SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1691 (2), Wednesday, January 18, 2012
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TITLE: Believers to Take the Plunge
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Many Russians will throw themselves into freezing rivers and lakes on Thursday as the country’s Orthodox Church prepares to celebrate Epiphany, which marks the baptism of Jesus Christ by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. In the West, this holiday is celebrated on Jan. 6 and focuses more on the coming of the Magi to see the baby Jesus, but the Russian Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar, according to which the feast date falls on Jan 19.
On this day, honoring an old Russian tradition, believers and enthusiasts jump into holes carved in the ice — usually made in the form of a cross — on lakes, rivers and other bodies of water. According to the custom, a priest blesses the water and rescue teams stand by to monitor the bathers. In spite of the wintry weather, there is always a great number of believers prepared to take part in the ice dipping. Many believe that the temperature plummets every winter on Epiphany, leading to the term “Epiphany frosts.” Weather forecasters however, deny that such a phenomenon exists.
“Nature has no reason to do this,” said Alexander Kolesov, the chief weather forecaster at the St. Petersburg Hydrometeorological Center. “After researching the weather on Epiphany during the last 10 years, we can note severe frosts on Epiphany only in 2006 — at minus 17 degrees Celsius — and in 2010 when it was minus 15. In 2003, for example, it was plus 2 and in 2008, about zero. In other years, the negative temperatures have been insignificant and shouldn’t be regarded as a cold snap,” he added.
According to forecasts, this year the weather also promises to stay relatively mild.
“We predict a temperature of between minus 4 and 6 in the city, and down to minus 10 in the Leningrad Oblast,” said Kolesov. “Of course, we can hardly call them ‘Epiphany frosts,’ but everything depends on the cloud cover. There could be some changes.”
Some Orthodox Christians, however, are already preparing to go for a dip. According to the tradition, plunging into the icy-cold water symbolizes the washing away of sins. The Orthodox Church itself, however, does not link jumping through the ice with church customs. This tradition comes from pagan times, and is only remotely associated with Christianity.
“It’s like baking pancakes at Maslenitsa (Shrovetide),” said Konstantin Parkhomenko, a priest at St. Petersburg’s Svyato-Troitsky Izmailovsky Cathedral. “It’s unusual and tasty, but is only marginally related to religion. Many people mistake these old Russian traditions for part of the faith, as the church isn’t against them, because they don’t contradict the faith — these customs are regarded as something important.”
“When someone asks me whether or not I bless the jumping into freezing water at Epiphany, I answer: If people have the health and desire to do so in honor of God, please, go ahead. But on the condition that you first do his duty — attend church, go to confession and take communion,” he said.
“I believe the struggle with such Russian folk traditions to be extreme. If these customs do not damage one’s health but — quite the opposite — help the body to be healthy, psychologically ‘restart,’ bring people together, introduce older customs to the population and allow people to have an active and healthy rest, then we can only welcome them,” said Parkhomenko.
For just such reasons, Mikhail Yefremov has taken part in the Epiphany ritual for the past three years. This year, he plans to make it a fourth. His story started when late in the evening four years ago he visited his friends at a motorcycle club without even thinking about the fact that it was Epiphany.
“One of my friends — he was in his forties — invited me to join them and jump into the ice hole. At first, I thought it wasn’t such a good idea considering it was minus 10 outside and I didn’t have anything like a towel or slippers with me. But finally they convinced me, and we went to the Peter and Paul Fortress where the ice hole was,” said Yefremov.
“I remember I had to stand in line for about 20 minutes to jump into the water and I just wanted to dive in as soon as possible and put my clothes back on. Even my eyes froze, I tried to blink but nothing happened. But when you plunge in and then get out of the ice hole, you don’t feel anything. The main sensation comes five minutes later. You feel all hot inside — you’re not even in a hurry to get dressed. You feel fresh and light as if you’ve just had a bath,” he said.
“For me the experience isn’t so closely related to religious reasons — it’s mostly connected to the adrenalin I get from jumping into the freezing water and good health that it brings.”
Yefremov once jumped in the water when it was minus 25 degrees, and last year he did it outside the city, in a settlement in the Leningrad Oblast. There a local priest blessed the water. About 80 to 100 participants — parishioners from the local church, along with their friends and acquaintances — take part annually.
“The priest first spoke about this celebration, about the roots of this custom and the Jordan River. Then he blessed the water and we jumped in three times,” said Yefremov.
Taking the plunge outside the city as Yefremov does is safer than doing so in bodies of water in St. Petersburg, as the Neva and its tributaries are dirty and unsafe, according to Greenpeace specialists.
“The pollution problem has not yet been solved, therefore those who choose to bathe in St. Petersburg waters are at risk of catching infectious and intestinal diseases,” said Maria Musatova, press officer for Greenpeace in St. Petersburg. “Moreover, chemical pollution from factories also adds toxins to the water. We monitor the concentration of toxins, and the amount in the water is hundreds and thousands of times what it should be,” she said.
“People can catch a virus and this can have a harmful and toxic influence on the skin and inner organs that may even appear later,” she said.
“Greenpeace recommends taking the plunge outside St. Petersburg in closed bodies of water,” said Musatova.
Despite the warnings, people continue to dive into icy waters on Epiphany and are afraid neither of polluted water nor of catching a cold.
“This is because you know that it’s Epiphany and the water is holy, and you’re sure you won’t catch a disease,” said Yefremov.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Cruisers Come Home
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Thirty-two tourists from St. Petersburg were on board the Italian passenger cruise liner Costa Concordia, which sank last week, and will return home this week, Fontanka reported. Seventeen returned home Monday evening and the rest were due to return home Tuesday.
None of the St. Petersburg residents suffered any injuries during the incident, Interfax reported.
Costa Concordia, which had more than 4,000 passengers on board, including 111 Russian citizens, ran aground and then sank close to Giglio Island in Italy on Friday night.
As of Tuesday at least six fatalities had been recorded, with 29 still missing and about 70 people having suffered injuries.
Manilova Job Swap
MOSCOW (SPT) — Alla Manilova, former deputy governor of St. Petersburg and major PR representative for ex-governor Valentina Matviyenko, may take up a position in the federal government managing issues related to culture, Kommersant daily reported Monday.
“The new appointment of former ‘ideological’ deputy governor to one of the positions in Vladimir Putin’s administration is expected this week,” the newspaper said.
Another Kommersant source said that Manilova might take up a high position in the Russian Ministry of Culture — the position that current minister Alexander Avdeyev has promised to leave after the presidential elections.
“It is possible that before that time Manilova will serve as an advisor to the prime minister during the pre-election campaign,” Kommersant wrote.
Manilova lost her position as deputy governor when St. Petersburg’s new governor Georgy Poltavchenko became head of the city administration.
Train to Tallinn
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A direct train connecting St. Petersburg and the Estonian capital Tallinn is planned to be launched in May.
The train will have both first- and second-class cars. The number of seats on the train will total 200 and it may increase to 400 seats in the future.
A train service used to operate between the two cities, but stopped running several years ago. There are currently several daily buses between the two cities, as well as flights.
Galeria on the Market
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Morgan Stanley financial services firm plans to buy the city’s Galeria shopping and entertainment center from Meridian Capital.
The cost of the retail complex is valued at $1 billion, and the deal is expected to close before the end of the month, Interfax reported.
Galeria was commissioned by Briz construction company at the end of 2010. More than $500 million was invested into the project.
Briz was then owned by Meridian Capital (U.K.)
The area of Galeria totals 192,000 square meters. In addition to stores, the shopping center is home to a movie theater, a bowling alley, restaurants and entertainment areas for children.
Plans for New Holland
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko has expressed an interest in having a world class cultural center designed and located on the city’s New Holland Island, Interfax reported.
After visiting the island, Poltavchenko said that after the area’s reconstruction, he didn’t want it to be overloaded with entertainment facilities.
“It’s a unique object; there isn’t anything like it in the world. Therefore it would be good to see a great world class cultural center there. It should have fewer entertainment venues, offices and restaurants and more venues for high culture,” Poltavchenko said.
New Holland Development Company, which is affiliated with Roman Abramovich’s Millhouse investment company, won the contest to realize the investment project on the island. The company plans to invest 12 billion rubles ($381 million) into the project, with plans to build residential buildings, exhibition halls, a hotel and offices.
Ford Production Up
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Ford Motor Company plant located outside St. Petersburg in the Leningrad Oblast plans to increase production by 20 percent in 2012.
It intends to produce 119,000 cars in 2012 compared to the 99,000 cars produced last year, Interfax reported.
Due to high Ford Focus and Mondeo sales, the plant will probably need to increase production even more, plant representatives said.
Hunger Strike Over
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Two activists from the city’s Heineken brewery plant trade union ended their hunger strike last week, Interfax reported.
The activists, Vitaly Morozov and Sergei Kolegov, ended the strike after an agreement was reached between the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Trade Union Federation, the city’s Automobile Industry Trade Union and plant administrators.
Heineken’s trade union leaders began the hunger strike to protest the violation of their labor rights.
TITLE: City Refuses to Approve Commemorative Rally
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The city authorities have refused to authorize an annual anti-fascist march and rally in memory of the slain anti-fascists Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova due to be held on Thursday, Jan. 19, allowing only a “picket” on the largely deserted Ploshchad Sakharova on Vasilyevsky Island.
Human rights lawyer Markelov and journalist Baburova were shot dead in downtown Moscow on Jan. 19, 2009, and the date has been marked with vigils and rallies across Russia since then. Other anti-fascists, such as Nikolai Girenko, Timur Kacharava, Ivan Khutorskoi and Alexander Ryukhin, who were also killed by neo-Nazis, are commemorated too.
Stefania Kulayeva, the program director of Memorial Anti-Discrimination Center, said City Hall refused to issue a permit on purely technical grounds, just as it did last year.
According to the law on public assemblies, applications must be submitted to the authorities from 15 to 10 days before the event, but because of New Year and Christmas celebrations, City Hall was closed from Jan. 1 through Jan. 9.
