SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1679 (41), Wednesday, October 19, 2011
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TITLE: Victim’s Father Wins Lawsuit
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Petrogradsky District Court ordered the district administration Tuesday to pay 430,000 rubles ($14,000) in physical damages to the father of a young Estonian woman who spent more than nine months in a coma after being hit by a chunk of falling ice in February last year.
Vadim Kashtanov, the father of 23-year-old Milana Kashtanova, will be paid specifically by Building Maintenance Service No. 2, the organization responsible for overseeing the ice-clearing works.
Kashtanova, who had come to St. Petersburg to study psychology, was hit on the head by the ice as she walked past an apartment building at 3 Ulitsa Krasnogo Kursanta on the Petrograd Side that was being cleared of ice. She sustained severe brain injuries.
After completing an expensive rehabilitation course at the Reha Nova clinic in Cologne, Germany — the costs of the treatment totaled 100,000 euros — Kashtanova was taken home to Estonia this summer, where the rehabilitation process continues.
Kashtanova’s mother is getting ready to file another suit against the authorities for about 200,000 rubles, and more suits will follow in order to receive full compensation for all of the German clinic’s bills, said Alexander Golovanov, the lawyer representing the Kashtanov family. The next case will be reviewed by the court on Nov. 8.
“In total, the family is seeking compensation of almost 2.5 million rubles,” Golovanov said. “If the family does not repay the bills, the Cologne clinic will take legal action against them, the parents were told.”
After Tuesday’s verdict, Golovanov said he was hoping that the authorities would be willing to settle the compensation issue peacefully, without further trials. But a representative of Building Maintenance Service No. 2, said the company would only transfer the funds to the Kashtanovs after being ordered to do so by the court.
This spring, a case was filed against the company seeking 1.5 million rubles in damages. The authorities protested, but the money was paid thanks to the intervention of Konstantin Zheludkov,  then head of the Petrogradsky district administration. 
“This young woman sustained awful injuries that confined her to bed for many months; it would be dishonorable for us to bargain,” Zheludkov said at the time. “It is a matter of honor for us to cover the costs of her treatment in full.”

TITLE: Officials Drop Charges Against Voina Activist
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A criminal case against the art group Voina over last year’s stunt involving overturning police cars has been dropped by investigators, while the artists continued to find themselves in trouble this week.
Voina artists Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolayev were arrested in Moscow in November last year and charged with criminal mischief motivated by hatred of the social group “police,” and spent three months in a pre-trial prison in St. Petersburg.
They were released on bail paid by British graffiti artist Banksy in February.
According to the ruling, a scan of which was posted on Voina’s web site last week, the artists’ actions “do not contain signs of crimes governed by Article 213 [motivated by hatred of a specific social group].”
The investigation agreed with experts from the Herzen Pedagogical University, who came to the conclusion that the police were not a social group, which meant that the artists could not be prosecuted under Russian anti-extremist laws.
As a result, Nikolayev no longer faces any charges and is due to get back his bail money.
Vorotnikov and his wife Natalya Sokol remain under investigation for their part in a Strategy 31 rally on March 31. They have been charged with assaulting a police officer and insulting a police officer, respectively.
Vorotnikov was put on the police’s international wanted list in July. His wife Sokol was put on the federal wanted list the next month.
Sokol was detained Monday with her two-year-old son after giving an interview to a German TV journalist outside a hotel on the Kryukov Canal. She was released Tuesday morning after spending the night at a police precinct.

TITLE: Lovesick, Or Simply In Love?
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg experts have decided that love is not an illness, contrary to what the World Health Organization declared earlier this month, Interfax reported.
“There are no documents that define love as an illness. The more complicated problem today is the human disability to establish significant and long-term relationships. Many people have a fear of feelings,” said Anna Vasilyeva, a senior scientist at St. Petersburg’s Bekhterev Science and Research Institute, at a press conference last week. 
At the beginning of October, media sources reported that the World Health Organization classified love as an illness and even gave it a code — F63:9.
Eminent city psychotherapist and sexual health doctor Lev Scheglov said, however, that nowadays those unhappy in love often seek medical help.
“In today’s society, it’s now more acceptable to talk about sexual practices instead of feelings,” Scheglov said.
Scheglov said that an attempt to define love as an illness was nothing new.

TITLE: Community Reps, Police Team Up to Fight Crime
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As the number of immigrants from the former U.S.S.R. grows, local representatives of diasporic communities are joining forces with the law in an effort to bring peace and order to the lives of struggling migrants.
According to official statistics, Russia has 10 million migrants, with St. Petersburg housing approximately 1 million of them. Hundreds of thousands of people from Central Asia, Ukraine and other nearby poverty-stricken regions flock to the city every year in the hope of a better life, but often find themselves miserable, living and working in marginal conditions, and even turning to a life of crime.
“Of course, if someone shares a room — or an attic or a basement, for that matter — with ten or so other people; if they do dangerous work without any insurance or adequate training; if they sneak into the country with fake permission like thieves, such a life leaves no room for respect for the law,” said Yelena Dunayeva, head of the local branch of the Federal Migration Service. “To reduce crime rates among immigrants, it is crucially important to efficiently combat illegal migration first, and make sure that all people who are employed in the city have their rights protected by the law.”
According to official statistics, foreign citizens are accountable for no more than 3 percent of the total number of crimes committed in St. Petersburg. Although 3 percent is a tiny fraction, the character of the crimes typically attracts a lot of attention, Dunayeva said.
“We have noticed that many local residents have a prejudice against migrant workers: A lot of St. Petersburgers tend to believe that immigrants are very corrupt and commit a lot of crimes,” Dunayeva said. 
“This is because the sort of crimes that migrants commit often make a big splash — stabbings, rapes, drug dealing, violent physical assaults — thus creating an illusion that the migrant community in general is highly criminal.”
Another source of prejudice against migrant workers is police statistics, which say that migrants are responsible for half of all officially registered rape cases in the city. Many St. Petersburgers are also uncomfortable with the fact that most immigrants live in the city illegally. Data collected by the city’s human rights groups suggests that no more than 20 percent of migrant workers in St. Petersburg are here legally.
Arkady Kramarev, a United Russia lawmaker with the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly and former head of the city police, calls for developing a coherent strategy for combating crimes committed by migrants. 
“City Hall invests a lot of money into all sorts of tolerance programs, but I would like to remind the authorities that tolerance should not border on humility and lamb-likeness,” he said.
Experts stress that when analyzing ethnic crime, it is important to distinguish between hate crimes and ordinary criminal incidents committed without an ethnic hatred motive. 
“Here is one good example: Recently there was a violent fight between an ethnic Tajik and an ethnic Uzbek, which, on the surface, seemed to be a hate crime.  However, after investigation, it turned out that one of the men owed the other money and the fight had a domestic, rather than ethnic motive,” said Sergei Uvarov, head of the operational investigations department of the city’s criminal police.
The police say there is a trend of ethnic criminal gangs attacking their own fellow nationals. 
“It is not uncommon for Armenian or Azeri gangs to target ethnic Armenians or Azeris — in some cases, the victim and the criminal come from the same village,” Uvarov said. “Such ties actually make it complicated to solve crimes as the victim and the criminal may happen to have shared relatives who may pressure or threaten the lawyers and the investigation.”
So far in 2011, the local police have registered 594 crimes committed against foreigners, while 292 such crimes have been solved during the same period, Uvarov said. By comparison, foreign nationals have committed 1,341 crimes in the city and 1,805 crimes have been solved since the beginning of this year.
 Alikhan Musayev, executive director of the Azeri National and Cultural Community in St. Petersbrug, said one of the core tasks for his organization has become the development of a coordinated anti-criminal policy together with local law enforcement. 
“There are 400,000 Azeris living in the city — some have been here for decades, while some have just arrived — and from what I have seen, one of the most ailing issues is the lack of state control over the health of the newly arriving people,” Musayev said. “Things are so bad that I would even suggest arranging basic express health-checks at passport control points. Tuberculosis and other highly dangerous infections abound.”
 The Investigative Committee of the General Prosecutor’s Office has recently suggested introducing greater fines for Russian companies caught employing illegal immigrants or violating migrant rights. One of the measures included stripping companies of their license.
Ravshanbek Kurbanov, a member of the council of elders of the Uzbek community in St. Petersburg, said that in order to help Uzbek migrants know and use their rights, the community has launched a newspaper. 
“In the near future, we will start distributing the newspaper in Uzbekistan,” Kurbanov said. “Our people have to know what the risks are of being an illegal immigrant, which companies are reliable employers and where they can turn to for help.”

TITLE: Excluded City Activists Create Splinter Group
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Opposition parties and preservationists who do not wish to cooperate with the authorities have formed an independent coalition to campaign against the destruction of historic St. Petersburg, they announced at a news conference Monday.
Called Gradozashchita (City Defense), the coalition includes members of The Other Russia, the Party of People’s Freedom (Parnas) and ROT-Front, as well as activists from Okhtinskaya Duga, a group formed to campaign against Gazprom’s plans to build a skyscraper on the Okhta cape, and ERA (Ecology of Ordinary Architecture).
None of the three parties have been registered by the authorities, with various official reasons having been given.
According to the coalition’s manifesto, Gradozashchita will oppose attempts to destroy historic St. Petersburg or evict residents from old buildings as part of so-called “renovation programs,” as well as infill construction, the destruction of gardens, and other cases of lawlessness on the part of the authorities and big business against the city and its residents.
The activists will use the “broadest range of means,” from campaigns of direct action and protests to legal action. 
According to The Other Russia’s local leader Andrei Dmitriyev, his party was rejected for inclusion in the Coalition for the Preservation of St. Petersburg that was formed shortly before the rally for the preservation of St. Petersburg in autumn 2009 by the Yabloko Democratic Party, preservationist group Living City and several other organizations – despite its contribution to the struggle against the destruction of St. Petersburg.
 “They’re only interested in publicity,” Yabloko’s local chair Maxim Reznik told The St. Petersburg Times at that time.
Okhtinskaya Duga’s Yelena Malysheva and ROT-Front’s Tamara Vedernikova were expelled from the coalition when they protested against the decision. 
“As non-systematic opposition, we were perhaps undesirable in that coalition, not corresponding to the political goals of Yabloko or something else,” Dmitriyev said Monday.
He said that before the split, all the preservationists and political opposition acted together, describing the cancelation of the plans to build the Gazprom  skyscraper on the Okhta cape as “our common victory,” but criticized his opponents in the preservationist movement for becoming too close to City Hall.
“We see that they have not only entered into a dialogue with City Hall — there’s nothing wrong with dialogue with the authorities – they are allowing themselves to be led on a leash by the city administration,” Dmitriyev said, pointing to the fact that deputy governors spoke at a preservationist rally earlier this year.
“To defend the city and invite its main destructors to speak at the rally is a little ridiculous,” he said.
However, Dmitriyev said that the newly-formed coalition is not intended to rival established preservationists.
“There are two niches, two ways, so we’ll cooperate as much as possible, but we believe that appeasing the authorities is not right,” he said.
Late last year, a group of preservationists including film director Alexander Sokurov and Yabloko’s Reznik started to hold monthly meetings with then governor Valentina Matviyenko. 
The move came as a surprise, as preservationists had previously invariably called for the dismissal of Matviyenko, holding her responsible for the demolition of heritage buildings and emergence of new buildings they saw as out of place in the UNESCO-protected city center.

