Notebook

While We Slept?

Is a new arms race brewing?

On Christmas Eve, a new fleet of Russian ICBMs went into service that were designed to evade anti-ballistic missile defense systems. The one megaton (75 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb) Topol-M missiles have a range of 6,000 miles and can change their trajectory in flight.

The Russian Army has hinted at a forthcoming technology for months. (“This is a very expensive technology and its production depends on the situation,” said Colonel General Yuri Baluevsky, chief of the army’s General Staff earlier in December.) Russia brought the missiles into play after years of stewing over the Bush administration’s decision to pull out of the 1972 ABM treaty soon after taking over the White House in 2001. 

General Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of the Russian missile forces was quoted by The Scotsman saying the Topol-M missile “is capable of piercing any missile defense system” and is immune to electromagnetic blasts used by current U.S. anti-missile systems. A submarine-based version of the Topol-M, the Bulava, was tested in September, launching from the White Sea and hitting its target on Kamchatka 30 minutes later.

Russia has recently formed more than 20 new missile force units — the fastest increase of Russian nuclear spending since 1963, prior to the Cuban missile crisis. But leaders are quick to assert that nothing aggressive should be read in Russia’s actions. Said Baluevsky, as reported by RIA Novosti: “We have long stopped preparing for large-scale nuclear and conventional wars. We will continue to prepare for the defense of our territory, but we will not be preparing for a war on foreign land.” 

“Please, sir...”

Orphanages in crisis

The general prosecutor’s office in January released a damning report on Russia’s orphanages. In the words of Deputy General Prose-cutor Sergei Fridinsky, the report “established that in many regions of Russia the guarantee of social support to orphans is being violated; that is, not fulfilled.”

Moscow News quoted Boris Altshuler, director of the Right of the Child organization, as saying that conditions in many orphanages were “absolutely terrifying.” Alt-shuler cited a recent case of a child who was forced to dig a grave for another orphan. Results of the prosecutors’ investigation have been sent to Health Minister Mikhail Zurabov with a demand to rectify the situation.

Given such stories, much finger-pointing was directed at the Kremlin. In 2004, President Vladimir Putin decided to transfer to Russian regions the responsibility for funding most social services. Many of the regions are cash-strapped, and some orphanages have been forced to make do on far less than the mandated minimum budgets. One notorious home for mentally disabled children in Petrozavodsk was budgeting just 30 kopeks per child per day. 

It also does not help that  orph-an-ages are largely unaccountable to outside regulators. Duma deputies, Altshuler said, “have repeatedly rejected the idea of independent public inspections of children’s homes without advance warning.”

 

Piping it Out

Siberia’s mineralized future

About the same time Russian President Vladimir Putin was dealing with the Ukrainian gas crisis in January (see page 7), he announced that Russia will this summer begin construction of a new Siberian oil pipeline linking Nakhodka and Tayshet, in Sakha.

“The demand for energy is growing at a faster rate in Asia and the Pacific than in other regions,” Putin said, according to RIA Novosti. “Russian and possibly foreign investments should be more actively drawn in...” Putin said that Sakha was ripe to profit from development of its oil, gas and coal deposits, but that there must not be “situations in which the state alone invests in infrastructure while other shareholders reap profits.”

At press time, environmental activist and author Valentin Raspu-tin lashed out at the idea of the pipeline, saying it would bring only ill-effects to the region’s ecology.

 

Battling Impressions

In 1948, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin decreed the dissolution of Mos-cow’s New Western Art Museum, which had held French impressionist works collected by the famous art patrons Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin. Some of the collection went to Moscow’s Pushkin Museum, the rest was sent to the Hermitage, where today it is one of that museum’s most popular permanent exhibitions. 

But now Irina Antonova, director of Moscow’s Pushkin Museum, says that the impressionist works at the Hermitage should return to Moscow. “This was a purely Moscow collection and its artistic power reveals itself only when all the items in the collection are together,” Antonova said.

Hermitage experts have yet to comment on Antonova’s suggestion.

 

Preserving the Past

A new 57,000 m2 building to house the Russian State Historical Archive opened in St. Petersburg on December 24. Over half of the building is ready for use and it will eventually supplant the current 15,000 square meter building in the Senate and Synod historical complex in St. Petersburg’s city center.  

