SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #779 (45), Friday, June 21, 2002
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TITLE: Activists Propose Waste Solution
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Every year, 700,000 tons of waste end up in St. Petersburg's three municipal dumps, and the resulting steady increase in the size of the dumps has become a cause of concern for the city administration and environmentalists alike.
 
In search of a solution to St. Petersburg's garbage crisis, the city administration is currently studying the viability of building what would be the city's first waste-incineration plant. But the idea of opening such a plant in St. Petersburg, while aimed at dealing with one environmental albatross, has sparked an outcry from environmentalists, who warn that the plant would generate other hazards to health and the environment.
 At a press conference organized by Greenpeace on Monday, which was chosen by non-governmental environmental organizations around the world as the Global Day of Action Against Waste Incineration, the environmental group called for more ecological awareness and proposed the construction of a sorting facility as an ecologically-friendly alternative to waste incineration.
 "We would like to shatter the myth that waste incineration is a promising technology. In the ovens of the incineration plant, domestic waste becomes, of course, less visible, but also a lot more dangerous for people's health," said Igor Babanin, Greenpeace project coordinator for St. Petersburg.
 Babanin said that, while providing a disposal alternative to landfill sites, the combustion process creates toxic compounds such as dioxins and releases heavy metals from containers used in things such as batteries. These substances have been demonstrated to be carcinogenic and to negatively affect both immune and hormonal systems. 
 Of the 1 million tons of waste produced in St. Petersburg every year, 70 percent is sent directly to dumps without any prior sorting. The other 30 percent is sent to facilities where it is, for the most part, turned into compost. The retention of this system, however, has few supporters.
 The compost produced, which in Soviet times was initially designed to be used by collective farms, is of low-quality and environmentally hazardous, as it contains heavy metals and other toxic substances that can easily find their way into ground waters.
 On Monday, Greenpeace sent the St. Petersburg administration a proposal to build, instead of the incineration plant, a waste-sorting facility, where recyclable materials such as plastic, paper, glass and fabrics would be sorted for recycling. Toxic substances, such as heavy metals, would be pressed together with the non-recyclable waste into briquettes and stored.
 "This option is less dangerous than composting, because heavy metals are a lot less likely to leak from a densely compressed briquette than from compost," Babanin said on Tuesday. "The heavy metals can still be treated later. Ideally, the heavy metals would be separated from the rest of the waste and disposed of, but this cannot be done at this stage."
 According to Greenpeace representatives, such a facility would not only be more ecological than an incineration plant, but also more cost-effective. Whereas the estimated cost of the incineration plant is $125 million, with another $25 million per year necessary for maintenance, Greenpeace says that the cost of the sorting facility would only amount to between $8.8 million and $33 million. Further, they say that the cost of the facility could be recouped in less than five years through the sale of recyclable materials. Facilities of this type are already in operation in Moscow, Archangelsk, and other Russian cities.
 "We have no difficulty in selling the paper and the glass saved from the waste, because they are always in demand," Babanin said. "It is tougher to find clients for plastic, although Moscow does sell plastic waste to Asian companies."
 The price tag for the incineration -plant project remains a major obstacle, and it is still unclear how the city administration plans to find the funding, considering that St. Petersburg's annual budget for waste-disposal is just $2 million.
 Babanin is at a loss to explain the city's motivation for acquiring such an expensive facility. "Maybe it is simply based on some personal preference within the administration, or maybe the city has been made a tempting offer by a foreign firm," he said. "The administration might even be considering ultimately importing foreign waste to burn. Although this is still illegal, the laws could be changed."
 According to the Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance, an international environmental NGO, the market for waste incinerators in Western Europe has been declining steadily due to opposition from environmental groups and and to the development of waste-recycling programs. As a result, the producers of incinerators have been looking increasingly to developing countries as new markets. Eastern Europe, where waste combustion is still a relatively new concept, has drawn a lot of attention.
 There are currently two incineration plants in Russia, both in Moscow. A third plant is being built, also in the Moscow region. "Luckily, this technology is still relatively undeveloped in Russia. But there has been an increase in the activity of foreign firms looking to build waste incinerators in Russia," said Greenpeace spokesperson for Russia, Yevgeny Usov, on Monday. "St. Petersburg is a cultural city, and I don't think it needs such a dubious present from the administration for its 300th Anniversary," he added.
 While environmentalists condemn waste combustion as a dangerous and expensive solution to the city's waste- disposal problem, St. Petersburg administration officials say Greenpeace's proposal is itself unrealistic. Andrei Vassiliev, the head of project development at the Committee for Power Supply and Engineering, expressed doubts that a sorting facility would be financially viable through the sale of recyclable materials.
 "Greenpeace officials are far too emotional in their approach to the problem of waste. They would like us to go back to the stone-age in order to preserve the environment," Vasiliev said. "Their figures are also exaggerated and hardly reflect reality."
 Vasiliev adds that recycling creates a gradual deterioration in the quality of the materials involved.
 "Every time a material is recycled, it loses quality. You cannot eternally recycle. A city is like a human body, it creates useless waste," he said.
 Advocates of the incinerator say the plant will not only solve, once and for all, the problem of dumps, but will also generate thermal energy and electricity, much needed in St. Petersburg.
 Another argument in favor of the incineration plant is that, by significantly reducing the size of garbage dumps, it will also contribute to solving the social problems linked to them.
 "The dump in the south of St. Petersburg is an eyesore, populated by homeless people who live from what they find in the garbage. By refusing to burn the waste and get rid of it once and for all, Greenpeace is creating a route for homeless people: From the city's dumpsters to municipal dumps, through the waste sorting facility," Vasiliev said.
 As for the ecological danger of waste combustion, Vasiliev says that there are now efficient ways of cleaning the gas emissions from their toxic components. The method generally used in Western incinerators is trapping the toxic by-products of combustion in the fly ash.
 But environmentalists argue that incineration requires the ash to be buried in a special landfill, a solution they say is costly and particularly hazardous in developing countries, as they are less likely to have the resources to create, operate and monitor the landfills properly.

TITLE: Smolny Suffers Beglov Defeat
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The candidacy of Alexander Beglov, St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's nominee for the post of vice-governor and head of the city's treasury, was defeated in a vote by the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday. With 20 lawmakers voting in favor and 21 against, Beglov fell four votes short of being confirmed for the post.
 
The position was left open when former Vice Governor Yury Antonov resigned on May 31 citing personal reasons. 
 Before the vote on Wednesday, Yakovlev stumped for Beglov in an address to the assembly, stressing his ability to work amicably and constructively with the various organs of local government. Yakovlev also highlighted Beglov's experience working as deputy director of the city capital construction administration.
 Beglov spent the day before Yakovlev's address answering questions from lawmakers, in a series of meetings with the different factions in the Legislative Assembly. He then addressed the entire assembly on Wednesday, and said he would focus on questions surrounding greater attention to legislative norms at both the regional and federal levels.
 According to statements by lawmakers and to official documents from the Legislative Assembly, Beglov was not confirmed for the post largely due to the fact that the members of the Legislative Assembly found him underqualified for the position.
 Earlier this month the Legislative Assembly's Judicial Department sent an official comment on Beglov's appointment to Smolny, stating the opinion that Beglov did not possess the requisite education and professional experience to fulfill the duties he would assume in the new position effectively. 
 "Considering that ... Beglov is a graduate of the Leningrad Institute for Engineering and Construction ... we believe that his education does not correspond to the post of vice governor and head of the St. Petersburg administration treasury," the judicial department wrote. Despite the message, Yakovlev's administration opted to go ahead with the vote.
 But analysts say that the vote against Beglov has less to do with his qualifications than with naked political questions.
 "Those who voted against Beglov obviously did not wish to see someone so close to Yakovlev in this post," said Leonid Kiselman, a political analyst from the Sociology Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 
 One of the functions of the vice-governor is to serve in the place of the governor when he is out of the city or otherwise unable to fulfill his duties in office, so Wednesday's vote leaves Smolny without anyone to fill in for Yakovlev.
 While the votes against Beglov were cast mostly by the anti-Yakovlev group in the assembly, the motivations for the votes in favor of his candidacy appear to have been varied. "Half of the lawmakers voted for Beglov because they support Yakovlev. It is sad, but it is the current state of affairs in the Legislative Assembly," said a Yabloko faction source who asked to remain anonymous.
 But others saw financial considerations as a greater incentive for many of the lawmakers who voted for Beglov. Had he been confirmed by the Legislative Assembly, he would have been responsible for disbursing money from the city budget.
 "Some of these lawmakers were simply looking for financial support in exchange for a vote for Beglov," said Ruslan Linkov, the head of the Democratic Russia party. "Unfortunately, many of the pro-Yakovlev deputies have a fairly cynical frame of mind."
 Antonov is the first of the Vice Governors Yakovlev has lost to have left of his own free will, sparking speculation by political analysts that he was positioning himself to run for governor once Yakovlev leaves office.
 Antonov was the fifth vice-governor that City Hall lost in the last year. Gennady Tkachev was replaced last May due to health reasons; Alexander Potekhin, the acting chairman of the Media Committee, resigned in December after he was charged with illegal business activities; Anatoly Kogan, head of the Health Committee, was removed from office after being charged with criminal negligence, and charges of abuse of office lead to Valery Malyshev's resignation in October.

TITLE: A Second Reading For Extremism Bill
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A controversial Kremlin bill on combating extremism passed its crucial second reading in the State Duma on Thursday, with critics cautioning that the latest version gives the state even more power to suppress public protest than did the original draft.
 
Pro-Kremlin centrist factions supported the bill, which passed with a 226-126 vote, while liberal parties were split. The Communists voted unanimously against the bill, as they did during the first reading, held June 6. The presidential envoy to the Duma, Alexander Kotenkov, said he was pleased by the vote and predicted the bill would become law and go into effect by July.
 The Kremlin has pushed persistently for the enactment of anti-extremism legislation, especially since a wave of racist attacks - many of them attributed to skinheads - earlier this year.
 More than 100 amendments to the bill were submitted over the past two weeks, according to Pavel Krasheninnikov, head of the Duma's legislation committee. Krasheninnikov said the version passed Thursday was a step up from the original text, thanks in part to a fuller definition of extremism.
 Lawmakers threw out one of the most controversial definitions from the bill's original list of "illegal activities" construed as extremism - "hindering the legal activities of government authorities."
 Several other concerns voiced by the bill's critics - who include rights advocates, liberal politicians and Communists - were addressed as well.
 While only the courts have the right to disband an organization suspected of extremism, its activities, under the revamped bill, can be suspended by the Justice Ministry or prosecutors. In the earlier draft, other unspecified government agencies also had this right. 
 An article that made Internet providers responsible for the content of their clients' Web sites was also struck Thursday.
 Additionally, the bill now stipulates that political parties will be held responsible for extremist statements made publicly by their leaders if such statements "are not explained" within five days. It was not clear what kind of explanation would be acceptable.
 It also outlaws the distribution of extremist literature and propaganda, explicitly naming the works of Nazi and Fascist leaders.
 Critics of the bill, however, said it had become even more ambiguous and open to abuses than before.
 Lev Levinson, a Duma aide and human rights activist, said the bill does not clearly define some of the offenses it lists, such as "jeopardizing state security," which can result in a prison term. He said no such crime is mentioned in the Criminal Code.
 "If most of the articles in the first draft largely overlapped with the Criminal Code, with its more or less exact definitions, after the second reading they became unclear, making it possible to prosecute each and every Russian citizen," Communist Sergei Reshulsky said. 
 Reshulsky also said the bill's definitions of extremism introduced the idea of inciting "social hatred," in addition to racial, ethnic and religious strife. 
 "Imagine people going out to protest against power cuts and cursing the wealthy town bosses. Under the bill, they are criminals and subject to prosecution," said Reshulsky, whose faction staunchly opposed the idea.
 Vladimir Pekhtin, head of the Duma's pro-Kremlin Unity faction, defended the bill, saying it had to be harsh by definition: "This law has been forced to respond to violence with violence."