TITLE: ‘Pirates’ Storm Historic Ship
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Leningrad Military base called Sunday’s incident in which a pirate flag was hoisted from the cruiser Avrora an act of vandalism, comparing it to when a visitor to the State Hermitage Museum threw acid on and slashed Rembrandt’s “Danae,” Rosbalt news agency reported.
A group of young people who boarded the museum ship under the guise of being tourists raised the flag at about 5 p.m. on Sunday.
Their party of eight, planning to hoist the flag to the top of the mast, split into two groups. One of them was caught by museum employees and handed over to police. The second group, consisting of two young men and a young woman, managed to climb the mast and hang a Jolly Roger flag.
The young people then refused to climb down and stayed on the mast until one of them was talked down by a psychologist. The others were taken down by emergency workers and police.
The young people, from St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, caused no damage to the ship, said Andrei Lyalin, director of the city’s Central Navy Museum, Interfax reported.
They did, however, demonstrate inappropriate behavior for St. Petersburg residents, Lyalin said.
The first group of young people who were unsuccessful in their “takeover” of the revolutionary cruiser were unemployed and from other parts of Russia such as Murmansk, Petrozavodsk and Electrostal, the city police said. They were detained by police before they could hang banners calling for an end to hunger.
The Narodnaya Dolya (People’s Share) and Food Not Bombs organizations claimed responsibility for the events. Organization representatives had announced earlier that they were planning to do something called “Memorial October or Avrora Sunday” to mark the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily reported.
The organizations themselves sent press releases to the media saying the act itself was aimed at drawing attention to the problems of poverty in Russia. They provided statistics showing the level of poverty in Russia at 16.1 percent — almost 23 million people — who live below the poverty line. At the same time, the number of billionaires in Russia increased by 160 percent — from 62 to 101 people during the last year, they said.
The organizations also said that the price of staple foodstuffs grew by 22.7 percent in 2010.
The Avrora Cruiser has long been a symbol of the Bolshevik Revolution. A blank shot was fired from its canon as a signal to storm the Winter Palace in October of 1917, heralding the start of the October Revolution.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Teremok to Expand</b> 
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The fast-food chain Teremok, which offers traditional Russian dishes with a focus on pancakes, plans to increase its turnover in 2011 by 14 percent — up to 3.5 billion rubles from the 2.05 billion rubles it made in 2010, the company said in a statement.
The increase will be greater than that in 2010 when turnover increased by almost 13 percent from 2009, Interfax reported last week.
Mikhail Goncharov, general director of Teremok Group, said the company planned to enter the markets of large Russian cities such as Krasnodar. Currently Teremok has restaurants in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
“We’re also considering opportunities and possible market demands in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. We are sure that modern Russian cuisine would appeal to the global market,” Goncharov said.
Teremok Group has been operating on the local fast-food market for 13 years. It focuses on traditional Russian pancakes with a variety of fillings.
The chain currently has 181 venues — from street kiosks to restaurants.

<b>Train Driver Faces Trial</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The driver of a suburban train who set off after the doors closed on a female passenger earlier this year is now facing criminal charges.
Northwestern transport investigators are looking into the circumstances that left a woman severely injured at a railway station in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported last week.
A criminal case has been opened on charges of carelessness and the violation of safety regulations.
The passenger was caught in the train doors on the platform of the Slavyanka station on Feb. 16. The train dragged her along the platform, resulting in serious injuries.
The investigation concluded that the accident occurred due to the train driver’s violation of safety rules as passengers boarded the train.

<b>Sweet Merge</b>
YEKATERINBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg Krupskaya Confectionery Factory has bought out Yekaterinburg-based SladKo Confectionery Corporation.
Norway’s Orkla Brands, which owns both of the factories, made the decision to merge the companies to form a single branch of Orkla Brands in Russia.
The turnover of the branch is expected to reach 6.8 million rubles this year. The merged companies will employ 3,350 employees.
Krupskaya Factory was founded in 1938 and specializes in the production of chocolate goods. In 2006, the Norwegian company Orkla bought the factory. SladKo was founded in 2001 and has belonged to Orkla since 2005.

TITLE: Medvedev Promises Bigger Cabinet
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has promised to expand the Cabinet and to “seriously reconstruct” United Russia as prime minister next year.
Medvedev’s comments to a ragtag bunch of celebrities and politicians Saturday were an attempt to assure supporters disgruntled by his decision to give up the presidency that he is staying in politics and bringing his modernization agenda with him.
But his second attempt to smooth the feathers of his core constituency, the middle class, appeared to have a mixed effect — judging by the reaction in the blogosphere, where Twitter posts about his speech, marked with the hashtag “pitiful,” competed with approving “yes” hashtags.
“They are trying to frighten us with stagnation,” Medvedev told the audience at the Digital October conference center. “I want to say a few words about that: It won’t happen.”
“I don’t know who will replace the current governing team,” Medvedev said, according to a transcript on the Kremlin’s web site.
“I hope they will be better, more intelligent, more competent than we have been, but now I see it as my personal duty to continue working,” he added, stressing that he expected members of the audience to help him.
His audience numbered some 200 people, among them liberal-minded businessmen, artists, public activists, bloggers and celebrities. The guest list included the head of the Skolkovo foundation, billionaire Viktor Vekselberg; directors Fyodor Bondarchuk and Alexei Popogrebsky; gallery owner Marat Gelman, Yandex head Arkady Volozh, pop star Viktoria Daineko and television show host Tina Kandelaki.
But in a bid at broad representation, also invited were a decorated tank commander who took part in the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict, a steel worker and several of Medvedev’s allies with the ruling United Russia party.
“If we win the [State Duma] vote in December … we will have to do some serious reconstructing of the party,” Medvedev said about United Russia, whose electoral list he is topping. He was addressing director Bondarchuk, a party member who nevertheless lashed out at United Russia shortly before Putin announced his return.
Medvedev also said he would not give up on modernization, which would call for a “so-called big Cabinet” or “extended Cabinet.”
He did not explain what that meant, but did say the big government would work together with the “traditional Cabinet, United Russia, civil society, experts, regional and municipal authorities and voters.”
He urged the audience to consider giving feedback to the proposal. The attendees wasted no time in proposing to form a public committee to help create the “big Cabinet.”
“Have no doubt, both the ‘big government’ and the smaller, real Russian government will consist of new people,” the president said.
Medvedev said he called the gathering to explain his decision not to run for the presidency in March, nominating his mentor Prime Minister Vladimir Putin instead. Putin said he would make Medvedev his prime minister in the post-election Cabinet.
Speaking of Putin, Medvedev said they are “not competitors in everyday life, but close comrades, friends for 20 years already; otherwise there would be no political career in Moscow for me.”
Medvedev earlier explained the proposed job swap, announced at the United Russia convention last month, in a prime-time television interview with the three main national channels, saying he was stepping down because Putin remained the more popular politician.
But that interview did little to stop the backlash by his liberal-minded supporters, who were not the prime-time television audience.
For the second attempt, Medvedev selected a more modern venue, speaking at the high-tech Digital October nestled in the Krasny Oktyabr building, the former Soviet confectionery factory.
He was also decidedly less formal than at the pompous United Russia event, sporting no tie and walking about the stage as he spoke, his iPad resting on a desk. Moreover, he waved around a green “photographing allowed” sign, introduced by bloggers fighting rampant bans on photography around the country, most of them of questionable legality.
Not everyone took Medvedev up on his invitation to attend the meeting. Rustem Agadamov, who runs one of Russia’s most popular LiveJournal blogs, Drugoi, told the Izvestia newspaper that he was interested at first, but rejected the invitation after he learned the event was associated with United Russia.

TITLE: Russia Denies New Facility Is for Spying
AUTHOR: By Dusan Stojanovic
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BELGRADE, Serbia — Russia has denied news reports that the emergency relief center it is creating in Serbia will be used to spy on neighboring Romania, where U.S. anti-ballistic missile interceptors are likely to be installed. 
Those reports began two years ago when President Dmitry Medvedev announced that Serbia and Russia had agreed to create the joint “emergency response center” at the airport in Nis, central Serbia.
But during a ceremony opening it on Monday, Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s Emergency Situations minister, said the speculation that Russia is creating a military installation in Serbia is “a pure fabrication.”
Shoigu said the center will house emergency relief experts and their equipment, and fight major forest fires, flooding, earthquakes and other natural disasters in the Balkans.
Romania has agreed to install anti-ballistic missile interceptors as part of the revamped U.S. missile shield to replace a Bush-era plan for interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic.
“I’m inviting all those [countries] that suspect that this will become a Russian base to join our de-mining teams,” Shoigu said. “They have planted the explosive devices in the first place,” he added, referring to the U.S.-led airstrikes against Serbia in 1999 that left the Nis region infested with cluster bombs.
Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said it would be Serbia’s sovereign right to allow foreign military installations on its territory but that the center will only serve a humanitarian purpose.

TITLE: ‘Spy’ Battles Deportation in U.K.
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — A British lawmaker’s former assistant accused of spying for Moscow went to court Tuesday in a bid to prevent being deported — telling judges that she had had an affair with her boss, but was not a Russian agent.
Yekaterina Zatuliveter, also known as Katya, was arrested in December on suspicion of using her position in the office of legislator Mike Hancock to pass information to Russian intelligence.
She was not charged, but British authorities want to deport her as a danger to national security.
Zatuliveter denies spying and is asking the Special Immigration Appeals Commission to block her extradition. The case is being heard by three judges and a former head of the MI5 intelligence agency.

TITLE: A Modest PM Putin Applauds Himself
AUTHOR: By Mansur Mirovalev
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin lauded himself Monday as Russia’s hardest-working leader since World War II, putting himself above Communist-era titans like Stalin and Khrushchev in his first lengthy interview since announcing that he will return to the presidency next year. 
The nationally televised display of bravado was remarkable even for a man known for his extreme self-confidence, obsession with his public image and virtually unquestioned control over Russia’s most important institutions.
Putin announced last month that he will run for a third term as president in March elections, and his victory is seen as a certainty. He told the heads of Russia’s three national television channels that the Soviet Union’s Communist-era leaders were not physically capable and willing to run the country the way he does.
“I can’t recall Soviet leadership after World War II that worked as hard,” the former KGB colonel said. “They did not know what to do because of their physical limitations or misunderstandings.”
The channel heads took turns asking Putin a series of polite questions that ranged from deferential to obsequious. One of them compared Putin to a hawk — to which the prime minister replied with a condescending smile.
“A hawk is a good birdie,” he said. “But I am against any cliches.”
None of the interviews questioned Putin’s favorable comparison of himself to the Soviet Union’s post-WWII leaders.
Those leaders include Joseph Stalin, who turned most of Eastern Europe into a Communist bloc; Nikita Khrushchev, who provoked the Caribbean missile crisis, sent the first man in space and banged his shoe on the table in the United Nations promising to “bury” the Western world; and Mikhail Gorbachev, who started perestroika and the democratic changes that led — against his will — to the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Putin accused his Communist-era predecessors of making people feel unsafe and monopolizing ideological and economic power in ways that led to the collapse.
“This political force led the country to collapse and disintegration,” he said. “People lost the sense of being protected.”
During his two terms between 2000 and 2008, Putin put national television under Kremlin control and used it project the portrait of himself as a wise and robust leader who personally manages crises and keeps his fellow Russians safe. He also cultivated the image of a macho leader who can pilot fighter jets, ride a horse bare-chested and pet Siberian tigers.
Putin looked especially hawkish in comparison with his successor, the bookish Dmitry Medvedev, who appointed his mentor prime minister and was widely seen as a second-in-charge during his four years in the Kremlin.