The archive preserves state documents from the 18th-20th centuries and contains the collections of Russia’s State Council, the State Dumas, Senate, Synod, and the personal collections of the country’s prominent state, public and religious figures. The Archive also contains a scientific library with more than 400,000 books, including rare manuscripts and early printed books.

“This event is not only relevant to Russia,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin at the opening ceremony, according to Interfax. “This is also the biggest archive in Europe.  The documents kept in this archive are relevant to 85 countries...” 

After moving to the new quarters, the next major phase – the “real revolution,” Putin said – will be digitizing the archive’s holdings, allowing broader and more immediate access to archival materials.

 

Caviar emptor

Wild caviar’s days may be numbered

Russia and nine other world exporters of caviar were banned from exporting sturgeon caviar until they can show that harvesting the fish roe is sustainable. 

Into the breach, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, may step two Northern California companies, which produce farm-raised sturgeon caviar. Deborah Keane, vice president of sales and marketing at Tsar Nicoulai Caviar LLC said that the ban will force people to try her company’s non-wild caviar. In the process, she said, they will “realize there’s very little difference... A lot like California wines, we’ve been able to bring California caviar to international quality.”

Actually, there is one important difference. Beluga caviar from the Caspian sells for more than $200 an ounce. California caviar costs about $70 an ounce (up from $45 an ounce last year).

Founded in 1996, Tsar Nicoulai now produces tens of thousands of pounds of farm-bred caviar each year, the Chronicle reported. The other Californian producer, Stolt Sea Farm, was started in 1987 by a Dutch conglomerate, and produces 7.5 metric tons per year. 

It takes 15-20 years for a female sturgeon in the wild to mature to harvesting age. In more stable farming conditions, that is reduced to about 10 years.

 

Slavs vs. Cherkess

Pre-election rhetoric heats up 

There are some 446,000 residents of the region of Adygey. Of these, 70% are of Slavic nationality. In December, at the Fourth Congress of the Union of Slavs of Adygey, a resolution passed which called for Slavs to achieve an electoral majority in the local Duma, and then to legislate the region’s dissolution and merger with Krasnodar Krai, which surrounds it. 

Some 10 days later, the Cherkess minority had its own meeting: the Cherkess Congress and Adygey Khase. Its participants vowed to prevent a Slavic majority from taking hold of the legislature and proposed sending protests to various national and international authorities. According to regnum.ru, Cherkess Congress Chairman Murat Berze-gov condemned some individual Slav Congress delegates’ calls to legally acquire weapons in order to “defend their interests.”

Signs of the Times

More pictographs for new times

Beginning with the New Year, Russian motorists had to cope with a dizzying array of new road signs – 24 completely new signs and 18 which are variations on old signs. Among the newest are “Con-gestion,” “Artificially Uneven Surface,” “Beach” and “Dangerous Shoulder.” 

Near Road Police stations, hated hexagonal “Stop” signs are being replaced with the less definite “Control.” Upon entering Russia, foreigners will now be greeted by a large sign listing the “General Speed Limits,” including 60 kmh in populated areas, 90 kmh outside these areas and 110 kmh on highways.

Notably, the signs for populated areas are also being changed. Instead of the name of the town on a white background for when you enter a town and the same sign with a diagonal line through it for when you depart, there will be a sign with a pictographic representation of houses to indicate you are entering a populated area. For the sign for “departing populated area,” the houses have the well-established diagonal line through them. 

All of the new signs are being introduced to conform with the 1968 International Convention on Road Signs and Signals, approved throughout Europe and Russia in 1971. Of course, it will take several years for the signs to spread across the vast breadth of Russia’s roads, and into the knowledge base of Russian drivers.

 

Beslan Report

Local officials blamed 

Just before the New Year, Alexander Torshin, deputy speaker of the Federation Council, released the conclusions of a Duma commission he chaired to probe the Beslan hostage crisis of September 2004. 

The Duma report placed blame squarely on local police and officials, for failing to act on previous instructions to increase school security, for deliberately supplying false information on the number of hostages, for failing to coordinate between local and federal security personnel, and for failing to restrain local residents, whose firing on the school provoked a response from the terrorists and led to the disastrous storming of the building, in which hundreds died.

One day before Torshin’s press conference, Deputy Prosecutor Nikolai Shepel said that the prosecutor’s office failed to find any fault with law enforcement bodies’ actions during the crisis.

