SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #831 (96), Friday, December 27, 2002
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TITLE: Charter Court Thwarts Yakovlev
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The City Charter Court ruled on Tuesday that Governor Vladimir Yakovlev may not submit amendments to a law passed by the Legislative Assembly to raise pensions for the elderly to Russia's official poverty line.
 
In its ruling, the court called on Yakovlev either to sign the law into effect or to veto it.
 The case was brought by a group of eight deputies who complained that, even after they had accepted a number of amendments to the law "On Social Payments to Pensioners in St. Petersburg" on June 5, the governor returned it to the assembly, asking that further amendments be made. According to statements by the governor at the time, the law violates procedures for drafting legislation.
 But the deputies countered that Yakovlev's request for further amendments was beyond his authority.
 "My position remains the same. We have to take people out of this state of misery, and it is in our power to do so," said Vadim Tyulpanov, the vice speaker of the Legislative Assembly. "In this situation, the governor has violated the law by appropriating for himself the powers of both the legislative and the judicial branches."
 "The deputies of the Legislative Assembly have demonstrated their readiness to defend the democratic principles of our city's government and not to allow arbitrary rule on the part of the executive branch," he added.
 The court's ruling sided with the group of deputies.
 "The City Charter Court, on the basis of Paragraph 1, Article 33, and articles 15 and 32 of the St. Petersburg City Charter, ruled that the St. Petersburg law sent to the governor by the Legislative Assembly to be signed is consistent with all conditions laid out in the charter for passing laws in St. Petersburg," said Olga Tulsanova, the spokesperson for the City Charter Court. "According to Article 32 and 33 of the St. Petersburg City Charter Court, the governor of St. Petersburg has either to sign or reject laws sent to him by the Legislative Assembly."
 The law is intended to raise the minimum pension received by city residents of retirement age to the official poverty level, which is currently about 2,236 rubles (about $70), from the present minimum of 1,707 rubles ($53.50). The raise was to become effective beginning Jan. 1 but, in one of the amendments the assembly rejected, Yakovlev proposed shifting the date to Jan. 1, 2005. Supporters of the law say that moving it back would render the law meaningless, because federal pension reforms call for payments to be above the poverty line by 2005 anyway.
 Lev Savulkin, senior analyst at the Leontieff Center for Socio-Economic Research, said that the governor's reluctance to sign the bill was understandable.
 "I see three reasons why the governor is against this law. First, it means a huge jump in spending. Second, the budget has already been passed and some other spending items it already contains would have to be cancelled. Finally, if the law comes into effect, the City Finance Committee will have to work out an agreement with the pension fund, which is not a city-budget fund," Savulkin said Thursday.
 At the same time, Savulkin says that Yakovlev doesn't want to veto the law, due to strict political considerations.
 "The governor would look bad if he vetoed the law," he said "It would look like he is not concerned about social questions."
 He added that the deputies had gone to the City Charter Court not only to defend their legislative powers, but also because the law was the fulfillment of a promise already made to the electorate.
 Legislative Assembly deputies believe that, should Yakovlev decide to veto the legislation, they will be able to muster enough votes in the chamber to pass it anyway. Two-thirds of the assembly - 34 deputies - are required to override a gubernatorial veto.
 "I think the draft law will easily garner the 34 votes," said Arkady Kramarev, the head of the Legislative Assembly's Commission for Order and Law Enforcement.
 If the law is passed, deputies will have to determine how to find the money in the budget. There are different opinions as to how this will be done.
 "The funding question will be answered by introducing amendments to the city budget," said deputy Viktor Yevtukhov, from the Political Center Organization. 
 But Kramarev disagreed, saying that the governor may have to foot the bill from budget funds under his control.
 "I think the funds will come mainly from the governor's reserve fund," he said. "However, this question has yet to be discussed in the assembly."

TITLE: Christmas Tree a Thorny Subject
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: TVER, Central Russia - What is Christmas without a Christmas tree - that German tradition that made its way to Russia some 300 years ago and has become such a part of both Orthodox Christian and secular culture here?
 
But there is at least one small Protestant Christian community that takes its Biblical foundations so seriously that a tree and even the whole merry spirit of the holiday is a matter of debate - if not controversy - among its 70 members.
 On Zavokzalnaya Ulitsa, among typical wooden houses with snow-covered gardens, one of Russia's four tiny Reformed communities made its home six years ago in a brick house it bought from a Gypsy clan.
 Here, where the services are translated from the Dutch liturgy, the seemingly simple question of a Christmas tree caused Pastor Yevgeny Kashirsky to hesitate.
 "I have not raised this question yet," Kashirsky, who resembles characters from Holbein and Vermeer canvases, said Friday. "Last year, we did have a tree. The year before we didn't. The more conservative brothers consider it to be pagan."
 Otherwise, the pastor speaks with conviction about John Calvin's theology and a need for Christian enlightenment and political activism to eventually build something of a 16th-century Geneva or rural Dutch town in this sleepy city of about 500,000 inhabitants.
 Contrary to the traditional Russian perception of Dec. 25 as "Catholic" Christmas, the vast majority of the arguably more than 1 million Russians who celebrated the holiday on Wednesday were Protestants, predominantly adherents of Protestantism's 19th-century, originally Anglo-Saxon denominations - Baptists, Pentecostals and Seventh-day Adventists. So-called first-wave Protestants are represented in Russia by two Lutheran churches - one of German, the other of Finnish tradition.
 Reformed communities, which existed before the Revolution in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Odessa, were almost exclusively Dutch and did not survive the Soviet period, while Hungarian Reformed churches from Transcarpathian Ukraine never proliferated either.
 Against this background, Kashirsky's strictly conservative Evangelical Reformed Church and its even smaller fellow parishes in Moscow, Omsk and Ufa represent a somewhat exotic phenomenon for the followers of Russia's religious revival. One of the most traditional forms of Protestantism, the Reform church emerged in a most untraditional setting as a result of a religious pursuit by a group of intellectuals and not of proselytizing by foreign missionaries.
 "I see it as a form of religious creativity, which was so widespread in the 1990s in Russia, when tons of people began inventing their religions," said Alexander Shchipkov, author of the "What Russia Believes In" program on Radio Rossii and head of the Media Union's Religion Reporters' Guild. "They are intellectuals, and it comes from their heads, not from their hearts. It is unlikely to become big in Russia. But they are serious. They took a real basis, a tradition that works without them, and began adapting it to Russian conditions."
 The small group that formed around Kashirsky meets weekly for services, holds a theological class, tries to enforce Puritan discipline among its members, and does not go after new adherents for sheer numbers. It produces a Web site and publishes brochures to disseminate its ideas.
 "The most common Russian Protestant worldview largely has to do with your personal salvation and preaching the Gospels, usually a very optimistic and joyful type of preaching," Kashirsky said, as a portrait of Calvin looked down from the wall. "But what do you do after that? Well, you create one choir, another choir and the question arises - is that it? We are saying that you should be totally Christian in all spheres of life - in the family, at work, at school, so that everything leads to Christ."
 While rejecting what Protestants describe as Orthodox "additions" to the Bible, Kashirsky said he finds many common points with the Orthodox Church. "We work on the same field with the Orthodox - we are pro-state, pro-family, pro-patriotism," he said.
 Kashirsky, who was born in Tver and specialized in English and German during his studies at the local university's linguistics department, said he had had an interest in faith since his childhood. Growing up in a typical, religiously indifferent Soviet family, he would stop by the city's only Orthodox church and light a candle, but no one would ever speak to him there about faith. In the late 1980s, he went to a Baptist church.
 "I am very grateful to Baptism that it led me through the doors of Protestantism, and then I walked on my own," he said. His love of reading led him to Calvin's theology. It was not available in Russian until several years ago, but he got hold of an address for a British publishing house, which sent him several books in English.
 In 1991, he registered the first Calvinist community in post-Soviet Russia. After ties were established with several Reformed churches in Europe, mainly with the Dutch-based Reformed Church (Liberated), Kashirsky attended pastoral seminars in Wuppertahl, Germany, and at Theological University in Kampen, the Netherlands.
 In 1996, the community bought the house on Zavokzalnaya Ulitsa. Built by an extended Gypsy family, it had a spacious common room in the middle with a staircase leading to a second-floor gallery, so no remodeling was necessary to convert the house into a church.
 Kashirsky writes extensively on issues ranging from men's need to reassume responsibility and leadership in families to the confrontation between Islam and Christian civilizations. He views his community as God's nation with a special mission to bring the Reformation to Russia and said he would like one day to form a Christian political party
 "We will create our own Russian Protestant culture," he said. "There was a time when there was no Protestant culture in the Netherlands or Switzerland either."
 Sermons in Kashirsky's church take up more than an hour of the 1 1/2-hour services, which seem to have more of an intellectual than an emotional or artistic appeal. There is no organ.
 The Christmas service at 7 p.m. on Wednesday was not much different from others, Kashirsky said, while community members were encouraged to invite relatives and friends who are alone for Christmas Eve dinner. Children got their gifts on New Year's Eve.
 Vadim Skakovsky, co-owner of a small company producing communications equipment, said he was baptized in the Orthodox Church but did not like its emphasis on ritual. When a friend of a friend brought him to Kashirsky's church, Skakovsky, who said he had always liked to read philosophical books, found a home.
 "I discovered such a depth of theology here, and such a systematic worldview that I could not find elsewhere," Skakovsky said. As a presbyter, his duty in the community today is to oversee discipline, visit troubled members at home and resolve issues such as a quarrel between two sisters who refused to receive Communion together.
 Because of its small size and because it does not proselytize in the streets, Tver's Reformed church has not encountered any problems with the authorities or local media, which did not appear aware that such a church exists in their city at all during a seminar on religion and the press in Tver last Friday.

TITLE: Ex-Miss Universe Set For Job in Television
AUTHOR: By Larisa Naumenko and Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - She's a police officer, a former Miss Universe and now the host of the country's most popular children's television show.
 
St. Petersburg's Oksana Fyodorova, who lost her crown just months after being named Russia's first Miss Universe, is donning a new hat as the host of "Spokoinoi Nochi, Malyshi," or "Good Night, Little Ones."
 The raven-haired, green-eyed 25-year-old will appear with the program's much-loved puppets - the mischievous piglet Khryusha, the charming rabbit Stepashka, and the good-natured puppy Filya - four to eight times a month, sharing the role with two other hosts, said Lyudmila Zaitseva, general director of Klass!, which produces the seven-minute show for Rossia television.
 Fyodorova, a police lieutenant and a postgraduate student in civil law, was set to host her first show Friday at 7:50 p.m. She will host her second on Monday.
 "It's a program with a good spirit. When I was a child I enjoyed watching it," Fyodorova said from St. Petersburg, where she was making final preparations to defend her dissertation this week. "Now, I've been given a chance to be the host of the program, and I decided to use it."
 Fyodorova was named Miss Universe at a pageant in May but was later stripped of her title after pageant organizers complained that she was refusing to fulfill her duties as a beauty queen. Fyodorova has said she stepped down for personal reasons.
 Zaitseva said it was Fyodorova's charm that won her the job.
 "Beauty attracts everybody, including children," she said.
 She said Fyodorova had a promising future in television, despite her lack of previous experience. "There is still a lot she will have to learn, but I have reason to say that everything will go right. She looks and acts pretty natural in front of the camera," she said.
 Fyodorova acknowledged it was not easy being a television host, especially for a program aimed at small children. "I have gotten used to the camera," she said. "The main thing for me is to be as natural as possible and to be able to create a special atmosphere in seven minutes that will make our little children happy."
 Fyodorova said the show's creators did not have to come up with any special on-screen persona for her.
 "The main thing is to be myself because I don't need to make any kind of special image," she said. "I have the option of eventually thinking up something new."
 She said that three programs have already been filmed, and the shooting took one day.
 Fyodorova told the Izvestia daily earlier this month that her favorite character on the show was Filya, the puppy. But she denied having a favorite in the telephone interview. "If I had one, the others' feelings would be hurt," she said.
 Prior to being crowned Miss Universe, Fyodorova won the title of Miss Russia in 2001 and Miss St. Petersburg in 1999. These days, she is a full-time student at the Interior Ministry University in St. Petersburg. A third-year postgraduate student, she was set to defend her dissertation on the regulation of private detective agencies and security firms on Friday.
 Fyodorova joins a television show will a turbulent past. "Spokoinoi Nochi, Malyshi" has been produced on a shoestring budget and moved from one channel to another over the past decade.
 When financing dried up in 1991, a special farewell program was shown in which Khryusha and friends said goodbye. A public outcry caused the program to be reinstated.
 In recent years, the staff on the show has worked without pay for months on end and at times even filmed in their own apartments.
 Because commercials are not allowed during children's programs, Channel One, which broadcast the show for years, whittled it down to seven to eight minutes and sandwiched it between numerous commercials. That wasn't enough to keep it alive, and the channel ditched the show in August 2001.
 "Spokoinoi Nochi, Malyshi" was then picked up by Kultura, another state-controlled channel. Earlier this year the show moved to state-owned Rossia, which announced that it planned to devote more airtime to children's programming.

