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 LGBT activists and human rights organizations are protesting in St. Petersburg with petitions against what they say is a homophobic draft law proposed by Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party in an attempt to gather more votes from conservatives ahead of the Dec. 4 State Duma elections.
On Friday, the Legislative Assembly’s legislation committee introduced a draft amendment to the local law “On Administrative Offences in St. Petersburg” that would outlaw “public actions directed at promoting sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism to minors” if approved by the Legislative Assembly.
According to the draft law, violators will be fined. The fines would be from 1,000 to 3,000 rubles (about $33 to $100) for individuals, 3,000 to 5,000 rubles ($100 to $160) for officials and 10,000 to 50,000 ($325 to $3,630) rubles for legal entities. |
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A GOLDEN MIND
ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT
This model of the head of Joseph Brodsky, created as part of a competition to design a monument to the emigre Soviet poet in Italy,
comprises part of the Modulor design biennale that runs through Nov. 20 at Erarta Museum and Gallery of Contemporary Art. |
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The Communist Party intends to take control over upcoming parliamentary elections by placing their representatives at polling stations and installing video cameras throughout the Leningrad Oblast to ensure the close monitoring of ballot boxes and vote counting, the party’s leader Gennady Zyuganov said at a press conference in St. Petersburg last week.
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The world of Russian ballet was rocked by controversy this week when dancers Natalya Osipova and Ivan Vasilyev announced they would leave Moscow’s celebrated Bolshoi Opera and Ballet Theater for St. Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Theater.
The married couple, who often star together in ballet productions, will perform for the first time on Dec. |
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Landlords have increased prices for premises surrounding Admiralteiskaya metro station, which is due to open by the end of the year at the intersection of Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa and Kirpichny Pereulok. |
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When what is supposed to be a standard process of drafting army conscripts becomes a nocturnal raid or semi-criminal ensnarement, a new book compiled by the local NGO Soldiers’ Mothers may come in handy.
The Russian army has for many years been notorious for its hazing, high suicide rates and severely ill young men being drafted in a desperate effort by the military authorities to fill the minimum quotas for recruits. |
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Having a second child can double a Russian family’s financial stress, experts said.
In Russia, 32 percent of families live below the poverty line, said Yelena Nikolayeva, member of the presidential commission on demographic policy, Interfax reported. |
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English in the Metro
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Recorded announcements in the St. Petersburg metro will be played in English from Nov. 14 through Nov. 20. as part of the International Metro Week campaign, Interfax reported.
“The main goal of the campaign is to form an open cultural space, develop hospitality and draw foreigners’ attention to the beauty and history of St. |
All photos from issue.
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 KIEV, Ukraine — Efforts to free former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from prison through the domestic legal system are almost certainly doomed and she is likely to remain in prison for many months, her lawyer said Monday.
Serhiy Vlasenko charged that President Viktor Yanukovych is intent on keeping the top opposition leader in prison to bar her from elections. |
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MOSCOW — Two wayward flamingos got a taste of Russian hospitality after they landed in rural Siberia last Friday, Itar-Tass reported Monday.
The battered, freezing flamingos were recovered from a lake in the Tomsk region, and hunter Ivan Metla put the more injured bird in his banya — presumably to simulate what he believed to be its natural habitat — and fed it broth and compound feed, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported. |
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MOSCOW — The weekend’s presidential election in South Ossetia ended with a surprise tie between the candidate supported by Moscow and a major opposition figure, authorities in the tiny Georgian breakaway region said Monday.
Analysts said the opposition candidate’s strong showing indicates a high level of discontent among the local population with outgoing president Eduard Kokoity, whose government has been widely accused of misusing millions of dollars of aid sent by Moscow. |
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MOSCOW — Authorities in Siberia have ruled that political ads denouncing “crooks and thieves” could only be interpreted as an attack on the ruling United Russia party. |
 MOSCOW — A Russian spacecraft carrying an American and two Russians blasted off Monday from the snow-covered Kazakh steppes in a faultless launch that eased anxiety about the future of U.S. and Russian space programs.
