SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #797 (62), Friday, August 23, 2002
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TITLE: Moscow Blast Stirs Memory of 1999
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - While law-enforcement officials and scientists reiterated Thursday that a gas leak was the most likely cause behind Tuesday's deadly Moscow apartment-house blast, press coverage of the tragedy betrayed public jitters.
News reports and witness accounts of the explosion that killed eight, injured as many and left at least 20 people homeless reflected residual fear from the terror attacks of 1999, distrust for official pronouncements and widespread suspicion toward outsiders, especially dark-skinned migrants from the southern Caucasus region.
"Moscow Winced Again," proclaimed a front-page headline in the popular Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. "People have grown so accustomed to terrorist acts that they refuse to believe in everyday accidents."
"Our leaders don't want noise about terrorism," Valentin Petrov, whose in-laws lived in the destroyed part of the five-story brick walk-up, told The New York Times. "People have lost their homes, but it makes no difference to them. They need stability before the next elections."
Within hours of the explosion at 32 Ul. Akademika Korolyova late Tuesday, emergency and police officials pointed to a gas leak. But the nature of the damage - a gaping hole the width of an entire entrance - stirred frightening memories of the apartment blasts that killed nearly 300 people in 1999. One of the first explanations for those blasts, although it was quickly discounted, was also a gas leak.
Prosecutors are still working on a chemical analysis of the debris, but a police spokesperson said there was "nothing criminal" about the blast, just "an everyday accident." Preliminary analyses found no trace of explosives.
Yury Voroshilin, a deputy prosecutor for Moscow's northeast district whose office is leading the probe, confirmed Thursday that investigators still believe the epicenter of the blast was in a second-floor apartment. Investigators have established the identities of the apartment's owners and tenants and would have no problem locating them if necessary, he said.
But press reports homed in on the ethnic background of the residents, alluding to allegations, still unproven, that the 1999 blasts had been carried out by Chechen terrorists.
Kommersant cited unnamed neighbors as saying that a family of 12 from the Caucasus had moved into the apartment about six months ago. The newspaper said the new tenants seemed "suspicious." Moreover, the family reportedly moved out days before Tuesday's blast, ominously warning their neighbors that "you'll remember us yet."
Similar snippets of information had appeared in broadcast-news reports hours after the explosion when local residents were cited as saying that some rowdy neighbors from the Caucasus had left in a huff recently, threatening to send them "flying into the sky."
Prosecutors said Wednesday that the apartment was owned by an Armenian family and occupied by their friends or relatives, also Armenian.
Several publications interviewed a woman believed to be the owner of the apartment. Izvestia quoted a woman identified as Yana Selikova as saying she had lived in the apartment for 16 years but had moved out several years ago. Afterward, she said, the apartment had been occupied by her relatives, who had recently left Moscow.
Selikova said she had visited the apartment around 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon. "I specifically checked everything. If the gas had been going, I would have felt it," she said.
Many other neighbors said they had not smelled gas. But specialists asserted that the smell would not have penetrated a tightly shut apartment door and that a gas leak indeed could have led to such grave damage.
Alexander Komarov, an expert on explosions and combustibility at the Moscow State Construction University, said that within two hours, one working burner on a gas stove can fill a standard two-room apartment with about 200 liters of methane. An explosion under such conditions would increase pressure inside the apartment to about one metric ton per every square meter.
"No concrete wall would withstand such pressure and a brick wall would be destroyed immediately," Komarov said.
Most Russian apartments use natural gas for cooking. Explosions caused by leaks from aging pipes and stoves are common. On Thursday, an explosion tore through a two-story dormitory in the Siberian town of Kogalym, killing five children and three adults, news agencies reported. The blast, which caused the building to collapse, was blamed on a natural-gas leak.
Staff Writers Nabi Abdullaev and Valeria Korchagina contributed to this report.
TITLE: Room Enough for a Garden up on the Roof
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Like many other St. Petersburg residents, Natalya Petrova spends a good part of the year longing for the season - some call it "dacha season" - during which she can escape the hustle and bustle of the city's streets and get back to the earth or, more specifically, back to her garden. When the season comes, Petrova gathers up her gardening tools and, as she has every day for nine years, heads for her roof.
Petrova and her friends - other pensioners, who also lack the opportunity to spend their summers at a dacha - have turned the typical, flat roof of their nine-story building into an urban dream garden, where they grow cucumbers, tomatoes, pumpkins, parsley, lettuce, strawberries, gooseberries and a variety of flowers.
"I started working on the garden when I became unemployed," says Olga Kuschenko, another resident. "At that point, I suddenly realized that, beside my children, whom I have raised well, I want to leave something else behind me."
And she, and the other residents have left something to behold. In the middle of August the roof flourishes with fluffy orange marigolds, deep red roses and gentle pink and white petunias.
But the roof isn't just for looks, as just about everyone, and thing, in and around the building can get something out of its production. As we speak, a bumble bee circles hovers around the petals of a marigold, while Petrova picks cucumbers and lettuce for another woman in the building.
Petrova says that one of the best things about the idea is that they are able to share what they produce with many of the 288 families of their building at 9 Pulkovskaya Ul..
"Why not to give flowers to children who are going go to start the new school year on Sept. 1, or for someone's birthday, or for people who go to visit the graves of their relatives at the cemetery?" Petrova asked.
Petrova said that, at the beginning, some of the building's residents were against the idea.
Once, however, they realized that the gardeners' plan included covering the roof with special waterproof material and the special beds they had for the plants, they warmed to the idea - especially when they realized that they could gain as well.
Even residents of the building that don't get up on the roof to work themselves have their own contribution to make to the garden.
Every day, a large number of them gather up whatever food scraps or garbage they have accumulated and bring it to the building's cellar, much to the delight of millions of grateful California worms.
Kuschenko has been breeding the worms underground for three years, feeding them the "food" that the building's residents bring, which the worms turn into ecologically pure fertilizer for the garden.
"Their favorite is banana peels," Petrova says.
"You know, this is the second year that our gardeners gave me marigolds to plant at my mother's grave," said Lidya Pokhomova, a resident of the house. "I'm very grateful for that, and so I give food waste for the worms," she said.
The garden even manages to supplement incomes a bit and pay for gardening equipment, as the women grow and sell not only their vegetables, but also cultivate apple and fir saplings.
"They are for people that want to grow these trees near their houses or at dachas," Petrova said.
According to Kuschenko, the idea for the roof garden came from advice from Sharon Tennison, the president of the Center for Citizen Initiatives, a U.S. NGO that deals with questions of sustainable agricultural development worldwide, who visited St. Petersburg ten years ago and, while answering questions on a local radio interview, said that St. Petersburg's residents should take advantage of their flat roofs.
Soon after, ten women in the building, headed by a woman named Alla Sokol, who worked for a company called "Flowers" that was - you guessed it - in the business of growing and selling flowers, began the project. Sokol still takes part in the rooftop gardening sessions.
Kuschenko says that the roof can take on more functions, so she encourages parents that don't have the opportunity to send their children away for summer vacation to spend time with them on the roof.
"Children can learn how to take care of a garden and have the opportunity to communicate more with their parents," she said.
The city administration has taken note of the project and supports the idea.
"Those women are great," said Vasily Zakharyaschev, head of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Garden Administration. "They share their seeds with other gardeners for free, and this is very useful, especially when St. Petersburg is preparing for its 300th anniversary and we are working on the 'flourishing balconies' program."
The ninth-story location, apart from providing a view, also creates some safety issues and, although the roof is bordered by a low fence, the gardeners say they pay attention to safety rules.
"We don't allow women to walk around here on high heels and children aren't allowed up without adult supervision," Petrova said.
The danger aspect has not only occurred to the gardeners but to others as well, explaining what Petrova calls one of the site's most interesting visitors.
"I think that the pilots of a small AN-2 plane that flew around the area for a while once thought that something was wrong with me," she says with a laugh. "Perhaps they thought that the woman rushing around the roof was getting ready to jump. Anyway, they flew away after I gave them a friendly wave," she said.
TITLE: State Duma Deputy Victim of Ambush
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Vladimir Golovlyov, a liberal State Duma deputy and former regional privatization chief who was the focus of a corruption probe, was gunned down Wednesday morning while walking his dog in northern Moscow.
Golovlyov, 45, was walking his dog at around 8 a.m. in a park near Pyatnitskoye Shosse in the Mitino district when an unknown assailant or assailants opened fire on him. He was shot twice in the head and died instantl, and, minutes later, his body was found by a passerby, a police spokesperson said.
The attack, in which the deputy had most likely been ambushed, had all the markings of a contract hit carried out by a professional killer, said city prosecutor Mikhail Avdyukov, who arrived at the scene an hour later.
"There were two bodyguards with him who said that they did not see anything," Avdyukov told reporters. He did not explain.
Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin said that investigators are looking into two possible motives: one linked to his long career as a lawmaker and the other to his past duties as head of the State Property Fund's office in the Chelyabinsk region in the early 1990s, which gave him power over the privatization of vast federal property in the region.
Elected to the Duma for the third time in 1999, with the Union of Right Forces, Golovlyov left the faction last fall to become an independent deputy and one of the founders of the Liberal Russia party sponsored by Boris Berezovsky.
At about the same time, in October, the Prosecutor General's Office asked the Duma to strip him of his legislative immunity because of an ongoing investigation into his past in Chelyabinsk.
The Chelyabinsk investigation was begun back in 1996 and dragged on until last year, when Golovlyov was charged with financial abuse in his handling of the privatization of state property. According to some media reports, he was accused of pocketing $600 million.
In November, the Duma voted to partially strip his immunity to allow prosecutors to question him but stopped short of allowing his arrest.
Golovlyov denied any wrongdoing, saying the attempt to strip him of immunity was punishment for his political activity, namely Liberal Russia, which he co-founded with four other liberal deputies.
Leonid Troshin, a spokesperson for the Prosecutor General's Office, said Wednesday that the investigation by Chelyabinsk prosecutors, which was under the control of his office, was finished in January. Since then Golovlyov, who was questioned several times after losing his immunity, had been reading through his case documents.
Troshin said his office had planned to send a formal request to the Duma when it returns next month from the summer break asking it to allow the case to be sent to court.
Gazeta.ru reported that Golovlyov had business interests in Chelyabinsk left over from his former employment and held stakes in several local companies.
Liberal Russia leader Sergei Yushenkov, however, said Golovlyov was not involved in any business activity. Whether he held stakes in any companies, "I can neither confirm nor deny this, I just do not know," Yushenkov said.
Yushenkov said Golovlyov's murder looked to be politically motivated, as did the criminal prosecution and campaign to strip him of his legislative immunity, which he said was initiated by the Kremlin after Golovlyov got involved with Liberal Russia.
"The murder of a Duma deputy who is in opposition is in the first place political," Yushenkov said.
He said Golovlyov and other Liberal Russia activists have received death threats in the past related to their involvement in the new party, which is yet to be registered with the Justice Ministry.
A previous attack on Golovlyov some three months ago was prevented by his dog, Yushenkov said, who denied that Golovlyov had bodyguards.
Berezovsky told Ekho Moskvy radio that Golovlyov's murder was a message to the political elite and an attempt to intimidate other Liberal Russia activists.
"A sign has been given to all - do not cross the line that is called the opposition, everybody will be shot," said Berezovsky, who lives in self-imposed exile in Europe to avoid criminal prosecution that he says is politically motivated.
Investigators searched Liberal Russia's offices on Wednesday night, NTV reported, citing one of Golovlyov's aides.
TITLE: Memorial: Military Threatens Our Staff
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Memorial human-rights group said Thursday that the military has started actively to threaten its members working in its Chechen offices and that it was considering closing them down.
In the latest incident, a brother of Doka Islayev, head of Memorial's Urus-Martan office, was arrested Wednesday afternoon at a checkpoint while the two brothers were on their way from Urus-Martan to the family's village, Goiskoye, said Lipkhan Bazayeva, Memorial's representative in Nazran, the Ingush capital.
A photograph of a Chechen OMON police officer was planted in the pocket of Said-Khusein Islayev and he was told he was suspected of plotting to murder the man and taken away, Bazayeva said Thursday by telephone. Neither of the brothers knew the man in the photo, she said.
Doka Islayev, who reported the incident to her office, was trying to locate his brother, she said.
"It is a very special method used by troops to evoke fear in our workers," Bazayeva said. "They were afraid to do it to Doka because he is a very respected person and a Memorial member and it would be hard to prove any wrongdoing by him, but his brother is just an ordinary man and they will not even bother to find evidence. We are afraid that he will just disappear like many other Chechens."
Memorial has worked in Chechnya throughout the military campaign, providing locals with legal advice and collecting individual records of harassment, torture and murder of civilians by federal troops. The group employs 13 people, all native Chechens, in its offices in Grozny, Gudermes and Urus-Martan.
Bazayeva said an employee of the Grozny office, Shamil Tangiyev, has been hiding in Nazran since he only barely escaped arrest two weeks ago when masked troops walked into his home late at night.
"Luckily for him he was in Nazran that night," she said. "But the troops came after him again several times and the neighbors told our Grozny office that they were looking for Tangiyev saying he is a rebel."
At the end of July, the Memorial office in Grozny was broken into by federal troops, who smashed down the door and turned everything in the office upside down, said Oleg Orlov, who heads Memorial's board. Orlov said no one was in the office when the troops came, but the staff walked in in the middle of the raid.
Bazayeva said the entire staff feels unsafe, even in Nazran. "We are all afraid," she said. "Even here, I am terrified to think that something could happen to my children."
The office of Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the Kremlin's spokesperson on Chechnya, said it could not comment on the arrest of Said-Khusein Islayev, and suggested calling Chechen authorities. The Chechen prosecutor's office refused to comment, and a police officer, who refused to give his name, said finding the missing man would not be easy.
"Look, it depends on where he was taken - to Khankala, to the republic or federal OMON, to SOBR [a rapid-reaction squad], and by whom - by Defense or Interior troops," the officer said. "You are unlikely to find anyone to comment on this."
Interfax quoted Nikolai Kostyuchenko, the Chechen prosecutor, as saying on Aug. 3 that, in the past 2 1/2 years, 1,050 people disappeared in Chechnya, including 320 people in the first half of 2002.
A source in the presidential administration said "there is no war against Memorial in Chechnya."
But Orlov said that considering all the threats and attacks on Memorial's staff in Chechnya in the past 10 months, it was clear that a campaign was on to pressure human rights activists to leave the republic.
He said Memorial is reluctantly considering closing its offices in Chechnya to protect its staff.
"That would mean the closure of the biggest channel of independent information from the republic and basically the stoppage of any possible open dialogue between civil society and the state," Orlov said.
TITLE: Police Arrest Supporters of Dalai Lama
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Police detained some 30 Russian Buddhists who gathered outside the Foreign Ministry in Moscow on Thursday to protest Russia's decision to deny the Dalai Lama permission to enter the country.
Chanting "Visa to Dalai Lama!" and holding portraits of the exiled Tibetan leader, about a hundred protesters from the traditionally Buddhist regions of Kalmykia and Tuva demonstrated peacefully outside the ministry building on the Garden Ring.
Police quickly broke up the rally, saying the protestors were disturbing public order with an unsanctioned demonstration. By noon, those protestors who had not left voluntarily were put into police vans and taken to a nearby police station.
Last week, the ministry turned down a request for the Dalai Lama to visit Russia, saying his delegation had a "political orientation" and included members of the Tibetan government in exile. The ministry said it was taking into account China's "sharply negative" view of the Dalai Lama's political activities.
But Russian Buddhist leaders denied the Dalai Lama's proposed visit had any political aims and said it was designed to tend to the spiritual needs of the community.
Protesters said their rally was peaceful and that there was no need for the police to get involved.
"I'm a Russian citizen, and I'm allowed to walk and stand where I want in my own country," said Anastasia Manzhanova, who came to Moscow from Elista, capital of the republic of Kalmykia in southern Russia, where she is a member of the Buddhist center.
Thursday's rally was the second public protest over the visa denial. Ten Buddhists were detained in a similar protest last Saturday.
An estimated 1 million Russians are Buddhists, most of whom live in Kalmykia, Buryatia and Tuva. The visit would have been the Dalai Lama's first official visit to post-Soviet Russia.
The Dalai Lama made an unofficial visit to Buddhist regions in 1992 and in 1996 was granted a transit visa for his trip to Mongolia but denied a similar visa request last year.
TITLE: Hidden Agenda Giving Cause for Concern
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Officially, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov's three-day visit to China, which began Wednesday, is about trade - namely, energy, aviation, transportation, electronics, banking and telecommunications.
But the item not on the public agenda is the one worrying Washington and Taipei the most: arms.
Since U.S. President George W. Bush came to power last year, the U.S. defense establishment has taken an increasingly alarmist approach to China's burgeoning defense-procurement program, in which Russia, as its main supplier, is playing the leading role. Washington's growing concern over Beijing's buildup - and Russia's role in it - is spelled out in two recent reports, one from the Pentagon and the other sponsored by Congress.
"Despite overwhelming U.S. military and technological superiority, China can still defeat the United States by transforming its weakness into strength and exploiting U.S. vulnerabilities through asymmetric warfare ... deception, surprise and preemptive strikes," concluded the U.S.-China Security Review Commission, which is funded by Congress.
In the addendum to the report, one of the authors, Arthur Waldron, went even further, saying China's buildup is aimed at excluding America from Asia and establishing the ability to threaten and coerce neighboring states ranging from Mongolia to Japan to India.
"With respect to China's proliferation behavior, we have all the evidence we need: China is a major source of advanced weapons to terrorist-sponsoring and other dangerous states. ... Far more work is required, both from the commission and the government on China's role (or lack of it) in international terrorism," Waldron wrote.
"Beijing's close connections to terrorist-sponsoring states provide ample reason for concern. ... Foreign companies helping China's military and security apparatus should be denied any participation in U.S. government procurement or development programs."
The main foreign company helping China's military and security apparatus is Rosoboronexport, which dismisses Washington's concerns.
"I think that Russia is not doing anything illegal by [selling arms to China]," Rosoboronexport chief Andrei Belyaninov said Wednesday. "We are acting within the framework of international law."
Part of the problem, U.S. officials admit, is that they do not have a precise picture of China's military program. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov reportedly signed a protocol with China during his visit there earlier this summer under which all arms deals between the two nations are classified as secret.
Earlier this year, Beijing announced that it would boost its defense spending in 2002 to $20 billion. However, the Pentagon believes that China's actual spending could be as high as $80 billion, which would give it the second largest military budget in the world after the U.S.
"Chinese secrecy is extensive. China reveals little in its Defense White Paper about the quantity or quality of its military forces," the Pentagon said in its report, which was commissioned to address the gaps in knowledge about China's military power, its relations with the former Soviet Union, and security in the Taiwan Strait.
The most immediate issue is Taiwan, which China has vowed to bring back under its control since 1949, when two million nationalists fled to the island after the communists conquered the mainland.
However, the biggest obstacle to retaking Taiwan by force is the United States military, which China is actively seeking to redress.
The Pentagon report said China's modernization program is primarily in preparation for a potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait and is heavily reliant upon Russia.
The report, commissioned by Congress, said the acquisition of Su-27s in the 1990s, and the purchase of the more modern Su-30MKKs represents a quantum leap for China's air force: "The extended range of the Su-30MKKs would allow [China's] air force to circumnavigate Taiwan and strike lesser-defended facilities on the eastern side of the island. The Su-30MKKs can carry the X-31 supersonic anti-ship missile and pose a greater threat to U.S. vessels."
"What the Chinese military is driving towards is to have a credible deterrent ... to make the U.S. think twice about intervening on Taiwan's behalf," Ilan Berman, vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council think tank in Washington, said by telephone.
"If there is a conflict over Taiwan, both Taiwanese and U.S. forces will be fighting against Russian weapons," says Richard Fisher, a China military expert with the Jamestown Foundation, a think tank close to the Bush administration. "Russia's arms sales to China amount to gasoline on smoking embers. This is simply unacceptable," he said.
TITLE: Writers Union Head Chulaki Dead at 61
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Mikhail Chulaki, famous St. Petersburg writer and the head of St. Petersburg Writers Union, died in hospital on Wednesday from injuries he suffered after being hit by a car the night before. He was 61.
Chulaki was hit by car while walking his dog, near the village of Metallostroi in the Kolpino region.
Chulaki wrote 25 novels, and his articles and stories were published in leading Russian newspapers, such as Izvestiya, Literaturnaya Gazeta, Obshchaya Gazeta and magazines such as Neva and Zvezda.
Beside his literary activities, he was also the head for a time of the St. Petersburg Administration Human Rights Commission.
His love of animals - he had five cats and a dog as pets in his house - also led him to a stint as the head of St. Petersburg's Animal Protection Society.
Most of his novels, such as "Chto Pochyom?" ("How Much Does It Cost?"), "Tenor" ("Tenor"), "Vechny Khleb" ("Everlasting Bread"), "Prazdnik Pokhoron" ("Funeral Holiday"), were in the realistic genre, dealing with real-life situations and the way the characters deal with everyday problems.
His articles often provided a philosophical and social perspective on various events and changes taking place in Russia.
"I don't like people who are pre-occupied exclusively with themselves," he wrote in one article, entitled "Mankind's Collective Narcissism."
Born in 1941 into the family of a musician and an artist, Chulaki decided early on that he wanted to dedicate his life to literature. Deciding that medical knowledge would be very useful for a writer, he enrolled in and graduated from St. Petersburg's Pavlov Medical Institute.
After graduation, he worked as a psychiatrist for six years at the city's oldest mental asylum, nicknamed the Pryazhka, for the river that runs nearby. He followed this with work as a lion tamer for another year, before turning full time to writing.
Friends and fellow writers said that his approach to writing, straightforward and realistic, echoed his approach in his own life.
"Despite the fact that he considered himself an atheist, he was a holy man," said Nina Katerli, a St. Petersburg writer. "He was honest, sincere, and very responsible. In his works he was very independent and open. He had the strength to tell the truth about the things about which others would not dare to speak."
Daniil Granin, another well-known Russian writer, said that, with regard to his writings on current affairs in the country, Chulaki's work exhibited a sharp and radical character
"He spoke against the occult science, against the policies of St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, and many other things he disagreed with," Granin said.
Granin said that it was this approach that ultimately saw Chulaki dismissed from his post at the Human Rights Commission, as the authorities found it difficult to deal with his readiness to take a stand on points of principle.
Chulaki will be buried at the Bogoslovskoye Cemetery in St. Petersburg. As of Thursday evening, the date of the funeral had not yet been announced.
TITLE: Officials: Boat Will Be Raised by Friday
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A full week after the cargo ship Kaunas sank near the Liteiny Bridge, blocking most cargo-transport traffic along the Neva River, Interior Waters Ministry officials were reporting Thursday that enough of the vessel would be cleared for traffic to resume by Friday morning.
According to information from the ministry, 110 ships were waiting upriver and in the approaches to the Neva, waiting for divers to finish sheering off the upper portions of the Kaunas.
Divers have been working on removing deck structures and the bridge of the sunken vessel in order to provide the five meters' clearance the ministry has set for safe passage of 5,000-ton cargo vessels - the heaviest allowed on the waterway - but their work has been impeded by high winds and strong currents.
The press service at the local department of the Emergency Situations Ministry reported that, on Thursday, the 30-ton bridge had been removed from the vessel and that divers were busy clearing the remaining obstacles from the deck.
Vladimir Krivoshei, the head of the Transport Ministry's Interior Waters Department said Thursday that full traffic would resume Friday morning. He said that 40 to 45 vessels should clear through the route by the time the bridges across the Neva are lowered Friday morning.
The Kaunas sank on Aug. 16, two hours after it collided with the Liteiny Bridge. All eight crew members and two passengers aboard were removed safely from the vessel before it sank.
The other bridges along the Neva have continued to be raised overnight to allow boats with low clearances and displacements under 2,000 tons to pass. Eighteen of these vessels, which manage the route by slipping under another arch of the Liteiny Bridge, passed along the river early on Thursday morning.
TITLE: Russia's New Status Brings New Rules
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Giving with the right hand and taking with the left, the European Commission this week approved and delivered to its 15 member states proposed amendments to trade-protection legislation that simultaneously grant Russia market-economy status while tightening up the rules.
The commission said that it expected the amendments to be approved by mid-September, making the changes official.
The commission has been quick to point out that the changes to anti-dumping and anti-subsidy legislation merely formalize existing practices and are not aimed at Russia in particular.
"It reflects a reality that has come about but has not been taken into legal form," said Vincent Piket, deputy head of the European Commission delegation to Moscow. "It should be done for the sake of transparency and openness."
The amendment to the anti-dumping law removes Russia from the list of non-market economies, giving companies the right to be judged by domestic prices in anti-dumping cases, rather than by prices in a comparable country. European regulations allowed companies to apply individually for market-economy status, but only SUAL, the country's second-largest aluminum company, had won such status.
It also defines "particular market situations" in which the commission can increase the cost of production of a company by "a reasonable amount" when investigating claims that imports are sold below cost such as "[among other things], when prices are artificially low or when there is significant barter trade, or when there are non-commercial processing arrangements."
Russia's low energy prices have been a sticking point in negotiations with the European Union for accession to the World Trade Organization, with Brussels pushing Moscow for a commitment to increase prices to world levels.
The amendment also allows the EC to use information from other markets if it decides a company doesn't "reasonably" reflect its production and sales cost in its records.
"[The costs] shall be adjusted or established on the basis of the costs of other producers or exporters in the same country or, where such information is not available or cannot be used, on any other reasonable basis, including information from other representative markets."
Brussels may use information from comparable countries in cases of "particular market situations."
Richard King, associate attorney at White & Case in Brussels, said the amendments do, in general, reflect common practice. But, he said, the combination of Russia and the new rules is "an interesting coincidence."
"If something is undefined in the regulation, they have broad discretion anyway," King added.
Gaining market-economy status also opens up Russian companies to the threat of anti-subsidy tariffs - similar to duties in the United States.
"It's potentially two-edged," King said. "Market-economy status is not necessarily a total benefit."
The amendment to the anti-subsidy law also allows the EC to adjust prices by an "appropriate amount, which reflects normal market terms and conditions," or use information from a comparable country "if there are no such prevailing market terms and conditions for the product or service in question in the country of provision or purchase that can be used as appropriate benchmarks."
Falsification of accounts is not necessary; the EC could deem that domestic accounting principles are not adequately reflective of true costs, King said.
Chris Weafer, former head of research at Troika Dialog, said it seemed the EC was backpedaling under pressure from major lobbying groups.
"The EU is continuing to pressure Russia not to stop the reform process. Russia will not have an easy ride on economic trade unless it continues the reform process," Weafer said.
"Market-economy status is not going to ensure easier times for major exporters," he said. "We've seen repeatedly that when it suits the U.S. or the EU, they'll find a reason to block imports."
TITLE: Russia, China Sign Cooperation Deals
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: SHANGAI, China - Saying that record volumes of trade are drawing their countries ever closer together, visiting Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and his Chinese counterpart Zhu Rongji on Thursday signed a series of cooperation and bilateral trade deals.
"We set a high value on the development of Sino-Russian cooperative relations," Zhu said, adding that total trade between the two countries with a les-than-easy Cold War past was $10.1 billion last year, the highest ever.
Kasyanov said that Russian private investment in China had reached a high of $300 million, China's official Xinhua agency reported.
China is now the sixth-largest foreign market for Russian products, and Russia is the eighth-largest market for Chinese exports, Kasyanov said.
The two countries signed a broad communique on improving economic ties in a host of fields, including energy, technology, finance, transport, aviation, aerospace, ecology and telecommunications.
In the cooperation memorandum, the two countries' central banks agreed to allow commercial banks to conduct trade clearance in each other's national currencies - a move that will simplify transactions between cross-border traders by allowing direct conversion between the yen and ruble.
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China agreed to extend a $200-million credit to state-owned Vneshtorgbank to finance the purchase of Chinese exports.
"[This deal] is deemed to further facilitate medium and long-term lending by Vneshtorgbank to its customers who are actively engaged in imports of sophisticated equipment from China on favorable terms," Agence France Press quoted the bank as saying.
"I believe our direct trade cooperation will definitely develop quickly along with our friendly political relations," Zhu told a media conference after the two leaders held talks in Shanghai.
Ties between the two countries faltered in the early 1960s amid an ideological split between the then-rival powers.
China has been a major customer for advanced Russian arms such as fighter jets, submarines, and air-defense systems and both sides are keen to increase the volumes. China is also a growing consumer of Russian gas and oil.
Zhu said additional Chinese crude-oil purchases alone could potentially swell bilateral trade by $7 billion a year.
Zhu also said that both countries agreed to help Russian telecommunications firms enter the Chinese market, but he did not elaborate.
"Despite some individual problems, we have produced a series of important documents and important projects," Kasyanov said, without elaborating.
Russian news agencies quoted Sergei Tsyplakov, the head of Russia's trade mission in China, as saying that Beijing had asked Moscow to ease restrictions to allow more of its laborers to work in Russia.
"Russia will defend its tough position on the import of Chinese labor," Tsyplakov said.
(SPT, AP)
TITLE: Retailers Claim Gas Prices Set To Increase
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: On July 1, the State Duma passed in third reading an amendment to the Russia Tax Code regulating the operation of gasoline retailers in Russia. According to a local association representing these retailers, the ultimate effects of the law will be a rise - by as much as 100 percent - in the price of gas in the city.
The St. Petersburg Oil Club - an association that comprises 14 gasoline retailers in the area - announced its opposition to the contents of the law at a press-conference on Wednesday. It said that the law, which stipulates that all licensed operators must apply for special registration status as oil-operating companies. In order to get this status, companies must operate not only their own gas stations, but gas storage facilities as well.
Representatives of the club say that these stipulations will be a barrier to competition within the market.
"This law not only contradicts the policy of support for medium and small businesses, but it also violates the Constitution," Oleg Ashikhmin, the vice-president of the Russian Fuel Union, said on Wednesday. "This can only lead to monopolization of the market."
About 90 percent of wholesale companies in the city don't satisfy both requirements. While most do own storage facilities, the vast majority do not operate retail outlets.
If these players are removed from the market, Ashkimin said on Wednesday, the price of gasoline could jump to between 17 rubles ($0.55) and 22 rubles ($0.71) per liter for A-92 grade. Presently, the price of A-92 grade gasoline is about 11 rubles ($0.35).
The Oil Club representatives present at the press conference said that another of the law's provisions - that requiring retailers to pay excise taxes up front to the government for the gas that they receive- will also encourage the establishment of a monopolistic situation.
Prior to the passing of the amendments, a portion of the excise taxes were paid by each of the refiner, wholesaler and retailer of the gasoline, and the retailers would pay their portion once the product had been sold. With a lag time of 10 to 20 days between the purchase and sale of the gasoline, some smaller retailers say they will be unable to come up with the excise money up front, providing an advantage to larger firms.
The St. Petersburg Oil Club said that it has filed requests with Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, Segei Tarasov, the speaker of the legislative assembly and the presidential representative for the Northwest Region, Viktor Cherkesov, to introduce a number of amendments to the tax code to the Duma to deal with their concerns. They say that they have received no reply from Smolny.
Federal representatives, for their part, say that the Oil Club is overreacting - perhaps for their own benefit.
"This is just baseless panic-mongering," Yuri Matyzyn, the deputy head of the St. Petersburg department of the Antimonopolies Ministry, said on Thursday.
"We should check the situation out completely before having such a reaction. This could be an attempt on their part to create a negative situation, like during the gasoline crisis in 1999, which was instigated by the St. Petersburg Oil Club," he said.
It's too early to assert, but I think that the gasoline market needs more control," Matzyn added. "If prices rise, we'll take antimonopoly measures and investigate the causes. If there is a systemic cause, then we'll talk about the law. If the cause is an arrangement between the companies, we'll initiate legal proceedings."
TITLE: Small Businesses Can Temper 'Big' Syndrome
AUTHOR: By Peter Boone and Denis Rodionov
TEXT: DURING the past five years, Russia's industrial labor productivity has risen by 38 percent, making the United States' productivity boom of about 13 percent appear lethargic in comparison. While some claim that this growth has beendriven purely by devaluation and that high oil prices, we believe this misses the point. In 1992, oil prices were high and Russia experienced a spectacular devaluation, yet its export sectors collapsed and the economy remained mired in stagflation until 1998. Something changed in the late 1990s.
In our view, the crucial factor has been the emergence of a private sector with incentives to generate growth, following the massive redistribution of property during the initial voucher privatization and the loans-for-shares scheme of 1995 and 1996.
In a survey of 64 of Russia's largest enterprises, we calculate that a single shareholder group has now established control over 97 percent of privatized enterprises by revenues. On average, these core shareholders have 65 percent of a company's shares, giving them full effective control and allowing them to shift their focus to improving operations. And the turnaround has been dramatic.
In the early 1990s, when companies were still state-owned, there was little incentive to invest or generate growth. Instead, a feeding frenzy opened up as insiders and outsiders fought to gain control of cashflows, and the lack of ownership rights meant that the "winners" in these battles quickly transferred funds to jurisdictions abroad, where property rights were protected and they could hold on to their winnings. Some far-sighted groups chose to collect shares, despite the lack of effective property rights, and sometimes violent battles for control ensued. It is no surprise that, as a result, investment collapsed, capital flight soared, and even inherently profitable industries, such as oil, fell into rapid decline.
Today, there is a marked difference between the operational performance of companies where private shareholders have established control, and those under state ownership or where control is still dispersed. Among Russia's 14 largest traded companies, we estimate productivity growth at state-owned companies was 10 percent between 1998 and the present day, compared to 41 percent at private companies. This is perhaps the single clearest indicator that ownership has played a major role in the country's recovery.
Yukos has clearly led the way, with productivity up 100 percent since 1998, driven by applying new technologies and exploiting underutilized resources (i.e. better management). This contrasts with state-owned Gazprom, where productivity remains flat, despite a massive investment budget, amid allegations of asset stripping and inefficient use of funds. Many other private companies, including Sibneft, TNK, Severstal and Russian Aluminum are demonstrating how private owners can generate major productivity increases, while state-owned companies such as UES, Rosneft, Rostelecom and Tatneft are treading water.
However, the trend comes with a caveat. With the arrival of the new owners, there has also been a massive concentration of ownership. In our sample of 64 companies, we estimate that 85 percent of privatized companies are now controlled by eight large shareholder groups, whose combined revenues in 2001 significantly exceeded total federal government revenues. The contrast is stark - in 1992 this figure was zero.
This new class is cash-rich, politically powerful, and likely to remain a strong lobby, giving it a powerful role in setting the course for Russia's future economic development. At times, the interests of this "big eight" have been closely tied to the nation's fortunes: They have successfully lobbied for radical tax reform, land privatization, state recognition of property rights, and a realignment of foreign policy toward the West. It is in their interests to ensure a stable political regime and conservative financial policy.
However, history shows that such power can be abused. During the 1970s in Latin America, strong industrial groups promoted trade restrictions, choking off productivity growth - just as Russia's automobile industry is currently lobbying for import tariffs to protect inefficient producers. In the nineteenth century, America's infamous robber barons monopolized key natural resources and, by artificially inflating prices, slowed the development of the manufacturing sector. Large enterprise groups in Japan continue to thwart competition by promoting excessive regulation, and in Korea inefficient investment led to an excessive build-up of debt, which is now being paid for by the households who lent their savings to the chaebol banks.
Given that Russian democracy has yet to mature and protection of smaller businesses and individuals is weak, the economic environment appears ripe for abuse by politically connected groups. However, despite these dangers, we are more sanguine in the longer term, and see three major causes for optimism about these new private owners.
First, Russia's major enterprise groups are largely focused around commodity exports, meaning that the risk of Latin American-style isolationism is minimal. On the contrary, these groups have an interest in promoting global economic integration. Over the next five to 10 years, we expect them rapidly to expand Russia's energy and commodity exports, giving them an interest in creating an economic environment where domestic and foreign partners are willing to make multi-billion dollar investments in the supporting export infrastructure. It is no coincidence that the country's largest oil producers strongly support better political ties with the G-7 and China, WTO accession, and a free trade arrangement with Europe.
Second, Russia's large businesses are not the all-conquering machines that they are sometimes portrayed to be. Business is tough and many of the "oligarchs" of the early 1990s have already disappeared. Some groups have acquired assets with the explicit goal of restructuring and selling them. We expect this to lead to another wave of asset sales - at much higher prices and with greater foreign participation - weakening the role of the "big eight" in the Russian economy. Also, as time passes, the "big eight" are likely to face another problem. On the whole, they are owned by a small group of partners and have a nontransparent legal structure. We expect a gradual dissolution of these partnerships as the owners age and individual partners' interests diverge. Very few are likely to become family heirlooms.
Lastly, now is finally the time for Russia's small and medium-sized businesses to take off. Business has never been so profitable. The reform agenda that was strongly supported by big business is paying off for small businesses too: Household incomes are rising quickly, taxes have been lowered, and the medium-term perspective finally looks stable. The problems for small businesses are also clear: onerous regulation and interference by the authorities. While small businesses currently lack the power and mechanisms to defend their interests, and the jury is still out on how they will develop in the current environment, the smaller companies we cover all appear to have bright prospects.
If Russia's political leaders can help by reducing the hindrances to business development, in five years' time the small business sector could become a powerful political force. And that's one more reason to be sanguine about big business.
Peter Boone, head of research at Brunswick UBS Warburg in Moscow, and Denis Rodionov, deputy of head of research, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. The views expressed are their own.
TITLE: The Helicopter Crash and the Price of War
AUTHOR: By Pavel Felgenhauer
TEXT: IN the worst helicopter disaster in world history, a heavy army Mi-26 helicopter went down in the northeastern suburbs of the Chechen capital, Grozny, killing at least 115 service personnel.
Russian military helicopters and fixed-wing transport aircraft often carry unauthorized passengers, including sometimes civilians. It is reported that there was at least one child on the Mi-26 - the son of one of the service personnel on board - who perished in the crash together with his mother. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov announced that he was suspending the chief of the army's air force, three-star General Vitaly Pavlov, from service - apparently as punishment for the total lack of orderly passenger registration for army helicopter transportation in Chechnya.
Of course, any journalist or soldier who has been in a war zone with virtually any army knows that not all flight regulations are always strictly observed. I once had a ride on a Mi-26 from Mozdok to Grozny, together with some 50 service personnel and journalists on top of a stockpile of crates with tons of artillery shells and other munitions. I boarded the helicopter minutes before takeoff and a crew member penciled my name on some sheet of paper without, apparently, reporting it to ground control.
In war zones, paperwork is never done on time or by the book. But, despite obvious lapses in bureaucratic procedure, the army's helicopter pilots, mechanics and flight controllers have performed excellently in extremely severe conditions during the war in Chechnya - actually, much more professionally than most other branches of the military.
Pavlov was apparently picked out for public punishment only because the Mi-26 disaster exposed the official spin line that the war in Chechnya already ended long ago.
The Mi-26 is reported to have been shot down by Chechen rebels using a shoulder-launched heat-seeking anti-aircraft missile. The missile hit one of the engines as the Mi-26 was approaching Khankala, and the helicopter crash-landed in a minefield that made up part of the federal military headquarters' perimeter defenses. Some of the survivors, attempting to abandon the wrecked Mi-26, are reported to have been killed by "friendly" anti-personnel mine explosions.
The war in Chechnya has not "ended," and reprimanding Pavlov will not alter this fact. After almost three years of occupation, Russians feel safe in their main Chechen base only behind massive minefields. Khankala is a besieged fort in totally hostile territory.
The Mi-26 was ferrying troops and officers assigned to various units from Mozdok in North Ossetia. By road, it is 136 kilometers through the relatively peaceful northern part of Chechnya, with military checkpoints all the way and a bridge over the Terek River guarded by federal troops. There is also a rail link between Mozdok and Grozny, officially open for commercial and civilian traffic.
But, instead of taking a two-hour ride, army personnel patiently waited to board a helicopter - some for more than a day. Obviously, they did not even consider the roads of northern Chechnya to be safe. Military armored convoys are frequently attacked, and anyone risking a ride without protection will most probably end up in a rebel dungeon. This time, the helicopter route turned out to be no safer.
It is reported that a relatively primitive Strela heat-seeking missile downed the Mi-26. A plane dropping fireball decoys can successfully deflect such missiles. But helicopter pilots complain that such decoys are in short supply and are used only in extreme situations - usually when the pilot is lucky enough to notice a missile launch and has enough time to press the decoy release button. After the latest disaster, pilots will surely fire decoys more often, but Soviet stockpiles of infrared air force decoys are by no means endless.
Many other munitions and military equipment badly needed in Chechnya are in increasingly short supply, because procurement has stopped and production been abandoned since the demise of the Soviet Union. The price of resuming production would be immense and in some cases virtually prohibitive. The cost, both human and financial, of continuing the war grows, while victory appears out of reach.
If the price of oil falls anytime soon, the Kremlin may run out of resources to sustain hostilities at their present level. Then it may let Chechnya go at last.
Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.
TITLE: modern art in black and white
AUTHOR: by Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Despite the almost total absence of any advertising, the Manezh was crowded enough on Wednesday afternoon for the opening of the fourth running of the International Festival of Experimental Art and Performance.
The festival, which has been held biennially since 1996, was inspired by "Dialogues," another two-yearly modern-art event at the Manezh that was first held in 1993 and set up by the same curator, Larisa Skobkina. However, that is as far as the links between the two events go.
"Dialogues" is mainly dedicated to demonstrating global trends in the visual arts, and was one of the first festivals in post-Soviet Russia that attracted foreign artists to display their work here. In contrast, the IFEAP, while also attracting foreign artists, focuses more on the art of performance. The two festivals, which are now held in alternate years, therefore correspond to the commonly held separation of art into its visual and performance aspects.
The first runnings of the IFEAP were highly successful, and were - as Skobkina never tires of pointing out - the subject of press interest and lectures in the United States, the U.K., Austria and Finland. This, however, was some time ago, and it is difficult to imagine such an event being the subject of a university lecture, now that the euphoria generated by the first contact between the newly liberated Russian artists and their Western colleagues has passed.
This year's festival features works by about 50 artists, who have come from 16 different countries, Skobkina said at Wednesday's opening. The festival program falls into two parts: The first part is made up of the photo, video and other installations on display, while the second part consists of performances.
The installation part begins with a work by Zurab Tseretely, who is best known for his gigantist sculptures around Moscow. The work at the Manezh, "Black and White Background," is made of metal, as are the statues in the capital, and, while not on the same scale, gives the impression of being a representation of them.
In the festival program, Tseretely takes up a whole page listing all of his official positions in cultural institutions around the globe: In addition to being president of the Russian Academy of Art, Tseretely holds some 20 other official positions, which raises the question: What should an exhibition-goer expect from an artist as engaged as Tseretely? The work is the symbolic beginning of the exhibition: like "Black and White Background," not many of the other works on display are truly engaging.
Some works, such as "Dwarf Shrub of Mint Family," by Germany's Anders Romare and Sweden's Urban Granberg, show off a sense of humor; others, such as Henry Grahn's "About Life," are just fun. There are even a couple of topical works, reflecting on collapsing houses in Russia and the floods in Europe.
One work, by Italian artist Renzo Olivia, is bound to attract attention. "The Boundary Line Between Sacred and Profane" is a series of re-designed icons.
In the festival's catalogue, Olivia explains his idea: "Russian people in these days are at loss if they-have to define a boundary-line between sacred and profane. Before, during the Communism, nothing was sacred (they were using churches as factories, as clubs, as swimming pools, as warehouses, etc.). Nowadays, in sort of superstition, they tend to consider sacred everything which concerns religion. They have not found yet the right approach to that matter: but a deconsecrated church is not anymore a church, an old oklad [icon frame] is just a scrap of metal - good for Scrap Art!."
The performance part of the festival is dominated by foreign artists, and is different every day. Local performers are also featured: St. Petersburg's "Iguana Theater" is set to perform every day, as a sort of hole-filler in the timetable.
From the timetable in the catalogue, Saturday promises to be the most interesting day in terms of performances. The day includes an appearance from Andre and Michel Decosterd, a Swiss partnership of a musician and an architect, whose 35-minute performance, "Siliknost," will feature two workers with shovels filling four buckets full of holes. The Decosterds' movement is the object of an experiment with sound and light.
Of the other participants, Nicole Garneau and Big Smith Performance ensemble, from the U.S., will perform live percussion music on West African and Afro-Cuban instruments, vocal music, poetry, prose and painting; and British artist Adrian Palka will present his performance "Kick the Bucket" which was shown at July's Dokumenta XI festival in Kassel, Germany.
A visitor to the festival may leave with the impression that nothing new has happened in the field of experimental and performance art over the last decade.
Skobkina claims that the IFEAP is "the only festival in Russia to be dedicated to the latest developments in modern art and technologies." While this may be the case, the festival does not illustrate the latest movements in the field, unlike the Venice Biennial, the 49th running of which was held last year, or Kassel's Dokumenta. In this sense, the low level of advertising is perhaps appropriate.
The International Festival of Experimental Art and Performance runs through Sunday at the Manezh.
Links: www.performart.narod.ru
TITLE: the music hall's founding father
AUTHOR: by Aliona Bocharova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The name of Ilya Rakhlin, who died on Aug. 15 aged 84, is virtually synonymous with the St. Petersburg Music Hall, the theater that he founded in 1966.
Rakhlin was born in Klintsy, in the Bryanskaya Oblast, on Oct. 10, 1917, and came to Leningrad in 1936 to study at the city's Institute of Music and Cinema (now the Academy of Theater Arts) - against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to become a lawyer or a doctor.
During World War II, Rakhlin served in the navy. He barely survived the bombardment at Volokolansk, near Moscow, in 1941, and was hospitalized with a concussion for a long time afterwards, before serving in the Far East. By 1946 he was already a director and leading actor at Russia's Pacific Ocean Navy Theater. After that, Rakhlin worked at the Leningrad Drama and Comedy Theater, the New Theater, and the Russian Drama Theater of Estonia, in Tallinn.
From 1960 to 1966, he was a chief director of the Soviet Union's Cinema Propaganda Bureau, a general theater director at the country's State Concert Association, and artistic director of the Theater Tours Bureau. In 1966, he returned to Leningrad and founded the Music Hall.
The following year, the theater gave its first performance, of a show called "Net tebya prekrasnei" ("There Is No-one More Beautiful Than You"), and the theater still counts its years from this date. Rakhlin continued staging performances at the Music Hall until 1999, when he staged the symbolically named "Priznanie Lyubvi" ("A Confession of Love").
After "Priznaniye Lyubvi," Rakhlin was forced to retire from practical work at the theater for health reasons (although he retained the title of artistic director until his death) and handed over the reins to his son, Lev, who also studied at the Leningrad Institute of Music and Cinema and established a reputation of his own before joining his father at the Music Hall "about seven years ago," as he said in an interview this week.
Despite the current feeling of loss at the Music Hall, Lev says that the theater will carry on living and breathing in the spirit that his father intended: Ilya Rakhlin wanted it to be a "theater of joy" that would remain for ever young. "And it will no doubt remain so," he said confidently.
"In the past few years, I had the same responsibilities as now, but my father was still here and I felt that," said Lev. "Although nothing has changed on the outside, a massive psychological change has happened, and I feel the responsibility very keenly."