TITLE: Land Bill Set To Pass Second Duma Vote
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma is expected to pass in a crucial second reading Friday the long-awaited bill allowing the sale of farmland. But a last-minute about-face by the government to bar foreigners from buying the land has observers scratching their heads.
 
Some said President Vladimir Putin wanted to avoid enraging the population. Others speculated that the government had folded under pressure from Russian businesspeople eager to capitalize on the sale of farmland.
 Giving equal access of farmland to Russians and foreigners alike was the cornerstone of the government's version of the bill on farmland sales that passed the Duma in the first reading this spring.
 But just four days before the second reading, the four centrist Duma factions - Unity, Fatherland-All Russia, Russia's Regions and People's Deputy - declared they would amend the bill to ban foreigners from participating in the sales. The four factions have a majority in the Duma. The government then chimed in with its support.
 The announcement left observers baffled, particularly because the centrists, who are known for toeing the Kremlin line, had apparently not received any instructions from the government or the Kremlin to adopt a tougher stance.
 Putin, who before the Land Code was passed never went on record as to whether he backed the sales, has also never publicly said whether he supports the sale of farmland to foreigners.
 On Wednesday, he told the Russian Chamber of Commerce that he shares and understands "concerns voiced by those who propose not to rush to give foreigners the right to purchase land."
 "The discussions have shown that we must take a well-balanced, accurate and extremely careful approach to solving the issue," he said cautiously, adding that the government might change its mind later.
 Andrei Ryabov, an analyst with Moscow Carnegie Center, said the Duma factions probably abruptly changed their tactics due to fierce lobbying by big agricultural producers.
 "Of late, land has unexpectedly become a very profitable business, and big business in Russia is used to starting up in favorable conditions," he said. "They just asked for a head-start."
 Vladimir Pribylovsky, director of the Panorama think tank, said the initiative most probably came from Putin.
 "Putin must have felt that he went too over the top with his closeness to the West and understood that people might not be very understanding about this and that it could be used against him at some stage," he said.
 Pribylovsky said Putin is in a difficult spot in which he has to please both the West and the Russian electorate at the same time.
 "He wants to look like Gorbachev to the West and Stalin to Russia," he said. "So he could not announce such a decision, but he could have urged Surkov, our unofficial deputy prime minister for parliament, to give the order to the factions. 
 Alexander Chetverikov, a Duma deputy with the Russia's Regions faction, said: "I think what happened was an apparent political plot between the Kremlin and the Duma to combine both internal interests and the effort to follow a civilized foreign policy."
 He said that, despite the heated debates over whether foreigners should have the right to buy farmland, the right "means practically nothing, because there are no realistic opportunities for foreigners or even Russians to invest in agriculture."
 "Many years will pass before Russian land will be divided into plots and measured properly, before laws will be passed on mortgages and land pricing," he said.
 "But what is clear now is that Russian land is too cheap to be let onto the free market," he added.
 Chetverikov said all Russian farmland could be purchased for about $1.5 billion, if prices were in line with the amounts plots are currently being sold for in some regions.
 "Some foreign financial consortiums could find this kind of money and buy it all just for the sake of diversification of their assets," he said.

TITLE: Moscow Official Escapes Shooting
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Two masked assailants opened fire on a car carrying top Moscow city official Iosif Ordzhonikidze to work Thursday, seriously wounding his bodyguard and a passenger in a passing vehicle. One of the attackers was killed in a resulting firefight, while Ordzhonikidze, 52, escaped uninjured.
 
The attack is the second in 18 months on Ordzhonikidze, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov's deputy in charge of the city's lucrative gambling business, foreign relations, hotels and construction. The previous attack on Dec. 19, 2000, left Ordzhonikidze seriously injured and his driver dead. The case remains unsolved.
 Ordzhonikidze was speeding down Rublyovskoye Shosse in an bullet-proof car when a BMW 525 with blue police license plates forced it to the side of the road at about 8:50 a.m. As Ordzhonikidze's bodyguard Alexander Golikov stepped out of the vehicle, two masked gunmen jumped out of the BMW and opened fire with assault rifles. Golikov was wounded in the chest, but returned fire, killing one assailant, the police said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Not Just Symbolic
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The St. Petersburg's Will movement has decided to adopt lion cubs living at the city zoo, Interfax quoted Federation Council Chairperson Sergei Mironov as saying on Wednesday.
 Mironov said that the movement could not stand by and allow the cubs, which were born at the zoo, continue to live in "conditions that aren't exactly what you could call the best," Interfax reported. He also pointed out that the movement had the financial resources to ensure that there would be no problem in properly maintaining the cubs' cages and providing them with meat.
 He also said that the lion sculptures located on the Neva River on the Admiralteiyskaya Naberezhnaya, the restoration of which the movement helped fund, are symbols of St. Petersburg's Will.
 
 
Birthday Presents
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Mstislav Rostropovich, the world famous cellist, pianist and conductor, recieved honors from both President Vladimir Putin and the Culture Ministry in St. Petersburg on Wednesday to mark his 75th birthday.
 Rostropovich was also awarded a gold "St. Petersburg Creator" medal, an award established by the International Classic Center and the Star of Creativity independent political council, Interfax reported. The honor is divided into two categories: "Silver," for businesspeople who contribute to the revival of cultural values in the city; and "Gold," reserved for artists and cultural peronalities.
 
 
Samara Bomb Blast
 

MOSCOW (AP) - A homemade bomb exploded Thursday on a street in the southern Russian city of Samara, killing an elderly woman and injuring her daughter, an official said.
 The device exploded near a street lamp, said Yevgeny Puchko, a city police spokesperson. 
 It was not immediately clear how much TNT the bomb contained, but police described it as homemade. Itar-Tass said that, according to witnesses, the bomb was filled with nuts and bolts. 
 
 
Large Heroin Haul
 

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (AP) - Russian border guards seized one of their biggest-ever hauls of heroin on the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, killing two drug-traffickers before collecting 90 packages containing more than 96 kilograms of the drug, a spokesman said Thursday.
 The border guards fired warning shots when they noticed five infiltrators making their way across the Pyandzh River, which forms the border into southern Tajikistan late Wednesday, said Alexander Kondratyev, a spokesman for the Russian Border Guards in Tajikistan. They then opened fire, killing two, but the other three traffickers managed to flee back into Afghanistan.
 
 
Duma on Kaliningrad
 

MOSCOW (AP) - The State Duma on Wednesday criticized the European Union for not taking into account Russian concerns that its Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad will be cut off from the rest of the country after EU expansion.
 The State Duma unanimously passed a resolution with 401 votes expressing "serious concern" over the situation.
 "One has the impression that the European Union is conducting a systematic policy of creating conditions for the alienation of the Kaliningrad region from Russia," the Duma said in the resolution. 



TITLE: Integration Main Theme at Economic Forum
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It was billed as the Russian Davos, but the atmosphere is decidedly more Communist Party Congress than exclusive Swiss ski resort.
 
Some 500 delegates from across Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the former Soviet bloc descended on the city Wednesday for the opening day of the sixth annual St. Petersburg Economic Forum, the main theme of which is integration.
 "The increased popularity of the forum is evidence of its growing importance for CIS countries because of the decisions that are made here, both on a political and corporate level," Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who is chairing the four-day forum, told the delegates in opening remarks.
 Conspicuous by their absence were representatives of major Western businesses, with the notable exception, perhaps fittingly for an organization that was created to assist the Soviet bloc transition to capitalism, of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
 The EBRD, now the largest private investor in Russia, seized the opportunity in President Vladimir Putin's hometown to announce bold new initiatives concerning an issue dear to the president's heart - rebuilding St. Petersburg.
 EBRD president Jean Lemierre said the bank would commit nearly half of the $1 billion it plans to make available for projects in Russia this year to St. Petersburg. He said that between $400 million and $450 million would be made available for various infrastructure projects, including a $215-million facility for the construction of a dam to protect the flood-prone city and about $150 million for building a highway around the city center. 
 "We have been very committed to this city since 1994, when the EBRD held its annual meeting here," Lemierre told reporters, explaining the boost in financing. "Also, the government itself considers the development of St. Petersburg a priority, as it has always been a gateway to Europe."
 The EBRD was also made a strategic partner in future forums, signing a cooperation agreement penned on the Russian side by Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, who is also from St. Petersburg. The development was well received, as forum organizers have been searching for years for a partner to help promote the event in the West and attract greater numbers of Western investors.
 One of the few delegates from the West in attendance, a representative of a large German bank, said of the EBRD's new role: "This is exactly what the forum needs to increase its status and to attract Western attention."
 Most of the talk, however, focused on how to further integrate Russia's economy with those of its Soviet-era allies.
 For Anatoly Chubais, also a native Petersburger and the influential head of the national-power-monopoly Unified Energy Systems, integration means creating a unified energy market within the CIS and, eventually, all of Europe.
 Chubais said that this was only the logical conclusion to the reforms that began when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
 "Ten years after we started, we see that all our basic reforms - the introduction of private property, privatization and tight monetary policy - are finally bringing results," Chubais said.

TITLE: Putin Aiming To Plug Capital Flight Hole
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Looking to find additional resources to boost economic growth, President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday urged Russians to repatriate the billions of dollars that they shifted abroad over the past decade.
 
But unlike Putin's previous economic reforms in taxes and land, the newest drive may leave him empty-handed, analysts warned.
 Putin hinted Wednesday that businesspeople and private individuals who wait much longer to admit that they have cash abroad could find it frozen amid international efforts to fight terrorism. 
 Should this happen, the money would only be unblocked after a drawn-out battle in the courts, he said in an address to a congress of the Russian Chamber of Commerce.
 Putin acknowledged that the government must continue trying to create an attractive investment climate where repatriated funds could be put to work.
 "The government must not grab anyone by the sleeve and demand an immediate explanation of where theirmoney came from, especially since, in the past, it failed to create normal investment conditions in the economy," Putin said, according to Interfax.
 Nobody knows exactly how much money has fled the country over the past decade. Experts put the amount at anywhere from $50 billion to $400 billion.
 Analysts gave their nod of approval to Putin's call, but cautioned that the devil was in the details.
 "Financial liquidity generates growth. You could have more of it if you could patch the [capital flight] hole," said James Fenkner, chief strategist at Troika Dialog.
 In recent months, Putin has been prodding the cabinet to further stimulate economic growth. The World Bank, which puts capital flight at $20 billion to $22 billion per year, estimates domestic-capital investment would jump by 18 percent in dollar terms if capital flight were halved.
 Details of how Russians could bring money home were unclear Wednesday.
 He said the government estimates that $300 billion is tucked away abroad, and it hopes to recover at least $100 billion of this.
 
