SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1753 (12), Wednesday, April 3, 2013
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TITLE: Pussy Riot Rocker Faces Prison Transfer
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: PERM — Jailed Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina, who is currently serving a two-year sentence at a penal colony in the Perm region town of Berezniki, may be transferred to another correctional facility, two news reports said Wednesday.

The regional prosecutor's office has demanded that Alyokhina be transferred to another prison after a check found that she, a first-time offender, had illegally been placed in a prison with repeat offenders, Kommersant reported.

Prison regulations also prohibit inmates from being placed in solitary confinement more than once in the same colony, and Alyokhina has been in solitary confinement twice. In November, Alyokhina asked prison officials to place her in an individual cell because of a conflict with two other inmates. After 90 days in solitary confinement, Alyokhina asked to be left there for a longer period.

An unidentified official in the regional prosecutor's office told Interfax that a decision would be made by the Federal Prison Service and that Alyokhina might be transferred to a prison in the Perm region or another part of Russia.

The Perm region branch of the prison service said Wednesday that it had no information on Alyokhina's possible relocation and confirmed that she remained at the Berezniki colony.

Alyokhina and fellow Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich were sentenced last year to two years in prison for staging an anti-Putin performance at Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow on Feb. 21, 2012. Samutsevich later received a suspended sentence on appeal and was released.

The trio and their supporters, who include liberal Western politicians and pop stars Madonna and Paul McCartney, have said their punishment is incommensurate with their crim


TITLE: British Musician Cancels Russian Concerts in Protest Over NGO 'Crackdown'
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A famous British musician has canceled his upcoming concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg due to what he sees as a crackdown on human rights organizations.

"Given the crackdown by Russian authorities on groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, I have regretfully decided to cancel my upcoming concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg in June," a statement on Mark Knopfler's website says.

Knopfler, most famous as one of the founding members of Dire Straits, was due to perform on June 7 and 8 in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The concerts were part of his world tour for his new album "Privateering."

Experts say this marks the first such "walkout" by a Western artist in protest of recent legislation and that other Western performers may follow Knopfler's example.

Since early February, over 90 organizations have received unannounced inspections by prosecutors in connection with the new law on NGOs, which requires any organization receiving foreign funding to register as a "foreign agent."

Transparency International, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been among those visited, as well as elections watchdog Golos and the human rights group Memorial.




TITLE: U.S. Denies Russians Access to Guantanamo Prisoner 
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MIAMI — The U.S. won't grant Russian officials access to one of its citizens held at the Guantanamo Bay prison because the prisoner refuses to meet with them, the U.S. State Department said.

Russian officials have asked to meet with Ravil Mingazov at the U.S. base in Cuba. State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said the 47-year-old prisoner refused through his lawyer to see the delegation.

"So we're not able to facilitate the interview that they requested because we have a longstanding policy of not forcing such interviews if they're not voluntary," Nuland told reporters in Washington on Wednesday.

She said the U.S. has offered to host a Russian delegation on a visit to Guantanamo, where the U.S. holds 166 prisoners, but that individuals have a right to refuse visits under international humanitarian law.

Lawyers for Mingazov, a former ballet dancer accused of training with Islamic extremists, said the U.S. Justice Department told them Russian officials wanted to meet with their client.

They were told the delegation would include a representative of the Prosecutor General's Office as well as other ministries but the goal of the meeting was not disclosed, said attorney Doug Spaulding.

"In some respects it's been presented as something akin to a consular visit. They want to see how he is doing and make sure he knows what his status is," Spaulding said. "And in other respects it seems they want to ask him questions."

Mingazov, who has been held at Guantanamo for more than a decade without charge, has challenged his detention in court, but Spaulding said the prisoner fears what will happen if he is returned to his native country because of the experiences of seven other Russians who were released from the U.S. prison in southeastern Cuba.

"They were subject to persecution upon their release, and based on that he does not want to go back," he said.

Mingazov was a trained ballet dancer who had appeared on national television, according to the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. He later converted to Islam and left the country to escape anti-Muslim prejudice, eventually ending up in Afghanistan, it said. U.S. officials have said he was at a terrorist safe house when he was captured in Pakistan in March 2002 and had trained at al-Qaida linked camps.

In May 2010, a federal judge said there was not enough evidence to justify detaining Mingazov and ordered his release. The U.S. government appealed and the case remains pending.

TITLE: Demonstrators Flout New Law
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Nine protesters were detained at a Strategy 31 demo for the right of assembly Sunday as a new local law imposing further restrictions on the rallies in St. Petersburg, signed by Governor Poltavchenko on March 19, came into force in the city. 
More than three years since Strategy 31 demonstrations, which are named after Article 31 of the Russian Constitution — guaranteeing the freedom of assembly — and held on months containing 31 days, began in St. Petersburg on Jan. 31, 2010, it was apparent that the authorities continue to see it as a major threat. 
On Sunday, two dozen police vehicles were parked near the Gostiny Dvor department store on Nevsky Prospekt and the police’s top brass were present on the scene. Plainclothes officers lurking in the crowd and stationed on the second floor of the store’s gallery recorded the event on their cameras, and dozens of armored OMON special forces officers were waiting in groups on the sides of the site to make arrests.
Five minutes after 6 p.m., eight activists from The Other Russia party, whose leader Eduard Limonov launched the Strategy 31 campaign in Moscow in 2009, came to the site dubbed “Freedom Square” by protesters and linked their arms.
Speaking loudly, without mechanical amplification, activist Roman Khrenov said that the activists would demonstrate wherever they wanted rather than do as they were told, because “we have a right given to us by the constitution to do this.” A police officer was simultaneously announcing that the assembly was “illegal” using a bullhorn. 
Within seconds, the demonstrators were surrounded by police officers, who used force to pry them apart and take them into the waiting police vans as the protesters shouted “Russia Will Be Free” and “We Need The Other Russia.” The activists who had been detained were carted away within four minutes of starting the protest.
A young civil activist, Vyacheslav Yevgenyev, who had been distributing leaflets for the newly formed liberal December 5 Party and wore a white ribbon — symbolizing the demand for fair elections — was also arrested, but later was released into his father’s custody because he was a minor.
The police did not arrest several civil activists who had placards, apparently because of their advanced age. All in all, there appeared to be between 70 and 80 apparent sympathizers at the location. 
In addition to Khrenov, Sergei Chepiga, Sergei Grebnev, Yevgeny Markin, Alexander Kolosov, Maria Krylova, Fyodor Privalov and Ivan Peshy were also detained and charged with disobedience and for holding an unsanctioned rally; the offences are punishable by fines or prison terms of up to 15 days.
The eight activists, who were held at two police precincts overnight, were taken to the Kuibyshevsky District Court at 11:30 a.m. Monday. They were held in buses outside the court for hours, with the police not allowing activists from the Detainees Support Group to pass thermoses of tea to them.
City Hall has never authorized Strategy 31 rallies, citing different reasons from snow removal to repair works in the proximity of the metro entrance. During one rally in 2010, the police blocked the area next to the Gostiny Dvor metro, claiming that there had been a bomb threat.
According to the new legislation, assemblies on Nevsky Prospekt, Palace Square and St. Isaac’s Square, as well as near metro entrances, railway stations and the offices occupied by various state bodies, are forbidden. The Legislative Assembly passed the law in its final, third reading on Feb. 20.
The same day, Yabloko Democratic Party deputy Nikolai Rybakov filed a complaint with the St. Petersburg City Court, asking the judges to withdraw the law as being “illegal.”
“Having once come into force, and used even once, the new law will have destructive consequences for the rights of citizens,” Rybakov was quoted in a statement from Yabloko.
However, The Other Russia’s local chair Andrei Dmitriyev dismissed the law as “meaningless.”
“[City Hall] needs the law only to have an opportunity to reject the application of a rally if it’s held, for instance, on Nevsky Prospekt,” Dmitriyev said, speaking to The St. Petersburg Times by phone on Monday.
“It does not affect Strategy 31 in any way. When there are too many bans, they lose any meaning, because they start to duplicate each other. They have never permitted us to hold Strategy 31 rallies anyway, so if they included it in the law additionally, it hasn’t changed anything,” said Dmitriyev.

TITLE: Gazprom Continues To Move Offices to City 
AUTHOR: COMBINED REPORTS
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — State-owned gas giant Gazprom will soon move two departments to St. Petersburg.
A senior city official said the departments are “gradually starting to be moved and the rest will move eventually,” Vedomosti reported last week.
The unidentified official attributed the move to the company’s plans to relocate its offices to the new Lakhta Center, an 86-storey skyscraper being built for Gazprom in the city.
The skyscraper, with an area of 334,000 square meters, is slated for completion by 2018.
The company’s departments for construction and procurement are “already in the process of moving,” while a third responsible for design work has been built from the ground up in St. Petersburg, Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told Vedomosti.
He said there had been no decision yet regarding other departments.
Andrei Kruglov, head of Gazprom’s finance department, said his department would not be moving anytime soon, Interfax reported Friday.
It was not immediately clear whether the move would be accompanied by new local registration for Gazprom, which would require the company to pay additional city taxes.
Although Kupriyanov said the move was being conducted in agreement with the city, a second city official said the relocation was not being paid for using funds from the city budget.
Vedomosti said employees working in the relocated departments are being paid an additional two to three months’ wages to find housing in the northern capital.
Meanwhile, the Delovoi Peterburg daily reported last week that the number of Gazprom departments in St. Petersburg has also recently been expanded by the transferral of an office of Gazpromneft Marine Bunker to the city. Gazprom Marine Bunker is St. Petersburg’s leader in ship refueling at the city’s port.
The departments have taken over a floor of 1,120 square meters in the Senator business center on Vasilyevsky Island’s Bolshoi Prospekt. Gazprom Marine Bunker needed extra space to transfer its operational administration from Moscow to St. Petersburg, according to Delovoi Peterburg.
Gazprom Marine Bunker, which specializes in fueling ships in 24 Russian ports, has been registered in St. Petersburg since 2007. The company has held a leading position on the city market for a second year while controlling 30 percent of the local bunkering business. However, until recently its operational management has been carried out from its Moscow office.
According to experts, Gazprom departments already occupy about 90,000 square meters of office space in the city. Gazprom Neft moved to St. Petersburg in 2012, while the move of Gazprom Export is to be completed by the end of 2013, Vedomosti reported. 
Gazprom’s partial relocation from Moscow may lead to a loss in tax revenue for the city. Gazprom’s tax contributions to budgets at all levels in 2011 totaled 967 billion rubles ($31 billion). In 2012, the funds allocated for Gazprom employees’ salaries and bonuses alone totaled 99.9 million rubles ($3.2 million). Following the relocation of Gazprom’s employees to St. Petersburg, their tax contributions will go to the St. Petersburg budget, Vedomosti reported.
As a strategic partner of St. Petersburg, Gazprom enjoys certain privileges in the city. Therefore when the majority of companies with large advertising billboards on Nevsky Prospekt had to take them down last month to comply with new advertising legislation, Gazprom managed to retain its sign at the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Ulitsa Sadovaya. 

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Laugh for Longevity</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — People with a healthy sense of humor usually find an inventive way out of difficult situations, Maria Galimsyanova, an associate professor in psychology at St. Petersburg State University, said April 1, Interfax reported.
“The sense of humor exhibited in an unpleasant or unexpected situation is often a defense reaction that helps [somebody] to get through difficult times. Therefore in order to live easily and joyfully it’s important to teach oneself to find something funny in any setback. Usually, a good joke can relieve tension, depression or fear, and helps to release accumulated aggression,” Galimsyanova said.
The psychologist said humor also makes people feel better physically. Witty people always win the interest and respect of the public easier, and many people listen to them.
“The problem of people who lack a sense of humor is that they think too rationally. They thoroughly plan every minute of their life and try not to step aside from their plan. As a result, any unplanned event causes them substantial stress.”
On April 1, Russia marked April Fools’ Day.

<b>New Director for BDT</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The new artistic director of St. Petersburg’s Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theater, or BDT, Andrei Moguchy, plans to maintain the theater’s traditions, Russia’s culture minister Vladimir Medinsky told journalists last week, Interfax reported.
Moguchy, one of Russia’s leading modern theater directors, said he would not bring in any “bloody” changes.
“I’ve made a decision to take a risk. Everything will be slow and painless. However, my priority is to focus on working with the actors,” Moguchy said.
Moguchy said the decision on his new position came quickly and without warning for him. However, he will maintain his obligations to the city’s Alexandrinsky Theater, where he also worked, he said.
BDT is one of the city’s leading drama theaters.

<b>Soccer Stadium Costs</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The cost of FC Zenit’s new soccer stadium in St. Petersburg may end up totaling 34 billion rubles ($1.1 billion), the St. Petersburg Construction Committee said Friday, Interfax reported.
Work began on the new soccer stadium on Krestovsky Island in 2007. However, in light of Russia’s application for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the project was subsequently revised in order to completely meet FIFA’s requirements on capacity and safety.
At the moment the stadium, whose cost was previously valued at 44 billion rubles ($1.4 billion), is more than 30 percent complete.
On March 20, St. Petersburg vice-governor Marat Oganesyan said the estimated cost of the stadium would be corrected downwards.


TITLE: LGBT Rights Organizations Hold Protest
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: LGBT activists will send photographs of fascist graffiti in St. Petersburg to Governor Georgy Poltavchenko during the Week Against Homophobia and Transphobia, the annual series of events aimed at drawing attention to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity that is being held in the city this week. 
According to the Russian LGBT Network’s local chair Igor Kochetkov, the activists will take pictures of neo-Nazi graffiti covering the walls of St. Petersburg and send them to Poltavchenko, who signed the local law banning the “promotion of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism … to minors” last year.
“We want to draw his attention to the fact that the promotion of things that are punishable by the criminal code openly exists in the city, rather than the mythical ‘promotion of homosexuality,’” Kochetkov said to The St. Petersburg Times by phone this week.
Postcards will be also sent to the local politicians who supported the anti-gay law, celebrating the opening of the Week Against Homophobia and Transphobia, Kochetkov added.
This year, the motto for the forum is “It’s High Time to Speak Out!”
“Each of the events urges participants and onlookers to mediate on the consequences of homophobia and transphobia, and to speak out,” the organizers say.
Coordinated by the Russian LGBT Network, the festival began yesterday with a seminar called “LGBT Discrimination: What, How and Why?”  and will continue with the political debates “Attitudes Toward LGBT: A Test for the Democratic Opposition” on Thursday and the seminar “Promotion of Transgenderism: Daily Practices of Identity and Political Expression” on Saturday.
The point of Thursday’s debate, according to the organizers at the Coming Out LGBT rights group and Straights for LGBT Equality is the fact that the attitude to the LGBT community frequently inspires arguments from many organizations. 
Representatives of democratic political groups are expected to take part to discuss why the issue arises so frequently and what grounds the opposing sides occupy. The debates will be held at Andy Bar at 50 Ligovsky Prospekt (Korpus 13).
The screening of a short documentary film, “The Same as You…” (Takoi Zhe, Kak Ty…), dealing with the problems that LGBT teenagers face and how they internalize discrimination, is scheduled for Friday. The teenagers who appear in the film will take part in a discussion afterwards alongside invited guests.
The screening is tentatively scheduled to be held at Tsiferblat Anti-Cafe at 81 Nevsky Prospekt at 7 p.m. 
The “Promotion of Transgenderism” seminar is due to take place at Ligovsky 87 (office 300) at 7 p.m. Saturday. All events are free.
According to the organizers, the week’s events will come to a close with a “Day of Silence,” scheduled for Sunday. 
Instead of a silent public protest against the discrimination LGBT people face, the event will take the form of a public service announcement video that will be posted online on Sunday, according to Coming Out’s Olga Lenkova.  
Lenkova said no public protests were planned this year.
Updates are available from www.lgbtnet.ru and www.comingout.spb.ru

TITLE: SKA Falls to Dinamo in Finals
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Defending champions Dinamo Moscow advanced to this year’s Gagarin Cup Finals after dispatching SKA St. Petersburg 5-1 in Game 6 of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) Western Conference Finals, winning the series 4-2 Monday night. 
Marek Kvapil scored a hat-trick and his Czech compatriot Jakub Petruzalek notched three assists as they led Dinamo to victory in what turned out to be the decisive game in front of 7,596 spectators at the Luzhniki Olympic Arena in Moscow. 
With just over 11 minutes left in regulation time, Petruzalek fed the puck up to Kvapil, who broke into a one-on-one against SKA netminder Ilya Yezhov. Kvapil slapped the puck past Yezhov to complete his hat-trick, giving Dinamo a 4-1 lead that practically sealed the game and the series. 
Three goals down and in total desperation, SKA head coach Jukka Jalonen pulled his goalie with more than seven minutes still to play. Jalonen’s risky gambit failed and Sergei Konkov’s empty-netter at 55:10 spelled the end for SKA and their dream of hoisting the Gagarin Cup this year. 
It is the second year in a row that SKA entered the playoffs as favorites only to get knocked out by Dinamo in the conference finals. After losing the first three games 3-2, 4-2, and 4-2, SKA seemed poised to get swept 4-0 just like last year, but managed to fight back from the brink of elimination in Game 4 in Moscow, scoring six goals to trounce Dinamo 6-2 and take the series back to St. Petersburg for a fifth game. SKA edged out the Muscovites 2-1 in an epic Game 5 last Saturday when SKA forward Viktor Tikhonov heroically scored the game winner with just under two minutes remaining in double overtime, setting up Monday night’s decisive game. 
Dinamo, which now advances to the Gagarin Cup Finals for the third year in a row, has a chance to win back-to-back titles and may even get a chance to avenge its 2010 loss to Ak Bars Kazan. Ak Bars currently leads Traktor Chelyabinsk 3-2 in the KHL Eastern Conference Finals. The Gagarin Cup Finals start April 7.  

TITLE: Artist’s Stuffed Fox Exercises Local Politicians
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A group of St. Petersburg politicians, led by Vitaly Milonov, the United Russia lawmaker at the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly and the godfather of the infamous law against gay propaganda, has launched a crusade against a three-day exhibition by the British artist Adele Morse that is due to open at Geometria Cafe today.
The tireless parliamentarian Milonov has this time gained support from members of the Communists of St. Petersburg party, who have become enraged over Morse’s art.
 At the heart of the controversy is a stuffed fox that the artist, whose work often involves animal images, made as part of an art project. 
According to the curators of the exhibition at Geometria Cafe, Morse will stay in St. Petersburg from April 3 through 5, and will also give lectures about creating internet memes, take part in an autograph signing and attend a party at Geometria Cafe. The artist will also be making a documentary about her visit to the city, which will involve an excursion to visit the foxes at the local zoo, according to the project’s Russian curators. 
The protests against Morse’s Russian trip began even before the artist had finalized her decision to come to the country.
“This artist is traveling around with a work of art that shows Vladimir Lenin next to a very questionable character – a bizarre-looking fox; in other versions the fox sits next to the modern leaders of Russia,” complained Sergei Malinkovich, leader of the Communists of St. Petersburg party. “The fox appears next to prominent politicians of different eras, from Joseph Stalin to Barack Obama. Serving as the backdrop for the fox are collages inspired by the sobering realities of the life in the Soviet Union. Adele Morse is ridiculing the country; she is mocking our national interests.”
 Milonov took the Communists’ bewilderment further, suggesting that the artist is a “callous and mentally unstable person.”
 “No sane individual would organize a display like this; normal people could not bear to look at a maimed stuffed animal,” Milonov said. “If we do not stop this, the next step will be a stuffed human being exposed to the others as an art object.”
In her blog, Adele Morse responded to the critics, whom she said had got some of the facts about her art wrong.
“Anyone who knows me or my work well enough is aware that I have been a vegetarian for over 10 years and almost all of my work involves animals in some way. NEVER in a negative way,” the artist stressed on her blog over the weekend. 
“I do not personally feel I have the right to take another animal’s life, whether it be a human, a dog, a cow or a fox. I have never nor will I ever kill an animal for use within my taxidermy.  I believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion and I think it important for people to set themselves their own boundaries, However I will stand by the importance of taxidermy in our society as a means of preservation,” said Morse.
“As for the political side of things, I want to remind people that I personally have yet to make a [Russian] meme or photo collage. I don’t feel I know enough about what it’s like to live in Russia to go around blindly making political memes that will offend,” the artist said.

TITLE: Officer Charged in Accident 
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Six adults died while 21 children and three adults were injured in an auto accident last week in the Vologda Oblast.
A group of children from a St. Petersburg orphanage were on a trip in the region when their bus collided head-on with a Scania truck, following which the bus caught fire. According to investigators, a VAZ-2115 car driving in the opposite direction collided with the Scania truck, causing it to swerve into oncoming traffic and crash into the bus.
According to preliminary information the party at fault was a policeman who was driving the VAZ-2115, the RBK daily news portal reported.
The officer has been charged with vehicular homicide in the second degree.

TITLE: Udaltsov Sees House Arrest Extended
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov, who has been accused of scheming to incite “mass disorder,” will spend the summer at home. 
A Moscow court on Monday ruled that his house arrest would continue till Aug. 6, during which time he is unable to speak with fellow activists, use the telephone or Internet, or even go outside without police supervision.
The head of the radical socialist Left Front movement, who has been under house arrest since Feb. 9, told the Basmanny District Court that he had done nothing wrong and his innocence would be proved. 
He was initially given the right to leave his apartment under the condition that he would not leave town, but the court ruled that he had violated that agreement on numerous occasions.
The accusations against Udaltsov, which include plotting to violently overthrow the ruling regime, were officially made after a man alleged to be him was shown in a national television expos&#233; discussing funding from a political ally of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to support his cause.
In the video, grainy figures resembling Udaltsov and Georgian politician Givi Targamadze discuss inciting a revolt. Udaltsov has claimed that he was not in the footage.
Georgia and Russia fought a five-day war in August 2008, and relations between the countries have only recently begun to improve, following the election of a new Georgian prime minister with close ties to Russia.

TITLE: Organs Harvested From Russian Adoptees 
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Goryachev
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry said organs from adopted Russian children who died in the U.S. may have been used in transplants, a news report said Monday.
Responding to an inquiry initiated by State Duma Deputy Alexander Starovoitov, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in a letter obtained by Izvestia that Russian agencies in the U.S. “have information based on local media reports about two incidents of the possible use of deceased Russian children’s organs for transplantation,” Izvestia reported.
According to the Foreign Ministry, U.S. authorities attempted to use the organs of 6-year-old Alexei Geiko in 2003 and Ilya Kargyntsev, age unknown, in 2005.
Ryabkov said Russia may not be aware of all such cases due to a lack of official U.S. statistics on the use of children as organ donors.
He also noted that “the rules for obtaining consent for transplants are gradually being simplified” in the U.S.
In many states the procedure is based on the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act of 1987, which authorizes the use of organs for transplantation even without the patient’s or a relative’s consent, provided that “sufficient efforts to reveal possible objections have been taken.”
Russian deputies began discussing the issue of organ donation in December 2012 during the debate on passing the “Dima Yakovlev law,” which banned adoptions of Russian orphans by U.S. families.
Some deputies cited the use of adopted Russian children’s organs in transplants as the main reason for adopting the law, although they were unable to support their argument with official data.
Ryabkov’s letter comes in response to an inquiry that Liberal Democratic Party Deputy Alexander Starovoitov sent to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in February asking him to provide all available information on the issue.
Commenting on the Foreign Ministry’s reaction, Starovoitov said Russian children in the U.S. need additional protection to prevent them from being used as “material for organ transplantation,” Izvestia reported.
The Foreign Ministry’s press service declined to comment on Ryabkov’s response, but said the Russian diplomatic service continues to monitor the situation with Russian children in the U.S.

TITLE: Putin Calls for Soviet Honors to be Restored
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Earle
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ROSTOV-ON-DON, Southern Russia — President Vladimir Putin described the Soviet Union as a land of opportunity and called for two Soviet relics, mandatory school uniforms and the “Hero of Labor” award, to be dusted off in the name of social justice, during an informal meeting with supporters in Rostov-on-Don on Friday.
The Soviet government provided Putin with opportunities — a quality education, a KGB job abroad, and social mobility back home — without which he “wouldn’t have had a chance” to rise to his current position, Putin said, adding that the feat would be “fairly difficult” today.
“We must again make education a quality means of social mobility for everybody,” he told rank-and-file members of the All-Russia People’s Front, an umbrella group of organizations that support him, including the ruling United Russia party and thousands of nongovernmental groups.
During the meeting, a meandering question-and-answer session, Putin also threw his support behind mandatory school uniforms — abolished in 1992 — which an educator from the Siberian city of Tyumen told him could promote social cohesion and guard children’s health.
The federal government could require the uniforms and leave the details to the regions, Putin said.
At the suggestion of a wizened factory worker, Putin resurrected another Soviet icon, the Hero of Labor award, which was created in 1928, renamed the “Hero of Socialist Labor” in 1938, and discarded along with the Soviet Union in 1991.
“I don’t only agree with you, I think that your proposal will be carried out by the end of the day today,” Putin told the man, causing union leader Mikhail Shmakov to crease his face in disbelief before breaking into a restrained smile.
Putin has said there’s no going back to the Soviet Union, but has frequently expressed nostalgia for its geopolitical muscle, including when he famously called its collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. 
On Friday, Putin also seemed to echo many Russians’ belief that its social safety net and education system were stronger, too, and that the gap between the rich and poor was narrower.
He criticized income disparity and called for “reasonable limits” on so-called golden parachutes, occasionally lavish severance payments awarded to top executives.
A mining executive’s $100 million golden parachute — the largest in Russian history — sparked outrage when it was announced in December, and the practice has been criticized by State Duma deputies and the Prosecutor General’s Office. 
The former executive, Norilsk Nickel’s Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, a longtime Putin associate from his KGB years, promised to give 10 percent to the families of fallen security service officers.
Putin also listened to complaints about conditions for small businesses, specifically an increase in their obligatory payments to the pension fund.
As of this year, individual entrepreneurs have to pay 37,000 rubles ($1,200) per person into the fund, a dramatic increase over previous levels and a move that small business leaders say has caused more than 350,000 people to cancel their registration as entrepreneurs.
Putin ordered the government to review the situation within two weeks and report their findings back to him.
He also trod carefully on the thorny issue of whether Russian schoolchildren should use the same history textbook, saying that there should be a “canonical version of our history” for the sake of national unity, but that teachers should also present their students with various points of view.
The atmosphere in the auditorium seemed relaxed, with Putin sitting on a level with the audience, occasionally cracking jokes and reminiscing about his time as a young KGB officer.
His most provocative barb came in response to a young teacher who said she overheard two pupils on a playground talking about plans to provide false witness against their parents.
“Eavesdropping is bad. I learned that during my time in the KGB, and I gave it up,” said Putin, who served in the Soviet Union’s main security agency from 1975 to 1991. Embarrassing recordings of telephone conversations between Kremlin critics have a way of appearing on the Internet.
The light tone almost masked the serious political work taking place.
With United Russia beset by scandals and slipping in the polls, rumors have abounded that the All-Russia People’s Front will become the premier pro-Putin vehicle, perhaps even a replacement party. 
The speculation appeared to get a boost when Putin urged members to officially register the hitherto informal group and hold a founding congress on June 11-12, which coincides with the Russia Day holiday.
Earlier, the people’s front announced that Andrei Bocharyov, a decorated Chechen War veteran and former State Duma deputy, would lead preparations for the founding congress, which has involved the creation of regional organizing committees throughout the country.
Bocharyov said the group would ensure orders issued at Friday’s conference were carried out, including by checking with officials, RIA-Novosti reported. 
The All-Russia People’s Front was founded on Putin’s initiative in 2011 and used to elect dozens of non-party, pro-government candidates to the State Duma in December of that year, and secure Putin’s landslide election to his third presidential term in March 2012.


