-11-51. Prices start at 3,500 rubles ($110) per night for a double. Fishing equipment and boats are provided for free).

<b>Cultural tips</b>
With its four theaters, Oryol boasts a rich cultural life. The Oryol State Academic Theater of Ivan Turgenev (2 Ploshchad Lenina, +7 4862-76-16-39, theaterorel.ru) and the theater Svobodnoye Prostranstvo (2 Ploshchad Marxa, +7 4862-44-25-52, teatr.orel.ru) offer a wide range of classical plays, as well as those by modern playwrights like American Ken Ludwig.
The repertoire of the local Philharmonic Hall (23 Ulitsa Lenina, +7 4862-76-49-63, philharmusic.ru) includes pieces from Russian and foreign classical music performed by local and visiting musicians.

<b>Where to eat</b>
Among the restaurants recommended by locals is Riviera (86 Naberezhnaya Dubrovinskogo, +7 4862-55-66-01) focusing on Mediterranean cuisine. For that reason, the place is favored by Italians working in town, together with visiting actors and local officials. The venue, located in the city center, also claims to be Oryol’s only restaurant where waiters remove the bones from your dorado filet before serving. A meal for one costs 1,000 rubles ($30), including alcohol. For a slice of pizza, visit the Italian restaurant Mezonin (4 Kromskoye Shosse, +7 4862-20-12-22, grinn-corp.ru/content/view/324/122/). Although located on the city’s outskirts, the restaurant is frequented by foreigners. One nice thing about the place is a complimentary glass of Italian lemon liqueur Limoncello from the owner, who hails from Sicily. The average bill for one is 700 rubles to 1,000 rubles without alcohol.
Local expats also like Labirint (6 Ulitsa Pushkina, +7 4862-42-65-32), a three-story cafe that was the first in Oryol to offer business lunches. Among foreigners’ favorite dishes are beef carpaccio and pork steak served in a champignon sauce. Labirint, which is a popular venue for the local business elite to hold negotiations, also boasts a grill menu. A meal for one costs between 700 rubles and 1,000 rubles, including alcohol.

<b>Where to stay</b>
Oryol has a couple of hotels that claim to provide business-class accommodation and are popular among visiting show-business celebrities and regional officials.
Hotel Oryol (4 Ploshchad Mira, +7 4862-55-05-25, +7 4862-55-15-60, orelhotel.ru), which opened in 1956 and is located in a Soviet-era building with a dominating crown-shaped terrace, looks monumental. This downtown hotel is close to the city’s major places of interest and is about 10 minutes from the railway station by taxi. Prices range from 2,000 rubles ($60) per person per night for a single to 6,400 per person per night for a luxury suite and include breakfast.
The Grinn hotel (4 Kromskoye Shosse, +7 4862-44-01-94, hotelgrinn.ru/en) is located on the outskirts, but it only takes about 10 minutes to get to the city center by taxi. Add an extra 10 minutes for a trip to the train station and prepare for an hourlong ride during rush hour. The hotel is part of an entertainment complex with several restaurants, a shopping center, a bowling club and a covered skating rink. Prices range from 2,500 rubles per person per night for a single to 20,000 rubles per person per night for the presidential suite, including breakfast.

<b>Conversation starters</b>
You can’t go wrong talking about fishing, which is the locals’ passion. Oryol fishermen are very talkative and can give you a tip on the place to get the best catch.
“There’s plenty of fish, up to here,” one fishermen on the bank of the Orlik, told a reporter, pointing to his tanned chin in a symbolic gesture. “The banks are packed on the weekends. Bream and carp bite best in June through September.”
Literature is also a sure bet for conversation.

<b>Other helpful hints</b>
Oryol residents keep their town clean. On a recent visit, no beer bottles or food wrappers could be seen lying around on the streets. Unlike in some provincial towns, it is easy to find a trash bin.

