SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #994 (62), Friday, August 13, 2004
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TITLE: Report: Rasputin No Help to the Tsarevich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As Russia observes the 100th anniversary of the birth the nation's last heir to the throne, Tsarevich Alexei, a Canadian investigative journalist has written a report questioning whether Alexei had hemophilia and Grigory Rasputin's healing powers.
"If we are to accept the popular diagnosis of history and call it a clotting factor deficiency, then the boy's now famous sudden recoveries will remain a complete mystery," John Kendrick writes in an article published on the Internet in the September issue of the respected American Journal of Hematology. "The so-called 'Mad Monk' Rasputin, as a direct result of the revolutionary propaganda of the time, is then overblown into a larger-than-life legend," he added.
"If, however, we are to change the diagnosis and call it a platelet disorder, then the air is let out of the legend, and Rasputin is revealed to have been nothing more than a very ordinary middle-aged Siberian hippie who did not possess any healing powers at all," the abstract to Kendrick's article says.
Born Aug. 12 1904, Alexei was the only son of Russia's last tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra, but from an early age he was afflicted with an illness believed to be hemophilia.
Most history books assume that the diagnosis was correct, without doubting it or mentioning that it is a matter of debate. No laboratory tests or medical records have ever been found to confirm Alexei's diagnosis.
Alexei, a descendant of Britain's Queen Victoria whose descendants included several people who suffered from hemophilia, is thought to have inherited the illness through his mother.
Nicholas and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg in July 1918.
Forensic tests carried out by the Forensic Science Service laboratory in Aldermaston, England, in 1993, identified the remains of Tsar Nicholas II, the Empress Alexandra and three of their four daughters. But the bodies of Tsarevich Alexei and his sister Anastasia were not with those remains that were removed from a burial pit in the Koptyaki forest outside Yekaterinburg, and have not been found elsewhere.
As Kendrick points out "it is not yet known if samples from the identified remains of Empress Alexandra have ever been tested for the genetic evidence that might confirm whether Alexei's mother actually had been a carrier of a faulty Factor VIII or IX gene."
The only official statement issued by imperial court physicians about Alexei's blood condition, is dated Oct. 21 1912, Kendrick said. The doctors described the boy's symptoms as "significant anemia," Kendrick said.
Neither Nicholas nor Alexandra ever used the word hemophilia in any of their private letters or diaries from the birth of their son until their deaths, Kendrick writes. The journalist quotes a 1917 interview with family friend Anna Vyrubova in which she said, "The child had a rare disease ... The blood vessels were affected, so that the patient bled at the slightest touch."
But Swiss-American writer and historian Suzanne Massie, who researched several books on the last Russian royal family, said Anna Vyrubova can't be considered a reliable and trustworthy historical source.
"She wasn't present there at any of the accidents, and she was such a follower of Rasputin," Massie said Thursday in a telephone interview from Maine. "Proof could be found in medical archives which were seized by the Bolsheviks, and, as you know, [the family doctor] Dr. Botkin was killed."
Alexei's blood disease has always been given as the reason for Alexandra's dependence on the alleged healing abilities of the infamous Rasputin, Kendrick writes.
Massie said Thursday that six weeks after the birth of Alexei, Nicholas noted in his diary: "Alix [Alexandra] and I have been very much worried. A hemorrhage began this morning without the slightest cause from the navel of our small Alexis [Alexei]. It lasted with but a few interruptions until evening. "
However, Kendrick's article says the most acute evidence of Alexei's blood disorder does not appear until two months after his eighth birthday.
The royal family was vacationing in Spala, Poland in October 1912. Alexei was very pale, and his mother took him for a ride, which almost killed him.
"The shaking of the horse-driven carriage had caused the boy to cry with extreme abdominal and back pain," Kendrick said. "As the days passed, his fever climbed ever higher. By the end of the first day, his temperature had reached 39.7 degrees Celsius, and by the sixth and seventh day it had soared to a peak of 40.5 C."
It was then that Rasputin made his first legendary appearance, although in a physical sense he was thousands of kilometers away from the royal family, at his Siberian home in Pokrovskoye.
"The Empress Alexandra had telegrammed to ask for his prayers," Kendrick writes. "Rasputin responded by wire: 'God has seen your tears and heard your prayers ... The Little One will not die. Don't allow the doctors to bother him too much.'
"Following Rasputin's reply, the fever finally broke, and Alexei's temperature had dropped significantly within just a few short hours."
However, Kendrick attributes Alexei's sudden healing not to the so-called Father Grigory's mystical healing powers, but to a different diagnosis.
He argues that the accident in Spala could "possibly be the result of excessive swelling of the spleen by viral infection, and the occasional bleeding episodes that followed that initial event may well have been triggered by viral rather than physical causes."
The journalist writes that the condition called thrombocytopenia - which he proposes was actually what the tsarevich suffered from - has a natural tendency heal spontaneously. This could well be the explanation of the immediate improvement in Alexei's condition in Spala.
"The excessively high fevers appearing consistently throughout the record of each of Alexei's episodes are not a primary symptom of hemophilia," Kendrick said. "Symptoms of delirium, high fever, and heart problems, described in the writings of both Nicholas II and the tutor Pierre Gilliard, can be said to be inconsistent with that historically popular, but still unproven, diagnosis [of hemophilia]."
But Massie, whose son and grandson suffer from hemophilia, disagreed. "The symptoms described by Gilliard, Nicholas and Alexandra are very consistent with hemophilia," she said. "My son had them, including high fevers."
Ivan Danilov, the principal researcher with the Hematology Institute of the Russian Health Ministry, last month supported those who believe that the tsarevich's illness was indeed hemophilia.
In his work "Hemophilia," quoted in the online journal Retsept, or Prescription, he said that there is a clear relationship between the emotional condition of the mother of a hemophiliac child and its physical condition.
The study says that stable and positive emotional state of the mother reduces the number of spontaneous bleedings in their hemophiliac sons. Tsarevich Alexei is cited as an example.
"All archive material shows that Tsarevich Alexei suffered from a severe form of hemophilia," Danilov wrote. "As Pierre Gilliard witnessed, the empress was frustrated to see the boy's bleedings, and Dr. Botkin appeared helpless, and only Rasputin's entrances coincided with improvements of the boy's condition. But the royal family had an incredible faith in Rasputin, so they were all always relieved to see him."
As Danilov explains, it is well known that hypnosis narrows minor arteries. As a person calms down, the blood circulation slows down, and vice versa.
"As Rasputin was entering the tsarevich's room, he was confidence personified; he would say loudly that the pain would soon go and the boy trusted him," Danilov said. "Positive emotions reduced the bleedings, the boy was falling asleep, and the bleedings eventually stopped."
Massie's knowledge and first-hand experience confirm Danilov's words.
"Hemophilia is a very complicated condition," she said. "Even today, a lot is not understood about the connection between stress and the illness. Medicine knows today that there is a clear connection between psychological state of the person and their medical state, especially in the chronic conditions."
As for Rasputin, Massie said over a half, if not two-thirds of all literature ever written about him is rumor and speculation.
"What he did to Alexei was that he calmed the child. There is no evidence whether he studied classical hypnosis."
Kendrick's article concluded that until the tsarevich's remains are found and given a medical examination, there will always be room for various theories.
TITLE: University Backs Down on Honorary Degree for Putin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Hamburg University has called off its controversial plans to award President Vladimir Putin with an honorary doctorate in economics saying organizational problems not public protests were behind the decision, German media reported this week.
After widespread protests from professors and students who said it was inappropriate to award a doctorate to the leader of a state that ignores basic human rights, the university said it had no time to prepare the award ceremony.
"Only about 60 professors out of the 700 working for the university signed a petition [against the award]," Spiegel Online on Wednesday quoted university spokesman Peter Wiegand as saying, "It is not possible to complete the necessary preparations this autumn."
A new date for awarding the doctorate has not been chosen, because a particular occasion is necessary, he added.
"However, it could be that no appropriate occasion will occur anytime soon," he said.
The original occasion was to be Putin's next visit to Germany for consultations with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder planned for Sept. 10 within the annual Russian-German summit called the St. Petersburg Dialogue, a tradition started by the two leaders in 2001.
The honorary doctorate from Hamburg University was to have been awarded in reciprocation for a doctorate given to Schroeder by St. Petersburg State University in 2003.
Spiegel Online was ironic about Wiegand's explanation suggesting the university "couldn't get flower pots in time, didn't find enough chairs for the auditorium and failed to organize cold snacks."
The Kremlin press service said Thursday it "has nothing to say about it at the moment." But Mikhail Grabar, spokesman for the Russian embassy in Berlin, said Putin might show up in Hamburg sometime later to get the doctorate. "He will accept the award when the next possibility arises for him to come to Hamburg," evening newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt quoted Grabar as saying Thursday.
"We have democracy in Russia and Germany, so everybody can express their opinion," he added.
But the perceived parlous state of democracy in Russia was the reason why by mid August 67 professors of Hamburg University had signed a petition against the award, announced by the university last December, with students joining the protest.
Mikhael Greven, a Hamburg University political scientist and the author of the petition, said that the "organizational problems" cited by Wiegand served as a pretext to get out of an uncomfortable situation.
"It is shameful for the university process to finish in such an awkward way," Greven said in Spiegel interview.
During Putin's visit German students and politicians planned to organize mass protests against the award, saying that the five years of Putin's presidency had resulted in the administration violating human rights in Chechnya and depriving the public of an independent media and that this made awarding him unacceptable.
The German Society for Threatened Peoples also joined the protests accusing Putin of being a "Killer of a Nation," stating that during his presidency "80,000 Chechen children, women and men and 13,000 Russian soldiers have been killed."
A poll of 1,400 of the 4,300 university's economics students showed 55 percent of them against Putin receiving the award and 19 percent for. The remainder of the students had no have a clear opinion.
"If he was awarded with this doctorate, it would have been a spit in faces of democratically minded people [in Russia]," Boris Vishnevsky, a member of Yabloko faction at the Legislative Assembly, said Thursday in a telephone interview.
"I am very and extremely happy that he didn't get the award," he said. "It's because he hasn't done anything for the development of democratic society; on the contrary, he has done everything he can to destroy democracy, freedom of speech and free elections."
"He doesn't need a doctorate from Hamburg," he added. "If he has a doctorate from a Cuban University, all he lacks are doctorates of Lebanese and North Korean universities."
Putin has six degrees from different universities. In 1997, he defended a doctoral thesis at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute, his future presidential campaign headquarters, on the topic that Russia's economic development strategy has been developed on the basis of a detailed analysis of its mineral and raw materials potential.
TITLE: Pickpockets Well Known To Tourists, Not to Cops
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Pickpockets who prey on visitors to the Northern Capital are easily identifiable, bu police appear to be turning a blind eye to them, say tourists and expats residents of St. Petersburg.
In addition, credit and debit card processing companies appear to be providing the thieves with cash from stolen cards without making thorough checks about who is receiving the money, visitors said.
One group of pickpockets has been operating unhindered around the Griboyedov Canal entrance to the Nevsky Prospekt metro station for at least two years, expats said.
"I saw the same guy with dark hair and a broken nose on the same spot two years ago when my dad was robbed when he was visiting me in St. Petersburg," a U.S. citizen who declined to be named said Wednesday in an interview.
The group has been photographed and the photographs supplied to police.
No comment on the allegations was available from city police.
The group steals not only cash, but also credit and debit cards and has access to an electronic banking system that allows them to withdraw money very soon after the cards are stolen, residents say.
"My dad canceled his bank cards within about half an hour, but realized that in this period of time $2,000 had been taken from his bank account," the American said.
"Local shops are quite careful with checking of identification while making transactions with cards, so the only guess here is that pickpockets have an agreement of some sort with a store that makes such transactions," he said.
"The police says it's hard to get the proof they need to arrest pickpockets, but a woman monitoring the elevator at Griboyedov Canal entrance to the metro told us some operation was conducted [last week] by the metro police and several pickpockets were detained," he said.
"But the other day I saw them there again."
The St. Petersburg Times regularly receives phone calls and letters from tourists and expats living in the city complaining of street robberies.
The number of complaints increased significantly after Tuesday last week when the paper published the article "Metro Station Proves Haven for Pickpockets" based on the experiences of U.S. citizen Herb Blount.
Wai-Yip Geoffrey Chan of Ontario Canada is another person who had encountered the same pickpocket "team" working at the Griboyedov Canal entrance on the afternoon of July 25.
Chan was walking with his wife on the north side of Nevsky Prospekt heading east. He had a small daypack on his back, and a camera dangled from his neck.
Pedestrians were waiting to cross at on the northeast corner of the intersection. As Chan and his wife separately tried to cut through the crowd, pickpockets tried to get his property.
"I suddenly felt and saw four to five men with Central Asian or Mongolian facial features squeezing me into their middle. I immediately put my hand on my pant's right-back pocket to hold onto my wallet and then jumped, trying to cut loose from their grips," Chan wrote in an e-mail.
"I was lucky that I managed to break through and lurch forward," he continued. "I was furious. While maintaining a little distance from them, I pretended I was going to take their pictures using my camera. One 'team' member came up and tried to signal he would get rough with me. Nothing happened as I backed off."
A few hours later, Chan was walking past the same intersection but on the south side. He saw the "team" operating and it seemed to him the pickpockets coordinated with each other quite well, he said.
"In the next few days in St. Petersburg, we avoided that intersection. We had read enough guide books and web articles to realize that it would be a waste of time to pursue the matter with the police," Chan wrote.
"We would otherwise have had the experience of a lifetime in St. Petersburg, if not for the very unpleasant incident. We still cherish the great memory of many things in St. Petersburg and would love to visit again, but only after we see signs of substantial improvement in personal safety," he wrote.
According to local tourist operators there are two spots in the central part of the city, most popular for pickpockets' activity - the Griboyedov Canal entrance to the Nevsky Prospekt metro station and around the State Hermitage Museum.
The police say it is hard to deal with pickpockets because the current law is too soft, which allows law enforcers to detain alleged pickpockets for no more than 3 hours.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Sanitary Norms Broken
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - About 38 percent of city food outlets violate sanitary norms, Interfax quoted the St. Petersburg Sanitary Watch Center as saying Thursday.
Most violations were registered at places that sell kvas, a traditional Russian drink - 7.7 percent of locations inspected violated sanitary norms. Places that sell ice cream and watermelons were the next worst with 5.3 percent and 5.1 percent respectively of those inspected breaching standards, the report said.
The biggest breaches had to do with the absence of vendors' medical certificates and unhygienic sales outlets.
Plea for National Parks
MOSCOW (SPT) - Russian ecologists have been urged to support an initiative by Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov to organize a federal agency to manage national parks, Interfax reported Wednesday.
"As a result of the government reform, the system of reserves and national parks is at risk of being destroyed," said Natalya Danilina, vice-chairman of the World Commission on Protected Areas.
Ecologists say that national parks are in danger and need the state's supervision.
The national parks make 2 percent of the Russia's territory, which is more than the whole territory of Sweden.
Suspect Flees Center
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A suspect has escaped from the medical department of the Lebedev pre-trial detention center, Interfax reported Thursday.
Denis Nikitin, 27, who has four previous convictions, said on Tuesday that he was sick and was transferred from his cell to the center's hospital.
On Wednesday, medical personal found out that instead of Nikitin there was a rolled blanket on his bed, the report said.
Infection Rise Awaited
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - St. Petersburg can expect a rise in intestinal infections soon, Interfax quoted Oleg Parkov, head of the epidemiology department of the city's State Sanitary Watch Center, as saying Thursday.
The increase is seasonal and has to do with the return of St. Petersburg residents from vacation, formation of new groups of children at the beginning of a new school year, swimming, and picking up mushrooms and berries, he said.
To avoid infections, he advised people to wash vegetables and fruit from local markets, and not to drink water from unknown water supplies.
Intestinal infection may lead even to death, but this usually happens only to adults who are careless about their health, he added.
TITLE: Heavy Fire Exchanged in Enclave
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia - Georgian and separatist forces exchanged heavy fire for a second straight day in breakaway South Ossetia on Thursday, and a Georgian officer said three people in ethnic Georgian villages were killed amid conflicting claims about who initiated the violence.
Amid weeks of tension that has repeatedly erupted into exchanges of gunfire and shelling, the statement is the first time either the Georgians or South Ossetians have claimed deaths on their own side in the dispute over the separatist region.
Russia called for an immediate cease-fire and an emergency meeting of a joint commission comprising representatives from Georgia and South Ossetia as well as Russia and North Ossetia, across the border from the restive region in northern Georgia.
"The situation is escalating with every hour and could go out of control at any moment" with "catastrophic" results, Russian First Deputy Foreign Minister Valery Loshchinin said in a statement.
He said Russia was sending envoys to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.
"The Russian side demands an immediate cease-fire by the conflicting sides," Loshchinin said.
He said earlier agreements to remove all illegal armed forces from South Ossetia must be implemented. "It's necessary to move from words to actions," he said.
Tension has escalated in South Ossetia since spring after the January election of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has vowed to unite the fractured country by bringing separatist regions under central government control.
Gigi Gugutsidze, chief of staff of the Georgian unit in joint peacekeeping forces in the region, said Georgian villages had come under fire in the morning from Prisi, a village that is home to both ethnic Georgians and Ossetians, and other positions. He said three people were killed and several others wounded.
A spokeswoman for South Ossetia's separatist government, Irina Gagloyeva, said forces in Georgian villages opened fire first, targeting the region's main city, Tskhinvali, and nearby villages, and that heavy firing continued later in the morning. She said that 11 people were wounded.
A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman for the joint peacekeeping forces staff, Colonel Nikolai Baranov, said the forces had located and destroyed a position near that was the source of initial firing early Thursday that provoked a response from Georgian forces, Itar-Tass reported.
Baranov said representatives of the peacekeeping force - which includes Russian, Georgian and South Ossetian units - were headed to the position to see who was responsible for the gunfire.
Georgian and South Ossetian authorities have repeatedly accused each other of provoking violence and maintaining illegal armed forces in the region. They agreed last month that all such forces must be removed, but the exchanges of gunfire have persisted.
Russia has strong influence in South Ossetia, where most of the population hold Russian passports. The region's leaders want to unite with North Ossetia, becoming part of Russia.
Georgia accuses Russia of interfering in its affairs. Saakashvili's vows to control South Ossetia and the separatist Abkhazia region have increased tension in Georgia's relations with Russia.
TITLE: Deputy Governor Arrested In Bribery Investigation
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prosecutors in Kaliningrad have opened a case into large-scale bribe taking by the region's deputy governor, Savva Leonov, on suspicion of taking a $150,000 bribe from a local businessman in return for car import quotas, police said.
Leonov was arrested Monday in a Kaliningrad hospital ward, where he was undergoing a medical examination, after businessman Valery Nivensky handed him a briefcase containing the money, said Yevgeny Smirnov, acting head of the regional prosecutor's office responsible for investigating important cases, Interfax reported.
Investigators believe that Nivensky could have given the bribe to Leonov, who oversees economic issues in the regional administration, on behalf of a group of local businessmen in return for awarding them car import quotas in a recent tender, Alexander Koretsky, a spokesman for the regional administration, said Wednesday from Kaliningrad.
On Aug. 2, Leonov chaired an auction for selling quotas for imported cars into Russia's Baltic enclave, which is a free economic zone where importers enjoy discounts on customs tariffs for products to be used exclusively inside the region. Imports are strictly rationed.
Leonov is believed to have awarded the quotas to three major quota buyers, including Nivensky, over smaller importers, Russian media reported. The buyers who won the rights to the quotas are suspected of selling them to importers at prices many times higher than those paid at the original auctions.
Koretsky said that Leonov had been suspended from office for the duration of the investigation.
Kaliningrad Governor Vladimir Yegorov has ordered the regional administration's audit department to look into the work of the quota commission Leonov headed and has suspended the results of the Aug. 2 tender, Koretsky said.
"We have grounds to suspect that the tender was held with a number of violations," Koretsky said.
If found guilty of taking the bribe, Leonov faces up to 12 years in prison, Interfax reported. Officials at the regional prosecutor's office could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Leonov, 49, a longtime ally of Yegorov, became deputy governor last fall. Until then he had worked in the regional administration's budget and finance department.
According to Interior Ministry statistics, bribe taking among federal and regional officials of all ranks has risen steadily in recent years. Last year 7,346 cases of bribe taking were registered and 2,913 officials convicted. So far this year, 6,240 cases have been registered and 1,931 officials convicted.
TITLE: Killer of Novosolyov Gets 10-Year Sentence
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The St. Petersburg City Court has sentenced Dmitry Chernyayev, one of those accused of the murder of Viktor Novosolyov, a deputy speaker in the Legislative Assembly, to 10 years in jail.
The state prosecutor had called for Chernyayev to serve a 12-year sentence.
Chernyayev pleaded guilty to being a member of the so-called Tarasov Gang, which the investigation found had carried out a contract to murder Novosolyov, Interfax reported Tuesday. Chernyayev also pleaded guilty to participating in three other murders and was convicted of plotting to murder businessmen Vladimir Golubev and Vladimir Kumarin (Barsukov).
The City Court sentenced four other members of Tarasov Gang to various terms of imprisonment in May 2003. Artur Gudkov, one of the murderers, was sentenced to life imprisonment. A federal search warrant has been issued for Oleg Tarasov, who is suspected of being the organizer of the gang. Novosyolov was murdered on Oct. 20, 1999.
He was decapitated by a bomb placed on his car at traffic lights near his home. Gudkov, who put the bomb on the car, was arrested at the scene after being injured by one of Novosyolov's bodyguards.
Novosyolov was considered a leading candidate for the position of speaker of the assembly. As the result of another attempt on his life, he had been confined to a wheelchair.
TITLE: Priest Killed by Scaffold Collapse
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Father Viktor, the senior priest of the Uspeniya Svyatoi Bogoroditsy Church, otherwise know as the Blockade Church, died when the scaffolding on the church collapsed Thursday night.
Seven restoration workers suffered injuries.
The scaffolding of the church located at 52 Malookhtinsky Prospekt, collapsed in strong winds at a point 15 meters to 18 meters above the ground.
The collapse is thought to have been caused by violations of technical safety rules, Interfax reported Friday. The agency said material that covered the scaffolding had acted like a sail in the wind gusts.
All the injured were taken to city hospitals. Most had fractures and were in a serious condition, NTV reported.
The Blockade Church is the only Orthodox church dedicated to the World War II Siege of Leningrad.
It was under construction from 1996 to 2001. Every brick of the church was bought by donations of city residents, and bears the names of people who died during the siege.
TITLE: Dresdner Bank Set To Value Yukos Unit
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Justice Ministry said Thursday it hired investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein to value Yukos' biggest oil producing unit, due to be sold off to pay the oil company's tax debt.
The unit, Yuganskneftegaz, pumps 60 percent of Yukos' daily oil output of 1.7 million barrels per day.
Yukos shares extended earlier gains to trade up 14.9 percent at 111.40 rubles after the announcement about the selection of DrKW, part of Germany's Allianz Group.
Analysts said the decision, announced in a terse statement, may increase chances of Yuganskneftegaz being sold at a decent price as the state seeks to recover a $3.4 billion tax debt owed by Yukos for 2000.
"The good news is that they've selected someone independent and reputable," Aton oil analyst Steven Dashevsky said.
"The uncertainty that remains is whether the price that is appraised will be the price that will be paid to the company."
It was a sign the Russian government wants to show it is following international practice in pursuing claims against Yukos that have shaken investor confidence in President Vladimir Putin's Russia.
Moscow Arbitration Court denied on Thursday a request from Yukos to give it more time beyond the end-August deadline to pay a $3.4 billion back tax bill for 2000.
Yukos had asked for more time, saying it cannot meet the deadline because it lacks spare cash and is banned from selling assets to raise more money.
Yukos' 2001 and 2002 taxes are also under scrutiny.
Some analysts have worried that the government, which appears determined to dismantle the oil company, would make the tax claim as much as it needs to seize Yukos oil units.
Yukos itself has put a value of over $30 billion on the unit based on its reserves, while analysts give it a market value of $12 billion to $20 billion.
The announcement came in after business group Menatep, the vehicle of core Yukos owners including Khodorkovsky, declared Wednesday that Yukos is in default on a $1.6 billion loan Menatep had provided to the company last year.
Analysts said the move meant Yukos' core owners were giving up hope that the oil giant would survive and were trying to recover at least some money before it ends up in state hands.
By issuing a default notice, Menatep could be threatening to seize export revenues from Yukos, effectively pushing the Kremlin to choose between allowing the group to get its money or disrupting oil exports, one of the cards that keeps Russia at the top table of world politics.
Yukos contributes about 20 percent of Russia's total crude oil output, while Russia is the world's No. 2 oil exporter after Saudi Arabia.
A source close to Yukos said Wednesday that the default notice means that the creditors will be able to seize up to 75 percent of Yukos export revenues if they wish to proceed quickly with debt collection.
All three Menatep directors were unavailable for comment Wednesday.
Last month, Societe Generale announced that Yukos is in default on a separate syndicated $1 billion loan.
Even without Menatep seizing export revenues Yukos already exists on a fraction of the funds it needs to operate the company.
The Yukos source said "problems with cash are already a very serious issue," adding that it is only a matter of days before the company will face problems with paying out salaries.
Breaking the pattern of avoiding debate about the fate of Yukos, a top government energy official said Wednesday that the freeze of Yukos accounts imposed by courts in April could soon lead to a disruption of Yukos output.
"If the accounts are not unfrozen, the company will be forced to stop production," said Sergei Oganesyan, head of the Federal Energy Agency, which oversees national energy security.
Oganesyan said that the agency and the Energy and Science Ministry have appealed to prosecutors, tax authorities and the Court Marshals Service to allow Yukos temporary access to its accounts.
An oil company "is not a spigot that can be opened or shut. An enterprise may die because of it," he said.
SPT, Reuters
TITLE: Stroimontage to Build in Paris
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In a move described by some realtors as mere hype, by others as "bold," the Stroimontage construction company will become one of the first Russian developers to enter the Western real estate market when it begins work on a residential project near Paris next summer.
Stroimontage opened its French branch in April and has already acquired a 1.5-hectare site in the Paris suburb of Massy, where cellphone company Ericsson used to have its offices. It will begin the construction of a 30,000-square-meter residential project on the site in June, said Emin Iskenderov, general director of Stroimontage de Paris.
Iskenderov described the Paris development, which will have over 400 apartments, as "high-quality housing for the middle class" and said that it was not specifically targeted at Russians wanting to buy property abroad.
"We are aiming at the local market in order to become more competitive," he added.
The housing complex will comprise six six-storey houses, two of which will be built in an Italian style, two in a style that Iskenderov described as a "mixture of French and Ottoman," and the remaining two in a "modern" style.
Apartments will cost roughly 3,000 euros ($3,600) per square meter, which is an average price for a Paris suburb, according to Iskenderov, who also said that the company expects to achieve a 15 percent return on the investment.
BATEG, a subsidiary of French construction giant Vinci, will be the project's general contractor.
Stroimontage was founded in 1994 in St. Petersburg and, according to the company's predictions, will control roughly 10 percent of the city's housing construction market by 2005. It has also been active on the Moscow market, where it has completed several residential, as well as office, projects.
The company's most high-profile project to date is the $500 million Federation Towers, 92 and 44 stories high, which are part of the bigger Moskva-City development. It is scheduled to be completed in 2007. The company estimates its annual turnover to be $310 million.
The entire Parisian project will cost between 70 million and 75 million euros ($85 million-$90 million) and might use loans from French banks, Iskenderov said, stressing that it was still "too early" to say to what extent it could require outside financing.
He also added that Stroimontage was "in the process of acquiring" a neighboring plot, on which another 10,000-to 15,000-square-meter housing complex would be erected.
While some Moscow-based realtors praise the "boldness" of Stroimontage's decision to do projects in Western Europe, others dismiss it as a publicity stunt meant to boost the company's prestige at home.
"It will be interesting to see how they perform," said Michael Lange, managing director for the CIS at Jones Lang LaSalle. "This is definitely a bold move."
However, Lange added, the company is going "against the flow," as Moscow's much higher returns are attracting foreign developers.
One other company that has seemingly gone against the flow is the construction arm of St. Petersburg-based corporation LSR Group, which opened a Munich-based European branch, LSR Europe, in early 2004 and announced plans to build apartment blocks in central Munich and Cologne.
However, a company spokesman said work is yet to begin on any of these projects.
According to company information, LSR Group was responsible for 50 percent of all construction in St. Petersburg last year. The group, which also controls a large share of the city's construction materials market, expects its revenue tot op 14.7 billion rubles ($500 million) in 2004.
A representative of a large construction company, who requested anonymity, called Stroimontage's plans "completely not serious" and dismissed them as an "attempt to draw attention to the company."
Another builder said that his company had also considered doing projects in Western countries, but came to the conclusion that they would be "not nearly as profitable as the ones here."
TITLE: Pyatyorochka Raises Sales
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Pyatyorochka, Russia's largest food retailer by sales, plans to increase revenue by 50 percent this year as it opens new stores amid rising consumer demand, Vedomosti reported Wednesday, citing Executive Director Oleg Vysotsky.
Moscow-based Pyatyorochka will invest $120 million this year and plans to spend between $160 million and $200 million annually to build new stores and upgrade existing ones, Vysotsky told the newspaper in an interview.
The company has plans for an initial public offering, he said, without giving any details.
TITLE: Electronics Chain Aims to Better Market Position
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Telemax, the leading electronics and household appliances chain in the city, will open three new stores within the next three months.
Telemax, operating 11 stores ranging from 800 to 1,200 square meters in size, will open a new store at 109 Prospekt Veteranov on Saturday, Viktor Vazhagin, general director of the Telemax chain said Thursday at a news conference Thursday.
Two more stores will be launched in September and October, one on Prospekt Engelsa and the other on Ulitsa Butlerova, Vazhagin said. Once Telemax has a total of 14 stores running, it will become the city's leader in terms of its total trade area, amounting to 14,000 square meters.
The chain's owner, St. Petersburg-based Batis, invested a total of $8.5 million into its 14 stores, which are estimated to bring a total of $90 million in revenues this year. Last year's revenues at Telemax amounted to $25 million, Vazhagin said.
Telemax plans to increase the number of stores in its St. Petersburg chain to 25 in 2005. Besides that, some of the existing stores will be moved to more convenient locations, allowing for larger parking areas and better conditioning, conforming to the chain's motto to provide enough space to each customer, Vazhagin said.
Weekly visited by over 50,000 customers, Telemax hopes to increase the number of customers by teaming up with the Pyatyorochka food chain. Pyatyorochka, already sharing one store with Telemax, will continue the same practice at a number of the chain's new outlets.
Telemax occupies 15 percent of the city's electronics and household appliances market, Vazhagin said. Together with its main competitors, Technoshock and Eldorado, as well as two smaller chains - M.Video and Mir Tekhniki - Telemax accounts for 75 percent of the city's market, Vazhagin said.
The chain stores are prepared to squeeze single retail stores dealing in electronics out of the market, Vazhagin said.
"The remaining 25 percent, today occupied by single electronics stores, will be the battlefield where we will cross swords with our competitors," Vazhagin said. The company that organizes its costs management best will win, he said.
While the markup at Telemax is 10 percent to 15 percent - the average markup on household appliances in St. Petersburg's chains - retailers in Moscow add up to 35 percent, Vazhagin said.
Meanwhile, Technoshock's vice president Alexander Rybakov insisted that his chain is in a different category from its competitors. "Telemax and Eldorado are both economy chains, which we are not, but our interests largely overlap when it comes to middle class goods," Rybakov said in a telephone interview Thursday. Technoshock doubled its revenues this year, compared to 2003, reaching nearly $100 million. The chain, owned by St. Petersburg-based Simtex, owns 14 stores in St. Petersburg with a total area of 10,000 square meters.
The market's absolute leader is Eldorado, running over 470 stores in 300 Russian cities, including nine stores in St. Petersburg. Aggressively marketing its low prices, Eldorado targets mass customers. Often crowded and poorly conditioned, Eldorado stores however account for every fourth purchase of household appliances in Russia. The chain's 2003 revenues amounted to $1.35 billion, the company's web-site said.
In the opinion of chain representatives, no single stores will be able to affect the city's strictly structured market - not even Matrix - a giant electronics market, which opened last month at the Gulliver center, opposite Staraya Derevnya metro station.
Matrix, encompassing an area of 10,000 square meters, or two football fields, is the largest household appliances store in Eastern Europe.
