SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #851 (19), Friday, March 14, 2003
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TITLE: President Reshuffles Security Agencies
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin announced a sweeping reshuffle of security posts on Tuesday, putting his ally Viktor Cherkesov in charge of a new federal anti-drug agency and strengthening the Federal Security Service by giving it the border guards and communication agency, FAPSI.
The changes are largely in line with measures taken by the United States and other Western countries after Sept. 11 to counter the threat of terrorism, analysts said. Some suggested that Tuesday's reshuffle might be a first step in a government overhaul, with Putin starting with the more manageable security sector and then moving into the economic arena.
In announcing the changes, Putin told a cabinet meeting that they were aimed at increasing efficiency between government agencies in fighting terrorism and the growing drug problem.
Putin's spokesperson, Alexei Gromov, said later in the day that the reform will cut costs and bureaucracy while removing overlapping responsibilities between government agencies.
As part of the reshuffle, the Tax Police has been disbanded, with its duties to prevent and investigate tax evasion going to the Interior Ministry. Its buildings, funding and equipment will be used to build the new State Committee for the Control of Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances.
The new agency's powers are largely unclear. While the Interior Ministry employs about 7,000 officials in its anti-drug department, the new agency will have about 40,000 people, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. The ministry's anti-drug unit will be shut down.
FAPSI, or the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information, is being abolished and divvied up between the FSB and the Defense Ministry. FAPSI was in charge of the government's coded communications and electronic intelligence, and was broken out of the KGB in late 1991.
The Federal Border Service is also being returned to the FSB, and will be headed by deputy FSB director Vladimir Pronichev, a former border guard who took the spotlight last October when he was put in charge of rescue operation headquarters during the Moscow hostage crisis.
The Tax Police and border service chiefs will move to Brussels, Belgium. Mikhail Fradkov of the Tax Police will retain a minister's ranking and serve as Russia's envoy to the European Union, while the border service's head, General Konstantin Totsky, will serve as Russia's ambassador to NATO.
FAPSI director Vladimir Matyukhin was appointed first deputy defense minister, and will head a new committee in charge of weapons procurement for the power agencies.
"This is a balanced decision that has been supported by each of the power agencies involved," Putin said in televised comments.
While some of the changes can be made by presidential decree, others will require amendments to the law. Putin said he is sending the necessary bills to the State Duma, along with another package of bills to liberalize the Criminal Code.
Most politicians welcomed Tuesday's reshuffle as a first step in long-awaited administrative reforms or said it meant little to the political landscape. Some liberal politicians warned that strengthening the FSB's powers might prove dangerous.
"I see in this a sharp increase in the weight of the FSB, which is acquiring the traits of the KGB," said Boris Nadezhdin, deputy head of the Unity of Right Forces faction in the Duma.
Other liberals, such as Deputy Duma Speaker Irina Khakamada and Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky, supported the changes as a step toward efficiency and a sign that Putin is making the drug problem a priority.
Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said he saw little new in Putin's policy.
"The country needs a new course, a new strategy and a strong team, and all we see here is personnel castlings," he was quoted by Interfax as saying. "There aren't any fresh and bright faces that could provide a breakthrough. The president is reshuffling the same stack of cards."
By putting his personal friend Cherkesov in charge of the anti-drug agency, Putin has highlighted one of Russia's biggest domestic and international problems - the trafficking of drugs through Russia, Markov said. He said the agency might grow into an organization charged with fighting all forms of organized crime.
The power ministries are dominated by the so-called Chekists - largely former KGB officials from St. Petersburg - while economics are thought to be controlled by the "family" of politicians and businesspeople who rose to power during Boris Yeltsin's presidency.
"Today, the St. Petersburgers have obviously won," NTV television commentator Vladimir Kondratyev said in an evening broadcast. "It remains to be seen how the family will respond."
TITLE: Matviyenko Comes Home to New Job
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As part of a larger shakeup in the organization of state security agencies on Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin named Viktor Cherkesov, his representative in the Northwest Region, as the head of a new federal anti-drug agency.
Putin named Valentina Matviyenko to replace Cherkesov, whose office had enjoyed cold relations at best with the administration of Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, prompting both hopes for better relations between the offices and concerns within the Yakovlev camp in relation to Matviyenko's further political ambitions.
"I expect that this will be a change for the better, that [Matviyenko] will bring a constructive [style to the office], because the stand off between Yakovlev and Cherkesov, although it was not really talked about publicly, was clear to everyone and just dragged on," Yury Rydnik, the head of the pro-governor United City bloc, said in an interview on Wednesday.
"The city has suffered from the politicization of the situation, negatively affecting the investment and tourism climates here," Rydnik added. "The situation affected every single citizen of St. Petersburg, because projects like the Ring Road, for instance, and many others became politicized and were hindered as a result."
Lawmakers from the pro-Kremlin United Russia faction and its allies, which together represent a majority in the Legislative Assembly, were also positive about the appointment, saying that they hoped that it might lead to more flexibility from the pro-Smolny deputies in the legislature.
"[Matviyenko] will continue to do things the way they have been done, because it doesn't depend on who occupies this position. Konstantin Sukhenko, a United Russia lawmaker, said in an interview on Wednesday. "In any situation, that person is there to fulfill the president's will, so I think that Matviyenko will put things in order."
"We have got all the [committee] posts [in the Legislative Assembly] and the work by the presidential representative's office was positive here," he added. "We shook the [pro-governor] wing up and they shook us up as well but, in the end, we will have a balanced situation. We're already on our way."
Matviyenko, 53, was born in St. Petersburg - then Leningrad - and became involved in politics early, while still a student at the Leningrad Chemistry and Pharmacological Institute in the early 1970s. In 1977, just five years after graduating from the institute, she was appointed to head the regional committee of the Komsomol, the Communist Party's youth organization.
In 1984, Matviyenko was named the first secretary of the Communist Party in the city's Krasnogvardeisky District, from which she moved on to a position responsible for culture and education in City Hall before being elected as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in 1989. There, she served as the head of the soviet's committee for women's affairs.
After two years in the Supreme Soviet, her career took a diplomatic turn, with her appointment in 1991 as Soviet, and later Russian, ambassador to Malta, followed by a stint as Russian ambassador to Greece, beginning in 1997.
In 1998, Matviyenko was named as a deputy prime minister under then Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. She has since worked as the senior government official responsible for social issues.
During the last gubernatorial elections in the city in 2000, Matviyenko was initially registered as a candidate and was widely viewed as Putin's preferred candidate, but withdrew her candidacy before the actual vote, citing the need to continue her work in the federal government. Most political analysts attributed the decision to the fact that Yakovlev's popularity was too high for there to be a realistic chance of defeating him in the vote.
But Matviyenko now says that she has always wanted to return to her hometown.
"For all of my consciousness life, I have lived and worked in Leningrad and, while I was in Moscow, I was treating it like a long-term leave of absence," Matviyenko said in Interfax interview Wednesday.
In the same interview, Matviyenko made an initial positive gesture toward the Yakovlev administration, calling for an easing of the frequent criticism leveled at preparations for the city's 300th-anniversay celebrations on state-controlled television channels, which has largely targeted City Hall.
"I think that it is necessary to change the tone, to talk more about the city's history, its scientific and economic potential and about its people, rather than about how much money has been transferred [to the city budget] and how it has been spent," Matviyenko said. "If violations have occurred, it should be a matter of investigation by those who are responsible for doing this, and not the subject of a PR campaign in the media."
But, while her initial comments about Yakovlev's administration have been positive, political analysts believe that Matviyenko won't abandon her predecessor's tactics of putting pressure on Yakovlev, but will just go about it in a slightly different way.
"The main question is that of who will be blamed for the annoyances St. Petersburg's citizens will face as a result of the 300th anniversary. While Cherkesov was acting in a way that is more comfortable for him, by initiating criminal cases [against City Hall vice governors], Matviyenko will go about it more publicly," Boris Vishnevsky, a Yabloko faction member, said in an interview on Wednesday.
But an anonymous source close to the Kremlin said that Yakovlev could still be in for rough treatment, since Matviyenko's chief goal will be to supervise or, perhaps, even take part in the gubernatorial elections scheduled for May, 2004.
"When Yakovlev met with Putin [last Wednesday], he was not allowed to say a word. Only the president talked, and told him to forget about participating in any future election campaigns, either in the city or the Leningrad Oblast," the source said in an interview on Wednesday.
At a Tuesday briefing, Yakovlev said that Matviyenko would arrive to take up her post some time this week, and that discussing the prospects for future cooperation would be one of the first items on his agenda.
"There is an appointed presidential representative and a governor and there is work to be done. If [Matviyenko] has the same style as her predecessor, it will be hard [for us] to work together," Yakovlev said at a briefing Tuesday. "[But], despite the hard style of work that she has become used to, has a soft style for solving problems. She always wants to solve questions and we know how seriously she has taken her responsibilities in government."
TITLE: Ivanov's Comments Suggest Minor Rift
AUTHOR: By Judith Ingram
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - A small crack appeared Thursday in the European coalition leading the opposition to a new UN resolution that would open the way to war against Iraq, as France and Germany flatly rejected a British-proposed compromise out of hand but Russia signaled it would at least consider it.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov cut short a visit to Tajikistan, saying he had to return to Moscow for consultations on the newest British proposal with President Vladimir Putin. The proposal, unveiled Wednesday at the UN Security Council, included a list of six steps Hussein must take to avert war, including a television appearance renouncing weapons of mass destruction.
The proposal was an attempt to narrow differences over a U.S.-British-Spanish resolution in the United Nations giving Hussein a Monday deadline to disarm.
Earlier this week, Ivanov said that Russia would vote against a resolution that would automatically pave the way for war. But on Thursday he left his nation more room for maneuver.
"Until we have a draft resolution on the table, it's premature to say how Russia will vote," Ivanov told reporters in the Tajik capital Dushanbe.
U.S. officials have increasingly been telling Russia publicly that a veto could damage its relationship with the United States, at least in the short-term. Ivanov appeared eager to reassure Washington that Russia was not interested in a rift.
"We are not interested in a confrontation with the United States. It would be wrong to make far-reaching premature conclusions today, proceeding from a position that Russia has yet to take," Ivanov said.
Ivanov stressed that Russia considers the United States a partner.
"No one needs a confrontation, but Russia clearly and openly has stated its position that a military scenario would not only exacerbate the situation in the region but would run contrary to the interests of the United States itself. We are openly telling Washington that as a partner," he said.
A senior U.S. diplomat in Moscow said Washington was still holding out hope that Russia would abstain rather than veto the U.S.-British-Spanish resolution. The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a Russian veto would have a negative impact on American public opinion and, by extension, the U.S. Congress, but that it would not result in a "significant, strategic course change" away from the improving U.S.-Russian relationship for either Washington or Moscow.
The diplomat also said that, while Russia has tried to remain aloof from discussions of a post-Hussein Iraq, Moscow has explored ways to encourage Hussein to step down.
"It's my understanding that the Russians have been floating that idea," the diplomat said, adding that Moscow saw that as a viable way of ending the crisis without war.
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said Thursday that the only way to break the impasse over Iraq was "if Saddam Hussein steps down from the political arena.
"He must declare his resignation and open the door to changes," Gorbachev told reporters in Moscow, the Interfax news agency reported.
Also Thursday, the Kremlin said French President Jacques Chirac called President Vladimir Putin as part of "regular consultations" on Iraq. "Both sides confirmed their in intention to continue political and diplomatic efforts to provide a peaceful resolution of the crisis surrounding Iraq," Putin's press service said.
Meanwhile, lawmakers from two ends of the Russian political spectrum suggested that Moscow offer its own initiative on Iraq. Liberal legislator Grigory Yavlinsky suggested that Russia submit a draft UN resolution calling for the deployment of an international military contingent to form a cordon sanitaire around Iraq and hasten regime change.
Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky suggested that instead of vetoing a UN resolution authorizing the use of force, Russia insert a condition that Russian troops take part in the occupation of Iraq and establish a zone of influence in northern Iraq, including the Kirkuk oil fields, Interfax said.
TITLE: U.S., Russia Agree To Revive Stalled Nuclear-Reactor Deal
AUTHOR: By Charles J. Hanley
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VIENNA, Austria - The United States and Russia signed agreements on Wednesday reviving an on-again, off-again deal to shut down the last three Russian reactors producing nuclear-weapons-grade plutonium.
Under terms of the accords, the United States will spend an estimated $500 million on two new fossil-fuel power plants to replace the reactors, which provide heat and electricity to Seversk and Zheleznogorsk. The Siberian cities once were secret, "closed" locations of the Soviet military establishment.
The agreements "set the stage for another important advancement in our cooperative nonproliferation efforts," U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said. The signing "demonstrated to the entire world that Russia and America are friends and partners," said his Russian counterpart, Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev.
They signed the documents on the sidelines of a three-day global conference, co-sponsored by their governments, on another nonproliferation concern, the potential for development of terrorist "dirty bombs" - conventional, non-nuclear bombs packed with radioactive materials.
A U.S.-Russian deal under which Washington was to help phase out the reactors was first signed in 1997, and was celebrated as a historic event in the U.S. campaign to help Moscow safeguarded and reduced its nuclear stockpile.
The United States halted its own weapons production of plutonium in the late 1980s, as a result of a series of U.S.-Soviet arms control treaties.
