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RIGA, Latvia - It was a rainy and misty November day in 1967 when 20-year-old Yuris Putrinsh accompanied his mother to a Riga cemetery to lay flowers on the graves of Putrinsh's father and sister. A promising fourth-year physics student at Riga University, Putrinsh's life had little to do with politics, a little over two decades after Stalin had annexed his tiny Baltic state. |
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MOSCOW - Lyudmila Putin once called President Vladimir Putin a vampire, while he in turn has suggested that anyone who could put up with her for three weeks was heroic and deserved a monument. |
 MOSCOW - Half a year after the Kursk submarine tragedy left 118 seamen buried at the bottom of the Barents Sea, relatives of the victims still don't know the truth about the disaster and are petitioning the Prosecutor General's Office to find out. "I am feeling enormous moral damage in the form of physical and moral suffering," said Nadezhda Neust ro yeva, mother of Alexander Neust royev, a 21-year-old electrician who went down with the Kursk. |
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MOSCOW - The government won a parliamentary battle over budget amendments Thursday, easing fears of a foreign debt default and striking a blow against Communist opponents. |
 The trial of Dmitry Rozhdestvensky, former head of the Russkoye Video television and advertising company who was charged in 1998 with embezzlement, got underway in a city court Thursday with the reading of a five-hour indictment. The Rozhdestvensky case echoes charges brought against Media-MOST mogul Vladimir Gusinsky - now under house arrest in Spain and awaiting possible extradition - that he embezzled $10 million when purchasing a controlling stake in Russkoye Video in 1997. |
All photos from issue.
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 The St. Petersburg City Arbitration Court Wednesday threw out a case lodged by an arm of the City Property Committee, or KUGI, against the U.S. Consulate in an effort to raise the U.S. Diplomatic Mission's rent of $6 per year. The court - citing the consulate's diplomatic immunity - said the case was out of its jurisdiction and that it would have to be forwarded to Foreign Ministry and U. |
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MOSCOW - After being approved Wednesday by the State Duma, a bill aimed at easing prison overcrowding and reducing the time suspects can be held before being brought to trial is once again headed for the Federation Council. |
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Don't Dump Mir! MOSCOW (AP) - On the 15th anniversary of the Mir space station, a group of scientists and hard-line politicians protested Tuesday against the spacecraft's planned dumping next month. About 100 protesters stood outside the headquarters of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, chanting slogans and stamping their feet to stay warm in the freezing temperatures. |
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MOSCOW - The chandelier hanging from the ceiling of the President's Hall in the Russian Academy of Sciences Headquarters illuminated the calm demeanors of three of the country's wealthiest men. |
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BRUSSELS, Belgium - The Russian plan for anti-missile defense presented to NATO Secretary General George Robertson in Moscow this week is a broad concept that does not mention any specific anti-missile system, an alliance official said on Thursday. "It's very broad-brush . |
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MOSCOW - Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has reopened a high- treason investigation into the professor at the center of last year's spying case against U. |
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 MOSCOW - "When I started my business I borrowed some money and left my dog as collateral..." Strange as it might sound to some, such a declaration has actually been uttered by a few of the people who took 46,000 loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development over the past six years, the EBRD said Monday. |
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MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin ordered the government Wednesday to come up with a new Land Code by May and to prepare a separate bill that would allow the regions to decide for themselves how to deal with agricultural land. |
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LONDON - Russia's top oil producer LUKoil said Tuesday it is close to making an offer for a U.S. refinery to help supply its 1,300 Getty gas stations and enlarge its foothold in the United States while simultaneously pursuing an aggressive expansion of its downstream business in Eastern Europe. |
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MOSCOW - Protection of intellectual property issues will take center stage in parliament this spring as Russia rushes to come up with its stance on conditions for entry into the World Trade Organization, the government said Tuesday. |
 Special events bringing together governmental and business officials as well as specialists to discuss development and problems in any business sector in Russia tend, eventually, to end with the same basic question of how to attract investment. The international congress "Developing Telecommunications and Creating an Information Society," which was held at the Tavrichesky Palace on Wednesday and Thursday, proved no exception to the rule. |
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Dear Editor, John Dooley's piece ["Aid That Works," Feb. 20] extolling aid for legal reform is a sad example of how someone's experience leads to misguided generalizations. I can believe that Dooley has had some positive experiences participating in legal reform aid projects - so positive, apparently, that the grateful recipients of such aid have been able to pull the wool over his eyes. |
