SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1683 (45), Wednesday, November 16, 2011
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TITLE: ‘Homophobic’ Bill Attracts Protests
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: LGBT activists and human rights organizations are protesting in St. Petersburg with petitions against what they say is a homophobic draft law proposed by Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party in an attempt to gather more votes from conservatives ahead of the Dec. 4 State Duma elections.
On Friday, the Legislative Assembly’s legislation committee introduced a draft amendment to the local law “On Administrative Offences in St. Petersburg” that would outlaw “public actions directed at promoting sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism to minors”  if approved by the Legislative Assembly.
According to the draft law, violators will be fined. The fines would be from 1,000 to 3,000 rubles (about $33 to $100) for individuals, 3,000 to 5,000 rubles ($100 to $160) for officials and 10,000 to 50,000 ($325 to $3,630) rubles for legal entities.
“The objective of this draft law is to protect morals as the foundation of a healthy society,” said Vitaly Milonov, chair of the legislative committee and a United Russia deputy, on the Legislative Assembly’s web site.
According to Milonov, the draft law is designed to assist parents and schools in opposing the “powerful showbiz industry that promotes immorality and permissiveness.”
Speaking Tuesday, Igor Kochetkov, director of the LGBT rights group Vykhod (Coming Out), drew attention to mistakes in the draft law, which misspells some key terms in Russian in its title. 
“The total illiteracy of the definitions is striking, you can’t find such words in a dictionary, which shows that the authors were very much in a hurry,” he said.
“They didn’t even bother to show it to people who know Russian.”
Kochetkov said that the draft law “was introduced unexpectedly on Nov. 11, and they want its first hearing to be pretty soon — as early as on Nov. 16.”
“This indicates that they want it to pass before the elections — that it is a move in their election campaign, definitely. I think that if they fail to get it passed before the elections, it will not be of interest to them once the elections are over.”
On Tuesday, LGBT activists held a series of one-man demos, which do not require preliminary authorization under Russian law, in central St. Petersburg. Activists set up a scarecrow with a poster reading “Don’t let democracy slip away” and stood next to it, one by one, distributing leaflets.
Their posters read “I’m not a scarecrow! Don’t scare kids with me,” “Those under 18 aren’t allowed to look at me” and “Don’t take kids to the ballet — men wear pantyhose there.”
According to Coming Out, more than 1,000 residents have signed the petition against the draft law in person during the past three days, while more than 6,500 have signed it on the Internet. 
In a statement, Coming Out said that if passed, the law would put restrictions on the activities of LGBT rights organizations.
“Consequently, any information campaigns directed at lowering xenophobia and preventing hate crimes based on homophobia would become impossible.”
Although Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1993, Ryazan and Arkhangelsk outlawed “promoting homosexuality” in the 2000s by passing laws similar to the United Russia bill in St. Petersburg.
Kochetkov described the laws as “unconstitutional,” saying they “limit rights and freedoms, while the constitution states clearly that rights and freedoms can be limited only by a federal law, rather than by regional ones.”
“If such a law is passed in St. Petersburg, we will go to the city court and will take it to the Supreme Court no matter what.”
The Memorial Anti-Discrimination Center asked the Legislative Assembly to reject the bill as “contradicting Russian and international legal norms” in a letter Tuesday.
“The passing [of the law] would lead to mass violations of human rights on the territory of St. Petersburg,” it said.
Coming Out’s activists said they would continue to protest and picket the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday, when the draft law is due to be heard.

TITLE: Zyuganov To Watch Elections
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Communist Party intends to take control over upcoming parliamentary elections by placing their representatives at polling stations and installing video cameras throughout the Leningrad Oblast to ensure the close monitoring of ballot boxes and vote counting, the party’s leader Gennady Zyuganov said at a press conference in St. Petersburg last week.
“Everyone understands that the elections are falsified,” said Svyatoslav Sokol, a State Duma deputy for the Communist Party. “The question as to whether Russia will have international authority or fully discredit itself is of primal and urgent importance for our state and society,” he said.
“Illegitimate power leads to anarchy: Libya and Egypt put together,” said Zyuganov.
The Communist Party is also opposed to a legislative draft proposed by the United Russia Party that would allow citizens to vote by post. “We have information that every election constituency is supposed to gather a certain number of votes [for United Russia] in such a way,” Sokol said.
Zyuganov said that the Communist Party was going to fight against the passing of the law, even if it had to organize mass street protests to do so. Sokol said that Russia had never had fair elections, and wouldn’t have in the foreseeable future. 
According to Communist Party members, the party has a good chance of winning elections in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast. Sokol voiced a figure of 51 percent of votes in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, and Regina Illarionova, secretary of the regional committee, said that according to their estimate, the Communist Party should win in the Leningrad Oblast. 
Film director and member of the St. Petersburg Communist Party’s city committee Vladimir Bortko said that it was not possible to predict the outcome of the elections. “Only one thing is clear: We want to win,” he said.
“Our party already has higher figures than United Russia in many regions of Russia. In this sense, there is some kind of pressure [from United Russia] on us. But we won’t let them steal our votes,” Zyuganov said.
Communist Party members said that the party’s pre-election program concentrated on the country’s recovery from the economic crisis, reform in the housing and utility sector and development of all production branches, as well as supporting young people and introducing a graduated tax for the rich. Alexei Vorontsov, a member of the party, said that the party aimed to resurrect the idea of St. Petersburg as a cultural, scientific and industrial center. 
“The main problem for Russia nowadays is the absence of any unifying power or idea,” said Bortko.
“The only way to save the country is to build socialism.”

TITLE: Ballet Stars Abandon the Bolshoi for Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The world of Russian ballet was rocked by controversy this week when dancers Natalya Osipova and Ivan Vasilyev announced they would leave Moscow’s celebrated Bolshoi Opera and Ballet Theater for St. Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Theater. 
The married couple, who often star together in ballet productions, will perform for the first time on Dec. 1, premiering at the Mikhailovsky’s gala concert that will conclude the theater’s Grand Prix choreography competition. 
“The famous dancers have performed on the theater’s stage many times, but only as invited stars. From Dec. 1 they will be performing as part of the company on five-year contracts. Osipova will be the theater’s prima ballerina. Vasilyev will be the theater’s principal dancer,” the Mikhailovsky Theater’s press service reported.
Osipova said that for her, a native of Moscow, the decision to move to the Mikhailovsky was “a very serious step.”
“The main reason I’m leaving the Bolshoi is the lack of repertoire. Everything I could dance there I had already performed. We strive for creative freedom. When life becomes too comfortable for me I feel a huge need to change something, to get rid of that comfortable and stable current,” Osipova said, Fontanka reported.
Vasilyev said that they needed to move on when it was difficult to change their work at the Bolshoi. He said the couple wanted to dance as much as possible, including dances that incorporated new choreography.
Nacho Duato, the creative head of the Mikhailovsky Theater called Osipova and Vasilyev “real stars, dancers of extraordinary talent, absolutely devoted to dancing.”
Millionaire businessman Vladimir Kekhman, general director of the Mikhailovsky Theater, said he first approached Osipova and Vasilyev with an offer to move to the Mikhailovsky a year and a half ago. But it took them time to make a decision, Fontanka reported.
The Bolshoi regrets losing such talented dancers and will always be ready to take Osipova and Vasilyev back, the theater’s press service said, RIA Novosti news agency reported.
The Bolshoi offered Osipova and Vasilyev an extensive repertoire and staged a special performance for them, the theater’s press service said, adding that it believes the dancers were manipulated into believing there weren’t enough opportunities for growth and leaving.
Nikolai Tsiskaridze, another principal dancer at the Bolshoi, said he couldn’t rule out that other dancers would leave the Bolshoi as well, indicating certain problems in the theater, RIA Novosti reported.

TITLE: New Metro Station Causes Hike in Real Estate Prices
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Landlords have increased prices for premises surrounding Admiralteiskaya metro station, which is due to open by the end of the year at the intersection of Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa and Kirpichny Pereulok. The opening of the new station may significantly change the area’s prospects in the near future, experts say.
Sergei Fyodorov, director of business development at Jones Lang Lasalle in St. Petersburg, was quoted by Delovoi Petersburg (DP) daily as saying that when the new station opens, rent rates in the area, which currently range from 4,000 to 5,000 rubles ($130 to $163) per square meter per month, will increase by 15 percent.
Vasily Spitsyn, head of the street-retail department at LBK Union, said that rent had already risen by 30 percent, and a further increase may lead to a complete change of the profile of tenants in the area, DP reported.
Changes among tenants are already taking place in the area. The snack bar chain Kartage did not renew its rental agreement for premises on the first floor of 11 Nevsky Prospekt that it had been renting for the past nine years. Instead, the pie cafe Stolle will be opening in that location soon, Spitsyn said.
The Bukvoyed bookstore chain expects the customer volume at their shop located near the new metro to increase by 15 percent, DP reported.
Analysts expect the number of people passing by the new station to be comparable to that at Mayakovskaya metro station, located on Nevsky Prospekt: Between 2,500 and 3,000 people an hour, excluding rush hour.
The new station, located close to Palace Square, the State Hermitage Museum, the Admiralty and St. Isaac’s Cathedral, is expected to be the last metro station to open in the historic center of St. Petersburg. 
A shopping mall will also open above the metro station. The mall is a project of the eminent St. Petersburg businessman Mikhail Mirilashvili.

TITLE: NGO Prints Advice For Army Recruits
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: When what is supposed to be a standard process of drafting army conscripts becomes a nocturnal raid or semi-criminal ensnarement, a new book compiled by the local NGO Soldiers’ Mothers may come in handy.
The Russian army has for many years been notorious for its hazing, high suicide rates and severely ill young men being drafted in a desperate effort by the military authorities to fill the minimum quotas for recruits.
It is an open secret that the military is one of the most corrupt spheres of life in the country, and with brutal hazing rampant in the armed forces, many young men are willing to bribe their way out of performing their compulsory national service.
Yury Khromov, head of the civilian enquiries department of the city’s military commission, said that this year in the Leningrad Oblast alone, 8,000 young men are officially listed as draft evaders. Khromov was speaking at the presentation of the Soldiers’ Mothers book, titled “Defending the rights of conscripts and recruits,” at the Regional Press Institute on Tuesday. 
Men are listed as draft dodgers if they sign to confirm that they have received a summons and then fail to appear at a given time. Many young men go to great lengths to avoid confirming that they have received the summons, discarding them from their postboxes and pretending not to have received anything, so the local military officials have developed illegal schemes to track down potential recruits. Tactics documented by Soldiers’ Mothers include raiding apartments at night, seizing young men from public places and arranging a spontaneous fast-track medical examination and immediate departure to an assigned military base.
“It is done so quickly that within a matter of several hours, a young man can be grabbed on the street, examined, declared fit for service and promptly sent away,” said Oksana Paramonova, an activist with Soldiers’ Mothers, which exists to protect the rights of army recruits and their families. 
“One of the crucial things for potential conscripts and their loved ones to remember is never to switch off their cell phones: It is illegal for the military commission to say that a conscript cannot get in touch with a family member or a lawyer. If young men are detained, they should insist that an official report be compiled.”
According to estimates by Soldiers’ Mothers, there are tens of thousands of deserters in Russia at any given time.
Helping frightened young men evade the draft, it appears, is a booming business in Russia. Leaflets and advertisements for scores of dodgy firms can be found pasted on the walls of metro stations, bus stops and apartment buildings across the country.
Such services are not cheap, with costs amounting to up to several thousand euros. And, even at the high prices charged, there are no guarantees.  
“It is not a complicated scheme: What happens is that a lawyer in these draft-dodging firms handles the negotiations with military commissions,” said Ella Polyakova, chairman of Soldier’s Mothers. “If something goes wrong, naturally, no refund is given.”
All Russian men between the ages of 18 and 27 are required to serve in the armed forces. The Kremlin has long promised reform, but has refused to abandon conscription. Every year, thousands avoid service by bribing officials or faking medical ailments.
At the same time, Polyakova said, vast numbers of men with genuine health complaints get drafted, which can result in their condition becoming exacerbated, or even lead to their death during military service. 
“It often starts at the draft center,” she said. “I cannot count the number of times we have arranged for an ambulance to be sent to draft centers. Very often, civilian doctors cannot even get access to the patient — which is also illegal — so the situation desperately lacks transparency and requires investigation.”
Human rights advocates insist that the current risks of being in the Russian army are so high that a moratorium on compulsory military service must be considered unless a less dangerous and more transparent system is created.
The Defense Ministry estimates that between 500 and 1,000 recruits die from non-combat-related causes every year in Russia. But human rights groups contest official statistics and claim the actual number is as high as 3,000.
Non governmental organizations stress that it is extremely difficult for them to provide civil monitoring of the investigations of army deaths, including suicides. Although in theory, human rights organizations are not only permitted but officially invited to participate in the work of military conscript commissions, when it comes to actually giving seats to the representatives of NGOs, the authorities tend to avoid pressure groups that provide tangible civil monitoring, rather than providing a nominal presence on the board.
Polyakova’s Soldiers’ Mothers group has been denied a place on the grounds that the NGO, which challenges the authorities by publicizing and providing legal representation for cases of human rights abuses is “a destructive organization that effectively discredits the Russian army.”

