SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1746 (5), Wednesday, February 13, 2013
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TITLE: Chelyabinsk Entrepreneurs Quick to Profit Off Meteor
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Enterprising businessmen in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk lost no time in finding a way to capitalize on the meteor strike that shook the city Friday morning.
By early afternoon, several websites were already selling "fragments of meteorite."
Two-centimeter fragments of the celestial body that hospitalized dozens and injured hundreds more in the Urals early on Friday were being offered for 500 rubles a piece by 2 p.m. Moscow time.
"I'm selling it because it's useless to me. There are several scratch marks, but in general it's in excellent condition," wrote one Internet user calling himself Alexei and claiming to be from Magnitogorsk in the Chelyabinsk region. A picture of the "meteorite fragment" for sale can be found in the jewelry section of Avito.ru, an online store.
Another user called Dmitry was selling a 3.7-gram scrap of the meteor that he claimed to have found on the banks of lake Chebarkul, where the object reportedly landed, about 60 kilometers west of Chelyabinsk. He set no minimum price for bids.
The sales come despite warnings not to touch any fragments of the meteorite. Journalist Andrei Kondrashov, a local journalist, wrote on Twitter that an official had warned him not to touch the debris.
"Called Deputy Shingarkin: He notifies the Urals that there is no radiation, but debris must not be touched. Possible toxic contamination," he wrote.
TITLE: Meteor Shower in Urals Causes Panic and Injuries
AUTHOR: By Allison Quinn
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – A meteor shower in the Urals Federal District in central Russia shattered residents' windows, shook the ground and caused several injuries Friday morning, the Emergency Situations Ministry reported.
The first reports came in around 7:55 a.m. Moscow time, with witnesses in Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg and Tyumen saying they saw "blinding" flashes in the sky, heard massive thunder and witnessed windows shatter, Yelena Smirnykh, deputy head of the ministry's information department, told Interfax.
Debris is believed to have landed in several places throughout the Chelyabinsk region — about 1,500 kilometers east of Moscow — and windows in the buildings closest to the meteor's trajectory shattered, causing several injuries.
As of 2:00 p.m., about 500 injuries were documented, RIA-Novosti reported, citing the Interior Ministry.
The Chelyabinsk administration has created a working group headed by Deputy Governor Igor Murog to deal with the aftermath of the meteor shower and arrange medical assistance for those injured.
The Volga Federal District was also affected by the meteor shower.
"The flashes in the lower layers of the atmosphere caused by a meteor shower were recorded above both the Urals and the Volga Federal District, the impact of which caused windows to shatter in the upper floors of buildings," Smirnykh said.
"According to confirmed data, it was a single meteor that began to burn upon approaching Earth and then burst into pieces," Smirnykh said.
In Chelyabinsk, the region that appears to have been the hardest hit — which is also home to a nuclear power plant and the Mayak atomic complex — cell phone service is reportedly down. Several evacuations were carried out at schools through the region.
According to Interfax, all schools and kindergartens in the region have been closed by order of the Federal Consumer Protection Service.
The Emergency Situations Ministry is working in an intensified regime, with 20,000 workers put on high alert, Lenta.ru reported. The ministry says it doesn't expect any more meteor showers, however.
Residents initially thought the incident was caused by fighter jets flying too close to the ground.
"It was unclear, there were flashes with movements of something that looked like a comet or meteor. The airport is working according to its normal schedule," said Yevgeny Krasikov, a spokesman for Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport.
One witness from Emanzhilinsk in the Chelyabinsk region said, "It started to explode in the air and then continued to the earth. There are black clouds over the city. Everybody thought war had broken out."
Residents in Chelyabinsk have also reported a strong smell from the burning debris.
The Emergency Situations Ministry reported that radiation levels in the areas affected by the meteor are normal, and they will continue to be monitored closely.
Several politicians have already commented on the unexpected celestial event, with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin calling for the creation of an international system of defense against asteroids and meteors and Prime Ministry Dmitry Medvedev expressing hope that no one was seriously injured.
Medvedev, currently in Krasnoyarsk for an economic forum, also joked that the meteor could be seen as a symbol of the forum, in the sense that it is a reminder that "our entire planet is vulnerable, not just the economy," Rossiisskaya Gazeta reported.
Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, on the other hand, said that there really was no meteor at all.
"It wasn't a meteor falling, it was the Americans testing out weapons," Zhirinovsky said in comments carried by RIA-Novosti.
TITLE: U.S. Begins Push for New Arms Cuts
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – President Barack Obama's pledge to pursue new cuts to the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals appeared to be under way Wednesday, with the State Department's arms control chief in Moscow amid talk of a visit later this month by another high-level official.
The State Department has been tight-lipped about both trips, by Assistant Secretary Rose Gottemoeller and National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon, but statements in recent days have shed light on the likely purpose of their visits.
Gottemoeller, the arms control chief, told a group of security experts in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Tuesday that the United States was exploring several possibilities for a new agreement, including "reductions in all categories of nuclear weapons: strategic, nonstrategic, deployed and nondeployed," according to a transcript on the State Department's website.
The State Department said earlier that bilateral and international arms control and nonproliferation would be on her agenda. But on Monday, a department spokeswoman refused to say whether Gottemoeller would propose cuts to Russia's nuclear arsenal.
Adding to the hush surrounding the talks, Gottemoeller is not planning any public or press events, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Stacy MacTaggert said by telephone Wednesday.
Later this month, Donilon will visit Russia, likely with "some proposals regarding disarmament, including nuclear disarmament," State Duma Deputy Alexei Pushkov, head of the International Affairs Committee, said Wednesday.
"The ball is in the Americans' court," he said at a news conference in Moscow, Interfax reported. "Because we're not responsible for the crisis over the European missile defense system. that was an American idea."
The buzz about new cuts picked up Tuesday when Obama said the White House would "engage Russia to seek further reductions in our nuclear arsenals and continue leading the global effort to secure nuclear materials that could fall into the wrong hands," in his State of the Union Address.
White House officials are looking to cut deployed nuclear weapons to "just above 1,000," down from the current goal of 1,550 by 2018 outlined in the New START, which went into effect in February 2011, The New York Times reported Sunday, citing unnamed administration sources.
Donilon's visit will "lay the groundwork" for future talks on the issue, the newspaper reported.
The United States spends about $31 billion per year to maintain its current arsenal of about 1,700 deployed strategic warheads and delivery systems, according to a June report by the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based think tank.
Pushkov dismissed the vision of a nuclear weapon-free world, supported by Obama and his nominee for secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel, as a "propagandistic-romantic idea," because countries that had made large investments in nuclear weapons would never give them up, he said.
TITLE: Constitutional Court Orders Changes to Rally Law
AUTHOR: By Alexander Winning
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – The Constitutional Court on Thursday ordered lawmakers to rework parts of a law toughening protest rules that was passed last year in response to a wave of anti-Kremlin demonstrations.
The court found that the legislation, which hikes penalties for people who violate regulations on public rallies, imposes disproportionate fines on rally attendees. The court said lawmakers should slash the minimum fines, according to a summary of the ruling published on the court's website.
The rally law, which came into force June 9 after barely passing in the State Duma days earlier, is regularly cited by the political opposition and international rights groups as evidence that the Kremlin has sought to tighten the screws on opponents.
The law imposes fines of between 10,000 rubles and 300,000 rubles ($330 to $10,000) or up to 200 hours of community service on individuals who break rally rules. But the Constitutional Court said courts could assign reduced fines until the State Duma amends the legislation.
During Thursday's hearing, the court's top judge, Valery Zorkin, urged authorities not to clamp down on rally organizers and participants for political reasons and to provide citizens with the opportunity to gather peacefully.
Judge Olga Khokhryakova, who at one point took over for Zorkin in the four-hour reading of the court's verdict, said community service should be mandatory only for those who physically harm people or damage property.
When applied to rallygoers who had barely violated the law, the measure could be seen as a "method of crushing dissent," the ruling said.
Among other faults with the rally law, Constitutional Court judges cited a provision that means rally organizers can be held responsible for the conduct of individual protesters. Judges said the provision contravened established legal practice and was therefore unconstitutional.
But Zorkin and others stopped short of deeming the legislation unconstitutional, saying that it doesn't infringe on people's rights and that State Duma deputies could simply tweak specific clauses of the law.
Referring to clauses that ban protesters from wearing masks and attending demonstrations while drunk, the court said that the demands were justified and that such efforts were "exclusively aimed at maintaining order and guaranteeing people's safety," the Rapsi legal news agency reported.
The court also left in place the rule that one-person pickets, which don't require official permission, should be at least 50 meters from one another and a provision barring people convicted of two or more misdemeanors in the year leading up to a demonstration from being one of its organizers.
The Constitutional Court was asked to pass judgement on the rally law after nationalist Eduard Limonov and lawmakers from A Just Russia and the Communist Party complained about it in November.
At the time, the group of lawmakers said the law was passed with significant procedural violations and without proper discussion, a charge upheld Thursday by the Constitutional Court.
The court also ruled that Moscow's Tverskoi District Court should review its August verdict against Limonov, leader of the unregistered Other Russia party. Limonov was fined by the court for violating rally rules and told he wasn't allowed to organize demonstrations.
TITLE: Duma's Ethics Chief Asks to Step Aside After Navalny's Expose
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Deputy Vladimir Pekhtin has asked to temporarily be relieved of his duties as chairman of the State Duma's Ethics Committee pending an investigation into allegations that he failed to declare more than $2 million in real estate holdings in the U.S. state of Florida, Interfax reported Wednesday.
In a letter addressed to Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, Pekhtin, a member of the ruling United Russia party, asked to be sidelined from the committee until a check into the accusations, made by opposition whistleblower Alexei Navalny in his blog on Tuesday, was completed.
"I never owned and don't own any property in the United States," Pekhtin wrote. "The property mentioned in the press belongs to my son, Alexei, who, before I was even elected to the Duma in 1998, went to study in the United States, where he was later able to work and own property."
He also said that he has asked the Duma committee that oversees income and other financial declarations — which deputies are required to make by law — to investigate the claims against him.
