Notebook

TV Sense, or?

Popular journalist ousted

As this issue was going to press, NTV’s weekly program, Namedni, was shut down and its host/director, Leonid Parfyonov, one of Russia’s most talented TV journalists, was fired. Management said Parfyonov failed to comply with the terms of his contract, which bound him “to support the line of the channel’s leadership.” The news of the sacking came two days after Namedni was forced to pull an interview with Malika Yandarbieva, widow of Chechen separatist leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiev. The interview, shown in a version of Namedni broadcast to the Russian Far East, contained allegations that Russian secret services were involved in the February assassination of Yandarbiev in Qatar. Parfyonov had released an internal NTV document to Kommersant, ordering him to pull the interview.

All Power...

Kremlin proposes 

stricter referendum rules

In June, as this issue went to press, the State Duma passed the first reading of a controversial, Kremlin-sponsored bill on referendums, which could take effect as early as July if passed. Critics say that the bill, which requires amendment of the Constitution, would make it virtually impossible to force the state to hold referendums. The bill stipulates that only groups with registered representations in at least 45 Russian regions, each of which must have at least 100 members, may file for referendums, and only after they have collected two million signatures over a period of 45 days. At present, according to the Constitution, only 100 people are needed to initiate a nationwide referendum and they have three months to collect two million signatures. The new law would also reduce the number of signatures that may be collected in a single region from 200,000 to 50,000. This move in particular, critics noted, will mean that liberal initiatives, which traditionally have had most support in Moscow and St. Petersburg, will have no chance of being passed.

 

No Jokes, Please

Moscow alleges Chukotka bankrupt;

New Chukchi Bible published

This spring the Audit Chamber’s Sergei Ryabuchin declared Chukotka Autonomous Okrug insolvent. According to Ryabuchin, Chukotka’s debts to the federal budget amounted to R9.3 billion, more than double its annual revenues of R3.9 billion. Russia’s Budget Code stipulates that a region’s state debt must not exceed its budget revenues. 

The region’s governor is oligarch Roman Abramovich, and Audit Chamber Chairman Sergei Stepashin (prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, prior to Vladimir Putin) said that Abramovich had “let the president down” and should resign his post of governor. Meanwhile, the Chukotka regional administration denied that it was insolvent, and said the okrug was able to pay all its debts.

Less than a week after the audit report, Russian and international media reported that Abramovich had purchased a Boeing 767-300 for use as a flying office.

Meanwhile, in other Chukchi news, the Institute for Bible Translation (IBT), founded in Stockholm, Sweden in 1973, has released a Chukchi translation of the gospel according to St. Luke. The translation took 13 years and, was a joint effort of academics, teachers of Chukchi, and a Chukchi poet. The Institute’s press-service said the process was difficult because the team of translators was spread out across Russia and also because some key biblical concepts do not have exact parallels in the Chukchi language. Chukchi is still mainly an oral language and has only existed as a written language since 1932; many of the 15,000 native Chukchi in Russia are fluent in the language, but cannot write it. IBT has therefore included an audiotape of the translation with each of the 2,000 Chukchi Bibles it printed. This spring, IBT also released gospel translations for Russia’s 16,000 Shor people (in Southern Siberia) and for the Lezgin people of Dagestan.

 

 

Moscow 2012?

Moscow has been named one of five shortlisted finalists to hold the 2012 Summer Olympics. Moscow’s rivals are New York, London, Madrid, and Paris. The International Olympic Committee will make its final choice in Singapore on June 6, 2005. 

In the meantime, IOC Vice President Vitaly Smirnov announced that Moscow will likely build 15 new athletic facilities for the 2012 Olympic Games, whether or not the IOC awards those games to the city. Among the planned facilities is the world’s largest indoor ice-skating rink, which will host the world figure-skating championships in the winter of 2005 and which could be used for table tennis and weightlifting in 2012. The city also plans to build two 50,000-seat soccer stadiums, a 25,000-seat baseball stadium, a track-and-field stadium, and a swimming facility. 

Wedding Row

Former cosmonaut and Communist State Duma Deputy Svetlana Savitskaya recently called on the Duma to investigate the wedding of Trade and Economic Development Minister German Gref. 

Gref’s wedding was held in St. Petersburg’s Peterhof Palace, a former residence of the Russian imperial family. Savitskaya alleged that Gref used his position as a state official to exploit the museum for personal use and asked how Gref could afford to rent a presidential boat to ferry himself and his bride across the Neva. Deputies, however, rejected Savitskaya’s demand for an investigation.

 

Spy vs. FSB

In May, the Moscow Military District Court found former Federal Security Service (FSB) Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Trepashkin guilty of disclosing state secrets and illegal possession of ammunition. Trepashkin was sentenced to four years in prison. 

Trepashkin worked for Soviet/ Russian Security Services from 1984 to 1997. After his retirement, he took part in investigations of the FSB’s alleged involvement in the 1999 apartment-building bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities. Trepashkin claimed that the case against him was fabricated in relation to his criticism and investigation of the FSB. Shortly after he was sentenced, Trepashkin sent an open letter to President Putin, the chairmen of the Supreme and Constitutional courts, Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov, and Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin, as well as to civil rights organizations, asking them to intervene in his case. 

 

Fish in Space

...and worms and snails

Russian scientists are planning to send tritons, worms and snails to the International Space Station. “It is possible that tritons and snails will go into space in 2004 and it is quite possible that the crews of Expedition 10 or Expedition 11 will conduct the experiments,” said Georgy Samarin, laboratory chief from the Institute for Medical and Biological Problems, in an interview with Interfax. “The animals may be shuttled to the station separately, or brought by the Progress supply ship and returned with the crew. There is air in the supply ship, so they would survive. They were taken to Mir space station the same way.” 

Samarin said a regeneration experiment on flatworms could be one of the most interesting experiments. “It is known that if a flatworm’s head is cut off near its eyes, that part later fully regenerates. That is what happens on earth and will be checked in conditions of zero gravity.”

Samarin said that scientists also plan to send an aquarium with fish into space. In addition to the experiments’ scientific significance, they could also ease the psychological pressure of working in space for long periods of time, Samarin said. “Cosmonauts admit that even a pea-growing experiment in the station offered them significant psychological support. Experiments with living beings should be of even greater help.”

 

Meskhetian Émigrés

This August, a first group of Meskhetian Turks will depart Krasnodar Krai for the United States as refugees. About 15,000 Meskhetians live in the krai, where, until recently, most were not allowed to register or seek citizenship and continue to be the targets of discrimination. Some 10,000 Meskhetians are planning to leave Russia before the end of 2004.

Meskhetians were deported in 1944 from their homeland in Georgia by Soviet leader Josef Stalin, and sent to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. After violent clashes with Uzbeks in 1989, they were evacuated to Krasnodar region by Soviet authorities. 

 

Laundry Rights

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg will consider a complaint by Lidia Tumasova, a St. Petersburg pensioner, who has decided to fight for her right to dry her laundry in the attic. Tumasova told Interfax news agency that her attic was “taken over” eight years ago and that since then she has unsuccessfully petitioned Russian district, municipal and supreme courts, and finally decided to appeal to Strasbourg in February of this year. “I have a family of four and there are now lines to dry the laundry hanging in the hall and in the kitchen... There is no culture; we cannot even invite guests over! And such dampness should not be encouraged in our climate. The attic is a place of common use and I will continue insisting on that,” Tumasova said. 

 

{WEAPONS of home construction} During excavation of a foundation in the Black Sea city of Novorossiysk, a large cache of WWII ammunition was uncovered.

 

{Unfree & Unsafe} In a survey of press freedom, the American non-profit Freedom House this spring ranked Russia in 148th place – between Yemen and Cameroon – out of 193 countries. In May, another American NGO, the Committee to Protect Journalists, said that Russia is among the 10 most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. 

 

{Saving Storks} Energy industry workers in the Primorye have been building special structures into which they plan to transfer stork nests, ITAR-TASS reported. Storks have taken to nesting on the poles supporting high-voltage electrical lines, which often results in deadly accidents for storks and their nestlings. The Far Eastern Stork is an endangered species, and ecologists estimate that only 660 couples remain, with just 60 nests in Primorye. 

 

{Oligarchette?} The list of Russia’s one hundred richest persons, published by the Russian edition of Forbes this spring, includes 36 billionaires – 35 men and 1 woman. Russian billionaires first appeared in the Forbes list in 1997, and there were just four of them. The woman on the list is Yelena Baturina, who heads the Inteko construction company and is the wife of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Her personal wealth is estimated at $1.1 billion. Overall, the estimated wealth of Russia’s 100 richest persons is equal to one-quarter of Russia’s GDP.

 

Wolf Guarding... the Border

The wolf Aly trains and works along with service dogs in the Daurian Border Brigade, Chita oblast. The wolf was adopted two years ago by a frontier guard and showed such extraordinary searching abilities, that he stayed on and was given a job with the border guard service.

 

Putin’s Likeness

Notorious Moscow sculptor Zurab Tsereteli made public a five-meter high sculpture of President Vladimir Putin this spring, but the unveiling received Kremlin scorn instead of support. The Kremlin said Tsereteli knows that the president does not encourage such initiatives: “We did not expect such a well-known and successful artist to do such things. He should know better than anyone else that President Putin is extremely negative about such things. We are sure that this work will not be displayed anywhere but in the palace of the sculptor’s house,” the source said. Tsereteli (pictured at right with the statue) claims he worked on the sculpture for two years and said that Putin has never posed for him. (Komsomolskaya Pravda)

 

Chechen Champions

In soccer, Terek (Grozny) upset Krylya Sovetov (Samara) to win the final of the Russian Cup (1-0) at the end of May. It made Terek the first team in the first division of Russian soccer ever to win the Russian Cup and thus win a place in the European UEFA Cup. The only goal was scored in overtime, by 32-year-old forward Andrei Fedkov (pictured, center, battling Krylya Sovetov’s Moyzes and Dennis Kolodin), who devoted his victory to Akhmad Kadyrov, president of Chechnya and also of the Terek Grozny club. Kadyrov was assassinated in Grozny’s Dynamo Stadium on May 9. Shortly after the match, the team met with President Putin in the Kremlin and were presented with a sabre which Kadyrov had previously given to Putin.

Terek plays all its home games outside Chechnya and will have to find a suitable home stadium for next season’s UEFA Cup. The Chechen team played in Russia’s first division in the early 1990s, but had to disband when the republic became a war zone. The team was readmitted in 2001.

 

“The presidential bill ‘On Referendums in the Russian Federation’ is undemocratic. But our faction, most likely, 

will support it.” 

Dmitry Rogozin, head of Rodina Duma faction. (Rosbalt)

 

“We usually think that referendums are the very embodiment of democracy – when citizens can express themselves about any problem – but it is dangerous in our country to give the possibility to any group to carry out a referendum.” 

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of LDPR. (The Moscow Times)

 

“Democracy, like a young lady (baryshnya), should be tenderly guarded, protected and not allowed to be purchased for dirty money.”

Alexander Veshnyakov, head of the Central Electoral Committee of Russia, 

about the new law on referendums – see page 6. (Moskovsky Komsomolets)

 

“They [dinosaurs] had such a small brain, that they could not manage their bodies.”

Vyacheslav Shtyrov, president of Yakutia, using an analogy to talk about 

the problem of state management of the Northern Territories. (Itogi)

 

“In time, Moscow could become, if not in quantity, 

then in quality, a very Jewish city.”

 Berl Lazar, chief rabbi of Russia. (Itogi)

 

 

“In Russian history there have been sufficiently many people, starting with Boris Godunov, who were sincere in their desire to defeat poverty.” 

Alexander Pochinok, first aide to the Russian Prime Minister, 

and former Minister of Labor. (Argumenty i Fakty)

 

“After the bill on alternative civil service was passed, we had 58 volunteers. Today we have 11 left. But I think that after we explain the situation, even fewer will remain…”

Vasily Afanasiev, head of the draft board of the town of Zheleznodorozhny. (Izvestia)

 

“Political will must be reinforced by aircraft carriers... Or by the capacity of russky or rossiysky women to give birth.” 

Alexander Prokhanov, editor-in-chief of ultra-nationalist Zavtra newspaper. (Profil)

[russky = ethnic Russian; rossiysky = citizen of Russia] 

 

Russians who:

 

believe Russia could today win a 

war similar to World War II 58%

 

think children need a new 

organization, similar to the

Young Pioneers 59%

 

say freedom of the press in Russia 

is excessive and even permissive 15%

 

seek a lifestyle like an average family 

in Western Europe or the US 8%

  

 ... not worse than most 

  families in their town 50%

 

 ... to simply survive 18% 

 

spend at least 2/3 of family 

income on food 55% 

 

 ... at least half 87%

 

believe raising top federal bureaucrats’ salaries will not help stem 

corruption and bribe-taking 87%

 

were punished physically in 

their childhood 22%

 

grew up in single-parent families 25%

 

have their salaries denominated 

 ... in rubles 50%

 ... in dollars 45%

 ... in euros 2%

 

have bought a portrait/bust of Putin 3%

 ... have not done so/will not 81%

 

feel bribes, extortion and protection 

for money exercised by the police 

are a stable system 58%

 

will turn to the police if their life, 

family or property are threatened 67%

 

 

The Mummies’ Return

Struggling with curses in the Altai... and the Duma?

Some residents of the Altai Republic have claimed that indignant mummies are causing a greater than normal frequency of earthquakes in the mountainous region. The mummies – a “princess” (above) and a man excavated from their resting place on Ukok plateau 11 years ago – are presently held at the Novosibirsk Institute for History and Archeology. 

In the past six months, over 300 tremors of magnitude 3 or greater, and about a thousand milder quakes, have rocked Altai. So far, none have resulted in casualties. 

The effort to appease the spirits responsible for the quakes was led by the head of Kosh-Agachsky district (the epicenter of the earthquakes) Auelkhan Dzhatkambaev, who sent a letter signed by residents of the district to Siberian Federal District Presidential Envoy Leonid Drachevsky. The letter called upon Drachevsky to return the princess of Ukok to her original burial place. Instead, Drachevsky traveled to Kosh-Agach and told residents that the mummies would not be returned, saying they were serving important scientific purposes, and that he was “simply uncomfortable hearing about angry spirits, as if we were living in the Middle Ages.” 

The mummies were excavated in 1993 from a burial mound that dates to the middle of the first millennium BC. Their bodies were so well preserved that even elaborate tattoos on their skin were still visible. Scientists have concluded that the “princess” was just an ordinary young woman, perhaps even from “the middle class.” 

Meanwhile, Toizin Bergenov, the supreme shaman of Siberia, has offered his services to purge the Russian State Duma building of evil spirits, the Duma public associations and religious organizations committee reported to Interfax. “The shaman believes that much hatred and acrimony have accumulated in the lower chamber’s premises over the past ten years and also that not a few evil words have been uttered, which poisons the lives of those who work at the Duma,” the committee source said. 

A group of parliamentarians recently proposed repurification of the Duma building. The first purification, conducted by Archbishop Arseny of Istra, an aide to Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia, took place immediately following the building’s renovation in 1994. “The supreme shaman of Siberia quite liked the idea of inviting Orthodox priests to fight evil in the Duma,” the Duma committee source said. “But, in his view, this ritual will not be enough to eradicate the dark forces that have settled in the Duma.”

 

There are R69 billion in the investment portfolio of the Pension Fund of Russia.

4,860,000 individual entrepreneurs are registered in Russia.

Russia was the 14th largest importer of Hollywood productions in 2003. Russian movie houses spent over $150 million renting Hollywood films in 2003.

Some 700 people die of smoking-related causes in Russia each day, said Andrei Demin, president of the Russian Asso-ciation of Public Health. “The population of Russia is decreasing each day by 2,500 people for various reasons, and some 700 of these Russian citizens die of conditions related to smoking,” Demin said. He added that as many as 70% of men, 30% of women, and over 50% of teenagers smoke in Russia. 

150,000 tons of oil were stolen in Chechnya in 2003, according to Rosneft President Sergei Bordanchikov. Up to 7% of oil extracted each year in Chechnya is stolen, he said. Last year in Chechnya, over 1000 mini-factories (which process stolen oil) and 1200 illegal taps into pipelines were destroyed. 

100 million books and 20 million CDs produced each year in Russia will be outlawed after the amendment to the Law on Copyright passed by the Duma this May comes into force. This equals 20% of the book and 70% of the audio market. 

$600 million will be earned in 2004 by Russian offshore programming companies. 

R173 billion was spent on scientific research and development in Russia in 2003, an average of R199,194 per scientist. 

Some 14,000 women die and 3,000 women kill their husbands as a result of domestic violence in Russia each year. “However, the official statistics may not provide an exact picture of the scale of domestic violence,” said Larisa Ponarina, executive director of the ANNA Center for Violence Prevention, “for this problem is often kept quiet, because women tend not to report domestic violence to law enforcement agencies.” According to Amnesty International, every day 36,000 women in the Russian Federation are beaten by their husbands or partners. Every 40 minutes, a woman is killed by domestic violence.  

25,000 servicemen have been killed in Chechnya in the last 10 years, while at least 50,000 have been injured, according to estimates of the Union  of Soldiers’ Mothers’ Committees of Russia. The government does not regularly publish official casualty figures and reliable statistics from other sources are hard to come by (some estimates indicate that as many as 200,000 persons have died on all sides in the Chechnya wars since 1994). The authoritative British journal, The Military Balance, said Russian forces “suffered 4,749 casualties in 2003-2004, the highest figure in one year since the current Chechen conflict began.” In 2002, the Russian military (known to understate casualties) reported that, between September 1999 and December 2002, 4,572 Russian servicemen were killed and some 15,549 wounded.

0.4-0.6% of timber in Russia is obtained by illegal logging, according to official statistics. Independent sources estimate a much higher level of illegal logging: 20-50%.  

There are 487,000 registered drug-users in Russia. However, far from all users register. Experts estimate that there are some 3.5 million drug-users in Russia.

The state plans to allocate R3.095 billion for restoration of Chechnya’s fuel-energy complex in 2004.

There are approximately 50,000 skinheads in Russia, who commit an average of 30-40 attacks per month because of their xenophobia and ethnic enmity.

 

STATISTICAL SOURCES

NUMBERS (page 11): 1. Kommersant Vlast. 2. Tax Ministry quoted by ITAR-TASS. 3. Motion Picture Association of America, quoted by Gazeta. 4-5. Interfax. 6. Profil. 7-8. Kommersant Vlast. 9. Interfax; Amnesty International. 10. Kommersant Vlast; The Military Balance; Ministry of Defense. 11. Kommersant Vlast. 12. Kommersant Vlast, Ministry of Health and Social Development. 13. Kommersant Vlast. 14. Moscow Human Rights Bureau’s Director Alexander Brod, quoted by Interfax. 

 

RUSSIANS WHO (page 8): 1-3. ROMIR-Monitoring. 4-9; 15-18. Levada Center. 10-11. Public Opinion” Foundation. 12-14. RBK.

 

Oh, how the mighty fell: Capriati, Williams, Suarez, another Williams,  Davenport, Mauresmo, Henin-Hardenne... The list goes on and on.

When the dust settled in Paris, two Russian women were faced off against one another in the final of the French Open. Never before have two Russians, male or female, squared off in a Grand Slam final.

Fifth-ranked Muscovite Anastasia Myskina, 22, faced off against tenth-ranked Yelena Dementieva, 22, also of Moscow. It was far from the first time the two women had sparred. They have known each other since they were 6 or 7 – both took lessons from Marat Safin’s mother, and they have competed as doubles partners.

“We do everything together, and we’re pretty good friends, I hope” Myskina said before the match.

But what made the face-off all the more exciting is that, aside from the fact that it was both women’s first Grand Slam final, it meant, no matter what, a Russian woman would come home to Moscow with the trophy from the French Open.

Myskina and Dementieva were the first Russians to reach a women’s Grand Slam final since Dementieva’s coach, Olga Morozova, was the runner-up at Wimbledon in 1974. (Belarusan Natasha Zvereva reached the final of the Paris Open in 1988, only to be crushed 6-0, 6-0 by Steffi Graf.)

Clearly, both women were excited just to be playing in the final. “I’m really surprised that I’m still in Paris,” Myskina said.

“It’s incredible,” Dementieva said. “It was always my dream to play a Roland Garros final. I’m so happy.”

The fact that two Russian women met in the final is actually not that surprising. As reported in Russian Life and elsewhere, Russia’s women are a force to be reckoned with on the WTA circuit. At present, there are 10 Russian women among the top 43 ranked players. In the top 13, five are Russian.

As Izvestia wrote before the final, “all of the steam that has been building up in the cauldron of Russian women’s tennis in recent years has at last busted out... Paris has not seen anything like this in the 79 years of the French Open.”

Unfortunately, the final turned out to be one of the least competitive since Zvereva was demolished by Graf.

In just 59 minutes, the wiry Myskina devoured Dementieva 6-1, 6-2. More exactly, Dementieva lost by playing badly. Her 10 double faults and 33 forced errors belied her extreme tension at reaching the final. “I hate my serve!” she shouted at one point.

Meanwhile, the normally hot-headed Myskina played a relaxed and cool match, dominating long volleys with her powerful double-handed backhand.

As it turns out, the outcome may have been inevitable. “When we played for pizzas,” Dementieva recalled before the final about the pair’s long history of play, “Anastasia always won.”