Matrix PR manager Vadim Adanin said that MT-Group, the St. Petersburg company that owns both the Mir Tekhniki and the Matrix brands, never meant for Matrix to seriously influence the market. "It was more of an image-making project, which is not connected with Mir Tekhniki," Adanin said.
However, Adanin added, there are plans to make Matrix a chain, by opening more stores both in St. Petersburg and in the rest of the country.
TITLE: Ikea Plans Mega Malls
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: IKEA Russia has officially announced its plans to build a new shopping mall in Kazan.
Modeled on the company's two Mega malls in Moscow, the 100,000-square-meter shopping center will have roughly 150 stores.
When completed, Kazan Mega, which is scheduled for a late 2005 opening, is set to become the country's largest mall outside Moscow.
IKEA's plans to build a shopping mall next to its IKEA store in Kazan, which opened in March, were already known by the market, but it was not until late last week that they were officially confirmed.
No information on the project's cost was provided by the company, but earlier this year an IKEA representative estimated building the mall in Kazan would cost $75 million.
IKEA, which also operates two stores in Moscow and one in St. Petersburg, has repeatedly announced its ambitious expansion plans, which include a total of five to six stores in Moscow, one or two more in St. Petersburg, and one in every Russian city with a population of more than 1 million.
In addition to its stores, in Russia the Swedish company also operates the 150,000-square-meter Mega mall in Moscow, opened in late 2002, and is planning to open a second 230,000-square-meter Mega II mall in late 2004 in the city's northern Khimki suburb.
TITLE: Film Studios Incorporate as JSCs
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The city's two renowned film studios, Lenfilm and Documentary Film Studio, are re-emerging as joint-stock companies.
The structural change, that will help to allocate funds for reconstructing the worn facilities, should not affect the artistic style both production houses developed over more than fifty years of existence, the studios' directors said at a press conference Wednesday.
However, President Putin's government reform this year, which led to some serious changes in the administrative hierarchy of the state-owned cultural institutions, caused a four-month halt in production, which made every project more expensive, said Lenfilm's director general Andrei Zertsalov.
Lenfilm became a joint-stock company in April, with the state holding 100 percent of the shares. The decision to sell these shares will not be made until next spring, several reports said.
Though the studio's economic development plan for the five upcoming years is not ready yet, Zertsalov said, reconstruction of the street block neighboring on Lenfilm at the Petrograd Side is set to begin. The rotunda that used to exist between the buildings No. 8 and 10 on Kirovsky Prospekt will be restored, and a Russian star lane will be created next to it, Zertsalov said.
Lenfilm's third pavilion will be transformed into a movie theater with two small screens and an exhibition hall. The studio's main building will host a cinema museum, featuring Lenfilm's legendary sets and costumes.
In 2003 Lenfilm produced four movies and nine television series. This year, the studio will release two films, with one of them animated. For 2005-2006 there are 12 film requests submitted, Zertsalov said. Most of the films produced in Russia are still state-financed, but the system is going to change toward loan financing soon. Zertsalov said the loan system is not yet defined and will have to be elaborated in more detail.
Lenfilm, stripped of the copyrights to its film collection, the studio's main revenue source in the recent years, as a result of being re-incorporated as a joint-stock company, provides a variety of services to television companies to make profits.
The Documentary Film Studio, which annually produces about 15 state-ordered documentaries and five films for television channels, with many of them winning awards at international festivals, is also being divided into a film fund and an actual studio, the latter set to become a joint-stock company this year.
"We will resume working on reincorporating the studio as a joint-stock company in September. The studio is speeding up its working tempo, and we only hope the reorganization does not hamper it," said the studio's director general Vyacheslav Telnov.
All of the country's state-owned film studios are to be gradually reincorporated as joint-stock companies, as decreed by the law issued in 2001.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: New Real Estate Spot
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - International real estate agency Knight Frank opened a St. Petersburg branch.
"Knight Frank sees St. Petersburg as one of the most dynamically developing regions in Russia, and the new branch opening is a strategic step that will strengthen the company's position in Russia," the company said in a press release. The new branch will offer services in all segments of the city's residential and commercial real estate, including consultancy, the press release said.
Knight Frank, whose global alliance partner, Grubb & Ellis, is one of the largest commercial real estate firms in the U.S., deals in high class real estate in over 31 countries.
City GM Showroom
ST.PETERSBURG (SPT) - Belarussian car dealership Atlant-M plans to build a General Motors car center in St. Petersburg, investing $7 million into the opening, the company said in a press release.
The center's total area will cover over 18,360 square meters, and will showcase 5 GM car brands - Cadillac, Hummer, Chevrolet, Saab and Opel.
Atlant-M Baltica, the local branch of Atlant-M, is the official dealer of General Motors and GM-Avtovaz in St. Petersburg since 2002.
Heineken No. 3
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch brewer Heineken boosted its position in the fast growing domestic beer market to No. 3 Tuesday by buying two small breweries.
Heineken has agreed to buy the Central European Brewing Co. which owns a majority stake in Shikhan Brewery in Sterlitamak and all of Volga Brewery in Nizhny Novgorod.
It will fund the cash acquisition from available resources and its market share in Russia will rise to above 7 percent. The market share was some 4.5 percent.
TITLE: Khodorkovsky Has Scored a Moral Victory
TEXT: Little doubt remains that Yukos will soon cease to exist as a unified, powerful force in the economy. Hope that the Kremlin would allow Russia's largest oil producer to atone for the political ambitions of its owners has faded.
This does not mean, however, that Yukos will be declared bankrupt. Quite the opposite. Back in June, President Vladimir Putin told the world that the authorities were "not interested in the bankruptcy of a company like Yukos." And Putin tends to make good on such public declarations.
Most likely, another owner will snap up Yukos' core assets for $14 billion or $15 billion - the total amount that the company will probably be asked to pay in back taxes. The new owners could be Surgutneftegaz or a consortium including Gazprom and Rosneft. Odds and ends, including Yukos' assets outside the oil industry, such as its shares in energy companies, could be acquired by major players from Basic Element to Alfa Group. Once its most valuable assets have been sold off, Yukos will still legally exist, but it will be nothing but an empty shell.
Only external factors, such as the position of China, could still disrupt this process. The Chinese leadership is extremely concerned that the collapse of Yukos could scuttle the planned delivery of oil to the Chinese market. They have taken to bombarding Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov with letters and appeals. Rumor has it that Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko has already promised the Chinese that Yuganskneftegaz, Yukos' main production unit, will meet its obligations to Chinese customers no matter who controls it. Yet it cannot be ruled out that the "China factor" could help to drag out the existence of Yukos as a unified company.
The powers that be in the Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous district, who depend in no small measure on tax revenue from Yuganskneftegaz, are also more than a little concerned, and they're letting the Kremlin know about it. The list goes on. The plan for carving up Yukos will be adjusted based on what signals the oil giant's gravediggers receive along the way.
It seems likely that shortly before the official demise of Yukos, an oilman close to Putin will become chairman of the board. Current Yukos board chairman Viktor Gerashchenko, that mastodon of economic policy, who has failed to help Yukos establish a constructive dialogue with the Kremlin, will stay on as a simple board member.
It's still possible that Yukos' foreign shareholders and directors will manage to avert a formal declaration of bankruptcy. These people no longer have any idea whether the Kremlin has a grand design for Yukos, and if it does, if that plan factors in the real risks that the government is facing. Nor do they understand why the Kremlin won't just accept the shares and vows of political loyalty that the company's major shareholders have offered.
In the Yukos affair, Putin has once more shown himself to be an extremely good tactician and an extremely poor strategist.
When Putin was besieged by liberal propaganda a year ago, he acted firmly and consistently, relying on his understanding of a few basic facts. The first of these was that Western leaders would not stand up for Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky because for them the stability of the Putin regime was far more important.
The second fact was that Russia's most powerful businessmen, the oligarchs, would not join ranks to defend their persecuted colleague. Instead, at the decisive moment they would throw oil on the fire and join in the looting.
The third was that Russia's top liberals would drop their support for Yukos just as soon as the Putin administration stopped sending them encouraging signals - as happened when Alexander Voloshin was removed in October 2003.
The president was right on all three. He showed the 1990s elite, driven by mercantile interests and devoid of a guiding ideology, that it had nothing with which to oppose the power of the state machine.
Yet it remains unclear what the Kremlin hopes to gain from the total destruction of Yukos. A year ago, Putin's goals were obvious: to repulse the claims of big business to ultimate power; to restore the authority of the presidency; and to revive respect for supreme power, the guarantor of stability in Russia from time immemorial.
In launching the attack on Khodorkovsky, Putin aimed to reveal the bankruptcy of the basic values of the 1990s, when Russia was ruled for all intents and purposes by the oligarchs. What is happening now, on the other hand, testifies to the triumph of those values. As in the wild '90s, the strong are using a corrupt state machine to divvy up the property of the weak.
Contrary to popular expectations, the issue of legitimizing the privatization of power in the 1990s unfortunately seems to be off the table. As became obvious, no one wanted to raise this question, neither the members of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs nor the most influential government officials. It turned out that big business itself had no interest in legitimizing the status quo, a step that would have prevented future efforts at redistribution. For the oligarchs, receiving the stamp of legal ownership was less important than retaining the right to steal from their fellows.
Though talk of social responsibility has become commonplace, what we're really seeing is the substitution of false concepts for true. When oil and metals magnate Viktor Vekselberg bought nine Faberge eggs and brought them back to display in Russia for a year, his gesture was hailed as beneficial though the state and the people received nothing from Vekselberg's personal PR campaign.
The assets confiscated from Khodorkovsky and co. will not be put to use to generate social harmony. Think about it: If $14 billion is being taken from Yukos in the name of the state, why at the same time is the state moving ahead with the de facto cancellation of benefits for vulnerable social groups?
What started out as Putin's successful and necessary political campaign against Khodorkovsky has devolved into a questionable business venture. The oligarchs are pleased as punch. They were told that the rules of the game would change, but instead Putin merely settled a personal score with an excessively zealous political hooligan.
What this means, strange as it might sound, is that Khodorkovsky has scored a moral victory. He has demonstrated his steadfastness, his ability to survive and remain a strong person even in prison. You may recall that another oligarch, Vladimir Gusinsky, gave up his media empire on just his third day behind bars. Khodorkovsky has seen, and he has shown the world, that his opponents are motivated by nothing more than banal greed, not a desire to correct the injustices of the 1990s.
The Yukos affair will wrap up in late September. Khodorkovsky will be sentenced to two or three years in prison. Platon Lebedev will get four to five years. And many of the people who in the summer of 2003 accused me of shilling for the siloviki will applaud the verdicts with servile smiles.
Or perhaps I'm mistaken.
Stanislav Belkovsky, president of the National Strategy Institute, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Russia Needs to Mend the Fence in Relationship to Nature
TEXT: I don't really like fences except when they are used to mark the boundary of someone's private property.
However, after visiting nature resorts at Karelsky Peresheyek last weekend I thought that to protect the environment some kind of obstacle should be put in people's way.
