SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1729 (40), Wednesday, October 3, 2012
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TITLE: Bank Drops Navalny Card Project
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Alexei Navalny’s plans to launch a debit card that donates a percentage of all transactions to his anti-corruption work have been frozen after the bank behind the project pulled out, an associate of the opposition leader said.
“The bank decided not to pursue the project,” Vladimir Ashurkov, chief executive of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Fund, said without specifying the bank. “I understand they were afraid of the political risks.”
The launch of the co-branded card, envisaged as the latest accessory for anti-Putin protesters, was scheduled for earlier this year but has been postponed indefinitely.
“We had talks with a couple of other banks, but there are no concrete plans at this stage,” Ashurkov said Friday.
The original idea was not Navalny’s but was proposed by the bank that has now abandoned the project, Ashurkov added. The Anti-Corruption Fund declined to comment on the identity of the financial institution that put forward the scheme, saying only that it is one of the country’s top 100 banks.
But billionaire Alexander Lebedev said in a July interview with Izvestia that his National Reserve Bank, ranked the country’s 98th-largest by assets according to Allbanks.ru, was in negotiations to release the card.
Pressure on the outspoken Lebedev, who also has holdings in the agricultural, construction and media industries, appears to be increasing, and he said last month that he was looking to scale back his businesses in Russia.
National Reserve Bank, however, is still looking to release the “Navalny card,” Lebedev’s spokesman, Artyom Artyomov, said Friday.
“The bank has many projects, and this is one of them,” he said. “It’s in the process of development.”
TITLE: Kremlin Struggling With Pension Time Bomb
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A broad swathe of expert opinion maintains that the only way for Russia to defuse the ticking time-bomb of its pension system, which runs an annual deficit of 1.3 trillion rubles ($42 billion), is to raise the retirement age.
But such a move would be deeply unpopular among the population as a whole and faces implacable political opposition from the Kremlin.
"I am against raising the retirement age," then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wrote last year in an article published amid his campaign to be re-elected for a third presidential term.
Pensions, which average 9,700 rubles a month, grew rapidly during Putin's first two terms as president and he has pledged that they will continue to rise.
Caught between Putin's promises and the urgent need to staunch the money hemorrhaging from the budget to cover the State Pension Fund's spiraling deficit, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's cabinet has been forced into a series of elaborate contortions.
Though publicly opposed by the Finance Ministry, a long-expected outline for the overhaul of the pensions system between 2012 and 2030 was presented by the cabinet to the Kremlin on Oct. 1.
The most controversial part of the document was the proposal to cut the funded part of pension contributions — the so-called "cumulative part" — from 6 percent to 2 percent in order to reduce the State Pension Fund's losses.
Introduced in 2002, the funded part collects 6 percentage points of the 22 percent pension contributions paid by employers on behalf of those born after 1967. This is channeled to individual retirement accounts that are invested in securities.
The remaining 16 percent is comprised of unfunded "pay-as-you-go" contributions that directly finance current pensioners.
The suggestion to reduce funded pensions, championed by the Labor Ministry, prompted howls of criticism from the investment community.
The funded pension pool — valued at about 2 trillion rubles — is one of Russia's few large resources of domestic capital, a key stabilizing force for the country's markets.
"Moving from today's 6 percent to 2 percent is probably a retreat and not a step forward," said UBS Russia head Nicholas Jordan.
"If Russia wants to limit volatility in its local market, it needs local long-term money," he added. "Foreign money is more volatile and more fickle."
As it will mean instantly larger flows into the unfunded section of State Pension Fund, some characterized it as a raid on the inaccessible funded part simply to cover the budget in the short term.
It is "pickpocketing the next generation," Finance Minister Anton Siluanov warned in August.
The adoption of the proposals in their current form would hit equities and bond markets, according to bankers, many of whom believe the Finance Ministry will be successful in its opposition.
Putin's position is not yet clear, but he told a conference of foreign investors last week that he understood the importance of the funded part and its role "in overcoming the problem of long-term financing that everyone worries about."
Russia is not unique in its 2002 adoption of a funded part to the pensions system — 14 other Eastern European countries have enacted similar reforms in the last 15 years. The concept was developed in South American countries in the 1980s.
But while the government maneuvers almost powerlessly between the limits imposed by the president, there are more and more voices calling for firm action.
Pension reform has a "fundamental significance for the economy, people's social well-being and the position of business," former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin wrote last month. Kudrin, who has compared the pension system to a "classic financial pyramid," supports a rise in the retirement age.
Changing demographics are also injecting urgency to the debate.
Similar to many other countries, Russia's "baby-boomers" will soon become eligible for their pensions, adding to the dependent population. By 2020 there will be 42.5 million pensioners, according to the Ministry of Labor. And at some point after 2025 the number of pensioners will exceed those of working age.
Already rising fast, costs look set to climb further. Putin has said the equivalent of 10 percent of gross domestic product is already spent on pensions — a quarter of the government's annual budget. And the State Pension Fund's deficit has ballooned from 30 billion rubles in 2005 to 1.3 trillion rubles this year.
Largesse over the last decade has also compounded the problem. The current crisis has its "roots in the quite rapid increase in pensions over the last 7 years," said Vladimir Tikhomirov, chief economist at Otkritie Capital.
"Once you increase pensions it's almost impossible politically to cut them back," he added.
About 40 percent of the electorate, pensioners are a significant political force, and they are more likely to vote than young people. In the run-up to Duma elections last year, Putin promised an 8 to 10 percent across-the-board rise in pensions.
And average pensions are far below the average wage. Indeed, the average monthly pension is just 3,331 rubles above the official poverty threshold (a monthly income of 6,369 rubles).
Many academics, experts and businessmen see no viable exit from this demographic, fiscal and political crunch other than lifting the retirement age — whether directly or by the back door.
"The bottom line," wrote Ivan Tchakarov, chief economist at Renaissance Capital in a note to investors last week, "is that all of [the government's proposals] are just tinkering with the system to avoid the only decision that will really solve the problem … an increase in the pension age for men and, in particular, for women."
While the life expectancy of males in the country is significantly less than that of females, men are currently entitled to a state pension from the age of 60, while women are eligible from 55.
The International Monetary Fund proposed in August that Russia equalize the retirement age for men and women to 63 by 2030, and to 65 by 2050.
But in the face of high oil prices, government infighting and the danger of inciting social instability, radical change appears to be a distant prospect at the moment.
"The discussion about the pension system is only just beginning," Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters last week.
TITLE: Moscow Rally Held to Remember Reporter's Murder
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Around 200 people held a rally Sunday in Moscow to mark the sixth anniversary of the unsolved murder of crusading reporter Anna Politkovskaya.
Participants held up candles and pictures of the journalist and spoke in remembrance of Politkovskaya, a sharp critic of Kremlin policies in Chechnya, who was shot inside her Moscow apartment building in 2006.
The meeting, attended by numerous opposition figures, was unusual in that had received prior official approval from city authorities.
The low-key anniversary ceremony took place against the backdrop of nationwide celebrations to mark the 60th birthday of President Vladimir Putin, which falls on the same day.
The U.S. State Department said Saturday it would "continue to shine the spotlight on (Politkovskaya's) case" and urged more protection for journalists worldwide that speak out against abuses.
Rights organization RAW in WAR, which annually recognizes achievements by women reporting in conflict zones, demanded Russia bring to justice the killers of Politkovskaya and Natalia Estemirova, a rights activist in Chechnya murdered in 2009.
"We call again on the Russian government ... to end the killings and persecution of journalists and human rights defenders in the Russian Federation," read the group's statement, which was signed by a committee including dozens of international activists and public figures.
TITLE: Documentary Shows Putin in Uncompromising Mood
AUTHOR: By Peter Leonard
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a first-person documentary aired on his 60th birthday Sunday that the current generation of opposition leaders needs to be cast aside and he brushed aside concerns the two-year jail sentence for punk bank Pussy Riot was too severe.
The documentary that aired Sunday portrays Putin as a tireless and no-nonsense leader contemptuous of domestic and international criticism. It also depicts a Spartan lifestyle of daily exercise, plain breakfasts and late-night work sessions.
Putin says in the program that he welcomes opposing views, but that they should come from people willing to take responsibility for running the country. Putin's dismissive remarks addressed at the opposition, who he called "husks" to be thrown out, will reconsolidate anxiety over his perceived disregard for pluralism in Russia.
Celebrations took place all over Russia to celebrate Putin's birthday, although the Kremlin has said the president opted for low-key celebrations with friends and family. The documentary was one of a series of candid public displays of support for Putin.
The leader exuded a typical lack of self-doubt in the documentary, despite the unprecedented street protests that accompanied his reelection to the post of president earlier this year after a four-year hiatus as prime minister.
"From the very first steps, everything I did came in for criticism, but I was absolutely convinced in what I was doing and that there was no other path," he said, referring to his first term as president from 2000.
Three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison in August for performing an anti-Putin "punk prayer" at Moscow's main cathedral, a verdict that drew global outrage and came to symbolize the Kremlin's crackdown on dissent.
Putin dismissed that criticism, however, and said the court was right in its decision.
"My first reaction was they should ask believers for forgiveness and that would have been that," Putin said. "But they kept building it up and building it up, and so the whole case ended up in court and the judge slipped them two years."
With the band's case coming up for appeal this week, some will worry about the court's ability to reach an independent decision in the face of the Kremlin's clear position.
Much of Sunday's documentary focused on more trivial details of the president's daily life and fondness for his black Labrador, Kony.
Putin was shown performing daily weightlifting exercises and swimming in the pool at his residence. In an apparent demonstration of his attachment to his work desk, the narrator explains that Putin keeps a flask of tea under his desk.
Kony was seen at her master's side almost at all times, although she too was subjected to Putin's authoritarian streak.
"Kony, stop being a pest, it's not nice," he tells the dog as it sniffs at the interviewer.
Later, while the two discuss the ingredients of a vegetable juice made by Putin - of which two elements are garlic and horseradish - the president tells the dog: "No Kony, you can't have any."
TITLE: Teachers Reveling in Growing Technology
AUTHOR: By Lena Smirnova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Thousands of kilometers from the capital, a lone interactive whiteboard sits in a customs warehouse on Russia's southern border.
The device's Turkish manufacturer, Vestel, is rushing to get the unit to its Moscow showroom and start selling the product to schools. But more than two months is expected to pass before that happens and Vestel can join other companies cashing in on supplying classrooms with the newest education technology.
Russian schools have become the prime destination for educational technologies such as interactive boards, learner response remotes and audio systems, thanks to a state initiative to increase the amount of such devices in schools and a growing interest from teachers.
The best news for companies is that the market is still wide open. Only 16.4 percent of Russian classrooms are equipped with interactive boards, while in Britain this number has reached 75 percent, said Eugene Viscovic, president of the international markets department at Promethean, which has supplied 8,700 interactive systems to Moscow schools alone.
"For the UK to be today at 75 percent classroom penetration with this technology, it took 10 years, which means for Russia it's going to take a long time to have every classroom equipped," Viscovic said. "But you need to start somewhere."
Companies that supply technology for educational institutions in Russia got a stimulus in 2011 when then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin issued an order to modernize secondary schools by equipping them with more computers and other technologies. In 2011, 6,700 schools across the country were slated to receive new equipment.
"Now there is no going back," said Svetlana Titova, vice dean at Moscow State University's Department of Foreign Languages and Area Studies. "There are new standards, so whether the teachers want to or not, they have to study and move forward."
Yelena Novikova saw an interactive board for the first time at an exhibit in 1993. Five years later, as the general director of Polymedia, she brought the first such board to a Russian classroom. Her company recently partnered with Promethean and has high hopes for the local market.
"This is no limit," Novikova said. "There is room to grow. Russia has about 50,000 schools and 700,000 audience members. In Moscow today, every other [school] has an interactive board, and in Russia, it's one in five."
Other companies are also rushing to sell new technologies to Russian schools.
Panasonic has equipped 11,000 classrooms in Russia with interactive boards since it started addressing this market segment four years ago, said Irina Smirnova, coordinator of education programs at Panasonic. The company also recently started selling sound systems that facilitate the use of more audio materials during lessons.
New entrant Vestel is No. 1 in its home market of Turkey, where it sold 85,000 digital boards to schools this year, and it is now hoping to replicate this success in Russia. The company expects the first interactive board to arrive at its showroom in November, said Kivanc Isik, general director of the company's Russia office.
The price of the technology used to be a significant barrier, Smirnova said, but things have picked up since the federal program made equipping schools a priority. Companies can look for opportunities on Russia's official site for state orders, where municipal education departments post tenders for supplying their schools with computers or digital whiteboards.
Tsaritsyno Moscow High School No. 548 is one of the city's most progressive schools in terms of its technology arsenal. The school's administration started thinking about technology supplies in the 1990s and got the first interactive board in 2000. Now, the school has more than 800 computers and 50 interactive boards for its 2,300 students.
The trick is not to depend only on government support but find business-led competitions where teachers can win this technology, said Elena Shimutina, deputy director for information technology at the school. Shimutina added that part of her job is to find such competitions and notify teachers.
"There are different paths to getting this technology," Shimutina said. "Sometimes you have to pay, and sometimes you just win competitions from companies."
Even the more modest schools in Moscow are fairly well-supplied with technology, experts said. Schools in the regions are also doing well.
Panasonic has supplied its technologies to almost every region in Russia, Smirnova said. Large orders for interactive boards have come from Vladivostok, the Volga and Northwestern federal districts, the Krasnodar region and Chechnya.
The main problem now is that classroom technology is frequently underused.
"They have the technology, but they don't know how to use it," Titova said.
Titova teaches the online professional development courses for high school teachers and institute professors that are offered through Moscow State University. About 200 schoolteachers take these courses each year, she said.
Some companies also offer teachers training in using their technologies.
Polymedia issues brochures and DVD courses to teachers. Panasonic has independently trained 4,000 teachers, but it now directs teachers to professional development centers because the undertaking was too large, Smirnova said.
Shimutina has seen interactive boards used simply as projectors, with much of their functionality ignored, and she said that cases like these are shifting the discussions about the technology.
"Now we are talking more about the quality of teaching that is offered through technology," she said." We have started to look deeper into how we use this technology instead of just saying 'give us more, give us more, give us more'."
TITLE: New NTV Documentaries Likely to Cause a Stir
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — State-controlled NTV television is scheduled to air two new politically themed documentaries this weekend: an opposition expose Friday and a feature about the day-to-day life of President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, his 60th birthday.
The channel has a history of producing controversial documentaries about Kremlin foes — from former Mayor Yury Luzhkov to Pussy Riot — and Putin’s closely guarded personal life has long been a subject of intense interest and speculation.
“Anatomy of a Protest 2,” like its predecessor, will portray opposition leaders as foreign agents plotting revolution, judging by a trailer released Tuesday on NTV’s website.
“Who’s taking the money, how much and for what?” an ominous voice says over footage of protest leaders Sergei Udaltsov and Alexei Navalny giving impassioned speeches.
Opposition activists denounced the first program in the series as a pro-Kremlin hatchet job. After it aired in March, about 100 protesters were detained outside NTV’s headquarters.
The channel is billing the new Putin documentary as a “never-before-seen” look at the president’s everyday life, featuring scenes shot over a week at an investment forum, at his residence and inside his car.
The production will be at least the second such “intimate” Putin documentary released this year.
But unlike “I, Putin. A Portrait,” by German filmmaker Hubert Seipel, which memorably showed a laconic, solitary leader practicing his slap shot on an empty ice rink, NTV’s program appears likely to bolster the virile, witty and commanding persona Putin has long cultivated.
A clip on NTV’s website showed Putin doing laps in an indoor pool. Another clip, which briefly appeared on YouTube, showed host Vadim Takmenyov milling about with presidential advisers before being led into a cavernous room, where Putin waits at the end of a long table.
Past attempts to humanize Putin, including on numerous outdoor adventures, have had a mixed reception.
Critics snickered at a September video in which he donned a billowing white suit and piloted a motorized hang-glider in an attempt to lead endangered Siberian cranes southward to wintering grounds.
TITLE: Foreign Ministry Plays Down U.S. Smuggling Arrests
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry on Thursday complained that it had not been properly informed by United States authorities that a group of Russian citizens had been arrested on charges of smuggling microelectronics, raising “serious concerns” for Russia, Interfax reported.
“A lot is unclear in this story. It raises serious concerns, and we are counting on U.S. authorities to protect the rights and interests of the Russian citizens who have been arrested and face these charges,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told journalists.