Public documents show that Pekhtin and his son co-own two apartments in Miami Beach worth an estimated $540,900 and $1.3 million, respectively, as well as a house in Florida worth an additional $400,000, Navalny wrote.
In an interview with Izvestia the day the blog post appeared, Pekhtin seemed to flip-flop on whether he owned property abroad,stating that he owned "practically no" foreign real estate before adding, "I don't own any [foreign property] at all! I've lived here my whole life, in Russia."
Pekhtin won't exclude the possibility of suing for defamation of character, Interfax reported.
TITLE: Nixon's Russia Advice to Clinton Revealed
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: YORBA LINDA, California — Richard Nixon, in the final months of his life, quietly advised President Bill Clinton on navigating the post-Cold War world, even offering to serve as a conduit for messages to Russian President Boris Yeltsin and other government officials, newly declassified documents show.
Memos and other records show Nixon's behind-the-scenes relations with the Clinton White House. The documents are part of an exhibit opening Friday at the Nixon Presidential Library marking the centennial of his birth.
Clinton has talked often of his gratitude to Nixon for his advice on foreign affairs, particularly regarding Russia. In a video that will be part of the exhibit, Clinton recalls receiving a letter from the 37th president shortly before his death on April 22, 1994, at a time when Clinton was assessing U.S. relations "in a world growing ever more interdependent and yet ungovernable."
The documents from late February and early March 1994 show Nixon, then 81, in his role of elder statesman. It was two decades after he left the White House in disgrace during Watergate.
The exhibit records include a confidential National Security Council memo from a senior Clinton aide who spent three hours with Nixon shortly before the former president would make his 10th, and final, trip to Russia that year.
The aide, Nicholas Burns, writes that Nixon is generally supportive of White House policy on Russia but thinks the administration has not been tough enough when it comes to Russia's dealings with its neighbors.
Nixon also advises that U.S. aid to Russia should be linked to U.S. security aims, such as nuclear balance and a reduced threat from the Russian military, rather than emphasizing the value of domestic reforms there.
Nixon also offered to carry messages to Yeltsin and others as his own, the memo says.
The documents, released through Clinton's presidential library for the exhibit, also include talking points Clinton apparently used in his call with Nixon.
Nixon's trip to Russia was followed closely in the media, in part because Yeltsin froze the former president out of the Kremlin and took away bodyguards and a limousine authorities had provided for him after Nixon held meetings with Yeltsin adversaries.
Yeltsin later backed off and urged Russian officials and parliament members to meet with Nixon.
In Clinton's video for the exhibit, he said:
"After he died, I found myself wishing I could pick up the phone and ask President Nixon what he thought about this issue or that problem, particularly if it involved Russia. I appreciated his insight and advice, and I'm glad he chose, at the end of his life, to share it with me."
TITLE: Mosque Raid Causes Outrage
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Human rights organizations in Russia, Tajikistan and Georgia on Tuesday protested mass arrests and reported harassment and beatings of mostly Central Asian and North Caucasus migrant workers during Friday’s raid on a marketplace in central St. Petersburg.
They are demanding a thorough investigation by Russian and Tajik authorities into the actions of law-enforcement officers who raided Apraksin Dvor, the marketplace in downtown St. Petersburg, during a service at a mosque on the market’s territory.
The Investigative Committee put the number of those detained at 271, but Fontanka.ru reported that “no less than 700” had been arrested, while human rights activists say that the number of arrests could be as high as 1,000.
Officially, the raid was part of a criminal investigation into “public incitement to terrorist activities or public justification of terrorism” and “inciting hatred or hostility as well as humiliation of human dignity” and was conducted jointly by several law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Security Service (FSB) and counter-extremism Center E. Smaller raids were held elsewhere in the city.
But only one person of the hundreds who were arrested is a suspect in that case.
Mass beatings were reported to have taken place during the raid at Apraksin Dvor.
“People who were victims of the mosque raid there and their relatives keep approaching us since the raid took place,” said Anna Udyarova, a lawyer with the Memorial Anti-Discrimination Center, on Tuesday.
“For instance, one citizen of Uzbekistan said he had gone there with his sons, the youngest of whom was 10, and security service officers had used force against him, had beaten him as well as his adult sons, and all this had happened before the eyes of his 10-year-old son.
“Witnesses who work nearby in Apraksin Dvor said about 200 people were beaten, and some sustained injuries as serious as broken arms and legs, but they refuse to file official complaints or document their injuries because they’re afraid of how the authorities will respond. But in conversation with us, they say that all the men who were at the mosque during the service were beaten.”
The only person detained as a suspect within the investigation, according to the Investigative Committee, was Murat Sarbyshev, born in Kabardino-Balkaria (a republic in the south of the Russian Federation) in 1988. He is suspected of having uploaded “extremist literature and videos depicting terrorist attacks on the Internet in a period between October 2010 and April 2011,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement Saturday.
“We are trying to understand why such a large-scale special operation was held to detain just one person — who turned out to be a citizen of Russia — and with such a large number of people suffering as the result of harassment and beatings,” Udyarova said.
“It had an intimidating effect not only on those who were at the mosque at the time, but also on all the foreign citizens, mainly of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, who are based in St. Petersburg and Russia, who learned about this incident and perceived it as a threat to themselves.”
According to Udyarova, up to 1,000 people may have been detained in the city on Friday.
“We were told that about 1,000 were detained, because this special operation took place not only in Apraksin Dvor, but in other places in the city simultaneously,” she said.
“Differences in numbers can be explained by the fact that not everybody who was detained was taken to a police precinct; only those who had problems regarding their immigration documents.
“Even if, as the Interior Ministry’s representative claimed, the objective of this campaign was not to expose illegal migrants and they were in fact looking for suspects in a criminal investigation, as usual, innocent people — foreigners — who were there are the ones who suffered.”
She said the Memorial Anti-Discrimination Center will provide legal support if at least one person who is not intimidated enough to file a complaint is found.
According to the Investigative Committee, those detained included citizens of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and the regions of the North Caucasus, as well as one citizen of Egypt and one citizen of Afghanistan. Ten had personal documents showing signs of forgery, and twenty had no documents at all, the agency said in a statement Saturday.
Of those detained, seven were deported and one more was awaiting deportation in a detention center for foreigners, Interfax news agency reported Monday, citing a source in the police.
With the exception of them and the suspect Sarbyshev, all those detained during the raid were released with no charges pressed, it said.
Late on Tuesday, Interfax quoted a source with the FSB who claimed that the deported seven had links to an “international terrorist organization.”
TITLE: Police Charge Squatter With Injuring Officers
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A man has been charged by the police and put in pre-trial custody as the result of last week’s police raid on an occupied warehouse at the now-defunct Warsaw Railroad Station. The group of anarchists and preservationists who were squatting in the historic building in an attempt to save it from impending demolition have expressed concern that more arrests and charges could follow.
Twenty-year-old Denis Levkin, one of the 20 activists detained at the site last week, was taken to St. Petersburg’s infamous Kresty Prison on Feb. 6 and charged with using life-threatening violence against a government representative.
The rest of the detained activists were released from the police precincts, where most of them were held for two nights.
The police said in a statement that three officers had sustained injuries during the raid, with two being hospitalized. According to the Investigative Committee, two officers sustained “closed head injuries, bruises and lacerations to the head.”
If found guilty, Levkin may be convicted to up to ten years in prison.
“He denies the charges,” Levkin’s lawyer Gleb Lavrentyev said by phone Tuesday.
“If any officers sustained some injuries, they were not inflicted by him. That has been his position over the case, and I essentially support it.”
According to Lavrentyev, no police officers were in fact hospitalized following the incident.
“One visited the GUVD (Main Department of Interior Affairs) hospital, where he headed after allegedly being injured, and where his injuries were documented; the other went to an emergency room,” Lavrentyev said.
“Both were out the same day, nobody was hospitalized; they both went with great gusto to testify against [Levkin].”
The Investigative Committee has released scarce information about Levkin, saying he is a student of one of the city’s vocational schools and was born in Tajikistan.
Earlier, the police said that two of the detained activists might face charges.
Speaking to The St. Petersburg Times on Tuesday, one activist who was at the site during the police raid said Levkin did not belong to the anarchist movement and was rather a “scenester.”
He said Levkin had been charged mistakenly, and expressed concern that the case might grow to include more people.
About 45 activists gathered in and near the warehouse in an attempt to defend the building on Feb. 4 when it was raided by the police.
Twenty were detained and charged with minor offences, such as arbitrariness, or taking the law into their own hands, as well as failure to obey a police officer’s orders and disorderly conduct.
They face fines, community work or short prison sentences of up to 15 days.
TITLE: Zenit Returns With Game Against Liverpool
AUTHOR: By Daniel Kozin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: After a lengthy two-month winter break, local soccer team FC Zenit will be back on the field Thursday in a European fixture at the Petrovsky stadium against the legendary English soccer team Liverpool FC.
The game will see Zenit continue its European campaign in the UEFA Europa League round of 32, after a premature third-place exit from the first-tier competition, the UEFA Champions League, last winter.
Liverpool already boasts three titles from the competition, making it the most successful club in the history of the Europa League, previously called the UEFA Cup. Zenit won the competition once, back in 2008.
The encounter will be a test for Zenit, as it hopes to rehabilitate itself after the first half of the season brought more controversy than success. The team has been plagued by inter-squad conflicts that led to a drastic fall in performance.
According to Zenit coach Luciano Spalletti, the team is ready for a fresh start after two mid-season training camps in Dubai and Turkey, and a number of friendly games in preparation for the match against Liverpool.
“This is a signal and symptom that the team is growing and gaining momentum,” Spalletti said after the 1:0 win in the last friendly game against Belarus’ FC BATE Borisov.
During the break, Zenit — last year’s Russian champions — added to the squad by signing Portuguese defender Luis Neto from AC Siena for a reported 6 million euros ($8 million) as well as purchasing 21-year-old Serbian defender Milan Rodic from Serbia’s OFK Beograd.
With the Liverpool reds set to clash against Zenit on Thursday, the two new players may get the chance to test their mettle against superstars Steven Gerrard and Luis Suarez, as well as ex-Zenit defender Martin Skrtel.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Cheaper Roaming
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Ministry of Mass Communications hopes that legislative amendments that would end roaming charges inside Russia for callers on the same cell network will be passed in 2013, the ministry’s head Nikolai Nikiforov told Interfax on Monday.
