SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1742 (1), Wednesday, January 16, 2013
**************************************************************************


TITLE: State Recommends Schoolchildren Watch 100 Films
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – The culture and education ministers Thursday presented a list of 100 Soviet and Russian films that schools will be advised to show students to strengthen their cultural values and to build bonds with their parents and teachers from older generations.
"This is not a list of the best Russian films, and this is not a Russian Oscar. It is an attempt to show a cross-section of culture," Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky said at a news conference with Education and Science Minister Dmitry Livanov.
The list of films, compiled by the Culture Ministry, includes adaptations of classic novels, patriotic war films, popular 1960s comedies mocking the lives of Soviet bureaucrats and even a spy saga beloved by President Vladimir Putin.
The idea is seen as part of Putin's agenda to boost the moral climate in the country, which he said in his state-of-the-nation address last month lacks "spiritual ties." In a related effort, Putin issued an order in May for the Education Ministry to compile a list of 100 books recommended for school reading.
Medinsky said the films were chosen from submissions by more than 40,000 people who answered an appeal by the ministry for recommendations for the list. Culture experts and professors from the VGIK Institute of Cinematography helped choose which films would make the final cut, he said.
The selections include works by world-renowned directors such as Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky and winners of Academy Awards and prizes from the Cannes Film Festival, as well as slightly more controversial choices, like "Little Vera," the 1987 film best-known for being the first Soviet movie to contain a sex scene. That film made star Natalya Negoda famous and led to her posing in Playboy magazine in 1989.
The list has drawn more controversy, however, for failing to include foreign titles, although the Culture Ministry has said this is due to uncertainty regarding the rights to show such films.
"Is it necessary to raise barriers between the history of domestic and foreign films?" film critic Valery Kitchin wrote in a recent article in state-owned Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
Medinsky said the ministry will create a list of foreign films sometime in the future.

<b>Mixed Reviews</b>
The list of 100 films, a draft version of which was posted on the Culture Ministry website last week,  met with mixed reactions from critics and filmmakers.
"We need to see how it will be implemented. Only time will tell," said filmmaker Andrei Kavun, whose work includes a Sherlock Holmes television miniseries.
"But you can't win love by force," he said, referring to the tendency of many children to shun school-recommended literature.
Kavun was echoed by film critic Yury Gladilshchikov, who wrote in an opinion piece in Moskovskiye Novosti last week: "Will schoolchildren get mad because the screenings take away their free time, then turn out to be boring?"
In some countries, including the United States, watching films in school is often seen as a relaxed class activity for a Friday afternoon or the week before summer vacation.
But Medinsky said he discussed the idea with his French counterpart, who said that similar classes are held in French schools.
As for how schools would find time to screen the films, some of which are many hours long, Livanov said schools would be allowed to create their own guidelines.
"Nobody will force anyone to watch them. It will be a voluntary thing," he said.
The idea to show films in schools was initially nursed by Nikita Mikhalkov, a celebrated film director and staunch Putin ally, who then proposed it to Medinsky, a former United Russia State Duma deputy known for his conservative views and revisionist books on Russian history.
The fact that Mikhalkov and Medinsky stand behind the project has made some liberal filmmakers question the plan.
"To show films in school is a good idea, though it is not a new one. But I see the current initiatives not as a culture project but as an attempt to turn education into propaganda," said filmmaker Pavel Bardin, who is best-known for "Russia 88," his pseudodocumentary about a neo-Nazi movement, which was awarded a special jury prize at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival.
The list also contains three films by Mikhalkov, including "Burned by the Sun," the drama about a respected Soviet commander who falls victim to the Stalinist purges. The film won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1995.
But critics said the reputation of the once-beloved director has been tainted for many of his fans by his conservative, strongly pro-Kremlin political views, which he laid out in a 2010 political manifesto believed by many to have been conceived by Kremlin spin doctors.
"If you misbehave, you would be forced to stay after class to watch Mikhalkov's films," Gladilshchikov quipped in his opinion piece.
Another film on the list is the 1968 spy saga "The Shield and the Sword," about a Soviet spy in Nazi intelligence that, according to Putin biographers, contributed to his wanting to join the KGB.
That is one of several films focused on World War II, still a formative event for many Russians. The films in that category include "The Cranes Are Flying," from 1957, about a young woman whose beau dies in the war; the prisoner-of-war film "The Fate of a Man," from 1959; and "Liberation," from 1972, a Brezhnev-era miniseries derided by many critics for being full of ideological cliches.
The list contains only one cartoon: the enigmatic and philosophical "Hedgehog in the Fog," shot by renowned animator Yury Norstein in 1975.
Animator Anna Atamanova said she was not surprised by the lack of classical animation films on the list.
"Animation was always left behind fictional films in the Soviet Union, although it has often generated more income for the country," said Atamanova, the daughter of leading Soviet animator Lev Atamanov.

<b>Shaping Psyches</b>
The list contains films that paint the Soviet government in both glowing and highly cynical tones. They range from the classic 1925 propaganda film "Battleship Potemkin," about sailors who mutiny against their tsarist officers, to the 1984 drama "Repentance," a critique of Stalinism set in a small Georgian town. It was banned by Soviet authorities.
Mikhalkov, known for his outspoken anti-Bolshevist views, defended the inclusion of "Battleship Potemkin," a classic of international film, saying it is known for its "cinematographic significance."
Some bloggers said many of the films recommended for schoolchildren showed the events of the civil war from the Bolshevik point of view.
"It is hard to imagine what kind of assumption about the civil war schoolchildren will have after watching those films," a blogger who goes by the name terets92 wrote on LiveJournal.
Medinsky, known for his anti-Communist views, avoided a question about how revolution-inspired films would be received by today's children.
"For us, those films are interesting as being a part of an epoch," he said.
Livanov said the program was aimed in part at developing closer ties between students and teachers of older generations, for whom many of the films are classics.
"The culture gap between cultural foundations is widening," he said.
Asked why no modern Russian films were on the list, Medinsky implied that not enough were included in the public's submissions to justify their inclusion.
He said teachers could explain the significance of a particular film on the list by saying it was the "'Avatar' of its time," a reference to the 2009 James Cameron blockbuster.

TITLE: Germany Tries Couple on Spy Charges
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Germany put a married couple thought to be in their mid-40s on trial this week on suspicion that they spied for Russia for more than two decades under the cover of being an ordinary middle-class family.
The case of Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag, names believed to be aliases, is likely to add pressure to Berlin's troubled relations with Moscow until June.
The court in the southwestern city of Stuttgart is planning to hold 31 hearings over five months, according to a schedule on the court's website.
Prosecutors say the pair collected sensitive information from NATO and the European Union for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service while posing as Austrian nationals with Latin American heritage.
Their names and passports are thought to be fake, but the judge said at the initial hearing Tuesday that she would continue to address them as Herr and Frau Anschlag "to make communication easier," local media outlets reported.
The couple, who face up to a decade in prison if convicted, denied guilt but declined to make any further statements. The hearing continued Thursday with the questioning of a federal police investigator, court spokesman Stefan Sch&#252;ler said by e-mail.
The case has been linked to the "deep cover" sleeper agents uncovered in the U.S. in 2010. According to a report by German weekly Der Spiegel, the Anschlags' October 2011 arrest was made possible when the FBI passed on information from Alexander Poteyev, a Foreign Intelligence Service colonel who reportedly acted as a U.S. mole.
Poteyev, who ostensibly betrayed the spy ring even as he ran it, fled Moscow just days before the FBI rolled up the operation on June 27, 2010. In 2011, a Moscow military court sentenced him in absentia to 25 years in prison on charges of treason and desertion.
Analysts have speculated about why the Anschlags' case went to court while the U.S. spy ring was whisked off to Russia within weeks in a Cold War-style spy swap.
German media reported last year that Berlin had decided to press charges after the Kremlin failed to react to a German offer for a spy swap.
Andrei Soldatov, a security expert and founder of the Agentura.ru think tank, said that despite the recent dip in relations, Moscow believes it can get its agents out without a swap.
"They seem confident that their relations are so good that they will get them back after the trial," he said Thursday.
This was echoed by the defendants' lawyer, Horst-Dieter Petschke.
"After the trial ends, a swap will be easier because then all aspects of the case will be clear," Petshcke told Channel One in an interview aired Tuesday.

TITLE: Bolshoi Ballet Director Attacked With Acid
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – An unknown assailant threw acid in the face of Bolshoi Ballet director Sergei Filin in an attack that police have linked to his professional activities.
Filin was hospitalized with severe burns after the attack, which occurred near his apartment in the city center Thursday just before midnight, RIA-Novosti reported. The perpetrator fled and remains at large. So far no witnesses have come forward.
No motive was immediately named by police or Filin's associates, though Bolshoi spokeswoman Yekaterina Novikova said unknown people have been threatening Filin.
An unnamed police spokesperson told Interfax that a link to the ballet director's job was the most likely explanation but that a personal motive could not be excluded.
Filin had third-degree burns to his face, as well as burns to his eyes, Novikova said. He was in stable condition in City Hospital No. 36, the RIA-Novosti report said.

TITLE: Man Falls Off Train, Chases It 7 Kilometers to Survive Sub-Freezing Temperature
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – A 42-year-old resident of Bratsk fell off a train heading from Moscow to the Sakha republic and chased it for 7 kilometers to survive the minus 40 degree Celsius temperature, a news report said Friday.
The man reportedly decided to go out to the train's vestibule for a cigarette but mixed up the doors while trying to get back in and, walking into total darkness, fell onto the train tracks, Kommersant reported. It is unclear why the door that led outside was left open.
Wearing only sweat pants, flip-flops and a T-shirt, the man attempted to catch up with the train in order to re-board, but when that failed he decided to run after it. Seven kilometers later, he reached the next stop on the train's route, where he received help.
The local transportation department of the Interior Minister is looking into the incident to determine why the exit door was left open on the train.

TITLE: World Bank Praises Russia's Progress In Business Rankings
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Russia is on the right path to radically improve its business environment and move up 100 notches within the next five years in the global rankings of the favorability of countries' investment climate, a World Bank official said Thursday.
But its eventual position in relation to other countries in the Doing Business rankings is less important than the actual progress it is making to become more friendly to investors.
President Vladimir Putin's goal to make Russia 20th out of 185 economies by 2018 is very ambitious, but the government's commitment to improve regulation and the creation of a medium-term plan to bring those efforts to life is a good foundation for improving the rating, said Augusto Lopez-Claros, the bank's director of global indicators and analysis.
"And whether it comes to the 20th or 25th place by 2018 is a less important issue than the direction of changes," he said at a panel session at the Gaidar Forum.
Lopez-Claros, who oversees the compilation of the Doing Business rankings, praised recent efforts by the government to improve the investment climate and said further progress will require a consistent policy and strong political will.
However, he remained cautious about predicting whether Russia will make it to 20th place over the next six years.
"Clearly there's room for growth," Lopez-Claros said.
If Russia achieves the goal, it will become a rare example of a country making such rapid progress in moving up in the rankings in a short time.
The only country to make such a leap is Georgia, which skyrocketed from No. 100 in 2006 to No. 9 in 2013 as a result of drastic changes to the law enforcement system, said Kirill Rogov, a senior fellow at the Yegor Gaidar Economic Policy Institute.
The World Bank ranked Russia No. 112 in this year's list, up from 120 in 2012.
Moving up eight places during a one-year period "is not a breakthrough, but it indicated that we're moving in the right direction," said Deputy Economic Development Minister Sergei Belyakov, who participated in the panel.
To fulfill Putin's order, the ministry must ensure a rise of 31 places this year so that Russia will be ranked 81st in next year's Doing Business report, according to a decree signed in November by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
Some economists expressed doubt that this short-term goal is achievable.
"The legislative field for 2013 is already outlined. Unfortunately, no laws aimed at improving the business climate were passed in 2012," Russian Economic School rector Sergei Guriyev and Yale University professor Oleg Tsyvinsky said in an article published Wednesday in Vedomosti.
The article ironically said the State Duma was busy with "other important things," like Internet regulation and the "foreign agents" law.
However, the article stated, meeting the 2018 deadline is "absolutely realistic" if the authorities turn their words into deeds in 2013. Approving the privatization plan for 2014-16 is a key measure, the article said. The government missed the Nov. 1 deadline to provide the plan.
The government is counting on a number of measures to facilitate further progress. The plan for this year involves creation of an investment map of Russia to help companies learn about the investment potential of different regions, Andrei Nikitin, director of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, said at an earlier panel.
Another step is implementing what the government calls road maps, detailed tactical plans created in concert with businesspeople to measurably speed up state-provided services to businesses and reduce bureaucratic barriers.
The third measure to improve the business climate is encouraging startups so that more young people will chose entrepreneurship as their life path, said Nikitin, whose agency oversees the promotion of business activity in the country.
Belyakov said his ministry sees 20th place in the World Bank's rankings as a realistic goal.
"Based on that goal we were planning our activities," he said.

TITLE: Investigators Open 4th Case Against Razvozzhayev
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – The Investigative Committee has opened a fourth criminal case against opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev for knowingly providing false information to police,  a statement on the committee's website said Friday.
The latest charge comes as the Investigative Committee wraps up its investigation into Razvozzhayev's claim that he was tortured by investigators from Oct. 19-21 while being questioned over an alleged plot to destabilize Russia with mass riots.
The official spokesman for the Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, said: "Earlier in December at the Basmanny Court, and later in January, while located in Angarsk, Razvozzhayev said that he was submitted to torture by investigators."
By doing that, Markin said, Razvozzhayev was knowingly spreading false information.
Despite being warned by investigators to stop, he continued to do so, making the allegation again on Jan. 14 in the presence of his lawyer while at a detention facility in Angarsk, Markin said.
An investigator at that center reportedly filed a complaint against Razvozzhayev, leading to the latest charge.
The new charge brings Razvozzhayev's tally of criminal charges up to four, and it carries a maximum punishment of three years in prison. He also faces up to two years in prison for illegally crossing the Russia-Ukraine border, 15 years for robbery for reportedly stealing fur hats from a Siberian fur trader and 10 years for plotting mass riots.