TITLE: Berezovsky to Receive London Burial
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: LONDON — The late Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky will be buried in the Gunnersbury Cemetery in London as soon as medical tests are completed, news reports said Tuesday.
The 67-year-old tycoon’s two eldest daughters, Liza and Yekaterina, confirmed that he will be buried in London, Interfax reported.
A source close to the family told Dozhd television that the family members wanted him to be buried in London since they have all been living there for several years now.
Berezovsky’s first wife Nina Korotkova is due to arrive in London shortly to arrange the funeral, the date of which is yet to be announced.
Berezovsky was found dead March 25 in the locked bathroom of his luxury mansion near London with a ligature around his neck and a piece of similar material on the shower rail above him.
The initial post-mortem examination revealed a broken rib but no bruising on his body. Police have said they cannot rule out foul play, though the results of several different toxicology tests will not be available for several weeks.
Berezovsky’s daughter Anastasia described her father as a man of “overwhelming charm” in a tribute last week, The Guardian reported. She also said that “nothing about him was ordinary.” 

TITLE: Incumbent’s Favorite ‘Wins’ Town Election
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Governor Andrei Vorobyov’s preferred candidate was on Monday declared the winner of a small town mayoral election marred by allegations of widespread fraud.
Sunday’s election in the Moscow region town of Zhukovsky, 25 kilometers southeast of the capital, was seen as a litmus test of people’s trust in the ruling party governor ahead of the gubernatorial election in the fall.
Zhukovsky has been a stronghold of opposition sentiment, as similar allegations of ballot fraud in the previous mayoral election in 2009, as well as the felling of prized local forestland for a new highway, have sent shockwaves through this town of 106,000 in recent years.
The new mayor, Andrei Voityuk, who ran as an independent but was publicly backed by United Russia’s Vorobyov, officially garnered 36.8 percent of the vote, with only 39 percent of the town’s residents having cast ballots.
Voityuk, 51, who heads the Emergency Situations Ministry’s local air rescue center, was followed by Igor Novikov from billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov’s Civil Platform party, with 27.7 percent of the vote, and Communist Alexander Anikanov, with 25 percent. 
The other nine candidates received between 0.3 and 5 percent of the vote. They included A Just Russia’s Sergei Knyshov, Liberal Democrat Alexander Kurichev, Nikolai Stepanov of the “Green Alliance — People’s Party,” and thrash metal band leader Sergei Troitsky, a.k.a. “Spider.”
Regional police received 45 complaints from observers about possible electoral violations at a number of Zhukovsky’s 52 polling stations Sunday, and 12 people were briefly detained on suspicion of committing electoral violations, regional police said on their website. 
Independent elections watchdog Golos received 62 complaints about possible electoral violations in Zhukovsky by late Sunday, the group said in a statement.
Among the complaints, 26 concerned violations of the rights of observers, election officials and reporters; 17 consisted of forcing voters to cast their ballot in favor of a certain candidate and violating vote secrecy; and 16 were home voting violations and illegal voting, Golos said. 
“The elections cannot be considered fair and transparent,” third-place candidate Anikanov said by telephone Monday. “The most contemptible electoral schemes were applied, including vote buying,” he said.
Voityuk and Troitsky were implicated in vote-buying reports, but they, as well as Novikov, Knyshov and Anikanov, denied wrongdoing Sunday afternoon.
Prokhorov, leader of the Civil Platform party, called on regional authorities on Monday to “declare the election invalid” and, in a post on LiveJournal, said United Russia was guilty of ballot fraud.
But the head of the Moscow region’s election commission, Irek Vildanov, called Sunday’s election “fair” and said there were “no grounds to rule the election invalid,” Interfax reported.

TITLE: Siberian Swimmers Complete Record-Breaking 24-Hour Dip
AUTHOR: By Alexander Panin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government will not intervene on behalf of Russians hit by a drastic restructuring of Cyprus’ banking system, though it will consider specific cases involving state-linked companies, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said.
“If somebody gets caught and loses money at the two largest banks, it’s a shame, but the Russian government isn’t going to do anything about it,” Shuvalov said in a television interview Sunday.
But the government will look into specific cases of companies with state ownership that took severe losses because of the failed Cypriot banking system, he added. It will be done openly and in Russia. “But it doesn’t mean it is necessary to help the Republic of Cyprus,” Shuvalov said.
Last week, the Eurogroup agreed on a 10 billion euro ($12.8 billion) bailout scheme for Cyprus’ banks. In order to receive these funds, the second-largest financial institution in the country, Laiki Bank, will have to be shut down, and the largest lender, The Bank of Cyprus, restructured. 
Under the deal, the assets of Laiki Bank will be transferred to the Bank of Cyprus. Laiki account holders will get shares in the Bank of Cyprus worth 37.5 percent of their deposits above 100,000 euros. The remaining funds might never be seen again. Deposits of less than 100,000 euros are insured by the government, according to media reports. Confiscation of nearly two-thirds of assets over 100,000 euros represents a greater loss to account holders than the across-the-board levies that were proposed earlier and rejected by the Cypriot parliament prior to the government’s coming to an agreement with Europe.
Much of these funds are believed to have originally come from Russia. According to Moody’s ratings agency Russians accounted for about 19 billion euros in deposits in Cypriot banks as of Sept. 1, 2012. The Central Bank of Cyprus reports that there was a total of 67.4 billion euros worth of deposits in the country’s banks as of February 2013, out of which 20.9 billion came from non-European residents.
Shuvalov encouraged Russians to take advantage of the stable economy at home. Based on macroeconomic indicators, the country has “one of the most reliable economies and a sound banking system for storing funds,” the deputy prime minister said. Other officials have commented recently on keeping funds at home. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev proposed earlier this month to form an offshore zone in the Far East.

TITLE: Kadyrov Wants Travel Bans for Ex-Officials 
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Chechnya republic head Ramzan Kadyrov has proposed banning former top officials, including former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, from traveling abroad, where their state secrets could fall into the wrong hands, Kadyrov wrote in a column published in Kremlin-friendly newspaper Izvestia on Monday.
Such a ban would presumably target all former high-ranking officials, but Kadyrov singled out veteran opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov and Mikhail Kasyanov — a former deputy prime minister and prime minister, respectively — as well as former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and even Gorbachev for travel restrictions.
Their frequent trips abroad and meetings with foreign officials and Kremlin critics raise questions about the safety of the state secrets to which they have been privy, Kadyrov wrote, citing as an example Kasyanov’s recent participation in a conference organized by the U.S. Congress.
“I understand that [this proposal] raises many questions, primarily among human rights activists. … But I believe some things are more important than individuals’ rights, namely the interests of the state,” wrote Kadyrov, a former separatist leader who has led Chechnya since 2007.
Detractors have accused Kadyrov of running the once-restive region with an iron fist and trampling human rights, and have linked him to the mysterious killings of rivals at home and abroad. Kadyrov has denied wrongdoing.


TITLE: Deputy Concedes ‘Garlic Ban’ Bill Was April Fool
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A State Duma deputy has admitted that a bill banning garlic that he submitted to the parliament was an April Fools’ joke.
Sergei Ivanov, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, presented legislation Monday warning that garlic has negative “medical, demographic and socio-economic consequences.” The bill sought to ban garlic from most private and public buildings, including workplaces, apartment buildings, sporting and cultural facilities, and schools and universities.
Late Monday, however, several media outlets noticed that the bill had disappeared from the Duma’s register of pending legislation, prompting many to believe it had been an April Fools’ joke. 
Soon after, Ivanov announced that he’d withdrawn the legislation, saying that its main objective had been to “poke fun at ourselves” in light of all the recent “draconian bills” passed by lawmakers. 
“I planned to withdraw it tomorrow or this evening. … I submitted it and planned to retract it. But the April Fools’ joke was effective — it was a joke in which there is an element of truth,” Ivanov told RIA-Novosti on Monday night. 

TITLE: The Hunt for Foreign Agents Has Begun
AUTHOR: By Victor Davidoff
TEXT: March 25 has already gone down in the Russian blogosphere as the Russian “Kristallnacht” for its nongovernmental organizations. On that day, officials from the Prosecutor General’s Office arrived to inspect several prominent NGOs in Moscow, including the Russian branch of Amnesty International, For Human Rights and Agency for Social Information. In St. Petersburg, officials made unannounced visits to the environmental NGO Bellona, the LGBT organization Vykhod, the Automotive Workers Trade Union and the human rights group Memorial.
The nationwide inspection campaign went on all last week. Russian representative offices of well-known international organization also had unexpected visitors: Transparency International, Human Rights Watch and the Moscow Helsinki Group were inspected. In Samara, the prosecutor’s office inspected the Alliance Francaise, which was opened in 2001 personally by then-President Jacques Chirac.
The inspection campaign didn’t bypass religious organizations. In Rostov-on-Don, inspectors dropped in on the local Baptist church, and in Novocherkassk they visited the local Roman Catholic parish. It would have been strange if they ignored the Jews, so in Volgograd officials from the prosecutor’s office inspected the Center for Jewish Culture.
A total of 94 organizations in 28 regions have been checked to date. In each case, the group of inspectors was daunting. It included representatives of the prosecutor’s office, the Justice Ministry and the tax inspectorate. Sometimes these officials were joined by colleagues from the Federal Security Agency, the Emergency Situations Ministry, the Federal Immigration Agency, as well as the fire and health inspection services. There was plenty of work to go around. In one NGO, health officials found a serious violation: The organization had no articulate plan for rodent control.
These mass inspections were explained in various ways. President Vladimir Putin told Interfax that the inspections were meant “to determine if the actions of NGOs were legal and in compliance with the laws of Russia.” The president seems to have been referring to the law requiring NGOs with foreign funding to register as foreign agents. Several organizations, including Memorial and the Moscow Helsinki Group, have openly boycotted the law because, as one of Memorial’s directors, Oleg Orlov, explained on his Facebook page, “We aren’t going to register as foreign agents for one simple reason: We aren’t foreign agents.”
But the president’s version has been contradicted by officials in the Prosecutor General’s Office. They maintain that the inspections were being carried out to ensure that NGOs weren’t a screen for banned extremist organizations, “with an ultranationalist or fundamentalist religious orientation.” Extremists would have certainly been resourceful if they had infiltrated benign-sounding organizations such as the Society for Cooperation with Scholars at the Kennan Institute, the Union for the Preservation of Birds or the Young Medical Workers in the Don region.
Pavel Chikov, head of the Agora human rights group, said that the “goal of the inspections is to find as many violations as possible.” This in itself might paralyze NGOs. For example, Memorial employees had to copy eight kilograms of documents. For Human Rights was cited for an administrative violation, which might lead to its closure.
Memorial board member Sergei Krivenko, who is also a member of the presidential human rights council, told Interfax: “At Memorial we tried to come up with an analogy for these unprecedented inspections. The only analogy we could find was with the campaign of 1937-38, when all the international organizations and clubs were closed. They closed anything that had any reference to a foreign organization.”
The current crackdown on NGOs is in keeping with Putin’s general course that he set at the start of his third presidential term: to further isolate Russia and create an atmosphere of suspicion, xenophobia and spy mania. The siege mentality inculcated by the state media presents Putin as the only protector of Russia from the sinister intentions and actions of foreign governments. The battle against “secret foreign agents” — Russian NGOs — meets the same goal. It is no surprise that Moscow officials of the Prosecutor General’s Office showed up at Memorial with a film crew from NTV. Memorial employees had to call the police to remove them from their premises, but that evening the NTV news aired a report with the intriguing title: “What is Memorial Hiding?” The report, however, failed to answer the question.
Judging by public opinion polls, the anti-Western campaign whipped up by the Kremlin with help from the prosecutor’s office and the media is reaping results. But it would be wise for the Kremlin to recall that there is another side to every coin. As the satirical Twitter-account @KermlinRussia quipped: “Best business practices: How to improve Russia’s image for foreign investors? Wipe out the local office of Transparency International.”
Perhaps Putin is nostalgic for the days when the Iron Curtain kept nearly all Western influences out of the country. But in the 21st century, attempts to put up another Iron Curtain might turn even a great power into a copy of the poor and backward North Korea.

Victor Davidoff is a Moscow-based writer and journalist who follows the Russian blogosphere in his biweekly column.

TITLE: comment: Leading the Opposition With the People’s Front
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Frolov
TEXT: In an early March interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets, the Kremlin’s spin doctor, Dmitry Badovsky, argued that it is now more important to raise a viable opposition, unquestionably loyal to the Russian state, than to ensure the continued political dominance of the party of power.
This sheds light on the Kremlin’s central dilemma: how to perpetuate Putin’s system and infuse it with popular legitimacy while avoiding any unscripted rotation of power.
It reflects a long-standing belief that Putin’s system needs to reinvent itself through tightly managed elections in which parts of Putin’s elite compete for power while crowding out all challengers to the system. Vladislav Surkov said in 2006 that the Kremlin needed a “second leg to lean on in case the first one falls asleep.” It never worked out. Understandably, Putin’s elite flocked to the “alpha dog” party of power — United Russia, leaving the “beta dog,” A Just Russia, in oppositionist obscurity.
Now, the concept has been adapted to today’s turbulent times. The legitimacy of Putin’s system requires an opposition that would be broadly perceived as genuine but would never challenge Putin as the supreme ruler.
The existing loyal opposition is pathetic. Of the three State Duma parties, only the Communists have a future, but they are still harmless to the regime. The Liberal Democratic Party is an expiring, old man’s act, while Just Russia, having betrayed its protest voters, may not make it through the next election.
Then there is Mikhail Prokhorov’s Civil Platform, an ideology- free legal vehicle for registering candidates in elections, led by a controllable billionaire with foggy political views. In the regions, it may replace Just Russia as an assembly point for disgruntled regional elites. In Moscow, it would replay Prokhorov’s presidential campaign and divide the protest vote.
In 2007, President Vladimir Putin was asked what he would do when his second presidential term expired. “I will lead the opposition,” Putin said mockingly. Today, he is doing exactly that with the People’s Front. He leads a populist revolt against Medvedev’s liberal agenda, the wealthy, “crooks and thieves,” capitalism, the West and democratic freedoms. He breeds the new, “nationalized” elite loyal personally to him.
It’s the essence of Putin’s rule. He wants to lead everything, including the opposition, to maintain his unchallenged primacy. The task is superhuman.

<i>Vladimir Frolov is president of LEFF Group, a government relations and PR company.</i>

TITLE: Hermitage Cats Save the Day
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It is a little known fact outside St. Petersburg that a whole army of cats has been protecting the unique exhibits at the State Hermitage Museum since the early 18th century. The cats’ chief enemies are the rodents that can do more harm to the museum’s holdings than even the most determined human vandal. 
For the past 15 years, workers at the Hermitage have set aside a special day each year to honor the museum’s four-legged sentinels. Three years ago, that private celebration was made public and has attracted attention to the plight of both the museum’s holdings as well as its furry inhabitants.
Known as The Day of the Hermitage Cat, this year’s event will take place Saturday. 
“We are holding a competition among students from local schools this year,” said Maria Haltunen, assistant to the museum’s director and the closest thing the cats have to a union spokesperson. “We have asked the children to depict how they imagine a real Hermitage cat.” 
The ten best works will then be presented for a week in the Jordan Gallery, one of the ground-floor galleries visitors pass on their way to the main staircase.
“Special wall labels will be made for these pictures, labels that are identical to those that hang next to the museum’s greatest masterpieces,” said Haltunen. “They are bilingual, made from the same material and use the same type of text.”
“The children will then be given these wall labels as presents. The works by other children will be hung in the cellars — in the kingdom of the Hermitage cats,” she said. 
Every year the museum tries to find new ways to engage museum visitors with the history of the cats.
The first cat was brought to the Hermitage from the Netherlands by Peter the Great as a mouser. His daughter Elizabeth continued her father’s initiative. And it was on her decree that a carriage full of cats with good hunting skills was delivered to the court from the city of Kazan in 1745. In her turn, Catherine the Great established the feline corps as the official guards of the picture galleries. 
Since then the cats have been in constant residence at the museum, patrolling the underground areas — the so-called cat cellar — and preventing rodents from entering the museum. Staff at the museum believe that the mere presence of the cats is the single best safeguard against mice invading the Hermitage galleries and doing untold damage.
After centuries of this unrecognized service to some of the world’s greatest art, appreciative museum workers decided to mount a small private exhibition devoted to their unpaid colleagues in 1998. They were unprepared for the response, however, when word of the show got out a few years ago, quickly discovering that interest in the cats extended far beyond the museum walls. 
As a result the Day of the Hermitage Cat was officially entered into the calendar of museum exhibitions in 2010.
For his part, the museum’s director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, calls the cats “the spirit of the place; the museum’s genius loci,” said Haltunen.
During this year’s Day of the Hermitage Cat, the youngest of the museum’s visitors will be given the chance to decorate cat-shaped pieces of wood. Older children will be invited to play a strategy game that involves breaking a code, with each clue they uncover leading them toward a special exhibit.
According to long-standing tradition, exhibits from the museum’s storerooms that are not normally on view in the museum galleries are presented at the exhibition each year. Last year it was the museum’s only mummified cat.
This time around visitors will be given a glimpse of two posters by Th&#233;ophil Steinlen, a French painter and printmaker from the turn of the last century, who is famous for his work for the Chat Noir cabaret in Paris. 
Another novelty this year is the display of a book where information about each of the museum cats has been registered. In addition, representatives from the Vsevolozhsk Cat Museum — Russia’s only such museum — will hold a master class explaining how best to care for cats. The animals to be used in the demonstration will all be Hermitage alumni that now live in Vsevolozhsk and are waiting to be adopted. 
“As part of the event, a musical about the Hermitage cats will be presented on the stage of the Hermitage Theater,” said Haltunen. “The show tells the story of how the cats help save the museum’s exhibits and has already been performed twice in the U.S.” 
“Hermitage Cats Save the Day” is a musical drama based on a children’s book by Haltunen and Mary Ann Allin, “Anna and the Hermitage Cats.” It tells the story of a valuable artwork that is stolen from the Hermitage, causing the cancellation of the museum’s annual celebration for the cats. Chris Brubeck, son of the late jazz legend Dave Brubeck, composed the score. 
Currently there are about 50 cats in residence at the State Hermitage Museum. They have the status of official museum workers and several charitable organizations look after them throughout the course of their lives.

The Day of the Hermitage Cat takes place at the State Hermitage Museum on Saturday, with all events starting at 12 p.m. On Sunday a performance of “Hermitage Cats Save The Day” will take place in the Hermitage Theater. For more information, visit www.hermitagemuseum.org


TITLE: Blues Legends to Perform in St. Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Chris Gordon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: On Thursday, St. Petersburg audiences will have an opportunity to experience Modern Blues Masters, an all-star acoustic blues trio that performs music that brings a new dimension to the style by combining cross-cultural and contemporary influences. 
The trio is appearing at the State Jazz Philharmonic as part of the Traditional American Music Festival, which features musicians selected by the American Folklife Center at the U.S. Library of Congress.
“The festival’s aim is to acquaint Russian audiences with some of the most interesting and authentic music traditions in the United States,” said Susan Katz of CEC ArtsLink, the festival’s organizer. “The participating groups have all greatly influenced the development of musical culture while preserving the traditional heritage of their genres.” 
Modern Blues Masters features Phil Wiggins, Guy Davis and Samuel James, who are individually considered as some of the best musicians in the blues world. Wiggins, who has developed his own unique style on the harmonica, is accompanied by the notable guitar playing and vocals of Guy Davis and Samuel James. Their contributions to American and world folk music culture are valued both by the music world’s top critics and millions of listeners worldwide. 
Wiggins, besides being a renowned harmonica player, is also a gifted songwriter and singer whose material helped to define the sound of harmonica and guitar duet Cephas & Wiggins. The duet exemplified the synthesis of the African and European musical traditions that co-exist in the blues, making the pair one of the most important American blues duos and leading to extensive international tours. Following Cephas’ death in 2009, Wiggins continued making music by collaborating with Guy Davis, the Rev. John Wilkins and other leading blues musicians. 
For his part, Davis has dedicated himself to reviving the traditions of acoustic blues and bringing them to listeners through songs written by some of the greatest blues composers, African-American stories, and his own original songs, stories and performance pieces.  He is the author of many plays, and the co-author and musical performer for the Emmy award winning film “To Be a Man.” He has also been nominated for nine Handy Awards over the years including in the categories “Best Traditional Blues Album,” “Best Blues Song” and twice for “Best Acoustic Blues Artist.” 
James is a virtuoso guitarist, poet, singer and pianist, and is considered one of the most promising, young up-and-coming blues musicians in the world. James describes himself as a storyteller who chose a blues “get-up” for his stories. 
Following the St. Petersburg show on Thursday, Modern Blues Masters will take their show on the road, visiting Nizhny Novgorod on April 6, Kirov on April 8 and ending their Russian tour at the DOM Cultural Center in Moscow on April 11.
Modern Blues Masters will perform at 7 p.m. on Thursday at the State Jazz Philharmonic. Tickets cost 400 rubles and are available from the theater box-office and city ticket agencies.

TITLE: A Tale of Two Polities
AUTHOR: By Alastair Gill
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: What happens when an expanding 16th-century European power accidentally comes into contact with a newly forged semi-Asiatic state with imperial and mercantile aspirations of its own? 
This is the essential question posed by “Treasures of the Royal Courts: Tudors, Stuarts and the Russian Tsars,” an exhibition that opened last month at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum that chronicles the relationship between the British monarchy and the Russian tsars, from the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Ivan the Terrible in the early 16th century to the early Romanovs and the re-establishment of the English monarchy after the English Civil War in the mid-17th century.
The centerpiece of the show, which revels in the pomp and ritual of the court life of the era, is a stunning “buffet” of British and French silver from the Kremlin Armory Museum – a treasure trove that would never have survived to the present day had it remained in England. Alongside the Moscow silver, visitors can admire portraits, jewelry, armor, firearms, clothing and domestic objects. Some of these items were diplomatic gifts, shipped to Moscow via a six-week voyage through Arctic waters; others demonstrate the wealth and power of the courts and introduce prominent figures of the era.
In one respect this is a classic story of two nations furthering their own interests through mutual cooperation and flattery, yet it is also a tale of the collision of two cultures from opposite ends of a continent, with all the attendant misunderstandings that such encounters inevitably entail.
The establishment of diplomatic relations between the two nations in 1553 is given context by a 16th-century vellum and ink map of the northern Russian coast that is accompanied by a hand-colored chart of Muscovy and the Tartar lands. 
 In fact, the event was an accident: English explorer Richard Chancellor, in search of a North-East passage to China and new markets for English cloth, instead reached what is now Arkhangelsk, in the White Sea. Hearing of the arrival of this exotic foreigner, Ivan the Terrible invited him to Moscow for a royal audience, and Chancellor made the 1000-kilometer journey south by horse-drawn sleigh. Chancellor came away from his meeting with the tsar with letters and promises of trade privileges, as well as a new market for English wool. The Tsar was delighted to have acquired a new sea trade route and lavished gifts of furs and other goods on Chancellor. 
This led to the founding of the chartered London Muscovy Company in 1555 and the beginnings of a flourishing trade: Russia sent furs, rope, grain, wax and the ship masts that were vital to support England’s growing navy, while in return it received cloth, gold, spices, silver and weapons.
It was English silver that was the most highly-prized of these goods, however, and the sheer luxury of the 20 pieces on loan from the Kremlin indicates that the English monarchs were well aware of the esteem in which the tsars held this precious metal – silver was the most common form of gift sent to Muscovy. Arranged and presented as it was originally kept in the Kremlin, this dazzling ensemble of ewers, basins and pots made of gilded silver, illuminated by spotlights in an otherwise low-lit chamber, utterly steals the show.
These gifts were manufactured in Britain and France – amusingly, some were secondhand offerings – and all were dutifully marked with their weight and provenance on arrival in Moscow. Interestingly, the silverware would not be here today had it not been shipped to Muscovy, as almost all luxury silver items in England were melted down during the country’s civil war.
Besides the silver, the guns are also of note, including an English hunting rifle given as an ambassadorial gift. Its stock is inlaid with mother-of-pearl and engraved on both sides with Muscovy’s heraldic emblem, the two-headed eagle. 
Visitors to the exhibition, which runs through mid-July, can also admire a small-scale model of the earliest surviving English coach, a gift from James I to Tsar Boris Godunov. Sadly the original, which is kept in the Kremlin, is not on show, though a video of the vehicle accompanies the exhibit.
Walking from room to room, one is reminded on a number of occasions that the two states did not always see eye to eye on matters of protocol. 
A portrait of courtier Jerome Bowes, for example, shows an ambassador whose controversial diplomatic mission to Moscow in 1583 caused outrage on account of his irreverent and provocative attitude towards Ivan the Terrible. After Ivan’s death in 1584, Bowes was dismissed by the new tsar, Fyodor I, to which he responded by discarding the tsar’s diplomatic letters and “paltry present” on his way out of the country. 
“The English have wrought a terrible deed, in killing their sovereign, King Carlus, to the death,” reads a quotation by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, made on hearing of the execution of Charles I, an event which led to the severing of diplomatic relations between the two countries for several years in 1649.
Perhaps these misunderstandings were to be expected. One of the lasting impressions given by the paintings on view is of the distinctly Asiatic nature of 16th- and 17th-century Muscovy. The diplomats of the time, dressed in the traditional Russian court dress of fur hats and sable-lined Persian silk gowns embroidered with precious stones, strike a marked contrast with the conventions of contemporary European dress.
Particularly telling is a woodcut depicting a Russian delegation to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II at Regensburg in Bavaria. In this scene, Ivan the Terrible’s son heads the delegation, bearing the “letter of credentials” upon a red cushion, while behind him a mass of robed delegates hold sables and furs – a strange host from an Oriental land.
Yet despite the differences – which continue to challenge Russo-British diplomacy even today – the exhibition is perhaps more notable for the oddly symbiotic relationship it highlights between two nations then at very different stages of development. This was a classic example of a relationship which was of mutual benefit to both parties at a time when both were beginning to flex their geopolitical muscles. 
One of the most enduring legacies of this relationship is an example of true living history: The popular pelicans in London’s St. James Park are the direct descendants of a pair of the birds brought to England by the Russian ambassador back in 1662.