 <i>
Staff Writer Torrey Clark contributed to this report. </i>

TITLE: Desperate Measures: Pay Your Bill and Win a Prize
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Demonized each winter for combating debtors with deadly blackouts, and having suffered the humiliation of having the state's Ministry for Emergency Situations called in to deal with the conseuqences of powercuts, the Primorye region's electricity monopoly Dalenergo gambled on a game show to improve its image and bottom line - and won.
 
And so did dozens of its lucky customers, including a woman named Olga Senko, who is now the proud owner of a new Honda automobile, the top prize in a scheme to encourage consumers to keep up with the payment of their bills.
 It all began in March, when the Vladivostok-based utility, tired of chronic nonpayment, decided to launch a lottery.
 To be eligible to win, all the people of Vladivostok had to do was pay their heating and electricity bills.
 Dalenergo spokesperson Mikhail Tsedrik, in a telephone interview Wednesday, said that the company spent 1 million rubles ($33,000) advertising and organizing the lottery, including buying 39 prizes, but its collection rate soared in response.
 &quot;Our gain was 8 million rubles, so the effect is obvious and we will continue doing it,&quot; Tsedrik said.
 In addition to the car, the company gave away a home cinema system, a television, a washing machine, a refrigerator and several vacuum cleaners, kettles and car stereos.
 Tsedrik said the lottery was held on Wednesday on a local television station and featured two large containers - one for the names of the prizes and the other for the names of all Vladivostok residents of voting age, excluding &quot;the wealthy, energy company employees and city officials.&quot;
 Adding to the heated drama of the competition, the host selected a winner and then ceremoniously checked a computer database to see if he or she owed Dalenergo any money.
 &quot;[For each prize] we had to reselect a resident five or six times until we found one who had no debts to Dalenergo,&quot; Tsedrik said. However, Senko, the grand-prize winner, was found on the first try.
 According to Tsedrik, about 50 percent of the city's residents owe the utility money.
 Tselko said that Dalenergo is going to hold another lottery inFebruary that everyone in the region, not just resident's ofVladivostok, will be eligible to enter.
 Two other loss-making utilities, Chitaenergo and Murmanskenergo, have held lotteries similar to Dalenergo's.

TITLE: Scania Unveils St. Petersburg Bus Facility
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Scania, the Swedish vehicle manufacturer, held the official opening of its new bus factory in St. Petersburg this week, but analysts have expressed doubts about the viability of the facility due to its high production costs. 
 
The construction of the factory, which has the capacity to assemble 200 Scania OmniLink buses per year, with chassis brought from Sweden, cost Scania in the region of 80 million Swedish crowns (about $8.4 million) and the facility will produce between 32 and 34 buses by the end of the year. Scania plans to produce about 100 buses at the facility next year, with each bus costing $128,000.
 According to Per Nilsson, general director of Scania Russia, future production at Scania Peter, a wholly owned subsidiary, will be dependent on demand. He noted that the company has high hopes for leasing schemes for the sale of buses. The lease program will allow customers to pay 10 percent up front and the remainder over the following seven years. 
 The Scania representatives declined to reveal the interest rate given for the credit schemes but, according to Oleg Gryzlov, president of the Commercial Enterprises Union, which has signed a contract for the purchase of the plant's first 16 buses, through its Rostov-na-Donu-based subsidiary, Avtotransport Enterprise No. 5, the company will receive a rate of around 11 percent.
 At present, most of Russia's ten major bus manufacturers offer leasig programs, although the terms for credit are usually restricted to three to four years. 
 According to Nilsson, Scania is currently in negotiation with a number of potential clients, including the St. Petersburg city government and the Leningrad Oblast government, as well as about 25 private companies. The factory also plans to produces buses for export to the Baltic states, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan. 
 Scania's is not the first attempt to create a foreign bus-production facility in Russia. Mercedes planned to open a facility in Krasnoyarsk and another close to Moscow; MAN had plans to open one in Kurgan; and Volvo has expressed an interest in opening a plant in Omsk.
 According to analysts, all these earlier projects have failed for the same reason - the high costs for production of Western buses and, as a result, the high prices that would have to carry. Typical projected prices for Western buses produced in Russia range from $120,000 to $140,000, which is two to five times higher than the cost of Russian models. 
 Viktor Pashkov, head of the information-analytical service at the state-owned Avtoselkhozmash holding, which holds stakes in all Russia's bus production facilities, doesn't believe that the Scania plant in Russia will be a great success.
 &quot;If the other projects of Western bus producers to launch production here are anything to go by, the Scania project won't be a success,&quot; he said. &quot;Foreign buses haven't gained much popularity here.&quot; 
 According to Viktor Novochenko, the marketing director of the Ruspromavto holding company, municipal-transport services have shown a strong demand for buses ranging in price from $45,000 to $60,000 for new buses, and from $15,000 to $25,000 for secondhand buses.
 &quot;But foreign bus producers know that they have to capture a solid niche in the Russian market, however small,&quot; Novochenko said. &quot;And they have to establish themselves here before large, private transport companies that can compete with the municipal transport companies, develop.&quot;

TITLE: Russian Oil Tycoons Flash The Cash for National Side
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Two wealthy oil magnates, ashamed of Russia's poor performance in the World Cup, are offering to pay $1 million to a foreign coach that will take charge of the national team.
 
LUKoil Vice President Leonid Fedun and Yukos-Moskva President Vasily Shakhnovsky wrote to the president of the Russian Football Union, Vyacheslav Koloskov, on Thursday, saying they are willing to foot the bill for a foreign specialist - a bill that could notch up to $1 million a year.
 &quot;Vasily [Shakhnovsky] was at the World Cup ... I saw it from here and I was ashamed,&quot; Fedun told Vedomosti.
 Russia failed to make the second round after losses to Japan and Belgium, meaning that Russia has not reached the second round of a major international tournament in the last 10 years.
 &quot;The fact that we no longer live in a Soviet system hasn't reached sport yet. It still functions Soviet-style,&quot; said Fedun. &quot;Even in our company, I can speak of positive changes brought by the arrival of foreigners. These people bring a certain culture of doing business with them.&quot;
 Fedun said Spartak coach Oleg Romantsev, who tendered his resignation as the national coach after the loss to Belgium, had proved he was the best in the country over the last 10 years, so, if he couldn't succeed, no other Russian coach would.
 &quot;If the offer is not taken up, then Vyacheslav Koloskov has to understand that he carries the personal responsibility for naming the next trainer of the Russian team,&quot; said Fedun.
 Their offer comes as the Russian sports media has been discussing the possibilities of a foreign coach taking over the team. Leading national sports daily Sport Express has been running a campaign to install a foreigner in the position, and on Monday ran a front-page headline reading: &quot;We Need Our Own Huddink,&quot; referring to Dutch coach Guus Hiddink, who has unexpectedly led co-host South Korea to the quarterfinals.
 Numerous countries, including three of the current World Cup quarterfinalists - England, Korea and Senegal - employ foreign coaches, although Russia and most major European soccer powers have only ever hired their own compatriots.
 One persuasive example of what a foreign coach can do in former Soviet states is Italian Nevio Scala. Scala took over Ukrainian club Shaktyor Donetsk last year and immediately broke the stranglehold Dynamo Kiev had on Ukrainian football by taking Donetsk to its first league title.
 When asked by Sport Express, Koloskov said he was open to the idea of a foreign coach. 
 &quot;If a decent candidate is recommended to me and he fits the bill, then why not?&quot; said Koloskov. &quot;Now, personally, I haven't got anyone in mind. But we are ready to consider any offers.&quot;
 The Russian FA, which has yet to officially accept Romantsev's resignation, is likely to decide on the appointment of a new coach during the course of the next month. Both CSKA's Valery Gazzaev and Lokomotiv Moscow's Yury Syomin have been tipped as the main Russian candidates for the job. Vedomosti, citing an unnamed source, reported that Gazzaev would undoubtedly be given the position.

TITLE: Viacom To Build Russian Multiplexes
AUTHOR: By Sergei Rybak, Yelena Vinogradova and Alexander Gordeev
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: CANNES, France - Viacom is planning to open a network of movie theaters in Russia, beginning with what the international telecommunications giant says will be the biggest multiplex in the country.
 
Viacom president Sumner Redstone said Wednesday that National Amusements, a Viacom subsidiary managed by his daughter Sherl Redstone, would provide the investment for the project. National Amusements is among the top-10 largest cinema operators in the United States and Great Britain. 
 Construction of the first movie theater will start this year, Redstone said. Work on the second will begin in 2003. 
 Redstone was unable to specify where the cinemas would be built, saying he does not have a comprehensive knowledge of Moscow's geography. 
 But, according to information obtained by Vedomosti, the first movie theater is to be built in the Mega retail center, which is being constructed by Swedish furniture giant IKEA, in southern Moscow.

TITLE: Democracy Is Last in Line
AUTHOR: By Fred Hiatt
TEXT: STROBE Talbott, architect of Russia's policy throughout the Clinton presidency, recently criticized U.S. President George W. Bush and his team for not pressing the Russian government harder to end the war in Chechnya. That civil conflict, Talbott said, is &quot;a cancer metastasizing in the body politic&quot; of Russia, and if Bush put it higher on the bilateral agenda, he could influence events in a healthier direction.
 
