SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1728 (39), Wednesday, September 26, 2012
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TITLE: Wimm-Bill-Dann Accused of Promoting Homosexuality on Milk Cartons
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A nationalist organization has accused food and beverage giant Wimm-Bill-Dann of promoting homosexuality by including a rainbow on the packaging of its Jolly Milkman products.
The St. Petersburg office of the group People's Council (Narodny Sobor) has filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General's Office regarding the offending dairy products.
The rainbow is "the international symbol of the homosexual movement," Anatoly Artyukh, head of the group's St. Petersburg branch, told Interfax on Friday.
"I consider it to be blatant promotion of vice," he said.
The St. Petersburg city legislature passed a law in March instituting fines for the "promotion of homosexuality to minors." Companies can be fined up to 500,000 rubles ($16,000) for violating the law.
The traditional packaging for the Jolly Milkman line of dairy products apparently does not feature a rainbow, according to images on the brand's website. But a limited-edition series of milk cartons released under the brand does contain a rainbow.
Wimm-Bill-Dann, the country's largest food and beverage producer, has been selling dairy products under the Jolly Milkman (Vesyoly Molochnik) brand since 2000. Goods including milk, yogurt, kefir and tvorog are sold under the brand nationwide.
Wimm-Bill-Dann is owned by PepsiCo, which bought the company in 2010 for $3.8 billion.
Artyukh vowed to organize protests against products sold under the brand beginning next week.
People's Council has fought against what it has described as homosexual propaganda before, including by pop singer Madonna. The group sued Madonna last month following a concert she gave in St. Petersburg at which she spoke in favor of gay rights.
TITLE: Next Cold War? Gas Drilling Boom Rattles Russia
AUTHOR: By Kevin Begos
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PITTSBURGH — The Kremlin is watching, European nations are rebelling, and some suspect Moscow is secretly bankrolling a campaign to derail the West's strategic plans.
It's not some Cold War movie; it's about the U.S. boom in natural gas drilling, and the political implications are enormous.
Like falling dominoes, the drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is shaking up world energy markets from Washington to Moscow to Beijing. Some predict what was once unthinkable: that the U.S. won't need to import natural gas in the near future, and that Russia could be the big loser.
"This is where everything is being turned on its head," said Fiona Hill, an expert on Russia at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. "Their days of dominating the European gas markets are gone."
Any nations that trade in energy could potentially gain or lose.
"The relative fortunes of the United States, Russia, and China - and their ability to exert influence in the world - are tied in no small measure to global gas developments," Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government concluded in a report this summer.
The story began to unfold a few years ago, as advances in drilling opened up vast reserves of gas buried in deep shale rock, such as the Marcellus formation in Pennsylvania and the Barnett, in Texas.
Experts had been predicting that the U.S. was running out of natural gas, but then shale gas began to flood the market, and prices plunged.
Russia had been exporting vast quantities to Europe and other countries for about $10 per unit, but the current price in the U.S. is now about $3 for the same quantity. That kind of math got the attention of energy companies, and politicians, around the world.
Some European governments began to envision a future with less Russian natural gas. In 2009, Russia had cut off gas shipments via Ukraine for nearly two weeks amid a price and payment dispute, and more than 15 European countries were sent scrambling to find alternative sources of energy.
The financial stakes are huge. Russia's Gazprom energy corporation, which is state-controlled, had $44 billion in profits last year. Gazprom, based in Moscow, is the world's largest producer of natural gas and exports much of it to other countries.
But last month Gazprom halted plans to develop a new arctic gas field, saying it couldn't justify the investment now, and its most recent financial report showed profits had dropped by almost 25 percent.
The U.S. presidential campaigns have already addressed the strategic potential.
A campaign position paper for Republican Mitt Romney said he "will pursue policies that work to decrease the reliance of European nations on Russian sources of energy."
In early September, President Barack Obama said the U.S. could "develop a hundred-year supply of natural gas that's right beneath our feet," which would "cut our oil imports in half by 2020 and support more than 600,000 new jobs in natural gas alone."
Poland's Ministry of the Environment wrote in a statement to The Associated Press that "an increased production of natural gas from shale formations in Europe will limit the import via pipelines from Algeria and Russia."
The issue has reached the highest levels of the Kremlin, too.
Hill, of the Brookings think tank, heard President Vladimir Putin speak in late 2011 at a Moscow gathering of academics and media. She said in a blog post that "the only time I thought that he became truly engaged was when he wanted to explain to us how dangerous fracking was."
But one top Gazprom executive said shale gas will actually help the country in the long run. Sergei Komlev, the head of export contracts and pricing, acknowledged the recent disruptions but predicted that the U.S. fuels wouldn't make their way to Europe on any important scale.
"Although we heard that the motive of these activities was to decrease dependence of certain countries on Gazprom gas, the end results of these efforts will be utterly favorable to us," Komlev wrote in an email to the AP. "The reason for remaining tranquil is that we do not expect the currently abnormally low prices in the USA to last for long."
In other words, if the marketplace for natural gas expands, Russia will have even more potential customers because it has tremendous reserves.
Komlev even thanked the U.S. for taking the role of "shale gas global lobbyist" and said Gazprom believes natural gas is more environmentally friendly than other fossil fuels.
"Gazprom group generally views shale gas as a great gift to the industry," he wrote. When natural gas prices rise, "it will make the U.S. plans to become a major gas exporter questionable."
Whether exports happen involves a dizzying mix of math, politics and marketplaces, along with the fact that U.S. natural gas companies - and their shareholders - want prices to rise, too.
James Diemer, an executive vice president for Pace Global, an international consulting company based in Virginia, believes that shale gas costs more to extract than the current market price. Pace, which recently released a report called "Shale Gas: The Numbers vs. The Hype," has been studying shale gas for Gazprom and other clients.
"The capital will stop flowing" to U.S. shale gas, and the price will go up, Diemer predicted. He would not divulge the kind of work Pace is doing for Gazprom. Pace is owned by Siemens, a German company.
Pace's work for Gazprom has raised some eyebrows in Washington, and Hill noted that industry watchers in Europe already believe Russia is bankrolling environmental groups that are loudly opposing plans for fracking in Europe, which could cut down on Russia's natural gas market.
"I've heard a lot of rumors that the Russians were funding this. I have no proof whatsoever," she said, noting that many critics give the rumors credence because Gazprom owns media companies throughout Russia and Europe that have run stories examining the environmental risks of fracking.
Gazprom dismissed such conspiracy theories, saying that "nothing could be more out of touch with Gazprom's inherent interests," because the shale boom promotes gas as an abundant, affordable energy source.
Many U.S. media outlets, including the AP, have run stories about shale gas and the environment. Regulators contend that overall, water and air pollution problems are rare, but environmental groups and some scientists say there hasn't been enough research.
U.S. energy companies are eager to export natural gas products. The issue is sensitive enough that the Obama administration has delayed a decision on export permits until after the election. In April, the Sierra Club sued to block one plan for exports, saying it would drive up the cost of domestic natural gas and lead to environmental damage.
But just the potential for exports could allow others to seek lower prices from Russia, said Kenneth Medlock III of the James Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.
"It changes the position at the bargaining table for everybody," Medlock said. "You stack all that up, and you start to realize, `Wow.'"
There's one enormous unknown with the shale gas bounty in the U.S., Hill said. Unlike in Russia and some other countries, neither the government nor any one private company can really control or direct it.
"The question is, can the U.S. do what the Russians do, which is use this as a political tool?" she said.
TITLE: Moscow Silent Ahead of Key Georgian Vote
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: When Georgia elects a new parliament Monday, the small South Caucasus nation is likely to get the most global attention it's received since its 2008 war with Russia.
The vote has been labeled historic because the parliament will elect a prime minister who, thanks to a 2010 constitutional reform, will become more powerful than the president, who hitherto called the shots in the country of some 4 million inhabitants.
It also is the first serious test for President Mikheil Saakashvili, who weathered mass protests in 2007 and the conflict over South Ossetia one year later and is due to step down in 2013 after two five-year terms because the Constitution bars him from serving a third.
After the 2008 conflict, the Kremlin branded Saakashvili a war criminal and severed all ties with Georgia.
The parliamentary race is between two main rivals, Saakashvili's United National Movement and the Georgian Dream opposition coalition of billionaire businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili.
Most polls predict that the governing party will win, and pundits point out that the voting system favors the incumbent "party of power" by allocating 73 of the 150 parliamentary seats in first-past-the-post contests, in which newcomers typically fare badly.
Pundits have said that while Ivanishvili clearly presents the lesser evil from the Kremlin's perspective, Moscow should keep clear of making any public endorsement.
Nobody of political significance in Russia has made any public comments about the vote.
Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin pundit and vice rector of the Plekhanov Institute, said any public comment "would be used against Russian interests." He added that by airing any preference, Moscow would only harm "its" candidate.
"Being pro-Russia means discrediting yourself in today's Georgia," he said.
In fact, Saakashvili has accused Moscow of bankrolling Ivanishvili.
He told supporters at a Sept. 8 rally that Russia threw $2 billion into the elections "to finance its candidate." He later made it clear that he was referring to Ivanishvili.
The billionaire, who earned much of his fortune in Moscow in the 1990s, has in turn promised to improve ties with Georgia's northern neighbor while maintaining a pro-Western course.
Saakashvili also claimed that revelations about prisoner abuse in Tbilisi were part of a Moscow-orchestrated "conspiracy" ahead of the election, with the goal of forcing Georgia "back into Russia's imperial space."
Furthermore, Saakashvili suggested that Moscow was mulling another invasion by holding a large military exercise in the North Caucasus ahead of the election. The exercise ended Sept. 22.
"The occupant of our territories has vowed to accomplish in the next few weeks and months what it failed to do in 2008 and to use elections for this purpose," he said on Sept. 21, the Civil.ge news site reported.
While Moscow has kept mum, Western public opinion has shifted away from Saakashvili, whose reign was depicted as a beacon of hope for democracy when he assumed power in January 2004, following the bloodless Rose Revolution.
Lincoln Mitchell, an associate at Columbia University's Harriman Institute and one of the most prominent U.S. experts on Georgia, expressed sympathy for Ivanishvili in a documentary film posted on YouTube in mid-September.
Markov said victory for Ivanishvili would mean a "pivotal change of the situation," which could lead to much improvement.
A Russia-Georgia thaw would be welcomed not only by the hundreds of thousands of Georgians living in Russia, who have been hit hard by stringent work permit and visa requirements. Businesses are also set to benefit if Moscow lifts its ban on Georgian wine and mineral water, which has been in place since 2006.
However, most observers agree that the chances of an opposition victory are slim and that the main question is not whether Ivanishvili could win, but whether he could lose.
Georgia has never seen a peaceful handover of power in its turbulent post-Soviet history, and many experts fear that violence could set in if the loser refuses to accept the election results.
"The danger of civil war is big," Markov said.
Some even aggravated those fears with talk of the threat of a renewed Russian invasion.
Patrick Worms, a Belgian public relations strategist who advised the Georgian government during the 2008 war, said in a Facebook post that Moscow could send troops if Ivanishvili supporters took to the streets.
"A few agents provocateurs in the demonstrations lead to [incite] violence. Russian forces pour in to 'restore order' and install the 'rightful winner,'" he said, echoing an earlier statement by Saakashvili.
While few believe in the likelihood of a renewed conflict, many doubt that ties between Moscow and Tbilisi could really improve anytime soon.
Alexei Malashenko, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, pointed out that the mutually incompatible positions on Georgia's separatist territories are unlikely to go away anytime soon.
After the 2008 war, Russia recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent and stationed significant numbers of troops in the two areas. The territories had broken away from Georgia after violent conflict in the early 1990s.
"Moscow won't change its decision to recognize them, and no Georgian parliament or leader will give up those territories," Malashenko said.
TITLE: Moscow Court Postpones Pussy Riot Appeal
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Russian court has postponed the appeal of three members of jailed rock band Pussy Riot until Oct. 10 after one group member fired her lawyers.
The three performers were sentenced in August to two years in prison for performing a "punk prayer" against President Vladimir Putin at Moscow's main cathedral.
Yekaterina Samutsevich announced at the opening of hearings that she recused her three lawyers over an unspecified disagreement.
A day before the hearing, the Russian Orthodox Church said the rockers would deserve mercy if they offer repentance for their stunt. The move followed a statement by the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who said that keeping them in prison any longer would be "unproductive."
TITLE: Leningrad Region’s New $130M Baltic Port Gives Export Flexibility
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The new oil terminal at Ust-Luga went into operation Thursday as part of an effort to ease Russia's reliance on transit countries.
The terminal is located on the Baltic coast close to the border with Estonia.
The Ust-Luga terminal, which can handle about 15 percent of the country's oil exports, is likely to take away business from Ukraine, Belarus and Poland.
It sits at the end of phase two of Russia's Baltic Pipeline System, which the government ordered constructed after a transit spat with Belarus in 2007.
"Many European countries now don't get the money they used to get," said Konstantin Khamlai, director of Nevskaya Pipeline Company, which owns the terminal.
The company, half owned by Swiss-based oil trader Gunvor, has been testing the terminal since the end of March, shipping a total of 7.5 million metric tons of crude. It had to carry out the tests — which essentially amounted to additional scrutiny over operations — after several cracks appeared on the berths last year, causing an outcry from international environmentalists.
Thursday's opening comes after the authorities gave full permission to operate the terminal, deeming that there was no danger of recurring cracks. Gunvor's co-owner is Gennady Timchenko, an acquaintance of President Vladimir Putin.
Accompanying a group of reporters on the pristine black asphalt at the terminal, Khamlai jokingly proposed that they jump to make sure the ground would hold a harder impact.
"There are no cavities underneath," he said.
Tankers from the terminal will sail to destinations like Polish ports, Rotterdam and Southeast Asia, Khamlai said.
The company is operating only one of the two berths, however. Following an unbinding recommendation from the authorities, it has decided to have workers sink rocks to the sea floor to reinforce the bottom around the other berth just in case a tanker, for whatever reason, engages its propeller while moored. It was presumed the turbulence from the spinning could potentially move the ground and ultimately cause more cracks on the wharf.
"It's an additional measure that insures us against some hypothetical troubles," Khamlai said.
Nevskaya Pipeline plans to complete the work by the end of the year.
It aims to have handled a total of 15 million tons of crude this year. The terminal's full annual capacity is 30 million tons.
The Ust-Luga terminal isn't just for Russian crude. A fifth of its oil has been coming from Kazakhstan, Khamlai said.
Russian oil travels abroad chiefly through the Black Sea port of Novorossisk, the Baltic Sea port of Primorsk and the Druzhba Pipeline, whose northern spur runs through Belarus and Poland. There are also Ukrainian ports and the eastern pipeline that pumps crude to China. Total exports from the country amounted to 219 million tons of crude last year.
Nevskaya Pipeline invested $130 million to build the terminal, including $7 million that it spent on crack prevention. Gunvor borrowed half of the money from BNP Paribas.
The return on investment period was originally calculated to be seven years but that timeframe may grow, given the unanticipated costs caused by the cracks.
Gunvor in spring sold half of Nevskaya Pipeline to Transneft and Gazprombank. Oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, which built the Baltic Pipeline System, ended up with a 26-percent stake.
TITLE: Medvedev Seen Hanging in the Balance
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — When Dmitry Medvedev announced on Sept. 24, 2011, that he would step aside to let Vladimir Putin return as president, he disappointed critics and supporters alike. Disgruntled observers described him as a "political corpse."
A year later, Medvedev is prime minister and leader of United Russia — two jobs he inherited from Putin that formally make him No. 2 in the government and head of the country's most powerful political party.
But being No. 2 doesn't seem to matter much.
Indeed, Putin might fire Medvedev as a scapegoat if an economic crisis erupts, said Vladimir Pribylovsky, an analyst with the Panorama think tank.
"Medvedev is like canned food — he can be eaten whenever it is necessary," he said.
Since Putin's return to the Kremlin in May, a series of tough laws and court decisions have resulted in an atmosphere that pretty much has reversed the spirit of liberal reform that characterized Medvedev's presidency.
Examples include an amendment making libel a criminal offense again — after Medvedev abolished this last year — and the harsh sentence for Taisa Osipova, the wife of a Smolensk opposition activist, who was jailed for eight years last month on contentious drug charges. As president, Medvedev had asked prosecutors to review her case.
In a sign that the country's hawkish security services are gaining strength, the State Duma last Friday passed a bill in its first reading that was lobbied for by the Federal Security Service and widens the definition of treason to allow the arrest of staff from international organizations on spy charges.
The bill actually first entered the Duma in late 2008 but was subsequently held up in the presidential administration, then controlled by Medvedev, Vedomosti reported.
But the biggest fuss about Medvedev's demise broke out after two Duma deputies from the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party introduced a bill that would turn the country's clocks back an hour.
In 2011, Medvedev decreed to abolish daylight saving time by keeping clocks permanently set one hour forward. While switching clocks twice a year had been unpopular in the country, the permanent switch prompted even more complaints, especially in St. Petersburg, where people spent winter mornings in the dark until after 10 a.m.
The Duma backpedaled this week, with Deputy Speaker Sergei Zheleznyak, a senior official of Medvedev's United Russia party, saying Tuesday the parliament didn't need to pass a law but wait for the government to formulate a decree. Within hours, Putin declared that it was the Cabinet's responsibility to decide this, thereby putting the burden on its head, Medvedev.
