SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1722 (33), Wednesday, August 15, 2012
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TITLE: Transportation a Top Trouble for Tourists to Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Yelena Minenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: With about 12 percent of St. Petersburg’s working population occupied in the city’s tourism industry, which brought 115 billion rubles ($3.6 billion) into the city’s budget last year, City Hall is attempting to overcome remaining obstacles and develop the industry further.
According to the UN, the tourism sector is snapping on the heels of the energy and military-industrial spheres in terms of the most profitable and fast-developing sectors of the global economy, and St. Petersburg is doing its best to catch up, say representatives of the northwest branch of the Russian Tourism Industry Union.
To be labeled a tourism capital, a city has to have more people coming in than people permanently living in the city. There are currently about 5 million residents in St. Petersburg, and about 5.5 million people visited the city in 2011.
“Paris, for instance, welcomes 16 times more visitors than its current population, and certainly can be called a tourist capital,” said Tatyana Gavrilova, director of the northwest branch of the Russian Tourism Industry Union. “At this rate, St. Petersburg is still just a tourist destination, but until last year even Moscow couldn’t compete with us,” she said.
According to TripAdvisor.com travel website, St. Petersburg is seventh on the list of the 25 most visited places in Europe, and 20th in the global rankings. Yet despite these encouraging statistics, tourism in the city continues to see plenty of room for improvement.
One of the most pressing issues is transport. According to data gathered by the city’s Committee for Incoming Tourism, transport is the second biggest obstacle to the development of tourism in St. Petersburg after global political and economic instability.
“The current state of Pulkovo Airport means that St. Petersburg cannot be called a tourism capital,” said Gavrilova.
“As for the roads, the possibility of allowing tourist transport to drive in the lanes reserved for public transport is being discussed,” she added.
Before this summer, 40 parking spaces for tourist transport were allocated and marked with signs in agreement with the Committee for Transport and Transit Policy.
“We thought we were prepared for the season, but over the course of this summer, some of the signs have disappeared, for example at the parking space near Galeria shopping mall,” said Gavrilova.
Another problem identified by the Tourism Industry Union is a lack of new programs in the sphere of cultural entertainment for tourists.
“People who visit St. Petersburg for the first time are always satisfied with the program, but those who come here for a second time want something new,” said Gavrilova. “Once we offered one tourist group a choice: Either go to Peterhof — the summer residence of the Russian royal family — or visit the KGB museum. Seventy percent chose the KGB museum.”
While the tourism union is also examining ways of keeping cultural programs on offer innovative and appealing to young people, senior travelers make up about 70 percent of all foreign visitors to St. Petersburg, according to statistics.
Another topical issue is how the structure of incoming tourism is changing from large organized tour groups to individual tourists, with the Internet becoming both a major source of tourist information and a sales platform. Many individual programs are offered by hotels, half of whose profits, according to experts, are generated by accommodation costs, while the other half is accounted for by additional services such as excursions and theater tickets. But the city’s age-old tourism problem remains: There are about 400 four- and five-star hotels in St. Petersburg, and not enough economy class accommodation facilities.
The city is also focusing on domestic tourism, which currently accounts for about half of the total volume of incoming tourists. The Discover Your Own Country project consists of an exchange of social advertisements between Russian cities in order to attract domestic tourists.
Development is also expected in the sphere of yacht and boat tourism. A law allowing small, non-commercial foreign vessels to enter Russian waterways was passed in 2008, but rules governing this sphere were only established in May of this year.
“It is a very promising sector; yacht clubs have been built and certain areas of water for small-sized vessel traffic have been endorsed,” said Gavrilova.
The city also plans to introduce more campsites on the outskirts of the city, following in the wake of the Baltic Parking campsite, which opened near the Konstantinovsky Palace in the suburb of Strelna in May 2012.
TITLE: Mariinsky Theater Set to Open Doors to New Stage in May 2013
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Mariinsky II, the second stage of the world-famous Mariinsky Theater, will receive its first spectators in May 2013, Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky promised this week after a meeting with the company’s artistic director, Valery Gergiev.
“Russia will be getting the best theater building in the world,” Medinsky declared.
Earlier this year, the official made some sobering statements about the project, revealing Medinsky’s disappointment in the slow pace of the construction. Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2012, the minister said that the construction had slowed down and had de facto been taking place only over the three previous months.
Responsible for the design of the new opera house is Canadian architectural firm Diamond and Schmitt Architects, which in 2009 won the international competition to design Mariinsky II. The project, which is estimated to have a total cost of 19.1 billion rubles ($161.7 million), is being financed by the Russian government.
“The troupe needs the new stage like every living creature needs oxygen,” Gergiev said. “It is shameful that in the 21st century, the Mariinsky Theater has to close for at least five days to mount the sets for Andrei Konchalovsky’s staging of Prokofiev’s ‘War and Peace.’”
By his own admission, Diamond is not an architect that “hits you in the eye” or goes for extravagant solutions. Nor does he tend to replicate the past. “If back in the 18th century St. Petersburg had been replicating the past, you would have had a different city,” the architect told The St. Petersburg Times.
The local architectural community criticized Diamond’s design for what the critics described as a devastating lack of personality.
“An average architecture student would have done a better job,” said architect Mikhail Sarri, of St. Petersburg’s town planning council. His fellow council member Nikita Yavein went further.
“If any members of our council had the temerity to present our city with something as useless as this, they would have been kicked all the way back to their studios,” Yavein said.
TITLE: Evidence Called Into Question, Excluded From Trial
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg ombudsman Alexander Shishlov showed interest in the high-profile trial of 12 opposition activists accused of organizing and participating in “extremist activities of a banned organization,” which was attended by his assistant, Andrei Tolmachyov, for the first time last week.
Defense and rights organizations believe that the criminal prosecution of the activists was launched on purely political grounds, without any actual crime having been committed.
On Friday, the judge summoned a technical specialist and an investigator to attend the next court session after the defense motioned to exclude half of the secret video surveillance recordings from the case.
Defendant Igor Boikov’s lawyer, Ivan Bulgakov, motioned to exclude 14 discs from the case as inadmissible evidence due to the fact that there were no reliable dates on the footage.
He said that the court had given counter-extremism Center “E” permission to conduct secret video surveillance for the period of 180 days starting July 1, 2009 at the apartment where the activists held their meetings, but it was impossible to determine when the videos presented by the prosecution were actually made.
The dates were written in pencil on the discs’ envelopes by an investigator, while the file information recorded the default date of “January 1, 2006” for all of the videos checked.
Andrei Pesotsky’s lawyer, Sergei Golubok, pointed out that no document provided by the prosecution identified the discs by their factory numbers.
“There is no reliable data confirming when the recording was made,” Golubok said.
“We’re not saying that it was made in 2006. We are saying, ‘It’s chaos, a mess, it’s not clear when it was made.’ Once it’s not clear when it was made, doubt arises, and doubt in a criminal trial should be interpreted in favor of the defendants.”
Judge Sergei Yakovlev ordered an investigator and a technical specialist be summoned to explain the situation.
He also excluded a printout from a website as it violated the law. The judge agreed with Golubok’s motion to qualify the piece of evidence as inadmissible.
The page was simply printed out by an investigator and added to one of the case’s 15 volumes without any legal procedures being conducted or corresponding documentation.
“Its contents are absolutely innocent, but if we allow dubious printouts that we don’t know where they were taken from to be added to the case, we can forget about the code of criminal procedure,” Golubok said.
Both acts are seen as the court’s first concessions to the defense, whose motions have been mostly declined during the trial of the activists of The Other Russia opposition party, which opened on April 24.
As the prosecution has almost finished presenting evidence, defense witnesses are likely to start testifying this week.
The Other Russia’s local chair and one of main defendants, Andrei Dmitriyev, said that the activists will have dissident author Eduard Limonov, former world chess champion and oppositionist Garry Kasparov and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny come to St. Petersburg to testify on their behalf.
TITLE: Volunteers Mark Homeless Animals’ Day at Shelters
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Vegan Club is inviting volunteers to mark International Homeless Animals’ Day with a day of activities organized to help local animal shelters on Sunday, Aug. 19. Starting at 10:30 a.m., groups of volunteers will visit a number of local shelters, bringing equipment and assisting shelter personnel with various tasks.
“People usually collect some food and other things for animals and visit several shelters,” Vegan Club coordinator Dmitry Koretsky said this week. “The event is held in several cities; in Moscow they followed our initiative and will have a similar event on Saturday, Aug. 18.”
Although Koretsky and his friends have been volunteering at the shelters for several years, the official volunteer day was established last year. “We timed it to fall near International Homeless Animals’ Day.”
“First we started going to shelters when there were just two or three of us,” he said.
“We met the people that ran the shelters, then we slowly started to draw other people in by creating events on vkontakte [a Russian social network similar to Facebook]. Then those guys started to go there all by themselves because they like it — it’s interesting — and, all in all, the volunteer activities are very engaging.”
According to him, more than 130 volunteers took part last year. “As the moderator, I contact the people from the shelters and ask them what kind of help they need — whether it’s construction work, cleaning the cages or simply walking the dogs,” Koretsky said.
“The shelter’s administrators send me the information about the work they need to be done and the stuff they need, and then I ask for volunteers to be coordinators for each shelter. Usually we work at eight shelters. Each coordinator invites volunteers, meets them somewhere and takes them to the shelter that they are in charge of.”
The volunteers fill in a form on the Internet, indicating the most convenient locations for them to go to, and after receiving this information, Koretsky passes it onto the relevant coordinator, who will then get in touch with the volunteer.
“I write, ‘This is Vasya, he wants to go to the shelter in Pavlovsk, because he lives near Pushkin,’” he said. “The coordinator gets in touch and meets him, and they go to the shelter.”
Volunteers that own cars mark this on the form and can transport food, tools and other volunteers to the destination. “This person writes, ‘I have a car and have room for some shovels and three more people.”
Koretsky is 25, but said that volunteers can vary in age. “They are mostly high school and university students, but there are some older people as well,” he said.
The Vegan Club, which promoted veganism through punk concerts, social events and a vegan bar, existed for 18 months in an industrial area on Ligovsky Prospekt, but had to leave its space in February due to an increase in rent.
However, Koretsky said that the Vegan Club team didn’t just disappear and continued to organize charity hip-hop and hardcore punk concerts in other underground clubs.
“The vegan movement is directly connected to helping animals, so we keep doing what we can,” he said. “During this event, we help shelters for cats and dogs, but also other kinds of animals.”
Koretsky pointed out that it is not necessary to be a vegan to participate in the Vegan Club’s initiatives. “We’re mostly vegans or vegetarians, but we don’t impose any restrictions, like ‘If you’re not a vegan, you’re not coming with us,’ it would be silly,” he said. “Everyone is welcome.”
Having no sponsors, the activists use their own money to buy food and tools, or use funds raised at benefit concerts.
“We don’t raise much money because mostly unknown bands play there, but we use the concerts not only to raise money, but also to spread awareness about the shelters and about what kind of help they need,” Koretsky said. “This has caught some people’s interest and caused them to come to our events.”
One recent benefit, held at Doska club on Kazanskaya Ulitsa, raised 15,000 rubles ($500) for Bozhya Korovka (Ladybug), the only shelter in St. Petersburg for farm animals such as cows, sheep, goats and chickens, as opposed to lost or abandoned pets.
“For example, some rams were living in a laboratory where they were used for experiments, and then they [the researchers] wanted to get rid of them and, instead of having them slaughtered, they gave them to Bozhya Korovka,” Koretsky said.
Another situation was when “a chicken factory went bankrupt and was about to have thousands of chickens slaughtered, but some people went there and carried out as many as they could.”
Another special shelter is Sirin, which looks after wild birds that cannot survive under natural conditions due to injuries and other problems.
According to Koretsky, there are around 15 shelters for homeless animals in St. Petersburg. About eight of them are large and hold up to 400 animals each.
International Homeless Animals’ Day was established by the International Society for Animal Rights (ISAR), the first animal rights organization in the U.S., in 1992.
Find out more details and fill in the form at http://vk.com/anim1908.
TITLE: Historic Lenfilm Studio Spends August In Court
AUTHOR: By Luisa Schulz
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The peripeties surrounding the crisis-stricken Lenfilm film studio have not come to an end. Throughout the month of August, the legendary studio has faced a series of legal proceedings, while its future is to be determined in September.
On Aug. 6, the studio was taken to court for a 1.38-million-ruble ($43,500) debt it owes to the St. Petersburg Fuel and Energy Complex. The trial was adjourned until Sept. 10.
Lenfilm’s Aug. 9 trial regarding a debt of 477,000 rubles ($15,000) to Gazprom Mezhregiongaz St. Petersburg also ended in the defense applying for a suspension.
Meanwhile, the studio is still awaiting its costliest trial, with Barrier, a security company that is suing the film studio for 4.8 million rubles ($151,000). The trial is scheduled to start Aug. 20.
Lenfilm has been ridden with economic crisis for the last few years. Last October, Vladimir Putin promised that the studio would remain in state hands under all circumstances. In June 2012, newly nominated Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky repeated the promise to take care of the studio.
At the moment, three different screenplays have been submitted for Lenfilm’s future.
Sistema, an investment company, envisages a liaison between Lenfilm and RWS, a film and television corporation. This plan would require the studio to move out of the city center and transform its historical residence into a business center that would include a huge cinema complex and multi-story parking garage.
Lenfilm’s board of directors is playing a similar card, suggesting turning Lenfilm into a production platform that would take orders from other companies. Their scenario also implies the selling of Lenfilm’s property.
A very different vision was expressed in May by Lenfilm’s public council, the only group with Lenfilm artists as members. They insist that all of the studio’s capital remain state-owned, asking for a state loan of two billion rubles ($63 million) in order to cover debts and renovation expenses.
“We have to fight for the preservation of the studio and stay here because this studio is not only a memorial, but also a place of preparation…there is everything here for the birth of new cinema,” Lenfilm luminary Alexander Sokurov said in a meeting with company employees on Aug. 6.
Whether the upcoming decisions will be the closing credits or a new fade-in for the legendary stronghold of Petersburg cinema remains to be seen.
TITLE: Glimpse at Underground Sect That Shocked Russia
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KAZAN — Authorities spoke of a creepy cult living in an “eight-level ant house” dug deep into the ground, where children were kept in unheated cells and starved of daylight. A visit to the compound suggests a more ordinary reality.
A brief visit inside the compound, which provided shocking headlines around the world when police raided it and seized the children, revealed none of the elaborate underground design described by prosecutors. Nor does a police video showing rooms inside. The father of a cult member, who originally disapproved of his daughter joining the group, said he was able to visit freely and has no complaints about how members live or treat their children.
The conflicting portrayals raise questions about whether authorities may have exaggerated the eccentricity of the sect, perhaps in an effort to show they are cracking down on radical Islamic groups. The spokeswoman for Kazan prosecutors did not answer repeated calls to her office and cell phones on Monday.
Police stumbled upon the bizarre sect in early August as they investigated what they described as a terrorist attack that killed a top cleric in oil-rich Tatarstan, where the population is about 60 percent Muslim. Officials blamed the attack on the radical Islamic groups proliferating in the region.
Police seized the 20 children living in the compound and put them in orphanages. Their parents were charged with child abuse, which prosecutors said could deprive them of custody for up to two years. Prosecutors allege that the children, who did not attend public schools, lived in conditions “unfit for humans,” in small, dark and unventilated cells dug into the earth. Health officials said the children rarely saw the light of day.
Relatives of cult members disputed that. Madganur Ziganshin, whose daughter, Ralifa Ibragimova, joined the cult despite his objections, said the room where she lived with her husband and four children was not underground and had normal windows.
He also disputed claims that the children rarely saw sunshine and were not allowed to leave the property, saying they had visited both sets of grandparents and gone to summer camp, and that he visited frequently for up to three days at a time.