I think Talbott is right. But it's worth recalling that it was Clinton, not Bush, who compared former President Boris Yeltsin's behavior in Chechnya with Abraham Lincoln trying to hold the Union together; and who accepted, in a Time magazine article in 2000, Russia's right to &quot;liberate&quot; the Chechen capital, Grozny.
 Which is not to say that Clinton gave Yeltsin a free pass. Although Talbott acknowledged &quot;we didn't pay nearly enough attention early on&quot; to Chechnya, his administration frequently criticized Russian military behavior during the first war there in 1994-96 - just as Bush's administration criticizes aspects of Russian behavior during the ongoing second - and equally brutal - war.
 But it does seem easier to insist on a moral foreign policy when you're not in charge. Clinton cared about democracy in Russia, but other issues - serious, legitimate issues - always seemed to carry greater weight: persuading Russia to remove its troops from the newly independent Baltic states, helping ease nuclear weapons out of Ukraine, winning Russian cooperation in Bosnia or Kosovo or NATO. Just as for Bush, democracy matters, but not as much as eliciting Russian cooperation in the war on terrorism, in tearing up the ABM Treaty, with (yet again) NATO, or in opening the doors to U.S. chicken exports.
 Russian politicians, who now understand democracy pretty well, don't find this surprising. &quot;If they have to choose chicken exports or democracy, the domestic steel industry or democracy, I think the trade-off will be very simple,&quot; former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar said during a visit to Washington last week. &quot;Just calculate how many states export chickens and you know democracy will go to second place for any politician.&quot;
 Gaidar was in town with another democratic stalwart, Boris Nemtsov, and their progress report on Russian democracy - on how things are developing internally, while Bush concentrates on chickens, ABM and terrorism - was not entirely reassuring.
 The worries Gaidar expressed on his visit to Washington last year - &quot;that I'm not sure that Putin is very serious about democracy&quot; - &quot;proved to be correct,&quot; he said. &quot;It's nothing very drastic, none of his opponents are in jail.&quot; (&quot;In fact, some are in Washington, D.C.,&quot; Nemtsov interrupted.) &quot;But the level of control over the political process has increased,&quot; Gaidar said. &quot;The concept of managed democracy has increased.&quot;
 Gaidar and Nemtsov jumped into politics on the reform side as soon as the Soviet Union crumbled. Over the 11 years since, they have won a few battles and lost a few more; they have sometimes spoken out boldly and sometimes measured the prevailing winds. But, unlike so many of the first generation of reform politicians, they have not quit; they're still mixing it up, fighting for freer land codes and tax laws and the other nitty-gritty of a democratic market economy.
 So when they talk about a restriction of democracy, it's not the sour grapes of politicians in the minority. And the picture they draw is a mixed one, where the forms of democracy remain but the ability to challenge those in power has diminished.
 &quot;Elections exist,&quot; Nemtsov said, but Putin has manipulated them, through the courts or otherwise, to get provincial governors to his liking. &quot;The media still look independent,&quot; but the television companies have been brought under control one way or another. &quot;The upper house still exists, but it is like the House of Lords,&quot; with members appointed, for the most part, by the Kremlin or its allies. And so it goes, as Putin constructs his &quot;managed democracy.&quot;
 James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress and eminent Russia scholar, said in a recent speech at Georgetown University that in Russia &quot;the two realistic alternatives are respectively far worse and far better than the current conventional wisdom in America has yet seriously considered.&quot; On the one hand, he said, a genuine federal democracy; on the other, &quot;an authoritarian nationalism that would be in substance, though not necessarily in form, some new variant of fascism.&quot;
 Which makes you wonder whether Bush shouldn't put the question of Russia's internal development somewhere higher than chicken exports.
 The struggle between the two potential outcomes should not be &quot;a spectator sport for Americans,&quot; Billington said. He urged cooperation on many levels, including the citizen exchanges he has been promoting and organizing for years.
 As elected officials in a proud country, Gaidar and Nemtsov are naturally more reticent about the virtue of U.S. pressure. Bush &quot;reasonably thinks that democracy is our job, not his job,&quot; Gaidar said. &quot;You cannot impose democracy.&quot;
 But Nemtsov added that Putin, having cast Russia's fate with the West, would listen if Bush pushed harder on issues such as media freedom. And - ever the democratic politician - Nemtsov advised that Bush do so, for his own sake. &quot;Because if he does nothing, American public opinion will be against him,&quot; he said.
 <i>
 Fred Hiatt is a columnist for The Washington Post, to which he submitted this comment. </i>

TITLE: This Time, Ecology Should Wait
TEXT: ECOLOGICAL questions always seem to end up getting short shrift so, in this sense, the St. Petersburg story is pretty standard. It's always pretty difficult to find people who come out against the environment but, at the same time, it's often difficult to find public debates where the environment wins out over other concerns.
 
Take a list of topics, including industrial development, energy-resource utilization, health care, public transportation - the list could go on forever - and it's tough to find a case where the environment would be given priority by the average citizen here - let alone by the city administration.
 A steady stream of visiting politicians and dignitaries to the city has born this out. Every representative from a country located on the Baltic Sea that visits St. Petersburg invariably raises the issue of the ecological situation in the region with Governor Vladimir Yakovlev.
 The reply usually involves paying lip-service to the need to find a solution for the problem, and then a quick change of topic to the city's upcoming 300th anniversary. Why do today what you can put off until 2004?
 While doing nothing about the problem is clearly not the optimal long-range solution, adding to the problem is clearly also not a rational route to follow. In this case, building a garbage incinerator in the city to deal with the incredible amount of waste 4.5 million people can produce in one year is less appealing as a choice than simply doing nothing at all.
 Yes, finding a place for 1 million tons of garbage a year is a daunting task. Yes, the hope of setting up some sort of recycling system is probably a little too far off for most people to consider, and also for most St. Petersburg residents to comprehend.
 But it makes more sense to wait. Building such a facility, as environmentalists fear, would most likely lead the city to begin accepting, and burning, waste from other regions and even countries. This would clearly be a step backward from the standpoint of the local environment. Once the step is taken in that direction, it's going to be very difficult to turn around.
 We are told that this step - building the facility in the first place - will cost the city budget $25 million. If the city is able to find the money, which is doubtful, it would make more sense to pour it into, for example, industrial development, energy-resource utilization, health care, or transportation.
 It makes a lot more sense to spend the money on any of those things and, with respect to the garbage issue and its environmental consequences, wait until someone is ready to deal with the problem properly.

TITLE: When Patriots Put President Before Country
TEXT: FOR some time now, patriots in this country have fallen into two distinct groups: pro- and anti-presidential.
 
The first group is deeply convinced that President Vladimir Putin is their man and always has been. They are firm believers in conspiracy theories and reason that: If (as they are convinced) losing the Cold War, the destruction of the Soviet Union and all the country's subsequent woes were the result of Israeli and U.S. secret agents penetrating the highest echelons of power, then why can't the reverse happen?
 Their hope is unshakeable because any action by Putin that contradicts these assumptions is taken as additional confirmation of his deep cover and, consequently, of the fact that everything is going as planned.
 The other group is more rational. At first they too believed in the deep-cover fairy tale and held out for radical actions from the president. Days passed, then months and years, and nothing happened. These patriots began to lose their patience and get exasperated. Finally, when their patience snapped, they started to view the president as a traitor, which, of course, he isn't because he never was &quot;their man&quot; in the first place.
 The confusion in patriots' minds is paralleled by similar chaos in the heads of the liberals. For the liberals, the fact that the current president used to work for the KGB is enough to make them collapse in panic and await the return of totalitarianism.
 No matter what one thinks of Putin, he is no more a totalitarian dictator than Boris Berezovsky is an upholder of democratic values. But the liberals' hysterics fueled the patriots' paranoia. In the final analysis, the liberals' fears could be presented as indirect confirmation of the version about the patriots' deep-cover agent of influence in the Kremlin.
 There is nothing worse than a love deceived. The disappointed patriots express their indignation increasingly openly. The liberals, on the other hand, look perplexed. They, of course, wholeheartedly approve of Putin's pro-U.S. foreign policy, as they do any economic measures that can make the poor poorer and the rich even richer. But this great program is being implemented by a person who the liberal public has already written off as the embodiment of evil.
 Boris Yeltsin got away with human rights violations and election shenanigans simply because he had been declared a democrat. Yeltsin's position was not so much evidence of democratic beliefs as of his innate common sense: The combination of bureaucratic mayhem and a free press created a completely schizophrenic situation, demoralized the public and ultimately worked in the authorities' interests - by demonstrating the regime's power and sense of impunity.
 Putin, unlike Yeltsin, has already won himself the reputation as a persecutor of the free press and, thus, it is not the fashionable thing to like him. And no measures taken by the government will alter this at the emotional level. The political map, as portrayed by liberal commentators, is hopelessly fragmented and contradictory. The patriots' paranoia is complemented by the democrats' schizophrenia.
 At the end of the day, no one really loves the president - but does he really need to be loved? The most important thing is that orders are obeyed. And, in that respect, everything seems to be going according to plan so far.
 
 <i>Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist. </i>

TITLE: pep-see put the fizz into pop
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: &quot;Women differ. There are mice, and there are tigresses. There are lesbians, and there are nymphomaniacs. Kolibri is thoroughly feminine - we are not, though not without a touch of femininity,&quot; says Pep-See's Anna Kipyatkova, who is noticeably sick and tired of journalists' questions about Kolibri, another local female band.
 
After releasing its third album, popular local &quot;alternative-pop&quot; band Pep-See, which is fronted by three female singers, is now busy working at a new, acoustic set. However, its show at Red Club this weekend will be mainly based on its most recently released album, &quot;The Tantsy/Ze Dances,&quot; which came out on Moscow's Gala label in December.
 &quot;There are not enough venues in the city. It's an old story,&quot; says Kipyatkova. &quot;The most decent one now is Red Club. Faculty is also a very pleasant place - but we don't want to play in St. Petersburg too often, so we choose between Red Club and Faculty.&quot;
 The band, which used to describe its style as &quot;extreme disco,&quot; performs tongue-in-cheek songs dealing with sex, drugs and, occasionally, death - and does not hesitate to utter a strong word or two between songs.
 While its rare St. Pete performances are intended mainly for friends and local fans, Pep-See plays more frequently in Moscow, where club concerts pay better. Pep-See occasionally makes forays into provinces where, the band admits, audiences have difficulty in comprehending the band's twisted humor.
 &quot;Touring the provinces, I got the impression that people find it difficult to understand what's happening in front of them,&quot; says Kipyatkova. &quot;It's probably difficult for them to build a frame of reference for themselves. They haven't seen or heard anything like it. So the listeners appear shocked.&quot;
 Pep-See came out of the burgeoning local art scene of the early 1990s. Kipyatkova made her music debut in the pioneering techno band Lukee and took part in the Gagarin Party, the groundbreaking techno event held in Moscow in 1992. 
 Kipyatkova's interests also lay in underground cinema: she and her friends acted in films by Vladimir Zakharov, including one called &quot;The Fuhrer Was Always a Bitch&quot; with her acting as a male Nazi officer.
 The new album was produced and arranged by the band's guitarist, Vitaly Lapin, and is seen by the band as something of an improvement as far as sound is concerned. 
 &quot;Arrangements have now become more contemporary,&quot; says Kipyatkova, who claims that, on the album, the band almost sounds like it sounds live. &quot;There can't be anything ideal. We did 90 percent of what we wanted. The task has been fulfilled.&quot;
 Pep-See dismisses its first two albums, the 1996 &quot;Tri Zvezdy Na Nebe&quot; (&quot;Three Stars in the Sky&quot;) and the 1999 &quot;Ustupite Lyzhnyu&quot; (&quot;Get Out of the Way&quot;), as badly recorded, a fact it blames on poorly equipped local studios.
 &quot;[The albums] sounded rather provincial,&quot; says Kipyatkova. &quot;The idea was clear. Somebody had fun [listening to it], somebody didn't, but it was simply not good enough as far as sound was concerned.&quot;
 &quot;Although we worked hard - especially on the second album - we were absolutely unsatisfied with the result,&quot; she adds.
 Pep-See was formed in 1992, and originally featured singers Kipyatkova, Inessa Mikhailova and Maria Volkova, plus drummer Denis &quot;Ringo&quot; Sladkevich - now with Volkovtrio and S.P.O.R.T. - and Vnezapny Sych frontperson Kesha Spechinsky, who was actually the mastermind behind Pep-See's formation.
 &quot;[Spechinsky] came up with the idea,&quot; says Kipyatkova. &quot;He is a very active person. He gave us an impulse, but was instantly carried away by something else, and the snowball rolled without him. And, of course, we had his songs.&quot;
 Spechinsky composed some of the best-known Pep-See songs - including &quot;Vovochka,&quot; which led the band to national fame - overshadowing his own, underrated band.
 Pep-See's last album includes workings of Spechinsky's &quot;Turbo Boy&quot; and &quot;Lyubov Moya&quot; (&quot;My Love&quot;), but the other songs were mostly written by Vitaly Kudryavtsev, who penned the band's hit &quot;Disco&quot; - largely based on Baccara's 1970s disco hit &quot;Yes, Sir, I Can Boogie.&quot;
 Still fronted by the three women, Pep-See now includes guitarist Lapin, drummer Igor Rozanov and bass guitarist Nikita Popov.
 Kipyatkova admits that the Gala label, which signed the band in December, corrupted the initial promotional campaign for the album.
 &quot;They had no idea how to sell us and to whom,&quot; she says. &quot;They realized in the end, but time was lost.&quot;
 According to Kipyatkova, Pep-See targets mainly a student audience, already past their teens, and an arty crowd. &quot;They understand our musical jokes,&quot; she says.
 