Kulayeva said she applied on Jan. 10, the first working day of 2012, but received a refusal the following morning on the grounds that the application was too late. Last year, she said she applied on Dec. 31, just before the holidays, and a refusal was issued on the grounds that the submission had been made too early.
She pointed out that the Jan. 19 march in Moscow has been authorized. “We didn’t choose this date, they could have issued a permit, especially if they did not need more than one day to give us a refusal,” she said.
Nevertheless, Kulayeva said the protesters are planning to gather at 6 p.m. near Gorkovskaya metro, the closest station to Ploshchad Sakharova, and walk together to the site for security reasons, as threats against participants have appeared on neo-Nazi web sites. The event, which will feature a slide show, will be held at 7 p.m.
Under Russian law, picketing is defined as a form of stationary public assembly that does not use sound amplifying equipment. Only posters and other forms of visual agitation are allowed.
Kulayeva said that she received multiple phone calls from City Hall officials and police officers Tuesday, who warned her against holding an unauthorized march.
“It appears that the commemoration of human right activists and anti-fascists such as Markelov is highly undesirable for the authorities,” she said.
Markelov, 34, and Baburova, 25, were shot and killed by a masked man in downtown Moscow after they left a press conference at the Independent Press Center.
Despite international outcry over the killings, neither Prime Minister Vladimir Putin nor President Dmitry Medvedev reacted or presented their condolences to the families of the slain activists.
Interfax quoted a Foreign Ministry official who said that the murders were “artificially politicized and used, with dishonest intentions, to discredit Russia.”
In November 2009, Nikolai Tikhonov and his partner Yevgeniya Khasis, described as extreme nationalists, were arrested in Moscow and charged with the double murder. The investigators said the FN/Browning M1910 semi-automatic pistol that was used in the double murder was found in their apartment during a search.
In May 2011, Tikhonov was sentenced to life imprisonment, while Khasis as an accomplice was sentenced to 18 years in a penal colony.
According to the January 19 Committee in Moscow, commemorative events for Baburova and Markelov will be held in 20 Russian cities, including Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Petrozavodsk, Ufa and Omsk, as well as in Ukrainian cities and in Berlin and Paris.
TITLE: Petersburg Population on the Up
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s population has almost returned to the figure of five million people, which it reached just before the start of perestroika in 1985 before shrinking to 4.25 million people during the mass exodus of locals at the height of desperate times during the economic reforms of the 1990s.
At the start of this year, the city’s population exceeded 4.87 million people, and the face of St. Petersburg is becoming very different from its perestroika version. The population growth is mainly owing to ever-increasing immigration. The number of migrants in the city has swelled to 800,000 people, with Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan providing most of the newcomers. The immigrants — mostly young and middle-aged men — are active both in starting families with local residents and in bringing their relatives over to St. Petersburg.
“One important trend is the rapidly growing numbers of births among migrant women: In 2011, every fourth child born in the city was born into a family of migrants,” said Alexander Rzhanenkov, head of City Hall’s Welfare and Social Care Policies Committee, speaking at a news conference hosted by RIA Novosti on Monday. “By comparison, in 2008, migrant women were responsible for less than 20 percent of all births.”
In total, 57,538 children were born in the city last year, an impressive hike from 47,967 births in 2008.
After the so-called “three dark years of the St. Petersburg demographic” — 1992, 1993 and 1994 — when St. Petersburg’s population dwindled by hundreds of thousands of people, the population finally began to recover in 2004, when the city began to welcome migrants from the less prosperous CIS countries.
The average age of local mothers has increased dramatically.
“If five years ago, most new mothers were aged between 20 and 24, these days, the average age of women giving birth is from 26 to 31,” Rzhanenkov said. “It is no longer rare for a 40-year-old woman to give birth to a child, and such births typically go well for both the mother and the baby.”
According to Irina Yeliseyeva, director of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the trend of women postponing having children looks set to continue.
“People are much more individualistic today than they were 20 years ago,” Yeliseyeva said. “The number of those who make the decision not to have children altogether has been rising steadily. Women are becoming more and more successful at work, and in many cases the family seriously depends on the money earned by the woman, which allows her to dictate her terms. And what many modern Russian women want is to enjoy life, and not look after babies.”
At the same time, Yeliseyeva stressed that families who decide not to have children are typically much better off financially than many of those who have children. “Many families who have made a conscious decision not to have children belong to the intellectual elite,” she said. “It is indeed regretful that they decide against having children.”
Almost every second marriage in St. Petersburg ends in divorce. In 2011, the city saw 53,802 marriages and 25,249 divorces. According to Yeliseyeva, the high divorce rate — a stable tendency for well over a decade — is also a symptom of the devaluation of family values. Financial stability is the new God, and, particularly after the extreme hardships entailed by the controversial financial reforms and several waves of the economic crisis, choices in family issues are influenced by it.
In general, St. Petersburg still lives up to its unflattering nickname as “the city of babushkas.” The number of pensioners greatly exceeds the number of children, while the average age of a man in St. Petersburg is 38 years old, compared to 44 years for women.
In the retirement age group, the prevalence of women is “catastrophic,” according to Rzhanenkov, and in all age groups from the age of 20, the number of women exceeds the number of men by 10 to 30 percent.
Yeliseyeva offered some words of consolation for single marriage-minded women.
“The statistics look discouraging, especially for middle-aged women, but if you really want to get married you can always manage it: You simply need to look abroad,” Yeliseyeva said. “There are quite a few countries where there are more men than women.”
Remarkably enough, single fathers are an extinct species in the city. Of the 60,000 families with a single parent, only about 100 have a man as the sole breadwinner.
TITLE: Kremlin Concedes on Gubernatorial Vote
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel and Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev once declared that direct gubernatorial elections would not return to Russia in 100 years.
But on Monday, less than three years after making the vow, Medvedev asked the State Duma to reintroduce the elections in what looked like a major concession to the opposition protesters who took to the streets after last month’s parliamentary elections.
Political analysts said the text, published on the Kremlin’s web site, left many questions unanswered and predicted that the Kremlin would still retain a strong grip over regional politics through the use of indirect pressure and other means.
Government officials were quick to point out that the draft legislation does not allow the president to reject candidates as previously suggested by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Under the Kremlin bill, gubernatorial candidates can get on the ballot as independents by collecting signatures from voters, the number of which would be decided by each region, or with the support of political parties, which will “consult” with the president on their choice.
Larisa Brycheva, head of the presidential administration’s legal department, told reporters that parties would decide for themselves whether to consult with the president — and his opinion would not be binding.
“Even after consultations with the president, [a party] could put forward its own candidate,” Brycheva said, according to RIA-Novosti.
She said such a mechanism was necessary “to sometimes warn parties about making mistakes,” Kommersant reported.
When Putin first suggested reintroducing the direct election of governors during a televised Dec. 15 call-in show, he said the Kremlin should have the right to veto candidates.
But when Medvedev took up the proposal in his state-of-the-nation address a week later, he did not mention any restrictions.
Both Putin and Medvedev have in the past staunchly defended the 2004 decision to abolish the direct election of the country’s 83 regional leaders, which was one of the most controversial reforms of Putin’s two presidential terms from 2000 to 2008.
The decision was made after the Beslan school attack, where at least 334 hostages were killed, including 186 children.
Putin said in December that the abolition had been his own idea and argued that it was necessary because governors had obtained office “through semi-criminal local elites” in the 1990s.
Medvedev infamously said in September 2009 that he had been personally involved in the decision and that there was no reason to change it “neither now, nor in 100 years.”
Observers said Monday that the about-face provided a clear indication that the legislation was a direct response to last month’s street protests, where an unprecedented 50,000 to 100,000 people held two rallies in Moscow to demand a repeat of the Dec. 4 Duma vote. Hundreds also protested in other cities.
“This is a clear concession, but it’s too little and too late,” said veteran analyst Andrei Piontkovsky.
He also said the bill’s language left many questions unanswered and that it was unlikely that its submission to the Duma would keep demonstrators from taking to the streets again. Another protest is scheduled for Feb. 4.
Alexander Kynev, an analyst for regional politics with the Foundation for Information Policy Development, said the bill’s language left it unclear how gubernatorial runoffs would be conducted and noted that no regions have an established law on how many signatures independent candidates must collect. “The only standard we have is 2 percent of [a region’s] population,” he said.
Kynev said the new legislation was unlikely to free the regions from their current political impotence against the federal government. “For that you need multiparty parliaments and accountable lawmakers,” he said.
Rostislav Turovsky, a regional analyst and professor at Moscow State University, agreed that the Kremlin would remain in control even with the new legislation.
“A certain filter will remain, the only question is how tough it will be,” Turovsky said. He said the Duma might introduce stricter requirements for candidates. But even with lenient regulations, there will be “informal ways” to influence elections by rejecting signatures or pressuring the opposition, he said.
Turovsky suggested that the Kremlin would allow the opposition to take some governorships to give the impression that the law was working but that the oppositon’s gains would not shift the ruling United Russia party’s dominance.
United Russia, which is led by Putin, signaled Monday that it would seek no changes to the bill. “United Russia supports the president’s proposal in the form in which the text was submitted to the Duma,” senior party official Sergei Neverov told Gazeta.ru.
United Russia has 238 of the 450 Duma seats, enough to pass the law. Brycheva, with the presidential administration, said she expected the bill to become law in May. Medvedev will be out of office by then. The next president, presumably Putin, who is expected to win a third term in the March election, will be sworn into office in May.
TITLE: Probe’s Landing Site Still Unknown
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Space officials say, despite claims a failed Mars probe crashed in the Pacific Ocean near Chile, they still have no firm information on where it actually plummeted to Earth.
The unmanned Fobos-Grunt probe fell Sunday after being stuck in Earth’s orbit for two months.
The $170 million craft was one of the heaviest and most toxic pieces of space junk ever to crash to Earth, but space officials and experts said the risks posed by its crash were minimal because the toxic rocket fuel on board and most of the craft’s structure would burn up in the atmosphere high above the ground.
News agencies had cited Defense Ministry spokesman Alexei Zolotukhin as saying Sunday that fragments of the craft fell in the Pacific Ocean off Chile’s coast. But Zolotukhin said Monday that his estimate was based on calculations, and no witness reports had been received.
