SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1680 (42), Wednesday, October 26, 2011
**************************************************************************
TITLE: City Culture to Get New Head
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As Anton Gubankov has resigned as the head of City Hall’s Culture Committee, rumors abound that his replacement will be prominent local businessman Vladimir Kekhman, the director of the Mikhailovsky Theater, who made his substantial fortune importing fruit.
No confirmation of any negotiations being held with Kekhman could be obtained from either City Hall or the Mikhailovsky Theater on Tuesday, yet the millionaire’s possible appointment to the job has been the talk of the city’s cultural community for the past few days.
For the moment, City Governor Georgy Poltavchenko has appointed Gubankov’s deputy Anna Kucherova as acting head of the committee.
According to Poltavchenko, Gubankov, who has made no public comments on what he may do next, resigned of his own accord.
“The new governor is creating a new team; new people have joined the administration,” Gubankov said. “I am not the kind of person who would try to keep a job at any cost. Being able to work and be efficient at what I do has always been a priority. What I would most like to see is the ambitious cultural policy that was beginning to shape up go from strength to strength.”
In that respect, Gubankov may soon be disappointed. The city’s cultural circles were expecting his resignation. Poltavchenko’s list of priorities for the city’s development reportedly differs from those of St. Petersburg’s former governor Valentina Matviyenko, who encouraged costly outdoor festivities such as the Alye Parusa (“Scarlet Sails”) high school graduation festival. If the new governor does indeed have a different vision of spending on culture, it was natural to expect Gubankov’s departure to follow the resignation of deputy governor Alla Manilova, who masterminded these policies and with whom Gubankov worked closely.
On taking up the governor’s job on Sept. 1, Poltavchenko said he would make changes to the city government, but stressed that those changes would come gradually. Earlier this month, Poltavchenko accepted the resignation of Vera Dementyeva, who was chair of the city’s Committee for the Preservation and Protection of Historical Monuments. Dementyeva, who was facing fierce opposition from the local cultural community for her controversial policies that allowed a number of historic mansions to be destroyed, landed the plum job of director of the Pavlovsk Museum and Estate.
Many members of the local artistic and cultural community balk at the news of Kekhman’s possible arrival in the city government. While his supporters call him an efficient arts manager — under his leadership the Mikhailovsky Theater has been able to afford expensive renovation, Western coaches, star guest soloists and internationally established advisors — Kekhman’s critics accuse him of lack of vision, pointing to the frequent reshuffles at the theater’s management, including heads of opera and ballet divisions. For instance, the internationally acclaimed former Mariinsky Theater soloist Farukh Ruzimatov did not last as head of the company’s ballet division, and opera diva Yelena Obraztsova also failed to stay long as head of the theater’s opera department. Kekhman can offer generous salaries, but because he does not really have a clear idea of where his theater should go, he is easily manipulated by the various camps, hence the frequent staff reshuffles, analysts say. They predict it will be difficult for him to develop a sense of direction for an entire city, especially one as culturally diverse as St. Petersburg.
While jazz patriarch David Goloshchekin, head of the St. Petersburg Jazz Philharmonic Hall, is convinced that giving the chair of the Culture Committee to someone without a strong background in the arts and solid understanding of culture would be a grave mistake, Vasily Kichedzhi, the city’s new deputy governor who oversees, in particular, cultural issues, said the issue has not yet been decided.
“I have a list of nearly 25 potential candidates for this position. They are very different people, and all of them have gained a reputation in the city either for their artistic achievements or impressive managerial skills,” Kichedzhi said.
“Before any decision is made, we will hold talks with the most respected members of the city’s artistic circles.”
Kekhman has become notorious with many local media outlets for his controversial policies toward critics who produce negative reviews about Mikhailovsky Theater productions. The authors of the most scathing reviews have been denied both press accreditation to further performances and access to soloists.
TITLE: Residents Fear Program Will Lead to Evictions
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Concerned St. Petersburg residents congregated at City Hall on Tuesday to protest a controversial renovation program backed by the city’s authorities and to deliver a letter and signatures to City Governor Georgy Poltavchenko.
Led by the newly-formed preservationist coalition Gradozashchita, the protesters, including activists of the Party of People’s Freedom (Parnas) and the Other Russia party, delivered hundreds of signatures of residents who do not want to leave their homes and move to the outskirts as part of a City Hall program.
Three hundred and thirty pages of signatures (with an average of three to a page) collected during the past few days were taped together into two long ribbons and shown to journalists, along with photographs of the buildings in question, which did not appear from the photographs to be in poor condition.
“We had to roll them up when we heard the police calling for reinforcements on their radio, planning to detain us,” said Gradozashchita coordinator Tamara Vedernikova, adding that analysis of the program conducted by Gradozashchita experts was also delivered to City Hall.
About 150,000 residents in several districts may be evicted during the course of the renovation program — officially known as the “Development of Built-Up Areas in St. Petersburg” plan — activists say, adding that former governor Valentina Matviyenko gave 900 hectares of land in St. Petersburg to SPb Renovatsiya, the company charged with carrying out the program.
After the demolition of the buildings, the land may be used for commercial projects, activists warn.
Preservationists say that the buildings are in good condition, with some having undergone recent renovation work, and are seen as prestigious locations. They say the program is an attempt by developers to seize the land to make a profit from it.
“We checked a number of apartments to see how what they describe as “dilapidated housing” looks; I would move into such an apartment myself from my modern building without hesitation,” Vedernikova said.
The activists, who say that the residents themselves were not asked whether they agreed to participate in the program when it was adopted as a local law in 2008, are intent on getting an answer from Poltavchenko himself, rather than from any of the deputy governors.
“All these deputy governors have lied and continue to lie to us; let the governor himself lie if that’s what he wants,” Vedernikova said. “We will plan our further actions depending on his answer.”
SPb Renovatsiya, which was created exclusively for the renovation project in 2009, denies that evictions are planned, dismissing such information as “deliberate provocation.”
In a statement last month, the company said that the residents would receive “fully finished comfortable apartments” in the same neighborhoods in exchange for their “dilapidated housing.”
TITLE: Strategy 31 Protesters Vow To March at End of Month
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Organizers of the Strategy 31 rally for the defense of the right to assembly have said they will hold a rally despite City Hall’s refusal to sanction it, and asked opposition parliamentary candidates to join the demo due on Monday, Oct. 31.
“Prove that you are opposition in practice; don’t just shout it from your soapboxes,” they urged in an address to the registered parties the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), A Just Russia and Yabloko Democratic Party on Sunday.
“Express your disagreement with police violence against participants of the peaceful rally.”
The organizers said the coming rally would take the form of a march from Gostiny Dvor on Nevsky Prospekt to the Legislative Assembly on St. Isaac’s Square. As well as the right to assembly, the protesters will demand fair elections and protest the planned return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency, they said in a news release.
City Hall has never authorized Strategy 31 rallies — named so after article 31 of the constitution that guarantees the right to assembly — and regularly sends the police to break up the demos.
This time, City Hall rejected five routes suggested by the organizers, offering the remote Polyushrovsky Park as an alternative, to which the protesters did not agree.
Meanwhile, two Other Russia activists have received short prison sentences for holding a small rally calling on people to boycott the forthcoming State Duma elections as illegitimate near Gostiny Dvor on Saturday.
Igor Chepkasov and Sergei Chepiga were sentenced to four and three days in prison, while the three other detained activists were released Monday after being held for nearly two days.
One of them was the mother of a young child, and should therefore not have been detained for more than three hours by law, the Other Russia said in a statement Monday.
During the protest, the activists held up a black banner reading “Elections with No Opposition Are a Crime,” burned flares and distributed leaflets.
Along with several other oppositional political parties, the Other Russia failed to get registered by the authorities and is therefore excluded from the elections. The party will call on people to boycott the election and protest the exclusion of oppositional parties at a rally on election day, Dec. 4.
TITLE: Young Moms Give Birth to Sick Kids
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg women born in the 1980s or early 90s have difficulty giving birth to healthy children, the head of the city’s Health Committee Yury Scherbuk said at an administration meeting on Tuesday.
Currently the most common health issue among children is musculoskeletal problems. Women born in these years have musculoskeletal problems themselves and pass this complication on to their children. Only 36 percent of children born to these women are healthy, Scherbuk said.
St. Petersburg governor Georgy Poltavchenko commissioned the Health Committee to think about how to solve the problem.
“Maybe pregnant women aren’t getting some minerals that should be in our water? We also need to pay attention to the conditions our children exposed to at kindergartens and schools,” Poltavchenko said, Fontanka reported.
In addition, the city administration expressed its concern for the fact that many St. Petersburg children have problems with their teeth.
Almost all first grade students have cavities in their baby teeth. More than half of 12-year-old schoolchildren have had problems with their permanent teeth already, Scherbuk said.
Scherbuk said that according to statistics, in 2010 local dentists at children’s dental offices had to pull out 82,500 teeth, including 5,500 permanent teeth.
TITLE: Deputy Governor Hopes To Raise Retirement Age
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Deputy City Governor Sergei Vyazalov is considering upping the retirement age for St. Petersburg residents, Fontanka reported Tuesday.
Vyazalov, who is in charge of the city administration’s financial bloc, asked the Health Committee to devise a plan to include elderly city residents in the workforce to increase economic effectiveness.
“We are considering raising the retirement age in Russia. I wanted to ask if St. Petersburg residents would be able to take an active part in the economic life of the city,” Vyazalov said at a city administration meeting.
Yury Scherbuk, head of the city’s Health Committee, said the issue about raising the retirement age was critical.
“From moral and ethical points of view, it’s too early to make such a decision. Economically it’s most likely possible and justifiable. However, it should be done very gradually and the retirement age could be increased by one or two years at a time, not more,” Scherbuk was quoted by Fontanka as saying.
Vyazalov said the current financial situation in the country left almost no other way out of the situation. Without such measures, the social burden on the budget will be too heavy in a few years when the number of elderly people in the city is estimated to total 30 percent.
Deputy Governor Lyudmila Kostkina said that many city residents continue to work actively even at an older age. Out of 1.2 million retirees in the city, 700,000 still work. Many of them work until they are 70 years old, she said.
In addition to pensioners who continue to work hard until a late age, St. Petersburg is also home to at least 249 people — 217 of them women — over the age of 100.
TITLE: Women Flock to See Virgin’s Belt in Hopes of Conceiving
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: More than 300,000 of St. Petersburg’s faithful came to see the Belt of the Virgin Mary, an Orthodox relic that arrived in Russia for the first time from Greece last week, RIA Novosti reported.
St. Petersburg became the first Russian city to host the relic, brought from the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos. After being kept at the city’s Novodevichy Monastery for four days, the relic was taken to Yekaterinburg.
People waited in long lines to see the relic, access to which was open for 24 hours. Women with small children were let in without standing in line, and a street vendor opened Saturday outside the monastery to keep the masses of believers nourished.
However, the St. Petersburg eparchy later expressed hope that the next time a relic arrives in the city, the organizers will be better prepared, RIA Novosti reported.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was visiting the city on Oct. 20, the day the relic arrived, greeted the belt at Pulkovo Airport (see photo, page 1).
This is the first time the relic has left Greece since it was moved to the Vatopedi monastery. Twenty monks from Athos accompanied it to Russia, Interfax reported.
The belt is normally taken to a Greek city once a year at the request of believers. The monastery refused earlier requests from other countries, including the U.S. and Romania, but an exception was made for Russia, Interfax reported.
The relic will stay in Russia until Nov. 23, and will be taken to 12 cities including Moscow, Norilsk, Vladivostok, Krasnoyarsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Diveyevo, Saransk, Samara, Rostov-on-Don and Kaliningrad.
According to legend, the belt and robe of the Virgin Mary were given to two widows in Jerusalem not long before her death. It was subsequently kept in Palestine for many years. In about 408 AD, the belt was brought to Constantinople and placed in a church.
Orthodox disciples believe that the belt possesses great strength and helps women to conceive children.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Celebrity Auction
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Known St. Petersburg natives such as rock singer Boris Grebenshchikov and FC Zenit goalkeeper Vyacheslav Malafeyev will donate some personal items to a charity auction aimed at helping local homeless people, Interfax reported.
The auction is to take place on Oct. 28 at 112 Ulitsa Borovaya and is open to the public. All proceeds will go to support the city’s Nochlezhka Foundation to help the city’s homeless survive the upcoming winter.
Other Russian celebrities such as pop-singer Zhanna Friske and singer Pyotr Nalich will also donate items to the auction.
Pulkovo Crash
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A YAK-42 passenger aircraft belonging to Tatarstan Airlines collided with a service vehicle in St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport last week.
The aircraft collided with the vehicle when it was taxiing after landing. Nobody suffered during the incident, but the body of the aircraft was damaged.
A special commission investigating the accident will look into the reasons for the incident and the cost of the damage.
Luzar Plant Opens
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Lugansk, Ukraine-based plant Luzar, which produces car radiators, opened its own production plant in St. Petersburg last week.