“They pray. They are religious. But they are not junkies, drunks or bandits,” Ziganshin said in his home in the village of Bailyangar, 200 kilometers away. “They never abuse the kids, never beat them.”
Neighbors, however, said the children were raised to look upon others with disdain and would curse and throw stones from inside their compound.
“They consider themselves a higher race, while other people are garbage,” said Ildar Khusainov, 42, who lives in a nearby house.
It was not possible to determine from a short visit to the compound or from the video taken by police the day of the raid how much, if any, of the living space lies underground.
The sect, whose members call themselves “Muammin” — Arabic for “believers” — had thousands of followers in the 1990s. But they began to drift away after the founder, Faizrakhman Satarov, declared himself the “messenger of God” and his sect to be the world’s only true Muslims. When police raided about 60 people, including the children, were living in the compound.
Ibragimova’s husband accused authorities of seizing the children and filing abuse charges as a pretext for closing down the sect. Police have not reported finding weapons or any other evidence that sect members were involved in violence.
“They want to frighten us so that we leave by ourselves, so that we disappear,” said Shamil Ibragimov, a lean 30-year-old with a thin beard. “This is immoral. This is lawlessness.”
He said it took him five days to locate the children in an orphanage outside Kazan. They seemed happy but “did not realize they might lose their parents forever,” their father said.
The fate of the sect’s property remains unclear. Police, accompanied by social workers and construction experts, conducted a third search last week to further assess the living conditions and decide whether the haphazardly built structures should be demolished or allowed to stand.
TITLE: Earthquake Strikes Russian Waters
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A magnitude 7.7 earthquake that hit waters off Russia’s Pacific island of Sakhalin on Tuesday inflicted no casualties or damage, Russian officials said.
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry’s branch on Sakhalin said the quake was centered in the Sea of Okhotsk about 160 kilometers east of Poronaysk, Russia, at a depth of more than 600 kilometers.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake, which struck at 1 p.m. local time Tuesday, had a magnitude of 7.7, while the Russian ministry put it at 6.3.
“There have been no victims or damage,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that the quake was felt at a magnitude of 2 to 3 shocks in towns and villages on Sakhalin. The ministry said that there was no danger of tsunami and that aftershocks were unlikely.
In Japan, the Meteorological Agency also reported that there was no risk of a tsunami from the quake.
TITLE: Church’s Political Influence Going Up, Poll Shows
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russians are increasingly aware of the Orthodox Church’s influence on the political life of the country, but are attaching less importance to its teachings, according to a new poll released Tuesday.
Exactly half of those consulted by the state-run VTsIOM pollster said they felt the church’s influence in domestic politics, a six-percent rise over the 2010 figure. Forty-three percent said religious officials shape Russia’s course in international affairs.
But while respondents said the church’s political reach was growing, they said its role in the daily lives of citizens was falling, with 49 percent saying they essentially ignore the church, six percent more than two years ago.
The survey also discovered that 75 percent of Russians believe that the church should not be involved in politics, while roughly one-third said that the church should be limited to speaking only on religious matters.
In general, young Russians (37 percent) and the highly educated (33 percent) backed limiting the church’s sphere of influence. Villagers (22 percent), pensioners (20 percent) and those without higher education (18 to 19 percent) supported a greater role for the church.
VTsIOM pollsters consulted 1,600 people in 46 regions all over Russia for the survey, which was conducted in June. A margin of error of 3.4 percentage points was given for the poll.
TITLE: Sept. 9 Sees Start of Visa Deal
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — In a major triumph for the U.S.-Russia reset, the two countries will introduce a simplified visa regime that includes three-year visas starting from next month.
The Foreign Ministry has exchanged diplomatic notes with the U.S. Embassy — the final step in the landmark deal — and the new rules will come into force on Sept. 9, the ministry said Monday in a statement.
The new rules will make three-year multiple-entry visas allowing a maximum stay of six months the norm for both tourists and business travelers.
The ministry said a decision on whether to approve each application will now have to be made within 15 calendar days of submission.
The visa agreement — initiated by Washington as President Barack Obama sought to improve relations with Moscow — also ends a requirement for U.S. visitors to obtain a written invitation from a Russian citizen or organization to apply for a visa. The United States had no such requirement for Russian visitors but will continue to ask first-time applicants to attend an interview.
President Vladimir Putin signed the visa agreement on July 28, days after being ratified by the State Duma and Federation Council. Under U.S. law, no ratification was required in the U.S.
TITLE: Belarus Stripped of Gold for Doping
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: LONDON — Shot putter Nadzeya Ostapchuk of Belarus became the first athlete to be stripped of a medal at the London Olympics after her gold was withdrawn Monday for doping.
Valerie Adams of New Zealand was awarded the gold, and Yevgenia Kolodko of Russia was bumped up to silver. Fourth-place finisher Gong Lijiao of China was moved up to bronze.
The International Olympic Committee said Ostapchuk tested positive for the steroid metenolone. She won the shot put exactly a week earlier. The IOC said she was tested the day before her competition and again following the event. Both samples were positive.
“The [Olympic committee] of Belarus is ordered to return to the IOC, as soon as possible, the medal, diploma and medalist pin awarded to the athlete in relation to the above-noted event,” the IOC said in a statement.
The announcement came hours after the flame was extinguished at the closing ceremony with athletes and officials heading out of London. A day earlier, IOC President Jacques Rogge had proclaimed the fight against doping a success.
The Belarussian team had already sent home hammer thrower Ivan Tsikhan because of suspicions over a sample provided after his silver-medal performance at the 2004 Athens Games.
Besides Ostapchuk, only one athlete tested positive for a banned substance after competing. U.S. judo fighter Nick Delpopolo was cited for traces of marijuana in his urine sample.
The IOC had said this would be its most extensive Olympic anti-doping program. It took almost 6,000 urine and blood samples, including no-notice tests ahead of athletes competing.
TITLE: The Most Politically Correct Olympics in History
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The London Games have gone down in history as the most politically correct Olympics ever. Moreover, it was political correctness in its worst form — on the verge of fascism.
First, the leadership of the Greek Olympic Committee removed triple jumper Paraskevi Papachristou from the games for the following joke she made on Twitter: “With so many Africans in Greece … the West Nile mosquitoes will at least eat homemade food!”
The joke is certainly offensive, but ruining someone’s life over this matter — someone who has spent her whole life preparing for this competition — is pure fascism. It is the Ministry of Love punishing thought crime.
In another case, a member of the German rowing team, Nadja Drygalla, was forced to drop out of the competition because of a comment that was made on Facebook. But she had nothing to do with it. It was her boyfriend, a former neo-Nazi, who complained of having to travel on a train “with blacks and Pakistanis.”
Maybe the Olympic Ministry of Truth can answer one question for me: Why should Nadja Drygalla answer for the contents of her boyfriend’s Facebook page?
What’s next?
Disqualifying an athlete for the actions of his father? Or because another athlete’s grandfather served in the SS? Or maybe because somebody’s great-grandfather suppressed the Sepoy Rebellion in India?
But the most surprising aspect is the shameless double standards of the International Olympic Committee, or IOC. The Ministry of Love, standing by with a hot iron ready to dole out punishment for having politically incorrect boyfriends, turns out to be surprisingly tolerant of Nazism of another variety.
Take, for example, when several Lebanese Olympic athletes refused to train in the same room as Israelis. That is much worse than a tasteless joke on Twitter. It’s pure racism. The IOC should have clearly said to the Lebanese athletes, “Your demand is contrary to the very spirit of the Olympic Games, so we are excluding you from the competition.”
But instead of doing that, the committee simply put up a partition in the training room to appease the Lebanese racists and ensure that their tender feelings weren’t offended.
Another example was the two athletes from Saudi Arabia who refused to compete in the judo competition without their hijabs. It would seem that the logic of the Olympics is very simple: “Ladies, these events are dedicated to the achievements of the human body. We have our own standards. If you don’t agree with them, you can simply stay home. You can even kill two birds with one stone: In between your judo matches, you can use the same mat to pray five times a day facing Mecca.”
Instead, however, the IOC allowed the athletes to compete in the hijabs.
