SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #690 (57), Friday, July 27, 2001
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TITLE: The Naked Truth About Naturism
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: SESTRORETSK, Leningrad Oblast - Galina Rybina, 44, stands at the edge of the beach joyfully stretching her arms toward the warm sun and running sand between her toes. The sky is clear, the air is warm and Rybina is completely naked.
Welcome to the Dunes nude beach in Sestroretsk, about 30 kilometers northwest of St. Petersburg, where the only mandatory attire for the roughly 2,000 people who show up on sunny weekends is nothing but a confident smile.
"You know, I think, a nude body is more chaste than many too-revealing bathing suits that are designed to provoke desire," Rybina says bathing her tanned body in the soft rays of the evening sun.
All around her, nude men, women and children frolic in the sand and water. Others lay along the 150-meter stretch of the beach and bask in the sun's rays.
Not a tan line in sight.
The first local pioneers of the self-titled naturism movement appeared at the Dunes as early as 1957 or 1958, said Alexander Kotzov, President of St. Petersburg-based National Federation of Naturism, a private organization that supports and promotes naturism and nude recreation.
"For me personally [naturism] expands the borders of my inner freedom," said Kotzov.
The federation also oversees an 800-strong membership of nude bathers, all of whom receive identification cards. Photography on the beach is prohibited without special permission, to protect the rights of the bathers. The nudist community also works hard to minimize the intrusion of hecklers and peeping toms.
"We have a safe atmosphere here, and there's no sex on the beach, as some people may think," he said.
Kotzov emphasized in an interview at the beach Wednesday that one does not have to be a member of the federation in order to come and skinny dip. Everyone is welcome.
The atmosphere at the Dunes has not always been so relaxed, said veteran naturist, Kiril Vasiliyev, 42, who made his first trip to this beach together with his mother in 1973.
"I still remember times when the police rounded us up as 'infringers' of the law," Vasiliyev said.
"The police used to make special raids to the area to catch nudists and fine them," he said.
Back then, being arrested meant not only paying a fine, but also the possibility of trouble at work. The authorities normally informed on nude "hooligans" - as they were called then - at their places of employment.
Such reports usually led to petty harassment such as being declared ineligible for business trips or losing access to other company perks.
That changed in 1986, a year after Mikhail Gorbachev ushered in a far more relaxed political atmosphere, and the raids by police simply stopped, according to Kotzov.
In 1992, the enthusiasts managed to officially register the National Federation of Naturism, and the beach - nestled between the elite Beliye Nochi and the (unconnected) Dunes resorts, and enveloped by a pine forest - was granted official status.
According to Kotzov, most of the bathers who come to the beach are between 30 and 40 years old.
"That is probably the age when, psychologically speaking, people are willing to try something new," he said. "I don't think young people are ready to take the psychological step."
Many of the beach-goers told stories of their first experiences at the beach coming at that age.
Eleonora, 40, an engineer who preferred not to give her last name, has been coming to the beach since 1986.
"Nudity gives me more sun and liberates me from that wet rag called a bathing suit," she says basking in the sun near the water' edge.
Veteran nudist Vasiliyev said that he once tried swimming in a pool with a pair of trunks and found them to be like a heavy, protective suit.
Sergei Nikitenko, a former submarine officer, said he comes to the beach to revive his soul, but he notes that it is not for everyone.
"Naturism requires considerable efforts of will in order to step over social and psychological borders," Nikitenko said.
"For instance, although I've been a nudist for 12 years now, I still can't bring my wife into the movement. She came here once and took off the upper part of her bathing suit but never did that again," he said.
Others, though, were fortunate enough to find their soulmates laying naked on the sand at the Dunes. Rybina, for example, met her husband on the beach.
"I went swimming and found a nice little island. I was laying there and enjoying the waves," she said. "Then a stranger swam up to me.... The next day we got married and have lived together for four years now."
As she spoke, she pointed out her tanned husband laying nearby.
Over time, the beach has started gaining a reputation.
"I once overheard a resort visitor telling another that there are three places one definitely must see in St. Petersburg," said Kotzov. "The Hermitage, the Russian Museum and the nude beach."
You can reach the Dunes nudist beach by electrichka from the Finland Station or by marshrutka Nos. T-25, T-400 or T-417. For detailed instructions on how to find it, see the beach's Web site at http://members.theglobe.com/llama11/dunes_r.htm.
TITLE: O'Neill
BehindWTO as Priority
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Top U.S. finance and trade officials praised Russia's economic reform efforts on Thursday and said that they would work hard to turn promises of cooperation into action.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans said the United States would do everything it could to aid Russia's ascension to the World Trade Organization, which President Vladimir Putin has named as a top priority.
"We are going to be as helpful as we can be to respond to what the Russian side wants to help them gain access to the WTO," O'Neill told reporters after meeting with a host of top Russian officials, inluding Putin, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref and members of parliament.
"We are here to affirm that we will deliver what President [George W.] Bush has promised," O'Neill said, adding that both he and Evans "come from backgrounds where we both know what results mean," referring to their strong corporate backgrounds.
"As we continue to expand trade around the world and open markets around the world, it is important that we all play by the same rules. It is fundamental to competition," Evans said.
"We are grateful to our American partners for supporting Russia's ascension into the World Trade Organization and for their intentions to do everything possible to speed up that progress," Gref said.
Gref said that the United States would work with Russia in its WTO bid. Russia will send the U.S. team a detailed plan for how to work together over the next six months, he said.
A Gref spokesperson said the WTO cooperation agreement and the delivery to Evans of a 1,000-page argument on why Russia should no longer be considered a "non-market" economy by the United States were the key events of the day.
The non-market status that the United States has pinned on Russia is a key obstacle to Russia's joining the WTO and leaves the country vulnerable to anti-dumping legislation.
Kudrin hailed this petition as a milestone for Russia's integration into the world economy. "Today we have stepped on the path to the recognition of Russia as a market economy," Kudrin said.
Gref's deputy, Maxim Medvedkov, has estimated that foreign-trade restrictions, some of which stem from the non-market status, cause Russia losses of roughly $2.1 billion a year in export revenue.
"It would be a big plus for Russia if it is recognized as a market economy," said Kaha Kiknavelidze, a metals analyst at Troika Dialog. Kiknavelidze was not optimistic, however, of a change in U.S. policy in this area.
Russia currently exports neglible amounts of steel to the United States. Two years ago Russia, under threat of heavy anti-dumping duties, signed a voluntary restraint agreement setting quotas and a minimum price below which Russia would not sell steel on the U.S. market. U.S. steel prices have dropped below that minimum price, making Russian steel completely uncompetitive.
If the U.S. recognizes Russia as a market economy, the threat of a successful anti-dumping case - or duties that could range upward of 100 percent - would ease.
"In that case, Russia would most likely ask for a review of the agreement or withdraw," said Kiknavelidze. Russia has a similar agreement with the European Union, which expires next year. "It is likely it will be extended," he added.
Rob Scott, an anti-dumping consultant to U.S. steel producers and a fellow at the Economic Policy Institue, a Washington-based think tank, said that market-economy status would allow Russian steel exporters access to markets it currently cannot compete in.
"If the U.S. upgrades Russia to market economy status it would have a much better chance of minimizing or avoiding anti-dumping duties," Scott said. "And if duties are imposed, Russia has a better chance of getting those penalties overturned through the WTO," he said.
Just this week, for example, the WTO issued a finding against the United States for imposing anti-dumping duties on some Japanese steel makers, Scott said.
"Apart from the so-called Jackson-Vanik amendment, which denies Russia most-favored-nation trading status in the United States, there is a more general problem - the official recognition of Russia as a country with a market economy," said Yaroslav Lissovolik, an economist in Washington who deals with Russia's entry into the WTO.
"This lack of 'market-economy' status gives every country the right to start anti-dumping procedures against Russia," Lissovolik said. "And that's what affects Russia's ability to diversify its competitive exports, such as steel."
Lissovolik was doubtful, however, that the United States would upgrade Russia's status anytime soon. "But while a fundamental change in the U.S. position is unlikely in the short term, there are signs that the U.S. is increasingly engaged in dialogue with Russia over these issues" he added.
"We are designing a global solution to a global overcapacity of steel. We want everybody to play a very positive role in finding a positive solution," Evans said.
"We have ongoing bilateral discussion with Russia as to other markets we can talk about and find ways to reduce barriers in both countries," said Evans.
Staff Writer Alla Startseva contribued to this report.
TITLE: No Retraction After Nikitin Libel Ruling
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The weekly newspaper Chas Pik said that it will not publish a retraction of an article that accused environmentalist and former espionage defendant Alexander Nikitin of being a spy. The newspaper plans to appeal a libel verdict against it that was handed down by a federal court earlier this month.
Larisa Afonina, Chas Pik's deputy editor, said in a telephone interview Thursday that the newspaper will not consider the verdict final until it get a decision from the appeals court.
"According to the law, we can file an appeal, and we will publish a retraction if we lose that appeal," Afonina said. No date has been set for the appeal.
The article in question - entitled "When Politicians Talk, Themis is Silent" in reference to the Greek god of justice - was written by Alexander Zubarev and appeared in the newspaper on May 14, five months after the Supreme Court cleared Nikitin of all espionage charges brought against him by the Federal Security Service, or FSB.
Zubarev wrote in his article that Nikitin was acquitted for political, not legal reasons. The article also alleged that Nikitin received money in exchange for his reports.
Chas Pik's editor, Natalya Chaplina, is the wife of Northwest Region Governor General Viktor Cherkesov.
Cherkesov is formerly the head of the St. Petersburg FSB and oversaw the Nikitin prosecution. Before and during Nikitin's trial, Chas Pik published articles - many of them written by Zubarev - that was unabashedly pro-FSB.
When Afonina was asked whether Chaplina's relationship to Cherkesov had had any influence on Chas Pik's coverage of the Nikitin case, she refused to comment and referred questions to Chaplina.
Chaplina herself refused to take any phone calls from The St. Petersburg Times to discuss the lawsuit."You should ask the editor about that, not me," she said.
Cherkesov's spokesperson, Alexander Gutsailo, said that Cherkesov has no influence over his wife's popular broadsheet.
"[Cherkesov] does not have any stake or shares in the paper, so this is just a business issue [between the newspaper and Nikitin]," he said. He would not elaborate.
Nikitin, 49, was targeted by the FSB in 1995 after he contributed to a report by the Norwegian environmental group Bellona. Nikitin's contribution was critical of the Russian Northern Fleet's handling of it's nuclear waste.
TITLE: Rice: U.S. Will Go Ahead With Missile-Shield Tests
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that the United States will not wait for Russian agreement to deploy a planned national missile defense system.
Following a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, Rice said Washington will go ahead with testing for the proposed missile defense, which Russia opposes because it violates the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Earlier this week, Putin and President Bush announced that talks on missile defense would be linked with talks on cutting strategic nuclear weapons. Rice stressed that talks should move along quickly - first on the expert level, then between ministers and then between Bush and Putin at their next scheduled meeting in October in Shanghai, China.
The chairman of Russia's Security Council, Vladimir Rushailo, however, said that the discussions would be lengthy and would require legislative changes that would slow the process.
Russia contends that abandoning the ABM Treaty would undermine the foundations of global security and could lead to a new arms race.
Putin, who did not speak after his meeting with Rice on Thursday, said this week that despite the new linkage of talks, Russia and the United States still supported the fundamental principles of the ABM treaty.
Rice's approach was consistent with statements she made in Moscow on Wednesday aiming to put arms-control talks with Russia on a fast track. She said the two sides had now surmounted the stalemate on missile defense.
Rice flew to Moscow from Ukraine, where she also told reporters that Russia and the United States had overcome their dispute over the 1972 ABM Treaty after talks between their two presidents in Italy last weekend.
Upon arrival in Moscow, she immediately went into talks with Rushailo and emerged in a buoyant mood about prospects for overcoming Russian reticence toward U.S. missile-defense plans.
"We have every possibility to have a joint approach to the threats of the new era," she told reporters after the two-hour meeting. "We have every possibility to have a cooperative way forward. And I think that is what the two presidents are committed to concentrating on over the next several months."
She said Bush and Putin, whose meeting in Genoa was their second in a month, "have developed a good relationship and that we have the basis for cooperation on the new conditions in which we find ourselves." Both countries, she said, had to jettison the Cold-War precept of "balance of terror."
Earlier Putin was in northern Belarus holding informal talks with Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, who had met Wednesday with Rice in Kiev.
After her talks with Kuchma, Rice delivered a strongly worded warning to Ukraine, saying its integration into Europe depended on political reforms, transparent probes into the recent killings of journalists and fair elections.
"A very strong message is sent about political reform, about free press, judiciary reform and transparency in cases that are of worldwide attention here," Rice said.
Rice's visit to Kiev and Moscow follows an agreement between Putin and Bush in Genoa to link talks on missile defense and cuts in nuclear arsenals.
The ABM Treaty allows each country only one limited missile-defense system covering the capital or a missile installation, on the premise that neither country would strike first without protection from retaliation. Russia says abandoning the treaty would spark a new nuclear arms race.
The United States argues that it needs a missile defense to protect itself against possible attacks by hostile nations believed to be developing nuclear weapons.
In contrast to Rice's upbeat appraisal of the Genoa talks on Wednesday, Putin denied earlier this week reaching any breakthroughs with Bush.
- Reuters, AP, SPT
TITLE: City Struggles With Luli Influx
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A dirty man in Tajik national dress accompanied by a pair of equally dirty children were approaching passersby on Staro-Nevsky Prospect asking for money. Some people stopped and fished change from their pockets. Others, perhaps inured by the frequency of such requests in recent months, kept looking straight ahead as they wordlessly hurried past.
All of them, however, both those who gave and those who didn't, found themselves being approached again by another, virtually identical group just a few meters farther down the road.
This new kind of beggar first appeared in the city last year. They are Luli gypsies who migrated from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Officials estimate there are "several thousand" of them in the St. Petersburg area, although there are no accurate figures.
Luli gypsies, like European gypsies, originate from India. They are semi-nomads and speak a Dari dialect. They consider themselves Muslims.
On Friday afternoons, as local Muslims gather at the St. Petersburg mosque for prayers, Luli gypsies line the paths leading into the building, persistently begging for alms from, as they put it, their "co-religionists."
The city's Muslim community is less than thrilled by the influx of Luli gypsies, turning frequently to the police for help in controlling the situation.
"These people are like an invasion of locusts," said Ravil Pancheyev, assistant to St. Petersburg's mufti. "I doubt that they are Muslims at all. I have no idea what religion they do profess, if any."
"The Koran prohibits begging, to say nothing of the fact that our parishioners also complain that Lulis pickpocket them as well," Pancheyev said in a telephone interview with The St. Petersburg Times on Tuesday.
Pancheyev also said the gypsies are not Tajiks, and the fact that they wear Tajik clothing angers the Tajik diaspora.
As recently as six years ago, the Luli had not made it further into Russia than the southern Urals and Krasnodar. About four years ago, they first appeared in Moscow, arriving in force in St. Petersburg last summer.
In addition to their distinctive Tajik dress, Lulis are distinguished from other gypsies because only the men and children beg on the streets, not the women.
Pancheyev considers them economic migrants, having come to escape the difficult economic situation of Central Asia.
"The average monthly salary in Uzbekistan now is about $8," he said. "However, these gypsies do not want to work. They look for easy money."
The problem, however, is not limited to the local Muslim community. The Lulis also line the city's main streets, begging from cars stopped in traffic and in places frequented by foreign tourists.
"Our guests do complain about the gypsies' pestering and pick-pocketing," said a representative of the Grand Hotel Europe security service who asked not to be named.
Boris Shevenko, deputy chair of the City Tourism Committee, said that although his committee had not received any direct complaints from tourists about the gypsies, they were taking the matter seriously.
Such people "certainly do not decorate the city," he commented. "I think that solving this problem is especially important on the eve of the jubilee in 2003."
However, there does not seem to be any easy solution. Each Friday for weeks now, the police have been summoned to the mosque. They chase away the lines of Lulis and sometimes even detain a few for a couple of hours.
"However, 20 minutes after their release, the same gypsies are back at their places begging," Pancheyev said.
The St. Petersburg Migration Service argues that the Lulis do not fall under its jurisdiction.
The Migration Service says it deals only with the two major categories of people: refugees and ethnic Russians who have left former Soviet countries and are permanently living in Russia.
"[Luli gypsies] have neither status. They have no registration and, perhaps, no passports either," Mirgration Service head Sergei Tarasevich said.
"Of course, they come [to St. Petersburg] to earn money and could be considered a sort of economic migrant like, for instance, foreigners who come to work here. But those foreigners get business visas, various permissions, etc. So the Lulis are a different case," he said.
He added that his office has had "dozens of calls" from angry local residents complaining about the Lulis.
"The only way for now to deal with them is deportation," Tarasevich said.
"The police could organize it, but nobody has the money to send them back to Central Asia. The police have tried taking them outside the city, but they just come back."
Over the long term, Tarasevich says, the only hope of solving the problem may be the creation of a national immigration inspectorate, a project that is currently being dicussed at the federal level in Moscow.
"This inspectorate will be able to deal with such immigrants not only on the borders, especially the southern borders that are now rather open, but also throughout Russia. It will be able to stop such people before they reach urban areas," he said.
But there has not yet been any indication of how such an inspection would function or how it would be funded.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Nuclear Plan Blasted
BANGKOK (Reuters) - An international labor union said Tuesday it was shocked by Russian plans to build a nuclear reactor for Myanmar, possibly in return for produce it said was associated with forced labor.
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions said it had appealed to three affiliated unions in Russia, which represent some 35 million workers, to protest against the planned sale.
"We have been shocked to learn from the Russian ambassador in Rangoon [Yangon], H.E. Gleb Ivashentsov, of the probable intention by Burma [Myanmar] to pay for the nuclear reactor with a barter deal involving timber, rice and fish," Bill Jordan, ICFTU general secretary said in a statement.
"The production of these items has been repeatedly linked to forced labor. ... Russia should immediately cancel the deal."
The union said it had sent a written appeal to President Vladimir Putin on July 20 to scrap the deal.
The letter said the sale of the reactor, and a reported deal to sell 10 MiG-29 jet fighters to the military-run state, was a clear breach of an International Labor Organization resolution adopted last year.
Nuclear Malfunctions
MOSCOW (AP) - The state nuclear power company, Rosenergoatom, Tuesday reported two malfunctions at its Balakov plant, near Saratov, but said both were minor and radiation levels remained within accepted norms.
The first malfunction at the plant near Saratov occurred Sunday when a reactor's power was reduced due to a failed water pump, Rosenergoatom said. On Monday, another reactor was taken off line due to an oil-pipe malfunction, the company said.
Vershbow Arrives
MOSCOW (AP) - The new U.S. ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow, said in an arrival statement released Tuesday that he would work to broaden areas of cooperation, stimulate trade and expand Russia's cooperation with NATO, where he previously served as ambassador.
Vershbow, a career foreign-service officer who worked in Moscow 20 years ago, presented his credentials to the Foreign Ministry on Friday, a U.S. Embassy official said.
"I am very excited at the prospect of working together with my Russian counterparts, assisting Russia in her historic transition to a full-fledged democracy and member of the European community," Vershbow said in the statement.
"I personally hope to broaden the number of areas where the United States and Russia cooperate in our common interest; and I will work to stimulate increased U.S. investment and trade between our two countries. My previous assignment as ambassador to NATO will, I hope, contribute to expanding Russia's partnership with the Atlantic alliance in meeting the security challenges of the 21st century," he said.
Moiseyev Trial
MOSCOW (AP) - A former high-level Russian diplomat on trial on charges of spying for South Korea on Tuesday requested his case be heard by the Supreme Court in protest of the fourth transfer of his case to a new judge, his lawyer said.
Valentin Moiseyev was convicted by the Moscow City Court in December 1999. The Supreme Court overturned that conviction in June 2000 and ordered a new trial in the city court. Since then, the case has been transfered among four judges due to illness or vacation. Each time it is transferred, the trial must start from the beginning. The trial began for the fourth time July 20.
"He [Moiseyev] has no trust in the court, which for the past year has not been able to bring a guilty verdict or a not-guilty verdict or any verdict at all," lawyer Yury Gervis said.
Snake Bites
YAROSLAVL, Central Russia (SPT) -Three poisonous snake bites were registered in the Yaroslavl district, 400 kilometers southwest of St. Petersburg, over the past week, Interfax reported.
According to the State Epidemiology Inspectorate, the victims were a man of unspecified age, a 9-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy. All of the victims were given an antidote and are out of danger, the news agency reported.
Media-MOST Debt
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Gazprom said Tuesday it had paid off a $262 million debt owed by Media-MOST.
The Moscow City Court had already awarded the gas company majority stakes in the holding's media properties earlier this month in return for Gazprom's guarantee of the debts, which Media-MOST was unable to pay.
A spokesperson for Gazprom's media arm said Gazprom had paid the debts to Credit Suisse First Boston.
Leaving Vietnam
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will abandon its military base at Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay, once used by Americans and Japanese, because it cannot afford to keep it, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was quoted as saying Tuesday.
Moscow has had use of the base rent-free from its former Communist ally since 1979, but the lease expires in 2004. Hanoi had insisted that Russia pay to rent the base if it wanted to keep it. "We have to leave," Interfax quoted Ivanov as saying. He added that the price demanded did not match the base's function.
