SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #925 (93), Friday, December 5, 2003
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TITLE: Poll Results Will Be Posted on Web
AUTHOR: By Caroline McGregor
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - As the country gears up to elect its fourth post-Soviet State Duma on Sunday, The St. Petersburg Times' sister paper, The Moscow Times, is gearing up to conduct an exit poll.
The Moscow Times has joined forces with the Soros Foundation, Renaissance Capital and polling agency ROMIR to survey 20,000 voters in 150 cities on election day.
The poll is an effort to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the country's democratic process in action, as well as to provide insight into voter behavior and attitudes.
Results will be available online at elections.themoscowtimes.com, starting from 9:01 p.m. Moscow time, with continuous updates over the following days, giving vote-count breakdowns by federal district.
Under current Russian law, exit poll data cannot be published until the country's last polling stations are closed, in Kaliningrad, one hour behind Moscow, since such information could sway voters' choices.
The Central Elections Commission will release preliminary figures of the actual vote count at 10 p.m., with a fuller picture coming Monday morning. Final results will be announced before Dec. 19, commission chairman Alexander Veshnyakov said.
Information from exit polls run in 1999 by Kremlin spin doctor Gleb Pavlovsky was published during the election day on the Internet and helped to sway voter sentiment in favor of Unity, a party created just two months before the election by Pavlovsky and a team of Kremlin insiders for the express purpose of countering the threat posed by the Communists and Fatherland-All Russia, the bloc headed by former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.
The Kremlin placed such faith in the power of the exit polls that by 9:51 a.m. on the day of the vote, Pavlovsky sent a pager message to Valentin Yumashev, the former Kremlin chief of staff who remained a member of the Kremlin inner circle, saying, "It looks a lot like victory," according to Yelena Tregubova, who was there that day as a Kommersant reporter and described the experience in her new book "Tales of a Kremlin Digger."
In 1996, The Moscow Times together with CNN commissioned a series of opinion polls in the run-up to presidential elections in June, which showed that Yeltsin had been able to secure a strong lead over Gennady Zyuganov, his Communist challenger.
In 1999, there were already several sources for reliable polling data ahead of elections, and concern had shifted to whether or not the voting process was fair. In the March 2000 vote that made Putin head of state, Moscow Times reporters documented substantial fraud.
The exit poll to be done Sunday, canvassing 40 sample regions across all seven federal districts, should help demonstrate how valid the electoral process is. Within a 3.5 percent margin of error, its figures should tally with official results. Any significant divergences could suggest flaws in the system.
Veshnyakov denies that there is any chance of ballot-box stuffing, pointing to the sophistication of the commission's $58 million computerized voting system, called GAS-Vybory.
International organizations like the OSCE and the Council of Europe have sent hundreds of observers to monitor polling stations. Parties, too, will dispatch supporters to keep an eye on the process.
Voters will be given two ballots - one for party lists and one for individual single-mandate candidates. Each determines half of the Duma's 450 seats.
Just how many of the 110,760,402 voters the Central Elections Commission says are registered will turn out is unclear, though surveys suggest that 55 percent to 60 percent will cast votes. In 1999, turnout was 62 percent.
Of the 23 parties in the race, only the handful that win at least 5 percent of the party-list vote are eligible to the 225 seats awarded based on their share of the vote. The seats that would have gone to parties that don't clear the 5 percent hurdle - considered "wasted" votes - are proportionately redistributed among those that do.
On the other ballot, voters will select for an individual to represent the geographic single-mandate district where they live. Some candidates are affiliated with parties, others are not.
Initial exit poll results, available Sunday night, will give only a snapshot of the party-list vote because single-mandate data is more complicated to register.
Opinion polls are barred from publication in the last week before the vote. The consensus among observers, though, is that pro-Putin centrists, including United Russia and other Kremlin-allied parties, will control some 250 seats, with the Communists a distant second, holding, at best, half that number.
The reapportioned "wasted" votes could push United Russia to within striking distance of the two-thirds majority of 300 seats that would allow it to change the Constitution.
Pro-Kremlin centrists held 234 seats in the Duma elected in 1999, which convened for the last time on Nov. 29. Communists and their allies held 131 seats, and, as importantly, chaired 11 of the 27 Duma committees.
Pavlovsky, speaking Thursday on the sidelines of a news conference, said "Elections in Russia always produce the unexpected, though I do think we are going to see a serious victory for United Russia."
It would be a "miracle" if Yabloko clears the 5 percent barrier, he said, and the Union of Right Forces, too, runs the risk of being shut out. In this case, "United Russia could turn out to be the most liberal force in the Duma."
Michael McFaul, a Russian politics expert who teaches at Stanford University, agreed that Yabloko was in dangerous territory.
"The difference between 4.9 percent and 5.0 percent seems small, but politically, it's enormous," said McFaul, who is in Moscow this week. He added that Yabloko tends to "overpoll," while Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party, for example, does better, not worse, than expected on election day.
If the Duma is filled with the "amorphous" United Russia and a slew of nationalist-socialist parties, he said, "suddenly there will be a different feel than in the past, when reformers and anti-reformers were in opposition to each other."
"The momentum is on the side of United Russia. The Communists made giant mistakes," McFaul said, namely by flirting with millionaires. "The combination of the Kremlin wanting to weaken them [the Communists] and not very well thought-out moves on their own part created a crisis for them."
TITLE: Voters in U.S. May Seal Fate of Seleznyov, Khakamada
AUTHOR: By Matt Bivens, Kevin O'Flynn and Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A huge swathe of the Russian electorate will ignore this Sunday's elections, as completely as the politicians will have ignored them throughout the course of the campaign.
Even though there are millions of Russians eligible to vote abroad, they will likely have a minor effect on the election results.
Except, perhaps, in one election district in St. Petersburg, where outgoing State Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov is fighting for his political survival.
Although there are no official figures on how many Russians are eligible to vote abroad, the Foreign Ministry says that there are a potential 1.177 million voters.
But this figure only counts those who have registered to vote in 339 special polling stations in 140 countries worldwide - a figure far lower than the number of Russians who have emigrated in recent years, or those left behind after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
In Germany alone, there are 300,000 Russians registered at the embassy, but a spokesman said perhaps three times that number of emigre Russians live in the country.
In Britain, where an estimated 200,000 Russians can vote in London or Edinburgh, there has been little excitement or campaigning for the election, said Natalya Chouvaeva, editor of the Russian-language London Courier.
A small part of the reluctance comes from older Russians still wary of going to the old Soviet Embassy.
"Some people are [still] afraid to go to the embassy," Chouvareva said.
Analysts said that most Russian politicians have yet to realize the value of courting Russian emigres.
Russian voters abroad are generally seen as more liberal than the electorate back home, with proportionately more support for parties such as Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, or SPS.
One exception to the overall expatriate apathy could be the United States, where Russians living in or visiting the country this weekend will be able to vote, and perhaps play a crucial role in deciding whether Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov makes it back into the next parliament.
Seleznyov, until recently a Communist Party member, is battling against SPS co-leader Irina Khakamada, to represent the 468,000 voters of District No. 209 in St. Petersburg.
But Seleznyov and Khakamada will also be fighting for the votes of an indeterminate number of Russians in the United States, in the first election where expatriate votes will be counted toward single-mandate districts, as well as for the party list elections.
St. Petersburgers of District No. 209 will have to share their single-mandate election with their stateside countrymen. Russians in Britain will vote in Preobrazhenskaya, District No. 199 in Tulskaya region.
Valery Shchetinin, deputy head of the Foreign Ministry's elections commission, said that Russians abroad will cast their ballots as in Russia, from 8.a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday local time, wherever they are in the world. But in a number of countries in the Muslim world, voting will begin Friday and Saturday, as Sunday is a non-working day, he said.
So how many Russian votes are there in America, anyway? Yevgeny Khorishko, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington, said he's had consular officials working on that very riddle.
The answer? "They say it's almost impossible to figure out," he said.
And there is no registering to vote beforehand: Anyone who shows up at a polling station in Washington, New York, San Francisco or Houston waving a Russian passport gets a ballot.
Khorishko, who sits on the elections commission governing Russians voting in the United States, cited two contradictory figures. A report by the U.S. State Department says the metropolitan area of Miami, Florida, alone is home to some 300,000 Russian-speaking residents (though not all are voting-age Russian citizens). But in the 1999 Duma elections, about 3,000 Russians voted in the entire United States, Khorishko said.
A compromise figure of 40,000 is listed on the Central Elections Commission web site.
"Forty thousand [voters]!" says Sergei Gaidii, a spokesman for Khakamada's campaign. " If they all come and vote, that could be 10 percent of the ballot box. And this when a close election could be decided, not by thousands of votes, but by hundreds."
"Yes, there's 40,000 votes, so it will play a significant role," said Sergei Kostarnoi, Seleznyov's press secretary.
But the 40,000 figure may be a touch optimistic. At the last election, only a tenth of that number turned out.
Khakamada's team says it is not running a special American campaign. But Seleznyov is, complete with leaflets, free 2004 photo calendars of himself, and a large spread in the New York newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo.
There, Seleznyov playfully styles himself a child of the pokoleniye babibumerov (the Baby Boom generation), talks of his fondness for Americans and Israelis, and his hatred of stereotypes about Communists.
"We have prepared a whole campaign program for America," Kostarnoi said.
TITLE: Revelations Make Finns Review War Extraditions
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As Finns celebrate their Independence Day on Saturday, they will revisit their view of themselves after recent revelations that their country handed over dozens of Soviet Jews to Germany where almost certain death awaited them during World War II.
"The Extradited," a new book by Finnish historian Elina Sana, for the first time reports that about 3,000 foreigners, including 74 Jews, were sent by Finns to Nazi Germany. The news has led to a public debate in Finland.
As a result, on Nov. 19 the Finnish government launched an investigation into the deportation.
"The book got such a response because it showed completely new data on the number of foreigners and Jews extradited by Finland," Sana said in a telephone interview from Helsinki on Thursday.
"Most of those extradited were Soviet prisoners of war, and among them were many Jews," Sana said.
Mark Grubarg, head of St. Petersburg Jewish Society, said Thursday he is concerned not only about Jews being deported, but about all Soviet soldiers.
"Deportation to Nazis was equally bad for everyone," Grubarg said.
"I don't think the Finns who deported Soviet soldiers thought there was any difference in their nationality," he said. "They just deported Soviet soldiers."
"However, one thing is clear: when they deported people of Jewish nationality, it clearly meant their death," Grubarg said.
The Finns fought alongside the Germans, following the loss of a tenth of Finland's territory after Stalin attacked it in the Winter War of Nov. 30, 1939 to March 13, 1940. That action ended in a ceasefire.
Stalin's assault was made with his knowledge of the secret Ribbentrop pact made with Hitler that allocated Germany and the Soviet Union certain spheres of interest. The two dictators also used the pact to divide up Poland in 1939.
But in 1941, after Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, the Finns' position changed and they allied with Germany from June 25, 1941 to Sept. 4, 1944, which included their taking part in the siege of Leningrad.
Sana has been quoted as saying that the Jews were handed over to the Germans in order to enlist German support and as such were "part of the price for our freedom."
Finland has always been proud of having protected its own Jewish citizens from the Nazis, and previously it believed that the total number of Jews to fall into German hands from Finland was eight.
When SS head Heinrich Himmler visited Finland in the summer of 1942, there were fears that he would demand that Finland hand its Jews to Germany.
Finns are proud to tell how Prime Minister Jukka Rangell responded when Himmler asked about Finland's Jews.
"Finland has a couple of thousand Jews - decent families and individuals, whose sons fight in our army just like other Finns, and who are as respected as citizens as all others," Rangell said.
He ended his comments by telling Himmler: "Wir haben keine Judenfrage" ("We have no Jewish question").
The issue of the eight Jewish deportees was so important for Finland, which is proud of its liberal democracy, that a monument was erected memorializing the extradition.
November's decision to launch an investigation into the deportation of foreigners to Nazi Germany was also conditioned by a request for information from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, famous for hunting down Nazi criminals.
In a statement posted on its web site, the center called for a full report on the deportations and, if possible, the punishment of those responsible.
Political historian Professor Seppo Hentilk told the Helsinki Sanomat newspaper that Finland had no alternative but to launch an investigation.
"The Holocaust is such a sensitive issue in Central Europe that we cannot just shrug our shoulders," Hentilk said.
Hentilk said the investigation needed to involve many years of work by several researchers "if we wanted to investigate the matter thoroughly."
The Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, which welcomed Finland's decision to investigate the deportations, also called for the use of independent scholars.
Its statement concluded that "the investigation of these events is likely to prove painful and embarrassing for Finland, which admirably protected its own Jewish citizenry from being murdered by Nazi Germany during World War II."
"But the clarification of these deportations, which had such tragic consequences, is a necessity if Finland seeks to honestly confront its record during the Holocaust," it said.
Academic Heikki Ylikangas was assigned the investigation and is to inform Helsinki of the initial results by the end of January.
"For present-day Finland the investigation of this question is very important, because Finland has been regarded as open democratic constitutional state," Ylikangas said in a written response to questions.
He said Finland deported 2,600 to 2,800 Soviet prisoners of war to Germany. About 600 of them were expelled because of their political orientation.
Eighty to ninety of the Soviet prisoners of war were Jewish, he said.
"I must say the examination is very difficult because a big part of archives was systematically destroyed at the end of the war," Ylikangas said.
Sana also said she had difficulties when working in Finnish archives.
"I'm 80 percent sure there were more Jewish prisoners deported to Germany than the 74 names that I have found," Sana said.
Sana said there could be one more reason why not all the names of Jewish prisoners could be found.
"The matter is that when being captured Soviet soldiers of Jewish origin tended to hide their Jewish names because they were afraid they would become victims of Holocaust," she said.
The publication of Sana's book has also raised interest in another chapter of Finnish history - the extradition of large numbers of people, including Ingrians, ethnic Finns who had lived in the Soviet Union, to the Soviet Union after the end of the war.
Returning Soviet prisoners of war often suffered a very grim fate: many were sent to the gulag on their return.
TITLE: New Chubais Biography Gives Him Holy Aura
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In an election season dominated by the darker side of public relations, Anatoly Chubais, the consummate contrarian, is shrouding himself in light - holy light.
In a new biography that he edited himself, Chubais, widely derided for creating the oligarchs while lord of the early privatization process, compares his life's work to some kind of divine dance performed to a supernatural beat.
Part Mao and part Matrix, "The Unknown Chubais" characterizes Chubais as "The One" destined to become president of Russia and push the nation into taking a great leap forward.
"Anatoly Chubais is not Vladimir Putin's successor. He is not a member of [Putin's] team... because he is a leader himself," writes the author, Izvestia columnist and Gazeta.ru founder Andrei Kolesnikov.
"He is the leader of his own team, and he cannot play a supporting role on someone else's team."
The book is designed to rehabilitate the impression that Chubais is one of the country's citizens most likely to irritate others.
He also makes clear that Chubais is after more than making sure the Union of Right Forces (SPS) makes it past the 5 percent threshold needed to enter parliament in Sunday's elections.
In short, he wants the presidency.
"The party will not be enough for Chubais," the book says, making it clear that he intends to run in 2008.
Judging by Chubais' recent actions, however, 2004 cannot be ruled out.
Chubais made the decision to return to big-time politics around August, "after vacationing in Greenland, where he couldn't be reached by the cameras of scandalous reporters," the book says. And so he took the No. 3 spot on the SPS party list, though he does not intend to actually take a seat in the Duma should the party collect more than 5 percent of the vote.
"It has became obvious that SPS has become an instrument for Chubais to realize his own political objectives, a pad for launching into orbit," said Dmitry Orlov, deputy general director of the Center of Political Technologies.
Analysts said that if SPS manages to break the 5 percent barrier in Sunday's election, which is a big if, Chubais should get all the credit.
"He should have been No. 1 on the SPS list," said Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the Politika think tank. "This would have got the party more votes."
Once the decision to plunge into politics was made, Chubais began his "rehabilitation campaign" by taking advantage of his position as chief executive of state-owned national power monopoly Unified Energy Systems, which literally gives him access to every household, company and local government in the country.
First he pushed through lower tariffs for electricity consumers in his native St. Petersburg and dozens of other regions where SPS has traditionally fared the best, and sent out 30 million letters to consumers promising to lower their bills even further in the future.
Chubais then became the only major political figure to openly challenge the Kremlin's legal assault on oil giant Yukos and its multibillionaire founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is in jail on charges of theft and tax evasion.
And then last week, at the annual UES conference in Moscow, which in years past served as a forum for shareholders, analysts and potential investors to grill management, he released his new gospel - but only to journalists.
UES flew in hundreds of reporters from all over the country to attend its conference, and Chubais took advantage of the occasion to personally present a biography that talks about the man's God-inspired "mission" to lead Russia into the future.
"Sovietologists and domestic left-liberal intelligentsia cannot forgive Chubais for being so successful despite not having... the skills of God," the book says.
UES spokesman Leonid Gozman stays on message: "Business is a mission that Chubais feels is some sort of a contract with God. ... He, I am sure, with the same zeal, would dig a ditch and win the third world war."
And former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, Chubais' "best friend," took the comparison ever further: "Complaints by the intelligentsia about Chubais are complaints to God."
While political analysts note that Chubais, who has been blamed for everything from the 1998 economic collapse to deadly heating crises, may have little chance of winning a national election, he has groomed a number of very influential officials, including Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and Central Bank chief Sergei Ignatyev, who appear to worship him.
Orlov said he was "shocked" by at least one aspect of "The Unknown Chubais" - that "the so-called members of his team call him 'Older Brother,' which is unambigously associated with George Orwell's 'Big Brother.'"
Another of Chubais' "little brothers," Yevgeny Yasin, rector of the Higher School of Economics and a former economy minister, put it this way: "I feel pity that people don't understand how lucky they are [to have Chubais]. ... He keeps up working. His contributions are spread across time, which is why they cannot be seen clearly."
In the book, Kolesnikov writes that Chubais' presidential ambitions depend on a new generation of Russians, although political analysts from across the spectrum say he's got virtually no chance of succeeding.
"During two political cycles, the charisma of Chubais may undergo a surprising evolution. There's a fine line between love and hate," he writes.
Leonid Nevzlin, one of Khodorkovsky's exiled partners in Yukos, told Vedomosti this week that "a new, unexpected development in the personality of Anatoly Chubais" will soon be revealed.
But even a personal metamorphosis can't help Chubais, Nikonov said.
In the end, despite Chubais' apparent Messianic complex, he is just too despised by the people to get them to vote for him.
"People at the top often feel that they have a special mission. I guess Khodorkovsky also had that feeling," Nikonov.
TITLE: Luzhkov Re-Election Looks a Sure Thing
AUTHOR: By Denis Maternovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - With only one contender leading anything close to an election campaign, the victory of incumbent Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov in Sunday's mayoral vote seems inevitable, analysts said.
In addition to billionaire banker Alexander Lebedev, Luzhkov, 67, is opposed by coffin magnate German Sterligov and construction firm chief Nikolai Lifanov.
Sterligov, 37, who achieved near-celebrity status in the late 1980s as the founder of one of country's first stock exchanges, Alisa, is an ultranationalist and religious fundamentalist who, among other things, is campaigning with a promise to expel natives of the Caucasus from Moscow.
His first foray into politics was last year when he ran in Krasnoyarsk's gubernatorial election. He took 0.1 percent of the vote.
Lifanov, 57, is the general director of construction firm Progress Association, which has extensive contracts with Luzhkov's City Hall to build schools and hospitals. His electoral campaign has been virtually nonexistent, and he is generally regarded as Luzhkov's backup, meant to ensure that at least two candidates are participating in the election.
"There is no alternative to Luzhkov," said Yury Korgunyuk, a political analyst at the Indem think tank. "No large political movement dares challenge him."
The fact that Luzhkov is a leader of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party and enjoys the tacit support of other political movements has ensured that he has no real competition both this year on in previous races, said Grigory Belonuchkin, an analyst at the Panorama think tank. The Communists have never put forward a mayoral candidate.
Under the law, this will be the last time Luzhkov can seek re-election.
Luzhkov received 88.5 percent of the vote in 1996 and 69.9 percent in 1999.
TITLE: City Prosecutors Open Case Over VNITI Sale
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The city prosecutor's office has opened a criminal case against Dmitry Zuber, general director of the VNITI institute, which is a national center for high-technology defense products, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Citing a statement from the office, the news agency said a case of abuse of authority in regard to the sale of the administrative building located at 87 Maly Prospekt.
The four-story building of the institute was unexpectedly sold in August, after which more than 150 employees of the 5,000 square meter institute were shifted to the fourth floor and allowed to occupy half of the second floor. They were told to pay rent for the space they occupy.
The scientists, who have been barred from entering the building and have held public protests over its sale, condemned the change of ownership as illegal because the board of directors was not consulted.
The case arose as a result of checks ordered by the General Prosecutor's Office, Deputy Property Minister Nikolai Gusev and acting head of the institute A. Potapov, Interfax reported.
"In the course of the checks it was discovered that Zuber had concluded a sale contract for the building with the firms Askon, Sirius, Titan and Triada represented by their general director V. Vinogradov," the statement said, Interfax reported. "The building was sold for the bankruptcy price of $620,000 when its market price was $3.84 million."
"The deal was not economically justifiable, was made without regard to the interests of VNITI, and caused serious harm to the staff, was against the legal interests of the institute's operating company, that led to the expulsion of a great number of qualified specialists, made the work of the enterprise chaotic and damaged the business reputation of VNITI, and created the possibility of control being lost over documents that contain state secrets," the statement continued.
When the board learned of the sale, they temporarily dismissed Zuber and he went on vacation until next spring.
Zuber, the author of many inventions, had worked at the institute since 1961, and was VNITI's director for the last 10 years. He is an Honored Citizen of the city.
TITLE: United Russia Wary of Yudin
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - The pro-Kremlin United Russia party is considering expelling outspoken St. Petersburg Deputy Vladimir Yudin after he accused it of accepting funding from Yukos.
Yudin is perhaps best known for lodging the complaint with prosecutors about alleged misdeeds at Yukos that set off the ongoing legal attack against the oil giant.
At a news conference Tuesday, he accused United Russia chairman and Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov of personally putting representatives of Yukos and other oil majors on the party list for the State Duma elections in exchange for financing.
"United Russia is being financed by Yukos and TNK," he said. "Gryzlov has been pulled into the process of embezzlement from state coffers."
In a telephone interview from St. Petersburg, where he was on a campaign trip Wednesday, Yudin said the business presence on the party list will allow oligarchs to "dictate their terms" to President Vladimir Putin, who has publicly acknowledged his reliance on United Russia.
TITLE: Fingerprinting for U.S. Visas
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Fingerprints will be taken from those applying for U.S. visas starting Tuesday, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow said in a statement posted on its web site usembassy.state.gov/ moscow/ on Wednesday.
"The biometric program in its initial stage involves scanning of the two index fingers, a procedure that should only take a few seconds," the statement said.
"Visa applicants will be asked to place each index finger over a small glass screen that makes a picture of the finger, similar to a photocopy or a digital photograph. The scanned finger images will be linked to other identifying data collected from applicants to ensure that travelers to the United States are properly identified and to prevent counterfeiting and alteration of travel documents," it added.
Biometric data that can be used to confirm a traveler's identity.
All nonimmigrant visa applicants over 14 and younger than 80 must provide scanned finger images, except diplomats and officials on official travel and patients seeking urgent medical attention by Oct 26, 2004.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Security for Elections
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Polling stations on Dec. 7 will be guarded by 6,800 militia officers, Boris Donov, deputy chief of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast police, announced Thursday, according to Interfax.
Private security will also be used at polling stations, Donov added.
All militia officers working on Dec. 7 have already received special passes allowing them to vote outside the district of their registration so they can cast their ballots where they are posted.
About 1,500 militia cars will be deployed to ensure ballots are safely delivered. Special units with bomb-sniffing dogs will also be on duty in case bomb threats are received.
More Heroin Awaited
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The state anti-drug agency is expecting an increase in the heroin supply in Russia after a big harvest in Afghanistan, Interfax quoted Alexander Mikhailov, head of the agency, as saying Thursday.
