SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #751 (17), Thursday, March 7, 2002
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TITLE: Bush's Tariff Draws Moscow's Wrath
AUTHOR: 0By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Top government officials warned Washington on Wednesday that Russia was prepared to retaliate for the U.S. decision to impose punitive tariffs on steel imports, and demanded a legal justification for the protectionist measure.
"It cannot be ruled out that if this question, which is very sensitive for us, is not resolved, Russia would introduce retaliatory measures," Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref was quoted by news agencies as saying.
Gref estimated that the tariffs, introduced by President George W. Bush on Tuesday, would cause Russia losses of $400 million to $500 million per year.
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said that Russia was ready to take similar steps to protect domestic goods, but added that the U.S. tariff decision should not be interpreted as "a step toward a trade war."
Outraged domestic steel majors, however, said that this is exactly how Bush's decision should be interpreted.
"Bush's decision creates the preconditions for a new trade war to erupt - this is the greatest danger," said Severstal Sales Director Dmitry Goroshkov. "For a country that preaches free trade to follow hypocritical policies, for a country that gets no small benefit from the free-trade system ... and then violates those principles whenever it sees fit - this is beyond our comprehension," said Goroshkov
Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Maxim Medvedkov told reporters that the government is awaiting a legal explanation for applying the tariffs to Russian steel, which it sees as a violation of two existing trade agreements with the United States.
A 1990 trade agreement defines procedures and measures for market protection, and the 1999 Comprehensive Trade Agreement sets quotas on a series of Russian steel products exports to the United States and "serves in its own way as a sort of guarantee of access to the US market," he said.
"[The tariffs] rob the earlier agreements of all meaning," Medvedkov said. "Within the bilateral agreement, the government of the United States had to show that harm came from our - Russian - exports, but we've been given no proof of this."
The quota is 2 million tons, of which Russia exported 1.9 million last year, according to the Russian Union of Steel Exporters.
Many steel producing countries, including Brazil, South Korea and Japan, have already threatened to file suit against the United States with the World Trade Organization, an option not open to non-member Russia, which instead must rely on diplomatic channels.
Gref said he believed Russia could "sit down to the negotiating table without resorting to any sort of radical measures," The Associated Press reported.
"Under existing Russian legislation, if Russia applies anti-dumping measures against the United States, that is if, U.S. goods would be considered in the framework of goods from a non-market economy," Medvedkov said.
"Market-economy" status is a sensitive issue for Russia, which is considered a non-market economy by the United States - a classification that hinders Russia's ascession to the WTO on standard terms, which it is insisting on. It also allows the United States to use the production costs of comparable countries in anti-dumping cases against Russia, making them harder to fight.
The United States has calculated that the tariffs will affect 33 percent of Russia's steel exports, said Medvedkov, noting that his ministry is working on its own estimates.
The country's top steel producers, Se verstal, Magnitogorsk and Novoliptesk (NLMK) called the tariffs close to prohibitive and fear they will have a domino effect, as steel once sent to the U.S. market moves to other markets.
"Bush's decision to impose tariffs of 8 percent to 30 percent will most likely be the final blow, because Russian steel is not in the condition to jump three hurdles on the way to the U.S. market," said a Severstal spokesperson, referring to the new tariff and the two previous agreements.
Medvedkov also said the United States' actions could threaten the agreement to reduce excess steel capacity, reached at an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development meeting of 39 leading steel-producers in December 2001. The United States initiated the movement to ease overcapacity.
"Why should we participate in a process and cut production, when the initiator of the process isn't and is taking measures that clearly do not correspond to the agreement?" Medvedkov asked. In December, Medvedkov had said domestic producers pledged to restructure 10 percent of existing capacity over the next eight years, but would not have to cut either capacity or actual production.
To aid steel producers hit by the tariffs, the government may repeal export tariffs, currently at 3 percent, on a series of products, Medvedkov said.
"When a market is closed to our sales, any decrease in export tariffs helps. Our export prices are limited as is, prices are already low, so any change will be tangible," NLMK spokesperson Andrei Sidorov said.
The steel companies have expressed fears that the steel turned away from the United States' shores will flood other markets, exacerbating the global glut and sending prices tumbling.
The European Union has threatened to impose tariffs on steel in retaliation, but this should not effect Russia, or plans to sign a new steel trade agreement between the two in the next several days, Medvedkov said. The agreement foresees a 28-percent increase in quotas, allowing Russia to export up to 1.2 million tons of steel and steel products in 2002. If Russia cancels export tariffs on steel scrap, the European Union will increase the quotas by another 12 percent. Russia produced 59 million tons of steel last year, according to the OECD.
Russia may also consider increasing tariffs on steel including from CIS partners, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Some analysts said that the new U.S. tariff may be a good thing for Russian steel producers in the long run, as it would force them to improve efficiency and exploit more opportunities.
Alexei Moiseyev, economist at Renaissance Capital, said that, although, "high trade barriers are harmful to the economy of both the exporting and the importing countries - the Soviet Union being an extreme example - in the long-term, Russia could gain if, instead of moving steel exports from one market to another, and exploiting cheap labor, energy and materials, it moves up the technological chain and exports, say, railway wheels instead of raw steel."
Steel majors were not convinced.
"It's the same thing as recommending a leg be cut off so a man's arms will get stronger from using crutches," NLMK's Sidorov said. "If we cut ourselves off from profit, we lose the possibilty of investing in modernization to produce more and higher value-added products."
TITLE: 58 Years on, This Love Is Still Going Strong
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: "There are still no letters. Today I'm on night duty. It will be a tough night. Again many injured."
Galina Popova, 79, thoughtfully fingers the yellow pages of her wartime journal. Her voice grows steady and stronger as she reads.
"And I will be thinking about him."
This diary of a 22-year-old nurse during the blockade of Leningrad is a book of love, a story that began in July 1944. It tells the story of her love for Alexander Kukushkin, a 24-year-old pilot, whom she knew for just three months, but whom she has loved all her life.
Popova met Kukushkin at a dance in a Leningrad military rehabilitation center where he was convalescing after being wounded. It was May 1944, exactly one year before the war would end.
"As soon as my friend and I entered the room, I noticed a tall, handsome man with serious gray eyes walking confidently in my direction," Popova recalls.
"You know, it was that very love at first sight that people talk about so much."
The next day, Kukushkin appeared in the doorway of her family's room in a communal apartment and their relationship was under way.
There were not many things for courting young people to do in those days, but Popova will never forget seeing a performance of the opera "La Bayadere" at the Pushkin Theater.
The theater was freezing cold and the audience sat in their overcoats, the actors' breath visible in the air as they sung.
Kukushkin suddenly pulled a package wrapped in newspaper out of his coat pocket and handed it to Popova.
"It was chocolate, broken into rough pieces," she remembers. "I hadn't had chocolate for three years, all through the blockade."
To her own surprise, she handed the package back.