Kim Travels to Russia
VLADIVOSTOK, Far East (AP) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il arrived in Vladivostok on Thursday, the local customs service said.
A spokesperson said Wednesday that Kim arrived at the border for customs clearance at 9:30 a.m. Kim is expected to ride the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow, where he is scheduled to arrive Aug. 4 for a two-day visit, Itar-Tass said.
TITLE: No Time Like the Present for Supermarkets
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Judging by the number of firms that have recently announced development plans in the region, and by the opinions of industry analysts, there may be no better time than now to move into the St. Petersburg supermarket sector.
But while a number of Russian firms have said they are planning to do just this, certain advantages held by established European grocery chains may make competing and surviving difficult.
The number of supermarkets in the city is still very small at present. While operators like Finland's Stockmann and Super Siwa, as well as domestic firms such as Pyatyorochka and Lenta Cash and Carry are already operating here, the sector is considered undeveloped.
According to research by Gamma Group investment bank, about 60 percent of combined grocery and consumer goods sales in St. Petersburg occur at markets - such as Sennoy or Kuznyechny - while 19 percent come through older, Soviet-style shops, 13 percent from street sales and kiosks, and only 8 percent through supermarkets and department stores. Taken separately, the position occupied by supermarkets in the groceries sector is even lower.
But analysts say that all of this is about to change.
"This is absolutely the time for supermarket construction," Alexei Krivoshapko, retail sales analyst at United Financial Group, said. "Construction costs are still relatively low and, from a psychological standpoint, society here is basically ready for this step."
Lenta Cash and Carry and Pyatyorochka have both recently announced plans to expand their operations.
Lenta already has one $2.4 million supermarket, with an area of 4,800 square meters, on Prospect Energetikov in the city's Krasnogvardeisky District, and another store under construction on Ulitsa Savushkina, in the Primorsky region, which will open in August. The company's midterm plans call for eight to 10 new stores to be opened in the next couple of years, with a total investment of about $10 million, according to statements made at the end of June.
The Pyatyorochka chain already operates five large-scale supermarkets in the city and, in addition to plans for further development here, recently announced its plans to open 10 stores in Moscow by the end of the year - a plan that the firm says will involve a $6 million investment.
While Pyatyorochka is looking south, a number of Moscow-based firms have announced their intention to begin operations in the St. Petersburg area.
Seventh Continent, which operates eight stores in the capital, last week announced plans to pour from $20 million to $35 million into the construction of a shopping center to house Moscow retailers on the corner of Zvenigorodskaya Ulitsa and Ulitsa Marata in the city center. The building will have about 52,000 square meters of floor space, with 7,000 to 10,000 of these occupied by Seventh Continent itself.
Two other companies operating currently in Moscow, Perekryostok and the Turkish-owned Ramstore, say that they are in contact with the St. Petersburg administration and studying opportunities in the city, although they haven't announced concrete plans.
While St. Petersburg income levels are less than half those in Moscow (about $135 per person per month for St. Petersburg and $340 for Moscow), analysts are still positive about the market here.
"By income, St. Petersburg is ranked fourth among Russian localities," Krivoshapko said Wednesday. "But it has a population of 4.8 million, which means a lot of total purchasing power."
"In some ways, supermarket development has some negative aspects, such as the large amounts of investment required and high taxation levels," Krivoshapko said. "But, on the other hand, that is the most rational way of organizing retail sales: a minimum number of employees working in large spaces with a high turnover."
"At present, it's all happening as analysts predicted," Alexei Shaskolsky, senior specialist for corporate real estate at Gamma Group investment bank, said on Wednesday. "The situation in the market will change dramatically, and St. Petersburg and Moscow companies will try to grab as many prime locations as possible before these changes take place."
According to Shaskolsky, the experience in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, where large European grocery chains essentially squeezed smaller local operations that were at a competitive and distribution disadvantage out of the market, will very likely repeat itself in Russia.
"Companies like [Germany's] Spar and Metro, as well as Ramstore, will provide very serious competition to the local retail operators," he said. "Local retail chains will have two choices: either try to compete and ultimately lose, or try to get the highest price for their locations from the international heavyweights."
"Right now it's important to settle in the right place at the right time in order to establish the best position for future acquisition negotiations, which explains the rush in recent months."
"Actually, we expected this process to take place last year, so it's happening a year late," Shaskolsky added. "The foreign companies will likely come before the end of the year."
TITLE: Russia's Flagship Airline Has Its Eyes on the Emerald Isle
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Aeroflot is in negotiations with a group of international investors to set up a brand-new airline in Ireland, a move that would give the Russian air carrier access to all of Europe, an Aeroflot executive close to the talks said Tuesday.
"The airline will be created from scratch. The business plan is already prepared and will be presented to the Aeroflot board of directors in August and then to Aeroflot shareholders for approval," Boris Krivchenko, Aeroflot's London-based representative on commercial projects, said in a telephone interview.
Krivchenko said that six to eight months would be needed to create the as-yet-unnamed airline, and its initial fleet of two Boeing 737 jets could be in operation by the summer of 2002.
Aeroflot's director for route management, Alexander Kaneshchev, confirmed that the airline is considering forming an Irish air carrier. He stressed, however, that the plan was only one of several that Aeroflot is looking at in its bid to expand operations in Europe.
Earlier this year, Aeroflot held negotiations that ultimately failed to buy a stake in troubled Irish carrier Virgin Express Ireland.
Aeroflot General Director Valery Okulov said this month that work on the airline's operations in Europe "is continuing, foremost in Ireland."
"All the analysis that we have made says that it would be beneficial for Aeroflot," he said.
Any EU airline can take advantage of the European Union's open-skies policy, which allows it to fly to any destination of member states, if time slots are available. Aeroflot would be able to feed its passengers to that air carrier, which could then ferry them throughout Europe. "What is being created is a strategic partner for flying within Europe, a feeding airline that will link passenger flows up to Aeroflot's flights," Krivchenko said. "We fly to London from Moscow, but we cannot fly within Europe. We need a commercial helper to connect flights."
"With Europe operating under the open-skies [policy], the Irish can fly between cities in Germany," he added.
But Aeroflot will need an EU partner in order to create the new airline. Under EU regulations, European investors must own at least a 51 percent stake in airlines that qualify for the open-skies policy.
Aeroflot would not say with which investors it is negotiating. Krivchenko said at least a dozen investors are ready to finance the start-up.
Aeroflot is considering basing the airline at the Shannon airport.
Krivchenko said Aeroflot's long history with Ireland made it a prime country with which to work. Aeroflot used to make stopovers in Shannon on flights to the United States, but stopped them in 1999 after getting longer-range aircraft.
Aeroflot also had its first two Boeing 767s, which flew between Russia and the United States, registered with the Irish aviation authorities.
The airline flew up to 52 flights a week through Shannon, a stopover that gave it more than 30,000 additional passengers a year, Krivchenko said. Most of those passengers were in transit.
Krivchenko said the Russian and Irish governments reached an understanding six months ago under which Ireland would welcome an attempt by Aeroflot to cooperate with an Irish air carrier. Aeroflot is majority state-owned.
"Now the go-ahead has to be given within Aeroflot itself," Krivchenko said.
Ireland's Department of Public Enterprise, which deals with airlines, did not return requests for comment Tuesday.
Aeroflot would not disclose Tuesday how much the planned airline might cost. Krivchenko said the airline would lease two 737-400s and each plane would have four to five crews.
Leasing such an aircraft costs up to $350,000 a month.
Moscow-based aviation analyst Paul Duffy called the plan to launch a new airline sensible.
"The idea of a start-up makes more sense than taking over the business, and the unknown amount of debts, of Virgin Express," he said.
In the first four months of this year Aeroflot saw 15 percent growth on international routes and a 36 percent growth on domestic routes, Zhdanova said.
TITLE: Regions Get Boost From Ratings Agencies
AUTHOR: By Kirill Koriukin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian regions that continued to service their debts after the federal government stopped honoring its own in 1998 are being rewarded. Major rating agencies are keeping many regional ratings at the sovereign level and hinting that some could go higher.
Sovereign ceilings are not going to be blown off tomorrow, but there's an omen - Russian regional ratings, by every agency's book, have been quick to follow every upgrade of the sovereign ones.
Moody's Investors Service this week upgraded the Komi Republic's rating by two notches to Caa1. A few days earlier, Fitch put Moscow and St. Petersburg on review for an upgrade. Standard & Poor's has upgraded Moscow and St. Petersburg to B and Yamal-Nenets autonomous district to CCC+.
Moscow and St. Petersburg should be eager to get international ratings as both are looking to issue new debt to refinance past borrowings. Moscow has to patch a hole left by some $700 million in repayments this year, of which about $150 million is still outstanding. St. Petersburg has just under $200 million of debt outstanding.
But they are not alone. Dozens of regions that seemingly have no reason to pay agencies for a rating still ask for one. Regions, apart from those that need to refinance their existing debt, are not allowed to borrow internationally, according to last year's amendments to the Budget Code. However, Standard & Poor's currently rates seven Russian regions, while Moody's rates 12.
"Regions strive to get the same rating as the country. Whether or not a region can be rated above the country is a common question posed by regions and cities," said Elena Okorotchenko, a regional ratings analyst with Standard & Poor's.
Elizabeth Rudman, a regional ratings analyst with Moody's, can name a few good reasons why the regions are keen to get ratings.
One of the most obvious ones is that the ban on foreign issuances is not going to last forever, and you want to be ready to borrow when the opportunity comes.
Also, the regions need to attract direct foreign investment, and a credit rating - even a low one, which a Russian region can expect - is a big lure for investors. Thus, the U.S. Export-Import Bank has said it was ready to finance projects in the regions provided they had sufficient credit ratings.
"Regions are not getting ratings for the purpose of borrowing because they don't have an They are using the ratings as a marketing tool," said Rudman.
"We received our ratings a long time before the ban on hard-currency borrowing was introduced," said an official in Samara, one of the top-rated regions in the country. "If we give it up now, it will be hard to regain it later, or so the rating agencies tell us. It is prestigious to have one, even if we are talking not about today, but tomorrow," said the official, who declined to be named.
Agencies are far from ready to rate regions higher than the Russian Federation itself, especially concerning hard currency. The main obstacle: No matter how well their economies are doing and how transparent they are willing to be, the federal government still has too much control over them.
"The regions are not sufficiently autonomous or have to operate within a restrictive and centralized intergovernmental system," said Okorotchenko. "Theoretically, a region's local currency rating may go above a country's local currency rating, but this is not the case for Russia."
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: $800M Norilsk Project
KALGOORLIE, Australia (Reuters) - Canadian-Australian miner Argosy Minerals Ltd. said Thursday that Norilsk Nickel would end up with a controlling stake in a proposed $800 million nickel project in New Caledonia.
Norilsk, the world's largest producer of nickel from its mines in Siberia, has agreed to proceed with completing a bankable feasibility study leading to the joint development with Argosy and its New Caledonian partner Societe des Mines de la Tontouta (SMT) of the Nakety/Bogota project.
Under the agreement, Norilsk will fund a $20 million feasibility study required before construction of the mine and plant can commence, Russell said.
'Too Many Banks'
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia should move on banking reform as the sector in its current condition may slow economic growth, the chief economist of the World Bank's Moscow office said in an interview published Thursday.
"[Russia's] banking system has not so far been fulfilling its role to serve as an efficient financial mediator, as a bridge between different elements of the economy," Christof Ruehl told Vedomosti.
"Potentially it may create a big problem for economic growth," he said.
He said ARKO, Russia's state agency set up after the 1998 crisis to oversee banking-sector restructuring, had so far failed to achieve its goal and that there were still too many inefficient banks.
The number of active banks fell to 1,281 on July 1, 2001 from 1,547 on Aug. 1, 1998, on the eve of the crisis as the central bank and ARKO have been weeding out troubled banks.
OPEC Cuts Output
LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC on Wednesday agreed to curtail oil supplies for the third time this year in a bid to lift prices back toward its $25-a-barrel target.
Oil ministers, in an agreement reached by telephone, reduced output by a million barrels a day, or 4 percent, from Sept. 1.
Supply limits for 10 OPEC producers were pared to 23.2 million barrels daily, the group's lowest production since April of 1999, when tight curbs sent prices to a peak of $35 a barrel.
OPEC said in a communiqué from its Vienna headquarters that the decision was taken in the interest of market stability after the slowing world economy had eased petroleum demand and helped build petroleum stockpiles.
Finns Back WTO Bid
SAVONLINNA, Finland (Reuters) - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Wednesday asked Finland to back his country's bid to join the World Trade Organization.
"It is very important for us that Finland, as a European Union member, supports us in this," Kasyanov told a news conference with Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, who welcomed the suggestion.
"Finland will now try in a very practical way to have an influence so that the issues [related to WTO membership] can be discussed and to ensure that things stay on schedule," Lipponen said.
Moscow says it wants to join the trade body as soon as possible, either next year or in 2003, but insists it needs time to adapt its legislation to world standards because abrupt changes could hurt the Russian economy.
TITLE: Output Not Sole Focus of LUKoil Chief
AUTHOR: By Alexander Tutushkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - The largest Russian oil company LUKoil is guaranteed regular media attention. Analysts and journalists intently follow the dynamics of the company's development. Its corporate news provokes changes in the stock market.
LUKoil's oil production has not grown recently as much as that of other companies, but LUKoil president Vagit Alekperov said this is not a bad sign. Alekperov, named on Forbes magazine's 2001 list of the world's richest men, said his company is not inclined to "abrupt movements" and puts its emphasis on the economics of production and not on its volume.
Q: President Putin has started to meet regularly with representatives of big business. Do such meetings yield concrete results?
A: The biggest plus in this is that we have the opportunity to tell the head of state personally about the problems that arise in all sectors since, as a rule, he meets with representatives of the fuel and energy sectors as well as the food, banking, machine-building and automotive industries. It's significant. Officials understand that we now have the opportunity to address issues that we had previously discussed with the president but remain unresolved. This allows us to open a dialogue effectively with government officials and exert influence over the drafting of legislation. Look, all the laws that the government submits to the State Duma with the approval of the president are directed toward stimulating economic resources. Of course, these laws are not always the result of our meetings, but the meetings unquestionably play a role.
Q: With the appearance of a new government, how has the attitude toward your company changed abroad?
A: On its own, a national company cannot enjoy greater respect abroad than the country itself. Today, it is possible to predict the actions of the president and the government; there is certainty in the longevity of its programs. Accordingly, companies' positions have grown stronger outside of Russia. We feel that.
Q: Since last year, oil production has started to grow significantly, and companies have encountered problems with sales on the domestic market. Are oil producers threatened by an overproduction crisis?
A: The [production] potential in Russia fluctuates from 340 million to 380 million tons of oil. Of course, given today's reserves, it would be possible to produce more, but that would cost a colossal sum of money. For that reason, we believe production volumes in the coming years should be around 350 million tons. That is the minimum volume after the utilization of the Baltic pipeline system, the Caspian pipeline consortium and the northern export route we built at Varandei. These three systems will allow us to balance the volume of production with the development and export of our production to the European market.
Today, what is most important for us is to receive the government's forecasts for energy use within the country. We are now preparing local forecasts for those regions where the company works. In general, the Energy Ministry should play a more active role in guaranteeing people's well-being in a country where 90 percent of the territory is covered by snow for more than half of the year.
Q: How do you explain that the growth in your production is low in comparison to other companies?
A: Over the years, we have worked to raise the effectiveness of the stock of oil wells, and if we look at the dynamics of LUKoil from 1991, the company has increased its production by a small amount every year. Several other companies experienced a longer fall in production, and a large number of their oil wells became idle. Now they've received money and are organizing production operations. Therefore, such surges [in production volumes] have appeared. But we believe that abrupt movements are not worthwhile. After all, everything depends on the economics of the company and not the production volume.
Q: One of the most dramatic and unexpected scandals on the oil market was the agreement between oil company Yukos and the American company Williams International about the inclusion of a Russian company in the list of stockholders and main suppliers of raw materials to the American-managed Lithuanian oil concern Mazeikiu Nafta. Previously, LUKoil had expressed interest in Mazeikiu Nafta. Has LUKoil retained its interest in that project?
A: Our company has been and continues to be a major supplier and coordinator of supplies of oil to [Lithuania]. But throughout all these years, our interests have not once coincided. LUKoil will not be a passive shareholder. We set before ourselves the task that we would participate in that project on condition that we are either granted an operator's functions or that we establish an operational company jointly with the Americans. The advantage of the project should be the objective price of the shares. Our colleagues perceived the project differently. That is their right.
Q: From the moment LUKoil was established, its strategic goal has been to operate according to international standards. What do you need to do to achieve that goal?
A: Our volume of oil production outside of Russia is not sufficiently high. It is essential that we raise the level of our management, the level of motivation of our managers to work, and more actively participate in the formation of international consortiums.
Q: Not long ago, the American magazine Forbes included you on the list of the richest people in the world, estimating your personal wealth at $1.3 billion. How close is that to the truth?
A: I talk about it with a smile because Forbes compiled its ratings subjectively. They took the supposed packet of shares I am said to own, multiplied it by the capitalization of the company and from that produced some abstract sum. I don't think I'm a poor person, but all the same, I'm not nearly as rich as Forbes suggests.
TITLE: Russia Writes Off $572M in
Debt From Poorest Nations
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia is writing off $572 million owed by the world's most heavily indebted poor countries through a bilateral debt-relief program, top presidential aide Andrei Illarionov was quoted as saying Wednesday.
President Vladimir Putin joined the other Group of Eight leading industrial nations - the United States, Britain, Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy and France - last weekend in pledging to write off debt owed by the 23 countries involved in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries program, which was initiated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
HIPC countries are classified as those that have a per capita gross domestic product of less than $900 and a debt load greater than 200 percent of GDP.
To qualify for relief, the countries must explain how they would use the write-off.
Russia first agreed to join the HIPC initiative when it was formed in 1996, Illarionov said Monday, Interfax reported.
"The difference between 2001 and 1996 is that now we can say which of the less developed countries have fulfilled the requirements formulated in 1996 and 1999," Illarionov said.
Of the 23 countries that are on the HIPC list, 19 are in Africa and two each are in Central and South America.
In all, Russia and other Paris Club members wrote off $6.5 billion under the HIPC initiative, Illarionov said.
The Soviet Union heavily subsidized its allies, many of which are developing countries owing huge debts to Moscow and may not be able to pay for years.
Russia's generosity has put it in fourth place among the G-8 for volume of debt written off and first place for debt written off as a percent of GDP (0.3 percent).
Russia itself owes $48 billion to the Paris Club group of creditor countries - a third of its total foreign debt of about $151 billion.
TITLE: Oil Giant Says Ruling Meant $1M In Lost Sales
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Top oil producer LUKoil thundered against the country's judicial system Thursday for allowing a minority shareholder to win a two-day ban on its exports through pipeline monopoly Transneft, costing it $1 million.
LUKoil vice president Leonid Fedun said the Ryazan court ruling was a "purely psychological act without any basis in the law."
"This reflects very poorly on our courts, and judicial reform is way past overdue," said an outraged Fedun. "Naturally, LUKoil will not actively support reform. It's all completely ridiculous. This never could have happened in any other country."
On July 19, Judge Sergei Cherkasov of a district court in Ryazan, located about 200 kilometers southwest of Moscow, granted a petition filed by Ryazan resident Irina Yegorova, an owner of five LUKoil shares. Yegorova had requested that any authority - documents, executive orders, etc. - exercised by Lukoil president Vagit Alekperov over the company's exports be nullified because she believed that his election last year by shareholders was unlawful.
Cherkasov on Thursday annulled his own decision, but LUKoil's investigation is far from over. LUKoil is determined to find Yegorova, who does not live at the address she put down on court documents, and figure out the ulterior motive behind her claim, Fedun said.
Cherkasov could not be reached for comment.
"The judge will also tell us a lot about what happened," Fedun said. "These jokes with strategic systems of fuel transport are very dangerous."
Transneft officials, who received a copy of the order on Monday, claimed that LUKoil's crude wasn't being delivered to its destination. Fedun contradicted these statements, saying that crude oil did indeed reach docked tankers but the tankers could not depart until the proper documentation was in place.
At any one time, 23 percent of Transneft's pipeline capacity is occupied by LUKoil crude, and any kind halt in transport would be technologically impossible, Fedun said.
Fedun declined to say who the possible culprits were behind Yegorova's suit, but he added that it wasn't your run-of-the-mill battle between oil companies and minority shareholders. In her complaint, Yegorova says her rights were violated because LUKoil didn't include her agenda recommendation for the June 8 shareholders meeting.
Yegorova acquired her five shares on July 9 of this year, according to LUKoil's register, meaning she wasn't even a shareholder at the time of the meeting. Also, Russian corporate law states that a shareholder must own at least 2 percent of a company to be able to suggest an agenda item.
LUKoil was notified of the judge's decision by Transneft on Monday. A "brigade of lawyers" had to drive down to Ryazan to collect the documents because the court didn't have a fax machine. LUKoil filed its countersuit on Tuesday.
Fedun believes the instigator is a company working in the industry, because "their arguments, even though fundamentally flawed, were very sophisticated."