TITLE: Multiple Children Cause Parents Financial Stress
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Having a second child can double a Russian family’s financial stress, experts said.
In Russia, 32 percent of families live below the poverty line, said Yelena Nikolayeva, member of the presidential commission on demographic policy, Interfax reported.
“Almost half of families with two children and two thirds of families with three children live in poverty,” Nikolayeva said at the 5th All-Russia Forum of Mothers held in the city of Ufa on Tuesday.
Nikolayeva said having a second child makes a family’s financial situation two times worse, and a third child — four times worse than the financial situation of families with only one child.
A quarter of children live in families that can barely afford to buy them new shoes and clothes and have trouble paying for medical care and medicine, while 16 percent live in families that can’t afford to feed them properly.
Every fifth child lives in a family housed in poor living conditions, she said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>English in the Metro</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Recorded announcements in the St. Petersburg metro will be played in English from Nov. 14 through Nov. 20. as part of the International Metro Week campaign, Interfax reported.
“The main goal of the campaign is to form an open cultural space, develop hospitality and draw foreigners’ attention to the beauty and history of St. Petersburg as the capital of Northern tourism,” the metro said on its web site.
The announcements will be in English in wagons on the metro’s third line.

<b>Sex Offender Strikes</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Several St. Petersburg children and teen girls have become victims of a sex offender in the city, Fontanka reported.
On Nov. 12 an unidentified man attacked and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl in the elevator of an apartment building on Prospekt Alexandrovskoi Fermy. 
According to preliminary reports the man was between 20 and 22 years old and of Asian appearance.
At least three similar crimes were committed in the south of the city, in the Nevsky and Frunzensky districts, a few days earlier. 
On Nov. 10 a man committed similar sexual attacks against an eight-year-old girl on the staircase between the eighth and ninth floors of an apartment building on Ulitsa Karavayevskaya.
On Nov. 9 a man attacked a 15-year-old girl in the entrance hall of her apartment building. The girl screamed for help and her father heard and ran to help her. The girl’s father chased after and tried to catch the attacker but the offender managed to escape.
An hour earlier, another girl was the victim of a similar attack in the entrance hall to a building on Ulitsa Oleko Dundicha. Threatening the girl with physical violence, the attacker sexually assaulted her. 
Both victims in the latter two incidents described the attacker as a slim 20-year-old man of Asian appearance, Fontanka reported.

<b>LenOblast Goes Safari</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Wildlife parks may begin appearing on public hunting grounds in the Leningrad Oblast, the regional administration’s press service said.
The first such park is to appear in the Kirovsk forestry unit, near Morozov village, as a pilot project. Enclosures will be set up in which animals will be kept in a more natural environment, and visitors will follow trails from which they can observe nature.
A similar park may be opened in the Priozersk district.
Wildlife parks usually ensure that animals living in enclosed areas on the territory live in conditions similar to their natural habitat. Animals are sometimes kept in caged enclosures, but some also roam free on the land. 

<b>McHappy Day</b> 
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — McDonald’s will hold its annual large-scale charity event, McHappy Day, when a percentage of the fast food chain’s proceeds are donated to charity, on Nov. 20.
This year, the public will also be able to suggest worthy charitable causes. People can send their suggestions to the Ronald McDonald House charity web site at www.rmhc.ru until Nov. 19. Online voters and a committee of mothers will decide where the money will go.
During the last nine years, the project has managed to raise more than 90 million rubles ($2.9 million) in Russia to provide family rooms in hospitals as well as essential equipment and furniture for shelters, children’s homes and rehabilitation centers for children with physical and mental disabilities.


TITLE: Tymoshenko Looks Set to Remain in Jail
AUTHOR: By Maria Danilova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV, Ukraine — Efforts to free former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from prison through the domestic legal system are almost certainly doomed and she is likely to remain in prison for many months, her lawyer said Monday.
Serhiy Vlasenko charged that President Viktor Yanukovych is intent on keeping the top opposition leader in prison to bar her from elections.
“Tymoshenko is a very personal issue for Yanukovych. It’s very emotional: she is his personal, political enemy,” Vlasenko told a small group of foreign reporters in Tymoshenko’s office in central Kiev. “And according to the logic of Mr. Yanukovych, the enemy must be in jail.”
Tymoshenko, 50, was convicted last month of abusing her powers while negotiating a natural gas import contract in Russia in 2009, and sentenced to seven years in jail. The United States and the European Union have condemned the ruling as politically motivated, but Yanukovych has defied Western pressure to release her.
Vlasenko said parliament, dominated by Yanukovych loyalists, will likely kill a bill this week that would turn her crime into a less serious economic misdemeanor and allow her release. He also predicted that an appeals court, which will hear her case next month, would uphold the conviction. The appeals process usually takes up to two months, he said.
Tymoshenko is pinning her hopes on eventually getting the verdict overturned by the European Court of Human Rights, but Vlasenko said it may take some 10 months or even longer for the Strasbourg court to make a ruling on the case.
Furthermore, it remains unclear whether a decision by the European court would be legally binding in Ukraine. Tymoshenko’s spokeswoman, Marina Soroka, said if the Strasbourg court were to rule that Tymoshenko’s right to a fair trial was violated, she would have to be released from jail.
But Andriy Kozlov, an independent legal expert, said that while Ukraine’s Supreme Court would be required to review the case, it won’t necessarily be obliged to overrule the decision by the local courts.
Meanwhile, Tymoshenko is suffering from severe back pain, according to Vlasenko, but the authorities are refusing to let her be examined and treated at a medical facility outside her detention center that would have the necessary medical equipment and expertise.
The pain is so severe, Vlasenko said, that Tymoshenko was unfit to be questioned, but was nevertheless interrogated while lying in bed in her jail cell last week. The Soviet-era small, stuffy and odorous cell has three beds, a small table, a refrigerator, a TV-set and dimmed lights are left on through the night, said Vlasenko, who was present during the interrogation. The toilet, closed off by short walls that do not cover a person entirely, is located in the same cell.
The Health Ministry said Monday that state-employed doctors who have examined Tymoshenko concluded that she was fit to be interrogated, but would not disclose Tymoshenko’s medical condition, saying that would be unethical.
Tymoshenko was convicted of overstepping her authority while negotiating a gas contract with Russia. The court found that she did not have the authority to approve the deal, which was found to be harmful to the Ukrainian economy.
Tymoshenko insists that Yanukovych, her longtime foe, ordered the legal assault to prevent her from participating in elections and keep his power unchallenged. Yanukovych denies the accusations, saying he was not involved in the investigation and that a court made the ruling in her case independently.

TITLE: Lost Flamingos Visit Siberia
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Two wayward flamingos got a taste of Russian hospitality after they landed in rural Siberia last Friday, Itar-Tass reported  Monday.
The battered, freezing flamingos were recovered from a lake in the Tomsk region, and hunter Ivan Metla put the more injured bird in his banya — presumably to simulate what he believed to be its natural habitat — and fed it broth and compound feed, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.
The other bird was saved from attacking ravens by local farmer Ivan Dyachkov, who nurtured it back to health on fish and carrots, local web site News.vtomske.ru reported.
Daytime temperatures in the area stood at minus 11 degrees Celsius on Friday, according to online forecaster Gismeteo.ru.
Flamingos migrate over Siberia, but they rarely land. Those that do face certain death from the cold and attacks by local birds.
The two recovered birds have been turned over to a zoo in Seversk, effectively commuting a death sentence to life in prison.

TITLE: S. Ossetia Split on Kremlin Nominee
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The weekend’s presidential election in South Ossetia ended with a surprise tie between the candidate supported by Moscow and a major opposition figure, authorities in the tiny Georgian breakaway region said Monday.
Analysts said the opposition candidate’s strong showing indicates a high level of discontent among the local population with outgoing president Eduard Kokoity, whose government has been widely accused of misusing millions of dollars of aid sent by Moscow.
Emergency Situations Minister Anatoly Bibilov and former Education Minister Alla Dzhioyeva both scored 25 percent and will face each other in a Nov. 27 runoff, elections commission head Bella Pliyeva said in a statement posted on the region’s official web site.
Bibilov, who had open support from the Kremlin, got 25.44 percent — just 0.07 points, or about a dozen actual votes, more than Dzhioyeva, who had criticized outgoing president Kokoity as undemocratic, the statement said.
The figures were based on the counting of 98.84 percent of the vote. No final count was released by Monday.
The turnout in the republic of some 30,000 inhabitants was 67 percent, election officials said.
Kokoity has run the tiny mountainous region since 2001. He saw it through a five-day war in 2008, which ended with Russian forces defeating Georgia and recognizing the independence of South Ossetia and another breakaway province, Abkhazia.
But Kokoity is barred by the constitution from running for a third five-year term.
The former wrestler had thrown his weight behind two of the 11 candidates, but both Alan Kotayev and Georgy Kabisov fared poorly, winning just 9.6 percent and 7.5 percent of the vote, respectively.
Both candidates’ campaigns were assisted by Modest Kolerov, a public relations veteran and former Kremlin official, Kommersant reported last week.
Kokoity said Monday that Dzhioyeva would never win the second round and suggested that no woman could become his successor. “Our society has high respect for women. But the Caucasus remains the Caucasus,” he told Komsomolskaya Pravda radio.
Kokoity has also been accused of preventing opposition candidates Dzambolat Tedeyev and Alan Kochiyev from taking part in the presidential race on questionable pretexts.
Kochiyev was imprisoned and charged with assaulting a local legislator last month. He withdrew his bid Friday in favor of the pro-Kremlin Bibilov.
Tedeyev, a former Soviet wrestling champion who serves as trainer of the Russian national wrestling team, was barred from the race on the grounds that he had not lived in South Ossetia permanently for the past 10 years.
The decision by the elections commission last month led to tensions when Tedeyev’s supporters attempted to storm the commission’s building in the regional capital Tskhinvali.
On Nov. 1, Tedeyev published a YouTube video in which he backed Dzhioyeva’s candidacy.
Dzhioyeva, 62, was dismissed from her job as education minister in 2008 and brought to trial on embezzlement charges, which she has called politically motivated.
On Monday, she accused her opponents of unfair campaigning: “Unlike many of our competitors, we won without administrative resources, without colossal financial input and without any support from certain groups in the Russian political elite,” she was quoted as saying on the republic’s web site.
Experts also said Bibilov’s relatively poor showing was a sign of anti-Russian sentiment and that the Kremlin’s support for him, manifested last week when he was endorsed by a group of senior State Duma deputies in Tskhinvali, had proved too weak.
Alexei Malashenko of the Moscow Carnegie Center pointed out that Bibilov is closely associated with South Ossetian Prime Minister Vadim Brovtsev, a businessman from the Siberian city of Chelyabinsk who was installed in 2009, reportedly to achieve better control of the republic’s finances.
“There is … resentment against being governed by a Siberian,” he said by telephone Monday.
Unlike Abkhazia — Georgia’s other breakaway republic, which has a population of 200,000 and much more economic potential — the tiny South Ossetia, sandwiched between central Georgia and Russian North Ossetia in the Caucasus’ southern flank, is being given little chance of independent survival.
Only Nicaragua, Venezuela and the Pacific island nations of Nauru and Vanuatu have followed Moscow’s recognition of its independence, amid accusations from Georgia that Russia is engaging in checkbook diplomacy to ensure international support for the separatists.
Speculation has circulated that the region may join Russia and be merged with North Ossetia, but most analysts dismissed these reports. “I believe this is not on the agenda,” said Nikolai Silayev of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.
The European Union said Monday that it does not consider the South Ossetian elections legitimate and supports “the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia, as recognized by international law,” according to a statement by the EU’s External Action Service.

TITLE: Bus Ads Offend Officials
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Authorities in Siberia have ruled that political ads denouncing “crooks and thieves” could only be interpreted as an attack on the ruling United Russia party.
The slogan “For Russia Against Crooks and Thieves” —based on whistleblower Alexei Navalny’s catchphrase “United Russia is a party of crooks and thieves” — was included on posters that the newly oppositional party A Just Russia placed on 30 buses in Novosibirsk, party activist Alyona Popova said Monday.
But the city-owned bus company, PATP-5, later ordered the ads be taken down because they were “agitation against United Russia” on the eve of the Dec. 4 State Duma elections, Popova told The St. Petersburg Times.
The banners had been removed from 16 shuttle buses by late Monday, Popova said by telephone.
The removal of the ads was instigated after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited Novosibirsk last Tuesday, unidentified officials from A Just Russia told Sib.fm. Putin purportedly asked local officials “why such a crackdown on United Russia?” the news agency said.