The plant is to produce radiators for AvtoVAZ, Renault and Daewoo vehicles. By the middle of 2012 the plant is to produce up to 500,000 units a year. Investment into the enterprise totaled $2.7 million euros.
The majority of supplies are currently made for the spare car parts market, but the company is currently holding negotiations with some Russian carmakers to supply them directly, Kommersant daily reported.
One of the reasons for the plant’s St. Petersburg location is the proximity of Ford, Toyota, Hyundai, GM and Nissan automobile plants, the company said.
TITLE: Bolshoi Theater to Reopen After Restoration
AUTHOR: By Lukas I. Alpert
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The splendor of the tsars is finally ready for its encore.
The Bolshoi Theater reopens to the world Friday following a six-year, scandal-plagued renovation that has returned the cultural icon to its original glory while leaving observers stunned by its jaw-dropping cost.
The result is nothing short of spectacular. The interior restored to an opulent silk-embroidered, gilded grandeur of pre-revolutionary times. Behind the scenes, the theater underwent a cutting-edge technological makeover, while backstage areas doubled in size.
"There was no cost or effort spared in the reconstruction of this theater," said Mikhail Sidorov, spokesman for Summa Capital, the investment group that took over the long-delayed project in 2009. "We made no compromises."
That attention to detail knew no bounds — even the smallest speakers tucked high up in the rafters are draped in luxuriously thick red satin fabric.
While few would quibble with the quality of the work, the question of cost has long cast a dark shadow over the massively overbudget and years-beyond-schedule project.
Originally projected to cost $610 million, the figure skyrocketed as the scope of the project ballooned and the taint of corruption led the original contractor to be fired and the state prosecutor's office to open a criminal probe.
Officials have given widely varying figures of the final cost throughout, with Sidorov placing it at 21 billion rubles ($688 million) during a grand press tour on Monday. Some authorities have suggested the cost could easily have been double that, and the Audit Chamber claimed in 2009 that the price tag had spiraled to 16 times the original estimate.
"It is unlikely that anyone will ever be sure exactly how much public money has been spent," Kommersant art critic Sergei Khodnev noted earlier this week. Yet no charges have ever been filed.
Bolshoi spokeswoman Katerina Novikova deflected the criticism by pointing out that the theater — founded in 1776 by Catherine the Great — stands as the crown jewel of the nation's vast cultural history.
"This theater is like a temple and has been treated like one throughout," she said at the press tour.
The epic renovation of the Bolshoi's main stage began in 2005 and was supposed to be finished in 2008. In the interim, performances were shifted to the smaller "New Stage," which opened in 2002.
The renovation project quickly spiraled out of control when engineers discovered that the building's foundation had dangerously shifted, leaving numerous giant cracks running from the roof to the base.
"When it was decided to reconstruct the theater, no one could have foreseen the real scope of the work," Sidorov said. "Cracks in the lower wall were so big you could put a hand through them. The theater could easily have just collapsed like a house of cards."
After extensive efforts to shore up the foundation, a cast of thousands set to work restoring the theater to what it looked like in 1853 when it was destroyed by the last of three fires.
That meant tearing out the concrete floors and orchestra pit installed in the Soviet era, while bringing an army of 3,600 skilled craftspeople to recreate the elaborately-gilded paneling, velvet and gold-brocaded balconies and reveal 19th-century murals covered over by decades of paint.
Crews also excavated deep beneath the existing theater and the square in front of it, carving out more than 40,000 square meters of new rehearsal, storage and technical space — double what previously existed.
The main hall's plush red velour seats were stuffed with horsehair, upholstered with Italian fabric using 18th-century methods and glued together with a special recipe of tea leaves and sturgeon guts.
Six kilograms of sound-reflecting gold-leaf paint was applied to the chandeliers and partitions, and tens of thousands of pounds of hand-cut crystal pieces strung from the chandeliers — the centerpiece being a two-ton glistening behemoth hanging over the main hall.
A prominent hammer and sickle was removed from just below the roof and replaced with the double-headed eagle symbol that existed in its place before Soviet times.
While great attention was spent restoring the theater to its ancient glory, equal effort was put into upgrading the rigging, lighting and acoustical elements using the leading technological advancements available.
"This is the most thoroughly modern theater in the world today," Sidorov said proudly. "But every effort was made to keep as close to the original designs as possible."
The work is not entirely done. The Moscow metro announced early this month that it would close the part of the Dark Green Line between the Teatralnaya and Novokuznetskaya stations — running directly beneath the theater — for two last weekends of November to install the last acoustical dampeners.
Interest in what all the money and effort has delivered reached a fevered pitch in recent weeks, with hundreds of stories written about the renovation and nearly 300 reporters from around the world anxiously lining up for a guided tour earlier this week.
It is with this backdrop that the theater's inaugural gala performance unfolds Friday night, with a glittering opening ceremony led by President Dmitry Medvedev.
"This will be the most important event I have ever taken part in," said Anatoly Iksanov, the theater's general director.
The theater will then open its 236nd season on Nov. 2 with a performance of Mikhail Glinka's opera "Ruslan and Lyudmila," which premiered at the Bolshoi in 1846.
Meanwhile, tickets for the opening show on Friday appeared on several web sites last week with eye-popping prices ranging up to 2 million rubles ($66,000), but were quickly taken down. Bolshoi officials said it was either a mistake or fraud because all tickets had been given to the Kremlin administration, which denied putting any on sale.
For those who have not been invited, the opening will be broadcast live on the Bolshoi's YouTube channel, starting at 6 p.m. Friday.
Ballet and opera aficionados have waited with bated breath to finally get a glimpse at the gleaming new theater.
"This is a great moment for Russia, Moscow and the theater," opera fan Sergei Ivanov said as he stood in line for tickets earlier this week. "I wouldn't miss it."
He said he was concerned by the cost overruns but said a palace like the Bolshoi deserved the best.
"I don't think anyone would argue that they should do any less than a world-class job here," he said. "I just hope all the money went where it was supposed to."
TITLE: Socialite Chews Out Kremlin Youth Leader
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — In a new sign of the upper class’s mounting oppositional slant, Kremlin-linked socialite Ksenia Sobchak cornered the Kremlin’s youth policy chief, Vasily Yakemenko, in a posh Moscow restaurant and scolded him for frequenting such establishments.
Yakemenko’s spokeswoman Kristina Potupchik denounced the confrontation on her LiveJournal blog on Monday, calling Sobchak “a cheap prostitute.” But anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny praised Sobchak on Twitter.
The short exchange between Sobchak, previously not known for political activism, and Yakemenko took place Sunday at the Mario restaurant in downtown Moscow, where Yakemenko was dining with his wife. Sobchak shot the conversation on her cell phone and put the 78-second video online. It had more than 25,000 views late Monday.
In the video, a velvet-voiced Sobchak informs Yakemenko, who heads the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs, that she wants to interview him for GQ magazine. Without changing her tone, she then proceeds to accuse him of lying and rebukes him for going to “Moscow’s most expensive restaurant.”
The average bill at Mario starts at 4,000 rubles ($130) but can get much higher if the diner focuses on dishes such as Belon oysters or goatling with rosemary and potatoes stewed in a wood oven.
A soft-spoken Yakemenko averts his eyes from the camera through most of the video, toying with his smartphone as he rejects Sobchak’s request. He caves in at the end, agreeing to consider an interview if Sobchak “promises to believe his words,” and does not comment on how he can afford to dine at Mario.
Yakemenko declared an income of 1 million rubles ($32,000) in 2009, the latest year for which figures are available. But his agency controls much bigger sums allotted for youth policy in the federal budget. A chunk of the money goes to Nashi, a pro-Kremlin youth group that Yakemenko founded.
Sobchak, who has interviewed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Yevroset founder Yevgeny Chichvarkin for GQ, is the daughter of late St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, who started the political career of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
She is believed to maintain good ties with Putin, who has not commented on the story.
TITLE: ‘Spies’ Caught in Germany
AUTHOR: Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian intelligence has come under a new barrage of criticism for using ineffective Cold War-era tactics following the arrest of two suspected deep-cover spies in Germany.
The suspects apparently caught red-handed while listening to 1970s-style encrypted radio messages from Moscow appear to have much in common with the 10 sleeper agents uncovered in the United States last year.
German prosecutors said Friday that a couple living in Marburg, had been arrested on accusations of spying for an unspecified foreign intelligence service, which media identified over the weekend as Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service.
German bloggers identified the suspects as Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag, information also published by Kommersant on Monday.
The couple was said to have operated in Germany for more than 20 years, similar to the agents arrested in the U.S. in June 2010. They were in close contact with Chapman, who has become a national celebrity since returning to Russia in a prisoner swap, Focus magazine reported, quoting unidentified investigators.
A video by the local Oberhessische Presse newspaper showed a bungalow in Michelbach where the two were arrested by masked commandos last Tuesday.
Neighbors said the family, with a grown-up daughter, led an unassuming life since renting the house a year ago, the daily reported.
Steffen Haidinger, a spokesman for the German prosecutor general’s office, refused to comment on the reports, as did spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Berlin, explaining that German authorities had not offered any official information about the case.
Experts expressed bewilderment as to how the German-based couple could have gathered any meaningful information. They pointed out that Marburg, which has a famously left-leaning university, might have served as a recruiting ground for spies during the Cold War, but could hardly be a useful base today.
“This is absurd. There are no U.S. forces or anything else of interest anywhere nearby,” said Alexander Rahr, an analyst with the German Council of Foreign Relations.
But German media reports suggested that the pair was engaged in industrial espionage because Andreas Anschlag worked in an auto components firm.
Research by The St. Petersburg Times also showed that the family used to live not far from the U.S. air bases Rammstein and Bƒchel before moving to Marburg.
Other experts said that working with encrypted radio messages is bizarre in the 21st century, where the Internet offers intelligence agencies far easier and safer communications. Vladislav Belov, a researcher with the European Studies Center and the Moscow State International Relations Institute, noted that the Federal Security Service voiced fears earlier this year that the uncontrolled use of certain e-mail and voice services could threaten national security.
An official in the Foreign Intelligence Service told Izvestia that the couple was part of a group that had effectively retired from the agency.
TITLE: Forbes Gives 50 Reasons to Stay in Russia
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — There are at least 50 reasons not to leave Russia — starting with a tycoon who controls 80 percent of the global market for optical fiber lasers and ending with an opera singer nicknamed “La Bellissima,” Forbes said Monday.
In a nod to the country’s infamous brain drain, the Russian edition of the magazine published a new rating dubbed “50 Russians who conquered the world,” which lists businesspeople, celebrities, athletes and researchers who are recognized worldwide.
The rating comes with the subhead “Time to leave? Ask them,” referring to the immigration of talented people for financial reasons and weariness over issues such as corruption, a hostile business environment and political stagnation.
The publication consists of five lists of 10 names each. One list enumerates Russia’s top global investors, starting with emigre Len Blavatnik, whose global investment stands at $4.7 billion, and Alisher Usmanov, who has spent $4.4 billion on numerous Internet ventures and a stake in the London football club Arsenal.
A separate list of Russian-born entrepreneurs who built business empires abroad is topped by Igor Olenicoff, a Florida-based real estate mogul with an estimated fortune of $2.6 billion, diamond king Lev Leviev ($1.6 billion) and Valentin Gapontsev, who has carved out a near-monopoly in the optical fiber laser industry, earning a fortune of $1.1 billion.
A rating of top athletes, based on Google queries, is predictably topped by tennis star Maria Sharapova, and far behind her trails Washington Capitals winger Alexander Ovechkin and Andrei Kirilenko, formerly of the Utah Jazz.
Anna Netrebko, Mariinsky Theater and Metropolitan Opera star nicknamed “the most beautiful one,” leads the “culture” list, which also includes director Timur Bekmambetov and Mariinsky director Valery Gergiyev.
Leading Russians
Top global investor: Len Blavatnik
Top Russian-born abroad-based entrepreneur:
Igor Olenicoff
Top athlete: Maria Sharapova
Top researcher: Andre Geim/Konstantin
Novoselov
Top artist: Anna Netrebko
— Forbes
TITLE: NATO and Moscow Continue to Talk Missiles
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — NATO still hopes to engage Russia in its prospective missile defense system, but won’t yield to Moscow’s push for the shield to be run jointly, an alliance envoy said Tuesday.
James Appathurai, a deputy assistant NATO Secretary General, said the alliance would like to reach a missile defense deal with Moscow by NATO’s summit in Chicago next May, but added that he wouldn’t “gamble on expectations.”
“We are always, of course optimistic at NATO,” Appathurai said at a news conference. “But we are also determined to keep the hand outstretched. I can’t predict, of course, when we would arrive at agreement.”
Russia says the U.S.-led missile defense plan could threaten its nuclear forces, undermining their deterrence potential. It has agreed to consider NATO’s proposal last fall to cooperate on the missile shield, but the talks have been deadlocked over how the system should be operated. Russia has insisted that the system should be run jointly, which NATO has rejected.