"It's not a major player," he said. "A major company wouldn't take part in what is the equivalent of throwing a brick through a glass window."
TITLE: Norilsk Lands Spot on Mining List
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Norilsk Nickel, the world's largest nickel producer, has grabbed the No. 5 spot on the annual list of the top 50 non-fuel mining companies compiled and published by "Who Owns Who in Mining."
Norilsk's share in the total value of all non-fuel mining companies worldwide rose to 3.1 percent in 2000 from 2.1 percent the previous year, according to industry analyst Raw Materials Group and the Roskill Information Services consultancy, which released the ranking Wednesday.
Norilsk was the only Russian company on the list, which left out coal companies. According to the data, Norilsk was the No. 1 producer of palladium and platinum and No. 12 for copper.
With an eye toward going global, the company Tuesday appointed former Rosbank and Uneximbank chief Mikhail Prokhorov to be head of Norilsk's core unit, the Mining and Minerals Co. Norilsk Nickel. MMC is set to become the umbrella company when a share swap with Norilsk is completed this year.
"I have set myself the task of turning Norilsk Nickel into a major, powerful, international structure," Prokhorov said in an interview published in Kommersant newspaper Wednesday.
Norilsk has embarked on its first international venture, developing the Nakety-Bogota nickel mine and plant in New Caledonia with the Canadian-Australian mining company Argosy.
According to preliminary estimates, the New Caledonia project, which will carry a price tag of roughly $1 billion and produce 50,000 tons of nickel a year, should break even in six years.
Extraction costs for the project are expected to be much lower than in Russia, said Dzhonson Khagazheyev, first deputy in charge of MMC's domestic operations.
Norilsk's plans are to preserve its 20 percent share in the international nickel market over the next 10 years by developing projects worldwide, he said.
TITLE: Maslov Calls for Time for Code
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The real estate industry should not expect the new Land Code to start working smoothly overnight nor to solve all problems with recalcitrant local administrations, said the man behind the code.
"The Land Code on its own won't be able to change the situation completely because there is a very notorious bureaucratic tradition in this country and an ineffective justice system," said Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Alexander Maslov at a meeting last week of the real estate committee of the American Chamber of Commerce.
"We are going to monitor the process and the prices of land sales very closely. If they are slow and few we will take action to remedy this by introducing amendments into the law," he added.
In his first public engagement after the code passed the State Duma's second reading on July 14, Maslov said a local administration opposed to land sales could simply refuse to sell land, but he encouraged would-be purchasers to take their local administration to court if it stood in their way.
The latest draft of the Land Code avoided the contentious issue of sales or "turnover," which could include privatization, of agricultural land, but another principal issue, the provision of a national regime for foreign investment in land, proved a stumbling block for the government, Maslov said.
"The very idea that foreign individuals and firms should have equal rights with Russian individuals and firms [to own land] raised problems not, as was to be expected, only from the parties of the left, but also from the center and even the right," he said.
The version of the Land Code that passed provided for foreign companies and individuals and stateless persons to buy land, except on the national borders and in other restricted areas, he said. The list of excluded areas is to be approved by President Vladimir Putin, he added.
The code does not define what is a Russian or a foreign company and, therefore, allows Russian-registered companies that are 100 percent foreign-owned to qualify as Russian companies, Maslov said.
Maslov said firms should buy the land under their buildings soon after the code comes into law because the price is likely to rise. Local administrations have an incentive to set higher rates for selling land or the land will be sold at the minimum rate set by the code, he added.
The government accepted that the price of the land under enterprises had been built into the price of privatization, even though the land was leased or a permanent use right was granted. The government, therefore, did not believe that the sales should generate large sums for state budgets, he said. Its proposal had been to set the price of the land at five to 10 times the annual tax on the land, he added.
The sale price in the final edition of the code was set at five to 30 times the land tax rate for Moscow and St. Petersburg, five to 17 times for cities with populations between 500,000 and 3 million, and three to 10 times for towns with a population of less than 500,000, Maslov said.
In addition, land under different types of enterprises will cost different amounts according to the type of the enterprise. The variation is limited to plus or minus 30 percent.
"We are not quite satisfied with such a [system for calculating value] as we believe that those rates remain inflated, but we could not have passed the Land Code without this compromise," Maslov said.
Konstantine Kouzine, a real estate lawyer with Linklaters & Alliance, said the new code was a significant improvement on earlier drafts but had contradictions with other laws.
Kouzine and Adrian Moore, the real estate and construction partner of Baker & McKenzie law firm, submitted comments on the draft Land Code to the government on behalf of the American Chamber of Commerce, the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce, and the European Business Club.
"Some, but not all, of our comments were implemented in the draft," Kouzine said. "It's a compromise. It looks as if the government wants the principal ideas of the code adopted in the first place and to fine tune it later."
He said one advancement in the code is that there is no reference of a separate land-privatization law, meaning that as soon as the law is adopted, land will be able to be privatized.
Also, the code gives not only foreigners but Russians the right to own and trade in land, Kouzine said. The Constitution had previously established this right, but there was no law setting it up, he added.
Fritz Digmayer, a commercial lawyer, real estate law expert, manager and head of the German desk of Arthur Andersen/Andersen Legal Moscow, said the passage of the second reading of the law was a big political success for the government, Maslov and Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref.
If the bill becomes law "it will improve the investment climate in Russia. Land ownership will be a guarantee for investors," he said.
Digmayer, who worked for German agency Treuhandanstalt in privatizing state-owned land in former East Germany after reunification, said the price of land determined by the State Duma in the draft of the Land Code seems to be very low.
This could be explained only by the political need for compromise, he said. The former East Germany's state-owned land was sold only on the basis of public tenders to achieve the highest possible price. The market value of the land was found by "going to the market," he added.
Digmayer would not agree with Maslov's contention that the price of land might already have been built into the price paid for enterprises. This appears to be unrealistic, since until now land could not be owned, and therefore was not part of economic calculations, he said.
"In my opinion, land should be dealt with as a public good, to be sold for the benefit of the public budget on the basis of its market value," he said.
TITLE: Chubais-Remezov Battle Moving Into Courtroom
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The high-voltage feud between Unified Energy Systems chief Anatoly Chubais and Alexander Remezov, the person he is trying to remove as head of the capital's electric utility, Mosenergo, took a new twist Wednesday with each side claiming victory.
A Kemerovo court barred an Aug. 31 Mosenergo extraordinary shareholders meeting, which Chubais said he wanted to use to sack Remezov, accusing him of financial mismanagement.
The court's decision follows a lawsuit filed Tuesday by Andrei Voronkov, a minority shareholder of Mosenergo, which is 50.87 percent controlled by UES. Voronkov could not be located and the nature of his complaint was unclear.
UES, however, said that the Mosenergo board of directors Wednesday approved a list of five candidates to replace Remezov and signed off on that decision 20 minutes before court bailiffs arrived to declare next month's scheduled shareholders meeting invalid. Because Wednesday's board meeting was part of preparations for next month's extraordinary meeting, Mosenergo board chairman Anatoly Kopsov said in a press release that the bailiffs were too late, invalidating the court decision.
UES board member Andrei Trapeznikov insisted that Wednesday's meeting was valid.
The five candidates are current Mosenergo executives Andrei Vagner and Arkady Yevstafiyev, former Komitek head and current ESN-Energo director Grigory Beryozkin, Orenburgenergo chief Yury Trofimov and the incumbent Remezov - put forward by the Moscow city government.
Chubais asked Remezov to step down two weeks ago after a routine internal audit uncovered in what was described as financial abuse, including 270 million rubles ($9.22 million) of missing profits. Chubais said the audit has given rise to "serious grievances" about its subsidiary's activities and an extraordinary shareholders meeting would seek to elect a new general director.
Remezov denied the allegations, saying the audit was designed as a tool to oust him. "It looks like certain commercial structures have been pressing for my resignation after we put an end to offset settlements," he said.
Remezov also said Mosenergo sells about $10 million worth of electricity a day, payments for half of which were performed through offsetting, with a middleman getting 20 percent, or $1 million a day.
Remezov said Mosenergo commissioned UES-approved auditor Vneshaudit, the Moscow Audit Chamber and the state Audit Chamber to conduct separate audits. The Vneshaudit audit, a copy of which was obtained by The St. Petersburg Times, found no irregularities.
Andrei Abramov, an energy analyst at NIKoil, said Mosenergo was one of Russia's most successful utilities with no real problems to speak of and that the attack on Remezov is due to his opposition to Chubais' plan to restructure the national power grid.
Mosenergo produced 26.6 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in the first six months of the year, up 3 percent from the same period last year, according to the company's sales and distribution chief, Vitaly Kuzmin.
He said that the energo supplied customers with 25.3 billion rubles worth of electricity and thermal power in January through June, with a collection rate of 109.5 percent of sales, which includes debt payments.
"The era of non-monetary payments is over," Kuzmin said.
TITLE: Domestic Poultry Producers Playing Catch-Up With U.S.
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Domestic poultry production should grow 10 percent this year to 893,000 tons, but it still won't meet demand, the chairman of the Russian Poultry Union said Thursday.
Russia was the world's largest producer and consumer of poultry in the early '90s, but now more than 90 percent of all poultry is imported from the United States, union chief Vladimir Fisinin told a news conference.
Last year, the United States exported 694,000 tons of poultry to Russia - almost the same amount Russia itself produced.
U.S. poultry exports, however, are not growing, so domestic producers should more actively exploit the developing local market, said Albert Davleyev, head of the Russian office of the Poultry and Egg Export Council.
The Russian meat market is estimated at about $10 billion a year and is expected to grow to $15 billion in the coming years. Per capita consumption of all meat dropped in the last decade from 81 kilograms in 1990 to 41 kilograms last year, said Musheg Mamikonyan, president of the Russian Meat Union.
According to the ROMIR marketing agency, the share of poultry in the meat ration of the average Russian is 34 percent. Other kinds of meat - beef, pork, lamb, etc. - have 41 percent, followed by fish (18 percent) and canned meat (7 percent).
Russian poultry consumption is about 2 million tons a year and an estimated 1 million tons a year are needed in imports, Mamikonyan said. "The Russian poultry market has very big potential at present. Consumption can grow by 3 million to 5 million tons," he said.
The State Customs Committee estimates that illegal imports accounted for half of all poultry shipments last year, however, Russia has since tightened controls on poultry imports by banning land shipments and increasing customs fees to a maximum 25 percent.
"Customs fees and VAT collections from imported U.S. poultry increased 150 percent since last year," said Sergei Alexeyev, a Central Customs Department official.
Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev has said that quotas were needed on poultry imports, which would be possible next year. However, according to Fisinin, quotas aren't needed now.
"Today we are not able to provide ourselves with poultry without importing," he said, adding that if the local market continues growing, quotas will be needed in a few years.
Poultry imports do not create unfair competition for Russian producers as they did before 1998, when exports were subsidized by the governments of exporting countries, Mamikonyan said. "Additional restrictions might be dangerous and harmful for developing competition in the meat industry."
Almost all Russians prefer domestic producers, according to ROMIR. The quality of domestic poultry, however, very often is worse than imported stock, and prices on local poultry are too high for the local consumer, Svetlana Plotnikova from ROMIR said.
According to a report for the State Duma hearings on meat production, Russian poultry has dozens of times more dangerous chemicals than U.S. poultry, the Poultry and Egg Council's Davleyev said.
TITLE: Customs Flap Puts Pipeline Opening on Hold
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ALMATY, Kazakhstan - The opening of the first major oil pipeline built in the resource-rich Caspian Sea region in a decade has been postponed at least until September over customs and oil-quality disputes, an official said Thursday.
The pipeline, which runs between Kazakhstan's Tengiz oil field and Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, was to begin full operations Aug. 6. The Tengiz field is believed to be the world's sixth-largest oil field, and the 1,580-kilometer pipeline will ultimately have a capacity of 85,700 tons (600,000 barrels) a day.
But the opening has been delayed due to disagreements between Russian customs authorities and the consortium that built the pipeline, and also "due to uncertainty on the quality, standards and criteria of the Kazakh-Russian oil blend," said the head of Kazakhstan's state oil company Kazakoil, Nurlan Balgimbayev.
No new date for the start of the pipeline operation has been set.
"I don't think the delay will be longer than one month," Balgimbayev told reporters.
The Russian government has said it expects to collect more than $20 billion in taxes over the next four decades from the pipeline.
The pipeline is also expected to give Moscow political clout in the strategic Caspian region. Russia has a 24 percent stake in the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, followed by Kazakhstan with 19 percent and Oman with 7 percent. The $2.8 billion project also involves eight oil companies, including the Chevron Corp., ExxonMobil and Kerr McGee.
TITLE: Energy and Power
AUTHOR: By Jackson Diehl
TEXT: A senior official in the administration of U.S. President George Bush recently described President Vladimir Putin's dilemma this way: The president of Russia wants to rebuild Moscow's influence in the world, but he must choose between two mutually exclusive strategies. He could try the 19th-century big-power play, by bullying Russia's neighbors into becoming satellites and striking alliances with states that help counter Western clout, such as Iraq and Iran. Or he could go the 21st-century way, by liberalizing his economy, joining the global market and trying to integrate Russia into Europe's economic and security systems.
At present Putin does a little of both. In general, though, his words often proclaim the 21st-century strategy, while Russia's actions more often bespeak the 19th-century game. One interesting test of where this still-puzzling Kremlin leader is going is shaping up this summer in the Baltic country of Lithuania, now one of the leading candidates to join the European Union and NATO.
Lithuania, unlike Russia, has thrived since the breakup of the Soviet Union. It has one big economic problem: an energy system that binds it almost exclusively to Russian supplies and that thus carries the risk of pressure by strangulation. Moscow already used the cutoff card once, in 1991. Putin's government has shown a decided taste for employing energy supplies to gain some 19th-century-style leverage: It threatened Georgia with a cutoff, tried to take over Ukraine's electricity grid and has worked hard, though unsuccessfully, to establish control over the pipelines that will carry the vast new oil and gas supplies from the Caspian region.
Lithuania, like several other NATO-candidate countries, has been engaged in a quiet struggle to free itself from the vise of Russian energy dependence and the related efforts by powerful Moscow-backed industrial groups to take over power plants, refineries and other utilities as they are privatized. It's not only that such independence makes East European countries more attractive to the West, these governments feel that the real battle over NATO and EU expansion is being fought on this ground.
"Putin doesn't bother to argue loudly against NATO expansion, since he knows that won't work,'' says an East European ambassador in Washington. "Instead the Russians are trying an inside strategy. They want to take control over key industries and power supplies in our countries in such a way as to make them completely unattractive to NATO.''
Lithuania saw this threat coming before most of its neighbors, which is why, in 1999, it agreed to give Tulsa-based Williams International, a medium-sized American oil company, operating control and a 30 percent ownership share in Mazeikiu Nafta, a company that controls what was the largest oil refinery in the former Soviet Union. The complex represents no less than 10 percent of Lithuania's economy. Although the plant is still dependent on supplies of Russian crude, the government figured it could establish its economic independence by getting an American partner.
What it got, instead, was a cold war with Russia's largest oil company, LUKoil, which had a monopoly from the Russian government over the Baltic oil market. LUKoil cut oil supplies to Mazeikiu and refused to enter into a supply agreement. Its executives vowed to starve the refinery - and Lithuania - unless control of the company was given to LUKoil. Meanwhile, Russia's allies in Lithuania argued that Williams had gotten a sweetheart deal and then failed to meet its terms.
Four months ago, Lithuanian President Valdus Adamkus traveled to Moscow and raised the issue directly with Putin. His pitch was simple: release Lithuania from LUKoil's supply monopoly and thus its capacity for extortion. By doing so, he argued, Putin would not only be helping Lithuania, he would be helping his own announced goal of economic reform by encouraging free-market competition among Russian oil companies. In effect, he would be choosing the 21st-century model of Russian influence over the 19th-century version.
Putin was noncommittal, but two months later, Williams and the Lithuanian government struck a long-term supply deal with Yukos, the second-largest Russian oil company, which would give the Russians a stake in the refinery but not the controlling share LUKoil demanded. Lithuanian and U.S. officials believe this compromise will keep the Lithuanian oil industry independent and prevent its use as a blunt instrument of economic or political pressure from Moscow.
If, that is, Vladimir Putin goes along with the deal. A government-aligned newspaper recently denounced the Williams-Yukos accord as bad for Russia. LUKoil's allies in Lithuania mounted a campaign to block the accord in Parliament. The battle in Lithuania seemed to turn last week when left-wing Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas, aware that NATO membership could hang on his decision, assured Williams and Secretary of State Colin Powell that he'd back the deal. Still, if Putin fails to revoke LUKoil's government-granted monopoly, the contract still may fall apart.
"This is a test for Putin,'' says Vygaudas Usackas, Lithuania's ambassador to the United States. "If Putin breaks the monopoly and allows the free supply of oil to Lithuania, it would be a sign that Russia is really changing.''
Jackson Diehl is a member of The Washington Post editorial page staff. He contributed this comment to The Washington Post.
TITLE: My Plumber Is More Powerful Than Yakovlev
TEXT: WHAT makes a person influential? That is the question that Gallup, Channel 6 and Smena tried - and failed - to answer last week. But it certainly did make for thought-provoking reading.
They failed in part because the question can be taken in many different ways, thus making it unanswerable. The question, "Who has the biggest influence on your life?" is not the same as, "Who would you turn to if you wanted a problem fixed?" - in other words, if you wanted someone to wield influence on your behalf. And what does wielding influence mean, anyway? I have visions of begging Governor Vladimir Yakovlev to fix my leaky roof, and the governor picking up the phone, murmuring some instructions and presto!
Except that if the governor really can get the santekhnik to show up on time, then he is not the governor, but God. And the santekhnik may be the best in town, but to shut off the water he would have to get into the apartment above mine, and the babushka who lives there is always away at the dacha during the summer (you will have guessed by now that I'm drawing on a real-life situation to make my case). And, of course, I have to be able to gain access to Yakovlev in the first place. In fact, in this case, Yakovlev is entirely useless to me.
By restricting the survey to the elite, Gallup, et al. merely confirmed what most of us knew: that the big-hitters in town are important for other big-hitters and for those who aren't quite there yet but who more or less move in those circles. But for the vast majority of people, I would imagine that the heartless and faceless bureaucrats of the OVIR, the military conscription offices, the Tax Inspectorate, landlords, traffic cops and other "little people" can wield more influence than anyone they've ever seen on television or in the papers.
Perhaps you could consider these people to be mere elements of a system that Yakovlev, Putin and the rest of that crowd just represent. But then why name names? Why not just give positions: No. 1, whoever's governor, No. 2, whoever's president, and so on.
When I was reading the list, I found myself wondering about the absence of City Prosecutor Ivan Sydoruk. How much further down the ladder would Vice Governor Valery Malyshev have fallen had the survey's answers come back after it was announced that his financial activities were being investigated? And would Mikhail Mirilashvili - who could have had inconveniences removed at the snap of his fingers, and could have had a huge amount of money as the owner of six casinos, even if he didn't - have appeared on the list were it not for the fact that the prosecutor put him in the slammer?
So perhaps the prosecutor should be on the list. Unless he takes his orders from Putin via Cherkesov. Who may be "advised" by Roman Abramovich. Who may have got out of bed on the wrong side because he couldn't get a santekhnik to come out in the Chukotka weather. Because the santekhnik was drunk, making a certain vodka brand the most influential factor. As the saying has it, for want of a nail. ...
Barnaby Thompson is a former editor of The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Do We Have The Heart To Resolve This?
TEXT: IT is the purpose of this space to reduce all the city's problems down to tidy 400-word solutions, presented with compelling elegance. Some problems, though, refuse to be distilled in this manner. And the problem of the Luli gypsies, reported on page 3 of this issue, certainly fits into this category.
There is definitely a problem. Hardly a foreigner in town doesn't know at least one person who has been harassed or worse, even if they've been lucky enough to avoid such encounters themselves. Locals, too, are exasperated - as you can clearly see by the expressions of parents taking their children to play in Mikhailovsky Garden only to find the playground full of extremely aggressive Luli children taking a break from begging near the Christ the Savior Cathedral.
In addition to begging, the Lulis are notorious for pick-pocketing and robbing. Such crimes cannot be tolerated, and it would seem fairly straightforward for the police to crack down on such incidents. The main places where such crimes occur - in front of Dom Knigi, for instance, or around the mosque - are well known, and a few prosecutions would most likely at least moderate the worst aspects of the Luli problem.
Beyond that, though, solving the larger issues will no doubt severely test the city's humanity. It is easy - and getting easier as time passes and frustration mounts - to be tempted by Soviet-style solutions. Harass them. Round them up. Ship them out. What else? Such "solutions" may be easy and tempting, but they wrong.
How we approach the question, what combination of state and private efforts we can muster, what complex of answers we consider and implement, whether we have the wisdom to ask international organizations for help when necessary - these things will say a lot to the world about our city.
What is certain is that delaying an open discussion of this matter or waiting for Moscow miraculously somehow to solve it would be a mistake. As time passes, the public's patience and tolerance grow increasingly thin. In our story today, we quote the assistant to the mufti of the city mosque comparing the Luli to "an invasion of locusts." An official in the city government sarcastically quipped that such people "certainly don't decorate the city."