The Blue Lakes district is located about 80 kilometers northwest of St. Petersburg. Many of the lakes are in the middle of the forest. Their clear waters come from underground springs. In summer, they absorb the rays of the sun like bright mirrors.
Pine trees growing on their steep shores are reflected in the water. The scene would have been truly breathtaking if people who spend only a few hours of their weekend at the lakes took more care.
Unfortunately, the lakeshore is an ugly mess.
Empty bottles, ripped crisp packets, pieces of broken glass, dirty plastic bags and food leftovers cover almost every single meter of the shore along which cars park.
In 2002, Delovoi Peterburg conducted a survey of local environmental organizations to find out if anyone does anything to keep regional resorts clean.
"In June, we cleaned up rubbish on the shores of the Gulf of Finland and at Krasavitsa lake," the newspaper quoted Kirill Dmitriyev, head of local environmental organization Ecosphera as saying.
"Unfortunately, the ecological culture of the population is so low, the areas remain clean for only two or three days after which everything returns to as it was."
Two years later nothing has changed.
Greenpeace says municipal councils in the Leningrad Oblast that are responsible for keeping the lakesides clean have no money to do the work.
"It has got to the stage of so-called self regulation, " said Igor Babanin, head of Greenpeace's project for recycling separated rubbish. "People quit going to certain places where there is so much rubbish that they are unattractive to visit. In this way, the amount of rubbish at those places stops increasing.
"It may seem a sick joke, but the number of such places grows each year," he said.
The low level of citizen's respect for the environment in Russia can be clearly seen at the Finnish border.
Almost magically, after a clean roadside in Finland, rubbish covers both sides of the road as soon as you enter Russia. The reason in this case is quite simple: in Finland parking lots for cargo trucks waiting to cross the border have litter containers and toilets. In Russia, drivers wait in long lines for days and have just one thing to enjoy - the forest.
In addition, Russians are afraid to throw rubbish out of their cars near the Finnish side of the border because there are security cameras all over the place and drivers could face a huge fine for littering.
Russians' attitude to the environment has been formed under the conditions in which people were brought up - in Russia there is no sense of ownership.
The concept of everything belonging to everybody, introduced by the Communists in 1917, turned into an attitude that everything belongs to nobody by the end of the 20th century.
The results are clearly visible anywhere in St. Petersburg, where most yards are strewn with rubbish and staircases of residential buildings are lined with smashed mailboxes and burned-out light bulbs. People walking their dogs leave their animals' feces on the sidewalk.
All these areas are considered public and for this reason are treated as not belonging to anybody.
It would be wrong to say there is no way out. There is, although it will take a very long time to change people's approach to things. I have noticed there are many fewer cigarette butts on Nevsky Prospekt since trash bins were installed a year before St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary.
Maybe if litter containers are installed in places where cars park by lakes in the Leningrad Oblast the situation could improve slightly. Or maybe the most popular lakes should be fenced off and a guard put on duty at the entrance collecting 10 rubles from each visitor.
I am ready to pay to walk around the shore, especially if I don't risk getting my feet cut by broken glass.
TITLE: bringing harmony to the baltic
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A classical music festival with an environmental flavor, aimed at drawing attention to the plight of arguably the most polluted sea in the world opens in Stockholm on Thursday, August 19th.
As well as contributing in large measure to the pollution in the Baltic, St. Petersburg is contributing to the festival this year with the participation of Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theater company.
The Second Baltic Sea Festival, established last year by renowned Finnish conductor and composer, Esa-Pekka Salonen, artistic director of Los-Angeles Philharmonic, brings together classical musicians from the region.
The Mariinsky Theater joins the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Choir in this year's event. Gergiev, one of the festival's organizers, brings to Sweden one of the company's most recent and most successful productions - Yury Alexandrov's rendition of Dmitry Shostakovich's "The Nose", a rarely staged Soviet-era opera loosely based on Nikolai Gogol's story.
The festival gets its funding from the Swedish government, the city of Stockholm and a number of private companies.
What Salonen originally had in mind was to present prominent musicians from the Baltic Sea area in a compact and tightly packed event emphasizing the cultural richness and enormous diversty of the region.
"The are so many political structures in Europe at the moment that are more or less artificial, like, for instance, the European Union or NATO," Salonen said. "The Baltic Sea countries, similar to Mediterrenean countries, have a common history and culture, and therefore present a natural unit, rather than one based on artifical political agreements."
As the maestro points out, the countries, which have been through periods of tranquillity and turbulence, have now developed a political relationship in which the exchange of ideas and communication is easy to establish and maintain. "We just felt that it is the moment to manifest it through the classical music," he said. The idea of cultural integration will reach its apogee at the festival's final concert, juxtaposing Salonen conducting Stravinsky's "The Firebird" and Gergiev leading Sibelius's Symphony No.1.
The festival's environmental element is inseparable from its artistic philosophy, according to its organizers.
The Baltic sea is abundant with dangerous toxic algae, especially in the coastal area. The Swedish Commission for the Protection of Water Environment warned last year that the Baltic Sea is in an extremely serious state and that many species in the Baltic's ecosystem may face extinction because of contamination.
The number of sightings of fish in the Baltic Sea has decreased by almost a half, while the fish population, plankton and seaweed find themselves at a below-critical survival level due to a shortage of oxygen.
For various political and economic reasons, not every country in the region is contributing to the ecological revival projects. Russia, responsible for lion's share of the pollution, hasn't been very active combatting the consequences, while its citizens show little awareness in environmental issues in general.
Pregnant women in Sweden are now recommended not to eat herring, as it can affect the amount of dioxin in their bodies. But in St. Petersburg, the largest single source of pollution in the Baltic, such regulations are unheard of. It is common to see fishermen just a few hundred meters from an illegal out-pipe that turns water into an oily substance that is as bright as it is poisonous.
Salonen said he had been thinking about organizing this festival for years but the more immediate, and more personal, impulse to start working on the event followed about three years ago when the maestro, who typically spends the summer months in his home country, discovered, to his frustration, it was unsafe for his two daughters and son to swim in the Baltic Sea.
"I am not naive enough to think that classical musicians can save the environment of a whole sea," Salonen said. "But I do think that if we bring the ideas into the minds of the people with this ecological theme running through the festival, we have a better chance to improve the situation in the future."
Eventually, the festival's organizers want to widen the festival's geography by holding satellite events in other places across the region. Salonen is also keen to make the program more versatile by attracting jazz, rock and popular musicians to the event for a fuller, more embracing picture of the cultural scene.
"I would like to see every Baltic country participate in this," he said. "At this stage owing to financial constraints we have a limited program but next year we are hoping to widen the repertoire and get more countries involved."
TITLE: new ballet tackles 'anna karenina'
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The prominent St. Petersburg-based choreographer Boris Eifman has started rehearsing a new ballet, loosely based on Leo Tolstoy's novel "Anna Karenina" with his troupe. Eifman's choreographic rendition of the celebrated 1877 literary work - which recently topped the bestseller list in the U.S. after it was endorsed by television star Oprah Winfrey - will explore women's dependancy on sexual relationships.
The balletmaster describes the eponymous heroine as a werewolf. "Two confrontational human beings co-existed in her," he explains. "Anna belonged to high society, yet she was a woman deeply plunged into the world of stormy passions, unknown even to Dostoyevsky's characters."
Boris Eifman has traditionally been interested in psychological drama. Most of his ballets have been inspired by biographies of extraordinary people with a tragic fate, or based on literary plots.
"Red Giselle" tells the story of great Russian ballerina Olga Spessivtseva, who fled Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution and spent 20 years in a psychiatric ward in New York. "The Russian Hamlet" is devoted to the tragic life of Russian tsar, Paul I, the unloved child of Catherine the Great and Peter III who was killed in his bedroom in the Mikhailovsky Castle. Eifman's ballets "The Karamazovs," "The Master and Margarita" and "Don Quixote" were based on famous novels.
The first act of Eifman's "Anna Karenina" will be set to music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, while contemporary electronic music will be composed specifically for Act II, with the balletmaster himself contributing to the score. The production is scheduled to premiere in the spring of next year.
The choreographer, who has closely examined all film versions and available recordings of drama productions of "Anna Karenina," says almost everything he saw left a strange aftertaste. "Somewhat simplified approach," "lack of depth" or "superficial interpretation" were Eifman's blunt critical observations.
The balletmaster's ultimate ambition with the new work is to unveil new layers in the most familiar of the Russian classics.
"Ballet is a sphere of realization of psychological dramas," Eifman said. "When I read Tolstoy's prose, I feel that in 'Anna Karenina' he wanted to present his readers with a psycho-erotic analysis of the heroine's passions. In my production, I would like to touch on that very theme, which remains ignored by and unreflected in films and dramas."
The relationship between the characters Levin and Kitty will not feature much in the ballet because the choreographer believes, Levin's inner world would merit a separate stage work - one that Eifman would prefer to see as straight drama.
For Eifman, the key to Tolstoy's novel is Anna's emotional and sensual dependence on Vronsky. "As far as I can understand, she committed suicide to end this painful, unbearable connection, to break the ties she was unable to do anything about [in life]," he said. "The love triangle between Anna, Vronsky and Karenin will be the focus of my work."
The choreographer goes even further in his philosophy by generalizing the subject, suggesting that Anna's story appeals to women in general.
"Female emotional bondage lies within women's nature, and all this talk about emancipation is hypocritical," he said. "To me, the story is about sexual dependence and it is this aspect that is most interesting, captivating and worth exploring."
TITLE: the word's worth
TEXT: óÂÏÛ .(o)Ú,, ÚÓ"Ó ÌÂ ÏËÌÓ'++Ú,: What will be, will be.
Ah, August! The month that begins with just about every Russian knocking wood, spitting three times over his left shoulder, lighting candles and dancing under the moon while muttering spells to keep away the demons that historically plague Russia in this month. I'm spitting and knocking with the best of them, whenever I think about what has happened or could happen. ç o/oo++È ÅÓ"! (God forbid!)
ç o/oo++È ÅÓ"! is one of the phrases Russians use to ward off possible disaster. Another invocation of the good will of the Almighty is ÅÓÊ (ÅÓ") ÛÔ++ÒË - which also means "God forbid" or "may God preserve us." Ö^fi @++Á ÔÂ@ÂÊËÚ, o/ooÂÙÓÎÚ - ÅÓÊ ÛÔ++ÒË! (To go through another default - may Heaven preserve us!) In other contexts it's a good thing to say when stressing your innocence: èÂ@ÂÒÔ++Ú, Ò Ú'ÓËÏ ÏÛÊÂÏ? ÅÓÊ ÛÔ++ÒË! (Sleep with your husband? God forbid!).
When Russians are contemplating an unknown future, their expressions betray a certain fatalism, which, given Russian history, is probably just common sense. ç++ 'Òfi 'ÓÎfl ÅÓÊ,fl (it's in God's hands/it is the will of God). ü ÌÂ ÁÌ++,, ~ÚÓ .Ûo/ooÂÚ. óÂÏÛ .(o)Ú,, ÚÓ"Ó ÌÂ ÏËÌÓ'++Ú,. (I don't know what will happen. What will be, will be - literally, "what is destined to be cannot be avoided.") óÚÓ .Ûo/ooÂÚ Ò ÏÓÂÈ @++.ÓÚÓÈ? èÓÊË'fiÏ - Û'Ëo/ooËÏ. (What will happen to my job? We'll see - literally, "we'll live a bit and see.")
Despite the dark clouds, Russians have lots of ways of expressing certainty that everything will be just fine: ÇÒfi .Ûo/ooÂÚ iÓ@Ó-Ó! (Everything will be good!) ç++ @++.ÓÚÂ Û Ì++Ò ÌÓ'(o)È Ì++~++Î,ÌËÍ, ÍÓÚÓ@(o)È iÓ~ÂÚ 'Òfi ËÁÏÂÌËÚ,. çË~Â"Ó - 'Òfi Ó.@++ÁÛÂÚÒfl. (We have a new boss at work who wants to change everything. Oh, well - everything will fall into place.) When things aren't looking too good, but you still have hope, you can use the phrase Í++Í-ÌË.Ûo/oo, Ó.ÓÈo/oofiÚÒfl (things will turn out okay, one way or the other). ç ÁÌ++,, ~ÚÓ Ï(o) .Ûo/ooÂÏ o/ooÂÎ++Ú,, ÂÒÎË Ò(o)Ì Ì ÔÓÒÚÛÔËÚ ' ËÌÒÚËÚÛÚ. çÓ, Ì++'Â@ÌÓÂ, 'Òfi Í++Í-ÌË.Ûo/oo, Ó.ÓÈo/oofiÚÒfl. (I don't know what we'll do if my son doesn't get into the institute. But I suppose it will all work out, one way or the other.)
When things are definitely taking a turn for the worse, you can console yourself that the timing is just off. åÂÌfl Ì Ì++ÁÌ++~ËÎË o/ooË@ÂÍÚÓ@ÓÏ. çË~Â"Ó - 'ÒÂÏÛ Ò'Ófi '@ÂÏfl. (I didn't get the job of director. Oh, well - everything in its own time/the timing just wasn't right.)
Note that the word ÌË~Â"Ó is an intrinsic part of Russian expressions of fatalism. It means "Oh, well," "It's not so bad," "It's nothing," "It's not the worst thing that could happen."
When the worst has happened, your Russian friends will try to convince you that there is a silver lining in there somewhere. ÇÒfi, ~ÚÓ ÌË o/ooÂÎ++ÂÚÒfl - Í ÎÛ~-ÂÏÛ! (It will be all for the best, literally, "no matter what happens, it's for the best.") If that doesn't convince you, they'll resort to a number of sayings: ëÎÂÁ++ÏË "Ó@, Ì ÔÓÏÓÊÂ-,. (Crying won't mend matters.) It's better to forget it and move on: óÚÓ .(o)ÎÓ, ÚÓ .(o)ÎÓ. (What's past is past.) More ominously, they may console you that the worst may still lie ahead: ùÚÓ "Ó@,-ÍÓ - Ì "Ó@Â, "Ó@ .Ûo/ooÂÚ 'ÔÂ@Âo/ooË. (Nothing so bad but might have been worse, literally, "that's a little sorrow, not a big one; a big one is ahead"). Or, when nothing helps, they will tell you sagely: à ~ÚÓ Ô@ÓÈo/oofiÚ. (This too shall pass.)
As shall August!
Sergei Chernov is on vacation.
TITLE: fruitless odyssey to find greek fare
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Lesson number one: Never get a great idea while exhausted. Inevitably, it backfires and you wind up walking for a seemingly endless amount of time on a seemingly endless path to a seemingly non-existent location in the middle of an island. Really.
Lesson number two: Greek food in the middle of an island in northern Russian will almost never be a) Greek or b) worth the hike to find it (see lesson number one).
Formerly known as Tanatos, this restaurant was renamed Dialog because the owner decided to turn it into a chain venture, and is located on Pereulok Dekabristov, a long walk north from Vasilyeostrovskaya metro station.
Once the place has actually been located, through use of a map, GPS or a hotair balloon, there is not much to complain about.
Calling Dialog "Greek" is like calling St. Petersburg "Athens." Since the Olympic Games don't appear to be occurring in the Northern Capital, we can safely assume that St. Petersburg is St. Petersburg and not Athens. Similarly, Dialog simply isn't Greek: it has its own special version of dishes with Caucasian spice and Russian flare. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
The service was good, but slowly paced. The waitress, however, was quite attentive, asking to refill glasses and returning to the table just to make sure all was in order.
In a miraculous act, the waitress brought bread to the table almost right away, without being asked or without it being ordered. This is a rarity in many Russian restaurants. It was served with herb and paprika butter, and, while nothing special, it was fresh.
The appetizers were very good, the best being the stuffed calamari (250 rubles, $8.47). A single giant calamari (a calamara?) was prepared whole (minus the head) and filled with tomatoes and garlic, to produce a dish that was succulent, simple and innovative.
White, fried mushrooms (110 rubles, $3.72), garnished with potatoes fried to a golden brown on each side, proved satisfying enough but this dish is standard fare available in every Russian restaurant in the city.
Another guest described the fried cheese as meriting "4 stars." Presumably out of 5. It proved not to be the Greek variant which is usually served flaming and doused with lemon juice before your eyes in a fiery pan, but a version that looked like a giant, flattened, breaded mozzarella stick served with a creamy sauce. Notably, the diner said the dish was also light. A rather impressive feat, considering cheese and cream sauce could be the equivalent to a bag of lead.
The wine arrived early, before dinner, and it was tempting to scarf the lot before the food came.
When the main courses did arrive, everyone looked somewhat disappointed. The most impressive dish was the grilled chicken with Tkemali sauce, covered in herbs and served with Georgian dressing. Not Greek sauce, of course, but the diner said the chicken was delectable.
"Tkemali is usually for beef or mutton... but here we see chicken with Tkemali," he said. "They're experimenting with some stuff."
Another meat dish arrived, a plainly presented heap of meat with herbs.
"There's so many herbs on it," another guest commented. "I'm not a rabbit."
The two guests eventually switched plates because the meat was just too spicy for the first, but to the other's liking. The chicken continued to be the toast of table, as the diners enthused about its creative preparation.
There is "mousaka" on the menu at Dialog for 220 rubles ($7.45), a pie that is practically the national dish of Greece. Dialog tried hard to make their version appetizing and it wasn't bad, although it did seem like the type of dish you accidentally invent one day while staring at your nearly empty refrigerator wondering what to do with ground meat and potatoes.
It arrived in a piping hot Pyrex dish, with the lid still on top. Mousaka, when done right and done well, usually stand alone on the plate, without the help of a Pyrex dish to prop it up. Had Dialog called it what it was, meat and potatoes in a dish, it would have been a lot less disappointing.
Dessert was the last hope in the Odyssey. Will there be real Greek food? Sadly, no. A survey of the dessert menu turned up fruit and cream, ice cream fruit and cream and a baked apple. The cream desserts were good, but again, the exact same varieties are served in restaurants all over Russia. One plus, however, was that the fruit was fresh, not canned.
Everything then is much of a muchness at Dialog, although the draft beer of the day was condemned as "really bad" by the guest who ordered it.
"I think we should tell them that their food is better than their music," one diner said as Maxim Galkin and Alla Pugachyova crooned in the background.
"Oh my God, it's an electric chair for flies," the guest exclaimed looking to the right at the electric bug zapper strategically positioned in the middle of the room.
Dialog would be much better off removing any Greek association with the restaurant to allow its guests to experience it without any preconceptions. Even as an average Russian restaurant remains just that - average.
Dialog, 8 Pereulok Dekabristov. Tel: 350 3049. Menu in Russian only. No credit cards. Dinner for two with wine: 1,260 rubles ($42.71).
TITLE: director klapisch shoots 'russian dolls'
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In his sequel to "Euro Pudding," Cedric Klapisch has chosen St. Petersburg to represent one facet of modern Europe.
French film director Cedric Klapisch wrapped up filming the St. Petersburg scenes of the sequel to his hit film "L'auberge espagnole," or "Euro Pudding" (2002) in the city last week - and took time out to explain why he chose Russia as one of the locations for the new film.
The second film in the series, "Les poupees russes," literally "Russian Dolls," also features a Russian ballet dancer playing a leading role.
The original film, "Euro Pudding" (titled "Pot Luck" in Britain, "Una Casa de Locos" in Spain and "The Spanish Hotel" in the U.S.), was nominated for the 2003 Cesar Award for the best film, best director and best script. Called by critic Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times "as light and frothy as a French comedy, which is what it is" and "refreshingly frank," the film looked at themes of identity in contemporary Europe through the story of a twenty-five-year-old Frenchman, Xavier (Romain Duris). Xavier passes through a one-year internship in Barcelona learning Spanish so that he can become eligible for a job at the European Council's office in Paris. He has difficulties leaving his home and girlfriend Martine (Audrey Tautou from "Amelie") in France, and plunges himself into a genuine "paella" of cultures at the apartment he rents together with six other exchange students, from Spain, England, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Denmark. An American attempts to join the melting pot, but, tellingly, doesn't mix.
Xavier soon realizes it is neither Martine nor the bureaucratic job that he really wants. The cultural mix around him awakens a quest for his true self.
At the end of "Euro Pudding," Xavier decides to become a writer, piling up books and notepads on the desk at his parents' house.
In all of Klapisch's films, even the least important characters are made memorable and symbolic. Klapisch attributes his love for symbolism to his mathematical view of the surrounding world, possibly cultivated in him during the philosophical studies he pursued in France prior to choosing to become a film-maker. Klapisch lists Russian philosophical works among his favorites.
True to his symbolic system, Klapisch stretches the plot of the new film beyond the borders of the European Union and brings the cast of characters from the first film to St. Petersburg, where one of them - William from Britain (Kevin Bishop) marries a Russian girl Natasha, played by ballet dancer Yevgenia Obraztsova.
"What I wanted to say was really about the new Europe," Klapisch said during a short break between the scenes on the upper deck of the large old restaurant boat Lyudmila. "When you're young, you don't want to be like your parents. You want to invent a new life. And you don't want to grow up."
At the age of the characters in the series, Klapisch had already graduated from New York University's film school and was making his first steps in the industry. The idea of portraying the new generation of exchange students struck Klapisch when he was visiting his sister, seven years his junior, during her studies in Barcelona.
With most of the characters from "Euro Pudding" returning in "Les poupees russes," the new film's dynamic derives from the same pieces of contemporary Europe, represented by the international characters attracting and repelling each other.
Klapisch chose Russia because it is a place where things are changing very quickly, but it also continues to bear the mark of the past, he explained. The true identity of Europe is about both the old and the new, and St. Petersburg suited the picture, as it is both the history of Europe and the future of Europe, he said.
"I want the film to be called 'French Matryoshkas' in Russian," Klapisch said, emphasizing the idea that the best things in life arrive only after a long determined search, like the final doll inside the nesting set.
