SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #829 (94), Friday, December 20, 2002
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TITLE: EBRD Flood-Barrier Loan Approved
AUTHOR: Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The cabinet on Thursday approved the largest single loan ever granted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a $245- million credit to finance the completion of the St. Petersburg flood barrier.
 
The barrier, colloquially known as <i>damba, </i>or the dam, and which has been under construction since 1979 but is only 70-percent finished, is crucial to the structural survival of the city.
 The loan, which the federal government will repay over 18 years, provides more than half of the $418 million needed to build a 25.4-kilometer embankment across the Gulf of Finland. The money will also be used to establish a flood-warning system for the city, located just above sea level and often struck by floods.
 Signing of the final contract agreement is set for Friday, capping many years of negotiations. The city had first approached the EBRD with such flood- protection proposals in 1994, but talks sputtered along until Putin's government threw its support behind the initiative soon after he was elected in 2000.
 &quot;Beside the construction of the ring road and improvement of the underground lines, the flood-protection barrier is one of the city's top priorities,&quot; said a spokesperson for St. Petersburg Vice Governor Alexander Vakhmistrov, who is in charge of construction. &quot;Our city has always suffered from floods and it is crucial for it to have a well-functioning and contemporary means of protection.&quot;
 More than 270 large-scale floods have been registered in the city since it was founded in 1703. The most catastrophic, in 1824, left hundreds dead and more than 450 houses destroyed.
 &quot;The barrier will have a positive impact on navigation and the St. Petersburg port by providing an additional shipping channel, resulting in safer and more efficient routing,&quot; said a source close to the EBRD.
 The EBRD has reserved 540.3 million euros ($554.6 million) for St. Petersburg, or more than half of the projected $1 billion it plans to lend to Russia next year. The bank plans to loan $135 million to help fund St. Petersburg's ring-road project and $60 million for various waterway projects.

TITLE: Putin Gives Restrained Call-In Performance
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The usually sharp-tongued President Vladimir Putin appeared in a conciliatory mood during a 2 1/2-hour call-in show Thursday as he fielded questions ranging from pension reform and the Chechen war to the viability of reintroducing monarchy and why he wears his watch on his right hand.
 
Putin steered away from condemnations or populist gestures such as castigating a local official or giving someone a house. Instead, he gave statistics portraying a slowly growing economy and took time to spell out - sometimes at the risk of appearing boring - what government policies mean for the ordinary Russian.
 His answers looked like he was trying to project the image that a slow and sometimes mundane job of economic and political modernization lies ahead for the country.
 Projecting economic growth of 4 percent and an inflation rate of 15 percent for the year, Putin said the economy was slowly, but surely, growing stronger.
 Most of the 1.4 million questions sent to Putin via telephone and the Internet over the past five days and during the live television link-up Thursday with five towns, two villages and a military base in Tajikistan were complaints about low pensions or dismal living conditions, organizers said.
 However, Putin said Thursday that the number of Russians living below the poverty linehas dropped this year by 10 percent.
 &quot;Overall, one can firmly say that the country has become richer and the material well-being of most citizens has somewhat improved,&quot; Putin said, speaking from his Kremlin studio, where he was flanked by Channel One's Yekaterina Andreyeva and Rossia's Sergei Brilyov. &quot;That can be considered the main result of the year that was.&quot;
 Moscow and St. Petersburg were not included in the linkup Thursday. Organizers said the focus this year was on the country's backwaters.
 Although the call-in show, which was first held last December, is an attempt to allow people to bypass local bureaucracy and talk directly to the president, Putin made a point of acknowledging local leaders and said that establishing a balance of powers, responsibilities and funding among the federal, regional and municipal governments is one of the biggest tasks Russia faces next year.
 Addressing a group of reporters after the show, Putin said he had purposely refused to respond to personal requests. &quot;After reading some questions, you feel compelled to help,&quot; Putin said on Channel One. &quot;But, nonetheless, we should end the process in which the country's presidents resolve personal issues. More attention should be paid to the reasons behind people's concerns, and we should work on fixing them.&quot;
 But he said he would follow up some questions away from the public eye.
 Putin made one exception during the broadcast. He promised Oleg Orlov - a noncommissioned officer serving in the 201st division stationed on the Tajik-Afghan border who had received the Hero of Russia award in 1994 but couldn't get Russian citizenship - that he would soon be granted citizenship. Putin then used the opportunity to criticize the way that new laws regarding citizenship and foreigners are being implemented.
 &quot;It hurts me to hear that a hero of Russia doesn't have Russian citizenship,&quot; Putin said. &quot;That is impermissible. The president has special powers in this sphere, and your question will be solved within a week.&quot;
 Throughout the show, in which he answered 51 questions, mostly dealing with social problems, Putin emphasized that the federal budget could only afford a few additional expenditures.
 But he assured pensioners, who comprised the vast majority of callers, that the average pension of 1,496 rubles ($46.75) per month will grow next year to 1,690 rubles ($52.80). Taking a question from pensioner Venera Yermlayeva of the village of Tulbazy in Bashkortostan, Putin said pensioners will for the first time see the fruits of a new pension system next year, allowing them to accumulate part of their social payments in special accounts in state or private pension funds.
 As for budget-funded infrastructure such as health, housing and utilities, he said the main thrust of the government's policy is to pay benefits to those who need them rather than subsidize the organizations that provide the services.
 &quot;Money should not be paid to organizations because of their mere existence,&quot; he said.
 While acknowledging the difficulty of utility reform in a country with an impoverished population, Putin said it should be pushed further ahead.
 Inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations emerged as an important issue. Answering several questions on the subject, Putin warned against xenophobia and called for ethnic peace. But he failed to formulate a concrete national policy when a man from North Ossetia asked him to do so. &quot;We have a common fatherland,&quot; Putin said. &quot;We should treat each other as compatriots and members of one family.&quot;
 Putin reiterated his tough position on Chechnya. He brushed off suggestions that emergency rule be established or that peace talks be carried out with rebel leaders. He said Russia will stick to the policy of holding a referendum on a new constitution in the republic.
 &quot;The army has carried out its task. A completely different thing is needed there - the development of a political process.&quot;
 &quot;We have to ensure that the people take power in their own hands, that they have a Chechen constitution and that on the basis of this constitution legitimate bodies of power are elected that the people will trust and which will assume responsibility for the destiny of this republic.&quot;
 One question that Putin sidestepped came from a woman in the nuclear research town of Dubna in the Moscow region. She asked who would be held responsible for allowing Chechen rebels to take hostages in the Moscow theater in October.
 Putin replied that Russia and its Western allies in the anti-terrorist coalition don't have enough informants inside terrorist organizations. He said World War II-era measures such as having secret police rampaging the streets of Moscow and shooting suspected terrorists on sight are impermissible in a modern capital with 3 million visitors per day.
 &quot;We have to prevent such phenomena [terrorism] at an early stage, at its inception,&quot; he said. &quot;We don't have enough sources of information within this negative environment, information is vague and imprecise. That is why we are uniting in an anti-terrorist coalition of various countries to fight these threats.&quot;
 Foreign-policy issues were noticeably absent from the call-in show. One of the only questions with international ramifications was from a young woman in Kaliningrad who asked what would happen to Russia's Western-most exclave when its neighbors, Lithuania and Poland, join the European Union. Putin painstakingly explained the traveling rules he negotiated with the EU this year.
 Asked about the possibility of reintroducing a constitutional monarchy in Russia, Putin said he was tempted not to exclude any possibility, even an absolute monarchy. But that would be the wrong path to take, he said. &quot;There is no way Russia can be returned from the path of democratic development,&quot; he said.
 &quot;For a complicated, big, multi-faith and multi-ethnic country such as Russia, the bulk of the executive power should be in the hands of the head of state, at least during the current phase of development,&quot; he said.
 While the Kremlin has used news conferences to demonstrate Putin's human touch, only two questions Thursday gave any inkling of Putin's personal thoughts.
 Asked whether he is able to forgive insults, Putin said he can but it is difficult.
 And does he wear his watch on his right hand because he is left-handed? No, Putin said. He likes to keep his watchband loose, the winding stem would chafe against his left wrist bone.

TITLE: Assistant To Deputy Murdered
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Alexander Vasilyev, an assistant to State Duma Deputy Mikhail Grishankov, was shot dead on Wednesday on Ulitsa Beregova, in St. Petersburg's Vyborgsky district.
 
The 47-year-old Vasilyev, who lived in St. Petersburg, was a volunteer assistant to Grishankov, who is the chairperson of the State Duma Commission for Battling Corruption.
 Vasilyev's body was found at 9:20 a.m. on Wednesday at an outdoor sports facility, where he had been working out. He had been shot three times by an unknown assailant, including twice in the head.
 &quot;Vasilyev arrived at the club at around 9:00 a.m. at 4 Ulitsa Beregova. As he was approaching the metal parallel bars, the killer shot him in the head from behind, and then once more in the forehead to make sure he was dead. There were three shots in all,&quot; said Yelena Ordynskaya, the spokesperson for the City Prosecutor's Office. &quot;After this, the killer quietly put the weapon back in his backpack and walked away.&quot;
 According to the Prosecutor's Office, the weapon used was a Tula-Tokarev pistol.
 An official at the State Duma Security Committee, who asked not to be named, said that Grichankov had contacted law-enforcement officials in St. Petersburg to see that the investigation into the murder receives special attention.
 &quot;Grishankov has already spoken to the head of the Interior Ministry in St. Petersburg and asked him to supervise the investigation personally,&quot; the security-committee official said Thursday in a telephone interview from Moscow. &quot;He has also sent a telegram to the St. Petersburg Prosecutor asking him to pay particular attention to this investigation.&quot;
 Ordynskaya said that the investigators had already interviewed a number of people in connection with their investigation.
 An ex-naval officer and former submarine commander, Vasilyev was the co-president of a veterans organization and took part in drafting legislation related to social programs for secret-service agents. He was also one of the founders of a local personal-security company, Soyuz Offitserov (&quot;Officer's Union&quot;).

TITLE: Kremlin Gives Defiant General the Axe
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin fired one of Russia's most popular and outspoken commanders, Gennady Troshev, on Wednesday over his blunt refusal to accept a transfer from the high-profile North Caucasus Military District to a far-flung command in Siberia.
 
Putin signed a decree removing Troshev from his post after the colonel general was shown on national television defying Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov's &quot;offer&quot; to accept command of the Siberian Military District.
 Putin &quot;values&quot; Troshev's conduct as commander of the North Caucasus Military District, which has borne the brunt of the two military campaigns in Chechnya, said a statement released by the presidential press service on Wednesday evening. However, the president has found &quot;public discussions of the decisions made by the leadership of the armed forces unacceptable,&quot; it said.
 The commander of the Siberian district, Vladimir Boldyrev, will take over from Troshev. It will be decided in the next few days whether Troshev will continue his military service in a new assignment or be discharged, Interfax reported, citing a source in the Defense Ministry.
 Troshev angered Ivanov by publicly spurning his offer to swap posts with the Siberian commander, which would effectively have been a demotion for the veteran of both Chechnya campaigns.
 In an interview broadcast Tuesday night, Troshev said &quot;it is not time for such castling&quot; and pointed out that the Siberian district has one-third the number of combat-ready troops, even though it has the largest territory among Russia's six military districts. It also remains below the radar of the national media, especially when compared to the North Caucasus district.
 Ivanov responded to Troshev's pronouncement by asking Putin to fire him, since only the commander in chief can fire such a senior military official.
 Ivanov, a retired foreign-intelligence officer who is close to Putin, has been seen by some in the defense establishment as an ineffective defense minister. And Russian papers have speculated for months that Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the General Staff, who effectively controls the daily life of the Russian armed forces, is seeking to sideline him.
 Perhaps to head off further talk of a rift within the military, Putin's spokesperson on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, made a point of saying the decision to reassign Troshev was made jointly by Ivanov and Kvashnin. Troshev has been considered Kvashnin's man.
 The first report of the defense minister's intention to rotate the command of the two military districts emerged last week in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, which lamented the planned &quot;exile in Siberia&quot; of the combat general and quoted anonymous sources in the Defense Ministry as saying that Boldyrev had already agreed to the &quot;castling.&quot;
 The report generated no official announcement, however, until Troshev decided to go public. His appearance drew immediate fire from the Defense Ministry, Kremlin and State Duma.
 Paradoxically, the high-profile ouster will only help to propel the career of the 57-year-old Troshev, who would otherwise have had to spend the few remaining years of his active military service in Chita, a political backwater more than 6,000 kilometers east of Moscow.
 The ouster opens up a &quot;vast field of political opportunities&quot; for the outspoken general, who has gained both stars on his epaulets and popularity during his stint in the North Caucasus, according to one of Russia's leading independent military experts, Vitaly Shlykov. Troshev even has enough political weight to run for president, according to Shlykov, who once served as deputy defense minister.
 According to Aslanbek Aslakhanov, who represents Chechnya in the State Duma, and Union of Right Forces leader Boris Nemtsov, however, Troshev is more likely to run for the post of Chechen president as he is a native of its capital, Grozny. Aslakhanov said the idea has been discussed with Troshev, who did not rule it out.
 Troshev has made no public statement on his plans, although he once criticized a commander who quit the armed forces to run for governor.
 Two years ago, Troshev described the decision by his subordinate General Vladimir Shamanov to run for governor in the Ulyanovsk region as a &quot;betrayal.&quot; Shamanov won that post in December 2000, and it was later reported that he quit over an &quot;offer&quot; to be transferred to the Interior Troops, which are both less capable and less prestigious than Defense Ministry troops.