The deputy head of Russia’s space agency, Anatoly Shilov, told state news channel Vesti that agency data assumed the craft broke up somewhere over Brazil.
A statement Monday from the Federal Space Agency cited the reported Defense Ministry assessment, but gave no further information.
The Fobos-Grunt probe was designed to travel to one of Mars’ twin moons, land on it, collect soil samples and fly them back to Earth in 2014. It got stranded in Earth’s orbit after its Nov. 9 launch, and efforts by Russian and European Space Agency experts to bring it back to life failed.
TITLE: New U.S. Ambassador, Michael McFaul, Arrives to Keep ‘Reset’ Alive
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel and Alexey Eremenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The architect of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Russia policy arrived in Moscow this weekend to become the new U.S. ambassador at a critical time for the nations’ “reset” of relations, which has grown imperiled by bitter election campaigns in both countries.
Michael McFaul, 48, took up his duties Saturday when he arrived with his wife Donna Norton and their two sons at Domodedovo Airport, the newly minted envoy said on his LiveJournal blog. He planned to begin work on Tuesday as the embassy remained closed Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Day, giving the McFauls extra time to get comfortable in the U.S. ambassador’s palatial residence, Spaso House.
McFaul is not a career diplomat but is one of the most prominent Russia experts in the United States. He pursued an academic career before Obama appointed him as a special assistant and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs in the National Security Council, making him the White House’s point man for ties with the Kremlin.
McFaul’s appointment was widely welcomed when it became public last May, but his Senate confirmation was delayed in December by a Republican lawmaker who demanded assurances that Washington would not provide Moscow with sensitive missile defense information. The situation was later resolved.
Critics warn that McFaul’s mission is complicated by the fact that both counties are facing presidential elections this year (Russia on March 4, the United States on Nov. 6) and aggravated by the political crisis in Russia that started with last month’s mass protests against alleged fraud in the State Duma elections.
McFaul finds himself “in [a] hot seat in [an] icy climate,” Edward Lucas, the Economist’s international editor and former Moscow correspondent, wrote on Twitter.
Anti-American rhetoric has been on the rise in the country since Prime Minister Vladimir Putin blamed Hillary Clinton for sponsoring the anti-government protests that swept the capital and other cities in December.
Leonid Gozman, a leading liberal activist, pointed out that anti-American hawks Dmitry Rogozin and Alexei Pushkov have been given high-profile positions after the Duma elections.
Rogozin was appointed deputy prime minister for defense, while Pushkov, a political analyst and TV anchor, became chairman of the Duma’s foreign relations committee.
Gozman, who has known McFaul since the 1990s, said the veteran Russia expert was the best candidate he could think of for the job.
Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected pundit and former Duma deputy, said McFaul’s biggest drawbacks might be the thrust of his academic research and his ties to opposition leaders.
Markov pointed out that McFaul’’s doctoral thesis, completed in Oxford in 1991, was about revolutions.
McFaul’s later writings constantly return to the topic of spreading democracy — like the 2009 piece “Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can.”
“This will be viewed with big suspicion by many in Russia,” Markov said.
Sergei Oznobishchev, head of the Institute of Strategic Studies and Analysis, told RIA-Novosti that McFaul will be met “with mixed attitudes at best, and negative at worst.”
However, such a disadvantage in Moscow might prove to be an advantage in Washington.
It is precisely these ties that convinced Republican hawks like Senator Mark Kirk, of Illinois, that McFaul is the right man for the job.
“I’ll be supporting his nomination also because he will be good in working with the opposition and human rights communities in Russia,” Kirk told Reuters.
One of McFaul’s biggest assets is that he actually knows and is friends with almost everybody in Moscow.
When President Obama entered a lecture hall at Moscow’s New Economic School during his July 2010 visit, he was greeted with applause. But when McFaul followed, the hall was on its feet as everybody stood up to say “Hi Mike,” recalled Pavel Bayev, a professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
McFaul has maintained longtime ties with prominent liberals like Gozman, but also with leading pro-Kremlin figures like Markov, with whom he edited a number of books in the 1990s.
“What always struck me about McFaul is that he is a very democratic man — he always showed deep understanding for the simple people in Russia,” said Markov.
He said McFaul’s other main strengths will be that he has direct access to President Obama, having served as his Russia adviser for three years and that he should know the White House better than most career diplomats.
McFaul’s writing has not always been well received. His 2001 book “Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin” was criticized as being soft on the country’s democratic development under President Boris Yeltsin.
On Friday, McFaul introduced himself to the Russian public in a YouTube video that portrays him as a family man who developed an interest in U.S.-Soviet relations back when he grew up in Montana.
“I believe my most important mission is to continue to help Russians understand who Americans are, what we stand for and what we seek in our relationship with Russia and the Russian people,” McFaul says in the video, speaking in English with Russian subtitles.
The video got more than 700 comments on McFaul’s LiveJournal blog by late Sunday — not all of them welcoming.
TITLE: In New Tactic, Putin Courts Middle Class
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Trying to win back the hearts and minds of people he until recently dismissed, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appealed Monday to the middle-class voters who took to the streets in protest last month, to help sweep him back into office as president in March.
Writing in the pages of the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia, Putin explained that he fully understood what had made people so angry, driving tens of thousands to join in several large-scale protests against alleged vote fraud that took place around the country in December.
“There can’t be real democracy without policies accepted by the majority of the population and that reflect the interests of this majority,” Putin said in the article laying out his political program in the paper’s Monday edition.
Coming just a month after Putin scoffed at the rallies during his annual televised public question-and-answer session — in which he joked that the white ribbons protesters wore resembled “condoms” — the change in tune may reflect Putin’s acceptance of the harsh political reality he faces.
“The middle class are the people who can engage in policy. As a rule, their education level allows them to take a responsible approach toward the candidates and to ‘vote from the heart,’” Putin said, counting such voters as representing up to 30 percent of the population.
But political analysts and opposition leaders said Putin’s repeated mantra of how he brought stability to the country offers no new solutions to issues that have outraged the middle class, like corruption and tightened Kremlin control over the media.
Yabloko party chairman Sergei Mitrokhin described Putin’s article as a direct “overture to the middle class,” while dismissing it as “a very intelligent publicity stunt.”
“His advisers told him that the old program of United Russia would not work because it is aimed at pensioners,” Mitrokhin told a news conference held by opposition politicians Monday.
Political commentators noted that the phrase “vote from the heart” in Putin’s article echoed the 1996 campaign slogan of his predecessor Boris Yeltsin in his run against Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov.
But while Zyuganov still remains Putin’s most serious opponent in the March election, analysts said he wouldn’t be able to use the same anti-Communist rhetoric.
“Zyuganov might be an old guy, but he is surrounded by modern people who understand modern realities,” said Mark Feigin, a political commentator and member of the Solidarnost opposition movement.
Feigin said the Russian middle class “has grown fat enough” in the past few years and is ready to challenge the status quo.
Putin, however, repeated in the article that he is unwilling to speak to the opposition unless it emerges as a consolidated force.
“What should we talk about? How to establish power? To give it to ‘better people’? What’s next?” Putin wrote.
Feigin said this showed that Putin was not interested in talking to people who don’t share his agenda.
“He always believes that he symbolizes a power that must be left to someone, but this is not a succession of the throne. The new agenda will be created through compromises,” Feigin said.
Presenting himself as a steady-handed statesman during a stormy political time, Putin called his article “Russia is Concentrating” — quoting 19th-century Foreign Minister Prince Alexander Gorchakov, who used the phrase following the country’s devastating defeat in the Crimean War to represent a period of spiritual renewal.
“It is a nice metaphor. Gorchakov was saying Russia is trying to concentrate on both stability and development. By saying this, Putin is trying to react to Russian society’s demand for a tandem of both stability and development,” said Iosif Diskin, a sociologist and member of the Public Chamber.
Diskin said it would be difficult, however, for Putin and his team to manage both.
“Progressive people and conservatives do not always have the best relationship,” he said.
Putin also said he intends to create better conditions for the ambitious younger generation, promising to create 25 million new jobs in the technology sector.
Speaking at the news conference alongside Mitrokhin, Yabloko founder Grigory Yavlinsky, who intends to run in the March 4 presidential race, said he was not impressed by Putin’s new agenda, calling it a repeat of the promises he made during his 12 years in office.
“At least he could have explained why he failed to do this,” Mitrokhin joked. “Then it would have been interesting to read the article.”
Putin’s message was met with a mixed response from the hundreds of Izvestia readers who left comments on the paper’s web site Monday. Even those who praised Putin on the issue of stability said they were “fed up” with corruption.
One woman, who left only her first name Lyudmila, said the Putin government should be ashamed of its corruption practices. She also accused Putin of rudeness and of holding a “firm belief in his own sainthood.”
“The country is ashamed, and this shame is driving people onto the streets!” she said, explaining why she felt tens of thousands had massed at the anti-vote fraud protests in cities around Russia in December.
TITLE: Group To Prepare Election Observers
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The liberal opposition Yabloko party and the Moscow Helsinki Group are creating a public organization to finance the training of monitors for the March 4 presidential vote and other elections.
Yabloko party leader Sergei Mitrokhin said the group, Transparent Elections, would only accept donations from Russian nationals to avoid accusations of being financed from abroad — a charge that pro-Kremlin youth groups used to discredit Russia’s only independent elections watchdog, Golos, ahead of the State Duma vote in December.
“The resources of one party are not enough to make the process systematic,” Mitrokhin said at a news conference. “By joining our efforts, we will be able to guarantee fair elections.”
Mitrokhin said enough volunteers would be trained to visit all the country’s 97,000 polling stations on March 4, arguing that more than 100,000 people attended nationwide rallies on Dec. 10 and 24 against alleged fraud in the Duma vote.
“We will create a mechanism to control elections, and they will stop telling us that we only have data from just 10 percent of the polling stations and that this is not representational,” said Grigory Yavlinsky, Yabloko’s founder and a presidential hopeful.
But Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group and a veteran human rights campaigner, expressed doubt about whether enough monitors could be found, saying not all of those who attended last month’s rallies would be able to monitor the presidential vote.