<b>How to get there</b>
The city’s only airport is currently closed for modernization in line with the government’s program to upgrade a number of airports in central Russia, with the city administration looking for an investor to implement the project as a public-private partnership.
The fastest way to travel the 1,050-kilometer route to Oryol is by train. There are no express trains from St. Petersburg, but seven trains heading to a number of cities like Simferopol, Sevastopol or Feodosa pass through Oryol, with prices starting at 1,300 rubles one way for a third-class ticket.
<hr>
<b>Oryol</b>
<I>Population: 317,854
Main industries: manufacturing, retail and wholesale trade, services sector, construction and agriculture
Mayor: Viktor Safyanov
Founded in 1566
Interesting fact:</I> Oryol was among the first Russian cities where electric trams appeared in the late 19th century. The first line opened here in 1898, and Tsar Nicolas II visited the city to test the new transportation system.
Sister cities: Razgrad, Bulgaria; Nokia, Finland; Offenbach am Main, Germany; Kerch, Ukraine
Helpful contacts: 
• Nadezhda Leonova, a spokeswoman for Oryol’s mayor (speaks English) 
(+7 4862-43-29-74, orel-adm.ru);
• Svyatoslav Komarov, president of the Oryol Chamber of Trade and Industry (+7 4862-73-66-02, 
+7 4862-73-66-07, palata.orel.ru)

Major Factories
• Coca-Cola HBC Eurasia, 
(6 Italyanskaya Ulitsa, 
+7 4862-42-12-34; coca-colahellenic.ru) produces Coca-Cola, 
Fanta and Sprite, as well as the local brand Fruktaim. 
• Oryol-Alrosa, (24 Ulitsa Gorkogo, 
+7 4862-43-71-13; eng.alrosa.ru) is a gem-cutting unit of diamond monopoly Alrosa.
• Severstal-Metiz, (105 Razdolnaya Ulitsa, +7 4862-36-20-77; severstalmetiz.com/eng) is one of the three metalware plants of Severstal-Metiz, a subsidiary of steel giant Severstal.
<hr>
<b>Viktor 
Safyanov, 
Mayor</b>

Q: Why invest in Oryol? 
A: First, because it has a good location in the center of European Russia at a distance of 368 kilometers from Moscow and 1,024 kilometers from St. Petersburg. Oryol is a big transportation hub, with goods being shipped to Central and Eastern Europe via Ukraine and Belarus. Second, because we have six available production sites with an overall area of more than 123,000 square meters that can be used to implement investment projects.
Q: Which industries have the best investment prospects in Oryol? 
A: We welcome investment aimed at developing the manufacturing and services sector that will create new jobs and improve the living standard. Investing in energy efficiency projects and modernizing the city infrastructure are also good options.
Q: What makes Oryol unique? 
A: Oryol is one of Russia’s literature centers associated with the names of Turgenev, Bunin, Leskov, Andreyev, Fet and Apukhtin. You can attend museums devoted to these writers. Few know that Oryol has also earned fame thanks to its caves, which were formed in the 18th century to mine limestone for construction works.

TITLE: State Lures Foreign Scientists With Mega-Grants
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Leading German oceanographer Peter Koltermann was fascinated when he won a Russian “mega-grant” of 150 million rubles ($5 million) last year to research natural disaster risks.
“The Russian government is very daring, allocating a lot of money only under a promise [from researchers] to do it,” Koltermann told a recent roundtable in Moscow.
But he has struggled to concentrate on studying tsunamis, earthquakes and melting Arctic ice. Instead, he has spent much of his time fighting red tape.
“I don’t expect Russian bureaucracy to be simple,” Koltermann said, speaking in English. “And I think that in every bureaucracy, there is some way around. But I’d like to know for sure” how to navigate the bureaucracy in Russia.
In Russian academia, the 1990s are known as the brain drain era. Thousands of leading scientists and hopeful doctorate students moved abroad, prompted by meager salaries and nonexistent research funding at home.
A decade into the “fat years” of oil prosperity, the government is finally trying to reverse the trend, allotting 40 “mega-grants” to people like Koltermann in 2010 and to a new batch of 39 people, including Nobel laureates, last month.
But for now, the government seems to be learning that managing science is a science of its own.
The program is obviously working, because this year’s 39 recipients include two Nobel Prize laureates, astrophysicist George Smoot and organic chemist Osamu Shimomura, as well as the former director of the German-based Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics, Friedrich Wagner, and surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, the first person to successfully transplant a trachea grown from a patient’s own stem cells.
But the six mega-grant recipients who took part in the roundtable in Moscow last month had a lot to complain about, including visa problems, endless paperwork, spending restrictions, and a lack of equipment and qualified staff.
Then there is uncertainty about schedules, copyrights and the application of their research in Russia, where the high-tech industry is no less decrepit than academia.
“We need to internationalize our science and education,” Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff and political strategist, said when the grant program was rolled out in April 2010.
“We must take a practical view of things: Researchers in both the West and the East have moved further than we have,” Surkov said, in remarks published in Kommersant.
To rectify the situation, the Education and Science Ministry started the mega-grant program, whose recipients get 150 million rubles each and are required to establish laboratories or research centers in Russia. Each grant is to be used within two years, and recipients must spend at least four to five months a year in the country.
“The 150 million rubles are not just to work on a specific issue. The main task is to open a research center where other scientists will work after the program ends,” Andrei Malyavin, head of the science department at the Moscow State Medical and Stomatological University, told The St. Petersburg Times. 
“The money is to be spent on salaries and the purchase of modern equipment and research materials,” Malyavin said in an interview in November.
His university, for one, attracted Ferid Murad, a U.S. Nobel Prize laureate in physiology and medicine.
“Murad, like other scientists [in the program], has skills lacked by our researchers in setting up scientific research,” Malyavin said.
Other prominent names in 2010 included Gerard Mourou, a French pioneer in the field of electrical engineering and lasers; Manfred Thumm of Germany, winner of the prestigious IVEC award for excellence in vacuum electronics; and Stanislav Smirnov, the Russian-born and Geneva-based winner of that year’s Fields Medal, a top award in mathematics.
Program supervisor Igor Protsenko, a department head at the Education and Science Ministry, called the mega-grant project unprecedented.
“In essence, this is the first time that international expertise has been used” in Russian research, Protsenko told the roundtable.
Indeed, the project is “one of the first instances where a Russian institute has invited a foreign scientist to work on its soil,” J&#246;rn Thiede, a German marine geologist taking part in the program, said in an interview.