TITLE: U.S.-Russian Crew Blasts Off for Space Station
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Russian spacecraft carrying an American and two Russians blasted off Monday from the snow-covered Kazakh steppes in a faultless launch that eased anxiety about the future of U.S. and Russian space programs.
The Soyuz TMA-22 lifted off as scheduled at 8:14 a.m. (0414 GMT) from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome to carry NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin on a mission to the International Space Station.
The launch had been delayed for two months due to the crash of an unmanned Progress cargo ship in August. The failed launch raised doubts about future missions to the station, because the rocket that crashed used the same upper stage as the booster rockets carrying Soyuz ships to orbit.
NASA had warned that the space outpost would need to be abandoned temporarily for the first time in nearly 11 years if a new crew could not be launched before the last of the station’s six residents flew back to Earth in mid-November.
Russian space officials tracked down the Progress launch failure to an “accidental” manufacturing flaw and recalled all Soyuz rockets from space launch pads for a thorough examination. The successful launch of a Progress ship last month cleared the way for the crew to be sent off.
The crew said they trusted the Soyuz, a workhorse of the Soviet and then Russian space program for more than 40 years. “We have no dark thoughts and full confidence in our technology,” Shkaplerov told journalists before the launch.
The new crew is to arrive just in time to keep the orbiting station manned. The three crew members currently on board the station are set to return to Earth on Nov. 21. Another launch next month is to take the station back to its normal six-person crew mode.
The 39-year-old Shkaplerov and 42-year-old Ivanishin are making their first flights into space. Burbank, 50, who will take over command of the space station, is a veteran of 12-day shuttle missions in 2000 and 2006. The three men are to remain aboard the space station until March.
Russian Space Agency head Vladimir Popovkin said the agency was actively recruiting women to become cosmonauts. Only one woman is now in training and Popovkin told journalists at Baikonur that he was determined to send her into orbit, Russian news agencies reported.
Even in the case of an engine failure like the one that led to the Progress crash in August, a Soyuz crew would be rescued by an emergency escape system. But any further launch trouble would have prompted NASA to rethink the space station program, which now relies exclusively on Russian spacecraft after the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in July.
The Progress crash was one in a string of spectacular launch failures that raised concerns about the state of Russia’s space industries. Last December, Russia lost three navigation satellites when a rocket carrying them failed to reach orbit. A military satellite was lost in February, and the launch of the Express-AM4, described by officials as Russia’s most powerful telecommunications satellite, went awry in August.
In the latest failure, an unmanned probe intended to collect ground samples on Phobos, a moon of Mars, in the most ambitious Russian interplanetary mission since the Soviet era, suffered an equipment failure shortly after Wednesday’s launch and got stuck in Earth orbit.
Efforts to contact the craft have been unsuccessful, but Popovkin said there was still time to prevent it from crashing down.
“The prognosis shows that it will fly through January, and we have until the first days of December (to establish control) so it can fulfill its intended function,” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted the space chief as saying.
Russian space officials blamed the botched launches on obsolete equipment and an aging workforce. 

TITLE: Kremlin Insists That Tajik Deportations Are Not Political
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Kremlin pressure on Tajikistan continued Monday as President Dmitry Medvedev denied that the deportation of Tajik migrants from Russia was a tit-for-tat response to the harsh sentence Tajikistan handed down to a Russian pilot.
“If there are people who don’t have a [residence] permit, it means that they should be deported,” Medvedev told a news conference after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii, according to a transcript released Monday by the Kremlin.
“I really hope that our Tajik friends will hear or have already heard us and in the final decision will be guided not only by abstract considerations, but the general level of relations” between the states, Medvedev said.
Moscow migration officials announced their plan to deport a group of Tajik migrant workers shortly after Russian pilot Vladimir Sadovnichy and his Estonian colleague Alexei Rudenko were sentenced last week to 8 1/2 years on murky charges of smuggling and illegal border crossing.
Russia’s chief doctor Gennady Onishchenko suggested Monday that all Tajik migrants should be banned because the country’s underdeveloped health-care system has allowed for the widespread transmission of dangerous illnesses, including TB and HIV, among its citizens.
“A natural way out may be to consider a total ban on work migration from that state until minimum health-care conditions are developed there,” said Onishchenko, reported Interfax.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also commented on the issue Monday, saying Moscow has questions about the actions of the company employing the pilots, which officially reported their troubles only two months after they had been detained.
Sergei Poluyanov, general director of the pilots’ airline, Rolkan Investments Ltd., did not elaborate on why the company failed to report the case earlier.

TITLE: Elderly Man Injured at Rally
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg resident Nikolai Shkalin, 72, is one of the first victims of the ongoing parliamentary campaign, having sustained a broken hand at a rally crashed by a ruling party candidate.
Several city media outlets reported that Shkalin was thrown down from the stage by candidate Maxim Dolgopolov’s bodyguards during Sunday’s rally where some 700 residents protested development plans for the district.
A video from the scene shows Dolgopolov being booed off stage by protesters — many of them senior citizens — who clapped their hands and chanted “Go away!” and “Off with you!”
Several protesters, all young opposition activists, were detained and face hooliganism charges, the Neva24 web site said. Shkalin, a co-organizer of the rally, was hospitalized.
Dolgopolov denounced the incident as provocation and said he didn’t see the attack on Shkalin, which was not caught on video.

TITLE: Human Trafficking Increasing at Home
AUTHOR: By Khristina Narizhnaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Lax laws and poor enforcement make Russia a popular source for people forced into slave labor and prostitution, a leading international expert on human trafficking said.
The problem is also growing within Russia with more people being exploited now than in recent years — a dark side to the country’s still robust economy and a reflection of a growing disparity in wealth, said U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca.
CdeBaca, who also heads the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, spoke at the first Russian-American forum on human trafficking, which opened in Moscow last Tuesday.
The issue is not to be underestimated, he said; the human trafficking business worldwide rakes in about $31 billion annually, while the loss of wages from slave labor is about $21 billion.
Trafficked people come from the poor regions in Russia’s Far East, north and south, as well as former Soviet republics, analysts said at the conference.
Many victims, primarily Central Asian nationals, are made to work at the capital’s numerous real estate projects. Others are forced into donating organs, child rearing or prostitution.
One million people in Russia face “exploitative” labor conditions, which include physical abuse, withholding documents and payment and poor living conditions, according to a Migration Research Center estimate released in June.
Russia is the second-largest destination of migrants after the United States, said International Organization of Migration Russia head Enrico Ponziani.
“The huge movements of people mean there will always be space for traffickers to exploit the situation,” Ponziani said.
The United States has classified Russia as a “tier-2 watch list” country for the eighth year in a row in 2011. That means the government did not fully comply with the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.
Efforts by the Russian government to combat human trafficking include the signing and ratification of the United Nations’ Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, in 2000 and 2004, respectively.
Between 1,000 and 1,200 cases are brought against traffickers annually, and most end in guilty verdicts, according to Alexander Krasnov, who oversees drug and human trafficking issues at the Interior Ministry.
But much more still needs to be done, experts said.
While some are convicted, traffickers often get short prison terms — from three to seven years, compared with up to 40 years in the U. S., said Vera Gracheva, coordination adviser at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
A comprehensive anti-trafficking bill has been stalled in the State Duma for several years, though Krasnov said it might be passed in the first parliamentary session to follow the legislative elections, set for Dec. 4.
Russia’s existing trafficking laws are not precise enough to define what exactly constitutes human trafficking, experts said.
The country’s vast size and thousands of kilometers of porous borders also pose a challenge.
Besides, there are no laws protecting the victim. Rehabilitation shelters for victims are largely improvised grassroots efforts by cash-strapped nonprofit organizations or even individuals.
U.S. Ambassador John Beyrle and Russian ombudsman Vladimir Lukin also attended the forum on Tuesday. The Health and Social Development Ministry dispatched a senior official with a statement of support from Minister Tatyana Golikova.
“It’s a good sign that the ministry is thinking about it,” CdeBaca said.

TITLE: Defense Upgrade Starts With Recycling
AUTHOR: By Khristina Narizhnaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ordered the military-industrial complex to form a special commission to oversee government contracts and spending on defense projects Monday.
Chief military-industrial adviser Igor Borovkov will head the commission and recruit government members from the Defense Ministry, Finance Ministry, Industry and Trade Ministry and various other government spheres, Putin said at a private conference following the Presidium on Monday.
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered Defense Minister Alexander Serdyukov to provide a report on the implementation of state defense orders for 2011.
Last week, Putin signed seven contracts totaling 280 billion rubles ($9.2 billion) with the Defense Ministry and the United Shipbuilding Corporation in Severodvinsk, a step toward resolving the conflict between the ministry and the shipyard, at odds over delays and the cost of projects.
Putin gave one month to organize the documents for the commission, in time to monitor the 3,000 government defense projects slated for 2012, Borovkov said. The commission will monitor every stage of the government’s defense projects, from drafting contracts to purchasing weapons.
The government has allotted 20 trillion rubles ($650.2 billion) to modernize Russia’s armed forces over the next decade. Seventy percent of the country’s troops and Navy should have modern weapons and equipment by 2020.
Meanwhile, Russia spends 2 billion rubles every year to store 20 million tons of old weapons, half of which have exceeded their service life.
To solve the problem, the government has allotted more than 39 billion rubles to a reprocessing program for expired weapons, Putin said Monday. By 2020, 600 strategic weapons, more than 500,000 regular arms and equipment and 140,000 rockets will be processed.
The 10 million tons of expired weapons will be sold for scrap metal, Putin said. The weapons could provide millions of tons of metals totaling 10.5 billion rubles.
An Izvestia story Monday reported the Defense Ministry purchased almost 10,000 badminton rackets and tens of thousands of shuttlecocks, citing Alexander Shchepelev, head of troop physical development at the Defense Ministry.
The Defense Ministry, however, published a statement on its web site later that day saying the Izvestia story was “surprising.”
“Badminton isn’t a military sport in the armed forces of the Russian Federation, and its development doesn’t figure in the program for the physical training of troops,” the ministry’s web site said.

TITLE: Four Seasons Prepares to Open
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Four Seasons Lion Palace Hotel, set to open in the historic Lobanov-Rostovsky mansion, has entered the final stages of preparation for its opening in St. Petersburg early next year.
Tristar Investment Holdings, in charge of carrying out capital repairs and construction to transform the celebrated Lion Palace building into a hotel, and Uralsib Financial Corporation, the projects’ financial partner, have announced they have entered the final stages of construction and begun the gradual handover of the hotel to the operator, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts.  
Four Seasons will soon begin recruiting and training personnel. The commissioning of the building is projected to create more than 300 jobs. 
Isadore Sharp, founder of Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, expressed his enthusiasm for the project during a recent visit to St. Petersburg. 
“From the beginning we shared the vision of transforming this grand building, with its 200-year history, into a modern hotel that meets all of the Four Seasons’ standards,” said Sharp. “We’re very proud to be associated with this unique and outstanding project, working alongside the developer, the financial partner and the owner.”
The property is owned by the Department of Presidential Affairs of the Russian Federation. Vladimir Kozhin, head of the Department of Presidential Affairs of the Russian Federation, said the reconstruction of the Lion Palace was “a fine example of a successfully implemented project, when the developer, investors and partners all contributed to preserving the cultural heritage and historical appearance of the city.” 
During the restoration process, archived documents were used to recreate historical details as accurately as possible. Architect Auguste de Montferrand’s grand staircase has been returned to its original condition, requiring the marble, stucco and gilding to be restored. Sculptural moldings were reconstructed, and the paintings on the ceiling of the main entrance were recreated to match the originals. Two white marble lions, carved by architect and sculptor Paolo Triscorni, have been repaired and placed once again by the front entrance.  
Completed in 1820 as Princess Lobanova-Rostovskaya’s residence, the palace was the work of Montferrand — who also designed the neighboring St. Isaac’s Cathedral — assisted by the Italian sculptor and architect Triscorni. The building has always been known as the Lion Palace, in honor of the two white marble lions guarding its main entrance. 
The St. Petersburg landmark has been depicted in many period paintings and literary works, most famously, in Alexander Pushkin’s celebrated 1833 poem “The Bronze Horseman.” 
Evolving with the various eras of Russian history, the palace has housed government offices, a hostel, a telephone exchange, a school and a design institute.
The new hotel will have 183 rooms, as well as two restaurants, a bar and a tea lounge in a glass-roofed winter garden. There will also be a spa, a fitness center and a pool. 
For large-scale receptions and business conferences, the hotel is equipped with a ballroom, six meeting rooms and a formal boardroom.

TITLE: WTO to Accept Russia As Its Newest Member
AUTHOR: By Khristina Narizhnaya
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The “reset” between Russia and the United States appeared to be in full force at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, held in Hawaii’s capital, Honolulu, over the weekend.
Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama, who may be meeting for the last time as presidents with elections in both countries coming up next year, praised each other and discussed further cooperation.
Obama has done more than any other American leader to help Russia enter the World Trade Organization, Medvedev said, according to news reports. Russia is ready to join the WTO, and Obama is “enthusiastic” about the country’s likely upcoming entry, Medvedev told a news conference after the private meeting between the leaders.
The United States agreed to let Russia join the WTO after a dispute with Georgia was recently resolved, Obama said last week, Bloomberg reported.
“Russia’s membership in the WTO will lower tariffs, improve international access to Russia’s services markets, hold the Russian government accountable to a system of rules governing trade behavior, and provide the means to enforce those rules,” Obama said, Bloomberg reported.
Accession to the WTO will strengthen Russia’s economy and bring it closer to international standards, Medvedev said.
“We will have to go through development,” Medvedev said.
Medvedev and Obama discussed cooperation on a response to the nuclear threat from Iran, as well as a way to try to negotiate with the country to contain that threat, on the sidelines of the conference.
But NATO plans for a defense missile shield in Eastern Europe slated to be built by 2018 could derail the U.S.-Russian “reset.” The United States said the anti-missile system is necessary as a means of defense from Iran, Afghanistan and other “rogue” states, while Russia argued that the anti-missile system is also aimed at them. Russia has asked for participation in developing the shield, but the request has been denied by NATO.
“Concerning this issue, we have agreed to continue searching for possible solutions, taking into account that our positions are still far away from each other,” Medvedev said Saturday.
Negotiations to supply gas to China are currently under way, Medvedev said. Russia’s gas trade with Europe is valued at $250 billion annually. China and Asia-Pacific hold great potential to provide at least the same volume of trade, Medvedev said.
A gas pipeline between Russia and China has been in the works for nearly five years, but stalled recently since the two sides have failed to agree on pricing.
APEC will be hosted in Vladivostok next year.