<i>“Treasures of the Royal Courts: Tudors, Stuarts and the Russian Tsars” runs through July 14 at the V & A Museum in London. For more information visit www.vam.ac.uk</i>


TITLE: A Different View of History
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A joint Kazakh-Russian cultural project — a monumentally scaled historical film that revolves around the figures of Russian Tsar Nicholas I and a Kazakh khan, Jahangir, around the time of the 1825 Decembrists’ revolt — is facing obstacles getting funding from Russian cultural authorities, while filming in Russia is due to begin in late fall of this year.
While the Russian authorities could be seen as being likely to feel awkward about giving money to a film that features scenes of people taking to the streets to protest against their rulers, the project, titled “Jahangir, The Great Game,” has not encountered any direct criticism.
“No, it is the opposite: Everyone listens to the crew very attentively, nods their heads approvingly and agrees that cross-cultural dialogue, especially that focusing on East and West, is a subject that definitely deserves attention,” said Roza Orynbasarova, the film’s director. “But after that, we get nothing. No support.”
While the government of the Astrakhan Oblast, where some of the film’s scenes are going to be shot, has helped the project financially, St. Petersburg has been a tough nut to crack in terms of fundraising. The crew has not been able to secure any funding as of yet, which has put the project at risk. This is because St. Petersburg is the site of some of the most important filming locations, and the project still requires more than $2 million in funding. With such a significant shortfall, Orynbasarova and her team have decided to go public and tell the story of the film, its cultural significance and the financial obstacles that they are facing.
The idea for the film, whose total budget is estimated to be $8 million, emerged two and a half years ago, when prominent Kazakh poet, writer and politician Olzhas Suleimenov came up with a screenplay that focused on the young Jahangir’s first visit to St. Petersburg and the consequences that his exposure to the Russian culture of the time had on the development of the Kazakh state.
“Suleimenov created a parable that is deeply psychological and revolves around the strong personality of its heroes,” Orynbasarova said. “Jahangir’s arrival in St. Petersburg in 1825 was dramatic and very meaningful. He becomes a witness to the tragic events on Decembrists’ Square, and he sees the Great Game in full swing.”
The term Great Game refers to the battle between the British Empire and Russian Empire over spheres of influence in Central Asia, where Russia sought dominance over Kazakhstan and its neighboring states.
As Suleimenov points out, the film is intended to demonstrate mutual influence and interpenetration between Eastern and Western cultures. “As our starting point, we chose a scene that features the encounter between Tsar Nicholas I and Jahangir at a decisive moment in the history of Russia, the Decembrists’ revolt,” Suleimenov said. “Indeed, today, Senate Square, where these events took place, can be thought of as a very particular historical symbol. These events can certainly be directly associated with some of the protest meetings of the present day.”
Jahangir is both one of the most admired and controversial leaders of the Kazakh state. A reformer, he was instrumental in turning what were essentially nomads into a nation of householders.
“Jahangir had too little time to conceive his reforms and faced too much resistance,” Orynbasarova said. “He justified himself by referring to the actions of Russia’s Peter the Great. He was a dreamer — a very proud man and a very educated man — who posed a real threat to Russia without realizing it. He was also a politician who was easily angered by confrontation, annoyed at the sound of a military campaign, and who could not see the point of a revolt. Most importantly, Jahangir helped the Kazakh nation to wake up and start thinking seriously about its future and about its defense. This ruler taught the nation to think critically about its future.”
Casting is still in progress for many roles in the film, and auditions are being held far beyond Russia and Kazakhstan. Four languages are expected to feature in the film, including Russian, Kazakh, French and German, but even more will be heard. “We felt that because the environment was genuinely multi-ethnic, we needed the real sounds of the languages that were involved,” Orynbasarova said. “For example, Jahangir’s wife, Fatima, was Tatar, so she will speak her native language in the film. The Russian empress and the princess, both of German origin, will speak German — and we will be looking for German actresses to portray them.” 
One international celebrity who did not require a long time to convince him to participate in the project is the Serbian filmmaker, actor and musician Emir Kusturica, who expressed enthusiasm about playing general Mikhail Miloradovich and composing some of the musical score for the project.
A hero of the Napoleonic wars, Miloradovich was appointed Governor General of St. Petersburg after the end of the military campaign. On December 14, 1825, he went down to the scene of the revolt in an effort to prevent bloodshed. The veteran, who had earned enormous respect in the army, appealed to those who had fought with him in the Napoleonic campaign, and he nearly changed the course of history. But his peacemaking initiative was never completed — the general was shot dead by Pyotr Kakhovsky, one of the more radical officers that took part in the revolt.
“When I spoke to Kusturica, he agreed almost immediately,” Orynbasarova remembers. “I did not have to go into many details about our project. He very quickly saw where we were coming from, and said that in his home country he has first-hand experience in dealing with the difficulties of setting up dialogue between East and West.”
As Orynbasarova stresses, “Jahangir, The Great Game” is a very complex project, and it is an atypical project as well, because it shows the most dramatic historical events from the viewpoint of a Kazakh writer.
However, in the director’s opinion, this angle makes the story even more valuable, as it encourages mutual understanding and allows for a fresh new perspective on some of the most important events in Russian history.
“Isolation always lead to disaster. All members of society are connected to one another and if you try to live your life ignoring everyone else, and what they think or feel, you will be doomed to live the life of a mole,” Suleimenov said. 
Orynbasarova became the film’s director only this year. Originally, the job had been accepted by the legendary St. Petersburg filmmaker Alexei German, who died in February.
Many members of the local arts community welcomed the Kazakh initiative. “Historical films are an important part of cultural heritage,” said Alexander Pozdnyakov, a respected St. Petersburg film historian and critic. “Olzhas Suleimenov is a genuine Renaissance man, who has been building cultural bridges for many decades. The power of his talent cannot be constrained by borders, and he is capable of finding the ideas, the moments, the places that unite people, rather than divide them.”
Suleimenov and Orynbasarova have secured the support of Lenfilm, Russia’s oldest and perhaps most venerable film studio, which has a rich history of producing historical dramas as well as of cooperation with Central Asian countries.
“As the studio has just secured a major grant from the Russian government, it is looking forward to a revival. We are eagerly anticipating “Jahangir” because we would be honored to begin the studio’s revival with a project like this,” said Valery Karpov, press officer at Lenfilm. 

TITLE: THE DISH: Big Buddha
AUTHOR: By Chris Gordon
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: If you feel like getting away from it all — even for only a few hours — you can’t do much better than an afternoon or evening spent at Buddha Bar. 
Both literally and figuratively worlds away from the rather bleak and unlovely stretch of embankment that it sits on, Buddha Bar is a destination in more ways than one. Once through the doors, you are immediately enveloped by the restaurant’s warm crimson and gold glow. Smiling hostesses and handsome waiters move through the cavernous space silently and efficiently to a soundtrack of laid-back jazz and bossa nova, providing some of the best service in the city, which is also worlds apart from most other restaurants in St. Petersburg.
 After being led up a gracefully curving staircase onto the dining gallery, it was easy to forget that we were actually in a chain restaurant — albeit a very upscale one — that has branches around the world. We were offered a choice between a plush and comfortable-looking banquette or a table. After a moment’s hesitation, we chose to sit at a table order to have a view down into the lounge area, with its low-slung jewel-toned chairs and lacquered tables.
The menu, while offering plenty of options, is never overwhelming and contains mostly Asian and French-fusion offerings. It being lunchtime, we skipped over the tempting cocktail list in favor of a bottle of sparkling San Pellegrino water (340 rubles, $11.70). 
Choosing from the tantalizing dishes on offer proved to be more difficult than anticipated. But after a careful look through the entire menu, we settled on appetizers of crunchy calamari with green chili (560 rubles, $18) and a rare beef salad with a lemongrass dressing (580 rubles, $18.70). The dishes arrived after the perfect delay and were served family-style, so that they could be easily shared. 
The calamari was piled in a pale golden tangle with herbs and onions scattered on top and served with a clear, faintly green lime and spicy pepper dipping sauce. They were sublimely tender and ever so slightly crunchy, with a nice kick of acid and heat provided by the sauce. 
The beef was beautifully presented on a long oval plate with coins of milky-white daikon radish supporting the rolled slices of beef. These were covered with dainty leaves of mache, fresh whole soya beans and dusted with a delicate sprinkling of nori — the seaweed used to roll sushi. The lemongrass paired perfectly with all of the ingredients, but if there was any criticism of the dish, it was that the beef had been kept at slightly too cold a temperature and the center was ever so faintly icy.
For mains we chose the house crispy duck (890 rubles, $28.60) and a Swedish teriyaki salmon with pickled daikon (950 rubles, $30.60), accompanied by a portion of sticky coconut rice (180 rubles, $5.80). 
The duck arrived in a towering steamer basket with the top half holding a pile of pale rice-flour crepes in which to wrap the duck before dipping it into either a sweet and slightly sour plum sauce or a smoky hoisin sauce. Both were excellent and the portion of the tender yet crispy duck was more than enough for sharing.
The salmon was perfectly cooked too. Flaky and slightly cool in the center, the teriyaki sauce was neither too sweet nor overpowering and was set off perfectly by a crunch of tobiko caviar on top. The rice came served in a banana leaf and was fragrant but couldn’t hold up to the bold flavors of the other dishes.
For dessert, we had trouble choosing between the resolutely French offerings or those with more Asian flavors. In the end, we choose a creme brulee scented with jasmine and lemongrass (290 rubles, $9.30) and presented with an apricot sauce that combined the two. This was in fact the only time during the whole experience that we noticed that we were in a chain restaurant – simply because some of the desserts had the word “new” printed next to them on the menu. 
The dish arrived with the standard caramel crust having been replaced by a delicate, transparent disc of spun sugar that added visual appeal as well as providing the sugary crunch that contrasts so well with the creamy pudding. This was all surrounded by fresh berries that were drenched in an apricot sauce brought separately and dressed at the table. A pot of green tea with toasted rice (300 rubles, $9.65) provided a perfectly relaxing end to a nearly perfect experience.
It is true that Buddha Bar is neither the easiest place to get to, nor is it inexpensive. If we had wanted, we could easily have spent the price of a plane ticket to Asia by indulging in the impressive wine list’s more extravagant offerings. But at a time of year when spring seems to be taking a bit too long to warm things up, Buddha Bar provides a perfect escape from the winter blues that takes you away from it all with a minimum of effort and a maximum of taste.

TITLE: Russia’s Judiciary Remains Stuck in the Past
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In the past 12 months Russia has seen a number of highly politicized trials – cases based on debatable evidence, conducted with questionable procedures, and invariably resulting in guilty verdicts.
The Pussy Riot trial, arising from the feminist punk collective’s performance of an anti-Putin protest song in a Moscow cathedral, sent two members of the group to a prison colony for two years on charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” The judge, Marina Syrova, refused to hear defense witnesses and ignored defense evidence, and a lawyer for the defendants said they were denied adequate food and sleep during the course of the trial.
In another notable case, 12 activists from the opposition Other Russia party, most former members of the banned National Bolshevik Party, were on trial for nearly eight months for allegedly continuing the “extremist activities of a banned organization” in connection with a 2010 rally. Judge Sergei Yakovlev sentenced the activists to heavy fines but lifted the punishments due to the expiration of the two-year statute of limitations for minor offenses.
Vadim Volkov, vice rector for international affairs at the European University in St. Petersburg and head of its Research Institute for the Rule of Law, has written extensively on the Russian judiciary. He believes that no matter who rules Russia, and how, reform of a bench tightly connected to police and prosecutors is a long way off, unless there is a quick and complete overhaul of the system. Transitions Online talked to Volkov about the conduct and motivation of judges in Russia. This is an edited version of that conversation, which was conducted in English.
 
<b>Q:</b> Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a lawyer by education, attributed the high conviction rate in Russia to judges feeling awkward about investigations. “Judges are ashamed to acquit a person and thus question the work done by the investigation bodies,” he told German newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung. What do you say to this?
<b>A:</b> Vadim Volkov: Medvedev means that the judges don’t want to go against the investigation and the prosecution, because if they acquit someone it means that the system worked in vain. Basically, they held in custody and interrogated an innocent person, and they just do not want to go against it, so they are ashamed.
Medvedev’s main idea is right: the judges are weak. The judiciary has a weak position vis-a-vis the prosecution and the investigation. He said also that this is the Soviet legacy, which is also correct. Criminal courts in Russia were officially part of the so-called pravookhranitelnaya sistema [the law-enforcement system]. Now, according to the constitution, they are separate and independent. They are not part of the pravookhranitelniye organy [the law-enforcement organs], so to speak. In the Soviet Union, they were. They were part of the same machine – the last instance of checking on the work of preceding instances in the criminal process, meaning the militia, the investigation, the prosecution. This wasn’t an independent system.
Now in Russia, the judiciary has become an independent institution and its independence is guaranteed by the constitution and a number of other laws, but in fact, in practice, it doesn’t work as independent. It remains the last element of the law-enforcement system, in practice.
But Medvedev didn’t say anything about how we can change this situation. There’s a very hard dilemm<b>A:</b> it’s not in the interests of political authorities to increase the independence of the judiciary, because the judges can make the work of the police, the investigation, and the prosecutor very hard. They may give them a hard time. The political powers don’t want this conflict. On the other hand, this is a matter of the international prestige of Russia, and the investment climate, to have independent judges and independent courts. So Medvedev, as usual, stopped halfway. He said more or less about how things are, but he said nothing about how we can make things better, because a radical decision is needed here.
 
<b>Q:</b> Was there any period in modern Russian history when courts were more independent?
<b>A:</b> The judicial system in Russia maybe was more independent in the 1990s, but it was much weaker in [the sense] that it was under-financed. Salaries were low and the criminals could put pressure on judges. They could scare them, they could blackmail them. I know there were many cases when so-called mafia members would basically threaten judges, and they were not properly protected. So they could have been independent, but the institution itself was very weak. Now the institution is stronger in terms of finance. [Judges] receive high salaries, they are much better protected, much better equipped, but there was no increase in their institutional independence. So dependence upon the prosecution and investigation continued.
[It is] not that judges are so internally ashamed to make acquittal decisions; they are under pressure from the prosecution and from the investigation because there’s the institution of reversal of judicial decisions by a higher court, and acquittals are reversed by higher courts five times as often as guilty sentences. If they get several reversals, they will face disciplinary charges themselves and they risk their careers. So it’s rational in the system of control within the court bureaucracy to avoid acquittal. You can give them a suspended sentence, for example, but not acquittal, because acquittal will definitely lead to the prosecutor appealing to the higher courts.
Also, you don’t want to estrange and make a prosecutor into your enemy, because the prosecution is still a very powerful institution in Russia. Add to this the fact that about 16 percent of judges have a background in the prosecution, and another 14 percent have a background in investigation and the police. We can assume some kind of corporate loyalty. They simply don’t think of themselves as far apart from prosecution and investigation. That’s also a problem, the recruitment of judges.
 
<b>Q:</b> In the “Trial of 12” in St. Petersburg, the Other Russia activists were found guilty, but they were not punished. Does this seemingly unlikely ruling fit with general judicial practice?
<b>A:</b> This is so-called policy. You can do many things but you have to avoid acquittals, especially in resonant cases, because they create precedents.
If we talk about how to influence judges and about their behavior, I think the strongest influence is a kind of self-censorship. They basically socialize in the system, they work in this court among other colleagues, and they basically know how the Russian judicial system works. If they don’t want to work like the system works, they can go and find another job. But if they become judges, they will have to do their work in a certain way: avoiding acquittals, avoiding going against the prosecution, being sensitive to the requests of state prosecutors. They know what is required of them.
 There are cases of direct pressure, and this direct pressure usually comes from the chairman of the court of the [city or region]. This is where the center of control of the judicial system is situated, so all the orders are translated through this relatively small number of judges. These are old judges, and they can communicate directly with district judges. You don’t need to harass an individual judge, but you have to send a signal or a command through the institution of chairmen. The chairman will basically prompt what kind of policy to stick to. But again, now is a different time; the judges tend to avoid severe sentences, as you mentioned. They have a lot of opportunities to free a person, to avoid sending him to prison, yet avoid acquittal. So we can say the art of judging in Russia consists of trying to compromise between justice and the institutional pressures of the administration.
 
