SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1747 (6), Wednesday, February 20, 2013
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TITLE: Wave of Resignations Foreseen in Duma
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – The resignation of senior United Russia lawmaker Vladimir Pekhtin following accusations from opposition leader Alexei Navalny that he owned undeclared property in the U.S. triggered speculation that more lawmakers would quit their seats, throwing the ruling party into crisis.
Pundits said Thursday that with lawmakers facing an increasing barrage of incriminating evidence from opposition activists, the Kremlin would try to clean up United Russia — before reputational damage could affect the country's top leadership.
On Friday the Duma will consider a resignation claim from United Russia Deputy Anatoly Lomakin, who announced his decision to leave the Duma a few hours after Pekhtin's speech. Lomakin may become the fourth United Russia deputy to recently quit the Duma after Pekhtin, Vasily Tolstopytov, who quit Tuesday, and Alexei Knyshov, who left in October.
"Sooner or later the Kremlin will have to do away with United Russia because it has turned into a burden," said Yury Korgunyuk, an analyst with the INDEM think tank. "It used to be an instrument of control, and now it's an instrument of discreditation and shame and the Kremlin understands that," he said.
Federation Council Vice Speaker Svetlana Orlova said Thursday that Pekhtin's resignation symbolized a policy of self-clarification of the ruling party.
"President Vladimir Putin is gradually implementing the goals that he stated during his campaign. The recent events and criminal cases on embezzlement in the Defense Ministry, as well as a number of other high-profile corruption cases, demonstrate the authorities' tough position on this issue," she told Interfax.
Orlova added that the resignation was a systemic work not a single-step attack. She did not exclude that such a policy would reach the Federation Council. The Kremlin is ready to oust everyone who could discredit it, she said.
A Just Russia party leader Sergei Mironov told Interfax on Wednesday that the current Duma would set a record for the number of deputies resigning.
Alexei Navalny said in an interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets on Thursday that he possessed information about three more Duma deputies who had undeclared property abroad, one of whom was not a United Russia member. He also also said lots of people volunteered to find such information.
Two of them are apparently Vladislav Tretyak, who has property in Miami, and Andrei Isayev, who owns property in Germany. Isayev, though, told RIA-Novosti that he had no intention to leave the Duma.
Vedomosti reported Thursday, citing a source in the presidential administration, that six United Russia deputies may resign on the same grounds that Pekhtin did.
Meanwhile, the mysterious blogger Doctor Z, who gave Navalny the purported evidence on Pekhtin, disclosed his true identity: Andrei Zayakin, a Russian-born physics professor at Spain's Universidade de Santiago de Compostela.
Maria Lipman, an expert within the Carnegie Moscow Center, said by phone that more people would be involved in the activity of finding information on deputies who violate law. "There is a growing excitement among ordinary people to expose Duma deputies," she said.
Speculation has swirled that Kremlin discontent with United Russia may be a sign that in the future a new ruling party may be formed.
"There is no sign that United Russia has become pertinent in the political environment, and its leader Dmitry Medvedev in no way shows participation in its work, as well as Putin himself," Lipman said.
Vyacheslav Lysakov, a Duma deputy and member of the Putin-created All-Russia People's Front, said by phone that Putin had earlier announced that the question of making a party from the Front was not on the agenda.
"We have not still registered as a civil movement," he said. "This issue will be decided at our meeting in June. That is why we're now choosing the leader and forming committees."
Duma Deputy Dmitry Gudkov, a member of A Just Russia, told Gazeta.ru that Pekhtin's resignation might signal the beginning of a split in the ruling elite.
"Inside United Russia there are people who feel an advantage to ratting out someone — for example, the All-Russia People's Front, which can be strengthened if United Russia weakens," Gudkov said.
The prospect of party members leaving the Duma also fueled speculation that this could give more weight to the All-Russia People's Front while weakening United Russia.
The Front was created by Putin two years ago amid sagging support for the ruling party, whose leadership he subsequently handed over to Medvedev.
The Front enabled Putin-loyalists to enter the parliament on United Russia's ticket in the December 2011 Duma elections without joining the party. The 238-strong United Russia faction currently contains 82 People's Front members.
Vladimir Gutenyov, a senior Front figure and Duma deputy, said Thursday that the movement would use the situation to boost its presence in the parliament.
"Now we have a serious opportunity to increase the number of our supporters in the Duma," Gutenyov told The St. Petersburg Times.
He said that Pekhtin could be replaced by Nikolai Kalistratov, a former director of the Sevmash nuclear submarine plant.
Kalistratov was fired by then-President Medvedev in 2011 amid criticism that the military-industrial complex was not working efficiently.
Gutenyov, who is first deputy head of the Duma's Industry Committee, was speaking at the sidelines of a meeting of the All-Russia Machinery Union, a powerful industrial lobby headed by Putin ally Sergei Chemezov.
Kalistratov currently heads the Federal Arctic University's Arkhangelsk branch, which was the Arctic region that Pekhtin represented in the Duma.
Chemezov told Thursday's meeting that bringing more Machinery Union members into regional and federal assemblies remained a No. 1 priority. "Our central task is to work within lawmaking bodies," he said.
With Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Deputy Defense Minister Dmitry Borisov among its allies, the All-Russia Machinery Union is seen as the most powerful part of the People's Front, which consists of some 50 public organizations.
Staff writer Alexander Bratersky contributed to this report.
TITLE: Belkovsky Stands by Criticism of Church
AUTHOR: By Alexander Winning
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Outspoken Kremlin critic Stanislav Belkovsky said Thursday that he wouldn't retract his criticism of the Russian Orthodox Church, even though investigators have summoned him for questioning over an article he penned last week.
A day earlier, about 40 lawmakers and senators from all four State Duma factions urged investigators to check for signs of religious extremism in a piece Belkovsky wrote in the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily that accused the church of kowtowing to state pressure and advised Patriarch Kirill to retire to a women's convent.
The article, titled "Pope Shows Patriarch the Way" and published Feb. 15, argued that the Russian Orthodox Church was "effectively founded by Generalissimo Josef Stalin," who taught church leaders to be "the state's agent among those who don't deny the existence of God."
Belkovsky, who heads the National Strategy Institute think tank, said the church under its leadership "has fallen irreversibly into the abyss of serving state interests" and "while it remains an appendage of the executive branch, real political changes are impossible in the country."
Contacted by phone Thursday, Belkovsky said "there are no legal grounds for my prosecution" and that he stood by his arguments.
"If the case goes to court, a hearing would be an opportunity for me to proclaim everything I want to say about United Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church," he said. Belkovsky is expected to attend questioning Friday.
He said such a hearing would serve United Russia's interests by distracting public attention away from recent corruption scandals involving senior party figures.
"I will defend myself in any way possible, but I'm not very optimistic about my destiny. I could be arrested any day," said Belkovsky, a Kremlin insider during Vladimir Putin's first two terms as president.
On Wednesday, United Russia said in a statement that Belkovsky's article contained "coarse, unfounded attacks on the church" and incited religious hatred, an offense that carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Andrei Isayev, vice secretary of the ruling party's general committee, went a step further, calling Belkovsky a "white-ribbon revolutionary." The white ribbon is a symbol of the anti-government protest movement that sprung up in the wake of disputed State Duma elections in December 2011.
United Russia lawmakers seem to have been particularly riled by a section of Belkovsky's article that proposed disbanding the church and transforming it into a union of independent parishes in which pastors elect their bishops and bishops the patriarch. The church currently has a top-down structure.
Orthodox believers' reaction to Belkovsky's article was mixed, with the Union of Orthodox Citizens seeing it as "a provocation," while Andrei Kurayev, a leading theologian, told RIA-Novosti that he was willing to sit down with Belkovsky to discuss his arguments.
Religion in Russia has experienced a major revival since the Soviet era, and about 70 percent of Russians now identify themselves as Orthodox Christians, although a far smaller percentage regularly attend church services.
TITLE: No Visas for Accredited Olympic Members
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW – Andrew Mitchell, a spokesman for the International Olympic Committee, said all “accredited people” will not need a separate visa. “As part of the bid process for all Olympic Games, all bidders must guarantee that the Olympic accreditation card acts as a visa during the period of the Games,” Mitchell said.
Accreditation cards are usually issued to athletes, coaches, media and support staff. For last year’s London Olympics, they were also given to a “small number of representatives from high-level global sponsors,” according to a report on the globalvisas.com site.
It was unclear Thursday how many foreign accreditation holders and visitors are expected to attend the Sochi Games. The IOC referred all questions to the Russian Organizing Committee, which said in an e-mailed reply that some 150,000 people will be accredited – including about 13,000 media representatives and an unspecified number of volunteers.
The overall number of foreign accreditation card holders for the London Summer Games was given at 40,000, just over half of which required visas to Britain.
The overall number of foreign visitors for the 2011 Olympics and Paralympics was 590,000, 420,000 of whom visited primarily for the games, according to figures by Britain’s Office for National Statistics.
However, Winter Olympics figures tend to be much lower. The last games in Vancouver in 2010 were attended by 6,500 accredited athletes and team officials and 10,800 media representatives, according to figures by the Vancouver Organizing Committee.
Unlike for the FIFA World Cup in 2018, for which President Vladimir Putin has pledged visa-free entry for ticket holders, the government has not made any such promises for foreign visitors for the Olympics.
By contrast, the Foreign Ministry threatened the European Union with retaliation last fall if no visa waiver agreement with the Schengen group of states was reached before the Sochi Games.
EU officials retorted that they will not accept “artificial deadlines” while both sides implement a so-called common steps program, which is a condition for visa waiver negotiations to begin. They have also said Moscow could easily lift its visa restrictions unilaterally for the games.
Citizens from most European and many Asian and African countries need visas to enter Russia, that are typically issued single-entry and strictly for given travel dates. A visa facilitation agreement with the United States that was reached last year stipulates that visitors receive three-year multiple entry visas.
TITLE: Why a Girl Tore Her U.S. Passport
AUTHOR: By Alexander Winning
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Muffled in a light-blue coat and with downcast eyes, 10-year-old Sara ripped apart her American passport outside the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg.
With photo cameras snapping and television cameras rolling, Sara defiantly said she had no intention of living in the U.S.
Standing nearby, her mother, Russian emigre and Harvard graduate Marianne Grin, voiced support for legislation banning Americans from adopting Russian children — the reason for the rally in late December.
"The way that America betrayed us has led us to despair," Grin said by phone Thursday, explaining her daughter's actions.
State media lapped up the scene of a child rejecting her father's U.S. heritage in favor of her mother's Russian roots. The image of Sara tearing up her passport — although it was expired — appeared on television and in newspapers and blogs as the country debated the Jan. 1 ban on U.S. child adoptions.
Sara's theatrical gesture, however, casts the spotlight on a less visible sore point in U.S.-Russian relations where children are also suffering: child custody disputes.
A legal battle between Grin and Michael McIlwrath, a U.S. lawyer based in Italy, over Sara and her three siblings is indicative of the fraught nature of international custody disputes. But what makes this case more distressing are fears that the father is being punished because of a recent upswing in anti-American sentiment in Russia, said Alexander Khazov, McIlwrath's St. Petersburg-based lawyer.
After the couple divorced, an Italian court initially awarded custody to Grin in 2009. But another court in Florence, where three of the children were born and raised, ordered psychological tests on all family members and ruled in December 2010 that the children should move in with their father.
That arrangement remained in place until August 2011, when Grin took the children from Florence to St. Petersburg, unbeknown to her former husband.
She has not returned to Italy since and has lodged appeals with Russian courts to overturn earlier verdicts placing the children, now aged 6 to 15, with their father, to deprive him of his parental rights and to secure alimony payments.
On Jan. 25, about a month after Sara defaced her passport, the St. Petersburg City Court sided with Grin, overruling Florentine court decisions and saying that Russia doesn't extradite its citizens.
The ruling came despite bilateral children's rights agreements that oblige Russia and Italy to recognize analogous verdicts passed in either country.
In comments to journalists before and after the hearing, Grin described herself as a put-upon Russian mother forced to flee an abusive American husband. Her ex-husband's lawyer noted, however, that she only renewed her Russian citizenship in 2007, after letting her Soviet-era passport expire, and has offered no evidence that McIlwrath mistreated their children.
'Politically Motivated' Justice
In a series of lengthy interviews, lawyer Khazov said Grin was playing on the fact that local courts are reluctant to rule against Russian nationals in international disputes and described her efforts to reverse Italian verdicts as "forum shopping."
"We believe that the latest ruling is politically motivated. The children are being treated as Russian even though they've only lived in Russia since Marianne abducted them, and people in Russia have acted negatively toward Michael because Marianne made accusations that he constantly beat the children, which are not true," he said.
"The Russian court should never have heard this case because according to the Hague Convention on Parental Responsibility and Protection of Children, which Russia and Italy have signed, if there is an analogous ruling in another signee's country, that ruling should be observed," he said.
Khazov noted that a psychologist told an Italian court in September last year that Grin's relationship with the children posed a "strong psycho-pathological risk" and that Grin herself was "guided by paranoid fantasies."
These "fantasies" drove Grin to repeatedly take the children to Italian hospitals, saying that McIlwrath had harmed them, Khazov said, adding that local doctors never found the slightest scratch on them.
Speaking by phone from St. Petersburg, Grin told a vastly different story of years of domestic abuse and biased Italian courts swayed by her husband's close connections with local lawyers.
"The St. Petersburg ruling was the first time that my former husband wasn't able to bribe a court. In Italy, he managed unbelievable things. Almost all the lawyers in Florence were his employees or colleagues," she said.
"Now unfortunately their father can't understand our position. He dug his own grave. None of the children want to see him, and he can't understand that he won't get the children out of here."
Grin said Russian authorities have "morally supported" her case and that she was "98 percent sure" the children would remain with her. She vehemently rejected Khazov's claim that she was using her Russian citizenship as a weapon to gain sole custody rights over the children and said the U.S. Consulate in Florence refused to look into claims that McIlwrath abused their children.
McIlwrath, contacted by e-mail, referred all questions about the case to his lawyer.
No Binding Agreements
Grin has received high-level support at home. In October, children's rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov declared that the children should remain in Russia.
"The children's rights ombudsman believes that the children are Russian citizens and are on the territory of the country completely legally," Astakhov's office said in a statement on its website.
The statement said Astakhov had taken the situation under his personal control, although his office didn't reply to questions e-mailed on Jan. 31.
But Alexei Golovan, who served as Moscow's children rights ombudsman from 2002 to 2009, said the dispute reflected an urgent need for clear legislation on international custody disputes.
Although Russia and Italy have signed the 1980 Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and the 1996 Convention on Parental Responsibility and Protection of Children, there are no binding agreements between the two countries, since Italy hasn't recognized Russia's accession to either accord. Russia only signed the conventions in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
The first prescribes that in cross-border abduction cases, the child should be returned to their country of habitual residence, where courts are best placed to decide on their future domicile. The second states that court rulings in one member state should be observed in others. Prominent children's rights advocates including Golovan had campaigned for Russia to sign both conventions for almost a decade.
"In Europe, every fifth marriage is mixed, people move around Europe very actively, so the Hague Conventions are an important step," Golovan said. "If other member states don't accept Russia's membership, many children will suffer."
Explaining Italy's apparent reluctance to ratify Russia's accession to the Hague Conventions, Olga Istomina, a family lawyer and former chief counsel to the Education and Science Ministry, said Rome was waiting for Moscow to provide details of how Italian court rulings would be enforced in Russia.
For such details to be finalized, alterations must be first be made to Russian law, Istomina said, adding that the Education and Science Ministry was drafting federal legislation that would allow for the implementation of the Hague conventions.
The legislation will supplement the Administrative Code, clarify which courts should hear custody cases and provide a mechanism for extraditing children abducted by one of their parents, she said.
Golovan said Russia needed to gain experience in applying the Hague conventions and noted that the European Union had funded local projects to prepare judges, assist ministerial departments and apply international best practices to handle custody disputes.
He also conceded that "there is a tendency in Russia to believe that foreigners mistreat us." But both he and Istomina stopped short of calling the verdict politically driven.
A Pressing Issue
At present, 89 countries from all six populated continents have signed up to the 1980 Hague Convention on child abduction. Russia was the 86th country to accede to the convention, although only 16 member states, including six Eastern European countries, China, France and Spain, have recognized Russia's accession. Just 39 states have acceded to the 1996 convention.
In 2008, the last year for which data is available, almost 3,200 children were involved in Hague Convention child-abduction applications, a more than 30 percent increase over 2003, when applications were filed for roughly 2,200 children.
Bearing in mind that the conventions still don't cover vast swathes of Asia and Africa, experts believe that the real number of cases could be far higher.
The Education and Science Ministry asked that a request for statistics on child-abduction cases or international custody disputes involving Russian parents be submitted by e-mail. No reply had been received by Thursday to a request sent Jan. 31, and follow-up phone calls did not yield the information.
The ministry is the government body charged with fulfilling Russia's obligations as a Hague Convention member state.
Russian nationals have been involved in a number of high-profile international child custody disputes in recent years.
In 2009, a French court charged Irina Belenkaya with abducting her daughter twice after custody was awarded to the girl's French father. After abducting her daughter for the first time, a Russian court ruled the girl should live in Russia.
But the father snatched the daughter back to France, and Belenkaya was later prevented from taking the girl to Russia when she was intercepted by Hungarian authorities acting on an Interpol warrant.
Another Russian mother, Irina Bergseth, was deprived of her parental rights by a Norwegian court last April, allegedly because she wanted to spirit her 5-year-old son away to her home country. Astakhov described that ruling as biased.
Lawyer Istomina said tackling child abduction and ensuring better enforcement of custody rulings are pressing issues in Russia, where visiting rights are poorly enforced for the parent who loses out in the custody battle.
"Custody disputes are sensitive, and there remain gaps in our laws. Border guards have a regularly updated list of children who aren't allowed to leave Russia without both parents' permission, but parental visits are a different matter," she said.
She said that to her knowledge the Hague Convention has not been applied in Russia so far.
On a domestic level, Istomina said, Russian courts usually grant custody to the mother when the children are younger than five but that once the children start attending school, the court assesses both parents before making a decision.
In reality, in cases where a parent abducts a child, the abductor often wins the right to raise him, said Golovan, the former children's rights ombudsman.
"The children become hostages in this situation. The abductor determines the future of the children, who become used to the company of one parent over the other," he said. "This can cause serious psychological damage, as the children feel betrayed and their sense of worth is hit. It can determine the ultimate character of the children."
Khazov, McIlwrath's lawyer, said he had appealed the St. Petersburg court ruling on Feb. 7 and was optimistic about the outcome of the case. The St. Petersburg City Court is expected to review its ruling next month.
TITLE: Gay Groups Continue to Fight Unfair Treatment
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The small village of Novosyolki, southwest of St. Petersburg, has become City Hall’s favorite site to send St. Petersburg’s LGBT rights activists to rally, as the organizers of another protest planned this week found out when they were told that 15 sites they had suggested within the city were unavailable for their assembly. Meanwhile, a local court found no violations in City Hall’s continued refusals to let LGBT activists rally in the center.
On Monday, City Hall rejected a permit for the Democratic St. Petersburg movement to rally in the city against the national bill forbidding the “promotion of homosexuality” to minors, which is about to be accepted by the State Duma in its second hearing. It was passed in the first hearing on Jan. 25. Similar local laws have already been enacted in St. Petersburg as well as in ten other regions across Russia.