What’s next?
Maybe they’ll start obligating other athletes to wear hijabs as well. After all, it is only fair that the playing field be level for all athletes.
The IOC is a typical example of what is wrong with international organizations. They are ready with their hot irons to burn anything that even smells of inappropriate or politically incorrect ideas about the superiority of Western civilization over others.
That is a shame because the politically incorrect ideas these organizations so vigilantly fight against would have barely any consequences anyway. Regardless of what people are writing on Twitter, we can be fairly certain that Greece is not going to go to war with Egypt over a bad joke.
The racism that the Lebanese athletes displayed toward the Israelis is far more dangerous. It is part and parcel of the hate-filled ideology of Hezbollah.
As for the hijab, it’s not simply a harmless indigenous custom. In this case, it is a symbol of something broader: Saudi abuse and discrimination against women — in particular women’s rights to freedom, a basic principle that the Olympics represent.
It’s time to tell IOC officials that their actions make us sick. The civilized world should say to them: “What you’re doing has nothing to do with tolerance. It’s self-righteous, hypocritical and cowardly. You’re ready to destroy the life of a Greek athlete over a joke, fully aware that no ‘Greek Nazis’ are going to blow you up for it. But at the same time, you cave in like a coward when there is even the slightest danger that protecting true Olympic ideals will hurt your thin skin.”
God forbid some Islamic shahid be offended by your ban on hijabs at the games.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: comment: When Modest Deputies Live in Mansions
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: United Russia has broken a record for the number of bills proposed during the summer recess. Usually we don’t hear a word from deputies during the entire month of August. But this year, the temptation to play the populism game turned out to be too strong. Last week, United Russia proposed a bill to prohibit public officials at all levels from having bank accounts or owning property abroad. United Russia wants us to believe that this is part of a new anti-corruption campaign. But this PR stunt is bound to fail.
Of the 450 State Duma deputies, about 100 have declared in the past that they own foreign real estate or business. But it is safe to assume that the real number is three, if not four, times higher. The bill requires deputies to sell assets within six months after the law is passed. Does anyone really believe that this will happen, particularly during an economic slowdown?
Yet six months is plenty of time to transfer these assets to offshore companies, trusts or adult children. In this way, officials and deputies will remain modest public servants on paper.
The other problem with the bill is an inherent double standard. Why should officials be prohibited from owning, say, a $75,000 studio apartment in Bulgaria, while their $5 million mansion on Rublyovskoye Shosse is allowed? United Russia should require that public officials account for all of their assets in every country, starting with Russia.
One explanation for this strange bill is that it is part of an internal struggle among the elite. The younger members of United Russia want their chunk of the rich state pie, and the only way they can do this is by seizing power from the old guard, who have already gotten fat from years of feeding off the system.
But there is a much simpler explanation for this legislation. Perhaps it’s all really being done for the sake of public relations to appear “patriotic” to the masses.
In addition, this law could always be used as a tool for blackmail or extortion. Whenever the ruling elite need to discredit a disloyal member — for example Just Russia Deputy Gennady Gudkov — this law would allow them to find dirt on that person in the form of overseas property. Meanwhile, Kremlin-loyal deputies and other public officials would be allowed to hide their assets by transferring them to distant relatives, trusts or offshore companies.
If United Russia were truly serious about fighting corruption, it wouldn’t ban the ownership of foreign assets. It would focus on the more central issue of whether a public official can justify his assets —regardless of where they are held — by his officially declared income. This is how the issue is handled in most Western countries. If these assets were obtained legally and there is no conflict of interest, let public opinion, not the Criminal Code, determine the moral aspect of public officials’ domestic and foreign holdings.
Notably, amid United Russia’s fervent battle against corruption, the party has still not ratified Article 20 of the United Nations Convention against Corruption. This convention requires public officials to prove that their property and other assets were legally obtained. Failure to do so can result in their property being confiscated.
It is clear this bill is designed purely for the sake of propaganda in hopes of convincing Russians that United Russia is trying to battle corruption in earnest. But few Russians will fall for this trick.
Georgy Bovt is a political analyst.
TITLE: Disregarding the law
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Madonna made a graphic statement in defense of Pussy Riot at her Moscow concert last week — complete with the name of the imprisoned feminist group written on her bare back. Her speech on gay rights in St. Petersburg on Thursday however, came out somewhat vague and flat.
Despite the U.S. Consulate warning of a “threat of physical violence against spectators and performers” in St. Petersburg, the show went on without any complications, as local radical Orthodox and nationalist organizations canceled their previously planned protests. Nevertheless, local Orthodox radicals reported Madonna to the police for alleged “gay propaganda” after the show.
Performing at St. Petersburg’s Peterburgsky Sports and Concert Complex (SKK), Madonna was expected to make a strong statement against the St. Petersburg law, which has been in effect since March and punishes the “promotion of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism to minors” with fines. The law has been used to ban LGBT rallies and to detain protesters.
Her speech, however, involved mostly general words concerning tolerance (the situation is worsening “everywhere,” she said), a quote from Martin Luther King Jr., and she emphasized that all religions are about love.
She did not mention the St. Petersburg law banning the “promotion of sodomy,” a law she described as a “hideous atrocity” back in March. She did not criticize the St. Petersburg authorities for adopting it, did not urge them to abolish it and did not call for her fans to protest it.
“Now I am here to say that the gay community and gay people here and all around the world have the same right to be treated with dignity, with respect, with tolerance, with compassion and with love,” she said.
“If you’re with me, I want to see your pink armbands. If you’re with me, raise your arms and show your love and appreciation for the gay community.”
The pink wristbands were distributed at the concert to those wishing to support the LGBT community in St. Petersburg, according to Madonna’s official website. “The wristband will be part of the show — be prepared to raise your arm in support!” the notice read.
The audience, which included many members of the LGBT community, reacted with shouts and applause, and people raised their arms, revealing their pink wristbands and also held rainbow-themed paraphernalia. The St. Petersburg LGBT organization Vykhod (Coming Out) released a statement of gratitude to the singer the following day.
“We are grateful to Madonna for her eloquent speech of support. She inspires and leads the way for millions of people across the globe, and her voice is especially important for the community that they are attempting to drive underground in Russia,” wrote Coming Out’s publicist, Olga Lenkova, on behalf of the group.
However, some other LGBT activists, who had previously urged Madonna and the other pop stars to boycott Russia because of human rights’ abuses — after journalist Masha Gessen, who personally addressed the singer in her column on The New York Times’ website in March — dismissed the singer’s speech as lip service.
Activists from the LGBT rights group Ravnopraviye (Equality) picketed the show.
The group’s chair, Yury Gavrikov, stood with a sign that read, “Show[biz] and money are not equal to fighting for human rights,” while activist Maria Yefremenkova appealed to the members of the gay community that came to the show, saying that half of the audience at the stadium were LGBT.
According to her poster, which started with the words, “I don’t care about Madonna and her support,” the taxes from the money concert-goers spent on tickets will go, among other things, to a new residence for “homophobic” Governor Georgy Poltavchenko, who signed the law into effect in March. “[Gays community], what’s wrong with you?” it said in conclusion.
“Boycotting concerts in Russia is a much more significant act politically than a few words of support,” Gavrikov told the press. “I have respect for Madonna, but see this as a half-measure and, first and foremost, a publicity gimmick to draw attention to her shows.”
So far only two artists are known to have actually boycotted Russia over the Pussy Riot trial and human rights’ abuses: Finnish jazz musician Iiro Rantala and British artist Stuart Semple.
Rantala said he would not perform at a music festival in Moscow because he didn’t want to perform “in a country where free speech is at medieval levels,” while Semple, who was to participate in a Moscow contemporary art exhibition, wrote that he would not bring his installation “Happy Clouds” — pink smiley clouds floating in the sky — to the Russian capital until Pussy Riot was released.
In February, foreign tourists were urged to boycott St. Petersburg if the law was adopted. About 99,000 people signed a petition on All Out, a leading LGBT rights petition web site, appealing to Governor Poltavchenko not to pass the law. They said that they would not visit the city as tourists if the bill were to become law.