"I didn't want to try it because I had forgotten its taste. I thought that if I tried it again, I might like it too much. And maybe I'd never have another chance to eat it," she said.
"'You'll have a chance. I promise you,'" Popova remembers the young pilot saying with a laugh.
Fifty-eight years after that night, Popova sits in her apartment at a table set with tea and cakes. Kukushkin's letters are spread out like a fan around her. Her young self looks out from a golden frame on the table beside her. She holds her only photograph of Kukushkin in her hand like a precious treasure.
"When I receive your letters, I am as excited as a child," she reads from one of Kukushkin's letters. "You'll say that it is funny when a grown man behaves like a child ... but it is a fact that when people are in love, even the most serious ones start looking like babies."
She slowly lists through the yellowing pages and chooses another.
"I love you and will never forget you," Kukushkin wrote. "I will do everything I can to stay I alive so that I can be together with you."
During one of his brief visits to the city from the front, Kukushkin proposed to Popova. She still remembers the words he said.
"I am from Siberia. Before the war, I was studying at the Arts Academy in Moscow. I want to be an artist, and I plan to continue my studies after the war," he said. "And I want to make you happy."
Popova answered "yes" immediately.
"I only asked him to postpone the wedding until after the war, and he agreed," she said.
Popova recalls the stresses of those times and the relationships that were born when people were torn away from normal relationships by the war.
"There was a kind of mass psychosis for us, living among all that horror and hunger of war and blockade. When the war began, I was a 17-year-old girl. Sud denly, I saw hundreds of dying and seriously injured people. Some of them had lost both arms or legs, some were barely alive. ..."
Popova particularly remembers a wounded soldier from Georgia who was brought in suffering from massive blood loss. The hospital had no blood of his type, but Popova's blood matched and, although her health was already shattered by years of starvation rations, she immediately volunteered to give it.
"I nearly died after giving blood," she remembered. "But after that the wounded Georgian told me that he loved me. He used to write to me, as did other soldiers that I treated, who needed someone to remember them."
However, Popova always knew that her relationship with Kukushkin was not like this.
"Sasha and I only kissed. Nothing more," she recalled. "You know, now I sometimes think that probably I should have given him more. ..."
In September 1944, Popova began keeping her diary. It was almost one month after she received her last letter from Kukushkin, dated Aug. 19, 1944. He wrote it from an airfield in Estonia, from which Soviet pilots were flying missions to bomb Berlin and other targets in Germany.
"I don't know when I will get a chance to visit you," Kukushkin wrote. "Maybe this fall? Maybe sooner. On Aug. 15, I shot down two fascist fighters."
"See you soon," he wrote. After that, there was only silence.
"My dear, my sweetheart, my love!" Popova wrote in her first diary entry on Sept. 17. "Where are you? Can it be that you will never come back?"
"No, Sashenka," the entry continues. "Everything will be fine. Happiness will smile on us. I know you will be back."
Exactly one month later, Oct. 19, 1944, Popova got the bad news. A short, official message informed her that "Alexander Kukushkin died as a hero in aerial combat on Aug. 23, 1944."
As fate would have it, she received that message on the very day that she was accepted as a member of the Communist Party, an event that was one of the most important days in a young person's life at that time.
"I cried and cried. Even as I was being handed my Party card, I couldn't stop crying," she recalls.
She rushed straight back home to the comfort of her journal. Her entry for that day does not say a single word about the Communist Party.
"Dead. So long ago ... And I didn't know about it ... No, no, I don't believe it," the entry reads.
At that moment, Popova decided not to believe in Kukushkin's death.
"I hoped that he had been taken prisoner or had been saved in some other way," Popova says, tears welling in her eyes even after so many years.
And so she kept writing in her journal, writing to her Sasha.
"Tonight, Aunt Valya deeply touched me," Popova wrote on Nov. 19. "She said that she was fortune-telling with cards and that the cards said he is alive. My spirits went up. Can it be true? Can it be that he was seriously injured and didn't want to write to me about it? No, a thousand times no. He is mine, no matter what happened to him."
Popova turned again to her diary on New Year's Eve 1945.
"Sasha, my love. I am sad without you. I love you so much."
In 1947, Popova got married to another soldier named Yevgeny.
"I told him about my love for Sasha, but he actually never was jealous. He knew there was nobody alive to be jealous about," she said. "I told him that if we had a son, I would like to call him Alexander. My husband didn't mind, but we had a girl."
Yevgeny died of a heart attack 14 years later at the age of 37.
Although Galina told her husband about Kukushkin, she never showed anyone her diary or Kukushkin's letters. She hid them away among the clean linen.
"It was only in 1985 that I first told my daughter and granddaughter about Sa sha and his meaning in my life," Po pova said. "I confessed to them that he was the biggest love through my entire life."
In 1998, Popova became a great grandmother and her dream finally came true: Her great-grandson is named Alexander.
When Popova first received word of Ku kushkin's death, she wrote in her diary that she "would always remember him and never love anyone more than him."
"My friends told me that I was creating an idol, but I didn't care what they said," Popova recalls.
"You know, I still love him. It is absurd, but I still have hope that he is alive."
TITLE: Russia Sticks to Chicken Guns
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Despite increasing pressure from the United States, Russia will follow through on its decision to ban as of Sunday all U.S.-poultry imports due to health concerns, a top government official said Wednesday.
"The decision has been made and the ban will go into effect," Deputy Agriculture Minister Sergei Dankvert said, news agencies reported.
The ministry's veterinary inspection announced March 1 that it had stopped issuing import licenses for U.S. poultry and a complete ban would be effective March 10.
The announcement was made just two days after steelmakers asked the government to take "adequate measures" against America for its plan to impose punitive tariffs and quotas on steel from several countries, including Russia, which it did Tuesday. Both sides deny any linkage between the two issues, but they are the front lines of a burgeoning trade war that has already produced heavy diplomatic fire.
Agriculture Minister Alexei Gor de yev, who is also one of Russia's four deputy prime ministers, told reporters Wednesday that the decision to ban U.S. poultry was "purely technical," not political.
The Americans however, including Ambassador Alexander Vershbow on Tuesday, have warned of "serious harm" to bilateral relations.
In Washington on Tuesday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said it could lead the U.S. Congress to drop its plans to repeal the Soviet-era trade restrictions on Russia contained in the so-called Jackson-Vanik amendment that links immigration policy to trade policy, which would hurt Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization.
Zoellick's statement is just another example of "the American government trying to make every issue a political one," Gordeyev said. "One should respect the position of the American government, which at any price will protect the interests of its economy, but I don't understand what this has to do with Russia entering the WTO."
The goal of the ban is "to ensure the population's safety," he said. "We must be sure of the quality of imports, but there is no certainty in the quality of poultry imported from the United States."
Russia says the United States has not provided documentation on preservatives, antibiotics and other substances present in U.S. poultry. American officials say they already have, and complain of being marginalized by Russian authorities.
