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 At least 75 people were detained as the police thwarted a Strategy 31 rally in St. Petersburg on Monday. An estimated 500 came to Gostiny Dvor metro station on Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main street, to demand that the authorities uphold the constitution, Article 31 of which guarantees freedom of assembly. The OMON special-task police, dressed in black helmets and masks, acted rough, seizing and pushing people, dragging them to a police bus and occasionally slamming the detained against the vehicle. |
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 In a week in which Russia’s cut-rate Mata Hari Anna Chapman got herself back in the news by registering her name as a trademark for jewelry, clothing, drinks and, bizarrely, educational services, a number of local stories have posed questions about the value of names, what they reveal, and what they can be used to hide. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Foreign investors will be invited to bid for 30-year contracts to design, build, finance and maintain new high-speed links as early as December, Russian Railways announced Friday. Extensive high-speed lines stretching from Samara to St. Petersburg for the 2018 World Cup will cost 50 billion euros ($68 billion) and will be built under a concession system that will run over the next three decades. High-Speed Rail Lines, the subsidiary Russian Railways created to handle the project, will present potential bidders with its strategy for development in March, and will open an international tender for the Moscow — St. Petersburg route in December. |
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 Actor Oleg Basilashvili and author Boris Strugatsky were among artists, teachers and rights activists who wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday asking him to deny City Governor Valentina Matviyenko’s request to exclude St. |
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The St. Petersburg State Conservatory, which will celebrate its 150th anniversary next year, has found itself flooded by torrents of melted snow this week. Masses of snow from the conservatory’s roof melted, flooding more than 40 classes, ballet rehearsal halls, the premises of the theater and the library. If it hadn’t been for the academic vacation, the conservatory would probably have had to cancel some of the classes, Vadim Konoplev, head of the conservatory’s maintenance department, told reporters Monday. Professors and other staff had to arm themselves with mops and buckets to clean their heavily flooded alma mater. Some of the halls now require thorough renovation work. |
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 Foreigners were specifically targeted in the Domodedovo Airport bombing that killed 35 people, investigators said as they announced that they had identified the suicide bomber. |
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MOSCOW — The State Duma has passed a police reform bill in its second and third final readings, rejecting most amendments proposed by minority parties and the public, including a ban on beating women. The majority United Russia party on Friday supported all the recommendations of the Duma’s Security Committee, a decision that critics said effectively cripples a bill that the Kremlin introduced last year with much fanfare after public discussion. |
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MOSCOW — The country’s top traffic cop was promoted on Monday to oversee transportation security nationwide after last week’s Domodedovo bombing. President Dmitry Medvedev appointed Viktor Kiryanov to the new post of deputy interior minister in charge of transportation security and ordered him to draft a detailed plan of reforms in the area within the next few weeks. |
 NEW YORK — A U.S. citizen who used a fake Russian passport while living in Ukraine has agreed to go to Michigan to face charges he was a member of a violent ring that lured Eastern European women to the United States and forced them to become strippers. |
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MOSCOW — A U.S. mother shown on an episode of a popular American TV talk show disciplining her adopted Russian son by forcing him to swallow hot sauce and stand in a cold shower pleaded not guilty on Friday to child abuse. |
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MOSCOW — Russia wants the Council of Europe to end its practice of regularly monitoring the country’s compliance with democratic standards and has proposed a 25-item road map toward this end. Andreas Gross, a Swiss lawmaker and one of two country rapporteurs for Russia in the council’s Parliamentary Assembly, confirmed Thursday that the Russian delegation had submitted the list but expressed doubt that it would be adopted. |
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A prominent theater critic friend rang up recently complaining she had been “ousted” from a major theater. What she meant was that she was being denied accreditation for any events at the theater — one of the oldest and most important in Russia — on the basis of a negative review she had written about a recent show. |
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 The number of outbound holidaymakers, which dropped during the financial crisis, is rising again but travel agencies need to lower prices to attract them. Passenger flow through Pulkovo Airport in 2010 rose by 25 percent to 8.4 million according to preliminary calculations, said Olga Antipova, press secretary of the airport’s management company. |
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A request for a tender for the construction of a network of garages in St. Petersburg containing 250,000 parking spaces has been canceled. The competition for the right to rent 462 plots totaling 3. |
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The city authorities, which oversee the servicing of around 60 percent of residential property in the city, are trying to strengthen their influence over building management. The executive branch has few effective levers of influence on private utility companies because companies that have signed contracts with homeowners cannot be dismissed by decree, said Governor Valentina Matviyenko in mid-January. |
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Rosneft and U.S. ExxonMobil have joined forces to hunt for and extract oil from the Black Sea floor, as the state-owned oil giant continues to woo foreign firms for their offshore exploration expertise. |
 President Dmitry Medvedev has compared jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky to the mastermind of the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history in an apparent attempt to present the Yukos case as triumph of justice and highlight his agreement with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. |
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Domestic steelmakers increased output last year and are optimistic about this year, as the market gradually recovers after the economic crisis. Igor Chepenko, chief executive of rolled steel trader Brok-Invest-Service, expects steel consumption to grow by 5 to 8 percent in 2011, led by the needs of the construction industry. |
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Mounting a rare challenge to a government-backed deal, the Russian billionaire co-owners of TNK-BP said Thursday that they were seeking a court order to suspend a multibillion-dollar agreement between BP and state-owned Rosneft. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin threw his support behind BP’s alliance with Rosneft when it was announced earlier this month, while President Dmitry Medvedev said at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. |
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 Last week’s horrifying terrorist attack at Domodedovo Airport that killed 35 people should serve as a wake-up call to the public. The suicide bombing reveals the unpreparedness of government officials at all levels to deal with attacks and their inability to mount an appropriate response. |
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In an old Soviet joke, three elderly women go to the doctor. All have exactly the same health condition but they enjoy very different incomes. When the first woman — the wealthiest — tells her story, the doctor asks what her income is, and then suggests eating plenty of fruit and vitamins and recommends a trip to a seaside sanatorium. |
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 Musician Yevgeny Fyodorov, who disbanded his celebrated local rock band Tequilajazzz last year, returns with a new band, which he says is not unlike his former one, despite a new name and new members. Called Zorge, the new band’s core is Fyodorov, who sings and plays bass, and St. Petersburg-based German drummer Marc-Oliver Lauber. Formed in September as a duo, it has since been expanded to feature Vadim Sergeyev, the guitarist with Morekorabli, Splean and Optimystica Orchestra, and guitarist Dmitry Zilpert of the Moscow indie-rock band Tinavie. Fyodorov announced the split of Tequilajazzz on the band’s web site in July, amid work on the new album. The news came as a shock to fans, who have grown used to the band being one of the staples on the St. |
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Rosphoto
Works by Italian photographers Frank Dituri and Elio Ciol (above) are on display at Rosphoto from Feb. 11 as part of an exhibition titled ‘Density of Silence.’ |
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This week is a punk week. Scottish punk veterans The Exploited will return to St. Petersburg as part of a tour marking the band’s 30th anniversary and will perform at Glavclub on Thursday, Feb. 3. Formed in 1980 in Edinburgh, The Exploited is notorious for its politically-charged music and fast aggressive songs such as “Fuck the System” and “Beat the Bastards.
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 Stunning bel canto phrasings, impeccable fioritura, vitality and spontaneity — one would think St. Petersburg’s best-loved soprano Anna Netrebko was born to sing the part of Adina, the main character in Gaetano Donizetti’s sparkling opera “L’Elisir d’Amore” that premiered at the Mariinsky Theater on Jan. |
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LOS ANGELES — With the Oscars looming at the end of this month, last month’s Golden Globe Awards revealed a pervading Russian influence in Hollywood. Of five nominations for the Golden Globe Awards, three of those nominated for best foreign-language film were heavily influenced by Russian culture, though the eventual winner, Susanne Bier’s “In a Better World” (Denmark), was one of the two without a Russian connection. |
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Êîíåö: end, finish, death, rope, trace Êîíåö is a cool word. The primary meaning is an end to something either physical or temporal. But êîíåö can take you around the world, drag you under water, cast you out to sea, haul you to the edge of town, bring you to meet your Maker and even hide the evidence. Not bad for five letters and two syllables. It’s a word you probably use in the office every day. ß îïîçäàë è ñëûøàë òîëüêî êîíåö åãî äîêëàäà (I was late and only caught the end of his speech). Øåô õî÷åò ïîëó÷èòü îò÷¸ò äî êîíöà íåäåëè (The boss wants the report by the end of the week). The annoying abbreviation COB (close of business) — usually concluding an unexpected e-mail from the home office requesting a fully loaded, 50-page proposal — might be neatly rendered ÊÊÄ (ê êîíöó äíÿ — by the end of the day). |
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 “Chosen by Clio,” the alternative name of the “Heroes and Villains in Russian History” exhibition currently showing at the State Russian Museum, illustrates the complexity and ambiguity of the subject. |
 Russian spy Anna Chapman intoned “I will reveal all the secrets” in her new television show, which started last Friday on Ren-TV. Although the show abounded in bleeding wounds and starred Chapman in slashed velvet and high heels, somehow it managed to be a bit dull. |
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My guest confessed to me with a cheeky smile that she had not been able to sleep the night before. Indeed, when you are set to have dinner at a place titled as promisingly as “Wishes” (Zhelaniya means wishes in English), high expectations abound. |
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 Vietnam is a country of smiles. Although its recent history has been stained by horrific conflict, which has left terrible scars on the country, the people have managed to preserve many of their cultural and architectural treasures, as well as their remarkable hospitality and friendliness. Getting there Several airlines operate services from Moscow to Hanoi or Moscow to Ho Chi Minh. It is possible to get acquainted with both the north and south of the country in one trip. |
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 Travel to Brazil is typically associated with the divine beaches of Rio de Janeiro. The city’s bigger brother and Latin America’s fast-beating economic heart, Sao Paulo, by contrast, is often avoided by leisure visitors — in a similar way in which tourists often seek to escape the Babylonian spirit of fast-paced Moscow in favor of the more relaxed atmosphere of elegant St. |
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Issues Archive