TITLE: Human Rights Reset Yields No Progress
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: GAVRILKOVO, Moscow Region — The U.S.-Russian “reset” has yielded no meaningful progress on human rights, and the United States needs to “redouble” its efforts to press Russia on the issue, a senior American diplomat said Saturday.
The unusually harsh rebuke of Russia’s rights record was made by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner after his meeting with environmental activists near Khimki, where they are fighting a losing and sometimes violent battle to stop a government-backed road project.
Posner’s visit to the village of Gavrilkovo wound up a six-day trip across Russia, where he also traveled to Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan, and met with officials, students, religious leaders and human rights activists — including 84-year-old campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva.
“The so-called ‘reset’ has been effective in arms control, security issues and stronger economic ties, but I don’t think there’s been any meaningful progress on human rights and democracy issues,” Posner said.
“When somebody organizes a protest, they shouldn’t be beaten over the head with a baseball bat,” Posner said at the meeting at the summer house of Konstantin Fetisov, a Khimki forest defender who was severely beaten by unidentified thugs last November.
“We will continue to follow what’s happening in your case and to reinforce the importance of there being justice and accountability for the attack against you,” Posner told Fetisov.
Fetisov was left with impaired speech and memory after being beaten over the head with a baseball bat outside his apartment in Khimki on Nov. 4, National Unity Day. He spent 40 days in a coma after the assault.
“As a person, he’s recovered. As a person with two university diplomas, he’s not recovered,” his wife, Marina, told Posner as Fetisov looked on.
A $8 billion project to build a Moscow-St. Petersburg highway through the centuries-old Khimki forest caused a spate of public protests and minor clashes between activists and construction workers last year. Reacting, the Kremlin halted the project in August, but President Dmitry Medvedev ordered in December that the construction proceed as planned, saying it was too late to change anything.
Activists say the road is illegal and accuse local officials of waging a campaign of violence and intimidation against them.
At Saturday’s meeting, campaign leader Yevgenia Chirikova listed the injuries suffered by those present. “Pasha spent time in the hospital with a broken nose and a concussion. Lyosha had his nose broken. Seryozha, over there, was beaten over the head,” she said, adding that none of the attackers had been brought to justice.
However, police have detained six people on suspicion of planning and carrying out the attack on Fetisov, including Andrei Chernyshyov, a department head at Khimki city hall’s property management committee. None have been tried so far.
Posner said the United States would “redouble” its efforts to make sure Russia heeded international norms on human rights. He denied that this bid constituted a change of focus for the administration of President Barack Obama, which critics have accused of neglecting human rights in Russia.
Pressed for details about U.S. plans, Posner said, “I don’t think there’s more than one way to push the Russian government harder. Some of it’s private diplomacy, some of it’s public. Some of it’s reconstituting the McFaul-Surkov Civil Society Working Group. … We want to reorient it, rethink the way it’s been done.”
The McFaul-Surkov Civil Society Working Group, co-headed by Michael McFaul, the recently nominated U.S. ambassador to Russia, and Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff, has been meeting since 2009. Its agenda includes prison reform, migration, anti-corruption legislation and child protection — primarily for Russian adoptees in the United States.
Posner said “real differences” on human rights remained with the Russian side and the United States would continue to amplify activists’ voices and press officials to keep open the Internet and social media sites — key forums for opposition-minded Russians.
But he and U.S. Embassy officials remained diplomatic about the matter in hand, avoiding direct criticism of the Khimki forest construction project, which is considered by the State Department a human rights, not an environmental, issue.
“Given that it’s such an old forest, I think [the project] is a shame. But I also drive in this city — I understand the need for road construction. I don’t think there’s a good choice,” Cristina Hansell, environmental officer at the U.S. Embassy, said in Gavrilkovo.
Posner’s meeting with Khimki activists, however, is significant in itself as an example of the State Department’s increasing willingness to criticize and mildly sanction Russian officials for perceived human rights abuses. The shift comes months before the State Duma vote in December and the presidential election in March, which Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is widely expected to win. 
Chirikova, leader of the forest’s defenders, welcomed his visit despite the lack of any formal pledges on Posner’s part. 
“I didn’t expect him to say, ‘I’ll save you!’ … For us, the most important thing is that they’re paying attention,” she told The St. Petersburg Times at the meeting.

TITLE: Scientists Discuss Arctic Energy
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Arctic energy was the topic of discussion at a conference held in the city last week.
The Arctic region, rich in energy and fresh water resources, has become a stumbling point of conflicting interests among different countries around the world. The right to develop and use the Arctic energy sector has been already claimed not only by countries making up the “Arctic Five” (Russia, the U.S., Canada, Norway, Denmark), but also by countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, and others trying to break the alliance.
A steady depletion of natural resources in known and accessible areas has produced the need to find and open new mining sites and shipping routes.
As Viktor Boyarsky, director of the Arctic and Antarctic Museum in St. Petersburg, put it at a conference devoted to Arctic energy: “It is the perspective of natural resource production that makes different countries willing to go to the Arctic.” 
Tapani Kaakuriniemy, head of education at Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, said at the conference that the time to rethink the dimensions of discussion had come. 
“The Arctic is a sudden surprise. Recently only geographers talked about it, but now it is a politically strategic region,” he said. 
In Russia, questions of Arctic energy are being discussed at both governmental and scientific levels. The creation of a legislative base is still underway. In September 2008, the Security Council of Russia wrote an official outline of their plans in the Arctic through 2020, and further into the future. The International Arctic Forum “The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue” was also created under the auspices of the Russian Geographical Society.
Russian claims to the Arctic are based on the assertion that “95 percent of Russian gas and 75 percent of Russian oil resources are concentrated in the Arctic,” as earlier declared by Viktor Olersky, Deputy Transport Minister.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has already declared his intention to turn the Arctic into a Russian resource base, and back in 2007, Russian divers planted a Russian flag on the ocean floor at the North Pole, which other countries regarded as a Russian claim to the entire Arctic territory, resulting in numerous international discussions. 
“It is not a claim to territory, just as mounting an American flag on the Moon is not a claim to this secondary planet of the Earth,” Russian diplomats said at the time.
According to some scientists, the importance of the Arctic region for Russia is not confined to its resource value. With the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Russia lost its southern territories, which led to a forfeiture of its global power status. Now this role can be reinstated by means of northern territories. Maria Lagutina, PhD of Political Science at St. Petersburg State University, affirmed at the conference that Russia would become the northern power of the 21st century with the establishment of the Northern Sea Route as a global trade artery. 
The Northern Sea Route could potentially become an alternative to shipping via the Suez Canal, safety from pirate attacks and geographic remoteness from conflict zones being the route’s main advantages. Scientists also argued that it would be much shorter than the Suez Canal route, making transportation about two weeks faster. The Northern Sea Route has become accessible due to Arctic ice melting, and is already open for one month a year. Scientists say that global warming will make shipping via this route feasible for a longer period of time in the near future.
There are still many obstacles hindering access to the Arctic, among them environmental issues and complications involving exploitation of the territory, due to the undefined legal status of the Arctic region. 
“The legal regime of the Arctic Ocean must be developed with international participation,” Kaakuriniemy said.
Although all countries involved want the main role in developing Arctic energy, scientists agree that no single country is able to harvest the Arctic’s resources on its own; only joint efforts based on a stable legal and economic framework can lead to a positive outcome.

TITLE: Putin Gives Good News To Council
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin impressed a gathering of heavyweight foreign investors with charm and statistics Monday, at a set-piece annual discussion between government officials and foreign chief executives.  
Opening the 25th meeting of the Foreign Investment Advisory Council, or FIAC, with a welcoming smile directed at all sides of the rectangular table, Putin told investors that unemployment in Russia had fallen, foreign direct investment was growing and that Russia would not have a budget deficit in 2011. 
Despite recent political upheaval, including the firing of internationally respected Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin on Sept. 26, Putin stressed that there would be no changes to government economic policy.
“On the threshold of any big political event, especially parliamentary and presidential elections, investors are interested in how the economy will develop,” Putin said, according to a transcript on the prime minister’s web site. “We do not intend to change the economy’s orientation.”
Putin told his guests that he welcomed criticism as well as praise. “That was all very pleasant for me to hear,” Putin told Paul Bulcke, head of Nestle, who had just made a speech, “including the critical observations.”
Putin said unemployment had dropped by 1 million people since January, Russia’s trade surplus was $147.7 billion in the first three quarters of 2011, and agriculture will grow by a minimum of 14 percent this year.
Investors present at the meeting were quick to compliment Putin. “I had skepticism about investment in Russia, but I walked away with quite another impression,” said George Buckley, chief executive of 3M, in remarks released by his press service after the gathering. 
“I was very pleased with this meeting,” Buckley said. “Mr. Putin was very impressive, strong and intelligent. He is extraordinarily well informed.” 
Making a keynote speech at the meeting, James Turley, chairman of Ernst & Young, criticized the time required for construction in Russia and the effectiveness of its legislation in today’s global business environment. But he told Putin that FIAC was in favor of his decision to run for a third term as president in 2012.
“We support your candidacy for the post of president, but we will miss your leadership here in your capacity as prime minister,” Turley said. 
 “Topics ranged from customs to taxes, to easing visa regulations, to welcoming the creations of a new ombudsman to help foreign investors navigate the Russian system more efficiently,” he said.
Pledging to commit an additional $20 billion to health care and education over the next three years, Putin also looked to reassure investors during the televised gathering that Russia was able to keep a lid on any social protests linked to economic problems. Russians should be able to count on the fact that their country was changing for the better, Putin said. Otherwise, “things may reach the state that we now observe in some countries with an advanced economy where … hundreds of thousands demand what the governments of those countries are actually unable to do.”

