SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #982 (50), Friday, July 2, 2004
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TITLE: Putin Conspicuously Mum on Yukos
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: If President Vladimir Putin intended to send a message to the business community Thursday, he let events speak for themselves.
As he met with the country's most influential businessmen in the Kremlin, Putin remained markedly silent on the biggest news of the day - the announcement of an additional $3.4 billion tax bill for battered oil giant Yukos.
Instead the president used the meeting - his first with the country's top business lobby since November - to preach on his usual themes of paying taxes, showing social responsibility and overcoming poverty.
The 21 assembled members of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, or RSPP, and other lobby groups, only learned of the news upon emerging from the 2 1/2-hour meeting Thursday evening.
"I don't think anything about it. I haven't hear anything about it. You are the first to tell me," said Alexei Mordashov, head of the Severstal Group, when asked what he thought about the new tax claim in an interview on NTV's 10 p.m. nightly news program.
"The situation around Yukos was not concretely discussed," said Renaissance Capital's Alexander Shokhin, who attended the gathering.
Present were some of the country's richest men, from oil and metals tycoons Viktor Vekselberg and Oleg Deripaska to bankers Mikhail Fridman and Andrei Kostin.
Notably absent was Anatoly Chubais, CEO of Unified Energy Systems, who met with Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov earlier in the day to discuss reform of the energy sector. The issue was not raised during the meeting with the president.
Putin told the assembled businessmen that he expects businesses to abandon tax optimization schemes - and that the state has a right to expect they will not be used, Shokhin said in a telephone interview.
The president indicated that this is only fair given the lowering of taxes such as the unified social tax and the value-added tax.
"He said that all the freed-up funds should go into the real sector, should be invested in production and in raising wages," Shokhin said.
At the same time, Putin found some encouraging words as well, saying that limitations on investing abroad will be loosened and that the issue of timely VAT refunds will be resolved.
The meeting also covered administrative reform, the banking sector, mortgages, educating professionals and overcoming poverty.
The first speaker, billionaire Vladimir Potanin, said that instability in the banking sector is unacceptable.
The industry has had the jitters ever since two medium-size banks, Sodbiznesbank and CreditTrust, had their licenses revoked last month. The closures spurred fears that the Central Bank may go after other banks.
"The market painfully and inadequately reacts to bad news and even rumors," Potanin said in televised remarks.
He said that government regulations have to be strengthened in the banking sphere.
Intervention was totally justified, Putin said, but added that "the Central Bank has to act carefully and has to think about the interests of the banking sector and depositors."
Potanin also complained that while the economy is doing well, the much-vaunted administrative reform is not yielding results - a view supported by other participants.
Sergei Borisov, the president of Opora, the main lobby for small and medium sized businesses, appealed for more support and less bureaucracy.
"Only 17 percent of the work force is involved in small business, the lowest number in the world," Borisov said in televised remarks. "In the rest of the world small business is afraid of competition. In Russia small business is afraid of government officials."
"It was important for him to know the mood of business and how far it is ready to support upcoming reforms," Shokhin said.
Another participant, confectioner Andrei Korkunov, said that Putin acknowledged that businessmen in Russia are often looked at with contempt - and that it is time to cultivate their image as positive heroes.
"This meeting marked a watershed in that the uncivilized accumulation of capital is over and that the business understands it is hard to be rich in a poor country," said Korkunov. "We're the first to be concerned about social problems because nobody but us will resolve them."
Overall, the participants expressed satisfaction with the meeting.
"I have a very positive impression of the meeting," Korkunov said.
"It was a calm dialogue, no confrontation. From the start Putin set a relaxed tone for the meeting. There were no new demands set forth by the president," he said.
"Putin said that Russia is our mutual home that we have to make richer. Everybody agreed."
Participants said that Putin promised more meetings will follow.
The last time Putin met with the RSPP was in November, shortly after the arrest of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
But the last time Putin invited the RSPP to the Kremlin was 15 months ago, long before the trials and tribulations surrounding Yukos.
Staff writer Catherine Belton contributed to this report.
TITLE: Artists Get Reprieve in Studio Spat
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A week of confrontation between local artists and the city property committee over a proposal to privatize their studios ended Wednesday, when the Legislative Assembly passed a bill confirming the artists' rights to continue renting studios at discounted prices.
Local artists have been able to rent some 2,000 city-owned studios at low prices - currently from 500 to 1500 rubles per month - since the Soviet era.
City Hall last week issued a decree ordering the privatization of the studios so that they could to be subsequently sold or rented at market prices. Few artists' incomes are high enough for them to buy the studios.
The move was part of a national reform to get rid of privileges that has attracted widespread opposition, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets across the nation on Thursday.
The right to rent studios at discounted prices was granted by 14 city artistic unions. The deal between the city government and the unions terminates in 2010, and City Hall has made it clear it is not eager to prolong it.
City Hall invited artists renting the studios to pay in advance the rent up to 2010, which would on average be $2,000. Those who failed to pay would be evicted and their studios sold. After 2010, however, all studios were to be subject to privatization.
The artists protested outside the city parliament Wednesday morning, with some 1,000 people gathering on St. Isaac's Square in driving rain.
Ink was running on wet paper as the meeting's participants signed a petition to the Legislative Assembly. The names were barely legible, but their efforts paid off.
Vice-Governor Sergei Tarasov told reporters that until a compromise deal is reached, City Hall will take no action on the studios.
However, the artists have not won yet. The assembly will discuss, and possibly amend, the law again in October. City Hall intends to inspect all the studios and how they are being used before it decides what it will do.
Graphic artist Albert Sytin, 65, rents a modest studio under the program. It is located on the sixth floor of a drab house on Vereiskaya Ulitsa in central St. Petersburg. The roof is leaking, the walls are in obvious need of repair. The elevator has long been broken, but the studio is Sytin's only workplace.
"It is unthinkable for an artist to bring all their canvas, oil, plaster and sketches back to the place where they live," he said. "It would throw their apartments in total chaos."
"The Academy of Fine Arts and the Design Academy produce graduates every year," Sytin said. "[City Hall's] decree doesn't give them a chance - unless they have rich parents who can afford to buy them a studio."
St. Isaac's Square saw dozens of emotional speeches on Wednesday.
"There were harder times, but no times have been as ignoble," said academician Anatoly Levitin. "I am a very old man, I have witnessed almost all of 20th century, and I am amazed how our self-proclaimed democratic state is crushing those rare positive things created under the Soviet dictatorship. Our descendants will have only a vague idea about how we live today if we don't leave them works of contemporary art."
Valery Popov, head of St. Petersburg's Writers' Union, appealed to the common sense of bureaucrats.
"Pushkin created Russia's first literary magazine here, whereas you, by setting fancy rents, are forcing contemporary magazines to close down," Popov said. "The last person before you to attack the intelligentsia was [Communist era city party boss]Alexander Zhdanov. Do you really have more in common with him than with us?"
Albert Charkin, head of the St. Petersburg Artists' Union, said it was important to retain the city's stock of studios. Some 4,000 artists are in line to receive studios under the city program, he added.
"An artist is nothing without a studio, and is forced to take to the streets all year round, which nobody would tolerate, " Charkin said.
City Hall's plans for the studios is apparently part of a campaign to boost
privatization. Governor Valentina Matviyenko wants to put palaces, mansions and even forts at Kronstadt on sale to fill the city coffers. The studios are obviously viewed as inefficiently managed.
Officials complain that many artists sublet their studios, use them infrequently, don't maintain them and don't pay rent on time.
"The time has come to put things in order," Matviyenko said Tuesday. "We will revise the contract of every single studio, and if we see any violations of rules, we'll terminate the tenancy."
Her promise is still to be carried out, but mass privatization is out of the question as the assembly's bill protects the artists from having to pay market prices.
However, Irina Kukovitskaya, head of the exhibitions department at the Yelagin Palace, said inspecting the studios will divide the artists into "worthy" and "unworthy," which will weaken the artistic community.
"Pressing everyone against the wall is just a test of who is capable of fighting, and who is not," she said. "If they take half of the studios on the grounds that they are improperly used or whatever, then eventually they will easily take over the rest of them, as there would be far fewer people protesting."
Kukovitskaya said the privatization proposals show the lowly status of an artist in modern society.
"We have lost our stores, our clientele and now we are about to lose our workplaces," she said. "In Soviet times, there were three brand-name shops of the Artists' Union on Nevsky Prospekt alone, and they were forced to close down as intelligentsia couldn't afford to pay for the art, and the union couldn't afford to pay the rent. No wonder most of us are so penniless that we can't pay market rents for the studios."
(See photo, page 3)
TITLE: U.S. Hero Jones Served in Russian Navy
AUTHOR: By Chris Condlin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As Americans in St. Petersburg celebrate their most important national holiday on Sunday, few may realize that one of those who took part in the events that July 4 commemorates walked the city's streets at the same time their homeland was born.
For Americans, John Paul Jones is one of their most sacred Revolutionary War heroes, the almost-legendary founder of their navy, and the speaker of the famous words: "I have not yet begun to fight."
For the British, he is "Pirate Paul Jones," feared and fearsome raider of the British coastline. Yet for a time he was Pavel Zhones, Kontra-Admiral in the navy of Empress Catherine the Great, and, later, resident of St. Petersburg.
Jones' legacy in Russia is ambiguous, as was the rest of his life. Catherine gave him the admiral's rank that he never received in the United States, yet he was constantly handicapped by the supervision of Catherine's favorite Grigory Potemkin. Jones was loved by the Russian sailors under his command, yet he was never accepted by the aristocracy of St. Petersburg. And although he left Russia in disgrace, he always longed to return and wrote letters to Catherine for the rest of his life.
Jones was one of America's greatest heroes of the Revolutionary War, a shining light in the otherwise dismal history of the Continental Navy's attempts to beat back the British fleet. His daring raids against the British coastline in 1778-1779 made England feel vulnerable for the first time, and were a deciding factor in the end of the war. Put simply by Jones' most recent biographer, Evan Thomas, Jones "was one of the few members of the revolutionary generation who really knew how to fight."
The U.S. Defense Attaché in Moscow, Rear Admiral Ben Wachendorf, sums up what Jones means to the U.S. Navy: "As the Father of the U.S .Navy, John Paul Jones established the standards for courage, readiness, and moral conduct for future generations of U.S. Navy officers. His crypt at the U.S. Naval Academy serves both to honor him and to instill in midshipmen [students at the Naval Academy] a sense of duty, commitment, integrity, and an awareness of the great responsibility that goes along with service as an officer in the U.S. Navy."
After the war, the fledgling United States scrapped its navy and Jones was left without a job. He spent time in Paris, writing letters to the French and American governments, practically begging for a chance to get back in command. His chance came in 1787, when Catherine the Great approached the United States about lending Jones to lead the Russian fleet against the Turks in the Black Sea.
America agreed, happy to have Jones acquire experience in an established navy, and to end his incessant letter writing. Jones leapt at the chance out of idleness and lust for glory, but also, perhaps, out of love for his country. "In joining the Russian Navy," says Michael Crawford of the U.S. Navy Historical Center, "Jones sought to expand his experience in fleet operations, as opposed to command of a single warship, in preparation for the day when the United States would create its own fleet."
Nevertheless, the philosophical contrast between the Empress and her new commander was severe. Jones had humble parentage and owed much of his success to freedom of social advancement that America afforded. He fought to liberate a country from a tyrant, and then ended up employed by the most authoritarian monarch in Europe. In words that resonate with the modern visitor to Russia, it was only after arriving in Catherine's court that Jones realized he had spent his years in America "among an enlightened people, where the press is free, and where the conduct of every man is open to discussion, and subjected to the judgment of his fellow citizens."
In his first meeting with Catherine, the audacious Jones presented her with a copy of the new U.S. constitution. According to Jones, "her majesty spoke to me often about the United States, and is persuaded that the American Revolution cannot fail to bring about others and to influence every other government." One doubts the Empress was being completely sincere.
