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Over a thousand local communists took part in a demonstration on Monday to commemorate the 88th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. While some of the demonstrators shouted provocative slogans calling for the return of Stalin’s iron rule and the reintroduction of the GULAG prison camp system, the march took place without major incident. Members of the left-wing opposition also laid wreaths at the Lenin monument close to Smolny, despite the fact that City Hall had previously refused to give them permission to pay this tribute. “Their decision, signed by Leonid Bogdanov, head of Smolny’s Security and Law Enforcement Committee, is sheer nonsense,” Vladimir Soloveichik, co-head of St. |
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Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A doghandler walking in the city center Monday ahead of a crowd of communist demonstrators celebrating the 88th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. |
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The Kremlin-backed administration in Chechnya sponsored a rock festival on Monday as part of efforts by authorities to show that the region is stabilizing despite persistent violence and daily clashes between rebels and federal forces. Several prominent Russian rock bands played for five hours at the “Phoenix: Return to Life” festival in Chechnya’s second-largest city, Gudermes, east of Grozny.
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NEW YORK — It took Natasha a day trip to Moscow to find the American husband she had dreamed of. It took the next six years to get out of the nightmare that followed. A music teacher from central Russia, she was one of 200 Russian women who patiently lined up at a Moscow restaurant to meet 10 American men at a gathering hosted by a mail-order bride agency. |
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MOSCOW (Reuters) — A batch of illegal alcohol has killed 25 people in Russia’s Far East over the last week, media reported on Monday, and police warned residents to avoid the deadly brew. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin celebrated the new national holiday, People’s Unity Day, by speaking about the unity of all Russian people on Red Square, yet disunity was visible just a few hundred meters away as scores of young people denounced ethnic non-Russians at an officially approved march. |
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MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry is setting up a department to support Russian expatriates in what appears to be an attempt to win back millions living abroad. |
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MOSCOW — Otto Latsis, a political and economic commentator who was forced out of journalism in the early 1970s and returned with perestroika to become a quiet but uncompromising voice of liberalism, died last week. He was 71. Latsis died Thursday in a Moscow hospital after struggling to recover from injuries he suffered in a car accident in September, Interfax reported, citing Igor Yakovenko, head of the Russian Union of Journalists. |
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MOSCOW — Russia is in talks with Iran to set up a nuclear fuel joint venture over the next few years, a plan seen as a possible solution to a deadlock over Tehran’s nuclear program, officials said. |
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Gergiev Takes Prize STOCKHOLM, Sweden — British rock band Led Zeppelin and Russian conductor Valery Gergiev on Monday were named winners of the 2006 Polar Music Prize. The award was created in 1989 by Stig Anderson, manager of Swedish pop group ABBA, through a donation to The Royal Swedish Academy of Music. |
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The Moscow Times Russian Aluminum, or RusAl, has bid for a 48.79 percent stake in the St. Petersburg Sea Port, the country’s second-largest port, Seanews industry web site reported Thursday. RusAl head Alexander Bultygin signed a deposit agreement worth 160. |
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RIGA — The Presidents of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia called on Thursday for broader European Union involvement in a Baltic gas pipeline, which they said posed a potentially catastrophic environmental threat to their region. |
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Money from Russia’s growing oil windfall fund can help pay pensions for future generations, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said in an interview published in the government’s Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Monday. “Spending this money would be harmful because it is not backed up by anything. |
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WARSAW — Gazprom wants to renegotiate its long-term gas delivery contract with Poland, reigniting worries about energy security in the European Union newcomer. |
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MOSCOW (SPT) — Two large European companies may withdraw from the Russian market as a result of local corruption, Yelena Panfilova, head of Transparency International a corruption inquiry center in Russia, told a press conference in Moscow, Interfax reports Thursday. |
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Georgian minister Kakha Bendukidze and his business partners sold their 42 percent stake in heavy machinery manufacturer OMZ to a group of Russian investors last week, sparking speculation Gazprom may be behind the purchase. |
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Nickel To Sail Away NORILSK (Bloomberg) — Norilsk Nickel, the world’s biggest nickel producer, plans to spend $546 million to build a port and buy ships to become self-reliant in transporting the metal, Interfax reported Thursday, citing the Norilsk press office. |
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St. Petersburg-based businessman Kurt Stahl has done everything from selling berries to building hydrofoils but unlike many expats, it was never his ambition to come to Russia. |
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Next year Sberbank Northwest will double the number of mortgages it lends for acquiring residential real estate in the region, the company said last Tuesday. While financiers predict an increase in the total volume of mortgages for private individuals, other experts foresee pitfalls in the scheme. |
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The fate of a proposed O’kay supermarket in Murmansk is in the balance after protests from ecologists. Dorinda Holding, the founder and developer of the St. |
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NEW YORK Bloomberg) — Axa SA’s real estate investment management unit has raised 700 million euros ($836 million) to invest in retail parks, warehouses, and supermarkets in Europe. European Retail Income Venture raised 280 million euros in equity from institutional investors mainly in France, Scandinavia and the Netherlands at the first closing date. |