TITLE: Ombudsman's Plans for Orphans Under Fire
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Experts sharply criticized children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov’s proposals Thursday to create an orphan agency and inspect orphanages in Moscow, measures that appeared aimed at addressing concern over orphans’ welfare in Russia after the country renounced U.S. adoptions.
“An agency with that name, explicitly for orphans, that’s the end of the world,” said Boris Altschuler, head of the children’s rights watchdog Rights of the Child. He said a bureaucracy predicated on the existence of orphans would have little incentive to reduce their numbers.
Astakhov told Izvestia that he supported the creation of an orphan agency, adding at a news conference that the current system involves 19 agencies and is ineffective, Interfax reported.
But while more than 80 percent of Russia’s 650,000 orphans have living parents, the country would be better off creating an agency to help children stay in their families or find adoptive families, Altschuler said.
The children’s ombudsman also said a thorough inspection of Moscow orphanages in April will see psychologists dispatched to meet children.
This is the equivalent of visiting a prisoner in solitary confinement and asking him “How do you like it here?” said Alexander Gezalov, head of the Successful Orphans project.
If the government were serious about improving the lives of orphans, it would concentrate on reducing the number living in orphanages, which stunt children’s development and stigmatize them, he said.
About 371,700 children are growing up in state institutions, according to figures that the Russian government presented to the United Nations in 2011.
Addressing confusion about how the adoption ban will be carried out, Astakhov said orphans whose adoption has already been court-sanctioned — a total of 40 to 50 children — will be allowed to join their new families in the United States.
The other 100 or so pending adoptions will not go forward, he said, a move that struck Gezalov as heartless, given that some orphans have already met their prospective parents.
“Astakhov is saying that even if the children have met their adoptive parents, the kids are so stupid that they don’t understand whom they’ve met,” he said.
Orphans are leaving with their American adoptive families on a nearly daily basis, Astakhov said, but according to a report by the BBC Russian Service, not a single Russian orphan has left for the United States in 2013 due to egregious bureaucratic obstruction.
The Kremlin has faced protests and international condemnation over its decision to end U.S. adoptions as of Jan. 1. The government says it is protecting orphans from abuse at the hands of American adoptive parents — 19 have died since 1996 — while critics have described the law as a cruel nationalist ploy.
U.S. parents have adopted 45,112 Russian children since 1999, including 956 in 2011, according to the State Department.

TITLE: Medvedev Wants Economy to Grow 5% Annually
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday urged the Cabinet to ensure stable economic growth of at least 5 percent a year in the near future, a goal some officials said might require changes to current budget policy.
The major goal for the country's government is "to ensure transition to the path of sustainable economic growth of at least 5 percent," Medvedev said at an economic forum in Moscow. "We must have this purpose in mind and, based on that, attain stable growth of Russian citizens' wealth," he said.
Medvedev, who was speaking in a crowded hall full of international economic experts and government officials, outlined a number of measures he said are critical for ensuring macroeconomic stability.
Among other things, he called for stimulating private investment, developing small and medium-sized businesses and delivering on the plans to privatize state assets.
The announcement came as President Vladimir Putin was assessing Russia's economic performance in 2012, calling the preliminary results "satisfactory."
Gross domestic product increased 3.5 percent between January and November, while unemployment remained as low as 5.4 percent, Putin said at a meeting with bankers and Kremlin officials, citing data provided by the Economic Development Ministry.
He added that inflation also remained relatively low last year and resulted primarily from the increase in food prices.
According to the Central Bank, inflation reached 6.8 percent last year. The regulator hopes that the annual inflation target of 5 to 6 percent will become realistic starting in the second quarter of this year, the bank's first deputy chairman, Alexei Ulyukayev, said at the forum.
However, Putin said it's too early for officials to relax, as the volatility of  the country's key macroeconomic indicators throughout 2012 "causes concerns."
"According to the estimates by the Economic Development Ministry, annual GDP growth is slowing down. … Manufacturing and investment are demonstrating a similarly flagging dynamic. There are some problems in agriculture as well," he said, according to the Kremlin website. 
The Economic Development Ministry sounded optimistic about the prospects of Russia's economic growth, with Deputy Minister Andrei Klepach saying that Russia's economy has the potential to show more impressive growth rates.
"We fall short of our growth potential," he told reporters on the sidelines of the forum.
But he warned that achieving the goal of 5 percent growth might require drastic changes to the existing budget policy.
"We can speed up the growth rates and attain GDP growth of … over 4 percent a year. But this requires serious changes, including, in my opinion, correction of the budget rule," Klepach said.
To ensure macroeconomic stability, Russia has adopted a policy that ties public spending to oil prices. For this year, the government planned the budget based on the expected oil price of $91 per barrel.
Given the current situation, the economy is unlikely to grow more than 4 percent per year, while a 5 percent increase is possible only if serious structural reforms are carried out across a number of industries, said former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.
"Some steps that have been recently taken don't allow us to say that such a trend can arise," he said on the sidelines of the forum, referring to the reforms, Prime reported.
Meanwhile, Medvedev called for the government to deliver on its promises to reduce its involvement in the economy to help make businesses more competitive and ensure economic stability.
Authorities shouldn't postpone privatization until market conditions improve because implementing the plan is essential for  increasing the economy's competitiveness, he said.
"Of course assets should be sold in favorable market conditions, but we can't wait for them forever, otherwise we'll never sell anything," he said.

TITLE: Inter RAO Fires Opposition Leader
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – State-owned power giant Inter RAO fired a midlevel executive who helped lead an opposition party outside of office hours.
Marat Davletbayev left the company after being a fixture of the recent street protests and taking a leading role at the opposition December 5 Party. On Sunday, he and other party members rallied against the ban on the adoption of Russian children by U.S. citizens.
In losing his job, Davletbayev became part of a trend that reveals the employment risks of standing up to the Kremlin. In one of the similar cases, Vladimir Ashurkov said goodbye to his executive position at Alfa Group last year.
When Davletbayev agreed in June to help organize the December 5 Party, he predicted troubles at work, said a fellow party co-leader, Denis Bilunov.
"I trust that all this is not in vain!" Bilunov said on his LiveJournal page Wednesday, commenting on the fellow activist's career setback.
Davletbayev said through another senior party member, Alexander Larenkov, that he wouldn't comment on the dismissal. Larenkov, however, told The St. Petersburg Times that "if it had been his desire to leave, he wouldn't be sitting around doing nothing now."
The firing, which took place Dec. 29, remained unreported until late Tuesday. Inter RAO denied that politics were a reason for the pink slip, stating that the executive stepped down "by mutual agreement."
"The company didn't — and couldn't — have any complaints in connection with his political activity," an Inter RAO representative said, Interfax reported.
Sources in the company, however, said that Davletbayev's bosses were not amused by his elevation to the opposition firmament, the report said.
At Inter RAO, Davletbayev was director of a department that provided the country's third-largest power producer with legal support in running its domestic and international projects. The projects he oversaw included the acquisition of Turkish power plant Trakya and assets from Russian power company Bashkirenergo, an Inter RAO representative said.
In his political capacity, Davletbayev was a member of the standing committee of the December 5 Party, named after the date in 2011 when people took to the street in the first of the series of large protests over the tainted State Duma elections.
The party held its founding congress on Dec. 8. It seeks to bring together the protesters and their sympathizers, calling for fair elections, freedom of assembly and a handover of some powers from the president to the parliament.
Its platform is similar to those of some other new liberal parties, such as the Republican Party–People's Freedom Party, co-led by such figures as Vladimir Ryzhkov and Boris Nemtsov.
Sergei Davidis, a fellow member of the party's standing committee, doubted that Inter RAO had no politically driven motives for getting rid of the activist.
"As far as I can judge, they had no professional issues with him," he said. "The last straw for the employer was when he enlisted as a co-founder of the December 5 Party."
Davidis said employees at state companies and businesses that depend on state contracts and regulation should realize they could also have to forfeit their jobs if they get too involved in opposition to the powers that be.
Socialite and television host Ksenia Sobchak had to abandon her shows last year, including the one on MTV Russia, after she joined the protest movement. Davidis said Mikhail Shats and Tatyana Lazareva left CTC television in a similar scenario.
In November, business daily Vedomosti published an opinion piece by Davletbayev in which he likened President Vladimir Putin's rule to the reign of China's self-described first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who cracked down on dissent and had many of his achievements destroyed by revolts that erupted after his death.
Davletbayev, 33, had worked at Inter RAO for almost three years. His previous employment was at investment company V-Holding. Before that, he joined Gazprom in 2002 and worked for the gas giant until 2006.
He graduated from the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

TITLE: Church Suspends Priest Who Supported Pussy Riot
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – A Moscow region priest who supported Pussy Riot has been suspended from service for five years, ostensibly for repeatedly failing to show up to church and for traveling abroad without the blessing of his bosses.
Dmitry Sverdlov, who was appointed cleric to the Cathedral of All Russian Saints in the Moscow region town of Domodedovo in September, has not attended a single mass since then and hasn't provided a written explanation for it, RIA-Novosti reported Thursday, citing the Moscow Eparchy of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Sverdlov has been described in media reports as a priest who wanted to apologize on the part of the church to the three female Pussy Riot rockers who were sentenced to two-year prison terms in August over performing an anti-President Vladimir Putin song at a Moscow cathedral.
At his previous position in 2012, as the superior of the Peter and Paul Temple in the village of Pavlovskoye in the Domodedovo district, Sverdlov repeatedly traveled abroad without the blessing of his senior boss, the church said.
As a result, Sverdlov was demoted from a superior to a cleric on Monday, the Moscow Eparchy said on its website Wednesday.
Earlier, in February, Sverdlov asked his boss to relieve him of his post as a superior over "pastoral burnout" and "chronic fatigue" and leave him on part-time as a priest, but his request was turned down.

TITLE: Dagestan Judge Gunned Down in Apparent Revenge Killing
AUTHOR: By Alexander Winning
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – A top judge in the restive Dagestan republic has been gunned down outside his home in what observers called revenge for rulings against local insurgents.
An assailant fired at least five shots at Magomed Magodemov, 55, as he approached his car at roughly 9 p.m. Tuesday in Makhachkala, the republic's capital, the Investigative Committee said in a statement Wednesday.
Magomedov, who had served in Dagestan's judiciary for the past 30 years and presided over the trials of terrorist groups, died at the scene of the shooting, while his attacker fled.
Attacks on officials have become an almost-daily occurrence in Russia's troubled North Caucasus, where police and security service officers are battling a resurgent Islamist insurgency after two separatist wars in neighboring Chechnya.
A law enforcement operation code-named Volcano 4, aimed at detaining the culprit, has so far yielded no results, but investigators opened a criminal case on charges of attempted murder of a member of the judiciary and illegal weapons possession. The charges are punishable by a jail sentence of up to 20 years.
Commenting on Magomedov's death, Dagestan republic leader Magomedsalam Magomedov said on his official website that the attack was "an attempt to destabilize the republic, to frighten those who are at the forefront of the struggle with extremism and terrorism."
Dagestani State Duma Deputy Rizvan Kurbanov wrote on his blog that "the response to these slaves of Satan [those behind the killing] should be severe."
Investigators said Wednesday that they are treating Magomedov's professional activity as the likely motive for the assassination.
Magomedov had overseen a series of high-profile trials since his appointment to the presidium of the republic's Supreme Court in 1995. He had been subjected to repeated threats because of his work, local media outlets reported.
On Dec. 18, Magomedov sentenced three Dagestan natives to between eight and 10 years in jail for participating in underground terrorist cells. Lawyers and rights defenders have since cast doubt on the verdict.
Yelena Denisenko, a human rights activist and legal specialist in Memorial's Dagestan office, said by phone Wednesday that the defendants had likely been pressured into giving incriminating testimony.
Denisenko also said the accused, who initially admitted guilt but later retracted their confessions in the courtroom, probably weren't allowed access to their lawyers in pretrial detention. The verdict was subsequently appealed.
In other cases, Magomedov sentenced 19-year-old Gadzhimurad Khulatayev to 15 years for the murder of his father, a senior police investigator in Makhachkala, and sent three people to prison over a 2002 terrorist attack in Kaspiisk in which more than 40 people were killed.
Magomedov's killing comes just weeks after the All-Russia Congress of Judges shared its concerns with President Vladimir Putin over a surge in attacks on judges. The group told Putin that 14 judges had been killed in Russia over the past three years and that 250 crimes against legal officials remain unsolved.
Cabinet ministers responded in early January by issuing an order saying that judges would be provided with mobile warning alarms to alert police if they are threatened.
But Denisenko questioned the effectiveness of such alarms in Dagestan, where law enforcement and judicial officials are routinely threatened.
"This will be a positive measure if it is effective in 90 percent of cases, but whatever sort of security you have with you, you can be killed here," she said.
On Tuesday, the same day as the attack on Magomedov, a police car was sprayed with bullets in the village of Kirovaul.
A representative of Dagestan's Supreme Court refused a request for comment, saying only that all hearings scheduled for that day had been canceled so that Magomedov's colleagues could attend his funeral.
The funeral, which was held in Magomedov's home village of Kubachi, roughly 100 kilometers from Makhachkala, was attended by some 500 people and was heavily guarded by police, RIA-Novosti reported.
Magomedov's funeral fell on his 56th birthday.