Klapisch feels that Russia is fast going "yuppy" and that St. Petersburg today is similar to Spain about 15 years ago.
As if to better reveal the seamy side of St. Petersburg's ceremonial attire, the soundtrack to "Les poupees russes" will feature two songs by the city's laid-back underground group Markscheider Kunst. The group's recent album "Krasivosleva," sold well in Europe.
By coming to Russia, Xavier and his friends, now thirty-year-olds, take a broader view at what Europe really is, unpeeling its contradictions like the dolls of its title. Xavier has indeed become a writer, Klapisch said, but a more realistic version of a writer than he intended at the end of "Euro Pudding" - he has become a journalist and travels to Russia to complete an assignment. But the image of matryoshka dolls is also about the girls Xavier finds, Klapisch said. After going through the whole set, he finally gets his hands on the smallest doll, who becomes his ultimate choice - Wendy from Britain (Kelly Reilly).
Meanwhile, critics accused Klapisch of becoming too abstract in depicting his characters in his latest release, "Ni pour, ni contre (bien au contraire)," where the director attempted to imitate the classic gangster genre of film noir. While in regular films noir, gangsters are shown as appealing adventurers, Klapisch presented them as symbols in a play of cause and consequence.
Klapisch likes the cast to not just reflect the nature of their characters - every actor personifies an abstract element in the film universe. In Klapisch's current work, those elements are countries. The actors personify their native countries and speak their native tongues, lending a colorful authenticity to the many subtitled dialogues.
Klapisch literally bridges the less Euro-integrated Britain and Russia with France. Russia is personified by the ballet dancer character played by Obraztsova, named Natasha. Klapisch said he made Natasha a ballet dancer because Russia is related to perpetual movement. "It may have also been the cliche of Russian ballet and the Russian ballet being attached to traditions," he said.
Obraztsova, a Mariinsky Theater dancer in real life, said that by playing Natasha she tried hard to convey to her western colleagues about how developed Russia used to be prior to the Bolshevik Revolution.
"They think Russia is about communism. And I want to show it to them how beautiful and delicate Russia can be," she said, waving her hands emotionally and wearing a traditional white bridal dress for scenes in which Natasha is depicted getting married.
Obraztsova was invited to meet Klapisch in March, but did not go, as "it was too early in the morning", she said. Klapisch then himself came to the Mariinsky to see her at a rehearsal before the first night of Yury Grigorovich's "Legend of Love", in which Obraztsova has a solo. She was given the part shortly afterwards.
Obraztsova said Klapisch was very easy to work with. "He generates this sincere desire to always do exactly as he says," she added. Obraztsova will travel to London, where filming will continue this year.
In a curiously relaxed working atmosphere, with Klapisch radiating smiles at his crew and the mix of languages on board of the boat, even the shabby Lyudmila seemed like a Mediterranean cruise ship. Also on board was Cesar Award winning actress Cecile de France, reprising her portrayal of the stunning Belgian lesbian Isabelle from the first film. In "Euro Pudding," Isabelle gives Xavier an expert lecture-cum-demonstration about what really turns a woman on. In "Les poupees russes," which is scheduled to hit the screens in April 2005, Isabelle also tries finding a woman for herself.
"We all play that game of Russian dolls," Klapisch said.
TITLE: rostov: once restless, now restful
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian history is littered with towns which at one time or another seemed set firmly on the path to greatness, but for one reason or another never fulfilled their potential. Either they were weakened or destroyed by war, overtaken by hungrier and more determined neighbors or rivals, lost direction due to internal strife, or were sidelined by political decisions taken elsewhere. The town of Rostov-Veliky suffered most of these misfortunes during its decline from one of the richest and most powerful old Russian city-principalities to the tiny provincial backwater it is today. One of the less well-known towns which form Russia's famous medieval "Golden Ring" of historic towns and cities north-east of Moscow, Rostov-Veliky is today a charming settlement with a stunning kremlin, (administrative and religious buildings inside a fortified wall) set beside the shimmering blue expanse of Lake Nero. With a population of 37,000, Rostov-Veliky makes an ideal and accessible destination for a relaxing long weekend away from the big city. Its location close to the "Golden Ring" town of Yaroslavl also means the two could easily be combined on a single trip. Barely appearing on many maps, the size of the town (also sometimes known as Rostov-Yaroslavsky) appears to render the epithet "Veliky" ('Great') rather inappropriate, even laughable.
As with Veliky Novgorod (the small historic town near St. Petersburg) and Nizhny Novgorod (the Volga city of 1.5 million people), Rostov has a larger and much better-known namesake (Rostov-on-Don in South Russia: population 1 millon), with which it is frequently confused.
AN ANCIENT TOWN
Veliky-Rostov first appeared in chronicles as long ago as 892, during the reign of the first prince of Kiev, Oleg, which makes it one of the very oldest recorded settlements in Russia. After adopting Christianity in 989, it rose in prominence, and by the 11th century it was already a large and wealthy town, competing for power and influence with the younger towns of Suzdal and Vladimir, and with Kiev's power waning, shared their designs upon becoming the capital. Although Yury Dolgoruky, founder of Moscow, bestowed the title "Great' upon Rostov in the 12th century, it was ironically Suzdal that was made capital of the Rostov-Suzdal principality, and Vladimir that was later made capital of Russia by Yury's son Andrei. Ambitious Rostov-Veliky split away from Suzdal in 1207 to form its own independent principality, but did not enjoy its autonomy for long. In 1237-38 Mongol Tatars swept into the region and laid waste to its towns, sacking Moscow, Vladimir, Suzdal and Rostov and making them vassal states. Weakened, Rostov-Veliky was joined to the Moscow principality in 1474 and from then on developed into an important religious center. Unfortunately trouble was on the horizon, and Rostov-Veliky was burnt to the ground during the chaotic "Time of Troubles" early in the 17th century. Rostov-Veliky never really recovered from this setback - although the town's destruction did pave the way for the construction of its magnificent 17th century kremlin - and faded into relative insignificance in the 19th and 20th centuries.
BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH
Arriving by rail or bus, you make your way straight down Ulitsa Lunacharsgogo, past lush green meadows and pleasantly ramshackle izbas, painted in bold blues and greens, with windows enlivened by traditional fretwork frames and shutters, to where a low grassy rampart marks the edge of the old center. This is all that remains of an earthen fortress constructed in the 1600s, before the present-day kremlin appeared.
A short walk brings you to Rostov-Veliky's dusty main street, Ulitsa Pyatidesyatiletiya Oktyabrya ('Fifty Years of October Street'), and its 19th century one-story trading arcades, evocative of St. Petersburg's Gostiny Dvor. Eerily deserted even at noon, the street has a distinct air of the Wild West, with its low buildings, faded signs, peeling facades and battered doorways. The eye, however, cannot help but be drawn upward, above the empty drama of the street below, behind the arcades, to where a host of phantasmal turrets lift high above the kremlin, throwing glittering golden crosses into the sky above their elegant cupolas. It is as expressive a metaphor for the juxtaposition of heaven and earth as one could conceive; this dizzying gulf between the regular buildings of the street below, rooted firmly to the ground, and the fairy-tale towers beyond, which seem to hover in space, having left the material world behind.
This astonishing ensemble is the last great architectural legacy of the medieval era in Russia, constructed in the late 1600s, shortly before Peter the Great turned to the West and made a decisive break with the past. Unusually, this kremlin was built not as a fortress, but as a grandiose official residence by Rostov metropolitan Iona Sysoyevich, who was inspired by his love of medieval Russian architecture to build himself a great palace in that style. Construction of the kremlin began in 1670, and it was completed in the 1690s, by which time Peter was already upon the throne.
To reach the main gate, which is on the western side of the kremlin, follow Ultisa Pyatidesyatiletiya Oktyabrya past the towers to its end and turn left. On the corner is the entrance to a separate courtyard, containing the impressive 5-domed Assumption Cathedral and an equally impressive turreted belfry, in which no fewer than 13 great bells hang, the greatest weighing no less than 32 tonnes. The 19th century French composer Hector Berlioz even once came to Rostov to listen to the belfry's famous peals. Further on, two cylindrical towers roofed with aspen shingles flank the main gate. Above the gate sits the gateway Church of St. John the Divine, which, despite having shed all its plaster, wears five lovely slender-spired green domes like a pauper with a glamorous hat. Both Russians and foreigners are admitted for a surprisingly modest 2 rubles (7 U.S. cents), although you will pay (slightly) more to visit various buildings and museums inside. The gate leads into the kremlin's main courtyard, whose trees and verdant lawns are unexpected. The centerpiece of the yard is a pretty little pond, which was once used for bell-casting. Ranged about the edges of the courtyard are various buildings and churches. Of note is the Church of the Virgin Hodegetria (Tserkov Odigirity) built in a Baroque style, with yellow pilasters, ornate windows, and unusual diamond-shaped wall decoration. The Church of the Resurrection, above the northern gate, although guarded by an obstreperous babushka, houses some beautifully-preserved 17th century frescos and an impressive iconostasis. It also gives access to the gallery that runs around the top of the kremlin walls, providing wonderful views of the courtyard, the town, and the lake.
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
One of Rostov-Veliky's more unusual places of interest can be found just downhill from the kremlin's main gate. Signs directing you to "Khors" (a strange name in any language) will lead you to two wooden cottages set in beautiful gardens, just off the south-western corner of the kremlin. Russian artist Mikhail Selishchev, although not from the area, has made his home here on the banks of Lake Nero. Selishchev is a relatively successful artist who works mainly with wood and enamels, and he has exhibited his work in countries as far away as Spain. You can see some of his beautiful enamel pieces on the upper floor of the cottage on the right, which serves as gallery, studio, and also a guesthouse. There is also a curious one-room museum, which is an example of a typical interior from the beginning of the 20th century, containing a great many objects and curiosities from that era.
Passing through Selishchev's garden (open to visitors during daylight hours), you come to the banks of lovely Lake Nero, whose still blue waters stretch almost to the horizon. Despite being one of the largest lakes in the area, however, its depth never exceeds 4 meters. Peter the Great dismissed the lake as "a muddy puddle" while looking for a suitable place to build his first "fun" flotilla, choosing instead the considerably deeper lake at nearby Pereslavl-Zalessky. A 5-minute walk to the left brings you to a lakeside park, where you can hire small boats and go rowing.
ACROSS THE LAKE
Two kilometers to the south-west you will find next to the lake the Monastery of St. Jacob (Yakovlevsky Monastyr). Approaching on foot along the shore, the octagonal eastern tower rises before you like a great lonely sentinel, birds wheeling slowly about its empty belfry, the reed-beds and marshland at its foot stretching into the distance. There is a wild, Byronic air to the place, accentuated by the peeling plaster and chunks of fallen masonry. Green roofs and deep blue cupolas dusted with golden stars peep beyond the shabby walls.