First Deputy Agriculture Minister Anatoly Mikhalyov on Wednesday said Russia is on the verge of being critically dependent on meat imports, even though the country could be producing sufficient quantities itself.
"Rising meat imports hold back the development of local production," said Mikhalyov, adding that the ministry is moving to introduce quotas on chicken, pork, beef, egg and wool imports to protect domestic markets, with poultry and pork priorities.
Poultry imports nearly doubled last year to 1.36 million tons from 687,000 tons in 2000. The United States, which has roughly two-thirds of the Russian chicken market, increased exports by 80 percent last year to $629 million, according to the U.S. Embassy.
Domestic farms produced 860,000 tons of poultry last year, up 15 percent on 2000, but still just 49 percent of national consumption.
TITLE: U.S. Steel-Import Tariffs Trigger Strong Reactions
AUTHOR: By Jill Lawless
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Steel-producing countries around the world reacted angrily Wednesday to a U.S. decision to impose punitive tariffs on imports, saying the move betrayed years of work toward freer global trade and could spark an all-out trade war.
Britain's Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, said that she and Prime Minister Tony Blair were "bitterly disappointed." In Germany, Economics Minister Werner Mueller said it placed "a considerable strain" on U.S.-Europe relations.
The European Union said it would complain to the World Trade Organization after U.S. President George W. Bush slapped tariffs of up to 30 percent on several types of imported steel in an effort to help the ailing U.S. industry.
Countries from Japan to Australia also said they were considering filing complaints with the WTO, which can act as a court in trade disputes.
European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said Europe would "set the wheels in motion" to launch a WTO panel, which would rule on the legality of the tariffs and could authorize retaliatory measures.
Such action could take months. In the meantime, the European Union's Executive Commission met Wednesday to consider ways to protect Europe's fragile steel industry.
One option is retaliatory tariffs. Lamy said Tuesday that the EU might take "safeguard action" to protect its own market "as a matter of urgency."
Taken together, the 15 EU countries comprise the world's largest steel producer, with 21 percent of world production in 1998, according to the latest EU figures. The EU fears the new tariffs would jeopardize its nearly 4 million tons of annual exports to the United States, and divert up to 16 million tons of cheap steel onto world markets, much of it to Europe.
Britain's Hewitt said the move violated the spirit of negotiations at the WTO, the international organization that governs global trade.
"We are now embarking on new trade negotiations to try to cut tariffs across the world, and it really is shocking that America has taken this action, clearly in defiance of WTO rules," Hewitt told BBC radio.
That feeling was echoed across Europe and Asia.
Chinese Foreign Trade Ministry spokesperson Gao Yan said the Chinese government expressed "strong dissatisfaction" at the decision, and South Korea, the world's No. 6 steelmaker, said it would use "all possible means" to fight the U.S. tariffs. South Korea exported 14.6 million tons of steel in 2001, of which 2 million tons went to the United States.
Brazil, which exported $726 million worth of steel products to the United States last year was also critical.
"We have been an indiscriminate and unfair victim of the United States," said Jose Alfredo Graca Lima, a top Brazilian trade negotiator.
Swedish Foreign Trade Minister Leif Pagrotsky said the United States "has fired off its ammunition in this issue and, completely unprovoked and without us having any part in this, they have attacked us in this war."
Some countries accused the United States of trying to avoid the painful steel-industry restructuring that other countries have undertaken over the last few years.
"The German steel industry underwent the necessary structural change a few years ago with painful job cuts - without protective measures," Economics Minister Mueller said.
"It is generally known that the problems of the U.S. steel industry are due not to imports, but to decades of missed restructuring and a resulting lack of international competitiveness," he added.
TITLE: Germany's Metro Chain Coming to Town
AUTHOR: By Dina Vishnya and Yelena Zubova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: German retail store chain Metro Cash & Carry, which already operates two stores in Moscow, is getting ready to take its first steps into St. Petersburg market.
The company was given the go-ahead by the City Hall Investment and Tender Commission on Tuesday to start development of a plot of land in the Primorsky District.
According to Yelena Solovyova, the company's spokesperson, two locations are to be opened in 2003.
"We're opening two stores at once in St. Petersburg, just as we did in Mos cow," said Nikolai Asaul, head of the Foreign Investor Relations department at the municipal Center for Credit Banks - the company handling Met ro's application.
He said construction will begin on the stores in August, and they will take one year to build.
Metro is aiming at rapid implementation of its plans in St. Petersburg and, according to City Hall representatives, has already begun negotiations with local suppliers, including Nevskaya Kosmetika, Khlebny Dom amd Pekar, which already supply Metro's Moscow-based stores.
According to a source close to the deal, Metro's acting president for Russia, Tomas Hubner, approached Gov. Vladimir Yakovlev with a request to purchase three plots of land for the construction of stores: the one in the Primorsky District, one at the corner of Ulitsa Tipanova and Ulitsa Gagarina in the Moscow District and one near the Ladozhskaya metro station. According to experts, each of store will cost about $5 million.
The areas selected by Metro have already drawn their share of retail competition, with two stores on the same scale as Metro, Megamart and Lenta Cash & Carry already operating in the Primorsky District and an O'key store to open soon.
The chains already-operating don't seem worried by the entrance of a new competitor
"We're not afraid by Metro's expansion. There will be a small, but relatively insignificant number of customers who might switch over," said Oleg Zhe rebtsov, Lenta general manager. "The St. Petersburg market is still under-served in terms of retail, so right now it's only one-tenth of what it should be."
But not everyone shared Zhrebtsov's optimism.
"The retail market, even if is big, tends to follow the others." said Alexei Shaskolsky, a retail-space consultant with Colliers International in St. Petersburg. "But St. Petersburg market is not completely elastic. Purchasing power here is rather modest, so the supply could end up outstripping demand."
TITLE: ribot brings cuban rhythms to town
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Marc Ribot, a New York guitarist - best known for playing in a wide range of styles and for his numerous collaborations, including playing with artists such as Tom Waits and Elvis Costello - will be playing Red Club on March 12 with his popular Cuban-style band, Los Cubanos Postizos.
When Ribot played Moscow in January, his stripped-down experimental solo set demanded attention and a familiarity with contemporary improvised music. But this weekend's show - a cross between a party and a concert based on rhythmic, traditional Cuban music, with a drop of punk added in - has the less ambitious goal of aiming to make people dance.
A staple of New York's New Music scene, Ribot came up with the idea of forming a sound so different from his previous work because of the interest he had in the music of legendary Cuban composer Arsenio Rodriguez (1911-1972), who was a superstar on the Latin music scene in the 1940s and early 1950s.
"I've always wanted to perform this music, because I didn't know, really, very much about it, and by playing it was how I thought I would learn," he told The St. Petersburg Times by telephone from New York last week.
