SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1704 (15), Wednesday, April 18, 2012
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TITLE: Investigative Committee to Pursue Corrupt Police Officers
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Investigative Committee is forming a department that will investigate crimes committed by police officers despite resistance to the plan from Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev.
Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin has signed the paperwork for the new department, which will be established at both the federal and regional level, committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said Wednesday.
Investigators will also look into crimes that police officers commit together with members of other law enforcement bodies, but will receive assistance from the Federal Security Service because of the "additional obstacles" they face in such cases, Markin said, RIA-Novosti reported.
The new department will expand the authority of the Investigation Committee, which has emerged as a powerful agency after earlier reforms placed all investigative activities under its supervision.
The creation of the department comes soon after a headline-grabbing case of police abuse in the republic of Tatarstan where local police officers are accused of torturing and sodomizing a man in custody. The man died soon after.
Even though the number of registered crimes committed by police officers is on the rise, Nurgaliyev told the State Duma last week that he saw no need to create the department within the Investigative Committee. Nurgaliyev said half of crimes committed by police are exposed by the police themselves.
According to the Interior Ministry's internal affairs division, police officers committed about 5,000 crimes last year, including 3,000 related to corruption.
Russian law punishes police officers more severely than ordinary people for illegal activities, but police officers who commit crimes are often quickly removed from their posts and their dismissal papers are sometimes backdated, a Moscow police official told The St. Petersburg Times.
Police officers also are often reluctant to investigate crimes committed by colleagues because of pressure from superiors worried about their own reputations.
TITLE: Navalny Makes Time Magazine List of World's 100 Most Influential People
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Opposition leader and anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny was the only Russian named by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential figures in a list published Wednesday.
Navalny has risen to prominence as one of the leaders of a burgeoning opposition movement that has gathered strength following mass protests over alleged vote fraud in December's State Duma elections.
Writing about Navalny in the Time article, fellow opposition figure and world chess champion Garry Kasparov stressed Navalny's use of the Internet to gain supporters.
"Navalny has mastered the blogging and social networks that the opposition depends on since we are banned from the mainstream media," Kasparov wrote.
Neither President-elect Vladimir Putin nor President Dmitry Medvedev appeared on the list. Putin was Time's 2007 person of the year.
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Kommersant-FM that the president-elect's not being on the list was “a mistake.”
“It is, of course, a mistake — I just don't know what criteria they were guided by,” Peskov said. “In this case, I'll say this: [Putin's] authority within the country is well-known, it was confirmed electorally just recently, and Putin's international authority is also in no need of confirmation.”
Other international grassroots activists on the Time list include Saudi women's activist Manal al-Sharif and American immigration rights activist Dulce Matuz. Also included are U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, as well as prominent musicians, athletes and business people.
TITLE: Assange Interviews Hezbollah Leader on Russian TV Channel
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — The opening episode of Julian Assange's new talk show featured an interview with militant leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose Syria-backed Hezbollah militia is considered a terrorist organization in the United States and Europe.
The half-hour segment aired on Kremlin-backed broadcaster RT Tuesday and featured questions about Israel, Lebanon, Syria, theology and encryption.
Nasrallah, who rarely gives interviews, largely stuck to well-established positions, but he did reveal that his group had been in touch with opponents of President Bashar Assad, whose bloody crackdown on Syria's protest movement has claimed thousands of lives.
Nasrallah told Assange that Hezbollah, long an Assad ally, had "contacted elements of the opposition, to encourage them, to facilitate dialogue with the regime."
Speaking via videolink and through a translator, Nasrallah claimed that Hezbollah had been rebuffed.
"You have an opposition that is not prepared for dialogue ... all it wants is to bring down the regime," he said. He added that he would be happy to mediate if needed.
Later in the segment, Assange and Nasrallah also shared a joke about encryption - with the latter saying that Hezbollah kept Israeli code-breakers on their toes by using Arabic farm slang.
"That's not going to do you any good in WikiLeaks, by the way," Nasrallah joked.
Getting Nasrallah on air was something of a coup. The Shiite militant boss rarely gives interviews, and when he does they usually are on Hezbollah's Manar TV station. According to Hezbollah's media office, Nasrallah's last outside interview was with Kuwait's Rai TV three years ago.
The premiere of "The World Tomorrow" marked the launch of Assange's unlikely career in television, and a partnership with a Russian state-backed station that many have found uncomfortable.
Assange said before the broadcast that he anticipated criticism along the lines of: "There's Julian Assange, enemy combatant, traitor, getting into bed with the Kremlin and interviewing terrible radicals from around the world."
But he said that RT had a big international reach and his guests had told him things they "could not say on a mainstream TV network."
Assange remains under strict bail conditions at an undisclosed location in England while he fights extradition to Sweden on sex crime allegations.
His WikiLeaks website has been closed to public submissions amid a host of financial and legal problems.
TITLE: Russia Slams NATO Withdrawal From Afghanistan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS — Russia's foreign minister sharply criticized NATO's plan to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by 2014, saying Thursday that coalition troops should remain in the country until Afghan government forces are capable of ensuring security.
"As long as Afghanistan is not able to ensure by itself the security in the country, the artificial timelines of withdrawal are not correct and they should not be set," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
NATO plans to hand over lead responsibility for the war against the Taliban to the Afghan army and police by the middle of next year, and to withdraw its troops by the end of 2014. It has already started drawing down its forces, which reached a peak of about 140,000 last year.
NATO leaders say that Afghan forces are improving rapidly and will be able to counter Taliban guerrillas after 2014. But critics have pointed to widespread drug use and the high desertion rate among government forces as signs that it remains unprepared to handle the insurgents.
The Afghan army and police are scheduled to expand to more than 350,000 members in the next several months. NATO has already handed over to them responsibility for security over half of the country's population, and the transition is set to continue.
Lavrov, who attended a meeting of NATO defense and foreign ministers in Brussels, said China and other countries in Asia were also worried about the withdrawal schedule.
Moscow views NATO's military effort in Afghanistan as crucial for its own security, including helping to prevent instability from spreading into ex-Soviet Central Asia.
Russia has provided NATO with air corridors and railway routes for carrying supplies to and from landlocked Afghanistan. The link has become particularly important since Pakistan blocked NATO supplies from crossing its territory following an alliance airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani border troops in November.
On Thursday, Lavrov and NATO ministers discussed a plan to give the alliance a new logistics facility on Russian territory to transfer military cargo to and from Afghanistan.
The proposal now being considered by Russian lawmakers would for the first time allow alliance members to set up a logistics facility in Ulyanovsk, Russia, for troops and cargo.
Officials said there were "no differences" between the two sides on the use of the air base in Ulyanovsk.
"We expect to expand the transit options offered to us by Russia ... to Afghanistan," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after the meeting. "We appreciate very highly Russia's contribution, which is based on our shared interests and contributes to our shared security."
The former Cold War rivals remain sharply at odds, however, over a U.S.-led NATO missile defense plan in Europe that Washington says is aimed at deflecting a potential Iranian threat. Moscow fears it will eventually become powerful enough to undermine Russia's nuclear deterrent.
Despite those differences, Russia has also cooperated with the alliance in suppressing piracy off the Somali coastline and in such areas as anti-terrorism, counter-narcotics and search-and-rescues at sea.
TITLE: Trial of Other Russia Activists Set in Motion
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A trial against 12 local members of the oppositional The Other Russia party began in St. Petersburg last week. The preliminary hearing, which was closed to the public and the media, was held at the Vyborgsky district court on April 11.
The activists, including The Other Russia’s local chair Andrei Dmitriyev, were previously members of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP), which was banned in 2007 under the “anti-extremist” Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code.
Dmitriyev, Andrei Pesotsky and Alexei Marochkin have been charged with organizing activities of an extremist organization (an offense punishable with up to five years in prison) while Alexander Yashin, Oleg Petrov, Igor Boikov, Ravil Bashirov, Alexei Zentsov, Vladislav Ivakhnik, Roman Khrenov, Vadim Mamedov and Andrei Milyuk are charged with participating in activities of an extremist organization and face up to two years in prison.
According to the indictment, the activists held unauthorized protests “aimed at expressing intolerance toward senior executives of the authorities … and promoting the extremist activities of … the National Bolshevik Party.”
Originally, 13 local activists were charged, but in November last year Sergei Porokhovoi fled to Finland, where he requested political asylum. His case is due to be heard separately.
The activists deny the charges, saying they acted legally first within the Other Russia Coalition, which also comprised Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front (OGF) and Mikhail Kasyanov’s Russian People’s Democratic Union (RNDS), and from 2010 as members of The Other Russia party formed by the ex-NBP leader and author Eduard Limonov.
Limonov himself does not face any charges within the case filed by the St. Petersburg district Center E, the agency officially formed to fight extremism.
According to Dmitriyev, the case was filed in October 2010 in order to put a stop to protests, especially Strategy 31 — a series of rallies in defense of the right to assembly, in which The Other Russia plays a leading role.
He said that the case was opened after Center E planted two undercover agents within the group, and is partly based on covert video recordings made in an apartment offered by one of them for the group’s meetings.
Dmitriyev described the 370-page indictment, which he said was prepared by a team of 18 senior investigative officers, as “ridiculous.” One of the many alleged offenses with which the activists have been charged is crossing the road on a red light to “express the political views … of the National Bolshevik Party by means of obstructing traffic” on Nov. 21, 2009.
A St. Petersburg Times reporter witnessed that on that day the activists were arrested as they walked on the sidewalk toward the harbor on Vasilyevsky Island, where a congress of the ruling United Russia party was being held, in an attempt to deliver a petition to President Dmitry Medvedev.
During the preliminary hearing, the defense submitted two motions asking the court to exclude most of the alleged offenses from the case, because the time limit for them had expired. They also called for the case to be returned to prosecutors, because it did not state when the allegedly illegal activities ended. Both motions were dismissed by the court on the following day.
The National Bolshevik Party was banned by the Moscow City Court as “extremist” in 2007 for a series of protests in different cities — including one in St. Petersburg — in which three activists got into the Legislative Assembly and threw leaflets during a session.
According to Dmitriyev, Limonov will come to St. Petersburg to support the activists ahead of the second hearing, scheduled for April 24.
The Moscow-based human rights organization Sova criticized the case.
“We consider neither the ban on the NBP legitimate, nor the fact that the people who act on behalf of the Other Russia movement, which has not been banned, are persecuted,” Sova said in a statement last week.
TITLE: Local Fitness Chain Accused of Fraud
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Three hundred gym-goers are currently fighting to get their money back after between 1,500 and 3,000 members claim they were cheated by Galaktika fitness club chain.
At least three Galaktika fitness clubs have come under fire from their staff and members for allegedly owing money.
The most high-profile case is that of the sports club located at 5 Ulitsa Bakunina. Alexander Valentsev, a former member of the gym, said that last fall the club launched an advertising campaign to attract new members.
“Lots of new clients became members at that time,” said Valentsev. But by Dec. 17 the club was closed. When members called the gym by telephone, staff claimed that it was closed due to technical difficulties, but it later emerged that the club had been shut down by the management of the business center in which it was located for not paying rent.
Other affiliates of the chain claim that they are managed by other corporate entities and that they are not connected to the club at 5 Ulitsa Bakunina.
Last month, the Galaktika website was redesigned, with information and news about the Bakunina branch deleted. The chain also changed its name from Galaktika to Globus Fitness.
An address where disgruntled clients could send their claims was posted online. According to Valentsev, about 100 claims were sent by various people, but none were delivered to the recipient. Instead, they were sent back to the sender with a statement saying that the recipient had not been found. When one of the gym members went to check the address in person, she discovered a market on the spot where the fitness center office should have been, he added.
In February there were rumors that the fitness club would reopen, but when the members asked the business center management about it, they were told that Galaktika would not return to the building and that the management planned to open its own sports club on the premises. The new club would have no obligation to honor former Galaktika club clients’ membership, they were told.
Management of the new gym at 5 Ulitsa Bakunina contacted the disgruntled members by phone to set up a meeting.
“We were expecting a compromise from them, but they just proposed a discount for a new membership,” Valentsev explained. “The offer was valid for only two weeks, in other words, before the club was even open. Gyms always offer pre-opening discounts, so they weren’t giving us any real deal,” he said.
The Galaktika members made several attempts to get their money back, including by sending messages to the prosecutor’s office and to the police. They also initiated a collective claim and individual claims in court. One of the members, Nadezhda Gavrilova, has already won her own suit, while the collective claim is still under consideration.
“Although we are likely to win in court, our money won’t be returned to us as Galaktika was an empty company that didn’t own any property and the equipment was theirs only as part of a finance loan,” said Valentsev. “Therefore if they’re found guilty, it still won’t lead to any real result.”
“But it is no longer just a financial issue for us, but a question of principle, of defending our interests,” Valentsev added.
Valentsev is sure there is a connection between the old management and the new one. The founder of the Galaktika chain, Boris Bykov, who is now the director of the Nature Conservation Society, declined to answer any questions about Galaktika, claiming that he stopped working there about three years ago.
“I was the founder of the chain, but I have had nothing to do with the company for three years now. All enquiries should be sent to the club’s legal entities,” said Bykov, adding that all of the clubs are under different management.
Nikolai Pyzhenko, an employee at the Galaktika club located at 12 Ulitsa Ispytatelei, said that the club had not belonged to Galaktika for 18 months. “Since then, it’s been managed by the fitness center of Lesgaft State University of Physical Education,” he said. When asked for a contact number for the club’s management, however, Pyzhenko provided a cell phone number that turned out to belong to Boris Bykov.
“Galaktika owed us a very large sum of money,” said Danila Serdyuk, general director of the new club and a representative of the business center in which it is located. “We warned and reminded the management and owner many times about it. The final deadline for Galaktika to pay off its rent was Dec. 15.”
Serdyuk declined to state how much Galaktika owed and for what period of time, saying that he wouldn’t share the company’s financial details.
Serdyuk confirmed that a rental contract was signed with a company named Solntse in 2009 and that it was Bykov whom the business center’s management reminded of the outstanding debt before the club closed in December. Even after the club was already closed, the business center’s management negotiated with Bykov and still consider him to be their debtor, Serdyuk told The St. Petersburg Times. “But we’re working on a lawsuit right now,” he added.
Cheated club members are not the only ones to have suffered because of Galaktika. Former fitness trainer Mikhail Stolbov and sales department manager Lyudmila Chernega worked together at Galaktika at 12 Prospekt Ispytatelei. The club is still open.
“From 2007 to 2009 we were not paid our salaries on a regular basis,” Chernega said. She also claimed that the club had committed various violations by hiring people without work permits and committing tax evasion.
Chernega won her case against Galaktika, but as is the case with the fitness center at 5 Ulitsa Bakunina, she didn’t get her money back: A check of the company’s finances revealed that the company’s bank account was empty. Chernega claims there were two companies — Non-Commercial Partner Galaktika, which hired her, and Galaktika LLC, through which all of the company’s bills were paid.
Another affiliate of the Galaktika fitness club at 24 Aviatsionnaya Ulitsa allegedly sold club membership cards but never opened.
TITLE: Gay Trial Postponed 2nd Time
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Judges appear reluctant to use the notorious local anti-gay law, as the court hearing against Igor Kochetkov and Sergei Kondrashov, charged with “promoting sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism” and “failure to obey a police officer” was postponed Monday for the second time.
According to Vykhod (Coming Out) LGBT rights organization, a police officer identified as Afanasyev, when answering what exactly the promotion of sodomy was in Kochetkov’s actions, replied that it was the call to investigate hate crimes toward gays and lesbians. The second police persecution witness was absent for health reasons. The hearing was postponed until April 23.
“There’s a certain lack of coordination between the police and courts,” Kochetkov said Tuesday.
“The police charge people under the new law, but judges appear reluctant to hear the case and postpone hearings.
“Maybe they’re thinking about their reputations or are waiting for clarifications from the City Court.”
So far four people have been detained under the new law, according to Kochetkov. None of them have yet been punished.
Last week, about 150 people took part in a peaceful demonstration against the law in Helsinki, Finland, which was organized to coincide with St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko’s visit. The protesters stood chanting “Poltavchenko, love is a human right” in front of the Finlandia Hall, where Poltavchenko was to speak at the 200th anniversary celebration of Helsinki as the capital of Finland.
Their signs said “Poltavchenko: People can’t be silenced,” “Poltavchenko: The gay ‘propaganda’ law is against human rights,” “Gay” (in Russian) and “Love is a human right.”
“According to what we saw, governor Poltavchenko passed by the demonstration (at a 10-meter distance) and saw the signs and heard the slogans,” said Aija Salo, secretary general of Finland’s LGBT rights organization Seta, in an email.
“He did not stop to talk with us. But there were dozens of other guests of the Helsinki celebration who stopped on their way to the event, took our leaflets and expressed their support for the equal rights of LGBT people in Russia and in Finland.”
Poltavchenko signed the bill into law on March 7. It has been in effect since March 17.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Off-Duty Cop Kills Two
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A local policeman hit and killed a woman and her son, a sixth-grade student, while driving in St. Petersburg on Sunday night, the St. Petersburg Investigation Committee said.
The driver, Nikolai Miroshkin, hit the victims when they were on a pedestrian crossing on Ulitsa Rustaveli, the committee said.
The St. Petersburg police say that after running over the pedestrians, Miroshkin’s Honda Accord collided with an Opel Astra that was about to make a turn. The driver of the Opel Astra and his female passenger were both hospitalized, and the woman was reported to be in critical condition.
Miroshkin, 27, was detained, and investigators have opened a criminal case against him for the violation of traffic regulations resulting in the death of two or more people due to carelessness, the committee said.
No alcohol was found in Miroshkin’s blood, police said.
However, according to unofficial preliminary reports, Fontanka.ru news website obtained information that Miroshkin was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the accident.
The City Police Office said it has already decided to fire the policeman.
The head of a police department where Miroshkin worked has been temporarily relieved of his duties while the investigation takes place.
Frozen Corpse in Gulf
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — City police are investigating the death of a woman whose frozen body was found in the ice on the Gulf of Finland, Interfax reported Monday.
The body was found by a man who came to the St. Petersburg suburb of Sestroretsk to go skiing on the frozen gulf.
The body was found 100 meters from the shore and 500 meters from one of the health resorts located along the coast. The woman was wearing a ski-jacket and other warm clothes. In her pocket were a cell phone and keys on a heart-shaped key chain with the name “Olga” written on it. Her skis were found next to her body.
Man Dies at Meeting
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — An elderly shareholder of the city’s largest brewing company, Baltika Breweries, died of a heart attack during the company’s annual shareholder meeting last week, Interfax reported.
Seventy-four-year-old shareholder and pensioner Nikolai Mikhailovich died at the beginning of the meeting.
The company decided at the meeting not to pay out dividends for 2011.
An anonymous source told Interfax that by not paying income on its shares, the company “is violating the rights of the plant’s veterans — those who helped start the large Russian enterprise.”
Taimuraz Bolloyev, former president of Baltika Breweries who left the position in 2004 after heading the plant for 13 years, said it was unacceptable not to give shareholders the income from their shares.
“The enterprise is profitable, very profitable, but the main shareholder is giving a hard time to those who believed in privatization and invested vouchers in the company, essentially creating the plant from nothing but a green field,” Bolloyev was cited by Interfax as saying.
Bolloyev said Carlsberg, the company’s major shareholder, was acting legally but “it should also think about people.”
Baltika has 11 breweries in nine regions of Russia, as well as a plant in Azerbaijan. The major owner of the company, holding 85.6 percent of its capital, is Baltic Beverages Holding, which is owned by Carlsberg.
City Urged to Recycle
The city’s Greenpeace office will open a collection point for recyclable materials on April 21.
City residents will be able to drop off their plastic, glass, metal and paper waste to be recycled. They can also drop off hazardous waste and clothes they no longer need. The clothes will be donated to charity, Greenpeace said.
Accepted waste includes all kinds of plastic drink bottles, glass bottles and jars of any shape and color, aluminum cans, milk and juice cartons, hazardous waste such as disposable and rechargeable batteries, mercury thermometers, energy-saving light bulbs, automobile oil and all electronics.
The recycling point will be located at the entrance of Perekryostok supermarket at 81 Prospekt Prosveshcheniya, near Grazhdansky Prospekt metro station from noon to 7 p.m.
“People get the majority of their food packaging from stores and it would be convenient for them to return it to those same stores,” Greenpeace said.
Greenpeace said the next event of its kind is planned to take place near an Auchan supermarket on May 13.
Cyclists Start Season
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Several thousand people will kick off the biking season by riding their bicycles through the city’s suburbs on April 21, Velopiter club said.
The cycling event will start at the Garden City trade center located on Lakhtinsky Prospekt, and the route will run through the St. Petersburg suburbs of Sestroretsk and Beloostrov with a stop at the beach in Sestroretsk.
Cyclists will then head toward the finish on Palace Square in central St. Petersburg. The event is planned to finish at 3.30 p.m.
Finns Hear Complaint
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko has complained to Finnish President Sauli Niiniste that Russian tourists are experiencing inconvenience as a result of new border control policies.
Poltavchenko, who had a meeting with Niiniste in Helsinki last week, said the change in policy requires ferry passengers crossing several European borders during their journey to go through border control upon entering each new country.
“In the past, travelers went through border control only upon entering and exiting the Schengen zone,” said Poltavchenko. “Now Russian citizens have to go through checkpoints at every place where the ferry stops along the way. The new rules came into effect on March 1 of 2012,” he added.
Poltavchenko said the new rules could have a negative effect on tourism.
The Finnish president promised to discuss the issue with his European colleagues, Interfax reported.
Survivors Get $30,000
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — All the surviving mountain climbers from the St. Petersburg Politekhnik Alpine Club hit by an avalanche in the Khibiny mountains are to receive $30,000 each in compensation, insurance company Allianz’s press service said.
Two mountain climbers died and three were injured in the Khibiny mountains in the Murmansk region on April 1 as the result of an avalanche. All the survivors have been discharged from the hospital, Interfax reported.
TITLE: Sweden Wins Gold At 34th St. Petersburg Bolshoi Priz
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Sweden won a gold medal at the 34th St. Petersburg Grand Prix, or Bolshoi Priz, junior ice hockey tournament with a 5-3 victory over rival Finland at the Yubilieny Sports Palace on Saturday night.
Russia captured the bronze medal with a 6-3 win over the St. Petersburg team and the Czechs destroyed Slovakia 11-6 in the 5th-place match, both held earlier in the day.
“It was a good tournament for us,” said the Russian team’s head coach Valery Bragin. “We were able to evaluate a number of players. Whether or not they get called up to play on the team going to the world championship is up to them.”
In individual awards, Olli Kalkaja of Finland, Jonas Brodin of Sweden and Russia’s Pavel Buchnevich picked up the honors for best goaltender, best defender and best forward, respectively. Dmitrij Jaskin of the Czech Republic was the tournament’s most productive player with four goals and two assists.
TITLE: Bomb Attack Injures Senior FSB Officer
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A bomb attack Monday in Dagestan severely injured a senior officer of the local branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and killed his wife, Kommersant reported, citing local Investigative Committee sources.
The bomb went off under a Ford Focus belonging to Gasan Achilayev, head of the Khunzensky interdistrict branch of the FSB, about 9:20 a.m. in the regional capital of Makhachkala.
The explosion occurred right after Achilayev and his wife, Patimat, got into the car.
The blast killed Achilayev’s wife and tore off one of his legs. He remained in emergency care Monday.
Investigators linked the attack to Achilayev’s successful campaigns against regional rebels.
Investigators have opened a criminal case on charges of attempted assassination of a law enforcement officer, murder and illegal discharge of weapons and explosives.
Taken together, the charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Two bombs went off in Makhachkala in the 12 hours preceding the attack on Achilayev, killing a rebel and injuring two students, Interfax reported.
One of the bombs accidentally exploded inside an apartment building as a rebel, identified as Omargadzhi Ibragimov, tried to plant it.
The explosion killed Ibragimov and destroyed two flights of stairs.
The other bomb, equivalent to 200 grams of TNT, went off outside a men’s clothing store Sunday evening, injuring two young women.
Elsewhere, a small homemade bomb exploded outside a store in Sochi on Sunday evening and injured a 22-year-old man, Interfax reported.
TITLE: New Cosmodrome to Total $1 Bln
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last week that Russia will spend about $1 billion this year to build a new space launch pad in the far east that should ease the Russian space program’s reliance on neighbor Kazakhstan.
Putin told government officials in televised remarks the first rocket launch from the estimated $10 billion-Vostochny cosmodrome is set to be conducted by 2015, and in 2018 it should launch a first manned mission.
Putin said Russia will continue to use the Soviet-built Baikonur launch pad it leases from Kazakhstan, but added that a new launch facility of its own is needed to secure the national space program’s independence.
“Only the existence of several space launch pads would guarantee Russia a full independence in space activities,” Putin said.
Russia also has the Plesetsk launch pad in the north used mostly for launches of military satellites.
Vostochny, where construction began last year, is located outside the town of Uglegorsk in the far eastern Amur region.
Putin said the new facility will include more than 40 apartment buildings for personnel and the necessary infrastructure to make it a “comfortable, modern town.”
“We won’t repeat the past when they were saving money on people,” he said. “It will create a stimulus for the development of the entire far eastern region.”
TITLE: Russia’s Top Cyclist Caught Doping Before 2012 Games
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — One of Russia’s top contenders for an Olympic medal may never make it into the London 2012 competition, as cyclist Denis Galimzyanov was suspended after testing positive for a banned performance-boosting substance.
“It’s a bad, very bad surprise,” Russian cycling team manager Hans-Michael Holczer told VeloNews. “I have only heard the news 10 minutes ago, but I can confirm that the team is not involved. Whatever he did was his personal choice.”
The International Cycling Union said that erythropoietin, or EPO, was found in a urine sample submitted by the cyclist March 22.
EPO works by increasing the number of a person’s red blood cells, thereby increasing the ability to carry oxygen throughout the body and boosting athletic performance and endurance.
According to the organization’s rules, Galimzyanov has the right to request that a backup “B” sample be analyzed for the substance. If the 25-year-old cyclist fails this test as well, he could face a two-year disqualification from the sport, which would mean he could not participate in this year’s Olympic games.
Galimzyanov is racing on the Russian team Katusha for the fifth season, and had been expected to be one of Russia’s three entries in the July 28 Olympic road race. He is a specialist in sprinting, and was expected to do well on the course, which favors a sprint finish.
He won the Paris-Brussels race last year and finished 11th in the September road race world championship in Copenhagen.
Russian biathletes Dmitry Yaroshenko, Ekaterina Yurieva and Albina Akhatova are all currently serving two-year bans for the use of EPO as well.
TITLE: Syria Asks for Russian Pressure
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Syrian opposition members say they have sensed a shift in Russia’s stance on the conflict in their homeland and voiced hope Tuesday that Moscow will crank up pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.
On a visit to Moscow, Haytham Manna, spokesman for the Arab Commission for Human Rights, said Russia has voiced support for democratic changes in Syria and believes that the Syrians themselves should determine the country’s future.
“The representatives of the Russian government aren’t inclined to support the idea of preservation of the dictatorial regime,” Manna told a news conference. “They are talking about the need for continuing democratic changes, and it’s very important for us.”
Abdul-Aziz al-Kheir, a spokesman for the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria, said Russia’s position has been changing over the past two months and “particularly fast over the past two weeks.”
Members of the Syrian opposition said they hoped Russia will apply its power to persuade Assad to observe United Nations and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s cease-fire plan to end 13 months of violence in Syria.
“Russia has all the necessary levers to apply pressure on Assad’s government and help Annan’s mission,” Manna said.
Hassan Abdul-Azim, the head of the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change who is leading the delegation, said Moscow’s support is essential for the success of Annan’s mission.
“That is the last chance to end the fratricidal massacre and create preconditions for the transfer to a democratic form of government,” he said.