Because of this, he says, "I gave my word to the company that I will not leave the Music Hall. It is time for complete devotion."
Lev's immediate plans are for a new show called "The Theater of Joy" to be put on at the beginning of October to mark the Music Hall's 35th birthday, and what would have been his father's 85th birthday.
Like his father, Ilya Rakhlin did not want his son to go into the theater - he wanted Lev to be a scientist. However, said Lev, "I started studying history at Leningrad State University, but escaped after a month and entered the Institute of Music and Cinema."
Lev was still a student when the Music Hall was founded. He spent most of his free time in the theater, and remembers how it all started. The first Music Hall performance was to be staged in the old premises of the Lensoviet Palace of Culture.
"Four days before the first night, the fire-extinguisher water tanks, which hadn't been used or even checked since the war, unexpectedly burst," he smiled. "We had to dry all the rusty water off the scenery, and it was only ready two hours before the performance.
That first performance was a success and, just one year later, the Music Hall was invited to Paris, to open the silver-jubilee season of the famous Olympique Concert Hall there. Over the course of the next 35 years, the theater toured more than 50 countries, and won plaudits world-wide. Ilya Rakhlin also worked with foreign companies. For example, together with Berlin's Friedrichstadtpalast music hall, he staged a show called "Together," to mark Berlin's 750th anniversary.
In 1976, Ilya Rakhlin founded his own theater school, where he nurtured the Music Hall's future performers. This resource helped him to put together a troupe of actors with a new technique, one of striking elegance and originality of performance.
"I truly admired my father's talent, especially the epic scale of his performances, with rich scenery and large casts," said Lev. "We had planned to put on such a show for St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary [in 2003], and now I have to do it on my own."
The new production, says Lev, "will be a national historical musical ... an epic and romantic story that takes place during the reign of Catherine the Great on the island where the Peter and Paul Fortress is located."
The two Rakhlins spent a lot of time together in the theater and on tours. "Everyone at the theater says that we are very similar in temperament," said Lev. "Both of us had only one hobby - the theater - that was our work and our life." Another thing that father and son have in common is artistic intuition and a constant thirst for new ideas: Ilya Rakhlin was the first to revive the post-Revolutionary Soviet tradition of mass-theater spectacles - he made a point of staging works devoted to the Soviet Union's victory in World War II - and he staged over 150 of them all over the country, from Odessa to Leningrad; Lev has brought genres such as rock opera and jazz revue to the stage in Russia, and staged a jazz revue for the opening of the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980.
Ideologically, however, they were very different.
"My father lived with great illusions of those times and believed in them until the last moment," said Lev. "He loved the country so much that he was unable to evaluate it critically. But he was happy in those times."
It was partly because of these differences that Lev left the Music Hall many years ago and set up on his own. He founded "Narodny Dom" ("Folk House"), his own theater on the Music Hall's small stage, and spent a lot of time abroad, before many theater studios began closing down due to financial difficulties.
With the skills acquired on his foreign trips, Lev's influence at the Music Hall saw the theater's shows start to combine Russian national traditions with Western ones, often in such genres as musicals or revues. "My father was sometimes confused by the changes in the theater's stylistics over the last few years, but his intuition never let him down," he said.
Despite the generation gap and ideological differences, Lev says that his father did enjoy his work - even "Milashka," which Lev staged at Baltiisky Dom and which starred Dmitry Nagiyev, a television personality known for his vulgarity.
"He laughed and said that he never thought he would see the day when profanities - which he hated - would be so widely used," said Lev. "He also never thought that he would sit in the theater and find it funny and laugh without shame ... . It is a pity that he did not live to see the latest one."
TITLE: c'est la vie for a russian in paris
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg's club scene has not seen Wine, once of the favorite local bands, since November 2000, when its vocalist and songwriter, Alexei Fedyakov - a.k.a. Gelter, a.k.a. Winer - quit to go to France, where he still lives.
Since leaving, however, Fedyakov has not been idle. Recently, he has been recording a new, solo album, which is a far cry from the style of the old Wine, which was a unique guitar-driven, English-language band that took its cues from the Kinks, Morrissey and early David Bowie. On the new disc, however, Fedyakov sings in Russian and makes heavy use of keyboards.
Wine - which was known as Vino, Winecaster and The Wine before settling on its final name - was formed in 1991, and put out two albums, "Ugly" (1999) and "Wine Not?" (2000). Both were tape-only releases on the local label Bomba-Piter.
Fedyakov did not move for artistic or musical reasons - rather, he left to help his girlfriend, who was studying at a university in Paris.
"She had no money and asked me to come here," he said by telephone from Paris this week. "So, somehow, I went, and helped her. That was the main goal in my emigration"
Wine was a healthy exception on the Russian rock scene, its sound unaffected by the general lack of style, pompous posturing and faux-poignant lyrics of most popular Russian bands that broke through in the late 1980s. However, Fedyakov says that, although being abroad has positive aspects, he feels out of place in a foreign country.
"Everything is foreign here, strangers are all around," he says. "I don't belong to this place, and I am madly happy about it, because I am not a part of society."
"So, single-mindedly, I have vanished, and take no part in social life," he says. "Once I got here, I quit music right away."
Fedyakov explains the fact that he eventually started to write and record again by the influence of nostalgia.
"I started to write in Russian, then bought a good Portastudio by chance, and now I am recording a Russian album," he says. "It sounds like Wine, although the songs are not so beautiful. But there is something to listen to - I think the lyrics are good."
"The music is a bit different now - it contains a lot of keyboards and intricate sounds," he explains. "There should be a slightly different approach to it."
Fedyakov claims he has plans to come to Russia early next year to try to release the album, which is tentatively called "Boisya Devyatogo Syna" ("Beware of the Ninth Son"), but he is not sure if Wine can be reformed with the same lineup.
"I hope that I'll come and get the group togehter, because I deliberately don't play any concerts here," says Fedyakov.
Although Fedyakov is not playing formal concerts in Paris, he does appear every Thursday at open-mic night at Symposion, a basement club-cum-workshop founded by long-time emigre Alexei Khvostenko. Khvostenko - a.k.a. Khvost - an artist and poet, became popular with Russian rock fans through co-writing a song with Akvarium and through his collaboration with local band Auktsyon.
"It's the only place to which interesting Russians come," Fedyakov says. "The rest are just discos."
Fyodyakov appears on Khvostenko's forthcoming album, which is due to be released on Bomba-Piter in October.
"I played a lot of keyboards and bass on the record," he says about the experience, claiming that it had little to do with music per se.
"There were around ten people there, but only three musicians among them, at most. The instruments used to be switched on, and they played whatever occurred to them," says Fedyakov. "And Khvost used to take some of his poems and tried to recite them over the music. Or even shout."
Fedyakov, who is also a painter, sounds disillusioned about the contemporary Western world and admits that he dreams of coming back to St. Petersburg.
"The main thing is to remember that we live in the 21st century," he says. "Nobody gives a f**k about art in a civilized world. I think God rarely visits France because he receives a cold welcome here."
Still, Fedyakov says, he is not unhappy.
"I'm sitting at home like a monk, in underwear, with my Portastudio, and I don't care about anything," he says "I am recording [an album] quietly, slowly and single-mindedly. And I like it a lot."
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Esco Bar, the recently launched spot on the beach of the notorious Dyuni sanitarium, will throw a farewell party this Friday - as the administration has asked it to leave.
The place, which can be accessed only by going through the sanitarium's, has been oriented toward well-off techno-partygoers. In an emotional press release, Esco Bar director Yury Miloslavsky said that the bar has been unfairly accused of promoting drug use, "From accusations that our territory was covered by used syringes to those that we deliberately attract drug addicts."
In the next paragraph, though, he wrote, "We won't deny that we are also not angels. Having promoted several events, we started to understand that the public that stays until the morning leaves much to be desired, and that the number of people using illegal substances is growing visibly."
"In this regard, we strengthened the security, introduced face control and cut the number of events, but the flow of accusations has only grown," he wrote.
Whatever the accusations might be, Esco Bar was named in honor of Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin cartel and the world's richest and most brutal drug trafficker, who was shot dead by Colombian security forces in 1993.
As summer fades away, and with no interesting events in sight, promoters are preparing to cash in on the public's cultural hunger in autumn.
Big things start with U.K. pop diva Geri Halliwell on Sept. 2. The former "Ginger" of the Spice Girls was scheduled to play St. Petersburg this spring, but the show was canceled. The venue is the Ice Palace, which also promises an even worse "treat" - Australian heartthrob Darren Hayes, formerly of Savage Garden, on Oct. 28.
Also on the Ice Palace's schedule is Robert Plant, who has never played St. Petersburg - both his local concerts were canceled - but is set to do so on Nov. 12.
The U.K. electronic/noise band Coil will perform at a yet-unannounced location in Moscow on Sept. 18. Like U.S. schlock-horror diva Diamanda Galas, Coil enjoys inexplicable popularity in Russia. Promoted in Russia by Moscow's FeeLee label, the band put together a "specially for Russia" double CD compilation with a Russian title last year, and is planning to release a video of its concert last year in Moscow. No local promoter seems to have been interested enough to bring Coil to St. Petersburg.
Goldie will also appear in Moscow, at the club 16 Tons on Sept. 13. Bizarrely enough, the U.K. jungle pioneer will launch the tour to promote his third album, "Sonic Terrorism," there.
On the jazz scene, the Moscow-based Igor Butman Quartet will come to St. Petersburg, bringing in renowned U.S. trumpeter Randy Brecker as a special guest.
Brecker, who played with the seminal jazz-rock band Blood, Sweat and Tears in 1967-1968, has a successful solo career. His trumpet can also be heard on a hundreds of albums by such artists as James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, Chaka Khan, George Benson, Parliament, Funkadelic, David Sanborn, Horace Silver, Jaco Pastorius and Frank Zappa. The concert will take place at the Shostakovich Philharmonic on Sept. 12. Tickets are already available.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: careful with that samogon now
AUTHOR: by Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The first time I drank samogon, or home-distilled liquor, was in a leaky, Russian-made tent by the Black Sea, in the pouring rain. Like the late Jeffrey Bernard, the renowned British souse-cum-columnist, I was "unwell" that evening.
The restaurant-bar Samogonshchiki, while happily not resembling the aforementioned tent, also offers distinct possibilities to leave in a Bernard-like state. Its business card, thoughtfully provided under the ashtray on every table, advertises "Drinks to the special recipes of the 'Moonshiners,'" a reference to the classic Soviet comedy about the (mis)adventures of three drunks.
My dining companion and I, however, being true professionals, were not there just for the booze, and Samogonshchiki offers a copious food menu as well.
While purporting to offer the standard Russian and European cuisine, Samogonshchiki's extensive menu actually contains influences from such diverse cuisines as Mexican (Burritos) and Thai (a Thai salad). These influences pervade the more usual dishes as well, and it was wonderful to find such ingredients as tiger shrimp, sesame seeds, ginger, soy sauce and balsamic vinegar being used creatively and to great effect.
In addition, for a place with such an unusual, imaginative menu, Samogonshchiki's prices are eminently reasonable: Starters are generally around or under 150 rubles ($4.75), with black caviar the most expensive at 290 rubles ($9.15). Most main courses cost no more than 300 rubles ($9.50), and even the rarities of duck and quail, the most expensive dishes there, are only 590 rubles ($18.65). While there are plenty of meat-free starters, there is - as far as I could make out - just one vegetarian main course: pasta neapolitana (120 rubles, $3.80).
Alcohol is more expensive: A bottle of wine - there are selections from European and New World vineyards - will set you back anywhere between 500 and 2,399 rubles ($15.80 and $75.75), although most are nearer the former figure. The beers on offer is mainly Czech, and mostly cost 90 rubles ($2.85)
The menu, both visually and in terms of content, is illustrative of the meticulous care that has obviously been lavished on Samogonshchiki. Everything about the place - the interior; the place-mats; the food presentation; the friendly, attentive service - seems to have been planned, right down to the finest detail.
While perusing the menu, I ordered an unfiltered Shofferhofer beer (90 rubles), which arrived promptly and made for a most refreshing change.
For starters, my companion chose the "Tonkaya Taliya" ("Slim Waistline") at 70 rubles ($2.20), which differed from the description on the menu, but was a simple plate of vegetables with smetana. This got a thumbs up for the quality of the fresh, juicy vegetables and the smetana, which my companion described as "the sort you only get at the market."
I went for "Trus, Balbes, Byvalny" (100 rubles, $3.15), which consisted of a tower of half a dozen very good draniki, or potato pancakes, with ramekins of three sauces, of which I particularly enjoyed the spicy tomato one. (Fact fans: the dish is named for the three characters in the film.)
As a main course, my companion chose a chicken fillet with sesame seeds and an orange sauce. This consisted of strips of chicken coated in the seeds, with generous amounts of sauce and a small portion of rice. My companion raved about the unusual combination of the seeds and the orange with the tender, and gave the dish full marks.
I was unable to resist the sturgeon steak with ginger and soy sauce (the most expensive fish dish at 290 rubles, $9.15), with a side order of grilled vegetables (70 rubles, $2.20). The thick, pungent sauce was more obviously soy than ginger, and almost overpowered the more subtle taste of the fish, which was well cooked without being tough. I loved it.
After this, we sat and digested, and I persuaded my companion to help me with a dessert. Unfortunately, the ice cream with pineapple sauce (served in a coconut shell, another neat touch) was not available, so we picked the Irish-coffee ice cream (150 rubles, $4.75). As with all our selections, this was thoughtfully presented, in a little ceramic pot, and topped with coffee beans. It was also delicious: rich and creamy without being sickly, and with a noticeable hint of alcohol that suggested it had been made on the premises.
I couldn't leave Samogonshchiki without trying at least one of the home-made liquors (purely for professional reasons, of course). These all have wonderfully comic names, and I eventually plumped for one called baboukladchik (untranslatable, but something like "chick-bedder"), which is described on the menu as "A perfidious drink that can make you forget about moral scruples for an evening." While I did not have enough to get to that stage (unfortunately), the drink did have a certain kick, and I was still feeling the effects half an hour later.
Overall, Samogonshchiki is thoroughly to be recommended. Having discovered that it is not necessary to be in a tent in the low Caucasus to enjoy the drink, I suspect that I will be back in the not-too-distant future to explore further the joys of samogon.
Samogonshchiki. 34 Ul. Nekrasova. Tel.: 273-6645. Open daily, noon to 1 a.m. English-language menu available. Dinner for two with alcohol: 1,055 rubles ($34).
TITLE: helsinki's cultural feast
AUTHOR: by Luke Tchalenko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: "You're so sadly neglected
And often ignored,
A poor second to Belgium,
When going abroad.
Finland, Finland, Finland ..."
Michael Palin, from the album "Monty Python's Contractual Obligation"
A lot has changed in Finland since Palin and the Python crew mercilessly ridiculed the country over 20 years ago, not least of which is the emergence of the Helsinki Festival from a small classical music event to one of the major cultural festivals in the European calendar.
The annual Helsinki Festival, which gets under way on Aug. 23, should offer even the most cynical Python fan a good enough reason to make the trip over the border into a world of dazzlingly clean streets and European-priced beer for the over two-week-long cultural extravaganza.
The festival began in 1951 as the Sibelius Week of classical concerts but, in keeping with the turbulent atmosphere of the 1960s, the name and the format were changed in 1968.
The newly christened Helsinki Festival turned what had been a staid classical-music-only event into the rollicking international mixture of dance, music, theater, circus and visual arts it is today.
The Lord Mayors' concert in centrally located Senate Square on Saturday promises to be a highlight of the festival's opening weekend. The free performance includes international pop acts accompanied by the official festival orchestra, which is made up of members of the Helsinki Philharmonic and Finland's UMO Jazz Orchestra.
The Huvila festival tent, situated near the Finlandia Hall, will offer a diverse program featuring everything from Iranian musician Sussan Deyhim and Norwegian Sami Mari Boine, who bases her music on traditional Lapp melodies, to the Evening With Living Poets, featuring notables such as Paul Auster.
The Finns can match their Russian neighbors with their penchant and tolerance for vodka, but visitors to Helsinki will not be able to escape the festival by slipping away from the concert halls and theaters for a few glasses of Finland's finest. The Art Goes Kapakka program will bring culture to carousers in the form of musicians and performers trawling the city's watering holes and eateries. Expect Finnish national dress and loud traditional song to replace idle pub banter.
Russian baritone Dmitri Khvorostovsky, accompanied by compatriot Mikhail Arkadiyev, takes center stage at the Finnish National Opera on Aug 28 for the Russian Romances concert. The performance, expected to be one of the best of the festival, is one of the few events that is already sold out, though stand-by tickets may become available.
The Teatr Novogo Fronta, founded in St. Petersburg but now based in Prague, brings its unmistakable blend of conceptual and somewhat mystic theater to Helsinki with a performance of "Primary Symptoms of Name Loss," a theatrical adaptation of a diary found in the cloak-room of a Soviet factory in the fall of 1984. The performance will take place at Alexander Theater on the festival's last day, Sunday, Sept 8.
Helsinki's Russian influences run a lot deeper than the traveling Russian artists at the festival, however. The vast Russian Orthodox Uspensky Cathedral dominates the downtown area around Market Square, and just a few meters away in the square itself, a double-headed eagle bears testament to the country's Russian imperial legacy.
For Muscovites who find themselves missing home and pining for the grubby interiors and cheesy music of an average Russian bar, the Kaurismaki umlaut on second a brothers are happy to sate that nostalgia with the Cafe Mockba at 11 Eeirnkatu. The makers of the zany 1986 film "Leningrad Cowboys Go America" have created a dingy bar, complete with a samovar, an old gramophone churning out Soviet hits and a sign next to the cash register reading: "In Lenin we trust; others pay in cash."
For more details and ticket reservations, contact the festival's ticket office at +358-600-900-900.
TITLE: messing about on the river
AUTHOR: by Aliona Bocharova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As summer fades away and St. Petersburg's white nights turn ever darker, those in search of an evening's entertainment face a dilemma: It seems a shame to spend the last days of true summer in the smoky, sweltering atmosphere of a bar or a club, but not much is happening outside. The number of bars is limited in any case, and, besides, everyone wants to try something different occasionally.
But what is there to do, short of taking the dog for a walk while wearing headphones? The Jazz Boat might just be the answer.
While a boat trip along the Neva River has long been a staple part of the St. Petersburg experience for tourists, the addition of pleasant live music provided by musicians from the city's oldest jazz venue - Kvadrat (Square) - in place of the tour guide delivering information about the city's history, makes for a relaxing, different way to spend an evening.
"The club began in 1964 as the first jazz club in town, and the first boat trip was organized in 1967," says Natan Leites, the president of Kvadrat. "I remember every trip that has happened ever since."
The trips were originally just for those in the club's audience - musicians and artsy, intellectual types - who partied from midnight until 6 a.m. while enjoying the sea breeze coming off the Gulf of Finland.
It was only last year that the club decided to run boat trips for the general public.
"Last summer, we did it three times, but this year the boats have been running all summer," says Leites, who is now 65. "A few of the last ones will take place later this month."
Today's trips are, of course, different: the cruise lasts from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., and generally attract a large number of tourists who care more for french fries and beer than for jazz. Leitis, however, is in no way disappointed.
"We still hold one club boat trip every year," he says.
Although getting on that boat to discover what the trips were like in the old days is virtually impossible, Leitis does have plenty of stories to tell.
St. Petersburg's jazz culture got going when Kvadrat started up, and it was just one year later that the city's first jazz festival was held, with some success. After this, the club changed its name to City Jazz Club and, in 1966, organized what was, at the time, Russia's biggest jazz festival, which saw 28 bands playing on the largest stage in the city, at the Winter Stadium on Italyanskaya Ploshchad.
The first trips that the club's musicians undertook were by bus to Riga, and the club's first boat was granted by the local Komsomol, or Communist youth, brigade, which supported the club as a youth activity.
Now, Leites laughs when thinking back to some of the problems the group faced.
"The main difficulty concerned the musical instruments - getting a piano on board is never easy," he smiles. "Since there was no taxi service that would help us load a piano on board, we stood by the road and hitched a lift on a mail truck."
The club boat trip became a local legend, and attracted all sorts of attention. "At the wharf we had to look out for invaders from neighboring boats who tried to jump onto ours," recalls Leites. "The television company was also very interested, and offered to support us by covering half of our expenses."
Although the club was eventually forced to move into the Kirov Dom Kultury, at 83 Bolshoi Pr. on Vasilievsky Island, which had a leaky roof and a colony of pigeons occupying the top floor, the jazz club - and jazz culture - flourished until 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.
With the arrival of Gorbachev, according to Leites, the jazz scene faded and became less of a symbol of dissent against the regime.
Under Gorbachev, he says, "we were just carrying out the khosyaistvenny [executive-economic] plan, like any other part of the Soviet system."
During this whole period, all of the city's jazz bands appeared on stage at Kvadrat, and some of them can now be seen on board the boat.
The upper deck of the boat trips plays host to mainstream jazz, courtesy of Alexei Kanunnikov's band, Leningrad Dixieland, while the lower deck showcases contemporary, more experimental jazz acts, featuring regular jazz musicians from the Kvadrat, such as Yevgeny Strigalyov and Dmitry Popov.
While the open-air deck upstairs has the advantage of a fresh sea breeze and great views, with only one shortcoming - the hard benches - the atmosphere downstairs is more reminiscent of a cosy club, with people chatting around the tables, a band playing at the front and a small bar in the back.
Although the boat is usually quite crowded at embarkation - it takes around 200 people - as it gets going the crowd begins to mill around and relax more.
Often, some tourists settle down at the back to take photos of the passing scenery with the boat's Russian flag waving in the sunset.
The boat departs from outside the State Hermitage Museum and pays tribute to the architectural ensembles lining the Neva upstream, before turning around and heading for the Gulf of Finland.
As it passes the surreal seascapes of the harbor near Vasilievsky Island and goes out into the open sea, there comes a moment of delight to savor, as the boat turns round and seems to be being willed along by the setting sun.
On the way back, the atmosphere builds up even more: parents dance with their children, the younger crowd rush to finish their drinks, and, at the center of it all, are the jazz musicians, who are adulated with a final round of applause.
The date of the next Jazz Boat has yet to be announced. Those interested can try calling Kvadrat at 322-2404 or 315-9046. However, the club is currently only open on Monday.
TITLE: an 'amber room' opens at last
AUTHOR: by Anastasia Boreiko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Amber, the "sunshine stone," has a long history in Russia. It became popular for its unique texture as early as the 13th century, and was used for decorative pieces and ornamentation, as well as necklaces and crosses. It was even believed that amber has supernatural powers - especially the rare white amber, which, even today, many believe to have healing qualities.
Amber is also the subject of the State Hermitage Museum's latest exhibition, which opened on Tuesday. The collection consists of 120 pieces, ranging from tobacco boxes to swords with amber handles.
The amber on display at the Hermitage is exclusively from the Baltic Sea region, and is different in quality from other amber, such as Chinese.
"Baltic amber is the best amber in the world - it is noble, moving," explained Alexander Gourovlov, who headed the restoration effort for the exhibit, at the opening on Tuesday. "Other ambers are either really old or really young."
According to Gourovlov, Chinese and other ambers are less interesting than the Baltic variety, and react differently to light.
The pieces in the exhibition have been hidden in the Hermitage since the end of the 18th century. Many of them came to Russia as a result of Peter the Great's interest in amber. Peter brought back numerous articles from his travels around Europe, while other pieces were added by Catherine the Great and Peter III.
In addition, several pieces date back to the beginning of amber-working in Russia in the 13th century. These pieces were excavated from a village near Moscow, and illustrate the value of the stone throughout Russian history.
Although some of the pieces have been on display at the museum before, the collection has never been opened in its entirety. The creators of many of the pieces are not noted at the exhibition, but most of them were made by artists from Germany, Prussia and Russia.
