SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1688 (50), Wednesday, December 21, 2011
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TITLE: Opposition Politicians Booed at Electoral Fraud Rally
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Oksana Dmitriyeva, the local leader of the Just Russia parliamentary party, was greeted with boos and cries of “Give back your mandate” at a second local authorized rally Sunday at which thousands turned up to demand the annulment of the recent State Duma and Legislative Assembly elections.
“We won’t give back our mandates,” Dmitriyeva said. 
“Nevertheless, we believe that the election was dishonest and falsified; we don’t recognize these elections and we demand a recount of votes and the announcement of new elections.”  
As the volume of noise increased, Dmitriyeva said that those protesters who were booing her were “working for United Russia” and described them as “provocateurs.” 
The other parliamentary opposition parties, the Yabloko Democratic Party and the Communist Party (KPRF) also refused to renounce their mandates, although Dmitriyeva said that A Just Russia was the only registered party to demand the cancelation of the election result because of massive violations. 
Later on, KPRF Legislative Assembly deputy Vladimir Dmitriyev was booed on the same grounds. The Yabloko deputies did not speak at the rally.
Andrei Dmitriyev, the local chair of the unregistered The Other Russia party, called on parliamentary opposition deputies to reject their mandates. 
He said the local authorities’ answer to the Dec. 10 rally was the election of United Russia deputy Vyacheslav Makarov as the chair of the Legislative Assembly in a secret vote in its first session on Dec. 14. Although the oppositional parties took 25 seats, with the other 25 taken by United Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party, 30 deputies voted for Makarov.
Speaking at the rally, Dmitriyev asked the parliamentary opposition parties to reveal which five of their deputies had voted for Makarov. 
Boris Nemtsov, a leader with the unregistered Party of People’s Freedom (Parnas) and Solidarity movement who campaigned for people to spoil their ballots at the election as a form of protest, was also booed. As one protester later said, many were annoyed by the presence of a “celebrity” from Moscow at what was supposed to be a people’s rally.
On the eve of the rally, Nemtsov, Yeltsin’s one-time deputy prime minister, was briefly detained at the Moscow Train Station upon his arrival in St. Petersburg. According to him, police said that he had been described as an “extremist leader” in instructions that they received.
Despite apprehensions, Sunday’s rally drew nearly as many protesters as the Dec. 10 rallies, which were the largest protests seen in Moscow and St. Petersburg since current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin came to power as president in 2000. The organizers estimate the number at around 10,000 in St. Petersburg, while the police said it was about 4,000.
In reference to Putin’s comments during his 4.5-hour televised Q&A session last week that protesters were paid to attend and that their white ribbons, which stand for honest elections, resemble condoms, some posters read “We are here for free,” while one said “Putin is a sexually transmitted disease, wear white ribbons for protection.” Many posters said “For honest elections” and “My vote was stolen.”
The police, who did not intervene during the rally, tried to detain The Other Russia activist Igor Chepkasov at the end of the event. Chepkasov, who was reading out the rally’s resolution, had called on protesters to march to City Hall to put pressure on the city authorities to meet their demands. Several officers dragged Chepkasov from the stage, but other rally participants intervened and prevented them from detaining the activist.
After unsanctioned protests that lasted from Dec. 4 through Dec. 8 and resulted in hundreds being detained, Alexander Yashin, who was sentenced to 13 days in prison, and Filipp Kostenko (15 days), remain in custody and are due to be released on Wednesday.  
On Dec. 13, Kostenko, who was already on hunger strike, complained to the European Court of Human Rights that his rights to a fair court hearing and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly — articles 6 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, respectively — had been violated by the authorities.
Fontanka.ru reported that an Iranian student from St. Petersburg State University had been deported after being detained at one of the protests.
United Civil Front movement leader Olga Kurnosova, who applied to City Hall for authorization to hold the next anti-electoral fraud rally on Palace Square on Dec. 24, received permission Tuesday afternoon to hold the rally at 2 p.m. on Ploshchad Sakharova near the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island.
“We are planning a concert-rally, because most words people had to say have already been said,” Kurnosova said.
According to her, the authorities have reacted “unreasonably” to the protests. “Deputy governor Vasily Kichedzhi told television channels not to cover the protests,” Kurnosova said. “We’ll be waiting for a more reasonable reaction.”
Kichedzhi met with local television channels at City Hall on Monday. 
“The so-called opposition has no strength to come to power in a democratic way, so any support of unsanctioned, spontaneous actions could lead to chaos and the destabilization of society and could result in large losses for every family,” he said, according to City Hall’s web site.
Summing up Sunday’s rally, its host Andrei Pivovarov, a local co-chair of Parnas, said that the rally helped to bring all the political forces in the city together, even though the demands were ignored by the authorities.
“For us, the organizers, the main result was that we received great feedback from people, and that a new protest nucleus was formed of people who have previously never participated in any rallies; the main energy is coming from them,” Pivovarov said Tuesday.
The next Strategy 31 rally, which was originally conceived to demand that the authorities respect the constitutional right to assembly, will protest the rigged elections as well, said The Other Russia’s Dmitriyev, one of the Strategy 31 organizers.
He said the organizers had submitted an application to City Hall on Friday, and that the rally would be held near Gostiny Dvor on Dec. 31, whether it is authorized or not.

TITLE: Satirist’s New Book Explores What Makes Russian People Laugh
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Having problems understanding the Russian sense of humor? A new autobiographical book by a Russian writer who has been exploring life through satire offers valuable insight into the minds of Russian people and what has been making them laugh during the past few decades. The author in question is Arkady Arkanov, 78, one of the country’s most admired and respected satirists.
It is no coincidence that one of the central episodes of Arkanov’s book, entitled “Straight Ahead Into the Past,” is dedicated to the play that originally brought him and co-author playwright Grigory Gorin to fame in 1965. 
The play “A Wedding for All of Europe” tells the story of a provincial television station that plans to broadcast the wedding of an ambulance doctor and a factory worker live to the entire Soviet Union and all of Europe. The broadcast was meant to show the real — and indeed most enviable — life of a young Soviet couple. As soon as the decision is made and supported by local Communist Party authorities, censorship authorities get involved, and the wedding starts to turn into one big Potemkin village: The tiny modest apartment of the newlyweds is replaced by a pavilion and some relatives and friends do not make it through security control and are replaced by professional actors. In the end, even the couple themselves are removed from their own wedding, which is all acted out by actors.
“I must admit, with frustration, that despite the change of the regime, our modern television is not much different from the one ridiculed in the play,” Arkanov said at the book launch at St. Petersburg’s W Hotel on Dec. 10.
In the book, which interweaves autobiographical episodes with short stories and play excerpts, the author reflects on his life in the way that a chess player reviews a game. A medical doctor by education, Arkanov brings in a dose of estrangement and cold-blooded analysis to the turning points of his life, which were almost all connected with writing satires.
After graduating from Moscow’s Sechenov Medical University, Arkanov spent less than three years working as a doctor before quitting, as he felt that humor was taking over more and more of his time, and working half-heartedly as a doctor would be unfair to the patients.
It would be incorrect to say that Arkanov the doctor prevails over Arkanov the writer in the book, but one of the key conclusions that he makes in the work was clearly influenced by his medical background.
“In a way, life resembles running relays, and in Russia we have a problem with passing the baton on to the next runner — or the next generation, if you like,” he said. “If you lose the baton, or pass it on too late, or replace it with something else, the next generation will pay the price. Every runner in the relay must have a great sense of responsibility in order for the entire team to win. In Russia, the sense of responsibility in people appears to have gotten lost. The tragedy is that, for many people, the whole point of life is lost — it is replaced with ‘get-rich-quick’ or ‘now or never’ kind of traps when people strike up deals with their conscience without thinking about the consequences.” 
In the book, Arkanov reflects on the peculiarities of Russian humor.
“Many Russian intellectuals tend to think that Russian humor is wittier and more intelligent, than, say, German or American humor,” Arkanov said. “In the Soviet era this idea was supported by the Communist ideology that claimed proletarians from socialist countries were superior to those living in the capitalist world.” 
“From birth, the average American lives in a relatively prosperous society, where freedoms are protected, and almost any wish is realistic; indeed, one’s talent and one’s financial possibilities play an important role in reaching these goals,” reads Arkanov’s book. “In Russia, by contrast, people live in constant shortage of something, from freedoms to bread, and lawlessness, rather than people’s rights, is guaranteed by the law. In such circumstances, any human wish, even a very modest one, becomes a surreal dream with a bleak possibility of ever being fulfilled.”
The drastic differences in the way that these societies function explain fundamental differences between the Russian and American humor, Arkanov believes.
Therefore jokes about rude service in a cafeteria are likely to get a laugh among Russian audiences. Indeed, the subject is very close to home. Americans would be puzzled by this kind of joke, and, instead of laughing, would ask very reasonable questions such as “Why hiring a sneering waiter or a boorish hostess? Isn’t it bad for business, ultimately?” Or, “If the waiter was rude because he wasn’t paid on time, then what sort of employer are we talking about?” If an American were to find out, for example, that the waiter was rude because his wife had just died, he would then find the situation sad, and the whole joke unethical.
But in Russia, a heartbreaking fusion of tragedy and farce has long become the norm, and this abnormality has affected its humor, which Westerners often deem brutal.
“Unlike Russians, people in America find gay jokes funny,” Arkanov said. “In homophobic Russia, because the subject is taboo, such jokes are considered extremely vulgar. Russians are brought up to believe that being gay is worse than being a murderer. It is so bad that if you were to call a killer a killer, he would laugh, but if you called him gay, he would kill you for saying it!” 