Ryabkov said diplomats had so far met with one of the eight suspects arrested on charges of illegally exporting U.S. military technologies to Russian defense and intelligence agencies. Eleven people are accused of taking part in the scheme.
But Russian authorities also noted that the suspects had not been charged with spying, a statement analysts interpreted to mean that Moscow does not intend to turn the case into a major point of contention with Washington.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his ministry is still sorting out who among the defendants are Russian citizens. Media reports said that one of the defendants, Alexander Posobilov, has dual Russian-Azeri citizenship, and U.S. court papers said that suspect Alexander Fishenko has both U.S. and Russian passports.
According to an FBI indictment made public Wednesday, Fishenko and his co-defendants are suspected of violating strict U.S. laws on the export of advanced technologies.
"The defendants tried to take advantage of America's free markets to steal American technologies for the Russian government," Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn, said in a statement.
Fishenko, owner of Houston-based Arc Electronics Inc., and others were also charged with operating as unregistered agents of the Russian government in the United States, an accusation typically made against illegal foreign lobbyists. Fishenko faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted.
The U.S. side stated that Fishenko along with other employees of his company were involved in a “systematic conspiracy” to export high-tech products, including analog-to-digital converters and static random-access memory chips, micro-controllers and microprocessors.
The FBI indictment said the defendants from Fishenko's company had close relationships with the Russian Defense Ministry and Federal Security Service, which requested sophisticated microelectronics from the suspects, according to letters obtained by investigators.
The indictment said Fishenko and his co-defendants had shipped $50 million worth of sensitive technology before their arrest.
It also said that Fishenko, who emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1990s, is a part owner of the Moscow-based company Apex, which distributes electronic equipment made by leading European producers for use in the space, aviation and transportation industries.
Apex was created in 2005 as a joint venture of MIG Electronics and the Saransk Electronics Company, an official supplier of electronic equipment for the Russian military based in Saransk, the regional capital of the Mordovia republic.
In 2008, local newspaper Small Business published a photograph of Fishenko sitting with directors of both MIG Electronics and the Saransk Electronics Company during an industrial expo in Moscow.
Apex director Sergei Klinov, who was also indicted in the case by the FBI but not arrested, told Interfax on Thursday that he had heard about the case from the media and declined further comment.
An unidentified Apex employee told Interfax that the company would continue its operations. “We are law-abiding businessmen,” the employee said.
A manager at Apex reached by phone Thursday declined to speak about Fishenko's arrest.
Military expert Igor Korotchenko said he does not believe Russia smuggles U.S. components for its military industry or intelligence agencies.
Instead, he said, the country relies on the legal transfer of military-related technology from Germany, France and Israel. “It is easier to do it this way,” said Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of the magazine National Defense.
“The statement about Russian intelligence involvement is groundless. Those individuals are U.S. citizens who should answer to U.S. laws. I assume they were motivated by the desire to make the biggest profit possible,” Korotchenko said.
A source in the military-industrial complex told Interfax that up to 60 to 70 percent of components used in the defense industry are bought abroad.
Israel is a leading arms exporter to Russia and even produces a component in upgraded versions of Russian-made Kalashnikov rifles — a fact that caught Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev by surprise Wednesday during a meeting with defense contractors, Kommersant reported.
Korotchenko said he suspected that the scandal involving Fishenko was being used by U.S. President Barack Obama to boost his ratings on the eve of the presidential election.
“This is election PR, as he has to think about the conservative electorate who still live according to Cold War precepts,” he said.
Foreign Minister Lavrov said while on a visit to Islamabad on Thursday that he sees no link between the arrests and the U.S. election, RIA-Novosti reported.
Foreign policy expert Georgy Bovt said Russian assumptions that the scandal could affect the U.S. presidential campaign are “exaggerated.”
“The Russian-U.S. relationship will become worse whoever wins that election,” Bovt said.
He also said that the rather muted reaction to the arrests by Russian officials shows that the case is perhaps “not that serious.”
In 2010, the FBI arrested a network of several Russian sleeper agents, including spy-turned-celebrity Anna Chapman. All the agents except one, who was able to escape arrest, have pleaded guilty and were exchanged for agents convicted of spying in Russia for the West.
TITLE: Ministry Seeks to Shield Children From Public Wi-Fi
AUTHOR: THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Communications and Press Ministry has proposed banning children from using Wi-Fi networks in public, potentially making cafes, restaurants and other locations providing the service responsible for enforcing the law.
An official with the ministry’s Federal Mass Media Inspection Service, known as Roskomnadzor, said the ban should apply to people under 18 years old.
Locations providing Wi-Fi access would be held legally responsible for implementing the rule, and failing to meet the proposed measure would result in a fine ranging from 20,000 rubles to 50,000 rubles ($640 to $1,600), Vedomosti reported Thursday.
In Moscow alone, thousands of cafes, fast-food outlets and restaurants, as well as many parks, shopping malls and hotels, have Wi-Fi networks, which let laptop and handheld-computer users go online without a cable or modem.
Maxim Ksenzov, one of the watchdog’s deputy directors, announced the plan at a Wednesday conference with Internet media representatives, Vedomosti reported, citing participants in the conference.
Ksenzov said the proposal is tied to the Internet restriction law that comes into effect Nov. 1, allowing the government to block Web pages that fit the law’s definition of material harmful to child welfare.
Under that law, the government can force websites, website-hosting companies and Internet service providers to block offending sites.
Watchdog spokesman Vladimir Pikov told RIA-Novosti the service hasn’t decided whether Wi-Fi providers or owners of businesses offering their own Wi-Fi would be responsible under the law.
Citizens are no longer considered minors in Russia when they reach the age of 18, but people can obtain permission from regional authorities to marry at 16 and can get a motorcycle license at that age.
At national cafe chain Shokoladnitsa, “there are no methods at present that make it possible to identify the age of users logging on to the free Wi-Fi in our shops,” said Gennady Sbytov, the company's vice president for information technology.
“We see a solution to the [broader] issue in restricting access to certain web portals, in accordance with the law, for all guests,” he said by e-mail. “That way, Wi-Fi access would remain available.”
Sbytov said any Wi-Fi restriction at Shokoladnitsa would happen only if required by law.
Also affected by the proposal would be other major food chains providing free Wi-Fi, such as Subway, McDonald's and Kofe Khaus.
TITLE: Kiosk Owners Want Putin to Halt Tobacco and Beer Bans
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – The Coalition of Kiosk Owners said Wednesday that it would submit a 165,000-signature petition to President Vladimir Putin this week to halt pending bans on sales of cigarettes and beer.
A law passed last year forbids kiosks from selling beer as of Jan. 1. The Health and Social Development Ministry is now seeking to ban retail outlets with a floor area of less than 50 square meters from selling tobacco products.
The Coalition of Kiosk Owners, formed in April to fight the legislation, claims that such measures would shutter small businesses and not actually prevent drinking or smoking.
"Of course, we need to fight smoking. But this law would strike small business owners without having any impact on smokers," coalition leader Vladen Maximov said Wednesday.
"In St. Petersburg, where by law there are no kiosks, statistics show no discernible impact on rates of smoking," Maximov added.
Tobacco products can account for up to 70 percent of sales from kiosks in some regions, Maximov said. The coalition believes that a cigarette sales ban would push smokers to supermarkets and drive kiosks out of business.
The Economic Development Ministry has estimated that 300,000 to 500,000 kiosk workers could lose their jobs if the pending bans enter force.
The coalition estimates that firings could be closer to 1 million, including support positions like security guards and delivery drivers.
Maximov complained that officials "simply do not understand" the situation.
"They think we can just adapt and start selling different products, switch to sausages or whatever. They just don't understand the realities of how this business works," he said.
The coalition's written appeal argues that kiosks are a key stepping stone for many entrepreneurs to enter the business world and that such bans would have little if any impact on rates of smoking or drinking.
Maximov pointed to the experience of European countries that have taken an opposite route. In France, only small designated shops are allowed to sell tobacco. In Britain, a recently introduced ban on displaying tobacco products will not apply to smaller shops until 2015.
While Maximov was careful to say officials simply "do not understand" the impact of the changes, some kiosk owners have said the move is a deliberate attempt to clear their ubiquitous white-plastic boxes from Russia's streets for good.
The World Health Organization estimates that 39 percent of Russian adults are habitual smokers. Every year, 350,000 to 400,000 people die of tobacco-related diseases in the nation.
The World Health Organization has welcomed the health ministry's anti-tobacco legislation and warned that Big Tobacco would do all it could to dilute the measures.
TITLE: Ministry Mulls Quotas on Foreign Films
AUTHOR: By Lena Smirnova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Foreign films could become a rare delicacy for movie lovers if the Culture Ministry approves proposals to impose quotas on such films in local theaters.
The quotas were at the center of discussions Wednesday in the Public Chamber in a follow-up to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's suggestion last month that such measures be considered as a way to resurrect a crumbling domestic film industry.
The proposals come amid the Kremlin's efforts to isolate the country from foreign influence and promote an ideology focused on traditional local values.
State support for the local film industry has increased over the years to reach 5 billion rubles ($160 million) in 2012, about 1.5 billion rubles more than in 2010.
But the results of that support have been negligible. Sales of tickets for domestic films made up 16.7 percent of the total local sales in the first half of 2012, according to Romir Movie Research.
Some industry insiders see foreign-film quotas as a way to save the business. At the Public Chamber meeting, film producer Alexei Krol proposed setting the quotas for foreign films at 10 percent.
He also proposed that state support for the industry be increased to between 20 and 30 times its current level to make the industry more competitive with its foreign counterparts.
"Here is the Russian industry, and here is Hollywood. Let's not have any illusions," Krol said. "We are not talking about pampering [film producers] here. ...We're saying that we are not competitive."
The country's recent entry into the World Trade Organization would not be a barrier to introducing foreign-film quotas or increasing state subsidies, said lawyer Lev Bardin. Many WTO members, including France and India, already have quotas on foreign films, so Russians would be able to argue against having a double standard on this issue.
The Culture Ministry has looked into setting quotas for foreign films but has not made any decisions yet, Yelena Gromova, a deputy head of the ministry's film department, told The St. Petersburg Times.
The Culture Ministry is drafting a "road map" for reviving the local film industry. Some of the proposed measures include lowering ticket prices for domestic films, improving the electronic -ticket system and creating an expert council to oversee film festivals.
But not all producers support further state financing of the movie industry.
Some say the quotas would only increase the profits of DVD merchants and BitTorrent administrators. Movie critic David Shneiderov also warned that quotas could lead to widespread bankruptcy of movie theaters because there are simply not enough Russian films to fill the screens.
"[State] financing of the film industry promotes the deprivation of producers and leads to the absolute collapse of the Russian films' competitiveness," Shneiderov said.
Instead of these measures, Shneiderov encouraged the government to support the industry by giving potential investors tax benefits, setting up reward systems and enforcing strict audits of any state subsidies.
The money saved through this process could go toward building movie theaters in small cities and incorporating films into the education system, he said.
TITLE: UNICEF Scales Back, May Exit Russia
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle and Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency, is cutting back its presence on the ground in Russia and might even exit the country, a development experts described as a significant blow to children's welfare.
The decision reflects a failure to negotiate a new operating agreement with the Kremlin, which is increasingly eager for Russia to be regarded as a donor country rather than a recipient of aid.
A UNICEF spokesman told The St. Petersburg Times on Wednesday that negotiations were ongoing about a "new form of partnership," but it was unclear which of the agency's activities — research on children's issues, spreading best practices or funding projects — would continue under any new arrangement.
The former head of UNICEF in Russia, Bertrand Bainvel, left Sunday for a new posting in Myanmar, two people close to the organization said.
UNICEF, which has operated in Russia since 1997, has 12 staff members in Moscow, most of whom are applying for other positions in Russia and within UNICEF globally, regional spokesman John Budd said in e-mailed comments Wednesday.
The move by UNICEF does not appear to be linked to the departure of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, which ceased operations in Russia on Monday after the Kremlin accused it of using grants to meddle in politics.
Former partners and people close to UNICEF said that the scaling down of the organization's operations would be detrimental to child welfare and that the government's willingness to see UNICEF activities decrease was peculiar given its focus on children's issues.
"I think it's a shame and a major political mistake," Alexei Golovan, a former children's ombudsman and current member of the presidential human rights council, said by telephone Wednesday.
Golovan said UNICEF provided valuable research as well as information about best practices and guidance for improving policy on childhood poverty and the treatment of orphans and children with disabilities.
"The situation for children remains fairly alarming, and there are many negative tendencies," he said.
UNICEF closed its country program and office in Russia on Dec. 31, 2011, when it also stopped allocating resources from the organization's regular budget, including financing for projects implemented by Russian nonprofits, Budd said.
The partnership office, which is managed from Geneva and has 12 employees in Moscow, has been operating since Jan. 1 and is fulfilling existing obligations. The agency's only other office outside Moscow is in Vladikavkaz, in the North Caucasus.
"It's just finalizations negotiated with the government," one UNICEF employee said of the nonprofit's current programs.
Money raised in Russia before 2011 will be spent in Russia by the end of the year, Budd said. Contributions in 2011 and 2012 from Ikea, UNICEF's largest corporate partner, will be allocated to Save the Children and spent in Russia.
Experts and partners said the organization's downsizing and possible departure was senseless and would seriously harm efforts to improve child welfare.
UNICEF's main goals in Russia — improving preventive health care, reducing the number of orphans and promoting children's rights — continue to be major concerns.
UNICEF put the number of children in Russian institutions at "more than 140,000" in a February survey, a figure it says has not changed substantially since 2000. State statistics suggest that the number of children in institutions is falling.
There are no tracking mechanisms for the 20,000 young adults leaving orphanages every year, but experts estimate that only about 10 percent successfully adapt to normal life. Alcoholism, drug addiction, criminality and suicide take the rest, experts say.
UNICEF's departure could also hurt Russia's ability to implement an ambitious national children's strategy, the first of its kind in Russia, which was approved this year.
"Now that we're beginning to put this strategy into action, I think UNICEF's presence is more important perhaps even than it was during the 1998 crisis," Golovan said.
UNICEF's negotiations with the Foreign Ministry have been dragging on for more than a year.
Russia received large amounts of international aid after the economic hardships of the 1990s, but prosperity in recent years has prompted the government to seek to become a donor nation and reduce inflows of aid from abroad.
"Russia is one of the 'new donors' now and refuses to accept the status of a recipient of development aid from all international organizations," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said last month when explaining the expulsion of USAID.
The Kremlin has stepped up its foreign aid contributions fivefold over the past six years to $470 million in 2010. It has also offered funds to help Europe claw out of its financial troubles and extended billions of dollars in loans to neighbor Belarus.
Last year, the Foreign Ministry even drafted a proposal to establish its own international development agency to finance projects in poorer countries.
A new law effective Nov. 20 requiring foreign-funded NGOs involved in "political" activities to register as "foreign agents" has also raised concerns about nonprofits' future in Russia.
UNICEF operates in 157 countries across the globe and has extensive programs in large emerging markets like China, Brazil and India. It also conducts educational campaigns and political lobbying in developed countries like Britain.
"The most important thing is that we're not leaving UNICEF or the UN," children's ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said by telephone, indicating that Russia will continue to give funding to UNICEF for programs in other countries.
"We continue to work with international organizations," he said, adding that UNICEF's exit wouldn't have any impact on his own work.
But both state organizations and NGOs told The St. Petersburg Times that projects run jointly with UNICEF, in some cases for a decade, stopped receiving funding from the body this year.
UNICEF helped to bankroll a kindergarten at the Moscow-based Center for Curative Pedagogics where children with disabilities are educated alongside their peers. The support lasted until this year, when the funding was discontinued, said Roman Dimenshtein, chairman of the board at the nonprofit.
"It's a pity but not a shock," he said of UNICEF's drawdown. "Western money is leaving, but we haven't educated our businessmen about why they need to help."
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited the Center for Curative Pedagogics during a trip to Moscow last year.
UNICEF's shrinking role has been a significant loss for children, especially those living far from the relatively affluent capital, said Denise Roza, head of Perspektiva, a nonprofit that campaigns for people with disabilities.
Roza added that UNICEF had been particularly valuable for "hands-on" work, and its strong government contacts meant that policymakers paid attention to its research and activities.
Perspektiva lost about a third of its funding when USAID was kicked out of Russia. Now, facing a loss of UNICEF contracts, Roza said the organization is going to have to start looking for new opportunities.
"We need to do some heavy-duty fundraising," she said.
TITLE: Putin Signs Law Creating Single Voting Day in September
AUTHOR: By Natalia Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed a law introducing a single voting day for regional and federal elections, a measure that opposition politicians said was illegal and would benefit the ruling party.