If such people can permit themselves to say such things publicly, it is evident that passions are running high. The tolerance, sympathy and understanding that will be required to find a just solution to this problem already seem to be in very short supply. We are not talking about locusts, and we must not allow ourselves to believe that we are.
TITLE: Global eye
TEXT: Congressional Record
Did Gary Condit kill Chandra Levy?
That's the question that has engulfed/consumed/devoured the American media for weeks on end, to the exclusion of all else. You can't really blame them, though; it must seem like old times, the glory days: Democratic politician, lying adulterer, nubile intern, sex, sex, sex! No wonder they've already hung, drawn and quartered Condit for murdering young Chandra during a furious bout of hot, kinky sex. (Yes, we said sex! Kinky sex! Just like Clinton with that cigar!)
There are a few complications, however. For one thing, the unfortunate Miss Levy is still officially considered missing, not murdered. For another, Condit has a powerful figure providing his alibi: he was with Vice President Dick Cheney at the time of the intern's disappearance, then went from the White House to the floor of Congress for several hours of legislative work. (Of course, he probably just ordered a hit on her, like Clinton with Vince Foster; but then what about the kinky-sex angle? Oh well, we can work that out later.)
Then there's the matter of Condit's party status. It seems the California congressman is what they call a "Blue Dog" Democrat, one who runs with the Republican hounds. An arch-conservative evangelical Christian, Condit voted down the line with Newt Gingrich, held weekly strategy sessions with hard-right GOP honcho Tom DeLay, was a top contender for a post in the Bush cabinet, blasted Clinton during the impeachment battle for his "immoral conduct" with, er, an intern, and has lately been pushing a constitutional amendment to require the posting of the Ten Commandments - you know, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and all that - in every American classroom.
But why let such shadings get in the way of a juicy story? The vaguely Clintonian echoes have been enough to drive the "respectable" media back into their old tabloid frenzy, scraping the bottom of every available barrel for a bit of sexual muck to rake. How bad has it gotten? So bad that this week, The Wall Street Journal, house organ for the Right - and no mean barrel-scraper itself - took a network to task for its carnival coverage of the affair.
Surprisingly, the target was the Right's own private network, Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. Eschewing the outmoded practice of reporting, Fox has instead filled its "news" programs with a parade of psychics - vibrating mediums and traffickers with the dead, bringing back the latest on Chandra from the Great Beyond for the network's completely credulous "journalists."
Why is the network showcasing "these salesmen of occultist snake oil?" the Journal thundered. "Don't they care if people take Fox seriously as a news organization?"
Wait a minute: Fox is a serious news organization? This is the same Fox that hired George W. Bush's cousin to help direct their election-night coverage last year, right?
We thought peddling snake oil is what they do.
Smoke Screen
"I regret that I have only one life to give to my country, but as it is, gimme a light." - American revolutionary Nathan Hale, more or less.
Yes, you too can serve your country, the Philip Morris way - by smoking their cigarettes until you die.
Those intrepid Marlboro men have just completed a study for the Czech government, outlining the wonderful cost benefits of widespread cancer deaths, Reuters reports. PM, which controls 80 percent of the Czech market, said the Prague government saved $150 million in health care, pensions and housing costs in 1999 because of premature citizen checkouts due to smoking.
"Our principal finding," said the report, "is that the negative financial effects of smoking, such as increased health-care costs, are more than offset by the positive effects," i.e., agonizing death. In fact, the company said they were actually lowballing the benefits with that $150 million tag, "It can also be argued that the savings are even higher, as the shortening of life means a reduction in the number of old patients, whose treatment is more costly than average."
So what are you hanging around for, wasting valuable tax dollars with your worthless life? Light up, now! Your country needs you!
Or rather, it doesn't.
Party Poopers
So what will it be: the corpulent, cancer-peddling hedonist or the stiff-necked, God-squadding martinet?
Yes, once again it's an embarrassment of riches for Britain's teeny tiny Tory Party, as the shattered Conservative remnant look for a new leader following yet another electoral rout. After a dignified selection process seemingly lifted from a TV game show - each week, Tory MPs voted to remove one contestant, er, candidate from the list of aspirants - two men were left standing to face a September poll of the party faithful at large: Kenneth Clarke and Iain Duncan Smith.
Clarke, the noted bon vivant and past government minister, is deputy chairman of British American Tobacco - now under investigation for its role in the international cigarette-smuggling racket. Clarke, a former chancellor and health secretary (!), cheerily admits the BAT boys sneak a few cigs past customs here and there, but only where their competitors do it. So that's all right, then.
Meanwhile, the BBC reports, his fiercely ascetic, self-trumpeting Christian opponent, Duncan Smith, is basing his campaign on the three sacred pillars of Britain's eternal greatness, "Hanging, hunting and caning."
Sound familiar? Well it should: It turns out that Duncan Smith has spent many an hour at the knee of G.W. Bush, imbibing the heady wine of the Master's political philosophy. Republican leaders have even called him in to testify before Congress about the evils of European unification - a signal mark of honor for an obscure backbencher with no government experience.
In fact, when Bush's missile maven, Donald Rumsfield, made a visit to America's little transatlantic satrapy last month, the first person he met was not Prime Minister Tony Blair or Defense Minister Geoffrey Hoon or Foreign Secretary David Blunkett, but an obscure backbencher with no government experience named Iain Duncan Smith.
Memo to Tony: schedule a screening of "The Manchurian Candidate." Soon.
TITLE: a new spin on the electronic scene
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It used to be that Baza was just a small shop located in Pushkinskaya 10 selling vinyl almost exclusively to a miniscule group of esoteric DJs.
Over time though, it started promoting club events and educating the younger generation of DJs in the art of the scratch and spin - while trying as hard as it can to make an international breakthrough for the local talent. So high profile have its endeavors become that it was rated as "the shop of the month" in the November 2000 issue of the U.K. electronic music magazine Muzik.
Although the store's humble beginnings included promoting local acts like of Frankie Porcini and Cinematic Orchestra, Baza has dropped its local lineup altogether. Earlier this month, the store sent two buses of local DJs and fans to Tallinn, Estonia, for a bust-out performance at the massive two-day electronic music Sundance Festival, where they had their own Baza Arena.
Launching Baza in the midst of the financial meltdown of 1998, owner Kostya Shevelyov thought it would be impossible to trade in foreign - read: expensive - CDs. But vinyl was cheap and eternal, despite propaganda to the contrary. Shevelyov bought his first stock for the store for a mere $3,000.
"Vinyl lasts. There is no pirated vinyl, and there were still a lot of DJs" who wanted to shred.
"It was difficult to adjust our stock to Russian tastes," said Shevelyov. "Many things that don't sell well in the West are in high demand in Russia."
"The commercial clubs, such as Transformator, Skala, Sportivnaya and PORT, all played so-called kolbasen," a Russian slang term for German and Dutch house music.
Shevelyov explained that the narrow popularity of this kind of music of was limited to the Netherlands, where drugs are plentiful for the slow-moving fans.
"But here it was in demand because all the gangsters used to relax to that kind of music," said Shevelyov. "It constituted a half of all our sales in the beginning."
At Baza, Shevelyov was striving for a complete selection. "In Moscow, the shops are more specialized. For instance, there's a shop that sells house and trance, but no breakbeat. They may have no jungle, no trip-hop, no jazz or easy listening. But there was demand [for everything] here, and we tried to meet it all."
According to Shevelyov, Baza, whose catalogue now includes between 3,000 and 3,200 titles, counts as a hit any record that sells more than 20 copies, the average price of original vinyl running up to $10.
In addition, the stock accumulated by Baza contains quite a few records that have sold out in Europe, making visiting foreign DJs gasp as they buy up certain out-of-print items.
Baza's core clientele is about 100 local DJs, with 15 or 20 hardcore clients who just can't stay away.
"They come here every day, because they are afraid to miss something new," says Shevelyov. "In fact, they spend more time in Baza than they do with their girlfriends."
These die-hards account for about 80 percent of Baza's sales, although the store also sells online at www.baza.spb.ru.
Baza is a part of the techno culture that worked up a head of steam in St. Petersburg in the late 1980s at private parties and later in clubs like the now defunct Tunnel bunker club in the early '90s. What has developed from that is a school of DJs offering sets of solid, spinnable material.
"Judging from the trip to Tallinn, I wouldn't say that our DJs are better, but they can compete with Western ones," said Shevelyov.
"They play no worse, though it's more difficult to play [Europe] because the Western public is better prepared by its radio and magazines. People hear this music all the time, so it's easier for DJs there because they play records that the public already knows."
What prevents local DJs from breaking through internationally is the lack of their own releases, according to Shevelyov. "The remixes they put out are in reality piracy because they use other people's music in them," he said.
"If DJs had several releases [of their own music] on decent labels with decent distribution, then they would get invited to festivals and clubs," he added.
"Their wages would rise as well from $200 to $300 if they don't have a release to from $800 to $900 if it's successful. And if it's a hit, salaries can jump unpredictably to $4,000 or $5,000," he concluded.
The problem is the lack of good material. "We have little that can be put out in the West," says Shevelyov.
"DJ Kfear has a few good tracks, Primat does some [fine] music." But that, apparently, is it.
Another obstacle is the absence of vinyl-pressing plants in Russia. A vinyl-pressing line will be launched in Moscow in September, but the prices they charge will be double Western prices. Records for DJs demand a particular, harder kind of vinyl and deeper grooves, considering how harshly they are treated at clubs.
Despite the pioneering role St. Petersburg has taken in introducing electronic dance music to the Russian public, the city's scene is hindered by that eternal local trouble: the money vacuum.
"All brands distribute their money in Moscow. Even when promoting things in other cities, they prefer to operate from there," says Shevelyov.
"In Moscow they have a dozen foreign DJs playing every week. Here it happens once a month and is seen as quite an event, with everybody coming along."
TITLE: pro arte: on at places you never heard of
AUTHOR: by Keith Sands
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: What do a giant rubber fish, a room lined with boots, and two sculpted mushroom clouds hanging over a grand piano have in common?
Answer: they're all exhibits at the second annual Pro Arte Project series of exhibitions previewed on these pages earler this month. The organizers have invited contemporary artists to place installations and other exhibits in some of the city's more traditional museums. There is still time to catch the exhibitions, which run until Monday.
One good reason for visiting is that it will get you into museums you never knew existed. How about the Museum of Forensic Medicine? Or the Animal Anatomy Museum at the Academy of Veterinary Medicine? Or the Museum of the October Railway? Seeing how the artists have responded to the permanent exhibits is often a treat, and if the new art disappoints, there's always something else to have a look at - whether its a stuffed polar bear or the manuscripts of Alexander Blok.
The real pleasure of the project is seeing how an assortment of painters, photographers, filmmakers and conceptual-art pranksters have used the permanent exhibits of Soviet-style museums to suggest starting points for their own, subversive work. Minibuses have been organized to take visitors among the 11 participating museums, although they can seem rather few and far between.
If you can visit only one of the exhibitions, make it the "Dembelsky Album" (Anna Akhmatova Museum at the Fontanka House), altogether the most substantial one in the series. Over 20 artists, including the well-known Mitki collective, have produced witty, tongue-in-cheek works on the theme of military service.
A room lined with boots and a pair of army trousers with "Toilet Hygiene Regulations" printed on the seat satirizes the control-freakery of army rules and regulations, while an ingenious set of gadgets for "Military Actions Against Flies" hint at the discomforts and boredom of enlisted life. To put all this into context, you can flick through the photo albums of enlisted servicemen from 1965 to 2000, making this exhibition not just a collection of pranks but a fascinating archive of social history. Soviet propaganda posters complete the picture.
Pick up a map and guide (in Russian and English) from any of the participating museums, and take your pick. Here are some of the other highlights.
Alexander Blok Apartment Museum: Dmitry Prigov, "Defining the Blok Number Within the Limits of the General Number of Russian Literature as a Part of the General World Number."
Prigov is a talented poet and sculptor who also makes intriguing installation art using blotted-out newspaper covers. But this one is baffling. Sheets of paper scrawled with calculations cover the wall. The names of museum workers and the Silver Age poets featured in the apartment museum are reduced to numbers following a system based on the letter values of individuals' surnames. The curator will helpfully explain these mysteries, and calculate your own number if you wish, before confessing her bemusement at the whole thing. The Blok Number, if you are curious, is 11.3.
Museum of Railway Transport: Anton Olshwang, "Portrait in a Moving Frame."
Photos and objects from journeys along Russian and Chinese railways. While many of the photos are woefully presented (they have been left to curl up slowly in glass cases), there are a few gems. The pictures of China tend to combine the dingy with a splash of the exotic: four massive stone lions discarded on a rubbish heap; a grimy courtyard enlivened by bright orange robes on a washing line. There are also some odd tin-foil sculptures - apparently, it's something to do during long days in a train compartment. Some of these are moulded from human fingers and look strangely like primitive phallic idols from the State Hermitage Musuem's archeological collections.
Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic: Georgy Ostretsov, "Ice Eden."
A giant inflatable rubber sea creature dominates the upper exhibition hall. A looped video shows the same creature - something between a prehistoric whale and a gigantic black maggot - being fished out of "a frozen Antarctic lake" (which looks suspiciously like the Gulf of Finland near Sestroretsk). It's a witty exhibit that is clearly a genuine reaction to the museum itself, as it doesn't look the slightest bit out of place among the stuffed penguins and expedition maps. The museum itself is impressively housed and dingily atmospheric.
Metrological Museum of the State Standards Institute: Rustem Gallyamov, "Human Nets."
Too slight perhaps to merit a special trip, although the garden of the institute is pleasant enough. Alongside Mendeleyev's measuring equipment and lab apparatuses, nestle 12 composite photo-portraits of people from different professions - superimposed businessmen, scientists, journalists. The faces that result are surprisingly of-a-piece. The composite "Teacher" looks like a Roald Dahl nightmare, while "Pop-Idols," with the ghost of Yury Nikolaev's moustache emerging from the upper lip of Angelica Varum, is truly frightening.
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: When the temperature rises to 30 degrees Celsius or more, the best place on the local club scene to head to may well be Fish Fabrique - or rather, its yard. An alternative cafe at the Pushkinskaya 10 arts complex, the club puts tables and benches outside in the summertime, and now, probably because of the new competition from the nearby and free-entrance Cynic, it is not overcrowded. In any case, it's a (literally) fresher alternative to packed basement clubs, such as Moloko was when Tequilajazzz played there last week.
"People are not eager to go to concerts in the summer - they prefer to sit in the yard and relax," said Fish Fabrique's owner Pavel Zaporozhtsev, adding that he would not concentrate on his club's music program too closely until September comes around.
Catch the last summer days with Fabrique, because it is planning to close for repairs for a couple of weeks in mid-August. It might also change its repertoire a little.
Meanwhile, the kittens to which Fabrique's staff cat gave birth earlier this month are pretty big (and a little wild) - and now on sale. The price is purely symbolic. Interested parties should ask the management.
Fish Fabrique is open daily from 1 a.m. When a band is playing, there is a break between 8:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. Entrance fee is a stable 50 rubles for evening gigs - if there are any. See the Club Guide for location details.
The club Faculty misled those members of the public who came to watch Markscheider Kunst last Saturday, only to find that it was the Kunst-related Latin outfit, Tres Muchachos, while Kunst frontman Seraphim was seen at the Tequilajazzz concert at Moloko at the time.
Some members of Markscheider Kunst will get together with their colleagues from the ska-punk band Spitfire to play a rare concert as a group calling itself The St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review at Moloko on Aug. 2 when Spitfire, which is now touring Norway, returns for a few days before its German tour. You can guess the style from the joint band's name. It does, indeed, feature ska and jazz.
Just like Robert Plant, the German noise machine Rammstein postponed its Russian dates, scheduled for September. On this occasion, however, it was not anything to do with illness, but is rather thanks to an offer to extend its current U.S. tour that the band could not refuse. The Russian shows will now take place some time in November, as Universal Music Russia reported this week.
The chances are still good that Mark Knopfler will play Russia next week. The man responsible for the crime of "Money for Nothing" will appear with his current five-piece lineup for shows in St. Petersburg and Moscow. He is now touring to support his latest album "Sailing to Philadelphia," which was released in September.
Mark Knopfler at the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall, Monday, July 30, and at Kremlin Palace the next night. Tickets for the local show cost between 500 and 2,000 rubles and are still available (except the cheapest, in all likelihood) from the city's ticket kiosks.
TITLE: great-grandson of a great writer
TEXT: Fyodor Dostoevsky is celebrated as one of the most influential writers in Russian literature. His life and work, inseparable from St. Petersburg, have become almost mythic texts for millions of readers around the world. Dmitry Andreyevich Dostoevsky, the writer's great-grandson, spoke to Claire Bigg about his illustrious ancestor, not only as a writer but as a family member - and about how that affects his present-day life in a city almost created by the writer's pen.
qYou are Fyodor Dostoevsky's great-grandson. What impact has this had on your life, and how do you relate to Dostoevsky today?
aUntil the age of 27, I rejected Dostoevsky. I wasn't particularly interested in his novels and found it difficult to have the same surname because people kept asking me about my great-grandfather. When I finally read his work more closely, I understood that there was a lot to learn from him and that his preoccupations, what he called his "damned questions," were in fact very similar to mine. I became very interested in my great-grandfather's life and conducted extensive research. The conclusion I draw is that we often relive the lives of our ancestors. The more you know about them, the better you understand your own life. If I had realized this before, I think my life would have been much easier. Now I don't mind people asking me if I am related to Dostoevsky.
If I don't like the person, however, I will pretend the name is a coincidence. Dostoevsky had a great feeling for people, and I think I inherited this from him. I always trust my first impressions.
qWhat do you do for a living?
aI cannot really say I have one profession because I have had 16 different ones! I worked in a crystal-vase factory, for example, and as tram driver during the Soviet period. For a few years I worked as a taxi driver, but now I work in the Dostoevsky Museum, something I had wanted to do for a long time. My son is also a tram driver. I encouraged him to study, but in the end he went for trams, too. It must be in the genes. We are both very active. We like moving, travelling.
qYou often talk of family genes and similarities between members of your family, even over several generations.
aAbsolutely. I think a number of common features run in the Dostoevsky family and that these features are hereditary. And as I said, we often relive the lives of our ancestors. I think my sister, for example, is in many regards living the life of Dostoevsky's daughter, Lyuba. The more I learn about my ancestors, the more common points I find between them and the present Dostoevsky family. I believe these similarities are in our genes.
qYour great-grandfather is regarded as one of the most important writers in literary history. Has this ever been an incentive for you to write?
aBeing Dostoevky's descendant definitely made me want to write. I recently published a short story, although the circumstances are somewhat unusual. The story was about German prisoners of war in Leningrad. A few months ago, I met a correspondent of The Rheinische Post, who had come from Moscow to St. Petersburg to cover [Gerhard] Chancellor Schroeder's visit. He showed an interest in the story, and I agreed to have it translated and published in Germany. The same story was also published a few days ago by a newspaper in Smolensk.
qHave you kept anything from your great-grandfather, some items for example?
aNo, everything was taken away from the family under the Soviet regime and distributed to various museums. Nor does our family receive any royalties on my great-grandfather's work. All that was left to us was these genes!
qDostoevsky was fascinated by St. Petersburg, where he spent 28 years of his life, and from which he drew inspiration for most of his novels. Do you share your great-grandfather's fascination for this city?
aYes, I was born in St. Petersburg and I have spent all my life here. I love St. Petersburg because it has changed so little since the last century, and all the places linked to my great-grandfather have been preserved. What is now called the Dostoevsky quarter has not changed much, especially now that Sennaya Ploshchad is being restored. I think the church that was knocked down by the Communists there should be rebuilt. It was a crime to destroy it in the first place. This was the church in front of which Raskolnikov kneeled down, and I think there are still many Raskolnikovs today who need it.
The difference between my great-grandfather and me is that I was born here, whereas Dostoevsky was born in Moscow. Toward the end of his life, he wrote that he wished to go back to Moscow. He was fascinated by St. Petersburg, but at the same time he disliked it. He found it artificial and, unlike most St. Petersburg residents, he was not an admirer of Peter the Great. He disapproved of his reforms and his eagerness to westernize Russia and considered that the West's influence would only be a hindrance to Russia's development.
qIs there a place for you in St. Petersburg that is particularly symbolic of Dostoevsky?
aThere are many places symbolic of Dostoevsky in the city. Most of his novels have very realistic settings, especially "Crime and Punishment," which takes place around Sennaya Ploshchad. Raskolnikov's house, for example, is situated at 5 Stolyarny Pereulok, where the city recently hung a plaque. Dostoevsky's last apartment, 5 Kuznechny Pereulok, is also important, as it now hosts the Dostoevsky Museum. For me, however, the most symbolic place does not figure in any novel. Near Sennaya Ploshchad I discovered a small courtyard, dark, surrounded by four high walls. A rope hangs from one of the walls. If Sonia had not helped Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment," I'm sure this is where he would have hanged himself.
qMost of Dostoevsky's novels deal with religious questions. Some critics even consider him as verging on mysticism. How do you understand his attitude to religion?
aDostoevsky was born in a religious family, but in his youth he got involved in revolutionary activities and flirted with atheism. It was his years of exile in Siberia that really brought him to religion. The only book he was allowed to read during his four years of work camp was the New Testament. It is during this period, in the company of prisoners, that he learned to recognize the good in man and understood that everyone had the capacity to be redeemed. Without the Siberian years, I think there would have been no Dostoevsky as we know him. He went from doubt to faith, and it is this path that he describes in his novels. I would not say that Dostoevsky was a mystic, but there are a number of facts surrounding his life, as well as the life of our family, that I find hard to explain rationally.