"We have a problem with Afghan heroin and opium," he was quoted as saying. "The heroin harvest in Afghanistan this year was 4,000 metric tons, which one way or another will pass through Russia, and about 90 percent of the Afghan heroin will remain here," Mikhailov said.
"Under the Taliban the Afghan heroin harvest amounted to 189 tons," Mikhailov said.
Khakamada Blackmail
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A criminal case has been initiated against two individuals who attempted to blackmail Irina Khakamada's campaign headquarters Dec. 2, Interfax reported Thursday.
The suspects were taken into custody after the headquarters alerted the militia of a meeting at which 100,000 leaflets containing slanderous statements were to be distributed. The suspects allegedly demanded $90,000 in exchange for not distributing the leaflets.
The economic crimes unit is attempting to identify the printers.
Handicapped Access
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Governor Valentina Matviyenko announced Thursday at an International Disabled Day event at St. Petersburg's Ice Palace that all new buildings in the city would be equipped with ramps.
The city administration is drafting a special resolution to enforce the requirement. Existing buildings would also be equipped with ramps.
Russia has 10.8 million disabled people who make up 7.4 percent of the population.
Flu Epidemic Expected
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - City hospitals and clinics are bracing themselves for a flu epidemic, the state sanitary and epidemiological chief for St. Petersburg, Oleg Parkov, told Interfax Wednesday.
Elective surgery will be postponed, visits to hospitalized patients will be curtailed, and interns and doctors in residency from medical schools will boost staff at clinics and hospitals.
The epidemic was registered Dec. 1 when the number of flu sufferers hit 11,774. The threshold for declaring an epidemic is 9,000 reported cases a day.
The chief epidemiologist noted that flu epidemics usually last between five and six weeks at this time of the year. Surplus Shrinks
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The federal budget surplus in the first 11 months of 2003 was 152.2 billion rubles ($5.13 billion), or 1.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), a Finance Ministry official said on Thursday.
The budget surplus was 164.8 billion rubles, or 1.5 percent of the country's GDP in the January-October period.
Russia sets budget surplus aside in its reserves to help service foreign debt if oil price falls. The government is to transfer extra cash to the so-called stabilization fund starting 2004.
Ruhrgas Concerned
FRANKFURT, Germany (Reuters) - Germany's biggest gas supplier Ruhrgas, which relies on imports for over three-quarters of its gas needs, on Thursday called for more legal protection for foreign investors in Russia.
Part of utility E.ON, Ruhrgas purchased just under a third of its gas from Russia last year, and owns 6.5 percent in Gazprom, the world's biggest gas firm.
"Legal protection in Russia is in a serious state," Ruhrgas CEO and Gazprom board member Burckhard Bergmann told the Financial Times Deutschland. "The question of where the line lies between state and private entities has obviously not yet been determined."
23% Own Cellphone
MOSCOW (Bloomberg)-The country's wireless sales soared in November and nearly one in four Russians now has a cellphone, according to Moscow-based consultant Advanced Communications & Media.
The number of cellphone subscribers in the country soared 1.6 million in November to 33.5 million, or about 23 percent of the population, AC&M said.
Mobile Telesystems, Vimpelcom and Megafon, Russia's three largest cellphone companies, have about 86 percent of the country's wireless market and 99 percent of the market in Moscow, according to AC&M.
Russians are using cellphones more than ever as a fifth year of economic growth boosts wages and consumer spending. In 1995, there were fewer than 100,000 Russian mobile-phone users.
Rambler Not Russian
MOSCOW (SPT) - Russian Funds investment group has sold its 29.1 percent stake in Rambler Internet holding, the companies said in a statement Wednesday.
The stake was purchased by a consortium of western investors created by First Mercantile Capital Group, which became a Rambler shareholder in 2001 and now owns 100 percent of the holding. The size of the deal was not announced. New Holland Plans
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The New Holland urban renewal project could cost $500 million, Sergei Tarasov, vice governor for culture, education and the sciences said at a press conference Thursday, Interfax reported.
Investors could be attracted to the neighborhood by building business centers and hotels on the island, and also by developing the tourism infrastructure, Tarasov said.
Poor utilities infrastructure will be the main hurdle to development scheduled for 2004, Tarasov said.
Eco-Vodka
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Laplandiya vodka became the first brand in the region to be awarded an ecological certificate Wednesday.
The vodka, produced by the Nevsky distillery and distributed by Evroservis, will bear a hologram from the Center for Ecological Projects and Certification.
Alexander Golubev, the center's president, said at a press conference Wednesday that his center issues one-year certificates of ecological purity to producers that request them. Products monitored under agreement are spot-checked at the factory and on retail shelves at least twice a year.
Steel Deal
MOSCOW (SPT) - Metals producer Severstal signed an agreement Thursday to supply RusPromAvto in 2003 and 2004, Interfax reported.
Rolled steel orders will be placed quarterly, according to the terms of the agreement. Thus, 15,000 tons of cold- and hot-rolled steel will be supplied per month during the first quarter of 2004. An additional 4,000 tons of bolt stock will also be supplied.
The Gorkovsky automotive plant is the main consumer in the RusPromAvto holding of Severstal's products. Severstal steel makes up 70 percent of the plant's supplies.
Terminal Postponed
MOSCOW (Reuters) - No. 2 oil firm LUKoil said on Friday it had postponed the launch of the first, 2.5-million-ton block of its new Baltic oil products loading terminal in Vysotsk until the second quarter of 2004.
"LUKOIL has decided to launch the whole of the first section in spring next year, without breaking the process into stages," said a spokeswoman for the firm's oil-product subsidiary in Northwest Russia.
The firm hopes the new outlet will help sidestep Russia's crude export-capacity shortages by exporting refined oil to the United States and Europe.
IFC Investments Flat
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The World Bank's arm for private business financing, the International Finance Corporation, plans to keep its investments in the Russian economy this year at the 2002 level, or $600 million, Edward Nassim, the IFC's Central and Eastern Europe Department director, told an international pulp and paper industry conference Wednesday.
Nassim said investment in the timber industry is one of the IFC's priorities in Russia as the country accounts for about 25 percent of the world's forest resources and offers low production costs in this sphere, Prime-Tass reported.
TITLE: British Stick to Their Guns
AUTHOR: By Michael Diosi
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: British business in St. Petersburg continues to develop, despite the political uncertainties arising from the Yukos affair and the upcoming presidential elections.
According to Dan Kearvell, commercial manager and St. Petersburg representative at the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce, British companies are regaining their confidence in investing in St. Petersburg. "In January 2003 there were just 80 British companies present in the city. Now it is nearly 110," he says. "It is fair to say that British companies are relatively risk-averse, while the crisis of 1998 saw many UK companies leave the city. However, 2002 saw the amount of UK investment into St. Petersburg exceed pre-crisis levels for the first time, and there are signs for real optimism that British companies are starting to target St. Petersburg again as a potential destination for business investment."
British business, maintains Peter Langham, commercial consul at the British Consulate General in St. Petersburg and head of the UK Trade and Investment section, is still cautious. But, he says, it is more to do with perceptions of the practical difficulties of doing business here - organized crime, bureaucracy and legislative deficiencies - rather than political uncertainty at the national level.
British companies in St. Petersburg are well represented across the full spectrum of business, and last year British business contributed 10 percent of total investment in St. Petersburg. There are several examples of large-scale investment by British multi-nationals in the region. The Cadbury's plant in Chudovo, situated to southeast of the city in the Novgorod region, is the largest such production facility outside of the UK, and produces in excess of 45,000 tons of chocolate per year. British American Tobacco is another example of successful cooperation between St. Petersburg and the UK. From its site in the Konnaya Lakhta district of the city, BAT is currently showing year-on-year growth of 20 percent, the highest growth rate in Russia's tobacco market.
And positive trends are emerging for newer British business in St. Petersburg. "Traditionally in Russia as a whole," Kearvell notes, "British businesses have been represented more strongly in the consultancy sector than in manufacturing. However, in St. Petersburg construction and real estate in particular is one area where British companies' market share is significant. Companies such as Bovis Land Lease, Taylor Woodrow International, Pulford and Colliers occupy a strong position in the market and are active in many of the city's major construction projects."
British business is also diversifying, particularly into high-technology fields. Langham observes that British companies have been quick to exploit St. Petersburg's historical concentration of defense industry plants and expertise, converting them into the manufacture of high-technology precision instruments and machine tools for the international market.
Langham also notes an upsurge in interest for British consumer goods. He cites as an example the successful selling of British interior design and furnishings to St. Petersburg retailers. As disposable incomes rise, British furniture companies are capitalizing on their perceived goodwill by establishing permanent supply lines with Russian outlets in the city, and challenging traditional Italian furniture for a share of a rapidly expanding market.
These are predominately new British companies entering the Russian market, encouraged by the scale of opportunities and the growing economic and political stability. Current relations with Britain are extremely good, Kearvell says, pointing to Putin's visit to Britain in June where the President drew attention to the historically close political and economic ties between the two countries. The British in particular, he argues, are especially well attuned to the business dynamic in the city. "British businesses are extremely well received in St. Petersburg;" he says. "There is a genuinely high degree of mutual respect," and an understanding by the British of "the intrinsic importance of the Russian mentality to the success of foreign ventures in Russia."
For Kearvell, the backdrop of large, flagship British investment (such as the recent $6 billion TNK-BP deal, which now makes Britain the largest foreign direct investor in Russia), are symptomatic of the increasing investor confidence in Russia. "Political and economic stability is extremely important for business," he says, "as investors take confidence from such indicators."
So what then of the Yukos affair? How does this affect the confidence of British investors?
Langham is largely unconcerned, affirming "the UK Trade and Investment Section at the British Consulate hopes that the Yukos affair will not affect the investment environment as perceived by potential foreign investment." The possibility of government intervention into oligarchic activity has always been there, he argues, and Khodorkovsky's arrest is unlikely to make things worse. Bringing small and medium-sized companies to the St. Petersburg market, he maintains, is quite distanced from political interference in Yukos. Most of the British companies the British Consulate helps bring to the city are largely unconcerned by the activities of the oligarchs and their interplay with the government - simply because "they do not move in those circles." St. Petersburg, he argues, "is a different regional market with its own priority sectors."
Kearvell is more reticent. "We [at the RBCC] have an excellent relationship with a number of the big Russian holding companies, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and work closely with them to assist facilitating the bilateral relationship between the two countries," he says.
Oligarchy, it seems, does not actively deter new British business from coming to St. Petersburg.
Nor do upcoming Duma and presidential elections seem of particular concern to British business. "Of course," says Langham, "those British companies who are already represented here will have one eye on the Duma elections." But new British companies looking to break into the Russian market should, he says, be encouraged by the "relatively predictable" outcome of the elections, and the security Putin has managed to achieve under his tenure. "Foreign companies probably hope for more of the same," he says, finding a proactive federal government that is generally responsive to the need for legislative change. The RBCC too, says Kearvell, "will certainly watch the upcoming election closely, and is confident that whatever the outcome, Russo-British relations will continue to be fostered and develop."
The main concerns of British business in St. Petersburg seem to operate instead on the local rather than the national level. "There are image problems," says Langham, "which the city must address."
One such problem is the perception of organized crime. "This has been played up in the British media in particular," Langham notes, "and it takes a long time for British people to forget that."
But above all, it is bureaucracy and local legislative deficiency (particularly tax and customs) that are the main stumbling blocks. "Britons are scared off by it," Langham notes. "This is still viewed as a difficult market."
For Kearvell too, administrative obstacles are a key problem. "Not so long ago," he says, "a British businessmen looking to open a representative office in St. Petersburg told me that in order to do so he had to acquire the necessary 43 signatures. While this bureaucratic element has diminished over the past two to three years, it still hinders business investment."
TITLE: Retail Banks Gain Ground
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The banking sector is distorted and fails to provide the services that consumers want and the economy needs, but economic growth and stability are increasing trust and fostering expansion, an American Chamber of Commerce seminar on retail banking in Northwest Russia was told Tuesday.
"The banking system is gradually starting to accept the role that it should take in the economy," said Alexander Koloshenko, head of consumer banking at Raiffeisenbank Austria. "The trust of the population in the system is growing."
Only since the fall of communism have consumers had to make decisions about their personal finances and they need to be educated about the way international-standard banking services operate before they can reap the benefits, he added.
The St. Petersburg market is, however, hampered by having far fewer multinationals with large numbers of employees than Moscow, and people keeping payrolls off the books to avoid tax, Koloshenko said.
The banks' rating of a client's creditworthiness is based on declared income so this affects the size of loans clients can obtain.
Asked why people should put their money into foreign-owned banks, which have lower interest rates on deposits than Russian banks - and when the local retail outlets are Russian companies with no right to draw on their foreign headquarter's funds - Koloshenko said the foreign banks operate according to international practices.
What they lack in interest rates on deposits, they make up for in terms of affording lower risk, he added.
International banks guard their reputation fiercely, and headquarters would be loath to watch the outlets go under and damage the bank's reputation, Koloshenko said.
In any case, even if deposit rates are lower than at Russian banks, lending rates of foreign-owned banks are generally lower, reflecting their better management of risks, he said.
Consumers should use deposits to keep their money safe. If they want their money to grow in value, banks offer other higher-growth rate options, such as managed funds, Koloshenko added.
Viktor Bashkirov, head of consumer banking at Citibank, said his bank already offers many international-standard services to Russian clients, including telephone banking, Internet banking and overdraft facilities.
Koloshenko and Vyacheslav Titov, executive director of the Northwest Association of Banks, described the Russian banking sector as distorted and overcentralized.
Mistrust of banks, especially after many failed after the 1998 financial crisis, has distorted the market, which is dominated by Moscow banks. State banks Sberbank and Vneshtorgbank, for example, manage about 70 percent of all household deposits. The sector is dominated by money coming from the export of natural resources handled by large corporations.
Titov said that only 9 percent of all loans in the Northwest region are to individuals. In addition, the 3.33 banks per 100,000 people in the region is only about one 20th of Germany's 62.5 banks per 100,000 and a 10th of Finland's 30.4 banks per 100,000.
A key breakthrough to improving the conditions for consumer lending in the Northwest will be to create credit rating agencies that will allow people's credit history to be examined before loans are issued. Four of the foreign owned banks are in the process of creating such agencies, which will save resources and shorten the time taken to decide whether to issue loans, Titov said.
TITLE: Kremlin 'Not Pulling Strings' in Oil Merger
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Andrei Illarionov, President Vladimir Putin's top economic advisor, sought to distance the Kremlin on Thursday from the troubles of oil giant Yukos and warned that the judicial probe into the company will have long-term negative consequences.
In an interview with state-run Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Illarionov said the Kremlin was not pulling the strings in the breakdown of Yukos merger with Sibneft.
Sibneft sent shockwaves through financial markets on Friday by suspending the merger with Yukos amid rumors it was trying to renegotiate the deal or even pull out if it could not get better terms.
Asked whether the Kremlin was behind Yukos's troubles, Illarionov said: "As far as I know, it is not. Perhaps certain business groups are trying to conceal their interests behind the so-called 'Kremlin's hand'."
Some analysts say top Sibneft shareholders, acting on behalf of the Kremlin, want to take advantage of the troubles at Yukos, plunged into disarray by the arrest of former company CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and a tax investigation.
"Unfortunately, this is not the first time that various business groups are trying to use the institutions of power to settle their problems," Illarionov said.
Observers say prosecutors, who have accused Khodorkovsky of tax evasion and fraud, are also believed to have acted at the bidding of the Kremlin, which is anxious to curb the powerful businessman's political ambitions.
Some observers say the main figure behind the merger suspension was oil tycoon and Sibneft shareholder Roman Abramovich, also a Kremlin insider.
Illarionov, echoing earlier comments by high-ranking government officials, said the Yukos affair would have repercussions.
"From the economic point of view the consequences are very negative. Moreover they are not short term but long term," he said.
"Volatility on the stock and foreign exchange markets and changes in capital flows are important, but not the main consequences," he said.
"One of the most serious consequences is how the rules of this game have now changed," said Illarionov.
"Not only do the authorities interfere in business but also various business groups use the mechanisms of government for their own purposes. What is happening is not only the nationalization of business but also the privatization of authority."
TITLE: Industry Pays $3.4Bln Social Costs
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Despite reducing its share of social responsibilities in the past decade, Russian industry last year still shouldered a 97 billion ruble ($3.4 billion) burden, or just under 1 percent of gross domestic product, according to a recent report.
Manufacturing industries spend some 8.4 percent of their payroll, or 97 billion rubles, on social services, said Olga Lazaryeva, co-author of the survey released last month by the Moscow-based Center for Economic and Financial Research.
During the Soviet era, industries were responsible for everything from roads and kindergartens to yacht clubs and hunting lodges. Companies maintained 41 percent of all housing.
"Many objects have been transferred, but lots of enterprises have hung on to things and pay for the upkeep of those that have been passed to the municipalities," said Lazaryeva.
Vedomosti reported Wednesday that last year Unified Energy Systems spent 5.3 billion rubles on social objects, while Russian Railways paid 4 billion rubles.
Based on interviews with managers from more than 400 companies in 40 regions, the survey also found that respondents estimated that if they stop funding social payments, they would need to increase wages by 5 to 12 percent.
The project was initiated two years ago by the Helsinki School of Economics and financed by the Finnish Academy of Science.
The Center for Economic and Financial Research analyzed the data of the survey to determine why domestic companies often provide the kind of services that in other countries fall to the state.
In 1990, according to the survey, 78.5 percent of the companies were responsible for housing; 76.7 percent provided medical services; 69.8 percent kept kindergartens; 38.2 percent maintained holiday homes; and 84.4 percent held other objects.
Nearly 14 years later, 55.7 percent of companies still provide housing in some form, 90.8 percent medical services; 26 percent kindergartens; and 73.3 percent holiday homes.
TITLE: Machinations in Ufa
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: Of the dozen or so elections of regional executives taking place on the same day as the State Duma elections, Bashkortostan's presidential election has attracted particular attention. For much of the past year, the national media have been reporting on various scandals involving the republic and its president, Murtaza Rakhimov: the victory of the Rakhimov/United Russia list in elections to the republic's legislature was immediately followed by an anti-Moscow demarche on the part of the newly-elected legislators regarding the issue of Bashkir sovereignty; the Audit Chamber's statements regarding the Rakhimov clan's privatization of the Bashkir oil-refining complex on the sly; the charges of multibillion dollar tax evasion by oil companies controlled by Rakhimov's son, Ural, and so on.
With election day almost upon us, passions in the Bashkir elections have reached boiling point. There have been a series of scandals over the registration of Rakhimov's main rivals - Ralif Safin and Sergei Veremeyenko - resulting in a major clash between the Central Elections Commission and the Bashkir elections commission. Furthermore, the Tambov district court has ruled to annul the privatization of Bashkortostan's petrochemicals industry.
The Kremlin, however, having unleashed a full frontal attack on Rakhimov by supporting his opponents, has nonetheless avoided direct confrontation. Not only that, a couple of weeks before election day, United Russia leader Boris Gryzlov addressed a conference in Ufa on "The Role of United Russia in Strengthening Russian Statehood" at which he endorsed Rakhimov, who heads up United Russia's regional party list.
What is the Kremlin's agenda in Bashkortostan? Why has Bashkortostan attracted so much attention? And what will happen in the national parliamentary elections and the republic's presidential election?
It's worth noting that the Bashkir president is one of the most capricious and influential of all regional leaders, who has openly been challenging the Kremlin for many years. Nonetheless, he is also a member of the higher council of United Russia, and Bashkortostan is one of the largest regions in Russia. The "party of power" can pretty much count on getting a million votes there (the combined total that Unity and Fatherland-All Russia received in the 1999 elections). Whether United Russia gets those votes or not depends primarily on Rakhimov. And in addition, at stake is a huge chunk of unprivatized property: the republic's petrochemicals complex, which experts estimate to be worth $2 billion to $3 billion.
The CEC has been demonstrating impartiality vis-a-vis the Bashkir elections. Moreover, the experience in Kalmykia's presidential election suggests that in the case of open conflict, the final position of the Kremlin does not always correspond to that of the CEC.
On the other hand, the CEC has been rather accommodating in approving State Duma constituency boundary changes. Now the republic's leadership has complete control in all election constituences because the capital Ufa - the least "controllable" part of Bashkortostan - has been divided into six parts with rural districts tacked onto them. It is no great surprise that preliminary data show that Rakhimov's single-mandate candidates, running on the United Russia ticket, are ahead in all constituencies.
The struggle for power in Bashkortostan has to be understood in the context of the republic's ethnic composition. Bashkirs are the third-largest ethnic group in the republic, behind Russians and Tatars. However, the political elite at all levels is almost exclusively Bashkir. Interethnic tension can only grow in the course of the battle between the three leading candidates, who represent the republic's three main ethnicities. It would seem that fear of some kind of ethnic conflict is the main factor restraining the Kremlin from taking any radical actions.
Bashkortostan highlights the systemic crisis in the model of "two-tier" delegative democracy. The "father of the republic" and "father of the nation" cannot co-exist for long in the same country. Once President Vladimir Putin further consolidates his position, there will be no room for Rakhimov. In this clash between two powerful administrative machines, the Kremlin is gradually getting the upper hand, although it is unclear how far the Kremlin is prepared to go.
It seems that the Kremlin is employing its favored "good cop, bad cop" routine - the aim of which is not so much to remove the incumbent as to weaken him as much as possible in the elections, thereby making it possible to conclude an informal contract for the new term that is heavily in the Kremlin's favor. One should not exclude the possibility, moreover, that a new term might be truncated - as happened with former St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev (a former colleague of Rakhimov's in the Fatherland-All Russia leadership).
An outright and unequivocal victory in the Baskhir presidential election is unlikely. According to the polls, Rakhimov will not receive the 50 percent of the vote needed for a first-round victory; and in the second round, he will no longer be needed by the Kremlin to deliver the vote for United Russia, while Rakhimov's opponents would be able to join forces. Rakhimov needs victory in the first round no matter what the cost. And there can be no doubt that he will achieve it. The Kremlin will probably agree to the "payoff" of a million votes for United Russia.
And then, once the elections are over, the widespread machinations that are surely taking place during the elections, may well become a sword of Damocles hanging over Rakhimov's head and preventing him from regaining his previous independence.
Nikolai Petrov, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Why Duma Elections Do Matter
TEXT: There is a widely held view that the State Duma is completely in the pocket of the presidential administration, that all it really does these days is perform the role of rubber stamp for Kremlin-backed legislation, and that Sunday's ballot will not change much. And therefore the whole exercise is largely meaningless.
While it is true that the Duma has increasingly come to resemble an adjunct of the Kremlin legal department rather than a separate branch of government, it is certainly not true that the outcome of the elections will not have an impact on the political system.
Apart from anything else, voting preferences provide a snapshot of the popular mood at a time when the Kremlin is highly sensitive to trends in public opinion - i.e. three months before the presidential poll.
And although the Kremlin is most unlikely to invite the parliamentary majority that emerges to form a government (even if it is solidly pro-presidential), it is perfectly possible that there will be some kind of government reshuffle after the elections to align the executive more closely with "popular sentiment" prior to the presidential election - particularly if the results were to register a high level of discontent with the adminstration's current course.
President Vladimir Putin is looking for a first-round victory in March, so it is clearly in his interests to do everything in his powers to facilitate that, including personnel changes and tailoring his election manifesto to reflect voters' preferences.
But there is an even more important reason why the Duma elections matter.
The composition of the new Duma will set the tone for the next four years, and here the balance of political forces is crucial. An overwhelming victory for United Russia (with a roughly commensurate drop in the Communist vote) would be taken by the Kremlin as complete legitimization of its actions over the past four years. Opposition forces have provided one of the few checks (albeit a weak one) on the executive. Without even that in place, the potential for further authoritarian drift increases considerably. Equally worrying, if Homeland (Rodina) makes an impressive debut, garnering 10 percent of the vote or so, combined with a poor performance by the Union of Right Forces or Yabloko (particularly if one of them does not make it over the 5 percent threshold), there is a danger that the political center will be pulled in an alarmingly populist-nationalist direction.
