SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1727 (38), Wednesday, September 19, 2012
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TITLE: Author Testifies as The Other Russia Trial Dwindles
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Cases against three more activists from The Other Russia party were dropped Tuesday, thus downsizing the number of defendants on trial for allegedly continuing the activities of the banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP) from the initial 12 to eight. 
Judge Sergei Yakovlev closed the cases after defendants Vladislav Ivakhnik, Vadim Mamedov and Alexei Zentsov motioned Friday for the cases against them to be closed on the grounds that two years (the expiration term for petty crimes) had passed since they were last arrested during the protest rallies.
Last week, the case against Oleg Petrov was dropped on the same grounds, and the Nizhny Novgorod-based author and The Other Russia activist Zakhar Prilepin testified in the case as a defense witness.
The author, 37, who won the National Bestseller literary prize as Russia’s best writer of the past decade in 2011, belonged to the NBP until it was banned and is now a member of The Other Russia.
Prilepin, who was an OMON special task police officer before he became a journalist and author, said he had known The Other Russia leader Eduard Limonov, who co-founded the NBP in 1993, since 1996 and had got acquainted with some of the defendants, including Andrei Dmitriyev, Andrei Pesotsky and Igor Boikov, in 2001. He said he first met the other activists after 2007.
According to Prilepin, all the activists started to act within The Other Russia coalition and then The Other Russia party after the NBP was banned in 2007.
He dismissed the prosecution’s allegations that the fact that some of the defendants occasionally referred to their group as the Natsbols (the acronym for the National Bolsheviks) during their secretly recorded meetings, saying it did not mean that they identified themselves as members of the banned party. 
Prilepin said that there are National Bolsheviks who have never belonged to the NBP. 
“The ideology of National Bolshevism is not banned,” he said, pointing out that there are National Bolshevik organizations that exist or existed openly after the ban was imposed on the NBP, such as the National Bolshevik Front led by Kremlin supporter Alexander Dugin and an anti-Limonov group called the NBP Without Limonov.
Speaking outside the court after the Sept. 11 hearing that closed the case against Petrov, Prilepin said that the session had changed his expectations of how the trial would progress.
“Until now, I was under the impression that the court was biased and wanted to take repressive decisions against some of my comrades,” he said. 
“Of course, it’s too early to get too hopeful, but what happened today shows that they are starting to realize that the situation is a dead-end. It is becoming clear at least that people who turned up years after the NBP had been banned [in 2007] and who have never shared its ideology or written articles for Limonka [the NBP newspaper] have nothing to do with the NBP. 
“There is a different organization called The Other Russia. I think that step by step, all these people will have the cases against them dropped. But it’s still too early to suggest what will happen next.”
Prilepin alleged that the criminal case against the activists had been authorized by higher authorities in Moscow and was planned to become a show trial to intimidate the opposition.
“The decision could have been taken here, but as a case that could potentially develop national resonance, it would definitely have required a sanction from the federal authorities and such sanction was received,” he said, adding that The Other Russia had been targeted as the “most active opposition organization.” 
“It’s an organization that is impossible to compromise with, that stands by its position stubbornly and consistently. The St. Petersburg branch, as the country’s most active one, was chosen for this public beating . If they had done this in Moscow, they would have had to put Limonov on trial, which would have attracted global publicity.”
Prilepin said the indictment contained many absurdities and should have fallen apart as soon as the case emerged.
“But they have carried on dragging it out until today, and only the lack of attention from the national media allows it to continue,” he said. “If people had paid attention to it, it would have been something to laugh about from the start.”
Two more defense witnesses, Solidarity liberal movement’s local co-chair Vladimir Volokhonsky and Legislative Assembly Yabloko deputy Vyacheslav Notyag testified on Friday and Tuesday, respectively. Both said that they had participated in joint civic protests, including Strategy 31 rallies, with the defendants and had never seen them using banned NBP flags or heard them promoting the NBP.
On Tuesday, Judge Yakovlev said that prosecution experts from the Moscow-based Institute of Culture Studies — who wrote a debatable conclusion claiming that the secretly recorded weekly gatherings of the activists were in fact the meetings of the banned NBP — were only able to come and testify on Oct. 2, and declared a two-week hiatus in the hearing until that date.

TITLE: Public Council Takes On Police Traps
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Public Council of the Russian Interior Ministry has taken action over the so-called “traps” set by local traffic police (GIBDD).
Nikolai Kropachev, head of the council, said they had received many complaints from drivers, saying that local traffic police officers often take advantage of a number of unclear or confusing road signs and markings in the city in order to fine car owners.
“Police often punish drivers in locations where the organization of traffic is not clear enough,” Kropachev, who is also the head of St. Petersburg State University and a qualified lawyer, said at a news conference last week.
“The duty of the traffic police is not only to stop and discipline drivers, but also to prevent violations of the law. Therefore, if instead of doing so, a police officer just stands there and waits for infractions to take place, then he is in violation of his duty,” Kropachev said.
Kropachev appealed on behalf of the public council to drivers in the city and the Leningrad Oblast to inform his organization about similar problems on the roads.
Alexander Kholodov, deputy head of the council, showed several video clips of confusing locations where drivers were regularly fined by police.
One of those places was an exit from the city’s Admiralteisky Canal embankment, where a sign prohibiting a turn was obscured by scaffolding on the neighboring building. The traffic police would lie in wait there, catching and fining drivers who made the illegal turn because they couldn’t see the sign.
Kholodov said when the council learnt about the case it immediately contacted the city’s Road Traffic Organization Directorate, which is responsible for road signs and markings, and the problem was resolved within a day.
The video also showed a traffic police car that made its home in a spot on Ulitsa Bestuzhevskaya, where for reasons that were unclear, drivers were also constantly caught for violations. At the exit from Pulkovo I airport, a one-way sign was missing, Kholodov said.
Kholodov also mentioned a spot on Serebristy Bulvar where drivers were regularly stopped by traffic police who had already filled out the violation report: The only thing missing from the forms was the driver’s name and the time of the violation.
One St. Petersburg driver who asked only to be identified by her first name, Natalya, said she had been stopped by traffic police for making a turn where it had always been legal to do so. In a scenario familiar to many drivers, the markings on the road itself had not been changed, the new sign was not clearly visible, and traffic police officers were waiting there to catch unwitting drivers.
“I was eight months pregnant and on my way to the doctor’s for a checkup,” Natalya told The St. Petersburg Times. “Yes, I did break the rules because I didn’t notice the new sign. I was all set to pay the official fine when it emerged that my annual safety inspection certificate had just expired, and if they had issued me with an official fine, I would have had to leave my car at the pound. So we agreed on an ‘unofficial fine’ — a bribe — but I didn’t have enough cash on me. The officers were polite enough to drive me to the ATM, having asked me which bank I needed, and drove me back again so that I didn’t lose my parking space!
“I went and renewed my safety inspection certificate the very next day,” she added.
Sergei Zaichenkov, deputy head of the Road Traffic Organization Directorate, said the police had the authority to issue orders to fix road markings or signage problems if they were aware of them.
Zaichenkov said that problems with signage often arise due to construction work.
“The contractors of those works are supposed to inform our organization about them and obtain permission. However, often those contractors do not inform us about their activities and we remain unaware of them. Therefore we’d also like to ask drivers to inform us about such problematic spots,” he said.
Alexei Sumin, deputy head of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Road Police, said local police receive up to 50 claims a day about traffic problems on their website and that they review them.
Sumin said from 10 to 20 percent of traffic police officers are disciplined if they are found guilty of inappropriate conduct when dealing with drivers.
“Complaints are normally successful if drivers write a counter statement and are able to explain clearly the details of the police violation,” Sumin said.
Kropachev said he knew from his experience as a lawyer that drivers can win cases in which they have been punished incorrectly if they have good legal support.

TITLE: Foreign Tourism Operators Widen Their Local Presence
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: While Russian outbound tourism, including from St. Petersburg, is showing stable growth and taking a leading position in the world, foreign tourism operators are in turn expanding their services on the local tourism market.
Last week TUI, a major European tourism operator, announced the launch of flights from St. Petersburg on both TUI branded planes and regular planes.
The company will start flights on TUI branded planes to the Egyptian resorts of Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada on Oct. 7. The operator will also offer package holidays with direct flights from St. Petersburg to Thailand, Spain, Tenerife and the United Arab Emirates.
“All our customers enjoy a European standard of operations in both the services we provide and at the holiday resorts, and we want St. Petersburg travelers to experience this quality as well,” Chris Mottershead, managing director of TUI Russia and CIS, said at a press conference held on board a TUI branded plane at the city’s Pulkovo Airport last Friday.
Mottershead said the company had modified three planes belonging to its Russian partner Kolavia in order to meet TUI’s flight service standards.
Just a week before TUI announced its new flights from St. Petersburg, another major player in the travel market — Emirates Airlines  — announced the arrival in the city of its tourism branch, Emirates Holidays, which is the biggest tourism operator in the Middle East.
Emirates Holidays’ St. Petersburg office, which opened in the summer, is to offer full tourism packages to both local travel agencies and individual tourists on Emirates flights that were launched from St. Petersburg last November.
Ian McDougal, regional director of Emirates Holidays, said at a news conference in St. Petersburg that the company was ready to organize trips to numerous destinations around the world, including the United Arab Emirates, the Maldives, Mauritius, the Seychelles, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Singapore, Malaysia and India. 
The operator offers clients a system that allows it to allocate packages to 5,000 tourism agents in 30 countries.
The system makes it possible to book tourism services all around the world through reliable companies and ensures that all travel risks will be covered in the event of problems, McDougal said.
Oleg Aframeyev, general director of Zvyozdy Puteshestvy, representing the Emirates Holidays brand in St. Petersburg, said that it is “a brand product that has its own airline that also flies from St. Petersburg.”
The development of foreign tourism players on the Russian market is a clear indicator of the growth the country is witnessing in international tourism as more Russians seek to travel and discover new destinations, analysts say.
Tatyana Gavrilova, head of the northwestern office of the Russian Tourism Industry Union, said Russia is now one of the world’s leading nations in outbound tourism.
“According to the latest survey, Russians now travel 30 percent more than the Chinese and 640 percent more than Brazilians,” Gavrilova told The St. Petersburg Times.
Europeans, on the other hand, are not showing growth in outbound tourism, although they continue to travel a lot. Due to the financial crisis in Europe, outbound tourism is in stagnation there, she said.
“Therefore it is understandable that foreign tourism companies — those that are thinking about the future — realize the necessity of developing the Russian market. St. Petersburg, as the center of Russia’s northwest, is a very attractive location for them,” Gavrilova said.
Other factors, such as Russia’s entry into the WTO and the welcoming policy of Northern Capital Gateway, the consortium that runs Pulkovo Airport, have contributed to this positive development, she added.  
According to data from the Russian Federal Tourism Agency, the volume of Russian tourists abroad increased by 7 percent in the first half of the year compared to the same period last year. In total, Russians made about 6.5 million trips abroad, Interfax reported.
Turkey, traditionally the most popular destination for Russian tourists, again received the highest number of visits, welcoming 936,000 people, although numbers decreased by 17 percent on the year before.
In second place was Egypt, which saw 804,000 visits by Russians, an increase of 65 percent from last year. China received the third most number of visits by Russians in the first half of this year with about 573,000 Russian citizens going there, though this figure marked a decrease of 9 percent.
At the same time, the volume of Russian tourists significantly increased in Slovakia (by 97 percent), Tunisia (by 92 percent), Romania (by 85 percent) and Japan (by 62 percent).
Meanwhile, other countries saw a significant decrease in Russian tourists, including Sweden, which received 42 percent fewer Russian travelers than the year before, as well as Finland (41 percent fewer), Lithuania (24 percent fewer), Hungary (8 percent fewer) and Israel (7 percent fewer).

