|
|
|
 Many Russians will throw themselves into freezing rivers and lakes on Thursday as the country’s Orthodox Church prepares to celebrate Epiphany, which marks the baptism of Jesus Christ by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. In the West, this holiday is celebrated on Jan. 6 and focuses more on the coming of the Magi to see the baby Jesus, but the Russian Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar, according to which the feast date falls on Jan 19.
On this day, honoring an old Russian tradition, believers and enthusiasts jump into holes carved in the ice — usually made in the form of a cross — on lakes, rivers and other bodies of water. According to the custom, a priest blesses the water and rescue teams stand by to monitor the bathers. |
|
GO WITH THE FLOW
ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT
Cadets from St. Petersburg’s naval academies march along the Neva embankment on Monday, with ice floes visible on the river, after laying flowers at the monument depicting Peter the Great building a ship. Shipbuilders’ Day is celebrated every year in Russia on January 16. |
|
Cruisers Come Home
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Thirty-two tourists from St. Petersburg were on board the Italian passenger cruise liner Costa Concordia, which sank last week, and will return home this week, Fontanka reported. Seventeen returned home Monday evening and the rest were due to return home Tuesday.
None of the St. Petersburg residents suffered any injuries during the incident, Interfax reported.
|
|
The city authorities have refused to authorize an annual anti-fascist march and rally in memory of the slain anti-fascists Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova due to be held on Thursday, Jan. 19, allowing only a “picket” on the largely deserted Ploshchad Sakharova on Vasilyevsky Island. |
|
St. Petersburg’s population has almost returned to the figure of five million people, which it reached just before the start of perestroika in 1985 before shrinking to 4. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
 MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev once declared that direct gubernatorial elections would not return to Russia in 100 years.
But on Monday, less than three years after making the vow, Medvedev asked the State Duma to reintroduce the elections in what looked like a major concession to the opposition protesters who took to the streets after last month’s parliamentary elections. |
|
MOSCOW — Space officials say, despite claims a failed Mars probe crashed in the Pacific Ocean near Chile, they still have no firm information on where it actually plummeted to Earth. |
|
MOSCOW — The architect of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Russia policy arrived in Moscow this weekend to become the new U.S. ambassador at a critical time for the nations’ “reset” of relations, which has grown imperiled by bitter election campaigns in both countries.
Michael McFaul, 48, took up his duties Saturday when he arrived with his wife Donna Norton and their two sons at Domodedovo Airport, the newly minted envoy said on his LiveJournal blog. He planned to begin work on Tuesday as the embassy remained closed Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Day, giving the McFauls extra time to get comfortable in the U.S. ambassador’s palatial residence, Spaso House. |
|
 MOSCOW — Trying to win back the hearts and minds of people he until recently dismissed, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appealed Monday to the middle-class voters who took to the streets in protest last month, to help sweep him back into office as president in March. |
|
MOSCOW — The liberal opposition Yabloko party and the Moscow Helsinki Group are creating a public organization to finance the training of monitors for the March 4 presidential vote and other elections.
Yabloko party leader Sergei Mitrokhin said the group, Transparent Elections, would only accept donations from Russian nationals to avoid accusations of being financed from abroad — a charge that pro-Kremlin youth groups used to discredit Russia’s only independent elections watchdog, Golos, ahead of the State Duma vote in December. |
|
ASTANA, Kazakhstan — Weekend elections have determined that Kazakhstan’s parliament is no longer a one-party chamber, but international observers say the vote failed to meet democratic standards. |
|
|
|
 A new multi-functional complex, AirportCity St. Petersburg, officially opened at the end of last year, located close to the city’s Pulkovo II Airport. The final version of the complex will include several business centers and a four-star hotel complete with restaurants and conference halls. |
|
MOSCOW — Energy companies are preparing a collective appeal to the government to demand softening the conditions of the order requiring state companies and banks to disclose the beneficiaries of all parties they sign contracts with. |
|
MOSCOW — Steel giant Severstal said Monday that enough minority shareholders agreed to swap the steelmaker’s shares for the securities of its gold-mining unit Nord Gold, paving the way for the unit’s London listing later this week.
Investors tendered a total of 20. |
|
MOSCOW — A metro transfer hub will be built at the Moskva-City business center, according to the press service of the capital’s construction department, citing Sergei Kidyayev, vice president of Ingeokom, the main contractor for the construction of the Khodynskaya and the Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya lines. |
|
|
|
 One of the most common criticisms of the “Decembrists 2.0” protest movement is that it has no program, strategy or vision. But the opposite is true. Taken together, the five demands put forward by protesters at the Bolotnaya Ploshchad and Prospekt Akademika Sakharova rallies comprise a coherent program with a clear strategic goal. |
|
Investments often take time before they begin generating a profit. Investors are well aware of this fact. The St. Petersburg tax authorities apparently are not. |
|
|
|
 Jimmy Baldinini enjoys looking at women’s legs. The veteran of Italian shoe design, who runs the world-renowned shoe label Baldinini, admits this addiction without so much as a blink of the eye or any hint of embarrassment — and rightly so: He is a master shoemaker. |
|
Ñèäåòü: to sit, more or less
Whew. The annual winter 10-day Russian eat-and-drinkathon is finally over. Isn’t it amazing how tight a pair of jeans can get in just a little over a week?
Along with contemplating my girth, I’ve been considering — in a languid, hung over sort of way — stance verbs in Russian. |
 1990s pop legends Dva Samolyota have managed to keep their youthful fun spirit, despite a difficult history and lineup changes, says Anton Belyankin, the band’s frontman and only original member, as the band gets ready to perform at Griboyedov, the seminal local bunker club that its members helped to launch and now manage. |
|
This week is one that clubs describe as a “dead week.” Coming soon after the lengthy New Year/Christmas holidays, it lacks many great events, as the concert-going public relaxes after taxing celebrations and is frequently left without money to afford a ticket. |
|
During the dark and often dreary Petersburg winter, it is not uncommon to long to be transported from this concrete metropolis to a time when life was simpler…and sunnier. This magical city grants the key to such secrets to those who search for them. Via dell’oliva offers a sprinkling of Mediterranean cheer from the former premises of the equally sunny Greek restaurant Oliva, on Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. |
|
|
|
 Milena Avimskaya was born in Kazakhstan, grew up in the Siberian city of Surgut and was educated in Moscow. She found her calling in St. Petersburg.
A graduate of the department of theater management at the Russian Academy of Theater Arts in Moscow, she is the founder and managing director of St. Petersburg’s ON.TEATR, a spirited new venue in a city famed for its classical and conservative approach to the arts. |
|
 STOCKHOLM — A newly found Swedish document shows how the KGB intervened in the early 1990s to stop an investigation into World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg’s fate, two U. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive