1. society
2. welfare
3. healthcare
4. hospital

nO. 2 (1743)
санкт-петербург-таймс
In the Name of Jesus
w w w. s pt i m e s. ru
wed n es day, ja n ua ry 2 3 , 2013
alexander belenky / spt
A man climbs out of the water from a hole cut into the ice in the shape of a cross in the village of Tyarlevo in the Pavlovsk Park on Saturday night. The
temperature was minus 20 degrees Celsius. Russians across the country take the plunge every year to celebrate the Orthodox holiday of Epiphany.
arts & culture
Catching Up With
Pussy Riot
Freed group member Yekaterina
Samutsevich talks about the
past year and what the future
holds for Pussy Riot. Page 7.
local news
Hospital Plans
Cause Outcry
Children’s hospital may be
moved for judges. Page 2.
Please contact us at
997 1257
www.atlanticschool.ru
LocalNews
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 ❖ 2
City Duma Rejects Call
For Ban on Assemblies
By Sergey Chernov
T he S t. P etersburg T imes
alexander belenky / spt
The department of presidential affairs wants City Hospital No. 31 (above) to give up its premises to the court judges.
Hospital Plans Cause Outrage
By Irina Titova
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U R G T I M E S
More than 85,000 people have already
signed a petition addressed to President Vladimir Putin to defend St. Petersburg’s City Hospital No. 31, which
is under threat of relocation. The hospital, one of the city’s most successful
clinics in the treatment of child cancer,
is currently in danger of being designated as a medical center for the judges
of the country’s federal Arbitration and
Supreme Courts, which are due to
move to the city from Moscow during
the next few years.
The list of those who have signed
the petition includes not only medical
personnel at the hospital and the desperate parents of young cancer patients, but also well-known figures from
the worlds of art and science, as well as
ordinary Russian citizens.
The list included Zhores Alfyorov,
winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics;
actors Oleg Basilashvili, Liya Akhedzhakova and Yelizaveta Boyarskaya;
actress and children’s charity leader
Chulpan Khamatova, international
award-winning film director Alexander
Sokurov; musician Andrei Makarevich;
writers Daniil Granin and Lev Lurye
and other prominent figures.
The petition has attracted numerous supporters on Facebook and other
social networks through the website of
www.change.org, with many also leaving heartbreaking comments.
Maria Sautkina, the mother of one
of the hospital’s patients, said the clinic
“had the best doctors and equipment,
which have saved the life of my child.”
“Only here can my son have annual
examinations to prevent the return of
his illness,” Sautkina said.
Irina Stelmakhova, another supporter of the petition, said there could
be “no objective reason to stop the
work of the hospital, which is of vital
importance for sick children.”
“The people who are making the
decision should realize that the dissolution of the hospital may turn out to be
a death sentence for some kids. Sirs,
you are not beasts, are you?” Stelmakhova wrote in her comment.
The city’s main oncologist Yury Punanov also disagreed with the idea of
moving the hospital. Punanov has written an official statement saying that the
hospital should stay on its own premises,
Fontanka.ru news website reported.
The Russian Orthodox Church also
spoke up in defense of the hospital.
Vladimir Legoida, head of the Synod’s information department, said that
although the purpose of providing
medical help to the judges was “understandable,” for “they like all other
people need medical service,” the
“treatment of one [group of] people
can’t be done at the expense of other
people — especially when we are
speaking about children. Our future
depends on how we treat children today,” Legoida said on the church’s website Patriarchia.ru, adding that in any
society it is difficult to find any other
more simple and clear moral priority
than the interests of a sick child.
“I believe the community of judges
in Russia, which has many worthy people, will consider it morally unacceptable to get medical help if there is the
tiniest threat that because of it, children with cancer may suffer,” Legoida
said.
On Jan. 20, about 300 people gathered in front of the hospital to demand
the resignation of St. Petersburg Deputy Governor Olga Kazanskaya, deputy governor for social issues, and to
request the cancelation of the courts’
planned move to St. Petersburg. More
meetings in support of the hospital
were held in the city last week.
In November, President Vladimir
Putin approved a proposal to move the
Supreme Court and the Supreme Arbitration Court from Moscow to St.
Petersburg at a cost of more than 50
billion rubles ($1.5 billion). The process could take between 24 and 30
months, a senior official said at the
time.
In December, a working group
aimed at facilitating the move of the
courts from Moscow to St. Petersburg
made the decision to set up medical facilities for the judges in City Hospital
No. 31. Vladimir Kozhin, head of the
department of presidential affairs, ordered the city authorities and the country’s Health Ministry to move the hospital’s personnel and equipment to another hospital. No alternative options
were suggested in the protocol.
The final decision on which medical center will be chosen to provide
medical assistance to the judges is to
be announced in February, Interfax
reported, referring to Valery Kolabutin, head of St. Petersburg Health
Committee.
Kolabutin said the idea of setting up
a medical center for judges in City Hospital No. 31 was suggested as one of the
possible options, adding that the relocation of only a part of the hospital’s
department would cost about 350 to
400 million rubles ($11.6-$13.2 million).
The move would take two or three
years, he said.
Yelena Grachyova, coordinator of
the charity foundation AdVita, which
helps children and adults suffering
from cancer, said there were only two
ways to resolve the problem: “Either to
leave the hospital alone or first build a
brand new complex for it and only then
allow the clinic for judges to move in.”
The hospital, located in a quiet area
of the city’s prestigious Krestovsky Island district, has a unique child and
adult oncohematology department, as
well as departments for bone-marrow
transplants, cardiology and kidney
transplants. The hospital provides the
combined services of chemotherapists,
surgeons and emergency physicians,
and has a center for radiation therapy
nearby, which is convenient for sick
children, as it saves them from having
to put their health at risk by traveling
around the city in order to have the
treatment, Grachyova was cited by
MedPortal.ru as saying.
Grachyova said moving the hospital
had “neither economic, nor medical,
nor ethical grounds.”
“Until at least one reason for the
move is given, the matter should not
even be discussed,” she was quoted by
Interfax as saying.
On Jan. 16, a group of deputies from
the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly sent a repeat request to City Governor Georgy Poltavchenko enquiring
about the future of the hospital.
Poltavchenko answered that “Hospital No. 31 is being considered as one
of the options for the location of the
medical department to serve the upper
court bodies in future.” He added,
however, that “no action was being
taken on moving the hospital at the
moment.”
“Such action will begin only after a
final, balanced decision that does not
discriminate [against] anyone’s interests has been made. All the discussions
that are being held now can be called
speculative,” Poltavchenko said in his
answer, RIA Novosti reported.
On Wednesday, Jan. 23, supporters
of the hospital will gather on the city’s
Field of Mars at 6 p.m. for another rally
that has been approved by the city administration.
One-man pickets, which need no
authorization from City Hall, are being
held in support of the hospital every
day through Jan. 25 from 5 p.m. to 7
p.m. near the Ploshchad Vosstaniya,
Gostiny Dvor, Admiralteiskaya and
Nevsky Prospekt metro stations, the
authors of the petition said. Points for
gathering signatures have also been set
up in several places.
In a surprise move, the St. Petersburg
Legislative Assembly last week refused
to consider a controversial bill on
amendments to the law on public assemblies that would effectively ban any
protests in most of the city, including
bedroom communities.
Backed by City Hall and proKremlin party deputies, the proposed
law would ban public assemblies on
Palace Square, St. Isaac’s Square and
Nevsky Prospekt. Rallies would also
be banned within 200 meters from
state administration buildings, state
educational and health institutions,
railway stations and platforms, bus
and boat stations and airports, as well
as within 100 meters from metro stations and adjacent territory.
The bill on assemblies was drawn
up by United Russia deputy Vitaly Milonov and submitted to the Legislative
Assembly by City Governor Georgy
Poltavchenko.
The assembly’s refusal to consider
the bill caused a stir in the local media,
because previously any bills proposed
or supported by the authorities — including Milonov’s infamous “gay propaganda” ban — had all been passed by
the Legislative Assembly indivertibly.
The Yabloko Democratic Party, A
Just Russia and Communist Party deputies voted against the inclusion of the
bill on the assembly’s agenda, while
pro-Kremlin parties United Russia and
the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR)
backed it, with the exception of two
deputies.
Alexander Kobrinsky, a Yabloko
deputy and member of the Legislative
Assembly’s Legislation Committee, believes that the authorities will attempt
to push the amendments through again
at a future session.
“But we made it quite clear that we
don’t want to adopt it in its current
form,” Kobrinsky said Tuesday.
“We received unexpected support
from two members of the ruling coalition — United Russia and the LDPR
— who realize that they will have to
answer to their voters, because this law
would drastically worsen things for citizens. They won’t even be able to gather
to discuss problems of their district or
courtyard, and I hope that the governor has enough common sense not to
submit it in such a form again.”
I N
Kobrinsky said that no march or
rally would be possible in the city if the
law is adopted.
“We’ll be left with nothing more
than one-man pickets; you’ll be allowed to stand with a poster, and that’s
all,” he said.
However, the lack of a new, harsher
law did not prevent the authorities
from refusing to authorize rallies or
close down public assemblies.
The attempt to introduce the bill
was taken soon after the police dispersed a group of teenagers who gathered for a snowball fight on the Field of
Mars, arresting two for taking part in
an “unauthorized assembly.”
Called “Snow Battle” and held annually, the snowball fight was organized
via social networking sites and drew
several dozen to the open space on Jan.
7. A video of the incident shows a police officer speaking into a megaphone
to warn the teenagers that they are
“committing mass presence and mass
movement of citizens, qualified as a violation of public order.”
The teenagers, some of who were
holding snowballs, reacted with surprise and giggles. Two 18-year-olds,
Andrei Veselov and Valery Okunev,
were detained and face hefty fines.
Their cases are reportedly due to be
heard in court later this month.
The right of freedom of assembly
is the focus of Strategy 31, a campaign
of peaceful gatherings in defense
of this constitutional right held regularly across Russia, including in St.
Petersburg.
The most recent local Strategy 31
rally held near Gostiny Dvor metro on
Nevsky Prospekt on Dec. 31 was broken up as soon as protesters raised a
banner reading “Freedom of Assembly; Always and Everywhere.”
Nine activists were arrested and after being held for up to two nights in a
police precinct, most of them were
fined from 10,000 to 20,000 rubles
($330-$660) for participating in an unauthorized rally and 500 to 1,000 rubles
($17-$33) for alleged failure to obey a
police officer’s orders.
The demonstrators said they were
acting in defense of the constitution,
as arrests and refusals to authorize
rallies violate both the constitution
and the European Convention on
Human Rights, which is ratified by
the Russian Federation.
B R I E F
Yabloko Seeks Growth
Illegal Landfill Found
■ ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Fortyfour people have annulled their membership of the St. Petersburg branch of
the Yabloko Democratic Party, Interfax reported, citing information from
former Yabloko member Vitaly
Shtager. The news agency did not say
during what period of time the annulments had taken place.
In the middle of January, Shtager
announced that he had left the party
along with 11 other people. The group
of former Yabloko members also suggested that other members unhappy
with the party’s current situation should
also consider leaving.
Grigory Yavlinsky, head of the party
in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, said that Yabloko could soon
see a potential increase of 150 percent
— more than 600 people — in membership in the city as new members join
the party.
According to the latest statistics, the
St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko consists of 400 members.
■ ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A
large illegal landfill site has been discovered near the construction site of
the General Motors plant in the village of Shushary to the south of the
city, Interfax reported, citing the city
police.
Construction waste had been taken
to the landfill using heavy vehicles, and
the city police have already detained
several dozen trucks involved in the
dumping, the news agency reported.
The vehicles used had come from the
nearby GM construction site, Fontanka.ru reported.
A criminal case into violation of the
rules for the treatment of ecologically
dangerous substances and waste has
been launched.
GM launched its plant in St. Petersburg in 2008. It produces models including the Chevrolet Cruze and Opel Astra. By 2015, GM plans to expand the
capacity of the plant to 230,000 cars a
year. The current capacity is 98,000 cars
a year.
NationalNews
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 ❖ 3
Netherlands Implicated In
Suicide of Russian Activist
By Nikolaus von Twickel
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U RG T I M E S
MOSCOW — Friends and lawyers over
the weekend accused the Netherlands
of complicity in the suicide of opposition
activist Alexander Dolmatov in a Dutch
extradition center.
Dolmatov, a member of radical writer
Eduard Limonov’s Other Russia movement, was found dead in his cell early
Thursday in an extradition center in the
port city of Rotterdam. He had fled to
the Netherlands last summer to seek political asylum after being sought by police in connection with the violence during a May 6 protest against President
Vladimir Putin’s inauguration.
His lawyer Yevgeny Arkhipov accused Dutch authorities of grave rights
violations. He explained in a telephone
interview Sunday that Dolmatov had
been sent to the extradition center even
though he had appealed an earlier decision to deny him asylum. Also, he said,
authorities had notified nobody about
two earlier attempts by his client to kill
himself.
“He has become the victim of good
relations with Russia,” Arkhipov said.
He added that Dutch authorities had
not told him any details about the circumstances of the suicide. National media reports suggested that Dolmatov
had cut his wrists.
Arkhipov confirmed that Dolmatov
had been denied asylum in mid-December. The complaint was filed together
with a Dutch lawyer, Marq Wijngaarden,
on Jan. 11. Wijngaarden told Gazeta.ru
that the authorities had no right to send
him to the extradition center.
Dutch officials insisted that the reason
for the suicide was personal. They based
their statement on a letter that they say
was found with Dolmatov’s body.
“This letter is evidence that he killed
himself not because of his asylum case,”
said Onno Elderenbosch, deputy head of
the Dutch Embassy in Moscow.
Elderenbosch added that the letter
was addressed to Dolmatov’s mother
and that its contents would not be
made public because it was personal.
However, national media published
the letter over the weekend. The
handwritten note to his mother begins
with the words, “Mom, I am leaving so
I do not return a traitor and disgrace
us all.”
Arkhipov said the letter clearly
showed that Dolmatov killed himself because of his asylum case. “Obviously, he
wrote it under severe pressure,” he said.
He dismissed media reports that suggested Dutch authorities had pressured
Dolmatov to disclose military secrets.
Dolmatov had worked as a constructor
in a rocket factory near Moscow. Dolmatov told The St. Petersburg Times in
an interview in July that he had not had
access to top-secret information.
Arkhipov did, however, say that Russian special services had pressured his
client. “He had told me that he got
threatening phone calls from the Federal Security Service,” he said.
Denis Solopov, a friend of Dolmatov who lives in the Netherlands,
echoed Arkhipov’s comments. “One
hundred percent, the suicide was not a
personal thing,” he said by telephone
from Amsterdam.
He said he and family members had
been unable to contact Dolmatov since
December, when he stopped answering
his cell phone. “He simply vanished,”
Solopov said, suggesting that Dolmatov
had suffered from depression.
The Dutch Justice Ministry, which
oversees refugee affairs, said in an email Friday that Minister Ivo Opstelten
would order an investigation into the
circumstances of the death.
Dolmatov said in the interview in July
that he feared that he would be punished
disproportionately because he had
worked in a high-security rocket factory.
A laser engineer who worked in production allocation, Dolmatov said he was
fired from the factory in Korolyov in May
because of his political activities.
He hoped to follow the example of
Solopov, an environmental activist, who
received refugee status in the Netherlands in 2011 for being prosecuted for a
2010 attack on an administration building in the Moscow suburb of Khimki.
Solopov told The St. Petersburg
Times that he knows at least three other
opposition activists who have applied
for asylum in the Netherlands after being targeted by investigators for the May
6 protests. Their cases are pending, he
said.
denis grishkin / vedomosti
Russia’s demographic problems mean that it is vital to attract more immigrants in order to bolster the country’s workforce.
FMS Backs More Immigration
By Nikolaus von Twickel
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U R G T I M E S
MOSCOW — Russia urgently needs to
attract immigrants over the coming
years to avoid labor shortages, the
country’s top migration officer said
Monday.
“Even if we manage to stabilize or
increase the population by raising the
birth rate, the only source for increasing
the labor force for the coming 15 to 20
years will be migration,” Federal Migration Service head Konstantin Romodanovsky told Interfax in an interview.
Romodanovsky said that the Kremlin had ordered him to keep migration
stable at about 300,000 people per year
and that this number should include
ethnic Russians from abroad, highly
qualified foreign specialists and promising youths.
The figure of 300,000 immigrants
was formulated by Vladimir Putin in a
programmatic newspaper article in his
presidential campaign one year ago.
Critics have voiced serious doubts about
its feasibility, arguing that the government’s past attempts to lure Russian
speakers and qualified migrants to the
country have seen little success.
Romodanovsky warned that according to official data, the country’s population is expected to fall from the current
143 million to 139.3 million by 2030. “It
is problematic to refuse to attract foreign workers and to focus exclusively on
your own labor resources when those
are strongly declining,” he said.
However, the migration chief said
he supports recent bills intended to
tighten sanctions against illegal migrants. “They don’t pay taxes, they live
in shacks, hang around on the streets.
… It is time to put an end to this,” he
was quoted as saying.
Romodanovsky suggested that a
large share of the 3 million Uzbeks and
Tajiks working in the country are illegals. A law Putin signed on Dec. 30 introduced criminal charges and drastically increases fines for violations of
registration rules.