TITLE: Court Turns Down Pussy Riot Appeal
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEREZNIKI, Perm Region  — A Russian court has turned down the attempt by an imprisoned member of the Pussy Riot feminist punk band to defer serving her sentence until her preschool son becomes a teenager.
Maria Alyokhina on Wednesday asked the court to let her serve the rest of her two-year sentence after her 5-year-old son turns 14, arguing that separation from her child now will do irreparable psychological damage.
"I'm in a situation where I have to prove here that my son needs me, which is obvious," she said. Alyokhina told the court that while she wants her sentence deferred, she refused to plead guilty. "No one will force me to say I'm guilty. I have nothing to repent for."
Alyokhina was convicted last year along with two other band members of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for an anti-President Vladimir Putin stunt in Moscow's main cathedral. One of the women had her sentence suspended on appeal.
Judge Galina Yefremova rejected the petition, saying the court that sentenced Alyokhina had already taken the child's existence into account.
Sentence deferrals are uncommon. In fact, there are several prison colonies for female convicts with small children who raise their babies behind bars.
In the most publicized precedent, a woman in eastern Siberia who drove her car onto a sidewalk, killing one woman and leaving another confined to a wheelchair, had her sentence deferred in 2010 because she had just had a baby.
The woman, who did not admit guilt or apologize to the families of the victims, was a daughter of a senior local official, sparking suspicions of selective justice.

TITLE: Reputed Mob Boss Usoyan Shot Dead in Moscow
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: One of the country's purportedly most influential crime bosses was killed by a sniper in broad daylight Wednesday, police said, prompting fears of a return of 1990s-style gang wars in the capital.
Aslan Usoyan, better known as Grandpa ("Ded") Khasan, was hit in the head by a single bullet around 2:30 p.m. when he exited a restaurant in downtown Moscow, Interfax reported, quoting law enforcement officials. The 75-year-old died shortly after at a hospital without regaining conscience.
The killer, who fled, fired from a building opposite the crime scene on Povarskaya Ulitsa, the Investigative Committee said on its website. It added that officers found six bullet cartridges in a stairwell between the fifth and the sixth floors of the building.
Two of the shots injured a female passer-by, who was being treated at a hospital in critical condition Wednesday night. She had been hit in the chest and hip, the tabloid website Life News reported. It identified the woman as 30-year-old Maryat Bikchurina.
Usoyan had for years been presumed to be locked in a feud with rival mobster Tariel Oniani. In 2010, Usoyan was hospitalized after being shot by an assailant outside an apartment on Tverskaya Ulitsa.
Oniani is serving a 10-year prison sentence for kidnapping after being detained in 2009 outside Moscow. He denied involvement in the 2010 attempt on Usoyan's life.
Usoyan had reportedly been allied with reputed fellow mobster Vyacheslav Ivankov, who died after being wounded in a similar sniper attack in 2009.
The three mobsters were thought to be among the last senior representatives of the so-called thieves-in-law, a Soviet-era fraternity of convicts that maintains strict codes and rites and disdains any institution other than its own.
Both Oniani and Usoyan hail from Georgia. But while Oniani is from the mountainous Svaneti region, Usoyan grew up in a family of Yezidi Kurds in the capital, Tbilisi.
National media outlets reported that he was well aware that his life was in danger. Usoyan lived in a Moscow region settlement closed to outsiders, avoided public places, traveled in armored cars and employed former police officers as bodyguards.
The address of Wednesday's shooting, 55 Povarskaya Ulitsa, hosts a range of upscale restaurants and is just a stone's throw away from the New Zealand Embassy and the German ambassador's residence.
In 2008, the reputed founder of the Lazanskaya crime group, Movladi Atlangeriyev, was attacked and abducted there.
The murder raised fears of a new round of bloody gangland feuding. A law enforcement source told Interfax that the killing reflects an intensification of conflicts between major criminal groups. The Rosbalt.ru portal reported that pro- and anti-Usoyan clans had been preparing for war throughout December.
However, Alexander Mikhailov, a veteran police and security services officer, said the killing might mark the end rather than the beginning of the redrawing of criminal fiefdoms.
In an interview with Interfax, he pointed out that no gangland warfare had broken out after the last attempt on Usoyan's life.
"Overall, the situation is under control," he was quoted as saying.
Irina Yarovaya, head of the State Duma's Security Committee, said the murder does not mean a return to 1990s-style chaos.
"Today we have a different country, different laws and a different order," she told Interfax.

TITLE: Activists Appeal Verdict Despite Revoked Penalty
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The activists who were on trial for allegedly belonging to a banned organization in the infamous Trial of 12 appealed last week the bizarre verdict, in which the court found them guilty and sentenced them to hefty fines but then lifted the punishment. 
The defendants had pleaded not guilty and described the case as “fabricated.”
“They consider themselves innocent,” lawyer Olga Tseitlina, who is defending The Other Russia’s Alexei Pesotsky, said Tuesday. “Even if they couldn’t wish for a better verdict, [because acquittals are extremely rare in Russian legal cases].”
The verdict was announced in Vyborgsky District Court — unusually guarded by masked men armed with submachine-guns — on Dec. 28, shortly before the 10-day New Year holidays, amid fears of possible prison sentences, although the prosecutor had earlier asked the court to issue large fines.
According to the prosecution, the defendants resumed the “extremist activities” of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP), which was banned by the Moscow City Court as “extremist” in August 2007, and thus committed a crime under Article 282.2 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Organization of activities of an extremist organization.”) The offence is punishable by up to two years in prison.
In turn, the activists and defense claimed that the activists acted legally, first within The Other Russia coalition formed in 2006 by dissident author Eduard Limonov, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, and from July 2010 as members of the Other Russia political party.
Judge Sergei Yakovlev read the verdict for more than three-and-a-half hours, countering every argument previously put forward by the defense, and sentenced the defendants to large fines.
In a jaw-dropping twist several minutes later, Yakovlev revoked the punishment on the grounds that the new Other Russia was established at its founding conference in July 2010 and the defendants had acted legally as its members since then. 
Having excluded all the alleged offenses after July 2010, Yakovlev lifted the punishment on the grounds that the two-year limitation period for minor crimes had expired since that time.
The Other Russia’s local chair Andrei Dmitriyev and activists Andrei Pesotsky and Alexei Marochkin, who claimed he did not belong to The Other Russia at all, although he admitted being an NBP supporter before the party was banned, were charged with being organizers of extremist activities and were each issued with fines of 200,000 rubles ($6,625).
The Other Russia activists Andrei Milyuk, Roman Khrenov, Alexander Yashin and Ravil Bashirov were fined 150,000 rubles ($4,970) each. State prosecutor Nadezhda Filimonova had earlier asked the court to sentence the activists to 250,000- and 180,000-ruble ($8,285 and $5,965) fines.
Originally, charges were pressed against 13 activists, but the trial became known as the “Trial of 12,” after one of the accused, Sergei Porokhovoi, fled to Finland and applied for political asylum there in Nov. 2011 and his case was made separate.
The cases of five activists — Igor Boikov, Alexei Zentsov, Vladislav Ivakhnik, Vadim Mamedov and Oleg Petrov — were closed in September 2012 on the grounds that the two-year limitation period since their last detention at a public protest, seen by the prosecution as part of their “criminal activities,” had expired.
The prosecution’s case was based on audio and video recordings of activists’ meeting covertly made by anti-extremism Center E from July through December 2009 and presented on 27 DVDs, as well as on expert reports by Russian Institute of Cultural Studies employees Vitaly Batov and Nadezhda Kryukova, who defined the meetings as having been held by the banned NBP.
The accusations were backed by police officers and Center E officers as well as two “secret witnesses” presented as “Anatoly Sokolov” and “Mikhail Sazonov,” who had infiltrated the group. The two testified from another room via a PA system with their voices electronically altered.
The defense brought authors Limonov, Zakhar Prilepin and Nikolai Konyayev, as well as St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly deputies Maxim Reznik and Vyacheslav Notyag and a number of political and civic activists to testify in defense of the accused.
Later on the day of the verdict, the former defendants staged an unsanctioned protest against the anti-extremism law used against them at the trial by unfurling a banner, lighting flares and telling journalists and the public about their case near Gostiny Dvor, the site of Strategy 31 rallies in defense of the right of freedom of assembly.
Dmitriyev speculated on the amount of time and state budget funds spent by the state on the case, which lasted for about four years after the counter-extremism Center E planted a spy into the group in early 2009.
Later the same year, Center E spent six months secretly recording the activists’ meetings, after which the case went to the Investigative Committee, which launched an investigation in November 2010. According to Dmitriyev, 18 investigators worked on the case, ordering apartment searches, analyzing surveillance tapes and what they saw as evidence and summoning witnesses. 
After the case went to court, the trial began in April 2012 and lasted nine months until Dec. 28, when the verdict was pronounced.
The defense said the verdict that left the activists unpunished was motivated by the fact that the evidence provided by the prosecution was dubious or fabricated, while the experts were shown to be incompetent, having been proven to be a psychologist and a math teacher who did not have degrees in political science, sociology, heraldry or any subjects that would have qualified them to issue an expert opinion on the case.
“We categorically disagree with the fact that the verdict is accusatorial,” lawyer Sergei Golubok said outside the court after the verdict was announced.
“Even if there are no negative consequences for the defendants, the verdict violates their rights enshrined by the European Convention on Human Rights.”
According to lawyer Tseitlina, the case was unique because no activist or group in Russia has yet been tried for the alleged continuation of activities of a banned organization.
She said Tuesday that the appeal hearing at the St. Petersburg City Court will be set no earlier than February or March, as not all the defendants have yet been issued their copies of the verdict by the court. The verdict will not come into force until then.

TITLE: City Mourns Lawyer Schmidt
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The eminent human rights lawyer Yury Schmidt, who was regarded as a moral authority by thousands of democratic-minded Russians, died in a St. Petersburg clinic on Friday. He was 75.
The founder of the Russian Committee of Lawyers in Defense of Human Rights, which he established in 1991, Schmidt had been head of the defense team for imprisoned former Yukos Oil owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky since 2004.
Khodorkovsky’s case had turned into a lifelong cause for Schmidt, who referred to himself as “Khodorkovsky’s lawyer” in recent years. 
Schmidt’s courageous battle with cancer became an example of will, stamina and character for the people around him. The serious illness did not dampen the spirit of the lawyer, who continued his duties in full, complete with court hearings and exhausting trips to visit Khodorkovsky at a penal colony in Petrozavodsk, Karelia.
“We have lost a fearless and selfless warrior of law,” said lawyer Boris Zolotukhin.
“We have lost a wonderful person, someone who has helped me all these heavy years,” Khodorkovsky, who is due to be released from jail by the end of 2014, when he will have served 11 years for fraud and tax evasion, said in a statement that was posted on his website in English. “He was a very good and courageous person and for many decades, starting in ‘deep’ Soviet times, defended those who had fallen afoul of our authorities.
“I hope that I will be able to manifest the same kind of courage when my time comes; at least I have an example to follow in my life,” Khodorkovsky added.
“Yury Schmidt was a lawyer by profession, and human rights advocate from the bottom of his heart,” said &#233;migr&#233; dissident Vladimir Bukovsky.
Schmidt, who made continued efforts to raise international awareness of Khodorkovsky’s case and its political aspect — the oligarch had been a fierce opponent of the Kremlin, and made donations to opposition liberal parties — had said former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was treated more humanely after his capture than Khodorkovsky.
“When Saddam’s lawyers asked for an additional three months for him to familiarize himself with the case materials, they got a month and a half, but in 2005, Khodorkovsky, when the first trial started, wasn’t granted a single hour of the eight weeks he had requested,” Schmidt said after several months of working on the case.
“Instead of being sent to a prison in Moscow or in a neighboring region, Khodorkovsky is serving his term in a jail that is 7,000 kilometers away from Moscow, which you can only reach by a six-hour flight and another half-day drive by car along a bumpy road,” he added, referring to Khodorkovsky’s previous term in the Krasnokamenskaya colony near the city of Chita, Siberia. “This is not what you call accessible legal aid.”
From 1996 to 2000, Schmidt successfully defended the researcher and ecologist Alexander Nikitin, who remains the only person in the history of the U.S.S.R. and modern Russia to have won a treason or espionage case against the country’s security services. Until 1985, Nikitin served as a naval captain in the Soviet Northern Fleet, where he worked as a chief engineer on nuclear-powered submarines. In 1995, Nikitin wrote an analytical report for the Norwegian ecological organization Bellona on the potential environmental hazards of radioactive waste and decommissioned Russian nuclear submarines, specifically in northern Russia. The report resulted in him being charged with high treason.
In 2012, Schmidt received the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his long commitment to achieving the rule of law in Russia. The award became a vital sign of international recognition of the lawyer’s role as a defender of human rights.
“Yury Schmidt had been ill for some time, and, quite honestly, until the autumn of last year we all hoped that the illness would abate,” said Boris Vishnevsky, a lawmaker with the liberal faction Yabloko at the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, and a close friend of the lawyer. “Sadly, it did not happen. When I visited him at the end of December, Yury looked gravely ill but he remained amazingly composed, courageous and in good spirits. We will all remember him as someone who believed that good triumphs over evil, and who lived his life according to that simple principle.”
St. Petersburgers will be able to say farewell to Schmidt on Wednesday at a civil wake that will be held at the House of Architects at 52 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