TITLE: A Reluctant Critic of Putin
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Sobell
TEXT: After Vladimir Putin took power as president in 2000, I numbered among the handful of Western commentators who believed that Russia finally had a leader who could steer the country in the right direction.
With both feet planted firmly in the pro-Putin camp, I argued many times during the past decade that Putin was putting Russia on an even keel after the chronic instability of the 1990s. If he was doing so by pursuing policies not to the liking of the West, I thought, that was all well and good.
After all, Russia had to develop according to its own individual history and culture rather than attempt to follow precepts from abroad. In my view, Putin was to be applauded for his achievements, not least in making Russia more prosperous and stable.
Now, following Putin’s announcement that he will return to the presidency in the spring, I find myself with one foot inside and one foot outside the pro-Putin camp. To some extent, I understand the indigenous arguments in favor of Putin’s decision. Putin is the most capable political leader in Russia today. He enjoys far more support than any other politician and is best equipped to lead the country in the current unstable global environment.
I also realize that Russians are less than enthusiastic about President Dmitry Medvedev, mainly because he lacks the strongman aura of his mentor, while his reformist initiatives find little resonance among the majority of Russians, who remain wary of any sweeping change.
But while I understand all of this, I cannot endorse Putin’s decision and now find myself a reluctant critic. Putin had an historic opportunity to consolidate his achievements of the past decade. This would have meant choosing the course of action most likely to ensure the continued existence of the stronger, more stable state in whose creation he has been so instrumental — namely, making way for a successor whose credibility and authority derive solely and directly from the Constitution.  
By not doing so, Putin has committed two potentially fatal errors. First, he has shown disregard for something that he has claimed consistently to hold most dear — namely, rule of law. While admittedly he has not violated the letter of the Constitution — neither four years ago when he became prime minister while remaining de facto supreme leader, nor now by returning to the Kremlin for a third term as president — he has violated its spirit.
Rule of law is an absolute value. No one in authority can choose to accept, reject or manipulate it to his own advantage. If he does, he compromises that value, almost certainly beyond repair. This is the sorry precedent Putin has established for all future leaders of Russia and the unfortunate example he has set to Russian officialdom.
Second, Putin has created a false sense of stability. No edifice is sound if it rests on one pillar alone. If that pillar is a single individual, it will teeter, if not collapse, when he leaves the scene, either voluntarily or involuntarily, meaning his mortality. At any time, he could succumb to illness or fall victim to an assassin’s bullet or suicide bomb.
Some argue that Putin had no choice — that Russia suffers from a dearth of leadership talent and that for this reason his return to the Kremlin was unavoidable. But that argument simply does not hold water. To imply that Russia has exhausted its ability to deliver leaders equal to the tasks ahead is absurd. If that were the case, Russia would indeed be doomed.
What Putin has done by opting to return is merely postpone the problem of succession in Russia. The danger is that postponement will only make his inevitable departure all the more destabilizing. In effect, Putin has planted a time bomb — one that could go off at any time.  
Former French General and President Charles de Gaulle reportedly said, “The graveyards of the world are full of indispensable men.” This remark is droll, but it does underscore an essential truth.
A truly great leader does not cling onto power indefinitely. Rather, he knows when his job is done and when to facilitate a safe change of guard. After more than a decade in charge, Putin’s job has been done. The longer he stays on, the more he will devalue his undoubted achievements.

<I>Vladimir Sobell, formerly senior economist at Daiwa Securities, is an independent analyst based in London.</I>

TITLE: comment: Russia Needs Prokhorov
AUTHOR: By Alexander Etkind
TEXT: Mikhail Prokhorov, owner of gold mines in Siberia and a professional basketball team in the United States, is one of Russia’s richest men, with a net worth of $18 billion. In June, he agreed to lead the Right Cause party to contest December’s State Duma elections. Prokhorov, 46, seemed to believe that his business success would boost his political prospects.
Prokhorov was wrong, and he resigned in September from the party he had led. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will seek a third presidential term in 2012. In the absence of new faces or ideas, the only prospect for the coming election year will be to pump more petrodollars into a struggling and grossly inefficient economy. That spending binge will feed corruption, inflation and natural-resource dependency — the three evils that former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has fought throughout his tenure.
While Prokhorov is one of several respected oligarchs, Kudrin was the most respected member of the government. Their departure from political life is widely viewed as a symptom of deepening divisions among the Putin-era governing elite, even a harbinger of political crisis.
To be sure, there are many subtle signs of panic at the top over the state of the country’s economy. But there is no hint that United Russia has a new program to meet these challenges in Putin’s next administration, apart from more censorship of the Internet. But all signs of conflict within the ruling tandem have disappeared.
Until September, President Dmitry Medvedev made great efforts to encourage hopes for change. But Putin never lost control over the state apparatus, and the prospect of his regaining the presidency never dimmed. So those hopes were always false. Indeed, most of Russia’s rulers have been in office for the better part of a decade. Some, like Kudrin, had become visibly impatient for change, but most remained very content with the status quo.
As during the Cold War, a bureaucratic crisis suddenly exposed the mechanisms by which this elite has wielded power. When resigning from his party, Prokhorov accused Medvedev’s first deputy chief of staff, Vladislav Surkov, of foul play, calling him “the puppet master” who had “privatized politics in Russia.”
In talking about Surkov, Prokhorov demonstrated his refusal to be a puppet. In fact, Prokhorov has much to offer his country. His articulate speech and self-made success are unusual among Russian politicians. And with housing, health care and education less accessible now than at the end of the 1980s, his political program focuses on what should be done to improve Russia’s human capital — the key problem holding back the economy.
According to Prokhorov, productivity in Russia is only 6 percent or 10 percent of that in the United States, which is why the economy struggles even when the price of oil is peaking. More than 1 million educated professionals have emigrated from Russia over the past decade.
During the last 20 years, social inequality has grown threefold. Russia, Prokhorov concludes, is a feudal society, and Putin’s political monopoly and economic mismanagement only exacerbates the “natural-resource curse” that afflicts many countries that are equally dependent on oil and gas exports.
Such a bleak diagnosis of Russia’s ills could never be the basis for a Kremlin-sponsored political party. Nevertheless, for a while Prokhorov tried to play politics according to the Byzantine rules that govern Russian elections.
But playing politics by Putin’s rules requires scores of hired professionals and “political technologists.” Despite his acumen, Prokhorov surrounded himself with such people, pretentious wizards who have turned Russian politics into the revolting spectacle that it is. He hoped to break up Putin’s monopoly by using its own tools.
Today, Prokhorov’s program remains the only tangible result of the $26 million that he and his friends invested in his campaign. He is probably sorrier for the loss of three months of his time. Although he claims that he will not leave politics completely, he now looks like just another oligarch who must choose between capitulation, emigration and imprisonment. Kudrin’s future is no less obscure.

<I>Alexander Etkind teaches Russian cultural history at Cambridge University and is author of “Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience.” © Project Syndicate</I>

TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Mashina Vremeni’s <b>Andrei Makarevich</b> caused some debates last week when his song “Putin Goes to Kholuyovo” was uploaded onto YouTube, as the event was seen by some as the veteran rock singer’s transition to the opposition. 
In the satirical song, officials of Kholuyovo, a fictitious provincial town whose name can be translated as “lackeyville,” are preparing with spectacular servility for a planned visit by Vladimir Putin, but the prime minister ultimately fails to arrive. 
But when Makarevich started being questioned by the media about the song, he was quick to say that the song was not about Putin, claiming he has nothing to do with the opposition. 
“Anyone who has listened to the song knows that it’s not actually about Putin, but about the ass kissers that this country has always abounded in,” he explained to Radio Liberty. 
Some commentators, however, pointed out that Makarevich himself resembles a resident of Kholuyovo, having demonstrated a servile attitude to the authorities on more than one occasion. 
The list includes accepting a medal from Putin, making approving comments about both Putin and Medvedev, hosting a televised meeting between Medvedev and rock musicians at a Moscow club that Makarevich co-owns and, most notably, giving an open-air performance with his band on Red Square for pro-Kremlin youth organizations in honor of Putin and Medvedev on the 2008 presidential election day. 
Speaking to Radio Liberty, Makarevich explained these instances of what his critics see as servility as being down to naivety.
“I must be incorrigibly na&#239;ve. I did put certain hopes on Medvedev,” he said, relating how his feelings were hurt after Medvedev invited Putin to reoccupy his seat next year.
How the residents of Kholuyovo would explain their own actions, we’ll probably never know.
But Makarevich did at least promise that his band would not perform on Red Square on the 2012 election day.
Locally, a promising new music club will open this week. Called <b>Dada</b>, it’s operated by the team that was behind Shum club, which closed abruptly in the summer, and occupies the former premises of the now-defunct Tantsy, which has recently undergone renovation.
Dada will be launched with a party and a concert featuring Auroraw, Pyos i Gruppa and Chaisnegrami at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 20. The program, which also includes a performance by Stigma Show, will end with a set by DJ Mozzzg, who will spin discs until the last visitor leaves.
The management promises “gentle” prices at the bar for the occasion.
Dada is located in a picturesque crumbling courtyard between Sennaya Ploshchad and Gorokhovaya Ulitsa. Enter from 47 Gorokhovaya Ulitsa.
Don’t miss <b>Zorge</b> premiering its debut album at Glavclub on Saturday. According to frontman Yevgeny Fyodorov, pre-sale tickets are a bargain at 100 rubles, but the price on the door will be a standard 600 or 700 rubles.

TITLE: Victim of love
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Marc Almond, the British singer who came to fame as a member of the synthpop duo Soft Cell in the 1980s before building a highly diverse and compelling solo career, will be a special guest of the “Side by Side” LGBT film festival that opens in St. Petersburg this week.
Right now, Almond is once again on the rise. Last year he released “Variete,” his first studio album of original songs in almost a decade, before embarking last fall on his most successful tour, celebrating 30 years as a recording artist. 
Earlier this year he was involved in a collaboration with Michael Cashmore, a British composer and member of the group Current 93, which resulted in “Feasting with Panthers,” a collection of songs set to poems by Count Eric Stenbock, Jean Genet, Jean Cocteau, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud.
August saw Almond premiering “Ten Plagues,” an award-winning music-theater work created by the musician along with playwright Mark Ravenhill, theater director and opera designer Stewart Laing and musical dramatist Conor Mitchell, which ran at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre daily throughout the month.
Since his first Russian tour in 1993, Almond has spent a lot of time in the country. In 2000, he rented an apartment in Moscow and spent three years working on “Heart on Snow,” his 2003 album of Russian songs recorded with diverse Russian singers and musicians from veteran rock band Akvarium frontman Boris Grebenshchikov to the late Soviet pop-folk party diva Lyudmila Zykina.
In 2009, he released “Orpheus in Exile — Songs of Vadim Kozin.” Recorded entirely in Russia over two years, it includes songs written by or made famous by Kozin, a Soviet singer extremely popular in the 1930s and 1940s.
As part of the Side by Side festival, Almond has chosen to present the film, “Victim,” Basil Dearden’s 1961 groundbreaking gay-themed film starring Dirk Bogarde.  The film is considered to have been pivotal in changing the attitude of the public toward homosexuality and to have led to the eventual decriminalization of it in the U.K. As the BBC noted, it was also the first ever British film to use the word “homosexual.”
The screening will be followed by a discussion with Almond.