Notably, Monday’s news conference was covered by about 40 reporters. State television broke its silence about anti-Kremlin protests with last month’s rallies, which attracted tens of thousands of people in Moscow and hundreds more in the regions.
Transparent Elections is not the first organization to be formed as a result of the protests against the vote. Other new public movements include White Ribbon and Civil Monitor.
“I hope that the foundation will be successful because there is a powerful and enthusiastic movement from below,” Alexeyeva said.
TITLE: Kazakh Ruling Party’s Victory Tempered by Criticism
AUTHOR: By Dalton Bennett
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ASTANA, Kazakhstan — Weekend elections have determined that Kazakhstan’s parliament is no longer a one-party chamber, but international observers say the vote failed to meet democratic standards.
Authoritarian President Nursultan Nazarbayev had called the snap election in November, so Kazakhstan could proceed further along the path of democracy, he said.
According to preliminary results announced Monday, Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan party won 80.7 percent of the vote, with two other parties achieving slightly more than 7 percent each, thereby clearing the threshold to enter parliament.
That as many as three parties managed to win seats came as a surprise to many. Since 2007, the 107-member lower chamber — the Majlis — had been solely occupied by Nazarbayev’s deputies and nine others nominated with his direct approval. Before then, the parliament was occupied by multiple pliable and pro-government parties.
Under changes to election law approved in 2009, a minimum of two parties would get through in the next vote, ensuring there would no repeat of the one-party parliament.
The 71-year old president, who has led the former Soviet Central Asian republic since before independence in 1991, insisted Monday that the election outcome was nothing short of an achievement of historic proportions.
“This is our common victory, a victory for all the people of Kazakhstan,” he told a gathering of supporters in the capital, Astana.
But monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe saw it differently, saying that the election had failed to meet democratic fundamentals.
“If Kazakhstan is serious about their stated goals of increasing the number of parties in parliament, then the country should have allowed more genuine opposition parties to participate in this election,” Joao Soares, who led the short-term contingent of the observer mission, said at a news conference.
Monitors have also said the vote-count was not transparent.
“As a result, in many instances, it was not possible for observers to determine whether voters’ choices were honestly reflected,” the OSCE said.
Opposition supporters also noted that a more combative Communist party than the one elected Sunday with a higher public profile was suspended by a court for six months in October for violating the law on public organizations, thereby ruling out its participation in the vote.
Another party, Alga, which has distinguished itself by its unwavering criticism of the Nazarbayev government, has routinely been denied registration.
The source of the criticism is particularly stinging for Kazakhstan, which successfully lobbied for years to become chair of the OSCE in 2010 in an achievement it trumpeted as a sign it had been welcomed into the community of advanced, democratic states.
The vast nation, which occupies an area around the size of Western Europe and shares long borders with Russia and China, is becoming increasingly important as a supplier of oil and gas, and is key to the northern delivery route for supplies to the United States-led military operation in Afghanistan.
Despite the new additions to parliament, Nur Otan is still unlikely to face robust adversaries. Business-oriented Ak Zhol — which came in second with 7.5 percent of the 7 million votes cast — is closely tied to Nazarbayev’s billionaire son-in-law Timur Kulibayev.
Likewise, the People’s Communist Party — led by a politician who only managed to tally 1.4 percent of the vote in last year’s presidential election — is viewed largely as a toothless irrelevance. It finished in third, with 7.2 percent of the vote.
The only genuine opposition force among the seven parties contesting the election, the beleaguered All-National Social-Democratic Party, or OSDP, garnered just 1.8 percent of the vote, falling well short of the minimum 7 percent mark required to enter parliament. It has said it will mount protests against the result, saying that it was a result of fraud.
“These elections are a line the authorities have crossed — a rubicon after which all hopes that the current authorities can reform themselves are lost,” said OSDP co-leader Zharmakhan Tuyakbay.
TITLE: AirportCity Takes Off With New Hotel
AUTHOR: By Yelena Minenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new multi-functional complex, AirportCity St. Petersburg, officially opened at the end of last year, located close to the city’s Pulkovo II Airport. The final version of the complex will include several business centers and a four-star hotel complete with restaurants and conference halls.
Construction on the project started in 2007 and the first part of the complex — the four-star Crowne Plaza St. Petersburg Airport hotel, part of the InterContinental Hotels Group — was completed and opened in December.
As part of the first stage of construction, two business centers, Airport and Jupiter, will open in addition to the hotel. The second stage will include the construction of a third business center, Zeppelin, which is planned to be completed by the end of this year.
“Everything will depend on the current economic situation, if the occupancy rates of Airport and Jupiter reach 40 percent, we will begin the second phase,” said Andrei Kanivets, CEO of Avielen company, the project’s developer.
The whole complex will occupy 62,000 square meters, but it is not yet decided exactly what this land will be used for.
“There is a large territory in front of the future Zeppelin business center, which will be used as a parking lot, but we don’t plan on using it as such forever, it could be used as an area for another business center or a three-star hotel, or just a building for rent,” said Kanivets. “If all goes well, soon we will discuss the functional purpose of the third phase of construction.”
The project was financed by three Austrian commercial real estate companies — Warimpex Group, CA Immo Group and UBM. Together they invested 140 million euros ($177 million). The project was fully funded by foreign investment.
“St. Petersburg’s budget has already received 300 million rubles ($9.4 million) as part of the investment agreement, and now new tax payments are expected from the Crowne Plaza Hotel and Avielen company,” said Kanivets.
According to Georg Folian, deputy president of Warimpex Investment Company, the project’s payback period is expected to be within 15 years. “We don’t plan on leaving the project or selling our assets any time soon, only if the project becomes very successful will we discuss this issue.”
The area near Pulkovo is not yet a densely built-up area, but the new multi-functional complex AirportCity has already got a competitor — the Pulkovo Sky business center located next door. According to Kanivets, the approximate rental rate for the two business centers in AirportCity is 336 euros ($425) per square meter per year.
“Our rental rates will be higher than our neighbor’s, because Airport and Jupiter business centers are higher class — they are European-class office space,” said Kanivets. “So far we have found our potential leaseholders to be understanding of this fact and 20 percent of the lease contracts for the property are already in process.”
The main attraction for future clients is the “green development” technology used during construction, according to the project’s representatives. The technology includes heat recovery, water purification, garbage compacting and green roofs.
The architectural plan for the complex was provided by one of the investors — Warimpex — which has developed and invested in projects in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and other European countries.
“The first building [of Airport City] has got these interesting little windows, which have attracted a lot of attention: Some people coming from the airport even stop near our hotel and take a photo with these windows in the background,” said Kanivets. “For some time our buildings were even called ‘Czech sausages,’ as the company that came up with the idea is Czech. If you look at our future complexes from above, you’ll be able to see that the buildings look a bit like sausages.”
TITLE: Businesses Refuse To Listen To PM Putin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Energy companies are preparing a collective appeal to the government to demand softening the conditions of the order requiring state companies and banks to disclose the beneficiaries of all parties they sign contracts with.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin expressed his dissatisfaction in December during a conference on energy that parties contracted by state-owned energy companies were affiliated with their management.
After the conference, the government ordered energy companies and other state corporations and banks to disclose the beneficiaries of their contracting parties by February and to report the incomes of the companies’ management and those of their relatives by Jan. 10.
Contracts were to be annulled if the signing parties chose not to disclose their incomes. New contracts would then be concluded only after the disclosure of all beneficiaries.
The management of several state-run energy companies intends to take a unified position in two weeks and appeal to the government, a top manager of one of the companies told Vedomosti.
The manager believes that the requirement for full disclosure is logical when applied to major contractors, but gathering information from minor contractors is unrealistic.
“In its current form, the order is impossible to carry out — neither the size of the contracts requiring financial reports, nor the size of the contractors’ properties necessitating monitoring were indicated,” said another energy company executive, adding that annulling a contract could lead to legal action by the company.
State corporations have hundreds of thousands of contracts, explained a source at a state company in the transportation sector. Government departments are not ready either — they do not understand how they will process all the information. “Besides, the information is confidential, and there is a high risk it will be leaked from state departments,” a source told Vedomosti.
All state companies mentioned in the order can sign the appeal, which Russian Railways is coordinating, Interfax reported Friday. A representative of the railway denied the report.
The deadline to fulfill the mandate could be adjusted, the prime minister’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, but its annulment is not being discussed. Peskov had not heard about the appeal.
TITLE: Severstal’s Gold Miner Split-Off Is a Success
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Steel giant Severstal said Monday that enough minority shareholders agreed to swap the steelmaker’s shares for the securities of its gold-mining unit Nord Gold, paving the way for the unit’s London listing later this week.
Investors tendered a total of 20.3 million Severstal securities, which represent about 10.6 percent of Nord Gold stock, above the 5 percent threshold required for the gold miner’s split-off, Severstal said in a statement.
The deal will result in Nord Gold becoming the country’s fourth-largest gold producer and will allow both companies to focus entirely on their core businesses.
The swap of Nord Gold’s Global Depositary Receipts — owned by the steelmaker’s subsidiary Lybica — for Severstal’s GDRs is slated for Wednesday, to be followed by the gold miner’s listing on the London Stock Exchange on Thursday, while the exchange for Severstal’s ordinary shares is scheduled for late January, the statement said.
Severstal’s majority owner Alexei Mordashov will acquire Nord Gold’s remaining stock that wasn’t taken up in the swap to bring his stake in the gold miner to 89.4 percent.
“We view the results of the exchange positively — it’s in line with our expectations,” said Severstal’s chief financial officer Alexei Kulichenko. The number of minority shareholders participating in the exchange proves that “it was a fair option,” he said in a telephone interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
“The free float of more than 10 percent is a good starting point. We thank the investors that initially invested in the steel production business and chose to become Nord Gold shareholders. It’s an indication of trust that I’m sure we’ll justify,” said Nikolai Zelensky, chief executive of Nord Gold.
In February, Nord Gold targeted a $1 billion initial public offering in London but had to delay the listing, citing unfavorable market conditions. The company planned to list at least 25 percent of its shares.