Appathurai insisted that the alliance’s 28 members share a treaty obligation to provide security for each other and can’t outsource that.
“We can’t do that with any other partner no matter how trusted,” he said, adding that NATO is offering Russia an “unprecedented level of transparency and cooperation.”
Appathurai argued that the alliance has proposed to engage Russia by sharing data and coordinating a response. He also mentioned a U.S. proposal for Moscow to have a close look at the shield’s technical capabilities and see that it won’t threaten its security.
The NATO proposals have failed to impress the Kremlin, which has continued to push for legal guarantees that the future system wouldn’t threaten Russia.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has warned that the failure to reach agreement on missile defense may prompt Russia to deploy new offensive weapons, triggering an arms race.
Despite the missile defense dispute, Appathurai argued that the current relations between NATO and Russia are “broader and deeper than they have ever been.”
TITLE: Specialist Doubted In Abuse Scandal
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Bloggers have challenged credentials of a child psychologist who testified in a high-profile pedophile case after photographs surfaced suggesting she might have participated in erotic shows.
The twist complicates an already murky story and highlights the problems of Russia’s sometimes clumsy courts and its ineffective efforts to prevent child abuse.
Testimony by child psychologist Leila Sokolova was key for the prosecution in a criminal case that ended with Transportation Ministry official Vladimir Makarov being jailed last month on charges of sexually assaulting his 7-year-old daughter.
The case was opened last year after officials found “dead spermatozoids” in the girl’s urine during a routine checkup.
Makarov pleaded not guilty, saying hospital officials had not properly cleaned the specimen container from earlier patients — a regular occurrence at underfunded, understaffed hospitals.
A second test found no spermatozoids, and the girl denied abuse. Nevertheless, the case proceeded, based on, in particular, the psychologist’s examination of the girl’s drawings which included a cat with a fat tail, which Sokolova called a “phallic motif.” She said this, combined with the girl’s “unusual” attention to gender distinctions seen in other pictures, implied she had been abused. A Moscow district court sentenced Makarov to 13 years in prison for child abuse.
With Makarov’s appeal pending, several bloggers accused Sokolova of participating in public erotic shows. As proof, the bloggers cited photographs of a woman in latex outfits who resembled Sokolova, and web advertisements looking for partners for the shows listing her phone number.
The psychiatrist, who works for Ozon psychological rehab for abused children, declined to comment on the allegations.
Prominent psychologist Alexander Shadura told The St. Petersburg Times that Sokolova’s personal life — whatever it might be — should not have any influence on her expertise. “I don’t think it plays a role. She should just be a professional,” he said.
But Sokolova admitted earlier in an interview with Bolshoi Gorod magazine to being unsure about her conclusions.
She also acknowledged that she should have been less decisive about her findings. “This is the first time that I have screwed up so seriously,” she said, the magazine reported.
Makarov’s wife said investigators told her during the trial that they had realized their mistake, journalist Olga Romanova reported on Radio Liberty in July.
But they said they could not acknowledge the mistake because that would be seen as a failure in a state campaign against pedophiles, initiated by the Kremlin earlier this year, she said.
TITLE: Politicians Call Gadhafi a Hero
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia has demanded an investigation into Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s violent death as politicians of various stripes have described Gadhafi as a hero and his government as an “exemplary model” destroyed by the United States.
At the United Nations, Russia called for an end to a no-fly zone over Libya that allowed NATO forces to weaken Gadhafi — and possibly play a direct role in his death.
Mystery shrouds Gadhafi’s death in his hometown of Sirte, but autopsy results showed Sunday that he died of a bullet wound to the head. It was unclear whether he suffered the fatal injury before or after his capture by anti-Gadhafi soldiers on Thursday. Channel One state television showed gruesome footage of a captured Gadhafi covered in blood and crying, “Have mercy” in Arabic, on its news on Friday.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the circumstances surrounding Gadhafi’s death raised a number of questions that required an investigation.
“The footage we saw on television shows that Moammar Gadhafi was captured while he was wounded. And then, as a prisoner, his life was taken,” Lavrov said in an interview with three national radio stations.
He also said UN investigators should look into reports that NATO jets had attacked a vehicle convey carrying Gadhafi and his loyalists earlier Thursday, causing the former Libyan leader to seek refuge in a drainage tunnel. The anti-Gadhafi soldiers seized him shortly afterward.
Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s position that NATO has overstepped the bounds of its UN mandate, which only allows the enforcement of the no-fly zone. “Attacking targets on the ground has nothing to do with enforcing a no-fly zone … especially if they are not attacking anyone but trying to escape,” he said.
Russia has repeatedly expressed public regret with its decision to abstain from the March vote in the UN Security Council that authorized the no-fly zone.
Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, circulated a draft resolution to lift the no-fly zone at a closed-door meeting of the Security Council on Friday. “Crucial changes have taken place in the situation in Libya, we expect a declaration of liberation to be announced. … So, given all those circumstances, it’s time to wrap it up, including the no-fly zone,” he said in comments carried by Reuters.
Council members are expected to end the no-fly zone by the end of October, and have insisted that Libya’s new authorities participate in the decision.
In introducing the UN draft resolution, the Russians “admitted that they hadn’t actually consulted the Libyan authorities at all, and every member state said of course the Libyan authorities need to be consulted,” British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told Reuters.
In Moscow, meanwhile, Gadhafi’s death drew sharp criticism from a number of politicians.
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov denounced it as a “shameful NATO operation” that ended in lynch law. “Not even the Nobel Peace Prize-winning U.S. President [Barack] Obama can justify this,” Zyuganov said in televised comments.
Writing in his blog, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an ultranationalist and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, likened Gadhafi to the founders of Communism and the Italian nation state, Karl Marx and Giuseppe Garibaldi: “He is the wisest of men, an African Karl Marx, a Libyan Garibaldi,” he said, adding that Gadhafi’s legacy was to offer a third way between socialism and capitalism.
TITLE: Ex-Mayor Seeks Duma Seat From Jail
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A former Siberian mayor accused of extorting a half million-dollar bribe is running for a State Duma seat from jail, a Communist deputy said Monday.
Former Bratsk Mayor Alexander Serov received the paperwork confirming his candidacy Friday.
Serov was detained in February after obtaining what investigators said was a bribe of 15 million rubles ($510,000) from an Irkutsk businessman.
Serov, who later resigned as mayor, faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted, yet maintains his innocence.
Duma Deputy Sergei Obukhov said his colleagues in the Communist Party witnessed Serov’s detention and “how the evidence was falsified.”
He also said Serov enjoys “enormous” public support including rallies attended by thousands of people.
The 2005 federal law on Duma elections doesn’t ban candidates under criminal investigation or convicts from running, but requires candidates to reveal this information to election officials.
The Communist Party has asked election officials, the Investigative Committee and prosecutors to assist Serov with his campaign, including meetings with journalists and the public, from behind bars, Interfax reported.
TITLE: 15 Year-Old Takes Tram For a Joyride
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Police in a Urals town are investigating an incident in which a teenager commandeered an empty tram and safely drove it for almost an hour.
The 15-year-old stumbled upon the empty tram in the town of Zlatoust while its driver and conductor were out to lunch earlier this month.
The boy drove the tram for about 40 minutes along its normal route, picking up and dropping off passengers. The joyride ended when police switched the tracks, forcing the tram back to the depot, where the boy was apprehended.
TITLE: MBA Education Is Big Business in Russia
AUTHOR: By Tatyana Martyanova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The demand for business education within Russia is far from where it was before the global financial crisis: Students are requesting both the most expensive and the cheapest, shortest programs. This trend will cause the business education market to consolidate, analysts said.
The highest and lowest segments of the market, or programs with price tags of more than 1 million rubles ($32,000) and less than 300,000 rubles ($9,700), are growing the most successfully, said Sergei Myasoyedov, president of the Russian Association for Business Education, or RABO.
Following on the heels of the financial crisis, the business education market had its own downturn. That came after several years of high demand for programs of any quality or length, when about 2,500 people were entering business school in Russia each year. With most programs consisting of two years, that meant about 5,000 people were in business programs at any given time.
A $132,000 Price Tag
But an outflow of potential business school students began in spring 2009 and continued into 2010. The first group that exited consisted of students whose companies were paying or promising to pay for the education. In fact, according to estimates from education marketing firm Begin Group, the business education market shrank by roughly half.
Freezing prices didn’t save the situation for the schools, and lowering the price tag for business programs, as a handful of schools did, also failed to turn the tide.
Yet, student interest in the two most expensive programs in Russia has remained. Just last month, the Skolkovo School of Management launched an Executive MBA, or EMBA, program — or master’s program for businesspeople near or at the top ranks of their companies — that is conducted in Russian with simultaneous translation from English.
Forty-five people paid 95,000 euros ($132,000) for that offering — a record price for business education in Russia. In fact, Skolkovo had introduced the first English-language program, with a price tag of 90,000 ($124,700) euros, in 2009. This January, the fourth class for that program had 24 students, who also paid 90,000 euros. Skolkovo, which is an institution separate from the innovation hub of the same name, is enrolling its fifth such class.
The second most expensive program is the dual-degree EMBA offered by St. Petersburg State University’s Higher School of Management and HEC Paris for 51,900 ($71,900) euros. Sergei Kalendzhyan, dean of the Higher School of Commercial Management in the Russian Academy for Domestic Economy and Government Service, said demand for business education has already reached its nadir. That suggests the market is now on an upward curve.
Management of Expectations
Students registering in this post-financial-crisis period are requesting more from their programs: They want offerings that meet their individual needs in terms of what topics are offered and how teaching is conducted.
VShKU runs an EMBA program for supervisors and managers and, separately, a program for business owners. This year the school started an MBA program that runs on weekends, and two sets of students are enrolled in the weekend MBA program and the Institute for Business and Business Administration, or IBDA, while yet another group studies in the Russian Academy for Domestic Economy’s business school.
The Moscow International School of Business, or Mirbis, also is broadening its offerings as it tries to attract the widest possible group of students. Mirbis now has every type of business education program available at other schools in Russia — and does so in various formats and has 16 areas of specialization.
That makes it possible for Mirbis to increase its student enrollment even more, said Yekaterina Lisitsyna, MBA department director at Mirbis.
The hit of the academic season, however, is an abridged business education program that runs for a year, said Dmitry Pavlov, director of development and external communications for St. Petersburg International Institute of Management. This month, IMISP started offering one such program, in which 90 percent of students are paying the bill entirely or partially by themselves.
That number attests to the fact that it is difficult to get your company to pay for business education, as they once did, Pavlov concluded. What’s more, students who pay for their business education themselves tend to start off with a couple of trial programs that run less than a year.
Modules, Master’s Degrees
Anastasia Korshunova, director of marketing and sales for Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in Russia, said short-term programs of 18 months or less, as well as module MBA programs, are taking advantage of this demand, since these briefer programs make it possible to combine professional activities with graduate studies.
Vlerick Leuven Gent has introduced to the market a modular, 18-month EMBA program in Brussels. Before that came into existence, there was only a two-year program with evening classes. Interest is continuing in the module EMBA programs in St. Petersburg — they cost 23,000 euros ($31,870) — with about 20 to 25 students.
Twelve master-level management programs have appeared in Russia so far, but demand for such degrees is rising, especially because the majority of these programs have enrollment slots for which the federal government picks up the entire cost of the program for the student.
TITLE: TNK-BP’s Barsky Quits Company
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Maxim Barsky, chief executive-in-waiting of TNK-BP, whose appointment was intended to enshrine management independence and close down its bitter shareholder conflict, has resigned, the company said Friday.
The elevation of Barsky, 37, to head of TNK-BP had been scheduled for Jan. 1, 2011, but was delayed indefinitely.
TNK-BP had invested significantly in Barsky’s training, which included a six-month stint last year in London, but his frustrations at being kept from the top job had grown.
In July, he gave an interview to Financial Times where he said the shareholders had to accept new management, otherwise he would leave the company by year-end.
“It was made clear to him that he was never going to be made chief executive, so he resigned,” a source at TNK-BP told The St. Petersburg Times. “He was not someone who could be reined in.”
In a joint press release, BP together with Alfa, Access and Renova Group, or AAR — the shareholders — said that when Barsky formally leaves the company on Nov. 1, his position of deputy chief executive will be abolished. Mikhail Fridman, the current chief executive, will continue in his role until the end of 2013, at which point BP will appoint a replacement.
Vladimir Buyanov, a spokesman for BP, said he couldn’t comment on Barsky’s decision, which was a personal one.
Representatives of AAR did not respond to written requests for comment Friday. Mikhail Loskutov, a Moscow-based spokesman, did not answer repeated calls to his cell phone on Sunday.
Barsky said he remained on good terms with the shareholders, Bloomberg reported. “There is no disappointment,” he said.
Before joining TNK-BP in 2009 and soon becoming responsible for much of the oil giant’s day-to-day operations, Barsky had built up his company Western Siberian Oil, now known as Alliance Oil, to annual revenues of $3 billion.