The full consequences of this worst-case scenario would only start to be felt in March, however. The real election season only gets going on Sunday.
TITLE: A Low Regard For Freedom is No Joke
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
TEXT: Union of Right Forces co-leader Irina Khakamada came up with quite an interesting play on words this week.
The Party of Life, set up by Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, which is running in a bloc with State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov's Russia's Rebirth, has one of the lowest party ratings in the election campaign.
Khakamada said the rating of the party is as low as the value of life in Russia.
Unfortunately. she is absolutely right.
Listening and watching political advertisements on radio and television it becomes very obvious that in the more than 12 years that have passed since the end of the Soviet Union, people's freedoms and civil rights have not flourished. Perhaps they have declined.
The contest to get into the State Duma is the candidates' opporutnity to sell voters a product; the product being treasures that most people can only dream of. Candidates are a mirror reflecting the aspirations and needs of society. If they don't tell voters what they want to hear they won't have any chance of getting into the State Duma.
The campaign slogans tell us that society wants "Russia for Russians," "a strong Russia," and "more money for retired people." It does not want freedoms. Society has grown accustomed to feeling inferior to its rulers. It regrets that there is no Big Brother left on the map of Eastern Europe and still blindly believes the phrase that "if you're scared of me, this means you respect me" describes the best way to make any deals.
Unfortunately, I am not exaggerating.
That is why United Russia is on its way to get a big chunk of seats in the State Duma and that is why Vladimir Putin was elected president.
Remember what he said Nov. 12, 2002 at a press conference after a European Union-Russian summit.
"If you are a Christian, you are in danger," Putin said. "If you decide to become a Muslim, this won't save you either, because they [Islamic terrorists] think that traditional Islam is also hostile to their goals."
"If you want to go all the way and become a Muslim radical and are ready to get circumcised, I invite you to Moscow," Putin said. "We are a multi-confessional country, we have experts in this field, too. I will recommend that they carry out the operation in such a way that nothing grows back."
This language is very strong. It is so strong, in fact that it is impossible to find this passage on the official Kremlin website in a transcript of the press conference.
That's a pity. People like this sort of thing. They also like the way authorities dealt with terrorists in the Dubrovka Theater, killing more than a 100 civilians, and the mopping-up operations Russian forces conduct in Chechnya. Society wants order and stability. And it gets it.
Society does not care about its freedoms. Respect for life is not important here; it starts when a driver tells their passengers not to bother with the seat belt. Such a small thing says a lot about people's value system.
Some could argue this is not all of society, but just 30 percent or 40 percent of eligible voters. The rest of the population might think differently, but can't be bothered going to the polling stations. The truth is that by not deciding anything they decide a lot, automatically giving up their vote to collude in the continuation of the system.
By not going to polling stations, 60 percent to 70 percent of voters do not give a damn about the police ignoring the most violent crimes in favor of producing good statistics, authorities taking bribes or the military killing innocent people. If they did not feel OK about it they would go to vote and show their disapproval. But they don't.
This is exactly what the Kremlin wants. If people enjoyed their freedoms and considered life to be precious, then they would understand that they need to defend it.
I guess Mironov and Seleznyov where displayed great comic talent when they chose their party's name. Russia's Party of Life ... Good joke, bravo!
TITLE: chekhov's movie health check
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Is Russian society still as mentally deranged as described in Anton Chekhov's "Ward No. 6"? Oh, yes, sighs Russian actor Alexei Guskov, the producer and the brains behind a new movie called "Ragin" and loosely based on Chekhov's famous story.
Currently being filmed on location in St. Petersburg, the film aims to explore the state of mind of Russian society over the past two centuries. "This film is very much of a research project," Guskov said Thursday. "One of the biggest issues for us is to look into the mentality of the Russian intelligentsia, which had lost its influence and any control over the situation in the 19th century. As a result, the country suffered three revolutions - and we are still feeling consequences today."
The original script was written by cutting edge Moscow playwright Mikhail Ugarov, who drew critical attention after his play "Oblom off", inspired by Ivan Goncharov's well known 19th century novel "Oblomov" and staged by the author in Moscow.
The film's director Kirill Serebrennikov has extensive experience in the theater, where he enjoys the reputation of a talented enfant terrible, not following a particular canon and producing shows that are both tasteful and extravagant. For Serebrennikov, who has made two television serials (the 10-part "Rostov-Father" on NTV and the 12-part "Diary of a Killer" on the Rossiya channel), "Ragin" will be his first full-length film.
With very much a Chekhovian attitude, whose medical career rendered his fiction both cynical and compassionate, the film reveals that most mental disorders, phobias or breakdowns are in the end the result of people's fear of life and its dangers - which explains why many of us prefer to contemplate the world from a safe distance.
"Why have the Russian will and strength evaporated and where have they gone? This is what the film is about," Guskov said. "And the character of Dr. Ragin himself is a phenomenon which we are exploring, and that is why we have made his name the film's title."
The story evolves in a provincial Russian town, Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, in the early 20th century. Dr. Ragin (Alexei Guskov) runs a local mental hospital and whiles away his lonely evenings by reading medical literature. A new report by Viennese psychiatrist Himmelsdorf (Julian Wigand) inspires the Russian doctor in his job. In the meantime, ward No. 6 gets a new patient, bailiff Ivan Gromov (Alexander Galibin) who is suffering from persecution complex. Gromov laughs at Ragin's theories but through their arguments the doctor finds a new way in life which he hadn't been able to see before.
A number of additional characters have been invented to produce a representative cross-section of Russian society in early 1900s, from a city governor to common folk.
"Ragin" was filmed in Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, Yaroslavl and St. Petersburg with more scenes to be shot later this year in Vienna and Budapest.
Vienna will be shown indirectly, as if through Ragin's fantasies, and shooting in the neat Austrian capital is not meant to serve as contrast to the Russian poverty and chaos. Vienna relates to Russia as a dream relates to reality, and is not supposed to serve in opposition. "Ragin is dreaming of having Viennese cakes, which is a symbol of the stability he is seeking, but the truth is this is a kind of pseudo-stability, and that is exactly what we are hoping to show," Guskov said.
For the actors, preparing for the film involved a lot of specialized medical reading. "Of course, I haven't just read Chekhov and about Chekhov," said Alexander Galibin, who plays bailiff Gromov. "I have spent quite some time with medical literature, trying to get to the bottom of what a 'persecution complex' is - and how I can possibly project this mania on myself. It was quite a challenge."
Emotionally, the work is a challenge as well. "We work 16 hours a day, and it doesn't stop when we turn the lights off," Guskov said. "It just gets under your skin, and you experience a tremendous range of feelings, from nightmares to ecstasy."
The film will be completed in July and released in September, 2004 - 100 years after the death of Anton Chekhov from tuberculosis aged just 44. Part of an expected slew of commemorative events, "Ragin" will be screened simultaneously in Russia and Austria. It is also hoped that the film will be shown at one of the top international film festivals to mark the anniversary year.
TITLE: no razzamatazz for tequilajazzz
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Tequilajazzz, a leading local alternative band, has kept a low profile lately. Having passed its 10 years in existence this September, the quartet refrained from any anniversary activities - except for playing a "secret" concert for friends at Fish Fabrique in the spirit of the band's and the underground venue's tradition of jointly celebrating their anniversaries with annual parties.
"Ten wild years, what can I say?" said Tequilajazzz singer and bass player Yevgeny Fyodorov this week. "We celebrated it just as usual, like we marked the ninth, eighth and seventh anniversaries. Ten years have passed, and we hid away."
Last week, Tequilajazzz took part in Boris Grebenshchikov's 50th anniversary concert, honoring the Akvarium frontman with its cover of Akvarium's "Lebedinaya Stal" (Swan Steel) and its own early song "Starik" (Old Man).
"I remember the first half of the concert well, but the second half not so well, because, naturally, we were drinking to celebrate the anniversary," said Fyodorov.
"From the inside, it seemed to me that it was fun and even the appearance of the governor [Valentina Matviyenko] didn't spoil our spirits. I think Boris [Grebenshchikov] reacted very adequately, with a laugh, showing no severity. If they award you with a state honor, it's stupid to make any escapades about it."
Fyodorov suggested that awarding Russia's rock guru with a state honor has had a pre-election value for the Kremlin, though he doubts if Akvarium's fans would vote for the United Russia, the pro-President Vladimir Putin party, on the strength of the gesture.
"I think that nothing happens by pure chance just before the elections," he said. "I think that it's hardly their electorate; [Akvarium fans] are clearly a more liberal and pro-Western part of the population."
Apart from a pair of local concerts and several brief tours to Western Europe, Tequilajazzz has not been very active lately - unlike Fyodorov who has been busy composing and recording soundtracks for three television series, two feature films and a theatrical production.
"It's probably my own fault, if you can been call it that, but I've been totally immersed into music for the visual arts, so to speak," said Fyodorov whose other projects include a live soundtrack to Sergei Eisenstein's 1924 silent film "Stachka" (Strike) and a musical backing to an exhibition about the sunken submarine Kursk.
Though well-paid, composing for television series is not hack work for him, Fyodorov said.
"With television series, I am lucky to work with the old Lenfilm crowd, who try not to drop the standards set by the old masters from the Lenfilm studios. It's not that I have absolute creative freedom, but I have creative freedom within definite limits, which is perfectly normal."
Since he has been composing soundtrack music, Fyodorov admitted he has not written any new Tequilajazzz songs lately.
"It's happened so that musical and literary aspects are represented in my life very fully, but they are separate; it's either music for films or prose for film projects where I'm also a script-writer," he said.
"They don't join together in a song. And I don't want to hurry things up, because you can't force yourself to write songs. You get a chance to step away and look at what your next 10 years will be occupied with."
The band's latest album of new material, "Vyshe Oseni" (Above Autumn), was released in April 2002, concluding the softer, more lyrical trilogy which also included 1998's "Celluloid" and1999's "Sto Pyatdesyat Milliardov Shagov" (One Hundred and Fifty Billion Steps).
"Now our lyrical period has ended," said Fyodorov. "Our concerts are changing toward what was typical for us in our very early period, from 1993 to 1994. There were very hard-edged concerts then, and now our repertoire include more old songs than newer ones. We are returning to hard-edged forms."
"Lyrically, hard music implies hard subjects, so we are looking around trying to understand what subjects we can touch in our work. I often feel responsibility for what I'm singing. We're not ready to put together [music and lyrical content]."
This past April, Tequilajazzz played a big concert at Moscow's legendary Gorbushka venue called, "9.5 Victories," as part of its Moscow-based label FeeLee's 10th anniversary.
"We wanted to add an element of self-irony," said Fyodorov. "There can't be half a victory, because half a victory is a defeat. We did it to destroy that anniversary zeal."
For its anniversary, the indie label re-released back catalogues and put out compilations of the leading acts on its roster.
Called "Izbrannoye. Nami" ("Selected. By Us"), Taquilajazzz's compilation CD is not a standard collection of greatest hits.
"With us it was an 'anti-best-of,' because we decided to choose songs which are significant to us, rather than hits," said Fyodorov.
"There exist a lot of our best-of albums, mainly released by pirates, so we did sort of an anti-pirate compilation; there's no point in pirating it because there are no hits on it. We did so exclusively for creative reasons, rather than for commercial ones - it's simply the songs we wanted to remind people of."
Fyodorov said the band continues to tour extensively, while its members take part in recording his soundtracks when needed.
"We do a lot of touring, this year mostly in Europe - we've been twice to Iceland since the beginning of the year, becoming the only Russian group that has ever been there," said Fyodorov.
"Our listeners should not torment themselves waiting for our new album. We are not planning to record it soon, but I think that it'll happen some time in the winter."
Tequilajazzz performs at Red Club on December 13. Links: www.tequilajazzz.spb.ru, www.led-i-pepel.narod.ru
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: The coarse-voiced singer and double bass player of Billy's Band, Vadim "Billy" Novik, who formed the trio on the strength of his love for Tom Waits, will start celebrating the birthday of the U.S. troubadour at Red Club on Saturday, on the eve of the actual date.