<b>Q:</b> Could it be said that in the Trial of 12 the judge acted independently, rather than on orders from the authorities?
<b>A:</b> Let me put it this way: it’s like in the media. I am sure that a large number of journalists of [Russian television channel] NTV, they don’t need to be instructed what to say in every concrete instance. They will do it on their own. The main thing is to select the right people, motivate them, and that’s all. It’s the same thing with judges, they basically know it themselves.
I am desperately looking for judicial dissent, for judges who will go against the system and will create a model for independent judicial behavior. On one hand, if we talk about judicial independence, we have to look at organizational patterns, institutions, how the system is administered – the policy of a higher court, for example. But on the other hand, nothing will happen without some strong personalities. Now, I think, they basically avoid recruiting strong personalities to the courts. The recruitment system is such that it favors the former secretaries of the court, the former minor clerks of the court, who are very good at administration but who lack independence – internal independence, leadership, and the sense of creating justice. But still we can assume that there are judges who have some kind of professional ethics, and at some point we expect them to step forward, we expect some conflicts to emerge. Maybe this conflict will create patterns of independent behavior. We desperately lack role models of independent judges.
 
<b>Q:</b> Writing about the Pussy Riot trial for [Russian daily] Vedomosti, you singled out this case. Did Judge Syrova act by orders from the authorities, in your opinion?
<b>A:</b> We cannot say for sure, because the communication between the chairman of the court and a rank-and-file judge is always secretive. We will never know whether this communication occurred and what was its content. For a scholar, a researcher, this is not a basis of judgment. But we can look at some other things. We can assume that the judge has some ideas himself.
 The judge can stick to formal rules, or the judge can step over the formal rules and understand that the case he is handling is something more important than an ordinary case, because of publicity or political overtones. The Pussy Riot case was definitely a political case, and the defense also openly claimed that [Pussy Riot’s] act was political. The judge had no way out but to accept that she was handling a political case. It’s absolutely true that the judge ignored many formal procedural aspects, and from a procedural standpoint this case is very low-quality. They ignored evidence, they refused to listen to the witnesses from the defense side, and so forth. But the judge understood her political role.
My reading was that the judge understood that she had a mission, and my idea in that article was that yes, the judge was part of the game, and this game was aimed at increasing the solidarity of the conservative part of Russian society, because looking for enemies and punishing the enemies, that’s the objective social dynamic. Every sociologist knows that public punishment is not just an act of punishment; it relates to the society that punishes. This is an act of solidarity. The solidarity increases because they all are part of this practice of punishment. That’s why they made this case. They brought and [pursued] criminal charges against [the Pussy Riot members] instead of administrative charges. They could have pardoned them or punished them in other ways without this public trial, but they consistently went through this public trial, made it very visible. My idea was that the court in this case played a very unusual role – not just crime prevention or conflict resolution or creating justice, but the judge played a symbolic role. She was an instrument of increasing social solidarity and driving up the sentiments and emotions of the conservative part of society, which could then be used politically by the current authorities. That was my sociological reading of the whole thing.
 
<b>Q:</b> Former judge Yulia Sazonova sentenced former world chess champion and opposition activist Garry Kasparov to five days in custody when he was detained during a rally in Moscow in 2007, declining to watch the video of the detention or to hear defense witnesses. In an interview last year in Bolshoi Gorod magazine she revealed her motivation: “When you’re within this system ... you do believe that there are enemies around, while you’re for justice. … I did think that the police, the prosecution were with me and I could trust them.”
<b>A:</b> This is a very frank statement. It corresponds to their worldview. It’s very hard to think differently, being within the system. The fundamental thing is that this system has no separate professional culture, separate from the police and the prosecution. They share many aspects of the same professional culture. We are continuing research in this direction. We have some initial findings, but we’ll continue to try to track down the features of this culture.
 
<b>Q:</b> Would the judges act differently and rule based on the law and conscience if the political system changed?
<b>A:</b> It would take a very long time. The judicial system is conservative by nature. Only if there was any kind of lustration – that is, a total overhaul, the total change of judges – could we expect changes. Changes can happen, but these changes may be incremental. If the political system changes, we know the measures that have to be taken in the first place to at least give judges the space for independence and freedom. They will not necessarily claim this independence for themselves, but we can create much more independence for them, less administrative control for them, and then the system will evolve in the direction of independence. But it will take years. It won’t happen overnight.

<i>This interview was originally published by Transitions Online, www.tol.org</i>

TITLE: Executive Coaching For a Successful Career 
AUTHOR: By Alan Maishman
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It’s lonely at the top. For a business executive, the higher up the corporate ladder you climb and the more critical your decisions become, the less likely you are to receive honest feedback and support. 
Mistakes can cost millions. But who can you turn to for guidance? The problem is perhaps particularly significant in countries like Russia, where culture demands that seniority receive deference and respect, while what may be needed is objective criticism and frank advice. 
And poor leadership costs. High staff turnover is only the most visible of the missed opportunities. Few people at work today will deny the stifling of creativity, commitment and motivation that a bad boss can bring about. 
Getting the best out of people is a rare leadership skill, and it doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with the technical expertise and experience that may have fuelled an executive’s rise through the ranks.
Alla Kuznetsova, who has been coaching executives in Russia and Eastern Europe since 2005, told The St. Petersburg Times that one of the most conspicuous features of such growing markets is the young age of many senior managers, many of whom are under 30. “Very talented and ambitious, they very often lack the basics,” said Kuznetsova.
By way of illustration Kuznetsova tells the story of Andrei, a client whose last name was withheld as part of the company’s confidentiality policy, who at 28 years of age was appointed head of a strategic business unit in a global pharmaceutical corporation. Having previously worked as a consultant, his actual managerial experience was zero. 
“The situation was sink or swim. To the credit of the organization they gave him a floatation device — a coach. Our engagement lasted for a year and turned out to be a real success story,” said Kuznetsova.
Andrei confirms: “These coaching sessions had a great impact on my ability to better understand people, respond with more flexibility, accommodate faster and influence people with diverse behavior and perception styles. Coaching contributed largely to the department’s increased operational efficiency by improving my ability to connect to people, understand their needs and better influence and motivate teams, managers and other stakeholders.”
So what exactly is coaching? In contrast to management consulting, which attempts to give expert answers to questions, coaching aims to facilitate behavioral change by identifying the pivotal questions. It provides a reflective conversation within an exclusive relationship that is trusting, safe and supportive. It is more psychological in nature than other training and development methodologies.
Coaching may also be contrasted with mentoring. 
The knowledge residing within any organization is a key resource. Mentors, who are often senior managers within the organization, are engaged in knowledge management by passing down their experience and guidance. 
Executive coaches, on the other hand, more commonly come from outside. An external coach can give the executive the chance to explore ideas and options in confidence. 
Practitioners have a variety of backgrounds, including psychology and business, and may be PhDs or MBA graduates. Coaching programs are tailored to participants’ individual needs, and a wide variety of models and approaches may be used. Consequently, individual coaches practice in vastly different ways. 
For Kuznetsova, a typical project might last six months to a year. “For behavioral change to become habit, an individual needs at least three months of diligent effort,” she said. “Given the complexity of an adult’s professional challenges (as there is usually more than one area that requires development) plus the issue of sustainability of new behavioral patterns, realistically one couldn’t expect results earlier than a period of six months.” 
Barry Tomalin, Director of Cultural Training at International House in London, believes that the ability to build trusting relationships is also critical: “I’ve coached people all over the world, but mainly Europeans and Americans. One issue to be concerned about is the coachee’s fear of loss of face — in Asia, particularly. This means they may be afraid to put themselves in a position where they have to be open about their challenges.”
It is also important that the executive see the coach as an equal. 
Kuznetsova, who has coached many nationalities, says: “Russians are more sensitive to status, gender, age and overall presentation. It is a high context culture, which means that everything matters. If you want to make a good impression you need to look good (quality attire, hairstyle etc.) and exude confidence.”
“We have a saying that we greet people based on how they look. Definitely Russian top managers will often try to test your durability by trying to intimidate you. Once you reiterate the rules of partnership and indicate that this engagement will be at an equal level or will not take place at all, it usually settles at that point.”
Clearly the best coaches need to be assertive when required. According to Tomalin, they also need empathy and the ability to listen. “It is important to listen, explore all options and not jump in with instant solutions, however tempting. The important thing is to ask questions which allow the coachee to find the answer to problems him or herself.”
Coaching first emerged as a leadership development practice in the 1980s and the sector is now reported to be worth $2 billion worldwide. 
Last year, a study by the International Coach Federation reported that the profession continues to grow, with 47,500 professional coaches worldwide. 
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the U.K. reported in 2011 that three quarters of their survey’s respondents used coaching, and that 84 percent are using it more than previously. Despite the current economic climate, expenditure is rising. 
And is executive coaching growing in Russia? 
For Kuznetsova the answer is a resounding yes. “I started in 2005, when we were not even allowed to say the word ‘coaching’ in some organizations. Now it is hard to meet people at the executive level at large companies that have never heard about coaching. All Russian big banks use coaching for their executives and even mid-managers. Many companies require 2-3 day courses on coaching skills for their top managers.”
According to Tomalin, with such a plethora of courses now available it is important to make sure a chosen course is suitable. “There are an increasing number of coaching courses available and the best way to check validity is to visit the ICF International Coach Federation website at www.coachfederation.org,” he said.
Keith Nelson leads training courses for would-be coaches at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Continuing Education in the U.K. He told The St. Petersburg Times that demand is strong, adding that coaching is particularly suitable for those in middle age. 
“We have found coaching to be attracting an increasing number of students,” said Nelson. 
“This academic year we have launched a Diploma in Coaching, a higher level qualification than the Certificate which has been offered for a number of years. Coaching is an attractive career move, particularly for people in their 30s to 50s who are looking for a career change,” he said.

TITLE: Organizational Culture, Russian Style
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: At an employment interview at the Russian branch of one transnational company, candidates were asked what they thought an employee should do in case of fire. The answer that HR managers were looking for was “to follow the instructions.” The most common answer received, however, was “to put out the fire.” 
“Only one in five candidates gave the right answer,” said Oksana Pochtivaya, senior consultant at Psycon Rus, a consulting company specializing in recruitment, personal assessments, strategic resourcing and leadership development. “And it is this [type of person] who related to the corporate culture of the company and who also accounts for its success.”
This is just one of many example of the differences between Russian and Western outlooks that have an impact on organizational culture. Corporate culture — the values and norms shared by all employees of the organization — exists in every company and influences the efficiency of the business. In cases where it is not specially formulated, corporate culture emerges spontaneously and consists of the vestiges of past working habits brought to the company by its employees — which often may not correspond with the goals of the enterprise. 
Another instance of misunderstanding between nationalities, provided by Psycon Rus, concerns the financial director of a large company who moved to Switzerland from Russia and faced difficulties with staff who were not prepared to work a minute past 5 p.m., despite the fact that there was urgent work to be done.
“Russians are usually ready to stay late into the evening without demanding any compensation. To be successful, this director had to adapt to the new culture or leave the company,” said Pochtivaya.
The understanding of organizational culture in Russia and in the West is developing in a broadly parallel fashion, but with the Russian market lagging behind in several key areas. This is because new models of both market and labor relations emerged in Russia little more than 20 years ago.
“Corporate culture in Russian companies is young and is still in the process of being formed. Foreign companies bring us a culture that has been developed over decades,” said Alexander Yegorov, division director at the northwest branch of the Ancor recruitment agency.
“The general differences include the fact that foreign [organizational] culture is more transparent, while there is more impulsiveness and uncertainty in Russian companies,” he said.
“The local approach to forming and managing a corporate culture is characterized by being a young, ambitious and dynamic but anarchic process, while in Europe and the U.S. there are a number of standard practices,” said Olga Shmatko, head of the press office at HeadHunter St. Petersburg, a recruitment agency.
Corporate culture reflects the broader culture of which it is a part, and is strongly influenced by where an organization is headquartered. Finnish companies, for example, are built more on the family business model and have a less aggressive policy in doing business than American ones, according to Ancor. On the other hand, American companies are generally more democratic. Asian corporate culture, for the most part, makes severe demands on discipline, maintains a hierarchic system of seniority and is characterized by a slow decision-making process.
“Russian companies are developing by looking to Western experience while concurrently being influenced by the Russian business environment, and the ideology and policies of business owners and top managers,” said Yegorov.
“Many Russian companies are acutely aware of the need to establish and make dynamic use of corporate culture as a way to encourage best practices and form a common interest in success and prosperity,” said Yekaterina Ovchinnik, personnel director at Intercomp Global Services, a multinational business expansion and integration service provider.
Among the western trends that have been eagerly adopted by Russian corporate culture are the requisite formulation of a company’s mission statement and its corporate philosophy, which reveal the primary goals of the enterprise, according to HeadHunter specialists. An understanding of the significance of the work/life balance and diversity in the workplace is also becoming more and more widespread. 
“A respect for horizontal career growth is increasing through the development of professional competencies without promotion. More and more employees are choosing such a career path,” said Shmatko. 
The economic crisis of 2008 had a positive influence on the introduction of Western-style corporate culture by Russian business. 
“The [uncertainty in] some Western companies coupled with staff reductions allowed many Russian businesses to lure workers with experience of working in Western organizations and to integrate their experience, technologies and approach to business into Russian reality. However, not every expert [coming] from a Western company could find fulfillment in the Russian business environment,” said Yegorov.
The differences in foreign and Russian organizational cultures are also revealed in the approach to decision-making. In Russian companies, important decisions generally rest with one person, while western organizations have a highly developed system of teamwork and most decisions are reached through consensus across the entire group of leaders. 
‘The experience gained in the Soviet past may be rusty — due largely to ideological pressures and formality in relationships — but the best traditions are not forgotten, they must simply be reinstated and improved,” said Ovchinnik. 
Another significant difference is in the structure of relations between employer and employee. Russian business is largely hierarchical, and concepts of status are extremely important. Managers often prefer to separate themselves from the general workforce, both physically and emotionally.  
“The attitude to authority in Russia is rather complicated, encompassing elements of jealousy, fear, excessive demands and a perception of prejudice. In the West it is just a matter of hierarchy and organizational structure, in which employees often alternate between horizontal and managerial posts and the advancement of one worker is regarded with less resentment than often happens in Russian companies,” said Shmatko.
“In Russian companies a new boss does not have the right to put a foot wrong, as all of the employees are waiting for him to make a mistake, in order to satisfy themselves that his appointment was a mistake. It also relates to the insufficient transparency in career growth paths at Russian companies. People see no way of reaching a managerial position and every new appointment is [seen as being] unfair,” she said.
The transparency of evaluation and staff development mechanisms is now one of the principal advantages of working for a Western company, say Ancor experts. The new staff-development tools and proven business procedures offered by Western companies are also attractive for employees. Perhaps surprisingly, salary and perks are no longer a top priority, as Russian companies now offer remuneration packages that compare favorably with those offered by their Western counterparts.
“It is important for employees to feel confident in the company and to understand which objective criteria they should correspond to [in order] to see an advancement in position or salary,” said Shmatko.
Most HR professionals, however, understand that a company’s geographical origin is no guarantee of an advanced organizational culture.
“Far-sighted leaders of successful companies regard corporate culture as a strategic instrument that allows them to instill mutual goals and shared values in employees, and to create loyalty to the company’s business. It is always important to understand the individualities of the company and to look for employees based on these requirements,” said Pochtivaya. 