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IT'S finally happened. Lawmakers at the Legislative Assembly have become so disgusted at their own behavior that they have decided to set up a self-regulatory body, to be called "the working group on ethics. |
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ST. Valentine's Day, as we all know, has spread throughout the world in recent decades, stirring up dangerous passions and urban unrest. In India, Hindu extremists rioted last week because they had determined that the holiday was a scheme to compel people to celebrate a Roman Catholic feast. |
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THERE are two Russias. There is the official Russia, a land in which decrees are issued and international negotiations are conducted. And there is another Russia - a land in which bandits give orders to ministers and are the partners of ruling oligarchs. |
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Consider this scenario: The wife of the Vice President of the United States has written a novel celebrating - sensuously, intimately - the joys of lesbian love. What's more, this wanton womanizing takes place in the Old West, completely subverting the historical reality of the solid frontier family values that made America great. |
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IN preparation for the first meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov this weekend, the United States would be well served to make fundamental changes in its approach to Russia. |
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Entering the Bremen at lunch time on a Wednesday was rather like rediscovering the Marie-Celeste. While far cleaner, it was equally as deserted, save a flock of polystyrene seagulls hanging from the ceiling. True to its name, Bremen is a nautically themed restaurant, suitably situated on Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa and decked out with the accouterment always deemed necessary for such establishments, painted in navy blue, with masts, a ship's help and portraits of famous ships. As we entered, a lackey rang a loud bell and uniformed staff took us into the main hold, where we were greeted by an empty expanse of tables, filled only by waiting staff and muzak. |
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 Inside a tall glass case standing center-stage on a raised platform hangs a very ordinary brown-and-tan plaid sports coat - ordinary, that is, until a tiny printed label informs us that this particular jacket was worn by Anatoly Sobchak during the meetings of the first Congress of the People's Deputies in 1989, where the former mayor achieved international fame by blasting the failures of Soviet rule. |
 Once Sergei Shnurov was struggling for attention. Now, given the ever-growing success of his band Leningrad's concerts and albums - and with Leningrad preparing to play the biggest concert of its career - he is concerned with how to stay out of the mainstream. |
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Semyon Spivak is often called the last romantic of St. Petersburg theater for his lyric and emotional performances. His new production of Jean Anouilh's "L'Alouette" ("The Lark") which premiered on Feb. |
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The Mariinsky Theater, fresh from hosting the International Ballet Festival, has already embarked on its "Sheremyetev Evenings" - a cycle of eight concerts in the tradition of the concert traditions laid down by Count Alexander Sheremyetev a century ago. Sheremyetev was an enlightened dilletante with excellent musical training, and created his own choir and orchestra, which in time gained extreme popularity in St. Petersburg. The concerts were originally held in the House on Fontanka which belonged to the Sheremyetevs, and then after the audience grew in size, moved to the Dvoryanskoe sobranie. The current Sheremyetev evenings are dedicated to Count Sheremyetev, and thus in the program of the cycle there are equal doses of symphonic and choral music, and even opera in concert versions. |
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 The Mariinsky Theater's top-flight ballerinas spent last week performing alongside foreign male celebrities. Vladimir Malakhov, Ethan Stiefel, Carlos Acosta and Jose Manuel Carreno paid St. |
 LOS ANGELES - Controversial rapper Eminem, who once boasted he did not "give a damn" about the Grammys, picked up three of the music industry's most prestigious awards on Wednesday, but missed the top prize in a stunning upset. The album of the year Grammy instead went to veteran jazz-rock duo Steely Dan for their first release in 20 years, "Two Against Nature. |
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There is an old trick in my home town, London, and probably elsewhere as well, for telling a good Chinese restaurant. Look not at the menu, or even at the cleanliness of the kitchens. |
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Unlike the rather boring winter, this weekend offers plenty of opportunities, even if you're not a fan of Leningrad who will play the biggest concert of its local career on Friday (profiled on page 11). Tatu, the recent music biz creature promoted in the category "teen lesbian," will be playing what looks like their fourth concert. |
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One of the best things about being back in Virginia over Christmas was that my sister, Tamara, was home, too. Now, I may like to cook, but Tamara is a culinary wizard. |
 It may be true that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but that doesn't mean that the path to becoming a cigar connoisseur is any easier. For sometimes a cigar is a Cohibo or a Romeo y Julietta, sometimes it's a Churchill, Robusto or Panatella, sometimes it's shaped like a cigar, or it might be shaped like something else - a Figurados type - such as a Torpedo or a Pyramid. Navigating the world of cigars takes time and experience - as does smoking the things. |