TITLE: SKA Signs Finn as U.S. Players Return Home
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Kontinental Hockey League club SKA St. Petersburg has signed Finnish forward Teemu Ramstedt on an 18-month contract in the wake of the exodus of star players back to North America following the resolution of the NHL lockout. 
Ramstedt, who has spent his career in Finland with Helsinki area teams Espoo Blues and HIFK, fills a gap at center. 
“I’m most comfortable playing as a center forward, it’s when I most often get the puck and can make a good pass,” he told SKA’s press service after the signing.
The 113-day NHL lockout concluded Jan. 6. During the lockout many players from the NHL signed temporary contracts with KHL teams, but now the labor dispute is over these players have returned to their clubs in preparation for the NHL season.
“We just lost three of our best players, so we need to analyze the situation, fill in these gaps and make a number of adjustments,” said SKA head coach Jukka Jalonen. “We’re in real need of a goaltender, because [Ilya] Yezhov isn’t particularly healthy right now. But nothing is certain.”
Sergei Bobrovsky of the Columbus Blue Jackets was a solid netminder for SKA during the lockout, particularly during the holiday break, when he anchored SKA with three shutout wins over Slovak team Slovan Bratislava, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl and Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk, as well as a win over Czech team Lev Praha. The winning streak strengthened SKA’s grip on first place in the division. 
“I’m leaving the team with a heavy heart,” Bobrovsky lamented in his farewell address. “The lockout was quite good for me and it’s tough to leave the team. I want to thank everyone, particular goaltending coach Jussi Parkkila. I think all levels of my game have improved over the last three months.”
While Bobrovsky and St. Louis Blues winger Vladimir Tarasenko left the club immediately following the end of the NHL lockout, after SKA’s 5-2 loss to Ak Bars Kazan last week, SKA captain Ilya Kovalchuk skipped the New Jersey Devils’ truncated training camp and stayed for SKA’s 4-2 win over Salavat Yulaev Ufa, before continuing to Chelyabinsk this weekend for the KHL All Star Game, in which leading players from teams in the Eastern and Western divisions of the KHL face off against each other in an East vs. West showdown. Kovalchuk, who captained the Western Division team, scored a hat trick, but his team nonetheless fell to the Eastern Division 18-11 in the exhibition game. 
Kovalchuk’s delayed departure and flowery statements about SKA and the KHL led to speculation that he might finish the season with SKA, but he left for New Jersey following the All Star Game. 
“I’m sad to leave, but I have fulfilled my [NHL] contract. The [KHL] playoffs are just around the corner and things are about to get interesting,” he said in a short farewell address. “SKA is a strong team, capable of achieving greatness, and I’ll be following the team and rooting for SKA from across the ocean.”

TITLE: Lavrov Talks Customs In Ukraine
AUTHOR: By Ivan Nechepurenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his newly appointed Ukrainian counterpart, Leonid Kozhara, had a series of meetings Sunday and Monday to underline the importance of fostering strategic ties between the two countries, with Ukraine’s potential accession to the Russia-dominated Customs Union a central topic.
Relations have been strained since Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych canceled a Dec. 18 trip to Moscow to discuss Ukraine joining Russia’s trilateral Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan. Accession to the union would likely hinder Ukrainian hopes for membership in the European Union, but Ukraine is nevertheless lured by lucrative gas deals and promises of prolific investment.
“There is no doubt that our countries are free to identify their own priorities with regard to the European Union. At the same time, we share a common interest in building a unified Europe with no dividing lines,” Lavrov said at a news conference Sunday afternoon.
“We see no contradiction between our countries’ rapprochement with Europe and the intensifying multi-format cooperation within the Commonwealth of Independent States. These two developments complement rather than oppose each other,” Lavrov said.
The meeting took place at the National University in the town of Chernivtsi, on the border with Romania. The town is widely viewed as a cultural center of western Ukraine, which is well known for widespread resentment of Russian influence among its population.
The area around the university was blocked as the police tried to prevent protesters from approaching the main building. Members of the nationalist Svoboda party gathered in the center of town shouting, “Ukraine’s future lies with Europe,” and, “Say no to economic slavery!” the BBC reported.
On Monday the two ministers laid flowers on a monument to popular 19th-century Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko. Later they met with the students and faculty of the National University, where both were awarded honorary degrees for their efforts to put the university’s architectural complex on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
“Both Ukraine and Russia are interested in unification rather than in deepening a gap between them,” Kozhara, who was appointed foreign minister Dec. 24, said in comments carried by Itar-Tass. “In any case, a common market between the East and the West would meet the interests of all and would be a proper answer to the challenges we face. But for these ends, Europe should overcome ideological barriers. The European split must become history.”
Lavrov responded by saying “integration on the continent, both in terms of the European and Eurasian unions, develops according to the same rules. Therefore we must facilitate their pairing rather than oppose these processes.”
Konstantin Zatulin, head of the CIS Institute and a former State Duma deputy, told The St. Petersburg Times that Ukraine “has limited time to make a definite choice between the Customs Union and the EU. Its economic situation is catastrophic, and thus it can no longer afford the multi-vector policy it has pursued since the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

TITLE: New Alcohol Law Offers Hangover Cure
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Health Ministry’s chief narcologist, Yevgeny Bryun, warned Monday that it would take a month for many Russians to recover from the excesses of New Year’s celebrations.
“Long holidays are in any event bad. Long-term abuse of alcohol is always bad; it has chronic toxic impacts, the effects of which can last a month. Alcohol is only fully processed after three weeks,” he told Interfax.
And citizens who followed the time-honored tradition of the alcohol-soaked 10-day break by trying to restock from their local kiosk were rudely surprised to find they are getting unsolicited state support to dry out.
Since Jan. 1, retail sales of any alcoholic product have been banned between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m.  
Restrictions on alcoholic beverage sales have been increasing in recent years. Vodka and wine were taken off the late-night shopping list in 2010, but for years, beer had evaded time limits applied to other drinks by dint of being classified as a foodstuff.
As of the first day of the new year, that loophole was finally closed, resulting in many a visit to the local 24-hour shop ending in disappointment.  
At the same time, outlets smaller than 50 square meters — meaning the ubiquitous kiosks that have been the most convenient source of a casual beer for the past two decades — were banned from selling alcohol at any time.
Now consumers who want a beer before the witching hour will have to walk a little further to a convenience store or supermarket. And after 11 p.m. they’ll have to get off the street and into a bar, where they probably belong anyway.
But kiosk operators fear the law could spell extinction.
The Coalition of Kiosk Owners, a trade association that was formed specifically to fight the ban last year, says the impact since the start of the year is already tangible.
A small shop on Moscow’s Tsvetnoi Bulvar is typical of the outlets the association says might have to close.
The half a dozen beer-packed fridges that used to occupy much of the tiny shop’s floor space have disappeared.
So have many of the customers who would stop by to pick up their bottles of Baltika and a packet of smokes. A recent visit at a time of day when the shop would previously have been bustling found it almost deserted.
“What do you think? Bad. Very bad,” said Marina, a sales assistant who declined to give her last name when asked about the volume of business since Jan. 1.
A sign outside pushes fruit and vegetables, juice, cookies and household goods, among other perfectly wholesome and legal products.
But the staff were gloomy about the prospects of life as a wholesome local grocery store. “We simply don’t know if we’re going to survive,” Marina said.
Kiosk owners campaigning against the law last year estimated that alcohol sales account on average for 40 percent of turnover — meaning the ban could be crippling.
It is possible the shop assistant was being disingenuous — the Russian blogosphere is full of tales of outlets ignoring the restrictions.
The RBK Daily reported kiosks continuing to sell beer openly in Bryansk, while one blogger reported that many traders in Moscow were “still selling to regulars” from under the counter.
If the ban on booze weren’t enough, similar restrictions on tobacco sales could finish off the kiosks for good.
The Economic Development Ministry estimates 175,000 kiosks across the country will be forced out of business and up to 500,000 people put out of work if a bill banning tobacco sales at small outlets becomes law.
The bill, which will also ban smoking in public places, sailed through a first reading in the State Duma in December, and is expected to enter into force by 2016.
But officials insist that the moves are necessary for the health of the nation.
In a response to the coalition’s complaints released last month, the presidential administration said that the measures are part of the government’s commitment under a state strategy of reducing alcohol abuse by 2020 and the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which Russia ratified in 2008.
The Coalition of Kiosk owners said it had sent another letter to President Vladimir Putin complaining that these “vague phrases about the health of the population” failed to address their concerns.
“We argued in detail that the already passed and planned bans on certain sales puts the country’s entire small retail sector under threat,” said the letter, dated Wednesday.
Male life expectancy was at 64 in 2011, according to the State Statistics Service, while the figure for females was at 75.6 years.
Health experts cite high alcohol and tobacco consumption as major contributors to men’s early deaths.

TITLE: Duma Defers Discussion of Petition Against Adoption Ban
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A State Duma committee discussed Monday an online petition opposing the “Anti-Magnitsky Law” passed late last year, but it appeared to delay until at least April any action that could result from the petition.
The petition, published on the website of opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta last month, was signed by more than 100,000 people and demanded the repeal of the law, which went into effect Jan. 1 and includes a ban on adoptions of Russian orphans by U.S. families.
President Vladimir Putin has ordered that officials review any petitions that garner more than 100,000 signatures.
But Constitution and State Affairs Committee head Vladimir Pligin said Monday that no mechanism for considering such petitions was yet in place and that one would only be in place in April, Interfax reported. He said he would inform the Duma about the petition at a session Tuesday.
The petition was submitted to the Duma on Dec. 21, when a final vote on the bill was held, but Duma Deputy Speaker Sergei Zheleznyak said it could not be considered until after the New Year holiday due to parliamentary procedure.
Just Russia Deputies Ilya Ponomaryov and Dmitry Gudkov, who have opposed parts of the law, said they intended to use the petition as the basis for a parliamentary initiative.
“The committee said that signatures cannot be considered as an official appeal to the Duma, but the president said that all people’s initiatives must be considered, and they can’t be official documents by definition,” Ponomaryov told The St. Petersburg Times by phone.
He said an initiative would be introduced in the next two days but was not hopeful that it would be supported by the ruling party.
“Basically, the United Russia deputies will decide, but if we do something, sooner or later there will be a result,” he said.
Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov and other representatives of the paper attended the Duma committee meeting Monday, which was open to visitors.
Nadezhda Prusenkova, the paper’s spokeswoman, said they were not surprised by the lack of immediate action by the committee.
“We didn’t expect a miracle,” she said.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Monday that adoption procedures should be eased for Russian parents and acknowledged that the U.S. adoption ban has triggered a major public response. “And it is not declining,” he said at a meeting with his deputies, according to Interfax.
On Sunday, thousands of people marched through central Moscow to express their disagreement with the ban. Protesters carried portraits of Duma deputies and senators who approved the bill with the word “shame” written over them, and called for the Duma to be dissolved, a central demand of many nonparliamentary opposition groups.

TITLE: Samutsevich Retracts Charge
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevich has retracted from the Moscow Chamber of Lawyers her complaint calling for disciplinary action to be taken against her former lawyers, Nikolai Polozov and Violetta Volkova. 
Volkova announced the news on Twitter on Monday, writing simply “Samutsevich retracted her complaint from the APMO,” Interfax reported. 
Samutsevich, who was released early from her two-year sentence in October 2012 and given a suspended sentence after replacing Polozov and Volkova with a new lawyer, called for the lawyers’ licenses to be revoked in November. At the time, she said they had not returnedher personal belongings, including her passport and a letter from the European Court of Human Rights, even after she’d filed a request to get the items back.

