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About 1,500 workers at ZAO Ford Motor Company held a preventative strike for 19 hours in Vsevolozhsk, Leningrad Oblast, on Wednesday. The strike, which was initially planned to last for 24 hours, had to be stopped due to a decision of the Leningrad Oblast court that obliged the strike’s committee to postpone the action for 20 days. |
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Latvian Premier Quits RIGA, Latvia (Reuters) —Latvian Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis said Wednesday that he would resign Dec. 5, bowing to weeks of pressure that followed his attempt to fire the country’s anti-corruption boss. |
All photos from issue.
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With one month to go before the national parliamentary elections, public surveys are showing highly promising statistics about voter turnout and support for the pro-Kremlin United Russia party with President Vladimir Putin on top of its list, but some sociologists are beginning to suspect those voters questioned may not be sincere. Maria Matskevich, a leading researcher and head of a project with the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said a disturbing new pattern has emerged in the way that the respondents communicate with the sociologists. “While most people that take part in the polls are usually reluctant to talk about their income and financial possibilities for the first time since early perestroika we have noticed that the respondents are getting uncomfortable when discussing their political persuasions,” Matskevich said. |
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 MOSCOW — With the looming mystery over President Vladimir Putin’s future after his second and final term ends next year, one senior United Russia official is looking to the past — some 400 years — to cement Putin’s status as “National Leader. |
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Cultural workers from more than 130 city-funded institutions have called for support from the public, the media and legal authorities in a four-month-old battle against City Hall’s decision to cut manpower in the cultural sector by 10 percent as of Jan. 1. Battling workers, representing more than 7,000 others, met in the House of Actors on Wednesday but fell short of declaring an all-out strike hoping that City Hall will review its decision. |
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 MOSCOW — Senior state officials were scrambling Wednesday to avert the imminent closure of thousands of payment terminals across the country five days ahead of a deadline for them to channel all payments through commercial banks. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin gave officials three days to find an alternative to switching off the terminals, which millions of Russians use to pay utility and phone bills, during a closed-door meeting with high-ranking state officials. |
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Piter Dussmann, a subsidiary of the German facility management company Dussmann AG & Co., which serviced about 130 residential buildings in St. Petersburg, will quit the market. |
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MOSCOW — Global oil prices came within a hair’s breadth of breaking through the psychologically important $100 per barrel barrier Wednesday, a level that would give Russia extra confidence to increase spending and attract more foreign investors. West Texas Intermediate crude oil reached as high as $98.62 per barrel before falling back after a smaller-than-expected supply drop in the United States. The surge toward $100 has been fueled by dollar weakness, bad weather and heightened risks in such oil-producing countries as Iran, Iraq and Nigeria. In Russia, whose Urals blend of crude typically sells at a $7 discount to WTI, the soaring oil price could encourage potential foreign investors and prompt the government to further boost spending, said Clemens Grafe, chief economist at UBS. |
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 Nokian Tyres has announced the construction of a residential complex for employees at its plant in Vsevolozhsk. Offering affordable housing close to the plant, Nokian Tyres hopes to become an attractive employer. |
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MOSCOW — BP and Gazprom are holding intensive talks on the possibility of Gazprom buying into BP’s Russian venture, TNK-BP, industry sources said Wednesday. Such a deal would mark another milestone in a Kremlin drive to reassert control over the energy industry, which has alarmed foreign oil majors but not deterred them from doing business in resource-rich Russia. |
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 Vyacheslav Volodin, United Russia presidium secretary and State Duma deputy speaker, said recently that election campaign debates were nothing but “squabbles.” This is apparently why United Russia refused to participate in the debates. As Volodin put it, the party does not want to come down to the level of other parties that only spout populist slogans during such debates. |
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For over a week straight, television news reports have been showing demonstrations against Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, and they claim that his regime is on the verge of collapse. |
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 Alina Simone, a U.S. singer/songwriter, has just released her debut album and while gathering favorable reviews from the New Yorker and Time Out, she has not forgotten about her Russian roots. On a brief Russian tour that includes Moscow, Arkhangelsk and St. |
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“Autumn Rhythms,” now a semi-legendary local festival of jazz and improvised music held in the city between 1978 and 1993, was to be relaunched this week, but now it will not. |
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Igor Moiseyev, a legendary Russian choreographer who fused ballet with folk dance, was buried Wednesday in Moscow's most celebrated cemetery. A funeral for Moiseyev, who died Nov. 2 at the age of 101, was held at the Christ the Saviour cathedral in the center of the Russian capital. Culture Minister Alexander Sokolov and others from Russia’s arts scene attended the funeral, RIA Novosti news agency reported. Moiseyev was buried at the Novodevichye cemetery, which is the last resting place for dozens of famous Russian and Soviet figures, including former Russian president Boris Yeltsin who died in April. Described as a “genius and an innovator” by the New York Times on his 100th birthday, Moiseyev died of heart failure. |
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 In her U.S. dance company’s studio in South Philadelphia, Artistic and Executive Director Rebecca Davis recently said that she misses Russia-her favorite country-and hopes to return one day. |
 Think of the world’s top ten most frequently staged operas, and Giuseppe Verdi’s “Otello” will most certainly come to mind. Yet, perhaps paradoxically for opera directors, finding a voice to sing the title role is just as high on the list of opera’s greatest headaches. |
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“Zugzwang: Derived from the German, Zug (move) + Zwang (compulsion, obligation). In chess it is used to describe a position in which a player is reduced to a state of utter helplessness. |
 Pyotr Listerman is one of the most mysterious figures in Russian showbusiness. He crops up in the society pages of magazines and as a commentator on television and in newspapers, giving an inside angle on the sexual proclivities of Russia’s rich. Izvestia described him as an “elite pimp,” and he is said to provide oligarchs with beautiful women for fulfilling, mutually supportive relationships — or perhaps something more temporary. |
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Mari Vanna // Tel: 230 5959 // Open 1 p.m. through 11 p.m. // Menu in Russian and English // Dinner for two without alcohol 1,500 rubles ($60) This isn’t an average restaurant review and risks being of little use to those wondering where to get a bite to eat over the weekend. |
 For his first time behind the camera as a director, the actor Ben Affleck has chosen a brooding, serious drama about missing children, wayward parents and idealism lost and regained. “Gone Baby Gone” is based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, who wrote the similarly themed “Mystic River,” which Clint Eastwood turned into a modern classic. |
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 MANCHESTER — Manchester United needed to produce only flashes of champagne football to celebrate manager Alex Ferguson’s 21 years in charge with a 4-0 rout of Dynamo Kiev in the Champions League on Wednesday. It was United’s fourth successive victory in Group F and secured a place in the knockout stages. |
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BERLIN — The German tennis federation (DTB) believes there is no medical evidence to support a rumor that Tommy Haas was poisoned during Germany’s Davis Cup semi-final defeat by Russia in Moscow in September. |
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