SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1724 (35), Wednesday, August 29, 2012
**************************************************************************
TITLE: City Approves Skyscraper, Prompting More Protests
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A group of local politicians and city heritage activists have appealed to City Governor Georgy Poltavchenko, asking him to reduce the height of the planned 463-meter Lakhta Center skyscraper, after City Hall gave its official blessing on Aug. 17 to the construction of the notorious project, which is to host the headquarters of Gazprom Neft.
In an open letter, preservationists claim that the skyscraper will “interfere with the panoramas protected by UNESCO and alter some of the city’s signature views, including gems such as the Rostral Columns and the Peter and Paul Cathedral.”
The petitioners include Oksana Dmitrieva, a Just Russia lawmaker at the State Duma; award-winning filmmaker Alexander Sokurov; Maxim Reznik, head of the liberal Yabloko faction at the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, where he is also head of the Culture and Education Commission; Alexander Karpov, head of the Naturalists’ Society Expertise Center (ECOM); Yulia Minutina, head of the Living City preservationist group; and Alexander Kononov, deputy head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Association for the Protection of Monuments.
“The building of any constructions of the suggested height in this area would de facto mean ignoring not only the existing city policies for the protection of St. Petersburg’s architectural heritage but also going against UNESCO recommendations,” reads the letter. “We express our protest against erecting the skyscraper in the area. Additionally, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that, if built, the tower will create a dangerous precedent and inevitably pave the way for the mushrooming of similar buildings. Indeed, what one investor has been allowed to do is sure to provoke envious rivals into trying to do the same thing.”
The design of the Lakhta Center involves a vast office building and a science and education center surrounded by a large exhibition space, a sports center, a medical center, a children’s science theme park and a viewing platform, as well as a number of cafes, stores and entertainment venues, such as movie theaters and skating rinks.
Yabloko’s Reznik said that the new development — the approval of the construction in its existing shape by City Hall’s construction surveillance and assessment service — is sure to prompt another wave of public unrest.
“Gazprom’s local headquarters saga has been a painful story for the city,” he said. “It attracts a great deal of attention both at home and abroad, and serves as a litmus test of the integrity of the authorities. This is your chance to show that the legislation, with its requirements — however strict — applies to all companies equally, and no exemptions should be made, even for mighty tax-payers. If the authorities give in to an investor’s interests this time, it will send a clear signal to others.”
Originally, Gazprom had planned to build a skyscraper in the Okhta area across the River Neva from Smolny Cathedral, but at the end of 2010, the plans were buried following a wave of protests from the local heritage protection community that saw widespread support among city residents. Since the project was launched in 2006, the gas behemoth has been strongly criticized for numerous violations of the law, from using rent-a-crowds at public hearings to faking opinion polls and publishing paid biased news items supporting the project in the local media. Under pressure from residents and preservationists, the location of the planned business complex was moved to the Lakhta district on the outskirts of the city.
The cost of the Lakhta Center project, which is due to be finished in 2018, is estimated at 60 billion rubles ($1.87 billion).
This July, local heritage protection groups tried to interest UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, which was in town for UNESCO’s 36th session, into looking into the construction of the Lakhta Center. The plan collapsed after Eleonora Mitrofanova, Russia’s permanent representative at UNESCO, who also served as the session’s chairperson, avoided delving into the subject on the grounds that Lakhta Center will be located outside the historical center of the city and is therefore not under UNESCO’s jurisdiction.
Mitrofanova was adamant that since the complex itself is located outside the historical center, her organization has no right to intervene in the argument.
Poltavchenko has not yet responded to the letter. At a news conference in August 2011, however, the governor promised that he would support the construction project on the condition that it does not elicit protests from residents and will not destroy the integrity of the architectural landscape of St. Petersburg.
TITLE: Number of Bear Sightings Rises
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Wild bears have been encountered in the Leningrad Oblast with increasing frequency by people picking berries and mushrooms recently, 47News Internet portal reported last week.
People walking in forests have reported seeing bears in the Gatchina, Luga and Lomonosov districts.
Igor Prokhorov, head of the Leningrad Oblast’s Safety, Control and Regulation of Wild Nature Committee, said there are currently about 2,000 bears registered in Leningrad Oblast.
“It’s not too many for a territory of seven million hectares, but people should still be careful,” Prokhorov said.
Prokhorov said encounters with bears during the summer months are not overly dangerous, because bears have enough food around them. The most dangerous situation is coming across a female bear with a bear cub. Anyone who sees a bear cub is advised to leave the area immediately. Experts also advise people not to run away at high speed if they encounter a bear, but to leave slowly, preferably without turning their back to the animal, Prokhorov was cited as saying by 47News.
“It is quite rare for people to come across bears,” he said. “The animals shy away from people themselves. Bears rarely come close to residential areas, only if there are not enough berries in the forests. This year the berry harvest is quite bountiful, so there is no reason to worry,” Prokhorov added.
TITLE: Probe Opened Into Zenit-Anzhi Brawl
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg police have launched an investigation into a clash between fans of FC Zenit and fans of FC Anzhi at a McDonald’s outlet on Moskovsky Prospekt on Wednesday following a match between the two teams that left a Zenit fan in hospital.
Alexander Rumyantsev, also known as ‘Makasin’ and the leader of one of Zenit’s fan movements, was hospitalized in intensive care and operated on for injuries reportedly received during the game between Anzhi and Zenit in Anzhi’s home town of Makhachkala, Dagestan on Aug. 19, Interfax reported.
The following Wednesday, a mass fight broke out between Zenit and Anzhi fans on Moskovsky Prospekt. City police have opened an investigation into hooliganism over the incident.
Anzhi’s fans had gathered near Moskovskaya metro station last Wednesday to take a bus to Moscow to watch Anzhi’s match against the Netherlands’ FC Alkmaar scheduled for Thursday. Outside the nearby McDonald’s Anzhi’s fans were attacked by Zenit fans, seemingly in revenge for the alleged Anzhi fans’ attack on Zenit fans in Makhachkala four days earlier.
Windows in the McDonald’s cafe were broken during the struggle and the bus that was due to take the Anzhi fans to Moscow was also damaged.
TITLE: Two Pilots Killed During Test Flight
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Two people were killed when a Sesna-421 airplane crashed near a kindergarten outside St. Petersburg last week.
The plane crashed to the ground when its engine failed during takeoff. The pilot tried to direct the plane away from the village of Annino in the Lomonosov district of the Leningrad Oblast, Fontanka reported. One pilot was thrown out of the plane upon impact, while the body of the other was trapped in the cabin. Both pilots died, the news website reported.
According to preliminary information, the professional pilots were putting the plane through a recertification process after it had undergone repair work.
TITLE: Stroke Victim Flown Home
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A tourist from St. Petersburg who was left in a coma after suffering a stroke while on holiday in Bulgaria was flown back to the city by the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry on Sunday.
Olga Volobuyeva, development director for the charity organization Roditelsky Most, which helps children and families in difficult situations, was taken to the city’s Mariinsky hospital upon arrival. Her condition is described by doctors as stable but serious.