TITLE: Opposition Divides for March of Millions
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: While the March of Millions drew about 100,000 in Moscow on Saturday, according to organizers’ estimates, the St. Petersburg rally split into several and ultimately drew fewer participants than a similar rally on June 12. 
The rally’s demands included early presidential and State Duma elections in the wake of massive electoral fraud revealed in December and March, and the release of political prisoners.
In August, during the buildup to the rally, which was planned to be the first major protest of the autumn, a number of liberal organizations led by the League of Female Voters’ chair Tatyana Dorutina refused to cooperate with the March of Millions’ local committee and set up another committee called Democratic St. Petersburg to hold a march of its own — on the same day and under the same name. 
Although the Moscow march deliberately united people of different political views on the basis of the demands they have in common, the St. Petersburg splinter group said it would have a rally of democrats, excluding the left-wing activists and nationalists.
Moscow opposition leader Boris Nemtsov criticized the split as “beneficial to the authorities,” but the Yabloko Democratic Party’s Grigory Yavlinsky hailed it as “integration of democratic forces.”
The original march drew about 3,000, according to organizers’ estimates, and finished with a stationary rally on Konyushennaya Ploshchad, while the Democratic St. Petersburg rally’s organizers claimed their march drew between 3,000 and 5,000. According to some independent estimates, they drew between 1,500 and 2,000 each.
A smaller group splintered off and marched as the Citizens’ Committee co-chaired by activist Olga Kurnosova at the end of the main march. This group featured several dozen liberals, activists of the Left Front, and extreme nationalists such as the National Socialist Initiative (NSI) created and led by Dmitry “Shults” Bobrov, who spent six years in prison as the leader of the neo-Nazi gang Shults 88.
Yet another splinter group featuring some left activists and anarchists held a separate stationary rally on the Field of Mars, 50 meters away from the Democratic St. Petersburg rally.
The police reported that three people were detained during the rallies for unspecified “violations of the law.” Witnesses said that one of them was detained for wearing a balaclava in support of the imprisoned members of Moscow feminist punk group Pussy Riot.
Andrei Dmitriyev, The Other Russia’s local leader who co-organized the original march, said that the format of the March of Millions — proposed by the Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov and first held in Moscow on May 6 — had exhausted itself.
“It’s becoming clear that the protest wave that rose up on Dec. 5 is receding,” Dmitriyev said. “We can’t keep on marching and shouting ‘Revote!’ as we have done so many times before. Undoubtedly, the angered citizens have not disappeared and they remain, but the opposition should look for new formats. That is what we will do.”
According to Dmitriyev, even if the issue of electoral fraud persists, the Russian protest movement will become more left wing, fueled by a rise in utility bills, low wages, corruption among the authorities and an ever-deepening social split.
“We will be closer to ordinary people and social issues, closer to what ordinary St. Petersburg residents are concerned about. We’ll be thinking about new forms of protest, too,” he said.

TITLE: Weekend Babies To Get Prizes
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s five millionth resident is expected to be born in the city this weekend.
Doctors and statisticians say the child will be born on Sept. 22 or 23, Interfax reported.
Every day about 180 children are born in St. Petersburg. This weekend, the city’s maternity homes will reportedly inform the relevant city committees online about newborn babies.
The calculations will be completed on Monday, after taking into account the number of people who died in St. Petersburg during those two days. 
City officials have still not disclosed the nature of the gift they plan to present to the lucky baby, but have said that all babies born that day will get some kind of award.
It is planned that on Sept. 24, the traditional midday artillery salute at the city’s Peter and Paul Fortress will be executed in honor of the five millionth resident.
The Births Registration Office is preparing a special ceremony for the five millionth resident to which they may also invite the previous five millionth resident, who was born in the city in 1988, before the city’s population dropped again.
That person was Pavel Rusakov, who recently got married, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Madonna Case Set to Open
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The city’s Moskovsky district court will on Oct. 11 begin hearings in the lawsuit filed against pop star Madonna and organizers of the concert at which she performed in St. Petersburg in August.
The attorney representing the plaintiffs, Alexander Pochuyev, said the consideration of the case in court may take from three months to a year, Interfax reported.
The claim was made by the Trade Union of Russian Citizens and several other public organizations. It seeks damages of 333 million rubles ($11 million) from Madonna and the organizers of the concert for allegedly inciting religious hatred and offending cultural traditions.
The applications were submitted to investigators along with a video, which according to the Trade Union shows Madonna trampling an Orthodox cross under her feet and asking audience members wearing pink bracelets to raise their hands in order to show their support for gay rights in Russia.

TITLE: Gudkov Case Prompts Fears of Shakeup
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Following the expulsion of opposition Deputy Gennady Gudkov from the State Duma for unlawful entrepreneurship, parliament will investigate other reports of lawmakers engaging in illegal business activities, regardless of their political affiliation, a senior pro-Kremlin deputy said Monday.
“Any information that reaches us will be studied carefully,” Vyacheslav Lysakov, a deputy head of the Duma’s Constitutional Affairs Committee, told The St. Petersburg Times.
Lysakov, who is also a leader of President Vladimir Putin’s All-Russia People’s Front, was responding to criticism that Friday’s vote to remove Gudkov from the Duma was a Kremlin-ordered punishment for the Just Russia politician’s outspoken support for opposition street protests.
Some observers maintain that if all lawmakers are judged by the same standards as Gudkov was, a major shakeup will ensue in parliament, with dozens of deputies forced to give up their seats.
Gudkov and his supporters say the Duma’s decision to remove Gudkov from parliament was based on illegal evidence and violates the Constitution. Just Russia deputies have launched a campaign to show that a host of Duma members from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party are flagrantly engaging in unlawful entrepreneurship.
Other observers pointed out that all four Duma factions, including the more opposition-minded A Just Russia and the Communist Party, have members who could be expelled for similar violations.
Gudkov said Monday that three Just Russia deputies with significant business interests had withdrawn their signatures from a Constitutional Court petition filed by the party to check the lawfulness of his ouster.
Sergei Petrov, Oleg Mikheyev and Alexei Chepa removed their signatures from the document, Gudkov told RIA-Novosti. The trio did not take part in Friday’s vote on whether to divest Gudkov of his Duma seat.
Opponents of the policy used to oust Gudkov, even within United Russia, believe that more investigations of a similar nature could jeopardize the current parliament.
“If you can lose your seat for this, you can dissolve the Duma immediately,” Valery Fedotov, a St. Petersburg businessman and mid-ranking United Russia official, wrote on his blog. 
Fedotov added sarcastically that for the early elections that would result, parties should run only youth activists, military servicemen and migrant workers, because “they will be even more disciplined in their voting.”
But Lysakov said that everyone was equal before the law.
“Every case demands investigation,” he said in a telephone interview with The St. Petersburg Times. He denied suggestions that Kremlin pressure had influenced Friday’s 291-150 vote by pointing to dissenters within the United Russia faction. “These people are all alive and well,” he said.
Stanislav Govorukhin, a prominent film director who managed Putin’s election campaign earlier this year, was the only member of the party faction to vote against Gudkov’s ouster. Faction member Boris Reznik abstained, while member Alexander Khinshtein did not attend the vote.
Lysakov admitted, however, that Gudkov was singled out as the first victim of the policy because of his support for the opposition.
“He engaged in conspicuous behavior. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones,” he said.
Experts were divided as to whether the Duma would proceed with similar inquiries aimed at United Russia deputies.
Stanislav Belkovsky, an independent analyst and former Kremlin insider, speculated that some United Russia deputies will soon be forced to resign as a result of their business activities.
“This would be an image victory for the Kremlin to show that the Gudkov affair was not just political revenge,” he said.
Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Kremlin adviser who is editor of the russ.ru website, disagreed, arguing that this would create unnecessary conflict with the ruling party.
“Nobody tried to hide in the first place that this was a political punishment,” he said.
Gudkov himself said he believed it was possible, but not likely, that more deputies would be stripped of their seats.
“[The Kremlin] will hardly want to see another dangerous precedent,” he said by phone.
Gudkov also said he would continue his political work in the Duma by working as an aide to a member of the Just Russia Duma faction, saying he will even continue to get a vote in faction meetings.
“I will carry on the work in my party and all things that I have been doing so far,” he said, specifically mentioning his membership in the protest movement’s organizing committee.
Party leader Sergei Mironov said Gudkov might become an aide to his son Dmitry.
“He will definitely become an aide to one of our faction’s deputies. We will see if this will be Dmitry Gudkov or someone else,” he told reporters, according to Interfax.
Members of the Just Russia Duma faction said Gudkov’s seat might be given to Oleg Shein, a former Duma deputy from Astrakhan. Shein rose to prominence this spring when he staged a monthlong hunger strike after losing a mayoral election in the southern city.
Gudkov did not say exactly when the decision regarding his successor would be made. “Let us first wait for the Constitutional Court’s decision,” he said. He added that the chances of the appeal succeeding could be slim.

TITLE: YouTube At Risk Of Russia Blackout
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Internet users could face a YouTube blackout if a video clip responsible for ongoing protests across the Muslim world is declared extremist by authorities, a top government official warned Tuesday.
“Jokes aside, but because of this clip, access to YouTube could be completely blocked on Nov. 3 to 5 on the territory of the Russian Federation,” Press and Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov wrote on Twitter.
Nikiforov’s comments come after the low-budget movie trailer “Innocence of Muslims,” which mocks Islam and portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a greedy womanizer, prompted a wave of violent demonstrations in countries from the Middle East to North Africa and Europe.
In the latest episode of violence, on Tuesday an Afghan insurgent group launched a suicide attack near Kabul Airport that killed 12 people, mostly Russian and South African pilots, saying the attack was launched in retaliation for the film, media reports said.
Russian authorities could now respond by placing YouTube on a list of banned sites once a new law restricting access to content deemed extremist enters force Nov. 1, Nikiforov said.
Google, the Internet search giant that controls video-hosting site YouTube, has refused to delete the 14-minute clip from its servers, despite requests from the U.S. White House. But the company has said it will block access to the video in specific countries if local authorities or courts demand it.

TITLE: Russian Faces Jail Term For $1.8M Watch
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Russian tourist may face up to two years in prison for not declaring a $1.8 million watch he brought to Moscow from New York, the Federal Customs Service said Monday.
As the man attempted to pass through customs at Domodedovo Airport via the green channel, for “no goods to declare,” he was stopped and his luggage was searched.
Inside a “handbag,” officials uncovered a Jacob & Co. diamond-encrusted Rainbow Tourbillon gold watch with an estimated value of 54.5 million rubles, far exceeding the 10,000 euro limit for an undeclared item, the customs service said in a statement.
The man, whose identity has not been disclosed, told officials that the watch was a present from friends in America and he was unaware of its value.
Upon arrival, the passenger should have paid 30 percent of the watch’s value, 16.35 million rubles, according to customs regulations.

TITLE: Protesters Call for More Rage
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Sending a signal of defiance to President Vladimir Putin, an eclectic crowd of tens of thousands marched peacefully through central Moscow over the weekend, although their numbers appeared smaller than at previous protests.
While opposition leaders trumpeted the protest as the largest yet — more than 100,000 turned out, they said — yawning gaps in the procession and at a rally on Prospekt Akademika Sakharova suggested that fewer turned out than at earlier events. Police, who often underestimate turnouts, said 14,000 people attended.
People gathered Saturday afternoon despite harsh new penalties on illegal demonstrations and the prosecution of at least 17 people — including some who appear to have been swept up randomly — for participation in the clashes during a May rally. Saturday’s rally was sanctioned by City Hall.
Along with well-worn demands for Putin’s resignation and early presidential and parliamentary elections, protesters expressed outrage over the jailing of three members of the punk band Pussy Riot and the ouster of opposition leader Gennady Gudkov from the State Duma on Friday.
“Today, we’re sending a very harsh but peaceful warning to the government. They must understand: Either they find a compromise or they’ll be overthrown,” Gudkov told the applauding crowd.
The speech seemed to capture a growing feeling of anger and frustration within the 9-month-old movement, which has shaken the Kremlin but failed to secure broad democratic reforms.
“We lack personal rage in this struggle,” opposition leader Alexei Navalny told protesters, whose periodic chants of “We are the power!” and “Putin is a thief!” seemed timid compared with those of past rallies, including the one on May 6 that saw violent clashes with riot police and more than 400 detentions.
Leftist leader Sergei Udaltsov delivered his speech wearing aviator sunglasses and a black jacket. 
“They ask me, ‘Why are you in black? Why are you wearing black glasses?’” he said. “It’s difficult to wear a white ribbon. The white ribbon represents kindness. But today, I’m full of rage: Rage against the crooks, rage against the murderers and the bandits. I can’t be kind anymore. Today, I’m angry.”
Indeed, the opposition’s hallmark white ribbon appeared to face more competition than ever before from the nationalist tricolor and the Communist red ribbon, a possible sign of disillusionment with the movement’s predominantly moderate leadership.
But Udaltsov’s calls to defy the rally’s 10 p.m. ending time were mostly ignored, and he and two others were briefly detained for attempting to organize an unsanctioned march, police said in a statement. 
About 25 other activists were detained for trying to set up an Occupy-style encampment near the Kitai Gorod metro station, Novaya Gazeta reported online. In May, a similar encampment served as a gathering point for activists before it was closed by court order.
Activists kicked off Saturday’s march by releasing white balloons and a flock of doves, followed shortly thereafter by chants of “Russia will be free!”
In an apparent effort to widen the appeal of the protest movement, which the Kremlin has construed as a fringe effort spurred on by nebulous foreign forces, opposition leaders included a utility-price freeze and additional investment in education to their list of demands.
There were also calls for solidarity with workers, teachers, armed service members and protesters, who Udaltsov said were demonstrating in more than 50 other cities on Saturday. 
Two events in St. Petersburg drew more than a combined 1,000 people, police said, and about 15 people were detained at a chaotic, unsanctioned protest in Nizhny Novgorod, Interfax reported. A video posted on YouTube from the Nizhny Novgorod event showed a riot police officer knocking a young woman to the ground with a truncheon blow after a small group of protesters stole his helmet. 
Like earlier rallies, Saturday’s march down the Boulevard Ring looked at times like a carnival of grievances, with everyone from pensioners to anarchists taking the opportunity to hawk their causes. At one point, an ultranationalist chanting “Russian order on Russian land,” marched meters away from LGBT activists waving rainbow flags and shouting “equal rights, no compromise.”
Supporters of Pussy Riot, three members of which were jailed last month for a bawdy performance in a Moscow church, marched alongside a Hare Krishna member beating a drum.
“I think that the majority of people here didn’t come to support a particular leader or party but to support their sense of human dignity,” said Vladimir Eiderman, 60, a mathematics professor, holding a flag with an abstract symbol that he said stood for democratic values.
Notably absent were leaders of the liberal-leaning Yabloko party, who said the event was tainted by the presence of extremists on the left and right. Tycoon and former presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov and former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin also skipped the protest.