TITLE: Chechens Home in Kazakhstan
AUTHOR: By Burt Herman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KAINAR, Kazakhstan - Abumuslim Israpilov places his hand on the cold tombstone rising from the Kazakh steppes, praying briefly over his grandmother's body. It is a moment soaked with irony.
 
Israpilov's grandmother is buried here and not in her native Chechnya because, nearly 60 years ago, Josef Stalin deported the entire Chechen population 2,400 kilometers east to Kazakhstan.
 Now her grandson has moved to Kazakhstan because life in Chechnya has become so awful that this country, a symbol of perhaps the greatest injustice inflicted on the Chechens, has come to seem comfortable by comparison.
 Israpilov was an airport technician in Grozny until the fighting and bombing between Russian troops and opposition groups drove Chechens out of the area.
 In June 2000, he became one of 12,000 Chechens who have sought refuge in their forefathers' land of exile during the eight years that war has ravaged their homeland in the Caucasus Mountains.
 The cemetery of crescent-crowned Muslim graves is in Kainar, a village 45 kilometers west of Kazakhstan's commercial capital, Almaty.
 Kainar's small cement houses, built by Stalin's deported Chechens, have become home to their uprooted descendants. Now more Chechens are appealing to Kazakhstan for sanctuary away from the misery of refugee camps. Unwelcome elsewhere, they see this country as one of their last options, a Muslim country that once gave them refuge, an education and jobs.
 "It's like a second motherland for us," Israpilov said.
 But the Chechens' plea to be recognized as refugees presents the Kazakhstan government with a quandary. It wants good relations with the Kremlin, and refugee status might be interpreted as undermining President Vladimir Putin's claim that Chechnya is returning to normal and that the refugees can go home.
 It was Feb. 23, 1944, when on Stalin's orders, the Chechens were deported to Kazakhstan - half a million people herded into freezing railroad cars bound for the steppes.
 Stalin suspected the Chechens of having joined the advancing German army and turning against the Soviet Union as they had done three other times after the 1917 Revolution.
 Most of the Chechens were sent to the icy, inhospitable north of Kazakhstan and, during the next 13 years until they were allowed to return home, half of them died from cold, disease and hunger, said Akhmet Muradov, chairman of a Chechen cultural association in Kazakhstan.
 Some 32,000 Chechens stayed in Kazakhstan and became citizens - a tiny minority in a country of 17 million.
 Today's newcomers are Russian citizens and not officially recognized as refugees. They complain of discrimination in residency permits and jobs, especially since the Moscow theater attack by Chechen rebels in October that left 129 hostages dead.
 More than 10,500 Chechen refugees signed a letter last month appealing to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev for refuge, but he refused, calling it an internal Russian matter.
 "In Chechnya, the situation is even worse than it was in 1944 during the war," Muradov said. "People are looking for a place where they can survive."
 The the refugees have little money - Israpilov survives on 750 <i>tenge</i> ($5) a month in handouts from relief agencies - and refugees who cannot afford to bribe the corrupt bureaucracy do not get registered.
 During a recent trip to northern Kazakhstan, UN officials said they have heard reports of at least 30 deportations and feared that was only a small part of the problem. Kazakh officials are also stepping up screening practices.
 Lyoma Zaurbekov, 51, a former electrician at the Grozny circus who came to Kazakhstan in May 2000 with his wife and two sons, said that, when he recently tried to renew his registration he was videotaped mug shot-style, told to speak so his voice would be on record, and then denied registration.
 He said the officials asked him: &quot;When are you getting ready to go home?&quot;

TITLE: Leaked Memo Provides A Little Ivanov Insight
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A confidential British Foreign Office memo that was posted on the Internet gives details of closed-door meetings two years ago with Sergei Ivanov and lightly pokes fun at the man who would become Russia's defense minister.
 
Russian officials said the leaked memo was an embarrassment for British authorities but not for the Kremlin.
 The memorandum concisely describes the security issues that Ivanov, then secretary of the Security Council, discussed with unidentified officials from Prime Minister Tony Blair's staff, the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defense and Parliament during his visit to Britain from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, 2000.
 The Dec. 2, 2000, memorandum was classified as &quot;confidential,&quot; according to the text of the document displayed at the U.S.-registered Web site cryptome.org. The memo is a straightforward summary of Ivanov's position on security issues and mostly reflects what he said at press briefings during his visit, which culminated in a meeting with Blair.
 One of the few exceptions is Ivanov's admission that Russia may have an &quot;over-rosy&quot; view of the Iranian leadership, and his claim that China is the main supplier of technologies to Iran, which the United States has accused of pursuing a clandestine nuclear arms program.
 Another of Ivanov's reported statements that had not been made public previously is his assertion that the Kremlin was considering invoking Article 50 of the UN Charter to ask for exemptions from the trade sanctions on Iraq to retrieve some of Iraq's multibillion-dollar debt to Russia, &quot;particularly in respect to civil aviation.&quot; It is unclear what Ivanov had in mind.
 On the personal side, the memo's Foreign Office authors note that Ivanov, who spent most of his career in the foreign intelligence branch of the KGB and reportedly lived in England in the 1970s, was &quot;particularly at ease with the SIS [Secret Intelligence Service], but also socially, he tended to rigidity in the more formal meetings&quot; during his visit.
 The memo also claims that Ivanov had said no reconstruction of Chechnya was possible due to security concerns. Ivanov viewed Chechnya as a &quot;black hole of terrorism&quot; and warned of threats posed by Islamist terrorist organizations, according to the memo.
 The memo's authors belittle Ivanov's warning, saying &quot;he did not seriously advance the Islamic galactic plot theory.&quot; The memo also mentions a &quot;diatribe&quot; by deputy secretary of the council Oleg Chernov that the Internet could pose a major threat to world security in coming years.
 Less than a year later, al-Qaida struck the United States on Sept. 11 in the culmination of elaborate plot whose participants used e-mail to communicate.
 Neither Ivanov nor his spokesperson could be reached for comment. The defense minister was meeting his Ukrainian counterpart in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.
 According to one Defense Ministry official, however, Ivanov's decision to refrain from commenting on the leaked memo, which was first reported by The Sunday Times, speaks for itself.
 &quot;There is nothing really sensitive in what has been leaked. It is sort of bad for [the Foreign Office's] reputation, but from our perspective it just repeats what Minister Ivanov has said in public,&quot; the official, who asked not to be named, said in a telephone interview.
 During his visit to Britain, Ivanov also stated Russia's opposition to the eastward expansion of NATO and to U.S. plans to deploy a national missile-defense system, and he called for international cooperation to battle drug trafficking, according both to the confidential memo and press reports at the time. Ivanov also told his British hosts that the United States had overplayed its hand in the Middle East, but agreed that the situation should be stabilized there, the memo says.
 Press officials at the Security Council and Foreign Ministry declined to comment Tuesday. Calls to Chernov, who remains a deputy secretary of the council, went unanswered. One Security Council official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it is &quot;evident&quot; that the leaked memo is an embarrassment for the Foreign Office, but would not elaborate.
 A Foreign Office official, reached in London by telephone, would not confirm the authenticity of the memorandum, which was sent to the British Embassy as a coded cable, according to the text of the memorandum posted at cryptome.org, which is known for posting leaked classified information.
 The official acknowledged, however, that &quot;it appears to be a leak&quot; and that the Foreign Office is &quot;investigating very seriously.&quot;
 The Sunday Times report describes the leak as &quot;embarrassing&quot; for the Foreign Office.
 According to one prominent Russian espionage expert, leaks of top secret information occur rarely in Britain.
 &quot;Mostly what is leaked does no damage to their national interests. These leaks are mostly attempts by one rival clan within their bureaucracy to embarrass or discredit another one,&quot; said retired Lieutenant General Nikolai Leonov, former head of the KGB's foreign intelligence branch.
 Leonov also said he could not rule out that that the leak of the memo could have been an attempt to sling mud at Ivanov himself, particularly over his remarks that no restoration of Chechnya was possible due to security concerns.

TITLE: Company Finds New Uses for Bootleg Vodka
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: CHERNOGOLOVKA, Moscow Region - Some people might be tempted to drink Oleg Udolin's windshield-cleaning fluid rather than use it in their cars. But Udolin doesn't recommend trying it - even though it's made from bootleg vodka.
 
&quot;Whether or not people drink our liquid, I don't know,&quot; said Udolin, the director of Spirtprompererabotka. &quot;But I do remember people drinking antifreeze not so long ago.&quot;
 In 1998, Udolin saw stockpiles of cheap, confiscated alcohol piling up around Moscow and saw a business opportunity. He founded Spirtprompererabotka, and the company has since extracted ethyl alcohol from more than 20 million confiscated bottles of alcohol. It repackages the spirits as windshield-cleaning fluid at a plant in the outskirts of Chernogolovka in the Moscow region and sells it to BP service stations, a number of domestic big-name auto-accessory retailers and even the Moscow region police, Moscow railroad police and customs offices.
 The bottles contain a notice stating that the contents are made from illicit spirits.
 Obtaining the contraband is sometimes a tricky matter - Spirtprompererabotka first has to win a court's approval for each confiscated shipment. After that, the company pays 80 kopeks per half-liter bottle of vodka - which works out at half the price of commercially produced ethyl alcohol - to the regional budget.
 Udolin declined to give production or profit figures.
 &quot;Is it profitable?&quot; he said. &quot;You know, I think it is impossible to ask a question like that. It is impossible because the company was not created to turn a profit, but to help the state bring order to the alcohol market.&quot;
 Perhaps proof of this is that while the company does indeed turn a profit from its products, it relies more on commercially produced alcohol due to the unpredictability of counterfeit stings, he said.
 Most counterfeit alcohol comes from North Ossetia, and the most common labels are Stolichnaya and Moskovskaya, he said.
 In a recent tour of the plant, Udolin proudly showed off the windshield-cleaner production line, which he said was the only one in Russia.
 &quot;This is the only piece of equipment of this kind in the country and perhaps the world,&quot; he said, as a de-bottling line whirred into life behind him, uncapping potentially lethal counterfeit vodka and upending it into a 3-meter-long steel trough.
 In another room, a German-built Krupp Kautex plastic-molding line prepared plastic five-liter containers for filling.
 The end result is high quality, customers said.
 &quot;We don't buy low-quality products, and we haven't, as far as I know, had any complaints from customers,&quot; said Boris Sukhoverkhov, public relations director for BP filling stations, where the fluid retails for 100 rubles to 160 rubles ($3.15 to $5).
 &quot;You can't go anywhere in Russia without it,&quot; he said.
 Udolin, a burly former army major, pointed out a row of trophies that his products have won. &quot;We participate in all the shows in Moscow and the regions,&quot; he said with pride.
 On one shelf were the enemy scalps: a row of dubious-looking vodkas, their confiscation dates clearly labelled.
 Filipp Zolotnitsky, a spokesperson for the police's economic-crimes department, said there are other processing centers for confiscated spirits in the country, but the Spirtprompererabotka line was the best known.
 &quot;We keep the confiscated products until a court issues a ruling on what should be done with them,&quot; he said. &quot;If court-appointed experts believe they are safe to process, then off they go. If they are very dangerous or contain poisonous ingredients, then they are destroyed.&quot;
 He said about 50 tons of confiscated alcohol are reprocessed per year. About 10 tons are destroyed.
 Given that it usually takes six months for a court to make a ruling on counterfeits, the reprocessing system leaves itself open to abuse, said Viktor Makarov, president of Khimsintez, one of the first Russian companies to start reprocessing bootleg spirits. Khimsintez, located in the Moscow region town of Krasnoarmeisk, obtained a license in 1996 and makes a range of alcohol-based products, from perfumes to octane-enhancing additives for gasoline.
 The problem, Makarov said, is that the bootleg alcohol is held in police warehouses pending a court decision.
 &quot;The people who confiscate the products are for the most part not interested in it being processed,&quot; he said in a telephone interview.
 &quot;But I don't want this, I really do want to process it,&quot; he said. &quot;And if I really want to process it, I am either left without these raw materials altogether or it all turns into one gigantic headache.&quot;
 Khimsintez lodged a complaint with the police last year.
 Police spokesperson Zolotnitsky said there have been sporadic cases of counterfeits being resold but stressed that the problem has been brought under control in recent years.
 Measures were being taken to speed up court decisions, he said.