Meanwhile, the Central Elections Commission proposed restrictions on how people can take photographs and make video recordings at polling stations ahead of upcoming regional elections.
The law creating a single voting day stipulates that the two days in early March and October when regional and municipal elections are currently held be replaced with a single day: the second Sunday in September.
In years when both State Duma elections and regional and municipal elections are planned, the latter two will be held together with the Duma vote in early December, according to a copy of the law posted on the Kremlin website.
Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko of United Russia has said the single voting day would reduce state expenses for elections and bring more people to the polls.
But Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of the liberal Yabloko party, said that voting in September will make it harder for opposition parties to campaign, since they will have to stump in August, when many people are on vacation.
Campaigning is not so important for United Russia, he said, because it will mobilize its voters with the help of the “administrative resource” anyway.
The term “administrative resource” is often used to refer to the ruling party’s use of state resources, including state-controlled mass media outlets, budget funds, and officials’ privileges, to reach its political goals.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a co-leader of the opposition Republican Party of Russia – The Party of People’s Freedom, or RPR-Parnas, said by telephone that he believes the law is unconstitutional because “federal legislators interfered with the powers of the regions and municipalities.”
Also Wednesday, it was reported that the Central Elections Commission had proposed granting elections officials the right to put limitations on the creation and use of photographs and videos produced at polling places ahead of regional elections Oct. 14.
The commission could give elections officials the right to restrict photography and video-recording at polling stations to certain areas, Kommersant reported Wednesday.
Current laws allow accredited vote monitors and reporters to take photographs and record video at polling stations any time and anywhere except in the voting booths.
Officials could also be allowed to prohibit observers from taking close-up photos and videos and from publishing them without the consent of those who are filmed.
Lilia Shibanova, executive director of independent elections watchdog Golos, said the new photography and video-recording rules would make it more difficult to document violations.
“If we need to record [ballot] stuffing, it is useless to ask for permission. No one will give it,” Shibanova said by telephone.
TITLE: Boy Finds Rare Mammoth Carcass in Northern Russia
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – An 11-year-old boy discovered a mammoth carcass in the northern reaches of the Krasnoyarsk region in what scientists are calling one of the best-preserved specimens ever found.
After making the discovery, young Yevgeny Salinder told his parents, who then informed polar explorers living on the icy Taimir Peninsula where the discovery was made, the Taimirsky Dolgano-Nenetsky district administration said in a statement Thursday.
Scientists soon arrived to examine the half-ton carcass, on which scraps of fur, flesh, fat and internal organs remained intact, but it took a week to dig the carcass out of the permafrost. It was not immediately clear when the mammoth was found.
The mammoth, which will be unofficially called Zhenya, the diminutive form of the Russian name Yevgeny, is supposed to have died roughly 30,000 years ago at between 15 and 16 years of age.
Alexei Tikhonov, a mammoth specialist with the Russian Academy of Sciences, told journalists that the last time such a well-preserved mammoth was found in Russia was in 1901, also in the Krasnoyarsk region, but much farther south, according to the statement.
The carcass will become an exhibit at the Taimir Regional Studies Museum, but museum staff have agreed to allow scientists from zoological and paleontological institutes in Moscow and St. Petersburg to study the mammoth first.
TITLE: ‘Experts’ Use Wikipedia as Case Evidence
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The defense said it would demand the exclusion of an expert analysis from the case as the hearings of the Trial of 12 continued after a two-week pause Tuesday, dismissing the prosecution’s experts as utterly incompetent and unqualified.
The defense exposed large sections of Wikipedia articles copied by the “experts” complete with hyperlinks and formatting, a lack of specialist education and ungrounded claims in the text of the analysis, which described the secretly recorded videos of The Other Russia’s activists meetings as meetings of the banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP).
If found guilty, the activists face between two and three years in prison.
Vitaly Batov and Natalya Kryukova, who analyzed the videos for the prosecution, came from Moscow to testify in St. Petersburg’s Vyborgsky District Court, where the case is heard. Batov was also responsible for the linguistic and sociological analysis that supported the case for prison sentences for the feminist punk band Pussy Riot this summer.
Batov and Kryukova, from the Russian Institute of Cultural Studies, found that the slogan “Kill the Slave in Yourself” was a call for violence, while in the recent Pussy Riot trial, Batov found that the group’s “punk prayer” was motivated by “political and religious hatred and hostility.”
The investigators in the Trial of 12 turned to Batov and Kryukova, dubbed “call experts” by critics, after the original expert analysis conducted by St. Petersburg State University history professor David Raskin concluded that it was impossible to determine from the evidence whether the group in the videos was the NBP or any other similar group.
Kryukova spoke most out of the two, while Batov made occasional remarks.
“I am not interested in the vids,” Batov said, when asked whether he had compared the investigators’ transcription with what was actually heard in the videos, adding, “In this respect I always take my lead from the commissioner.”
In his analysis, Batov said, he used software called Lingvo Express, which he created on an IBM System/3 computer in 1974. The software determines psychological peculiarities and flaws in a person from examples of their speech, he said, adding that it surpasses Western equivalents because whereas they require tens of thousands of words to be able to give an accurate result, his own software can do so on the basis of just 200 words.
In addition to the software, Batov used a “psycho-hermeneutic” method that he had also invented, he said, though he admitted that the term had not taken root.
When asked whether his method is used by any other researchers, Batov — who is the author of a book called “Vladimir Vysotsky. Psycho-Hermeneutics of Creative Work” — compared the scientific community to a “zoo.”
“Innovations are only recognized after their rivals die out,” he said.
Batov said he had not undergone professional reevaluation since 1974.
While Batov said he has degrees in psychology and cultural studies, Kryukova is a math teacher.
When asked how she could conduct linguistic, psychological and sociological analysis, she said that she had taken group psychology at university for three terms.
In answer to a question about her qualifications in political studies, Kryukova replied that she had studied the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as a compulsory course at university before graduating in 1981.
Asked how the experts were able to confirm that the flag in the black and white video was the NBP’s banned red flag, Kryukova explained that black appears as black in a black and white image, while any other color appears as gray.
“This flag is definitely not black, which means it is red, because these groups use only black and red flags,” she said.
The experts saw a “call to — and justification of — the ideology and practice of violence” in defendant Andrei Dmitriyev’s words, when he said at a secretly taped meeting that if the activists gained the support of many small organizations, City Hall “will be forced to take us into consideration.”
When asked how his words could be interpreted as a call to violence, Kryukova replied that it contained the “intention to put pressure” on the authorities, which — in the context of the group’s activities — constituted such a call.
The indictment does not contain any charges of violence.
Kryukova initially claimed that she had used various dictionaries for definitions in the expert analysis, but later admitted the use of Wikipedia, an anonymous online resource to which anyone can contribute.
“So what, is that a crime?” Kryukova said.
“First-year students are told not to use Wikipedia!” defense lawyer Olga Tseitlina said.
Despite the contradictions and inconsistencies of the evidence offered by Kryukova and Batov, Judge Sergei Yakovlev openly helped them by dismissing some of the defense’s questions and sometimes even answering on their behalf, when they appeared stuck for a word.
“The expert analysis is the prosecution’s only proof and we’ll be demanding it to be excluded from the case at the next hearing,” Tseitlina said after the session.
The hearings in the cases of a group of The Other Russia activists opened in St. Petersburg in April. Last month, cases against four of the 12 activists were closed on the grounds that two years had passed since they were last detained for participating in a protest.
TITLE: Online Travel Resource Launched
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The global online travel resource My Destination has launched operations in St. Petersburg as part of a global expansion covering more than 100 other destinations and spanning 60 countries.
The My Destination website is powered by a community of local experts who provide unrivaled local knowledge and unique local deals, said Tim Stanley, director of My Destination in St. Petersburg.
“The former capital of the tsars is known for its unique atmosphere, its canals and bridges, architectural ensembles, and sumptuous palaces and museums, and receives five million visitors every year,” Stanley said.
“The city’s history is fascinating and never far off, but what I love is that this is also a modern, bustling city on the move, with trendy nightspots, an eclectic restaurant scene, contemporary art events, festivals such as the White Nights, proud sporting traditions, and much more. There’s always something new to discover. St Petersburg is truly one of the world’s great capitals of culture,” he added.
Thanks to the 12 million visitors the global resource receives annually, My Destination St. Petersburg and its local business partners will benefit from the international audience that the brand attracts, the company says.
The My Destination website contains travel articles, tips, videos and panoramic virtual tours. Visitors can share their travel experiences via interactive features.
Established in 2006 by Neil Waller and James Street, My Destination has offices in London, Los Angeles and Marbella, Spain.
TITLE: Reclamation Found ‘Risky’
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A planned land reclamation project in the Gulf of Finland near the town of Sestroretsk is dangerous for local ecology, according to a commission set up by the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, Interfax reported.
The assembly’s commission on the ecological protection of the St. Petersburg population discussed Monday the potential influence of the proposed land reclamation in the Gorskaya-Sestroretsk locality on the hydrological, ecological and geological conditions of the territory.
The experts said the project was a threat to both the ecology of the Gulf of Finland and to the safety of the real estate planned to be built on the reclaimed land.
The land reclamation project would result in the pollution of the beach in the village of Lisy Nos, the disruption of currents in the mouth of the River Neva, the destruction of the beach at Sestroretsk, and would threaten many rare species of flora and fauna, scientists said.
Doctor Konstantin Klevanny said the site chosen for the construction would become the most dangerous area of the Gulf of Finland, at risk of flooding up to six meters above sea level, Interfax reported. In such a scenario the city’s flood barrier would be incapable of defending the new residential districts, while hydraulic constructions would come under additional pressure, he told the committee. In addition, the Primorskoye Shosse and the railroad would also be at risk.
The company planning the project, Severo-Zapad Invest, failed to sign an official agreement with the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Federal Fisheries Agency, Interfax reported. Therefore the members of the commission decided to appeal to the Regional Development Ministry with a request to temporarily halt coordination of the project until a thorough assessment has been carried out, the news agency reported.
Severo-Zapad Invest plans to reclaim land from the sea to create a new territory of 370 hectares in the area of Sestroretsk for the construction of a new residential district called Novy Bereg (New Shore) in 2014. The cost of the project is currently evaluated at 250 billion rubles ($8 billion).
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Passenger Saves Lives
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A bus passenger saved a number of lives when she took the steering wheel from a dying driver on the St. Petersburg-Murmansk highway on Saturday, Fontanka reported.
The bus was traveling at a speed of 90 kilometers an hour when the driver suddenly felt unwell. He managed to say to the woman sitting next to him “Drive,” before losing consciousness. The woman removed the key from the ignition and steered the bus for several hundred meters until it came to a stop.
The driver, however, died from an apparent heart attack.
Supermarket Closed
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The city’s Narodny supermarket closed for 60 days last week.
Numerous inspections of the store revealed violations of sanitary legislation, migration and labor regulation.
An earlier court order to suspend the store’s activities was found to contain bureaucratic irregularities, Interfax reported.
TITLE: Three Suspects Arrested In Viktorov Murder Case
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Three suspects in the murder last month of Alexander Viktorov, rector of the St. Petersburg Service and Economics University, were arrested Sunday, including the alleged hitman.
According to the St. Petersburg police, the detention was made with the help of special forces, Interfax reported.
The three men, who are suspected of being the hit man, an accomplice and the organizer, respectively, are St. Petersburg residents Vitaly Kovalyov, 38, Vyacheslav Makarov, 31, and Novokuznetsk resident Andrei Yeliseyev, 38, Delovoi Peterburg reported.
All three men reportedly have criminal records, and Yeliseyev, who is suspected of carrying out the shooting itself, has previously been sentenced for a contract killing.
Sergei Umnov, head of the St. Petersburg police, said at a briefing Monday that the killers had been paid one million rubles ($32,180) for the murder. At least 600,000 rubles ($20,000) went to Yeliseyev, who had bought a new car with the money, Fontanka.ru reported.
Police believe the murder was connected to Viktorov’s professional activities, and are currently investigating who ordered the hit, Interfax said.
Viktorov was fatally shot near his house in the town of Vsevolozhsk in the Leningrad Oblast on Sept. 5. The killer fired five shots, hitting Viktorov four times. Viktorov’s wife was also injured in the shooting.
TITLE: Oreshek Takes Center Stage
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg military enthusiasts will re-enact historical events at the Oreshek fortress at the Days of Russian Glory festival on Oct. 6.
The re-enactment will commemorate the anniversary of Tsar Peter the Great’s capture of the ancient Russian fortress from the Swedes in 1702.
Anna Trofimova, head of Russian Cultural Development and Education Foundation, said the event would be a unique one for the fortress, which is located on Orekhovy Island at the head of the Neva River across from the town of Schlisselburg in the Leningrad Oblast.
Three groups of enthusiasts will re-enact different periods of the fortress’s military history, including the Novgorod Republic, the era of Peter the Great and World War II. About 100 people from various clubs in St. Petersburg will take part in the event, including a club devoted to the Preobrazhensky regiment, whose soldiers stormed the Oreshek fortress in 1702.
Visitors to the festival will also be able to visit a folk-craft fair and try their hand at various crafts themselves.
The event begins at 1 p.m., and a ferry to the island on which the fortress is located will run from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Entrance to the festival is free.
The fortress, founded in 1323 was the main outpost in Russia’s northwest, but was seized by Sweden in 1612. Its recapture in 1702 was Russia’s first key victory in the Great Northern War.
TITLE: Free Bike Schemes See Success
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Ivanov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Hundreds of bikes that could be used free of charge may grace St. Petersburg’s streets next year, as at least two schemes started by local firms in 2012 are to be extended.
Marina Veselova, coordinator of the FreeBike project run by Velodrive company, said Monday at a roundtable hosted by Vecherny Peterburg newspaper that the scheme had been launched in August. The FreeBike project comprises several dozen bikes that were donated — mostly by Velodrive itself, which has been running a scrap program since 2010 — then repaired, painted blue and supplied with a combination lock that can be opened by entering the code of either 000 or 0000.
The bikes can be taken by anyone wishing to use them from locations such as the Sosnovka, 300-Letiya Sankt-Peterburga or Alexandrovsky parks, Tretye Mesto café on Ulitsa Marata or Loft Project Etagi on Ligovsky Prospekt, and can be left anywhere the rider deems convenient. At least 50 to 100 more free bikes are to be added to the scheme in 2013, Veselova said.
A similar program with the equally similar name of #FreeBike was launched by Skatprokat bike rental center in July, using old bikes donated by members of the public. Skatprokat had about 30 bikes fixed, painted white and equipped with green wheels and black tires, with each one bearing a metal plate saying that it is free to use, Yury Biryukov, coordinator of the #FreeBike project, told The St. Petersburg Times in a phone interview. As donations are now less frequent — albeit no less welcome — his team is now working on repairing bikes at a more leisurely pace, he added.
The mere fact that not all of the bikes have yet been stolen offers some hope for the scheme’s future, Biryukov said. However, such projects cannot be operated by volunteers or private companies without support from public funds, as the experience of dozens of cities across the world has indicated, he added.
Biryukov said that while any free bike projects are welcome and would improve the situation in the city, it would be less confusing for users if there were a unified color scheme and rules. Olga Mnishko, an activist with the Velosipedizatsiya Sankt-Peterburga project (i-bike-spb.ru), who spoke at the roundtable, said that she hopes for the eventual unification of all free bike projects in the city. Velodrive’s general director Kirill Ostapenko said that in 2013, as many as 500 free bikes may be offered in total by all the similar schemes in the city, covering all of St. Petersburg’s districts.
Velosipedizatsiya has started a number of initiatives that aim to make cycling in St. Petersburg safer and more convenient, including petitioning City Hall to amend traffic rules to allow cyclists to ride in lanes reserved for public transport. A free safe-riding school (vk.com/bicycleschool) was started this year, providing guidance on accident reduction and traffic rules, Mnishko said. Safety precautions to be followed in St. Petersburg were outlined in a free leaflet (in Russian), which can be picked up at shops and cafes across the city.
Skatprokat printed a free brochure (also in Russian), which was compiled jointly with Time Out magazine and the traffic police department of the city’s Central District, specifying traffic rules that apply to cyclists. The police officially confirmed that riding on the sidewalk does not constitute an offense in and of itself, Biryukov noted.
Other cycling initiatives launched this year include a free bike route map of the imperial suburb of Peterhof compiled and printed by travel company Velorodeo. The company’s director Maxim Kleshchev said that this July’s Petrograd Academic Bikenight (Velonotte Pietrogrado), a free annual mass bicycle excursion focusing on architectural and cultural heritage, was crucial in raising awareness of cyclists by establishing a route from Peterhof to the city center.