The Russians, who have shut down 10 other plutonium-producing plants, continued operating the two at Seversk and one at Zheleznogorsk because they were vital to the power supplies of the cities, formerly known as Tomsk-7 and Krasnoyarsk-26. They continued reprocessing the spent uranium fuel into plutonium not to make bombs, but because indefinite storage of the spent fuel would have been prohibitively expensive.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Be Prepared
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - St Petersburg will host an international boy scout convention from July 11 through July 20, Interfax reports.
The organizers of the event are the Interregional Association of Scouts and the regional department of the All-Russian National Scouting Organization, Aleksei Kruchinin, the chairperson of the latter group, announced Thursday at a press conference in St. Petersburg.
According to Kruchinin, the meeting will draw about 1,000 scouts from countries all over the world. So far, scouting groups from France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Poland confirmed that they will participate, Interfax said.
The scouting camp will be set up on two sites. One will be in St. Petersburg itself, while the second will be in a small camp site on the bank of the Vuoksa River, near the village of Losevo in the Leningrad Oblast.
Happy Birthday
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Morris Hughes, the U.S. Consul General in St. Petersburg, presented the U.S. program for participation in the city's 300th-anniversary celebrations on Thursday, Interfax reported.
"Our countries are closely tied by general interests. As a symbol of this, there will be a visit to St. Petersburg by President George Bush at the end of May 2003," Hughes said, quoting an address by the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow.
The address further read that the anniversary "will serve as another reminder of the prestige of St. Petersburg in America, and underline the immense contribution of this city to world culture," Interfax reported.
The main part of the U.S. anniversary program will involve the hosting of a number of principally cultural events, Hughes said.
Among these will ge an exhibition devoted to the life and work of Soviet poet Joseph Brodsky, which opens on April 11 in the Anna Akhmatova Museum. The exhibition was organized by the U.S. State Department, the Russian National Library and the Joseph Brodsky Heritage Foundation. A significant portion of the exhibit's contents will later be handed over for a museum dedicated to the poet that is to be opened in the city.
New Draft Rules
MOSCOW (AP) - The military will no longer draft drug addicts, homosexuals and men infected with HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, the official Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper reported Thursday.
The new regulations are due to take effect July 1. Officials said they are part of an effort to tighten health requirements for conscripts.
U.S., U.K. - Out
ROSTOV-NA-DONU, Southern Russia (AP) - The owner of a cafe in the Rostov region said Thursday he will refuse to serve American and British citizens in protest against the U.S. and British stands on Iraq.
Alexander Ponomaryov, owner of the Olenka cafe in Taganrog, about 60 kilometers west of Rostov-na-Donu, said he took the action to protest the "aggressive politics" of the U.S. and Britain toward Iraq and their "attempts to violate the UN charter."
It was not clear if the small cafe - which offers a limited menu of Soviet-style dishes - has any American or British customers among the small population of Westerners who live in southern Russia.
TITLE: EU Announces Plans for City Anniversary
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The European Union has some interesting plans for St. Petersburg's 300th-anniversary celebrations, the most intriguing of which may be to run the majority of its cultural programs connected with the event outside of the official celebration period. Although the anniversary falls on May 27, the EU is planning major events in March and April and will open another new project in October, according to the European Commission's chief representative in Russia.
Speaking Wednesday at a press conference held to officially announce the EU's plans to mark the occasion, the head of the EC's Russian mission, Richard Wright, stressed the EU's wish to develop relations with St. Petersburg, chosen by the UNESCO as the world city of the year.
"The tercentenary gives us the wonderful opportunity to stress and strengthen relations between the European Union and Russia, and to demonstrate the multitude of links that unite our cultures," he said.
The EU's jubilee program kicks off with a film festival, "Young Cinema of Europe," which opens at Dom Kino on March 22 and runs until March 30. The festival's films, most of which will receive their premieres here, showcase little-known filmmakers and actors. Its aim, the organizers say, is to provide a fresh view of European cinema by avoiding films featuring European celebrities who are already well known in Russia. Wright said that some of the filmmakers and actors are expected to attend.
After the festival will come a concert by the European Youth Orchestra in the Shostakovich Philharmonic on April 3. The orchestra brings together 140 young musicians from all over Europe and is conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy. Ashkenazy, who was born in the Soviet Union, but defected in 1963 and took Icelandic citizenship in 1972, will conduct Sergei Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto with Russian pianist Alexander Gindin, as well as Rachmaninov's Second Symphony. The concert is part of the orchestra's Silver Jubilee tour, which will also include performances in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland.
Although the opening of the final cultural program is not until October, Europe's profile during the celebrations will still be significant, as President Vladimir Putin will be hosting a summit of European leaders at the Konstantinovsky Palace, in the St. Petersburg suburb of Strelna, beginning on May 30.
In October, in conjunction with European Culture Month, held in St. Petersburg, the EU will open a more permanent contribution to the city, in the form of the European Walkway, consisting of 15 placards throughout the city's historical center, commemorating and providing a brief explanation of events or sites related to a particular European country.
"The European Walkway is a unique project carried out in cooperation with the St. Petersburg administration," Wright said. "It will be a permanent symbol of the various links between St. Petersburg and European countries."
The placard illustrating a link with Greece, for instance, will be placed on 5-aya Sovietskaya Ulitsa., near the statue of Ioannis Capodistrias, a Russian diplomat who was president of Greece in the early 19th century. Other placards will be placed near the Bronze Horseman, sculpted by French artist Etienne Maurice Falconet, and by the Anichkov Palace, in honor of the Danish Princess Dagmar, who later married Tsar Alexander III, thus becoming Empress Maria Fyodorovna, and who gave birth to Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II.
The placards will be permanent and, Wright said, additional placards may be added to recognize ties with countries that will join the EU in the future.
Natalya Botazhok, the head of Committee 300, responsible for supervising the anniversary celebrations, noted that the EU's cultural program would take place outside the anniversary's peak season at the end of May and the beginning of June, which she said was because it was targeted at city residents. The fact that visits by 45 foreign leaders will take place during the anniversary period has lead to complaints that the event has become solely political and diplomatic in nature.
"For whom is the EU organizing these celebrations? For whom is Ashkenazy coming to the city? On what date is this concert going to take place? When is the walkway going to be inaugurated?" she asked rhetorically at the press conference. "These celebrations are organized for the city's residents. I am grateful to the EU for not insisting on holding these events on May 31. From the beginning, they understood for whom they were organizing their program."
TITLE: Nobel Prize Laureates Heading to Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In June, St. Petersburg will welcome twenty-five Nobel Prize laureates from Germany, Japan, England, Switzerland, Taiwan, Belgium and the United States. The driving engine behind the idea for such a meeting - the first of its type in Russian history - is Russian physicist Zhores Alfyorov, the vice president of Russian Academy of Sciences and himself a winner of the prestigious prize.
According to Alfyorov, his brainchild is first and foremost a scientific project. Called "The Sciences and Mankind's Progress," the project will consist of a series of meetings, conferences and seminars to be held in the city between June 16 and June 21.
All of the invited Nobel prize winners receieved their awards in physics, chemistry, economics or physiology/medicine.
"When choosing the guests, I started with the interests of the local scientific community, along with using my own personal connections," Alfyorov said on Tuesday. "So, as you may have already guessed, a good half of the guests are physicists."
The United States alone is sending nine physicists, including Charles Townes, Robert Schrieffer, Arno Penzias, Robert Wilson and Raymond Davies. Among other invitees are British physiologist Andrew Huxley, Swiss immunologist Rolf Zinkernagel, Taiwanese chemist Yuan Lee and Japanese chemist Hideki Shirakawa.
According to Alfyorov, most of the delegates who will attend have already provided the topics of their talks, with many of the themes touching on global issues that will be of interest beyond the narrow circles of their own colleagues. For example, Swiss chemist Richard Ernst plans to deliver a presentation entitled "Our responsibility beyond the limits of fundamental research."
The idea for the meeting of Nobel laureates was inspired by the St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary, but its organizers say they deliberately scheduled the project for the second half of June, after the jubilee festivities have calmed down.
"On St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary, it would be nice to remember of another very important jubilee. We can say that we are now marking 300 years of contemporary science, which began with names like Newton, Descartes and Leibnitz," Alfyorov said.
Funding for the event is coming from Russian oil giant Yukos, state-owned gas company Gazprom, energy monopoly provider UES and Swedish automobile manufacturer Volvo.
The St. Petersburg City Administration is providing support for the project in the form of transportation and other services for the guests. The Presidential Administration will also be providing financial support.
"This project was one of those rare cases where you want to support it right away, without any second thought," said Sergei Yastrzhembsky, official information-policy aide to President Vladimir Putin. "Alfyorov didn't need to convince us. We were convinced immediately."
Yastrzhembsky says that one of the biggest reasons behind the Kremlin's support for the event positive coverage it will generate for Russia in the foreign media.
Alfyorov, for his part, is hoping that St. Petersburg will eventually win back the reputation as one of the world's leading scientific centers.
"My wish is that, someday, it will be possible to say - like in the time of Peter the Great - that St. Petersburg is the ideal place for science," Alfyorov said.
TITLE: General Calls for Arms-Treaty Ratification
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The general who heads the defense committee in the State Duma recommended Thursday that the chamber ratify the nuclear-weapons treaty signed by the Russian and U.S. presidents last spring, suggesting that instability in the relationship because of disagreements over Iraq lend the matter some urgency.
"This document should have been ratified in a stable situation; it is all the more necessary to ratify it in today's unstable situation," the Interfax-Military news agency quoted General Andrei Nikolayev as saying. Nikolayev said he believes the Duma may ratify the treaty this month.
The treaty, signed last May by President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush, calls on both countries to cut their strategic nuclear arsenals to 1,700 to 2,200 deployed warheads by 2012. The U.S. Senate unanimously approved the treaty last week.
The Duma's international-affairs committee, which will make the final decision on whether to submit the bill on ratification to the 450-member chamber, will consider the issue Friday.
TITLE: Francis Hoping To Provide Wake-Up Call
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A news item about a U.K. school banning the story "The Three Little Pigs" for fear of offending Muslim students and the four young women in tight jeans, scanty tops and heavy makeup he invited to drop by for the interview for the story are enough to give you an idea of Dave Francis' idea of a radio show.
Citing the success of shows in the United States hosted by so-called "shock jocks" such as Howard Stern or Don Imus, Francis, a 43-year-old from Missouri, is hoping "The Dave Francis Show," which premiered at 7 a.m. on Tuesday on Radio Roks, will be the perfect vehicle for his self-described "black humor," and throw a little curve into St. Petersburg's more traditional radio scene.
"I'm a bit of an egomaniac, so any kind of performance is fun for me. I'm also opinionated, so any chance to proselytize is also welcome," he said with a broad smile, oblivious to the lipstick mark one of the young women had left on his cheek earlier. "Sit back, enjoy yourself, have a good time, that's the most important thing I'm saying on this show. The way I'm doing that is by bringing a libertarian, American perspective to the audience, which is something I don't think they hear very much."
A former journalist who now teaches English language in the evenings at St. Petersburg State University, Francis has no previous radio experience, but was all confidence leaving the studio after the show Tuesday.
"What I like to do is celebrate differences of opinion," he said. "The spirit of this [show] is supposed to be black humor, and I want to gauge everybody. Right now, France is going to take a beating, [French President Jacques] Chirac especially. I'm not above gouging my own either, I'm a big believer in gun rights and in one of today's stories I made fun of the [National Rifle Association]."
Francis sees in the new show an opportunity not only to cater to foreigners living in the city, English-speaking university students and tourists, but also a mean of confronting listeners with his opinions. While this may be his first attempt at radio, Francis is no stranger to confrontation here. Last May, just before the visit of U.S. President George W. Bush to the city, Francis became involved in a brief brawl with a number of so-called "anti-globalists" who were protesting Bush's arrival outside the university. Wearing his standard large cowboy hat, Francis, who was passing by the protest, tried to intervene to stop the group when they attempted to trample an American flag. He was punched a few times by members of the group before the police stepped in to break up the fray.
Francis' show features mainly international news, accompanied by the host's commentary and English-language rock music, with a light mix of country thrown in. But listeners in search of a traditional morning news review will find themselves out of luck, as the stories are generally of the strange, if not sometimes trashy, side.
"We do mainly international news, but we are thinking about putting together some local police reports, to make jokes about the tragedies that befall some of the locals," Francis said. "We try to make the music fit the story. There was a story about the schools in the U.K. encouraging girls to perform oral sex. We chose the song 'Blow Me a Kiss.'"
The show is being sponsored by St. Petersburg-based radar-system manufacturer Leninetz. Alexander Gorbunov, who is the CEO of the plant and used to be one of Francis' English-language students, agreed to finance ten radio shows. If the project proves successful, the run will be extended and, Francis hopes, maybe even be broadcast several times a week.
"I'm an egomaniac," Francis repeated. "I'd like to syndicate this thing all over. Realistically, we would just like to become popular in St. Petersburg."
TITLE: Navy Opens New Probe At Academy
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: ARussian Navy commission opened a three-day investigation into allegations of physical abuse at St. Petersburg's elite Nakhimov Naval Academy on Thursday, after military prosecutors announced last week that the results of a first investigation at the school had turned up evidence to support the claims.
