News Items

Whose Icons?

Famous Rublyovs disputed

Experts at the Tretyakov Gallery have concluded that three famous icons in its collection, the so-called Zvenigorod Deesis, were not painted by Andrei Rublyov, as previously thought.

Based on a comparison with Rublyov’s Trinity and an analysis of the painting surface, the experts have preliminarily concluded that the three icons were not Rublyov’s work. According to Vedomosti, gallery director Zelfira Tregulova said the museum will not immediately change the attribution of one of its most famous pieces of medieval art, and will instead wait for the final publication of the finding at the end of this year.

The Zvenigorod icons were attributed to Rublyov in the 1920s by Russian painter and art restorer Igor Grabar.

Taxi Merger

Uber and Yandex come together

Global ride-hailing giant Uber has decided to retreat from Russia, ceding its business to Yandex, the Russian search engine that controls the popular Yandex.Taxi service.

Under the deal, Uber is to invest $225 million and receive a 36.6 percent stake in the new joint venture, valued at $3.73 billion, the two companies have announced. Yandex will invest $100 million and receive a 59.3 percent stake.

The new company has yet to be named and will be headed by current chief of Yandex.Taxi, Tigran Khudaverdyan. The new company will also operate in other former Soviet countries, including Georgia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

Tennis Pros

Doubling down at Wimbledon

Russians Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina took the women’s doubles crown at Wimbledon, beating Monica Niculescu and Hao-Ching Chen in a rare 6-0, 6-0 shutout in just 56 minutes of play. It was the Russian duo’s third Grand Slam title, after the French Open in 2013 and the US Open in 2014.

Pipeline Politics

Russian projects threatened by sanctions

Russia’s two massive new gas pipelines, Nord Stream 2 (beneath the Baltic Sea) and Turkish Stream (beneath the Black Sea), priced at €9.8 billion and €11.4 billion, respectively, are well underway, aiming to pump gas to northern and southern Europe as early as 2019. Yet new US economic sanctions could derail the projects, according to Russian giant Gazprom, which is building the lines.

The round of sanctions initiated by the US Senate in June also took aim at the pipelines. Nord Stream 2 is meant to double the capacity of the existing Nord Stream pipeline and funnel gas to Europe bypassing Ukraine. Germany, however, supports the project as a way to reach its goal of ending reliance on coal and nuclear power. Sanctions against pipeline projects could lead non-Russian contractors, such as the companies laying the energy link in the Baltic and Black seas, to pull out, risking an indefinite halt to the projects.

Tropical Siberia

Climate changing in frosty Russia

As climate change displaces people in other parts of the world due to coastal floods, hurricanes, and wildfires, Siberia could become an attractive refuge.

Researchers from the Institute of Forestry in the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Branch say that, by the 2080s, Siberia (research focused on the area between the Urals and the Pacific coast) will have a milder climate and allow for increased crop production. Temperatures could rise as much as 9.1 degrees Celsius in midwinter, while precipitation may increase by up to 140 millimeters in the summer.

An increase in population, however, would require development of infrastructure, and any existing infrastructure would be threatened by the thawing permafrost and consequent destabilization of the top layers of soil and sediment.

Loving It

Zvyagintsev tours film fests

Andrei Zvyagintsev’s new film Loveless (Nelyubov, see PostScript, Russian Life July/August), about a couple going through a divorce who search for their missing son, was the only Russian film to be nominated for the coveted Palme d’Or this year. Though the movie did not receive the prize, it received the Grand Prix award in Cannes – the second most prestigious award – and was named Best Film at the Munich Film Festival.

Loveless is a beautifully-shot drama about two estranged adults who get involved in other relationships, while tragically neglecting their young son. It is a characteristically bleak look at Russian society by the director of the acclaimed films Leviathan and Elena.

Departures

Alexei Batalov, a Soviet actor most famous for his role in the Oscar-winning film Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, has passed away at 88.

Born in Vladimir in 1928, Batalov began acting during the war, in a theater his mother organized while evacuated to Tatarstan. He worked in the Soviet Army Theater and the Moscow Art Theater (aka MKhAT) but began concentrating on film in the 1950s and gained fame after the war drama The Cranes Are Flying, which received the Palme d’Or in Cannes. He effectively retired from acting in the 1980s, then taught at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography.

Soviet writer Daniil Granin has died at the age of 98.

Granin, born near Kursk with the last name German, to a forester father and homemaker mother, was educated as an electrical engineer and was working at the machine-building Kirov Plant in Leningrad when WWII broke out in Russia.

When he began publishing stories after the war, he changed his name to Granin, at the request of fellow writer Yury German. Many of Granin’s works were inspired by his engineering career. He became widely known after the publication of his novel Iskateli (Seekers), about Soviet inventors struggling to advance their work in the face of an intransigent state bureaucracy. International recognition came after the publication of A Book of the Blockade, which he wrote with Belarusian author Ales Adamovich, based on people’s accounts of the Siege of Leningrad.

Russian artist Ilya Glazunov, known for his giant paintings on historical and religious themes, has passed away at the age of 87. Glazunov, a native of St. Petersburg, lost most of his family to the Siege of Leningrad (he himself had been relocated to a village near Veliky Novgorod). After the war he enrolled in the Repin Institute of Art.

Although he was supported for many years by influential Soviet poet Sergei Mikhalkov and painted portraits of the Soviet and global elite, Glazunov clashed with Soviet authorities over his art, and some of his exhibits were shut down.

During the post-Soviet era, Glazunov, a monarchist who publicly opposed democracy, began to be embraced by the state. He endorsed Putin ahead of the 2012 election.

Glazunov’s epic canvasses include Eternal Russia and Awake, Russia!

The internet pioneer who launched many of Russia’s first news websites, Anton Nossik, has died suddenly of a heart attack. He was 51.

Nossik was one of Russia’s first bloggers and was at the core of the country’s vibrant early Livejournal community, frequently commenting on current events and sometimes enraging his audience. He founded several influential online news websites, including Newsru.com, Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru, and was often called the “godfather of the Russian internet.”