For example, the houses where the Dostoevsky family lived have been miraculously spared from the ravages of World War II. I was shown a picture in the military archive where you can see Dostoevsky's house standing among rubble. I don't think this is a coincidence.
qWhat do you think makes Dostoevsky such a great writer?
aSome writers are descriptive: They tend to stay on the surface of things. Dostoevsky was interested in peaks of life, when human sensitivity is at its height, such as the delirium that seizes Raskolnikov after the murder. Dostoevsky was a very intense person and put a lot of himself into his work. When he wrote he was in a sort of trance. He always wrote at night. He used to drink strong tea and smoke strong cigarettes, and the slightest noise would disturb him. His wife had difficulties transcribing his writings the next day, because words just poured out of him, often incoherent or illegible to others. She wrote in her memoirs that Dostoevsky would confuse fiction and reality to such an extent that there were times when he thought he had himself committed Raskolnikov's crime. If people find Dostoevsky's novels extremely realistic, it is because he literally lived them. This is not given to every writer.
qDo you believe, like many Russians, that Dostoevsky was a prophet?
aI think Dostoyevsky had a visionary gift, although not everything he predicted happened. Some events are striking though, such as the three murders that were committed in the past five years in the house where Raskolnikov killed the old woman. On one occasion, Dostoevsky was walking with a friend through the Okhta area of St. Petersburg and foresaw a fire. The Okhta caught fire a few days later. This incident really frightened him. Many people see in his novel "The Devils" a prediction of the 1917 Revolution: I think he warned us, but we did not listen.
TITLE: the tortured genius of dance
AUTHOR: by Anna Weiss
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This week at the Mariinsky Theater, choreographer Boris Eifman brought audiences to their feet with his newest work, "Don Juan and Molière."
Eifman's latest in a series of ferociously popular ballets (his "Red Giselle" featuring most prominently among them), "Molière" will no doubt serve to reconfirm what St. Petersburg audiences have already figured out: Boris Eifman is indeed a force to be reckoned with.
Sassy and street-smart, turbulent and brooding, "Don Juan and Molière" exemplifies the liberated style that has set Eifman apart from choreographers of more classical works. His characters are more knowing, more inwardly directed and, in the end, more passionate than any sylphide or swan princess.
And yet Eifman has not strayed entirely from his classical roots. His women wear pointe shoes, and one need only look at their steely technique to recognize that the men and women of Boris Eifman's company are, in fact, impeccably trained classical dancers.
The ballet's plot centers on the career of the French tragicomedy writer, Jean-Baptiste Molière. More a psychological portrait than a story ballet per se, "Don Juan and Molière" deals with the passions and terrors of the creative genius. The writer himself, powerfully portrayed by Albert Galichanin, struggles with his own ability to create for the stage. At times, he is elated and filled with wonder by his own power; the ability to dream up entirely new worlds thrills the young Frenchman. At others, however, Molière is confounded by his own limitations. The restrictions of the stage and of his own actors torture him as he struggles with his newest work: a bold new tragedy about the exploits of the infamous Don Juan.
As the writer battles these fears within himself, his stormy solos are treated with such choreographic care and poignancy that one cannot help but wonder whether Eifman himself is somehow identifying with the tormented creator.
Playing opposite Galachanin's Molière were Yury Ananyan as the brazen Don Juan, Natalya Povoroznyuk as Molière's young wife Armande, and Alina Solonskaya as Madeleine, Armande's mother and Molière's friend and confidante. Here, as in the rest of Eifman's ballets, the soloists proved that acting prowess and technical excellence are not mutually exclusive.
The ballet was set to a recorded conglomeration of works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Hector Berlioz. Other works by Eifman showing in the Mariinsky this week are his "Don Quixote," "Pinocchio," and the ever-popular "Red Giselle."
TITLE: mamleyev's compelling monstrosity
AUTHOR: by Oliver Ready
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: My first acquaintance with Yury Mamleyev was in the spring of 1999 at a reading in the Mayakovsky Museum in Moscow. Fittingly for a writer who made his name in the unofficial and esoteric intellectual circles of the 1960s, he chose an underground venue. In lullaby tones Mamleyev read "Evening Thoughts," a story in which an aging murderer recounts one of his most atrocious deeds. Afterward, Mamleyev signed a copy for me with the dedication, "Wishing you a happy memory of Russia."
I can see now that these few words were not meant in an ironic tone: By his own account, Mamleyev really does love the country to which he returned five years ago after more than two decades as an emigre in the United States and Paris. Yet the blood-drenched, fetid content of much of Mamleyev's largely Russia-based fiction can only be compared with the work of younger authors often seen as Mamleyev's own pupils, such as Vladimir Sorokin and Igor Yarkevich. Infanticide, self-amputation, rape and human activity reduced to a bestial level all feature high among Mamleyev's favored narrative subjects and fill the pages of his most famous novel, "Shatuny" (literally "The Shakers" but translated into English in 1980 as "The Sky Above Hell"), written in the late 1960s. Mamleyev's new work, Bluzhdayushcheye Vremya ("Wandering Time"), is intended as an antidote to "Shatuny," yet here too rape and patricide are crucial narrative cogs.
Critics of Mamleyev have always maintained that he is just out to shock; others are captivated by his philosophical concerns. But let us first retrace the background of an author who has been seen by reputable authorities both at home and in the West as one of the most important Russian prose writers and thinkers of his time, and who last year was awarded the prestigious Pushkin prize by the Alfred Tefler Foundation.
Born in Moscow in 1931, Mamleyev was to lose both his parents to the gulag: His father was a professor of psychiatry and was known for his skills of hypnosis. Yury Vitalyevich went down a different path and, after graduating from the Institute of Forestry in 1955, taught mathematics and physics at night schools for Soviet workers. It was a necessary foil for the wholly un-Soviet writing career that he was embarking on. In the 1960s and until his emigration to the United States in 1974, Mamleyev was a very prominent figure in the cliquish, eccentric world of the Soviet underground, which he described in his later novel, "Moskovsky Gambit" ("Moscow Gambit"), in 1985.
The artists and writers who gravitated around Mamleyev were all in headlong flight from Soviet reality, not to take up moral positions as dissidents (they were against that too), but to examine reality at the purely metaphysical level - a study that they laced with inordinate amounts of vodka and lashings of esoteric philosophies, from the religions of the East to the practices of the occult. Political concerns were alien to this group, but its members could not, of course, be immune to the times. For Mamleyev, it seemed that they were living "after the apocalypse" at a time when, as he told a Urals journal, "our planet and its people were transformed into the center of hell."
Mamleyev's fiction is best understood in the light of those years. Intellectuals such as he had been turned in on themselves by what he describes in a philosophical essay as the "militant atheism" and "excessive collectivism of Soviet thought." The fervent discussions and poetry readings of his group of depoliticized and socially alienated "metaphysicians" were directed only at the universal questions: life after death; the existence of God; and the division of the self into a lower, earthbound ego and a higher, divine 'I.' Nothing else seemed important.
Mamleyev's surreal stories and novels hover unceasingly around death and graveside experiences: "Living Death," "Death is Beside Us" and "A Jump into the Grave" are typical titles of his short stories, where time is collapsed and death is always in the present tense. His entire life's work has been directed at the need to make the big questions seem the only ones worth asking, and his fiction seeks to rip away the meager shields we put up against them. In his early story "Makromir," Mamleyev describes what he claims was a true incident related to him by his own students. In the story, 23-year-old Vasya Zhutkin jumps out of a sixth-floor window just for the hell of it. Before he does so, he dons a second overcoat to soften the fall; for Mamleyev, that second overcoat is the mask behind which we cower from the unknown.
In "Shatuny," these masks are laid bare. The motley gallery of mystics and mavericks described in the novel might be merely funny were it not for the philosophical context. Chief among the wandering heroes is the "metaphysical killer" Fyodor Sonnov, who eliminates people in order to interrogate their corpses. Among the other characters is a man who turns into a kurotrup, or a chicken corpse, while another fellow grows zits and pustules on his body, scrapes them off and eats them.
"As a writer, my position is that I'm alienated from what I'm writing," Mamleyev says. "It's like a letter from far away." He defines this alienation as his absence of sympathy during the writing process; there have been times when he has gone back to read his work and has himself been repulsed. But art, he says, "is an autonomous sphere, and the depiction of evil is not itself an evil." On the contrary: The aim of this depiction is for the reader to achieve a state of catharsis.
With his latest novel, Mamleyev claims to have tried to overcome the all-pervasive gloom of "Shatuny." "Wandering Time" is set in 1990s Moscow, and follows a similar if more refined group of mystical adventurers to those of "Shatuny." Opposed to them is a sect intent on securing immortality through genetic science and on destroying all independent thinkers.
It is far from obvious that "Wandering Time" is a "positive" novel. True, one of the characters does seem to achieve some kind of final destination and sense of calm in her metaphysical journeys; and elements of the grotesque are toned down throughout. Otherwise, though, the classic elements of the Mamleyev novel are all in place: the same bandit-type jargon and deliberate poverty of expression, and the same lengthy disquisitions on how to access the "higher self" beyond the illusions of time and space, support for which Mamleyev finds in the Vedanta branch of Hinduism.
The main narrative strand of "Wandering Time" is anything but rosy, cast like "Shatuny" under the long shadow of Dostoevsky. It follows the misadventures of the young Pavel, who is transported back to a time before his birth in the 1960s by a mysterious old man. There he gets into a fight with his father at a party and rapes a woman who then bears his son. Pavel's petrified confusion and the confrontation with his now-adult son back in 1990s Moscow provide the most grimly fascinating pages of the novel.
The wretchedness of humans before the mysteries of existence has remained, as ever, Mamleyev's theme. According to some critics, Mamleyev has been fatally seduced by his own monstrous creations. Perhaps; but this criticism can also be turned on its head, for the world that Mamleyev has created is compellingly his own. Those who are prepared to read him without prejudice will not soon forget the experience.
Oliver Ready is a postgraduate student and literary translator based in England.
TITLE: by the left, quick, munch
AUTHOR: by Robert Coalson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The latest addition to the neighborhood that is fast becoming St. Petersburg's "restaurant district" - the area around Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa - is a pleasant little eatery with the charming name Po Barabanu ("Beat the Drum"), which opened its doors earlier this month.
Po Barabanu's owners have chosen a playful martial theme for their restaurant, treating it with an excellent sense of humor. The staff is dressed in toy-soldier outfits straight out of "The Nutcracker," and the interior is decked out with bright colors and clever wooden sculptures. Although the hard, straight-backed chairs would probably be better in a military mess hall, the basement dining area is well air-conditioned and a relaxing place to eat.
When I invited my dining companion to visit Po Barabanu with me, he told me that he'd just had lunch there the day before. Nonetheless, he was eager to go again, which I took as an encouraging sign. He immediately started raving about the spicy steak and marinated red peppers he'd had, a dish called Russkii Shtykovoi Udar (Russian Bayonet Attack, 155 rubles). "I just love saying that name," he said.
In fact, all the dishes have amusing military names like Disinformatsia (Disinformation) and Sleza Rekruta (The Recruit's Tears). Reading the menu is a delight. Each dish is adequately described, although the menu is in Russian only.
Since Po Barabanu has only just opened, not everything on the menu is available yet. Most things are, however, and the selection is broad enough so that a second choice is no disappointment. Soups and appetizers run in the 50 to 150 ruble range, with the notable exception of a cold seafood dish called Tsusinskoye Srazhenie that is daringly named for the defeat that prompted Russia to sue for peace in the Russo-Japanese War and which goes for a cool 500 rubles.
For a starter, my companion opted for Feldmarshalsky Zhezl (Field Marshal's Baton, 80 rubles), which was six cheese sticks deep-fried in a beer batter. He thought they were "very tasty," but my more discerning palate found them fairly bland, mostly because of the tasteless cheese at the heart of the matter.
I had much better luck with one of Po Barabanu's three chicken-wing appetizers, the ironically named Palochki ot Barabana (Drumsticks, 90 rubles). These were four meaty fried wings with a pineapple-based sauce that was something of a distant cousin to sweet and sour. Having scored a direct hit with my first shot, I wiped my greasy fingers in anticipation of my main course.
From the intriguing selection of fish, chicken, beef and lamb dishes, I went for The Recruit's Tears (a bargain at 130 rubles), a reasonably sized chicken fillet tenderly seasoned with marjoram and topped with a cheese far more flavorful than the Field Marshal's. With a side dish of fat fries, this was an excellent and filling meal. I was wonderfully satisfied as I sipped my after-lunch coffee (30 rubles), which itself was quite good, if too small.
My dining companion's ill luck, though, continued with his entree. He chose Alma-Dalmasy (120 rubles), which is two medium-sized baked apples stuffed with plain ground lamb. Stuffed, perhaps, is not exactly the right word for the teaspoon of lamb tucked into each apple. Overall, the dish was filling enough, but uninspired, as was the plain boiled rice that he ordered as a side dish.
Po Barabanu's staff was friendly and professional, but be warned that the bread and butter costs 20 rubles for two small slices and the 20-ruble sodas that are advertised on the menu as 0.3 liter bottles are actually a minute 0.2 liters.
As you will gather, Po Barabanu was something of a hit-and-miss experience for us, but overall the pleasant, amusing atmosphere and the promising descriptions of the many untried dishes on the menu definitely mean that I'll be marching back there soon.
Po Barabanu, 13 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. Tel: 314-2181. Lunch for two without alcohol, 625 rubles ($21.55). No credit cards accepted.
TITLE: hollywood comes to russia
AUTHOR: by Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It's no "Gladiator," but "The Arena" packs a helluva punch for a film made on a limited budget, with amateur actors, by a man who knows how to do things on the cheap.
That man is Hollywood producer Roger Corman. A man with a reputation for being the king of low-budget B-movies, Corman, 75, has films like 1999's "The Haunting of Hell House" and 1996's "Humanoids From the Deep" under his producer's belt.
But he made his most recent film in Russia with a Russian crew and Russian actors, one of whom is better known to pop fans than moviegoers.
Called "Gladiatrix" in Russia and "The Arena" in the West, the film tells the story of female gladiators, and stars pop singer Yulia Chicherina as one of the three gladiator leads.
"I spent more time on preparations than on filming," said Corman of the experience of producing a film in Russia.
"It was a really amazing experience," he added, saying that he plans to begin other film projects in Russia in the near future.
The film was directed by well-known Russian admaker Timur Bekmambetov, who achieved fame with a colorful series of television commercials for Imperial Bank that use historical figures to advertise the bank's good points.
These commercials caught Corman's eye, and he chose Bekmambetov to direct the film, which takes place in ancient Rome.
"Corman needed a cheap product," Bekmambetov told Afisha magazine. "I don't think he was very sure the film would be a success, but the risk was small."
According to Corman, the film cost less than $1 million to make but is already gaining momentum in the United States, where it went straight to video. He attributes the success to the fact that audiences see the film as a follow-up to the blockbuster "Gladiator," which starred Russell Crowe.
But while "Gladiator" tells the story of a former soldier who ends up in the gladiators' ring, "The Arena" champions female gladiators, subjected to brutal masters and cruel dominance by men, and laments their fates in a story about three women captured by Romans and forced to fight.
Bekmambetov chose American women, Playboy models at that, to play two of the gladiators. For the third, he chose the unlikely Chicherina, a chubby-cheeked singer who hails from Yekaterinburg who rocketed to the top of the pop charts last year with the release of her debut album "Sny," or "Dreams." She is best known for her hit songs "Tu-Lu-La" and "Zhara," or "Heat."
Chicherina, 22, plays a mentally unstable, shorn-headed slave who ends up hanging herself when she realizes she will be forced to fight a friend to the death in the arena.
This scene, in fact, might have cost Chicherina her voice. According to the singer, something went wrong with the hangman's rope during filming and she lost consciousness during the hanging scene.
But despite almost no experience in acting, Chicherina played her role with passion.
"I liked the script," she said. "In general, I like films where people fight a lot."
She added that she even liked the long days of blocking, rehearsing and shooting.
"It was like a vacation," she said. "Nature and fresh air."
Chicherina said the most difficult part of filming was communicating with her American counterparts, who spoke no Russian.
But she did impress them with her singing. Chicherina wrote and recorded "Doroga," or "The Road," for the film's soundtrack.
The song is now at the top of local pop charts.
But success in the charts isn't enough for Chicherina.
"I want to act more," she said.
Perhaps Corman will give her another chance.
"Gladiatrix" will open in St. Petersburg theaters in September.
TITLE: making a break with tradition
AUTHOR: by Christopher Pascone
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: "Don't be scared," they told the audience. "Everything you see is meant to be the way it is, and you must not worry."
Forewarned and forearmed, our group of 18 was led up the five flights of stairs to the attic in which "Smeshnoi," an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Dream of a Ridiculous Man," ("Son Smeshnogo Cheloveka") is performed. Hidden deep in a courtyard on the Petrograd Side of the city, the apartment building that sets the scene for Dostoevsky's short story of 1877 has little in common with St. Petersburg's many traditional theaters. Indeed, "Smeshnoi" is anything but a traditional play. As our host said, "What you are about to see is not a play at all, but a 'spectacle.'"
"Dream of a Ridiculous Man" was written in 1877, and stands out as one of the most abstract works Dostoevsky ever wrote. On his way home to commit suicide, the ridiculous man in question encounters a little girl and ignores her pleas for help. Instead, he dreams that he has taken her life, gone to paradise and corrupted it. Out of his dream comes a love of life more important than any meaning that life may have to offer.
Apart from two brief cameos at the beginning and end from Irina Balai, who frames the show, "Smeshnoi" is all about Leonid Mozgovoi, an actor who will be familiar to many for his lead roles in three films by Alexander Sokurov: "Stone," "Moloch," and "Taurus." (Mozgovoi plays Chekhov, Hitler, and Lenin, respectively, in these films.) Mozgovoi's passion for one-role adaptations can also be seen in two more monologues he performs for local audiences, "The Black Monk," and "Lolita," both on at the Maly Drama Theater.
This adaptation of Dostoevsky's story, which was worked out by Mozgovoi and Lyudmila Martynova, is true to the author's words, but original in its use of setting and scenery. A number of visual tricks are worked into the spectacle, making continual use of illusion as a tool to portray insanity. Smeshnoi's intimate setting is shot through with visual stimuli: Surprise after surprise is created with various trompes d'oeil, beginning with Mozgovoi's sudden and striking appearance from a box just a meter away from the audience at the beginning of the spectacle, to his disappearance into thin air at the end. Just how he does this will remain a secret, however, because Mozgovoi is staying tight-lipped.
The auditorium itself is nothing more than an adapted room, approximately 3 meters by 5 meters - 18 is the maximum audience - making it the most intimate of private settings. Each guest takes a seat on 19th-century furniture, as shadows from candlelight flicker on the dirty walls of this Dostoevskian lodging and the creaking floorboards suggest the ghosts of the author's famous characters. Any number of terrifying scenes from "Crime and Punishment" or "The Devils" will rush through the minds of Dostoevsky fans as they prepare themselves for "Smeshnoi."
As vivid as the dream is on paper, Mozgovoi makes it all the more remarkable, as the tiny room, the flickering light and Mozgovoi's penetrating eyes and voice all conspire to evoke the insanity of Dostoevsky's "Ridiculous Man" for the next hour and 10 minutes.
The minimalist period decorations are entirely suited to reinforcing the mystical images conjured up by the actor, while the themes of the poverty of material life and the overwhelming richness of the spirit originally portrayed by Dostoevsky are unmistakably present in "Smeshnoi."
Ordering tickets for the spectacle is best done in groups. Performances are scheduled according to demand, and last from 7 p.m. to 8:15 p.m., with an introduction and tour from the Lenfilm studios, which are a short walk from Gorkovskaya metro station, starting at 6:30 p.m. The spectacle may be viewed with headsets broadcasting a simultaneous translation in English.
Those who have seen Mozgovoi's performances in earlier days - he has performed "Smeshnoi" over 350 times - say that he has become less exciting and more mechanical. This, however, is to be hypercritical. The first time one sees this show, one is astounded by the proximity of Mozgovoi's body and spirit, and one can sense his very breath as he enacts the moralistic message of "Dream of a Ridiculous Man."
Tickets for "Smeshnoi" cost 500 rubles per person (including simultaneous interpretation and guided tour from the Lenfilm studios to the hidden apartment building) and can be ordered by calling 247-4759.
TITLE: this is the season for
music on the beach
AUTHOR: by Christopher Pascone
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg club kids get their fun on the beach this weekend as the musical-arts festival "Open Air" takes over two forts off Kotlin Island, located in the Gulf of Finland 35 kilometers to the city's west. Sponsored by a handful of clubs, including local standbys Griboyedov and Mama, as well as by Kronshtadt administration, "Open Air" promises to be a paradise for alternative-music lovers.