Military prosecutors from the Leningrad Military District have also asked the commander of the navy, Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, to initiate disciplinary proceedings against the head of the academy, Alexander Bukin, and several of his subordinates.
The first investigation at the academy was opened at the end of February, after the parents of three teenage cadets complained that their sons were systematically assaulted by a group of their classmates.
Sergei Karyazin, 14, Andrei Papulov, 14, and Vladimir Sobolyev, 15 - all first year Nakhimov students - told their parents that they and other classmates were systematically beaten, insulted, robbed, and even sexually assaulted by a group of classmates following their arrival at the school last fall.
The navy commission that inspected the school last month rejected the allegations, saying that it had found no supporting evidence.
However, military prosecutors from the Leningrad Military District, who carried out their own investigation, said last week that they had uncovered incidents of physical assaults on the cadets and that the academy had been providing poor living conditions for its students and not responding properly to complaints from the students.
"Our inspection revealed that the authorities at the academy were aware of the cases of physical assaults on cadets by classmates ... but they neither investigated the matter nor took proper measures to correct the situation," military prosecutors said.
The prosecutors' report to Kuroyedov lead the navy's chief to order the investigation by the second commission.
"Disciplinary measures will be taken against certain senior officials who allowed these violations to continue," navy spokesperson Igor Dygalo said.
TITLE: Georgia To Extradite Rebels
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia - A court in the former Soviet republic of Georgia on Thursday upheld a decision to extradite two suspected Chechen rebels to Russia, but said a third would face trial in Georgia. The Chechens were among a group of 13 suspected rebels detained on the Russian-Georgian border last August. Georgia has extradited five to Moscow, but the drawn-out legal process has angered Russia, which accuses Georgia of turning a blind eye to Chechen activity there.
On Thursday, the Tbilisi district court upheld a decision by the Georgian Prosecutor's Office to extradite two of the Chechens, Ruslan Gelogayev and Rustam Elkhadzhiyev, to Russia, but annulled the order in the case of the third, Husein Alkhanov. The court ruled that Alkhanov has refugee status in Georgia and cannot be sent back to his home country under Georgian law. He will remain in Georgia to face trial on charges of illegal weapons possession and illegally crossing the border, the court said.
TITLE: Diplomat Pushes Korea Solution
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - A senior Russian diplomat warned Wednesday against threatening North Korea, saying Moscow was continuing its quiet diplomacy aimed at reaching a settlement of the crisis around Pyongyang's nuclear program.
"Russia is definitely against preventive strikes on North Korea and against any military nuclear programs on the Korean peninsula," Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov said during a visit to Tokyo, ITAR-Tass reported. He said sanctions against North Korea would only intensify tensions, ITAR-Tass said.
The dispute flared in October, when U.S. officials said Pyongyang acknowledged having a covert nuclear program in violation of a 1994 deal. Washington and its allies suspended fuel shipments; North Korea retaliated by expelling UN monitors, withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and restarting a nuclear reactor.
"The country has the possibility to create nuclear weapons, but no evidence, except hints, rumors and indirect information, exists that North Korea has such weapons already," Mamedov said.
TITLE: Pipeline Decision Put On Hold
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The cabinet on Thursday delayed choosing between rival pipeline projects aimed at supplying energy-starved economic giants Japan and China, saying that it didn't yet have enough information to decide.
"The government ordered the [Energy Ministry] and the oil companies to present the most effective route by May 1," Energy Minister Igor Yusufov was quoted by news agencies as saying after the government's weekly session.
Japan and China have been heavily lobbying the rival routes, which would extend the existing network from its easternmost hub near Lake Baikal to either Daqing in northeast China or the Russian port of Nakhodka on the Sea of Japan.
But, with powerful oil major Yukos backing the China link, and gas giant Gazprom and state-owned oil major Rosneft pushing a dual gas-oil Nakhodka link, the government is looking for a compromise that will please everyone.
Prolonging the decision until May appeared to underscore the importance of the choice, because that same month the cabinet is scheduled to hammer out the government's official energy strategy through 2020.
With domestic oil companies continuing unprecedented output growth, existing export routes by rail, sea and land are heavily congested, and opening new routes to Eastern Asia is an obvious but expensive option to relieve the bottlenecks.
Leading the push has been Yukos, which is aggressively lobbying the government to approve its $2.5-billion plan to extend the network 2,400 kilometers to Daqing, which the company says could come online by 2005 and carry 600,000 barrels per day.
Gazprom and Rosneft, however, say that the Daqing route would scuttle their own need to build the $5.2-billion, 3,800-kilometer Nakhodka route because, without Yukos' crude, it would be unprofitable.
The competing plans have split the attention of the government over the past few months and, until Thursday, it looked as if the Yukos plan would prevail. Now, however, analysts say that a third option appears to be gaining favor - building the pipeline to Daqing, and then extending it to Nakhodka.
"It looks like all of it will become a part of the energy strategy," said Pavel Kushnir, oil and gas analyst with United Financial Group.
Yukos says that it has already sealed a deal with China on price and volume, and Yukos CEO Mikhail Khordokovsky said this week that the government has no choice but to approve his company's plan.
"We consider Thursday's decision to be a technical requirement to allow the government to make a full analysis of the routes," said Yukos spokesperson Hugo Erikssen.
Yusufov, however, said that it was not clear that Russia's oil and gas reserves in Eastern Siberia and the Far East were enough to justify extending the pipeline network eastward.
Current reserves in the two regions are estimated at about 1 billion tons, and planned exploration and development projects, which will already cost $80 billion to $90 billion over the next 20 years, could double that figure.
"[The government] should base its policy on these parameters," Prime-Tass quoted Yusofov as saying.
Yusufov also said that the government will take into consideration the joint proposal by Gazprom and Rosneft that it create a unified transport system that can handle all the oil and gas exploration and develop projects in Eastern Siberia.
In an appeal last month to President Vladimir Putin, the two state companies asked the government to coordinate the development of Eastern Siberia's hydrocarbon resources, arguing that it would significantly boost the viability of all projects on the table.
Gazprom and Rosneft have their eyes on the Talakan and Chingin oil and gas fields in Yakutia and are keen to find ways to cheaply transport what they hope to extract.
TITLE: Kremlin Tightens its Grip On Gazprom Ownership
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government has boosted its stake in Gazprom to a controlling 51 percent, the threshold that the Kremlin said it needed before allowing the barriers to foreign ownership in the gas giant to be lowered.
Gazprom said Tuesday that the government's 38-percent stake in the company had been consolidated with those belonging to Gazprom and its subsidiaries, paving the way for the liberalization of the monopoly's controversial share system.
"The first stage of Gazprom's movement toward liberalizing its share market has been completed," the company said in a statement Tuesday.
The abolishment of the so-called "ring fence" share system, which penalizes foreigners, is seen as a key step in the ongoing reform of the gas giant and a way to open new avenues of much-needed capital.
Under the current system, foreigners' ownership of the company's stock is capped at 20 percent and is limited to American Depositary Receipts, which trade at an average 50-percent premium to local shares.
But bringing down the fence will not only boost Gazprom's own financial fortunes, but those of other Russian companies as well, said Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller.
"Liberalization of Gazprom's shares' market will not only trigger the growth of the company's own capitalization, but [also] raise the capitalization of the whole Russian stock market," Miller was quoted as saying in the statement.
The government had said that it would not liberalize trading in Gazprom shares until it regained a tighter grip over the monopoly. But now that the government is apparently satisfied with its de facto 51-percent stake, the company said the two-tier system will be unified gradually.
Gazprom also said that the current ownership structure will remain in place, and that the state will continue to determine company policy. However, the details of how the government boosted its stake were unclear.
Before Tuesday's announcement, the state directly owned 38.4 percent of the company, while another 11.1 percent was held by Gazprom either as treasury stock or by its pension fund and Gazprombank, a 100-percent subsidiary.
Troika Dialog suggested that the additional shares required to reach 51 percent came from Stroitransgaz, a construction subsidiary with links to former Gazprom management that was awarded a 4.8-percent stake at far below market rates in 1994. Gazprom announced last year that it was seeking to regain the Stroitransgaz stake, which would have boosted the company's treasury stock to 15.9 percent.
Another possible scenario is that the state purchased on the open market the amount of shares needed to boost the total combined government-company stake from 49.9 percent to the desired 51 percent.
But as Troika analyst Kakha Kiknavelidze pointed out, the government still does not have the direct control it said that it wanted before allowing Gazprom's trading to be liberalized.
"And there is no mechanism in place to purchase or transfer the treasury stock into the state's hands. The completion of this process could take at least another year," Kiknavelidze said.
Paul Collison of Brunswick UBS Warburg said that the announcement shows "that the government has finally woken up to the medium and long-term problems that Gazprom is facing."
"Removing technical constraints like the dual trading system could help improve Gazprom's operational performance, as well as boost its capitalization and help attract investment," Collison said.
President Vladimir Putin told Gazprom last month that the company was too important diplomatically and economically to split up.
TITLE: Kudrin Plans Tight Budgets
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia plans to draw up an austere three-year budget for 2004-2006 based on an average price of $18.5 per barrel of oil, the mainstay of the country's economy, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Wednesday.
Russia's 2003 budget is based on an average oil price of $21.5 per barrel.
"This means making policy more austere and cutting non-interest spending in the federal budget by about 1.4 percent of gross domestic product," Kudrin told a meeting of Finance Ministry officials.
Russia would aim to raise the value of a special stabilization fund to the equivalent of 8.7 percent of GDP to provide a cushion should oil prices fall sharply in the future, Kudrin said, adding that a fall in oil price to $12 per barrel would produce an annual budget shortfall of 2.9 percent of GDP.
(Reuters, SPT)
TITLE: Hammer and Sickle Debated at Aeroflot
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Flagship carrier Aeroflot on Tuesday approved the new corporate colors to grace its aircraft and uniforms, though whether it will shed its hammer and sickle logo remains a subject of internal debate within the company.
Aeroflot had said in December that it would drop the Soviet-era logo which has flown with the airline for 80 years, due to passengers' negative associations.
Now it is revisiting that decision.
Aeroflot spokesperson Irina Dannenberg said that, after polling its passengers and clients, who say that they would not miss the hammer and sickle, the company is soliciting the views of its staff, and expects to finalize a decision this month or next.
One proposal suggests a compromise solution: Rather than dropping the logo altogether, it would be partially modernized by replacing the hammer and sickle with a globe and making the wings less pointed.
The first new Airbus slated for delivery to Aeroflot this fall will be mainly silver with its belly covered in navy blue with a thin orange stripe separating the two colors.
The three colors were chosen to represent the carrier's new image and the design of the tail coloring will feature a fluttering Russian tricolor.
"The new colors convey the message that we want to pass on to our passengers," Tatyana Zotova, Aeroflot's marketing-department chief, said by telephone Tuesday.
"Blue relates that we are professional and able to provide security for the passenger, while orange shows the passenger we are comfortable and dedicated to customer service. It also sparks images of sunrises, cupolas, golden autumns and poetry," Zotova said.
The new colors were suggested by Identica, the British image firm that Aeroflot hired two years ago to help it reinvent its brand.
The planes' interiors will boast blue seats with orange safety belts. Flight attendants will also wear these new colors, though the airline has yet to choose a uniform design from the five proposals that it shortlisted last month.
The 27 new Airbuses and Boeings that will join the Aeroflot fleet by 2005 will come from the factory with the new colors. The rest of its 100-plus fleet will be repainted in stages, the company said.
Aeroflot's efforts to rebrand its corporate image fall under the development strategy it adopted three years ago to steer it to profitability, quality service and a better overall image.
TITLE: Tax Police Will Not Be Sorely Missed
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After President Vladimir Putin signed the Tax Police into oblivion Tuesday, businesses big and small are breathing a long sigh of relief at the demise of an organization that they say choked economic growth and, especially of late, was acquiring alarming new powers.
The Tax Police - perhaps best known as armed, burly men in masks who roughly restrain accountants, as depicted on television shows - were disbanded by President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, and their duties are being transferred to a new, scaled-down department in the Interior Ministry.
In announcing the move in a larger reshuffle of security posts, Putin said that most of the Tax Police's 40,000-strong staff will be transferred to a new federal anti-drug agency, the State Committee for the Control of Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances. The new agency will also acquire much of the Tax Police's equipment and buildings - from state-of-the-art sniper rifles to sanatoriums.
Interfax, citing an unnamed Interior Ministry source, said Wednesday that the new Interior Ministry department might get 12,000 former Tax Police officers, along with the Tax Police's databases and authority to investigate tax crimes.
Tax Police chief Mikhail Fradkov, who worked abroad under the now-defunct Foreign Economic Relations Ministry, will move to Brussels, Belgium, to serve as Russia's envoy to the European Union - a post that holds as much clout as that of a minister.
The Tax Police's central press service was not picking up the telephone Wednesday. "They're probably hiding," said a spokesperson for the Tax Police's Moscow division. "There isn't anything to say." The spokesperson said that she and her colleagues had learned of the shake-up from television. "We learned about it from NTV," she said. "It's as much a surprise for us as for everyone else."
The Interior Ministry said that it had anticipated the move. "We had known about the planned changes for some time and had been preparing for them. It wasn't a surprise," said a ministry spokesperson. "It is perfectly logical to disband the Tax Police, because a lot of its functions are carried out by our anti-organized crime departments."
Citing sources in the Tax Police, the Kommersant daily said that confusion ruled Tuesday morning.
Hungry for information, employees grilled Tax Police generals who, in turn, were unable to offer any clarification. An official announcement was made only in the afternoon, the paper said.
The Tax Police's forerunner - the Chief Department for Tax Investigation - was created in 1992 under the Tax Ministry and charged with battling large-scale tax crime. In 1993, it was spun-off into a separate autonomous body called the Tax Police Department. It acquired its present name in 1996.
The Tax Police garnered a reputation for being hungry for new authority that more often targeted honest businessmen with paramilitary-style checks than large-scale tax evaders. The Tax Police had the sole responsibility of enforcing two articles of the Criminal Code - tax evasion by companies and individuals. In addition, it enforced 26 other articles, which were also the responsibility of the Interior Ministry.
"Eventually, you had a huge body that was fighting a comparatively small problem ... They had 40,000 employees, which, for Russia, is a lot," said Maxim Maximovsky, a senior tax lawyer with the Pepelyaev and Goltsblat law firm.
The Interior Ministry said that it is charged with enforcing 91 articles pertaining to economic crime in the Criminal Code. "The problem of overlapping duties between the Interior Ministry and the Tax Police arose some time ago," the ministry said in a statement.
Maximovsky said that the Tax Police had an "elastic authority," operating under its own laws and performing checks on businesses and individuals that were difficult to dispute in court.
This made life particularly uncomfortable for small and medium-sized businesses. Andrei Nasonov, a top official with the Association of Entrepreneurial Organizations of Russia, said that small business has the most to gain from the end of the Tax Police.
"They were used as a mechanism for unfair competition and for extortion by blocking economic activities," he said. "This decision is certainly not a coincidence, and it was adopted because there have been too many signals from the business community that the Tax Police were slowing down economic growth."
"The Tax Police was originally set up to fight major tax evaders. About a year ago, it suddenly set up a division that was aimed specifically at the smallest businesses. It came crashing down on poor small businesses that had no way of protecting themselves."
Maximovsky said that the Tax Police was brimming with corruption. "They are used to resolve a variety of commercial problems and by businessmen to achieve a competitive advantage," he said. "Sometimes, entrepreneurs went to the Tax Police to get a criminal investigation opened against their competitors."
Last month, the Tax Police issued internal instructions that some lawyers said could have come straight from the pages of George Orwell's "1984." One instruction stated that the Tax Police could take "preventive" measures against those they suspected of being likely to commit a tax crime and could encourage family members "to exert a positive psychological influence" over them.
TITLE: Changes Predicted in Local Drink Market
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The St. Petersburg alcoholic-drink sector can expect dramatic changes in the coming months, both in terms of prices and market operators, according to a report issued last week.
The Club of Alcohol Market Professionals (CAMP), a non-commercial association of local alcoholic-drink producers, including the major vodka producer Ladoga, is predicting that retail prices for liquor will rise by 15 rubles per liter, while prices for other alcoholic drinks will rise by 5 rubles to 10 rubles in the coming months, said Maxim Chernigovsky, the head of the club.
"The excise tax on alcohol went up by 15 percent back in January and February, but stores were selling old stock, for the most part," said Irina Filanovskaya, commercial director of the Vilash wine producer.
These relative changes in price would lead to liquors continuing to lose their market share, though other factors would also contribute to the trend, analysts said.
According to research carried out by Business Analytica, the consumption of vodka fell by 8 percent between 1998 and 2002, while the market for wine grew by around 6 to 8 percent per year in the same period.
In 2001 and 2002, the volume of wine sales in St. Petersburg rose by 37 percent, while vodka sales only increased by 11 percent in the same period, Chernigovsky said. His predictions for the future indicate that the trend is set to continue. "I expect wine sales to show an annual growth of 30 percent to 40 percent per year [for the time being]," he said.
City Administration Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade spokesperson Alexander Sazhin said that local wine-producing companies more than tripled their production volumes in 2002, also reflecting the trend away from liquors.
According to CAMP, alcohol consumption per capita in Russia in 2002 amounted to 12.5 liters, though research carried out by Integrated Marketing Solutions put the same figure at 9 liters per capita.
In St. Petersburg, according to CAMP, wine accounts for 8 percent of market volume, beer 34 percent and vodka 53 percent. Ten local wine producers account for 8 percent of the local wine market, while over 80 percent of the total figure is imported from other regions of Russia.
The data for Russia as a whole appears to favor beer, with Business Analytica research showing that 42 percent of the average consumers expenditure on alcohol being occupied by purchases of vodka, while 37.5 percent of expenditure is on vodka. Business Analytica has predicted that beer consumption will rise to 39.4 percent, while vodka consumption will fall to 38.9 percent. This comes on top of the 77 percent growth in the beer market since 1998, according to Business Analytica.
Alexander Mazurov, commercial director of the Vingarden wholesaler, said that another major trend in the local market is for wholesalers and retailers to merge and consolidate, uniting small and medium-sized companies, squeezing out the smallest operators, and for wholesale companies to merge with producers.
Chernigovsky cited the wholesale company Temp First, with its ownership of the 13-store Nakhodka retail chain and the acquisition by the producer Veda of a 50-percent stake in the wholesale company Euroservice as evidence of this vertical integration.
"At present, it's the most economically viable form of development, because it allows all the participants to accumulate their resources and promote their brands at outlets," Chernigovsky said.
TITLE: Putin's Reforms, Round 3: Security Agencies
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: THE rumors that President Vladimir Putin was planning to form a single super security agency, the Federal Investigations Service, have not come true, at least not yet. Instead, Putin abolished or broke up a number of security agencies on Tuesday: FAPSI, the Federal Border Service and the Tax Police. He also created one new agency, the State Committee for the Control of Narcotics.
In the short term, the shake-up could be viewed as part of the struggle for power and influence in the crucial security and intelligence sectors - either as a reaction to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, or as a preemptive strike ahead of the upcoming national elections. The changes can also be viewed as part of Putin's long-term strategy for government reform and, in this context, Tuesdays reshuffle is the third round of these reforms.
In the Soviet era, the state's security and intelligence services were concentrated in three agencies: the Defense Ministry, KGB and Interior Ministry. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the big three quickly disintegrated, leading to a sharp increase in the number of agencies - a dozen or so in the early 1990s. By the end of the decade, 14 agencies possessed armed troops. This diffusion of responsibilities and functions led to confusion, the lack of a unified command and loss of manageability.
After the first war in Chechnya, the Russian leadership's concern about this disintegration hardened into a resolve to make some fundamental changes. Under a decree signed in July 1998, all agencies containing armed forces were ordered to redraw the borders of their territorial subdivisions to conform with Russia's military districts. However, the reform, in which Putin was involved first as a member of the Security Council and later as its secretary, was not implemented in full at that time.
Round One of Putin's reforms took place on May 13, 2000, with the decree creating seven federal administrative districts. One week later, Viktor Cherkesov, deputy director of the FSB, was appointed a presidential envoy along with Deputy Interior Minister Pyotr Latyshev, Tax Police General Georgy Poltavchenko, two army generals and two civilians. Over the next three months, the envoys assembled their staffs, assigning officials from the so-called power agencies a leading role. All federal security and law-enforcement agencies created federal district subdivisions, except for the FSB.
Round Two. In March, 2001, Sergei Ivanov, secretary of the Security Council, took over as defense minister, while his first deputy, Mikhail Fradkov, was installed as Russia's top tax cop. Boris Gryzlov moved into the interior minister's office, and the former minister, Vladimir Rushailo, became head of the Security Council. Far-reaching staff changes were soon carried out in all four agencies.
Round One of the reform established federal district-level divisions as the structural center of the reorganized agencies. In Round Two, the so-called chekists seized control of the main power agencies. And, in Round Three, Putin has redistributed turf and resources among the power agencies.
So, who are the winners and losers in all this?
The last round of transformations has substantially strengthened the three traditional Soviet power agencies. Putin's St. Petersburg allies in the power agencies - Nikolai Patrushev at the FSB, Ivanov and Gryzlov - are joined by Cherkesov, whose anti-drug agency has been given the disbanded Tax Police's buildings, funding, equipment and personnel.
The logic of giving such a powerful agency the task of policing the narcotics trade doesn't become clear unless the new committee's purview will be substantially broader than announced, and will include the war on terrorism, as Putin has suggested it may.
The decision to abolish the Tax Police makes rather less sense. If the tax police are thrown into the war on drugs, the Interior Ministry will have to spend considerable time and resources training new ones.
The replacement of Cherkesov with Valentina Matviyenko as presidential envoy to the Northwestern Federal District is particularly intriguing. For starters, none of the envoys has been replaced until now, despite the fact that several of them are obviously incompetent. What's more, the Northwestern Federal District, which contains Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg, is both crucial and particularly complex. It only made sense that Putin put Cherkesov, a trusted ally, in charge of it. Has Cherkesov, like Schiller's Moor, "done his job?"
Under his watch, many regional law-enforcement officers were replaced, particularly in St. Petersburg; criminal cases were opened against four deputy governors of St. Petersburg and other members of the administration; and a network of obshchestvennye priyomnye were opened across the federal district, complete with rather nontransparent sources of funding. The task of intimidating Governor Vladimir Yakovlev and blocking his plans to get re-elected to a third term has effectively been achieved. However, Cherkesov has been far less successful vis-a-vis preparations for St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary and in his work with Kaliningrad.
Nonetheless, Cherkesov's appointment to head a new powerful law-enforcement agency is clearly a promotion (and apparently something that he lobbied for himself).
It's still too early to say what problems and benefits Putin's sweeping changes will produce. On the one hand, strengthening the security agencies could improve their ability to work together and maximize their resources. On the other hand, the lack of transparency and civilian control increases the risk that a monster like the KGB will be resurrected. This lack of control is already evident in the way the changes were made: by presidential decree, in violation of existing law, and with no discussion in parliament.
Nikolai Petrov, the head of the Center for Political and Geographical Research, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: The City's Police Officers Are Running Riot
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
TEXT: ST. Petersburg's police officers are very choosy. It is no secret to the city's residents, and to tourists, that officers are particularly keen on money and cellular phones.
Sometimes, I must admit, they are very polite, as I found when a police car suddently appeared while I was on my way home at 3 a.m. one night recently.
I say this because, unfortunately, I had no documents at all with me, so they checked the only thing that they could - the roughly 600 rubles that I had in my pocket.
"We're sorry," one of the officers said. "It's like that these days. How much do you pay for your apartment?"
Satisfied with my answer, the officers drove off into the darkness of a misty night, leaving me alone - with my money safe and a surprised look on my face.
A friend of mine, local Democratic Russia party head Ruslan Linkov, who is close to the federal Interior Ministry administration, including Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov, was not so lucky when going home along Gorokhovaya Ulitsa at about the same time of night a few days previously.
At one point, he noticed four people standing in the dim recesses of an archway. A moment later, he heard footsteps running up behind him and, glancing backward, saw a guy raising an empty bottle in his hand and preparing to hit him over the head. He took evasive action, and the bottle slid relatively harmlessly down his arm.
While running away, Linkov saw a police car nearby that he stopped and asked the officers inside for assistance. The officers told him to calm down and go home, and promised to deal with the situation.
"I was in such a state of shock that I went home but, a bit later, I noticed that my watch was missing," Linkov said. "So, I called the police, and they sent a car to pick me up and take me to the nearest precinct to talk to a detective, who told me I was lucky to get out of the situation that lightly. He said that the officers [in the car] could have been working together with the people to spot [pedestrians], track them and then split what they got from the victim between them."
"None of the police cars later said they had been stopped to investigate my complaint," he said.
Here, I must add that Linkov doesn't drink, so any speculation about alcohol-induced hallucinations have no basis in fact.
There is one other theory that exonerates the police, though, if you believe official comments that the sting was, in fact, an operation by the so-called "fake" police officers who steal money and cellular phones from people all accross Russia.
Take, for instance, the report published March 4 on the Fontanka.ru Web site that said that people wearing the uniforms and masks usually donned by special police forces and armed with a "thing" resembling a machine gun broke into a flower store, tied up the store assistants, and made off with $150 and 4,450 rubles (about $140) in cash, plus some flowers.
This seems to me to be a very romantic robbery, especially as it happened only four days before last Saturday's International Women's Day.
Less romantic things have happened to friends of mine at some of the city's metro and train stations when, after making the acquaintance of the Interior Ministry's finest, they found 2,000 to 6,000 rubles (roughly $60 to $200) missing from their wallets or bags.
The police steal and take bribes. That is a fact, and nobody - except the police themselves - would argue about it.
The most cyncial attempt I've heard to defend the police's image was made on Oct. 30 by Yury Shuvalov, the head of the Interior Ministry Information Department, who denied rumors that police officers had rifled the pockets of unconscious hostages during the storming of the Theater Center Na Dubrovke in Moscow by Alfa Force troops.
Shuvalov referred to statements by Alfa soldiers made during an independent investigation of the events by the Union of Right Forces party.
"One police officer took a wallet from an unconscious woman and, when she regained consciousness at the same moment, he hit her in her face with his leg. An Alfa soldier noticed this, ran up to him, started beating him up and almost killed him, and others were screaming 'finish him, we'll sign him off.'"
That police officer's behaviour was sick.
This case alone should have been enough to force Interior Minister Gryzlov to think carefully about the police gaining the image of criminals in uniforms.
But he doesn't. The most important task for him is to raise the image of the Unity party, which he heads, with less than a year left before the next State Duma elections.
What's the upshot of all this?
In the same way that St. Petersburg City Hall officials break their legs falling on the ice - see "The Downside of a Governor Looking Ahead," Feb. 21 - people who know Gryzlov suffer at the hands of his subordinates.
TITLE: british video art is electric
AUTHOR: by Aliona Bocharova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: "Electric Earth," the exhibition of contemporary British video art that opened at the Marble Palace of the Russian Museum last Thursday, is a significant project for both of its organizers - the Russian Museum, its host, and the British Council, which brought the exhibition to Russia.
The Russian Museum, which claims to be the most advanced museum of contemporary art in St. Petersburg, has finally realized its dream of having a special area dedicated to showing video art; the British Council was given the opportunity to open its program dedicated to the city's upcoming 300th-anniversary celebrations in the brand-new "video-art halls." The fact that the exhibition has five curators only underlines its importance.
At first glance, "Electric Earth" does not appear to create a highly electric atmosphere; visitors in search of shocking video installations may be somewhat disappointed to be confronted only with a number of screens and monitors in semi-dark, desolate rooms. However, an emotional charge is definitely present. For example, Hilary Lloyd's "Rich" shows a young man being shaved bald - the effect is that of spying on a very private moment, a rite of initiation that will radically change the life of the video's hero. A different, hypnotic effect is created by Mark Titchner's "Artists are Cowards," which shows a goldfish circling endlessly on the screen - in almost migraine-inducing monotony - sharing its screen space to the text of Samuel Beckett's famous maxim, "Fail again, fail better."
The exhibition showcases British video artists aged between 21 and 38 years old. Despite their young ages, however, most have already exhibited their work in London's Tate Modern Gallery.
"[The artists] belong to the post-Young British Artists generation, and stand in opposition to the glamor and scandal of the Young British Artists," said British Council Arts Coordinator Anastasia Boudanoque, one of the exhibition's curators, referring to the 1980s and 1990s art movement in Britain that produced enfants terribles of the art world like Damian Hirst and Tracey Emin. To this end, the artists' use of home video is a statement that they belong to a different generation.
The Russian Museum's Olesya Turkina, another exhibition curator, said "Electric Earth" is "high-voltage territory." Indeed, high technology and unusual video-making strategies coincide with socially controversial themes and the energy and radical spirit of youth subculture. Even the slogan "Earache My Eye!" invented by Mark Beasley, curating the exhibition from the British side, is striking, as it implies that the ear perceives sound more quickly than the eye grasps a visual image. To underline this, the videos' soundtracks often do not coincide with the visual narrative, thereby creating a gap between sound and image.
"The artists document the culture to which they belong, living in its rhythm or ironically distancing themselves from their surroundings, be it the deadly boredom of a supermarket at night or the bewitching magic of a rave party," Turkina said.
Simultaneously opposing and exploring the mainstream culture of television news, big politics and traditional family values, the artists contrast it with their own culture, describing its main cultures and rituals. Oliver Payne and Nick Relph's "Mixtape," for example, shows teenagers in a rock band, kids in outsize trainers riding a scooter and a worker at a Starbucks coffee shop covering up her facial piercings with regulation blue sticking-plasters. Mark Leckey's "Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore" tells the story of three decades of British dance subculture. In Wolfgang Tillmans' "Lights (Body)," another dance-themed video, no bodies are visible, as though the dancers have dissolved in light and music and been transformed into pure energy. Instead, as Beasley put it, the lighting rig of a nightclub flickers to a generic house soundtrack and a nervously twitching mirror reflects a shimmering sequence of colors high above the dance floor. British curator Beasley said Leckey's work, in particular, is "very representative, as it rehabilitates this almost underground phenomenon."
The feeling of electricity is enhanced by the contrast between the neutral space of the museum and the surreal impression created by many of the videos. "Nirvana," by London's Szuper Gallery, fits this category. The sterile environment of an immigration building serves as a stage for an absurd performance: two women crawl on all fours across the blue linoleum of the office floor, while a young man dressed in a pink shirt and striped tie slumps pensively to the floor. The exaggeration of office workers' behavior, spiced with English humor, makes the video an illustration to Franz Kafka's famous novel "The Trial," according to Iosif Bakstein, a research fellow at the Russian Museum.
The British Council's Boudanoque is understandably proud of the exhibition, which she called "an entirely new experience of video-art presentation in the city."
"It is a shift to a European level that might not be obvious to experienced art lovers," she said. "Yet it's the first time that all the videos are on DVD, and that a surround-sound system is being used."
"Electric Earth" runs through April 7 at the Russian Museum's Marble Palace, after which it goes on tour around Russia. See Exhibits for details.
TITLE: mariinsky quits ticket system
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Mariinsky Theater is changing its ticket-sale system, following a conflict with the St. Petersburg Ticket Sales Board, a city-run organization that coordinates the distribution of tickets to performances at local theaters and concert venues through kiosks around the city.
From March 21, tickets for performances at the Mariinsky will only be sold at the theater's own box office, or via its Web site, www.mariinsky.ru.
The theater's administration said Wednesday that it was pulling out of its agreement with the Ticket Sales Board after receiving complaints from people who were unable to buy tickets at the board's kiosks but were, instead, offered the same tickets - at much higher prices - by scalpers on the black market just a few steps from the ticket offices. Previously, the theater sold most tickets at its in-house box office, but distributed a substantial number of cheaper tickets - priced from 30 to 300 rubles - through the kiosks.
The Mariinsky administration said it had received frequent complaints from spectators who were even forced to bargain with the touts to get a 30-ruble ticket for 300 to 500 rubles. The situation was aggravated by the recent Mariinsky International Ballet Festival, which attracted an array of international stars to perform at the theater.
The theater's management said it was able to determine which tickets had been sold by scalpers by checking the number on the tickets shown by audience members complaining about the problem. To alleviate the problem, the theater said, it was breaking off its agreement with the board.
"With the Stars of the White Nights Festival coming up between May 5 and August 5, the theater has had to assume full control over ticket sales, to guarantee our audiences affordable tickets to the performances," the theater said in an official statement.
The St. Petersburg Ticket Sales Board could not be reached for comment.
For inquiries about ticket prices, repertoire and cast lists, call the Mariinsky Theater's new enquiries service at 326-4141.
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Although St. Petersburg's Irish community is relatively small, St. Patrick's Day is now one of Russia's most popular imported holidays, after Halloween. Apart from the traditional parties at the city's Irish bars, the festivities will include several gigs by local Celtic-tinged bands and the like.
Although March 17 falls on Monday, the shindig will kick off on Sunday with a concert by some half a dozen folk and folk-rock bands at Red Club. The show starts at 5 p.m.
On St. Patrick's Day proper, all things Irish will be the theme of the day at PORT club, which recently made itself unpopular with local gig goers by imposing checks for weapons that led to waits of up to an hour to get into the recent concert by The Residents.
Further ahead, Irish-folk-music fans can look forward to an event called Post-St. Patrick's Day Hangover. See gigs for details.
Local Tom Waits-influenced band Billy's Band will play with an expanded line up under the moniker Billy's Big Band at Red Club on Saturday.
The band - usually a trio of stand-up bass, accordion and guitar - will be augmented for the occasion by five extra musicians, Vasily Savin on trombone, Mikhail Zhitkikh on saxophone, Alexander Butkeyev on piano, Yevgeny Bobrov on drums and Dmitry Maksimachyov on additional percussion.
According to the band's singer-cum-double-bassist Vadim "Billy Novik", the concert is set to be recorded for a forthcoming live album.
Billy's Band is also due to appear at new members-only house club Pla.Styl.Inn on Thursday at an evening being promoted as "Billy's Band's Private Party."
"We haven't thought of a concept for it yet," Novik said. "But it's likely that we'll play a normal concert, as a trio."
A much more important event, according to Novik, will take place at PORT club on April 4.
"There'll be a performance, there'll be an exhibition of paintings, with Purga [the popular bar at 11 Nab. Reki Fontanki that the band cites as its favorite venue] probably taking part. It will be grand," he said, adding that the event will be called "Bathing the Red Horse," after Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin's famous painting.
After Wednesday's concert by the 21st Century Schizoid Band, which featured members of prog-rock combo King Crimson's 1969-era line-ups, news broke this week that the "real" King Crimson will play at the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on June 10.
With spring and summer schedules filling up - no doubt with an eye on the increased marketing potential provided by St. Petersburg's upcoming 300th-anniversary celebrations - other gigs that have been announced include prog-rockers Jethro Tull at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture on April 13, English angst-mongers Radiohead at a location yet to be confirmed on May 31, Depeche Mode frontman David Gahan at LDM on June 17, and U.S. techno guru Moby at the Ice Palace on June 24.
One date that remains to be confirmed is blues guitarist John Mayall at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture on April 12 - the day before Jethro Tull - as the venue's Web site says, as Mayall's own site only lists his performance at a blues festival in Lillehammer, Norway, on April 11. The venue's art director was unavailable for comment at press time.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: just don't let the food go cold
AUTHOR: by Thomas Rymer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One of the classic dangers while writing a restaurant review is the pitfall of writing most of the piece about the atmosphere and service while generally ignoring the food. Unfortunately, if significant events during your dining experience include watching a female diner licking whipped cream off of the pectoral muscles of a male stripper, witnessing a bartender breathing fire or taking part in a painting contest in which the the canvas is the bare chest and midriff of a female dancer at the restaurant, you have to agree that a little pitfalling is understandable.
The exterior of Stervy (best rendered as "Bitches"), located on Ulitsa Marata just off Nevsky Prospect, has been a point of curiosity for me since I first noticed it late last year. With signage advertising it both as a restaurant and a "Zhensky klub dlya mushchin" ("Women's club for men"), you can probably understand the confusion. Its windows don't offer any help in solving the riddle - both because they contain female mannequins wearing vamped-out lingerie (fishnet stockings included) and brandishing weapons (including swords and bows and arrows) and because they almost completely obscure any view of what lies within.
What lies within, as it turns out, is not for those looking for a quiet and/or romantic spot, but would be good for a group of people (couples or otherwise) looking for an entertaining, if not particularly politically correct or inexpensive, night out.
Taking our place at our open booth in the restaurant, my dining companion and I started out with drinks - mine a simple Tri Medvedya draft beer (40 rubles, $1.25) and, for my companion, the house cocktail, "Sterva" (250 rubles, $7.90), which turned out to be a very tasty concoction including, among other things, blue curacao, vodka and tonic.
Our drinks duly ordered, we split the next little while between perusing the menu and wondering what the presence of the two enormous breasts and the pair of lips on the wall above our table (don't be afraid - strictly decorative) and the large, elevated glass booth at the end of the bar could reveal about the evening ahead. A little more about that later.
The menu at Stervy is organized just as you would expect, with salads, appetizers, main courses and desserts, as well as the standard little peculiarities of Russian-restaurant English translation. The selection in each category isn't huge, but the choices are enticing, with salads priced between 100 and 150 rubles ($3.15 and $4.75), appetizers running from 40 to 350 rubles ($1.25 to $11.10) and mains between 200 and 400 rubles ($6.35 and $12.70).
We decided to share a couple of appetizers to start. The mushroom and chicken julienne (120 rubles, $3.80) was good and heavy on the chicken, with the cheese melted perfectly and the mushrooms bringing the whole taste together. As good as the julienne was, the ham rolls with cheese (70 rubles, $2.20) were even better. The thin slices of ham were prosciutto-like, but more tender, and wrapped their way around a grated-cheese mixture that was rendered very tasty by the zesty, but balanced, presence of garlic and spices. Altough garnished with olives, sliced peppers, lettuce and parsley, the starter isn't particularly substantial, but is definitely worth trying.
For mains, my companion opted for the chicken breasts stuffed with shredded spinach (250 rubles, $7.90), a dish straight out of the local predilection for rolled dishes with filling. This offering was pretty standard, with the mixture in the center making the grade, even if the chcken itself was a bit in the dry side. The ratatouille (60 rubles, $1.90) side dish was the most successful of what she decided was a good main course. My "Bloody" steak (320 rubles, $10.15), a filet, came exactly as advertised - good and rare - and was a good, tender cut that satisfied me completely.
We each finished off with a bowl of ice cream (80 rubles, $2.55) and coffee (40 rubles, $1.25) while we sat back and watched the show.
More about the show. On Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, begining at 11:30 p.m., diners are treated to a steady stream of performances by male and female erotic dancers, lip-sync numbers by the transvestite master of ceremonies and flair bartending displays by - who else? - the bartender. There is a charge for the show (150 rubles, $4.75, for women and 200 rubles, $6.30, for men) but it's worth the fun. The whole performance moves throughout the room, and includes everything from solving the riddle of the glass booth to a few shower numbers. It just makes sense that, if you're going to paint all over someone, they need somewhere to wash off. In a few of the numbers, members of the audience are called on to join in the fun, which, while it can certainly be defined as risque, is more on the side of the absurd and playful than the raunchy.