A slightly more offbeat project called “Cycle Street Cleaner” is to be launched by Velodrive in 2013, offering free use of three-wheelers equipped to collect rubbish and to play “inspiring” music. Members of the public will be able to call on volunteers who man the bikes to come and collect rubbish where municipal cleaners’ efforts are insufficient. Ostapenko, Velodrive’s director, said he would personally volunteer to take part in the project, as would his employees.
In addition, a long-running free bike workshop that operates every Saturday from spring through autumn on Solyanoi Pereulok (bikeshop.tumblr.com), will offer maintenance and minor repair services provided by volunteers between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 6.
None of the City Hall officials whom Vecherny Peterburg invited to participate in its roundtable made an appearance. St. Petersburg’s bicycle transport development program has not yet been approved, and has no funding allocated by the city budget.
TITLE: City Celebrates Finnish Cuisine
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Helsinkibar will celebrate the food of Finland with a three-day Finnish Cuisine Weekend starting Friday.
Finnish star chef Jyrki Tsutsunen, who is popular in Finland for his cookery TV shows and who has been chef of the General Consulate of Finland since 2007, will offer a national menu that includes pike cutlets, Lapland mashed potatoes, applesauce with parsnips, sautéed chanterelles and cranberry sauce.
Finlandia vodka — the event’s partner — will be used for a variety of cocktails.
Tsutsunen’s Russian partner for the event is Alexander Taratukhin, Helsinkibar’s chef, who is described as an adept of new Finnish cuisine in St. Petersburg. Organizers promise that all the ingredients for the event will be brought fresh from Finland.
Organized by the General Consulate of Finland in St. Petersburg and the Light Music promotion agency, the event will end with a party headlined by Timo Santala of the We Love Helsinki DJ project at 10 p.m. Sunday, featuring Finnish music from the 1930s-80s.
TITLE: Kremlin Tightens Control of Nonprofits
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — On Monday, the same day that the U.S. Agency for International Development ended its 20-year presence in Russia, President Vladimir Putin proposed bringing nonprofit groups that provide social services under closer government supervision, Interfax reported.
A plan outlining criteria for evaluating the quality of services provided by nonprofits, as well as a public ratings system, should be finalized by April 1, Putin said Monday.
He also told a group of pensioners that the government would boost funding for nonprofits to 3 billion rubles ($96 million).
Fifty-seven nonprofits operating in Russia, from human rights watchdogs to HIV/AIDS prevention groups, are set to lose out on millions of dollars in U.S. government grants following the Kremlin’s decision to kick out USAID, which was announced last month.
The Foreign Ministry said USAID used grants to try to influence Russian politics, including elections and civil society institutions.
Like many NGOs, election monitor Golos, whose reports of violations during the State Duma elections in December helped spark massive street protests, has reacted with a mix of defiance and disappointment.
“We will continue monitoring [elections] no matter what,” Golos said in a statement at the time.
On Monday, Golos director Lilia Shibanova struck a somewhat less strident chord, saying the organization would monitor the Oct. 14 municipal elections as planned, barring any additional “news.”
This is because nonprofits can spend grant money that they’ve already received, she said.
Asked whether Golos had found any new donors, Shibanova laughed. “Of course not, you can’t find additional financing that fast.” New grants would take six months or more to materialize, she said.
Golos expects to provide an online map of elections violations, a free hotline, and training for vote monitors in 22 regions, the statement said.
Despite USAID’s eviction and a new law compelling nonprofits that receive foreign funds to register as “foreign agents,” Putin insisted that Russia’s policy towards nonprofits was unrestrictive.
“We don’t have any limits or bans on NGOs’ use of funds and aid, including that provided by foreign donors. This will only be welcomed,” he said Monday.
Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Carnegie Center, said Monday’s announcement was part of a larger trend of expanding government control.
“If you look around, you will see that in practically all directions, [Putin] does the same thing. It’s very bad, and I can’t imagine that he will be able to change something,” he said by telephone.
Yelena Gerasimova, director of the Center for Social and Labor Rights, which received USAID funding, doubted whether a ratings system or additional funds would be useful or fair.
Three years of applying for grants through the Public Chamber had yielded nothing, and even if they had, Russian government grants tend to be small, narrowly focused and wrapped in red tape, she said by telephone.
“Who’s going to do the evaluations? How are they going to be developed? How are they going to be carried out? There are many more questions than answers,” she said.
The loss of USAID funding will hit nonprofits differently, depending on their revenue streams.
Perspektiva, which defends the rights of people with disabilities, was set to lose about a third of its budget, director Denise Roza said last month. Public health advocate University Research Company was faced with completely halting operations in Russia, director Viktor Boguslavsky said at the time.
Other organizations interviewed by The St. Petersburg Times said they would do their best to carry on, freezing USAID-funded projects and looking for additional sponsors while trying to maintain existing projects and staff.
Davron Mukhamadiyev, head of the Russian Red Cross Society, said the demise of USAID would accelerate a trend of decentralization for his organization, in which Red Cross projects are handed over to local partners.
“Our main focus for the last two to three years was how to shift this kind of support from international sources to local sources. In many regions, local authorities have already adopted special legislation, including special expenses for counseling and other support for tuberculosis patients,” he said.
For example, the Red Cross will now consider handing over a program that provides counseling and other support to about 650 patients in the outpatient phase.
USAID spent $54.2 million in Russia in 2011, almost half of which ($22.2 million) went to projects related to human rights, democracy and governance, according to official data.
TITLE: Putin Aide Hits Out At Musical Ban
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A close ally of President Vladimir Putin lashed out Monday at a Russian Orthodox protest that closed a performance of the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar” as “just plain stupid.”
Sergei Ivanov, the Kremlin’s chief of staff, said he saw nothing blasphemous or sacrilegious in the spectacle, which he said he watched for the first time in a London theater as an exchange student in 1974.
“In the old days, we called it going too far, but in my opinion, this is just plain stupid,” Ivanov told reporters.
A Rostov-on-Don theater canceled the performance over the weekend after Orthodox activists complained to prosecutors that the show is blasphemous and mentioned a contentious bill being considered by the State Duma that would criminalize blasphemy.
Putin has not weighed in on the blasphemy debate, but Ivanov said Monday that “Jesus Christ Superstar,” if anything, was educational and that the London performance had left “a great impression.”
“I, of course, grew up in an atheistic state and knew nothing about elementary topics in the Bible,” he said, Interfax reported. “Thanks to this opera, I got to know them. So I think that this Rostov blockheadedness, I repeat, is just plain stupid and going too far.”
TITLE: Rejected World Cup Cities Express Disappointment
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Downcast officials in Krasnodar and Yaroslavl tried to stifle their disappointment Monday after their cities failed to make the list of host sites for the 2018 World Cup.
Some in Yaroslavl were quick to link their marginalization with the humiliation of the ruling United Russia party during mayoral elections earlier this year.
“It’s very bad that we won’t see the 2018 World Cup,” said Igor Bolkhin, adviser to Mayor Yevgeny Urlashov, news portal Gazeta.ru reported Monday. “The main reason for Yaroslavl’s exclusion from the list of those hosting the World Cup is, more likely than not, the recent change of leadership in the city and the region.”
Others blamed Yaroslavl’s proximity to the capital.
“We’re next to Moscow,” Yaroslavl Governor Sergei Yastrebov said, Interfax reported. “That shadow Moscow casts on the whole event probably influenced our result.”
Recriminations in Krasnodar were also bitter, though there was no suggestion that recent high-level criticism of governor Alexander Tkachyov had played a role.
“Without Krasnodar, there can be no World Cup. It’s just not possible; it’s awful,” president of Krasnodar football club and owner of retail giant Magnit Sergei Galitsky wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
Krasnodar is the only Russian city outside Moscow to have two teams in the country’s top football league.
The 13 prospective host cities for the World Cup were visited this summer by a delegation from football’s international governing body, FIFA, and their report was officially submitted for consideration on Sept. 26.
Each city was assessed on its infrastructure, level of socioeconomic development, investment programs and post-tournament “legacy” planning. The final decision by FIFA was based on those criteria.
TITLE: Medieval Homes Found in Tula
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Construction workers in the city of Tula unearthed medieval homes and jewelry while building an underground car park near the city’s kremlin, a local museum said Monday.
The workers have now handed over digging duties to archeologists from the local Kulikovo Field museum who said they had identified homes and possessions dating back as far as the 16th century.
Archeologists said in a statement that the earliest finds were homes built by potters and bricklayers who settled in the area when working on the city’s kremlin, or fortress.
A century later the Uspensky Monastery appeared on the site, while stone buildings were added from the 18th century onward.
Aside from buildings, archeologists chanced upon household goods, weapons, decorative items and a baptismal cross. The finds will be on display at the Kulikovo Field museum for visitors to see once the excavation work is completed.
TITLE: Saakashvili Concedes Defeat in Parliamentary Vote
AUTHOR: By Lynn Berry
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — President Mikhail Saakashvili on Tuesday conceded that his party lost Georgia’s parliamentary election, defying the opposition’s expectations that he would cling to power at all costs and preserving his legacy as a pro-Western leader who brought democracy to the former Soviet republic.
Saakashvili said the opposition Georgian Dream coalition led by billionaire businessman and philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili — who made his fortune in Russia and until recently was little known in his homeland — now has the right to form a government.
The opposition victory puts Ivanishvili in place to become prime minister. His antagonistic relationship with Saakashvili, who will remain president for another year, suggests that Georgian politics will be stormy.
Ivanishvili immediately went on the attack. Speaking at a televised news conference, he said most of the president’s widely praised reforms were a joke and his ideology “was all based on lies.” He ended by calling for Saakashvili to step down.
Saakashvili’s concession of defeat, even before the election results were released, also preserved calm on the emotionally charged streets of the capital, Tbilisi, where support for Georgian Dream is strongest. Opposition supporters had boisterously celebrated throughout the night. If they had felt deprived of victory Tuesday, the mood very quickly could have turned hostile.
During his nearly nine years in power, Saakashvili has pushed through economic and political reforms and attracted international investment that has led to dramatic economic growth. Poverty and unemployment, however, remain painfully high. Georgians have turned against Saakashvili in recent years. Many accuse his party — which has controlled not only the government and parliament but also the courts and prosecutor’s office — of exercising authoritarian powers.
Saakashvili’s campaign was also hit hard by the release two weeks ago of shocking videos showing prisoners in a Tbilisi jail being beaten and sodomized. The government moved quickly to stem the anger, replacing Cabinet ministers blamed for the abuse and arresting prison staff, but many saw the videos as illustrating the excesses of his government.
“It is clear from the preliminary results of the parliamentary election that the Georgian Dream coalition has secured a majority,” Saakashvili said in a televised address. “This means that the parliamentary majority should form the next government and I, as president, within the framework of the constitution, will help make it possible for parliament to begin its work, choose a speaker and also form a new government.”
Saakashvili will remain the leader of the country until his second and last term ends next October. Under a constitutional reform that goes into effect after he leaves office, many of the president’s powers will be transferred to the prime minister, who is chosen by parliament.
This is the first time in Georgia’s post-Soviet history that a government will be changed by the ballot box rather than through revolution. Saakashvili came to power through the peaceful Rose Revolution after a rigged parliamentary vote in 2003.
He said Tuesday there were deep differences between his United National Movement and the diverse opposition coalition.
“We think their views are completely wrong,” he said. “But democracy works through the majority of the Georgian people making a decision, and we respect this very much.”
International election monitors expressed concern over the harsh rhetoric during the campaign and isolated cases of violence, but overall praised the election.
“The process has shown a healthy respect for fundamental freedoms at the heart of democratic elections, and we expect the final count will reflect the choice of the voters,” said Tonino Picula, who led the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe observer mission.
Ivanishvili said the international observers were responsible for preventing vote rigging, and Saakashvili should be thankful to the opposition that “he was able in the end to save his reputation” as a democratic leader.
Ivanishvili confirmed his commitment to pursue Saakashvili’s goals of making Georgia an integral part of Europe and member of NATO, while adding that he would seek to restore the trade and diplomatic ties with Russia that were severed when the two countries fought a brief war in 2008. Georgian producers of wine, mineral water, vegetables and fruits had depended on exports to Russia, and the closing of these markets hurt them deeply.
Saakashvili has accused Ivanishvili of planning to put Georgia back under Russian domination. Ivanishvili denies that.
Before Saakashvili conceded, Ivanishvili met with two U.S. senators to assure them of his desire to maintain the close relationship with Washington forged under Saakashvili.
“We talked about the future, how to develop our relationship with our big friend (the United States), and how to develop democracy in Georgia,” he said after meeting with Republican Senator James Risch of Idaho and Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, both members of the Foreign Relations Committee.
At the news conference later in the day, he again sneered at Saakashvili, who he said deceived the United States. “They thought he was building democracy,” Ivanishvili said. “We have done a good deed for the United States, we have saved democracy in Georgia.”
In Russia, where the election was being watched closely, the government welcomed the defeat of Saakashvili.
“We very much hope and count on the changes that will take place in Georgia and will positively influence the improvement of our ties,” said Valentina Matviyenko, the Kremlin-loyal speaker of Parliament’s upper house.
Alexei Malashenko, a scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center, was more cautious.
“For a while, ties will soften, there will be a prospect of improvement, but an exchange of embassies is not possible yet,” he said.
TITLE: Rogozin Ally to Manage Resurrected Rodina Party
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin did not attend Saturday’s reunification of his nationalist Rodina party, but the re-emergent bloc is likely to become his political vehicle, pundits and party insiders said.
Alexei Zhuravlyov, a longtime Rogozin ally, was elected chairman of the party at a congress Saturday. He aims to restore the political vitality of the party, which was once seen as a Kremlin-supported alternative to both Communist and liberal forces.
Zhuravlyov, who was elected to the State Duma via the pro-Kremlin People’s Front, a loose union of forces loyal to President Vladimir Putin, made it clear that the new Rodina is a continuation of the party of the same name founded in 2004.
“We are saying clearly that we are the successors of the same Rodina that we established together,” Zhuravlyov said in opening remarks at the congress, RIA-Novosti reported.
Rodina, formed in 2003 as a pro-Kremlin bloc of moderate nationalists, became a party a year later and secured seats in the parliament.
In 2006, however, the Kremlin forced the party’s charismatic leader, Rogozin, to surrender his leadership to low-profile businessman Alexander Babakov.
The party was later incorporated into the now-opposition A Just Russia party, which had initially been backed by the Kremlin.
Pundits said at that time that the Kremlin was wary of Rogozin’s nationalist rhetoric and his rising popularity among radicals who openly challenged Putin.
Rogozin, who as deputy prime minister oversees the military-industrial complex, declared on Twitter on Saturday that he was “not a member of any political party or a movement.”
But Rogozin attended an assembly Saturday to found the Don movement to support the military-industrial complex. Zhuravlyov is a senior member of that movement.
TITLE: Shell Falls in Vegetable Patch
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The tail section of a wartime shell sent to be scrapped at a Krasnodar region military facility landed in a vegetable patch while its owner was digging potatoes, a news report said Tuesday.
The shell, which could date back to the 1940s and was meant to be destroyed at the Taskino army base, landed in the stunned gardener’s patch Saturday after exploding during officers’ attempts to destroy obsolete ammunition.
“Out of tens of tons of old ammunition, only one explosive shell, apparently produced between the 1940s to 1960s, reacted inappropriately, its propeller separated and flew off,” a representative for the Central Military District told Itar-Tass.
The representative clarified that the shell did not contain explosives and that military personnel had retrieved the errant shell.
TITLE: New Trade Center Boosts Taiwan-Russia Commerce
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) and the Taipei World Trade Center (TWTC) have opened a Taiwan Trade Center in St. Petersburg in an effort to push for more development in economic and cultural exchanges with Russia and boost communications between the business circles of the two countries.
The local center is the 56th of its kind for Taiwan. TAITRA’s first branch in Russia, the Taiwan Trade Center in Moscow, was established in 1992.
TAITRA is Taiwan’s leading non-profit trade promotion organization. Its mission is to raise the country’s business profile on an international level and expand global markets for Taiwan’s producers.
“There is ample room for Taiwan and Russia to increase trade and investment,” said Chih-kang Wang, the chairman of TAITRA, speaking at the inauguration ceremony of the St. Petersburg office on Sept. 27.