Though the band boasts a number of its own songs, it is likely to concentrate on Waits covers and translations. Tickets cost 200 rubles (in advance) and 250 (on the day of the show).
Panjabi MC, the Coventry, U.K.-born performer will bring his fusion of bhangra (the music stemming folk dance, performed by Punjabi men at harvest time) and contemporary dance beats, to the city on Saturday. The mix sounds fresh at first, but starts to irritate before long.
The MC's track "His Mundian To Bach Ke" (translated "Beware of the Boys") seems to be played on the nightly basis at the grungy student bar Cynic, but he appears in person at the more mainstream and upscale venue called Plaza.
Tickets cost 600 rubles (before midnight) and 700 rubles (after midnight).
As Finland celebrates its Independence Day this Saturday, a bunch of Finnish rock veterans will come to the city, bringing the festivities with them over the border.
Finnish rock legend Remu Aaltonen (ex-Hurriganes) will perform with Helsinki Hipcats at Prival.Com on Friday at 9 p.m. (1 Moika Nab.) and at Che on Saturday at 10 p.m.
The party at Che is called "Linija Mannergeima", celebrating Finland's independence from Russia. Che will also hold a photo-exhibition called "Made in Finland."
Helsinki Hipcats feature Elias Salminen on drums, Sami Roine on guitar and vocals and Mika Railo on bass. Though formed in August 2003, all the three musicians have long careers in music, the best-known being Roine, who is also the leader of the Finnish psychobilly band the Stringbeans, which has also played in St. Petersburg.
Their music is described as the 1950s Finnish jazz, swing, 1950s rock and roll, instrumental lounge with some Remu Aaltonen hits thrown in.
The shows will also include Finnish jazz pianist Jouni Joronen.
The international legend that is Chuck Berry. is coming to the city. The man who brought you such classics as "Roll Over Beethoven," "Carol," "Back in the U.S.A.," "Little Queenie," "Memphis, Tennessee," "Johnny B. Goode," and "Rock and Roll Music," will play at the Sports and Concert Complex on Wednesday.
Reports saying that this is Berry's first Russian tour are not true, because he performed in Moscow five and a half years ago (our photo shows him playing in Moscow in February 1997.)
Ironically, another veteran rock act, U.K.'s Manfred Mann's Earth Band performs in the city the very same night, at Oktyabrsky Concert Hall.
Do not miss Petrozavodsk's Finnish-Karelian folk band Myllarit, which performs at JFC Jazz Club on Tuesday, the Kinks and Morrissey-influenced Wine and the anarchic and wild Kacheli (the both will play on Wednesday at Moloko and Griboyedov, respectively.)
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: not just any old place but a real find
AUTHOR: By Joseph James Crescente III
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An acquaintance recently recommended a new restaurant tucked away on the Petrograd side. He told me the street and the name of the place, Mesto, which is Russian simply for "place." I asked around and no one knew of it. I hunted it down and found that it is not just any old mesto, but "Me100", a play on "sto," which is Russian for a hundred. This was our introduction to an oasis of a restaurant that perhaps prides itself on its anonimity. It's too late: a place this good can no longer remain a secret.
We were seated at a large table next to the window. The first thing I noticed was that everything about the interior is entirety gray. I really mean everything: the tables, chairs, walls, the bar, ashtrays, placemats, even the menu covers. Gray is a very soothing, mind-clearing color. The grayness was complemented by the sounds of lounge and cabaret, whispering throughout the meal.
The menu is a vast landscape of international delights, dominated by Japanese, French and Italian influences. While choosing from the menu, I gulped a glass of red, dry French wine (80 rubles for 100 grams, $2.70), while my companion sipped a stiff martini bianco on the rocks (50 rubles, $1.70). The majority of the starters are sushi rolls ranging in price from 30 to 400 rubles. We decided upon the sweet shrimp roll (140 rubles, $4.70) and the spicy salmon roll (40 rubles, $1.35). Both were simple and delicious, well spiced, well prepared and well presented. They were wrapped in seaweed, which we soon discovered is the house garnish. It makes an appearance one way or another on nearly every plate. The standard Italian appetizer of mozzarella with tomatoes was drizzled with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and topped with shaved almonds (150 rubles, $5.05). It's difficult to screw up such a dish, but the presentation was perfect. The standard of presentation was high with everything we tried, something so often lacking at most restaurants in St. Petersburg.
Finalizing decisions concerning the main course was agonizing. Italian offerings were ruled out because we wanted to take it easy on the carbohydrates. But all the major sauces are represented: Bolognese, Primavera, Carbonara, and Frutti di Mare. My companion decided on the pike perch and salmon served with a cream sauce over white rice and mushrooms (200 rubles, $6.70). She described it as paradise: the generous portion of fish was tender and the consistency of the sauce was excellent. I chose the beef steak (180 rubles, $6.05) which was served in a tower formation: fried potato medallions on the bottom, the steak in the middle and topped off with deep fried onion rings. Around the filet was a moat of French mustard sauce with cherry tomatoes wading through it. The steak was a smidgen dry, but the filet was such a good cut and the sauce assisted so graciously that it was still delicious. When I ordered, it was the first time in a restaurant in Russia that I was asked how well I would like my meat seared, and in a panic I said medium, when I prefer a rarer burn. It was not the chef's fault.
As we writhed in ecstasy in our chairs, I convinced my companion to join me for a dessert. The dessert menu is very short with only four items, but they include such standards as banana split with ice cream (70 rubles, $2.35) and deep fried Japanese-style apple dumplings served with hot strawberry jam (60 rubles, $2). We chose the latter. The dumplings were crisp and the jam thick with fruit. Needing coffee just to stand up, I ordered a cappuccino (50 rubles, $1.70), and my companion an espresso (40 rubles, $1.35). Both were standard restaurant quality.
The restaurant also serves caesar salad, eggplant, Greek and Italian salads, tempura, blini, meat and cheese plates, freshly squeezed juices and fried chicken. Freshly baked French farmer's bread and sourdough with walnuts accompany each meal.
Overall Mesto is laid back, stylish and chic. But the service was cold and efficient, much like the interior. and, towards the end our server's attention waned. Everything was well-seasoned, and the majority of the menu is affordable. A great place for indulgence or simply for dessert and coffee.
I asked my companion if she had any complaints and the only thing she could come up with was that the straw in her martini didn't fit with the style of the restaurant. Mesto opened only on Aug. 15 and has so far kept a low profile. (It's about a 10 minute walk from metro station Gorkhovskaya, and is not located on a major thoroughfare.) But don't let this deter you. Tell all your friends.
Mesto, 16 Lenina Ulitsa. Tel. 230 5359. Open daily from noon until midnight. Menu in Russian only. Credit cards accepted. Dinner for two with alcohol: 1,120 rubles ($37.65).
TITLE: museums screen video masterpieces
AUTHOR: by Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Since the time video technology was embraced as an artistic medium in the 1960s, its use has become widespread among modern artists: nowadays only a lazy artist doesn't work with video. The [Pro] Smotr Video Art Festival, which continues at various venues in St. Petersburg until mid-January, offers the chance to get acquainted with some of the big names in the wide category of video art today.
One of those names is the prominent British artist Mark Wallinger, perhaps best known for "Ecce Homo," a life-sized sculpture of Christ which occupied the so-called "Fourth Plinth" on London's Trafalgar Square in 1999. The British representative at the 2000 Venice Biennale and a Turner Prize nominee (1995), Wallinger's 2000 video piece "Threshold to The Kingdom" is showing at the Russian Museum's Mikhailovsky Castle building until Jan. 18. It is the most interesting in a small collection of pieces chosen to constitute the event.
By selecting just six works the organizers, headed by the PRO ARTE Institute, appear to be concentrating on quality rather than quantity. The distribution of the works between the Hermitage and the Russian museum venues suggests a subtle pecking order: works by the video art "superstars" - Bill Viola and Shirin Neshat, both from the U.S. - are exhibited in the Hermitage while pieces by other "stars" - KIMSOOJA (USA-So. Korea), Uri Katzenstein (Israel), Aernout Mik (Netherlands) and Wallinger - are at the Russian Museum (the latter, trying to enliven its numerous building possessions, spread these four works around three venues: the Marble and Stroganov Palaces and Mikhailovsky Castle). However, judging the festival by the works in it and not by the star-rating of the artists represented would suggest a different hierarchy.
One of the crowd-pleasers at the festival is the video-installation "The Greeting" (1995) by Bill Viola - the classic, key figure of video art. This piece is a contemporary reading of "Visitazione" ("Meeting of Maria and Elisabeth") by the Italian mannerist Jacopo Pontormo, who, in his turn, was influenced by Albrecht Durer's engraving "The Four Witches" and his 9th woodcut plate from "Life of Virgin Mary" series.
This exciting succession of influences, augmented by other mannerist drawings and paintings, is perfectly reflected with the help of the rich Hermitage collection.
Similarly, the video-installation "Turbulent" (1998) in which Shirin Neshat, originally from Iran, explores relations between men and women in Muslim society, is accompanied by another Hermitage addendum - Persian miniatures from the "Khamsa" by Nizami.
But this habit of using works extant in the Hermitage collection to support visiting new works doesn't always deliver a coherent whole, and there are questions to be raised in this regard here. As it happens, Neshat visited St. Petersburg a year ago and presented at the Hermitage some works that were of more meaning and originality than this contribution to the [Pro] Smotr festival.
Meanwhile, Wallinger's "Threshold to The Kingdom" is very modest in technical terms but very delicate and impressive. Wallinger discussed the work, which simply depicts people passing through an arrivals gate at an airport, in an e-mail interview from the U.K. last month.
"Video is a relatively cheap and easy medium to use, but with the reward and challenges of working with time and sound," said Wallinger, who established his reputation in a series of highly detailed paintings of horses in the manner of 18th century English animal painter George Stubbs.
"'Painting' is a deliberate way of working with video. If the structure and intent of the work has been thoroughly mapped out, one is gifted with the accidental - the fortunte details that afford a more organic space beyond one's control, the space to breathe," Wallinger said.
Using slow motion and accompanied by a soundtrack of Allegri's Miserere on the 51st psalm, Wallinger finds in an ordinary situation - people passing through an airport arrivals gate - a plot for an artistic experience of reality as the antechamber of Paradise, where the security man serves as St. Peter who guards the gate.
"The text of the 51st Psalm gave me the theme of cleansing and redemption, confession and absolution that led me to the no-man's land of the airport. The music is sublime - but it was important to use the English rather than the Latin version," Wallinger said.
It may be disputable, but Wallinger seems to be a rare example of what could be named a "pure" video artist. Making maximum use of video's direct relation to reality, Wallinger uses accidental, not directed episodes. But in opposition to simply documenting them, he chooses another strategy - to manipulate them, to find new "signifiers" (to borrow a term from semiotics) and to invest in them new meaning.
In general, the current [Pro] Smotr Video Art Festival serves as a good showcase of the history of video art - which is also the history of the blurring of the boundaries of the medium itself. Born somewhere in between cinema and television, artists later began using video to document performance art, to explore its digital properties or to combine it with other media within installation art pieces. Now "video art" comprises objects from a wide set of new media technologies of which video is often only a part.
There is another interesting feature of these works in particular and video as a high-art medium in general. According to the festival's website, like Wallinger, "all [the artists] have participated in the Venice Biennale, the oldest and most prestigious international forum of contemporary art."
However, if this year's Venice Biennale can be considered any kind of gauge of modern art trends, then we are witnessing the end of the video art boom since U.S. and U.K. artists seem to be returning to more traditional media. Perhaps this [Pro] Smotr Video Art Festival can be seen as some sort of summation of the movement.
[PRO] SMOTR runs at the Hermitage (General Staff Building) and the State Russian Museum (Marble and Stroganov Palaces and Mikhailovsky Castle) through Jan. 18, 2004.
Links: http://www.prosmotr.spb.ru
TITLE: sympathetic dalila adds depth to hit
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Those who heard Olga Borodina sing Dalila at the Mariinsky Theater on Tuesday may have been wondering why they sympathized with this magnetic Philistine beauty, a femme fatale who deluded and betrayed her Hebrew lover for the sake of her people's victory.