TITLE: Report: Russian Cos. Broke Iraq Embargo
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson and Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Three Russian companies have sold missile and helicopter components to Baghdad in violation of the UN arms embargo, a German newspaper reported Thursday, citing Iraq's declaration on chemical, biological and nuclear programs. 
 
 The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung published the article hours before chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix reported to the UN Security Council on the results of a preliminary examination of the voluminous declaration that Iraq submitted to the United Nations on Dec. 7.
 Citing the declaration, the paper said two Russian companies, which it identified as Niikhism and Mars Rotor, were instrumental in supplying Iraq with long-range missile parts via a Palestinian middleman. The paper also alleged that a certain Livinvest has tried to supply helicopters to Iraq in violation of the UN sanctions.
 &quot;Enterprises from at least two of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - Russia and China - continued, in violation of the relevant UN resolution, to engage in direct cooperation with Iraq over armaments,&quot; Die Tageszeitung reported.
 &quot;This information emerges from Iraq's report to the UN Security Council, and Die Tageszeitung has seen the passages in it relating to procurement,&quot; the report said.
 The list of firms that Iraq said violated UN sanctions includes 24 from the United States, eight from France, 17 from Britain and six from Russia, as well as companies from Japan, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Sweden, the paper said.
 Russian defense officials and industry experts dismissed the paper's allegations as &quot;rumors.&quot;
 However, Russian and international media and also an influential Russian non-proliferation watchdog have reported that two out of the three companies identified by the paper did cooperate with Iraq in violation of the embargo.
 A 1998 report by the Center for Policy Studies in Russia, or PIR, described this cooperation as follows:
 Iraq used Weaam Gharbiyeh, a Jordanian of Palestinian descent, to purchase 120 gyroscopes and accelerometers for long-range missiles from the Scientific Research Institute of Chemical and Construction Machinery - NIIKHSM - which is located in the Moscow region city of Sergeyev Posad that, among other things, dismantles missiles.
 According to reports on the Iraqwatch.org Web site, the Mars Rotor company tested the instruments before they were shipped to Baghdad at the end of July 1995. The location of the company could not immediately be determined.
 While many of the parts were seized by weapons inspectors, a significant number remain unaccounted for, according to the PIR Center's report.
 And in the same year, the Livinvest company was preparing the necessary documentation to export Russian-made M-17 military helicopter equipment and spare parts to Iraq via the Lebanese firm Amsar Trading, Die Tageszeitung said, citing the declaration. The paper added that it was unclear from the report whether the deal had gone through.
 Huawei Technologies Co. - the Chinese firm mentioned in the newspaper report - is said to have supplied fiber-optics for Iraqi anti-aircraft systems from 2000 to 2001.
 In a decision that has angered other member-nations, only the five permanent members of the Security Council were given complete access to the Iraqi declaration.
 A spokesperson for the Iraqi Embassy declined to comment when reached by telephone Thursday, and Russian officials were unfazed by the newspaper report.
 Gennady Saidov, deputy director of the NIIKHSM, said the &quot;Niikhism&quot; company mentioned in the article had nothing to do with his research institute, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency.
 None of the details mentioned had come to his attention during his lengthy tenure at the institute, he said.

TITLE: Currency Control Set for Limit Rise
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma's budget committee on Monday recommended that lawmakers vote to raise to $10,000, from $1,500, the amount of cash foreigners and Russians can carry out of the country without special Central Bank permission.
 
The recommendation by the influential committee comes ahead of Friday's crucial second reading of amendments to the law on currency controls, which passed a first reading in October.
 Currently, foreigners cannot take out a single cent without a declaration stamped upon arrival or a special bank receipt, while Russians can take out up to $1,500 without questions. 
 A source close to the committee, who requested anonymity, said the recommendation to raise the limit to $10,000 is unlikely to pass due to pressure from the government and the Central Bank. More important, he said, is making the rules of the game the same for everyone.
 The Central Bank has recommended a limit of $3,000.

TITLE: Making It Less of a Dog's Life for City's Strays
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: With the thermometer reading minus seven degrees Celsius and the wind whipping the large, old-fashioned umbrella that protects her and her goods from the snow and sleet, 79-year-old Nadezhda stood bundled up in layers of clothing at her little newspaper stand on Wednesday.
 
Her stand - a fold-out table, the umbrella and a chair - on Vladimirsky Prospect, near the Dostoyevskaya metro station, usually does brisk business, as the prices she charges for her newspapers, magazines, television guides and calendars are low. Some of the people who stop aren't interested in buying anything at all, but they give her money anyway.
 &quot;It's for dogs,&quot; they say.
 Every day, four stray dogs sit patiently by the spot where Nadezhda sets up her stand, eyes glued to the corner of Vladimirsky Prospect and Kolokolnaya Ulitsa, just opposite, waiting to catch a glimpse of her.
 After she arrives, she drags out four large cardboard boxes for them - portable dog houses - as she has been doing for over three years.
 &quot;What times these are!&quot; Nadezhda complains. &quot;If people throw babies into garbage dumps, then it's just as easy for them to kick out dogs.&quot;
 Nadezhda went to sell newspapers when her daughter, Tamara (neither woman would give her surname), stopped receiving her salary on time. They went as long as ten months without receiving anything and, Nadezhda explains, they had to buy medicine for Tamara's 24-year-old son, who is an invalid as a result of a serious head injury suffered as a teenager.
 It was when she began selling newspapers on the corner that Nadezhda says she noticed the group of stray dogs, searching desperately for food and attention. Nadezhda, who came to St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) in 1938 and served in an anti-aircraft battery during the blockade, sort of adopted the dogs.
 All of the dogs have names, and Nadezhda knows all their stories. She says that Belaya Lapka (&quot;White Paw&quot;) - Lapka for short - was born on the street, the daughter of Chernishka (&quot;Blackie&quot;), who ended up on the street when her owner was committed to an insane asylum. Jack also used to have a home, where his owner regularly forgot to feed him, while Sharik (&quot;Balloon&quot; - the name of the central character in Mikhail Bulgakov's novel &quot;Sobachye Serdtse,&quot; or &quot;Heart of a Dog&quot;) lost all his relatives.
 &quot;Sharik is my favorite, because he is an orphan,&quot; Nadezhda says. &quot;They killed his granny and his sisters.&quot;
 &quot;They&quot; are city employees whose job it is to rid the city's streets of stray dogs, particularly when there are complaints that a particular animal is dangerous. When asked how she knows all of these details, Nadezhda answers that she &quot;just knows.&quot;
 &quot;People have scared him,&quot; she says. &quot;Now, he doesn't let anyone pet him, not even us.&quot;
 According to Yelena Irkhoglainen, the head of the St. Petersburg Animal Protection Society, in 1998, the last year for which she has figures, St. Petersburg had about 10,000 stray dogs. She says that she doesn't think the number has changed much in the intervening years.
 &quot;Dogs and cats usually lose their homes because their owners are old and lonely people. So, if they have to go to the hospital or they die, the pets end up homeless,&quot; Irkhoglainen says. &quot;However, most stray animals are born to animals already living on the street.&quot;
 Yuri Andreyev, the head of St. Petersburg's Veterinary Department, said that educating the public about the responsibility involved in having pets is part of the answer to the problem, and that people have to understand that pets are not just toys, or ways to make money.
 &quot;People often get a dog or a cat without any idea of what kind of care the pet needs. Others get pets just so they can sell the puppies or kittens,&quot; he said.
 Irkhoglainen says that the situation for animals on the street, although bleak, is better than it was 10 years ago, with people treating stray animals better and many more people helping the dogs and cats.
 &quot;I know quite a number of kind babushki and other people who take care of as many as 12 animals, and Nadezhda Vasilyevna is one of them,&quot; she said.
 Watching the customers come to Nadezhda's table, about every third person seems to know her already. Some arrive carrying bags with food for the dogs. Others just give her an extra 10 rubles.
 One woman arrives with a young girl and a bag full of hot food. For the girl, it's a lesson in kindness while, for Tamara, it's a chance to learn something new about the dogs' eating habits.
 The woman empties out the contents of the bag - cooked pasta - for the dogs.
 &quot;Wait, they don't eat pasta,&quot; Tamara says. But the dogs prove her wrong.
 &quot;They ate the pasta!&quot; the little girl says, smiling happily.
 Nadezhda and the dogs are obviously popular in the neighborhood, and the sight of a reporter with a notebook asking questions worries some of her customers.
 &quot;She's a nice woman and these are peaceful dogs; they never harm anyone,&quot; one well-dressed woman says. &quot;Don't do anything that's going to be bad for them.&quot;
 Nadezhda's little spot often looks more like a neighborhood meeting place and a mini folk-psychology center, with people stopping to chat with her, complain about life's problems, or just ask about the dogs' well-being.
 But not everyone is so friendly. Nadezhda says that wealthy men with big, pure-bred aggressive dogs are the biggest problem. Sometimes, the owners let their dogs loose to go after Nadezhda's little group.
 Tamara says that taking care of the dogs with her mother has, in turn, taught her a lot about people.
 &quot;When I see a man walking by with a little dog, I know at once that he is brave and wants to take care of little ones,&quot; she says. &quot;But the ones with the dogs that are bred to fight are cowards; they have to rely on their dogs' anger.&quot;
 &quot;The best feeling we get from the dogs is to see their joy when they see us, and when we are able to find owners for their puppies,&quot; Tamara says.
 While Nadezhda and her daughter say that they have been able to find homes for the puppies, their attempts to settle the dogs themselves in homes haven't worked out. Nadezhda managed to find people willing to become the dogs' owners and take care of them, but the plan failed because the dogs just ran away.
 &quot;They are so used to their freedom on the street,&quot; she explained.
 The dogs follow Nadezhda home after work, but she doesn't let them inside. In the morning, they wait near the spot for her stall or, sometimes, wait outside her building. The dogs treat their little area as their home, and have even settled into a toilet routine, with Nadezhda taking them to a suitable spot nearby once a day.
 Her acquaintances at the stall worry about how difficult Nadezhda's life must be.
 &quot;This old woman shouldn't have to spend her senior years like this, freezing outside,&quot; says Alexander Melnikov, a young lawyer, who has three former stray dogs at home as pets and sometimes helps Nadezhda out. &quot;But this hard life makes her do it.&quot;
 But Nadezhda's complaints are for the pets.
 &quot;If I were the president, I would build a big house for stray dogs, hire good people to work there, and let them all live normal lives,&quot; she said.

TITLE: Terrorism-Book Author Warns Of Need To Tighten Security
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - While scrambling to safeguard nuclear materials after Sept. 11, authorities should also boost security at more conventional municipal facilities that, if attacked or sabotaged, could explode and cause widespread damage and a large number of causalities, the editor of a new book on terrorism said Wednesday.
 
Facilities such as fertilizer and industrial refrigeration warehouses could under certain conditions be turned into &quot;means of mass destruction,&quot; according to the book, titled &quot;Terrorism in Metropolitan Areas: Assessment of Threats and Level of Protection.&quot;
 The book, edited by Vladimir Dvorkin, a senior adviser at the PIR Center, the country's leading nuclear-security think tank, contains a list of industrial and other facilities with estimates of what damage they would cause if sabotaged.
 An explosion at a refrigerator warehouse would lead to an enormous fire and release tons of ammonium into the air, possibly poisoning thousands of people over an area several square kilometers wide, the book says.
 Urban facilities like refrigerator warehouses are usually fenced and guarded by some kind of security detail. However, attacks or sabotage of the sites would be significantly easier to execute than a strike on a well-guarded nuclear-weapons facility, Dvorkin said at a presentation of the book.
 Therefore, municipal facilities top the list of possible targets in a terrorist strike, and they should be as well guarded as nuclear sites, said Dvorkin and another security expert, Alexander Fedorov.
 The experts offered no estimates of what it would cost to tighten security.
 Russia needs at least 6 billion rubles ($190 million) to boost security at civil nuclear facilities alone, according to the State Nuclear Inspection Agency.
 &quot;This is the minimal sum that would bring [security] at a number of nuclear facilities up to international levels,&quot; agency head Yury Vishnevsky told reporters in November.

TITLE: Scheme Tackles Siberia's Housing Problems
AUTHOR: By Megan Merrill
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Last year, Tanya Weaver visited a family of eight living in a home that had so much mold on the walls that every single child had asthma.
 
&quot;The doctor's advice was: 'Get a better house,'&quot; Weaver said.
 Weaver was there to help them do just that. She is helping residents of two Russian cities learn to build homes for their neighbors as affiliates of Habitat for Humanity International, a U.S.-based, nonprofit Christian organization that builds houses for people without adequate shelter.
 Habitat's first Russian affiliate, in the eastern Siberian city of Ulan Ude, was officially registered in November, and residents will begin renovating two apartments at the end of January.
 Weaver is also setting up an office in Moscow, Habitat Russia, which will help Russian affiliates, raise funds, recruit volunteers and take care of public relations.
 &quot;We in Habitat believe that the organizations should be locally led so that it is locals helping each other and not foreigners,&quot; Weaver said.
 &quot;They came, taught us and helped to plan how to do things,&quot; said Galina Petrovna, head of Habitat Ulan Ude's board of directors. &quot;Now we have purely organizational issues. We have to decide things like where to build and how to deal with the government.&quot;
 Habitat Ulan Ude began three years ago, when Andrei Andreyev returned to his hometown from an exchange program to the United States and brought photographs of volunteers working on a Habitat building. He and Petrovna began to create an affiliate group with teachers, students, elders and construction workers.
 &quot;We have so few programs for people who are in need, especially of housing,&quot; Petrovna said. &quot;We have a government mortgage program. But it charges a high interest rate.&quot;
 &quot;Our program will be a big help to people in need, who don't have a home or who live in run-down homes. We have many such people,&quot; she said.
 More than 72 percent of Ulan Ude's population lives in buildings that require major repairs or lack water or sewage systems, according to a study by the Ulan Ude Statistics Commission. Overcrowding is a serious problem.
 Habitat sells the homes to the families at no profit, with a no-interest, long-term mortgage, while the government mortgage program charges about 35 percent interest, Petrovna said.
 To keep the mortgage payments low, the affiliate raises funds to buy materials. Except for the construction that must be done by state-certified professionals, all labor is provided by volunteers.
 The families themselves must help build the homes they will live in, and also must work on a Habitat home for another family. &quot;We call it 'sweat equity,' and it's considered half of their mortgage,&quot; Weaver said.
 Families chosen by the affiliate's selection committee must meet other criteria as well. They must live in substandard housing and make 75 percent or less of the per-capita income.
 The affiliate must get permission from the government to build, and Weaver said this is the stage where being part of an international organization is helpful.
 &quot;You do the work, but sometimes people don't pay attention to you because you're Buryat or Kyrgyz or whatever. Sometimes, it helps to have an international person behind you,&quot; Weaver said. &quot;I can't imagine that [Andreyev] could come to Moscow and people would take him seriously.&quot;
 Habitat Ulan Ude currently has the funds to remodel two apartments. &quot;They need to learn how to build and work with volunteers before starting big projects,&quot; Weaver said.
 Habitat Ulan Ude is finding out what is realistic, Petrovna said. &quot;To buy an apartment and fix it up turns out to be more expensive for us,&quot; she said. &quot;In general, I think we'll finish half-built houses.&quot;
 Weaver said Habitat would not build in Moscow in the near future because costs are too high and the capital already has some housing programs. &quot;There's a need, but there is a bigger need outside of Moscow, because the government pays so much attention to Moscow,&quot; she said.
 Another Habitat affiliate is getting started in Tomsk.
 Habitat for Humanity is a Christian group that does not discriminate according to religion or try to convert anyone. However, the group often runs into problems with the authorities.
 &quot;'Are you guys a sect?' That was the first thing they asked,&quot; Weaver said.
 Weaver said it is not clear whether Habitat Russia will be able to officially register with the government after the Nov. 1 changes to the law on foreigners working in Russia, since it also changed how groups register.
 Habitat will register as an autonomous, nonprofit charitable organization and not as a religious group.
 &quot;I don't know what's going to happen when they see we're Christian - but Habitat International isn't going to back down and let them not register us,&quot; Weaver said.

TITLE: Veteran's Death From Cold Stuns Ust-Kut
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Like other residents in his apartment block, 81-year-old Nikolai Bobkov was used to the bitter cold that comes with the eastern Siberian winter in Ust-Kut. 
 
This year, the World War II veteran lived in his one-room apartment without central heating for a second winter in a row, patiently waiting with several hundred other residents for the city to make good on promises to repair the heating system. He huddled over a small electric heater as the outside temperature dropped to minus 40 degrees Celsius at the beginning of this month.
 Then, the neighborhood's electricity was cut off on Dec. 5.
 Bobkov's frozen body was found Friday - two days after the power was restored. Television showed sheets of ice covering his apartment walls and icicles hanging from the radiators. The water in the toilet was a solid block of ice.
 The death has shocked Ust-Kut, whose chronic heating woes won national attention last December when 11-year-old Pavel Shvedkov asked President Vladimir Putin during a televised call-in show whether he would have to repeat a year at School No. 9 because classes had been cancelled for lack of heat.
 Putin replied that heating was the responsibility of the local administration, and officials in the city of 69,000 were quick to promise to fix the heating system.
 Bobkov, who lived alone and suffered from a heart ailment, was found after worried neighbors noticed that the lights in his apartment were on day and night and asked the police to break down the door, according to news reports.
 Doctors who examined Bobkov's body said his hands and feet were covered with frostbite, Ust-Kut prosecutor Nikolai Lyubshinov said Monday.
 &quot;The autopsy has raised some questions about the cause of the death,&quot; he said by telephone from Ust-Kut. 
 He did not elaborate.
 He said an investigation was opened into Bobkov's death Sunday.
 Switching off heating and electricity in the all-too-common disputes between power companies and regional and local administrations is nothing new in the regions, but incidences of people freezing to death in their apartments are rare.
 Heating problems started in Ust-Kut, some 500 kilometers north of the regional capital, Irkutsk, in 1996. Electricity is switched off up to three times a day.
 An unidentified Ust-Kut official told NTV television that the city lacks the money to keep utilities running and carry out major repairs to the dilapitated heating system. He said that the lion's share of the city's budget is spent on wages and heating fuel, and that the city had had to put up municipal property as collateral for a loan for additional fuel.
 Bobkov's neighbors told NTV that they have to wear <i>valenki (felt boots) </i>and coats at all times at home because heaters do little to keep the cold at bay - and the electricity is often off anyway.
 Lyubshinov said that in addition to investigating Bobkov's death, prosecutors have opened a separate case into &quot;the illegal deprivation of heating. But it is unclear who will be held responsible in both cases,&quot; he said.
 The Prosecutor General's Office in Moscow is overseeing both cases, he said.

TITLE: Putin Offers Guarantees for UES Reform
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Any Unified Energy Systems assets sold off in the course of restructuring the monopoly will get a fair price and lead to lower electricity prices for consumers, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
 
&quot;[UES reform] should be conducted according to a unified plan, and this plan has to be balanced and realistic,&quot; Putin told the country during a live television appearance in which he answered questions from all over the country.
 &quot;We need to create conditions in the electric-power sector whereby capital, including private capital, will flow, in order to expand the operations and increase the number of fossil-fuel power stations,&quot; Putin said.
 Putin said that only a fraction of the mammoth electric monopoly will be allowed to slip into private hands, while nuclear-power stations and the electric grid would remain under tight state control.
 Putin also addressed the sector's main problems, including disproportional tariffs used for residential consumers and industry. 
 Residential consumers currently pay much less for electricity than industrial clients, despite the fact that delivery of electricity to residential areas is more costly.
 &quot;This situation should be brought to a balance,&quot; Putin said, adding that one of liberalization's ultimate goals is to reduce tariffs.
 His remarks earned praise from analysts who said that his tone and words indicated that he fully understood the need for reform. They were also pleased that Putin emphasized reform's aim of attracting investment.
 &quot;[Putin] seems to have given his support for the reform,&quot; said Lauri Sillantaka of investment bank Troika Dialog. It was a positive indicator that Putin is concerned about the risk that assets could be &quot;given out for nothing to oligarchs,&quot; he added.
 Putin's remarks come amid heated debate among lawmakers over whether or not to consider in the key second reading a bundle of draft bills needed before the UES revamp can move forward. 
 The State Duma was scheduled to vote on the bills Wednesday, but its agenda-setting council balked, saying that more time was needed to study them. A decision on whether a vote will be held this month is expected Monday or Tuesday.

TITLE: Petersburg Brewer Ups Capacity
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A St. Petersburg micro-brewery has unveiled ambitious plans to develop the Russian market for ultra-premium beer. 
 Local brewery Tinkoff has begun testing production at its new plant in Pushkin, Oksana Grigoriyeva, Tinkoff's public-relations director, said in a telephone interview on Thursday.
 
The Pushkin plant will begin brewing beer for sale in February, 2003, with a planned capacity of 25 million liters per year, which amounts to six million bottles of ultra-premium beer per month. 
 Founded in 1998, Tinkoff currently runs three restaurants in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Samara, where it sells its own beer, and the company plans to open a fourth restaurant in Novosibirsk in the near future. The Tinkoff restaurant in St. Petersburg currently produces 250,000 bottles of beer per month. 
 Tinkoff has invested $15 million in the construction and equipping of its new brewery, using German-made Steinecker brewing equipment, Grigoriyeva said. 
 Market analysts estimate that the ultra-premium beer market in Russia amounts to 25 million liters per year, with the vast bulk of the market occupied by imported beers or foreign brews made under license agreements in Russia, such as Heineken and Corona. 
 Recent entrants into the high-end beer market, however, include the Peter The Great brand introduced by the St. Petersburg-based Bavaria brewery, which is part of Sun Interbrew Ltd. A number of other local breweries have also said that they are developing premium or ultra-premium products. 
 According to market analysts, Tinkoff currently occupies a 0.04-percent share of the beer market in Russia. &quot;We're not aiming for a major market share,&quot; Grigoriyeva said. &quot;We have small-scale production. Our brewery is like a 'home-brewery' and we focus on the quality of our raw materials and our own recipe.&quot;
 There are currently five breweries working in St. Petersburg: Baltika, Bavaria, Bravo, Stepan Razin and Vena.

TITLE: Result of Slavneft's 'One-Horse' Auction Faces Criticism
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A day after paying nearly $1 billion each to win complete control of Slavneft in a farcical auction, Sibneft and TNK said Thursday that they still hadn't agreed how to divvy up the spoils.
 