The Soyuz TMA-22 lifted off as scheduled at 8:14 a. |
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MOSCOW — Kremlin pressure on Tajikistan continued Monday as President Dmitry Medvedev denied that the deportation of Tajik migrants from Russia was a tit-for-tat response to the harsh sentence Tajikistan handed down to a Russian pilot. |
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St. Petersburg resident Nikolai Shkalin, 72, is one of the first victims of the ongoing parliamentary campaign, having sustained a broken hand at a rally crashed by a ruling party candidate.
Several city media outlets reported that Shkalin was thrown down from the stage by candidate Maxim Dolgopolov’s bodyguards during Sunday’s rally where some 700 residents protested development plans for the district. |
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MOSCOW — Lax laws and poor enforcement make Russia a popular source for people forced into slave labor and prostitution, a leading international expert on human trafficking said. |
 MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ordered the military-industrial complex to form a special commission to oversee government contracts and spending on defense projects Monday.
Chief military-industrial adviser Igor Borovkov will head the commission and recruit government members from the Defense Ministry, Finance Ministry, Industry and Trade Ministry and various other government spheres, Putin said at a private conference following the Presidium on Monday. |
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 The Four Seasons Lion Palace Hotel, set to open in the historic Lobanov-Rostovsky mansion, has entered the final stages of preparation for its opening in St. Petersburg early next year.
Tristar Investment Holdings, in charge of carrying out capital repairs and construction to transform the celebrated Lion Palace building into a hotel, and Uralsib Financial Corporation, the projects’ financial partner, have announced they have entered the final stages of construction and begun the gradual handover of the hotel to the operator, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts. |
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MOSCOW — The “reset” between Russia and the United States appeared to be in full force at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, held in Hawaii’s capital, Honolulu, over the weekend. |
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MOSCOW — The International Energy Agency stressed in its annual World Energy Outlook report released last week that while Russia will remain crucial to the international energy market, its domestic inefficiencies are enormous.
Russia wastes almost one-third of the energy that it uses — an amount similar to that consumed by Britain every year, the report said. |
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MOSCOW — During an opening ceremony Saturday, Sberbank flaunted its 16,500-square-meter data center Yuzhny Port — the largest of its kind in Europe.
The data center, developed by Irish and Russian contractors in 15 months, cost about $1. |
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 On Thursday in Geneva, Russia completed negotiations on its accession to the World Trade Organization. Stop for a minute and reread that last sentence with me: Russia’s negotiations with the WTO are completed.
It is truly a historic milestone, and, yes, it has taken 18 years to achieve. |
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The State Duma election television campaign kicked off Nov. 5 by intruding on the usual morning programming.
In nonelection times, the programming follows a standard pattern. |
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Moscow rock veteran Andrei Makarevich of Mashina Vremeni has found himself in a series of awkward situations recently, as Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party campaigns ahead of the upcoming State Duma elections.
First, he said that he would not perform for the Kremlin on the presidential election day as he had done in 2008, and even said that he would not vote for Putin. He then recorded a song that contained criticism of United Russia, but protested when it was described as “anti-Putin.”
Most recently, a YouTube video showed Mashina Vremeni being introduced by a United Russia suit-clad official at a concert in Kemerovo on Nov. 3. The official announces that the concert is backed by United Russia, provoking boos from the audience, but no protest from Makarevich or any other member of the band.
Then the entire band is shown on stage receiving honorary certificates and medals with which the local governor chose to award them, as the boos continue. |
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STANISLAV BELYAEVSKY
BORIS EIFMAN AND HIS
TROUPE PREPARE TO UNVEIL
THE CHOREOGRAPHER’S
LATEST WORK: ‘RODIN,’
DEVOTED TO THE LIFE AND
WORK OF THE EPONYMOUS
FRENCH SCULPTOR. |
 Yury Shevchuk, arguably Russia’s most popular rock musician known for his political dissent, walked out during a press conference in St. Petersburg last month.
He had just performed an unpolished set of new songs, complete with elaborate video art and a light show that he is going to premiere in the city with a mostly new lineup of his band DDT this Wednesday, and wanted to discuss his work, but the questions were too frequently about politics.
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The Corinthia Hotel St. Petersburg has shaken up the city’s Sunday brunch scene by dramatically slashing the cost of its brunch at Imperial restaurant to 2,011 rubles ($66).
With an emphasis on seafood, including oysters, giant king prawns, sea scallops and mussels, as well as free-flowing alcoholic beverages and freshly squeezed juices, it’s not hard for brunch-goers to get their money’s worth. The restaurant’s recently appointed Canadian head chef Ian Minnis has added his own stamp to the hotel’s established brunch tradition by increasing the number of live cooking stations around the restaurant, including a pasta counter where diners can watch their made-to-order sauce be cooked in just a few minutes while they wait. |
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 Gogol Bordello, an eccentric band made up of musicians who unite their cultural influences to make the inimitable sound of volcanic gypsy punk, plans to take St. |
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Ôàéåðû: flares
This week I have a lot to worry about.
First on my list: Avoid being hit by that asteroid hurtling toward Earth. Yes, I know scientists say we shouldn’t worry, but they said climate change was nothing to worry about, too.
Then I have to worry about Russian nationalism. |
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Wine connoisseurs have reason to rejoice this month: From Nov. 17, St. Petersburg will follow France’s lead and mark the Beaujolais Nouveau festival, which celebrates the ripening of the first young wine and has recently become a gastronomic guilty pleasure among Petersburgers. |
 Dance and body language are capable of conveying what words alone cannot, according to Boris Eifman, whose ballet troupe will premiere the choreographer’s latest work, ‘Rodin,’ at the Alexandriinsky Theater on Nov. 22.
The ballet depicts the fate of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin and his model and muse, Camille Claudel.
Unfortunately for Camille, her famed lover and teacher refuses to end his twenty-year relationship with his wife Rose Beuret, causing Claudel to become mentally unstable. |
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 Last week, the scandal around media personality and it-girl Ksenia Sobchak and her jokey exposure of youth tsar Vasily Yakemenko at a pricey restaurant deepened, as a national channel apparently pulled an interview with her. |
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24-Hour Georgia
Khochu Kharcho, a new Ginza Project restaurant specializing in Western Georgian cuisine, is eager to please whenever, whoever and almost wherever it can. Located on Sennaya Ploshchad, the two-story restaurant is open 24 hours a day, equipped with hookah and a kids’ menu that includes Georgian classics such as khachapuri as well as not-so-Georgian hotdogs, and is ready to deliver anywhere within a five-kilometer radius. |
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 If you’ve lived in Russia and have scribbled anything on paper, chances are you’ve left your mark on a Syktyvkar product.
Perhaps you are in a job that doesn’t require you to write on paper. But you have, at some point, probably calculated a restaurant tip on a napkin. Then you, too, have appreciated Syktyvkar’s bounty.
Even if you have merely flattened a cardboard box or blown your nose into a tissue — it will be hard to say you’ve never used anything from Syktyvkar. |
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 MOSCOW — A year from now, Pasha Kormiletsyn could find himself studying at an American high school, sitting around an American dinner table or playing American football in a town like Bozeman, Montana; Willis Point, Texas; or Morrisdale, Pennsylvania. |
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 BEIRUT — Syrian activists say a wave of violence has killed more than 70 people in Syria in one day.
The activists say many of those killed on Monday are Syrian soldiers who came under attack by army defectors in the southern province of Daraa.
And in the restive city of Homs, the city morgue has received 19 corpses, all of them with bullet wounds. |
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TAIPEI, Taiwan — When President Barack Obama arrives in Australia on Wednesday to kick off a four-day Asia-Pacific visit, he should receive a warm reception from America’s longtime allies in the region. |
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JERUSALEM — At the end of a stormy debate, Israeli lawmakers pushed ahead two bills that critics say would threaten the independence of the country’s Supreme Court, just days after Cabinet ministers advanced another proposal to sharply limit funding for dovish groups. |
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HANNOVER, Germany — Wear Milk? Anke Domaske says why not.
The 28-year-old German is the designer of an award-winning new textile made entirely from milk that’s environmentally friendly as well as soothing to people with skin allergies. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive