SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1745 (4), Wednesday, February 6, 2013
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TITLE: In Show of Force, Putin Sacks Olympics Official
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – The countrywide celebrations marking the one-year countdown to the start of the Winter Olympics in Sochi were overshadowed Thursday by a high-profile dismissal at the Russian Olympic Committee.
During a two-day inspection of Olympic construction sites, President Vladimir Putin fired the committee's deputy president, Akhmed Bilalov, because of skyrocketing construction costs and delays in completion of the Russkiye Gorki ski jump at the Krasnaya Ployana ski resort.
The move followed Putin's visit to the construction site a day earlier, when he castigated Bilalov for the poor work.
Analysts said the incident was a public dressing-down amid ongoing speculation about embezzlement and corruption during preparations for the games. A video of the president inspecting the construction work appeared online Wednesday.
Bilalov, who is also president of Northern Caucasus Resorts, a state-owned company overseeing a project to develop that region as a tourist destination, will be dismissed from all his positions in line with Putin's order, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak said at a news conference in Sochi.
"The required instructions have been made. He'll be dismissed from those two positions," said Kozak, who oversees Olympic preparations.
Kozak pointed out that Bilalov had taken on the task of financing the project, with part of the investment coming from Krasnaya Polyana Company, Russkiye Gorki's core investor, which was owned by Bilalov until Sberbank acquired control in May.
"After an investor takes on an obligation to build an Olympic facility, it becomes an obligation by the Russian Federation to the International Olympic Committee," Kozak said, adding that failing to fulfill such obligations affects Russia's image negatively.
Russia celebrated the one-year countdown to the Olympics on Thursday by installing huge clocks in eight cities that count the days, hours, minutes and seconds before the event. The clocks were installed in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Rostov-on-Don, Pyatigorsk and Khabarovsk.
A day earlier, Putin grilled the government and Russian Olympic Committee officials in his usual laconic manner about the reasons for delays.
In the video on YouTube, the president doesn't seem to be well aware of Bilalov's status.
"What is Mr. Bilalov doing now? Where does Bilalov work?" he asked. "It turns out that a deputy president of the country's Olympic Committee is dragging the construction down?" Putin said with indignation after figuring out that Bilalov had been in charge of the project.
But the whole show might have been just for effect, since Bilalov is a well-known figure among the country's elites, and Putin was likely aware of his activities and business interests, said Yury Korgunyuk, an analyst for think tank INDEM.
Putin was playing "a wise and fair leader," but he was acting for the camera after making Bilalov a sacrificial lamb to show that the corruption fight is under way, Korgunyuk said.
"That's the Russian way to eliminate corruption," he added.
Bilalov, who hails from the republic of Dagestan, started his political career in 1999 as a deputy in the third State Duma representing the Edinstvo movement, which was subsequently reorganized into the ruling United Russia party.
He also represented a United Russia faction in the fourth State Duma between 2003 and 2007 and was a Federation Council senator from the Krasnodar region in 2011 and 2012.
Bilalov was appointed to the Russian Olympic Committee in 2010, the year he reportedly sold his stake in Krasnaya Polyana to his younger brother Magomed.
But some media outlets said Akhmed Bilalov remained the company's beneficiary until last year, when Sberbank bought an additional share issue to increase its stake in the company from 25 percent to 50.03 percent.
The country's biggest lender had invested approximately 2 billion rubles ($66 million) in the Russkiye Gorki complex in 2010 in exchange for a 25 percent stake.
Completion of the complex was initially scheduled for June 2011, but the deadline was moved to July 2013 because the investor, Krasnaya Polyana, was dragging out the work, Kozak told Putin during Wednesday's inspection.
He also said the construction cost had soared from 1.2 billion rubles in 2009 to 8 billion rubles, with part of the sum provided by state lenders.
"Well done! You are doing a good job," Putin retorted ironically.
Kozak said Bilalov was aware of the authorities' dissatisfaction with his work.
"While he was participating in the project, I told him maybe a dozen times the same things the president said at the ski jump yesterday," Kozak said at the news conference Thursday, Interfax reported.
He added that delays in completing the ski jump complex had been caused by mistakes during the preliminary investigation of the construction site because the peculiarities of the soil hadn't been taken into account.
"I told him that the initial work on this site had been carried out as if it were done for an enemy, not for himself," the deputy prime minister said, referring to Bilalov. "Now a different shareholder, Sberbank, has to drive piles to keep this ski jump in place on the unstable soil of the slope."
Kozak said formalities have yet to be finalized before Bilalov is dismissed officially. After the dismissal, Bilalov will be free to choose "any other place of work," Kozak said.
TITLE: Navalny Ally's Apartment Raided
AUTHOR: ByYekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Investigators on Thursday raided the apartment of Vladimir Ashurkov, director of the Foundation for Fighting Corruption and an anti-Kremlin activist, in connection with a criminal case against opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Navalny, who started the foundation, is accused of stealing 100 million rubles ($3.3 million) from the now-defunct Union of Right Forces liberal opposition party in 2007. Navalny denies the charges, which were announced by investigators in December.
In Thursday's raid, investigators seized documents and electronic equipment including computers, Navalny tweeted. An Investigative Committee representative said the confiscated materials were related to the theft case, Interfax reported.
Navalny, who is a practicing lawyer, wrote on his blog that he went to Ashurkov's apartment to offer him legal assistance but that investigators blocked him from entering.
Navalny alleged that the seizures were designed to paralyze the activity of the anti-corruption foundation and had nothing to do with the criminal case, noting that he was not acquainted with Ashurkov in 2007.
He said he believed investigators wanted to "dig around in them [the seized electronics] and find something interesting/compromising."
Ashurkov's cell phone, which was seized by investigators in Thursday's raid, was turned off, and other attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful.
A U.S.-educated former Alfa Group executive, Ashurkov took the helm at Navalny's Foundation for Fighting Corruption last year. The foundation is an umbrella body for projects including the tracker of state tenders RosPil, pothole-busting RosYama, election monitor RosVybory and volunteer coordinator Good Vehicle of Truth.
Ashurkov is also a member of the Coordination Council, an unofficial body charged with making key decisions for the nonparliamentary opposition.
Investigators did not say Thursday what connection Ashurkov might have to the theft case against Navalny, one of three criminal cases open against the opposition leader.
The case relating to the Union of Right Forces has no stated victims. Navalny, who says he has not been officially charged in the case, is suspected of receiving 100 million rubles for providing advertising services to the party and then transferring the money to shell companies.
Investigators based their opening of the case on the fact that they had not found any document confirming that the contract for the advertising services had been fulfilled.
Former members of the party have said government agencies have all the relevant documents.
A number of high-profile figures have been questioned by investigators as part of the case, including former party leader and current Kirov region Governor Nikita Belykh, former party co-leader and current liberal opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, former party presidium member Maria Gaidar, deputy head of the party's political council Leonid Gozman and television presenter Vladimir Solovyov.
All of them have denied that money disappeared from the party and have said the case is politically motivated.
TITLE: Obama Urged to Take a Harder Line on Putin's Russia
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – U.S.-based pro-democracy watchdog Freedom House slammed President Vladimir Putin for the “worst deterioration in Russia's democracy and human rights situation” and urged U.S. President Barack Obama to take a harder line, according to a report published Thursday.
The report criticized Putin for his “anti-American rhetoric and policies” and said the Obama administration should take a “markedly different approach” from the reset policy of Obama's first term.
The U.S. and allied leaders should not lend Putin “undeserved legitimacy or invest much time with him,” the report said, and Obama should personally “speak out against Putin’s human rights abuses and crackdown on civil society.”
In one of the other recommendations, Freedom House urged Obama to abandon his calls for “win-win” cooperation with the Kremlin, saying “such rhetoric only feeds the impression in Moscow that the Obama administration needs and wants a good relationship more than Putin does.”
“The United States undermines its own credibility in the world when it comes across as too forgiving and desirous of good relations at all costs instead of proactively asserting its interests and values.”
Freedom House also urges the Obama administration to “aggressively” implement the Magnitsky Act and encourage democratic allies to pass similar legislation. In force for a few weeks now, the act, named after a whistle-blowing Russian lawyer who died in pretrial detention, seeks to punish Russian officials who commit human rights violations by imposing sanctions that include denying them entry to the United States.
Among the other proposals, the report said there should be no U.S. support for Russia’s bid to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as long as Putin continues his crackdown at home.
Freedom House also criticized the Obama administration for “meekly” accepting a range of recent moves by Putin that many see as blatant anti-Americanism, namely expelling USAID from Russia, ejecting the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), ending the Nunn-Lugar nuclear nonproliferation program with the United States, banning American adoptions of Russian children and terminating a bilateral counternarcotics agreement.
TITLE: Sochi Is a Hard Nut to Crack for PR Gurus
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – One year before the Winter Olympics are to kick off, it looks like Sochi 2014 is getting mired in controversy.
While the country's leaders have made it clear that the Olympics are a matter of national pride and prestige, national and international media attention is increasingly focused on the unprecedented $50 billion price tag, allegations of massive corruption, involvement of warring mafia clans, ecological destruction and the unfair forced resettlement of local residents.
On Wednesday, U.S. watchdog Human Rights Watch weighed in by saying that migrant workers employed in construction sites are subject to systematic exploitation.
Earlier this week, a report in Britain's Guardian linked the city with an ongoing turf war between mafia clans because reputed crime boss Aslan Usoyan, who was killed in Moscow last month, had vital business interests here.
And in a rare appearance on national television, veteran opposition leader Boris Nemtsov said on RBC TV that "between 50 and 80 percent" of the money "or some $30 billion" that is poured into Sochi is pocketed by corrupt officials and businessmen.
Nemtsov, who was born in Sochi and unsuccessfully ran for mayor in the city in 2009, argued that it was a huge mistake to award the Winter Games to a city with a subtropical climate, where practically all related infrastructure had to be built from scratch.
President Vladimir Putin seemed to respond to that criticism Wednesday, when he admitted that corruption was driving up costs. "The most important thing is that nobody pilfers, so that there won't be unsubstantiated price hikes," he warned during an inspection in the Roza Khutor skiing resort.
Putin is widely seen as the games' patron after he was credited with personally convincing members of the International Olympic Committee to award them to Russia in Guatemala City in 2007.
Analysts even said that his desire to preside over the games as head of state was one explanation for his decision to return to the presidency last year. "One reason certainly was that opening the games with world leaders gives you such international prestige," said Alexei Makarkin of the Center of Political Technologies, a think tank.
Deputy Prime Minister Kozak, the government's point man for the Olympics, picked up this theme when he rebutted criticism of cost overruns by arguing that most of the money went into infrastructure projects. Speaking to reporters in Sochi on Tuesday, he said that only 200 billion rubles ($6.6 billion), split evenly between private investors and the state, is going into the Olympic construction, while the rest would be for the benefit of the local population.
"Attracting so much investment should be a matter of national pride," he was quoted as saying by Interfax.
Feelings of pride have been competing with a barrage of criticism for some time.
Critics argue that most of the private money comes from large state corporations, which rarely act in corporate interests. The games' general sponsor is state oil giant Rosneft, while Gazprom and Russian Railways are also on board.
Prominent among the critics are ecologists, who say that the massive construction projects are destroying local wildlife. In 2010, the United Nations Environment Program said in a report that the government had ignored the cumulative effects of the various projects on the regional ecosystems.