The author of the bill, Sergei Kalashnikov, said Thursday that he would cancel it, Interfax reported.
Medvedev and other members of the Cabinet have not commented on whether they are ready to turn back the clocks on the last Sunday of October.
The uncertainty even has real consequences for consumers: Russian Railways said in a statement Wednesday that it would not sell international train tickets for dates after Oct. 28 — when the rest of Europe switches to winter time — because it was waiting for a final decision.
Medvedev also has lost other initiatives, most notably with Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, who successfully defended his ministry's Zvezda TV channel against plans to transform it into a new public television station, widely seen as Medvedev's pet project. Serdyukov did, however, lose Zvezda's $48 million in annual state subsidies.
Another battle, with Rosneft president Igor Sechin, remained undecided Thursday. Sechin, who is widely seen as the most powerful of Medvedev's opponents, has railed against the government's plans to use more than $4 billion of the state-run oil giant's dividends.
As pundits and media reports have started to talk of a de-Medvedevization, the prime minister has put on a brave face and not shied away from confronting Putin.
A public disagreement culminated last week when Medvedev publicly criticized a 2008 incident in which Putin, then prime minister, promised to "send a doctor and prosecutor" to billionaire Igor Zyuzin, the owner of steel and coal producer Mechel.
"In modern Russia these unambiguous instructions are not being made in such form, like to suggest sending the doctor for a cure. Russian business knows what I mean," Medvedev said, according to a transcript on the government's website.
The comments came just days after Putin criticized the government's budget and complained that Cabinet members were not fulfilling his orders. To this Medvedev retorted dryly that he, too, never liked the budget during his time as president.
Medvedev also voiced public dissent during a Sept. 12 meeting with United Russia officials in Penza, where he criticized both the decision to keep the Pussy Riot band members in jail and called a bill forbidding government officials from owning real estate abroad "senseless."
Putin and Medvedev had publicly bickered before, most famously in March 2011 when Medvedev said that it was unacceptable to compare Western calls for armed intervention in Libya with medieval crusades — hours after Putin had done just that.
The two seemingly addressed fears of a growing split on Thursday by holding a meeting in Putin's Novo-Ogaryovo residence, in which they discussed the upcoming budget.
Such meetings, with colorful photos, were held regularly during Medvedev's presidency to show that the much-touted "tandem" was working. However, this was the first time such an event was held since they swapped jobs earlier this year.
Observers said that the current configuration is fundamentally less stable than the previous "tandem." They pointed to the mass protests that have shaken the country's politics since the December Duma elections — and that have been explained at least in part by widespread frustration over Medvedev's departure from the Kremlin.
They also note a growing split in the elites that was manifest in the presidential campaign of billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, who was widely seen as a candidate for the liberal wing in the government.
"Putin's comeback is much more difficult than originally planned," said Masha Lipman, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Lipman suggested that Medvedev is perceived as a threat by the conservative camp simply because he is the most legitimate heir. The Constitution stipulates that the prime minister becomes acting president if the head of state dies or is otherwise incapacitated.
Medvedev also has said he might run again for president.
Lipman said the specter of another Medvedev presidency weakens his present position. "There is a desire to belittle [him] and overshadow his legacy — and to pretend that his presidency never happened," she said by telephone.
At the same time, Lipman and other pundits said Putin will protect Medvedev to reward him for his proven loyalty during his Kremlin tenure. At least for now.
"It looks likely that he might not serve through Putin's term," Lipman said. Putin's current six-year term ends in 2018.
TITLE: Grozny Court Bans Anti-Muslim Film
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A court in the Chechen capital Grozny has declared extremist an anti-Muslim video that has sparked violent protests in North Africa and the Middle East. The court ruling means that the film is now banned nationwide.
Leninsky District Court in Grozny has declared the film extremist, Chechen press minister Murat Tagiyev told RIA-Novosti on Friday.
Under Russian law, a work is banned across the country after being declared extremist by a single court.
At the request of prosecutors, Internet providers in multiple regions including Omsk, Volgograd and the republic of Chechnya had in recent weeks blocked access to YouTube and other websites on which the "Innocence of Muslims" film was available.
The video clip, a crude film trailer made in the U.S. that portrays the Muslim prophet Mohammed as lecherous and selfish, has triggered violent demonstrations at U.S. embassies in countries including Egypt and Libya.
Tagiyev, the Chechen press minister, said the Leninsky District Court ruling echoed concerns expressed by many senior Russian officials about the potential for violence over the film in Russia, which has millions of Muslim citizens.
"A failure to take necessary measures to prevent the uncontrolled spread of a socially dangerous, provocative video that insults religious beliefs could cause serious negative consequences," Tagiyev said, summarizing the court's ruling.
The court noted that the film could destabilize Chechnya, the vast majority of whose citizens are Muslim, Tagiyev said. A number of Internet providers in Chechnya on Thursday blocked access to YouTube and several other websites on which the video was available.
It was unclear what specific measures would be required of Internet providers to block access to the film. Earlier this month Communications and Press Minister Nikolai Nikiforov said that there would be no countrywide blackout of YouTube because of the film and that only the video itself would be blocked on the video-sharing site if declared extremist.
TITLE: Metals Magnate Deripaska Settles London Lawsuit
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Representatives of Oleg Deripaska say the Russian metals magnate has settled a multibillion dollar lawsuit brought by fellow oligarch Michael Cherny over the latter's claim to a stake in Rusal, the world's largest aluminum producer.
London public relations firm Portman said Thursday that the case "has been terminated" and said neither party would be making any further comment. The terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
The agreement comes as the suit was due to go to court in London, a mammoth trial which promised to shed a harsh light on Russia's corruption-tainted metals industry.
Cherny, who lives in Israel, claimed that he and Deripaska had cheated him out of billions of dollars' worth of shares in Rusal, which is controlled by Deripaska. Deripaska denied the claim.
TITLE: Russian NGOs Defy Law Naming Them ‘Foreign Agents’
AUTHOR: By Max Seddon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Leading Russian non-government organizations said Thursday they would defy a new Kremlin law requiring those who receive funding from abroad to register as "foreign agents."
The heads of nine prominent NGOs have issued a joint statement saying they would ignore the law, which was approved by the Kremlin—controlled parliament over the summer in a bid to undermine the groups' credibility.
"We survived the Soviet power, and we'll survive this," Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a Soviet-era dissident who heads the Moscow Helsinki Group, said Thursday.
The law passed in July requires any NGO that receives foreign funding — from governments, groups or private citizens — and engages in vaguely defined political activity to register itself as a "foreign agent," provide detailed quarterly reports of its finances and identify itself as a foreign agent in any material it distributes.
Failure to comply would bring fines of up to 5,000 rubles (about $150) for members, 50,000 rubles ($1,150) for the heads of these organizations and up to 1 million rubles ($31,000) for the organizations themselves. Anyone who continues to participate in organizations that violated the rules can be fined up to 300,000 rubles ($9,000) or sent to prison for two years.
The law is part of a package of repressive bills initiated by the Kremlin after President Vladimir Putin's inauguration for a third term in May. Putin has repeatedly accused the U.S. of staging major protests against his rule to weaken Russia. His claims played well with his core support group of blue-collar workers and state employees, many of whom remain suspicious of the West.
The supporters of the new law described it as a necessary shield against foreign meddling in Russian affairs.
Alexander Sidyakin, one of the bill's authors, claimed during its passage that NGOs had "smeared" Russia's parliamentary and presidential elections last winter with "mud."
"We'll let citizens know whose megaphone this mud is crawling out of, and they can draw their own conclusions," he added.
Alexeyeva and other rights activists also criticized a plan by Radio Liberty, a station funded by the U.S. government, to shift its broadcasts to the Internet, urging it to stay on the airwaves.
"We cannot lose a station with an active civil stance based on the universal values of freedom, democracy, and human rights," they wrote in a letter, adding that these values "are under attack from the Russian government."
Earlier this month, Moscow declared an end to the U.S. Agency for International Development's two decades of work in Russia, saying it was using its money to influence elections — a claim the U.S. denied.
And last week, parliament gave a quick preliminary approval to a new treason bill drafted by the main KGB successor agency that vastly expanded the definition of treason to include such activities as financial or consultative assistance to an international organization.
Lawmakers also gave the government sweeping powers to blacklist websites in July, ostensibly to combat child pornography. Last week, however, Russia's communications minister tweeted that the law could be used to shut access to YouTube over a U.S.—produced anti-Islam film that has provoked riots across the world.
The parliament is also considering making offending religious beliefs a criminal offense, punishable by up to five years in prison. The move follows a public outcry over the hooliganism conviction three members of feminist rock band Pussy Riot received in August for a "punk prayer" against Putin in Moscow's main cathedral.
TITLE: Rogozin Taunts Romney After Airplane Gaffe
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin taunted Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Wednesday after the former U.S. governor told reporters that he was concerned that windows on modern airplanes are sealed shut.
"The windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem," Romney said Monday after his wife's jet was forced to make an emergency landing days earlier when smoke filled the cockpit.
"No problem! We'll send our An–2 to Romney's campaign headquarters," Rogozin quipped back on Wednesday, referring to a postwar biplane known for its shaky flight safety record.
"Not only do the windows not close, but the doors sometimes swing open mid–flight. On the plus side, there's fresh air to breathe, and you can take in the countryside," he wrote on Facebook.
Although a U.S. reporter who was present for Romney's comments later said they were made in jest, domestic and international media rushed to interpret them as a gaffe worthy of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush.
The hashtag #RomneyPlaneFeatures was still being actively circulated with sarcastic commentary on Twitter on Wednesday.
Romney, whose net worth is estimated at $200 million, is known for his hawkish attitude toward Russia and has referred to the United States' former Cold War enemy as its "No. 1 geopolitical foe" on the campaign trail.
TITLE: Lavrov Offers New Warning to U.S. Over Magnitsky Bill
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Using some of his harshest language yet, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that the adoption of the Magnitsky bill by the U.S. Congress would have disastrous consequences for U.S.-Russian relations.
Lavrov, speaking during an interview with United States television talk–show host Charlie Rose, said Moscow supported a dialogue on human rights with Washington but did not want to be "lectured" or "judged" through efforts like the Magnitsky bill.
"This would be certainly something which will be detrimental to our relationship," he said, speaking in English. "Attempts to interfere in the legal procedures of other countries are not really welcome by normal states, normal governments, and this is absolutely the case between Russia and the United States."
Returning to a well–trodden Kremlin line, Lavrov insisted that Russia was interested in discussing human rights, particularly cases involving the abuse and sometimes death of adopted Russian children at the hands of their U.S. parents and the imprisonment of convicted arms trader Viktor Bout.
Lavrov did not say what Moscow's response might be if U.S. lawmakers pass the Magnitsky bill. The legislation, which Congress has postponed until after national elections on Nov. 6, would blacklist Russians implicated in human rights violations and is named after lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow jail in 2009 after being arrested by senior officials he had accused of corruption.
Lavrov spoke to Rose during a visit to New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly this week.
Keeping on the Russian theme, Rose was scheduled to interview billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov and his sister, Irina, on Thursday night.
TITLE: Passports to be Required for Domestic Travel in Russia
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Travelers crossing the borders of their home region will have to show a passport and will be entered into a police database under a new decree issued by the Transportation Ministry.
The new rules, published in the government’s Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Wednesday, will bar travel companies from selling tickets to interregional destinations on any form of transportation to customers who cannot present a passport or another form of valid ID.
Russian citizens may present either an internal or foreign–travel passport, while foreign citizens should present the passport issued by their state. The decree does not mention what children without passports should do, but the list of valid documents includes birth certificates.
Carriers will be required to pass personal information on all passengers on interregional journeys to a centralized database accessible to “law enforcement and regulatory authorities,” according to the decree.
The move aims to improve security by allowing police and other agencies to trace the movements of anyone who gets on a bus, train, plane or riverboat.
Travel companies, which will be required to start passing on information to the database before the decree comes into force in July, will face fines for failure to deliver data.
“If it’s just forgetting to pass on the information, they will face a fine or possibly the seizure of vehicles on which there is no information about passengers,” Vladimir Chertok, deputy head of the Federal Transportation Agency, told Rossiiskaya Gazeta. Companies thought to be deliberately concealing information will face criminal charges.
Domestic air travel and most long-distance train routes already require presentation of passports.
TITLE: Duma Bill Would Send Blasphemers to Jail
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Such acts are currently considered administrative offenses punishable by a fine of up to 1,000 rubles ($30).
The bill would also make it an administrative offense to publicly "profane" religious literature or symbols, warranting a maximum 50,000 ruble ($1,600) fine, said Nilov, who represents the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party.
In a joint statement Tuesday that paved the way for Nilov's bill, deputies of all Duma factions described a growing attack on Russia's "centuries–old, spiritual–moral foundation" aimed at discrediting traditional values, arousing civil discord and undermining the country's sovereignty.
The measure appeared to have the public's backing, with 82 percent of Russians supporting harsher punishments for blasphemy, according to a survey this month by the state–run VTsIOM pollster.
Recent months have seen the attempted assassination of the chief mufti of Tatarstan, the felling of Orthodox crosses, vandalism against Orthodox churches and the jailing of three members of the punk band Pussy Riot for an anti–Kremlin performance in a Moscow church.
The Pussy Riot case received international attention and came amid what government critics describe as a general crackdown on dissent that has included increased fines for illegal rallies, searches and new legal cases against opposition leaders, and the criminalization of slander.
Several prominent opposition leaders denounced the anti–blasphemy bill as a violation of the constitutional right to free speech and a crude tool for punishing critics of the resurgent Russian Orthodox Church.
The bill is a "gross violation of the Constitution, which guarantees the freedom of opinion and speech, including harsh opinions about the church," said Vladimir Ryzhkov, co–founder of the opposition Party of People's Freedom, Interfax reported Wednesday.
"Interesting. Why aren't there any plans for a law that would ban offending the feelings of nonbelievers?" designer Artemy Lebedev quipped on his LiveJournal blog Tuesday.
"[Expletive] God," he wrote.
An Orthodox activist and a group of Orthodox believers told the Russian News Service on Wednesday that they would sue Lebedev for that remark.
TITLE: Billionaire Lebedev Charged With Hooliganism
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Kremlin critic and billionaire Alexander Lebedev has been charged with hooliganism over a fistfight on a television show last year, the Investigative Committee said Wednesday.
The charge, which carries a five–year prison sentence, is for “hooliganism motivated by political, ideological, racial, ethnic or religious hatred or enmity,” the same charge brought against the three Pussy Riot rockers given prison sentences last month for their performance denouncing President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral.
Lebedev was asked to sign a document preventing him from leaving the country, the Investigative Committee said in a statement on its website.
The billionaire rejected the charges through his lawyer, calling them trumped–up, and his spokesman said Lebedev refused to sign the document that would force him to stay in Russia.
“This is completely invented and nothing but political punishment,” Lebedev's lawyer, Genri Reznik, told The St. Petersburg Times.
Reznik has said the Kremlin is seeking to punish his client for his exposure of government corruption, for publishing the critical newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and for his support of opposition leader and anti–corruption blogger Alexei Navalny.
The hooliganism case stems from a televised brawl between Lebedev and former real estate mogul Sergei Polonsky on Sept. 16, 2011. Lebedev punched Polonsky several times in the face over a perceived slight on the talk show NTVshniki, shown on state–controlled NTV.
Lebedev's spokesman Artyom Artyomov ridiculed the fact that the charges are based on the adversaries' alleged “deep political differences.” “Where are the politics? Where is the inciting of hatred?” he asked.
Notably, the criminal investigation into the brawl was initiated last fall, after Vladimir Putin, then prime minister, labelled the incident as hooliganism at a meeting of his All–Russian People's Front movement.
"We have a front, but we do not attack anyone. They do not have a front, but they punch each other in the ear. Hooliganism," Putin said at the meeting held on Sept. 21 of last year.
Shortly after the charges were made public Wednesday, Lebedev published the official criminal complaint on his LiveJournal blog.
Lebedev quipped on Wednesday about how long it had taken investigators to file charges in the case.
“Our skilled investigators took a whole year to conscientiously investigate the incident, and now I am finally told that I am a defendant in a criminal case," he told Interfax.
The Investigative Committee opened a criminal investigation in connection with the fight between Lebedev and Polonsky on Oct. 14.
Artyomov said Lebedev did not sign the Investigative Committee document limiting his travel because Lebedev considers it an excessive measure given his cooperation with investigators during the past 12 months. “He has always shown up for questioning,” Artyomov said by telephone.
The charges add greatly to the troubles of the businessman, who has already been facing pressure from the authorities.
Police have made multiple raids on the offices of his National Reserve Bank, and Lebedev, a former KGB spy, says his companies and family have faced systematic harassment from the Federal Security Service.
After a video surfaced online this summer showing Lebedev with prostitutes in a hotel in Kiev, he said he was selling all his Russian business holdings.
On Tuesday, he told Reuters in an interview that efforts to sell his assets, which include a potato farming business and a stake in Aeroflot, Russia's largest airline, have failed so far.
He also co–owns Novaya Gazeta with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his son owns British newspapers The Independent and London's Evening Standard.