TITLE: Shelters Seek Owners for Homeless Pets
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This Christmas Eve, St. Petersburg’s abandoned animals will have the chance to experience a Christmas miracle: To find a new home and family. 
Loft Project Etagi is once again organizing a charity event titled “I Want to Go Home” to help rehouse abandoned cats and dogs on Dec. 24. 
Twice a year for the past three years, dogs and cats from the city’s shelters have been brought to the exhibition halls of Loft Project Etagi to enable city residents to find a new friend. This year, animals from the Poteryashka, Drug (Friend) and ZooZashchita shelters will be on show, as well as felines from the Cat Museum and the State Hermitage Museum, which is famed for  the cats that roam its hallowed halls. Organizers expect 102 dogs and 88 cats to be brought to the modern art space Saturday. 
“We have an opportunity to help; we have enough room and informational resources,” said Valya Vasilyeva, deputy PR director of Loft Project Etagi cultural center. “And we know that in spite of all the kindness and care of shelter workers, the life of pets in shelters is not easy. We try to help dogs and cats to find new families. We get the rooms ready for the animals, make enclosures for them, and on the day of the exhibition, they are brought to Etagi,” she said.
To adopt a pet, prospective owners must first pass an interview with shelter workers to prove that they are capable of looking after a pet and have appropriate conditions for it.
“Offers to adopt a pet may even be declined, for example, if we see that someone lives with a big family in a small room in a communal apartment, we won’t allow them to adopt a large dog,” said Vasilyeva. “Moreover, in the event that the pet does not settle down in the family, because of its character or due to any other reason, the shelter appeals to adoptive owners to bring pets back, as former shelter inhabitants will be always accepted here,” she said.
All the animals up for adoption have been vaccinated and sterilized. Veterinarians are present at the exhibition and help potential pet owners to fill in all the necessary documents.
“We’re going to bring 24 dogs and 16 cats to the exhibition,” said Marina Pushenko, head of the Poteryashka shelter for lost or abandoned animals. “Small dogs are more popular among visitors — if we had 24 Yorkshire terriers, we would find them all homes immediately — so we take the smallest ones, with the most appealing appearance. For example, those who are particularly fluffy or who are a nice color,” she explained.
“We also take the most friendly animals, with nice characters,” she added.
Every time the event is held, from 2,000 to 3,000 visitors attend the exhibition, according to Etagi data. The number of visitors depends a lot on the day the event is held, on the season, even on the weather. The staff of Etagi themselves set a good example last year, when they adopted one of the dogs from Poteryashka. 
“The director of Etagi fell in love with Sonya, who had only three legs because of injuries, and Sonya found a new home among the center’s exhibition halls,” said Pushenko. “This year I saw her again; she was sitting with the security guard. She recognized me and greeted me affectionately. We are very happy for Sonya, we know that everything is fine with her, and that she is loved and cared for,” she said.
“Our team decided to adopt Sonya as a guard dog, but actually she is really friendly, said Vasilyeva. “She has her own office and gets paid in food,” she added.
During the three years of the project’s existence, 216 cats and 98 dogs have found new families.
“If even one pet finds a new home thanks to our event, we will be really happy,” said Vasilyeva.

<i>The “I Want to Go Home” event takes place from noon to 9 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 24 in the Fifth Floor gallery of Loft Project Etagi, 74 Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel. 458 5005.</i>

TITLE: Feel Free to Be a Freak at DeLa’Ruk’s FREE’k Bazaar
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As New Year approaches, Loft Project Etagi promises to be flooded with creative spirit thanks to FREE’k bazaar, a design and handmade market running from Dec. 20 through Dec. 31, which offers much more than just gifts. 
“Everyone who is not afraid of being a little bit gaudy and crazy will be here,” organizers said.
FREE’k bazaar is a platform that brings together creative people with unusual hobbies and interests. It provides a common ground for young designers, vintage collectors and showroom representatives. Workshops, fashion shows, lectures and shopping will be the order of the day, and the creative event will, in true market fashion, allow shoppers to bargain. 
“The format of an amicable craft market is the best answer to the demands of artists and visitors,” said organizers.
The idea of craft markets, popular in Europe, is still gaining steam in Russia. According to Alla Antoshchenko-Oleneva, director of the handmade design club DeLa’Ruk, which organized FREE’k bazaar, the idea was inspired by the success of craft markets in London. 
“Initially the idea of FREE’k bazaar appeared in 2008,” said Antoshchenko-Oleneva. “We wanted to host it at the Red Triangle factory, but some Russian artists were a bit frightened and others indifferent to the idea. That’s why we established Dela’Ruk, which works as more of a street exhibition. Later, it turned into a design and handmade club, and we returned to the idea of FREE’k bazaar, which our club began to hold every weekend. 
“During the winter 2010 season, FREE’k bazaar was attracting up to 1,000 people a day. On the eve of 2012, the time has come to bring the idea back, and we decided to make this New Year FREE’k bazaar as large and eventful as possible,” she said.
The market provides designers with a creative and communicative space; for customers, it is an opportunity not only to purchase exclusive designer pieces, but also to participate in educational and entertaining events. The market fully meets the requirements of “edutainment,” where people can have fun by participating in such events as FREE’k SpeedDating or find out something new about creative industries at the FREE’k lecture, devoted to learning how to transform a creative hobby into a profession. 
“It’s always a great pleasure to buy things directly from designers and collectors, who can transfer their creative energy to customers through their work,” Antoshchenko-Oleneva said.
As the organizers are interested in building a festive atmosphere at the bazaar, every event will be full of holiday spirit. A fashion show called “Shchelkun” will feature pieces by St. Petersburg designer Natalya Trofimenko. 
“Trofimenko creates fairy clothes and accessories. She is also a fairy-girl herself, always creating new things,” Antoschenko-Oleneva said. 
A fashion show from a group of young designers called Dark Aesthetic will show a collection of corsets based on sketches from the 13th century.
Visitors will have the chance to participate in the creative process during workshops as well as compete to make the best handmade Christmas tree. According to organizers, participants are encouraged to be as imaginative as possible and trees can be made from any material, from plastic bottles to rubber gloves.
All the FREE’k trees made will be displayed in the Loft Project Etagi courtyard, where a tree from designer Konstantin Sha, as well as from environmental movement Landishi and charitable organization Nochlezhka, which with DeLa’Ruk is collecting gifts for homeless people at FREE’k bazaar, will also be on display. 
Bazaar visitors will choose the winner of the FREE’k tree competition. The winner will be able to participate in all workshops, lectures and sessions for free. Organizers insist, however, that the main prize is creating a truly festive atmosphere.

<i>FREE’k bazaar runs from Dec. 20 through Dec. 31. It is open from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. weekdays and 12 p.m. to 10 p.m. weekends. It will be held at Loft Project Etagi, 74 Ligovsky Prospekt. M. Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel. 935 4516. www.delaruk.com/bazar.</i>

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Doing It For the Kids</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — “Artist,” a charity founded by the Russian actors Yevgeny Mironov and Maria Mironova with pediatrician and journalist Natalya Shaginyan Nidem, will hold a New Year’s charity event for children with health problems in St. Petersburg from Dec. 19 to Jan. 8.
The event is aimed at helping handicapped children who receive treatment at the city’s Albrecht Federal Prosthetics Center. 
Anyone interested can take part in the event by going to the restaurant Teplichnye Usloviya and writing down or drawing a personal greeting for the children.
10 percent of every restaurant check during the event will be donated to Artist. The money collected will be used to start a program called “I Want to Walk,” aimed at supporting handicapped patients at the Albrecht Center.
Currently there are at least 75 children receiving medical treatment at the center, and they are looking forward to New Year and receiving gifts, the organizers said. 
The restaurant Teplichnye Usloviya is located at 25 Nab. Kanala Griboyedova.  To find out more about the event, call 923 9244.

<b>New House Speaker</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — United Russia deputy Vyacheslav Makarov was elected the new chairman of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly last week.
In a secret vote, Makarov got 30 votes while his competitors — Pavel Soltan from A Just Russia and Yury Gatchin from the Communist Party — won 13 and five votes, Interfax said.
Vadim Tyulpanov, leader of the United Russia regional office and Speaker of the House for two terms, did not run as a candidate.
Makarov is a military officer who served in the Russian Space Forces. From 1992 he served as chair of the Mozhaisky Military and Space Academy. From 2000 to 2003 he was a municipal deputy. Makarov has been elected to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly twice — in 2003 and 2007.

<b>Happy New Year!</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Entrance to all city museums and the Central Park of Culture and Leisure will be free for school children during their winter vacations.
New Year events in St. Petersburg will start on Dec. 25 when Russia’s Father Frost lands by helicopter on the city’s Senatskaya Plochshad next to the Bronze Horseman monument.
Father Frost will travel the city to wish city residents and visitors a happy New Year. He will also visit St. Magdalene’s Children’s Hospital on Vasilyevsky Island.
The celebration on Palace Square begins at 6:30 p.m. Father Frost will switch on the lights of the city’s main Christmas tree. The lights ceremony will be followed by a concert.
On New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31, several concert stages will be erected on Nevsky Prospekt, Palace Square and Vasilyevsky Island, City Hall officials said this week. Official fireworks will begin on Vasilyevsky Island at 1 a.m.
Bus and trolleybus traffic along Nevsky Prospekt will stop by 9 p.m. on Dec. 31, and the metro will open at 4 a.m. on Jan. 1.
“The special thing about the celebration this year is that the city has been decorated by five different companies instead of only one as it has been done before,” city officials said.
The celebration will continue on Jan. 7 when Orthodox Christmas will be celebrated on Sobornaya Square at the Peter and Paul Fortress. 