The festival kicks off Saturday afternoon on Fort Shants - details of how to get there are listed below - with DJs from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Germany, and the Baltic states spinning their trade in a free gig. Described in more informal terms as a "beach rave," "Open Air" will continue through the night. Four dance floors - organized by the categories "main," "beach," "house," and "drum'n'bass" - will provide for varying musical tastes. Live acts "Chugunny Skhorokhod" and "Ekspensiv Dans" will also perform.
The action begins again on Sunday at 3 p.m. with an outdoor concert featuring well-known local acts such as Dva Samolyota, Pep-See, Kolibel, Solnechny Udar and others. The concert will be played as part of the national tribute to the Russian Navy. "Open Air" will also feature video screens and art installations by local alternative artists, and laser shows will round out the show.
Entrance to the "Open Air" festival is free. Transportation to the festival can be found leaving from two places: Griboyedov, at 2a Voronezhskaya Ulitsa, metro station Ligovsky Prospect, 164-4355; and from the bus stop nearest to metro station, Chyornaya Rechka. Buses can be identified by the word "Fort" written on them, and will leave starting at 12 p.m. on Saturday from Griboyedov, and 7 p.m. on Saturday from Chyornaya Rechka. Buses will reportedly leave as often as every 15 minutes, and continue around the clock. The approximate travel time, according to organizers, is 30 minutes from the two St. Petersburg pick-up points to Kotlin Island. For more information, phone Griboyedov.
TITLE: not the 1st sexual revolution
AUTHOR: by Thomas Rymer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One day in 1988, a middle-aged woman participating in a televised satellite broadcast between the United States and the Soviet Union stood up and uttered to the world the immortal words that would soon become the most hackneyed cliche for any student of Soviet and Russian sexual culture, "There is no sex in the Soviet Union."
Although the woman was immediately shouted down by the others in the audience and although it was obvious that she had simply poorly expressed what she intended to say, her words were simply too good for the Western press to ignore. Twisted and taken out of context, the quotation was endlessly repeated and mocked. In reality, she merely meant to say that, although there was plenty of sex going on in the Soviet Union as its high birthrate at the time attests, society was too ashamed and conservative to tolerate open discussion about the birds and the bees.
With the raising of the Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet Union just three years later, the discussion and the influence of sex became ubiquitous, as naked or half-naked women began to adorn the covers of upstart tabloids, and pornographic magazines and movies - even if badly dubbed from the Dutch - became available throughout the country and, of course, all over St. Petersburg.
Much of this discussion has, inevitably, been devoted to the eternal debate over whether pornography and erotica - the distinction seems to be especially important in Russia - are destroying the moral fabric of society, or whether they are signs of a healthy awareness and a barometer of an improving climate for individual liberties.
Meanwhile, however, the debate has done little to slow the explosion of sexually explicit materials.
THE FIRST REVOLUTION
Although many date Russia's openness regarding sex back to the infamous "no-sex" quote, experts know that what has happened since then is really the country's second sexual revolution this century. And like the present flowering, the first came during a time a profound social change and upheaval. It can roughly be dated to the period from 1905 to 1930.
"Pornography made its first big breakthrough here after 1905, with the appearance of the novel "Sanin" by Nikolai Artsybashev," said Alexander Poznikov, a film expert and consultant who works for Lenfilm studios.
"It contained some incredibly bold portrayals of sexual intercourse, so 'Sanin' became something of a symbol, a turning point that came after the 1905 Revolution and the war with Japan."
"They were liberal times, and pornography spread out onto the market."
But the liberalization of attitudes toward pornography and open sexuality was an uneasy process, one that evoked misgivings from both the left and the right. Those on the right considered the liberalization of sexual attitudes a sign of the revolutionary nature of the times and a weakening of social values, religion and, ultimately, the state.
Many on the left, on the other hand, felt that the heightened interest in sex was a direct result of the materialism and superficiality of bourgeois society.
However, in the very early days after the October 1917 Revolution, influential people like Alexandra Kollontai urged extreme sexual liberation as a way of sweeping aside the old society.
"In the late '20s, there was an absolutely free, non-puritanical attitude toward this question, and Alexandra Kollontai wrote such books as 'The Wings of Free Eros' in an era where the idea was that having sex was no different from having a glass of water," Poznikov said.
"Kollontai and her husband, [Pavel] Dibyenko, were true sexual revolutionaries. They were trying to liberate society in this way and their books are now classics."
BOLSHEVISM DRAWS THE LINE
But what happened in the 1930s has been labeled as "The Great Retreat." The recriminalization of homosexuality in 1932. Bans on pornography in 1935. The outlawing of abortion in 1936. All this made clear the essentially conservative ethic of the new Stalin-era leadership. At this time, distributing pornographic material was punishable by two years in prison.
The term "pornographic" was transformed into a potent weapon of state censors, who applied it widely to any politically or socially suspect works of art.
INTO THE THAW
Only after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the "thaw" that followed under his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, did erotica and sexual themes begin to seep back into popular Soviet culture.
By the 1970s, pornography could be obtained from young street black-marketeers, or fartsovshiki, who bought items ranging from jeans to chewing gum from foreigners and resold them to Russians.
"[These people] acted as go-betweens between foreigners and the Soviet people. They made their money selling hard-to-get goods," he said. Including pornography.
Sergei Pryanishnikov, the president of the local company SPb, which both produces and imports erotic films for distribution in Russia, said that the relaxation of rules during this period brought a strange result.
"Pornography was treated [under Stalin] about the same as dealing in foreign currencies," he said. "But during the Thaw, we had the absurd situation where there were people still sitting in jail for selling such films as 'Emmanuelle,' while the same films were already being shown in cinemas."
This paradoxical situation remained largely unresolved until the advent of glasnost under Mikhail Gorbachev.
By late 1987 people, mostly young men, began to appear outside Russian metro stations, selling photocopies of crude pornographic drawings and, in the fullness of time, glossy magazines and videocassettes.
There was one further attempt to clamp down on the distribution of pornographic materials in 1991, but it is was half-heartedly carried out primarily as a way of distracting the public from pressing political and economic problems. Conservatives liked the idea of a crusade against pornography as a way of casting aspersions on the supposed failures that had been precipitated by glasnost and perestroika. A strongly worded anti-pornography resolution was adopted by the Supreme Soviet, but it was never seriously enforced.
PORN AS DIALOGUE
Conservatives in society still argue that the availability of sexually explicit materials is having a damaging effect, but even members of Stalin-era generations have grown less likely to complain of the trend.
"I talked to women in their 70s when I was at the opening of the Playboy exhibition last year, and they were thrilled to see these photographs," Poznikov recalled.
"Many of them are only bitter in that they feel that the Communists stole this whole part of their lives. They resent that when they were young they were taught that this was bad. Now they talk to their children and grandchildren, telling them to live differently."
LEGAL BATTLES
As it turns out, the difficulty is that, although public attitudes may have shifted, Russia's Criminal Code has not kept up, leading to a degree of uncertainty about what is allowed and what is not.
Article 242 of Russia's Criminal Code, which is left over form the Soviet period, addressed the question of pornography by simply prohibiting it. Since the law itself hasn't been changed, the definition of what "pornography" is and, conversely, what should be classified as "erotica" - which is not prohibited - has become the central question in the debate.
Unfortunately, there seems to be as many different answers as there are people to ask. The quip in the West about the judge who said "I know pornography when I see it" mirrors the Russian situation as well.
"The whole situation is absurd, because there's no concrete definition of this anywhere in the world," said Pryanishnikov. "It's really funny because everything depends on which expert's opinion is considered."
And Pryanishnikov knows from personal experience exactly what he is talking about. There was a city commission that considered the question of what is pornography and thateven drew up a list of recommendations. "But the police have their own set of experts who consider all the things Smolny called 'erotica' to be 'pornography,'" he said.
"So, we end up taking one of our films to the administration," he continues, "which says that it is erotica and, therefore, legal to sell. But as soon as we start selling it, the police seize it, show it to their experts and the next thing we know, charges have been filed."
"I'm in that very situation today," Pryanishnikov said. "The prosecutor's office recently initiated a criminal case against me. The court will be in a tight spot because if it decides [the film] is pornography, it will be going against the governor. If it says 'erotica,' it will sour its relations with the prosecutor's office."
The case has already been in the court for six months, and Pryanishnikov says that it doesn't appear there will be action taken anytime soon.
Pryanishnikov added that all that people working in the industry want is some kind of consistent guidelines they can understand and apply when deciding what is legal for them to sell.
"If I want to live as a law-abiding citizen, I should be able to have a clear idea of what is permitted and what's forbidden," he said.
"I'm not an expert or a specialist. If they can't come up with one good answer, then how can they expect me to?"
Aside from making his own life more predictable, clear regulations in the industry would improve conditions for consumers and other producers as well, Pryanishnikov said.
"This would set out more clearly what is forbidden in all instances - child pornography, for example," he said.
"[Child pornography] is forbidden in the entire civilized world, and the only way to fight against things like this is to make clear where the boundaries are and then have the authorities strictly enforce them."
TITLE: revealing petersburg
AUTHOR: by Curtis Budden
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Sex. It seems to be everywhere these days. In fact, finding a local nightclub, bar, restaurant or even cafe without a strip show can be pretty hard work. Drop in for a late-night cup of coffee at the Nochnoye Cafe on the Petrograd Side, and you'll be treated to a pretty risque striptease show in a place that is really nothing more than your average neighborhood watering hole.
You want to watch the big game between Manchester United and Liverpool this weekend? Well don't worry, the Football Bar on Karavanaya Ulitsa has a live strip show to keep you entertained during halftime.
A bit of the exhibitionist in you perhaps? Why not take part in one of the amateur striptease fests that have been known to take place regularly at Port on Thursdays or at Metro Club on Mondays. The stage is all yours.
With such a plethora of establishments offering strip shows, it's impossible to cover it all. But getting down to the bare essentials, we can divide the establishments into two general classifications.
The first is what can comfortably be called the traditional strip club, which would include well-known places such places as Golden Dolls, Sahara, Tutsi, and Koko Bango.
The second variant seems to be a particularly Russian phenomenon. I'm referring to dance clubs or discos that also feature topless dancers or strip shows, such as National Hunt, Konyushenny Dvor, Beermuda's Triangle, Luna and Saigon.
GOLDEN DOLLS
Golden Dolls, the crown jewel in St. Petersburg's adult-entertainment scene, should be granted status as a protected historic landmark. After all, it probably causes more mouths to drop than even the Winter Palace.
Behind its doors is an intimate, dimly lit fantasyland for men. Everything is geered toward one goal: Relax and forget about everything.
And the forgetting starts immediately, as women walk up and begin discussing a wide range of ways to unwind.
The most popular offer is a full-strip table dance for 1,000 rubles. If that's not enough to get your blood flowing, you can double the price and go to a private room for 30 minutes where you'll be treated to a fully nude routine from the dancer of your choice with quite a bit of contact.
And if even that leaves you wanting more, there is the "crazy menu." Prices start at 1,000 rubles for just about anything you can think of, from routines involving fruits and vegetables right up to the most expensive item on the menu, the dildo dance, which goes for 6,000 rubles.
Golden Dolls is selling the fulfillment of male fantasies, but it does so in a sophisticated manner. With the plethora of dancers available, it's always possible to find one to suit your tastes. Don't forget, it's your fantasy, and the ability of the women at Golden Dolls to help you explore your own desires - whether it be something from the crazy menu or simply an intelligent conversation with a beautiful woman - is this club's greatest feature.
But the fulfillment of fantasies isn't cheap. Besides the services already mentioned, drinks start at 130 rubles for a beer and go up to about 7,000 rubles for a bottle of cognac. You'll also be expected to give "small gifts" of about 100 rubles to the girls who are providing your constant entertainment.
60 Nevsky Prospect
Tel. 110-5570
Entry is free from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., 290 rubles from 7:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m., and 690 rubles after 10:00 p.m.
Entertainment program begins daily at 9:00 p.m.
www.golden-dolls.ru
TUTSI
Until now, the only way you would have heard of Tutsi is by word-of-mouth or if you happened to stumble upon it in a drunken stupor. This strip club does not advertise, nor is it even listed in the yellow pages. But if Golden Dolls is the city's crown jewel, then Tutsi is certainly its hidden gem.
To find it, just make your way to the Bronze Horseman statue on Ploshchad Dekabristov. Peter the Great himself triumphantly points out across the Neva River in the general direction of Tutsi, as luck would have it. With Peter's reputation for decadence, this seems oddly appropriate. Maybe this is what he meant when he envisioned his city becoming Russia's window to the West.
Moored to the Angliiskaya Naberezhnaya on the Neva, Tutsi is located in the renovated dining room of a small ferryboat. It is an intimate, well-lit venue with six tables, three on each side of the dance floor. It offers a simple program, featuring non-stop dancing throughout the night. Each woman dances for two songs, removing all of her clothing during the first song and then performing full-contact lap dances throughout the second song.
Although there is no charge for the lap dances, if you don't make a small "donation," you may find yourself ignored the rest of the evening. The dancers are mostly young students, who are friendly and seem to enjoy what they're doing. If you speak Russian and make a good impression, some of them just may join you at your table during their breaks. If conversation is not what you had in mind, however, you can buy a 15-minute private show for 700 rubles. You can also buy a one-hour private show, but the price and conditions must be agreed separately in each case. The one quote I was given was 3,500 rubles.
Tel. 248-0680
Open daily 9:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m.
Entry is 100 rubles Sunday through Wednesday and 200 rubles Thursday through Saturday.
Drinks range from 40 to 250 rubles.
NATIONAL HUNT
When it first opened, National Hunt was supposed to be the local version of Moscow's Hungry Duck, infamous for its sex shows and all-around debauchery.
But it never achieved the cult status of Moscow's original. Over the past few months, however, National Hunt has undergone a face lift, kicking out the prostitutes and renovating the interior, and in doing so it has breathed new life into what has become one of the city's most popular nightclubs.
National Hunt has a spacious interior with plenty of tables and good food, as well as a dance floor and two bars, so there are plenty of opportunities to eat, drink, and be merry. If, however, the dancers are what you've come for, this club has a lot to offer.
Beginning daily at 11 p.m. women dance in pairs on podiums attached to the main bar, and a variety of strip routines materialize on the stage, including a fabulous leather-clad "bring-out-gimp" bit based on the movie, Pulp Fiction.
The club is constantly thinking up new ideas to keep things fresh for its many repeat customers. One of the biggest problems for a club like National Hunt, however, is keeping its dancers. With the explosion of establishments offering strip shows of one variety or another, this is not always easy to do.
"We used to have eight girls," explained National Hunt's art director, Igor Parashkin. "Half of them went to another club. Only one girl is left from that generation of dancers. Now we have to find and train new girls. Finding a new dancer is not like finding a new bartender or waitress. We have contacts at dance schools. Most often, however, we just go to nightclubs in the city to watch how ordinary girls dance. If we think someone dances well and has an attractive figure, we approach them and give them a business card. Then we invite them in to try out."
While watching such a try-out on Tuesday evening, Parashkin looked on with a shy expression on his face. "It's difficult you know," he explained. "It's not easy to tell a girl who comes in to dance that she is lacking in a certain area."
Although the search for new talent continues behind the scenes, the current crop of dancers at National Hunt is certainly some of the best in the city, offering a unique combination of beauty and personality that's definitely worth a visit.
11 Malaya Morskaya Ul.
Tel. 311-1343
Open daily from noon to 6:00 a.m.
Shows start daily at 11:00 p.m. and continue until 3:00 a.m. Sunday through Wednesday and until 5:00 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.
Free entrance for foreigners.
Drinks 50 to 350 rubles.
www.oxota-club.ru
KONYUSHENNY DVOR
Known in the expatriate community simply as Marstall, Konyushenny Dvor is essentially what National Hunt used to be - i.e., they haven't kicked out the prostitutes.
With the bar situated right in the middle of the club, there isn't much room to maneuver, often leaving one feeling claustrophobic. Fortunately, however, going up to the second floor allows you to get away from all the activity below, and from the balcony you can get a good view of the stage.
The show itself is the best thing about this club. Konyushenny Dvor has managed to find some beautiful strippers who are also remarkable dancers. To keep things from getting stale, the club is constantly coming up with entertaining new shows. One of the more memorable shows recently was the "Pioneer Strip," featuring girls dressed as Soviet pioneers.
Marstall is also to be commended for its narodny striptiz, or amateur striptease. Though this event occurs frequently, the best part is that you never know when it's going to pop up. But if you visit often enough, you're bound to end up in a situation where that girl you've been eyeing on the dance floor is suddenly stark naked in front of hundreds of cheering patrons. It's a bit surreal, but I guess that's the point.
5 Kanal Griboyedova
315-7607
Open daily from noon until 6:00 a.m.
Shows start at 11:00 p.m. and continue until 3:00 a.m. Sunday through Wednesday and until 5:00 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.
Free entrance for foreigners
Drinks range from 50 rubles and up.
LUNA
This upscale club deserves it's own category since it certainly can't be called a traditional strip club, nor is it a nightclub that just happens to feature erotic dancers. Luna features something called "strip ballet," which, as the name suggests, is closer to what you'll find at the Mariinsky than what you'll see in other strip clubs
Luna's dancers are clearly just that: dancers. They perform four shows a night - with long breaks between - that are elaborate, sensual numbers, with just the right amount of eroticism expressed through intricate dance routines. The effect is a slow, inexorable raising of the level of sexual tension in the audience in what is patently a very artistic experience.
You'll be drawn in as the dancers play out their roles while moving fluidly across the bi-level stage, softly caressing one another with their movements sometimes shrouded by a thin mist. You'll only get a fleeting glimpse since they vanish backstage almost as soon as they finish stripping. The rest is up to your imagination.
With a variety of elaborate shows available each month, Luna's program will never become boring. As with Golden Dolls, however, be sure to bring lots of cash.
46 Voznesensky Prospect
Tel. 310-1616
Open daily from 6:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m.
Entry 400 rubles after 11:00 p.m.
On Sundays and Mondays there is a 20 percent discount at the bar, a 30 percent discount in the restaurant, and a 50 percent discount on the entry fee.
Drinks start at $3.5 and can run into the hundreds of dollars for a bottle of wine or champagne.
www.lunaclub.ru
TITLE: take a ride on the wheel of fortune
AUTHOR: by Sam Charap
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Before I was commissioned to write this article, I had never been to a casino, either in St. Petersburg or in the United States. I was, to be honest, not only a novice, but a skeptic as well.
I was a victim of the stereotype that local casinos are places to avoid, most likely filled with gun-toting, jump-suited, gaudy-German-car-driving New Russians competing to see who can have his head shaved closest to the scalp. This stereotype was overlaid in my mind atop the timeless image of writer Fyodor Dostoevsky on an out-of-control gambling binge, falling deeper and deeper into debt and despair in some seedy joint on Sennaya Ploshchad.
I went into this story with low expectations, but I emerged - miraculously - pleasantly surprised.
GUIDE
Obviously, to get some perspective on the local casino scene, I needed a guide. And I found a sanguine Western businessman whom we'll call John (he preferred we not use his real name), who has been living here and frequenting the casinos for three years.
Late last Thursday, I met John at his office to begin my immersion into the world of fortune. Here's what I learned.
PREPARATIONS
A unique feature of Russian casinos is the almost laughably predictable requirement that all patrons register themselves. As soon as you pass through the metal detector at the door, you will be asked to show your passport - so be sure you bring it along - and register. Most places will also take a digital photograph of you.
But most casinos offer VIP cards to high rollers and regulars. These allow you to bypass the usual registration process and run a monthly tab. Within the major casino chains, a single VIP card is welcome at all the chain's casinos. Some VIP cards provide special discounts.
John recommended these cards for two reasons. First, he explained, VIP patrons are treated as such by the staff - smiles and hellos, offers of help, and all-around great customer service are guaranteed. Second, a card means that you are more or less bound to one casino.
"Going to one casino all the time, you get to know what's what," John said. "When I go to a place just once or twice I always end up losing money." I have to say that I didn't understand the logic of that, but I wasn't going to argue with my chosen guru.
Obtaining a VIP card is a somewhat mysterious process, something like being admitted into a secret society at a prestigious university. The casino's management somehow just decides - based on your frequency of attendance, the amount you spend and your general comportment - whether or not you merit a card.
Don't worry about what kind of cash to bring or how much. Gambling establishments make it extremely easy for you to put your money on the table. All of the casinos I visited offered currency exchanges that accept credit cards and/or ATMs.
THE DRILL
John tells me that gambling here is dominated by three games - blackjack poker and roulette - and slot machines. "I've never seen craps," he said.
The vocabulary is primitive - besides fishki (chips), everything else can be conveyed with a cool da or nyet. You can buy your fishki either directly at the table or at the casino's kassa.
In general, games are played by international standards, but there are some casino-particular rules, so it's best to be clear before you sit down at a table. The administrators and service staff are usually very friendly and more than happy to answer questions. Some even provide printed handbooks.
There are no cover charges at the casinos I visited, and most work 24 hours a day.
THE EXTRAS
All casinos make their patrons comfortable. Complimentary cigarettes are available at every table, and players are offered free food and drink ranging from sandwiches and beer at less expensive casinos to a full bar and fourchette at high-end joints.
Yet John's advice is to be wary of the free booze. "It's best to gamble when you're sober," he says wisely, as your awareness of the money you are losing dramatically decreases as your blood-alcohol level rises. If only Dostoevsky had had such sage advice.