Critics say that Madonna not directly criticizing the Russian authorities and ignoring calls to boycott the city, along with being vague in what she said at her concerts might be connected to her vested interests in Russia. Early last week, she held a launch event for her own Hard Candy fitness center in Moscow, her second after the one in Mexico City.
The police checked protesters’ IDs and put down their names and addresses in their notebooks, but did not arrest them. According to Gavrikov, an officer told him that they had been given specific orders not to be easy on the activists at the show. Earlier the police said that 350 officers would be deployed to maintain public order at the show and in the area near the stadium.
No attacks or harassment from Orthodox activists were reported. Despite prior announcements that the People’s Assembly and other organizations would be picketing the concert near the Park Pobedy metro station and near the stadium itself, there was a last-minute change in plans and they moved their protest of Madonna to Palace Square.
Their reasoning was that Madonna performed in an outdoor concert on Palace Square when she came to the city the last time, in 2009, so this place needed to be cleansed with holy water. Protesters also said that they would not want to be next to the members of the gay community that would undoubtedly be near the stadium where the concert was to start at the same time (in fact, it started more than two hours late).
According to Rosbalt news agency, a dozen and a half activists did gather on Palace Square, but dispersed when the priest who was due to conduct the ritual failed to appear.
Two days before the St. Petersburg show, when Madonna performed in Moscow on Tuesday, a group of Orthodox activists held a series of one-man protests along Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main street. In the pouring rain, two-dozen demonstrators stood at a distance from each other holding posters that depicted caricature images and doctored photos of Madonna.
The signs bashed the singer for promoting “homo fascism” and for being a “pervert.” A number of anti-Madonna leaflets were also seen in the city center early last week.
There was no telephone bomb threat, as was feared by some after Orthodox archdeacon Andrei Kurayev’s hinted of one to St. Petersburg television audiences.
In early April, Kurayev suggested on local television that placing a false telephone bomb alert might prevent the Madonna concert from taking place, later saying that he had been “joking.” Controversy and a complaint from Moscow-based LGBT activist Nikolai Alexeyev followed, but the police said in June that they would not launch criminal proceedings against the priest.
Last week, the prosecutor’s office that Alexeyev appealed to then said the police’s refusal was lawful.
Early last week, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and the U.S. Consulate General in St. Petersburg released a warning for U.S. citizens about Madonna concerts, especially the St. Petersburg one. “The U.S. Consulate General in St. Petersburg has received information regarding a threat of physical violence against spectators and performers at the St. Petersburg concert on Aug. 9,” it said. The diplomats alerted the Russian authorities, which “have indicated to the Embassy that they are taking appropriate measures in the light of this information.” U.S. citizens were reminded to “remain vigilant regarding their personal security, and to be aware of their surroundings at all times, especially in crowded areas.”
On Friday, a press officer for Vitaly Milonov, the United Russia Legislative Assembly deputy who initiated the “anti-gay” law in November 2011, told Interfax that an organization called Roditelsky Kontrol (Parental Watch) reported Madonna to the police for “gay propaganda.”
“There were minors there as well, there were 12-year-old children there,” Milonov was quoted as saying. “We believe that the law banning the promotion of homosexuality was violated.”
He said the alleged violations were captured by the activists present during the concert at the stadium on video.
As an individual, Madonna may be punished with a fine of 5,000 rubles ($150), if found guilty under the law.
TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An international solidarity event to show support for Pussy Riot — the three women that have been imprisoned for performing an anti-Putin “punk prayer” — will be held around the world on Friday, Aug. 17.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s lawyer, Mark Feigin, said that the event will start at 2 p.m., one hour before the judge is scheduled to begin reading the verdict in Moscow. Due to time differences, people in other countries will join the event later, once the verdict is already known.
The event will be held in Paris, Prague, London, New York, Munich, Vilnius and other cities, Feigin said. Participants will stand and hold “Free Pussy Riot” posters.
The trial — which has been viewed by many internationally with disbelief and disgust — showed disrespect of the law on the part of the judge and prosecution and has been compared to a mix of Stalin-era show trials and medieval witch trials by some.
Powerful concluding statements made by Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich last week have already made history as a verdict of Putin’s regime.
The women have been supported by dozens of international musicians, authors and filmmakers, from Peter Gabriel and Sting to Bjork and Madonna.
According to Feigin, Moscow supporters will gather at the Khamovnichesky District Court.
“Because of the authoritarian rule in Russia, we urge people to come without posters and wait for the court’s ruling,” Feigin said.
In St. Petersburg, Pussy Riot supporters will start gathering at 2 p.m. on Arts Square.
“It’s an act of solidarity, that’s why it’s important it be held on one and the same day with all of the people that sympathize with these young women and who simply support democracy and freedom in Russia,” Feigin said.
“Innocent people may be sentenced to a lengthy term in a prison colony as the result of this illegal trial.”
TITLE: Budding eroticism
AUTHOR: By Luisa Schulz
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A naked woman in a light flesh tone leans back, her hand descending between her legs. This picture, captioned “Dream,” is one of many on show at the “Dedicated to Bloom” exhibition, which opened at the Nabokov Museum on Aug. 13. It displays litographic works by Mikhail Karasik, who drew inspiration from James Joyce’s novel Ulysses.
“It’s not really illustrations of literature, it’s just associations evoked by literature,” said Karasik as he explained the concept of the “artist’s book,” his specialty and the subject of the exhibition.
Although dedicated to Joyce’s character Leopold Bloom, whose excessive erotic fantasies caused the landmark novel’s initial ban in the United Kingdom, the exhibition does not restrict itself to a single libido. Another room displays acts of the Russian Silver Age, while a third room takes the spectator to the boudoirs of the Middle East. Thus, the exhibition undertakes a little erotic trip around the world, comparing the concupiscence of different cultures.
Curvy pictures of Molly Bloom, Leopold’s wife, and glimpses of her buttocks set the tone for the “Dedicated to Bloom” (2003) album reflecting Leopold Bloom’s erotic fantasies. Aside from her, the series features beefy whores, Bloom’s teenage daughter Milly and his seaside fantasy Gerty, who is pictured in a romantic ocean embrace with Bloom as the waves rise up to their waists to insinuate Blooms’s famous orgasm.
Reminiscent of Henri Matisse’s 1935 erotic illustrations to Ulysses, Karasik’s attempt is more focused on color, with erotic tension being concentrated in pink tones. Particularly intriguing is Karasik’s technique to combine lithography with previous photomontage, using pornographic photo material from the very eras he depicted. The women on display should thus really resemble the pornographic pictures allegedly collected by Bloom in the novel.
Pornographic archives were also a source of the series “The Silver Age. Russian Types” (2004), the women, whose acts are more enigmatic and blurred than in the Bloom album, are bathed in shades of blue and patches of green. This is the only series displaying a few male acts, including men at a banya.
“Rich earthly colors, naive style and yearning but august postures are characteristic of the lithographs of the third album, “The Arab Eros” (1998)”
It is interesting to note that none of Karasik’s albums would have been on show in the societies they explore. In the Silver Age, erotic art was censored, as it was in early 20th-century Ireland. In Arab countries, acts are banned even today. “The Arab Eros pictures are of course a bit of a provocation,” says Karasik. “In Arab countries, it is even forbidden to use the word eros.”
Had he chosen slightly different erotic motives, he might also have upset the Petersburg authorities.
The exhibition “Dedicated to Bloom” runs through Sept. 3. at the Nabokov Museum at 47 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa, M. Admiralteiskaya. Tel. 315 4713.
TITLE: the word’s worth: Hometown favorites
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Ìîñêâè÷: Muscovite
The other day I was talking to an acquaintance that had moved to Moscow from Voronezh. I wanted to find out where he was born. My question started out fine: Âû êîðåííîé— (Are you a native —).
But then I realized I didn’t know the proper word for a resident of Voronezh. So I used my tried and true method to conceal my ignorance. I paused and fiddled with my shoe, giving him the opportunity to fill in the word for me. It worked. Êîðåííîé âîðîíåæåö? Äà. (A native of Voronezh? Yes.) À âàøà æåíà? (And your wife?) Òîæå èç Âîðîíåæà (She’s also from Voronezh).