TITLE: Kim Jong Il’s Death ‘Won’t Hurt’ Russia Ties
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The sudden death of maverick North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il cast a cloud over the future of the world’s last Stalinist state, but Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that it should not affect relations between the two countries.
Analysts agreed that Russia is likely to remain an important trading partner of North Korea, but only if the country is not plunged into chaos by feuding clans — which, they said, is a more likely consequence of Kim’s death than a gradual democratization of the closed country.
As hundreds wailed in the streets of Pyongyang in a show of mourning for the “dear leader,” Asian markets reeled and South Korea readied its army, fearing provocations from the tentative successor, Kim’s youngest son, Kim Jong Un.
Kim Jong Il died in his armored train Saturday, the country’s official news agency KCNA reported Monday. He was 69.
The cause of death was the “great mental and physical strain” that he had endured on the job, said a North Korean television anchor, who burst into tears as she wrapped up her remarks.
No details were provided, but some news reports said he had suffered a heart attack. His father and predecessor, Kim Il Sung, died after a sudden heart attack at age 82. News media have reported about Kim Jong Il’s health problems since 2008, when he suffered a cardiac arrest. His penchant for cigars and fine cognac has done little to help his condition, the news reports said.
Kim will be succeeded by his third son, Kim Jong Un, believed to be in his late 20s. KCNA referred to him as “the great leader” for the first time in a Monday report, Itar-Tass said.
Photographs from North Korea showed crowds of people weeping in public over Kim’s death, many of them kneeling before monuments of the leader.
President Dmitry Medvedev has offered his condolences, but neither he nor Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have been invited to the funeral on Dec. 28, which will be a strictly domestic affair with no foreign dignitaries attending.
Kim is expected to be buried in the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang, where the embalmed body of his father is on display and maintained by the same Russian experts who maintain the body of Vladimir Lenin in the Red Square mausoleum in Moscow. It is unclear whether Kim’s body might be put on display as well.
“We hope that this loss of the Korean people will not affect the development of our friendly relationship,” Lavrov said, RIA-Novosti reported.
Ties between Moscow and Kim’s regime run deep. Kim was, in fact, born on Russian soil in 1941, while his father was fighting in the Soviet army against Japanese forces in World War II. A Soviet birth certificate identified him as Yury Irsenovich Kim born in a village near Khabarovsk.
Russia is one of the few countries that Kim has visited, last touring it in his armored train — his only mode of foreign transportation — in August. He and Medvedev discussed economic ties at a meeting near Lake Baikal.
Bilateral trade has plummeted since Soviet times and now stands at about $100 million a year, making Russia the third-biggest trade partner for North Korea after China and South Korea.
Russia has been trying to step up its involvement in politics on the divided Korean Peninsula through economic means, proposing, among others, to create a trans-Korean gas pipeline and restore a railroad link between the two Koreas.
The pipeline deal remains under negotiation, but Russian Railways in October commenced work on the 10,000-kilometer rail line, which starts in the North Korean port of Rajin.
Hundreds of North Korean workers are also employed in the timber industry in Russia’s Far East. Some of them have seized their chance to flee their home country, voicing plans to never return to North Korea.
The Russian government has criticized the Kim dynasty, which has “preserved Stalinism in its worst forms,” since the 1960s, but that has not prevented Moscow and Pyongyang from collaborating, said Yevgeny Kim, a senior researcher at the Institute of the Far East with the Russian Academy of Sciences.
“We will be ready to work with any regime,” Kim said by telephone from Moscow.
Kim, who has visited North Korea several times, said the country, despite its near-isolation from the outside world, is undergoing slow change, allowing limited Internet access at universities and some forms of private entrepreneurship.
A South Korean businessman working in Moscow said he hoped Kim Jong Il’s death would bring about change. “We want to see who will hold the real power in the country,” said the businessman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the issue.
Many analysts said they also wondered who would really hold power and voiced doubts that it would be Kim Jong Un, given his lack of charisma and government experience. Kim Jong Il began grooming him for succession around 2009, after losing faith in his two other sons. But Kim Il Sung spent more than a decade preparing Kim Jong Il to take over when he died in 1994.
“Kim Jong Il has been working to put in place a group of people who should facilitate the succession process for his son … and to establish multiple power centers to provide support and guidance to the heir-apparent should he suddenly pass away,” said analyst Sarah McDowall of the IHS Janes Dence weekly.
But “there is now a heightened risk of an upturn in factional tensions within the North Korean political elite as senior political figures, doubting the capabilities of Jong Un, could initiate a power struggle,” she said in e-mailed comments.
North Korea held a missile test on Monday, reports said, though it remained unclear whether it was a pre-planned exercise or a show of force.
South Korea put its 500,000-strong army on high alert on Monday and held talks with Tokyo and Washington, two other opponents of Pyongyang.
Regional markets slid over concerns about possible destabilization in the region, with Korea’s KOSPI losing 4.1 percent, Shangai’s SSE Composite down 2.5 percent and the Australian S&P/ASX down 2.3 percent, Reuters reported.
“Much will depend on whether outside forces will exert pressure on the country,” said researcher Yevgeny Kim, referring to the United States and South Korea. Neither country made any demands to Pyongyang on Monday.
Raising a parallel with the Soviet Union, Kim said the possible emergence of a figure similar to progressive Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev could lead to the “destruction” of the North Korean regime.
But Pavel Leshakov, a Korea expert at Moscow State University, said the Soviet example has taught the North Korean elite not to embrace outright reformism, Gazeta.ru reported.

TITLE: Nemtsov, Akunin Hacked
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was the victim of a phone tapping scandal this week, while the LiveJournal and Gmail account of prominent author Boris Akunin, who has also attended recent opposition rallies, were hacked into.
Lifenews.ru, a news site loyal to the Kremlin, published recordings of phone conversations in which Nemtsov can seemingly be heard calling other opposition activists insulting names and swearing.
Nemtsov responded by saying he had been illegally phone tapped, and accused the authorities of attempting to split the opposition ahead of another mass protest demo planned for Dec. 24. He admitted that part of the recordings were genuine, but said they had been heavily edited and that other parts had been faked.
In the meantime, all the entries in Akunin’s blog were erased and a new one was added that called the author a “revolutionary” and turned his real name — Grigory Chkhartishvili — into an obscenity.
The blog was accessed by gaining Akunin’s password by hacking his Gmail account, RBC Daily reported. Both accounts were apparently hacked Sunday night.
“When there is nothing to discuss on the merits, the only reaction is, ‘Be quiet, you bald man” or “You’re just a Georgian,” Akunin told RIA-Novosti.
LiveJournal promised to restore Akunin’s blog with its original entries.
Akunin flew to Moscow from France to address a rally of tens of thousands of people gathered on Bolotnaya Ploshchad on Dec. 10 to denounce recent State Duma elections as fraudulent. He is also helping organize a follow-up rally scheduled for Dec. 24.
On his blog, Akunin recently outlined the speech he gave at the Dec. 10 rally and posted a television report about the rally that never was broadcast.
A prominent hacker who goes by the name Hell published what he purported to be excerpts of Akunin’s hacked Google and LiveJournal account on his web site.
In January, Hell has claimed responsibility for hacking the LiveJournal accounts of Valeria Novodvorskaya, a former Soviet dissident and a member of the New Times editorial board, and businessman Konstantin Borovoi.

TITLE: Hopes Fade in Search for Oil Rig Survivors
AUTHOR: By Natalya Vasilyeva
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Time appeared to be running out Tuesday to rescue 39 people still missing more than 2 days after an oil rig capsized and sank in stormy, freezing waters off the eastern coast of Russia in the sea of Okhotsk.
Rescuers say they found four lifeboats and an inflatable life raft in the frigid water near where the oil rig capsized, but all of the boats were empty.
The State Sea Rescue Coordination Center said Tuesday all the lifeboats were empty, though in one of the boats the emergency lights were on. 
Of the 67 men aboard, 14 were plucked alive from the icy water immediately after the accident and taken to a hospital. Workers have since pulled out 11 bodies from the Sea of Okhotsk, and three objects that may be bodies have been spotted but not yet retrieved.
The Kolskaya floating platform was being towed back to port in a fierce storm when a strong wave broke some of its equipment and portholes in the crew’s dining room, and it started sinking in the choppy water.
One of the survivors, Sergei Grauman, said on Russian state television that the platform’s portholes were smashed in a second and the crew had struggled to fix them.
“Everyone rushed to the deck,” he told Channel One. “It all felt like a movie.”
The Emergencies Ministry and military officials said there are four vessels, one helicopter and one airplane still searching for survivors. Helicopter shots from the area on NTV television showed nothing floating on the partly iced-over sea.
Russia is the world’s largest natural gas exporter and second-largest oil exporter, and hydrocarbons are Russia’s key export commodity. But, it produces most of its oil onshore and hasn’t had any significant oil platform accidents in recent years.
The platform — 70 meters long and 80 meters wide — was built in Finland in 1985. It has recently done some work for Russian energy giant Gazprom.
There has been no report of environmental damage, but there is likely to be little because the rig only carried a small amount of fuel.
Russian newspapers on Monday speculated about whether there could have been fewer deaths if the rig’s owner had taken more people off the rig before it was moved.
Russian law allows only a “minimal number of crew members” to be aboard the platform while it is being towed and bars any non-crew members or passengers. Reports said that at least 14 people aboard were not crew members.