Volobuyeva fell into a coma after suffering a stroke on July 31, the third day of her vacation with her children in Bulgaria. Her medical insurance policy was not enough to cover medical evacuation back to Russia. Volobuyeva’s collegues at Roditelsky Most appealed to the St. Petersburg government for help, and City Hall in its turn contacted the Health and Emergency Situations ministries.
TITLE: Finnish Kremlin Supporter Sparks Slander Scandal
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian media made unfounded accusations against a Finnish professor after he expressed support for the imprisoned members of feminist punk group Pussy Riot earlier this month.
Several Russian news outlets reported that Teivo Teivainen, a professor of world politics at the University of Helsinki, faces up to five years in prison for trying to break into a Russian Orthodox Cathedral in the Finnish capital with a canister full of urine.
Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, Finnish YLE radio and the University of Helsinki have all exposed the accusations as false, but Russian media seem to be in no hurry to publish corrections of their earlier reports.
The “canister of urine” fiction became a national story in Russia when it was reported by Interfax, the major news agency, and picked up by other news agencies, websites, newspapers and major television channels on August 15, two days ahead of the verdict in the Pussy Riot trial.
It came more than two weeks after Teivainen had stopped during his World Political City Walk next to Uspenski Cathedral, Helsinki’s main Russian Orthodox cathedral (which was closed at the time, in keeping with its schedule), where two women donned Pussy Riot-style colored balaclavas and called for the release of the imprisoned women.
While international media reported on the trial, describing it as a “medieval witch trial” and a “farce,” and published images of the defendants sitting in a cage in the courtroom on their front pages, many Russian media were discussing the “attempted blasphemy” in Helsinki, arguing that Pussy Riot would also have faced a prison sentence in European countries for their punk prayer. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov went as far as to say, on Aug. 20, that “staging a blasphemous event in a church” was punishable by a two-year prison sentence in Finland.
Interfax, as well as other Russian media, referred to only one source in their reports: Johan Bäckman, who was identified as a “prominent Finnish human rights activist and adjunct professor at the University of Helsinki.”
In reality, Bäckman is Finland’s best-known supporter of the Putin regime, and is notorious for his highly eccentric public statements and campaigns.
Bäckman has stated that Estonia has no right to exist as an independent state; that the Winter War was started in 1939 by Finland, rather than the Soviet Union; that Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered by Putin’s enemies in an attempt to discredit him; and that disputes over the custody of Russian-Finnish children in Finland were a “genocide of Russian children” and manifestations of “Russophobia.”
His recent article about the Pussy Riot trial, published on his website in Russian, is titled “Pussy Riot: The Face of Fascism.” In it, Bäckman complains about the “leniency” of the two-year sentences passed on the women, arguing that “feminism is a crime against mankind.”
“Pussy Riot is a violent assault on democracy in Russia, [an assault] committed against Orthodoxy, against all the confessions of Russia, against Russian statehood, against the Russian nation and its unity,” he continues.
Many of Bäckman’s previous statements have been readily and uncritically reprinted in the Russian press, leading Helsingin Sanomat to dub Bäckman “the Russian media’s favorite Finn.”
In an article titled “Criminal proceedings launched against organizer of attempt to repeat the Pussy Riot performance in Helsinki,” Interfax reported on Aug. 15 that Bäckman and several other people had signed a complaint to the police.
“Criminal proceedings have been initiated under two Finnish Criminal Code articles concerning the violation of rules on religious tolerance,” Bäckman was quoted as saying.
A paragraph containing a reference to the “canister full of urine,” although technically unattributed, was inserted between quotations from Bäckman.
The University of Helsinki published a statement the following day in which it asked the media to correct the information and denied the accusations against Teivainen, who had spoken in support of Pussy Riot during one in a series of walking tours organized by the university and Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art.
During these tours, Teivainen stops at different sites and discusses international political issues with his audience. During the walk on August 3, he stopped near the Bank of Finland, where he spoke about the global economic crisis. During the stop near Uspenski Cathedral, he spoke about the human rights situation in Russia.
“The walking tours included several vivifying pieces of performance art, one of which was held in front of the cathedral,” the University of Helsinki’s statement said.
“In it, two masked women expressed their support for the group Pussy Riot. The performance did not constitute a crime.”
The University of Helsinki specifically stressed in its statement that Bäckman (who identified himself as “Dr. Johan Bäckman, Adjunct Professor in Sociology of Law, University of Helsinki” in his petition and a letter to this newspaper) “is not a professor at the University of Helsinki, neither is he employed by the university.”
Replying to questions from The St. Petersburg Times, Bäckman did not stand by what he told Interfax about criminal proceedings against Teivainen, despite the fact that it was published as a direct quotation, and denied he was the source of information about the “canister full of urine.”
“Regarding claims of his arrest, charges pressed against him by prosecutor or the urine, this information appeared in my knowledge in non-Russian media first and is of contradictory nature,” Bäckman wrote in English.
“Therefore the urine issue is not put forward in the crime report [or] the complaint to the university, because it is vague. For example, there are some four-five versions of the urine issue. Some media claimed it was not Teivainen, but participants who carried the urine.
“I have never claimed he was arrested nor charges were pressed against him, because I do not consider that information reliable. However the fact that Teivainen was not arrested should be confirmed by the police. There is no such confirmation.”
The only Finnish source known to have published the urine claim was web news service Verkkomedia.org, which ran an article on the case on Aug. 7 and removed it two days later. In a letter of apology to readers, it said that the article was based on information taken from a Russian website, from where it had since disappeared.
In his letter to The St. Petersburg Times, Bäckman insisted that Teivainen could face up to two years in prison on blasphemy and disruption of religious service charges for organizing what he called a “political protest against the church,” despite the fact that the church was closed.
“In my opinion it would be the same thing as if somebody protested against a Synagogue waving Nazi flags with Nazi uniforms or against a Mosque waving insulting Muhammad caricatures,” Bäckman wrote.
According to Teivainen, two people, Rauni Salminen and Tommi Lievemaa, last week retracted their signatures from Bäckman’s petition to the University of Helsinki, in which he demanded that the university fire Teivainen.
“It is true that I have retracted my name from the petition to the University of Helsinki,” Lievemaa wrote to The St. Petersburg Times.
“Naturally there is no real ground, in my view, for the police investigation either. Since I had a discussion with Mr. Teivainen on the telephone and had some more information about the event he organized in front of the Uspenski Cathedral, I decided to withdraw from the petition.
“It seems that the previous information about the ‘Pussy Riot event’ was quite highly exaggerated (a jug of urine and so on). This event was only one part of a larger ‘promenade of world politics,’ that was organized in cooperation with the Museum Kiasma.”
Salminen did not reply to queries sent to her email address and Facebook page.
Despite the retractions, their signatures were still on the petition on Bäckman’s website when checked Tuesday.
According to Teivainen, given the absurdity of the claims, Bäckman’s smear campaign was not aimed at the Finnish police, the administration of the University of Helsinki or the Finnish public, but at Russians unfamiliar with life in Finland. “In fact, I do not know of any genuine journalist in Finland that would trust him as a source,” he wrote.
“As there are clearly no legal grounds whatsoever for these claims, they obviously play some other purpose,” Teivainen wrote on his Facebook page.
