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 Semi-spontaneous protests against widespread fraud favoring pro-Kremlin party United Russia at the Dec. 4 State Duma and St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly elections resulted in the biggest rally St. Petersburg has seen in the past decade, drawing more than 10,000 on Saturday.
Part of the national campaign of protests demanding the annulment of election results because of multiple violations — the largest being a rally in Moscow attended by between 25,000 to 150,000, according to various estimates — the St. Petersburg rally was organized via Vkontakte (the Russian equivalent of Facebook) originally as an unauthorized assembly on Ploshchad Vosstaniya in central St. Petersburg.
The Vkontakte group was called “We didn’t elect crooks and thieves,” the “party of crooks and thieves” being a popular name for United Russia coined by Moscow opposition activist Alexei Navalny.
During the rally buildup, Vkontakte’s CEO Pavel Durov was summoned to the St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office on Friday after he publicly rejected demands by the Federal Security Service to shut down anti-fraud protest groups on his social network, while St. |
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SKIN DEEP
ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT
A man shows off an apparent tattoo on his arm that reads ‘Putin is a thief!’ at a sanctioned protest rally against electoral fraud held in St. Petersburg on Saturday. Other rallies protesting the Dec. 4 State Duma election results were held around Russia the same day. |
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Football season is over, but St. Petersburg fans are celebrating the month-long winter lull as Zenit St. Petersburg ends the year with flying colors, having progressed into the Champions League knock-out stage for the first time in history, while six points clear at the top of the Russian league.
Zenit guaranteed its continued participation in the continent’s most prestigious competition in dramatic fashion last Wednesday in Portugal, after hanging on to the 0-0 tie it needed to edge out Porto in the final game of the group stage.
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All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — Mikhail Prokhorov, the billionaire and failed State Duma hopeful, said Monday that he would attempt a political comeback by running against Vladimir Putin for president next year.
The abrupt announcement, which Prokhorov made to gasps of surprise from seasoned reporters at a news conference, could give an air of legitimacy to the election, which is widely expected to be won by Putin. |
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MOSCOW — In the hours before Saturday’s rally, fears were voiced that police might detain people who arrived at the initially authorized venue, Ploshchad Revolyutsii, instead of Bolotnaya Ploshchad, which was hastily approved a day before the demonstration. |
 MOSCOW — Saturday’s rally in Moscow marked an “amazing,” even unprecedented, event for modern Russia. Yet though euphoria was palpable in the air, it came with a tinge of pessimism, fueled by the simple question: “What’s next?”
Some linked the bluesy feeling to poor work by rally organizers. |
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MOSCOW — Much to the surprise of observers and regular Russian television viewers, state-run channels gave substantial coverage to Saturday’s anti-government rallies in Moscow and other cities — even if they still managed to present the protests as insignificant, apolitical events. |
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MOSCOW — The last-minute test thousands of Russian children were suddenly required to take on the day of the biggest anti-government rallies in years contained political messages, revealed examples from some exams that have appeared on the Internet.
“I had no doubt that United Russia would win,” read one of the examples that was posted on LiveJournal, according to Newsru. |
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BEIJING — Two Russian exchange students have accepted a Chinese peace prize on behalf of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was honored for enhancing Russia’s status and crushing anti-government forces in Chechnya, the prize organizers said. |
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 As it is clear to almost everyone, the State Duma elections results were fabricated. The question now is: Will the Kremlin-approved “opposition” parties finally oppose the ruling regime?
Authoritative and independent elections observers, including Alexander Kynev and Dmitry Oreshkin, estimate that United Russia falsely inflated its results by an average of 15 percentage points to 17 percentage points — and in Moscow, by 20 percentage points. |
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I spoke with about 100 pleasant young people last week at the monthly meeting that Russian Reporter magazine editors and journalists hold with readers. |
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 Anthony William Gear, the longstanding general manager of The Old Customs House restaurant, is reviving the Foreigners’ Club, a social community of expats that he initially established in 1996, shortly after his arrival in St. Petersburg.
The relaunch evening is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. |
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Images of disaster have always been morbidly popular, but recently this theme seems to have become especially topical due to the Mayan Doomsday Prophecy, which predicts the end of the world in December 2012. |
 Mikhail Borzykin, the frontman of Televizor — the St. Petersburg band that has been performing protest rock songs since the perestroika days of 1987 — spoke and sang one of his Putin-era songs during Saturday’s rally against electoral fraud, which turned out to be the city’s biggest-scale demonstration in the past few years, bringing together more than 10,000. |
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Âñåãî äîáðîãî: All the best
A non-Russian friend happened to visit during one of the demonstrations this week. This misfortune made him realize two things. |
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A day at the beach
At first glance — and second for that matter — Traiton Beach looks very much closed, to the shock and dismay of any hungry would-be diner. But turning the corner and straying away from the Fontanka embankment where the restaurant windows are completely closed either by full-length metal shutters or banners announcing its opening in October, Traiton Beach’s main entrance is very much open and the kitchen up and running. |
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 It was a chance meeting in France that led 23-year-old Petersburger Yana Nelaton to begin a new life in the Caribbean island paradise of St. Barth.
“I was studying at St. Petersburg State University, and my mother and I were visiting Paris. The receptionist at the hotel didn’t speak English. A man came over to help us — my future husband — and that’s how we met. A year later I moved to St. Barth to be with him. |
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 MOSCOW — On most days, author Michael Cunningham sits in his studio in lower Manhattan and writes. On a good day, he says he writes several pages; on a bad day, he forces himself to write at least one sentence. |
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