Another campaign against the games has been waged by Circassians, the remnants of the region's aboriginal inhabitants, many of whom fled after the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the mid-19th century. Circassian activists, based mostly in the United States and the Middle East, complain that their ancestors' mass exodus amounts to brutal colonization and genocide committed by the Russian Empire and have launched a website against the games. http://nosochi2014.com/
But the most serious concerns have been around security, which is fragile in the entire North Caucasus region, that begins just behind the mountains that tower over Sochi.
In a bizarre incident, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, fueled such fears when it said last year that agents foiled a terrorist plot on Sochi, that was masterminded by Chechen separatists and authorities in Georgia. Making matters worse, the FSB said it discovered a huge arms cache in Abkhazia, a breakaway Georgian republic that lies just kilometers from Sochi.
However, PR experts interviewed for this article said that while it is facing an uphill struggle, the government might still reap a positive outcome.
They say that while media typically devote attention on controversy and criticism in the run-up to the games, their successful conduct can make this quickly forgotten.
"In the Olympic cycle you typically get a dip in confidence around a year before the start," said Dan Timms, who was the British government's head of communications for the 2012 London Summer Games, and who now works for Portland, a London-based communications agency.
Timms said that organizers should work hard over the coming 12 months because Olympic Games invariably provide an opportunity like no other.
"There are few international sporting events that might have a larger impact on how the rest of the world views a host country," he said.
As an example, Timms pointed out that Canada made a huge image leap because of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.
He added that in the run-up, Vancouver was also hit by criticism, ranging from climate concerns to opposition from native Americans. "But they launched a clever promotional campaign, and their nation brand index jumped from 2005 in 2010," he said by telephone.
Russia usually fares poorly in international image ratings. In a 2011 survey it was rated the worst member of the BRIC group, which includes China, Brazil and India, tying with Egypt and Venezuela.
Timms suggested that while the games won't heal a negative image overnight, they could do a lot of good by surprising people.
"They can send a strong signal to the world of a new, modern Russia," he said.
His words were echoed by Peter Necarsulmer, a veteran PR strategist who has worked in Russia since 1990.
Necarsulmer argued that while the task was definitely difficult, the country was doomed to succeed because "there is nothing more important than pulling off a globally successful 2014."
He added that the government would have "demonstrate that the fabulously large investment has benefit not only for the image also for the people."
Igor Reichlin, owner of the Reichlin & Partners PR firm, predicted a mixed result. "They will do anything possible to prevent disaster. Russia is always good for mass-mobilization," he said. "But I don't know if they will manage to cover the gaping holes behind the scenes."
TITLE: Jets Scramble on Japan's Northern Territories Day
AUTHOR: By Ivan Nechepurenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Japan scrambled four fighter jets to intercept two Russian fighters it said invaded Japanese airspace near Russia's Kuril Islands for about 11 seconds Thursday, as Japan celebrated a national day of commemoration calling for the disputed archipelago seized in World War II to return to the Japanese.
Russia's Defense Ministry denied that an intrusion had taken place and said it was conducting military exercises in the area. For months, Japan has been locked in a bitter territorial dispute with China over land in the East China Sea.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, elected in late December with promises to strengthen territorial defense, said at a rally earlier Thursday, Japan's Northern Territories Day, that his country would seek to find a "solution" to the dispute over the Kurils, which Japan calls the Northern Territories.
The national Northern Territories Day commemorates the anniversary of an 1855 treaty with Russia that solidified Japanese sovereignty over the islands. The day is marked by nationalist rallies across the country calling for the territory to be returned.
Originally, the islands were inhabited by neither the Japanese nor Russians, but by the indigenous Ainu people. Russia acquired the islands only in 1945, at the end of World War II.
The Allies' 1951 peace treaty with Japan — which, however, was not signed by the Soviet Union — renounced Japan's rights to the Kurils, but did not specify what islands would be internationally considered as part of the archipelago. In 1956, the Soviet Union offered Japan the Habomai and Shikotan islands, part of the Kuril chain, in exchange for a peace treaty. But only a joint declaration to end the war was signed, and the islands are still under Russian control.
Since then, the two countries' positions have not changed significantly. In the meantime, the parties have repeatedly discussed the issue. Although Russia has not budged over its claim to the islands, it has agreed to allow visa-free travel for the Japanese to visit the land and fish in the area.
Alexander Konovalov, head of the Institute for Strategic Assessment, told The St. Petersburg Times that he did not see how, with all enduring territorial disputes, Japan could achieve significant progress on the issue. "The only way out of this situation is by using the islands jointly," he said. "For instance, Russia can soothe Japan's sentiments by allowing more cultural exchange."
Apart from its territorial disputes with Russia and China, Japan also contests sovereignty over the Liancourt Islets with South Korea.
Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said Russia feels vulnerable and isolated and, as such, is unlikely to make any significant concessions. "Russia was always part of a bigger whole. Today it feels lonely and isolated and, therefore, reacts to territorial disputes very acutely."
In 2010, then-President Dmitry Medvedev became the first Russian leader to visit the islands, sparking rebukes by the Japanese government. He returned for a second visit in July 2012. The islands have a significant strategic and economic value, with fish, oil and gold and silver deposits.
TITLE: Foreign Agent Law Complaint Sent to Strasbourg
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Eleven prominent rights groups have sent a complaint against Russia’s so-called foreign agent law, which targets NGOs engaged in political activities, to the European Court of Human Rights.
The organizations argued Thursday that the legislation violates the Constitution and fundamental human rights — such as the freedoms of expression and assembly — by threatening the groups with closure.
“The law is a real threat and might be applied against us any minute,” Oleg Orlov of the Memorial human rights center, told reporters in Moscow.
Apart from Memorial, the complaint’s other 10 submitters include the Moscow Helsinki Group, the For Human Rights movement and the Golos vote watchdog.
The law, which came into force in November, stipulates that non-governmental organizations must label themselves “foreign agents” if they receive foreign funding and engage in political activity.
Its opponents argue that the law’s declared aim — to increase transparency in NGO funding — does not correspond to its real aim of stifling the activities of pro-democracy and human rights groups. Critics also complain that the law’s definition of political activity — shaping public opinion and influencing political decision-makers — is so vague that it can be applied to any aspect of their work.
According to the law, such organizations must register themselves as foreign agents with the Justice Ministry, but none has done so. Most human rights organizations have vowed to defy the law, which threatens non-complying organizations with closure and their heads with criminal charges.
The activists said Thursday that they want the Strasbourg-based court to give the complaint priority status.
They also argued that their case justifies a complaint before having exhausted national courts because of the imminent serious threat against NGOs and their staff.
Neither the government nor law enforcement agencies have given an indication whether or when they would crack down on the non-compliance with the foreign agent law.
TITLE: Police Evict Warehouse Squatters in Violent Clashes
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Investigative Committee said Tuesday it had opened an investigation into alleged attacks on policemen who stormed a historic building belonging to the now-defunct Warsaw Railway Station.
The 19th-century warehouse had been occupied by activists, who had turned it into a cultural center in the hope of saving it from impending demolition.
Two of the activists face up to 10 years in prison on charges of violent assault of a police officer.
The OMON special-task police stormed the building late Monday, arresting 22 activists. The activists, mostly anarchists and preservationists who had given themselves the name Spasi i Sokhrani (Save and Protect) Collective, said they were beaten, some badly.
The police said Tuesday that three officers had sustained injuries, two of whom have been hospitalized.
Fontanka.ru news website cited a police source who said that one officer had sustained a “closed head injury, concussion and lacerations” as the result of “several blows to his head with a crowbar,” while another had a “punctured lip and broken teeth” and the third a “contused laceration” of his hand or arm.
An activist who identified himself only as Alexander said Tuesday that the OMON special-task force — summoned after the regular police had failed to get the activists out of the building — broke in, beating and arresting people.
“They did not let anybody out, they simply flew in and started beating everybody with truncheons, and forced them onto the ground,” Alexander said.
“Some of our guys shouted out loudly that they were being beaten. Several defenders sustained serious injuries. One had a concussion, one young woman who was defending the squat from the outside repeatedly had her head bashed against an iron grid and ended up in the hospital later that day, and several more people called us from the police precinct saying they felt very unwell after being hit really hard.”
He said he did not witness any attacks on police officers.
According to Alexander, about 45 activists gathered in and near the warehouse to defend the building after the police first attempted to seize it on Monday. A number of activists stood in a line, preventing the police from entering the warehouse.
He said that the police were called by the developer’s security guards after the latter came in the morning and started breaking the warehouse’s wall with sledgehammers, before retreating after a conversation with the activists. The building’s electricity was cut off on Saturday.
“We spoke to the Admiralty district’s deputy police chief, who insisted on entering the building to check it for drugs or whatever,” Alexander said.
“The preservationists who were with us tried to explain to him that the building had a historical value, and he said he had received a report from the owners about the building being illegally seized, although he did not present any documents.”
The police spokesman said Tuesday that 20 activists who were detained Monday had been charged with arbitrariness, or taking the law into their own hands, as well as failure to obey a police officer’s orders and disorderly conduct. He added that not all of the activists have been charged with all three crimes.
A number of detained activists were held in police precincts overnight and were expected to appear in court Tuesday, but according to Alexander, no hearings were held, and some activists were yet to find out their official charges. He said 17 people remained at different police precincts by the evening.
The activists occupied a 19th-century warehouse in November, soon after another historic warehouse was demolished on the site by a developer. According to the activists, the developer is set to tear down the buildings to make way for elite apartment buildings.
“They destroyed several warehouses; they either demolished them with machinery or set fire to them, and they stand burnt and in ruins,” Alexander said.
“Only two or three of them are left, with the ruins of destroyed warehouses right next to them.”
The activists turned the building into a cultural center — complete with an art gallery and a bar — that had been open to the public since early January. According to Alexander, a music concert and a few disco nights had been held at the location, with more being planned.
Several attempts by the developer’s security guards to drive the activists out last month failed.
Dating back to the 1850s, the Warsaw Railway Station was closed in 2001 to be reconstructed into a retail and entertainment complex. The historic warehouse buildings belonging to the station were stripped of their protected status in 2007. The preservationists said that decision was illegal, and demanded that the buildings be put back under state protection.
TITLE: Plant Power to Heal Humans
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A group of scientists from St. Petersburg State University has bred a number of transgenic plants that are able to boost the human immune system, including the cells responsible for fighting viruses, the university’s press service announced, Interfax reported.
The scientists have developed transgenic tobacco, pea and carrot plants that synthesize bull interferon. This protein is produced by the cells of the immune system and boosts immunity.
“The transgenic plants that contain interferon stimulate anti-virus immunity and this is the only effective way to fight viral infections. During flu epidemics it would be enough just to have a salad made of such carrots to prevent infection,” said Vladislav Yemelyanov, an assistant professor of the university’s Genetics and BioTechnologies faculty.
TITLE: WHO Calls for Harsher Tobacco Laws
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The World Health Organization, which has supported Russia’s plans to take tough measures to limit smoking, is calling for the age limit for cigarette sales to be raised in Russia, Interfax reported.
“In many countries you can buy cigarettes from the age of 18. However, many counties have raised the age limit to 20 to 21 years old,” said Haik Nikogosyan, Head of the Secretariat of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
“Raising the age limit in Russia could be an effective measure. That would be the right step,” he said.