The campaign against the Turks in the summer and spring of 1788 was successful, but Jones returned to St. Petersburg in November an unhappy man. He had been hindered throughout the campaign by rivalries with other officers, in particular the supreme military commander, Potemkin.
By the time Jones arrived in the capital, Potemkin had already poisoned Catherine's mind against the foreign kontra-admiral (Russian for rear admiral), and Jones' Russian career was effectively over.
Things would get worse. Jones was accused of rape by a young German girl who had delivered butter to his apartment. To this day the record is unclear. There were several people in St. Petersburg who would have been happy to see Jones humiliated, possibly Catherine among them, and who could have fabricated the case. On the other hand, Jones was famous for his sexual appetite, and this was not the only time in his life that he was accused of rape.
Alexander Poddubny, of the St. Petersburg-based Admiral John Paul Jones Society Charity Fund, finds the allegations preposterous. "It was all the creation of those who envied Jones," says Poddubny, "They envied his glory and his success in Russia. It was a simple case of provocation. Jones' memory deserves better than this dirt."
Jones left Russia in the late summer of 1789, a little over a year after he had arrived. The remaining three years of his life were spent waiting desperately for his next command from Russia, France, or the United States.
"Even after leaving Russia," says Poddubny, "Jones constantly wrote letters to Russia, suggested plans for strategic partnerships between America and Russia, and always aspired to return here. It is even reported that when he died in Paris, he was wearing the uniform of an admiral of the Russian Navy."
In recent years, Jones has emerged as a symbol of U.S.-Russian relations. On July 4, 2003, during the city's 300th anniversary celebrations, the U.S.S. Nicholas paid a visit to St. Petersburg where a ceremony on board paid tribute to Jones a symbol of cooperation between the American and Russian navies.
Two days later - Jones' birthday - American and Russian naval officers along with American General Consul Morris Hughes unveiled a memorial plaque to Jones on Gorokhovaya Ulitsa, near the Admiralty, on the building where he lived.
Jones biographer Evan Thomas is pleased by the resurgence of interest in Jones and his use as a symbol. "Jones' diplomacy was a bit of a bust, considering he got kicked out of the country in a sex scandal, but it's good that people want to remember him. However difficult his time there, his visit to Russia was at least a beginning. He went with the blessings of the new American government because they thought Jones could learn something about building a navy. Great nations can learn from each other."
Like the relationship between the United States and Russia, Jones' time in Russia was complex and ambiguous, full of rivalry, misunderstanding, and mutual suspicion, but also periods of cooperation and great accomplishment.
TITLE: Landmine Left At Synagogue
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Security guards at the Great Choral Synagogue on Lermontovsky Prospekt found a landmine outside the synagogue on Tuesday night.
The landmine, wrapped in plastic, was discovered shortly after 4 a.m during a routine inspection of the territory. The police arrived immediately to destroy the mine, but discovered that it contained no explosive.
Mark Grubarg, head of local Jewish community said the matter will be discussed with the city authorities. "It is very fortunate that the mine was harmless, but we really can't just forget about it," Grubarg said. "The incident is yet another reminder of the unfriendly attitude towards ethnic and religious minorities. It has to be confronted, if, of course, the city doesn't want to face more brutal crimes."
The synagogue's principal rabbi, Menahem Mendel Pevzner said he has no idea who was behind the attack, and attributed it to the unhealthy attitudes toward minorities in St. Petersburg.
TITLE: Big Bikes On Road To Berlin
AUTHOR: By Simone Kozuharov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Indiana Jones and his father used one to outrun the Nazis. Now, Three Germans, two Englishmen and a Chinese mechanic have taken Chinese-built modern-day versions of BMW motorcycles with sidecars on a transcontinental journey from Beijing to Berlin, with a stop in St. Petersburg along the way.
The four motorbikes never fail to draw a crowd in villages and tiny towns along the route. Sometimes up to 300 people gather to gawk and stare at the comical-looking contraptions.
"Its just interesting. One, because we're foreigners and two, because we're a bunch of idiots on motorbikes," Richard George, one of the drivers, said with a laugh, on Thursday.
The bike riders are themselves something of a novelty. A motley crew composed of an executive chef, a foreign correspondent, a board chairman of a telecom company, a hotel manager, a photographer and a mechanic, the six middle-aged men could be called a collective embodiment of a mid-life crisis.
The road to Petersburg has been paved with everything from villagers, shocked by the arrival of men with white skin, to a naked woman in Kazan. From villagers to erotic dancers to the Russian border guards, these guys have nothing but good things to say about the people they've met along the way.
"The one thing I noticed in Siberia is just how friendly everybody is. They are just so nice, just lovely people - absolutely gorgeous," George said. "I've traveled my whole life and they're probably some of the nicest people I've ever met."
In fact, the group have become an odd symbol of peace.
Matthias Schepp, a sidecar passenger and former correspondent for German magazine Stern in Moscow, recounted how the group was embraced in a village that was once located on the front lines.
"A man helped us who still remembered the time of the war very well. They showed us the graves of German soldiers and told us who died there, where the front was," he said.
"I think this is just a wonderful incident after the German and Russian people warred so horribly twice in the past century and that so many people died and that now the people in this village treated us with their hearts and were ready to help."
TITLE: Music Aids Tolerance, Says Yul Brunner's Son
AUTHOR: By Lisa Strid
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Music can make the world a better place, Rock Brynner, son of the late Vladivostok-born Hollywood star Yul Brunner, said in St. Petersburg this week.
In a talk given at the city's American Corner on Tuesday, Brynner focused on how music helped bridge white and black America while tracing a narrative of its roots through to the Vietnam era.
Brynner can draw on rich experiences; his varied endeavors include everything from working as Muhammad Ali's bodyguard to serving as road manager for Bob Dylan and The Band. His latest incarnation is as a history professor specializing in the U.S. Constitution at Colombia University in New York.
Starting at the end of the U.S. Civil War, when old Confederate army instruments could be obtained cheaply by former slaves, to the birth of jazz, up to Elvis' appearance, Brynner described the climate of prejudice and inequality that the African-American founders of the musical genre faced.
"It is a beautiful irony that the former slaves took the instruments from the army that had supressed them and began to create a music that 100 years later dominates the world."
Nevertheless, even in living memory black artists faced enormous barriers.
"There were still many lynchings [of blacks accused of crimes]... as late as 1930," Brynner said.
When Elvis' voice first hit white airwaves in 1953, however, "They couldn't tell if it was a white man or a black man," and the door was opened for black artists, while white America got its first taste of what it had been missing.
"Rock & roll integrated American culture before the courts had integrated American schools, restaurants, and public places," he said.
He warned, however that popular music has become commercialized.
"The story continues, but the commercial forces of recording companies and radio stations have now co-opted teenage rebellion. By now it's almost impossible for a real teenage rebel to be heard by the American public." But he doesn't believe that rock is dead.
"As long as there are teenagers who want to make their parents angry with the music they like, there will be rock & roll."
During his talk, Brynner dismissed a question on hip-hop, failing to note the curious parallels between its birth and that of rock & roll, which suggests that while blatant shows of prejudice may have been swept from the surface of America, culture itself may still have a long way to go toward equality.
Asked what brought him to Russia, Brynner replied - an e-mail invitation from Vladivostok. He was surprised upon arrival to learn more of his family's history - that his great-grandfather had founded the eastern port city, and that his grandfather attended Petersburg's own Mining Institute.
Brynner's book about his father, "Yul: the Man Who Would Be King," a play on the title of Brunner's famous "The King and I," will be published in Russian next week by Eksmo.
TITLE: Letter Was Fake
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - A letter signed by five U.S. congressmen and calling for U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to investigate the actions of former Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko is a forgery, four of the congressmen and the U.S. Embassy said.
The June 4 letter, posted on the web site of the U.S.-based American Defense Council, which describes itself as from a conservative lobbying group, alleges that Kiriyenko recently purchased property in Illinois in a possible attempt to live in the United States.
It also expresses concern over the origins of any money he might spend in the United States, suggesting that Kiriyenko might have had a role in the disappearance of a $4.8 billion IMF loan in 1998.
House Representatives Charlie Norwood, Mike Pence, Philip Crane and Henry Bonilla said in a statement that they knew nothing about the letter and that their signatures had been forged.
"We have neither collectively nor individually signed any letter to Secretary of State Powell regarding former Prime Minister Kiriyenko and his citizenship status," the statement said.
TITLE: U.S. Investors Eye Oblast for New Options
AUTHOR: By Chris Condlin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: U.S. investments in St. Petersburg have been in decline, but analysts are unsure whether it is a lack of attractive opportunities or the policies of the new city administration that are to blame.
The newly published statistics report by the Committee of Government Statistics for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast (Peterburgkomstat), show that after a peak in 2001, American investment in the city has declined for two consecutive years. American companies invested $220 million in the city in 2001; $143 million in 2002; and $135 million in 2003.
Despite the decline, American investment actually accounts for a greater percentage of foreign investment in the city now than before. In 2002, U.S. firms comprised 16 percent of the investment pie, in 2003 - 19 percent.
"All countries have been slowing their investments," says Natalya Kudryavtseva, Executive Director of the St. Petersburg International Business Association (SPIBA), "it's not just American companies. Last year was the worst drop in a while in foreign direct investment for the country as a whole."
Investment from the Netherlands experienced the biggest decline: while U.S. investment fell by 38 percent from 2001-2003, Dutch investment fell by 58 percent.
The United States retained its place in 2003 as the second biggest investor in the city, after the Netherlands, and ahead of Cyprus with 17 percent of total investment in 2003, Finland with 11 percent, Britain with 8 percent and Germany with 6 percent.
Some of the biggest American investors in the city and the Leningrad Oblast are Philip Morris, International Paper, Ford Motor Company, Coca Cola, Wrigley, Caterpillar, Otis, Gillette, and Pepsi Cola.
One concern for the city is that many of these large investors are taking their business to the Leningrad Oblast. In the past year, the oblast surpassed the city as a destination for foreign investment. In 2003, St. Petersburg was eighth out of Russia's 89 administrative regions in terms of foreign investment as compared to fourth in 2002. Leningrad Oblast, however, climbed from 12th place in 2002 to seventh in 2003, the Peterburgkomstat report shows.
Many of the larger American companies have gone to the oblast simply because there is nowhere in the city to build a factory. "We wanted to build a factory, so we came to the oblast, there's no room in the city," says Marina Balabanova, of Philip Morris, "it's as simple as that."
Others say the picture is not so simple. Anna Gurevich, Senior Investment Officer at Quadriga Capital, says the city is discouraging investors with land reform that makes buying or obtaining long-term leases on land more difficult. "The city's requirements are getting tougher," says Gurevich. "Starting from Jan. 1, 2004 the city raised land prices as much as four to six times the previous price. The city should be interested in housing new companies, but they are providing no support for that. I think the tendency for the next 10 years will be for companies to go to the regions."
Leningrad Oblast has traditionally been one step ahead of St. Petersburg when it comes to providing incentives for foreign investors and minimizing bureaucratic red tape. The oblast promulgated its Investment Law in July 1997, a full year ahead of the city administration. The law includes tax exemptions and deferments for investors, as well as promises of state subsidies for projects that are of a major economic or social value to the oblast.
"The oblast started attracting investors earlier than St. Petersburg," says Kudryatseva, "the oblast government's attitude has always been friendly. They work to help investors overcome the barriers to investment. St. Petersburg is a different story. There they have always been less friendly."
Yet, Kudryatseva is hopeful that the new city administration will prove to be more investor friendly. "The people in the government now seem to understand what foreign business needs. We seem to talk to the relevant government officials in the same language. There is a lot of good talk about facilitating investment. We will wait and see."
Gurevich is less positive. "They are trying to invent new rules, but these rules are more to protect themselves than to give something to investors. I haven't found any rules that would make the lives of foreign companies any easier."