“One possible logic is that if you spread lies of this kind and try to make people even for a moment believe that ‘Pussy Riot style action’ could lead to a judicial process also in countries like Finland, it may help to ‘normalize’ the trial in Russia. Other motives are also possible.”
Despite the fact that the accusations have been exposed as unfounded, articles making these claims are still available on Russian websites, and no Russian news outlet has yet published a correction. Bäckman sent a link to an article titled “Scandalous Finnish professor has accused the Russian media of lying,” published on Saturday by the Rosbalt news agency. After briefly citing Teivainen, Rosbalt repeated the false “canister full of urine” accusation as established fact.
TITLE: Mezhdunarodny Mall Opens
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Mezhdunarodny shopping center opened in the city’s Frunzensky district Friday, continuing the trend of opening retail and entertainment complexes in the same buildings as new metro stations.
Projects of shopping complexes adjacent to metro stations, such as the Ligov complex at Obvodny Kanal metro station, Zvenigorodsky complex at Zvenigorodskaya metro station, and Radius at Volkovskaya metro station, appear to have proven the attractiveness of this district to shoppers.
Mezhdunarodnaya metro station is still under construction, however, and is planned to open in December this year. By that time, another metro station in the Frunzensky district — Bukharestskaya — should be opened with a large shopping center in its building, according to data from Maris, part of the CBRE Affiliate Network.
In spite of the fact that the Frunzensky district already has another large shopping center, Rio, experts observe a lack of both retail and entertainment sites in the district and don’t predict any serious competition between the complexes.
“There will be a high demand for the Mezhdunarodny complex as it is in a highly populated area and many people will prefer a complex situated close to residential buildings to the remote Rio or Continent,” said Yelena Prozorova, assistant to the consulting and evaluation department at Maris.
The opening of Mezhdunarodnaya metro station is expected to increase the number of shoppers in the new complex.
“Mezhdunarodnaya will be the end station for a long time, which will allow it to gather customers from a significant part of the district,” said Igor Kokorev, manager of the strategic consulting department at Knight Frank St. Petersburg.
“Another important point is that a large residential complex is situated in the surroundings of the metro station and shopping center,” he added.
The Mezhdunarodny complex occupies 46,400 square meters and includes stores, a movie theater, a gym, food court and Prisma supermarket occupying about 2,000 square meters that is the 10th store in the Finnish chain to open in St. Petersburg. The new complex will also have parking space for 300 cars.
Based on the experience of other complexes in similar locations with metro stations and residential buildings, Knight Frank experts predict the Mezhdunarodny complex will be successful on the market.
Its nearest competitors have a number of disadvantages in comparison. For example, Rio is not located near a metro station or residential buildings.
“Bukharestsky will be housed in a building with a metro station that will see a smaller volume of metro passengers,” said Kokorev.
Maris specialists are however less pessimistic about Bukharestskaya metro and believe it could generate more customers as it will be used not only by local residents but also by employees of companies based in the Continent business center.
The Yuzhny Polus mall that already exists in the Frunzensky district is located far from the metro station and has a weaker structure of anchor tenants, according to Knight Frank experts.
“As the number and quality of retail and entertainment services in these complexes is approximately the same, the competition will be not significant due to the large residential area in the Frunzensky district,” said Prozorova.
TITLE: Survey Suggests Russians Have Cut Back Expenses
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russians have significantly reduced their living expenses while spending on entertainment has halved, Interfax reported this week, referring to a survey carried out by Romir polling agency.
The survey indicated that during the last six months, Russian people have become less inclined to make large purchases.
When asked about major family expenses during the last six months, a third of respondents indicated clothes as their main expense. This figure was, however, 12 percent less compared to November last year.
The number of people spending large amounts on medicine decreased from 24 percent to 18 percent. People also spend less on home renovation, with 13 percent of respondents citing it as a major expense compared to 18 percent last year.
If in 2011 at least 14 percent of respondents spent a large part of the family budget on entertainment, in 2012 that figure decreased to 7 percent.
At the same time, the poll showed that Russians are not economizing on other sectors such as vacations, car purchase or repair, the purchase of smart phones, computers, home appliances or jewelry.
Eighteen percent of Russians continued to spend large sums of money on vacation compared to 19 percent last year; 12 percent of them still said they saw significant expenses on car repairs while in 2011 that figure was 11 percent.
The poll showed that the most thrifty people represent 24 percent of the population. These people told sociologists that they didn’t spend money on any items listed in the survey.
TITLE: Firm Linked to Navalny Is Raided
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Investigators raided a business owned by the parents of opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny on Tuesday morning, reportedly searching for evidence linking Navalny to a high-profile corruption case.
“As far as I understand, they are looking for documents linked to ‘the criminal society, which Navalny created in Kirov,’” anti-corruption campaigner Navalny wrote on Twitter, in reference to an ongoing investigation into his activities while advising Kirov region Governor Nikita Belykh in 2009.
Navalny clarified that Federal Security Service officers accompanied investigators during the searches on his parents’ Kobyakovo Willow-Weaving Factory in the Moscow region.
On its website, the factory, which makes items including baskets, furniture and chests, describes itself as “the oldest willow-weaving business in Russia.”
On Aug. 1, investigators charged Navalny with organizing the theft of timber products from the KirovLes state company, thereby costing the regional government 16 million rubles ($500,000).
Navalny faces up to 10 years in prison if the charges are proved but has denied any wrongdoing. Supporters say investigators thought up the case as a means of punishing Navalny for challenging President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Narodny Store Closed
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg’s Krasnogvardeisky district court ruled that the city’s Narodny supermarket should be closed for a period of 15 days after it was found to have violated sanitation and migration laws, the city prosecutor said last week, Interfax reported.
Numerous inspections at the supermarket found systematic violations of sanitary and epidemiological legislation, as well as migration and labor legislation, the prosecutor’s report said.
Narodny, known for its low prices, has repeatedly come under fire from the authorities. On June 28, police detained 56 people there for violating migration legislation. One of those people is suspected of the illegal possession of drugs. A previous case resulted in the store having to remove fake alcohol from sale. The officials also found poor quality products in the store, Interfax reported.
Ice-Breaker Ordered
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Atomflot, the state company that maintains the world’s only fleet of nuclear powered icebreakers, signed an agreement with St. Petersburg’s Baltiisky shipbuilding plant Baltiisky Zavod last week on the construction of a lead atomic ice-breaker, Interfax reported.
The cost of the project is expected to be 36.9 billion rubles ($1.15 billion).The ice-breaker, which will have a capacity of 60 megawatts, is to be built by Dec. 30, 2017 and may be given the name ‘Arktika,’ the news agency reported.
The new atomic ice-breaker will differ from previous generation ships in its ballast system, which will allow it to change its keel depth in order for it to operate both along the Northern Sea Route shipping lane and in the rivers of the Arctic region.
Baltiisky Zavod specializes in the construction of both atomic and diesel powered ice-breakers and ice class ships.
Fornication on Nevsky
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — City police have opened an investigation after a video was posted on YouTube showing a man and a woman having sex on St. Petersburg’s main thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt.
