Notebook

Felines honored

Even a cat likes 

a monument

A monument dedicated to cats was unveiled in the courtyard of St. Petersburg State University last November. The meter-high sculpture features a cat atop a column adorned with quotations about cats from famous writers and scientists. The idea for the monument, which was sponsored by several scientific bodies as well as the Cat Lovers Club in St. Petersburg, came from Russian Academy of Sciences academician Aleksander Nozdrachev, whose words are also engraved on the monument: “Humanity must be unceasingly grateful to the cat, which has presented the world with countless first-rate discoveries in the field of physiology.” 

Freeze Speech?

Putin vetoes Duma

media legislation

The Duma last fall passed amendments to Russia’s Law on the Mass Media that would have significantly limited media coverage of anti-terrorism operations. But President Vladimir Putin vetoed the amendments at the urging of leading media representatives. The amendments followed what some termed “media -abuses” during the hostage-taking crisis at a Moscow theatre. 

After the hostage-taking crisis, the Kremlin criticized the media, including NTV and STS television channels and the Echo Moskvy radio station. Among other things, the stations broadcast interviews with hostage takers and hired lip readers to decipher Putin’s words in silent footage of a meeting during the hostage standoff. The Duma amendments arose from this criticism and would have made it illegal to broadcast or print news that “propagandized or justified extremist activities, including statements of persons trying to stop an anti-terrorist operation and the justification of such opposition.” 

Journalists and human-rights advocates feared the amendments would curb already-limited independent reporting about the war in Chechnya. 

While praised by some as proof that Russia still has a free press, Putin’s veto received a skeptical response from others, who said the president was simply giving the appearance of supporting press freedoms, because the amendments would surely reemerge in the Law on Mass Media, which will soon be submitted to the Duma by a committee consisting of heads of Russia’s leading mass media.

In a poll of Russians after the hostage crisis, only 35% said they oppose any censorship in such situations.

 

Mighty Students 

Contest seeks top linguist

Two months ago, a national Russian Language Contest among university students was initiated by Minister of Culture Mikhail Shvydkoy and Minister of Education Vladimir Filippov. The winner will be chosen on January 25, Tatyana’s Day, which is the traditional Students’ Day in Russia. The competition is part of a government-wide effort to promote love and respect for Russians’ mother tongue.

 

Liberalephants

A new liberal party held its founding congress last November. The party has a memory-friendly abbreviation: SLON (“elephant”–which is also the party’s symbol), which stands for “Union of People for Education and Science.” The party was founded by Vyacheslav Igrunov, a Duma deputy from the YABLOKO (“apple”) faction. SLON has advertised itself as a party of the intelligentsia, striving to revive Russia’s preeminence in education and science. 

All in the family

Strength through punishment

Conservative Duma Deputy Gennady Raikov, head of the People’s Party of the Russian Federation (NPRF), said his party will strive to lift Russia’s moratorium on the death penalty and to recriminalize homosexuality. The Peope’s Deputy faction headed by Raikov called for criminal sentences for “sexual minorities” earlier last year, arguing that this would help “strengthen the institution of the family” and improve “public morality and the health of citizens,” but the initiative was rejected by the Duma. 

Elsewhere on the legislative front, the Duma last fall passed a law that would allow children as young as 14 to get married. However, the law was rejected by the Duma’s upper body, the Federation Council, which said it sought to protect minors from potential abuse. Under current law, Russians can marry at 18, or at 16 “under special circumstances” such as teen pregnancy. The Family Code does not set a lower limit for marriageable age, leaving the matter at the discretion of regional authorities.

 

No irony, just fate 

New Year holidays

broken up

The Ministry of Labor and Social Development has decided that Russians will not get a full week off between New Year’s and Christmas this year. January 1-4 will be holidays, but the 5th and 6th will be working days, and Orthodox Christmas, January 7, will be a holiday. It is likely this rule will only apply to government workers, as many private companies give their employees a week to ten days off to enjoy New Year’s celebrations.

 

The Russian Nobel

Nobel Prize laureate, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Duma Deputy Zhores Alferov announced that Russia has created the “Global Energy Prize,” which will be equivalent to the Nobel Prize, but will be devoted to the sphere of energy. The prize will be awarded each year in St. Petersburg and Alferov said funding for the $900,000 annual award will come from Gazprom, Unified Energy Systems and the oil giant Yukos. The prize will be awarded by an international jury of 25 specialists, including five Nobel Prize laureates, headed by Alferov. The first Global Energy laureate will be named in May 2003, to mark the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg. 

 

EU Compromise 

Agreement hashed out

over Kaliningrad

Starting January 1, Russians traveling between Russia and Kaliningrad will use special visas to cross Lithuanian territory. This compromise, settled at the November Russian-EU Summit, will also grant the 950,000 residents of Kaliningrad a “facilitated transit document” (a low-cost and easily-obtainable multiple-entry visa) for transit through Lithuania. 

The transit/visa issue was raised as plans were being made for Lithuania to enter the European Union. Russia pressed hard for visa-free travel across Lithuania for Kaliningraders, but had to settle for this compromise.

Non-visa alternatives are still being sought. At the end of October, Russian Prime Minister Kasyanov directed the launch, before January 1, 2003, of a ferry service between the Kaliningrad oblast port of Baltiysk and St. Petersburg. And Russia and Lithuania are discussing the possibility of high-speed, non-stop trains that would transit Lithuania. 

 

WWII May End

Russia, Japan rumored close

to peace treaty

President Vladimir Putin said that Russia and Japan are preparing to sign a “very solid” document during a bilateral summit in January. This led Russian news agencies to speculate that Russia and Japan may be close to signing a peace treaty that would settle the border dispute in the Kuril Islands, and thus be able to formally end World War II. The full normalization of Russian-Japanese diplomatic relations and business ties have been limited for nearly 60 years by the lack of a peace treaty.

The Write Script

Cyrillic to become

official alphabet

In November, the Russian Parliament passed a series of amendments to the Law on the Languages of the Peoples of the Russian Federation that would require all alphabets of all languages used in Russia to be based on the Cyrillic alphabet. Representatives from Tatarstan and Karelia (where Latin scripts are used) called the new law unconstitutional and said that Cyrillic cannot adequately transcribe certain words in Tatar and Karelian. Tatarstan, for its part, has been moving in recent years to drop use of Cyrillic in the republic altogether. At press time, it was not known whether President Putin would veto the legislation.

 

Tankers Aweigh

Russian oil seen as

Middle East alternative

Russia could help the US lessen its dependency on OPEC by exporting 50 million tons (300 million barrels) of oil to the US in 2003, former Prime Minister and head of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Yevgeny Primakov said. Already in September, Tyumen Oil Company sent 840,000 barrels of oil to the US strategic reserve. Tyumen Oil hopes to be able to supply 400,000 barrels of oil a day to the US.

In related news, ownership of the oil aboard the Prestige, the oil tanker which sunk off Spain in November, blackening Spanish shores, was traced to Russia’s Alfa Group, controlled by oligarch Mikhail Fridman. 

 

Clean Money

Russia dropped from

laundry list

In October, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force removed Russia from its blacklist of countries that “exhibit insufficient zeal” in the fight against money laundering. Russia first landed on the blacklist in 2000 and has since enacted tougher legislation to combat the problem.

 

Cheap Solution

Kamchatka finds strength

underground 

In October, the first block of the Mutnovo Geothermal Power Station on Kamchatka Peninsula went into full operation. The new plant, partially funded by the EBRD and using Siemens equipment, will help solve the Russian Far East’s persistent power problems. It is the first geothermal plant on the peninsula, indeed in Russia, and by the middle of this year should produce enough power to meet one-fourth of Kamchatka’s energy needs. (ITAR-TASS)

 

Stalin’s sell-out

Soviet leader sought separate

peace with Hitler

According to recently declassified intelligence documents, Josef Stalin secretly offered Adolf Hitler a separate peace in February 1942 and proposed that the USSR and Nazi Germany join forces against the United States and the United Kingdom. The revelations are made in a new book, Generalissimo, by veteran military-intelligence officer Vladimir Karpov, and were discussed in an October 17 article in Komsomolskaya Pravda.

In a February 19, 1942, document, Stalin offered Hitler a complete truce on the Eastern Front. Furthermore, he offered to undertake a joint military offensive against the other Allies “to restructure the world” by the end of 1943 under the pretext of accusing “world Jewry of warmongering.” 

In a second document, dated February 27, 1942, Vsevolod Merkulov, a chief of the Soviet security apparatus, reported on a meeting with a high-ranking Nazi figure, SS General Karl Wolf, in Mtsensk, in Belarusian territory that was occupied by German forces. Merkulov reported that Wolf elaborated German counterproposals, under which Stalin should “solve the Jewish question” in the Soviet Union before Germany would agree to an alliance against the Allies. Wolf reportedly said that Berlin would be willing to make territorial concessions to the Soviet Union in Europe and to change the color of the swastika on the Nazi flag from black to red. Merkulov also reported that Berlin was insisting on “unacceptable” demands, including German control over Latin America, the Arab world, and North Africa and Japanese control over China. (RFE Newsline)

 

Seals that Save

Six seals from the Murmansk aquarium took part in military training at the Northern Fleet garrison last fall. Two veteran grey seals, who have served in the Russian Navy for 15 years, helped train the six less experienced seals to assist humans in search and rescue operations.