 <i>
Pep-See plays Red Club at midnight on Friday. Links: www.pep-see.spb.ru </i>

TITLE: bringing two countries together
AUTHOR: by Aliona Bocharova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg, which has long enjoyed the reputation as a center of the world's literary landscape, has always held an attraction for foreign writers. This summer sees a continuation of this tradtion, in the form of the Summer Literary Seminars, or SLS, a program that began at the Herzen University on Monday and runs through July 12.
 
The SLS bring some of today's best U.S. writers - both established and those currently making their marks - and literary scholars together with their Russian counterparts for a four-week-long flurry of writing-related activities, such as seminars, lectures and public readings.
 The program was started four years ago by its current director, U.S. writer Mikhail Iossel, a St. Petersburg native who emigrated to the U.S. in 1985 with no hope of ever seeing his family or friends again. However, as the political climate changed, Iossel was able to return, and the SLS grew out of his desire to share the literary history of his home town with U.S. writers.
 &quot;The initial aim was simply to place St. Petersburg in the literary consciousness of Americans,&quot; notes Iossel. Now, however, the program has gained a much wider context, as it has grown in reputation and size - with a faculty of 25 teachers and 70 participating students.
 &quot;We believe that a writer can benefit from contact with foreign culture. Removal from a routine context tends to provide a creative jolt, by offering a whole new perspective on the author himself and his surroundings,&quot; says Iossel. &quot;We also try to correct the distorted picture of American literature that exists in Russia by bringing the finest American writers and vice versa, as well as bringing new aspects of contemporary literature to attention.&quot;
 Outside Russia, there is little awareness of the contemporary Russian literary scene, as Russian literature is mainly known abroad for its 19th and early 20th-century authors, such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoi and Nabokov. &quot;The only contemporary Russian writers known in the U.S. are Viktor Pelevin and Natalya Tolstaya, who writes provocative literature reviews for magazines such as The New Yorker,&quot; says Iossel.
 To solve this, the SLS bring together writers and critics from Moscow and St. Petersburg to talk about contemporary Russian literature and art. Among the faculty members returning from last year are Andei Zorin, one of the foremost scholars of contemporary Russian and world literature, and Arkady Dragomoshchenko, a St. Petersburg poet who has received numerous Russian and international literary awards.
 On the U.S. side, the authors conducting the seminars include Jerome Rothenberg, arguably the most European contemporary of U.S. writers, who is known for his two-volume anthology of 20th-century poetry; Dave Eggers, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of &quot;A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius;&quot; Ed Pavlic, who &quot;writes jazz;&quot; and Aimee Bender, a leading experimental writer. The seminars will be held at open readings in the Stray Dog Art Basement every Tuesday and Thursday at 7 p.m.
 Members of the SLS faculty have also been invited to conduct seminars, while the participants - mainly students majoring in creative writing - submit applications with a literary piece, the main criteria for selection. &quot;A lot of the writers who teach at the SLS would not agree to take part in a similar seminar in the U.S., simply because they are not interested,&quot; says Iossel.
 One of the main reasons cited for taking part in the SLS is an affection for classical Russian literature. &quot;Although we were brought up on the finest examples of Russian classical literature, some of us bring such books as Dostoevsky's &quot;White Nights,&quot; or Gogol's &quot;Nevsky Prospect&quot; to re-read them in the original, magical atmosphere of Petersburg,&quot; says Jeff Parker, the program's assistant director, and an author of short stories and novels.
 Croatian-born writer Joseph Novakovich puts it this way: &quot;Going out into the unknown is always exciting. Eastern Europe, and Russia specifically, has always been a place that evoked doubts, fear and interest.&quot;
 Participants in the SLS are also willing to learn about the state of Russian literature and art at present. &quot;The students plan on spending a lot of time hanging around alternative galleries, such as the Free Arts Foundation at Pushkinskaya 10, and the Borei Art Gallery&quot;, says Iossel. Anna Matveyeva, a leading young Russian art critic and a member of the faculty, will accompany participants on June 29 to the annual art festival at Pushkinskaya 10.
 &quot;Russian literature today is nearing [Western litarature] in certain way. If we are talking about electronic, Internet literature, one may find that the Internet is becoming more accessible, and the chain of Internet cafes is constantly growing&quot;, notes Parker, who is also a Web designer that teaches interactive media.
 Nevertheless, there is a certain local spirit to St. Petersburg's culture that could be a source for inspiration for many foreign writers. For example, Parker makes the following observation, which might one day make it into one of his stories: &quot;My friend is drinking beer sitting on the steps of the Kazan Cathedral. Once he is finished, he puts it down nearby and starts his stopwatch. He waits until a babushka approaches him to ask for the empty bottle. Seven seconds, that is the record so far, he says.&quot;
 

 <i>
Links: www.sumlitsem.org </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: This weekend brings several big events, starting with the <strong>Viktor Tsoy Birthday Concert.</strong> Celebrating what would have been the late Kino singer's 40th birthday - had he not died in 1990 - it will feature some top rock bands from St. Petersburg and Moscow. Tsoy's songs display surprising longevity - they can often be heard played by street performers in the city's underpasses. The event will take place at SKK on Friday. Tickets cost from 250 to 350 rubles ($8.06 to $11.29)
 
On the same night, the three-day <strong>Fresh Wind</strong> open-air festival kicks off on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, near Pribaltiiskaya Hotel. Now in its third year, it is promoted as a festival of &quot;extreme music and sports,&quot; although it is mostly oriented toward rather safe electronic acts and DJs.
 Somewhat surprisingly, then, this year's headliners include former Leningrad-singer-turned-electronic-composer/musician Igor Vdovin and reformed surf band The Bombers. See Gigs for the full music schedule, and check www.extremefestival.ru for sport shows. 
 The city's open-air raves also start this weekend, with <strong>Vperyod Na Zapad</strong> (On to the West), whose date, June 22, coincides - purely by chance, the promoters insist - with the day that Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941. 
 The free, open-air all-nighter near <strong>Mednoye Ozero</strong> (Copper Lake) is being held this year for the fourth time at a picturesque, forest spot on the slope of a sand pit near the lake. But, despite the fact that the whole event is free, gaining entry could still turn out to be tough. &quot;It's a semi-closed, non-commercial event with absolutely no advertising,&quot; says Alexei, one of Mednoye Ozero's promoters, who asked that his last name not be given.
 &quot;It all started out as a party for friends and now attracts about 1,000 visitors who come to drink some vodka and cook up some shashlik. People simply come to the forest to relax,&quot; he adds.
 The music styles are techno, hardcore and Goa trance, played by some of the city's finest DJs, including Slon, Kisloid, User, Lena Popov, Mist, Samadkhi and Orange, and Moscow's Pelengator.
 The power for the show is supplied by portable generators and there will be a bar set up with drinks and snacks. 
 The event starts at 7 p.m. Those attending will be transported by bus from Ozerki metro station.
 Buses will depart every 30 minutes between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m. Local bus 435 will get you there as well.
 <strong>Open Your Windows, </strong>a massive, open-air rock festival will take place on Sunday at noon at the cavernous, 60,000-seat Kirov Stadium on Krestovsky Island, and will feature dozens of bands - both well-known and obscure - performing in an 11-hour marathon.
 The audience at last year's event was estimated at 30,000 fans.
 The festival took its name, Okna Otkroi in Russian, from the song by Rossianye, a seminal local underground rock band from the 1970s and early 1980s.
 Launched last year, it features around 10 better-known local acts, including Tequilajazzz, Auktsyon, Korol I Shut, Chizh &amp; Co., Piknik and Torba-Na-Kruche.
 The music is not the only treat - last year's fans found time to swim, sunbathe, drink beer and eat hot-dogs. Tickets cost 100 rubles. ($3.23)
 
 <i>- by Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: who's a pretty polly then?
AUTHOR: by Shawna Gamache
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Where Fonarny Pereulok meets the Moika River, there is a brightly colored restaurant called Popugai, (Parrot), and it unfolds before one in a strange dichotomy of languid mysteriousness. There is the salmon-colored entrance area, with mismatched sofas and exotic plants, and a royal-blue colored room where a bevy of giraffe- and zebra-print chairs gather around low circular tables. Silver stars and insinuating clouds are painted on the walls and the room is fronted by a bar, which boasts high primary-colored bar stools, made from glass bricks. 
 
Beyond the antechamber is an orange-yellow room with low couches and throws, more animal-print chairs and interesting pieces of African and Indonesian art, plus a small stage with a sound system. Further back are benches, the bathroom, and even a cavernous area cozily housing a ping pong table. 
 My companion and I went for the antechamber, which is also brighter and housed a giant string of chubby, brightly-colored Chinese lanterns that lent the room a bit of exotic charm.
 My companion quickly decided upon a large Leffe beer (105 rubles, $3.40) on tap, and I went for a bottle of Corona Extra (80 rubles, $2.58). The drinks came quickly, and ice-cold. The Leffe, an incredibly high-malt amber, was served in a large goblet, and the Corona, dripping with condensation and, as God intended, with a generous lime sliver placed at the mouth. We enjoyed our drinks, looked lazily at each other, and soaked up the atmosphere.
 The musical atmosphere was not as I had anticipated - this reggae bar splices its Jamaica stylings with lots of low, mellow drum n' bass, ambient and trip-hop. The music was incredibly enjoyable, and allowed hours to stretch languidly, uneventfully on. We did decide to eat eventually, however, splitting two appetizers. The appetizers were good, though the Bruschetta (65 rubles, $2.10) wasn't exactly of the traditional variety, but instead offered four chunky pieces of toast - two topped with eggplant and feta, and two topped with tomato and onion - garnished with a small pile of juicy, seedless olives. The guacamole and chips (150 rubles, $4.83) were worth ordering again and again, as the guacamole, while made of mostly tomato, was well-spiced and sumptuous. We polished off the starters slowly, and ordered more beer as we contemplated the mains.
 Popugai has a humble menu that charmingly calls its entrees &quot;hot appetizers,&quot; &quot;salads,&quot; and &quot;sandwiches.&quot; Choosing from all the dishes on offer is not easy, as they all conjure up a recollection of home, or some tropical getaway. My companion finally chose the jumbalaya, and I opted for the Szechuan salad. 
 The Szechuan Salad (130 rubles, $4.19) made for a satisfying meal, consisting of corn, peas, red peppers, lettuce, rice, and carrot gratings and heavily seasoned with salt and pepper. I don't know that I would necessarily order it again, but it fit the bill, and the lettuce and parsley provided some much-needed nourishment. My companion was a little overwhelmed by the giant Jumbalaya (180 rubles, $5.80), which boasted most of the traditional fixings - rice, sausage, red peppers, onion, prawns, and shredded carrot - but none of the spice. 
 Relatively satisfied with dinner - and having finished our beers - we decided to linger still more, over desserts and coffee. I went for the rich cappuccino (40 rubles, $1.29), and the dry, but decent, brownies (35 rubles, $1.13), and my companion for the delicious, if strange, pear milkshake (35 rubles, $1.13) and the Tvorog Tort (60 rubles, $1.88) which featured giant, cracker-like wafers layered with light chocolate and <i>tvorog </i>- Russian cottage cheese - and topped with whipped cream and kiwi fruit. Sitting at the child-sized table, lovingly embraced by a giraffe, I decided that Popugai is the place to spend lazy summer evenings, enjoying slow, languid looks over shared snacks and glistening, ice-cold ale.
 