THE CROWD
I was most surprised by the crowd at St. Petersburg's casinos, which, as John says, is "a mixed bag."
"You see people who are spending their last 200 rubles, and you see those who could go on all night." Russians comprise the vast majority of casino-goers, but all the managers I talked to say they get a good number of foreigners too.
Some casinos, like Adamant, appeal to a specific age group, but on the whole, the crowd, according to John, is usually two-thirds male and in the "mid-20s to mid-40s" range. He said he's seen his fair share of mafia types, but "when they're there, they behave." The rule he follows is to offer a simple "mozhno" before sitting down at a table to avoid unpleasant situations.
Don't go to a casino in St. Petersburg if you are not prepared to drop at least 500 rubles. Even John disappointed me by admitting that is "way down" over his entire St. Petersburg gambling career. With a pained look on his face, he declined to give an exact figure. As the old saying goes, the best way to make money in a casino is to own one.
PLACES TO LOSE YOUR MONEY
There are dozens of casinos in St. Petersburg, which vary greatly in atmosphere, crowd, and minimum bet. In general, it's worth dropping in and sampling the variety. Below, I just throw the spotlight on a few representative places that indicate the range of local haunts.
THE GLAMOUR
The Taleon Club, on the corner of the Moika River and Nevsky, literally took my breath away. It is housed in the former mansion of one of the Yeliseyev brothers (the ones who owned the huge Yeliseyevsky grocery store further up Nevsky), which has been lavishly restored to its imperial grandeur.
As Taleon's tour guides will tell you, the building was constructed in the late 18th century. In this building, Catherine II had her famous affair with Grigory Orlov, and conspirators gathered here to plot the murder of Paul I. Later, Maxim Gorky converted the building into an artists' commune, the Dom Iskusstva. Still later, it was the Institute of Marxism-Leninism.
But the building has nothing in common with Marx or Lenin anymore.
Inside the casino, with its marble fireplaces and huge chandelier, there are eight card tables and four roulette wheels, along with one baccarat setup. All chips are in U.S. dollars and the minimum bet is $5. The maximum on the tables, $2,500, is the highest in St. Petersburg. There are also two private poker rooms that are reserved for tournaments that usually take place five times a week. Winners get a lottery ticket that qualifies them for a drawing for one of the two silver Mercedes C-200s on display out front. The next drawing is on Aug. 25.
Taleon also features two bars, and an upscale restaurant, where Sir Elton John dined after his July 19 concert at the Catherine Palace in Pushkin. Taleon's imperial setting attracts extremely upscale patrons who are probably too buried in their chips to pay attention to the ironic, Gorky-era painting on the ceiling of the casino room, which is entitled "The New Life of Socialism."
A BIT MORE COMFORTABLE
A relatively new entry on the gambling scene is Adamant on the Moika near St. Isaac's Square. This place draws a middle-aged crowd, according to manager Maria Asonova. Unlike most other casinos in the city, Adamant is only open from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m.
The casino is housed in the historic building where the sale of Alaska to the United States was consummated and from where the Decembrists made their fatal trip to Senatskaya Ploshchad. Along with the casino, the building houses Adamant's restaurant.
The casino itself is small and dignified, with only one blackjack table, one roulette wheel and two poker tables. One of the latter - the only one of its kind in St. Petersburg, according to Asonova - is set up for double poker, where players have the option of playing two hands against the house.
For holders of an Adamant card (which also works at Adamant's affiliate Plaza on the Strelka of Vasilevsky Island), there is a posh VIP lounge that is larger than the actual casino itself.
Like Taleon, Adamant's chips are denominated in U.S. dollars. This is a sign of a high-class casino, according to John. The minimum bet at Adamant's card tables is $10.
MID-RANGE
The Astoria Casino - a member of the Conti group located adjacent to the eponymous hotel on Malaya Morskaya Ulitsa - is a lively alternative. The atmosphere here is fairly classy with a full bar and a well-presented buffet for players. Here the chips are in rubles and the minimum bet on the card tables is 50 rubles before 5 p.m. and 100 rubles after.
The Astoria features an attached restaurant (main courses in the 500-ruble range) and a nightclub, where every midnight the Show Ballet Astoria performs a cabaret act, followed by a strip show at 2:30 a.m. According to Anton, the manager of the casino, the club hosts one major concert a month and features a gypsy show on Thursdays.
CHEAPS
John's favorite spot in town turned out to be Kapitan Morgan on Bolshoi Prospect on the Petrograd Side. He calls it "a poor man's casino" for St. Petersburg, meaning mostly that it too has ruble-denominated chips.
"The reason I go to Morgan's is that the chips are in rubles and if you're not a big gambler, that's better," he said.
Late on a Thursday night, the tables were mostly empty, but there were enough players to keep one poker and two blackjack tables going, as well as one roulette wheel spinning.
The friendly staff didn't even bother looking at John's VIP card and they were eager to get me through the registration bit and into the bar. We passed by the American- and Russian-style pool tables (100 rubles an hour) as we headed for the casino. On the way, John mentioned that the food in the restaurant here is quite good, and we picked up a couple of beers (50 to 80 rubles) to get us warmed up.
At the blackjack table I immediately forgot the one crucial thing that John had taught me: I was thoroughly distracted by the free beers they kept offering me. To be honest, the ensuing hours are a bit hazy, but I located this entry in my notebook:
"[Three] a.m. I'm out 700 rubles and hurting. Rapidly realizing that gambling isn't for me, especially in St. Petersburg, where the beer is too cheap to resist especially when it's free."
In the cool light of the morning after, though, I think I may have been too hasty in my judgment. The casinos really were a lot of fun. And can free beer really be a bad thing?
COORDINATES:
All casinos are open 24 hours per day, unless otherwise noted.
Kapitan Morgan, 30 Bolshoi Prospect, Petrograd Side, 230-7151
Astoria Club, 20 Malaya Morskaya Ulitsa, 313-5020
Adamant, 72 Nab. Reki Moiki, 311-0409 (hours of operation: 5 p.m. to 8 a.m.).
Taleon Club, 59 Nab. Reki Moiki, 312-5373, 315-7645.
Premier Casino Club, 47 Nevsky, 315-7893. Bar and Russian restaurant. Live music every day of the week. Minimum bet on the card tables: 200 rubles.
Hollywood Nites Casino, 46 Nevsky, 314-3183. Restaurant and nightclub with occasional live shows. Minimum bet on the card tables: $5 (chips in dollars).
Plaza, 2 Nab. Makarova, 313-5020. Two bars, restaurant and nightclub. Live music on most Wednesdays. Minimum bet on the card tables: $5 (chips in dollars).
Oazis, 13 Schastlivaya Ulitsa , 320-7640. Bar, restaurant, and nightclub. Minimum bet on the card tables: 100 rubles.
TITLE: a stroll on the queer side
AUTHOR: by Charles Digges and Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: If you are looking for the heart of St. Petersburg's gay and lesbian community, you won't stumble onto it by following a pair of teenage girls holding hands. That just doesn't mean the same thing here as it does on, say, Haight Street in San Francisco.
Finding the gay community here takes a bit more ingenuity. It gets little notice in the mainstream media. Even the two local support organizations - Krilya for gay men and Labrya for feminists and lesbians - keep a pretty low profile and can be a bit hard to find. Once you find do them, though, they provide a wealth of useful and interesting information and services.
Such discretion may be a predictable consequence of the fact that, until the mid 1990s, being gay - for men, at least - was an offense that could bring you five years in prison.
Just as in Soviet times, gaining entry into St. Petersburg's all-but-invisible gay culture is achieved primarily by word-of-mouth. Or by its modern, electronic equivalent - the Internet. Gay.ru, the Web site of the Moscow-based Russian Society for Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transsexuals, provides a detailed road map of the capital's gay lifestyle, but offers only a few crumbs about St. Petersburg.
With that in mind, The St. Petersburg Times has plucked the grapevine for information on venues and attitudes to orient gay and lesbian visitors to the northern capital and help out those permanent residents who are still feeling their way.
FINDING A COMMUNITY
The queer community's secrecy may not be based so much on fear and safety anymore as on habit and preference. And, perhaps, even pride.
"Why do I need some organization like Krylya promoting my interests as a gay man when I already know I am gay and know where to go to express that?" said 31-year-old theater producer Oleg, who preferred not to give his last name.
He described the local gay community as decentralized and small, about 2,000 to 2,500 people. This means that most of them know each other well.
"It is a promiscuous world, but everyone is safe, "said Oleg "Condoms are a matter of course. If AIDS is coming from anywhere, at least in St. Petersburg, it is from heterosexual intravenous drug users" said Oleg. "Condom use is just expected [among gays]."
When asked if the local gay community needs some sort of advocacy backbone, something like ACT-UP in the United States, Oleg said "no."
"The clubs perform that service. I am not going to join marches and groups to promote my right to a lifestyle I am already living comfortably in the clubs," he said.
In other words, many in the queer community here - unlike in the West - avoid becoming a political constituency.
WHERE TO MEET
At present, there are several gay and lesbian clubs in St. Petersburg, most of which advertise conservatively and cater to a mixed crowd of men and women. All these clubs host gender-specific evenings at which the presence of members of the opposite sex is discouraged. But - with the exception of Karpiz's women-only policy - all of them welcome all orientations all the time.
Other unofficial gathering places for men include the park in front of the Alexandrinsky Theater on Nevsksy where men can meet men for no-strings-attached short-term - and paid - encounters.
GLAM
The best-known local gay club by far is Club 69, which became the center of the gay community after the elegant and raunchy Mayak club - with its famed drag shows and dark make-out room just off the dance floor - went out of business in 1998.
Club 69 borrowed much from Mayak's successful formula, from the pounding dance music to the bare-chested, flirty bartenders shaking out cocktails to the pelvis-thrusting tracks laid out by the DJ. It boasts a roomy bay and a tennis-court sized dance floor where dolphin-smooth men in g-strings shake their stuff from platforms down at the dancers below.
Although Club 69 bills itself as exclusively gay - featuring the city's most concupiscent male strip show starting at 2 a.m. daily - the crowd is a mix of gay and lesbian couples as well as a few heteros who come along for the ride.
Despite its fame, the club keeps a low profile and offers buff security to protect visitors. It also has a dedicated clientele, most of whom found the place through friends and just decided to stay.
"This is not so much a club as a recurring event," said 21-year-old Igor, who didn't want to give his last name. "It is the only place for gays to truly congregate and actually talk and meet."
Anya, 19, and Masha, 20, a couple who asked us not to print their last names, said Club 69 was definitely their favorite club.
"It is safe here for us," said Anya. "Even with men around, we feel natural in this place. It's cozy, the music and shows are good, and it has an inviting atmosphere. It may be the best place in town for couples with non-traditional orientations."
Gary Spearman, an American writer spending the summer in St. Petersburg, was even more enthusiastic.
"This is like clubs should be," he said. "This could be London or America."
Drinks run from 60 rubles (soda) to 160 rubles (Blue Lagoon).
GRIT
Spearman may have unwittingly put his finger on just the thing that doesn't ring true about Club 69: It is for everyone, which, egalitarian as that seems, can be a bit confining for the crowd that wants try something a bit more liberating than Club 69's conservative approach allows.
For such people, Club 69 seems rather a bit more like a showplace of the local gay community than an actual part of it. As Oleg put it, "If you are looking for someone to go to bed with and ditch a few days later, you to go to Greshniki," or Sinners.
Indeed, from its cavernous atmosphere on Kanal Griboyedova - with its vertiginous spiral staircase, pelvis-grinding music and fake foam rock sprayed onto the walls - one immediately realizes that people come to Greshniki solely in order to get it on.
The crowd here, too, is mixed, although that is a judgment call based on dress as the majority of the patrons had their lips locked, rendering their faces invisible. These people were hooking up and doing it with the devil's blessing. This is not Club 69.
Greshniki should be applauded for its frankness: There are very few places where gay and lesbian couples can be so open. But the volume of the music makes conversation impossible.
"And it's supposed to be impossible," said Oleg. "Who wants to talk when you're just looking at bodies?" Getting boozy at Greshinki, as at Club 69, can be an expensive proposition, with drinks running from 60 rubles for a beer or soda to 160 for more flammable cocktails.
A WORK IN PROGRESS
The "little-engine-that-could" award goes to Club Mono, or the Domashny Gei Klub, so hip and happening that they can't even decide exactly what name they want. The sign at 4 Kolomenskaya Ulitsa casts its vote for Mono, but the clerks answering the phone all say, "Domashny Gei Klub."
And the club's split personality doesn't end there. The interior - three rooms, including a VIP room - is decorated with colored paper anchors seemingly haphazardly tacked to the walls. The card-table furniture and the loud Russian pop hits make it seem like any other unpleasant cafe on, say, Ulitsa Lenina in Tver.
Two nice touches, though, are the entrance price - free before midnight - and the so-called VIP room, which features an enormous couch and a box of Kleenex where, on weekends, one can order lap dances of differing prices and contact levels, all of which is helpfully explained on the club's food menu right after the appetizer section.
Starting at 150 rubles for a no-contact dance performed by the boy of your choice, the prices climb to 450 for a full-contact, on-lap dance. During the week, the room is rentable for porn screening at 150 rubles a groan.
Mono's administration is considering a women-only night.
WOMEN ONLY
The only local club that is strictly single-sex is the dilapidated and, to be blunt, inconveniently located lesbian club, Kapriz, at 3 Ulitsa Krzhizhanovskogo in the city's southwestern district. And when they say no men, they mean it.
"Girls want to be alone with each other here. It's not written on a man's face that he is, say, gay and won't bring trouble into the place," said Natalya Ivanova, a Kapriz administrator.
"The only men here are our two security guards, for obvious reasons. So if another man comes in, the women will be anything but pleased."
The club operates just one night a week, from 7 p.m. Sunday night to 6 a.m. the next morning. The rest of the week, the men take over.
"When we started, there was no good way to advertise the place. But news spreads fast in our rather closed lesbian community," Ivanova said. She added that they could now advertise in newspapers if they wanted, but that they already have all the customers they can handle.
"There is no other place in town where I feel as at home as I do here," said Yulia, a 20-year-old tourist-agency manager. "It is not very easy to get to this place, but that means that it is safer and quieter than if it had been located downtown."
But thanks to its location - a 15-minute car ride from the Prospect Bolshevikov metro station - the club hasn't seen much trouble with the police or the testosterone-loaded riff-raff. That is not to say, however, that some of Kapriz's clients haven't mixed it up a few times on their own. The club also features a late-night drag show.
When we visited, a big cake on one of the tables in the bar confirmed our impression that the atmosphere is homey enough for private celebrations or small get-togethers. The bar - which offers a good variety of drinks from 15 to 20 rubles and even hot dishes too - is separated from the dance floor, which allows for quiet conversations. Free billiards also makes Kapriz worth the trek.
The club is doing well, but still can't scrape together the money to move closer to the city center. For that reason - and as unfeminist as it may seem - you may want to have a "man friend" pick you up when you leave.
COORDINATES
Club 69
2 Krasnoarmeiskaya Ulitsa
259-5763
150 rubles for men
200 for women, except ladies night on Wednesday when the price is 150
Open daily from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m
Greshniki
28 Nab. Kanala Griboyedova
311-3305 or 316-4291
150 rubles, except ladies night on Wednesday when women get in free.
Open daily from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.
MONO
(Domashny Gei Klub)
4 Kolomenskaya Ulitsa
164-3678
50 rubles for men and women
Open daily from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Kapriz
3 Ulitsa Krzhizhanovskogo
584-0950
50 rubles, women only
Open Sundays from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m.
TITLE: it's in the eye of the beholder
AUTHOR: by Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Things have changed a lot since the days when people were reticent even to talk about erotic subjects, and any photographs of nudes were considered contraband. Back then, it was illegal just to bring erotic magazines into the Soviet Union and black-marketeers did a brisk business selling smudgy photocopies of back issues of Playboy and Penthouse.
Yes, things have changed a lot, as a quick glance at an Obsession advertisement at any downtown bus shelter amply demonstrates. Russia's home-grown selection of erotic publications - including a local version of Playboy published by the parent company of The St. Petersburg Times - is now so large that it can be hard finding an ordinary newspaper at many kiosks. This is to say nothing of a booming native industry in erotic films, music videos and television programs.
But this new commercialization, along with the public attention it receives, has many from St. Petersburg's original underground erotic movement worried. The prevalence of the erotic, they claim, and the sheer volume of suggestive advertisements featuring nudes have blunted the impact of erotic photography as an art.
"The creative part of erotic photography is disappearing" said Alexander Yakovchuk, a local professional photographer who specializes in this craft.
"People identify art with ads, and very few understand that these are completely different things," he added.
But if the impressive success of Yakovchuk's recent exhibition, Krasota, or Beauty, is any indication, the creative force of the genre may be gaining ground back from commerce in the public mind. Krasota ran for three weeks this summer at the Union of Artists' gallery on Bolshaya Morskaya and was even held over for several extra days.
"We drew over 10,000 visitors," Yakovchuk - who also curated the exhibit - said.
By New York or European standards - where crowds have been inured by such landmarks as the confrontational penis and breast studies of the late Robert Mapplethorpe and Cindy Sherman's aggressive, wall-sized studies in sado-masochism - the dreamy, cellophane-bedecked images of Krasota may seem restrained.
However, Sherman and Mapplethorpe would tip their hats to Krasota's attendance figures.
A 70-year-old pensioner and his two grandsons who were among the 10,000 gawkers, took time to note their impressions in the exhibit's visitor's book.
"My grandsons and I liked this exhibition a lot. I even got to touch the bum [of one of the photographs of a nude] when the guard turned to look the other direction," the pensioner wrote mischievously.
Not everyone, though, has cast off the puritanism of Soviet times so completely. When The St. Petersburg Times visited the exhibition in its closing days, an elderly woman was seen pulling a small child out of the hall by the arm.
"This is such a nightmare," she hissed. "Let's get out of here at once."
Ironically, Yakovchuk also uses the word "nightmare" when he talks about the art of the erotic photographer. In his view, nightmare is a principle element of the craft, which - as he argues fiercely - has nothing to with the titillation of pornography.
Visitors to Krasota were greeted by a stark warning: "If you are in favor of commercial eroticism, do not visit this exhibition. You are going to be disappointed. This exhibition is not made to satisfy you. These girls, getting undressed, have the same feelings as any person would while undressing - for the first time - in front of a camera."
In other words, Yakovchuk's models are imperfect and shy, and he wants to push his viewers into a contemplative mood about the voyeurism they are about to experience.
This concept, though, was difficult for many visitors of the exhibit to handle. Their perceptions and expectations have been shaped by commercial advertising. Yakovchuk reported that he was constantly overhearing comments such as "this girl has too many freckles." One panicked viewer, who claimed to be a doctor, said that one of Yakovchuk's models showed signs of "liver distension."
"I'm not doing commercial erotic photos like you see in Playboy, for instance," he stresses again. "Although this is very popular now."
"Such photos are very far from reality. [Such] photographers use computer-manipulation techniques. Lots of make-up. And to begin with they look for perfect girls to photograph."
"As a result, women [in society] start trying to achieve an ideal that only exists in the genre of commercial photography.
Coincidentally, the Union of Artists' gallery opened an exhibition of the history of Playboy photography just as Krasota was coming to a close, and the two exhibits shared the space for a few days when Krasota was held over.
Visitors, however, immediately tuned in to what Krasota was all about and felt liberated by the contrast with commercial photography.
"I have the feeling that the whole world is obsessed with [commercialized] erotic photos and sex," said Lena Ivanova, an 18-year-old student. "But these pictures here, they show real life."
Zurab, a 38-year-old man who was visiting the exhibition with his wife and who asked that his last name not be printed, agreed. "This is a very unusual and interesting type of artist," he said.
"I think that we sometimes have too few opportunities to have a look at ordinary things through different eyes," he said.
TITLE: a date that is just a phone call away
AUTHOR: by Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Have you ever wondered what would happen if you called one of those numbers boxed off from the rest in the classified sections of papers like the one you're reading now? You know, those ads featuring exotic names that drip seduction like Lolita or Svetlana, and that reassuringly declare, "We Speak English."
Do the business people with their corporate credit cards and expense accounts really get what they are looking for? Is the woman in the ad really, as the text suggests, an attractive tour guide? Or is it just a come-on to attract customers for other skills she may have that aren't mentioned in the ad?
The mere mention of escort services often evokes images of high-class, ready-made hookers. Indeed, the lines between "companionship for a fee" and prostitution are blurry, piquing the curiosity of potential clients.
With such thoughts in mind, I picked up the phone and dialed.
DIALING THE NUMBER
The next thing I knew I was standing on Ploshchad Alexandra Nevskogo at exactly 5:30 p.m. - the appointed time for my "preliminary" meeting. A dark-blue Mercedes pulled up to the curb. A young woman cocked open the back door, eyeballed me expectantly and beckoned me to approach. As nonchalantly as possible, I got in and shut the door.
"Mind if I smoke?" asked the middle-aged brunette as she lit up a Vogue slim menthol. She opened her bag and took out some black three-ring binders.
They turned out to be filled with photos and personality profiles of available "escorts" - women who, for a fee, would show up on anyone's arm for an important banquet. Women who could dress to the nines and draw attention to their beauty. Women who would sincerely laugh at any joke until the time on the meter runs out. Women who would...
