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MOSCOW — A new holiday celebrated for the first time on Friday is supposed to help unite the country under a new patriotic banner. But People’s Unity Day, which is supposed to commemorate the day in 1612 that Moscow was liberated from Polish occupation, is stirring up a heated debate in some circles, with critics calling it little more than a celebration of Russian Orthodoxy triumphing over Roman Catholicism. Moreover, the government has gotten the Nov. 4 date wrong, historians say. Ultranationalists, meanwhile, intend on Friday to stage a march denouncing the “occupation” of Russia by illegal migrant workers, and Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov is organizing a military march on Red Square for Monday, the day of the Soviet-era holiday that the new holiday has replaced. |
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Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
An imperial double-headed eagle, a symbol of the Russian state, forms part of a railing near St. Isaac’s Cathedral, a key place of worship for Russian Orthodox believers. |
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GENEVA — The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called on Thursday for access to all foreign terrorism suspects held by the United States after a report of a covert CIA (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) prison system for al Qaeda captives. The Washington Post said on Wednesday the CIA had been hiding and interrogating inmates at a secret facility in Eastern Europe, one among so-called “black sites” in eight countries thought to include Russia under a global network set up after the Sept.
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Local citizens demonstrated remarkable unity in their opposition to ethnically motivated crimes, at least as far as a new survey carried out by the St. Petersburg Agency For Social Information this month shows. Ninety-six percent of locals reacted negatively to attacks on foreign students, the survey shows. |
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State Duma deputies on Wednesday overwhelmingly called for television channels to cut down on the amount of violence they show, in what First Deputy Speaker Lyubov Sliska said was a “yellow card” for the channels. |
All photos from issue.
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The first twenty volunteers to test a new vaccine against bird flu developed at the St. Petersburg Influenza Research Institute will begin the trial this week, the institute's director Oleg Kiselyov said at a news conference on Wednesday. Work on the vaccine began in May, when the institute received the H5N1 strain of the deadly virus from a U. |
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Russian lawyer Maxim Viktorov acquired one of Italian maestro Niccolo Paganini’s violins for a little more than $1 million at a Sotheby’s auction in London on Tuesday. |
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Attention may be on the new People’s Unity Day holiday, but the old holiday celebrating the October Revolution will not go unnoticed. The first military parade since the break-up of the Soviet Union will be held on Red Square on Monday. The event will be a reenactment of the famous parade on Nov. 7, 1941, when Soviet soldiers marched through Red Square and then headed straight for the front to fight against Nazi Germany. |
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With outside investors set to spend $25 million for a controlling stake in Petersburg Television and Radio, industry experts are speculating on the future of the company’s TV channel, formerly a federal station. Rossiya bank, Severstal-group and Baltic media-group could buy 1. |
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St. Petersburg-based provider i-Free has started distributing mobile content services in Kazakhstan, the company said Wednesday. The agreement was signed with KaR-Tel, a mobile operator with more than 1. |
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Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref on Wednesday threw his weight behind the Russian Regional Jet, promising government support for the landmark project, which is expected to put Russia back on the map of global aviation. “We have full confidence that this jet will be made,” Gref told reporters after the project’s presentation at the Moscow design bureau of fighter jet manufacturer Sukhoi, the leader of the project. |
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TALLINN — An Estonian investment bank, the subject of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry, said on Wednesday it had started an internal investigation and suspended staff at the centre of the probe. |
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Metro Maker Profits ST.PETERSBURG (SPT) — The profits of Vagonmash, one of the largest producers of metro and railway wagons in the CIS, increased 2.58 times to 1.33 billion rubles ($45.7 million) in the first nine months of 2005, compared to 0.52 billion in the same period last year, a company press release announced Wednesday. |
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And a happy holiday to you. Go to the dacha, sleep in, get drunk, be happy. What holiday is it? It’s a Friday — that’s all most Russians can tell you. In the last 15 years, Russia has acquired some new holidays, such as Constitution Day, on Dec. 12, and another day, June 12, which is sometimes known as Independence Day, which begs the question: Independence from what? Hard to say. |
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Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko scored a major victory last week when the government auctioned off the Kryvorizhstal steel mill for more than $4. |
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Treasures from the collection of the late banker Edmund Safra, who died in 1999 in mysterious circumstances with a rumored Russian connection, are being sold this week at Sotheby’s auction house in New York. The sale of works from one of the greatest private collections of the 20th century features the most important selection of works by Russian court jeweler Carl FabergÎ to be offered at auction in the past 25 years, according to Sotheby’s experts. |
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The onset of cold weather stimulates an appetite for red meat. In the summer, beef, pork, or lamb can be dispensed with, but as the days get shorter and the temperatures fall, one develops a strong desire for a well-cooked beef steak, served in a warm and cosy place. |
 They are called Metamorphosis, but although they are based mainly in the Czech Republic, the name has nothing to do with Franz Kafka’s unsettling story about a man who turns into an insect. “In a way it just came out of the [fact] that the project has to have a name. |
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The Estonian capital Tallinn may have had the distinction of hosting yachting events during the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but St. Petersburg is the undoubted yachting capital of modern day Russia. |
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ADDIS ABABA — Three people were shot dead in the Ethiopian capital on Thursday, doctors said, in a third straight day of political unrest that has killed at least 42 and stirred fears for the giant African country’s stability. The violence has prompted Britain to warn its citizens against non-essential travel to Ethiopia and an alarmed African Union called on both government and opposition in the country, the Horn of Africa’s dominant power, to show restraint. |
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PARIS — Faced with failing to clear the Champions League group stage for the first time in 11 years, Manchester United and manager Alex Ferguson need a convincing performance against Chelsea on Sunday to quiet fan unrest. A 1-0 defeat by Lille on Wednesday left an uninspired and toothless United third in a tight Group D with two games left. |
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