"We did three performances, and on the third performance we were signed by Atlantic Records. In the beginning I thought it was just another project, that I would do a couple of gigs at a small bar and maybe develop it over years and years. But then, after we got signed, I thought, wow! that we were able to make a band. So we did."
Formed in February 1997, Los Cubanos Postizos features bassist Brad Jones, of the Jazz Passengers and Ornette Coleman's Prime Time; Jazz Passenger drummer E.J. Rodriguez; percussionist Robert J. Rodriguez of Miami Sound Machine and keyboardist Robert Coleman, who played with John Zorn and Elliott Sharp and was a member of both the Sephardic Tinge and the Selfhaters. It was Coleman who introduced Ribot to Rodriguez's music in the early 1990s.
The name Los Cubanos Postizos means "the Prosethetic Cubans," to emphasize the nature of the band's work.
"By the name of the band, I just wanted to make very clear that, although we're exploring the work of the Cuban composer, obviously I'm not a Cuban musician, and I didn't want to pretend to be a Cuban musician, and we're not trying to do the music correctly," said Ribot, who has never been to Cuba.
"You know, we're Yankees using Cuban music, and we're looking at the way the other Yankees have used Cuban music. I mean that's not completely true, because our drummer is in fact Cuban, and I'm not sure our percussionist, who is a Puerto Rican, would consider himself a Yankee."
Ribot was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1954. He started his music education at 11 by studying classical guitar with the Haitian guitarist and composer Franz Casseus. Later on, he combined his studies with playing with local garage bands.
He said he listened to a lot of rock music when he was in his teens.
"When I grew up, I listened to all the same rock bands everyone else did. You know, I'm 47, so I listened to ... I liked the Rolling Stones more than the Beatles, but, you know, I listened to that kind of music.
"Then I just started trying to think, 'Oh! Where did that come from?' - and from the Rolling Stones I listened to I understood that a certain amount came from R&B players and from blues players, so I started to listen [to blues records].
"So Howlin' Wolf records influenced me a lot. I mean, all the rock records influenced me a lot - I still like rock.
"I'm a guitarist and when I came to New York, I heard certain other guitarists, like Fred Frith and Arto Lindsay, Elliot Sharp and also James Blood Ulmer - they were playing differently than the other boys," said Ribot. "So I thought, 'Well, if you're going to be a guitarist in New York, you need to understand what people are doing. So I listened to the other guitarists that were here, and I decided I also wanted to work with the composers and with the bands who were doing the kind of music that was different about New York. And at the time in the early 1980s there was a lot of No Wave music. I worked for the Lounge Lizards and with John Zorn, and a lot with composers like Anthony Coleman."
Despite his impressive New Music discography, in the rock world Ribot is better known for his contributions to albums of such diverse artists as Elvis Costlllo, Marianne Faithfull and Tom Waits.
Supplying guitar tracks to such seminal Waits albums as "Rain Dogs," "Big Time," "Frank's Wild Years" and, most recently, "Mule Variations," Ribot is often described as "Tom Waits' guitarist" or even "Tom Waits' Right-Hand Man," as was the title of a Ribot interview in the Mojo magazine. However, Ribot downplays his importance.
"You know, he calls me sometimes to play on records and sometimes he doesn't. So he has two arms of his own, and he doesn't need me as his right arm. But I like working with him. You know, if he calls me, that's good," Ribot said.
Ribot doesn't have any complexes about the eclecticism of his career. "I don't think that musicians should worry if they have a style or not," he said.
"I think musicians should play what they want to play, and if other people think they have a style, then that's good. But to repeat yourself so that other people will recognize you is a bad idea."
Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos perform at Red Club at 7:30 p.m. on March 12. Support comes comes from Markscheider Kunst. Tickets cost 300 rubles. Marc Ribot's official site is at www.marcribot.com
TITLE: philharmonia and petrov push boundaries
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A new work by renowned Russian composer Andrei Petrov - the composer of music for the ballets "The Creation" and "The Master and Margarita," the opera "Peter the First," numerous symphonic works and over 80 soundtracks - will premiere Thursday in the Shostakovich Philharmonic.
The symphonic suite "Street Melodies in Tuxedos" attempts to bridge the areas in which Petrov's work is best-known - popular music and classical. The 40-minute suite comprises symphonic arrangements of Petrov's scores to films such as "Autumn Marathon," "The Man-Amphibian," "The Secrets of St. Petersburg," "Watch Out for a Car," "An Old, Old Tale" and "Garage."
"I was inspired by the outstanding American violinist Itzhak Perlman - who performs music from Holliwood films and popular Broadway shows - and Riccardo Muti conducting Nino Rota's film music to the highest acclaim," says Petrov. "Watching the audiences rocking and rolling when symphony orchestras and classical musicians perform popular melodies convinced me to try my hand as well."
While the original arrangements were written for instruments like guitar, saxophone or accordion, in the suite the themes from Petrov's film music will appear in symphonic versions, allowing symphony-orchestra musicians to demonstrate their skills. The melodies will also be presented in longer versions. It took Petrov about a year to complete the score.
The St. Petersburg Academic Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Alexander Dmitriev, will be performing "Street Melodies."
"I very much enjoyed rehearsing the piece. Even though the melodies are familiar to everyone, in this new work they appear in an entirely different light, like new pieces. The tunes follow each other in an original, yet winning, order: Waltz is followed by march, which in turn is follwed by a slow lyrical theme," Dmitriev said. "The orchestra and I are pleased to be premiering this piece."
To the vast majority of Russians, Petrov is known first and foremost as a movie composer. He wrote his most famous soundtracks to films by the directors Eldar Ryazanov and Georgy Danelia. And - although he perceives classical music as an eternal art, seeing soundtracks more as entertainment - he is not at all discouraged by the fact that the general public is not very familiar with his symphonic works and ballets. "Most Russian contemporaries of [Dmitry] Shostakovich knew him primarily as the author of the romance from 'The Gadfly' and the song 'The Morning Greets Us With Coolness,'" Petrov smiles.
Recently, however, Petrov's music has rarely been used for movies. "Directors of my generation, whom I feel close to, don't shoot many films today. Younger directors seem to have different tastes," he says. "At the same time, I feel outraged by the brutality of much of what I see on the screen. I am a hopeless romantic by nature."
For Petrov, film music is a precious opportunity to appeal to a much larger audience than any concert hall could ever hold. "If the movie is thrilling and well made, you virtually slide into the screen and plunge yourself into the world of these characters, their feelings, joys and troubles, and all the sounds surrounding them," he says.
"The most precious thing I've learned from Georgy Danelia about movie music is that it shouldn't be connected with a particular episode, but should soar over the film, encompassing the whole story," Petrov says. "And if you achieve this, the music can also exist as an independent piece, and not be just a soundtrack." On Thursday, he hopes to demonstrate this philosophy.
With Petrov's new work, both the composer and the St. Petersburg Philharmonia are trying to reach a new audience. It is an open secret that the majority of Russians do not frequent classical venues. "I really wish I could see people of all ages - not just the elderly and Conservatory students - in classical halls," says Petrov.