As the law on public assemblies requires the administration to suggest an alternative site if the one suggested by the organizers is unavailable, the organizers of the protest that had been planned for Sunday, Feb. 24 were told to hold it in Novosyolki.
“I didn’t go there, but I checked it on the map; it’s beyond the Ring Road, and takes two hours to get to from St. Petersburg,” said Natalya Tsymbalova, an activist with Democratic St. Petersburg and the Alliance of Straights for LGBT Equality.
“There is an aerodrome, a dump and a cemetery there. It looks like they have found the most remote location which is still officially part of the city.”
According to Tsymbalova, City Hall first dismissed five suggested sites last week, saying that other events were scheduled to be held at the first four, while large-scale road maintenance works would be held at the fifth. She said the organizers had not been given the reasons for the alleged unavailability of the ten other suggested sites, which include Palace Square and St. Isaac’s Square, as well as smaller locations where other rallies are usually authorized.
Tsymbalova said the third application, containing five other suggested locations, would be submitted to City Hall shortly.
“We’re running out of time and there’s already little hope,” she said.
“They look determined not to let us go anywhere but Novosyolki.”
As the planned date of the rally approaches, chances of the rally eventually being authorized are growing slimmer.
“If they still don’t let us have a rally, we have an idea to hold a kind of flash mob by walking around all the rejected sites to see what is really happening at them on Feb. 24; to see if there are some real events taking place there or if we have been given the runaround, so we could use it in court,” Tsymbalova said.
“We’ll definitely file a complaint about this absolutely insolent and mocking rejection and we hope to win in the city court or the Supreme Court, because it’s obviously unlawful.”
On Monday, the Smolninsky District Court dismissed a complaint by LGBT rights organization Vykhod (Coming Out), which was given Novosyolki as the only available site to hold a protest against the anti-gay law ahead of its first hearing at the State Duma in December.
According to Ksenia Kirichenko, the coordinator of Vykhod’s legal aid program, a representative of City Hall described the village as the most appropriate location for such an event.
“Novosyolki is becoming a favorite tool for effectively banning LGBT rights rallies,” Kirichenko said in a news release.
In 2011, City Hall redirected the organizers of the St. Petersburg Gay Pride event to Novosyolki. Instead, an attempt to hold the rally was undertaken in the city center on Senatskaya Ploshchad, beside the Bronze Horseman monument, and resulted in arrests and fines.
According to Kirichenko, Vykhod will appeal the Vyborgsky District Court’s ruling.
TITLE: Local Ferry Line Resumes Regular Navigation
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian ferry operator St. Peter Line, one of the five largest ferry operators plying the Baltic Sea, has announced the opening of regular navigation for its boats Princess Anastasia and Princess Maria.
The company’s first ferry of the season is set to depart St. Petersburg on Friday for a cruise to Helsinki and back. On Saturday, the company will launch a cruise on the Princess Anastasia that calls at Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn before returning to St. Petersburg.
Both ships underwent mandatory examination by Lloyd’s Register in January to confirm that they remain seaworthy. The company took the opportunity to update the ferries’ interiors, including guest rooms, restaurants and the public areas of the boats. They also carried out systems checks and repairs, according to a press release from the company.
Russia’s only ferry operator plans to carry more than 700,000 passengers by the end of the year. In 2012 the company transported in excess of 640,000 passengers, which was up one third on passenger numbers for the previous year.
The ferries carried passengers from 138 countries to and from St. Petersburg in 2012. The most frequent travelers on the company’s ferries were Russians, followed by passengers from Finland, Sweden and Estonia.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Maternity Death
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Investigative Committee of St. Petersburg has opened a criminal case into the death of a female citizen of Afghanistan who died in a city maternity home on Oct. 19 last year, Interfax reported.
The investigation established that on that day the 33-year old woman had a Caesarian section. However, the medical help that she received at Maternity Home No. 6 on Ulitsa Mayakovskogo did not meet health and safety requirements, leading to the woman’s death.
The criminal case was opened under part two of Article 238 of the Russian Criminal Code (on the rendering of services which do not meet standards of safety to the lives or health of consumers).
Personal Data Ruling
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Nevsky district court of St. Petersburg has forced at least three Internet sites to delete the personal data of Russian citizens, Interfax reported last week.
The court’s decision was based on a claim by the Russian Communications, Information Technologies and Mass Communications Watch. The case involves the domain names of Golix.ru, Durix.ru and Telefon-spravka.rf.
The Russian Communications, Information Technologies and Mass Communications Watch also sent a request to the authorized bodies of France, India and the U.S. and registrars of domain names located in those countries about deleting the personal data of Russians from nine Internet sites registered in the .com, .info and .net domain zones.
Attitudes on Adoption
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — No more than 14 percent of Russians would consider adopting a child and 80 percent believe it is an unacceptable option for them, a poll by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center, or VTSIOM, said, Interfax reported.
Those who see adoption as an unacceptable option give reasons such as their age (30 percent), financial status (22 percent) and the presence of a biological child in the home (15 percent).
Fewer respondents list concerns about their housing conditions (7 percent) and problems with health (3 percent) as reasons for opting out of adoption.
Four percent more confessed that they are not ready for such responsibility, as many said they first wanted to have their own child or are unwilling to take care of others’ children.
Three percent said they would consider adopting the child of a relative or friend.
Zenit Beats Liverpool
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Local soccer team Zenit St. Petersburg defeated the English side FC Liverpool 2:0 in the first leg of the last 16 of the UEFA Europa League in St. Petersburg last week. The return match is scheduled for February 21.
TITLE: Group Re-enacts Battle From the Siege of Leningrad
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: There is no shortage of outdoor winter activities in and around St. Petersburg, from skiing to sledding to sleigh-riding, provided the weather is good. This Saturday, when Russia celebrates the Defenders of the Fatherland Day, sees a rather special event, however, involving real weapons and a serious fight. The town of Kirovsk in the Leningrad oblast will play host to the re-enactment of the final battle of the Siege of Leningrad.
This year, Russia marks the 70th anniversary of the final lifting of the Siege of Leningrad.
The battle in Kirovsk, where the historic events took place in 1943, will mark the opening of a military re-enactment festival titled Russian History in the Open Air, and is sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Culture’s Tourism and Regional Policy division.
The activities kick off at midday but the historical re-enactment will not begin until 3 p.m.
More than 400 leading historical re-enactment enthusiasts from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic countries will join forces in Kirovsk to recreate the dramatic events of the winter of 1943.
The feast of sight and sound will plunge audiences into the atmosphere of the wartime era. Authentic military hardware, including Second World War-era tanks and military planes will be used in the re-enactment, while modern special-effect techniques will be involved to enhance the visual effects of the historical spectacle.
The landscape where the historic events originally took place has been carefully preserved since the end of the war and trench lines and shell craters remain intact. For the re-enactment, barbed wire barriers, earth-and-timber emplacements, front line positions, and the imitation remains of villages in which German units entrenched themselves will be constructed.
A military field kitchen will be set up on the site, along with an exhibition of military equipment. Documentary footage of the war years will be shown on a large screen.
The organizers of the project have pledged to endeavor to stage the event with as much historical accuracy and realism as possible.
“The events of those terrible days did not just change the course of Russian history, they have remained in the national consciousness as one of the most tragic and devastatingly fatal periods in the whole of the country,” said the festival’s spokeswoman, Anna Lobashova.
The military campaign that resulted in the breaking of the siege took three months. More than 200,000 soldiers paid with their lives to ensure the successful outcome of the operation.
Over the course of the year, the project will feature a series of staged historical re-enactments that will attempt to roll back the decades in order to celebrate some of the most significant dates in Russian history. With the noble goal of preserving the country’s cultural and historical legacy in mind, the project’s participants will stage re-enactments in the Russian regions, meticulously reconstructing the events that influenced or even changed the course of Russian history.
For more information about the project, visit: www.militaryfest.ru
TITLE: Committee Hears Plea On Behalf of Historic Buildings
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A number of the city’s venues built in the second half of the 20th century should be recognized as monuments of regional significance, said historian Boris Kirikov at a meeting of the Cultural Heritage Council at City Hall last week, Interfax reported.
The list of such buildings should include the Finlyandsky railway station, the Pulkovo 1 airport terminal and the Yubileiny Sports Palace.
By law a building may be recognized as a historical monument 45 years after its construction.
TITLE: Child Welfare Bill Sparks Concern Among Parents
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A bill redefining the conditions under which children can be seized from so-called “socially vulnerable families” has provoked fear among critics that more minors could be taken into state care due to petty infractions.
Amid a renewed push by authorities to decrease the number of children in state care, 84 percent of whose parents are still alive, the bill’s opponents are concerned that it could have the opposite effect. Critics also say it follows a Western model that they say allows the government to overstep its rightful authority, and that it could breed corruption at social services agencies, whose funding depends on the number of children in their care.
President Vladimir Putin, who has increasingly sought to limit foreign, and especially Western, influence in the country, gave a surprise speech last week at a meeting of a conservative parents’ group in which he gave reassurances that the bill would not be abused.
“Concern for the elderly and for children was always the top priority [for Russian families],” Putin said at the Feb. 9 meeting. “It is these traditions in particular that we need to revive. And, conversely, we must avoid blind imitation of foreign experience.”
“The so-called legal procedures must be perfected. This includes strictly, exhaustively listing the signs of a family’s major problems, when the authorities must and can interfere and provide targeted assistance,” he said.
The bill was drafted last year by the government in line with the Kremlin’s national strategy on children’s issues to 2017, which was signed by Putin in June. The strategy lists “reinforcing preventive measures to protect the rights and interests of children in socially vulnerable conditions” as one of the government’s tasks.