<i>Varya Kudryavtseva contributed to this report.</i>

TITLE: The Long Wait for WTO Membership Is Finally Over
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The World Trade Organization officially welcomed Russia as a member Friday, bringing the curtain down on the country’s 18-year accession process.
Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina and director general of the WTO Pascal Lamy signed a protocol on Russia’s accession at a ceremony in Geneva after the organization’s ministerial conference approved documents granting Russia membership in the global trade club.
Russia will have 220 days to ratify the documents and will become a full-fledged WTO member 30 days after the ratification.
With Russia’s accession, the WTO will cover more than 97 percent of world trade, Lamy said at the ceremony.
As a WTO member, Russia will push for the implementation of existing rules of global trade and development of new principles of trade between member states to reduce growing risks of protectionism amid the current uncertainty on global markets, Nabiullina said.
“Joining the WTO, we are ready to actively fight these risks, so for us, completing the WTO talks is not a finish but a start. … We share the organization’s focus on supporting the most vulnerable economies,” she told the ministerial conference.
President Dmitry Medvedev, who didn’t participate in the ceremony, echoed the idea in his address to the conference, saying Russia is prepared to help ensure global economic stability.
Nabiullina also said “preserving the status of the WTO as a trade organization” is crucial for Russia, as developing mutual trade could help resolve problems in relationships between countries.
“Problems in relationships between countries have always existed and unfortunately will remain. The development of trade can really help solve them,” she said.
Russia had sought WTO membership for 18 years. The last hurdle on its way to the organization was removed only last month when Russia resolved its dispute with Georgia — which was blocking the country’s entry into the organization — over monitoring trade on the borders of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Medvedev said the country’s accession to the WTO “is a result of long, difficult negotiations” that will be beneficial for both Russia and other member states.
Russia’s entry into the WTO opens up the country’s economy of almost $2 trillion to foreign companies and is widely expected to boost the country’s economic growth and attract investment.
Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who was invited to attend the conference by Lamy, expects that after accession Russia’s economy will grow 3 percent to 4 percent in the next 10 years.
“Approximately 0.4 percent a year. It’s a serious increase,” he said on the sidelines of the conference, Interfax reported.
As part of the global trade club, Russia will become a more favorable environment for developing domestic business, which will result in increasing exports, Kudrin said.
Applying WTO norms will enable Russia to participate in the global trade process on par with other member states.
“This will create a new standard of business development in Russia,” Kudrin said.
But some domestic entrepreneurs voiced concerns that reducing import duties would result in growing competition in a number of sectors.
“There are many questions from business in various areas,” the president of Russia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Sergei Katyrin, said last week.
“We should specify jointly with business the major risks that might arise in some industries and even regions,” he told a news conference in Moscow.
Katyrin said among those concerned about increasing competition are car makers, aviation industry companies and insurance companies.
But Maxim Medvedkov, Russia’s top negotiator in the WTO bid, denied concerns, saying Russia would be able to control the volume of imported goods because the WTO allows its new member states to protect domestic manufacturers by limiting imports in vulnerable sectors for five to seven years.
“If we feel that we are being choked with imports, we’ll intervene. We have that right and special protective mechanisms,” he told the Rossia-24 television channel Friday.

<b>Remaining Hurdles</b>
The country’s entry into the trade club will spur economic and investment cooperation between Russia and the United States, U.S. President Barack Obama told Medvedev in a telephone conversation Friday, according to a statement on the Kremlin’s web site.
“Having confirmed their intention to continue productive and credible dialogue, Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama agreed to work jointly and effectively in the future, focusing on further increasing the potential for mutual cooperation,” the statement said.
But for this to happen, restrictions on the countries’ mutual trade must be lifted, with the U.S. Congress expected to decide soon on abolishing the 40-year-old Jackson-Vanik amendment — part of the 1974 Trade Act that prevents the United States from granting Russia permanent normalized trade relations.
Obama said last month that his administration had started talks with Congress on repealing the amendment so that the country’s businesses could enjoy the advantages provided by Russia’s membership in the WTO.
He reiterated his administration’s commitment to push for the amendment’s abolishment in the telephone conversation with Medvedev, a White House spokesman said.
But efforts to repeal the amendment might face resistance among U.S. lawmakers, as some of them said both the White House and the Russian government will have to persuade congressmen of the sides’ mutual interest in Russia’s accession to the WTO.
First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Friday that abolishing the amendment is a matter of a few months.
However, the sides made a decision not to apply WTO norms in mutual trade because of U.S. unwillingness to change its legislation, RIA-Novosti reported Friday, citing an unidentified source in the organization.
This right is granted to new member states joining the organization by the Marrakech agreement establishing the WTO, but this exception won’t work in regard to Russia if Congress repeals the Jackson-Vanik amendment before the country completes ratification of the WTO documents, the source said.
Meanwhile U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton said last week that Russia’s membership in the trade club will allow the United States to push for further reforms in the Russian economy using the mechanisms of the WTO.
“The United States worked very hard to make the case that Russia should be a member of the WTO. … Now we have tools, through the WTO, to deal with some of the economic challenges and distortions coming from the Russian economy,” she told the PBS television channel.

<b>Changes Needed</b>
One of the major barriers that long hampered Russia’s accession to the WTO was intellectual property violations, with pirated software and DVDs being available in kiosks and marketplaces across the country.
Even though the situation seems to have changed for the better, concerns remain over protection of intellectual property rights on the Internet, which provides a huge base of counterfeit software, films and music.
The share of retail kiosks offering pirated software across the country declined to 23 percent this year from 27 percent in 2010, according to a survey issued by Microsoft last month.
Moscow remains one of the biggest markets by volume of pirated software for sale, with 33 percent of retail outlets offering such products, the survey said.
The capital’s Savyolovsky Market — a huge retail complex that has earned a reputation as a piracy lair — was placed on a list of the world’s biggest pirate markets compiled by the U.S. government earlier this year.
But when a St. Petersburg Times reporter visited the market Friday afternoon, salespeople in the complex insisted that one wouldn’t find a single pirated copy in its kiosks anymore.
“Everything has changed drastically. All pirates were removed from the market,” said a salesman at a kiosk offering software and computer games, who declined to give his name.
The market’s administration breaks lease agreements with those selling pirated products, said another, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, piracy continues to thrive outside the market, with a number of kiosks offering illegal software and DVDs just a few hundred meters from the complex.
“People can’t afford licensed software,” said one salesman, showing a copy of the latest version of Microsoft Office that was issued last year. The CD, a licensed copy of which costs 6,500 rubles ($205) at Savyolovsky Market, can be obtained for just 200 rubles there.
Business Software Alliance, an international lobby group representing the world’s biggest software producers, ranked Russia third last year after the United States and China by commercial value of pirated software, which reached $2.8 billion.
The salespeople in the kiosks outside Savyolovsky said they didn’t expect any changes after Russia’s accession to the WTO.
“I don’t know what will change,” said one of them, adding that the kiosk will continue to operate.
Russia has a sufficient legislative base to protect intellectual property, but its practical implementation remains an issue, lawyers said.
The country’s accession to the WTO doesn’t mean that the situation will change immediately because economic conditions must be created in Russia that would make piracy unprofitable, said Yelena Trusova, a partner in the intellectual property practice at Goltsblat BLP.
“The reason for the prosperity of piracy is that pirated goods are still much cheaper than original products. If the price gap between original and pirated goods was 10 percent to 15 percent, these pirate stands … would die by themselves,” she said by telephone.
However, this is unlikely to fully solve the problem of counterfeit media content and software because their distribution is gradually moving to the Internet, already resulting in losses for pirates, said Oleg Yashin, vice president of Russky Shchit, a nongovernmental organization fighting computer piracy and violations of intellectual property rights on the Internet.
Given poor Internet penetration in the regions and the fact that some consumers of illegal content have no computers, demand for pirated DVDs and even cassette tapes remains strong, but there’s a distinct trend to move illegal software distribution online, he told The St. Petersburg Times.
Yashin said up to 90 percent of illegal software in Russia can be downloaded from the Internet, with the remainder being sold on CDs or loaded onto USB sticks by salespeople.
Paradoxically, distribution of illegal software on the Internet affects not only software companies, but pirates selling such software on CDs, as they are seeing a 30 percent to 40 percent decline in sales annually, he said.
After Russia’s accession to the WTO, the government must continue to combat web sites with domestically located servers that distribute content illegally and “investigate and prosecute companies that illegally distribute objects of copyright or related rights on the Internet,” the WTO said on its web site last month.
But Yashin said a broader approach is needed. The servers of most domestic file hosting services and trackers are located outside the country, and entering into international cooperation is crucial for Russia to fight Internet piracy, he said.

TITLE: State Works to Help Small Businesses
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A block of programs aimed at helping small business development has been extended to a governmental level. As the realities of the economic and business sphere are always subject to change, some programs to retrain and update business and management personnel have been designed. 
One such program is the Presidential Program for Management Personnel Retraining, which has been implemented at several St. Petersburg universities and is currently supervised by the St. Petersburg Inter-Regional Resource Center. 
The program was established in 1997 by presidential edict. Since that time, the program structure has undergone some changes and has been updated to match the economic realities and needs of business under the conditions of globalization and economic crises.
The Program for the Development of Small-Scale Entrepreneurship, devised by City Hall’s Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade Committee, has announced the concept of a “green corridor” for small businesses. The programs vary depending on the level and type of support. They range from credit programs to consultations, from support for established enterprises wishing to extend their business to a regional level to support for entrepreneurs just starting out, for whom a grant program has been created. 
The program is currently based on the western model of training, in which the main focus is on the practical rather than the theoretical part. 
“Two thirds of the curriculum is practical training and internships in companies involved in adapting foreign technologies to the Russian market,” said Vladislav Raskovalov, general director of the St. Petersburg Inter-regional Resource Center, at a press conference last week devoted to government programs that support small business, held within the 9th Forum of Small Entrepreneurship Entities in St. Petersburg. 
“Along with methods such as case studies, the program helps to prepare specialists to work in modern innovative situations,” he added. 
Internships organized in Finland and Germany are paid for with city budget funds. 
“The program provides a unique communicative area, and in this sense, administrative support is indeed necessary,” said Konstantin Gavrilov, head of the St. Petersburg Education Committee’s primary and specialized secondary education branch.
The priority training spheres are currently the modernization of energy-efficient technologies, community facilities, innovative production and small and medium-sized business development. 
Senior managers are not the only alumni of the Presidential Program. Representatives from other fields such as healthcare and education are also members. According to Raskovalov, blue-collar job training is now becoming an integral part of the program: 80 percent of the training is paid for by city budget funds and 20 percent by business funds, which companies pay to participate in the program.