“I hope we will have the opportunity to collaborate with Maxim [Barsky] on new projects in the near future,” said German Khan, executive director at TNK-BP.
The top spot in the company has always involved a difficult balancing act between the company’s shareholders. The former head of TNK-BP, Robert Dudley, who was forced out of Russia in 2008, once described the position of chief executive as “the most difficult job in the world.”
The tumultuous shareholder relationship between BP and AAR took a turn for the worse again this year as AAR successfully derailed a $16 billion tie-up between BP and Rosneft.
Legal action from the deal’s collapse is ongoing. On Monday, the TNK-BP board decided not to join a $13 billion suit brought against BP by minority shareholders.
Andrei Prokhorov, a minority shareholder in TNK-BP Holding, the listed subsidiary of TNK-BP Ltd., the 50-50 joint venture of BP and a quartet of billionaires, is seeking damages from BP and nominees on the board of TNK-BP Holding Peter Charow and Richard Sloan, in connection with BP’s attempt to secure an exploration and share-swap deal with state-controlled Rosneft.
TITLE: The Middle-Class Malaise
AUTHOR: By Lucian Kim
TEXT: The closest I came to becoming a socialist was when I was a teenager growing up in the U.S. Midwest in the 1980s. The years under U.S. President Ronald Reagan were an era of stagnation, marked by political conservatism and social conformity.
I rejected my own bourgeois origins in the belief that there was more to life than an office job and a house in the suburbs. Middle-class existence seemed so predictable, petty and oblivious to the injustices of capitalist society. Little did I understand that my rebellion itself was a luxury afforded by a bourgeois lifestyle.
I first had to move to Russia to grasp the folly of socialism and reclaim my middle-class roots.
What Americans called “middle class” in the late 20th century would be considered extravagant by the standards of any other society. And since Americans took their material well-being for granted, ambition was not necessarily equated with accumulating even more wealth. There was nothing unusual about my conclusion that living an interesting life was a higher priority than simply making money.
That’s one reason I started studying Russian and made my first trip to Moscow in 1991 — the last, hungry year of the Soviet Union. When I returned as a journalist in 2003, it was heartening to see that the fruits of the global economy were available to an increasing number of Russians.
After the humiliating deprivations of socialism, Muscovites were in a hurry to catch up. I was amazed to find a shopping center under the Kremlin walls, sushi served in Italian restaurants and bumper-to-bumper traffic jams in the middle of the night. It was funny to see advertisements for “elite underwear” or “VIP car washes.”
When I heard the word “democratic” used to denote restaurants geared to more budget-conscious customers, I began to appreciate the economic component of democracy. After all, what has primarily made the West attractive to the rest of the world is the availability of affordable, high-quality goods and services to the average citizen.
Like most Westerners, I was at first dazzled by Moscow’s opulence: the omnipresent luxury brands; supermarkets overflowing with imported foods; prices rivaling Tokyo or London. Of course, I knew the often-repeated phrase that “Russia begins beyond the Moscow Ring Road” and that the wealth of the world’s largest country was concentrated in one city. Yet it took me eight years of living in Russia to comprehend the depth of the country’s poverty.
The real discovery for me was just how thin Moscow’s veneer of prosperity is.
Without a doubt, a Russian middle class has emerged, but it is not well established and tiny compared with the rest of the population. What’s more, belonging to the middle class is as much a mental state as it is a set of socioeconomic indicators. There is hardly a Russian over the age of 25 who hasn’t experienced some form of need. The trauma of socialism’s “equality in poverty” goes a long way in explaining the inferiority complexes of the ruling political class or the conspicuous consumption of so-called New Russians.
The secret about Russia’s millionaires and billionaires is that they aren’t rich people at all. They are really poor people with more money than they know what to do with. Today, nouveaux riches from across the post-Communist world draw attention to themselves with their crass tastes and boorish manners. One hundred years ago, it was U.S. robber barons who vexed the English aristocracy with their desperation to buy respectability.
In the globalized world, societal developments that took centuries in the past have accelerated to breathtaking speed. Conventional wisdom holds that the appearance of a middle class in developing economies can help create the critical mass for democratic change. In Russia, even the Kremlin expresses the hope that a broad middle class will one day take a lead role in public life.
A middle class representing the majority of a country’s citizens and enjoying a high standard of living is much harder to create than an oligarchy. The problem is that Russia can be called “post-industrial” only insofar as it manufactures next to nothing, not because it has made the transition to a knowledge-based economy. The ranks of Russia’s emerging middle class are unlikely to be filled from the oil-and-gas sector or dying one-company towns. It may be too late already.
Beginning with the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, the middle classes of Europe and North America became bigger and more empowered with every new technological breakthrough, lifting entire social layers out of poverty. Now technology and open borders are reversing that trend, upsetting the societal model that once defined Western civilization.
The America that I grew up in is disappearing. The industrial workers who once made up the broad base of the middle class have seen their jobs migrate to countries like Mexico and China. Office workers in the service industry have to compete with educated English speakers in India or Africa.
Before the 2008 financial crisis, cheap credit created the illusion that Americans could maintain their lavish living standards despite fundamental changes to the U.S. economy. In fact, dollars once held by the middle class were ending up in the hands of foreign treasuries and the rich. Anger at this redistribution of wealth has caused “Occupy Wall Street” protests to spread around the world.
The Western-style, middle-class stability and “normalcy” that so many Russians strive for is no longer so stable or normal in the West. The middle class is shrinking, as well-paying jobs and affordable housing are becoming increasingly difficult to find. This socioeconomic trend is observable in the United States as well as across Europe. Western capitalism may prove to be as vulnerable to the forces of globalization as socialism and communism were 20 years ago.
Citizens of the West have long been accustomed to being ahead of the rest of the world. Now, for once, Russia may be a harbinger of things to come — a two-class society of the super rich, the poor and nobody in between.
Lucian Kim is a Berlin-based journalist who worked in Russia from 2003 until earlier this year. He is writing a book about the Vladimir Putin era. This comment appeared in Vedomosti.
TITLE: comment: Stopping the HIV Epidemic
AUTHOR: By Joost van der Meer
TEXT: The Russian government put itself in the spotlight of the international health community by organizing a high-level forum in Moscow earlier this month on halting the spread of infectious diseases such as HIV. A goal agreed upon by all member states of the United Nations strives to halt and reverse the spread of infectious diseases, among which are HIV and AIDS, by 2015. Russia positioned itself at the conference as a leader in the battle against HIV.
Indeed, Russia has some things to boast of: Transmission of HIV from mother to child during pregnancy is almost eliminated, and many more Russians with AIDS are receiving medication against their disease than ever before. But HIV in Russia is growing because the government has not addressed HIV transmission in the group where it matters most: intravenous drug users. Nearly 80 percent of people with HIV in Russia got their infection through drug use, and new cases continue to occur among the country’s 1.8 million drug users.
There are evidence-based interventions that many countries have adopted and that lead to demonstrably lower HIV transmission, based on reducing the harm that drug use brings about, including the spread of HIV by contaminated injections. It is important to exchange used needles and syringes for clean ones among users that cannot or will not kick the habit, and it is equally important that those users who want to get clean are admitted to high-quality rehabilitation programs.
True, needle exchange does not cure opiate addiction, as some of our Russian critics argue. But we treat diabetes with insulin and are perfectly happy with this noncurative approach that hugely improves the quality of life of diabetics.
The scientific evidence that this approach works against the spread of HIV has been around for years. Methadone programs prevent new HIV infections, and they also help reduce petty crime, while fears that needle exchanges spread injection drug use have proved unfounded. But Russia has largely ignored these facts, much to the frustration of international organizations including the UN and much to the disappointment of nongovernmental organizations and local authorities in Russia that are dealing with a huge drug and HIV problem on the ground.
The Russian government is clearly shooting itself in the foot. The UN estimates that about 1 percent of adult Russians are HIV positive, while the population continues to decline. Brazil has made different choices. With similar expenditure on HIV as Russia, Brazil has managed to turn the tide and enjoys impressively declining rates of HIV among drug users.
So why does Russia ignore all the evidence and international pressure to step up its commitment to make sure the spread of HIV in the country is halted by 2015?
The U.S. battle against HIV may offer some good lessons. Under the administration of President George W. Bush, it made life for drug users difficult and blocked needle exchange among drug users. But when President Barack Obama took office, this changed.
It is not that Russia lacks supporters and leaders in the field of HIV prevention. Civil society leaders have spoken out over the last few years, television journalists such as Vladimir Pozner have played a pivotal role in bringing the issue to the attention of the public, and there are many health professionals and scientists who support evidence-based HIV prevention among people who inject drugs. But Russia lacks leadership among those in power who can really make a difference for the disenfranchised groups in society most affected by HIV.
There is one key difference with the U.S. approach to HIV: Russia lacks the outspoken and high-level support of business leaders to battle the disease. It was significant that the HIV forum in Moscow had no representation of the Russian business community. George Soros is a vivid example of a business leader and philanthropist from the United States who is not afraid to support and fund approaches that were not condoned by his own government.
It is in the interest of Russia and the world to see Russia, a Group of Eight member, containing its HIV epidemic. Therefore, it is hoped that we will see high-level governmental and business leadership on this issue occurring in Russia soon — hopefully, well before 2015.
Joost van der Meer, a medical doctor, is executive director of AIDS Foundation-East West, which has run HIV projects in Russia since 2001.
TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A major Finnish prize was awarded to Moscow music critic and promoter Artemy Troitsky this year. The Tampere Music Award for Exceptional Achievement in the Music Business was presented to Troitsky in the Finnish city of Tampere on Saturday.
“I am pleased that my prize comes from Finland, because I am a big fan of Finnish music and I have worked hard to promote it in Russia: Managing licensing, organizing concerts and festivals, and working on radio promotion. It seems to me that this award is deserved,” Troitsky was quoted as saying in a press release.
The award was presented in Tampere Hall at the Music & Media Finland Industry Awards Gala by Olli-Poika Parviainen, deputy mayor of Tampere.
The prize looks like a gesture of support for Troitsky, who has been fighting four lawsuits that he sees as a Kremlin-orchestrated campaign to punish him for his independent judgments on politics and participation in protest activities.
The Tampere Music Award was established by the City of Tampere last year, when it went to Rein Lang, Estonia’s then minister of justice, who was an underground rock promoter during the Soviet era.
Troitsky got more good news last week, this time concerning his legal battles, as former traffic policeman Nikolai Khovansky withdrew his lawsuit on Oct. 19, after expert analysis established that Troitsky’s remarks did not contain expletives or any information expressed in indecent form, and could not therefore be seen as insulting.
Khovansky was criticized for being quick to put the blame for a controversial 2010 traffic accident on two women killed in the crash, rather than on a state oil company executive who is believed by many to have caused the incident.
At a DDT gig in a Moscow club last year, Troitsky awarded Khovansky — in absentia, naturally — with an anti-prize as a policeman who “showed the nastier side of himself.” Khovansky’s lawsuit was the first in a series of legal charges, one of which was submitted by pro-Kremlin rock musician Vadim Samoilov.
Khovansky wanted 500,000 rubles (about $16,320) from Troitsky for alleged damages. Now it looks like it is he who will have to pay. By withdrawing the lawsuit, he is liable to pay 35,000 rubles ($1,140) in court costs, which include the costs of the analysis.
In local gigs this week, from the Czech Republic comes Dva, a band that has never previously performed in St. Petersburg.
Consisting of Jan Kratochvíl and Bara Kratochvílova, the experimental pop duo combines traditional acoustic instruments, electronic devices and some theater or circus. Previously, the band worked with the idea of folklore of non-existing nations, but on its most recent album, “HU,” turned to the concept of “non-existent radio stations” playing pop songs written in non-existent world languages.
Dva will perform at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 26 at J. Walker, a pub located at 36 Naberezhnaya Kanala Griboyedova, previously better known for jazz concerts.
TITLE: The dark arts
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Finnish rock musician and author Kauko Röyhkä spent last week in St. Petersburg enjoying old Italian paintings at the Hermitage and immersing himself in the atmosphere of underground music venues such as bunker club Griboyedov.
One of Finland’s leading rock artists, famed for his powerful lyrics, Röyhkä was born Jukka-Pekka Välimaa in 1959 in the small town of Valkeakoski, but grew up in Oulu in northern Finland.
He is now based in Turku, where he lives with his wife Olga, herself a singer and the frontwoman of indie rock band Olga, and their young son.
The St. Petersburg Times caught up with Röyhkä at the local indie bar-cum-launderette Stirka to speak about his musical and literary career, which has resulted in some 25 albums and 15 books.
Is it true that you originally wanted to be an author, but ended up as an author and rock musician by chance?
My first novel and my first record came out at the same time, in September 1980. I’ve been both a writer and a musician from the start.
Isn’t that pretty unusual?
Yeah, in Finland there was nobody like me at that time. Now there are some musicians who have written novels or something. But I am a professional author, I’ve written about 15 books and made maybe 25 albums.
What field do you feel you belong in more?
I don’t know, I like both things and it’s hard to say. There were times when my music was more successful, and other times when my books were more successful. It’s been 31 years now; it’s a long career, many things have happened.
But I also have kind of a weird reputation in Finland. I’ve always been a bad boy, not a typical musician or writer.
Did you study to become a writer?
I studied a bit of literature at Turku University, but only for one year. I left the university when my book and album came out. I’ve been a professional artist for 31 years now: I’m 52 years old, and I was 21 when I started.
What was Finland like at that time?
It was the time of punk rock. The punk rock thing started in 1977. I was never a punk rocker, but a new waver. I liked artists like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, but also older stuff. And I also liked bands like Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Iggy and the Stooges, stuff like that.
But I chose to write in Finnish, because I’m a literary person and I want there to be meaning in my writing. I can speak English, but maybe not so well, so I can’t express my feelings fully; I need my own language to do that. Lyrics are very important to me.
Did many people write songs in Finnish back then?
At that time, yes. It was before we had these big bands like H.I.M. and Nightwish. In the early 1980s, most bands wrote in Finnish. I think it was the beginning of the Finnish rock scene in the Finnish language, because many good bands emerged at that time.
If you write in Finnish, you can’t cross the border; you have to stay in Finland. But I chose that.
Punk rock in the U.K. was fed by political and economic issues under Margaret Thatcher. Was the situation different in Finland?
The punk rock thing in Finland has a social point too, but I think it represented honesty, saying exactly what you mean, and that could be love songs that are very direct and not as romantic as showbiz songs.
Of course, everybody wanted to have hits too, but there was a kind of honesty in the music, and I liked that and have kept it. I write mostly about personal relationships — issues between people and between men and women, things like that.
The first album doesn’t sound too aggressively punk, it’s more like rock and roll.
Yeah, it’s like rock and roll, but I am writing very directly about hatred between people, and jealousy, things like that. It’s about relationships mostly.
And one thing that is very important to me is otherness, the outsider thing — you’re an outsider in this society, an outsider in relationships, a kind of weird person, because I’ve always been like that.
You are known for your own style of guitar-playing, could you tell us about that?
I try to make a new kind of sound, because I am not really a musician. I play guitar in my own way, and I make my own chords and everything. So the melodies are always a little bit different compared to other bands. My musicians have always been happy about that, because it’s something original, nobody does that kind of stuff.
The song “Kultainen aasi” (Golden Donkey) stems from your “Satanist” period — could you tell us a bit about that?
It was a time when I was very interested in the occult, Satanism and things like that. I was searching for magical and unconscious things, and I was thinking about where everything comes from — the music and lyrics. What the power in us, the power in me is. Sexual things are also very important to me. Most of my books are also about sex or violence.
Have they been translated into Russian or English?
Not yet. Because I’m a weird guy in Finland, and publishers don’t trust me.
I think I always go too far. I’ve done things that are taboo. Maybe I was searching for some kind of enemy in the human race.
What was the reaction in Finland to your first album?
It was negative. But I had one radio hit, “Steppaillen” — “Tap Dancing.” It was a metaphor about a guy who is tap dancing and everybody hates him. So it was kind of a prophetic song, because my first years were like that. But my fourth album was a success, and the end of the 1980s was a good time for me in the music business. The 1990s were a little bit difficult, but now it’s quite good again. They couldn’t get rid of me and now they have to accept it.
I can make a good pop song if I want to, but that’s not the most important thing to me. I want to make music that is interesting in the mind. I want to make people think and react and experience something. I want to write about the things that are important to me and that thrill me, and some of those things can be very bad and controversial. People get confused by that, they don’t know what to think about me. Some people think I’m mad, but some say that I write about things that nobody else does.
How did you become interested in Satanism?
Well, it was an experimental thing for me to do, because at that time, at the beginning of the 1990s, I was very much alone, my life was in a bit of a bad situation. I had too much time to think about things. I went deeper and deeper inside myself. And weird things came out. But I don’t believe in Satanism any more. I don’t know if I even did at the time, but I was interested in it at any rate.
It reminds me of Led Zeppelin’s interest in Aleister Crowley.
Yeah, and David Bowie had a similar thing too. Even the Beatles had Aleister Crowley’s head on the cover of “Sgt. Pepper.” So it’s nothing new in rock music, but in Finland it was something terrible, and many people thought I’d gone mad.
But a strange thing happened, because this heavy rock thing started in Finland in the 1990s, and I was surprised because when I had a gig in Finland and there were suddenly boys with long hair who were into magic. I was of course ten years older than them. But I think people respected me, because they knew I wasn’t trying to please everybody.
What kind of music did you listen to as a teenager?
I think my first love was progressive rock, like Genesis and Pink Floyd and bands like that, and then came the Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls — maybe I’m kind of a mix of those bands.
Could you tell us about the book you wrote about Velvet Underground?
It was a book about the Velvet Underground and Lou Reed, and also a book about my youth, when I was starting my musical career. The difficulties I had, because we were living in Oulu, where not many people understood what the Velvet Underground was, so we had to tell everybody that it was a very important band. That was the start.
I’ve also written books about war, but they’re not standard war books.
The best-known novel I’ve written was “Two Suns” (Kaksi aurinkoa), about a band during the war entertaining soldiers at the front. It’s a strange band, the people in it are strange; some of them are occultists. I tried to describe music and art in a situation when music and art are not wanted. These people have problems in their relationships, and trouble between them and the army and society. I think the protagonist in this story is music and not the people. And the music gets lost, because most members of the band are killed.
Nobody has written a book like that because normally books about war are about heroism or history or something like that. But I was writing about music and the magic behind the music.
How do you feel on the music scene after all these years?
I am having a renaissance right now, I am a hot thing again. Everything moves on; you don’t want to get stuck in the past.
The past is past. The past is nice, but I want to be part of the future. I always think that the best things I’ll do are in the future and not in the past, because we were so young when we started. We did some good things in the past, but I think we can do better things now. I’m always writing new stuff. I wrote 140 songs for the last album we made, and we used only 13 of them. So it was very hard to choose them, and many good songs were left out.
Kauko Röyhkä’s not-yet-titled six-CD retrospective box set is due out on Stupido Records in March 2012.
TITLE: Diaghilev reloaded
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The legendary impresario Sergei Diaghilev may have died 82 years ago, but his spirit is alive and well in St. Petersburg this week as the second “Diaghilev. P.S.” festival gets underway.
While the first festival, held in the city two years ago, presented a cycle of ballets, exhibitions and concerts directly linked to the Russian Seasons to celebrate 100 years since Diaghilev took European capitals by storm with his showcase of Russian ballet, art and music, this year’s program delves deeper into the legacy of the showman and patron of the arts.
The festival opened Sunday with a concert by U.S. conductor Scott Dunn of Vladimir Dukelsky’s “Orpheus Trilogy.” Dukelsky, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1922 and is known there as Vernon Duke, was considered by Diaghilev to be his “third musical son” after Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Sunday’s concert at the Philharmonic represented a rare performance of the composer’s music in his native country.
“He would have been so happy,” said Dukelsky’s widow, Kay Duke Ingalls, after the concert. “He always dreamed of his concert music being played in his native country. He left Russia after the Revolution, and came back just once.”
“Diaghilev was instrumental in the careers of so many composers: Stravinsky, Satie and Ravel, to name just a few,” said Dunn at a press conference last week. “His importance in the composition of early 20th-century concert music cannot be overestimated.”
During his lifetime, Diaghilev brought together an unprecedented wealth of musicians, dancers and artists. Ballet scores and operas were composed for him by Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Debussy, Ravel, Satie and Richard Strauss, while his choreographers included Fokin, Nijinsky and Balanchine. Exotic, evocative sets were designed by the leading artists of the time, including Nikolai Roerich, Alexander Benois, Leon Bakst and later Pablo Picasso. Diaghilev’s quest to break with tradition and establish original directions in the field of ballet influenced its development for decades after his death in 1929.
With this in mind, a highlight of this year’s festival looks set to be the Russian premiere of Angelin Preljocaj’s ballet “Snow White” set to music by Gustav Mahler with costumes by Jean Paul Gaultier. The ballet will be performed two nights running, on Wednesday and Thursday, at the Alexandriinsky Theater.
With the inclusion of a work not directly related to Diaghilev himself (though Preljocaj has in the past choreographed stagings of several ballets originally commissioned by Diaghilev), the festival’s organizers are expanding the project’s scope to include work that simply encapsulates the innovative and daring spirit of the impresario.
“It’s surprising that no one thought before 2008 of doing something with such a classic St. Petersburg brand as Sergei Diaghilev — the whole world knows him; it’s a magical name,” said Natalya Metelitsa, the festival’s artistic director. “We wanted to show all the diverse sides of Diaghilev.”
And indeed, the festival is nothing if not diverse. A dance show titled “The Two Poles of Dance” featuring performances by both the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet and the Top 9 contemporary dance troupe at the Hermitage Theater on Thursday will demonstrate both extremes of the world of dance.
In keeping with the festival’s fledgling traditions, this week will also see a host of exhibitions open around the city, showcasing artists both old and new.
To complement a series of international academic conferences focusing on Diaghilev and his contemporaries held earlier in the week, an exhibition of work by artists Leon Bakst, Alexander Benois, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, who worked closely with the impresario, is on show at the Rimsky Korsakov Apartment Museum.
In contrast, work by contemporary young artists devoted to Diaghilev is on show at the Anna Nova gallery, after the gallery’s representatives approached the festival’s organizers and proposed an exhibition titled “Contemporary Artists on the Russian Seasons and Sergei Diaghilev.” The show, which opened Tuesday, presents the work of several local artists including Pyotr Shvetsov, Valery Katsuby and Stas Bags.
Further proof of the festival’s broad scope is offered Wednesday, when an exhibition titled “Maria Callas Forever” is due to open at the Sheremetyev Palace. Items on show include costumes, photographs, sketches and personal items belonging to the celebrated soprano, who died in 1977.
Finally, on Friday, the day of the festival’s closing ceremony at the Sheremetyev Palace, an exhibition of tapestries titled “Eye to Eye. Diaghilev and Nijinsky” will open at the Theatrical and Musical Arts Museum.
For a full festival program,
see www.diaghilev-ps.ru.
TITLE: the word’s worth: The Incredible Here and There
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Âîí: out, off, away, over there
What with all the demonstrations and pre-election excitement — oh, wait! That’s in other countries.
Let me start again.
What with all the stability and absence of pre-election excitement, I find myself somewhat linguistically bored. So I’ve drifted back to old language obsessions, like nailing down those little words like âîò (here) and âîí (there), which have a range of meaning that is nothing less than astonishing.
I think of âîí as the verbal equivalent of a head nod to indicate “over there” or “out.” When someone asks where the metro is, you can nod in the right direction and say: Âîí òàì (Over there). When an unpleasant person bothers you on the street, you can pull this phrase out of your pocket: Ïîø¸ë âîí! (Get out of here!) (Note: Not recommended for use with the police).
And if all this chatting on the street distracts you so much that you’ve forgotten a business meeting, you can exclaim: Âñòðå÷à âûñêî÷èëà âîí èç ãîëîâû! (The meeting just completely slipped my mind!).
To continue in the âîí vein, you might try to convince the person you stood up that your lapse of memory was ñëó÷àé èç ðÿäà âîí âûõîäÿùèé (absolutely extraordinary). But you might hear an angry reply: ß èç êîæè âîí ëåçëà, ÷òîáû ïðèãëàñèòü òåáÿ, à òû çàáûëà? (I went through hell to get you an invite — literally, “I climbed out of my skin” — and then you forgot?)
Âîò is “here” physically or figuratively: Âîò ìîé äîì (Here’s my house). Âîò ÷òî ÿ òåáå ñêàæó! (Here’s what I’ve got to say to you!) It can be used as an intensifier that draws attention to the word near it. Ïîëîæèòå ïèñüìî âîò ñþäà (Put the letter right over here.) Âîò èìåííî! (That’s exactly it!)
Doubling âîò doubles the meanings. Âîò-âîò can mean “any minute now” or “just a little more.” A gloomy commentator writes: Ïèðàìèäà âëàñòè âîò-âîò ðóõíåò (The pyramid of power is about to come crashing down). Âîò-âîò alone — often pronounced without the final “ò” and in multiples — is used as a warm approval when someone has caught on to something. When I’m doing my usual “stick the cables randomly into the DVD player and TV until there is sound and image,” I wait to hear my helper’s Âî-âî-âî! (Now you’ve got it!)
A lot of âîò phrases express surprise or astonishment, pleasant or otherwise. For example, âîò êàê (sometimes âîí êàê) means something like “It’s like that, is it?”When you still can’t get the DVD player to work and your helper finally reads the instructions to discover that you need an entirely different cable, you reply: Âîò êàê! (So that’s it!) Or you might say: Âîò îíî ÷òî (So that’s the problem). And your helper might say: Åçæàé è êóïè êàáåëü. Âîò è âñ¸. (Go and buy the cable. That’s all there is to it.)