Manna said that while the opposition was encouraged by the talks in Moscow, differences remain. Russia continues to be strongly critical of Assad’s opponents using force, Manna said, while the opposition views it as a legitimate response to the violence on the part of the regime.
He said the opposition delegation also sought to assuage Russia’s concerns about the rise of Islamism in Syria and prospects of continuing violence in the country in case of regime change.
The opposition delegation was due to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later Tuesday.
TITLE: Speculation Builds Over United Russia Split
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Speculation mounted Monday about the future of United Russia following a report that Dmitry Medvedev might assume leadership of the battered party in an attempt to allow incoming President Vladimir Putin to distance himself from the faltering political force.
The move would allow Putin to remain unaffiliated with United Russia — which he is not formally a member of — and instead find backing from his more recently formed People’s Front coalition leading to the creation of an alternative political party.
Putin might propose that Medvedev — the presumptive prime minister — take control at the party’s upcoming congress in May, Vedomosti reported Monday, citing sources. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not comment, only saying it is up to the congress to decide who would become the head of the party.
Medvedev, who is also not an official member of United Russia, led the party during last year’s State Duma elections. But this created difficulties for the party, which built its campaign around Putin while Medvedev was associated with more liberal-minded positions.
But analysts questioned whether Medvedev taking command of United Russia would ultimately lead to the creation of a system with two dominant parties since the Kremlin does not intend to lose control over the one “party of power.”
“I wouldn’t talk about a two-party system because then the party’s electoral base is shrinking,” Pavel Salin, an expert with the Center for Current Politics, said about the theory that the People’s Front — currently a coalition of businessmen and civic leaders — might be turned into a political party for Putin.
The Kremlin has toyed with the idea of creating a genuine two-party political system in the past, backing the creation of the left-wing A Just Russia party under the leadership of then-Federation Council head Sergei Mironov, a former Communist. The party has started to attack United Russia instead, but it does not enjoy widespread support.
United Russia still has a parliamentary majority but suffered a significant pounding in December’s Duma elections. Since, it has become the target of attacks from liberal activists who dubbed it the party of “crooks and thieves” — a bumper-sticker slogan popularized by blogger Alexei Navalny.
While the party’s popular rating has grown from 42 percent to 52 percent since the elections, the Kremlin does not see it as a strong political force, Salin said.
“It wouldn’t be swept away totally. It has parliamentary deputies who are still a strong asset,” said Salin.
He predicted that United Russia and People’s Front would ultimately act as a single political force.
That position was echoed by Vyacheslav Lysakov, a United Russia deputy who was elected to the Duma through the People’s Front.
“Such an idea should be discussed with careful attention, since the creation of such a party might lead to a split,” said Lysakov, the head of the Free Choice motorist movement.
Out of 238 United Russia deputies currently in the parliament, 80 were elected through the People’s Front, Lysakov said.
Political expert Sergei Markov, of the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, said that while United Russia might become more liberal under Medvedev, authorities would preserve it from the split.
“The main thing for them is not that it is a party of views, but the party of power,” Markov said.
He added that the Russian political elite lives in fear of losing political control over the system.
“It is like a person who saw his house burn down when he never allowed anyone to smoke inside,” Markov said.
Political expert Iosif Diskin, who took part in founding United Russia, said both Medvedev and Putin do not intend to create “an ideological competition” between two pro-government parties.
He said United Russia might turn more to the left, following a trend in society in which more people are supporting left-wing policies.
“It should become the party of national compromise,” Diskin said.
The party’s ideological agenda has always been a problem for United Russia. Despite early efforts to present itself as a conservative political force, the party’s main feature is its loyalty toward the government and not an ideological agenda.
“United Russia was always trying to embrace a broad range of ideological positions. That was its positive side and its biggest problem,” said Vladimir Medinsky, a former senior United Russia deputy who admitted that he looks at the party’s future with uncertainty.
TITLE: Russia Becomes Third Biggest Military Spender
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Russia and China kept increasing their spending on weapons last year, while the global financial crisis hit military spending in the U.S. and Europe, a leading think tank said Tuesday.
Russia overtook Britain and France to become the world’s third largest arms spender, to the tune of some $8 billion — a 9.3 percent increase over 2010.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute says budget cuts kept worldwide military expenditures nearly flat at 0.3 percent in 2011, marking an end to an 11-year trend of growing arms spending.
China boosted purchases by 6.7 percent to around $143 billion, remaining the world’s second largest arms investor.
The world’s leading arms buyer, the United States, cut military expenditure by 1.2 percent to $711 billion, while Europe marginally increased its spending to $407 billion.
“The after-effects of the global economic crisis, especially deficit-reduction measures in the U.S. and Europe, have finally brought the decade-long rise in military spending to a halt — for now,” said Sam Perlo-Freeman, head of SIPRI’s Military Expenditure Project.
Last year, six of the world’s top military spenders — Brazil, France, Germany, India, Britain and the U.S. — cut their military budgets.
Russia’s growing expenditure was mainly driven by the country’s aim to replace 70 percent of its Soviet-era military equipment with modern weaponry by 2020, SIPRI said, adding that it expects the Kremlin to increase its military spending in coming years.
“They are clearly putting very high priority on building up their military power again,” Perlo-Freeman said. He said Russia lacks important modern communications technology for the battlefield and wants to hedge against America’s overwhelming military might even if there is no current hostility between Russia and NATO.
Perlo-Freeman said many analysts doubt whether the Russian arms industry will be able to fulfill such ambitious plans after two decades of stagnation in the wake of the Soviet collapse.
One of the key reasons for the slight U.S. decline was the long delay in Congress agreeing on a 2011 budget as the Obama administration clashed with Republicans over measures to reduce the deficit, SIPRI said.
The institute expects American arms spending to continue falling due to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and the Budget Control Act, passed by Congress last year.
SIPRI said China’s spending is in line with its overall economic growth and has remained stable at around 2 percent of the country’s GDP since 2001.
It noted that China’s increased arms spending has caused concern among its neighbors and contributed to higher arms outlays in both India and Vietnam. But the report said talk of an arms race in Asia would be premature due to mixed trends in arms acquisitions.
Despite the increases, the Chinese military technology still lags behind America’s, SIPRI said.
“The U.S. is going to maintain for the foreseeable future overwhelming military dominance,” Perlo-Freeman said. “The U.S. still outspends China five to one, and Russia’s spending is half of China’s.”
TITLE: Strict Drug Law Puts Vets in Jam
AUTHOR: By Max de Haldevang
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — After eight years of fighting a strict law that virtually bans an anesthetic essential for their work, Russia’s veterinarians say they have nearly reached the end of their tether.
Ketamine has long been used for operating on animals throughout the world, but when it came in vogue as a party drug in the late 1990s, Russia’s response was to ban the substance entirely in 2003. Outcry among vets ensued, and it was reinstated for veterinary use in 2004, but under such strict conditions that it is almost impossible to obtain.
“It was technically legalized but in reality rejected. In the last eight years, only 5 percent of vets have obtained licenses to be able to use it,” says Irina Novozhilova, president of VITA, an animal rights group. “I thought when it all started that it would be sorted out very fast because you can’t just ban a profession. To work without anesthesia is to cut animals when they are conscious.”
Oleg Aristov, who runs a veterinary clinic in St. Petersburg, said the alternatives are heartbreaking.
“It is really painful for your pets to undergo operations [without ketamine],” Aristov said. “It hurts them.”
This has left vets between a rock and a hard place, with two contradictory laws condemning them whichever way they turn.
“If a vet uses ketamine, that is a violation of Article 228 for the distribution of narcotics, whereas if they operate on conscious animals, it is a violation of Article 245 for cruelty to animals. So a vet is faced with the choice of which law to break,” Novozhilova said.
In a worse case scenario, under the current laws, vets face a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison just for doing their work. But they are left with few options.
“The best medicines are believed to be opiates, but they are completely banned in Russia, so ketamine is our only choice,” Novozhilova added. “Measures other than ketamine absolutely do not give the desired effect.”
Despite the law, vets have continued to use ketamine without a license for the past eight years, but the situation was thrown into turmoil once again in March, when Alexander Shpak of St. Petersburg was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in a penal colony.
He was caught selling ketamine by an undercover agent from the Federal Drug Control Service, who befriended him by pretending to be a vet. The agent eventually persuaded Shpak to sell him the drug, claiming it was needed for an urgent operation.
But Yevgeny Chernousov from the Moscow College of Lawyers insists that the Drug Control Service acted illegally in doing this.
“It was provocation. Members of the Drug Control Service, themselves broke the law about operational investigative activity, which bans encouraging people to commit a crime,” he said last week. “Moreover, the vet sold ketamine to help an animal, not a drug user.”
Aristov says that if such sentences begin to be given out regularly, the profession could be put in real danger.
“We all use ketamine, and I shall continue to do so because there is no other option,” he said. “Imagine what would happen if the punishment given to Shpak were given to everyone. I think a lot of my colleagues would be scared to use ketamine and would do operations on conscious animals.
“[The options are] either to leave the profession, constantly expect that you may go to jail for 8 1/2 years — or even for 20 — or not use anything,” he said.
Veterinarians also insist that the strict laws are needless because ketamine is now not even in common use as a recreational drug in Russia, a trend that narcotics experts confirm.
“Ketamine is not a narcotic, it is an anesthetic,” said Dr. Yevgeny Bryun, a Public Chamber member and director of the Moscow Narcotics research center. “There has been no particular problem with ketamine use for a long time.”
Ivan Varentsov, a policy expert at the UN-funded Andrei Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice, believes that the measures taken toward vets are due to a reluctance to combat the mafia.
“In my opinion the Drug Control Service should have stopped harassing and provoking doctors who want to treat animals a long time ago,” he said. “I would like to hear more news about successes in the fight against the real drug mafia, opening criminal cases against big drug dealers. … But clearly it is easier and more peaceful to undertake long-term operations to harass doctors.”
Dr. Chris Seymour, a Senior Anesthetist at the Royal Veterinary College in Britain, said ketamine’s addictive potential is so low that vets there do not even have to record when they have used it.
“Apparently the reason [in Britain] why it is not a controlled drug like morphine and methadone is because it has a fairly low addictive potential,” he said. “I think about 15 percent of people who take it would ever take it again because the experience is so unpleasant.”
Drug Control Service authorities did not immediately respond to a written request for comment on Monday.
Novozhilova says Russian vets are left without hope, as they cannot think of a way to change the situation.
“We honestly don’t know what to do next because we have been battling for eight years, we have had 20 or so protests, a motor rally, 12 news conferences, the signatures of thousands of people,” she said. “Dozens of famous people support us, including award-winning artists; we wrote a letter to [President-elect Vladimir] Putin but did not receive an answer.”
One of the award-winning artists supporting them is actor Dmitry Pevtsov, who called the current laws “organized sadism” and wondered what would happen if Putin’s dog, Koni, needed an operation.
“I find it interesting, if he needs to sort out an operation, how will Vladimir Vladimirovich slip out of this one?” he asked. “Surely, Koni won’t be operated on without anesthetic?”
Aristov believes that the only way to solve the situation would be for all vets to go on strike, but he does not think this will take place.
“Sadly, I don’t think it would happen,” he said. “Everyone is too apathetic. It could maybe happen for one week in St. Petersburg.”
Novozhilova said the methods that some Russian vets now use to anesthetize animals are the ones that vets commonly used in the 18th century.
“We are becoming dinosaurs in our attitude to animals!” she exclaimed.
TITLE: Boy Still Haunted By Saga of Bad Adoption
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOMILINO — Two years after Artyom Saveliev’s American adoptive mother put him alone on a plane back to his homeland, the towheaded 9-year-old shivers and barks “No!” when asked if he would ever go back to the United States.
The boy who instantly became a potent symbol of failed adoption policies now lives in a cheery home in a village of foster families near Moscow. As he tries to move forward in his life, the legacies of his case reverberate deeply through U.S.-Russian relations.
His treatment ignited outrage in Russia toward the United States, temporarily halted American adoptions of Russian children, sparked investigations in both countries and touched off an emotional debate about whether U.S. couples could trust Russian information on children they were seeking to adopt.
But what about the boy himself?
Officials have generally refused journalists’ attempts to visit Artyom, saying the attention would likely distress him and hinder his adjustment to his new life in Russia. But on Thursday, Pavel Astakhov, Russia’s children’s ombudsman, arranged a rare visit by journalists to Artyom’s village, partly to draw attention to two looming court cases involving Torry Hansen, the American woman who adopted and then ditched the boy.
In April 2010, Hansen sent 7-year-old Artyom from Tennessee back to Russia on a one-way plane ticket with a note saying he had psychological problems and she didn’t want to be his mother anymore. No criminal charges were ever filed in the U.S.
His new caregiver, Vera Yegorova, says any memories of Artyom’s life in Tennessee remain a “taboo” for him. She said it took months of sessions with a psychologist and a speech therapist for the boy to start communicating again.
“He is no different now from other children,” said Yegorova, a plump, vivacious 53-year-old who has raised 17 foster children at the village run by the international charity SOS.
Five other children live in the same house with Artyom and all go to a nearby school.
But for all the superficial normalcy of his new life, Artyom also appears troubled. He can say “thank you” in strongly accented English, but otherwise resists speaking in English. He gets poor grades in school, has trouble communicating and speaks in short sentences.
Astakhov, who was on the visit to the foster village, said Russia is suing Hansen for $2,300 a month for Artyom’s foster care and “psychological correction.” It is unclear how much of that psychological care was related to the boy’s U.S. experiences or was needed due to earlier issues that Hansen had complained about.
A trial in that case begins in May, along with a separate proceeding in which Astakhov says Hansen has sued him and a Russian newspaper for libel.
Meanwhile, a Tennessee judge ruled last month that Hansen is liable for child support in a lawsuit brought by her former adoption agency.
Hansen now lives in California but her exact whereabouts are unknown. She couldn’t be located for comment Thursday, and after firing three lawyers who previously represented her, she no longer has an attorney to speak for her in the U.S. child support case.
For years, Russia had been one of the biggest sources of adopted children for Americans. Artyom’s arrival put a halt to that.