While he mentioned Taiwan’s interest in Russia’s rich natural resources — namely oil and metals — and praised the country’s recent economic achievements, he said that Taiwan’s export priorities for Russia include components for the automotive industry and machinery, and IT products.
“Russia is now a country with 140 million consumers, booming infrastructure needs and the ninth-largest economy in the world,” he said.
“Indeed, it is time for us to deliver more and increase our presence here.”
Jeffrey Hong, director of the Taiwan Trade Center in St. Petersburg, has worked for TAITRA for the past 20 years, with his most recent assignment being to head the office in Stockholm.
“Now that Russia has joined the World Trade Organization, and the number of enquiries from Taiwanese businessmen about potential Russian partners has increased dramatically, the St. Petersburg office looks set to be very busy,” Hong said.
“One of the center’s tasks is providing information services and responding to enquiries from both Taiwanese and Russian businessmen — and we provide all information services free of charge,” Hong added.
The Taiwan Trade Center in St. Petersburg is located at 32 Naberezhnaya Makarova.
Jack Cheng, director of TAITRA’s Moscow center, said that Taiwan’s producers are seeking to make their range of export goods more diverse.
“For example, we are now selling top-class mountain bikes to Russia as well as a range of luxury cosmetic products for hair styling.”
St. Petersburg’s business community welcomed the arrival of the Taiwan center.
“TAITRA’s branch in Moscow has been operating for many years already, and opening the branch in St. Petersburg is an important step toward further development of trade and strengthening the position of Taiwanese business on the Russian market,” said Vladimir Kotenev, president of the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
In 1999, the chamber signed a cooperation agreement with TAITRA’s Moscow branch, and has since organized more than 15 joint events with its Taiwanese partners.
“We are very much looking forward to expanding business ties locally,” Kotenev added.
The St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry is currently preparing a presentation about a machine-building exhibit that will take place in Taipei. The presentation will be the organization’s first project with TAITRA’s local office.
TITLE: Zuckerberg Meets PM on Visit
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg paid a visit to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Monday during a trip coinciding with the social network’s push to recruit programmers and tap coding talent in Russia.
Speaking with Medvedev at the tech-savvy official’s Gorki residence outside Moscow, Zuckerberg said he came to Moscow to check out the country’s programming talent for himself.
Noting that a Russian specialist won Facebook’s programming contest this year, Zuckerberg said his company has “been really impressed by the quality and talent and innovation that we’ve seen.”
“While I’m here, I’m going to be speaking at a Hackathon that’s happening, with a bunch of different companies and developers that are here, just to kind of encourage and help them build things on top of Facebook,” Zuckerberg told Medvedev.
The Hackathon is a brainstorming session where programmers create and demonstrate add-ons for Facebook. Monday’s session in Moscow at the Digital October technology conference center in the former Krasny Oktyabr chocolate factory was the last stop on Facebook’s World Hack tour this year.
Chris Rogers of Grayling Eurasia, Facebook’s press office in Russia, declined to give Zuckerberg’s schedule for Tuesday, except to confirm that the chief executive will address students at Moscow State University that evening.
During this trip to Russia — his first — Zuckerberg has posted photographs to his Facebook page, including a photo of himself and Medvedev shaking hands with the caption, “Good conversation with Prime Minister Medvedev.”
TITLE: Baikal Plant To Be Shut Down
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill will “almost certainly” be closed in the near future, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said.
“There has been a lot of discussion, there is a group that is analyzing various courses of action...most likely the plant on Baikal will close, almost certainly,” Dvorkovich was quoted as saying last Friday.
For decades, environmentalists have campaigned for the closure of the controversial factory, which they say releases dangerous pollutants into the pristine waters of Lake Baikal.
It was briefly closed in 2008 after the federal environmental watchdog ordered it to cease releasing effluent into the lake, a process essential to the production of high-value bleached cellulose, which makes the plant profitable.
Then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin allowed the plant to recommence production in early 2010.
Plant employees were reportedly told in June that the mill would finally close when its license to release effluent into Lake Baikal expired on August 15.
But regulators last month extended the mill’s license for another year while other options are considered.
The plant is the main employer in the town of Baikalsk and authorities are said to be wary of the economic impact of closure.
TITLE: Mortgages See Record Levels
AUTHOR: By Lena Smirnova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The number of mortgages issued this year could reach record levels, with 933,000 deals worth 1 trillion rubles ($32.2 billion) expected to be financed in the real estate market, Alexander Semenyaka, general director of the Agency for Housing Mortgage Lending, said last week.
One in every five deals in the real estate market now involves a mortgage.
“Despite the fact that there has been a slow growth of interest rates throughout this year as compared with the previous year, this growth does not impede people from using mortgages as a way to buy homes,” Semenyaka said.
Twenty percent of all real estate purchases and 40 percent of newly built apartment sales are now made using mortgages.
In the first seven months of this year, 353,252 mortgages totaling 516.9 billion rubles ($16.6 billion) were issued. That is an increase of 50 percent over the same period in 2011 in terms of both quantity and monetary value of the deals, according to Central Bank statistics.
The average rate on mortgage credits today is 12.2 percent per year. Although major housing lenders Sberbank and DeltaCredit increased their rates in August, the agency forecasts that average rates won’t surpass 12.5 percent by the end of the year.
Most Russians now look to mortgages to finance housing needs rather than investments, said Ilya Ponomaryov, deputy head of the Federal Agency for Construction. Until 2009, investors made up the bulk of mortgage borrowers.
“Since 2011, mortgage use has grown in proportion to inflation,” Semenyaka said. “This confirms the fact that the growth in the number of mortgages is not a result of investment purchases but the tendency of people to use the mortgage to help them improve their living conditions.”
Bad-debt rates are also decreasing. Mortgage holders covered 96.2 percent of their obligations in the first seven months of 2012, as compared with 94.6 percent the year before, according to Central Bank data.
The agency has programs to reduce interest rates for low-income segments of the population, such as military staff, young scientists, teachers and women who rely on state maternity funding.
It also has special offers for families with two or more children. In accordance with Russia’s Land Code, these families can receive free land plots from the government and build houses on them. But since families rarely have the money for a project like that, the agency has offered to pool different families’ land and build low-rise cooperative housing.
Pilot projects are already under way in the Irkutsk and Novosibirsk regions.
Six families in Novosibirsk formed a cooperative, which will have 90 apartments. The families received a mortgage to construct the building, will take six apartments for themselves and use the other 84 to pay off their debt.
TITLE: New City to Emerge As Part of Aviation Center
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A new town of 60,000 residents will appear next to the science city of Zhukovsky, 20 kilometers east of Moscow, as part of the planned National Aircraft Manufacturing Center.
A 2008 decree by then-President Vladimir Putin ordered the creation of an aviation manufacturing technopark in Zhukovsky, to include the design bureaus of United Aircraft Corporation, Ilyushin, MiG and Sukhoi.
The center, or NAMC, will create 10,000 jobs, said Timur Ivanov, deputy head of the Moscow region government.
In order for the project to be realized, the social, educational and scientific infrastructure has to be created, said Tigran Alexanyan, head of the non-commercial partnership NAMC. Zhukovsky was enlarged by 1,300 hectares in order to host the center.
At the end of 2011, another 886 hectares were purchased to make room for the necessary facilities for the center, as well as housing and commercial buildings. Essentially, a new city of 60,000 people will emerge in this space, Alexanyan said. United Aircraft Corporation confirmed the information.
At the beginning of September, architectural firm John Thompson and Partners presented its three-part concept for the new territory: the innovation park Zhukovsky, with a federal university, technopark and offices; a residential area for workers of the NAMC; and commercial investment projects on an area of 380 hectares. The total space to be built is 3 million square meters, including 2 million square meters of low-rise housing. Total investment is estimated at $4 billion.
Financing for the project is coming from public-private partnerships, while the infrastructure will be built using federal funds. The construction of roads to the main NAMC airfield, where the bi-annual MAKS air show is held, is already being financed.
TITLE: Obama Caves In to Kremlin Repression
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As the U.S. presidential election approaches, President Barack Obama’s “reset” with Russia has been dealt two painful blows, both of which are either directly or indirectly the fault of the Obama administration. After working in Russia since 1992, USAID was ordered to close the doors of its Moscow office by Monday. Meanwhile, U.S. government-funded Radio Liberty will also close down its radio broadcasting effective Nov. 10. Freedom and democracy in Russia has suffered two major setbacks, only worsening the situation with freedom of speech and human rights.
USAID, established in 1961 by U.S. President John F. Kennedy, was literally thrown out of Russia with a hard kick in the rear. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was shocked to hear from Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the APEC summit in Vladivostok in early September that the decision had been made in the Kremlin to kick USAID out of the country in a matter of weeks.
Yet the Obama administration did not object to the decision. The only appeal it made was to ask for an extension of USAID’s presence until May. But in the tradition of Soviet-era Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Russia once again said “Nyet!” USAID employees were told to pack their bags and leave Russia by Oct. 1.
In addition, Radio Liberty has shut down its radio operations and will shift to an Internet format. Radio Liberty president Steven Korn explained the move as a way to make its broadcasting format more modern. But regardless of how Korn tries to spin it, the shutdown will be a blow to freedom of the media in Russia. The “modernization” amounted to firing dozens of outstanding journalists, including Mikhail Sokolov, Anna Kachakayeva and Lyudmila Telen. Once a powerful radio station that millions of Russians tuned in to for alternative views and discussions will be diluted by key staff reductions and lost in the huge expanse of the Internet.
During its 20 years in Russia, USAID offered grants of more than $2.6 billion to hundreds of NGOs. In recent years, more than half of the funding was spent to support democracy and human rights. Recipients included Memorial, which defends human rights and educates Russians on the horrendous crimes committed by the Soviet Union; Golos, which provides training to election observers and fights election fraud; and the Moscow Helsinki Group, which has fought for human rights in Russia since the days of Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Yury Andropov.
As of Nov. 1, those organizations, along with hundreds of other Russian NGOs that receive grants from foreign donors, will be required by a recently passed law to stigmatize themselves as “foreign agents.” Now those NGOs have been dealt the most serious blow by being denied the financial support of their largest donor. In the end, civil society will suffer.
Not only the so-called politically oriented NGOs came under attack, but also the social programs funded by USAID. These include projects ranging from the fight against AIDS and tuberculosis to assistance for the disabled and the protection of the environment. Thousands of Russians will now be denied vital aid simply because the Kremlin has deemed that they should not receive it. The Russian authorities explain that they rejected U.S. humanitarian aid because Russia has “gotten up off its knees.” Try telling that to the thousands of Russian children who die every year because they can’t receive basic medial care, or to the country’s AIDS and tuberculosis patients who don’t have access to medication.
In response to the aggressive anti-democratic campaign led by Putin and members of his chekist clan, the Obama administration continues its cowardly retreat from its democratic principles. It did not make a single attempt to preserve Radio Liberty or the USAID mission in Russia. As a result, Radio Liberty, which once hosted such talents as poet and playwright Alexander Galich and author Sergei Dovlatov, is being systematically destroyed. Millions of Russians who want a more democratic Russia have been betrayed and abandoned, while dozens of NGOs of critical importance to Russian civil society will be severely curtailed or closed outright.
Although the Obama administration has said it is committed to defending freedom and human rights in the world, it has meekly given in to the Kremlin on two key institutions that have made invaluable contributions toward building democracy and civil society in Russia.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio and is a co-founder of the opposition Party of People’s Freedom.
TITLE: regional dimensions: Why the Kremlin Is Still Afraid of Elections
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: Regional elections, which will be held in less than two weeks, will be the first since the State Duma elections last December that sparked the mass protest movement. They are important for the opposition and for society as a whole. Both are rousing from a state of lethargy and calling for a more open, fair and competitive political system and for the authorities to heed its demands.
The authorities are afraid of elections. They are even more afraid of the scandals resulting from the Kremlin’s manipulation of elections, including large protests in Moscow. They are therefore making large-scale use of administrative resources to ensure electoral victory without having to resort to widespread falsification again. This is the same tactic used in Moscow and St. Petersburg during the presidential election in March.
The newest element in this electoral cycle is the first direct election of governors since 2005, five in all. The introduction of a “filter” at the municipal level not only allowed the authorities to reduce the number of candidates to three or four in each race but, more important, to cull out unwanted candidates.
As a result, the Kremlin-friendly incumbents are favored in each election. They are expected to win by a large margin in the Amur, Belgorod and Novgorod regions, but they will encounter some difficulties in the Bryansk and Ryazan regions.
The race in Ryazan is especially important. That was where a strong candidate first appeared from a spoiler party, the Patriots of Russia. He challenged the unpopular gubernatorial candidate and won support from some members of the local political elite before unexpectedly withdrawing his candidacy in exchange for a cushy senatorial post.
United Russia can count on a fair degree of success in these elections because it allowed voting only in those regions in which it already enjoys majority support and split the electorate in other regions by means of spoiler parties.
No particular surprises are expected in the six regions slated to hold legislative elections, despite several novel circumstances in the campaigns. Those include a large list of parties — from 11 to 17 — because of the emergence of new parties and the annulment of the previous rule obligating political parties to collect a large number of signatures to register.
The most interesting elections promise to be those for the municipal legislatures in Barnaul, Vladivostok, Kursk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Tver, Cherkassk and Yaroslavl and for mayor in Kaliningrad, Nizhny Tagil and Khimki. In these cities, there may be some surprises, including a poor showing by United Russia.
Overall, the authorities have responded to protesters’ demands for a more competitive and transparent political process by employing ever more sophisticated tricks to retain their hold on power.
An old Soviet-era joke relates how Leonid Brezhnev responded when he was told that the train he was riding had to stop and could go no further. He ordered that the curtains be closed and that the wagon be rocked from side to side to create the illusion that the train was moving forward.
It seems the current regime is taking the same approach. Politically speaking, it has also stopped dead in its tracks.
Nikolai Petrov is a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
TITLE: Cradle of rock
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Perestroika is back. Interest in Russian rock music in Finland is on the rise again, says Finnish author Tomi Huttunen, whose recent book on Russian rock is the second in Finland after Artemy Troitsky’s pioneering “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” published in Finland at the height of perestroika in 1988 under the title “Terveisiä Tšaikovskille” (Tell Tchaikovsky the News).
Huttunen, whose book is called “Pietari on rock,” a pun that can be roughly translated as “St. Petersburg Means Rock,” came to St. Petersburg last week with a bus full of about 30 interested Finns from all around the country including remote Lapland as well as eastern and western Finland.
They walked around places made legendary by the Leningrad rock musicians of the 1980s — including former locations of the Leningrad Rock Club and the bohemian hangout unofficially known as “Saigon” — and attended a concert and a party at the Mitki art group’s studio featuring Vladimir Rekshan of the local 1960s/70s rock legends Sankt Peterburg, as well as Alexei Zubarev, guitarist with the art-rock band Sezon Dozhdei in the 1980s and Boris Grebenshchikov’s BG Band and Akvarium in the 1990s.
The trip was arranged to conclude a series of book events that began in March with a concert and discussion with DDT frontman Yury Shevchuk at the University of Helsinki, where Huttunen is a professor of Russian literature.
Huttunen, 42, encountered Russian rock when he first came to Leningrad in 1986. “I was 15 and it was with a high school group in a bus full of drunken Finns,” he says.
“It was late autumn. We came and saw the empty Nevsky; we thought there was not a single man in this city, there were only some cars, but then there was a huge queue for an ice-cream stand. It was very cold, and there were people queuing for ice cream.
“We had too many rubles and didn’t know what to do with them. We went to Dom Knigi and there, apart from the portraits of Gorbachev, we saw records on sale and one was Akvarium’s ‘white album.’”
The freshly released vinyl LP was the first official release by Leningrad’s leading rock band fronted by Boris Grebenshchikov, culled from its two underground DIY tapes as a Soviet propaganda answer to “Red Wave,” a compilation of St. Petersburg rock released by the then aspiring U.S. singer Joanna Stingray in the U.S. earlier that year.
“I played it at home and started to translate the lyrics by ear, using a small tourist dictionary,” Huttunen says.
“It turned out many years later that I hadn’t understood anything in the lyrics, but the translations turned out to be very interesting. I started to develop my Russian from there.
“Then I wrote a student essay in Russian, and I wrote about some grass, some hallucinations, something in your palm and this turns into something else… It was my idea of communication in Russian. My vocabulary was fully based on Grebenshchikov’s idiom in the 1980s.”
The 1980s saw the explosion of Russian rock, and Leningrad was its cradle.
The Finns, Huttunen points out, were there in the very beginning, with filmmakers Ria Karhila and Cristian Valdes shooting Akvarium’s legendary performance at Tbilisi ’80 rock festival in 1980. The resulting documentary — featuring an interview with Grebenshchikov — was first shown on Finnish state television later the same year.
Nautilus Pompilius, Dzhungli, AVIA and Pop Mekhanika performed in Finland in the late 1980s, when Soviet liberalization advanced and groups formerly belonging to the underground were finally allowed to travel abroad.
The co-credit is given to Dmitry Konradt, the photographer responsible for documenting most of the historic moments of St. Petersburg rock at its height in the 1980s. He supplied more than 60 photos to illustrate the book. “It’s not just my book, Dima Konradt is the second author, so Russians can perceive it as well by looking at the pictures,” Huttunen says.
“It’s an author’s album by Konradt, too. The visual line implements the plot; and much of what I wrote was based on the photographs that we selected together with Dima.”
The 174-page book is built on the historical principle, according to Huttunen.
“In the beginning I wanted to explain to the Finnish reader that St. Petersburg rock is exceptionally literature-based,” Huttunen said.
“I have a joke [in the book] that ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll’ translates into Russian as ‘Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky.’ I have liked the idea for a long time, and I reviewed lyrics by Shevchuk, Grebenshchikov, Mike, Tsoi and so on to find out how often Pushkin or quotes from Pushkin are featured in them. It is a distinctive feature of St. Petersburg rock that it has its roots in 19th-century literature. Then I go on to the formation of [the group] Sankt Peterburg in the late 1960s and the phenomenon of [its frontman] Rekshan and discuss his lyrics.”
Huttunen also writes about Kolya Vasin, an artist, historiographer and Beatles expert, because the John Lennon Temple of Love that he founded at 10 Pushkinskaya Ulitsa is well known among Finnish tourists to St. Petersburg.
Speaking of Finnish visitors, he goes on to explain aspects of everyday life in Soviet Leningrad, such as fartsovshchiki (illegal dealers in foreign goods), Galyora (a gallery around the Gostiny Dvor department store where they resold goods obtained from Finnish tourists), Brod (a slang name for Nevsky Prospekt, stemming from Broadway) and various Russian slang names for the Finns themselves.
Huttunen compares Russian rock’s poetry tradition to what was happening in Finland in the 1970s and early 1980s.
“There was a very strong poetry school within rock music, both in Finland and in Russia,” he said.
“There were [singer-songwriters] Juice Leskinen, Dave Lindholm and Tuomari Nurmio in the 1970s and Hector, who translated Bob Dylan and Donovan, and then Ismo Alanko, Kauko Röyhkä and Eppu Normaali in the 1980s; there were very many similarities, and it would be very interesting to do a comparative analysis of the lyrics.”
According to Huttunen, Nurmio came to Leningrad in 1985 where he met Zoopark’s Mikhail “Mike” Naumenko backstage and wrote the first foreign article about the Russian musician.
Huttunen confronts the popular view that Russian rock’s poetical strength stemmed from the lack of good equipment, tracing its roots to the Soviet school program of classical literature and more recent samizdat literary works that were distributed from peer to peer.
“It takes a long time to explain to a Finn where ‘Alexander Sergeyevich [Pushkin] with his mouth torn’ comes from, or some Gogol motifs in the Leningrad lyrics at that time,” he says. “Of course, much was inspired by the Modernist poets of the early 20th century, even if they all deny it. Grebenshchikov knew poetry by Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelshtam and Boris Pasternak very well and it can be seen in his lyrics. And you can’t speak about Shevchuk without speaking about Joseph Brodsky. Poetry met rock.”
Huttunen argues that Western rock artists influenced by poetry found a more vivid response in Soviet Leningrad.
“Why was there such strong interest in George Harrison out of all The Beatles? Then Dylan, Marc Bolan, David Bowie and Jim Morrison?”
“St. Petersburg is Rock” includes 30 pages of Russian rock lyrics with parallel Finnish translations done by Huttunen, who sang his translation of Akvarium’s early 1980s song “Why Doesn’t the Sky Fall Down” (“Pochemu Ne Padayet Nebo”) during the event at Mitki’s studios last week. However, the book lacks any lyrics written by Kino’s late frontman Viktor Tsoi, as Huttunen failed to get permission to reproduce them from his heirs. Obtaining permission to print some of Mike Naumenko’s lyrics took 18 months.
“The readers of the book want to listen to the songs, but it is impossible to listen to them without translation, because the lyrics are so important,” Huttunen said.
“When an American band comes to Finland, nobody is interested in what they are singing about; they are interested in what they are doing and how they play. With Russian bands, everybody starts to ask what they’re singing about. They feel a text tradition at once and think: ‘It sounds like the lyrics are important here.’”
Unlike earlier generations of rock musicians, bands such as Auktyon, which emerged in the late 1980s, are more “listenable” for Finnish audiences, according to him.
“Many of my students like Auktyon very much, because it’s avant-garde rock, rather than more traditional folk rock or Mike’s rock ‘n’ roll or New Wave,” Huttunen says.
“They have something that is their own; you can’t explain where it comes from. Auktyon’s collaborations with [the late émigré artist and songwriter Alexei] Khvostenko are very interesting historically. In short, I wanted to write the history of late Soviet culture from the point of view of rock music.”
Some of the songs mentioned and translated in the book can be listened to on the publisher’s website.
However, translations are not enough to allow for a full understanding of certain aspects of life back then, and further explanation was needed.
“How to explain the song ‘Dreams of Something Bigger’ (‘Sny o Chyom-to Bolshem’) and why Akvarium was not allowed to perform on television because it was too daring,” Huttunen says.
“It can only be understood in the context of the late 1980s. It’s difficult for a Finn to understand what was daring about it.”
The book concludes with an explanation of the rock musicians’ current political stances, which, Huttunen says, is especially interesting for Finnish readers.
“Why do they ask Grebenshchikov and Shevchuk about what happens in this country? Because nobody asks our (Finnish) rock musicians about political issues. That’s what I am trying to explain; why they are addressed about this and what their answers are.”
According to Huttunen, interest in Russian rock music and culture is experiencing a rebirth after perestroika in the wake of mass anti-fraud protests and the imprisonment of members of feminist punk group Pussy Riot.
“In spring, we did a presentation for the book in Helsinki, it was just fabulous,” Huttunen said. “Everybody came to the university and there was no space in the room, about 100 were left outside. Everybody wanted to see Shevchuk. He was shown on every television channel and he was interviewed, of course, about the political situation but also about music.
“He was asked whether there was freedom of speech in Russia. Pussy Riot was a hot topic and it influenced interest in Russian rock music and the modern history of Russia and, in my view, it’s right, because it should be discussed from the point of view of contemporary culture and art.
“The Finns are not explained what Pussy Riot is. One should know some history to understand, for instance, conceptualism. And speaking about conceptualism, [Siberian punk band] Grazhdanskaya Oborona and the history of punk is very important, and how Pussy Riot’s work is connected with [late Moscow poet] Dmitry Prigov.
“It’s interesting for me to see the upsurge of interest in Russian culture now, it was not the case before in Finland. It is as if they decided that artists and rock poets will tell us what will happen. The book is an attempt to answer.”
“Pietari on rock” by Tomi Huttunen with photographs by Dmitry Konradt is published by Into publishing house, Helsinki, Finland, 2012.
TITLE: Power to the people
AUTHOR: By Natalya Smolentseva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The world’s largest short film festival begins Wednesday in St. Petersburg — and in another 299 cities around the globe.
Ten films from Norway, the Netherlands, the U.K., Peru, France, Romania, the U.S., Spain and Russia will be shown simultaneously in 300 cities, and everyone who goes to see them will have the chance to be on the jury: The winner of the Manhattan Short Film Festival is chosen not by professional critics, but by audiences.
Comedies, dramas, parables and a parody of the classic American horror film are all on the program of this year’s festival, along with a new short by Julio Ramos (whose film “A Doctor’s Job” was voted second-best film by last year’s Russian audiences) and a history of Arctic exploration inspired by the expeditions of Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen.
“This year’s festival program is very strong,” said Sasha Akhmadshchina, one of the festival’s organizers. “I am really fond of American 50s horror, so I enjoyed ‘The Elaborate End of Robert Ebb’ and ‘92 Skybox Alonzo Mourning Rookie Card,’ which is a very funny sketch of the lives of two brothers, and a great example of U.S. independent cinema. The film’s budget was only $500 and basically it was spent on food and beer. Despite a modest budget, the film was selected for the Sundance Film Festival program.”
This year will mark the first time that a Russian film is screened at the festival. The eminent actor Vitaly Saltykov’s directorial debut “Where the Sea Flows” has already appeared at the Cannes Film Festival, the East End Film Festival in London and many others. Actress Oksana Akinshina, star of films such as “Stilyagi” and “Vysotsky — Thank You for Being Alive,” plays the leading role.
“My film is a story about a young mother who struggles with very contradictory things in her soul. It is for the kind of people who don’t eat popcorn at the cinema,” said Saltykov.
“Unfortunately, in Russia the short film is considered an exclusively student format,” said Akhmadshchina.
It is only in the last few years that the situation has begun to change. Last year was an unequivocal success for Russian short films: Taisia Igumentsova, a student of director Alexei Uchitel, won first prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
“It is certainly chic to express your idea succinctly, loudly and at the same time put it in a small time frame. Everyone would like to pass this test of ‘brevity is the soul of wit’,” Saltykov said. “And now, when you can make films even on a phone, this genre is rapidly developing.”
The festival was first held on Sept. 27, 1998, when films were projected onto the side of a truck in New York. The following year, well-known American cinematographers like Roger Corman and Susan Sarandon were among the jury members of the festival. As it became increasingly popular, it started to receive applications from all over the world. This inspired the creator of the festival, Nicholas Mason, to substitute a professional jury with spectators.
The system of voting at the festival is simple. Every viewer will receive a voting ballot, on which they should place a mark beside the film they consider the best. The votes will then be counted (“and this process is totally honest,” claims Akhmadshchina, drawing a comparison with recent State Duma and presidential elections) and sent to New York. The winner will be announced Oct. 8 on the website www.tourdefilm.ru. Russian viewers make up approximately 10 percent of the global audience of Manhattan Shorts, so they wield a significant influence in voting.
The Manhattan Short Film Festival runs at the Avrora movie theater from Oct. 3 through Oct. 7. www.manhattanshort.com
TITLE: the word’s worth: Slacking off
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Ñà÷îê: net, lobby, slacker
A couple of weeks ago, President Vladimir Putin made a joke about Pussy Riot and group sex — or rather he quoted an old Soviet joke about group sex. Like all old jokes, there are about 25 versions of it, but the punch line is always something like this: ãðóïïîâîé ñåêñ ëó÷øå, ÷åì èíäèâèäóàëüíûé, ïîòîìó ÷òî ìîæíî ñà÷êàíóòü (group sex is better than individual sex because you can —).
Rats! Just when it gets interesting, the poor foreigner is slayed by slang.
Out come the reference books. Search engines are set in motion. Phone calls are made. In researching this tantalizing word, I have learned a tremendous amount about ancient Russian games, the habits of university students, the joy of fishing and butterfly hunting and the extraordinary fantasies and speculations of an army — and navy — of armchair etymologists.
It all starts with ñà÷îê (or ñàê), which is a net used to catch butterflies or fish. And also, according to one serious etymologist, a dialect word for a bone used in an ancient game called áàáêè — something like skittles.
But more to the point — and the original Soviet joke — ñà÷îê is a goof off, loafer or slacker. It’s also a place where students hang out between classes or go to skip them. For example, the humanities building of Moscow State University has áîëüøîé è ìàëûé ñà÷îê (big and little hang-outs).
Ñà÷êîâàòü/ñà÷êàíóòü is the verb from ñà÷îê. In some contexts, it means to catch something in a net. ß ëîâèëà ðûáó, à ìóæ å¸ ñà÷êîâàë (I reeled in the fish, and my husband netted it). In slang, it means to play hooky, goof around, slack off or avoid doing whatever you are supposed to be doing.
This slang meaning seems to have appeared in the 1960s, or at least that’s the earliest I can find it in print. The mystery is how a net morphed into a way to ditch work.
One etymology is the ancient game theory: áèòü or äàâèòü ñà÷êà (hit or crush the bone) was what you did in the game of áàáêè. And since you played áàáêè instead of working, the phrase morphed into a verb that became a synonym for goofing off. The only problem with this theory is that it took at least five centuries for the linguistic metamorphosis to occur.
Another is the summer camp theory: catching butterflies with ñà÷îê was such an easy activity it became synonymous with slacking off. The problem with this version is that racing over fields, up hills and over dales for butterflies is not my idea of relaxation.
Then there is the army theory. This has some textual evidence: Ñà÷êîâàòü — çíà÷èò óêëîíÿòüñÿ îò áîåâîé è ïîëèòè÷åñêîé ó÷¸áû (Goldbricking means skipping combat and political lessons). However, the justification sounds a bit contrived. Supposedly, in the post-war Soviet army, one guy shot his rifle while the other caught the shell in a net, hence netting = not shooting = goofing off.
In the navy theory, ñà÷îê was the hammock sailors slept on, hence äàâèòü ñà÷êà (crushing the net) = not swabbing the deck = goofing off.
In any case, in the old joke the verb that sounded so intriguing in the context of group sex turns out to be anything but. I’d translate the punch line this way: Group sex is better than individual sex because you can skip out on the heavy lifting.
Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.
TITLE: A kaleidoscopic craftsman
AUTHOR: By Daniel Kozin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Psoy Korolenko, the Moscow-based singer-songwriter, is set to perform as part of a duo with St. Petersburg-based pianist and composer Alyona Alenkova this Friday at Dusche club, in a concert dedicated to their upcoming album “Russian Riches. Volume II.”
That much is known. How else to describe the enigmatic artistic persona of Korolenko to those unfamiliar with his work is a challenge, as consciously or not, the artist defies categorization or comparison.
Variously described as a wandering scholar, the chief postmodern troll of the Russian Internet and a shaman journalist, among equally eclectic epithets, Korolenko’s performances are characterized by a variety of subject matters, musical styles and even languages.
Describing himself as a “one-man cabaret inspired by early 20th-century popular songs, traditional Klezmer music, French chanson, Soviet popular songs and the Russian bard tradition, with experiments in rap and other genres,” he strongly shuns the title that may seem most natural in describing his work.
“My music is not eclectic, in that it always follows a certain logic and conveys a very specific meaning that I find important,” he said in a telephone interview with The St. Petersburg Times ahead of his local gig.
His fluid use of genre is complemented by lyrics in Russian, English, French and Yiddish, in addition to Italian, German and any other language he deems fit to express his artistic vision. Though to the untrained ear it may sound confusing, this multilingualism has a very specific purpose.
“The audience will usually pick up on the two primary languages, Russian and English, which express the content, and I add a third decorative language such as Yiddish to spell the meaning that is conveyed, rather than stating it. It adds an additional level of understanding out of ambivalence, being both serious and light, old and new, like an electric current that creates polarity.
“I strive to illustrate the wide range of meanings, values and feelings that exist in every person. This is an appeal to contradictory tastes, not only among the audience, but also in any given audience member, who represents not only their own tastes, but also those of their parents, their culture and previous generations.”
Korolenko’s background as a philologist — he holds a PhD from Moscow State University in the works of Ukrainian-Russian writer Vladimir Korolenko, from whom he takes his pseudonym — unites seemingly contradictory performance elements. Rhyming and rearranging syllables across languages allows him to create wordplay that delves deeper into the semantic meaning of concepts, accompanied by the light and minimalist synthesizer that is his instrument of choice.
“My goal is to bring people with very different views together to feel united by emphasizing differences; this is a way to bring peace,” he said.
Fans are equally attracted to Korolenko’s witty use of literary references, with quotes from classic Russian poets such as Pushkin and Gogol used as liberally as Russian profanities.
The poetic aspect of the artist’s work will be most in evidence at Friday’s concert, with the majority of the set to be songs based on Silver Age poetry such as that of Osip Mandelshtam, Marina Tsvetaeva and Boris Pasternak.
“We even have a song written by Leo Tolstoy,”said Korolenko. “It’s from his ‘ABC Book.’ Tolstoy, who hated modernism, appears as a modernist himself.”
The gig at Dusche represents a Moscow-Petersburg alliance of sorts. The music was mostly created by St. Petersburg-based Alenkova, who will play piano in the duo.
Collaborations with St. Petersburg artists such as the band Opa, with whom Korolenko recorded his previous album, as well as a love for the city, make the musician a frequent performer at local venues. A recent show on Sept. 3 jam-packed the small Nutcracker café on Ulitsa Soyuz Pechatnikov, forcing a small crowd to hunch on the sidewalk outside to get a glimpse of the performance.
