The government has launched a state-owned search engine, Sputnik, that is being lauded as the “safe” alternative to search engines like Google or Yandex – companies Vladimir Putin recently criticized publicly, stopping just short of accusing them of serving the CIA.
Sputnik was developed by the state telecom giant Rostelecom, Russia’s largest fixed-line internet provider. Sputnik.Ru has a shortcut to government services on its front page, such as registration of marriages or cars, as well as a special page for finding drugs in the nearest drugstore. While many critics said that the engine was created to filter out critical information, a test by The Moscow Times comparing it with the search engine giants concluded that “it does not seem that Sputnik is filtering news searches. It is simply doing a terrible job of finding information on the internet.”
A new law has been adopted cracking down on individuals with multiple citizenships. It requires those with a second, third, or fourth passport, or even just a permanent residency abroad, to write to State Migration Services in order to be entered in a database of such persons. Those who fail to notify the authorities could be subject to a criminal investigation; conviction could entail a fine of up to R200,000 ($5,900) or 400 hours of community service.
Russians who are also citizens of other countries do not place as much weight on their obligations to Russia as single-citizen Russians do, said Duma member Andrei Lugovoy (the former security officer wanted in Britain for his alleged involvement in the death of Alexander Litvinenko) as he presented the bill to the floor. “In the last half year there has been a war… so in this complicated geopolitical situation we need to know who is loyal to Russia and just how loyal,” Lugovoy later said on primetime television. Other Duma members commented that the bill is needed to keep an eye on citizens who might act against Russia’s national interests.
The National Bestseller prize this year went to 31-year-old St. Petersburg poet Kseniya Buksha, whose novel about a defense industry factory was picked over works of acclaimed writers like Svetlana Alexiyevich and Vladimir Sorokin.
Buksha based her novel Freedom Factory (Завод «Свобода») on interviews with workers in a St. Petersburg factory, writing in between other jobs because she “needed money,” she said. The resulting work, as gazeta.ru wrote, is more Lang’s Metropolis than Sholokhov’s Virgin Soil Upturned.
National Bestseller’s jury honors one novel written in Russian each year, awarding a monetary prize of R250,000.
Eight years after journalist Anna Politkovskaya, 48, was murdered in her apartment building in broad daylight, a Russian court convicted five men of the crime, though many say the investigation never tried to identify the person who ordered the killing.
Three of the guilty men were brothers who lived in Chechnya; one of them is said to have shot Politkovskaya five times at point blank range. Two others, one a former police officer, participated in tracking the journalist. The jury delivered a 7 to 5 guilty verdict, though at press time the criminals’ sentence had not been pronounced.
The trial was the third attempt to prosecute the case of the outspoken journalist’s murder. Still, “somewhere on this earth walks the man who ordered the murder,” wrote Novaya Gazeta, the opposition newspaper where Politkovskaya worked and wrote articles critical of the government and its policies in Chechnya.
Christie’s auction house set a new record for a Russian art sale. Items on bid fetched £24 million, more than twice the £11 million pre-sale estimate, and included paintings by Vasily Vereshchagin and Vladimir Borovikovsky.
“This market still demonstrates excellent results,” Christie’s Russian Art Department Director Alexei Tizengauzen told RIA Novosti. Most buyers were Russian speaking, flocking to London from Russia and elsewhere.
A treasure trove of Scythian gold and other ancient artifacts unearthed in Crimea are in legal limbo. While the items were on loan to a museum in Amsterdam, the peninsula was annexed by Russia. The exhibition is scheduled to close in August, and lawyers have yet to decide if the items should be returned to their home museum, now Russian, or to Kiev, since the loan agreement designates the treasures to be the national property of Ukraine.
The exhibition items came from four museums in Simferopol, Kerch, and Bakhchisaray. They were discovered in archaeological digs on the peninsula’s Black Sea shores, which are rich with history and have been criss-crossed by various trade routes and cultures for centuries. The agreement with Amsterdam’s Allard Pierson Museum brought about the largest such loan to Europe in Crimean history.
In a welcome revanche after their disappointing loss to Finland at the Sochi Winter Olympics, in May Russia’s hockey squad claimed the title of World Champion, winning 5-2 over Finland.
The tourney was held in Minsk, Belarus, and the Russian and Belarusan presidents, Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko, both known to dabble in the sport themselves, cheered from the stands, disproving the rule oft-cited by sports journalists that Russia’s hockey team loses whenever Putin is in the crowd.
The win was Russia’s fourth championship title in seven years.
At press time, the coach of Russia’s national soccer squad, Fabio Capello, named the roster for the team that will go to Brazil for this summer’s World Cup.
After calls by some US senators that FIFA disqualify Russia from the World Cup because of its actions in Ukraine, the football body replied that the event is about sportsmanship, not politics.
The Russian team had some surprise omissions, like Andrei Arshavin and Roman Pavlyuchenko. Only one player has World Cup experience, forward Alexander Kerzhakov, and two players have never even played on the national team. Six of the 23 players come from Dynamo Moscow, and another five from Russia Premier League champions CSKA. It is the first time since 2002 that Russia has advanced to World Cup play. They face Belgium and Algeria in their group.
Russia will host the World Cup in 2018, four years after its successful Sochi Winter Olympic Games.