TITLE: Salary Unsurprisingly Most Important to St. Petersburg Residents
AUTHOR: By Alastair Gill
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The question of salary is, as ever, the principal factor on which those looking for work in St. Petersburg base their choice company, according to an article published by HeadHunter, a recruitment agency. The overwhelming majority of those surveyed by the agency, 97 percent, said it was the salary on offer that most influenced their decision to work for one company over another.
The second most important concern is the location of the office. Of those polled, 66 percent said that it is of vital importance that the journey from home to work be as short and convenient as possible. However, all else being equal — that is, if the salary and location of the office satisfy the jobseeker’s demands — then other criteria come into play. These are factors that can be directly influenced by HR managers and company management.
Just over half of locals in search of work take a critical approach to a firm — how well known is its brand or products; what kind of corporate culture does the organization have; and how long is the application process? 
The last of these is especially important: Jobseekers are much more discerning in their choice of work now than they were immediately after the crisis, and the efficiency of personnel departments — including communication and processing applications on time — is becoming of primary importance.
Forty-three percent of those polled use job interviews as an opportunity to cast an eye over the company’s team and assess the people who work there, while for a third of the city’s jobseekers, the design of the office is important. 
A company’s reputation also plays a role in where potential employees choose to work, according to Olga Shmatko of HeadHunter. “With increasing competition for professional staff, it is simply not possible to ignore such an important component of HR management as the reputation of the employer, or its HR brand,” she said.
The agency’s statistics show that people are becoming more aware of this. 
“The brand broadcasts an employer’s values and principles and is a sort of mutual test for the consistency of the company and its consumers in the labor market, both external [potential applicants], and domestic [current employees],” said Shmatko.
Almost one in five people are attracted by companies that have won the “HR Brand of the Year” award or that check out on social networks and various “blacklists” of employers, highlighting the importance of having a well-regarded brand.
“Due to increased competition for talent for all levels of an organization’s management, building a strong employer brand becomes a defining characteristic of the expertise of a company’s managerial staff,” said Pavel Yefremenko, head for the selection, development and training of staff for the OKEY supermarket chain’s HR department.
For current employees, the key factor in loyalty to their employer is, once again, the salary — testified to by 91 percent of respondents. If the salary is to their satisfaction, people are ready to dedicate more time and effort to the good of the company. Meanwhile, for 67 percent it is important that the salary is paid entirely legally and that the bonus system is clear.
The second-most important factor for current employees is the comfort of the workplace, the equipment, and recreation areas. Curiously, a flexible work schedule and the opportunity to regulate one’s workload is considered more important than an extended benefits package including medical insurance, cell phone payment, meals, transport etc.  
In last place on the loyalty scale were the assorted ‘perks’ with which companies pamper their employees — free tea, coffee and snacks, board games, PlayStation, sports equipment and so on.

TITLE: Challenges of Using a Contingent Workforce
AUTHOR: By Vera Mashkova 
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A contingent workforce in Russia has become a hot topic and tops the list of the most discussed human resource issues in the country. What are the real benefits of a contingent workforce, and what are the best practices that should be taken into consideration? What value does it bring to the Russian market?
By definition, a contingent workforce is a provisional group of workers who work for an organization on a non-permanent basis, also known as freelancers, independent professionals, independent contractors or consultants.
Today, the workplace is changing. While there are many factors that influence this change — including economic conditions, an aging workforce, and changing worker attitudes —the workplace has become unpredictable for businesses and workers alike. As a result, businesses need flexible talents to fill the gaps, and at the same time, workers are looking for more freedom and flexibility.
Following the worldwide trend, temporary staffing is becoming more and more dynamic on the Russian labor market, and it is no wonder that it has attracted lots of attention of the bodies concerned with compliance with the respective labor legislation over the past few years. Being a hot topic equally among government authorities, employee representatives and within the HR community, in a short-term perspective, temporary staffing requires a clear definition of its legal status. Currently, the only way for Russian companies to attract temporary staffing under Russian law is by concluding “service agreements” with recruiting companies. Under such agreements, the recruiting companies undertake to provide certain services to a client and assign certain employees the provision of such services to the client. However, up to now no changes related to the regulation of employee temporary staffing have been formally implemented in the Labor Code, meaning there is still a great deal of ambiguity for all parties involved — engaged contractors, service agencies and their client companies.
There are several misconceptions today about being a contractor, among those being the misuse of workforce, lower pay level, absence of employment guarantees and social benefits, all of which are not true. International companies’ experience based on cooperation with reputable agencies shows that the latter observe labor legislation, pay taxes and do not tend to mislead their contractors.
Temporary staffing is considered advantageous for both parties, and the prime benefit is flexibility: in type and amount of labor resources for the companies and a variety of assignments and projects for the contractors. The contractual work style is an ideal solution; the increased freedom, flexibility, and opportunities provided is the primary reason that workers choose it over traditional employment, and this is especially true for young people (around 69% of contractors are young): a contractual arrangement allows a wider range of opportunities, industries, businesses, and gives a chance to try oneself in different roles. Lacking actual work experience, young specialists become successful in creating career records that enable them to get permanent jobs aligned with their aspirations. Specialists engaged on project work have opportunities to diversify their experience within large companies, and become considered for a long-term assignment in the future.
The irrefutable benefit of engaging a contingent workforce is the opportunity to have immediate access to expertise not present internally. For example, for the IT industry, where an increased volume of work requires a quick response, this is an assurance that the customers’ requirements will be met. The changing business landscape and economic situation requires an employer’s flexibility in bringing the right expertise depending on the demand.
Reputable agencies guarantee that contract workers get the same level of social benefits, and the client company as an employer on the market will not jeopardize its reputation, as eventually it will have an impact on its overall image, depriving it of opportunities to attract people it is interested in: The employer values its reputation and will not allow unfair treatment and misuse of workforce.
Thus, accreditation of service agencies is viewed as an important and reasonable step in setting up the appropriate status of the companies offering temporary staffing. What we see now is that the labor market is seeking government support in restricting unreliable providers and ensuring respective regulations, so the presence of shady companies — which gives a negative perception of temporary staffing — is not limited.
It is apparent that temporary staffing requires the introduction of legislative changes and new regulations; up until now legislative initiatives varied between restrictions and prohibiting, and did not address frustration over the topic among the involved parties.
The situation is expected to change dramatically this spring, when, according to Andrey Isaev, Chairman of the Labor, Social Policy and Veteran Affairs Committee of the State Duma, “the ban on temporary staffing in Russia” setting forth restrictions in outsourcing will be adopted. The key point here is that the law will fully prohibit a narrower aspect of temporary staffing — outstaffing, rather than outsourcing as a concept, meaning client companies will retain the right to engage companies providing their core services, varying from office cleaning to payroll support. If this law is adopted it will put an end to the practice of client companies engaging temporary contractors via recruitment agencies that offer a wide range of personnel based on the client’s requirements.

<i>Vera Mashkova is HR Director for HP Russia and CIS</i>

TITLE: Cross-Border Understanding and Partnerships
AUTHOR: By Richard Lewis
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Finns used to say that the best sight in Stockholm was the 6 p.m. boat leaving for Helsinki. By the same token, it could be said today that the best sight in Finland is the Allegro leaving Helsinki station every morning at 9 a.m., bound for St. Petersburg. 
I had the occasion to experience this exhilarating ride recently when I was invited to give lectures in St. Petersburg in two prominent academic institutions — the University of Humanities and Social Sciences and the European University — in the city.
In both universities I was impressed by the quality of the audience, in marked contrast to those I had addressed in earlier times in Moscow. Soviet-epoch audiences listened dutifully, but their reactions were restrained, smiles guarded, feedback almost non-existent. The audiences I now addressed in St. Petersburg were warm, sympathetic listeners, showing keen interest in other cultures. 
Russia is in fact one of the most multicultural countries in the world (alongside Canada and the United States) and therefore cross-cultural discussions are of great interest and very meaningful for Russians.
The more I interacted with Russian people, the more I realized that they possess the totality of what I would consider essentially European characteristics — generosity, courtesy, compassion, love of learning, sense of humor, eloquence, etc. 
In fact, one could argue that in some sense they are the perfect Europeans, having positive characteristics from both Northern and Southern Europe. They also possess a few sterling Asian traits such as adaptability, self-sacrifice and stoicism in adversity. In summary, I sensed strongly their breadth of vision — a quality that must serve them well in the future.
Yet Russia tends to do poorly in country branding rankings. 
For instance, in the Reputation Institute’s 2012 list of 50 countries, Russia came in near the bottom, at number 45, and at number 83 in the broader 2012 Country Brand Index, despite millions of dollars being spent on public diplomacy to improve the nation’s image internationally since 2005. 
Of course there is the challenge of the media’s negative portrayals of Russia with a focus on stories about conflict or instability. There is also an international sense that there is a duality and inconsistency of messages from Russia (domestic versus international), which can increase unfavorable perceptions. These may be only perceptions, but they matter, and can take generations to change, and plenty of patience. 
So, at a time of national soul-searching and repositioning, what is their future?  What indeed is Russian cultural identity? 
On top of the wealth of qualities outlined above (and which must imply capacity for leadership in both European and Eurasian contexts), the country is reputed for its rich and comprehensive artistic history as well as its advances in the fields of science and space technology. 
The nation’s extensive assets in oil, gas and minerals should provide a steady improvement in standards of education and living in general. Russians have already begun to travel abroad in large numbers, thereby broadening their knowledge and worldview from year to year. It would be a mistake to underestimate or discount Russian influence in the coming decade.
Patience may be essential, but Russians — in the Asian part of their dual soul — have it in abundance. The motto of Field Marshal Kutuzov, in Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” was “patience and time.”
If Russia is set to thrive, what are the implications for Finland?
The destinies of Finland and Russia are inevitably intertwined. Their lands adjoined each other many centuries before either culture acquired the status of a nation state. 
Long before political developments, their peoples, partly of Asian provenance, followed the northward migration of game at the end of the last Ice Age and settled northern (including Arctic) territories. 
A linguistic map of Russia west of the Urals shows a scattering of ancient migrating tribes speaking Uralic languages (to which family Finno-Ugric belongs), mingling and often settling on Russian territory. Such cultural islands, surrounded by Russian peoples, are the present-day Komi, Voguls, Mari, Volyaks, Ostyaks, Mordvins and, closer to the Baltic, Karelians and Ingrians. Lapps (Sami) continue to inhabit adjoining areas in northern Finland, Sweden, Norway and the Kola peninsula.
Both Finns and northwestern Russians are cold climate peoples, inheritors of an austere environment that caused their ancestors considerable hardship. 
Cold latitudes engender cool, sturdy, resilient individuals with an inordinate capacity for self-reliance and a survival instinct. The arctic survivor must have stamina, guts and powers of invention. The diagram below illustrates differences in Russian and Finnish qualities, but markedly indicates numerous striking commonalities.
In spite of the Russo-Finnish hostilities in 1939-45 (a period of war which would probably have not taken place had it not been for the menace of Nazism) I have remarked on many occasions that Finns like Russians as people. During my recent trip, Russians showed a friendly interest in Finland — in fact, I gave a long interview to a journalist from St. Petersburg’s BaltInfo news agency, discussing the good relations that exist today.
The period of Russian rule in Finland, which lasted 108 years (1809-1917), bore no resemblance in character or essence to other Russian occupations of the 19th and 20th centuries. A formula was found that was acceptable to the Tsar but that also met the political and cultural requirements of the Finnish people. 
The first confirmation of a guarantee of dignity was apparent in Finland’s status within the Russian Empire. 
Finland was called a Grand Duchy, the Tsar of Russia also being the Grand Duke of Finland. Tsar Alexander I was a confirmed liberal. He treated the Finns with due respect. The Lutheran Church was left untouched and all members of the senate were Finns. They reported directly to the Tsar and were not responsible to the Russian Civil Service. 
In general the Finns remained loyal to Russia during the politically turbulent 19th century. Finnish was spoken on both sides of the border, reducing the confrontational aspect of the frontier. Thousands of Finns served in the Russian Imperial Army. Hundreds of them achieved the rank of General or Admiral.
Again Finland remained loyal to Russia during the Crimean War. Alexander II was so popular in Finland that his statue stands in front of the National Cathedral. Lenin liked Finland — he hid there before the revolution; and Stalin respected Finland, especially the country’s military skills. Krushchev, Molotov and Brezhnev all exhibited reluctance to bully their neighbor. 
Finnish presidents Paasikivi and Kekkonen pursued a friendly policy with Russia, showing that it was possible to maintain friendly relations with the Soviet Union while simultaneously strengthening political, economic and cultural ties with the west.
From a 2013 standpoint, a prosperous internationalizing Russia must inevitably be of increasing benefit to Finland. 
Tourism from Russia is mushrooming rapidly (1.2 million entry visas to Finland were issued in 2012 compared with 373,000 in 2005). Large numbers of Russians are buying property in Finland (more than 300 million euros were invested in private property between 2008 and 2012) and many Russian companies are setting up offices in Helsinki for logistical and other reasons. 
Finnish shops (Stockmann) and railways (VR) are eagerly establishing themselves in Russia and transport routes through St. Petersburg, Kotka, Helsinki and beyond are increasingly facilitating trade of all kinds. 
Finnish exports to Russia are also welcomed, reminding one of the days when Nokia launched its success on the basis of Russian contracts. I believe that Russians in many walks of life realize that in Finland they have a reliable neighbor that can be of tremendous help in showing other nations the benefits of Russian co-operation and engagement.