On Thursday, the State Duma said it would ratify a U.S.-Russian agreement on adoptions within weeks.
The deal stipulates that better information will be provided to prospective parents about the social and medical histories of Russian children. Once an adoption has been completed, the U.S. agency that made the arrangements will be required to monitor the living conditions and upbringing of the child, scheduling periodic visits by a social worker and sending reports to Russian authorities about the child’s development.
In cases where adoptive parents seek to dissolve an adoption, the agency will be required to notify Russian authorities and the U.S. State Department.
More than 60,000 Russian orphans have been successfully adopted in the U.S., according to the National Council For Adoption, a U.S. adoption advocacy nonprofit group.
The group has hired an attorney to help in the case seeking compensation from Hansen. The lawyer, Ray C. Stoner of Pittsburgh, was among the officials on Thursday’s visit to Artyom.
The trial “will send a message about how children should be treated and that there is a consequence if the child is not treated properly,” Stoner said.
Artyom was born in 2002 in Lesozavodsk in eastern Russia, and was sent to an orphanage after a court found that his alcoholic mother neglected the boy.
“He often talks about the mother that gave birth to him,” caretaker Yegorova said. “He remembers her.”
There are more than 740,000 children without parental custody in Russia, according to the U.N. agency UNICEF.
TITLE: Indian Culture Festival Spices Up St. Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Kristen Steagall
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg will be filled with the sights, sounds and smells of India for the next week as it plays host to the first Indian culture festival in Russia, Open India. Indian cinema, dance, music, fashion and cuisine will all be showcased at Mirazh and Avrora movie theaters through April 22, giving residents a chance to experience a piece of Indian culture without even leaving the city.
The festival, which began in the city on April 16, marks the 65th anniversary of the establishment of Russian-Indian diplomatic relations. The Indian Ambassador to Russia, Ajai Malhotra, and the director general of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations, Shri Suresh Goel, were present at the festival’s opening ceremony to mark the occasion.
The festival opened to a full house at Lensoviet concert hall Monday night. The ceremony featured a concert by the Nizami Brothers, a vivacious duo who sang traditional Qawwali music, an ethereal-sounding, Sufi devotional music that is popular in the Punjab and Sindh regions of South Asia.
The musicians were at times accompanied by Whirling Dervishes, Sufi men dressed in long white skirts, loose white blouses and tall fez-like hats that whirl in intricate patterns, arms lifted high over their heads, as a way to express dhikr, or rememberance of God. Out in the lobby, guests were able to purchase Indian jewelry and clothing, try Indian cuisine like chicken biryani or masala tea and look at a photo exhibit of India.
Film is the main feature of the festival, which will present 15 Bollywood films throughout the week. Bollywood, a term used to refer to Hindi-language cinema produced in Mumbai, was coined in the 1970s as a combination of Bombay (the former moniker of Mumbai) and Hollywood. The festival’s planners hope the wide selection of films will highlight the diversity of Bollywood films and dispel the belief that all Bollywood films are light-hearted musical comedies and melodramas; the motto of the Open India festival is “Discover India in a New Way. ”
“Even if people don’t make it to the theater, at least they get interested,” said Kuku Kunal, a member of the festival’s administrative staff originally from Bihar, India. “I don’t think Indian cinema gets the recognition that it quite deserves … if it gets into people’s memories, latches on, that would be great.”
Some films to be shown during the festival include “3 Idiots,” a much-loved film that broke Indian box office records in 2009; “Like Stars on Earth,” an inspirational story about a troubled student and his teacher; “Jab We Met,” a Bollywood “When Harry Met Sally”-type story; “Jodha Akbar,” an epic depicting pre-British Indian history; and “Never Say Goodbye,” which features a star-studded cast and iconic Bollywood songs.
Bollywood film star Sharman Joshi flew in especially for the festival and was present at a meet and greet before the showing of “3 Idiots” on Tuesday night. A full list of films and their respective show times and locations can be found on the Bereg art center website (www.artbereg.ru).
The festival will also include street theater performances from the Rajasthan region, modern Indian fashion shows, two photo exhibitions, yoga classes and opportunities to try Indian cuisine. A lecture on philosophy and human transformation by Dr. Rajesh Dalal, director of the Krishnamurti Foundation, will also be open to the public next week with dates and times to be announced.
Additionally, the Russian-language edition of the book “King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema” by Anupama Chopra will be available for purchase in the lobbies of the Avrora and Mirazh movie theaters.
The Open India festival, which will also be presented in Novosibirsk, Omsk, Krasnodar and Yekaterinburg this September, is part of a year-long calendar of cultural and academic events that the Indian Embassy in Moscow has planned. Later this year, India will reciprocate the exchange and host a festival commemorating Russian culture in Delhi.
The Open India festival runs through April 22. Tickets for the film showings can be purchased at Mirazh cinema at 36 Bolshoi Prospekt and Avrora movie theater at 60 Nevsky Prospekt. For more information, visit http://artbereg.ru/projects/open-india.
TITLE: New Book Slams Putin’s Rise to Power
AUTHOR: By Matthew Brown
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The daily work of journalists is often divided by their managers, editors and the like into two categories: “Off-diary” and “diary” articles.
The split means that the former comprises unpredictable, unexpected and undigested news events — anything that the reporter couldn’t have penciled in, such as a terror attack, a natural disaster or a politician’s gaffe.
The latter meanwhile concerns anticipation, forecasting and being forewarned and forearmed about a long-scheduled newsworthy occasion like an election or a press briefing.
But how does a journalist react when these happenstances collide? When a pre-planned outcome clashes with a series of unforeseen occurrences?
One answer is Masha Gessen’s political biography-cum-memoir of Vladimir Putin, published in the U.K. last month under the title “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.”
Gessen has expanded a long-form article written for Vanity Fair, a glossy U.S. monthly, about the venality of post-Soviet politics and the siloviki, into a book prepared and published in time for the no-brainer occasion of Putin’s return to the presidency.
So far, so “diary.”
But major flies in Gessen’s ointment were of course the eruption of mass demonstrations against the flawed state duma elections of December 4, 2011, Putin’s shock announcement that Dmitry Medvedev had been a puppet all along, and various riotous “off-diary” incidents thereafter.
In Gessen’s book this conflict produces an odd, blog-like epilogue covering December 3 to December 10, 2011. You can almost hear the presses grinding into gear to get the book printed, published and pushed in time for the deadline.
It’s a shame because Gessen, rather against her solid first-draft-of-history journalistic instincts, had in the preceding eleven chapters made a vicious stab at nailing Putin to the historical stake.
These violent metaphors are deliberate. Gessen’s account is full-on, poke-in-the-eye spite and bile. If you are not a Putin fan, or have ever had misgivings about his coarse stylistic fireworks, you will be more than satisfied here.
From his peculiar walk, toilet language, frosty personal relationships, and even a mental disorder related to grabbing that Gessen spuriously introduces, it is all here.
But what does it amount to?
Gessen underlines again and again that Putin is “small,” “vengeful,” academically useless, without interest as a person or personality. Yet rather quickly, vast and complex events such as the on-the-ground atrocities of the Chechen wars, the Moscow apartment bombings, the Nord-Ost theater siege, the Beslan tragedy, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya, (but not, weirdly unmentioned, that of Viktor Yushchenko) and the death of former St. Petersburg city council leader Anatoly Sobchak are being woven into a scheme that directly leads to one man: Putin.
Well, is he a know-nothing thug or an evil genius? Which? Gessen can’t square the circle of her arguments nor provide substantive back-up for her claims.
While one suspects the author would like to scream “He Killed Them All!,” the book’s editor has (probably) added modifiers like “probably” all over the place.
This means that inference and innuendo are all that are added to the well-thumbed record.
Gessen is however a fluid and evocative writer. The book is likeable from page one, and occasionally deliciously bitchy, with telling details retold well.
The first parts of the book are also good at portraying the complicated intersection of St. Petersburg’s “intelligentsia” and “proto-democrats” in the 1990s.
Increasingly intriguingly, accounts of Gessen’s own circumstances and that of her growing family punctuate the arc of the politico-Putin narrative her book struggles to convincingly galvanize.
During the drama, the Russian people remain strangely absent. Some salt is shaken on the slugs of the Moscow-centric Western press, who, as Gessen tells it, probably let Putin get away with murder.
Her prologue is a moving and personal depiction of her reaction to the assassination in 1998 of Galina Starovoitova, a famed new voice in the stew of dreams and nightmares in the immediate post-Soviet era. She adds vague but emotional encounters with Marina Salye, who investigated Putin’s work during his time in the Leningrad government and called for his dismissal and a criminal investigation. After years of keeping out of the public eye in the Russian countryside, Salye died last month aged 77.
Gessen, it is tempting to say, pads a flawed, impressionistic polemic about Putin with flashes of fascinating personal memoir.
Her instincts are to detach herself from the story, but the reader is left wanting more of her and less of him.
“The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin” by Masha Gessen (2012) is published in the U.K. by Granta, priced at £20, and in the U.S. by Riverhead, priced at $27.95.
TITLE: New Cold War for Resources Looms in Arctic Air
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: YOKOSUKA, Japan — To the world’s military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open up a treasure trove of resources, long-dreamed-of sea-lanes and a slew of potential conflicts.
By Arctic standards, the region is already buzzing with military activity, and experts believe that will increase significantly in the years ahead.
Last month, Norway wrapped up one of the largest Arctic maneuvers ever — Exercise Cold Response — with 16,300 troops from 14 countries training on the ice for everything from high intensity warfare to terror threats. Attesting to the harsh conditions, five Norwegian troops were killed when their C-130 Hercules aircraft crashed near the summit of Kebnekaise, Sweden’s highest mountain.
The United States, Canada and Denmark held major exercises two months ago, and in an unprecedented move, the military chiefs of the seven main Arctic powers — Canada, the United States, Russia, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Finland — are to gather at a Canadian military base in May to specifically discuss regional security issues.
None of this means a shooting war is likely at the North Pole any time soon. But as the number of workers and ships increases in the High North to exploit oil and gas reserves, so will the need for policing, border patrols and — if push comes to shove — military muscle to enforce rival claims.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its untapped natural gas is in the Arctic. Shipping lanes could be regularly open across the Arctic by 2030 as rising temperatures continue to melt the sea ice, according to a National Research Council analysis commissioned by the U.S. Navy last year.
What countries should do about climate change remains a heated political debate. But that has not stopped north-looking militaries from moving ahead with strategies that assume current trends will continue.
Russia, Canada and the United States have the biggest stakes in the Arctic. With its military budget stretched thin by Iraq, Afghanistan and more pressing issues elsewhere, the United States has been something of a reluctant northern power, though its nuclear-powered submarine fleet, which can navigate for months underwater and below the ice cap, remains second to none.
Russia — one-third of which lies within the Arctic Circle — has been the most aggressive in establishing itself as the emerging region’s superpower.
Rob Huebert, an associate political science professor at the University of Calgary in Canada, said Russia has recovered enough from its economic troubles of the 1990s to significantly rebuild its Arctic military capabilities, which were a key to the overall Cold War strategy of the Soviet Union, and has increased its bomber patrols and submarine activity.
He said that has in turn led other Arctic countries — Norway, Denmark and Canada — to resume regional military exercises that they had abandoned or cut back on after the Soviet collapse. Even non-Arctic nations such as France have expressed interest in deploying their militaries to the Arctic.
“We have an entire ocean region that had previously been closed to the world now opening up,” Huebert said. “There are numerous factors now coming together that are mutually reinforcing themselves, causing a buildup of military capabilities in the region. This is only going to increase as time goes on.”
Noting that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe, the U.S. Navy in 2009 announced a beefed-up Arctic Roadmap by its own task force on climate change that called for a three-stage strategy to increase readiness, build cooperative relations with Arctic nations and identify areas of potential conflict.
“We want to maintain our edge up there,” said commander Ian Johnson, the captain of the USS Connecticut, which is one of the U.S. Navy’s most Arctic-capable nuclear submarines and was deployed to the North Pole last year. “Our interest in the Arctic has never really waned. It remains very important.”
But the U.S. remains ill-equipped for large-scale Arctic missions, according to a simulation conducted by the U.S. Naval War College. A summary released last month found the Navy is “inadequately prepared to conduct sustained maritime operations in the Arctic” because it lacks ships able to operate in or near Arctic ice, support facilities and adequate communications.
“The findings indicate the Navy is entering a new realm in the Arctic,” said Walter Berbrick, a War College professor who participated in the simulation. “Instead of other nations relying on the U.S. Navy for capabilities and resources, sustained operations in the Arctic region will require the Navy to rely on other nations for capabilities and resources.”
Acknowledging the need to keep apace in the Arctic, the United States is pouring funds into figuring out what climate change will bring and has been working closely with the scientific community to calibrate its response.
“The Navy seems to be very on board regarding the reality of climate change and the especially large changes we are seeing in the Arctic,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences University of Colorado. “There is already considerable collaboration between the Navy and civilian scientists, and I see this collaboration growing in the future.”
The most immediate challenge may not be war — both military and commercial assets are sparse enough to give all countries elbow room for a while — but whether militaries can respond to a disaster.
Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at the London-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said militaries probably will have to rescue their own citizens in the Arctic before any confrontations arise there.
“Catastrophic events, like a cruise ship suddenly sinking or an environmental accident related to the region’s oil and gas exploration, would have a profound impact in the Arctic,” she said. “The risk is not militarization; it is the lack of capabilities while economic development and human activity dramatically increases. That is the real risk.”
TITLE: Putin’s Cousin Heads Bank’s Board of Directors
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Igor Putin, a cousin of President-elect Vladimir Putin, has been named head of the board of directors of Russky Zemelny Bank and plans to turn the bank into a backer of large-scale government projects, the bank said Monday in a news release.
The president-elect’s cousin is on the board of directors of Master Bank and reportedly heads pipeline producer Surguttruboprovodstroi and Yakutsk-based Construction Division-888, which in December won a 1.3 billion-ruble tender ($43 million) from the federal roads agency to build a section of highway in Yakutsk, Interfax reported.