TITLE: Trans-Siberian Railroad Fully Electrified
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian officials celebrated the full electrification Wednesday of the legendary Trans-Siberian railroad line, the world's longest section of track.
 
&quot;The line will now be able to function as a single, unified system,&quot; Viktor Popov, the chairperson of the Far Eastern section of the 9,200-kilometer line, said at ceremonies held at the Ruzhino station in Russia's Far East, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
 The Far Eastern section of the line runs 4,660 kilometers and carries more than 30 percent of all of Russia's exported goods.
 Officials said that they hoped that finishing the complete electrification would further boost traffic on the Trans-Siberian railway by up to 40 percent.
 &quot;The completion of this grandiose project is a huge contribution to the development of the Russian Far East,&quot; said Sergei Darkin, governor of the Primorye region, according to ITAR-Tass.
 The project wasn't finished quickly, as it has taken 74 years to finish installing the equipment that allows electricity-powered trains to run along the entire line, from Moscow to the Vladivostok.
 The last, 175-kilometer section was finished this month.
 The Trans-Siberian railway celebrated its 100th anniversary last year.
 Russia has said it wants to link the line with a railway that is currently being rebuilt between North and South Korea.

TITLE: Ferry To Operate Weekly Kaliningrad Run
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Maritime Administration of the St. Petersburg Port held a ceremony to launch its new ferry service between the city and Kaliningrad on Wednesday.
 
The ferry Georg Ots, which was purchased in November for $2 million by the administration from ESCO Maritime, a Tallinn-based maritime management firm, then set sail on Thursday for the first time on its new two-day route.
 Maritime Administration representatives said that the present plan is for the ship to make the round trip to Kaliningrad once a week, leaving St. Petersburg on Wednesday and arriving in Baltiisk, a port near the city of Kaliningrad, on Friday, then making the return trip from Saturday to Monday. According to Port Administration spokesperson Andrei Markelov, the ferry was purchased and the service set up in response to a special order from the Federal Transport Ministry.
 &quot;With the anticipated entry of Poland and Lithuania into the European Union in 2004 and the difficulties this will create both for Russian citizens and for cargo moving between the Kaliningrad region and the rest of Russia, President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government gave us the task of setting up ferry service between the cities,&quot; the Maritime Administration said in a statement on Wednesday.
 &quot;The new ferry line will become part of a federal program to provide sufficient transport support for the Kaliningrad region&quot;, added Chingiz Izmailov, the deputy head of the Transport Ministry.
 The 12,600-ton Georg Ots was launched in 1980 in Poland, and has six decks with sleeping space for 252 passengers, a 215-seat restaurant, six bars, a casino and two stores. The ferry also has decks for cars and trucks, which can accomodate up to 13 truck trailers or 107 cars.
 Prices for a one-way ticket from St. Petersburg vary from 1,550 rubles ($48.50) to 4,700 rubles ($147). On Wednesday, Gennady Batanin, the chief of the Maritime Administration, said that only 30 tickets had been sold for the first journey. Nevertheless, the administration expects the service to be popular and that it will be able to recoup the $2 million spent for the ferry within four years.
 The administration plans to suspend the route during March and April in order to perform maintenance on the ship, but will then resume the round trip between Baltiisk and St. Petersburg twice a week, Batanin said on Wednesday.
 &quot;After purchasing the ferry, we already modernized much of the ship's equipment, including installing a new navigation system and GPS,&quot; he added.
 Since its construction in 1980, the Georg Ots had been sailing a route between Helsinki and Tallinn.
 &quot;It was the so-called 'vodka-passenger' trip, as most of the visitors were Finnish people going to buy vodka in Tallinn,&quot; one crew member said on Wednesday.

TITLE: Vietnam Pulls the Plug on $1.3Bln Refinery Joint Venture
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HANOI, Vietnam - Russia has agreed to withdraw from a $1.3-billion joint venture to build Vietnam's first oil refinery, state-controlled media reported Thursday, amid differences over acquisition of technology for the plant.
 
The agreement was reached Wednesday at the end of the two-day meeting of the Vietnam-Russia intergovernmental commission between Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan and visiting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Victor Khristenko, the Vietnam News Agency said.
 &quot;Regarding the Dung Quat oil refinery plant, the two sides decided to change the form of cooperation under which the Vietnamese side would be the sole investor,&quot; VNA said.
 Vietnam's state-owned PetroVietnam and Russian partner Zarubezneft established the Vietross joint venture in 1999 to build the Dung Quat refinery in central Vietnam, with an annual capacity of 6.5 million metric tons of crude oil.
 The two sides, holding equal stakes, had been unable to reach agreement on the acquisition of modern technology and equipment for the plant. The Russian partner had reportedly wanted to provide the plant with outdated Russian technology.
 &quot;Despite efforts by the Vietnamese partner, so far the largest bidding package worth $740 million has not been concluded,&quot; Pham Quang Du, PetroVietnam chairperson, told the National Assembly last month. &quot;Construction ... has been delayed because Zarubezneft has experience in gas and oil production, but not in building oil refineries.&quot;
 The Vietnamese government has selected a group of construction companies including France's Technip-Coflexip, Japan's JGC Corp. and Spain's Technicas Reunidas to build the plant.
 The Dung Quat plant will be located in the Quang Ngai province, 850 kilometers south of Hanoi. It will have a processing capacity of 130,000 barrels per day of crude oil.
 Although it produces oil, Vietnam currently has no refining facilities and has to import refined oil products to meet its domestic needs.
 The country earned $2.56 billion from exporting 13.92 million tons of crude oil in the first 10 months of this year, while it paid $1.67 billion for 8.34 million tons of petroleum products, according to government figures.
 Vietnam plans to produce between 16.8 million and 17 million tons of crude oil this year, nearly unchanged from last year, according to PetroVietnam.

TITLE: World Bank Set for Loans, Stressing Reforms
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The World Bank said last week it expects to approve $570 million in new loans to Russia in the next six months, more than it did in all of 2002, but cautioned that higher lending doesn't necessary mean unqualified support for the government's reform effort.
 
&quot;We don't measure the success of our programs in Russia by the number of loans,&quot; said Julian Schweitzer, the bank's director for Russia. &quot;What is much more important now [are] key reforms, including civil service and public management,&quot; he added.
 Schweitzer and Christof Ruhl, the bank's chief economist for Russia, joined a growing list of critics who think the government is making a mistake by slowing the pace of reforms ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections in December 2003 and March 2004, respectively.
 The good news, Ruhl said, is that unlike the pre-crisis years, when fiscal stimulus entered the economy mainly through the state, most of it now comes from the private sector. But the bad news is that the country's reliance on oil hasn't decreased, but has actually grown over the same period, and the economy is concentrated in fewer hands.
 Ruhl said that to break this chain, the government must find the political strength to push through a series of crucial reforms that are facing increasing opposition from large business groups.
 &quot;A lot of the most important reforms, including public administration, natural monopolies and the banking sector, have to be undertaken,&quot; Ruhl said.
 He pointed out, however, that political populism is not the only reason the government and lawmakers have been dragging their feet. Part of the reason these reforms are taking so long is because they are technically more complicated than previous ones.
 In addition, Ruhl said, the various restructuring plans currently on the drawing board could be painful for vested interest groups for the first time in a decade.
 &quot;In all the sectors of the economy, there are vested interests, which will oppose these reforms because they are introducing new benchmarks for competition,&quot; Ruhl said.
 &quot;Any significant delay will make them more difficult to push through because the business lobby becomes more powerful with every year.&quot;
 A similar view was expressed by Stanley Fischer, a former first deputy director of the International Monetary Fund who is now vice chairperson of Citigroup, the world's largest bank.
 &quot;Russia needs to grow more than 4 to 5 percent a year if it wants to catch up with European Union countries, and to do that will require an even higher pace of reforms,&quot; Fischer told students at the Russian Economic School, which celebrated its 10-year anniversary last week.
 The economy is expected to grow 4.2 percent this year and the government is forecasting 4 percent growth for 2003.

TITLE: Weighing the Risks
AUTHOR: By Paul Wolfowitz
TEXT: A DEC. 18 front-page article in The Washington Post titled &quot;Projection on Fall of Hussein Disputed&quot; attempted to describe a split that simply does not exist between the senior civilian and military leadership over planning for potential war in Iraq. The Post's reporter attributed variously to me, to the &quot;Wolfowitz school&quot; and to the &quot;Wolfowitz view&quot; the contention that Saddam Hussein's government &quot;will fall almost immediately upon being attacked.&quot;
 