Currently, Russians are charged roaming fees when traveling outside the region of the country in which their account is registered.
“The idea is to be able to use a cell phone when arriving from another town and be charged local tariffs,” Nikiforov said. “This is so that people will not have to line their pockets with SIM cards from different cities and replace them in their phones. Legislation to address this is already under discussion, and the technical details are being worked out.”
The ministry has suggested that when visiting a different region, cell phone users should be able to speak with other people in that region registered with the same network operator without paying extra roaming charges. Calls outside that region, for example, to the caller’s home region, will still be charged as long-distance calls. If person has traveled to another region and receives a call from their home region or any other region, it will be the caller who pays the additional charges rather than the person receiving the call.
The changes to current legislation envisage callers being switched automatically to their operator’s most popular tariffs in the region to which they have traveled. The ministry made no mention of moving away from roaming charges on calls made to numbers on other networks.
Man Falls From Roof
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A 24-year-old Tajik man was seriously injured when he fell from the roof of the St. Petersburg Grand Choral Synagogue on Sunday. The unidentified man was clearing snow from the roof when he fell, Interfax reported.
The man, who fell from a height of 20 meters, was hospitalized at the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy.
City investigators are currently looking into the incident.
Duato Heads to Berlin
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The artistic director of the city’s Mikhailovsky Ballet Theater, Nacho Duato, will head the Staatsballett Berlin in 2014, Interfax reported.
Duato will also continue to work simultaneously as the resident choreographer at the Mikhailovsky, according to the theater’s press service. Spanish choreographer Duato has been the artistic director of the Mikhailovsky Theater’s ballet troupe since January 2011.
Visa-Free Finland
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A number of towns in the southeast of Finland have proposed the introduction of a 36-hour visa-free regime for tourists from Russia arriving in the country by train, Interfax reported.
The idea attracted particularly strong support from the authorities of the Finnish city of Lappeenranta, which is located near the Russian border.
The latest move is part of a campaign by Finnish authorities to encourage Russians to travel to their cities.
TITLE: Plain Mariinsky II Building Hides Dazzling Interior
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The long-awaited second stage for the city’s world-renowned Mariinsky Theater is currently going through acoustic tests amid waves of public criticism of its exterior appearance.
While the company is enthusiastically planning new titles for its repertoire made possible by the new state-of-the-art stage, local preservationists lament that the new venue designed by the Canadian company Diamond & Schmitt architects has failed to make a harmonious pairing to the historical venue with which it is connected by a bridge over the Kryukov Canal.
Mariinsky II appears to have a split identity. With austere exteriors that have been most recently nicknamed “the Mariinsky retail and entertainment center,” it dazzles with splendid precious interiors and impresses with its fine acoustics.
A panoramic internal bridge overlooking the vast inner halls of Mariinsky II and leading to the Tsar’s Box offers a stunning view over enormous shiny wall panels made entirely of Italian onyx. Oak was used to decorate the minimalist yet solid modern auditorium, which differs from the opulence of the historic theater across the canal. Setting foot inside Mariinsky II truly gives the impression of entering a temple of the arts.
The project, whose total cost is estimated at 19.1 billion rubles ($161.7 million), is being financed by the federal government.
“The first acoustic tests have shown that rehearsing here feels very natural,” said Valery Gergiev, the artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater, speaking to reporters after an acoustic test on Tuesday. “We should be able to play with ease and flair here.”
The performance during the acoustic check, which featured a handful of short orchestral works and operatic arias by Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Verdi, was attended by Nikolai Vinnichenko, the presidential representative in the Northwestern federal district.
“As a city resident, I am pleased that St. Petersburg is getting this marvelous hall with splendid designs and fabulous acoustics, and as an official I am satisfied to see that the project is now moving forward at a good pace, and we can be sure that it will open as expected,” Vinnichenko said.
Marat Oganesyan, head of the northwestern board for construction, renovation and restoration, said that work is now in its final stages at Mariinsky II.
“The workers are mounting three staircases in the foyers and are putting the last touches to the interiors,” Oganesyan said. “All the work will be completed by March 15, when we will proceed to applying for safety certificates from the inspection agencies.”
The Mariinsky is currently busy hiring staff to serve the new stage.
“Recruitment is certainly not easy, as this company — like any other significant troupe — has history, style, traditions and incredible numbers of nuances to be aware of,” Gergiev said. “Our approach is that we will hire capable, mostly young people who are able and willing to learn fast.”
Discussions about a second stage for the Mariinsky began almost ten years ago. Gergiev says the technical capabilities of the historic theater, built in 1860 to a design by the Italian architect Albert Cavos, do not match the troupe’s artistic potential. The Mariinsky has to close for several days to erect sets for certain performances, while many foreign directors working with the company have to adjust their bold designs to the modest capacities of the Mariinsky’s stage.
The new venue will welcome its first audiences on May 1, when veterans of the local classical music scene will be treated to an opera and ballet gala. The next day will see the stage’s official opening.
“I want to emphasize that we will perform the same program for the veterans and for the guests of the official opening,” Gergiev said. “It is really important for us to make sure that this theater is accessible for ordinary locals, and — please take no offense — the main audiences to benefit from the opening of this hall will be children and young people, for whom we will design a wealth of programs.”
According to Gergiev, certain productions will be adapted or restaged for the Mariinsky II, and new titles that will be produced specifically for the new venue have already been established. One of them will be the world premiere of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera “Lefty,” loosely based on Nikolai Leskov’s 19th-century tale about the cross-eyed craftsman who made steel horseshoes small enough to fit a flea. Cutting-edge choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, who is currently artist in residence at the American Ballet Theater in New York, will also stage new ballets for Mariinsky II, to be premiered later this year.
TITLE: Film Festival Brings Fashion Critic to City
AUTHOR: By Natalya Smolentseva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The international fashion film festival A Shaded View on Fashion Film (ASVOFF) will take place in St. Petersburg for the first time this year. Attending the festival of short, fashion-themed films will be the festival’s founder herself, the fashion blogger and critic Diane Pernet.
Known as “the black widow” for the extravagant black outfits with which she is associated, Pernet will travel to St. Petersburg from Paris to see the work of young Russian film directors. The winner of the festival, who will be chosen by fashion critics and bloggers, will be given the opportunity to participate in an ASVOFF retrospective in Paris this November.
The arrival in St. Petersburg this year of Pernet’s festival continues an Aurora Fashion Week tradition.
“Every year we show foreign movies about fashion houses with subtitles, but this time we will present a completely different project,” said Uliana Kim, one of the organizers of the Aurora Fashion Week.
Pernet began her career as a documentary filmmaker. Later, while working as a costume designer, she switched to fashion once she understood the significance of clothing in cinema. The ASVOFF festival, which debuted at Paris Fashion Week in 2008, is Pernet’s attempt to answer the question of whether or not fashion can be the protagonist of a film, and to bring wider recognition to this kind of cinema.
The festival’s first cinema event took place last Thursday at the city’s Avrora cinema. At the event, audiences were treated to a screening of “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel,” which marked the film’s Russian premiere. Organizers say that they try to appeal to a wide audience, rather than just focusing their attention on fashion critics and bloggers. However the films in competition will only be screened for invited guests, as organizers say the venue is too small to accommodate the general public.
The festival competition will be held Saturday at the Angleterre Hotel, where participants will be given the opportunity to see the best short films from the Paris festival, as well as the Russian films entered into competition. The winner will also be named Saturday. Aurora Fashion Week organizers will sit on the festival jury, but will defer to the opinion of Pernet, they said.
“Most of the contributors, and we place a real accent on this, are from St. Petersburg and show local brands in their films,” said Kim. “But there are also representatives from other Russian cities, because Diana’s opinion was the main criterion.”
As one of the few events dedicated to fashion and cinema in St. Petersburg, ASVOFF is a good chance for young directors to display their talents.
“Russian fashion cinema lags behind its Western counterpart for objective reasons,” said Kim. “It is a symptom of the overall lag in Russia’s film industry.”
On Feb. 17, the general public is invited to an open conversation with ASVOFF producer Pernet at the Avrora cinema, which will mark the end of the festival.
TITLE: Church on Sennaya Looks Set to Be Rebuilt
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Architectural excavation work on Sennaya Ploshchad aimed at the possible rebuilding of the Church of the Assumption (also known as the Savior on Sennaya), which was located on the square until it was demolished in the 1960s, will begin next month, Interfax reported.
The square will be surrounded by fencing, and major excavation work will take place, exposing the engineering infrastructure on the site, according to Mikhail Malyushin, described by Interfax as the church’s parish priest.
Archaeological work will continue on the site throughout 2013, during which time the final plans for the new church are also to be worked out, Malyushin said.
The lead designer of the project, Rafael Dayanov, said that construction of the church could begin in 2014.
The foundation of the original church was uncovered during excavation of an entrance for the Spasskaya metro station.
While former St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko was in office, the idea of rebuilding the church on its historical site was first raised and a small chapel built on the spot. In 2011, work on establishing the original footprint of the church began.
The Church of the Assumption was built on Sennaya Ploshchad in the 18th century and was one of the city’s largest houses of worship. In the early 1960s, the church was demolished to make way for the metro station entrance now standing in the square.
TITLE: Pharma Cluster Takes Shape
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Pharmaceutical companies Gerofarm, Neon and Samson-Med are all planning to begin construction of pharmaceutical production facilities in the city’s Pushkinskaya industrial zone at the end of spring or the beginning of summer, Interfax reported.
At least $12.9 million has already been spent on paving new roads and supplying the territory with water, gas and electricity. The agreement on the development of the new factories was signed between city government officials and the pharmaceutical companies in June 2010, when plans were first made to transform the area into a pharmaceutical cluster.
Gerofarm intends to spend around $43 million on its factory, while Samson-Med is planning to spend $49.7 million. Neon envisages spending $29.8 million on their production facility. All of the plants are expected to come online in 2014, Interfax reported.
Cluster residents are to enjoy reduced rent payments and tax breaks.