Igor Putin has plans to turn Russky Zemelny Bank, which is associated with construction firm Inteko, formerly owned by Yelena Baturina, into a financier of such major infrastructure projects as the Murmansk Sea Port, the Yuzhny Sakhalinsk Thermal Power Station, the Kola highway connecting Murmansk and St. Petersburg and the Abinsk Electrometallurgical Combine, Interfax cited the news release as saying.
The bank also has plans to get involved in building public housing and developing the economies of the regions.
According to Interfax data from March, Russky Zemelny Bank has around 4 billion rubles in assets, with 1.32 billion rubles of its own capital.
Vladimir Putin’s opponents claim that members of his inner circle have become wealthy during his years in power. Putin, who served as president from 2000 to 2008 and who is currently prime minister, was elected to a third term as president in March.
TITLE: Putin’s Pipedreams Recycled
AUTHOR: By Martin Gilman
TEXT: In the days following the inauguration of President-elect Vladimir Putin on May 7, he will appoint a new government under future Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. A new government, even with some familiar faces, is still a new beginning. Ideally, what should be the government’s program, at least in the economic and social spheres, and could such a program be implemented?
Before answering these questions, it is important to remember that Russia is an unpredictable country, and expectations of what might be considered normal elsewhere are too often confounded. It is also important to remember the country’s history of major economic and social reforms that have been carried out in post-Soviet Russia.
Just over 20 years ago, Russia’s development path was hotly debated within the country and abroad. With an economy so distorted by the 20th century’s most ambitious social experiment, the immediate focus was on taming hyperinflation, stabilizing the exchange rate and reversing the decline in output.
Soon the focus broadened to economic transformation. In April 1996, prior to President Boris Yeltsin’s reelection, the government introduced an ambitious three-year structural reform program supported by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It brought together Russia’s foremost sectoral experts, and they elaborated an extensive set of reforms covering a wide spectrum — from agriculture, banking, competition, housing, taxes, privatization to pensions, the judiciary and official institutions. But their subsequent application was selective and lackluster. The easy measures were implemented, while the politically controversial ones were delayed.
In late 1999, Putin assigned German Gref the task of developing an ambitious reform program. His Center for Strategic Reforms, in consultation with the country’s leading experts, devised a comprehensive 200-page economic plan that was adopted as government policy in July 2000. Then, Gref was given the responsibility of implementing this plan as the head of a new super-ministry of economic development, trade and industry. It covered much of the same ground as the 1996 program with a view to the transformation of the state and economy. Likewise, its application was selective and lackluster. And once again, the easy measures were done, while the politically controversial ones were delayed once the urgency resulting from the August 1998 default faded and oil prices became buoyant.
Even when there was strong political resolve — for example, the monetization of social and housing benefits in 2005 or the long-postponed reform of the military in late 2008 — implementation was partial and fraught with difficulties.
So once again this year, brushing off the dust from earlier attempts, the Russian government has adopted a new long term plan called Strategy 2020: New Growth Model — New Social Policy. It was released a month ago and consists of six parts and 21 chapters that cover a wide range of both general and rather technical aspects of economic and social policy. The plan acknowledges that a lack of competition, an inefficient public sector, a lack of incentives for innovation and many other well-known problems, such as Russia’s excessive dependence on external factors — commodity prices in particular — need to be changed.
As to the question of what a new Russian government should do, the needed reforms are pretty clear — and have been for a long time. Nuances may evolve, but the basic need is to diversify away from the overreliance on gas and oil exports, develop human capital, promote the rule of law and transparency, reduce corruption and maintain macroeconomic stability.
The government’s 2020 strategy sounds very reasonable in this sense, involving the collaboration of many of the same experts from earlier plans and covers many of the same issues with similar recommendations. The strategy has much to commend itself as a roadmap to guide the country through what could be a period of volatility and an unusual degree of uncertainty in the global environment. And it is not just a few marginal liberals or multilateral institutions espousing such policies. In Russia, there is a broad majority in favor of these reforms in general terms.
If the policy agenda is so obvious, then why hasn’t it been implemented already? From a technical point of view, many of these proposals have been sitting on a shelf since 1996. A seemingly highly centralized government had ample opportunity — especially since 2000 — with high oil prices to cushion whatever the social costs of reform might entail. And why would the new-old team of government leaders be expected to do now that which they have been reluctant to do for the last several years?
Russia may be far from an ideal democracy, but that doesn’t mean the Kremlin is insensitive to public opinion. As elsewhere, general support for policy change comes up against the hard reality that real change affects vital interests. This is never easy to manage, and maybe even more so in Russia, where civil society remains rudimentary, the elite is divided into multiple, powerful factions and resentment brews just beneath the surface.
Perhaps this explains why Putin did not even bother to mention this strategy in particular in his last address to the State Duma as head of government a week ago. Instead, he focused more on generalities about the investment climate or demographic developments and referred to the same old longstanding issues of innovation, developing social services and welfare, raising the standard of living for teachers and doctors, and improving education.
It is tempting to attribute a seeming disregard of the critical need for a comprehensive package of reforms to an arrogance of power and latent inertia. But it may not be so simple. In a sense, delaying the inevitable is hardly a surprise and far from a uniquely Russian experience. Even in the United States — where there is a broad consensus to reduce budget deficits and public debt, improve education and infrastructure, and reform the tax system — there seems to be a profound disagreement as to how these goals should be achieved. Barring a crisis, chances of implementation even in the United States are low. The same is true in the countries of the euro zone at the present time.
The same logic may well apply to Russia. Muddling through has been a relatively successful strategy both politically and economically for many countries in the last decade or so. Since initiative is inherently risky, the forces of inertia are most likely to dominate in the new-old Russian government. They know what to do, but it doesn’t mean that the needed reforms will actually be done.
Martin Gilman, a former senior representative of the International Monetary Fund in Russia, is a professor at the Higher School of Economics.
TITLE: inside russia: Ignoring Shein, Putin Is Playing With Fire
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Astrakhan has suddenly become the political epicenter of Russia.
A political crisis arose out of nowhere thanks to A Just Russia member Oleg Shein, who has been on a hunger strike for a month to protest the electoral fraud that he claims robbed him of his victory in the mayoral race in Astrakhan.
Shein and his fellow hunger strikers are showing the usual signs of starvation: They are as pale as ghosts, frail and are always running a fever. Meanwhile, in the plush State Duma last week, President-elect Vladimir Putin said: “As far as I know, Oleg Shein began a hunger strike but did not go to court. Honestly, it’s a little strange. Why starve? Perhaps, a court will still investigate, and everyone will agree with the results of that investigation.”
Whenever there is problem that Putin wants to avoid, he advises the aggrieved parties to take their case to Russia’s courts — infamous for their loyalty to the Kremlin (or anyone who is willing to pay them enough money).
But this time, he couldn’t get away with this tactic so easily. After Putin made the scoffing comments in the Duma about how Shein should take his complaints to court, all of the deputies from A Just Russia — led by Sergei Mironov, a former Putin crony — walked out of the Duma chamber.
It is strange that the authorities are being so stubborn in opposing Shein. For one, mayors carry almost no political weight in Russia. Second, Shein is a nationalist who never tires of criticizing the United States. He also wrote a jingoistic book titled “The Defeat of the Georgian Occupiers of Tskhinvali.” So why doesn’t the Kremlin cut a deal with him?
Could the reason simply be that both the former and current Astrakhan mayors have close ties to the “gray cardinal” of the Kremlin, First Deputy Chief of Staff Vyacheslav Volodin?
It is worth remembering former Astrakhan Mayor Sergei Bozhenov, whose tenure is best known for a series of Astrakhan fires in 2005-06 in which 28 people died. Later, the Astrakhan City Hall reportedly sold that land to developers.
Then, Shein ran for mayor in Astrakhan in 2009 — a race he clearly would have also won if there hadn’t been electoral fraud. His close associates were beaten and threatened not by the cops, but by thugs. (Usually, the authorities prefer using police rather than gangsters to fulfill these missions.)
Notably, after Kremlin ideologist Vladislav Surkov was replaced by Volodin, Bozhenov was shifted from his job as mayor of Astrakhan and appointed governor of the Volgograd region.
What could be the reason for this? If Volodin decided that Bozhenov’s presence in Astrakhan during the March presidential election could trigger massive protests there, why was he given a new fiefdom? And if Volodin really considered Bozhenov to be a good mayor, why didn’t he leave him in Astrakhan?
Maybe things are not as complicated as they seem. Perhaps, Bozhenov simply bought himself his new job. After all, if a person leaves the store carrying a pound of meat, it most likely means he paid the cashier for it.
Either way, the authorities are not about to change the results of the Astrakhan election simply because Shein and others refuse to eat. If they did, that would mean that Putin had caved in. But everybody knows that Putin answers to nobody, least of all to voters. Sooner or later, this will be his undoing.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Unexposed genius
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Legendary local rock musician and Zoopark frontman Mikhail “Mike” Naumenko, who died at the age of 36 in 1991, will be remembered at a memorial birthday event at Dada club this week.
“Unlike [Kino leader] Viktor Tsoi, who became a real national hero through his purposeful activities, Mike, in my view, remained an unexposed genius,” said the event’s organizer Alexander Donskich von Romanov, a friend of Naumenko and former member of Zoopark.
“On the one hand, his work, strangely enough, initiated a wave of creative reaction all across Russia — in the provinces and far-off areas, in the Urals, Siberia, the south, east, west and north. But on the other hand, Mike never did anything to promote himself; essentially, the only thing he did was his creative work.
“By and large, he remains underestimated — in the sense of the degree of recognition [he gets]. But to any person who knows all the realities of Russian rock music, it’s obvious that unlike his talented contemporaries like [Akvarium’s Boris] Grebenshchikov and [Mashina Vremeni’s] Andrei Makarevich, it was him who created a revolution — a revolution in the world of Russian rock.”
Donskich von Romanov compared Naumenko to the late Soviet iconoclastic singer-songwriter and actor Vladimir Vysotsky, admitting however that neither Naumenko nor his rock musician friends were fans of the singer.
“Just like Vysotsky, many songs by Mike are dramas; they have a character that are not identical to their author, and the characters are different and sometimes walk from one song to another, like Sweet N., Venichka or Vera. But drama is always present in the song; there’s often a system of interaction and dramatic conflict in it. This is what led me to at one point create an opera based on Mike’s lyrics.”
Excerpts from the opera — called “Prizraki Goroda N” (The Ghosts of the Town of N) — premiered at St. Petersburg’s Gigant Hall in April 2011. Donskich von Romanov defined the genre as “blues opera.”
“The word ‘blues’ embodies a certain sadness. As [artist and filmmaker] Viktor Tikhomirov put it, ‘There’s always a sadness about a life that was not lived in Mike’s songs.’ About a life that he could have lived, but didn’t.”
Although influenced lyrically by the likes of the Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, T. Rex and Bob Dylan, Naumenko rethought the original subjects, placing his songs’ subjects and characters in the realities of the Leningrad of his day.
“Broadly speaking, I think rock music is split into three components: Musical, poetic and visual, which in some sense is the continuation of the theatrical tradition,” Donskich von Romanov said.
“Out of the three, Mike’s music and image were reduced, they were largely borrowed. But the literary component seems to me to be immeasurably larger and more important. He is not just a man who found some Russian equivalent to English poetry; he was like Lermontov inspired by Byron, or Pushkin who was inspired by Tacitus and created [the poem] ‘I’ve set up to myself a monument not wrought by hands.’“
“You can’t see it as a translation of Tacitus. It’s like a saturated salt solution that you put a crystal into. Tacitus was that kind of crystal [with Pushkin] — or Byron with Lermontov. They were only crystals. But Mike was the solution and the final result. His personality, his world-view, his cultural and literary background, his profound knowledge of rock poetry fundamentals — this was the result of profound scholarly research and the result of his inner work. It’s a combination of genius and diligence.”
“On the surface, it looked like laziness and the world of a daydreamer: A sofa, a television, a book, things like that. But it was clear to me then and now that under this quiet surface, powerful processes were going on deep down. So powerful that they have influenced all Russian rock poetry of the late 20th century, with no exceptions.”
Donskich von Romanov, who sings and plays the keyboard, said he would like to highlight Naumenko’s literary works at the memorial event on what would have been the musician’s 57th birthday. In particular, he is planning to read Naumenko’s short story, “Untitled,” with an unpublished ending.
The short story depicts rock musicians who live in Leningrad but release albums, are featured on television shows and drive Rolls Royces.
“In my archives I have luckily preserved the author’s typewritten copy of this story, which was published without its last paragraph [in a posthumous collection of Naumenko’s works],” Donskich von Romanov said.
“And in this last paragraph a certain Garth appears, who, as it turns out, wrote everything that came before [in the text]. Then he rereads what he’s written and goes to bed, because he has to get up early the next day and go to try and get tickets for [then popular underground rock band] Mify in [the nearby town of] Pushkin. That kind of phantasmagoria,” Donskich von Romanov said.
The story’s characters Zoo and Garth later reappeared in Donskich von Romanov’s own semi-autobiographical novel, “Prizraki Goroda N,” published by Gelikon Plus in 2009.
“These rock musicians live in Leningrad in the 1970s and early 1980s, but at the same time they are rock stars; they record at [Soviet record label and studios] Melodiya, release albums that are played on the radio, and so on — this kind of combination of reality and the desired,” Donskich von Romanov said.
“I borrowed this principle that Mike used, which was appropriate to our life then: We lived with our feet in the Socialist Realism that surrounded us, but with our heads in the clouds of real rock music, that life that was practically inaccessible to us — or accessible only through the echoes of magazine interviews and albums by those bands.”
Naumenko was born on April 18, 1955 into the family of a university lecturer and a librarian. He wrote his first songs in English. Having played electric guitar with Akvarium from 1977 to 1979, he formed Zoopark in 1981.
Donskich von Romanov (born Alexander Donskikh in the town of Solikamsk in the Perm Oblast) met Naumenko in 1978, when singer Olga Pershina brought him to an Akvarium rehearsal that was being held at cellist Seva Gakkel’s apartment on Ulitsa Vosstaniya. They quickly became friends.
“To me, Mike was such a good friend that we shared everything,” he said.