TITLE: EU, U.S. Warn Ukraine On Tymoshenko Case
AUTHOR: By Maria Danilova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: YALTA, Ukraine  — A top U.S. official said Saturday that Ukraine is failing its test on democracy in the run-up to parliamentary elections, citing the jailing of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and shrinking media freedoms.
The jailing of Tymoshenko, the country’s top opposition leader and heroine of the 2004 Orange Revolution, has strained Ukraine’s relations with the West, which has condemned her conviction as politically motivated. The European Union has frozen a key cooperation deal with Kiev.
Thomas Melia, the U.S. assistant deputy secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said the Ukrainian election set for October has been compromised by the jailing of Tymoshenko and another top opposition leader. Melia said Ukraine “failed the test today.”
“I think if the international community, the international observers, were to give a grade today on this election environment and whether it is going to mark a step toward Europe and the West, I think it failed that test today,” Melia told an international conference in the Ukrainian Black Sea city of Yalta. “I think with the political prosecution, politically directed prosecutions, against certain opposition candidates, that has serious consequences on the quality of the election here.”
The conference had been dedicated to Ukraine’s integration into the EU, but many speakers used it to put the government on the defensive by criticizing its policies.
Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison last October on charges of abusing her powers while negotiating a natural gas import contract with Russia in 2009. She denies the charges, and accuses President Viktor Yanukovych, her longtime foe, of jailing her to bar her from the vote.
“The case — from the very beginning — was politically motivated,” Tymoshenko’s top aide, Hrihoriy Nemyria, said at the conference.
Yanukovych, whose fraud-tainted victory in 2004 was annulled under the pressure of massive street protests dubbed the Orange Revolution, has resisted strong Western pressure to release her, saying he has no influence over Ukraine’s courts.
Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin maintained a tough stance on the Tymoshenko case, suggesting the Ukrainian leaders will not bow to Western pressure.
“The issue of freeing Tymoshenko is exclusively in the framework of the law enforcement and judicial system of Ukraine and no statements, political declarations and blackmailing will lead to a positive decision,” Kuzmin told the conference.
But Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who was just denied permission to visit Tymoshenko in jail, suggested that keeping her behind bars will effectively prevent Ukraine from joining the Western club, which it strives to do.
“If you try to go everywhere you will likely end up nowhere,” Bildt said. “You cannot pursue a policy of reforming, truly modernizing a country, without being very dedicated to a strategy and a mission.”

TITLE: Central Bank Launches $5Bln Sberbank Auction
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A 15-month guessing game for investors ended Monday as the Central Bank announced it was launching the long-awaited sale of a $5 billion stake in state-owned financial mammoth Sberbank.
Considered a proxy for Russia itself, a successful conclusion to Sberbank’s deal would lay a stable foundation for the Kremlin’s ambitious privatization program, which is looking to raise $9 billion this year alone.
The sale of 7.58 percent of the country’s biggest lender will leave the Central Bank with a majority holding of 50 percent plus one share.
A decision to go ahead with the placement has been repeatedly delayed because of turbulent market conditions, political uncertainty and fragile commodity prices.
But action by the European Central Bank and the decision of the U.S. Federal Reserve to launch another round of quantitative easing boosted stock markets last week and opened a window for Sberbank to make its move.
“They have chosen the moment correctly,” said Andrei Shemetov, chief executive at Aton brokerage in Moscow. 
The price range for the sale of the 1.7 billion ordinary shares is between 91 rubles ($3) and the market value when the books are closed, according to an e-mailed statement from the bank and the regulator.
The bid book was completely covered, Interfax reported, citing a financial market source. Another source said the bids were below the market price. Interfax also reported that investors have so far bid an average of approximately 93.5 rubles per ordinary share.
The relatively low 91 ruble threshold meant Sberbank shares dropped as much as 2 percent on news of the deal but closed at 95.57 rubles Monday. The books will be open Monday and Tuesday, but may close early if demand is sufficiently strong.
The bulk of the stake will be listed on the London Stock Exchange — Sberbank’s first listing in compliance with the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority — and sold to institutional investors.
“[This] represents an opportunity for us to further diversify Sberbank’s investor base and secure an international stock exchange listing,” said Sberbank president German Gref in an e-mailed statement.  
“With a strong balance sheet and significant scale, Sberbank is well positioned to maintain its solid market share in Russia and to capture additional growth opportunities in Russia and beyond.” 
Dependent on demand, however, up to 15 percent will be listed domestically on Moscow’s MICEX-RTS stock exchange. Sberbank has 70 million individual customers in Russia and has a 46.1 percent market share of the country’s retail deposits.
The local listing was a “gift” to MICEX-RTS, Sberbank deputy chief executive Bella Zlatkis told reporters Monday.
Once the Soviet Union’s savings bank and notorious for long queues and poor customer service, Sberbank has tried in recent years to position itself as a global player. It is currently Europe’s third-largest bank and has used the continent’s financial woes to snap up assets.
In February, it bought the international banking arm of Austria’s Volksbank for $630 million, and in June it acquired Turkey’s Denizbank from struggling Franco-Belgian lender Dexia for $3.6 billion.
While some experts expressed doubt that demand for Sberbank’s offering would be overwhelming, others were more upbeat.
“We expect the deal to be a success given the high risk appetite following the European Central Bank’s … announcement and the Fed’s QE3 proposal,” VTB analyst Mikhail Shlemov wrote in a note to investors Monday.
Sberbank is not the only big Russian player to look to international markets recently as negative global sentiment has eased.
Earlier this month both mobile operator MegaFon and mid-sized lender Promsvyazbank requested permission from the regulator for initial public offerings worth up to $4 billion and $1 billion, respectively.
“The timing of the deal is very logical,” said Jason Hurwitz, a financial analyst at Alfa Bank. “First, you have strong global market dynamics and, second, it seems clear that Russian banks, including Sberbank, will face diminishing profitability and tight sector liquidity.”
Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Troika Dialog are the global coordinators and bookrunners for the sale.
Sberbank Investments, a subsidiary of Sberbank, may acquire up to 20 billion rubles worth of ordinary shares, according to the statement. Such a provision is standard practice in placements of this size, Zlatkis said.
Top officials at the Central Bank were talking about the state divesting a portion of Sberbank as far back as 2009.
The parameters of the current sale, however, were passed by the National Banking Committee in March last year. The government approved them two months later.
“The aim of the deal is to increase the share of non-state shareholders in the capital of our leading bank, and it should facilitate the improvement of the quality of corporate governance,” Central Bank deputy chairman Sergei Shvetsov told reporters Monday.
Committing to a price threshold of 91 rubles is a climb-down by the Central Bank; previously the regulator had said it would not sell below 100 rubles. During a secondary public offering in 2007, Sberbank stock was sold at 89 rubles per share. 
Another idea previously floated — to reduce the Central Bank’s stake in Sberbank through a share issue — was also abandoned.
“You can reach 50 percent in two ways: dilution or sale,” Shvetsov said. “Since Sberbank today has enough capital for the realization of its business plan, the sale option was the only one.”
A successful placement of the Sberbank stock should help kick-start the privatization agenda that has stalled since the sale of a $3.3 billion holding in state-owned lender VTB early last year.
According to a plan confirmed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in June, in addition to the 7.58 percent stake in Sberbank, by the end of 2013 the state must sell 50 percent of shipping giant Sovkomflot, 25.2 percent of VTB and 25 percent of Russian Railways.  
While a successful Sberbank international listing would be symbolically important, some experts are unsure how significant the banking giant’s success would be for the financial sector as a whole.
“It will be good for Sberbank,” said Aton’s Shemetov. “But Sberbank is an exceptional phenomenon in the Russian economy.”

TITLE: Church Ahead in Land Dispute
AUTHOR: By Rachel Nielsen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Russian Orthodox Church is prevailing in a dispute over its free use of government land on which its buildings are located, potentially avoiding a giant bill.
The win also maintains a similar right for synagogues and mosques, though their numbers are tiny compared with Orthodox churches.
The State Duma legislation had originally proposed ending the government practice of transferring land to religious groups for free. In Russia, church buildings are usually owned by the Moscow Patriarchate, while the land underneath them typically belongs to municipal authorities.
But the head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s legal department said “the current version of the draft legislation” won’t change the land use system.
“For all legal entities that are exempted from paying land tax … there is a stipulated provision under which they are going to have ‘permanent land ownership’ on a free basis, which essentially won’t change the current situation,” Ksenia Chernega, the nun who runs the department, told Interfax last week.
She made the comments after Vedomosti reported last week that Patriarch Kirill had sent President Vladimir Putin a letter criticizing the proposed amendments to the Civil Code.
Chernega said, however, that the letter had been sent in May and “from that moment” the church began working “with legislative and executive authorities” on the law.
Kirill wrote that the legislation “affects the legal interests of religious organizations,” Vedomosti reported, citing a copy of the letter.
If religious institutions lost the right to use land free of charge and buy it from the government for free, there could be a “carving up” of properties, Kirill said, arguing that most religious organizations would forfeit their rights to that land because they wouldn’t be able to afford to buy it.
Municipal ownership of church land is a vestige of policies in the Soviet Union, in which all land belonged to the state. The Soviet government also confiscated many church buildings and converted them into museums and offices. Many churches were reclaimed in the 1990s.
Under the initial proposals in the Duma, if a church were situated on municipal, regional or federal land, it would either need to pay rent to the relevant government body or buy the land, said Alexei Konevsky, head of Pepeliaev Group’s real estate and construction practice. If a church skirted payments under that system, it would risk a government lawsuit to claim compensation for land use, he said.
Such lawsuits could bankrupt religious organizations, with their assets being seized and auctioned off, he added.
Speaking of financial and legal risks to religious organizations is “premature” at the moment, however, said Roman Zaitsev, a lawyer with Salans.
“Going by the current version of the Civil Code legislation, which will be subject to significant edits during its second reading, those risks haven’t appeared,” he said by e-mail.

TITLE: Government May Increase Railways Subsidies
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government may double subsidies to Russian Railways next year in a bid to stave off reductions of passenger services. 
Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said at the Baikal Economic Forum last Thursday that subsidies to the monopoly in 2012 amounted to 100 billion rubles ($3 billion).
“If we exclude the Moscow and northwest transportation hubs, one third of all rail routes are loss-making,” he said, Interfax reported. 
He added that the government would seek to resolve the deficit in order to avoid reducing passenger services, possibly doubling the amount of subsidies next year. 
In August, Russian Railways announced cuts to commuter services in a number of regions because regional authorities had failed to provide the subsidies that make loss-making routes sustainable.
Analysts said at the time that the move was more of a warning shot than a genuine plan, since slashing essential commuter services carries such political risk that the government can not allow it to happen. 
Russian Railways President Vladimir Yakunin said at the forum that failure to invest in upgrading rail infrastructure by 2020 could knock 1.5 percent off annual GDP. 
Loss-making passenger services have been a constant headache for Russian Railways since incorporation in 2005. 
Russian Railways has said it lost over 9 billion rubles ($280 million) on commuter services in 2011, and 4.6 billion rubles in the first half of this year alone. 
The company, which controls the second-longest rail network in the world, takes federal subsidies of between 30 to 60 billion rubles per year for its capital expenditures. 
Meanwhile, it was reported that Russian Railways is the front runner to take over a 75 percent stake in GEFCO, a logistics operator belonging to French car maker PSA Peugeot-Citroen.

TITLE: Belarus Plans MTS Stake Sale for End of Year
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Belarus’ State Property Committee has begun preparations for the auctioning off of the state’s 51 percent stake in the joint venture it has with Russian cell phone giant Mobile TeleSystems.
The auction will be held before the end of the year, the committee told Interfax, and the starting price is still set at $1 billion.
“A final date for the auction of the state stake in MTS has not yet been determined, but a series of presentations will take place at the end of October, beginning of November,” a committee spokesman said.
Russian parent company Mobile TeleSystems, which has a 49 percent stake in the venture, has reiterated its interest in buying Belarus out. “We are interested in this asset,” MTS public relations director Yelena Kokhanovskaya said. Belarus MTS had 5 million subscribers as of July 1, 2012. 
Meanwhile, Mobile TeleSystems in Russia said Monday that it plans to double the share of mobile Internet users among its subscribers by 2014.
About 37 percent of MTS’ customers used mobile data services as of the end of the second quarter, company spokeswoman Valeria Kuzmenko said.