Another astonished and astonishing âîò phrase is âîò ýòî äà, which translates literally as “here this is yes” but means something like “That’s incredible!”Âîò ýòî äà can be used when the expensive new cable breaks in your hands (Shoot!), or when the picture and sound are perfect (Now that’s really something!)
After your DVD player is working and you suggest that your helper fix the cable TV box, you might hear: Âîò åù¸. Ñàìà ñäåëàé. (No way. Do it yourself.)
Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.
TITLE: Viva Espana!
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A modern Spanish opera inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’ classic novel “Don Quixote” is one of the central events of this year’s “Spanish Evenings” festival that kicked off on Oct. 21 with a performance by Spanish guitarist Rafael Aguirre at the Glinka Hall of the Philharmonic.
“The opera was shown in Passau in 2010 with great success and it will be performed in Barcelona and New York in 2012,” said Albert Barbeta, artistic director of the Art Modern Foundation, a St. Petersburg-based center of musical and cultural exchange among Russia, Spain, Latin America and the U.S. The foundation is a long-term partner of the festival.
“The mission of our foundation is to promote contemporary music,” Barbeta said. “One of our first projects was the “Sovremennoe Proshloye” (Contemporary Past) music festival, which we held in 2008 with an eye to showcasing Russian composers who suffered from persecution or whose music was banned for political reasons.”
The opera “La Dulcinea de Don Quixote,” written by the aspiring Spanish composer Agustin Castilla-Avila, will be performed Sunday at the theater of the St. Petersburg Academy of Theatrical Art on Mokhovaya Ulitsa. The festival, which is now in its 14th year, is always on the lookout for new venues and performance spaces.
“To keep the festival and the foundation alive, we feel we should not limit ourselves to the very narrow circle of academic venues like the Philharmonic Hall,” he said. “For example, one of the foundation’s most important projects was a performance of the chamber opera “The Letters of Van Gogh” with Opera Incognita St. Petersburg at the Hermitage Theater.”
On Oct. 29, the festival will present a master class by the Spanish pianist Enrique Bagaria at the Conservatory. The day before, the musician will give a recital at the Glinka Philharmonic Hall, accompanied by his compatriot, violinist Jesus Reina.
The “Spanish Evenings” festival was founded in 1998 by the Spanish conductor and Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory graduate Alexis Soriano, who reserves a special place in his heart for the city in which he studied music.
“I have been to many countries and towns, but only here have I met such an incredible love and enthusiasm for Spain and Spanish [culture],” he said. “This admiration touched me to the depths of my soul.”
As a response to this enthusiasm, in 1998 Soriano created a festival dedicated to a subject close to his heart: Spanish music. The idea behind “Spanish Evenings” is to introduce Russian audiences to more obscure music by eminent Spanish composers, with a focus on contemporary classical music in Spain. Ironically, even the festival’s organizers on the Russian side admit that contemporary Spanish classical music is virtually terra incognita in Russia.
According to Barbeta, Soriano strives to present the musical culture of Spain in all of its diversity.
“Alexis is very open to ideas; he has earned a solid reputation in Spain, and musicians often send him their work in the hope that he will present it to international audiences,” he said.
“When the festival began in 1998, I essentially discovered a new world for myself,” says local composer Sergei Yevtushenko. “Before, I was under the impression that Spanish classical music ... was dead and buried. It isn’t even studied at the Conservatory.”
However, the festival has proved that classical music is thriving in Spain.
“I was amazed to see the variety of names, styles and approaches,” said Yevtushenko. “Contemporary classical music has surely had a luckier fate in Spain than in St. Petersburg. Every [“Spanish Evenings”] festival features several Russian or even world premieres.”
For a full schedule of the festival, see www.remusik.net/news/festivals/111013-2/
TITLE: Italian icon
AUTHOR: By Olga Panova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This week Italy is once again invading the Venice of the North, showing St. Petersburgers the very best of Italian lifestyle.
An exhibit of iconic Vespa vehicles organized by the Piaggio Foundation in cooperation with the Multimedia Center of Cinematography is on show at the Astoria Hotel through Oct. 30 as part of the “Week of Tuscany.”
“Today, after more than sixty years, the Vespa is a worldwide symbol of Italian creativity and a unique example of ‘immortality’ in the history of industrial design,” writes Piaggio Group Chairman and CEO Roberto Colaninno in the introduction to the exhibition catalogue.
“The Vespa is no longer just a product of the world of transport: It is the story of a phenomenal symbol of global mores, and the images exhibited at the Piaggio Museum offer a fascinating journey through films, advertisements, photographs and posters, in the company of a legend without equals.”
The Vespa made its movie debut in 1950, four years after its market launch, in the Italian film “Sunday in August,” and became a worldwide status symbol in “Roman Holiday” (1953), with the celebrated sequence in which Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck weave their way through the Rome traffic on a Vespa 125. In addition to movie posters and stills from countless films, the exhibition presents the Vespa models that played leading roles in the films, covering sixty years of history, styles and a changing way of life.
During that time, countless actors and actresses have sat on Vespas, which have appeared or even taken a leading role in countless films.
“Examples include Nanni Moretti’s ‘Dear Diary’ (1993), in which the main character spends an entire episode – entitled, naturally enough, ‘In Vespa’ – on the saddle of a 150 Sprint,” said Pier Marco De Santi, senior lecturer in the history of cinema at the University of Pisa and art director of the Festival of European Cinema of Viareggio, whose research generated the idea of creating the exhibition.
“Or ‘Alfie’ (2004), directed by Charles Shyer, which sees Jude Law out on the streets of Manhattan on a white and blue Vespa; or Sydney Pollack’s ‘The Interpreter’ (2005), in which Nicole Kidman’s favored means of transport around New York is a yellow Vespa,” he added.
The photographs in “The Vespa and the Movies” exhibition illustrate the long list of international movie stars seen on the world’s most famous scooter through the years.
The exhibition was displayed in March and April this year in Turin, at the “Art of Being Italian” festival to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the United Italian Republic, and afterwards at the opening of The Cannes Festival. It also made an appearance in Taormina during the prestigious film award ceremony “I Nastri d’Argento (The Silver Ribbon),” is devoted to the style icon “Made in Italy”, to the legendary Vespa motor scooter, which became a leader in the world of Italian cinema for generations.
The newest model of the scooter — the Vespa PX — will be presented at the exhibition.
Visitors to the Vespa show who find their appetite for Italian lifestyle and cinematography whetted can also enjoy an Italian Cinema festival, which will take place next door to the Vespa exhibit at the Astoria’s sister hotel, the Angleterre. On Nov. 10, 16 and 22, the “Legendary Cinema of Italy” program will present movies by Federico Fellini (“La notte” and “La strada”) and Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Eclipse.”
The Italian Film Festival at the Angleterre Hotel starts Oct. 26 and ends Nov. 22. Movies start at 8 p.m.
TITLE: in the spotlight: A trolley dash in the name of fashion
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, Russian MTV launched “Project Podium,” its homegrown version of the U.S. hit show “Project Runway,” where young designers compete to create the best outfit and show it on catwalk models.
The fun of the show is seeing the bitchy contestants labor over their bizarre outfits with sweatshop hours. Unlike most reality shows, it does actually require some skills — sewing for a start, which impresses me anyway.
The U.S. version stars doll-faced model Heidi Klum as one of the judges, curtly condemning terrible outfits and eliminating the offenders. Perhaps she will make an appearance on the Russian show, although her husband, British singer Seal, misstepped recently with a performance at Ramzan Kadyrov’s birthday celebrations. Seal justified himself in an ill-judged Twitter message, insisting he was playing for the “Chechenyan people.”
The Russian version is hosted by Anna Sedokova, a former singer in the VIA Gra girl group, known for its minimal amount of clothing. A pinup favorite, she was described as the “most stylish presenter on national television.”
The winner gets to show a collection at one of Moscow’s fashion weeks and to design a capsule collection for Bosco Sport, as well as have a fashion shoot in Russian Elle magazine, whose editor is one of the judges.
The Russian contestants are a real mixed bag, coming from all over the country, with two from Vladivostok alone, and one from Belarus. The first show introduced the most one-dimensional character, Olga from the famed textiles city of Ivanovo, a dizzy blonde who thinks Vladivostok is in the north and loves pink. Then there were the cool people. Dima from Omsk has little braids and designer stubble. “I’m not interested in these people,” he said of the other contestants. But he made an exception for Dasha Dee-Dee, a slim nightclub dancer, who explained she did not want to be eliminated because her apartment has just burned down.
The first competition was to design an outfit from materials bought at the Carousel hypermarket. Contestants dashed around with trolleys and a budget of 3,000 rubles ($95.50), provoking some confusion among shoppers. “You should get a LCD television,” one suggested.
The weirdest choices were by Belarussian Dima, who piled his trolley with slices of processed cheese, and Muscovite Anton, who bought plastic cups. Others went for more manageable options such as plastic wrap and aluminum foil, while the cool Dima examined the chili section.
The contestants had to work till midnight, cue frazzled nerves. But somehow they managed to get something on the catwalk models in the end, and it was impressive how the models managed to make the outfits look passable.
The voice of reason on the show seemed to be Elle editor Yelena Sotnikova, who questioned the designers about the wearability of their outfits. Yorgas from Sochi showed a dress that was basically just green twine and flowers. “You could only wear that dress in a forest,” she said. Another designer said she had created a minimalist structure of coat hangers to show urban isolation, prompting the response: “I’ve lived in a metropolis quite a long time and I’ve never felt like this.” And she shuddered in horror at a designer who made a dress of mats tacked together with string, saying: “I’m very afraid of patchwork.”
In the end, the bizarre cheese dress got through — although it lacked geometry, apparently — and Anton cut up his plastic cups into sequins for a highly praised shimmering 1950s-style number. The overall prize went to a minimalist white dress scattered with salt crystals, and the coat-hanger girl tearfully went home.
TITLE: THE DISH: Mesto
AUTHOR: By Tobin Auber
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Place to Be
I should immediately declare an interest here, and offer something of a warning. Take a trip to the toilet at Mesto and you’ll find a photograph of this author staring down at you as you go about your business. The original Mesto was located on Ulitsa Lenina and was something of a hit. The management has hung reviews of that previous incarnation in the toilet. Back then, your humble reviewer gave it a glowing thumbs up when working for another publication, hence the mug shot printed by the article.
The new Mesto also gets a thumbs up, albeit for entirely different reasons. The restaurant on Ulitsa Lenina — opened in the early noughties — dates back to an almost forgotten time in St. Petersburg’s culinary history, a time when having a sushi section on the menu was something of a daring novelty. The fusion of simple and light European and Asian cuisine went well with the restaurant’s minimalist grey interior. The fact that Mesto’s owner and head chef, Katya Bokuchava, was also the city’s top celebrity photographer, also gave it a certain flare. Memorably, one wall featured a large black and white collage of the city’s crème de la crème ace faces snapped out and about at society events (no, my photograph wasn’t there). The restaurant’s name also referenced this would-be glamorous connection, Mesto literally meaning “the place,” but also “me-100,” sto being Russian for one hundred.
Mesto version 2.0, however, has now set off in something of a new direction, Bokuchava having taken a break and studied cooking in England — she now admits that she worships at the temple of British chef and restaurateur Marco Pierre White.
In the interior design of Mesto’s single dining room, the British connection is understated, the dark floral wallpaper, exquisite ceiling plasterwork and stucco molding recalling the black ink styling of Aubrey Beardsley. It’s an inspired piece of referencing, as Beardsley’s curving Art Nouveau flourishes perfectly at home amid the Style Moderne architecture of the Petrograd Side.
But it’s the menu that really reveals the extent of the British influence here. British cuisine has gone through an incredible renaissance in the last couple of decades, partly thanks to celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay and the above-mentioned Marco Pierre White, and it’s at new interpretations of English classics such as shepherd’s pie and Beef Wellington that Mesto excels.
We started with an “anti-Caesar” (380 rubles, $12.50), Mesto’s antidote to the standard Caesar salad that almost every restaurant in St. Petersburg feels obliged to offer. Here, it featured grilled chicken wrapped in crispy pancake rolls, iceberg lettuce and a pesto sauce. The pancake rolls were everything they should be — perfectly crisp and oil-free — and the sauce also avoided the potential for an oil-slick calamity.
The warm salad with new potatoes, grilled chicken fillet and spinach in a pesto sauce (320 rubles, $10.50) was another light salad, perfectly presented and featuring wonderfully fresh ingredients. The menu proudly announces that the range of dishes it offers is very limited in order to ensure that all the ingredients are fresh, and both salads that we tried provided evidence, though it would be hard to describe the portions as ample.
