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 The authorities shut down yet another Strategy 31 rally in defense of the right of assembly in central St. Petersburg on Monday, arresting dozens, including a young Swedish woman who came to support residents.
The opposition said a number of arrested activists were beaten by the police, who made arrests without stating their name and rank or the grounds for arrest as required by law, and often acted brutally.
In a press release, the Yabloko Democratic Party said that its four Legislative Assembly candidates were arrested during the rally, while one of them, Denis Vasilyev, was beaten in a police bus.
According to Vasilyev, he asked the policeman who arrested him to identify himself. Instead, Vasilyev was handcuffed and beaten. He added that an employee of a private security firm helped to handcuff him, and that later that same person was presented by the police as a witness to the activists’ alleged crimes.
Yabloko’s Alexander Shurshev said Tuesday that by law, Legislative Assembly candidates may only be charged with administrative violations with permission from a prosecutor. |
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ANIMAL SACRIFICE
ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT
This medieval horse armor is part of a new exhibit at the Artillery Museum that looks at the various ways in which animals have been used
by humans during warfare throughout history. Other animals featured in the exhibit include dogs and snakes. |
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St. Petersburg police detained 22-year-old student Alexander Kasatkin last week on suspicion of committing three instances of sexual violence against 10 and 11-year-old girls. The cases caused city police to hold preventative lectures on personal safety in city schools.
Kasatkin is believed to have been involved in about 15 more such cases, Fontanka reported.
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The sudden increase in child and teen suicide during the last week has left St. Petersburg residents shocked and city psychiatrists seriously alarmed.
The city’s chief child psychiatrist, Lyudmila Rubina, said that this fall St. Petersburg is setting a record high for the number of suicides among minors, Interfax reported. |
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An organizer of the original March Against Hatred criticized the United Russia party, which held a similar event under the same name Sunday after the original organizers decided not to hold the march this year. |
 To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the opening of what is now Bolsheokhtinsky Bridge, one of its two lighthouse-like towers has been opened for inspection by the general public.
The 334-meter bridge, which connects the historic city center with the right-bank district of Okhta, was unveiled in October 1911 as the Emperor Peter the Great Bridge, a name it kept until 1917 and that is still displayed in gilded letters on the bridge. |
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St. Petersburg was initially planned by Peter the Great to be a dream city, geared at attracting the best intellectual and creative resources.
Three centuries later, City Hall plans to return to this idea and work toward transforming St. |
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The angel that resides atop the Alexander Column on Palace Square was illuminated in pink shades Thursday as St. Petersburg joined the list of cities participating in the global Breast Cancer Awareness campaign launched in 1992 by Estee Lauder skincare company. |
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Musical Elevator
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A musical elevator was installed in a residential building in the city’s Frunzensky district Tuesday.
The new elevator cabin will play classical music. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — The global population officially topped 7 billion on Monday, and a worldwide fight immediately erupted over which lucky baby was the first to reach the milestone — with three infants from the distant corners of Russia vying for the crown.
The first recorded Russian birth came at 12:19 a. |
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A maternity home Monday was ordered to pay 3 million rubles ($100,000) in compensation to two families whose babies it accidentally switched at birth.
The two families only found out recently through DNA tests that their 12-year-old daughters were switched by mistake after birth after the former husband of one of the mothers, Yulia Belyayeva, refused to support their daughter, Irina, because she did not look like him. |
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MOSCOW — The ruling United Russia party scrambled to distance itself Monday from a senior member in the republic of Udmurtia, who was filmed promising money for votes to local organizations at a closed meeting.
The party has been accused of buying votes for years, but this is one of the few instances when it has been caught red-handed, said a leading regional analyst. |
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NEW YORK — The friends of Viktor Bout had code words for him in the emails and text messages they assumed were safe from prying eyes. Often, he was “Boris. |
 MOSCOW — The pilot of the chartered Yak-42 that crashed in September, killing most of the Yaroslavl Lokomotiv hockey team, confused the plane’s brakes with footrests during takeoff, precipitating the tragedy, Kommersant reported Monday.
Having trained on a Yak-40, pilot Andrei Solomentsev thought he was putting his feet on footrests when he was actually slowing the plane down. |
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More and more Russians, especially those living in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other big cities, are waking up to the possibilities of Internet television. The Big Three — the top three federal television channels — are slowly but surely losing their audiences as they switch to smaller private, often locally managed, channels. |
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LONDON — Unlike previous voting cycles, foreign investors are bored with political developments in the run-up to Russia’s parliamentary and presidential elections, according to a group of leading investment bankers. |
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MOSCOW — Russia, France, Germany and several other mostly European countries on Friday signed the first-ever international treaty to combat the growing multibillion-dollar counterfeit drug industry.