Some of the bill’s opponents say its language is vague, creating the potential for misuse. As an example, some cite the draft law’s addition to the definition of a “socially vulnerable family” as one in which parents create conditions that obstruct the “normal upbringing and development” of their children.
No law currently specifies the meaning of “normal upbringing and development,” leaving it to the discretion of social workers.
Current legislation defines problem families as those in which the parents “fail to fulfill their duties of upbringing, education or support of children,” “negatively influence [their] behavior,” or “treat them cruelly.”
The proposed bill would also allow social workers to decide what measures to take with the families they work with, measures it calls “social patronage,” and grant them more freedom to decide which families and children to assist.
Alexei Golovan, a former children’s ombudsman and current head of a charity that helps children deprived of parental care, said he supported the bill because “it’s better to prevent a problem than to treat it.”
“Opponents of social patronage say it is interference in the family. But how can we treat a family without interfering with it?” Golovan told The St. Petersburg Times.
Under the new bill, social workers who examine families will be able to issue orders for allowances to be paid to poor families, for helping unemployed parents to find jobs, and for the provision of psychological and other assistance, while currently they can only register violations of children’s rights, Golovan said.
The bill would also help decrease the number of children in children’s homes, he said. Current children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said earlier this month that an estimated 84 percent of the roughly 120,000 children living in orphanages are so-called “social orphans,” meaning that their parents are alive but have been stripped of their parental rights.
The problem of Russia’s stubbornly high orphan population has taken the spotlight after the passage late last year of a ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian children. Critics of the ban say there are not enough Russian families willing to adopt Russian orphans, while supporters say that the orphans are better off living in Russia and that new measures to encourage adoption need to be developed.
General skepticism of foreign influence and Western practices is part of what motivates opposition to the proposed bill by the All-Russian Parents’ Resistance, the parents’ group that Putin addressed on Feb. 9.
“The problem is the liberal concept that dominates Cabinet circles — they are oriented toward the West, where insane things are happening,” said the group’s founder, Sergei Kurginyan, a political thinker who has warned against allegedly Western-backed revolutionary efforts in Russia, in an interview with Izvestia last week.
“They take crying children away from good families,” he said. “We plan to secure the legal defense of mothers whose children are taken away.”
In September, Kurginyan submitted a letter to the Kremlin signed by more than 141,000 Russians expressing opposition to the bill.
The Russian Orthodox Church, a powerful lobby group with close ties to Putin, has expressed reservations about the law as well.
Senior church official Vsevolod Chaplin spoke to the parents’ group at the Feb. 9 meeting, calling on authorities to spell out in the law “in detail, with all the force of legal guarantees, the right of parents to bring up children, define their views on life, their lifestyle, their moral image … [and] what is good or bad.”
Albert Likhanov, head of the nongovernmental Russian Children’s Fund, said parents must be “brought to a condition” in which they can take care of their children and said allowances to families with children had to be raised.
Like Kurginyan, Likhanov expressed concern that social workers would seize children for minor infractions, including certain kinds of punishment that are traditional for some Russian families.
“In rural families, they might box [a child’s] ears. That is not a big deal,” he said.
Other opponents of the bill agree that it would allow undue meddling in a family’s affairs, or “infringe on the inviolability of the family,” as Pavel Parfentyev, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Family Policy think tank, put it.
The Family Code, a set of legal rights and duties of married couples toward each other and their children, establishes “the inadmissibility of arbitrary interference in family affairs,” while the Constitution guarantees the rights of personal privacy and family confidentiality.
Parfentyev also pointed to the potential for corruption as a result of the bill, saying officials and organizations could profit from its provisions.
Authorities spend an average of 600,000 rubles ($19,900) per year on every child in a children’s home in Russia, children’s ombudsman Astakhov said in an interview last year.
“Supporters of the bill are either regional officials or nonprofit organizations that are already involved in similar activities,” Parfentyev said, referring to social patronage. “We are calling it the vicious circle of financial interest.”
“It is understandable that children’s homes are keen to have children,” he said.
Parfentyev argued that poverty is the main reason for family problems, saying that if a similar amount of money was provided to a family with children, that family would “stop being in need.”
Golovan, the former children’s ombudsman, conceded that the bill opened the door to abuse by officials but dismissed this concern as insignificant, saying “anyone can abuse their powers” in Russia.
TITLE: Urals Schools, Hospitals Reopen After Repairs
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Schools and hospitals reopened in the Chelyabinsk region on Monday following repairs of major damages from Friday’s meteorite strike and the subsequent debris fallout, the press service of the region’s governor announced, Interfax reported.
The Federal Consumer Protection Service announced Sunday that all schools and hospitals in the Chelyabinsk region had been repaired and could resume normal operations. In most of the damaged buildings, workers had to replace windows that were blown out by the shock wave from the meteorite’s explosion.
Repair work had to be done quickly due to the cold weather, with temperatures in the region falling below minus 20 degrees Celsius.
The meteorite that crashed Friday morning weighed about 10,000 tons, with a 17-meter diameter. It disintegrated after entering the Earth’s atmosphere, exploding above the Chelyabinsk region and causing major damage and panic throughout the Urals Federal District.
Fragments of the meteorite were later found in the Chebarkul lake, prompting scientists to suggest naming the meteorite “Chebarkul” in the international catalog of meteorites.
Viktor Grokhovsky, a spokesman for the meteorology committee of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said specialists weren’t allowed to go near the scene of the crash, but the meteorite was later delivered to a university lab for analysis.
Earlier, the regional branch of the Interior Ministry reported on Feb. 15 that several fragments of the meteorite had been found in the vicinity of the lake, but a search on Feb. 16 yielded no results.
Experts put the power of the blast at 500,000 tons of TNT, making it the most powerful meteoric explosion since the Tunguska meteorite in 1908.
TITLE: Magnitsky Tax Hearing Postponed Until March
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Kravtsova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The opening of a tax evasion trial against deceased whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and business associate Bill Browder, who set up what was once one of Russia’s largest foreign investment firms, has been postponed to March 4 so the state-appointed defense team can familiarize itself with some 60 tomes of case documents.
Magnitsky, whose name titled a recently passed U.S. law imposing international sanctions on alleged human rights abusers, died in a Moscow pretrial detention facility in 2009, about a year after he had accused high-ranking Russian officials of a multimillion-dollar embezzlement. Soon after he made that accusation, Magnitsky was jailed on tax evasion charges.
In April 2012, the Prosecutor General’s Office moved to revive the case because, it said, Magnitsky’s mother had on many occasions said she wanted official acknowledgement that her son was innocent. In 2011, Russia’s Constitutional Court had ruled that dead people could be tried in a court of law if close relatives sought vindication for the accused.
But Magnitsky’s mother, Natalya, has publicly condemned her son’s posthumous trial as “unlawful” and refused to allow any lawyer to represent him.
Ahead of Monday’s hearing, in which Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court honored the defense’s request to delay the trial, Magnitskaya’s lawyer read a statement saying she did not authorize anyone to represent her son. “Any person who assumes such an obligation acts against my son’s interests,” the statement said.
The Prosecutor General’s Office has charged Magnitsky and Browder with fraud and tax evasion of more than 522 million rubles ($17.3 million). Browder, who fled the country in 2005 after falling out of favor with President Vladimir Putin’s government, is being tried in absentia. Britain has refused to extradite him.
Browder’s Hermitage Capital fund, once a major foreign investor in Russia, has denounced the case as a fabrication by corrupt officials. U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act in December, imposing monetary and visa sanctions on a list of Russian officials believed to be involved in Magnitsky’s persecution.
“The fact that this posthumous trial is going ahead indicates that justice in Russia is turning into raw and outright blasphemy,” Hermitage Capital said Monday in a statement. “There is a special place in hell for the people organizing this.”
“The reopening of a prosecution against my dead son, without my consent and without the consent of other close relatives and against their will, is contrary to the aims and the legal meaning of the judgement of the Russian Constitutional Court,” Magnitsky’s mother was quoted as saying in the statement.
Independent lawyer Mark Feigin, who had proved defense counsel in the Pussy Riot case, said by phone that the court was interested in finding Magnitsky guilty because it would offer a degree of vindication for those officials he had accused of embezzlement.
“The purpose of the case is to acknowledge Magnitsky’s guilt and demonstrate to the world that it is defending a guilty person and the Magnitsky Act was a mistake,” lawyer Anna Stavitskaya said. “But Russia doesn’t understand that no one will believe the court’s decision.”
TITLE: Meteor Raises Security Fears
AUTHOR: By Ivan Nechepurenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The meteor that struck outside Chelyabinsk on Friday with such suddenness and explosive force has prompted a question among some spooked observers:
If Russian defense officials were unable to track an object 17 meters in diameter rocketing down to earth, how could they detect a much smaller but equally lethal missile?
The answer is: If it were coming from space, they probably couldn’t.
Luckily for Russians, space-based nuclear weapons are prohibited — and missiles fired from the Earth’s surface are a lot easier to spot.
“Detecting a missile launch and tracking an object in outer space are two completely different tasks,” said Eugene Myasnikov, director of the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies.
Both the United States and Russia have early-warning systems that are able to detect practically all Earth-based missile launches, he said.
Such a system tracks objects that fly relatively close to the Earth’s surface, while asteroids travel along a completely different trajectory.
Soon after the meteor struck near Chelyabinsk, some pundits questioned whether what had happened was not a rare natural phenomenon but a military strike.
Yulia Latynina wrote Friday in Novaya Gazeta that she was puzzled as to why the explosion took place so close to the Elansk military testing range, where the 119th missile brigade is based, and why the meteor’s trajectory so closely resembled that of a ballistic missile.
On her Ekho Moskvy radio show on Saturday, she admitted to having succumbed to paranoia and apologized for “hastily jumping to conclusions.”