Sibneft President Eugene Shvidler told journalists that there were two options - either the two oil majors would split Slavneft's assets down the middle, or Sibneft would swallow it whole and give TNK a piece of itself.
 &quot;Slavneft will not be an independent company. We will either split it 50-50 with TNK or we will consolidate it with Sibneft and TNK would receive a stake in Sibneft,&quot; Reuters quoted Shvidler as saying.
 Later, however, TNK chairperson Viktor Vekselberg said that bringing Slavneft under his company's umbrella was still very much an option. &quot;One of the options is to merge Slavneft with TNK,&quot; he said.
 In an auction devoid of competition, Sibneft and TNK jointly snapped up the government's 75-percent Slavneft stake for $1.86 billion, just 10 percent above the starting price, which many observers felt would have been as high as $3 billion had the playing field been level.
 The sell-off had been billed as the biggest privatization in Russian history, showcasing the progress toward transparency and open competition absent in the insider deals involving government property that prevailed in the 1990s.
 In the end, however, it failed on all those counts. The $1.86-billion sale price was just below the $1.875 billion raised in the 1997 auction for 25 percent plus one share of state telecoms holding Svyazinvest, which billionaire speculator George Soros later called the worst investment of his life.
 With just one party bidding, many observers concluded that asset sales in Russia are still an insiders' game, confirmed by the events leading up to Wednesday's auction.
 In May, while Sibneft and TNK were quietly buying up blocking stakes in Slavneft's best assets, Sibneft, with the help of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and a small private army, replaced Slavneft's management with its own team. That discouraged outside Russian or foreign bidders, who would have had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, to gain complete control of the company, even if they won the 75-percent stake. 
 In the week leading up to the auction, Russian oil majors LUKoil and Surgutneftegaz pulled out of the race, while others, like Rosneft, were barred by obscure court rulings. The final hurdle for Sibneft, cash-rich Chinese oil giant CNPC, was essentially told that it wasn't welcome just a few days before the sale.
 Taken together, all this means that &quot;transparency in Russian sell-offs is not yet possible,&quot; the influential daily Kommersant concluded in a front-page article Thursday.
 Even Shvidler said that the auction shows that Russia is not ready for foreign capital - and just as well, because competition from foreigners is not welcome.
 &quot;From the point of view of profitability, forecasts and overall comfort, Russia is not yet matching the oil majors' requirements,&quot; Reuters quoted Shvidler as saying when asked why none of the foreign oil majors had decided to run for Slavneft.
 &quot;To be honest, we do not want competitors at all. We would welcome foreign oil majors only as equity investors,&quot; he said.
 Shvidler said that he could not rule out a possible mega-merger between Sibneft, Slavneft and TNK in the future, but he said that the industry was not yet mature enough for that to happen any time soon.
 Analysts said Thursday that it seemed most likely that Sibneft and TNK would opt to merge Slavneft into Sibneft, with TNK receiving a stake in Sibneft. 
 Pavel Kushnir, oil and gas analyst at United Financial Group, estimated that TNK could gain a 10-percent to 15-percent stake in Sibneft as a result of the share swap. UFG puts the value of Slavneft and its subsidiaries at $3.4 billion.
 Another option is to equally divide throughput at Slavneft's refineries and divide up the company's oil fields. That could take more time, however, as TNK and Sibneft would have to consolidate key subsidiaries into Slavneft, such as major producer Megionneftegaz, analysts said.

TITLE: GAZ Puts theBrakes on Volga Production
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - GAZ this week will halt production of its once-popular Volga sedan in a demand-driven shutdown that could last weeks or even months, the company said Tuesday.
 
&quot;We don't hide the fact that the car is outdated,&quot; company spokesperson Vasily Sarchev said by telephone from GAZ's Nizhny Novgorod headquarters.
 As the only luxury sedan available to regular consumers, the Volga was once the most desired car in the Soviet Union.
 But sales have fallen as demand for used imports in the same price category has risen.
 &quot;Although the profit margin on the car is very slim, we can't raise prices because consumers are hardly buying it as it is,&quot; Sarchev said.
 He said that just 63,349 Volgas were produced in the first 11 months of the year, a decline of 25 percent over the same period last year.
 He would neither confirm nor deny media reports that production will not restart until February, and then only for export, but he suggested that they were true.
 &quot;We don't deny there are a few large export orders scheduled for that period,&quot; he said. GAZ and its dealers have two months' worth of Volgas in stock, &quot;so it doesn't make sense for us to keep producing,&quot; he added.
 The state's second-largest automaker, however, hasn't completely lost its shine - overall production at its massive factory in Nizhny Novgorod is up 5 percent this year to 182,754 vehicles, thanks to the profitable Sobol and Gazel lines of commercial vans and trucks.
 But falling demand for Russian automobiles is hitting GAZ's rivals, too. The state's largest automaker, AvtoVAZ, has been forced to cut production by a third until the end the year, although many believe that it could take the company well into the new year before normalcy resumes. And No. 3 carmaker Izhmash-Avto has also cut back its production targets for the year, but not as drastically. An Izhmash spokesperson said that &quot;the situation on the market&quot; has forced the company to halt production for a week starting Dec. 23.
 &quot;Car companies share suppliers, so when VAZ cuts production, these suppliers ask us to slow down as well because it's not profitable for them to produce just for GAZ when their output is roughly 70-percent oriented toward VAZ and 30 percent toward us,&quot; Sarchev said.

TITLE: Russian Hacker Cleared in Test Case on Encryption Codes
AUTHOR: By Bob Porterfield
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAN JOSE, California - Elcomsoft, the Russian software firm acquitted of criminal charges that it violated the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, will continue to produce computer programs that decrypt security codes in many popular software products - but not Adobe's eBook Reader.
 
&quot;No more. We're not selling the product anywhere,&quot; a jubilant Elcomsoft president Alex Katalov said Tuesday after a federal jury cleared his company.
 Elcomsoft makes a variety of decryption programs for clients that include Fortune 500 companies and U.S. law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice itself.
 The Moscow-based company was accused of marketing a computer program designed solely to crack the security of Adobe's electronic book publishing software.
 Lawyers for Elcomsoft said that its program merely allowed users to make backup copies of eBooks and to read them on other devices, something permitted under the &quot;fair use&quot; concept of copyright law.
 The federal case against Elcomsoft was the first to go to trial under the controversial 1998 law, which Congress passed at the urging of Silicon Valley and the movie and recording industries. Many in the technology industry argue that the law is unduly restrictive.
 Elcomsoft's product, the Advanced eBook Processor Program, was based upon an algorithm developed by Dmitry Sklyarov, a 27-year-old programmer. He became a lightning rod for hacker rights after his arrest in Las Vegas, where he described his work at a convention.
 Sklyarov testified that his intent in writing the program had been to permit legal owners of eBooks to remove security restrictions that he believed were allowed under the &quot;fair use&quot; concept of copyright law.
 Jury foreman Dennis Strader said that the argument made an impact on the jurors, who asked the judge to clarify the &quot;fair use&quot; definition shortly after deliberations began.
 &quot;Under the eBook formats, you have no rights at all, and the jury had trouble with that concept,&quot; Strader said.
 The DMCA, which was being tested at trial for the first time, prohibits the production and distribution of any product designed primarily to circumvent security features of digital media.
 &quot;Clearly we're disappointed that the jury did not feel the government met its burden of proof in this case,&quot; Adobe said in a statement. &quot;We continue to believe that Elcomsoft violated the DMCA by selling a tool designed to hack the Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader and we stand behind our original decision to report Elcomsoft's activity to the U.S. Attorney's office.&quot;
 Civil libertarians say that the digital -copyright act stifles computer research and gives publishers, record companies and movie studios too tight a grip on online content. &quot;The good guys won one; it's nice to see,&quot; said Fred von Lohmann, attorney for San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that assisted Elcomsoft and Sklyarov in obtaining their attorneys.

TITLE: European Union Positives Outweigh Negatives
AUTHOR: By George Melloan
TEXT: THE European Union had a big day in Copenhagen last Saturday, when leaders of the 15 member states agreed to admit 10 new aspirants to membership. As with most EU events, there was a great deal of last-minute haggling before the deal was struck. Turkey, which has been stiff-armed for 40 years, was finally promised a chance to begin negotiations in 2004, if all goes well.
 
Amid all the self-congratulation, a nagging little question keeps popping up: Why does anyone want to join the EU? Its largest member, Germany, seems mainly interested in pulling other members down to its sickly level by forcing them to jack up taxes to the German level. The other prime mover in 1950 of what later became the EU, France, still has dreams of turning it into a new Napoleonic empire. Britain, frozen out by Charles de Gaulle for 10 years before joining in 1973, still isn't sure about whether it wants to trust the folks who run the euro.
 Some of the EU's creations have been disasters. Generous farm subsidies drain the EU budget and earn Europe the enmity of poor agricultural countries that can't afford to compete with subsidized farming. The insane fisheries policy encourages over-fishing, depleting fish stocks offshore in the Atlantic. The European Commission, the EU's executive branch, seems at a loss to explain what purpose is served in blocking mergers of companies not headquartered in Europe. The ambition for a common foreign policy that France has clung to from the beginning doesn't seem to be going anywhere very fast, mainly because members are unwilling to switch from welfare programs to spending that maintains military power.
 And yet 10 European states were hammering on the door to get into this club and there are more waiting in line. They all have their separate reasons. Poland's former communist leaders, who are rapidly running the economy into the ground, wanted to get their hands on some of those EU farm subsidies. Greek Cypriots want to erase the wall that separates them from Turkish Cypriots, using the leverage that EU membership can provide. The three Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, want some help in fending off the tender embraces of the Russians, who held them captive for 50 years.
 And so it goes with the other candidates, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Malta. Romania and Bulgaria hope to be in the next class to matriculate. And maybe after them would come the Balkan states.
 In principle, most of these aspirants have sound reasons. The one thing Europe's small countries have never had is security. Their leaders have noticed that EU and NATO membership has calmed down the ancient animosities that have soaked the European continent with blood for centuries. The Balkan horrors of recent years, which degenerated into such barbarisms as ethnic cleansing, was a reminder that Europe can still come up with deadly tyrannies of the sort practiced by Slobodan Milosevic. It took major military muscle, supplied by the United States and NATO, to subdue even a relatively small Serbia.
 Winston Churchill was prophetic when, just after World War II, he proposed that Europe knit itself together with friendly alliances. NATO, sponsored by the United States, became the answer to the Soviet threat. What later became the EU, which had its beginnings with the European Coal and Steel Community, helped build a European economy. It started with six countries, France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries, and has added members periodically ever since.
 The secret of this success was free trade. Trade barriers came down and the EU opened up to a free flow of goods, investment, services and people. Two of the most dramatic events were the Schengen plan, which demolished border checkpoints between signatories, and the single currency, which now makes trade easier for 12 EU counties.
 Peace, security and free trade are a winning combination and, despite the various relapses into bureaucratic interventionism, that combination is the reason states want to join. After the new entrants become members of the EU on May 1, 2004, it will constitute a common market of 450 million people with a $9 trillion economy, approaching the size of the U.S. economy, which exceeds $10 trillion.
 So, the EU has not lost sight of its reason for being, despite the temptation to merge all those diverse cultures into a &quot;United States of Europe.&quot; But, of course, it is still capable of fundamental errors. Its next big project is the creation of a European constitution, presumably for the purpose of harmonizing EU law. That may well be a bridge too far.
 Valerie Giscard d'Estaing, a former French president who has been put in charge of this project, is a somewhat dubious choice. His presidency turned out to be a messy affair when he was forced to admit, not long before his 1981 re-election bid, that Central African Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa had proved to be a very special friend, sending Giscard gifts of diamonds. Since Bokassa was a particularly odious dictator, with a bad habit of bumping off his enemies, this didn't go down well in France, even though the gifts were not illegal under French law. Giscard d'Estaing lost to the Socialist Francois Mitterrand, who held the presidency for two terms, despite some peccadilloes of his own.
 Why Giscard d'Estaing was picked for something as important as writing a new EU constitution probably has something to do with his patrician appearance and the fact that he is French. But he committed another error of judgment last week at a time when EU leaders were deciding to cut Turkey some slack, when he said that admitting Turkey to the EU &quot;would be the end of Europe.&quot; This affront probably convinced the EU leaders that it was time to quit rejecting a strategically placed NATO ally, hence the offer to Ankara to begin talks.
 But what are the chances that all members will be willing to further surrender their national sovereignty just so the French can pursue their goal of &quot;deepening&quot; the EU or (more precisely) enlarging its power? Britain, for one, might not find that an appetizing prospect. But, so far, the basic achievements of the EU have held it together, and the enlargement suggests that they are still a powerful draw.
 