Nord Gold’s split-off brings the company’s valuation to about $2.7 billion compared with $3 billion to $4 billion ahead of last year’s IPO, said Andrei Tretelnikov, an analyst at Rye, Man & Gor Securities.
“That means the company has a potential for growth. But it has yet to prove its operational efficiency and the ability to fulfill the ambitious plans it has set,” he said by telephone.
As an independent company, Nord Gold plans to continue increasing output. The company targets production of 800,000 to 850,000 ounces of gold this year, Zelensky said.
The gold miner, which focuses primarily on emerging markets, is also considering acquisition options in Russia and other markets including Africa, he said.
After separating its gold unit, Severstal will focus on its core business, said Chris Clark, chairman of the company’s board of directors.
Nord Gold’s split-off “marks the end of Severstal’s successful involvement in gold,” he said in the statement.
But Severstal expects this year to be more difficult for the domestic steel industry compared with 2011 amid weak demand from Europe, which is struggling to fight its debt crisis, Kulichenko said.
“The uncertainty on the global markets might put pressure on prices, but the emerging markets will be the major driver that will allow us to retain our financial performance at an acceptable level,” he said.
The average prices for hot-rolled steel are expected to slide 10 percent to 15 percent this year from $730 per ton in 2011, Tretelnikov said.
Kulichenko said the steelmaker expects this year’s output to reach 10 million to 11 million tons in Russia and about 4 million tons in the United States.
TITLE: Moscow To Get 2 More Metro Stops
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — A metro transfer hub will be built at the Moskva-City business center, according to the press service of the capital’s construction department, citing Sergei Kidyayev, vice president of Ingeokom, the main contractor for the construction of the Khodynskaya and the Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya lines.
In addition to the existing Vystavochnaya station on the Filyovskaya line, the hub will consist of two new stations, Delovoi Tsentr on the Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya line and Delovoi Tsentr on the planned Khodynskaya circle line.
“If we don’t [build the hub], then in 2015, when construction of the business center is complete and 3 million square meters of office space is commissioned, the Filyovskaya line won’t be able to cope with the exponentially increased passenger traffic,” Kidyayev explained.
The Moscow construction department announced in December the beginning of the new Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya line to link the central areas of the city and Moskva-City with the Dorogomilovsky and Ramenki districts.
TITLE: The Decembrists’ Manifesto
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
TEXT: One of the most common criticisms of the “Decembrists 2.0” protest movement is that it has no program, strategy or vision. But the opposite is true. Taken together, the five demands put forward by protesters at the Bolotnaya Ploshchad and Prospekt Akademika Sakharova rallies comprise a coherent program with a clear strategic goal. If those demands are met by the Kremlin, Russia’s political system will undergo a fundamental change and become a democratic state governed by rule of law.
The first demand is that the authorities immediately release all political prisoners and those who were deliberately incarcerated on trumped-up charges. The web site Politzeky.ru lists 137 of Russia’s most prominent political prisoners, including former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his former business partner Platon Lebedev. In addition, there are also tens of thousands of innocent businesspeople who were convicted on fabricated charges after their businesses were seized by corrupt government officials. This is a standard method used by officials to cover up their expropriation of private enterprises.
In addition to releasing political prisoners, the first demand voiced by protesters is to dismantle the police state, eliminate politically motivated prosecutions and respect fundamental human rights. This requires a fundamental reform of the court system and security forces.
The second demand is the annulment of the results of the rigged parliamentary elections and the holding of new elections under open, democratic rules and legislation. Throwing out the results of the Dec. 4 elections would enable this country to form a parliament that has legitimacy, a basic requirement for creating legitimate laws and governance.
The protesters’ third demand is the dismissal of Central Elections Commission head Vladimir Churov and a criminal investigation into all allegations of electoral fraud that have been documented and recorded by citizens and monitors. This is in no way a personal attack against Churov and his colleagues. It is aimed at the thousands of individuals across the country who have been accused on solid grounds of committing electoral fraud — local election commission members, government officials and managers at state organizations. Bringing them to justice will establish the principle that ordinary citizens and officials are accountable before the law and must answer for their crimes. It will also help institute much-needed reforms to improve the transparency and accountability of elections.
The fourth demand calls for the adoption of new legislation concerning political parties by the end of February 2012. During President Dmitry Medvedev’s December address to the nation, he proposed legislation that would ease the registration requirements for political parties, including eliminating the need for them to collect millions of signatures. Medevedev also promised to return the direct election of governors and single-mandate districts in State Duma elections. These measures are a good start, but alone they would not accomplish the fundamental changes protesters are demanding.
Even if Medvedev’s measures were adopted, fundamental obstacles to the holding of democratic elections at all levels would remain. These include the barring of election monitors and representatives of civil society from polling places, the widespread use of so-called administrative resources, media censorship and the frequent bans on political rallies and demonstrations. Moreover, the ruling regime continues its illegitimate hold on power, while government officials and their relatives remain unaccountable before the law. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin holds monopoly power, the parliament is decorative, and the courts obey the orders of their political bosses. In his December address to the nation, Medvedev did not mention these huge barriers that prevent the country from developing a democracy.
Medvedev’s proposed political reforms remain incomplete and superficial. They do nothing to change the basic nature of Putin’s authoritarian system, one in which all power is focused in the hands of a single individual.
The “Decembrists 2.0” movement calls for something fundamentally different — namely, deep and comprehensive political reforms based on two principles: the creation of strong constitutional guarantees against autocracy and instituting the rule of law that would make all citizens — above all, elected officials — accountable for their actions.
Finally, the fifth demand is that new and fair parliamentary elections be held in accordance with new, democratic legislation. Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, Liberal Democratic Party head Vladimir Zhironovsky, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, Yabloko party leader Grigory Yavlinsky and former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin have all demanded that the Dec. 4 elections be annulled and new ones be held under new democratic rules and provisions.
The idea of electing an interim president in March for a term of 12 to 18 months is also becoming popular. The interim president would oversee the introduction of democratic legislation, constitutional amendments and the implementation of electoral reforms. Once these are in place, a new, free and fair presidential election would be held for a five-year term.
The more than 100,000 protesters who rallied in the public squares in Moscow and other cities in December have articulated a clear strategy to reform the country. The main components of this strategy include eliminating the police state, moving away from autocracy and toward the rule of law and holding new parliamentary and presidential elections. They reflect the long-term interests of Russian society and offer the best roadmap for the country to develop as a modern, free and democratic state.
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.
TITLE: comment: Season’s Greetings From the Tax Inspectorate
AUTHOR: By Tom Stansmore
TEXT: Investments often take time before they begin generating a profit. Investors are well aware of this fact. The St. Petersburg tax authorities apparently are not.
Just before the New Year holidays, one of our clients — a subsidiary owned by European shareholders — received a rather ambiguous phone call from the tax authorities inviting them to a meeting, although the topic of conversation was not revealed. Although the Tax Code provides for written notification procedures for such encounters, this was understood to be an informal meeting. Even though attendance was discretionary, our client felt that as they were new to the district and wanted to start their relationship with the authorities on the right foot, it made sense to attend. I’ve seen this before, however, so I suggested that along with our accountant in charge of their operations, I would go along too.
We arrived at the designated office about 15 minutes ahead of the scheduled time only to discover that a line of taxpayers had already formed and that we were about the seventh or eighth to arrive. As the meeting with all the other taxpayers had been scheduled for the exact same time as ours but the office door remained closed and locked, our client politely suggested that the authorities were back there preparing a holiday buffet so as to welcome the new members of the district. I suspected otherwise and thought it unlikely we would even be offered tea.
I was right. They called the taxpayers in, one by one, on a first come, first served basis. The purpose of the summons, as you may have already guessed, was to inquire when the company would start to pay profit tax. When it was our turn to go in, the representatives of the tax authorities were somewhat surprised both by the size of our delegation and by the fact that it was comprised of westerners as well as locals (we had deliberately considered both factors before agreeing to attend this voluntary engagement).
The meeting began with a review of our last profit tax declaration (which showed a loss). Immediately, the well-rehearsed question — “when do you plan to pay profit tax?” — was put forward. “When the company makes a profit,” was my well-rehearsed reply. As I had seen this show before, their posture that the economy was booming, money was falling from the sky and only an idiot could fail to make a profit in this lush and fertile environment came as no surprise to me. Furthermore, I pointed out, it was the shareholder of the company that had funded the investment and was the party most interested in generating a profit.
“What is the business plan and what are you doing to generate a profit?” came the next round of inquiry (at this point the authorities started to scrutinize the itemized expenses on the declaration with the intention of challenging many of them as frivolous and not being of a legitimate business nature. To his chagrin, even the salary of the general director was not immune from challenge.
The point here, however, is not to offer sound business advice, but to intimidate (a challenge to anyone’s salary is, by definition, personal). Expenses are what they are and investing in a foreign country, least of all Russia, is not cheap. Again, I pointed out that it was the shareholders who were the party most interested in what was being done with their money and that the increase in social fund contributions that the company would be paying starting from the beginning of this year would not help. Regarding the business plan, I indicated that a number of different options were currently being looked at, including moving production on shore as well as the acquisition of a competitor company. I wanted to mention the fact that as Russia has decided to remain on daylight saving time all year round, our shareholders can’t even schedule a conference call with their general director to formulate a plan, but I thought that this would only confirm their suspicions of idiocy.
This response (again rehearsed) was accepted and our meeting was quickly concluded with the parting wish that we would soon become a profit taxpayer. If we had been offered a glass as our client had originally hoped, we would have all been only too happy to drink to this sentiment.
The point is that there continues to exist a philosophy within the tax inspectorate that we all work for the state. There are few countries, as far as I’m aware, in which profit tax authorities invite the payer in to explain when they will be making contributions to the budget, and those that do are former CIS countries where a similar mentality exists. The truth is, however, that the discussion, by its very nature, illustrates the fact that the system is adversarial and that making a profit and paying profit tax are not the same thing.
These meetings attended by and subsequently very much discussed by our foreign client add credence to the reputation of Russia as being a difficult place in which to invest. To those doing business here, corruption and poor infrastructure are difficult enough. A relationship founded on intimidation, however, simply adds insult to injury and a sense of frustration for those who believe that the state exists to serve the people, not the other way around.