TITLE: A Wasteful Russia Criticized
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The International Energy Agency stressed in its annual World Energy Outlook report released last week that while Russia will remain crucial to the international energy market, its domestic inefficiencies are enormous.
Russia wastes almost one-third of the energy that it uses — an amount similar to that consumed by Britain every year, the report said. Potential yearly savings of natural gas alone, about 180 billion cubic meters, are equivalent to Gazprom’s entire annual export volumes.
Details in a report showed that the average on-road consumption of the Russian car fleet is more than 13 liters per 100 kilometers, compared with 8 liters in the European countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
But despite the waste, Van der Hoeven was positive about Russia’s ability to raise its energy efficiency, noting that Russia already had the requisite legislative and institutional framework in place.

TITLE: Sberbank Has Europe’s Largest Data Center
AUTHOR: By Justin Varilek
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — During an opening ceremony Saturday, Sberbank flaunted its 16,500-square-meter data center Yuzhny Port — the largest of its kind in Europe.
The data center, developed by Irish and Russian contractors in 15 months, cost about $1.2 billion. The center will centralize and store all of the information from Sberbank’s regional banks, diminishing the time required to implement banking services.
Sberbank plans to develop a second data center in Skolkovo of 7,000 square meters with rentable storage space. The design plans received tier-3 certification Nov. 2 from the Uptime Institute.
The Yuzhny Port facility also centralizes loan processing for individuals and small businesses to decrease the time required to receive and process loans from 800 different locations around the country.

TITLE: WTO at Last
AUTHOR: By John Beyrle
TEXT: On Thursday in Geneva, Russia completed negotiations on its accession to the World Trade Organization. Stop for a minute and reread that last sentence with me: Russia’s negotiations with the WTO are completed.
It is truly a historic milestone, and, yes, it has taken 18 years to achieve. That is far too long, in my view, but I will await the doctoral dissertations and “case studies” that are no doubt already being written to analyze the many reasons for the long process.
Right now, I am thinking back 18 years to 1993, when I was working on the staff of the National Security Council at the White House as director for policy toward Russia during the administration of President Bill Clinton. I remember the discussions between Presidents Clinton and Boris Yeltsin and between Vice President Al Gore and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, in which they first established WTO membership as a goal. And I recall the hours of internal discussions among those of us responsible for making that goal a reality — former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott; Larry Summers, a former chief economic adviser to President Barack Obama; Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state for political affairs; and Vladimir Lukin, Russia’s former ambassador to Washington. So I feel a sense of personal satisfaction that over the past three years as ambassador, I have been able to help conclude what we began.
I took part in the meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in June 2010 when President Dmitry Medvedev visited Washington. It was there that Obama reaffirmed that the United States strongly supported Russia’s WTO bid. At the news conference after that meeting, Obama said WTO membership would be good for Russia, the United States and the world and called upon our negotiating teams to accelerate their work.
“Guys,” he told us later in private, “we have to get this done.”
Obama found it incomprehensible that a country the size and importance of Russia was outside the WTO. And he made it clear that it was his priority to work to resolve the outstanding bilateral problems with Russia, which meant, of course, that it was our priority, too. Obama and Medvedev established a deadline for that bilateral agreement — Sept. 30, 2010, which at that time was only nine weeks away. This required Russia to draft and pass key pieces of legislation in a very short time. It also meant that we had to solve the always difficult problems surrounding U.S. meat and poultry exports to Russia. Through an incredible outburst of political will, and thanks to hours and hours of hard work by experts on both sides, most of the work was done by that deadline.
In October 2010, when Summers returned to Moscow for talks with First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and others, it was practically all finished. Like me, Larry remembered those early conversations in 1993 vividly — and believed, like me, that it was long past time to finish the job.
There were many other discussions after that, too many and too long to recount. The visit by Vice President Joe Biden to Moscow in March and his discussions with Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin were also absolutely indispensable to progress, as was the work of top trade experts Maxim Medvedkov and Chris Wilson, who personally negotiated many of the most important details of the agreement.
The bottom line was the announcement in Geneva on Thursday and the formal invitation that will follow in mid-December. Once Russia ratifies and signs the agreement, it will benefit from opportunities in the global economy.
Everywhere I travel in Russia, I meet people who want to make connections and do business in that global economy. Russians made more than 36 million trips abroad last year, and more Russians now receive visas to travel to the United States than ever before.
With Russia now poised to join the WTO, it will have the chance to benefit as a full participant in the global trading system. For the first time, Russians will be able to benefit from the WTO rules that provide open, free, transparent and fair global economic competition. Predictable tariff rates and an enforceable dispute resolution mechanism will give Russia and its partners more certainty and encourage the kind of commerce that creates opportunities for both Russians and Americans.
And the country’s economy will grow. The Higher School of Economics has forecast that opening Russia’s services markets alone will increase gross domestic product by 14 percent.
The connections and relationships that our two countries will create as a result of this will not only directly benefit U.S. and Russian companies, workers and farmers, but they will also go a long way toward ensuring that both countries remain on the road to increased partnership and cooperation.
I have long said that the best and most sustainable foundation for stronger relations between our two countries is economic, and our shared success on WTO shows us that we are building that foundation together.

<i>John Beyrle is U.S. ambassador to Russia. This comment appeared on his LiveJournal blog.</i>

TITLE: between the lines: From Earthquakes to Elections on TV
AUTHOR: By Alexei Pankin
TEXT: The State Duma election television campaign kicked off Nov. 5 by intruding on the usual morning programming.
In nonelection times, the programming follows a standard pattern. Every 30 minutes, a five-minute news block airs. Since President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are the main sources of good news, morning viewers can expect a full chronicle of all the world’s bad news from the previous night: Fatal car, airplane and train crashes, contract killings, floods, earthquakes, fires, clashes between protesters and police and other horrors to help them start their day.
Following the news, smiling talk-show hosts provide a wealth of useful information, such as how to overcome an attacker, robber or rapist simply by pushing two fingers against his windpipe, how to open a car lock frozen by inclement weather, how to lose weight without really trying and so on.
And finally, a hefty block of commercials plunges viewers into a paradise of consumer bliss.
But now, politics have invaded this television paradise. For example, this is how morning advertisements by political parties look on Channel One:
• A happy milkmaid reports that jobs have finally appeared in her village and that farmers now have money. She urges everyone to vote for United Russia.
• A villain symbolizing price hikes on utilities snatches away pension increases from the hands of retirees. A Just Russia promises to protect the interests of pensioners.
• Depressing statistics of an acute demographic crisis are shown, along with an equally depressing picture of a country full of empty, abandoned towns and villages. Right Cause claims it will halt this degradation if the party wins in the coming elections.
• A respectable middle-aged woman who successfully manages a small business tells viewers that if United Russia wins the election, prosperity will increase even more.
• Yabloko party leader Grigory Yavlinsky promises Russians heaven on earth by offering every family the chance to build their own home on land allocated at no cost, with gas lines connected for free. This is all possible, we are told, by the honest allocation of revenues accumulated over the past decade from high oil prices.
• With a deft move of the pool cue, Right Cause leader Andrei Bogdanov scatters a pack of billiard balls representing the ruling and opposition political parties.
• Somber Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov contemptuously reads a list of names: Yegor Gaidar, Anatoly Chubais, German Gref, Alexei Kudrin, Mikhail Kasyanov — all of whom are liberal politicians and reformers living and dead, incumbents and those who have either been dismissed from their posts or joined the ranks of the opposition — and promises to completely replace the ruling elite.
Of course, viewers love it when someone lambastes the authorities. But will this advertising tirade affect the outcome of the elections?
I don’t think so. Most of the politically active electorate is old enough to compare the advantages of stability under Putin — even if it increasingly resembles the stagnation under Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev — with the horrors of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and President Boris Yeltsin’s liberal reforms. They will vote according to the principle that even the worst leaders today are better than the liberal opposition’s promises of change and a better future.
Let the critics try to prove that these voters are wrong.

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

TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Moscow rock veteran <b>Andrei Makarevich</b> of Mashina Vremeni has found himself in a series of awkward situations recently, as Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party campaigns ahead of the upcoming State Duma elections.
First, he said that he would not perform for the Kremlin on the presidential election day as he had done in 2008, and even said that he would not vote for Putin. He then recorded a song that contained criticism of United Russia, but protested when it was described as “anti-Putin.”
Most recently, a YouTube video showed Mashina Vremeni being introduced by a United Russia suit-clad official at a concert in Kemerovo on Nov. 3. The official announces that the concert is backed by United Russia, provoking boos from the audience, but no protest from Makarevich or any other member of the band.
Then the entire band is shown on stage receiving honorary certificates and medals with which the local governor chose to award them, as the boos continue. The entire scene lasts for over 4 minutes.
Soon after the video was leaked, Makarevich denied being sponsored by United Russia and said that the presenter’s words were a surprise to him, saying that the band has “landed in the shit again” because of one man.
“It’s called ‘screwing someone without warning,’” he wrote in a blog on Snob.ru web site.
He then wrote another song, called “The Pre-Election One,” in which he essentially says that he does not want to back either the political right or left, and manages to make a homophobic remark along the way.
 Another Moscow rock veteran, Vasily Shumov of the band Center, doubted Makarevich’s sincerity. 
“Having played a zillion concerts myself, I can’t understand how an experienced band could have been unaware of the event’s background and sponsors,” he wrote on his blog last week.
“If suddenly some cheat jumped on stage and started rambling something out in left field, such emergencies are dealt with right away, within 10 seconds. On video, I didn’t notice Makarevich or anybody from the band coming onto the stage at once to counter the infiltrator and dirty fraud.”
Since 2008, every move made by Makarevich in support of the Kremlin resulted in hundreds of angry comments from disappointed fans on his web site, especially after Mashina Vremeni performed an election day concert for pro-Kremlin activists in 2008, and after a notorious televised meeting between President Dmitry Medvedev with selected rock musicians held in a club that Makarevich co-owns last year. 
But eventually the musician seems to have found a way out.  From now on, all the comments on his web site are subject to heavy moderation.  
When accessed this week, the site mostly consisted of messages asking about Mashina Vremeni’s early recordings and whether Makarevich would agree to perform at the birthday party of an old fan. No, he won’t.

TITLE: New Model DDT
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Yury Shevchuk, arguably Russia’s most popular rock musician known for his political dissent, walked out during a press conference in St. Petersburg last month. 
He had just performed an unpolished set of new songs, complete with elaborate video art and a light show that he is going to premiere in the city with a mostly new lineup of his band DDT this Wednesday, and wanted to discuss his work, but the questions were too frequently about politics.
“I’ll leave for ten minutes now, and you ask questions to the musicians,” he said before departing. The conversation with the musicians sitting on the stage quickly died, and was replaced with silence. After a while, Shevchuk returned, dealt with a dozen more questions and then called it quits.
DDT’s press officer said recently that Shevchuk did not do interviews, and that he received about 30 requests every week. 
Shevchuk, who has been compared to the iconic late Soviet singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky for his broad popularity with people of diverse backgrounds, even had policemen listening to his songs and taking pictures of him on their cell phones when he performed several songs at a rally.
On Sunday, people reportedly spent hours standing in line outside a record shop in central St. Petersburg to get his autograph during the official signing session for the new album and upcoming local concert.
The 54-year-old Shevchuk was born in the Magadan Oblast and lived in Ufa from 1970 to 1985, when he moved to Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known. Having formed the original DDT, which enjoyed some popularity with rock fans through self-made tapes, in 1980 in Ufa, he reformed the group with new members in 1986, and the new lineup made its debut at the Leningrad Rock Club in January 1987. 
Shevchuk became a national star following the huge mainstream popularity of his song “What Is Autumn?” (Chto Takoye Osen?) in 1991.
Shevchuk has occasionally been described as “Russia’s Bruce Springsteen” in the past, but after what he called a “dress rehearsal,” at least two local music critics compared the new set to Nine Inch Nails, Roger Waters and U2.
Called “Otherwise” (Inache), the show — and DDT’s new album — presents an almost totally new DDT and new, alt-rock sound that is a far cry from the “Russian rock” that DDT largely defined in the 1980s and 1990s. 
Gone is drummer Igor Dotsenko, the only other member who had been with the band since its debut in Leningrad in 1986 and who was once described by Shevchuk as the band’s “axis.” Shevchuk admitted that Dotsenko was more “into blues,” than the music that Shevchuk wants to perform these days. 
There are some new faces in the band, most noticeably — both to ear and eye — the cropped-haired background singer Alyona Romanova, who was originally with the Russian folk-influenced band Zventa Sventana.
With a penchant for all things gigantic, Shevchuk’s ideal of a stage show has for a long time been U2, and his duet with Bono on “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” during U2’s Moscow concert last year was therefore nothing but logical.
Premiered nationally at Moscow’s Olimpiisky Sports Complex on Nov. 9, “Otherwise” is an ambitious conceptual work that involved a theater director and libretto and essentially follows the protagonist throughout the 18 songs of the live set.
Shevchuk said that there are no more than 25 to 30 venues in Russia able to host his new show, which requires three trailer trucks packed with equipment and screens, adding that in cities lacking such venues, the band will perform a “chamber” set called “Solnik” (Solo).
“The main objective of this set is to create tension between music, words, video art and light,” he said.
Perceived by some as a perfect people’s candidate for the presidency, Shevchuk made headlines last year when he confronted Vladimir Putin over the lack of free speech and continued dispersals of peaceful rallies in Russia at a meeting after a charity event in St. Petersburg, apparently managing to irk the prime minister.
“Will you invite Putin to the premiere at Olimpiisky?” was one of the first questions. 
“If he comes to our premiere, rather than us going to his premiere, that would be OK — there’s a difference, isn’t there?” said Shevchuk, adding that he had invited “all the politicians” to the dress rehearsal in St. Petersburg, but only “a few guys came.”
Present at the local event last month was Boris Nemtsov, a leader of the oppositional Solidarity movement and the Party of People’s Freedom (Parnas).
Since 2008, Shevchuk has annoyed the authorities by attending protest rallies and speaking out against the controversial planned Gazprom skyscraper and Kremlin-backed plans to build a highway through the Khimki forest near Moscow.
Soon after Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008, he held stadium concerts titled “Don’t Shoot” in Moscow and St. Petersburg featuring a Georgian act to protest the war. Speaking about “Otherwise,” the musician said he was thinking about “Armageddon and war” when writing the songs.
Shevchuk has also supported political prisoners such as Taisia Osipova, an oppositional activist who has been held in pretrial custody in Smolensk since November 2010 on what her supporters say are falsified charges, despite the fact that she is diabetic and has a young daughter. 
At the press conference, Shevchuk described President Dmitry Medvedev’s statement about seeing Putin as Russia’s next president as the “last elections.”
However, the event demonstrated Shevchuk’s apparent reluctance to get further involved in politics, and perhaps a lack of clear vision for the future of Russia, even if he has a keen sense of what is wrong and unfair.
“‘Otherwise’ is a concept, an alternative way to experience existence in time and space, unlike the slavish consumerism imposed on society together with all of its “positive” reinforcement,” Shevchuk wrote on DDT’s web site (complete with an official English translation). 
“Everyone is capable of basking in the warmth of inner freedom. Everyone can choose to live ‘otherwise,’ refusing to allow cynical propaganda and banal, hollow voices to answer the eternal questions of existence.”
With his references to private lives and “being nice to each other,” this sounds quite a lot like Brezhnev-era “internal emigration” — something from which Shevchuk originally emerged in the 1980s.