At Mesto, the English staple that is shepherd’s pie (500 rubles, $16.50) is much like the island that it hails from – small but perfectly formed. Served in its own individual porcelain baking tray, and featuring strips of veal and mutton under its upper layer of mashed potato, this is something of a novel take on the dish, which usually relies on minced meat, thick gravy and an outsized portion.
The duck with apple puree (700 rubles, $23) hit all the same buttons: A beautifully presented piece of minimalism, wonderfully tender and cooked to perfection, but perhaps not for those in search of hearty English fare.
The tiramisu (250 rubles, $8) was another miniature masterpiece, again served in its own individual white ceramic tray, while the apple pie in a flaky pastry casing and ice-cream (250 rubles, $8) was more generous, but just as packed with taste.
In short, then, and despite the slight reservation about the size of the portions, Mesto is to be recommended — this is excellent pub grub, but not as we know it.
TITLE: Lappeenranta and Imatra — Ideal Weekend Getaways
AUTHOR: By Alexander Belenky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Among Russians, the cities of Lappeenranta and Imatra are some of the most visited places in Finland. They’re close to the Russian border — you drive across and you’re already there. In Lappeenranta you can go shopping without having to deal with all of the usual hustle and bustle of Petersburg stores, or simply relax while enjoying Finland’s beautiful nature. In Imatra, it’s easy to find a nice hotel with all the essentials: A room with a view of a lake, a sauna and even a water park. Many Russians nowadays have gotten into the habit of spending their weekends in southern Finland, but there is an element of risk in this — what if these great weekend excursions start to get boring and predictabable? What new and exciting things can be found in what seem to be fully explored Finnish cities?
Imatra
If you’ve already stayed at the Imatran Kylpylla Hotel, complete with a spa and water park, but are bored with these amenities, focus on the other things this fascinating and beautiful city has to offer.
Right next to the hotel you can rent bicycles, four-wheelers (only with a valid license) and, depending on the season, paddleboats and even paintball equipment. If none of these activities pique your interest, set out on a nature walk on one of the many wooded paths. Along the trail you’ll be able to see many different types of mushrooms. It’s not true that Finns don’t pick mushrooms, but due to Finland’s good ecology and lower number of mushroom pickers, many mushrooms grow in great numbers right by the road. On these pond-side paths, ducks bravely waddle along, unafraid of tourists and eager to be fed.
Few people know that on the edge of the city you can find the Church of the Three Crosses (Kolmenristin Kirkko), which was built by the eminent Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. The church was designed to have no right angles, great acoustics, and is crowned by big white domes. The inner walls of the church can even be moved, changing the configuration of the room to accommodate the number of church-goers on any given day.
Despite its fascinating church, Imatra, architecturally speaking, isn’t the most attractive place to visit. Right nearby, however, you can see something remarkable — an incredibly romantic view of a castle-turned-hotel (an inexpensive one at that) located not far from a waterfall that flows into the Vuoksi River. Valtionhotelli consists of two separate buildings: A castle-hotel and a modern convention center, connected by an underground passage. Those who live in Imatra are convinced that their quiet little town is haunted by ghosts and will gladly tell you about the mysterious ‘woman in grey’ who roams the halls of this hotel. Hotels first appeared in Imatra in the 19th century, but they were wooden and frequently burned down. A castle-hotel was finally built (from stone), and is now over 100 years old.
The sluice gates of the Imatrankoski waterfall are opened fifty times a year. Accompanied by the celebrated Finnish composer Sibelius’ music and a light show, water crashes into the rapids and fills the canyon below. Walking along the lower path through the canyon, soon you’ll be able to see cliffs covered not in the scrawl of modern vandals, but in things written by famous visitors who have visited the canyon.
Life in Imatra isn’t all picturesque waterfalls and light shows, however. At the beginning of the 20th century, many people, having lost the will to live, would go to Imatra to end it all, throwing themselves into the foaming falls. St. Petersburg aristocrats and Finland’s highest-ranking officials of the time considered the waterfall and its surrounding area to be their vacation spot and often went there to relax. Tsar Nicholas II often visited the castle-hotel, and the hall decorated for the emperor himself still carries his name.
Not far at all from Imatra, in Rauhan, the new spa hotel Holiday Club Saimaa has just opened. It’s located on the grounds of an old pre-war boarding house, and the hotel has already built a lot of cottages and apartments, an ice arena, bowling alley, golf course and a very original water park — Cirque de Saimaa — with waterslides, sandbars and waterfalls. For children, they’ve built a small sauna designed to look like an igloo, much too tight for any adult to squeeze into, and for parents — a spa center and banya. This tourist haven is rumored to be the biggest resort not only in the area, but in all of Finland. In addition to the services offered by the hotel, guests are welcome to enjoy the calming peace and quiet as well as the natural beauty of Finland’s northern nature and lakes.
Lappeenranta
Lappeenranta is a small city in southern Karelia most famous among Russian tourists for its shopping and sales, but that’s by far from all the city has to offer.
On the shore of Lake Saimaa is an old fortress that has left its mark on Finnish, Swedish and Russian history. Being held by all of them at different points in history, the Fortress of Lappeenranta was built on the edge of the lake where the Lappee Market has been doing business since the 18th century. Nowadays the old fortress is no longer characterized by its stone walls, towers and dungeons, but rather its earthen walls and one-floored barracks. Today the fortress grounds are more a place for romantic strolls than the violent battles of the past. Walking through the overgrown grass of the bastion, you get a view of the city and lake from above. As you venture further along the cobblestone roads between the barracks, turn the corner and you’ll see that people, regular Lappeenranta citizens, still live on the fortress grounds. If you speak with them you’ll discover that they consider the fortress to be “a very comfortable place to live. It’s quiet enough, the ecology of the area is good, there aren’t many cars. Tourists walk along the main roads and if they turn down this road, they take a picture of our house. That probably means it’s pretty. We hang our laundry outside to dry and children here play outside on the grass.”
Next to the main entrance to the fortress is what used to be the Russian Mayor’s house. It is now the cozy little Café Majurska you can read about in most any travel guide. It’s known for its unique atmosphere and baked Finnish goods. “I recommend you try the ‘lettu’ (Finnish pancake) with cream and fresh berry jam, amazing!” wrote a Japanese tourist on her blog. By the café you’ll find the Russian Orthodox Pokrovskaya Church, whose services are in Finnish.
Just outside of Lappeenranta is a one-of-a-kind restaurant, Säräpirtti Kippurasarvi, with only a single item on the menu: Lemin särä, a traditionally prepared lamb dish. The choice may be limited, but you can have as many helpings as you’d like, all for one price. The lamb is cooked for a long time — no less than nine hours — and is prepared without any herbs and spices, just salt. It is served with potatoes, soup and homemade kvas. When Esko Hietaranta, owner of the family-owned restaurant, was asked how many lambs his restaurant serves up in a year, he said that in all of Finland there aren’t enough to meet the demand, so they are imported from Australia. In order to get a table at the popular eatery, you need to reserve a table well in advance so that the lamb has enough time to cook to perfection.
After a nice meal, you can work off your dinner riding around on a rented motorized bike. If the pedalling gets tough, that’s ok, just turn on the motor. It’ll give you just the boost you need to keep going around the hilly city.
By the docks on the shore of Lake Saimaa you can visit the market, stroll through an area filled with souveniers, boats and kites, and sample freshly fried fish. You can take a ride on one of the many boats that leave the docks for a tour around the lake, or head home to St. Petersburg on a ferry via the Saimaa Canal as you take in the scenery painted bright by the autumn leaves.
TITLE: Dead Bodies Attract Crowds at Anatomy Exhibition
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia’s first open anatomic exhibition, ‘The Human Body,’ celebrated its anniversary last week. The results are astonishing considering it has only been open for a year: The exhibition has had more than 100,000 visitors — a third of them children — and received two books of positive feedback from fans, while only nine people have fainted — with one filmed incident in which three visitors lost consciousness simultaneously.
The display is possible thanks to the research of Russian scientists including Ivan Goivorovsky, a professor of anatomy at the Military Medical Academy, whose work led to the development of a unique polymer embalming technique. This technique allows dead human bodies and organs to be kept on display without posing any danger to visitors.
It took 20 years for Goivorovsky to assemble a collection and to make it look like the exhibit items do today. The majority of people visiting the exhibition may expect to see something morbid or disgusting, but in fact the beauty of nature remains evident. With the intelligent arrangement of the bodies and parts, and some skillful lighting, the human bodies look like museum objects.
This is the first time an exhibition has shown the body this way, in comparison to examining pathology in the human body. This makes “The Human Body” exhibition interesting and useful not only for those curious to learn more about their bodies, but also for medical students and professionals.
Cultivating a new generation of outstanding doctors is an important goal to keep in mind in the quest to make progress in science and medicine. Organizers of “The Human Body,” closely collaborate with schools and children’s homes to educate children and promote interest in the sciences. After visiting this exhibit, some children’s curiosity has been piqued and they have voiced plans to pursue careers in medicine.
This year, the exhibition has added to its collection of organs, which helps people better understand the processes and workings of our internal organs.
“Anatomy is an exact science; it helps people look at their lives in an easier and more courageous way. It educates optimists,” said Alexander Nevzorov, an exhibition trustee.
The exhibit is popular not only among scientific minds, but among more creative types as well. Located in one of the Litsedei Theater rehearsal rooms, the show has become a favorite place for actors to visit. Anton Adasinsky, one of the theater’s actors, said that knowing how the body works is of vital importance for becoming a good actor.
Painter Rasim Agayev often works in the hall where the exhibition is held.
“The exhibition helps to uncover the truth and strives to find an origin. When people understand the harmony of the universe, it becomes possible to depict it in a work of art,” said Agayev.
A collaboration event with artists has been announced and is in the works. An art competition dedicated to the human body will be judged by Boris Trubnikov, head of the Severnaya Palmyra art project. The best works will be put on display at the exhibition.
Organizers are trying not to limit the development of the exhibition.
“There is a need to make it more evolutionary to show people who a human is, where they come from,” said Nevzorov. This year, items such as moving human and canine skeletons were added to show the core differences between human and animal structures.
It’s as yet undecided how long the exhibition will run for, but organizers and supporters agree that it should be a permanent exhibition.
“The items will last for a long time and for many generations. It can already be called a museum of the 21st century with modern technical and presentation facilities,” said Goivorovsky.
The exhibit has been compared with German anatomist Gunther von Hagens’ “Body World,” a show of dead bodies. “The Human Body” exhibition, however, possesses no “show” qualities and was created for educational purposes only.
‘The Human Body’ is open daily from 11 a.m. to
9 p.m. at the Tolstoy Square complex, 9 Ulitsa Lva Tolstogo. Tel. 050. M. Petrogradskaya.
TITLE: Brit Navigates Real Estate With No Bribes Paid
AUTHOR: By Andrew McChesney
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — David Simons, a 45-year-old British entrepreneur and investor, beams as he beckons toward a wall of his Moscow office lined with golf trophies and photographs. But perhaps what makes Simons most proud is the framed $100 bill hanging beside the golf memorabilia.
The banknote represents what Simons does best — and it’s not golf.
Simons won the $100 in a wager with his business partner over how quickly he could convince the Moscow regional authorities to register a 46,000-square-meter building for U.S. agricultural machinery giant John Deere. Simons completed the process, which he said normally takes six to nine months, in just a month.
“I had a bet with [my partner] that I would have the building registration documentation before he signed the formal lease with John Deere,” Simons, soft-spoken and unpretentious, said in an interview. “I won.”
The building in question is located in the South Gate industrial park, the flagship project of Radius Group, which was co-founded by Simons and Christopher Van Riet, a U.S. national, and has more than $900 million in warehouse projects in Russia. Simons, as co-managing director, shepherds through approvals, design works and construction — without offering bribes, he said.
How did he win the $100 bet?
“We did it in about a month because we looked at what documentation was needed and when it was needed. We went and spoke to the authorities, so they knew our documents would be coming. Our documents were correct on presentation — not one mistake,” he said, adding, as if as an afterthought: “I think our record is 100 percent because our documentation is 100 percent correct.”
Simons first visited Russia in August 1991 as hard-line Communists were attempting to oust Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in a coup. Simons sat down with The St. Petersburg Times to share his insights into Russia after witnessing two coup attempts and five financial crises during the past 20 years — and to explain how he has succeeded without resorting to bribery.
Q: Why did you first come to Russia?
A: In ‘91, a friend suggested, “Let’s go to Moscow and see what’s going on there.” So in August of ‘91 we came for two weeks. This happened during the time of the coup. It was a culture shock. The week before I’d been in Hong Kong for some business meetings, and then I arrived on a British Airways flight from London to Sheremetyevo Airport, with its dark, brown interior and very strange way of doing customs and immigration.
Obviously, I didn’t speak the language. We made some business appointments in advance — I have built in me a British sense of punctuality, so we made appointments for 9 a.m. — but people came at 11 a.m. and did not even apologize for being late. Then the first thing they wanted to do was celebrate our meeting with a shot of vodka before we even discussed any business.