The couple had sex intermittently for about 20 minutes in front of the Mertens House building that houses the Zara department store early Sunday morning. Despite the time — it was about 5 a.m. — the sight caused a traffic jam on Nevsky Prospekt as many passing cars stopped to watch and record the spectacle. The pair paid no attention to anyone around them.
A 13-minute video of the action was posted on Sunday, and by Tuesday about 200,000 people had watched it. After that the administration of the hosting service deleted the video, Fontanka reported.
The video also contained a running commentary from the witnesses who were filming it. After the end of the sex show several passersby asked the man who had taken part in the sex act what was going on. He was with several other men.
“We’re celebrating a birthday, we’re having a party,” the men said by way of explanation, Fontanka reported.
The woman left the scene after having sex and walked toward Gostiny Dvor department store, swaying.
TITLE: Why Pussy Riot Is Scarier Than a Nuclear Attack
AUTHOR: By Alexander Golts
TEXT: The Pussy Riot case undoubtedly marks a new stage in Russia’s degradation. It is obvious that President Vladimir Putin is attempting to strengthen his authoritarian rule with Russian Orthodox fundamentalism and repression. As a result, Russia’s already poor global reputation will only get worse.
The Pussy Riot trial and sentencing demonstrated the weakness of the ruling regime as well as its willingness to isolate Russia further from the rest of the world. Recall how during the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s relationship with leading foreign countries — and especially with the United States — was based on nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction.
But as Moscow and Washington have presumably moved away from nuclear deterrence as a dominant security doctrine over the past 20 years, it has become increasingly difficult to justify maintaining large nuclear arsenals on both sides. Now, the argument goes, the two countries should gradually reduce their enormous stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
In reality, though, Moscow has stubbornly clung to its long-outdated nuclear deterrence doctrine. In every way possible, it has tried to leverage its huge nuclear arsenal that it inherited from the Soviet Union into a source of greater influence in international affairs. Yet that effort has failed miserably. In a rare moment of frankness after NATO initiated its military operations against Yugoslavia in the late 1990s, President Boris Yeltsin hastily convened a meeting of his Security Council and reportedly asked, “Why aren’t they afraid of us anymore?”
The answer to his question is clear: With the process of globalization accelerating and Russia integrated into the global economic system, any talk of the Kremlin launching a nuclear attack against the United States has become completely absurd. How could the political elite in Moscow seriously consider waging a nuclear attack against the United States when many officials have family members living there and most keep money in U.S. accounts? What’s more, how could Russia destroy a country in which it has long held a major portion of its gold and foreign currency reserves?
For its part, the West excludes the possibility of Russia launching a first nuclear strike against the United States or against one of its NATO allies. The fact that Russia’s arsenal is the world’s second-largest plays no role. In fact, the United States is much more concerned about an attack from North Korea, even though Pyongyang has only two or three nuclear devices and its delivery vehicles are far more primitive. Until recently, the West was never particularly concerned in the post-Soviet period that the Kremlin could act irrationally in the international arena.
Indeed, Russia has done its best to try to convince the West that it is unpredictable and unbalanced. Take, for example, the artificial confrontation that the Kremlin has provoked over the U.S. missile defense system being deployed in Europe. Russia’s generals have on several occasions threatened to launch first strikes against U.S. missile defense installations if the Kremlin considers them a threat to its nuclear deterrence. The only problem is that nearly every military and political leader in the West saw right through this bluff and didn’t treat it seriously.
But what the generals failed to accomplish in terms of scaring the United States may have been accomplished by the Pussy Riot trial and sentence, which showed how reactionary Russia’s leadership really is. This will not be lost on the leaders in the Pentagon and White House. Although on the surface Pussy Riot appears to be only a domestic issue, Russia’s reactionary and fundamentalist behavior in the case is viewed more broadly by many Western leaders, who are drawing conclusions about the overall sanity and stability of the Kremlin leadership. This inevitably raises security issues. If the Kremlin shows instability and radicalism in domestic issues, it could show similar radicalism and unpredictably in global security and military issues as well.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress will most likely pass the Magnitsky Act in the next few months, which, if signed by President Barack Obama, will cast all of Putin’s ruling elite as a band of criminals. That, in turn, could prompt Putin to crack down on many members of his own inner circle whom he considers political liabilities. Political analyst Georgy Saratov believes that a “cultural revolution” is possible, which would enable Putin to replace the current elite with a “red guard” of loyal, pro-government youth, similar to the one Chinese leader Mao Zedung formed in the 1960s during that country’s Cultural Revolution.
Indeed, the Kremlin is clearly becoming more radicalized. The Pussy Riot case suggests that Putin is prepared to do absolutely anything to remain in power.
If this trend toward radicalization continues, we could see an increase in U.S. sanctions against Russian officials who are implicated in corruption and human rights abuses. What will Russia’s reaction be to these sanctions? Since Russia is unable to enact a symmetric response, the Kremlin will have to revert to the only asymmetric response it is capable of developing: military threats. This will clearly heighten the confrontation between Russia and the United States.
Alexander Golts is deputy editor of the online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal.
TITLE: between the lines: The West Is on the Wrong Side of Pussy Riot
AUTHOR: By Alexei Pankin
TEXT: After the failed putsch of August 1991, the democratic West had an opportunity to establish a protectorate over Russia and conduct radical political and economic reforms like those it implemented in West Germany and Japan following World War II. Now, 21 years later this August, the West is losing the last traces of whatever moral and political capital it held in Russia as it defends the rights of an offensively named punk group to shout obscenities in a church.
I traveled around the country during the fall of 1991 and saw how reactions to events differed in the capital and in the provinces. Muscovites were euphoric over their newly acquired freedom. State-controlled Channel One aired derogatory parodies of the Soviet national anthem sung by a dozen popular rock and pop musicians. People from the regions watched all of this with disgust and disbelief, dreaming of a strong and stable central government and rapidly losing faith that President Boris Yeltsin was capable of creating one.
It was amazing that people from all segments of society — liberal Muscovites, conservative farmers in the southern Kuban area, state employees of every rank, private businesspeople, public sector workers and urbanites — sincerely hoped that Washington and Berlin would take responsibility for simple-minded Russians during the transition period. At that time, they viewed the West as a legitimate authority and saw Washington and Berlin as benevolent friends, not as foes.
Of course, that was an illusion, like many other illusions of the perestroika period. The West could have played one important role as an impartial arbiter in the conflicts that inevitably arose when Russia was trying to create a new society and economy.
But the West ruined its reputation in Russia by repeatedly putting itself on the wrong side. It praised young reformers who destroyed the economy and made millions of Russians penniless virtually overnight. The West also supported Yeltsin’s bloody attack on the White House in 1993 and supported Yeltsin’s openly fraudulent re-election campaign in 1996.
Throughout President Vladimir Putin’s rule, the Western media, nongovernmental organizations and U.S. lawmakers waged a relentlessly negative propaganda campaign against Putin. Putin, we were told, was somehow personally responsible for the sinking of the Kursk submarine in August 2000. He was also behind the poisoning death in 2006 of former Federal Security Services agent Alexander Litvinenko in London, and Putin was the aggressor who started the Russia-Georgia war of August 2008.