Tom Stansmore is the general director of Emerging Markets Group, a St. Petersburg-based outsourced accounting firm.
TITLE: The shoes say it all
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Jimmy Baldinini enjoys looking at women’s legs. The veteran of Italian shoe design, who runs the world-renowned shoe label Baldinini, admits this addiction without so much as a blink of the eye or any hint of embarrassment — and rightly so: He is a master shoemaker.
Baldinini, however, is very much a sophisticate. How about guessing a woman’s character by the pair of shoes she is wearing? This kind of game is hard for the designer to resist, and he says he hardly ever makes a mistake. Sitting at a bar in St. Petersburg’s Taleon hotel just before the Russian premiere of Baldinini’s 2012 Spring/Summer collection, Baldinini accepts the challenge of demonstrating his art of divination.
A petite, athletic young woman is chosen as the subject. Her long dark hair is worn loose, half covering her back, which is almost fully exposed by a revealing black dress. She is wearing a pair of Cinderella-sized varnished black peep-toes with stiletto heels. She is a PR manager for the St. Petersburg branch of a large Western company.
“Wow, an extremely ambitious girl; she wants to be among the cream of the crop, and she is unstoppable,” Baldinini begins, with a mixture of caution and admiration. “She is quite brave, a risk-taker, and she has got a grip of steel.” The designer could not be more accurate.
Baldinini was in town to present his spring and summer collection, but during the interview, his mind constantly returns to the high-heeled winter boots that he is convinced will become a sensation next winter.
“They will make the girl feel and look like an elf; I created this model especially for Russian women — a stiletto heel, long and tight — whoever chooses them will look like a goddess!”
Russians are Baldinini’s core clientele. They account for more than two thirds of the brand’s customers, and constitute his dream shoppers. There is no way, he says, that the average American woman would be interested in the stiletto-heeled winter boots that I created for Russia, even if we paid them to wear these boots!
“Americans typically go for comfortable, casual and inexpensive fare; unlike in Russia, there is not much demand in the U.S. for fashionable, statement shoes,” Baldinini said. Indeed, Russia boasts one of the highest proportions of women who wear high heels on a daily basis, and much of the country’s female population is convinced that comfortable, flat shoes are suitable only for an arthritis-suffering babushka, and that, unless your physical condition requires you to wear those, a better bet by far is glossy stilettos.
Baldinini openly approves of the Russian attitude, which has been instrumental in filling his coffers since his company entered the Russian market in 2000.
“Russia has been my key market — along with Italy and Saudi Arabia — because you have the biggest numbers of fashion-conscious people, which is unbelievable. For me, Russia is a paradise: As a designer, I enjoy making striking, mind-blowing shoes, and not everyone has the courage and the confidence to wear those. In Russia, the appetite for them is huge!”
Every year, Baldinini’s company creates more than a thousand different designs, creating individual collections for the various countries in which it operates.
In recent months, the designer has been contemplating the idea of conquering the vast Chinese market, but the results of market research have left him deeply frustrated.
“When I visit China and watch people shopping, I cannot believe my eyes: They just grab anything that has a label on it. Baldinini is indeed a brand, and therefore it would sell there, but they miss the point about the essence of a particular brand. In other words, if you rip off the label, the customers would ignore your product. This is bewildering.”
As the conversation turns to “the power of the label” territory, Baldinini’s sore point becomes clear. The designer suddenly explodes with an emotional diatribe about the competition between the Italians and the French for the status of the world’s cradle of fashion.
“The French would do well in China because they are good at selling brands and explaining to customers that such and such a French label is an absolute necessity,” he said. “Good sales of Italian fashion are due to the quality, while in France they are much better at marketing than at product-making! But when you are in a shop, they treat you in such a way that if you do not buy the item, you feel like either a person of no taste, or a pauper and loser.”
“I recently saw a Louis Vuitton bag selling for something like 3,500 euros; it was a very average bag, and I can bet that if you removed the label, it wouldn’t sell even for 350 euros,” said Baldinini. “Perhaps one mistake that we Italians make is that we believe that quality always speaks for itself. It is not always the case. Unfortunately, customers who want to shop for labels are blind.”
There is so much passion and wounded pride in this verbal torrent that it seems prudent to bring the designer back to the idea of winning over the Chinese market. Baldinini does not seem like someone who gives up easily.
“Yes, I am considering another trip to China,” he said. “Yes, it is a country where there are fakes galore and the fashion market as such does not really exist. But after all, who said that it cannot be created? At any rate, I am not admitting defeat.”
TITLE: word’s worth: Sitting Around
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Ñèäåòü: to sit, more or less
Whew. The annual winter 10-day Russian eat-and-drinkathon is finally over. Isn’t it amazing how tight a pair of jeans can get in just a little over a week?
Along with contemplating my girth, I’ve been considering — in a languid, hung over sort of way — stance verbs in Russian. Stance verbs are ñòîÿòü (to stand), ëåæàòü (to lie), and ñèäåòü (to sit). Ñòîÿòü is a vertical position, ëåæàòü is a horizontal position, and ñèäåòü is a kind of in-between position. People do it. Dogs and cats do it. What’s the problem?
The problem is when you are talking about creatures other than humans and pets or inanimate objects. In English, we generally just use a form of “to be” to describe location and position: The plate is on the table. The boots were in the hall. But in Russian, you need to choose one of those three stance verbs. If you use the vertical/horizontal/in-between paradigm, you might say: Òàðåëêà ëåæèò íà ñòîëå (The plate is lying on the table), since a plate is flat and in a horizontal position. Or you might say: Ïòèöà ñòîèò íà âåòêå (The bird is standing on the branch), since it’s vertically positioned.
But you’d be wrong. In Russian, plates “stand” and birds “sit.” Huh?
“Huh” is right. Grammar and textbooks are little help. Native speakers all agree on what verb must be used, but they cannot explain why. Linguists have only recently begun to plumb the mystery. While they more or less agree that there are some conceptual or perceptual underpinnings to the use of Russian stance verbs, they disagree on what they might be. And they admit that so far they can’t formulate rules to explain all of the usage.
So what’s a poor foreigner to do? Until linguists come up with some rules, I think it’s easier to think of this as a set of linguistic conventions in which animate and inanimate objects are associated with certain verbs.
For example, when small scurrying creatures like åæè (hedgehogs), áåëêè (squirrels) and ìûøêè (mice) as well as all insects and anything that flies — ìóõè (flies), áàáî÷êè (butterflies) and ïòèöû (birds) — are immobile, they “sit.” Ïàóê ñèäèò íà ïîäîêîííèêå. (The spider is on the windowsill). This is even true when the insect is splayed out horizontally: Ãóñåíèöà ñèäèò íà ëèñòå (The caterpillar is on the leaf).
You can use the verb ëåæàòü with any of these creatures, but it conveys the notion of fatal immobility. Ìûøü ëåæàëà íà ñòîëå might be translated as “a dead mouse was lying on the table.”
Other things that sit: roofs on houses, mushrooms on the ground, clothes on people, pies in the oven and corks in bottles. Êðûøà ñèäèò êðèâî íà èçáå (The roof on the house is crooked); ãðèá ñèäèò ïîä áåð¸çîé (there’s a mushroom under the birch); ïëàòüå õîðîøî ñèäèò íà íåé (the dress fits her well); ïèðîã ñèäèò â ïå÷êå (the pie is in the oven); ïðîáêà êðåïêî ñèäèò â áóòûëêå (the cork is really stuck tight in the bottle).
Ñèäåòü is also used with people to describe being stuck in some way: îí ñèäèò â òþðüìå (he’s in prison); îí ñèäèò äîìà ñ äåòüìè (he’s at home with the kids); ÿ ñèæó â ïðîáêå (I’m stuck in traffic).
Or, more to the point this week: ß ñèæó íà äèåòå (I’m on a diet).
Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.
TITLE: A return to roots
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: 1990s pop legends Dva Samolyota have managed to keep their youthful fun spirit, despite a difficult history and lineup changes, says Anton Belyankin, the band’s frontman and only original member, as the band gets ready to perform at Griboyedov, the seminal local bunker club that its members helped to launch and now manage.
“It can’t be called a comeback, because we’ve been playing all this time, even if it has been very infrequently,” Belyankin says, sitting at Fidel, an indie bar on Dumskaya Ulitsa that he co-owns with Dva Samolyota’s current guitarist Andrei Gradovich.
“We mostly went to Europe for six weeks or so, to play 12 to 15 concerts, but hardly played here. You see, out of all the people who played for many years and who wrote all these songs, there’s only me left.”
Dva Samolyota has been relatively low-profile since 2004, when it released “Ka Ra Bas,” its last album with the vocalist and band’s co-founder Vadim Pokrovsky.
The Moscow producers the band had a deal with were planning to give a new burst to the band’s then declining career, but Pokrovsky died in September 2003, months before the album came out. He was 36.
“There’s always an up and down curve in everybody’s life,” says Belyankin, 43.
“Besides, we’re adults now, we’re not interested in the money from performing concerts. I understand that I’ll never be a Mick Jagger, so there’s no sense in struggling toward that. You should just really enjoy what you do.”
Since 2004, Belyankin has been pursuing another career as the manager and owner of indie DJ bars, popular with students and expats. Once a co-founder of the pioneering Datscha, Belyankin now co-owns — with guitarist Gradovich — Fidel, Belgrad and Bermudy. Currently, the two are about to open a fourth bar, tentatively called Scientific Club Epsilon.
“I don’t think there’s much difference between the things I do,” he says.
“We do everything with the same level of responsibility — the bars and the band.”
Apart from Belyankin, the band’s current lineup includes guitarist Gradovich, formerly of the 1990s band Jugendstil, ex-Ulitsy keyboard player Armen “Mon” Chikunov and drummer Vladimir Titov, a jazz-trained musician whose main job is playing with a military band, plus three young brass players picked from the local jazz scene.
“Andrei, Mon and I are trying to make our musicians play in a way that will really be Dva Samolyota,” Belyankin says.