City Hall says that the decline in U.S. investment is nothing to worry about. "We have simply entered a period in which a lot of the big U.S. companies have already explored the market," responds Yekaterina Belikova, the head of the Division for Foreign Economic Relations, part of the city government's Committee for External Relations. "They have come, they have built their factories, now the city is trying to serve them in a different way. We are developing stable laws, improving transportation, developing infrastructure. All of this helps foreign investors."
Belikova also pointed to the "constructive dialogue" with organizations like SPIBA and the American Chamber of Commerce as proof that the city was focused on supporting U.S. businessmen.
But Kudryatseva thinks the city should not rest on its laurels. "It's necessary for the city to create real attractive conditions for investment. We are competing with the whole world for possible investors. We are competing with countries that have transparent systems, friendly governments, and friendly tax regimes. We must actively seek new investment."
However, not all of the impediments to investment come from Russia, say some analysts. American investors' fear of Russia and of the Russian market remains one of the biggest obstacles. "The biggest step for U.S. investors is convincing themselves to come here, to simply start operations," says Maxim Balanev, a consultant at the St. Petersburg Foundation for Small & Medium Enterprise Development.
Everyone seems to agree that this is the time to invest in Russia. As Kudratseva says, "the right time to invest is now. It's not too costly to penetrate the market now, but later will be too late."
TITLE: No Foreign Branches
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - (SPT) It won't be possible for foreign banks to open branches in Russia for now, said Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin at a news-conference Thursday, Interfax reported.
"I think that the limitation is well-founded," he said. Kudrin said that foreign banks could still open fully-owned Russian subsidiaries.
"The limitation has to do with the Russian legislature and trans-border accounting that becomes less transparent if the situation is changed," Kudrin added.
TITLE: Vodka Maker Buys A Pit for Development
AUTHOR: By Sophia Kornienko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Vodka maker Veda Holdings will invest $300 million into the construction of a new recreation center to replace the notorious pit near Moskovsky station.
State-owned Vneshekonombank, that used to act as the main investor in the project, sold its stake to Veda last week. It remains unclear what led the company to take part in the overpriced burdensome project, analysts say.
Veda and Vneshekonombank won the tender organized by the federal property ministry in April and bought the pit for $80 million.
However, both the city Committee for Investment and Strategic Projects and Veda's deputy general director Yelena Morozova failed to answer if the money was actually paid.
Processing such big payments takes much time, one of the committee's officials said Wednesday. "We are not publishing our expenditures," Morozova said in an interview the same day.
Veda refused to comment which banks will take part in financing the $300 million project and when the investment is expected to pay off.
Meanwhile, the investment committee's project manager Nikolai Asaul said that it doesn't matter whether the money has been paid or not.
"What matters to us is that the project develops. We don't care if the tender winner has paid the money to the federal budget and which investors they attract," Delovoi Peterburg quoted Asaul saying Tuesday.
Once planned to accommodate the foundation of a modern train station for express trains going to Moscow, the pit was created in the late '90s by a company called Vysokoskorostniye Magistrali, or VSM.
Backed by federal government guarantee, the company spent $49 million of loan provided by London's Indosuez and SBC Warburg on the project before Russia's former president Boris Yeltsin cancelled his decision to build the express railroad in 1998.
In 2001, VSM's shareholders voted to give up the pit, worth $65 million by that time, to the Property Ministry in order to cover the company's debts to the state.
Vasily Sopromadze, president of Corporation C development company, told Vedomosti back in April that he considered $80 million "an impossible price" for the pit. With the infrastructure fees of at least $100 per square meter taken into account, the land near Moscow train station is going to cost the investors $2,500 per meter, he said. In Sopromadze's opinion, the pit should cost a maximum of $15 million.
"The city does not have another construction site similar in location and size," Morozova said. It is true that $80 million is a lot higher than the pit's market price, but the reasons for such a high price are obvious, she said.
The Finance Ministry and St. Petersburg's city government went to court in March to decide whether it is the federal or the city budget that is responsible for paying the Western creditors.
The arbitration court of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast is holding another hearing on the case on Friday.
"The scarcity of information provided by the city concerning such a well-known investment project is confusing," said expert Alexei Shaskolsky of the St. Petersburg Institute for Entrepreneurial Issues.
"The public has the right to know what is happening to such significant locations on St. Petersburg's investment map," he said.
In Shaskolsky's opinion, political motives may have had a serious effect on the decisions made concerning the pit.
The city government may have granted some undeclared concessions to the investors to motivate them to enter the dubious project, Shaskolsky said. "The city is no longer looking to reap profits from the project - it will be enough to see the gaping hole finally filled in. The pit has become a thorn in the city's side," he said.
When the project is finished, in 2008 by various estimates, a 22 percent share must be passed to the federal government.
TITLE: Dutch Flower Ban Shrinks Market
AUTHOR: By Sophia Kornienko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg will run out of flowers from the Netherlands this Sunday, wholesalers say.
Dutch flower imports account for 90 percent of the city's flower market. Rosvetnadzor, the federal veterinary and agriculture agency banned the imports earlier this week. It announced Thursday that the ban will remain in place at least until a delegation of Russian botanists conducts checks in the Netherlands.
Rosvetnadzor imposed the ban on Dutch flower imports to Russia on Monday, after thrips, a parasite that attacks flowers in pots, was discovered in a large Netherlands shipment.
However, not only flowers in pots, but also cut flowers were banned. "Thrips-infested flowers are supplied to Russia on a regular basis, but the latest lot supplied to Krasnodar was the last straw to break the camel's back," said the head of Rosvetnadzor, Sergei Dankvert.
He refused to estimate when the ban can be lifted. "Permissions on flower imports used to be issued by Rosvetnadzor's regional offices, but now such permissions have to be authorized by the central office," he said. "It is impossible to settle the matter without sending Russian specialists to the Netherlands, where they can examine the greenhouses used for growing the products for imports to Russia," Dankvert said.
"The fuss around Dutch flowers had been staged," Vladimir Kuleshov, director of St. Petersburg wholesaler Flora said Tuesday. "In my opinion, someone's provoking the redistribution of shares in the flower market," Kuleshov said. "Holland has the best system of quality control in the world. There is no one to replace Dutch exports in St. Petersburg today", Kuleshov said. About 80 percent of the products supplied by the city's local flower manufacturers - Tsvety, Nevsky and Moskovsky state flower nurseries - are faulty, he said.
Lyudmila Vikhareva, director of Tsvety, told Business News Agency on Thursday that she had demanded public apology from Kuleshov, who placed his comments in a number of the city's media outlets.
"The quality and the assortment of the flowers grown in St. Petersburg nurseries is equal to that of the imported flowers," Vikhareva said.
Tsvety, the only local producer growing large batches of flowers, is not going to raise prices on products, Vikhareva said.
"The products grown locally can't even be called flowers," Roman Kivel, director of Aalsmeer, another St. Petersburg wholesaler, said Thursday.
"We are currently reorienting our business to involve suppliers from other countries, such as Israel, Colombia and Ecuador," Kivel said. But these measures are only temporary as the ban "cannot possibly last long," he said. Without Dutch exports, local producers will only have flowers to last them a couple of days at most, he added.
Transportation costs have gone up already, Kivel said, because flower exports from other countries are heavier and not as efficiently packaged.
St. Petersburg monthly flower sales are valued at $8 million, of which only 10 percent goes to domestic flower manufacturers. The city also serves as an important transit hub, redistributing flowers as far as Vladivostok. Vans with flowers arrive from Finland and the Baltic states. A medium-sized wholesaler unloads three to four vans per day, Rosbalt information agency reported Monday.
It is impossible to control flower imports to Russia, an anonymous source told Rosbalt on Monday. "Importers may pay about $1,000 per pallet to customs officials in "unofficial fees." Considering that every van carries about 28 pallets, it is doubtful that anyone [offered that kind of money] will block flower imports," the source said. "Flowers will simply become registered as green peas or something else when passing through customs," he said.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: High City Ratings
ST.PETERSBURG (SPT) - Moody's Interfax Rating Agency confirmed its St. Petersburg long-term rating at Aa2 level, and the city's short-term rating level at RUS-1.
Both the long-term and the short-term ratings position the city as highly creditworthy compared to other Russian regions.
The agency reported that the rating was determined by the city's high economic diversification and budget revenues, low debt volumes, relatively stable economy development and low dependency on federal funds for budget stabililzation.
Budget profits rose by 17 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of 2003, according to agency reports.
The profit growth was accompanied by decreasing levels of outstanding debt, by 44.7 percent, which was largely due to the city's fulfilment of Deutshe Bank's credit obligations, Interfax said.
However, Moody's Interfax noted that the uncertainty remains regarding local administration budget reforms.
Particularly unclear remain the city's expenditures reorganization and benefit reforms proposed by the administration.
Once decisions are made regarding the reform parameters, Moody's Interfax Rating Agency will give an additional adjustment to the ratings.
Another Yukos Claim
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Tax Ministry is seeking 98 billion rubles ($3.4 billion) in back taxes from oil major Yukos for 2001, in addition to its claim for 2000, Interfax reported Thursday.
The report, which could not be immediately confirmed, sent Yukos' shares plunging by up to 15 percent.
"Incredible stuff. I am surprised the share price didn't plunge lower on this news," said Natalya Odintsova, head of research at fund managers Prospekt.
A court has already ruled that Russia's largest oil firm must pay $3.4 billion in back-taxes for 2000, and bailiffs who visited Yukos' headquarters on Thursday gave it five days to pay. Yukos has said the 2000 claim would bankrupt it.
The new claim for the subsequent year appeared likely to bring closer a firesale of the company's assets - with state enterprises likely to be at the front of the queue.
"Yukos will be left with the following scenario, which is most likely-there is going to be a big asset sale, and the company will fall to pieces," Odintsova said.
Social Project Done
LENINGRAD OBLAST (SPT) - A reconstructed part of the Svetogorsk town hospital was due to open Friday in Leningrad Oblast.
The reconstruction project was developed and funded by OAO Svetogorsk, a subsidiary of paper giant International Paper, as part of a three-year social program.
S. Pondar, OAO Svetogorsdk's general director, along with the Oblast officials was due to speak at the opening ceremony.
TITLE: A Two-Faced Policy
AUTHOR: By Anne Applebaum
TEXT: Who runs U.S. foreign policy? In a week of historic court cases, international summits and the imperial spectacle of a U.S. viceroy handing over sovereignty, it seems an easy question. Foreign policy, as we all know, is controlled by what the British call the Great and the Good: senior judges and top ambassadors, senators and presidents, and famous names and famous faces.
Yet if you dig beneath the front-page stories, the answer is different. Look at the puzzling question of who controls U.S. policy toward Chechnya, an admittedly lesser, but not entirely insignificant place. After all, the Chechen war is among the bloodiest ethnic conflicts in Europe: Civilian deaths are approaching the level of Cambodian deaths under the Khmer Rouge. Chechnya is also a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists and has contributed to the weakening of democracy in Russia. President Vladimir Putin came to power on a wave of anti-Chechen Russian nationalism.
Theoretically, U.S. policy toward Chechnya is clear enough. Although we consider Chechnya to be "an internal Russian matter," we do say that we want the war to end by negotiation, and we do believe that there is someone for the Russians to negotiate with. Indeed, when the Great and the Good speak about Chechnya, which is not often, they usually sound like Steven Pifer, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. In 2003, for example, Pifer told the Congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe that "we do not share the Russian assessment that the Chechen conflict is simply and solely a counterterrorism effort. ... While there are terrorist elements fighting in Chechnya, we do not agree that all separatists can be equated as terrorists."
But do the opinions of the Great and the Good matter? Cut now from the imperial vistas and the halls of the Capitol to another scene: a courtroom in Boston where, last month, an immigration judge granted political asylum to Ilyas Akhmadov. It was not a surprising decision. Akhmadov was formerly the "foreign minister" of an elected, moderate, separatist Chechen government. Since the Russian invasion of Chechnya in 1999, he has been in exile, advocating a negotiated end to the Chechen war, repeatedly denouncing terrorism. If he were to return to Russia, he would nevertheless be arrested and, as the immigration judge pointed out, would probably be "shot without being afforded the opportunity to defend himself in a trial, as has happened to other members of the Chechen government."