TITLE: Megafon Slashes Charges
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian cell network operator Megafon has cut international roaming fees for subscribers by three to nine times in most European countries, Turkey and in the European part of CIS countries. 
All together Megafon’s roaming calls have become cheaper in 44 countries, Interfax reported.
“The company has agreed with most European cell phone operators to reduce charges for international calls,” said Konstantin Solodukhin, deputy head of Megafon for the development of corporate sales and operator business. 
“It was a hard negotiation process that took about two years,” Solodukhin said, Interfax reported.
In place of the previous price list for international roaming services, the operator has introduced a basic roaming tariff called Eurotariff, which applies to all tariff plans.
Eurotariff will allow the company’s clients to pay six rubles a minute for all received calls instead of the 56 rubles a minute it cost before. All outgoing calls to Russia from abroad will cost 16 rubles a minute. Calls within the country the caller is in will cost 86 rubles a minute. Sending a text message will cost 19 rubles.
Solodukhin said Megafon would provide these lowered costs as part of its regular service.
“We told European operators that we should stop having roaming as a premium service. We should instead stimulate the use of roaming through regular clients,” he said.
When European operators initially had to lower roaming tariffs in the European Union, they tried to compensate for their losses at the expense of other places, including Russia, Solodukhin said. 
However, the situation began to change when the Russian Communications Ministry initiated negotiations with foreign administrations regarding cost cuts for Russian clients, he said.
European operators, who lowered tariffs after the decision of the European Commission, noticed that the cut in international roaming fees led roaming traffic to increase by three or four times. Therefore foreign operators expect the decrease in roaming tariffs within Russia to result in an increase in traffic and income, experts said.
Megafon might lose some profit in the short term due to the new program, but the loss will be compensated for later on, Solodukhin said.
Last October the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service concluded that Russia’s three major cell phone operators — MTS, Vimpelkom and Megafon — violated anti-monopoly legislation by establishing a monopoly on high prices for roaming on the territory of Russia and CIS countries.

TITLE: St. Petersburg Automobile Sales Have Doubled During Past Year
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Sales of new cars in St. Petersburg have grown by almost 50 percent during the past year, AlfaStrakhovaniye insurance company’s analytical center reported.
Between January and September of this year at least 140,057 new cars were sold in the city, 49.3 percent more than for the same period last year, when they sold only 93,766 cars.
The top month for car sales was June, when the number of cars sold reached 18,951 cars, the company reported.
The most popular brand in St. Petersburg was the Russian-made Lada, of which 12,614 vehicles were sold, which made up nine percent of all the cars sold in the city during the mentioned time period.
Lada’s sales increased by 20.3 percent in St. Petersburg compared to last year.
The second most popular brand in the city was Chevrolet with 11,393 cars sold, totaling 8.1 percent. Volkswagen took third place with 7.6 percent.
The overall number of cars sold in Russia from January to September increased by 45.7 percent, from 1.31 million to 1.92 million cars.
The sale of foreign cars grew by 58 percent from 870,000 to 1.37 million vehicles, making up 71 percent of all new car sales in the country this year.
Research showed that one third of all new cars in Russia are sold in Moscow; St. Petersburg takes eight percent, Samara five percent, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Krasnodar and Ufa three percent each and Rostov-on-Don and Perm two percent each.
Kirill Varlamov, head of AlfaStrakhovaniye’s analytical center, said the growth in demand for new cars in 2011 was caused by a number of factors.
“The stimuli for the positive consumer spirit among Russians were the automobile credit programs and the Cash-for-Clunkers program that ended in the middle of 2011,” Varlamov said.
“There was also an insignificant effect of deferred demand. People who postponed buying a new car during the financial crisis bought one in 2010-2011,” he said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Family Housing</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The city should develop a financial support program to help families with a lot of children to build dachas or other detached houses on the land they are given by the city, Poltavchenko said last week, Interfax reported.
“We need to think about how we can support families who do not have the income to build houses on these plots of land,” Poltavchenko said.
Last week the city government signed a resolution that will provide families with many children with land plots on which to build a house or dacha. 
There are more than 15,000 such families in St. Petersburg, and land plots will be given upon application through 2012.

<b>Lufthansa to Hamburg</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — German airline Lufthansa plans to introduce a direct flight from St. Petersburg to Hamburg, Ronald Schultz, director of Lufthansa in Russia and CIS countries, said last week.
The flight is to be launched as part of the company’s 2012 summer schedule, which begins at the end of March, and will operate twice a week.
Lufthansa expects passenger flows from St. Petersburg to German cities to increase by 15 percent in 2012, totaling 400,000 passengers.
Lufthansa currently operates flights from St. Petersburg to Frankfurt, Munich and Dusseldorf.

<b>Heineken Strike</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Heineken Brewery trade union held a 24-hour strike last week to protest an irregular working schedule introduced several years ago, and to call for cuts in the number of freelance employees.
During the strike, all bottling lines and raw material deliveries to the plant were completely stopped, Interfax reported.
As a result, the general director of Heineken in St. Petersburg, Igor Shatz, promised to hire 13 more bottling operators. However, he said it would be difficult to resolve the issue concerning working hours.

TITLE: A Crisis of Confidence
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
TEXT: It is already clear that Russia will experience a systemic political crisis in 2012. The country’s leaders and institutions will completely lose the people’s trust by next summer. The authorities will become vacillating and weak and will flounder from one crisis to another.
The State Duma will be led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s crony and purported former KGB operative Sergei Naryshkin — an even more colorless speaker than his predecessor, Boris Gryzlov. The parliament will thus be fully stripped of any legitimacy in the eyes of the people and will fail to reflect both the real disposition of political forces in the country and the public mood in general.
United Russia, the “party of crooks and thieves,” will occupy 238 Duma seats, although it actually earned at most 35 percent of the vote, or 160 seats.
The Kremlin-sanctioned “opposition” parties — the Communist Party, A Just Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party — betrayed voters who voted for them as a protest against United Russia. Unmotivated to challenge the election results or demand a recount, the servile “opposition” recognized and attempted to legitimize United Russia’s fraudulent victory. Thus, the three minority parties failed to exploit the very real opportunity they had to gain a majority in the Duma and fulfill their many campaign promises to voters. And so, as many observers predicted would happen, the strategy of “voting for anyone but United Russia” only translated into votes for Putin and his party.
But such cowardly conduct by the obsequious “opposition” did not go unnoticed by an angry and vocal public. At the demonstration on Bolotnaya Ploshchad, protesters responded to speeches by Community Party and Just Russia leaders with chants of “Hand over your mandates!” Of course, their demand was not met. With the Kremlin’s pocket opposition discrediting itself by its unwillingness to challenge the authorities, it only exacerbated the political crisis that is certain to erupt in 2012.
Even in November, Putin’s approval rating had fallen to 51 percent according to a VTsIOM poll, and his trust rating plummeted to 25 percent on Dec. 10, when the Bolotnaya Ploshchad protests took place. These trends are likely to continue, and by the time the presidential election is held on March 4 Putin’s approval rating will probably be no more than 30 percent. This means that any one of Putin’s hand-picked running mates for the presidential race — Gennady Zyuganov, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Sergei Mironov, Grigory Yavlinsky or Mikhail Prokhorov — could actually receive enough protest votes from disgruntled citizens to beat Putin in the runoff vote.
This leaves Putin no choice but to even more brazenly and recklessly employ every administrative resource at his disposal to organize massive falsification of the election results in March. To receive the 55 percent to 60 percent of the vote that he wants, Putin would have to fabricate almost as many votes as he actually receives. But after the blatant violations during the Duma election campaign and Dec. 4 elections, the people are well prepared for more tricks, such as “carousels,” absentee ballots and other methods to stuff the ballots, in March. More violations will be caught on video and placed on the Internet.
Starting on March 5, the day after the presidential election, we can expect to see mass protests that will dwarf the recent rally on Bolotnaya Ploshchad.
During Thursday’s annual call-in show, Putin showed that he does not have a modern political or economic agenda. He once again talked about foreign powers plotting against Russia and, at the same time, had no answers concerning the most important issues affecting the country’s development: the creation of an effective democratic political system, the elimination of rampant corruption, establishing rule of law and diversifying the economy. At this point, society will simply reject any pseudo institutions that Putin and his chief ideologist, Vladislav Surkov, dream up as legitimate. This will only lead to more protests across the country. The weak and unpopular government will have to resort to populist measures, such as increasing government handouts, which will only make matters worse for the economy.
By clinging to power, Putin and his corrupt clan have created a serious, crippling crisis of confidence in government and the political system as a whole. Society must now do all it can to ensure that this crisis does not lead to the country’s collapse.

<i>Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio and is a co-founder of the opposition Party of People’s Freedom.</i>

TITLE: always a dissident: Politics Without Choice
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: The surge in street protests this month was the natural result of widespread discontent that has been building up steam for several years without any outlet. It would have been difficult to predict that the trigger would be the falsified results of the elections for the purely decorative State Duma. These results came as no surprise to the public, but it seems that people were simply looking for a pretext to vent their frustrations.
The Duma elections served only one purpose: to prepare for the presidential election in March, and we all know who the winner will be. That decision is made not by voters but by a select group within the bureaucratic elite. The purpose of presidential elections is only to try to legitimize decisions that rulers have already made and to provide legal validation for a political relationship that already exists.
This month’s public protests ruined that scenario. The rapid decline in United Russia’s popularity, the growing size and number of popular protests and the complete discrediting of the country’s electoral process before the eyes of the world have combined to create a situation in which elections no longer serve their main function — to legitimize the choice of the ruling elite — but instead pose a serious problem for the authorities. Obviously, these elections will never become fair and honest. For one, the current opposition forces are either groups that have splintered off from the ruling party or represent a motley assortment of marginally significant factions of mostly liberals and nationalists. More important, however, the Kremlin-approved, hand-picked running mates will never have a real chance of beating Putin.
Society’s rejection of the current authorities, which was made clear by the protests this month, does not necessarily indicate support for the opposition. The agenda offered by the anti-government protest organizers does not fully reflect the reasons for the enormous discontent. Opposition leaders have been hesitant to focus on social issues — even those of concern to their own constituents — to maintain as broad a base of support as possible. At the end of the day, most Russians are more concerned with the condition of their local hospitals than with elections. The Dec. 10 protests drew approximately 250,000 people nationwide. By comparison, as many as 2.5 million pensioners turned out to protest the monetization of social benefits in 2005, despite the January cold.
Russians do want honest elections, but the vast majority will risk the police batons to fight for them only once it becomes clear that such elections would actually improve their quality of life and usher in the welfare state that most desire. But on this question, opposition leaders are not only out of sync with their own supporters, but are actually in the same camp as the ruling regime.
Things are moving toward an impasse because a real triumph of democracy would spell the simultaneous collapse of the ruling party and the opposition. The authorities refuse to publicly back down. Both sides would prefer to reach a quiet agreement between themselves. That is now impossible because Russian politics have gone public and secret collusion between the parties is no longer viable.
In chess, such a situation is called a stalemate. But life is not a game in which the pieces can be cleared from the board and a new match started. That is why there is every reason to expect that the outcome of this crisis will not be free elections, but a new round of a political battle without rules.