TITLE: Depardieu Holds Forth on Russian Politics
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Actor and newly minted Russian citizen Gerard Depardieu belittled the country’s opposition as disoriented and attacked foreign critics of the prosecution of the punk band Pussy Riot.
“The Russian opposition has no program, nothing,” he said in an interview Sunday night on state television channel Rossia 1.
He added that having very intelligent leaders like former chess champion Garry Kasparov was not enough. “Politics is a little more complicated,” he said.
Depardieu’s comments came just 10 days after President Vladimir Putin gave him a Russian passport in the head of state’s Sochi residence.
Depardieu followed up the much-publicized meeting with a trip to Mordovia, a Finno-Ugric region on the Volga River, where he was elevated to something of a national icon.
State television feted the actor’s visit, showing footage of him putting on a local ethnic costume and showing off his new passport during a public reception in Saransk, the regional capital.
The actor was reportedly offered an apartment as his official residence in Mordovia, but he declined an offer to become the republic’s culture minister, saying he is already “the world’s culture minister,” Russian News Service Radio reported, quoting State Film Fund (Gosfilmofond) director Nikolai Borodachyov.
Depardieu was subsequently offered the title of honorary Udmurt by activists in Udmurtia, another Finnic-speaking region.  A Communist State Duma deputy asked him to join the Communist Party, and a theater in the Siberian city of Tyumen offered him a job, albeit for a humble 16,000 rubles ($527) per month.
In Sunday’s interview, he used last year’s Pussy Riot performance in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral to lambaste recent French criticism of Russia as baseless.
He said that if band members had performed in a mosque, “they would not have come out alive,” and he added that their behavior would have caused outrage even in the Catholic world. Similar arguments have been made by Putin in the past.
“If I say such things in France, I’m labeled an idiot,” he said.
However, Depardieu’s decision to accept Russian citizenship elicited heaps of mockery and criticism both inside and outside the country.
On Saturday’s episode of “On N’est Pas Couch&#233;,” a popular late-night show on French television, actor Jonathan Lambert staggers on stage pretending to be Yury Depardioff, who speaks with a heavy Russian accent. 
Critics said that Depardieu’s original aim of saving money on taxes was invalid because he would not be eligible and that his trip to Russia was just a PR stunt for Putin that deals a blow to Francois Hollande, the socialist French president, who had planned a 75 percent marginal income tax for wealthy citizens.
They also questioned how Depardieu, who reportedly arrived by private plane, would legally travel between Russia and Europe, which have stringent visa requirements, after trading his French passport for a Russian one.
Russian law stipulates that foreigners from most countries must give up their previous citizenship on becoming Russians.
However, Depardieu has said in recent interviews that he is not yet ready to give up his French citizenship and that he would continue to seek a Belgian passport. National media reports said that under French law, anybody wishing to give up citizenship must wait for one year for the change to take effect.
Others said Putin’s decision to decree citizenship to Depardieu is a slap in the face for thousands of former Soviet citizens, who face massive and cumbersome bureaucratic hurdles to obtain a Russian passport.
One often-quoted example is former Olympic gymnast Maria Filatova, who has been left a stateless U.S. resident after fighting for more than 10 years to get Russian citizenship. 
A Gazeta.ru investigation that lists all the documents required for applicants quoted Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, as saying that the Russian Consulate in Paris dealt with Depardieu’s case, which occurred during the country’s New Year’s holidays.
“[Putin’s] decree is practically an order for those agencies concerned,” he was quoted as saying. 
However, Russian law requires a presidential decree for every case in which citizenship is being obtained, restored or given up. A search on the Kremlin’s website Sunday yielded just three results from the past six months.
In an indication of how rarely that process is successful, the decrees, dating from August, November and December, list just 96 cases in which citizenship was obtained or restored.
Putin announced last year that the rules for getting citizenship should be eased, an initiative that has been assailed by nationalists, who fear that the country will be swamped by migrant workers from Central Asia.
But most of the criticism focused on Depardieu’s image, which has suffered blows recently. The once-adored actor made headlines when he urinated in an airplane aisle and fell off a motorcycle in Paris.
The actor, who showed up at a controversial 2010 dinner gala at which Putin sang “Blueberry Hill,” has been condemned by human rights activists for appearing at a birthday gala for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and for appearing in a music video with Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbekistan’s authoritarian president, Islam Karimov. 
“Putin has recently taken more and more steps that border on the absurd,” music critic Artemy Troitsky told the Belarusian newspaper BelGazeta. 
But Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst and vice rector of the Plekhanov Institute, said the whole story was a big win for Putin because it showed the world that famous people are ready to come to Russia.
“And it is a wonderful Christmas present for the Russian people that such a great actor joined them,” he added.

TITLE: Locals Join Activists As Forest Furor Heats Up
AUTHOR: By Alexander Winning
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Around 50 local residents protested Monday at a construction site in the Selyatinsky Forest outside Moscow, where environmental activists and construction workers are locked in a battle over pristine woodland.
Activists obstructed construction equipment in an effort to stall work on a multistory housing development, set to be built on land sold by municipal authorities for the project.
The protest followed a statement Sunday by a regional environmental group saying that an activist was hospitalized after being assaulted in Moscow earlier this month, an attack that, if confirmed, would be the latest in a series of beatings of environmental activists in the region.
The Selyatinsky Forest activists had earlier organized a car rally and informal stroll through Selyatino, the Moscow region town 50 kilometers southwest of the capital where the housing is due to be built, to drum up support for their cause.
After builders contacted police, Tatyana Pavlova, head of the We Will Save the Selyatinsky Forest action group, was detained around noon Monday.
Pavlova was later given a misdemeanor charge for failing to obey law enforcement officials, she said by phone, adding that officials had previously threatened her with extremism charges. Extremism is punishable by a prison sentence of up to five years.
On Sunday, a regional environmental group published a statement saying that Alexander Tolstov, an activist with Pavlova’s group, was assaulted in Moscow in early January by unidentified thugs.
“Unidentified individuals shoved the young man into a car near the Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad metro station, beat him up and threw him out in the Medvedkovo district,” the group Ecological Defense of the Moscow Region said.
The statement pointed to a separate attack on volunteers gathering signatures in defense of the Selyatinsky Forest as proof that the group’s activists face threats over their stand against the construction project.
Pavlova called the assault on Tolstov an effort to scare activists into abandoning their campaign, adding that Tolstov remained hospitalized and that her group would continue to attempt to block construction in the forest.
A Moscow police representative denied knowledge of the attack on Tolstov in comments carried by RIA-Novosti on Monday.
Trees began to be cut down in Selyatino in late December, despite acting Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov having said days earlier that local opposition to the project should be taken into account.
The project envisages erecting multistory apartment blocks on three parks and a 73-hectare wooded area that formerly belonged to Selyatino’s municipal authorities.
Yevgeny Golubev, the town’s chief, subsequently called activists “occupiers” and “American troops” at a recent meeting of the ruling United Russia party, according to the Ecological Defense of the Moscow Region.

TITLE: 2012 Outflow $56.8Bln, Declares Central Bank
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Central Bank said net capital outflow in 2012 was $56.8 billion, a drop from 2011 but the fourth-highest annual figure since the fall of the U.S.S.R.
Experts link the flight of funds to Russia’s investment climate, the country’s current account surplus and fears of political instability. Net outflows were observed every year after 2007, and inflows are on record for two only years since 1994. Other emerging markets, including India and Brazil, recorded inflows in 2012.
During the last quarter of 2012, $9.4 billion left Russia, according to preliminary data published on the Central Bank’s website.
That was a slight uptick from the second and third quarters, which saw outflows of $6.4 billion and $7.6 billion respectively. Amid political uncertainty, the presidential election campaign and the economic crisis in Europe, $33.3 billion left the country in the first quarter.
The banking sector saw a $23.6 billion inflow of capital, which helped the headline outflow figure to fall year on year. One of 2012’s biggest deals, the $5.2 billion privatization of state lender Sberbank, was hailed at the time by officials as a boost for the effort to reduce capital outflow.
The net outflow in all sectors outside banking was $80.4 billion. Many experts predict that outflows will shrink in 2013.
According to the Central Bank, capital outflow in 2013 will reach up to $10 billion if oil prices average $97 a barrel. This will rise up to $35 billion if the oil price averages $73 a barrel.

TITLE: Reports Say Ryazan on Brink
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The impoverished Ryazan region is on the verge of bankruptcy amid speculation about the governor’s health prompted by his political opponents, a news report said Monday.
A source with the Ryazan region’s legislature told Kommersant that the region is “heading straight to bankruptcy.” The source added that the regional government’s debt will amount to 22.3 billion rubles ($737.2 million) this year, accounting for 75 percent of the regional budget’s revenues.
The region, which has a population of 1.14 million people, is a three-hour drive from Moscow, and most of its budget deficit is covered by federal subsidies. Its revenues come mostly from the oil refining and power industries.
The news about the region’s financial troubles comes amid speculation about Governor Oleg Kovalyov’s deteriorating health, Kommersant reported, citing Communist State Duma Deputy Vladimir Fedotkin.
Fedotkin was Kovalyov’s only serious challenger in the gubernatorial elections in October. The incumbent governor, while largely unpopular, got more than 64 percent of the vote, which was marked by a low turnout and a lack of serious political competition.
Vladimir Krymsky, head of the regional branch of the left-wing Just Russia party, said that Kovalyov, who became governor in 2008, does not effectively govern the region.
But Olga Chulyayeva, a regional government spokeswoman, denied that Kovalyov’s health has worsened. She also said that the region is not on the verge of bankruptcy.
The Finance Ministry has proposed that governors be responsible for their regions’ financial woes. The country reintroduced gubernatorial elections under a law passed in April 2012, but federal ministers can propose that the president dismiss certain governors, according to a presidential decree published in January.
Under the law on gubernatorial elections, the president can remove regional leaders from office if a court rules that they are involved in a conflict of interest or corruption or fail to properly fulfill their duties.
Alexei Titkov of the Regional Politics Institute said Monday that federal authorities might use the dire financial situation to “send a warning sign” to the regional governor, but he would not be removed. “To replace a newly elected governor is to admit a mistake,” Titkov said.
Konstantin Anglichanov, a senior expert at Fitch Ratings, said the situation with the Ryazan region’s debt should not be dramatized. While the region’s debt level is higher than in many other regions, the “debt portfolio is balanced enough.”
“More than half of the region’s debt consists of short-term bank loans,” said Alexandra Balod, a senior analyst at Standard & Poor’s. Balod said that a number of regions like Astrakhan and Smolensk “face similar risks.”
“We expect the debt burden of all Russian regions to gradually increase in the next three years, and the Ryazan region’s debt levels will likely remain higher than average,” Balod said in an e-mail interview.

TITLE: Ex-EBRD Official Faces Bribery Charges
AUTHOR: By Alexander Winning
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Interior Ministry on Tuesday formally charged Russia’s former top representative at the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development with attempted bribery for soliciting a kickback of over $1 million from a Canadian company operating in Russia.
The ministry’s investigative department said in a statement that Yelena Kotova, who sat on the board at the London-based lender from 2005 to 2010, and well-connected banker Igor Lebedev conspired to secure approval for a $95 million EBRD loan to the unidentified Canadian oil and gas firm by using their official positions and business ties.
Kotova was dismissed from her position by Russian authorities in December 2010 amid an internal EBRD probe into her and three other officials. 
All four subsequently had their diplomatic immunity revoked at the request of the Russian and British governments, although Kotova has repeatedly refuted the charges against her. 
Kotova, who is accused of expecting $1.43 million in return for securing the loan, faces separate charges in Britain for allegedly running a money-laundering operation in Britain and the United States. Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service is yet to file charges against Kotova.
Russian officials said that their investigation into Kotova and Lebedev, who could receive a maximum penalty of 12 years in prison, is almost complete. Lebedev is accused of acting as a liaison between Kotova and the Canadian company.
On Tuesday, EBRD spokesman Jonathan Charles told The Associated Press that the bank has cooperated with Russian authorities and is following the case.
According to Kotova’s personal website, she left her banking career for creative writing. Kotova, who has published three novels since leaving the EBRD, refers to herself as a “columnist, essayist and writer” on her site. 
The EBRD was founded by Western governments in 1991 to help former communist countries make the transition to capitalism.

TITLE: Sberbank Sees Rise in Stocks
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Stocks in Moscow climbed Monday as the share price of state-owned lender Sberbank rose above 100 rubles for the first time in 10 months.
Global markets have been rising since the U.S. government avoided the “fiscal cliff” that was predicted to have dire consequences for equities worldwide. 
Sberbank and the country’s other major state-owned bank, VTB, have gained between 5 percent and 10 percent of their value this year. 
The Moscow Exchange was up 1.05 percent on Monday at 1526.74.

TITLE: Commercial Property Market to Stay Strong
AUTHOR: By Rachel Nielsen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The commercial property market is poised to notch another multibillion-dollar figure this year as economic factors support the purchases of malls, offices and hotels.
Though many analysts expect this year’s volume of investments to come in below the record-breaking total of $7.5 billion in 2011 — and be roughly even with last year’s more modest figure of about $6 billion — they said the 2013 number will demonstrate the market’s strength.
“We’re expecting a pretty positive year,” said Tom Devonshire-Griffin, head of capital markets for Jones Lang LaSalle in Russia.
He pointed to stabilized macroeconomic environments in the United States and Europe, where investor jitters can have a ripple effect on the Russian market when funds and individuals try to reduce their financial risks.
“It helps that the Americans seem to have come to some form of agreement, and the noises from Europe seem to be fewer now,” he said, referring to the congressional agreement over U.S. tax cuts and the European Union’s government debts.
Fellow real estate consulting firm Cushman & Wakefield said the domestic market has maintained a fast clip in spite of economic woes.
“Despite the negative influence of the macroeconomic trends, the office market in 2012 experienced high demand, good supply and stable office rents,” Cushman said in a report last month.
Last year’s major commercial real estate buys in Russia could exceed $6 billion, according to CBRE, or $5.5 billion, according to Knight Frank Russia.
Knight Frank said this year’s volume could reach about $5.5 billion to $6 billion if the 2012 market conditions for commercial real estate investments continue.
Darrell Stanaford, a longtime real estate executive and adviser in Moscow, said a 2013 figure of at least $4.5 billion is possible.