I gave up my pretense of linguistic competence. Îíà òîãäà … âîðîíåæêà? (She’s a Voronezhka?) I tried. He laughed. Íåò òàêîãî ñëîâà. Âîîáùå íåò ñëîâà äëÿ æåíùèíû-æèòåëüíèöû Âîðîíåæà (That’s not a word. In fact, there isn’t a word for a woman resident of Voronezh).
And then we had one of those great Russian little word exchanges. I asked, À êàê æå òàê? (How could that be?) He replied, Âîò òàê (There you have it).
Since fiddling with my shoe isn’t always possible, I decided to find the rules for formation of nouns from city names in Russian. This type of noun has the rather obscure designation ýòíîõðîíèì or ýòíèêîí (the equally obscure ethnicon).
My research came up with a mixed bag. There are rules, but they have lots of exceptions. Here convention and tradition rule. And to follow what rules there are, it helps to have at least a nodding acquaintance with history. For example, some of the oldest cities use the oldest suffix to denote residency, the letter “÷.” So a resident of Ìîñêâà (Moscow) is ìîñêâè÷ (Muscovite), and a native of Ïñêîâ (Pskov) is traditionally ïñêîâè÷ (Pskovian).
Except, of course, that a resident of the super-ancient city of Êèåâ (Kiev) is êèåâëÿíèí (Kievan), while a native of Òîìñê (Tomsk), founded about 700 years later, is òîìè÷, which is a … Tomskian? Tomskan? Tomsker? Tomskite? Ethnicons are tricky.
Many cities that end in -ñê or -òñê (except for Òîìñê, of course) use the suffixes -àí, -÷àí, or -ÿí, like Minsk: Ìèíñê — ìèí÷àíèí, Õàáàðîâñê — õàáàðîâ÷àíèí, Ñìîëåíñê — ñìîëÿíèí, Èðêóòñê — èðêóòÿíèí and Êóðñê — êóðÿíèí. You will note that various letters of the city name disappear or stay, apparently as they wish.
Some cities that end in -îâî, -èíî or -åíî use the suffix letter “ö,” like Ivanovo: Èâàíîâî — èâàíîâåö. But others, like Kemerovo, don’t: Êåìåðîâî — êåìåðîâ÷àíèí.
Some cities use the jazzy -ÿê ending to denote their citizens, like Perm: Ïåðìü — ïåðìÿê; or Tula: Òóëà — òóëÿê. A Siberian is traditionally ñèáèðÿê, although my 18-year-old neighbor calls him ñèáèðÿíèí.
But a native of Novosibirsk (Íîâîñèáèðñê) is not íîâîñèáèðÿíèí, as per rule No. 2, or íîâîñèáèðÿê, as per rule No. 4, but íîâîñèáèðåö.
Lucky is a native of Tver (Òâåðü), who can call himself òâåðÿê, òâåðè÷àíèí, òâåðèòÿíèí, or even òâåðè÷, depending on mood and inclination.
Unlucky is a resident of Òîðæîê, who calls himself íîâîòîð because the town was originally called Íîâûé Òîðã. Similarly, a native of Arkhangelsk (Àðõàíãåëüñê) is called àðõàíãåëîãîðîäåö, because the city was once Àðõàíãåëüñêèé ãîðîäîê.
There are other strange and wonderful ethnicons. A native son of Ufa (Óôà) is óôèìåö; residents of Odessa (Îäåññà) are îäåññèòû.
But why are there female residents all over the place — ñèáèðÿ÷êà, óôèìêà, èâàíîâêà, ìîñêâè÷êà and even íîâîòîðêà — but no words to describe them in Âîðîíåæ?
Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.
TITLE: in the spotlight: Lacking love for Madonna
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Late last week, Madonna gave her support for the members of Pussy Riot on trial by speaking at her concert, pulling on a balaclava and revealing the words Pussy Riot written on her back.
Wearing just a black bra, Madonna writhed to Like a Virgin in a tribute that seemed to fit her image perfectly, even if, as a colleague pointed out, “Like a Prayer” would have been even better. You have to give it to Madonna: She was offending the Catholic Church back when some of the members of Pussy Riot were still in diapers.
This was the kind of behavior likely to irritate former Komsomol workers such as Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who wrote on Twitter that “every former b. as she gets older tries to read everyone lectures on morals.Especially during international tours.” The letter “b” obviously stands for “blyad,” an extremely offensive Russian word for tart.
He then added a retort: “Either take off your cross or put on your knickers.”
I doubt Madonna will lose any sleep over this. And Rogozin has always been one for plain-speaking, to put it mildly. But I’m still reeling from the fact that this is a deputy prime minister talking in what is presumably his usual tone.
The satirical Twitter feed @KermlinRussia replied, “Only a few keep on working as blyadi in the Russian government.”
Madonna had already spoken in support of Pussy Riot in interviews as she visited her gym in Moscow. And rumors were swirling that she would do something at her concert.
“Ahead of the concert there were none of the usual fan discussions about why she isn’t performing “Into the Groove” on this tour,” Vedomosti wrote. “No, the intrigue was that at this concert Madonna would perform in support of Pussy Riot.”
Whatever your views on Pussy Riot, you have to hand it to their supporters for organizing a definitive stunt. Also, it is amazing how the group’s homemade balaclavas have become such a strong symbol that it was enough just for Madonna to pull one on.
Kommersant’s typically snarky headline for its story on the concert was “Pray, Love, Earn,” but the reviewer admitted he was bowled over.
“It wasn’t even about the music. Madonna didn’t always hit or sustain the notes and maybe her new material is not as good as before. All that matters is the gesture and the show,” he wrote.
But Komsomolskaya Pravda slammed Madonna for lecturing fans — and worse, keeping them waiting.
“After a rude three-hour delay without any apology, preaching the death of religion and the American way of life is a bit naive. You are in Russia, lady. Here we take these things seriously,” the newspaper fumed.
Madonna’s stunt won praise from some Russian celebrities, and less from others.
“It wasn’t for nothing that I had her poster over my bed when I was 13,” television host-turned-opposition-activist Ksenia Sobchak wrote on Twitter.
TITLE: THE DISH: Warzsawa
AUTHOR: By Daniel Kozin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Retro relaxation
Categorizing Warszawa, a three-month-old self-titled “buffet” in the city center, is no easy task, (though it’s name can offer guidance) as it is unlike any other place in the city. In fact, it is so different that one cannot even be sure it is in St. Petersburg.
Located a few minutes-walk from Nevsky Prospekt, the place is easy to miss, and not only because of the street’s confusing house numbering system. It is virtually nondescript from the outside, with only a subtle inscription on the dark glass door guiding the way in.
Entering can be a disorienting experience for the unprepared, and a disappointing one for the cynical. The contrast to the gaudy St. Petersburg street and it’s typically flashy cafes is so strong that the initially perceived mood seems subdued — potentially even somber. A few seconds of acclimatization help guests to accept their new whereabouts, hundreds of kilometers away and a century back in time, in fin de siècle Eastern Europe.
Unobtrusive yet elegant, the first room is dominated by an old-fashioned bar counter made of dark wood and flanked by rickety wooden stools, behind which an antique cabinet holds a shiny collection of bottles and glasses. The dark green floral wallpaper and soft glow from the glass chandelier complete the setting and guarantee peace of mind. The second room continues the style, complete with unassuming burgundy wallpaper, a retro radio system and a half-dozen tables along a velvet-upholstered bench.
Warszawa is not a restaurant, as it only offers something to sip and snack on, yet its charm lies in precisely that: A magically warm environment away from the hustle and bustle of the city that provides a rare opportunity to catch your breath and relax. It is a perfect alternative to more boisterous establishments — a place to come in mid-afternoon for a slow coffee and newspaper, or after work for a beer with intimate company. Undoubtedly, the clatter of dining would irreparably disrupt the meticulously designed environment.
On offer are various types of coffee, starting at 80 rubles ($2.60) for an espresso, home-made desserts, Czech and German beers ranging between 150 and 200 rubles ($4.70 - $6.30) and two types of sandwiches.
The St. Petersburger favorite, kartoshka (70 rubles, $2.30), was moist and not overly sweet, with just the right note of brandy under the surface. The apple envelope was less fresh (70 rubles, $2.30), though the apple with cinnamon combination strongly complimented the coffee. Most impressive out of the small meal was the brie sandwich (130 rubles, $4). The subtle cheese was highlighted by honey, pears and Dijon mustard, while the sharp spinach gave just the right bite for something to chew on.
During the visit it became obvious that the patrons of Warszawa come here for something that isn’t listed on the menu; one group was engrossed in a game of scrabble (which included the barista after her shift was over), two friends were catching up over a beer, a couple was slowly passing the time in an embrace and two bearded types smoking pipes were playing a contemplative game of chess.
In addition to the board games and chess sets, Warszawa offers film screenings of art house classics every evening on the projector in the backroom, including titles by directors such as Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard and Roman Polanski. A complete list can be found on the café’s vkontakte page, which is the best way to get in touch with the place as it has no phone number. Later in the night, DJs play a refreshing mix of non-mainstream tracks. Open from 10 in the morning until 4 at night, it’s hard to imagine a better place to unwind and soak in a time when life wasn’t so complicated.
TITLE: Persian Composer Makes Music in Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Running a contemporary classical music center in Russia may seem an unlikely occupation for a Persian composer brought up in the traditional and extremely intricate Oriental musical culture. This, however, has been the exact mission of 33-year-old Tehran-born composer Mehdi Hosseini for the past 10 years.
Hosseini arrived in town in 2002 to study at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory under composer Sergei Slonimsky and music historian Tatyana Bershadskaya, making Russia’s northern capital his second home.
Hosseini, who originally studied drama, switched to classical music relatively late, already in his teens. He took private lessons from Farhad Fakhreddini, the man behind the Iranian national orchestra, for five years, and it was through his mentor that Hosseini came across his first-ever piece of the Russian classics — Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.”
Since that time, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Stravinsky have become Hosseini’s favorites. It is these composers that he would bring to Iran, if he were to introduce the local audiences to the Russian classics, he said.
“I would be interested in building up an evening of pieces by Shostakovich — a string chamber quartet, a symphony and a concerto all performed during the same evening,” he said. “Some would criticize this approach for “overindulging the audiences,” but for me this approach feels right because it allows the listeners to get a full scope of the legacy of a master.”
In St. Petersburg, Hosseini made supporting new music festivals one of the key priorities of his reMusik Contemporary Music Center, which he founded in 2010 and which runs new contemporary academic music festivals and publishes an Internet magazine on contemporary music in Russian and English (www.remusik.org). Through his work, the composer has established extensive contacts with St. Petersburg classical music ensembles and local musicians are also keen to play Hosseini’s original works.
The composer, whose opuses have been performed during some of the city’s most respected cotemporary academic music festivals, in the caliber of St. Petersburg Musical Spring, Sound Ways, Contemporary East and West and Contemporary Past, is now working on a new piece that will premiere during the forthcoming edition of the annual international Sound Ways festival in November.
“The orchestras simply need to play new music, otherwise there will never be an audience for it,” Hosseini said. “The human soul is curious — during rehearsals I can feel the curiosity, which is much stronger than any prejudice or skepticism.”
When the composer was rehearsing his “Concerto for String Quartet and Chamber Orchestra” with the St. Petersburg Academic Philharmonic orchestra in 2010, it was not clear until the very last rehearsal whether the premiere of the work would actually take place.
It was not at all the case that the musicians did not have the appetite for the unorthodox piece. Neither was it the case that the orchestra’s rapport with American conductor Brad Cawyer was not perfect. “The work was very different from what the musicians had done before, and it required a drastically different mindset,” Hosseini said. “Even three days before the premiere, the piece was literally falling apart. But at the very last rehearsal it suddenly came together in a mesmerizing, beautiful way.”
The concerto has already been released by the Iranian recording label Arqanoon Records, and won encouraging reviews in the international press.
“This work, which represents the peak of Hosseini’s expertise, implies many cultural and linguistic issues and structures,” reads a review by Mohsen Saghafi for Arqanoon Records. “The points seen as chords in the piece do not refer to pointillism, but are pauses, which are to be regarded as the expression of successive new statements. The dialogue among the four solo string instruments attempting to be heard through the tumult of orchestral sounds is a musical metaphor for the cultural status of the tribes of Iran. In this piece, Hosseini reproduces the absurdity and multi-cultural aspect of societal and popular culture and conversations with the use of the orchestra. He represents the tumult of a society in which ethnic cultural elements are evident but cannot be easily heard. This society speaks in a language that is beyond understanding, even for itself, but the cultural identity of this disrupted society can still be found.”
As Saghafi points out, for Hosseini, the final goal is not dependent on the past, but at the same time progression cannot be achieved without an understanding of what has already happened. The composer considers the past and future to be interrelated in a complementary way.
Over the ten years he has spent in St. Petersburg, Hosseini’s composing style has evolved dramatically. Originally, Hosseini relied strongly on ancient Persian music. “Iranian regional folk music has always been a crucial and vital source of inspiration for me,” he said. “However, now I seek to muffle down the obvious Persian influences. What interests me at present is exploring the possibilities of improvisation in classical Persian music and the transfer from these traditions to Western European classical music.”
Hosseini admits that the situation for young composers is particularly problematic in Russia: Major orchestras show little enthusiasm when it comes to new music because general audiences express little interest in the contemporary repertoire, making it hard to sell these concerts; listeners, in turn, do not have enough exposure to this repertoire to be able to develop a taste for it.
The composer would like to see a friendlier attitude toward contemporary music projects from the state — and not necessarily in the form of generous grants. “Orchestras find it risky to perform contemporary works and experimental pieces because such concerts rarely attract full houses,” he said. “However, with so many orchestras being state-funded, it would not cost anything to write a line in the orchestras’ policies to have them perform, say, five contemporary works per season. Also, some tickets for contemporary music concerts could be distributed for free among students as part of an educational initiative.”
ReMusik’s next big project is a contemporary music festival, to be held in St. Petersburg from May 23 through 30, 2013. “We are going to take a regional approach: For instance, for the Day of Switzerland we are bringing ten aspiring Swiss composers to the city,” Hosseini said.
St. Petersburg has always been a leading city in new music — since the days of Tchaikovsky and during the experimental period back in the 1920s, until Stalin ended this experimentation. After so many years of persecution and fear — not the fear of bad reviews, but fear for one’s life — returning to an unrestricted state of mind can still pose a challenge to Russian composers.
“What I feel in St. Petersburg, is that overall creativity is tangible in the air, and if we support up-and-coming young talent, it will win through,” the composer said.
TITLE: Melting of Earth’s Ice Enlivening Murmansk
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MURMANSK — With their strangely elegant keel-less black hulls supporting the bulky but streamlined superstructure, there is something ineffably spine-tingling about standing next to a nuclear-powered icebreaker.
The Lenin, launched in 1959, was the first-ever built and is now permanently moored on Murmansk’s seafront. The railing on the dockside is adorned with padlocks and graffiti left by local young couples in love.
These vessels, which were only ever built in the Soviet Union and the stars of hundreds of iconic photographs of Arctic exploration, seem to ooze adventure out of their supposedly radiation-proof hulls and are symbols of the city’s former and future potential — which is set to grow dramatically thanks to the race to extract the Arctic’s natural resources.
Ships and Sailors
Nuclear icebreakers are part of the fabric of Murmansk. Even the nightclub at the city’s Radisson hotel is called Lyodokol, the Icebreaker.
But life on board wasn’t always all that great.
“Four hours on, eight hours off, for four months without a break,” said Andrei Zolotkov, who served in the icebreaker fleet for many years. “And sometimes they’d vibrate like crazy.”
Zolotkov, a Murmansk native, eventually quit — not because of the pay, which he says was double that of the average for other sailors in the Soviet era, or even because of the nuclear safety issue – but because of the climate.