<i>Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.</i>

TITLE: A musical dynasty
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The concert held at Tavrichesky Palace on Dec. 10 could probably have claimed a Guinness book entry: It took at least 15 years to put together. The cause was well worth the lengthy preparations. The performance, entitled The Imperial Musical Collection, showcased 20 long-lost musical works composed exclusively by members of the Romanov family, including Tsar Alexander II and Prince Konstantin Romanov. 
These works had last been played almost one and a half centuries ago and then were lost in the chaos of the Bolshevik Revolution. Vyacheslav Mozardo, president of the Moscow-based Slava international cultural center, sought to revive Russia’s imperial musical legacy. Along with his team of researchers, Mozardo spent more than a decade going through thousands of files in the Romanov family archives as well as libraries far beyond Russia, from Switzerland to Thailand. 
The idea of searching for music written by the Romanovs originally came to producer Bella Abaeva, the driving force behind the project, when she was contemplating her relationship with her own children. 
“I was thinking what sort of people I want them to be inspired by,” Abaeva remembers. “It happens all too often that young people today forget that while becoming successful in life it is important to keep your heart and soul alive — and in this respect the Romanovs represent the finest example of members of the elite who were emotionally exuberant and generous.”
Abaeva then joined forces with the Slava Center, and the research began. “Sometimes we would find a fragment of a letter containing a musical score in an archive in one country, and it would take many months to find the rest of the document thousands of miles away in a totally different library,” she said. 
Most members of royal families in countries where they have existed or still exist are involved in some sort of artistic activity, from poetry to painting, but hardly ever composition, and in this respect the Romanov family stands out. 
“The Romanovs adored composing romances or short classical music opuses as presents for their loved ones,” Abaeva said. “Indeed, we have made it all very private in the sense that while presenting the music, we withhold any personal dedications. We respect the privacy of the authors.”
Importantly, the project gives precious insight into the personalities of the Romanovs, showing them not only as members of the royal family, but as human beings.
The music presented at the concert is terra incognita not only for general classical music audiences, but even for musicologists whose area of expertise is 19th-century Russian music.
“When I played bits and pieces of various works to music reviewers and historians, they would come out with the wildest guesses, from Hector Berlioz to Pyotr Tchaikovsky, but not a single person even suspected that we could be talking about a musical piece written by a Russian aristocrat,” said Mikhail Golikov, the artistic director and principal conductor of the Tavricheskaya Cappella that comprises a youth symphony orchestra, a chamber choir and a horn ensemble. The cappella musicians played the music of the Romanovs to audiences at the concert on Dec. 10. 
“As a musician I am absolutely fascinated by these works,” said Golikov. “They would be a blessing to any distinguished orchestra or venue.”
Soprano Natalya German, who sang several romances written by members of the Romanov dynasty at the concert, said she was touched to be part of the project. 
“I was amazed by the poetry, as well as by the music: In one romance, a prince dreams of building a beautiful house — made of sapphires and peacock feathers — on an island for his beloved,” German said. “This romance conveys a tenderness that is unthinkable today, but it is what all women want to experience. I envied the woman to whom such romantic verse was dedicated, and I was honored to be able to sing it to Russian listeners, who had never heard it before.”
The Cappella will perform the program in Russian cities and towns including Moscow in 2012 during a series of closed charitable concerts, according to Golikov. In 2013, the program will be played for general audiences. A CD recording of the works will also be made during the course of the next three years.

TITLE: Culture lessons
AUTHOR: By Tatyana Sochiva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As the festive season gets underway, the city’s museums are preparing a host of seasonal exhibits, including special programs and excursions aimed at younger visitors.
The State History of Religion Museum is just one of many cultural institutions to launch a seasonal schedule of events in honor of the holidays, with an exhibit titled “Birds, Animals and People Are Happy: Christmas and New Year in the East and West.” 
The exhibit features winter holiday customs from around the world, with a focus on the role of animals in holiday culture. This theme poses a wide array of interesting questions. What do animals symbolize? Have opinions and attitudes toward them changed over Russian history? How does a legend explain the sequence in which animals were assigned to the Chinese calendar?
The fundamental differences between the Christmas and New Year celebrations are made clear by the museum, which offers visitors a choice: Those who want to learn more about New Year should visit the rooms devoted to Japan, China, India and other countries. Information about Christmas, on the other hand, can be found only in the rooms devoted to Catholicism and Orthodoxy. 
In addition, there is a temporary exhibit devoted to Italian Art from the 14th through 20th centuries, which also links back to the museum’s other exhibits, since the primary subjects in Italian painting and sculpture are Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
The museum offers guided Christmas and New Year tours of both permanent and temporary exhibitions.
For kids from five to 13 years old, Christmas tours include questions and riddles about the journey of the Magi as they search for Jesus Christ in different lands. Guides also talk with kids about the significance of the Christmas tree, the nativity scene and other symbols and traditions. 
The cognitive journey for little ones ends with an interactive show or a craft project.

<i>The mini exhibit “Birds, Animals and People Are Happy: Christmas and New Year in the East and West” is currently on show at the State Museum of the History of Religion, 14 Pochtamtskaya Ulitsa. M. Gostiny Dvor, Sennaya Plochshad. Tel. 315 3080. www.gmir.ru.</i> 

<i>The “Journey to Christmas” children’s festive program runs through Jan. 6.</i>

TITLE: Big screen for little guys
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A feature-length prequel to Smeshariki, one of Russia’s most popular modern cartoon series, will be released across the country Thursday.
The 90-minute 3D cartoon called “Smeshariki. Nachalo.” (Smeshariki. The Beginning) is an adventure story about the characters loved both by children and adults finding themselves in a modern metropolis as superheroes.
“This is the first full length animated film about Smeshariki, where we wanted to show the prehistory of the Smeshariki series,” Denis Chernov, director of the new film, said at a press conference last week. 
Chernov said Smeshariki’s producers had been planning to make a feature-length film for quite some time, “because there should be development in any project.”  
The plans were realized at the company’s headquarters in St. Petersburg with the help of film director and producer Timur Bekmambetov, who has been responsible for a string of action movies. It was his first foray into the field of animated film.
Ilya Popov, general producer of the Riki production company that is in charge of Smeshariki, said the company plans to show the new film beyond Russian-speaking countries.
“First we’ll show it in Russia and CIS countries, but then we’ll also work on an international version of the project. We’ll probably need to adjust some parts of the cartoon to make it more understandable for, let’s say, American culture,” Popov said. 
Vladimir Postnikov, the actor who provides the voice for one of the series’ main characters — Hoggs the Hedgehog — said he was glad that the cartoon had turned out to be “a Russian-style animated film.”
Chernov said that both the Smeshariki series and the feature-length film codify a lot of additional information, making them interesting for both children and adults.
Nikolai Kozlovsky, 23, an engineer who attended a closed showing of the new film, said the movie was obviously aimed at adult audiences as well as at children.
“This film conveys basic morals via a clear, understandable language,” Kozlovsky said.
Vlad Lisovets, 32, a copy-writer, said he felt there was “a certain aggravation of the atmosphere in the middle part of the cartoon.”
Many members of the preview audience commented on the difference between the parts of the film, saying that the beginning and end of the movie were in Smeshariki’s usual light-hearted and humorous style, while the middle part was more of an action story intensified with gloomy colors unusual for the series.
Some child experts said that the length of the film, its intense action part and 3D format could make it difficult for small children to watch. 
The Smeshariki series that was launched in St. Petersburg in 2003 stars a family of unusual and colorful personalities: Krosh the Rabbit, Hoggs the Hedgehog, Rammy the Sheep (Barash), Sweeny the Piglet (Nyusha), Mr. Crow (Kar Karych) and others.
The Smeshariki characters always get into amusing predicaments when they try to solve their problems, and the solutions generally teach them about friendship and helping one another.

TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Few local rock musicians were in the crowd during the recent anti-electoral fraud rallies in St. Petersburg, but the situation may change this Saturday when a concert/rally is planned to take place in the city.
The event, due to be held at 2 p.m. on Ploshchad Sakharova near St. Petersburg State University, will feature <b>Televizor</b>, organizer Olga Kurnosova said Tuesday.
When the event’s authorization was received Tuesday, the rest of the lineup was not yet set.
<b>Yury Shevchuk</b> was not present at the St. Petersburg rally as his band DDT is now on tour, but he did attend a smaller protest in Nizhny Novgorod.
Speaking there at the unauthorized rally organized by the Communist Party, Shevchuk said he was not associated with any political party, the Agency of Political News (APN) reported.
“But one has to be a human being first and foremost, rather than part of a herd or electorate,” he said at the rally.
“Civil society is not an easy thing. One has to be capable of expressing one’s opinion for it to be formed once and for all. That’s why I am in a place where people are defending their position.”
Televizor’s Mikhail Borzykin and SP Babai’s Mikhail Novitsky performed at the Dec. 10 rally, and Zorge frontman Yevgeny Fyodorov said on Facebook he had also attended the rally. Zemfira and Alisa’s Konstantin Kinchev have reportedly spoken out against electoral fraud at their concerts.
But the whereabouts of the rest of the musicians — for instance, those who recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Leningrad Rock Club with a six-hour concert — remain unknown.
The strangest news concerns Akvarium’s <b>Boris Grebenshchikov</b>, whose meeting with students was canceled at St. Petersburg State University.
According to all the media sources that reported the story, the development suggested that the university canceled the event not so as not to distract students from upcoming exams — the official reason given — but in reality so as not to let Grebenshchikov make any oppositional statements ahead of the planned anti-fraud rally in Moscow.
This seems unlikely, as Grebenshchikov is known for accepting medals from the Kremlin, being friends with Russia’s gray cardinal Vladislav Surkov and having made pro-Putin-statements during the past decade.
But who knows? <b>Paul McCartney</b>, who was happy to sing “Hey Jude” to Putin at the Kremlin in 2003, reportedly refused to meet anybody from the Kremlin during a recent visit to Moscow, wishing Russians success in fighting electoral fraud in a video address, instead.