TITLE: Kremlin Backs New-Look Youth Group
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Nashi, the controversial pro-Kremlin youth group known for fierce campaigns against government critics at home and abroad, will be split into several projects under a new name, the All-Russian Youth Society, the Izvestia daily newspaper reported on Feb. 11.
A spokeswoman for Nashi appeared to confirm the report, saying the name “Nashi” (Ours) would remain, for now, but that the “logic would change” and that the group would expand geographically and widen the scope of its activities, Interfax reported.
Analysts downplayed the report, saying the Kremlin would continue to use such groups to recruit and groom sympathetic young people and as a counterbalance to opposition forces, which have gained an especially strong foothold on online social networks.
“I don’t think what’s going on right now is a sensation of any kind, but simply a continuation of a trend,” said Pavel Salin, an independent political analyst.
Nashi was effectively broken up into projects after a meeting with Kremlin spindoctor Vyacheslav Volodin last month, Izvestia reported, citing an undisclosed source in the presidential administration.
Each project aims to combat a different perceived social ill: Stopkham (Stop Boorishness) activists target poor behavior on the nation’s roads, Khryushi Protiv (Piglets Against) goes after expired produce on grocery store shelves, and Begi Za Mnoi (Run After Me) promotes healthy lifestyles, to name a few existing projects.
Nashi was founded in 2005 as a Kremlin response to youth organizations in Serbia and Georgia that took an active role in anti-authoritarian revolutions seen in Moscow as Western-backed. “For many years, my task was to prevent an Orange Revolution,” Nashi creator and former leader Vasily Yakemenko told The St. Petersburg Times last year.
Activists took up pro-Kremlin causes with sometimes alarming relish. Nashi camped outside the Estonian consulate in Moscow during a spat between Russia and Estonia in 2007, prompting the Baltic state to close the consulate for “security” reasons and declare Yakemenko persona non grata.
While the group was officially “anti-fascist” and “democratic,” some accused it of bullying government critics, as in 2010, when members of Nashi’s radical wing, Stal (Steel), displayed portraits of opposition leaders’ heads mounted on stakes and sporting hats with swastikas.
Such tactics led opposition-minded Russians to dub Nashi activists “Nashisty,” a nickname that evokes the Russian word for “fascists.”
Regardless of Nashi’s fate, such groups will continue to have an important role, uniting pro-government young people with political ambitions, said Vyacheslav Nikonov, a State Duma deputy and member of the ruling United Russia party.
“There are hundreds of such organizations. Something is constantly happening to them. They grow and shrink, appear and disappear,” he said.
Vladimir Pribylovsky, an analyst with the Panorama think tank, said Nashi no longer had powerful backers in the government. Yakemenko left the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs in June, and the Kremlin’s longtime political mastermind, Vladislav Surkov, lost his post in late 2011.
“Nashi was a pet project of Yakemenko, supported by Surkov. Its function overlapped with Young Guard [United Russia’s youth wing]. Nashi used to have the upper hand, in terms of financing, etc., and now Young Guard has more opportunities,” he said.
Volodin, Surkov’s replacement, is more interested in Young Guard, and the All-Russia People’s Front, a confederation of civic groups that support President Vladimir Putin, said Pribylovsky, whose name once appeared on a list of 168 “most despicable enemies,” mostly opposition leaders and Kremlin critics, reportedly compiled by Nashi and leaked onto the Internet.
Salin, the political analyst said Monday’s report reflected not a sea change for Nashi, but the continuation of a process to reform the organization that was begun in 2008.
“The government thinks that young people are more pragmatic now, so it’s trying to offer socialization and professional skills as opposed to something that’s purely anti-Western,” he said. “They’re continuing to work with young people. The only question is in what form.”
Earlier this month, Yakemenko, who gave up his job as head of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs in June to found a political party that subsequently failed to get off the ground, opened a cafe in Moscow called “Eat Pie,” specializing in pies made using recipes from “old Rus.”
“The Nashi project is finished, and I can say that with pleasure,” Yakemenko told The St. Petersburg Times last year, admitting that the project “started to make serious mistakes” soon after he formally stepped down as head of the organization in 2007.
Nashi officials, however, used to years of speculation that the government was on the verge of pulling the plug on the movement, appeared to greet the Izvestia report with a chuckle.
“I think Nashi should apply to the Guinness Book of World Records as the movement that’s been closed the most number of time,” commissar Anton Smirnov tweeted on Monday.
TITLE: Officers Investigate Reporter
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Moscow — The Investigative Committee opened a probe against Novaya Gazeta reporter Irek Murtazin, claiming that he might have revealed secret details of the investigation against opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his brother Oleg, the committee’s spokesman, Vladimir Markin, said Monday.
In an article published last week, Murtazin posted scans of the allegedly classified documents, including a complaint by cosmetics maker Yves Rocher against Glavnoye Podpisnoye Agentstvo, a company linked to the brothers. The article triggered a boycott by bloggers and activists against Yves Rocher because of what they perceive as the company’s participation in political repression against the opposition leader.
“Only a limited number of participants in the trial — who had been warned that disclosure of criminal case materials is forbidden by law — had access to those documents,” Markin said.
Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov rejected the allegations.
“We didn’t disclose any state secrets. We don’t know any secrets. … I know that the newspaper was acting in line with the law,” he told Interfax.
Murtazin echoed the thought, saying he could not have disclosed any secrets connected with the investigation, since he was not involved in the criminal case.
“I didn’t sign a non-disclosure agreement, and the Mass Media Law gives me the right not to disclose the sources of information,” he said in comments posted on Novaya Gazeta’s website.
Muratov also said his publication was ready to cooperate with investigators.
“Apparently, those who organized the smear campaign against the foreign company are pursuing the goal of forcing the businessmen to withdraw their claim,” said Markin of the Investigative Committee.
Investigators opened the case against Navalny and his brother in December on charges of large-scale fraud and money laundering.
TITLE: At Least 17 People Killed In Komi Mine Explosion
AUTHOR: By Ezekiel Pfeifer
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A pocket of methane gas exploded in a coal mine in the far northern Komi republic on Monday morning, killing at least 17 miners.
The blast at the Vorkutinskaya mine, owned by steel giant Severstal, occurred at 10:28 a.m. at a depth of about 800 meters, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
Authorities cited differing numbers of fatalities from the explosion. Emergency officials said that 23 miners were in the area of the explosion and that 17 died and one was missing. Federal investigators said that in addition to the fatalities, two miners were injured in the blast.
A total of about 250 workers were in other areas of the mine at the time of the explosion and were evacuated, local prosecutors said.
According to prosecutors, the blast was caused by a high concentration of methane, a combustible gas.
The explosion was at least the second fatal accident at a Russian mine in the past month. On Jan. 20, methane exploded in a mine in the Kuzbass coal basin in western Siberia, killing four workers.
Accidents at mines and industrial facilities in Russia are not uncommon, due to frequently lax compliance with safety rules and deteriorating Soviet-era infrastructure.
President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to the families of the workers killed in Monday’s blast and ordered Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov to fly to the scene of the accident.
Puchkov took off for the town of Vorkuta from Moscow at 3:30 p.m. on Monday with a team of physicians and psychologists to manage the fallout, the Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement. It said 287 people and 79 machines were being employed in the cleanup and rescue efforts.
Puchkov said the families of those who died would each receive 2 million rubles ($66,000).
Komi republic head Vyacheslav Gaizer also flew to the scene on Monday afternoon from the regional capital, Syktyvkar, Interfax reported.
The Investigative Committee said in a statement that it suspected the blast was caused by a violation of safety standards, and had opened a criminal investigation into the accident.
Local prosecutors said in a statement that they would monitor the investigation and had initiated a check into the mine’s compliance with labor and industrial safety rules.
The Vorkutinskaya mine, which began operations in 1973, takes its name from its location in the town of Vorkuta, situated on a river about 150 kilometers from the Arctic Ocean.
The mine with an annual output of 1.8 million tons of coal belongs to the company Vorkutaugol, which is owned by Severstal.
In 2011, the Vorkutinskaya mine was given an award for having the best labor conditions of any facility in the Komi republic, RIA-Novosti reported.
TITLE: U.S. Mothers Gain Custody
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — After weeks of anxiety plodding through the opaque Russian legal system, two U.S. women have custody of their adopted Russian children and are preparing to take them home to start a new life together.
On Saturday, Jeana Bonner, of South Jordan, Utah, and Rebecca Preece, of Nampa, Idaho, talked about the expenses, confusion and emotional swings they’ve gone through since arriving in Moscow in mid-January, expecting to quickly leave with their children, both of whom have Down syndrome.
The Bonners and Preeces each have another child with the syndrome.
Bonner and Preece, and their husbands, Wayne and Brian, had spent about a year, including multiple trips to Russia, to arrange for the adoption of the five-year-old girl and four-and-a-half-year-old boy. By late 2012, the adoptions had received court approval, and they thought all they had to do was wait out the 30-day period in which such rulings can be challenged.
But in those 30 days, a ban on Americans adopting Russian children sped through parliament and into law, part of a hastily born package of measures retaliating against a new U.S. law allowing sanctions on Russians identified as human rights violators.
When Jeana Bonner and the Preeces arrived in Moscow, they found themselves caught in a legalistic blind alley. Although officials said adoptions approved before the ban would go through, the judge who was to issue the decree formally granting custody said the ban meant there was now no mechanism for him to do so.
Help came from a surprising quarter: The office of children’s rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov, who has been one of the strongest critics of American adoptions. The office appointed an attorney for the Preeces and Bonners, who obtained a Supreme Court order directing the lower court to immediately issue the decree, Bonner said.
“We were really excited and thought ‘Let’s go pick up our children,’” Bonner said.
But the lower court waited another 15 days.
“That was really frustrating and disheartening,” especially because some other American adoptive parents had received quick action from courts in other parts of Moscow, she said.
The delay forced Brian Preece to go back home to tend to the family’s fireplace business. The two women stayed, racking up what Rebecca Preece said was “a couple thousand dollars” in costs for food, accommodation and canceled flights.
When the decree came through on Tuesday, the women rushed to the orphanages.
“It was an amazing day, just so special, what we’d hoped and dreamed it would be,” Bonner said.
Both were due to leave Russia on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, they’ve been doting on the kids, who are keeping their Russian names as middle names and getting new first names: Jaymi Viktoria Bonner and Gabriel Artur Preece.
“It makes us hopeful for the other families that have met their children and really would like to finish their adoptions,” she said. “It makes us hopeful that they will do the right thing for these families as well.”
At the time the ban went into effect, 46 adoption cases went into legal limbo. U.S. officials have not said how many cases have been resolved.
TITLE: Lavrov Says U.S. Should Learn to Respect Russia
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The U.S. needs to conduct its affairs based on “mutual respect,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Feb. 7.
“The U.S. will not change overnight. They must get used to the fact that affairs can only be conducted on the basis of equality, a balance of interests and mutual respect,” Lavrov said during an interview set to air the next day on Rossia-2 television.
“We may no longer see arrogant actions that directly contradict Russia’s interests, those of our neighbors and those of other parts of the world. But this does not mean that the [Obama] administration has stopped trying to advance its own interests in Central Asia, the Caucasus and even around Russia. This does not mean that the new administration — although it’s not really new, it’s more like the ‘old new’ — is abandoning its missile defense plans,” he said, Interfax reported.
“The tone and style of negotiation and dialogue have changed under Barack Obama. This is always a plus. … The practical impact of these conversations has also changed,” he said. “They [the Americans] are physically not able to solve any problems, but remain the largest and most powerful military, economic and financial power.”
Speaking about Afghanistan, Lavrov said that even as a coalition the U.S. can do little.
“The threat of terrorism is still there, and the drug threat has increased. They cannot solve the problems related to the spread of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, drug-trafficking and organized crimes,” Lavrov said.
TITLE: Pair Accused of Stealing Nearly $800,000 From Skolkovo Fund
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s premier technology hub became the site of the nation’s latest high-level corruption scandal on Tuesday after investigators accused two officials of using a fraudulent tender to make off with 23.8 million rubles ($789,000), the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
Kirill Lugovstev, financial director of the Skolkovo Fund, which supports the hub, and Vladimir Khokhlov, head of a daughter company that handled customs and finance, and others arranged for a crooked contract to
be awarded to a company owned by Lugovstev’s parents, investigators said.
Under the contract, which stipulated three years’ advance payments and forbade refunds, the finance company agreed to lease office space from Lugovstev’s family business. But Khokhlov and Lugovtsev instead used the money to renovate the building, investigators said.
In a statement, the Skolkovo Fund said possible misdeeds at its daughter company were discovered during an internal audit and passed on to investigators in the fall. Lugovstev was placed on leave pending the investigation, and the money advanced was returned.
Premeditated theft by a group of individuals is punishable by a fine of up to 300,000 rubles ($9,950) and up to five years in prison.
TITLE: Anti-Gay Bill Takes Russia Back to Middle Ages
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
TEXT: On Jan. 25, the State Duma passed a bill on the first reading that prohibits homosexual propaganda aimed at children. This obscurantist legislation is part of a broader attack that Russia’s political and ideological reactionary forces have waged against dissenters since President Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin last May.
Working closely with the Russian Orthodox Church, the Putin regime is deliberately playing to the primitive stereotypes, ignorance and hatred of the conservative majority, actively bearing down on all forms of dissent and nontraditional behavior, focusing their efforts on residents of Moscow, St. Petersburg and other large cities. The attack on homosexuals is only a small battle in the larger war against the “creative class,” the opposition and other dissenters who gave the Kremlin such a bad scare during the mass protest rallies last year.
This war has been extended over the past year to target liberals, contemporary artists, atheists, political cartoonists, bloggers and volunteers. It also includes legislation restricting Internet freedoms and other laws aimed at “blasphemers” and those who “slander” politicians and the state. In short, the Kremlin is methodically persecuting the most active, creative and free-thinking members of society. Like all authoritarian regimes, the Kremlin is trying to create a country of loyal and inert conformists who are driven by herd instincts.
The authorities are creating an increasingly unbearable atmosphere for the most active and freedom-loving Russians, one that is filled with hate, intimidation and persecution. As a result, the brain drain of Russia’s most talented professionals is increasing at an alarming pace, which makes the ambitious innovation and modernization initiatives such as the Skolkovo technology park a useless endeavor. Up to 100,000 Russians leave the country every year, with about 2 million Russians now living permanently abroad. Meanwhile, polls consistently show that the number of Russians thinking seriously of emigrating increases with every passing year under Putin. The main reason is that they see no future for themselves living, working or raising a family in a Russia that is decaying because of systemic lawlessness, corruption, stagnation and autocracy.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev made a Freudian slip when he joked at the recent World Economic Forum at Davos that if Google co-founder Sergei Brin had not left his native Soviet Union in the late 1970s, he would probably have been arrested in Russia today. But this is no laughing matter for many Russians. The chances of being arrested in Russia are higher than ever. There have been cases of people being thrown in jail arbitrarily for opposition activities, participation in peaceful demonstrations, critical comments made on blogs, “blasphemous” songs or cartoons and “libelous” newspaper articles. Over the past year, the Investigative Committee has become the most important repressive institution in the country.
In an effort to suppress active, free-thinking Russians and mobilize the conservative majority around the Kremlin, the Putin regime relies on old, Soviet repressive instruments with one important new addition: The Russian Orthodox Church. The Kremlin ideologues have a new strategy: combine the stagnation of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev with the ultra-conservative ideology of the Orthodox Church. The tactic of inciting homophobia, taken directly from the Soviet playbook, is now actively supported by the Orthodox Church.
Homosexuality was a criminal offense in the Soviet Union from 1934 until 1993, and thousands of people with a nontraditional sexual orientation served terms in Soviet prisons and punitive psychiatric institutions. In the early 1990s, that law was repealed because it violated European conventions that Russia had signed on protecting human rights. Now Soviet thinking and legislation are gradually seeping back into Russian society. The Kremlin can’t ban homosexuality — not yet, at least — but it can introduce repressive measures against gays by packaging the bill as a ban against “homosexual propaganda aimed at adolescents.” This is not a laudable drive “to protect children” as proponents of the bill contend. It is a thinly veiled display of homophobia.
As in most cases with Russia’s repressive laws, the legislation is loosely worded to give the authorities maximum latitude to apply it arbitrarily. The bill does not define “homosexual propaganda,” which will give the police and courts free rein to interpret the legislation as they please if it becomes law. For example, two homosexuals holding hands on the street where a minor is present could be enough to arrest those who are “spreading homosexual propaganda.” It effectively declares that all homosexuals, by definition, are dangerous freaks and inferior to heterosexuals. Many of the supporters of this bill view homosexuality as a perversion and an illness. They believe that homosexuals should be either subjected to mandatory psychiatric treatment or be isolated from society.
This anti-gay legislation not only contradicts international norms of tolerance and protection of minority rights, but it also directly contradicts established, decades-old medical and psychological understandings about the nature of human sexuality. With their obscurant views of homosexuality, Russian lawmakers and their supporters are very much stuck in the Middle Ages.
Notably, the homophobic initiative by Russian authorities has been condemned by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; German Foreign Affairs Minister Guido Westerwelle; Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs; British Foreign Minister William Hague; and the Council of Europe. They all consider Russia’s new anti-gay legislation a violation of human rights — in particular, a violation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
TITLE: comment: No Financial Center Without the Rule of Law
AUTHOR: By Bruce Misamore
TEXT: The plans to make the Moscow stock market into a major international exchange and Moscow into a major international financial center are, unfortunately, one big pipe dream as long as the regime of President Vladimir Putin continues to trample over private property rights.
Foreign investors will not bring their money into a financial marketplace in significant amounts until they can be assured that their investments are protected by a strong rule of law and an independent judiciary. As Russian capital continues to flee the country, a natural question arises: If Russians don’t trust their own country’s financial markets, why should foreign investors?
The Russian government and its senior officials continue to delude themselves every day. The growth that has occurred in Russia in the past ten years is not because of Putin. It is despite him. The absurd criminal trial of a deceased Sergei Magnitsky is a pathetic attempt to deceive Russians and cover up the corrupt activities of Kremlin officials. It is right out of the Soviet playbook, as is the Russian ban on adoptions of Russian orphans by U.S. citizens.
Despite populist statements by the government about efforts to improve the business climate, the Kremlin’s control of the courts continues to be the law of the land. The cases of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his colleagues Platon Lebedev, Vasily Aleksanyan, Svetlana Bakhmina and others awakened the world to Russian justice under Putin. Magnitsky and the corruption exhibited by the Russian administration in everything associated with that case are indicative of complete lack of a rule of law and a continuation of the obfuscation.
The state’s expropriation of Yukos, which started ten years ago, scared away both Russian and foreign capital investment and will continue to do so until Russia understands its grievous mistakes and makes necessary changes. Yet to this day, Russia and its state-controlled companies continue to have no regard for the rule of law and property rights.
Nobody should be fooled by the pomp surrounding the recent deal with BP. The Rosneft acquisition of TNK-BP is just another in a series of attempts to legitimize assets once held by Yukos that were illegally seized by the Russian government.
The Russian government has consolidated its almost unlimited powers inside Russia and ignores calls from the West to improve its human rights record and the rule of law. Moreover, it has started to apply offensive tactics, accusing the West of poor human rights records to deflect criticism away from itself and mislead Russian citizens. Is this the solid foundation for creating an international financial center?
The U.S. Magnitsky Act, which bars Russian officials accused of human rights violations from the entering the U.S., has a good chance of being adopted in similar forms in Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden and perhaps other European Union countries. The Magnitsky Act is not in any way anti-Russian. On the contrary, these measures impose sanctions against a group of corrupt politicians and officials accused of human rights violations who have little regard for their own law, the interests of Russian citizens or for the creation of an atmosphere that attracts substantial foreign investment — the very measures that are absolutely essential to create a robust and attractive financial center.
TITLE: Love in a cold climate
AUTHOR: By Chris Gordon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In the pantheon of intellectual power couples, world cinema has yet to come up with a better match than filmmakers Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann. And just in time for Valentine’s Day, a new exhibition celebrating their love opens Thursday at Rosphoto.
“Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman. Photographs” brings together images of the couple from the mid-1960s onwards, many of which have never been displayed to the public before. Drawn from the archives of the National Library of Norway and the Norwegian Film Institute, the photographs show the couple at work and at rest, often in the company of other actors and surrounded by the trappings of their craft.
During the course of a relationship that lasted more than 40 years, the pair collaborated on some of the most psychologically penetrating films ever made, forging an enduring culture of auteur cinema in Scandinavia along the way.
Ullmann and Bergman met in 1965 and lived together for five years, having a daughter before separating. They continued to work side-by-side, however, long after their affair ended and would remain close friends and colleagues until Bergman’s death in 2007.
The couple first worked together on Bergman’s 1966 film “Persona,” which introduced the Norwegian actress to international audiences and won her critical praise around the world. Together they would collaborate on some of the Swedish director’s most celebrated work including “Cries and Whispers,” “Scenes from a Marriage” and “Autumn Sonata,” among others.
Bergman is widely considered to be one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, and is cited as an influence by directors as unalike as Woody Allen and Andrei Tarkovsky.
“Bergman was the first to bring metaphysics — religion, death, existentialism — to the screen,” French film director Bertrand Tavernier was quoted as saying in the New York Times obituary for Bergman. “But the best of Bergman is the way he speaks of women, of the relationship between men and women. He’s like a miner digging in search of purity.”
Bergman retired from directing films for theatrical release in 1984 with his Academy Award-winning swan song “Fanny and Alexander,” but continued to work in the theater. He staged radical interpretations of plays by August Strindberg, Anton Chekhov and Yukio Mishima, as well as penning a number of novels and screenplays. He also continued to direct for television, releasing the film “Saraband” in 2003 for which Ullmann reprised her role from “Scenes from a Marriage.” It would mark the last time the couple would work together.
Ullmann began directing films in the early 1990s and based her film “Private Confessions” on a screenplay by Bergman. The collaboration signaled a new phase in the pair’s working relationship, and she would go on to direct “Faithless” from Bergman’s semi-autobiographical screenplay. She was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000 for the film.
The exhibition at Rosphoto is a joint project between the Consulate General of the Kingdom of Norway and the Consulate General of Sweden in St. Petersburg. A number of films will be screened throughout the run of the exhibition including four feature films, one TV program and two documentaries. The film program kicks off on Feb. 14 with the Russian premiere of “Liv and Ingmar Painfully Connected,” a 2012 documentary by the Indian film director Dheeraj Akolkar.
The only Bergman film on the program is “Scenes from a Marriage” from 1973 (Feb. 16 and March 30). All films will be shown with English subtitles and, at the first screening of each film, simultaneous Russian interpretation.
At 12 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 13, a roundtable discussion will be held at the Danish Cultural Institute that will examine the impact Bergman and Ullmann had on Swedish and Norwegian cinema. The discussion will be led by Jan Erik Holst of the Norwegian Film Institute and Jannike Olund of the Bergman Center on the Swedish island of Faro, where Bergman lived and worked for the last 40 years of his life.
“Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman. Photographs” runs from Feb. 14 through March 31 at Rosphoto, 35 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. Tel: 314 1214. www.rosphoto.org.
TITLE: Silencing the avant garde
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “I can’t understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I’m frightened by the old ones.”
This famous quote by the U.S. composer John Cage, renowned for his unorthodox use of musical instruments in search of a new sound, is the motto of a bold new exhibition that has opened at the Engineer’s House of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The project, conceived by the northwest branch of the State Center for Contemporary Art and the History of St. Petersburg Museum together with the Pro Arte Institute, marks the centennial of the birth of the eccentric composer.
Titled “Silent Presence,” the exhibition celebrates the composer’s philosophy through a dynamic display that will run in the exhibition halls of the Peter and Paul Fortress until March 31.
Cage was a daring innovator who had the courage to go against the grain, and who was very much ahead of his time. The art of the composer is broader than any definition or genre. Furthermore, any definition that one could try to give Cage, the man who rejected the concept of music and sounds serving purposes of creativity, would only serve to constrict him. The intentions of Cage, his artistic ambitions, were on the contrary an attempt to push boundaries rather than to be forced into any definitions.
The exhibition revolves around Cage’s most famous composition, the three-part conceptual piece “4’33” that consists entirely of silence, and was hence nicknamed “the silent piece.”
The first performance of the notorious work, which was written in 1952, created a scandal as many members of the audience, when confronted with the sound of silence, felt they were being fooled.
“It is a piece that has become a sort of icon in post-war culture, like Warhol’s soup cans: A punch line for jokes and cartoons; the springboard for a thousand analyses and arguments; evidence of the extremity of a destructive avant-garde that appeared in the 1950s and 60s,” says U.K. scholar James Pritchett, one of the leading experts on Cage’s art.
What was the idea behind the historic work?
“Originally we had in mind what you might call an imaginary beauty, a process of basic emptiness with just a few things arising in it,” Cage wrote about the piece in his essay “Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?”
“And then when we actually set to work, a kind of avalanche came about which corresponded not at all with that beauty which had seemed to appear to us as an objective. Where do we go then? Well what we do is go straight on; that way lies, no doubt, a revelation. I had no idea this was going to happen. I did have an idea something else would happen. Ideas are one thing and what happens another.”
Cage’s drawings comprise a substantial proportion of the display, including the “Seven Day Diary” and “Stones” series, as well as selected pages from the “Mushroom Book.” The exhibition presents the scores of some of the composer’s iconic works, such as Fontana Mix, Music for Carillon and Ryoanji, alongside audio recordings of these pieces.
Also featured in the exhibition are groundbreaking drawings by Marcel Duchamp for his artwork “The Large Glass” that is also known as “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.” Duchamp created the artwork between 1915 and 1923. Instead of a canvas, the artist used two panes of glass, and added lead foil, dust and fuse wire to oil as the main materials.
It was for Duchamp that Cage composed the enigmatic and mysterious five-minute piece for the prepared piano in 1947, which gained international fame. The piano was prepared with bits of rubber, pieces of feather and one small bolt precisely placed to emphasize string harmonies that make the piano sound like an obscure village ensemble.
The piece was intended for the movie “Dreams That Money Can Buy” that Duchamp made with the surrealist artist and film-theorist Hans Richter.
The exhibition also pays tribute to Cage’s “Lecture on the Weather,” a multimedia stage work composed in collaboration with Maryanne Amacher and Luis Frangella. The composition was commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1975 to mark America’s bicentennial.
Inspired by the politically charged essays of Henry David Thoreau, “Lecture on the Weather” uses weather soundscape as its focal point, fusing in the elements of music, documentary, speech and lighting.
In addition to the Cage memorabilia — photographs, drawings and notes — the exhibition incorporates documentaries about the composer. A special section documents Cage’s visit to St. Petersburg in 1988.
“If we begin to count the doors that John Cage opened for us and the new sound ways that he discovered, we won’t be able to stop for a rather long time,” said St. Petersburg music historian Olga Manulkina.
“The prepared piano, the use of sound and silence as equal music-making elements, the creation of graphic notation as a system of representing music through the use of visual symbols, the art of happening. In short, Cage’s ideas live on and win.”
“Silent Presence” runs through March 31 at the Engineer’s House at the Peter and Paul Fortress. Tel. 233 0040.
www.proarte.ru
TITLE: Growing up with Spitfire
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Twenty years after Spitfire formed, the St. Petersburg band that became a major underground success as Russia’s leading ska-punk band singing in English has stepped aside from the ska-punk idiom and now writes songs in Russian.
The anniversary concerts are set to be held at Dusche club — co-owned by Spitfire members and Leningrad frontman Sergei Shnurov — on Friday, and at the Moscow club Gogol the following night.
Spitfire was originally formed as a garage rockabilly trio by singer and guitarist Konstantin Limonov, drummer Denis “Kashchei” Kuptsov and double bassist Igor “Popugai” Akulinin in 1993 and made its stage debut during a psychobilly event at the now-defunct Indie club on Feb. 10 that year.
“They started out playing psychobilly, when it was Kostya, Kashchei and Popugai, who lives in Denmark now,” said frontman Roman Parygin, who joined as a trumpet player in 1997 after Spitfire’s 1996 debut album “Night Hunting.”
“There’s nobody left of the original lineup today. I joined soon after Spitfire had come to its music genre of ska punk and released its first album, and took part in all our insane European tours of 1998 to 2007 and 2008.”
With co-founding drummer Kuptsov’s departure in 2009, the band now features Parygin on vocals and trumpet, Grigory Zontov on saxophone, Vladislav “Valdik” Alexandrov on trombone, Dmitry Kezhvatov on guitar, Ilya “Pianist” Rogachevsky on keyboards, Andrei “Ded” Kurayev on bass and Igor Rozanov on drums.
“It can be said that Grisha, Valdik, Ded and me — and, since 2000, Pianist — these five guys, we’ve been playing together all these years,” said Parygin, who became the full-time vocalist after Limonov left in 2006.
Alongside Distemper in Moscow, Spitfire was one of two Russian bands playing ska punk when it started out. Originally, the band sang in English, and was one of few Russian bands to release its records abroad and perform at European venues.
“When I joined the band, I was 17; I’m 33 now, and my understanding has changed a lot,” Parygin said.
“When we were playing in 1998, there was the so-called third wave of ska music in Europe; it was very trendy, very popular and we would get 500 fans at a gig there. That’s quite an achievement for a band from Russia.”
Despite success at clubs, touring Europe was fun but far from profitable, he admitted.
“When I was 17, I could go for two months or even longer, have a great time and return with 30 Deutschmarks,” he said.
“But we’ve grown up and everybody has children running around in their apartments, and if I were to go away for two months and return with 30 euros, the children would no longer be running around.
“When we started touring, we were an aspiring band and mostly played in exchange for a percentage of the ticket sales or cover charge. There were only a couple of times when we returned from a tour with a load of money. But we still tour, even if it’s not that much.”
Parygin said the band more or less stopped touring Europe in 2008, mainly due to the closing of the German ska-punk label Pork Pie, which released its records internationally, and the overall drop in popularity of ska punk.
“It’s like the genre of psychobilly, which died out,” he said.