 

Threat from within

Officials surrounded by criminals

Russian government officials have begun remonstrating that a vast shadow of criminality is darkening the Russian economy, encompassing most all of the Russian Far East, the customs service, the police and the military.  

On December 8, Interfax reported that Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said, “customs and regulatory agencies are so connected with criminal groups that we cannot obtain a clear picture [of the country’s economic situation].”

Five days later, according to ITAR-TASS, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev, speaking in Khabarovsk, said that “growing social tensions in the Far Eastern Federal District, the share of criminal control of its economy, and the swelling illegal migration here have turned into an actual threat to our national security.  There is no sign that criminal groups’ activities are on the decline, and their control now spreads over a large part of the region.”

In early February, according to The Moscow Times, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov cast the net wider still, saying that the police are systematically covering up crimes and that the military is an “army of criminals.” According to Ustinov, in 2005 police covered up 700 murders, 1,500 assaults, and 80,000 property-related crimes, and that the threat of imprisonment is no deterrence to their actions. As to the military, Ustinov said that so many officers committed crimes in 2005 that two regiments could be set up with their numbers. Their thefts, he said, added up to $60 million, or “enough to buy three dozen modern tanks.” 

In 2005, Ustinov said, some 16,000 military personnel were charged with a variety of crimes, including 100 senior commanders and eight generals or admirals. Authorities punished 550 officers for beating their subordinates. 

 

Good vs. Evil

On New Year’s Day, the sequel to the 2004 blockbuster Russian film, Night Watch, was released. Day Watch (Dnevnoy Dozor) broke all previous Russian box office records, taking in $9 million in its first four days. (Last year’s Ninth Company – Devyataya Rota – held the previous record of $6.7 million, lenta.ru said.)

In Day Watch, the main character, Anton Gorodetsky, spends his evenings fighting witches and vampires in the streets of Moscow, trying to manage a centuries-old balance between the forces of Dark and Light. Day Watch is expected to earn at least $30 million at the box office. The third installment in the series is to be produced in English, by a combined Russian and Hollywood film team.

The films are based on a trilogy by Russian fantasy writer Sergei Lukyanenko and could be said to carry on certain fantasy motifs begun by Mikhail Bulgakov in his famed novel, The Master and Margarita, which caused its own small-screen sensation in December. 

The long-awaited TV miniseries of The Master and Margarita, directed by Vladimir Bortko debuted at the end of last year and was reportedly seen by 24% of the viewing audience. The film brought new popularity to Bulgakov’s novel: in Pskov, all copies of The Master and Margarita disappeared from bookstore shelves, Interfax said.

Following fast on the heels of all this, at press time the first Russian film based on a work by Alexander Solzhenitsyn debuted. The First Circle, starring Dmitry Pevtsov in the role of Innokenty Volodin (photo, above), is directed by Gleb Panfilov.

 

“There are devoted Sovietologists who do not understand what is happening in our country, do not understand the changing world. There is no need to argue with them. They deserve a very brief remark: ‘To hell with you.’”

Vladimir Putin at January press conference (Moscow Times) 

 

 “This little song must end! No more flights to the North!... Shoot all the birds. Line up all our men – our troops from Sochi to the Crimea – and any bird flying past should be stopped in its tracks!”

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the LDPR, 

on the bird flu outbreak in neighboring Turkey (Itogi)

 

 

{RUSSIAN OF THE YEAR} Google’s founders – Russian-born Sergei Brin and American-born Larry Page – were named Men of the Year by the Financial Times. In just seven years, the company that the duo founded has risen to be one of the most powerful and influential companies in the world. Google’s stock market value is nearly $130 billion, roughly on par with IBM and only trailing Microsoft and Intel amongst hi-tech companies.

 

{BIRD FLU VACCINE} Oleg Kiselyov, head of Russia’s Influenza Institute, said January 12 that Russia would be able to begin large-scale production of a bird flu vaccine (for domestic birds) as early as April. Kiselyov said his institute is recommending production of 100 million doses.

 

{THEY LOVE THEM, YEAH} The first Russian monument to the Beatles will be unveiled in Yekaterinburg on June 18 (Paul McCartney’s birthday), on the banks of the river Iset. It will be cast in iron and be located not far from the “Cement Keyboard,” which was recently unveiled in this Urals city. In order to raise funds for the monument, on February 25 rock groups will perform for 12 straight hours, performing every one of the Beatles’ songs from all their albums.

 

{SORGE HE IsN’T} A Russian Army officer was arrested on suspicion of passing secret documents to Estonia in hopes of gaining Estonian citizenship. The means of transmission were less than crafty: he allegedly gave parcels (labeled as toy MiG-23 fighter models) full of classified documents to bus drivers to drive over the border.

 

{ANOTHER MERGER} Irkutsk oblast and the Ust-Orda Buryat Autonomous Okrug have submitted a proposal to merge via referendum, which could be held as early as April. If it passes, the regions could unify on January 1, 2008.

 

{BULL MARKET} Russian foreign arms sales are on the rise. Mikhail Dmitriev, head of the Federal Military-Technical Cooperation Service, said that Russian arms exports are approaching $20 billion per year, “with more room for growth in the future.” Russia’s biggest clients for military hardware are China and India, comprising 70% of current sales, but, Dmitriev said, Russia is making inroads into the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America as well.

 

$150 million

Annual state support for film

 

27.4 million

projected number of Russians at greatest risk for contracting avian flu

 

75%

President Putin’s stated goals for 2005 which were met  

 

R1.3 trillion

State budgetary purchases in 2006

 

3.6 m2

Space required for each prison inmate 

in Russia

 

7.5 million

Estimated number of potholes on 

Russian roads

 

142.8 million

current population of Russia (down by 

more than 675,000 over 2005)

 

$5 million

official reported annual income of Transportation Minister Igor Levitin

 

$62,000

official reported annual income of 

Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov

 

$27,000

official reported annual income of 

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov

 

14,000,000

estimated number of foreign workers in Russia (just 750,000 have official 

work permits)

 

R8.985 billion

wage arrears in Russia as of December 1, 2005 (a 7.2% decline vs. November)

 

67

agents of foreign intelligence services foiled in their operations in Russia during 2005

 

RUSSIANS WHO:

 

live below the poverty line 15.8%

   ...projection for 2008 10%

 

feel press criticism of the Powers That Be

   ...is good for the country 57%

   ...is harmful 23%

   ...don’t know 20%

 

watched the TV premier of
The Master and Margarita 24.2%      

   ... in Ukraine 34%

 

budget their expenses 

   ...a month or less ahead 37%

   ...two to three months ahead 20%

   ...a year ahead 1%

   ...not at all 31%

 

named Vladimir Putin as 

their “favorite Russian” 21%

...named Vladimir Zhirinovsky 

   or Alla Pugacheva 4%

 

support oil exports as Russia’s main 

form of participation in the 

international division of labor 73%

 

could name a significant 

government achievement 

in 2005 29%

...could name a 

   significant failure 48%

 

use the internet at least monthly 17%

   ...vs. January 2003 10%

 

regularly drink beer 50%

 

feel politicians 

   ...are generally dishonest 57%

   ...have too much power 52%

 

How Cold is Cold?

Dubbed “the world’s coldest run,” the 15th Annual Omsk Christmas Half Marathon was even colder than usual this year. Held on January 7, while Russia was enduring a deep cold spell, it attracted 396 dedicated souls, despite start-time temperatures of -25o C. Said a half-naked Valery Salnikov on a Russian TV broadcast, “Just look at the weather! You run and test yourself. We should celebrate Christmas in our natural state.” The mostly Russian crowd was joined by a handful of foreign runners as well, from Australia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Britain and Germany. This year’s winner was Denis Rychkov, of Sosnovo, Omsk region, with a time of 1:08:26, respectable in any weather. 

 

“Recently... more challenges to [Russia’s] national security have emerged... chief among them is interference in Russia’s internal affairs by foreign states – either directly or through structures that they support – and the attempts of some countries, coalitions, and extremist terrorist organizations to develop or gain access to weapons of mass destruction.”

Foreign Minister Sergei Ivanov (Wall Street Journal Europe)

 

“We did not pull this price out of our nose.”

Vladimir Putin, on the Ukrainian gas crisis (Moscow Times)

 

“The deployment of NATO military infrastructure and its military contingents is a subject of our most meticulous attention.”

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (Interfax)

 

“Those who dare to not pay their taxes will find scorched earth below them, and above them – my heel.”

Georgy Boos, governor of Kaliningrad region (Itogi) 

 

“A significant portion of Serpukhovites are these days saying ‘Serpukhov is the best city in the world.’ But sometimes they also add, ‘at least for Serpukhovites.’”

Pavel Zhdanov, mayor of Serpukhov (Itogi)

 

“‘Russia for the Russians’...[is a] road to nowhere.”

Vladislav Surkov, deputy head of the Presidential Administration (Vedomosti)

 

“To my regret, it has become a rule to scare ordinary citizens abroad with Russian spies, who have allegedly made inroads into all of the agencies. There have been instances of foreign counter-intelligence services deliberately exaggerating the Russian espionage threat to show their relevancy, enhance their staff or secure more funds.”

Sergei Lebedev, director, Foreign Intelligence Service (Interfax)

 

“What, do you imagine, could result from the merger of Russia and the U.S.? Well, traffic cops would definitely stop taking bribes.”

Andrey Vavilov, former first deputy minister of finance (Itogi)

 

 “The Metropolitan is not an underground. The Metropolitan is a way of life.”

Dmitry Gayev, head of the Moscow Metro (Itogi)

 

Dynamo clinches title 

Moscow’s Dynamo won the European Champions Cup – its first ever European hockey club title in their tenth attempt. In early January, after a five-round penalty shootout, Dynamo defeated the resilient Finnish club Kärpät 5-4 at St. Petersburg’s Ice Palace. Russian striker Maxim Sushinsky was named the MVP player of the tourney. 

Metallurg (Magnitogorsk) won the ECC two years running, in 1999 and 2000, before the event was set in wider format featuring the European champions. St. Petersburg agreed to host the tournament for three years. Last year the ECC title went to Avangard (Omsk). 

 

Canada thrashes Russia

Canada won the hockey World Junior Championship for the second straight year, trouncing Russia 5-0. Russia trailed early and could not overcome the Canadian team’s advantage in spirit and points. The only consolation in the loss was that Russia’s striker, Yevgeny Malkin (already eyed by NHL headhunters), was included in the symbolic World Team at the end of the tourney. 

Russia still on top

Russia grabbed all four golds at the Europeans Ice Skating Champion-ships in January, held in Lyon. 

In pairs, Tatyana Totmyanina and Maxim Marinin defended their European title, topping the standings with 195.87 points. Germany’s Alyona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy placed second and Russia’s Maria Petrova and Alexei Tikhonov grabbed the bronze. 

Irina Slutskaya made history by becoming the first woman to win seven titles, surpassing Sonia Henie (Norway) and Katarina Witt (Ger-many) who had each won six titles in their career. “Katarina Witt was for me always the best skater, and I never thought that I’d beat her record,” Slutskaya said. “I put my name into the history book, and I think that’s good.” 

In ice dancing, Tatyana Navka and Roman Kostomarov brought home the gold with their passionate Free Dance to Carmen, completing difficult lifts including a curve lift and a serpentine lift. However, on the last lift Navka did not grab her blade in the right place and cut her hand so badly she had to have stitches.  

In men’s singles, Yevgeny Plushenko defeated Stephane Lambiel (Switzerland) in a face-to-face duel to win his fifth European title. At the world event last March in Moscow, Plushenko had to withdraw due to a groin injury, helping Lambiel to win the gold. A confident Plushenko performed a nearly flawless free program, hitting a dizzying combination of a quadruple toeloop, then reeling off a triple Axel, triple toeloop, double loop combination to the crowd’s uproarious approval. Brian Joubert (France) took the bronze. 

 

Kamaz vs. the Sahara

The Russian Kamaz crew, headed by Vladimir Chagin, won January’s Lisbon-Dakar Rally in the truck class. It was Russia’s seventh win in the history of this marathon road race, which traverses the Sahara desert – more victories than any other team in the race. Chagin – nicknamed “tsar” by his fellow drives – won six starts, securing the team over three hours of lead time at the beginning of the race, which came in handy after some setbacks in Mauritania, where he twice fell victim to the “sand trap.”

 

Overchkin to stay

According to a ruling by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, Washington Capitals rookie Alexandr Ovechkin will stay in the NHL and not be forced to return to Russia to play for Dinamo (Moscow). The Russian club sought enforcement of a Russian arbitrators’ ruling that the team still owns the 20-year-old left wing. Ovechkin played for three years for Dinamo before moving to Avangard (Omsk). He opted out of his 2005-06 contract with Avangard to join the Capitals. At press time, Ovechkin was leading all rookies with 32 goals and 58 points.