TITLE: The Church Has Replaced the Communist Party
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
TEXT: As President Vladimir Putin tries to strengthen his vertical power structure, the country’s social divisions are growing deeper.
The Pussy Riot case divided Russian society between those calling for leniency for the women and those who demanded that they be severely punished. This split also represents the division in attitudes toward the Russian Orthodox Church itself. Many Orthodox believers have openly criticized the church hierarchy for its reactionary stance on the case and for its close alliance with the country’s authoritarian leadership. In response, squads of self-appointed Orthodox vigilantes have taken to the streets to enforce the church’s moral code of public behavior.
Amid all this, there has been a sharp discussion on the Internet regarding the list of Orthodox church scandals — from the appalling way that Patriarch Kirill pressed charges against his neighbor for leaving excessive dust in his luxury apartment to a series of car accidents involving Orthodox priests, sometimes drunk, driving expensive foreign automobiles. Topping the list of scandals was a photograph showing Patriarch Kirill wearing a very expensive watch, which the church sloppily tried to erase using Photoshop.
Orthodox leaders claim that there is an organized campaign, supported by the opposition and its supposed sponsors, to discredit the church. In response, public figures accuse the church of colluding with the Kremlin to force obedience to the authoritarian regime, stifle dissent and violate the Constitution by merging the church and state.
It seems that the Russian authorities are the ones most actively and deliberately working to deepen divisions in society. 
There are, indeed, two Russias. The first Russia consists of about 15 million “modernist and European” citizens, or 11 percent of the population, who live mostly in large and medium-sized cities, have a higher education and are employed in the private sector, which makes them less dependent on the state. They are the foundation of the opposition movement that has taken to the streets for the protests that began in December. Most of the Russian intelligentsia belongs to this group, although there are many high-profile members of the “creative intelligentsia,” such as singers Oleg Gazmanov and Yelena Vayenga and film director Nikita Mikhalkov, who go out of their way to support Putin.
The second Russia consists of about 40 million conservative citizens, or 30 percent of the population. They are nostalgic about the Soviet period, support Putin and believe the country as a whole is moving in the right direction. They are mainly residents of outlying provinces, small and medium-sized cities and rural areas. Their distinguishing feature is their dependence on government support in the form of salaries, pensions, social benefits and subsidies from the federal budget. The members of this group don’t want convulsions to the existing social order and favor stability even when it means stagnation. Uralvagonzavod factory director Igor Kholmanskikh has become a poster child for this Russia, along with Sveta from Ivanovo. Kholmanskikh is now the presidential envoy to the Urals Federal District, and Sveta became the host of a prime-time show on NTV.
These two Russias hold vastly different values and attitudes toward democracy, freedom and human rights. The Western-bent and modernist Russia demands protection of human rights and freedoms, tolerance of dissent, the right to privacy, free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, freedom of the press and guarantees for private property and fair market competition. It calls for a secular government and a strict separation of church and state. In foreign policy, this more educated and progressive class supports closer ties with the European Union and the United States and is suspicious of Russia’s friendship with Belarus, Venezuela and Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Much of provincial, conservative Russia has little concern for democracy and human rights and is most interested in receiving government handouts and achieving lifetime job security with positions in the bloated state bureaucracy.
The same people who once bowed before portraits of Vladimir Lenin and Communist leaders now pay homage to the Russian Orthodox Church and its icons. In Soviet times, any criticism of the Communist Party was considered blasphemy. Now, criticizing the Orthodox church qualifies as blasphemy. This Russia is strongly anti-Western and anti-U.S., and it believes that there is a global conspiracy against the country. It is convinced that the opposition is a fifth column of agents funded by the U.S. State Department.
Putin has openly aligned himself with the conservative Russia and has initiated a war against the values most important to the progressive Russia: Freedom of speech, the freedom to form nongovernmental organizations, freedom of creative expression and the right of assembly, and the unrestricted use of the Internet.
Russia has not been this deeply divided since the supporters and opponents of democratic and market reforms battled each other in the 1990s, a period marked by dangerous social tensions. The danger we face today is that social divisions and the escalating standoff between society and the ruling powers will once again erupt in a violent standoff between retrograde and progressive members of society.

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

TITLE: comment: Turning a Fortress Into a Fortune
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: After returning from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vladivostok, foreign guests are still trying to make sense of what they saw there and asking themselves whether Russia will ever be able to develop the Far East.
Journalist David Pilling wrote in the Financial Times last week that Russian authorities are blindly hoping that the $20 billion they spent on the summit in Vladivostok will be enough to turn the city into a trans-Eurasian hub. Build it and they will come.
But there is little chance of that happening. The miserable state of the region’s infrastructure is a big factor that will obstruct its development. In addition, Vladivostok has never been a gateway to the East. It has been better known in history as a fortification for repelling enemy attacks.
This fortress mentality has changed little over time. Even before the APEC summit began, many foreigners complained about the difficulty they had obtaining Russian visas to attend the event. What’s more, residents in the Far East are highly cautious about what they view as a “Chinese invasion” of immigrants taking over the region.
Russia’s desire to have a foothold in Asia is easy to understand. Asia offers a real alternative to an economically stagnant Europe. Although the growth rate of the Asia-Pacific region is slowing, it is still impressive compared to the West.
In theory, the Asia-Pacific region offers a perfect opportunity for Russia’s economic growth. Asia has a shortage of resources, while Russia possesses some of the largest reserves of natural resources in the world. But a breakthrough hasn’t happened. Pilling writes that Russia’s trade with Asia is woefully small and that “there’s a gap as wide as the Volga between Russian ambition and reality.”
Achieving a breakthrough in the Far East is an eternal goal, but there is little understanding as to how Russia can actually accomplish it. The government continues thinking in terms of mega-projects. It plans to allocate 1.8 trillion rubles ($59 billion) from the federal budget to Vneshekonombank to develop the region. There is no doubt that the money will be spent on important development projects, but this by itself will not result in an economic boom in the region.
Why has Russia’s economic relations with Asia stalled? It turns out that the ritual exchange of official pleasantries between Russian leaders and their partners in the Asia-Pacific region have been practically worthless.
Consider China. Beijing seems to be very interested in importing Russian gas, but President Vladimir Putin failed yet again this year to conclude a deal. It seems the two sides have been “nearing the final stage of reaching an agreement” on gas supplies for the last 15 years. Yes, Moscow sells oil to China, but at a price that is barely profitable for Russia.
The pressure methods Russia uses in Europe — such as “If you don’t behave yourselves, we’ll cut off the flow of gas!” — have failed in Asia. The Asians have much more latitude to repel these crude methods.
Moscow must refine its negotiating skills, abandon its macho approach to partners and accept the fact that it will not dictate the terms of every deal. And it wouldn’t hurt if Russian leaders stopped seeing enemies everywhere they turned.

<i>This comment appeared as an editorial in Vedomosti.</i>

TITLE: The price of principles
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Dozens of international music stars — from Madonna and Sting to Peter Gabriel and Paul McCartney — expressed their support for the imprisoned women of feminist punk group Pussy Riot, who were sentenced to two years in prison for an anti-Putin performance in a Moscow church. Last week, Russian state television struck back by alleging that the artists were paid for their support.
Called “Provocateurs 2” as a follow-up to a show aired in April, the program — seemingly aimed to further demonize Pussy Riot and their supporters — contained an interview with American analyst William Dunkerley, who cited unnamed sources in British show business as saying that the London-based PR firm Bell Pottinger offered to pay up to 100,000 euros to artists for statements in support of Pussy Riot. 
Aired on Rossiya 1 channel on Sept. 11, the program linked the alleged offer to Putin’s London-based arch-nemesis Boris Berezovsky, claiming that it was him as well as “certain U.S. citizens” who stood behind Pussy Riot’s performance.
“In fact, they didn’t say directly that the artists were paid,” said Alexander Cheparukhin, the Moscow promoter who did a lot to draw attention to the case and the support of international artists in the West.
“They said that some agency linked to Berezovsky ‘made an offer.’ Then they can say ‘So what, there are a lot of crazy people who could offer whatever they like.’ They deliberately talk rubbish to create some sort of information pollution that can confuse people who are used to trusting TV. Those people don’t follow in what format and what exactly is said. It isn’t a direct lie, it’s speculation. ‘There’s hearsay…’ They could end up saying that there’s hearsay that everybody is an agent of the global Jewish conspiracy.”
The program could certainly have left gullible television viewers with the impression that the musicians were paid for their support of Pussy Riot, though this was not stated overtly, but an article in Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper contained a more direct distortion of the facts. Published on Aug. 17, the day of the verdict, the article claimed that Peter Gabriel had criticized his fellow musicians as a “bunch of overpaid, uninformed musicians banging on about a part of the world they don’t really understand” and dismissed Pussy Riot as a ”punk group playing rude, subversive music in a cathedral — it has outrage, blasphemy and sacrilege all wrapped up in one fell swoop.” In reality, the Russian newspaper had cut out the first paragraph of Gabriel’s article from British newspaper The Times. In the rest of the article, the British musician mocked this pro-Kremlin view and explained why international support for Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich was important, describing the imprisoned women as “very brave young people willing to risk their freedom, along with all the accompanying threats to family, for a better, freer and more open Russia.”
“His article was very passionate, maybe the most passionate of all articles published on this subject; I even read some bits from it during the Pussy Riot support concert in St. Petersburg, and at more length at [Saturday’s March of Millions] rally in Moscow,” Cheparukhin said.
Cheparukhin, 54, is an eminent Russian music promoter and tour manager who won the WOMEX (World Music Expo) Professional Excellence Award for his efforts in promoting world music this year (he will receive it at the WOMEX awards ceremony in Thessaloniki, Greece next month).
“I am not a politician, I don’t plan to participate in political campaigns on a permanent basis, but there are certain instances when you simply can’t stand aside, when the degree of absurdity goes beyond the limit and you can’t fight the desire to do something,” Cheparukhin said.
“For the past five years I have promoted successful festivals in cooperation with the state, but I’ve always had a feeling of a poisoned background caused by the fact that it is this person who leads the country and he broadcasts definite ideas, definite values, definite attitudes to people and how everything should work. He produces a certain type of young people. Some people emerge as opposite to this image of power, but it’s clear that it influences many and creates standards of behavior that, in my view, are totally defective — the cult of strength and doublethink, which is more cynical than it was in the Soviet Union. You can’t remain silent when you feel that something dangerous to yourself or something screamingly unfair is going on,” Cheparukhin said.
“It was obvious that [the Pussy Riot trial] had nothing to do with the law, that it was an utterly lawless trial, that the religious hatred motivation was dropped in in a despicable manner, that everything was turned upside down when they claimed that [Pussy Riot’s] intention was to insult believers, when it was absolutely clear that all their movements and shouting were part of filming a video. It was an exclusively anti-Putin video, exposing the alliance of the authorities and the new quasi-state, ideological and somewhat punitive institution called the Russian Orthodox Church to provide sacred support for Putin to remain in power as long as he wishes. Sort of a carte blanche for autocracy.”
Cheparukhin said he had reservations about Pussy Riot’s church performance in the beginning, along with other opposition activists who expressed doubts about it.
“But at a certain point, that attitude started to annoy me,” he said.
“After I heard what the young women said in the courtroom, when I read several reports from this obviously unlawful trial, I felt a liking for the women that I didn’t have at the beginning.
“I was impressed by them as personalities, artists and fighters and I felt uncomfortable standing aside. I realized I had resources to help them that nobody else had. Promotion has never been business for me, I got involved in it because it was interesting, so I had an informal relationship with some artists. I’ve been friends with Gabriel for a long time, because I produced some artists such as [Tuvan folk band] Huun-Huur Tu or [Russian world music singer] Inna Zhelannaya that he liked. I had a resource of influence on the Western music community that I could use.”
In fact, Gabriel — who made video statements of support for Russian protesters in March and May, was the first international rock star to lend his public support for Pussy Riot soon after the women were arrested in Moscow. 
“When I was in London in mid-May, I filmed him on my iPhone, and he talked about Occupy Abai, about the shutdown of the Bolotnaya Ploshchad rally and about Pussy Riot, and I thought that maybe I could stir other artists as well,” Cheparukhin said.
According to Cheparukhin, the first prominent gesture of support was made by Faith No More, but happened without his prior knowledge. During a concert in Moscow on July 2, the band — whose Russian tour Cheparukhin managed — offered the stage to the remaining members of Pussy Riot who made a statement in support of the imprisoned women and unfolded a banner that called for people to gather at the Tagansky Court on July 4, when the trial was due to open. He admitted that at first he was even slightly annoyed with the band for not telling him about their plans, but said when the news from the trial started to arrive, he realized how grossly absurd and unfair it was.
“I was overcome with passion and became much more active,” he said.
“I wrote a very good letter to Sting and made sure it was given to him, and it seems to me that it influenced him to make a statement. I stress “it seems;” I am sure in some cases such as with McCartney, Peter Gabriel, Johnny Rotten, Peter Hammill, Billy Bragg and others, but about some I can only suggest that it influenced a person, but don’t know it 100 percent.”
Sting dismissed the charges as “spurious” in a statement on Amnesty International’s website on July 25.
Cheparukhin said he asked Sting’s concert agent, who also works for Madonna, U2, The Rolling Stones and Public Image Ltd., to forward his letter to all those artists.
“Out of those artists, Madonna and Johnny Rotten spoke up for Pussy Riot, Madonna was very active, and her actions were most resonant, while Johnny Rotten dedicated an entire concert to them at the Rebellion punk festival in Blackpool [on Aug. 3],” Cheparukhin said.
“But Bono and Jagger didn’t react. For what reason I don’t know, but I know for sure that they received the letters. I spoke to their agent once again later, and he said that he had spoken to them both personally and they should not be pressed now but should be given time to consider it.”
He also appealed to Patti Smith, whom he has brought to Russia several times, and who eventually spoke at every concert of her recent tour in support of the women, starting from a concert in Oslo on Aug. 1 where she sported a T-shirt reading “Putin has pissed himself” (after a Pussy Riot song) and said:
“Their only crime is being young, arrogant and beautiful!”
Cheparukhin also appealed to McCartney, despite the fact that Putin had conducted a personal tour for the ex-Beatle around the Kremlin and that McCartney performed “Hey Jude” for his host during his 2003 visit to Moscow.  
The promoter also ignored some British music industry professionals who tried to discourage him, saying that the musician was too “bourgeois” and would probably speak on behalf of seals or vegetarianism, but not Pussy Riot.
“It was the most overwhelming moment,” Cheparukhin said.
 “Everybody — both famous musicians and managers — were telling me that it was impossible, unrealistic, ‘don’t even try.’ I wrote a letter to him and got a letter [to Pussy Riot] from him in an hour, I was simply stunned. First his manager wrote that the message had been forwarded but he probably wouldn’t read it because he was on vacation, but an hour passed and all of a sudden there was a letter.” 
In his message and on his website, McCartney expressed his support for the imprisoned women on Aug. 18, the day after the verdict. “I hope you can stay strong and believe that I and many others like me who believe in free speech will do everything in our power to support you and the idea of artistic freedom,” he wrote.
Cheparukhin said that McCartney’s move was received with gratitude not only by Pussy Riot and their supporters but by the British music community too.
“What followed then was that I received several letters saying ‘Sasha, you have no idea what you’ve done; you’ve improved McCartney’s image for England,’” he said.
“’We didn’t even think he was capable of such things,’ ‘I am happy to have been wrong,’ ‘I am happy to have made a mistake,’ people wrote to me. He had somehow damaged his reputation over his divorce with Heather [Mills], and it had become the done thing among British musicians and their managers to speak about him almost contemptuously. I’m happy that I managed not only to wake him up, but also to improve the British attitude toward him.”
As a music professional, Cheparukhin dismissed widespread criticism of Pussy Riot’s songs as substandard, saying such judgments were “provincial.” 
“When I posted a link to the song ‘Putin Lights the Bonfires (of the Revolution)’ released on the day of the verdict I posted a link to it on Facebook and wrote, rather insultingly, ‘Listen and envy, you stars of shit rock,’ and that post of mine was ‘liked’ by many outstanding classical and academic musicians and more advanced rock musicians,” he said.
“These guys have a high opinion of Pussy Riot as musicians and as contemporary artists, which can be evaluated by its result and public effect.  And the effect is quite evident; they opened this abscess, it was surgery, they provided the lens that allowed people to see much more clearly what is happening in our society.
“Moreover, a lot of Western musicians like their music, too. For instance, Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand said he liked the music, that it’s high-energy and passionate. Honestly, [music journalist and activist] Artyom Troitsky and me agree on one thing. On the day of the verdict I got the record that was given away outside the court and listened to it about 20 times in a row. 
 “Later I spoke to Troitsky, who was on a lecture tour in the U.S. that day, and he told me that he had downloaded the song and also listened to it 20 times!” 
Cheparukhin said he liked the “rage, desperation, challenge and crossing every border” in Pussy Riot’s songs.
“Everything that was tongue-and-cheek and understated in the protest movement’s slogans was fully stated and expressed openly in these performances by Pussy Riot,” he said.
“Not only in the church performances, but also in the Red Square performance and this song that was recorded by the other women from the group and that was scheduled to be released on the day of the verdict. In the reaction of some Russian musicians, who are doomed to remain provincial and never to become part of international culture, one can see envy, jealousy and fear.
“That’s the main difference between Russian musicians and Western ones. Because for Western artists, Pussy Riot are fellow musicians, even if they don’t play the guitar like Jimmy Page.”
Judging by the pro-Kremlin media, the support for Pussy Riot by international artists was noticed by the Russian authorities — and annoyed them.
“I never thought about what effect it would have, it can’t be excluded that it would anger them,” Cheparukhin said.
“But I understood that it was what the women themselves were asking for. They asked for such letters to be sent to them. In the end, even moral support for people who have been thrown in prison illegally is a result. And it was important for Russians to see how progressive Western artists view the issue.”

TITLE: Walking the line
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Message To Man, Russia’s only international festival of documentary, animated and short non-documentary films, kicks off on Sept. 22, pushing its boundaries and embracing drama theater. Two cutting-edge theater companies — Moscow’s Teatr.doc and Belguim’s Liege Theater Festival — will present some of their most recent and much-discussed productions.
The festival was originally established to provide Russian documentary makers with a stepping-stone to the international film scene, and has been a springboard for young and up-and-coming film directors since it was first held in 1988.
The 22nd Message To Man event continues to focus on documentaries, while showcasing, for the first time in its history, a series of drama performances.
 The festival’s venues include Rodina movie theater, Dom Kino and the Erarta Museum of Modern Art. Hosting the theatrical part of the festival will be the legendary Lenfilm, Russia’s oldest film studio. On September 23 and 24, Pavilion No. 1 will welcome audiences to the Russian premiere of Lars Noren’s staging of “Le 20 Novembre,” a coproduction of the Liege Theater Festival and the Belgium National Theater. The production, which will be performed in German with simultaneous translation provided,  was inspired by the diary of a murderer, a young man living in a small German town, who goes on to kill his former classmates and teachers, and then ends his own life. The sobering diary sheds light on the darkest corners of the human soul.
Politics takes center stage at Teatr.doc’s production, “One Hour and 18 Minutes,” directed by Mikhail Ugarov and dedicated to the final hours of the life of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina detention center in November 2009.
Documentary theater is very new to Russia. The Magnitsky production is only the second experiment of its kind, the first one being Teatr.doc’s project “September.doc,” which was loosely based on the notes that appeared on message boards after the school hostage crisis in Beslan in 2004. The staging can be seen on September 25.
For the people behind Message to Man, individuals and human life are sacred. The project’s ideologists are convinced that the more personalities there are in the world, the better a place it will be. The name of the Message to Man festival has also become its mission. It refers to the Bible and reflects the essence of the festival’s purpose: Faith, hope, love, grace and compassion — eternal human values that we need in life, as well as in films.
In the years since it was launched, Message To Man has been diverse enough to incorporate films about aged Eskimo hunters, Swedish authors and refugees starting new lives. In 2001, the controversial German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s documentaries on the Nazis, “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia” were shown, with Riefenstahl, then aged 98, coming to St. Petersburg to enjoy a standing ovation during one screening.
The festival was initially held once every two years, but has developed into an annual event. Since 1995, the premieres have been shown in a separate competition.
Many of the films shown at the festival have rarely been screened and cannot easily be found anywhere else in Russia. During its history, the festival has created a fascinating collection of more than 28,000 films that have been shown at it.
The event’s anthropocentric philosophy has been carefully preserved by the festival’s president, the renowned Russian filmmaker Alexei Uchitel.
This year, the festival reaches out to audiences regarded as outcasts: Sept. 27 sees a film screening at the Kresty pre-trial detention center. The inmates will be treated to Sergei Miroshnichenko’s film “Born in the USSR: 29 years,” followed by a meeting with the director.
At the height of perestroika, Miroshnichenko started filming seven-year-olds for a documentary project in which the children were asked about the things that affected them, what they were afraid of, interested in, excited about or what they hoped for. The director asked his young interviewees if they believed in God, or cared about politics. The project developed as the director and his team returned to their main characters every seven years, and documented their emotional and spiritual evolution. The evening in Kresty will feature part four of the series, in which the characters are 28 years old. They live in different countries now, have different jobs, are of different ethnic origins, and perhaps the only thing that unites them is that they were all born in the political giant that was the U.S.S.R.
Uchitel admits that the festival is surviving against the odds. This year, the festival is being held as part of the Third St. Petersburg Kinoforum that has become an umbrella for several local film events, from the student film festival Nachalo to the International St. Petersburg Film Festival, which will have its debut this fall.
“To say that we are going against the grain is not enough: Every year I get the impression that we are teetering on the edge of a financial catastrophe,” the filmmaker said. “Raising funds for a non-commercial film event is a Herculean task. Very sadly, in Russia, art house films as well as original domestic films interest hardly anyone, from producers to the authorities, and from potential sponsors to potential spectators. The appetite for what we have been doing is, unfortunately, scarce.”
The festival this year will feature six gala-premieres of non-fiction full-length films. The highlights include James Marsh’s “Project Nim” (U.K., U.S.), a heartbreaking story about an attempt in the 1970s to bring up a chimpanzee baby like a child; Dali Rust’s film “Marina’s House” (Lithuania) about Andrei Tarkovsky’s sister Marina; “900 Days” (Holland), Jessica Gorter’s reflections on the Siege of Leningrad; and Andrei Gryazev’s film “Tomorrow” (Russia) about the protest art group Voina.
Message to Man is divided into international and national competitions. The international jury, which always features a winner of one of the previous events, awards the Golden Centaur Grand Prix and several Centaur prizes. A total of 120 films will compete for the prizes.

<i>Message to Man runs through Sept. 29. For a full program, visit the festival’s website at http://message2man.com/</i>

TITLE: TALK OF THE TOWN
TEXT: One of the most talked-about events among the city’s beau monde this week was the opening of the French footwear company <b>Christian Louboutin</b>. Twenty years after the creation of the legendary brand, the designer and company founder himself came to St. Petersburg to open his first store here on Monday at the newly restored <b>DLT department store</b>. Currently, only women’s collections of bags and shoes are available, but the fashion house promises to start selling men’s accessories here too in the near future.
Meanwhile, reactions to the post-op DLT have been mixed. The historic department store, which originally opened in 1909, had been closed for seven years while it was renovated, and only reopened to the public on Sept. 6 as a branch of Moscow’s TSUM luxury boutique mall. Locals who remembered it fondly from its Soviet days as the Leningrad Trade House had been waiting with bated breath to see it restored to its former glory.
While it was not the store’s first facelift — the building was badly damaged during World War II — visitors to the sparkling new mall have commented on its emptiness. And while since the ’60s, DLT had been known as a family store specializing in children’s items, its focus is now on eye-wateringly expensive designer brands that only the children of oligarchs can expect to grace their wardrobes.
In other news of similarly adult pleasures, <b>Thann</b>, already well established at the Stockman Nevsky Center, has now opened another spa center in St. Petersburg, this one at the <b>Sokos Palace Bridge Hotel</b>. Those who have visited the Palace Bridge’s first-rate aqua center, with its vast selection of saunas and choice of gyms — one mixed, one for women only — will know that this is a perfect match.
Thann was founded in 2002 in Thailand, and uses natural ingredients in its range of botanical and essential oils, combining them with a blend of cutting-edge scientific research and Asian traditions in natural therapies.
The Thann salon at the Palace Bridge has already had a soft-opening (there will be an official opening later in the year), and a visit to the newly refurbished premises last week impressed: Thann has a policy of using muted tones in its d&#233;cor and very restrained lighting, creating a perfect atmosphere to relax in. The local personnel have been comprehensively trained and can offer a range of treatments featuring the Thann products, whether it be Oriental Essence, Aromatic Wood, Sea Foam, Rice Collection or Shiso Collection.
Once you’ve treated yourself at the Thann Spa, take a dip in the Palace Bridge’s refreshing pool, and then you’ll feel you’ve really earned a meal in the hotel’s excellent Seville restaurant, just one more attraction at what is one of Petersburg’s top residences.