And the whole story surrounding the Pussy Riot case is best summed up by the saying, “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
As Soviet-era dissident Eduard Lozansky wrote to me: “This furor over ‘female genitals run amok’ could ordinarily only have been accomplished with a wildly expensive PR campaign. Now, even such pillars of the free press as The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times compare Pussy Riot to Soviet-era dissidents Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, while Putin has been compared to Josef Stalin.”
I would say that the democratic West is not selling out but suffering from a sort of collective dementia.
Alexei Pankin is the editor of WAN-IFRA-GIPP Magazine for publishing business professionals.
TITLE: Nameless masterpieces
AUTHOR: By Luisa Schulz
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “Unknown artist — Portrait of an unknown man,” is one of the captions to be found at a new exhibit in the Benois wing of the State Russian Museum. As a rule, art exhibits are devoted to prominent artists likely to attract big crowds. But opened on Aug. 22, the new exhibit at the Russian Museum — titled “Unknown Artist” — defies this logic: It is devoted solely to paintings and sculptures by unknown artists from the 17th- to 19th-century collections of the Russian Museum.
All museums of the world face the problem that part of their collection remains unattributed. At the Russian Museum, this proportion amounts to about 800 of 15,000 artworks. These are works that are not signed by the artist and which, for various reasons, have failed to be attributed to anyone. In the new exhibit, about 200 of the anonymous works have been made accessible to the public for the first time.
“The fact that they do not have a name does not make them less worthy either of the viewer’s attention or of exhibition,” Georgy Goldovsky, head of the museum’s department of Russian art from the first half of the 18th century to the 19th century, said at a press conference devoted to the opening of the exhibit.
It is no coincidence that the exhibit covers the period from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Artworks from this period were far more likely to remain nameless than 20th-century creations.
“The changes in attitude toward the creation of art and the artist’s level of self-awareness have played an important role,” Goldovsky said.
The lifeblood of the exhibit is the portrait section. Included among them are what are known in Russian as parsunas, late 17th-century portraits that mark the beginning of European-style Russian painting, but also imperial portraits, portraits of children, merchants, clergymen, artists and members of the military.
“These works belong to the mosaic of Russian art, without which even Bryullov, Aivazovsky or Kandinsky could not have distinguished themselves,” Goldovsky said.
Indeed, the exhibit comprises an entire catalogue of the period’s styles. Aside from portraits, it also features allegories, genre painting, historical painting, paintings of St. Petersburg, and a handful of sculptures.
This may sound as though the artworks on display are primarily of historical value rather than high artistic value in themselves, and indeed, it is assumed that they are mostly not the work of some unidentified master, but of amateurs who took occasional lessons at the academy. The styles rarely seem as distinct as say, those of an Andrei Matveyev or Ivan Vishnyakov in the portrait rooms of the museum’s permanent collection.
The Romanov ladies gaze down on the viewer as from other famous portraits, the members of the military display their badges, and the merchants and artists their respective insignia, while the children are depicted as adults in miniature with blase facial expressions and violins, books, spears or puppies.
But the truth is that there are also treasures to be found among these mystery works, starting with the oldest exhibit, the “Group Portrait of the Members of a Delegation to England in 1662,” a harmoniously composed trio of ambassadors. The late 17th-century also saw the creation of the famous Transfiguration Series, which features uniquely ironical, almost grotesque parsunas of Peter the Great’s associates painted by partly unknown artists.
In the allegory section, a signboard of the Main Joint Irkutsk American Company dating from the late-18th century captures viewers’ attention, while a gem in the interiors section is the multi-layered painting “Reflection in the Mirror” from the second half of the 19th century. The “Portrait of an Architect” is a skilful example in the artists’ portraits section.
Even the children’s portraits, though regarded as the work of non-professionals, contain paintings such as the “Portrait of a Boy in a Red Shirt with a House of Cards on the Table” or the “Portrait of a Boy with a Mirror” contemplating his painted moustache, which captivate the viewer with their close observation and subtlety.
Apart from such individual jewels, the exhibit excels in the questions it raises. Why do we generally attribute so much importance to the names of the artist of paintings? Is it because the personality of the artist is essential to our understanding of the painting? Or is that a fairy tale written by the art market? In this exhibition, the nameless artworks are grouped together by time, subject and style, a method which recalls art theorist Heinrich Woelfflin’s idea to construe an ‘art history without names,’ based only on artistic trends.
What is beyond doubt is that everyone who prefers to look at the artworks themselves rather than at the captions beneath them will find something in this exhibition to inspire them.
“Unknown Artist” runs through Oct. 8 in the Benois Wing of the Russian
Museum, 4 Inzhenernaya Ulitsa,
M. Nevsky Prospekt. Tel. 595 42 48.
www.rusmuseum.ru.
TITLE: Empty shell sires culture
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Portnova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Last weekend saw the opening of Chetvert, a self-described “creative cluster” in a former military barracks on Ulitsa Dekabristov. Although the five-story building is still covered with construction netting, inside, work is going ahead at full steam.
Although the center technically opened to the public on Aug. 25, not all of the facilities are ready to open their doors. Currently, only five projects are fully functioning: The Stone Troll ceramic workshop, Mo-Mo vegetarian cafe, Lighthouse secondhand store and showroom, Kladovaya store selling original items, and a hair salon boldly named Hairfuckers. According to its organizers, Chetvert has the capacity to house 40 to 50 projects in total. In the near future, a yoga studio and dance school are set to open, alongside numerous architecture and design bureaus and a small soap production facility.
The building Chetvert occupies was bought by a development company that the curators are reluctant to name from City Hall. The process of transferring full ownership rights to the mystery developer is expected to take five to seven years, and in the meantime, the building is to become a hub for the rapidly developing stratum of young creative entrepreneurs in the city.
“Nobody knows exactly how long Chetvert will be there; it’s an experimental project,” said curator Roman Krasilnikov. “There is no telling how long it will be viable and needed by the city.”
Chetvert has taken shape thanks to the efforts of five young people who work on a voluntary basis. For the last three months, they have spent all of their free time here. Some curators, like Daria Nazarova, have regular jobs and help out after their day job, while others, like Krasilnikov, are there from 10 a.m. until late at night.
“Last night I slept here because there were a huge amount of things we needed to do before the technical opening,” said Krasilnikov on Saturday.
The refurbishment of the premises is going ahead at full speed. Although much has been done, challenges remain. The process has thrown up some interesting finds for the curators.
“Actually we had a lot of stuff from the previous owners of this building who were based here for a long time,” said Krasilnikov.
“It may sound strange, but the most impressive thing was a mummified rat’s body, it looked like a cool object of art.”
Chetvert not only has public spaces for design studios, stores and workshops: The left wing of the building is residential. Residents of Chetvert include tenants of the creative enterprises on site, meaning they have both a workspace and living space under one roof. Potential residents of the creative cluster will, however, be disappointed: All of the rooms have already been let.
“Creative young people prevail among the tenants, but there are some average people with families and kids who have no connection whatsoever to this so-called creative class,” said Krasilnikov. “I think that’s great, because it’s important not to lock yourself into your own narrow world. All the residents get on well with one another,” he added.