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Strategic investors in St. Petersburg have unexpectedly hit upon hurdles, despite concluding lucrative agreements with the city’s authorities. Two major development projects have aroused waves of public discontent and anger from those already leasing space on the sites for future construction project locations. |
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ST.PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, which has one of the world’s largest collections of art, announced a 39-million-euro ($46.5 million) expansion of its small branch in downtown Amsterdam. The Hermitage will occupy the rest of the Amstelhof building, built in the 1680s by the Dutch Reformed Church as a home for the elderly. |
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Nothing compares to Nevsky Prospect, at least in St. Petersburg, exclaimed Russian writer Nikolay Gogol. According to him Nevsky was the capital’s line of communication, somewhere you meet friends you haven’t seen for years. |
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Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, who took the helm of this oil-exporting U.S. ally from his father in 2003, faced the first public test of his leadership Sunday in a parliamentary election opponents have criticized as unfair. Aliyev, 43, who along with his father and former president Heidar, opened the economy to Western oil companies such as BP Plc and ExxonMobil, is seeking to retain control of the 125- member parliament before standing for re-election in 2008. |
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Russia is using U.S. laws as a guide to drafting new measures to regulate investment in energy companies, but will set its own rules to specify what constitutes a national security risk, Russia’s energy minister said. |
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Menatep Sells Sibintek Unit MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Group Menatep has sold Sibintek, which designs automated services for oil companies, to Russian holding company Rus for an undisclosed sum, Kommersant reported Monday, citing Menatep Managing Director Tim Osborne. Rus bought Sibintek in part because of the real estate it owns in Moscow, the newspaper said, citing a source close to Rus who it didn’t identify. |
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“We will bury you,” Nikita Khrushchev told U.S. diplomats in 1956. The conventional wisdom is that Khrushchev got it wrong: The repressive Soviet state collapsed under the weight of its own cruelties and lies while democratic America went from strength to strength, buoyed by its national commitment to liberty and justice for all. |
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There are very few Russians still alive who remember the Revolution. Soon it will pass entirely from experience into history. Yet what Chou En Lai said about the French Revolution holds for the Russian as well: Too soon to judge. |
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Last week, on Nov. 1, the St. Petersburg government adopted a document entitled “the St. Petersburg strategy for the preservation of heritage,” prepared by the Committee for the State Protection of Monuments (KGIOP). The strategy can be read on the official site of the St. |
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Last week, a legal thunderbolt struck at the heart of the grubby conspiracy that led the United States and Britain into an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. |
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MOSCOW — If a crime grabs the national spotlight, Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov is almost always put on the case. The burly prosecutor rushes to the scene and appears on television sputtering angrily about suspects and witnesses, as if to reassure the nation that the guilty will be punished and order will be restored. |
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MOSCOW — Kirill Gerasimov alternately wiped his sunglasses and checked his watch as midnight approached, fidgety behavior for a guy who makes his living by staying cool. |
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BAKU — Azerbaijan’s parliamentary election did not meet international standards for democracy, Western observers said on Monday as the defeated opposition prepared mass protests against what it said was widespread fraud. “The shortcomings that were observed, particularly during election day, have led us to conclude that the election [on Sunday] did not meet Azerbaijan’s international commitments on elections,” said Alcee L. |
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AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE SANTIAGO — Fugitive former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, wanted at home on corruption and human rights charges, was arrested just hours after his stunning unannounced arrival in Chile, police said. |
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WASHINGTON — A poll showing rising doubts among Americans about President George W. Bush’s integrity has raised a new hurdle to the fresh start he is seeking after the indictment of a senior White House aide and other political woes. A week after vice presidential aide Lewis Libby resigned and was indicted on charges related to the leaking of a CIA operative’s identity, an ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that fewer than half of Americans viewed Bush as trustworthy and honest. |
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AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE BANGKOK — Thailand has ruled out any form of autonomy for its Muslim-majority south and said there was no evidence that foreign terror groups linked to Al-Qaeda were involved in the region’s unrest. |
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TEHRAN — Iran, whose president has called for Israel’s destruction, said on Monday it will submit a proposal to the United Nations for a peaceful solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The Islamic Republic does not acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and is known to support militant Palestinian groups. |
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LONDON — Jose Mourinho is in the unaccustomed position of having to put on a brave face after a fortnight of reverses culminated in Chelsea’s first league defeat in 41 games. The super-confident Portuguese boss pronounced himself “not afraid of the future” following Manchester United’s 1-0 victory at Old Trafford which came hard on the heels of Chelsea’s Champions League defeat at Real Betis. |
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NEW YORK — World record holder Paul Tergat pushed ahead in the final few meters to defeat defending champion Hendrick Ramaala of South Africa in a thrilling finish to the New York City Marathon on Sunday. |
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MOSCOW — CSKA beat Dynamo 2-1 in a heated Moscow derby on Sunday to clinch their second Russian premier league title in three years with a game to spare. CSKA defender Alexei Berezutsky opened the scoring from close range in the 55th minute and Brazilian playmaker Daniel Carvalho added the second 18 minutes later. |
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