That has never been my view, nor is it the view of the senior civilian leadership in the Defense Department. The Post's reporter had access to those facts, but The Post's readers, including influential people in Washington, in Baghdad and around the world, are also entitled to them.
 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks have been pushing others hard to think through all the implications of the possible use of force, to think carefully about all the ways in which things can go wrong. That is the only prudent way to plan.
 The day before the story appeared, Rumsfeld was asked in a news conference about the assumption that &quot;Iraqi forces might fold quickly.&quot; He said that is &quot;not the way to look at this situation. First of all, any war is a dangerous thing, and it puts people's lives at risk. And, second, I think that it is very difficult to have good knowledge as to exactly how Iraqi forces will behave.&quot; (Those who are interested in seeing all of these views at greater length are invited to visit www.defenselink.mil.) 
 President George W. Bush has not made any decision about the use of force to achieve the goal of disarmament of Iraq's arsenal of terror. We are still trying to achieve that goal by peaceful means precisely because we understand the risks involved in any use of force.
 Hussein has demonstrated an unparalleled ruthlessness, unpredictability and willingness to sacrifice his military and his people for the sake of his own survival. He has shown no compunction about using weapons of mass terror in the past, either against his own people or Muslim neighbors. He has shown a willingness to use sacred Muslim religious sites to hide his weapons, thereby committing sacrilege. And he has no conscience or mercy when it comes to the weakest and most innocent members of society - the children of Iraq. For these reasons, we in the Defense Department - at all levels, military and civilian - have been thinking carefully for months about all the ways in which things can go wrong, because that is the only prudent way to plan.
 It is also true that it would not be responsible to plan only for the worst case. Things could break in a more favorable direction, and we need to be prepared for that too, so that we do not proceed on assumptions that lead to unnecessary American or Iraqi deaths. But the best way to handle that is to be prepared for the worst things that could happen - which I and other administration officials have been emphasizing repeatedly.
 Every significant aspect of military planning has been the subject of intense discussion between Rumsfeld, Franks, General Richard Myers and the president. They have no differences concerning the size or nature of the military forces required, should it become necessary to disarm Iraq by force. Nor do they have any false sense that anyone can predict the course of events. It has never been so.
 One concern that is much greater than it was during the Persian Gulf War 11 years ago is the danger that Hussein might actually use his most terrible weapons. This serious threat leads us to conclude that this regime is too dangerous to leave indefinitely in possession of those weapons of mass terror while it acquires even more.
 War is brutal, risky and unpredictable; anyone who does not understand that should not be involved in military planning. On the wall of my office, I hung a painting depicting the Civil War battlefield of Antietam on the day after what was the bloodiest single day in U.S. history. It is a reminder of what it means for Americans to risk their lives in combat for their country.
 The president needs no reminder about what a terrible thing war is. He has had to comfort the widows of brave men killed in Afghanistan, and he knows what it would be like to comfort widows if there were a war in Iraq. But he also has comforted the families who lost loved ones in the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon. He can imagine what it would be like to face the survivors of a catastrophic terrorist attack on the United States with chemical or biological or even nuclear weapons.
 No course open to the United States is free of risk. The question is how to weigh the risks of action against the risks of inaction and to be fully aware of both.
 One risk that is often exaggerated is the risk of what might happen in Iraq after the removal of the Hussein regime. It is hard to believe that the liberation of the talented people of one of the most important Arab countries in the world from the grip of one of the world's worst tyrants would not be an opportunity for Americans and Arabs and other people of goodwill to begin to move forward on the task that the president has described as &quot;building a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror.&quot;
 
 <i>Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. deputy secretary of defense, contributed this comment to The Washington Post. </i>

TITLE: Unity at the UN Is a Big Step Forward
TEXT: THE discussion on Iraq at the UN last week revealed a consensus on a key point: that Baghdad's 12,000-page submission to the Security Council failed to meet the council's demand for a complete declaration of weapons of mass destruction. The conclusion that the Iraqi statement was, as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell put it, &quot;a catalogue of recycled information and flagrant omissions&quot; was even echoed by Iraq's sometime defenders. &quot;The declaration does not clearly answer and resolve pending questions,&quot; said French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte. That unity is important - it deals a major setback to Saddam Hussein's effort to save himself and his arsenal by splitting the council and the international community.
 
As Powell and other officials made clear, the U.S. administration now intends to pursue an intensive diplomatic campaign that could lead to a decision on war within weeks. If Iraq continues &quot;its pattern of noncooperation, its pattern of deception, its pattern of dissembling, its pattern of lying ... through the weeks ahead, then we're not going to find a peaceful solution to this problem,&quot; Powell said. The administration still has an important job of diplomacy ahead; only Washington was ready to characterize the Iraqi statement as a &quot;material breach&quot; of the council's resolution. France and Russia still insist that Iraq must be found not only to lie in its statements, but also to be uncooperative with inspectors before the council can consider the &quot;serious consequences&quot; called for in Resolution 1441.
 Bush administration officials recognize the need to prove to the general public, in the U.S. and abroad, that Hussein has again defied the United Nations. Without access to the intelligence that the White House says many governments possess, many people still doubt whether Hussein really is hiding banned weapons, or poses a threat. In the coming weeks, the administration needs to make more of the evidence it has available, both to inspectors and to the public.
 The patently false declaration he delivered effectively disarmed his would-be supporters; it even failed to cover weapons and materials that previous UN missions had declared unaccounted for. According to Powell, it offered no information about the mobile biological weapons labs Baghdad built in the late 1990s, or Iraq's attempts to import high-strength aluminum tubes that could be used in nuclear-weapons production. If war is to be avoided, there must be a credible path toward peaceful disarmament, one distinguishable from Iraq's tactics of deception and resistance over the past decade. So far, Hussein has offered no grounds to hope for such an option; in fact, he has all but irrevocably undermined it.
 
 <i>This comment first appeared as an editoral in The Washington Post. </i>

TITLE: What Was the Point of Putin Going on TV?
TEXT: LAST week's big entertainment news was President Vladimir Putin's two-hour live call-in show. Of the huge number of people hoping for a chance to put their question to the president, only 51 lucky - thoroughly vetted and 100-percent-loyal - souls actually got the chance.
 
On Thursday morning, as the select few were preparing to dial, a Canadian friend of mine asked me if I was planning to call the president as well. Why should I? I have power in my apartment, thank goodness. The heat works, and the roof doesn't leak.
 Calling the Kremlin is like playing the lottery. The game is set up like the promotional contests run by radio stations. The prize goes to the person who calls at just the right time and asks just the right question. Of the tens of thousands of people who call in to complain about their lives, one gets through, and the government takes urgent action to address his grievances.
 It's not hard to figure out why people call the president. What's harder to fathom is why the Kremlin bothers to put on the annual Putin show. Radio stations run promotional contests in their continual battle for listeners. The Kremlin has no competitors. Putin's official popularity rating is already over 86 percent and, when the next election rolls around, it will no doubt top 100 percent.
 Not long ago I had occasion to appear on an &quot;interactive&quot; television show. Viewers were invited to call the studio and weigh in on the following question: What does the constitution guarantee for you - your safety, your civil rights, or nothing at all? By the end of the program, 3 percent of callers said the constitution guarantees their safety, 2 percent said it guarantees their civil rights, while a whopping 95 percent said it guarantees absolutely nothing.
 The same illogic applies to Putin's job-approval numbers. The majority of Russians do not support his domestic or foreign policy, as borne out by the same polls usually cited to prove the president's overwhelming popularity. But when asked if they support the president, people answer yes.
 This isn't really a paradox. In essence, the question of supporting the current regime comes down to whether you're prepared to go on living in this country. It has been made abundantly clear that no other regime is possible. Love it or leave it. And most people go along because they have nowhere else to go.
 In the 18th century, it was said that the Russian state amounted to an autocracy held in check by palace revolutions. As recent history has shown, you can pull off a political revolution in today's Russia without hitting the tsar over the head with a snuffbox. You can simply force him to name a successor.
 The people only notice palace revolutions when a new face appears on their coins and a new portrait is hung on their walls. For the favorites at court, however, they can be catastrophic.
 The regime must strengthen its course. Its decisions must be made irreversible. But how? Unfortunately, the current generation of Kremlin favorites has come up with nothing better than a live call-in show.
 
 <i>Boris Kagarlitsky is the director of the Institute of Globalization Studies. </i>

TITLE: festival brightens winter nights
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Running a music festival isn't very difficult, according to conductor Yury Temirkanov, the artistic director of the Arts Square Festival.
 
&quot;A festival is no big deal, really,&quot; he smiles. &quot;In Europe, nearly every village now has its own festival.&quot;
 &quot;What does present a challenge is building a symbolic concept of the event in such an historic location [as St. Petersburg],&quot; he adds.
 This year's Arts Square Festival, which opens on Friday with a concert including world-renowned pianist Evgeny Kissin playing Brahms' Second Piano Concerto, is only the fourth running of Temirkanov's brainchild, which he set up to revive the St. Petersburg tradition of a sparkling winter-concert season.
 Nevertheless, the musicians taking part would do the world's most prestigious musical events proud. In addition to Kissin, the list includes American soprano Barbara Hendricks, violinist Vadim Repin, cellist Truls Mork, contralto Ewa Podles and baritone Vladimir Chernov.
 According to Shostakovich Philharmonic Director Yury Shvartskopf, the venue suffered from cancellations by several Western artists of their planned performances in the aftermath of the tragic events in Moscow in October, when over 120 people died after Russian troops stormed Moscow's Theater Center na Dubrovke, in which Chechen rebels had taken hundreds of hostages during a performance of the Russian musical &quot;Nord-Ost.&quot; However, he said, not a single musician invited to perform during the Arts Square Festival had reconsidered their decision to come to St. Petersburg.
 &quot;Maybe it's because they're all my friends,&quot; Temirkanov says. &quot;In any case, I'm very happy to have made it happen.&quot;
 &quot;Having a festival like ours, with a beautiful ball in the historic Yusupov Palace, wonderful concerts and a genuine winter-holiday atmosphere, is very important for St. Petersburg,&quot; he says.
 Perhaps in recognition of Temirkanov's efforts, the city administration has declared the festival to be the first official event of St. Petersburg's 300th-anniversary celebration. The recognition also brought the festival some financial reward, in the form of $60,000 from the St. Petersburg 300 Fund.
 Arts Square centers on two venues, the Shostakovich Philharmonic and the State Russian Museum, both of which are located on the event's namesake, Ploshhad Iskusstv, with its famous statue of Russia's favorite poet, Alexander Pushkin, in the center.
 As part of the festival, a special exhibition opens in the Benois Wing on Monday (although there will be a special viewing for festival guests on Sunday). The exhibition, &quot;Dvoye&quot; (&quot;Twosome&quot;), examines human relationships between two people. Among the works on display, which date from the 15th to the 20th centuries, will be Nikolai Ge's &quot;Peter the Great Interrogating Tsarevich Alexei,&quot; Konstantin Somov's &quot;The Harlequin and the Lady,&quot; and even some icons by Nikolai Rerikh.
 &quot;I'm happy that the museum's input has evolved from nominal to substantial,&quot; says the museum's director, Vladimir Gusev.
 &quot;The idea for the exhibition came as I was talking with Yury Temirkanov,&quot; he says. &quot;It's a sad circumstance that the museum and the Philharmonic are yet to be joined by our neighbors on Arts Square. Let's hope that, next time, we can make it a 'Threesome.'&quot;
 According to its organizers, the festival has the potential to grow some more. The Musical Comedy Theater, situated right next to the Shostakovich Philharmonic, is not taking part for a very simple - and just as outrageous - reason: The venue isn't heated.
 In addition, the Mussorgsky Theater, on the Kanal Griboyedova side of the square, was willing to take part, but wanted money in return - an attitude that infurated Temirkanov.
 &quot;I approached them and asked if they would let the Boris Eifman Ballet Company perform 'Russian Hamlet' on their stage, as part of the festival,&quot; he recalls. &quot;They said it would cost me $5,000 - as if I was doing it for myself, and not for the city!&quot;
 As with every previous Arts Square Festival, Temirkanov is introducing a talented newcomer to the city's concert goers this year. The name to watch this time is Kazakh conductor Alan Buribayev, who conducts the Shostakovich Philharmonic's Academic Symphony Orchestra on Tuesday, New Year's Eve, in a program of works by Berlioz, Bizet, Faure and Johann Strauss.
 A graduate of the Kazakhstan Conservatory and a prizewinner at a number of competitions, Buribayev now studies at the Vienna University of Music and Drama. Temirkanov noticed the gifted young conductor at Copenhagen's Nikolai Malko International Conducting Competition, where Buribayev was awarded a special prize &quot;For Talent.&quot;
 A previous Temirkanov protege, Chinese-born pianist Lang Lang, returns for this year's Arts Square Festival, this time to perform Grieg's Piano Concerto at the festival's closing concert on Jan. 7, with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra under Temirkanov's baton.
 &quot;Lang Lang has a fantastic career. He gives over 100 performances a year around the world,&quot; Temirkanov says. &quot;I keep close tabs on what he is doing, but I'm happy to see that he doesn't need my help any more.&quot;
 Although the festival starts shortly after Western Christmas and winds up on Orthodox Christmas, its director says he isn't religious at all.
 &quot;Do I believe in God? Regretfully, no,&quot; Temirkanov said in an interview for his 60th birthday in 1998. &quot;You must write 'regretfully,' because I would very much like to.&quot;
 &quot;I think that believers live more securely,&quot; he said. &quot;They 'stand well' on this earth. But I live as an atheist.&quot;
 Although the Arts Square Festival largely has yet to resonate with Western audiences, Shvartskopf said the number of guests coming from abroad has been growing every year. A rarity in Russia, the festival is able to reveal its program a year in advance, making it much easier to promote both at home and abroad.
 Temirkanov notes another new feature of the festival that brings it one step closer to its high-profile counterparts elsewhere.
 &quot;In the past, everyone performed at the Philharmonic for free,&quot; he recalls. &quot;I basically had to ask my friends for a favor. I'm relieved those times are over.&quot;
 As for next year's festival, Temirkanov would like to make it a juxtaposition of Russia and the United States. He has already divulged one of the acts that he hopes to bring over - an African-American choir singing a program of spirituals.
 