TITLE: the word’s worth: Putin’s main goof
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Êëèí: birds flying in a V-shaped formation

On this fine September day after the start of the school year, it’s time for a pop quiz. Ëåòÿò æóðàâëè (the cranes are flying) is:
a) the name of a famous Soviet film
b) what Vladimir Putin exclaimed on a hang-glider flight to lead Siberian cranes south
c) the phrase that launched a thousand witticisms
d) all of the above.
If you answered (d), you win a white lab coat and your own personal crane beak.
Unless you’ve been on a beach with no access to news in any language, you know that Putin, dressed in white but apparently not wearing the artificial crane beak he promised to put on, went up in the air three times in a motorized hang glider. The flights were part of Ïîë¸ò Íàäåæäû (Flight of Hope), which led a flock of endangered Siberian cranes south for the winter. In addition to perhaps saving a few more of these graceful birds, the flights served as inspiration for hundreds of witty headlines, blog posts, cartoons and opinion pieces.
The only problem for us non-native Russian speakers is figuring out what the jokes are. Some jokes are easy to get. Putin took three flights — his three electoral campaigns — and tried to get the birds — the population — to follow him. One disenfranchised blogging crane wrote: Íàçûâàåòñÿ âñ¸ ýòî ïî÷åìó-òî ïîë¸òîì íàäåæäû, õîòÿ íèêàêèõ íàäåæä íè ó êîãî äàâíî íåò (For some reason all this is called a flight of hope, although we all lost hope a long time ago).
And then there was this headline “Ïóòèí: È â ýòîì ñòðîþ åñòü ïðîìåæóòîê ìàëûé” (Putin: In that formation there is a small space). This is a reference to the song Æóðàâëè (“The Cranes”), a famous and much-loved song about World War II. The song was based on a poem written in Avar by Rasul Gamzatov and then translated into Russian by Naum Grebnev. In the final version, soldiers killed on the battlefield become white cranes flying in the misty twilight: È â òîì ñòðîþ åñòü ïðîìåæóòîê ìàëûé, áûòü ìîæåò ýòî ìåñòî äëÿ ìåíÿ (In that formation there is a small space, perhaps a place for me).
And then folks had fun with beaks. One headline was: Ïóòèí êëþâîì íå ù¸ëêàåò (literally, Putin doesn’t snap his beak). This is wordplay on the expression â áîëüøîé ñåìüå íå ù¸ëêàé êëþâîì (literally, “in a big family don’t just snap your beak open and shut”). This means that if you are a baby bird with lots of baby bird siblings, when mama bird brings a worm, grab it. Don’t just sit there opening and shutting your beak. Today, êëþâîì ù¸ëêàòü means to do nothing, to miss an opportunity: Don’t just stand there gaping. Do something. So the headline might be translated: Putin isn’t just hang-gliding around.
Other wits had fun with the word êîñÿê, which means a flock of birds flying in a V-shaped formation. As a slang word, it means some kind of screw-up. One newspaper reported the news: Ãëàâíûé êîñÿê Ïóòèíà, which means either Putin’s Main Flock or Putin’s Main Goof.
And still others played around with the word êëèí, which also means a V-shaped formation but can also refer to a wedge of some sort. In slang, it means a crazy, obsessive idea or a kind of stupor. Hence the headline: Êëèí Ïóòèíà.
Translate as you wish.

<i>Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.</i>

TITLE: Romanian rhapsody
AUTHOR: By Viktoria Koltsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg is one of three Russian cities welcoming Romanian culture as a part of  a cultural exchange festival this week. 
The show “Mozart Rocks” will officially open the Days of Romanian Culture festival on Sept. 24 at the city’s Music Hall. 
“Mozart Rocks,” created by producer Constantin Teodorescu in 2006, sees the works of Mozart played on electric guitars together with a philharmonic orchestra, and famous rock songs by bands such as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Pink Floyd arranged in a classical style.
The Days of Romanian Culture in Russia festival, which encompasses musical and dance concerts, galas and exhibits, master classes and folk performances, follows on the heels of the Days of Russian Culture held in Romania from 2010-2011. 
“Romanian culture attracts people with its original, unique and diverse forms. I am pleased to see that the program of the festival reflects this diversity and gives the Russian public the opportunity to experience life-affirming Romanian folklore, art, folk dance and classical music,” said Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky.
After the original arrangements of “Mozart Rocks,” a more conventional concert will take place in the main hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. On Oct. 7, soloists of the National Bucharest Opera will perform in an opera gala. Sopranos Silvia Sorina Munteanu and Irina Iordachescu, baritone Ionut Pascu and tenor Ionut Hotea will perform with the Mikhailovsky Theater’s orchestra, conducted by Mikhail Tatarnikov.
The highlight of the folk part of the festival will be a concert by the Basilica ensemble on Nov. 12 at the Teatr na Liteinom. Organizers promise a colorful show with traditional costumes, dancing and old songs of love and despair. The concert will be part of an international tour by the award-winning ensemble, which is more than 40 years old, has won different awards and is touring the world. 
The festival’s program in St. Petersburg concludes with a photo exhibit at the Museum of Ethnography in October featuring a selection of works from the second Romanian Art Wave. 
The artwork will include “portraits of local people in colorful Romanian blouses that inspired Henri Matisse, pictures of landscapes, scenes of peasant life, and much more,” according to the festival’s organizers.
 
<i>The Days of Romanian Culture festival runs through Nov. 12.</i>

TITLE: Piecing things together
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The program of the Year of Germany in St. Petersburg 2012-2013 was officially presented in the city last week.
The Year of Germany in Russia represents the Russian half of a cultural exchange between the two countries that began in June. 
German Consul General in St. Petersburg Benedikt Haller and Alexander Prokhorenko, head of City Hall’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said the city would host more than 100 different events in the spheres of politics, economics, culture, science, education and other fields of collaboration between the two countries. 
Haller said that for the German Consulate, the realization of the St. Petersburg program had a special significance, as this year the Consulate will mark the 40th anniversary of its opening in the city.
Prior to the beginning of the cultural exchange, St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko visited the German state of Bavaria, where the two sides signed an agreement on mutual collaboration.
Most of the events of the Year of Germany in Russia will take place in St. Petersburg and Moscow this year, spreading to other Russian cities in 2013. Around 1,000 events in total will take place in Russia as part of the cultural exchange.
The program of events in St. Petersburg began with the assembly of the world’s biggest jigsaw puzzle, an image of German artist Albrecht Durer’s picture “Self Portrait in a Fur Coat” on Palace Square on Sunday.
The idea of assembling jigsaw puzzles depicting masterpieces by eminent artists first appeared in the German city of Nuremberg eight years ago. A puzzle of the picture “Portrait of a Young Venetian Woman” by Nuremberg native Durer, one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, was put together by residents of the town. The event proved so popular that the puzzle then went on tour in Italy, Poland and China.
The “Self Portrait in a Fur Coat” puzzle was produced especially for the Year of Germany in Russia. The painting, the original of which is kept in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, is one of Durer’s most daring works. Durer painted himself in a frontal pose, a remarkably bold move, as at that time only icons with the image of Jesus Christ were painted that way.
The puzzle is recognized as being the biggest in the world and measures 15 by 20 meters. It consists of 1,023 pieces, each measuring 70 by 40 centimeters and weighing 800 grams.
The jigsaw puzzle’s journey across Russia began in Moscow on June 20, and in August it was assembled by the residents of Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk.
The next major event of the Year of Germany in St. Petersburg will be a performance by opera diva Christine Schafer on Sept. 20, followed by an exhibition of drawings and engravings by German artists at the State Hermitage Museum.
The list of other events also includes art exhibits, theater performances, discussions and conferences.
The Year of Germany is intended to strengthen Russian-German partnership, offer ideas for solving global issues and open the way to a future of mutual cooperation between the two countries.
Germany is St. Petersburg’s second-biggest trade partner in terms of export and import. According to the Russian-German Chamber of Commerce, there are about 700 companies with German investment registered in the city.

<i>For more information about the cultural program of the Year of Germany in Russia, visit www.germanyinrussia.ru</i>

TITLE: in the spotlight: The call of fate
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: This month, NTV launched a new reality show, “The Call of Fate,” where sleazy “model producer” Pyotr Listerman helps a millionaire choose from a harem of young women.
The idea of the show is close to that of the U.S show “The Bachelor,” where women compete for the affections of a man who has been deemed highly eligible. But NTV takes away any semblance of romance or gloss by picking Listerman as a judge.
It’s hard to say exactly what Listerman does. He calls himself a model producer but says openly that he runs an escort agency where beautiful women meet rich men for a night or even for arranged marriage. Naturally we only hear his side and he is a canny self-publicist. So it is not clear whether he really moves in the high places that he claims.
Listerman last did a television show like this in 2007, but he hasn’t changed a bit: He still has the same little round glasses, black leather jacket and shaved head.
The show is called “The Call of Fate” because, the channel claimed, Listerman needs to make just one phone call to fix up the winner with the millionaire. “All the best marriages in the world, I make them,” he said in the trailer. And presumably the Church of Scientology has him on speed-dial.
“Listerman appearing on NTV is a symptomatic situation. Although you would have thought, how much further could they go?” said television critic Arina Borodina on Kommersant FM radio.
Ksenia Larina of Echo Moskvy called the late-night show “pornography of the soul.”
NTV has resolutely turned its back on any liberal opposition-minded viewers and is even having fun with its pariah status. It invited a verbally challenged Kremlin youth group member, “Sveta from Ivanovo,” to present a show after a YouTube video of her spouting nonsense about United Russia became a hit. Last week its cameramen accompanied Orthodox activists who interrupted a discussion about Pussy Riot at Teatr.doc by shouting about blasphemy.
In a recent show, the toothy millionaire Vladimir Bulankov romanced some of the women over dinner before taking them all to a gym and watching them fight each other in a boxing ring.
Looking up Bulankov, I found that he is known as a “social lion” in Kiev, where he is a businessman. Bizarrely, the show features Russian women but probably to save money is actually filmed in Kiev, as could be seen from the name of the gym.
Bulankov wore pink suede moccasins and complained to Listerman about the cheap plastic-packed lunches the women were being served in their house. Not because they looked disgusting, though. “I think in three days they’ve already put on weight,” he fretted.
In a later episode, apparently, he watched the women parade in their swimsuits before weighing each one.
The women, who are nearly all slim with long hair and in their late teens or early 20s, spent most of the episode I watched complaining. With some justification: They even had to share beds in the low-budget house. Listerman popped in now and then to swear at the women (bleeped out) and tell them: “I am always right, I am God.”
Yana from Simferopol was sent packing after Bulankov did not like her attempt to wow him with erotic dancing, which he called “vulgar.”
But the main event was the boxing ring, where the women had to fight each other. Listerman described it as a kind of therapy where they could vent their “internal wars with each other.”
“Only until the first blood,” he reassured the women.
The winner was the scariest woman, Yulia, 22, from Nadym in the remote far north. She got a little too enthusiastic with her fists and the other woman, a blonde, burst into tears and got a comforting hug from Bulankov, so it was not clear who had actually won.

TITLE: THE DISH: Mindal Cafe
AUTHOR: By Alastair Gill
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>Third time lucky?</b>
It’s easy to see why at first Angliiskaya Naberezhnaya seems to be an attractive proposition to the restaurateur. It’s just around the corner from the Bronze Horseman and St. Isaac’s Square, and boasts a row of historic mansions and commanding views across the Neva River to the Academy of Arts.
Taking advantage of these indisputable assets, Mindal Caf&#233; opened this summer in the handsome mansion previously occupied by Bella Vista and before that, Kashtany, and besides the interior decoration has inherited the style and quality of its predecessors. However, it has also inherited a problem that appears to be inherent in its location.
But let’s begin with the good things. An outdoor terrace offers unobstructed views across the river, while inside the d&#233;cor is elegantly restrained: Unvarnished floorboards, brushed light wood paneling, a graceful chandelier, white tablecloths and upholstered beige chairs. A vase of fresh Michaelmas daisies stands on each table. The understated but tasteful mood is highlighted by a handsome white dresser, shelves of preserves in aquamarine glass jars, and a live — but oddly quiet — canary perched in a cage on the windowsill. Complimentary ramekins of salted almonds (Mindal is Russian for almond) made a pleasant first impression as we deliberated our choice. The only gripe was the mainstream dance music playing on the radio, which was particularly noticeable given the lack of other diners.
The title of ‘caf&#233;’ is somewhat disingenuous here: The atmosphere is that of a restaurant for the well-heeled, and so are the prices. Soups and salads cost around 300-400 rubles ($10-$13), appetizers begin at 180 rubles ($6), and main courses range from around 300 rubles to 1,300 rubles ($10-$42). Whereas its precursor focused largely on seafood, Mindal Caf&#233;’s chef Marina Naumova offers a menu that is heavily accented toward Georgian and other Eurasian dishes. As devotees of the spicy cuisine from south of the Caucasus, we were keen to see how some of our old favorites measured up, so there was no way we were giving the khachapuri (330 rubles, $10.80) a miss. Our choice was vindicated: The famous cheese bread was golden, moist and perfectly baked. A lively Georgian salad (250 rubles, $8.15) complemented the rich khachapuri with juicy cucumber and the welcome zest of fresh red chili. The dry red Georgian house wine (150 rubles, $4.90) was well balanced and fruity and was excellent value for money. However, the adzhabsandal (400 rubles, $13.70) turned out to be not quite what we expected — instead of the traditional ratatouille-like mix, we were presented with a bowl of roasted peppers, eggplant and zucchini lacking in any sauce. The vegetables were firm and aromatic, although our enthusiasm was slightly dampened by the presence of that old culinary rogue, dill — a very Russian twist on a Georgian dish.
After a substantial pause, the fresh red chili made its second appearance of the meal, bringing extra vim to a colorful interpretation of the Georgian classic, kharcho (spicy beef soup, 300 rubles, $10). The roundup of the greatest hits of Georgian cuisine concluded with an exemplary bowl of tender chakhokhbili (chicken in tomato sauce, 390 rubles, $12.75) spangled with fresh coriander.
So Mindal Caf&#233; gets top marks for food, and the service also merits mentioning: Throughout the meal our waiter was courteous and attentive, and was happy to assist us in the choice of dishes. The mains did take rather a long time to arrive but given the quality of the food that can be overlooked. However, the elephant in the (empty) room is the lack of clientele. We spent the best part of our meal dining alone, which doesn’t bode well for the attempts of this restaurant to escape the fate of its short-lived predecessors. The problem with this location is that it is difficult to see where customers are going to come from. In the summer months the steady stream of cruise ship passengers from the dock nearby and wedding guests from the palace next door should be enough to fill tables, and the terrace is an extra draw. But the big question is whether this excellent restaurant is capable of attracting the custom it deserves during the winter months. A tough nut to crack.

TITLE: Odessa Has Chutzpah
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ODESSA, Ukraine — “The air conditioner is broken, but you’re very welcome to come in,” an attractive restaurant hostess says with a charming smile. “Here in Odessa, you cannot feel let down.”
Situated on the Black Sea in southern Ukraine, the nation’s fourth-largest city is as renowned for its warm water seaport as for its humor.
Native son Mikhail Zhvanetsky, a beloved satirist, once wrote: “In Odessa they joke without end, but this is not humor, it’s a condition caused by heat and audacity.”
Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, who co-authored two of the Soviet Union’s most-famous comedies, “The Twelve Chairs” and its sequel, “The Little Golden Calf,” grew up in Odessa. Many of their works poke fun at the Soviet system.
Isaak Babel, heralded as one of the greatest writers of Russian prose, was also born in Odessa. His collections of short stories, including the acclaimed “Red Cavalry” and “Tales of Odessa,” are considered masterpieces of Russian literature.
Zhvanetsky, Ilf, Petrov and Babel were all members of the city’s once-prominent Jewish population, which at the turn of the 20th century made up nearly 40 percent of the populace.
Although pogroms and emigration have left the Jewish community a shadow of its former self, its influence remains clearly palpable in the city’s cultural identity.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many Jews moved to New York’s Brighton Beach, settling in an area now called “Little Odessa.”
Russian director Leonid Gaidai noted the similarity in his 1992 comedy, “Weather Is Good on Deribasovskaya, It Rains Again on Brighton Beach.” The title refers to a pedestrian walkway in central Odessa, named after Jose de Ribas, a Spanish nobleman who founded the city while serving as an admiral in the Russian imperial navy.
Odessa’s population is predominantly Russian-speaking. And with a diverse demography including Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Romanians and Turks, many here consider themselves as being of one ethnicity: Odessian.
In a tribute to the city’s uniqueness, street vendors hawk “Russian-Odessian” dictionaries, featuring comical scenarios. In one, a recently widowed Odessian inquires at a funeral home: “How much would a funeral cost? … Oh, and without a body?”
The ideal place to learn the “Odessian” language is at a cafe or aboard one of the old-fashioned trolleys that criss-cross the town.
Conversations about politics and daily life are loud and common, and Russian, Ukrainian and even Georgian leaders are discussed with the same kind of familiarity that someone might use when discussing neighbors.
The name of the modern city of Odessa, founded in 1794, has a disputed origin. Some historians say the then-budding metropolis was renamed to honor the ancient Greek city of Odessos, erroneously thought to have been located here.
But that archaic city was in fact located near the present-day Bulgarian town of Varna, some 400 kilometers to the southwest. Others say “Odessa” is actually a derivation of “Yedisan,” meaning “seven flags,” the Turkish-language title of the imperial Ottoman settlement in the area.
Under the Russian Empire, Odessa became one of the nation’s main ports. It received honorable awards from the tsar after withstanding unified British and French attracts during the Crimean War.
Built by many prominent Russian, Italian and French architects throughout the 19th century, downtown Odessa is essentially devoid of the Soviet architecture that permeates the nation.
A popular warm weather destination among Russians that harks back to Soviet days, the city is now becoming trendy with Moscow’s bohemian crowd.
Tatler magazine’s Russian edition recently called Odessa a “colossal hub of energy” in an article showcasing interviews with celebrities who said they prefer Odessa to France or Spain. In 2011, Odessa was named “best city to live” by Focus magazine.
Many Ukrainians are also moving to Odessa, which is slowly changing the city’s historically mixed demographic. “The city is losing its traditional coloration,” local historian Sergei Valenrod said in an interview. But, he added, aesthetically the city remains relatively unchanged.
With cheaper prices than Russia’s Sochi, Odessa remains a great destination for tourists seeking a warm-weather break from St. Petersburg. According to port authorities, 50,000 tourists arrived in Odessa by cruise ship last year.

<b>What to do if you have two hours</b>
If you stop in Odessa during a sea cruise or simply have a long layover on a flight to Kiev, take a stroll around the famous Deribasovskaya street in the heart of downtown Odessa. Many nice cafes dot the pedestrian walkway.
Then head over to Primorsky Bulvar, with its monument to one of the city’s founding fathers, Armand-Emmanuel de Vignerot du Plessis, better-known as the duke of Richelieu.
The French aristocrat emigrated to Russia after the French Revolution and became a devoted state servant in the court of the tsar. In 1803, Alexander I appointed him governor of Odessa.
The duke earned respect from locals for facilitating trade and investing his own money in the beautification of the city. In 1814, he returned to France, where he became minister of foreign affairs.
The monument is a popular meeting place and tourist destination. Nearby is a picturesque view from atop the Potemkin Stairs.
Consisting of 192 steps, this site was made famous by a scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s classic film “The Battleship Potemkin,” about a mutiny against tsarist officers on the eponymous cruiser in 1905.
In the haunting scene, a baby carriage plunges down the stairs after soldiers shoot into a crowd that has gathered to support the rebel crewmen.
For some fresh snacks for the rest of your journey, be sure to visit the large Privoz market at 14 Privoznaya Ulitsa. Remember, for a good discount, it’s OK to haggle.

<b>What to do if you have two days</b>
If you have a couple of days, check out some of the city’s museums.
The Museum of Western and Eastern Art (9 Pushkinskaya Ulitsa; +380 48-722-4815; www.oweamuseum.odessa.ua), built in 1858, has a permanent display of Italian and Dutch art, including the renowned “Luke the Evangelist” by 17th-century portrait artist Frans Hals.
The painting was briefly stolen from Moscow’s Pushkin Art Museum in 1965, but it was later recovered by the KGB. The story was featured in the well-known Soviet detective novel “The Return of the Holy Luke” in 1971.
Odessa’s Military History Museum (2 Pirogovskaya Ulitsa; +380 48 29 8125) offers an overview of the battles fought in the region as well as mementos from the times. Stormed by Nazi forces during World War II, then liberated by the Red Army in 1944, the city was especially affected by the war.
“You, who have found this note, report that I died not on my knees,” a Red Army soldier wrote in a chilling note displayed in the museum.
But despite the harsh times, Odessa’s trademark humor persisted. To put psychological pressure on the Nazi infantry, locals altered tractors to resemble tanks and sounded ship alarms. The tractor-tanks were called Na Ispug, “for a scare.”
A visit to Odessa is not complete without a trip to Arcadia Beach. Located to the west of the city, Arcadia is home to popular nightclubs frequented by the Russian elite, including billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov.
The area’s private beaches are very clean, with polite personnel, in contrast to the droves of Russian tourists who try to present themselves as masters of the universe.

<b>What to do with the kids</b>
A popular tourist destination, Odessa has plenty of family-friendly attractions. The Nemo dolphinarium (25 Lanzheron Beach; +380 48 720 7070; www.nemo.od.ua) is advertised as the largest of its kind in the former Soviet Union. It has a variety of shows for children and even provides an opportunity to swim with the dolphins.
Interestingly enough, Ukraine has a long tradition of working with dolphins. During the Cold War, it had a secret base for training dolphins for military operations.
With its 1,600 animals, from elephants to Amur tigers, the Odessa Zoo (25 Novoshepnoi Ryad; +380 48 722 55 89; zoo.od.ua) is also a great place to take the kids. Plans for building the park in Odessa, which has mild winters, were made as early as 1889, but the project was completed only after World War I, in 1922.
The zoo also allows visitors to sponsor a particular animal.

<b>Nightlife</b>
Those looking for an all-night party should visit the city’s most popular nightclub, Itaka (Arcadia Beach; +380 0482 349 188; itaka-club.com.ua). The club, which can accommodate up to 3,000 people, has a restaurant that serves European and Mediterranean cuisine as well as a concert hall where popular Russian and Ukrainian pop singers perform almost daily.
Opera and ballet lovers will be delighted to see Odessa’s national opera and ballet theater (1 Chaikovsky Pereulok +380 487 80 15 09; opera.odessa.ua), which stages such operas as “Prince Igor,” “Aida” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” The theater building is a masterpiece of its own, built in 1887 by top Austrian architects who also designed theaters in Budapest and Dresden.

<b>Where to eat</b>
Compote (70 Panteleimonovskaya Ulitsa; +380 482 345 145; www.compot.ua), which takes its name from a drink made of fruits stewed or cooked in syrup, is one of the most popular local restaurants serving traditional Ukrainian cuisine.
But the food is as eclectic as the interior, which features cozy sofas and pictures of Hollywood celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart. An average meal with wine will cost you $30.
Another local food option is Dacha (85 Frantsuzky Bulvar; +380 48 714 3119, www.dacha.com.ua/ru), built inside an old country mansion with an interior straight out of the 1960s. In the summer, guests can dine under white umbrellas on the veranda, surrounded by greenery. An average meal for two with borshch, dumplings and homemade vodka will cost you $45.

<b>Where to stay</b>
The five-star Bristol hotel (15 Pushkinskaya Ulitsa. +380 487 9655) in the heart of Odessa is one of the most elegant and stylish buildings in the city. Built a century ago, the hotel was a favorite of many prominent dignitaries, including American novelist Theodore Dreiser and Russian poet Ivan Bunin.
Rooms range in price from $200 for a single to $1,400 for the presidential suite.
Another option is the reconstructed two-story mansion (30 Rishelyevskaya Ulitsa; +380 048 785 1653; derishele.od.ua) also located in the center of the city, a former guest house of the duke of Richelieu. The mansion has a cozy and relaxed atmosphere and is situated within a quiet courtyard. A single room costs $45.

<b>Conversation starters</b>
Any Odessian will be pleased if you compliment the city and mention novels by well-known local writers. If you ask someone on the street for directions you may just find yourself immersed in a long conversation — on any subject.

<b>How to get there</b>
Trains to Odessa run three or four times a week from St. Petersburg’s Vitebsky Station. The journey takes about 35 hours. A roundtrip will set you back $325.
Rossiya operates four flights a week to Odessa, while S7 Airlines and Serosvit offer indirect flights from about 7,000 rubles ($225) one way. A nonstop flight takes about two-and-a-half hours.
<hr />
<b>Odessa</b>
Population: 1 million
Mayor: Alexei Kostusev
Main Industries: seaport, tourism, heavy machinery
Founded in 1794
Interesting Fact No. 1: The paving stones in the famous Deribasovskaya street were made out of lava from Italy’s Mt. Vesuvius two centuries ago. 
Interesting Fact No. 2: Red Army Marshal Georgy Zhukov, credited with liberating the Soviet Union from Nazi occupation and conquering Berlin, commanded local military forces and played a lead role in cracking down on criminal gangs in the city.
Helpful Contact: Svetlana Boyeva, head of the foreign relations department in the city council (+380-48-725-3297).
Sister Cities: Varna (Bulgaria), Baltimore (U.S.), Rostov-on-Don (Russia), Split (Croatia), Marseille (France)

<b>Major Businesses</b>
• Krayan Holding Company 
(2 Kosovskaya Ulitsa; +380-48-738-0831; krayan.odessa.ua). Founded in 1863, the crane producer became one of the leading enterprises in the Soviet Union, shipping heavy cranes throughout the nation and exporting them abroad.
• LUKoil Refinery Plant 
(1/1 Shkodovaya Gora; +380-48-236-6003; luk-odnpz.com/main/default.asp). Built during Soviet times, the refinery now belongs to LUKoil and has undergone a major renovation.
• Odeskabel (144 Nikolayevskaya Doroga; +380-48-716-1123; odeskabel.com). The biggest cable producer in Ukraine.
• Odessa Champaign Factory 
(36 Frantsuzsky Bulvar; champagne.odessa.ua). A well-known maker of sparkling wines.