Nikogosyan said the WHO supported Russia’s plans to limit smoking in public places. The law on the matter is to be considered by the State Duma in a third reading later this year.
“In Russia the death rate from tobacco is very high. You’re losing your population. For you it’s a demographic issue, an issue of national security. It’s more than a health service. Tough state intervention in that area will be justified,” he said.
Nikogosyan suggested that Moscow could become a tobacco-free city.
“You could make all of Moscow tobacco-free. New York City, [which is] also a big city, has become free of smoking. You can’t smoke anywhere in New York, not in hotels, nor in restaurants. There’s hardly anywhere you can smoke there,” he said.
Nikogosyan said the WHO was worried by the increase of cigarette production in Russia.
“You should get rid of those tobacco factories, not only in Moscow but in Russia in general. Russia risks becoming a paradise for tobacco production. In the last 25 to 30 years the production of cigarettes in Russia has doubled,” Nikogosyan said.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Typhoid in City
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A child has been diagnosed with typhoid fever in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported.
The child’s mother, reportedly a citizen of Tajikistan who lives in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, took the child to a children’s hospital, where the diagnosis was ascertained.
According to data from the Russian Consumer Watch, at least 41 cases of typhoid fever were registered in Russia in 2011.
Free Wi-Fi in City Center
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Free Wi-Fi will appear in parks in the center of the city and on Nevsky Prospekt, Andrei Kibitov, spokesman of City Governor Georgy Poltavchenko said, Interfax reported.
The issue was discussed with Poltavchenko at a meeting of City Hall’s Youth Council.
The area of free Wi-Fi coverage will later be expanded to include the main streets in the city center, Kibitov said.
More Mondeos
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Ford Motor Company plant in the Leningrad Oblast resumed production of Ford’s Mondeo model on Feb. 4, Interfax reported.
The production of the Ford Mondeo was temporarily halted last fall due to a shortage of parts for that model, Delovoi Peterburg newspaper reported Feb. 4.
Hermitage Hikes Price
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The entrance fee for Russian visitors to the State Hermitage Museum has increased from 200 rubles ($6.70) to 250 rubles ($8.30), beginning Feb. 1.
For foreign citizens it remains 400 rubles ($13.30).
Earthquake in Finland
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Minor earthquakes in the suburbs of Helsinki that occurred on Sunday and Monday won’t affect seismic activity in St. Petersburg, Vladimir Karpinsky, chief geophysics engineer at the Russian Academy of Sciences, was quoted as saying by website Fontanka.ru.
The magnitude of the earthquake in Finland was only 1.7 points on the Richter scale, Karpinsky said, adding that nobody but experts had noticed it.
The border between the Karelian Isthmus and Karelia is known as the Ladoga-Bothnian tectonic zone, and similar phenomena occur there sometimes, Karpinsky said.
Finnish media said it was the first time an earthquake on that scale had been registered in the Helsinki area for 90 years.
TITLE: Mistral Hull Heading to France Soon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A St. Petersburg shipyard will send France the assembled stern section for the first Mistral helicopter-carrying amphibious assault ship this summer, Alexei Kravchenko, spokesman for the United Shipbuilding Corporation, announced Friday.
The stern section is under construction at the Baltiisky Zavod shipyard in St. Petersburg owned by United Shipbuilding Corporation. It will consist of 120 separate sections to be assembled at the shipyard, Kravchenko said.
The assembled section will then be shipped to France by sea, Interfax reported.
“The shipment of the first Mistral’s stern section to France means the Russian shipbuilders will have fulfilled their obligations to build [parts of] the ship’s hull,” Kravchenko said. He denied recent rumors in the press that construction of the stern and fulfillment by Russia of its commitments is behind schedule. “Such information does not correspond to reality,” Kravchenko said.
The official keel laying ceremony for the first Mistral for the Russian Navy will be held in the French city of St. Nazaire on Friday, Interfax reported.
France announced in February 2010 an agreement to sell Russia a Mistral ship, with an option for three more vessels. On June 17, 2011 Russia and France signed a $1.7 billion contract for the joint building of the first two Mistral ships.
The spokesman for the United Shipbuilding Corporation declined to comment on the fate of the planned second Mistral ship.
TITLE: Officials Implicated In $9M Trash Fraud
AUTHOR: By Maria Buravtseva and Pyotr Tretyakov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Officials from the Primorsky district administration are suspected of fraud concerning a contract worth 270 million rubles ($9 million) for the removal of garbage.
The Investigative Committee on Thursday carried out a search of the offices of the administration of the Primorsky district of St. Petersburg as part of a criminal case into fraudulent practice committed by an organized group or on a large scale.
In 2012, the district’s administration signed a state contract with a commercial organization for 300 million rubles ($10 million) to liquidate illegal refuse dumps in the district and to create an ecological zone, the Investigative Committee said in a statement issued by its press service. According to law enforcement agencies, the district’s administration listed the commercial organization as being paid more than 270 million rubles for services rendered, but more than 174 million rubles’ worth of the work described in the invoice had not been carried out.
An Internet tender for the liquidation of illegal refuse sites was held by the Primorsky district administration in January 2012, according to the state commissions website. Its only participant — and the winner — was a company called Temp, with whom a contract for more than 270 million rubles was signed. The contractor was due to carry out the work by Sept. 1, 2012. Vedomosti was unable to reach the company for comment last week.
According to data from Spark, Temp was set up in June 2011 and belongs to its general director Sergei Anisimov. According to data from the state administrative and technical inspectorate, in 2012, Temp was given 18 orders for the clearing of illegal waste sites in the Primorsky district.
The Primorsky district administration failed to respond to questions from Vedomosti. The district’s council has been headed since November 2011 by Vyacheslav Chazov; for six years before that he was the chairman of the city’s Physical Exercise and Sports Committee.
Bringing in federal investigators to work on a regional criminal case could be a sign that the federal authorities are seeking to strengthen control over regional officials, as the local law enforcement agencies could be connected to the local elite, said political analyst Alexei Makarkin. When changes are made in the local administration and a new team comes in, there is often a wave of denouncements against officials from the previous government, he said.
Last fall, searches were carried out at the city’s Energy Committee, as a result of which the committee’s former chairman Oleg Trishkin was arrested, along with Konstantin Mosin, director of the Upravlenie Zakazchika (Client Management) state company, and the owners and directors of the contractor firm Petrokom. They are suspected of having laid pipes using counterfeit quality certificates, causing losses of 6 billion rubles ($200 million) to the budget.
TITLE: SKA Eyes Playoffs After Continental Win
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: SKA St. Petersburg won the Continental Cup on Friday after defeating Western Division rival Dinamo Moscow 3-1 to cap a three-game winning sweep in the club’s final home series.
SKA bulldozed its way to the cup, awarded to the Kontinental Hockey League regular season champions, having chalked up a 5-1 win over Traktor Chelyabinsk and a 3-0 shutout over Metallurg Magnitogorsk earlier in the week.
SKA is one of the favorites to win this year’s Gagarin Cup — awarded to the KHL playoff winner — and as regular season champions SKA will have a home ice advantage throughout the playoffs, which start Feb. 20.
SKA head coach Jukka Jalonen blew off what some have dubbed the “Continental Cup curse” — the fact that since the cup’s inception in 2009, no Continental Cup winner has managed to advance beyond the conference finals.
“No one has seen this team in the playoffs and we’ll still do everything we can to get ready,” he said.
Team management made a number of 11th-hour moves just before the Feb. 1 trade deadline, including trading left wing Gleb Klimenko to Atlant Moscow Oblast in exchange for attacking defenseman Alexander Osipov, as well as signing wingers Mikhail Varnakov and Artemy Panarin from Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod and Vityaz Chekhov respectively, in exchange for draft picks.
SKA general manager Alexei Kasatonov was reluctant to trade Klimenko, who scored a goal in Wednesday’s game against Metallurg, and held out until minutes before the deadline.
Commenting on the trades, Jalonen was philosophical, explaining that SKA had been obliged to adopt a cautious approach looking forward.
“We lost two wingers who went back to the NHL, so we signed two Russian wingers, in addition to the center forward [we previously signed] from Finland,” said Jalonen. “We felt that we needed an extra defenseman because right now we’re only playing eight, which is a little risky because we could end up playing 28 games in two months [in the playoffs], so now we have him. Management did a great job getting these three players on the last day,” he added.
“Unfortunately, sometimes to get something you want, you have to give up something in return,” he said, referring to Klimenko.
Osipov played 42 games with Amur Khabarovsk, where he tallied 12 goals and six assists before he was traded to Ak Bars Kazan, from where he moved to Atlant, where he notched two assists in six games. Varnakov played 47 games with Torpedo, racking up 21 goals and 20 assists, and also played in this year’s KHL All Star Game. Panarin scored 11 goals and seven assists with Vityaz.
Journeyman goaltender Ivan Kasutin also joined SKA on Jan. 24. from Vityaz, and gave a strong performance in his SKA debut against Traktor.
“We’ll see how these new guys fit into our system,” Jalonen said, “...but overall I’m very happy with how the team is playing now.
“We’ve played close, hard games against some very tough teams. The deciding factor against Dinamo was [our] special teams; we were able to capitalize on our power plays, while they were not... Against Metallurg we were able to kill a four-minute penalty and then scored [taking a 2-0 lead and the momentum]... 5-1 is a great result against Traktor, but the game was pretty much even. They controlled the game in the first period, but we improved in the second period and in the third we capitalized on all of our scoring chances. We still have a lot of work moving forward,” said Jalonen.
Metallurg Magnitogorsk’s head coach Paul Maurice also commented on his team’s need to improve. The traditional powerhouse has been struggling to find itself since the departure of its locked-out NHL players, who returned to North America after the resolution of the NHL labor dispute.
“There haven’t been many games this season where we have been outplayed in all aspects, but tonight was one of those nights,” said Maurice.
“We’ve tried seven different line-ups in about as many games, but we still have time to get ready for the playoffs.”
Before the start of the game against Metallurg last Wednesday, SKA honored Norwegian Patrick Thoresen for being the first foreign player in the KHL to tally 250 points (97 goals and 153 assists). Thoresen agreed to a one-year extension to his contract Friday.
TITLE: Local Engineer’s Homemade Sub to Get Maiden Voyage
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Mikhail Puchkov, an engineer from St. Petersburg, is planning to launch a private submarine that he has made himself, Interfax reported.
Puchkov began building the submarine in the 1980s. At first, he worked on it only during the summer, as he didn’t have any suitable facilities for the winter, but for the past few years he has been putting the finishing touches to it in a heated garage.
“I’ve tested the submarine 100 kilometers from St. Petersburg in Lake Ladoga and in the Gulf of Finland, and I’m planning to launch it this summer during my vacation,” Puchkov said.
The submarine, named Kit (Whale), is five meters long and weighs about three tons. It has a top speed of three knots and can submerge to a depth of 10 meters.
For short trips, the submarine can accommodate two people, but for longer trips it is only really comfortable for one person. Kit has enough air reserves to allow the person inside to stay underwater for one-and-a-half to two hours.
Its fuel tank holds 200 liters of gas, and it uses about four liters of fuel per hour.
TITLE: City’s Gay Law Offends Venetians
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MILAN, Italy — Venice is seeking to break off cultural relations with St. Petersburg because of the Russian city’s legislation curbing gay rights.
The city council invoked Venice’s “history, international prestige and conscience” in a motion unanimously approved Monday evening asking the city administration to refrain from cultural exchanges as long as anti-gay laws are in place. The motion says “the city of Venice cannot ignore what is happening in the institutions” and asked officials to communicate the reason for the unilateral action.
Two of Europe’s cultural jewels, Venice and St. Petersburg signed an agreement in 2006 to pursue cultural and other exchanges.
St. Petersburg is one of a number of Russian cities that have passed laws banning what they call “homosexual propaganda.”
TITLE: Parisian Women Can Put On Pants
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: French Minister for Women’s Rights Najat Vallaud-Belkacem has repealed a law dating from 1800 banning Parisian women from wearing trousers in public places, Interfax reported, citing French media.
The minister said the rule was “incompatible with the principles of equality between men and women that are written into the constitution, as well as France’s European engagements.”
The historical law allowed women to wear trousers only upon obtaining special permission from the city, or in the event that they were riding a horse or a bike.
Under the law, women wearing trousers could in theory be detained by the police. Although the law has not been enforced in recent decades, women’s rights activists have been attempting to have it revoked for some time.
TITLE: Labor Dispute Highlights Shortage of Skilled Pilots
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — An employment dispute between Russia’s largest airline and an outspoken union leader has highlighted a sharpening confrontation between pilots and Russia’s air carriers over how to deal with a chronic shortage of qualified fliers.
Aeroflot pilot Igor Deldyuzhov, who also heads the Sheremetyevo Cockpit Personnel Association, was fired by the airline in March 2012 but won an unfair dismissal case in September.
A Moscow court on Monday postponed a decision on Aeroflot’s appeal of the ruling, extending a bitter dispute that trade union officials have described as a “war.”
Depending on whom you believe, Deldyuzhov’s mistake was either failing to pass a pilot’s exam or adhering too conscientiously to air safety rules.
But the dispute really seems to go to the heart of a crisis facing Russia’s aviation sector: What do you do when you are running out of pilots?
Deldyuzhov says he was fired for violating Aeroflot’s internal procedures by enlisting a third pilot on a long-haul Moscow to Tokyo flight in late 2011, a measure his union argues was necessary to ensure compliance with a Transportation Ministry regulation dictating the amount of time pilots can work without a break.
Deldyuzhov was unavailable for comment Monday, but Sheremetyevo Cockpit Association spokesman Igor Kobodkov said he believed the airline had taken advantage of this violation of Aeroflot’s rules to punish him for heading the union, which claims to include 850 of Aeroflot’s approximately 1,500 pilots among its membership.
“We’ve got a serious war on with Aeroflot. This isn’t about any alleged violation of procedure. It’s because the union is strongly fighting for the interests of its members,” Kobodkov said.
Aeroflot flatly denied both the accusations of union-busting and the association’s account of Deldyuzhov’s dismissal.
“The main reason for the dismissal of Mr. Deldyuzhov was he failed to pass a pilot’s qualification procedure. If an employee is violating the rules and regulations of the company, he cannot guarantee the safety of passengers,” an Aeroflot spokesman said by telephone.
But the airline has made no secret of its irritation at the trade unionist. The spokesman said the company had previous issues with Deldyuzhov’s breaches of confidentiality when he discussed internal Aeroflot affairs in public.
“Unfortunately, under Russian law, a company has no way of firing staff for damage to reputation. And we believe he damaged our reputation because while he was an employee, he accused the company of a lack of safety measures,” the Aeroflot spokesman said.
In fact, as the spokesman said, Aeroflot is rated the safest airline in Russia.
Independent industry watchers say it is difficult to untangle exactly who is right and wrong.
“It’s one of those cases where when Deldyuzhov explains his position, you think he’s right, and when Aeroflot explains their position, you think they’re right,” said Roman Gusarov, editor in chief of Avia.ru, an industry website.
But the case goes to the heart of a brewing confrontation between air crew unions and Russia’s largest airlines over pay and conditions.
Kobodkov said the root of the dispute is attempts by Aeroflot and other airlines to water down employment laws to make pilots fly longer hours and take shorter vacations and allow airlines to hire foreign pilots.
“It’s because we are fighting strongly for our members’ interests,” he said.
Russian pilots still enjoy comparatively strong benefits compared with their Western peers, including about 70 days of vacation a year, said Gusarov.
Aeroflot and other major airlines argue that these protections — many of them dating from the Soviet era — make them uncompetitive with Western rivals.
From the airlines’ point of view, it is a problem that is only exacerbated by a shortage of qualified fliers.
“It’s not just that we’re not training enough people. It’s that the Russian air travel sector is growing at a rate of 25 to 30 percent in terms of passengers carried every year,” Gusarov said. “You just can’t churn out enough pilots to meet that demand.”
Dmitry Stolyarov, first deputy CEO of Transaero, said in October that there are about 14,200 qualified pilots working in Russia, and about 700 leave the industry annually.
Combined with the growth in demand for air travel, that is leading to a shortage of about 2,100 people a year, he said.
There have been some minor changes. On Jan. 30, the High Court granted Aeroflot the right to calculate a pilot’s additional vacation on calendar days, not working days.
But the court turned down a request to strike down Transportation Ministry Decree No. 50, a Soviet-era law that grants flight crews extra vacation days because of the “special nature” of their work.
Aeroflot had argued that the decree, which was issued in 1986, was unsuited to modern conditions and contradicted the 2002 Labor Code.
Aeroflot’s contracts with pilots grant them 40 additional calendar days of vacation on top of the 28 calendar days stipulated in the Labor Code. Decree No. 50 grants vacation on working days, Gazeta.ru reported.
The unions argue that the reforms would place passengers in danger. The Sheremetyevo Cockpit Personnel Association says there were no fewer than 22 cases of loss of radio contact with aircraft, which were “most likely” the result of fatigued pilots falling asleep in the cockpit in 2011.
And Kobodkov said the idea that Russian pilots are relatively well off is a myth.
“Aeroflot pilots fly 900 hours a year on average. At Delta, it is 750,” he said.
But the staff shortage is real, and it is posing a problem for airlines and potentially putting dangerous strain on over-worked fliers, Gusarev said.
One answer floated by the Transportation Ministry and several airlines, including Aeroflot, Transaero and S7, is to allow Russian carriers to hire foreign pilots to pick up the slack.
The idea has been included in the ministry’s road map for transportation development and could be on the books by the end of the year.
But the move is fiercely opposed by pilots’ associations, which have warned that it could allow airlines to hire poorly qualified but cheaper pilots from other former Soviet republics.
The Sheremetyevo Cockpit Personnel Association, which Deldyuzhov heads, even produced a pamphlet warning of “Gastarbeiter in the sky.”
“As a completely neutral observer, I would guess it will be resolved in the interests of the airlines,” Gusarov said.
That is partly because the state is the majority shareholder in Aeroflot and partly because “everyone understands it is the only way out” of the current situation, he added.
“It’s no silver bullet. Not every pilot is going to be able to just move to Russia and start working here, and Western airlines are also growing rapidly, so the competition for qualified flight crews is not just limited to Russia. But it is probably the only thing to do,” Gusarov said.
TITLE: Russian Cancer Patients Are Too Late to Consult Doctors
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — More than 40 percent of Russian cancer patients turn to doctors only in the last stages of the disease, Russia’s top oncologist, Valery Chissov, told RIA-Novosti on Monday in an interview to mark World Cancer Day.
More than 20 percent of Russian cancer patients are diagnosed in the fourth stage, and more than 40 percent in the third or fourth stage.
The statistics speak to the poor qualifications of general practitioners, the reluctance of patients to be examined regularly and a badly organized treatment system in Russia, Chissov said.
In 2011, there were 231 cancer patients per 100,000 people in Russia, the latest data available show, and the figure for 2012 is expected to be similar.
Chissov also expressed concern over the mortality rate for cancer patients in Russia, noting that while there are more cases of the illness in the U.S. — 332 per 100,000 people in one year — the mortality rate is higher in Russia: 180 fatalities out of 100,000 people, compared with 121 in the U.S.
There are about 2.8 million cancer patients in Russia. Over the past 10 years, the number of cancer patients detected each year climbed 18 percent, meaning the yearly increase in diagnoses is around 1.5 percent.
Slightly more than 500,000 Russians are diagnosed with cancer every year, an average rate in the world.
Russia established a national cancer program in 2009, allocating 6.5 billion rubles to the program each year. The program aims to monitor dynamics in diagnoses across the regions and analyze the reasons for late detection.
TITLE: Sochi Olympics to Be Costliest Ever
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel and Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — One year before they kick off, the Sochi Winter Olympics have already bagged a world record. They will go down as the most expensive games in history.
The cost will top 1.5 trillion rubles ($50 billion) in state and private investment, and three-quarters of that sum has already been spent, as shown in figures released Friday by the governmental commission overseeing preparations for the games.
Since preparations began in 2008, organizers have spent 1.14 trillion rubles on sports and road infrastructure and other measures, according to documents released ahead of the first meeting of the commission chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, Prime reported.
The $50 billion price tag is more than 25 times higher than that of the last winter games, in Vancouver, Canada. The 2010 Olympics cost an estimated $1.8 billion, or $2.5 billion if calculated on the basis of generated real gross domestic product, a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers shows.
Sochi also overtakes the Beijing Summer Games of 2008, which cost $40 billion and have been rated the most expensive Olympics so far.
The cost of the Sochi games is higher than that of all previous winter Olympics combined, opposition politician Boris Nemtsov said in an interview with online television platform Politvestnik posted Friday. It was not clear whether his estimates were in real or nominal terms.
The high cost has been explained by the almost complete lack of adequate local facilities. Jean-Claude Killy, chairman of the International Olympic Committee’s coordination commission for the Sochi games, has said that 85 percent of the infrastructure had to be built from scratch.
Kozak said at Friday’s commission meeting that of the money spent so far, some 200 billion rubles went into sports infrastructure construction. Upgrading city infrastructure cost an additional 500 billion rubles, with transportation requiring the biggest share, he said.
However, the figures have risen massively over the years. They are now more than four times higher than they were in 2007, when President Vladimir Putin won the games and pledged $12 billion to develop Sochi into a world-class winter sports complex.
Allegations of cost overruns and mismanagement have dogged the preparations for years. Olimpstroi, the state corporation in charge of the construction, has had four presidents in four years.
Government officials have downplayed criticism over the ballooning costs by pointing out that two-thirds of the amount is covered by private investors.
The commission figures released Friday show that private-sector investment stands at 737 billion rubles and is supposed to reach approximately 1 trillion rubles.
Critics say the lion’s share of the sponsoring companies are state-controlled, meaning that much of their money also comes from state coffers.
The games’ general sponsor is Rosneft, and the official list of sponsors on Olimpstroi’s website includes more state giants, like Russian Railways and Gazprom.
The construction costs are also alleged to have been inflated by corruption. A report on the Svpressa.ru portal last week cites a former construction entrepreneur identified as Vyacheslav Alexandrovich, who says on his blog that typically 20 percent of a given project’s cost is imaginary so that money can be funneled into the pockets of private interests.
Many questions have also been raised over the investments’ future use. Critics say the Olympic venues risk becoming huge white elephants, not least of all because prices in Sochi and the surrounding resorts are too high to be competitive with alternatives in Turkey and Europe.
Kozak, the deputy prime minister in charge of the Olympics, said the government would focus on getting infrastructure ready in time.
TITLE: Child-Safe Internet Plan Sparks Censorship Fears
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government’s plans to protect children from harmful online content are causing increasing alarm among anti-censorship activists, who see one region’s plans to introduce a smut-free version of the Internet as the latest move to banish distasteful speech.
Details of the Kostroma region’s plan, which appeared in the media last week, sparked talk of a “white list” to accompany the federal government’s existing blacklist of websites that are deemed to contain extremist information or child pornography, or to promote bad behavior.
The plan would give net denizens in Kostroma, a mostly rural region about 190 kilometers northeast of Moscow, the option between using the existing Internet, with all its dangerous and unsavory corners, and a “clean” version, consisting of hundreds of thousands of inoffensive websites.
A non-governmental organization called the Safe Internet League, which has close links to both the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church, has already picked 400,000 websites safe for children, and the number is growing, the Kostroma regional administration said Wednesday in a statement.
News reports quoting the league’s acting director, Denis Davydov, as saying that a strict parental control option would be the default, meaning that users would have to opt out rather than in, quickly sent bloggers and free-speech activists into a frenzy.
Connectivity advocate Matvei Alexeyev said the initiative was probably illegal — Article 29 of the Constitution guarantees the right to “freely seek, receive, transmit, produce and distribute information by any legal way” — not to mention technically unfeasible.
There are more than 633 million websites in the world, according to a recent estimate, Alexeyev wrote Friday in a blog post on Ekho Moskvy’s website. “When will the site-by-site check be finished? In 200 years?”
Even government ministers have entered the fray. Communications and Press Minister Nikolai Nikiforov implied that it was illegal for one region to limit web surfers to a “white list” of pre-screened sites, Interfax reported.
Furthermore, the Federal Mass Media Inspection Service’s blacklist, which was expanded in November over critics’ objections to include websites deemed to include child pornography or promote suicide and drug use, is the only legal vehicle for filtering out harmful content, he said.
Almost a hundred child pornography sites have been closed this year in Russia at the request of foreign law enforcement agencies, Russian Interpol official Tatyana Shishova said at a news conference on Monday, the day before Safer Internet Day, part of a European Union-backed international awareness campaign.
Some cast a critical eye on the Safe Internet League, the non-governmental organization that helped develop the November law, which Public Chamber member and journalism professor Ivan Zassoursky described as a “conservative lobbying structure,” in an interview Friday with Ekho Moskvy radio.
The chairman of the league’s board of trustees is Igor Shchyogolev, an aide to President Vladimir Putin who served as communications and press minister from 2008 to 2012 under then-President Dmitry Medvedev.
The league was founded by the Saint Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, a group with close links to the Russian Orthodox Church and a $40 million yearly budget, whose board of directors includes Shchyogolev, Putin-friendly actor and director Nikita Mikhalkov, and chairman Konstantin Malofeyev, the largest minority shareholder of state-owned telecom firm Rostelecom.
But an official with the group denied that it is an arm of the church, which Putin has given an increasing role in dictating public morality, and said the media had missed the point of the proposal.
Several of the country’s telecom companies, including Rostelecom, MTS, Beeline and MegaFon, are league members, and their dues support the group’s advocacy efforts, said Valery Ponomaryov, assistant to acting director Davydov.
“Parental control,” not “white list,” more accurately described the proposal, he said. On the more critical question of whether a clean Internet would be the default option, Ponomaryov deferred to Internet service providers, saying they would be the ones to decide.
Ponomaryov said he is personally in favor of the default option, arguing that it was “sensible” because opinion polls “showed that up to 70 percent” are in favor of it.
TITLE: Georgian Wine to Flow Again
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Georgian wine and mineral water could return to Russian store shelves as early as this spring, Russia’s chief sanitary official said Monday.
Moscow will send teams of sanitary inspectors to facilities in Georgia, Gennady Onishchenko told reporters. If they approve local quality levels, producers can register in Russia and resume imports, he said in comments carried by Interfax.
Onishchenko was speaking after talks with Georgian officials in Moscow. Speaking at a joint news conference, the head of Georgia’s national wine agency, Levan Davitashvili, said he hoped that imports could resume by the end of spring. Onishchenko added that this was realistic. “Maybe even earlier,” he was quoted as saying.
Moscow imposed a wide-ranging ban on food imports from Georgia in 2006. The ban was officially explained as having to do with quality concerns but was widely believed to be political.
Its lifting would mark a major breakthrough amid the recent thaw between Moscow and Tbilisi that followed the defeat of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement in parliamentary elections last October. Georgia’s new prime minister, Bidzina Ivanishvili, has pledged to improve ties severed after the 2008 war over Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia.
Experts have also said Moscow would be forced to lift the ban anyway because it joined the World Trade Organization last year. When the ban was originally imposed, it was seen as a reaction to Tbilisi’s demand during WTO talks over Russia’s accession that Moscow open customs checkpoints in South Ossetia and fellow breakaway region Abkhazia.
Davitashvili said that both sides had agreed on how to lift the ban on wine and water and that talks about fruit would follow.
Analysts say Georgian wine producers might face an uphill struggle if they were to return after an eight-year absence, because imports from regions like Latin American have made massive inroads during that time.
But Mikhail Khubutia, president of the Union of Georgians in Russia, said Georgian products would not need much promotion upon returning to the Russian market. “Russian consumers are still in love. They have been waiting patiently,” he told The St. Petersburg Times. Khubutia said wines from Georgia would also profit from quality improvements made during the past few years.
Such improvements were “forced upon them because they had to focus on exporting to Western markets,” he explained.
However, Khubutia was cautious in estimating future market share. He said Georgian wines would probably capture 2 percent of the Russian market at first.
Georgian wine and mineral water, popular in Russia since the Soviet era, made up almost a third of total Georgian exports before the ban.
TITLE: Tula Zoo in Mourning As Clairvoyant Raccoon Dies
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A female raccoon named Gemma, who shot to fame after accurately predicting the results of the 2012 European Football Championship and London Olympics, died at Tula’s regional zoo.
“Sadly, after a long illness, Gemma passed away Sunday afternoon,” Tatyana Rodenko, an employee at the zoo, told Interfax on Monday.
Doctors diagnosed Gemma with a stroke stemming from heart failure, and they also think she had cancer.
The prophetic raccoon was 18 years old. The average life expectancy of raccoons is between 8 and 10 years.
Rodenko expressed gratitude to people who supported the animal.
Gemma was given to the Tula zoo in 2000 and began predicting sports results with the help of handlers in 2006.
TITLE: Man Jailed for Posting Nude Pics
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Muscovite who posted nude photos of his ex-girlfriend on the Internet was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison on charges of distributing pornographic materials and violation of privacy, investigators said Monday.
The Investigative Committee said in a statement that the 32-year-old put more than 200 nude photos of his 26-year-old ex-girlfriend without her consent on various websites, including a pornography site, where he included her name, date of birth and address.
The statement didn’t specify the names of either the man or the victim.
TITLE: City Still Waiting for Street Ad Guidelines
AUTHOR: By Yevgeny Fyodorov and Nadezhda Zaitseva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Approval of new guidelines for outdoor advertising in St. Petersburg, which market players have been waiting for since last year, has still not been given.
The Committee for Architecture and City Planning (KGA) and the Committee for State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments (KGIOP) have declined to approve the strategy for the development of the outdoor advertising market, according to a source in the advertising sector.
The strategy for the development of outdoor advertising in St. Petersburg for the period 2013 to 2017, which was presented in November 2012 by the Committee for Press and Media Relations, envisages in particular the dismantling of large advertising structures in historical areas of the city.
The distance between advertising structures should be from 25 to 400 meters, depending on the formats involved, while the standard 1.2 meter by 1.8 meter “city-format” illuminated billboards seen on streets and at bus stops around the city should be located a minimum of three meters from the nearest building. According to the source, officials are not satisfied with the distance from monuments currently stipulated by the document. The KGIOP and KGA have established that the document’s definitions of zones allocated for advertising contradict municipal law No. 820 from 2009, “Concerning the limits of protective zones around sites of cultural heritage on the territory of St. Petersburg and the modes of use of land within the limits of these zones,” said the manager of a city advertising agency.
KGIOP has submitted the strategy to be finalized along with a number of remarks, said Natella Davydova, a representative of the committee.
The document is currently awaiting approval by the KGA and the KGIOP, according to the representative of the Committee for Press and Media Relations, Maria Kirillova. The KGA declined to answer questions from Vedomosti on Thursday.
At the end of December the strategy was discussed in the Chamber of Commerce by officials and market players. Alexander Lobkov, chairman of the Press Committee, announced at the time that the document would be submitted to City Hall by year’s end, and that bidding for space on the city’s advertising structures would be held in April-May of this year. Around 97 percent of the city’s existing advertising spaces will be put on the market, and following dismantling and bidding, around 12,000 advertising structures will remain, he said. According to Lobkov, there are currently 14,500 advertising structures in the city, 4,500 of which have expired their placement period. For the time being, a moratorium has been placed on the dismantlement of these structures, three market players told Vedomosti.
The majority of agreements concerning the placement of outdoor advertising expired last year, said Dmitry Ganibalov, marketing director at Volgobaltmedia advertising agency. According to Ganibalov, the longer the strategy remains unapproved, the longer advertisers will continue to operate extra-legally.
TITLE: Chemezov Nominated For Norilsk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Alisher Usmanov, the billionaire owner of Metalloinvest, is proposing that Sergei Chemezov, the head of state corporation Russian Technologies, join the board of Norilsk Nickel, Vedomosti reported Monday.
Chemezov was nominated as an independent candidate, the newspaper said, citing three sources close to Norilsk Nickel shareholders.
Twelve other candidates for the 13-member board, which is to be elected in March, were nominated by Vladimir Potanin’s Interros and Oleg Deripaska’s RusAl and Millhouse Capital.
The candidates were nominated on behalf of Roman Abramovich and Alexander Abramov.
Potanin, Deripaska, Abramovich and Abramov agreed that they themselves will not join the board.
They also jointly selected a candidate to chair the board, Gareth Penny, who is former general director of De Beers and current executive chairman of the board at New World Resources, the biggest coal producer in central Europe.
Interros put forward its director general, Sergei Barbashev, his deputies Marianna Zakharova and Andrei Bugrov and head of the investment department Alexei Bashkirov as candidates to join the Norilsk board.
TITLE: Watchdog Strips Red Wings Of License After Investigation
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The country’s aviation watchdog revoked the license of Red Wings Airlines, controlled by billionaire Alexander Lebedev, weeks after one of its Russian-made jets crashed.
Lebedev told Interfax on Friday that the Federal Air Transportation Agency had revoked the company’s license effective Monday.
The watchdog said Friday that the decision had been made following several investigations in January.
The agency said it had discovered various safety violations, Interfax reported Friday, citing officials at the watchdog.
The watchdog also said the company had “not taken the necessary steps to fix the problems.” It added that the company lacks financial resources to continue operations.
The probe was conducted soon after the crash of a Red Wings plane in late December, but the agency stated that the decision is not connected with the disaster.
The Tu-204, flying from the Czech Republic with only crew on board, crashed on Dec. 29 at Vnukovo Airport, scattering debris across the nearby highway.
Four crew members, including the pilots, were killed immediately, and a fifth person died the following day. Two crew members survived.
It was the second crash of a Tu-204, a plane developed by the Tupolev design bureau in the mid-1990s.
The Investigation Committee, which opened a criminal probe into the accident, said it is considering several possible causes of the crash, including human error, weather conditions and a technical malfunction.
Lebedev told Interfax on Friday that the crash was caused by a “convergence of several tragic events.”
“Red Wings has a stable financial position, even better than that of some other companies,” Lebedev said.
Experts said in January that there had been four accidents involving Red Wings planes in December.
Aviation expert Roman Gusarov said Red Wings’ possible exit from the market would contribute to market consolidation by big airlines.
“Red Wings’ passengers would be absorbed by large carriers,” he said.
Gusarov added that the Tu-204 jets used by Red Wings can be purchased by other companies looking for a medium-range jet airliner.
“Speaking objectively, all critics of that aircraft have referred not to the plane’s quality but to a lack of proper service by the manufacturers,” Gusarov told The St. Petersburg Times on Sunday.
There are 51 Tu-204 planes now in operation at Russian and foreign companies, including Transaero and Air China Cargo.
Another asset owned by Lebedev, National Reserve Bank, is also experiencing financial difficulties. Vedomosti reported in December that the bank had decided to sell some of its property and close several regional branches.
Lebedev also co-owns opposition-leaning newspaper Novaya Gazeta with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
In 2012, Lebedev said he intended to sell his Russian assets. He had been targeted in a criminal investigation after voicing support for the opposition movement.
TITLE: The Witch-Hunt Against Gays Has Begun
AUTHOR: By Victor Davidoff
TEXT: On Jan. 25, the State Duma passed in the first reading a bill prohibiting display of “homosexual propaganda” among minors. The bill stipulates that an individual found guilty of violating the law be fined up to 5,000 rubles ($167) and that a legal entity face a fine of up to 500,000 ($16,667) rubles. During the vote, gay rights activists protested outside the Duma. Orthodox Christian supporters of the law appeared, attacked the gay activists and threw snowballs, dirt and paint bombs at them — all under the eyes of the police officers standing nearby. And when the police finally took action, the attackers went free. Instead, 20 gay protesters were arrested.
For the bill to become law, it must go through two more readings in the Duma. It was sent back for more work so that the meaning of the vague phrase “homosexual propaganda” could be clarified. So while all the implications of the law are still unclear, two things are certain even now.
First, the bill is unconstitutional. Mikhail Fedotov, head of the Council of Human Rights, said in an interview with Interfax, “If we say that propaganda of heterosexuality is allowed, then we immediately contradict the constitutional guarantee of equality among citizens, since the rights of a person belonging to a sexual minority are impinged upon in contrast with the rights of a person belonging to the sexuality majority.”
Second, regardless of how “ homosexual propaganda” is ultimately defined in the bill, the legislation, if passed, will be applied much more broadly and affect more than homosexuals. An analogous law on the books in St. Petersburg makes it a misdemeanor to “propagandize sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism” to minors.
As a result, St. Petersburg is renowned as the European capital of homophobia, where measures are periodically taken to take rock musicians to court — Madonna, Lady Gaga and Rammstein — or to block MTV. The Duma’s Committee on Family, Women and Children goes even further in its recommendations and demands a ban even on “performances involving homosexuals in places accessible to children.” This would produce a blacklist of gay actors and musicians who would be banned from television screens before 11 p.m. Who knows how far these state homophobes may go? Perhaps as far as banning Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales and the music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
It is certain that the legislation will spark a nationwide witch-hunt against public figures, journalists, teachers and others. Ilya Kolmanovsky was almost fired from a lycee where he teaches biology after school administrators received a number of letters, ostensibly from parents of his students, accusing him of homosexuality. Kolmanovsky had to prove that he isn’t gay and that he is married with two daughters. He insisted that he was the subject of a smear campaign simply because he defended gay rights.
Gay teenagers, who are already bullied at school and in their communities, are sure to be victims of the law. Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov wrote on his Facebook page: “My children have a traditional sexual orientation. My daughters are interested in boys, and my son is interested in girls. But it could have turned out differently. There are families in which the children have a nontraditional sexual orientation. Can you imagine how hard it is for the parents and children in those families and the pressure they are under every hour of every day? … Surveys have shown that 20 to 35 percent of gay teenagers think about suicide or have tried to kill themselves. This is 10 times more than teens with traditional sexuality. … It’s clear to me that the law passed by the Duma against propaganda of homosexuality will ramp up the level of hatred, first of all against gay teens. Thousands of young people, intimidated and scorned, will take their own lives. This law will bring nothing but tragedy and death.”
Journalist Daniil Rotshtein agrees with Nemtsov that the law will increase the level of hatred in society. In a post on the Facebook page of Kommersant radio, he wrote, “Russian children … are shielded from being sent for adoption in savage America and soon from propaganda of homosexuality. The only thing Russian children aren’t protected from is hatred. And hatred in our country is expanding. We are taught to hate America, people from the Caucasus, gays, liberals, Orthodox Christians, non-Orthodox Christians.”
Rotshtein believes that “the law banning the propaganda of homosexuality is not needed to prevent that propaganda. Even the most dim-witted deputy knows that there isn’t any propaganda of homosexuality at all. The only real effect of the law is to split society and incite one group against another. Apparently Vladimir Putin and his team find it easier to stay afloat on a nasty, roiling sea of malice. While we choke on hatred for one another and see the enemy in every person who in some little way doesn’t look like us, we don’t notice how the political noose is slowly getting tighter around the neck of all of society. And when that noose is pulled tight, no one is going to be able to utter a peep — not gays, Orthodox Christians or even deputies.”
We can only hope that Rotshtein’s prophesy doesn’t come true.
Victor Davidoff is a Moscow-based writer and journalist who follows the Russian blogosphere.
TITLE: FROM A SAFE DISTANCE: Why Russia Has Trouble Attracting Investors
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: Recently, Moscow Times columnist Yulia Latynina showed how differently the wealthy in the U.S. and Russia use their fortunes. She listed a dozen U.S. robber barons, captains of industry and financiers who founded major universities, libraries and museums. Meanwhile, in Russia, where the number of billionaires is now second only to that of the U.S., the wealthiest mainly buy soccer clubs.
Actually, Latynina’s list of U.S. philanthropists doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. Ever since pastor John Harvard almost 400 years ago donated money to found America’s oldest university, America’s educational, cultural and medical establishments have depended on private money. Every college campus, museum and hospital has buildings and rooms named after donors, each representing millions in philanthropic contributions.
Of course, all these activities are completely voluntary, encouraged only by relatively minor tax incentives from the government. It can safely be said that without this deep sense of civic responsibility on the part of its wealthy citizens, America would never have achieved such greatness.
Whether or not the emergence of the new super-rich class in America over the past 20 years has been good for the country, it has been a veritable bonanza for philanthropy. After the re-election of President Barack Obama in November, many conservatives and some rich people spoke darkly of emigrating, perhaps in the same way actor Gerard Depardieu did to escape from high taxes in France by requesting a Russian passport. But their philanthropy, which has continued unabated during the Obama years, speaks louder than their words. They remain deeply committed to America’s future.
Meanwhile, Russian oligarchs are more likely to speak pompously about Mother Russia, but their actions — where they keep their capital, purchase assets and send their children — indicate that they don’t see much future in their native country. Even the majority of soccer clubs listed by Latynina are foreign.
Then, there is another aspect. In the United States, wealth tends to be accumulated by people who create or build something. Before World War II, it was railroads, steel mills, engineering concerns and companies based on new ideas. More recently it’s been startups in high tech and service industries. American entrepreneurs are energetic, highly organized and innovative, not the spoiled do-nothings of Communist-era caricatures. Naturally, when they give away their fortunes, they want their money to build something tangible, lasting and of real value.
Russia, on the other hand, is an economy built mainly on its natural wealth and geared toward consumption. Few new ideas have come out of Russia, and no global companies have emerged outside the resource sector since the Soviet collapse. Russia’s is a user economy rather than a producer one.
Thus, Russian oligarchs buy expensive toys, including soccer clubs. But even the most successful of them, billionaire Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea, say some fans, is a collection of top-dollar stars coming and going at a breakneck pace and not a serious club built to win year after year.
This basic reality was on display at the recent gathering of global political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland. The high-level Russian delegations came back satisfied with the willingness shown by Western companies to invest in Russia. But those companies only want to benefit from consumer demand in Russia, spurred by its current oil wealth. Their investment is minimal and rarely for the long term. It’s understandable: Why should they risk their capital in a country that produces little of what the rest of the world wants and whose own wealthy elites would rather live elsewhere?
Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.
TITLE: Paying tribute to Petersburg rock
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg has a reputation as the cradle of the Russian rock revolution, and an upcoming exhibition at the Pushkinskaya 10 art center is expected to showcase some of its legacy and artifacts.
Called “Realities of Russian Rock. Continuation,” the exhibition will also embody a proposal for a future museum of St. Petersburg rock, according to organizer Vladimir Rekshan.
Rekshan, 62, is himself part of this history, having founded the rock band Saint Petersburg in 1969. The group was reputedly the city’s first band to sing in Russian (the rest tended to sing in English) and arguably the city’s most popular band in the early 1970s.
“When speaking about this exhibition, I usually start with a hypothetical question that I then answer myself: ‘Where have all the cups and plates that mankind produced throughout the last 5,000 years gone?’” Rekshan said.
“They were broken, they were taken to a dump, to a cultural layer, and then we find smithereens, some Greek and Scythian cups and exhibit them in a museum. This is an objective process, natural and inexorable. What was simply [life] yesterday becomes part of history after a while.
“Big and very important cultural events took place in Leningrad before our eyes, connected with the development of the once new music genre of rock music. Many real heroes emerged in the process, but it has partly become history since then. Many people have passed away. There’s still a generation that remembers the 1970s, but there will remain nothing of it after a while.”
According to Rekshan, the exhibition is a kind of smaller follow-up to a giant exhibition called “Realities of Russian Rock” held at LenExpo exhibition complex in March 1991.
“It was 3,500 square meters; it was an attractive and very successful event, with exhibits collected by the Rock Club, musicians and designers,” he said.
“But then the country collapsed and many things collapsed with it. Some of the exhibits were taken by the musicians, but a large portion was simply lost. For instance, some were given to libraries, but the libraries closed and bars emerged in place of them. As a person who studied history at the [Leningrad] University, I understand that the city deserves to keep what is about to disappear. But there is no place where fans of this culture in the city can come and see things.”
The Leningrad Rock Club, which was the center of the rock explosion of the 1980s and the place where bands such as Akvarium, Kino, Zoopark and Rekshan’s own Saint Petersburg performed and hung out, folded in the 1990s, but people from across Russia continued to go there and leave graffiti in the courtyard on 13 Ulitsa Rubinshteina until it was closed for renovation by the building’s new owners.
“My car was once blocked in nearby, and I wandered around there for an hour and witnessed how people would come and look at the graffiti such as ‘Tsoi, You’re Alive’ [for Kino’s late frontman Viktor Tsoi], ‘Alisa,’ ‘BG’ [for Boris Grebenshchikov], even my name was there; people kept coming,” Rekshan said.
“It doesn’t even need to be explained. If there was a Café de Flore in Saint-Germain where existentialists and all kinds of the New Left gathered, it will be there forever; only coffee will cost twice as much there. If Hemingway lived on Place de la Contrescarpe, then there will be a plaque on the building. With us, it’s mostly words, but little personal effort to do something useful.