HOW IT WORKS
Thus began my adventure into the shadowy underbelly of the escort-service world.
Sergei - who didn't want to reveal his last name - has been in the escort business for more than three years now. He cleared some things up for me.
It turns out that he is a sort of marketing manager for the VIP Escort Service. "I do the advertising," he said.
"There are two ways you can do business. Aim down-market and attract customers with low prices, or aim up-market." After doing the former for too long, Sergei set his sights on the latter.
"It's more complicated offering high-quality, safe services, but the rewards are better, and it feels better."
WHAT ESCORTS DO
Sergei emphasizes that it is important to know the girls you are working with well.
"We go through a long process of interviewing our girls before hiring them because we intend to keep working with them for at least two years." Sergei said. "Once we're sure they are right for us, we sign them up for tour-guide training courses, so that they can show guests around the city."
Without any prompting from me, Sergei added that all their escorts are screened regularly for sexually transmitted diseases.
"Our girls have to bring in test results every month," he said.
Representatives of other escort agencies that I spoke with also said their women were screened for foreign-language abilities, higher education and, of course, beauty.
GETTING HOOKED UP
In my quest for the perfect date, I found that the first step - the phone call - connects you to a friendly and encouraging voice on a mobile phone. Reactions varied according to my introduction.
For instance, if I introduced myself as a well-heeled businessman, I was immediately offered an intimate (read: sexual) encounter. If, however, I revealed my journalistic intentions instead, I was offered the "tour-guide" or "escort" fare, which included a walk in the historic center and a bite to eat. Nonetheless, the potential for a window-fogging sexual massage was always hanging in the air. It was up to me to pose the question, however, and only by taking that plunge does one discover what the limits really are.
And what does that mean? One agency representative - who incredibly asked that we not print even the name of his agency - confessed that the prices of an escort and, especially, any erotic services that may be ordered, depend heavily on the client's passport.
"It's [more expensive] for foreigners," said the representative, but he added that anyone with soome money can "have a go."
Sergei said that VIP's customer base is mostly foreign and that there were differences between the tastes of foreign and Russian clients.
"Foreigners like to organize things in advance," he said. "Usually they arrange escorts even before they arrive in St. Petersburg because they're pickier than Russians," he said.
"If the [foreign] client wants to go to a banquet with an escort, he asks that she be able to interpret for him. Russian clients are usually just bored and want to go out with someone the same night. We don't like that kind of business."
PRICE AND, UH, SERVICES
And so, how much does this service run you? A survey of several agencies in town revealed that run-of-the-mill escort services range from $100 for one to two hours to $200 or $300 for the evening. One service quoted an hourly rate of $80.
With a top-of-the-line escort agency, you can also get other services ranging from organizing meeting rooms for conferences, obtaining tickets to the theater. This sort of thing, according to VIP's Sergei, runs about $300 a day
ORDERING IN
Your first peek into a service's catalogue - is free. However, some may prefer the increasingly popular option of perusing online catalogues. Many local agencies maintain sites with full photo catalogues and imaginative personality profiles - all just a mouse click away.
Some agencies actually let you meet the woman before committing.
THE EVENING BEGINS
The initial meeting is as much for the agency to screen you as it is for you to screen them. If both parties like what they see, the wheels are set in motion.
The usual arrangement is for your escort to come to your hotel, an arrangement that is facilitated by agreements between the agencies and the security people at most of the city's finest hotels. Under these friendly agreements, guards turn a blind eye to this form of commerce.
MALE ESCORTS
Although the "Midnight Cowboy" thing hasn't really caught fire yet in St. Petersburg, escort services are not strictly for men only. Several companies offer a small selection of male escorts.
"We have two men working at our service and they are usually available," Sergei said, adding that he has a staff of five to eight women working for him at any one time.
A BETTER IMAGE
Escort agencies are one of those things that sprang up in the heyday of bandit capitalism. As a result, they've developed an image that many in the business think is outdated and unfair.
"It's not as scary as you think," one agent said. "It's just a meeting between two people."
Sergei put the whole business into perspective by recounting an incident that happened to him.
"Once an English client of ours wanted to marry one of our employees. He offered me Pound20,000 [$28,000] to let her go," Sergei said. "Of course, I didn't accept. I mean, we're not running a prison here! Sometimes people imagine things are much worse than they actually are."
The telephone numbers and Web addresses of most reputable escort services can be found in any tourist or foreign-oriented publication. Here are some of the ones contacted for this story.
Svetlana Escort Service
938-3686
www.elitegirls.spb.ru
VIP
948-9434
www.anastasia.cekc.spb.ru
Liza
934-3471
www.liza-escort.spb.ru
TITLE: Israel Attempting To Fence Off Its Troubles
AUTHOR: By Laurie Copans
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAT HEFER, Israel - An orange swingset and large crawling tubes beckon children to a playground in this quiet village a half-hour's drive from Tel Aviv, but a faint crackling noise explains why no one answers the call.
"Warning! Electric fence" read signs in Hebrew and Arabic hanging on a forbidding barrier that - along with coils of barbed wire and a concrete wall - separate Bat Hefer and its neat cottages from dusty fields in the West Bank city of Tulkarem.
The barrier runs along the "Green Line," once the border between Israel and the West Bank, but largely erased since Israel captured the territory from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.
Now parts of the invisible 290-kilometer frontier, which runs through desert valleys, cotton fields and alongside several Tel Aviv bedroom communities, have re-emerged.
The Israeli government is building fences, walls and trenches along about 48 kilometers of the Green Line, at a cost of $1.25 million, to protect Israelis from shooting and bomb attacks, a frequent occurrence during the 10-month-old Palestinian uprising.
Defense Ministry spokesperson Shlomo Dror said the long-term plan is to have fences cover much of the former frontier.
This leads some to conclude that brick by brick, Israel is erecting a border with the Palestinians, even though Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is opposed to a so-called "unilateral separation" advocated by his predecessor, Ehud Barak.
"In some ways, cumulatively, it could in certain places take on the character of a border," said Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher.
The final border was supposed to have been drawn in peace talks. But negotiations broke down in January and prospects for a resumption, let alone a successful conclusion, are dim during the current climate of violence and recriminations.
Barak has said that in the meantime, Israel should unilaterally draw a border east of the old frontier, within the West Bank, to enhance Israel's security. This would mean that some Jewish settlements deep in the Palestinian area would either be dismantled or end up cut off from Israel.
Sharon has said he would not dismantle Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and barriers running along the Green Line would strengthen claims by the 200,000 settlers that they are being abandoned by their government.
There is also concern that a unilateral border could undercut Israel's position in future peace talks.
Perhaps because of the political complexities, the government has been working on the project quietly and somewhat reluctantly.
"This is meant to protect residents in the area," Dror said. "We're trying not to get into anything now that will be political."
The first stretches of cement walls and barbed-wire fences, to be built along dozens of Israeli communities bordering the West Bank, will be completed by the end of the year, he said.
In Bat Hefer, border-police jeeps patrol a cement wall that was built by residents in 1996, when the community was established. Two weeks ago, the Defense Ministry erected an electric fence alongside the wall. The fence will eventually run for more than 10 kilometers to the south, alongside several farming communities.
In this area, Palestinian militants have infiltrated in recent months through orange orchards and along dirt roads into the crowded Tel Aviv metropolitan area to carry out deadly bombings.
While the fences are meant to give residents a feeling of security, Palestinians can still get around them, and Israelis living near the West Bank demand a continuous barrier.
"In each and every place that they come in freely we need to put a wall, a barrier or an electric fence," said Benny Yaacobi, the secretary of Bat Hefer, while looking across the wall at the outlying fields of Tulkarem.
Houses abutting the West Bank in the area have been shot at about 30 times in recent months and Palestinians placed a suitcase full of explosives on the wall once, Yaacobi said. No one has been injured in the incidents.
Electric fences will also run for dozens of kilometers west of the West Bank town off Jenin, and south and north of Jerusalem, Dror said.
The government expects the barriers to remain for some time, he said.
Yet area residents are not satisfied and are pushing for complete separation from the Palestinians.
"We have been talking about this physical separation from the Palestinians for years," said Yitzhak Yehoshua, the chair of the Lev Hasharon regional council northeast of Tel Aviv.
"I don't have any doubt that this is the only solution. We wish there could be another way because we wanted peace. But it's not possible now."
TITLE: Attack on Spy Plane Marks Shift In Strategy
AUTHOR: By Anne Usher
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - By firing a surface-to-air missile at an American U-2 spy plane over southern Iraq on Wednesday, President Saddam Hussein's government has signaled a significant change in its targeting strategy against patrolling U.S. and British planes, officials said.
The high-flying U.S. plane was not hit, but the missile flew so close that the plane's pilot felt the reverberations from the explosion.
The intelligence plane was flying as part of Operation Southern Watch, a joint U.S. and British operation patrolling "no-fly'' zones over Iraq, Pentagon spokesperson Lieutenant David Gai said.
The operation, in place since the Gulf War ended in 1991, is designed to protect Kurdish and Shiite groups from government forces. Iraq disputes the legitimacy of the flight-interdiction operations and regularly contests U.S. and British patrols by firing missiles and artillery guns.
Less than a week ago, the crew of a Navy E2-C surveillance aircraft flying in Kuwaiti airspace reported seeing the plume of a surface-to-air missile fired from inside Iraq. That plane also was not hit in what has become almost a daily - and potentially deadly - game of cat-and-mouse between the two sides.
U.S. officials are interpreting the new attacks on U.S. surveillance aircraft as a significant shift in Iraq's tactics. Rather than take aim at patrolling warplanes, officials say the Iraqis are choosing now to go after the slower-moving monitoring craft. The high-performance fighter jets have continually evaded Iraqi missiles since the flight-interdiction operation began in 1991 after the Persian Gulf War.
"This is something new, because, in the past, all the attacks have been against fighter aircraft,'' an Air Force official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He said the twin attacks on surveillance plans within six days mark a significant shift in strategy.
The U-2 operates at an altitude of more than 21,000 meters, beyond the range of most surface-to-air missiles. CBS News, which first reported the incident, said U.S. officials believe the Iraqis have modified some of their missiles, adding extra fuel to extend their range.
In Wednesday's incident, the pilot of the Air Force U-2 saw an antiaircraft missile streak toward him before it exploded nearby. The explosion was close enough for the pilot to feel the shock wave but not to damage the plane, the Air Force official said.
Although he said the pilot felt "some concussion,'' he said the airman was asked to rank on a scale of one to 10 - with 10 being most likely - whether he thought the missile could have hit him. The pilot answered: "One.''
Over the past three years, Iraq has occasionally claimed to have hit a U.S. or British plane, but no downing has been confirmed.
Last month, a U.S. Navy fighter jet attacked an antiaircraft artillery site in southern Iraq in what U.S. military officials called a response to the frequent attacks on the U.S. and British patrols.
TITLE: World Upset With U.S. Unilateralism
AUTHOR: By Alexander Higgins
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GENEVA - The United States abandoned seven years of global talks on enforcing a treaty banning germ warfare Wednesday, surprising even its allies and prompting criticism for the latest in a string of go-it-alone U.S. positions.
The Bush administration insisted it still stood by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention but said it had too many objections to a draft accord on enforcing the treaty, making further negotiations useless.
"In our assessment, the draft protocol would put national security and confidential business information at risk," U.S. chief delegate Donald A. Mahley told delegates at a forum in Geneva.
"More drafting and modification of this text would, in our view, still not yield a result we could accept," Mahley said, announcing the decision based on a Bush administration review of the draft.
The U.S. decision effectively kills the protocol, which negotiators worked out in seven years of talks and which requires full consensus to be approved. Nearly all the other 55 countries at the conference expressed support for the accord, although some had sought changes to be negotiated in the next three weeks.
The stance fueled criticism that the United States is taking isolationist positions on a number of multilateral issues, after Washington's rejection of a climate-change accord and its doubts about other arms-control agreements.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the United States is "practically standing alone in opposition to agreements that were broadly reached by just about everyone else," Annan's spokesperson Fred Eckhard said. Annan hopes Washington will "close ranks with the rest of the international community," Eckhard said.
At the Geneva conference, delegates were left looking for a way to salvage the accord.
"Though I understand some of the rationale, I was rather surprised by the U.S. argument at this stage," said Ambassador Seiichiro Noboru, head of the Japanese delegation at the conference. "We may need a few days to reflect."
Noboru said negotiators had to figure out how to bring the United States back on board because the protocol "still presents the most realistic way to strengthen" the 1972 convention.
Tibor Toth, the Hungarian diplomat chairing the negotiations that began in January 1995, said he would examine the U.S. position to see what can be done.
When the convention was created during the Cold War, negotiators left out enforcement details because no one seriously thought any country would try to use germ warfare.
The United States has pushed for a way to give the treaty teeth since Iraqi armaments discovered after the Gulf War showed it had been useless in stopping violators.
Mahley said Washington would come up with new proposals and rejected criticism of the U.S. stand.
"There is no basis for a claim that the United States does not support multilateral instruments for dealing with weapons of mass destruction and missile threats," he said.
In Washington, a senior Bush administration official said at least 37 items in the protocol made it "unacceptable" to the United States, and all the concerns had also been voiced under President Bill Clinton.
"It's not a case where the administration came in and said, 'Another multilateral agreement we can trash.'" he said. "The unanimous interagency view was that this protocol added nothing to our verification capabilities. Nothing."
One of the U.S. objections was over inspections the protocol would allow into sites suspected of developing biological weapons.
Mahley said the protocol did not protect information held by governments or businesses. Countries or competitors could raise unfounded concerns and bring inspections that would damage security or business secrets, he said.
The Bush administration has been criticized both at home and abroad for rejecting the Kyoto climate-change negotiations, demanding an amendment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and demanding the watering down of an agreement to curb trade in small arms.
The United States also faces controversy at a conference on racism next month in Durban, South Africa. Efforts to draw up an agenda for the session have been deadlocked over whether countries that benefited from slavery should formally apologize and pay compensation, which the United States opposes.
Those positions are seen as continuing an isolationist trend that included the U.S. Senate's 1999 refusal to ratify the nuclear test-ban treaty and the Clinton administration's rejection of the 1997 treaty banning land mines.
Canada and South Africa said they regretted the U.S. decision at Geneva.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Hooker Safety
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Police have rounded up some 500 prostitutes in a bid to protect them from a mysterious killer and to clean up a northeastern city, Iran's official news agency reported on Wednesday.
The detentions, which began early this week, follow the killing of 19 prostitutes in Mashhad, 757 kilometers northeast of Tehran, during the past year. The latest victim was found Monday. Officials say all the victims were convicted prostitutes and drug users. Each was killed on a Sunday and strangled with a headscarf. The murders have been dubbed the "spider killings."
Police are baffled by the killings, but it is rumored that they are inspired by Islamic vigilante groups who are angry at the spread of prostitution and vice in Mashhad, a holy city that draws flocks of pilgrims, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
X-Mas Veteran Dies
LONDON (AP) - Bertie Felstead, one of the last survivors of the informal Christmas truces between British and German soldiers during World War I, has died. He was 106.
Felstead, a private with the Royal Welch Fusiliers, was one of the soldiers who crossed into no-man's-land to celebrate Christmas with the Germans in 1915 during an unofficial truce. The soldiers exchanged holiday greetings, swapped cigarettes and played soccer - before being ordered back to their trenches to resume hostilities on the front near the French village of Laventie.
Felstead recalled that on Christmas morning, "All the soldiers were shouting to one another, 'Hello Tommy, Hello Fritz,' and we gradually got to know each other this way.
"The Germans started it, coming out of their trenches and walking over to us. Nobody decided for us. We just climbed over our parapet and went over to them. We thought nobody would shoot at us if we all mingled together."
Such truces had been widespread at Christmas 1914, to the chagrin of military commanders. They recurred sporadically in 1915, but never happened again.
Mayon Erupts Again
MANILA, Philippines (AP) - The Mayon volcano erupted with little warning early Thursday for the second time in a month, spewing lava into the air and forcing thousands to flee villages in its shadow.
Panicked villagers streamed down the mountainside, many of them crowding roads with private vehicles. "There was an earthshaking and we heard roaring thunder, and after, we heard the frying sound of eggs when the pebbles were falling on our roofs," said Jo Malasarte, a resident of Malabog, at the volcano's foot.
Local emergency officials said they received no immediate reports of damage or injuries but hadn't inspected all areas affected by the eruption.
Ex-Leper for Reform
TOKYO (Reuters) - A former Japanese leprosy patient is standing as a candidate in Sunday's election for the Upper House of parliament in hopes of reforming the country that deprived him of his freedom for decades.
Miyoji Morimoto, who has spent most of his life behind the walls of special centers under a draconian 1953 law that incarcerated leprosy patients, said on Thursday he wanted to work to rid Japanese society of the sort of prejudice he had experienced. The main opposition Democrats, whose No. 2 leader, Naoto Kan, was health minister when the Leprosy Prevention Law was repealed in 1996, tapped Morimoto as a candidate to help woo voters in what is likely to be a tough battle given Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's tremendous popularity.
Wahid Departs
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Ousted leader Abdurrahman Wahid vacated the presidential palace he had been refusing to leave, ending a political standoff Thursday and allowing his successor to move into the mansion.
About 2,000 supporters outside the palace greeted the 61-year-old deposed leader with chants of "Gus! Gus!" - his nickname. He emerged from the palace with friends and family members who boarded vehicles in a motorcade bound for the airport, where Wahid will board a plane to Singapore en route to the United States. The motorcade drove slowly through a sea of flag-waving supporters as guards cleared the way.
Wahid is expected to undergo medical treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
Judge Shot Dead
JAKARTA, Indonesia (Reuters) - A motorcycle gunman on Thursday shot dead the judge who sentenced the youngest son of former Indonesian President Suharto to jail for graft, police and witnesses said.
Sayfuddin Kartasasmita, head of general crime at the Supreme Court, was shot dead in his car after two motorcyclists forced him off the road in a Jakarta suburb. Kartasasmita sentenced Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra to 18 months in jail for graft last September in a widely applauded conviction. After seeking a presidential pardon, which was rejected, Tommy has been on the run since early November.
Okinawa Arsonist
TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese court on southern Okinawa Island, reluctant home to the bulk of U.S. forces in Japan, on Thursday sentenced a U.S. serviceman to five years in prison for arson, court officials said.
In February, an arrest warrant was issued for 24-year-old Marine Lance Corporal Kurt Billie on suspicion of having set fire to several restaurants in Chatan, a town just north of the Okinawa capital, Naha, in January. "The charged was sentenced to a five-year prison term," a Naha District Court spokesperson said.
Following the procedures of a Japan-U.S. agreement on the status of U.S. servicemen in Japan, Billie was handed over to the Japanese after charges were filed in February. Last week, a U.S. airman was charged with raping a Japanese woman in a parking lot in Chatan, an incident that rekindled local resentment of the huge U.S. military bases on the island and renewed tension over Japan-U.S. security ties.
ETA: 'We Did It'
BILBAO, Spain (AP) - The armed Basque separatist group ETA claimed responsibility Thursday for 15 attacks, including five killings, from March through mid-July, a newspaper said.
The pro-independence Basque daily Gara said it had received a communiqué from ETA in which the group detailed the attacks and in some cases commented on the individuals targeted.
The ETA, whose name is a Basque-language acronym for Basque Homeland and Freedom, habitually admits to its attacks in statements several weeks later.
The group has now claimed responsibility for all 34 of the killings attributed to it since the group ended a 14-month-old cease-fire in January 2000.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Vikings Re-Sign Moss
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minnesota (AP) - Randy Moss hinted he might have to look elsewhere for a Super Bowl ring. Maybe now he believes he can get it with the Minnesota Vikings.
Or it might just be that an eight-year, $75 million contract offer was more convincing.
The Vikings' star wide receiver, who said he wanted to be the highest-paid player in the league, agreed Wednesday to a contract extension that includes an $18 million signing bonus.
Because NFL contracts usually contain complicated performance clauses and early retirement can cut short a player's earning power, it's tough to tell exactly whose deal is worth the most.
But based on annual averages, Moss is now the highest-paid non-quarterback in the league and third-richest player overall - behind Drew Bledsoe and Brett Favre.
In three seasons Moss has 226 catches, 4,163 yards and 43 touchdowns, the best for any wide receiver over that period in NFL history.
Smith's Return
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Joe Smith, forced to leave Minnesota last year because of a series of illegal contracts, has rejoined the Timberwolves, according to published reports.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press, in a report on its Web site early Wednesday, and the Star Tribune of Minneapolis in a story later Wednesday on its Web site, said Smith signed a six-year contract worth about $34 million.
Smith's agent, Dan Fegan, said that Smith orally accepted the deal earlier this week, but planning for a wedding had kept him from signing it immediately.
Smith, who turned 26 Thursday, played with Minnesota for two seasons before an arbitrator sided with NBA commissioner David Stern, who voided Smith's contract after finding the Timberwolves guilty last fall of signing him to a series of illegal contracts designed to sidestep the salary cap.
Picked first overall by the Golden State Warriors in 1994 out of Maryland, Smith signed with the Detroit Pistons last year - averaging 12.3 points and 7.1 rebounds.