<b>Paper Sea</b>
The general idea for the mega-grant program is a good one, researchers agreed at the roundtable. But the bureaucratic obstacles in the scientists’ path are many and varied.
One major problem is the federal law on state tenders, which involves protracted — to put it mildly — procedures to purchase necessary equipment and materials.
“In Russia, to buy a chemical agent, you need three months,” said Yuri Kotelevtsev, a researcher at the British Heart Foundation Centre for Cardiovascular Science with the University of Edinburgh. 
“If you need just one chemical agent, no one will talk to you, and you will have to wait till someone orders a truckload of them,” said Kotelevtsev, who won a grant to open a laboratory for stem cell research at the Pushchino State University in the Leningrad Oblast.
The system of online tenders was introduced to curb graft among state officials but is applied to government-backed scientific institutions as well.
The government also demands reports on every bit of spent mega-grant money, which results in towering piles of paperwork.
“Don’t make our life crazy by constantly demanding to explain why we need this or that,” complained Sergei Lukyanov, a researcher at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
“How we do research — using this or that device — is our own business. The main thing is to get results,” said Lukyanov, a grant recipient who has opened a laboratory at the Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy.
The tenders are actually supposed to be handled by college administrators, but they tend to offload responsibility onto the researchers, the researchers said.
“We have very little administrative support,” oceanographer Koltermann said. “And not every scientist is a good administrator.”
Yet another inconvenience is that the grant money cannot be spent on capital repairs, even though “it’s next to impossible to find ready-to-use premises of high quality and fit to conduct research in a short time,” said Malyavin of the Moscow State Medical and Stomatological University.
Biochemist Lukyanov said the Nizhny Novgorod university provided his laboratory with a basement where repairs are being carried out “in full swing.”
Some people simply give up. Eight researchers failed to arrive at the laboratory of algebraic economics at the Higher School of Economics because they “were unable to cope with … filling out endless papers,” grant recipient Fyodor Bogomolov told the roundtable via speakerphone.

<b>Time vs. Money</b>
The proposed time frame of two years to use the grants also appears too short, Koltermann said. In Europe and the United States, he said, grants to start a laboratory usually last four to five years, with the researcher required to spend the entire time in the country that pays him — and not waste much time on paperwork.
Another shortcoming is that similar contests for grant money are usually announced a year in advance, while in Russia the first was announced two months before it was held. “Therefore, it was rather difficult to prepare a substantiated bid,” university official Malyavin said.
Also, while 150 million rubles is certainly an impressive sum, it may not be enough to operate a laboratory for two years, Malyavin said.
“Co-financing is not mentioned in the contract but was an indispensable part of the bid and will be one of the main criteria to achieve the grant’s goal,” he said.
Malyavin’s college managed to attract private sponsors and other European grants to help the laboratory’s work.

<b>Dim Future</b>
What will happen after each two-year project ends is another concern.
“In two years, a foreign professor can take our best specialists and leave,” biochemist Lukyanov said. “This way, [the program] can turn into a personnel recruitment drive for the foreign specialist. We risk seeing a new wave of specialists fleeing abroad.”