 <i>George Melloan is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal. This comment appeared in Tuesday's edition of The Wall Street Journal. </i>

TITLE: Enjoying the Frozen Chaos of Life in Russia
TEXT: THE year that was did not bring the Kremlin victory in Chechnya, but it did see the government chalk up a series of victories in its ongoing battle with the free press. And that, undoubtedly, is far more important.
 
You can leave people without hot water and heat in their homes, but you can't cut off their propaganda. After all, a properly indoctrinated populace understands that it can do just fine without hot water, electricity and heat.
 While journalists in Moscow were persuading the president to forgive their excessive show of free speech during the &quot;Nord-Ost&quot; crisis, journalists in the provinces were under the gun. Criminal investigations were opened and searches conducted.
 The Moscow journalistic elite promised Putin that they would behave themselves. You can sleep easy: Censorship will not be introduced in Russia. There's no need for it. Everything the leadership could ever want will be done voluntarily, without compulsion or terror. The journalistic elite thinks too highly of its own well-being and places too much importance in its chummy relations with power to rock the boat. When it comes to lifestyle and mentality, are these people really any different from others in high places, be they government officials or captains of industry?
 There are exceptions, of course. Take satirist Viktor Shenderovich, for example. He clearly doesn't understand how good he has it. Instead of telling a few jokes, he announces a laundry list of unpleasantries and ruins his bosses' day. And I'll never understand what happened with Leonid Parfyonov's weekly show &quot;Namedni&quot; (&quot;The Other Day&quot;). It's thanks to people like this that censorship was nearly introduced in this country.
 Opposition-minded journalists took advantage of the 20th anniversary of Leonid Brezhnev's death last fall to compare the restoration of &quot;order&quot; under Putin to the years of &quot;stagnation&quot; under Brezhnev. But stagnation is impossible in the Putin era. Under Brezhnev, the regime's slogan was stability; the perception of stability as stagnation came rather late in the day. The political system became more strict, and the dream of freedom left over from the 1960s was dispelled. But society itself was stable and this is why the early Brezhnev years evoke such nostalgia in many people.
 The system had a firm foundation, although far-reaching processes were already under way that would, in the end, lead to the collapse of the Soviet order. Stability itself paradoxically gave rise to increased expectations throughout society, and these expectations brought the system down.
 The strength of the Putin regime derives from society's utter lack of hope that anything will ever change for the better. Some already have it pretty good, and for everyone else things couldn't get any worse. Most people have more or less adapted to their new life. Under Brezhnev, the country lived for 18 years without change, and at first life wasn't at all bad. The very lack of news was good news for people who still remembered the war and the Terror.
 The Russia that entered the 21st century was a country grown weary from unresolved problems and weakened by the sense of its own impotence.
 Tired of unsuccessful attempts to find a way out of the crisis, the country resigned itself to poverty, inequality, the systematic degradation of education and health care, the impossibility of winning or ending the war in Chechnya, the corruption and insolence of government officials. The chaos of the 1990s produced a desire for order. But &quot;order&quot; has only compounded the problems. The Kremlin, with all its repressive might and the full weight of its propaganda machine has guaranteed that the problems will never be solved. Society will no longer look for a way out of the crisis. It will live in a state of crisis and regard this as the normal state of affairs. Everything will stay just as it is. The current order is nothing more than frozen chaos.
 The country needs peace and calm. The government works to ensure that this calm is not disturbed. And if unpleasant events can't be prevented, then the people must at least be spared unpleasant news. That's why promoting prosperity in the information sphere has become a basic necessity for the state. If we can't live well, at least don't remind us constantly that we're living badly. Especially with the New Year right around the corner; and with the price of oil on the rise; and given that we have the most popular president in the world - not counting Turkmenbashi.
 It's time to kick back and enjoy the ride.
 
 <i>Boris Kagarlitsky is the director of the Institute of Globalization Studies. </i>

TITLE: a life devoted to the art of music
TEXT: q:<i>At the opening of the festival, you will perform Brahms' Second Piano Concerto. Why did you choose to perform this work?
 </i>a:I chose this concerto because it is one the most recent things I have learned, and I have already performed it with maestro [Yury] Temirkanov conducting. Also, it is one of the composer's greatest works.
 

 
q:<i>In what directions are you looking to expand your repertoire?
 </i>a:Currently, I am rehearsing a new program comprising works by Schubert and Liszt that will premiere next year. The piano legacy is so massive, and so abundant in masterpieces, that there are many works that I am thinking of performing. For example, I've never played one of Bach's compositions in the original in a concert; I've only played a [Ferruccio] Busoni arrangement, although Bach is one of my favorite composers.
 
Haydn wrote more than 50 sonatas, but I've only played two on stage; of the 20 sonatas by Mozart, I've only performed one, and only three sonatas by Beethoven. I'm not in any way saying that I want to perform entire sets of these composers' sonatas, but I would like to perform a lot of them. In fact, I started with these composers, and feel very close to them.
 Chopin has always had a very important place in my repertoire - I perform more Chopin than any other composer - but, again, he wrote so much that there are still jewels to rehearse. I will definitely include some of his etudes, polonaises and mazurkas in my programs.
 
 
q:<i>Are there any works you like but wouldn't dare perform in a concert?
 </i>q:Yes, of course. And, frankly, the list would be quite long. There is so little in the classical piano legacy to which my soul doesn't respond. I am very omnivorous in my tastes - be it music, literature, art, cuisine, and so on. To adore a composer and to be able to perform his work at an adequate level are very different things; I'm speaking from personal experience. I don't prefer Chopin over Beethoven at all, but performing Beethoven has always been a greater challenge.
 

 
q:<i>You refrain from performing contemporary piano music, saying that it doesn't touch you deeply enough. Meanwhile, modern composers aren't writing much for the piano anymore. Why do you think that composers are losing interest in the piano, preferring other instruments?
 </i>a:I can only guess, but perhaps the reason is that composers alive today believe that the music that already exists for the piano - which totals an immense number of works - has exhausted the instrument's possibilities. I think that this is also why some modern composers tend to write their works for a prepared piano, requiring musicians to use not only the keys, but also the strings and so on. It just illustrates their desire to extract new possibilities from the instrument. I, for one, don't see myself playing music by John Cage.
 

 
q:<i>What music do you listen to for pleasure?
 </i>a:Apart from the classics, I like folk music, and jazz, in particular. I know that jazz isn't usually described as folk music, but it is, really. I play jazz in private - things like Scott Joplin's ragtime music. But jazz improvisation is not something I'm good at - it's a completely different art.
 

 
q:<i>Do you feel nostalgic for Russia and, if so, what do you miss most?
 </i>a:Nostalgia comes to me when I visit Russia. I miss the people, although my friends come to see me in London and New York. Strangely though, when I meet my friends in Russia, the feeling is not the same. Probably, most of all, I miss the places that are closely connected with my childhood memories, places where I grew up and my early youth. These places are impossible to uproot from your heart, unless there was something disastrous and nightmarish that you survived there. But, thank God, that wasn't the case, and I am not looking to forget my country.
 

 
q:<i>Are you still a Russian citizen?
 </i>a:Yes, and I am not planning to change. I would only have started applying for foreign citizenship if a horrendous fascist-style regime took over in Russia. I could never accept that, and let's hope that that scenario will never come about. 
 

 
q:<i>Is there anything in your home in London to remind you of Russia?
 </i>a:We have quite a lot of Russian books but there doesn't have to be anything in material terms. I am often asked if my mother cooks Russian food for me, and I always say that she doesn't have to. She cooks different things.
 
For me, the feeling comes from inside. I don't need to be reminded [of Russia]. If it's in your soul, you don't need reminders.
 
 
q:<i>Do you share the views put forward by anti-globalists about globalization endangering national cultures? Do you see globalization as a threat to ethnic values?
 </i>a:I would say that God created human beings first, and only then created nations. I am also convinced that we should, first and foremost, appreciate what brings people closer together, rather than what separates and divides us. The variety of ethnic cultures is what makes humankind so rich, and it should be nourished. I don't think there's a contradiction there.
 
At the moment, I don't see any danger from globalization as such. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that, now, art lacks genius. But, in my opinion, it has nothing to do with globalization. History - and the history of art in particular - has survived various epochs, and the current era is just another part of history.
 
 
q:<i>Has there been a moment in your career that you would describe as crucial?
 </i>a:There hasn't been. There were events that I consider very important or challenging, such as my first solo recital, my debut in the Moscow Conservatory's Grand Hall, my first tour abroad, my debut in Western Europe and, of course, when I met and debuted with Karajan. But there wasn't anything strong enough for me to call crucial.
 

 
q:<i>You are still with your teacher, Anna Kantor, and you've said many times that you've never considered changing teachers. How has your relationship evolved?
 </i>a:I consider her to be my second mother - and, by the way, my [birth] mother totally agrees with me. Anna Pavlovna has been living with my family for over 11 years now; she is a real member of the family.
 
Of course, she doesn't teach me technical nuances, like in the early years, but there is hardly anyone who knows and understands me better. That's why her advice and opinion are so valuable for me.
 
 
q:<i>What's the greatest compliment you've ever received?
 </i>a:It was when Herbert von Karajan called me a genius. Naturally, nothing can even compare with such a high estimation, coming from so outstanding a person.
 

 
q:<i>How much did the tag of a &quot;genius&quot; cost? What have you had to sacrifice?
 </i>a:In this respect, I'm not really any different from other musicians who maintain an international career. In terms of physical limitations, it is all quite normal for a pianist. None of us, for example, can play volleyball. I regret that I never learned to skate or play tennis. Now, it's too late, and too risky.
 
As for my life style, just like all musicians who have succeeded at a certain level, I have to plan my life two or three years in advance. Of course, this puts me under high pressure. But it's very natural - the better you perform, the more engagements you are offered, and you have to create a schedule. It may put pressure on you, but that's how it works.
 In that respect, the whole life of a musician - well, of any artist - is a sacrifice. Not because we have to rehearse and perform around the clock. As with most people, there is no border between my life and my profession. Music penetrates my entire life and, in this way, things like days off simply do not exist for me.
 But the most important thing is that, for me, music is the top priority, and I arrange my whole life accordingly. Is that a sacrifice? It is, indeed, but, on the other hand, I am doing what I love most of all in my life. What I do gives me the greatest happiness and the greatest reward.
 