Lebedev has a fortune worth $1.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
He said buyers were afraid of angering Putin, whose support is widely seen as vital for big business deals.
Asked if he thought he would be jailed, Lebedev told the news agency: "I don't see any reason for anybody fabricating a case like that unless they want to put you into prison."
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied pressuring businessmen over their political activities, but Lebdedev insisted that that was exactly what was happening.
"I know the position of the president … he thinks it is true that I have been funding [the opposition], so I was violating rule No. 1: If you have money you should not interfere [in politics]," he told Reuters.
Most wealthy businessmen have avoided backing anti–Kremlin political movements since the 2003 arrest of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who had openly supported opposition parties. He is still in prison.
Yury Korgunyuk, an analyst at the Indem think tank, said Lebedev should view the threat seriously because he had been warned many times already.
“The government is showing that it won't tolerate that sort of activity anymore,” he said by telephone.
TITLE: German Lawmaker Refused Prison Visit With Khodorkovsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – A prominent German lawmaker on Wednesday pledged not to give up her efforts to visit jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, even though she was barred from meeting him in his Karelian prison this week.
Marieluise Beck, of the Green party, said she filed another visitation request with the regional government of Karelia, the northwestern region where Khodorkovsky has been imprisoned since last year.
"I handed the request to the German Consulate here," she said by telephone.
Beck spent most of Tuesday in the town of Segezha, where Khodorkovsky's Prison Colony No. 7 is located.
She said she managed to speak with the prison director, who told her he would decide on her request within 30 days.
Beck said she decided to take the train back to St. Petersburg because she could not wait a whole month in the provincial town on the border with Finland.
"As a Bundestag deputy, I have work to do," she said, adding that she was flying to the German capital Wednesday night.
But she was adamant that she would return immediately if successful.
"I am absolutely determined to succeed with this visit, even if I have to take the night train 100 times," she wrote on Twitter.
The train journey from St. Petersburg takes 12 hours, she said.
Beck, who is a member of the parliament's foreign relations committee, said she filed the request after Khodorkovsky's relatives transferred their right to visit him to her. She said this was done after authorities denied her request to visit him in her capacity as a foreign lawmaker.
Beck said she attended 14 hearings during Khodorkovsky's two trials. She also said that to her knowledge, no foreign lawmaker has been allowed to visit the tycoon in prison.
TITLE: Residents Protest Demolitions
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Hundreds of local residents gathered to protest ongoing demolition in St. Petersburg last week, but the main bone of contention has shifted from opposition to the Gazprom skyscraper — which is no longer planned to be built in the historical Okhta district — to the historical Rogov House, which was abruptly and swiftly demolished on Aug. 26.
City Hall declined to authorize a march, but agreed to a stationary rally, which drew 300 to 500, some holding posters reading “Don’t Ruin the City” and “Stop Destroying History.”
Protesters demanded that developers who break preservation laws should face criminal charges or have their licenses revoked, rather than being punished with token fines as they are currently.
“In my view, there should be legislative initiatives that ensure that so-called investors, who are in reality vandals and gangsters, should not simply be fined,” said Maxim Reznik, a deputy from the Yabloko Party in the city’s Legislative Assembly.
“The penalty for breaking laws governing cultural and historical heritage should be revoking of the license and a ban on further work in the construction business,” he said.
Former governor Valentina Matviyenko’s popularity plunged after more than 100 historical buildings were demolished in the city center during her tenure to give space to projects such as the Stockmann store on Nevsky Prospekt.
Some preservationists had pinned their hopes on the new governor Georgy Poltavchenko, who made a statement about the preservation of the historic center soon after taking office in August last year, but they have grown disappointed as more buildings were demolished.
One poster depicted six buildings or sets of buildings built in the 19th and early 20th centuries that were demolished earlier this year.
Reznik used his speech at the rally to demand the return of gubernatorial elections, which were abolished by President Vladimir Putin in 2005.
“Either you are not in charge of anything, in which case, why do we need such a governor, or you know everything and are simply pretending that you are not in charge of anything,” he said.
Alexei Kovalyov, a deputy for the Just Russia party in the Legislative Assembly, said that the developer should be ordered to rebuild the Rogov House, of which a large portion was demolished years ago, in full.
“One day we will pull down the giant building behind the Delvig House [Regent Hall], and everything will be OK,” Kovalyov said.
“Let’s not allow a similar construction where the [Rogov] House used to be.”
Preservationists fought to save the Rogov House, which was twice removed from the city heritage register, for years until it was demolished on Aug. 26.
The building’s owner, Vektor, chose a Sunday to carry out the job without drawing much attention. Last week, the company was fined 500,000 rubles ($16,000) for demolishing it without a permit, but has appealed.
The Rogov House, named after the merchant who built it in the Classical style between 1798 and 1808, was the oldest building on Vladimirskaya Ploshchad. Located next to the Delvig House, it was valued as a relic of Pushkin-era St. Petersburg.
The building — located at 3 Zagorodny Prospekt — had been under threat since the 1980s, when it was damaged during the construction of Dostoyevskaya metro station. An attempt to demolish the building in February 2010 was stopped by activists.
At the rally, preservationists announced the launch of an emergency service of text messages to be sent to subscribers in the event of future sudden demolitions, so that volunteers could come and try to prevent them.
Rallies for the preservation of St. Petersburg have been held every autumn since 2007 and originally focused on opposing plans to build a skyscraper for Gazprom Neft in the historic Okhta district. The Okhta Center skyscraper plan was scrapped in December 2010.
After the first preservation rally drew more than 5,000 people and turned political — anti-Kremlin sentiment dominated at it — City Hall stopped authorizing the marches, agreeing only to stationary rallies in less busy locations.
TITLE: Charities Decry Proposal To Ban Tobacco Funding
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A draft law that would ban tobacco companies from taking part in philanthropic activities has stirred a nationwide debate.
The State Duma will next month review the draft law, which, if passed, would prohibit tobacco companies from donating to charities and taking part in any other philanthropic activities. The plan has fanned the flames of discussion of whether certain sources of donations can be legally qualified as unethical, and has raised concerns about the destructive impact that the law would likely have on the recipients of grants.
According to official statistics, the three largest tobacco companies operating in Russia — British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco International and Philip Morris — jointly donate about $6 million to the country’s charities every year.
The law’s critics have branded the initiative as hypocritical: The state is comfortable with harvesting high tax revenues from tobacco companies, yet is willing to impose a ban on charity for them, thereby ostracizing their business.
“The quality of a tobacco company’s charitable activity is no different from that of, say, food producers, so the law has a distinct discriminative character,” said Anna Orlova, director of the Resource Center for Non-Governmental Organizations, speaking at a roundtable discussion on the subject at the Astoria hotel Thursday.
“Smoking itself is not a criminal activity, it is not banned by the law,” said Alexander Matrosov, special envoy for JTI in Russia’s northwest. “At the same time, smoking is an activity that is viewed critically by society. The ambiguity of the issue is obvious.”
To what extent would the ban complicate the financial situation of the grants’ recipients? Natalya Chernova, dean of the secondary education faculty at St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation, is convinced that the negative effect of the ban would be felt immediately.
“Let’s face it: The state is not coping with its responsibilities, and it will not be able to in the foreseeable future, so the ban is an irresponsible move. The new equipment for my faculty that we received in the past three years all came through the philanthropic programs of a tobacco company. It is unfair to deprive us of a vital source of funding without even offering an alternative solution.”
Vladimir Matveyev, deputy director of the State Hermitage Museum, who oversees its exhibits and development projects, called the legislative initiative nothing short of bigotry.
“I do not argue with the medical fact that smoking is not good for you,” he said. “Yet the way this fact has been twisted by the law’s authors would only result in creating a conflict in society. The way it looks now, it is likely to do more harm than good. If a business is allowed to operate legally in Russia, then why handicap it and ban it from charity work? Why not fast food chains? They are not very healthy either.
“In the ancient Russian town of Veliky Ustyug, a number of churches were built with financial help from sinners, and they are not seen as less spiritual, let alone demolished or closed down,” he added.
Russia’s Health and Social Development Ministry is also campaigning for a whole string of anti-tobacco initiatives that includes a full ban on smoking in hotels and public places, as well as a ban on the sale of tobacco and beer in retail kiosks — a move that has already been ratified by the State Duma and is due to come into force in January next year.
Russia’s retailers are begging the Duma to reconsider its decision.
Rusbrand is a Moscow-based non-commercial partnership that unites the country’s largest producers of everyday consumer goods. According to the agency’s statistics, between 60 and 80 percent of turnover in Russia’s kiosks comes from the sale of tobacco products and beer. The ban on the sale of these products that is due to start on January 1, 2013, would effectively destroy a huge number of small retail businesses.
“In the Leningrad Oblast, for example, there are places where there is only one kiosk serving quite a large area, and the nearest one would involve a long drive,” said Dmitry Arkatovsky, editor-in-chief of the news portal Online47, which is funded by the administration of the Leningrad Oblast. “If the law is passed, the kiosks will close, which will be a pain for local residents as well.”
According to Rusbrand, at least 150,000 kiosks across Russia will have to close in 2013 because of the tobacco and beer sale ban.
Anastasia Savchenko, a manager at the PricewaterhouseCoopers Corporate Social Responsibility Center at the Graduate School of Management at St. Petersburg State University, believes that a detailed calculation of the impact of the new anti-tobacco amendments on various social and business groups is required.
“Sending multiple protest letters — which is what we can all see going on now — is not going to yield results,” Savchenko said. “It is only by supplying concrete figures reflecting the negative consequences of the laws that people can make themselves heard.”
TITLE: Man Leaves Boy at Roadside
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A five-year-old boy from St. Petersburg was found by the roadside in the Sverdlovsk Oblast on Friday, more than 2,000 kilometers from his home. The boy told the man who found him that his name was Daniil Yermakov and that he was from Ulitsa Polyarnikov in St. Petersburg. He said he had been left alone by the side of the road by his father, web portal Fontanka.ru reported.
The boy said he had been driven by his father from St. Petersburg, but that his father had then told him to get out of the car by the edge of a forest and told him to wait there while he went to a food store.
St. Petersburg police determined the boy’s exact address, and that he lived there with his mother Olga, 47, brother Anton, 22, and a 26-year-old man with whom his mother lived. The police also ascertained that the boy’s father was a citizen of Moldova. However, none of the boy’s relatives were reportedly at home, and the neighbors said the family had departed for the Sverdlovsk Oblast by car.
It is not clear how long the boy had spent alone, but police said his condition was satisfactory.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Five Millionth Resident
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The much anticipated five millionth resident of St. Petersburg, who was born in the early hours of Saturday morning, is a girl, Interfax reported.
The baby girl, who weighed 3.4 kilograms, was born to the Sharkov family, which already has two boys and a girl. The girl’s mother Olga is a manager at a local construction company and her father Sergei heads a department at a construction design bureau.
On Friday night 179 children were born in St. Petersburg, one quarter of whom were born to families of non-St. Petersburg residents, Interfax reported. At least 124 of them were born to St. Petersburg families.
The baby’s father was invited to fire the cannon at the Peter and Paul Fortress for the daily midday salute.
St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko said City Hall will present the family of the five millionth resident with a four-room apartment. The other children born on the same night as the lucky baby will also get gifts, including commemorative medals.
According to the Russian Statistics Agency, more than 57,000 children were born in the city in 2011, nearly twice as many as in 1999. In the first eight months of this year, at least 41,115 babies were born in the city, 4,168 more than during the same period last year.
Twenty-four percent of the babies born in the city this year were born to residents of the Leningrad Oblast, other Russian regions and foreign citizens.
Local Businessman Dies
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Alexei Logunov, a 39-year-old St. Petersburg businessman and co-owner of the city’s Italian restaurant chain Mama Roma, was found dead in his apartment in Nice, France earlier this month.
Logunov was the owner of about a dozen food ventures, including the Liverpool pub and the Havana club. French police believe the businessman died of natural causes. According to preliminary medical reports, he died of a heart condition. Logunov’s friends and colleagues expressed doubt, however, that a man of his age could die of heart problems, the web portal Fontanka.ru reported.
Logunov’s friends became concerned when they heard no news from him for 10 days. Police went to his home, entered the apartment and discovered Logunov’s body about 10 days ago. It is believed he had died about 10 days prior to the body’s discovery.
The Mama Roma chain has 12 branches in St. Petersburg, as well as one in Kemerovo and one in Krasnoyarsk. Logunov was also the owner of the Republic of Coffee chain of coffee shops. Logunov also reportedly owned some businesses in Europe.
Psychology for Kids
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The head psychiatrist of the Health Ministry, Zurab Kekelidze, has suggested introducing psychology lessons beginning at primary school level to warn children about the danger of drugs, about adolescence and to prepare them for the difficulties of first love, Interfax reported.
Kekelidze said school principals had been asked at what age they considered it best to give children psychology lessons. “We thought it was relevant to start from the fourth or the sixth grade but we figured out that some pupils are offered drugs as early as in the fourth grade,” he said.
Kekelidze said they didn’t plan to introduce psychology lessons as a science subject, but rather that specialists would inform children about the risks of alcohol and drugs, and educate them about adolescence.
Adolescence is a difficult period for every teenager, and distress resulting from the first experience of love is often a reason for children getting “in with the wrong crowd” and experimenting with alcohol and tobacco, Kekelidze said.
“Teenagers shouldn’t develop inferiority complexes,” he said. “They should know that every person goes through such experiences and that if someone falls in love they may get rejected or may reject someone. But they should be able to navigate such experiences safely,” the psychiatrist said.
Park to Take Payment?
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Visitors to the Summer Gardens may have to pay for the privilege in the future, Sergei Renin, head of the department of the Russian Museum that is responsible for the gardens, was quoted by Interfax as saying Tuesday.
Turnstiles were installed in the gardens when they reopened after reconstruction work earlier this year, but entrance is currently free.
TITLE: Rasputin Memorial Vandalized
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Unidentified vandals attacked a wooden cross dedicated to Orthodox mystic Grigory Rasputin on the grounds of the Tsarskoye Selo former imperial estate outside St. Petersburg, a news report said Tuesday.
Security guards at the Tsarskoye Selo estate, now an open-air museum, told Interfax that the vandals had taken a saw to the memorial Monday and that the damaged cross had been moved to the museum for safekeeping.
The guards clarified that they were not responsible for looking after the memorial, as it was mysteriously erected on the edge of the estate seven years ago without the permission of museum authorities.
Rasputin, who acquired a reputation as a psychic and faith healer in the early 20th century and became a close adviser to the wife of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, is a controversial figure, and a definitive account of his murder in 1916 in St. Petersburg’s Yusupov Palace remains elusive to this day.
After his death, the imperial family allowed Rasputin to be buried in a bell tower on the Tsarskoye Selo estate, but his remains were later removed, burned and scattered elsewhere after the 1917 February Revolution.
Monday’s attack on the Rasputin memorial follows a spate of cross-felling episodes in recent weeks.
On Sept. 3, vandals chopped down one Orthodox cross in the Altai republic and nine in the Leningrad Oblast. None of the perpetrators have been identified.
In a separate incident, on Aug. 17 a bare-breasted activist from Ukrainian women’s rights group Femen chain-sawed through a wooden cross in Kiev in protest at the sentencing of three Russian punk rockers for criticizing authorities in Moscow’s main cathedral.
TITLE: Russia Sees Six-Year Decrease in Road Deaths
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The number of deaths in car accidents in Russia has decreased by a fifth in the six years since the country introduced a new road safety program, according to Viktor Kiryanov, deputy head of the Interior Affairs Ministry, Interfax reported.
“In 2011 the number of people killed in car accidents decreased by 18.9 percent compared to 2004, the year that the program was launched,” Kiryanov said. “The number of children who died in traffic accidents dropped by 32.8 percent and the number of pedestrians killed in such accidents decreased by 38.9 percent,” he said.
Kiryanov said the number of casualties had decreased despite the fact that the total number of cars in the country had increased by 35 percent.
However, last year some regions registered an increase in the number of car accidents and the number of people who were injured or killed in those accidents. Kiryanov said these statistics were connected to a range of factors, including the increasing number of vehicles in Russia and the condition of road infrastructure, the development of which has failed to keep pace with the increase in traffic.
Kiryanov said it was necessary not only to inform the population about road safety rules but also to teach them to understand the presence of such danger.
“Often people think that traffic accidents concern other people and will never affect them,” he said.
“They may think that the safety measures limit their freedom and their right to transportation. An example of this is the legislation on safety belts and child safety seats, which caused widespread dissatisfaction. People often don’t know that it is far more dangerous for a mother to hold a child in her arms than to put the child in a safety seat while traveling by car,” he added.
TITLE: KHL Teams Clean Up On Lockout
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Kontinental Hockey League teams started bolstering their rosters with locked-out players from the U.S. National Hockey League last week.
Local team SKA St. Petersburg signed New Jersey Devils winger Ilya Kovalchuk and Columbus Blues goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky. Washington Capitals captain Alexander Ovechkin signed with his former team Dinamo Moscow and Pittsburg Penguins star Yevgeny Malkin signed with Metallurg Magnitogorsk, along with Ottawa Senators defenseman Sergei Gonchar and Nikolai Kulemin of the Toronto Maple Leafs. CSKA Moscow picked up Detroit Red Wings center Pavel Datsyuk and Philadelphia Flyers goalie Ilya Bryzgalov.