<i>DDT will perform at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 16 at Peterburgsky Sports and Concert Complex (SKK), located at 8 Prospekt Yuriya Gagarina. M: Park Pobedy. Tel. 388 1211.</i>

TITLE: TALK OF THE TOWN
TEXT: The Corinthia Hotel St. Petersburg has shaken up the city’s Sunday brunch scene by dramatically slashing the cost of its brunch at Imperial restaurant to 2,011 rubles ($66).
With an emphasis on seafood, including oysters, giant king prawns, sea scallops and mussels, as well as free-flowing alcoholic beverages and freshly squeezed juices, it’s not hard for brunch-goers to get their money’s worth. The restaurant’s recently appointed Canadian head chef Ian Minnis has added his own stamp to the hotel’s established brunch tradition by increasing the number of live cooking stations around the restaurant, including a pasta counter where diners can watch their made-to-order sauce be cooked in just a few minutes while they wait. 
Naturally, it wouldn’t be Sunday brunch in St. Petersburg without some traditional staples such as blini with caviar and salmon coulibiac, but there’s plenty to keep aficionados of international cuisine sated too, as well as staunch supporters of the Continental breakfast, with a small but perfectly adequate range of croissants, cheese and pastries.
While it’s easy to overestimate one’s appetite at buffet-style meals, diners are advised to leave room for dessert, which includes a chocolate fountain.
Brunch is served from 12.30 p.m. to 4 p.m., which should give even the most ravenous post-Saturday night revelers chance to refuel and relax — if not detox — to the strains of live jazz music. 
Sunday brunch at other upscale establishments in the city is considerably more expensive, costing 4,500 rubles ($148) at the Grand Hotel Europe, and 3,800 rubles ($125) at the Taleon Imperial Hotel. Whether the Corinthia’s bold pricing policy will cause its competitors to follow suit remains to be seen, but it undeniably offers value for money. It may also become a popular option for families, as children under 12 eat for free, and there is a staffed children’s room.
In more good news for families, Fitness Family, a new fitness center that claims to be Russia’s first sports club tailored specifically to families, has opened at 15 Kondtarievsky Prospekt. All family members, from toddlers to their venerable great grandparents are welcome, with a range of classes designed for various age groups and physical abilities. There are also special fitness courses for pregnant women and new mothers.
Meanwhile, Swatch, Switzerland’s youngest and most cosmopolitan watch-making brand, is to open a flagship boutique at 74 Nevsky Prospekt on Dec. 1 showcasing its latest innovative collection, Swatch Touch, in addition to more traditional ranges.
Offered in six colors — including camouflage — Swatch Touch is the brand’s first touchscreen collection. 
 Since Swatch launched its first collection of watches in 1983, the brand has expanded around the world, turning watches into an affordable fashionable accessory. Not only did Swatch break the stereotype of Swiss watches as luxury items, it helped to prevent the country’s watch market from being swamped by Asian producers selling cheep and cheerful quartz watches in large quantities. Since then, the company has remained popular with young fashionistas across the globe.

TITLE: Gogol Bordello unplugged
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Gogol Bordello, an eccentric band made up of musicians who unite their cultural influences to make the inimitable sound of volcanic gypsy punk, plans to take St. Petersburg by storm on Nov. 23.
At its latest local concert, the group will give an acoustic concert as part of a European tour.
“The idea for an acoustic tour has been on our minds for many years,” the group’s charismatic Ukrainian-born lead singer and lyricist Eugene Hutz said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
“Gogol Bordello has always been two bands in one. The acoustic band is actually the foundation of Gogol Bordello. Our first album is basically an acoustic period with a tiny, gentle touch of electricity. Electric Gogol Bordello is a powerful generator, but at the moment we have started to miss the colors and textures that an acoustic show possesses. So why not have an acoustic tour that will be fun for everybody? People will hear songs that the electric band doesn’t play anymore, and it’s great and refreshing for us.”
The set list of the acoustic show consists of the most requested songs that the band doesn’t often play live anymore, according to Hutz. “We’ve been around for six albums and there is a lot of material that people are addicted to. Russian shows are of course more special because we have quite a bit of Russian material that has never been released. It has been accumulating all this time and now the time has come to rock some Russian fans.”
The eight-person band currently consists of members from Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Ecuador, Scotland, the U.S. and Ethiopia. What brought them together? A love of music, the desire to make something special and a little bit of luck. 
“Raw power and the raw joy of playing is the foundation of the band,” said Hutz. “That is something that is always going to be there, we’re not interested in any other kind of sound. That’s just the nature of it. Our band is always pretty messy on the stage.”
Formed in New York in 1999, Gogol Bordello quickly made a name for itself as a boisterous, eccentric band, and now plays all over the world and takes part in European and American music festivals. The band famously performed with pop queen Madonna in 2007 and are regular guests in Eastern Europe and Russia. 
To date, the band has released five albums as well as an EP full of driving electronic beats, and has taken on more group members. 
Gogol Bordello’s music is characterized by the sounds of the violin and accordion, inspired by traditional Romanian and Carpathian melodies, and combined with Hutz’s distinctive voice. The lyrics are full of feelings of non-acceptance and of the difficulties of immigrant life, expressed by Hutz in a way that sounds at home anywhere, from America to Russia. 
“All the songs of discomfort are from the earlier years,” said Hutz. “I’ve been on stage for many years, long before Gogol Bordello existed. My career started in Kiev in 1987. It’s funny, but back then I did not feel at all comfortable, even in my hometown. Everybody told me that I had to go away, so I went … and eventually I came to the point where I realized that if I went to Morocco or Siberia or Brazil I would feel more at home there than anywhere before. Obviously I’ve gone through quite an evolution, which I enjoy very much.” 
Gogol Bordello is always open to experiments, and every new album features even more new cultural and musical influences from different countries than the last. The group’s most recent album, “Trans-Continental Hustle,” was influenced by Hutz’s move to Brazil, which is reflected in the traditional Brazilian rhythms that punctuate the record.
“The more inspiration you have, the better. It’s a scientific fact,” said Hutz. “But adventures are what inspire me most of all. A lot of my life I was looking for good places to be, to breathe. I have discovered quite a few of them. At the moment it’s like I have my own triangle of New York, Rio de Janeiro and Kiev; that’s pretty good, it’s a lot to take care of and that’s kind of how I like it.” 
No matter what direction of music the band chooses to experiment with, one thing stays the same: It’s always true rock ‘n’ roll with strong guitar parts. Hutz was brought up listening to Johnny Cash, Jimmy Hendrix and Nick Cave, and admits that they have all in some way influenced his music. 
“If you want to really rock a house, all you need to do is to pick really good mentors who will influence you,” Hutz said.
“The reason why I love Cave and Cash is not only because of their music, but because their lyrics were really strong. For me, coming from a Russian rock background, that was important, because Russian rock always had lyrics that were superb and more advanced than the original Western rock ‘n’ roll, I think. Of course, Western rock is much stronger when it comes to performance and production, but Russian song writers were the champions of writing lyrics. So naturally I picked mentors who taught me how to tell a story, like Johnny Cash or Nick Cave or Leonard Cohen or Shane MacGowan from The Pogues. I learned English through my mentors. I feel like they are kind of my uncles in this sense.” 
Hutz pays tribute to this sentiment in his song “Strange Uncle From Abroad,” in which he sings: “My strange uncles from abroad, yes I never met them, but I took everything they wrote, and I’ll never forget them.” In addition to his “uncles,” Eugene collaborates with a lot of contemporary musicians. Gogol Bordello toured with System of a Down during the latter group’s reunion tour recently, and has worked with other bands ranging from Rage Against The Machine to Manu Chao and many others. The Russian music scene is seemingly the only area in which Gogol Bordello hasn’t yet collaborated with anyone. 
“I would love to work with some Russian artists, but we need some contacts for that,” said Hutz. “We were friends with System of a Down and Rage Against The Machine for years before we actually shared the stage with them. On the U.S. rock scene, everyone is very supportive of one other and people really do things together. It feels healthy, creative and normal, the way it should be. So for me, friendship comes first in this matter.” 
Despite regular time-consuming tours, the members of Gogol Bordello still find time to write new material. Eugene Hutz told The St. Petersburg Times that work on the group’s new album was underway, and that fans could look forward to some surprises.
When on tour, Gogol Bordello is known for its love of partying. Almost every song is accompanied by Hutz’s exuberant shouts of “Party!” The band is also famous for its after-parties, at which Hutz is often known to DJ. The singer promised to maintain this tradition at this month’s gig too.
“That is a fine Gogol Bordello tradition, and we will never leave St. Petersburg without an after-party,” he said. “It has become a tradition to rock out all night long till sunrise, and St. Petersburg is a great city for this.” 
 
<i>Gogol Bordello will perform at 8 p.m. on Nov. 23 at Glavclub, 2 Kremenchugskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 905 7555. M. Ploshchad Vosstaniya. www.glavclub.com.</i>

TITLE: the word’s worth: A nationalist’s lexicon
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: <i>Ôàéåðû</i>: flares

This week I have a lot to worry about.
First on my list: Avoid being hit by that asteroid hurtling toward Earth. Yes, I know scientists say we shouldn’t worry, but they said climate change was nothing to worry about, too.
Then I have to worry about Russian nationalism. Or maybe I have to worry about myself for worrying about it, because of course there’s nothing to worry about. Come on, it’s just a bunch of mixed-up kids!
To calm myself down, I spent several hours reading about <i>Ðóññêèé ìàðø</i> (the Russian March). That was a mistake. Not only did I get more worried about Russian nationalism, I also got worried about my language and cultural competence.
For example, I had no idea what <i>çèãà</i> was, as in <i>êèäàòü çèãó</i>, or the verb <i>çèãîâàòü</i>. It is Russian nationalist-speak for giving the Nazi salute (Sieg heil — Hail victory). In standard Russian, the salute itself is çèã õàéëü, which was also chanted on Nov. 4: <i>“Çèã-õàéëü, çèã-õàéëü, ìû ïîñòðîèì áåëûé ðàé!”</i> (Sieg heil! Sieg heil! We’ll build a paradise for whites!)
And then I was very confused about the entertainment people brought along, which included <i>ôàéåðû</i> (flares) and <i>äûìîâûå øàøêè</i> (smoke bombs, presumably homemade). People had to wear masks to keep the smoke out of their eyes — even ski masks that hid their faces completely! I mean, why else would they wear them?
I thought their color-branding was gloomy. Everything was black and yellow, supposedly in reference to the Russian celebration flag — used for a couple of decades in the early 19th century — and the Russian imperial standard, used for about 50 years until 1917.
Why not use the Russian tricolor? Why use a flag that looks like the German national colors?
But the slogans upset me most of all. In the words of one participant, <i>òðàäèöèîííûå ëîçóíãè</i> (traditional slogans) were:
<i>Ðóññêèå, âïåð¸ä!</i> (Onward, Russians!);
<i>Îäèí çà âñåõ è âñå çà îäíîãî</i> (All for one and one for all). Thank you, Monsieur Dumas.
<i>Ðîññèè — ðóññêóþ âëàñòü!</i> (Russian leaders for Russia!)
And the all-time nationalist movement fave: <i>Ðîññèÿ äëÿ ðóññêèõ</i>! (Russia for Russians).
Then there were <i>“êðåàòèâíûå ëîçóíãè”</i> (creative slogans) heavy on anti-Caucasus sentiments, like: <i>Íå õîòèì êîðìèòü Êàâêàç — èì Àëëàõ è òàê ïîäàñò!</i> (We don’t want to feed the Caucasus, Allah will provide for them) or an obscene version of it.
Another was: <i>Îò÷åãî â áþäæåòå äûðû? Îòòîãî, ÷òî ñûò Êàäûðîâ!</i> (Why does the budget have holes? Because Kadyrov has eaten it up!)
Most of the other slogans were plain old racist and obscene. But one “creative” slogan puzzled me: <i>Îäèí-÷åòûðå-âîñåìü-âîñåìü!</i> (One-four-eight-eight!) This, it turns out, is a <i>êîäîâûé ëîçóíã</i> (coded slogan) that is rendered 14/88 in English.
The first half refers to the 14 words “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” coined by U.S. white supremacist David Lane (ignoring the fact that the Russian version has 12 words: <i>ìû äîëæíû çàùèòèòü ñàìî ñóùåñòâîâàíèå íàøåãî íàðîäà è áóäóùåå äëÿ áåëûõ äåòåé</i>). According to Russian nationalists, the second half refers to Lane’s revolting 88 Precepts.
Whatever happened to “Two-four-six-eight! Who do we appreciate”?!
All in all, the Russian March was a thoroughly upsetting linguistic and cultural event. But wait! One slogan from a Frenchman, another from an American, a salute from Germany. These aren’t nationalists. They’re internationalists.
So there’s nothing to worry about, right?