<b>You’re participating in the “Side by Side” LGBT film festival this week. Could you explain why you chose to support the event?</b>
I’m very happy to be supporting the LBGT film festival as I think it’s very important for such events to be held in Russia. It represents a change in attitudes I feel, and that Russia acknowledges the hugely important role gay people have contributed to art.
<b>You’ve chosen a film to show during the festival, “Victim” (1961). What influenced your choice?</b>
The film “Victim” is a very important film in Britain in gay cinema as it helped to change the law that made homosexuality a criminal offence and left gay people, particularly men, open to blackmail. At that time lesbians’ existence was barely acknowledged. It’s a wonderful film of its time and was a very brave film for a matinee idol such as Dirk Bogarde to play such a major role in.
<b>What will be your role in the upcoming festival? Will there be a music performance or will it be a discussion? What subjects are you interested in discussing with the Russian audience?</b>
I’ll be presenting the film and taking part in any discussion and answering questions. There will be no music performance. I would like to hear about gay Russians’ experiences.
<b>You’ve been to Russia many times since your first visit in 1993. Could you comment on the gay rights situation in Russia, which is one of the themes of the upcoming festival? Could you compare the situations in Britain and in Russia?</b>
I think that gay rights have a long way to go in Russia, of course. It reminds me of how Britain was with its attitude to homosexuality in the 1950s and 60s, probably worse. I do feel there are changes though and a film festival such as this is part of it. Even in Britain, it is not always a gay Utopia. Though gay people are very visible in work life and culture, there has been an uprising of homophobia and violence against gay people. Some think that gays have become too visible.
<b>Polls show that the majority of Russians are hostile toward homosexuals. Do you think that’s true? If so, what do you think is the reason for it and how can it be dealt with?</b>
Of course, it’s true, many Russian males in particular like to have very macho attitudes, though some of them may be gay themselves, but there are many gay people in Russia in all kinds of life. I know, I’ve met many. I think it’s a slow process, a gradual acceptance and defiance without alienating people who may be anti-gay and it takes a lot of patience. I believe it will change.
<b>Are street protests or artistic activities or anything else most efficient in the struggle for rights, in your opinion?</b>
I may be wrong, but street protests are cracked down on and the rent-a-thugs and angry babushkas are brought out to show anti-gay sentiment, which lead to violence and get nowhere. I think the best way is a more subversive acceptance through music, film and culture, it’s more powerful than a guy in a dress shouting with a placard.
<b>You devoted one of your recent albums (“Orpheus in Exile”) to songs by Vadim Kozin, who is believed to have been sentenced to labor camps because of his sexuality. What was inspirational to you in his work and fate?</b>
I thought Kozin’s story was sad and tragic in many ways, yet powerful and inspirational. He was a balding, not conventionally attractive man to be a gay icon, yet he is truly a Russian gay icon and should be an inspiration to gay people as someone who was persecuted for his sexuality. He didn’t stand up and shout ‘Yes, I am homosexual,’ yet he should be celebrated. It is hard to get to the exact truth of his story, as so much is blurred in Russia of what is true and what is gossip or hearsay, but the version of the story I know of him is one of inspiration. He sang many wonderful songs written by himself and others that may only exist in crackling recordings and I felt his songs should be revisited by a singer from another country and taken across the sea. His song “Friendship” is a true gay love song. “Orpheus in Exile” is one of my most successful albums these past years.
<b>Your most recent album was “Feasting with Panthers,” a collaboration with Michael Cashmore, which featured songs set to the poems of Count Eric Stenbock and other decadent poets. How did you come up with the idea?</b>
It was my idea after “Orpheus” to do an album of decadent homoerotic poetry put to music. I chose some of my favorite poems by people such as Jean Genet, Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Count Eric Stenbock and British poet Jeremy Reed and others, and Michael put them to music. It’s a powerful record, I feel.
<b>You said in an interview that last year’s album “Variete,” which has been described as the return to your 1980s cabaret-style solo albums, would probably be your last solo album of original material. Why so?</b>
It’s more possible that in the future my albums will be a mixture of my own songs and songs by others and not just original songs. I think of myself as a song interpreter as well as a writer and in these climates it’s becoming harder to record albums, especially to the standard I like.
<b>Most recently, you have been involved in the music-theater work “Ten Plagues.” What is interesting in it for you and are you planning to continue working in theater?</b>
I would like to move further into a theatrical field but who knows the future? “Ten Plagues” was a great challenge and demanding for me and I was happy that it was received so well by critics and audiences. I learnt so much from it as a performer.

<I>Marc Almond will present “Victim” at 7:30 p.m. and take part in a discussion at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 26 at 
Mirage Cinema, 35 Bolshoi Prospekt (Petrograd Side). Tel: 677 6060. 
The “Side by Side” film festival opens at Mirage Cinema at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 21. See www.bok-o-bok.ru for program and details.</I>

TITLE: TALK OF THE TOWN
TEXT: Top notch Italian regional cuisine is on the menu at the <b>Corinthia Hotel’s Imperial restaurant</b> this week as the hotel hosts the <b>Bella Italia festival</b>, the latest event in the Year of Italy in Russia cultural exchange program.
 The restaurant is serving a special menu through Sunday prepared by double Michelin-starred guest chef <b>Valentino Marcattilii</b> from Imola, Italy. As well as the special menu, which includes his signature dish — one giant, delectable ravioli stuffed with spinach, ricotta, Parmesan, truffle sauce and egg yolk — Marcattilii will host a master class on Oct. 19. The culinary extravaganza will culminate in an Arrivederci Brunch at the Imperial restaurant on Oct. 23.
Alongside regional Italian cuisine, the festival also aims to showcase Italian interior design and fashion. The hotel is hosting an exhibition of Italian wares ranging from olive oil, pasta, truffle sauce and other regional delicacies to upscale ceramic kitchenware and <b>Alessandro Gheradi</b> shirts, whose clients include Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Visitors to the exhibition, which runs through Wednesday, will have the opportunity to sample some of the edible exhibits.
 Meanwhile, the new menu at the <b>Viktoria restaurant in the Taleon Imperial Hotel</b> celebrates Russian gastronomic cuisine while providing new insights into the city’s architectural and historical legacy. The idea behind the new menu is to connect certain dishes with a particular historic building that can be observed from the terrace of this panoramic restaurant located on the top floor of  the former mansion of the merchant Yeliseyev, on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and the Moika embankment. 
The hits created by the restaurant’s chef <b>Vyacheslav Vasiliev</b> include mullet baked in fragrant herbs, duck fillets served with cranberry and red cabbage, sturgeon soup with a touch of champagne and quail with foie gras.  The baked mullet — one of the lightest dishes on the menu  — has become an instant hit. Viktoria boasts one of the finest views in town, offering close-ups of Kazan Cathedral, the Singer building, Mertens House and the Nobel House, among other architectural gems. The historical notes accompanying the description of dishes reveal secrets about the rations of the city’s hussars, aristocrats and orphanages in pre-revolutionary times.
In the second half of October, the aroma of fried chestnuts permeates the streets of French towns, and now the chain of <b>Jean-Jacques Rousseau</b> French bistros has imported the idea to the banks of the Neva River with the launch of a <b>chestnut menu</b> from Oct. 17. The highlights of the menu include chestnut soup with Parma ham, salad with chestnuts and mushrooms, chestnut muffins and home-made chestnut marmalade. The bistro at 2/54 Gatchinskaya Ulitsa on the Petrograd Side will also serve take-away grilled chestnuts sold at 100-150 rubles per portion.

TITLE: Animated romance
AUTHOR: By Olga Khrustaleva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The temperature in St. Petersburg may be distinctly autumnal, but the city’s cultural life will be warmed up this week by a summery event at Dom Kino, which will host the premiere of the Spanish animated film “Chico y Rita” (Chico and Rita). 
Set in Havana and New York at the end of the 1940s, “Chico and Rita” is far more than a simple love story. It offers insight into jazz history, the Cuban revolution and the beginnings of the showbiz industry. 
The plot revolves around Chico, a young jazz pianist and composer, who meets the beautiful singer Rita in Havana, where both of them perform at clubs and restaurants. The two fall in love, but fate seems determined to separate them. Chico follows Rita to New York after she gets a contract there, and she finds him after he completes a European tour with a jazz band. But time and again they take different paths, only to reunite many years later. The film also gives a broader picture of the post-war music scene, depicting the rise of bebop, along with jazz stars like the legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker who appears on stage in the film, and Chano Pozo, the first percussionist of Cuban origin to play in a jazz band.
The film brilliantly recreates the setting and atmosphere of Cuba, New York and Europe. Drawn in a sharp manner, with impressive attention to detail, it creates a charming and very true-to-life picture. 
“I didn’t want the camera movements to be electronic,” said Fernando Trueba, one of the film’s directors, in an interview with BBC film critic Mark Kermode at the Cannes international film festival. 
“I wanted there to be a human feeling all through the movie. Not only with the characters... but also with the way that the camera moves.”
The film’s art director Javier Mariscal undertook thorough research before starting work. He went to Havana, where he discovered that many buildings are now dilapidated, but found out that the local government has collected many historical photos to help with reconstruction work. Archive images taken on board planes and ferries traveling between Cuba and America and carrying Cuban musicians were also of help to the film’s creators. According to Trueba, the pictures were a goldmine of information about clothes, faces, billboards, bars, cars and other aspects of everyday life.
The film was well received by critics. “The year’s best musical and one of the year’s finest animated films, this utterly delightful Spanish movie is an affecting, funny, historically accurate and at times pleasingly erotic story,” wrote film critic Philip French in his review for The Observer.
The film is a musical, and the soundtrack indeed deserves special attention. Written by renowned Cuban jazz pianist Bebo Valdes, it is a work of art in itself. 
“The movie stems from two things,” said Trueba. “One is my admiration for Mariscal, the artist who worked with me and made the movie with me... And it’s also born out of collaboration, friendship, love and admiration for Bebo Valdes. Everything came together: The art of Mariscal, the music of Bebo and a love story.” 
Bebo Valdes’s son Chucho Valdes, who is also a well known jazz pianist, will be a special guest at the premiere of “Chico and Rita” at Dom Kino on Oct. 25, and will also give a concert at the Philharmonic the next day. Chucho Valdes was 16 when he started performing, and at the age of 23 he formed his own band called Chucho Valdes & Combo. His most successful project, however, was a jazz band titled Irakere that Valdes formed in 1972.
The trip to Russia is his first since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back in Soviet times, as a pianist from the U.S.S.R.’s ally Cuba, Valdes was a regular visitor to Moscow and St. Petersburg. This time around, Valdes and his band will give perform concerts in both St. Petersburg and Moscow, and  will attend the premiere of “Chico and Rita” in both cities.

<I>“Chico and Rita” premieres at 9 p.m. on Oct. 25 at Dom Kino movie theater, 12 Karavannaya Ulitsa. Tel. 314 5614, www.domkino.spb.ru. M. Gostiny Dvor.