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, joked Friday that the strike was the U.S. testing a new weapon.
But people’s fears over the possibility of a missile strike may be justified: There is currently no missile defense system in the world that could effectively intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles, Myasnikov said.
The U.S. is currently building a multi-layered missile defense shield that would be able to intercept single missiles but would still be ineffective against a massive nuclear strike, which Russia, for example, is technically capable of.
Strategic stability between Russia and the United States is instead based on the concept of mutually assured destruction, meaning that if the U.S. launched a strike into Russian territory, Russia could quickly retaliate.
Russia has based its fierce opposition to a planned U.S. missile defense system in Europe on its desire to maintain this arrangement, saying the missile shield could eventually render Russia’s nuclear deterrent ineffective.
Missile strikes from space are more difficult to track or block. But the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibits the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in outer space.
The government is still concerned about creating a warning system for strikes from space — if only to know about future incoming meteors.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has tasked Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, the Cabinet’s point man on both defense and space issues, with developing a system for predicting and preventing extraterrestrial threats.
Vladimir Lipunov, professor at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute at Moscow State University, is currently developing such a system.
“The Chelyabinsk event is very important, as hopefully it will make the government pay more attention to this problem,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
Lipunov’s institute has developed a concept for a new Master-3 telescope capable of detecting incoming asteroids one day before they enter the atmosphere, he said. But this telescope would need to be a complex system with land- and space-based components, and the government has not allocated any funds for its construction.
Addressing the danger that falling space objects pose, Lipunov warned ominously that “outer space is a living organism and changes every second. Asteroids are not the only threat we face.”
TITLE: Zhirinovsky to File Libel Case in Plagiarism Affair
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky on Wednesday will ask Russia’s top investigator, Alexander Bastrykin, to open a criminal case against State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomaryov on libel charges for Ponomaryov’s allegation that Zhirinovsky plagiarized his Ph.D. dissertation.
On Monday, A Just Russia deputy Ponomaryov appealed to Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to strip Zhirinovsky of his Duma seat, citing media reports that accused Zhirinovsky of plagiarizing and falsifying his dissertation, titled “The Future, the Present and the Past of the Russian Nation.” The dissertation earned him his Ph.D. degree in 1998.
If the media reports are confirmed, the State Commission for Academic Degrees and Titles would be obliged to strip Zhirinovsky of his degree. Zhirinovsky intends to appeal to Bastrykin when the latter speaks to the Duma on Wednesday, Itar-Tass reported Tuesday.
Zhirinovsky denied that his dissertation was plagiarized or falsified, saying the “hundreds of thousands of pages” written by him and available online prove his innocence.
“What I have said and written would be enough for hundreds of dissertations, and to become an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences twice,” the blusterous leader said in comments carried by Itar-Tass.
Zhirinovsky faces up to two years in prison if charged and convicted of fraud, among other charges, while Ponomaryov faces up to 480 hours of public service or a 5 million ruble ($166,000) fine if he is found guilty of libel.
TITLE: Lipetsk Deputy Found Dead in Cement Barrel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Police say they found the body of Lipetsk city council deputy Mikhail Pakhomov in a barrel of cement in a garage near Moscow. He had been declared missing Feb. 12.
“It has been confirmed that the remains found in the area of the Obukhov village in the Noginsky district belong to Pakhomov. The nature of the wounds suggests that he was killed,” investigators told Interfax on Monday.
On Sunday night, police said they discovered a barrel with cement containing a man’s body in the garage of a resident of the Noginsky district. The identity of that resident has not been disclosed. Police have opened a criminal case on charges of murder, which carries a maximum punishment of life in prison.
RIA-Novosti reported, citing the Investigative Committee’s press service, that at least eight people have been detained on suspicion of murdering Pakhomov. The alleged mastermind, Yevgeny Kharitonov, a former Moscow region utilities official, was reportedly arrested at Sheremetyevo Airport aboard a flight heading to Krasnodar. It is believed that Pakhomov owed him money.
On Sunday, police said they detained five people aged between 24 and 30 believed to be involved, who face up to 15 years in prison on charges of kidnapping. They also detained three Muscovites suspected of stealing property worth about 400,000 rubles ($13,000) from Pakhomov, Interfax reported.
Pakhomov is believed to have been abducted Feb. 12 in the southwestern region of Lipetsk. Police later stopped a car in the Moscow region where they found Pakhomov’s personal belongings.
TITLE: Back to Stalin’s Soviet Union
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: This month marks the 70th anniversary of the Red Army’s victory at the Battle of Stalingrad, prompting renewed debate over the legacy of Josef Stalin. Once again, many conservative Russians are hoping that the name Volgograd will one day be permanently changed back to Stalingrad. As a nod to them, local Volgograd deputies agreed to call the city Stalingrad during the six days of the battle’s anniversary every year. Of course, the deputies wouldn’t dare incur the Kremlin’s wrath by actually changing the city’s name on a permanent basis without PresidentVladimir Putin’s permission. Yet it is doubtful that Putin would agree in any case. After all, why would Putin want to revive Stalin’s personality cult when the current national leader is still alive?
Nonetheless, it seems as if Russia’s fixation with Stalin will last for a long time to come. In fact, a large part of the population sees happiness only in Russia’s past. They are completely disillusioned by the present and see no hope for the future. Roughly half of Russians are trying to walk forward with their heads turned back to the past. The authorities make no attempt to cure them of this dangerous habit but, on the contrary, do all they can to indulge these sentiments. State television is full of old, Soviet-era movies that are filled with long-outdated propaganda. It also shows new films and series that equally distort Soviet history and idealize the “wonderful Soviet times.”
Apparently, the Kremlin’s pro-Soviet propaganda is an attempt to restore pride in the country’s glorious past and strengthen support for the current regime, especially in its neo-Soviet ideological confrontation with the West’s “rotten liberalism.” Just like in the Soviet period, the Kremlin also targets human rights activists, people who would have been locked up in psychiatric wards had they lived in the Soviet Union.
But glorifying the Soviet past is an extremely risky strategy. It encourages people to compare Stalin to Putin, and this comparison does not always work in Putin’s favor. In the minds of conservative voters, the old Soviet social system is preferable to the current one. Indeed, according to a recent Levada Center survey, the current political and economic system is losing supporters. Almost 40 percent of the population would like to live in the “Soviet political system.” Only 17 percent are satisfied with the current system, and a slightly larger 22 percent support the model of Western democracy. This liberal segment of the population has remained stable as a percentage since the early 1990s and would provide the electoral base for a strong liberal party — if such a party could ever get off the ground in Russia.
The Putin regime reached its height of popularity in 2008. At that time, 40 percent of the population supported the existing political model and provided a strong electoral base for United Russia. But the subsequent “castling maneuver” that returned Putin to the Kremlin in May and the conclusion made by many Russians that the current system is incapable of resolving key social and economic problems have led to growing disenchantment with the current leadership.
With regard to economic models, after two decades of so-called free-market capitalism, 51 percent now openly yearn for a Soviet-like system of state planning and distribution, according to a recent Levada poll. In the last year alone, the number of Russians favoring a market economy and private ownership fell sharply from 35 percent to 29 percent. Those figures reveal the extent to which many Russians have conflicting ideas and anxieties and believe that the building of a new, post-Soviet future for Russia has hit an ideological dead end. This anxiety is exacerbated by the growing social inequality in Russian society, its aging infrastructure, the breakdown of education and systemic problems in medical care.
Yet underscoring its huge blind spot, the regime does not perceive these shortfalls as problems. With almost all authority held by a single individual, it is impossible to address the full breadth of the problems facing the country in any comprehensive or systematic way. Instead, Putin, who to this day still lacks a coherent long-term strategy for the country’s development, haphazardly addresses only those issues that grab his attention, while the key fundamental issues affecting all of society are largely neglected. Instead of producing pragmatic and realistic plans, this system can create only pie-in-the-sky forecasts for the next 10 or 20 years that promise to increase Russians’ living standards to that of the U.S.
The authorities continue to foster a cult devoted to all things Soviet and recycle musty, worn-out ideas, which serve as the basis for new laws and policies. At the same time, they are preparing a large-scale wave of privatization that will sell off the remaining assets of the Soviet legacy. It is difficult to find a logical or consistent policy here for the simple reason that one does not exist.
TITLE: comment: Putin Continues to Feed the Siloviki
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: According to tradition, Russia’s law enforcement officials started off the year by summing up the previous 12 months and making plans for the coming year at board meetings of the Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service. PresidentVladimir Putin attended both meetings, held during the last two weeks. These are especially noteworthy considering that last year the FSB was stripped of its supervisory role over all law enforcement agencies, with the Interior Ministry now under Putin’s personal control. That move might have been a reaction to the protest movement that the FSB was unable to halt and because the police are the government’s first line of defense against mass protests.
Addressing the top brass, Putin said, “The Interior Ministry has always played a key role in Russia’s law enforcement system — and not just in law enforcement, but in the state government system in general.” Putin also drew attention to the fact that salaries for Interior Ministry and military personnel had been doubled, and that funding for their housing had been increased six-fold. At the same time, Interior MinisterVladimir Kolokoltsev reported that as a result of the decision to end co-financing at the expense of regional budgets, the funding for police did not rise at the same rate in Moscow, the Moscow region and in St. Petersburg.
In contrast to most regions, where the number of applicants exceeds the number of police jobs available, police forces in the capital suffer from chronic manpower shortages. Putin described the top priority for the Interior Ministry as ensuring the public’s safety and fighting extremism and called for beefing up measures to ensure law and order in public places — that is, at locations where mass protests are held. “But the political battle and public discussion must remain within the Constitution’s limits,” Putin said, “and not erode and destroy the foundations of our country and society.”