The new exhibition is housed in the Hermitage's Blue Bedroom, where special care has been taken to avoid damaging the stones.
The room's large windows are all covered by drapes, in order to keep too much natural light from hitting the stones: because amber is so sensitive to sunlight, the pieces must be kept in a dim environment, according to Gourovlov.
In addition, he explained, in order to preserve the stones' original tone and color, there must be no humidity in the atmosphere.
The newly restored collection boasts some unique pieces that use the "sunshine stone" in imaginative ways. It has both small pieces (such as hair pins and snuff boxes) and large pieces - possibly the most impressive work is an incredible chess set, which illuminates the collection both with the color and richness of the stone and the shape of the pieces.
TITLE: vietnam film at war with itself
AUTHOR: by Kenneth Turan
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: For a simple-minded film, which is what it is, "We Were Soldiers" manages to evoke a complex series of reactions: While its unrelenting sentimentality is frustrating, the overwhelming physicality of its combat sequences is undeniably impressive. In turn, these sequences are so powerful that they take on a life of their own, sending a message that is probably quite opposite to the one the filmmakers intended.
"We Were Soldiers" is the first Vietnam War film with amnesia. It stars Mel Gibson as Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore, who, in 1965, took on 2,000 of the enemy with but 400 of his own soldiers in the first major battle between North Vietnamese regulars and U.S. troops. It's the first film to pretend that the American soul-searching the war caused - not to mention the conflict-laden films, from "The Deer Hunter" and "Apocalypse Now" through "Platoon" and "Born on the Fourth of July," it inspired - simply never happened. Intent on celebrating the undeniable heroism of American fighting men and taking advantage of the fact that the battle in the Ia Drang Valley took place before the war was on most Americans' radars, "We Were Soldiers" deftly sidesteps the messy question of why the United States was in Vietnam in the first place in favor of giving deserving soldiers the old-fashioned heroic warrior treatment. This is a film where men next door to death say, "Tell my wife I love her," and "I'm glad I could die for my country." Irony may not be dead globally, but it certainly is here.
In this, "Soldiers," written and directed by Randall Wallace from the book Moore wrote with journalist Joseph L. Galloway, is smarter than the Vietnam film it most resembles, John Wayne's 1968 "The Green Berets." While that film is crippled by its determination to showcase the plight of the plucky South Vietnamese and demonize the evil North, "We Were Soldiers" goes out of its way to paint the North Vietnamese officers and men as equally heroic individuals who just happened to be on the wrong side of the fence.
There is nothing wrong with celebrating genuine heroism, and it's hard to argue with Moore and Galloway's point, made in their book, that not enough people were "sensitive enough to differentiate between the war and the soldiers who were ordered to fight it." But this film's sincere brand of retro revisionism and depoliticization is going too far in the opposite direction, and Wallace's wholehearted embracing of the extremes of corniness in the film's noncombat sequences are certainly nothing to applaud.
After a prologue showing French troops having their own troubles in the Ia Drang Valley in 1954, "We Were Soldiers" shifts forward a decade to Fort Benning, Georgia, where Moore, assisted by leathery Sergeant Major Basil Plumley (Sam Elliott) is a central figure in preparing junior officers for the new air cavalry style of warfare that makes extensive use of helicopters.
It's unfortunate that Wallace, who wrote Gibson's "Braveheart" as well as the recent "Pearl Harbor," has such an irrepressible passion for sappy situations and dialogue. The gee-whiz soldierly camaraderie he fondly depicts gets rapidly tiresome, as do the scenes of Moore's idealized family life with wife Julie (Madeleine Stowe) and five of just the cutest kids, including a little girl who winsomely asks, "Daddy, what's a war?"
Even in these situations, star Gibson is very much a strength, bringing the requisite air of quiet command to one of the most effective of his recent roles. Tough, brainy, charismatic, someone who is as much a father to younger officers like Bruce Crandall (Greg Kinnear) and Jack Geoghegan and his wife (Chris Klein and Keri Russell) as to his own children, Gibson's Moore is a kind of John Wayne for the new century, a man so indomitable it makes you wonder how the North Vietnamese managed to win the war.
Except for an unhappy sequence of wives back home dealing with death-announcement telegrams, "We Were Soldiers" becomes a very different film once the men go into combat and find themselves trapped and outnumbered like another 7th Cavalry, George Armstrong Custer's, a century earlier. If not for the eventual presence of reporter-photographer Galloway ("Saving Private Ryan's" Barry Pepper), this story would probably have been even more unknown than it actually is.
The film's sentiments may be retrograde, but "Soldiers'" savage action sequences, most impressively shot by Dean Semler using anywhere from four to 11 cameras, are indelible, even as part of us is saying, "Oh no, not another state-of-the-art battle film." There has been a lot of memorable combat footage over the last several years, from "Saving Private Ryan" to the current "Black Hawk Down," but the way Wallace and Semler have shot the multi-day battle that takes up most of "We Were Soldiers'" screen time makes it stand out.
Wallace's idea was not necessarily to be as brilliantly artistic as, for instance, Ridley Scott and cinematographer Slawomir Idziak were in "Black Hawk Down" but rather to create, as he told American Cinematographer, "a document of the battle taking place before us." As a result, the combat in "We Were Soldiers" has a brutal, savage, unrelenting quality, with enough of the blood, the screaming and the life-and-death chaos of hand-to-hand combat to make the terror on the soldiers' faces more than believable. A sequence of one soldier trying to cut the burning parts off a comrade's face that has been seared by a white-phosphorous round is exactly as harrowing as it sounds.
As the battle goes on and more and more innocent young men are cut down without a prayer, "We Were Soldiers" undercuts its avowed aims and becomes, paradoxically, less and less the "tribute to the nobility and uncommon valor of those men under fire" the press notes say it wants to be and more like the classic anti-war films "Paths of Glory" and "All Quiet on the Western Front."
Heroism and courage are not the words that come to mind after witnessing what we see here but rather slaughter and terrible waste. We feel the pointlessness of these deaths, the awful devastation on both sides. Especially because we cannot forget what this film prefers to avoid knowing, that bravery and self-sacrifice without a reason are not cause for celebration but rather one of the saddest, one of the most regrettable of human activities.
TITLE: China Races Against Time To Stop Floods
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: CHANGSHA, China - An army of Chinese soldiers and civilians is racing against time to stop a huge lake from bursting its banks and flooding an area that is home to millions.
About 900,000 people in the southern province of Hunan piled up sandbags as a crest of floodwater from days of incessant rain surged down the Yangtze River towards the dangerously swollen Dongting Lake, local officials said on Thursday.
The flood surge was expected to reach the lake - where waters are rising inexorably - by Sunday. If Dongting, which is about the size of Luxembourg, bursts its banks, water could wash across flat, fertile farmlands where 10 million people live.
Two cities, Changsha and Wuhan, with a combined population of 13 million, are also at risk. Hundreds of kilometers of embankments have to be watched round the clock for breaches to be plugged.
People worked around the banks of the lake and along four swollen rivers that feed it after the provincial government declared a flood emergency for the first time since 1998.
"They have surrounded the lake," said a flood-control official in Changsha, the provincial capital about 100 kilometers from Dongting. "There are 900,000 people fighting the floods. There are people everywhere."
Television showed them piling sandbags around the lake, a major overspill for the Yangtze.
In Changsha, some 3,000 people had evacuated an island in the middle of the Xiangjiang river, one of the four feeding Dongting, which was almost completely submerged. Soldiers and fishermen ferried people to higher ground in wooden boats. Others waded through their homes in water more than waist deep or took refuge on second-floor patios.
"Some people have been clearing out, others are going back to collect their stuff," said fisherman Duan Xuicheng. "I've been taking them back and forth from morning until night."
The worst is yet to come. The Yangtze flood peak is still surging through neighbouring Hubei province and will not reach Dongting until Sunday, another flood control official said.
"The flood peak will hit Dongting on the 25th, pushing its waters up to 35 meters," said one flood control official.
Dongting rose to 34.57 meters on Thursday, 2.57 meters above the flood warning level, state television reported.
Water levels could match those in 1998, when the worst floods in decades killed more than 4,000 people after the Yangtze and Dongting burst their banks, the China Daily said.
With more than 900 people killed this year already, government officials have said that this year's toll could exceed that figure.
Traffic was restricted in some areas to ensure that relief supplies, like tents for some of those expected to be driven from their homes, got through unhindered.
Dongting is China's second-largest freshwater lake and one of two major catchments on the Yangtze, which floods almost every year as it meets a network of tributaries and lakes in the big rice-producing provinces of Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi.
"All the water is coming together in Dongting, so its waters just keep rising," another flood-control official said.
People had begun fleeing their homes near dykes along the lake and the Xiangjiang, now at a record high, local officials said.
Dongting, which covers about 2,700 square kilometers, is at its fullest in three years but still short of its historical high of 35.9 meters seen in 1998.
The China News Service said on its Web site that 14 flood-control officials in Hunan had been punished for neglecting their duties. It gave no further details.
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In Germany, High waters moved closer to the mouth of the Elbe on Thursday, as the river kept thousands of volunteers scrambling to reinforce dikes to prevent further flooding and European leaders discussed how to finance the cleanup.
As the Czech Republic began to rebuild, officials said the flooding caused millions of dollars' worth of damage to cultural treasures, including handwritten scores by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and a rare bible.
The rain-fed floods that have raged across central and eastern Europe have caused billions of euros of damage and claimed the lives of 113 people.
Although flood waters had receded to the point that officials in the northern port city of Hamburg said the swollen Elbe did not pose any threat, tens of thousands of people were still unable to return to their homes in the devastated eastern regions of the country and in the Czech Republic.
Hundreds of strained dikes in Germany remained under constant observation. More than 13,000 people filled and stacked sandbags to shore up barriers near Dannenberg, about 85 kilometers southeast of Hamburg.
South of Vienna, a new string of thunderstorms unleashed more flooding overnight, swamping local highways and several houses in low-lying areas, Lower Austria emergency services personnel said. No injuries were reported.
(AP, Reuters)
TITLE: Protestors Gear Up for Summit
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Activists coming to the World Summit on Sustainable Development say they are planning massive demonstrations that will be organized and peaceful - unless police provoke them.
"We're not seeking violent confrontation at all," said Dale McKinley, a spokesperson for Social Movement Indaba, an umbrella organization of activist groups. But "if the security forces react in a heavy-handed manner, we will not be intimidated and will not be chased away."
Hundreds of African and overseas groups were expected to rally against world poverty, environmental decay and globalization throughout the 10-day summit, which starts Monday.
Nearly 60,000 delegates and 100 world leaders planned to descend on Johannesburg for the 10-year follow up to the Rio Earth Summit.
Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said Thursday he expected summit demonstrations to proceed peacefully. "We have always created conditions for negotiation."
A wide range of protests have been scheduled, from performance art to long marches. They unite behind an even broader range of causes.
Friends of the Earth International will stage a mock Academy Awards ceremony giving "Green Oscars" to companies deemed environmentally friendly. And a four-kilometer human chain, linking the impoverished township of Alexandra to the upscale Sandton neighborhood, where the conference is being held, hopes to highlight growing income gaps between the world's rich and poor.
Activists said they are standing up for the oppressed and underclass. Many dismissed the summit as a bureaucratic talk shop that will do little to eradicate poverty and stop environmental destruction.
"It's a gathering of hypocrites, and we feel the whole thing is illegitimate," said Trevor Ngwane of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, an anti-privatization group. "We stand for peace. We stand for justice. They represent the interests of the rich and powerful."
TITLE: Woman Killed at Fugitive Militant's Farm
AUTHOR: By Mark Lavie
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM - A bomb exploded Thursday at the farm of a fugitive Islamic militant, killing a Palestinian woman and wounding her son, and Israeli troops arrested a regional Hamas leader elsewhere in the West Bank.
Also Thursday, the Palestinian security chief, Abdel Razek Yehiyeh, was in Gaza for a renewed attempt at persuading Hamas and Islamic Jihad to halt shooting and bombing attacks in Israel, senior Palestinian officials said.