Chucho Valdes and Irakere perform at 7 p.m. on Oct. 26 at the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, 2 Mikhailovskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 710 4257. www.philharmonia.spb.ru. M. Gostiny Dvor.</I>

TITLE: the word’s worth: Time of Troubles
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: <I>Ïîïàñòü â öåéòíîò</I>: to run out of time

There is a lovely concept in linguistics called the Frequency Illusion, which I personally experience very frequently. In nonspecialist language, it means that once you’ve noticed a phenomenon, it seems to happen a lot. In my case, once I identified the chess metaphor in <I>ðîêèðîâêà</I> (castling), now all I see are chess allusions.
To catch all these allusions in Russian, first you need to know the basics. <I>Øàõìàòû</I> (chess) is played on a <I>äîñêà</I> (board) with <I>ôèãóðû</I> (chess pieces). The names of the pieces vary from language to language. In Russian, the pieces are <I>êîðîëü</I> (king), <I>ôåðçü</I> (queen; literally “vizier”), <I>ëàäüÿ</I> (rook; literally “boat”), <I>ñëîí</I> (bishop; literally “elephant”), <I>êîíü</I> (knight; literally “steed”) and <I>ïåøêà</I> (pawn). <I>Êîíü</I> and <I>ñëîí</I> are called <I>ë¸ãêèå ôèãóðû</I> (minor pieces), and <I>ëàäüÿ</I> and <I>ôåðçü</I> are <I>òÿæ¸ëûå</I> (heavy or major pieces).
Since <I>ôèãóðà</I> is also a figure (person), you can see the fun you can have with puns. A political figure might be a lightweight (<I>ë¸ãêàÿ ôèãóðà</I>) or a heavyweight (<I>òÿæ¸ëàÿ ôèãóðà</I>). <I>Áèçíåñìåíû — ýòî ïåøêè, à äåïóòàòû è ÷èíîâíèêè — ýòî ôèãóðû áîëåå òÿæ¸ëûå</I> (Business leaders are pawns, while deputies and bureaucrats are the heavyweights).
Most of the time, the lot of pawns is pretty terrible. Someone wrote dramatically: <I>Ãëóïûå, æàäíûå äóðî÷êè, îíè ïîãèáëè ïåøêàìè â ÷óæîé èãðå</I> (Stupid, greedy little fools, they died as pawns in someone else’s game).
But as someone pointed out: <I>Ïåøêè íàçàä íå õîäÿò, îíè ïðåâðàùàþòñÿ â ôèãóðû</I> (pawns can’t go backwards, and they can turn into major figures). That is, a pawn can inch its way to the other side of the board and become promoted — usually to a queen. In Russian, this is <I>âûéòè â ôåðçè</I> and is used whenever a figure of ostensibly little importance rises up to the top. For example, an analyst studying Middle Eastern politics wrote: <I>Òóðöèÿ — ïåøêà, êîòîðàÿ ñïîñîáíà âûéòè â ôåðçè</I> (Turkey is a pawn that could very well be promoted to queen).
Even though the knight (<I>êîíü</I>) is a lightweight, its L-shaped, jumping move suggests strength and daring. This <I>õîä êîí¸ì</I> (knight’s move) is used figuratively to describe any clever and unexpected move. Sometimes the move is crafty: <I>Âàëåíòèíà Ìàòâèåíêî ñäåëàëà õîä êîí¸ì. Íà ìóíèöèïàëüíûõ âûáîðàõ îíà íå áóäåò ñîñòÿçàòüñÿ ñ îïïîçèöèîíåðàìè</I> (Valentina Matvienko made a clever move — she won’t be going up against opposition politicians in the city elections). Now it also seems to refer to any bold and perhaps unexpected act: <I>Îí ñäåëàë õîä êîí¸ì è êóïèë äîì</I> (He took the leap and bought a house).
But not only chess pieces are used figuratively. <I>Ïîïàñòü â öåéòíîò</I> is chess-speak for being in a time crunch — zeitnot is German for “time trouble.”A managerial consultant advises: <I>Åñëè Âû íå õîòèòå ïîïàñòü â öåéòíîò, òî ñòîèò çàâåñòè îðãàíàéçåð</I> (If you don’t want to find yourself pressured for time, you should get a personal organizer).
To which I would add: You might also consider hiring a pawn who is about to be promoted to queen.

<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: The truth behind the smiles
AUTHOR: By Kristina Aleksandrova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Photos of politicians are usually plastered all over newspapers, but it is usually professional photographs that reflect them most accurately. Only a photographer is capable of capturing the individual as a whole: Their characteristic body movements, gestures and facial expressions. Yet most snapshots rarely make it through the official selection. Now, pictures revealing more about the nature of political leaders through their body language — the subconscious manifestation of human nature — are on display for the first time at the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall.
The exhibition features approximately 50 photos, most of which were taken by Kremlin pool photojournalists Alexander Astafiev and Anatoly Zhdanov. The project also features the work of two photographers from St. Petersburg: The St. Petersburg Times photographer Alexander Belenky, and Sergei Grachev, who also previously worked as a staff photographer at The St. Petersburg Times. 
There are many who believe in the ability of photographers to see political leaders through a different lens, and now visitors without this unique gift will be able to view these familiar public figures in a different light that focuses on their body language and expressions not so easily caught by the amateur photographer.
Astafiev began covering political events involving Russian leaders about seven years ago. Since that time, foreign politicians have also been the focus of his lens. 
“I take photos of every political event connected with our president,” said Astafiev. “Of course I try to publish every interesting picture because very soon they become a thing of the past and fall into oblivion.”
According to body language expert Allan Pease, non-verbal signals are five times more informative than verbal ones. Gestures and facial expressions are more trustworthy than words. Even an experienced liar can only imitate insincere gestures for a short period, because the body involuntarily gives out signals contradictory to its conscious actions.
“Some of the photos at the exhibition had never before been published and can be considered as informal,” said exhibition organizer Olga Sviridenko. 
The photos displayed as part of the “next frames” part of the exhibition combine both documentary reporting and creative freedom. In these shots, photojournalists show a person in their everyday environment and demonstrate the ability of modern photography to take away these distractions, unveiling their personal image.
All politicians understand the importance of body language, and they try to use it to their advantage as best they can, making themselves more dramatic, charming and attractive. The right gestures made former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt one of the most confident leaders in history, just as a mess of the wrong ones made Richard Nixon a joke. 
Most psychologists agree that President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin both have very expressive gestures. During one press conference, Allan Pease observed that Russian leaders, unlike American politicians, are very aware of how they communicate non-verbally.
Since facial expressions and body language cannot be heard, it is necessary to watch closely in order to detect subtle movements or a brief look. For example, only the close analysis of a video in which Medvedev receives a Soviet propaganda poster at Stanford reveals the true feelings of the president. He reads the phrase “Workers of the world, unite!” and only a freeze-frame captures the expression of disgust on his face. Such controversial images are rarely shown by the press or at most exhibitions. However, the “Political Body Language” exhibition at the Manezh allows all visitors to see a small part of the “real Medvedev.”
Putin’s telltale body language includes a habit of tilting his head and staring sullenly at what is really attracting his attention. Due to this peculiarity, it is easy to tell which theme of summit talks really interests the prime minister. A sign of favor to his interlocutor is a special handshake, when he places his free hand on the shoulder of the person whom he is greeting. Putin likes to be shown as being in control and dominant, analysts say, and during handshakes, the prime minister always gets the upper hand by turning the back of his hand — not that of his interlocutor — toward the camera.
Sometimes, body language is the only way in which politicians can communicate with the people they meet through their work. One of the exhibits shows former St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko and German Formula 1 champion Michael Schumacher using a primitive form of sign language (see page 13).
“Schumacher visited the city in 2008 for the Commission for Global Road Safety,” said Belenky, who captured the moment.
“It was a very pompous, formal occasion, but when they sat next to each other, it seemed that they couldn’t find a common language, and resorted to sign language. It struck me as amusing, and I took a picture of it.” 
According to Astafiev, there is always an element of chance in photography: It is a question of being in the right place at the right time. 
“The process of photographing politicians is very unpredictable. Working with ordinary people, you can organize some type of stage management, whereas taking photos of politicians can be compared to winning a lottery,” said Astafiev. “A photographer should always predict what’s going to happen, because they can’t interfere with the process.”
Whether it be a photo of Medvedev’s shrewd smile or former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov’s frown, the images look certain to raise lot of questions about what we really know about these people, and what they simply lead us to believe.

<I>“Political Body Language” runs from Oct. 20 to 23 at the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall, 1 Isaakievskaya Ploshchad. Tel. 314 8859. M. Sadovaya/Sennaya Ploshchad.</I>

TITLE: in the spotlight: Military service, celebrity-style
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, Channel One started a new show called “Special Assignment,” where famous people have to put on khakis and join the Russian army for six weeks. 
The show’s brilliant trailers had Russian tanks waltzing in sync on sand, which looked like a satire on modern warfare — until the waltzing stopped and our lovely hosts, the blonde Vera Brezhneva and the muscled Oleg Taktarov, climbed out of the hatches. 
The idea of the show is that two teams get immersed in the action by living in real barracks, under the command of real officers, and compete with one another in silly games until the best team wins.  It is sponsored by the Defense Ministry, which apparently believes that it will help recruit more soldiers. 
The conditions are “comparable to the real army life of a conscript soldier in the armed forces of the Russian Federation,” Taktarov tells contestants.
There’s definitely an aim of promoting the army, with fact boxes telling us how the contestants are wearing the new modern uniform, not the recently abolished breeches and foot rags.
It’s the latest in a long line of endurance reality shows, such as “Survivor,” which had competitors eating worms on a jungly shore, and “Fort Boyard,” where players wearing hideous Lycra outfits have to negotiate giant rubber hammers and avoid slipping into water-filled pools.
The show lasts six weeks, during which time the contestants allegedly go through the whole course of a “young warrior” that a conscript would experience. The final four contestants have to decide who is the overall winner.
The show has a portentous voice-over, with the announcer constantly saying things like: “They will never return to their previous lives.”
The contestants included a blonde model called Yelena Kuletskaya, 28, former girlfriend of Eurovision winner Dima Bilan. Willowy and self-possessed, she spoke in an unusually low-pitched voice. “There’s no mirror in the barracks,” she said in horror.
Another familiar face was Avraam Russo, the Syrian-born pop singer who fled Russia in 2006 after he was shot in his moving car in central Moscow and seriously injured. Oddly enough, that did not dissuade Russo from pursuing an appearance in a reality show bristling with guns.
All the same, I was relieved when Russo was disqualified from the first round after walking, not jogging, to the base with his dodgy leg, and arriving last.
There are also some oddballs such as a woman called Miriam, whose qualification seems to be that she once served in the Israeli army — and can drive a tank — but who was clearly struggling to keep up in a totally unsuitable dress.
Somewhat unfairly, there are also a number of professional sportsmen: Vitaly Minakov, a wrestling world champion, Viktor Maigurov, a biathlete, and Batu Khasikov, a kickboxing world champion. And typically, they all seemed to end up on one team.
“The main thing is you have to conquer yourself,” Khasikov intones wisely, while the other team comforts itself that “the public will support us. We have more girls and intelligentsia.”
The real work is done by the show’s two officers: Captain Alexander Kolbanov, a paratrooper, and Lieutenant-Colonel Vladimir Podolyansky, whose job is to herd the teams into the right places and teach them to stop smiling, hold their chins up and shout, “Tak tochno,” the army way of saying “Yes.” They spend three hours a day schooling the recalcitrant celebrities on the parade ground.
“I’m small, skinny and ugly, but you have no idea what I’m capable of,” said Podolyansky, who has a favorite catchphrase: “The punishment will be cruel.”
“They’ve not come to a pioneer camp,” he said firmly.