Putin’s address to the FSB was more terse and strict. Agency employees were also given a significant raise of 40 percent effective Jan. 1. As with the Interior Ministry, Putin set the top priorities for the FSB as fighting terrorism and providing security for the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi. On the subject of terrorism, Putin spoke of a direct link between extremist and terrorist groups and firmly recommended “neutralizing a variety of extremist structures,” defining them as those who “sow hatred, destabilize our society and country, and thereby endanger the lives, well-being and peaceful existence of millions of our people.” He also made direct reference to nongovernmental organizations receiving foreign funding that “inevitably serve the interests of others.”
Presumably, the transcripts of the president’s speeches posted on the official Kremlin website do not contain all of his remarks at those meetings, or else his words have been edited for public consumption. Even still, they show that the Kremlin is paranoid about “political extremism” — loosely interpreted as any public criticism of the authorities — as well as foreign-funded NGOs that are believed to support extremism. First, the State Duma passed tougher laws against “illegal protests,” which include exorbitant fines that even the Kremlin-friendly Constitutional Court ruled against earlier this week. Now the president has told his principle law enforcement agencies that strict enforcement of those laws is a top priority in the fight against terrorism.
Nikolai Petrov is a professor of political science at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.
TITLE: Eifman Academy holds auditions
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The family welfare center in the city’s Primorsky district was crowded Friday afternoon with excited children and their anxious parents, anticipating an audition with a new St. Petersburg ballet academy that has just been launched by the renowned Russian choreographer Boris Eifman.
All classes at the academy, which is funded from the state budget, will be free of charge. At present, the only professional ballet education in St. Petersburg is given at the Vaganova Ballet Academy.
While the venerable Vaganova Ballet Academy has candidates flocking to its doors and lining up for auditions, Eifman took a more proactive approach. The choreographer and some of his finest dancers have decided to virtually take to the streets in search of new talent.
In their approach, Eifman and his counterparts are following in the footsteps of the Mariinsky Academy for Young Singers. The founders of the Mariinsky Academy, the pianist Larisa Gergieva and the singer Grair Hanedanyan, have been traveling across Russia and the CIS countries looking for gifted young singers to join their classes.
When the Eifman Ballet Academy has its official inauguration and welcomes its first pupils on September 1, 2013, a total of 72 children, aged from 6 to 11 years old, will attend the classes.
The idea for the Boris Eifman Dance Academy received a blessing from the then-St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko back in 2011. The school will resemble the teaching and coaching system of the imperial ballet schools that emerged in tsarist Russia before the 1917 revolution.
The academy is located on the Petrograd Side and occupies more than 12,000 square meters in the quarter between Ul. Bolshaya Pushkarskaya, Ul. Vvedenskaya and Ul. Lizi Chaikinnoi. Its vast premises incorporates14 ballet studios, an on-site medical center, a sports complex with a swimming pool and classrooms.
The academy’s program will be very comprehensive. The children will be taught everything from acting to dance, to the history of music and the most delicate nuances of performing styles.
“At the academy we have created innovative coaching programs that incorporate the methods and the achievements of both contemporary choreography and professional sports,” Eifman said. “The programs have been conceived with the idea in mind that the training that our pupils receive will be both profound and diverse. The versatility of training will ensure that, on graduation, our students will have the liberty of choosing the right career within the general dance field.”
All this will be done with great care. The coaches promise to treat the pupils as if they were their own children.
Albert Galichanin, a people’s artist of Russia and a former dancer with Eifman’s company, will teach at the academy, and sounded almost regretful after the audition Friday.
“I really wish we could accept more pupils; there is such a wealth of talent in the city,” Galichanin said.
Eifman and the Dance Academy’s coaches are reaching out as far as Murmansk and Pskov for prospective students. “I believe in talent and the policy of equal opportunities,” Eifman said. “The poorer families representing the so-called socially vulnerable groups would not normally even think of their children enjoying a career in ballet as it seems to them to be worlds apart from their humble living.”
Ballet professionals admit that today’s dancers have rather limited career choices. In Soviet times, when the Vaganova had twice as many students as it has now, graduates received offers from numerous state-run theaters. In those days there was no risk of unemployment. But since that time many theaters, especially in the smaller towns, have closed down. The Vaganova professors usually manage to secure places for their best graduates in the state-funded ballet theaters but they admit that this task is becoming more difficult every day.
In addition, it is clear to today’s ballet students that unless they make it into the dancing elite it is highly unlikely that they will become wealthy through dancing.
Although they are growing up in a very pragmatic world, they do not look at dance as a road to riches. They know that if they wanted money they would likely be better off in another area of show business.
But at least this means that those who join ballet classes in Russia these days are definitely not out there for the money. Rather, they come for the art.
Importantly, the academy offers the possibility to shift — over the course of the program — from a dance career to professions like stage design and theatre production technologies. “Unlike in dance, there is a shortage of qualified specialists in theater production,” Eifman said, commenting on the unusual opportunity offered at his school.
TITLE: Penderecki’s China
AUTHOR: By Chris Gordon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Krzysztof Penderecki, the Polish composer who shot to fame in 1960 at the tender age of 27 with his “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima,” will appear at the St. Petersburg Philharmonic on Saturday, conducting a program of his own compositions.
Penderecki is a regular guest conductor at the Philharmonic and Saturday’s concert is dedicated to the composer’s 80th birthday. The program, which is part of the Two Days of Polish Music festival, will include the St. Petersburg premiere of the composer’s “Winterreise” (2007-2009), a concerto for horn and orchestra, and “Three Chinese Songs” (2004), a setting of Chinese poetry for baritone and orchestra. Penderecki’s “Symphony No. 3” (1988-1995) will also be performed.
Perhaps best known to audiences outside the concert hall for the way his music has been used in horror films from “The Exorcist” and “The Shining” on to David Lynch’s “Inland Empire,” Penderecki ‘s early works explored the recreation of electronic sounds by the orchestra and were a perfect fit for film makers looking to keep audiences on the edge of their seats. Today the composer focuses more on classical forms and deepening his exploration of the symphony orchestra’s sonic palate while continuing to conduct at concert halls around the world.
Penderecki’s concert will be followed by a program of music by his compatriot Witold Lutoslawski on Sunday, which closes the festival.
Krzysztof Penderecki will perform at
7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 23 at the
St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Main Hall (2 Mikhailovskaya Ulitsa, tel. 710 4257). www.philharmonia.spb.ru
TITLE: All that jazz
AUTHOR: By Daniel Kozin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The 13th edition of Moscow’s Triumph of Jazz festival is making its way to the northern capital for the first time this year. The two concerts included on the St. Petersburg program will be held Feb. 24 at the St. Petersburg State Jazz Philharmonic and Feb. 25 at the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall.
The annual event has been held in Moscow since 2000 and is one of Russia’s biggest jazz events of the year, bringing celebrated jazz musicians from around the world to perform alongside Russia’s own stars.
The St. Petersburg version of the program kicks off Sunday at the city’s premier jazz venue with a concert by Grammy-nominated New York pianist Bill Charlap and his trio, renowned for their interpretations of jazz standards. The pianist has recorded for the Blue Note label and was described by Time magazine as a musician that “approaches a song the way a lover approaches his beloved… no matter how imaginative or surprising his take on a song is, he invariably zeroes in on its essence.”
Monday’s program features legendary American drummer Roy Haynes and his Fountain of Youth band. A jazz veteran, Haynes has been playing since the 1940s and has collaborated with some of the best jazz musicians of the century. He is the only surviving member of the Charlie Parker Quintet, and was a member of John Coltrane’s quartet in the 1960s. He also a received Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.
The event will also see jazz-funk pioneer Lee Ritenour and his band perform, as well as Australian singer Fantine. The Moscow Jazz Orchestra, led by festival organizer and renowned Russian saxophonist Igor Butman, is also scheduled to perform.
The Triumph of Jazz festival takes place 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 24 at the St. Petersburg State Jazz Philharmonic (27 Zagorodny Prospekt, tel. 764 8565), and 7 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 25 at the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall (6 Ligovsky Prospekt, tel. 275 1300).
TITLE: Eclectic Estonia
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Tallinn Music Week, the Estonian capital’s major music industry festival, due to take place from April 4 through 6, is coming to St. Petersburg this week to introduce the neighboring country’s burgeoning music scene to local music lovers. The St. Petersburg Times spoke via Skype with the festival’s director, Helen Sildna.
Q: What’s the idea behind the upcoming Estonian music event in St. Petersburg?
A: This year we have the hope, or ambition, to invite more bands and music lovers, and also those tourists interested in culture from Latvia, Finland and Russia, to the Tallinn Music Week. We had the idea that the [organizers of] the Stereoleto festival could help us to spread the word about TMW, so they will help a bit with marketing to Stereoleto fans through their channels. We also thought it would be great to come to St. Petersburg. The reason for doing so is that we would like to meet some of the key music industry people who are active in Russia, and especially St. Petersburg, on location. And if some [of the] music industry press come [to the event] and find out more about TMW, that would also be great.
Another bit of good news is that one of the Estonian artists that is performing at TMW this year — Mart Avi & Ajukaja — will be playing a full live set at the Stereozima festival on Feb. 23.
On Friday, Feb. 22 we’ll have a little reception and get-together for the Russian music industry and press at Helsinkibar, and we’re welcoming everybody who is interested. I will introduce the festival and Ilya Bortnyuk, the organizer of the Stereoleto and Stereozima festivals, will be there as well. There will also be other people from the Russian music scene who have been to TMW before and who will talk about their impressions. That will be followed by a little party with drinks and food. Raul Saaremets, who is a kind of underground legend in Estonia and a respected DJ, will also play records. So it will be an easy-going, relaxed pre-party.
Q: Why did you choose to bring Mart Avi & Ajukaja to perform in St. Petersburg?