“It was a miracle to me that we had such a broad specter of common interests. To me Mike remains the quintessence of this St. Petersburg spirit, of the local intelligentsia, of this element that’s produced only here and nowhere else. It turned out to be vital to me.”
At one point, when Donskich von Romanov had no place to live in Leningrad, Naumenko and his wife shared their room with him in a communal flat on Borovaya Ulitsa for about three months.
He said the room was then frequented by many Leningrad underground rock musicians.
“Tsoi and Ryba [Kino member Alexei Rybin] spent days and nights there. Svinya and Ricochet (punk musicians Andrei Panov and Alexander Aksyonov, respectively) were there all the time,” he said.
“It was a tiny room, but everything was swinging there.”
He first played with Naumenko in 1979 as part of a nameless trio created for a stint in a provincial restaurant. He joined Zoopark in 1983.
Donskich von Romanov criticized what he sees as clichés in interpretations of Naumenko and his work.
“There’s a popular view that Mike was a rock and roller a la Chuck Berry, sort of retro — but if you listen to his songs, what retro are they talking about? It was him who portrayed the time he was living in. He did so more than anybody else. But there was no single grain of self-publicity in him,” he said.
In his last years of his life, Naumenko had health problems and did not write any new songs, even as other bands gained in popularity.
“He didn’t write songs with slogans like ‘We’re Together’ [Alisa’s perestroika anthem] and for that time he proved to be insufficiently radical,” Donskich von Romanov said.
“He was just sitting on the sidelines not doing anything to become rich and famous like his friends and peers were. Of course, he could not help being depressed by that. When it became possible to tour, the manager Seva Grach emerged. Zoopark started touring a lot, but for some reason Mike stopped writing.
“I understand it really well. Mike was not the type of person to write a lot of topical songs and perestroika anthems. He was a profound, subtle lyric poet. He was too delicate, too fragile for this world, especially at that time.
“In my novel and in my life, I ask myself all the time why he stopped writing. And I can’t find any other answer except ‘It’s difficult to swim in sulfuric acid’ and ‘a flower can’t live without the sun.’ The talent must be starved, but not starved enough to die of hunger.”
On August 27, 1991 Naumenko died of a cerebral hemorrhage. According to another version, he died of a basilar skull fracture sustained under unclear circumstances.
One of the first memorial birthday events Donskich von Romanov organized was a concert in 1995 marking what would have been Naumenko’s 40th birthday. The gig was held at the Leningrad Rock Club’s former premises at 13 Ulitsa Rubinshteina, and featured Boris Grebenshchikov, Kolibri and Dva Samolyota, among many others.
Donskich von Romanov is currently getting ready to put together Naumenko’s complete written works — which also includes his samizdat translation of Richard Bach’s “Illusions.” The publication is due to coincide with the late musician’s 60th anniversary in 2015.
Mikhail “Mike” Naumenko’s birthday memorial event featuring Alexander Donskich von Romanov will take place on April 18 at 8 p.m. at Dada, 47 Gorokhovaya Ulitsa. M. Sennaya Ploshchad / Sadovaya. Tel. 983 7050.
TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An unlikely meeting of Scorpions and the Leningrad Rock Club survivors took place in the city Tuesday as part of Scorpions’ farewell world tour, reviving memories of the band’s original visit to the now-defunct Rock Club in April 1988.
Perestroika and what was seen as westernization were all the rage at the time, but at the reunion — which took place at rockabilly club Money Honey — rock veterans said a new perestroika was needed.
Scorpions were the first major international rock band to come to perform in the Soviet Union during the perestroika years in the late 1980s.
Originally supposed to split their Russian stint between Moscow and Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, the band found out that the Soviet authorities considered it undesirable to let a metal band perform in the capital.
They managed to move the Moscow concerts to this city, where they performed ten sold-out concerts at the then Lenin (now Peterburgsky) Sports and Concert Complex.
When in Leningrad, Scorpions paid a brief visit to the Leningrad Rock Club, located at 13 Ulitsa Rubinshteina, and played two songs on borrowed instruments to the audience of Russian rock fans and musicians, who were surprised to discover that their cheap instruments could sound so great.
The event took place in the Rock Club’s Red Corner, the basement room located off the courtyard. The late Andrei “Svinya” Panov’s pioneering Russian punk band Automatic Satisfiers and the now defunct all-girl hard-rock band Situatsiya played there that night.
This and the 1989 Moscow visit inspired Scorpions to write “Wind of Change,” which on the wave of Gorbymania sold 14 million copies, making it one of the top twenty best-selling singles of all time and the best-selling single by a German artist or band ever.
Symbolically, Scorpions’ Rudolph Shenker and Matthias Jabs, who came to Tuesday’s meeting, were treated to “Fed Up” (Syt Po Gorlo), Mikhail Borzykin’s once-banned Soviet-era protest song performed live by his band Televizor.
According to the veteran Russian musicians — who included guitarist Alexander Lyapin of Akvarium fame, Sankt-Peterburg’s Vladimir Rekshan, Televizor’s Borzykin and Auktsyon’s Igor Cheridnik — the current times are more similar to 1984, when the Soviet repressive system was at its height, than to 1988.
“It was a time of hope,” said Borzykin later. “Now, 25 years later, we have come back to the same situation and something should have changed so that we don’t turn into hamsters on a wheel. The current anti-American propaganda on television reminds us of 1984. This ‘fed-up’ feeling is shared by many people who now go to rallies and are trying to change the situation for the better. We’re again in need of a ‘Wind of Change.’”
TITLE: French connection
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Up-and-coming French filmmaking talent takes center stage at the Parisian Seasons in St. Petersburg film festival that kicks off on April 19.
Contemporary French cinema has been a missing link in the repertoire of Russia’s movie theaters, which heavily favor Hollywood blockbusters and tend to avoid reflective European films, especially those that come from newcomer directors.
Parisian Seasons nurtures an ambition to become an eye-opener for curious locals who would like to explore French cinema beyond the classics.
During the course of the festival, which will run through April 25, the city’s Dom Kino will show 41 films by aspiring French directors. The opening on April 19 will see the screening of a series of short films by students and graduates of France’s La Femis film school.
“The program of the festival is divided into several parts, including works by newcomers selected by the festival’s experts, films chosen by La Femis and films selected by the Paris House of Short Films,” explains filmmaker Marianna Lanskaya, the project’s founder and director.
Some of the works that will be shown at the festival have already become a sensation. Nada Mezni Hafaiedh’s first ever feature film, “Histoires Tunisiennes” (Tunisian Stories), is based on the real life stories of several North African women who struggle to establish themselves in highly patriarchal societies while seeking inner balance, peace and happiness. The film had its world premiere in Tunisia in December 2011 and enjoyed international success. The director will attend the Russian premiere of her film in St. Petersburg.
On April 25, Lanskaya, a stage designer whose theater work has already received international recognition, will present her 2010 film “Un Million de Roses” (A Million Roses), a 23-minute story plunging audiences into the daily routine of a university professor — an elderly Marxist — whose life is disrupted by an avalanche of rose bouquets from one of his female students.
“The film was conceived as a kind of joke, a playful sketch about how far a student could go to squeeze a good mark out of their professors,” the director said. “In the film, the student Julie attempts to manipulate her professor and grab his attention by radically changing her appearance from punk to Goth to rapper, appealing to his most vulnerable spots, like, for instance, his old and unfulfilled passion for fast cars.”
A highlight of the film festival looks set to be Bernard Darnault’s movie “Francesca Solleville, montrez-moi la phrase,” also showing on April 25. This music documentary pays tribute to a singer of formidable character. The director traces Solleville’s impressive 50-year singing career. The vocalist threw challenges to the powers that be, opposed fierce rivals and ignored the glitz of showbiz in favor of her own crusade for justice as she saw it.
A professional jury that includes, among others, the prominent Russian film director Yury Mamin, TV presenter Yekaterina Krayeva, cameraman Maxim Volokh and conductor Sergei Diaghilev, a descendant of the legendary Russian impresario, will award prizes at the event’s closing ceremony on April 25. Prizes will be awarded in four categories: Best film, best director, best actor and best actress.
The Parisian Seasons festival was first held in St. Petersburg in 2002. It originally emerged as a theater-themed exhibition but its concept eventually evolved into a film event, complete with screenings, discussions and roundtables.
Lanskaya admits that it was her own work that prompted her to adapt her brainchild into a short film festival. “Un Million de Roses” had been continuously rejected by international film festivals on the grounds that the programs were full.
“I thought, well, there are so many films and so few festivals, so why don’t I set one up — if only for the sake of a more diverse picture to be offered to audiences and more voices of artists to be heard,” Lanskaya said.
“When I started working on the festival’s program I was absolutely overwhelmed and astonished by the number of wonderful works. There are so many gifted directors who have so much to say, and I am happy to be able to give them the screen.”
For a full schedule of the Parisian Seasons, visit http://parisian-seasons.com/ru.
TITLE: Irish humor
AUTHOR: By Ciara Bartlam
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Dylan Moran, best known for his role as the Irish alcoholic Bernard Black in the U.K. series Black Books, became the first native English-speaking comedian to perform stand-up in Russia last week.
The 1980s and 90s saw the birth of the rocker in Russia and a subsequent frenzy for foreign music: Now, in 2012, the way is being paved for the same flurry of excitement — this time for international stand-up comedy.
Moran’s performances on Thursday and Saturday evenings at Chaplin Hall were part of a joint experiment organized by Igor Meerson and Anton Borisov of the hit Russian TV show Comedy Club together with Mick Perrin’s U.K. agency Just for Laughs Live.
The general format of stand-up comedy in Russia is a 10-minute stint, with little or no prior experience, learning on the spot and frantically responding to the audience’s jeering or applause. Stand-up has existed amongst the student community for a while now and is present at Open Mic nights held at Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art, but the program is still in its experimental phase. Accordingly, the organizers of Dylan Moran’s shows felt that there was much to be gained from a dialogue between Russian comics and their Western counterparts.
It’s not just the Russians who benefit. The opportunity to perform in another country is also a cultivating experience for Western comedians, according to Nick Handford, a representative from Just for Laughs Live.
“Russian stand-up is such a learning experience that it is immediately interesting for anybody coming here, and not only that: Hopefully this will open the door to bringing Russian comedians over to the U.K., to broaden our horizons even further,” said Handford.
On the challenges of performing a routine that would be entertaining to a Russian audience, Moran said before his show Saturday: “I may have built up in my head the differences between East and West and thought, ‘I must find out what works here’ just because I don’t know it; I don’t know what people talk about and how they conduct themselves… I didn’t want to go on and be talking to myself; I wanted to be talking to people about the reality of their lives.”
Everything was covered in Thursday’s show, from the city’s controversial new law banning “homosexual propaganda” to imprisoned oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Despite the rapturous applause that Moran received throughout the show, and even with the translation being delivered through earphones to the non-English-speaking portion of the audience, at times, the language barrier proved insurmountable. Having got tied up in explaining a hat box as a box of hats, he exclaimed, exasperated, “I don’t know why I’m repeating myself thinking it will be any clearer!”
Linguistic difficulties are one thing, and only to be expected, but cultural differences are not as easily reconciled. Moran commented during his show that it was especially difficult to know when the audience found something funny because unlike in the West where people generally just laugh out loud, people in Russia tend to clap as a sign of approval. “Russian people obviously laugh through their hands. I wonder, do you also cry through your knees?” he joked.
In the end, the cultural differences proved too much for the courageous comedian and he ended, visibly disappointed, telling his audience that they seemed to have become “disconnected.”
“For all of us, [the project] is a big thing because apparently nobody’s done it before,” Moran said later. “So, you know, we just wanted to see whether it would work. You can’t have everything you want and it might not be the best gig, but that’s not the point. The point is just: Can we make this work somehow? We’re at that stage, you know, very early days in the lab.”
The lab work is continuing, with more Western comedians soon to be confirmed as coming to grace the stages of St. Petersburg. It looks like international stand-up comedy is well and truly on its way to Russia.
TITLE: the word’s worth: Putin has turned bland
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Äëèííîå, çåë¸íîå, ìÿñîì ïàõíåò: long, green and smells like meat
My study of the annual addresses of Russian leaders is something like Kremlinology crossed with reading tea leaves with a bit of linguistic analysis thrown in. I’m looking for a sense of mood conveyed by language, some linguistic hint of what lies ahead. And with Vladimir Putin, I’m looking for some “special” expressions, That is, expressions I don’t understand that turn out to be archaic or crude — or both.
So I listened to Vladimir Putin’s 2012 address before the State Duma on Wednesday. And then I read the transcript. I scratched my head and read it again. Vladimir Vladimirovich! What happened? When did you turn into a linguistic Mr. Bland?
Of course, there is some of his trademark assertiveness, as in õî÷ó ïîä÷åðêíóòü (I must stress) and óâåðÿþ (I insist).
But most of the speech is based on rhetorical questions and answers — a whopping 82 of them, by my count. Many of the questions follow happy talk about progress and admit that things could, of course, be better: Äîñòàòî÷íî ýòîãî èëè íåò? Íåäîñòàòî÷íî. (Is that enough? No, it’s not.)
Some of the self-interviewing seems to even undercut the stream of positive statistics, like this internal Q&A about rising imports: Ïî÷åìó ýòî ïðîèñõîäèò? Ïîòîìó ÷òî íàøà ýêîíîìèêà, íàøà ïðîìûøëåííîñòü íå îòâå÷àåò âûçîâàì ñåãîäíÿøíåãî äíÿ ïî êà÷åñòâó è ïî öåíå òîâàðîâ. (Why does this happen? Because our economy and our industries are not meeting today’s demand for high-quality, low-cost goods.)