 <i>
Popugai. 1 Fonarny Pereulok. Tel.: 311-5971. Open daily, 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Credit cards not accepted. Menu in Russian. Dinner for two with alcohol: 1,000 rubles ($32.26). </i>

TITLE: celebrating a great teacher
AUTHOR: by Igor Stupnikov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Students and teachers from choreographic schools and institutions have once again gathered in St. Petersburg to pay homage to the priceless contribution that Agrippina Vaganova, one of history's leading ballet teachers, made to the development of world ballet.
 
The Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet opened its doors on Tuesday to the participants in the Vaganov-Prix International Ballet Competitition, a competition for young ballet dancers that, despite being held for only the fifth time, has already won fame and popularity around the world.
 The first competition took place on May 4, 1988, and, since then, many participants - such as Ulyana Lopatkina, Maiya Dumchenko, Svetlana Zakharova, Andrian Fadeyev and Igor Kolb - have gone on to become full- fledged stars in their own right. There is no doubt that, of this year's contestants, a lucky few will go on to grace the world's finest ballet stages, as heirs to the wonderful traditions of the Russian ballet school, whose &quot;flight performed by the soul&quot; Pushkin described in &quot;Yevgeny Onegin.&quot;
 The fifth running of the competition aims not only to show these young performers' mastery, but also practically to demonstrate Vaganova's system as a system of Russian classical dance that continues to develop at various choreography schools throughout the world.
 The 82 contestants taking part in the competition come from a host of Russian cities, including Moscow, Perm, Saratov, Voronezh and Donetsk. Dancers have also come from abroad, with entries from South Korea, Japan, Italy, Brazil, Hungary, Poland and Uzbekistan.
 The jury for the event is headed by Natalya Makarova who has worked at the American Ballet Theater, the Royal Ballet in Great Britain and the Swedish Royal Ballet. Makarova's deputy is Altynai Asylmuratova, the artistic director of the Academy of Russian Ballet and a prima ballerina at the Mariinsky Theater.
 The jury also includes some of today's leading dancers and dance teachers: Marina Semyonova and Natalya Dudinskaya, who both studied with Vaganova, before continuing her work and putting her approach into practise; Makhar Baziyev and Nikolai Boyarchikov, who head the Mariinsky and Mussorgsky Theater ballet companies, respectively; and Zhanna Ayopova, one of the stars of the Mariinsky's ballet company.
 The list of the competition's patrons is also impressive: Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydky, CIS Interparliamentary Assembly General Secretary Mikhail Krotov, St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, State Hermitage Museum Director Mikhail Piotrovsky and Mussorgsky Theater Artistic Director Stanislav Gaudasinsky.
 The official opening of the festival, at which the order of competitors was also decided, took place on Wednesday, with the first round on the stage of the academy's training theater. The second and third rounds will take place in the sumptuous surroundings of the Hermitage Theater on June 22 and June 24, and a gala concert for the winners and participants in the competition will take place in the Mikhailovsky Theater on June 26 - the anniversary of Vaganova's birth.

TITLE: inside the mind of mussorgsky
AUTHOR: by Larisa Doctorow
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Mariinsky Theater's &quot;Stars of the White Nights&quot; festival shows off one of its recent successful premieres this week.
 
For its new production of Modest Mussorgsky's opera &quot;Boris Godunov,&quot; the Mariinsky rejected the traditional 1874 version, which has been a part of its repertoire up until now, in favor of the composer's original version, from 1869.
 The original score differs significantly from the later, expanded version, and makes for a more compact, focused drama that focuses on the personal tragedy of Boris himself. The Marinsky's new production reflects this, marking a daring change in the theater's approach to staging already established works. 
 The mastermind behind this new staging is Viktor Kramer, the director of St. Petersburg's Farces Theater, which he founded with some colleagues after graduating from the Leningrad Theater Academy - where he was taught by, among others, Georgy Tovstonogov, the manager of the Gorky Drama Theater. 
 Kramer first ventured into opera about a year ago, when he was invited by the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory to stage Berlioz' mammoth masterpiece &quot;Les Troyens.&quot; After that, the Mariinsky Theater invited him to stage &quot;Tsar Demyan,&quot; a collaborative work by five St. Petersburg composers that premiered during the White Nights festival in 2001.
 Kramer's plans get even larger-scale next year, when he will be responsible for staging various events around the city for the city's tercentenary celebrations.
 When asked by Mariinsky Theater Artistic Director Valery Gergiev to stage &quot;Boris Godunov,&quot; Kramer said, &quot;I hesitated. Such a serious, tragic piece is very complicated to put on. It demands a lot from a stage director. But here we are: Gergiev, Georgy Tsypin as scenographer and Gleb Filshtinsky as lighting engineer. Who could refuse [an offer] to work with such professionals?&quot;
 
q: Weren't you attracted to this project precisely because it meant working with the composer's most authentic version, without the Polish act?
 a:Yes,. I like that version more. It concentrates on [Godunov's] personal story, without any distractions. 
 q:So you have brought the personal drama, and not the country's drama, to the fore?
 a: For me, &quot;Boris Godunov&quot; is not a story of the conflict between the tsar and his people, not a history of Grigory Otriepyev [the False Dimitry], nor the history of Godunov's rule. Rather, it is one of man's inner conflict.
 
I believe that Mussorgsky wanted it to be this way. Godunov was destroyed, not by an external conflict, but by an internal one. Otriepyev could not be an equal rival to such an experienced politician as Godunov. 
 
q:What is the concept behind the stage design?
 a:Gergiev said that he wanted to bring our staging culture into the next century. He feels that combining our singing and performing culture with modern stage culture, which the West adopted long ago, can be successful.
 q:So that is why he invited you and Georgy Tsypin, whose scenography is bright and avant-garde?
 a:The theme of [Godunov's] conscience is central to our staging. We moved away from traditional visual images of old Russia.
 q:After this production, are you going to move away from the theater and into opera?
 a:Probably. I have several offers to stage operas. You know, opera intoxicates you: You don't necessarily like it, but when you start working at it, you can't stop. I never imagined that it could be so involving.
 
I never thought of myself as an opera fan. I like music, but old-fashioned productions disappoint me: They make me feel as though I am in a museum, among dusty art. That was before I started staging operas myself. Now I see that it can be challenging.
 
q:So you don't believe that opera is dying, as some predict?
 a:On the contrary. I see that interest in opera is growing everywhere in the world, including Russia. The problem is its form, and Gergiev understands this. He wants to produce modern stagings.
 
[With &quot;Boris Godunov,&quot;] I created a production that is not about Russia as a country, where Russians live, but is about important, universal dilemmas. This is not a folklore show, with traditional costumes - you can see them in museums. We did not try to reconstruct [Godunov's] face - you can see that at wax museums and elsewhere.
 We have tried to understand the story emotionally, spiritually and visually, and to present opera-goers with an artistic summary of our thinking. I was not trying to show a tourist version of a Russia that never existed, a Russia with <i>kokoshniki</i> [peasant women's head-dresses], <i>sarafani</i> [peasant style dress] and so on.
 
q:You place the chorus along the stage in such a way that some are in bright spotlights, while others are hardly visible.
 a:Working with the chorus always poses a problem. I think we have succeeded here. I tried to avoid personalizing each chorus member, especially in the mundane, everyday scenes. We tried to present the chorus as a mass: As soon as the number of people concentrated in one place exceeds a certain level, they become a mass. In that sense, they are easy to control, to govern: One moment you make them shout, &quot;Long live the Tsar!&quot; and, the next, &quot;Hang him!&quot; This is frightening - it is Russia's problem. It is the hydra that is beautiful in some of its actions and frightening in others.
 q:Would you say that your staging is about people versus power, or about power versus individuality?
 a:It happens in real life. If we were to take any one person from the chorus and tell their story, they would come out as one person against the whole world. But it is not possible to stage a production like that, and present every person individually. If you look at a painting, you see that there are bright spots and darker, foggier spots: The more important things are placed in the light, and the rest remains in the background.
 q:how important for you is the actual score of the opera?
 a:It is the most important thing - everything starts with music. To transform musical movement into something physical is fascinating. In opera, the rhythms are fixed and you start from that, as opposed to drama theater, where nothing is fixed and you start from nothing. I never imagined that I would be as enchanted by opera as I am now. Opera has an enormous impact. In drama, I am interested in working on the miniscule, intimate details. With opera, I get satisfaction from the large-scale expressiveness. The exact coincidence of movement, music and acting is unique: No other artform is capable of creating such a shock. Opera hits you with a full force.
 
When I think about a work like [&quot;Boris Godunov,&quot;] it gives me goose bumps. When the crowd cries, &quot;Bread! Bread!&quot; it creates a wave of emotion that drowns you. When the audience leaves after [Godunov's] death at the end of the opera, they are unable to speak. They are choked with emotion. What other art form is capable of creating such repercussions?
 

 <i>
&quot;Boris Godunov&quot; is at the Mariinsky on Monday, and Vyborg Castle on Thursday. </i>

TITLE: the rewards of cooperation
AUTHOR: by Anastasia Boreiko and Anastasia Izmailova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The State Hermitage Museum on Thursday marked the beginning of a new epoch, with the opening to the public of one of Kazimir Malevich's four celebrated paintings called &quot;Black Square.&quot;
 
Malevich painted the four pictures in 1913. The Hermitage &quot;Black Square&quot; will, according to Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky, hang opposite Vasily Kandinsky's &quot;Composition No. 6.&quot;
 With the &quot;Black Square,&quot; Malevich single-handedly established a new, avant-garde style of painting - which became known as suprematism - that returned to a simple, non-aesthetic style.
 According to a press release, the purchase of the &quot;Black Square&quot; will effectively advance the establishment of a new collection of 20th-century art at the Hermitage.
 The painting almost ended up going abroad, but, at an auction earlier this year, the Culture Ministry decided that it was too valuable, and stepped in to purchase it for the Hermitage. Thanks to a $1-million donation from art philanthropist Vladimir Potanin, the painting will remain in Russia.
 Potanin explained that his donation came &quot;from the soul,&quot; because now is the time to bring back works of art to the Hermitage in order to continue the development of the museum. 
 The Hermitage plans to gather other landmarks of modern art, in addition to the &quot;Black Square.&quot; Although the purchase of more paintings is currently financially &quot;incomprehensible&quot; for the Hermitage, as Piotrovsky explained, other 20th-century classics will be housed on loan from museums around the world.
 Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi explained that the Hermitage needs to &quot;begin putting together a modern collection.&quot; With this in mind, the opening to the public of the &quot;Black Square&quot; marks a monumental milestone in establishing such an exhibition.
 Over the course of the Hermitage's history, many masterpieces have been sold off - especially under the Soviet regime - but, with the donation of it's newest jewel, the museum hopes to be starting a new trend.
 The &quot;Black Square&quot; exhibition provides another example of the Hermitage's current dynamism. This was further shown this week by the opening of the exhibition &quot;The Madonna and the Knights.&quot;
 The exhibition is the first fruit of a three-way co-operative agreement, signed in January, 2001, by Piotrovsky, Thomas Krens, the director of New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Wilfried Zeipel, the director of Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum. The agreement, entitled &quot;On developing long-term cooperation programs,&quot; provides for the long-term planning of joint events and exhibit exchanges by the museums.
 According to Piotrovsky, the implementation of the agreement and the &quot;Connecting Museums&quot; exhibitions signal another step forward, for both the museum and global education.
 &quot;The Madonna and the Knights&quot; features three paintings: Anthony van Dyck's &quot;The Madonna and the Partridges&quot; (1630) from the Hermitage collection; Oskar Kokoschka's &quot;The Wandering Knight&quot; (1915), from the Guggenheim Museum in New York; and van Dyck's &quot;The Vision of the Blessed Hermann Joseph&quot; (1630) from the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
 Both van Dyck paintings were intended for Antwerp's &quot;Commonwealth of Bachelors,&quot; an organization, patronized by the Jesuits, of unmarried men, dedicated to charitable works. Both pictures are closely linked to the cult of the Virgin Mary, to whom the commonwealth was dedicated. Whereas &quot;The Madonna and the Partridges&quot; depicts Mary with her small son, &quot;The Vision of the Blessed Herman Joseph&quot; shifts the focus, with a young monk demonstrating his devotion to Mary on bended knee.
 &quot;The Madonna and the Partridges&quot; is perhaps more closely linked to the cult of Mary as a virgin. It depicts Mary with her small son, and is distinguished by its restraint and grace, and the softness of its lines. The solemnity of the canvas is matched by its colorings, the tone being set by the Madonna's traditional blue dress, the strongest color element in the composition. In Christian art, blue is a symbol of the heavens and of spiritual love, faith and truth and, in her turn, Mary has been worshipped as the embodiment of such qualities for centuries.
 Kokoschka's &quot;The Wandering Knight,&quot; in contrast, omits Mary entirely, depicting a lost, lonely man, bound in armor and prostrate on the ground. The gloomy, cold palette of this work develops a disturbing atmosphere. It is the color - saturated and expressive - that dominates this picture, providing the key to its essence and absorbing the viewer.
 A major historical artistic theme has been the striving of the human soul toward a higher spiritual plane, and toward its very being. This theme is embodied in &quot;The Madonna and the Knights&quot; in works by two very different artists, each of whom displayed total mastery of the artistic language of his day.

TITLE: a return to top form
AUTHOR: by Tobin Auber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Officially, Sergei Rogozhkin's &quot;The Cuckoo&quot; does not premiere until next Wednesday at the Moscow Film Festival. However, The St. Petersburg Times has managed to lay its &quot;long hands&quot; - as Russians would say - on an advance copy.
 
&quot;The Cuckoo&quot; is tipped as one of the main contenders for top awards at the festival. However, it is hotly awaited for other reasons: Rogozhkin who made &quot;Peculiarites of the National Hunt,&quot; one of a select number of recent Russian films that have been hits with the local public and genuine financial successes.
 The &quot;Peculiarities&quot; brand has already spawned two popular sequels, both featuring blatant product placement. These marketing tie-ins, still a rarity in Russian film, are evidence of the films' ability to pull in the crowds. The characters, now household names, are busily hawking vodka, cigarettes and <i>pelmeni, </i>in between knockabout visual gags and one-liners about &quot;hot-headed Finns&quot; that have carved out an instantly recognizable niche in today's language.
 Now, according to the film's producers, the director has returned to the kind of work that can win prizes at international film festivals, and there isn't a bag of pelmeni or a bottle of vodka in sight. Rogozhkin has proved he can pack cinemas - and sell video cassettes by the cubic meter - but is he still a &quot;serious&quot; film-maker?
 Cuckoo&quot; is set in World War II, on the notoriously vicious Finnish-Russian front. Veiko (Ville Haapasalo), a Finnish sniper, is chained to a rock, dressed in a Nazi uniform, by a group of German soldiers. He is left with a rifle and a telescopic sight, the theory being that he will kill any Russian soldier he sees, in a desperate attempt to escape being mistaken for a Nazi. Red Army soldiers dubbed these Finnish sharpshooters &quot;cuckoos.&quot;
 Meanwhile, a Russian officer, Kartuzov (Viktor Bychkov), is arrested by an NKVD political officer for having been in &quot;anti-Soviet correspondence&quot; with a friend - echoing the fate of the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Both manage to escape, and seek refuge with Anni (Anni-Kristiina Juuso), a Lapp peasant living an isolated, lonely existence in the northern wilds, her husband having been pressed into the Finnish army.
 Despite having no common language - and despite the obvious mistrust between a Red Army officer and a Finn dressed in a Nazi uniform - the three of them must live and work together. The soldiers can't return to their own sides, which have disowned them, but they remain, at least nominally, enemies. The rest of the film is an intimate three-way drama, as the characters struggle to understand each other against the eerily beautiful backdrop of the White Sea.
 The film treads a fine line, particularly in view of the enormous shadow cast over it by the &quot;Peculiarities&quot; series, and by the casting. In the &quot;Peculiarities&quot; series, Bychkov played the gaunt, inebriated Kuzmich, while Haapasalo played a bewildered, intermittently inebriated, Finnish student, and this leads to the fear that &quot;The Cuckoo&quot; may suddenly lurch into slapstick, or stock-in-trade jokes.
 However, Rogozhkin steers clear of that trap, and both actors acquit themselves well - Bychkov has put on weight to distinguish his character from Kuzmich, and Haapsalo demonstrates an acting range that few could have guessed from his previous role. As good as their performances are, though, they are almost eclipsed by Anni-Kristiina Juuso's debut as a Lapp with a common-sense, earthy sexuality - as she observes, you wait for a man for four years and suddenly two come along at once.
 Refreshingly, Rogozhkin focuses on the characters' shared humanity, avoiding the often wearying, introspective tendency among Russian directors to dwell on the question of &quot;What does it mean to be Russian?&quot; It is also a testimony to the film's strength that it examines this without grossly simplifying the subject or coating it in sugary sentimentality.
 Rogozhkin is back on top form, and &quot;The Cuckoo&quot; should be in with more than a fighting chance for top honors in Moscow.

TITLE: brothers doin' it for themselves
AUTHOR: by Kirill Galetski
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The twelfth annual &quot;Message to Man&quot; film festival, St. Petersburg's premier animation, documentary and short-film festival, wraps up on Saturday, and the judges for the festival's two competitions are deliberating over who should receive the accolades, including the top prize of the Golden Centaur Statuette and $5,000.
 
According to festival tradition, previous winners are invited again as members of the jury, and the guests at this year's festival include the Guard brothers, a pair of British film makers who won the Golden Centaur in 2000 for their brief, but brilliant, 1999 film, &quot;Inside Out.&quot; Charles, 26, is on the International Debut Competition jury, while Tom, 29, is attending informally. 
 &quot;We're really happy to be at the festival,&quot; stated Charles at the festival's opening ceremony. &quot;Winning the festival prize helped us to make our next film.&quot;
 The brothers were born and raised in London, and attended Cambridge University, where Tom's studied English and Charles studied History of Art. The film profession was part of their life from an early age, as their father, Howard Guard, directed television commercials.
 Tom and Charles drifted into various production jobs, mainly associated with cinematography, working as assistant camera operators on such big-budget films as &quot;1492: Conquest of Paradise,&quot; &quot;Judge Dredd,&quot; and &quot;The Avengers.&quot; They also followed their father into advertising, and now work as television-commercial directors for Rogue Films. The brothers are also developing a full-length feature project with British writer William Boyd, the author of &quot;Good Man in Africa&quot; and &quot;An Ice Cream War.&quot;
 The brothers made their professional debut with 1998's &quot;Shuttle,&quot; a dialogue-heavy film that featured a couple experiencing a rift in their relationship at a train station. It was an ambitious project for their first short film, with all the trappings of a large professional shoot.
 All three of their short films to date focus on the theme of urban chance encounters, and star up-and-coming British actor Lena Headey, with whom Tom became acquainted while working on a production job.
 In contrast, however, the brothers wanted &quot;Inside Out&quot; &quot;to be a conscious rejection of everything that had been explored with 'Shuttle,'&quot; according to Tom. &quot;We wanted to return to a simpler way of making films, somewhat like when we were younger. We wanted no dialogue, no lights - we used natural lighting for the film - and no large crews.&quot;
 &quot;Inside Out&quot; is the story of a market researcher, played by noted English actor Simon McBurney, standing on a busy London street unable to get anyone to stop and fill out his survey. The researcher becomes so exasperated that he decides to play jokes on some of the passersby, and a comely young woman, played by Headey, dressing a nearby shop window, becomes his audience.
 The film captures exquisitely what could be a real-life human episode in practically any city. It uses well-chosen visuals, a bright, expressionistic score and absolutely no dialogue. McBurney's animated, dynamic performance gives the film its verve, while Headey's equally spirited turn gives it heart.
 The Guards both work as camera operators, and their conscious adoption of a more minimal approach has paid off. &quot;Inside Out&quot; has a streamlined and stylish and worldly outlook that put it in a different league from many short films. It won top short-film prizes at the Montreal Film Festival, the BBC Short Film Festival, and the Kodak awards before it played at &quot;Message to Man.&quot;
 The brothers invested their &quot;Message to Man&quot; prize money in their next film, &quot;Round About Five,&quot; which starred Martin Freeman, Jodhi May and Headey, and explored similar themes (and also showed at &quot;Message to Man&quot; last year).
 &quot;With all three of the films, we wanted to explore the chance encounter,&quot; said Charles. &quot;We follow it from beginning to end, and see how far it could go. It was important for us to show what went on before and after the encounter, to illuminate how far the characters could take it.&quot;
 Other film-making duos - such as Joel and Ethan Coen, and Jeunet and Caro - divide their duties, with one partner usually concentrating on the visual side and the other working with actors. The Guards, however, said Charles, &quot;really do everything together, including working with the actors. I think its important to [consistently work in tandem] so as not to confuse the actors.&quot;
 &quot;When I run out of juice, Charles takes over,&quot; quipped Tom, &quot;But, having said that, we really work together the whole time.&quot;

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Murder in the Hague
 

PARIS (NYT) - A Chinese judge from the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague who ostensibly died of natural causes several years ago is now believed to have been killed by a hospital nurse, Dutch prosecutors said on Thursday.
 The nurse, Lucy de Berk, 40, has been under investigation in the deaths of 13 people in her care, public prosecutors said. According to her indictment, she deliberately injected patients with lethal doses of medicine and other substances at three different hospitals in The Hague.
 The impending trial of the nurse has attracted much attention in the Netherlands. Proceedings were to have begun on Monday, but the trial has been postponed to allow further investigation. The nurse is said to have killed her victims by administering morphine, potassium or other substances. The police suspect her of having mistreated a total of 19 patients, 13 of whom died between 1997 and 2001.
 