TITLE: Wake-up call
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Vasily Shumov, singer and guitarist with the reformed veteran Moscow band Center, which has recently come up with a new album examining and dissecting Putinism, is determined to hold a concert-cum-exhibition in defense of Russian political prisoners — even if the planned show due last Saturday was abruptly shut down.
Last week, the Moscow venue Flacon canceled the event two days before the planned date — in spite of preliminary agreements — giving a children’s event due to be held the same day as the reason. Shumov is convinced that the cancelation came after a call from the authorities, which is a typical story in Russia today. The event is now planned to be held at Proekt_Fabrika in Moscow on Sunday.
Shumov said that he came up with the idea of the event, titled “Freedom of Choice,” when hundreds were arrested in Moscow on Dec. 5 and 6 during the spontaneous protests against electoral fraud at the State Duma elections.
“I participated with my photography works in an exhibition called ‘Postcards from Artists’ at a museum in Moscow with around 40 other artists, and all the people who came to the opening on Dec. 7 were discussing these mass arrests — more than a thousand were arrested during the protests,” Shumov said, speaking on Skype from Moscow on Sunday.
“People were given 15 days in prison for protesting. Moreover, I know many of these people personally. I know [oppositional activist] Alexei Navalny and [contemporary artist] Pyotr Verzilov. With Verzilov, I have even done some artistic and civic projects. I felt I had to stand up for my friends.”
Later on, the idea expanded to include people such as Sergei Mokhnatkin, who was charged with beating a policeman during a peaceful Strategy 31 rally in Moscow and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison last year, and Taisia Osipova, a political activist held in a pre-trial detention center in Smolensk on drug charges since Nov. 2010.
Rights activists and opposition insist the charges are fake and consider Mokhnatkin and Osipova to be political prisoners.
“I am fiercely indignant about the authorities holding fake elections,” Shumov said.
“I think it was the biggest fraud in our history that was exposed and documented — all these ‘carousels’ [of people voting several times], ballot-stuffing and simply rewriting of the official result protocols. People were absolutely outraged by this, and for that outrage they were hauled off to prison. 
“That was my initial impulse. But then the guys who were sentenced to 15 days asked me not to forget about people who have been arrested at different times and on different grounds: Mokhnatkin, Osipova or Matvei Krylov, who was put in prison for throwing water on a prosecutor. There are political prisoners in Russia, it’s a fact, and they emerged under Putin.”
Shumov sees the authorities ignoring the constitution as the root of all the evil in Russia today.
“I see following the constitution as the only way out of the situation,” Shumov said.
“Under Putin, the constitution has become an empty document that has no real effect in real life. It has become what it was in the U.S.S.R. When it says that people have the right to assembly, in real life they have no right to assembly. 
“The constitution says that censorship is forbidden, but censorship is flourishing in the media, on central television channels. It says that the authorities should be changeable, that a person has the right to elect and be elected. Those points are all violated too. 
“In principle, it’s total constitutional nihilism, which formed under Putin — that’s where it all comes from. Under the pretext of fighting extremism, they introduced Article 282, but it’s so unprincipled that it can be used to put any person in prison for any utterance. As soon as people stop allowing these ‘comrades’ to violate the constitution, that’s when they will disappear. That’s what happened in Moscow on Dec. 10.”
On Dec. 10, tens of thousands came to protest electoral fraud on Bolotnaya Ploshchad in Moscow, contributing to the biggest protest of Putin’s era.
“I was walking to the site from far away — and I haven’t seen such a huge number of people in all my life,” Shumov said.
“I was born in this city, I’ve seen all sorts of things, but I haven’t seen such a flow of silent people. When I came there, I couldn’t get closer because of the density of the crowd. I couldn’t hear the speeches, I heard some noise, but couldn’t discern the words, because I was too far from the stage. 
“There were a huge number of people there! It was not five or seven thousand; it was 100,000 or even more. They were not political activists, it was ordinary Muscovites and visitors. It was truly a people’s rally.”
Strikingly, veteran rock musicians who recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Leningrad Rock Club — whose songs and uncompromising stance were thought to have helped put an end to the Soviet regime — mostly remained silent, some choosing to speak about “artistic freedom” that they enjoyed and “staying out of politics.”
“As experience showed, to my great regret, these people turned to be — as a Russian expression puts it — bedbugs in a couch,” Shumov said.
“They are either cowards, or yes-men, or simply don’t give a damn about anything. The bedbugs that crawl out only to get their pay and then go back into their bedbug nest. That’s all.”
Shumov said the future of music lies with activist rock.
“In the late 2000s, a new direction emerged — and continues to emerge — that didn’t exist before: Activist rock or, as I call it, ‘act rock,’” he said.
“I don’t think it’ll go away, it’s only emerging at the moment. It’s very satisfying after the totally useless 2000s, when so-called ‘club parties’ were the only entertainment. I think it will develop, and that this is the music and art that our time will be judged by.”
Center’s new album is called “Mne Khorosho, Chast 1” (I Feel Good, Part 1), the title referring to the media model of “positive mentality.” 
“The ‘I-feel-good’ state that most of our citizens are in is a dangerous illusion, a syndrome of spiritual collapse,” Shumov explains in notes to the album. 
“Imposed by the media, ‘positive outlook’ has led to society having kept away from civic activities and turned into a herd that is easy to manipulate.”
Speaking on Sunday, Shumov said that Center has been labeled ‘Russian rock’s most conceptual band,’ and a concept is present in this album as well. 
“The idea is the following: The album will consist of two parts. Part 1, which is already out, is what I call ‘activist rock,’ or ‘act rock,’ — it’s protest songs, social commentaries and political satire, created in the style in which I write, because I have developed a certain style throughout the years.”
The album’s artwork contains a series of “mental health tests,” black-and-white drawings that Shumov urges readers to interpret in detail, publishing selected answers on Center’s web site at www.centromania.com.
“All this has an artistic conceptual point, but it also has a clearly cut protest point. These songs that I wrote in the past six months are what I want to say today — of course, with an artistic method,” Shumov said.
“When after some time somebody will ask, ‘What did you do to help improve the situation, instead of sitting on your hands?’ I’ll always say, ‘We did this album.’”
“Because of course I can go to rallies, I can organize a concert, I can support the guys and demand freedom for political prisoners, but that’s all rhetoric. 
“But what’s important is action. This album is action.”
According to Shumov, the release date of the album was deliberately chosen for late last month — shortly before the Dec. 4 State Duma elections.
“Nobody knew anything then yet, nobody knew the scale of the falsifications, although they were expected,” Shumov said.
“What was not expected was that such a large number of people would become observers and that the Internet, iPhones and cheap cameras have changed the situation; it’s become impossible to conceal the falsifications. It was a huge crime that the state involved young people, students, teachers, principals and some doctors in — all these people were drawn by the state into a criminal offense.”
According to Shumov’s plan, “I Feel Good, Part 2” was due to come out shortly ahead the presidential elections.
“All the songs have already been written,” he said.
“It will be ‘I Feel Good’ from the point of view of everyday life. It’s these bedbugs in a couch — the people who stay at home drinking, who are totally apathetic, who are busy with their own small personal problems. If Part 1 is about political protest and social activities, that’s the opposite of modern Russian life.”
However, the State Duma electoral fraud could affect the album’s release date.
“I don’t recognize these elections,” Shumov said.
“If these elections were fake, illegal, then the presidential elections won’t exist for me until they deal with the fraud in a fair way. Maybe we’ll reschedule the release date.”

<i>Mne Khorosho, Chast 1 (I Feel Good, Part 1) by Center is out now on Soyuz record label. The “Freedom of Choice” concert and exhibition in defense of Russian political prisoners is planned to be held at 5 p.m. on Sunday at Proekt_Fabrika in Moscow.</i>