National media have described the
law as directed against “elastic apartments,” fake addresses at which hundreds and even thousands of migrant
workers are registered. Critics have
called the law a populist gesture that
will bolster anti-immigration sentiment in the country.
Russian law stipulates that foreigners inform the migration service of
their whereabouts when they stay longer than seven working days in the
country. According to rules reinstated
in 2011, this can also be a company address for foreign employees. The law
also requires Russian citizens to register any given home address three
months after they move there.
Experts said that while recent reforms have greatly eased the country’s
registration system, illegal registration documents are still widespread,
especially because many employers
require local registration as a hiring
requirement.
“What might be easy on paper is often cumbersome in practice,” said
Pavel Chikov, head of the Agora human rights organization. He pointed
out that the rules stipulate a landlord’s
consent and sometimes require the
landlord to be present for the registration process, which typically involves
standing in long lines.
Chikov predicted that the stricter
rules would only increase corruption.
“Higher fines will mean higher bribes,”
he said.
NTV Documentary Alleges Campaign Against Church Diva’s Voice
By Jonathan Earle
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U R G T I M E S
MOSCOW — State-controlled NTV
television Sunday aired its latest documentary-style film targeting prominent
opposition figures, this time for allegedly being part of an organized information campaign to discredit the Russian Orthodox Church.
The film, “I Don’t Believe It,” accuses popular blogger Rustam Adagamov — a member of the opposition
Coordination Council — TV hosts
Leonid Parfyonov and Vladimir
Pozner, and others of links to an anti-
clerical campaign partly run out of
Ukraine.
Ukrainian feminist group Femen,
known for staging topless protests, and
the punk band Pussy Riot are portrayed as among the most infamous
manifestations of the campaign.
Other participants in the effort, primarily bloggers and journalists, receive
payouts in exchange for negative coverage of the church, the program alleges, and others come across as repulsive people.
Adagamov, for example, is said to
be willing to accept 150,000 rubles
($5,000) for a blog post, and the show
repeats allegations recently made by
his ex-wife that he is a pedophile.
The blogger responded by saying
that he was proud to be grouped with
Pozner and controversial curator
Marat Gelman, and criticized NTV for
failing to mention his pro-Church activities.
“Where’s the part about how I used
my blog to help Father Vladislav from
Belgorod, who had adopted an orphan,
raise money for a new house?” Adagamov wrote on his Facebook page, adding that the film was a “piece of crap.”
Parfyonov, a former host on NTV,
directed his anger at filmmaker Boris
Korchenikov, a journalist and actor best
known for his role in “Kadety,” a television drama about military cadets.
“What is this shoddy, pompous heap
of nonsense? Do you think Orthodox
patriotism atones for the sin of wretched
journalism?” Parfyonov wrote on his
Live Journal blog.
Church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin defended the film, saying it accurately reflected the general public’s
mood, not including certain urban
“cliques,” RIA-Novosti reported.
Endangered Bison Overdosed on Speed, Says Forensic Study
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U R G T I M E S
MOSCOW — A European bison, whose
sudden death at a Moscow region nature
reserve earlier this month sparked outrage among conservationists, died not of
food poisoning, but of an overdose of
speed, according to a forensic study,
RIA-Novosti reported.
The bizarre death of Shponti, a
mating bull imported from Germany
to boost Russia’s breeding program,
was initially chalked up to rotten
fruits.But an independent study revealed that the 1,300 kilogram animal
had elevated levels of amphetamines
in his kidneys, enough to cause cardiac
arrest.
It was not immediately clear how
Shponti could have ingested the powerful drug.
The Priosko-Terrasny reserve has
been at the center of efforts to save the
European bison since Soviet times, but
has been scandalized in recent years by
apparently open warfare between employees and the park’s management.
An earlier statement on the reserve’s website, which appeared to
have been written by disgruntled employees, said KaMaZ trucks dumped
several crates of rotten mandarins and
tomatoes in the bison enclosure sometime before the New Year. The state-
ment laid the blame for Shponti’s death
squarely on the park’s director.
Three bison have died at the reserve
in murky circumstances in recent
months. A female bison, Madonna, perished on Jan. 7, the same day as Shponti,
and an eight-year-old breeding bull
named Multon was euthanized in October after he apparently broke his jaw.
The results of an official inquiry into
the deaths are expected in February.
Is ‘Too High’
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U RG T I M E S
MOSCOW — One of the hardest things
for an opera reviewer to do is to describe the lead singer’s voice. The reviewer could list off notes or compare
the voice to that of a bird.
Polish soprano Katarzyna Dondalska
reached a new milestone that reviewers
can use to quantify her singing capacity.
Her voice reaches high enough to damage the loudspeakers in Moscow’s metro.
Dondalska will be in Moscow on Jan.
25 to perform with the Morphing Vienna Chamber Orchestra at the Viennesse Strauss Gala 2013.
The concert’s organizers wanted to
submit ads to play while people are riding the metro’s escalators, but some of
the notes turned out to be too high and
potentially damaging to the audio systems. In the end, the organizers had to
choose another sound clip for the ad.
The Vienna-based chamber orchestra is returning to the city for the second
time with a number of classical compositions from the repertoires of renowned
world composers, including Johann
Strauss and Wolfgang Mozart.
4 ❖ Wednesday, January 23, 2013
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The St. Petersburg Times
Activists Urged to Become Elections Officials
By Jonathan Earle
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U R G T I M ES
MOSCOW — A presidential election
in Russia isn’t scheduled for another
five years, but the people who will run
the polling stations and count the ballots are already being selected.
Regional elections officials have until April 30 to form more than 90,000
local elections commissions nationwide
— one for every polling station —
whose members will serve five-year
terms under a new law that elections
watchdogs said is designed to protect
the ruling party.
Given widespread allegations of
fraud during State Duma elections in
December 2011, often involving local
elections officials, they say it is critical
that independent activists committed
to fair elections find their way onto local commissions.
Even one honest commission member is enough to “jam the vote-rigging
machine,” said Roman Udot, head of
monitoring at Golos, a nongovernmental elections watchdog.
Golos is one of several groups that
have recruited thousands of volunteers
to serve on the commissions, which
have traditionally consisted of state
employees and members of government-friendly civic groups handpicked
for their loyalty, not for their democratic scruples, Udot said.
The new recruits, energized by the
past year’s pro-democracy movement,
which the 2011 election scandal helped
to spark, will be placed on commissions mainly via the Communist Party
and A Just Russia, parliamentary parties with the right to one spot on each
commission.
As commission members, they’ll
have access to voting documents as
well as more clout than an observer, a
significant number of whom said they
were shooed away from polling stations during the Duma elections.
They can also influence other commission members, refuse to certify
election results and offer dissenting
opinions that can be used to challenge
vote tallies.
Due to the new five-year rule, commissions chosen in the next few months
will administer Duma elections in 2016,
the presidential election in 2018, and
gubernatorial and other local races.
Close attention will likely be paid to
city legislative and mayoral elections in
Moscow, expected next year and in 2015,
respectively, given the particularly fervent opposition activism in the capital.
Georgy Alburov, of the opposition
election-monitoring group Rosvybory,
said he expects enough volunteers to
cover every one of Moscow’s 3,400
voting stations.
“Recruitment is going well,” he said.
“It’s picking up as the late-January
deadline approaches. People are waking up and are ready to register.”
Alburov, a member of the opposition
Coordination Council, is also a close
ally of Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny.
To dissuade newcomers, elections officials began accepting applications over
the long winter holidays, when many
Russians travel or relax, Alburov said.
The window for applicants in the Samara region, for example, was from
mid-December to mid-January, closing
before Russians returned to work.
Recruitment appears to be going
less well outside Moscow and other major cities, with even major parties saying
they likely won’t be able to cover many
polling stations.
The Communist Party will recruit
enough people to cover only 75 percent
of commissions nationwide and only 20
to 30 percent in regional centers and
villages, said Vadim Solovyov, a senior
alexandra astakhova / vedomosti
Watchdogs say it’s vital that independent activists committed to fair elections find their way onto local commissions.
party official, Kommersant reported
last week.
A Just Russia’s Mikhail Yemelyanov
was more optimistic, telling the newspaper that his party will cover all local
commissions, excluding those in several
regions, including the North Caucasus.
Incidentally, the ruling United Russia
party’s overwhelming victory in several
regions in the North Caucasus — it officially won more than 99 percent of the
vote in Chechnya, for instance — raised
eyebrows and sparked local protests.
“People are afraid that the commission will be a lot of work, although in
reality, commissions are only active just
before elections,” Ilya Mishchenko,
head of training at vote monitor Citizen
Observer said, explaining the choice ofsome activists not to volunteer.
More than 1 million people will be
selected to serve on the commissions,
whose average size is about 12 members,
from a pool of nominees submitted by
parties and local administrations.
Dozens of political parties that registered in the wake of last year’s political
reforms, which made it easier to create
new parties, are not entitled to place
representatives on the commissions.
Video clips purportedly showing local elections officials committing infractions ranging from minor violations
on tally sheets to outright vote-rigging,
caused outrage during and after Duma
elections in December 2011.
A recent study by U.S. and Russian
academics published in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, a
U.S. academic journal, concluded that
United Russia’s official results in Moscow, 47 percent, were 11 percentage
points higher than its actual haul.
Ultimately, the stated goal of Golos,
Rosvybory and other recruiters is to
instill integrity in the electoral process.
“For the time being, our task is to, at
the very least, weaken the wave of falsifications, when people have become so
unused to the idea that they can choose
something that they A) don’t vote, B)
don’t run for office and C) don’t donate
money to political campaigns,” Udot
said.
Zhirinovsky Wants Fines
For Using Foreign Words
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U R G T I M ES
MOSCOW — The leader of the Liberal
Democratic Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky,
said his party is preparing legislation
that would impose fines on officials who
use foreign words at work when there is
a Russian equivalent.
“The Russian language must be
freed from trash and foreign words,”
Zhirinovsky told journalists, Interfax
reported.
The legislation also stipulates dismissal from one’s job in certain cases.
He said lawyers are currently examining the bill, after which it will be submitted to the State Duma for consideration by lawmakers.
When asked what sanctions would
be imposed on officials who violate the
rules set out in the bill, Zhirinovsky
said: “Fines and dismissal from your
job — they’re obliged to adhere to the
norms of the Russian language.”
“Why say ‘dealer’ when there is
‘posrednik,’ or ‘performance’ instead of
‘predstavleniya’ — soon they’ll even
force us to use English pronunciation,”
he said.
It was unclear Tuesday whether the
legislation would also apply to other
workers in the public sphere.
Zhirinovsky’s proposal is the latest
in a series of moves taken by the Duma
in recent months to extirpate foreign
influence.
The so-called “Anti-Magnitsky
Law” passed late last year bans adoptions of Russian orphans by U.S. families, and a law passed earlier last year
requires nongovernmental organizations that conduct “political activity”
and receive foreign funding to register
as “foreign agents.”
A proposal has also been put forward to ban officials from owning
property abroad or sending their children to study in foreign countries.
Lawmakers have taken on less politically charged areas of foreign influence as well. Duma Deputy Sergei
Zheleznyak of United Russia called for
movie theaters that show foreign films
to face a tax that all other movie theaters would be exempt from. That same
bill also called for a quota on foreign
films.
Filin Awaits More Surgery
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U R G T I M ES
MOSCOW — Bolshoi Theater artistic
director Sergei Filin will undergo two
more surgeries after an unknown attacker splashed his face with sulfuric
acid last week, doctors said Monday.
On Tuesday, Filin will have some areas of skin replaced. They were severely
damaged in the attack. On Wednesday,
he will undergo a second eye surgery,
doctors said, Interfax reported.
But Filin’s eyesight will not return
completely for at least six months, a
theater spokeswoman told Komsomolskaya Pravda on Friday. The theater’s supervisory board will send Filin
for rehabilitation to a foreign clinic,
probably in Germany or Israel, she
said.
Filin, 42, said he was certain that the
attack was linked to his work, and police have tentatively agreed.
Business
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 ❖ 5
MICEX Shuns Foreign
Stock Markets With IPO
By Howard Amos
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U R G T I M E S
MOSCOW — The Moscow Exchange
announced Monday that it will shun
the foreign stock markets traditionally tapped by Russian companies
and go ahead with an initial public
offering on its own Russian trading
platforms.
The size of the stake in the unified
exchange being offered to foreign and
domestic investors was not disclosed,
but the company is looking to raise at
least $500 million, said a source familiar with the situation.
The Moscow Exchange was formed
by the 2012 merger of MICEX and
RTS, the country’s leading bourses,
and was supposed to help the Kremlin
transform Moscow into an international financial center. Experts said
that the success of the IPO could be a
litmus test for how far this aspiration
has been realized.
“[The Moscow Exchange’s] whole
business case is that people should do
more business in Moscow,” said Bruce
Bower, a partner and portfolio manager at Verno Capital.
Media reports had previously suggested that the company would seek a
dual flotation in London and Moscow,
in a format similar to the biggest listings by Russian companies last year.
Targeting both London and Moscow, state-owned lender Sberbank
raised $5.2 billion in September 2012
and telecommunications giant Megafon $1.3 billion two months later.
The Moscow Exchange has “never
discussed a float in London,” said Nikita Bekasov, a company spokesman.
“The Exchange’s own listing is a
key element of our strategy to promote the development of local capital
markets,” said chairman of the Moscow Exchange supervisory board and
Central Bank Deputy Chairman Sergei Shvetsov in an emailed statement.
Others were more blunt. “We want
to show that Russia is an attractive
place for investors,” said a source close
to the company who requested anonymity to speak freely, adding that this
was why Moscow had been picked
over London.
Faced with a choice between London and Moscow, however, investors
have previously been reluctant to settle on the Russian capital.
Sberbank executives said in advance of their secondary public offering last year that up to 15 percent of
the company’s placement could be on
the Moscow Exchange — but, in the
end, 97 percent went to London.
In one of the most recent IPO announcements, private rail freight operator NefteTransService said last
week that it is seeking to float only on
the London Stock Exchange.
Unlike their more mature compatriots in Europe, the U.S. and Asia, Russian stock exchanges have traditionally
been characterized by speculative investors, a dearth of long-term capital
and high volatility. And trading volume
declines in Moscow have been steeper
than other financial centers throughout
2012.
The Moscow Exchange declined to
comment on the exact timing of its
IPO, but reports suggest that it is
planned for mid-February. Nor did it
comment on how the IPO funds
would be used.
The company last week announced
earnings of 15.9 billion rubles ($525
million) for 2012 — 36.7 percent higher
than the MICEX Index reported for
the same period in 2011.
The exchange was valued at $4.5
billion when the merger between
MICEX and dollar-denominated RTS
was announced, but Central Bank
Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev
said early in 2012 that the joint entity
was actually worth closer to $6 billion.
He has since said that its value is
likely to have diminished.
Cabinet: No Reinstatement
By Anatoly Medetsky
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U R G T I M E S
MOSCOW — The Cabinet has rejected a proposal to reinstate government officials on the boards of statecontrolled companies.
It has also nominated several newcomers to sit on the boards at such
behemoths as Gazprom, the Federal
Grid Company and Svyazinvest, Vedomosti reported Monday.
By keeping the boardrooms free of
officials, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s Cabinet seemed to signal that
it still disapproves of excessive state
influence over business even after the
ministers backed the megatakeover of
privately owned TNK-BP by state-run
Rosneft.
“Overall, it’s a positive development,” Alexander Shevchuk, deputy
executive director of the Association
for the Protection of Investor Rights,
said about the decision on the
boards.
During Medvedev’s presidency
from 2008 to 2012, he ordered an exodus of officials from the boards in a
bid to make the economy more transparent and competitive.
Deputy prime ministers Igor
Shuvalov and Arkady Dvorkovich rebuffed a proposal by the Federal State
Property Management Agency that
officials make their way back to the
companies to be privatized by 2016.
The agency said they would oversee
preparations for the sell-offs.
Instead, Shuvalov and Dvorkovich
listed only people who have no government jobs — at least at the moment. The nominees included former
Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko,
who would vie for a seat at the Federal Grid Company and the InterRegional Grid Company, which run
electricity grids.
The Cabinet submitted its proposal
to President Vladimir Putin’s administration for approval. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Kremlin
would respond in the next few days,
Vedomosti reported.
Shevchuk said he was concerned
that a lack of officials on the boards
could delay decision-making.
“Government officials on a board
is quite a fine idea,” he said. “It’s better than having someone who would
take triple the time to get the government’s approval for something.”
In addition to Shmatko, the Cabinet listed a fair share of other
would-be novices on the boards. Most
of the new faces would appear at telecom provider Svyazinvest.
They are IBS Deputy CEO Anton Yevgenyev; chairman of Thermal
Devices Research Institute Sergei
Malinov; adviser to the chief executive of the Research Center for Industrial Technology and Aerial Navigation Systems, Vladimir Yakovlev;
and deputy head of Moscow city
property department, Konstantin
Pesotsky.
Back to Work
alexander belenky / spt
Workers trim trees on the Field of Mars on Tuesday. The city is now fully back to work after the holiday
celebrations, although January is traditionally a quiet month for businesses in the city.