Pianist and arts manager Irina Nikitina, who runs the annual "Musical Olympus" festival, blames conductors for the half-empty halls. "Look at the contemporary Russian classical-music scene: The repertoires of the country's various orchestras barely differ [from each other]," she says. "What we see is all the same soloists, performing the same works, with the same orchestras, in different towns."
Philharmonia director Yury Schvartskopf's answer to this widely acknowledged problem is to diversify. He is enthusiastic about bringing jazz, ballet and literary evenings into classical-music venues.
"I realize that some people's first visit to the Philharmonia may be a jazz concert or an evening of Argentinian tango, but there is a chance that, next time, they would come for a classical piece," he says, adding that local interest is also a part of the policy: "We also perform works by St. Petersburg composers at least once a month," he says.
However, new audiences have new habits. In the 2001/2002 season, the Philharmonia was forced to start printing two requests in concert programs: The first asking the audience to switch their mobiles off, and the second requesting them not to applaud in between movements of a work.
"Maybe we will have to consider making an announcement before the concerts," says Yekaterina Grebentsova, the Philharmonia's press secretary. "During a recent concert, a woman sitting next to me didn't react at all when her mobile rang in the middle of the performance. She pretended that it wasn't her phone."
Links: www.philharmonia.spb.ru. For ticket information, call the Philharmonia at 311-7333.
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Red Club will host two Western acts next week - the main attraction is Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos (see more about them on page i), but Les Hurlements d'Leo may also be interesting, as this act has won many a local heart.
They first came to Russia in May 2001 at the invitation of Tequilajazzz, whom they had met at the Fu kuoka Live Summit festival in Japan. However, partly because the local concert was held at the inconvienently located LDM, it was poorly attended The band scored a bigger success in Moscow.
"They are sort of France's Leningrad, probably - although this kind of music-making is more traditional in France" said Tequilajazzz's Zhenya Fyodorov. "Sort of a street/cabaret band with a double bass and drums. It's folk punk, French style."
According to promoters, the current Russian tour (two concerts in Moscow and one in St. Petersburg) is to promote the band's first Russian release, due out soon on Soyuz Records. Called "French Street Chanson," the disc will be a compilation of the band's two albums.
Despite recent rumors of Garbage and Muse concerts, the T.C.I. agency, which was said to be promoting both, refused to confirm the news. The agency's spokesperson did say that Garbage would probably arrive in the summer, but failed to provide any information on Muse.
However, there was some unexpected news about Jimmy Somerville, when it was announced that the former member of Bronski Beat and the Communards is returning to Russia and will play the Aquatoria nightclub on March 9. Entrance is between 100 and 500 rubles, depending on what is your sex and whether you arrive before or after midnight. I don't make up these rules; I just report them.
At his first concert in St. Petersburg back in 1996, the "Scottish pop soprano" and outspoken proponent of gay rights performed with two black female backup singers while all the music was prerecorded. The information about his current lineup was not yet available as this issue went to press, but the club did warn that Somerville will not take the stage until 1 a.m or even later.
Preparations for St. Patrick's Day parties - a new local "tradition" - are in full swing. It looks like the main event will be a concert at LDM on March 16 by Cruachan, the Irish band which blends Celtic folk and death metal and boasts former Pogue frontman Shane McGowan as its producer. Russian acts that will also take part in the concert include Moscow's Belfast and White Owl, as well as St. Petersburg's Nordfolks, Ad Libitum, Dartz and Llanfair P.G. The show will start at 5 p.m.
Meanwhile, this month will probably see the opening of yet another club, one that in a way will follow the traditions of the now-defunct Art Clinic by combining cabaret and underground art experiments.
The place will be located on the Petrograd Side and will be called Orlandina, after a song by Paris-based artist, poet and songwriter Alexei Khvostenko, better known to local fans for his collaborations with Auktsyon.
Management hopes Khvostenko will come for the opening, which is expected on around March 29. Watch this space for the news.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: soviet mindset lowers the steaks
AUTHOR: by Thomas Rymer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Recently, the Montreal Steak House sent us a heads-up that it was reopening at their location on Apraksin Pereulok, so three of us decided to pop by and see what was up. We were, sadly, disappointed.
Montreal Steak House has slipped a bit. I myself reviewed the restaurant two years ago, when it was called the Montreal Canadiens Steak House and sported an interior bedecked with photos and memorabilia associated with hockey, right down to the Wayne Gretzky jersey worn by our waiter.
In its present incarnation, steak has replaced hockey as the focus of the restaurant's decor, with posters at the entrance trumpeting the quality of the certified Angus beef on offer, and little U.S. flags stuck in with the toothpicks on all of the tables, also touting the quality of their American beef.
Otherwise, the restaurant's two rooms are pretty much the same as they were before being gripped by hockey mania, with the front room the brighter and more elegant of the two, although a bit chilly in the winter, and the room further back a little darker.
Our trio started dinner off with a round of large Tuborg draught beers (50 rubles each, $1.60), and set out on an exploration of the rest of the menu.
The menu offers what you might find at any mid-market restaurant in town, with hot and cold appetizers, soups and salads, as well as chicken, pork and fish dishes. The prices struck us as being higher than one might expect, but we took that as a sign of what could possibly be an exceptional meal ahead.
I was actually in the process of jotting down some basic information on price ranges, variety of items and the sort, when the manager arrived to inform us that there might be a problem if we wanted to pay by credit card, as there had been difficulties with the bank authorizations in some cases. Not with specific card companies, but with certain banks. He also firmly intoned that writing down information from the menu was not allowed, meaning that now I can't go into detail about what the place offers, beyond a Soviet mentality.
I started off with a mushroom-and-vegetable soup (100 rubles, $3.25), which was a milky (not to be confused with creamy) concoction that left me less than impressed. I followed with a Caesar salad with grilled chicken breast (160 rubles, $5.15), remembering that, on my first visit, Montreal's Caesar salad had been exceptional. Times have changed. The chicken breast was tender and generously served up, but the combination of cucumber, tomato, onion and olives, topped off with a slightly-seasoned, mayonnaise-based dressing that served as a bed was a far cry from the Caesar of my fond memory or, for that matter, just about any other Caesar salad I've ever had.
But the preliminaries aren't the most important thing here, so let's get down to the meat of the matter (Get it?). Any restaurant billing itself as a steak house has to be judged by beefier criteria (get it?), and this group of carnivores came to put Montreal Steak House to the test.
One of my dining companions opted for the Filet Mignon "Irokese" (450 rubles, $14.50). Instead of the standard, thick, bacon-wrapped cut I had expected, this dish consisted of three thin slices done sans bacon. The steak was accompanied by French-fried potato medallions and "vegetables," which turned out to be a purely decorative garnish of cucumber, tomato and black olives.
The other two mains - my other dining companion's T-Bone steak and my Big Montreal steak, which was a porterhouse cut (both 850 rubles, $27.50) - were the most positive parts of our dining experience, although the price was enough to give us both pause. Although the presentation was basically the same, the steaks themselves were, if not excellent, tasty, and were prepared exactly as we had ordered.
The problem is that we expected more. Given its prices, Montreal Steak House should doing better than "tasty." Excellent shouldn't be too much to ask of an 850-ruble cut of meat. And it could ditch the Soviet attitude too.
Montreal Steak House, 22 Apraksin Pereulok. Tel.: 310-9256. Open daily from 11a.m. until the last customer leaves. Dinner for three with beer, 2,660 rubles ($85). Menu in Russian and English. Credit cards accepted (see text).
TITLE: ballet festival a breath of fresh air
AUTHOR: By Alice Jones
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: With the International Festival of Jazz Music and Dance swinging to a close last week and Mariinsky dancers limbering up for that theater's international ballet festival next week, local audiences are being treated to a veritable dance extravaganza this month. This week sees the Hermitage Theater putting on a festival of contemporary dance featuring guest companies from London and Yekaterinburg flying in. The aim of the festival is to show audiences who are perhaps more at home with "Sleeping Beauty" and "Swan Lake" just what is meant by "contemporary dance."
The well-respected Yekaterinburg dance company Provintsialniye Tantsi will perform alongside London's Charles Linehan Company on March 6 to open the event, which will also feature London's Carol Brown Dances on March 8. In addition to the performances, Petersburg choreographers will be given the chance to study with their British counterparts during master classes at the Cannon Dance School.
This British-Russian venture is not merely a chance collaboration, but has its roots firmly planted in the history of ballet. It was Sergei Diaghilev's visit to London in 1911 with his famous Ballets Russes that first brought the idea of modern dance to Britain, and many British artists were inspired to appear in his company under Russian pseudonyms. Two former artists of the Ballets Russes - Ninette de Valoir and Marie Rambert - remained in Britain and became the defining figures of modern British dance as it is today. Bringing today's most modern dances to the sumptuous, imperial surroundings of the Hermitage Theater is yet another example of the juxtaposition of old and new that this festival represents.
The three companies taking part, although well-known within the realm of modern dance, are largely unheard-of in St Petersburg, a city dominated by classical ballet. The festival provides a long-overdue opportunity for local dance enthusiasts to acquaint themselves with more contemporary works.
Provintsialniye Tantsi is one of the most avant-garde dance companies in the country, bringing together elements of European and American choreography and combining it with drama and the theater. Charles Linehan - a graduate of the Rambert School - and Carol Brown are representatives of a new generation of British modern dance that prides itself on breaking down barriers and conventions. Both place particular emphasis on the personalities of their dancers as well as their technical abilities, resulting in an overwhelming sensual mixture of emotion, ballet and theater on stage. Their work is based on the concept of "world ballet" using trends from many cultures and weaving them into their dances, taking inspiration from anything from ancient Egyptian rites to early 1990s pop songs.
The pieces to be performed at the festival are an eclectic collection, mostly choreographed by Linehan and Brown themselves, but also featuring contributions from Tatiana Baganova of Provintsialni Tantsi and Dutch choreographer Anouk van Dyke. The lengths of the individual pieces range from two minutes to 40 minutes, and the numbers address modern ideas such as feminism, stereotypes of modern dance and women on the stage.
Linehan and Brown take a serious, intellectual approach to dance. These are certainly not ballets based on fairy tales. "Speak, Memory" is performed against a video backdrop, as is "Ocean Skin," with both set to original music. With the titles of the pieces ranging from the ultra-modern "Flesh.txt" to the frankly bizarre "A Quiet Life" with Herrings" the performances promise to be unique sensory occasions. Expect the unexpected.
The Contemporary Dance Festival will be at the Hermitage Theater March 6-8. All performances start at 7 p.m. Tickets are not on sale, but can be picked up free of charge from the British Council (46 Nab. Fontanki. Tel.: 325-6074) and the Pro Arte Institute of Culture (Peter and Paul Fortress. Tel.: 233-0040).
TITLE: 'The No. 1 Issue Is the Lack of Representation'
TEXT: As it approaches its 10th anniversary, Petersburg's Center for Gender Issues faces an uncertain future. The center's founder, Olga Lipovskaya - one of Russia's most prominent feminists - talks with The St. Petersburg Times about the center's achievements, her disappointments and her plans for the future.
Q: How do you feel about the center's progress in its first decade?
A: The last 10 years have been a disappointment to me, or rather a lot of gradual disappointments. The center started with an inspiration and a lot of romantic ideas, but since then I've come to disappointment and tiredness - fatigue I would say.
I'm the only one left of those who founded the center. A lot of the other women left for other projects, better salaries or whatever. That has been a cause for great disappointment. But what I'm most concerned about is that in the last 10 years, we haven't taken a qualitative step toward solidarity, toward organizing together.
Q: What changes have you seen in Russia's women's movement over the past 10 years?
A: If we're speaking about feminism, I wouldn't say that there is more appreciation or understanding of feminism than there was 10 years ago. If anything, the discussions of equality have shifted toward theoretical discourses on gender studies. This was a comfortable shift that effectively avoided feminism as an issue, as a political standpoint and as a word.
Q: Why do you think Russia's feminists haven't achieved a stronger movement?
A: Russia's a very big country with a very strong patriarchal tradition. After the revolution, state policy and everything presupposed that women's equality had been achieved. But, in real life in the Soviet Union, there was no access to new ideas, feminist theories, no translations, no books - nothing. A lot of important feminist literature wasn't translated into Russian until the 1990s.
Maybe 10 years is not enough for a movement's development. Maybe also there are too few of us, too few feminists and real feminist groups who are seriously aware and concerned about women's issues in the political sense.
Q: What about other women's organizations in Russia?
A: There are numerous organizations of women, but very few of them work for women. Most of them work for children, for families, against drugs or to defend their sons from the army. There are very few organizations that I could call feminist.
Q: What are your main concerns about the status of women in Russia?
A: In my opinion, the No. 1 issue is the lack of political representation. Absolutely. Women are underrepresented at all political decision-making levels. Even countries like Bulgaria and Poland have more women in power than Russia.
The other key issue is that so many people are living under the poverty line, and I'm sure the majority of them are women.
There is a huge number of women bringing up children on their own with very little support. There just isn't enough social provision for them.
Q: What are the center's achievements, and what services is it providing?
A: The positives are that we have built strong information-exchange networks aong the former Soviet Union, eastern Europe and the West. The center connects people. It provides resources to women and groups looking for funding or support.
The center's library is widely used. In fact, I think it's the best collection of feminist literature in Russia. I've been collecting it for 15 years. I started with 80 volumes of my own. And a lot of the material here, you won't find anywhere else. It's in Russian, English and other languages.