TITLE: THE DISH: Rada & K Vegetarian Establishment
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>Vegan in furs</b>
Of all the things one might expect to find in a vegetarian caf&#233; (a green color scheme, ethno music, wait staff with dreads, perhaps), a patron in a fur coat is probably not on most people’s list, even in Russia. It is perhaps credit to the welcoming atmosphere of Rada & K Vegetarian Establishment that even those blissfully indifferent to animal rights, such as the diner described above, feel at home here.
There are plenty more surprises in store at Rada & K, which opened at the end of the summer. The first is the cafe’s prices, which are barely above those of a stolovaya, or canteen. True, the setup is that of a stolovaya, with diners lining up to choose their food from a long metal counter. But it’s an upscale kind of a canteen, with sparkling floors and tables and funky crockery and cutlery. And if the typical clientele of the city’s canteens are mature office workers and corpulent traffic cops, then the crowd at Rada & K is young and hip. The chilled-out, friendly atmosphere means solitary diners will not feel out of place. The one long room is divided into three seating sections, with raised counters and stools at the windows providing ample people-watching opportunities. 
Other aspects are not so surprising: The obligatory dreadlocked waitresses are indeed present, along with green walls and ethno music complete with tambourines (though this later relented into more recognizable yet no less chilled-out tracks by Coldplay and Air). To erase any remaining doubt as to just what kind of place this is, the phrase “Peace to the World” is stenciled on the walls in different languages.
Despite being comfortingly familiar, Rada & K fills a niche on the scant local vegetarian scene. The inexpensive Troitsky Most chain outlets are dated and as a rule, tiny, while other more spacious veggie establishments such as the Idiot and Botanika cafes are relatively pricey. Even the prices of the freshly squeezed juices at Rada & K put other city cafes to shame: An amazingly energizing mixed citrus fruit drink costs just 65 rubles ($2), while a dreamily smooth lassi made using homemade yoghurt — just as impressive — costs a bargainous 45 rubles ($1.40). An intriguing-sounding apple milkshake (105 rubles, $3.25) was sadly unavailable.
Rada & K offers both vegetarian and vegan dishes (the latter clearly marked) from Eastern Europe and India. Of the former category, salad Olivier (70 rubles, $2.20) was very chilled. A plus point was its light, homemade dressing, while the scarily realistic vegetarian sausage it contained was not quite such an unqualified success. Other Russian dishes available include a vegetarian version of classic borshch soup and vegan plov, both priced at 50 rubles ($1.55).
The Indian dishes were far more impressive: Dal soup (70 rubles) was thick, salty, bursting with flavor and cumin seeds, and agreeably spicy by local norms. Guaranga (75 rubles $2.30), a bright yellow dish consisting of potato slices baked in cottage cheese with turmeric, was also fiendishly good.
From the small selection of freshly baked breads and pastries, the apple samosa (50 rubles) was a novel incarnation of the usually savory dish. Filled with apple puree instead of the traditional mixture of potatoes, peas and spices, the pastry was flavored with aniseed and certainly represented a departure from American-style apple pie and Russian pirozhki.
Excellent-value, unusual dishes in a friendly setting are not all that Rada & K has up its sleeve, however. Next door, the Adi store sells Indian spices and pulses and ingredients for making Chinese, Korean, Thai and Japanese dishes, as well vegetarian meat-substitute products, for those inspired by Rada & K to go home and attempt to recreate environmentally friendly masterpieces. The less ambitious or skilled in the culinary arts can take advantage of the caf&#233;’s takeaway and delivery service.
In a final act of karma, the cafe offers a 10-percent discount on its already outrageously fair prices to students and pensioners. Really, what more could you want?

TITLE: Frequent Oil Spills Wreak Devastation on Russia
AUTHOR: By Natalya Vasilyeva
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: USINSK — On the bright yellow tundra outside this oil town near the Arctic Circle, a pitch-black pool of crude stretches toward the horizon. The source: A decommissioned well whose rusty screws ooze with oil, viscous like jam.
This is the face of Russia’s oil country, a sprawling, inhospitable zone that experts say represents the world’s worst ecological oil catastrophe.
Environmentalists estimate at least 1 percent of Russia’s annual oil production, or 5 million tons, is spilled every year. That is equivalent to one Deepwater Horizon-scale leak about every two months. Crumbling infrastructure and a harsh climate combine to spell disaster in the world’s largest oil producer, responsible for 13 percent of global output.
Oil, stubbornly seeping through rusty pipelines and old wells, contaminates soil, kills all plants that grow on it and destroys habitats for mammals and birds. Half a million tons every year get into rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean, the government says, upsetting the delicate environmental balance in those waters.
It’s part of a legacy of environmental tragedy that has plagued Russia and the countries of its former Soviet empire for decades, from the nuclear horrors of Chernobyl in Ukraine to lethal chemical waste in the Russian city of Dzerzhinsk and paper mill pollution seeping into Siberia’s Lake Baikal, which holds one-fifth of the world’s supply of fresh water.
Oil spills in Russia are less dramatic than disasters in the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea, more the result of a drip-drip of leaked crude than a sudden explosion. But they’re more numerous than in any other oil-producing nation including insurgency-hit Nigeria, and combined they spill far more than anywhere else in the world, scientists say.
“Oil and oil products get spilled literally every day,” said Dr. Grigory Barenboim, senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Water Problems.
No hard figures on the scope of oil spills in Russia are available, but Greenpeace estimates that at least 5 million tons leak every year in a country producing about 500 million tons a year.
Dr. Irina Ivshina, of the government-financed Institute of the Environment and Genetics of Microorganisms, supports the 5 million ton estimate, as does the World Wildlife Fund.
The figure is derived from two sources: Russian state-funded research that shows 10-15 percent of Russian oil leakage enters rivers; and a 2010 report commissioned by the Natural Resources Ministry that shows nearly 500,000 tons slips into northern Russian rivers every year and flow into the Arctic.
The estimate is considered conservative: The Russian Economic Development Ministry in a report last year estimated spills at up to 20 million tons per year.
That astonishing number, for which the ministry offered no elaboration, appears to be based partly on the fact that most small leaks in Russia go unreported. Under Russian law, leaks of less than 8 tons are classified only as “incidents” and carry no penalties.
Russian oil spills also elude detection because most happen in the vast swaths of unpopulated tundra and conifer forest in the north, caused either by ruptured pipes or leakage from decommissioned wells.
Weather conditions in most oil provinces are brutal, with temperatures routinely dropping below minus 40 degrees Celsius in winter. That makes pipelines brittle and prone to rupture unless they are regularly replaced and their condition monitored.
Asked by The Associated Press to comment, the Natural Resources Ministry and the Energy Ministry said they have no data on oil spills and referred to the other ministry for further inquiries.
Even counting only the 500,000 tons officially reported to be leaking into northern rivers every year, Russia is by far the worst oil polluter in the world.
Nigeria, which produces one-fifth as much oil as Russia, logged 110,000 tons spilled in 2009, much of that due to rebel attacks on pipelines.
The U.S., the world’s third-largest oil producer, logged 341 pipeline ruptures in 2010 — compared to Russia’s 18,000 — with 17,600 tons of oil leaking as a result, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Spills have averaged 14,900 tons a year between 2001 and 2010.
Canada, which produces oil in weather conditions as harsh as Russia’s, does not see anything near Russia’s scale of disaster. Eleven pipeline accidents were reported to Canada’s Transport Safety Board last year, while media reports of leaks, ranging from sizable spills to a tiny leak in a farmer’s backyard, come to a total of 7,700 tons a year.
In Norway, Russia’s northwestern oil neighbor, spills amounted to some 3,000 tons a year in the past few years, said Hanne Marie Oeren, head of the oil and gas section at Norway’s Climate and Pollution Agency.
Now that Russian companies are moving to the Arctic to tap vast but hard-to-get oil and gas riches, scientists voice concerns that Russia’s outdated technologies and shoddy safety record make for a potential environmental calamity there.
Gazpromneft, an oil subsidiary of the gas giant Gazprom, is preparing to drill for oil in the Arctic’s Pechora Sea, even as environmentalists complain that the drilling platform is outdated and the company is not ready to deal with potential accidents.
Government scientists acknowledge that Russia does not currently have the required technology to develop Arctic fields but say it will be years before the country actually starts drilling.
“We must start the work now, do the exploration and develop the technology so that we would be able to ... start pumping oil from the Arctic in the middle of this century,” Alexei Kontorovich, chairman of the council on geology, oil and gas fields at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told a recent news conference.
The same academy’s Barenboim said, however, that Russian technology is developing too slowly to make it a safe bet for Arctic exploration.
“Over the past years, environmental risks have increased more sharply compared to how far our technologies, funds, equipment and skills to deal with them have advanced,” he said.
In 1994, the republic of Komi, where Usinsk lies 60 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, became the scene of Russia’s largest oil spill when an estimated 100,000 tons splashed from an aging pipeline.
It killed plants and animals, and polluted up to 40 kilometers of two local rivers, killing thousands of fish. In villages most affected, respiratory diseases rose by some 28 percent in the year following the leak.
Seen from a helicopter, the oil production area is dotted with pitch-black ponds. Fresh leaks are easy to find once you step into the tundra north of Usinsk. To spot a leak, find a dying tree. Fir trees with drooping gray, dry branches look as though scorched by a wildfire. They are growing in soil polluted by oil.
Usinsk spokeswoman Tatyana Khimichuk said the city administration had no powers to influence oil company operations.
“Everything that happens at the oil fields is Lukoil’s responsibility,” she said, referring to Russia’s second largest oil company, which owns a network of pipelines in the region.
Komi’s environmental protection officials also blamed oil companies. The local prosecutor’s office said in a report this year that the main problem is “that companies that extract hydrocarbons focus on making profits rather than how to use the resources rationally.”
Valery Bratenkov works as a foreman at oil fields outside Usinsk.
After hours, he is with a local environmental group. Bratenkov used to point out to his Lukoil bosses that oil spills routinely happen under their noses and asked them to repair the pipelines. “They were offended and said that costs too much money,” he said.
Activists like Bratenkov find it hard if not impossible to hold authorities to account in the area since some 90 percent of the local population comprises oil workers and their families who have moved from other regions of Russia, and depend on the industry for their livelihood.
Representatives of Lukoil denied claims that they try to conceal spills and leaks, and said that no more than 2.7 tons leaked last year from its production areas in Komi.
Ivan Blokov, campaign director at Greenpeace Russia, who studies oil spills, said the situation in Komi is replicated across Russia’s oil-producing regions, which stretch from the Black Sea in the southwest to the Chinese border in Russia’s Far East.
“It is happening everywhere,” Blokov said. “It’s typical of any oil field in Russia. The system is old and it is not being replaced in time by any oil company in the country.”
What also worries scientists and environmentalists is that oil spills are not confined to abandoned or aging fields. Alarmingly, accidents happen at brand new pipelines, said Barenboim.
At least 400 tons leaked from a new pipeline in two separate accidents in Russia’s Far East last year, according to media reports and oil companies. Transneft’s pipeline that brings Russian oil from Eastern Siberia to China was put into operation just months before the two spills happened.
The oil industry in Komi has been sapping nature for decades, killing or forcing out reindeer and fish. Locals like the 63-year-old Bratenkov are afraid that when big oil leaves, there will be only poisoned terrain left in its wake.
“Fishing, hunting — it’s all gone,” Bratenkov said.

<i>Bjoern H. Amland contributed to this report from Oslo, Norway.</i>