Deputies Seek Karpov Probe
By Alexander Bratersky
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U RG T I M E S
MOSCOW — A group of United Russia lawmakers have accused a colleague,
world chess champion Anatoly Karpov,
of lobbying on behalf of a tobacco company, and they asked the Justice Ministry
to see whether he can be labeled a foreign agent.
The attack against Karpov is seen as
part of a smoldering conflict between
lobbyists, as anti-smoking legislation is
pending in the State Duma, experts said.
The country’s $22 billion tobacco market is currently the second-largest in the
world, surpassed only by China.
Several Duma deputies, including
ones from United Russia, stated in a letter to the ministry that the charitable
foundation Peace and Harmony, cofounded by Karpov, is a partner of Japan
Tobacco International, one of the three
largest tobacco companies in Russia.
The move was prompted by a proposal by Karpov to exclude an article
from the anti-smoking bill that addresses
the illegal tobacco trade.
The anti-tobacco bill, which passed in
first reading, is seen as one of the strongest government attempts to curb rampant smoking in the country.
It will affect 44 million citizens, or
a third of the population. About
400,000 people die annually from
smoking related diseases, according to
offical figures.
The law would ban smoking in most
public places and introduce tough punishments for violators.
“The point of our collective letter is
to check whether a deputy’s foundation
is a foreign agent,” United Russia deputy Alyona Arshinova told Izvestia
Monday.
Arshinova was referring to a controversial new law that obliges any organization receiving foreign grants and engaging in political activity to register as a
foreign agent. The law was mainly aimed
at human rights organizations that have
voiced opposition to the Kremlin.
Anatoly Vereshchagin, communication director for Japan Tobacco International, said his company works with one
of the partners of Karpov’s foundation,
which is not prohibited by the legislation. Karpov was not available for comment Monday.
Karpov, a senior deputy who sits on
the Economic Policy Committee, told
Izvestia his colleagues’ reaction to his
proposed amendment was “overheated.”
He said the language of the article he
seeks to exclude is preserved in the
World Health Organization’s Protocol to
Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, which the Russian parliament plans
to ratify.
Vereshchagin said Monday that after
the protocol is ratified it will take priority over national legislation.
“All tobacco companies are supporting the fight against the illegal market,”
Vereshchagin said.
That sentiment was repeated by
Vadim Zhelnin, the head of Tabakprom,
an industry lobbyist group. He said,
however, that the industry is more concerned with different provisions of the
article that Kasparov wants to exclude.
Both the anti-tobacco legislation and
the WHO protocol require that all tobacco products be marked with special
codes so illegal trading can be tracked.
Zhelnin said tobacco companies are
dubious about the required markings.
He said such an approach didn’t prove
effective when it was introduced for the
alcohol industry.
“It hasn’t produced an effect, while
legal producers have suffered,” he said.
In 2005, producers of alcoholic beverages were subjected to a policy that
forced them to pay for the installation of
costly equipment to mark their products
with special stamps.
The idea to implement such a system
for the tobacco industry has received a
similarly negative response from the Agriculture Ministry, which said existing
excise stamps are enough to control the
tobacco trade.
However, Slon online columnist
Dmitry Yanin noted in a recent article
that the ministry’s response repeats a
similar argument from British American
Tobacco almost word for word.
Report Assesses Popular Discontent Scenarios
By Anatoly Medetsky
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U R G T I M E S
MOSCOW — How popular discontent
will play out is one of the key uncertainties that the World Economic Forum identified for Russia’s long-term
economic development in a report released Tuesday.
Attendees of the annual forum in
Davos, Switzerland, which opened
Tuesday, are set to question Prime
Minister Dmitry Medvedev about this
and the report’s findings, the forum
said in a statement.
In a report titled “Scenarios for the
Russian Federation,” the forum also
names two more potential gamechangers: Major shifts in global energy
trade and Russia’s ability to reform its
institutions.
The conclusions of the research will
come up for discussion at a session led
by Medvedev on Wednesday, Jan. 23.
“During the session, Prime Minister
Medvedev will answer related questions from the audience as well as from
social media users worldwide,” the forum said.
In addition to street protests, which
have become the hallmark of domestic
politics, the report also examined the
surge in U.S. shale gas production and
Russia’s institutional environment,
stating that the country appeared to
have made little headway against corruption despite a significant rise in per
capita wealth over recent years.
Depending on how the situation unfolds, the report outlines three scenarios to challenge thinking about Russia’s
economic development through 2030.
“We believe ‘Scenarios for the Russian Federation’ delivers an accurate
portrayal of the challenges facing Russia,” Borge Brende, a managing director at the World Economic Forum, said
in the statement. “We hope it provides
policymakers and planners with insights they can use to optimize the
country’s long-term development.”
One outlook, called regional rebalancing, stipulates that unexpected
sources, such as the resourcefulness of
the country’s regions, will drive economic change. Institutional reform will
progress mainly at the regional level
and stagnate at the national one.
Another scenario, called precarious
stability, explored the consequences of a
sudden and sustained drop in oil prices,
concluding that the government would
likely choose to preserve economic stability over reform in a time of crisis.
In the third possibility envisioned in
the report, beyond complacency, high
oil prices stall institutional reform
while popular discontent grows as a result of inefficiency in the provision of
public services.
Feature
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 ❖ 6
Martial Art Shows You Can’t Beat the System
By Melinee Prochasson
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U R G T I M E S
I
t’s the middle of a December afternoon, and in a spartan hall in
northwest Moscow, a group of
men and women of various ages
are lying on the floor, while others are defending themselves from opponents wielding whips. This is not
some sado-masochistic ritual, but a
seminar devoted to a form of the Russian martial art Systema.
Originally developed as a military
practice for Russian special forces, Systema remains a relatively unheralded
practice. Nowadays this training is also
employed in the form of an education
based on self-knowledge and control of
others through the practice of defensive hand-to-hand combat.
There are several branches of Systema, each following a different pedagogy. The seminar in Moscow is taking
place at the school of Mikhail Ryabko,
founder and developer of one of the
most popular forms of Systema, known
as the Ryabko Style. Ryabko, a Special
Forces colonel who has been involved
in combat training since the age of 15,
has seen his passion blossom into what
is now a network of 200 affiliate schools
around the world.
The main principles of Ryabko’s
Systema are an absence of rank and
precise techniques and an emphasis on
improvisation and playful exercises. No
physical protection is worn in this contact sport, in which breathing technique
is a major focus.
“Genius things are simple, and I
think that Systema incorporates the
God-given principle of power and enРЕКЛАМА
ergy at minimum costs,” said Vadim
Yusupov, a 24-year-old Ryabko Systema adherent who has practiced boxing for two years and Shotokan karate
for nine years.
“You can come to [Systema] with a
rich experience of other martial art
classes and with strength of body and
good knowledge. But from this moment, everything is going to change:
You come not to get additional information and techniques, but to cut out
unnecessary things in your life. You
will discover with amazement how
great your power is. This power sits in
harmony with nature, simple natural
motions and relaxation,” he added.
The origins of Systema are difficult
to assert, but it is believed to have
grown out of various foreign-influenced martial arts that existed in imperial Russia and that practically disappeared after the Revolution.
“Some things are true, others are
basically unverifiable,” said Vladimir
Vasilyev, a former student of Mikhail
Ryabko’s school and now an instructor
in Toronto, Canada.
“The changes in government in
Russia [during the last century] didn’t
help to conserve a trace of what happened,” he added.
Despite its military origins, a friendly
atmosphere reigned at the Moscow
seminar and a number of foreign enthusiasts were present. Participants were
welcoming and keen for observers —
and even journalists — to join in.
The participants demonstrate a remarkable readiness to shed any restraints about their self-image in order
to do the exercises and assume some
highly unusual positions.
After the training sessions, a group
discussion takes place. The participants
talk about the exercises, and how people feel about the course. The idea of
community and dialogue is an integral
part of Systema.
The ability to express and understand oneself is one of the key focuses of
the activity, with the aim of subsequently
being able to employ this ability in daily
situations. A system originally developed for warfare has become a system
for coping with the demands of daily life
— and this is a view shared by many adherents of the Ryabko Style.
Stéphane Vartarian, a Ryabko
Style instructor in France, says that
Systema helped him to understand
himself better.
“It has shown me how it is my
thought that determines my daily situations,” Vartarian said.
“I have learned to analyze my feelings and thus make better use of my
intuition in day-to-day situations.”
For Yevgeny Sokolov, a 53-year-old
Special Forces reserve officer who is a
scientist and MBA lecturer by profession, as well as an expert in psychological techniques and training officer of the
Ryabko Systema, the community aspect
of Systema is of crucial importance.
“Firstly, it’s a like-minded community,” he said.
“The community of permanent participants and mentors is based on the
spiritual values of the Russian Orthodox Church; it’s grounded in patriotism
and in the ancient military traditions of
Russia, but it’s accessible for people of
different nationalities and religions.
“Secondly, Systema offers an opportunity to constantly improve yourself
melinee prochasson / spt
Mikhail Ryabko (l) demonstrates exercises during the Systema seminar in Moscow.
spiritually, psychologically and physically, regardless of your age, sex, level of
basic training and health. Everyone can
discover something useful in it, from
health-improving practices to unique
fighting techniques,” said Sokolov.
“Finally, Systema makes it possible
to achieve a high degree of self-control
and self-correction, which helps to
maintain balance and efficiently defend yourself under any circumstances,” he said.
Ryabko’s school represents just one
of a number of different approaches to
Systema. Another popular style is the
Kadochnikov Systema, named after its
creator, Alexei Kadochnikov. Both the
Ryabko and Kadochnikov forms of
Systema are based on the idea of developing a better knowledge of one’s
internal state, but despite being
branches of the same discipline, the
two “systems” have important differences: Ryabko’s style is a system of effective breathing and relaxation,
whereas the technique developed by
Kadochnikov is based on biomechanics, which visualizes the body as a set of
angles, levers and points of application
of force. One of the key moments of
the Kadochnikov system is to unbalance your opponent, according to Nikita Rozin, a student of the method.
“To do this, you have to make the
body of your opponent relaxed,” said
Rozin. “There are many tricks to do this
— a punch to the throat or an impact to
the eyes, grabbing their hair, impacts on
certain points on the body, sudden yells
and other tricks,” he added.
“After these tricks, usually you have
about one or two seconds while your
opponent is shocked. Then you start to
unbalance the body of your opponent
using the system of leverage.”
According to Rozin, there is nothing
new in this approach — which is based
on simple laws of mechanics from physics textbooks — because the body is
built according to a system of levers.
“After that, when your opponent is
on the ground, you get him into a painful hold or more often trample on the
melinee prochasson / spt
Ryabko’s style is a system of relaxation.
joints of your opponent to prevent any
riposte,” said Rozin.
“An essential point of the system is
to react to the opponent only when
they strike you. As a self-defense practice, in Systema they teach technical
aspects based on the lever principle,
and then let you ad lib.”
Rozin, whose father is a boxer, used
to practice Aikido, but found it difficult
to apply many of the techniques he
learned in that martial art. He then took
up Systema instead, and was surprised
by how quickly he made progress.
“After one year of practice I felt
very confident in my skills. I started to
know how to act in different situations,” says Rozin.
“When someone attacks you in a
confined space (for example an elevator
or a train), when you have several opponents, when they go for you with a
knife, club or whatever. And that is very
important in Systema, because it’s primarily a system of self-defense and they
teach you how to defend yourself as efficiently as you can. I remember that
after one year I could “see” around 360
degrees of my body; it seems mystical
when you hear about it, but it’s real.”
Arts&Culture
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 ❖ 7
What Katya did next
Freed Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevich talks to The St. Petersburg Times about the events of 2012.
T h e S t. P e t e r s b u r g T i m e s
T
welve months after feminist punk collective Pussy
Riot’s “Putin Has Pissed
Himself” breakthrough
protest performance on
Red Square, group member Yekaterina Samutsevich, who was freed by
an appeal court in October, came to
St. Petersburg to take part in a roundtable organized by the Center for Independent Social Research.
Called “Class, Gender, Politics:
Russia After Pussy Riot,” it was dedicated to the imprisoned group member
Maria Alyokhina, whose appeal was
heard — and rejected — last week in
Berezniki in the Perm Krai, some 2,000
kilometers away.
On Sunday, Samutsevich, 30, spoke
to The St. Petersburg Times via Skype
about events surrounding Pussy Riot
and Russia in general throughout the
past year.
Q: What are your impressions of your
visit to St. Petersburg?
A: I came to take part in the roundtable, but the actual reason was that the
roundtable was dedicated to Maria Alyokhina and a court hearing about a postponement of her sentence that was taking place that day. That’s why I decided
to support Masha by coming to St. Petersburg and talking about her and problems of media coverage of our case.
I liked the roundtable a lot, I liked
the Center for Independent Social Research, very intelligent and sincere people work there. I haven’t spoken to such
people for a long time, and I was pleased
that they supported us and invited me.
There were many specialists on gender
issues at the roundtable; there was even
a specialist on the problems of female
prisons there. I really appreciated this
professional approach to the topic.
As for St. Petersburg, it was a sunny
day when I arrived, so that put me in a
good mood. Especially when I just arrived, because I had hopes that Masha
could be released. But obviously, as
soon as I learned that Masha’s postponement appeal had been rejected, my
mood got a lot worse. I found out when
the roundtable had already started, so
probably wasn’t very cheerful during it,
but I had good reason to be upset.
Q: Pussy Riot last gave an interview to
The St. Petersburg Times a year ago —
just after the “Putin Has Pissed Himself” performance on Red Square and
a month before the first two members
of the group were arrested. The protest
movement was still at its peak, but you
were unhappy that it had turned into
sanctioned rallies and said that the
Kremlin was not afraid of them. Would
you say this tendency has prevailed and
the protest movement has subsided?
A: Well, not everything has subsided,
because people see what is happening.
The authorities attempt to present the
situation like this: There was an opposition, it made some weak moves, but
failed to make a critical point in a convincing way, so people didn’t choose the
opposition but chose Putin again.
But obviously, thinking people who
follow the situation see an entirely different picture. There was an opposition
and still is. The other thing is that the
authorities have started to take a definite political stance. They saw a certain
threat and decided to attack the problem from different sides to cut away the
ground from under opposition-minded
citizens.
They resorted to repressive measures — such as our arrests for virtually
nothing, and those of the May 6 protesters — and distortion of the situation in
the media at the same time. Libel
against various political figures as well
as the situation in general came from
the television the whole time. The authorities reduced the entire opposition
to two or three people and attacked
them, often using libel. In reality the opposition is not two or three people, but a
great number of citizens who are unhappy about the situation in the country
and are ready to change the system.
It doesn’t mean that there’s no opposition, it does exist — but now we
have to take the authorities’ strategy
into account, analyze it and build some
new line of struggle.
Q: Propaganda against Pussy Riot frequently contained accusations of things
actually done not by Pussy Riot, but
done in the past by the Voina art group,
including a stunt in which a woman
stole a chicken from a supermarket by
concealing it in her vagina, or, as Putin
told Angela Merkel, hanging an “effigy
of a Jew” in a store. Questions about
those performances at the roundtable
showed that this strategy even worked
with informed people, didn’t it?
A: The information about the
chicken and the “effigy of a Jew” was
obviously targeted at people not informed about what had happened in action art and Russian art in general during the 2000s. It’s aimed at people who
are not interested in such things and
who — if they happen to see some video
or documentation [of such things] — are
simply shocked, and simply won’t understand anything. That’s what it was
calculated for — for this shock stemming from a lack of understanding.
The authorities did everything to collect such “strange” information, which
was in reality false. Because yes, these
things did happen, but they were different and connected to entirely different
people. It relied on the effect that people would hear snatches of it in passing
and would not try to get to the bottom
of it or analyze in a detailed way.
They hear about [Voina’s] performance at the Biological Museum [in
which the group staged an orgy] or
about a chicken stunt and think that
Pussy Riot are perverted girls who
have sex in public and then go to the
cathedral and desecrate the amvon and
solea [sections of Orthodox churches in
which women are not allowed]. It’s targeted at a lack of understanding, a lack
of information and lack of critical
thinking, and maybe a lack of analysis
of the authorities’ strategy.
Q: How do you respond to criticism
that the punk prayer in the Cathedral
of Christ the Savior presented a chance
for the authorities to split society?
A: In reality, what existed before was
revealed here; we didn’t produce anything new, it simply became visible. People have been divided over many issues
for a long time, especially along the lines
of conservative values and contemporary art in such forms as action art or
media art. This division has existed for a
long time and has been created artificially by our authorities’ cultural policy.
There’s practically no education in
the field of art. That’s why there are so
few artists. They’re either self-taught, or
come from the Rodchenko School. It’s
good that it exists in Moscow, but it still
doesn’t produce many young artists, and
the kind of art that would be open and
visible is scarce. That’s why people don’t
fully understand what they are seeing
when they see work by Pussy Riot.