TITLE: Will Counter-Revolution Come on Horseback?
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A pair of modern-day Cossacks begin their patrol at 8 p.m. on a cool September evening. They’re on the lookout for lawbreakers: Drunks, drug addicts, youths out after curfew — anybody disturbing the peace in Lyublino, a quiet residential district in southeast Moscow.
Andrei Pichugin and Nikolai Vladimirtsev, self-styled descendants of the tsar’s fearsome horsemen, wear snappy blue uniforms and polished black shoes. Pichugin periodically doffs a peaked service cap during the three-hour foot patrol, revealing a glistening crown of sweat.
Vladimirtsev, 22, is baby-faced and soft-spoken. His day job is photographer at local sports events. Pichugin, 23, short and squat, is in law school. The two met as undergraduates.
“People like to ask us, ‘Where’s your horse? Where’s your sword?’” Pichugin says, passing a group of teenagers drinking beer on the hood of a parked car in an otherwise empty courtyard. One teenager, oblivious to or undeterred by the Cossacks’ red and silver shoulder patches, gives a derisive whistle.
The men keep walking. The hood of a car is considered “indoors,” Vladimirtsev said. It’s legal.
In dozens of cities across Russia, people like Pichugin and Vladimirtsev, members of state-registered Cossack organizations, are increasingly assuming low-level security functions previously reserved for the police, typically patrolling after dark and sometimes securing demonstrations.
The men are unarmed, except for an occasional Cossack saber, and are legally forbidden to do anything except prevent a crime in progress and alert the police. They cannot take suspects into police custody, but merely hold them still until the police arrive.
Nevertheless, as Cossacks’ numbers and ambitions grow, they’ve been raising eyebrows from locals and activists who see in them the rise of a pro-Kremlin paramilitary force, unbound by law, waiting to be sicced on enemies of the state, just like their ancestors were.
Those fears appeared to be confirmed in August, when Krasnodar Governor Alexander Tkachyov announced a plan to hire Cossacks to help police target illegal migrants — mostly from Russia’s Muslim southern flank — to crack down on crime and maintain the region’s racial balance.
“We’ll squeeze them out, create order, ask for documents and enforce immigration rules: ‘Where are you from? Why?’ etc.,” Tkachyov told a gathering of police officers. “I’m confident that there’s no other option.”
Under the plan, Cossack watchmen would receive additional police powers and, for the first time, a salary.
The speech sparked outrage from rights activists, who accused Tkachyov of inflaming ethnic tensions. Alexander Sokolov, a member of the Public Chamber, asked the prosecutor general to check the remarks for evidence of illegal extremism.
Experts interviewed by The St. Petersburg Times described the Cossack movement as part of a Kremlin-guided revival that began in the waning days of the Soviet Union and has continued piecemeal into the present, with Cossacks coming increasingly under the Kremlin’s control.


Official estimates of Russia’s Cossack population vary. A 2002 nationwide census found 140,000 Cossacks, but the true number is currently closer to 7 million, according to Alexander Beglov, chairman of the presidential council on Cossack affairs.
That would make Cossacks the country’s second largest “ethnic” group behind Russians and ahead of Tatars. (Cossacks were listed as a subethnicity of Russian in 2002 and a separate ethnicity in the 2010 census.)
Since the late 1980s, the government has co-opted Cossacks, a historically separatist ethnicity, by redefining them as a social group loyal to the government, said Marina Ryblova, a Cossacks expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Rostov-on-Don.
The government defines a Cossack as anybody who joins a Cossack organization and carries out government service, and in 1995, it established a register of organizations that excluded fringe groups.
“The state’s job is to help the Cossacks, to draw them to military service and military-patriotic education for children,” Vladimir Putin wrote in an extensive article on nationalities in Russia during his presidential campaign in February.
Today, 426 registered Cossack organizations have a combined 936,000 members, according to the Federal Drug Control Service, which conducts anti-drug operations with 100 of them. At the top of the hierarchy are 11 organizations, known misleadingly as “armies,” that bring together smaller regional and local groups.
“There are people dressed in Cossack uniforms, but there aren’t any Cossack armies, as in real military organizations,” Rublyova said.
The functions of the Cossack organizations range from sponsoring local sporting events and participating in Victory Day parades to organizing patriotic and spiritual programs. There are also 30 schools for Cossack cadets, which prepare children for military service.
The local Cossack society in southeast Moscow that counts Pichugin and Vladimirtsev as members is part of the Central Cossack Army, which has the distinction of being the only army whose leader, or ataman, is not also a state official.
The other atamans include a State Duma deputy, a deputy governor and two high-ranking regional advisers. By law, atamans are approved by the president, who also presides over the presidential council on Cossack affairs. Council members include major Cossack leaders and key state officials such as Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the defense industry.


Hour three of the patrol. No trouble so far; the playgrounds are empty and dark. Pichugin points to his old school, a squat, geometric structure that looks like a failed game of Tetris. 
For Pichugin and Vladimirtsev, the horseless horsemen of Lyublino, being a Cossack is about patriotism. “A Cossack is an upstanding person who loves his motherland,” Pichugin says. “A patriot loves his motherland in words only, but a Cossack does in his actions. Always in his actions.
“We want to change something with own hands. For our apartment building, for our own region,” he says. “We want kids to grow up playing sports instead of drinking.”
The men say they’re satisfied with the government of Vladimir Putin and have no problem with opposition protests as long as protesters follow the law. “People have the freedom to express themselves,” Pichugin says.
A reporter broaches the subject of Pussy Riot, the punk band that made international headlines when three members were jailed for an anti-Putin performance in a Moscow church.
Pichugin chuckles. “They shouldn’t have sent Pussy Riot to prison. They should have lowered their trousers and taken a switch to their backsides. That’s the Cossack way.”


In Krasnodar, a city in the heart of Cossack country 1,200 kilometers south of Moscow, Maxim Petrenko sees illegal migrants selling drugs to children, girls smoking cigarettes, the occasional “depraved” rock-and-roll concert, and a new, unofficial marriage registry for gays — and he doesn’t like it.
Petrenko, a local nationalist leader, said influence from the West and migrants from the East are weakening Slavs’ grip on the Kuban, the Cossacks’ homeland, which includes the Krasnodar, Adygea and Karachay-Cherkessia regions and parts of the Stavropol region.
He said it’s about control, not racism, which he renounces. “Every nation should have a territory where its interests come first. … Russians should feel that they are the masters of their land,” he said by telephone, echoing comments made by Governor Tkachyov.
Petrenko thinks that the Cossack “moral police” are the answer. Regular police are bound by regulations and rules of conduct that limit their authority to the letter of the law, he said.
“I can grab a rude man by his little elbow and take him outside for a Cossack chat, without violence, just lay things out for him. … A police officer will say, ‘What’s going on? There’s nothing in the law about how he should act,’” Petrenko said.
On Sept. 1, their first day on the job, Cossack watchmen in the city of Krasnodar detained more than 100 “lawbreakers,” including three people wanted by the police, and returned 35 minors out past curfew to their families, the local Yuga.ru news portal reported.
The mayor immediately announced plans to boost their numbers from 150 to 250 in October. Under his plan, which will cost the region about 650 million rubles ($20.5 million) per year, Cossack patrollers will receive a monthly salary of 20,000 to 25,000 rubles ($635 to $780), about the salary of a police officer, Tkachyov said.
Semyon Simonov, who monitors migrants’ rights for watchdog Memorial in Sochi, described Tkachyov’s proposal as a dangerous populist ploy.
“Maybe after the floods in Krymsk, it was an attempt to improve his image among people who are upset about immigration,” he said. “Tkachyov is that kind of person. This is his essence. He’s made similar declarations before, such as saying that certain last names should be illegal.”
Cossacks are the main nationalist force in the Krasnodar region and have held that status for years, Simonov said. In the mid-2000s, they helped authorities evict thousands of Muslim Meskhetian Turks, many of whom resettled in the United States as refugees.
Simonov said it’s not uncommon for local Cossacks to hold anti-Roma and anti-Semitic views.
“I think bringing people with these convictions to maintain public order is generally dangerous and could become a reason for an interethnic conflict,” he said by telephone. “Nationalists are getting ready to join these units and participate in raids.”
Ironically, the government’s demand for laborers to build infrastructure for the 2014 Winter Olympics has been a significant draw for migrants, Simonov said.
Petrenko, the local nationalist leader, is an assistant to Liberal Democratic Party heavyweight and Duma Deputy Vladimir Ovsyannikov and is himself running for a seat in the regional legislature.


Pichugin points to a wide gap in the skyline, interrupted by billowing smokestacks, rotund storage tanks and tangles of pipes. That’s the largest oil refinery in Moscow, he says. It fuels the entire city.
They walk to a cluster of high-rise apartments on the edge of town, through a swamp that Vladimirtsev calls “a forest.” The air smells like rotten eggs and car exhaust.
“That’s Lyublino smelling like Lyublino,” Pichugin jokes.
For Cossack leaders, political conservatism trumps Cossack ancestry when it comes to determining who’s a Cossack and who’s just wearing a sheepskin hat in public.
“The government sees Cossacks, first and foremost, as a group inclined toward patriotism,” said Olga Rvacheva, who studies modern Cossacks at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Beglov, the chairman of the presidential council on Cossack affairs, said in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio last year that a Cossack is anybody who feels like a Cossack and follows “centuries-old” rules and traditions.
“Orthodox Christianity is one of the signs of a true Cossack,” he said, adding that Cossacks have “always supported the laws of the state, the fatherland and the Orthodox Church.”
Patriarch Kirill told the presidential council in 2009 that Cossacks have always kept alive the flame of patriotism, faith in the church and a readiness to sacrifice themselves for their values.
Pichugin and Vladimirtsev, the Lyublino watchmen, are therefore Cossacks by Beglov’s definition. Pichugin’s closest Cossack relative is an ancestor who fought in the Russo-Turkish war of the late 1870s. Vladimirtsev’s grandfather had Cossack blood.
The traditions were lost during the Soviet era, they said, so they’re starting from scratch, learning to wield the Cossack saber, or shashka, in the hope of resurrecting an idea of true Russianness that seems more desirable than any modern alternative.
The Orthodox Church and Cossacks, “manly men standing guard on frontiers,” are symbols of authentic “Russianness” that have been used to reconstruct Russia’s post-Soviet national identity, said Shane O’Rourke, a professor at the University of York and author of “The Cossacks,” a history of the military caste. But the idea that Cossacks have always been loyal defenders of church and state, as officials often claim, is a lie, he said.
“All the great rebellions against the Russian state before 1905 were led by Cossacks. That’s what made the Cossacks dangerous,” he said.
Furthermore, while Cossacks were exceptionally loyal and lethal against foreign enemies, many rebelled when asked to attack anti-government protesters in 1905.
Cossacks’ ethnic purity and historical loyalty to the Orthodox Church also appear to be politically motivated inventions. Cossacks often mixed with the people they were supposed to be fighting; many were Old Believers, and some were even Buddhists, O’Rourke said.
The very word “Cossack” is a Turkish word meaning a warrior or brigand, he said.
None of this stops some modern-day nationalists, often less affable than Pichugin and Vladimirtsev, from taking up the Cossack banner in defense of the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church.
Men in Cossack uniform were spotted at pro-Putin events from Moscow to Vladivostok in the run-up to March elections. In April, a group of them pounced on pro-Pussy Riot demonstrators in Krasnodar, seizing posters and tearing them to shreds.
“We must show how we feel about these morons’ pranks,” said Nikolai Doluda, ataman of the Donskoi Army and deputy governor of Krasnodar, referring to Pussy Riot’s February performance in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral.
In Ukraine, Cossack activists recently nailed shut the door to the office of Femen, the feminist group known for topless protests against the Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian government and other causes. On another occasion, Cossacks provoked a bloody melee with riot police who prevented them from raising a large cross, without permission, on the outskirts of Feodosia, in Crimea.
“Aggressive nationalism in Cossack circles is a very complicated question. There’s no way around it,” said Sergei Balakleyev, editor-in-chief of Kazaki v Edinstve (Cossacks United) magazine. “There have been excesses, unworthy behavior, in my personal opinion.”
Nationalist Cossack groups tend not to register with the government or the Union of Russia Cossacks, and Balakleyev refused to estimate their numbers, arguing that the majority of Cossacks are mainstream patriots, eager to defend their land, faith and family.