Then there was an astonishing bit about NATO operations in Afghanistan, which was like a patient teacher walking dim-witted students through a difficult concept: Ìû ñ âàìè ïîíèìàåì, ÷òî ïðîèñõîäèò â Àôãàíèñòàíå, âåäü ïðàâäà? (You and I understand what’s happening in Afghanistan, isn’t that true?) Ìû ñ âàìè çàèíòåðåñîâàíû â òîì, ÷òîáû ñèòóàöèÿ òàì áûëà ïîä êîíòðîëåì, òàê? (You and I want the situation there to be under control, right?) È ìû ñ âàìè íå õîòèì, ÷òîáû íàøè ñîëäàòû âîåâàëè íà òàäæèêñêî-àôãàíñêîé ãðàíèöå? Íå õîòèì. (And do you and I want our soldiers fighting along the Tajik-Afghan border? No, we don’t.)
This little exchange ended with: Íî òàì çàïàäíîå ñîîáùåñòâî è ÍÀÒÎ ïðèñóòñòâóþò. Äàé Áîã èì çäîðîâüÿ, ïóñêàé ðàáîòàþò. (But the Western community and NATO are there. God grant them health. Let them work.)
Give me a minute to pick up my jaw from the floor.
In response to criticism from the Communist Party deputies, Putin gave a spirited defense of capitalism:  öåëîì îíà [ïëàíîâàÿ ýêîíîìèêà] ãîðàçäî ìåíåå ýôôåêòèâíà, ÷åì ðûíî÷íàÿ ýêîíîìèêà (Overall, a planned economy is far less effective than a market economy). And he stomped on any attempt to romanticize the economic success of the Soviet period, sometimes with old jokes: Äëèííîå, çåë¸íîå, ìÿñîì ïàõíåò. ×òî òàêîå? Ýëåêòðè÷êà â Ìîñêâó. (What’s long, green and smells like meat? A Moscow commuter train) — that is, a train filled with shoppers who came to Moscow to buy meat that was unavailable outside the capital.
There were shows of modesty and appeals to work together, like: Çíàåòå, âìåñòå íàäî ïîäóìàòü, ýòî íåïðîñòîé âîïðîñ. (You know, we have to think about that together. It’s not an easy question.) Or: ß íå çíàþ, íàäî âìåñòå ïîäóìàòü. (I don’t know. We have to think about that together.)
×òî ýòî çíà÷èò? ß íå çíàþ. Äàâàéòå ìû ñ âàìè âìåñòå ïîäóìàåì. (What does this mean? I don’t know. Let’s think about this together.)
Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.
TITLE: The dark side of human nature
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Claude Debussy’s 1902 opera “Pelleas et Melisande” has been rendered as a thriller fused with irony and trash esthetic by the American director Daniel Kramer, who presented his take on the work at the Mariinsky Theater on April 13.
Mammoth garbage cans, dark metal staircases, a crumbling stone well, torn, putrid dresses and stifling darkness relieved by occasional glimpses in moonlight — Kramer’s rendition of Debussy’s tragic tale inspired by Maurice Maeterlinck’s play of the same name is a sobering show. The director has shown no mercy for Maeterlinck’s signature magic and symbolist mysticism. These have been replaced by expressionist physicality of the sort that focuses on torment, angst and mental fragility. Contrasted by the surreal sensuality of Debussy’s music, Kramer’s visual expressionism works to produce an intoxicating effect.
The characters on stage suffer from spiritual deprivation, while physicality abounds, at times taking almost masochistic twists.
“Pelleas et Melisande” is the story of a love triangle that begins with Prince Golaud discovering the vulnerable and mysterious Melisande in the woods. The prince marries the enchanting creature, who eventually falls for his half-brother Pelleas. During the course of the five-act drama, we follow Golaud’s slow and painful self-destruction. Engulfed by jealousy, Golaud kills Pelleas and tortures Melisande on her deathbed with endless questions about her fidelity.
Debussy carved the heroes for his only opera as double-edged swords, and Kramer excels in exposing the paradoxes that define the characters. Melisande (Anastasia Kalagina) is constantly torn between the poles of emotional fragility bordering on hysterics and feminine power that allow her to pull the strings of Pelleas and Golaud. Her fluctuations reach their climax in the love scene, which ends in Golaud murdering Pelleas in a fit of uncontrolled jealousy.
Pelleas (Andrei Bondarenko) exudes immaturity and youthful innocence, while revealing a sensual potential that creates a tangible tension on stage from his first encounter with Melisande. Andrei Serov serves up a mesmerizing portrayal of Golaud and his descent from a respected and ever-composed man into a wreck ruined by nagging suspicion and jealousy.
The Mariinsky symphony orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev was hypnotic, captivating with nuanced delicate textures and thrilling with a wealth of sound palette. Dark low strings took the audience to the territory of suspense drama, in which a threatened child is sent to spy on his mother, whose long-concealed passion becomes impossible to restrain. The orchestra indulged in a feast of brooding passions that took a sudden and fatal resolution.
The Mariinsky’s “Pelleas et Melisande” explores the dark side of human nature, making the show a twin to the company’s 2010 staging of Bela Bartok’s “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” — also produced by Kramer and again based on literary material by Maeterlinck. Kramer rendered Bartok’s one-act masterpiece as a modern docu-horror, making striking crystal-clear parallels between the infamous duke and contemporary sadists who kidnap children and young women to lock them in basements and turn them into slaves.
Kramer’s haunting “Pelleas et Melisande” gives audiences plenty of food for thought, yet somehow it falls short of touching the soul as much as it works to tease the mind. One thought that comes to mind after reading an interview with Kramer published in the production’s program is that the forbidden love theme is becoming a political issue here.
“We cannot do everything. Look at one of the laws that has just been passed in St. Petersburg,” the director said, referring to the notorious bill banning “gay propaganda” that was passed by the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly this spring, embarrassing the city on an international scale and adding to Russia’s reputation as an intolerant, authoritarian country.
“Does the human heart have rules? Who decides who we can and cannot love? Can anybody govern our hearts? The revolutions of the human heart are unstoppable in my experience,” Kramer concludes.
Is food for thought the company’s new policy?
Looking back at the Mariinsky Theater productions that have been staged during the last three years, it is striking that most of them thrived on provocation, effect, surprise and unorthodox associations, and importantly, these shows — especially their visual elements — appeared to be at odds with the music. These productions made statements, the statements created a splash, yet the productions failed to last, resembling a frenziedly fashionable item that everyone suddenly talks about but soon leaves behind and forgets. Perhaps these shows were not meant to last; perhaps they were meant to make a statement.
In Kramer’s “Pelleas et Melisande,” the score and the acting exist in parallel worlds, encouraging audiences to build bridges between these worlds. While many theater-goers may find this exciting, it fails to create a wholesome experience, which is what other members of the audience are craving when they buy their tickets.
“Pelleas et Melisande” will next be performed at 7 p.m. on April 18 at the Mariinsky Theater, 1 Teatralnaya Ploshchad. Tel. 326 4141. www.mariinsky.ru
TITLE: in the spotlight: A star-studded christening
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, flamboyant pop singer Filipp Kirkorov christened his baby Alla-Viktoria. It was just a small event with a national television channel filming, a few pop stars and a church closed for ordinary mortals on the Palm Sunday holiday.
There had been rumors that Alla-Viktoria might not exist. Kirkorov announced back in December that a surrogate mother in the United States had given birth to his baby. But then months went by without any sightings, and some even wondered whether she might be a PR stunt. What’s more, some of Kirkorov’s statements about the baby verged on the wild-eyed. Let’s not even start on her emotionally loaded name combining the names of his ex-wife pop diva Alla Pugachyova and his late mother.
But no, blue-eyed and bouncing, she lay in Kirkorov’s arms in a special edition of Channel One’s “Let Them Talk” chat show on Monday, as he proudly showed her off to friends at the christening party. The guests included ex-wife Pugachyova and her new husband, television presenter Maxim Galkin. On television, the scene was set to a new song by Kirkorov in honor of his baby, called “Alla-Viktoria.”
At one point as Kirkorov wafted around, a hand reached from offscreen and wiped some dribble from the baby’s chin, suggesting that the father avoids the less aesthetically pleasing side of child care. The show could seem like television intrusion into a family’s personal life, but then again the host, Andrei Malakhov, is Alla-Viktoria’s godfather.
Paparazzi waited outside the church as the guests arrived for the christening — pop stars, actors, fashion designers and I thought I spotted Turkish hotel owner Telman Ismailov. Kirkorov wore a naval-style jacket frogged with gold braid, while Alla-Viktoria was wrapped in voluminous layers of white satin and lace.
At the end, Kirkorov made a speech in front of the gilded altar, invited by the priest. Bizarrely, the punk feminist group Pussy Riot protested at this, complaining on their blog that Kirkorov was allowed to stand in the same closed-off part of the church where they tried to perform in the Church of Christ the Savior. The women, three of whom are facing jail for hooliganism after their abortive performance in January, said that by rights, Kirkorov should face the same punishment. Although he didn’t sing, and even if he had, realistically it would not have been a diatribe against the church and Vladimir Putin. Pussy Riot also criticized Kirkorov for getting the church closed on a major religious holiday, Palm Sunday. The notice on the church’s door, according to Life News, warned people off for “technical reasons for preparations for Easter,” which did seem a bit of a stretch. Life News also reported that Kirkorov’s people insisted on disinfecting the font.
“Let Them Talk” also gave some insights into Kirkorov’s life as Malakhov went to his country house — with a lot of white and gold paneling and a worrying number of photographs of Pugachyova hanging in his bedroom. A sensible-looking middle-aged nanny hovered at all times and stopped the men from waking up Alla-Viktoria to film her.
There was something quite weird about seeing two tall men in suits cooing over a baby on television, with no mother in sight and no one turning a hair, despite everyone going into vapors about gay adoption here.
Alla-Viktoria — Alla for short — seemed to be a cooperative baby, posing in a Babygro with “Russia” written on her chest and letting Kirkorov play the “Alla-Viktoria” song to her on his MP3 player. Although, she did draw the line at intertwining her fingers photogenically with his.
TITLE: THE DISH: Kalitka
AUTHOR: By Jack Stubbs
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Urban escape
Tucked away a short walk from Chernyshevskaya metro station, the entrance to Kalitka (Gate) resembles that of a Russian cottage nestled in the woods. Small and hewn from roughly cut wood, but with just enough lighting so as not go completely unnoticed, a covered staircase leads down below street level, away from the city’s noisy streets.
The atmosphere is immediate and tangible. The restaurant is quiet, but with the steady hum of conversation, enterprise and the occasional clinking of wine glasses. Shelves displaying jars of conserved fruits and vegetables immediately catch the eye, ingeniously backlit so as to project wonderful illuminations onto the whitewashed walls. Soft lighting blends perfectly with the wooden furniture to create a genuinely rustic feel, but straight lines, simple linens and the tasteful inclusion of traditional Russian fabrics prevent it from overwhelming guests. Here “contemporary” does not mean “minimalist.”
The menu passes the immediate and most important test: That of being spoilt for choice. A whole host of traditional Russian dishes are available, ranging from cold appetizers and salads for a few hundred rubles to hearty main courses and ambitiously priced “Chef’s Specials.” The soups, all priced at about 250 rubles ($8.50), are particularly noteworthy and served with scrumptious hot pies, blini or another complimentary sidedish. For those with a larger appetite (and wallet), a selection of meat cuts available to be grilled on the spot over an open fire pit may prove irresistable.
More adventurous diners may be tempted by a shot of the homemade spirit samogon (120 rubles, $4), but otherwise there is a more than sufficient wine list — some bottles with prices that make the eyes water, but a half-liter of perfectly decent house red is available at a reasonable 500 rubles ($16.80).
To start, the homemade corned beef with salted cucumber and rye bread (260 rubles, $8.70) and steamed beef topped with sour cream dressing (280 rubles, $9.45) perfectly embodied Kalitka’s self proclaimed “modern yet traditional” approach to Russian cuisine — enticing traditional dishes that are not afraid to be themselves, and thankfully without the “fusion twist” all too frequently encountered around the city.
The corned beef was just as it should be: Light, delicate and pleasingly salty, all of which contrasted perfectly with the crisp cucumber and homemade rye bread. The steamed beef was delightfully tender and succulent in flavor, but unfortunately a heavy hand with the horseradish in the sauce caused many of the dish’s subtleties to be lost.
As a main course the jackfish meatballs on a bed of spinach and toasted pine nuts with a lemon and garlic sauce (350 rubles, $11.80), could not come more highly recommended. The “meatballs,” which would perhaps be more appropriately described as “patties,” were crisp and delicate on the outside while retaining the fish’s natural flavor and succulence within. The spinach was moist and perfectly seasoned and the garlic sauce, akin to a Greek tzatziki, brought the whole thing together beautifully.
The pork brisket served with buckwheat, mushrooms and onions however did not quite live up to expectations. It was a tad bland and something of a disappointment at 370 rubles ($12.50). Both dishes were however significant in size, and while there was a pleasing sense of getting one’s money’s worth, both diners were by this point full.
Luckily the dessert menu offers a choice of light sorbets and ice-creams alongside the traditional cakes and pastries. The selection of fruit sorbets for 90 rubles ($3) was just what was needed to top off the meal, and was more than big enough to share. Homemade cookies (120 rubles, $4) and coffee (90 rubles, $3, each) provided the perfect ending to a decent meal of wholesome Russian food, but thankfully — this time at least — without the pretensions.
TITLE: Russia Helps to Connect Cultures in Abu Dhabi
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic symphony orchestra joined Iraqi oud master Naseer Shamma, Indian sitar player Anoushka Shankar and actors from London’s Shakespeare Globe theater at the ninth Abu Dhabi Festival that was held in the UAE capital in March and April.
Connecting cultures was the motto of this year’s event, which welcomed the U.K. as the guest country of honor, with British culture featuring generously in the festival’s program, complete with the first-ever visit of the Royal Opera House company to the Persian Gulf region.
Spanning three weeks — this time, from March 11 through April 6 — every year, the festival brings together musical and dramatic talent from all over the globe.
The Russian element was by no means small, with Vengerov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Yury Temirkanov performing a program of Rossini’s Overture from “The Barber of Seville” and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and Violin Concerto in D minor on March 22.
Vengerov captivated the audience with an emotional and ultra-romantic rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Vengerov’s approach to Tchaikovsky was passionate and sentimental, yet the musician avoided the common pitfall of allowing the sentimentality to overflow and grow saccharine. Tchaikovsky’s work, undoubtedly the most romantic concerto in the violin repertoire, was a winning choice for Vengerov, who gives the composer’s subtlety a respectful treatment.
