SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #669 (36), Tuesday, May 15, 2001
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TITLE: City To Try Short-Stay Visas at Border
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Foreign tourists visiting St. Petersburg for 72 hours or less are soon to be granted the right to get visas at the border, the Foreign Ministry said last week.
 But the ministry and the City Tourism Committee offered conflicting versions of the plan, while some analysts said that it did not go far enough.
 "This is an experiment," said Alexander Vakhrushev, the Foreign Ministry's representative in St. Petersburg, "and only applies to tourists ... not businessmen."
 "The duration of the experiment depends on how everything goes."
 According to the plan, tourists arriving by air at Pulkovo 2 international airport, and by road at the Torfyanovka and Brusnichnoye crossings from Finland, will be able to buy a three-day visa for around $25 at passport control.
 But the old system will not completely disappear. Vakhrushev said that tourists who plan to take advantage of the new rules will have to apply to an international tourist operator first in order to have their names put down on a list. That list will then be forwarded to Russian border officials - rather than to a consulate or embassy - three days before entry into the country.
 Vakhrushev added that the details were still being worked out, but that the new rules would come into force sometime this summer.
 It was not clear which tour operators a tourist would have to apply to, or if there would be any "official" operators.
 However, Valery Golubev, head of the City Tourist Committee, gave a different version of the plan. He said that citizens of what he described as stable countries - citing the United States, Japan and Western European countries - could get a visa at the border without going first to a tour firm, and that businessmen were included.
 "The idea is to let people visit St. Petersburg for just a few days to go to a concert or a conference of some kind," Golubev said in a telephone interview on Monday. "They should [be allowed] in without any invitation."
 Golubev said Tourist Committee research showed that the average cost of a tourist visa for a U.S. citizen was currently $50 if they applied one week in advance, and rose to $450 for a same-day visa.
 "You have to be crazy to pay that kind of money to go to Russia," he said. "As a rule, Americans are not so rich, and would rather go on a cruise around the Bahamas for the same amount."
 Golubev added that a meeting of the government on May 18 would discuss the visa issue, at which City Hall would lobby for the abolition of additional payments for urgent visas in certain countries.
 The Tourism Committee chief said that the flow of tourists to St. Petersburg would increase by around 30 percent after the new regulations had been introduced. According to hotel records, Golubev said, around 1 million foreign tourists visit St. Petersburg annually.
 "We expect an additional 500,000 tourists from Finland in the winter season," he said.
 Rachel Shackleton, general director of training and consultancy firm Concept and an expert on city tourism, welcomed the news, but said that three days was too short.
 "If you look at the plane schedule of British Airways, for example, there is a flight on Friday and the next one is on Monday only," Shackleton said. "My advice would be to extend [the length of stay] to five days."
 Shackleton said that the flow of travelers from Europe could increase by 50 percent. "St. Petersburg is competing with other European cities, but after the hassle [tourists] have in a Russian consulate, they say, 'Why should we stand in this line? Let's go to Madrid instead.'"
 Vladimir Kozhevnikov, head of the tourist company Cosmos, which organizes trips to St. Petersburg for foreign tourists, said that facilities at Russia's borders were ill equipped to deal with a major rise in tourism.
 "I support the visa plan," Kozhev ni kov said in a telephone interview on Monday, "but there are huge queues when a plane arrives at Pulkovo 2, and this is only going to make things slower."
 "Even if the new regulations are introduced, we would work the same as we do now, through [Russian] consulates."
 St. Petersburg customs authorities and Border Guard officials refused to comment on the new regulations, saying that they had not received any official documentation.

TITLE: Surgeon Gets Back Wages Paid in Manure
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Dr. Yury Zotov is used to being paid very little. He is used to being paid months late. He is even used to being paid in goods - but something inside him broke when the hospital where he works offered him three tons of manure instead of back wages.
 "I'm a surgeon, what do I need with manure?" Zotov, 42, said in a telephone interview from the Vacha district hospital in the Nizhny Novogorod region. "It's an insult." 
 Zotov and the rest of the few hundred people who work at the hospital were offered the dung as part-payment for wages not paid from December.
 For years in Russia, bosses with no cash have used anything at hand to pay their staff. If a company produces something, then its own products are the most likely choice. 
 The Podolsk sewing-machine company once gave its workers a sewing machine each, while the Massandra vineyard in the Crimea once handed over 10 bottles of wine a month. These bottles could in turn be exchanged for food.
 Much weirder payments have occured when firms have passed out goods that they have received from other firms in lieu of debt, for instance the packets of tampons that were given to Arkhangelsk lumberjacks in 1994.
 Zotov, who has worked as a surgeon at the hospital for 18 years, also has taken home some unusual things, including building materials.
 But there was a limit to what he would accept. And the back-end product of a farm animal was it. As author Henry Miller once said, "When shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes." 
 "If they'd offered us sugar or sand, maybe we'd have kept quiet," Zotov said, with weary disgust."But manure?"
 He made the hospital staff's plight known in Moscow by appearing on TV Center.
 Delays in the provincial hospital's miserly wages have been constant, according to Zotov, whose salary of just a little over 1,300 rubles a month is one of the best in the hospital. Some doctors receive as little as 700 rubles, nurses as little as 500 rubles and cleaning staff 250 rubles, he said.
 "I don't know how to feed my children," said Zotov, whose wife, also a doctor, earns 840 rubles a month at the hospital. "We work day and night."
 In addition to the insult of the offer, Zotov already has all the manure he needs from his own livestock. So flabbergasted was he that he didn't even stop to find out what kind of dung was his for the taking.
 "I don't know what type, maybe it's their own," joked Zotov, who said the offer came from the mayor via the chief doctor at the hospital.
 Vacha Mayor Alexander Abrosimov defended the offer of manure.
 "Maybe the associations are not pleasant, but it's a needed commodity for every resident," the mayor said in a telephone interview. 
 Many people survive on their low wages by growing vegetables in garden plots or at their dachas. 
 "Everyone is looking for manure," the mayor said, adding that his administration was just trying to prevent people from becoming "anxious" about finding enough for their potatoes.
 He also poured scorn on Zotov's claims that he was poor. 
 "He's not a poor man. ... He has his own house, a three-story house, a car," Abrosimov said.
 The mayor said Zotov was complaining because he was "psychologically sick." Lots of people who were "psychologically sick" were coming to his office to complain, he said. 
 The dung, which Abrosimov said he thinks is from cows although he had not personally checked, is worth at least 350 rubles and perhaps as much as 500 rubles a truckload.
 Abrosimov blamed a shortfall in taxes for the inability to pay wages in full. The manure itself was received as payment from local collective farms who owed the city money for fuel for their tractors, he said.

TITLE: Siamese Cat Nurses Zoo Wolves
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It's not quite the wolf lying down with the lamb, but it's close.
 Two newly born wolf cubs in Novosibirsk Zoo have been adopted by a Siamese cat after their mother was found to have hardly any milk.
 "She took to them like her own children," said Rosa Kaipberdyeva, one of the zoo employees who is looking after the cubs, in a telephone interview from Novosibirsk in Western Siberia. "She's like a real mother [to them]." 
 The two-week-old cubs, a variation of the gray wolves found in Russia, were passed over to Musya, a Siamese cat belonging to a friend of one of the zookeepers, soon after their birth. 
 The zoo looked for a surrogate mother cat that had just given birth after realizing that Berta, the cubs' overweight mother, had very little milk.
 The cubs are practically helpless and rely totally on Musya. Sometimes, the attendants help them go to the toilet by massaging their stomachs. 
 The cubs, which were blind when they first met Musya, took to her instantly and immediately started sucking milk from her teats, Kaipberdyeva said.
 Apart from sleeping and eating they do very little. Kaipberdyeva said they seem to be running and fighting in their dreams.
 Musya, who is also caring for one of her own kittens, is very patient with the pair and even meows at the zookeepers to warn them off when they come near. 
 The cubs don't deprive the kitten, which is half their size, from any milk, Kaipberdyeva said. Suckling from Musya is interspersed with milk from the bottle every three hours. The three have, so far, a friendly sibling-like relationship.
 "They don't fight. ... They only argue over the teat," said Kaipberdyeva, adding quickly, "Of course, the cubs win because they are bigger."
 The cubs will stay with Musya until they begin to eat meat off the bone, she said. By that time - or three weeks, as estimated by the zoo - Musya will have taught them to hunt and kill. Although she is a domestic cat, Kaipberdyeva said enough wild instinct remains for her to show the wolf cubs the primal way.
 The zoo, which promised Musya's owner to return her safely, said it will have to ensure that the cubs don't do harm to the mother or the kitten as they grow.
 "We'll take them away so that tragedy won't happen," said Kaipberdyeva.
 The cubs, though, are tainted by the smell and the ways of Musya and will not be able to return to their mother and father. They will be sold to a zoo without wolves.

TITLE: U.S. Student Just a Pawn In Another Spying Game?
AUTHOR: By Peter Baker
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: VORONEZH, Central Russia - It's hard not to notice the glow-in-the-dark brassieres. Or the tough-looking guys hanging out around the roulette table. Or the bouncer with the metal-detector wand screening customers for weapons.
 Whatever the warning signs, John Tobin ignored them that night back in January as he made his way into the Night Flight casino and dance club with a few Russians. He was out to have a good time, like always. Everyone who met the 24-year-old American studying in this university town knew he had a wild streak.
 Before the evening was out, though, the Fulbright scholar from Connecticut found himself caught up in something far more serious than another vodka-induced hangover. Rousted by police who claimed they found a matchbox containing marijuana on him - drugs they planted, he would later say - Tobin suddenly was ensnared in the spy craze that has seized this country under President Vla dimir Putin, becoming the latest pawn in a geopolitical game of tit for tat.
 The Federal Security Service boasted it had caught an American spy-in-training, essentially making Tobin its answer to the arrest of alleged double agent Robert Philip Hanssen. Never mind that no espionage charges were brought against Tobin. Drug charges stemming from no more than one-twentieth of an ounce of marijuana would be enough to put him away for 37 months.
 Today Tobin sits in a jail cell, awaiting transfer to a Russian prison colony in a penal system plagued by a tuberculosis epidemic. His friends and teachers can think of no explanation other than the obvious one, that he was singled out to make a point. "Maybe some winds of the Cold War have come again to visit us," said Zhanna Sokolova, dean of international students at Voronezh State University.
 Here in Voronezh, about 450 kilometers south of Moscow, Tobin says he was a victim of the provincial zeal of the local branch of the Federal Security Service, intent on showing the bosses in the capital that they had nabbed an American spy.
 "My son basically fell for a trap, as far as I can tell," said his father, John Tobin Sr., a construction contractor in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
 The younger Tobin first came to Voronezh State University in 1998 during his junior year at Middlebury College and returned last autumn as a Fulbright scholar studying changing political attitudes in the decade since the fall of communism. Bright and witty, he made many friends and impressed teachers with his command of the language, right down to Russian swear words. Department head Larissa Rybacheva still has his grammar workbooks to show how few mistakes he made.
 But he also began skipping class. His apartment a few blocks from campus was a haven for late-night parties, with a closet filled with empty vodka bottles, according to a friend. One time, Tobin drunkenly broke a door in the dormitory, said Anatoly Leonov, the Middlebury coordinator at Voronezh. Another time, he returned from a trip with a black eye, explaining he had been in a scuffle over a woman, according to two friends.
 Neighbors in his run-down building complained. "They just kept us awake, slamming the doors," said Suzanna Kudrishova, a 78-year-old retiree who lives across the hall. "There was never any peace."
 According to Tobin's account, a few days before his arrest they summoned him to their office, where he was "asked to cooperate" - apparently to become an agent. He answered no, said Tobin's attorney, Maxim Bayev.
 Not long afterward, a Russian friend introduced Tobin to two young women, Bayev said, and they invited him to Night Flight. Known as a hangout for a tough crowd, Night Flight is bathed in black light, making everything white shimmer brightly in the darkness - including the bras of the waitresses through their light blouses. 
 According to Bayev, the women with Tobin in the early morning hours of Jan. 26 suggested buying drugs. Accounts vary on whether Tobin agreed, but soon police were on the scene frisking him, claiming to find a small plastic bag of marijuana in a matchbox. A search of Tobin's apartment turned up another tiny amount of marijuana in a textbook, authorities said. Tobin said the drugs were not his.
 The case drew international attention only a month later, when Russia publicized it following Hanssen's arrest, making much of Tobin's resume, which included a stint in the army and training at Fort Huachuca, the army's intelligence center in Arizona. The proof of Tobin's espionage interests, as Russian authorities saw it: He tape-recorded interviews with political figures and was seen near the local power plant.
 His teachers found that laughable. Of course he taped interviews, they said. He was writing a paper on politics. And the power plant, according to Bayev, is near a park frequented by young people.
 "He landed in trouble because of his foolishness," said Leonov, the Middlebury coordinator. But "all the hype around him, it's just games, games, games."

