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 The campaign leading up to the Dec. 8 elections for the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, which both City Hall and the City Electoral Commission (CEC) have described as quiet, finally began to generate some noise this week. Following the anger expressed by some of the candidates that false election materials are being circulated under their names, an Interior Ministry raid on Tuesday night apparently turned up one of the guilty printing presses. |
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 The question of HIV/AIDS infection rates is not just a government problem in Russia. While health experts regularly criticize the government for the inaccuaracy of official infection-rate figures, they also say that the stigma associated with infection leads many to keep the problem to themselves. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW - Next time President Vladimir Putin wants to talk about "snuffing" someone in an outhouse or to chat in English with his friend George W. Bush, he may find himself violating federal law. A bill establishing Russian as the official state language, due to be considered by the State Duma in the critical second reading this week, bans the use of language that is "vernacular, disdainful or foul," and mandates the use of Russian in all official contacts, even with foreigners. |
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MOSCOW - The State Duma will soon consider a controversial bill slashing regional authorities' control over their representatives in parliament's upper house and making senators virtually untouchable for the first year of their terms. |
 Russia's top construction official this week criticized a number of preparations for St. Petersburg's upcoming 300th-anniversary celebrations, saying that, in some cases, work is behind schedule and funds are being used ineffectively. "I must say that there are projects that are organized on an unsatisfactory level," Nikolai Koshman, the head of the Federal Construction Committee, or Gosstroi, said at a press conference on Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW - Likely as a result of national consolidation in the aftermath of the hostage crisis in Moscow, President Vladimit Putin's approval rating jumped to an all-time high of 83 percent in November, one of the country's leading pollsters said. |
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MOSCOW - First there was Scrooge, the Dickens character who banned holiday celebrations at work. Now there's Mayor Yury Luzhkov, Moscow's own anti-scrooge. The Moscow mayor's love of holidays has him insisting "forcing, actually, on pain of fine" that every single shop dress itself up for this year's winter celebrations. |
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MOSCOW - Investors punished Gazprom on Wednesday for posting first-half financials far below expectations and failing to offer much of an explanation why. The gas giant's stock closed down 3.5 percent after the company revealed January-June revenues under international accounting standards of just $9. |
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MOSCOW - Delta Fund, a multimillion-dollar private-equity fund set up by the U.S. government to promote investment in Russia, said Tuesday that Russian industrial groups are at long last moving into direct investment and predicted that there would be no such thing as a "foreign investor" in a couple of years. |
 While commercial law may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the State Hermitage Museum, for Baker & McKenzie, the museum's theater turned out to be a pretty good fit. The Hermitage Theater hosted a concert and reception Wednesday night to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the opening of Baker & McKenzie's St. |
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MOSCOW - Despite the strong gross-domestic product figures posted by the government over the past three years, the economy has a long way to go before it starts showing any real growth, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development cautioned Wednesday, in a report urging Russia to diversify the economy from the natural-resource sectors. |
 NIKoil, the owner of a 75.21-percent stake in Lomonosov Porcelain, plans to invest $5 million in production, said Nikolai Gordeyev, NIKoil vice president and new general director at the porcelain factory, at a press conference on Friday. Lomonosov Porcelain also plans to open its first retail outlet abroad, in Paris, following a recent agreement with the French factory Deshouliers, in which NIKoil holds a 51-percent stake. |
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MOSCOW - The world's largest civilian communications satellite went into the wrong orbit Tuesday, dooming it to destruction, because of a Russian booster failure, the Russian Aviation and Space Agency said. |
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MOSCOW - Aeroflot's board of directors late Tuesday approved the largest fleet upgrade ever undertaken by a Russian carrier. The state-controlled company's board, dominated by government representatives, agreed to acquire a total of 18 mid-range Airbus A320s - 10 under seven to 10-year operational leases and eight under 12-year financial leases. |
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WORLD AIDS Day on Sunday is a time to celebrate the gains made in treating and preventing HIV/AIDS, as well as to highlight the need to protect the human rights of those living with the virus. It is also a time to remember the lives lost and to learn from past failings. |
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IT has become a tradition that all military-reform plans in Russia always consist of three stages. Since 1992, three different defense ministers have introduced three major military-reform plans. |
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 Phil LaDuca's first students in St. Petersburg were all about their bodies. When the American modern dancer and choreographer first came to the city to give a masterclass in Broadway jazz dance in 1998, there was only a group of nightclub-show dancers waiting for him. Now, LaDuca is back in town, and the difference is drastic. The dancers eagerly absorb LaDuca's skills, devouring his every step with their eyes, and dreaming of artistic careers. |
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 Over the past six years, student-oriented basement venue Moloko has built up a reputation as St. Petersburg's finest underground rock club - and the club celebrates its sixth birthday in unusual style on Friday. |
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Moscow folk-rocker Inna Zhelannaya, who postponed her series of club concerts in St. Petersburg last week, has now cancelled them completely - without giving an explanation. Instead, a member of her band, Sergei Starostin, will come to fill in for her. |
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To keep in tune with the frenzy of French wine-drinking that seems to have seized every self-respecting venue in St. Petersburg since the arrival of the beaujolais nouveau last week, I decided to spend Sunday afternoon in a place that answers to the modest name of Wine Salon and Grand Cafe Club Chateau. |
 The Mariinsky Theater is asking a French director to remodel an old favorite for its latest premiere. "La Traviata," one of the world's most popular operas, has been a frequent guest at the Mariinsky and, on Dec. 15, the theater will premiere its latest interpretation of Verdi's famous work. |
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With its new show, "Fabrika Zvyozd" ("Star Factory"), Channel One is trying to recreate the success enjoyed last year by "Za Steklom" ("Behind the Glass"). |
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MOSCOW - First came "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." Then, as if by magic, appeared a Russian version, "Tanya Grotter and Her Magic Double Bass." Now, another Russian twist in the tale is set to join Harry and Tanya. "Porri Gatter and the Stone Philosopher," a deliberate parody of the bestselling J.K. Rowling books, is set to hit bookstores at the end of the week. Belarussian authors Ivan Mytko and Andrei Zhvalevsky are behind the book, which turns Harry Potter from a child with magic powers who lives among ordinary humans to a child with no powers who lives among magicians and has to use technology to survive. |
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 Finally, inevitably, John Woo has gone to war. Starting with Hong Kong classics like "A Better Tomorrow" and "Hard-Boiled," and continuing into Hollywood extravaganzas "Face/Off" and "Mission: Impossible 2," Woo is his generation's pre-eminent orchestrator of violence, someone who truly loves the smell of napalm in the morning. |
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From the moment Prince Andrei Kurbsky posted his first missive from Poland to Ivan the Terrible, emigre literature has been a fact of Russian literary life. Throughout the 19th century, literature written abroad entered into and enriched the literature at home by engaging it in a discourse about the relation between culture and power, between moral right and political legitimacy. |
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Obrezaniye: circumcision. We can thank President Vladimir Putin for continuing to broaden our linguistic range last week. But it was news for me when the president recommended sdelat operatsiyu takim obrazom, chtoby u vas uzhe nichego ne vyroslo (to do the operation so that nothing will ever grow back). |
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