“There are some new bands, but they gather 150 people or so now, and when the bands Mad Sin or The Meteors come, people go to see them not because they’re into psychobilly, but because they’re founders of the genre. It’s just like they go to see Ozzy Osbourne, because he’s still alive.”
Spitfire’s fifth and most recent album, called “5,” is all in Russian and represents a step away from the music subgenre that Spitfire used to be associated with, although it contains a couple of ska-punk tracks.
“As years pass, you develop as a musician and want to get out of the framework of ska music, and when we took a step outside ska music, some people who were used to us playing ska punk said, ‘It’s shit,’” Parygin said.
“Because people who are on ska Internet forums like Ska.ru don’t tolerate any deviance. It drives me crazy. That’s why our new album, ‘5,’ hasn’t found a place for itself in the hearts of ska-punk lovers. There’s too much rock music on it — and the rock music of the Killing Joke type at that — it’s too clever for guys who are into ska punk.”
Having spent years with a ska-punk band, Parygin expressed reservations about the ska movement in Russia.
“I like the music, but ska festivals in Russia are the worst thing imaginable,” he said.
“It’s unclear why people come to the event — to get wasted and sleep under the stage? I don’t think that’s punk rock. Punk rock is not a urine-stained lout, punk rock is a different ideology.”
In addition to original Spitfire songs, the album, which was written entirely by Parygin in Russian, contains a song called “Jurassic Park” by local ironic avant-rock band NOM, originally recorded for last year’s NOM tribute album, “NOM Rock Family: 25 Years On Stage.”
“[NOM member Andrei] Kagadeyev called me and asked, ‘Do you like the song about velociraptors?’ I said, ‘Pretty much.’ He said, ‘Would you like to do a cover?’ ‘Pretty much.’ And when I listened to the whole tribute album, I came to the conclusion that our cover version was the best.”
Parygin said the band had switched to writing songs in Russian after the departure of drummer Kuptsov, who had written Spitfire’s English-language lyrics.
“English goes better with rock and roll, it’s more difficult to write in Russian,” Parygin said.
“‘If you listen to a lot of songs by Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, they’re utter nonsense, they’re about nothing. ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ — can you imagine a chorus like that in a Russian song? But I wouldn’t be surprised if we suddenly have a new song in English one day. It’s not like we had a goal to conquer Russia now, or anything.”
He said his own songs were about his “inner world, relationship to the outside world, the struggle between good and evil in myself and about love.”
“But not about blue suede shoes!” he said.
“Of course, I am talking metaphorically, but I’ve never liked Elvis and I’ve never understood why he’s the King of Rock.”
Parygin studied trumpet at the Mussorgsky College of Music, but did not complete his degree, choosing a tour with Spitfire over a final exam.
“We had an entertainment and jazz department at the Mussorgsky, where all the musicians who had no time or desire to attend classes systematically would go,” he said.
“Those who studied in a classical department were reproached for missing classes, while with us it was like ‘Working students should be stimulated.’ If it weren’t for the entertainment department, I would have been kicked out long before the final exam. But it was 1999, and the choice was between taking the exam or going on tour. So I went on tour.”
Since 2002, the members of Spitfire have also performed as part of stadium rockers Leningrad, but are also keen to start new experimental projects such as a spinoff “metal” band called Preztizh.
“I picked up the wrong instrument when I was a child, so I had to buy a bass guitar last year, and last week our pianist, our drummer and me tried to perform as a trio,” Parygin said.
“But that’s another story. I want to try myself as a bass guitarist; we even have some pieces already written. But it’s straightforward rock.”
Parygin said he has broad music tastes.
“I like all music, no matter what genre it is,” he said.
“I think music can be divided into two categories: Cool and crap. Of course, I prefer thrash metal of the 1986 type and everything related to it. I like Pantera, Slayer, heavy stuff. I think Gallagher recorded a great album as Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. I like Morrissey, Killing Joke, everything.”
Of Russian-language bands, he mentions Morekorabli, Psikhheya and his recent discovery, Pionerlager Pylnaya Raduga.
“They play grunge in its purest form,” he said. “The pre-‘Nevermind’ type of grunge, let’s say. They should have been in Seattle in the early 1990s, they would have been kings there.”
Spitfire will perform at 8 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 15 at Dusche, 50 Ligovsky Prospekt, Korpus 6. Tel. +7 (960) 246 4550.
TITLE: A kingdom of cats
AUTHOR: By Tatyana Sochiva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In a city renowned for its countless grandiose, record-breaking sights and museums, the Cat Republic is not listed in Top 10 guidebook recommendations. Yet this café with a difference, in which noble felines rule, already has a devoted and steadily growing following.
After obtaining a visa and washing their hands, visitors to the Cat Republic may pass through the magic wardrobe to meet the country’s furry inhabitants themselves. There is one simple rule here: Never insist on interaction with any cat that is not interested.
“The relationships between our cats include a lot of different stories,” Anna Chugunova, spokesperson for the Cat Republic, told The St. Petersburg Times.
“There is a whole series of tales. Dyushes, who is a Don Sphynx, is very friendly with furry cats, he likes to warm himself by cuddling up to them.”
“On the contrary, the Persian cat Mary suffered so much from her fluffy fur coat this summer that the staff of the Cat Republic decided to cut the beauty’s hair. She looked very funny. Many people couldn’t help smiling when they saw her. Mary felt very insulted, foremost by her hairdressers. She wouldn’t go near them, and would not allow them to stroke her or hold her in their arms. And when somebody pointed at her and laughed, she left the room in a huff.”
The Cat Republic consists of several rooms that house a café, a library, a mini-cinema, an exhibition gallery and a souvenir shop, all based around a cat theme.
The walls of the cats’ domain are decorated with fanciful murals by Olga Popugayeva and Dmitry Nepomnyaschy. The wall paintings portray cats alongside their best friends, the Hermites, who are a diminutive people living in the State Hermitage Museum and other museums, according to a new urban mythology.
This association with the great museum is far from accidental. A number of the quadrupeds residing in the Republic hail from the Hermitage — home to a celebrated army of felines who help keep the museum’s storerooms free of vermin — and are named in honor of paintings and notable artists, or people connected to them.
“The Cat Republic continues to help the cats at the Hermitage,” said Chugunova. “It assists in the treatment of their illnesses, finds places for them to live and raises funds for their care.”
The Cat Republic started out as a branch of the Vsevolozhsk Cat Museum located just outside St. Petersburg.
“There was no point in making a duplicate version of [the museum],” said Chugunova. “Firstly, we aimed to create a platform for interaction. And then we combined this dream with the idea of a cat café. That’s how the Cat Republic was born.”
There are currently 15 cats in residence at Cat Republic. The newest emigres include a mixed-breed cat from the Hermitage named Gauguin, a Leopard cat named Gala and a purebred American Curl named Mango.
Each cat has its own story, and not always a happy one. Shreky, a Cornish Rex, fell out of a window at the age of five months and broke three of his legs. The cat’s owners took him to the Elvet veterinary clinic to be put down. But because the clinic has a policy of always curing animals that can be saved, vets there set the kitten’s broken bones with metal plates.
“Within a couple of months, Shreky looked like a cyborg-cat,” Chugunova recalled. He eventually ended up at the Cat Republic for further rehabilitation because he had gotten used to round-the-clock attention while recuperating and was bored when left alone at home.
But no matter where the cats come from, all of the republic’s residents have been carefully selected for their capacity to be friendly — both to one another, and to visitors. Every day the cats provide valuable anti-stress therapy to the children and adults who pet, feed and photograph them.
The stated goal of the Cat Republic is to educate the public on proper cat care. In addition to a variety of events and master classes, meetings with felinologists and zoopsychologists are held regularly.
“The Cat Republic has taken part in the city’s Museum Night, Children’s Day and the Cat Mania exhibition that was held at the Peter and Paul Fortress,” said Chugunova.
The idea of a feline kingdom may be new for St. Petersburg, but it is based on a Japanese model. “The first cat café emerged in Osaka,” said Chugunova. “They have the same format — people come to sit and have tea as well as to commune with the cats.”
While such businesses are booming in Japan, the Cat Republic so far remains a unique destination in a city known for its more traditional museums and galleries.
The Cat Republic is located at 10 Ulitsa Yakubovicha, tel. 312 0487. Open daily, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. http://catsrepublic.ru
TITLE: THE DISH: UMAO
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Micro dining
The latest gem on the city’s Pan-Asian dining scene is the tiny UMAO, hidden away on Konnogvardeisky Boulevard behind the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall, and opposite the row of expensive eateries such as Stroganoff Steak House that lines the other side of the boulevard.
UMAO is a model of simplicity — think plain cream-colored walls and wooden tables — and contemporary Asian chic, with its brown paper placemats, transparent plastic chairs, glass lampshades, and branches and fairy lights adorning the capacious windowsills.
With its young staff, laid-back, welcoming atmosphere and chilled music, the cafe makes a great place to enjoy a Tsingtao beer (170 rubles or $5.70 for half a liter) and a plate of ferociously hot, tangy vegetable spring rolls (a bargain at 120 rubles, or $4) while catching up with friends.
Despite the café’s small size, solitary diners wolfing down fresh, firm, steaming dim sum with chicken and shitake mushrooms (200 rubles, $6.70) on their lunch break from work will also feel at home, and in the absence of any likeminded coworkers, can entertain themselves by flicking through one of the numerous Sobaka.ru and TimeOut magazines available.
If the idea of trawling through pages of generously Photoshopped local D-list celebs is enough to put you off your meal, fear not: The large windows offer a more romantic view of the snowy boulevard outside, which makes the perfect setting in which to warm up with a bowl of piping hot cream of spinach soup (170 rubles, $5.70). If the rich and salty dish isn’t enough on its own to thaw you through, then the single innocuous-looking red chili pepper lurking at the bottom of the bowl certainly will be.
Sweet and sour soup with salmon (180 rubles, $6) was just pleasantly spicy, and, like everything else at UMAO, cholesterol-inflatingly salty, seemingly due to the chef’s predilection for soy sauce. The seaweed flavor and texture contrasted nicely with the superbly firm pieces of salmon, cooked to perfection.
The sauces at UMAO also tend to be soy-based and salty, and diners would be well advised to go easy with them to avoid swamping the taste and texture of the dishes themselves. For example, it would be a shame to doctor the crunchy Gorengan chicken (180 rubles, $6), deep-fried in batter yet laudably grease-free, with anything other than the delectable mayonnaise-based concoction with which it was served.
The portions here are not enormous, but offer excellent value for the reasonable prices: UMAO is drastically cheaper than its nearest rival in terms of cuisine and atmosphere, the ever-popular King Pong. A portion of chicken teriyaki noodles (220 rubles, $7.30), for example, was generous enough, and did not fall into the usual trap of being doused in a greasy sauce. At this stage, only the most expert chopstick-users are likely to manage to devour the firm, elusive noodles with any grace with the chopsticks provided on each table. Others may, in the interests of table etiquette, have to admit defeat and ask the unfailingly friendly wait staff for a fork.
UMAO, the waitress laughingly confided, is in fact a random combination of letters that was chosen as the restaurant’s name “because it sounded Asian.” The food, however, seemed at least a little more authentic, and certainly the eatery already seems to have a small yet dedicated — and rapidly growing — following.
And the best news? From March, UMAO is set to start offering home (or office) delivery.
TITLE: Russian Men Turn to Service of Romance Consultant
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian men are among those eagerly making use of the services of a French entrepreneur offering a helping hand in making unforgettable romantic gestures.
Proposing marriage from outer space or declaring your love with a shower of 1,000 red roses falling onto the deck of a yacht during a romantic cruise in Paris are just a couple of the ways that French company ApateoSurprise can help men to surprise their sweethearts on Valentine’s Day, and Russians are among the most active users of these services.
“Russians can really do amazing things when they are in love!” said Nicolas Garreau, the founder of ApoteoSurprise.
“They usually choose a private dinner cruise on the Seine, with 1,000 red roses suddenly falling from the sky when the yacht stops at the Pont des Arts, the most romantic bridge in Paris,” he said.
“Russians are also fond of a scenario that includes hundreds of candles spelling out a special message of love in the air as they arrive at a magical French abbey by chauffer-driven car. Another popular scenario is a candlelit dinner at a castle with a private fireworks display that includes a giant red heart suddenly blazing forth,” he said.
Unsurprisingly, such bold demonstrations of emotion come at a price. A dove delivering a declaration of love to a hotel costs 390 euros ($521), while for about 16,000 euros ($21,395), lovelorn romantics can splash out on a giant white heart written in the sky above Paris by small aircraft.
Although less inventive — or less prosperous — men may consider their more traditional proposals unforgettable, 80 percent of women say that they are disappointed with the way their lovers choose to propose, according to information from ApateoSurprise, whose mission is to ensure that their methods will be anything but disappointing.
“Since 2006, when I launched my agency, I’ve planned about 1,000 romantic surprises and marriage proposals, and I would say that the most popular package among clients is a one-hour limousine tour with champagne and chocolate,” said Garreau.
“The limo stops at the Eiffel Tower, the tower sparkles, and all of a sudden, a personalized message appears on a giant ultra-bright LED screen. Women cry almost every time. And of course the message can be displayed in Russian,” he added.
Women rarely know beforehand that their other half has called on the services of a Parisian expert in romance. But Garreau does not usually interfere in the process, or even help the client in choosing a fitting scenario. He believes that the client knows which form of expression suits their particular situation best.
Garreau’s most extravagant proposal yet will be made on Valentine’s Day this week. For 4,990 euros ($6,675), men can propose to their girlfriends from space, at an altitude of 30 kilometers. A picture of the couple and a proposal text will be sent into space, where video equipment will capture the whole event, after which the woman will be given the film.
“I’ve always been romantic in my private life and I have always tried to do amazing things to surprise the women I was in love with, but I always had to do everything by myself, as no specific service existed to help create a romantic surprise,” said Garreau. “The job of marriage proposal planner didn’t exist — either in France or anywhere else — despite the fact that 3 million couples come to Paris annually for a romantic getaway. Most men propose during these holidays in what is considered to be the world capital of love,” he added.
“My goal was to allow men traveling to Paris to offer their loved ones the most romantic and memorable surprise. I wanted to make possible those romantic fairy tales that seemed impossible in real life,” he said.
Among international clients, Russians are the most represented nationality, said Garreau. The company’s ultra-romantic proposals became popular among Russians as soon as the company was launched.
“Russians ... really like beautiful, spectacular and sometimes extravagant romantic surprises, but prefer to keep them intimate,” said Garreau. “They want to live a wonderful, magical, private moment — a personal dream that nobody else on earth can share with them. They also want the event to have a big element of French romance.”
TITLE: New Museum Puts Sex in the Spotlight
AUTHOR: By Viktoria Koltsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new Erotic Museum is opening in St. Petersburg just in time for Valentine’s Day.
The Museros museum of erotic art will open its doors on Feb. 14, making it the city’s first museum entirely dedicated to the history, art and aesthetics of sex.
“The idea is to show the culture and art of eroticism, the true aestheticism of this important part of our lives,” said Karina Gorbatenko, the museum’s press secretary. “This is both an artistic and educational museum that will shed light on the rather closeted erotic culture.”
“Not knowing is bad, not wanting to know is worse,” proclaim the museum’s creators. “The theme of sex is still provocative and is not freely spoken of. That is why most museums and galleries can’t display erotic art objects; they would create too much controversy.”
Erotic art has never been so accessible for people living in the post-Soviet territories, and the founders of Museros want to create a place that completely blows the lid off the topic of sex. All of the museum’s exhibits will illustrate the unspoken culture that exists around human sexuality, its organizers say.
The museum occupies more than 900 square meters in five sultry and opulent rooms. The History Room reveals the “untold part of world history,” including the sex-lives of imperial Russian rulers and Soviet leaders. On show are discreet machines and imaginative sex toys that are in themselves works of art. One of the featured objects is an armchair dating back to the reign of Catherine the Great. Outwardly, the chair looks like any other from the era, but it conceals an inner mechanism that could be started by a single foot manipulation in order to give pleasure to the lady occupying the chair.
The Erotic Culture Room showcases customs and traditions from all over the world. Artifacts and objects of art from ancient times to the modern day represent the culture of various nationalities, tribes and communities. In focus here are unusual ways of attracting sexual partners, such as by stealing their work tools, different views on sexuality, and less common ways of giving pleasure. The exhibition gives lie to the stereotypes that making love is a similar process all over the planet, and that it has changed little since ancient times.
The founders of the museum have been building up their collection of art objects for 30 years, buying them at auctions, galleries and from private collections. They have visited erotic exhibitions around the world, and say they have tried to take the best ideas from the most famous erotic museums in Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin.
The collection features art objects from the locations and cultures ranging from the Roman Empire, Babylon and ancient Carthage to France, Japan and Oceania. Visitors can marvel at phallic amulets dating back to the first to fifth centuries AD, ancient Roman vases, a sex shop catalogue dating back to 1910, Russian paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries, Japanese erotic engravings of the 18th to 19th centuries, and other sex-themed artifacts from five continents.
The museum is also home to a 3D showroom featuring interactive exhibits and a library. Early erotic movies are screened, alongside 3D adult films.
The Modern Room is devoted to contemporary erotic industries, inventions and the fashion for sex toys, and how they form and influence erotic art today. It contains the biggest European collection of sex machines and BDSM constructions, according to the museum.
The museum’s creators promise regular master classes and events, as well as new exhibitions and constant additions to the permanent collections.
Museros opens on Feb. 14 at 43/45 Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel. 905 0394. Open daily, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. www.museros.ru
TITLE: Blood for Love Not Money
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “Blood for Love” is the name of a charitable event with a romantic twist with which volunteers from the local branch of the Red Cross, the members of Club 25 — a local association of young blood donors — and like-minded locals will mark St. Valentine’s Day in St. Petersburg.
The local branch of the Red Cross has made a tradition out of its blood donation initiative on Valentine’s Day as part of a campaign to encourage blood donation among younger people.
“On Valentine’s Day, we usually join forces with the City Blood Transfusion Center, but this time we have decided to work directly with a hospital because we discovered that the situation there regarding blood supplies is very alarming,” said Asya Galiyeva, a representative of the Red Cross in St. Petersburg who works on the organization’s blood donation projects targeting young people.
“Because the hospital’s blood transfusion laboratory has a rather limited capacity, and because a substantial number of blood donors have already expressed an interest in coming in, we will organize a second round of donations on March 14, when more donors will come and give blood for ill children,” Galiyeva added.
The event is set to take place at the Filatov Children’s Hospital No. 5, located at 154 Bukharestskaya Ulitsa in the south of the city.
Hospitals across the country are struggling with shortages of blood, and St. Petersburg is no exception.
The websites of local charitable organizations are inundated with requests for urgent blood transfusions.
To make matters even more complicated, the State Duma passed amendments to the blood donation law in July 2012 that effectively banned financial compensation for donors. The law came into force on Jan. 21, and the results have already greatly alarmed many doctors, especially in large cities whose hospitals use vast volumes of blood.
Previously, Russian donors typically received about 500 rubles ($17) in compensation for donating blood. By comparison, in many European countries, donors receive only light refreshment or small token gifts.
The Red Cross is currently campaigning for the implementation of these international standards.
The end of the cash payments for donors was intended to enhance the safety of the blood supply, as it is believed that donors who are not interested in monetary compensation will not be interested in concealing any compromising medical information about health conditions that might prevent their blood from being accepted.
“At present, up to 30 percent of first-time blood donations are unusable, as people lie about their health conditions or are, in some cases, unaware of them,” said Vladimir Krasnyakov, chief doctor at the St. Petersburg Blood Transfusion Center.
The changes in the law have attracted strong opposition from both blood donors and medical professionals. Many donors relied on the fee, while doctors have already noticed a sharp decline in blood donations.
During the past few years, the Red Cross in St. Petersburg has accumulated a database of about 2,000 blood donors who are able to respond promptly to requests from hospitals for blood.
“We have seen a rapid rise in demand for blood after the changes in the law, and we immediately distribute any urgent requests from the local clinics via a system of cell phone text messages,” Galiyeva said. “That way, we lose no time.”