Of course, the authorities have done
a lot to present contemporary art, es-
lates the right of freedom of speech and
the right of freedom of expression guaranteed by the European Convention on
Human Rights. It violates the rights of
three people: Nadya, Masha and me.
sergey chernov / spt
By Sergey Chernov
Yekaterina Samutsevich at the roundtable in St. Petersburg last week.
pecially action art, as hooliganism. The
opinion that this is not art but some ordinary hooligans who are destroying
values is constantly being implanted,
with other points of view suppressed
and going unheard. That’s where this
misbalance around contemporary art,
especially political art comes from. This
division of opinions is the result.
Q: It was clear that all the Pussy Riot
performances annoyed the Kremlin,
especially the Red Square one. Was the
punk prayer simply used as an excuse
to stop the group’s activities and make
an example of it?
‘The international
support showed that
Pussy Riot was not a
bunch of freaks who
had done stuff that noone could understand.
A: Well, yes, I think the group’s entire
work caused annoyance starting from its
first performances, because — as it was
said at the Zamoskvoretsky Court —
they contained “calls to extremism, to
overthrow the regime,” and so on.
They were annoyed about everything. Either it simply came to boiling
point, or the people from the special
services who were in charge of monitoring us were given orders to open a
criminal investigation and arrest us.
Q: Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina were arrested on March
3, 2012, on the eve of Putin’s inauguration, leading to speculation that the arrests were a present for him. Do you
think it was his personal revenge for
your anti-Putin performances?
A: Actually, it’s not that simple.
When we talk about the situation in
Russia, we are not just talking about
Putin. The powers that be are not one
person, even if he’s the president and
the top man. In reality, we are dealing
with the whole system that is in power
in Russia, and there are many political
forces at play.
Putin as one person has simply become the symbol of the system and it’s
only natural that the system protects
itself, that’s why it reacts in such an aggressive way to any damage done to
this symbol, to what it sees as an insult
to him, even if in reality it’s just a critical statement.
Q: But didn’t he speak almost sensually
about the two-year sentences using the
diminutive word “dvushechka” [for the
two-year prison sentence handed to the
women] and sounding as if it was indeed a personal matter for him?
A: Yes, sure. I think he has a certain
image, a certain role, and this image is
pretty strange now, let’s put it that way.
It’s analyzed by the Western press, because many are surprised by his behavior. Because a head of state shouldn’t
behave like this. They are always on
guard, they watch their words — both
what they say and how they say it — how
they dress, how they sit, it’s literally like
that. And allowing themselves to say
such things, in such a tone, and tell lies in
a conversation with the leader of another
country, like in the conversation with
Angela Merkel, is simply impermissible.
There are many versions: It may be
a deliberate anti-Western move, to
demonstrate such a disdainful, utterly
contemptuous attitude toward the rest
of the world, or maybe something is
happening to him, maybe he’s simply
going insane. It’s like [former Russian
leader Boris] Yeltsin, who used to get
drunk and behave in a weird way.
Everybody is analyzing why he behaves like that, and what he said, but the
authorities’ actual strategy — for instance, the reform of education — is not
analyzed well enough. So it could be a
deceptive move as well. Perhaps instead
of paying so much attention to this inappropriate behavior, we should bear it in
mind and pay more attention to things
that are actually happening now.
Q: What’s happening with the ban on
Pussy Riot’s videos?
A: The Moscow City Court will hear
my appeal on Jan. 24, as well as my second complaint about the refusal of the
court to acknowledge me as an interested party. I don’t know the order in
which they will be heard, but there’s a
hope that maybe the court will send the
case back for reconsideration. It’s another stage of the struggle. Then, if they
reject it, it’ll go immediately as an appendix to our complaint to the European
Court of Human Rights, because it vio-
Q: How did international support affect the Pussy Riot situation?
A: Such support could not fail to
have an effect, it was very strong. But
the influence was multi-faceted, it can’t
be said that it brought great benefits,
that everybody was ecstatic because of
such support. Obviously, the authorities started to react and create their
own media campaign. The stronger
support was, the stronger the resistance
of the media that serve the authorities.
And so a kind of media war began.
There is a confrontation of different
ideas: The idea of freedom of speech,
which is turned upside down in Russian
media that speak about a threat to traditional values. There’s a permanent
struggle going on, and that’s OK.
But the support showed that Pussy
Riot was not a bunch of freaks who had
done some stuff that no-one could understand. It became clear that it is art,
that it’s very articulate art, it’s political
art, it’s feminist art. This was understood by a majority in the West.
Then there was understanding
about the situation in Russia. Because
Putin and the other people who represent power say that we have democracy
and freedom of speech. It turned out
that that is not true, that it is all lies.
That Russia had huge problems with
freedom of speech, with human rights.
Q: What’s your opinion about
“Pussy Riot — A Punk Prayer,” a feature-length documentary shown at the
Sundance Film Festival last week?
A: I’ve seen a rough cut of the film,
but what I saw was filmed in a quality,
good way. As far as I understood, its
makers tried to present the situation as
objectively as they could, that is, to include and show opinions from different
sides. But to be honest, it seemed to me
that mostly, opinions had been collected that if not quite against us, were
definitely not for us. I speak with a lot
of people who support us ideologically
— who don’t simply pity us as young
women, but support our ideas. I think
there’s quite a few such people in Russia, but this documentary makes it seem
that the situation is entirely different —
that everybody is against us. That even
our relatives misunderstand us, or don’t
fully understand us.
Q: In a recent interview with the French
magazine Les Inrockuptibles, you said
that it’s difficult to continue as Pussy
Riot under the current conditions and
invited people to repeat what the group
had done, which was interpreted by
some as an announcement that Pussy
Riot is disbanding. Is that the case?
A: Well, it definitely wasn’t a statement about disbanding the group, because otherwise I would have put it in a
different way, like: “The group is disbanded, it doesn’t exist anymore.” Of
course it exists, and the group members
exist too. But I meant that it is difficult
to continue in the same way as before
the arrest, because the situation for us,
the actual members of the group, has
changed radically.
And then I meant that Pussy Riot has
shown what can be done within a cultural form of protest. As creators of the
group, we had a very strong desire to
have people not watching us in silence as
we deal with the difficult trial. It would
be worthwhile to try and do the same
thing that we did, or to somehow use
what we had offered to the people.
8
wednesday, january 23, 2013
Mutiny at the Mikhailovsky
By Viktoria Koltsova
T h e S t. P e t e r s b u r g T i m e s
B
enjamin Britten’s 1961 opera “Billy Budd” will see
its Russia premiere on
Jan. 24, 25 and 26 on the
stage of the Mikhailovsky
Theater. The theater is staging the Vienna State Opera’s production from
2001, directed by the eminent German
theater director Willy Decker.
As the world marks the British
composer’s centenary in 2013, Decker
is visiting Russia for the first time and
is personally recreating his version of
the opera for the Mikhailovsky.
“I have worked with wonderful Russian singers, but I have never staged
anything in Russia,” Decker was
quoted by the theater’s press service as
saying.
“The fact that Britten’s opera has
never been performed here either adds
to the responsibility,” he said.
The libretto is based on Herman
Melville’s novella “Billy Budd,” about a
young sailor with a stammer being bullied aboard a ship in 1797. The libretto
was written at Britten’s request by the
novelist E. M. Forster, an expert on
Melville’s work, who wrote it together
with Eric Crozier. The action takes
place on board the ship, and there is not
one female character.
The title role will be sung by Andrei
Bondarenko, while German bass-baritone Johannes von Duisburg and British bass Graeme Broadbent will alternate in the role of John Claggart, the
ship’s master-at-arms who sets out to
make trouble for Billy.
Von Duisburg first played Claggart
in Decker’s production seven years
ago.
“The clash between Billy Budd and
Claggart is an example of the eternal
struggle between good and evil,” said
the bass-baritone.
“Claggart is a man devoid of feelings; his only enjoyment comes from his
ability to manipulate the crew of HMS
Indomitable. He is a very slippery character. Listen to the music: Everything
around my character moves quickly —
well-coordinated work is underway —
but Claggart’s arrival is accompanied by
the appearance of legato, glissando...
This is a man who can do anything he
wants, but always formally within the
law, like some politicians.
“Then comes the entrance of Billy
Budd, whose sincerity and purity captivates the whole crew, Claggart included. The master-at-arms encounters
something unfamiliar — emotion, affection — and because of this, he begins to hate Billy. It is the kind of lovehate relationship that leads to disaster,”
said von Duisburg.
His counterpart Broadbent sees the
HMS Indomitable as a model of society in miniature. “All the classes are
represented, from the aristocracy in
the person of Captain Vere to virtual
criminals, since anyone could be conscripted as a sailor,” he said.
“The confrontation between Billy
Budd and Claggart is actually a story of
the struggle between good and evil, only
in this case everyone turns out to be the
loser. As a result, the laws by which society lives are victorious over humanity:
After Billy accidentally kills Claggart,
Michael Poehn / Wiener Staatsoper
The theater prepares to stage ‘Billy Budd,’ Benjamin Britten’s opera about male relationships at sea.
‘Billy Budd,’ a tale of bullying with tragic consequences, is set on board a ship and features an all-male cast.
acters’ themes are very clear and the
details communicate the drama of
their relationships. There are amazing ensembles in which you sense the
scale of the ocean, waves and hurricanes. When I first heard this opera, I
immediately imagined everything as a
complete whole — the atmosphere on
that specific ship. I think that out of
all of Britten’s operas Billy Budd is
the most musically accessible to an
audience.”
Mikhail Tatarnikov, musical director
at the Mikhailovsky Theater, described
Britten as one of two exceptional fig-
the captain has to decide whether or not
he should be executed. In human terms,
he understands Billy and knows he is innocent, but according to the law, the
sailor deserves death. The law turns out
to be more important than morals.
Bondarenko says he dreamed of
singing the role of Billy Budd.
“When Claggart notices how much
everyone loves Billy, he becomes angry
because he himself will never be like
Billy, and at the same time he’s afraid
that he likes Billy himself,” he said.
“This is conveyed wonderfully in
Britten’s music: In the score the char-
ures in 20th-century music, alongside
Czech composer Leo Janácek.
“The most powerful influence [Britten] experienced was the influence of
life itself,” said Tatarnikov. “He suffered
from a very strong, internal anguish:
Basically, his entire life was a challenge
to society. And although that’s not very
good for a normal person, it’s excellent
for creativity, for art,” he said.
“Billy Budd” will be shown at 7 p.m. on
Jan. 24, 25 and 26 at the Mikhailovsky
Theater, 1 Ploshchad Iskusstv. Tel. 595
4305. www.mikhailovsky.ru.
Petersburg: Poetic and prosaic
By Galina Stolyarova
T HE S T. P E T ER S BURG T IME S
A
cultural guide to St. Petersburg that was published in October by
Academia Rossica in
cooperation with Oxygen Books in London, “City-Pick St.
Petersburg” offers a fascinating view of
Russia’s northern capital as seen by
more than sixty writers, poets, dancers
and artists from different eras.
“It is an essential read — slip it into
your bag alongside a Rough Guide,” is
the advice to readers from Waterstones
Books Quarterly, a literary magazine
published by the U.K. book retailer
Waterstones.
While a classic guidebook serves
travelers up heaps of helpful practicalities, from ideas for quick refuels between sightseeing and water taxi schedules to skating rink locations and warnings about pickpockets’ favorite hangouts, “City-Pick St. Petersburg” offers
readers a wealth of different flavors of
St. Petersburg, creating a fabulous sense
of the city. Flipping through the pages,
the reader is presented with a diverse
and beautiful portrait of the city, and a
fair idea of what St. Petersburg is about.
“Along the canals, the globes of the
street lamps throw pale circles onto the
pastel walls; in the deserted Square of
the Decembrists, the Bronze Horseman looks lost, the only complex, human form in the middle of a vast geometric space, standing out in the mist
made of mingled water and sky, the receding perspectives of the palaces converging on the shining spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress,” reads an excerpt
from a 1987 essay by French journalist
and travel writer Olivier Rolin.
A rather different image of the city
comes from an essay by the British
writer Duncan Fallowell, the author of
“One Hot Summer in St. Petersburg.”
“St. Isaac’s balloons ahead, the cross
mounted on an anchor at its apex (anchors and tritons are everywhere in St.
Petersburg),” he writes. “This is the almightiest cathedral in the city, with
Samsonic columns to prove it outside,
and within an opulence of malachite
and lapis lazuli and harlequinades of
colored glass.”
Divided into nine chapters, the anthology interweaves memoirs and diaries with fiction and documentary
prose as well as historical essays and
travelers’ notebooks.
Incorporated in the book are short
fragments from the novels of some of
Russia’s greatest writers, including Leo
Tolstoy’s “War And Peace,” Ivan Goncharov’s “Oblomov,” Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” and Alexander
Pushkin’s “The Captain’s Daughter.”
The lion’s share of the anthology,
however, is devoted to much more recent writing, encompassing the prose
of Vladimir Nabokov and Andrei Bitov, and the recollections of poet and
Novel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky,
composer Sergei Prokofiev and filmmaker Alexander Sokurov.
The most sobering and perhaps also
the most emotional chapter, “City Under Siege,” is devoted to the 900-day
Nazi Siege of Leningrad during World
War II, the most tragic period in the
history of the city. Here, a translation
of the sharp official proclamation by
Leningrad Defense Chiefs and Soviet
Party Leaders, giving chilling descriptions of the cruel and ruthless enemy, is
fused with a moving story, the novel
“The Conductor,” Sarah Quigley’s hu-
for spt
A new book explores facets of St. Petersburg from dark episodes in its history to modern Russian women.
The cover of ‘City-Pick St. Petersburg.’
mane account loosely based on the
events leading to the writing of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony and the
preparation of its premiere under the
baton of conductor Karl Eliasberg.
With winter temperatures lower
than minus 30 degrees Celsius and no
electricity or heating during the second
winter of the Siege of Leningrad, the
orchestra’s pianist Alexander Kamensky kept his hands warm by placing two
scorching bricks on both sides of the
instrument to radiate some heat. Eliasberg was so weak he was driven to rehearsals on a sledge.
The Leningrad Bolshoi Symphony
Orchestra gave 300 performances during the nearly 900 days of the siege, but
the performance of Shostakovich’s
Seventh Symphony was special.
Many Leningraders who didn’t have
a radio at home would gather on the
streets to listen to orchestral music
coming from the loudspeakers. It was
an opportunity to rise above physical
weakness, fear and starvation.
The book is primarily aimed at culture vultures, barely touching upon
mundane matters such as the local political hierarchy, gastronomy or sports.
Instead, we find the legendary Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova describing
her studies at the Imperial Ballet
School.
“I learnt my art under as nearly perfect conditions as one ever found on this
earth,” reads the ballerina’s story, originally published in the U.S. in “The Lady’s Home Journal” in September 1924.
“The Russian ballet owes its subtle perfection of detail, its greatness ... to the
fact that it is made up of dancers who
from the day they went to live in the
dormitories of the Imperial School saw
nothing — were surrounded by nothing
— but beauty — beauty — and the highest standards physically, mentally, morally and spiritually.”
Another renowned Russian ballerina, Tamara Karsavina, remembers on
these pages a precious tradition that
still exists today, that of the finest pupils of the Vaganova Ballet Academy
— the former Imperial School — being
allowed to dance on the venerable
stage of the Court Theater at the Hermitage. On each such occasion, one
member or another of the Imperial
Family would come to have supper
with the artists — the part that nobody
wanted to miss!
In one of the more recently written
travel features, the U.K. journalist
Miranda Sawyer delivers a bitter and
rather sarcastic account of her observa-
tions of apparently overdressed modern Russian women, whom the author
slags down as “Swarowski-studded glamazons” and “stout grumpy lady
trolls.”
“Today’s Russian woman is tall and
gorgeous and dressed like a Selfridges
Christmas tree,” Sawyer wrote in her
piece “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” originally
published in British newspaper The
Observer in 2011. “There is no part of
her clothing that is plain: Everything is
stonewashed, or appliqued, or has diamante dangly bits, or is made out of
actual leopard. Heels are killer.
Make-up can be viewed at a hundred
paces. Our trousers — and us — are
just too dull.”
One would bet that Tim Stanley
saw a rather different Russian female
crowd in the new St. Petersburg art
galleries that he describes with enthusiasm and admiration in his essay, discussing the “sudden northern Renaissance.” It is not dress sense that Stanley examines but rather the phenomenon of the appearance of a whole
array of wonderful new museums of
the caliber of the New Museum and
Erarta Museum of Contemporary
Art.
As for the appearance of the city
and its residents, the male opinion that
can be found in the book is much more
delightful to hear. As Viv Groskov of
the British Airways “High Life” magazine puts it, “St. Petersburg is seductive, charming, and a little eccentric.”
Most locals, regardless of their sex, age,
occupation and social status, could not
agree more.
“City-Pick St. Petersburg” is published
in English by Oxygen Books, 272 pages,
and is on sale for around $16.
wednesday, january 23, 2013
9
The one that got away
By Viktoria Koltsova
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U R G T I M E S
T
he celebrated Russian émigré
ballet dancer and actor
Mikhail Baryshnikov, who celebrates his 65th birthday this
month, is being paid tribute to in St. Petersburg with an exhibition.
“Ballet Is a Castle of Beauty,” an abbreviation of the opening line of a 1976
poem dedicated to Baryshnikov by poet
Joseph Brodsky, is the title of a new photography exhibition at Erarta Museum
of Contemporary Art that consists of
images of the dancer on stage.
The photographs on show, which are
exclusively images of Baryshnikov on
stage, build up the story of his dance
and theater career through the work of
three prominent dance photographers
who captured Baryshnikov during performances and rehearsals at different
stages of his career.
Art historian Irina Ivanchenko said
at the exhibition opening that Baryshnikov’s main contribution to the art
form was his demonstration of the potential of the human body, adding that
he was also an innovator who had
pushed new boundaries in dance when
he unexpectedly left classical ballet in
1989 to become a modern dancer.
“He was unique and without any
competition the best performer of
modernist choreography, [he] influenced the development of the American dance genre, far from classical ballet,” said Ivanchenko.
Baryshnikov, heralded by New York
Times critic Clive Barnes as “the most
perfect dancer I have ever seen,” famously defected in 1974 while on tour
in Canada with the Kirov Theater, as St.
Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater was
known during the Soviet era.
He sought political asylum in Toronto, and after announcing that he
would never return to the U.S.S.R., has
spent the rest of his career abroad, most
famously spending 18 months as principal dancer at the New York City Ballet
when it was run by the legendary choreographer George Balanchine.
“Baryshnikov not only provided
modernist choreographers [with] the opportunity to work with professional class
[dancers] and revealed new horizons of
creativity to them and aroused their
imagination, but discovered through his
performances the benefits of classical
education for contemporary dancers. In
this case — the benefits of the Russian
classical school,” said Ivanchenko.
The photos on show at Erarta were
all taken by three photographers: Nina
Alovert, who photographed ballet at
the Kirov and Bolshoi Theaters in the
1950s before emigrating to the U.S. in
1977 and who is the author of Barysh-
nikov’s biography; Paul Kolnik, the official photographer of the New York
City Ballet for the last 30 years, who
photographed Baryshnikov during his
time at the company; and Maria Baranova, a fashion and dance photographer
who has mostly photographed Baryshnikov’s recent work in various plays.
The photos are different in epoch
and style, but Baryshnikov’s phenomenal energy and brilliance are present in
every image.
The exhibition has been organized
by the Open World Dance Foundation,
a charity that encourages children who
are interested in ballet to pursue their
ambitions, and that counts Baryshnikov
among its supporters. The foundation
was set up with the goal of helping orphans to develop their creative talent
and integrate into society through the
arts and psychological care.
“We do not set a goal to raise ballet
stars; for us it is important to give children the opportunity to have a choice,”
said founder Yekaterina Schyolkanova,
a former soloist with the Kirov Ballet
and the American Ballet Theater and a
native of St. Petersburg.
“We hope that children involved in
dance will never fall into a criminal environment, as art changes people. Familiarity with ballet connects children to
different kinds of art — theater, music
and decorative art,” she said.
maria baranova
Nearly 40 years after Mikhail Baryshnikov’s defection, the city in which he once lived marks his 65th birthday.
The images include ones of Baryshnikov in theater plays, such as ‘In Paris.’
Although the exhibition mainly features photographs of Baryshnikov in
acting roles, they are just as energetic
and striking as the images of him dancing in Roland Petit’s “Carmen” 30 years
earlier. The show is proof of the words
of ballet historian and critic Vadim
Gayevsky, who wrote of Baryshnikov:
“…What was really unique was his
intellect, a mind that broke all barriers
and could understand the logic of any
choreographic structure. He wanted to
do what he could not do, he wanted to
try everything, and he was always successful. He flies through the dance, he is
free.”
“Ballet Is a Castle of Beauty” runs
through Feb. 9 at Erarta Museum and
Galleries of Contemporary Art, 2, 29th
Liniya, Vasilyevsky Island. Tel. 324
0809. www.erarta.com
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Wednesday, January 23, 2013
10 wednesday, january 23, 2013
HOW TO USE THE LISTINGS:
Dates and times are correct at
the time of publication, but
last-minute changes are not
infrequent, so it’s best to check
by contacting the venue.
Addresses and telephone
numbers can be found at
www.sptimes.ru (or scan the QR
code below).
Unless otherwise stated, stage
events start at 7 p.m.
All stage shows and
films are in Russian
unless noted.
Tchaikovsky based on Tolstoy’s novel.
Alexandrinsky Theater, 8 p.m.
Les Noces. Le Rossignol One-act ballets, set
to music by Igor Stravinsky. Mariinsky Theater
opera
Cosi Fan Tutte Goetz Fischer (Germany)
stages Mozart’s comic opera about a pair of
friends who decide to test the fidelity of their
fiancees by swapping partners and courting
them in disguise. Rimsky-Korsakov
Conservatory Theater
PREMIERE! Billy Budd Benjamin Britten’s
opera, based on Herman Melville’s novella
about events on board HMS Bellipotent.
Mikhailovsky Theater
concert
Chamber Music Bach, Handel, Schumann,
Liszt. Cappella
Chamber Music Kochneva House
friday, january 25
ballet
stages
wednesday, january 23
ballet
Swan Lake Tchaikovsky’s ever-popular ballet
in four acts with a prologue about the tragic
fate of a swan princess. Musical director and
conductor – Valery Gergiev. Mariinsky Theater
opera
La Boheme Yury Alexandrov stages Puccini’s
opera set in the Latin Quarter of Paris, tracing
the interwoven romances of a poet-painter,
musician and philosopher. St. Petersburg Opera
Oedipus Rex Igor Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio
based on Jean Cocteau’s libretto of
Sophocles’s tragedy about a man destined to
murder his father and marry his mother.
Staged by Jonathan Miller. Musical director
and conductor Valery Gergiev. Mariinsky
Theater Concert Hall
concert
Chamber Music Brahms, Tchaikovsky,
Rachmaninov, Franck, Poulenc. Museum of
Music (Sheremetyev Palace), 34 Nab. Reki
Fontanki, tel. 272 4441
Yury Kornakov Memorial Evening Marking
the 75th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
Shostakovich Philharmonic, Small Hall
Chamber Music Purcell, Britten, Handel,
Gluck. Kochneva House
thursday, january 24
ballet
Anna Karenina The Boris Eifman Theater
performs a ballet to music by Pyotr
Red Giselle The Boris Eifman Ballet Theater
performs the tragic story of Russian ballerina
Olga Spesivtseva, set to music by Bizet,
Tchaikovsky and Schnittke. Alexandriinsky
Theater, 8 p.m.
Le Parc Angelin Preljocaj choreographs a
sensuous ballet depicting amorous intrigue in
three acts to music by Mozart. Sound
compositions by Goran Vejvoda. Mariinsky
Theater, 8 p.m.
opera
PREMIERE! Billy Budd Benjamin Britten’s
opera, based on Herman Melville’s novella
about events on board HMS Bellipotent.
Mikhailovsky Theater
concert
Gala Concert Winter Evening. St. Petersburg
Opera soloists. St. Petersburg Opera
When We Were Students Marking the 150th
anniversary of the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Miaskovsky, Petrov. St.
Petersburg State Academic Symphony
Orchestra. Shostakovich Philharmonic, Main
Hall
Pyotr Laul Piano Recital Mozart,
Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms,
Chopin. Cappella, 7 p.m.
Chamber Music Byrd, Dowland. Old music and
poetry of the 16th century. Cappella, 7.30 p.m.
Symphony Music Pärt, Bruckner. Mariinsky
Theater Symphony Orchestra. Mariinsky
Theater Concert Hall
saturday, january 26
ballet
Le Parc Angelin Preljocaj choreographs a
sensuous ballet depicting amorous intrigue in
three acts to music by Mozart. Sound
compositions by Goran Vejvoda. Mariinsky
Theater, 6 p.m.
Giselle Adolphe Adam’s tragic ballet, staged
by Nikolai Dolgushin, about the tragic
consequences of one young peasant woman’s
love for a member of the aristocracy. RimskyKorsakov Conservatory Theater
opera
Pagliacci Yury Alexandrov stages Ruggero
Leoncavallo’s tragic opera about a jealous
husband in a troupe of itinerant actors. St.
Petersburg Opera
PREMIERE! Billy Budd Benjamin Britten’s
opera, based on Herman Melville’s novella
about events on board HMS Bellipotent.
Mikhailovsky Theater
concert
Vocal Music Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Saint-Saens, Strauss, Verdi, Charpentier,
Massenet, Gounod, Puccini. Mariinsky
Theater Concert Hall
In the Realm of the Glorious Saltan
Rimsky-Korsakov. Extracts from The Tale of
Tsar Saltan. Mariinsky Theater Symphony
Orchestra. Mariinsky Theater Concert Hall
Symphony Music Schumann, Tchaikovsky.
St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.
Shostakovich Philharmonic, Main Hall
Choral Music Rachmaninov. Smolny
Cathedral Chamber Choir. St. Isaac’s
Cathedral, 4 St. Isaac’s Square, tel. 315 9732
Jazz-Ba-Rock Bach, Vivaldi, Pachelbel,
Purcell. Original and modern versions.
Divertissement String Quartet. Moscow
Violinjazz Quartet. Shostakovich
Philharmonic, Small Hall
Symphony Music Tchaikovsky. Cappella
Symphony Orchestra. Cappella
sunday, january 27
ballet
The Nutcracker Vasily Vainonen directs
Tchaikovsky’s Christmas favorite based on
E.T.A. Hoffmann’s tale. Mariinsky Theater
Le Corsaire Marius Petipa’s ballet based on
Byron’s tragic poem, featuring eclectic music
by Cesare Pugni, Leo Delibes, Riccardo Drigo
and Adolphe Adam. Mikhailovsky Theater,
1 p.m., 7 p.m.
opera
Cinderella Boris Asafiev’s children’s opera
based on the tale by Charles Perrault. RimskyKorsakov Conservatory Theater, 5 p.m.
Boris Godunov Yury Alexandrov directs
Modest Mussorgsky’s opera based on
Pushkin’s historical drama about guilt and
power, using the first version of the many
currently in use. St. Petersburg Opera
Sadko Alexei Stepanyuk’s staging of RimskyKorsakov’s opera-bylina in seven scenes
about a poor fisherman who falls in love with
a sea princess. Mariinsky Theater,
11.30 a.m.
Olga Vizavi
AVIA, the re-formed perestroika avant-pop band, will reunite with Anton
Adasinsky of the Derevo physical theater company (right), to perform at
Kosmonavt on Friday, Jan. 25.
Symphony Music Rachmaninov,
Shostakovich. St. Petersburg Academic
Symphony Orchestra. Shostakovich
Philharmonic, Main Hall
Chamber Music John Cage. John Cage
Festival. Erarta Museum, 5 p.m.
Concert and Lecture Cappella Choir and
Symphony Orchestra. Cappella, 12 p.m.
In the Realm of the Glorious Saltan
Rimsky-Korsakov. Extracts from The Tale of
Tsar Saltan. Mariinsky Theater Symphony
Orchestra. Mariinsky Theater Concert Hall,
12 p.m.
Concert and Lecture Cappella Choir and
Symphony Orchestra. Cappella, 2 p.m.
Vocal Music Russian romances. Museum
of the History of St. Petersburg:
Rumyantsev Mansion, 3 p.m.
Choral Music Marking the anniversary of
the lifting of the Siege of Leningrad. Smolny
cathedral chamber choir. Sampsonievsky
Cathedral, 3 p.m.
Martin Münch Piano Recital Balakirev,
Albeniz, Ravel, Munch. Shostakovich
Philharmonic, Small Hall
monday, january 28
concert
Symphony Music Bruckner. Mariinsky
Theater Symphony Orchestra. Conductor
Valery Gergiev. Mariinsky Theater Concert
Hall, 8 p.m.
Chamber Music Concert. Participants of
the 7th Crescendo Competition-2013
festival. Shostakovich Philharmonic,
Small Hall
THE DISH
By Allison Geller
T h e S t. P e t e r s b u r g T i m e s
Those faced with the predicament
of where to take vegetarian — or,
even more dire, vegan — guests in
the city, or who want to go out to
dinner and still feel good about
themselves, will be glad to find the
new vegetarian café Ukrop (Russian for “dill”) on the map. Diners
are also sure to appreciate the eatery’s hip eco-friendly aesthetic:
Think tree house taken over by
home makeover show.
The cafe has two levels, with a
coffee bar and seating area on the
lower one, and another coffee bar
and the main dining area on the top.
Decorations include origami chandeliers, artistically rendered wall
sculptures of dill plants, and floorto-ceiling bookshelves arrayed with
clay pots, clocks, books and other
well-curated knickknacks.
The whimsical touches extend to
the tables, which are separated from
each other by high planters. On each
table is a jar of coloring pencils,
which, we were assured, are conscientiously sharpened each night before the next day of business. And
don’t leave Ukrop without sticking
your hands under the table — there
you’ll find small pebbles, stones and
even whole walnuts. Think of it as a
raw, vegetarian, vegan, lactose-free
hand massage.
While the menu — in Russian
only — is available on the café’s
website, it does not fully correspond
to the up-to-date menu at Ukrop itself. The only English words on the
menu are those explaining the
“vegan,” “raw,” “milk” and “spicy”
symbols beside the dishes.
The stereotype about Russia and
borsh will never die if restaurants
keep coming up with their own take
on the classic beet soup. Ukrop’s
otlichny(excellent) raw borsch (180
rubles, $6) translated into shreds of
crispy, raw cabbage floating in a cold
beet broth and sprinkled liberally
with the herb most loved by Russians
and after which the café is named:
Dill. While the greasy, meaty taste
that permeates most bouillon-based
borsch was not missed, the dish didn’t
pack much punch. The crunchy Olivier salad (220 rubles, $7.30), which
featured raw mayonnaise and innovative cubes of sweet potato in place
of the usual ham, was just as fresh,
but also nothing to moon over.
Our slightly bumbling but wellmeaning waiter brought out the
main courses while our jaws were
still working on all that roughage.
The vegetable cutlets with tomato
tartare (180 rubles, $6), were made
from some indefinable mixture of
ground up nuts and raw vegetables,
resulting in a tan-flecked, light green
patty. While the creamy pesto offered some encouragement, the cutlets were still reminiscent of something you would put in your pocket
before a long bike ride.
The ravioli with spinach, homemade cheese and pine nuts (260 rubles, $8.60) bore a close resemblance to fried wontons and were a
pleasant surprise, garnished with a
sweet sauce and a few leaves of arugula, and accompanied by a ramekin
of sour cream.
The raw concept also extends to
most of Ukrop’s desserts. The pome-
opera
The Brothers Karamazov Vasily Barkhatov
directs Alexander Smelkov’s opera in two acts
based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Mariinsky Theater
concert
Chamber Music War songs. Divertissement
Chamber ensemble. Kochneva House, 2 p.m.
Valeria Stenkina Vocal Recital (soprano)
Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Rubinstein, Verdi, Giordano,
Puccini, Massenet, Bizet. Shostakovich
Philharmonic, Small Hall
Symphony Music Paganini, Beethoven, Berlioz,
Schumann, Rossini. St. Petersburg State
Academy Orchestra. St. Petersburg Chamber
Choir. Mikhailovsky Theater
Choral Music Mozart. Cappella choirs and
symphony orchestra. Cappella
gigs
wednesday, january 23
rock, etc.
Motor Roller Rock. Dada, 47 Gorokhovaya
Ulitsa. Tel. 983 7050. 8 p.m.
Classic Rock Show Covers. Jagger, 2
Ploshchad Konstitutsii. Tel. 923 1292. 8:30 p.m.
Andrei Knyazev Rock. Manhattan, 90
Naberezhnaya Reki Fontanki. Tel. 713 1945.
8 p.m.
King Rock Fest 2013, Part 3 Acts t.b.c. Zal
Ozhidaniya, 118 Naberezhnaya Obvodnogo
Kanala. Tel. 333 1069. 6 p.m.
Kuzma and VirtUOzy Punk, alternative.
Zoccolo, 2/3 3-ya Sovetskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 274
9467. 8 p.m.
jazz & blues
Dilligent dining
Ukrop
23 Ulitsa Marata
Tel. 946 3036
Open daily 12 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Menu in Russian only
Dinner for two with a glass of wine 1,810 rubles
($60)
tuesday, january 29
concert
granate tart (220 rubles, $7.30) was
appealingly presented, covered in
fresh pomegranate seeds and plated
with a dusting of cocoa powder. The
other tart, a “striped cashew cake”
(220 rubles, $7.30), was made up of
tan, pink and brown layers. The flavor was not unlike that of the vegetable cutlet.
A glass of German Klaus Langhoff white wine (180 rubles, $6), was
as sweet as grape juice and served in
a glass with a disturbing red stain,
and the coffee (80 rubles, $2.60) was
mediocre. Stick to the fresh juices
and well-chosen tea list.
Except for the ravioli, with their
appealing chew and satisfying flavors, this is food that announces itself
as vegetarian at first bite. Expect to
feel surprisingly heavy after eating
here, as if you had dined on dense,
protein-packed energy bars. On the
other hand, Ukrop certainly offers
freshness, in both food and atmosphere.
Even if it’s just for a coffee or a
juice, it’s modestly priced and centrally located, and it’s good to know
that something crisp, wholesome and
full of fiber is only one recycled-paper menu away.
1900 Arseny Ivankovich, David Goloshchyokin and
His Band. Jazz Philharmonic Hall, 27 Zagorodny
Prospekt. Tel. 764 85 65, 764 9843. 7 p.m.
Four & More Funk, electric jazz. JFC Jazz Club,
33 Shpalernaya Ulitsa. Tel. 272 9850. 8 p.m.
thursday, january 24
rock, etc.
King Tubby Birthday Concert Jungle Rock,
Caribace Dub Club, OVRDBD. Dada, 47
Gorokhovaya Ulitsa. Tel. 983 7050. 7 p.m.
Sny Afrikantsa Acoustic. Fish Fabrique
(Nouvelle), 53 Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel. 764 4857.
9 p.m.
Chestnoye Slovo / Valen’Time Rock.
Manhattan, 90 Naberezhnaya Reki Fontanki.
Tel. 713 1945. 8 p.m.
Dilemma / Altavista / Ad Notam Pop rock.
Zal Ozhidaniya, 118 Naberezhnaya Obvodnogo
Kanala. Tel. 333 1069. 8 p.m.
jazz & blues
Homage to Charlie Mingus Grigory
Voskoboinik Quartet. Jazz Philharmonic Hall, 27
Zagorodny Prospekt. Tel. 764 85 65, 764 9843.
7 p.m.
Gaivoronsky Volkov Kondakov Art jazz. JFC
Jazz Club, 33 Shpalernaya Ulitsa. Tel. 272 9850.
8 p.m.
friday, january 25
rock, etc.
Triada Hip-hop. Avrora Concert Hall, St.
Petersburg Hotel, 5/2 Pirogovskaya
Naberezhnaya. Tel. 907 1917. 7 p.m.
Granny Smith Jazz, funk, R&B, pop. Dada, 47
Gorokhovaya Ulitsa. Tel. 983 7050. 7 p.m.
wednesday, january 23, 2013 11
18 Plus Ska rock. Dusche, 50 Ligovsky
Prospekt, Korpus 6. Tel. +7 (960) 246 4550.
8 p.m.
Stilissimo feat. Rennie Pilgrem Breaks.
Dusche, 50 Ligovsky Prospekt, Korpus 6. Tel.
+7 (960) 246 4550. 11:55 p.m.
Bondage Fairies / Hospital /
Interdeer Electropunk, indie rock,
alternative. Fish Fabrique (Nouvelle), 53
Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel. 764 4857. 9 p.m.
Od1n / Conus Experimental, electronica,
improvised. GEZ-21 (Gallery of Experimental
Sound), 53 Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel. 764 52
58. 8 p.m.
Electro Zombie Punk, alternative.
Griboyedov, 2A Voronezhskaya Ulitsa. Tel.
764 4355, 973 7273. 9 p.m.
AVIA / Positive Band Pop, rock,
experimental. Kosmonavt, 24 Bronnitskaya
Ulitsa. Tel. 922 1300. 8 p.m.
Student Day Toch-v-Toch, Nas Net. Mod, 7
Naberezhnaya Kanala Griboyedova. Tel. 712
0734. 8 p.m.
Ackee Mama / DiaPositive / Sergei
Kuryanov Band Reggae. Vinyl Story, 2
Aptekarsky Pereulok. Tel. 334 1561. 8 p.m.
Kukryniksy Pop rock. Zal Ozhidaniya, 118
Naberezhnaya Obvodnogo Kanala. Tel. 333
1069. 8 p.m.
Nosebleed / Gorilla Troops / Distress /
Foreseen Hardcore, crossover, thrash metal.
Zoccolo, 2/3 3-ya Sovetskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 274
9467. 8 p.m.
jazz & blues
Elvira Trafova and Pyotr Kornev Band
Romantic jazz night. Jazz Philharmonic Hall,
27 Zagorodny Prospekt. Tel. 764 85 65, 764
9843. 7 p.m.
Easy Winners Ragtime Band Early
traditional jazz. JFC Jazz Club, 33 Shpalernaya
Ulitsa. Tel. 272 9850. 8 p.m.
saturday, january 26
rock, etc.
Markscheider Kunst Latin, Afro rock,
reggae. Avrora Concert Hall, St. Petersburg
Hotel, 5/2 Pirogovskaya Naberezhnaya. Tel.
907 1917. 7 p.m.
Chyo Morale Balkan pop. Avrora Concert
Hall (BB King Hall), St. Petersburg Hotel, 5/2
Pirogovskaya Naberezhnaya. Tel. 907 1917.
7 p.m.
Komba BAKKh Reggae. Dada, 47
Gorokhovaya Ulitsa. Tel. 983 7050. 7 p.m.
Drugly Cats Pop punk. Dusche, 50 Ligovsky
Prospekt, Korpus 6. Tel. +7 (960) 246 4550.
8 p.m.
Pony Indie rock. Fish Fabrique (Nouvelle),
53 Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel. 764 4857. 9 p.m.
Harddrive Improvised, psychedelic rock.
GEZ-21 (Gallery of Experimental Sound), 53
Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel. 764 52 58. 8 p.m.
Post-Student Day Ghetto Girls, the Clones
Project. Griboyedov, 2A Voronezhskaya Ulitsa.
Tel. 764 4355, 973 7273. 9 p.m.
Space Trees Rock. Manhattan, 90
Naberezhnaya Reki Fontanki. Tel. 713 1945.
8 p.m.
Bitsikl Babskogo Reggae, ska, Latin. Money
Honey, 28 Sadovaya Ulitsa. Tel. 310 0549.
7 p.m.
Avgust Metal. Vinyl Story, 2 Aptekarsky
Pereulok. Tel. 334 1561. 7 p.m.
Mujuice Pop rock. Zal Ozhidaniya, 118
Naberezhnaya Obvodnogo Kanala. Tel. 333
1069. 8 p.m.
Polyn / Sh.I.V.A. / Falling Down Rock,
indie rock, alternative. Zoccolo, 2/3 3-ya
Sovetskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 274 9467. 8 p.m.
jazz & blues
Leningrad Dixieland Band Jazz dancing.
Jazz Philharmonic Hall, 27 Zagorodny
Prospekt. Tel. 764 85 65, 764 9843. 7 p.m.
Alexei Cheremizov Band Piano night. Jazz
Philharmonic Hall (Ellington Hall), 27
Zagorodny Prospekt. Tel. 764 85 65, 764
9843. 8 p.m.
Camaradas Salsa. JFC Jazz Club, 33
Shpalernaya Ulitsa. Tel. 272 9850. 8 p.m.
Captain Flint. Vinyl Story, 2 Aptekarsky
Pereulok. Tel. 334 1561. 6:30 p.m.
Dima Kartashov Hip-hop. Zal Ozhidaniya,
118 Naberezhnaya Obvodnogo Kanala. Tel.
333 1069. 8 p.m.
Da.Nk / Siam / Dochki-Materi Rock.
Zoccolo, 2/3 3-ya Sovetskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 274
9467. 8 p.m.
jazz & blues
Alexander Latin Band Latin jazz. Jazz
Philharmonic Hall, 27 Zagorodny Prospekt.
Tel. 764 85 65, 764 9843. 7 p.m.
Forrest Gump & Uncle Misha Blues. JFC
Jazz Club, 33 Shpalernaya Ulitsa. Tel. 272
9850. 8 p.m.
monday, january 28
rock, etc.
Koshki Jam Acoustic. Manhattan, 90
Naberezhnaya Reki Fontanki. Tel. 713 1945.
8 p.m.
Stea Funny Indie pop. Zoccolo, 2/3 3-ya
Sovetskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 274 9467. 8 p.m.
jazz & blues
Svetamuzika Fusion. JFC Jazz Club, 33
Shpalernaya Ulitsa. Tel. 272 9850. 8 p.m.
tuesday, january 29
rock, etc.
Super-Offline Acts t.b.c. Dada, 47
Gorokhovaya Ulitsa. Tel. 983 7050. 7 p.m.
Kvadrat Jazz Club Jam session. Griboyedov
(Griboyedov Hill), 2A Voronezhskaya Ulitsa.
Tel. 764 4355, 973 7273. 10 p.m.
Plokhaya Muzyka / Sianuksvil / Polyot /
Johnny Dilinger Rock, alternative. Zoccolo,
2/3 3-ya Sovetskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 274 9467.
8 p.m.
jazz & blues
Kvadrat Jazz Club Jam session. Jazz
Philharmonic Hall (Ellington Hall), 27
Zagorodny Prospekt. Tel. 764 85 65, 764
9843. 8 p.m.
Andrei Kondakov Band Original
compositions. JFC Jazz Club, 33 Shpalernaya
Ulitsa. Tel. 272 9850. 8 p.m.
screens
NEW! Anna Karenina (2012, U.K.) Joe
Wright’s drama starring Keira Knightley and
Jude Law. Avrora, Jam Hall, Khudozhestvenny,
Mirage Cinema, Pik.
Another Woman’s Life (La vie d’une
autre) (2012, France-Luxembourg-Belgium)
Sylvie Testud’s drama starring Juliette Binoche
and Mathieu Kassovitz. Avrora, Dom Kino.
NEW! Bollywood: The Greatest Love
Story Ever Told (2011, India) Rakeysh
Omprakash Mehra and Jeff Zimbalist’s
documentary. Dom Kino.
Cherry on the Cake (La cerise sur le
gateau) (2012, France) Laura Morante’s
comedy starring Laura Morante and Pascal
Elbe. Dom Kino.
The Double (Dublyor) (2012, Russia)
Yevgeny Abyzov’s comedy starring Alexander
Revva. Khudozhestvenny, Mirage Cinema, Pik.
NEW! Gangster Squad (2013, U.S.) Ruben
Fleischer’s crime film starring Sean Penn and
Ryan Gosling. Mirage Cinema, Pik. Starts Jan.
24.
Gentlemen, Good Luck! (Dzhentlmeny,
Udachi!) (2012, Russia) Alexander Baranov
and Dmitry Kiselyov’s comedy film starring
Sergei Bezrukov, Gosha Kutsenko and Anton
Bogdanov. Pik.
Grave Encounters 2 (2012, Canada-U.S.) John
Poliquin’s horror film starring Richard Harmon
and Shawn C. Phillips. Khudozhestvenny.
NEW! Great Expectations (2012, U.K.-U.S.)
Mike Newell’s drama starring Helena Bonham
Carter and Ralph Fiennes. Avrora, Mirage
Cinema. Starts Jan. 24.
NEW! Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters
(2013, U.S.) Tommy Wirkola’s actionadventure horror film starring Jeremy Renner
and Gemma Arterton. Khudozhestvenny,
Mirage Cinema, Neva, Pik.
NEW! A Haunted House (2013, U.S.)
Michael Tiddes’ comedy starring Marlon
Wayans and Essence Atkins. Pik.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
(2012, U.S.-New Zealand) Peter Jackson’s
adventure fantasy film starring Martin
Freeman and Ian McKellen. Pik.
The Imposter (2012, U.K.) Bart Layton’s
documentary about the 1997 case of the
French confidence man Frederic Bourdin.
Dom Kino.
In the House (Dans La Maison) (2012,
France) Francois Ozon’s thriller starring Fabrice
Luchini and Ernst Umhauer. Dom Kino.
NEW! Jack Reacher (2012, U.S.)
Christopher McQuarrie’s crime thriller starring
Tom Cruise. Jam Hall, Khudozhestvenny,
Mirage Cinema, Neva, Pik.
Life of Pi (2012, U.S.-China) Ang Lee’s
adventure film starring Suraj Sharma, Irrfan
Khan and Adil Hussain. Khudozhestvenny,
Mirage Cinema, Pik.
NEW! Lincoln (2012, U.S.) Steven
Spielberg’s historical drama film starring
Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field. Avrora,
Mirage Cinema. Starts Jan. 24.
NEW! Metro (2013, Russia) Anton
Megerdichev’s thriller starring Sergei
Puskepalis. Mirage Cinema. Starts Jan. 24.
Movie 43 (2013, U.S.) Elizabeth Banks and
Steven Brill’s comedy starring Emma Stone.
Dom Kino, Khudozhestvenny, Pik.
NEW! Parental Guidance (2012, U.S.) Andy
Fickman’s comedy starring Billy Crystal and
Bette Midler. Avrora, Khudozhestvenny,
Mirage Cinema, Neva, Pik.
NEW! Parker (2013, U.S.) Taylor Hackford’s
thriller starring Jason Statham and Jennifer
Lopez. Mirage Cinema. Starts Jan. 24.
Delhi Dance (Tanets Deli) (2012, Russia)
Ivan Vyrypayev’s drama starring Karolina
Gruszka. Dom Kino.
Pulp Fiction (1994, U.S.) Quentin Tarantino’s
crime film starring John Travolta and Uma
Thurman. Khudozhestvenny, Rodina.
NEW! Django Unchained (2012, U.S.)
Quentin Tarantino’s western starring Jamie
Foxx and Christoph Waltz. Avrora, Jam Hall,
Khudozhestvenny, Mirage Cinema, Neva, Pik.
NEW! Rust and Bone (De rouille et d’os)
(2012, France-Belgium) Jacques Audiard’s
drama starring Marion Cotillard. Avrora. Starts
Jan. 24.
sunday, january 27
So Undercover (2012, U.S.) Tom Vaughan’s
action-comedy film starring Alexis Knapp and
Miley Cyrus. Pik.
Superstar (2012, France-Belgium) Xavier
Giannoli’s comedy starring Kad Merad and
Cecile de France. Dom Kino.
NEW! Toy Seller (Prodavets Igrushek)
(2012, Russia) Yury Vasiliev’s comedy starring
Shamil Khamatov, Agnes Chadova and
Tatiana Lyutaeva. Khudozhestvenny, Rodina.
NEW! Ticket to Vegas (Bilet na Vegas)
(2012, Russia-U.S.) Gor Kirakosian’s comedy
starring Mikhail Galustyan. Dom Kino, Mirage
Cinema. Starts Jan. 24.
museums
ACADEMY OF ARTS MUSEUM
17 Universitetskaya Nab. Tel. 323 6496, 323
3578 M: Vasileostrovskaya. Wednesday
through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Konstantin Rudakov. Graphics. December
20 through January 27
Flower Crosses: Galina
Rozhdestvenskaya. Painting. January 12
through February 10
ANNA AKHMATOVA MUSEUM AT THE
FOUNTAIN HOUSE
34 Fontanka River, entrance from 53 Liteiny
Pr. M: Gostiny Dvor, Mayakovskaya. Tel. 272
2211. Daily, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Monday;
1 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the last Wednesday of
every month. www.akhmatova.spb.ru
Reading Group. Part of the Christmas at
Fountain House cycle. December 21 through
February 3
Painting and Graphics from the Collection
of Nikolai Blagodatov. Paintings, graphics.
January 15 through January 27
NEW! Alideza Naderi (Iran). Painting.
January 29 through February 12
ARTILLERY MUSEUM
(Military Historical Museum of Artillery and
Engineers) 7 Alexandrovsky Park, M:
Gorkovskaya. Tel. 232 0296, 610 3301.
Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Closed last Thursday of each month.
Most August Feldzeugmeister. Dedicated
to Grand Prince Mikhail Nikolaevich (18321909). Uniforms, medals, photo, furniture,
weapons, paintings, graphics. November 16
through February 28, 2013
European Hunting and Hunting Weapons
in the 16th to 18th Centuries. Rifles, pistols
and other weapons, engravings, taxidermy.
September 8 through January 31, 2013.
rock, etc.
On-The-Go Indie pop. Dada, 47 Gorokhovaya
Ulitsa. Tel. 983 7050. 7 p.m.
Plyazh Pop punk. Dusche, 50 Ligovsky
Prospekt, Korpus 6. Tel. +7 (960) 246 4550.
8 p.m.
Alexei Nadzharov Improvised, electroacoustic, jam. GEZ-21 (Gallery of
Experimental Sound), 53 Ligovsky Prospekt.
Tel. 764 52 58. 8 p.m.
Diskoteka Avariya Pop. Kosmonavt, 24
Bronnitskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 922 1300. 8 p.m.
What For? Rock. Manhattan, 90
Naberezhnaya Reki Fontanki. Tel. 713 1945.
8 p.m.
Stary Gnom Hip-hop. Mod, 7 Naberezhnaya
Kanala Griboyedova. Tel. 712 0734. 7 p.m.
Music With No Borders Arthouse Hours,
Kamni, Bearded Birds, Bone Machinist,
for spt
Paintings and drawings by Yelena Kiseleva are on show through Feb. 3 at the
Small Hall of the Nonconformist Art Museum, part of the Pushkinskaya 10 art
center, in an exhibition of the artist’s work titled ‘The Portrait. Metamorphosis of
the Genre.’
Zal Ozhidaniya
Fronted by singer and guitarist Roman Litvinov (pictured), Mujuice, the Moscow
band that combines indie rock and club electronica, will perform at Zal Ozhidaniya
on Saturday, Jan. 26.
ALEXANDER BLOK APARTMENT MUSEUM
57 Ul. Dekabristov, M: Sadovaya, Sennaya
Ploshchad. Tel. 713 8631. Daily, 11 a.m. to
6 p.m. Closed Wednesday.
Silence Blossoms Here... Blok’s St.
Petersburg. Photos and postcards from the
beginning of the 20th century from the
museum’s collection. November 27 through
April 24
ISAAK BRODSKY APARTMENT MUSEUM
3 Pl. Iskusstv. M: Nevsky Prospekt. Tel 314
3658. Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to
7 p.m.
CHALIAPIN MANSION AND MUSEUM OF
RUSSIAN OPERA
26 Ulitsa Graftio, M: Petrogradskaya. Tel. 234
1056. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 12 p.m. to
6 p.m.
DECORATIVE AND APPLIED ARTS
MUSEUM
13 Solyanoi Pereulok. M: Nevsky Prospekt,
Chernyshevskaya. Tel. 273 3258. Tuesday
through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4.30 p.m.
DERZHAVIN MUSEUM
118 Nab. Reki Fontanki. M: Tekhnologichesky
Institut, Sennaya Ploshchad. Tel. 713 0717.
Tuesday to Sunday, 10.30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Vy Pomnite, Tekla Za Ratyu Rat...
Dedicated to the War of 1812. Graphics,
objects, painting. November 16 through
February 15
NEW! Miniatures From Private
Collections. Sculpture. January 23 through
February 28
DOLL MUSEUM
8 Kamskaya Ulitsa, M: Vasileostrovskaya. Tel.
327 7224. Daily, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Master
classes in making dolls are held on Saturdays
at 10 a.m. www.museumdolls.ru
NEW! Textile Harmony. Decorative art.
January 21 through March 3
DOSTOEVSKY APARTMENT MUSEUM
5/2 Kuznechny Pereulok, M: Vladimirskaya.
Tel. 571 4031. Tuesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to
6 p.m. www.md.spb.ru.
Reflected Dostoyevsky City: Tatyana
Rebriyeva. Photo. January 15 through
January 29
HEROIC DEFENDERS OF LENINGRAD
MUSEUM MONUMENT
Ploshchad Pobedy. M: Moskovskaya. Tel. 371
2951, 373 6563. Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (5
p.m. on Tuesday and Friday). Closed
Wednesday and the last Tuesday of every
month.
HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY MUSEUM
23 Professora Popova Ul. Tel. 346 1850.
Tuesday through Saturday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
www.photohismus.spb.ru
NEW! Photographer of the Silver Age.
Photos by the artist Alfred Eberling. January
25 through March 12
HISTORY OF RELIGION MUSEUM
14/5 Pochtamtskaya Ulitsa. M: Nevsky
Prospekt / Sennaya Ploshchad, Sadovaya.
12 wednesday, january 23, 2013
Sentimental Journey. Wedgwood in
Russia. Faience and porcelain from England.
December 8 through March 31
Hugo van der Goes: Adoration of the
Magi triptych. To celebrate the painting’s
recent restoration. December 8 through
January 27
A Wonderful Collection of Precious Books.
250 years of the Hermitage Library. Books.
December 8 through March 10
An Artist of All Schools. Christian
Wilhelm Dietrich (1712-1774). Painting,
graphics. November 28 through February 24
Russian imperial porcelain from the
second half of the 18th century. From the
Christmas Gift series. December 2 through
March 31
for spt
Yevgeny Orlov’s ‘Movement on a Ladder’ is one of the images on show at the Manezh
Central Exhibition Hall through Jan. 26 in a show titled ‘Petersburg. 20 Years.’
Tel. 571 0495, 314 5838. Daily 11 a.m. to
6 p.m. Closed Wednesday.
HISTORY OF ST. PETERSBURG MUSEUM
Peter and Paul Fortress. M: Gorkovskaya. Tel.
230 6431. Daily, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. (6 p.m.
Tuesday). Closed Wednesday.
www.spbmuseum.ru.
All Russia Remembers. Monuments to the
War of 1812 in St. Petersburg. Architectural
models, models of monuments, painting,
graphics, numismatics. November 29 through
March 31
New Year Stories. Postcards from the prerevolutionary and Soviet periods from the
museum’s collection, painting, graphics,
photo. December 3 through March 10
HISTORY OF ST. PETERSBURG MUSEUM:
MUSEUM OF PRINTING
32 Naberezhnaya Reki Moiki. Tel. 312 0977.
Daily 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (5 p.m. Friday). Closed
Wednesday.
HISTORY OF ST. PETERSBURG MUSEUM:
RUMYANTSEV MANSION
44 Angliiskaya Naberezhnaya. M:
Vasileostrovskaya, Nevsky Prospekt. Tel. 571
7544. Daily, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (5 p.m.
Tuesday). Closed Wednesday and the last
Tuesday of each month. www.spbmuseum.ru
The Collection of the Dukes of
Mecklenburg. Engravings showing views of
Western Europe, books. November 15
through May 19
Society of Traveling Exhibitions. 21st
Century. Exhibition No. 46. Painting, graphics
and sculpture from Russia, Belarus, Germany,
Poland, Ukraine and Finland. December 26
through February 22
KIROV APARTMENT MUSEUM
26/28 Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt. M:
Gorkovskaya, Petrogradskaya. Tel. 346 0217.
Daily, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Wednesday.
KUNSTKAMERA
3 Universitetskaya Nab. Tel. 328 1412. Daily,
11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Monday and the last
Thursday of each month. www.kunstkamera.ru
MATYUSHIN MUSEUM OF THE ST.
PETERSBURG AVANT-GARDE
10 Ul. Professora Popova. M: Petrogradskaya.
Daily, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., (5 p.m. Tuesday).
Closed Wednesday. www.spbmuseum.ru
Samozveri. Children’s books and toys of the
Russian avant-garde, from private collections.
September 3 through January 31, 2013.
The Three+ Alexander Maslov, Grigory
Molchanov, Alexei Gostintsev and others.
Painting. November 22 through January 31
MUSIC MUSEUM AT THE SHEREMETYEV
PALACE
34 Nab. Reki. Fontanki. Tel. 272 4441. Open
Wednesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
NIKOLAI NEKRASOV APARTMENT
MUSEUM
36 Liteiny Prospekt. M: Chernyshevskaya. Tel.
272 0165. Daily 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed
Tuesday and the last Friday of every month.
ADVERTISING
Folk show
at the nikolaevsky palace
+7 812 312 55 00
www.folkshow.ru
VLADIMIR NABOKOV APARTMENT
MUSEUM
47 Bolshaya Morskaya. Tel. 315 4713, 717
4502. Daily, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (12 p.m. to 5
p.m. at weekends). Closed Monday. www.
nabokovmuseum.org
Presentiment: Andrei Borichevsky. Photo.
January 16 through February 8
POLITICAL HISTORY OF RUSSIA MUSEUM
2/4 Ulitsa Kuibysheva. M: Gorkovskaya. Tel.
233 7052. Daily, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed
Thursday and the last Monday of the month.
www.polithistory.ru
Beyond the Realm of the Possible.
Paintings, sculpture and installations by U.S.
war veterans from the collection of the
National Museum of Veterans’ Art in Chicago.
December 14 through January 31, 2013.
NEW! Poets Tread a Knife Edge.
Dedicated to the 75th anniversary of Vladimir
Vysotsky’s birth. Objects, photo. January 25
through February 13
POLITICAL POLICE MUSEUM
6 Admiralteisky Prospekt. M: Gostiny Dvor,
Nevsky Prospekt. Tel. 312 2742. Monday
through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.
POPOV CENTRAL MUSEUM OF
COMMUNICATIONS
3 Pochtamtsky Pereulok. Tel. 323 9718.
Tuesday through Saturday, 10.30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Closed the last Thursday of each month. www.
rustelecom-museum.ru
PUSHKIN APARTMENT MUSEUM
12 Nab. Reki Moika. Tel. 571 3801. Daily
11 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. Closed Tuesday.
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV APARTMENT
MUSEUM
28 Zagorodny Prospekt, Courtyard. M:
Dostoyevskaya. Tel. 713 3208, 315 3975.
Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Closed last Friday of each month.
NIKOLAI ROERICH APARTMENT MUSEUM
1 Line 18, V.O. Wednesday through Sunday,
11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tel. 325 4413.
www.roerich.spb.ru
The Charms of Finland. Nikolai Roerich and
Finnish cultural figures. Objects. November
23 through April 24
Secrets of the Gobi Desert. Field
investigations from the part of the Gobi desert
visited by the Roerich expedition. December
21 through February 24
RUSSIAN ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUM
4/1 Inzhenernaya Ul. M: Nevsky Prospekt. Tel.
313 4421. Daily, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed
Monday and the last Friday of each month.
Gavriil Vashenko. Painting. December 21
through January 30
URBAN SCULPTURE MUSEUM. NEW
EXHIBITION HALL
179 Nevsky Prospekt. Entrance through 2
Chernoretsky Pereulok. Tel. 274 3860. Daily,
12 p.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Thursday, Friday.
www.gmgs.ru
SIEGE AND DEFENSE OF LENINGRAD
MUSEUM
8 Solyanoi Pereulok. Tel. 275 7208. Daily 10
a.m. to 6 p.m., (3 p.m. Tuesday). Closed
Wednesday and the last Thursday of every
month.
STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM
1 Palace Square. M: Nevsky Prospekt. Tel. 571
3420, 571 3465. Daily, 10.30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
(9 p.m. Saturday). Closed Monday.
www.hermitagemuseum.org
The Storm of 1812. Painting, graphics,
sculpture depicting the war of 1812 from the
State Hermitage’s collection. December 26
through April 7
NEW! Toy Soldiers. From December 26.
Closing date to be confirmed
We All Merge into a Single Soul... The war
of 1812 in medals. December 26 through
April 7
STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM:
MENSHIKOV PALACE
15 Universitetskaya Nab. M: Vasileostrovskaya.
Tel. 323 1112. Daily, 10.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. (5
p.m. Sunday). Closed Monday.
STATE RUSSIAN MUSEUM
2 Inzhenernaya Ul. M: Nevsky Prospekt. Tel.
314 3448, 595 4248. Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
(5 p.m. Monday). 1 p.m. to 9 p.m on
Thursdays. Closed Tuesday.
www.rusmuseum.ru/eng
No Barriers. Russian Art 1985-2000.
Zurab Tsereteli, Gely Korzhev, Konstantin
Zvezdochyotov and others. Sculpture,
graphics. Painting. December 5 through
February 3
STATE RUSSIAN MUSEUM: MARBLE
PALACE
5/1 Millionnaya Ul. M: Nevsky Prospekt. Tel.
312 9196. Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (5 p.m.
Monday). 1 p.m. to 9 p.m on Thursdays.
Closed Tuesday. A branch of the State Russian
Museum.
Resonant Matter. Objects, video art, sound
installation, sculpture, performance.
December 20 through March 11
STATE RUSSIAN MUSEUM:
MIKHAILOVSKY (ENGINEERS’) CASTLE
2 Sadovaya Ulitsa. M: Nevsky Prospekt.
Tel. 313 4112. Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (5 p.m.
Monday). 1 p.m. to 9 p.m on Thursdays.
Closed Tuesday. A branch of the State Russian
Museum.
Dreams as Reality. Painting, sculpture and
graphics of the 17th – early 21st century from
the museum’s collection. November 28
through January 27
STATE RUSSIAN MUSEUM: STROGANOV
PALACE
17 Nevsky Prospekt. Tel. 571 2360. Open
10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (5 p.m. Monday). 1 p.m. to 9
p.m on Thursdays. Closed Tuesday. A branch of
the State Russian Museum.
The Territory of Silence: Pyotr Dik.
Painting. November 22 through February 11
YELAGIN ISLAND PALACE AND MUSEUM
OF 18TH-20TH CENTURY DECORATIVE
AND APPLIED ARTS
1 Yelagin Island, M: Krestovsky Island,
Chernaya Rechka. Tel. 430 1131. Tuesday
through Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
NEW! Steps art group. Painting, graphics.
January 20 through February 23
When Magicians Come to People.
Objects. November 20 through January 31
YUSUPOVSKY PALACE
94 Nab. Reki. Moiki. M: Sennaya Ploshchad,
Sadovaya. Tel. 314 9883. Daily, 11 a.m. to
5 p.m. http://yusupov-palace.ru
BOREY
58 Liteiny Prospekt. M: Vladimirskaya,
Mayakovskaya. Tel. 275 3837.
Tuesday – Saturday 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.
www.borey.ru
Photographika. Photo, graphics. January 15
through January 26
DIDI ART GALLERY
62 Bolshoi Prospekt of V.O., M:
Vasileostrovskaya. Tel. 320 7357. Daily 12 p.m.
to 8 p.m. Saturday, Sunday 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.
http://didigallery.com
Yelena Schumacher. Painting. December
21 through January 29
ERARTA MUSEUM
2, 29th Line of Vasilyevsky Island, lit. A. M:
Vasileostrovskaya. Tel. 324 0809. Daily 10
a.m. to 10 p.m. Closed Tuesday.
www.erarta.com
Crosses. Painting, graphics, sculpture,
installations and video art. January 18
through February 4
Ballet Is a Castle of Beauty. Nina Alovert,
Paul Kolnik (both – U.S.), Maria Baranova.
Dedicated to Mikhail Baryshnikov. Photo.
January 16 through February 11
NEW! Soviet Pin-Up: Valery Barykin.
Posters. January 24 through February 25
GLASS GALLERY
1/28 Ul. Lomonosova, M: Gostiny Dvor. Tel.
312 2214. Daily 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Game of Beads: Konstantin Chmutin.
Graphics. January 15 through February 4
KVADRAT
28 Ulitsa Kuibysheva, M: Gorkovskaya. Tel. +7
963 315 6937. Wednesday through Saturday,
2 p.m. to 7 p.m. www.4tgallery.ru
Everyday Experiences. Painting, graphics,
video. December 21 through February 1
LEMONADE GALLERY
9 Ulitsa Belinskogo, attic. M: Gostiny Dvor,
Mayakovskaya. Tel. +7 921 654 8954, +7 904
615 5916. Open Monday – Thursday 2 p.m. to
10.30 p.m. (from noon at weekends).
www.vk.com/lemonaderoof
LOFT-PROJECT ETAGI
74 Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel. 458 5005. Daily
10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Gradographics. Graphics, video art.
December 20 through February 16
NEW! Fencers: Pavel Zmunchila. Photo.
January 24 through April 25
100 Years Under a Red Sun. Photo.
December 11 through March 11
Hot Cold. Painting, photo, graphics, video art,
sculpture, objects. December 22 through
February 15
Formula Gallery. Promgraphics: Mark
Petrov. Tel. 458 5005. Graphics. December
26 through March 27
MANEZH CENTRAL EXHIBITION HALL
1 St. Isaac’s Square. Tel. 314 8859. Open
daily, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. www.manege.spb.ru
Petersburg. 20 Years. Mikhail Anikushin,
Konstantin Simun, Zaven Arshakuni and
others. Painting, graphics, photo, sculpture.
January 13 through January 26
MART GALLERY
35 Ul. Marata. Tel. 710 8835, 315 2738. M:
Vladimirskaya, Dostoyevskaya. Daily 12 a.m.
to 7 p.m. Saturday 12 a.m. – 6 p.m. Closed
Sunday, Monday. www.martgallery.ru
Gallery Artists. Painting. December 20
through January 26
NEW! The Wizard’s Hat: Anna
Soluyanova. Painting. January 30 through
February 2
NEW MUSEUM GALLERY
29 6th Line of Vasilyevsky Island. Tel. 323
5090. M: Vasileostrovskaya. Wednesday to
Sunday, 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.
www.novymuseum.ru
Point of View: Vitaly Pushnitsky.
Sculpture, painting, postcards. December 7
through February 3
PERINNIYE RYADY ART CENTER
4 Dumskaya Ulitsa. M: Gostiny Dvor. Daily
11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tel. +7 904 601 0000.
www.artcenter.su
100 Wonders of the World. Gold collection
2012. Photo. December 13 through March 3
PUSHKINSKAYA 10 ART CENTER
Galleries open from 4 p.m. through 8 p.m.
Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Entrance at
53 Ligovsky Prospekt. Tel: 764 5371
http://en.p-10.ru/
The Door. Posturbanism: Alexei Parygin.
Floor 3. Photo. January 12 through February
3
GEZ-21 Outbuilding B, 3 Floor. Tel. 764 5258,
Daily 3 p.m. to midnight.
Navicula Artis gallery. Man-Sticker:
Alexei ‘Fanat’ Shlyakov. Tel. 764 5371.
Installation. January 12 through February 3
New Academy of Fine Arts Museum.
Room 405. Tel. 272 8222. Saturday 6 p.m. to
7 p.m.
Nonconformist Art Museum. The White
Movement: Igor Shirshkov. Floor 4.
Tel. 764 5371. Wednesday through Sunday
3 p.m. to 7 p.m. www.nonmuseum.ru.
Paintings, graphics. January 12 through
February 3
Parnik Art-Project. Inside Out: Olga
Dospekhova. Installation. January 12
through February 3
RACHMANINOV GARDEN
5 Kazanskaya Ul. Tel. 312 9558. Tuesday to
Saturday, 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.
http://fotorachmaninov.ru
Face Control: Alexander Pilko. Photo.