KHL President Alexander Medvedev said in a statement that as the NHL and the NHL Players Association had failed to reach a new agreement, the NHL officially implemented a lockout on Sept. 15, meaning the association’s players currently have no legal obligations to their employers. In accordance with International Ice Hockey Federation rules, the KHL completed the relevant transfer cards and decided to allow the NHL players to participate in the KHL from Sept. 20.
The lockout signings generated a lot of buzz for SKA’s much needed 3-1 win against Dinamo Moscow last Sunday night in Moscow in a game that was billed as a showdown between Kovalchuk and Ovechkin.
The win in Moscow ends SKA’s four-game road trip, which they split with two tough losses to Metallurg Magnitogorsk (4-3) and league newcomer Slovan Bratislava (4-2) and a 3-2 win against Traktor Chelyabinsk.
SKA has had an inconsistent start to the season with a 2-1 loss to Avangard Omsk, a 7-3 win over Barys Astana and a 7-5 victory against Yugra Khanty-Mansiysk.
SKA has retained the explosive and high-scoring offense that has thrilled fans for the past few seasons. Fan favorite Patrick Thoresen leads the league with 10 points and Gleb Klimenko is the scoring leader with six goals. However, they have also conceded the most goals.
SKA head coach Milos Riha made it clear the team has a number of things to work on.
“I think the biggest problem is the lack of a natural center,” he said following the home match against Yugra.
“We’ve tried a number of things and this is something that we’ll work on going forward. The season is still young and we’re still in the process of completing our roster.
“Some have argued that we’re one of the strongest teams in the league, but I don’t see it that way. A number of teams have loaded up with good players and we really need to come together as team if we’re going to win,” he added.
The KHL has expanded to 26 teams for the 2012-2013 season. Lokomotiv Yaroslavl returned after missing last season due to the tragic plane crash that killed most of the team in September 2011, and the league’s expansion was completed with the addition of Slovan Bratislava from Slovakia and HC Donbass from Donetsk, Ukraine. Meanwhile Slovakia’s Lev Poprad was disbanded and replaced by Lev Praha, a team based in Prague, Czech Republic.
Twenty of the teams are based in Russia and six more are located in Belarus, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Slovakia and Ukraine.
TITLE: Pussy Riot-Inspired Photo Culled by Ikea
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ikea, known worldwide for its provocative marketing stunts, has decided to draw the line at a picture of masked youths wearing Pussy Riot-style balaclavas and seated on Ikea furniture.
A month into a customer competition to select the cover for its next catalog, Ikea Russia deleted the picture of four youths wearing colored masks from its website over the weekend. In place of the photo, visitors to Ikea Russia’s site now see a statement that reads: “Ikea is a commercial organization that operates independently of politics and religion. We cannot allow our advertising project to be used as a means of propaganda.”
The photograph, taken by a user called Starovoitova from the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, was the most popular in Ikea’s photo gallery at the time it was deleted, and the pictureless page remained in the No. 1 spot Sunday. It has garnered more than 1,400 online votes.
A Moscow court sentenced three members of the punk band Pussy Riot to two-year jail terms in August for a performance criticizing President Vladimir Putin in Moscow’s main cathedral. A legal appeal of the three women’s sentence on hooliganism charges is due to be heard Oct. 1, when supporters plan to hold a worldwide rally.
TITLE: Stricter Penalties Planned for Drunk Driving
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — United Russia is planning legal amendments to radically increase penalties for drunk driving two days after an inebriated motorist killed seven people in southwest Moscow, a senior party official said Monday.
“There should be radical increases in the fines, we’re not talking about 5,000 rubles [$160]. We will propose a fine of at least 100,000 rubles [$3,200],” Andrei Vorobyov, leader of the party’s State Duma faction, told journalists, Interfax reported.
Five thousand rubles is the current fine for driving under the influence of alcohol.
The ruling party will also press for lengthy bans and criminal punishments for repeat offenders, even if their driving doesn’t cause casualties, Vorobyov said, adding that the matter had been discussed at a party presidium meeting.
“A mere 5,000 rubles and a misdemeanor charge, that’s way too small,” he said.
United Russia’s faction head said party colleagues would present the planned amendments to the lower house “in the shortest possible time frame” and stressed that other Duma factions support United Russia’s position.
President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Monday that “the events of the past week confirm the necessity of discussing this issue and adopting tougher measures,” RIA-Novosti reported.
A drunk driver plowed into a bus stop in Moscow’s southwest Saturday afternoon, killing seven and injuring three.
The driver, identified in media reports as Alexander Maximov, 30, said he had been drinking for two days prior to the crash. Maximov had his license confiscated in 2010 for drunk driving, and police only returned it to him in March.
TITLE: Treason Bill Gathers Momentum in Duma
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma tentatively approved a bill last Friday to broaden the legal definition of high treason, seen by human rights groups as part of a continuing crackdown on foreign-funded organizations in Russia.
While lawmakers contend that the bill would make the work of law enforcement authorities more effective, rights activists say it would enable the state to undermine the activity of any person or NGO in the country.
According to the bill, which passed its first reading with unanimous approval, any individual or group found relaying a state secret to a “foreign government or international, foreign organization” can be charged with high treason, punishable with up to 20 years in prison.
Last week, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced that it would cease its activities in Russia after the government accused it of using funds to influence elections. As of Nov. 20, a new law will compel all organizations receiving money from abroad to register as “foreign agents.”
Prominent human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov said the current bill, which would apply to acts “undermining national security, constitutional order, territorial or state integrity,” could be used to consider any opposition activity dangerous.
“The bill has very broad definitions of treason and espionage,” he said. “While previously only those who had official access to National Security Information could be brought to trial for disclosing it, now everyone who accidentally becomes aware of secret information can be convicted.”
“The previously passed bills [on non-governmental organizations] and the bill currently under consideration are parts of the same chain strapped to the neck of NGOs,” said Alexander Nikitin, head of the St. Petersburg branch of Bellona, an international environment protection agency.
Nikitin was charged with treason for reporting about nuclear safety to Bellona in 1996. “In fact,” he added, “the amendments will allow the Federal Security Service to prosecute people working in NGOs for their professional activity.”
Backers say the bill would facilitate a crackdown on espionage.
“We should include international organizations on the list of agents that can be charged with treason due to the fact that foreign intelligence agencies actively use them to camouflage their spying activity,” FSB deputy head Yury Gorbunov told the Duma on Friday, Interfax reported.
Gorbunov claimed that the bill would distinguish between espionage as high treason and espionage as a crime committed by a foreign citizen, and would allow prosecution of international organizations accused of such a crime.
In 2004, nuclear specialist Igor Sutyagin was convicted of espionage for revealing purportedly classified information to a London-based company, even though the information was publicly available, rights activist Ponomaryov said.
“Sutyagin was charged illegally then, but this new bill would allow him to be considered guilty,” Ponomaryov said.
Also on Friday, Radio Liberty/RFE announced that it would cease AM radio broadcasting in Moscow on Nov. 10 and switch over to multimedia Internet broadcasting, said Yelena Glushkova, head of the radio station’s Russian office.
Glushkova said the decision was due to new legislation that bans radio broadcasting by companies more than 48 percent owned by foreign individuals or legal entities.
The Memorial human rights group said Friday in a statement that it would not register as a foreign agent with the Justice Ministry, even though it received grants from USAID.
Earlier, the Moscow Helsinki Group and the For Human Rights movement repeatedly said they would not register by late November when the respective law comes into effect.
TITLE: Ponomaryov Faces Voting Suspension
AUTHOR: By Natalia Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma’s ethics commission Monday recommended that Deputy Ilya Ponomaryov’s voting rights be suspended for one month after he called United Russia members “crooks and thieves” and wore jeans instead of a suit to parliament.
United Russia member Vladimir Pekhtin, who heads the Credentials and Ethics Commission, told reporters the Duma would tentatively approve the measure this week. The proposal was backed by the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.
Ponomaryov, who represents the Just Russia party, told reporters that the proposed ban from Oct. 16 to Nov. 16, was meant to exclude him from taking part in deciding the oft-controversial state budget, Interfax reported.
The “crooks and thieves” phrase, which Ponomaryov uttered in an address to the lower house of parliament during its final spring session, had been popularized by opposition leader Alexei Navalny to describe the nation’s ruling party.
Valery Gartung, a Just Russia representative who is on the ethics commission, told The St. Petersburg Times that there were no grounds for a ban because Ponomaryov did not name any specific “crooks” or “thieves” and thus did not break any law.
Gartung called the measure “political revenge” from Kremlin-controlled United Russia for Ponomaryov’s participation in the opposition movement, which for the past nine months has held marches and rallies on the capital’s streets.
Gartung said the commission should have only warned Ponomaryov that it was unacceptable to address lawmakers in such a manner.
Last week, Just Russia Deputy Gennady Gudkov was ousted from the Duma for unlawful entrepreneurship. A voting ban against Ponomaryov could signal more hang-ups on the way for the opposition party, which collaborates with protest leaders including Navalny, Sergei Udaltsov and Ilya Yashin.
Communist Deputy Sergei Obukhov told The St. Petersburg Times that Ponomaryov voiced a “widespread opinion” about United Russia, which is trying to “muzzle” the political opposition by silencing Ponomaryov in particular.
“We see that any deputy who speaks out rather actively is immediately repressed,” Obukhov said.
The Credentials and Ethics Commission comprises 14 lawmakers — seven from United Russia, three Communists, two Liberal Democrats and two from A Just Russia.
United Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party voted in favor of suspending Ponomaryov’s right to vote, while the other two factions voted against it.
United Russia based its decision on the offensive words Ponomaryov used, but the Liberal Democratic Party said Ponomaryov did not deserve to vote because he wore jeans to the Duma, Ponomaryov told reporters.
The ethics commission acted Monday on the instruction of Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, a United Russia member who was asked by 40 deputies from his party and the Liberal Democratic Party to assess Ponomaryov’s use of the words “crooks and thieves.”
TITLE: Radio Liberty Vows Continued Presence
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — U.S. government-funded Radio Liberty has reiterated its commitment to operating in Russia after Nov. 10, when a new law forces it to discontinue AM broadcasts, and after dozens of journalists and editors left the organization last week.
“We are not giving up on our commitment to provide you with Svoboda’s unique perspective on news and events in Russia,” wrote Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty president Steve Korn, referring to the network’s Russian name, Radio Svoboda, in a statement posted on the network’s website Monday.
The network, founded in 1953 to provide coverage in countries with limited press freedom, was for generations a thorn in the side of the Soviet government.
Radio Liberty will now focus on digital platforms, including web and mobile devices, and on-demand and live content, Korn wrote.
The network will stop AM broadcasts on Nov. 10, when a law will take effect that makes it illegal for stations more than 48 percent foreign-owned to be on the airwaves.
The same law will brand non-governmental organizations that receive grants from abroad as “foreign agents,” a measure that has been roundly condemned by opposition and civil rights activists.
The law prompted a re-think of Radio Liberty’s strategy, which led to the decision to buy out dozens of employees in the digital content side of the business, said Julia Ragona, a vice president at the station, by telephone on Monday.
About 40-50 journalists and editors were let go last week amid speculation that the broadcaster was clearing house ahead of the arrival of new director Masha Gessen.
“We knew there would be some changes, but we didn’t know they would take such a harsh form. … The form was strange, unusual, harsh and unexpected,” said Mumin Shakirov, who said he was abruptly laid off after 14 years at Radio Liberty.
He said about 40 employees were summoned to the company’s legal department on Thursday and asked not to come back to work.
They were each given a severance of between four and six months’ pay, he said. “There aren’t any legal demands at this point. But from an ethical point of view, it wasn’t exactly pretty,” he said.
Ragona and Gessen seemed to contradict Shakirov’s account. They said employees were offered buy-outs, and their severance packages were generous.
In a remark aimed at Shakirov and others, Korn wrote that Radio Liberty was committed to “acting with fairness toward those of our staff who are leaving.”
Former website editor Lyudmila Telen accused Gessen, who has worked as a consultant for Radio Liberty since spring, of directing the firings in an article in Novaya Gazeta.
But Gessen, formerly editor-in-chief of Vokrug Sveta and an editor at Snob, denied this.
“I did not include any recommendations on personnel issues, period. It was a detailed report on the state of the bureau and its functionality and its flaws,” she said of recommendations about the Moscow office she sent to the heads of Radio Free Europe in May.
Shakirov and Yury Timofeyev, another journalist who lost his job at Radio Liberty, blamed the decision on the organization’s U.S. bosses.
“But naturally they consulted with those who will take the reigns of Radio Liberty,” Shakirov said. “They decided that Radio Liberty will be different. We don’t yet know exactly how.”
Gessen, an outspoken Kremlin critic who has been involved in organizing opposition protests, said she wanted to make the news content at Radio Liberty unbiased.
“I want to do a kind of journalism that no one is doing at the moment. I would describe it as normal journalism. … Something that’s not polemical, like opposition media, and something that’s not controlled by the Kremlin,” she said.
Fifty percent of Radio Liberty’s audience in Russia is radio listeners and 50 percent is online users, Ragona said, with web traffic in Russia reaching about 2 million unique visitors per month.
Radio Liberty currently broadcasts in 21 countries — mostly the former Soviet Union, Central Asia, the Balkans, and the Middle East — in 28 languages and reaches 24 million people per week.
It has more than 500 employees in Prague and Washington, and employs an additional 750 freelancers in 19 bureaus across its broadcast areas. Its 2011 budget was $92.7 million, according to its website.
Ragona refused to link the reshuffle at the Russian bureau to the Kremlin’s recent decision to kick out U.S. government-funded USAID on Oct. 1 after the Kremlin accused the organization of meddling in Russian politics.
The changes at Radio Liberty have prompted some to question the continued purpose of a station that launched during the Stalin era.
“I think it’s out of date. If the State Department wants to promote liberty here, they should make satellite Internet connections available for everyone. People don’t need Radio Liberty,” said Ivan Zassoursky, a professor at Moscow State University’s school of journalism.
TITLE: Observers Slam Vote in Belarus
AUTHOR: By Yuras Karmanau
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINSK, Belarus — International observers on Monday condemned a weekend vote in Belarus in which not a single opposition politician won a parliament seat. The election looks set to deepen the former Soviet nation’s diplomatic isolation.
Critics also said the 74.3 percent turnout reported Monday by the country’s Central Elections Commission chairman was way too high and indicated widespread fraud.
The main opposition parties, which were ignored by state-run media, boycotted the election to protest the detention of political prisoners and the ample opportunities for election fraud.
The vote filled parliament with representatives of the three parties that have backed the policies of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.
“This election was not competitive from the start,” said Matteo Mecacci, leader of the observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. “A free election depends on people being free to speak, organize and run for office, and we didn’t see that in this campaign.”
Belarus’ parliament has long been considered a rubber-stamp body for Lukashenko’s policies. He has ruled Belarus since 1994 and Western observers have criticized all recent elections there as undemocratic.
Local independent observers estimated the overall turnout as being almost 19 percent lower than the official 74.3 percent figure.
“Belarus gets ever closer to the worst standards of Soviet elections,” said Valentin Stefanovich, coordinator of the Rights Activists for Free Elections group.
At least 20 independent election observers were detained, according to rights activists.
Political analyst Leonid Zaiko said the way the elections were held highlighted Lukashenko’s desire to prepare for another beckoning economic crisis.
“He plans to control the situation with an iron fist. He has no time for any opposition, not on the street and certainly not in parliament,” Zaiko said.
Lukashenko’s landslide win in the 2010 presidential election triggered a mass street protest against election fraud that was brutally suppressed. Some of the 700 people arrested at that protest are still in jail, including presidential candidate Nikolai Statkevich.
Opposition politicians have cautioned supporters to refrain from holding protest rallies this time.
The opposition had hoped to use this election to build support, but 33 of 35 candidates from the United Civil Party were barred from television, while the state-owned press refused to publish their election programs.
TITLE: Hot Slogan For Sochi Winter Olympics
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Five hundred days before the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, organizers announced that they have chosen “Hot. Winter. Yours.” as the slogan for the games.
Organizers said in a news release that the word “hot” is meant to symbolize the intensity of the games for competitors and spectators, “winter” refers to how Russia is perceived in the eyes of the world, while “yours” expresses how the crowd can empathize with those taking part, Interfax reported.
The punctuation marks in between each word are an added touch, intended to convey the high-tech equipment used in the games by reminding the viewer of a Web address, organizers said.
Olympic hosts traditionally choose a slogan to give their games an individual flavor and brand identity and embody the spirit of the event.
The slogan for this summer’s London Olympics was “Inspire a generation.”
TITLE: War Games Tailor-Made to Boost Putin’s Ego
AUTHOR: By Alexander Golts
TEXT: The enemy landed troops near Novorossiisk, but the Russian military command was not caught unaware. A motorized infantry brigade from Vladikavkaz was quickly brought in and sent into battle. With skillful maneuvering and counterattacks, the Russian soldiers fought back the enemy. The actions of the brigade were supported with fire from self-propelled artillery weapons systems. Su-25 attack planes delivered an additional massive strike, along with Su-24 frontline bombers and assault helicopters. They were joined by Tu-160 bombers, which destroyed the enemy’s strategic installations. The result: Enemy forces were decisively defeated.
This was the scenario that the Southern Federal District strategic command enacted in the Caucasus 2012 war games last week, while the commander in chief, President Vladimir Putin, proudly observed the first part of the huge military spectacle. He was pleased with what he saw and personally bestowed awards on those who had distinguished themselves during the first day of maneuvers. (Normally, awards are given at the conclusion of the battle, but Putin apparently had a scheduling conflict and decided to hand out the honors in advance.)
“Here, the most important elements of modern-type combat are employed, not just on maps, but in field conditions, improving training and mastery for commanders and soldiers,” Putin told a group of soldiers and officers who took part in the exercise. “Overall, this is how we should shape the new Russian Army and Navy and strengthen our national defense potential. … The armed forces must demonstrate their preparedness to defend our national interests and show that they are ready to decisively rebuff any threats or challenges to Russia’s national security.”
But what potential threat were these war games designed to address? The only forces capable of mounting such a large-scale landing operation are the United States and China. But China would be unlikely to invade by sea, particularly considering that it shares a nearly 1,000-kilometer border with Russia. The only other likely possibility is that the Novorossiisk games were preparation for repelling a massive attack by U.S. troops.
If that is the case, these maneuvers were about as useful to national security as the reconstruction of the Battle of Borodino that Putin observed a few weeks ago. This battle was much like the maneuvers carried out by the U.S. 1st Cavalry Armored Division that I observed in 1990.
The reason is that a revolution in military affairs has taken place since 1990. The United States — and probably China — has now adopted network-centric warfare, meaning that it will not land troops on the battlefield and fly directly over enemy targets to destroy them. Instead, satellites identify targets and transmit their coordinates to remote combat aircraft that quickly destroy the enemy’s troops and equipment with a push of a button. Only about four minutes elapses between a target’s detection and destruction. During the war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s generals tried to mount counterattacks several times, but the U.S. destroyed their forces the moment they began moving toward the staging area, using aircraft that were flying hundreds of kilometers outside the range of Iraqi air-defense missiles.
Why would an aggressor possessing sophisticated, ultramodern technology allow Russia’s infantry brigade to advance more than 700 kilometers without attacking it while en route? Why were Russian planes used only to land paratroopers and not to defend their own troops from the inevitable attacks by enemy aircraft?
Perhaps the reason is that the Southern Federal District — and maybe the entire Russian armed forces — does not need a fleet of modern combat aircraft to disrupt the air and space operations of a technologically advanced enemy.
What’s more, the motorized infantry brigade that so masterfully mounted a defense is hardly big enough to be considered a brigade at all. Izvestia reported that it took a call-up of 300 reservists just to fill out the ranks enough to stage these maneuvers.
Meanwhile, the military brass has repeatedly proclaimed that the recent military reforms have enabled leaders to create large battle-ready units that can quickly start fighting without the need for reservists. From now on, according to Interfax, brigades will be broken down into smaller battalions of tactical groups, and only those reinforced battalions will be fully manned.
The problem is obvious: The demographic situation in Russia makes it impossible to staff a million-man army. But not a single military commander would risk informing the commander in chief of this fact. Instead, the head of the General Staff tediously insisted that the recent maneuvers proved that the armed forces are capable of repelling external aggressors or resolving an internal conflict. Perhaps Putin wants a million-man army to put down any possible color revolution or maintain Russia’s superpower status.
Military commanders staged the pointless war games in Novorossiisk for one reason only: To enable Putin to go on believing that Russia is still a great power.
Alexander Golts is deputy editor of the online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal.
TITLE: inside russia: Turning Scientists Into Drug Traffickers
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: In mid-August, investigators with the Federal Drug Control Service arrested 55-year-old Olga Zelenina, head of the Penza Agricultural Research Institute’s analytical laboratory and one of Russia’s top experts on poppy cultivation, for the findings of her scientific research.
There are a lot of Kafkaesque incidents in Russia’s bizarre judicial system, but this one tops them all.
So-called poppy busts by the authorities have become more frequent lately. They all follow the same pattern: A businessman imports poppy seeds to be used in Russia’s popular poppy-seed buns, and federal drug control agents throw him in jail for drug trafficking. Their argument: Fragments of poppy plant stems inevitably get mixed up with the seeds during the harvest, and the stems contain an opiate. The federal agents equate the presence of these trace elements in the shipment to drug trafficking.
As a recognized expert in the field, Zelenina’s laboratory offered its opinion on a case involving a businessperson by the last name of Shilov who had imported 42 tons of poppy seeds from Spain in 2010.
Zelenina wrote in her findings that it is natural for such impurities to be present in a large quantity of poppy seeds. She wrote that Shilov’s poppy seeds contained 0.00069 percent morphine and 0.00049 percent codeine, and that such miniscule quantities of opiates could only be extracted with the help of a first-rate laboratory.
Zelenina now finds herself threatened with a 20-year prison term. Her crime was concluding very scientifically that two multiplied by two equals four, when she ought to have known that in Russia, two times two equals 17 — or whatever the ruling authorities decide it equals.
As I have already mentioned, the poppy seeds themselves do not contain opiates, but any quantity of harvested seeds will inevitably include tiny fragments of poppy plant stems that do contain trace amounts of opiates. The old government standard allowed shipments of seeds to contain up to 3 percent plant stems, but the new standard does not allow any — zero percent.
That new government standard for poppy plant stems is not the only document from federal agents to defy the laws of chemistry and biology.
Several years ago, Russia was rocked by the “case of the chemists” after federal agents pushed through legislation that equated the precursors of narcotics to the narcotics themselves. A precursor is a substance from which you can make drugs. For example, morphine is a precursor for heroine.
But the Federal Drug Control Service rewrote the chemistry textbook and decided that a precursor is a substance that you can use to make a drug. For example, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, toluene and acetone were recategorized in this way. Considering that no less than 11.5 million tons of sulfuric acid are produced annually in Russia, the number of potential narcotics producers rose significantly. It also became possible to bring charges of selling narcotics against anyone who sold acetone. And that is exactly what happened.
At the same time, the Russian law on narcotics was amended in 2007, making it possible for drug control officers to transport the narcotics they uncovered without destroying them.
Obviously, any agency that makes it legal for its officers to transport the narcotics it seizes without destroying them is going to have trouble stopping the drug trade. After all, it is difficult to fight against the illegal trade you are personally engaged in.
Since the Federal Drug Control Service badly needed something positive to report, it decided to battle against poppy seeds and top researchers who refuse to go along with the amazing scientific discoveries made by the agency.
Yulia Latynina hosts a radio talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Winter retreat
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Yevgeny Fyodorov, the frontman of Zorge and earlier of Tequilajazzz, dismissed media reports this week that he had emigrated to Georgia for political reasons, saying that Ukrainian journalists who interviewed him had “misplaced accents.”
“I haven’t emigrated, we’ve just temporarily settled here,” said Fyodorov, speaking by phone from Tbilisi on Monday.
“It’s like everybody does in the rest of the world; if somebody wants to live for a while in some other place, without being bound by their propiska [residency permit for Russian citizens that has remained since the Soviet era], they go there. For instance, a band from Los Angeles goes to rehearse in Canada, or quite the opposite, a band from Canada goes to rehearse in Cuba. It’s just the same, because I have found a very favorable atmosphere here — on both a creative and human level — and I am going to spend some time here. Not the rest of my life.
“We’ll just stay here during the cold St. Petersburg November and December, there’s a very good studio and very good working conditions here. So I’ll be living between three cities: Tbilisi, St. Petersburg and Moscow, because I’ll have a lot of stuff to do in Moscow and St. Petersburg, so I fly back and forth.”
Zorge will open the band’s new season with the release of a new episode of “Mongoloid,” its audio and comic strip series, this week, just before the band relocates to Tbilisi for the autumn.
“Mongoloid” is a post-apocalyptic series of songs, prose and drawings that the band posts on a specially designated website, www.zorgemongoloid.com.
“I don’t know what to call it, an audio comic strip or a multi-episode audio book; it consists of many parts,” Fyodorov said.
“We post an episode once a month, as if it’s a television series. It was supposed to be about the songs, but we happened to meet an artist who does drawings, something like a comic strip. It’s not animation, but rather a slide show.”
“Mongoloid,” which Zorge launched in May, was nominated as the year’s “most interesting Internet project” and “best design” at the Steppenwolf Awards, the alternative music awards founded by Moscow music journalist and promoter Artemy Troitsky.
“It’s unique, because no one has done anything like it so far,” Fyodorov said.
“We’ll be uploading episodes for 12 months. In the acoustic version, the story is told by its character, while on the web site, there is also a narrator’s detached point of view, a literary version of the events, so it’s sort of a multi-dimensional, multi-media thing. The professionals noticed it immediately; the first letter of thanks I received was from [film director] Timur Bekmambetov.”
The materials are available for free and can be downloaded both as video and audio files in different formats. “You can download the whole soundtrack, or you can download just the songs separately,” Fyodorov said.
As with Zorge’s debut album, the project is crowd-funded. Those wishing to support “Mongoloid” can do so on the website www.kroogi.com.
The “immigration” news perhaps stemmed from earlier interviews with Fyodorov in which he said he was considering emigrating after Putin and Medvedev announced a year ago that they would swap their jobs as president and prime minister. He said at the time that he found the moral climate in Russia “disgusting.”
“In fact, [the alleged immigration news] was distributed by the Ukrainian press,” Fyodorov said.
“I gave an interview when I was there, and the Ukrainian press approached it from their specific viewpoint, and distributed the information, having changed the accents a bit, it’s as simple as that.”
Zorge did not perform at the Free Pussy Riot Fest held at Glavclub earlier this month, but Fyodorov signed an open letter from artists in defense of the imprisoned members of the feminist punk group.
“My name is no. 151 on this letter, which has now been declared a list of enemies of Russia,” Fyodorov said. “So I am now no. 151 as a ‘Jew’ and ‘Russophobe’ on a special website — I don’t want to call it ‘Orthodox Christian,’ because it’s false Orthodoxy.”
He said he did not mind being included on the list, but has some apprehensions.
“It’s actually a ridiculous thing; they simply copied the list of signatures of artists in defense of Pussy Riot, and added their own commentary,” he said.
“It amuses me a lot, but it’s a grassroots movement, some volunteers make those lists and that makes me a bit nervous. Because it’s not the KGB who compile those lists, but people who travel in the same metro as you do. It’s a portent not of state terror, but for what can happen if there’s civic disagreement between different social groups or other kinds of groups. That’s what makes me nervous. It’s a grassroots initiative of ordinary people. That is what’s disgusting about it.”
Fyodorov said he had reservations about joining the campaign in defense of Pussy Riot, who were arrested in March and sentenced to two years in prison in August for their anti-Putin performance in a Moscow church, because he subscribes to Tibetan Buddhism, rather than Orthodox Christianity.
“I didn’t take an active part in this situation initially, because it’s common knowledge that I belong to an entirely different confession, and I didn’t want to meddle in Orthodox business,” he said.
“But when the situation stopped being a purely religious dispute and moved into the legal field, it was of course impossible to stand by, and my comments were on Reuters and in Afisha magazine. After web broadcasts from the court ended, I turned off my computer and was happy not to check the Internet for two weeks.”
Although many rock musicians supported the imprisoned women, a number of them said Pussy Riot should be punished for alleged sacrilege.
“It came as no news to me, it only proves that we are all different,” Fyodorov said.
“Just like the rest of society, musicians can be divided into those who are more educated and less educated, those who are rooted in the Soviet traditions and those who are not, those who are inclined to make xenophobic conclusions and those who are not. Reality shows that nothing has changed since 1905.”
According to Fyodorov, the other important issue worthy of attention right now is the activists arrested and investigated in the aftermath of the May 6 demo on Bolotnaya Ploshchad in Moscow, which broke into riots when the police started arresting protesters.
“It’s a matter of prime importance now, but one that has unfortunately been forgotten about,” he said.
While Fyodorov dismissed the immigration rumors, he admitted that his wish to spend more time outside Russia and temporary relocation with his family to Tbilisi was connected with the deteriorating climate in the country.
“There’s an indirect connection; I don’t always find it nice to walk amid people in the street now,” he said.
“It’s not directly connected to the political situation, because there are also issues here in Georgia, as everybody knows. I’m not following politics too closely right now, I decided to get it out of my head a bit and am exclusively focusing on creative tasks. I am interested in it only to the extent of what cleverer and more informed people are writing about it. I just read, and form my own opinion.”
After the “Mongoloid” showcase concerts in St. Petersburg and Moscow this weekend, the band is set to spend the rest of October in a St. Petersburg studio.
Zorge will go to Tbilisi to continue work on the project at the end of October.
“We will become a Georgian band for a while; we will be living and working there,” Fyodorov said. “We will just relocate for the fabulous golden autumn and grape season in Tbilisi.”
Fyodorov said he had paid brief visits to the Georgian capital in August and September.
“We like the situation there, apartment rental costs suit us, we like Georgian food and what goes on in Georgia.”
Zorge will not release a regular album for the time being, according to Fyodorov.
“We’re not recording albums at the moment; we record one ‘Mongoloid’ song per month and upload it, as well as some instrumental cinematic music. I can’t rule out that after Tbilisi, we will find ourselves at some other point on the globe, where we’ll be doing just the same thing.”
Zorge will perform at 8 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 28 at Zal Ozhidaniya, 118 Naberezhnaya Obvodnogo Kanala. Tel. 333 1069. M. Frunzenskaya / Baltiiskaya.
TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Global Pussy Riot Day 2 in support of Pussy Riot’s imprisoned members is to be held on Monday, Oct. 1, the day of the appeal hearing on the verdict handed down to Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who were each sentenced to two years in prison on Aug. 17.
Tolokonnikova’s lawyer Mark Feigin said that he hopes that the campaign will be held in more than 100 cities across the globe. The first Global Pussy Riot Day was held on the day of the verdict and reportedly saw people gather in more than 60 cities worldwide.
On Sunday, Feigin took the stage to announce the Pussy Riot solidarity day during Peter Gabriel’s concert in New York.
Yoko Ono and Amnesty International awarded this year’s LennonOno grant for peace to Pussy Riot’s imprisoned members Friday. The award was accepted by Tolokonnikova’s husband Pyotr Verzilov, who was in New York with their daughter Gera, on behalf of the three women.
“I thank Pussy Riot in standing firmly in their belief for freedom of expression and making all women of the world proud to be women,” Ono was quoted by Reuters as saying.
On Thursday in Washington, Verzilov and Pussy Riot’s lawyers met with the American lawmakers who drafted the Magnitsky bill, whose aim is “to impose visa and banking restrictions on Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses.”
They proposed that the Magnitsky bill should be broadened to include the people responsible for the persecution of the punk group, so that similar sanctions would be imposed on them.
Those people include Judge Marina Syrova, who displayed open disregard for the law and backed the prosecution, and reporter Arkady Mamontov, who made mud-slinging programs about the group for Russian state television, among others.
Earlier this month, Feigin urged Muscovites to show their support by coming to the Moscow City Court on the day of the appeal hearing.
“There is no justice in Russia, there are no honest courts in Russia,” said Feigin, speaking at the Sept. 15 March of Millions in Moscow.
“The street should become the court, this is the only way to bring about changes inside Russia.”
In St. Petersburg, a rally will be held in support of Pussy Riot, the activists arrested and investigated in the wake of the May 6 rally on Bolotnaya Ploshchad and The Other Russia activist Taisia Osipova, who was sentenced to eight years in prison on fabricated drug distribution charges.
The St. Petersburg rally has been authorized by City Hall, according to organizer Yulia Alimova. It is due to be held on the Field of Mars at 6 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 1.
Alyokhina, Samutsevich and Tolokonnikova have been named “prisoners of conscience” by Amnesty International.
The appeal will be heard at 11 a.m. on Monday at the Moscow City Court.
TITLE: Ceremonial rites
AUTHOR: By Natalya Smolentseva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The last few years have seen some tragic episodes in the history of Poland, most notably the plane crash in Smolensk, Russia in 2010 in which the majority of the Polish government lost their lives. Through the media, people now are able to feel like they participate in high-profile funeral ceremonies such as those of the government members or that of Pope John Paul II in 2005. How did the country feel, and how is the concept of death understood in Polish culture? This is an issue that has formed a basis for discussion by contemporary Polish artists.
The “Ceremonial” exhibit at the Krasnoye Znamya culture center aims to help Russian viewers to get a general notion of what is going on within the contemporary Polish art scene. All types of visual art will be on display, but there is an emphasis on video work.
The cult of the dead in Poland goes back through the ages and features in the work of the majority of national poets and artists.
“Messianism — this is the key word in this project,” said Katya Shadkovska, curator of the “Ceremonial” exhibit. “The whole of Poland’s national identity is seen through the prism of this word and the meaning of this word.”
The organizers expect people to think about existential problems. “We also wanted to focus right now on the situation in the politics and economy of Poland and the whole world, and prompt people to think about how other people are manipulating them,” Shadkovska said.
Among the artists participating in the “Ceremonial” exhibit are well-known figures in Polish art including Zuzanna Janin and Grzegorz Kowalski. The teacher of the most eminent Polish contemporary artists such as Artur Zmijewski, the curator of the seventh Berlin biennale and a driving force behind the critical movement, Kowalski was a major influence on the history of Polish contemporary art. The display includes a documentary about his theatrical activities during the ’70s.
“This is a story that shows how the individual is forcing his way through the external, through the people around him,” said Marcin Krasny, another of the exhibit’s curators. “That is why we are talking about how people would treat a person who is already dead.”
The participation of another leading Polish artist is of particular current interest, in the context of the Pussy Riot case and the debate it has engendered. Aleka Polis is an eminent Polish feminist artist and believes that the members of the punk band Pussy Riot “should become sort of Mother Mary figures,” said Shadkovska. “Here in this exhibit we have totally different work by Aleka Polis, absolutely non-feminist in character. We are showing some of her most personal and intimate work.”
Two parts of her triptych are devoted to the central Polish tragedies of recent years, the death of the Pope and the Smolensk plane crash, while the third one is about the death of Aleka’s own father.
“There is a tradition of death portraiture in Poland that goes back to the 18th century,” said Krasny. “Aleka is following this tradition in order to make this kind of contemporary video portrait.”
As well as video, the exhibit — to which entrance is free of charge — includes painting, photography and other mediums used by Polish artists to display their reflections. Maurycy Gomolicki’s photo project was created in Mexico and Poland, and explores both differences and similarities in the experience of death, as well as the fascination with its aesthetic. There are also objects on show, such as Szymon Kobylarz’s model of the fictional interior of an institution offering euthanasia.
The “Ceremonial” exhibit runs from Sept. 27 through Oct. 12 at the Krasnoye Znamya culture center, 24 Bolshaya Raznochinnaya Ulitsa. M. Chkalovskaya. Tel. 965 0659.
TITLE: the word’s worth: Zyuganov in the dog house
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Ïîñëåäíÿÿ ñîáàêà: lowest of the low
In the heat and confusion of events, a politician sends a sharply worded tweet. Public outrage ensues. His aides clarify, only making things worse. The politician says he didn’t mean what critics say he meant, and then says he didn’t write the tweet at all.
This would hardly catch my eye — it happens every day in the United States — but this particular Twitter incident occurred in Russia, and the tweet concerned an American. One of the politician’s colleagues said, “Ìû ñ÷èòàåì, ÷òî ýòî ïðîèçîøëî èç-çà ïëîõîãî çíàíèÿ àìåðèêàíöàìè âñåõ íþàíñîâ ðóññêîãî ÿçûêà” (We believe this happened because the Americans had a bad understanding of all the nuances of the Russian language). I’m always interested in nuances Americans don’t understand.
The purported author was Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, and the alleged tweet was this: Àìåðèêàíñêîãî ïîñëà â Ëèâèè ðàññòðåëÿëè êàê ïîñëåäíþþ ñîáàêó. Ýòî áûë ãëàâíûé ñïåöèàëèñò ïî ëèâèéñêîé «ðåâîëþöèè». Îí ïîëó÷èë òî, ÷òî ïîñåÿë. (The U.S. ambassador to Libya was shot like the lowest dog. He was the main specialist on the Libyan “revolution.” He reaped what he sowed.)
Zyuganov and his aides insisted the phrase ðàññòðåëÿòü êàê ñîáàêó (to shoot like a dog) means áåç ñîæàëåíèÿ ðàññòðåëÿëè, áåñïàðäîííî ðàññòðåëÿëè (to shoot someone without mercy, to shoot someone brazenly). This phrase, they said, condemns the executioners, not the executed.
This is the nuance Americans supposedly didn’t get. But English has the exact same expression — to shoot someone like a dog — which, exactly like the Russian, is a comment on the way someone was treated.
So what’s the problem? Well, at least part of the problem is the word ïîñëåäíèé (last), a word left out of all the convoluted and contradictory explanations.
Ïîñëåäíèé generally isn’t a problematic word. It means the last something, like ïîñëåäíèé äåíü ìåñÿöà (last day of the month), or ÿ æèâó íà ïîñëåäíåì ýòàæå (I live on the last floor). Like in English, it can refer to an action done just before death, like ïîñëåäíèé âçäîõ óìèðàþùåãî (a dying person’s last breath). Sometimes it can mean the very newest of the new, like ïîñëåäíÿÿ íîâîñòü (latest news) or ïîñëåäíÿÿ ìîäà (the latest style).
And then it can be an intensifier that means the worst in a bad series, like ïîñëåäíèé äóðàê (the stupidest idiot), or ïîñëåäíèé íåãîäÿé (the worst scumbag) — or ïîñëåäíÿÿ ñîáàêà (a lowly dog, the lowest of the low).
Calling someone ïîñëåäíÿÿ ñîáàêà is a strong insult. Ýòî ñàìàÿ ÷òî íè íà åñòü àíàôåìà: òû õóæå ïîñëåäíåé ñîáàêè (That is the worst kind of anathema: You’re worse than the lowest dog). Ëó÷øå áûòü ïîñëåäíåé ñîáàêîé äîìà, ÷åì â âàøåé Àìåðèêå (It’s better to be the lowest of the low at home than to live in your America.)
On the other hand, in examples where someone was treated like ïîñëåäíÿÿ ñîáàêà, the phrase clearly condemns the treatment. Áðîñèëè íàñ â àýðîïîðòó êàê ïîñëåäíèõ ñîáàê (We were dumped at the airport as if we were a pack of street dogs). Íà äîïðîñàõ áèëè êàê ïîñëåäíèõ ñîáàê (At interrogations they beat us like dogs.)
But if there is any ambiguity about the first sentence, the tweet resolves it with the last sentence: ïîëó÷èë òî, ÷òî ïîñåÿë (usually ÷òî ïîñåÿë, òî è ïîæí¸øü — as ye sow, so shall ye reap). He got what he deserved.
It’s no wonder there was such a scramble to explain, clarify, translate and blame. Outrageous.
Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.
TITLE: Love, war and fraternity
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica, who this year is presiding over the jury at the St. Petersburg International Film Festival, has always had fraternal feelings toward Russians. Adored by Russian audiences and a frequent guest at the country’s film festivals and clubs alike, the filmmaker and musician never misses a chance to refer to the Russians and the Serbs as members of the same family.
So the promise that Kusturica made in the city on Monday sounds all the more natural: The director announced that his new film with the working title “Love and War,” which is currently being shot, will have its premiere at a future St. Petersburg Kinoforum. Filming is scheduled to be completed in about a year.
In the film, which will be released as a three-part series, Kusturica also plays the main character, a man at war, who ends up becoming a monk.
“The three parts of the film follow the main character during three very challenging and trying periods both for him and his native land,” Kusturica said. “You will see this man at war, falling in love with a woman who sacrifices herself to save him, and living a reclusive life in a monastery. In the cloister, my hero is working with a stone, and when the work is done, he takes it to the top of the highest hill, only to push the 80-kilogram thing down. As the monk is carrying the heavy stone up the hill, scenes from his turbulent past flash through his mind.”
Kusturica’s son will be responsible for the soundtrack to the new film.
For Kusturica, work on “Love and War” is a long-awaited return to the filmmaking process. “I have not done any films in the last four years, and I did not want to push myself, really,” the director said. “A director’s job is nothing like working on an assembly line, where you have to adhere to a certain schedule. I have had a lot on my plate — from touring with concerts to writing a book — and I was waiting for the right moment to get back to filmmaking. I needed to be ready for new work.”
For shooting “Love and War,” Kusturica will for the first time use a digital camera, and he is hoping that this will allow him to break new ground. However, the director feels he needs to warn younger generations of film directors against focusing too heavily on new technology. “Any technology, however advanced and exciting, is just a tool that helps to deliver certain ideas, rather than the goal itself. A good film always explores existential issues, and technology alone is not enough to achieve it.”
“The world of cinema is changing drastically these days; it is undergoing tectonic transformations,” Kusturica added. “There is a strong tendency that is especially tangible in Western Europe that a happy ending is now seen as something of bad taste. I cannot agree with that.”
As an admirer of Russian cinema icons such as Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Alexander Dovzhenko and Andrei Tarkovsky, and a regular at the Russian film events of today, Kusturica is frustrated to see a lack of independence and substance in the works of up-and-coming Russian filmmakers.
“In the younger generation of directors, there is a tendency to imitate Hollywood films” he said. From their works, one does not get a flavor of what life feels like for Russian people these days, during such a challenging time of transition. I very much hope that a new wave of Russian cinema will soon come. We all deserve it.”
TITLE: in the spotlight: Lives less ordinary
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: This week is my last “In the Spotlight” column, after about six years of watching bad television and writing about Ksenia Sobchak.
Not that I am obsessed with the It Girl we have learned to call an opposition leader, but I did buy her “How to Marry a Millionaire” perfume.
The idea of the column was basically to read a lot of gossip magazines and watch trashy television. Back then no foreign journalists ever seemed to write about show business and television, as if people spent every waking moment thinking about Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It seemed fair to write about who was on the cover of Russia’s most popular magazine, 7 Dnei. And why they were all so keen to show off their new bathroom fittings.
Over the years I developed my favorite stars, who could always be relied on when inspiration ran dry: Sobchak, of course, pop diva Alla Pugachyova and her ex-husband pop star Filipp Kirkorov, as well as permed pop singer and leopard-print addict Valery Leontyev, who is the only one not to have changed a bit.
Cartoonist Viktor Bogorad, who specializes in excoriating caricatures of Vladimir Putin, got very good at drawing Sobchak without complaining once.
Russia now has Hello! and Ok! magazines, but in the beginning it was just 7 Dnei, which publishes voluminous interviews with stars about their gigantic new houses and numerous exes. That might seem like showing off, but it is perfect escapism for readers living in crumbling one-bedroom flats with dodgy Soviet plumbing, I should know.
Another favorite was Tainy Zvyozd, or Secrets of the Stars, a slim publication where Putin’s dog Connie and Medvedev’s fluffy cat Dorofei have written regular columns on Kremlin gossip. Connie is back now and has become rather outspoken lately, even writing about Pussy Riot.
Rarely, I got some critical feedback. The wife of a publisher, Olga Rodionova, who likes to pose for arty nude shots, got her lawyer to send me a warning letter. Not because I described her genital piercings, but because I said she worked for an “obscure” television channel. Roman Abramovich’s man asked me to check with him after I wrote about a flurry of engagement rumors. And Elton John’s people got back to me to deny he was going to do a gay-pride concert.
On the positive side, I learned recently via Twitter that one of my columns was used in an English exam at Moscow State University’s journalism department. It was about Sobchak.
My favorite Soviet singer Pugachyova managed to get secretly divorced, retire, marry a television host three decades her junior and move with him to a chateau in the Moscow region. Not bad for a singer who started out under Brezhnev.
Meanwhile, ex-husband number four, Kirkorov, grew progressively odder. He gave an interview from a psychiatric clinic after attacking a female assistant. Then he had two children in swift succession (less than nine months apart) via American surrogate mothers, laying the way for puzzling conversations in the playground. Background checks, what background checks?
Once the eternal leader of Dom-2 reality show, Sobchak lost contracts after taking part in opposition rallies. She was even blacklisted from Fort Boyard, a game show where people run around with rubber hammers. It has been a surreal transformation and my brain practically exploded when she had lunch with the Financial Times.
Another very weird moment was when pop star Pugachyova joined forces with Mikhail Prokhorov and spoke out against Kremlin eminence grise Vladislav Surkov.
Good for them, but I find their new activism a little bit worthy and dull. I preferred it when stars knew their place in a ridiculous bubble of Miami mansions, private jets and leopard-skin print televisions. At least Leontyev kept the faith.
TITLE: THE DISH: Market Place
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Upstairs, downstairs
Don’t make the mistake, when visiting Market Place, of lingering downstairs. Once you have selected your meal, cafeteria-style, from the open cooking stations — choose from salads and wraps, pasta and wok dishes, a grill station and meat and fish dishes — situated around the large, brightly lit first-floor room, head upstairs to enjoy it.
That’s not to say there’s anything inherently wrong with the first floor, with its exposed brick walls, wooden floor and jungle of plants on the broad windowsills. The Bershka clothing store that occupied these premises until recently is unrecognizable in Market Place. Instead of rows of wet-look leggings and leather jackets, visitors are greeted by a large barrow of fruit and vegetables and jars of pickles, illustrating the cafe’s name. Don’t be fooled, though: This is not reflected in the menu, with no choice, as such, for vegetarians, who might find a meat-free main course at the pasta and wok station if they are lucky, but are unlikely to do so anywhere else.
The only familiar element that remains from Bershka is the staircase, through the center of which an installation of cheese-graters, pans and utensils — all painted white — now dangles, suspended from the ceiling.
Follow the beckoning whisks upstairs to the far more appealing second-floor dining room, where the harsh light of downstairs is subdued by wicker lampshades and enhanced by candlelight, and the bustling sounds of brisk frying are replaced by the strains of soft female jazz vocals. Here, instead of the motorway canteen-style layout below, there is just one counter displaying cakes, cookies and other desserts. Coffee (65 rubles, $2), beer (114 rubles/$3.65 for half a liter) and wine are on sale, as well as sangria for 110 rubles ($3.50) per glass.
From up here, where the expansive windows offer rare views out onto Kazan Cathedral and Nevsky Prospekt (the corner table offers a particularly good vista), it may no longer seem important that the solyanka soup (75 rubles, $2.40) was overly salty or that the potato in it had already turned a little mushy. The slightly cool temperature of the side dish of buckwheat porridge with carrot and mushrooms (48 rubles, $1.50), may fade into insignificance, and the marinated chanterelles with onion, dill and garlic (57 rubles, $1.80) may well seem a little less bland than they did downstairs. So what if a bowl of salad (90 rubles, $2.90) is fridge-cold and lacking in flavor, despite signs declaring that the cafe uses produce grown organically (an ambitious claim in itself in Russia) in the Leningrad Oblast? And yes, the pasta Arrabiata (148 rubles, $4.70), despite being firm, piping hot and freshly cooked, could have benefited from a few more fresh chili peppers, but ultimately, there are few places on Nevsky Prospekt that offer meals at these kinds of prices — and with generous portions too — never mind with a view this good.
After all, Market Place — part of a chain that also has branches on Vasilyevsky Island, Ploshchad Konstitutsii and Moskovksy Prospekt — is not masquerading as a gourmet restaurant (though the beef cutlet with salted cucumbers and melted cheese, for 105 rubles/$3.35, was hard to fault). On the contrary, it has forged a new niche for itself, joining the new phenomenon of stolovayas or canteens on Nevsky Prospekt, following in the footsteps of more basic establishments like the boldly named Stolovaya No. 1 almost opposite it, and another next to the Kolizei movie theater at the other end of the street, but with a slightly hipper interior than the average no-frills canteen.
After years of Nevsky being a desert for decent, reasonably priced eateries and frequented only by hungry tourists who didn’t know any better, the novelty of being able to get something to eat on the city’s most famous street is a welcome trend. And judging by the spontaneous rush of diners on a recent Sunday night, including the occasional backpacker — though they sadly almost all made the all-too-easy mistake of failing to venture upstairs — Market Place could do well. In fact, if only the rather surly, unhelpful chefs at the cooking stations and cashiers at the tills would learn some basic manners from the far more personable khaki-shirt-clad staff working the restaurant floor, it could do very well indeed.
TITLE: City’s Language Schools Look to Innovation
AUTHOR: By Yelena Minenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As more and more job vacancies require the knowledge of a foreign language, the city’s ever-multiplying language schools are finding innovative ways to improve their students’ language skills.
According to the JobsMarket website, there are now 60 language schools in St. Petersburg, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Among the language schools in the city, there are several that stand out for their alternative approach and progressive teaching methods.
Lessons at Inter Tempora foreign language club take place in a room where there are no desks, only a round table and a wide windowsill.
“We try to create as natural an environment as possible; we want our students to be physically relaxed, we don’t want them to perceive classes as something academic,” said Veronika Maslova, the club’s head.
“We teach English in small groups, with five people maximum,” she said. “Our students make themselves tea or coffee here. If they come for class early, they can sit on a sofa and relax, have something to eat, watch a movie in English or read a book. Then, for 2 hours and 15 minutes we practice the language. The communicative methodology that is very popular today and promoted by almost every club is presented here fully,” she added.
Beside intensive and extensive English courses, to which it is planned to add Spanish, Swedish and Japanese, the school also offers free participation in its conversation club, which takes place in a café. Groups of young people meet to speak English in an informal environment in which they can discuss different topics, the latest news, or watch and discuss films.
Inter Tempora has been operating for almost a year and is currently working on the development of courses for young children and individual Russian lessons for foreign businessmen.
A similar principle of practicing language in a natural, informal and relaxed atmosphere has been adopted by World Language Café, a network of mobile language clubs that arranges coffee and lunch meetings with native speakers for those wanting to learn English, German, French and other languages.
A combination of communicative methodology and the so-called structural approach (in which the focus is on the systematic teaching of structures) is offered by the Advance training club for a course titled “English language in 3 months with guaranteed results.”
“We test all the teaching methods that appear in the world and combine them, for example in our classes we use mind cards and mind maps created by [educational consultant] Tony Buzan, the grammar structuring technology of Stanford University and others,” said Nikolai Yagodkin, the center’s director.
“We only study things that students will need in practice, in real life: When we practice reading, we read texts from real life, in speaking we practice different speech templates. Our aim is to make our students speak,” said Darya Timoshina, one of the course teachers.
The teachers at Advance guarantee that within three months students will be able to pass two levels at once — from Beginner to Pre-Intermediate or from Elementary to Intermediate. “If you start from point zero, six months is the maximum period that you can spend with us,” said Yagodkin.
If by the end of the course students are not satisfied with the results, the school is willing to refund the full price of the course. According to Advance, which also plans to offer German courses in the future, it is currently the only teaching center to offer this guarantee.
New approaches to study are being introduced by bigger companies too. English First — an international educational network — opened an innovative education center in St. Petersburg last Thursday. The center contains an area for interactive themed events and an iLab zone for independent work in English First’s online school.
“The new center can be compared with a modern fitness club: Students buy a membership card for a year, receive a schedule of classes and have a personal coach and 24-hour access to the online platform,” said Carl Cronstedt, EF English First country manager for Russia.
English First’s new system of education, known as Efekta, contains four major steps: Learn, try, apply, certify. In Efekta, the study process begins online, includes lessons with native speakers, practice in real situations during events and finally, testing and receiving a certificate.
“This is a school for adults,” said Crondstedt. “We want to meet the needs of the adult population, who, according to our surveys, don’t have a lot of time for English; they need a flexible schedule, new technologies and native speakers as teachers.”
EF divides the six standard levels of English into 16, which prolongs the educational process, so that a year at a new EF school gives students the opportunity to cover 4 out of 16 levels.
About 15 percent of Russians evaluate their knowledge of foreign languages as high, according to research carried out in 2008 by the Levada Center research organization.
Most of those 15 percent are Russians with a higher education aged from 18-39, and are typically businessmen, managers and students. Eighty percent of that 15 percent said they spoke English, 16 said they knew German, and four – French.
Russia currently ranks 32nd out of 44 countries assessed in the EF English Proficiency Index, with an overall classification of “low.”
TITLE: City Museums Get Hands On in Bid to Teach Kids
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: While signs in museums reading “Do not touch the exhibits” were once standard, they are becoming increasingly rare: Visitors are now often met by friendlier signs inviting them to interact with the exhibit. Modern museums try to engage young visitors by educating them via entertainment, and interactive exhibits in which people are encouraged to touch the items on show are becoming more and more popular.
While in Europe the new format of “edutainment” (education combined with entertainment) is already well known, St. Petersburg is only taking its first steps in this direction. One of the first interactive museums to appear in the city, back in 2009, was Skazkin Dom (The House of Fairy Tales), where children are immersed in books and learn the story directly from the characters of the fairy tales.
“Since that time, seven similar establishments have been launched in St. Petersburg,” said Yekaterina Andriyevskaya, co-founder of the Skazkin Dom, LabirintUm and KidBurg museums. “Furthermore, traditional museums have started to include interactive exhibits, as they were beginning to lose visitors.
“Although new interactive museums are appearing, we are still years behind Europe,” she said. “In Europe, children’s museums are always interactive, they do not even consider anything else. But our residents still need explaining what it is to them.”
As the old Chinese proverb goes, “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.” Museum representatives believe that interactive exhibits promote education and help to combat scientific illiteracy. The entertaining format is attractive to children — it is interesting, exciting and makes it possible to demonstrate theory.
“In our system of education, the creative, intuitive abilities of children are not taken into account. They should develope the skill of attaining rapidly changing information,” said Irina Donina, head of the children’s programs and education department at the State Museum of the History of Religion, one of the older museums that includes interactive exhibits in its regular program.
Interactive components have become a fascinating complement to scientific exhibits. For example, visitors can use a video microscope to observe the life of insects or don a special mask that enables them to see the world as animals do. The city’s Planetarium has a laboratory for experiments and also offers visitors the chance to take a “space journey” inside a spacecraft. The interactive format can also be adapted for art museums, as shown by the aromatic installation devoted to Caravaggio organized by the State Hermitage Museum, where visitors could sniff the aromas of the flowers and fruits that inspired the Italian artist.
“Our motto is fun, beauty and experimentation — all these should be present in an interactive exhibit,” said Alexei Zemko, head of Expo Science Interactive, a company that creates and provides museums with interactive exhibits.
“A guide is also necessary, especially in our topic of telling visitors about religions,” said Donina. “Children should not leave the museum with a belief in shamanism. There is a trend for kids to explore everything by themselves. We follow another tradition, in which a guide directs the young visitor, corrects their understanding, and helps them to find interesting aspects that unite or divide people of various religions.”
Museums using interactive exhibits, however, face a problem inherent in their innovation. The technology is soon out of date and it is generally expensive to regularly update the equipment.
“We have to keep moving and create interactive exhibits with a view to the future,” said Donina. “So we create an exhibit that can be renewed with the use of our own resources. For example, we can use a ready-prepared space, make some minor changes and teach children about a completely different historical period or belief,” she explained.
In spite of the success of the entertainment format, it cannot fully replace the traditional system of education, and is only appropriate for children in a particular age range.
“The classical approach to education will always be relevant, especially for residents of St. Petersburg,” said Andriyevskaya. “Children should also visit classical museums and enjoy traditional paintings, for example.”
The interactive museums do not reject classical forms of education; rather, they aim to complement them. Although Skazkin Dom is an interactive exposition, its goal is to attract young visitors to traditional reading.
“Our task is to bring children back to fairy tales and books,” said Andrievskaya. “As we always tell children, if they stop reading, the fairy tale characters will disappear.
“We set ourselves a mission: To restore interest in books. Our interactive programs fully involve children in the story and they feel as if they are characters — we provide them with old household items related to the era. We support the school curriculum and have performances based on the works of Alexander Pushkin and Pavel Bazhov,” she said.
Teachers often bring young pupils to the museums to repeat and reinforce what they are taught at school. Older children can also find value in visiting interactive museums. The ultimate purpose of these exhibits to attract children to scientific and technical occupations.
“Our graduates still prefer the careers of financier and lawyer and do not want to enter technical universities. Interactive exhibits can help to solve this problem,” said Expo Science Interactive’s Zemko.
“I believe interactive museums can influence children’s choice of future occupation. For kids it’s like an acid test — by visiting this or that interactive museum, and getting involved in the technical or artistic process, the child can feel whether or not it is for them,” said Andriyevskaya.
“For example, my children visited LabirintUm, which demonstrates physical laws and natural phenomena, but prefer other museums as they are interested mostly in the humanitarian sciences. So they made their own choice,” she said.
The KidBurg museum allows children from a very young age to form an opinion about various occupations: First they are given a job, which they can later change, then they complete tasks, earn and spend money.
“It’s the territory of childhood, a space in which children make their own decisions. For kids it is a new and unique experience, as in real life they can rarely decide anything,” said Andriyevskaya.
TITLE: Innovation Dominates MBAs
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In an economy in which businesses have to keep moving in order not to sink below the surface, innovation is the new buzzword in business education programs.
The number and variety of courses offering to teach students how to be innovative in business is increasing rapidly, with such programs being incorporated into the courses offered by traditional universities and business schools with well-established names around the world.
Traditional European and American business schools are keeping pace with the trend by opening innovative divisions in countries such as Singapore, China and India: Asian business schools are becoming more and more popular among students due to the rapid economic growth and development of markets operating in innovative spheres in the region.
Interestingly, innovators are in high demand not only among tech companies and creative industries, but also among traditional financial institutions and government organizations, as new approaches to business, development and commercial ideas are essential for any business nowadays.
“Programs in business innovation are very popular now,” said Anastasia Romanenko, chief marketing officer at Insight Lingua, a company specializing in education abroad. “Business is a very changeable sphere, and education should always be adjusted to new realities.”
Key skills that can be learned by enrolling on innovative programs include how to better manage ideas and knowledge, make strategic decisions and adjust to changeable business realities.
“The majority of programs in innovation are offered at postgraduate level, but there are a lot of short courses designed for acquiring specific qualities and skills or developing a creative mind,” Romanenko said.
Stanford Graduate School of Business, which heads the 2012 Financial Times Global MBA Ranking, offers an academic program titled “Powering Innovation Entrepreneurship” that “provides exposure to both the fundamentals of business and the practical aspects of identifying, evaluating, and moving business ideas forward.” Program participants can choose their campus — either Stanford, Singapore or Beijing.
“Stanford Ignite (an academic program for those developing and commercializing ideas) gives graduate students and graduates in non-business fields the management knowledge and skills they need to become leaders in established and start-up organizations,” says Dean Garth Saloner on the school’s website.
Another interesting program offered by Stanford is a joint online course from the Stanford Center for Professional Development at the School of Engineering and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. According to the university website, the program is “designed to engage and inspire, be prepared to get out of your chair and use your whole brain, because creativity and innovation take practice.” The course offers subjects varying from “Leading Innovation” to “Diffusion of Innovations in Social Networks.” Depending on the subject and availability of time, students can complete the certificate in one or two years.
Another approach to business innovation is offered by Cambridge Judge Business School with its MPhil in Innovation, Strategy and Organization program, which aims to extend students’ knowledge of social science methodologies and offer them the interdisciplinary study of organizations.
“I regard the MPhil in Innovation, Strategy & Organization as an invaluable first step in my research career,” Raina Brands, who completed the MPhil degree at Cambridge Judge Business School, is quoted on the school website as saying.
“The ISO program provided me with a rigorous grounding in a range of disciplines, which really assisted the transition from my first degree in psychology to the multidisciplinary management environment of Cambridge Judge Business School. The faculty places a strong emphasis on rigor and imagination, and my work became far more creative as a result.”
One of the most creative programs is offered at City University Cass School in London with its MSc degree in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership, which is aimed at people working in creative industries. The program is focused on developing “practical skills that will enable a student to lead change in an organization and deliver innovation.”
The course includes disciplines in creative writing, psychology, creative design and innovation in different performance arts, as well as technology and math courses delivered by the Center for Human Computer Interaction Design.
“In Russia, people still don’t know much about innovative programs for creative industries, but specialists with innovative skills are in high demand in this sphere,” Romanenko said.
Other opportunities for studying innovation in creative business management include the MA in Innovation Management at University of the Arts London and the MSc in Management of Innovation at Goldsmiths. According to Romanenko, London is the most suitable place for creative development in business due to the vast number of companies there working in creative industries.
Technology-based innovation can be learned at INSEAD Business School, which has campuses in France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi, and Sloan Business School at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The “Technology and Operations Management” and “Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management” programs at these universities both offer PhD degrees, while the London School of Economics offers an MSc in Management, Information Systems and Innovation.
Innovative programs can also be found in Russia. This year St. Petersburg State University launched its MA in Information Technology and Innovation Management, which is fully taught in English and includes a compulsive semester in business schools in Europe or the U.S. The program is designed for people with a good knowledge of IT and math, and it is envisaged that after graduation students will begin a career in innovation management. The program, whose core subjects are taught by professors from the IT department, also has business cases in its curriculum that are taught by people who currently work in business.
The main goal of the Higher School of Innovative Business department at Moscow State University is to adapt traditional university programs to the new demands of the industry by offering postgraduate, MBA and extended education programs. It focuses on managerial and governmental spheres, but it is also possible to study geological and chemical management.
Short courses can be found at Skolkovo Business School, which runs a two-month program in Innovation Management for big businesses. The program is designed for vice-presidents and directors of innovation, department managers and managers of strategy and development.
TITLE: Choosing the Business Graduate Degree for You
AUTHOR: By Christophe Coutat
TEXT: Demand for better and more qualified business professionals has become acute during the last four years, and the pay-off remains excellent. Investing in your career now could be the right move in the long run.
MBA or MIM?
Many Russian students look into options to continue their education abroad with a graduate degree. For those set on a career in business management, there are two obvious choices that should be made: A Masters in Management (MIM) or Master of Business Administration (MBA). These two might look like mirror images of each other, yet there are essential differences between them that must be considered before plunging back into the world of practically-oriented academia.
Work experience is the key when it comes to making a choice between MIM and an MBA. Generally MBA candidates have more “clocked work hours,” with three or more years of extensive work experience. For the Masters in Management, work experience is not essential, and in fact the majority of candidates have very little practical experience, sometime no more than a year.
In a nutshell, the MBA and the MIM are aimed at two different target groups — the former for professionals, the latter for graduates.
Overseas Temptation
Despite higher tuition fees and stricter requirements, the MBA remains a top-demand degree for Russian candidates. Data by Advent Group — organizer of the Access MBA & Masters events held twice per year in Moscow and St. Petersburg — shows that almost 60 percent of event attendees are ready to spend more than 50,000 euros on obtaining an MBA degree. According to data compiled by Advent this spring, more than 40 percent of Russian candidates preferred to do their MBA in the U.S. or the U.K., while only 8 percent targeted local business schools. Most candidates favor programs requiring full-time participation and are eager to relocate abroad for their studies.
Competitive Edge
Some would argue that going back to university at a time when the economy is suffering is nothing short of an escape. Though this may be the case for some, the motivation of most MBA candidates is a great deal less “escapist.” Today’s MBA graduates are still very much in demand. Prospective MBA students have been knocking on the doors of international business schools, continuing a trend that started in 2008. The pay-off has been quite tangible. “Recent MBA participants have gone on to work for over 300 companies in 60 countries,” said Jake Cohen, dean of the MBA program at INSEAD.
Going Global
Most MBA programs these days try to be recession-proof and offer their students an open-platform experience. Many of the respectable business schools, for example, have a variety of exchange programs that students can take and thus gain hands-on experience by learning about the Asian or the American economy from the source, rather than in a classroom with a lecturer. Many top schools now have multiple campuses. Duke University has picked up on the current global trend and offers students the chance to study in different parts of the world, including St. Petersburg and New Delhi. By being immersed in some of the world’s most important economic regions, students get a direct experience of the market and build connections locally. Thus, even if the crisis continues in Europe and the U.S., MBA graduates can always pack their things and look for a job in Asia or Brazil where the economy is booming. Furthermore, instability for the Western economies does not mean that Russia will follow the same trend. Many Russian managers see a globally recognized MBA degree as a good opportunity to diversify their profile and make a global network of business partners.
Recouping the Cost
A new survey by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), a global non-profit organization of leading graduate business schools, shows that alumni from graduate management programs recoup one third of the financial investment in their graduate degree within the first year after graduation and 100 percent of their investment after four years. The Alumni Perspectives Survey discovered that within ten years of graduation, average alumni nearly doubled their return on investment. The study conducted in late 2011 includes responses from 4,135 alumni, who graduated from 2000 through 2011. It showed that 86 percent of the 2011 graduates were employed after graduation. Some 82 percent from the class of 2011 said their salary met or exceeded their expectations.
Tough Decisions
Studying abroad is a major investment in time and money, and for many students the biggest educational expense that they will make in their lives.
There are more than 3,000 MBA and 7,000 Master programs in existence worldwide. Different types are tailored to meet a diverse range of student needs: Full-time, part-time (evenings or weekends), Executive MBA, online MBA, specialized MBA, and others.
Candidates should evaluate a program by three different criteria: The quality of its academic specialization, its educational environment and its career placement program. A school’s alumni network is another important factor, not only because it gives an idea of the level of the program; it is also a vital source of contacts for future employment. Another reliable method is to look at school accreditations, of which EQUIS, AMBA, and AACSB have the best reputation internationally.
One of the best ways to choose the right program is to speak with school representatives and get first-hand information on the specific details of each MBA or MIM.
Christophe Coutat is CEO of Access MBA. Access MBA and Access Masters events give candidates the opportunity to meet admissions directors of global business schools and discuss their development plans in customized one-to-one meetings. The next event will be held in St. Petersburg on Oct. 6 at Astoria Hotel.
TITLE: Making the Most of Study Abroad Programs
AUTHOR: By Ciara Bartlam
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Every year, hundreds of foreign students come to St. Petersburg to study Russian. Most of them complete their study programs during the course of several months and leave with an improved knowledge of Russian and, inevitably, a few tales of their adventures in Russia. But every year, there are also students for whom the experience turns out to be something to be endured rather than enjoyed. So what is the recipe for a successful study experience in St. Petersburg, and what are the pitfalls that should be avoided?
BE PREPARED
The problems that students encounter during study abroad are fairly universal and include homesickness, culture shock, acclimatization to the weather and, of course, the language barrier. Student representatives say that the way in which the home universities prepare their students for these issues can make a difference to how much the students get out of their time here.
Some home universities may limit themselves to briefing students about insurance and life in a homestay (albeit with some very useful information about slippers, table etiquette and how to effectively boil water).
Ingrid Nelson and Courtney Himebrook, two former students of the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) program for U.S. students at St. Petersburg State University, said that while they got a lot out of the CIEE program itself once they were here, they were not adequately prepared by the study abroad departments of their home universities.
“I felt as though I had no idea of what was going to be happening during my time abroad. I didn’t have enough information about what exactly was going on before I left,” Nelson said.
According to Kathryn Alcock, resident director for the American Institute for Foreign Study (AIFS), which has run courses at the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University for more than 20 years, her students have to be thoroughly prepared before coming to Russia, because for a lot of them, it is the first time they have left the country. She outlines the preparatory steps taken as follows: A pre-departure meeting at the students’ home university, pre-departure information from AIFS and an orientation week upon arrival.
Natalya Rostovtseva, director of the Benedict School language center in St. Petersburg that provides courses for British students studying on the Russian Language Undergraduate Studies (RLUS) programs in St. Petersburg, agreed that lack of preparation by home universities is a common complaint among students.
“Better preparation in their own country would help students,” she said. “For example, two of our students this semester could not cross the border because they thought an invitation was equivalent to a visa.”
CULTURAL IMMERSION
Rostovtseva conceived the idea of creating a tailor-made program specifically oriented toward foreigners back in 1992 when she was teaching philosophy at St. Petersburg State University. Before then, foreign students coming to the country to learn the language studied alongside Russians on regular degree programs. With the help of friends and contacts at British universities and her colleagues at the State University, she set up a program designed to meet the needs of British students coming to Russia — a curriculum that included not only language awareness, but also cultural, historical and contemporary features that would help students accomplish more during their short time abroad.
The aim of the program is to “try to create a connection between the language and the cultural environment,” according to Rostovtseva. “We read newspapers with the students, watch TV programs and watch Russian films and get them to discuss what they’ve seen,” she said.
“Language, a professional tool, is not the only benefit of study abroad — a year here also makes you think more broadly, and flexibility and tolerance in our society is a great, great thing.”
On average, approximately 150 British students attend RLUS courses in St. Petersburg every academic year, with about 100 attending the Benedict School and 50 attending RLUS courses at St. Petersburg State University. The numbers for the American programs are smaller, with 25 to 40 students attending AIFS courses any given semester. Hundreds more foreign students study in the city on courses or programs for which they have enrolled individually.
SUPPORT FROM AFAR
Student representatives argue that a lack of preparation invariably leads to a need for more support from home universities during the year, and students complain that this support is not always sufficient.
“What support?” said Himebrook. “After the bombing in the Moscow airport, my college’s study abroad office did check to make sure I was alive, but that was the only time I ever heard from the institution while I was there.”
While the services provided by home universities may be enough for most, there are inevitably a few cases every year of students ending up in emergency situations.
“The personal support I received from my university was adequate,” said Hannah Wilson, a student from University College London who completed a RLUS course in the city last year.
“I appreciated the free medical insurance organized for us. However, in the case of one course-mate who suffered a nervous breakdown in the first term, I feel that in future, the home university should bear some responsibility for assessing the psychological well-being of students embarking on trips away to places as remote as Russia.”
According to AIFS’ Alcock and RLUS student representative Sebastian Richardson, the extent of home university involvement in the year abroad experiences of their respective students differs greatly. Alcock said that the universities AIFS works with in the U.S. closely monitor their students’ progress during their year abroad.
“The students’ home universities are in contact with the students quite frequently... I and my colleagues in the AIFS U.S. office in Stamford, Connecticut are also in contact with the students’ study abroad advisors should any questions or concerns arise,” said Alcock. “I also ask the home universities to ‘like’ our Facebook page where they can see the latest news from campus.”
In contrast, British universities tend to take a less hands-on approach, according to Richardson. He cited Manchester as one university that actively tries to support and encourage its students during their year abroad, but said that other universities don’t seem to appreciate the types of problems students can have.
“Manchester is something of a special example because our liaison officer there regularly comes to Russia and has spent time living here, whereas the others haven’t,” he said.
CARPE DIEM
In addition to extensive preparation, study abroad representatives in the city say students can ensure their time in St. Petersburg is a success by finding out about the opportunities available to them — and taking advantage of them. It’s not a question of universities telling students what to do, but more an issue of giving them insight into what they can do, they suggest.
Wilson, who studied Russian on a RLUS course in St. Petersburg on her year abroad from University College London, interned at a local law firm during the summer of her year abroad.
“The greatest progress was made in the summer rather than during the year abroad itself,” she said.
There is certainly no shortage of opportunities for foreign students in the city, and study abroad representatives urge students to recall that St. Petersburg is not limited to the bars on Dumskaya Ulitsa. Social networking sites such as Facebook and vKontakte are full of interest groups that students can join. Charity events and organizations like the Spasibo! Project and Blago.ru are growing by the day and many would be delighted to have the help of native speakers, while offering students a chance to see a different side to the city in exchange.
For those interested in attending lectures and workshops, places like the Loft Project Etagi arts center on Ligovsky Prospekt and the Poryadok Slov bookstore on the Fontanka hold regular meetings and offer students the chance to get involved in contemporary culture with Russians their own age — and practice their Russian outside class.
And best of all for impoverished students, the majority of these cost nothing more than a minimal amount of time and effort.
TITLE: Malicious Craze for Dog Poisoning Spreads
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Vera Lesovets held up photographs of her dog, Yasha, a spunky 5-year-old corgi, nipping playfully at the heels of a German shepherd twice her size.
But Yasha’s life was cut short this week: After snacking on something in a Moscow park, she fell into a seizure at Lesovets’ apartment and began foaming at the mouth. The family rushed her to a nearby animal clinic, where the veterinarian said this was the sixth case he had seen that week, and there was nothing he could do.
On Friday police opened a criminal investigation into what they suspect are poisonings by dog killers. Cruelty to animals is common in Russia and animal protection laws are rarely enforced, but reports of as many as 70 dead dogs this week have spurred the police to take action.
While some residents suspected that a vigilante matriarch, wary of her children being bitten, might be the cause of the attacks, Lesovets was quick to suspect a more malicious culprit: dog hunters, a kind of deadly hobby gaining ground in the Russian online community.
Dog hunting forums — the most well-known of which are Vreditelyam.net and Pest.net — are populated by those who call themselves “volunteers” and provide graphic photos of their trophy killings. The sites require extensive registration and identification processes for participants.
“It’s a whole community. They have websites,” a young event manager said. “They write how they kill them, post photographs, tell you which poison is better and where to buy it.”
In the case of this neighborhood’s dogs, the poison of choice was amanita phalloides, also known as the death cap mushroom, which has no known antidote and is dangerous for both animals and humans.
Before the attacks, the 50th Anniversary of October park in southwest Moscow, near the Prospekt Vernadskogo metro station, allowed residents to give their dogs a moment’s respite from cramped city living and frolic without a leash in the grass or in the snow.
Owners no longer feel safe to do that, as the number of slain dogs keeps growing. Police estimates have ranged from 40 to 70 killings, based on complaints filed by owners. According to the website of one nearby veterinary clinic alone, they had received about 20 cases that week, 14 of them fatal.
The police were first notified of the poisonings early this week and formally opened a criminal investigation on Friday.
Masha Beshina was out walking her dog on Thursday when she discovered some pieces of ham suspiciously scattered in the part of the park where she usually walks her dog.
“Unfortunately the police don’t take measures,” said the middle-aged teacher. “Because for them a dog is not really something that exists.”
Russian law calls for a prison sentence of up to two years for those who kill or abuse animals, but animal rights activists say it has been rarely enforced.
“We need investigative bodies, the police, the courts, the judges to start working,” said Darya Khmelnitskaya, director of Virta, a charitable fund for animal welfare. “The legal clause already exists.”
She said that one way to target dog killers would be to track IP addresses of the users who spread information about it online or shut down the sites completely. While some of the sites have been closed, information is still easily spread by individuals through websites such as Vkontakte, the largest Russian social network.
According to Khmelnitskaya, only nine cases against dog hunters in Moscow have made it to court since 2011, with just one ending in a conviction.
On the site Vreditelyam.net, now moved to the domain vredy.org, the owners state in their manifesto that they consider themselves keepers of the peace: Since Soviet times, the population of stray dogs, which now reaches an estimated 25,000 in Moscow alone, has ballooned, and fear of bites and attacks has grown as well.
But just as the population of strays has grown, Muscovites also have long been a friend to many of the shaggy mutts. Dog hunting has touched a nerve in a society where stray animals have traditionally been ignored by the state and instead taken in by big-hearted citizens. One group established on Vkontakte in opposition to the dog hunters has attracted almost 4,000 members.
Most of the local residents said their dogs were former strays found either on the streets or in Moscow’s overcrowded, underfunded shelters.
“I took these dogs off the street from homeless people four years ago,” said Oleg Maximov, a middle-aged man who said he works for a construction company.
“How can I wait for someone to poison these dogs, these dogs that I saved from a likely death?
TITLE: From Closed City to Center of the World
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Urals city of Yekaterinburg is embracing its industrial heritage as it goes all out in its bid to host the 2020 World Expo.
For the next month, former printing presses, heavy machinery factories and other industrial spaces — both operating and obsolete — around the city are hosting work by contemporary artists from all over the world for the second Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art, one of several stages in Yekaterinburg’s bid to host the World Expo.
The biennale is the brainchild of Alisa Prudnikova, a native of Yekaterinburg, who says the idea was born out of the desire to forge a new identity for her hometown, Russia’s fourth largest city, which has a rich history as a center of machinery production, metal processing and metallurgy.
“As an art historian and curator, I travel a lot, and I discovered that people rarely knew much about Yekaterinburg,” Prudnikova said on Sept. 12, a few hours ahead of the biennale’s opening.
“I was tired of telling people ‘it’s where the tsar was murdered and where the president was born, it’s the border between Europe and Asia’ etc., and decided it should be known for something else — a biennale. But to differentiate it from other biennales, I decided it should be industrial. That way, people get to see a different side to the city, different industrial districts.”
The biennale opened on Sept. 12 at the Uralsky Rabochy (Ural Worker) printing press, which occupies one of the many Constructivist buildings for which Yekaterinburg is famed. One of the main installations was absent, having somehow been rerouted to — and detained in — Bishkek.
MORE THAN ART
This time around, however, the biennale — which features the work of about 80 artists from more than 20 countries — is about more than contemporary art: Prudnikova is also one of the ambassadors for the city’s bid for World Expo 2020.
“These are like little Olympic Games for us,” said biennale director Natalya Balabanova. “We are really pleased to help people to see Yekaterinburg through the prism of contemporary art, but also understand how important it is to show people Yekaterinburg — that was our main task.”
“Bit:Fall,” a special Expo project within the biennale by German artist Julius Popp, stands alone on Oktyabrskaya Ploshchad and is designed to reflect the theme of Yekaterinburg’s Expo bid, “Global Mind.” Drops of water fall from a frame and are lit up to spell different words for less than a second before they plunge into a pool below, creating what the artist describes as a “waterfall of words.” The words — in both Latin and Cyrillic letters — are the most popular search terms on the Internet at that moment. The installation reflects the information people are bombarded with every day and how we interpret that information, according to Popp.
“They appear in water — not for long — before dissolving again in the wind,” he explained.
THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD
Although most of the artwork itself, like Popp’s installation, is not industrial-themed, some of the biennale events embrace the theme wholeheartedly. Paintings depicting heroic workers with sooty faces against the background of inferno-like interiors of plant workshops, complete with red-hot tongues of steel, make up the “Planned Exploit” exhibit at a branch of the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts. The paintings, executed from the 1920s to the 1980s and chosen from the museum’s permanent collection, include a somewhat ironic-seeming depiction from 1974 of a young girl in a short skirt and high heels walking past the belching chimneys of an Uralmash factory. The painting, by Boris Semyonov, is titled “Factory Spring.” Other works by the artist on show include a painting of a young woman with her hair covered by both a hard hat and a headscarf, titled “Little Mistress of a Big Workshop.”
A few blocks away, in the Architector upscale interior boutique mall, the Belaya Gallery has put together an exhibit titled “The Artist Valentin Novichenko and the End of Industrial Art,” showcasing the artist’s etchings that focus on Uralkhimmash — the Ural Chemical Machine-Building Plant. Unlike the paintings of “Planned Exploit” that focus on the figure of the worker against a factory background, in the dazzling etchings on zinc and linoleum of Novichenko, who died in 2010, human figures appear as tiny dots against the awesome might of machinery.
“Industrial art began in the 1930s as propaganda to promote Stalin’s industrialization campaign,” said Marina Dashevskaya, director of the gallery and the exhibit’s curator. “To enter the Artists’ Union and get state orders, artists had to create industrial landscapes, and this led to some really good art right through the ‘90s, when some of the factories closed. In the 21st century, we are now seeing nostalgia. Many countries miss industry — it has largely disappeared from Europe to the southeast, for example to China,” she said.
Some biennale events, such as a performance of jazz music in the Kamvolny plant set to footage of factories being built and harassed-looking engineers (a machine in the room downstairs had been turned on especially to add to the ‘industrial’ atmosphere), make it hard to tell how ironic the industrial theme is.
“Now people are making [industrial art] with irony,” said Dashevskaya. “They’re looking at it from the outside; these people have never been inside a factory. For those who grew up here in the Soviet era, their attitude to it is totally different. It was the meaning of life for some people, and 30 years later, people are making music to it.
“This art,” she said, gesturing to Novichenko’s engravings, “this is serious. But that other stuff is not art.”
OPENING UP
A closed city until 1991, Yekaterinburg could not be turning its back on its isolated past more emphatically. It welcomed the BRIC summit in 2009, looks certain to be one of the venues for the 2018 FIFA World Cup that Russia is hosting, and if the city is successful in its bid to host the World Expo 2020, it would attract millions of visitors from all over the world. With a little more than a year to go before the winning Expo venue is announced, the city is using every opportunity it gets —including the industrial biennale — to promote its bid.
“Just because I don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s bad,” smiles Arkady Chernetsky, chairman of the Expo bid committee’s supervisory board. Chernetsky was mayor of the city from 1992 until 2010 and is now a member of the Federation Council.
“We are always looking for ways to move away from our ‘closed city’ past and are always looking for platforms from which to showcase the city,” he said.
Yekaterinburg, which proposes hosting the Expo on a 550-hectare site from May 1 to October 31 2020, is focusing both on its historical role as a center of learning and on the process of globalization in its bid.
“The Internet is already an international platform,” said Chernetsky. “This expo may be less about people bringing products, and more about them bringing ideas — that’s our theme.”
By a strange twist of fate, Chernetsky was once director of the same factory — Khimmash — where the etcher Novichenko worked. He was made mayor of Yekaterinburg by Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first president and the city’s most famous son.
Chernetsky cited Yekaterinburg’s numerous Constructivism monuments and, surprisingly, its weather (“Who wants to go to Dubai in summer?”) as the city’s advantages in the bidding war, along with its budding status as a hub: The city is home to more than 20 foreign consulates and diplomatic missions, and its modern airport connects the city and surrounding region with 80 cities around the world.
The former mayor admits, however, that the city’s infrastructure would need to be improved before the Expo could take place. “The most burning issue right now is traffic,” he said.
He also cites this as one of the potential benefits to be gained by the citizens of Yekaterinburg from winning the bid.
“The problem of all Russia and all its big cities is infrastructure,” he said. “Solving this problem immediately and everywhere is impossible. Our task is to get first in the line.”
Chernetsky also cited investment in the region and a more confident self-identity as consequences of a successful Expo bid. “We’re not on the edge of the world, we’re at the center of it,” he said.
“It will give rise to commercial projects and bring more people here to start profitable businesses. It will help the Urals as a whole.”
SHARING THE GLORY
The idea of boosting not only the city but the Urals region as a whole was echoed by the biennale, which saw artworks created in other locations in the Sverdlovsk Oblast as part of the Artist in Residence program.
In Uralmash, a suburb of Yekaterinburg built around the heavy machinery factory of the same name, French artist Matthieu Martin repainted the decaying White Tower, a monument of Constructivist architecture, restoring it to its former glory for his project, titled “Refresh the Revolution.”
But at the unveiling of the results of the Artists in Residence program at Yekaterinburg’s refurbished Stalinist Gothic Central Stadium, it was Leonid Tishkov’s series of works devoted to a now-closed ice skate factory in the historical town of Verkhoturye, 300 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg, that stood out.
A video installation and series of photos titled “Derelict Utopias: Skate Producing Plant” portray a melancholy crumbling red brick factory, surrounded by tumbleweed on the outside while the inside resembles the abandoned buildings around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Mountains of rusting ice skates are stacked against a background of peeling paint and industrial debris that contrast sharply and poignantly with cups still containing dregs of tea, and posters congratulating workers on the plant’s anniversary or on the New Year.
In another part of the project, Tishkov has created a vertical wave-like sculpture made from old skate blades, titled “A Tower of Skates: Higher and Higher!”
But while the art biennale reflected nostalgia for the long-gone age of industry, Yekaterinburg is focusing firmly on the future, more specifically, on the year 2020. The city has already fought off competition from other Russian cities such as Nizhny Novgorod to win the right to bid for the Expo for Russia. Now it just needs to convince the International Exhibitions Bureau General Assembly that it is the best choice, above its rivals Ayutthaya (Thailand), Dubai (UAE), Izmir (Turkey) and Sao Paolo (Brazil). Certainly the city is not wanting in the patriotism often lacked by other Russian cities. The pride of Yekaterinburg residents in their city and region is remarkably in evidence, and not only when the bid for the Expo — to which the city plans to attract a total of 30 million visitors — is being discussed.
Dashevskaya, the curator of the Belaya Gallery, who said she had been selling art for 20 years, said there is great demand for local landscapes in the Urals.
“You could offer them a Warhol, and they would say ‘Give us the Urals,’” she said.
The Second Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art runs through Oct. 22 at various locations. For a program of events, visit www.uralbiennale.ru