World record holding swimmer Yulia Efimova, who tested positive for steroids in October, has been banned from competition for 16 months, through next February.
Efimova received a bronze medal at the London Olympic Games and has not slowed down since. Last year, she broke the world record in the 50m breast stroke sprint and the 200m, but those records, along with several medals, have been stripped from her in the wake of the doping scandal.
Efimova (right), who is 22 and hails from Taganrog, trains in California. She claimed the steroid came from an L-Carnitine supplement she bought without knowing that it contained banned substances. The anti-doping body decided that a world-class swimmer should be more cautious.
“One or two more breaches and the federation could be suspended altogether,” said Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko. Mutko was referring to the Russian Swimming Federation, though it was not clear if the body had received an official warning.
«В Сирии принято решение о введении обязательного обучения русскому языку во всех школах. Нас на Украине прижимают, а вот вам пример Сирии».
“A decision was made in Syria to require all schools to teach Russian. In Ukraine we’re being oppressed, but Syria’s setting a fine example.”
Sergei Stepashin, Russia’s former head auditor turned diplomat. (Vedomosti)
«Нам пытаются приклеить ярлык — что мы собираемся восстановить империю, Советский Союз. Это не соответствует действительности».
“People are trying to put a label on us, that we are resurrecting an empire, the Soviet Union. That is not the reality.”
President Vladimir Putin, interview with heads of international media organizations (Kremlin.ru)
«Я вот задумался, почему мне нравится балет, баскетбол и леопарды. А ведь у них много общего – прыгучесть, грация…»
“I thought to myself, why do I like ballet, basketball, and leopards? The fact is, they have much in common – a certain spring, grace…”
Sergei Ivanov, Kremlin chief of staff (Komsomolskaya Pravda)
«Вообще орать о своей любви, будь то любовь к Родине или любовь к женщине, — это пошлость. Любовь не требует того, чтобы о ней орали, неистово бия себя кулаком в грудь».
“Screaming about your love, be it love for your country or your woman – is in poor taste. Love does not need to be screamed about, it does not need people beating their chests about it.”
Rocker Andrei Makarevich (Izvestia)
«В Смоленске берёт начало река Днепр… Возможно, встанет вопрос, чтобы повернуть воды Днепра в Тихий Дон».
“The Dnieper River begins in Smolensk... Perhaps eventually we will consider turning the Dnieper’s waters into the Quiet Don.”
Politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky suggesting Russia might shut down Ukraine’s main water supply after Ukraine allegedly began blocking the North Crimean Canal that is the peninsula’s only source of water. (Argumenti i Fakty)
Andrei Mironov, a longtime human rights campaigner and dissident, was killed while working in Eastern Ukraine as a translator for Italian correspondent Andrea Rocchelli, who was also killed. Both were caught in the midst of mortar fire between Ukrainian troops and separatists in Slovyansk, a city in Donetsk Province.
Jailed in 1985 for distributing samizdat literature, Mironov was one of the Soviet Union’s last political prisoners. He was freed months later by a decree of then General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. An early member of Memorial, the human rights organization that uncovers and chronicles Soviet-era repressions, primarily through archival research, he was also well known for his work in Chechnya and other war zones, where, among other things, he collected and exposed internationally banned weapons. He was 60 years old.
Tatyana Samoilova, a Soviet movie actress who soared to stardom after her lead role as Veronica in the WWII drama The Cranes Are Flying, passed away at 80.
She was just 23 and a film school student when she debuted in Mikhail Kalatozov’s film. Samoilova was hailed by movie critics around the world, including at Cannes; to this day, The Cranes are Flying is the only Russian movie to receive the Palme d’Or.
In later interviews, Samoilova said that she received many enticing offers while on her European tour, but a western acting career was scotched by the Cold War. She went on to star in Anna Karenina, but had few other film roles, and instead worked most of her career in several Moscow theaters. Later in life, she drifted into obscurity and illness.
Viktor Sukhodrev, the personal translator of Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, has died at 81. Sukhodrev was born in 1932, and learned his impeccable English as a boy in London, where his mother worked in the Soviet trade mission from 1939 to 1945. Some reports claim that during this time his father worked as an undercover KGB agent in the United States.
Sukhodrev began working as an interpreter under Khrushchev and is rumored to have had a knack for polishing the Soviet leader’s off the cuff remarks and crude language. He accompanied Khrushchev and his wife on their official visit to the United States and said in an interview later that he was just as disappointed as Khrushchev when US authorities canceled their visit to Disneyland (because of security concerns). He also admitted in an interview that he did not correctly translate the Russian saying “Всякий кулик свое болото хвалит” (“Every snipe boasts about his own swamp”), which Khrushchev uttered during talks with some Americans who were praising the capitalist system. Instead of snipe, he translated kulik as duck.
Later, under Brezhnev, Sukhodrev was so trusted that he was the only interpreter present during that leader’s summit talks with Nixon, who decided to forego a State Department translator in order to gain Brezhnev’s trust. Even in the Soviet era, Sukhodrev often used the Bible to keep his translations sharp – reading it in one language, he translated it into the other in his head.
Unlike some of his employers, Sukhodrev was described as something of a dandy, with the manners of a true gentleman. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev decided to use a new translator, and Sukhodrev finished out his diplomatic career at the foreign ministry.
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