<i>Richard Lewis is one of the world’s foremost linguists and cross-cultural experts. 
He has written a number of books on cross-cultural themes including ‘Finland, Cultural Lone Wolf; When Cultures Collide’; ‘The Cultural Imperative; Cross-Cultural Communication — A Visual Approach’ and most recently, ‘When Teams Collide’ (May 2012).
In 1997, he was knighted by President Ahtisaari of Finland in recognition of his services in the cross-cultural field relating to the training of Finnish Ministries for EU entry (1995) and the EU Presidency (1999). He was promoted to the rank of Knight Commander by President Halonen in 2009. 
In May he will be a keynote speaker at the XIII International Likhachev Conference organized by the St. Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences. His topic will be ‘Dialogue of Cultures: Value, meaning and communication.’</i>


TITLE: Exploring Northeastern Estonia 
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Ida-Viru County, or Ida-Virumaa, a northeastern and somewhat overlooked part of this small yet extremely diverse Baltic country, can be an exciting adventure, even if the northern spring is late to arrive.  And it is closer to St. Petersburg than the nearest Finnish city of Lappeenranta (163 km vs. 207 km), thus making it an even closer gateway to the European Union.
After a two-and-a-half hour bus ride from St. Petersburg, the traveler is met by a magnificent view of two medieval fortresses confronting one another. One is Russia’s Ivangorod Fortress — and just across the narrow Narva River — Estonia’s Hermann Castle. The iconic image of these two citadels facing each other adorned Estonian 5-kroon bills until the euro was introduced in 2010.

<b>Gateway to Estonia</b>

Hermann Castle is Narva’a most popular image. As a medieval stronghold originally established by the Danes in 1256, the wooden fortress was sold to the Livonian Order of the Teutonic Knights in 1346.
Both the castle and the city of Narva were destroyed during World War II, as the area was the scene of especially heavy fighting, with the battle for Narva in 1944 leading to thousands of casualties on both sides. 
Currently, the Russian-Estonian border is formed by the Narva River, although during Estonia’s first period of independence between 1919 and 1940, Ivangorod was part of Narva, but was absorbed into the Soviet Russian Federation in 1945, and was not returned to Estonia when the Baltic country regained independence in 1991. The Russian-Estonian border treaty is yet to be ratified.
Although promoted as Estonia’s best-preserved castle, Hermann Castle was reconstructed during the Soviet period and was recently rejected as a UNESCO heritage site because the building barely resembles the original structure. It was therefore deemed of little historical value. Yet despite this, the castle — especially when seen paired with its Russian equivalent — is an imposing sight that stirs the imagination and stimulates a sense of history.
Narva is primarily a Russian-speaking city and is populated mostly by ethnic Russians. Ethnic Estonians constitute a mere 3 percent of the population. The imbalance was caused by mass Soviet deportations of the Estonians to the Gulag. The survivors were not permitted to return to their land, presumably because of the Soviet Union’s Cold War plans to develop nuclear facilities in the region, to where the workforce was brought from across the Soviet Union.
The city — once renowned for its blend of gothic, baroque and classicism — was reduced to ruins in the course of the devastating Soviet air raids in March 1944. To add insult to injury the Ivangorod Fortress, several churches, the buildings of the Krenholm Manufacturing Company and a large number of residential buildings were blown up by retreating German troops several months later. By the end of July 1944, when the German troops left Narva, 98 percent of the city had been destroyed.
The Soviets, who reoccupied the city in 1944, chose to pull down the ruins of the old town in 1950 to build a modern city center, rather than repair the damaged buildings redolent of Narva’s western past. Only two residential buildings and Narva’s town hall have been restored.
Nonetheless, Narva still merits some exploration. Hermann Castle, Narva’s most visited site, houses the Narva Museum, which tells the story of the medieval town and citadel. All kinds of outdoor events are held against its walls, from Georgian food fairs to rock festivals, including the notorious Narva Bike, to be held this year on July 19-21 and headlined by British pop band Smokie. The three-floor restaurant Castell,  located in the castle’s northwestern tower, provides not only food but also a show based on the deeds of the knights, with armored actors dancing and rattling their swords in the aisles between the tables.
Apart from the castle, the city is famous for its 17th-century Swedish bastions. Named Honor, Gloria, Victoria, Fama, Triumph, Fortuna, and Spes the casemates of the seven buildings were used as bomb shelters during World War II, and The Dark Gardens, the city’s oldest landscape park, created on the Victoria bastion in the 19th century.
In addition to the castle, the Orthodox Resurrection of Christ Cathedral and the Lutheran Church of Alexander — both dating to the late 19th-century— have been rebuilt and can be visited.
The only civic building to be restored by the Soviets, Narva’s town hall is considered to be the best-preserved historical building in the city, even if it was severely damaged during WWII and stood without a roof until it was restored in the early 1960s. Originally built by German architect Georg Teuffel in 1668-1671, it was used to house the city’s “young pioneer palace” during the Soviet period. Currently closed to visitors, it now provides shelter for creative workshops and a rehearsal room for a local rock band. 
One of the town hall’s rooms houses a model of Narva now as well as paper scale model of the pre-1940 Narva lovingly created by local enthusiast Fyodor Shantsyn. Not yet finished due to the frequent lack of funds, the 1:100 scale model is expected to be the first step in creating an Old Narva miniature park.
The square upon which the town hall sits is where the different approaches to Narva’s heritage engage in desperate conflict. Alongside the old town hall sits a new 10-million euro structure housing the University of Tartu’s Narva College. It is a radical sight.
Designed by a team of Estonian architects, its white fa&#231;ade with a “beak” is a take on the old Narva Stock Exchange which occupied the site before it was damaged in WWII and pulled down a few years later. It’s avant-garde form, with the beak repeating the shape of a part of the stock exchange’s roof, is a nod to the city’s past, yet the cutting-edge innovations hiding inside look decidedly to the future.  
The interiors are designed to be the perfect environment for academic studies, while also maintining a slightly informal feel.  An atrium is closed on the sides with ironwork gates designed to replicate the patterns found on the wings of a South American butterfly species called Chlosyne narva. 
The Narva College building was criticized by preservationists, who wanted the stock exchange rebuilt as it was before being demolished, and opposed by city authorities, which delayed it construction for six years. The building was finally inaugurated by Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves in November of last year.

<b>Tsarist-era Resort</b>

From Narva, it is only 18 kilometers north to Narva-Joesuu, a celebrated resort with a 13-kilometer fine sand beach and pine trees, which attracted Russians both under the Tsars and the Communists. 
Located on the Narva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, it is where Estonia’s longest, river, the Narva, which has its source at the northeastern end of Lake Peipus, flows into the sea.  The road there offers great views of the river, with Russia on the other bank.
The long list of celebrities who visited the resort before the 1917 revolution includes painter Ilya Repin, author Nikolai Leskov and poet Igor Severyanin.
Close to the beach sits the Narva-Joesuu Spa and Sanatorium. Built in 1960s it is evocative of the Soviet era — when it was launched as a health resort for collective farm workers — and even bears a plaque saying it is protected by the Estonian state as a heritage site, but is now renovated and features up-to-date spa treatments. 
The landscape here is defined by the Baltic Klint, a 1200-kilometer-long erosional limestone escarpment which rises up to 50 meters above the Baltic Sea at some points. Starting on &#214;land island in Sweden and ending in the area south of Lake Ladoga in Russia, its Estonian section is 300 kilometers long, known as the North Estonian Klint and seen as a natural monument symbolizing Estonian national identity.
A ride along the shore will be memorable for the sea views, the splendid 19th-century Oru Park in Toila, which boasts 270 different species of bushes and trees, and the 30.5-meter Valaste waterfall, Estonia’s highest, among other attractions.

<b>Earth Power</b>

The depths of Ida-Virumaa contain large deposits of oil shale — used in thermal power plants — and thus hold the largest power capacity in Estonia. This resource was intensively exploited under the Soviets, with mountains of oil-shale ash left across the county standing as a kind of monument to the era. 
A unique and award-winning souvenir from Estonia is known as “Pruun kuld” (Brown Gold), an “oil-shale” chocolate produced in southern Estonia with the addition of bee propolis, but available only in the area.
Kukruse, a district of the Kohtla-J&#228;rve municipality, hosts the world’s only oil shale museum. Its permanent exhibition shows how oil shale forms, how it is discovered and produced and the history of its use. One of the rooms holds an exhibition of 80 “socialist realist” paintings titled “The Oil Shale Industry in Art,” once a much-appreciated artistic subject in the area. 
The mineral was used in the Soviet nuclear program, which turned Sillam&#228;e, where the facilities were located, into a highly secure town closed to outsiders. Workers were brought to the town from across the Soviet Union and a labor camp was established in the area where prisoners were used for the hazardous work.
The history of the settlement, which went under code names such as “Leningrad-1” or “Narva-10,” is on display at the Sillam&#228;e Museum of History and Culture, where relics of the Soviet era — from military uniforms and propaganda to typical Soviet apartment interiors — are well represented, as well as the earlier history of the area.
The museum also holds a large collection of minerals, including Estonia’s dolomite, limestone and granite, and Soviet-era radios and irons. 

<b>To the Manor</b>

Like the rest of Estonia, Ida-Virumaa has its share of old manor houses once belonging to Baltic Germans. Neglected and frequently transformed for agricultural use under the Soviets, a number of them have been renovated and turned into hotels, spas, restaurants and even museums.
Kukruse Manor — known as “Polar Manor” — in the village of Kukruse has been turned into a small yet state-of-the-art and well-researched museum dedicated to 19th-century Arctic explorer Eduard Gustav von Toll, who once owned the place and financed many of his polar expeditions from the manor’s profits. 
The nearby Saka Cliff Hotel & Spa is located on a cliff above the Gulf of Finland. The complex, which also features a former Soviet border guard tower that has been turned into a conference hall, is near the Kivisilla waterfall and  boasts a viewing platform with great views of the sea and the limestone coastline.  A hiking trail leads 1.5 kilometers from the Sea Tower to the sandy beach and includes a climb down a 50-meter-high cliff via a stairway. In the 20th century, the manor was occupied alternatively by the Estonian coast guard, the Nazi Waffen SS and the Soviet army. 

<b>Sports and Adventure</b>

A group of enterprising enthusiasts in Tuham&#228;gi have found a use for an oil-shale ash hill, converting it into a ski resort. Launched in early February, the ash heap near the town of Kivioli has been transformed into a popular recreation center offering options for winter sports, with families visiting from as far away as Tallinn.
Half of the hill — which rises 173 meters above sea level — holds a ski slope with four downhill runs, from 400 to 700 meters, the other is a motocross center, where the two-day Kivioli Motocross Festival is due to be held in August.
Here visitors can rent ski equipment, have lunch at a freshly-opened caf&#233; and stay overnight in the 30-bed Tuham&#228;e Hostel right next to the slope. 
The Alutaguse Recreational Sports Center, which has rooms for 36 guests, saunas and a caf&#233;, can also be visited year-round and is good for a holiday oriented toward nature and sports, including running, biking, Nordic walking and skiing. 
Located in the hills, only 80 km from Narva, the climate there is drastically different. The center’s owner, Tarmo Kollo, says that last year a skiing competition was held as late as April 20. “When flowers blossom in Narva, there is still snow here,” he said. 

<i>The St. Petersburg Times was a guest of the Narva City Department for Development and Economy and the tourism cluster of Ida-Virumaa.</i>
<hr>
<b>How To Get There</b>

From St. Petersburg, three bus companies operate daily bus services to Narva. Lux Express departs from the Baltiisky Railway Station 
(www.luxexpress.eu), Ecolines 
(www.ecolines.net) can be picked up near Vitebsky Railway Station, while the more budget-friendly BalticShuttle 
(www.balticshuttle.com), the most recent addition, departs from the Bus Station at 36 Obvodny Kanal Nab.

<b>Where To Stay</b>

M&#228;etaguse Manor 
A hotel in a renovated manor in a small village, complete with a spa complex, pool, a restaurant and a bar.
Pargi 1, M&#228;etaguse. Tel: +372 333 1151. www.moisahotell.ee

Saka Cliff Hotel & Spa (Saka Manor)
Built in the 17th century with an old park starting right at the entrance, the renovated complex features a hotel with 46 rooms available both in the old mansion, which also hosts an a la carte restaurant, and in the spa hotel built in 2004. 
Kohtla Parish. Tel: +372 336 4900. www.saka.ee

Narva-Joesuu Spa Hotel
This former Soviet sanatorium is now renovated and features up-to-date spa treatments. 
Aia 3, Narva-Joesuu. Tel: +372 359 9529. www.narvajoesuu.ee

<b>Where To Eat</b>

Castell 
Located in a tower of Narva’s Hermann Castle, this three-floor restaurant offers not only food but theatrical shows from chivalric times.
Peterburi mnt 2, Narva. 
Tel.: +372 359 9257. www.castell.ee

Every decent hotel has a fine restaurant or two. The restaurants at the Inger Hotel in Narva (Puskini tn 28. Tel: +372 688 1105. www.inger.ee) and the Meresuu Hotel in Narva-Jouessu (Aia 48a. Tel: +372 357 9600. www.meresuu.ee) merit a mention, 
as well as the restaurants in the above manors.