But if the Great and the Good recognize the need for moderate voices in Chechnya, officials at the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, do not. Two days after the judge's decision, DHS lawyers appealed it, on the grounds that Akhmadov is a terrorist. Although conceding that Akhmadov was part of a government that had "spoken out against" terrorism, the appeal argued that his "actions and comments" have "furthered acts of terrorism and persecution by Chechen separatists," and that he should therefore be deported. To anyone who has ever heard them speak, the text of this appeal would sound like nothing so much as the work of Russian security officers, not U.S. officials. Rumor has it that the State Department has protested, on precisely those grounds.
What interests me, though, is not some inside-the-Beltway battle for influence between the DHS and the State Department but rather what this strange tale says about how cavalierly we use our own power, in Chechnya and anywhere else not on the front pages. We may think of these places as insignificant, but the feeling is not mutual. On the contrary, every nation in the world considers its relationship with the United States to be one of its most important. Around the world, the words of the U.S. government carry extra weight. Phrases from the DHS appeal will be quoted in the Russian media, used in other court cases and cited as a precedent: "Look, the U.S. government thinks Akhmadov is a terrorist"; or "Look, the U.S. government is dumping moderate Chechens"; or "Look, the U.S. government doesn't care anymore about human rights."
There are many explanations for the DHS appeal: Perhaps it reflects DHS contacts with Russian security, or a White House attempt to curry favor with the Russian leadership, or even simple ignorance. None is sufficient. We may not have the national energy to do anything about Chechnya or the national attention span even to care much about what happens there, but at least we should have the national decency to treat Chechens who are trying to achieve peace in their country with consistency. For that reason, if for no other, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge should make clear that the U.S. government keeps its word, and withdraw this embarrassing appeal immediately.
Anne Applebaum is a columnist for The Washington Post, where this comment first appeared.
TITLE: Yandarbiyev Killing May Yet Rebound
TEXT: In slapping 25-year sentences on two Russian intelligence agents Wednesday in the killing of former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a Qatari judge made a point of saying that the car bombing was approved by the "Russian leadership."
Responding to this charge, Russia once more denied any official involvement in the assassination and insisted that the two agents were in Qatar to gather intelligence on terrorists.
Russia had previously sought Yandarbiyev's extradition on charges of helping to organize numerous terrorist attacks and of acting as a financial go-between with radical Wahhabist groups in the Middle East, but to no avail.
Entire theses could be written on whether extrajudicial execution of suspected terrorist leaders can be justified, regardless of whether Yandarbiyev could have been considered one or who ordered his assassination.
But such arguments do not answer a vital question about the effectiveness of assassinations of leaders of radical Islamic groups and terrorist networks.
Israel, for instance, has enjoyed a relative lull period after two Hamas leaders were killed in successive months. Damage to an organization, though, does not necessarily hurt its cause, and Palestinian rage has only been fueled.
In comparison, since the killing of Yandarbiyev in Doha in February, the Kremlin has seen no letup in the North Caucasus. In the worst of the attacks, its loyal Chechen president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was assassinated in May and the Ingush city of Nazran was raided by hundreds of Ingush and Chechen rebels in June.
Although Yandarbiyev was far from being the sole pillar of Chechen separatism, his death might have had a short-term effect on the financing of the rebels, but it definitely dealt no mortal blow to their command and control.
Similarly, Russia did not go on to win the first war in Chechnya after the assassination of Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev in 1995. Instead, Yandarbiyev took over, and radical Wahhabi ideas and cash took the rebel movement in a more extreme direction.
Moreover, just like the assassinations of the Hamas leaders, the killing of Yandarbiyev might in the end generate more support for the separatists' cause in Chechnya, as Yandarbiyev's followers seek to portray him as a martyr.
In these circumstances the idea of assassinating a leader in an attempt to bring down an entire movement is a dangerous myth, where the biggest collateral damage is to the long-term chances for peace.
TITLE: Case Study of How Not to Run a Country
AUTHOR: By Paul Krugman
TEXT: The formal occupation of Iraq came to an ignominious end on Monday with a furtive ceremony, held two days early to foil insurgent attacks, and a swift airborne exit for the chief administrator. In reality, the occupation will continue under another name, most likely until a hostile Iraqi populace demands that we leave. But it's already worth asking why things went so wrong.
The Iraq venture may have been doomed from the start - but we'll never know for sure because the Bush administration made such a mess of the occupation. Future historians will view it as a case study of how not to run a country.
Up to a point, the numbers in the Brookings Institution's invaluable Iraq Index tell the tale. Figures on the electricity supply and oil production show a pattern of fitful recovery and frequent reversals; figures on insurgent attacks and civilian casualties show a security situation that got progressively worse, not better; public opinion polls show an occupation that squandered the initial good will.
What the figures don't describe is the toxic mix of ideological obsession and cronyism that lie behind that dismal performance.
The insurgency took root during the occupation's first few months, when the Coalition Provisional Authority seemed oddly disengaged from the problems of postwar anarchy. But what was Paul Bremer, the head of the CPA, focused on? According to a Washington Post reporter who shared a flight with him last June, "Bremer discussed the need to privatize government-run factories with such fervor that his voice cut through the din of the cargo hold." Plans for privatization were eventually put on hold. But as he prepared to leave Iraq, Bremer listed reduced tax rates, reduced tariffs and the liberalization of foreign-investment laws as among his major accomplishments. Insurgents are blowing up pipelines and police stations, geysers of sewage are erupting from the streets, and the electricity is off most of the time - but we've given Iraq the gift of supply-side economics.
If the occupiers often seemed oblivious to reality, one reason was that many jobs at the CPA went to people whose qualifications seemed to lie mainly in their personal and political connections.
Given Bremer's economic focus, you might at least have expected his top aide for private-sector development to be an expert on privatization and liberalization in such countries as Russia or Argentina. But the job initially went to Thomas Foley, a Connecticut businessman and Republican fund-raiser with no obviously relevant expertise. In March, Michael Fleischer, a New Jersey businessman, took over. Yes, he's Ari Fleischer's brother. Fleischer told The Chicago Tribune that part of his job was educating Iraqi businessmen: "The only paradigm they know is cronyism. We are teaching them that there is an alternative system with built-in checks and built-in review."
Checks and review? On Monday a leading British charity, Christian Aid, released a scathing report, "Fueling Suspicion," on the use of Iraqi oil revenue. It points out that the May 2003 UN resolution giving the CPA the right to spend that revenue required the creation of an international oversight board, which would appoint an auditor to ensure that the funds were spent to benefit the Iraqi people. Instead, the United States stalled, and the auditor didn't begin work until April 2004. Even then, according to an interim report, it faced "resistance from CPA staff." And now, with the audit still unpublished, the CPA has been dissolved.
Defenders of the administration will no doubt say that Christian Aid and other critics have no proof that the unaccounted-for billions were ill spent. But think of it this way: given the Arab world's suspicion that we came to steal Iraq's oil, the occupation authorities had every incentive to expedite an independent audit that would clear Halliburton and other U.S. corporations of charges that they were profiteering at Iraq's expense. Unless, that is, the charges are true.
Let's say the obvious. By making Iraq a playground for right-wing economic theorists, an employment agency for friends or family, and a source of lucrative contracts for corporate donors, the administration did terrorist recruiters a very big favor.
Paul Krugman is a columnist for The New York Times, where this comment first appeared.
TITLE: grandeur waltzes into town
AUTHOR: By Larisa Doctorow
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: On Friday the Grand Waltz International Music Festival opens in the Pavlovsk Park's Rose Pavilion, bringing back to life a 19th century tradition when top Russian and Western European artists performed there and Pavlovsk was the summertime music capital of Russia. Johann Strauss, the King of Waltzes himself, conducted the concerts, played the violin and composed new music here during 11 summers between 1853 and 1865, which explains the motif of the festival.
It all started with the construction of a railway connecting Pavlovsk with St. Petersburg, when the line running to Tsarskoye Selo built in the mid 1830s was extended. To attract people who were afraid of taking the train, a so-called Music Station was built and public concerts were offered during the summer season. After Strauss, came Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Glazunov and many others. Like many other traditions, it all ended in 1917.
A revival sprang up in 2002. In 2003, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, the Austrian Consulate presented the city with a copy of the famous sculpture of Strauss by Edmund Hellmer (1921) that used to stand in Vienna's Stadtpark. Appropriately enough, this statue is now one of the features of Pavlovsk and an integral part of the Festival's promotional literature.
While the opening and closing concerts will be in Pavlovsk, this year the festival also expands downtown and to other suburban locations. As Festival Artistic Director, Julia Kantor, explained at a news conference: "Our festival geographically follows the places where Johann Strauss performed." The venues now include Peterhof, Tsarskoye Selo and the Konstantin Palace in Strelna, as well as the Hermitage Theater.
The Festival concerts naturally feature the music of Strauss, father and son, but there are some surprises, including music never yet performed in Russia, such as the Strauss Romances for Cello and Piano (Monday) and romances (Tuesday) by a Russian society girl, Olga Smirnitskaya, who fell in love with Strauss. Like today's pop bands, Strauss won over hearts wherever he played. Indeed, a part of the Vienna sculpture that seems not to have been brought to Russia depicts ecstatic young women, described on one website as "groupies" of that age.
The festival brings together musicians and singers from the Mariinsky Theater, the State Hermitage Orchestra, the St. Petersburg State Conservatory Orchestra, Andreyev's State Academic Orchestra of Folk Instruments, the conductors Dmitry Khokhlov, Alexei Karabanov and Alexander Vikulov. Also participating for the first time are foreign musicians, among them the Italian maestro Fabio Mastrangelo and Austrian conductor and world-renowned specialist on Strauss, Christian Pollak, who will give two concerts. In the closing concert of the festival on July 12, Mariinsky soloist Anna Netrebko will give a recital.
One spin-off of the festival has been a project to restore the original Pavlovsk Music Station, which was several hundred meters from today's elektrichka station. Director of the Pavlovsk Park- Museum Nikolay Tretyakov has talked about constructing a small railway along which a reduced scale train will run. Two or three cars will take the public straight to the future Music Station.
The Festival runs from July 2-12. Tickets for all venues are on sale in the theater box offices around the city.
TITLE: KMFDM bring sound of 'WWIII'
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: KMFDM, the intense U.S.-based industrial band, who describes its style as "ultraheavy beat," brings its most recent album, "WWIII," to St. Petersburg and promises a really special event, when it performs at club PORT on Friday.
The band was formed in Paris by Sascha Konietzko and German painter and multi-media-performer, Udo Sturm, in February 1984.
"At first, it was more of an art project, a sort of a soundtrack to art exhibitions and things like that," said Konietzko about the beginnings of the band, which released its first album, "What Do You Know, Deutschland," in 1986.
"We started, at a pretty early point, combining machine beats, electronic sounds and heavy metal guitar, with politically charged lyrics - not stuff about misery and love, but all about anger and political protest, dissatisfaction with political systems, because we figured out communism doesn't work, capitalism doesn't work, democracy doesn't work, so the driving question behind the early KMFDM stuff was: what actually works?
According to Konietzko, KMFDM has never seen itself as a German band. "We never felt like a German band, we've always been a very international mixture of people: our singer was from Indonesia, our drummer was half-Japanese. It was more than a local German band, it was an international force."
Konietzko, who was born in Hamburg in 1961, attributes his Slavic-sounding name to possibly Ukrainian roots. "I think, originally my family came from the Ukraine," he says.
From his early years, Konietzko was surrounded by music and musical instruments due to his parents' musical interests.
"My father is a marine biologist. In the 1950s he worked in Africa as a marine biologist for the Royal Belgian Zoological Society. While in Africa, with a tape machine, he recorded native music, and he exhibited those recordings at ethnic festivals in Germany and all over Europe in the early 1960s. He was interested in all kinds of archaic native musical instruments, African drums.