TITLE: Putin, Chavez Find Common Language
AUTHOR: By Andrew Kramer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Monday met with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who like the Russian leader is intent on resisting the global clout of the United States. 
 Putin and Chavez greeted each other warmly in the gilded St. Catherine Hall of the Kremlin, joking and smiling as their translators struggled to keep up with the banter. 
 The two also traded serious words of praise for one another, the nations they lead, and the potential for cooperation. 
 "We in Russia view Venezuela as an influential and authoritative state in Latin America, as a serious participant in the club of world powers," Putin said, opening the first meeting of the delegations between the two sides. 
 As for Venezuela, Caracas has a "huge interest" in political, economic and technological cooperation with Russia, Chavez responded. He praised Putin for what he called "the revival" of Russia. 
 "We're described in the world in a similar way," Chavez told Putin later, according to Itar-Tass. "We're called people of democracy, with our own vision of democracy." 
 Like Putin, Chavez has unsettled Washington and some of its Western allies by courting leaders of countries including Iraq and Cuba. He has also defended China's human rights record; Putin is scheduled to sign a new, 10-year friendship treaty with China this summer. 
 Both expressed hope that bilateral trade would grow - it jumped 350 percent last year, according to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry - and Putin said Moscow was interested in boosting energy cooperation. He thanked Chavez for an invitation to attend an OPEC summit in Caracas. 
 Russian and Venezuelan officials were expected to sign three cooperation agreements on energy, military technology and combating drugs during Chavez's three-day visit.

TITLE: Putin Praises Envoys After Year on Job
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin gave high marks Saturday to the group of regional envoys he appointed one year ago to help cement his grip on the country.
 The move was one of the first steps Putin took after his inauguration as president last May. He said then that Russia would be torn asunder if the Kremlin did not keep tabs on the 89 regions.
 "We have managed to halt the processes of disintegration that were taking place," Putin told his seven envoys in televised remarks as he opened a meeting in the Kremlin to mark the first year since their appointment. Putin praised the team, made up mostly of army and security generals, for having moved quickly on their main task of bringing local legislation in line with federal laws.
 "This was your priority task and on the whole you have fulfilled it," he said.
 But Putin also told the envoys that raising living standards in the regions was their most important task. "There can be no other task," Putin said.
 "If the living standard parameters keep rising, it will mean that our common goal is showing results," Putin told the envoys, according to Interfax.
 He also urged them not to slow the pace of their work and "be on the offensive." 
 Putin said he was happy that the envoys had largely managed to avoid antagonizing regional leaders and described his decision to set up the super-regions, which critics have said was unconstitutional, as being "right and justified."
 The move, coupled with the eviction of regional bosses from the Federation Council, allowed Putin to restore control over regions that overstepped their authority under President Boris Yeltsin.
 Putin said despite having avoided the worst in relations with governors, some tensions remained between them and his representatives who sometimes meddled too much in what was not their business.
 "Sometimes, regretfully, the representatives of the president go beyond that line where clear prerogatives of the regional leaders lie," Itar-Tass quoted Putin as telling reporters. "That is wrong."
 
 <i>- Reuters, AP </i>

TITLE: Berezovsky Making Moves Back To Political Scene
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Boris Berezovsky announced Friday that he is giving millions of dollars to human rights organizations and is planning to fund a new political party to oppose President Vla di mir Putin, whom he helped bring to power in 1999 and 2000.
 &quot;I am really trying to help those who want to live in Russia,&quot; the former Kremlin power broker said in a video link from France. &quot;One of the most important elements is forming institutions of civil society.&quot; 
 The International Foundation for Civil Liberties, which Berezovsky created in December with $25 million, has selected 163 organizations based outside Moscow - ranging from environmentalists to press freedom and prisoners' rights groups - each of which will receive annual grants of up to $15,000 for the next four years. 
 The grant recipients were chosen from among 300 applicants by a committee including such prominent human rights advocates as Alexei Simonov, president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation; Valentina Melnikova, who heads the Union of Soldiers' Mothers Committees; and Valery Abramkin, director of the Center for Penal Reform. The committee also includes Yury Ryzhov, a former Russian ambassador to France.
 However, some critics have argued that Berezovsky's past business dealings and political manipulations, often seen as incompatible with democratic principles, call into question the integrity of his philanthropic activities.
 &quot;Berezovsky's entire reputation is connected to a political history that is far from straightforward and to his influence on political processes,&quot; media analyst Anna Kachkayeva told The Associated Press. &quot;This makes the actions of people who try to cast him as a new dissident strange, to say the least.&quot;
 But Abramkin, Melnikova and Simonov - all of whom attended Friday's conference - argued that the importance of the cause justified accepting the gift.
 Berezovsky gave his first high-profile charitable donation last November, when he donated $3 million to Mos cow's Sakharov Museum, named in honor of the Soviet dissident, renowned physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner And rei Sakharov. 
 After the gift was announced, Sakharov's widow, Yelena Bonner, told The Washington Post she was well aware Berezovsky might have ulterior motives for donating the money, but he was the only one who offered help.
 &quot;Everybody is saying this is dirty money, but there are people who are richer than Berezovsky and they aren't doing it [giving money]. Maybe Berezovsky is doing it to change his image, but that's his prerogative,&quot; the paper quoted her as saying. 
 Pavel Arsenyev, head of Berezovsky's Moscow-based charitable fund, said $10 million of the $25 million would go to nongovernmental organizations, while other priorities would include support programs for prisoners, journalists and ethnic Russian communities in the former Soviet Union. 
 Berezovsky left Russia in November after prosecutors summoned him for questioning in an investigation into the embezzlement of nearly $1 billion from the national airline Aeroflot. He has denied any wrongdoing and has said the investigation is politically motivated.
 Berezovsky said at Friday's conference that he planned to return to Russia by the end of the year after creating a political party to oppose Putin. 
 &quot;The reason I want to return to Russia is politics. Now after one year of Putin's presidency, we have the necessary conditions to form a real opposition.&quot; 
 Berezovsky said it was unlikely he would work on the project together with fellow oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky - a one-time rival who has fallen out of the Kremlin's favor due to a bitter conflict over his media empire - because Gusinsky &quot;is not interested in politics.&quot;

TITLE: Kiselyov New TV6 General Director
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Former NTV general director Yevgeny Kiselyov was elected general director of TV6 at an extraordinary shareholders meeting Monday as bankruptcy proceedings were started against the channel.
 Kiselyov had been acting as general director since Gazprom-Media appointed managers took control of NTV on April 14. But his move to the station, which is 75 percent owned by Boris Berezovsky, has led to departures from TV6 and splits within the former NTV team.
 Pavel Korchagin, general director of Media-MOST's TNT channel, was named first deputy general director at TV6, and Grigory Krichevsky, NTV's former news editor, was named deputy general director.
 Ivan Demidov, deputy general director and chief producer at TV6, quit and three other senior staff on Monday said they would resign, Interfax reported.
 Badri Patarkatsishvili, the most recent TV6 general director and widely believed to be Berezov sky's right-hand man, was appointed chairman, replacing Igor Shabdurasulov.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Nuclear Plan On Track
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The government approved a treaty to turn plutonium from nuclear weapons into civilian reactor fuel on Friday. But it said it needed billions of dollars from Washington and other Western partners to make the swords-into-ploughshares program a reality. 
 Last summer, Russia and the U.S. signed a memorandum to each turn 34 tons of weapons plutonium into reactor fuel over 25 years. Russia said the agreement foresees large-scale international funding, including the U.S. paying at least $200 million toward building plants to store and salvage the plutonium. 
 
 
Drug Security Threat
 

MOSCOW (AP) - A think tank warned Friday that drug use was spreading to children as young as 6 years old and increasing in the armed services, posing a serious national security threat. 
 In a lengthy report published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy said that "drug use has turned once and for all into a mass, all-national problem that directly threatens the state." 
 According to Interior Ministry statistics, the number of drug seizures grew 3.5 times between 1990 and 1999, reaching almost 60 metric tons in 1999. The number of registered drug users has increased almost 400 percent since 1990 to reach 450,000 in 2000. 
 More than 60 percent of drug addicts in Russia are 16 to 30 years old, and almost 20 percent of them are of school age, the report said. 
 
 
Satellites Back
 

MOSCOW (AP) - The military has restored full control over four satellites after a fire in a ground command center last week temporarily cut communications, a Defense Ministry spokesman said Monday. 
 Anatoly Perminov, head of the military's Space Forces, was quoted on Thursday, the day of the fire, as saying contact with the satellites had been restored quickly.
 But on Friday the independent Military News Agency quoted a Space Forces official as saying the satellites could not be controlled from the ground, though information could be received from them. 
 On Monday, a Defense Ministry spokesman said full communications and control had been restored. 
 
 
Prosecutors Off Hook
 

MOSCOW (AP) - Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov has closed corruption cases against two of his predecessors, a spokesperson said Friday. 
 Leonid Troshin said that he had not been informed why the cases had been closed against Alexei Ilyu shenko, who served as prosecutor general from February 1994 until October 1995, and Yury Skuratov, who held the post from October 1995 until February 1999. 
 Ilyushenko was accused of bribe-taking and abuse of office and jailed in February 1996 pending investigation. He was freed two years later, and was diagnosed with tuberculosis contracted in jail. 
 Skuratov initiated a corruption investigation into former President Bo ris Yeltsin's inner circle. He was forced out of office after television broadcast a video of a man who resembled the prosecutor cavorting with two prostitutes. 
 The investigation based on that incident was closed in August, but the prosecutor had continued to pursue charges of abuse of office based on Skuratov's acceptance of 14 tailored Italian suits allegedly paid for by a Kremlin contractor. That case has now been closed, Troshin said. 



TITLE: Charity Provides Small Comfort
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The parents of 32 soldiers killed in Chechnya were called together Friday so that a charity fund could give them 10,000 rubles ($345), but they found it difficult to express any gratitude.
 &quot;I would prefer these donations to be brought to my home,&quot; said Svetlana Zosimenko, whose son Mikhail, 24, was killed in December 1999 near Argun. &quot;Just as you start finding a little peace of mind, they bring us out for those actions, and they are very disturbing.&quot;
 The <i>Liniya Zhizni, </i>or Life Line, charity fund, which organized the event with the help of City Hall, gave the parents the cash in envelopes, along with flowers and boxes of chocolates.
 Of about 3,000 soldiers and officers officially recorded as killed in Chechnya and Dagestan since August 1999, 140 were drafted from Moscow and the Moscow region, the fund said. Their relatives are brought together from time to time, in ad hoc groups, to receive donations from charity funds or the city government, said Boris Shevtsov, a City Hall official.
 &quot;We understand that no words or actions could make up for the parents' losses, but we think that society must demonstrate its respect and empathy to relatives of the victims,&quot; said Tatyana Vasilyeva, another city official.
 Most of the parents who gathered Friday in a city administration building were crying. Sitting around a big table, some pressed flowers to their faces to hide the tears. Some clenched their fists and gritted their teeth. All found it difficult to speak.
 Several of the mothers said their sons went to war to earn money, either as contract soldiers or after volunteering for officers training as conscripts.
 &quot;He wanted to earn some money for us because I am disabled and I have lost all my close relatives including my husband,&quot; said Olga Mikhailova, whose son Andrei, 18, was killed last December while serving at a checkpoint between Chechnya and Dagestan. 
 &quot;After his death, I received 125,000 rubles in insurance and they pay me a pension for him, 1,700 rubles.
 &quot;But all I want is him alive,&quot; Mikhailova said.
 Yelena Podgorodnikova's son Nikolai, 18, was killed Aug. 18 last year. He was a sapper, and died of wounds after a land mine exploded near him. 
 Zosimenko agreed: &quot;I don't know what our children died for there. My son participated in the first war and he had never fully recovered from it and found it hard to live in peace. He told me the young boys were dying there, while he knew what needed to be done [to stay out of danger].
 &quot;But I still wonder - why my son, who was a scout-sniper, was sent into a plain attack, like infantry, with other scouts? I saw a film made by RTR about that attack as told by its survivors and I understand they were used unprofessionally. In the month he died, only 45 people survived out of his battalion of more than 300 people.&quot;
 The Liniya Zhizni fund was created in 1997 with the participation of the Fuel Ministry, the Union of War Veterans and the state Military Insurance Company. The fund's supervisory council includes Gazprom and most of the major oil companies, which make regular contributions to the fund.
 According to a fund press release, it has donated more than 50 million rubles. Most of the money has gone to the families of servicemen killed in armed conflicts and to wounded and handicapped soldiers being treated in hospitals.

TITLE: Aviation Firms Told To Link Up
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The country's hundreds of aviation companies will be consolidated into a half dozen holding companies by 2004 in a bid to transform the stagnant industry into a mean and lean competitor to U.S. and European rivals, the government has announced.
 The plan, adopted by the government Friday, puts a new spin on a years-long industry restructuring by proposing to clump civil and military aircraft makers together.
 By setting a three-year deadline, the government has shown the urgency with which it feels the called-for revamp is needed. Its 2004 deadline is well ahead of the 2010 deadline that the Russian Aviation and Space Agency and the Industry, Science and Technology Ministry suggested when proposing the revamp to the government on Friday.
 Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov told reporters after the government meeting that Russia's industry has to consolidate its hundreds of aviation companies into a handful of aviation powerhouses in order for them to compete with the likes of Boeing and Lockheed Martin of the United States, and the maker of the Airbus, the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co.
 &quot;There's only three of them in the world, and there are 316 in Russia,&quot; Klebanov said.
 This number will be whittled down to six to seven holding companies, of which one or two will make aircraft. Only three civil aviation plants will remain - factories in Voronezh, Ulya novsk and Kazan that produce Ilyushin and Tupolev planes. The civil aviation plants, in turn, are to be saddled with the country's two military giants, the producers of Sukhoi and MiG fighter jets and helicopters.
 Under the plan, one holding company will combine 10 enterprises including the Tupolev aviation complex, MiG Russian Aircraft Corp., helicopter designer Kamov, Aviastar in Ulya novsk, Aviakor in Samara and Progress in Primorye.
 A second holding to be formed will unite 15 companies including MiG rival Sukhoi, the Yakovlev design bureau, the Ilyu shin aviation complex, and the Mil, Ros vertol, Kazan and Ulan-Ude helicopter plants. A third will bring together the country's 33 engine producers.
 Klebanov said the government also wants to set up 10 to 13 more holdings to lump together other aviation companies such as those dealing in weapons and avionics.
 The deputy prime minister did not rule out that a merger between the makers of the Su and MiG jets might take place, a proposal that has been floated by the government in the past and fiercely opposed by both military giants.
 Klebanov said the defense industry would launch the production of a fifth generation fighter by 2010. The government will discuss a draft for reforming the entire military industrial complex next month, he said.
 A federal audit last year found that the government maintained a controlling stake in only seven companies, while it had completely lost control of 94.
 The government said Friday that at least a third of the aviation companies is state-owned, while another third is partly state-owned. The state has no stakes in the rest.
 The government is working to increase its ownership in the companies by writing off their debts.
 The Russian Aviation and Space Agency estimates that endeavor will cost the government 222 billion rubles ($7.7 billion), of which 14 percent will come from the federal budget.
 Some of the industry's players welcomed the government's bid to prop up their sagging profits. The industry, which accounted for up to a quarter of all global production in Soviet times, only managed to roll out nine civil aircraft and 21 military planes in 1999, according to the Audit Chamber. All 21 military planes were sold abroad. By comparison, the Soviet Union built about 450 civil and 1,000 military aircraft during its glory days, the chamber said.
 &quot;The country cannot leave this stew [the aviation industry] as it is, and a restructuring should have been done five years ago,&quot; agreed Konstantin Ma ki yenko, deputy head of the Center of Analysis of Strategy and Technology.
 However, Makiyenko expressed skepticism about the plan.
 &quot;I have not seen a single positive example of the government restructuring the sector,&quot; he said.
 &quot;Unification should come from the enterprises themselves and not be imposed from above.&quot;
 And that is exactly what has been happening in some aviation companies. As they scramble to survive, some have been revamping operations, diversifying products and seeking partnerships with other players.
 Fighter producer MiG, for example, has completed a restructuring that brought design, production, rollout and servicing under one roof. Sukhoi is carrying out a similar revamp. Both companies have for several years been pushing civil aviation programs with modest success.

TITLE: Aeroflot Says Technicians' Strike Is Illegal
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A bitter labor dispute is casting a pall over the nation's flagship carrier just as the lucrative summer vacation season is heating up.
 A one-hour strike by 300 Aeroflot technicians on Sunday sparked the ire of airline management, who vowed to sue the technicians' union over the action.
 &quot;We will sue,&quot; Aeroflot spokesperson Alexander Lopukhin said on Monday.
 &quot;The strike violated laws regulating labor conflicts. ... Under Russian law, airline employees are not allowed to strike at all,&quot; he said. &quot;We are now calculating the damages we are going to seek. It's not big, but it's something.&quot; 
 The decision to take legal action came just hours after news agencies reported that the head of the technicians' union, Viktor Kleshchenkov, had threatened to call a full strike beginning May 25 if the union's demands for higher pay and better working conditions were not met.
 When reached by telephone, Kleshchenkov said that a final decision would be announced Wednesday.
 &quot;We will hold a press conference Wednesday and announce our decision to strike again or not,&quot; said Kleshchenkov.
 Hundreds of Aeroflot flight attendants are currently on &quot;sick leave&quot; to protest a new contract system that they say cuts their wages.
 Mamonov said his union warned management in March that it, too, was prepared to strike if its demands were not met, but no progress had been made.
 Aeroflot officials say the whole problem is due to a misunderstanding - instead of slashing salaries, as the unions fear, the new contract system actually raises salaries 32 percent.
 &quot;We started [the contract system] with the pilots, and there was a misunderstanding at first, but now they are happy,&quot; said Lopukhin. &quot;Gradually we will transfer all our services to the same system. People just don't understand and we are trying to explain it to them,&quot; he said.
 According to sources within the company, Aeroflot pilots earn 80,000-100,000 rubles ($2,700-$3,450) a month, while flight attendants get on average $500 and technicians $250.
 The technicians are asking for a 50 percent pay raise and the flight attendants complain that they'll be forced to work longer hours under the system. 
 The Union of Flight Attendants recently launched a Web site (www.steward.narod.ru) to air its complaints and warn passengers of a decline in flight safety.
 &quot;If you see an air hostess with a melancholic face and bags under her eyes, a stained uniform and ladders on her tights, you should know that she simply doesn't have enough sleep due to a maddening race through the time zones. She sometimes works up to 18 hours, she gets to Sheremetyevo by public transport and she simply does not have enough money for quality cosmetics, hairdressers or dry-cleaners,&quot; reads a message posted on the union's site.

TITLE: No Russian Firms Among World's Top 500
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - Surgutneftegaz has replaced rival LUKoil as Russia's largest company by market capitalization, but it is still 65 times smaller than U.S. behemoth General Electric, according to the Financial Times' new rankings of the world's top companies.
 No Russian company cracked the annual global FT500, but five - Surgutneftegaz, LUKoil, Gazprom, Yukos and Unified Energy Systems - made the top 500 in Europe and 26 counted among the top 100 for Eastern Europe, up from four and 20, respectively.
 The rankings show that although 2000 was not the most successful year for the Russian economy since the collapse of the USSR, Russian companies to a small degree strengthened their positions in the ratings. LUKoil, however, lost its status as the largest company in Eastern Europe and is now third, behind Polish telecoms giant TPSA and Surgutneftegaz. 
 LUKoil went from 191st place for all of Europe last year to 231st place in 2001, while Surgutneftegaz broke in for the first time at 214th place with a market cap of $7.4 billion. 
 In the ratings for Eastern Europe, eight new Russian companies appeared and the sectoral representation of Russian companies became noticeably more diverse. In 2000, Russian metal companies were represented by Norilsk Nickel alone. Now Severstal has been added to the list at 47th. In the automotive sector, aside from Gorky automotive factory (GAZ), the regional car maker KamAZ has been added. Nizhnekamsk nefte khim is the first Russian company in its sector to appear on the list, and Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), which successfully issued American Depositary Receipts last year, appeared at 10th place, surpassing rival Vimpelkom at 28th place. The other new faces are Slavneft-Megionneftegaz (No. 66), Nizhnekamsk neftekhim (No. 68), Pur neftegaz (No. 69), Sakhalinmor nefte gaz (No. 70), and Lenenergo (No. 85). 
 The success of MTS should be noted. It issued shares in 2000 and immediately joined the top 10. Two companies, Sun Interbrew and Tyumen Oil Company, were dropped from the list.
 For the second straight year, however, Poland, led by TPSA, had more companies on the Eastern Europe list than Russia. While 26 Russian companies were represented (20 in 2000), 30 Polish companies made it, down from 32 last year.
 Because the Financial Times traditionally rates the companies according to market value, a company's position on the list is based not only on its commercial success, but also on its ability to attract investors. As a result, a giant like Russian Aluminum has never appeared on the list since it is not a public company. 
 Russia did not excel on account of its traditionally undeveloped corporate culture. Yukos and MTS appeared on the lists of leading companies due to their improved transparency and more friendly relations with minority shareholders.
 Russia is able to produce oil, smelt steel and make trucks. But Russian business does not yet have an understanding of what can be reaped from active work on the stock market. Many Russian companies are now convinced it is more profitable to issue bonds than shares, given that issuing bonds does not obligate companies to share power with shareholders.
 But that is the domestic market. As for the international market, isolation and the concentration of power in a single hand does not help companies to join the list of leaders. The FT500 ratings for the world's largest companies testify to this. Not a single Russian company is represented on the list. 
 The interrelation between the old and new economy, which for the past two years has determined the distribution of corporate power in the United States and Europe, has yet to have an impact on Central and Eastern Europe. In the ratings of the top 100 biggest players in the region, as in the past, the top positions are held by formerly state-owned companies, the majority of which have preserved their monopoly positions in their markets.
 But that list of big players is no longer as homogenous. Success is determined not by a company's categorization in the new or real economy, but by its readiness to reform. The companies moving forward are those which are actively privatizing and reforming their corporate management. TPSA, for example, moved from second to first place, despite the general declining interest in telecommunications companies. The market value of TPSA rose from $9.45 billion in 1999 to $9.85 billion in 2000, largely because French Telecom bought a large stake of TPSA in 2000.

TITLE: CB Taking Heat Over Sberbank Emission
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A controversial share emission by Sberbank has diluted minority shareholders' stakes by 36 percent and allowed the Central Bank to increase its ownership by 1.2 percent to 63 percent of voting stock.
 In the past, the Central Bank has promised to keep the size of its stake in Sberbank unchanged, and analysts doubt whether it could have done this without access to insider information - the size and price of the bids of other buyers in the placement.
 Sberbank placed a total of some 5 million shares at $36 per share Apr. 25, citing the need to recapitalize the bank as an excuse for a 36 percent dilution of the existing shareholders who did not participate in the subscription.
 At that price, any increase of the government's stake in Sberbank could be treated as acquisition of assets below the market value involving the use of insider information, according to Andrei Iva nov, a banking analyst with Troika Dialog.
 A group of foreign shareholders, led by Hermitage Capital Management managing director Bill Browder, has been pressuring Sberbank and now intends to force its registrar to disclose the full shareholder list.
 &quot;We are going to carry on with our legal action to invalidate the share issuance,&quot; Browder said.
 Under Article 8 of the law on the securities market, the registrar should disclose the ownership details upon request of a shareholder who owns at least 1 percent in the company.
 &quot;We will use our right immediately,&quot; said Browder.
 On May 24 and May 30, courts will hear cases filed by Dalnyaya Step, a company closely connected to Hermitage, against Sberbank's advisory board and the Central Bank, which authorized and registered the new share issuance.
 The shareholder list could be made available at the annual shareholder meeting of Sberbank, but so far this meeting has not been called.
 Sberbank's press service failed to disclose the date of the annual meeting Friday, saying such information was not available.
 &quot;The news that Sberbank released Friday is more like no news at all,&quot; said Abramov. &quot;Significant pieces of information were withheld.&quot;
 Recently, the stock market has been ripe with rumors that a large portion of the newly issued shares would end up in the hands of one of Russia's oligarchs - who could thus gain a major influence on the largest savings bank in the country.
 &quot;Free float in Sberbank will become smaller,&quot; Ivanov said. &quot;What we heard today is a bit of a negative piece of news.&quot;
 Sberbank's share price had risen 43 percent since the start of the year to $36 per share Friday, but analysts said that the way the recent share issuance was handled reinforces corporate governance risks and undermines credibility in the management practices of the bank.
 &quot;There is no guarantee this will not happen again in the future,&quot; said Andrei Abramov, analyst with NIKoil brokerage. &quot;Sberbank is very untransparent.&quot;

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Oil Exports Up 14%
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Russian crude exports in the first quarter jumped 14 percent over the same period last year to 35.7 million tons, Interfax reported a Customs Committee official as saying Monday.
 The exports generated a total revenue of $5.76 billion for oil companies in the first quarter, up 5 percent year-on-year.
 Non-CIS countries accounted for most of the exports, buying up 33.4 million tons for $5.4 billion. Italy was the biggest customer with 5.4 million tons, followed by Germany (4.88 million tons) and Poland (4.79 million tons). 
 Oil exports in March were 12.34 million tons worth $1.812 million, of which 11.48 million tons ($1.679 billion) went outside the CIS and 859,100 tons to the CIS, the news agency reported.
 
 
Gas Exports Fall
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Russia's natural gas exports in the first three months of the year 2001 dropped 18 percent over the same period last year to 48.674 billion cubic meters, Interfax quoted a Customs Committee source as saying Monday.
 But while exports were down, revenues rose 16 percent year-on-year to $5.3 billion. 
 Three quarters of the total went to non-CIS countries.
 The largest buyers were Ukraine (12 billion cubic meters), Germany (8.3 billion cubic meters) and Italy (5.7 billion). 
 Russia exported 14.8 billion cubic meters for $1.604 billion in March, of which 3.8 billion cubic meters went to CIS nations for $188.28 million and 11 billion cubic meters for $1.416 billion went to other countries. 
 Last year Russia exported a total of 176.8 billion cubic meters of natural gas for $16.1 billion.
 
 
Crude Praise
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez thanked Russia for pledging support for high oil prices at a press conference with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday. 
 "All members of OPEC thank Russia for taking a position that supports just oil prices," Chavez said. "Our cooperation is not just useful but absolutely essential, we can't allow ourselves to let oil prices go down." 
 Chavez, elected on a leftist populist platform, has moved his country away from a traditional alliance with the United States, Venezuela's biggest oil export market, towards a broader range of ties with nations like Cuba, China and Russia.
 
 
$210M Tanker Loan
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The Far East's Primorye Shipping Co. has secured a $210 million loan from two European banks, the Norwegian Christiania Bank and the Dutch Fortis Bank, for the construction of two tankers with a deadweight of 108,000 tons each, Prime-Tass reported. 
 Primorye Shipping head Alexander Kirilichev said that the deal had been signed in London on Monday.
 The tankers will be built at the Brodosplit shipyards in Croatia. 
 Kirilichev said that the negotiations for a loan for a third tanker were ongoing and a deal could be reached this summer.
 
 
'Oil at $17 in 2002'
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The main part of Russia's draft budget for 2002 predicts an average for annual oil prices at $17 per barrel, GDP growth at 3.5 percent to 4 percent and inflation at around 12 percent, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref was quoted by news agencies as announcing on Monday. 
 Gref said that his ministry has three different scenarios as to how the economy will develop in 2002, with the main part of the draft budget's numbers reflecting the least optimistic forecast for oil prices. 
 If the price of Urals crude rises above $17 then all additional revenue will go to the stabilization fund, which is one half of the new two-part budget to be formed from state revenues that depend on favorable global economic factors. 
 Gref further declined to predict the exchange rate of the ruble against the dollar for 2002, but he noted that it would correspond to the annual rate of inflation. 



TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Cellular Glitch
 

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp has become the latest victim of cellphone software glitches, but analysts said on Monday the cost of recalling its faulty handsets would be limited and the firm's brand name should help it bounce back.
 Japan's dominant mobile-phone service provider, NTT DoCoMo Inc, said on Friday it had suspended sales of Sony's latest handsets featuring an advanced version of its popular "i-mode" Internet access service due to a software fault.
 DoCoMo said the glitch could affect a database downloaded into the Sony phone when a user is upgrading an application that accesses the Internet and employs Java, a versatile software technology that allows for enhanced functions.
 About 420,000 of the Sony phone model "SO503i" have been sold since its launch on March 9 this year, and will be replaced if customers wish, DoCoMo said.
 
 
Setting a Date
 

OSLO, Norway (AP) - The Norwegian government set June 18 as the target date for listing the state-owned oil company Statoil ASA on the Oslo and New York stock exchanges after it offers up to 20 percent of the concern's shares to private investors.
 The planned date was announced Monday just after Statoil reported strong profits for the first three months of this year, its last quarter as an entirely government-owned company.
 The ministry of oil and energy said an offering of shares would run from May 31 through June 15 for private investors and from May 29 through June 15 for institutions. A final price will be set at the end of the period.
 
 
Expensive Error
 

DUBLIN (Reuters) - A Sudanese doctor working at an Irish hospital says he has more than 40 million Irish pounds ($44.4 million) in his account - and is having trouble getting rid of it.
 Dr. Mutasim Mohamed, a 35-year-old immigrant from one of the world's poorest countries, told the Irish Times his account with the AIB International Banking Services branch in Bantry, southwestern Ireland, was wrongly credited months ago.
 He informed the bank of the error, but instead of deleting the funds, the bank continued to send him statements confirming his millionaire status.
 "Let them keep their millions and leave me alone to get on with my studies," said Mohamed, who arrived in November to work at Bantry general hospital, but is on leave to study for exams.
 
 
Lufthansa Talks Pay
 

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - With a strike looming at the start of the summer tourist season, Lufthansa and its pilots resumed talks over pay but made no quick progress.
 Talks were rekindled Sunday, but Georg Fongern, a spokesperson for the Vereinigung Cockpit union, said on Monday that no "tangible result" had emerged from the latest negotiations.
 The union said Monday that talks had restarted. But Lufthansa spokes person Katrin Haase declined to comment, saying the airline would release no details about the highly sensitive talks.
 Striking pilots grounded more than 900 of 1,100 scheduled flights last Thursday, affecting tens of thousands of passengers and forcing Lufthansa to rebook many on other airlines and trains. Another 90 flights were scrubbed Friday. 



TITLE: Buy and Sell: Existential Problems for Businesses
TEXT: TO buy or not to buy, that is the question - at least, the unfamiliar question facing Russian businesses today.
 As the first private enterprises celebrate their 10th anniversaries, entrepreneurs are tired, bored or dead. So the idea of selling those businesses still going has arisen.
 However, the business of selling a business is pretty new in Russia. After a decade of the &quot;free economy,&quot; we have lots of business, but no experience of how they change hands. What do you sell? Office space? Market share? Or any of a number of intangible assets?
 The top manager of a St. Petersburg factory said that he and his team were planning to extend their business, and received a proposal to purchase a controlling stake in a factory located in the southern Urals. The price proposed was around $16 million. &quot;But what did they want to sell us?&quot; he asked. &quot;Maybe their equipment, which is worth much less than the asking price, or the brand, which is also worth much less, or an established business, which they did not have at all.&quot; 
 By selling an enterprise, I do not mean a hostile takeover. A number of freshly privatized enterprises have changed holders pretty fast this way.
 But a <i>privatized </i>enterprise is a factory, the most appetizing parts of which are real estate and equipment, and contacts with suppliers and clients that have been built up over the decades. A 10-year-old business, on the other hand, is something constructed step by step from almost nothing.
 Take Petrovsky Bank, whose &quot;merger&quot; with the Moscow-based MDM Bank was announced last month. It was clearly more of a purchase than a merger/alliance.
 The partners are unequal: Apart from its financial services, the MDM empire includes mining and other industrial facilities, and it is connected to oligarch Roman Abramovich; Petrovsky (a controlling stake in which must be worth several million dollars) is a local bank.
 Its greatest asset, which according to the official version was what attracted MDM, is its retail operation. In St. Petersburg, Petrovsky is the leader in serving private clients, especially pensioners. 
 If the Petrovsky-MDM deal works out, it is still unclear exactly what the Muscovites will get. Will it be a network of affiliated offices, or the Petrovsky name, or its retail know-how? Or will it be Petrovsky's &quot;intangible&quot; assets, like connections, friendships, influence - which are, after all, what you're probably really buying when you purchase a Russian business.
 
 <i>Anna Shcherbakova is St. Petersburg Bureau chief for Vedomosti newspaper. </i>