Q: What was it like setting up a business in the early 1990s?
A: We didn’t even understand how to do business here. So we spent six months learning the customs, and the second set of six months we spent learning the rules: the customs laws, the tax laws, how to import goods, how to export goods. And then everything changed. As Russia developed its laws, we spent a third set of six months relearning everything because it all changed. It really was very much like the Wild East — one day you’re absolutely legal, and the next day something has changed and you were doing something — I’ll use the term very loosely — illegally.
Here’s a good example: I transited through Moscow after visiting Scandinavia for a couple of days. I landed just before midnight, and I was leaving the next morning on a plane to Asia. I had something over $1,000 in cash — not a lot, just safety money in case I lost my wallet — and I declared it on my customs form. The next morning, I went back to the airport after staying the night at the airport hotel and the customs foreman stopped me and said, “Where are the bank papers for this money?” I said, “I don’t need them. I just arrived last night, it’s under the $1,500 limit.” She said, “No, the limit’s $500 — this morning it changed.” I said, “Well, I arrived last night. Here’s my immigration stamp in the passport showing I came in last night. Here’s my customs form stamped correctly. You know I brought it in.” “Well,” she said, “you can’t leave with this. The limit’s $500. You either go get traveler’s checks or you get rubles, but you can’t leave with this amount of dollars. You don’t have the papers for it.” As a result, I left the money in a sealed envelope and did the paperwork — Russia’s a very bureaucratic place so it took an hour and I nearly missed my flight. When I returned, I took my customs papers and they gave the money back to me.
Q: How did you get into real estate here?
A: I was always looking at the real estate business, but the laws didn’t exist to allow foreigners to own real estate in Russia. Then around ‘98 they started allowing foreigners or companies with foreign charter capital or foreign shareholders to actually own already-built property. So I started to get involved again in the real estate business with some partners in St. Petersburg mainly, and some small businesses in Moscow, representing international investors looking to put a toe in the water in Russian real estate, mainly in hotels. In 2002, I co-founded a company called RKK Developments with a Russian partner.
Having been involved in the hotel business, I am convinced that the way to stability in an unstable market is to embrace the less risky, less fashionable elements of real estate — hotels and warehouses. Retail and residential office is very cyclical. I believe that people will have to stay in rooms, therefore hotels will always maintain a certain level of value; and warehouses are a huge opportunity and stable — a realization that I arrived at in the trade business and after looking around Russia at warehouses and understanding that there was no real distribution infrastructure. As long as you’re in for the long term, you’ll ride out the highs and the lows, and you’re stable.
Q: What’s the secret to getting the authorities to sign off on documents without offering a bribe?
A: Communication. You can submit your documents and wait. But if you want to really get through the process as expeditiously as possible, you have to be on top of the process. So we’re constantly visiting the authorities. We maintain relations with all the building authorities, and we have a good working relationship with the local administrations where we invest. We effectively shepherd our documentation from window to window, from desk to desk. We also consult with the authorities, keeping them informed of what we’re doing and getting their opinion — there’s no point in submitting documents that are not going to be understood. So when our documents officially arrive, the construction authority or the chief architect is not surprised by what he’s looking at because it actually reflects his input.
I have a very strong opinion on corruption. Most of the corruption in Russia is actually a myth, and no one really knows the level of what is termed as corruption. Russian bureaucracy is such a giant beast that what is sometimes termed as corruption is just a misconception that actually has more to do with the heavy bureaucratic structure where there is an unwillingness to accept responsibility. It’s easier to say no than it is to say yes because saying no doesn’t carry any risk.
Q: How do you handle extortion attempts?
A: We built 86,000 meters of warehousing in Kazan in 2006 and 2007, and like always we made sure that we were 100 percent correct with our documentation. At the end of the development, we had an issue in getting some of the utilities connected. The easy way to solve the problem would have been becoming involved in corruption and bribery. As I said, we don’t do that.
But we were fortunate that we had written into our agreements with the republic of Tatarstan that they would guarantee the availability of utilities — this was an important investment worth over $100 million.
So I went to the Tatarstan government and showed them the decree that was signed originally. I said we seemed to be having some issues now.
They were unaware of our issue — this was a very low-level issue — but I had to escalate it because we needed to solve the problem. I had tried to solve the problem at the local level, but it didn’t work.
The problem was solved in a week. Whatever was blocking the issue was unblocked, and the government lived up to its obligations.
TITLE: Newborn Child Pulled From Turkish Rubble
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ERCIS, Turkey — A two-week-old baby girl, her mother and grandmother were pulled alive from the rubble of an apartment building Tuesday in a dramatic rescue, 48 hours after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake toppled some 2,000 buildings in eastern Turkey.
Television footage showed rescuers in orange jumpsuits applauding as the baby, Azra Karaduman, was removed from the hulk of crushed concrete and metal. A rescuer cradled the naked infant, who was wrapped in a blanket and handed over to a medic amid a scrum of emergency workers and media. The state-run Anatolia news agency said the baby was in good health but was flown to a hospital in Ankara.
Authorities said the death toll had risen to 370 as rescuers in Ercis and the provincial capital, Van, raced against time to free dozens of people trapped inside mounds of concrete, twisted steel and construction debris. At least nine people were rescued on Tuesday, although many more bodies were discovered.
Authorities have warned survivors not to enter damaged buildings and thousands spent a second night outdoors in cars or tents in near-freezing conditions, afraid to return to their homes. Some 1,300 people were injured
The baby’s mother, Semiha, and grandmother, Gulsaadet, were huddled together, with the baby clinging to her mother’s shoulder when rescuers found them, emergency worker Kadir Direk said. There was a bakery on the first floor of the building, which may have kept them warm, he said.
Hours after the infant was freed, the others were pulled from the half-flattened building and rushed to ambulances as onlookers clapped and cheered. The mother had been semiconscious, but woke up when rescuers arrived, Direk said.
“Bringing them out is such happiness. I wouldn’t be happier if they gave me tons of money,” said rescuer Oytun Gulpinar.
Workers could not find the baby’s father and there were no other signs of life in the shattered building, he said.
The Hurriyet newspaper reported the family live in Sivas, central Turkey, but were visiting the girl’s grandmother and grandfather.
Firefighters and rescuers ordered silence while they listened for noise from other possible survivors in the large five-story apartment block, parts of which were being supported by a crane.
Nine-year-old Oguz Isler was rescued along with his sister and cousin, but on Tuesday he was waiting at the foot of the same pile of debris that was his aunt’s apartment block for news of his parents and of other relatives who remain buried inside.
Turkish rescue workers in bright orange overalls and Azerbaijani military rescuers in camouflage uniforms searched through the debris, using excavators, picks and shovels to look for Oguz’s mother and father and other relatives still inside.
Dogs sniffed for possible survivors in gaps that opened up as their work progressed.
“They should send more people,” Oguz said as he and other family members watched the rescuers. An elder cousin comforted him.
Mehmet Ali Hekimoglu, a medic, said the dogs indicated that there were three or four people inside the building, but it was not known if they were alive.
The boy, his sister and a cousin were trapped in the building’s third-floor stairway as they tried to escape when the quake hit. A steel door fell over him.
“I fell on the ground face down. When I tried to move my head, it hit the door,” he said. “I tried to get out and was able to open a gap with my fists in the wall but could not move my body further. The wall crumbled quickly when I hit it.”
“We started shouting: ‘Help! We’re here,’” he said. “They found us a few hours later, they took me out about 8 1/2 hours later. ... I was OK but felt very bad, lonely. ... I still have a headache, but the doctor said I was fine.”
“They took me out last because I was in good shape and the door was protecting me. I was hearing stones falling on it,” the boy said.
The government’s response to the quake appeared to be well-coordinated because of the country’s vast experience in dealing with killer quakes and their aftermaths. Turkey lies in one of the world’s most active seismic zones and is crossed by numerous fault lines. In 1999, two earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 struck northwestern Turkey, killing about 18,000 people.
TITLE: Libyans Bury Gadhafi In Unmarked Gravesite
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MISRATA, Libya — Moammar Gadhafi was buried early Tuesday morning in an unmarked grave in a modest Islamic ceremony, closing the book on his nearly 42-year rule of Libya and the eight-month civil war to oust him.
A Gadhafi nephew read a prayer for the dead before Gadhafi’s body — along with those of his son Muatassim and former defense minister Abu Bakr Younis — were handed over for burial, said Ibrahim Beitalmal, a spokesman for the military council in the port city of Misrata.
The bodies had been kept in cold storage in Misrata for four days before being taken under cover of darkness to the burial site, which Beitalmal said was “not far” from the city. As part of the ceremony, the bodies were washed in line with Islamic tradition. A Muslim cleric, a nephew of Gadhafi and sons of Abu Bakr then recited prayers before handing the bodies over for burial, which took place at 5 a.m.
Libya’s new leaders have said they would not reveal the location of the grave, fearing it could be vandalized or turned into a shrine for the former dictator’s die-hard supporters.
Gadhafi was captured alive Thursday as he tried to flee his hometown of Sirte, where he had been hiding since revolutionary forces swept into the capital, Tripoli, two months earlier.
He died later that day in unclear circumstances, and Libyan leaders have promised an investigation in response to international pressure to look into Gadhafi’s death. Video has emerged showing Gadhafi being beaten and abused by a mob after his capture, and researchers for the New York-based Human Rights Watch have said there are strong indications he was killed in custody.
Human rights activists have warned that the new Libya could get off on the wrong foot if vigilante justice is condoned. However, many Libyans appeared relieved that Gadhafi is dead, saying a long trial for the former dictator would have been disruptive and made it harder on the country to get a fresh start. Earlier this week, interim leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil formally declared an end to the civil war, starting the clock on what is to be a two-year transition to democracy.
The bodies of Gadhafi, Muatassim and Younis had been kept in a refrigerated produce locker in a warehouse area of Misrata for the past four days. Hundreds lined up every day to view the corpses, some coming from hundreds of miles away. Visitors donned surgical masks, and at times guards arranged separate lines for men and women.
Misrata suffered immensely during the war. It was besieged for nearly two months and shelled indiscriminately. Gadhafi was captured by fighters from Misrata, who brought him back to the city as a trophy.
TITLE: Rising Floodwaters Cause Bangkok Airport to Close
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BANGKOK — Advancing floodwaters in Thailand breached barriers protecting Bangkok’s second airport Tuesday, halting commercial flights at a complex that also houses the country’s flood relief headquarters and thousands of displaced people.
The flooding at Don Muang airport, which is primarily used for domestic flights, is one of the biggest blows yet to government efforts to prevent the sprawling capital from being swamped. Its effective closure is certain to further erode public confidence in the ability of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s administration to defend the increasingly anxious metropolis of 9 million people.
Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, the country’s main international gateway, has yet to be affected by flooding and flights there were operating normally. Most of the city has been spared inundation so far.
Don Muang has come to symbolize the gravity of the Southeast Asian nation’s deepening crisis, which has seen advancing waters drown a third of the country and kill 366 people over the last three months.
The airport houses the government’s recently established emergency Flood Relief Operations Center, and one of its terminals has been converted into an overcrowded shelter filled with tents for about 4,000 people who fled waterlogged homes.
Somboon Klinchanhom, a 43-year-old civil servant who took refuge there last week, was preparing to move after authorities said the terminal had become too crowded and thousands of people displaced there would be relocated.
“I thought it would be safe and well-protected,” Somboon said of the airport, as she packed her belongings again.
Though floodwaters have yet to spill across Don Muang’s runways, ankle-high water could be seen Tuesday rushing over sandbagged barriers around the airport’s perimeter, swamping internal roads. One vast pool was headed toward two Thai Airways jetliners parked outside a hangar, their wheels wrapped in plastic sheets.
The two main carriers based at Don Muang announced they were suspending operations and diverting flights to Suvarnabhumi because of the flood threat. They are Thai Orient Airlines and Nok Air, which said it was halting flights until Nov. 1.
Capt. Kantpat Mangalasiri, the airport’s director, said Don Muang’s commercial runways would be closed until Nov. 1 to ensure safe aircraft operations.
TITLE: Aidworkers Seized By Gunmen
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAIROBI, Kenya — Somali gunmen kidnapped an American aid worker and her Danish colleague from northern Somalia on Tuesday, officials said.
The 60-year-old Danish man and the 30-year-old American woman were working for the Danish Demining Group when they were seized in northern Somalia, two Nairobi-based officials said. They asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The group did not immediately answer phone calls placed to its headquarters in Denmark following the attack, which happened near the Puntland capital of Galkayo.
The two Westerners were taken by gunmen while on their way to the airport, said Ahmed Mohamed, a police officer in the Somali town of Galkayo.
Galkyo is divided in two, a northern section under the control of the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, and a southern section under the control of a clan called Galmudug. Mohamed said the two kidnapped Westerners crossed into the southern side of the town and were abducted there.
The Danish Demining Group helps dispose of unexploded bombs and teaches communities about the dangers of land mines and other ordinance, according to its web site.