"My entire life I was always exposed to exotic instruments around the house. I started building my first guitar when I was eight years old, and I made the pickup out of an old headphone system, so that was how I got interested in music. Not so much in playing an instrument, because till today I can't pick up a guitar and play a song, I can't just join a band and jam. I am not a musician per se."
Since Konietzko was 11, he played drums and bass with a band at school. "Later I became interested in electronic music, in industrial music, music that was not using conventional instruments," he said.
"So the early KMFDM instruments were vaccuum cleaners, distortion pedals, little synthesizer boxes and early drum machines. We were very good friends with Einsturzende Neubauten. It was very inspiring to just do noise and have fun." Though the band's name is often transcribed as "Kill Motherfucking Depeche Mode," its origins do not have anything to do with the British pop band.
"The real definition for KMFDM is a German acronim for 'Kein Mehrheit fur die Mitleid,' which has 'Mehrheit' and 'Mitleid' flipped," said Konietzko.
"It should be "Kein Mitleid fur die Mehrheit' [No Pity for the Majority], we just flipped it because it was the way to do it at that time, and we abbreviated it to KMFDM.
"And when we came to the U.S., people were asking what does that mean, and we had to explain, 'It is German, it's not quite correct, and people were just scratching their heads, 'Aha...,' like 'O kay...' So we just need to say something more snappy. So we said, 'OK, it's Kill Motherfucking Depeche Mode, "
"It was definitely a protest against the state of music at all times, and that's still the case today. It didn't really have anything to do with us hitting Depeche Mode."
Deprived of any noticeable success in Germany, KMFDM moved from Hamburg to the U.S. in 1991. "Everything was against us, we had no luck at all, we had no record label, we had no money at all, we had no success," said Konietzko.
"But we had licensed our music to WAX TRAX! in Chicago, that was popular at that time for electronic music. From Front 242 to Ministry, all kinds of good bands were signed to that label.
"And they were selling KMFDM records in the U.S. and they said, 'It's doing very well, you have to come over here and promote your stuff. Why don't you go on tour with Ministry? So we came over here, and suddenly we realized that there were 25,000 to 40,000 people that would buy our music, and compared to Germany, where there were maybe 200 or 300, you know, it seemed very natural and logical to stay here and work as long as it worked out."
Released last September, the band's most recent album deals with the current political situation in the world.
"KMFDM is a work of concept, everything is based on each other," said Konietzko.
"Frank Zappa coined the term 'conceptual continuity,' and this is exactly what KMFDM is doing in its own way.
"WWIII" was preceded by an album called 'ATTAK.' Is was incidentally around the time when the attack on the United States occured, and the reaction to this attack was clearly the opening strokes for World War III, so what do we have going on right now? World War III. Here we are!"
Though critical of President George W. Bush, Konietzko insisted that "WWIII" is not anti-Bush.
"It's not an anti-Bush record per se, it's an anti-stupidity record," he says.
"The opening track, 'WWIII'" says it all. KMFDM is waging war against everything. Against every government, against all religions, against everything that organizes people into a stupid mass of nothing. If we had a message, it would be: Think for Yourself and Don't Believe the Bullshit."
KMFDM plays at 7 p.m. at PORT on Friday. Links: www.kmfdm.net
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Berlin-based artist and musician Jim Avignon, aka Neoangin, spent four days in the city having played two exciting concerts - a planned one at Griboyedov and a surprise full-length gig at the increasingly popular Bar Datscha, using his masks and artworks for the show that he jokingly describes as the "poor man's Pink Floyd." Sadly, Avignon failed to record some tracks in scheduled collaboration with the local ska band Dva Samaliota, which was, after all, one of the goals of his stay in St. Petersburg. Some three songs were rehearsed on Monday, but no material could be recorded due to the sudden illness of the band's bassist and vocalist Anton Belyankin.
However, even with an ailing member, Dva Samaliota had to go, rather abruptly, to Moscow on Wednesday night to appear at the launch concert for its long-awaited album. According to drummer Mikhail Sindalovsky, the band was informed about the show by its Moscow impresarios only three days before the actual event.
In an interview with The St. Petersburg Times (see page xi), Sergei Shnurov of the hugely popular ska-punk band Leningrad says that "it's not good that Leningrad plays on open-air stages. In fact, it's not our place. Not big, massive events," but, in his trademark manner, he does just the opposite.
This Sunday, Leningrad will again appear on, well, an open-air stage, at the odd hour of 3 p.m. to perform as part of a motor race championship's (supposedly) cultural program. Meanwhile, Shnurov has confirmed that Leningrad's most recent, quirky album "Babarobot" will be made into an animated feature, with Sergei Selyanov as producer. According to Shnurov, the film will be released "some time in fall."
Stereoleto Festival will open for the third time with the evening show headlined by Asian Dub Foundation (see photo, page iii) on Saturday.
The support will come from local band St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review. The band has recently recorded its second album, which leaves even a stronger impression than their 2002 debut, and features vocalist Jennifer Davis, who joined the band after its first album was recorded. The album is not scheduled for release until at least fall.
Though possibly the central musical event of summer, Stereoleto that runs on Saturdays, has shrunk to a series of four one-days gigs in contrast to the six of last year.
"It's quality not quantity that matters," said Stereoleto's promoter Ilya Bortnyuk of Svetlaya Muzyka.
"The thing is that all artists that we have this year are stars, and artists of such stature as David Byrne are worth three of the usual ones."
Though last year's festival took place at Molodyozhny Theater and its inner gardens, this time only the opening event will be held there, with the remaining three scheduled to be held at three different sites.
"It's impossible to continue [at Molodyozhny Theater] because it's close to a residential area, and we had very big problems last year. Even if we only stage one gig there this year, it's risky." Tickets cost 400 rubles (pre-sale) and 500 (on the door), except for the David Byrne concert on July 17 (500 and 600 rubles).
According to Bortnyuk, next year's Stereoleto is planned to be a massive two-day, three-stage event with an estimated audience of 50,000. "It'll be somewhere out of the city, and with such headliners as, say, Massive Attack."
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: eurasia loses japan in translation
AUTHOR: By Yuriy Humber
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: "I don't speak Japanese, but I know all the terms for the food," answered a maroon and gold kimono-clad waitress with a particularly Asian face. The Eurasia sushi bar on Vladimirsky Prospekt (part of a chain of restaurants and bars around the city), certainly presents a knowing echo of Japan, keeping its 10 wood and glass-top tables in the main dining hall separated by bamboo beams, minimalist but stylish wall decorations; with a set of private dining booths at the back, some authentically carpeted with tatami straw mat and accompanying furniture. The restaurant's neighborhood, however, is less than Asian, from the flanking truly-Russian Apteka and the yellow neo-Classic building of the Lensoviet Theatre, to the plethora of shoe boutiques, a flea market, and the Vladimirskaya Church. And, whether to appease the neighbors or the clients, the taste of the restaurant's cuisine is far less distant from the locale than Nippon itself.
When the initial allergic, yet voguish emergence of Japanese restaurants and bars spotted St. Petersburg's cityscape a few years ago, the image such places created was of costly sparsity. Indeed, even now they remain a kind of exotica if not in totality then in some of the choices they offer, such as Eurasia's sweet prawn sushi (70), tempura keks (100 rubles), tobiko rolls (199 rubles), bitter yet sweet green tea ice-cream (70 rubles). A slightly bewildered Balzac-aged customer eyes the menu as she would an exam paper she feels she's about to fail. "Are you looking for something unusual?" prompts the waitress' welcoming tone. The lady waves away the invisible insects over the menu, sighs, then turns with a defeated "Just stick to those for now."
For a less daunting, experimentation-wise and price-wise experience Eurasia offers a great Monday to Friday, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. happy hour, and a wonderful Special: all sushi for 35 rubles before 1 p.m. and after 10 p.m..Monday to Friday, and during the day at the weekend. Buy one item, receive another one free.
Individual sushi (two during the magic happy hour) range from 35 rubles for tofu, omelette, avocado topped rice-balls, through to the popular smoked salmon (60 rubles), eel (70 rubles), and yellowtail (80) options. With over two pages of color-photo, Russian and English text, and that's just for sushi, the menu impresses by its extensiveness. Then come sashimi (shrimp - 160 rubles; mackerel - 180 rubles; octopus - 290 rubles), maki-rolls (around 120 rubles), miso soups (69 rubles for a standard, up to 160 rubles for spicy seaweed flavored miso), salads (peaking at the 360 rubles mark with Eurasia's special), and hot dishes: tempura shrimp (350 rubles) or fried rice and shrimps (150 rubles).
For the "I hate sushi and all that fishy crap" companion in your group, appeasement may come in the shape of chicken with rice (210 rubles), pork in ginger sauce (235 rubles), baked mussels even (150 rubles). Indeed, looking across the bar-restaurant there stands a plate of pasta and sauce, vapors announcing its European defiance.
While waiting for the two, three chefs who are positioned partly on display behind a bar area to slice and wrap your delicacy, the sound system keeps the atmosphere relaxed, never permitting chill-out, mild mixtures of jazz, techno, and soul to disturb a conversation or confuse an order. The staff's tone and advice for the uninitiated ease where there is unfamiliarity.
Ordering for a large appetite (of a group) suits the assorted sushi boards, preplanned with a sushi, rolls, and miso for 215 to 425 rubles, and "The Glutton" (850 rubles). Eurasia's speciality rolls recommend with an endearing creativity, wrapping and stuffing the usual aqua-marine and vegetable ingredients to form, for example the Yin-Yang circles (290 rubles). Of good value and taste are the Alaska rolls of salmon and avocado centered rice, covered with red caviar tobiko balls (280 rubles). For those seeking luxury, there is Eurasia 3, which for a mere 680 rubles will contain eel, salmon, cucumber and avocado with red and black caviar sprinkled rice.
With all the options and the service, it is the details that disappoint. A Japanese restaurant would never bring umeshu (plum wine) in a wineglass, or any sake, since the term "wine", though applied, is a loose and jarring cross-cultural borrowing. In the sushi rolls, between the rice and the fish there was no wasabi, the green horseradish, which apart from being mixed with soya sauce, in Japan is also applied directly on top of the rice when sushi is made; it left certain sushi quite dry. And the pride of any Japanese restaurant - the sashimi, was barely average. Usually lost in stacks of daikon radish and placed on a lullaby of nori (nettle-like) leaves, Eurasia's yellowtail sashimi (240 rubles) arrived on a puddle of daikon and not in neat slices, but ragged as if torturously sawed by some unhappy Pinocchio. The appearance proved important since the sashimi flesh retained an icy taste of just-defrosted product at first, and then completely flopped into a beaten mass when the ice excused itself. For a sushi restaurant, where prices add up with each mouthful, these details can leave some doubt over the bill's worth. Especially since the freshest tuna sushi at the best fish market in Japan, Tsujiki Market, can be purchased at the nearby sushi bar for a reasonable Yen400 (110 rubles).
To counter the details, Eurasia's own title saves its graces. It does not seek to be the Japanese food chain, but a European adaptation. Does my waitress, looking like a Yuko, sounding like the Olga that her name tag reads, need to persuade of an authenticity? "For speaking Japanese, well, we got a list of some words back there," and she points behind the bar.
"Like, konnichiwa?"
"Erm yeah - that's a, erm - hello, isn't it?"
Eurasia, Vladimirovsky Prospekt 14, open daily from 11am till 5am. Tel: 310-38-79. Reservations not required, but recommended at the weekend and for groups. Menu in Russian and English with all items depicted on photos. Credit cards accepted. Dinner for two with a drink around 1,500 rubles, or much cheaper during a Special or a Happy Hour time period.
TITLE: shnurov's 'musical gazprom'
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The most recent album by Leningrad does not sound like any other album put out by the hugely popular St. Petersburg band. "Babarobot, ili Kak Pisat Saundtreki" ("She-Robot, or How to Compose Soundtracks") is actually a cross between a radio play and a musical.