TITLE: Going From Georgian Wine to U.S. Adoptions
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
TEXT: The Kremlin is conducting its current anti-U.S. campaign according to the same scenario it used in all previous campaigns against countries that irritated President Vladimir Putin and were labeled as “enemies.” Similar campaigns were waged against Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland.
The Kremlin’s approach to these propaganda campaigns follows the same basic standard. First, every campaign is reactive in nature and never the result of a deliberate strategy. Instead, the campaigns are spontaneous and often reckless, knee-jerk reactions to specific events the Kremlin finds annoying. For example, the large-scale campaign against Georgia in the fall of 2006 was launched after Tbilisi detained five officers of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate on charges of espionage. Similarly, a campaign was unleashed against Estonia in 2007 after that country moved a monument to fallen Soviet soldiers out of the Tallinn city center. The Kremlin initiated the current anti-U.S. campaign as a spontaneous retaliation for passage of the Magnitsky Act.
Second, the decision to initiate a defamation campaign against a designated country is almost always made by Putin and usually confirmed in a special meeting with members of the Security Council. As a rule, the campaigns are emotional reactions without any somber or thorough analysis of its predictable consequences. For example, a special session of the Security Council was called immediately after the Russian intelligence officers were detained in Georgia, and the series of measures to take in response was hurriedly worked out during that meeting.
Third, the measures used are always selected so as to cause maximum damage or discomfort for the “enemy” and without any regard for moral or legal considerations. For example, the anti-Georgia campaign in 2006 incorporated a no-holds-barred strategy. Air and automobile traffic between the countries was halted, as were mail and money transfers. House-to-house searches were conducted for people with Georgian surnames under the pretext of “the struggle against illegal immigration.” Detainees were subjected to abuse, and more than 800 people were quickly deported, two of whom died. A number of Georgian children — even those with Russian citizenship — were evicted from schools. Georgian restaurants and cafes were subjected to punitive inspections, some of which were forced to shut down.
The same fate befell major Georgian-owned casinos and entertainment complexes such as Kristall, Golden Palace and Bakkara, while casinos owned by other nationalities were left untouched. Publishers putting out books by renowned Georgian author Grigory Chkhartishvili, better known as Boris Akunin, were subjected to tax inspections. The Kremlin enlisted chief sanitary doctor Gennady Onishchenko, who has served the same function in similar campaigns, to ban Georgian food products and wine. Most of those sanctions against Georgia remain in force to this day, and even more were added following the Russia-Georgia war in 2008.
The same scenario is playing out in the current anti-U.S. campaign. The immediate pretext for this was U.S. President Barack Obama’s signing of the Magnitsky Act on Dec. 14. The immoral and inhumane ban on adoption of Russian orphans by U.S. citizens is just one more example of Putin’s erratic and ill-conceived decisions. Putin wanted to deliver a blow to U.S. parents who were set on adopting children from Russia, knowing that Russia is the third-most-popular country for U.S. foreign adoptions, with more than 60,000 adoptions over the past 20 years.
Yet Putin ignored the fact that U.S. parents can easily look to similar neighboring countries, such as Ukraine, Moldova and other former Soviet republics, which also have a large number of orphans. Much worse, however, is that Putin’s “Anti-Magnitsky Act” deals a crippling blow to thousands of Russia’s own orphans, most of whom will now be deprived of their lawful right to be adopted by loving parents. What’s more, the law contradicts a new bilateral agreement regulating the adoption process that went into effect in November, and there are serious legal questions about whether the law violates international conventions that Russia signed on children’s rights.
For now, the Kremlin is afraid of imposing any economic measures against the United States other than the standard tit-for-tat ban on imports of U.S. pork. The Russian economy is already weak, and sanctions against U.S. firms could exacerbate the country’s economic stagnation. In addition, the Kremlin fears retaliatory U.S. sanctions because much of Russian industry, including the defense sector, is critically dependent on modern U.S. components, such as computer chips, that simply do not exist in Russia.
Russian officials are considering additional measures as well, such as limits on the percentage of U.S. movies that Russian theaters can show. Additional restrictions, such as visa denials, might also be placed on U.S. journalists and other “suspicious Americans” working in Russia. In short, expect a new round of anti-Americanism in 2013.

<i>Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio and is a co-founder of the opposition RP-Party of People’s Freedom.</i>

TITLE: the russian front: Putin’s Colossal Anti-Magnitsky Blunder
AUTHOR: By Richard Lourie
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin’s initial response to the Magnitsky Act was right on the money: to accuse the U.S. government of monumental hypocrisy by focusing attention on Washington’s record of torture and illegal rendition of terrorism suspects. That reaction also had the tit-for-tat structural symmetry that is standard in such cases.
More important, it allowed the Kremlin to take territory it had not occupied since Soviet days: the moral high ground. Back then, Soviet officials would counter U.S. criticism of human rights violations with the standard question, “And what about your blacks?” Historian Martin Kenner even contends that progress in the civil rights movement was accelerated by the criticism from Moscow, a sort of social justice race running parallel to the arms and space races.
Apart from symmetry and high ground, there was also an excellent contextual reason to attack the U.S. for its practices of torture and rendition. The subject is very much in the air again because U.S. President Barack Obama has nominated John Brennan, currently his chief counter-terrorism adviser, to be the new CIA director. Four years ago, that nomination proved impossible because of Brennan’s favorable remarks about rendition and waterboarding. In addition, the new film “Zero Dark Thirty” detailing the manhunt for Osama bin Laden was controversial even before its recent release because its violent opening scenes of waterboarding suggest that this torture led to actionable intelligence. This was an ideal moment for Putin’s attack to resonate with U.S. popular cultural as well as on Capitol Hill.
A significant percentage of Americans, especially among those who voted for Obama in November, are still angered by the damage that former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney caused to the U.S. global image. If Putin’s idea was to stick it to the U.S., he  couldn’t have found a better means and moment to do it.
Yet Putin’s big mistake was when he turned his initial symmetric response into a foolish asymmetric one. By denying Americans the right to adopt Russian children, the reasoning must have been some combination of “The Americans are sentimental, this’ll hurt them!” and “Who do they think they are, coming here and shopping for our blond, blue-eyed darlings!”
In the end, of course, it is Russia’s own orphans who will suffer the most. The old Russian saying, “Beat your own so others will fear you,” was probably not designed with kids in mind.
Patriarch Kirill has called on Russians to adopt more children. It’s a good idea. This is also a moment where the opposition or spontaneous groups that are changing Russia slowly from the bottom up could come forward with a mass adoption program. But it seems that they, like Putin, are also letting a rare and valuable opportunity slip by.
What makes this whole business even odder is how adroitly Putin dealt with French actor Gerard Depardieu, grabbing world headlines and changing the perception of Russia as a place where artists like the punk group Pussy Riot are persecuted to making it a rather safe haven for international movie stars fighting for reasonable income tax rates.
Yet only time will tell whether Putin’s play on Depardieu was smart. It may turn out that, like many post-Soviet people, Putin has thrown out the dialectical baby with the Marxist bath water. Dialectics stressed that things inevitably turned into their opposite. Russian citizen Depardieu may yet end up on Red Square protesting the arrest of some fellow “Russian” artist, a sight the world media would gobble up. Stay tuned.      

<i>Richard Lourie is the author of “Sakharov: A Biography” and “The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin.”</i>

TITLE: Russian rock legend dies
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Russian rock and jazz scenes are in mourning for Yevgeny Guberman, the local drummer extraordinaire who died in St. Petersburg on December 30 at the age of 57. 
Guberman played in styles ranging from garage rock to mainstream jazz and was reputed as the city’s —or even Russia’s — No. 1 rock drummer. 
The St. Petersburg Times sat down with Guberman at the now-defunct Dostoevsky Bar in August 2000, when the musician came back to the city to play a few concerts as a member of the Dutch rock trio Kek ‘66. 
Guberman had moved to Amsterdam in 1987, when Russia was starting to open up under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The drummer performed with a number of outfits there before returning to St. Petersburg in 2004. 
In the 1970s and 1980s, Guberman played with a number of bands and styles — from the mainstream jazz group David Goloshchyokin Band to Akvarium, which was in its “punk” stage at the time. 
Once described as the greatest drummer in Russian rock, Guberman said: “It was what people said — it was not my thing. In Holland everything is different — there’s no concept of who’s the best, who isn’t the best. You’re a drummer, O.K. Nobody looks at what kind of drums you have, what kind of cymbals, because everything is in the stores. But after a concert people approach you and say: ‘Oh, it was great,’ and you say: ‘O.K., thanks a lot.’” 
Although Kek ‘66 was reminiscent of British beat of the 1960s and used Kinks-style riffs, Guberman insisted that the music the band played was American. 
“We play real American garage punk. It was people who were orientated not to The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but to The Kinks, Remains, Searchers, The Hollies,” he said.  
“American kids who were 15 or 16 would buy instruments, get into their fathers’ garages and blast it out at full force — this music stems from that.” 
Apart from Kek ‘66, Guberman played with four jazz outfits in Amsterdam at that time.
“If I had to play five days a week with one and the same band, I wouldn’t be able to stand it, it would become a routine,” he said. 
“I need to play different music, with different people — just to stay in balance. And I need to play jazz — because I love this music, I feel it and can play it — not as the greatest players did, but still in my own way.”
Despite his busy music schedule, Guberman made a living as a driver while in the Netherlands. 
“You can’t survive on music,” he said, “or you have to play with the likes of [pop stars Alla] Pugachyova or [Filipp] Kirkorov, which is possible, but I don’t want to do that. It would be the same crap five days a week. No.”
Kek ‘66 was heir to The Kliek, a similarly ‘60s-influenced band that came to Russia in 1993 to play at the now-defunct TaMtAm club — and split soon after returning to the Netherlands. Featuring Guberman and Kek’ 66 founder Robert M&#252;ter, who sang and played guitar, the band disintegrated due to troubles on the road.
“We came on our own, it was February, the van broke down and there were those borders — Polish, Belarusian,” said Guberman. “When we came back everybody fell out, and we split in a week.”
Born in Leningrad on July 30, 1955, as a teenager Guberman studied ballet at a choreography school in the Urals city of Perm for three and a half years.
“The school was formed by teachers of Leningrad’s Vaganova School who were evacuated there during the war. I was totally crazy about ballet — but then I heard [The Beatles’ debut album] ‘Please Please Me’ and everything ended there — in one day.”
Upon returning to Leningrad, Guberman graduated from high school and studied for four years at a music college. 
“Then a friend told me that Goloshchyokin needed a drummer, because his drummer had gone on a drinking binge,” he said. “I came to an audition, he took me on, I got a steady job and everything started from there.” 
Guberman considered Goloshchyokin “his great teacher” — alongside veteran saxophone player Alexei Kanunnikov, who led an amateur jazz band with whom Guberman played his first concert.
He joined Akvarium “by chance.” The band got an invitation to “Spring Rhythms,” the first national rock festival in Tbilisi, Georgia, when the state eased its grip on rock music to demonstrate its “human face” to the world before the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980. As the regular drummer was out of town, Guberman was invited as a replacement.
The now-legendary performance at the festival resulted in a scandal with the jury walking out and repressions awaiting Akvarium back home. “I don’t know what it was. All the bands were rather polished, while we simply raged. Of course, we were well prepared — unshaven, uncombed. Grebenshchikov made buttons for everybody.”
“Dyushka (flautist Andrei Romanov) wore a button reading ‘Where Am I Living?’ Boris had a button reading ‘No, I Am Not Boris Grebenshchikov,’ and I had one saying ‘A poshli vy vse na khui’ (‘Why Don’t You All Fuck Off’). I remember a cameraman approaching me on stage and nearly falling down. We were totally unleashed at that time.”
According to the memoirs of Akvarium’s cellist Seva Gakkel, the band’s performance at Tbilisi’s staid Georgian Philharmonic concert hall made the jury walk out.
After the festival Akvarium was banned, Grebenshchikov was fired from his job at a Leningrad sociological research institute and expelled from the Young Communist Union, and the band had to resort to the practice of underground “apartment concerts,” having to play without a drummer in order not to disturb the neighbors and attract the police.
Guberman’s drums can be heard on Akvarium’s classic albums “Elektrichestvo” (Electricity), which featured the band’s Georgian live set and a number of studio tracks, and “Radio Africa.” The two albums were released as self-produced reel-to-reel tapes in 1981 and 1983 respectively.
Guberman continued to play with other jazz and rock outfits, most notably rhythm-and-blues band Zoopark, until moving to Moscow in 1982, where he performed with the jazz bands Allegro and Igor Butman Quintet.
His reputation was so immense that Akvarium’s long-time drummer Pyotr Troshchenkov, who joined the band after Guberman finally left in 1982, used the pseudonym “Pyotr Guberman” for some time.
Guberman emigrated in December 1987 — just before the Russian rock breakthrough, when formerly underground bands started to play stadiums.
“I just had to leave, I simply couldn’t stay in Russia any longer,” said Guberman. “It didn’t matter to me at all where to, and by pure chance, I married a Dutch girl and found myself in Holland.”
In a later interview, Guberman explained his return to St. Petersburg in 2004 as being due to his feeling of remaining a foreigner despite having lived in the Netherlands for 17 years.
Recently, he performed in St. Petersburg clubs with a band called Shaggy Train.
Guberman chose the drums because of Ringo Starr — and he admitted to knowing the drum parts to every Beatles song by heart. Speaking about his favorite drummers, he also mentioned Simon Kirke (Free), Bobby Colomby (Blood, Sweat and Tears), Terry Bozzio (Frank Zappa), Paul Hammond (Atomic Rooster), Charlie Watts (The Rolling Stones) and American jazz drummer Tony Williams, among others.
“I never liked drum solos — I can play those solos, but it’s somehow not very interesting,” Guberman said.
“I like to play with people. I like it when people play music together. How people react to each other. I can play guitar and I can play bass, which is my favorite instrument. But drums are something else.” 
Guberman was buried at the city’s Krasnenkoye Cemetery on Jan. 4. The cause of death has not been announced.

TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg will demonstrate solidarity with Maria Alyokhina, an imprisoned member of the feminist punk collective <b>Pussy Riot</b>, by holding a roundtable titled “Class, Gender, Politics: Russia After Pussy Riot.”
<b>International Day of Solidarity with Alyokhina</b> will be held Wednesday, with solidarity events planned in cities including Berlin, Bonn, Lisbon, London, Los Angeles, Milan, Munich, Paris and Stockholm. Check www.freepussyriot.org for more information about the events.
The campaign is scheduled to coincide with a court hearing called to decide whether Alyokhina deserves to be released, with her sentence exchanged for a suspended one, on the grounds that she is a single mother of a young child. 
The hearing will take place in the IK-28 female prison colony in Berezniki in the Perm Krai, some 2,000 kilometers southeast of St. Petersburg.
Alyokhina has reportedly encountered particularly harsh conditions in her prison colony, being repeatedly punished for alleged “oversleeping” and confined to a solitary cell. There have also been reports of hostile attitudes toward her from her fellow inmates.
Alongside Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich, Alyokhina was sentenced to two years in prison for “hooliganism motivated by hatred for a religious group.”
The Kafkaesque trial, which ended in August in Moscow, saw the defendants deprived of food, water and sleep, defense witnesses ejected from the court so that they could not testify, police dogs in the courtroom and the arrests of Pussy Riot supporters outside the court — most infamously that of former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, who was then accused of biting a police officer.
Samutsevich was later released on a suspended sentence.
Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina have been in prison since March 3, 2012, when they were arrested on the eve of the Russian presidential election.
Some see the unusually severe treatment of the band’s members as revenge by Vladimir Putin, whom the band confronted and ridiculed in their performances and videos.
Pussy Riot’s support group has urged people to organize readings, music festivals of support or public events. “Any sharing of information about the lawless imprisonment of Maria is helpful and may persuade the judge to release Maria,” they wrote in a statement.
St. Petersburg’s roundtable will be held at the Center for Independent Social Research at 7 p.m. Wednesday.  
One of the topics of discussion will be whether Pussy Riot’s feminism really threatened the Russian constitution, which guarantees equal rights for men and women, as the Moscow court claimed.
Meanwhile, the New Year holidays were marred by the death of the legendary St. Petersburg drummer <b>Yevgeny Guberman</b>. 
Guberman, who died on Dec. 30 at the age of 57, was best-loved for his work with the seminal Leningrad underground rock bands Akvarium and Zoopark. See article, this page.

TITLE: Tradition for simplicity’s sake
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As popular wisdom in the opera world has it, many directors put on their best work when they follow the composer’s intentions, without turning the ideas inside out for the sake of experiment. The exceptions, some directors themselves often admit, only prove the rule.
French director Yannis Kokkos, whose production of Jules Massenet’s “Don Quichotte” (Don Quixote) premiered at the Mariinsky Theater on Dec. 28 and 29, has avoided an innovative conceptual staging and this production has created a masterful backdrop for the Mariinsky’s opera singers. Harmony, simplicity and rapport are key to the show’s success.
“Don Quichotte,” Massenet’s com&#233;die h&#233;ro&#239;que, has received delicate and tactful treatment from Kokkos, whose visual spectacular revolves around an ancient folio that graces the center of the stage, symbolizing the source of the story of the clash between fantasy and reality, the sadness of unrequited love and the comic side of heroism.
For the first two premiere performances, the Mariinsky recruited the renowned Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto to appear in the lead role. Furlanetto delivered a sumptuous performance, making the most of his stage presence and charisma. With a round tone and fine phrasing, the Italian offered an iconic treatment of the ill-fated romantic knight. 
This opera, originally written for the legendary Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin and premiered in 1920 at the Opera de Monte Carlo, throws down a vocal challenge to singers and demands a mighty stage presence. Without a particular singer in mind to fit the lead role, it would be suicidal for a company to embark on a production like this.  In the absence of an obvious Don Quixote, the Mariinsky solved the problem by inviting Furlanetto, thus finally accepting the international practice of inviting heavyweight guest stars to cast in premieres, without relying solely on homegrown talent. 
The director has infused the show with subtle retro elements, from elements of shadow theater, with silhouettes of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza slowly crossing the back of the stage, to the use of some primitive stage machinery, such as the knight’s life-size metal horse. The enormous folio that stands, wide open, on the stage, also serves as the knight’s deathbed in the opera’s finale. 
For Kokkos it was important to visually emphasize the contrast between the bourgeois crowd that ridicules and rejects Don Quixote and the knight himself. It is the confrontation of values, and the opposition of idealism and the materialism on which the director centers his production.
Andrei Serov is a solid choice as Don Quixote’s squire Sancho Panza. Technically adroit and liberated, he provides the much-needed comic relief for this opera-bouffe. 
Mezzo-soprano Anna Kiknadze is less convincing as the knight’s beloved, Dulcin&#233;e, who vocally appears somewhat shaky, yet who is dramatically very much in tune with Massenet’s image of Dulcin&#233;e, a coquettish and light-hearted creature, a somewhat understated attempt at Carmen, whose lack of sensitivity causes Don Quixote much heartache. Dramatically, the contrast between the old-fashioned and kind-hearted romantic knight and the cunning Dulcin&#233;e, with both feet firmly on the ground, is striking and works very much to the production’s advantage. The main character appears ultra-conventional, as if he indeed were a literary personage who has miraculously come alive and is finding it extremely hard to adjust his emotional innocence and humane values to the calculating materialism of the real world. 
The Mariinsky symphony orchestra, under the baton of Valery Gergiev, has brought vigor, energy and drive to its captivating interpretation of the score, delivering powerful waves of volume and color. The musicians produced a recording of the opera for the Mariinsky Label in 2012, winning rave reviews, and are clearly quite comfortable with the score. 
The show will not only please more conservative members of the audience who find it difficult to digest any modern twist or sharp social context in any historical opera, but will also be a treat for those who have managed to rise above the vicious clich&#233; that being traditional is a recipe for success. 
Soul-searching and experiment have been a tangible trend at the Mariinsky during the past several years. It has been Gergiev’s artistic policy to give the company more opportunities to break new artistic ground and be involved in experiments that offer both the musicians and the audiences daring new angles. That is why the Mariinsky chose to work with directors such as Daniele Finzi Pasca, whose productions for Cirque du Soleil have gained international recognition, and Claudia Solti, who has an extensive background in filmmaking. The results of the Mariinsky turning itself into an artistic testing-ground have been a hit-and-miss experience. In this context, Kokkos’ humane and tasteful production, which allows the performers to be spontaneous and grow within the show, is a soothing addition to the repertoire and is bound to achieve lasting popularity.

<i>“Don Quichotte” will next be performed on Feb. 1 at 8 p.m. at the Mariinsky Theater, 1 Teatralnaya Ploshchad. Tel. 326 4141. www.mariinsky.ru</i>

TITLE: Russia from the rails
AUTHOR: By Viktoria Koltsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The groundbreaking documentary project Cinetrain visited St. Petersburg this weekend on its drive to break stereotypes and capture Russian reality. 
The Cinetrain project sees foreign film crews travel around Russia for one month, stopping in cities for two or three days at a time and ending up at Lake Baikal in Siberia. On the four-day train journey back from Baikal, the crews will edit their short films, which will then be given pre-premiere screenings in Moscow on Feb. 6. Later, the films will be edited into one full-length movie and shown at international festivals. 
“This year we decided to explore stereotypes about Russia,” said Tatyana Petrik, the project’s executive producer. 
“Our country suffers from a bad image abroad: Bears on the streets, vodka… So we took the most common stereotypes and are exploring them while we travel on the following route: Murmansk, St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk, Kotlas, Tomsk and Irkutsk (Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal). We want to unite the short films into a full-length documentary called ‘Russian Winter,’” she added.
Seven film crews are working on the following stereotypes, titled: Vodka, Bears, Lada Mystery, Russian Women, Russian Winter, Russian Bath (banya) and Russian Soul. The crews took a train to Murmansk on Jan. 3 and will return to Moscow from Baikal on Feb. 1. 
“It is a challenge, to be able to focus and shoot on location with such limited time,” said Petrik. “We can’t really prepare anything until we arrive in the new city. You’ve got to run about, search for your characters, film them, think about your concept and edit. But on the other hand this is what makes our project so unique — the tight schedule brings out the liveliness, the moment right here and right now.”
This year, 24 young filmmakers from 15 countries were selected to take part. 
“After we had chosen our participants, we formed them into film crews based on their personal qualities and characters,” said Petrik. 
“We sent them information and links to literature and films to learn more about their topic, because it is impossible to have a foreigner land in Russia for the first time and next day shoot a good-quality documentary,” she added.
“This was a great opportunity for me; I have never been to Russia, never shot in these kinds of cold conditions, and have never really shot in snow,” said John Craine, director of photography for the Russian Soul film crew. 
“The Russian soul is mostly seen as a Dostoevsky-type, but really that is idealistic in a way. Talking to some of the guys on the Cinetrain crew, I realize it is not entirely true,” he said. 
“It’s difficult to film people when you don’t know what people are saying, because when you know, you can respond with the camera in a certain way,” he added.
To prove the stereotypes wrong is not the key idea. The filmmakers simply want to shoot their own view on the topic.
“When you start looking more closely at something simple, it is not simple anymore; it’s the same with stereotypes, you start exploring them and they are no longer there,” said Fyodor Druzin, director of the Russian Bath film. 
“My topic, the Russian bath, isn’t so much a stereotype, it’s just an image that lots of people have seen. Russian men and women run naked in the snow, and it adds to the image of the crazy and wild Russia. I want to show what the banya is, what it means, why people go there really. It is very important for me to show the atmosphere of the banya,” he added. 
St. Petersburg, the filmmakers’ second location after Murmansk, seemed much more European to the Cinetrain participants, they said, citing different styles of dress and architecture and a different atmosphere. 
The history of the legendary Cinetrain project goes back to Soviet filmmaker Alexander Medvedkin. In the 1930s he organized filmmaking train cars that traveled around the Soviet Union. Film crews not only shot and edited straight away, but also screened their movies on the spot to the people who took part in them. 
“In 2008 we did the first Cinetrain using modern equipment: Small but high-quality cameras, and editing on computers,” said Petrik. 
“We took the Trans-Siberian Railway and traveled from Moscow to Vladivostok and back. We had six international film crews, who each shot a 10-minute film about finding the border between Europe and Asia. There were no specific topics assigned, they all filmed what they wanted. We just wanted to see how it would work out. Our project premiered at the Cannes Film Festival,” she said.
The success of the pilot revival led to a second journey in 2010, as well as this year’s project. Each time, the Cinetrain explores and documents different regions of the former Soviet Union.
“The second time, in 2010, we went from Bishkek to Moscow, traveling through Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Russia,” said Petrik. 
“We explored the idea of these countries and people living as neighbors.” 

<i>The results of this year’s Cinetrain project will be screened on Feb. 6 at the DOC Documentary Film Center in Moscow. For more information, visit www.cinetrain.net</i>

TITLE: A perfect pas de deux
AUTHOR: By Chris Gordon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: For those who haven’t overdosed on sugar plum fairies and nutcracker princes during the recent holidays, the New York City Ballet unveiled a month-long festival Tuesday dedicated to the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky as interpreted by the iconic choreographer George Balanchine and others. 
Running through Feb. 24, the Celebrating Tchaikovsky festival presents some of Balanchine’s best-loved work as well as including both the first and last ballets he choreographed while in the U.S. It also offers a rare chance to see all nine of the Balanchine ballets currently in the New York City Ballet’s active repertory that were created to the music of Tchaikovsky.
A native of St. Petersburg, Balanchine emigrated to America in 1933 after a stint as Diaghilev’s choreographer for the Ballets Russes in Paris. Once in New York he quickly set about establishing a dance academy and eventually co-founded the New York City Ballet. 
Within a year of his arrival, Balanchine had premiered “Serenades” set to Tchaikovsky’s transcendent “Serenade for Strings in C” — a signature work for the New York City Ballet since its inception and the current festival’s opener. In it the choreographer concentrates 300 years of classical dance vocabulary into a modern masterpiece that places human movement at the center of a performative universe freed of narrative.
Balanchine’s relationship with Tchaikovsky’s music began while he was a dancer at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. Having cut his teeth on Marius Petipa’s choreography, Balanchine went on to create a version of “The Nutcracker” for his new homeland that has become a beloved and time-honored classic. During the course of his career Balanchine choreographed some 40 ballets inspired by the theatricality of Tchaikovsky’s music, calling it “music to make everyone weep.”
Perhaps most surprising for audiences used to more classical interpretations is the choreographer’s one-act compression of “Swan Lake” that today features an entire flock of black swans. Jettisoning the original plot, Balanchine combined music from the first and fourth acts of the ballet and added a duet from Tchaikovsky’s opera “Ondine” for good measure. The result is an extremely modern reflection on the original that foregrounds the emotive qualities of the music.
In addition to “Serenade” the company will also perform Balanchine’s “Mozartiana” and “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” on the same program, and “Swan Lake,” “Allegro Brillante” and “Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3” on another. The final Balanchine program will feature the “Diamonds” segment from “Jewels,” “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux” and “Divertimento from ‘Le Baiser de la F&#233;e,’” which was composed by Stravinsky as a homage to the music of Tchaikovsky.
The final program also includes “Bal de Couture,” a new work by Peter Martins set to selections from “Eugene Onegin.” Martins’ acclaimed production of Tchaikovsky’s “The Sleeping Beauty” closes both the Celebrating Tchaikovsky festival and the 2013 winter season.

<i>Celebrating Tchaikovsky runs through Feb. 24 at the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. For more information, visit www.nycballet.com</i>

TITLE: THE DISH: Brera Bar
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: <b>Fifty shades of gray</b>
Brera is a smart new bar that opened at the end of last year on the unassuming Pochtamtskaya Ulitsa. Housed just a few doors down from the upscale gourmet giant that is Ginza’s Mansarda, and around the corner from the row of expensive eateries comprised by the Stroganoff Steak House, Russian Vodka Room No. 1 and Graf-in, Brera offers a considerably less expensive and formal alternative for hungry office workers in this neighborhood. 
Named after a district in Milan, the restaurant offers a menu that is — unsurprisingly — predominantly Italian, and given that district’s reputation as the “Milanese Montmartre,” the interior is also suitably artistic.
A lot of work has gone into Brera’s original design, which certainly lives up to Italy’s reputation as the design capital. A centerpiece is the chandelier, which consists of dozens of spherical lamp bulbs bunched together with a red cord. On one wall, a huge mirror hangs in a wooden frame around which climbing vines snake their way, threaded in and out of a trellis. Large silver-colored lampshades resemble the kind of dryers that elderly ladies seem to spend hours under at the hairdresser’s, and doorknockers provide quirky decorations for the backs of some of the chairs. Spacious gray velvet armchairs positioned in front of the windows provide a languorously comfortable spot from which to watch the world go by. Gray is indeed a dominant theme, with the walls and a wardrobe at the entrance also painted in its shadowy shades.
There is also an international feel to Brera’s decoration, and a constant contrast between old and new, with flag designs inset into the shiny tables, other country symbols adorning the walls and furniture and a vast globe sitting in a stand on the bar that dominates one wall (and boasts an impressive peanut dispenser). Old-fashioned traveling trunks are dotted around the interior, among the smart leather hassocks and giant candles standing in enormous glass jars. Above the bar stands a miniature obelisk resembling a Cleopatra’s Needle, while a classical bust completes the picture of empire. A jarring note was, as so often encountered in Russian restaurants, the shopping channel playing on a flat-screen TV.
From the Italian classics on offer, bruschetta (100 rubles, $3.30) featured decadently ferocious amounts of fresh garlic alongside the tomatoes and basil. It was a small portion, but given its reasonable price and that it came from the Bar Snacks section of the menu, this was probably to be expected.
Traditional Italian clear soup with meatballs (290 rubles, $9.60) was a winner, and contained delicate, pea-sized pieces of potatoes and carrots, as well as tender meatballs. It made an excellent appetizer and winter warmer, without being too rich.
Another national favorite, ravioli with ricotta and arugula (250 rubles, $8.30), was disappointingly average, however, and lacked any strong taste, while the arugula was undetectable, presumably swamped by the oily sauce in which the ravioli were served.
Moving into more international territory, the hamburger (410 rubles, $13.50) was a spectacular sight, featuring both bacon and burger, as well as a mountainous hunk of Mozzarella and rings of roasted red onion, along with the obligatory lettuce and gherkin. The burger was very moist, which unfortunately made the bun disagreeably soggy. Despite this, it was refreshingly light for a hamburger, and the accompanying fries were a welcome surprise, in that they turned out to be chunky, British-style chips rather than American-style fries.
With a substantial wine menu as well as a range of fresh juices available for 200 rubles ($6.60) per 250 milliliters, Brera may not be a new gourmet Mecca, but as a smaller and reasonably priced caf&#233;-bar with a relaxed atmosphere, it is a welcome addition to a district dominated by large and expensive eateries. 

TITLE: Bringing Russia’s Rural Past to Life
AUTHOR: By Yelena Minenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Verkhniye Mandrogi, a cozy, peaceful village surrounded by water and woods, is connected to the rest of the world by just one bumpy earth road. The empty muddy streets of the village, its exclusively wooden houses and characteristic smell of woodsmoke recreate the leisurely rural atmosphere and peaceful way of life of an old village in Russia’s north.
The village, located on the banks of the Svir River some 300 kilometers northeast of St. Petersburg, was founded 16 years ago as an eco-stop (a stop in natural surroundings) for tourist cruise ships traveling between Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega, northern Russia’s two largest lakes. The name Verkhniye Mandrogi was taken from an old village that was located on the site until the 1940s, when it was burned down during World War II. 
Sergei Gutsait, the initiator of the project, was once on a cruise along the Svir River and found the conditions of the existing eco-stops rather poor. He then came up with an idea that would be advantageous both for tourists and for him as an entrepreneur. 
“The village initially was planned as a Russian Disneyland, an entertainment center based on the fairy tales and operas of the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov,” said Vitaly Vasilyev, director of the St. Petersburg Center for Humanitarian Programs, who was involved with the project in its early phase.
“But with time the idea transformed into something more global — not an artificial reconstruction, but a real modern village populated with real people,” he added.
Artisans and craftsmen from all over Russia were invited to live and work here, including one of the main creators of the village’s original style, woodcarver Yury Gusev. It is Gusev to whom Verkhniye Mandrogi owes its colorful, fiendish images of dragons and other unidentifiable fearsome creatures, which don’t really stem from traditional Russian art themes. 
The atmosphere of a real Russian village from a bygone age was brought to Mandrogi a little later, when authentic wooden houses from the cities of Vologda and Arkhangelsk were delivered in sections and then reassembled. Nowadays this part of the settlement, called the Old Village, is the most interesting, since the interiors have been recreated with the addition of original Russian peasant paraphernalia. 
The only stone building in the village is a mansion created in the style of a 19th-century landowner’s house — a residence for VIP guests. 
“Now we’re also working on one of the most long-awaited projects — the transportation of an old village church to Verkhniye Mandrogi,” said reception manager Galina, who introduced herself only by her first name, saying that in their “rural, democratic way of life” they don’t use surnames. 
“It will be a functioning church with a priest, like in any typical Russian village,” she said.
Today Verkhniye Mandrogi is a unique settlement as well as a commercial enterprise with a population of about 100 people. There are more than 50 different constructions on the site, including a kindergarten and a school for employees’ children. In summer the population doubles when more craftsmen come here to work during the holidays.  
During the navigation season, between two and 14 cruise ships disembark daily at the village. 
“At first it was just a stopover, but when some guests who came by ship wanted to stay longer, we started building small inns and guesthouses,” said Galina.
“Today we can house 150 people at any one time, and most services are aimed at guests visiting for several days,” she added. 
The main centers of attraction are workshops of different craftsmen located mainly in the Old Village. Nelya, a weaver from Ukraine, works in the house of the Old Believers, a religious group that broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church after a schism in 1666. The interiors of the authentic house are full of original exhibits that people can touch, unlike in most ethnographic museums. 
“I live here permanently, but my daughter studies in the city and comes to help me with work in summer,” said Nelya. 
In the center of the main room — heated by a large white Russian stove — there is an old but functioning weaver’s loom, behind which Nelya demonstrates the weaving process and performs master classes. 
Nelya’s husband Vladimir works in the woodcarving workshop and specializes in elaborate wooden toys typical of northern culture: Birds of happiness. 
“I’ve been working with wood since long before I was invited here,” he said. “I am self-taught; in the North where I’m from almost everybody knows how to work with wood from childhood.”
Other houses are occupied by a blacksmith, potters, engravers and painters. 
The only means of transport in the village is simple open-air carts drawn by horses, which are taken care of by Vladimir Yerofeyich, a groom from Pskov with an impressively large beard. His stables are home to about 20 thoroughbred horses and one fat, disdainful cat.
“In summer we take tourists from cruise ships around the village on a kind of sightseeing tour,” said Yerofeyich, as the locals call him. 
To provide food for guests, small farms have been created: Cows, rabbits, quails and ducks are bred on the territory. 
“We have our own pickles and preserves, we bake our own bread and famous Mandrogi pies and make cranberry drinks and liqueurs,” said reception manager Galina. 
The meals here are very heavy, as they often are in Russian homes, although food is not included in the cost of accommodation, which ranges from 2,600 to 45,000 rubles ($85-$1,490) per night. 
One of the must-sees is a vodka museum celebrating the one thing to be found in every Russian settlement. The Mandrogi vodka museum was the first of its kind and is now the biggest in Russia. Visitors can try different kinds of vodka and learn about the complex customs associated with drinking it. 
“Verkhniye Mandrogi is an exemplary product of the tourist business — in all other similar complexes everything is made out of cardboard, it’s not real, just semblance,” said Vasilyev. 
“The aim was to draw talented people to the village, settle them here and provide them with a salary that they would never get in the backwoods — it’s a really socially responsible business,” he added.
The craftsmen who create their works here live on the money that they make from sales. 
“We don’t hide the fact that we are a commercial project offering elite recreation, and we are not aimed at reviving traditional crafts and folk culture,” said manager Galina. “Our main purpose is to entertain our guests and show them different Russian crafts and trades.”
Those seeking a genuine experience of Russian peasant life will not find it in Verkhniye Mandrogi, with its comfortable accommodation, electricity, sewage, water systems and Wi-Fi. Instead, Mandrogi offers something of its own — a stylized resort in beautiful natural surroundings, high-class service and diverse entertainment rooted in the old Russian way of life. 
<hr />
<b>How To Get There</b>

From St. Petersburg, Verkhniye Mandrogi can be reached by car (a drive of around five hours) or by train, with further organized transfer by car (there are several trains to Podporozhye, close to Mandrogi, from St. Petersburg’s Ladozhsky Railway Station every day). The return transfer by car to the station costs 1,800 rubles ($60). 
Many river cruise ships also make a three- to four-hour stopover at Mandrogi.cellar.

TITLE: Olympic Complex Nears Completion in Sochi
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As the much-anticipated Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games approach, the mountain resort of Krasnaya Polyana is getting ready to host international competitions at its brand new facilities. The state-of-the-art biathlon and ski complex, which boasts arguably the world’s most complex and challenging runs, is set to host the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup Biathlon competition in March this year.
While Russian athletes are yet to produce impressive results on home soil, the team behind the ambitious project has begun to set its own records. The Alpika Service ski complex is putting the finishing touches to the world’s longest aerial cableway, which will link the transport hub at the bottom of the Krasnaya Polyana resort with the ski and biathlon complex up at the Psekhako Ridge. 
The cableway will have the capacity to serve up to 3,000 people per hour, according to Vladimir Makarenko, deputy director for the construction of Olympic projects of the Social Invest wing of the Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom. 
“The technical solution that we are employing on this cableway is unique: This is a so-called 3S road, meaning that instead of the one rope usually used on such cableways, we are using three,” said Makarenko. 
“This extra resource ensures that we can use very large gondolas that can hold up to 32 people. By comparison, a standard cabin has a modest capacity for no more than five people.”
Work is in full swing at the future transport hub that will connect those who arrive by train from the Adler-Sochi airport and by bus from the nearby areas to the stadiums by three aerial cableways. The three cableways will together be able to process up to 7,000 people per hour. 
At present, with about 70 percent of work completed, Alpika Service is a busy construction site, with shells of buildings looming over piles of facing tiles, pipes, metal and wire.  
Matvei Geller, head of Gazprom’s special projects department, said all construction work will be finished by October this year, when the company will announce the total costs of the ambitious project. 
The biathlon and ski complex has already gained praise and approval from both medal-winning sportsmen and sports officials who have had the opportunity to assess the facilities. 
Sergei Prosvirnin is a four-time world champion in summer biathlon, a warm weather version of the traditional biathlon in which the skiing is replaced by either running or mountain biking. He now works for the state-run ROS Engineering Service that has been contracted to provide technical assistance in the construction of the Olympic projects.
Prosvirnin says that the 4.5-kilometer biathlon run throws a tough challenge to sportsmen, being one of the most difficult of its kind in the world, owing to dramatic variations in elevation over its course. 
“The elevation changes to the most extreme degree allowed in this kind of competition,” said Prosvirnin. “The run will definitely be one of the toughest in the world.” 
In addition to the biathlon ring-run, two five-kilometer runs for skiers have been completed.  Members of the Russian female ski team recently tested the highly challenging roller ski track — and a fair proportion of the sportswomen were unable to complete the run. 
“We drew some conclusions from the team’s performance, and we will make some adjustments to the track,” Prosvirnin said. 
The ski and biathlon complex will also serve as a permanent training base for the Russian teams, which until now have been forced to train abroad in the absence of high-quality facilities on home ground. 
“For the Olympic Games in Vancouver in 2010, dismountable ski and biathlon facilities were built for financial reasons, and this is quite a common solution when countries want to economize,” Makarenko said. “We have decided to build a proper stadium, which will be put to regular use in Russia, where biathlon is an important sport.”
The ski slopes and tracks are located in close proximity to the Olympic village — a great advantage for the athletes. When the athletes leave their apartment in the Olympic village, the closest ski run will be located within 50 to 100 meters — a distance unheard of in most countries, where athletes are usually driven by bus for a good hour or two from the cottages to the slopes.
“Actually, the close proximity of the venues was an important factor in favor of Sochi when the decision about the host city for the 2014 Winter Olympics was being made,” Makarenko said. “Very few locations are in a position to offer such convenient conditions.” 
The Olympic village will consist of cottages that can accommodate 280 athletes — which have already been completed — as well as a vast hotel and apartment complex with a capacity for a further 800 people. It is expected that the cottages, made of pinewood, comfortably furnished and overlooking breathtaking mountain landscapes that rival the most prestigious Alpine resorts, will sell like hot cakes once they go on sale after the Olympics. 
Both local residents and the Olympic ideologists are hoping that the Olympics will give Krasnaya Polyana a huge boost that will prompt the development of the locality into a prestigious Russian winter resort.
After the resort is put into full-time operation, prices for ski-passes, accommodation and services will be on the same level as at the major European ski meccas, and it is hoped that a significant proportion of the Russian visitors to the latter will opt for Krasnaya Polyana and become loyal regulars.
The issue of when the investment will be returned, and even when the resort will start bringing in profit, remains an open question. The Olympics, just like the space and arms industries, remain a matter of national pride and prestige and are admittedly more of a political rather than commercial enterprise. 
“This is not about commerce, this is about the prestige of Russia,” Makarenko said. “As for the specifics of the construction itself, the highest spending here is on-the-ground protection. Only about 20 percent of the costs are necessitated by the sports sites themselves, while the lion’s share of the money is needed for engineering works.”