A: The way it happened was that Ilya Bortnyuk saw the band playing at TMW in 2012 and really liked them. That’s why we decided that it would be great to bring them over to St. Petersburg in February. They are an intriguing electronic act, with electronic sounds mixed with Mart Avi’s vocals. He’s been compared to a young Scott Walker or David Bowie and has a very special, peculiar voice. It’s quite a special live show, I would say. Ajukaja, who is actually Raul Saaremets, has mixed together the electronic part and Mart Avi sings live on top of it. They just had the international release of their debut album, “After Hours” (Porridge Bullet), which came out a few days ago.
Q: Raul Saaremets used to play drums with Röövel Ööbik, a legendary Estonian indie band from the 1980s and early 1990s, so there is also a connection to the older Estonian music scene, isn’t there?
A: Yes, basically he was active in the old Estonian punk scene, but then became active again in the 1990s. He was the guy who first started [putting on] house and techno music club shows, which are now called Mutant Disco. Mutant Disco just celebrated its 15th anniversary this year. We can say that he and another producer and DJ called Rhythm Doctor, who is actually English, brought club culture to Estonia. That’s the reason why underground house parties became so popular as well as being really good quality.
Q: The Estonian music scene seems to be thriving at the moment. Could you please give a brief description of what it’s like?
A: There’re many various music scenes that are all very active. One of the first reactions that we’ve received through TMW from the international music press is that everybody is intrigued and interested to find out that there’s such a large variety of different genres and scenes; and that within all the genres and scenes themselves there are so many different artists. We have a very strong folk music tradition, and, of course, there are a lot of traditional folk groups, but there are also examples like Metsatöll, which is a folk-influenced metal band and then, from another angle, Mari Kalkun, who is a singer-songwriter.
Folk music influences a lot of different scenes: There are indie bands who have been influenced by it, as well as singer-songwriters; there are even some metal bands. Let’s say that ethnic Estonian folk has been able to add quite a strong flavor to [the work of] many artists. Of course, there’s also a strong choral tradition, which is in itself large and well-developed in Estonia. International journalists were also intrigued by how much this choral tradition has also influenced many indie bands, and that vocal music has such strong roots in Estonia. There is also a vibrant experimental electronic music scene and a strong punk scene, which was started by bands like J.M.K.E. and Röövel Ööbik. Now there’s a particularly lively scene of experimental singer-songwriters.
Of course everybody knows Arvo Pärt, but there’s also a new generation of young contemporary classical composers in Estonia as well.
Q: How are the artists selected for TMW?
A: First of all, we are really committed to the idea that we want absolutely all music styles and genres represented on the program. That’s the guideline for the whole idea. We want to have contemporary classical, punk, rock, metal, hip-hop, urban, avant-garde and electronica. There’s an open call for applications, which closes in December or early January, and then we have a roundtable of key Estonian organizations that are very active in their respective fields. For example, the biggest local jazz festival is involved with the jazz programming for TMW, the biggest metal festival is involved in getting together the metal bands, etc. So when it comes to programming the festival we have around 30 people who are all top specialists in a particular musical genre in Estonia. The program is then put together in collaboration with them on the basis of the applications we have received.
This year we received close to 600 applications and the final program now includes 233 acts.
Q: What’s the history of TMW?
A: TMW started in 2009, but the idea was born as early as 2007, I would say. A few people in the Estonian music industry had been visiting many similar events, such as Music and Media in Finland, By:Larm in Norway and Eurosonic in Holland, and a bunch of us started thinking about how we could better develop the export of Estonian music. We thought that holding an event like this would have an immediate impact, and this is how it began developing. Of course the broader idea was to begin by working strategically on the Estonian music export front, but we felt that we had to start with something very concrete. The first step was actually setting up the TMW festival. It seemed to us to be a format that was working effectively for other countries, and so could also work for us. One of the main reasons to start then was that at the end of 2008 it was announced that Tallinn would become a European Capital of Culture in 2011. In 2009 those funding structures opened up as well, so the Culture Capital money was actually the first bit of public funding that we got. It’s hard to say if we would have been able to start in 2009 without that Culture Capital element. I am sure we would have started, but perhaps a year later, or something like that.
Q: Was it smaller than it is now when you began?
A: Yes, much smaller. For the first event we had 65 artists and around 230 delegates. So the number of artists has increased nearly four times — from 65 to 233 — and the number of delegates has also grown significantly. In 2012 we had over 600 delegates — half of them international, half of them Estonian. And of course audience numbers have also grown. In 2009 we had 4,500 people coming to the clubs; last year we had 11,200.
Q: What is your background in music industry?
A: Before TMW, I was an international artists’ booker for a company called BDG, which is one of Estonia’s biggest concert promotion agencies. I worked at the company until 2008 and through this work was able to gain some basic international music contacts and the knowledge and understanding of how the business works. And also because I’d already gone to international music events like the International Live Music Conference in London, Eurosonic, or By:Larm, I already had knowledge of how the business operates. But what I was really surprised about, and what I realized through this work, was that most of the concert business and music industry in Estonia at that time was based on international artists and an international repertoire; anything Estonian was completely random. There were absolutely no professional promoters, record labels or music companies working with the local artists. I remember our Finnish partner, Risto Juvonen, who is the head of Live Nation Finland, once said that a country’s music industry can never have a stable development until it can regularly work and do business with its local talent. This sentence kind of stuck in my mind, and I started looking at how music industries in other countries operated. For instance, let’s look at the Fullsteam label in Finland, or even at Live Nation Finland; most of their stable, regular business comes from working with local Finnish acts.
So I realized this through my work with international acts and decided that somebody had to do something about it. There are a lot of exciting artists in Estonia, and it was quite obvious that somebody had to start working on this.
Q: What are your own tastes in music?
A: I like many different things. It can be anything from singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan to contemporary electronic experimental music or hip-hop. It doesn’t matter what the music genre is, it’s just about creativity. I’m not after perfectly produced products, I’m more about becoming fascinated by a unique talent.
Q: The Russian involvement with TMW is growing from year to year — what is the reason for that?
A: There are five Russian acts this year: Chikiss, Kim & Buran, Mooncake, Paradith and Trelleborg. I am interested in establishing working relationships with all of the neighboring countries. It’s the first logical step we should take. It makes absolute sense for bands from our countries to travel and be able to play in clubs in Finland, Estonia, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, etc. It’s kind of a strategic approach that we have. After all the years we’ve been doing TMW, it’s now a normal thing for an Estonian band to play in clubs in Riga, for example. With the Russian band Motorama, who were at TMW last year, there was an immediate interest from the Estonian audience. They also got noticed by a French label and agency called Talitres, which is the same company that represents [Estonian indie band] Ewert and The Two Dragons in France. They’re now working with Motorama as well, and they found Motorama here in Tallinn.
Estonia’s Mart Avi & Ajukaja will perform alongside France’s Wax Tailor, Norway’s Casiokids and St. Petersburg’s own Juniper as part of Stereozima at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 23 at A2, 3 Prospekt Medikov. Metro: Gorkovskaya. Tel. 309 9922.
TITLE: A Wondrous and Beautiful Land
AUTHOR: By Natalya Smolentseva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Photos of the most beautiful, amazing and hard-to-reach corners of Russia can be seen in an exhibition titled “Russia’s Wild Nature” which opened last week at the headquarters of the Russian Geographical Society. The exhibition displays work by finalists of the annual photo contest, held for the second time by National Geographic and the RGS from May to September 2012.
“This year we received 43,000 photos from all over the world,” said Alexander Grek, editor-in-chief of National Geographic Russia. “The main purpose of this exhibition is to educate Russian photographers, display talent and support a passion for taking pictures of Russian nature.”
Winners were chosen in seven nomination categories, among which were Macro, Mammals, Birds, From Dusk to Dawn and others. The images were selected by professionals from both Russia and the U.S., with the final selection being made by National Geographic senior photo editor Kathy Moran and photo editor Darren Smith.
The annual contest is open to everyone, but excludes professional photographers working for National Geographic.
The winner of the grand prize, Natalya Belentsova, was awarded 300,000 rubles ($10,000) for her work “The Treasure of Dwarfs” in a ceremony at the Lumiere Brothers Photogallery in Moscow in December. The prizes were awarded by Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Yulia Boyle, Vice President of Development at the National Geographic Society.
Belentsova’s photo was taken in a cave near the Mount Mutnovsky volcano in Kamchatka and was judged best-in-show based on such criteria as composition, uniqueness and the inaccessibility of the location.
“The judging was completely impartial: Nobody knew the photographers and everybody was surprised by the result,” explained Grek. “A strange shot has won, from my point of view. It is said to be very difficult to capture this kind of light.” However, some of the photographers suspect the winner of having used special lighting techniques.
Meanwhile, in a special interview for National Geographic Russia, Belentsova stressed that the only thing she had used while shooting was an ordinary lamp.
“I photographed both with the lamp — to illuminate the foreground or provide general lighting — and without it, using long exposures. In total I took approximately 300 pictures. The photo that I sent to the contest was probably taken without the lamp,” said Belentsova.
Prizes were awarded by the Russian Geographical Society and sponsor Bon Aqua in two special nomination categories: “Young Talents” and “Towards a Clean Future for Lake Baikal.” In the former category, Alexander Popkov, the 16-year-old author of the photo “Quintet,” won a guided trip around the historical building of the Russian Geographical Society in St. Petersburg. In the latter category, Rostislav Mashin won the chance to travel to Lake Baikal as part of the Bon Aqua expedition (an ecological initiative sponsored by Coca-Cola) for his work “Sunrise from Cape Burkhan,” which was taken on Lake Baikal’s Olkhon Island. Other winners received photo equipment and gifts from the sponsors.
Commenting on the standard of work in the contest, Grek said that it hasn’t yet reached an international level, but that he hoped it would improve during the next two to three years.