 <i>
Evgeny Kissin plays at the opening concert of the Arts Square Festival in the Shostakovich Philharmonic on Dec. 27, and a solo recital at the same venue on Dec. 30. </i>

TITLE: an opera worth singing about
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Inattentive service was a standard feature of Soviet cafes and canteens. But, when privately owned restaurants became the norm, owners began training their staff to adhere to the Western maxim that &quot;the customer is always right.&quot;
 
Many St. Petersburg establishments have learned the lesson too well. Intrusive service is now a common plight at many local eateries, and can be extremely annoying, if not infuriating. I have found waiters who wanted to be certain we were enjoying the meal to such a degree that they watched us swallow every single bit of food, and wouldn't leave until we asked them! In other places, waiters pop up every few minutes wondering if everything is O.K. One particularly restless chap at Patio Pizza managed to visit us at least four times during the main course alone (!) to check if our dinner was going well. &quot;It was - until you started asking questions,&quot; my dining partner <i>du jour </i>nearly told him. She later regretted that she hadn't.
 The importunity of many of today's servers had almost squeezed out my memories of lax, even rude, Soviet attendants. However, this week provided a reminder that some traditions die hard. While the service at Beijing Opera, the Chinese restaurant near the Mariinsky Theater to which a colleague and I went for lunch this week, is prompt and polite, it falls on the wrong side of non-intrusive.
 Our server was friendly, and brought our order swiftly, but that, it seemed, was that. For example, servers in most Chinese restaurants will pour out diners' green tea, but our server brought the cups and the pot and then left. When we dropped some salad on the table, she didn't bother cleaning it. I also had to fetch napkins from another table.
 The careless service belied what was, otherwise, a decent dining experience. Beijing Opera has a main dining hall and smaller, cozier tea room. As we entered, we saw a Chinese couple at one table - usually an indication that the cuisine is good. The indication proved correct here.
 We picked a table in the tea room, with a yin-yang symbol dividing our round table. Hand-written &quot;thank you&quot; notes hung from the ceiling, curling round the lamp; as far as we could tell, previous guests had left satisfied.
 Beijing Opera's menu - which is provided in Chinese, Russian and English, accompanied by a photo of each dish - is extensive. The fish section looked particularly tempting, in particular, the stewed and fried flat-fish, carp and pike-perch dishes. The menu also indicates the size of the portions.
 The dishes also vary widely in terms of price. There is a good selection of business lunches, at 168 rubles ($5.85) each, as well as homemade shrimp-and-meet pelmeni for 80 rubles ($2.50). At the other end of the scale, you can go for frogs' legs (700 rubles, $21.95), stewed lobster (838 rubles, $26.25), shark fins (1,675 rubles, $52.50), <i>trepang </i>(sea cucumber) with chicken and fried shrimp (838 rubles), or, for the really adventurous, snake cooked to the diner's taste (998 rubles, $31.30). Top of the range is the &quot;Sparrow's Nest,&quot; at a whopping 3,358 rubles ($105.25)
 We started with a delicately fried salmon filet (195 rubles, $6.10) and the Beijing Opera salad (138 rubles, $4.35), which was a traditional Chinese mix of soy beans, chopped cabbage, carrots and cucumbers.
 Although both tempted by the fish dishes, we went for pork for the main course, and were far from disappointed. My fried pork with dates (195 rubles, $6.10) was delicious, and not at all over-fried or excessively sweet. My colleague was happy with her fried pork in sweet-and-sour sauce with pineapple (220 rubles, $6.90), declaring the dish to be very tasty.
 The dishes were more filling than we expected, so we couldn't fit in the homemade Chinese cakes - a bargain at 8 rubles ($0.25) apiece - or the other desserts, including banana or lotus in caramel. We agreed they would provide a good excuse to return.
 
 <i>
Beijing Opera, 17 Ul. Dekabristov. Tel.: 314-1173. Open daily, noon until the last customer leaves. Major credit cards accepted. Lunch for two, without alcohol: 818 rubles ($25.65). </i>

TITLE: netrebko shines in 'la traviata'
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The dazzling jewel in the crown of the Mariinsky Theater's new production of Verdi's &quot;La Traviata&quot; is undoubtedly Anna Netrebko as the heroine, Violetta.
 
The theater's artistic director, Valery Gergiev, has often said that, if an opera company has a Violetta, it would be a sin not to stage the opera. Netrebko's performance ensures that, after five years without &quot;La Traviata&quot; in its repertoire, the Mariinsky no longer needs to offer prayers for forgiveness. The soprano was stunning on opening night on Sunday, revealing new facets of her dramatic and vocal talents and emerging as a fully fledged Verdian heroine.
 Netrebko made her name, both at the Mariinsky and internationally, first and foremost as a superlative interpreter of Mozart. Her Mariinsky debut in 1994, as Suzanna in Mozart's &quot;The Marriage of Figaro,&quot; was a triumph. International recognition arrived the following year with her debut at the San Francisco Opera. Since then, Netrebko, with her musicality, charm and vitality, has thrived in roles as seductive soubrettes or alluring, coquettish heroines such as Musetta (Puccini's &quot;La boheme&quot;), Gilda (Verdi's &quot;Rigoletto&quot;) and Natasha Rostova (Prokofiev's &quot;War and Peace&quot;). Although a fan of Verdi - and &quot;La Traviata&quot; in particular - Netrebko, who cites Maria Callas as one of her favorite interpreters of Violetta, long considered the composer too dark and heavy for her voice.
 Netrebko's vocal performance on Sunday showed the tremendous work that she has done to adjust to Verdi. The ease of her singing is stunning, and is matched with impeccable technique, with which every single note is exact. Her strong, silvery soprano glittered with radiance and razor-edged precision. Her voice soared effortlessly over potential vocal pitfalls and, importantly, her pianissimos were marvelous.
 Dramatically, as well, Netrebko's Violetta was convincingly sincere. In terms of artistic skills, her evolution began in 2000, when she sang Antonia in Martha Domingo's produciton of Jacques Offenbach's &quot;The Tales of Hoffmann,&quot; in which she approached the role of a dying singer with rare subtlety and depth, showing impressive artistic versatility. Her portrayal of a dying courtesan in &quot;La Traviata&quot; shows that Netrebko's evolution has continued, and her ability to give the audiences not only adroit technique but also a deep, sincere and original approach to her characters, has been taken to a new, higher level.
 However, whereas in &quot;The Tales of Hoffmann,&quot; Netrebko overshadowed the other singers vocally, this time the ensemble was a marvel, settling into a very smooth, harmonious performance. The orchestra, with Gergiev conducting, was magnificent, as was the chorus.
 Tenor Oleg Balashov as Alfredo, Violetta's lover, captivated with a fluid, flying sound, proving an equal stage partner for Netrebko. Renowned Mariinsky baritone Vasily Gerello excelled as Giorgio Germont, Alfredo's father; in particular, the scene in which Giorgio appeals to Violetta to break off her scandalous relationship with Alfredo for the sake of Alfredo's sister's marriage was a genuine highlight. Both the music and the drama were at their highest point, mesmerizing the audience. Violetta's despair and Giorgio's devastation were almost palpable.
 French director Charles Roubaud said before the premiere that, for him, the most important aspect of the opera was the concept of sacrifice. To his professional credit, Netrebko's Violetta was sacrifice personified on the stage. She portrayed a woman who gives up her beloved for the sake of &quot;morality,&quot; losing her life and getting no support and little understanding. For Roubaud, the social aspect of the story dominates the human tragedy. His &quot;La Traviata&quot; is not so much about a woman who loves a weak, shallow man as it is the story of a woman who dares to live in defiance of the rules of the society to which she belongs. In tune with Roubaud's ideas, Gerello imbues Giorgio with much understanding, even compassion, toward Violetta.
 Visually, the production is designed along metaphoric, suggestive lines, which worked very well. A particular success were the final moments, when Violetta, having received Alfredo, tries to regain her physical strength but falls dead. Designer Bernard Arnould turns Violetta's deathbed into a giant, white orchid. The curtains making up the orchid, which take up most of the center of the stage, collapse with Violetta's last breath. This symbolic finale provides a fittingly powerful ending to Roubaud's imaginative production.
 
 <i>
&quot;La Traviata&quot; plays next on Jan. 6 and 14. Call 114-4344 for ticket details. Links: www.mariinsky.ru </i>

TITLE: looking at life in the goldfish bowl
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The end of 2002 is turning out to be very busy for veteran St. Petersburg band Akvarium and its legendary founder, Boris Grebenshchikov.
 
Akvarium has just completed a four-date tour of the west coast of the United States, is currently working on a new album, and has just re-released four old albums. On top of all that, the band plays its traditional St. Petersburg Christmas concert at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture this weekend.
 &quot;It went really well,&quot; said Grebenshchikov of the U.S. tour by telephone from London this week. &quot;At the Lensoviet concert, we want to showcase stuff we don't normally play, and we had the opportunity to try it out on people in America.&quot;
 The tour, called &quot;Rosa i Inzhenery Khaosa&quot; (&quot;Rose and the Enginners of Chaos&quot;), took in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, and was advertised as a farewell to &quot;Sestra Khaos&quot; (&quot;Sister Chaos&quot;), Akvarium's most recent album, released on Feb. 15.
 &quot;How long can you play the same album?&quot; asked Grebenshchikov. &quot;To play 'Sestra Khaos' and a set of old hits is just not interesting any more, so I think we'll revive a number of old, acoustic songs that people don't know we can play.&quot;
 &quot;We tried out a simple acoustic set in San Francisco, and it worked out amazingly well,&quot; he said. &quot;We played a number of songs that even I didn't know I remembered.&quot;
 Whereas audiences at Akvarium's U.S. concerts drew mainly Russian emigres, Grebenshchikov is soon going to be introduced to a broader American audience as a Russian singer-songwriter.
 Leading budget classical-music label Naxos is planning to feature an album of Russian songs performed by Grebenshchikov as part of its Naxos World series early next year. Called &quot;Russian Songwriter,&quot; the disc will include a couple of urban folk songs and covers of tracks by Alexander Vertinsky and Bulat Okudzhava alongside Grebenshchikov's own material.
 &quot;They're trying to show the Russian style of songwriting through my voice,&quot; said Grebenshchikov, who says that the label gave him almost total artistic control over the disc. &quot;They put forward the cover design, which fits in with the rest of the series, and we searched the Internet together pretty intensively, so that the pictures would comply with what they want.&quot;
 Grebenshchikov was in London to attend the world premiere of the Peter Jackson blockbuster &quot;Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,&quot; as well as to look for musicians to play on Akvarium's new album, which he described as &quot;something big and strange, with the emphasis on [the word] strange.&quot;
 &quot;We started recording in [St. Petersburg], continued in Delhi, and will go on to Bombay,&quot; he said. &quot;I'll need some Irish instruments as well, so I'll be talking about Irish instruments in London.&quot;
 The recording sessions in Delhi took place in November, when Akvarium performed at the Russian Cultural Center there.
 &quot;We rented a studio there, and recorded some interesting stuff,&quot; said Grebenshchikov. &quot;There were a lot of Indian musicians [on the recordings] - eight or 10, and there will be more. My old dream came true.&quot;
 Although Grebenshchikov is slightly vague about the new material, he talks about it with noticeable enthusiasm.
 &quot;I'd keep it all to myself and not record it, with pleasure,&quot; he said. &quot;I'd like to create absolutely perfect music. So far, it's turning out very well. We've never done anything like this before.&quot;
 Meanwhile, four more Akvarium albums have been remastered and are due to be released soon locally as part of the 20-disc anthology being released by the band's current label, Soyuz, to coincide with the band's 30th anniversary. The final four albums are due in February or March.
 As 2002 comes to an end, Grebenshchikov looks at the year ambivalently.
 &quot;I'm glad it's ending,&quot; he said. &quot;The year was good, and we did a lot, but I'd like to write music, rather than perform. I don't like performing.&quot;
 He also says that music around the world is &quot;getting duller and duller.&quot;
 &quot;There were interesting parts but, this year, I haven't heard an [interesting] album yet,&quot; he said. &quot;I just listened to the last album by [cult Icelandic group] Sigur Ros. It's very good, and it's terribly boring.&quot;
 &quot;I get the impression that people simply forget what life is,&quot; he said. &quot;They start to think in terms of money.&quot;
 Grebenshchikov admits that Akvarium plans to take a break after the Christmas concert.
 &quot;We'll play the concert and that will be that; we'll take a long break,&quot; he said. &quot;We'll play some concerts across Russia ... but it will all be on a small scale.&quot;
 
 <i>
Boris Grebenshchikov and Akvarium play at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture at 7 p.m. on Saturday. 
 Links: www.aquarium.ru </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Radio Inferno, advertised as St. Petersburg's first goth-rock festival, provides a rare treat at Red Club on Saturday - a set by re-formed 1990s guitar trio <strong>Jugendstil.</strong>
 