“I’m one of those strange Muscovites who loves Petersburg,” he concludes.
Psoy Korolenko will perform together with Alyona Alenkova at 8 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 5 at Dusche, 50 Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel. +7 (960) 246 4550.
TITLE: Killing time on Latvian shores
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Juris Poskus’s “Kolka Cool,” a poetic black-and-white film about the tough love between rough youths from a tiny village on Latvia’s Baltic coast, took the Best Film award at the St. Petersburg International Film festival that concluded Saturday.
The Latvian director has spent his summer vacation in Kolka for years, and recently it occurred to him that the fishing village has a particular breed of people who would serve as a fascinating subject for a film.
“They kind of thrive on contradictions, and seem to be constantly torn apart by them,” Poskus said. “Both men and women alike are at once sentimental and hard-hearted. They long for deep and meaningful feelings, yet they do not seem to be able to rise beyond the dull routine of their daily lives.”
It is no accident that the characters in Poskus’s film are always wondering what to do. They find themselves at a loss not only in killing time on a daily basis, but also in what to make of their own lives. There is no shortage on the international film market of films about young people wasting their time, but what distinguishes “Kolka Cool” is, according to the Russian producer Yelena Yatsura, a member of the festival jury, “the masterful use of the black-and-white medium to transmit the feeling of emotional devastation, spiritual alienation, lack of hope and loss of perspective.”
Fourteen films by leading directors from across the globe, from Belgium and Germany to Iran, from Turkey to Latvia and Finland, competed for the Golden Angel, the festival’s grand prize, which was awarded in a number of categories. Alexei Balabanov won the best film director award for “I Also Want It,” while Emilie Dequenne picked up the best actress award for “Loving Without Reason” and Merab Ninidze walked off with the best actor award for his role in the German film “Invasion.”
The jury, headed by Serbian director Emir Kusturica, admitted that awarding the prize for best actor had been difficult, as they could not decide between the two leading actors in “Invasion” — Ninidze, who played an immigrant lawyer with connections to the underworld, and the German actor Burghart Klaussner, who played the lawyer’s antagonist, a politically correct landlord who eventually rebels against the lawyer.
“The contrast between the two characters made the film compelling, and we would have awarded two prizes, if the rules of the festival had only allowed us to do so,” said jury member Erika Gregor, the co-founder of the Forum of New Cinema at the Berlinale International Film Festival. Although Ninidze was given the prize, Klaussner received a Special Mention.
Mika Kaurismaki’s “Road North” took the audience prize. This film — the story of a joyless 38-year-old pianist suffering as a result of separation from his wife and little daughter, and suddenly embracing his heavily drinking, chain-smoking, flirtatious and overweight father, who returns to his son after 35 years of absence — was far ahead of its closest competitors.
The Turkish director Zeki Demirkubuz received the critics’ prize for his film “Inside,” loosely based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Notes From the Underground.”
“Directors from all over the world are fascinated with Dostoyevsky, and adaptations of his prose are done with impressive regularity, but unfortunately only a handful of these adaptations have been successful,” said film critic Vladimir Kuzmin, a member of the St. Petersburg Association of Film Critics.
“Demirkubuz made the courageous and risky decision to project Dostoyevsky’s prose onto modern Turkish reality, and he succeeded brilliantly. Actually, by doing so he succeeded Akira Kurosawa, who employed the same method when making a film based on ‘The Idiot,’ Luchino Visconti with his film ‘White Nights,’ and Mika Kaurismaki with ‘Brothers,’ his adaptation of ‘The Brothers Karamazov.’”
Apart from Balabanov’s film — a touching blend of fairy tale and unfiltered Russian realities that takes hope and longing for happiness as its central theme and is expected to hit the Russian screens before the end of the year — it is unclear which of the winning films, if any, will be shown in Petersburg again. Kirsi Tykkylainen, the festival’s program director, said negotiations are now in progress between the producers of Kaurismaki’s film and Russian film distributors.
“In Finland, the film began screening in August, so it is still too early to expect any final agreements on international distribution, but let us hope that Russian audiences will soon be able to see this wonderful film,” Tykkylainen said.
The Kinoforum, which was in its third year and ran from Sept. 21 through Sept. 29, turned into an umbrella brand for four different film events, namely the International Film Festival and three already established local events: The Message to Man festival of short and documentary films, The Beginning festival of student films and the Vivat, Russian Cinema! festival of Russian films.
Reflecting on the experiment, its participants said that the unification has been a success, although for the sake of the audiences the festival needs to run for longer.
“Perhaps we should be talking about a film marathon — I have noticed that many members of the audiences were tearing themselves apart trying to make the most of this cinematic feast; many of them failed to fulfill their plans as the schedules of the festivals did not allow it,” said Lyudmila Tomskaya, director of the Vivat, Russian Cinema! festival.
Although the exact format of the next edition of the Kinoforum is yet to be determined, it has been suggested that St. Petersburg should follow in the footsteps of the established international film festivals in Cannes, Berlin and Helsinki that traditionally run for two weeks.
The Berlinale’s Gregor suggested making the event’s interactive element more vibrant.
“I would incorporate more meetings with the audiences, discussions, debates,” she said. “The audiences would love to meet the filmmakers and their crews, I am sure.”
The festival’s organizers said that the event’s sales were phenomenal.
“The halls were filled every day, regardless of time or subject — the audiences had a great appetite for what we had to offer, which tells us we are on the right track,” said Maria Averbakh, director of the International Film Festival.
TITLE: THE DISH: Sky Terrace
AUTHOR: By Tobin Auber
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Reach for the Sky
Once again the benefits of St. Petersburg’s low, flat horizon have yielded another excellent rooftop restaurant, this one a stone’s throw from Petrogradskaya metro station, perched atop the Tolstoi shopping mall.
Despite a general thumbs up, the restaurant started on a bad foot: Getting in is something of a brainteaser. On entering the shopping mall, it’s a poorly-signposted struggle to find the right lift to take you to the terrace on the top floor, and the signposting doesn’t improve from there. You simply emerge with passageways leading left and right, and it only later becomes apparent that they lead to three different dining rooms and two separate outdoor terraces. Here, you’re left to your own devices to find a room with a waiter or waitress in it ready to serve you.
On a recent visit on a Monday night, there was no shortage of free tables, and after we seated ourselves at one, a waiter did eventually appear. It was to our relief that things began to dramatically improve — the waiter proved to be an excellent and informed host.
We started by sharing a selection of Italian sausage cuts (650 rubles, $21) and a mozzarella pizza (280 rubles, $9), which proved a good combination. The large plate of sausages was well presented and more than enough for two, while the pizza easily ranked among the best to be found on the Petrograd Side, up there with the two Italian powerhouses of Bolshoi Prospekt: Capuletti and the underrated Italy Zapad in the Apriori shopping center. The mozzarella had an excellent tang to it that went well together with the liberal helpings of sausage that we topped it with.
We followed this with a leg of duck (550 rubles, $18) and a grilled beefsteak with mushrooms (850 rubles, $27), the waiter making an excellent recommendation that we accompany this with a Baron Philippe de Rothschild red (380 rubles, $12 a glass).
The duck came with pear, mashed potato and stewed cabbage, the only minor quibble being with the cabbage, which had been overdone and reduced to a paste, although the actual tartness of its taste was appreciated. There were no complaints about the duck itself, however, which was a perfectly cooked, melt-in-the-mouth delight with just enough crunch to the skin.
The steak was also superb, cooked to an immaculate medium-rare. Even true Petrograd Side patriots such as this reviewer will admit that you have to head across to the continent for a decent steak, but Sky Terrace’s effort has brought an end to those culinary Dark Ages. As well as being wonderfully tender, like the duck it was unfussily but elegantly presented, with a good selection of grilled vegetables that complemented the meat perfectly.
The food, then, was a success. The restaurant’s interior, the work of one of Petersburg’s long-standing design aficionados, Mikhail Orlov, risks being accused of being on the minimalist, even gloomy side, with dark woods and beige, brown and green tones. None of this stands out, nor is it meant to: The understatement of the interior means no distractions from the view through the huge windows that stretch the length of the walls. As rooftop restaurant views go in St. Petersburg, this one is a cracker, and Sky Terrace is to be commended for making the most of it.
TITLE: Nalchik: A Horseshoe in the Caucasus
AUTHOR: By Marina Marshenkulova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: NALCHIK — Everyone knows that a horseshoe brings good luck. So maybe it’s no coincidence that Nalchik, the capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria republic, means “little horseshoe” in the local Kabardian and Balkar languages.
Several versions are floating around about the origins of Nalchik’s name. Some say the Nalchik River makes a horseshoe-shaped curve in this city. Others say Duke Atazhukin, an 18th-century warrior and politician who played a major role in the history of the Kabardians, lost a horseshoe nearby, while a third version has it that a lot of people lost their horseshoes in the area around the time when Nalchik was established. The most probable explanation, however, is that Nalchik is surrounded by U-shaped mountains.
Nalchik received the status of a city in September 1921 but was almost completely destroyed after being occupied by Nazi forces from Oct. 28, 1942, to Jan. 3, 1943. An eternal flame burns in the city park in honor of those who fell in battle. Other reminders of World War II also remain — tank and artillery monuments and two soldiers’ graves on the grounds of School No. 9.
Reconstruction of Nalchik began as soon as the Nazi forces left, but the effort was overshadowed by the forced deportation of the Balkar people. On Josef Stalin’s orders, the first of 14 military trains crowded with emigres was dispatched from the Nalchik train station on March 8, 1944, and the people were sent into exile in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
The rebuilt city came with its advantages. Nalchik has an orderly network of streets with mostly multistory residential and administrative buildings from 1950 to 1970. In the late 1960s, the Politburo in Moscow declared the city a resort town and gave it another facelift.
As a result of this reconstruction, one of the architectural peculiarities of the city is the fact that buried between the main streets and their multistory buildings are whole blocks of private houses, most of them built before the 1917 revolution. They seem to be hidden to avoid ruining the balance of the neatness of the main streets.
These days, Nalchik tends to make the news only in connection with government-led crackdowns on Islamic militants. The city grabbed international headlines in October 2004 when dozens of militants tried to seize local law enforcement offices in a brazen raid that left 142 dead, including at least 14 civilians, according to official figures.
But violence, which is relatively uncommon, has a long history here. Some locals still remember mass rioting on July 13, 1968, after rumors started circulating that the police had killed someone in their office at the Central Bazaar for disturbing the peace. A crowd broke into the office and freed the detainees there. But the rumors kept spreading, and the crowd burst into the local police inspector’s office, killing him. The turmoil ended only at the end of the day. Thirty people ended up in prison, including three sentenced to execution. That’s what rumors can do.
But the city also takes pride in its appearance. In 1997, a citywide effort was made to groom the parks, reconstruct decaying buildings and skillfully hide the losses of previous years in other ways. Later that year, Nalchik took third place in a national contest organized by the Federal Agency for Construction, Housing and Communal Services for “the most comfortable city in Russia.” The next year, Nalchik won first place.
Nalchik added to its titles “city of military glory” under a decree signed by then-President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010.
Nalchik might be just a tiny, restive spot on the map of Russia for some people, but anyone in the North Caucasus will tell you that all roads lead here.
What to see
if you have two hours
Nalchik is a small city, and two hours might be just enough time to catch a glimpse of it. Start at the city’s main Square of the 400th Union Anniversary, which locals refer to as “Maria’s Square” because it is the site of the Forever With Russia monument, dedicated to Ivan the Terrible’s wife, Maria, who was a native Kabardian.
Then take a walk up the main street, Prospekt Lenina, admiring the pristine sidewalks and abundance of shops and cafes. If you are interested in gold jewelry, this is the place to shop. You might not be able to bargain for gold pieces in St. Petersburg but here it is a must. Sellers walk back and forth on the street and might come up to you and ask if you are selling something. Yes, this is a place not only to buy but to sell gold and silver, if you have any.
Also drop by Atazhukinsky Park, the most popular spot in town. Since time is limited, go straight to the park’s best-known eatery, the Kuanch cafe (Atazhukinsky Park; +7 8662 42-35-94), owned by Balkars who serve favorites like grilled shashlik, deep-fat-fried cheburek pastries stuffed with meat or cheese, khichin flatbread with cheese-potato filling soaked in butter and local beer. It’s pretty cheap, about 50 rubles ($1.60) for a cheburek or khichin, and very tasty. You will sit at a wooden table overlooking Track Lake and mountains covered with woods. You might see chairlifts going up and down the mountain. But be forewarned: The parking lot at the back of the cafe is not free. That’s how locals like to make some extra cash. One parking space costs 20 rubles (80 cents), but the good news is the car will be guarded, and you can park as long as you want.
What to do
if you have two days
“Don’t even think of coming to Nalchik without climbing the 1,000 steps on Kizilovka Mountain,” the locals will tell you. Health enthusiasts cut the steps — called “terrenkur,” or path of health — out of Kizilovka Mountain deep in Atazhukinsky Park more than 30 years ago. As one of the builders, Ilya Khasyanov, said in an August interview with the local newspaper Nalchik, the task was tremendous because back in the 1970s there was no special lifting equipment, and all construction materials had to be carried by hand. The steps stretch 2,620 meters and reach a peak of 843.13 meters above sea level.
The steps are where you will find the first signs of life in the city in the morning, and here you can meet not only your neighbors going up and down but also senior officials from the regional president’s administration. As the name suggests, people climb the path of health to stay fit. The four rules for climbing the stairs are simple: Breathe through your nose; try to restrain yourself from talking; don’t smoke; and after completing the walk, sit down for at least half an hour.
Actually, there are not 1,000 but 839 stairs, to be exact, together with spots for resting and admiring the view. Stop at the sanatorium at the bottom of the stairs to sip cool carbonated mineral water for free at a drinking station. The water comes from wells at a depth of more than 1,000 meters. This water is used to treat stomach ulcers, chronic hepatitis and other illnesses. While drinking, you might want to check out the souvenir shop in the same spot.
The best time to climb the stairs is in late spring and early autumn. Watch out for rain. The stairs might become slippery, while the ground on the mountain dries very slowly due to the fact that it is covered with tall trees all the way to the top.
Instead of using the steps, you can go up Kizilovka Mountain in a chairlift and visit the mountaintop Restaurant Sosruko (25 Ulitsa Lermontova; +7 8662-42-64-53), named after a well-known bogatyr in local Nart Epos, which is to the North Caucasus what Greek mythology is to Western civilization. You see, the people of the Kabardino-Balkaria republic like to eat very much, and this place happens to be one of the main sights in Nalchik. Perched at 600 meters above sea level, it allows you to see almost every spot in the city. The restaurant itself is an architectural beauty shaped like Sosruko’s head, with his stretched hand holding a torch. It’s also possible to travel here by car, but the chairlift ride with the lake below is an experience that you will not soon forget.
Atazhukinsky Park also offers places to sit and alleys to explore. Enjoy your time here in the park, the pride of Nalchik.
Nightlife
Nightlife and Nalchik don’t get along very well. There are places to go and enjoy, but at night the city and its residents like to sleep. But if you happen to be suffering from insomnia, here are some ideas.
The Palace of the Trade Unions (12 Prospekt Kuliyeva; +7 8662-47-71-42) is where most concerts and shows are held, especially during the winter. It is also a cinema. The city has two other cinemas as well: the State Concert Hall (28 Shogentsukova Prospekt; +7 8662-77-33-35) and Cinema East (37 Prospekt Lenina; +7 8662-42-10-80).
If you like to sing late into the night, a karaoke club called Adagio (129a Ulitsa Suvorova; +7 928-707-07-07) is open from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. Every once in a while, it also holds themed parties.
Nalchik boasts five theaters: the Russian Drama Theater (Square of 400th Union Anniversary; +7 8662-77-42-02), the Kabardian Drama Theater (2 Shogentsukova Prospekt; +7 8662-40-90-70), the Balkar Drama Theater (2 Ulitsa Balkarskaya; +7 8662-40-45-74), and the Free-for-all Theater of Mukhadin Nagoyev (2 Prospekt Lenina; +7 8662-40-70-13). The last theater is free, but it has a little box where you can leave as much money as you wish if you think that the play was worth your time. It’s open every Saturday from 6 p.m.
During the summer months, some of the best concerts and festivals are staged at Zelyony, or the Green Theater, a magnificent triple-deck construction in the depth of Atazhukinsky Park.