We also have free legal counseling, psychological counseling and free computer classes - which have proven very popular - and English lessons. Then there's our monthly newsletter, Posi delki [referring to women's gathering in villages], which is distributed to more than 400 addresses across the former Soviet Union.
Q: What are your feelings about Women's Day?
A: I like Women's Day, because it's around this time that journalists get attracted to women's issues. I also like this day because around this time I can always record a lot of sexist advertisements and praises to women. There's a lot of sexism in newspapers. For example, two years ago there was a wonderful newspaper headline that read, "Russia Is Lucky: It Has Oil, Wood and Women."
Since Soviet times, Women's Day has been the day when Russian women get presents from their husbands. Women organize feasts for guests and visitors. Men get drunk; women wash the dishes.
The whole issue of the fight for women's equality, which was initially the foundation of this day, has been forgotten. Some are gradually beginning to revive this idea.
Q: Do you think Women's Day can be used as a vehicle for social change?
A: I believe so, but so far I've had a mixed experience with media coverage on Women's Day. Last year, around March 8, we had a good round-table discussion on a St. Petersburg television channel. It was pretty good because they combined our discussion with vox pops outside, asking people questions like, "Is it O.K. for women to earn more than their partners?" And the answers were quite good; on the whole it was encouraging.
But, on the other hand, three years ago, I went to Moscow to take part in a program called Press Club. It was set up with a bunch of men: journalists, actors, media personalities, around the outside and a group of us feminists in the center.
Some of the men were so aggressively sexist. They were literally attacking us, saying things like, "you are mistaken when you think that you are able to compete with men. We just allow you to play in this field; when you're not needed we'll remove you from the competition." It's quite impressive, comments like that.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: I'm going close down and leave for India. I'm going to quit. I don't want to close the center down, but I don't know if it will survive after I leave.
In India, they have a women's movement that is quite different from ours. I'm not going to change my general goal or aim, just my environment.
I want to have free time and space for myself. Maybe I'll write. I'm also very interested in doing more translations from English. At least with translating I'll have concrete results of my work.
Q: Have you got any optimism left?
A: I've got optimism left, it's just not enough for my lifetime. I started the center at 38, and 48 is the time you have to think and maybe change something in your life.
I've been talking about women's circumstances in Russia for about 10 years, and I get bored of it. I don't have time to think and write about things I want to [think and write about]. I've been to thousands of conferences, and I usually speak about the topics that are offered to me, but not about what I want.
Q: What do you think will be the center's future after you leave?
A: I'm not sure about the future of the center. We're having a strategic-planning meeting at end of March. But the foundation that supported us for 10 years with full funding [from the German Heinrich Boll Stiftung Foundation] is shifting its funding toward specific projects.
We can reapply, absolutely, but it will mean that neither rent, regular salaries nor programs will be paid for.
Q: Does the center have any plans for its anniversary on Oct. 1?
A: I have a bit of a dream project actually. We want to organize an event that will be an exhibition-type happening on the topic of women's image in the Russian mass media - in advertisements, on television, in magazines, etc. My idea is that there will be posters of sexist ads, television programs to watch. And there'll be a basket full of different colored pieces of paper with different sexist quotations from the media and from different politicians, and you'll be able to choose the one you like the best. I also hope to have some feminist art exhibited that would confront this kind of sexism.
I think it would make a good crescendo to the end of my work.
St. Petersburg's Center for Gender Issues is an educational, research and activist non-profit organization focusing on gender inequality in Russia. Tel.: 275-3753. Tel./fax: 275-8722
Interview conducted by Katherine Ters.
TITLE: Zenit Anticipating Successful New Season
AUTHOR: By Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It was an evening of anticipation, pledges and a big surprise for Zenit St. Petersburg fans as the club held its first ever pre-season, meet-the-team session at SKK on Tuesday. Roughly 5,000 fans turned up to see their heroes and to hear club President Valery Mutko talk about his plans for Zenit.
Mutko began by calling Zenit's current lineup "the very best team in Russia," but most of his address was taken up by off-the-field matters. He confirmed that Petersburgers will be able to see all of their team's games live on St. Petersburg Channel Five, beginning with the opener, away at Anzhi Makhachkala at 4 p.m. on Saturday. Zenit's first game at Petrovsky Stadium is at 5 p.m. next Wednesday against Rotor Volgograd. On a practical note, Mutko confirmed that tickets for Zenit's league home games will cost 100 rubles, although the price for European games has yet to be decided.
After last season's unexpected third-place finish in the Russian championship - Zenit's best finish since winning the U.S.S.R. championship in 1984 - hopes are high among the fans that the club is finally where it belongs, in the top strata of the league, and Mutko said that, from here, the only way for head coach Yury Morozov's side is onward and upward.
However, key players have left the club since last season. Goalkeeper Alexander Borodin and midfielders Maxim Demenko, Andrei Kobalyov and Alexander Gorshkov are all now playing elsewhere, and fan-favorite Gennady Popovich has retired because of health problems. As a result, this season's team places its faith largely in youth, with many players not yet 20, and Sarkis Ovsepyan, recently voted Armenia's best soccer-player, the oldest at 29.
In Popovich's absence the team has struggled to score goals, netting just one while giveing up eight on a recent tour of Hungary, and failing to capitalize on its dominance in recent friendly matches against sides, such as Ukraine's Poligraftekhnika, which should not have caused it problems. The club has, however, taken steps to rectify this, and Tuesday night unveiled striker Predrag Randjelovic, who signed for the club from CSKA Moscow earlier that day, as the latest in a trio of Yugoslav imports.
The other two Yugoslavs who have joined the club are center-back Milan Vjesnica, from Vojvodina Novi Sad - who became Zenit's first player ever from outside the CIS states when he signed in December - and winger Vladimir Mudrinic, from FK Sartid, which was in fourth place in the Yugoslav league at the winter break.
As the new signings, including Russian national junior-team goalkeeper Sergei Ivanov, were handed their club shirts by Mutko, and scarves on behalf of the Nevsky Front fan club, the fans roared their approval, even breaking into chants of "Yugoslavia" for the foreign contingent.
If Zenit should improve on last season's performance, getting through to the Champions League group stages could still be just as difficult, after UEFA published its country-by-country ratings over the weekend. Russian football has been in decline for the past few years, and this is reflected in the rankings, which UEFA uses to determine how many automatic-qualifying places each country will have in the Champions League and UEFA Cup. Russia's rating has dropped by 75 percent since the 1997-1998 season.
For the Champions League 2003-2004, Russia will have no automatic qualifiers. The Russian champions will have to go through one round of qualifying, with the second-place team having to get through two rounds. Third and fourth place will go into the UEFA Cup qualifying competition. Sport Week-End, which published the data Monday, blamed the demise in Russia's footballing fortunes on lackluster performances in this season's competitions, singling out Spartak's game against Dutch team Feyenoord and Lokomotiv Moscow's defeat by Israel's Hapoel Tel Aviv.