TITLE: Slowing the Brain Drain
TEXT: SINCE the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West has been rightly concerned about the fate of Russia's vast stockpile of nuclear weapons, materials and expertise. Specifically, the West worried that the disintegration of the Russian economy would make nuclear scientists and experts vulnerable to temptation by rogue states seeking the expertise and material necessary to develop their own nuclear weapons and missiles.
 To avert or manage this threat, Western programs were begun to provide financial support and alternative employment for the skilled experts and technicians needed to maintain Russia's nuclear industries and weapons. These efforts have been largely successful in engaging portions of Russian weapons experts, but the risk of brain drain remains.
 While few have actually fled their country or tried to profit by stealing fissionable material, fewer still are being attracted into the field. The net result poses a new danger for Russia: that there will soon be no one left with the requisite skills needed to maintain the safety and security of its nuclear materials.
 A new study shows this to be especially true among those living in what were once known as the &quot;secret cities.&quot; In these isolated communities, the economic strain has been so severe that it's nearly impossible to attract new scientists and experts to fill the necessary positions.
 A recent survey of five Russian nuclear cities and three Russian missile enterprises makes the reasons clear enough. The results in the nuclear cities show that more than 62 percent of employees earn less than $50 per month; 89 percent of experts report a decline in living conditions since 1992.
 It wasn't always this way. After World War II, the Soviet Union applied enormous effort to the development of its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, which were viewed at the time - and still today - as a key component of its political and military status. Tens, if not hundreds, of enterprises were built, making it possible for Moscow to achieve a rough nuclear parity with the United States by the early 1970s, although at the price of significant overtaxing of the nation's resources.
 During the 1940s and 1950s, the &quot;closed&quot; nuclear cities were developed far away from major cities and were almost totally isolated. It was possible to visit or relocate there only with specially issued passes, and the residents of the cities had to get official permission to leave these sites. These cities were not shown on maps, had no names, and were referred to by the names of the nearest administrative centers plus a postal code.
 As compensation for their remote location, the populations of the closed cities enjoyed significant privileges. A much better selection of foods and consumer goods was available than around the country as a whole, and at reasonable prices. Workers received higher pay and generally received free housing.
 The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union put an end to this relatively comfortable existence. A sharp reduction in government funding substantially reduced the standard of living in the nuclear and missile cities.
 Despite Western assistance programs, nuclear experts regularly went months or longer without receiving any pay. Work orders declined, job satisfaction decreased and the relative benefits that city residents once enjoyed all but vanished without any real prospect for finding new jobs in their current locations.
 These circumstances create two potential security concerns. First, they give rise to fears that these highly trained and now disenfranchised workers might be tempted or even compelled to sell whatever is close at hand - or themselves - simply in order to make ends meet. Despite this potential danger, there has been only one known incident: In 1992 a large group of missile experts from the missile city of Miass tried to leave the country. At the last minute, they were removed from an airplane setting out for Pyongyang, North Korea, from the Mos cow's international airport.
 The threat of the unauthorized use of nuclear materials attracted most of the attention during the '90s, and there were several recorded cases of theft, which led to a significant but arguably underfunded effort to improve the security of, and accounting for, nuclear materials throughout the former Soviet Union.
 The second concern is that Russia's economic and strategic hard times are crippling its ability to maintain the human and technical capabilities necessary to keep up its modern nuclear arsenal and its nuclear power stations. Just as the United States is facing potential problems as its nuclear work force ages - and fewer top experts are interested in entering the field - Russia is already facing a notable degradation in the skills of its nuclear experts.
 Without the needed investment in facilities, education and living standards, Russia might face serious problems with the safety and reliability of its nuclear arsenal and nuclear power plants in the years ahead. And, of course, this has serious implications for Russia's perceived security and for international strategic stability generally.
 The risk that a brain drain could also lead to additional global proliferation sparked early attention from the United States and its international partners. In 1991 and 1992, Western countries moved to engage and employ the elite of the ex-Soviet nuclear, chemical, biological weapon and ballistic missile complex through the International Science and Technology Centers, which were described at the time as technical &quot;dating services&quot; between Western government grants and ex-Soviet experts. The expectation was that the Russian economy would develop to the point where it could provide alternative employment for these specialists.
 This expectation, however, has proved very wrong, and almost a decade later the economy is still unable to employ adequately this vast network of experts. For its own security, it is critical that West understand the changes going on in the Russian military complex and develop effective responses to deal with the serious challenges posed by those developments.
 
 <i>Valentin Tikhonov is a Moscow-based sociologist and author of &quot;Russia's Nuclear and Missile Complex: The Human Factor in Proliferation&quot; for the Carnegie Non-Proliferation Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He contributed this comment to the Global Beat Syndicate. </i>

TITLE: Push for an Even Better Visa System
TEXT: WORD from the Foreign Ministry that - finally! - Western tourists visiting St. Petersburg for less than 72 hours will be able to get their visas at the border starting this summer is welcome indeed. By all rights, tourism should be the city's major cash cow and it has been more than frustrating to watch the Moscow bureaucracy stubbornly block efforts to develop this sector. 
 For years, Moscow has placed inane objections such as the potential lost revenue to Foreign Ministry consulates and a seemingly obsessive insistence on absolute visa parity with other countries ahead of our city's vital interests. The ministry's long-overdue concession may signal that it finally has its priorities straight.
 However, in view of the crucial importance of tourism for St. Petersburg's development, it would be a serious mistake for municipal authorities to sit back and watch how the Foreign Ministry's plan plays out. Already, the ministry is indicating its weak commitment to making the new system work and to wringing the maximum benefits from it. 
 City authorities must realize that if the plan falls through, it will do immense harm to our reputation and serve as a grave setback to St. Petersburg tourism. And the city also cannot assume that the Foreign Ministry will inconvenience itself in any way for our benefit.
 Therefore, the city must engage the ministry now. For a start, the 72-hour limit is a needless restriction that should be increased to at least five days. A week would be better still. 
 Moreover, the city should insist that Moscow commit itself to the program for at least three years. Obviously, Western cruise and ferry operators will not be encouraged by statements such as those by local Foreign Ministry representative Alexander Vakhrushev, who emphasized that &quot;this is an experiment&quot; and &quot;the duration of the experiment will depend on how everything goes.&quot;
 Further, the city should get the ministry to drop the needless requirement that tourists contact a tour operator at least four days in advance in order to get on a list for a visa. Other countries offering this service for tourists get by just fine without such needless bureaucracy, and Russia can as well.
 Finally, the city must take implementation into its own hands. If extra funding is required to set up visa desks or to train border agents, the city should be prepared to provide it. 
 If we get an all-out effort from City Hall, this just might work out. Despite the Foreign Ministry.

TITLE: Berezovsky as Human Rights Champion?
TEXT: LAST Friday I found myself under unheard-of psychological pressure. All day journalists were calling me and demanding that I get on the Web site of the newspaper Stringer and read the transcripts of alleged telephone conversations involving the secretary of the head of President Vla di mir Putin's administration, Alexander Vo lo shin, and Vo loshin himself. Supposedly recorded between March 2 and 7, the transcripts include calls from numerous well-known political figures.
 Then when I got home that evening, my wife stuffed the May issue of the paper in my hand and made it perfectly clear that she wasn't going to let me go to bed until I had read the transcripts. I realized that resistance was futile and settled down to read the paper, whose editorial board is headed by the chief body guard of former President Boris Yeltsin, Alexander Korzhakov.
 The transcripts truly are entertaining reading, but what really caught my eye was a curious article called &quot;The Main PR Campaigns in the Central Press for the Month of March.&quot; It presented the results of research conducted by some group called Lobbynet, which monitored the money earned from publishing semi-hidden political advertisements (that is, articles that are paid for as advertising, but which appear to the reader as ordinary news) by a representative selection of nine state, oligarch-controlled and independent newspapers. 
 According to Lobbynet, the press earned just less than $2 million in March publishing articles on topics ranging from the gubernatorial elections in Tula, the proposed law to allow the import and reprocessing of nuclear waste and the conflict between Sidanko and the Alliance oil group. By far the biggest money-earner was Komsomolskaya Pravda ($560,000), with Nezavisimaya Gazeta pulling up the rear (just $80,000). 
 On the very same day that I discovered Stringer, there was a press conference at the Sla vyan skaya Hotel devoted to the initial work of the International Foundation for Civil Liberties. Readers may recall that this foundation was created last December by Boris Berezovsky, the originator of the Kremlin's campaign against Vladimir Gusinsky's NTV. 
 Obviously, journalists were interested in learning whether the press-conference participants were worried about being connected to Berezovsky's money. According to Kommersant (owned by Berezovsky), Valery Abramkin, the respected head of the Center for Penal Reform, stated that Yelena Bonner (widow of Andrei Sakharov) &quot;was the first to take money from Berezovsky and she had no such doubts.&quot; In fact, however, Bonner did have doubts and some very serious ones, as did some of the other directors of the Sakharov Center and Museum. Abramkin either didn't know about this or has forgotten.
 In short, Berezovsky, the king of the bluff, lost no time in using the good names of Bonner, Abramkin and the head of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, Alexei Simonov. No doubt, he will continue using them to catch other innocents both in Russia and abroad in his nets. And no one is going to remember the activists' efforts &quot;to distance themselves.&quot;
 Personally, I'll be interested to see how much the budgets for various PR campaigns in our newspapers increases once Berezovsky starts promoting his party in earnest. I'll keep reading Korzhakov's Stringer, God forgive me.
 
 <i>Alexei Pankin is editor of Sreda, a magazine for media professionals (www.internews.ru/sreda). </i>

TITLE: U.S. Defense Must Get Smarter
TEXT: FOR a nation intoxicated by the seemingly effortless precision of smart bombs during the Persian Gulf War, the mediocre results of the latest strikes against Iraqi air defense sites are extremely disappointing. Pentagon officials indicated that new satellite-guided bombs were primarily to blame for the failure to damage more than about 40 percent of their targets. 
 Initial reports indicated that computer software might be the cause of the misses, while later reports stated that high winds in the target area were the reason. The first report is rather more believable, given that an analogous software problem caused difficulties with a NASA spacecraft attempting to land on Mars. But a glide bomb is far more likely to be affected by heavy winds than a conventional bomb, and so this explanation might well be the root cause. 
 Plausible as the explanations may be, they are descriptions only of a symptom. They do not address four major problems, which together pose a major threat for the United States' ability to defend itself. 
 Before addressing them, it might be well to examine the ordnance used against Iraq: the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) launched by Navy Boeing (formerly McDonnell Douglas) F/A-18 Hornet fighters. Raytheon is the prime contractor for this glide weapon, which uses a combination of inertial guidance and global positioning system satellite information for accuracy. 
 The JSOW's ability to glide to the target allows the launch aircraft to stand off at a distance of 27 to 65 kilometers from the target. The JSOW is an excellent weapon, one that will continue to be developed over the next decade. 
 This brings us to the first two of the four major problems. Item one: The experience of the Gulf War - with its low United Nations-force casualties and with a minimum of casualties inflicted on the Iraqi civilian population - has brought a demand for bloodless victories. To achieve those, precision guided munitions are to be used in relatively small numbers against key targets. 
 This admirable aim can be achieved only by increasing dependency upon satellites for navigation, communication and even guidance. 
 Item two is the failure to provide enough money for defense at a time when weapons systems are becoming ever more expensive. Unfortunately, neither the American public nor Congress has been convinced of the level of spending required to train, equip and maintain forces able to achieve the socially laudable goal of winning while causing a minimum number of casualties. 
 The third major problem is that the United States is relying ever more on sophisticated weapons, using space navigation and intelligence systems. These systems are used to make ever-smaller forces potent enough to carry out national policy. 
 Yet the United States is not providing a means to prevent massive disruption of those systems by a determined enemy. The attack could come at an equally sophisticated level from Russia or China, using anti-satellite missiles, or it could come in the relatively primitive form - a nuclear weapon exploded in space to destroy our satellite systems. Such a massive disruption would effectively neuter the effectiveness of the small fleet of bombers and negate the capability of most of the new precision-guided munitions. We would be left without the means to enforce national policy. 
 Finally, the fourth problem that must be addressed is the validity of a defense posture that seeks to assure potential enemies that we will only use weapons that will hurt them no more than is absolutely necessary. In the centuries that the Royal Navy guarded the British Empire, it was not navy policy to avoid hurting people in carrying out policy. On the contrary, recalcitrant nations soon learned that provoking John Bull quickly resulted in a thrashing by the closest warship. 
 The Royal Navy was also there to protect British commerce; it should be noted here that there is now more commercial than military investment in space and that this commercial wealth must also be defended. 
 Perhaps it is time to create a doctrine that would enable the United States to decide that if it is to defend itself, it must be in command of space - and be willing to pay the price to obtain and maintain that command. Then, and only then, will good bombs no longer go bad.
 