Where to eat
The best places to eat are located in the park area of Nalchik. If you want to eat the best salmon on the grill, locals say restaurant Dolinsk (2a Prospekt Shogentsukova; +7 8662-72-01-85) is the place to go. Dolinsk is also known for its shashlik and signature dish of chicken and beef tenderloin. It’s not cheap: The average price for one person starts at 1,500 rubles ($50). But the food and company are worth it. Don’t be surprised to see the president of Kabardino-Balkaria dining here. After all, it’s one of the fanciest places in town, with a wine-beige and gold interior in an antique style. During the summer, visitors can eat outdoors in the grove. The restaurant holds up to 80 people and is open from noon to midnight daily.
If you’d prefer a more stately and formal place with pillars in the halls, make a beeline for the restaurant Elbrus (Dolinsk, the City Park; +7 8662-42-19-37, +7 8662-42-01-96). The restaurant resembles a fancy music hall and is a favorite among the ruling elite and businessmen, who stop by to dine on barbecue ribs, seafood, and, of course, national cuisine. The average bill for one runs from 1,500 rubles ($45). The restaurant, open from 11 a.m. to midnight, seats 400 people on two floors, a banquet hall and two summer verandas, which overlook Track Lake and the Green Theater.
Where to stay
Spa-Hotel Sindika (8 Ulitsa Pirogova; +7 8662-49-25-25, +7 8662-72-00-45; spahotelsindica.ru) is considered the best hotel in Nalchik, primarily because it’s presidential material. Regional President Arsen Kanokov built it before being appointed to office. Located in the park area, the hotel offers spa and health services and is considered one of the best resorts in Russia. A standard single costs 2,400 rubles per night, and a double costs 2,800 rubles. A suite for two costs from 7,800 to 8,200 rubles ($245 to $260).
Hotel Grand Kavkaz (2 Ulitsa Tarchokova; +7 8662-47-72-66, +7 8662-40-00-87; grand-kavkaz.ru) is the second-best hotel and is also located in the park area. Nevertheless, it’s not far from the city center, which you can reach in 10 minutes by car. The hotel positions itself as an art hotel and from time to time holds exhibitions of well-known artists. The prices of the rooms range from 2,500 ($78) for a single to 7,500 rubles ($235) for a suite.
Hotel Russia (32 Prospekt Lenina; +7 8662-77-53-78; hotelrussia07.ru) is for those who literally like to be in the middle of the action. The hotel is located right in the center of Nalchik, opposite the Musical Theater and the Forever With Russia monument. A modern hotel with 150 rooms, it offers a range of services, including a restaurant with national, European and Latin cuisine, a bar, a hairdressing salon, a medical center, chain stores, an airline ticket office, a laundry room, computer and printing facilities and much more. Hotel staff are willing to arrange an excursion to Mount Elbrus and other sights in Kabardino-Balkaria. Room prices range from 800 rubles to 2,500 rubles ($25 to $80) per night.
Conversation starters
Locals like to talk about nature, especially about Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe. They strongly believe that they have the most beautiful landscapes in Russia, and a lot of visitors agree with them. Locals also like to complain about high prices in stores, low salaries, and the bills that pile up faster than the salaries can cover. Another favorite topic of conversation is marriage, which is still largely carried out according to the centuries-old custom of kidnapping. The details of who was kidnapped, when and how, and how old the bride is and what the groom does for a living are usually known to the public.
Culture tips
There are some cultural peculiarities that a visitor might want to consider when coming to Nalchik. Caucasus natives are taught from birth to respect the elderly. They prove it with actions, not words. For example, everyone gets up when an elderly person enters the room. Locals give up their seats to their elders on public transportation. The same goes for women. Men usually treat them with great respect.
Another thing to remember while in Nalchik is to always look to your right and left before crossing a road, even if there’s a green light. Local drivers are very bold and daring at times.
How to get there
A round-trip, economy-class ticket from St. Petersburg to Nalchik via Moscow costs about 18,000 rubles ($580) but is likely to involve a lengthy transfer in Moscow. Kuban Airlines flies daily to Nalchik’s international airport from Moscow’s Domodedovo and Vnukovo airports.
For those who prefer to take a train, a one-way ticket on the 2,398-kilometer route costs about 6,000 rubles ($193). But it will take a minimum of 40 hours, including a change in Moscow.
Nalchik
Population: 300,400
Acting Mayor: Viktor Sorokin
Main industries: machinery manufacturing, health and wellness, food manufacturing, tourism
Founded in 1724, 1818 or 1822, depending on whom you believe.
Interesting fact: In 2002, the city’s Atazhukinsky Park was named the best park in Russia. The park covers a quarter of the city’s area, or more than 200 hectares. The main alley covers 1,340 meters.
Helpful contact: the receptionist at the mayor’s office, Nalchik City Hall (79 Ulitsa Keshokova;
+7 8662-42-27-34;
adm-nalchik.ru)
Sister cities: Amman, Jordan; Vladikavkaz, Russia; Kayseri, Turkey; Reno, Nevada, U.S.
Major Businesses
Nalchik Machine-building Factory
(4 Ulitsa Malbakhova;
+7 8662-44-38-95, mashzav7.narod.ru) is one of the country’s largest makers of facilities and repair parts for oil and gas production.
Nalchik Khalva Factory (6 Ulitsa Zavodskaya; +7 8662 77-23-20; halvichny.ru/smi.html) is a large factory producing khalva and other confectionery, beer, nonalcoholic beverages and vegetable oil.
Arsen Kanokov
President,
Kabardino-Balkaria
Q: Why should foreign companies invest in Nalchik?
A: I majored in finance, and if I were a foreign investor, I would place a good portion of my active assets in Kabardino-Balkaria. Our republic is an agricultural region with a congenial climate where high profits are guaranteed. Besides, we have many recreational opportunities and a beautiful natural environment, which means big potential for tourism development. Of course, there are some risks involved due to the aftermath of the world financial crisis, but at the same time, the prospects for investment are huge. We are always open to mutually profitable partnerships, and we are ready to provide any needed cooperation for investors.
Q: What makes Nalchik stand out among other North Caucasus cities?
A: There is a Russian proverb that says, “It’s better to see something once for yourself than to hear about it a hundred times.” That’s why I invite business representatives to come and personally look at all the beauty of our ancient part of Russia. The North Caucasus has many faces, and each part of it is unique due to its natural and ethnical diversity. For example, there are representatives of about 100 nationalities in Kabardino-Balkaria. Nalchik residents are hospitable people with beautiful customs and traditions. At the same time, Nalchik is quite a European city that is actively developing, and given its resort status, we don’t build any industrial facilities in the center of the city; they are located on the outskirts.
Q: How do you see Nalchik developing in the next 10 years?
A: Not so long ago, Nalchik was considered to be a Russian-only resort city. It has dozens of health centers and sanatoriums, and many of them need reconstruction. I hope in the next 10 years to fix them all in order to return the former resort glory to the city.
Q: Which sectors are developing most rapidly?
A: We have a long-term strategy of republic development based on the cluster policy. The priorities, first of all, are industry, agriculture, tourism and recreation. For example, significant achievements have been made in the agricultural sector thanks to innovative technologies. Our republic produces high-quality foodstuffs that we proudly demonstrate at international exhibitions such as International Green Week in Germany.
Marvin Steinfort
U.S. business consultant for APEX, a Nalchik-based business that develops local businesses and educational institutions in Kabardino-Balkaria.
Q: Why did you decide to move to Nalchik?
A: When my wife and I finished our studies in China, we started thinking about what we wanted to do. An acquaintance said he knew a guy in Russia who does development work with students, and that’s how it started. At first, we taught English at the Institute of Business in Nalchik because we didn’t speak any Russian. We really liked the area and decided to stay.
It was worth our time to come here 2 1/2 years ago. There is a different mentality for how business is done here compared to the United States. I feel there is a lot of potential for this republic in several areas, like education and tourism.
There is a huge difference in how education functions here. It’s frustrating to figure out how to motivate students and help them see the potential for their lives, their city and their republic.
We are also very interested in tourism. After the Soviet collapse, a lot of sanitariums fell into bad shape. But there are beautiful valleys and mountains here that are untouched for the most part. There is a history, a unique culture of music, dance and languages that fascinates me, and I think it would be fascinating for other Westerners, too.
Q: What makes your business successful?
A: To make it successful, you have to be willing to learn to make connections with people. If you come here thinking you know it all and you are just going to do it your way, you are not going to succeed. But if you come here, meet people and figure out how things function, then you have a chance. From my perspective, things are done here based on who you know, not how smart you are.
Q: What is your favorite part about living in Nalchik?
A: It’s experiencing culture and the natural beauty of the landscapes. I feel that we are the lucky Westerners who are able to see and experience it all.
TITLE: Zenit in Crisis Before Showdown With AC Milan
AUTHOR: By Daniel Kozin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Wednesday evening marks Zenit’s first home game in the Champions League group stage, and the face-off with Italian side AC Milan could not come at a worse time.
Languishing in seventh place in the Russian Premier League after confidently leading the table only a few weeks before, Zenit has now been hit by a scandal that threatens to tear the team in two. Its potentially catastrophic consequences are already apparent, with Zenit having recorded just one win in the last five matches, including a 3-0 thrashing by Malaga CF in the first CL group game. Team spirit is at an all-time low and in-team rivalry has led to drastic measures from club management, as key team members protest against two new players getting paid more than them.
The leader of the conflict, Russian national team captain and midfielder Igor Denisov, initiated what now threatens to become a full-blown mutiny against club and management in his refusal to play in a league match against Krylya Sovietov Samara on Sept. 22.
According to an official club statement the following day, the player had issued an ultimatum, demanding talks over an improved contract and salary before continuing to play for the club.
The club rejected Denisov’s demands and announced his demotion to the youth squad for failing to fulfill contractual obligations, publically stating that his “salary is one of the highest not only in Zenit, but in the entire Russian Premier League” and that “it corresponds to the high value of Denisov as a player, and is comparable to the salaries of players of similar stature in Europe.”
On Sept. 24, Denisov shot back at the club in a frank interview with news daily Sport Express that reaffirmed his unwillingness to step down from his position. He cited the two record signings of Brazilian striker Hulk and Belgian midfielder Axel Witsel last month — and their multi-million euro salaries — as the source of the conflict, which he said created an imbalance in the squad that he was personally fighting against through his demands for a higher salary.
“Are they [the new players] so much better than our team’s current leaders that they deserve to get three times more [money]? Zenit is composed of excellent players, who have won no less than the newcomers. […] We deserve more respect,” he was quoted by Sport Express as saying.
A native of St. Petersburg, Denisov, 28, debuted with the club in 2002. He was voted the best player of the Russian Premier League in 2011-2012.
Other national team members, including Vyacheslav Malafeev, Vladimir Bystrov and Alexander Kerzhakov have reportedly expressed support for Denisov to the club. Kerzhakov was also demoted to the youth team after the Sept. 22 game for “improper behavior,” having expressed support for Denisov, though Kerzhakov has since been pardoned and came out to play against Lokomotiv Moscow on Saturday.
The importance of Wednesday’s game for the future of Zenit cannot be underestimated; a loss would be nothing short of disastrous for the club’s sponsors and management. The two record-breaking signings of Hulk and Witsel for a combined 80 million euros were made with the intent of bringing Zenit success in the Champions League, with talks of the quarterfinals as the goal. More importantly, club president Alexander Dyukov justified the enormous sums by claiming that their financing would not increase the club’s budget, as it would be broken down into increments during the next three years, which would presumably be covered by future Champions League successes.
A second successive loss in group qualification would end those plans just as they begin, deeming the ambitious project a premature failure. It seems that the tens of millions spent to improve the squad may well be the reason for its collapse.
TITLE: Beethovenfest Celebrates Subversive Music
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “Art Has a Mind of Its Own”: The motto of this year’s Beethovenfest, which ends on Oct. 7 in Bonn, is the kind of thought that could easily have come from the U.S. composer John Cage, renowned for his unorthodox use of musical instruments in search of a new sound. It is revealing that the centennial of the birth of the eccentric composer was one of the key events of this year’s Beethoven festival.
Titled “In the Bird Cage,” the Cage Night celebrated the composer’s philosophy through a series of performances running concurrently in the halls of three museums that are at the heart of Bonn’s Museum Mile: The Bundeskunsthalle Forum, the Haus der Geschichte and the Kunstmuseum.
“There is hardly anything that Beethoven and Cage share or have in common yet the Cage Night could not be more at home at the Beethoven festival,” said French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who took part in the project, contributing a performance of Pierre Boulez’s piano sonatas numbers 1 and 3.
“Both composers were daring innovators — each of them in their own way — who had the courage to go against the grain. And they were both way ahead of their time.
“Any definition that one would try to give Cage, the man who rejected the concept of music and sounds serving purposes of creativity, would constrict him, and it was actually the composer’s intention to push boundaries rather than to be squeezed into any definitions,” he added.
The prestigious festival was first held on what would have been Beethoven’s 75th birthday in 1845 (he died in 1827 aged 57) and had Franz Liszt as its first artistic director.
The city of Bonn perceives Beethoven as its top “brand,” as do the festival’s heavyweight sponsors. That allows the festival to run for a month, featuring 60 concerts by some of the world’s most distinguished musicians.
During its history, Beethovenfest has built up a dedicated, open-minded and curious audience receptive to new ideas, such as incorporating other musical genres, from jazz to hip-hop, into the programs of some of Europe’s most venerable classical music events.
There was far more to the Cage Night than pieces by Cage himself. The Israeli-Palestinian piano duo Amal, which translates into English as “Hope,” performed Russian classics alongside groundbreaking contemporary works by emerging Israeli and Palestinian composers to highlight the political aspect of their performance. The title of their concert, “Ignoring Boundaries” could easily have served as a second motto for the whole festival.
“Coming together on stage, we are making not only an artistic but also a political statement; we want to say, look, art can overcome national borders and political argument alike,” said pianist Yaron Kohlberg, one of the Amal duo.
The two musicians share a dream of performing in Israel and in Arab countries, but their first engagement of the kind — a concert in Qatar — was canceled earlier this year because of high security concerns.
The Cage Night featured a total of eight shows, and the schedule allowed audiences, if they so wished, to compare drastically different renditions of the composer’s pieces.
The Ensemble Spinario and four actors from the Members of Freyer Ensemble threw a challenge both to themselves and the audience by choosing a selection of sobering cerebral works by the German artist Anselm Kiefer — who shares the philosophy that “art is not entertainment and it has to be difficult” — as a backdrop to their performance. Kiefer’s dark works did not overwhelm Ensemble Spinario’s show, but added an eerie feel to it, which far from being a disadvantage, rather added to the unorthodox rendition of the composer’s “Song Books.” The musicians brought contemporary dance, theater, acrobatics and pantomime to spice up the engaging show, with the actors throwing dice, knitting, tuning a portable radio and pushing each other around in a wheelbarrow.
Actress Salome Kammer brought humor and charisma to her tongue-in-cheek rendition of Cage’s music. She performed in the foyer of Haus der Geschichte, a venue that she shared with four musicians: Steffen Schleiermacher (piano), Andreas Seidel (violin), Friedrich Gauwerky (cello) and Stefan Hussong (accordion). The use of space and the venue’s acoustics was formidable, and the ensemble made a winning decision to place the musicians in different parts of the hall to enhance the trick of toying with the acoustics.
Beethovenfest is not new to the format of a night dedicated to a particular composer: In 2011, the event featured a romantic Liszt Night, and the genre of honoring composers looks set to continue. Reflecting on the Cage Night, which took place on Sept 15, Ilona Schmiel, director of Beethovenfest, said the “In the Bird Cage” experiment had brought a new wave of audiences to the festival.
“Half of the people in the halls I had not seen before, and this means that the new ways of listening to music resonate with a greater share of the public,” Schmiel said. “At the festival, we are always looking for new ways to open up the audience.”
Schmiel said the festival would be sure to employ the tactic of holding themed concerts in museums in the future, and also explore the format of arranging a series of venues between which the audience could circulate freely throughout the evening.
When Schmiel took charge of the festival in 2004 and scheduled some contemporary music, there were noticeably fewer people in the auditoriums than in previous years. The festival manager and her team were not discouraged, however, and their efforts soon began to pay off. At present, the Beethovenfest can easily incorporate the world premiere of a new work in its programs, and the halls are sure to be packed.
“We live in the 21st century and we cannot just stick to the past, dully repeat old works and pretend that no talented music has emerged since,” said Schmiel. “That would be cowardice, and will not take us anywhere. I always felt obliged to include new music in the programs, indeed, in the name of Beethoven who was always ahead of his time.”