The band quit the local club scene five years ago, but re-formed following a request from festival promoter Leonid Fomin, who combines playing in goth-rock combo Para Bellum with a day job as associate editor of local rock magazine Fuzz.
 Jugendstil, one of the finest acts from the time of TaMtAm Club, was not really a goth band at all but, rather, a post-punk affair with a few gothic elements. The group folded in 1997, a year after the seminal alternative club closed.
 The Jugendstil of 2002 features original band members German Podstanitsky on vocals and bass and Andrei Gradovich on guitar, plus drummer Igor Mosin from Bondzinsky. While Gradovich has remained musically active in the past half decade, playing with Bondzinsky and Kolibri, Podstanitsky took a non-musical job, and has resumed rehearsals only recently. The band has rehearsed around 10 numbers, including its club hit &quot;Figuristy&quot; (&quot;Figure Skaters&quot;), plus some less well-known songs from its later period.
 Jugendstil's only album, 1996's &quot;Nikto Nikomu Nichego&quot; (&quot;No One Owes Anyone Anything&quot;), is still available at some local record shops.
 Apart from the Red Club date, Jugendstil will also play at Fish Fabrique on Dec. 27.
 &quot;We'll see how it goes,&quot; says Gradovich. &quot;If we like it, we'll probably continue and do something new.&quot;
 Durnoye Vliyaniye (&quot;Bad Influence&quot;), another defunct band, which would be more appropriate for a goth event, was also asked to reunite for the gig but, after consideration, declined.
 <strong>Alex Fedechko-Matskevich, </strong>who has created some of the most recognizable photos of Russian rock acts (and of some foreign visitors), is set to stage an exhibition at the unlikely location of the Alexander Blok Apartment Museum. 
 Alex Fedechko-Matskevich is actually the <i>nom de plume </i>of a pair of photographers, Andrei Fedechko and Alexander Matskevich, who has been on the local rock scene since 1997.
 Fedechko, 32, came to St. Petersburg from Ukraine in 1992, and says he was influenced by photos in Rolling Stone magazine. &quot;I saw a Rolling Stone anniversary book, and it was a shock for me,&quot; he says. &quot;Now, it's not a shock anymore.&quot;
 Fedechko-Matskevich's work covers a wide range of Russian rockers, including such traditional antagonists as Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov to pop-rock diva Zemfira.
 &quot;I find it all interesting - live photos, reporting or studio photos,&quot; says Fedechko. &quot;I get pleasure from the shots I take, although sometimes it does turn into work.&quot;
 &quot;The main thing is to take a picture that is interesting to look at,&quot; he says.
 The exhibition, &quot;A Pause in Motion: The World of Rock Music,&quot; will also include a series of live acoustic concerts by local performers. Check afm.spb.ru for listings. Fedechko will also make his debut as a rock singer, performing in his native Ukrainian.
 &quot;A Pause in Motion&quot; opens at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, and runs through Jan. 26. See Exhibits for details.
 The week's most important event, though, is the traditional Christmas gig by <strong>Boris Grebenshchikov and Akvarium</strong>.<strong> </strong>See the story on this page.
 
 <i>- by Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: potter's magic is wearing off
AUTHOR: by Kenneth Turan
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: &quot;Quite simply,&quot; Chris Columbus, director of &quot;Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,&quot; just about purrs in a press kit quote, &quot;if you loved the first film, you are going to absolutely adore this one!&quot;
 
If things were truly that simple, what a fine world this would be.
 While in general terms whatever you thought of the first production, pro or con, you'll likely think of this one, the reality is that even partisans of &quot;Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone&quot; may well be put off by parts of the new film.
 &quot;Chamber of Secrets&quot; displays such zeal for re-creating the book's more grotesque aspects, from man-eating spiders to venom-dripping monster serpents, that it is sure to rattle the cages of the smallest viewers, sending them under their seats if not out of the theater.
 The Harry Potter novels have a kind of magic that is beyond the powers of these films to duplicate. The darkness that invades &quot;Chamber of Secrets&quot; underlines how well the books managed to balance good and evil, dark and light, so that within their pages you seemed to be experiencing both at the same time. Not so here.
 Because &quot;Chamber of Secrets&quot; can't seem to get the balance right, it ends up broadly overdoing things on both ends of the spectrum. The film's scary moments are too monstrous and its happy times have too much idiotic beaming, making the film feel like the illegitimate offspring of &quot;Alien&quot; and &quot;The Absent-Minded Professor.&quot;
 &quot;Chamber of Secrets,&quot; like its predecessor, is intelligently cast and makes good use of behind-the-camera talent such as returning screenwriter Steve Kloves and new cinematographer Roger Pratt. And the problem has never been anyone's intentions toward the material; &quot;Chamber's&quot; 2 hours and 41 minutes show that, if anything, the films are more concerned than they should be about leaving something out.
 To be fair, &quot;Chamber&quot; has a bit of the magic of the Rowling originals, mostly in its ability to reproduce some of the book's peripheral tricks. It's amusing to see the Whomping Willow, the screaming mandrake plants and the bad-tempered Howler sent by Mrs. Weasley to chastise the misbehaving Ron. Truly, all that money can buy has been bought, and although that is an accomplishment of a sort, it is not great filmmaking.
 The acting in &quot;Chamber of Secrets&quot; is a similarly mixed bag. While it is charming to see how appropriately Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley and Emma Watson as Hermione Granger have matured in a year, the eagerness of Grint's Weasley to continually make Little Rascals-type faces is unfortunate.
 As for the adults, Alan Rickman already seems tired of his role as Professor Snape, while Maggie Smith appears to be getting more used to being Professor McGonagall. Of the newcomers, the most satisfying acting comes from, of all people, Kenneth Branagh. As celebrity author Gilderoy Lockhart, Hogwarts' new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Branagh does some of his best film work in years, bringing the same kind of pleasure to the part of a self-absorbed, fatuous fop that Robbie Coltrane brings to the stalwart giant Hagrid.
 The plot begins when an annoying house-elf named Dobbie pleads with Harry not to return to Hogwarts if he values his life. Once back at the school, Harry and his pals have to contend with petrified fellow students and ominous writings on the wall.
 This all unfolds capably enough until the appearance of Aragog, a 3-meter spider with a 6-meter leg span, and a dreadful snake known as the Basilisk. To be fair, these creatures appear in the book as well, but it is one thing to read about them and another to actually see them on the big screen, a difference the filmmakers, without a sense of what is fitting in a film like this, should have been sensitive to but were not.
 The most memorable moments in &quot;Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets&quot; involve not some expensive special effect but the unplanned poignancy of Richard Harris' performance, the last of his long career, as headmaster Albus Dumbledore.
 Perhaps as an acting choice, perhaps because of the effects of the illness that eventually took his life, Harris plays Dumbledore with a quavering but resolute frailty that gives the character an effective gravity. His speech about the life span of his beloved phoenix, Fawkes, one of those creatures that &quot;burst into flames when it is time for them to die,&quot; provides an unintentional valedictory to an impressive career.

TITLE: the passing of siberia's native life
AUTHOR: by Benson Bobrick
PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: Toward the end of the 16th century, Siberia fell to the Russians as an unexpected prize. At the time, European Russia stood deep in its own ashes after a half-century of war, famine, plague and despotic rule under Ivan the Terrible. Ivan's ambitions had been thwarted to the west by Poland and Sweden and to the south by the Crimean Tatars backed by the Ottoman Turks. Russia then turned to the east and, within a few generations, acquired a territory larger than the Roman Empire.
 
That territory covers about a twelfth of the Earth's total land surface and stretches from the Arctic to Central Asia, the Urals to the Sea of Japan. Its mineral wealth makes it potentially the richest resource area on earth. But, after the geologist and the geographer have exhausted their estimation of its dimensions in numerical wonder, there remains its human heart. When the Russians first arrived, Siberia already had a diverse life and culture of its own, and it is the idea of Anna Reid's captivating new book, &quot;The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia,&quot; to explore the impact of the Russian conquest on that culture's fate.
 A former Kiev correspondent for the Economist and the Daily Telegraph, Reid is no ordinary journalist. As in her previous book, &quot;Borderland: A Journey Through the History of the Ukraine,&quot; she sets out on her travels determined to bring the land of her reckoning alive. In this she is aided by her acute curiosity, fine descriptive gifts and delight in detail. The result almost always gives us an indelible sense of place.
 Consider, for example, her description of flying from Moscow to Tobolsk: &quot;The in-flight movie ... was 'Some Like It Hot,' accompanied by rye bread, cucumber and soapy mineral water, served on battered aluminum trays. The Tupolev's engines kept up a homely rumble, and the sun sparkled on the scratches on the windowpanes. As we came in to land, no bossy loudspeaker said to belt up or stow bags in overhead lockers, the unoccupied seats flopped forward in unison and a canteen of cutlery jingled down the center aisle. On the runway our baggage tumbled onto potholed tarmac awash with meltwater and the cawing of rooks.&quot;
 It is the plight of the indigenous peoples that is Reid's chief concern. Like other conquering powers, the Russians insisted on their colonial right to civilize the &quot;savage&quot; and make the wilderness their own. Ultimately, their way was cleared by slaughter, alcoholism and disease. Reid's account of her own journey - part history, part travelogue, part excursion through Siberian lore - more or less follows the progress of Russian domination eastward as the native peoples are subdued.
 It was not long before some were struggling to survive. In 1876, for example, there were said to be only about 1,600 Yukaghirs left, the pitiable remnant of a once-powerful tribe. Their ancient burial mounds could still be seen, containing skeletons with bows and arrows, spears and shamanistic drums, but the descendants of these mighty warriors had fallen into such indolence and addiction that their chief delight was a coarse Ukrainian tobacco stretched with dung.
 Under the Soviets, the Yukaghirs and other small nomadic groups essentially disappeared. Stalin, in fact, distrusted all native peoples because they lacked an &quot;industrial proletariat,&quot; the only class to which he could pretend to relate. But, in the parsing of native life, the new categories did not apply. &quot;The Small-Numbered Peoples,&quot; Reid explains, &quot;possessed no exploiters and exploited in the Marxist sense ... . Owning a hundred deer did not make a man a kulak; prospective sons-in-law working out their bride-prices were not hired laborers; a shaman was not the same thing as a priest.&quot; No matter: It was not the people but the categories that counted, and collectivization programs proved as devastating to Siberian natives as to peasants in Ukraine.
 The history of their obliteration has since been obliterated. In St. Petersburg's State Russian Museum, for example, we learn that &quot;the sole evidence of the native Siberians' existence is an 18th-century ivory,&quot; while the vast collection housed by the State Hermitage Museum contains but a single &quot;china figurine of an Itelmen girl, one of a series of 'national types' produced by the Imperial Porcelain Factory in the 1780's.&quot;
 Losses of all kinds abound. At Goose Lake, once home to a thriving monastery, the author goes in search of the head lama and finds him &quot;in a cabin in the temple grounds, hiding from his mother, girlfriend and infant sons behind a newspaper. The wall above his bed was decorated with 3-D posters, one of kittens in a basket, another of a table laid with Ben Nevis whiskey and tomatoes sliced to look like flowers.&quot; The shaman's true power and knowledge belong to another book. Here we find it in its fall.
 
 <i>
&quot;The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia.&quot; By Anna Reid. Walker &amp; Co. 224 pp. $25.
 
 Benson Bobrick is the author, among other books, of &quot;East of the Sun: The Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia.&quot; </i>

TITLE: the word's worth
AUTHOR: by Michele A. Berdy <i>
TEXT: Ballotirovatsya v deputaty: </i>to run for parliament.
 
Present-day legislative-branch <i>(zakonodatelnaya vlast) </i>terminology is a somewhat uneasy mixture of old Russian standards and new Western imports. The whole parliament <i>(Rossiisky parlament) </i>is a bicameral system <i>(bikameralism) </i>made up of an upper and lower house <i>(verkhnyaya i nizhnyaya palaty). </i>By association with the American system, in the upper chamber the representatives are now commonly called senators <i>(senatory); </i>in the lower house, they are either called deputies <i>(deputaty) </i>or sometimes parliamentarians <i>(parlamentarii). </i>When you hear words like <i>spiker </i>(the speaker), <i>veto </i>(veto) and <i>brifing </i>(briefing), you might well feel like you're on Capitol Hill dubbed into Russian.
 However, there is another set of words that hearken back to pre-revolutionary Russia. The legislative branch is called the Federal Assembly <i>(Federalnoye Sobraniye); </i>the upper house is the <i>Sovyet Federatsii </i>(Federation Council) and the lower house is the State Duma <i>(Gosudarstvennaya Duma). </i>Duma is a nice old Russian word derived from <i>dumat </i>(to think). It refers to any assembly of highly placed officials <i>(chiny) </i>who meet to discuss problems and resolve issues. So Russian <i>dumtsy </i>(colloquial Russian for Duma members) are supposed to be the state's thinkers. Their Western counterparts are &quot;talkers&quot; - parliament comes from the old French <i>parlement,</i> from <i>parler</i>, to speak.
 This is closer to another old Russian word for law and decision-making assemblies: <i>veche. </i>This precursor to democratic legislatures was an assembly of noblemen in Novgorod who gathered to decide issues of the kingdom. Etymologists aren't certain, but they hypothesize that the word is derived from <i>veshchat </i>- to speak, tell, announce, teach or explain. Or it might come from the word <i>zavet, </i>a commandment. So the first Russian democrats were talkers, the second wave, thinkers. Perhaps the third wave will be doers?
 In the meantime, running for office in Russia also poses challenges for the linguistically disadvantaged. You can say <i>on izbirayetsya </i>(he is running for office) or <i>on ballotiruyetsya v parlament, na post prezidenta </i>(he is running for parliament, for the post of president). So far, so good. But what do you make of the grammatical form <i>on ballotiruyetsya v prezidenty, v deputaty? </i>Call the Grammar Emergency Squad! We're talking about one president, an animate object (well, in most cases) - so what's it doing in the nominative plural? Hey, don't get me wrong. I'm happy to get rid of case endings, but I keep waiting for my Russian teacher to rap my knuckles with a ruler.
 Losing an election is also a grammatical no-brainer <i>(yozhiku ponyatno): Ya ne byl izbran </i>(I didn't get elected); <i>Ya ne nabral dostatochnogo kolichestva golosov </i>(I didn't get enough votes); <i>Ya proigral </i>(I lost); <i>Ya ne proshyol </i>(I didn't get in).
 Winning is also pretty simple in the past tense - <i>ya vygral </i>or <i>ya pobedil. </i>But let's say you're a cocky candidate, and you are flat out sure you and your party mates are going to win.
 <i>On pobedit! Oni pobedyat! My pobedim! Vy pobedite! Ya pobe- Ya pobe- Ya pobedu? Ya pobezhdu? Ya pobezhu? </i>None of those forms are right. For reasons lost in the mists of time, you just can't say it in the first person singular. The proper way in Russian to express your future victory is: <i>Na vyborakh ya oderzhu pobedu </i>(I will be victorious in the elections).
 Which is more than I can say about my success with the conundrum of Russian grammar.
 
 <i>
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter. </i>

TITLE: Yao Ming Gets Revenge for Opening Day
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HOUSTON - Forgive the Indiana Pacers if they didn't recognize the 7-foot-6 (2.29-meter) guy scoring from all over - he sure didn't look like the same Yao Ming they saw on opening night.
 
Yao had 29 points, 10 rebounds and six blocked shots to lead the Houston Rockets to a 95-83 victory Wednesday night over the team that held him scoreless in his NBA debut.
 &quot;I was breathing a lot easier on the court,&quot; Yao said.
 The Pacers kept it close throughout the second half and were within 78-76 before Yao dropped in a finger roll with 2:54 left. He followed with a free throw and a baseline shot over Brad Miller that gave Houston a seven-point lead.
 Indiana had a scare with 2:23 left when forward Jermaine O'Neal fell to the floor holding his left knee, causing him to hobble off the court with assistance. Team officials first said it was only a mild sprain, then backtracked and said he would be checked Thursday.
 The Rockets (14-10) won despite shooting 38 percent. Houston was able to take 10 more shots thanks to a season-high 60 rebounds, compared to just 34 for Indiana.
 Yao's 29 points was one short of his season high. The No. 1 overall draft pick set a new personal best for blocks.
 O'Neal led Indiana with 27 and Ron Artest had 23.
 
 <strong>
Washington 118, Memphis 100. </strong>At Washington, Michael Jordan took over the game early, scoring 18 of his season-high 33 points in the first quarter as the Wizards extended their winning streak to three.
 
Jordan made 14 of 23 shots, going 8-of-11 in the first quarter, to hit a season high in points for the second time in as many nights.
 The Wizards had a season-high in points and shot a season-best 62 percent while avenging one of their most embarrassing losses of the season - an 85-74 defeat at Memphis on Nov. 23 that was the Grizzlies' first win after a 0-13 start.
 
 <strong>
San Antonio 91, Seattle 88. </strong>At Seattle, Tony Parker scored 22 points and Tim Duncan barely missed a triple-double with 18 points, 15 rebounds and eight assists.
 
David Robinson scored 18 points and had 10 rebounds and Steve Smith scored 13 points off the bench as the Spurs snapped a four-game road losing streak.
 Gary Payton had 25 points and eight assists for the Sonics, who missed two late shots that would have forced overtime.
 
 <strong>
Dallas 80, Denver 75. </strong>At Denver, Michael Finley scored 31 points and Steve Nash added 14 of his 18 in the second half as Dallas dealt the undermanned Nuggets their sixth consecutive loss.
 
Denver shot only 36 percent and had difficulty in its first game without James Posey, the team's second-leading scorer, who was dealt to Houston earlier in the day in a three-team trade.
 
 <strong>
Miami 91, Boston 81. </strong>At Boston, Eddie Jones scored 21 points to lead Miami to a rare road victory as the home crowd turned against the Celtics.
 
Miami held Boston to only three baskets over a span of 17:51 - from the 5:10 mark of the first quarter until the opening minute of the third.
 
 <strong>
Detroit 111, Cleveland 106 (OT). </strong>At Cleveland, Chauncey Billups scored eight consecutive points in overtime and finished with 23.
 
Billups hit a 3-pointer to put Detroit ahead to stay, 106-103. He drove to the basket to score 44 seconds later and added another 3-pointer for an 8-point lead with 1:11 to play as Detroit extended its season-high winning streak to five games.
 
 <strong>
Philadelphia 99, Minnesota 94. </strong>At Philadelphia, Allen Iverson scored a season-high 41 points, reaching the 40-point plateau for the 51st time.
 
Eric Snow added 13 points and Greg Buckner had 11 for the Sixers, who have won two straight after losing five in a row.
 
 <strong>
Chicago 96, Toronto 83. </strong>At Chicago, Jalen Rose scored 20 points and Donyell Marshall and Marcus Fizer had double-doubles for a second straight night.
 
Chicago has won five of its last six and has a three-game win streak for only the second time since January 2000.
 
 <strong>
Orlando 97, Utah 90. </strong>At Salt Lake City, Pat Garrity scored 24 points and Shawn Kemp had 14 points and 12 rebounds as the Orlando Magic avoided falling below .500 for the first time this season.
 
The Magic won without forward Grant Hill, who dressed but sat out the game to rest his surgically repaired ankle. Back pain forced Tracy McGrady to miss most of the second half.
 
 <strong>
Portland 97, L.A. Clippers 93. </strong>At Los Angeles, Bonzi Wells scored 30 points and led a late 15-0 run that gave a 92-87 lead with 1:15 left.
 
Scottie Pippen, who started the run with a pair of 3-pointers, finished with 11 points. Portland reserve Jeff McInnis scored 17 points in 17 minutes against his former team.
 Elsewhere, Golden State defeated New Orleans 111-106.

TITLE: Slumping Bruins Put to the Sword by Rare Sabres Win
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BOSTON - The Boston Bruins are missing the ingredients that made them the best team in the NHL over the first two months of the season.
 
After rolling to 19 victories - which still leads the league - the Bruins are in decline. That was never more evident than Wednesday night, when they lost their fourth straight game - this one to the Buffalo Sabres, whose eight wins match Atlanta for the fewest in the league.
 &quot;There's no question you have to play with a passion and desperation,&quot; Bruins defenseman Don Sweeney said after Boston's 4-2 defeat in Buffalo. &quot;We're getting away from our game. It calls for patience and positioning and aggressiveness.&quot;
 Chris Gratton scored his first goal in nearly a month and added three assists for Buffalo. J.P. Dumont, Taylor Pyatt and Stu Barnes also scored for the Sabres.
 Mike Knuble and Sergei Samsonov, back after missing four games with a wrist injury, scored for the Bruins. But it wasn't enough for a team that has lost its offensive bounce. Boston has been outscored 17-6 during its longest losing streak since a four-game skid last season.
 In addition to its offensive breakdowns, Boston is struggling defensively. Gratton's goal, which opened the scoring just 4:40 in, came on a 2-on-0 break. Boston also allowed two power-play goals for only the fourth time this season.
 &quot;We're not playing our game right now,&quot; forward Brian Rolston said. &quot;It's very simple, we're giving up 2-on-1, 2-on-0s, things we don't do normally. You just try to work as hard as you can to get out of it, that's the bottom line.&quot;
 Dumont's power-play goal at 9:01 of the second period proved to be the winner, giving the Sabres a 3-1 lead. Gratton set up the goal when he shoveled a pass to Dumont, who one-timed the puck into the open right side of the net.
 &quot;It was nice,&quot; Gratton said. &quot;Everyone's been struggling of late. It's nice to chip in offensively. When the puck goes in it allows you to gain confidence.&quot;
 
 <strong>
Anaheim 5, St. Louis 2. </strong>In Anaheim, California, Jean-Sebastien Giguere allowed his first goal in four games, and Paul Kariya scored twice and had three assists as Anaheim won its fifth straight.
 
Giguere made 44 saves while trying to join Bill Durnan of the Montreal Canadiens as the only goaltenders since the inception of the red line in the 1943 to 1944 season to post four consecutive shutouts. But he had no chance on Al MacInnis' shot from the right circle at 16:52 of the second period after Anaheim built a 4-0 lead.
 MacInnis scored both St. Louis goals during power plays.
 The first goal ended Giguere's 100-save scoreless streak at 237 minutes, 7 seconds - third-longest in the modern era behind Durnan and fellow Hall of Famer Turk Broda of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
 
 <strong>
Carolina 1, Tampa Bay 1. </strong>In Raleigh, North Carolina, Brad Richards scored in the first period, and Nikolai Khabibulin allowed just one goal against Carolina for a third straight game.
 
The tie kept the Lightning three points ahead of second-place Carolina in the Southeast Division. Tampa Bay also has 5-1 and 2-1 wins in the first two months of the season over the Hurricanes, who got a goal from Jan Hlavac.
 Tampa Bay had the best chance to score in the extra five minutes with a scramble in front of Arturs Irbe with 2:19 left, but the goalie was able to cover up.
 Carolina dominated play for most of the third period, but got only Ron Francis' wraparound shot from in close with 9.2 seconds left in regulation.
 Elsewhere, it was Toronto 2, Florida 2; Philadelphia 3, Atlanta 1.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: <b>Hartley Sacked
 </b>

DENVER (AP) - Bob Hartley led the Colorado Avalanche to four straight Western Conference finals, and a Stanley Cup championship in 2001, but it wasn't enough to save his job.
 Citing a slow start and a lack of passion in his team, Colorado General Manager Pierre Lacroix fired Hartley on Wednesday after 4 1/2 seasons.
 "We are an organization with very, very high expectations," Lacroix said. "We've done it every year that we've been in Denver and it's no different this season. It was obvious that the team is not showing any emotion, the team is not doing what it needs to do to fulfill these expectations, so I am convinced it was the right time."
 Assistant Coach Tony Granato will take over as permanent coach.
 Hartley, who was promoted from Hershey in 1998, is Colorado's wins leader at 193-109-48, and has a 49-31 playoff record.
 "That's part of the business," Hartley said. "Everyone has different opinions and that's the way Pierre feels."
 
 
<b>Kit on for the Lads
 </b>

MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's craze for racy calendars has prompted a third division soccer club to ask the mothers of its younger players to pose - with their kit on.
 Serie C club Pro Sesto said it was selling the calendar, featuring the mothers of some of its youth-team players, to raise funds for victims of a recent earthquake.
 "Housewifes, employees, professionals, blonde, brunette, slim and chubby - the mothers of our young players did not hesitate for a moment about joining in this initiative," the club said on its Web site.
 The mammi are featured posing in the team's uniform.