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 What a difference a year makes - or does it? As Russia marches into 2001, it has a vigorous president, a restructured parliament and a new/old anthem. The dealmaker who a year ago stage-managed political life has recast himself as a dissident and gone into exile. |
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One day in early 1971, a dissident artist and sculptor named Mikhail Shemyakin received a summons from one of the offices of the KGB for a chat. During this meeting, he was advised by a KGB general to accept a permanent exit visa, rather than be remanded to the Soviet state's meat-grinder system of psychiatric wards and labor camps - a system of which Shemyakin had already had first-hand experience. |
 Just when you thought things couldn't get any more confused at the Legislative Assembly, with the City Charter tangled in court and federal powers threatening to disband the lawmakers, something else that could threaten the foundations of Russian power has emerged - a spy scandal. The evidence in the case? A 10-meter-high German-style Christmas tree stranding in front of the Pribaliyskaya Hotel. |
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 A prisoner's life may offer little to enjoy and a lot to endure. But if there is anything that can make an isolated convict feel a part of the outside world, it is New Year's Eve and its traditional festivities. |
All photos from issue.
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Mir Back in Touch MOSCOW (AP) - Mission Control has regained a firm hold on the Mir space station after a sudden loss of radio contact, Russian officials said Wednesday, allaying fears of an uncontrolled plunge by the aging orbiter. Space officials blamed their 20-hour loss of contact, which started Monday night, on an unexplained power loss. |
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MOSCOW - A Moscow court dismissed a fraud case against media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky this week, boosting the vocal Kremlin critic in his battle against extradition from Spain. |
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Last week St. Petersburg's Almaz shipyards delivered the first of two enormous Zubr hovercraft it has contracted to build for the Greek armed forces under a deal arranged by Ros vooru zhe niye, the Russian state agency responsible for arms sales abroad. |
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ADRs for PTS (Reuters) - Russian regional telecoms firm St. Petersburg Telephone Network (PTS) plans to issue American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) in the first half of 2001, the company said on Tuesday. |
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LONDON - Holiday-thinned European markets padded gains on Thursday afternoon as last-minute portfolio polishing boosted a handful of technology and drugs stocks. A 2 percent drop in Europe's biggest stock Vodafone Group kept the rebound in check and pulled the telecoms sector down 1. |
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LONDON - Mobile-phone companies are facing fresh legal action from brain tumor victims in the United States, a newspaper reported on Thursday. Britain's Times newspaper said Peter Angelos, a U. |
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MOSCOW - 2000 looks set to go down in history as the year that Russia's economy finally turned the corner and picked up some steam thanks to market reforms. For the second year in a row, industries pumped more crude and cast more steel while the government collected fatter taxes. "It was such a soft landing after the crisis that some people forget that we were on the brink two years ago," Central Bank deputy head Tatyana Paramonova marveled after a discussion in the State Duma this week. |
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FOR the first time in its post-Soviet history, Russia has passed a balanced federal budget into law. On Dec. 14, the federal budget for 2001 was adopted by the State Duma, passing the crucial threshold in the budget process. A week later, the budget was approved by the Federation Council. |
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Our Wishes For Russia's New Year AS The St. Petersburg Times swept up a year's worth of back issues and catalogued the yellowing newsprint, we took time to reflect on 2000 - a tumultuous and at times disappointing year for Russia - and thought about what we wish the country as it progresses into the millennium. |
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I RECENTLY noticed a social phenomenon at work that hadn't attracted my attention before. It started when I was informed that a police investigator named Alexei Astafiev from the Moscow region town of Reutov had put in for early retirement. Or, to be more precise, he was "encouraged" to apply for early retirement. |
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A Millennium Shining Bright For Lawyers THE year 2000 is almost over, and by tradition it is time to look back and see what happened - in this case, in the realm of business. |
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An open letter from Chechen students studying at Grozny State University. Vladimir Vladimirovich! When a ship is sinking, it calls for help, sends out an SOS signal everywhere. And for us, residents of the Chechen Republic, the time has come to ring all the bells with a demand that the persecution of an entire people - an entire nation - be stopped. |
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 Composer Leonid Desyatnikov was honored for his music to the film "Moscow," directed by Alexander Zeldovich, at the State Academic Cappella on Sunday night, as part of the third Golden Ram award ceremony, an annual event dedicated to the work of the nation's film industry that was founded by the Guild of Theater Critics and the Kinotavr movie production company. Desyatnikov, whose compositions strike an effective balance between serious and "light" music, is equally famous in Moscow and in this city, and has always been a figure of great interest to the musical public. |
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 An ambitious project that is set to unfold over the next two years opened at the Peter and Paul Fortress last Friday, as the first of five volumes of photographs retrospectively documenting the life of this city throughout the last century was unveiled. |
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The "Arts Square" festival came into existence a year ago as a response to the Mariinsky Theater's "Stars of the White Nights." A group of young managers at the Philharmonia gave Yury Temirkanov an offer he couldn't refuse - a chance to rival Valery Gergiev on home territory by setting up a festival that was the equal in terms of artistic level and marketability of the White Nights event, and capitalizing on the Christmas and New Year festivities. There were, however, two main problems. First, even with a highly alluring musical program, it hasn't been so easy to entice the more squeamish tourists to brave the St. Petersburg climate. After last year's financial problems, the Arts Square festival has gone to work at marketing the event, and judging by the size of the audiences, it has succeeded. |
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 Looking back at the year 2000, perhaps the most importnat musical event will go down as the worst one: the old Soviet anthem will lead Russians into the new millennium, with the majority of the population applauding and singing along. |
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What's in a name? Well, it just seems to make sense sometimes. Create a bistro-style eatery, throw in a couple of pool tables, a banquet room, a disco and a sports bar and - it only stands to reason - you call it the Football Bar. It's always been a sort of truism in the restaurant industry that, when you try to be all things to all people, you end up being nothing to anybody. |
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New Year's Eve has always been Russians' favorite holiday, not only because it used to be the only non-politicized holiday, but also because it offered a substitute for a non-existent nightlife, as the entire city used to move around from one party to another throughout the night. |
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 PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania - Owner Mario Lemieux made a rousing return after 3 1/2 years away from the ice, getting a goal and two assists to lead the Pittsburgh Penguins to a 5-0 blanking of the Toronto Maple Leafs Wednesday. Playing his first game since the 1997 Eastern Conference quarterfinals, the 35-year-old Lemieux did not miss a beat. |
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Over the Hill? ORLANDO (Reuters) - Grant Hill, whose arrival in Orlando this summer had Magic fans dreaming of an NBA title will undergo additional surgery on his left ankle and will miss the rest of the season. |
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BOGOTA, Colombia - Warring leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries, and the illegal drug trade in the world's top cocaine producer are causing an ecological disaster of "unsuspected proportions" in Colombia, according to an army report. The report, titled "The scars on 'Mother Earth,"' said the rebel groups' tactic of blowing up oil pipelines had polluted the Andean nation's ecosystem with more than 2 million tons of crude oil in the last decade. The drug trade, the report said Wednesday, contaminated the soil with 200,000 tons of chemicals a year and caused deforestation at a pace that was rapidly destroying the country's jungles. "Guerrillas and paramilitaries have caused this ecological catastrophe which, . |
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 MOSCOW - European men's champion Yevgeny Plushenko made light of a bout of food poisoning to skate a flawless free program and retain his title at the Russian figure skating championships on Wednesday. |
 BEIJING - Faced with mounting public outrage after a Christmas-night blaze killed 309 people in a notoriously unsafe shopping center, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji Wednesday vowed "severe punishment" for those responsible. Police were looking into arson as a possible cause of the fire that ripped through a popular dance hall packed with Christmas revelers on the top floor of the six-story building in the central city of Luoyang, a local official said. |
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 MALDEN, Massachusetts - A software engineer who allegedly gunned down seven co-workers at an Internet company near Boston methodically targeted his victims in a premeditated killing spree, prosecutors said on Wednesday. |
 OAKLAND, California - Allen Iverson made an unexpected return after missing just one game with a partially separated shoulder and scored 29 points to push the Philadelphia 76ers to a 118-110 National Basketball Association victory over the Golden State Warriors. |
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PONTIAC, Michigan - Byron Leftwich threw for one touchdown and ran for another as Marshall scored 13 points in the third quarter and defeated Cincinnati, 25-14, Wednesday for their third straight Motor City Bowl triumph. |
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