 <i>
For a complete schedule, see Listings.
 Links: www.artsquarewinterfest.ru </i>

TITLE: kicking against the tide of expectations
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: &quot;For the first time in many years, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just doing what I want, nothing to do with my past,&quot; says Sergei Shnurov, frontman of ska-punk band Leningrad, which saw its popularity skyrocket in 2002.
 
The new-look Shnurov, sporting a thick mustache and a fresh bruise on his cheekbone, is recording what he calls an &quot;experiment&quot; in a new studio, Neva Records on the Fontanka River, that he has been using since Leningrad's 1999 album &quot;Mat Bez Elektrichestva.&quot;
 The song, with a chorus mentioning &quot;Roboty i boboty&quot; (&quot;Robots and bo-bots&quot;) and featuring a quote from seminal late-1980s local band Nol, comes across as a retro electro-pop number.
 &quot;I think it's like Alla Pugachyova's 'Robinson,' really 1980s,&quot; says Shnurov. &quot;Half the instruments are live, however strange it may seem.&quot;
 Leningrad fulfilled its five-album contract with Moscow's Gala Records with November's &quot;Tochka&quot; (&quot;Period&quot;) and has no recording deal now, despite being in high demand from the record industry.
 &quot;We didn't have any concert contracts, and our recording contracts were not very demanding,&quot; says Shnurov. &quot;At the moment, we don't owe anybody anything. But I can say that it's some milestone in my life.&quot;
 Shnurov is contemplating a new Leningrad album next year, but says he has no idea what it will sound like.
 &quot;The thing is that I've been thrown into experimenting,&quot; he says. &quot;If I record an electronic retro album, it's not clear under which name it could be released.&quot;
 Shnurov divides his studio time between experimenting and working on soundtracks for films and television series, currently recording material for new episodes of the ironic crime series &quot;Agentstvo NLS&quot; (&quot;Agency NLS&quot;).
 Looking back over the past year, he says, &quot;I wasn't resting, but I wasn't working, yet I still felt generally tired.&quot;
 &quot;I don't know why,&quot; he says. &quot;It was a very strange year.&quot;
 Shnurov says he had to work hard to liberate himself from the pressures of show business and public expectations.
 &quot;I got some close attention from the public, which was pretty hard to put up with,&quot; he says. &quot;But I reconsidered my attitude toward the situation, and it's much easier now.&quot;
 &quot;Now, I'm dealing with myself. I'm not interested in opinions of what I'm doing, nor discussions about it,&quot; he says. &quot;Recently, there were a lot of conversations and discussions that left a mark on me, whether I reacted or not. Now, I'm absolutely isolated. I've even switched off my mobile phone - it only works one way.&quot;
 Shnurov's new solo album, &quot;Vtoroi Magadansky ...&quot; (&quot;Second Magadan ...&quot;), released on Moscow's Misteriya Zvuka last week, steers away from Leningrad's current direction, containing urban-folk-style songs recorded with minimal fuss.
 &quot;I wanted to restore a more intimate atmosphere with the record, rather than the detachedness of [Leningrad's album 'Piraty XXI Veka' ('21st-Century Pirates)],&quot; he says. 
 &quot;Of course, it will undermine Leningrad's popularity, because people are expecting something different,&quot; he says. &quot;They're waiting for <i>zaboi </i>[loud, heavy music]. But I'm already bored with that.&quot;
 Shnurov also sees a number of Leningrad soundalike bands appearing on the scene.
 &quot;For example, every band uses a brass section now. Not that they're imitating us, I mean, but it has become a trend,&quot; he says. &quot;But I don't follow any trends; that's why I'm making music like I am now. I'll probably even release it as 'Leningrad.'&quot;
 On the live front, whereas Shnurov describes Leningrad's first stadium concert in February as an &quot;epochal event&quot; for the band, Friday's show at the Yubileiny Sports Palace fails to spark much enthusiasm.
 &quot;There's nothing new, nothing fresh. It will be a normal, ordinary concert,&quot; he says. &quot;There's not much sense in surprising people, because we haven't really played for a year, except for some brief appearances.&quot;
 In contrast to what was billed as Shnurov's &quot;solo concert&quot; at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture in September, which featured folk musicians as well as Leningrad's full lineup, Friday's show will avoid experiments, according to Shnurov.
 &quot;There's no sense in playing a balalaika at a stadium,&quot; he says. &quot;We'll leave that for more intimate venues.&quot;
 &quot;Also, the sound quality at Yubileiny leaves much to be desired,&quot; he says. &quot;So, you can try to get an interesting sound by using lots of acoustic instruments but, actually, lose the whole concert.&quot;
 In any case, Shnurov is more interested in recording his new songs.
 &quot;What's happening in the studio now is more radical, avant-garde and interesting than Leningrad with its eight records, because Leningrad is now pop culture,&quot; he says.
 Some of Shnurov's comments offer little hope for Leningrad's future.
 &quot;I'm not interested in working with Leningrad as a band, as a phenomenon, as anything,&quot; he says. &quot;It's like a game. I've already solved the crossword and there's nothing else to do with it, except show it to friends and wipe your ass with it.&quot;
 Although Leningrad's popularity peaked in 2002, Shnurov says the band was just reaping the fruits of its former labors.
 &quot;2001 was the final strike to get everything rolling by itself; the real work was put in 2001,&quot; he says. &quot;In 2002, we got to the top by the force of inertia, so to speak.&quot;
 Leningrad still shocks audiences, as seen in July, when it scandalized and excited a Russian rock event in Nuremburg, Germany by playing its set stark naked - which Shnurov calls an &quot;improvisation.&quot;
 &quot;It was fun, but nothing more,&quot; he says. &quot;It's strange - Leningrad became predictable because it was unpredictable ... . It's stalemate; whatever move you make, you can't win.&quot;
 Shnurov's current obsession with the 1980s electro-pop sound seems rooted in how he views today.
 &quot;I think stagnation is coming back, when nothing happens and society becomes introverted,&quot; he says. &quot;After the 1960s and the punk revolution of the late 1970s, the 1980s were nothing years. Depeche Mode was a phenomenon but, for me, not quite.&quot;
 
 <i>
Leningrad plays Yubileiny Sports Palace on Friday. 
 Links: www.leningrad.spb.ru </i>

TITLE: answers to the unanswerable
AUTHOR: by Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: There are some questions that manage to provoke hours of stimulating discussion at the dinner table. On the other hand, there are some that stop the conversation and make your dining companions look at you slightly askance.
 
&quot;Come to think of it, what is the singular of ravioli?&quot; falls into the latter category. I had cause to ask this question this week while dining at Il Grappolo, an upmarket Italian restaurant that opened not long ago on Ulitsa Belinskogo. My curiosity had been piqued upon realising that the three said stuffed-pasta envelopes that constituted my main course were costing me in the region of $5 each.
 It must immediately be said, however, that each was $5 well spent.
 Dining at Il Grappolo provokes a few reconsiderations about what makes for good Italian cuisine, as we realized later, and this is most obviously reflected in the size of the portions. With one notable exception (of which more later), none of our dishes were of the &quot;mama's kitchen&quot; school of massive bowls of pasta and gargantuan pizzas often found elsewhere. Rather, the menu has obviously been put together with great care so that individual dishes complement each other, to leave diners feeling pleasantly full - and, more importantly, with the feeling of having eaten something memorable - rather than stuffed.
 (As an aside, as one of my dining companions pointed out, pizza does not feature on the menus of many high-class Italian eateries, being considered a &quot;poor man's dish,&quot; despite its pre-eminence around the world. As he explained, pizza was made popular by working-class Italian immigrants to America, whence it was reinvented as a staple of world cuisine.)
 Historical digressions apart, probably the best example of Il Grappolo's philosophy was provided by the aforementioned ravioli ($15; all prices are listed in dollar equivalents). These were served in a Gorgonzola-based sauce that, together with the Ricotta cheese with which they were stuffed, made for a dish that was judged to be almost perfectly satisfying without bloating.
 The original intention of our trip to Il Grappolo was a Christmas party for myself and one of my long-suffering All About Town colleagues. However, we were also joined by a friend visiting for the weekend from Britain, who soon took upon himself the role of cynic-in-residence.
 After arriving and handing our coats to a smiling, but silent, coat-check attendant, we were led up to the restaurant and handed over to our server, who quickly established himself as unfailingly polite and efficient. The service, as hoped for, was superb - attentive yet discreet.
 My AAT colleague began with a gigantic Caesar salad ($8) that, while excellent, she was only able to half-finish. The size of her portion made an interesting contrast to the cynic's starter, Melanzane Parmigiana ($8.50). (Another question I have been unable to fathom: Why do Americans call that vegetable an eggplant?). This, as became apparent, was made smaller deliberately, as it turned out to be extremely rich and filling.
 I, meanwhile, went for one of my favorites, the Caprese salad ($15), which was dressed - to my order - with the usual black pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar at the table with impressive dexterity by our server. The mozarella <i>di buffala </i>was wonderfully tender, almost melting. It provided a lovely contrast to the enormous slices of tomato (where did they find such tomatoes?) that made up the other half of this clasically simple dish.
 While I dallied longingly over my ravioli, my colleague was tucking into her main course of grilled Branzina fish ($24), which came simply, yet elegantly, presented, with a side dish of delicately flavored mashed potato, lemon wedges and salad. This did not last long, and my colleague glowed with praise for the dish.
 Meanwhile, the cynic - having declared that he &quot;couldn't find fault with&quot; his starter - had chosen a bowl of tagliatelle with mushrooms ($16). Again, this was sophisticated and fulfilling without being over-plentiful, and drew rave reviews. My companion was unwilling to state categorically that his pasta had been freshly made - as I was with mine - but was fairly certain that it had been.
 We accompanied all this with a bottle of house white wine, a 2000 Chilean Undurraga ($25) that, while perfectly acceptable, somehow failed to stay the course, as the cynic put it. He also found minor fault with the decor, which I would describe as modern Italian rustic chic, but which he described as slightly sterile. 
 Our main gripe - and I don't care how many times I have to say this, it never fails to annoy me - was the music. For a restaurant as top-notch as Il Grappolo undoubtedly is, the choice of bad electronic pop and various other hideous compositions is not good enough. I would hesitate to dictate matters of internal policy to a management as capable as Il Grappolo's, but surely some quiet, noodly jazz or an opera disc or two - maybe even something Italian, heaven forbid - can't be too hard to find to put diners at ease.
 Still, in context, the music was a minor nuisance, and we departed into the cold December evening more than happy, having, we felt, brought this column to a fitting close for the year.
 And, for my dining companions' future reference, the singular of ravioli is raviolo (although, as we suspected, my Italian sources say that it's very rarely used).
 
