Notebook

No April Fools’

On April 1, a group called the Workers-Peasants Red Army, which was the official name of the Bolshevik and Soviet army until 1946, has claimed responsibility for planting a bomb that destroyed Moscow’s only monument to Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II. The group called Nicholas the “bloody executioner of workers and peasants” and said the act was in ‘retaliation’ for proposals to move the preserved corpse of Vladimir Lenin out of its mausoleum on Red Square. The 11-meter high statue was erected last May near the Moscow suburb of Tayninskoye, to mark the 100th anniversary of Nicholas’ coronation.

Relieving News

The first of 400 coin-operated toilets has been installed on central Moscow’s Pushkin Square. The new, French-made toilets will cost two metro tokens per use – about 53 cents, and offer customers just seven minutes of use before the lights inside automatically turn off. The city plans to defray the cost of installing and maintaining the toilets by selling advertising space on their outer shells. A spokesman for the French-Swiss Lindon Company, which is financing the project, said the toilets were built to maintain an internal temperature of 16 de-grees Celsius and to continue operating even when outside temperatures drop as low as minus 35 C.

Peter’s Portrait

In March, the Russian Central Bank began issuing a new 500,000 ruble bill featuring Peter the Great and the city of Arkhangelsk. The bill’s front bears a likeness of Arkhangelsk’s monument to Peter the Great, and the reverse side is graced by the Solovetsky Monastery. The bills debuted on March 17th in the Far East, and were expected to reach Moscow by the end of the month. The note, which replaced about half of the current 100,000 ruble bills, offers better protection against counterfeiting, said the deputy chairman of the Russian Central Bank, Arnold Voilukov. Each bill will have a special dye that changes color depending on the angel of viewing, plus another 22 security measures. The decision to introduce the new notes is also due to an increase in the average Russian monthly salary, which topped 1.1 million rubles (about $200).

Sakharov’s Memoirs in Russian

Yelena Bonner, 74, the widow of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, announced the first publication in Russia of her husband’s memoirs, seven years after they were published in New York. Sakharov’s memoirs were written mostly during his seven-year exile in the city of Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod where he was exiled by the Soviet rulers for his opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The print-run is just 5.000 copies.