"Samson et Dalila" is the only one of Camille Saint-Saens' operas remaining in repertoire of modern opera companies. In most renditions of the work, which premiered at the Mariinsky this week, the story of Samson and Dalila is presented as that of a diabolically charming and as such insidious Philistine temptress who seduces a Hebrew hero to discover the secret of his strength - with no hesitation, no regrets and no questions asked. Simply put, Dalila is not a sympathetic role.
But Borodina's perception of the role turned Dalila into a much more human character. On Tuesday she offered a tremendously powerful yet sad and regretful Dalila.
Borodina revealed to the audiences a tormented and lyrical heroine, full of sensuous magnetism, essential for the role, and of hidden sadness which the character traditionally doesn't require. Borodina was convincing to an almost frightening extent turning her Dalila into a sophisticated and complex woman. A major alteration to the traditional image of Dalila was made in making the character softer, more human and even loving.
Dalila has become one of the most successful roles on the international operatic stage for the Mariinsky Theater's renowned mezzo soprano who brings sobriety and thoughtfulness into her interpretation. In the second act, during the seduction scene in particular, she was tenderness personified, her mellow-toned, creamy voice wrapping around the hall, and captivating the audiences as if they were drowning in honey. But in the third act, she appeared estranged as Philistines celebrated the victory, and her voice became remarkably colder and darker. Her Dalila was more devastated than triumphant.
Her victory over Samson (Alexei Steblyanko) was smooth and overwhelming, spontaneous yet predictable. As she was pacing impatiently around the stage in vain, awaiting Samson but not really expecting him to come, even those familiar with the opera caught themselves wondering if the scenario had been altered. Steblyanko, although technically adroit, was an unequal partner for Borodina, and his good performance took titanic effort, in contrast to Borodina's flowing and effortless performance. His stage presence lacked intensity and sobriety. As to why he sang standing like a sailor balancing himself during a storm, his feet wide apart, his arms waving, his body swaying as if against a strong wind, nobody knows but it didn't contribute to the image of a miraculously strong hero.
Yevgeny Nikitin's ponderous yet slightly inflexible bass was a fitting choice for the High Priest, while Mikhail Petrenko was lacking power as Abimelech, the governor of Gaza.
The libretto of "Samson et Dalila," written by Ferdinand Lemaire is based on the story in the Bible, with one major omission. In the biblical story, Samson leads the Hebrews against the Philistines and inspired his depressed army by killing Abimelech, the governor of Gaza. He then becomes seduced by the Philistine woman Dalila, who deceives him and finds out the secret of his strength, which results in his capture. But the libretto of the opera doesn't feature the fact that the secret of Samson's strength is in his hair, which Dalila cuts. Blinded and tortured, Samson is mocked by a Philistine crowd in the pagan temple. He prays to God to regain his strength and then regains it, then, pulling the temple down, kills himself and the Philistines.
The libretto sets the action in Israel in 1150 BC but the French director Charles Roubaud downplays the elements linking the opera with a specific time and place. The stained glass roof of the synagogue in Act One bears a broken star of David, and this is the only religious symbol to appear during the entire performance. The Philistines, dressed in long black coats, looked borrowed from The Matrix. For the director, the most important issue is the universal human drama, which could have happened at any time and at any place around the globe.
"Samson et Dalila" is Roubaud's third collaboration with the Mariinsky theater, where he already staged Verdi's "La Traviata" and Puccini's "Turandot." The opera troupe is visibly very comfortable with his delicate yet conceptual approach. Using corps de ballet - interlacing in an erotic dance - in the scene of the bacchanalia was a winning decision, while the highly symbolic finale was a genuine success. In the scene when Samson ruins the temple, several razor-edge plates cut through the stage like guillotines.
The Mariinsky Theater choir put on an impressively concerted performance, while the Mariinsky Symphony orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev demonstrated a flawless rapport between the musicians, the conductor and composer. Every note of the score was performed as written.
"Samson et Dalila" will be performed next on January 5, 2004. Olga Borodina appears as Dalila at the Mariinsky next on July 8, 2004.
TITLE: tarantino drowns uma in blood
AUTHOR: By A. O. Scott
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: With its relentless bloodshed and scrambled, inconclusive narrative, Quentin Tarantino's long-awaited fourth feature, "Kill Bill: Vol. 1," is certain to provoke both awe and revulsion. The film's detractors and its fans are likely to agree, however, that the movie, a densely referential pastiche of B-movie attitudes and situations, is above all an exercise in style.
In parts of "Pulp Fiction" (1994) and in his last picture, "Jackie Brown" (1997), Tarantino seemed to be using the action-exploitation formulas of which he is so enamored as stepping stones toward an exploration of plausible characters and authentic emotions. Now, it seems, his interests have swung in the opposite direction, and he has immersed himself, his characters and his audience in a highly artificial world, a looking-glass universe that reflects nothing beyond his own cinematic obsessions.
The most vivid emotional connection in "Kill Bill" does not take place between any of the characters, but between the director and his star, Uma Thurman. Tarantino has referred to Thurman as "my actress," and as Marlene Dietrich to his Josef von Sternberg. Accordingly, much of the perverse energy of "Kill Bill" arises from his near-maniacal fascination with her. She is at once his idol, his alter-ego, his dream lover and his muse, the way Anna Karina was for Jean-Luc Godard in the early 1960s.
Tarantino shoots the elliptical curves of Thurman's face in extreme close-up, his wide shots emphasize her tall, willowy frame, and at one point the camera lingers on her long, strangely shaped toes for what seems like an entire reel. A title at the end informs us that the movie is "based on The Bride, a character created by Q and U" - as in Quentin and Uma. In the movie, the two of them, one in front of the camera and one behind it, seem as inseparable as those two codependant letters.
It must be said that this infatuation takes some disturbing forms. The opening shot, in black-and-white, lingers on Thurman's bloody, beaten face. Her character, known by various aliases (her real name, for reasons that may become clear in Volume 2, is bleeped out whenever it is uttered), is attacked on her wedding day and left for dead by a team of assassins called the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (or DiVAS). They have been hired by Bill (David Carradine, whose face is never shown), who was once the Bride's lover and whose child she may be carrying. After four years in a coma, she wakes up and sets out to take revenge on her assailants, writing a "to kill" list with their names on it.
Bill's name is last, and since this is only the first episode, the title's imperative, which sounds like Dr. Seuss gone haywire, remains unfulfilled. Not that there is any shortage of killing. As is his habit, Tarantino presents the action out of sequence, so that the first person (Copperhead, played by Vivica A. Fox) to be dispatched is the second one on the list. This may be a tongue-in-cheek nod to a venerable Hollywood convention: the black character dies first. Copperhead lives in a tidy suburban house, which she and The Bride proceed to demolish in a frenzy of hand-to-hand combat interrupted by the arrival of a school bus carrying Copperhead's young daughter.
Later - that is, earlier - our heroine will force an elaborate showdown with Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu), who has ascended from assassin-for-hire to Tokyo gangland leader. Liu once again demonstrates her agility; she also shows off her linguistic ability and her brains (literally). Michael Madsen and Daryl Hannah, the remaining DiVAS members, will be dealt with in Volume 2.
It will inevitably be said, in Mr. Tarantino's defense, that his violence is fundamentally cartoonish. (The actual cartoon inserted in the middle of the picture, to provide background on one of The Bride's would-be assassins, may be bloodier than anything else in it, which is saying a lot.) But he undermines this argument with sequences that cross the line between jolting and sickening. While The Bride is in the hospital, a cretinous orderly named Buck rents out her unconscious body for sex; when she wakes up, she kills Buck's latest customer by chewing off part of his face, and then takes care of Buck by slamming his head in a metal door.
Compared with this, the long, intricate climax, during which The Bride takes on 88 yakuza fighters and litters a Tokyo nightclub with their severed limbs and writhing trunks, feels as insouciant and elegant as a show-stopping musical number. Which, in essence, it is, staged with the assistance of the martial-arts maestro Yuen Wo-Ping.
The sordid creepiness that occasionally seeps into "Kill Bill" makes you wonder what Tarantino is trying to do, and whether he is entirely in control of his own imagination. Other parts of the movie are notable for their dullness, especially an interminable chapter during which the Bride purchases a sword from a reluctant craftsman played by the Japanese action legend Sonny Chiba. The point, aside from allowing an excursion into mystical Shaolin mumbo jumbo and displaying Thurman in a cute American tourist jeans-and-T-shirt ensemble, seems to be to revel in the sheer presence of Chiba. Check it out, Tarantino seems to be saying, Sonny Chiba's in my movie. How cool is that?
Way too cool? Not cool enough? It depends. The movie-geek in-jokes are sometimes amusing and sometimes annoying. The English dialogue is purposely stilted, often sounding like badly translated subtitles ("I have no wish to kill you before the eyes of your daughter," The Bride says to Copperhead, before doing just that). When the characters speak Japanese, the English subtitles show a similar awkwardness ("Whom in Okinawa made you this steel?").
The hurtling incoherence of the story may also be, at least partly, a tribute to its sources, in which sense was more often than not trumped by sensation. Will the loose ends and cliffhangers that proliferate in Volume 1 be satisfactorily resolved in Volume 2? Will anyone outside the hard core of Tarantino's fans really care? Whom knows.
"Kill Bill: Vol. 1" is rated R in the U.S. (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has shootings, stabbings, beatings, beheadings, disembowelings, amputations, mutilations, eye-gougings, slicings, choppings, bitings and a spanking. Also, some naughty words.
TITLE: presidential potboiler has no sting
AUTHOR: by Max Byrd
PUBLISHER: the new york times
TEXT: As a young man Abraham Lincoln wrote poetry. John Quincy Adams, to console himself after losing an election, translated some odes of Horace. But leaving aside campaign speeches, legal depositions and recent addresses to Congress, up until now no American president has ever published fiction.
Write, a novelist starting out is always told, what you know. Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, is 79 years old, probably not the oldest first novelist in literature, but certainly crowding the record. What he knows is politics, carpentry and, as it turns out, an enormous amount of American history.
"The Hornet's Nest," according to the book's acknowledgments, was seven years in the making. And its somewhat sensational title refers not to Washington or Congress or even Camp David, but instead to an obscure and ferocious enclave of northern Georgia partisans and militiamen in the Revolutionary War, a guerrilla-like group to which Carter says several of his ancestors belonged.
Historical fiction is, of course, a literary genre at least as old as Homer. For a former president it is about as dignified a choice as he could have made, and it seems to have satisfied the author's need, hardly unusual at 79, to bring his progenitors to life, and at the same time deliver something like a schoolteacher's disquisition on a favorite subject. "Most Americans," Carter explains in the acknowledgments, "know very little about major events of the war in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, and I wanted to present as accurate an account as possible." He adds, a little ominously, that his editors have pushed him to reduce the original length of the book, which he has done "with some pain and reluctance."
The novel begins quite charmingly in Philadelphia in 1763, with a whirlwind courtship (his naive and apolitical lovers marry seven pages into Chapter 1, in the middle of a paragraph; so much for suspense). Ethan and Epsey Pratt then drift southward to North Carolina, where the Battle of Alamance Creek (1771), between British authorities and a group of colonial protesters known as Regulators, leads to the hanging of Ethan's firebrand older brother. The Pratts, tilting now toward the Revolutionary side, migrate still farther south, like Carter's own forebears, to a settlement near Augusta.
Here the stoic Ethan falls slowly in love with the wife of his neighbor, Kindred Morris (Pratt and Kindred are Carter family names). And here too the great historical tides of the Revolution eventually sweep him away from his homestead and into the command of the notorious rebel partisan Elijah Clarke, who will hector and slaughter his way to the book's bloody climax at the Battle of Kings Mountain (1780) in South Carolina. It is a little-known battle, as Carter says, yet it becomes the turning point of the war in the South.
There is something very congenial in Carter's voice as he lines up Ethan and Epsey and Kindred, sits them down on their hard 18th-century benches and has them utter paragraph after paragraph of earnest, good-natured, faintly implausible dialogue. And there is something quite incisive about his writing when the subject is farming, or woodwork, or the concrete details of daily life in colonial America.