“They are jazz musicians, so they tend to drift into some sort of restaurant jazz. We make them listen to different music, some ethnic music, so that they can hear how brass and wood-wind instruments are played in such music.”
The band is occasionally joined by Anna Belyankina, Belyankin’s 23-year-old daughter and award-winning documentary director, who sings with him in the song “Karabogazgol.”
Just before this interview, Belyankin had a meeting with television and video director Pyotr Troitsky to discuss a planned video for the band’s 2004 love song “Wind of Freedom” (Veter Svobody).
With the famous line “Hands smell of a Mosin rifle,” Troitsky believes that the song — which mentions Che Guevara and “the demons of Communism” — could become an anthem for the ongoing mass protests provoked by electoral fraud in December and the upcoming presidential elections due to take place on March 4.
“We don’t have a song like they did in the U.S. in the 1960s, a song that was known and sung by everybody when people got together,” Troitsky explains. “’Wind of Freedom’ could become that.”
Belyankin himself, however, claims not to be affected by current revolutionary moods.
“It’s the director’s view,” he says.
“To be honest, I like the song itself, but I don’t care much about what is happening in the country’s political life,” he says. “I care about my work, my band, my family. Political life has not affected me in any way so far.”
“Wind of Freedom” was released on “Poo,” the DIY album that Dva Samolyota released “for friends” in secret from Moscow producers in 2004.
The band did not return to the studio until 2010, when they released a 4-track CD single “Pure Baselure.”
“We got lazy and old,” Belyankin says.
“We recorded ten songs, but they remain to be finished. We only mixed these four songs and released them, but we will finish them and release an album before long. The songs are all good, in Dva Samalyota style — with lots of brass, and idiotic as they have always been. A lot of idiocy and absurdity.”
Dva Samolyota came to fame in the early 1990s for its upbeat music mixing ska, Latin and African rhythms and Pokrovsky singing in a fake “African” language that the band sold as “Swahili.” Despite the fact that the “African” vocals disappeared with Pokrovsky’s death, Belyankin says the band’s Russian-language songs contain the same amount of the absurd.
“In reality, there’s no difference between what Vadik sang in ‘Swahili,’ and what we now sing in Russian,” he says. “Everybody can find their own meaning, if they need to find any meaning at all.”
During the 1990s, Dva Samolyota was fashionable both in St. Petersburg and Moscow, where they even moved to live at some point.
“For some reason, we were a trendy band,” Belyankin says.
“Not popular, but trendy. But you can’t be a trendy band for 20 years, from 1991 to 2012.”
The band’s second splash of popularity came in 2000, when it released “A Friend Dumped Her Problems on Me” (Podruga Podkinula Problem). With a video directed by Troitsky, the title rap song has become perhaps the band’s most famous song.
Legend had it that Belyankin wrote the lyrics when he read a provincial teenage girl’s complaint in the letter’s section of Cool magazine. Due to its huge popularity, the song became a curse for the band, overshadowing its diverse and exciting body of work.
“It’s a great pity to me that nobody listens to anything but ‘Podruga’ besides our friends,” Belyankin says. “When they hear about Dva Samolyota, people only recall ‘Podruga.’ But on the other hand, it’s a good song.”
Since its start, Dva Samolyota was a refreshing departure from the seriousness of Russian rock.
“Russian rock has not gone anywhere, it’s still around, Russian rock is a nightmare, even country music is better,” Belyankin says.
“Take Russian rock or Russian chanson — they’re both horrible. The adjective ‘Russian’ spoils everything for some reason. Even hard rock or heavy metal rock is OK, you can listen to it or not, if you like. But Russian rock — it’s instant depression.
“All music is now split in two in Russia — it’s either still Russian rock, which is plaintive, where they’re miserable about everything, or it’s popular music such as ska or klezmer, and they play it because it’s popular.
“All this is fun music, where they have this ‘umts umts umts.’ But people don’t like fun music all that much, even if it’s more difficult to write something fun than something dark.”
According to Belyankin, the problem is that many bands play music not because they like it, but because they choose to play music that is popular.
“For instance, ska is fun music and you should play it with pleasure, but some play it only to be popular and make money,” he says.
“Ska is good music, reggae and disco are good music, the main thing is to play it with enjoyment. Even country is good music, if it’s played with enjoyment.”
Belyankin admits not going to club gigs anymore, although he says he checks out new bands on the Internet.
“As always, good bands are few,” he says.
“Even at the Leningrad Rock Club you could count the good bands on your fingers, even if there were more than a hundred of them. Now maybe there are two good bands in a thousand.
“But it’s more difficult now; as soon as a good band emerges, producers interfere and it immediately becomes not very good.”
Belyankin recalls Dva Samolyota’s stint with its Moscow producers in the early 2000s with dislike.
“We suffered with them for three years,” he says.
“They start to tell you how to behave, how to sing. ‘Change this here, please,’ ‘Add one more refrain here,’ ‘Take this out.’ Or ‘Just stand and do nothing.’”
He says that the band was forbidden to arrange its own concerts, having to wait for orders from producers.
“It becomes forced labor; you have to sit and wait. We spent a lot of time recovering after we parted ways with them.”
However, Belyankin sees the current situation of the music scene as more promising.
“A lot of shops have appeared where they sell musical instruments, and a lot of young people are buying guitars. Let young people play guitars, it’s a very good thing to do — maybe the best.
“All my young acquaintances buy Chinese Gibsons and Fenders, because they are cheap, but sound good. At least, better than the shit we used to play when we were young. My first bass guitar was a Rostov-Don, it was a horrible log. But it was OK, I did play it. It’s great now when you go and buy a guitar. The main thing is to get a band together.”
Belyankin describes this week’s upcoming gig as a “control concert” before the band’s planned tour across Siberia. “We have some new songs and want to test them out on our friends who come to Griboyedov,” he says.
Dva Samolyota performs at 9 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 20 at Griboyedov, 2A Voronezhskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 764 4355, 973 7273. M. Ligovsky Prospekt. www.griboyedovclub.ru.
TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This week is one that clubs describe as a “dead week.” Coming soon after the lengthy New Year/Christmas holidays, it lacks many great events, as the concert-going public relaxes after taxing celebrations and is frequently left without money to afford a ticket.
Nevertheless, a good group to check out this week is Dva Samolyota, which will perform at Griboyedov, the bunker club which they helped co-found, on Friday, Jan. 20.
Concerts by Dva Samolyota have been rather rare since 2004, when the band released its most recent albums, two at once.
Bassist and vocalist Anton Belyankin is the band’s only founding member, but he claims that you can feel Dva Samolyota’s original and fun spirit even in the band’s newer material. He talks about the band’s ups and downs in an interview on this page.
Kirpichi, St. Petersburg’s pioneering alternative rock/hip-hop band, will perform at Zal Ozhidaniya on Saturday, Jan. 21.
The city’s seminal rock band Auktyon, whose music style developed from new wave in the 1980s to experimental art rock music in the 2000s, will perform at the Avrora Concert Hall on Saturday, Jan. 21.
More events are coming soon, when audiences are expected to have recovered from the holidays, both physically and financially.
Kasabian will perform for the first time in St. Petersburg, local promoter PMI revealed this week.
The British indie rock band is scheduled to perform at the Peterburgsky Sports and Concert Complex (SKK) on March 6.
Support will come from the German pop-rock band Fools Garden and Russian electro-pop act Tesla Boy.
“Kasabian are the great heretics of British rock; 21st century renegades with a romantic’s heart, a poet’s lust for life and a lysergic vision to sear the eyeballs of anyone who would doubt them,” says the band’s bio on its MySpace page.
Hailing from Leicestershire, England, the band released its fourth album “Velociraptor!” in September 2011.
In Moscow, Kasabian is due at Stadium Live Club on March 8.
Britain’s pioneering electronic dance group Stereo MCs is due at Glavclub on Feb. 22.
Combining elements of dance music, hip-hop and pop, Stereo MCs was founded by singer Rob Birch and DJ/producer Nick Hallam in Clapham, London in 1985, and is best known for its 1992 international hit “Connected.”
March 1 will see The Subways, also at Glavclub.
Formed in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England in 2003, the British indie rock trio has built a solid reputation through its 2005 debut album “Young for Eternity” and years of performing at rock festivals in Reading and Leeds.
Now on tour in support of its most recent album “Money & Celebrity,” released in September, The Subways are made up of Billy Lunn on guitar and vocals, Charlotte Cooper on bass and vocals and Josh Morgan on drums.
TITLE: THE DISH: Via dell’oliva
AUTHOR: By Ronan Loughney
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: During the dark and often dreary Petersburg winter, it is not uncommon to long to be transported from this concrete metropolis to a time when life was simpler…and sunnier. This magical city grants the key to such secrets to those who search for them. Via dell’oliva offers a sprinkling of Mediterranean cheer from the former premises of the equally sunny Greek restaurant Oliva, on Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. While remaining true to the Mediterranean theme, the interior has been completely redone and the menu —and prices for that matter — taken up a notch or two.
An anonymous entrance hall hints at what lies inside as a kindly old lady with a curious twinkle in her eye guards the cloakroom. A short flight of steps leads up to the restaurant itself.
Street lamps peer lazily from behind drooping curtains as the corridor opens out into a stone banquet hall, which sprawls out in various directions into six smaller halls. In the center of the main hall lies an ornate granite and copper mosaic bearing the restaurant’s crest — a gnarled olive tree — a physical stamp of the restaurant’s authenticity (the name Via dell’oliva translates from the Italian as “Olive Street” and references its popular predecessor).
The feeling of a sleepy summer night is most perfectly captured in the backroom, whose oblong shape, battered window-shutters and sun-bleached furniture all give the impression of a little Italian promenade. Paradoxically, the decor is also reminiscent of the interior of some Tuscan palace, as terracotta and dirty yellow walls mesh elegantly with naked stone. The room leads up into a balcony at its far end, where those with a flair for the romantic may see the opportunity to reconstruct a famous Shakespearean scene. Here the tables lie behind raised stone walls, while the lights shine dully, creating a dusky calm, ideal for setting the mood.