The opening hours of Chetvert are not yet regular, but in the near future the center plans to be open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. or even later. Once maintenance work is completed in the yard, the curators plan to set out a small veranda with ping-pong tables.
“All the entertainment projects planned for the near future will be of a more educational than evening/nighttime nature: Concerts, exhibits, presentations, master classes and so on,” said Nazarova.
By the time the building on Ulitsa Dekabristov is given over to its developer, the curators plan to have found another empty building with the same aim: To make a suitable and welcoming space for the city’s creative community and their needs.
“We have all the resources and we want to preserve our team of curators and tenants,” said Krasilnikov. “After all, Chetvert is not about the walls, it’s all about the people who make it what it is supposed to be — a new creative cluster. Our project is mobile and can move anywhere and function in the same way.”
Chetvert is located at 25 Ulitsa Dekabristov.
TITLE: Pioneering photos
AUTHOR: By Tatyana Sochiva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A traveling exhibit of photos by the American documentary photography pioneer Walter Rosenblum opened at the city’s Rosphoto exhibition hall Friday.
Titled “Message from the Heart — Walter Rosenblum,” the exhibit is the largest collection of the legendary photographer’s work yet to be shown in Russia.
Rosenblum (1919-2006) was one of the first photographers to consider photography a form of art comparable to Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Goya paintings. His iconic images, which have been exhibited in the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Haiti, Italy and Spain, are the best argument for his assertion.
The artist’s style was influenced by his compatriots Paul Strand, pioneer of modernism in photography, and Lewis Hine, who documented the lives of immigrants and workers. Rosenblum’s works are similarly marked by expressive form and social content. He spent a lot of time studying both the people he photographed and the environment in which they lived. Often the heroes of his shots faced difficult living conditions, but Rosenblum’s sincere admiration and respect for them brought a sense of optimism to a cruel world.
The exhibit taking place at Rosphoto covers all the periods of the photographer’s life and career through a variety of images divided into chapters including “Pitt Street” (1938) dedicated to the street where the photographer grew up, “War” (1944), featuring pictures taken by Rosenblum as a war correspondent, documentary representations of deprived neighborhoods such as “South Bronx” (1980) and many other series of images.
The “Message from the Heart” exhibit is curated by well-known figures in the world of photography and cinema: Photography historian Naomi Rosenblum and documentary film producer Nina Rosenblum (the wife and daughter of the photographer) along with Andrei Martynov, who helped to bring the exhibition to Russia.
“I have been familiar with Walter Rosenblum’s works for a long time,” said Martynov.
“I have even included them in other exhibits, for example, ‘New York Then and Now.’ I visited San Leo [a small town in Italy] by chance two years ago, and there I was introduced to his widow Naomi Rosenblum and her daughters. The idea of bringing the exhibit to Russia was born right there and then. Naomi agreed to my proposal immediately and she thought of the exhibition title [‘Message from the Heart’] referring to the fact that the Rosenblum family have Russian roots, but their ancestors left for America long ago.”
The exhibition is accompanied by screenings of the film “Walter Rosenblum: In Search of Pitt Street” by Nina Rosenblum. She has twice been nominated for an Oscar in the documentary film producer category.
“Message from the Heart — Walter Rosenblum” runs through Sept. 14 at Rosphoto, 35 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 314 1214. M. Admiralteiskaya. www.rosphoto.org.
TITLE: Going Gaga
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: U.S. pop star Lady Gaga will give concerts in St. Petersburg and Moscow in December, Interfax reported this week.
The singer will perform at St. Petersburg’s Sports and Concert Complex (SKK) on Dec. 9 and Moscow’s Olympiisky Sports Complex on Dec. 12 as a part of her “Born This Way Ball” world tour.
Tickets are due to go on sale on Aug. 31.
Lady Gaga, who has won five Grammy Awards, will present her latest album “Born This Way” and hit songs from her previous ones “The Fame” and “The Fame Monster” during the tour of more than 20 countries.
British rockers The Darkness and DJ Lady Starlight, who have previously collaborated with Lady Gaga, will also take part in the world tour.
According to the organizers, the new show is a rock opera with elements of electronic music and metal.
TITLE: THE DISH: Semeinye Traditsy
AUTHOR: By Luisa Schulz
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An eye for detail
Peering from outside through the aquarium-sized windows of this restaurant into the interior with its blue- and green-colored walls, bookshelves covering the back wall and dark Viennese cafe chairs feels like looking into a ship’s cabin or a private library.
Looking out from the inside, sitting on one of the sofas facing the windows, guests have a cinematic view of Kronverksky Prospekt and Alexandrovsky park that is no less impressive. The other tables scattered in the corners of the room instead offer an overview of the pocket-sized restaurant and make diners feel comfortably sheltered from attention.
Semeinye Traditsy (Family Traditions) is a restaurant full of details to fuel the imagination, one of which is tablemats and lampshades displaying drawings of family scenes. White floor tiles running diagonally and interspersed with burgundy-colored tiles that match the table varnish add to the carefully composed, but unpretentious ambience of the cafe.
An eye for detail can also be discerned in the crockery on which the various courses are served. To start with the dessert, Grandma Tanya’s pear tarte tatin (180 rubles, $5.70), as succulent and buttery as if cooked by a French lover, came on an oval plate with a scoop of ice cream residing in a tiny extra bowl, while an angular plate reflected the sour cream chocolate and nut cake (also 180 rubles), which tasted less of chocolate and nuts than of sour cream, but in a good way.
The tomato soup with fish and seafood (250 rubles, $7.80), chosen as a starter, arrived in an oval bowl floating on a longer plate like a small boat, and had an equally eloquent taste. A trapezoid form on the other hand made the beetroot salad with goat cheese and croutons (240 rubles, $7.50) open up in front of you like a garden, the chicory not only agreeing with the bitter taste of the arugula and mild goat cheese, but also with the color of the beets.
A pork chop (370 rubles, $11.55) was served atop a bed of mashed potato and onion marmalade in the center of a much larger plate, and was both juicy and crispy. While the mashed potato was somewhat ordinary, the marmalade, which was reminiscent of chutney, was delectably roasted.
A cinnamon stick crowned with mint leaves adorning the stewed vegetables with haricot beans, mint and cinnamon (240 rubles, $7.50) made them resemble a miniature tropical island on a plate. Unfortunately, the pale particles of carrot, zucchini and white beans were taste-wise rather reminiscent of the contents of a can, uniting three rather tasteless kinds of vegetable, so that compared with the other dishes, this one did not quite live up to what its name had promised.
Another small setback was that there was no wine on the menu and that beer was unavailable, but the cider (150 rubles, $4.70) was good and the dried fruit compote (60 rubles, $1.90) had a honeyed but not overly sweet taste.
The compact restaurant was pleasantly filled with diners, but the lines of sight are so well dispersed that guests can feel comfortably private. A highlight was the waitresses, who were attentive but unobtrusive, staying behind the counter even as it drew nearer to closing time.
It is never easy to find a name for a restaurant, and perhaps this one does not quite sum up the recipe of the venue. “Family Traditions” might suggest a more traditional, noisy, rustic place than this is, and might not sound very evocative to someone looking for a special place to eat.
In reality, this is a place that is about as relaxed, cultured and enjoyable as can be found in the city.
TITLE: Legendary Club Fish Fabrique Comes of Age
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s pioneering rock club — and the oldest surviving in town — will mark its 18th anniversary this week with a concert by pop-rock band Polyusa and a party.
Once the people who ran it referred to Fish Fabrique as an “educational” club, but now describe it as “historical.”
Originally, Fish Fabrique was launched with a concert by local alt-rock band Tequilajazzz on September 2, 1994, and took its name from Berlin’s club Fabrique and the nickname of its former co-owner, Oleg “Fish” Labetsky.
Located on the fifth floor of the now-legendary building located at 10, Pushkinskaya Ulitsa, which was occupied by artists and musicians while it stood empty waiting for full-scale renovation work, the club became an instant hit in the local underground music scene.
“There was a saying, ‘Where’s the deepest underground in St. Petersburg? On the fifth floor!’” recalls Pavel Zaporozhtsev, the club’s owner and one of its founders.
The club faced almost no competition because there was only one other club, the legendary TaMtAm. Because TaMtAM had only evening concerts, its clientele would continue on to Fish Fabrique, which held all-night parties.
“There was no concept of DJs then, people just had fun to a tape recorder,” Zaporozhtsev recalls.
Fish Fabrique, which has become affectionately known as Fishka (literally “chip,” but also a slang word for “something special”), immediately became a popular hangout with expats and more sophisticated Russians. Zaporozhtsev recalls one OMON riot police raid on the venue.
“They burst in and made everyone line up, but it turned out that out of 100 people only two or three were Russians; all the rest had Western passports,” he said. “[The police] didn’t know what to do and left.”
He says that the club became a hangout for expats and Western visitors partly because there were no other such places in town where they could find anything similar to clubbing.
Fish Fabrique is proud to have held Russia’s first Halloween party — put together in the former venue by a group of the club’s American friends, including Christian Courbois, the founder of WestPost postal and courier service.
“People had no idea what Halloween was,” said Zaporozhtsev, recalling a man who came in a three-piece suit because he thought it was appropriate attire for a Halloween party.
During Fish Fabrique’s first winter, the water pipes exploded in the basement and the staff had to carry 20 plastic canisters of water upstairs every day for the bar and toilet. Although the building’s electricity had been cut off, Zaporozhtsev remembers bribing an electrician, who connected the club with the electrical system of the next-door building via the attic.
But the stairs were lit by candles to prevent visitors from falling and injuring themselves.
Building materials had to be purchased from construction sites, because stores did not sell them at that time — just several years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
When the building TaMtAm was located in was seized by a developer and the club closed, Fish Fabrique inherited its table football, which had been brought from Germany and — according to Zaporozhtsev — was the first one in the former Soviet Union.
Denis Kuptsov, then the drummer of the ska-punk band Spitfire, and Labetsky himself contributed to the venue’s alternative designs, which can be seen in Alexander Bashirov’s 1999 feature film “The Iron Heel of Oligarchy” (Zheleznaya Pyata Oligarkhii).
With Bashirov starring as Nikolai Petrovich, who comes to St. Petersburg to organize a revolution against the oligarchy, much of the film was filmed at Fish Fabrique’s old premises and featured some of the bands who performed there, including Tequilajazzz and the all-female indie pop group Kolibri.
When they launched the club, its organizers focused on fun rather than money, according to Zaporozhtsev.
“We were a group of friends, we had a lot of German friends and did everything together, plastering and painting walls all together,” he said.
“The monetization of the country has happened since then, and you really have to work hard to survive. I wouldn’t say it’s a good thing or a bad thing, that’s just how it is.”
Zaporozhtsev admits that much of the city’s nightlife has recently moved to Dumskaya Ulitsa, where German entrepreneur Anna-Christin Albers and Dva Samolyota rock band singer and bassist Anton Belyankin launched the indie bar Datscha in 2004, spawning many similar bars on the same street.
“Once there was Fish Fabrique, Griboyedov and Moloko, and then came a decade of slackening, nothing was happening at all,” he said.
“And then, about five years ago, there was a new breakthrough, suddenly a lot of things started to happen.”
Despite being wildy popular hangouts, the Dumskaya Ulitsa bars largely lack live music.
“Historically, [the defunct bar] Cynic started all this,” Zaporozhtsev said. “Why bother with bands and a PA system, who needs that? Bring a load of beer and turn the music up louder.”
Fish Fabrique has held hundreds of concerts by every remotely well-known local band, not to mention bands from the rest of Russia and abroad.
“Everybody has played here, except for maybe [stadium rockers such as] DDT and Alisa,” Zaporozhtsev said. “But even their musicians have performed here with their solo projects.”
After continued attempts to evict the artists residing in the building at Pushkinskaya 10, City Hall finally came to an agreement with the squatters, splitting the building between the city and the artists before it was finally renovated in 1998. Fish Fabrique was given a smaller room in which the bar and a stage were set up.
The interiors were designed by Rechniki (Rivermen), the underground art group of squatters and metal sculptors.
“They welded everything from iron: The tables, chairs, trees and the bar,” Zaporozhtsev recalled.
“The city installed new water pipes in the building this summer, and we found many interesting artifacts [in the basement], such as metal gears, everything that was left over from when the club’s interior was being created.”
An interesting fact about the bar is that St. Petersburg’s former mayor Anatoly Sobchak threw a closed party there for the artists of the Pushkinskaya 10 art center in February 2000, just days before he died of a heart attack in Kaliningrad.
The bar, which has a capacity of about 100, expanded in 2010 and now also has a bigger room — called Fish Fabrique Nouvelle — right across the courtyard. The new room holds about 150.
“The two rooms are equally popular,” said Zaporozhtsev.
“There’s a certain contingent that doesn’t accept the new aesthetics and goes only to the old bar, and there’s a newer bunch of people who only go to the new room. That was the idea — to have diversity and a small courtyard in the middle.”
Zaporozhtsev said the organizers used to describe the club as “educational” because it introduced new music and a new way of spending time to locals.
He said that Fish Fabrique had seen five generations of concert-goers during its 18-year existence.
Fish Fabrique’s legendary cat Fishka, who was with the club for 13 years, died of old age but had given birth to nearly 100 kittens, which were distributed among musicians and regulars. Yevgeny Fyodorov, the Tequilajazzz frontman who now fronts a new band called Zorge, owns one of Fishka’s offspring.
“They went all around the world; I know for sure that seven went to Finland, four went to Germany and a couple went to France,” Zaporozhtsev said.
The club’s new cat, Rusya, was adopted from a pet shelter, has no tail and has been neutered.
“But she catches mice, she knows her job well,” he said.
Fish Fabrique’s 18th anniversary party, featuring a concert by Polyusa, will be held at 8 p.m. on Saturday, September 1 at Fish Fabrique, 53 Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel. 764 4857. Metro Ploshchad Vosstaniya.