<b>SCIENCE</b>

Any Russians who leave may not be to blame because Russian industry has little way to apply whatever breakthrough discoveries are made.
Industrial production in Russia is not developing, which means “any results in research here … go to the West,” said Sergei Nikitov, deputy head of the Institute of Radio-engineering and Electronics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
“There will be results, but in 10 or 20 years, not one or two,” said Nikitov, who won a grant to open a laboratory at Saratov State University.
“You can shower someone with money, but it’s impossible to do something fundamental in two years,” added Vladimir Klimenko, head of Laboratory of Global Power Engineering Problems at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute.
That is provided that the laboratories survive long enough. No funding is guaranteed for them after the mega-grants, and how the first ones will continue to work after 2012 is anyone’s guess, said Vladimir Malakhov, a researcher at the biological faculty of Moscow State University who has opened a laboratory at Far East Federal University to study the fauna of local seas.

<b>Who Owns What</b>
The program gives all rights to the research’s findings to the college that hosts the grant recipient, which means that “the leading researcher can’t sell the results of his research,” medical scientist Malyavin said.
In the United States, researchers can take out a patent on their discoveries, but Russian laws give them no such option, he said.
Imperfect and contradictory patent legislation results in less than 10 percent of Russian discoveries being patented, which hinders the practical application of the research, he said. 
Larisa Petrova, a senior researcher at the Physics Research Institute at St. Petersburg State University, said profits from a patent sale would likely go to the host university, leaving out the researcher who actually made the discovery.
Moreover, grant rules oblige a university to pay for securing legal protection of the research’s findings from its own pocket, and most colleges do not have the money, Petrova told The St. Petersburg Times in an interview in November.
“Consequently, as soon as such an opportunity arises, the patent — if the university gets one — will be sold by the university, possibly in cooperation with the Education and Science Ministry,” Petrova said.
She also said buyers would likely be foreigners because there are “no developed structures in our country to adapt a product of scientific research for commercial use.”

<b>They’re Working on It</b>
Program supervisor Protsenko of the Education and Science Ministry pledged to have most wrinkles ironed out in the near future. Amendments to the law on state tenders, exempting scientific research from the cumbersome procedures, are to be passed by the State Duma this fall, he said at the recent roundtable.
He insisted that successful projects would not be abandoned because the program’s rules allow financing to be prolonged to laboratories for one or two years, depending on their performance. 
Evaluation criteria for success are still being worked out, Protsenko said. But this means grant recipients can contribute to the discussion, he said, urging researchers to submit their proposals on how their work must be judged.
He also condemned college administrators for “shifting their responsibility” on administrative matters onto the researchers. “The only documents a researcher must sign are the research paper and the bill,” Protsenko said. He gave no advice on how that might be achieved.

<b>Home Front Problems</b>
Eduard Kruglyakov, who chairs a commission against bogus science at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, said Russian universities had enough qualified scientists, but their achievements are often modest because authorities allocate almost no money to modern equipment and materials for research.
“I think that inviting the researchers is a humiliation of our own academia and an attempt to destroy it,” Kruglyakov told The St. Petersburg Times in an interview in November.
He also blamed poor school education for the dried-up “inflow of smart youth” into scientific research.
Grant recipients might struggle to staff their laboratories because the “prestige of higher education has fallen, and few young people want to do scientific research,” agreed Klimenko of the Laboratory of Global Power Engineering Problems at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute.
Two foreign mega-grant recipients were more optimistic about the professionalism of Russian researchers, saying they are well educated. But they also said their Russian colleagues have few opportunities to apply their knowledge and skills inside the country.
Peter Sloot, a professor of computational science from the Netherlands, said by e-mail that Russian scientists are “very good,” but the problem is that “sometimes their scientific results are not published in international peer-reviewed journals.”
“This is mainly because of the language problem and because of traditions,” Sloot said, referring to the Soviet-era isolation of Russian science.
“Due to this, these results might not be recognized by the international scientific body for a long, long time,” he said.
Russian researchers have “excellent basic education,” at least in planetary geodesy, J&#252;rgen Oberst, a German specialist in the field, said by e-mail.
But “what is missing are projects and jobs for young researchers,” he said.