“Our society is completely divided, there’s an intellectual and emotional civil war going on, even if they’re not firing machine guns yet. But there are elements that could be outside the contradictions. There must be many people even within the authorities from the generation that was simply obliged to listen to Tsoi, [Yury] Shevchuk and all the others.”
According to Rekshan, the exhibition will be subtitled “Exhibits of a Future Museum.”
“I would like to pose the question to everyone, ‘Do we need such a thing?’” he said.
“I am addressing the participants of those events, those who like music, the media, the authorities — do we need this or not? If we do, OK, let’s think what can be done about it.
“The room is not large enough and my resources are not so great that I can present a full-fledged museum to the public. My role was to inspire people to do this.”
Last year, Rekshan and Saint Petersburg performed to a group of Finnish tourists who had read “Pietari on Rock,” an account of Leningrad rock by Finnish author Tomi Huttunen.
“They read the book, got interested and wanted to visit those places,” he said.
“They came, but there was nothing to visit. Nowhere where it had all happened remained, there is no museum, no club, nothing at all. We somehow manage to damage ourselves. We create historical events, then forget about them and after a while somebody will have to collect the crumbs. This is wrong.”
At the exhibition, Rekshan will present a number of objects such as posters, paintings and concert tickets that he kept, although he admits that much was lost.
A number of items will come from collector Sergei Chubrayev, who has accumulated a large collection of objects related to the late musician Sergei Kuryokhin of the band Pop Mekhanika.
“He collected as much as possible, he bought some foreign posters, T-shirts, tickets, he owns Kuryokhin’s vinyl player, not to mention all the recordings, elements of costumes, drafts of Pop Mekhanika’s performances; he already has a full-fledged museum of his own,” Rekshan said.
Graphic artist Sergei Lemekhov, who played bass with the first lineup of Saint Petersburg and who was one of the designers of the 1991 exhibition, will present a series of drawings humorously chronicling the history of Russian rock that he has made especially for the exhibition at Rekshan’s request, starting from the emergence of self-produced flexible records made on used X-ray film in the 1950s.
“The final drawing I asked him to do is that of the notorious meeting between Shevchuk and Putin, when Putin asks, ‘Who are you?’ and he replies, ‘I am Yura, a musician,’” Rekshan said.
“The exhibits will be arranged around this graphic history.”
A number of exhibits will show how music was distributed before the advent of CDs and mp3s.
“It’s an information society now; you press a key on your computer and listen to any music you like,” Rekshan said.
“But that’s not how the country lived. In the 1960s, tape recorders appeared; there was a Nota recorder, and people copied vinyl records on reel-to-reel tapes that they decorated with photographs of The Beatles or Pink Floyd. I have this beaten Nota recorder, and I selected some tapes from ones that several people brought to me. That’s how things were.
“Then there were vinyl records that have also died out. During a brief period at the height of perestroika, everything started being released on vinyl. But after a few years, the vinyl market died and the pressing plant ground to a halt. I’ll display the so-called “Multicolored Square” made up of the Leningrad Rock Club’s records.”
Several original 16-track tapes preserved by Rekshan that were used by legendary local producer Andrei Tropillo to record the underground rock bands will also be on display, as well as a pair of locally produced Soviet-era guitars.
Rekshan said that meetings with key figures of Leningrad rock such as poet, music writer and co-founder of Akvarium Georgy “George” Gunitsky and the Leningrad Rock Club’s president Nikolai Mikhailov will also be held as part of the exhibition.
More recent exhibits will include an Order of Lenin presented to Rekshan by Russian Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov.
“I recorded an album called ‘Revolution,’ featuring songs connected with the [Russian] Revolution and the Civil War, to which I added some musical quotes from international rock music classics,” he said.
“As the result of some complicated combinations, I was given this award, which is a purely intra-party one and isn’t worth anything, but it says ‘For an active position in life and promotion of national rock music.’ And a signature: Zyuganov.
“It’s kind of a joke, because even if I am a person of left-wing convictions, I am not a member of any party. But as I see it, just like the Pope apologized for burning Giordano Bruno to death, the leader of the KPRF [the Communist Party of the Russian Federation] apologized for the harassment [of rock musicians] by the party during the Soviet era.”
A lecture titled “Personality Cults in Leningrad Rock” will be given during the exhibition by the philosopher, theologian and Beatles fan Oleg Ulanov. Small, chamber concerts are also planned.
Rekshan, who combines music with writing, also wrote Russia’s first rock memoirs, called “Kaif” (Kicks). They were originally published in the literary magazine Neva in 1988, but have since then been published several times as a separate book, with Rekshan adding new chapters. He said different editions of the book will also be on display.
He also urged visitors who own objects that could be used as potential museum exhibits to leave information in a book that will be available at the exhibition.
“For instance, ‘I am Petrov, I own an old guitar that used to belong to I don’t know whom,’ or ‘I have a poster from such-and-such a year,” he said.
“It’s an element of civil society. We have a kind of Tsarist consciousness: ‘Somebody high up should…’ Nobody should do anything. People should organize themselves and solve the problems that they can, even if it’s not politics, although there’s an element of politics in it.”
“Realities of Russian Rock. Continuation” will open at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 16 and run through March 17 at the Navicula Artis Gallery, Puskinskaya 10 Art Center, 10 Pushkinskaya Ulitsa (entrance through 53 Ligovsky Prospekt). Tel: 951 7894.
TITLE: A love-hate relationship
AUTHOR: By Laura Mills
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — When famed viola player Yuri Bashmet declared that he “adored” President Vladimir Putin, he stirred little controversy in a country where classical musicians have often curried favor with the political elite.
But political drama spilled into the orchestra pit last month when Bashmet refused to condemn a new law prohibiting Americans from adopting Russian children, and in response the beloved singer Sergei Nikitin canceled his appearance at a concert celebrating the violist’s 60th birthday.
The spat joins a long Russian tradition of artists who have jumped — or been dragged — into the political fray. From composer Dmitry Shostakovich, who lived in fear of arrest under dictator Josef Stalin, to the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who returned to a liberalizing Soviet Union in 1991 and took up arms to defy Communist hardliners, Russian musicians and other artists have had a habit of becoming politicized figures.
At the core of the argument today is a question about what an artist’s role should be in Putin’s Russia: Attracting generous state funding for bigger and better artistic projects? Or challenging the political system in a way most ordinary citizens cannot afford to do?
Some of Russia’s cultural figures brought their star power to the anti-Putin rallies that rocked Moscow last winter. Others were recruited to back up Putin as he ran for a third term as Russia’s president. As the expression goes: “A poet in Russia is always more than a poet.”
Actor and theater director Yevgeny Mironov appeared in a pro-Putin campaign ad in which he gave heartfelt thanks to Putin for keeping Russia — and his Moscow theater — afloat. Some of his fellow actors loudly refused.
Actress Chulpan Khamatova, who depends on government support for charity work for children, filmed a similar pro-Putin ad, but the delivery appeared strained, as if she were speaking under duress. And she was one of the many cultural figures who signed a petition condemning the adoption bill.
The ban, which went into effect Jan. 1, proved controversial even among many Putin loyalists in the intelligentsia, who see the Kremlin as playing politics at the expense of Russia’s orphans. Tens of thousands of people took part in a Jan. 13 protest march through Moscow, one of the largest anti-Putin demonstrations the city had seen in many months.
The adoption ban was in response to the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law that imposes sanctions on Russians accused of involvement in the prison death of whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and other rights abuses.
Yury Norshtein, Russia’s best loved animator, took Putin to task over Magnitsky during an awards ceremony on Jan. 19. Norshtein noted that Putin had attributed Magnitsky’s death to heart failure, but said that in fact the lawyer had died because of “a failure of Putin’s heart.”
The audience erupted with cheers and applause.
Discontent over the adoption ban entered the classical music world at a news conference Bashmet gave ahead of his birthday jubilee concert on Jan. 24. The floppy-haired violist, who is the conductor of two Moscow orchestras and a famed soloist in his own right, gave an equivocal answer when asked about his stance on the adoption ban, refusing to condemn the law in its entirety.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Jan. 27, Bashmet said he didn’t think the fate of children should be decided by anti-American legislation, but he asserted that the adoption ban would end up helping Russia’s orphans by raising awareness within the country about the tens of thousands of children in need of families.
“There are things that need to be decided within the country, and it’s good that this question has been raised in such a controversial way, so that now the president has decreed that it will be at the center of attention,” Bashmet told the AP. “Our government is now responding to this, to the betterment of these children.”
That stance didn’t sit well with Nikitin, a bard in the Russian folk tradition. He said that it didn’t bother him if “Bashmet adores the president,” but his ambiguous justification of the adoption ban took things too far.
“This [the adoption issue] doesn’t have anything to do with politics,” Nikitin said. “It’s about being humane, being humanitarian, about morality.”
Bashmet may be an extreme example of an artist showing affection for Putin, but classical musicians have rarely been immune to politics.
Valery Gergiev, director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, has been outspokenly supportive of the Putin regime. After Russia and Georgia fought a brief war in 2008 over the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia, he conducted a concert in front of a destroyed government building in the South Ossetian capital.
The cellist Rostropovich, whose support for Soviet dissidents had led to his exile in the United States in the 1970s, returned to the Soviet Union as the Communist regime was crumbling. Wielding a Kalashnikov, he stood with protesters who had rallied around Boris Yeltsin in defiance of Communist hardliners trying to take power in the August 1991 coup.
Other musicians have been much less willing participants when it comes to politics, doing their best to avoid the political fray. This was particularly true when the risks were greater, as they were in Soviet times, when even a discordant note or a suggestive motif could bring accusations of deviating from the political line.
The composer Shostakovich received a scathing critique of his experimentalism in 1936, infamously titled “Muddle Instead of Music” and published in the Soviet Union’s most important newspaper. With the Stalinist purges moving at full throttle, Shostakovich backed away from some of his more avant-garde music, taking more care to adhere to the political line.
But Shostakovich, like his contemporary Sergei Prokofiev, was also protected by his status. Great musicians of the Soviet period became a source of patriotism and a means of challenging the West’s dominance. Despite the heavy weight of Stalinist repression, Shostakovich and Prokofiev created some of the most cherished, experimental and at times critical music of the 20th century.
After Stalin’s death, many of Shostakovich and Prokofiev’s compositions that were interpreted as anti-fascist during the dictator’s life were recast as artistic protests against the Stalinist terror.
Nikitin believes in the examples set by Prokofiev and Shostakovich — great artists who were among the few people who could attempt to oppose, even if only through their music, the existing regime.
“The government and state officials, including the president, should be grateful to these artists, that they give them the opportunity to experience this kind of art, and in this way to make life in our country richer,” he said.
In Soviet times, cinema also was under strict government censorship. When Stalin was in power, he decided personally which films could be shown and which were to be stashed “on the shelf.” Despite this, the Soviet era is remembered as the height of Russian filmmaking, from the early experimentalism of Sergei Eisenstein to the charming, Oscar-winning “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears.”
After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, things changed drastically for the film industry. A style called “chernukha,” or blackness, became the vogue among many Russian filmmakers, who made dark and violent movies showing contemporary life as a bleak moral vacuum. Others, like director Nikita Mikhalkov, took a different tack by producing upbeat, patriotic films, attracting generous funding in the process.