 <i>
Il Grappolo. 5 Ul. Belinskogo. Tel.: 273-4904. Open daily, noon to 1 a.m. Menu in Russian and English. Credit cards accepted. Dinner for three, with alcohol and a 20-percent discount: $118.40. Same meal without discount: $148. </i>

TITLE: she's a soprano with a mission
TEXT: Wherever she goes, Barbara Hendricks seems to make it her aim to inspire people.
 
The American soprano is one of today's most in-demand performers, but there is much more to her than merely a world-class musician. In addition to her concert and opera performances, which have seen her work with just about all of music's big names, Hendricks is also a passionate human-rights campaigner. Since 1987, she has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which has taken her around the world's trouble spots, including singing New Year's concerts in Dubrovnik and Sarajevo during the wars there in the early 1990s. More recently, she sang at East Timor's independence-day celebrations.
 Hendricks was born in Stephens, Arkansas. She graduated from New York's prestigious The Juilliard School, to which she had applied at the personal invitation of Jennie Tourel, who spotted the young singer at a music summer camp. Before going to New York, Hendricks completed a science degree at Nebraska University, in case her musical career didn't work out.
 Unusually for a Western musician, Hendricks has performed widely in the Soviet Union and Russia since the mid-1970s. She returns to St. Petersburg on Jan. 5, to perform with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Dmitry Sitkovetsky. Hendricks spoke recently with Staff Writer </i><strong>Peter Morley.</strong>
 
 
q:<i>What first inspired you to come to Russia?
 </i>a:Artists don't really choose where they go; they're often invited. The opportunity came through friends who are musicians, and we did some chamber music. The violinist in that group was Ilana Isakadze, who's Georgian and had her own orchestra there, so I came another time to sing with her orchestra.
 
I've done concerts in East Germany, in Hungary, and throughout the Eastern bloc. I felt the importance of music in the lives of the people, so it was important for me to have that part of my season. It was fascinating, and I really felt like I was bringing a message of this music and that it was central to their lives. I don't know if there was any publicity or marketing before, but I certainly didn't do any interviews or anything like that to prepare for the concerts, and I really felt that people came for the music. Out of curiosity for an American artist, but also for the music. As a musician, that's wonderful.
 
 
q:<i>What impressions did St. Petersburg or Russia make on you?
 </i>a:What affected me most, or impressed me most, was the solidarity of people. Friendship meant something at that time. Someone you could trust your life with was your friend. The sad part was that people had the other side, which was that, maybe, a close member of your family was somebody you couldn't trust. If you went shopping and, after standing in line, you managed to get there and buy shoes, you bought extra ones because your neighbor might need them. They'd do the same for you - otherwise, you couldn't exist, because there were too many lines to stand in. That kind of solidarity really impressed me.
 
I was lucky to be in East Germany in December 1989, the first time people walked over Checkpoint Charlie to West Berlin. I consider it my gift for having to go through Checkpoint Charlie myself so many times. I was recording at the time. When it really opened up, and people walked through and weren't stopped, I didn't know about it because, of course, there was no Western television in my hotel. The waiter, when I went down to breakfast, excused himself for being so tired, because he'd been up all night and had just arrived at work. We actually cried together. I couldn't believe it.
 I went through that checkpoint many times with my hands over my mouth for fear that I was going to scream something that would get me locked up. I said to myself when it happened that this was something I would never see in my lifetime and, on the other hand, I hoped that they would not trade in that wonderful sense of solidarity for the color television and the car.
 I've been back [to Russia] for a couple of concerts, and the change is enormous. Everything happened and was deregulated so quickly, which meant a lot of corruption took the place of the government. I don't know how long it's going to take for the country to get itself through all that. And then, of course, the Chechen problem is one [to which] I think a political solution has to be found.
 
 
q:<i>Is the Chechen problem, from a humanitarian point of view, something you would espouse?
 </i>a:Yes, because they're threatening to close the refugee camps now, and I'm absolutely against it. It's still within [the UNHCR's] mandate that people should not be forced to go back to a war zone where their lives are in danger. Those camps are pretty horrible, even by refugee-camp standards but, still, people feel like their lives are not in danger, if they don't freeze to death or starve to death. Then, they have to go back and be shot at or bombed. Definitely this is something that concerns me.
 

 
q:<i>So, if you were asked to go down there tomorrow, or at the next free point in your schedule, would you go?
 </i>a:It would depend. I don't know if they would let me, given the situation; they don't let me go into situations where they don't think it's safe for me. For something like Sarajevo, the bombs were falling and I had to make a decision to go or not but, of course, they were responsible for my safety. I wasn't allowed outside without a helmet and bulletproof vest on, even though it was so heavy to wear - we don't think about it, but they are incredibly heavy. I don't know how they assess the situation in terms of UN personnel going [to Chechnya].
 

 
q:<i>Where does your driven, humanitarian side come from? There are lots of celebrity charities and celebrity causes, but there aren't many people who would put on bulletproof jackets to sing concerts in Sarajevo.
 </i>a:It has nothing to do with being a celebrity. I feel that, as a citizen, I must do what I can do, and I can't really keep my mouth shut about what I think. I think it really has to do with the fact that I believe all children have a very true sense of justice, and I never lost mine.
 
I sometimes sit in front of my television and scream at it, because I find that some of the situations in the world are so ridiculous, and that poor people are being manipulated and uneducated people are being manipulated.
 I've always meddled and, also, I was born in America as a refugee, really. I did not have the full protection of the law. The passing of the voting-rights bill gave me my rights, but it gave me an enormous responsibility, for myself and for future generations. I fell in love with the principles of democracy and the fact that I could make a difference in my own destiny and my own life. Those are principles that I feel need so much more support now than 30 years ago. Because of the war against terror, the dangers of infringing on the human rights of the innocent individual are being accepted. 
 

 
q:<i>You've been described as a &quot;freedom fighter&quot; rather than a &quot;charity worker.&quot; Is that fair?
 </i>a:I think so, because I don't really do much charity work. There are celebrities who can do celebrity dinners and can fill Wembley [Stadium in London], but I can't do that. I think it's wonderful that people are sincere and do it, because I can't. Also, it doesn't interest me - there's nothing I hate more than having to sit through a charity dinner.
 
I believe in freedom in terms of human rights based on the universal declaration of human rights. I'm not talking about going and burning down institutions. We already did that in 1968. That was my generation that felt that we were going to change the world. We've come to the realistic realization that we can move things forward a bit.
 I still consider myself to be a militant for human rights because, within the declaration of human rights, we have the possibility to respect one another, be who we are, and be different. What makes the world so wonderful is the difference. Just within Europe, to travel from St. Petersburg to Andalucia, what a richness of culture and food and customs and music and art you come in contact with. We should all be ourselves, keep our cultures but, when we have a problem, find some way of resolving those problems, sitting down together without resorting to destruction, to barbarism and genocide. I will never stop fighting for that freedom, for everyone to be who they are.
 
 
q:<i>Do you think that musicians have to be cosmopolitan to have a successful career in today's &quot;shrinking world&quot;?
 </i>a:It depends what you want. I think you have to be as rich as you can be in experiences in order to express emotions. That's the whole point about being a performing artist. You've got to be able to relate emotions that aren't necessarily your own. You've got to play a character. Even a two-minute song is a mini-opera that is not my story. In order to have experiences, you have to live. I don't think you can really be a true artist sitting in your hotel room.
 
Going through passport control, sometimes I see the reaction that I get, and I think about a poor guy who's an asylum seeker and how he would be treated. I need to know that, even though it's painful and I'd rather not have to go through it, because then I can relate more. You get off the plane, half the people who've been sitting there go straight through, and I get pulled aside. Why? It's not because they think I'm cute or they want an autograph, although that's happened in France. I think that I have to do it so that it reminds me that there are a very few people who get to avoid that.
 I think that, as an artist, and this is something Jennie Tourel said, you're a reservoir and you need to keep filling it with experiences. Go to the theater, go to the opera, go to dance, read, go to the museums, live, have experiences, fall in love, be hurt.
 

 
q:<i>Are there any moments or people in your career that you could single out as particularly important?
 </i>a:Jennie Tourel really had the greatest influence on me, because she was the example of the sort of artist that I needed at the time. When I arrived in New York, I didn't have a clue what it was going to be like. It was my first big leap of faith. Seeing her and watching her work, and her attitude to her art, was so necessary to me, because it coincided with something that I needed - I needed to have a noble goal. I had a rather strict, Protestant upbringing, where singing was something you did at church, but didn't enjoy too much.
 
I had conductors who influenced me and supported me, like Bernstein, and also Herbert von Karajan. I worked with [Carlo Maria] Giulini, who was a very spiritual musician, very discreet - a wonderful, elegant man. They were all very different, but gave me a lot, and supported me as a musician. That was truly wonderful.
 
 
q:<i>What music did you grow up with?
 </i>a:All kinds of music, not at home, but at school. At home, I had church music but, in school, we did a little bit of everything. We tried to do a little bit of [Handel's oratorio] &quot;The Messiah&quot; at Christmas time, Broadway musicals, we would do jazz. That's probably why the repertoire I have is so large because, for me, music was just music, and there was nothing that was off-limits. 
 
I was lucky because, in America, we don't have the same richness of composers as France, Germany and Italy, so we were forced to sing and know the repertoire in other languages. In English, between [Henry] Purcell and Britten, it's pretty meagre, whereas a German singer can sing German music for his whole career, and have more than enough, if that's what they want to do. I'm always searching for different repertoire.
 
 
q:<i>How did you choose the program for this concert? Was it deliberate to sing Berlioz' &quot;Nuits d'ete&quot; (&quot;Summer Nights&quot;) at a winter festival?
 </i>a:No, it wasn't. I've worked with Sitkovetsky many times, and we did the Berlioz together. We were going through the repertoire we could do, and I made a list and he said, &quot;We enjoyed doing that together, so let's do that one.&quot; 
 

 
q:<i>Whose idea was it to do a concert with a chamber orchestra?
 </i>
a:I happen to think that [Yury] Temirkanov is one of the few giants of conducting so, when he asked me, I agreed immediately. I have great esteem for him as a musician and as a person.
 

 <i>
Barbara Hendricks performs on Jan. 5 at the Shostakovich Philharmonic. Links: www.artsquarewinterfest.ru </i>

TITLE: all alabama loves reese
AUTHOR: by Desson Howe
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: Your can take the girl out of Alabama, but ...
 
In &quot;Sweet Home Alabama,&quot; that girl is Melanie (Dakota Fanning). When we meet her, she's a preteen and telling her sort-of boyfriend, Jake (Thomas Curtis), she'll be busy for a while before she's ready for marriage. There's a bolt of lightning, as if to cement this precocious utterance. And another.
 Cut to Melanie (Reese Witherspoon) as a grown-up woman, on the verge of success and love. She's a break-through designer in New York City. And Andrew (Patrick Dempsey) the JFK-like son of the New York City mayor (Candice Bergen) just stuck a Tiffany rock on her finger.
 She takes a quick trip home to 'bama to patch up differences with her folks (Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place) and tell them the news. And she runs into older Jake (Josh Lucas), to whom she is already married. Whoa, okay. And she wants him to sign those divorce papers, so she can get with her second husband.
 Jake's real nice, real down home. And in the tired moral coding of this movie, the emphasis is on real. Real, at least, in that Hollywood studio way, which is to say, about as unreal as any character could be.
 Around Jake is a state full of lovable, equally &quot;real&quot; southerners who could probably double as the cast of &quot;The Country Bears.&quot; My favorite is Fred Ward as a rather unconvincing good ol' boy who loves Civil War reenactment battles. He's about as Dixie as California Gov. Gray Davis. But he does get the movie's only funny line, which suggests that no one has enough posterior width and breadth to ride two horses.
 Some tiredly familiar rules apply here: People who live in the heartland are real. People who live in New York City are vain (that designer crowd, you know?) and out of touch. This mayor and Andrew are Democrats. Of course. And when prodigal daughter Melanie returns to humble Pigeon Creek, the one-water-tank town she ran away from, well, you can see what the Yankees did to the girl. She's uppity, sasses her mama and she's mean.
 Obviously, you won't be watching &quot;Sweet Home Alabama&quot; for its profound insights into American society. It's the usual romantic comedy vehicle for up-and-coming stars.
 But Andy Tennant's direction is appropriately bright, and the lead performers are sweet enough. I don't expect I'll be the only one who thinks Lucas is channeling Matthew McConaughey, but he's got a charm about him. And if you're a fan of Witherspoon, this movie was produced, shot, edited and distributed entirely for you. The crew has done its job for her - everyone from the hairdressers to cinematographer Andrew Dunn. She glides through this movie with perfect hair. Her most picturesque expressions are caught in all their poetic motion. And she's a natural charmer herself. As for this story, well, Southern Gal don't need it around anyhow.
 