 <i>Walter Boyne, a retired Air Force bomber pilot, is former director of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. He contributed this comment to Newsday. Pavel Felgenhauer will be back next week. </i>

TITLE: At 60, Bob Dylan Has Stood the Test of Time
TEXT: BOB Dylan turns 60 on May 24. It's been almost 40 years since Joan Baez took him on stage with her at the Newport Folk Festival, where he appalled just about everyone with his stridently unpretty singing voice and his raucous, edgy lyrics. He was, at least in theory, a folk singer. But Bob Dylan wasn't interested in wistful melancholy or febrile lament. He sang about poverty and desperation; he sang about love's limitations in a voice hoarse with feeling.
 In the 1960s, like millions of other white, middle-class teenagers, I used to jump around in my suburban bedroom, sing-shouting the lyrics to &quot;Positively Fourth Street&quot; and &quot;Subterranean Homesick Blues.&quot; Bob Dylan and I were ticked off about the same things - America's vanity and hypocrisy - and in love with the same things - anarchic freedom, the strange beauty of the underlife, the whole haunted shimmer of a vast and dangerous world.
 I was not a particularly bookish child. I loved Bob Dylan back when names like Flaubert, Dostoyevsky and Woolf were mere rumors to me. Hearing Bob Dylan sing &quot;Just Like a Woman&quot; on &quot;Blonde on Blonde,&quot; I had my first real sense of transport at the hands of a writer. I had never before heard anything so passionate and peculiar, so utterly itself. I was knocked out not only by the lithe, effortless rhymes, but by his songs' particular combination of ardor and cruelty; by their implied conviction that the yearning for happiness is a deadly serious business, and that seeking it may not leave your life in any shape you recognize as comfortable or kind.
 Every adolescent has heroes, and the people we love in our middle age are rarely the ones we loved during puberty. Bob Dylan, however, has stood up for me. When I write fiction, I hope not only to honor the depth and magic of great authors but to approximate, on paper, the jangly exaltation I felt when the needle touched the grooves of &quot;Blonde on Blonde.&quot; 
 Bob Dylan belongs to a line that includes not only Woody Guthrie and Jack Kerouac, but Flaubert, Woolf, and even Maria Callas. Like them, Bob Dylan is one of the slightly preposterous and wholly necessary figures who've risked public humiliation by no secret of their passions; who've courted reputations as fools, romantics and hysterics; who've rambled the highways so that we in our beds could imagine them out there roaming a world so immense and mysterious that the only conceivable thing to do is try to make art of it.
 They understood that their strangeness was part of their strength, and that a great artist can seldom expect to come through with his or her dignity intact. I've tried to learn what I can.
 
 <i>Michael Cunningham is the author of &quot;The Hours,&quot; which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1999. He contributed this comment to The New York Times. </i>

TITLE: Fluent Russian Is Just Around the Corner
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One of the biggest on-going struggles for most foreigners living or traveling in Russia is gaining a grip on the Russian language itself. However, whether you seek a complete grasp of Russian's tongue-twisting grammar, or simply just enough Russian to get around town, it need not be a complex task to find a language-study program to suit your needs and financial limits. 
 Initially, keep in mind that various programs cater to different types of students, and therefore may have very different takes on just what &quot;studying Russian&quot; means. While some students are looking for intensive drilling and &quot;sink-or-swim&quot; immersion, often including living with a local host family, others may see their stay as more of a vacation, with less time hitting the books and more seeing the sights. Additionally, the needs of a student who is on an exchange program for just a few weeks or months will be different from those of the residential ex-pat who weathers the city year-round.
 However, some benefits of being a student remain the same across the board, with one of the biggest being the possibility to receive a student identity card. Official student IDs allow free access to many city museums, as well as the opportunity to buy reduced-fare metro and bus passes. 
 Other pluses may include the use of computers and the Internet. Most programs now offer Internet access on some level, and a few even provide students with their own email accounts. According to Katya Riabova of local Russian language school Liden & Denz, their facilities include &quot;modern classrooms equipped with dataport connectors for students with their own laptops,&quot; as well as &quot;free and unlimited Internet access for all.&quot; 
 
 <strong>SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE
 </strong>If you're struggling to fit your classes into your existing work or family schedule, or simply not ready to make the commitment to a full-time academic program, there are a number of private organizations around the city that offer classes to suit your needs. 
 However, while choosing the right class is often a matter of personal preference, there are a few questions you may want to confirm before shelling out your hard-earned rubles. Remember to ask about specific policies of your program, such as class length. Surprisingly, &quot;an hour&quot; of instruction may range anywhere from 45 minutes (the length of the Russian academic hour) to the full 60 minutes, depending upon your program's own definition. Also, be sure your program lets you know just how &quot;small&quot; your small group is, and be aware that if the number of students in your group increases in the future, a decrease in price should most likely follow.
 There is also wide speculation about how many hours of study per week are appropriate for foreign-language students. Yana Tulyakova of St. Petersburg's Language Link school says: &quot;Our teachers consider six hours per week to be the most suitable amount of study hours for most students. However, we can offer more or less intensive classes.&quot; Small-group classes at Language Link cost from $5 to $6 per hour; individual lessons are $10 per hour and the teacher may come to your apartment or office for no extra charge.
 Other programs suggest a more intensive schedule for a shorter, limited time period. The standard schedule of Liden & Denz Language Center runs 20 hours a week for an average of three weeks, with groups of about four students (maximum eight), and costs $560 for three weeks. One-to-one lessons are also available upon request.
 Similarly, the language program EducaCentre sees a range of 20 to 30 hours of instruction per week - in small groups (maximum six people) or individually - as being optimum. Individual courses range from $10 to $15 per lesson, two-person groups from $7 to $13 per lesson, and larger groups from $110 to $190 per person, per week.
 And while many organizations, such as Language Link, offer special topics including Russian Literature and Bu si ness Russian, others take this one step further, offering highly specialized language courses or unique additional services for their clients. EducaCentre offers business-focused instruction for professionals and specialists in the marketing and commercial trades, international banking and the medical fields - along with the interesting course &quot;total immersion at the teacher's house,&quot; where students both live and study full time with their teacher for two weeks (prices range from $1090 to $1365).
 Some organizations offer preparation courses for the &quot;TRKI&quot; state exam (test of Russian as a foreign language), including the Language Study Center Zlatoust, which is based on the publishing house of the same name. The exam is internationally recognized by the ALTE (Association of Language Testers Europe), according to Marianna Zhloudneva of the center. 
 Many programs also provide &quot;tourist&quot; features for those who are interested in getting outside of the classroom, as well as assistance with visa and registration, accommodation, and often meals and host-family placement. One program that likes to mix business with pleasure is the INFO Study Program, whose one-month program offers 80 study hours (4 study hours per day, 5 days per week) with a maximum of six students in each class. In addition to morning classes, there are daily pre-planned excursions throughout the city in the afternoons. Cost is $1450, including tuition and excursions, and room and board with a Russian host family.
 
 <strong>FULL-TIME STUDY
 </strong>For more intensive immersion, a popular and economic route is to enroll as a full- or part-time student at a local university. In addition to vastly improving your language skills, such classes can often speed up the process of completing degree requirements for a foreign university program. 
 Sylvia and Claire, two students from the University of Nottingham in Britain, came to St. Petersburg to participate in a program at St. Petersburg State Technical University as part of a mandatory year abroad. They say they considered other options, but decided on the university program because it was cheaper and, they felt, would provide more opportunities to interact with other students their age, both foreign and Russian.
 Under their program, they pay fees at their home institution, which in turn arranges everything for their study here in St. Petersburg. They will be taking Russian language and culture classes. 
 Another popular program is the Center of Russian Language and Culture at St. Petersburg State University, which holds Russian language courses for foreigners at the Smolny Cathedral complex. About 1,000 foreign students chose to come here to study Russian and related subjects each year. Programs are available for a semester (four months), year (10 months), and summer (two to 12 weeks), and the center has both hotel and dormitory accommodations. A typical class schedule consists of 20 hours per week in groups of six to nine students, and cost is about $90 per week, with dorm or host-family residence adding an additional $4-12 per day.
 However, Hannah, another student from Nottingham, notes that there are also problems with studying in an environment boasting such a heavy foreign student population. &quot;The hostels are full of foreign students and English is the easy option,&quot; she said, &quot;so that's what you do.&quot;
 &quot;[St. Petersburg] can turn into a Western ghetto ... It's pretty easy not to speak Russian. At least when I was a student in Voronezh almost nobody spoke English, so you pretty much had to speak Russian,&quot; she said.
 
 <strong>DO-IT-YOURSELF METHODS</strong>
 For Russian texts and study material, there's always Dom Knigi, centrally located on Nevsky Prospect. Their Russian language for foreigners section is located on a separate shelf in the foreign language department, which can be found at the rear of the ground-level floor. 
 And if you want to be a guinea pig for new material, Zlatoust provides classes using their own materials. According to Zhloudneva, &quot;All our courses [are first] piloted in the student classrooms.&quot; 
 Finally, one of the myths of language-learning is the idea that after a certain age, it just doesn't happen. And while patience and free time may indeed wane as we get older, it is never too late for self-improvement - as a brief survey of student statistics at several local language centers confirmed. At Liden & Denz the average student age is 34, while students from Zlatoust range in age from 18 to 60. EducaCentre boasts students ranging from 16 to 75, and (the winner is:) INFO Study's past students spanned the impressive range from 15 to 86 years of age.
 
 <strong>Liden & Denz</strong><i>, 11 Transportny Per., 325-22-41, www.lidenz.ru
 </i><strong>Language Link, </strong><i>7 Kazanskaya Ul., 311-47-26, LL@spb.ru, langlink@spb.cityline.ru
 </i><strong>EducaCentre, </strong><i>22 Sinopskaya Nab., 327-03-73, www.educacentre.net
 </i><strong>Zlatoust, </strong><i>13 Inzhenernaya Ul., 315-25-12, www.zlat.spb.ru
 </i><strong>INFO Study Program, </strong><i>2 Tavricheskaya Ul., 275-15-13, infomir@pop.convey.ru
 </i><strong>Center of Russian Language and Culture, </strong><i>7/9 Universitetskaya Nab., 328-9452, info@crlc.pu.ru </i>

TITLE: Victory Day: For Nazis and Hooligans?
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: &quot;It's Victory Day, smelling of gunpowder, it's a great day, though our hair is gray on our temples, it's happiness, though we have tears in our eyes, Victory Day...&quot; </i>As long as I can remember, every year May 9 began with this march, and &quot;happy tears in one's eyes&quot; was not just a figure of speech. Festive demonstrations used to wake me up in the morning, as crowds passed by my windows on our street - with red carnations everywhere and familiar songs echoing from afar. I would call my grandparents, and my grandmother would take me to a meeting with her former comrades. Watching war movies on TV in her room, my other granny would recollect that horrible afternoon when she, three little children at her feet, was leaving a besieged Leningrad in one of two motorboats carrying survivors across Lake Ladoga. A little off shore, German planes were heard buzzing above and in a minute dead bodies floating in the water were all that was left of the other motorboat.
 As years passed, festive feasts occurred less frquently and going to see the fireworks in the evening was no more a matter of course - or was I becoming an adult, preoccupied with my own, more pressing, concerns? The Victory Day march was still heard on street loudspeakers, but its bars grew weaker under the roar of drunken teenagers, and empty beer bottles scattered all around were an ugly jeer at the red carnations that the war veterans held in their hands. This May 9, &quot;Zenith the champions!&quot; was what those teenagers shouted in Palace Square, and walking the streets among those violent crowds did not seem entirely safe. 
 But all this was nothing compared to the herds of skinheads, clad in black with swastikas on their sleeves, who marched, unperturbed, down Nevsky Prospect that day, with police showing no concern as they were not &quot;disrupting public order.&quot; 
 It wasn't a huge surprise to me, however, having witnessed the comfortable growth of fascism among my compatriots: &quot;Mein Kampf&quot; selling on the street. Generals spitting antisemitic bile on TV. Black people beaten in broad daylight. Several peoples living in one war-stricken mountainous region branded &quot;the Caucasian nationality&quot; and harassed throughout the country. 
 You're asking me what all this has to do with a TV review? As I watched TV last week, I couldn't help thinking that those in charge of the programming were taking us for idiots. I'm used to seeing war veterans live like second-class citizens in the motherland they once saved, and I understand that football and beer may be more important for today's teenagers, who feel that they are the only Russian items of which they can be proud. However, I refuse to enjoy the president's solemn speeches and the demonstration of military might, aired simultaneously on all state channels, if this is all they can do to remind us of what the war was against, while keeping silent the rest of the time. I heard President Putin say - it was, after all, the first report in every news slot: &quot;The ideas of Nazism still roam the world ... And one of the tasks of contemporary world politics is to prevent them from flaring up even locally.&quot; Yes, how about that?