TITLE: the word’s worth: How to love shopping, drinking and soccer
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Õëåáîì íå êîðìè: someone’s favorite thing
I think we can all agree that Russians can get pretty passionate about things — perhaps even more so than other nationalities, although I’m not sure how to go about researching that. There is no nuts-o-meter that would allow cross-cultural comparisons. But in any case, the Russian language offers a plethora of ways to express passionate interests.
To describe lovers of the arts, Russian began to use a word borrowed from French, ìåëîìàí (music lover), and then generated áàëåòîìàí (ballet lover) and êèíîìàí (cinema lover). A theater lover is described with the homegrown terms òåàòðàë for a man and òåàòðàëêà for a woman. For those whose passion has crossed the line into addiction, Russians have borrowed from English to describe àëêîãîëèê (alcoholic), òðóäîãîëèê (workaholic), and even øîïîãîëèê (shopaholic).
Or you can just call someone ëþáèòåëü (lover) and add a noun. A friend with a great appetite calls himself ëþáèòåëü âêóñíåíüêîãî è íåïîëåçíîãî (a great lover of everything that tastes good and is bad for me). Sometimes you can replace the noun with a gesture. The same friend adds: È ÿ áîëüøîé ëþáèòåëü ýòîãî äåëà (And I’m a great lover of doing this) and snaps his fingers on this side of his neck to show what “this” is: Hitting the bottle.
The only tricky bit about the word ëþáèòåëü is that it can also mean an amateur:  òðóïïå åñòü ïðîôåññèîíàëüíûå àêò¸ðû è ðåæèññ¸ðû, è åñòü ëþáèòåëè (The troupe has professional actors and directors as well as amateurs). When ëþáèòåëü is combined with an art, object or sport, it doesn’t mean a lover; it means a nonprofessional. So êèíîëþáèòåëü is an amateur film maker, and àâòîëþáèòåëü is a nonprofessional driver.
If a person’s love for something is ramped up high but hasn’t quite crossed over into addiction, you can call him ôàíàò (fan, fanatic). This is most commonly used for sports fans: Òîëïû ôàíàòîâ òðåáîâàëè àâòîãðàôà ó ôóòáîëèñòà, êîãäà îí ïîÿâëÿëñÿ íà óëèöå (Crowds of fans asked for the soccer player’s autograph whenever he went outside.) But it can also be used to describe anyone whose passion for something is a bit unhealthy: Îòåö áûë ôàíàòîì ñâîåé ïðîôåññèè è ìîã ñòàòü æåðòâîé çàöèêëåííîñòè (My father was a fanatic about his work to the point of obsession).
If you want to describe a less frenetic passion, you can use the word ïî÷èòàòåëü (admirer). This is a good word to pull out of your linguistic pocket when you unexpectedly crash into an author at a bookstore reading: ß ÿâëÿþñü âàøèì äàâíèì ïî÷èòàòåëåì (I’ve long been an admirer of your work). Just hope the pleased writer doesn’t ask: À êàêàÿ ìîÿ êíèãà áîëüøå âñåãî âàì íðàâèòñÿ? (Which of my books do you like best?)
I like the slightly old-fashioned word ïàäêèé, which describes having a weakness for something or someone. The word is either followed by íà and the accusative case or äî and the genitive case. Îí ïàäîê íà ëåñòü (He’s a sucker for flattery). Îíà ïàäêà äî ñëàäêîãî (She’s got a weakness for sweets).
Another vivid expression is õëåáîì íå êîðìè, which literally means “you don’t even have to feed him bread.” The idea is that someone loves to do something so much that he’d give up food for it. Âàñ õëåáîì íå êîðìè, òîëüêî äàé ïîáîëòàòü, ïðè÷¸ì íå ïî òåìå. (You like nothing better than to talk — and especially off-topic).
In other words, he’s ëþáèòåëü ïîãîâîðèòü (a real talker).
Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.
TITLE: Filming stereotypes
AUTHOR: By Aliide Naylor
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: When the collective of 25 young people who had traveled across Russia in one month had just arrived in Moscow after a three-day train trip from Irkutsk, their priorities were, understandably, to eat dinner, get washed, shave and finish their film edits.
These young people are documentary filmmakers from 16 countries whose mission in Russia was to unravel the reality behind the country’s biggest stereotypes as part of the Cinetrain, or Kinopoezd, project, which previously took place in 2008 and 2010.
The idea for Cinetrain came from the 1930s journeys of specially equipped film trains, which traveled to the far corners of Russia on anthropological expeditions.
The filmmakers’ fast-paced tour kicked off at the beginning of January. During the course of the month, they created seven different shorts exploring the main stereotypes people ascribe to the country and its people: Russian winters, bears, banyas, vodka, women, Lada automobiles and the Russian soul.
Alongside this impressive feat, they created a “Making Of” film to document their journey, which included trips to such faraway places as Murmansk and Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal.
While the films touch on the day-to-day lives of their subjects, the prism of stereotypes allows them to be captured with a very specific concept in mind. For example, “The Bear Question” explores a “Russian idea of a bearlike person” rather than bears themselves, director Tristan Daws said.
Each of the strong, rugged men in the film tells a fairy tale, lending a childlike quality to their fierce characters.
Henri D’Armancourt, sound director of the documentary about local winters, includes this coexisting fierceness and friendliness in his perception of the Russian soul.
“One moment a man can be your friend, drinking with you, and the next, he could want to beat you up. Then he’ll get you a drink and start trying to hit you again, and then offer you a cigarette … while he’s beating you up!” D’Armancourt said.
The legendary alcohol consumption in Russia is another national stereotype the filmmakers focused on.
“We didn’t really want to drink so much sometimes, but sometimes you have to because you want to meet people,” said Xavier Thieulin, sound director for the film about vodka.
The general attitude in the group was that while the stereotypes exist for a reason, they are not necessarily applicable to everyone in the country. Pronounced differences were found between the villages and the cities.
Fyodor Druzin, director of the banya short, is from St. Petersburg yet had always wanted to go beyond the European part of his native country and explore Siberia.
There was a consensus among the group that people in the eastern villages are friendlier than those in the cities. Druzin said village residents are also more accommodating of smaller ethnic groups.
“Anthropologically, there are minute cultural differences that I catch,” he said, adding that he was amazed by the efficiency and administrative competence he witnessed in Tomsk.
As foreign filmmakers, they were received with a mixture of interest and apprehension.
“They’re suspicious of cameras and microphones, especially if you go to remote places,” said Stefan Bookas, director of photography for “The Bear Question.”
“However, this is only an initial reaction, and people were happy to open up so long as the filmmakers explained clearly and thoroughly what they were doing and wanted.”
The winter weather also proved to be not just a stereotype, but a real challenge for the filmmakers, who were sometimes forced to shoot in temperatures below minus 20 degrees Celsius.
Thanks to the cold, the filmmakers identified a feature they found to be very prevalent in the Russian soul: Adaptability and endurance.
“The thing that I picked up was the survival instinct in harsh conditions,” said John Craine, director of photography for “The Russian Soul.”
“It’s so normal,” added Cristina Picchi, director of the film about winter stereotypes. “There were stories of people sinking in the lake in their car. They were just like ‘Yeah, we got out.’ It’s just everyday life. There’s a thin line between living and dying in the winter, and it’s seen as so common that it’s almost nonexistent.”
This endurance seems to be something the crew members grasped onto and assimilated. Despite hindrances from the extreme weather, last-minute changes to their films and time constraints, there was a great deal of the Russian avos — just hoping it’s going to work out — in the process, too.
The seven short documentary films will have a pre-premiere at 8 p.m. on Feb. 6 in Moscow at the Multimedia Press Center at RIA-Novosti, 4 Zubovsky Bulvar. +7 495 645 6472, www.pressria.ru.
TITLE: THE DISH: Ne Grusti!
AUTHOR: By Allison Geller
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A moody mouthful
“I know a place with a great eel roll by Vladimirskaya” was probably not on anyone’s tongue before the opening of Ne Grusti! And it probably still isn’t, but since the restaurant only opened in December, it may just be a matter of time. Thank goodness we ignored the recommendations of the waiter, who told us he didn’t like fish and suggested the Olivier salad and the T-bone steak.
Ne Grusti!, like so many hybridized, bastardized ethnic restaurants in the city, is not so much Japanese as Japanese-themed. The sushi menu comprises all of three rolls — California, Philadelphia and eel, though each can be ordered in “hot” and “baked” variants. Trusting the opinion of our self-proclaimed sushi-hating waiter, we went with the “hot” eel roll (400 rubles, $13.40), and were rewarded with a delightfully crispy, tempura-fried roll of eel, cucumber and a bit of mayonnaise festively colored with pink fish roe.
The waiter’s antipathy toward fish is understandable if all he has tried is the restaurant’s salmon tartare (270 rubles, $9). The bland, dubiously fresh mixture of chopped raw salmon and cabbage served with toast had to be liberally punched up with salt and lemon juice in order not to be ignored altogether. The grilled squid, (350 rubles, $11.70) served with pearl onions, a white sauce and a few red pepper flakes, was not overcooked but also lacked flavor. Like a concession from the chef, it was accompanied by a large, artistically carved lemon wedge. A better choice might be the eggplant salad with croutons (170 rubles, $5.70), a cold eggplant and tomato relish that the waiter was kind enough to bring us to sample as we contemplated the menu. (In a show of concern for table service that is still rare for Russia, the waiter was attentive throughout the meal, and bussed our table vigorously.)
Perhaps the waiter was on to something with his leaning toward the meatier dishes. The pork tenderloin with potato omelet (500 rubles, $16.70) was a winner. Chunks of pork were paired with potato gratin and a tart cherry sauce, a satisfying combination of classic, if un-Japanese, flavors.
As any Japanese-themed restaurant in St. Petersburg should do, Ne Grusti! also offers pasta dishes (about 300 rubles, $10), borsch (250 rubles, $8.30), beer snacks and a kids’ menu, which tempts little ones with dishes such as “The Goldfish” (150 rubles, $5) and “Hut on Chicken Legs” (200 rubles, $6.70).
Tempura-fried bananas (250 rubles, $8.35) capped the meal, as our first choice of meringue with raspberries was unavailable. Served with chocolate sauce, the bananas were what they promised to be, though could have done with a cold scoop of ice cream.
The drink menu at Ne Grusti! is more extensive than the food, with all the liquor you could ask for, an assortment of shots and cocktails priced around 350 rubles ($11.65) each, and three red and three white wines by the glass, going for around 250 rubles ($8.30), as well as mostly exorbitantly priced bottles. A pot of sencha Japanese green tea (150 rubles, $5) did for our Sunday lunch.
While our table was the only one occupied when we stepped in at about 1 p.m., a few more tables had filled up by the time we left. The restaurant, with its small bar and double-sided drink menu, might well be a pleasant venue for an evening drink (and an eel roll).
The restaurant’s name — Russian for “don’t be sad” — is exemplified in the décor, which, with its fringe curtains, plush heart mobiles and red wallpaper that could have come out of the boudoir of Catherine the Great, is a mix of cozy and cheesy, dance club meets love shack, complete with the ever-present flat screen TVs playing muted music videos.
Perhaps a better name for the restaurant would be, “Don’t be ambivalent!” as this was our chief emotion upon leaving Ne Grusti! A hit-and-miss menu can’t be fixed by even the most conscientious of wait staff and endearingly offbeat interior.