 
Bomb Kills Briton 
 

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - A car bomb explosion killed a British banker in the Saudi capital on Thursday.
 Quoting the chief of Riyadh police, the official Saudi Press Agency said the victim's SUV exploded.
 In London, the Foreign Office said the explosion happened in the street outside a residential compound. Most Westerners in Saudi Arabia live in heavily guarded high-walled compounds.
 A Foreign Office spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified the dead man as Simon Veness, a banker. He worked for Al Bank Al Saudi Al Fransi, the police chief told SPA. 
 There were no other casualties in the 8:54 a.m. explosion, the police chief was quoted as saying.
 
 
Bush Aids HIV Babies
 

WASHINGTON (NYT) - With the U.S. Congress urging him to increase spending to fight global AIDS, U.S. President George W. Bush announced on Wednesday a $500 million plan to prevent expectant mothers from passing the AIDS virus to their babies.
 More than 2,000 infants are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus every day during pregnancy, birth or breast feeding, despite the widespread availability of cheap antiretroviral medicines that greatly reduce transmission of the virus from mother to child.
 The White House said the new money will provide treatment to a million women a year over the next five years. The goal is to reduce the number of infected babies by 40 percent in a dozen African nations and the Caribbean. 
 
 
Blair Mostly on Board
 

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Thursday that it would be good for Britain to join a successful euro currency but insisted that his government's five economic tests - promised by Blair to be completed by June 2003 - were a precondition for joining.
 ``The reasons why we are, in principle, in favor of joining the euro are because if the euro is successful and (it is) in our
 economic interests to join then it is going to be good for British jobs, British industry and British investment,'' Blair told a news conference.
 "I want the euro to be successful. It is in the interests of this country for the euro to be successful in or out of the euro .... . For the euro to fail would be a disaster for Britain,'' Blair added. 



TITLE: World Cup Set for New Look Quarterfinals
AUTHOR: By Sam Thorne
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: SHIZUOKA, Japan - The eyes of the soccer world will turn to the elegant Ecopa Stadium in Shizuoka on Friday, as England and Brazil line up for a World Cup quarterfinal match that has all the makings of a classic.
 
The two teams will walk out onto the pitch not only with the weight of famous past encounters on their shoulders, but also knowing that, in light of upsets in other parts of the draw, the winner of this game will have a great chance of carrying off the World Cup trophy come June 30.
 Much of the attention before the match has been focused on Michael Owen's groin, which he tweaked in England's 3-0 victory over Denmark last Saturday.
 For most of the week, Owen looked doubtful to play but by Thursday he was fit enough to take part in a training session at the stadium along with England's other injury worry, Paul Scholes, who turned an ankle against the Danes.
 &quot;He [Owen] is fully fit and it will not be a gamble to play him,&quot; England coach Sven Goran Eriksson said Thursday. &quot;It is a big boost to us that he is fit.&quot;
 Losing Owen would be a massive blow for England, because the team will be relying on his speed to put pressure on a Brazilian defense that looked unconvincing against Belgium on Monday.
 Several England players watched that game from the stands and will have come away encouraged by a disjointed performance from the Brazilians, who needed the help of the referee in disallowing a legitimate goal by Belgium and a deflection for Rivaldo's goal to win the game.
 England will want to take a page out of Belgium's book by closing down the Brazilian midfield and cutting off the supply lines to Rivaldo and the resurgent Ronaldo, a job that Scholes and Nicky Butt will be confident of carrying off against the lightweight pairing of Juninho and Gilberto Silva.
 What the English will not want to do is to give the ball away as much as they did against Denmark. Disguised by the one-sided scoreline was the fact that England had just 37 percent of possession against the Danes and, if the team is as generous toward Brazil, it will find it tough going, particularly if the weather forecasters are correct in predicting a warm and humid afternoon.
 Such conditions are likely to suit Brazil, although England has had the advantage of two extra days to recuperate from its last match.
 Following South Korea's amazing win over the Italians on Tuesday, the three other quarterfinal matches are dominated by unfamiliar faces.
 The Koreans, Turkey and Senegal are all first-time quarterfinalists, while the United States is making its second appearance at this stage of the tournament after reaching the semifinal of the inaugural World Cup in 1930.
 Having defied the odds in reaching the last eight, the Americans have been in bullish mood ahead of their match against an uninspiring German side at Ulsan, South Korea, on Friday.
 In Michael Ballack, however, Germany will have the only world-class outfield player on the pitch, and if he is in form, the Germans should make it through to the semifinal.
 Saturday's games see Spain take on co-host South Korea in Gwangju, South Korea, and Senegal play Turkey in Osaka, Japan.
 The Koreans have already knocked Portugal and Italy out of the World Cup and, with the backing of their fanatical home support, they are capable of making it a memorable Mediterranean treble against the Spanish.
 In its match against Ireland on Sunday, Spain looked slow on defense and flimsy in the midfield, and, to add to the team's problems, top striker Raul looks doubtful for the quarterfinal after sustaining a groin injury in the same game.
 Senegal, meanwhile, has provided one of the feel-good stories of the World Cup, and the team demonstrated in its performance against Sweden that it has the mental strength as well as the natural ability to last even longer in the tournament.
 Turkey also showed character in knocking co-host Japan out of the World Cup in front of a partisan crowd Tuesday, but the team lacks the effervescent skills of players like Pape Bouba Diop and Henri Camara, which have lit up the World Cup since Senegal's opening-day victory over France.

TITLE: WORLD CUP WATCH
TEXT: Persona Non Grata
 

ROME (Reuters) - Italian soccer club Perugia has cut its ties with South Korea's Ahn Jung-hwan, after he scored the goal that knocked Italy out of the World Cup, Perugia's chairperson has been quoted as saying.
 "That gentleman will never set foot in Perugia again," Luciano Gaucci told sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport on Wednesday.
 Italy has reacted with fury to Tuesday's shock 2-1 defeat by South Korea, accusing the referee and soccer's ruling body FIFA of fixing the match.
 Ahn, who missed a penalty earlier in the match, was hailed as a national hero when he headed home the golden goal winner in the 116th minute.
 But his goal was viewed in a different light at Perugia in central Italy, where he has been viewed as an under-achiever during his stay at the club.
 "He was a phenomenon only when he played against Italy. I am a nationalist and I regard such behaviour not only as an affront to Italian pride but also an offence to a country which two years ago opened its doors to him," Gaucci was quoted as saying.
 "I have no intention of paying a salary to someone who has ruined Italian soccer."
 
Only Human
 

KISARAZU, Japan (Reuters) - FIFA hit back on Thursday at critics of the standard of refereeing in this year's World Cup, saying the men in the middle had done a very good job.
 Italy and Portugal have complained particularly loudly about hair-line decisions that they felt contributed to their early exit from the competition.
 "We'll have to wait until the final to evaluate the whole tournament, but until now the referees in general have done a very good job," said Edgardo Codesal Mendez, a member of FIFA's referees' committee.
 Italy, which was knocked out by co-hosts South Korea 2-1 after a golden goal in extra time, said they had been victims of several poor decisions in the match including the sending-off of striker Francesco Totti and the disallowing of a goal for offside.
 "They are human beings, they are not machines," Codesal Mendez said. 
 
 
No Respect
 

OSAKA, Japan (AP) - Senegal coach Bruno Metsu said Thursday that negative Turkish comments awoke his players from a deep slumber as they prepared to become Africa's first-ever World Cup semifinalist. Meanwhile, South Korean coach Guus Hiddink said that if South Korea's all-out attack is too much for Spain in Saturday's World Cup quarterfinal, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
 "They denigrated us," Metsu said at Senegal's headquarters. "They were already talking about meeting Brazil or England. We must prove them wrong."
 Metsu said the Turkish media already thought their team was in the semifinal. "Everybody saw us as a little country. We couldn't even get sparring partners ahead of the World Cup. We proved all predictions wrong," he said.
 
 
Victory Insurance
 

SEOUL, (Reuters) - South Korean soccer players and coach Guus Hiddink are to get free flights on the national airline and have been given free insurance after reaching the World Cup quarterfinals.
 Korean Air said the Dutch coach, who is close to being a national hero, would get free first-class travel for four years and the rest of the players four round-trip business-class tickets.
 "They can fly anywhere at anytime," a Korean Air spokesperson said.
 Kyobo Life Insurance also said it would donate insurance worth 9.1 billion won ($7.4 million) to the national team, which beat the odds by defeating Italy 2-1 on Tuesday to reach the quarterfinals.
 
 
Timely Meeting
 

WASHINGTON (AP) - After U.S. President George W. Bush and Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade discussed fighting terrorism in a White House meeting, they turned their attention to the World Cup.
 The Americans are in the final eight for the first time since the inaugural World Cup in 1930. Senegal is playing in the tournament for the first time.
 "The two presidents said that they look forward to the two teams possibly meeting, which, of course, would be in the finals," White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said.
 Wade has been a strong supporter of the team.
 "He always uses the right word, and, I guarantee you, my players don't laugh, they listen," Senegal coach Bruno Metsu said.
 After becoming just the second African team to reach the World Cup quarterfinals, Wade assured the players they will come back to Senegal as heroes. But he added that it wouldn't hurt to stay another couple games. 



TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Streak Goes On
 

MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) - Luis Castillo of the Florida Marlins equalled Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby's 1922 record for the longest hitting streak by a second baseman during the 2-1 Interleague win over the Cleveland Indians on Wednesday.
 Dominican-born Castillo, who said he had never heard of Hornsby, led off the sixth inning by beating out a dribbler against Cleveland starter Danys Baez to extend his hitting streak to 33 consecutive games.
 Hornsby, who played for St Louis, Heinie Manush of Washington (1933), Hal Chase of the New York Yankees (1907) and George Davis of the New York Giants (1893) are the only other players with a 33-game streak.
 
 
In the Hall
 

TORONTO, Canada (Reuters) - Roger Neilson, who battled cancer to return to the NHL coaching ranks, and three players from the 1980s have been elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, the National Hockey League announced on Wednesday.
 Neilson, who has coached eight NHL teams and also been an assistant coach on four others, has been joined in the 2002 induction class by defenseman Rod Langway, left winger Clark Gillies and center Bernie Federko.
 "It was very exciting and unexpected to receive a call today from [selection committee chairperson] Jim Gregory telling me of this decision," said Neilson. "It is a great honour and I very much appreciate the recognition from the hockey community."
 
 
No Bowling
 

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani cricket authorities have barred pace bowler Shoaib Akhtar from taking part in the "world's fastest bowler" competition in India later this year.
 A spokesperson for Pakistan Cricket Control Board (PCB) did not give an explanation for the decision, but said Shoaib could not participate in such competitions without the board's permission and in no case before the World Cup next year.
 "There is no question of Shoaib Akhtar joining the proposed competition before the World Cup," spokesperson Khalid Butt said.
 PCB's refusal came amid a military standoff between Pakistan and India over the disputed Kashmir region.