TITLE: RUBLE AROUND TOWN
TEXT: <strong>Monday's ruble/dollar rates in St. Petersburg:
 
 Address Buy Sell
 </strong>
Avto Bank 119 Moskovsky Prospect 28.50 29.05
 Alfa Bank 6 Kanal Griboyedova 28.00 29.00
 Baltiisky Bank 34 Sadovaya Ulitsa 28.60 29.39 
 Bank Sankt Peterburg 108 Ligovsky Prospect 28.30 29.15
 Impexbank 58 Nevsky Prospect 28.30 29.05
 Promstroi Bank 4 Mikhailovskaya Ulitsa 28.40 29.10
 Petrovsky Narodny Bank 7 Naberezhnaya Reki Moiki 28.30 29.03
 Redmetbank 18 Zagorodny Prospect 28.60 29.10
 RusRegion Bank 54 Nevsky Prospect 28.90 29.20
 Sberbank 4 Dumskaya Ulitsa 27.40 29.05 
 <strong>Average 28.33 29.11 </strong>

TITLE: The Truth Behind Begging Kids
TEXT: If you have spent time in the St. Petersburg metro, this picture will most likely sound familiar: An exhausted, dirty child carrying a tot in his or her arms is telling a sad story of a refugee family rescued from Chechnya. Or, the child is accompanying a disabled man, introduced as &quot;father,&quot; who lost his limbs in a recent ethnic conflict. The child is asking for money, but sometimes there is more than simple hunger and poverty driving him to do so. In some cases the child may be a slave. 
 Fifteen-year-old Alyona, whose last name has been withheld for her protection, spent five months enduring just such an existence. Currently completing a rehabilitation course at a St. Petersburg crisis center for girls who have been victims of physical violence and sexual abuse, she spoke to </i><strong>Galina Stolyarova </strong><i>about her dramatic experience of being a slave for a local gypsy family.
 </i>
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>How did you find yourself in slavery?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>I am from Dubosary, Moldova. I ran away from home, and met a group of gypsies at a market place in Kishinyov. They tempted me to join them and go to St. Petersburg for a couple of months. They suggested I sell icons, earrings, cheap jewelry and other trinkets, and said I would be paid $100 a month. I was thrilled! 
 Of course, it didn't look at all suspicious to me then. Traveling with gypsies was at first even some fun. It never occurred to me that it could end in slavery until my troubles started. 
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>Why did you choose to run away from home?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Well, I was seeking revenge. I wanted to disappear without saying a word to my parents about where I was going. I wanted them to wonder where I was. My escape was absolutely intentional.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>Where there problems at home? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Not really. I just didn't understand my parents. I was angry because I had to look after my three younger sisters and brothers, as well as doing lots of work in the home and the field. I saw my schoolmates enjoying themselves after class, and thought that it was unfair that I had so much to do around the house. I had very little liberty. My parents always wanted to talk about life and the future, and I wanted to avoid these conversations because I thought they were boring. I think I misunderstood them. I thought they wanted me to do even more work at home, and it was too much for me, and so I decided to run away. 
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>What kind of work did you have to do when you arrived in St. Petersburg?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>I worked in metro stations accompanying &quot;my father,&quot; a one-legged disabled man in a wheelchair, who also belonged to the same gypsy clan. Very soon I got disgusted, sick of constantly lying to people and begging. 
 I wanted to leave, but I was terrified because my owners were beating me, even on the face, and threatening to kill me. And they said they knew the city well, and that the police were on their side.
 Additionally, the other slaves and I had to do all the housework for the gypsies.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>How much money did you have to bring back every day?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>At least 1,000 rubles. On holidays and weekends it could be more than that. If it was less, my master would beat me.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>Where did you live, and what were the conditions like?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>I lived in a two-room apartment with a big gypsy family and other slaves. I shared one small room with two other children and three disabled people with whom we went to the metro for money. Of course, there was no furniture there. We slept on some kind of mattresses that had probably been taken from garbage sites.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>Did your masters feed you?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Once a day, in the evening. But they only gave us fried eggs. Eating all the same food - and so little food - every day was nightmarish, but of course the gypsies wouldn't bother cooking for us or let us use their kitchen.
 They were extremely brutal to all of the slaves. They threatened to kill us all the time. Once my master raped me.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>Why didn't you contact the police earlier, especially after the rape?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>I was scared. I dreaded policemen because the gypsies convinced me that they have very close ties, full contact with the local police, and that if I tried to ask a policeman for help, he would only return me to the gypsies.
 And also my own experience with local police was terrible. They were always rude to us, shouting at us to get out of the metro. Once one of them beat me badly because he wanted me to give him all the earnings that I had made that day. 
 Also, the ordinary people were very unfriendly and rude. Before I got to this center I was convinced St. Petersburg is a city of mean people, unwilling to help.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>How did you finally escape?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>A policeman stopped us, and made us go with him to the police station. I told them everything, and then they contacted my family, and sent me to this crisis center.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>What about your captors?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>I informed the police where they lived and how to find them. But the police didn't put them in jail. There were no witnesses of the rape; there were also no bruises on my body at that time. There was, in fact, no proof of any criminal activity.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>How do you feel now?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Much better. I used to have nightmares all the time. I was afraid the gypsies would find me. But now I have almost forgotten all those horrors. The center's psychotherapist taught me how to get over these dreams. She helped me to become stronger, to get more optimism and self-confidence.
 That slavery experience really made me feel bad about myself. It made me feel guilty, too. At heart I believed that the treatment I was getting from the gypsies was the only treatment I deserved. I thought that all people would treat me with contempt because I was a beggar-girl. Now I am over that feeling.
 The most important thing is that I've learned to consider the consequences of the paths I choose and the decisions I make. Now, before I do something, I give my choices much more thought. 
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>What are you thinking of doing in the future?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>To return home, finish school and then find a job - maybe a tutor at a kindergarten.
 I will be back home soon, I have already spoken to my parents on the telephone. They cried and said repeatedly that they want me to come back and that they can't wait to see me. They are not angry with me - they are just happy that it is over and that we will soon be together again.

TITLE: Five-Star End for the Revolution's Lost Poet
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: <i>&quot;In the Former Hotel d'Angleterre, on the 28th of December, 1925, the life of the poet Sergei Yesenin was tragically cut short.&quot;
 </i> 
The self-styled &quot;last poet of peasant Russia,&quot; and one of the founders of Russia's &quot;Imagist&quot; school of poetry, Sergei Yesenin committed suicide at the age of 30 in St. Petersburg's d'Angleterre Hotel, a victim of his own struggles with addiction and a revolution he felt had betrayed him.
 Born October 3, 1895, in the village of Konstantinovo (it is now named Yesenino), Yesenin's poetry often turned on the traditions of Russian folklore.
 Yesenin welcomed the Bolshevik Revolution in October, 1917, writing a number of works in which he praised and looked forward to the world he believed it would help create. In 1918 he wrote <i>Inoniya</i> (Otherland), where he praised the revolution as the event that would lead to a peasant millennium in Russia.
 But the policies of the Bolshevik government, along with the refusal of his application for Party membership, led his opinion of the new regime to sour and, in 1925, he wrote the poem &quot;The Stern October Has Deceived Me.&quot;
 But, aside from the results of the revolution, Yesenin was also plagued by addiction to alcohol and cocaine. Following his marriage to dancer Isadora Duncan (who was 17 years his senior) in 1922, the two traveled together through Europe and to the United States.
 The relations between the two further worsened during the trip, with Yesenin's drinking increasing steadily. He ultimately suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized in Paris. The two split in 1923. Yesenin later married one of the granddaughters of writer Lev Tolstoy.
 Yesenin's slide continued, and in 1925 he was back in a clinic - this time in Moscow - to treat his addiction problems. He checked himself out of the clinic on December 21st, began drinking again and came to St. Petersburg (by then Leningrad).
 He checked into the Angleterre, where he hung himself from the water pipes along the ceiling in his room's icon corner. He left behind a suicide note in the form of the poem - Good-bye, My Friend, Good-bye - written in his own blood. For much of the Soviet period, the fact that Yesenin had committed suicide was repressed.

TITLE: PRICE WATCH
TEXT: <p><strong>The cost of getting two ear piercings in St. Petersburg: </strong>

<strong>Beauty Salon </strong><i>- </i>200 rubles. <i>Leninsky Pr. 118; Tel: 157-29-90</i>
 <strong>Beauty Salon </strong><i>- </i>120 rubles. <i>Pr. Pyatiletok 10, Building 1; Tel: 440-78-95. </i>
 <strong>Beauty Salon </strong><i>- </i>150 rubles. <i>Maly Pr. 76; Tel: 235-05-40. </i>
 <strong>Damskiy Ugodnik </strong><i>- </i>160 rubles. <i>Marshala Govorova Ul. 8-a; Tel: 184-51-24. </i>
 <strong>French Cosmetic Centre </strong><i>- </i>220 rubles. <i>Moskovsky Pr. 66-b; Tel: 327-92-28. </i>
 <strong>Grandmed </strong><i>- </i>280 rubles. <i>Kultury Pr. 4; Tel: 559-99-33. </i>
 <strong>Krasota </strong><i>- </i>220 rubles. <i>8-aya Sovetskaya Ul. 14; Tel: 271-11-73. </i>
 <strong>Kurazh </strong><i>- </i>Prices from 250 rubles. <i>Kanala Griboyedova 56/58; Tel: 310-73-37. </i>
 <strong>Madam Beauty Salon </strong><i>- </i>Prices from 170 rubles. <i>3-aya Krasnoarmeyskaya Ul. 10; Tel: 327-92-29. </i>

<i>The St. Petersburg Times advises all its readers to make absolutely sure that piercings are carried out with totally sterile equipment. </i>

TITLE: BRIDGE SCHEDULE
TEXT: <strong>BRIDGE 1ST OPENING 2ND OPENING
 Volodarsky 2.00 - 3.45 4.15 - 5.45
 Finlyandsky</strong> 2.30 - 5.10
 <strong>Alexandra Nevskogo</strong> 1.30 - 5.05
 <strong>Bolshe-Okhtinksy</strong> 2.00 - 5.00
 <strong>Liteiny</strong> 1.50 - 4.40
 <strong>Troitsky</strong> 1.50 - 4.50
 <strong>Dvortsovy</strong> 1.35 - 2.55 3.15 - 4.50
 <strong>Leytenanta Schmidta</strong> 1.40 - 4.55
 <strong>Birzhevoi</strong> 2.10 - 4.50
 <strong>Tuchkov</strong> 2.10 - 3.05 3.35 - 4.45
 <strong>Sampsoniyevsky</strong> 2.10 - 2.45 3.20 - 4.25
 <strong>Grenadersky</strong> 2.45 - 3.45 4.20 - 4.50
 <strong>Kantemirovsky</strong> 2.45 - 3.45 4.20 - 4.50

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Arafat Slams Killings
 

GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat Monday condemned Israel's killing of five Palestinian policemen as "dirty and immoral" and said the Jewish state would be held accountable for the deaths.
 Arafat said all but one of the paramilitary policemen, whose duties included liaison with Israeli troops guarding a nearby military checkpoint, were asleep when they were killed.
 Details are still sketchy on how the five members of the Palestinian National Forces operating an outpost at the edge of the Palestinian-controlled West Bank town of Beitunia, west of Ramallah were killed.
 A Palestinian ambulance officer said his crew found the bodies of five men shot dead by heavy machinegun fire and dumped in a hole near the checkpoint.
 The Israeli army said it had no knowledge of the killings as described by the ambulance officer.
 
 
Concorde Crash Deal
 

BERLIN (Reuters) - Lawyers representing most of the relatives of the German victims of last year's Concorde air crash outside Paris said Sunday they had reached a compensation deal with Air France.
 They declined to say what the value of the settlement was. Air France's insurers have said in the past their offer comes close to an overall settlement of around $150 million.
 "The settlement has been agreed to in the last few days by Air France as well as by the relatives," German lawyer Gerhart Baum said in a statement.
 The Air France Concorde crash north of Paris on July 25 killed all 109 aboard and four people at a hotel in the outer suburbs of Paris. Most of the passengers were German tourists on the first leg of a Caribbean cruise vacation. 
 