Stervy is definitely something worth checking out, particularly if you are with a group and looking for somewhere to provide great food and a little different entertainment at the same time.
Stervy. 10 Ul. Marata. Tel.: 315-4903. Open daily, noon until the last customer leaves. Menu in Russian and English. Credit cards accepted. Dinner for two with alcohol and cover charge, 1,780 rubles ($56.40).
TITLE: an ancient myth becomes reality
TEXT: The boundaries between art and science are being blurred and, in Russia, it's happening in Kaliningrad.
Dmitry Bulatov is one of a small, but growing, number of artists around the world who are using techniques from genetic engineering to create a new form of art known as Ars Chimera (sometimes called transgenic art). The chimera was a creature in ancient Greek mythology that had a lion's head, a goat's body and a dragon's tail.
Bulatov, the curator of the Kaliningrad branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art, is running a project called "Consciousness on the Alert" in conjunction with Moscow's Ivanovsky Virology Institute. One of the project's aims - although currently on hold because of lack of financing, according to Bulatov - is the creation of a florescent, or glowing, cactus, by introducing genetic material from bioluminscent - naturally glowing - organisms (in this case, a cone jellyfish and a sea anemone) into a Lophophora cactus - a traditional food of North American Indians, widely known for its drastic hallucinogenic properties.
Genetically modified art made its first public appearance in 1936, when photographer Edward Steichen exhibited new varieties of delphinium flowers at New York's Museum of Modern Art. The movement started by Steichen was later named Ars Genetica, and was based on principles of heredity codified in the 1850s and 1860s by Austrian monk Gregor Mendel - although, as Bulatov pointed out, humans had been using selective breeding for thousands of years previously.
With the discovery of DNA by Francis Crick and John Watson in 1953 and the subsequent revolution in microlevel genetic engineeering, a whole new world of possibilities opened up. The first artistic use of genetic engineering - in effect, the first work of Ars Chimera - was "Microvenus," a 1996 project by American artist Joe Davies, with help from Harvard University biologist Dana Boyd, that involved inserting a section of synthetic DNA into an E. Coli bacterium. Today, the trend is growing worldwide, and its techniques, taken from genetic and biochemical science, are increasingly sophisticated - as well as attracting increasing ethical attention and criticism, as seen with Eduardo Kac's 2000 project "GFP Bunny," in which the Brazilian artist genetically engineered a white rabbit, which he named Alba, that glows green under special blue light.
In addition to his practical work, Bulatov has also edited what he calls an anthology of works about Ars Chimera theory in Russia. The book, which also covers aspects of biomedicine, genetic engineering and nanorobotics, includes contibutions from artists, critics, art historians and philosophers, as well as Bulatov himself. Andrei Vorobei recently went to Kaliningrad to interview him.
q:What attracted you to Ars Chimera?
a:With regard to genetic art in general, I'm tired of seeing "dead" works of art, like pictures, photographs and the like. I'm interested in living art that develops in time. As for Ars Chimera, there are two main reasons.
First, being a contemporary artist, I'm interested in a new physical medium for of modern art. With Ars Chimera, we have a biological medium, which is why we talk about moist, or wet, media - a biological carrier or interface. So, for me, it is a new medium with a bright future.
Second, I'm doing it because it is dangerous. What I'm doing is a form of rhetoric - by doing it, I'm warning people about the dangerous nature of these techniques. This sort of art engineering has a clearly expressed precautionary character - by fixing a failure of modern science and engineering, it obtains a human measure, and shows us that the world was once one thing and can become something completely different.
q:Where does the science end and the art begin? In other words, what is the difference here between a scientist and an artist?
a:The main difference is that the scientist is interested in the practical use of these technologies, like an advisor. For instance, insulin was created using transgenic techniques. But it's difficult to imagine a scientist wanting to create a trangenic rabbit that glows green under special lighting, as Brazilian artist Eduardo Kac did with his "GFP Bunny" project.
It's important to understand that, at the current stage of development of genetic engineering, one chimera organism or another can be created without any problems. But the artist is interested in something else. We're now at the stage when biotechnologies have been given "public-service" properties. Now, an artist can use such technologies to create an artistic product. These products are no longer seen as being a part of science - discoveries, inventions and patents are irrelevant here. Of course, the work of the [Ars Chimera] artist has a scientific background, but it is directed toward other areas and contexts, be they social, philosophical, mythological or artistic.
An Ars Chimera artist focuses all his attention on the resources for getting the results and on his own thoughts, rather than on manufacturing a product, in which a scientist is interested. Another interesting example is the utopian project "Pig's Wings" [from 2002], by Australian artists Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts, who attempted to use living pig tissue to construct and grow a semi-living wing-shaped object and, therefore, to make us wonder if pigs actually could fly one day. Obviously, this "rhetoric surrounding the development of new biotechnologies" lies in the field of art rather than of serious science.
Chimeric science and Ars Chimera overlap more in Ars Chimera design, which can be seen as a form of applied science and art. The main activity now in the field is the construction of a GFP [Green Florescent Protein] catalog. It already includes 26 GFP-like proteins taken from different kinds of organisms - soft and madreporite corals, ctenophores [comb jellyfish], actinias [sea anenomes] and the like - that have the ability to floresce, with colors ranging from blue-green to ruby red. This produces the possibility of genetically creating an art object with two, three or even four colors simultaneously or, in other words, the GFP-type fibers can be built into other organisms to make it change color, as was the case with Kac's rabbit.
The GFP catalog, therefore, can be seen as the modern artist's palette, and Ars Chimera design becomes a more complex and varied media technology on the basis of which tomorrow's art technologies will be developed. For instance, a housewife will be able to order a plant from an Ars Chimera designer to go with the color of her wallpaper.
q:What is new in the forms of being of Ars Chimera works?
a:What's new is the form of the proof, or documentation, of this art - you can't present a photo or a video, as it could have been created with Adobe PhotoShop or another computer program. Microlevel art requires another form of exhibiting.
Another interesting feature is connected with a remark by well-known art historian Boris Grois: For a long time, a momentary perception of art was required from a viewer but, in the second half of the 20th century, temporal art forms appeared, art that unfolds over time, like video art and performance art. As for Ars Chimera, we already have a bio-temporal art form. First, you can be in touch with this art object, and your emotional perception of a live object will be higher than of a dead object. Second, like you, it changes over time.
q:The main problem here seems to be that these new technologies are very expensive for artists and require a deep knowledge of biology, at least, which makes them accessible to only a few artists.
a:Yes, but we can also talk about the "socialization" of the technologies. As soon as the technologies are "socialized," as soon as they come out of the scientific lab and become accessible to ordinary people, then artists who are interested - and also feel that they can realize themselvs through these technologies - begin to use the technologies and to expand their practices into different areas, using different media. As a simple example, video art appeared when the first video cameras went on sale - i.e., they were socialized. Personally, I think that [video] technology, or practice, is not cutting-edge for modern art. In other words, the level of modernity of video artists is open to question.
q:How do you see the level of socialization of Ars Chimera?
a:I'm talking about a different level of socialization. For example, 30 years ago, you could buy a camera and you had to know in detail how it worked and how to take photographs, since you had to do it at home. Now, you can buy a camera without needing to know how it works and without needing to understand the printing process, because you can send [the film] to the photo studio. The camera is now at a higher level of socialization, which the artist can explot.
It's the same with other things, and must be the same with Ars Chimera technologies. In the end, the artist will not need to know much about biology, For instance, it will be possible to order an Ars Chimera project and only have to specify the concept. I'm exaggerating, certainly, and omitting a lot, but it will be something like this. At the moment, undoubtedly, it requires detailed knowledge; I spent more than a year on it. Additionally, it can't exist at the moment without a well-equipped scientific lab, constant consultation with experts and a continual flow of financing. In general, Ars Chimera is currently at a low level of socialization but, as I said, it is subject to change.
First, [the development of Ars Chimera] will depend on legal limitations, which are, obviously, necessary, as these techniques could seriously damage nature. There are already rules in place limiting access to labs, which techniques can be used, etc. So it will depend on the character and intensity of the restrictions.
q:Where do you stand in ethical terms? How would you formulate your position?
a:I've been asked about this many times, and I don't have an unequivocal, prepared answer. It's a living topic for me. As I only work with plants, some problems are easy to prevent. Rigid control is required here, in biosafety terms.
q:Returning to the rabbit, in simple terms, how does the rabbit feel? The common question is: "Do you have the right to do this?"
a:No, I don't have the right but, in this case, I usually point out that, at the moment, lots of scientific experiments are carried out on animals - monkeys, mice, etc. Monuments have been erected to Pavlov's dogs.
Ignoring my art project for a moment, I think that imposing restrictions is absolutely impossible. Limiting any form of experiment is impossible, as is limiting the development of technologies and new techniques. It is outside our competence.
It's already impossible to stop [the development of Ars Chimera]. If I don't do it, somebody else will. The genie has been let out of the bottle, and it's impossible to put him back. The best we can do is to work [as Kac said of his rabbit], "with great care, acknowledging the complex issues thus raised and, above all, with a commitment to respect, nurture, and love the life thus created."
Dmitry Bulatov's book, "BioMediale. Contemporary Society and Genomic Culture" will be released in June in Russian and English by New York firm Art & Science Collaborations, Inc. Links: www.ncca.smufsa.nu/chimaera (Russian only); http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/links/wilson.artlinks2.html; for Ars Chimera projects, check: www.ekac.org (Eduardo Kac); www.tca.uwa.edu.au/pig/pig_main.html (The Pig Wings Project)
TITLE: on screen, bare legs and all
AUTHOR: by Elvis Mitchell
PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: IT'S rare to find a picture as exuberant, as shallow - and as exuberant about its shallowness - as the director Rob Marshall's film adaptation of the Broadway musical "Chicago." It's the raw expenditure of energy and the canniness of the staging that should pull audiences in and keep them rooted. The fabulous bones of this oft-told tale have been picked over so often that there's no flesh left on them. But Marshall and the screenwriter Bill Condon get a terrifically sweet concoction out of this fabled skeleton.
The movie, set in Prohibition-era Chicago, is tough, brittle fun - a mouthful. Mercilessly adapted by Condon, who won an Oscar for his "Gods and Monsters" script, this "Chicago" has a connoisseur's appreciation of camp, which it treats as a dish best served cold. This, of course, is undoubtedly the best way to present a movie take on Bob Fosse's digressive musical version of "Chicago," itself a song-and-dance spin on the 1926 play by Maurine Dallas Watkins.
Her original "Chicago" had made it to the screen twice, notably as 1942's "Roxie Hart," one of the finest comedies of that era. This new picture maintains the relentless spirit of Fosse's blunt suavity and the breathless, black-silk enthusiasm of Kander and Ebb's songs.
In other words, "Chicago" is as tough as Roxie (Renee Zellweger) turns out to be. Her Roxie is on trial on a murder charge, accused of killing a man (Dominic West) who took advantage of her. Marshall's movie makes her more of a victim initially, tumbling from a happy romp into the lurid terror of violation. His adaptation plays on the audience's affection for Zellweger's scrappy Kewpie-doll-with-a-heart image before exposing the knowing smirk and steel-jacketed ambition looming beneath Roxie's dimples. The picture saves her chameleon aspect for later, turning her spunky, spiky naïf on her head: instead of spreading good will, she pimps for it. As the press coverage of Roxie's trial grows, her own sense of self inflates; she gets hooked on cheap, easy fame.
Turning the tawdriness of Roxie's murder trial into a brash campaign for fame and allure, Fosse's "Chicago" - which jumped from one roof-raising number to another - broadcast the crass, manipulative motives of everyone involved. The sinewy, exposed skin of the dancers provided a jaw-plummeting contrast to the cold callousness of the characters. Marshall and Condon try something different. This movie, choreographed by Marshall, may be accused of being inspired by Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge." It cranks up the temperature by flashing more thigh than Kentucky Fried Chicken, generating excitement with bullet-timed editing and brassy, hip-shaking musical numbers that openly comment on what has come before as well as advancing the story.
Dennis Potter's "Pennies From Heaven," with its coldhearted Brechtian observational style, is a big influence, too. The trial and everything leading up to it are treated in Marshall's picture like backstage preparation. It provides standard dialogue exchanges for the cast members so their beady-eyed grasping is obvious. For the eruption of the musical numbers, the movie pops inside Roxie's head - the id-free world of her unconscious, where the songs are sung out and the dances are flung out.
Back in the real world, the competition grows between Roxie and Velma (Catherine Zeta-Jones) for the public's attention and constantly diminishing concentration. Velma is a jazz baby stage performer who is also doing time and anxious about being upstaged - especially when both her life and her public profile may be at stake. Condon may have also gone back to the prefatory material that Watkins wrote for her "Chicago," which details a chunk of the actual history of the crimes that inspired the show.
"Chicago" was a tough movie to make. Fosse, laboring to get it done since he brought it to the stage in 1975, finally gave up on it; instead he transplanted some of the plot machinations and several of the show's songs to the movie "All That Jazz" (1979). His Expressionist-slink dance style has turned up everywhere but the Christian Broadcasting Network in the interim. But Fosse's death in 1987 wasn't enough to derail a filmed "Chicago." And with the exception of Wilma Flintstone, almost every female star of the last 20 years who ever sang a note - or dreamed of it - was mentioned as a possible star.
On first sight of Zeta-Jones in "Chicago," in her Louise Brooks wig and ruthless smile, it's hard not to be reminded of the limping musical she was seen rehearsing in last year's comedy "America's Sweethearts" with the same vocal equipment. But not since she used that martial form of Pilates to slither through a series of electronic alarms in "Entrapment" (1999) has she shown the kind of physicality she displays here. She pumps her majestic, long legs like the cylinders of a Corvette about to redline, but always knowing exactly when to stop short of throwing a piston.
"Chicago" has become more of Roxie's story, but that doesn't stop Marshall from supplying its cast with moments to, as Fosse used to say, razzle-dazzle 'em. As the big-ticket defense lawyer and jury barometer Billy Flynn, Richard Gere has never been better, turning spoiled princeling arrogance into a witty revel. He splashes his winner's juice sparingly, and the movie's shift from acid reality to bitter, high-flying musical serves him best.
Queen Latifah, as the prison matron, has a number dripping with the honey of the young Bessie Smith. She and Gere are used for their bigger-than-life personae, and sudden pressure drops in those presences signal their duplicity. John C. Reilly is the opposite - the movie's conscience - as Roxie's long-suffering husband, and his baggy-pants "Cellophane" number is rueful and angry.
"Chicago" is also a Broadway baby's joy, with snappy cameos of theater performers, including the lovable Christine Baranski, who seems to bring a cheering section with her. To be sure, it's not the type of picture that lingers, and obviously some of the sting-like-a-bee editing is a mercy to Zellweger, whose float-like-a-butterfly voice doesn't triumph over her my-left-foot dance skills.
The big finale featuring her and Zeta-Jones almost does what a jury can't: stop them cold. Until that scene, Zellweger's performance is alternately subtle and reptile; she can still win the day. Who would have expected her - and Miramax - to come through in a musical?
"Chicago" is currently showing at Crystal Palace, Avrora and Mirage Cinema.
TITLE: they ride on the wings of the wind
AUTHOR: by Michael Dirda
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: Perhaps 30 years ago, there was a vogue for popular "illustrated" histories and biographies. Some were original, others pictorially amplified versions of previously published texts, but all were slightly oversized volumes, roughly the dimensions of a three-ring binder. Over the years, I bought quite a few of these elegant, inviting books: Alan Moorehead's "Darwin and the Beagle," C.P. Snow's "Trollope," Graham Greene's "Lord Rochester's Monkey," Anthony Burgess' "Shakespeare," Wilfred Blunt's "Linnaeus" (this last reissued recently in a gorgeous new edition by Princeton). Lively writers, appealing subjects, lots of pictures and maps - surely, I thought, all nonfiction should be presented in this attractive way.
John Ure's "The Cossacks" is a book in this lavish tradition, at once pleasing to look at and to read. There are scores of paintings of Cossack warriors, a handful of maps, and an easygoing text that calls to mind after-dinner conversation over port and Stilton. This is hardly surprising, as Ure spent his career as a British diplomat (in Russia, Cuba, Brazil and Sweden), though finding time, in that cultivated English way, to publish eight books and to give out the Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph prize for the best travel writing of the year. Ure, in other words, appears here as a passionate, informed amateur rather than a professional historian.
Yet, surely, one demands a good deal of passion in charting a people as colorful, as controversial, as the Cossacks. After all, these were "the untamed horsemen who had tormented and harassed Napoleon's Grande Armee across the Russian steppes from Moscow to Warsaw, and then onwards across central Europe to the gates of Paris itself. They were said to need almost no rations, plundering what they required from friend and foe alike. The French believed that they barbecued and ate children."
Descended from Mongol or Tartar nomads, these mustachioed warriors dwelt as semi-autonomous clans along the Don River, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Orthodox Christians, disdaining manual labor other than fishing and hunting, intemperate, equestrian, self-sufficient and fiercely independent (though ruled by an elected hetman or ataman), they regarded themselves as a military caste, like the Gurkhas, janissaries or some of the Plains Indians. They liked to dance, carouse and drink heavily - except when going into battle: On a raid or campaign "an ataman would feel himself justified in shooting a drunken Cossack who was jeopardizing the safety of his fellows by noisy behavior or erratic shooting." They sported tall shaggy hats, long sheepskin coats and, eventually, tunics crisscrossed with sewn-on slots for their rifle cartridges.
Ure organizes Cossack history by focusing on legendary figures and by emphasizing their tangled relations with the tsar. So, in the 16th century, Yermak leads a Cossack host into Siberia, battling the indigenous tribes all the way to Lake Baikal and beyond. Shortly after the 17th-century "Time of Troubles," Stenka Razin - perhaps the archetypal Cossack - spends his life as "soldier, bandit, freedom fighter, champion of the poor, and scourge of the Sultan," as well as a pirate on the Volga and a threat to the Russian imperial throne. The young Mazeppa, discovered in bed with a nobleman's wife, is stripped naked and tied to a wild horse. He survives to become the leader of the Cossacks, a favorite of Peter the Great and, ultimately, a turncoat who sides with the invading Charles XII of Sweden. In the 18th century, the illiterate Pugachyov pretends to be the true heir to Catherine the Great's throne, leads an army to the gates of Moscow and plays a key role in Alexander Pushkin's great short novel "The Captain's Daughter."
During the 19th century, the Cossacks made up much of the Russian cavalry and served as reconnaissance specialists, guides and special-operations forces. They fought in the Caucasus, for example, against Chechen warlords - and met defeat at the hands of Imam Shamyl. In a book filled with colorful, larger-than-life figures, that Muslim spiritual and military leader may be the grandest.
"When in 1832 the Russian commander in the Caucasus culminated a punitive campaign through Chechnia and Daghestan by a 10,000-strong attack on the 500-strong garrison of Ghinari, Shamyl was one of only two men to escape alive. This he did by making his horse leap over the heads of a line of Russian soldiers who were about to open fire on him. He cut down three of them with his sabre before a fourth ran him through with a bayonet; Shamyl plucked the bayonet from his own chest, used it to despatch the fourth Russian, and galloped off into the forests."
When the Russian Revolution broke out, the Cossacks equivocated, many at first supporting the tsar, but some the Bolsheviks, and still others the White Russians in their eventual civil war against the Reds. During the 1930s, they were periodically starved and massacred by their government and, after World War II, they were betrayed by the West: Cossack prisoners of war who had, for one reason or another, fought against Stalin were handed over to the Soviets and were shot or exiled to labor camps. Today, Ure says that Cossack culture and tradition has revived in 21st-century Russia; he ends his history with this timeless, if melodramatic, image:
"It is a picture of a horseman spurring his pony across the snowbound wastes of Russia, causing a whisper of fear to run ahead of him like a Siberian wind blowing through the tall grasses of the steppes and the clumps of silver birches. His face is hard, etched with lines of courage tinged by cruelty, of mirth tinged with suffering. His destination is unknown. But one thing is sure: he is firmly in the saddle and likely to remain so."
Ure's is an inviting brisk survey of Cossack history, and he writes pleasingly, with occasional rhetorical flourishes, as above. But, even though he briefly discusses Tolstoy's "The Cossacks" - which Turgenev regarded as the best story written in Russian - why does he fail to mention that most thrilling romance of Cossack life, Gogol's "Taras Bulba"?
Michael Dirda is Senior Editor of The Washington Post's Book World.
"The Cossacks: An Illustrated History." By John Ure. Overlook Press. 288 pp. $45.
TITLE: Serbian Police Arrest Assassination Suspects
AUTHOR: By Katarina Kratovas
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BELGRADE, Serbia - Montenegro -Police on Thursday arrested several members of an underworld network accused of assassinating Serbia's prime minister, a pro-Western leader who made enemies by pushing for the arrest of mobsters and war crimes suspects.
Zarko Korac, Serbia's deputy prime minister, said that "although several arrests were made, many of the suspects are still in hiding and have gone underground."
A government-imposed state of emergency, which curtailed some civil liberties, took effect Thursday, a day after snipers killed Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic in downtown Belgrade as he stepped out of his armored car en route to meetings at a government building.
The army's top body, the Supreme Defense Council, raised the level of combat readiness, and instructed the military to assist the police in the search for the assassins.
A statement late Wednesday by the Serbian cabinet blamed Milorad Lukovic, a warlord loyal to former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, and an underworld network known as the "Zemun Clan," after a Belgrade suburb, for allegedly organizing the killing.
"Their aim was to trigger fear, lawlessness and chaos in the country," the statement said. "The assassination ... was an attempt by this group to crush the fight against organized crime and help its individual members evade arrest."
Korac did not specify who was arrested, but indicated that Lukovic was not among the suspects in custody.
"Djindjic assassinated by the Zemun Clan," Belgrade newspapers headlined Thursday over photographs of known members of the Serbian underworld and pictures of their arrest warrants.
The more infamous mob leaders include Dejan Milenkovic, known as "Bugsy;" Mile Lukovic, known as "Godfather;" Vladimir Milisavljevic, whose alias is "Idiot;" and Mladjan Micic, nicknamed "Rat."
Police established checkpoints throughout Belgrade, and officers armed with assault rifles searched cars and drivers. Checkpoints were also set up along highways around the capital and, early Thursday, a police helicopter was seen hovering over the suburb of Rakovica.
There were fears that the volatile Balkan country could plunge into violence in a possible power struggle for Djindjic's successor.
The party of former Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, Djindjic's political foe, criticized the cabinet for ordering a state of emergency, calling it an "extreme and potentially hazardous measure" that would add to a "climate of fear and mistrust."
"Little has been done in building real democracy in Serbia," Kostunica's party said, adding that the authorities should instead have invited all political parties to form a "transitional government."
Djindjic had many enemies because of his pro-reformist stand and his crackdown on organized crime, which is rampant in Serbia and across the Balkans.
He was despised by some for his role in toppling Milosevic in October 2000 and orchestrating his handover to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2001.
Djindjic outraged hardliners and nationalists by calling for more arrests of top Serb indicted war-crimes suspects, such as the world's No. 2 fugitive - former Bosnian Serb military commander General Ratko Mladic - who is believed to be hiding in Serbia.
TITLE: U.S. Force Attacked In Afghan Ridge Pass
AUTHOR: By Jamey Keaten
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGRAM, Afghanistan - A U.S. special-forces convoy was ambushed in eastern Afghanistan, and five of the assailants were killed in a subsequent gunfight and coalition air assault, an army spokesperson said Thursday. No coalition forces were injured.
About 20 attackers fired on the convoy with small arms and machine guns Wednesday from ridges overlooking a road between the towns of Gardez and Khost, Colonel Roger King said. Two attackers were captured and taken into custody for questioning, he said.
At least five others were confirmed killed, he said, and the fate of the others was not immediately clear.
The U.S. special forces, accompanied by a few Afghan militiamen, called in F-16 fighters and A-10 aircraft as support in a chase and firefight that lasted several hours, King said. He said that the planes dropped two 300-kilogram bombs on suspected enemy positions.
The special forces "were chasing these people as they tried to withdraw over an extended distance of rough terrain," King said. "It went on for about 2 1/2 to 3 hours."
"The road that goes through the pass is a traditional ambush site," King said.
The area in eastern Afghanistan is one of the most active in the war on terror, with attacks on coalition bases and troops nearly a daily occurrence. Most attacks involve rockets fired on U.S. bases using crude timers, most of which miss their mark.
It was not immediately clear who carried out Wednesday's attack, but U.S. officials believe al-Qaida, remnants of the ousted Taliban regime and loyalists of renegade rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are active in the area.
The groups are believed to have joined forces to attack coalition forces and the U.S. backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
The group of attackers "was obviously hostile to the coalition, because it was an easily recognizable convoy in that it had Humvees included," King said.
The size of the group was similar to a band of Taliban fighters that killed five Afghan soldiers and kidnapped two others in the southern Helmand province several weeks ago, King said.
Twenty three states participate in the U.S.-led coalition fighting the war against terror in Afghanistan from headquarters at Bagram Air Base, north of the capital, Kabul.
Early Thursday, a rocket was fired at a coalition base in the eastern city of Asadabad, though no injuries or damage to coalition equipment was reported, King said.
TITLE: Japan Deploys Ship Amid North Korean Missile Reports
AUTHOR: By Kenji Hall
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOKYO - Japan has sent a destroyer to the Sea of Japan, the Defense Agency said Thursday, amid media reports that North Korea may soon test an intermediate-range ballistic missile.
Meanwhile, South Korea's top diplomat urged North Korea on Thursday to accept a U.S. proposal to defuse a nuclear dispute through multilateral talks.
South Korea Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan criticized North Korea's objections to such international negotiations as "illogical." The day before, he urged the United States to be more flexible.
In Tokyo, Defense Agency spokesperson Yoshiyuki Ueno said that the Aegis-equipped destroyer - which includes top-of-the-line surveillance systems - was deployed to the Sea of Japan between Japan and North Korea.
Ueno refused to say when the destroyer was deployed, and described its mission as part of regular patrol activities.
But the dispatch came as two major Japanese newspapers reported that North Korea appears to be making final preparations to test-launch its Rodong ballistic missile, possibly around the sea.