 

Really Great

After years of delay, a Presidential Decree has declared that The Great Russian Encyclopedia will be published. The 30-volume state-sponsored project will supercede The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which was last published in 50 fat black volumes in the late Soviet era. The Soviet Encyclopedia became notorious for incidents when librarians and users were mailed new pages to replace old pages that contained discredited personalities. But the encyclopedia also served as a huge repository for scientific, historical, biographical and other information that was not readily available elsewhere.

 

The Mole’s Worst Enemy

Konstantin Timofeev, of Ivanovskaya oblast, caught 3000 moles in wire traps during the fall 2002 hunting season. Originally, Timofeev’s goal was to exterminate moles that were rampaging his garden. But he subsequently decided to make himself a coat out of mole skins, which led him to set a mole hunting record. (Ima-Press)

 

Kosher Baltika?

Russia’s leading beer brand, Baltika (St. Petersburg), plans to start manufacturing kosher beer in the near future. Baltika President Taimuraz Bolloev met with Berl Lazar, one of Russia’s two chief rabbis, as well as other representatives of Russian Jewry, to discuss certification of Baltika according to Jewish dietary laws. If plans go ahead, the factory and beer ingredients will undergo constant checks by kashrut experts. The primary target market for the kosher beer would be Israel, where it is expected to prove popular among Russian expatriates there.

 

Rowing Record

Adventurer crosses 

heavy seas

Russian adventurer Fyodor Konyukhov (pictured, right) set a world record for solo rowing by crossing the Atlantic Ocean on December 2, 2002. Konyu-khov’s 7-meter, specially equipped rowboat made the 5,400 kilometer crossing from the Canary Islands to Barbados, following the route of Christopher Columbus, in 46 days and four minutes. This beat the previous record set by Frenchman Emmanuel Coindre in 2001 by 11 days. Originally, Konyukhov had planned to cover the distance in 100 days, but two weeks from the start of the journey he is said to have found a current that helped him reach his destination twice as fast. Konyukhov is the first Russian to row across the Atlantic Ocean. A remarkable adventurer, Konyu-khov has participated in Around the World Alone sailing competitions, the Iditarod, has trekked to both poles and climbed the highest peak on every continent, among other achievements.

 

 

Russia Takes
Davis Cup

Risk-taking brings home

top tennis title

Twenty year-old tennis star Mikhail Yuzhny emerged as Russia’s new national hero when he sealed the country’s first Davis Cup victory, beating France’s Henri Mathieu in a nerve-wracking match. Overcoming an initial two-set deficit, Yuzhny effected a stunning rebound: 3-6, 2-6, 6-3, 7-5, 6-4. 

Russian team coach Shamil Tarpi-schev made the decision to replace Yevgeny Kafel-nikov with Yuzhny after Kafelnikov lost his singles match and participated in the team’s doubles loss. 

The Russian team’s enthusiastic mascot in France was ex-president Boris Yeltsin. Russia’s highest ranking tennis fan came all the way to Bercy Stadium to cheer his team. Within seconds of Mikhail Yuzhny winning the deciding match, Yeltsin bounded over a courtside barrier and marched on the court to be part of his team’s triumph. 

“It was tough, it was difficult. After all, they [the French] beat the Americans. But still I believed in this victory,” Yeltsin told reporters. While he praised Yuzhny for being “someone with a strong character,” Yeltsin also gave himself part of the credit for the win. “Did I bring them luck? Yes, you can say that, that I was their good luck charm.”

 

The Russian Army has to struggle to adapt to new realities, but sometimes it can be hard to outrun the past. The Russian government has said it seeks to end conscription within a decade. But building an all-volunteer army will prove exceedingly difficult, and every spring and fall draft boards across Russia put out the call for young men to fill their ranks. At left, new recruits go through their paces in Grozny, Chechnya, where over 300 Chechen conscripts joined the Russian army last fall to serve their two year term of duty.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov proposed reinstating the five-point star as a symbol of the  Russian Army. “The star is sacred for soldiers,” Ivanov said, “Our fathers and grandfathers fought under the star, and we’ve always had stars on our shoulders.”

President Putin approved the proposal, and said he hoped it would be also supported by the Duma. In 2000, in a nod to the Soviet military tradition, red was made the official color of the Russian military banner.

 

 

$1445

The economic value of one human life in Russia in 2002, according to the Institute of International Economic Research in Vienna.

 

 

$3,500,000,000

Investment Moscow plans to make to increase its income from tourism ten-fold by 2015.

 

 

$80,000,000

The volume of Western Union transactions in Russia in 2002. 

 

 

$8,400,000,000 

Capital flight from Russia to the US in the first nine months of 2002.

 

 

$500,000,000

Value of planned project to build 20 huge Wal-Mart stores in Russia, starting in 2003.

 

Number of

census workers bitten 

by dogs while 

carrying out their duties 140

 

cars in Russia 28,205,000

 

internet users 

18 and older 8,800,000

 

people living in 

Chechnya 

in 2002 1,088,816

 

 

... in 1989 1,277,000

 

 

homeless 

persons

in Russia 4,000,000

 

prisoners 

in Russia 919,000

 

state of the art movie 

theaters in Russia 250

 

foreign spies in Saratov region,

according to its governor 50

 

homeless children removed 

from Russian streets 

in the first ten 

months of 2002 537,000

 

Russians who

 

feel Russia should 

support the 

US in Iraq 8%

 

know the words to their

new national 

anthem 16% 

 

can get adequate 

health 

care 25%

 

can get a job 

commensurate 

with their 

training 19%

 

fear being a 

victim 

of terrorism 78%

 

belong to the 

middle class 19%

 

refused to take 

part in 

the national 

census 6%

 

 

are women 53%

 

say they will vote 

in the 2003 

elections 70%

 

feel the government is telling 

the truth about casualties 

from the 

Nord-Ost crisis 9%

 

live below the level of basic 

subsistence 

(1817R) in 

late 2002 25.9%

 

... in late 

2001 27.2%

 

According to VTsIOM polls conducted in October 1990 and October 2002, if the October Revolution were to break out now, Russians said they would:

 

1990 2002

Wait it out and not participate 18% 28%

Actively support the Bolsheviks 32% 23%

Cooperate with the Bolsheviks in some areas 35% 20%

Emigrate abroad 8% 16%

Fight against the Bolsheviks 5% 8%

Other 2% 5%

 

STATISTICS SOURCES. Page 6 money facts: 1. Argumenti i Fakti. 2. RBK. 3. RFE/RL Newsline. 4. State Statistics Committee. 5. Kommersant. Page 8 “Number of”: 1. Strakhovoi Don VSK. 2. GIBDD. 3. Obshestvennoe Mnenie Foundation. 4. Kommersant; Geografiya Rossiy. 5, 6. Komsomolskaya Pravda. 7. Paradise Productions. 8. izvestia.ru. 9. Interfax. Page 9 “Russians who”: 1. ROMIR. 2. monitoring.ru. 3,4,5. VTsIOM. 6. Carnegie Foundation. 7. Obshestvennoe Mnenie Foundation. 8 Kommersant. 9, 10. Agency for Regional and Political Research. 11, 12. Ministry of Economic Development. Other page 9 facts: Favorable opinions of leaders: VTsIOM. Russians being stopped by police: monitoring.ru. October Revolution: VTsIOM.

 

 

“We used our entire reserve of informants—starting with imams and ending with the lowest drug addicts.”

Halid Sulumov, head of Grozny police force,
on freeing the Red Cross employees kidnapped in Chechnya in November (Itogi)

 

“Livestock of prominent political figures in agriculture will soon exceed the quantity of cattle livestock.”

Aleksei Gordeev, Vice-premier and Minister of Agriculture (Itogi)

 

“I do all sorts of silly things – like think about what is going to happen to Russia.”

 Exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky,
on what he does in his free time. (Itogi)

 

“He says he is Stalin’s relative, but in fact he is Yeltsin’s illegitimate son.”

Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of Russia,
on Boris Berezovsky’s attempts to support
the Communist Party. (Itogi)

 

“In one district, there was a 156-year-old man among the list of pensioners. Caucasians
are, of course, long-lived, but not to
such an extent.”

Razman Digaev, head of the Statistics Committee
of Chechnya, on census results. (Itogi)

 

“The number of insane people in the country is increasing, violence and debauchery are on the rise, and all this is the work of journalists.”

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, on press freedoms. (RFE Newsline).