TITLE: Alternative Museum Tours Russia for Talent
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Museum of Everything, which toured St. Petersburg earlier this month selecting and exhibiting local artists at an impromptu exhibit space on New Holland island, moved to the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow’s Gorky Park on Saturday.
At the heart of the Museum of Everything is the concept of a museum of creativity, as opposed to a fine art museum. The museum does not have a permanent venue; instead, exhibits are held in a diverse variety of locations.
The project tours the world extensively, and is constantly on the lookout for new talent, seeking contributions from people without a professional training in art. A number of the artists whose works are exhibited by the museum come from marginalized groups of society.
In July and August, the Museum of Everything toured St. Petersburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Yekaterinburg, where museum founder and director James Brett joined art experts to select works by local artists to be exhibited in those cities for the duration of the museum’s tour there.
In an interview with The St. Petersburg Times, Brett said he had been overwhelmed by the Russian tour. He found the local art distinctly Russian, revealing the country’s Orthodox connection, its social conflicts and its landscapes.
“Only about 5 to 10 percent of the works may have appeared in a different country,” he said.
The idea for the Russian tour was born out of a conversation with Darya Zhukova, founder of the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, on a recent visit to London.
“In my mind we were on a train from Moscow to Vladivostok stopping in every village, but I was a little too ambitious, so it took its current shape,” Brett recounts.
“People were coming and bringing their works. From a young student just expressing themselves to an old lady who maybe has a hobby, artists would come and we would look.”
The most thrilling works selected during the Russian project will be included in a grand-scale international tour, and some of them will become part of the museum’s permanent collection in London.
Moscow is to see three displays, the first of which was held from August 23 to 26. The next two are due on Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, and from September 6 to 9. When the search for artists is complete, the Museum of Everything will announce the dates of the final show, also to be held at Garage.
The collection was founded in London in 2009, following an interesting encounter between James Brett and an elderly man called William Brett living on the Isle of Wight.
By sheer coincidence, James Brett happened to read an article in a newspaper about an 85-year-old man who had created a museum inside his own home, and whose home was the school the octogenarian himself had attended when he was five. Inside this brick building with a high ceiling was everything from his life that he considered important, from his schoolbooks to old records and plastic bottles. James Brett went to the island and met the man.
“He showed me a fishing net, and asked me what it was. ‘It’s a fishing net,’ I replied,” Brett remembers. “And then he said, ‘but it is to catch rabbits at night.’ His home had become an installation, an artwork. And the local children loved it; and they called it a museum of everything.”
The two Bretts agreed that the younger of them would take the name to London, and that is how James Brett’s Museum of Everything was born.
Unlike any other arts institution, the museum does not have many regulations, and it constantly changes its form, adopting a new one to suit its new mood.
“The museum is a bit like a child, and it is in fact a child — it is only three years old,” said Brett.
The original idea was very simple. There was no institution in the U.K. that showed art by people who are non-professional or self-taught or who, for whatever reason, did not fit into mainstream art history. Brett was interested in just such material, and he happened to know a number of art curators in London, so the concept formed in his mind gradually.
“I was not interested in the museum being a stable idea, so we originally wanted to do a show,” Brett said. “There had been exhibitions of this sort of art in the formal museums, and usually they were not successful because a formally taught art historian would not understand this work, as it exists outside an art historical context. It is not a fine art.”
Russia’s solution to a similar dilemma was the creation of so-called naive art museums, yet the concept’s critics have compared the creation of a naive museum to that of a ghetto.
“Its name suggests that the artist who creates the work is somehow primitive, which is a bigoted idea,” said Brett. “The person who is least able to communicate can somehow express themselves fantastically, yet their means of communications may not include words.”
Giving Brett’s artists a correct name is a sensitive issue. Calling these exhibits a display of “outsider” art would not be without some ground for a professional critic, yet for the curators and the artists alike, it is nevertheless a rather tactless term.
Brett adheres to the philosophy that everyone is disabled in the sense that every human being has a different degree of ability. In other words, the disability concept could effectively work the other way around, with the word ability serving as a starting point for assessing someone’s capacities or resources.
“Because we have a narrow view of ability, we do not have a very narrow view of disability, and as a result these people are marginalized very quickly,” Brett said. “It is a mistake because actually, within the area that I am looking at, it can be very fruitful for them. People with autism can be astonishing if given the right job or profession. They can cope and perform extremely well, but they need to be given more time.”
The work of amateur artists is often regarded with prejudice, and it is this unjust attitude that the Museum of Everything strives to overcome. Professional training is not synonymous with talent, and the absence of an arts diploma may indicate a lack of certain training but has nothing to do with a lack of creativity.
Although Brett sets no goal of making his artists commercially successful, the museum does help them to get international recognition. In 2011 the museum presented a show by Judith Scott, a solo artist with Down Syndrome, who never spoke, had never heard, and did not even know she was making art. The curators took 60 of her works and exhibited them in an old building next to the Selfridges department store in London. The display occupied almost 1,000 square meters of space. Her works were shown on TV and became one of the most discussed art events of the season, and now they are part of another traveling show in Madrid that is later traveling to the New Museum in New York and then going to London.
“If you were to meet Judith Scott, were she alive, you would feel sorry for her because she had a severe disability,” Brett said. “But if you do not know any of that, and if you look at her work, you are amazed.”
The works exhibited by the Museum of Everything have mostly been created by artists who represent so-called socially vulnerable groups, and are the result of a creative process. And it is from this perspective that the curators would like them to be judged. The attitude that the museum requests from its audiences is not always easy to master, even for professional art critics.
When Brett put together a show of international artists with learning disabilities in Selfridges in London last fall, he talked to an art critic from a leading London daily newspaper.
“The reviewer is a smart guy, a prominent art critic, but when he visited the display he said: ‘This is not a museum, this is not art, this is painful,’” Brett recalls. “He was totally wrong. The art that we exhibited was not full of pain. It was done by people who were extremely happy to be making these works. So if even an educated man came with this bigotry, with this predetermined misunderstanding, I can see why society marginalizes these people.”
For the show in Selfridges, the curators used every single window of the store, and in each window they showed work by a different artist. The curators did not announce anywhere that the artists were disabled. Inside the store were 400 works by different artists, and the only way people could discover that they had a disability was from a film that showed them working in their studios.
“With the eyes of contemporary art we can understand different forms of beauty; we do not need a completely clearly organized pattern,” Brett said.
“It is true that people with some forms of, say, schizophrenia, are dangerous to themselves and other people, and they need to be protected, but it does not mean that you just push everybody into the sea,” Brett said. “I know from my experience that if you give art to somebody with a learning disability or a mental health issue, it will help. It is cheap and easy, and there will always be somebody nice who wants to do it. Trust me, there are so many really nice people out there.”
Those who missed the selection process in St. Petersburg but feel that their work could make a valuable contribution to the Museum of Everything can send photographs of their artwork to: ru@musevery.ru or cd@musevery.com.
Staff cannot guarantee to reply to all applicants, but James Brett makes sure that he personally looks at all art that is sent to the museum for consideration. Because of the extremely high volume, there may be a waiting period of up to one month before a file is viewed and assessed.