Twelve Palestinian factions, including the Islamic groups, were to resume talks Thursday in Gaza City on a joint political platform. Talks broke down earlier this month after Hamas and Islamic Jihad vetoed clauses calling for an end to attacks on Israelis and implying recognition of Israel. Yehiyeh was to participate in the talks, marking the first time a senior Palestinian Authority official is involved.
In the village of Saida in the northern West Bank, a 55-year-old Palestinian woman was killed and her son was wounded Thursday when a bomb exploded at the chicken farm where they were working, Palestinian security officials said.
The farm belonged to an Islamic Jihad fugitive, Ahmed Yassin, 30, the officials said. The fugitive is not related to the Hamas leader by the same name.
Also in the northern West Bank, Israeli troops arrested the Hamas leader in the town of Qalqiliya, Mohammed Wajeh Quoa, 41, Palestinian officials said. Quoa had been arrested repeatedly by Israel in the past and in 1992 was deported to south Lebanon for one year, along with 400 other Islamic militant activists.
The arrest came a day after Israeli security officials announced the capture of a five-member Hamas cell, including four Arab residents of Jerusalem. Cell members are suspected of detonating a series of bombs, including the July 31 blast in the student cafeteria of Jerusalem's Hebrew University.
Nine people were killed in the explosion.
The arrests of the four east Jerusalem residents took many Israelis by surprise, because Palestinians living in the city had been relatively inactive in the past two years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.
About 200,000 Palestinians live in east Jerusalem, the sector Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed to its capital. The Palestinians in the city have residency permits and blue Israeli ID cards that give them freedom of movement.
Eli Yishai, the Israeli interior minister, said he would work to revoke the residency permits of the four suspects, even before a trial is held.
"There's no reason, like in the past with previous cases, to wait for the court since the evidence speaks for itself and they confessed to what they did," Yishai told Israel Radio. "We must fight with all the power to stop this."
Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert said that "the vast majority" of Jerusalem's Arabs are peaceful. Asked about measures to prevent further acts of terror, he said, "One thing is certain. There will be no wall down the middle of Jerusalem."
Gideon Ezra, a member of parliament from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud party, said Jerusalem Arabs involved in terror should be punished harshly: "Cancel their social security payments, destroy their houses."
TITLE: Baseball Owners Make Offer To Players
AUTHOR: By Ronald Blum
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Trying to spark talks, Major League Baseball owners presented a new revenue-sharing deal to the players union, calling the offer a significant step toward what players want.
The proposal, made Tuesday night and disclosed Wednesday, was much better received than management's luxury-tax plan last week, which was so far from what players would accept that they set an Aug. 30 strike date.
Revenue sharing among teams and a luxury tax on high payrolls to slow salary increases are the chief issues that could lead to baseball's ninth work stoppage since 1972.
Rob Manfred, management's top labor lawyer, said the revenue-sharing plan was a "substantial move toward the union both in structure and in transfer amount."
He wouldn't disclose details of the proposal, but another person familiar with the plan, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it would transfer about $270 million, $12 million less than management's previous offer. Manfred said the next move is up to the players.
"I am frustrated," he said. "I'd like to get a more active dialogue going on the tax and the revenue sharing, but it takes two parties to have a dialogue."
In memos to players and agents last weekend, union head Donald Fehr said players agreed to raise the amount of money transferred from high-revenue to low-revenue teams from $169 million to $235 million annually, using 2001 figures. Before their latest offer Tuesday, owners had proposed a figure of $282 million.
Meanwhile, Frank Coonelly, a lawyer in the labor-relations department of the commissioner's office, sent a nine-page memo to team executives urging them to make plans to cut expenses.
Each team, he wrote, should "examine all of its contractual obligations, including agreements with other unions, employment contracts. leases, etc., to determine what cost-saving measures may be taken during the strike."
Since the 1994-1995 strike, which lasted 232 days and wiped out the World Series for the first time in 90 years, the commissioner's office instituted standard employee contracts for non-players such as managers, GMs, scouts and trainers.
Negotiators are working to prevent another walkout, but it appears that the talks, like always in baseball, will go right up to the deadline. With the sides stuck on the luxury tax, management turned to revenue sharing in an effort to build momentum toward a deal.
"We thought it was a productive step to try to move the other related piece in the hope the whole negotiation would move forward," Manfred said.
Players fear that a large increase in revenue sharing, when combined with a luxury tax, would take away too much money from high-payroll teams.
Manfred said owners had more room to compromise on revenue sharing and a luxury tax.
"We have the flexibility I believe is necessary to get a negotiated agreement, assuming all parties are willing to enter into meaningful compromises," he said.
TITLE: Hewitt Gets Tough Draw, Williams Final Scheduled Again
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: NEW YORK - Top seed and defending champion Lleyton Hewitt was handed a tough draw Wednesday for next week's U.S. Open, where he could meet red-hot Briton Greg Rusedski in the second round, while Serena and Venus Williams will be expected to meet in a Grand Slam final for the third straight time. Serena beat her older sister at the French Open and Wimbledon.
Australia's Hewitt faces France's Nicolas Coutelot to open his defense but will then come up against former runner-up Rusedski if the unseeded Briton beats a qualifier.
Rusedski is hot, playing excellent tennis last week beat Hewitt on the way to winning the RCA Championships in Indianapolis.
Second seed and 2000 champion Marat Safin also faces a tough time.
The Russian meets German Nicolas Kiefer in his opener and could then play former world No. 1 Gustavo Kuerten in round two.
Four-time champion Pete Sampras meets Spaniard Albert Portas while Andre Agassi, seeded sixth, plays fellow American Robby Ginepri.
The potential men's quarterfinal pairings: Hewitt vs. No. 8 Albert Costa, this year's French Open champion; No. 2 Marat Safin vs. No. 7 Juan Carlos Ferrero; Tommy Haas vs. Tim Henman; and No. 4 Yevgeny Kafelnikov vs. Agassi.
In the women's draw, top seed Serena Williams faces wildcard Corina Moriariu who has just returned to the circuit after having treatment for leukemia. Defending champion Venus Williams - seeded second - faces a qualifier, while ninth seed Martina Hingis meets American Marissa Irvin.
Hingis is in the same quarter of the draw as Venus and Monica Seles.
On the women's side, Top-seeded Serena Williams got a more favorable draw than Venus, the two-time defending Open champion. No. 2-seeded Venus has Jennifer Capriati, Monica Seles and Martina Hingis on her side of the field.
The earliest she could face a top-20 player is in the fourth round, against 15th-seeded Anastasia Myskina.
The quarterfinals could be: Serena Williams vs. No. 8 Justine Henin; Venus Williams vs. Seles; No. 3 Capriati vs. No. 7 Kim Clijsters; and No. 4 Lindsay Davenport vs. No. 5 Jelena Dokic.
(AP, Reuters)
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: A Big, Big Shock
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Spartak Moscow coach Oleg Romantsev will spend a week in hospital after an argument with his top striker, Dmitry Sychyov, who wants to quit the club, the Russian Premier Division team said on Wednesday.
"Oleg Romantsev has been admitted to a Moscow hospital," Spartak spokesperson Alexei Zinin said.
Romantsev guided Russia to the World Cup but was replaced after their dismal showing resulted in a first-round exit.
Zinin did not know the nature of the illness, but said the 48-year-old coach, who has suffered from heart problems in the past, will remain in hospital for the rest of the week at least.
On Wednesday, Spartak said 18-year-old Sychyov, Russia's best player at this year's World Cup in South Korea and Japan, had submitted a written request to annul his contract with the champion, which tied him to the club through 2006.
Spartak said the news, which "came as a shock for the Spartak management," had worsened Romantsev's condition, calling the player's action inappropriate.
Please Come Home
BEIJING (Reuters) - The Chinese Basketball Association has pleaded with the country's first National Basketball Association player, Wang Zhizhi, to return to the national team for the world championships.
Wang, who also plays in China for the military-run Bayi Rockets, did not report for mandatory training with the national squad after finishing the season with the Dallas Mavericks, fueling media speculation he might be seeking to defect.
But Wang, who has become a free agent able to sign with any NBA squad, said he opted to spend the off-season in Los Angeles to practice and rejected reports of a possible defection.
The official Xinhua news agency said Wednesday the CBA had sent a letter to the 7-foot-1-inch (216-centimeter) Wang saying he would not be punished if he returned and could still play in the world championships starting next week in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Record Renege
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Barry Bonds hits another historic home run and the man who ends up with the ball after a fight in the bleachers gets sued.
Last October it was a tussle over Bonds' record-setting 73rd home run of the season - one man got a glove on it, but another took it home.
This time, it's a guy who got a ticket to the game after allegedly promising fellow workers to split any profits on the remote chance he caught Bonds' 600th career home run ball.
That's just what Jay Arsenault, a 36-year-old carpenter from Vacaville, did Aug. 9, in the bleachers of Pacific Bell Park.
Now, ball in glove, he's allegedly reneging on a promise to share the wealth, according to three former friends who have filed suit in Solano County Court. The story was first reported in the Fairfield Daily Republic.
On Tuesday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order, saying the ball may not be sold.
Arsenault and the baseball have been ordered to appear in court Sept. 5 for a hearing. But there's no guarantee they'll show - he wasn't in court Tuesday and the lawyer his former buddies hired can't be sure the ball hasn't been sold.
"It's a sad case in a sense, because this was an agreement between friends and money got in the way," said attorney Curtis Floyd.
Not Gone Long
MILAN, Italy (Reuters) - The city of Florence showed huge support for its new soccer team on Wednesday with over 30,000 fans turning out to watch Florentia Viola's first match - a 1-0 defeat in a Serie C Cup match against Pisa.
Florentia replaced the city's traditional team Fiorentina after the two-time Italian champions were refused a license to play in Serie B at the beginning of the month and ceased to exist as a sporting entity due to huge debts.
Florentia, which starts next season in Serie C2, Italy's fourth division, was formed as a successor by the city council in a bid to keep professional football alive in Florence. It has since been taken over by Italian shoe tycoon Diego della Valle.
The new club's very young side, captained by Italian World Cup player Angelo di Livio, who has stuck with the city, lost in front of a full house at the Franchi stadium on Wednesday.
"The support was fantastic and is a real stimulus to us all to take the club to the top," said della Valle.
Project Goes On
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Reuters) - The sudden death of Swedish telecom-to-media tycoon Jan Stenbeck will not stop the syndicate he and his business empire sponsored from going after the Americas Cup yachting trophy.
"It is a bit shaky right now but all indications are that the project will continue," Fredrik Feldreich, head of Swedish yachting club KSSS, which is currently hosting the world match-racing championships, told reporters on Wednesday.
The Americas Cup, sailing's most prestigious event, is contested under the match-racing format.
A spokesperson for Stenbeck's Victory Challenge syndicate told Swedish TT news agency that they intended to fulfil Stenbeck's vision by carrying out the $30-40 million project to the end.
"Our Americas Cup effort was one of his major projects right now," TT quoted spokesperson Bert Willborg as saying from the syndicate's headquarters in New Zealand.
Stenbeck's boat, named Orm - the Swedish word for snake - is scheduled to compete in the America's Cup challengers' regatta, which begins in October.
Welcome Back
MELBOURNE, Australia (Reuters) - Australia welcomed 1998 U.S. Open finalist Mark Philippoussis back to its Davis Cup squad on Tuesday for next month's playoff against India, ending the player's two-year absence from the tournament.
Philippoussis, 25, was the hero of Australia's 1999 final victory over France in Nice but, over the past two years, has suffered knee problems and personality clashes with Australian officials.
World No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt will lead the bid by Australia, runners up in the past two years, to defeat India in the Sept. 20 to Sept. 22 playoff in Adelaide to qualify for the World Group next year.
Philippoussis has not played for his country since the first round tie against Switzerland in 2000.
"He has had some big moments for Australia and no bigger than in France," Australia Davis Cup captain John Fitzgerald, speaking from the U.S., told reporters in a teleconference.