For long stretches in the book the complex background material of Revolutionary politics and strategy completely displaces the Pratts and the Morrises. The schoolteacher's voice takes over. The author seems determined to put down on paper every single fact he has gathered in his seven years of preparation. Until the last quarter, when Ethan abandons the wounded Kindred to the British and then redeems himself in the American way, through violence, the human interest of the story goes slack and the narrative deteriorates into blocks of exposition.
The most self-revealing moment comes when Carter ushers onto the stage an ambitious politician named Button Gwinnett, briefly governor of Georgia, remembered chiefly now as one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence:
"He was a solemn person, and although his receding chin and slightly pouting mouth gave a first impression of weakness, his brilliant mind, intimate knowledge of the political currents in Savannah and his accurate assessments of his peers made him a formidable politician. He never forgot a slight or a favor and was able to accumulate an intimate cadre of supporters who were almost fanatic in their loyalty to him. He was somewhat reclusive in his personal habits. . . . The intensity of his commitments was the basis of his political influence."
In another era Gwinnett might have written a novel.
TITLE: the word's worth
TEXT: Zhryeby: lot, fate, destiny.
Anyone watching the election debates? Well, I am, along with four pensioners, six representatives of the Central Elections Commission, and 23 lawyers (representing the organizations participating in the State Duma elections). And I highly recommend them to any foreigners wanting to expand their vocabulary, pick up the code words of contemporary Russian political life, and get utterly confused over who stands for what.
However, I did learn that zhryeby is a "lot," i.e. what is drawn to determine the order the candidates and parties appear on the ballot and participate in the debates. It's used in the phrases brosat or myetat zhryeby (to throw or cast lots) and vynut or vytyanut zhryeby (to draw lots). Once the lots are cast and drawn, you can say zhryeby broshyen (the die is cast), which sounds impressively fateful, if not fatal, for the candidates.
Most of the parties define themselves as politicheskiye partii (political parties), though there are a number of izbiratelnye bloki (electoral blocs). The latter are formed when several parties merge; these parties are called in Russian blokoobrazuyushchiye partii - literally "bloc-forming parties." This should not be confused with American block parties, in which neighbors get together for beer and potluck. Although who knows, maybe Russian bloc-parties do the same thing. But probably not the high-brow gang at Yedineniye, which defines itself as kontseptualnaya partiya (a conceptual party).
The main problem with the parties - from the point of view of an unsophisticated foreigner, of course - is that they all have the same name. There are three parties that claim unity: Yedineniye (Unity), Partiya Mira i Yedinstva (Party for Peace and Unity), Yedinaya Rossiya (United Russia); three that represent the people: Narodno-Respublikanskaya Partiya Rossiya (the People's Republican Party of Russia), Narodnaya Partiya Rossiskoy Federatsii (the People's Party of the Russian Federation), "Rodina" narodno-patriotichesky soyuz (the "Homeland" People's Patriotic Union); two that hearken back to the old glory days of Rus: Za Rus Svyatuyu (For Holy Rus) and Obyedinyonnaya Rossiskaya Partiya "Rus" (The "Rus'" United Russian Party); and two that are patriotic, although one tries to position itself as the real thing: Istinnye Patrioty Rossii (True Patriots of Russia).
Liberalnaya Rossiya (Liberal Russia) should never, ever be confused with LDPR - Liberalno-Demokraticheskaya Partiya Rossii (the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), headed by Vladimir Zhirinovsky who is, by Western standards at least, neither liberal nor democratic.
Confused yet? Now, imagine you are a pensioner looking at that ballot (izbiratelny byulleten). If I were a Russian pensioner, you can bet I'd mix up my patriots, unities and people's parties and mark the wrong box. Or vote for KPRF (the communist party) because at least I've heard of them; Rossiiskaya Partiya Pensionerov i Partiya Sotsialnoy Spravedlivosti (The Russian Pensioners' Party and the Social Justice Party), because they sound like my kind of folks; or Partiya Slon (Elephant Party), for the whimsy of it. Actually, the elephants stand for Soyuz Lyudey sa Obrazonvaniye i Nauku (The Union of People for Education and Science).
And if all this isn't confusing enough, sometimes candidates legally change their names. Remember those candidates who officially changed their names to 'KPRF"?
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based interpreter and translator.
TITLE: Coroner Says Police Beating Killed Man
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CINCINNATI - The death of a 160-kilogram black man who was clubbed by police in a videotaped beating was caused primarily by the struggle that ensued after the suspect lunged and swung at the officers, the coroner said Wednesday in a case that has heightened racial tensions.
Hamilton County Coroner Carl Parrott said Nathaniel Jones, 41, suffered from an enlarged heart, obesity and had intoxicating levels of cocaine, PCP and methanol in his blood.
He said the death will be ruled a homicide, but added that such a decision does not mean police used "excessive force." The coroner said he had to rule the death a homicide because it did not fall under the other categories: accident, suicide or natural.
"Since the struggle was the result of a purposeful act, in this case, the effort by the police to subdue him, to do their jobs, that purposeful act was a primary cause of death," Parrott said.
The coroner said the death was a homicide because the struggle and restraint caused Jones' death, but noted that Jones would have been more likely to survive had he not used drugs, been obese or suffered from the weakened heart.
Black activists say Jones' death was another example of police brutality against blacks.
But city officials have said the officers were properly defending themselves against a violent suspect. The officers - five whites and one black - were placed on administrative leave.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Chretien Says Farewell
OTTAWA (AFP) - Prime Minister Jean Chretien leaves Ottawa next Wednesday for a tour to Nigeria and France, his final overseas tour before he steps down as prime minister on Dec.12.
Senior Canadian officials said Friday that his visit to Nigeria - for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) - was very important because, as one of the officials said, "the prime minister is passionate about Africa."
Chretien will leave Ottawa Wednesday to arrive in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, for the meeting of the leaders of more than 50 Commonwealth countries, mainly former British colonies.
He will leave Abuja on Dec. 8 for a visit to Paris, at the invitation of French President Jacques Chirac.
On Dec. 10, Chretien will arrive back in Canada before handing over his office to his successor as leader of the governing Liberal Party, Paul Martin, on Dec. 12.
Ohio Shooting Fears
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Lunchtime was slow at the China City restaurant: only about half the tables in the dining room were occupied. That has been typical since police started investigating a series of shootings along a 8-kilometer stretch of Interstate 270, including one that killed a woman.
"We were busier before the shootings.," China City manager Jeffrey Zhu said Wednesday.
Four of the 12 shootings - three at vehicles and one at the school - were from the same gun, Franklin County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Steve Martin said. Ballistics tests could not link the other shootings, which began in May, but police think all are connected.
Rwandan Media Guilty
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Two Rwandan journalists were jailed for life and a third was sentenced to 35 years on Wednesday for fanning the flames of a 1994 genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 people, a U.N. tribunal spokesman said.
The verdict ends a landmark three-year trial that heard how the media played a major role in inciting extremists from the Hutu majority to carry out the 100-day slaughter of ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.
Ferdinand Nahimana, 53, a founding member of Radio Television Libres des Mille Collines (RTLM), was sentenced to life in prison along with Hassan Ngeze, 42, owner and editor of the Hutu extremist newspaper Kangura.
Life in prison is the most severe penalty the tribunal can hand down.
Travel Writer Quits
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jan Morris, the British-born journalist and travel writer, says she is quitting while she's ahead.
After writing more than 30 books, she is among the world's best impressionistic travel writers, lauded by Publishers Weekly as "one of the most admired and imitated travel writers alive."
Despite such acclaim, Morris has no intention of milking her reputation, believing her 2001 book on the Adriatic port of Trieste is as good as it gets.
Her fans will still get to enjoy a newly released collection of her essays, "The World: Travels 1950-2000," which she calls a postscript to her career.
The collection tracks nonfiction written by Morris as James and then as Jan. The author underwent a sex change in 1972, the topic of Morris' 1974 book "Conundrum."
TITLE: Klitschko One Fight From Lewis
AUTHOR: By Hal Bock
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Vitali Klitschko figures he will be the heavyweight champion eventually. How soon depends in large part on Saturday night's 12-round fight against Kirk Johnson.
Klitschko subbed for an injured Johnson last June against WBC champ Lennox Lewis and was ahead on all three scorecards when he was stopped by a nasty cut in the sixth round.
Now Klitschko and Johnson head a Madison Square Garden card, and the winner becomes a mandatory opponent for Lewis - if Lewis fights again. Should the title become vacant, the Klitschko-Johnson winner would be in position to claim it.
Also on the heavyweight card are undefeated Joe Mesi (27-0) against Monte Barrett (29-2) in a 10-round co-feature. The bouts will be televised by HBO.
"I planned to be world champion last June 21," Klitschko said Wednesday. "It is experience. You need to have experience. It is the most important factor to have. If I had been more experienced, I would be champion now."
Klitschko (32-2, 31 KOs) thought he could have continued against Lewis, but that decision was out of his hands. Then he hoped for an immediate rematch with Lewis. Instead, he must take a step back and fight Johnson (34-1-1, 25 KOs), while Lewis considers his options.
Klitschko recognizes it is a vital step.
"I am giving my best to be world champion," he said. "This fight is very important. Kirk is the top heavyweight in the world. To be the official challenger, winning this fight is very important."
For Johnson, this fight is just as vital.
He was disqualified for low blows in a title fight against then-WBA champ John Ruiz in July 2002. Then, impressive wins over Jeremy Bates and Lou Savarese earned him the date with Lewis, but he was forced to step aside because of a torn chest muscle.
Promoter Dino Duva called those disappointments two strikes for Johnson, who laughed off that description.
"I don't live my life with two strikes," he said. "I'm not playing baseball. If it was baseball, three strikes and I'd be out. I understand this opportunity. I'll get in the ring and do what I have to do."
Johnson believes he is better prepared for Klitschko thanks to some training tips from ex-champ Larry Holmes.
"I overtrained for Ruiz," Johnson said. "I was in great shape for Lewis but tore the muscle. I had no control over that. Saturday night, I'll be in control.
"Vitali is a strong fighter. I'm Kirk Johnson. I don't worry about anything else. I'm all about doing what I need to do to win the fight. My skills are what I win with."
Klitschko said he is fully recovered from the cut that stopped the Lewis fight.
"I feel well," he said. "I'm in great shape. I am ready for a great performance. I don't underestimate Kirk Johnson."
TITLE: Free-Agent Fedorov Back in Detroit, Gets Cold Welcome
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DETROIT - Pavel Datsyuk had two goals and two assists, and the Red Wings spoiled Sergei Fedorov's return to Detroit on Wednesday night with a 7-2 victory over the Anaheim Mighty Ducks.
After playing 13 seasons with the Red Wings, Fedorov signed a five-year, $40 million contract with Anaheim in July. He was booed every time he touched the puck, but there was a mixed reaction when he scored with 4:40 left in the second period.
Fedorov was knocked out of part of the game after he was cut on his face during the first period. He missed a portion of the second period while the wound was being repaired.
Mark Mowers, Brett Hull and Kirk Maltby each had a goal and an assist for Detroit and Jason Williams and Brendan Shanahan also scored.
Tony Martensson had the other Mighty Ducks goal.
Hull's goal was the 729th of his career and moved him within two of Marcel Dionne, who is third on the NHL's career list. Wayne Gretzky (894) is first and Gordie Howe (801) is second.
Shanahan scored his 542nd career goal, snapping a tie with Stan Mikita and Ron Francis and putting him alone in 20th place. Francis scored his 541st earlier Wednesday night in Carolina's 2-1 loss to Nashville.
Detroit took a 2-0 lead in the first period.
Mowers opened the scoring 4:32 in when he tipped in a pass from Kris Draper. Hull scored with 5:21 left in the period when his one-timed slap shot beat Jean-Sebastien Giguere after Datsyuk won a faceoff deep in the Anaheim zone.
The Red Wings added four more in the second period as Maltby and Williams scored 50 seconds apart. Ducks goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere was pulled in favor of Martin Gerber after Williams' goal.
Datsyuk then scored with 6:45 left and again with 3:31 remaining.
Fedorov's goal was sandwiched between Datsyuk's pair. Fedorov beat Manny Legace with a wrist shot from the top of the right circle.