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As Anton Gubankov has resigned as the head of City Hall’s Culture Committee, rumors abound that his replacement will be prominent local businessman Vladimir Kekhman, the director of the Mikhailovsky Theater, who made his substantial fortune importing fruit.
No confirmation of any negotiations being held with Kekhman could be obtained from either City Hall or the Mikhailovsky Theater on Tuesday, yet the millionaire’s possible appointment to the job has been the talk of the city’s cultural community for the past few days.
For the moment, City Governor Georgy Poltavchenko has appointed Gubankov’s deputy Anna Kucherova as acting head of the committee.
According to Poltavchenko, Gubankov, who has made no public comments on what he may do next, resigned of his own accord.
“The new governor is creating a new team; new people have joined the administration,” Gubankov said. “I am not the kind of person who would try to keep a job at any cost. |
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HOLY RELIC
ALEXEI NIKOLSKY / RIA NOVOSTI / AP
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (r) inspects the Belt of the Virgin Mary, an Orthodox relic, upon its arrival in St. Petersburg from the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos in Greece on Thursday. Thousands of believers flocked to see the relic while it was on show in the city |
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Concerned St. Petersburg residents congregated at City Hall on Tuesday to protest a controversial renovation program backed by the city’s authorities and to deliver a letter and signatures to City Governor Georgy Poltavchenko.
Led by the newly-formed preservationist coalition Gradozashchita, the protesters, including activists of the Party of People’s Freedom (Parnas) and the Other Russia party, delivered hundreds of signatures of residents who do not want to leave their homes and move to the outskirts as part of a City Hall program.
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Organizers of the Strategy 31 rally for the defense of the right to assembly have said they will hold a rally despite City Hall’s refusal to sanction it, and asked opposition parliamentary candidates to join the demo due on Monday, Oct. 31.
“Prove that you are opposition in practice; don’t just shout it from your soapboxes,” they urged in an address to the registered parties the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), A Just Russia and Yabloko Democratic Party on Sunday. |
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St. Petersburg women born in the 1980s or early 90s have difficulty giving birth to healthy children, the head of the city’s Health Committee Yury Scherbuk said at an administration meeting on Tuesday. |
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Deputy City Governor Sergei Vyazalov is considering upping the retirement age for St. Petersburg residents, Fontanka reported Tuesday.
Vyazalov, who is in charge of the city administration’s financial bloc, asked the Health Committee to devise a plan to include elderly city residents in the workforce to increase economic effectiveness. |
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More than 300,000 of St. Petersburg’s faithful came to see the Belt of the Virgin Mary, an Orthodox relic that arrived in Russia for the first time from Greece last week, RIA Novosti reported. |
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Celebrity Auction
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Known St. Petersburg natives such as rock singer Boris Grebenshchikov and FC Zenit goalkeeper Vyacheslav Malafeyev will donate some personal items to a charity auction aimed at helping local homeless people, Interfax reported.
The auction is to take place on Oct. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — The splendor of the tsars is finally ready for its encore.
The Bolshoi Theater reopens to the world Friday following a six-year, scandal-plagued renovation that has returned the cultural icon to its original glory while leaving observers stunned by its jaw-dropping cost. |
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MOSCOW — In a new sign of the upper class’s mounting oppositional slant, Kremlin-linked socialite Ksenia Sobchak cornered the Kremlin’s youth policy chief, Vasily Yakemenko, in a posh Moscow restaurant and scolded him for frequenting such establishments. |
 MOSCOW — Russian intelligence has come under a new barrage of criticism for using ineffective Cold War-era tactics following the arrest of two suspected deep-cover spies in Germany.
The suspects apparently caught red-handed while listening to 1970s-style encrypted radio messages from Moscow appear to have much in common with the 10 sleeper agents uncovered in the United States last year. |
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MOSCOW — There are at least 50 reasons not to leave Russia — starting with a tycoon who controls 80 percent of the global market for optical fiber lasers and ending with an opera singer nicknamed “La Bellissima,” Forbes said Monday. |
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MOSCOW — NATO still hopes to engage Russia in its prospective missile defense system, but won’t yield to Moscow’s push for the shield to be run jointly, an alliance envoy said Tuesday.