The Yomiuri, Japan's largest newspaper, said that U.S. military officials in Japan notified their Japanese counterparts of the possibility last week after North Korean army vehicles were spotted gathering near several launching sites in the northeast and other parts of the isolated communist country.
The Rodong, first tested in 1993, has an estimated range of up to 1,500 kilometers - meaning that it could reach almost anywhere in Japan.
In 1998, North Korea launched a long-range Taepodong ballistic missile over Japan, demonstrating its capability to reach virtually any Japanese city with warheads.
Regional tensions have been especially high recently.
On Monday, North Korea test-fired a short-range missile. It also conducted a test launch on Feb. 24.
Analysts have said that the widely anticipated upcoming launch from a base on North Korea's east coast fits a recent pattern of unusual military maneuvers that seem designed to pressure Washington into dialogue.
In the past weeks, communist North Korea has rejected repeated U.S. offers to discuss the nuclear dispute in a multilateral setting including Russia, China and other countries, and insisted on direct talks with Washington.
The United States has rejected the North Korean demand as a ploy to extract more economic concessions.
South Korean foreign minister, Yoon, told South Korea's MBC radio, "North Korea must come out with a more open stance."
Yoon said that the eventual solution of the nuclear crisis would involve economic aid for impoverished North Korea from countries besides the United States.
"It's illogical to exclude the potential aid providers from the talks," Yoon said.
The test followed a March 4 confrontation between four North Korean fighter jets and a U.S. RC-135S Cobra Ball. No shots were fired in the rare encounter in international airspace over the Sea of Japan, about 240 kilometers off North Korea's coast.
The plane flew from a base in southern Japan.
In Washington, a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity said Wednesday that the U.S. Air Force was readying aircraft to resume reconnaissance flights off the North Korean coast.
TITLE: New Year, New Hope For Zenit
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: After last year's disastrous Yugoslav experiment, Zenit is hoping that its new Czech formula will provide the recipe for success.
Since naming Vlastimil Petrzela as head coach in December, St. Petersburg's only Premier Division soccer club has undergone something of a velvet revolution during the off season that has fans eagerly anticipating Saturday's season opener against Saturn Ramenskoye at the Petrovsky Stadium.
Zenit President Valery Mutko is hoping that playing the club's new Czech card will bring the same success experienced by two Russian ice-hockey teams - Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, which won last year's Superliga, and Avangard Omsk - after hiring coaches from that country who breathed new life into them.
"I like Petrzela's work, and I like how things are coming together," Mutko told journalists at a press conference on Thursday before the team returned from its final off-season training camp, which was being held, not surprisingly, in the Czech Republic.
"There is growing excitement in St. Petersburg, which is underlined by the fact that the ticket office has already sold more than 9,000 [season and game] tickets," he said, before proudly adding: "That's a record."
Zenit's new Czech connection extends beyond its new head coach to the playing staff, as well. Over the past couple of months, the club has signed four Czechs and one Slovak on Petrzela's recommendation and with whom the coach has worked in the past.
From the Czech Republic come defenders Pavel Mares and Martin Horak from Sparta Prague, and current Czech under-21 midfielder Radek Sirl and striker Lukas Hartig from Bohemians Prague, with Slovak goalkeeper Kamil Kontofalski also coming from Bohemians. The lone Russian to arrive at the club is talented midfielder Vyacheslav Radimov, from Krylya Sovietov Samara.
Although there has been the usual round of speculation in the local press about Zenit's chances, how the team will come together on Saturday still seems to be anybody's guess. Just last year the club signed three highly touted Yugoslavs, who subsequently found themselves warming the bench for most of the season and were subsequently placed on the transfer list. Still, the apparent quality of the new signings, combined with a number of talented youngsters moving up from Zenit's youth-development system, seems promising.
Currently, most of Zenit's problems are in midfield, with club captain Alexei Igonin and Radimov - who formed a useful partnership in pre-season games - both injured and struggling to be fit in time for Saturday's game.
Althogh the defense experienced numerous problems during the team's first winter training camp in Turkey, Armenian playmaker Sarkis Ovsepyan and Horak found a common language and, subsequently, allowed a miserly two goals on the following two trips, to Cyprus and Spain. The only weakness is on the left, where regular fullback Valery Tsvetkov is currently on the injured list. Petrzela is not yet fully confident in Romanian Daniel Kiritse, signed last season, who reportedly does not speak Russian and has difficultly communicating well with his teammates.
The coach is reportedly happy with the team's offense, built around last season's top scorer, Alexander Kerzhakov, but his decision to start Hartig over Kerzhakov's fellow Russian international, fan favorite Andrei Arshavin, caused raised eyebrows in the media. Petrzela told the Sport Express daily that he was unsure of Arshavin's strongest position.
"Clearly, he provides much-needed depth to the attack," he said. "Logically, he is a midfielder but, with key wide players like Alexander Spivak and Sergei Osipov, it's difficult to fit him in."
Arshavin, who is currently considering signing a new contract, quashing rumors of an impending move to Spartak Moscow, was unimpressed, telling Sport Express: "Getting paid to sit on the bench is not for me." Arshavin said he could not understand why Petrzela praised him but still had no answers regarding his position in the team.
Petrzela has also been working on tactics, rebuilding the team to play a better 4-4-2 system, although with room to move to a more attacking 4-3-3 system with more midfielders joining the attack.
As president of the Premier Division, Mutko was wearing two hats on Thursday. He spoke at length about new rules on the number of foriegners teams may field, stadium standards, and changes to the transfer system to come into effect by 2005. As Zenit president, he mentioned two measures aimed at keeping the fans happy - new toilets at the Petrovsky Stadium, and an electronic ticket-sales system aimed at preventing scalping.
"The Zenit management has the best relations in the league with its players and fans," he said.
TITLE: 76ers Add to Misery for Pacers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PHILADELPHIA - The losing continues for the Indiana Pacers, who are about to play another game without Ron Artest.
For the second time in less than a week, Artest will be suspended for a flagrant foul. This one came when he tackled Eric Snow in the fourth quarter of a 96-93 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night.
Artest, who also missed the team's loss to the Sacramento Kings on Sunday, left the locker room before the media was allowed in after the game.
Pacers coach Isiah Thomas defended his player.
"There's definitely concern because we've lost a lot of close games because of perceived flagrant fouls or perceived technical fouls," Thomas said. "Somehow, we've gained a reputation."
But there was little defense for the latest flagrant foul. Snow grabbed a rebound and sent the outlet pass. After he released the ball, he was pulled down by a charging Artest on the baseline.
Snow and the Sixers bench erupted, before referee Ken Mauer called a level-one flagrant. If the call is upheld, Artest will draw a one-game suspension and will miss Friday night's home game against Utah.
Thomas pins the blame for the close officiating on Dallas Mavericks' coach Don Nelson. According to Thomas, Nelson has been publicly critical of what he perceives as rough play by the Pacers, who have lost six in a row and 12 of 13.
"I have to give Don Nelson a lot of credit, he really put it to us," said Thomas. "I think our games are definitely officiated differently now. Nellie, you're the best."
Allen Iverson had 31 points, shooting 16-of-19 from the foul line, and Keith Van Horn scored 17 of his 19 points in the second half as the Sixers, who improved to 12-2 since the All-Star break, came back from a double-digit deficit in the fourth quarter.
"I never felt we were out of this game," said Van Horn. "We stepped up our defense in the fourth quarter and that gave us some easy baskets in transition. When you do that, the rim looks wider."
Iverson was unavailable after the game after needing two stitches in his lower lip. He was struck while defending Reggie Miller's potential tying 3-pointer at the buzzer.
Eric Snow and Aaron McKie each had 12 points, and Derrick Coleman grabbed 14 rebounds for Philadelphia.
Artest had 25 points, Jermaine O'Neal had 18 points and 10 rebounds while Al Harrington added 16 points for Indiana.
After the Pacers scored the first five points of the fourth quarter to go ahead 72-62, Philadelphia scored 15 of the next 19 - with Iverson's fast-break layup giving the 76ers a 77-76 advantage with 7:55 to go.
After Jamaal Tinsley sank a jumper, the Sixers scored seven straight, including four free throws by Snow - two of which came after he was flagrantly fouled by Artest.
The Sixers lead hit 11 - 91-80 - as the run reached 23-4, but Indiana scored 13 of the next 18, and two free throws by Jeff Foster made it 96-93 with 34 seconds left.
Indiana led by as many as 10 in the first quarter, and held a nine-point advantage late in the second. The Sixers scored the last four points of the half to make it 44-39 at the break.
(For other results, see Scorecard.)
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: SKA Survives
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - St. Petersburg ice-hockey team SKA guaranteed its place in next season's Superliga, the top division of Russia's Professional Hockey League (PHL), with a 2-0 win over Metallurg Magnitogorsk in front of over 1,800 fans, who filled the team's small stadium to more than capacity.
SKA's win, combined with Spartak Moscow's 3-2 overtime loss to Salavat Yulayev of Ufa, mathematically clinched safety for the St. Petersburg team. Spartak was relegated as a result of the defeat, and will be joined in the PHL's Vyshaya Liga next season by fellow Moscow team Krylya Sovietov, Mechel Chelyabinsk and Molot-Prikamye Perm.
SKA struggled for much of the season, after its new head coach, Boris Mikhailov, reorganized the team midway through the first part of the season when he was brought in by team management to replace the former head coach, Nikolai Puchkov.
SKA takes on Dinamo Moscow in its final game on the season at the Ice Palace at 6 p.m. on Saturday.
Cyclist Kivilev Killed
PONT DU GARD, France (Reuters) - Cyclist Andrei Kivilev died after crashing during the second stage of the Paris-Nice race, plunging teammates and rivals into mourning on Wednesday.
The third stage of the Paris-Nice race was called off on Wednesday and Kivilev's Cofidis team mates crossed the finish line in formation at Pont du Gard, a dozen meters ahead of the rest of the peloton, which held back as a mark of respect.
The 29-year-old Kazakh, leader of the Cofidis team, suffered head injuries in a fall following a collision with another rider around 40 kilometers from the finish of Tuesday's stage between La Clayette and St. Etienne.
Kivilev was not wearing a helmet and went into a coma immediately. His death was announced on Wednesday.
The Cofidis team doctor said that a helmet might have saved the rider's life.
"The point of impact was right where the helmet should have been," said the doctor. "If Andrei had had a helmet his injuries would have been less serious."
Kivilev, who finished fourth in the Tour de France in 2001, was the first cyclist to die in competition since Spanish sprinter Manuel San Roma in the Tour de Catalunya in 1999.
CSKA Buyout?
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - CSKA Moscow is in talks with Roman Abramovich about the possibility of the oligarch and governor of the Chukhotka region buying a stake in the soccer club, Interfax reported Thursday.
"Some contact has been made, but it's too early to talk about concrete figures yet," CSKA Press Secretary Sergei Aksenov told Interfax.
Aksenov would not say with which of Abramovich's many business interests the club was negotiating. However, he said that 24 percent of the club would remain in the hands of the Russian Army Central Sports Club, i.e., the Defense Ministry, according to Interfax.
One-Period Wild Blitz
ST. PAUL, Minnesota (AP) - Manny Fernandez had 31 saves and Minnesota scored four first-period goals against Ron Tugnutt as the Wild beat the Dallas Stars 4-2 on Wednesday night.
Minnesota scored all of its goals in a 7:44 span, the biggest coming on a short-handed goal by Filip Kuba that put the Wild up 2-0 and deflated the Stars, who had a chance to tie the game on a four-minute power play.
Tugnutt, coming off back-to-back shutouts, lasted only one period and stopped only six of the 10 shots he faced. Corey Hirsch stopped all nine shots he faced in relief of Tugnutt, who had been playing brilliantly in place of the injured Marty Turco.
In 20 starts before Wednesday's game, Tugnutt was 11-5-3 with a 1.96 GAA.
Darby Hendrickson, who missed 45 games with a broken arm, ended Tugnutt's shutout streak at 128:40 when he scored his first goal in more than a year. Minnesota also got goals from Andrew Brunette and Antii Laaksonen.
But the Wild offense seemed flat after the first, as Dallas outshot Minnesota 24-9 the rest of the way.
For other results, see Scorecard.
Piazza Brawl
PORT ST. LUCIE, Florida (AP) - New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza started a bench-clearing brawl Wednesday night when he charged the mound after being hit by a pitch from Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Guillermo Mota.
Piazza and Mota had a shoving match last year in spring training after the pitcher hit Piazza in the hip with a pitch. He waited until Mota was coming off the field in the eighth inning and grabbed him by the jersey.
This time, Mota's first pitch to Piazza in the sixth inning was inside, and his second hit Piazza in the back of the shoulder. Piazza immediately charged the mound with his right fist cocked for a punch, and Mota threw his glove at him and began backpedaling away.
Both benches emptied, with Mets outfielder Jeromy Burnitz chasing Mota after Piazza was restrained on the mound by two Dodgers. Mota made it to the dugout without begin caught.
An irate Piazza, red-faced and glaring with rage, yelled at Mota while being restrained by coaches and umpires. Twice he tried to charge the first-base dugout, but was held back both times.
Both Mota and Piazza were ejected. No punches appeared to land during the fight. The Dodgers beat the Mets 13-6 in a split-squad game.