SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #923 (91), Friday, November 28, 2003
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TITLE: Low Pol Turnout Expected
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The turnout for the State Duma elections could be so low that the results will be invalid, the City Election Commission says.
"[We ask] to use all possible means to raise the turnout of voters," commission head Alexander Gnyotov said in his address to the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday.
St. Petersburg-based sociologists predict the turnout could be as low as 16 percent, well below the 25 percent necessary for elections to be considered in valid.
"We have data suggesting people are not anxious to participate in the elections," Leonid Kesselman, a political analyst in the sociology separtment of the Academy of Science said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "If the turnout reaches 30 percent this would have to be considered an extremely good result in the current conditions."
Gnyotov said the commission has taken its own steps to boost turnout, including distributing individual invitations to citizens to vote, putting up advertising posters and holding meetings with political parties' representatives. But this might not be enough, he said.
Last month's gubernatorial elections saw a turnout of just 28.24 percent, largely seen as a response to current Governor Valentina Matviyenko being imposed on the city by the Kremlin.
Kesselman said the Duma elections are irrelevant to many people.
"The thing is people have got skills by now to survive without the authorities being involved," he said. "If there is no policeman on the road you can drive, but if there is one, you'd have to pay or find another way to go to avoid him."
"Forty percent of the population lives like that now," he added. "As for those who go to vote, these are people still thinking that those elected will give them new shoes and will pay them the pension. There are fewer and fewer such people."
A poll by the Agency of Social Research which took place two weeks ago indicated a worst-case scenario of only 15 percent of the 3.7 million eligible voters in the city could show up on Dec. 7. This week the minimum figure jumped up to 28 percent and up to 37 in a best-case scenario.
"There is an indication that things are getting more lively after the television debates," Roman Mogilevsky, head of the agency said Wednesday in a telephone interview.
"[The situation in general] is linked to mistrust of authorities," Mogilevsky said, added that some legal measures may need to be taken to make people vote.
The general rating of the parties in the city shows United Russia has 33 percent of support followed by Yabloko and the Union of Right forces with 6.7 and 6.6 percent respectively. Sergei Glazyev's bloc has 6.2 percent of support followed by LDPR with 5.6 percent and Communists with 4.3 percent, Mogilevsky said .
"The final stake each party gains will depend on turnout," he said. "The left-wing parties, such as the Communists or the Rodina [Glazyev's] bloc will benefit if it is low and right-wing parties will gain if it is high," Mogilevsky said.
Lawmakers have already started thinking how to attract more voters.
"I will ask people to come to the polling stations, " Vatanyar Yagya, a city lawmaker in the Party of Life faction, saidWednesday. "I can do it on the radio and on the cable television.".
"I also will also visit schools to meet teachers to tell them talk to children to remind their parents to vote," he said.
Vladimir Yeryomenko, a Mariinskaya faction lawmaker, said only alcohol would improve the turnout.
"City Hall has to negotiate with Baltika brewery to organize election-day beer sales throughout the city at the cost of 1 ruble for a half a liter," he said. "These who vote will get their beer for 1 ruble a glass. Women go to vote anyway, but as for men ... only beer can save the elections."
Tatyana Dorutina, head of St. Petersburg League of Voters, said she hopes up to 30 percent of voters will show up at the polling stations because of the federal significance of the elections, but the expected low turnout is a consequence of St. Petersburg citizens feeling they "were raped by the previous gubernatorial elections."
"There's quite an interesting thing happening," Dorutina said Wednesday. "We organized a forum with participation of different political parties, but the parties don't show any interest of any interest in meeting the voters."
TITLE: Georgian Hopefuls Eye Moscow
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Leaders of three independent-minded Georgian regions were to meet Thursday to discuss what one of them described as "purely economic issues" but what in reality looked like a blunt warning to Tbilisi that any use of force against them could trigger the country's disintegration.
South Ossetia President Eduard Kokoity, Abkhaz Prime Minister Raul Khadzhimba and Adzharian leader Aslan Abashidze took turns holding talks with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov behind closed doors.
The trio were to sit down together later Thursday for a meeting expected to focus largely on the resignation of Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, who stepped down Sunday under pressure from the opposition.
"We will only discuss economic issues," Kokoity told Interfax after meeting with Ivanov on Thursday afternoon.
Khadzhimba chose not to make any public statements ahead of the tri-partite. Both Kokoity and Khadzhimba have repeatedly asserted that their provinces would like to join Russia as subjects of the Russian Federation.
The wild card Thursday appeared to be Abashidze, who until recently has avoided any separatist rhetoric. But even he has started to question Georgia's integrity after last weekend's events. "It is difficult to say where Georgia is and where it isn't," Abashidze said Wednesday.
While Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought wars to break away from Georgia, Abashidze chose to incrementally distance his Black Sea region from Tbilisi's control in the 1990s by capitalizing on the weakness of the government and the revenues from port and customs levies.
Abashidze reportedly had been prepared to swap Adzharia's semi-independence for the Georgian presidency, but the weekend coup, which brought outspoken nationalist Mikhail Saakashvili and moderate Nino Burdzhanadze to power, pushed him back into isolation. Burdzhanadze is serving as the acting head of state, while another moderate opposition leader, Zurab Zhvania, holds the second-highest post. Saakashvili is expected to win the upcoming presidential election on Jan. 4.
After seeing Saakashvili and his allies oust Shevardnadze, Abashidze introduced a state of emergency in Adzharia and hinted that the region may even secede if the new Georgian leadership tries to force it into submission. He also has said Adzharia might not take part in presidential and parliamentary elections. The parliamentary vote also is scheduled for Jan. 4.
With Abkhazia and South Ossetia already out of Tbilisi's control, the secession of Adzharia could set of a chain reaction in Georgian regions Marneuli and Dzhavakhetia, which are mainly populated by Azeris and Armenians, respectively. This could lead to the disintegration of Georgia, analysts warned.
Given the fact that Saakashvili tends to use forceful nationalist rhetoric to gather popular support, the leaders of Georgia's ethnic minorities are concerned he might use force against them if elected president. That is why the leaders of Adzharia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia are scrambling to secure Moscow's support, analysts said.
Abashidze's recent actions suggest that he is trying to warn Saakashvili about what might happen he doesn't strike a deal with Abashidze, said Arthur Martirosyan, program manager at the Conflict Management Group in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Alexander Pikayev, analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, agreed, saying, "The very fact that these three leaders are meeting is unprecedented and the fact that the meeting is taking place in Moscow is a very strong signal, a warning to Saakashvili."
Saakashvili should have learned from the experience of late Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who used nationalist rhetoric to become president, only to see South Ossetia secede and a civil war break out, Pikayev and Martirosyan said.
As Georgia's armed forces are weak and the economy is in dire straits, it is practically impossible to force the separatist republics back under control, and Saakashvili should focus his efforts on convincing Adzharia to participate in Jan. 4 elections, Martirosyan said. "This should be his priority task, as any other alternative would mean that whoever wins the elections might be viewed as illegitimate in Adzharia," he said.
In the longer term, the new Georgian leadership should try to revive the economy so that all the regions would have at least a financial reason to cooperate with one another, he said. This could then help build trust and perhaps result in a compromise to restore Georgia's Soviet-era borders.
"At the moment, these players view the situation as a zero-sum game, and only joint value-building through, for instance, economic cooperation might be able to help them move toward a solution," Martirosyan said.
TITLE: Textbook's Putin Pages Too Hot for Schools
AUTHOR: By Maria Danilova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A textbook on modern Russian history that invites students to discuss whether Putin is an authoritarian leader and has formed a police state may be banned in high schools.
The Education Ministry's expert council met Thursday night and tentatively decided to remove the book from school curriculums. The council's presidium and Education Minister Vladimir Filippov still have to approve the ban before it can come into force.
Igor Dolutsky, the high school history teacher who wrote the textbook, said the decision is clearly linked to upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.
The last few pages of "National History, 20th Century," which deal with Putin's rise to power, ask students to "prove or disprove" a comment by journalist Yury Burtin about "Putin's personal power and authoritarian dictatorship" and an argument by Yabloko party leader Grigory Yavlinsky that "a police state was formed in Russia" in 2001.
Some 20,000 copies of the book, which is in its seventh edition, are being used in the 10th and 11th grades. The book was first published in 1993, and 500,000 copies have been distributed to students over the past decade.
The latest edition was completed in early 2001 and approved by the Education Ministry in June of that year.
"They have already examined the book and approved it," Dolutsky said. "Their statement said, 'The material on the last decade of Russian history is provided in a tactful way.'"
But Fillipov lashed out at the Putin assignment during an Education Ministry meeting on Tuesday and asked for a review of the book's accreditation.
"Who will voters cast ballots for after reading this?" Fillipov said, according to Dolutsky, who was briefed about the meeting by his publisher, who was in attendance.
"We don't need such a pre-election gift," Fillipov was reported as saying.
Dolutsky expressed astonishment over the debate.
"The book is written for high school students who are under the voting age, so I don't understand the drama," he said.
"I agreed with my publisher that I wouldn't touch upon the most recent years, because it was obvious that nobody would let us publish that. That is why the book covers recent Russian history only up until early 2001," Dolutsky said. "But even that is too much for them to take."
While not mentioning the textbook, Putin told a meeting of historians at the Russian State Library on Thursday that history books should not become a political battleground.
"Modern textbooks for schools and universities must not become a ground for new political and ideological fighting," he said in televised remarks. "Textbooks should provide historical facts, and they must cultivate a sense of pride among youth in their history and country."
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: $100,000 Pay Heist
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - About 3 millon rubles intended to be paid out as wages for workers of construction company PMK-6 has been stolen, Interfax quoted city and Leningrad Oblast police as saying Thursday.
A vehicle with the wages was held up on the banks of the Pryazhka river about noon just after the wages had been withdrawn from a bank, the report said.
The police said the theft was one of many in which large sums of money were being shifted without an escort capable of protecting it from being stolen, the report said.
Second City Mosque?
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Plans are underway for the construction of a second mosque in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported Thursday.
Zhafyar Ponchayev, mufti of St. Petersburg and the Northwest region, said a second mosque is needed because of the growing number of Muslims in the city, the report said.
His spokeswoman Lyubov Musi yenko said the proposal is being examined and a decision will be made in the first half of next year.
"We do not see any good reason why construction [of a second mosque] should be forbidden, especially because it will be paid for by Muslims and their sponsors," she added.
The city's existing mosque, constructed in 1913, is one of the biggest in Europe and can accommodate 5,000 people.
Pedestrian Zones
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The city administration is developing several pedestrian zones in the city, Interfax reported Thursday.
One such zone, called The Heart of St. Petersburg, is to link all the largest museums and cultural venues in the central city, the report said. These include the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the Pushkin apartment museum, the Church on the Spilled Blood and the Summer Garden.
Other proposed zones include Dostoevsky's Peterburg, situated in the Admirateisky district, the University on Vasilevsky Island, and Sportivny Peterburg in the Petrograd district.
The program is intended to attract citizens, tourists and investors.
Senator Confirmd
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Vitaly Mutko, president of Zenit, the city's top soccer team, will represent the city administration in the Federal Council, Interfax reported Wednesday.
He will replace Mikhail Mikhailov who was nominatd to the council by former goveror Vladimir Yakovlev, the report said. Gays in the Army
MOSCOW (SPT) - Homosexuals are no longer forbidden from serving in the armed forces, General-Major Valery Kulikov, a member of the Defense Ministry's heath commission, told reporters Thursday.
"There is no such diagnosis as 'homosexual,'" Kulikov was quoted by Interfax as saying Interfax. "This is not a medical question. ... A homosexual will be evaluated on his general suitability for armed service. If he is psychologically and physically healthy, he is suitable and will serve in the armed forces."
Kulikov said the military has not considered prospective soldiers on the basis of their sexuality since July 1.
But he added: "I would not advise such persons to publicize their sexual orientation. In the army they are not liked and will probably be beaten."
SPS Candidate Struck
MOSCOW (SPT) - Vodka magnate Yury Shefler may lose his spot on the Union of Right Forces party list if the Supreme Court supports a Central Elections Commission decision Wednesday to seek his removal, Kommersant reported Thursday.
As the chairman of SPI Group, Shefler is locked in a tussle with the government over ownership of lucrative trademark rights to popular vodka brands such as Stolichnaya. He is under federal investigation in connection to a death threat received by a business rival in 2002. Shefler lives abroad.
The commission also wants to cancel the registration of Nikolai Lugovsky, the general director of the Kremlyovsky trading house, running for the Communist Party. Lugovsky also holds a passport from Belize.
It says law enforcement agencies discovered mistakes and forgeries in both candidates' registration documents after their candidacies were approved.
"If I were these parties, I wouldn't want to be linked with such people. What do they have to offer?" commission chairman Alexander Veshnyakov was quoted by Kommersant as saying.
Lebedev Considers Bid
MOSCOW (SPT) - Billionaire banker Alexander Lebedev, who is running for Moscow mayor against incumbent Yury Luzhkov, is considering withdrawing from the race, Interfax reported Thursday.
He told reporters that there was no pressure on him to pull out. Instead he felt the playing field was tilted against him. He cited the "immature electoral system in Moscow and the large quantity of administrative violations."
Sergei Glazyev's Homeland bloc has supported Lebedev's candidacy. Lebedev said he would listen to the party's recommendation on whether to quit the race.
Moldova Peace Plan
CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) - President Vladimir Voronin said Thursday that he rejected a Russian peace plan because it offered too much autonomy to a breakaway Moldovan region and strengthened Moscow's hand in the area.
Voronin suggested that under the proposal which was drawn up by Dmitry Kozak, an aide to President Vladimir Putin, the disputed region of Trans-Dniester could have become a state in its own right.
According to the plan, Trans-Dniester, which is mainly populated by Russians and Ukrainians, would officially have been named the Moldovan Dniester Republic.
"In no document had a Moldovan Dniester Republic been indicated in writing," he told national television. "Suddenly the Moldovan Dniester Republic appears everywhere in the memorandum, and so I asked myself and I ask you if this had remained in the document where would we have gotten to?"
The region is not recognized internationally.
Ballerina Reinstated
MOSCOW (AP) - Ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, fired from the Bolshoi Theater amid allegations that she was too heavy, on Wednesday won her suit against the renowned cultural institution.
A Moscow court ordered the theater to reinstate her and to pay her the wages she had missed between now and her dismissal in September. Television reports said those wages amount to about 190,000 rubles ($6,300).
A lawyer for the theater, Dmitry Lobachev, said on NTV that the theater would appeal.
Although Volochkova was reinstated, it did not guarantee that she would be able to get back on stage. Space Station Hit?
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Crewmembers on the International Space Station reported on Wednesday hearing a brief, metallic crunching noise as if something struck the outside of the outpost, but checks turned up no damage, a newspaper reported.
Astronaut Mike Foale told NASA's Mission Control that it sounded as if something hit the rear of the station's Russian module that houses the crew's sleeping quarter, kitchen and lavatory, the Houston Chronicle said.
"It sounded like a metal tin can kind of being expanded and compressed," Foale told Mission Control.
New HIV Cases Rising
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. officials say more signs of "prevention fatigue" are reflected in the latest report on AIDS - a 17 percent increase in new HIV cases among gay men over the past three years.
"HIV is not over in the United States," said Robert Janssen, director HIV/AIDS prevention division for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "The fight is as urgent as it was 20 years ago."
During 1999-2002, the CDC reported 18,843 men with new diagnoses of the virus that causes AIDS, an increase of 7.3 percent over the previous three-year period.
The CDC said the infection rate among heterosexuals and intravenous drug users did not change significantly.
IAEA Censures Iran
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - The U.N. atomic agency on Wednesday censured Iran for 18 years of secrecy, issuing a resolution that its director said gives him more muscle in policing the country for evidence of nuclear weapons ambitions.
Director General Mohamed El Baradei of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said the measure sends a message that failures won't be tolerated.
The resolution wa adopted by consensus by the 35-nation IAEA board.
Sniper Suspect Tried
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lee Malvo, the teenage suspect on trial in one of 10 sniper killings that terrorized Washington last year, has been portrayed both as an obedient boy eager for direction and as an expert gunman working alongside convicted murderer John Muhammad.
Malvo's trial has dovetailed with the successful prosecution of Muhammad, a 42-year-old Gulf War veteran convicted of the October 2002 sniper siege. A jury recommended the death penalty for him on Monday.
Malvo, 18, is being tried as an adult and could also face execution if convicted on two murder charges.
Ferry Deaths Toll 163
KINSHASA (Reuters) - At least 163 people were drowned when two ferries collided on a lake in The Democratic Republic of Congo, more than the 50 initially reported missing, the government said Thursday.
Minister of Humanitarian Affairs Catherine Nzuzi wa Mbombo said 222 people escaped from the disaster involving two ferries carrying an estimated 450 to 500 people. The accident occurred Monday during a storm.
TITLE: Yavlinsky Slams Kremlin Stance
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Kremlin wants a tame State Duma, says Grigory Yavlinsky leader of the liberal Yabloko party.
"The administration thinks that creating a tame Duma with an obedient majority will be useful for them," Yavlinsky said at a news conference in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
"However, this dangerous road will only lead Russia to its traditional Potemkin village [status]," he said.
A Potemkin village refers to an illusory sense of well-being created by Count Grigory Potyomkin, who painted pretty facades on buildings and dressed their peasant inhabitants as nobles so that Catherine the Great would believe they lived well when she passed through in her coach.
"The government should be interested in having an independent legislative organ," he said. "Otherwise, it will lead to weakening of the Russian power."
The election campaign for the State Duma is characterized by "unequal conditions" for different parties, Yavlinksy said.
The pro-Kremlin party United Russia, which is leading the race according to opinion polls, enjoys overwhelming coverage in the mass media, and especially on television, he said.
Russia has developed a system "that is cosmically distant from free politics," and where "no democratic society is being created," he added.
"Russia has built up the system of pereferiinyi, or bandit capitalism, which lacks independent legislative and judicial authorities, as well as a politically significant independent mass media," he said.
All parties running in the election have something to lose, Yavlinsky said.
"Some will defend their power; some their property; some - practically nothing, like Communists, who have to defend only what they had long before that time.
"We will defend freedom," Yavlinsky said.
Boris Vishnevsky, member of Yabloko faction in St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, said Yabloko traditionally enjoys good support in St. Petersburg and has three deputies in the State Duma.
"St. Petersburg is a city of intellectuals, and that's exactly the social level that Yabloko leans on," Vishnevsky said. Polls show that Yabloko may get 10-15 percent of votes in St. Petersburg, he said.
In the 1999 State Duma elections the party 11.21 percent.
Tatyana Protasenko, senior reseacher at the Institute of Sociology of Russian Academy of Science, said Yabloko is contesting third or the fourth place in St. Petersburg for the Duma elections with the Communists. United Russia is leading and the Union of Right Forces is second, she said.
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During his visit, Yavlinsky met with St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko to discuss his party's representatives in the city administration.
Yavlinsky said Yabloko did not aim to have its representatives in high positions such as vice-governorships, but asked to have its professional representatives on city committees. "We think that professional represenation in executive structures is more important than political appointments," he said.
TITLE: Phone-In Homework Service for City Pupils
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A group of teachers have created a paid homework-help service for St. Petersburg schoolchildren.
Called Pifagor, the service is named after Pythagorus, the Greek mathematician whose theorem every schoolchild knows.
Now when schoolchildren from fifth to 11th grade have problems doing their homework they can call the service and ask professional teachers to help them complete it.
"We opened the service when we realized how many children have difficulties with their homework, and that 70 percent of them resort to consulting each other," said Anna Kulesha, general director of Pifagor.
"We also figured out that many parents just don't have time to help their children do their homework, and children just get the direct answers from the better children in their class," Kulesha said. "However, often such help only makes the pupils' mastery of a subject worse."
The teachers staffing the telephone lines never give direct answers to mathematics problems or other subjects, but they explain to children how this or that problem can be solved, she said.
"They lead children to the right answers while making them think," Kulesha said.
For the moment the service consults on only five subjects - mathematics, geometry, physics, Russian and English.
Kulesha said it is intended to expand the service to chemistry, biology, and other languages soon.
The service, which works from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m., is a paid-for service. Those students who want to use it have to buy special pre-paid cards.
There are three types of cards that allow different numbers of questions to be answered.
A card for 10 questions costs 250 rubles (two additional questions are free); a card for 30 questions costs 500 rubles (plus five questions for free); and the card for 50 questions costs 750 rubles (plus 10 questions for free).
Each card contains certain codes, which students usee when calling the directory service. They first call the operator at 337-68-58. Then, they are to give the number of the card, name a password, say what grade they attend, and the subject they are interested in.
After that the operator connects them to the teacher they need.
The cards are sold in RosPechat kiosks and in video stores.
Since the service started its work last week, they have received from 30 to 70 calls a day, she said.
"We expect a significant increase in the future, and we are getting ready to expand our service."
Boys and girls are using the service in equal numbers.
Slightly more questions are being asked about mathematics than other subjects.
Kulesha said their service got support from district education departments. In the future the group plans to distribute free cards among children from poor families.
TITLE: Rector Resigns After Blaze Kills 37 Students
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The rector of Moscow's Peoples' Friendship University resigned Thursday, saying he bore responsibility for a dormitory fire that killed 37 foreign students and injured scores of others.
Rector Dmitry Bilibin's office confirmed that he had stepped down. Assistant rector Viktor Ponka said Bilibin told students that he held himself responsible for the blaze.
Ponka said Education Minister Vladimir Filippov accepted Bilibin's resignation in principle but asked him to remain on the job for an unspecified period of time. No successor was named.
Meanwhile, investigators questioned Bilibin and other university officials, the Interfax news agency reported. It said Moscow prosecutors had questioned Bilibin as well as an assistant rector in charge of buildings and grounds and an official responsible for the dormitory itself.
Russian officials blamed the high number of victims in the fire early Monday on neglect and the lack of basic safety precautions. They said the building, a quarantine facility for recently arrived students, lacked a fire alarm system and that there was no evacuation plan for its residents, many of whom didn't speak Russian.
TITLE: Mixed Reaction as Judge Quits
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Vladimir Poludnyakov, head of the City Court officially resigned Tuesday, leaving the post he occupied for 22 years, local media reported Wednesday.
"I'm leaving with a light heart," Kommersant quoted Poludnyakov as saying. "Nobody asked me, nobody forced me to go. Yesterday I met the staff, it was very sad for me to tell them I was leaving, but it was a celebration in any case. It is good, though, when a manager can live like that without any scandals,"
He asked for forgiveness from any St. Petersburg citizens that he might have offended, the paper said.
Valentina Yepifanova, Poludnyakov's first deputy was appointed acting chief judge of the court.
Citing anonymous sources, Kommersant said there are at least three other candidates in contention for the position, including Valery Bolshakov, the Northwest presidential representative deputy head, Sergei Vorozhtsov, a Supreme Court judge, and Alexander Shturnev, head of the Vyborg district Federal Court.
The position could stay open until March next year.
Poludnyakov became a victim of the national court reform launched by Dmitry Kozak, deputy head of the presidential administration, who introduced a regulation that judges should leave their job after they reach the age of 65.
"Poludnyakov's age is the only reason for this decision," Yury Novolodsky, a member of the St. Petersburg League of Lawyers, said Thursday.
"Poludnyakov's time is finished," Novolodsky said.
"It was time for a change because he was appointed in Soviet times and lived though all the perestroika events. He was responsible for all staff appointments at the court.
"[Mayor] Anatoly Alexandrovich [Sobchak] wanted to replace him in 1993, but it was impossible because until quite recently there was a regulation that judges can not be replaced," Novolodsky said.
"In the 10 years since the constitution came into force we have moved further and further away from it ," Novolodsky said.
"It said the courts shall be independent, but they become more and more dependent on authorities," he said.
"He [Poludnyakov] should have resigned 22 years ago," Ruslan Linkov, head of the St. Petersburg branchof the Democratic Russia party, said Tuesday, "He was a great specialist in the telephone-bill tactic [allowing suspects' telephone conversations to be tapped]."
Yury Kravtsov, a member of the St. Petersburg League of Lawyers, said he has low expectations that Poludnyakov's resignation will improve the city court system.
"Unfortunately, the system is in such a state that it is hard to talk about his achievements or failures," Kravtsov said Thursday.
"There is always hope things will get better, but that will really depend on who is going to be appointed to this position," he added.
TITLE: Creation of Anti-Corruption Council Seen as Liberal Win
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A presidential decree Monday to form an Anti-Corruption Council, an advisory body to help President Vladimir Putin fight against graft, appears to be a victory for liberals over hard-liners within the Kremlin - and could signal a priority for Putin's probable second term in office, analysts said.
The move is Putin's latest effort to rein in bureaucracy ahead of next month's State Duma elections and presidential elections in March.
Alexei Makarkin, director of the Center of Political Technologies, said the way the council had been formed and its responsibilities defined was a defeat for an alternative, heavy-handed approach to the problem, which had stipulated the establishment of a special agency, either independent or as part of the Interior Ministry.
Proposals on ways to fight corruption began coming in after Putin ordered the Cabinet to formulate ideas in late October.
If created, a special agency would have further frightened the country's business elite, which has been carefully watching for the authorities' next moves after the arrest and jailing of former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Makarkin said.
Instead, according to Putin's decree, the council's members - the prime minister, the speakers of the Duma and Federation Council, and the chief judges of the Constitutional, Supreme and Higher Arbitration courts - will not command an armed taskforce, but merely recommend better policies to eradicate corruption.
The council will hear an annual report from the prosecutor general on efforts to combat corruption, and it will report to the president on its own progress.
The council will have two commissions - one to fight corruption and the other to uncover conflicts of interest.
Neither of the commissions will investigate crimes, leaving that function to law enforcement agencies. Instead, the council will analyze problems and issue recommendations. "This will rule out the concentration of too many powers in the hands of the council," Makarkin said.
According to Makarkin, conflict of interest cases would extend to government officials accepting gifts or free lunches from, or spending vacations with, company executives they deal with as part of their governmental responsibilities.
TITLE: IKEA Showcases Cozy Homes
AUTHOR: By Vanessa Bittner
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: No longer will St. Petersburgers haul IKEA gadgets and accents back in their luggage from their trips to Moscow or Helsinki. With the opening of the IKEA Kudrovo store, local residents will be able to take advantage of the famous Swedish home furnishings chain closer to home.
While the grand opening is scheduled for Dec. 12, journalists and select members of the public were present Thursday for the store's soft opening.
The three-level store, which occupies 31,000 square meters of retail floor space and cost $40 million to build, is located in the Leningrad Oblast's Vsevolozhsky district at the future junction of Murmanskoye Shosse and the ring road. In a press conference at what the public relations staff called a "dress rehearsal" for the December opening, the store's director Peter Nilsson said the Kudrovo store benefited from the expertise of IKEA employees from 15 countries "to make this a normal IKEA store."
"We have made nothing more or less than one of the best IKEA stores in the world," he said.
Adding to his words that the Kudrovo store - after the two IKEA stores in Moscow - is the "first step" in IKEA's expansion in Russia, Nilsson announced that the empty fields beyond the vast parking lots would become the site of a new shopping center within a year. Thus the Swedish concern has plans to make Kudrovo the "main shopping point in St. Petersburg."
Casting a small but unpleasant shadow on the opening, Interfax reported Wednesday that the natural resources ministry's state control department for the Northwest federal district had announced that it intended to file a suit against IKEA. The ministry alleged that IKEA failed to satisfy federal law by not providing documentation of environmental approval for land planning and waste removal contracts for the construction site.
Responding to the allegation, IKEA spokeswoman Irina Vanenkova said that IKEA did have the necessary documentation and is doing everything in its power to observe the law, Interfax reported.
Nilsson echoed the company's official stance and added that the incident would not compromise future development. With projected revenues of $60 million during the first year, the Kudrovo store "should recoup investment in two or three years," Nilsson said.
IKEA plans to build two or three stores in St. Petersburg and is seeking a location similar to Kudrovo. Tenants for the planned shopping center have not been announced.
Free buses shuttle pedestrian shoppers from the Ulitsa Dybenko metro station to the Kudrovo store.
TITLE: Khodorkovsky Hit With Indictment, New Charge
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Prosecutor General's Office continued to turn the screws on Yukos on Thursday, slapping former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky with another charge and seizing a number of documents from Yukos-Moskva, the operational headquarters of the oil giant.
"Khodorkovsky faces charges based on seven articles of the Criminal Code, but one more episode was added to the final charges. It is related to the events that took place in 2000," prosecutors' spokesperson Natalia Veshnyakova told Interfax.
In all, Khodorkovsky has been charged with 11 crimes, the latest being the alleged "misappropriation" of $2.8 million from a sale of apatite concentrate in 2000, Veshnyakova said.
Khodorkovsky, founder of Yukos, which has made him Russia's richest man, has been held in pre-trial detention on charges of large-scale tax evasion and fraud since Oct. 25. On Tuesday, prosecutors said they had officially wrapped up their investigation of Khodorkovsky and handed him an indictment 40,000 pages long.
In another Yukos-related development on Thursday, prosecutors said they had taken new documents from Yukos-Moskva offices on Wednesday.
"The head of the company, Stephen Theede, was presented with an official order to seize documents. The requested documents were handed over [by the company]," the Prosecutor General's Office said in a statement.
"[No members] of Yukos-Moskva's staff were questioned," it said.
Yukos declined to comment.
Prosecutors are probing several Yukos subsidiaries for possible tax evasion.
The Prosecutor General's Office also announced Thursday that it had sent to court its case against former Yukos-Moskva head and key company shareholder Vasily Shakhovsky. He is accused of large-scale tax evasion and forgery.
TITLE: Wise Foreigners Take Tips on Complex Deals
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: For more than a decade St. Petersburg has attracted foreigners interested in buying an apartment, either for their own use or for renting out.
Yulia Anikeyeva, managing director of DTZ Zadelhoff Tie Leung, estimates that 2,000 apartments have foreign owners, mostly older city stock in the center that has been bought and renovated. Only a few dozen renovated apartments are on the so-called secondary market, she said.
Such purchases boomed when multinationals arrived in the city in the early 1990s and foreigners found little suitable accommodation. Banks and auditors that serviced the big industrial companies followed and the peak of apartment purchases occurred around 1996, she said.
The 1998 financial crisis saw many multinational companies shut down in the city and it took some time for the local market to regain momentum, although it is a buoyant market with annual price rises of 15 percent to 20 percent in recent years.
"Right now we are seeing another peak, but a bit of a different kind," Anikeyeva said in an interview. "Most of the best locations are already sold."
"The main part of our business has become providing services to wealthy Russians from Moscow and those who have got rich by selling natural resources," she added.
Whereas in the 1990s 80 percent to 85 percent of DTZ's clients were foreign, today they make up only 40 to 50 percent.
Such interest has driven the cost up; one 1,000-square meter unrenovated city apartment recently fetched $1.5 million, she said.
DTZ usually works with Russian partner companies who know which houses - usually central city former mansions occupied by several families in communal apartments - are suitable for a foreigner to purchase. The partners already have a good idea about which properties are available and what the cost of resettling the occupants will be, she said.
While the market of available homes is shrinking, the pool of residents willing to move out of the center is also getting smaller.
"Some want to stay in the apartment and refuse to move for any money," Anikeyeva said.
However, many people in squalid central city apartments without the cash to renovate have been waiting for an investor to arrive. They agree to resettlement readily because they already have a clear idea where they want to go and how much money they will seek.
The city government monitors resettlement deals to make sure they satisfy former residents, she added.
A typical deal would be for a 150-square-meter apartment costing $800 to $1,000 per square meter, but possibly costing up to $2,000 per square meter. The cost of a good renovation would be $350 to $400 per square meter and such an apartment could be rented out for about $2,000 per month, she said.
Anna Grigoryan, head of the agency department at S. Zinovieff & Co., said it takes three to five years to recoup an investment, in other words returns are 20 to 33 percent per year, if an apartment is leased. Renovating to sell on an apartment should bring a return of 15 to 40 percent, while simply living in the apartment has recently meant an average 20 percent annual return, she said in a written reply to questions.
In contrast to Anikeyeva, Grigoryan said the residential market is quiet and she said foreigners are interested in renovated buildings.
"The apartments most in demand are reconstructed buildings in the center ... with a well working infrastructure of security, underground garage for parking, and a separate boiler-house," she said.
"The change of administration in St. Petersburg, connected with the election of Valentina Matviyenko has slowed demand for property," she said.
Grigoryan and Maxim Kalinin, partner at law firm Baker and McKenzie, discouraged foreigners from trying to find an apartment on their own.
"It is better to start by getting recommendations on a good real estate company," Grigoryan said. "It's best to apply to a foreign real estate company because they have a European level of services, English speaking staff, etc., for example DTZ, Pulford, S. Zinovieff & Co., and Colliers.
"The first step for any foreigner wanting to buy an apartment in St. Petersburg should be to find a good real estate agent," Kalinin said in an interview.
"Good agents have access to the historical files of the apartment," he said.
Public records are supposed to list the current owner and encumbrances, but a foreigner wishing to buy will want to make sure that there are no problems in the history of the apartment. This means knowing that all the previous residents and their children have been properly deregistered, he said.
Grigoryan said that once a client has set the price range of the apartment they are looking for and has been offered choices, it can take between one and three months to seal a purchase.
Kalinin said that there are no restrictions on foreigners buying an apartment in St. Petersburg that do not apply equally to Russians.
Lawyers are generally conservative about proceeding, but clients who wait too long to clinch a deal may find their prized purchase has gone to someone else, he added.
He warned that a property that had changed hands several times within 18 months, even though it looks satisfactory, might have some hindrance that is not obvious and would-be buyers should beware.
Even though neither the state nor a lawyer can guarantee title of a property, the Constitutional Court this year ruled that bona fide deals will not be voided at the expense of the buyer, Kalinin said.
While foreigners have dealt with resettlement issues relating to apartments, Kalinin said locals usually deal with buildings with several families needing to be resettled because foreigners have a psychological barrier when tackling such a complex task.
Anikeyeva said almost all deals are done in cash, even though foreigners are often uncomfortable about this.
"Those business people who have invested in Europe and come here for the first time are pretty much surprised why they can't pay through their bank account," she said.
"But they start to understand that babushkas don't have hard currency bank accounts and are afraid of banks," she added. "It only depends on money and timing."
Grigoryan said 99 percent of transactions are in cash.
Kalinin said that the city government has said that many dilapidated buildings, especially those that have been empty for years, may soon be offered for tender at token prices, if the new owner commits to restoring them.
In many cases, the new owner will want to renovate the apartment and must remember that any structural changes in the apartment have to be approved by the state authorities. Historical protection may also relate to parts of the apartment, such as windows, doors and staircases.
Before any demolition starts, a draft design must be approved by the state and after this is done, the final results have to be inspected and approved.
TITLE: Banks Provide Real Estate Answers
AUTHOR: By Vanessa Bittner
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As the real estate market in St. Petersburg becomes more civilized, banks will play an increasing role in attracting institutional investors. This tendency was highlighted by experts from Colliers International at a conference on the future of investment in land and real estate held by Vedomosti in October.
Banks are the link to institutional investment with their role in real estate investment projects.
There are about a dozen banks in St. Petersburg that provide loans to developers, Boris Yushenkov, general director of Colliers, said in a telephone interview. Ownership is another route. "In the 'golden days' before 1998 many banks acquired real estate at low prices - whether in the form of entire buildings or shares - and now must find uses for these buildings," Yushenkov said.
There are many reasons why real estate is not an attractive investment for banks themselves. Although Russian law allows banks to own real property, Central Bank regulations oblige them to have mostly high liquidity assets. According to Vladislav Miagkov, real estate expert with Ernst & Young, "the more properties a bank owns, the lower the liquidity rate of its assets ... in the best case properties make up a few percent of assets."
So the banks do not engage directly in the management of these properties, rather they create subsidiaries in the form of management companies.
PSB Management Co. - formerly Baltic Financial Agency Management Co. - for example, as a subsidiary of Promstroibank, manages real estate owned by Promstroibank and provides opportunities for investors to participate in real estate projects.
While Miagkov says it is difficult to find an efficient property manager, others engaged in the process beg to differ. According to Vyacheslav Balabayev, vice president and director of the St. Petersburg office of the Trust investment bank, good management is possible.
The key here lies not in keeping a large staff, "...but in the quality of management and reaction to day-to-day challenges. The more the company relies on outsourcing for services the better, for example to handle everything from security to window-washing to facilities maintenance," Balabayev said in an interview.
With three fully occupied business centers in the Admiralteisky district and one in the Tsentralny district, Balabayev nevertheless maintains that good location is not the only attribute of success. The Evrika business center on Ulitsa Bekhtereva - the former Zavod Turbinnykh Lopatok - also boasts 100 percent occupancy. Office space at Evrika is leased for $20 per square meter per month, while another business center on Canal Griboyedova has offices available with lease rates of $400 per square meter per month. The downtown area with its traffic jams has made business centers in other parts of the city attractive, with transportation access still being a deciding factor.
Business centers are popular investments because they represent the most developed sector of the real estate market, according to Yushenkov of Colliers.
By assigning oversight of real estate projects to subsidiary management companies or specialized investment funds, banks protect themselves from risk. According to Miagkov, returns on real estate investment range between 16 percent and 20 percent, which is lower than with other assets such as shares and bonds, which also have shorter pay-back periods. Real estate presents higher risks.
This is where diversification comes in. Lev Pukshansky, director of the investment office at PSB Management Company, maintains that the key to diversification is making available to investors both commercial and residential projects - whether in St. Petersburg, the Leningrad Oblast or even Moscow. Commercial real estate and, more specifically, business centers present a very "transparent and comprehensible" investment. Unlike stocks or securities, they are tangible assets that generally maintain their value in the long term despite temporary fluctuations in the market. In particular, a ready Class B business center presents relatively low risk with returns of approximately 15 percent. For comparison, return expectations for greenfield investments start at 20 percent, but the risk to investors is higher.
PSB Management Co. owns two business centers, the Sheremetiev and the Admiral, and manages the Pallada, Narvsky and Sofiiskaya, with another business center under construction at 153 Leninsky Prospekt.
Since real estate investments involve long-term money they are more typical of investment and pension funds, Ernst & Young real estate expert Miagkov said. According to American statistics the share of real properties in the investment portfolio is usually about 10 percent. However, in the huge American funds, this percentage is represented by many properties. Russian pension funds, Miagkov concludes, have not yet reached the stage of considering real estate investments.
Pukshansky, however, is optimistic that the future of real estate investment in Russia lies in working with pension funds and insurance companies, "by creating a local analogue to the [U.S.] Real Estate Investment Trust," he said in an interview. Pukshansky's management company, as a subsidiary of Promstroibank, is a ready organization that "has everything necessary to develop real estate, so we reduce the risks."
Now it is up to the government to produce the legislation necessary for a stable environment.
TITLE: Mortgage Law Now In Force
AUTHOR: By Igor Gorchakov
TEXT: The recently enacted Russian Law "On Mortgage-Backed Securities," which was officially published on November 18, 2003, and entered into legal force on the same day, represents a step forward for real estate financing since it lays out the legal framework for securitizing mortgage-backed loans. In accordance with the Law, it is now possible to issue two new types of Russian securities which will be backed by loans secured by mortgage (base asset), namely: mortgage bonds and mortgage participation certificates.
Mortgage bonds can be issued by banks and mortgage agents. The Law defines a mortgage agent as a special-purpose commercial company whose sole business is the purchasing of mortgage-backed loans and/or mortgage participation certificates and issuing of mortgage bonds backed by such loans and/or certificates. In addition, the Law sets forth certain requirements for the base asset of the mortgage bonds, for example, that the principle amount and interest of a loan secured by mortgage should not exceed 70 percent of the value of the mortgaged property. The mortgaged property must be insured against loss or damage for the entire term of the loan, among other requirements.
Issuance of mortgage bonds must be registered with the RF Federal Commission on the Securities Market, or FCSM, and the issuer of such bonds should pay a securities tax in the amount of 0.8 percent of the nominal value of the issued bonds.
All investors who purchase mortgage bonds of the same issue have equal rights with other owners of mortgage bonds. The Law also sets forth a non-exhaustive list of events of default under mortgage bonds, which, inter alia, include a decrease of the value of the base asset to below the nominal value of the mortgage bonds issued. The owners of mortgage bonds may levy execution on the base asset only through court action.
Mortgage participation certificates can be issued by management companies of investment or pension funds to the owner of a mortgage-backed loan in exchange for a contribution of such loan to a "mortgage pool," which may consist of mortgage-backed loans, government securities, cash or, in a limited number of cases, real property. The owners of mortgage participation certificates are the owners of the "mortgage pool," which is managed by the management company acting as a trust manager for those owners. It is not necessary to register an issuance of mortgage participation certificates with the FCSM or to pay a securities tax on the issuance of such certificates. However, the rules of trust management of the "mortgage pool" must be registered with the FCSM.
Both mortgage bonds and mortgage participation certificates are transferable securities and may be traded on the securities market.
Although not all of the provisions of the Law are clear - and a number of normative acts will have to be adopted and implemented by the RF Government, the FCSM and the RF Central Bank in order to enforce some of the provisions of the Law - it is an important step forward in developing Russian securities legislation. In addition, the practical implementation of the Law will also depend on how quickly the market for mortgage-backed loans will emerge and develop in Russia.
Igor Gorchakov is an associate at Baker & McKenzie's St. Petersburg Office.
TITLE: End of Stability Can Arouse Sleeping Voices
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bim and Kim Iskyan
TEXT: The resurgence of political uncertainty in Russia heralds an end to the "stability" of the first 3 1/2 years of President Vladimir Putin's regime. However, the increased volatility engendered by the Yukos affair and its fallout, coupled with the collapse of the system of oligarchic capitalism, may ultimately prove salutary for the long-term development of Russian democracy and civil society - and, ironically, work to counter Putin's growing authoritarianism.
Shock over the abrupt end to the artificial stability that has characterized the political environment over the past several years is largely a result of the rose-tinted expectations and simplified assumptions that Russia-watchers have entertained until now about Putin's presidency.
Indeed, Putin's pursuit of so-called political stability by centralizing power in the executive branch has damaged Russia's still-nascent democratic experiment by crippling public debate and defining the boundaries of political discussion in the narrowest of terms. Moreover, it is possible that after the March 2004 presidential election, Putin will try to engineer an amendment to the constitution to allow him to stay in power beyond the mandated two-term limit (or else follow in the tradition of installing a chosen successor) - either way continuing to ride roughshod over Russia's delicate democracy.
On another front, one of the major results of the political uproar triggered by the attack on Yukos and the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been the demise of Russia's unique brand of oligarchic capitalism and its replacement by bureaucratic capitalism spearheaded by Putin's ex-KGB henchmen. Under most circumstances, Putin turning on the oligarchs as a political force (some of whom installed him in the Kremlin) would be an unquestionably positive development - as would be the resignation of Kremlin chief of staff Alexander Voloshin, despite the vocal regrets of some observers who seem to have forgotten that he is the main architect of Putin's authoritarianism. But this sentiment is dampened by the still-remote, though increased, possibility that through their attack on Yukos and Khodorkovsky, Putin and the siloviki may be trying to tighten further their grasp on the political arena and move toward full-blown authoritarianism.
However, concerns over the implications of the Yukos affair have been overblown, and breathless admonitions that the attack on Yukos represents the end of Russia's post-Soviet democratic experiment are likely to prove to be just as wide of the mark as the earlier premature proclamations about "St. Putin the Savior of Russia." Rather than a march toward greater state control, including the nationalization of privatized assets, the next phase of the Putin regime is likely to involve a continuation of authoritarian rule with targeted repression of political opponents and rivals that the Kremlin deems a threat. Khodorkovsky was targeted primarily because he was a political threat, and the political nature of the conflict between Yukos and Putin suggests that the chances of large-scale asset redistribution are minimal, as long as no other oligarchs decide to get into politics beyond the limits established by the president.
Running counter to the Kremlin's increasingly authoritarian impulses is the renewed climate of political uncertainty which may well mark an important step in rejuvenating political debate in Russia (at least now the issue of Putin's authoritarianism is a subject of open discussion), by triggering the creation of a bona fide opposition. Also, the absence of an alternative to Putin over the past few years has been a key factor in the president's ability to almost single-handedly dictate and dominate the political agenda.
Whether the opposition evolves into a real political force or folds in the face of the Putin juggernaut remains to be seen. The regional governors, who were among the major losers in Putin's power grab, may hold the key to survival of a serious opposition and their defection from the Putin camp would signal a shift in the balance of power away from the Kremlin. Additionally, the oligarchs themselves, who also have a lot to lose in Putin's continued power play, might gravitate toward opposition involvement, although they would run the risk of becoming targeted like Khodorkovsky. Ultimately, however, a true opposition will need to evolve at the grass-roots level which may prove challenging due to the general passivity of the populace.
In the meantime, the emerging opposition suffers from conflicting agendas and is dominated by figures weighed down by political baggage. Opposition sentiment at this stage has logically coalesced around Khodorkovsky, but it would require several years and considerable effort to re-engineer the former Yukos CEO's image. By repeatedly defying Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has positioned himself - in the eyes of the oligarchs and the business community, at any rate - as potential presidential material (particularly if he soon loses his position, as Putin casts about for someone more malleable to head the government). Finally, Anatoly Chubais, as the only major business leader to stand up to Putin and the siloviki, has indicated his interest in returning to politics, but he remains despised by the general public and may have a difficult time combining the roles of opposition leader and head of UES, one of Russia's largest government-controlled companies.
More significant than specific opposition leaders, though, are the institutional implications of the re-emergence of a vocal opposition that could offer a real alternative to Putin's politics, policies and personality. Conspicuously absent since Putin's rise to power has been a credible brake on the president's prolonged power grab, as he has effectively subverted and/or co-opted the very institutions that should provide checks on the executive branch.
A genuine opposition has a vested interest in ensuring that its potential avenues to power remain open by initiating vigorous discussion about the political environment and defects in the political process, and therefore is the best potential insurance against the continued concentration of power in the executive branch. Forces that offer a credible alternative to the president are in effect the optimal guarantors of democratic practices - such as relatively fraud-free elections - as only through these can they hope to come to power.
Putin and the siloviki are clearly focused on increasing the authoritarian nature of the regime. But the issues that form the backdrop to the new environment of political uncertainty, including the consequences of the privatization process that created oligarchic capitalism in the first place and the resulting corruption and inequality that pervade Russia, will need to be adequately addressed for real and sustainable political stability to be achieved. The gradual development of an independent, credible and vociferous opposition, offering a real political alternative rather than what is currently offered by the Communist party and so-called patriots, is the best hope for establishing stronger foundations for democracy.
In the final analysis, renewed political instability may be just what Russia needs.
Alexander Bim is a political analyst at IMAGE-Contact Consulting Group and Kim Iskyan is a former securities analyst for the Russian equity market. They contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Matviyenko Fails Snow Test at First Hurdle
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
TEXT: Finding myself outdoors on Monday afternoon after the first big snowfall in St. Petersburg this winter, I had to jump over numerous deep puddles. I soon realized that if I wanted to get safely to the nearest cafe for lunch, I would need flippers and a helmet: the flippers to speed me through the pools of water, the helmet in case of accidents caused by big piles of snow falling from roofs.
Later that day, I thought of another item of clothing I was missing: chemical warfare overalls. Cars splashed me three times in a row, covering me with dirty melting snow while I was trying to cross Ploshchad Truda on my way home.
When I got there and looked in the mirror, it struck me that this was the first time in a long time that I had seen a coal miner in the flesh.
It would be impolite to repeat the words that came to mind regarding St. Petersburg's new governor, Valentina Matviyenko. Given that it was only a day after my return from Britain, the words were four letters long and rather colorful.
St. Petersburg hit a low point this week. City Hall failed to clear even St. Isaac's Square of snow. I can't remember that not having been done when the city was ruled by Anatoly Sobchak or Vladimir Yakovlev. Matviyenko is a pioneer in this respect.
City Hall's maintenance committee representatives say that more than 700 snow-clearing vehicles were on city streets Monday. I saw one on my way home that was not actually clearing the street but just spreading melting snow around, making the puddles even bigger.
"Oh, that's why City Hall has said it is ready for the winter season," I thought, looking at a snow-clearing vehicle passing by. Although I don't understand why I saw only one such machine in my 20-minute walk home - surely there should have been more. After all, City Hall authorities said only 30 percent of snow-clearing vehicles broke down shortly after they started work Monday morning.
Some people have already suffered from this half-hearted approach to clearing the streets.
On Monday, a mere 48 St. Petersburg citizens injured their legs, arms and backbones after falling on the ice, 33 of them being hospitalized, according to local media reports.
On Oct. 27, Vladimir Dedyukhin, head of the maintenance committee, who has kept the post he held under the previous administration, informed Matviyenko that 1,699 snow-clearing vehicles were ready to start clearing city streets as soon as snow started falling. That was 10 percent more than last year, he added.
This inspired Matviyenko to suggest that the snow-clearing service should work around the clock. It looks like her inspired suggestion has only been partially realized.
I could give Matviyenko the benefit of the doubt, knowing that her experience lies in social issues such as pensions and state employees' salaries (she never had to deal with snow in the corridors of the Kremlin), but I won't.
The reason is that Dedyukhin, the person appointed by her to be responsible for snow clearance, has been in charge for years and was described by the new governor as an experienced manager, along with several other officials who retained their committee chairmanships following Matviyenko's election.
On Monday, we saw the first sign that the "new" city government won't work any better than its predecessors, and may be even worse.
If snow in winter is so unexpected for Matviyenko, how will she manage the city in general?
TITLE: brazzaville's musical escape
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Los Angeles' Brazzaville, featuring members of Beck, Natalie Merchant's and Tom Waits' bands, is bringing its sophisticated, pop-noir sound to the city this Saturday. Formed by Beck's saxophone player David Brown in 1998, the band has released three albums, "2002" (1998), "Somnambulista" (2001) and "Rouge on Pockmarked Cheeks" (2002), which were all re-released in Russia last week.
Although Brazzaville's music is frequently described as "lounge," Brown, the band's songwriter, singer and guitarist, disagrees.
"I don't think that 'lounge music' describes our music very well," wrote Brown in a recent e-mail interview from his new home in Barcelona, Spain where he moved two months ago.
"When I think of lounge music I think of a kind of kitschy sound with lots of red velvet and martinis. I can see why people might use that term to describe some of what we do but I never much liked it. I really don't have a good way of describing our music.
"It has something to do with escape, escaping to a faraway land on a jumbo jet... the peace that I feel at 35,000 feet with the sound of the plane's engines swaddling me like a warm quilt on a winter morning. It also has something to do with the belief that there is an ultimate reality that exists just beyond the fringes of our consciousness and that reality is very nice and the reason that we feel so afraid and worried much of the time is that we forget that the everyday world is just a dream.
"Our music also has something to do with telling stories about people who might be down on their luck but who display a lot of humanity. So it's really too difficult for me to try to label the sound that we have. I think that labels might help to sell records but they rarely describe the music well. What would you call The Kinks? 'Rock and Roll' seems like a very wanting description."
Though compared with Morphine, Tindersticks, and post-"Asylum" Tom Waits, Brown's own musical preferences include Brazilian singer Jorge Ben whose obscure tracks, he said, made him cry every day during a month-long Beck tour.
"The second side of 'Combat Rock' by the Clash is also one of my favorite things," he continued.
"The Kinks. I think that Ray Davies is one of the greatest songwriters of his generation. I've loved David Bowie and dub reggae since I was a teenager. There is a track of these Russian girls singing an old folk song a cappella that came on a microphone sampler CD that this Russian guy sent me when I bought a LOMO mic from him on Ebay. I listened to that track for months."
According to Brown, who occasionally sings in Portuguese, he likes bossa nova, but does not listen to it much.
"I think people think that I do because of the way I play guitar and because I sing in Portuguese sometimes. I play guitar that way because that's how [Beck's then guitarist] Smokey [Hormel] taught me to play and I really never learned any other ways. I sing in Portuguese because it's such a fun language to sing in! I try not to think about influences although I'm sure I have many. I think that you can get into trouble as a songwriter if you think too much about those things."
Brown picked up Portuguese while in Brazil where he escaped from the increasingly crazy lifestyle he started to develop in Los Angeles some 10 years ago.
"I wandered around Brazil for about 6 months in the early '90s and I picked up the language there. I think that it saved my life to go down there. There are a lot of crazy people on my mother's side of the family and I was in my early 20s and they say that that is when you can go crazy much of the time.
"I had been working nights painting a lingerie store on Hollywood Blvd. Beck was painting it with me. We both fell into this crazy vampire schedule that we couldn't seem to get out of. I would wake up at about 5 p.m. and call him.
"He would just be getting up and we would go and have 'breakfast.' Anyway, during that period I saw a great darkness. I felt like I could go into it and that I would become insane. Instead I went to South America and took boats down the Amazon River, sleeping in a hammock and watching the little pink dolphins swim by."
Brown took his band's name from the capital of the former French Congo, but he said there is no direct reference to this particular city.
"I liked the name Brazzaville because it seemed like an anonymous city name," he wrote.
"It didn't sound particularly European, African, Latin American or Asian even though it has the French 'ville' at the end that indicates that it is a town of some sort. Also, Brazzaville was ranked as the city with the worst quality of life on earth by the UN in 1998. Vancouver was first and Brazzaville was last. So I thought that maybe since it was the worst in the everyday world, it could be the best in the alternate world of art, music and dreams."
Though Brown has never been to Russia, he is interested to pay a visit because of his family history.
"Russia seems like a really heavy place to me," wrote Brown.
"If a Russian decides to write down a few thoughts it comes out as a book that's 800 pages long. I have a great respect for Russian literature and Russian music. I remember hearing back when the cold war was still on that Russians read more books and went to the theatre more than any other people on earth. I was surprised by that. I also heard that less than 2 percent of Americans finish a single book per year.
"My grandmother came from the border region of Poland and Belarus. She was always such a warm and soulful woman, it made me curious to visit that part of the world. She played balalaika and made buckwheat pancakes for me. She was pretty crazy though. Her family were all Jews and she was the only one that didn't die in the Nazi death camps. She escaped to Palestine and eventually to the U.S. I can't imagine how a person could endure the loss of their whole family and not go a bit crazy. Maybe that's why I'm so obsessed with escape.
"As a Jew you have to be ready to split on a moments notice!"
Apart from Brown, Brazzaville features David Ralicke on trombone and saxophone, Mike Bolger on trumpet, accordion, keyboards and valve trombone, Kenny Lyon on guitar and bass, Joel Virgel Vierset on percussion and drums, Josh Segal on violin and saxophone and Joe Zimmerman on bass, both stand-up and electric.
Brazzaville performs at 8 p.m. at Red Club on Saturday. Links: www.brazzaville2002.com
TITLE: borodina returns for biblical epic
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Olga Borodina may have gained international fame singing the role of Dalila on the world's most venerable stages yet the renowned mezzo-soprano is only now getting ready to perform her top character at the Mariinsky Theater, her home theater. Directed by Charles Roubaud, the Mariinsky's rendition of Saint-Saens's "Samson et Dalila", premieres on Dec. 2.
Borodina debuted as Dalila 12 years ago at Covent Garden, with Placido Domingo as Samson. Since then, the lead in "Samson et Dalila" has become her most successful role, in addition to another French opera, Bizet's "Carmen". On opening night on Dec. 2, her partner as Samson will be the Mariinsky tenor Alexei Steblyanko.
"Dalila is my best role, and perhaps the only one to have laid so smoothly and easily on my voice," Borodina said on Thursday. "Dramatically, too, the character is very complex, deep and sophisticated. Also, this opera is that rare case, when the music tells you all the nuances of your character. Dalila's pride, ambition, obstinacy and tenderness, everything is there."
Borodina's perception of Dalila is different from the general view of the heroine as a remorseless Philistine woman, who seduces the Hebrew warrior Samson not because she loves him but solely to find the secret of his power and take his strength to help her people. After losing his power, he is taken prisoner by the Philistines, who blind and mock him. The singer disagrees with the opinion that Dalila wasn't really in love with Samson.
"Having lived through Dalila's life on stage so many times, I feel that she did love Samson, and regretted that she had sacrificed her love for him to her people," the singer said. "Seeing him suffering made her suffer as well. This is my attitude on stage because this is how I personally feel about it."
For Roubaud, this will be his third production with the Mariinsky, where he has already staged Puccini's "Turandot" in 2002, and Verdi's "La Traviata" in spring of this year. The director sees the opera first and foremost as a story of a femme fatale and of seduction. "Dalila is a classical example of a powerful woman using all her charms to seduce a man and achieve her goals," Roubaud said on Thursday. "Passions are boiling in this woman, and the appetite for power wins over her feelings for the man."
Although Roubaud admitted the obvious political resonance of the opera, which features a choir singing "Liberty to Israel," and which, he pointed out, actually takes place in the Gaza Strip, the director said he has chosen to stop short of building up additional political emphasis.
"There is enough in the opera to make you sense parallels with the ongoing Middle East conflict," he said. "But 'Samson et Dalila' is a self-sufficient enough work. And in any case I don't think the director should bring in matters, which the audience can easily find on television in news bulletins."
Design-wise, the team isn't aiming to reproduce the Israel of 1150 BC, as the libretto has it. "We have decided not to do one of those 'antique productions'," Roubaud said. "It is unlikely that there is an expert who would be able to recreate it, and there is no need to do so. Rather, we have created what we hope is a universal language, very symbolic and not really attached to a particular epoch."
"Samson et Dalila" first saw the stage in Weimar in 1877, where it was sung in German. Fifteen years later, in 1892, the opera was performed in Opera de Paris.
The Mariinsky theater has only staged the opera once before, in 1896. Since then, "Samson et Dalila" was only sung in a concert version, and not until 2002. The opera will be performed in French.
"Samson et Dalila" premieres at the Mariinsky theater on Dec. 2. The next performance is on Jan. 5, 2004. After the opening night Olga Borodina sings the role next on July 8, 2004, during the Stars of the White Nights Festival. Links: http://www.mariinsky.ru
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Bad Manners will come to St. Petersburg for the first time - over 25 years after the British ska band was formed.
Part of the early 1980s ska revival in the UK, alongside Selector and Madness, Bad Manners is probably the only band which survived, even if its chart success (hits include "Ne-Ne-Na-Na-Na-Na-Nu-Nu," "Lip Up Fatty," "Special Brew," "Lorraine," "Just a Feeling," "Can-Can" and "Walking in the Sunshine") ended in 1983.
Fronted by Buster Bloodvessel (born Douglas Trendle), the 190-kilogram, bare-headed singer, who is also known as "Fatty," the band is brought to Russia by Moscow website www.ska.ru to take part in its annual ska festival aSKArbin.
Apart from his merits as a singer, Bloodvessel is known for his stint as a hotel owner and as a London mayoral candidate.
In St. Petersburg, Bad Manners will play at Stary Dom on Saturday. Tickets cost between 500 and 1,000 rubles.
While Bad Manners provide aggressive, somewhat silly ska, a more relaxed, sophisticated sound will come from Brazzaville that same night.
The Los Angeles dark pop band, formed by Beck's former saxophone player David Brown, who now plays guitar and sings, will play Red Club at 8 p.m. Tickets cost between 350 and 400 rubles. See article, this page.
Moloko, arguably the city's finest underground club, will mark its sixth anniversary on Saturday.
Earlier this year the club exchanged lawsuits with the local city property committee, which refused to prolong the rent agreement with the venue for no clearly formulated reason, and, according to its director Yury Ugryumov, this anniversary party could well turn out to be the last.
Though no extra fun is planned, there will be a gig by the hugely popular local band Markscheider Kunst, which is likely to pack the place, leaving many fans outside.
In fact, it was Markscheider Kunst which opened the then anonymous Moloko in November 1996 - the club officially took the name by its fourth concert.
The concert was not advertized and drew 38 fans - mostly friends and fellow musicians, who heard about it through the grapevine.
Over its six years, the place held a huge number of great gigs and is enormously respected by local alternative bands, with such groups as Tequilajazzz paying its respect to the venue by performing full-length concerts there twice a year, in summer and in winter. Tickets cost 150 rubles.
Leningrad, probably the leading local band, will perform this Friday for a richer crowd than its usual set of fans at the exclusive floating club/restaurant Aquarel.
Twelve months ago Leningrad played at the upscale Astoria Club for an audience that the band's frontman Sergei Shnurov described as "deputies and bandits, which is the same thing really.
"The main thing is that the concert went well," Shnurov then added. "I started by saying, 'Hey, bourgeois, let's make some noise!' It was fun."
According to the venue, only $100 tickets are still available. Guests should arrive by 11 p.m., the concert will start at around midnight. Call Aquarel at 320-8600 for more details.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: time to check out the chak-chak
AUTHOR: By Adam Federman
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The standard samsa in St. Petersburg is a thin, flimsy dough folded over an often sparse filling of meat and onions. You can find one outside most metro stations. And after a long escalator ride out of the subterranean world beneath the Neva you might be enticed by the clouds of steam coming from the vending carts. The samsa at the carts are usually fried and kept warm inside a plastic bag above a hot-water well. Or if you head to one of the shaverma stands instead you can find a samsa for ten rubles that, after serving time in a microwave, ends up rather stiff and chewy.
At Serebryanny Vyek (Silver Century), a windowless cafe not far from Metro Lesnaya, one of the first things you'll notice when you walk in is a plate of samsas sitting on the counter. The meat pies are golden brown with a few black cumin seeds in the center. They're round and plump with a generous filling of ground meat, onions, and cilantro. It's pretty much impossible not to order at least one unless of course you can resist passing up what is probably the best samsa in the city.
But it's best to turn to the menu before you get distracted. There are only three menus in the whole place and it's best to order from the counter where you can ask away about what everything is and how it's prepared. Of course if you want to sit and study the menu you're welcome to just don't expect the waitress to come and take your order. She'll bring your food to the table but everything else happens at the counter.
Uzbek cuisine is understated and uses a simple combination of herbs, especially the aromatic parsley-like leaves of the cilantro herb, and spices, namely cumin. The Manty for 85 rubles ($2.80) are a must and make a good starter for two. Four large dumplings topped with sour cream are reminiscent of the Chinese soup dumplings you can find in New York City - always a challenge to eat with chopsticks. Here though you don't have to worry about that. The dumplings are filled with ground meat and onions and a soup broth that spills out onto the plate when you cut into them. It's best to approach them with a spoon.
There are a number of salads to choose from all between 40 and 85 rubles ($1.30 - $2.80) that make a good first or second course. But if you're looking for Uzbek fare it's best to save room for the entrees and soups. Salad Tashkent though for 85 rubles ($2.80) gives you a chance to try the pebka or green radish. The Fantasia salad is less interesting, a basic cucumber, tomato, cabbage and carrot salad that was heavy on the oil (60 rubles, $2).
Although the menu is short it is varied with a wide range of dishes. The chychvara, a type of pelmeni in broth with sour cream for 80 rubles ($2.60) is good and the lagman (also 80 rubles), a noodle-soup with braised beef and vegetables also makes a nice starter or even a main dish.
The shyrpa (85 rubles, $2.80), an Uzbek soup with lamb, was excellent. The lamb was served on the bone and though a bit fatty was full of flavor. The soup comes with potatoes, carrots, onions, and, yes, cilantro. If you have a problem with cilantro you may want to ask that they withhold it from your order as it comes with almost everything.
The homemade nan-lepeshka is a must with any meal at Silver Century but especially with the soups. It's a flat bread but unlike the thin stretched nan of Indian cuisine has a firm crust and a soft, fibrous crumb. And like the samsa it comes with the signature black cumin seeds in the middle. An order is 15 rubles ($0.50).
If you still have room the shashlik (Central Asian shish kebab) for 95 rubles ($3.15) is a good bet. It's a skewer of grilled pork marinated in lemon and cumin and served with onions and cilantro. The pork was not overcooked - always a sign that the chef knows what he's doing.
The food at Silver Century is really the heart of the matter. The service is pretty bare bones. But the chef, dressed in an old apron and slippers, will often bring you your food or clear you plates while wishing you a pleasant meal. And behind the lilting chant of Uzbek music coming from the cassette player it's easy to feel you've been whisked away to another land.
Unfortunately, aside from tea, coffee, and juice there's very little to drink. The menu boasts a wide selection of beer but the only thing in stock was Bochkaryov, the strong one with 8 percent alcohol ("Krepkoye") for 45 rubles ($1.50). No wine or hard liquor is served.
Before you leave, check out the chak-chak for 50 rubles ($1.65), an Uzbek dessert made with an egg-based dough and a touch of cognac. The dough is cut into strips, fried and mixed with honey and then left to set. It's the Uzbek version of a Rice Krispy treat. Like all the food at Silver Century, it leaves you more than satisfied.
Silver Century, 7 Pargolovskaya Ul. Metro station: Lesnaya. Open daily noon to 8 p.m. Menu in Russian only. Credit cards not accepted. No smoking. Dinner for two with alcohol 700 rubles.
TITLE: love is like a bottle of ketchup
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: They have been branded extreme cabaret, black clownage, absurdist comics and flowing parodists. All that is true and yet it still doesn't fully describe their shows.
The St. Petersburg-based theater troupe "Comic-Trust" is very much a stylistic polygon, each side connected with a different form of visual comedy. Every performance is a melting pot of genres and arts: take some pantomime, spice it up with a bit of farce, garnish with puppetry, add a touch of grotesque and wrap up in avant garde... this theatrical fusion is an experience which tugs at multiple heartstrings at once. You leave the show happy, shaken up and turned upside down.
"We ourselves don't even try to find an adequate description of what our style is because we are superstitious: if we are lucky and find the right word and tell everybody, then the miracle would vanish," says Vadim Fisson, director of the company's shows, which are performed all over the world. "But it is funny when they announce us at festivals and don't know what to call us, and just say 'the discovery of the festival', 'a special guest' or even 'a gift'!"
Most of the shows - "Second Hand," "Naphtalene," "White Side Story," and Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra," which hasn't been shown in Russia yet - have various gags for the different countries in which they are performed. But the meat of the shows - performed by a maximum of three actors - is always the same. "It never happens that the audience just stares at us, perplexed and petrified - with perhaps the exception of a couple of corporate shows in Russia," Vadim said. In general, he describes the Russian audience as more thoughtful than those in other countries, explaining that it seems to take some time for viewers to adjust to what they see on stage - but once they have it takes as long for them to come down from the joy of the performance.
"One of our friends compared Slavic-style love to a full bottle of ketchup: you shake it hard trying to squeeze some out but no luck, you try again and here it splashes out, all at once," says the troupe's only female member, Vadim's wife Natalya Fisson.
"Comic-Trust" emerged twelve years ago, when, as Vadim puts it, a few friends bought a stove so that they could share in cooking. "Cooking and then eating together is really lots of fun and does bring you much closer," he said. Soon the first show, "Rubbish in Suit" was born - perhaps out of a desire "to expend some extra adrenaline."
"Adrenaline," in fact, is a project of its own, where anything goes to turn a corporate presentation into a driving spectacular, where life is reflected as if through an array of crazy mirrors of "Comic-Trust's" brand and design.
Although Vadim is officially the director, both the scripts and the stagings are written by literally all "Comic-Trust" members, which includes - apart from Vadim and Natalya - actors Nikolai Kychyov (or "Coca-Colenka") and Igor Sladkevich ("Zhuchyok"). "We have never had an argument about 'who plays what'," Natalya said.
"Of course, the productions have survived some minor changes, especially our oldest, 'Second Hand,' which premiered in 1997. In principle, we'll continue doing a show until we get bored. That's the only criteria."
The actors themselves don't often get to see other peoples' shows. But the best opportunities for this come at the festivals abroad in which "Comic-Trust" also performs, for example at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (UK), the Limburg Theater Festival (The Netherlands), the Printemps des Comediens (Montpelier, France), or the Gioco del Teatro (Turin, Italy).
But when they are at home in St. Petersburg, the members of "Comic-Trust" are very occasional theatergoers - and not without a reason. "The problem with many St. Petersburg theaters is that the generation of artistic directors has been recently replaced by managers. The directors with a talent who do stage don't have their own troupes," Vadim said.
Compared to the soulless hacks of many established theaters, Vadim said he feels a connection with his audiences.
"I think the strong point of our company is our apparent sincerity - this is what I think the audiendes like about us. They forgive us our imperfect pantomime and dancing," Vadim said.
The palace of culture housing the Stantsia Alternative Stage, where "Comic-Trust" normally performs, will be demolished in the next three years to make space to the grandiose new stage of the Mariinsky theater.
"There is currently no other stage like that in the whole town, which is a shame," Natalya said.
"Much smaller provincial towns in Europe have thriving alternative stages. Venice and Edinburgh have experienced a rebirth after establishing their arts festivals. At this point, St. Petersburg has much to learn from the distant Siberian town of Omsk - where we have seen hugely successful modern sculpture, from a sculpture of a plumber coming out of a manhole to the town's mesmerizing Scales of Justice, where the scales are filled with small figures looking out from behind bars, a hint of Omsk's past as a town for political prisoners - if, that is, St. Petersburg wants to stay artistically alive."
"Comic-Trust" performs "White Side Story" on Nov. 28, 29 and 30 at the Stantsia Alternative Stage Palace of Culture of the First Five Year Plan (34, Dekabristov Ul., Third floor). Links: http://www.comic-trust.com
TITLE: deathwish of pop icon poet
AUTHOR: By John Leonard
PUBLISHER: the new york times
TEXT: In the winter of 1837, after the bullet, the opium, the sacraments, the convulsions and the coffin lined with crimson velvet, the Russian Orthodox metropolitan of St. Petersburg refused to conduct a funeral service for Alexander Pushkin in St. Isaac's Cathedral, "on the grounds that a death in a duel was tantamount to suicide."
It will seem to many readers of T. J. Binyon's magnificent biography that the metropolitan was right - that the poet might just as well have shot himself. Always quick to take offense; delusionally jealous of his dim but beautiful young wife; unable in the social whirl to find time to finish any of his longer writing projects; "harassed and persecuted" by the tsar's own censors whenever he did jot down something; subject to mood swings that today, says Binyon, "would cause him to be classed as a manic-depressive" - Russia's first pop icon/literary superstar, who by the vivacity of his own example had turned art into a substitute for politics, was a nervous frazzle and a burning fuse.
He was also, of course, short - a "small, swarthy, apelike poet," 5-foot-6, unsightly side whiskers and clawlike fingernails, sometimes to be seen wearing a black frock coat and silk top hat like Bolivar's, sometimes with a fez and Turkish pantaloons - and a surprising snob, boasting that his father's boyar side of the family went back 600 years. (On his mother's side, notoriously, there was that "blackamoor" great-grandfather from Cameroon.)
As we'd expect from someone given to hissing at actors onstage and accusing strangers of cheating at cards, his last duel was not his first. Binyon alludes to several that stopped short of the firing line in the spring of 1836 alone, a period of "sullen rage" during which Pushkin "became incapable of rational thought or action, and lashed out indiscriminately at anyone or anything, caring little - on the contrary rather hoping - that he might bring the whole edifice of his life crashing about him."
Which is not to say that Georges d'Anthes, the Alsatian reprobate who couldn't stay away from Natalya Pushkin, didn't deserve rough justice, maybe even a horsewhip. Yet everyone agrees that the poet was more relieved than anxious. From "a state bordering on lunacy," he became almost cheerful: "free from those mental sufferings which had so terribly tortured him." On his way to his wounding he even stopped at a cafe where, today, a wax replica with his risible side whiskers keeps a pale eye on Nevsky Prospekt.
"It's difficult to breathe, I'm suffocating" were Pushkin's last words. And we know exactly how he felt because Binyon, a lecturer in Russian literature at Oxford, a senior research fellow at Wadham College and the author of a history of detective fiction as well as mystery novels of his own, invites us in, sits us down and opens the closets and the veins. He has practically inhaled all of 19th-century Russian culture, from school curricula to court etiquette to book publishing to adultery. Thus, though he disavows "literary analysis," he is not above pointing at Ossian and Ariosto, at Byron, Milton, "Rob Roy" and "Tristram Shandy." He has read every diary, letter, memoir, report card and dossier, attended masked ball and febrile seduction, counted every "dead soul" serf whom Pushkin inherited as property, and exhumed every body of every Decembrist the poet might have met at school before they plotted their abortive coup without him.
Still, the substance and sinew are the nervous wreck of a great poet, with a tsar like a monkey on his back. He was a plump and clumsy child who hated exercise and often sat down in protest in the street. His "beautiful creole" mother not only loved his younger brother best but went months not even speaking to Alexander; and when he departed for the new imperial lycee at Tsarskoe Selo she let two years go by without seeing him at all.
Graduating from the lycee into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as a collegial secretary, he was paid 700 rubles a year to do nothing whatsoever. And if anyone actually did ask him to do something, he considered it a "gross affront" to his dignity. For a people's poet, he was full of an aristocrat's entitled resentment. It's a wonder that such a "dissolute young rake" had time between brothels, faro and the theater to become so famous, as much for his satires and obscene epigrams as for his revolutionary odes, before his 21st birthday.
This giddy period drew to a close in 1820, when several of his anti-authoritarian poems came to the unamused attention of Tsar Alexander I. He was exiled to the south instead of Siberia only upon his promise to refrain from writing verses against the government. In muslin trousers on the Black Sea coast he imagined himself as Ovid, exiled by Augustus. Nevertheless, between quadrilles, gunfights, police spies and fast women, he wrote like an e-mail maniac. All of a sudden, from mornings in bed with a notebook on his knees, he produced "Ruslan and Lyudmila," and "The Gypsies," with "Boris Godunov" and "Eugene Onegin" waiting in the wings.
Tsar Alexander died in November 1825, after which, against the succession of his younger brother Nicholas, the Decembrist liberals revolted - and were executed or exiled. At least 11 had been friends of Pushkin. Several, in the dock, professed admiration for his freedom poems. Yet none had breathed a word to him of their conspiracy, probably because they didn't trust him to keep his mouth shut. But the Pushkin permitted by Nicholas to return to St. Petersburg, with strings attached, was not the protorevolutionary he had appeared to be before his forced sabbatical.
Not even Binyon knows exactly what happened. Somewhere in the south, a Byronic sympathy for Greek independence somehow metastasized into imperial bloodlust. He no longer identified with the Circassians, Chechens and Ingush, "the free mountain peoples," but celebrated instead their pacification even unto genocide.
But later came "The Bronze Horseman," the greatest poem in the Russian language and perhaps the best poem about power since the "Iliad." It remained unpublished in Pushkin's short but eventful lifetime.
Pushkin: A Biography. By T. J. Binyon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $35.
TITLE: navy movie is a bit of a shipwreck
AUTHOR: by Stephen Hunter
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: A good rule of thumb is, avoid movies with colons in the title. A colon connotes equal weight for both halves of the entity surrounding it. In other words, someone, namely the author, hasn't been able to make up his mind which half is more important. He hasn't discriminated - and that, after all, is his job.
And thus the much ballyhooed and ultra-handsome "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" suffers from what might be called colonitis. It comprises too many equal parts, and they tangle each other up. Everything is important, which comes to mean that nothing is important. Derived from two novels in the famed Patrick O'Brian series set aboard a British man-of-war during the Napoleonic era, it also pulls in snatches from other O'Brian books and additions from the imaginations of director Peter Weir and his co-scenarist John Collee. Lots of material, but nobody has done much discriminating.
Thus the thing feels weirdly overstuffed, as stories keep stumbling into and over one another or are buried beneath the arrival of other stories. The worst example is the film's narrative framework - a long cat-and-mouse sea hunt between the British ship HMS Surprise and a faster, meaner, bigger Frenchy called the Acheron that is presented in the early going as a matter of utmost, almost overwhelming importance. But if it's so important, why does Weir keep shunting it aside, even losing contact with it as other, lesser stories take precedence? He even puts the hunt for the devious Acheron on pause to make room for a bird-watching expedition! Only when the bird-watcher stumbles upon the Acheron at harbor does Weir remember what the movie is about.
The center of the O'Brian novels is the relationship between two men, the indomitable man of war Capt. Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and his ship's surgeon, amateur naturalist and, in the books at least, intelligence agent Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany). So in sync are the two very different minds - Jack's is action-oriented, direct, noble; Stephen's is subtle, ironic, witty - that they make beautiful music together on the Surprise's afterdeck.
But as beautiful as the music is, and as experienced as the actors are with each other (they related brilliantly in "A Beautiful Mind"), the truth here is that neither shows particularly well. Crowe is outsize in the old movie-star fashion, a stern face, a stout body, a formidable presence, but the movie idealizes Jack Aubrey to a somewhat irritating degree: not only is he brilliant, brave and inspirational, but he's also inspirational, brilliant and brave. Plus, he plays a mean fiddle, gives great speeches and is handy with a sword. But on the downside, he's - oops, they left the downside out of the film (but not out of the books, where Aubrey frequently displays an importunate randy streak, expressed on the wives of various Brit officials in ports of call). The movie makes him into a Sgt. Rock of the Royal Navy, though I suppose that would make him Capt. Rock. So the character isn't nearly as persuasive as a more subtly shaded, darker evocation might have been.
As for Bettany, this was to be the picture that would make him a star, and it won't. The movie is so pitched to Crowe that Bettany doesn't imprint with any singularity, and certainly not with anything like the power and charm he brought to "A Beautiful Mind."
As it wanders about the globe, windblown and drifty, the movie does find a good subplot now and then. The best of these has to do with the presence of young men - very young - on these ships as midshipmen preparing for a life at sea. The precocious among them are given yet more onerous responsibility, which leads to certain astonishments. The hero-boy of the Surprise ends up, one-armed and, at the tender age of 13, leading wizened, tattooed sailors in hand-to-hand combat when the Surprise finally does surprise the Acheron. The young actor Max Perkis, who plays Midshipman Lord Blakeney, is terrific in the part, easily the master and commander of his elders.
And then there's war. The movie begins with battle and closes with battle. It's a shame the first one is so powerful and the last one so generic; it ought to be the other way around. But that first fight, when the Acheron opens fire from a fog bank - loved the sudden flashes breaking out of the white wall of vapor - and the French heavy ball tears into the Surprise's wooden hull and converting what it strikes by shot's deadly alchemy into shrapnel, is immediate and terrifying. Suddenly we're in a wooden Verdun where the very air seems alive with death. Wow: it has to be the best naval battle sequence ever gotten onto film, and totally as terrifying as Weir's brilliant re-creation of the crucible of "Gallipoli."
In the end, the film seems fated to disappoint everyone except the slick magazines that put it on their covers. The cognoscenti who have memorized the O'Brian novels will pull out their hair at the liberties taken, the plots and incidents meshed together haphazardly. The Aubrey-innocent, who don't know the difference between a topgallant and a preventer backstay, will just wonder what the fuss is about.
TITLE: the word's worth
TEXT: In English, we sometimes say that hatred is just one step away from love. Well, in Russian, devotion and betrayal are flip sides of the same word. Moy predanniy drug menya predal (my devoted friend betrayed me). Hmm. This is the sort of thing that tends to drive us non-native speakers around the bend, but actually it's not so hard to understand.
Predat has the original sense of "to hand something over" (peredat). It is used in phrases like predat telo zemle (to commit someone's body to the earth); predat vonovnika sudu (to hand the culprit over to the courts); or predat chto-to glasnosti (to make something public, to make something known, literally, "to give voice to something"). If you use the somewhat old-fashioned reflexive form predavatsya / predatsya, it means "to give yourself over to something/someone," "to devote yourself to something/ someone": On predavalsya razdumyam (he surrendered to contemplation). From this you get the adjective predanniy, which means committed or devoted, or the noun predannost (devotion).
But when you give someone or something over to someone else, it means you are betraying them. On predal taynu moyemu vragu (he revealed my secret to my enemy). On menya predal (he betrayed me).
If the betrayal was of a personal nature, you might clarify that: On mnye izmenil (he was unfaithful to me). In the domestic context, izmena is marital infidelity; in the governmental context, it's treason.
Sdat is prison camp slang that has infiltrated everyday speech. It means "to rat on someone," "to give someone up," as in the phrase: Oni sdali yevo mentam (they gave him up to the cops). In everyday speech, it can mean "to give someone away." Ya khotel sdelat yemu syupriz i priglasil yevo druzey v restoran na yevo den rozhdeniya. No yevo druzya menya sdali (On his birthday, I invited his friends to a restaurant for a surprise party. But his friends gave me away). In this context sdat is used somewhat jokingly; it would be more correct to say: yevo druzya vydali menya.
Podstavit is another useful word to know. Depending on the context, it can mean "to frame someone," "to expose someone" or "to put someone in an awkward situation." You could translate the film title "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" as "Kto podstavil Krolika Rodzhera?" It's clear in this context that the accusation is unjust or evidence is fabricated. You could also say: On menya podstavil! On provyol vecher s lyubovnitsey, a zhenye skazal, chto byl u menya (He put me in an awkward situation. He spent the evening with his lover, but he told his wife that he was with me). The awkwardness comes from trying to guess what he told his wife you had for dinner, so your stories match up.
Strong words to describe this kind of rat are predatel (betrayer) and vrag (enemy). You can also call him either ne drug or nedrug (emphasis on the first syllable), depending on the level and nature of the betrayal. On tebye - ne drug means "he's not your friend," "he's no friend of yours." On tvoy nedrug is much stronger and means "he's your enemy." You could also say nedobrozhelatel (someone who wishes you harm), vreditel (pest, in Soviet times "a saboteur") or izmennik (deceiver, betrayer, traitor).
Or you can simply call him zmeya (literally, a snake). If you feel like a bit of high drama, you can say: Ya prigrel zmeyu na svoyey grudi! (I warmed the snake on my breast!) It will be clear that once the snake warmed up, he bit you. That's what snakes do.
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
TITLE: Additional U.S. Marines Head For Iraq
AUTHOR: By Robert Burns
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The Pentagon says it will include several thousand more Marines than originally planned in the rotation of fresh combat and support forces in Iraq next year.
As a result, the overall force is likely to be larger than the 105,000 total the Pentagon had estimated on Nov. 6, when it first announced most details of the rotation plan, expected to start in January. There are about 130,000 U.S. troops there now.
In the announcement Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved the mobilization of 9,900 Army, 1,290 Navy and 3,208 Air Force reserve personnel for the rotation.
Rumsfeld also put on alert 4,228 Army, 1,290 Navy and 2,381 Air Force reservists, to let them know they may be mobilized for duty in Iraq. The specific units alerted and mobilized Wednesday were not disclosed. The Pentagon says they can expect to be on active duty for up to 18 months.
The rotation is due to be completed in May, and the fresh forces are expected to stay there for one year.
Although the Pentagon did not provide a total, it appears that by May it will be closer to 110,000, counting the additional Marines.
For reasons not explained Wednesday, the Pentagon said it had decided to send an additional three battalions of Marines. Those would be beyond the 20,000 designated on Nov. 6.
The Pentagon also did not specify how many Marines would be in the three battalions. Officials said the total, including support and service support troops, would be in the range of several thousand.
The Pentagon has struggled to set the troop rotation for 2004 because of President George W. Bush administration's inability so far to persuade its international partners to contribute significant numbers of troops.
TITLE: Activist Admits She Spied for Beijing
AUTHOR: By Curt Anderson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Gao Zhan was a celebrated human rights activist and scholar whose imprisonment by the Chinese was opposed by the highest levels of the U.S. government. It turns out that she also was selling sensitive American technology to China.
Gao, who was born in China but is a U.S. resident living in McLean, Virginia, pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of unlawful export for selling 80 microprocessors. She also pleaded guilty to tax evasion, as did her husband, Xue Donghua.
"The technology exported in this case is tightly controlled for good reason: it can be used in sensitive military systems," said Kevin Delli-Colli, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. The Defense Criminal Investigative Service was also involved in the case.
Gao could face up to 10 years in prison, with sentencing set for March 5. But prosecutors say she could get a more lenient sentence if she continues to cooperate with investigators. Xue, who could face up to a year in prison, also agreed to cooperate.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington declined to comment.
Gao gained international attention when she was arrested in China on Feb. 11, 2001 on charges of spying for Taiwan. She and her husband and their 5-year-old son were about to return to the United States following a visit when they were seized by government agents.
Gao was jailed. Her husband, who is an American citizen, and son were detained and separated from each other for 26 days before being allowed to return to the United States without her.
Her release was secured in part by President George W. Bush's phone call to Chinese President Jiang Zemin, which came during a time of tense U.S.-China relations following a collision over the South China Sea between a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet. The spy plane made an emergency landing and no one aboard was hurt. The Chinese plane crashed and the pilot died.
While court documents lay out the crimes Gao has admitted to committing, U.S. officials were unable to explain why China suspected her of spying against it if she had been helping Beijing for years before that.
According to prosecutors, from 1998 to 2001 Gao helped the Chinese government obtain more than $1.5 million in sensitive items using a false name and a front company.
Court documents say Gao admitted to using the name "Gail Heights" to order high-tech items to be illegally shipped to China through a front company called "Technology Business Services" or "University Services" that she falsely claimed was connected to George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
U.S. Customs officials were tipped to the scheme in fall 2000 by a company that had found no connection between the university and the "Gail Heights" who had placed an order for electronic parts that fall under U.S. government export controls.
TITLE: Northern Ireland Faces Wait To Know Election Results
AUTHOR: By Shawn Pogatchnik
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BELFAST - Northern Ireland faced a two-day wait Thursday to find out which parties have won majority control of the province's legislature - and, through it, the power to form or block a new Catholic-Protestant administration.
Voters on Wednesday chose the 108 members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which has been suspended for the past 13 months because of an Irish Republican Army spying scandal.
The first winners were expected to be announced Thursday. But the complexity of the election - which allowed voters to rate several candidates in order of preference - meant several recounts of ballots will be required. Many results won't be known until Friday.
Partial results of an exit-poll survey Thursday suggested that the extremes of Northern Irish opinion - the IRA-linked Sinn Fein and Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists - were running neck and neck with their moderate rivals.
Paisley has promised to torpedo any attempt to include Sinn Fein in any future government if his party seizes the Protestant side of the house.
Irish state broadcasters RTE, which commissioned the survey of voters leaving polling stations across Northern Ireland, reported that Sinn Fein appeared to be edging ahead of the Social Democratic and Labor Party. The SDLP won 24 seats, Sinn Fein 18 at the last legislative election in 1998.
RTE said early indications suggested that the Ulster Unionists - who angered many Protestants by voting in late 1999 to form a four-party administration involving Sinn Fein - had retained a narrow lead over Paisley's supporters.
RTE cautioned, however, that it wouldn't release details of its survey until later Thursday because answers from about 600 of 1,500 voters polled had not been tabulated yet. Many of the unprocessed interviewees were from Sinn Fein's power base of Catholic west Belfast.
Overnight, Catholic youths threw rocks and gasoline-filled bottles at police escorting ballot boxes from the Shantallow district of Londonderry, the province's second-largest city. Nobody was reported hurt and police reported no other violence.
Efforts to form a stable Catholic-Protestant administration have dominated peacemaking efforts since 1998, when rival politicians backed the U.S.-brokered Good Friday accord on Northern Ireland's future.
The landmark pact recommended that Northern Ireland should be governed by a grand coalition that included Sinn Fein.
The Assembly is unlikely to convene before Christmas, largely because its first key task would be to vote to elect the senior Catholic and Protestant administration figures. Failure to elect politicians to the top two posts within six weeks would trigger the Assembly's renewed dissolution and a new election.
TITLE: U.S. CSKA Player Gets Citizenship
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Russian joke tells of an American spy who, though he speaks perfect Russian and has a fake passport, is immediately exposed as an imposter. The giveaway? He is black.
J.R. Holden, a black American basketball player from Pittsburgh, is equally conspicuous when he takes the floor for CSKA Moscow as a Russian citizen. The difference is that unlike the doomed fictitious spy, Holden's Russian passport is legit.
A two-time all-league point guard for Bucknell University, the 185-centimeter Holden was three days away from hanging up his sneakers and starting to look for a "real job" after graduating in 1998 when he got a call from a professional basketball club in Riga offering to pay him $3,000 per month to quarterback the team.
"I thought I had hit the big time," Holden said. "I thought I was rich."
By accepting the offer, Holden embarked on a career that took him from Latvia to Belgium to Greece and eventually to the Russian capital last season, where he has become a star for CSKA Moscow, the defending Russian champion and one of Europe's strongest clubs. And the most intriguing turn in Holden's journey came last month, when, by presidential decree, he became a citizen of the Russian Federation.
The idea to make Holden a Russian citizen came from CSKA Basketball CEO Sergei Kushchenko last January in response to new regulations from the Russian Basketball Federation dictating that Russian league teams can have no more than five foreigners on their game roster. Of those foreigners, no more than two can be U.S. citizens, and no more than three can be on the court at once.
Similar regulations are common in European leagues in order to prevent hired foreign guns from dominating play and to keep a semblance of national flavor.
Kushchenko said the new rules created problems for CSKA, which, until Holden's naturalization, had five foreigners - including three Americans - on its roster.
With Holden, who rarely plays less than 35 minutes of the 40-minute games, listed as a Russian citizen, CSKA was able to keep its other two Americans - veteran center Victor Alexander and guard Marcus Brown - and free up a spot for another foreigner.
CSKA began doing the paperwork for Holden's citizenship in May on the basis of article 13.3 in the federal law on citizenship, which states that "a person of special merit before the Russian Federation may be accepted as a citizen of the Russian Federation" regardless of other standard criteria, such as living in Russia for a minimum of five years or knowledge of the Russian language.
"We had to convince the authorities that J.R. fit this description," Kushchenko said. "He is one of the best guards in Europe, he was the Most Valuable Player of the Russian league last year, and at age 27, he's at the peak of his career."
Holden said he thought Kushchenko was joking when he first brought up the idea in January.
"But then this summer, while I was in the States, [CSKA] kept writing me e-mails asking about my mother's name, my sister's name and things like that," he said. "And I thought, 'They're really serious about this.'"
Finally on Oct. 20, with letters of support from Mayor Yury Luzhkov and the State Sports Committee, J.R. Holden became a Russian citizen by a decree from President Vladimir Putin.
It may seem suspicious for a government to go out of its way to help out one particular club team in the national league. But Kushchenko had an ace up his sleeve when making the case for Holden as a "person of special merit."
"We said we could use him in the national team," he said.
The idea of a black American point guard running the show for the Russian national team might seem like science fiction to someone waking up from a Cold War-era coma, but assuming both Holden and the Russian Basketball Federation are willing, there is nothing to prevent such a scenario.
According to the regulations of world basketball's governing body, FIBA, a naturalized player is eligible to play for the national team of his adopted country if he has never played for a national team in his native country.
Since he has never played for a U.S. national team, Holden is free to play for the red, white and blue of the Russian flag.
Russian Basketball Federation president Sergei Chernov said he is very interested in putting Holden on the floor with his new compatriots, especially considering the problems the national team had at the point guard position in the most recent European Championships, where it failed to qualify for the 2004 Athens Olympics.
"We have two deficiencies in our national team: at the center and point guard positions," Chernov said. "He would immediately take care of our problems at point guard. He's a great dribbler, defender, passer and shooter."
Chernov said that official talks with Holden will take place after the New Year, when a replacement will be named for current national team coach Sergei Yelevich. He noted, however, that the federation had already had informal talks with Holden, who expressed interest in playing for Russia.
"If he can make his teammates better, why wouldn't they want to play with him?" Chernov said. "We want to defend the honor of our country, and if he's ready to do that, then we'd be pleased to have him."
The national team's next major task will be to qualify for the 2005 European Championships in Belgrade.
For now, Holden is keeping mum on whether he will play for Russia, finessing questions like a seasoned diplomat.
"I can't really talk about it," he said. "Right now I'm only focused on playing for CSKA."
After some prodding, Holden did admit that "the national team is pretty good. I could probably help them, but I don't think I'd make them a lot better or worse."
Being black can be an obstacle in Moscow, where attacks on dark-skinned foreigners are common.
Former Spartak Moscow soccer player Jerry-Christian Tchuisse, a naturalized Russian citizen from Cameroon, said this year that he was scared to leave his apartment in Moscow for fear of being assaulted because he was black.
But Holden said he has never experienced such problems since coming to Moscow, noting that did not grow up in the "best neighborhood."
"I'm used to being aware of danger and protecting myself," he said.
Holden says he sees himself playing professionally for about five more years, and that he would not mind finishing out his career in Moscow.
"Moscow's been great to me," he said. "It was here that for the first time people considered me one of the best point guards in Europe."
Holden said his family was supportive of his decision to obtain Russian citizenship, though there was some typical parental concern.
"They just said, 'Make sure you can come home and that you keep your U.S. citizenship,'" he said.
TITLE: Lakers Shines Without O'Neal
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - Another game without Shaquille O'Neal, another blowout victory for the Los Angeles Lakers.
It's obviously nothing more than coincidence.
"We want him back in the worst way," Karl Malone said after the Lakers took command early in beating the Washington Wizards 120-99 on Wednesday night.
"It is impressive, but hey, we realize who he is and what he means to us. Guys have just found their stroke a little bit. Let's not put the buggy ahead of the horse. We know what he means to us."
Kobe Bryant scored 22 points and Devean George had a season-high 18 points for the Lakers, who shot 61.4 percent (43-of-70).
Eight Los Angeles players scored in double figures, something that hadn't happened for the Lakers since Feb. 19, 1998.
"They spanked us pretty good," Washington's Kwame Brown said. "If Shaq was in the game, who knows?"
The Lakers shot 59.2 percent without O'Neal in a 121-89 victory over Memphis on Sunday night.
"A lot of people are finding their stroke and then we are getting easy buckets and layups," George said.
"We're having fun, that's good, that's what we're supposed to do - have fun and win games," Lakers guard Gary Payton said. "As soon as the Big Fella comes back, it's going to be even better."
The game was essentially over by halftime, when the Lakers held a 61-36 lead. The Wizards (6-9) were playing their fourth road game in six nights.
O'Neal, who has a strained muscle in his right calf, said he hopes to return Friday night against the defending NBA champion San Antonio Spurs.
"Right now, I'm about 70 percent," he said before the game. "If I can get it up to 80, I'll be ready to go."
The win was the fourth straight and seventh in eight games for the Lakers (12-3). It also extended their regular-season home winning streak to 23, including eight this season.
The Wizards lost for the seventh time in 10 games. They played their second game without leading scorer Gilbert Arenas, who went on the injured list Tuesday with a severe abdominal strain.
Derek Fisher and Kareem Rush added 14 points each and Malone had 13 for the Lakers. None of the Los Angeles starters played in the fourth quarter.
Rookie Jarvis Hayes led Washington with 22 points to equal his career high. Juan Dixon added a season-high 20 points for the Wizards, who had six players in double figures.
"Those are the type of ones you forget about - throw away the tape," Wizards coach Eddie Jordan said. "They are playing for a championship. They showed it. We're just not good enough now to compete at their highest level."
A three-point play by George with 7:33 remaining in the third quarter gave the Lakers a 73-44 lead. It was 92-69 entering the final period.
Hayes scored eight points and Dixon added five as the Wizards outscored the Lakers 15-8 to start the fourth quarter, making it 100-84.
But Bryon Russell and Fisher made back-to-back 3-pointers to put the Lakers ahead by 22.
Medvedenko and Fisher scored seven points each during a 22-7 run that extended the Lakers' lead to 57-32 late in the second quarter.
The Lakers scored 10 straight points - five by Bryant - for a 14-6 lead in the opening 4:15 of play.
They led the rest of the way.
Bryant had 11 points and George had nine in the first period, which ended with the Lakers leading 31-21. The Wizards weren't closer than 10 points after that.