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

TITLE: Beaujolais season
AUTHOR: By Olga Panova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Wine connoisseurs have reason to rejoice this month: From Nov. 17, St. Petersburg will follow France’s lead and mark the Beaujolais Nouveau festival, which celebrates the ripening of the first young wine and has recently become a gastronomic guilty pleasure among Petersburgers.
The tradition of celebrating Beaujolais Nouveau began in the 19th century among viniculturists of the Beaujolais region. Their wine was the first to be ready. Beaujolais has a light aroma and flavor that differs every year depending on the crop and weather conditions.
Beaujolais’ complex flavor is rooted in the peculiarities of the soil where the Game grape, a black-grade grape with white juice, grows. In order to maintain the fresh, fragrant taste of young wine with its bright fruity tones, there is a maceration process of four to five days. This helps to maximize the presence of fruit aromas, without the wine becoming tart. During manufacturing, the young wine is fermented, making the wine softer. As with the majority of wines, the second fermentation allows Beaujolais Nouveau to reach stability within a month after harvesting. At this stage, Beaujolais and Beaujolais Village are bottled and the celebration begins.
During the past few years, the Beaujolais Nouveau festival has become popular in Russia, first taking place in 1999 in Moscow. In St. Petersburg, the festival will be celebrated at the city’s French restaurants and bistros. 
While France’s celebrated “best jug” and “golden bottle” competitions will not be held in St. Petersburg, participants are invited to sample a special Beaujolais menu and enjoy the strains of traditional French chanson. 
Beaujolais restaurant at 29 Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa is celebrating the Beaujolais Nouveau festival for the first time and has been successful in creating an authentic French atmosphere thanks to French chef Serge Fery, who has prepared a special menu for the occasion. 
“The young Beaujolais at Beaujolais restaurant will be complemented by its loyal companions: Coq au vin, snails in garlic sauce, ox tails, traditional cheeses and smoked foods, finishing with pear in red wine dessert,” said the chef. 
“During the Beaujolais Nouveau festival, live accordion music will be played every night, helping to create a completely French atmosphere,” said Yelena Yanb, the restaurant’s owner. The restaurant is offering a special Beaujolais dinner for two people — including half a bottle of wine — priced at 2,000 rubles ($66), and recommends booking a table in advance.
Kukhnya, another authentic French bistro located at 77 Fontanka Naberezhnaya, will also offer a special Beaujolais menu featuring tuna tartare with strawberry, coquilles Saint-Jacques, sea bass in a Martini sauce and pineapple Carpaccio with lime sorbet for dessert. 
For the opening of the new wine season, Vinograd Caf&#233; at 47 Marata Ulitsa will attempt to transport its guests to France with the romantic sounds of chanson by Manouche and a special menu created by chef Martin Delfim, who combines the traditions of Portuguese cuisine with the fruity notes of young French wine in a Lisbon-style fish soup, Catalan fish stew, lamb with feta cheese and Provence-style veal in a Cabernet Sauvignon sauce.
At the pricier end of the local dining scene, the Taleon Imperial Hotel will be offering an exclusive dinner menu from chef Igor Ivanugin. 
“Normally we serve dishes made from products typical of the Beaujolais region as well as for France,” he said. “The most important thing is that the food should be nourishing, nutritious and very simple — something that could be found on any rural table in France.” 
During the Beaujolais festival, Taleon is offering homemade sausages, game dishes, onion pie, stewed eggplant, veal pate and various soft cheeses. A rural-style dinner will cost 4,100 rubles ($135) per person for a four-course meal and 1,500 rubles ($50) for a bottle of wine.
The flavor of this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau is still a mystery that will soon be revealed. A young wine’s worst enemy is time, so don’t waste a second — try it on Thursday evening at a restaurant, or simply buy a bottle of Beaujolais to enjoy with friends over a home-cooked meal.

TITLE: Emotion in motion
AUTHOR: By Tatyana Sochiva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Dance and body language are capable of conveying what words alone cannot, according to Boris Eifman, whose ballet troupe will premiere the choreographer’s latest work, ‘Rodin,’ at the Alexandriinsky Theater on Nov. 22. 
The ballet depicts the fate of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin and his model and muse, Camille Claudel. 
Unfortunately for Camille, her famed lover and teacher refuses to end his twenty-year relationship with his wife Rose Beuret, causing Claudel to become mentally unstable. Her desperate love for Rodin is soon replaced by bitterness as she feels betrayed by him and her emotions.
In Eifman’s interpretation of the story, set to the music of 19th and early 20th-century French composers Maurice Ravel, Camille Saint-Sa&#235;ns and Jules Massenet, Rodin is both an incredible love story about a meeting of minds, as well as a tragic portrayal of artistic jealousy and selfish passion that destroys the love and lives of both Rodin and Camille.
Eifman, who is known for his depictions of tortured passion and has previously devoted ballets to the tormented composer Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy’s tragic heroine Anna Karenina and the ill-fated Tsar Paul I, was not only attracted to the story of Rodin by the strong characters. In spite of the obvious difference between sculpture and dance, the basic principles of Eifman and Rodin’s work are the same. Both artists see the body and movement as a means of expressing human passions and life.
“With the help of body language, we communicate passion, internal struggle and despair in our performance, all the aspects of life of the human spirit, which are brilliantly expressed by Rodin and Camille in bronze and marble,” said Eifman. “To turn a moment frozen in stone into an irrepressible sensuous stream of body movements is what I was striving for when creating this new ballet performance.”  
Movement by itself, however, means nothing. Eifman is not only a choreographer, but a philosopher and psychologist as well. His ballets are choreographed to make the audience think and empathize with the dancers through vivid portrayals of extreme psychological states. For Eifman, ballet is a medium through which to explore the meaning of life and death, love and madness, spiritual and carnal passion. 
Eifman’s theatrical productions have gained fame, both at home and abroad. This success is possible largely due to his team of masters of classical and avant-garde dance. In this production, the roles of Rodin, his mistress Camille and wife Rose are played by Oleg Gabyshev, Lyubov Andreeva and Nina Zmievets, and the scenery and costumes are designed by Olga Shaishmelashvili. 
The Boris Eifman Academic Ballet Theater, founded thirty years ago as the Leningrad Ballet Ensemble, is celebrated for the originality of its performances, which earned the maverick choreographer the reputation of a dissident back in the Soviet Union. Today, Eifman is known around the world for his own inimitable style, developed while working with the traditions of Russian classical ballet.
Next year, “Rodin” will be performed on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater as part of the Chereshnevy Les (Cherry Orchard) Open Art Festival in May.

<i>“Rodin” will premiere at 8 p.m. on Nov. 22 at the Alexandriinsky Theater, 6 Ploshchad Ostrovskogo. M. Gostiny Dvor. Tel. 710 4103.</i>

TITLE: in the spotlight: Cutting off Sobchak’s airtime
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, the scandal around media personality and it-girl Ksenia Sobchak and her jokey exposure of youth tsar Vasily Yakemenko at a pricey restaurant deepened, as a national channel apparently pulled an interview with her.
Last month, Sobchak filmed Yakemenko, the clean-living founder of pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, having lunch at a restaurant serving very expensive oysters and posted the video on Twitter.
It was a rare case of poking fun at a self-righteous official, but a spokeswoman for Yakemenko’s Federal Agency for Youth Affairs reacted with venom by calling Sobchak a “cheap prostitute.” And, of course, the whole thing became an Internet sensation.
Sobchak then gave an interview on “Unreal Politics,” a late-night show on NTV, whose hosts are journalist Andrei Kolesnikov and television star Tina Kandelaki.
But the makers said the show had been pulled. Kandelaki wrote in her blog that Kolesnikov texted her to say the latest episodes had been pulled and he had decided to close the show all together.
She said she did not know why but guessed it was the “editorial policy of the channel’s management.” Kolesnikov also told Slon.ru that “naturally, this is about the leadership of the channel.”
The other episode was about President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Moscow State University’s journalism department, when placard-waving students were barred.
NTV, controlled by Gazprom Media, has run documentaries dishing the dirt on the Kremlin’s enemies, including billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko.
A spokeswoman for NTV told Slon.ru that the channel worked on a contract basis with the makers of “Unreal Politics” and it was wrong to say the episodes had been pulled because they had not been commissioned. But she did not say why they were not being aired.
Sobchak is close to Vladimir Putin, who entered politics through her late father, former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. She began her career as a kind of Russian Paris Hilton, blond, wealthy and uninhibited. She became a household name by hosting Dom-2, TNT’s lowbrow reality show where contestants discuss their love lives around a campfire.
But she has also done more interesting things, such as interviewing famous people in a no-holds-barred style for GQ magazine. And she has firmly expressed some risky opinions, such as outspokenly criticizing the Russian Orthodox Church.
Both Kandelaki and Sobchak are avid Twitter users, so the whole story has played out there, too.
Evidently not on the best terms with Kolesnikov and Kandelaki, Sobchak on Thursday wrote that she suspected the show was on the point of closure anyway, because of low ratings, so the makers decided to go out with a bang.
Under Twitter pressure from Sobchak, Kandelaki posted both the shows on her blog.
In the interview, Sobchak was her usual provocative self, wearing a top that kept slipping off her bare shoulder.
She described Yakemenko as a “person with no sense of humor or irony about himself,” recalling his rebuke to a chubby activist that by overeating he was “stealing from the country and from Putin in particular.”
But she laughed off a suggestion from Kandelaki that she could be an opposition leader.
“I’m not an oppositionist. I’m not a person who will tomorrow go to the Russian March holding Navalny’s hand,” she said, apparently lumping all opposition in with nationalists and blogger Alexei Navalny.

TITLE: THE DISH: Khochu Kharcho
AUTHOR: By Elizabeth Rattey
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>24-Hour Georgia</b>
Khochu Kharcho, a new Ginza Project restaurant specializing in Western Georgian cuisine, is eager to please whenever, whoever and almost wherever it can. Located on Sennaya Ploshchad, the two-story restaurant is open 24 hours a day, equipped with hookah and a kids’ menu that includes Georgian classics such as khachapuri as well as not-so-Georgian hotdogs, and is ready to deliver anywhere within a five-kilometer radius. 
While the substantial menu includes descriptions of most dishes, many may seem to those uneducated in the art of Georgian food to be rather similar — lots of meat, stews and spices. Consulting with the servers can however help to understand the sometimes subtle differences and make a final decision. Kharcho with lamb, a thin broth with rice, spices and fresh cilantro, totaled 230 rubles ($7.50) and was an impressive start to the meal. Served piping hot and in red clay dishware reminiscent of something you might find in a caf&#233; buried in the mountains, the soup had quite a kick, but even those who can’t stomach spicy would still be safe. The lamb was a little fatty, but the dish was overall satisfying and justified the restaurant’s name (Khochu Kharcho means “I want kharcho” in Russian). The other appetizer, cheburek with veal (280 rubles, $9.20) was a perfectly fried thin pastry, but extra thin on the meat. Khachapuri cheese bread (320 rubles, $10.50) was freshly baked and filled with delectable Suluguni cheese.  
The main courses took a bit longer to be served, but only because they weren’t waiting under a heat lamp for their unsuspecting patron, and the waitress had the courtesy to warn us that it would be a few minutes. The dishes arrived in order of their readiness rather than simultaneously, assumedly to avoid the presentation of almost fresh food. Kuch-machi (340 rubles, $11.15), effectively giblets, is a dish ordered only by the brave and was surprisingly good (and very spicy) considering how difficult it can be to prepare innards. It was also presented well, with cilantro and fresh pomegranate seeds sprinkled on top. Chkmeruli (640 rubles, $21), baked chicken in a creamy garlic sauce with herbs, came recommended and with a bowl of lemon water and towel for clean-up as it should be eaten with your hands. In fear of looking like a cave-person who mistakenly made it past face-control, an attempt at using a knife and fork was made but proved useless. Hands it was. Both entrees were healthy portions, even too much, especially after the appetizers. The large portions, however, are in keeping with the Georgian tradition of over-feeding guests.
The restaurant’s atmosphere, like its staff, is warm and inviting. Despite its high seating-capacity of almost 300, it feels intimate and personal. The earth-toned color-scheme with tan walls and curtains accompanied by primarily red-and-orange patterned armchairs and sofas and low-lighting create a calm and relaxing interior. While ideal for snuggling or chatting, if you come to Khochu Kharcho to eat, a booster seat may come in handy as the chairs are a little low. The lampshades woven from straw project funky designs onto the ceiling, complimenting the patterns on the furniture and columns. A large movie screen on one wall showing a Soviet film seemed to be a little out of place at first, but was harmless enough as there was no sound, and less odd once we realized the film was Georgian. 
Our table for two proved to be a little small, or rather just littered with no fewer than four unnecessary table tents, toothpicks and more. Every time the waitress brought something, it was a challenge to find somewhere to put it. She did, however, get rid of the advertisements once asked.
A trip to the restroom was more like a field trip to a village. Walking through some curtains, the restaurant’s modern twist on Georgian style was left behind. Even the music was different, with traditional instrumental music replacing the R & B and Amy Winehouse combination playing in the dining rooms, and sinks in the form of red clay basins sitting on the counter tops. Thankfully the “country excursion” wasn’t too authentic — the toilets flushed and there were even baskets of fluffy white hand towels.  
Overall, Khochu Kharcho comes highly recommended for its appetizing and authentic Georgian cuisine, friendly atmosphere and attentive but not intrusive service. Vertically challenged diners should, however, be prepared to sit up straight in order to reach their dinner.

TITLE: The Paper Trail Leads to Syktyvkar
AUTHOR: By Khristina Narizhnaya and Lena Smirnova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: If you’ve lived in Russia and have scribbled anything on paper, chances are you’ve left your mark on a Syktyvkar product.
Perhaps you are in a job that doesn’t require you to write on paper. But you have, at some point, probably calculated a restaurant tip on a napkin. Then you, too, have appreciated Syktyvkar’s bounty.
Even if you have merely flattened a cardboard box or blown your nose into a tissue — it will be hard to say you’ve never used anything from Syktyvkar.
The northern city is one of Russia’s top suppliers of paper and pulp products. Its large wood and paper companies — Mondi Syktyvkar, Syktyvkar Tissue Group and Syktyvkar Plywood Mill — churn out more than 490,000 tons of office paper, 265 million toilet paper rolls and 170,000 meters of plywood, among other products, each year.
Local enthusiasm for pulp and paper dates back to 1926 when the now struggling Syktyvkar Timber-Processing Complex began to form. The complex secured a supply of wood products for the paper industry and even gave birth to some spinoff companies, including the Syktyvkar Tissue Group. And as time went by, the paper industry progressed from supplying standard necessities for the Soviet market to the craftsmanship of triple-ply, colored toilet paper to be shipped across Russia and other former Soviet republics.
Getting these products to store shelves, however, can be a challenge for company managers. Syktyvkar’s location in the Komi republic is fairly remote. The city is the end station for a railway line and two major roads. A journey by train from Moscow to Syktyvkar takes almost 28 hours.
The transportation situation is expected to improve with the completion of construction on the Belkomur Railway, which will connect Syktyvkar to the White Sea ports. There is also work being done to build a highway from Syktyvkar to Naryan-Mar, a river port town that sits beyond the Polar Circle.
Syktyvkar’s remote location was one of the factors that made it a popular exile spot for Russians and foreigners. The city became an exile destination in the second half of the 19th century and has gathered a variety of exiles and prisoners, including anti-monarchists, kulaks and German soldiers.
Sitting around the table with Syktyvkar residents can lead to a tangled mapping out of ancestral lines. Virtually everybody in the city has ancestors who were not born in Syktyvkar but came either voluntarily or by force.
Lidia Klimusheva first came to Syktyvkar when she was 6 years old to attend her aunt’s wedding. She later returned to the city for her university years, got married to a local man and, she admits, fell in love with the city forever.
“Did I ever want to leave the city? No! Never!” she said. “Here everything is my own: the air, the people and the streets. Everything! Everything is close and dear.”
More than 70 different nationalities live in Syktyvkar, with Russians making up just over half of the population. Komi, the area’s indigenous inhabitants, are the second-largest group. They became a minority population of about 30 percent following a rise in immigration to the Komi republic in the post-World War II period.
Komi have their own language, although this knowledge has been declining. The Komi language is no longer used in schools or government institutions, and very few local Russians speak it.
The indigenous populations subscribe to the Russian Orthodox Church, but their beliefs also show traces of their own Komi mythology.
One popular myth tells the story of the hunter Yirkap who makes a pair of enchanted skis for himself. The skis let Yirkap travel very fast, but also get him in trouble with two witches, one of whom ultimately drowns him.
Syktyvkar’s cold weather, like in Yirkap’s story, is frequently mentioned in Komi folk tales. In the winter, temperatures in the city fluctuate around minus 15 degrees Celsius. The weather is often the first thing that outsiders ask about before coming to the city and the first thing the locals proudly bring up. But even though Syktyvkar residents are happy to prove that they are impervious to the cold, some city visitors wouldn’t object to adding a couple more degrees of warmth.
“If I became mayor of Syktyvkar, the first thing I would probably do is move it closer to the south, somewhere in Crimea,” Andrei wrote on a Syktyvkar city forum after visiting the city. “It needs to be closer to the sun and good weather, where you can abandon coats and jackets.”
Andrei is from Ukraine, so perhaps his affection for warm weather is not surprising. Local residents, however, appear unfazed by such comments and embrace the cold winter months. As one Komi saying goes, “A cold summer is warmer than a warm winter.”
And for those needing a more savory reason to embrace the weather, another Komi saying promises, “The winter is long, so everything will be eaten.”
<b>What to see if you have two hours</b>
Walk through the streets of Syktyvkar to get a feel for the small city. Stefanovskaya Ploshchad is the town’s central plaza with a statue of Lenin. Nearby is the newly reconstructed white St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Walk to Teatralnaya Ploshchad to see the statue of the republic’s first poet, Ivan Kuratov, surrounded by fountains that light up on summer nights.
To get a glimpse of the region’s literary tradition, visit the Literature Museum of Ivan Kuratov, (2 Ulitsa Ordzhonikidze, 8-212-24-05-12, en.museumkomi.ru), located in an 18th-century house owned by the merchant Sukhanov and one of the oldest buildings in the city. The museum features a historic collection on the development of the area’s language, literature and poetry.
<b>What to see if you have two days</b>
Sosnovy Bereg is Syktyvkar’s Rublyovka, located a 10-minute drive from the city, on the picturesque bank of the Yelya-Ty Lake. Here you can visit the cottage village’s park, see the city’s elites, or just walk along the quiet lake and breathe the pine-scented air.
To find out more about local culture and Komi history, visit the National Museum (6 Kommunisticheskaya Ulitsa, 8-212-24-11-73, museumkomi.ru). The museum has a collection of more than 250,000 items pertaining to local history and culture, an extensive photo archive and often hosts master classes on Komi crafts and other educational events.

<b>Where to stay</b>
Hotel Palace (62 Pervomaiskaya Ulitsa, 8-212-39-14-00, palace-hotel.ru) is conveniently located on four floors of the city’s largest, central mall, Torgovy Dvor. The recently built hotel boasts large rooms at prices ranging from 4,400 rubles ($145) for a single standard, to 7,700 ($250) rubles for a double luxury suite.
Centrally located Hotel Avalon (133 Internatsionalnaya Ulitsa, 8-821-225-7500, avalonhotel.ru/en/), built in 2007, is one of the newest and most modern hotels in Syktyvkar. Prices for rooms range from 4,200 ($140) rubles for a standard single to 10,400 rubles ($340) for a luxury suite.

<b>Where to eat</b>
Take in the city’s sights, listen to live music and enjoy Mediterranean food at the Penthouse restaurant (62 Pervomaiskaya Ulitsa, 8-212-39-13-33, rpenthouse.ru), located on the 15th floor of the city’s central mall, Torgovy Dvor. The menu, custom-created by chef Mario from Baden-Baden, includes delicacies such as penne in basil sauce with king prawns, escargot in garlic sauce and spices, grilled trout with almonds, vanilla creme brulee and raspberry panna cota. The average check for a dinner for two is 4,000 rubles ($130) with alcohol. Pushkinsky Restaurant (20/2 Ulitsa Pushkina, 8-212-21-62-29, restoran-pushkinski.ru) features several dining rooms with eastern, classic, green and hunter themes. The average check for a dinner for two with alcohol is about 3,000 rubles ($100).

<b>Nightlife</b>
For a taste of the local high culture, visit the Savin State Academic Drama Theater (56 Pervomaiskaya Ulitsa, 8-212-24-31-92, komidrama.ru). The theater’s repertoire includes classics like “Hamlet” and productions of modern local plays, including “Pannochka,” based on Nikolai Gogol’s “Viy,” and “Wedding With a Dowry,” a comedy about marriage that has won the theater national praise. The lineup also includes family-oriented plays, such as an adaptation of children’s classic “Chipolino,” an Italian story about an onion.
If you want to dance at a nightclub but are sick of bumping into drunk teenagers, head to the newly opened club SSSR (31 Ulitsa Malysheva, 8-212-29-74-80). The dress code is strict, and bouncers require you show a passport that proves you are at least 25 at the door.

<b>Conversation Starters</b>
Talk to the locals about the beauty of the local nature. The Komi republic has some of the best forests in Russia, which turn a variety of red, orange and yellow hues during the short but picturesque fall season.

<b>How to get there</b>
The Syktyvkar Airport, located a short drive from the city center, has flights to other cities in the Komi republic as well as flights to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Round-trip tickets from St. Petersburg are about 9,000 rubles ($295) for the  two-hour flight with Nordavia, UTair or Aeroflot. The departure and arrival tableau does not always work, so checking with the staff may save you from confusion.
The trip by train takes about 34 hours, including  getting on a second train in Mikun that takes you to Syktyvkar.  Third-class tickets one-way cost about 2,000 rubles ($65). Trains leave every other day from St. Petersburg’s Ladozhsky Railway Station.
<hr />

<b>Syktyvkar</b>
Population: 235,006
Main industries: timber, woodworking, pulp and paper products
Founded: 1780
Interesting fact: Beating out many cities, Syktyvkar’s name changed early in 1930 instead of the 1990s. The city traded its original name, Ust-Sysolsk, for Syktyvkar, which means “City on Sysole” in the local Komi language.
Helpful contacts: 
• Mayor Ivan Pozdeyev (22 Ulitsa Babushkina, +7 8212-294-537-294100, syktyvkar.komi.com; 
• Larisa Turkova, head of the department of economics and analysis (22 Ulitsa Babushkina, 
+7 8212-294-537-294122, syktyvkar.komi.com/content/view/2814/430); 
• Olga Lysova, chief specialist in the department of analysis and investment programs (22 Ulitsa Babushkina, +7 8212-294-537-294159)
Sister cities: Lovech, Bulgaria; Taiyuan, China; Debrecen, Hungary; Cullera, Spain; Los Altos, California, U.S.
<b>Major businesses</b>
• The Mondi Group (2 Prospekt Bumazhnikov, +7 8212-69-95-55, mondigroup.com) is an international paper and packaging company that operates across 31 countries. It is Europe’s largest maker of office paper with key operations based in Russia, Central Europe and South Africa. Mondi Syktyvkar is one of Russia’s largest producers of paper products, and it employs 100,000 people in the city.
• Syktyvkar Tissue Group (4 Prospekt Bumazhnikov; +7 8212-62-02-20; veiro.ru) is Russia’s third-largest company in the production of sanitary products. It specializes in market base paper, toilet paper, paper towels and napkins, which are sold widely across Russia and the CIS. The company’s managers planned to conduct its first IPO in May 2011, hoping to raise up to 700 million rubles, but the IPO was later postponed due to market uncertainties.
• As a paperless alternative to Syktyvkar’s paper complex, Komitex (10 2nd Promishlenaya Ulitsa, +7 8212-28-65-01, komitex.ru) produces non-woven and synthetic fibers in Russia. The company’s product line offers more than 50 types of merchandise, which it supplies to more than 700 companies in Russia and abroad. 
<hr />
<i><b>Ivan Pozdeyev, 
Mayor</b></i>

Q: Why should investors come to Syktyvkar? 
A: Syktyvkar has a favorable economic climate. The city has attracted more than 500 million euros ($680 million) in foreign investment in the last four years alone. The timber, transportation, energy and utility sectors are definitely the leaders in terms of attracting investment.
Q: How is City Hall improving the investment climate? 
A: We have adopted a strategy for the socio-economic development of the city that will be effective until 2025. At the moment, we are working with major city producers to come up with a program for the city’s economic development over the next four years. These documents will prescribe a range of activities for stimulating investment activity.
Q: Do you encounter logistical difficulties because of the city’s location?
A: Syktyvkar is located away from the main national and international transportation routes. Of course, this is a disadvantage. But the construction of the Belkomur Railway and the Syktyvkar-Naryan-Mar federal highway will solve the situation. These projects will give a powerful stimulus to the economic development of the city.
Q: What are your favorite places in Syktyvkar? 
A: My favorite place is Kirov Park. The park is located on the banks of the Sysola River, at the mouth of which our city was born.

TITLE: Russian Teens Vie for All-Expenses-Paid Trip to U.S.
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A year from now, Pasha Kormiletsyn could find himself studying at an American high school, sitting around an American dinner table or playing American football in a town like Bozeman, Montana; Willis Point, Texas; or Morrisdale, Pennsylvania.
He might come back to Russia with a Southern drawl. Or a cowboy hat. But he would certainly return with a new perspective.
“It’s a chance to fundamentally change my life,” Pasha said as he joined about 800 other teens in a Moscow schoolhouse to participate in the application process for the U.S. government-funded FLEX program (Future Leaders Exchange), which began for Muscovites on Sunday.
About 240 teenagers from across the country will make the cut to spend a school year abroad, living with American host families, attending high school and participating in community life. The teens are an elite sample of the first post-Soviet generation, and the things they bring back could very well change Russia.
Over 7,300 Russians have graduated from FLEX, marking 20 years in Russia and the former Soviet Union next year, have brought their experience and language skills to leadership positions in business, government and elsewhere. 
Over the next two years, The St. Petersburg Times will be following the selection process and later the winners as they settle into their new lives in America, cope with separation from home and analyze their experiences. We also will meet with alumni to see what impact they have made on their communities.
For Pasha and other applicants  to the 2012-13 pool, the long journey started in school classrooms in 50 cities across Russia, where workers and volunteers from the American Councils for International Education, which operates FLEX on behalf of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs — first tested their basic knowledge of English. 
On Sunday applicants from Moscow and nearby regions were ushered inside eager to begin the competition and find out how they measured up to “American” standards. 
Last year, less than 2 percent of the 740 high school students who passed through this test center got a spot in the program. Harvard University’s acceptance rate is three times higher. And just like getting into an elite U.S. college, acceptance to FLEX is an inexact science, with organizers looking for a particular set of character traits.
“We select the ones we think will be most able to adapt to a new culture, be part of a host family and talk about their own culture,” said Matthew Mulherin, who oversees the selection process for the American Councils.
To get the scholarship, applicants must pass three rounds of testing. On Sunday, the applicants — 14 to 16 year olds — took a 15-minute, 16-question English comprehension test. A third of them will move on to the second round, a standardized English proficiency test and three written essays. Those who make it to the third round — semifinalists — will face two more essays, an interview and a formal application. The winners of the competition will be announced in early April.
“I’ll always remember getting that phone call,” said Ksenia Semyonova, a 2002 graduate. “I figured I wouldn’t get it because everything is corrupt in Russia.”
Mulherin said the program offers many students their first glimpse of a “major, high-integrity process,” meaning there’s no cheating and no currying favor. It’s pure merit, he said.
“America is a country of possibilities. America beckons,” said Yekaterina Volodicheva, waiting for her daughter Yelizaveta to finish the test. The two traveled 140 kilometers for Yelizaveta to take the test for a second year in a row.
Volodicheva said the chance to go to America had inspired her daughter to study Russian folklore and history to share with Americans. Part of the student exchange requires the Russian teens to prepare presentations in which they share their culture with their American classmates.
Like many parents, Volodicheva wasn’t thrilled about sending her daughter away for a year. “But how can you put a stick in the spokes of a child’s enthusiasm?” she said.
Applicants gave various reasons for trying out, such as language learning and cultural exposure. Yekaterina Berulava, 14, said she wanted her English to be as good as her brother’s, who is a program alumnus. Dasha Timerbayeva, 15, said she wanted to follow her boyfriend, a Russian-American, to the U.S. Some expressed a desire to leave Russia.
“I don’t like it here,” said Ksyusha Kuzmina, 14.
Others said they wanted to get out of Russia, “as fast as possible.”
But because the program is partly about building up an active alumni network in Russia, applicants looking to emigrate aren’t likely to get a ticket. In fact, alumni aren’t even allowed in the United States for two years after they return, though some will later study at U.S. colleges and universities on U.S. government programs.
From behind his desk, Volodya, the school’s security guard, watched students leave. “I would have gone to America when I was young,” he said. “Hell, I’d go now.”

TITLE: Syria Sees Wave of Violence
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIRUT — Syrian activists say a wave of violence has killed more than 70 people in Syria in one day.
The activists say many of those killed on Monday are Syrian soldiers who came under attack by army defectors in the southern province of Daraa.
And in the restive city of Homs, the city morgue has received 19 corpses, all of them with bullet wounds.
The latest death toll comes from the Local Coordination Committees, an activist coalition, morgue figures and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
President Bashar Assad’s regime has been trying to crush an uprising for the past eight months, but the movement has not abated. The UN estimates the regime’s military crackdown on dissent has killed 3,500 people so far in the past eight months. November is shaping up to be the bloodiest month of the uprising, with more than 250 Syrian civilians killed so far, activists say.
Although activists say the uprising has remained largely peaceful, with street protesters calling for the regime’s downfall, an armed insurgency also has developed in recent months targeting Assad’s military and security forces.
A resident near the town of Khirbet Ghazaleh in Daraa province said he heard more than four hours of intense gunfire. He asked that his name not be used for fear of government reprisals.
Another witness, who is an activist in the area, said he counted the bodies of 12 people, believed to be civilians killed by security forces’ fire.
“I saw two army armored personnel carriers, totally burnt,” he told The Associated Press by telephone. He also asked for anonymity out of fear for his safety.
The activist coalition called the Local Coordination Committees group identified at least 50 people who were killed on Monday. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented 69 deaths, and said 34 of them are soldiers.
The latest violence appeared focused in the southern province of Daraa. Discrepancies in figures of those killed and injured are common, because the Syrian government has prevented independent reporting and barred most foreign journalists. Details gathered by activist groups and witnesses are key channels of information.
Assad is facing the most severe isolation of his family’s four-decade rule in Syria. On Monday, Jordan’s King Abdullah II said Assad should step down for the good of his country, the first Arab leader to publicly make such a call.
In the hours after the king’s comments were broadcast, three protesters scaled the fence at Jordan’s embassy in Damascus and ripped down the Jordanian flag. Jordan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Kayed said no one entered the embassy and there were no injuries.
Syria’s crackdown has brought international condemnation, but Damascus has generally been spared broad reproach in the Arab world. That changed Saturday, with a near-unanimous vote by the 22-member Arab League to suspend Syria.
Earlier Monday, Syria struck back at its international critics, branding an Arab League decision to suspend its membership as “shameful and malicious” and accusing other Arabs of conspiring with the West to undermine the regime.
The sharp rebuke suggests Damascus fears the United States and its allies might use the rare Arab consensus to press for tougher sanctions at the United Nations.
Assad says extremists pushing a foreign agenda to destabilize Syria are behind the unrest, not true reform-seekers aiming to open the country’s autocratic political system.

TITLE: U.S., Asia Ties Strong Despite China Worries
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TAIPEI, Taiwan — When President Barack Obama arrives in Australia on Wednesday to kick off a four-day Asia-Pacific visit, he should receive a warm reception from America’s longtime allies in the region.
The U.S. has deepened military ties with Asia in the past year, at once reassuring its partners of its commitment and capitalizing on mutual fears about China’s rise. Both sides face a simple truth: They need each other, possibly more than ever.
In Australia, Obama is expected to announce an agreement to allow an expanded U.S. military presence in the country. Earlier this year, the U.S. disclosed plans to deploy military ships to Singapore. And Malaysia has joined two multination military exercises with the U.S. for the first time.
Such moves, together with frequent visits by senior American officials — Obama will be the first president to join an annual East Asian leaders meeting later this week — have defused fears that America’s defense presence might wane. They also show the region’s growing concern about China’s more aggressive stance in recent years.
“China is becoming an 800-pound gorilla,” said Ralph Cossa, president of Pacific Forum CSIS, a Hawaii-based think tank. “The U.S. is still the 1,600-pound gorilla, so which one would you rather have? And we’re housebroken; we’re a lot more fun to invite into your living room than the one who isn’t.”
Since 2009, China has confronted Southeast Asian countries over rival territorial claims in the South China Sea, refused to condemn North Korea’s apparent sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, and squared off with Japan over claims to a long disputed island group between Okinawa and Taiwan.
“Before this time there was extreme reluctance to anger Beijing by explicitly deepening ties with Washington,” University of Sydney security specialist John Lee said. “After 2010 there was little choice for other regional capitals but to seek closer relations with the U.S. in order to balance and hedge against future Chinese intentions and behavior.”
China’s defense spending has increased threefold since the 1990s to about $160 billion last year, and its military has recently tested a new stealth jet fighter and launched its first aircraft carrier.
The core of America’s Asian security presence remains South Korea and Japan, which between them host some 80,000 U.S. troops and several U.S. Air Force and Navy bases. Japan is headquarters for the 7th fleet, America’s naval force in the Pacific.
Encouraged by clear signs of U.S. resolve, the Northeast Asian allies have remained firmly on America’s side.
In Southeast Asia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia have all been at loggerheads with China over a number of tiny islands in the South China Sea. China believes the Spratly and Paracel islands may sit astride large deposits of oil and gas — though others are doubtful — and has moved assertively to underscore its claims in the area since 2009.
The United States began to push back following U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s implicit criticism of China’s behavior at a regional security forum in Vietnam in July 2010. It stepped up cooperation with regional allies and even began building a new security relationship with old enemy Vietnam.
In June of this year, then U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said littoral combat ships, small vessels designed to operate close to shore, would be deployed to Singapore. The prosperous city-state sits astride the Straits of Malacca, the strategic waterway through which the majority of Asia’s oil imports pass, including those to China and Japan.
In the longer term, America’s soaring government budget deficits could influence its deployments in the region, with Pentagon cutbacks expected to total some $450 billion over the next decade — roughly the size of annual U.S. defense expenditures not including Afghanistan and Iraq.
But U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, visiting Japan and Indonesia last month, dismissed speculation that the cuts would force America to trim its Asian profile. “We will ... not only maintain but strengthen our presence in this part of the world,” he said. “We are a Pacific nation, we’ll have a Pacific presence.”
China could also face future limits on its defense spending.

TITLE: Israeli Legislators Push Bills Through Despite Criticism
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM — At the end of a stormy debate, Israeli lawmakers pushed ahead two bills that critics say would threaten the independence of the country’s Supreme Court, just days after Cabinet ministers advanced another proposal to sharply limit funding for dovish groups.
Opponents say both developments reflect attempts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to stifle dissent and pluralism.
Netanyahu himself was absent from the parliament vote on Monday, which dominated newspapers headlines and radio talk shows.
A government spokesman on Tuesday said Netanyahu was absent because of a mourning ritual for his recently deceased father-in-law. Commentators, however, questioned whether he was trying to avoid criticism over the measures, which have caused a furor not only among government opponents but within Netanyahu’s coalition as well.
One of the two bills would change the way the top court’s judges are selected; the other changes rules for becoming chief justice. Both proposals, which require further votes in parliament to become law, would let officials influence who joins the court next.
Critics of the Supreme Court say it is too activist, too biased and usurps the legislature’s power.
“There is no pluralism in the makeup of the Supreme Court,” the Maariv newspaper cited Cabinet Minister Uzi Landau as saying during the parliament debate. “It is left wing, political, divorced from Judaism and at times from reality, and allows itself to intrude into places where it has no business.” The top court’s supporters laud what they regard as its fierce independence.
“We are in the midst of a wave of legislation that must be stopped,” said Cabinet Minister Meridor of Likud.

TITLE: German Designer Launches Milk-Based Fabric
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HANNOVER, Germany — Wear Milk? Anke Domaske says why not.
The 28-year-old German is the designer of an award-winning new textile made entirely from milk that’s environmentally friendly as well as soothing to people with skin allergies. Called “Qmilch,” it drapes and folds like silk, but can be washed and dried like cotton.
The biochemist and fashion designer has so far only used the fabric to make dresses for her own MCC fashion line. But next year Domaske has plans to begin mass producing — and several companies have already expressed interest in using the fabric.
Qmilch — a combination of quality and the German word for milk — won the innovation award of Germany’s Textile Research Association, which recognized it as a new, sustainable fiber that could revolutionize the clothing industry.
Currently, apparel depends heavily on byproducts from oil, or natural resources such as water — used in the thousands of liters to produce just a bolt of cotton.
“We know that everything that is based on oil has a limit, that materials like cotton that take up a lot of land, water and chemicals are limited, so we need to think about how we in produce fabrics and textiles in the future,” said Klaus Jansen, who heads the Textile Research Association.
Tatjana Berthold, a seamstress for Domaske’s MCC fashion line has been cutting and sewing the fabric into dresses for the past year.
“At first I did not believe that it was made from milk, but when you work with it, you notice that it feels different from normal fabrics,” said Berthold. She cast Domaske a sly sideways glance, then confessed to have privately made a pair of pajamas from a scrap she had been given.
Domaske’s quest for a natural, non-irritating fabric began after watching her stepfather suffer through terrible skin irritations while being treated for cancer. “There are so many people who really suffer just by wearing normal clothing. I wanted to find a way to help them.”
After two years of trial and error, working with a research lab, Domaske and her team of six finally landed on a process of reducing milk to a protein powder that is then boiled and pressed into strands that can be woven into a fabric.
The strands, she says, can be spun rougher for a heavier texture, or shiny smooth, to create a soft jersey that drapes and feels like silk.
Domaske concedes that at $28 per kilogram, her fabric costs more to produce than even organic cotton, which goes for about 40 percent less. But she hopes local production will keep down transport costs and reduce the overall price.
She also notes that only 2 liters of water is needed to produce 1 kilogram of fabric, or enough to make several standard dresses. By comparison, the same amount of cotton requires more than 10,000 liters of water.
The designer, who works from the central German city of Hannover, has already received interest from car manufacturers and members of the medical and hospital industries.