TITLE: THE DISH: Graf-in
AUTHOR: By Shura Collin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>All that glitters</b>
To the seemingly never-ending yellow building on Konnogvardeisky Boulevard that is also home to the upscale restaurants Stroganoff Steak House and Russian Vodka Room No. 1 — owned by the Svoi v Gorode restaurant group — now comes Graf-in. But the similarities between the newcomer and the established favorites end with their location.
Stroganoff Steak House, which enjoys the reputation of one of the best steakhouses — if not the best — in the city, is not cheap, and nor is its Russian twin, which attracts well-heeled tourists with its traditional Russian dishes and adjacent vodka museum, guaranteed to pull in the crowds. Yet local gourmets consistently return to the restaurants because they offer excellent food, generally accompanied by good service. 
Sadly, Graf-in appears to have neither of these attributes, though that has not stopped it from boldly matching its neighbors’ prices. 
The food was late and disappointing, and the portions meager. From the Thai section of the menu, vegetable soup (220 rubles, $7), was oily and ordinary, rather than spicy as promised. 
Spinach cream soup (250 rubles, $8) was fresh, but the small portion disappeared in a matter of seconds, a feat made possible by the fact that it was only vaguely hot when served.
Likewise, the fact that the temperature of the vegetable lasagne with Parmesan and Mozzarella (370 rubles, $12) became distinctly cooler toward the middle of the dish set alarm bells — in the form of the pinging of a microwave — ringing in our heads. In addition, the dish contained more cheese and b&#233;chamel sauce than vegetables, making it somewhat sickly. 
Duck leg with mashed potato (580 rubles, $18.50) was in fact two duck legs — though again, it was still not the most generous portion, especially in light of the price. While it was inoffensive enough, it was certainly nothing to write home about.
Worse than the food, however, was the unbelievably slow service. 
The 150-ruble ($4.80) bread basket had long been devoured even before drinks were served, not to mention the appetizers, which actually had to be sought out to be sure they had not been forgotten, so long were they in coming. Most frustrating was the wait staff’s apparent reluctance to bring the bill. Graf-in offers both a breakfast menu (8 a.m. to 12 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekends) and a three-course business lunch for 250 rubles ($8), but only those with the slackest of work schedules and most relaxed of bosses would be advised to take advantage of these offers on a work day.
It is less surprising than it should be that Graf-in has, in spite of all this, attracted a steady stream of clients since it opened in July. The road outside its glass-covered terrace is consistently double parked with flashy vehicles, making for an incongruous contrast with the neighboring trolleybus park.
The enclosed glass terrace is popular with well turned-out young women sinking back into the comfortable sofas and armchairs to smoke hookah pipes and drink cocktails, at any time of day — and at any time of year (fleece blankets are provided). They are perhaps enticed in by the huge peacock-adorned lamp bases that flank the terrace, or by the cavernous interior, with its chic whitewashed walls and multitude of glass lightshades, or perhaps even by the automobile fashion show outside itself. Either way, this is regrettably less a sign of deserved popularity than of yet another local eatery with more style than substance.

TITLE: Ufa: Soviet Cafeterias and IKEA Furniture
AUTHOR: By Khristina Narizhnaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: UFA — Ufa is best seen from the window of a landing airplane in the early fall. The concrete center is surrounded by multi-colored cottage roofs sprinkled on rolling hills, covered in yellow, green, orange and red trees, cut by rivers and lakes as still as glass.
Despite being a manufacturing and oil-refining center, the capital of Bashkortostan has some of the best-preserved nature in Russia. Nearby are hundreds of kilometers of virgin forest and mountains where some of the world’s finest honey is produced by wild honeybees.
Not surprisingly, customs from the long-gone Soviet era remain preserved along with the pristine nature. Government officials serve in an imposing white block of a building with endless hallways of creaking lacquered parquet floors covered in red carpets. They dine at a real Soviet cafeteria, with white cloth-covered tables and traditional Russian food.
Journalists and other visitors of the government — a reporter for The Moscow Times, the sister newspaper of The St. Petersburg Times, visited Ufa on a government-organized press tour — are accompanied by a member of the government at all times and are told not to meet with anyone or go anywhere alone. The main hotel for out-of-towners is located far from the city center, in a wooded area near a river.
The majority of the Ufa men wear black worker’s hats, wildly popular in the U.S.S.R. and ubiquitously worn by former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.
But modernity is starting to creep into the republic. Swedish furniture giant IKEA opened its first store in the republic in August. French supermarket chain Auchan opened its first Bashkortostan location earlier this month.
Since President Dmitry Medvedev appointed a top RosHydro manager, Rustem Khamitov, as Bashkortostan’s president in 2009, great strides have been taken to modernize the republic. Attracting investors became a priority to replenish the republic’s budget, which had been supported by revenue from its oil-refining and mining industries prior to changes in federal tax law during the mid-2000s.
The republic’s government, previously closed to outsiders politically and financially, has set up a development corporation to help investors realize their local projects.
Traveling businessmen from other regions said the business climate has grown more open since the republic’s former president, Murtaza Rakhimov, who held the post for nearly 20 years, was replaced.
Ufa has long been a multicultural center. Ivan the Terrible set up a fortress in the city in the 16th century to protect central Russia from Asian invaders. The region was populated by Bashkirs, a nomadic Muslim Turkic tribe.
Today more than 100 nationalities live in Ufa, with major ethnic groups including Russians, Bashkirs, Tatars, the Chuvash, Ukrainians, Jews and Belarussians. Over the years, various nationalities have intermarried, and there are many mixed ethnicities living in the area.
One of the country’s largest Jewish community centers was built here in 2007, and Khamitov was the first republican president to attend a Hanukkah celebration last December.
Rabbi Dan Krichevsky said he feels safe in Ufa and is not worried about his son, who wears a traditional Jewish yarmulke hat. The greatest hardship Krichevsky faces in the region is access to reasonably priced kosher food. The food must either be shipped from Moscow or Israel, which can get very expensive.
Someone should open local kosher food production company, Krichevsky said.
“He would be a monopolist,” Krichevsky said.
<b>What to see if you have two hours</b>
Take a walk around central Ufa. Wander down Ulitsa Gafuri, past the turquoise glass wave-like Congress Hall business center and the fountain with multi-colored tiles to the equestrian statue of Bashkir hero Salavat Yulayev. Yulayev was one of the main figures in the Pugachyov rebellion fought in the 18th century to improve the situation of the Bashkir peasants. The nearly 10-meter-high statue is one of the largest horseman statues in Europe, and it overlooks the sloping tree-lined banks of the Belaya River.
From there, head east on Ulitsa Tukayeva to Ufa’s oldest mosque (53 Ulitsa Tukayeva), built during the early 19th century, and the nearby Friendship Monument, built in 1957 to celebrate 400 years of Bashkortostan being part of Russia.
To see the well-preserved wooden houses of Ufa, walk down Ulitsa Oktyabrskoi Revolyutsii, one of the oldest streets in the city. The pale blue-and-white Nativity of the Mother of God church on nearby Ulitsa Kirova is the city’s most ornate church.

<b>What to do if you have two days</b>
Visit the Lya Lya Tyulpan mosque 
(5 Ulitsa Komarova), located in the northern part of the city, overlooking the Belaya River. The red-and-white mosque, whose two minarets resemble tulips, was built in the 1990s and is one of the region’s most important Islamic centers.
The National Museum (14 Sovietskaya Ulitsa; +7 347-272-12-50; museumrb.ru) is the republic’s major museum with exhibits of the region’s history and national Bashkortostan cultural artifacts, including traditional dress.
Shop for the famous Bashkortostan honey at one of the city’s honey shops (2 Novosibirskaya Ulitsa, +7 347-274-46-84, bashkirmed.com; 7/2 Ulitsa Akademika Koroleva, +7 347-244-34-46, efesin.ru). Locals warn to stay away from the markets since the honey there is unregulated and often counterfeiters either mix sugar or syrup into their honey or feed their bees sugar.

<b>What to do with the kids</b>
During the summer you can visit Yakutov Park (65/3 Ulitsa Lenina, +7 347-292-39-27, yakutov.ru), which has rides and games. During the colder months, visit the planetarium located near the park.

<b>Where to eat</b>
The Akbuzat (217a Ulitsa Mendeleyeva, +7 347-241-35-05) restaurant is located inside the hippodrome of the same name. Diners can watch equestrian races out of the windows of the restaurant as they sample European and Bashkir fare at prices Muscovites could only dream of — the average bill is 500 rubles per person.
La Ruche (20 Ulitsa Karla Marksa, +7 347-292-65-35, laruche.ru) is one of the fanciest restaurants in Ufa. The menu features a variety of meat, seafood and vegetable dishes, with elements of Asian and European cuisine that includes ingredients such as rucola, shrimp, octopus, Parmesan cheese and coconut milk. The average check is about 2,000 rubles per person.

<b>Nightlife</b>
World-famous DJs play at Rise nightclub (1 Verkhnetorgovaya Ploshchad, +7 347-279-60-20, clubrise.ru) for Ufa’s trendiest, best-looking crowd. The club is open every night from midnight and features a lounge and a restaurant, and sometimes screens films.
The Opera and Ballet Theater (5/1 Ulitsa Lenina, +7 347-272-10-12, bashopera.ru), where Rudolf Nuriyev, one of Russia’s most famous ballet dancers, got his start, has performances almost every night of the week. The theater’s repertoire includes classics such as “Don Quixote” and “Sleeping Beauty” as well as “Crane Song,” a Bashkir production. The city boasts 10 other theaters, including the State Bashkir Drama Theater (34 Ulitsa Zaki Validi, +7 347-272-7310, bashdram.ru), the State Tatar Theater NUR (36 Ulitsa 50 Let SSSR, +7 347-248-95-33, teatrnur.ru) and the State Russian Drama Theater (79 Prospekt Oktyabrya, 
+7 347-233-00-73, rusdram.ru).

<b>Where to stay</b>
Surrounded by woods and overlooking the Belaya River, President (2 Ulitsa Avrory, +7 347-279-80-08, presidenthotel.ru) is the best hotel in Ufa, popular with visiting businessmen. Although the hotel hosts families, late at night the hotel bar’s tables are full, mostly with oil businessmen and prostitutes. The rooms range in price from 2,800 rubles for a standard single to 9,700 rubles for a luxury suite for two ($90 to $310).
The centrally located Agidel Hotel (16 Ulitsa Lenina, +7 347-272-56-80, agidelhotel.ru) boasts a billiards hall, a sauna, a beauty salon, a restaurant and a bar. Make sure to book in advance because its central location keeps this hotel in high demand. Prices range from 1,300 rubles ($40) for a single room to 6,050 rubles ($190) for a luxury suite.

<b>Conversation starters</b>
New street curbs have recently been installed around the city that residents consider to be too high. The curbs have been blamed for many of the city’s ills, including a kidnapped baby, taken from a stroller on the street because the mother could not lift it over the high curb to go into a pharmacy. Complaining about the high curbs will make the locals feel closer to you.

<b>How to get there</b>
The easiest and fastest way to get to Ufa is by plane. The renovated Ufa International Airport hosts domestic flights to St. Petersburg and other cities in Russia and international flights to several locations, including the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Turkey, Egypt and Azerbaijan. The nearly three-hour direct flight from St. Petersburg costs about 10,000 rubles ($325) with Rossiya Airlines round-trip. Indirect flights are cheaper: From 7,000 rubles ($230) round-trip with a connection if you fly with Aeroflot. The airport is located a convenient 30-minute taxi ride from the city center.
Trains also travel to Ufa from St. Petersburg’s Moscow Railway Station. The roughly 2,000-kilometer trip takes about 42 hours and a second-class ticket costs around 2,000 rubles ($65).
<hr />
<b>Ufa</b>

Population: 1,062,300

Mayor: Pavel Kachkayev

Main industries: oil extraction, oil refining, gas, metals mining, auto parts, chemical production, agriculture

Founded in 1574 when Ivan the Terrible ordered a fortress built here

Interesting fact No. 1: 
The city was initially named Tura-Tau after the name of the hill that it 
stood on. 