TITLE: Terrorist Attack in Mogadishu Kills 70
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOGADISHU, Somalia — Islamist militants detonated a truck bomb Tuesday in front of the Education Ministry in Somalia’s capital, killing at least 70 people and wounding dozens including students and parents who were awaiting the results of scholarships.
It was the biggest attack in Somalia’s capital since the al-Qaida-linked group known as al-Shabab withdrew most of its forces in August amid an offensive by African Union forces and a devastating famine.
The bomb blew up after coming to a halt at a security checkpoint, leaving blackened corpses on the debris-strewn street and setting other vehicles alight. Uniformed soldiers were seen dragging the wounded away.
Ali Abdullahi, a nurse at Medina hospital said they were treating people with horrific wounds, including amputated limbs, burns, and patients who have lost their sight in the attack.
“It is the most awful tragedy I have ever seen,” he said. “Imagine dozens are being brought here minute by minute. Most of the wounded people are unconscious and others have their faces blackened by smoke and heat.”
Ali Muse, the chief of Mogadishu’s ambulance service, told The Associated Press that at least 70 people had died and at least 42 others were wounded.
“The explosion has not only affected the targeted place, but even passers-by and car passengers died there. The death toll may increase and we are still carrying many dead bodies,” he said.
Al-Shabab immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on a web site it uses.
“Our Mujahideen fighters have entered a place where ministers and AMISOM foreigners stay,” al-Shabab said in a brief post on a web site, referring to the Ugandan and Burundian forces who make up the African Union peacekeeping mission. But it was not clear whether the ministry building was their intended target.
The Somali government said that no senior government official was wounded in the bombing.
“The casualties are mostly students and parents who were waiting for results of scholarships from the Ministry of Higher Education,” the government said in a press release. “The attack shows that the danger from terrorists is not yet over and that there are obviously still people who want to derail the advances that the Somali people have made towards peace.”
Ali Hussein, a police officer in Mogadishu, said the vehicle blew up after pulling up to a checkpoint at the entrance to the Ministry of Education.
Suicide bombings were unheard of in Somalia before 2007 but have become increasingly frequent. Al-Shabab claims allegiance to al-Qaida, which often uses car bombs and appears bent on gaining a foothold in the Horn of Africa.
Al-Shabab includes militant veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts who have trained Somalis in tactics like suicide bombs and sniper fire, and until recently hosted the most wanted al-Qaida operative in Africa. The fugitive Fazul Abdallah Mohammed, al-Qaida’s top operative in East Africa, was killed by a Somali government soldier at a roadblock in June.
Mohammed was the mastermind behind the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Al-Shabab carried out a double suicide bombing in Uganda in July 2010 that killed 76 people watching the World Cup final on television. Americans of Somali heritage have also joined the group.
In 2009, a suicide bomber attacked a university graduation ceremony in Mogadishu, killing 24 people, including three government ministers, medical students and doctors.
Somalia has endured anarchy for the last two decades. The nation is gripped by famine, which mostly affects southern parts of the country controlled by al-Shabab.

TITLE: Hundreds of Libyans Flee Gadhafi’s Hometown Sirte
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SIRTE, Libya — Libyan revolutionary forces fired rockets into the western half of Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown Tuesday even as hundreds of residents streamed out of the city to flee the fighting.
Anti-Gadhafi fighters launched their offensive against Sirte last month, but have faced fierce resistance from regime loyalists holed up inside. The battle for the city has become the focal point of efforts to rout die-hard supporters of Gadhafi, whose whereabouts remains unknown more than six weeks since Tripoli’s fall.
Nouri al-Naari, a doctor at a field hospital in a mosque on Sirte’s outskirts, said that two anti-Gadhafi fighters had been killed and 28 wounded in intense battles in Sirte on Monday.
Amid concerns about a humanitarian crisis, the International Committee of the Red Cross said its staff had crossed the front lines and delivered urgently needed oxygen and other medical supplies to the hospital in Sirte on Monday. They also evacuated a Dutch nurse who had been working there.
Aid workers also are providing food and other items for thousands of people who have fled Sirte.
Libya’s de facto Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said Monday that Sirte, some 400 kilometers southeast of Tripoli on the Mediterranean coast, must be seized before the transitional leadership can declare victory and set a timeline in motion for elections for a formal government. Fighting also continues in the town of Bani Walid and in pockets in the south, but Jibril said Sirte’s capture would mean the main entry ports to the country were secure.
He and the head of the National Transitional Council, which is governing the country, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil have pledged not to take part in any future government.
Revolutionary forces have seized Tripoli and much of the rest of the country, but they have been locked in a standoff over Sirte and Bani Walid for weeks. NATO also continues to hit the loyalist strongholds with airstrikes.
Tayib Oraibi, a field commander from Tripoli, said the main obstacle facing the fighters now in Sirte is the Ouagadougou conference center, which is the main base for Gadhafi loyalists inside the city.
On Monday, revolutionary forces said they had seized the village of Abu Hadi south of Sirte — a strategically important victory because it cuts off a key supply route for Gadhafi forces, according to Salah Mohammed, another field commander from the nearby city of Misrata.