"It's an absurd play, deprived of realism," says Leningrad's frontman and songwriter Sergei Shnurov, standing looking out over Moika River.
"It turned out to have such an interesting plot with all these twists. It could be perceived as a multi-layered work. It's much more multi-layered than the early albums."
The plot of "Babarobot" is ridiculous. Three redneck teenagers get fixed up with a job at a factory, where in accordance with the current times no wages are paid but meals are offered instead.
As they do not have to do any work either, they pass their time at a beer kiosk where they get the great idea to sell one of them - appropriately nicknamed "Robot" - as a housekeeping robot. The man who buys the alleged robot falls in love with him and buys two tickets to the Russian southern resort of Gelendzhik, supposedly a dream destination in Soviet times. However, the train does not reach Gelendzhik, because it is blown up by terrorists.
Shnurov finds it meaningless to retell the plot. "It's like retelling the plot of a film, especially some fuzzy one," he said. "A guy comes, shags some chick, then gets killed! It makes no sense."
If Leningrad's previous album, last year's "Dlya Millionov" (For Millions) was conceived by the band as a contemporary "Sgt. Pepper," "Babarobot" is openly conceptual. "I've been always guilty [of conceptualism], but disguised it skillfully," says Shnurov.
"And, in the true sense, [Leningrad's 1999 debut album] 'Pulya' was also conceptual. And 'Mat' is also conceptual, as well as 'Dachniki.' 'For Millions' seems so mixed at first glance but it has its own mixed-up concept - to represent all kinds of genres that have been tackled previously only by Akvarium on the [Russian] music scene." Shnurov says he decided to record "Babarobot" because he sees nothing interesting happening on the Russian music scene, which he once compared to a "swamp with frogs."
"I am not glad that nothing was happening last year, and there is still nothing happening: it's boring," he says. "I wanted to release this record if only for critics, so they could discuss it and scold at it. And it's difficult to criticize [pop rock singer Yulia] Chicherina - because there's nothing to criticize. There's nothing outstanding of note.
"Also people now have a subject to talk about sitting in the kitchen. Did Shnur crack, or not? There are many topics for conversations [on the album]."
"Actually now's a period of timelessness - I wanted to stir [the situation] somehow. 'Babarobot' may change some views of both musicians and listeners - that you can do what is considered not right in principle. And the main thing is that one should not be afraid to lose the face one has on television.
The CD "Babarobot" is recorded as a single 30-minute track, which supposes the listener will listen to the whole thing as one piece, but it is followed by separate tracks of all the songs featured. And despite the popular notion, the menacing eyes on the cover do not belong to Shnurov, .
"I don't know, because it was designed by someone else, though the idea was mine. I wanted to use the eyes of a famous English gangster from GQ magazine. However, it turned out that on the full photo he is very scary, but his eyes are kind. I needed intense eyes."
On the album, Shnurov effectively plays with cliches, both Soviet and post-Soviet. "It's retro and not retro at the same time," he says. "But I dare say it's like the new make of Volkswagen [Beetle] - it looks like the old one, but it's new."
The album cites old Soviet cartoons and contains a hilarious parody on Vladimir Vysotsky, the well-known Soviet-era singer/songwriter. However, even with Vysotsky's trademark rattling guitar style and gravel voice, the song in question is not a heroic ode to mountain-climbers or submariners, but a description of the decrepit, falling-apart post-Soviet factory, where the second-floor toilet functions, and that only because the first-floor one is "already full of shit."
"It's the cultural foundation that we grew up on and that still resonates in our head," says Shnurov about citing old Soviet music. "As for Vysotsky, it's as if he were singing in the modern times. Generally, there are some interesting facets and gleams [on the album]. I listened to it many times. And even if I didn't put some meanings into it, they appeared there all by themselves."
The track "My Idyom" (We March) - a highly ironic take on pro-President Putin, Kremlin-backed youth movement Idushchiye Vmeste (Marching Together), infamous for its campaign against author Vladimir Sorokin - for certain listeners was misleading, its irony lost if taken out of the context of the album.
"It's funny," says Shnurov, when hearing that some people thought he wrote a pro-Putin anthem. "It could easily even be the anthem of Marching Together, if taken out of the context. Especially if you take out all the sarcastic notes that the song contains; then it's a ready-made anthem: 'The country with the huge heart should have a big fist.'"
Earlier this year, Shnurov said "I don't like Putin's Russia" at a Moscow news conference and he confirms that it should feel that way throughout the album."I think it's a sort of neo stagnation period," he says. "I don't know if Putin is to blame; 'Putin's Russia' is simply the definition of a period, the Russia of today. Every one of us, even I, suddenly feel self-censorship. It's not a very good sign.
"I also think it's an attempt to build America on our own wooden foundation. It's a rather silly thing to do."
Shnurov, who has played around with other people's texts and music throughout his career, admits that it is difficult to be a postmodernist in Russia. "Postmodernism has died, because it's won," he said. "You still can exist in postmodernism one way or another, but it's difficult to exploit texts in an uncultured society. When people don't understand references, it's hard."
Leningrad's audience strangely encompasses almost every social grouping, including football fans, office managers, artists and intellectuals. At the end of a recent open-air concert at St. Isaac's Square, the tougher members of the audience sang along to "Nikogo Ne Zhalko"(No Pity for Anyone) from the Shnurov-composed soundtrack to last year's gangster film "Boomer," and, as soon as the concert folded, got involved in a massive fight with the police.
Shnurov, however, declines the influence of his art on life. "In my case it doesn't," he says. "I rather look at life and it influences me and what I do, rather than vice versa. Though I don't know.
"I think it's not good that Leningrad plays on open-air stages. In fact, it's not our place. Not big, massive events. With the album 'Babarobot,' we are actually trying to return to where we belong. But probably we won't manage it, anyway."
To promote the album, Shnurov rented a number of big street billboards, something no local group has ever done. He claims he did so in an attempt to scare off the undesirable element among Leningrad fans.
"I'd so much like to have dim-witted people say that Leningrad went pop, that it chose to pig out," he says.
Early last month, Shnurov also launched his much-awaited retro electro-pop project Diody (Diodes), which he renamed - shortly before the show - into ALLA.
The name, which has the first letter "L" turned left, is reminiscent of a logo of ABBA, hugely popular in Soviet Union in the 1970s and '80s, and at the same time refers to Soviet pop diva Alla Pugachyova.
The project has so far only 11 songs that were all performed by a trio of Shnurov (who wore a tracksuit in the manner of the 1990s gangster types) on guitar, and Leningrad's Andrei Antonenko sporting a jacket covered with flashing colored light bulbs on a Mac laptop and keyboards. It was not Shnurov who was in the spotlight, but the blonde singer Natalya Pavlova, who performed most vocal parts.
Shnurov sees the premiere as a success and wishes to repeat it before long. "Emotionally, it's equal to the first ever gig by Leningrad at [the now-defunct local club] Art Clinic, something like that," he says. "People were perplexed all the same."
Pavlova, the Moscow-based pop singer, first collaborated with Leningrad last year, providing backing vocals to songs "Manager" and "Raspizdyai" for last year's album "For Millions," and is now seen by Shnurov as a "full member of the band," taking part in concerts.
The ever-expanding Leningrad is described as a gruppirovka (gang) on the covers of the band's two most recent albums. "It first appeared on 'For Millions,' when it became clear that there are so many of us," says Shnurov. "We are not actually a band, because the band is those who meet and rehearse. And we don't rehearse, just meet. That's why we are a gang."
Over the past three years, the popularity of Leningrad has grown exponentially. In the course of a two-minute walk down Gorokhovaya Ulitsa in St. Petersburg after this interview three young men wanted autographs or a mere handshake.
"Of course, it's hard," said Shnurov about the burden of fame, "I have to go to expensive places not to get bothered."
Last year, Shnurov was seen to be involved in a fight just outside the Griboyedov bunker club, when a fan got enraged after Shnurov had refused to spend time in his company drinking.
Shnurov says he will restrain from releasing any new material for the next few months, because of the abundance of Leningrad CDs on the market.
"I am becoming a monopoly like [state-owned gas company] Gazprom. Leningrad is the musical Gazprom. That's why I'm just doing nothing now - time for having fun."
Leningrad is scheduled to play at a motor sports event at Kirov Stadium at 3 p.m. on Sunday. "Babarobot" CD is available from local record shops. Links:www.leningradspb.ru, www.shnurov.ru
TITLE: propaganda posters revisited as art
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Once an efficient propaganda instrument, political posters of the Soviet era are now displayed at the State Russian Museum as works of art.
Graphic, bright and compelling, Soviet posters are often viewed as the quintessence of an epoch, reflecting the way that the country's rulers addressed the governed. Through the images of posters, the audiences can see how the state encouraged people, and what it did to make them feel optimistic about their future.
The exhibition at the museum's Benois Wing comprises 100 posters from the gallery's rich collection and is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of ITAR-TASS. Most of the items on display represent the period from 1910 to 1950. During the World War II, groups "Boyevoi Karandash" (Fighting Pencil) and "TASS Windows" existed on the divide between reporting and art, producing sharp satirical posters and series of caricatures to appear in the print media. The drawings frequently presented Germans in distorted shapes, at times in the form of animals such as rats or wolves.
"Posters thrived in turbulent times, during revolutions, social changes and wars," said Yevgenia Petrova, deputy director of the State Russian Museum. "`Because the genre is designed to convince by its nature, it is laconic in form, bright in colors and populist in style."
Governor Valentina Matviyenko, who is rarely seen at arts functions, attended the event to welcome the display.
"We may have various opinions about certain periods of our history but we need to remember it all as we remember our parents," she said. Most of Matviyenko's political career was spent within the Communist Party system.
The first Russian political posters date back to the Napoleonic wars, but they gained an international fame during the 1920s when avant-garde artists Kazimir Malevich, Aristarkh Lentulov and Alexander Rodchenko became interested in the genre. Indeed, the first Soviet propaganda art was created by some of the most talented and acclaimed artists in the country.
Communism's "spin doctors" waged a tireless struggle to win the hearts and minds of the masses, and no object was too insignificant for them. They made ink pots in the shape of a woman reading Stalin's historical works or embroidering a Soviet flag. They made tea sets portraying heroic revolutionary leaders - and, of course, they went for capitalist Russia's favorite technique of hanging huge banners over main thoroughfares - except that instead of promoting the fun of the casino as those on Nevsky Prospekt do today, they extolled the virtues of the workers of the world.
"Such propaganda techniques were especially important during the first years of the revolution, when the authorities were appealing to the whole nation," said Irina Vazhinskaya, head of the arts department at the Museum of Political History of Russia. "Propagandists and political technologists had to transform the mentality of the people and make them accept new political ideas and a new lifestyle." In that respect, this mentality very much bridges them with authors of modern advertising campaigns who attempt to change people's habits and encourage them to try new products.
In contrast to our times, during the 20th century most Soviet artists didn't shrug away from politics. "Nobody has made any known statements about hating to do posters. It was quite the opposite, the artists were finding these tasks challenging and exciting as it was a thrilling chance to speak directly to thousands of people," Petrova said. "Malevich, for instance, started with political posters but eventually turned away."
According to Petrova, what makes Soviet posters so precious and so valuable is their innovative manner and the talent of the authors. The Soviet state, that cared so much about brainwashing, could not have allowed a loser to serve as its mouthpiece.
"You need to realize that one needs to be an artist of many talents to be a successful poster-maker," Petrova said. "You need to have a remarkable sense of color and composition, a virtuoso ability for reproducing details, and a talent for graphics and calligraphy."
Soviet political posters are inevitably accompanied by a slogan or even a whole verse. "Ah, my heart is burning, brighter than fire. Why, my darling are you rejecting me?" complains a young man from a poster. The poor man doesn't want to go to war, and here his beloved's reason. "Years don't go back, the river doesn't flow backwards. The Cheka [forerunner to the KGB] will keep you warm," she threatens.
In the golden age of the Soviet poster, the 1920s, avant-garde artists brought their contrasting colors, sharp broken lines and cold aesthetics into the genre. The Russian avant-garde artists were the first in the world to use photographic images as part of design.
"The state badly needed them to get their ideas to circulate, and there was no television," Petrova said. "Time provoked these ideas and called for them."
Today, it is not the state that appeals to the masses but commerce. Artists who may have gone to politics a few decades ago, are now employed in advertising agencies. And the Russian Museum is not against buying some of their work.
"Our prime task is to document the art of the time we live in," Petrova said. "We are obliged to have them, whether we like them or not."
"The Russian Political Poster of the 1910s to 1950s: From the collection of the State Russian Museum commemorating the centenary of ITAR-TASS" is now showing in The Benois Wing of the Russian Museum. Links: www.rusmuseum.ru
TITLE: between the lines of the early soviet mind
AUTHOR: By Stephen Lovell
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Journalism did not come naturally to the Bolsheviks. What does a reporter have left to do under a one-party dictatorship? How do you go about creating "news" that is entirely predetermined and predictable? In the wake of the Civil War and the economic collapse, newspapers became a top priority for the Bolshevik leadership as instruments of political mobilization and social change. And yet, there still remained the question of what to print from day to day.
The answer to that question changed along with shifts in political agenda. Moving away from the adversarial propaganda of the Civil War period, the Bolsheviks embarked on a "mass enlightenment project" in the early 1920s, urging newspapers to expand their circulations to all corners of the population in order to spread the party word. A different approach was launched in the second half of the 1920s, as enlightenment took a back seat to industrialization. Long, dense articles were replaced by the shorter pieces, prominent headlines and photographs of the First Five-Year Plan. Show trials and shock workers stood in for today's tabloids' bare breasts and celebrity updates. Arctic rescue stories, granite-cheeked young workers and grisly tales of sabotage and treason all became staple fodder. Industrialization was presented as combat, heroism, adventure; the result was a specifically Soviet form of sensationalism.
Historian Matthew Lenoe provides a lucid and extremely well-researched account of how Soviet newspapers came to adopt the Stalinist model of shrill exhortation between 1925 and 1933. Along the way, he shows that there is more to the history of Soviet newspapers than naked ideology. The Central Committee took great care to set the agenda of the print media, and editors and journalists closely followed the party line. But the product they created was largely their own: a distinctly Soviet model of mass journalism that eschewed entertainment and the profit motive, deferring instead to the growing mass of politically active party members.
One of the perils of conducting archival research on a phenomenon as ideologically saturated as the early Soviet press is that much of the story - agitation, propaganda, self-criticism, the First Five-Year Plan - have already been heard in other contexts. But Lenoe's focused study of newspapers brings a number of important refinements to received wisdom, thanks to robust common sense not always found in scholarly writing on Soviet history.
Many scholars divide interwar Soviet history into three stages: the diversity and cultural experimentation of the early New Economic Policy; the utopianism and mass coercion of the "cultural revolution" between 1928 and 1931; and the conservative social policies and hierarchy of the 1930s. This schema has its virtues, but it also has serious limitations. It tends to exaggerate the conservatism of the 1930s, and takes a much too rosy view of the 1920s. The NEP era may have been culturally diverse by later standards, but that's not saying much. The militarized, us-and-them mentality that had been established during the Civil War remained a constant in Soviet culture for at least three decades to come.
During the first Five-Year Plan, newspapers turned particularly productive workers into Soviet heroes. In fact, as Lenoe points out, the Bolshevik party had always been committed to mobilizing society under its total control. The roots of cultural revolution are deeply concealed in the departments of agitation and propaganda of the early 1920s. Moreover, through a careful year-by-year analysis of key organizations, Lenoe shows that much of the impetus to a new kind of mass journalism came directly from the party itself. By the second half of the 1920s, when it became clear that newspapers were not doing enough to ensure the loyalty and enthusiasm of rank-and-file members, the Central Committee redefined the media's approach. "Self-criticism" - vicious printed assaults on particular institutions and their personnel - became the order of the day: If positive suggestion had failed, cadres could be motivated instead by the hunt for scapegoats. When self-criticism began to get out of hand later on, the party opted instead for the boosterism and future-orientation of the First Five-Year Plan, which aimed for the headlong economic and social transformation of the Soviet Union.
But a general discussion about the Bolshevik Party, or about the population it subjugated, only gets us so far. Lenoe puts real people back in the picture. The fundamental and inescapable feature of interwar Soviet society, he argues, was the distinction it drew between those categories of the population it considered worthy of resources and those it did not. Bolshevik newspapers were making a pitch for a very specific constituency - young men, primarily of peasant or working-class origin, who were about to benefit from unprecedented opportunities for upward mobility. From the late 1920s on, Soviet newspapers tailored their content to an imagined proletarian who was eager for adventure and sensation, habituated to brutality and social conflict, and impatient with the legal process. They directed their articles at those very Moscow factory workers who complained during their lunch breaks that the Shakhty show trial of 1928, in which dozens of engineers were charged with anti-Soviet conspiracy, had been too lenient (53 defendants, only five executions).
Newspapers gauged their target audiences through readers' letters, meetings, police and party reports, and questionnaires, but the real determinant of change in newspaper style and content, Lenoe argues, was the turnover among the journalists themselves. Beginning in the mid-1920s, the old guard - people who had worked in pre-Revolutionary newspapers or in the Revolutionary underground - was gradually replaced by a younger, more militant generation of journalists, who elbowed aside the commitment to mass enlightenment in favor of scapegoating and shock campaigns. Eventually, their zealous program of self-criticism even antagonized the party leadership, which forced them to sidestep to veer toward the heroic storylines and sensationalism of the 1930s.
Lenoe makes a convincing argument that newspaper journalism was the crucial medium of Soviet culture in the period just before the state-sponsored ideal of Socialist Realism was instituted. There have been a number of fine studies of Socialist Realism, but most have been written by literary scholars, who tend to focus on novels and plays, literary journals and writers' congresses. As a result, the people who were most actively involved in serving up the myths and narratives of the new Soviet culture - the journalists who filed formulaic reports on construction sites, polar expeditions, show trials and other phenomena of public importance - have been left out of the picture.
"Closer to the Masses" can be read as a plea for a less abstract way of telling history: one that aims not to crack the code of Stalinist culture once and for all, but to show who was involved in producing that culture, what constraints they operated under, and how those constraints changed from one month, or one year, to the next.
Stephen Lovell is a lecturer in history at King's College London and the author of "The Russian Reading Revolution: Print Culture in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras."
Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution, and Soviet Newspapers by Matthew Lenoe, Harvard University Press
TITLE: Hussein Appears In Court Before Judge
AUTHOR: By Fisnik Abrashi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq - Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein appeared before an Iraqi judge Thursday to hear charges of crimes committed during his rule, the Arab language television stations Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya reported.
The stations quoted American sources. An Iraqi judge is expected to read charges against Saddam and 11 of his top lieutenants.
The hearing gives the former dictator his first chance since his capture seven months ago to speak in public.
Saddam was led from an armored bus escorted by two Iraqi prison guards and ushered through a door guarded by six more Iraqi policemen, according to CNN, which had a pool reporter monitoring the hearing. The bus was escorted by four humvees and an ambulance.
Salem Chalabi, the director of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, said beforehand that Saddam would face a single judge in Thursday's session, which is expected to take place in or around Baghdad International Airport.
He said Saddam and his lieutenants are in good health.
"He looks fine, he's seen by a doctor on a daily basis and looks fine, he's thinner and his hair is a bit wavy but otherwise, he's OK," Chalabi said.
The charges were expected to include war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. A formal indictment with specific charges is expected later, Chalabi said. The trial isn't expected until 2005.
"The next legal step would be that the investigations start proper with investigative judges and investigators beginning the process of gathering evidence," he said. "Down the line, there will be an indictment, if there is enough evidence - obviously, and a time table starts with respect to a trial date."
Saddam and the other 11 suspects were transferred to Iraqi custody Wednesday. He and the others are no longer prisoners of war but are still locked up with U.S. forces as their jailers.
"They were surprised that they were told they're in Iraqi custody," Chalabi said.
President Ghazi al-Yawer told an Arab newspaper that Iraq's new government has decided to reinstate the death penalty, suspended during the U.S. occupation.
U.S. and Iraqi officials hope the trial will lay bare the atrocities of his regime and help push the country toward normalcy after years of tyranny, the U.S.-led invasion and the insurgency that has blossomed in its aftermath.
But the trial could have the opposite effect, possibly widening the chasm among Iraq's disparate groups - Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis.
"It's going to be the trial of the century," National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told Associated Press Television News. "Everybody is going to watch this trial, and we are going to demonstrate to the outside world that we in the new Iraq are going to be an example of what the new Iraq is all about."
Wednesday's transfer of legal custody took place in secret. Chalabi said the defendants were brought one by one into a room at an undisclosed location and informed of the change in their status to criminal suspects. They were told that they will appear in court within 24 hours to hear charges, he said.
According to Chalabi, the 67-year-old Saddam said "good morning" as he entered the room, listened to the official explanation.
TITLE: New Belgrade Regime Is Ready to Deliver Suspects
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro - Serbia-Montenegro is ready to extradite UN war crimes suspects following the election of a pro-Western leader in Serbia, their president said Wednesday.
Serbia, the dominant partner in the two-republic union that replaced Yugoslavia, elected reformer Boris Tadic president in a runoff poll Sunday in which he faced a hard-line nationalist ally of former autocrat Slobodan Milosevic. The republic had been without a president for two years.
''With the election of Serbia's president, the Serbia-Montenegro union is finally ready to show that it accepts its international obligations,'' the union's president, Svetozar Marovic, told reporters.
Marovic is the president for the country as a whole, while Tadic was elected to lead Serbia. Tiny Montenegro has its own president, Filip Vujanovic.
Chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that authorities in Serbia-Montenegro had provided "almost no cooperation'' with the prosecutor's office since December and the country "has become a safe haven for fugitives.''
Also, Wednesday 60 Bosnian Serb politicians and officials, including the interior minister and speaker of parliament, were dismissed for their failure to arrest the region's leading war crimes suspect, Radovan Karadzic.
Lord Paddy Ashdown, exerting his authority as the international high representative for Bosnia, also froze the bank accounts of the main Bosnian-Serb party, the Serbian Democratic Party, or S.D.S., and several major companies.
"The R.S." - Bosnian-Serb republic - "has been in the grip of a small band of corrupt politicians and criminals for too long," he said.
The accusation that police and government officials have cooperated to protect Karadzic is not new, and has been made repeatedly by Western officials and the war crimes tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte. But the extent of the measures taken by Lord Ashdown took many by surprise.
"Nobody expected measures of such magnitude," said Senad Slatina, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, a political think tank with offices in Sarajevo. "He really struck at R.S. hard. If you go through the list in detail there is not a single large, publicly-owned company that has not been touched. These are the businesses that politicians find most attractive."
(AP, NYT )
TITLE: Israel's Supreme Court Rules Rerouting of Separation Wall
AUTHOR: By Ramit Plushnick-Masti
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BIDOU, West Bank - Israel's Supreme Court sided with the Palestinians in a precedent-setting decision Wednesday, ordering the government to reroute part of its West Bank separation barrier near Jerusalem because it causes too much suffering.
The ruling - the first major legal decision on the barrier - cracked a cornerstone of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to disengage from the Palestinians by 2005.
Palestinians rejoiced at the move. A family in this West Bank village expressed relief at no longer being blocked from its olive trees, and a little boy rode his bicycle up and down the barrier route waving a Palestinian flag.
"The wall was choking all of our lives. That's why the decision is important," said Mohammed Abu Eid, a 54-year-old father of 10 whose crops were uprooted to make room for the barrier.
Israel's deputy defense minister, Zeev Boim, said the ruling would delay completion of the barrier, which Israel says it is crucial for keeping out suicide bombers. "Now there will be a court appeal on every meter of the fence," Boim told Israel TV's Channel One.
The court said the barrier must be rerouted, even at the cost of Israeli security. Several officials decried the ruling as a security menace, but the Defense Ministry - which oversees the barrier's construction - said it would comply.
The court also forced the government to return land that has been seized and compensate the Palestinians for their financial losses, making it less likely the government can finish the project by next year as planned.
The ruling focused on a stretch of barrier near Jerusalem that would have separated some 35,000 Palestinians from their crops. Foundations had been laid along parts of the 40-kilometer section, and earthmovers had leveled ground and uprooted trees elsewhere in preparation for construction.
With Wednesday's decision, similar lawsuits are likely for other parts of the 700-kilometer complex of fences.
The court did not shoot down the barrier itself but rather the chosen route, which it said "injures the local inhabitants in a severe and acute way."
The decision comes a week before the world court at The Hague, Netherlands, was to issue its own advisory ruling on the barrier Palestinians decry as an attempt to expand Israel's borders.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: EU Chooses Barroso
BRUSSELS (AFP) - European Union leaders attending a special summit appointed Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso as the new president of the EU executive, breaking a deadlock over the bloc's top job.
"Durao Barroso was appointed," one diplomat said after the EU leaders, barely 10 minutes into their summit talks, broke out in ringing applause to hail the center-right leader as the successor to European Commission chief Romano Prodi from Nov, 1.
With the clock ticking down before Ireland handed over the EU presidency to the Netherlands at midnight Wednesday, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern convened the extraordinary summit after the leaders failed to find accord on Prodi's successor two weeks ago.
Saudi Militant Killed
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AFP) - One of Saudi Arabia's most dangerous Islamic militants was killed in a shoot-out here that left another militant and a police officer dead, police said, a week after al-Qaida supporters were offered an amnesty.
Abdullah Mohammed Rashid al-Rashud, "one of the most dangerous suspects in the kingdom, who is considered an ideologue of the al-Qaida group in Saudi Arabia" was killed in a heavy exchange of gunfire in the Al-Quds area of eastern Riyadh, they said.
He was near the top of the kingdom's list of most-wanted Islamic militants.
Madrid Terror Targets
MADRID (Reuters) - The Madrid train bombers were planning other attacks on targets including a British school and two Jewish centers, Spanish media say, quoting a police report.
Investigators found documents detailing the targets in the wreckage of a suburban apartment where seven prime suspects in the train attacks blew themselves up on April 3 when police cornered them, the reports on Wednesday said.
Police have handed the information to a parliamentary commission investigating the bombings that killed 191 people and injured 1,900 on packed commuter trains on March 11, news agency Europa Press said.
Nigeria Acts on Polio
GENEVA (Reuters) - The governor of Nigeria's northern Kano state, focus of polio outbreaks in parts of west Africa, has pledged to start an immunization program in early July, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
Last week, the WHO said west and central Africa were on the verge of their largest polio epidemic in years as the virus was spreading out from Nigeria's largely Muslim north.
Kano and other northern states halted the campaign a year ago after assertions by Muslim leaders that the U.N.-supplied vaccine was unsafe. Since then, polio has spread into neighboring countries.
Suu Kyi 'Can Run'
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Detained Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will be allowed to run in future elections, the Indonesian foreign minister said Wednesday, quoting his Myanmar counterpart.
Military-ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, is holding a national convention to draft a constitution that would allow a return to civilian rule.
Suu Kyi has been under detention for more than a year.
TITLE: Hosts Portugal Through to Euro2004 Final
AUTHOR: By Robert Millward
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LISBON - Portugal advanced to the final of a major soccer tournament for the first time, beating the Netherlands 2-1 Wednesday night in the semifinals of the European Championship.
Portugal will now face the winner of last night's semi-final between the Czech Republic and Greece on Sunday.
"I'd trade everything I've ever won for this one moment,'' said Portugal's star-playmaker Luis Figo, who repeatedly penetrated the Dutch defense. "It's a historic moment for the country.''
Before a crowd of 46,679 fans at Jose Alvalade Stadium, Cristiano Ronaldo headed in Deco's corner kick in the 26th minute and was given a yellow card by Swedish referee Anders Frisk for pulling off his shirt in the celebration.
Nuno Maniche made it 2-0 when he beat Edwin van der Sar with a 22-yard shot to the far post in the 57th minute, also off a corner kick.
The Netherlands got a goal when Portuguese defender Jorge Andrade put the ball past his own goalkeeper, Ricardo Pereira, in the 63rd minute while trying to clear Giovanni Van Bronckhorst's cross.
"The Portuguese have a lot of talented players in the team. It was quite simple: They were the better team on the night,'' said Netherlands coach Dick Advocaat. Portugal lost in the semi-finals of the World Cup in 1966 and the European Championship in 1984 and 2000.
The Dutch, the European champion in 1988, suffered a similar fate when they were eliminated in the semi-finals four years ago, at the tournament they co-hosted.
Now, one month after FC Porto won the European Champions Cup, Portugal is in a position to win the biggest tournament for national teams behind the World Cup.
"We deserved to win,'' said Portugal coach Luiz Felipe Scolari, who led Brazil to its fifth World Cup title two years ago.
After the game, Scolari said he would stay on as Portugal's coach for two additional years, through the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
TITLE: Titans of Tennis still Unstoppable
AUTHOR: By Stephen Wilson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WIMBLEDON, England - Wimbledon is two matches away from the men's final everyone wants to see: Roger Federer vs. Andy Roddick.
Federer is the top-seeded defending champion with the classic all-court game; No. 2 Roddick is the U.S. Open champ with the brute power and fastest serve in tennis. Federer epitomizes Swiss reserve, Roddick oozes American brashness.
They met in the Wimbledon semi-finals last year, with Federer winning in straight sets. He went on to beat Mark Philippoussis for his first Grand Slam title. This time, they reached the semis from opposite halves of the draw.
On Friday, Federer faces Sebastian Grosjean - a third repeat semifinalist from last year - and Roddick plays 20-year-old Mario Ancic, a protege of former Croatian champion Goran Ivanisevic.
Federer made the final four by beating 2002 winner Lleyton Hewitt in a compelling Centre Court match that ended just before dusk Wednesday night. Federer won 6-1, 6-7 (1), 6-0, 6-4 to extend his grass-court winning streak to 22 matches. "He's a shot-maker out there,'' Hewitt said. "He's going to be a tough player to beat on grass. I'd be very surprised if he doesn't win his third major on Sunday.''
Federer lost his first set of the tournament against Hewitt. He also was broken for the first time in 105 service games at Wimbledon going back to last year's quarterfinals. But after the break put Hewitt up in the fourth set, Federer broke right back and proceeded to close out the match. He finished with 19 aces.
"He doesn't have a Roddick kind of serve with brute power,'' Hewitt said. "He serves to set up the point with his strengths. He's got great variety out there. That's what makes him such a great player.''
Roddick, who hasn't lost a set in five matches, outslugged Sjeng Schalken 7-6 (4), 7-6 (9), 6-3. He served 18 aces and closed the match with a leaping overhead winner, though he mistimed his jump and landed off balance - not quite the graceful "slam-dunk'' style popularized by Pete Sampras during his run to seven titles.
"I was too excited,'' Roddick said. "I'm looking just to finish it off. I got up way too early so I couldn't really take a full swing at it. It felt like the ball wasn't getting to me. I was thinking I was going to flag it into the back fence.''
Unseeded Ancic beat No. 5 Tim Henman 7-6 (5), 6-4, 6-2, leaving the 29-year-old British player wondering if he's running out of time in his quest to become the first homegrown men's Wimbledon champion since Fred Perry in 1936.
"I've never hidden behind the fact that this is the tournament I'd love to win the most,'' Henman said. "The reality is that I don't have an endless number of years for chances.'' Ancic is the last player to beat Federer at the All England Club - he did it in the first round in his Wimbledon debut in 2002. Nicknamed "Super Mario,'' the 6-foot-5 Ancic is often compared with the 6'4" Ivanisevic, who retired last week after losing to Hewitt in the third round.
Roddick and Ancic played each other for the first time last month, with Roddick winning 7-6 (3), 4-6, 6-4 on grass at Queen's Club. "I don't know what's in the water in Croatia, but it seems like every player is over 7 feet tall,'' Roddick said. "He's playing great on grass right now. He's serving really big. He's definitely going to be tough.''
Grosjean, who swept Florian Mayer 7-5, 6-4, 6-2 and has not dropped a set, has been in three previous Grand Slam semifinals but never reached a final. Grosjean has a 2-1 record against Federer, but they haven't met since 2001.
"He's a very tricky player to play against,'' Federer said. "He returns well, his first serve is very good and he moves well. This is a dangerous combination. He has a lot of weapons.''
TITLE: Tiger Woods Looks to The Western for a Lift
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LEMONT, Illinois - Starting the Cialis Western Open much below par in the winning stakes, Tiger Woods is having to answer the same probing questions as last year. Then he went out and promptly shattered a bunch of records on his way to a wire-to-wire win. Yet this year, the winning card has been left rather bleak.
He wasn't a factor in either of the year's first two majors. Hadn't won that much on the regular tour - one win in 11 starts. And his swing continues to be in a state of flux.
"Certainly I'm not playing as well as I know I can,'' Woods said Wednesday after his pro-am round at the Western Open. "I feel like the game is very close to coming together. I know I keep saying that, but I feel in my heart of hearts that it is. I'm close to putting it together.''
What better place to do it than the Western, one of his favorite tournaments? Woods played the Western's amateur tournament when he was growing up, and he's played this tournament every year but one since he turned pro, winning three times. He withdrew in 2002 with the flu.
His first victory in 1997 remains one for the ages, with fans breaking through the ropes to follow him, Pied Piper-like, up the 18th fairway. Last year, he gave a resounding answer to all the critics of his game - at least for one week.
After opening with a 9-under 63 that tied the course and tournament records, he went on to win by five strokes. His 21-under 267 matched the Western Open record, and he was the tournament's first start-to-finish winner since 1993.
And he's clearly excited to be back on familiar ground. A grin spread across his face as he talked about his past trips to Cog Hill Golf Club, and he seems very much at home here. He was relaxed as he talked about what's wrong with his game, not showing any of the defensiveness he had at the U.S. Open earlier last month.
"Any time you come to a golf course where you've had success, you usually feel pretty good,'' Woods said. "If you're playing great or poorly, you still feel like you can play well around a golf course that you played well on in the past, and that's been the case when I've played at Bay Hill or Memorial."
"I may go in the tournament hitting it great, may go in there hitting it terrible. But for some reason I've turned it around and really played well, just because I like the golf course and a lot of the holes just fit my eye. This golf course is very similar to that.''
While part of that is just personal comfort, familiarity can also give a big practical advantage. Aside from owner Frank Jemsek, there probably aren't too many people who know the Cog Hill course better than Woods. He knows what clubs to hit when. Where he needs to put shots on every hole. What holes will get tough if there's rain or wind or high temperatures.
Two holes on the course were changed for this year's tournament. The fifth hole was shortened 45 yards and will play as a par 4 at 480 yards, making the Dubsdread Course a par 71 for the first time. No. 5 had been an eagle hole for many players in the last few years.
A more significant change was to the par-5 ninth, where the tee box was backed up 38 yards to make the hole play at 600 yards.
"That was a really tough hole to begin with. It's going to be extremely difficult now,'' said Jerry Kelly, the 2002 winner. "It's going to play over par if we play into the wind, I guarantee you.''
The changes don't seem to bother Woods. Then again, he's got enough on his plate with his ever-evolving game.
Some have questioned whether he's lost focus since getting engaged to Elin Nordegren, but Woods scoffed at that notion.
"I was living with Elin when I won my two majors in 2002,'' Woods said. "It's the ball in the hole fast enough. Everybody goes through highs and lows in their career. Everyone.''