The Council of Europe-sponsored Medicrime Convention obliges signatory states to criminalize a broad range of activities that make possible the sale of fake medicines that harm patients and deprive legal producers of revenues. |
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MOSCOW — The company that operates Singapore’s main airport will help Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element Holding create a new air transport hub in southern Russia under an agreement of intent signed Monday, the companies said. |
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 The third anniversary of the military reforms that Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov first announced to the top brass on Oct. 14, 2008, passed virtually unnoticed. We all remember the relentless criticism aimed at Serdyukov’s reforms throughout 2009 and 2010, but this has all but disappeared. |
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According to a joke that circulated during the breaks at the recent Russian Internet Week forum, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin did not allow President Dmitry Medvedev to run for a second term because Medvedev spends too much time on the Internet. |
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The controversy surrounding Western stars who went to Chechnya to congratulate its leader Ramzan Kadyrov — for a fee — continued this week.
The Independent on Sunday newspaper reported that Hollywood actress Hilary Swank has sacked the employees she found responsible for her ill-advised appearance at Kadyrov’s 35th birthday party, which was held on a floating stage on the River Sunzha.
“I could feel the spirit of the people, and I could see that everyone was so happy. Happy birthday, Mr. President!” Swank told the birthday boy in Chechnya, where human rights organizations report the widespread use of torture, disappearances of people and politically motivated killings.
For her work, Swank is believed to have received $1.5 million. As Kadyrov’s Chechnya is largely sponsored by the Kremlin, it’s likely that the money to pay Swank came from the Russian budget.
Incidentally, Kadyrov’s explanation of where money for building opulent palaces in Grozny comes from raised some eyebrows recently. |
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THE ‘HOLY RUSSIA’ EXHIBIT
SPANNING RUSSIAN HISTORY
FROM THE 10TH TO 18TH
CENTURIES COMES TO THE
MIKHAILOVSKY CASTLE. |
 The Leningrad Rock Club, which is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its founding this week with a big stadium concert featuring DDT’s Yury Shevchuk and Akvarium’s Boris Grebenshchikov, was never really a rock club. There was no bar or nightly gigs, and the monthly concerts were not open to just anyone.
Formed in 1981 under the rule of Leonid Brezhnev, the Leningrad Rock Club was meant to be an organization not unlike the Union of Soviet Composers, which made sure musicians did not go too far, censored lyrics and issued performance permits.
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The first week of November will see the arrival of a stylish new Parker boutique on the local shopping scene. The elegant venue at Leto retail center was designed and furnished by Bruno Moinard, an internationally established architect, stage designer and artist who has collaborated with clients including the Cartier Foundation, Yves Saint-Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld and the MoMa Museum in New York.
A distinguished pen specialist since 1888, Parker brings to St. Petersburg not only its best-selling classical writing masterpieces but also a range of ultra-modern specimens from their new Ingenuity line that blends innovation with artistic creativity. |
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 Gas masks for horses, body armor for dogs and various accessories for pigeons, snakes and other animals went on display at a thought-provoking exhibition dedicated to the use of animals in war that opened at St. |
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Êàê ðàç: just right, just now, exactly, actually
Let’s see what the digital mailman has just delivered in my weekly mailbag of reader’s questions. Misha in Ukhta asks: “Is it true that Americans don’t speak English?” It’s definitely true in Brooklyn. |
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Traditions not only unify a nation and keep its spirit up, but also inspire it to push forward with new creative achievements, according to the organizers of the tenth St. |
 A unique collection of 450 works of Russian art that attracted more than 26,000 visitors to the Louvre last year is now on show in St. Petersburg at the Mihailovsky Castle.
The French opening of the “Holy Russia” exhibit, the centerpiece of 2010’s Year of Russia in France celebrations, was attended by President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. It was at the opening that Medvedev first suggested showing the impressive collection selected from 25 Russian museums and libraries in its native country. |
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 Last week, socialite and media personality Ksenia Sobchak caused a bit of a sensation in an Italian restaurant by going up and filming the founder of pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, Vasily Yakemenko, having a pricey lunch with his wife. |
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A view with a price
Bella Vista, which opened in August in the former premises of the upscale restaurant Kashtany (Les Chataignes), more than lives up to its new name, with windows looking out across the River Neva directly onto the stately Academy of Arts. Back in the summer, it had a summer terrace, which is undoubtedly the best way to make the most of the view. |
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 VLADIVOSTOK — Just months after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev jokingly promised to show “Kuzka’s mother” to the Americans in Moscow, he made his first official visit to the United States — and ended up taking a trip that proved crucial for Vladivostok.
Impressed by the views of San Francisco and the Golden Gate bridge, Khrushchev called for the residents of Vladivostok, which he visited on his way back home in 1959, to turn the city into “our San Francisco. |
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 WASHINGTON — FBI surveillance tapes, photos and documents released Monday show members of a ring of Russian sleeper spies secretly exchanging information and money during a counterintelligence probe that lasted about a decade and ended in the biggest spy swap since the Cold War. |
 Seventy years after the events and with only a handful of survivors left, there are still new angles to approach the tragedy of the 872-day World War II Siege of Leningrad.
In “Leningrad: Tragedy of a City Under Siege,” British journalist and writer Anna Reid has compiled information from recently opened archives, literary works, interviews, recent research and diaries. |
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Issues Archive