Interesting fact No. 2: 
During World War II, the Soviet Ukrainian government relocated to Ufa following the eastward retreat in 1941.

Sister cities: Ankara, Turkey; Halle, Germany; Las Pinas, Phillippines; Orenburg, Russia; Paldiski, Estonia.

Helpful contacts: 
• Aidar Garyev, general director of the Corporation of Development of the Bashkortostan republic 
(78 Ulitsa Oktyabrskoi Revolyutsii; +7-347-280-82-32; 
kr-rb.ru); 
• Yury Pustovgarov, president of the republic’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (3 Ulitsa Karla Marksa, +7-347-276-20-52, 
tpprb.ru)

<b>Major Businesses</b>

• Selena Neftekhim (14 Ulitsa Mira; +7-495-755-95-04; selena.su), created in 1998, extracts gas and oil and is one of Russia’s biggest producers of diesel fuel, auto fuel, aviation fuel, industrial oils, bitumen, polymers and plastics. 

• Stroitelny Trest No. 3 (10 Prospekt Oktyabrya; +7-347-246-14-06; trest3rb.ru) is a group of construction-related companies that were founded in the Soviet era. The group provides various services, including development and investment, construction of housing and commercial real estate. 

• Elektrozavod (Elektrozavodskaya Ulitsa, Moscow; +7-495-777-82-26; elektrozavod.ru), Russia’s largest producer of electric parts, has two branches in Ufa. A recently constructed branch produces a large share of the country’s power, distribution and unitized transformers. The second branch is a Soviet-era electric parts factory integrated into the company in 2004 and today produces electricity-generating parts and reactors.
<hr />
<b>Pavel Kachkayev, 
Mayor 
At 60, he has worked in the Ufa administration since 1994 and has been mayor for the last eight years.</b>

Q: Why should foreigners come to Ufa? 
A: Lakes, forests, rivers, good climate and mountains. It’s a good spot for skiing and snowboarding. We have over 100 nationalities and we all live in peace.
Q: Why is Ufa a good place for business? 
A: We live conservatively within our means. We try to create good conditions for investors. Our city’s Moody’s rating has gone up four times in five years. The business climate is more transparent now.
Q: In what should investors put money into Ufa? 
A: If someone wants to build a logistics center in Ufa, we’ll give them a hectare and bow deeply before them. We’ll be happy for any manufacturing, housing construction or retail. We have oil, but there is not enough oil for everyone.
Q: What is your favorite part of Ufa? ?A: Oktyabrskaya Ulitsa is all made of wood. A hanging bridge where lovers put padlocks. The Friendship Monument. The Church of the Nativity. The movie theater. The mosque. I love it all.

TITLE: Italian Artist Dedicates Local Show to Steve Jobs
AUTHOR: By Olga Panova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Google the phrase “Steve Jobs genius” and in 0.09 seconds 84,000,000 pages will pop up. 
“Stay hungry, stay foolish:” Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, and his motto have had a great influence on millions of people, including contemporary Italian artist Alessandro Gedda, whose work is currently on display at the Academy of Arts. Having known Jobs personally and been inspired by him, Gedda has created an interactive installment entitled “Big Apple,” to commemorate Jobs’ death earlier this month. Pieces can be bought, and all proceeds will be donated to the Scientific Research Fund.
“Genius is engagement, conviction, trust, freedom and suffering, sometimes isolation,” said Gedda. “One evening I said to my friend, ‘The glass is never half-empty, not even half- full, it is a must for me that it is always and only full.’” 
His series of works, created in St. Petersburg, are an expression of true passion for life, a heart overflowing with emotion and the idea that it is eternal in its existence despite everyday circumstances. 
“The morning after Jobs’ death, while walking to the magnificent Academy of Arts, I was thinking about the power of an idea, the power of a dream, and the atmosphere of the city, a fruit of the dream of Peter the Great,” said Gedda. “That inspired me to create this series in front of the young students of the academy and to show them where freedom of vision, the power of their imagination and dedication to their dreams can lead them in the future.”
Gedda’ s exhibition was organized by the Maimeri Foundation together with the Russian Academy of Arts to take place during the Year of Italy in Russia culture exchange. The exhibition consists of a selection of digital art installations, oil paintings and works of contemporary design. The subjects include New York skyscrapers, Hollywood stars, voluminous hearts and colorful race cars that evoke an incarnation of Futurism. 

<I>“Big Apple” runs through Nov. 6 
at the Academy of Arts Museum, 
17 Universitetskaya Nab. Tel. 323 6496. 
M. Vasileostrovskaya.</I>

TITLE: Lacrosse Teams Get Set to Clash
AUTHOR: By Jack Stubbs
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A group of St. Petersburg students will make sporting history Saturday when they compete against Moscow in Russia’s first ever lacrosse match.
Although lacrosse has been played in Russia since 2007, only recently have significant steps forward been made in the game’s development. The St. Petersburg White Knights have played the Moscow Rebels on two previous occasions, but this will be the first time both teams have fielded a full side of ten men.
As the only two lacrosse clubs in the country, a lot is at stake for both teams. Both have previously won one of the previous two encounters and the series is drawn at 1 – 1. The 2011 Capitals Cup, to be held in Moscow this Saturday, will be the deciding factor in who claims the title of National Champion.
“Saturday’s match will break the tie and determine the current ruler of Russian lacrosse,” said David Diamonon, founder of the Moscow Rebels lacrosse club. “The Moscow Rebels’ and St. Petersburg White Knights’ contributions will be etched into the annals of lacrosse history.”
Originating from Native American war games, lacrosse is traditionally played in North America, with small but dedicated followings in the U.K., Australia and central Europe. The sport requires two teams of ten men to pass, catch and shoot a rubber ball with netted sticks in order to score in the opposition’s six-by-six-foot (1.8-square-meter) goal. 
Dmitry Petrov, 21, a physics student and captain of the St. Petersburg White Knights, founded the local club in 2008. While at first the team consisted only of Russian students, Petrov said they soon found foreign students who wanted to play and make the most of their time in Russia. The team is currently a mixture of Russian, American and British students.
Petrov said Saturday’s match would be about a lot more than just winning. 
“This is really about the development of lacrosse in Russia,” he said. “We need more teams and more people playing. 
“Students in particular really want to get involved, we just need to get the word out there.”
Last month, Russia was granted membership to the Federation of International Lacrosse. There are plans to form a national team with hopes of playing in the 2014 World Championship.
“I want to play in Europe and show them what we can do here,” Petrov said. “We can make something out of nothing and the world needs to know that.”
Speaking about the development of Russian lacrosse, Diamonon said, “As a nation full of sports fans, Russia is ripe for introducing new games. Compared to sports long since entrenched in Russia such as soccer, ice hockey and basketball, to name only a few, lacrosse offers opportunities for athletes interested in exploring something new, something different, something cooler.”

<I>The 2011 Capitals Cup will take place at 
1 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 22 at Moscow’s Sokol Stadium. For more information on lacrosse in Russia or playing in St. Petersburg, visit www.lacrosserussia.ru or www.vkontakte.ru/club1265533.</I>

TITLE: St. Isaac’s Cathedral Inspires British Designer
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Color is the god that Tricia Guild worships. Admirers of the founder of U.K.-based interior design company Designers Guild call her a color crusader, and she is getting her latest inspiration from St. Petersburg.
“She is about the only designer who can make a bright orange sofa without making it look ridiculous,” said one of her admirers.
  It is all about how people use color, Guild explains. 
“If you go to Milan and visit contemporary design salons you see a lot of color; color gives a kind of vitality to a space,” the designer said. “The question is, obviously, how it is used and in what quantity. So if you want a bright orange sofa, you should probably decide against having a bright orange carpet.”
Guild started out nearly 40 years ago with a small fabrics shop and now runs an internationally established global company that enjoys commissions from the British royal family. It was Guild’s trip to India that inspired her to make her first collection of fabrics, before she opened her first shop on King’s Road in London.
 “On that trip I found some beautiful little old woodblocks, very simple, and then decided to print those,” she said. “The method was of course different but it was based on these small, almost geometric, printed little fabrics, and I thought I could make those in wonderful colors and develop my language.”
Taking ideas and inspiration from travel has become Guild’s philosophy. Speaking to The St. Petersburg Times in September before the presentation of her new collections at the U.K. Consulate General, Guild spoke with enthusiasm about the glorious shades of malachite in St. Isaac’s Cathedral. 
“It is not that a journey would immediately create a collection; it is more that the impressions of it go into your soul,” she explained.
It is not only travel, however, that inspires the designer. What else does a trendsetter look for to keep pushing forward? For Guild, it is fashion, theater, opera, architecture, and of course knowing and building from what clients in different countries are enjoying most from each collection.
Guild grew up in a very artistic family and lived in a house abundant with bright colors and modern furniture. “I was always reorganizing things in my room,” Guild said. “I loved the house, and my parents included me in the decorating. I was fascinated with ballet so there was a big poster of an Edgar Degas painting of a ballerina in my room. So it was quite personal.”
In 2008, Buckingham Palace invited Designers Guild to create a new collection based on the interiors and the treasures of the palace and Windsor Castle. The royal family commissioned the designers to rethink and recolor elements of the existing regal decor and produce a brand new Royal Collection to inject it with a bit of life and ensure it had a fresh modern twist.
 “We were very honored to have been asked to do that and we do our best to make it work,” Guild said. “It is not that we just took documents that were in the palace, it was our inspiration so it could be drawings on the walls or it could be part of the architecture; we created the collection using the archives, but not always literally.”
The company’s agreement with Buckingham Palace is ongoing, meaning that Designers Guild launches a new collection for the palace every year. The choice of what will serve as the inspiration for the next collection is always spontaneous, and ideas come to Guild as she is wandering through the royal palace.
“Every time I go to the palace, there is always something new that you have not seen, like a fascinating piece of ceramic or, for example, while looking for motifs for the last collection, we went into a room that had some beautiful chinoiserie,” the designer said.
Russia is one of the key consumers of the embroidered silks and lush velvets of the Royal Collection, which is a striking departure from Guild’s signature shocking pink, shiny orange or sky blue palettes.
“It’s because they’re using so much of it in one go — shiny silk on shiny silk plus grand flock wallpaper — that it could be a bit heavy-going for younger, Western European and North American tastes (though you can imagine it in those Nancy Reagan lookalikes’ houses in Palm Beach),” read a review of one of the first collections in The Independent. “But in the lovely rich BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India, China] countries — especially Russia — you can just see them buying the whole package.”
Author of more than 15 books, Guild is convinced that taste is something that one can learn and develop. In her opinion, it is arrogant to suggest as some people do that taste is in one’s genes, and being born without a good eye for color or a sense of taste cannot be acquired. 
“In a book, you can open people’s eyes and you can open their feelings to perhaps be more sensitive,” Guild said. 
“Not everybody is going to become their own talented designer, but the more open they are, the more they know about something. It is the same with music: The more you know it, the more you can appreciate it. My husband [restaurateur Richard Polo] is very musical and we go to the opera a lot; you can play two bars of something and he will know who is singing and so on. I am not like that, but I can appreciate much more now because I’ve learned so much about it. Knowledge makes people less fearful and more confident in their choices.”