 <i>
Sweet Home Alabama opens at Crystal Palace and Mirage Cinemas on Jan. 2. </i>

TITLE: meet the other vladimir yakovlev
TEXT: Politics is a very different animal in Russia than in the West. Whereas politicians in the United States, for example, can usually return to their law firm and a stable income when they are not reelected, their St. Petersburg counterparts are drawn from various walks of life - and have to look for something else when their terms in office expire.
 
One example is Vladimir Petrovich Yakovlev - no relation to his namesake, Governor Vladimir Anatolyevich Yakovlev - who is usually referred to by the nickname kulturny (&quot;cultured&quot;).
 He acquired his sobriquet while serving as the chairperson of the city's Culture Committee, a post he held for over seven years, first under late Mayor Anatoly Sobchak and then under the present governor.
 A professor at the University of Culture and Art, where he lectures on the history of St. Petersburg, Yakovlev ran for reelection in the Dec. 8 elections to the city's Legislative Assembly as a candidate for the SPS+Yabloko bloc in the eighth electoral district.
 Although he was defeated by Vladimir Golman, it is likely that he will be back in a high-profile cultural role soon.
 Just before the elections, Yakovlev sat down to talk about changes on the city's cultural scene with </i><strong>Larisa Doctorow.</strong>
 
 
q:<i>You were responsible for the city's cultural life for a long time. How do you think the cultural landscape has changed since Perestroika? Are St. Petersburg's theaters, museums and palaces doing better or worse?
 </i>a:I think the cultural life in the city has changed together with the whole country. At first, it was very hard after the arrival of Perestroika; I call that the &quot;survival stage.&quot; Stage two was stability and preservation, and the third stage is development. When I left office in fall 1999, we were already on the way to development.
 
When I first took the job, culture was meant to get 1.7 percent of the city budget but, in reality, it didn't get more than 1 percent. By the time I left, we had 4 percent and, for 2003, about 6 percent has been promised.
 The money is supposed to support the city's cultural institutions. We have 89 theaters here, of which three belong to the federal Culture Ministry - the Mariinsky Theater, the Bolshoi Drama Theater and the Alexandriinsky Theater. We also have 250 museums, including several of national stature, such as the [State] Hermitage [Museum], the [State] Russian Museum and the Naval Museum.
 Then we have lesser museums, such as the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, the Bread Museum and others.
 I set myself the task of improving people's education. I had three goals: people, children and monuments. I think children's education is important for the city's cultural life - we have to create consumers of culture, to teach children to appreciate culture. Without consumers, culture can not exist.
 
 
q:<i>What has changed on the museum front?
 </i>a:A lot. They have become alive. Change has touched the very nature of the museums. They are learning to survive and to earn money. Take the Russian Museum, for example. Two years ago, it got to the point where, for every ruble of state-budget funding it receives, it makes 8 rubles of its own. I think that this is more important than policign whether museum visitors are putting on <i>valenki </i>[felt slippers that museums often require visitors to wear].
 
I remember getting angry letters from people asking us why we dropped the requirement that visitors put on valenki. I tried to explain to them that these buildings were constructed for people to use, not just to look at. People lived in the palaces. The valenki are not the problem. The buildings were constructed for people, not for valenki.
 
 
q:<i>What has happened in the theaters?
 </i>a:I was the dean of the Theater Academy for years. I was the last dean appointed in the Soviet era, and I saw the transition of the repertoire from the ideological to normal, human drama. Still, I must say that, in the 16 years since the start of Perestroika, nothing of great artistic significance has taken place.
 
The film industry is slowly getting back on its feet, largely thanks to St. Petersburg film makers. We still have great performers. Russia is so rich in talent that, despite so many people leaving, new talent keeps appearing.
 We should be careful with the restoration work. The city should not turn into a museum - it should be alive.
 
 
q:<i>What about the many palaces that need restoration? Will they all be restored?
 </i>a:I hope so. But then the question is what to do with them afterwards. There are 500 palaces in the center of the city. We have to be reasonable and practical.
 
For example, people often ask why the Boris Eifman [ballet] troupe does not have its own theater. I reply that ballet troops don't have their own theaters anywhere in the world. For example, look at Maurice Bejart's troupe. His dancers are among the highest paid artists in the world, but he rents space. So let Eifman rent, like everybody else, because it is just not possible for a ballet company to maintain its own theater.
 
 
q:<i>What is going to happen to the Konstantinovsky Palace at Strelna, which is being restored as a Presidential residence? On the way to Peterhof recently, I noticed a big fence around the park. Does this mean that it will be off-limits to people?
 </i>a:That's another misconception. The palace is being restored at a cost of $300 million. When no VIPs are visiting, it will function like a normal museum, and the park will be open to visitors as well. Now, we are trying to decide whether to use it as an exhibition space or as a cultural monument to the past, like Peterhof. Its construction will give a tremendous boost to renovating the whole area between St. Petersburg and Peterhof. I hope it will even touch Oranienbaum, which is in a very sad state.
 
I never thought I'd be able to enter the Mikhailovsky Castle from the embankment of the Fontanka River, but it will soon be possible.
 Did you know that the Russian Museum is now the biggest in the world? Even the Hermitage is getting worred, although, in the spring, it will open a new storage space at Novaya Derevnya that will cost $30 million just to build. The government paid for it.
 
 
q:<i>What is the city doing to attract investors? My impression is that the city's economy is in bad shape.
 </i>a:You're right. Nothing is possible without a functioning economy; people have to earn money somehow. The city's economy was based on the defense industry, which was in a big slump for a long time but is now improving. Another area of hope is the food industry - the biggest taxpayer in the city is [the brewery] Baltica.
 

 
q:<i>Is anybody interested in attracting foreign investors?
 </i>a:I am more interested in attracting Russian firms. There are many rich Russians in the country, and we should not lean on foreigners.

TITLE: the word's worth
AUTHOR: by Michele A. Berdy <i>
TEXT: Stary Novy god: </i>old-style New Year's.
 
Before the Revolution, seasonal festivities started on Dec. 24 with <i>kolyadky </i>- a cross between Christmas caroling and trick or treat. People would go from house to house, singing songs and asking for sweets. This was really a pagan holiday in honor of kolyada, the god of feasts, but since it coincided with Christmas Eve <i>(nakanune Rozhdestva Khristova, </i>also called <i>sochelnik), </i>everyone pretended that this was really a celebration of Christ's birth. On this day and throughout the holiday season (called <i>svyatki, svyatiye vechera* </i>- Holy Week), people indulged in mummery <i>(ryzhene) </i>- dressing up in costumes - and circle dances <i>(khorovody). </i>Traditionally hosts served <i>kutya, </i>a hearty mix of kasha, honey, raisins and other sweets - which, I have to admit, I've found utterly revolting every time I've tried it.
 The season was also a time for <i>gadaniye </i>- fortune-telling, mainly for girls to foresee their future husbands. In Russian villages, marriage was the only event that changed a girl's life. If she married a young, handsome, kind and rich man, there was some hope of - if not happiness and abundance - then at least of tolerable living conditions. But if he were old, poor, ugly or mean, a girl could only look forward to a life of misery and want. So it is not surprising that there are so many rituals connected with this: <i>gadaniye na kuritsakh, na loshadyakh, podslushivaniye, gadaniye u vorot, gadaniye bashmakom </i>(fortune-telling using chickens, horses; listening, fortune-telling by the gate, using a boot). Almost all these rituals are supposed to tell an unmarried girl what direction her intended will come to her from. After that, she'd spend days racking her brain to think what villages lie to the north or east, and what unmarried men from there she might have met on church holidays or at fairs.
 For <i>gadaniye u vorot </i>on Christmas Eve or the eve of Epiphany (<i>Kresheniye</i>) a girl might stand by the gate and recite: <i>Zalai, zalai, sobachenka! Zalai, sery volk! Gde zalaet sobachenka, tam zhivyot moi suzheny! </i>(Bark, little dog, bark; howl, gray wolf; where the little dog barks, there lives the one destined for me!) To tell her fortune with a boot, a girl takes the boot off her left foot and throws it out the gate, watching which direction it points when it lands. Her future husband lives in the direction the boot points. If it points to her house, it means she won't marry that year.
 There are also indoor fortune-telling rituals, involving mirrors, glasses or water, candles and wax, and mirrors - the idea being that you peer into them and &quot;see&quot; your husband to be. In fact, <i>yei by pered zelkaltsem </i>is an expression meaning &quot;it's time for her to get married.&quot; In my feckless youth I did a great deal of this at <i>devichniki </i>(all-girl parties, hen parties) but, frankly, I never saw anything not attributable to the vast amount of alcohol consumed.
 All of this ended with the Revolution, and New Year's became the official holiday. We still had <i>yolki, </i>but they were called <i>novogodniye yolki </i>(New Year's trees) not <i>rozhdestvenskiye, </i>and we still decorated them with <i>ukrasheniya </i>(decorations). But, instead of St. Nick we had Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) and Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden) to bring presents and treats. <i>Deti khodili na yolku </i>means &quot;children went to a New Year's party,&quot; where there would be a decorated tree, singing, dancing and mummery - that is, everything that has been done for the past two centuries, now dressed up as a secular celebration of the New Year.
 So, get out your mirrors, take off your left shoe, and start celebrating. <i>S prazdnikom! S Rozhdestvom Khristovym! S Novym godom!</i>
 
 <i>
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter. </i>

TITLE: Israeli Soldiers Kill Six in Hunt for Militia
AUTHOR: By Mohammed Daraghmeh
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: RAMALLAH, West Bank - Israeli soldiers hunting militia fighters in the West Bank killed six Palestinians on Thursday - four gunmen, an unarmed teenager and an apparent bystander, officials on both sides said. Five Israeli soldiers were wounded.
 
An Israeli official, meanwhile, confirmed that the military has begun setting up buffer zones around Jewish settlements in the West Bank to keep out Palestinian attackers. Palestinian officials complained that Israel was further expanding settlements with the fenced-in zones.
 Thursday's violence came a day after Palestinian Christians observed what some said was their dreariest Christmas ever, with Israeli tanks surrounding the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Jesus' traditional birthplace.
 In the town of Ramallah, Israeli soldiers trying to arrest two wanted men killed one in a firefight and captured the second, an Israeli military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Palestinian hospital officials said an apparent bystander was also killed in the fighting. The slain wanted man was tentatively identified as Bassam Lutfi, an activist in the Islamic militant group Hamas.
 In the town Tulkarem, Israeli soldiers killed Jamal Nader, 28, a local leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militia linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
 In a third incident, in the town of Kabatiya, soldiers surrounded the home of Hamza Abu Roub, 37, a local leader of the Islamic Jihad group, and demanded that he surrender. Abu Roub sent out his wife and children, a neighbor said. The fugitive then appeared near the wall of his house and began shooting, drawing heavy return fire. Bursts of gunfire echoed through the town, residents said.
 Four soldiers were wounded in the gunbattle, including one who was in serious condition. Troops blew up Abu Roub's home.
 Both Abu Roub and Nader, the militia leader from Tulkarem, were at their homes even though they were fugitives. Wanted Palestinians have found it increasingly difficult in recent weeks to find refuge in homes of supporters because troops have been demolishing homes of those who hide wanted militants.
 Also Thursday, in the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers searching for wanted men killed a Palestinian gunman in a firefight in the downtown area, or Casbah, the army said. An Israeli soldier was lightly wounded.
 Later Thursday, soldiers re-imposed a curfew on Nablus - a routine measure since troops reoccupied the city in June. Hundreds of Palestinians threw stones at soldiers, and the soldiers opened fire, killing a Palestinian teenager, witnesses said.
 The teenager, who witnesses said was carrying books and was not involved in stone-throwing, was killed by a shot in the stomach, hospital sources said. The army was checking the report.
 Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, confirmed Thursday that the Israeli army has begun establishing wider buffer zones around West Bank settlements to keep out attackers.
 The zones will have beefed up patrols and special observation towers, Gissin said. He refused to detail what other special measures will be taken.
 Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said the buffer zones are a further attempt by Sharon to expand settlements and sabotage a U.S.-backed peace plan that envisions Palestinian statehood by 2005.
 &quot;Sharon wants to make sure by 2005 that it will be impossible to create a Palestinian state because of the settlements,&quot; Erekat said.

TITLE: Clashes Hit Christmas Festivities
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Bloodshed marred some of the world's Christmas celebrations and social tensions shadowed others on Wednesday. A grenade killed a girl and two other worshippers at a church in Pakistan, bombs exploded at a church in India, and protesters blocked church doors in Yugoslavia.
 
Most tourists and religious pilgrims stayed away from Bethlehem on Wednesday, but a small number of Palestinian Christians braved dreary weather to attend Mass in the town of Jesus' birth.
 Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the highest-ranking Roman Catholic member of the clergy in the Holy Land, told worshippers at the Church of the Nativity not to lose hope, despite the bloodshed and hardships.
 In Pakistan, two assailants shrouded in women's robes threw at least one hand grenade at a small Christian church in the populous Punjab province, killing three worshippers - including at least one young girl - and wounding more than 10, authorities said.
 The church was holding a Christmas service when the attack took place Wednesday evening in the village of Chianwala, about 65 kilometers northwest of Lahore.
 All three of the dead and most of the wounded were women or girls; all were Pakistani, officials said.
 In eastern India, a gang armed with crude bombs attacked a Protestant church on Christmas Eve, wounding six people and robbing hundreds of worshippers.
 The 20 assailants set off several bombs, then grabbed valuables from the congregation and raided a church safe before fleeing when officers arrived.
 In Belgrade, Yugoslavia, about 30 hard-line Serb nationalists prevented dozens of worshippers from attending an Anglican Christmas Eve church service that was to be held in a Serbian Orthodox chapel.

TITLE: Bodies of Dead Peacekeepers Flown Home
AUTHOR: By Nicola Lange
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: COLOGNE, Germany - The bodies of seven German peacekeepers killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan arrived home Wednesday, met by grieving relatives and Defense Minister Peter Struck.
 
An honor guard carrying flaming torches stood at attention in the twilight and drums rolled softly as the flag-draped coffins were carried off the transport plane at Cologne-Bonn airport.
 &quot;All of Germany grieves with you,&quot; Struck told the victims' relatives.
 The seven were killed Saturday when their Sikorsky CH-53 helicopter crashed as it returned from a routine patrol over Kabul. They were among 4,800 peacekeepers stationed in the Afghan capital for the past year, trying stabilize a country ravaged by 23 years of invasion, civil war and repressive regimes.
 A large portrait was placed in front of each victim's coffin before it was loaded onto the plane at Kabul airport.
 Buglers played taps and more than 100 Afghan and international peacekeepers stood at attention as a mark of respect for their fallen comrades in the International Security Assistance Force.
 The head of the peacekeepers, Turkish Major General Hilmi Akin Zorlu, expressed condolences to the German contingent during the chilly Christmas morning memorial service.
 &quot;I hope that they, and we in ISAF, can take comfort from the fact that our colleagues were doing their duty not only toward their country, but toward the magnificent contribution Germany has made, and continues to make, supporting the peace process here in Afghanistan,&quot; he said.
 German General Werner Faeers welcomed the show of solidarity.
 &quot;Your warm words of sympathy remind us of the fact that the ISAF is a family that not only shares a common profession, but shares the very sad moments of life together as friends and fellow soldiers,&quot; he said.
 Military officials say the crash likely resulted from a mechanical failure. Witnesses saw flames leaping out of the engine compartment before the chopper crashed, and there was no sign of gunfire.

TITLE: Kings Get Revenge With Win Over Lakers
AUTHOR: By John Nadel
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - It's nearly seven months later, and Chris Webber still feels the pain from the Western Conference finals.
 
At the same time, the Sacramento Kings' star is doing his best to learn from the experience. &quot;This was like a midseason playoff game for us,&quot; Webber said after the Kings' 105-99 victory over the slumping three-time defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers.
 Webber had 25 points, 15 rebounds and six assists Wednesday night in the first game that counted between the bitter in-state rivals since the Lakers beat the Kings last June, winning the seventh and deciding game in overtime at Arco Arena.
 That marked the third straight spring the Lakers eliminated the Kings en route to a title.
 &quot;We learned that we have to stick together no matter what, that a game is 48 minutes long, not 47 minutes, 30 seconds,&quot; Webber said. &quot;Game 7 still hurts. They have those rings, we want to win a championship.&quot;
 &quot;If we were too excited about this, it would mean we thought we shouldn't have won,&quot; he said.
 In the other NBA games Wednesday, Orlando beat Detroit 104-99, and New Jersey routed Boston 117-81.
 Peja Stojakovic equalled a season high with 26 points, Mike Bibby scored 14 points, and Bobby Jackson added 11 for the Kings (23-8), who won for the 11th time in 14 games.
 The Kings learned after the game that Jackson, averaging 19.8 points, broke his left hand when Shaquille O'Neal knocked the ball out of his hands while he was driving to the basket with 4:25 left.
 Jackson, who wore a splint afterward, was to be re-examined Thursday in Sacramento.
 &quot;It's a bummer, man, but it's part of the game,&quot; he said. &quot;We're so deep, we play so well, that's the good thing. We have been doing it all year.&quot;
 The stumbling Lakers (11-19) have lost four of five and are 8-10 since O'Neal returned after missing the season's first 12 games while recuperating from surgery on his right big toe.
 O'Neal had 27 points, a season-high 17 rebounds and five assists, but shot just 8-of-19 and made 2-of-8 after halftime - both after the outcome had been decided. He didn't speak with reporters afterward.
 Kobe Bryant also had 27 points for the Lakers along with 15 rebounds and six assists, but he made only 7 of 24 shots and went 2-for-12 in the second half.
 &quot;We're getting much better,&quot; Bryant said. &quot;I think we played really well outside of that mental lapse we had in the third quarter.
 The Lakers led by as many as 12 points before the Kings outscored them 17-2 to turn a 70-60 deficit into a 77-72 lead.
 &quot;We celebrated a little bit too early,&quot; Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. &quot;For a team that's as qualified, we're not doing things that make basketball sense.&quot;
 The Lakers came back to go ahead early in the final period, but baskets by Jackson and Webber triggered a 10-2 run that gave the Kings a 92-84 lead.
 Bryant's 3-pointer and a jumper by Derek Fisher drew the Lakers within three points with 3 1/2 minutes to play, but that's as close as they would get.
 The Lakers outrebounded Sacramento 61-42, but shot only 36.7 percent compared to 46.3 percent for the Kings.
 &quot;I think the biggest difference is, they are not making shots,&quot; Kings coach Rick Adelman said. &quot;I still think they are a pretty darned good team and they're going to be back.&quot;
 The two teams bickered through the media during the offseason, with O'Neal saying in early October he &quot;wasn't worried about the Sacramento Queens.&quot;
 In the final preseason game on Oct. 25, the Kings' Doug Christie and the Lakers' Rick Fox were ejected after a fight early in the first quarter. The fracas continued in a Staples Center off-court tunnel. Fox was suspended for six games, while Christie was banned for two.
 
 <strong>
Orlando 104, Detroit 99. </strong>In Orlando, Florida, Tracy McGrady scored 46 points in his return from a back injury, leading Orlando over Detroit.
 
McGrady was sidelined for all but a half of Orlando's last four games. He made 14 of 26 shots and 18 of 21 free throws. Mike Miller added 15 points for Orlando, and Grant Hill had 10 points and 15 rebounds for his fifth double-double of the season.
 Richard Hamilton led Detroit with 22 points.
 
 <strong>
New Jersey 117, Boston 81. </strong>In East Rutherford, New Jersery, Richard Jefferson scored 22 points for New Jersey in a rematch of the Eastern Conference finals.
 
The Nets won their 11th straight in New Jersey and fourth in a row overall. New Jersey, which shot a season-high 55 percent from the floor, improved to 16-1 at home. Lucious Harris added 17 points, Jason Kidd had 16 points and 11 assists, and Kenyon Martin had 16 points and 13 rebounds.
 Paul Pierce scored 27 points for the Celtics.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: <b>Yankees Sign Contreras
 </b>

NEW YORK (AP) - For the second time in less than a week, baseball's biggest spender broke its budget for a big international acquisition, reaching a preliminary agreement Tuesday on a $32-million, four-year contract with Cuban defector Jose Contreras.
 Last week, the New York Yankees agreed to a $21-million, three-year deal with outfielder Hideki Matsui, Japan's biggest slugger. 
 "We couldn't, the right word is we wouldn't, sacrifice the opportunity to sign these talents on the basis of reducing payroll first," Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said.
 "The mindset is still for me to reduce payroll," he said. "Obviously, when the opportunities to sign Hideki Matsui or Jose Contreras presented themselves, it was time for us to make decisions, to move now and continue to work on cutting the payroll down the line."
 
 
<b>Hnida Makes History
 </b>

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Katie Hnida became the first woman to play in a Division I-A football game when she attempted an extra point Wednesday following a New Mexico touchdown in the Las Vegas Bowl.
 Hnida, a walk-on junior, had her kick blocked but by then she had already made history. With her blonde hair in a ponytail, Hnida kicked the ball low, allowing a UCLA player to block it.
 Hnida was on Colorado's roster in 1999 and suited up for the Buffaloes in the Insight.com Bowl. She joined New Mexico's team before this season, and got her big chance in New Mexico's biggest game of the season.
 "I can replay in my mind seeing that hand block the kick, and that's going to be what I think about before I go to bed tonight," she said. "It's been a very long road to get here and I thought about it many times, but I really had no specific expectations as to what it would be like."
 
 
<b> Holmes Out
 </b>

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) -Priest Holmes is out for Kansas City's regular-season finale against Oakland on Saturday.
 Holmes, who is just two touchdowns away from the NFL single-season record of 26, injured his hip at Denver on Dec. 15. He missed last week's game against San Diego. The 2001 NFL rushing champion was leading the league with a team-record 1,615 yards rushing when he was hurt at Denver. Holmes' 2,287 yards from scrimmage this year is just 142 shy of the NFL record.
 
 
<b>Ewing's Jersey Retired
 </b>

NEW YORK (AP) - Patrick Ewing's No. 33 jersey soon will hang from the rafters of Madison Square Garden.
 The New York Knicks will retire the number of their former center during halftime of their Feb. 28 game against the Orlando Magic. Ewing, an assistant coach with the Washington Wizards, spent 17 years in the NBA, the first 15 with the Knicks.
 He averaged 21 points, 9.8 rebounds and 2.45 blocks in 1,183 games and was selected as one of the NBA's 50 greatest players.