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 It is frequently said that price doesn't necessarily determine quality. People who hold this to be true are often found saying things like, "It pays to shop around," "The best things in life are free," or even "Can't buy me love. |
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"So, what exactly are those film shows at Griboyedov? Anybody been?" - was a recent posting on one of the Web conferences dedicated to city culture. Here's an answer. Monthly Kinokultprosvet screenings, held by Alexei Popov and Alexander Shcherbanosov, show works by local independent film artists as well as the choicest vintage Soviet documentaries, from educational reels for schoolchildren to propaganda movies for army soldiers and pregnant women. |
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Many are the entertainments that can be found in the environs of St. Petersburg during winter, but besides the usual pursuits of skiing and sleigh-riding comes another sport, involving real weapons and real casualties. |
 The Berlin International Film Festival, also known as Berlinale, is one of the big three film festivals in Europe, along with Cannes and Venice. Held from Feb. 7 to 18, this year's festival was the 51st, and had a number of distinctive features. It is the last to be curated by Moritz de Halden, the festival director who has guided the Berlinale since 1980. De Halden's final contribution was an incredibly varied selection of some of his favorite films. |
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 When Richard Taruskin's "Defining Russia Musically" first appeared in hardback in 1997, it sparked controversy and glowing reviews, both because of and despite the way it tore into big names in the musicological world. |
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Under Lenin and Stalin, the Soviet Union learned to read and write, something for which its citizens would be forever thankful. But the black magic of the written word served the leadership far better than its subjects. There was no crisis that could not be rewritten by the elite to conform to Marx and the General Line. |
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Every story has its logical end. With the science of history, however, we almost never know if this or that obscure event was eventually to blame for a well-known outcome, our assessments of facts changing as time passes. |
 It is generally accepted that the Russian avant-garde is one of the brightest pages in the history of this country's art scene. And it is also generally accepted that the avant-garde's four brightest stars were Suprematist artist Kasimir Ma levich, Constructivism founder Vla di mir Tatlin, abstract Impressionist Was sily Kandinsky and revolutionary artist and photographer Alexander Rod chenko. |
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Griboyedov, the trendy bunker club managed by ska band Dva Samaliota, is expanding its activities by producing a compilations of often fresh and exciting music - which has been heard in the club since its opening on Oct. |
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When St. Petersburg experienced its first wave of perestroika, approximately between 1989 and 1991, an array of new artistic collectives fought each other for their place in the sun. Perestroika's second wave brought in its turn both musical and theatrical festivals. By the middle of the '90s, St. Petersburg's cultural continuum saw the development of a new phenomenon: institutes representing the progressive cultural vanguard of European countries. At first their work was barely noticeable, but by means of cultural projects and educational programs, the Goethe Institute and the British Council began to attract the people's attention, and public opinion regarding such establishments took a U-turn. |
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 Almost ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, St. Petersburg is still trying to come to terms with its Soviet past. A new exhibition which opened Tuesday in the Rumyantsev Mansion focuses on the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which lasted almost a decade from 1921 to 1929 and marked the introduction of certain capitalist elements to the Soviet economic order. |
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TORONTO - Toronto Maple Leafs coach and general manager Pat Quinn said Wednesday that the Philadelphia Flyers backed out of a trade for Eric Lindros at the last minute earlier this week. "I called to arrange for a 3:30 trade call on Monday and that's when I was told [by the Flyers] we're not going through with it," Quinn said. |
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UN, Congo Timetable UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The Security Council and Congo's warring sides have agreed to a new timetable for the factions to begin pulling back their troops from the vast African nation and for UN observers to move in to oversee their departure. |
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Avs Land Blake LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Los Angeles Kings traded Rob Blake, one of the NHL's hardest-hitting and highest-scoring defensemen, to the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday night. The Kings, who included center Steve Reinprecht in the deal, acquired right wing Adam Deadmarsh and defenseman Aaron Miller from the Avalanche. |
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JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid dismissed fears of an explosion of unrest as he flew out of the crisis-racked country Thursday, but bloodshed escalated into beheadings even before he boarded his plane. |
 LONDON - European champion Real Madrid and Leeds United of the English Premier League became the first clubs to qualify for the quarterfinals of the Champions League on Wednesday. Leeds' impressive 4-1 win over Anderlecht in Brussels and Real's 2-2 draw with Lazio in Rome means that neither team can finish outside the top two positions in Group D. |
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