Notebook

Ghost Ship

Vessel disappears, returns;

journalist flees

The mysterious saga surrounding the disappearance of a Russian ship in August has sent the journalist who broke the story into exile abroad. The ship, Arctic Sea, was officially carrying timber, and vanished en route from Finland to Algeria. Contact with the vessel was lost, and it never reached its destination, leading Interpol to issue a hijacking alert. 

Defense Minister Anatoly Ser-dyukov said the ship was attacked by eight pirates, from Russia, Latvia, and Estonia. “We are not excluding the possibility that they could have been carrying more than just lumber,” said Alexander Bastrykin, a Russian official on the investigation team.

The cargo has been rumored to be everything from cruise missiles to drugs. One story suggested that the hijacking was staged by the Russian government itself. 

Mikhail Voytenko, a longtime seaman and the editor of Sovfrakht Marine Bulletin, which broke the story, wrote extensively on the ship’s disappearance. He expressed doubts about the official story, published an open plea from the crew’s relatives to the government, asking it to start searching for the vessel, and pleaded with journalists not to try to contact crew members after their return. In a series of interviews Voytenko gave by phone from Istanbul, he said someone in the government called and advised him to leave the country, because a criminal case had been opened against him.

 

Soviet Titan Dies

Poet, composer of anthems

outlives regime he praised

One of Russia’s most famous poets, Sergei Mikhalkov, died at 96 in September. The decorated cultural figure and the patriarch of the Mikhalkov family, which includes directors Nikita Mikhalkov and Andrei Konchalovsky, died of old age, the family said. 

Mikhalkov, who became famous for his children’s poetry (over 300 million copies of his books had been printed through 2008) is best known for his authorship of the Soviet anthem that replaced The Inter-nationale in 1944; the text was written by Mikhalkov and El Registan (real name Gabriel Ureklyan).* 

Mikhalkov was born into a Moscow noble family, and was criticized widely by other writers for his willingness to celebrate the Powers That Be in his work. A longtime chairman of the Soviet Writers Union, he was implicated in the smear campaigns against Boris Pasternak and other authors. 

Mikhalkov wrote dozens of plays and screenplays for movies and animated films. He rewrote the 1944 anthem in 1977 to glorify Lenin instead of Stalin, then did a second rewrite in 2000 that dropped proper names and focused on the country’s vast area and natural resources. The writer was buried at Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.

 

*1944 version of Soviet Anthem: 

Along the new path where great Lenin did lead.

Be true to the people, thus Stalin has reared us,

Inspire us to labor and valorous deed!

1977 Version:

Along the new path where great Lenin did lead.

To a righteous cause he raised up the peoples,  Inspired them to labor and valorous deed.

 

 

Bitter Ironies

Authorities know extremism

when they hear it

A human rights group in Novorossiysk has been accused of extremism for using the slogan “Freedom is not given, it is taken” at a rally. The phrase is a modification of a quote by Maxim Gorky, whose fictional character, the machinist Nil, said “Rights are not given, they are taken.” 

The group, Committee for Human Rights, was ordered disbanded by the regional prosecutor, and linguistic experts called the phrase “erroneous and harmful,” “serving the interests of those who want to destabilize Russia’s political system,” Vedomosti wrote. 

Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg, a court ruled that screaming “kill blacks” while beating up Caucasian nationals was neither extremist nor xenophobic. A linguist reviewing the case, in which 30 young men beat a school-boy nearly to death, concluded that the slogan could be used “ironically,” rather than xenophobically.

Russia’s law on extremism, passed in 2006, has, according to human rights organizations, become a tool to silence groups that freely express oppositionist political views or criticize the government. Activi-ties threatening Russian security, or actions stirring racial, religious, or nationalist hatred, can be classified as extremist and qualify as a criminal offense under current legislation.

Conde Nast Censors

NPR stirs up tempest

in KGB teapot

National Public Radio stirred headlines in the U.S. and Russia with allegations that GQ magazine pulled a feature about Vladimir Putin and his involvement in the 1999 apartment bombings from the magazine’s Russian edition. NPR cited a Conde Nast internal memo in which a lawyer wrote about the publisher’s decision that the article, “Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise to Power,” “should not be distributed in Russia.” 

Calling the involvement of security services in the bombings a “taboo topic,” the NPR story accused Conde Nast of kow-towing to Putin’s repressive regime and failing in its professional obligations. Gawker.com initiated an internet campaign to translate the piece, written by journalist Scott Ander-son, who traveled to Russia on assignment.

In Russia, however, few understand what the fuss is all about. Russia GQ Editor Nikolai Uskov wrote in his blog that he never considered publishing the piece in Russian in the first place, as there is “absolutely nothing new” in it. Spanning six pages of the magazine, the piece is based on an interview with former FSB officer Mikhail Trepashkin, polished with the reporter’s personal observations and visits to the sites where the bombings took place 10 years ago. 

Trepashkin has given numerous interviews to both Russian and English-language media. The involvement of the FSB in the bombings comprises a well-known conspiracy theory and is thoroughly explored in the book Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror, written by Alexander Litvinenko and Yury Felshtinsky and published in 2007 (2004 in Russian). The book’s Russian text is available on the internet.

 

Language Woes

Several grammar rules

loosened, liberalized 

With the start of a new school year this fall, Russians received a surprise gift from the Ministry of Education and Science: a set of new, official dictionaries determining rules of Russian language usage. 

The new language norms liberalize grammar rules somewhat, making colloquial preferences officially recognized. Кофе (kofe), the word for coffee, can now be used in the neuter case, a practice previously considered incorrect, as kofe is a masculine noun. In addition, the dictionary added Anglicisms such as “five-o-clock” to mean an afternoon snack, and expanded stress rules for words like dogovor (both first and last syllables can now be stressed), and yogurt. 

Although the changes were criticized by many as a “dumbing down” of the rules, they are not likely to change usage significantly, RIA Novosti reported. For example, news anchors on the First and Rossiya channels will continue to use “classic Russian language norms.”

 

Scientific Plea

Expat scientists decry

collapse of their field

Russian scientists living and working abroad wrote an open letter to Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, calling for an improvement in the catastrophic state of Russian fundamental science. 

Signed by 116 Russian scientists working in research centers and universities in the US, Canada, Great Britain, and numerous other countries, the letter says Russian science “continues to regress,” while “the scale and seriousness of the danger of this process are underestimated.”

 Among the problems exacerbating the process, the scientists wrote, are a lack of strategic planning and clear goals, inadequate funding, leading to a declining prestige for scientific fields, lowering educational standards, and Russian science being out of step with the global context. The letter calls for “immediate measures to avoid collapse of science in the country.” The letter can be found at:

hep.phys.soton.ac.uk/
~belyaev/open_letter

Programmers Recognized

Russia’s programmers will now have their own official holiday, thanks to a presidential decree to observe “Programmer Day” on September 13. In leap years, the date will be moved to September 12, so that the holiday always falls on the 256th day of the year, or 2 to the power of 8. 

 

Prison Synagogue

A prison colony in Arkhangelsk region has opened Russia’s first prison synagogue. Some 15 Jewish inmates in the institution, located in the village of Yertsevo, asked for a place to pray. According to Rabbi Aaron Gurevich, there are some 400 practicing Jews who are inmates in various Russian prisons. There are an estimated 1,100 religious congregations in the prison system, encompassing about 70,000 persons, 80 percent of whom are Orthodox, the Moscow Patriarchate said in 2007. The first prison church was opened in 1992, in a colony in Saratov region. In 2003, the same colony also opened the first prison mosque.

 

Born to Direct

As his latest eccentricity, Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev proposed that Aeroflot include his three-month old son on the company’s board of directors. In a “joke letter” to company management and the government, which controls the airline, Lebedev wrote that his opinion as a board member is never considered, so his place might as well be taken by his newborn son, Reuters reported. Lebedev’s displeasure comes from Aeroflot’s sponsorship of soccer clubs and the Sochi Olympics, as well as spending money on a new office in central Moscow. Lebedev owns 30 percent of
the airline.

 

Olympic Budget Soars

Russia will spend over one trillion rubles
($33 billion) on Olympic development in Sochi during 2009-2012, about R700 billion of which will come from the federal budget, the Regional Development Ministry estimated. The figure is about six times the original development plan created in 2007. The greatest chunk of spending, about R350 billion, is planned for next year.

 

Digital Pushkin

The Pushkin Museum has started a program to make digital copies of its vast collection. The museum has finished copying several collections of etchings, two of which are available online at www.russianprints.ru and www.britishprints.ru. In the future, all works at the Pushkin Museum will have a digital, online copies.

 

Authors Honored

Two Russians have been nominated for the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Children’s Literature Award. There are over 170 international finalists for the prize, including writer Yekaterina Murashova and illustrator Yevgeny Antonenkov. Murashova’s stories Klass Korrektsy and Gvardiya Trevogi are recipients of a Zavetnaya Mechta—a Russian prize for children’s books. Winners of the Astrid Lindgren Prize will be announced in March.

 

Luzhkov Sues

Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and his wife Yelena Baturina are separately suing Boris Nemtsov over a pamphlet that bitterly critiques Luzhkov’s 17-year reign in Moscow and accuses the couple of corruption. Nemtsov, a Yeltsin-era deputy prime-minister turned opposition politician, has published similar pamphlets on the Putin presidency, Gazprom, and the Sochi Olympics. In Luzhkov: Conclusions, he accused the mayor of using his office to propel his wife, head of development firm Inteko, to the top of the Forbes list of women billionaires. Meanwhile, political analysts are predicting Luzhkov’s imminent departure. The longtime mayor is 73 and is gradually becoming enveloped in media criticism. Nemtsov wrote on his blog that will be “glad” to meet the couple in court.

 

Russian Card Game

The Russian government wants to develop a competitor to Visa and MasterCard. The Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank are working on legislation to develop a national credit card system. Similar attempts fell through in 1993, 1994, and 2005. For the moment, 85 percent of bankcards in Russia are affiliated with global giants Visa and MasterCard, but there are a total of 20 smaller payment networks in Russia, Kommersant reported. MasterCard announced its willingness to participate in development of a national system, but did not qualify, as it is a foreign company.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Today we do not have an Iron Curtain, we have a newspaper curtain. American and Russian newspapers have created this new curtain, but there is no curtain between our poetry and literature.”

Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko (Russia Today)

“We will sort it out.
We understand one another. We are people of the same blood. We’ll sit down and sort it out, depending on the situation. We’ll decide between the two of us.”

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, on whether he or
President Dmitry Medvedev (both at left) will run
for the presidency in 2012. (Kommersant).

 

“In the southern region of the country, teachers are coerced to improve [students’] results on the Unified State Exam. As a result, Muscovites were not able to get into the universities they wanted.”

Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, demanding that non-Muscovites have their state exam results checked.
Russian universities use the exams as part of the application process.

 

“He was able to use his talent to the utmost for the development of Russian culture, no matter the regime—from Stalin to Medvedev.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky on the passing of composer Sergei Mikhalkov. (Interfax)

“So, we’re sitting in the studio. I don’t understand English, and he doesn’t know Russian. I ask the first question, about the missile defense system… and he responds with such a long, boring tirade... And, since there are cameras all around, I can’t signal him to cut it short, so I kick him under the table. He understands immediately, and wraps it up with one sentence. Ten minutes later, I ask him another question—slowly so that the translator has time—and I receive a return kick. Clinton’s kick landed on my shin, and I was limping for a month. He wore these nice sturdy shoes made from crocodile skin, but I was just wearing sandals—it was summer after all.”

Ekho Moskvy editor in chief Alexei Venediktov,
on interviewing Bill Clinton. (Russky Reporter)

 

“I keep thinking that someday there will be a new Khrushchev, who will deconstruct the present cult of personality. When that happens, the archives will be opened and the world will find out who killed whom, who kidnapped people, who sold weapons, and where the money flowed. Among other things, we may find out why Khodorkovsky went to prison.”

Lyudmila Ulitskaya, right, the third Russian writers to exchange
a long correspondence with jailed businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The interview is published in Russian on Radio Svoboda’s
website and in English on opendemocracy.net. 

“How is airtightness checked differently, in a Japanese car versus a Soviet car? In both cases, a cat is put inside the car. If, in the Japanese car, the cat dies overnight, it’s airtight. If, with the Soviet car, the cat fails to escape, that means it too is airtight.”

Vladimir Mau, rector of the Russian Academy
on the National Economy. (Itogi)

 

“People will survive, but not the oligarchs.”

Kremlin aide Arkady Dvorkovich,
on the aftermath of the
financial crisis in Russia. (Reuters)

 

Actor Lauded

Actress Ksenia Rappoport won the Best Actress award from the Venice Festival Jury for her role in the Italian film
La doppia ora, directed by Giuseppe Capotondi. 

In the movie, Rappoport plays a Slovenian hotel maid in Turin, where she is trying to find love before a tragedy turns the movie from a romance into one about “horror, mystery, psychodrama—and their required elements in rapid succession,” Variety wrote. 

Rappoport gained international recognition with her portrayal of a mysterious Russian woman in another Italian film, The Unknown Woman, where she befriends a wealthy Italian couple. The top Venice prize for a male performance went to Colin Firth, while the Golden Lion (best film award) was given to Lebanon, a debut film by Samuel Maoz, about Israel’s 1982 invasion of that country.

 

facts & figures

 

This year, after receiving permission from courts, Russian security services opened private correspondence 115,000 times, broke into 11,000 apartments, and tapped phones 64,000 times. Only 1% of court verdicts result in acquittals. 

 

In a recent international survey, 30% of expatriate executives picked Russia as the most desirable country in which to work—the top destination. Hong Kong was in second place with 27%, followed by Japan (26%). One-third of expat executives have salaries over $250,000, but pay relatively low Russian taxes. 

 

There are 1.5 – 4.2 million homeless persons in Russia, or 3% of the population. In Moscow, an estimated 100,000 persons are homeless. 

 

R230 billion ($7.6 billion) was spent on Russian infrastructure projects between 2006 and 2008. Meanwhile, construction prices have been increasing 25-40% per year. It now costs $12.9 million to build one kilometer of highway in Russia, which is 4.4 times as much as in China, and 3.5 times more than in Brazil. Russia spends five times more on repairing roads than building new ones. In 2008, 2300 kilometers of roads were built. 

 

The number of Russian students studying in foreign universities grew to 42,881 in 2007, up from 28,000 in 2000. Some 12,000, or 28%, studied in Germany, 4,900 in the US, 3,200 in France. Up to 5% of students in German universities are Russian. 

 

Wales Overcome

Former Spartak striker and current Tottenham star Roman Pavlyu-chenko netted a goal against Wales to secure Russia’s 3-1 victory at the September 2010 World Cup qualifier in Cardiff. Igor Semshov and Sergei Ignashevich (on a free kick) delivered Russia’s other two goals. This put Russia in second place in qualifying Group 4, trailing Germany by one point. 

Russia hosted Germany in Moscow on October 10, the winner to be ensured a berth in the finals, to be played in 2010 in South Africa. Russia lost the tough-fought match 1-0 and finished in second place in its group. Second-placed sides in each qualifying group will compete against each other for Johannesburg slots in knock-out qualifying matches.

 

Prokhorov Swishes

Russian oligarch Mikhail Pro-khorov has reached an agreement to buy 80 percent ownership in the NBA’s New Jersey Nets for $200 million. Under the terms of the agreement, Prokhorov’s company, Oneximbank, will also obtain 45 percent ownership in the development of Barclays’ Center (a new, 32,000-seat stadium in Brooklyn), plus an option to obtain a 20 percent development share in the Atlantic Yards. The deal is to be finalized in the first quarter of 2010, but must be approved by the NBA’s board of directors. 

The news sparked controversy in Russia. “I can’t call this act anything but absolutely unpatriotic,” said Aslambek Aslakhanov, a member of the Commission on Physical Culture and Sports in the Federation Council. “We too have talented children, but we don’t develop sports. Nor do I understand the position of Russia, which allows its citizens to buy foreign clubs for huge money.” (Oligarch Roman Abramovich bought the English soccer club Chelsea a few years ago.) 

Olympic pairs skating champion Anton Sikharulidze, now a Duma deputy, said “it would be much more efficient and useful if the money earned in Russia would also be spent here. All the more so that we face a sea of problems in sports, especially in youth sports.” 

Interestingly enough, Prokhorov said that buying the New Jersey Nets would help develop Russian basketball by using the Nets as a place for rising Russian stars to play professionally and for coaches to get internships. Russian players, he said, have to compete for the best spots in Russian clubs with scores of foreign legionnaires. 

Prokhorov—Russia’s richest man according to this year’s Forbes list—is a huge basketball fan, and, as a major shareholder in Norilsk Nickel, he funded the Euroleague champions CSKA Moscow before selling his stake in the metals giant last year.