The big surprise of the evening was the announcement that Zenit will play a friendly match against Italian giant AC Milan on May 29. Milan has promised to send a full-strength side, and Ukrainian international Andrei Shevchenko has said that he will beplay. Milan, which has been European champion five times and Italian champion 16 times, is currently in 6th place in Serie A.
TITLE: March 8 Is Not the Same for All Women
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: While many women across Russia are looking forward to some tender loving care on International Women's Day, St. Petersburg's women's boxing team will be going about things a bit differently.
"First, we are going to celebrate at home. Then on March 9 we are going to spar at the Arena Boxing Bar," said Natalia Karpovich, the president of the St. Petersburg Women's Boxing Federation, at a press conference Tuesday.
Disdaining the image of the fairer sex commonly found in Russia, the team insists that being female is in no way a disadvantage. As team member Natalia Ivanova said, "I was tired of being told by others that I am weak. I wanted to show my parents and my friends that I am a woman, but that I am strong."
Karpovich just said, "Sport is sport. There is no such thing as a 'man's sport.'"
The team has also convinced family members that women's boxing is not a dangerous sport, despite what some might say. Nadezhda Shvets, mother of team member Yulia Shvets, explained: "Many people have spoken out against the sport, but my daughter has been boxing for five years and has never had an injury."
Alexander Skorokhodov, of the St. Petersburg Committee for Physical Education and Sport, backed up the team's assertions of equality. "The female body is obviously designed differently, with its main purpose being child-birth. But we've got excellent coaches and trainers that are looking out for our athletes," he said.
He also noted that female boxing is very tough, adding, "Women's psychology is slightly different, which makes it a really challenging sport. This is not like soccer - the boxer has to play both offensive and defensive roles."
The Russian national team came home from the inaugural Women's Amateur Boxing World Championships, which were held in Scranton, Pennsylvania, between Nov. 26 and Dec. 2 last year, with a fistful of medals - four gold, two silver, and three bronze - and team captain Karpovich is optimistic about the future.
"There's a big future in women's boxing, particularly with the inclusion of the sport in the 2008 Olympics" she said. "Right now, we are sure that we have women on the team who will compete at those games, although one of our main goals right now is to work with youth to develop the sport in our city. As President Putin said 'sport is our nation's health.'"
Karpovich will lead St. Petersburg's team in the Russian Cup, to be held in Mos cow on March 17.
Karpovich also torpedoed the obvious question regarding the team's social lives: "Our boyfriends are not afraid of us. We are strong, but we are beautiful and remain women. Several of us have children and we live very normal lives."
The St. Petersburg Women's Boxing Team will be demonstrating its skills in an exhbition at 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 9. Arena is at 6, 2aya Krasnoarmeiskaya Ul. Tel./fax: 146-8533.
TITLE: Smirnov Backs Officials as 'Anti-Russian' Wave Hits Spain
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Despite the storm and emotion of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, veteran sports official Vitaly Smirnov - formerly president of the Russian Olympic Committee and current vice president of the International Olympic Committee - stands firmly behind Jaques Rogge and Leonid Tyagachyov, the heads of the International and the Russian Olympic Committees respectively. Both Rogge and Tyagachyov have come in for harsh criticism over percieved misjudging of Russian athletes at the games.
Smirnov was reluctant to blame Russia's poor showing on Rogge, as President Vladimir Putin had. Smirnov disagreed with the decision to hand out an extra gold medal in the figure-skating competition, but said the games were well-organized and IOC president Rogge was a "worthy president," although not "immune from mistakes."
Russia, he said, could only win a certain amount of medals because it is strong in only a few events - cross-country skiiing, figure skating, men's hockey and biathlon. Other events, such as speed skating, bobsled and luge, require training facilities that Russia doesn't have at the moment, he said.
Smirnov refused to directly criticize Tyagachyov, who took over from him as president of the Russian Olympic Committee last year. "He has been on the job six months, and the accusations against him are unfair," Smirnov said. He added, however, that he found it "unpleasant" that he had not been more widely consulted since leaving.
Meanwhile, fresh evidence supporting anti-Russian conspiracy theories emerged this week, from the Primera Liga, Spain's top soccer division, Britain's The Guardian newspaper reported.
In a game played Feb. 24 between Real Betis and Celta Vigo, Celta's Alexander Mostovoi and Valery Karpin - both of whom play for Russia's national team - were sent off. Mostovoi, The Guardian reported, received his red card for "kicking the ball towards [the referee] in a disrespectful fashion and saying, 'here, you take it.'" Betis won 4-1.
According to the Guardian, an unnamed player claimed that the referee admitted he was out to victimize the two Russians. "I spoke to my teammate," the newspaper quoted Karpin as saying," and the ref said: 'we've got those Russian clowns in our sights. They're f***ed.'" Karpin added that he didn't "want to name my teammate or put a gun to his head, but I swear this is true. You can call me an arrogant, cranky son of a bitch, but I'm not a liar."
Spanish conspiracy theorists, according to The Guardian, had surmised that the sendings-off were part of a campaign to allow Real Madrid - Celta's opponents in the following game - to win the title. Celta Vigo appealed the cardings, and a video panel subsequently overturned Mostovoi's dismissal. Had it stood, the player would have missed the game with Real. Mostovoi's presence, however, was not enough to stop Real from winning the game 1-0.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: VIENNA, Austria (Reuters) - New European indoor pole-vault champion Svetlana Feofanova of Russia denied she was emulating the great Sergei Bubka after she broke the world record by one centimeter for the fifth time this season. Russia's Feofanova cleared 4.75 meters on the final day of the European Indoor Championships on Sunday. Feofanova had the previous pole-vault best of 4.74 meters in Lievin, France on Feb. 24.
Ukrainian world record holder Bubka, now retired, set 30 men's world records - 14 outdoor and 16 indoor - and was famous for increasing them by one centimeter at a time. When asked whether she was following his trend, the 21-year-old said, "Another one-centimeter world record? No, this is not my decision. This is in the hands of the officials who move the bar."
Yakovlev To Serve
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev will be putting into action his recent ly stated support for President Vladimir Putin's sports initiative, at a tennis tournament being held at the city's Humanitarian Trade-Union University. Yakovlev will take on Sergei Tarasov, the speaker of the Legislative Assembly, at 11 a.m. Friday, as part of the University Duet 2002 tournament.
The tournament aims to bring together some of the city's best-known tennis lovers and sports figures. So far, those who are expected to play include Andrei Bashnin, the general director of Vesti and vice president of the League of Journalists; Vladimir Kirilov, first vice governor of Leningrad Oblast; and Yevgeny Kulikov, 1976 Winter Olympics gold medalist at 500M speedskating.
The tournament also aims to further popularize tennis and healthy living in St. Petersburg. Play begins at 11 a.m. on Thursday, March 7.