The standard of service was exceptional — the waiter bent over backwards to make the dining experience comfortable, and was extremely flexible when it came to accommodating guests. Such service was more than could have been expected, and ensured that there was a cozy, laidback atmosphere from the offset.
After drinking all of this in, the food seemed entirely incidental — an excuse, not a reason, to be in this magical place — but this is not an eatery that rests on its laurels. To test the establishment’s continental authenticity, a breadbasket was ordered to start the meal. It was brought promptly, still warm and crisp from the oven, with a ramekin of creamy olive butter, making the 80-ruble ($2.50) price seem like a misprint. The most expensive thing on the menu is a 1,200-ruble ($38) filet mignon, while the cheapest dish is a 290-ruble ($9.10) mixed olive salad. A two-course meal for two would easily run up a bill of 3,000 rubles ($94), with mains averaging 800 rubles ($25).
Of the appetizers, the spicy chicken salad with cep mushrooms (350 rubles, $11) provided an intriguing yet cohesive blend of flavors, sprinkled Parmesan blending surprisingly well with the curry sauce, though be warned — the ceps are almost disturbingly fleshy, and go down rather like one imagines a sliver of flab would.
The spaghetti Carbonara (300 rubles, $9.41), another appetizer, was bland by any standards and served barely warm with rather fatty bacon. The Ambrosial white wine — Monterio Viura 2010 Espana Estella, 150 rubles ($4.75) per glass — did its part to try and redeem the dish. While it was almost impossibly subtle in flavor, it initially left a delicately sharp aftertaste. The Seny Seco variant of the same wine (also 150 rubles) was equally delicate, though slightly sweeter, itself leaving a tinge of honey on the tongue, which helped to freshen up the Carbonara.
Rustic and luxurious, friendly and high-class, inside and out, Via dell’oliva succeeds on many contradictory levels at once, all of which combine to make it a welcome snapshot of the Mediterranean amid the bleak winter Petersburg cityscape.
TITLE: Bringing the New Play Movement to St. Petersburg
AUTHOR: By John Freedman
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Milena Avimskaya was born in Kazakhstan, grew up in the Siberian city of Surgut and was educated in Moscow. She found her calling in St. Petersburg.
A graduate of the department of theater management at the Russian Academy of Theater Arts in Moscow, she is the founder and managing director of St. Petersburg’s ON.TEATR, a spirited new venue in a city famed for its classical and conservative approach to the arts.
“There really isn’t a new play movement here,” she says about St. Petersburg, “But since I’m sick in the head, I said, ‘We have to do this!’” And do it she has.
As Avimskaya describes it, she “followed” her husband, the director Garold Strelkov, to St. Petersburg, when he accepted a job at the Lensoviet Theater. “I arrived here pregnant, and I knew no one,” she says matter-of-factly, sitting in a bright white rehearsal space in her new professional home. “So I started attending the theater and meeting young people.”
Avimskaya was interested in problems of theater development long before she began imagining ON.TEATR, whose name is officially written in all capital letters at her insistence. While compiling a dissertation titled “Finding Work for Theater Workers in Times of Transition,” she conducted a poll to learn how often graduates of Moscow’s theater institutes were aided by their institutions during job searches.
“The vast majority said ‘nothing, no meetings, no help, no advice,’” Avimskaya states almost indignantly.
Upon arriving in St. Petersburg she conducted more research and learned that just 5 percent of local academy graduates actually found jobs in theaters. When she shared this information with an official at the institute, he asked her not to publicize it.
She honored that request but eventually did something far more important. In 2009, she organized a festival bringing together young directors and actors to create barebones shows in a brief period. “In fact,” Avimskaya declares, “many good shows came from that. The organization I created worked.”
She repeated the festival the following year with grand ambitions, presenting 35 different shows staged by 35 directors. Andrei Moguchy, one of St. Petersburg’s top experimental directors, warned Avimskaya in advance that nothing would come of her efforts. But after he saw several of the showings he decided to open his own laboratory for young directors.
Thus, ON.TEATR began taking shape as Avimskaya held out a helping hand to talented young people, and they began gathering around her. Since 2009 ON.TEATR has mounted 16 productions, has conducted a joint laboratory with partners in Italy and, in August this year, assumed residence in a large basement measuring 500 square meters in a centrally located courtyard at 18 Ulitsa Zhukovskogo, not far from Liteiny Prospekt.
Presently, the ON.TEATR marquee features numerous productions of plays by top contemporary Russian writers — Yury Klavdiyev, Oleg Bogayev, Vasily Sigarev, Yelena Isayeva, Yaroslava Pulinovich and Anna Yablonskaya, who perished in the terrorist attack at Domodedovo airport last January.
Equally impressive is the large number of directors who have gravitated to the new venue. Avimskaya invariably refers to them as “our” or “my” directors, exhibiting a motherly affection for them all. But more than showering love on them, she looks for ways to empower them.
“I was criticized by one critic for not appointing an artistic director,” she explains. “But I say that all my directors are talented and I don’t want any of them to have someone else wielding power over them.”
The result is a system by which each director works with his or her own group of actors, technicians and designers, and answers for everything the group does. The group shares the proceeds of each performance 50-50 with the theater, and things are going well enough that some actors are taking home 1,000 rubles ($32) for a single night’s work. Thanks to their work at ON.TEATR, such directors as Dmitry Volkostrelov, Denis Shibayev, Maria Kritskaya, Yekaterina Maximova and others have begun making names for themselves. This focus on directors sets ON.TEATR apart from other similar endeavors in Russia, and means that its work has its own unique stamp.
Avimskaya, however, frowns and waves off attempts to call ON.TEATR a success. It’s too early for that, she implies. But she does take satisfaction in tossing out some numbers, as one might expect of a professional manager.
“Between 2005 and 2008 only four young directors staged shows in St. Petersburg,” Avimskaya declares. “In 2009 alone, after our first festival, the number jumped to six.”
That number, according to Avimskaya, is now up to about 10. One doesn’t have to be a professional mathematician to suspect that adds up to success.
TITLE: Document Shows KGB Stopped Probe
AUTHOR: By Louise Nordstrom
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STOCKHOLM — A newly found Swedish document shows how the KGB intervened in the early 1990s to stop an investigation into World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg’s fate, two U.S.-based researchers said Monday.
The Swedish diplomat, who would have turned 100 this year, is credited with rescuing tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis. He disappeared after being arrested in Hungary by the Soviet Red Army in 1945.
The Russians have said he was executed on July 17, 1947, but unverified witness accounts and newly uncovered evidence suggest he may have lived beyond that date.
Wallenberg researchers were hoping that key pieces of the puzzle would emerge when an international commission was granted access to Soviet prison records as the communist rule was heading toward its end.
But a document from the Swedish Foreign Ministry supports claims that the KGB — the former Soviet secret police and intelligence agency — acted to obstruct that effort, said German researcher Susanne Berger, who consulted a Swedish-Russian working group that conducted a 10-year investigation until 2001.
The Sept. 16, 1991 memorandum from the Swedish Embassy in Moscow cites the former head of the Soviet “Special Archive,” Anatoly Prokopenko, as telling Swedish diplomats that the KGB instructed him to stop a search for documents by researchers working for the first International Wallenberg Commission.
Prokopenko also said the KGB wanted copies of all documents that the researchers had already viewed, according to the memo, which was made available to The Associated Press by Berger. Its authenticity was confirmed by the Foreign Ministry.
Berger said the document was significant because it illustrates how since the end of the Cold War researchers have struggled to get access to crucial documents from Soviet archives.
“The action in 1991 has, unfortunately, proved symptomatic, rather than an exception to the rule,” Berger told the AP. “Twenty years later, we are still facing this fundamental problem.”
In an interview with the AP on Monday, Prokopenko said the researchers had been euphoric when they found an archive document on Wallenberg’s transfer from one Soviet prison to another, sharing their discovery with other members of the commission investigating Wallenberg’s fate.
That was a mistake, the archivist implied, saying the KGB officers on the panel reacted quickly, warning authorities, and Prokopenko was immediately ordered to bar the researchers’ access to the files.
Prokopenko said he complied because he was working to open the archives to the public, taking advantage of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberal reforms, and realized that open disobedience would lead to his immediate ouster. “I had to make a sacrifice for the sake of uncovering numerous other secrets of the archive,” Prokopenko said.
He added that following a brief period of openness before and after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, authorities have grown increasingly reluctant to allow public access to the archives.
“The situation has grown worse, and even the files that were opened to the public in 1991-1992 were classified again later,” he said.
The Swedish government declassified parts of the memo after Prokopenko mentioned the KGB interference in a 1997 article in a Russian newspaper, but it didn’t become publicly known until Berger obtained it this month.
Wallenberg was arrested the day after the Red Army seized Budapest, along with his Hungarian driver Vilmos Langfelder. The Russians never explained why they detained him.
Russian scholar Vadim Birstein, one of the researchers working for the first Wallenberg commission, told the AP they had just found some previously unknown documents when the archive was closed to them in the spring of 1991.
“We were stopped exactly after I found three documents: two with the name Wallenberg on it and one with the name Langfelder — and (the authorities) said they weren’t hiding anything!”
Birstein and Berger, who are based in the U.S., said that though they and other researchers have since been granted access to study some Wallenberg files, important archive material has still not been made available.
“At the key junctures, the doors have remained closed,” Berger said, noting that even the first piece of material that was handed over by the Russians in 1991, and was meant to illustrate a new openness on their side, turned out to be censored.
It concerned interrogation material suggesting that Wallenberg had been questioned six days after his alleged death.
Russia has never been able to produce a reliable death certificate or hand over Wallenberg’s remains — circumstances that have prompted researchers to continue to try to tap Russian authorities for more information.
As Sweden’s envoy in Budapest from July 1944, Wallenberg saved 20,000 Jews by giving them Swedish travel documents or moving them to safe houses, and dissuaded German officers from massacring the 70,000 inhabitants of the city’s ghetto.
Sweden marks the 100th anniversary of his birth this year with a series of events, including a traveling exhibition, seminars, conferences, concerts and a commemorative stamp.
Associated Press Writer Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.