The monastery is named after Bishop Jacob of Rostov, who according to legend founded it in 1389 after being hounded out of Rostov-Veliky by its townspeople, enraged because he had forgiven a woman condemned to death by the prince. Chased by the angry mob, Jacob left his court and went down to the shore of the lake, where, in demonstration of his purity, he cast his cloak onto the water, stepped onto it, and swept across the lake where he returned to dry land. The townspeople and prince, having run along the shore of the lake after the bishop in awe of this miracle, pleaded for forgiveness, which Jacob bestowed. However, he vowed never to return to Rostov-Veliky, and instead founded the monastery upon the very spot where he had landed.
The monastery was closed during the Soviet period, and was only returned to the Orthodox Church in 1993, by which time it had practically fallen into ruin. The monks have worked hard on restoring the interior, and while it is fairly well-kept and tidy inside the walls, it lacks the romantic atmosphere of the exterior. Most of the present-day monastery was built in the 19th century, so is predominantly "neo-classical Empire-style" in appearance. This makes the churches of St. Dimitry and St. Jacob, although furnished with impressive columns, porticos and stucco, rather incongruous beside the blue-domed Cathedral of the Conception, which was built more than a century earlier. Behind the churches, near the bell tower, several granite headstones in long grass mark the resting place of the monks' predecessors.
From the monastery, following Ulitsa Engelsa, and then Ultisa Leninskaya will eventually bring you back to the kremlin and the town center. And when evening comes, you may reflect, upon seeing the quiet, empty roads and the fantastic silhouettes of the kremlin's turrets against the stars, that ruined ambition is sometimes not such a bad thing, that perhaps we should be thankful that the tides of history have long ago denied a city the glory it once craved.
. HOW TO GET THERE
The best option is to take the overnight train from St. Petersburg to Yaroslavl (Train no. 45 to Ivanovo), which leaves the Moscow Station at 17:33 every day, arriving at Yaroslavl Glavny station at 05:28 the next morning, and then continue by elektrichka from the same station (1 1/2 hours), or by regular bus from Yaroslavl bus station. The entire journey from St. Petersburg to Rostov-Veliky takes about 14 hours, making the trip suitable only for those with 4 or 5 days to spare.
. WHERE TO STAY
Dom Na Pogrebakh (House on the Cellars) is a small hotel located inside the grounds of the kremlin, with well-furnished, wood-panelled rooms and space for up to 56 guests. A double room with fridge and TV costs $18; singles cost $7; a dorm bed costs $3. Tel: (08536) 31244.
"Khors" (see text) is a museum and art gallery in a small wooden cottage located right on the bank of Lake Nero, close to the kremlin. Owner Mikhail Selishchev, who lives next door, also rents the downstairs floor to guests. There are 2 small bedrooms, sharing a cozy old-fashioned kitchen with a view of the lake, and a shower. Selishchev will also allow guests to use his "black banya" and cook shashlyk in the garden. Prices change according to season, but you can expect to pay about $10 per person. Tel. (08536) 32483. e-mail: selishchev@mail.ru
. WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK
Restoran Slavyansky, at 8 Sovietskaya Ploshchad, near the kremlin, serves a wide range of traditional Slav dishes for reasonable prices. Trapeznaya, located in one of the ancient halls inside the kremlin, is worth a look just for its setting.
Arkada, on Ulitsa Pyatidesyatiletiya Oktyabrya, is a modern cafe-bar with standard Russian fare, as is Lion, just off the same street, next door to the shop of the same name.
After everywhere else shuts at 12, Rostov night owls funnel into the Metro bar on Ulitsa Pyatidesyatiletiya Oktyabrya, which is open until 6am, or the local discotheque, Lux, on Ulitsa Kommunarov, 5 minutes walk from the kremlin. You may be surprised by how raucous things can get.
TITLE: Britain Issues License For Human Cloning
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Britain granted its first license for human cloning Wednesday, joining South Korea on the leading edge of stem cell research, which is restricted by the Bush administration and which many scientists believe may lead to new treatments for a range of diseases.
The British license went to Newcastle University researchers who hope eventually to create insulin-producing cells that could be transplanted into diabetics.
South Korean scientists announced in February they had cloned an embryo and extracted the stem cells from it.
Many scientists believe stem cells hold vast promise for treating an array of diseases from diabetes to Parkinson's. Stem cells can potentially grow into any type of human tissue and scientists hope to be able to direct the blank cells to grow into specific cell types needed for transplant.
Stem cells can be found in adults, but scientists believe they may not be as versatile as those found in embryos. They envision using cloning to create an embryo from a patient so that stem cells extracted would be a perfect transplant match.
"Therapeutic cloning will in the immediate future be a vital tool in harnessing the power of stem cells to treat some of the major diseases which threaten humankind," John Harris, professor of bioethics at the University of Manchester, said after the license was announced. "This decision is a signal of our society's compassion and concern for those threatened by disease."
Britain's ProLife Party lamented the decision and said it was considering whether it could sue.
Regulations on cloning and stem cell research vary around the world. Britain is the only European country that licenses cloning for stem cell research and three years ago was the first in the world to do so when Parliament voted to allow regulators to license the method for stem cell research.
South Korea followed in December. Countries such as Sweden and Japan are expected to pass similar legislation soon.
This year, the United Nations will revisit the issue of whether to propose an international treaty to ban "therapeutic" cloning-which produces stem cells from cloned embryos-as well as "reproductive" cloning, which makes babies.
In the United States, where much of the pioneering work on stem cells took place, the issue is embroiled in political controversy.
The Bush administration forbids federal funding for research on embryonic stem cell lines created after Aug. 9, 2001. It also forbids federal funding of all cloning research.
The rules do not apply to privately funded labs, but scientists working in such firms say money for the research has dried up since the controversy arose.
TITLE: U.S. Captive Clears Suspect
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HAMBURG, Germany - A key al-Qaida captive in U.S. custody told interrogators that a Moroccan on trial for helping the Hamburg-based Sept. 11 suicide pilots had no knowledge of the plot, according to a summary of the questioning of two key terror suspects presented Wednesday for the first time in court.
In a note of caution, however, the U.S. Justice Department cited "inconsistencies by at least one of the individuals" and said that "there may be reason to question the assertions regarding Mounir el Motassadeq." It said it was considering whether further information could be provided.
Mounir el Motassadeq, accused of giving logistical aid to the Hamburg al-Qaida cell that included hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, is being retried after his conviction was thrown out in March.
The appeals court ruled he was unfairly denied testimony from U.S.-held suspects including Ramzi Binalshibh, believed to be the Hamburg cell's contact with al-Qaida. The new trial opened Tuesday with a U.S. pledge to provide evidence, but no direct testimony.
Presiding Judge Ernst-Rainer Schudt said the Hamburg state court had received a fax from the Justice Department dated Aug. 9, containing summaries of the interrogations of Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to have masterminded the Sept. 11 plot.
The Justice Department's summary said Binalshibh maintained that el Motassadeq was not part of the plot.
It was the first time that statements by al-Qaida captives in U.S. custody were presented in a German court. The judge said afterward that "we must consider what this means for the trial, and what it means for the volume of evidence we will listen to."
TITLE: U.S. Military Attacks Najaf
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAJAF, Iraq - Explosions and gunfire echoed across the holy city of Najaf on Thursday, as the U.S. military and Iraqi forces launched a full-scale assault to crush a weeklong uprising by militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Thousands of U.S. troops were taking part in the offensive, which began with the cordoning off of the revered Imam Ali shrine, its vast cemetery and Najaf's Old City.
"Major operations to destroy the militia have begun," said U.S. Marine Maj. David Holahan, executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines Regiment.
The assault was expected to be led by Iraqi forces - many of whom have only minimal training - in an effort to ease anger from Iraq's Shiite majority if the offensive damages the shrine where many insurgents have taken refuge.
The offensive risks inflaming Iraq's Shiite majority-including those who do not support the uprising-if it targets the shrine. The U.S. military said Wednesday it was holding joint exercises with Iraqi national guardsmen in preparation for the planned assault.
Taking the shrine itself was not the objective, Holahan said, "but it might be."
U.S. commanders say interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi would have to approve any operation at the shrine itself, and any operation involving entering the shrine would likely involve Iraqi national guard troops, not U.S. forces.
On Wednesday, Al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric leading the insurgents, exhorted his followers to fight on even if he is killed.
The United States had announced its plan for the offensive Wednesday, and in response, al-Sadr loyalists in the southern city of Basra threatened to blow up the oil pipelines and port infrastructure there.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Turkish Crash Kills 6
GEBZE, Turkey (AFP) - At least six people were killed and 85 injured when two trains collided head-on Wednesday near Istanbul in northwestern Turkey, according to a crisis cell set up to deal with the incident.
Of those injured, 27 remained in hospital, the Anatolia news agency quoted the crisis cell as saying, following the second major rail accident in Turkey in three weeks.
The two trains collided in the province of Kocaeli, southeast of Istanbul, after one of them apparently passed a red light, officials said.
The accident came just three weeks after 37 people were killed and some 80 injured when a newly-inaugurated express train derailed in the same region.
Locusts Darfur-Bound
ROME (Reuters) - Millions of locusts may be heading for Sudan's Darfur region, pest control experts said Wednesday, where violence has already created a humanitarian disaster and two million people are short of food and medicine.
If locust swarms do hit, insecurity in the remote western region would prevent an effective control operation, they said.
"Swarms could get into Sudan any day, but we of course don't know when," said Clive Elliott, senior officer in charge of the locust group at the Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
"The FAO is in contact with the authorities in Sudan and our coordinators in Cairo are working with the countries around the Red Sea to get as prepared as possible for an invasion from the west," he said.
Elliott said he had no information to suggest locusts had already swept into Sudan, but a pest control expert in the region said they may have already hit.
Goss 'Not Qualified'
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Congressman Porter Goss, President Bush's nominee for CIA director, could be his own worst enemy when it comes to making the case that he deserves to lead the U.S. intelligence agency.
"I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified," the Florida Republican told documentary-maker Michael Moore's production company during the filming of the anti-Bush movie "Fahrenheit 9/11."
A day after Bush picked Goss for the top U.S. spy job, Moore on Wednesday released an excerpt from a March 3 interview in which the 65-year-old former House of Representatives intelligence chief recounts his lack of qualifications for employment as a modern CIA staffer.
Goss, who served with the CIA clandestine services in Latin America and Europe in the 1960s, was not immediately available for comment.
Fay Wray Dies at 96
NEW YORK (AP) - Fay Wray tried twice to wrestle free from a giant gorilla's grip. Once onscreen in the 1933 classic "King Kong" and then again in the years that followed when she yearned to shake the ape's prestigious shadow.
"I used to resent 'King Kong,'" she said in a 1963 interview. "But now I don't fight it anymore. I realize that it is a classic, and I am pleased to be associated with it."
Wray died quietly in her sleep Sunday at her Manhattan apartment, said Rick McKay, a friend and director of the 2003 documentary "Broadway: The Golden Age," the last film she appeared in. She was 96.
The Empire State Building-the skyscraper that Kong scaled while holding tight to Wray dimmed its lights for 15 minutes Tuesday in honor of the actress.