 
Algeria: 4,880 Missing 
 

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - Algeria said on Thursday that at least 4,880 people had been declared missing since the start of a bloody Islamic insurgency in 1992, which has claimed more than 100,000 lives. 
 Speaking at the National Assembly, Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni said that authorities were working to handle missing persons complaints. 
 Algeria has been wracked by an insurgency since the army canceled 1992 elections that a now-banned Muslim fundamentalist party was poised to win. Since then, Islamic insurgents have waged a bloody campaign to topple the military-backed government. 
 The uprising has defied frequent and fierce military crackdowns and a peace initiative by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
 Killings of civilians, insurgents and police forces are reported on an almost daily basis. 
 
 
Philippines Vote
 

MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines voted Monday in largely peaceful elections in which newly installed President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her detained predecessor vied for the hearts and minds of the country's poor.
 Polling in the elections ended with no immediate report of major unrest despite a death toll of 79 in pre-poll political violence.
 Poll officials estimated at least 75 percent of the country's 36.5 million voters turned out to vote for the 13 Senate seats, a new House of Representatives and for thousands of local posts in the nation of 76 million people.
 Results for some House seats could emerge late Monday but results for the Senate race were likely to take several days and for local polls even longer.
 Estrada, who is awaiting trial on economic plunder charges punishable by death or life imprisonment, won power in 1998 with strong support among the urban poor.
 
 
Basque Separatists Win
 

BILBAO, Spain (AP) - Parties backing independence for the troubled Basque region won the most seats in a key election, but voters rejected a party linked to violent separatism. 
 Sunday's vote in the Basque region was also a blow to pro-Spanish parties, which polls had suggested stood a chance of winning for the first time in 21 years, and indicated Basques still want to move toward self-determination - but by peaceful means. 
 The run-up to the vote was marred by a fresh wave of violence, including the slaying May 6 of a Spanish senator and a car bombing in Madrid on Friday that injured 14. Both attacks were blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA. 
 The violence appeared to turn off Basque voters, as Euskal Herritarrok - considered the political wing of ETA - saw its number of seats cut from 14 to seven. 
 The vote's main winners were the ruling Basque Nationalist Party and its coalition partner Eusko Alkartasuna. Both advocate nonviolent independence. 
 
 
New McVeigh Evidence
 

WASHINGTON (AP) -Just days before Timothy McVeigh was to be executed, the FBI has disclosed that some 3,135 investigation materials - including interview reports and physical evidence such as photographs, letters and tapes - were withheld from McVeigh's lawyers. 
 McVeigh was to be executed for the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, including 19 children. 
 The defense team has just begun reviewing the documents and attorney Robert Nigh said he was not prepared to disclose what was in them. He did, however, contend that "the fact of the production itself could possibly change the legal outcome of the case."
 
 
Women in Combat?
 

CANBERRA, Austraslia (Reuters) - Debate over women in combat gripped Australia Monday after the government said it was considering allowing female soldiers to participate fully in combat, including front-line roles.
 While women have already been cleared to serve in most combat roles in Australia, the suggestion that they be allowed to serve in infantry, artillery and armored combat units met mixed reviews.
 "We don't think society is ready to accept the idea of their daughters coming home in body bags," said Ray De Vere, president of the Returned Services League in Queensland state, which represents about 48,000 veterans.
 The debate over women in combat - a policy already embraced by the United States, Canada and Israel - was fired on Sunday when media reports said a key Defense Department report was set to recommend all combat roles be opened to women as long as they met the same physical standards as men. 



TITLE: Iverson's Clutch 3-Pointer Buries Raptors
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TORONTO - Make it an ugly game, and the result will be easy on the eyes.
 That's what Allen Iverson told his teammates in an expletive-filled speech, and that's precisely what they did to even their series with the Toronto Raptors.
 Iverson scored 30 points, including a 3-pointer with 2:21 remaining, to break a tie after the Raptors had come back from a 16-point deficit, as Philadelphia defeated Toronto 84-79 Sunday to tie their best-of-seven series at two games apiece.
 &quot;I told my teammates we're harder than we've been playing,&quot; said Iverson, who voiced his displeasure in two players-only meetings the Sixers held between Games 3 and 4.
 The 76ers regained home-court advantage heading into Game 5 Wednesday night, but all the news wasn't good. Starting small forward George Lynch fractured his left foot in the third quarter and will be out for the rest of the playoffs.
 Aaron McKie, the NBA's sixth man of the year, moved into Philadelphia's starting lineup and had 18 points, five assists and five rebounds.
 McKie also spent almost the entire game defending Vince Carter, helping hold him to 25 points on 8-for-27 shooting.
 Dikembe Mutombo bounced back from a poor Game 3 and had 13 points and 17 rebounds for the Sixers, who won despite Tyrone Hill being in foul trouble throughout and Lynch leaving late in the third.
 Iverson wasn't at his best, shooting 3-for-12 in the second half and 10-for-30 overall, but he did hit the one shot that deflated the Raptors after they had spent so much time clawing their way back.
 
 <strong>Lakers 119, Kings 113. </strong>Kobe Bryant's hot hand put the Los Angeles Lakers in the conference finals.
 Bryant set career playoff bests with 48 points and 16 rebounds as the Lakers advanced to their second straight Western Conference finals with a 119-113 victory over the Sacramento Kings on Sunday, sweeping the best-of-seven series.
 Bryant scored 15 points in the fourth quarter as the Lakers, who won their 15th straight game since April 1, weathered a strong effort from the Kings and advanced to face the winner of the San Antonio-Dallas series. The Spurs can move on with a victory at home on Monday.
 After record-setting performances in the first two games of the series, Shaquille O'Neal had 25 points and 10 rebounds. He spent his second straight game in foul trouble under constant pressure from the fired-up Kings, and fouled out with 3:09 left.
 
 <strong>Hornets 85, Bucks 78. </strong>The highest scoring team in the NBA playoffs will head home an offensive shell of itself, and potentially in trouble in a series it once controlled.
 The Milwaukee Bucks fizzled down the stretch Sunday against the Charlotte Hornets, scoring 12 fourth-quarter points in an 85-78 loss that evened the Eastern Conference semifinals series at 2-2.
 Milwaukee's points total in Game 4 was the franchise's lowest in postseason history - a total of 185 games - and its turnover total (24) was easily its highest of the four games in the best-of-seven series. The previous low was in an 85-80 loss to Detroit in 1989.

TITLE: European Leagues Nearing Conclusion
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Roma maintained its five-point lead over Lazio in the Italian league, beating Atlanta 1-0 on Vincenzo Montella's second-half goal.
 Montella, often a substitute this season, scored his 11th goal of the season in the 63rd minute Saturday off a corner kick from Hidetoshi Nakata.
 Roma has 67 points with four rounds left as it chases its first league title in 18 years. Juventus is third with 61, followed by Parma (50) and AC Milan (47).
 Lazio, the defending champion, came from behind to beat Napoli 4-2. Juventus edged Fiorentina 3-1 on Friday.
 Fourth-place Parma was stunned 2-0 by Reggina but stayed three points ahead of AC Milan, which beat crosstown rival Internazionale 6-0 at San Siro stadium Friday night.
 In Naples, groups of fans smashed several parked cars, set a vehicle on fire and clashed with police outside the San Paolo stadium Saturday following Napoli's 4-2 loss to Lazio. Four fans were arrested as Napoli slipped into the relegation zone.
 
 <strong>England.</strong> Leeds may still wind up in next season's Champions League.
 Eliminated last week by Valencia in the Champions League semifinals, Leeds beat relegation-bound Bradford 6-1 Sunday.
 The third and final automatic place for England in the Champions League will be decided Saturday in the season finales. Liverpool can grab the spot behind Manchester United and Arsenal with a victory at Charlton on Saturday. Leeds is home to Leicester and needs Liverpool to stumble.
 Manchester United, which wrapped up the league title weeks ago, was beaten 2-1 at Southampton - its second straight loss. Arsenal, already guaranteed a Champions League place, needs just one point in its last two matches against Newcastle and Southampton to guarantee second place.
 
 <strong>France.</strong> Nantes became French champion for the eighth time Saturday by beating relegation-bound Saint-Etienne 1-0 with Tahitian striker Marama Vahirua scoring in the ninth minute.
 Nantes is four points ahead of second-place Lyon with game to play. Lyon ensured it would play in the Champions League next season by beating Strasbourg 5-0 and moving four points ahead of third-place Bordeaux.
 
 <strong>Germany.</strong> Two 90th-minute goals Saturday put Bayern Munich close to its 17th title, while dealing Schalke's hopes a huge setback.
 Krassimir Balakov scored to lift Stuttgart to a 1-0 victory against Schalke. Seconds later on another pitch, striker Alexander Zickler's volley gave Munich a 2-1 victory over FC Kaiserslautern.
 That dramatic end put Munich three points clear of Schalke heading into the final round of the German season.
 Bayern has 62 points followed by Schalke (59), Borussia Dortmund (57) and Bayer Leverkusen (54).
 
 <strong>Spain. </strong>Real Madrid let a two-goal lead slip in the second half to draw 2-2 with Espanyol at the Bernabeu stadium Sunday. With four matches remaining, leader Madrid has 70 points, six more than its closest challenger Deportivo de La Coruna. Valencia has 59 followed by Mallorca (59) and Barcelona (56).

TITLE: Coulthard Closes on Formula 1 Leader
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SPIELBERG, Austria - David Coulthard saw Juan Montoya blocking Michael Schumacher, and figured he might benefit from their clash at the front of the field in the Austrian Grand Prix. 
 &quot;It was not a question of if, but when and where they would tangle,&quot; Coulthard said Sunday. 
 He was right. On the 16th of 71 laps, Montoya and Schumacher swerved off the course. Coulthard drove by with four other cars and went on to win the race. 
 It was the second victory this season and the 11th in the career of the McLaren driver. He moved within four points of Schumacher, the three-time and defending series champion. 
 Schumacher wound up second, thanks to orders given to Ferrari teammate Rubens Barrichello to let him pass near the end of the race. 
 Barrichello, third in the points but far behind the leaders, was clearly upset. 
 &quot;I have little to say. I have to talk to the team, get some explanations,&quot; Barrichello said. 
 Predictably, Schumacher, who still has won everywhere but Austria, wasn't apologizing for the decision. 
 &quot;I am very happy he did that,&quot; Schumacher said. 
 He admitted that it was fair to say he would have been beaten by Barrichello, who wound up third. But with Coulthard closing the gap, Schumacher said he needs every point he can get in the battle for the title. 
 &quot;The sport is about a lot of things, a lot of money, a lot of pressure and what counts at the end is the championship, to be honest,&quot; he said. &quot;As long as we don't work against the rules, I think we are quite fair.&quot; 
 Montoya, who started second, pulled away faster than polesitter Schumacher at the start of the race. Ralf Schumacher, who like Williams teammate Montoya was to exit later with mechanical problems, also beat his brother to the first turn on the 2.68-mile A1-Ring. 
 Ralf Schumacher went out on the 11th lap, leaving Montoya and Michael Schumacher to battle it out. The blocking tactic allowed five cars to close in on them. 
 Montoya, a former Indy 500 and CART champion, fended off several attempts by Schumacher to pass. 
 Schumacher finally got the nose of his car in the front onthe 16th lap, only to have Montoya block the attempt in a curve by swerving to the outside. The two did not touch but Montoya's maneuver slowed both cars significantly. 
 Montoya was forced to continue through the gravel and Schumacher, waving in an angry gesture at Montoya, hit the grass. This allowed Barrichello, Jos Verstappen, Coulthard, Kimi Raikkonen and Olivier Panis to pass. 
 &quot;I was a little bit upset,&quot; Schumacher said. &quot;There was no way he could make the corner and he just wanted to take me with him out of the circuit. I'll have to have a word with him.&quot; 
 But Schumacher later toned down his comments, and said he would watch a replay before blaming Montoya, who called it &quot;just a racing incident.&quot; 
 Coulthard took the lead on the 48th lap, after Barrichello pitted. 
 Rookie Raikkonen finished fourth in a Sauber, followed by the BAR of Panis and the Arrows of Verstappen.