“There were people from all over serving on the icebreakers, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ukraine. And for them it was great. You did four months at sea in the Arctic and then went home. But I’m from Murmansk. I’d do my four months and then I’d be stuck here where it never gets light in winter.”
He is now head of the local chapter of Bellona, an environmental organization that specializes in fighting pollution from nuclear relics of the Cold War.
And he is not especially keen on some of the relics lining the Kola Bay, the long black finger of water reaching inland from the Barents Sea that for nearly a century has served as Russia’s northern-most ice-free port.
On the eastern shore of the bay, the city of Murmansk – the largest anywhere in the Arctic Circle – huddles on a series of hills tumbling down to the waterline, where dinosaur-like cranes load mountains of Siberian coal into freighters.
All along the water, oil tankers, container ships and Atomflot’s fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers testify to this remote city’s claim to fame as the country’s northern gateway.
Atomflot, a subsidiary of state-owned nuclear monopoly Rosatom, has seven nuclear-powered icebreakers currently in operation, the newest being the Fifty Years of Victory, launched in 2007. Two defueled and retired nuclear icebreakers, the Sibir and the Arktika, which in 1975 became the first surface vessel to reach the North Pole, are moored awaiting renovation or decommissioning at Atomflot’s base two kilometers north of the city.
Radioactive Soviet relics are a fact of life in Murmansk. In a bay to the west, toward the Norwegian border, more than 40 reactor sections cut from nuclear submarines are in storage. Hopefully, in about 100 years, someone will find a use for those radioactive hunks of metal, Zolotkov said. Until then, they will stay there.
“What if you have a tanker coming down here and it loses steerage power and collides with them?” he asked, gesturing toward the Atomflot fleet moored against green hills. “It’s a pretty extreme scenario, but after Fukushima, who knows,” he said.
Zolotkov is not opposed to the technology in principle. Icebreakers are actually pretty reliable, he says. There have been only two serious accidents, he said, both aboard the Lenin; neither was fatal, although it later emerged that the waste was dumped in the Arctic sea.
The sailor-turned-activist says he’d rather see Atomflot build its nuclear bases a safe distance from population centers, like the Navy does.
The ability of a nuclear icebreaker to stay at sea almost indefinitely (Soviet-built models needed refueling only once every four to five years, and the new generation under construction at shipyards on the Russian Baltic should be able to last even longer) makes them indispensable to the fulfillment of the country’s maritime ambitions.
“If Russia wants to be the master of the Arctic, we need them — you can’t do it with anything else,” he said.
And mastering the Arctic is exactly Russia’s intention: Murmansk is set to be the epicenter of the effort.
Renaissance From Resources
Beginning life as a rail terminus and dock during the First World War, Murmansk became famous in the Second World War as the landing point for lend-lease convoys that brought precious supplies to its ice-free bay from Britain.
In recent years it has fallen on harder times. The subsidies and generous wages and pensions that workers used to get for enduring the long winter nights and short summer dried up at the end of the Soviet Union. The huge cargos carried by Sevrmorput, the state-owned arctic shipping company, from industrial giants like Norilsk and other far northern outposts of the Soviet empire have contracted vastly, Zolotkov said. The harbor is now stacked high with mountains of coal brought by the trainload for export from Siberia — but not much else.
Murmansk is home to 300,000 residents, although 30,000 people have left in the last 10 years. Zolotkov sees the demographic trend as ironic: The Soviets once planned to boost the city’s population to 750,000.
But now the city and its bay have become the cockpit for an oil and gas driven dash for the Arctic.
The Shtokman gas field in the Barents Sea is thought to hold 3.8 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. Gazprom says Prirazlomnoye, an oil field on the other side of the Barents just south of Novaya Zemlya, holds 72 million tons of oil reserves.
The tankers, oil platforms, and icebreakers needed to develop these fields will all be based in Murmansk. And along the fjord, the paraphernalia of Russia’s march to the north jostles with Soviet history.
Alongside the Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia’s only aircraft carrier, four huge metal columns reach for the sky.
They are the legs of the Arkticheskaya, a new drilling platform destined for the vast offshore fields.
Last year, the Prirazlomnoye platform — the first purpose-built platform for the new arctic fields built at the Sevmash military shipyard near Arkhangelsk — was towed out of Kola Bay to begin exploratory drilling in the Pechora Sea, over 805 kilometers away south of Novaya Zemlya.
The oil recovered by these platforms will be loaded onto ice-class tankers and brought back to Kola Bay, where it will be loaded into the Belokamenka storage facility, which is actually a retired Japanese-built super tanker moored like a colossal red brick in the middle of the fjord north of the Atomflot base.
Unable to leave Russian waters because of its single hull — safety standards in most countries now require tankers to be at least double-hulled — the Belokamenka is permanently in Kola Bay and is currently used by LUKoil to store oil from its fields in the Yamal peninsula.
Ocean-going tankers will then pick up oil from the floating depot and take it to refineries in Rotterdam.
That is the plan, and Rosatom has already ordered a new generation of icebreakers from shipyards in St. Petersburg to support it.
Boom Brings Risks
But Russian environmentalists have more than a few problems with how the situation is evolving.
For a start, it is two to three days sailing from Murmansk to Prirazlomnoye. If something goes wrong at the gas field, the platform’s crew will have an agonizing wait for the support vessels docked along Kola Bay to come to the rescue.
They also say the platform will need to be constantly attended to by at least one icebreaker to keep the sea around it clear in winter.
Then there is the business of loading and unloading oil. This is the riskiest part of the transportation process — first in the rolling seas of the open Arctic Ocean, and again in the Kola Bay, said Roman Dolgov, director of Greenpeace Russia’s arctic program.
That’s why this past weekend, just behind the Belokamenka, a comparatively tiny white and green vessel was anchored.
The Arctic Sunrise, a 49-meter conventionally fuelled icebreaker owned by Greenpeace International, departed Monday evening on a tour of the Barents Sea gas fields.
The environmental group wants to highlight what it calls unacceptable risks in developing offshore fields in the Arctic by giving journalists a chance to “experience [the] severe weather conditions that greatly raise the risk of an oil spill in the area.”
The idea, says Greenpeace Russia’s Vladimir Chuprov, is to challenge what he calls a “strategic error” of opening up the Arctic to oil and gas development.
“You only need Arctic development if you have decided that Russia’s economy will continue to be reliant on oil and gas. Either we concentrate on modernizing the country and switching to a high-tech economy, or we put those massive resources into opening the Arctic and continue to live on oil. We can’t do both. Unfortunately, [President Vladimir] Putin seems to have made his choice,” Chuprov said.
Exactly how to halt the development is difficult to see, though Dolgov says they have done it before.
“In the 1990s we were campaigning for a ban on underground nuclear testing, and in 1996 we got the comprehensive test ban treaty. I think Greenpeace made a big contribution to that. So the ultimate goal is to get an international agreement like we have for Antarctica, banning exploitation of the Arctic so its unique ecosystem is preserved,” he said.
Locals in Murmansk’s central square, where Greenpeace was gathering signatures of support on Sunday, were generally positive about the activists’ mission. “It’s extremely important. We always want to preserve the Arctic and the environment for our children,” said Victor Smirnov, a railway worker.
But Dolgov acknowledged that some had questioned how Russia would be able to pay for social programs, hospitals and schools without the more than 50 percent of the budget contributed by oil and gas money.
In Murmansk, where, together with the opening of a new sea-route from Europe to the Far East, the project offers hope of jobs, money and the economic rebirth of the kind Scotland’s Aberdeen has thrived on since the discovery of North Sea oil, the force of the economic argument has obvious appeal. But it comes tinged with skepticism born of disappointment.
“There’s always a lot of potential here. But that’s the thing with potential: It is always in the future,” Zolotkov said, casting a critical eye over the icebreakers, oil tankers and semi-complete oil platforms moored on the bay’s cold, dark waters.
“They’ve been talking about Shtokman for 50 or 60 years. We still haven’t seen anything yet,” he added.