The standing ovation that the musician received from the audience was deserved.
“It was my choice to perform Tchaikovsky’s concerto in Abu Dhabi, as it conveys the essence of the Russian soul, while its lyrical, heartfelt melody and mysterious vibe make the piece close to Arab audiences and their musical traditions,” the musician said in an interview after the performance.
Vengerov spoke with admiration about the festival’s mission and concept, suggesting that Russia, where xenophobia and ethnic and cultural intolerance are some of the most burning issues facing society, should make a similar effort to connect cultures.
“It is such a wise yet simple concept, and it works wonders,” Vengerov said. “Art is a universal language, and when you see a talent that takes your breath away, you forget what nationality they are, and you just love them, and you then naturally begin to accept an alien culture without even feeling that you are making an effort.”
Her Excellency Mrs. Hoda Ibrahim Al Khamis Kanoo, the founder and artistic director of the Abu Dhabi Festival, compared her brainchild with an angel that spreads its wings to embrace audiences and musicians.
“I can tell you honestly and openly that we do not have a problem with intolerance in UAE,” she said. “Our country is one of the most accepting and welcoming cultural environments that you can think of — but it did not come for granted. We made it so.”
“It is a place where people from diverse backgrounds and cultures have made their home… Bringing alive our cultural assets is imperative to their long term survival and we hope that our exciting program will engage a new generation of art lovers,” she added.
It has been recognized that a lack of interaction with people of different ethnicities leads to intolerance. A recent sociological survey held in St. Petersburg by the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences investigating the level of exposure that locals have to foreign cultures showcased results that appeared somewhat at odds with a large city purposely built as a cosmopolitan center open to other influences and nicknamed Russia’s “window to Europe.”
More than half of local citizens have never traveled abroad, according to the survey. Most have never dined in a restaurant serving any cuisine other than Russian, and perhaps most shockingly for Russia’s self-proclaimed cultural capital, every second respondent admitted they had never attended an exhibition of art by a foreign artist.
The performance that perhaps embodied the festival’s spirit the most was the concert by Naseer Shamma and Global Music Ensemble on March 24. The iconic oud player assembled an international dream team of musicians, including Nino Josele on Spanish guitar, Grammy award-winning Giovanni Hidalgo (Puerto Rico) on percussion, Miles Jay (U.S.) on upright bass, Vasilis Saleas (Greece) on clarinet, Edmar Castaneda (Colombia) on harp and Cesare Picco (Italy) on piano.
The musicians mesmerized the audience with a breathtaking performance in which the musicians created a delicious fusion combining traditional Middle Eastern musical heritage and delicate touches of foreign influences.
To what extent can culture heal ethnic conflicts and encourage tolerance? This issue was explored during the cultural diplomacy debate that was held on March 24 and brought together American, Western European and Middle Eastern diplomats, politicians and cultural luminaries.
While for Michael Corbin, the U.S. ambassador to UAE, ethnic conflict appears to largely be rooted in a cultural misunderstanding, which the diplomat has been trying to dispel by arranging culture missions to the Middle East that would counter the image of the U.S. as a global soldier, for many recipients of American and other Western cultural packages, the answer is rather cultural disrespect.
“We know your culture, but please when you come over here make an effort to learn a few things about ours,” fired a member of the audience at the U.S. ambassador during the discussion.
Ultimately, it is up to the individual how broad a picture they want to see. “Even in the tiny Middle Eastern village where I grew up, it was possible to get a book by, say, Charles Dickens,” said His Excellency Lakhdar Brahimi, a Member of the Elders. “All it took was my interest to read it.”
Turning the event into a festivity for all residents, Kanoo and her team decided not to limit the festival to a traditional series of performances in classical venues. Instead, the concerts spilled out into some unorthodox venues such as hospitals and children’s homes.
The “Music in Hospitals” tour brought together a group of talented professional and amateur musicians to play for patients at hospitals in Abu Dhabi.
“Reaching out to hospitals and community organizations across Abu Dhabi shares in the spirit of ‘Bilad Al Khayr’ — the land of blessings,” Kanoo said. “The link between the arts and healing has been explored for generations, and we are proud to continue this important work alongside our partners throughout the Abu Dhabi Festival this year.”
TITLE: Breivik: ‘I Would Have Done It Again’
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: OSLO, Norway — Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik insisted Tuesday he would massacre 77 people all over again, calling his July rampage the most “spectacular” attack by a nationalist militant since World War II.
Reading a prepared statement in court, the anti-Muslim extremist lashed out at Norwegian and European governments for embracing immigration and multiculturalism. He claimed to be speaking as a commander of an anti-Islam militant group he called the Knights Templar — a group that prosecutors say does not exist.
Maintaining he acted out of “goodness, not evil” to prevent a wider civil war, Breivik vowed, “I would have done it again.”
Pressed by prosecutors to explain what he meant, he compared his attacks to the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Japan to bring World War II to an end.
“They did it for something good, to prevent further war,” Breivik said.
Breivik has five days to explain why he set off a bomb in Oslo’s government district on July 22, killing eight people, and then gunned down 69 others, mostly teenagers, at a Labor Party youth camp outside the Norwegian capital. He denies criminal guilt, saying he was acting in self-defense, and claims the targets were part of a conspiracy to “deconstruct” Norway’s cultural identity.
“The attacks on July 22 were a preventive strike. I acted in self-defense on behalf of my people, my city, my country,” he said as he finished his statement, in essence a summary of the 1,500-page manifesto he posted online before the attacks. “I therefore demand to be found innocent of the present charges.”
He compared Norway’s Labor Party youth wing to the Hitler Youth and called their annual summer gathering an “indoctrination” camp. But he later told prosecutors he would have preferred to attack a conference of Norwegian journalists instead, but wasn’t able to carry out that “operation.”
Breivik’s testimony was delayed briefly Tuesday after one of the five judges hearing the case was dismissed for his comments online the day after the attack — comments that said Breivik deserves the death penalty. Lawyers on all sides had requested that lay judge Thomas Indreboe be taken off the trial, saying the comments violated his impartiality. He was replaced by backup lay judge Elisabeth Wisloeff.
Norway doesn’t have the death penalty. If found mentally sane — the key issue to be decided in the trial — Breivik could face a maximum 21-year prison sentence or an alternate custody arrangement that would keep him locked up as long as he is considered a menace to society.
Breivik is being tried by a panel of two professional judges and three lay judges — citizens appointed for four-year terms who participate on an equal basis in deciding guilt and sentencing. The system is designed to let ordinary people have a role in the Norwegian justice system.
On Monday, Breivik rejected the authority of the court, calling it a vehicle of the “multiculturalist” political parties in power in Norway. He confessed to the “acts” that caused the 77 deaths but pleaded not guilty.
Again on Tuesday — just like Monday at the start of his trial — Breivik entered the court smirking before flashing a clenched-fist salute.
According to Breivik, Western Europe was gradually taken over by “Marxists and multiculturalists” after World War II because it didn’t have “anti-communist” leaders like U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. The senator dominated the early 1950s with his sensational but unproven charges of Communist subversion in high government circles in the U.S.
“But even McCarthy was too moderate,” Breivik said.
Judge Wenche Elisabeth Arntzen repeatedly interrupted Breivik, asking him to keep his statement short.
“It is critically important that I can explain the reason and the motive for the massacre,” Breivik replied.
Mette Yvonne Larsen, a lawyer representing victim’s families, also interrupted Breivik, saying she was getting complaints from victims who were concerned that the defendant was turning the trial into a platform to profess his extremist views.
Her remarks prompted the judge to again urge Breivik to wrap it up. But Breivik replied if he wasn’t allowed to continue he might not speak at all.
He warned that Europe was heading toward a civil war between “nationalists and internationalists.” He said he was inspired by al-Qaida’s success, and praised Europeans suspected of right-wing extremist attacks. They included Peter Mangs, a Swede suspected of shootings against immigrants in 2010 and three Germans — Uwe Boehnhardt, Uwe Mundlos and Beate Zschaepe — suspected in the killings of eight people of Turkish origin, a Greek man and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007.
When asked why he started crying in court on Monday when prosecutors showed an anti-Muslim film that Breivik posted on YouTube before the attacks, he said: “I was thinking about Norway and Europe, which are ruled by politicians and journalists killing our country. I was thinking that my country is dying.”
Breivik insisted that the Knights Templar network exists, with two other cells in Norway, though he said his description of it in the manifesto was too “pompous.” The initiation rites and medals of honor he described were ideas, rather than existing traditions, he said.
After proceedings ended Tuesday, prosecutors reiterated they don’t believe the group is real, and said they would question Breivik more about it Wednesday.
Families of the victims were upset at his testimony.
“I think it’s important to underline that we don’t view Breivik as a politician in this matter. He is a mass murderer,” Trond Henry Blattmann, whose 17-year-old son was killed on Utoya, told The Associated Press outside the court.
Even his lawyers concede that Breivik’s self-defense defense is unlikely to succeed and said the main thing for them was to convince the court that Breivik is not insane.
One official psychiatric examination found him legally insane while another reached the opposite conclusion. The judges’ panel must decide whether to send him to prison or into compulsory psychiatric care.
In his testimony Tuesday, Breivik rejected suggestions that he has a narcissistic personality disorder.
“July 22 wasn’t about me. July 22 was a suicide attack. I wasn’t expecting to survive that day,” he said. “A narcissist would never have given his life for anyone or anything.”
Associated Press writers Bjoern H. Amland and Julia Gronnevet in Oslo and Malin Rising in Stockholm contributed to this report
TITLE: Discovery Shuttle Lands at New Home
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Virginia, USA — Space shuttle Discovery soared around the Washington Monument and the White House in a salute to the nation’s capital Tuesday before landing for the last time near its new museum home.
The world’s most traveled spaceship took off at daybreak from Cape Canaveral, Florida, bolted to the top of a modified jumbo jet for the trip. Three hours later, the pair took a few spins around Washington at an easy-to-spot 1,500-foot altitude before the retired shuttle was grounded for good.
The combo landed at Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia. Discovery will be towed Thursday to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum annex near the airport.
Thousands of people lined the National Mall between the Washington Monument and the Capitol to get a view of the shuttle.
“That’s fantastic. That’s wonderful. Look at that — you can see the name on it,” said Sorena Sorenson, a geology curator who works for the Smithsonian Institution, whose museums line the mall.
NASA ended the shuttle program last summer after a 30-year run to focus on destinations beyond low-Earth orbit. Discovery — the fleet leader with 39 orbital missions — is the first of the three retired space shuttles to be turned over to a museum for display. It first launched in 1984.
Terri and Bill Jacobsen of Maryland used the shuttle’s flyover as a teaching experience for their home-schooled son Riley. They calculated the speed, angle the shuttle and plane would bank and other factors to figure out just where would be the perfect viewing spot.
“It was pretty amazing,” said Riley, 12. “Pretty freaking crazy. It looked like it was inflated.”
When Discovery departed Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, nearly 2,000 people gathered along the old shuttle landing strip to see Discovery off.
The plane and shuttle headed south and made one last flight over the beaches of Cape Canaveral and then returned to the space center in a final salute.
Astronaut Nicole Stott, part of Discovery’s final crew, watched with her crewmates as the shuttle departed. “Smiling on the outside,” she said in a tweet. “DC bound. Take great care of her!”
Discovery’s list of achievements include delivering the Hubble Space Telescope to orbit, carrying the first Russian cosmonaut to launch on a U.S. spaceship, performing the first rendezvous with the Russian space station Mir with the first female shuttle pilot in the cockpit, returning Mercury astronaut John Glenn to orbit, and bringing shuttle flights back to life after the Challenger and Columbia accidents
For at least the next three to five years — until commercial passenger craft are available in the United States — NASA astronauts will have to hitch multimillion-dollar rides on Russian Soyuz capsules to get to the International Space Station.
TITLE: North Korea Rocket Launch Condemned by UN Council
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS — The UN Security Council strongly condemned North Korea’s rocket launch Monday, announcing it will impose new sanctions and warning of further action if Pyongyang conducts another launch or a new nuclear test.
Acting swiftly, the 15-member council, including North Korea’s closest ally China, adopted a presidential statement underscoring its united opposition to Friday’s launch — which violated UN sanctions — and the military policy being pursued by the country’s young new leader, Kim Jong Un.
The council directed its sanctions committee to expand the list of North Korean entities subject to asset freezes and identify more proliferation-sensitive technology to be banned for transfer to and from the country.
“The swift and unanimous adoption of this strong presidential statement shows that the international community is united in sending a clear message to North Korea that such provocations are serious and totally unacceptable,” said U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, the current council president who read the statement at a council meeting.
North Korea’s attempt to launch a satellite ended in failure when the rocket disintegrated over the Yellow Sea, embarrassing its new leader at what the North had planned as the centerpiece of the 100th birthday celebration of the country’s founder, his grandfather Kim Il Sung. Western nations have said the launch was a cover for the testing of a long-range missile, and worries remain about North Korea’s nuclear program amid reports that it may be planning another atomic test soon.
North Korea launched missiles in 2006 and 2009; in both cases, the missile tests were followed by nuclear tests.
“Clearly, the potential for that pattern to persist is one that all members of the international community are mindful of and think would be a disastrous course for the North to pursue,” Rice said. “It will only lead to the North’s increased isolation.”
The statement expressed the Council’s “determination to take action accordingly in the event of a further DPRK launch or nuclear test,” using the initials of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the country’s official name.
It said Friday’s launch, “as well as any use of ballistic missile technology, even if characterized as a satellite launch or space launch vehicle, is a serious violation of UN resolutions.” It demanded that North Korea halt further launches using ballistic missile technology and suspend its ballistic missile program, as required by UN resolutions imposing sanctions after the country’s nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.
The council asked the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against North Korea to prepare new additions for the sanctions list within 15 days.
Rice said the U.S. would propose “a robust package of new designations, including the names of companies responsible for North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and a list of technical items that North Korea needs to proceed with its illicit programs.”