“Next year we are going to put the discussions of the photos on the Internet, because it is useful for the photographers to understand global trends and the criteria used to select photos,” said Grek.
New nomination categories such as “Mother and Young”, “Protected Russia” and “Unusual Shot” are also to appear next year.
After the announcement of the results of the contest, the exhibition began its tour of Russian cities. “We are planning to visit cities such as Yaroslavl and Yekaterinburg, although nothing has been decided yet,” said Maria Smagina, special projects coordinator for National Geographic Russia.
The “Wild Nature of Russia 2012” photo exhibition runs through March 17 at the headquarters of the Russian Geographical Society, 10 Pereulok Grivtsova. Entrance is free of charge.
TITLE: THE DISH: Arka
AUTHOR: By Alastair Gill
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Archingly hip
Regulars on the Petersburg restaurant scene will be familiar with a new type of hip eatery that typically becomes popular with the local young professional and “creative” class. Nobody’s quite sure whether these places are bars, restaurants or music venues — it’s all part of a cover-all-bases approach. After all, why limit yourself to being a restaurant when you can be all things to all people?
Arka Bar and Grill, which opened last summer on Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ul., falls squarely into this category. Issues of originality aside, this is no bad thing in itself, especially as Arka has a couple of extra cards up its sleeve to set it apart from the competition. The first is the originality of its layout. Entering from the street, you pass into a long narrow space with a high arched ceiling lit by spotlights. This bottleneck-like space that leads to the large dining area at the back is lined by a 13-meter long bar, and is in fact an archway that once linked the street to the building’s interior courtyard — hence the name.
The second is the creative way in which the designers have used what is already an unorthodox space. The dining area is divided into two levels and makes judicious use of exposed brickwork balanced with Scandinavian-style wood paneling, all accentuated by subtle lighting.
Chef Yevgeny Khitrov’s menu emphasizes simplicity and is focused on grilled meats, soups and salads. Vegetarians will find little on offer here, however, as even the salads allow little room for maneuver. This required one diner to make some compromises when it came to starters. As it turned out, her only real criticism of the smoked cod salad with roasted beetroot and new potatoes (360 rubles, $12) was that it was “rather Russian.”
Although the salad didn’t quite hit the mark, Arka unexpectedly raised the bar with two selections from the soup menu — both chosen at the urging of the waiter. As it happens, the inventive soups are a very good reason to eat at Arka. The cream soup with Jerusalem artichoke and smoked salmon (380 rubles, $12.60) is a twin-flavored delight, the tiny morsels of salmon providing a sharp counterpoint to the delicate notes of the melt-in-the-mouth artichoke. The delectable mushroom cappuccino soup with Borodinsky bread (360 rubles, $12) should also be an essential choice.
The seafood shashlyks of squid, scallop and prawn (340 rubles, $11.30) came on a slab of black slate, accompanied by a green chili sauce. Though perfectly grilled, the morsels of seafood were served three apiece on two miniature skewers and were disappointingly bland. Better value for money was the grilled sea bream (680 rubles, $22.50), which comes with a medley of baby corn, chili pepper and pickled onions. Arka offers novel variations on side dishes — new potatoes with mint (160 rubles, $5.30), for example — but in general the sense was that, soups apart, our choices failed to deliver on their promise. Visitors may be better advised opting for a steak (1400 rubles, $47) or a shashlyk meal for two (1100 rubles, $37). House red wine starts at 240 rubles ($8) per glass.
The service is informal, verging on eager — our waiter got ahead of himself at one point by removing a spoon from the table shortly before the soup had arrived. But in general this can only be a good thing. The question remains, however, whether Arka can be all things to all people. On this evidence, it seems like it’s a tricky balancing act to maintain.
TITLE: Businesswoman Turns Professional Psychic
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg psychic Tatyana Ikayeva, one of the final ten contestants in the current season of the popular Russian reality television show “Battle of the Psychics,” has made a remarkable career transition. With degrees in finance and law under her belt, and after a successful fifteen-year career as a financial analyst, in 2008 Ikayeva decided to trade it all in for a business of her own — as a psychic.
“My colleagues in the financial world were lost for words when I told them that I was quitting,” Ikayeva, who calls her business Store of Wishes, remembers. “I was doing very well, and there was no obvious reason for me to change careers. Yet I now feel that I have made the right choice. I have always had an ability to predict the future and used it for fun, but I did not really know how to make it work as a business. At some stage I realized that I could use it to help others while also making it my main activity, and now life feels just right.”
In 2012, Ikayeva decided to challenge herself and auditioned for the “Battle of the Psychics” television program, in which participants who claim to have paranormal abilities put them to a series of entertaining tests.
Out of 16,000 hopefuls, around 300 people, including Ikayeva, entered the first round of the competition. The task was to describe what was happening on the other side of a wall.
“It felt like a madhouse. Many of those trying to secure a place in the finals, apparently in an effort to make an impression on the jury, were trying to turn their participation into a visual spectacle: Some sang, some danced, some performed bizarre rituals,” Ikayeva remembers. Behind the wall stood a large aquarium in which a school of piranhas was fiercely tearing apart bits of chicken. Ikayeva told the judges that she sensed aggressive activity taking place on the other side of the wall, and she mentioned the presence of water and glass. This test secured Ikayeva a place among the top 25 finalists of the show. “At that stage things eased up in the sense that everyone in the group truly deserved their place there: Their intuition was above average,” she said.
Then Ikayeva went on to win the next test, where in a vast hangar she successfully detected a car in which a man was hiding. The fortune teller, however, is most proud of her performance in the round in which she was asked to give a description of a person sitting next to her while blindfolded. “I said it was a man who was destined to have a career in singing but who chose a different path and now mostly talks,” Ikayeva recounts. When the blindfold was removed, the popular Russian actor Mikhail Kokshenov was revealed to be sitting next to her. Kokshenov confirmed, in amazement, that he had actually had a musical education, and had considered a career in singing.
Unfortunately for Ikayeva, the Kokshenov episode never made it into the final version of the show. “I understand that the producers need to make it visually engaging, and to achieve this they use a lot of short segments that make little sense but are visually exciting. Indeed, I was prepared for the fact that out of one or two hours of filming, sometimes just a few seconds of footage might be used,” she said. “But even so, the final edit was frustrating to watch. To stay in an episode, you constantly need to turn everything into a performance — bring rats, burn incense, or mumble some sort of nonsense and roll your eyes. I am not a clown and do nothing of the kind.”
Ikayeva is one of more than 800,000 fortune tellers, healers, and practitioners of magic, who, according to state statistics, are officially registered in Russia. The numbers also include shamans, who are especially common in Siberia.
“Even as a child, Tatyana frequently scared everyone with her frightening predictions,” reads a brief introduction to the St. Petersburg psychic on the “Battle of the Psychics” website. When asked about the origins and accuracy of this sobering description, Tatyana said the summary resulted from a story that she had told the crew during filming.
Tatyana discovered her gift at the age of five, when, upon meeting a female friend of the family, the little girl told the assembled company that the woman was ill. She then shocked everyone further by giving a spontaneous and rather specific diagnosis, which later was confirmed by doctors.
“I cannot say how I gain insight into people’s situations. What I do is concentrate, and then I have thoughts or see images that flash through my mind,” Ikayeva said. “When I was young, I tried to wave these things off. Eventually though, I realized that the insights were true. I grew up in Dushanbe, where my father was deputy agriculture minister of Tajikistan, and I could predict an earthquake a couple of days before it happened. At some stage I noticed that people were listening to me when, for example, I suggested that they cancel a trip to the mountains that I had a bad feeling about.”
Now that making predictions has become her livelihood, Tatyana says that she doesn’t even need to advertise, as word of mouth brings her all the clients she needs.
“My clients can easily be divided into two categories: The curious and the desperate,” Ikayeva said. “The curious see a visit to a psychic as a form of entertainment — a kind of thrilling alternative to clubbing. The vast majority though are desperate; those who have lost ground, or, even worse, lost hope owing to the various hardships they have been through.”
As Ikayeva points out, about 90 percent of her clients have psychological issues, but many of them also complain about having been placed under “spells” or are suffering the effects of “black magic.”
“I try to bring them back to reality by pointing out the attitudes that keep them from breaking out of a depressing situation,” Ikayeva said. “My task is to give my client the drive they need to move on.”
Over the past five years, the Ministry of Health has made a concerted effort to tackle depression and mental health disorders. There has been a vast increase in these illnesses since the collapse of the U.S.S.R. The Health Ministry claims that while more than 80 percent of Russians will at some stage need treatment for a mental health disorder, only 3 percent seek counseling.
By comparison, the prophecies of fortune tellers, unlike psychological counseling, are very popular in Russia. Various nationwide surveys held in the past decade have shown that more than 20 percent of people admitted having used the services of a fortune teller, shaman or practitioner of magic.
Although each fortune teller, faith healer or shaman has his or her own list of services and prices, they are all essentially selling the same thing: Hope. This hope is offered to clients in the form of a new romance, a vast inheritance, a plum new job or a successful medical treatment.
So why do so many people in Russia choose a shaman or some other kind of psychic practitioner over one of the country’s psychologists or physicians? It is unlikely to be connected with advertising, since there is no shortage of ads for professional counseling services. It seems that many people who opt to enlist the services of psychics are seeking a form of escapism, an attempt to enter an alternative reality. And very often they get duped, according to Ikayeva.
“It is hard for a desperate person to assess things critically; if you have decided to visit a psychic, pay close attention to what you say and what they say,” Ikayeva advises. “Do not start your visit by bombarding them with information. Let them demonstrate their intuition and skill. Also, beware that the more cunning ones use vague phrases to describe events that could fit almost any situation. Spend money wisely? Do not trust strangers? Show affection to your loved ones? Is this not universal advice? A true psychic is always specific.”