January 15 through March 2
RACHMANINOV HOTEL
5 Kazanskaya Ul. Tel. 327 7466.
www.kazansky5.com
NEW! Ballet Is a Castle of Beauty. Part
of the ‘Days of Baryshnikov’ festival
devoted to the dancer Mikhail
Baryshnikov. Photo. January 20 through
March 4
RIZZORDI ART FOUNDATION
49a Kurlyandskaya Ulitsa. M: Baltiiskaya.
Tuesday through Friday, 2 p.m. – 8. p.m.,
Sunday 12 p.m. – 7 p.m. Closed on Mondays.
Tel. 702 9062. www.rizzordi.org.
Between Land and Sky. AES+F art group,
Valery Kazas, Irina Drozd and others.
Painting, graphics, photo, installation,
video art. December 6 through January 31
ROSPHOTO STATE CENTER OF
PHOTOGRAPHY
35 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 314 6184,
314 1214. Daily, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
www.rosfoto.org
Vladimir Antoshenkov. Photo. December 6
through February 3
Stone Garden: David Goberman. Photo.
December 27 through January 27
DMITRY SEMENOV GALLERY
63 Ligovsky Prospekt, apartment 19. Daily
12 p.m. to 8 p.m. Closed Sunday, Monday. Tel.
575 8323, +7 911 998 6673.
Alexander Bartov: ‘From the Life of
Trees’ and ‘Mirages of Iceland.’ Painting,
graphics. December 21 through January 31
galleries
ANNA NOVA
28 Ulitsa Zhukovskogo, tel. 275 9762.
Tuesday-Saturday 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.
www.annanova-gallery.ru
Reconstructor: Denis Patrakeyev.
Painting, installation, video art. December 21
through February 9
ARTISTS UNION OF RUSSIA EXHIBITION
CENTER
38 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 314 3060.
Daily, 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. Closed on Monday.
www.spb-uniart.ru
From Petersburg to Vyborg: Vladimir
Kolbasov. Painting. January 15 through
January 27
NEW! Ivan Chernyakevich. Silk painting.
January 22 through January 27
NEW! Anatoly Kurshin. Painting, graphics.
January 22 through January 27
BOOK AND GRAPHICS CENTER
55 Liteiny Prospekt. M: Mayakovskaya. Tel. 273
5452. Daily 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. www.naiv-art.ru
NEW! Dmitry Burago. Painting. January 23
through February 3
for spt
St. Petersburg’s infamous Kresty detention center is the subject of a new exhibition
at Erarta Museum and Galleries of Modern Art that runs through Feb. 4.
online
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Wednesday, January 23, 2013
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Opinion
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 ❖ 15
Another Day, Another Dismembered Body
By Victor Davidoff
A
dysfunctional family with spouses living separate lives but staying together
only for the sake of the children. Huge
debts from the couple’s small business.
A family of five crammed into a tiny, rented tworoom apartment. No chance to start a new business or find well-paying jobs. Add to that serious
drinking problems for both husband and wife
and you get the perfect setup for a Dostoyevskian
novel that inevitably leads to murder.
The murder took place Jan. 3 after a fight.
The lawyer for former restaurateur Alexei Kabanov said Kabanov confessed to strangling his
wife, journalist Irina Kabanova, and dismembering her body. Kabanov started hiding the body
parts but was prevented from completing his task
by investigators. They searched a car he was driving and found two bags filled with human remains
in the trunk.
Kabanov made his name in the Moscow restaurant scene. In 2000, he was one of the originators of the innovative OGI Project, named after
a publisher of art-house literature. A literary club
and cafe hybrid, it was a place where people could
have dinner as well as attend exhibitions, book
readings, literary festivals and poetry readings. It
even had its own library.
The project was a success. The owners opened
several other cafes under the brand PROgi
and had plans to start another 18 cafes. But
the company wasn’t able to raise the money to expand, and after the oil boom crashed in 2008,
the company began to nosedive. A number of cafes were closed, and others were sold. Kabanov
and his wife opened their own cafe, called Cherska, in the center of Moscow. It was financed
by the sale of Kabanova’s apartment. But the cafe
failed, and the couple lived on her income from a
radio talk show.
Unfortunately, domestic murders are common
in Russia. As psychologist Gennady Chichkanov
said in an interview with Verchernyaya Moskva,
“Someone’s body is being dismembered every
day.” But the Kabanov case got a tremendous
amount of attention because of one detail: Kabanov is a well-known opposition figure. He ran
in the elections for the opposition’s Coordinating
Council. He was arrested several times during
the Moscow demonstrations in 2012 and volunteered to help with clean-up operations after
the flooding in Krymsk last summer. It is thus no
wonder that as soon as the murder was reported,
anti-opposition web sites erupted with joy.
Blogger Dobryiviwer wrote on his LiveJournal
blog: “People who wear the opposition movement’s white ribbon symbol are criminals. …
The white-ribboner Alexei Kabanov brutally
murdered his own wife and cut her body
r
By Nikolai Petrov
T
e
g
i
into pieces. Another opposition leader, Leonid
Razvozzhayev, was a mugger. Garry Kasparov is
constantly giving speeches in the U.S., while Boris
Nemtsov is seen embracing one of Russia’s worst
enemies, John McCain. What a lovely creative
class Russia has: Murderers, thieves, sadists
and traitors.”
A blogger on the Ridus agency site — financed
by the Kremlin, according to former employees —
wrote: “The Zavtra club that Kabanov co-owned
is now the favorite hangout for white-ribboners.
Maybe that would be a good place to show his art
of dismembering a human body.” A translator
and anti-opposition writer who uses the pseudonym Goblin wrote: “The avid opposition activist
Kabanov killed his wife and dismembered her
body. Who else is among them? Necrophiliacs?
Cannibals?”
Questions like these, which sound like they
were taken from Stalinist-era newspapers during
the Great Terror, are more puzzling than upset-
o
n
a
l
d
i
m
e
n
s
ting. Poet Vsevolod Yemelin wrote on his LiveJournal blog: “I don’t wear a white ribbon myself.
But what is there to cheer about? What’s going
on? One guy out of a demonstration of 100,000
people killed his wife. What does this have to do
with the protest movement in general? One person was a murderer, while 99,999 people were not.
It’s not going to stop the movement. People will
still demonstrate — perhaps not tomorrow, but
at some time. Don’t rush to bury the protest
movement.”
Of course, the Kabanov family tragedy has
nothing to do with the protest movement. But it
does have something to do with the economic situation in the country, particularly the crisis
of small business development. Last year, income
from individual businesses in Moscow was down 3
percent, according to an analysis published
in Kommersant. The number of entrepreneurs
has been falling over the last four years; it fell 4
percent in 2012. More and more small business
i
o
n
he first weeks of 2013 have already
shown that relations between Russian
authorities and society will be no better
this year than they were in 2012.
The large-scale “March against Scoundrels”
rally in Moscow on Jan. 13 and the smaller but
significant rallies in a host of major cities showed
that large numbers of demonstrators can be mobilized on short notice to protest the actions of the
authorities. The angry protests might be triggered
by fraudulent elections, repressive measures
against protesters or even something as seemingly
far removed from the standard political agenda as
the recent law prohibiting U.S. citizens
from adopting Russian children.
Among the key things that could trigger protests this year are the criminal charges authorities
plan to file against participants in the mass protest
rally on Bolotnaya Ploshchad on May 6, the day
before Vladimir Putin’s inauguration. In a Levada
Center survey conducted in December, 40 percent
of respondents said the process could have a negative effect on the authorities. At the same time, 40
percent said they believe dissatisfaction and resentment will grow as a result of unjust court rulings
and abuses by the judicial system, police and government officials. In addition, 12 percent of those
questioned predicted that the protest mood would
Victor Davidoff is a Moscow-based writer
and journalist who follows the Russian blogosphere.
s
More Protests in 2013
increase and become more
radicalized.
Also noteworthy, opinion polls indicate that a significant part of the population sympathizes with protesters. According to a recent survey by the Levada
Center, more than onethird of Russians fully or
Nikolai Petrov
partially support the mass
protests.
The environmental protest movement is also
growing. Expert Siberia magazine named an environmental activist as its person of the year
for 2012. Also in Siberia, the Krasnoyarsk is Opposed movement forced local authorities to halt
construction of an iron plant in Yenesei that
would have heavily polluted the environment.
An increasing number of people who were previously unengaged are now joining the environmental protest movement. In the fall, 181,000 Krasnoyarsk residents — one out of every three adults
in the city — signed a petition demanding that
President Vladimir Putin halt construction of the
plant.
A number of environmental protests were also
held in the Moscow region demanding an end
to highway construction and the clearing of forests, the most notable being the Khimki forest
owners and entrepreneurs, whether they are engaged in computer programming or trade, are being forced to find full-time jobs and abandon their
hopes of owning their own business.
The analytical Internet site Tolkovatel says
“business activity in Moscow is slowing down,
and white-collar labor is less in demand. Middleaged, middle-class migrants to Moscow can’t find
work. They can either go back to the provinces or
even abroad, or they have to change professions.”
There were many factors that led to the murder in the Kabanov family. But there is a larger
lesson that can be gleaned from this tragedy.
A country that denies opportunities to its creative
and entrepreneurial class is a country without
prospects for economic development in the 21st
century.
dispute and the defense of the Tsagovsky forest
in Zhukovsky, 25 kilometers from Moscow.
Demonstrations against social and economic
conditions, especially the increase in utility rates,
are also increasing. Spontaneous rallies were held
recently in Volgograd, Kaliningrad, Bryansk,
Omsk, Pervouralsk and other cities.
Rising prices on the full range of consumer
goods and price hikes on alcohol and tobacco
products are also fueling social and economic protests. The new law on education, which entails
reductions in many areas, is slated to go into full
force this fall, along with similar “reforms” in the
the health care system. Both of these initiatives
alone could add attract more Russians to the protest movement.
As a measure to prevent unrest, Putin promised to raise salaries for state employees, largely
drawing on regional budgets to fund the increase.
But Putin is taking a risk in potentially creating
a “middle class” of bureaucrats, which he hopes
will counterbalance the more independent opposition movement. We will likely see the first problems in Putin’s strategy when the ineptitude
of governors and the Regional Development Ministry leads to financial mismanagement
and chaos.
Nikolai Petrov is a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
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Feature
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 ❖ 16
Hermitage Finds Itself in Ferragamo’s Shoes
By Galina Stolyarova
T H E S T. P E T E R S B U R G T I M E S
S
alvatore Ferragamo, one of
Italy’s most renowned and
successful fashion companies,
has become the first member
of the association of the
Friends of the Hermitage Museum in
Italy. What will the alliance between
the iconic shoe brand and the vast art
collection bring to these venerable institutions — and indeed, their dedicated
audiences? Giovanna Gentile Ferragamo, vice-president of the company
and the daughter of its founder Salvatore Ferragamo, spoke to The St. Petersburg Times about this collaboration
and the many connections between the
Ferragamo family and the world of art.
“Naturally, we are fascinated by the
Hermitage’s collections, and we would
be thrilled to be able to get inspiration
from the amazing artworks; our designers recently had the precious opportunity to study the archives of the
Bolshoi Theater in Moscow,” Ferragamo said.
On the board of the Hermitage
Friends in Italy, Ferragamo works
alongside the heads of some of Italy’s
most respected businesses, as well as
scholars and members of aristocratic
families, such as Contessa Maria Vittoria Rimbotti, president of the Friends of
the Uffizzi Gallery Association; Claudia
Cremonini, head of the external relations department of the Cremonini food
processing holding; professor Stefania
Pavan, a senior lecturer in Russian literature at the University of Florence;
and Marquise Bona Frescobaldi.
“We are very honored by this opportunity to be so close to the Hermitage Museum; the Ferragamo family has
always been affiliated with arts and culture,” Ferragamo said.
Most recently, the company sponsored the restoration of Leonardo da
Vinci’s “The Virgin and Child With
Saint Anne,” a newly restored oil-onwood painting dating back to circa 1510
and left unfinished by the artist when
he died in 1519. The painting was the
focal point of the Louvre’s exhibition
“Saint Anne, Leonardo da Vinci’s Ultimate Masterpiece,” which juxtaposed
sketches and drawings from the last
two decades of the master’s life.
The sponsorship earned Ferragamo
the right to hold its first ever fashion
runway show inside the Louvre, which
took place in June 2012.
Yet of all the arts — just like in Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s
famous declaration — cinema has been
the most important art form for Ferragamo since the 1920s.
Hollywood would bring Ferragamo
energy, inspiration — and the loyalty of
distinguished clients such as Lauren
Bacall, Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Greta Garbo and Sophia Loren.
Salvatore Ferragamo Spa has made
it a tradition to work for big film productions, both by making accessories
for them and by working closely and
actively with costume designers on set.
Collaborations in the last 20 years include Alan Parker’s “Evita” in 1996,
which starred Madonna in the lead
role, and Andy Tennant’s 1998 film
“Ever After: A Cinderella Story,” starring Drew Barrymore, Anjelica Huston
and Jeanne Moreau, and more recently
on Baz Luhrmann’s “Australia” (2008),
with Nicole Kidman in the lead role.
“Evita herself was a dedicated client
of ours, and for the film we made exact
copies of the models that she had ordered,” Ferragamo recalls. “So what
Madonna wears in the film are in fact
replicas of the very same designs that
we had made for Evita.”
Salvatore Ferragamo
used to divide his
female clients into three
categories: The
Cinderella, the Venus
and the Aristocrat.
It was the same story with Meryl
Streep and the film “The Iron Lady,” in
which the actress portrayed former
U.K. prime minister Margaret
Thatcher. “We had the history of her
orders in the archives, and we were
able to produce copies of Thatcher’s
shoes for Meryl Streep,” Ferragamo
said.
During a visit to Italy for the launch
ceremony of the association in July
2012, the Hermitage’s director,
Mikhail Piotrovsky, visited the Ferragamo Museum in Florence, where
he attended an exhibit dedicated to
Marilyn Monroe.
Some of the items at the permanent
collection of the Ferragamo Museum
are particularly moving for Giovanna
Ferragamo. For example, she has a
strong emotional connection with the
patchwork shoes that are associated
with her childhood.
“Over the years, my father had
made — he did it a few times — a
for spt
Ferragamo made copies of Margaret Thatcher’s shoes for the film ‘The Iron Lady.’
alexander belenky / spt
Giovanna Gentile Ferragamo, the company’s vice-president, pictured during an interview at the Hotel Astoria in St. Petersburg. patchwork flat shoe design which is
made of many little pieces of leather
sewn together with another piece of
leather,” she remembers.
“The little bits had different colors
and textures. These pieces could be lizard or suede, or anything else. When
my sister and I were about 10 years old,
he would make these shoes for us. I
was a very shy child, and, of course, the
other kids did not have shoes like
those. So I hardly ever wore the fantastic shoes — or, when I did, I tried to
hide my feet under the chair! When I
think of those now, my thoughts are
very different. If I had them today, I
would love them.”
Salvatore Ferragamo used to divide
his female clients into three categories:
The Cinderella, the Venus and the
Aristocrat. The division was not based
on style, however, but solely on the size
of the ladies’ feet. A Cinderella had a
shoe size smaller than a six (39), the
Venus took a size six, and the Aristocrat a seven (41) or larger.
Joking aside, when he created
shoes for any great actress he was
working with, he would start with their
personality.
“Marilyn Monroe was a stiletto
woman — and indeed, this shape comes
to mind immediately when we think of
her,” said Giovanna Ferragamo. “This
was an ideal match between a woman
and a fashion item, and stilettos are fre-
Fashion aficionados
hope the cooperation
between Ferragamo
and the Hermitage will
lead to new collections
inspired by art.
quently even associated with Monroe.
By comparison, Greta Garbo loved
flat, somewhat masculine-looking
shoes.”
Russian admirers of the Ferragamo
brand are hoping that this cooperation
will result not only in arts projects, but
also new collections inspired by the
Hermitage’s objects of art.
The Hermitage has already collaborated with considerable success with St.
Petersburg designers Lilia Kisselenko,
Tatyana Parfyonova and Ianis Chamalidy, who received permission to
study the museum’s collections, consult
curators and produce new designs inspired and influenced by the Hermitage’s treasures.
Is there anything that Giovanna
Ferragamo really likes and remains
faithful to that is not fashionable?
“A lot of things, actually, starting
with this bag,” she replies, pointing at
her elegant, compact, black leather
handbag.
“The company first produced them
about 25 years ago, and indeed, Ferragamo does not make these designs
anymore. They do it for me, upon request, specifically — and I have a few
of them, in different colors.
“Come to think about it, most of my
wardrobe is not fashionable. If I
opened my closet, people would think,
goodness, this is all vintage!”
Учредитель и издатель – ООО «Нева Медиа». Главный редактор – Шура Коллинсон. Свидетельство о регистрации средства массовой информации ПИ № ФС2-8918 от 30 ноября 2007 года, выдано Управлением Федеральной службы по надзору за соблюдением законодательства в сфере массовых коммуникаций и охране
культурного наследия по Саверо-Западному федеральному округу. Отпечатано в ОАО «Первая Образцовая типография» филиал «СПб газетный комплекс». 198216, СПб, Ленинский пр., 139. Заказ № 978. Подписано в печать: по графику в 1.00, фактически в 1.00. Тираж 20000 экз. Распространяется бесплатно.