James Appathurai, a deputy assistant NATO Secretary General, said the alliance would like to reach a missile defense deal with Moscow by NATO’s summit in Chicago next May, but added that he wouldn’t “gamble on expectations. |
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MOSCOW — Bloggers have challenged credentials of a child psychologist who testified in a high-profile pedophile case after photographs surfaced suggesting she might have participated in erotic shows. |
 MOSCOW — Russia has demanded an investigation into Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s violent death as politicians of various stripes have described Gadhafi as a hero and his government as an “exemplary model” destroyed by the United States.
At the United Nations, Russia called for an end to a no-fly zone over Libya that allowed NATO forces to weaken Gadhafi — and possibly play a direct role in his death. |
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MOSCOW — A former Siberian mayor accused of extorting a half million-dollar bribe is running for a State Duma seat from jail, a Communist deputy said Monday. |
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MOSCOW — Police in a Urals town are investigating an incident in which a teenager commandeered an empty tram and safely drove it for almost an hour.
The 15-year-old stumbled upon the empty tram in the town of Zlatoust while its driver and conductor were out to lunch earlier this month.
The boy drove the tram for about 40 minutes along its normal route, picking up and dropping off passengers. |
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 The demand for business education within Russia is far from where it was before the global financial crisis: Students are requesting both the most expensive and the cheapest, shortest programs. This trend will cause the business education market to consolidate, analysts said. |
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Maxim Barsky, chief executive-in-waiting of TNK-BP, whose appointment was intended to enshrine management independence and close down its bitter shareholder conflict, has resigned, the company said Friday. |
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 The closest I came to becoming a socialist was when I was a teenager growing up in the U.S. Midwest in the 1980s. The years under U.S. President Ronald Reagan were an era of stagnation, marked by political conservatism and social conformity.
I rejected my own bourgeois origins in the belief that there was more to life than an office job and a house in the suburbs. |
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The Russian government put itself in the spotlight of the international health community by organizing a high-level forum in Moscow earlier this month on halting the spread of infectious diseases such as HIV. |
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A major Finnish prize was awarded to Moscow music critic and promoter Artemy Troitsky this year. The Tampere Music Award for Exceptional Achievement in the Music Business was presented to Troitsky in the Finnish city of Tampere on Saturday.
“I am pleased that my prize comes from Finland, because I am a big fan of Finnish music and I have worked hard to promote it in Russia: Managing licensing, organizing concerts and festivals, and working on radio promotion. It seems to me that this award is deserved,” Troitsky was quoted as saying in a press release.
The award was presented in Tampere Hall at the Music & Media Finland Industry Awards Gala by Olli-Poika Parviainen, deputy mayor of Tampere.
The prize looks like a gesture of support for Troitsky, who has been fighting four lawsuits that he sees as a Kremlin-orchestrated campaign to punish him for his independent judgments on politics and participation in protest activities.
The Tampere Music Award was established by the City of Tampere last year, when it went to Rein Lang, Estonia’s then minister of justice, who was an underground rock promoter during the Soviet era. |
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COSTUME DESIGNS AND
STAGE DECORATIONS BY
LEON BAKST AND OTHER
SILVER AGE ARTISTS ARE ON
SHOW THIS WEEK AS PART
OF THE WIDE-RANGING
‘DIAGHILEV. P.S.’ FESTIVAL. |
 Finnish rock musician and author Kauko Röyhkä spent last week in St. Petersburg enjoying old Italian paintings at the Hermitage and immersing himself in the atmosphere of underground music venues such as bunker club Griboyedov.
One of Finland’s leading rock artists, famed for his powerful lyrics, Röyhkä was born Jukka-Pekka Välimaa in 1959 in the small town of Valkeakoski, but grew up in Oulu in northern Finland.
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 The legendary impresario Sergei Diaghilev may have died 82 years ago, but his spirit is alive and well in St. Petersburg this week as the second “Diaghilev. P.S.” festival gets underway.
While the first festival, held in the city two years ago, presented a cycle of ballets, exhibitions and concerts directly linked to the Russian Seasons to celebrate 100 years since Diaghilev took European capitals by storm with his showcase of Russian ballet, art and music, this year’s program delves deeper into the legacy of the showman and patron of the arts. |
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Âîí: out, off, away, over there
What with all the demonstrations and pre-election excitement — oh, wait! That’s in other countries.
Let me start again. |
 A modern Spanish opera inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’ classic novel “Don Quixote” is one of the central events of this year’s “Spanish Evenings” festival that kicked off on Oct. 21 with a performance by Spanish guitarist Rafael Aguirre at the Glinka Hall of the Philharmonic.
“The opera was shown in Passau in 2010 with great success and it will be performed in Barcelona and New York in 2012,” said Albert Barbeta, artistic director of the Art Modern Foundation, a St. |
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 This week Italy is once again invading the Venice of the North, showing St. Petersburgers the very best of Italian lifestyle.
An exhibit of iconic Vespa vehicles organized by the Piaggio Foundation in cooperation with the Multimedia Center of Cinematography is on show at the Astoria Hotel through Oct. |
 Last week, Russian MTV launched “Project Podium,” its homegrown version of the U.S. hit show “Project Runway,” where young designers compete to create the best outfit and show it on catwalk models.
The fun of the show is seeing the bitchy contestants labor over their bizarre outfits with sweatshop hours. |
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The Place to Be
I should immediately declare an interest here, and offer something of a warning. Take a trip to the toilet at Mesto and you’ll find a photograph of this author staring down at you as you go about your business. |
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 Among Russians, the cities of Lappeenranta and Imatra are some of the most visited places in Finland. They’re close to the Russian border — you drive across and you’re already there. In Lappeenranta you can go shopping without having to deal with all of the usual hustle and bustle of Petersburg stores, or simply relax while enjoying Finland’s beautiful nature. In Imatra, it’s easy to find a nice hotel with all the essentials: A room with a view of a lake, a sauna and even a water park. |
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 Russia’s first open anatomic exhibition, ‘The Human Body,’ celebrated its anniversary last week. The results are astonishing considering it has only been open for a year: The exhibition has had more than 100,000 visitors — a third of them children — and received two books of positive feedback from fans, while only nine people have fainted — with one filmed incident in which three visitors lost consciousness simultaneously. |
 MOSCOW — David Simons, a 45-year-old British entrepreneur and investor, beams as he beckons toward a wall of his Moscow office lined with golf trophies and photographs. But perhaps what makes Simons most proud is the framed $100 bill hanging beside the golf memorabilia.
The banknote represents what Simons does best — and it’s not golf. |
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 ERCIS, Turkey — A two-week-old baby girl, her mother and grandmother were pulled alive from the rubble of an apartment building Tuesday in a dramatic rescue, 48 hours after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake toppled some 2,000 buildings in eastern Turkey.
Television footage showed rescuers in orange jumpsuits applauding as the baby, Azra Karaduman, was removed from the hulk of crushed concrete and metal. |
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MISRATA, Libya — Moammar Gadhafi was buried early Tuesday morning in an unmarked grave in a modest Islamic ceremony, closing the book on his nearly 42-year rule of Libya and the eight-month civil war to oust him. |
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BANGKOK — Advancing floodwaters in Thailand breached barriers protecting Bangkok’s second airport Tuesday, halting commercial flights at a complex that also houses the country’s flood relief headquarters and thousands of displaced people.
The flooding at Don Muang airport, which is primarily used for domestic flights, is one of the biggest blows yet to government efforts to prevent the sprawling capital from being swamped. |
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NAIROBI, Kenya — Somali gunmen kidnapped an American aid worker and her Danish colleague from northern Somalia on Tuesday, officials said.
The 60-year-old Danish man and the 30-year-old American woman were working for the Danish Demining Group when they were seized in northern Somalia, two Nairobi-based officials said. |
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Issues Archive