TITLE: Physicists Win Nobel Prize
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STOCKHOLM — Three U.S.-born scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for discovering that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace, a stunning revelation that suggests the cosmos will eventually freeze to ice.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said American Saul Perlmutter would share the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award with U.S.-Australian Brian Schmidt and U.S. scientist Adam Riess. Working in two separate research teams during the 1990s — Perlmutter in one and Schmidt and Riess in the other — the scientists raced to map the universe’s expansion by analyzing a particular type of supernovas, or exploding stars.
They found that the light emitted by more than 50 distant supernovas was weaker than expected, a sign that the universe was expanding at an accelerating rate, the academy said.
“For almost a century the universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago,” the citation said. “However the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up the universe will end in ice.”
The academy said the three researchers were stunned by their own discoveries — they had expected to find that the expansion of the universe was slowing down. But both teams reached the opposite conclusion: Faraway galaxies were racing away from each other at an ever-increasing speed.
The discovery was “the biggest shakeup in physics, in my opinion, in the last 30 years,” said Phillip Schewe, a physicist and spokesman at the Joint Quantum Institute, which is operated by the University of Maryland and the federal government.
“I remember everyone thinking at the time (that) there was some mistake,” Schewe said. But there was no mistake.
An accelerating universe means it will get increasingly colder as matter is spread out across ever-vaster distances in space, said Lars Bergstrom, secretary of the Nobel physics committee. The acceleration is believed to be driven by an unknown cosmic power, called dark energy, one of the great mysteries of the universe.
The research implies that billions of years from now, the universe will become “a very, very large, but very cold and lonely place,” said Charles Blue, spokesman for the American Institute of Physics.
In contrast to the big bang, that fate has been called the “big rip” to indicate how galaxies would be torn apart, he said. Galaxies will be flying away so quickly that their light could not travel across the universe to distant observers as it does today, making the sky appear black, he said.
The physics prize was the second Nobel to be announced this year. On Monday the medicine prize went to American Bruce Beutler and French scientist Jules Hoffmann who shared it with Canadian-born Ralph Steinman for their discoveries about the immune system. Steinman died three days before the announcement, but since his death was not known to the committee, they decided he should keep the Nobel. Since 1974, Nobels have been awarded only to living scientists.

TITLE: Knox Departs Italy a Free Woman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PERUGIA, Italy — Amanda Knox headed home to the United States a free woman Tuesday, the morning after an Italian appeals court dramatically overturned the American student’s conviction of sexually assaulting and brutally slaying her British roommate.
Back in Perugia, the family of slain British student Meredith Kercher remained stunned by the verdict and searching for answers.
Lyle Kercher, the victim’s brother, said the family has been left to wonder who is guilty in the 21-year-old Kercher’s death after the release of Knox and her one time boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito on appeal. A third man has been convicted in the brutal slaying, but his trial concluded he did not act alone.
“If the two released yesterday were not the guilty parties, we are obviously left to wonder who is the other guilty person or people. We are left back at square one,” Lyle Kercher said.
Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini expressed disbelief at the verdict, and vowed an appeal to Italy’s highest criminal court.
“Let’s wait and we will see who was right. The first court or the appeal court,” Mignini told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
“This trial was done under unacceptable media pressure. The decision was almost already announced; this is not normal,” he said.
Knox and Sollecito were convicted in 2009 of sexually assaulting and murdering Kercher, a 21-year-old British student who shared an apartment with Knox in Perugia. Knox was convicted to 26 years, Sollecito to 25. Both had been in prison since Nov. 6, 2007, four days after Kercher’s body was found at the apartment.
But the prosecution’s case was blown apart by a court-ordered DNA review that discredited crucial genetic evidence.
On Tuesday, Knox thanked those Italians “who shared my suffering and helped me survive with hope,” in a letter to the foundation.
“Those who wrote, those who defended me, those who were close, those who prayed for me,” Knox wrote. 
Sollecito, meanwhile, arrived back home near the southern Italian city of Bari before dawn on Tuesday. He was quoted by Italian news agencies on Monday night as saying he was looking forward to seeing the sea, but he declined to make any appearances after reaching home.
Prosecutors said they would appeal to the nation’s highest criminal court, after reading the court’s reasoning due out within 90 days.