Notebook

Rybakov dies

Anatoly Rybakov died in his sleep in late December after a complicated heart operation in New York. He was 87. Rybakov was author of the legendary novel trilogy which began with Children of the Arbat, one of the milestones of perestroika. The novel was surely autobiographical – in 1933 Rybakov was arrested and sentenced to three years of exile for “counter-revolutionary agitation and propaganda.” Nonetheless, he joined the army when WWII began and participated in the storming of Berlin. His romantic children’s novel, Kortik (The Dagger), which he wrote at the age of 37, became a must-read for Soviet adolescents, as did subsequent works. Children of Arbat, stored in a desk for 20 years, was published in 1987 in serial form in Druzhba Narodov literary magazine. It became the first literary verdict on Stalin’s regime after the long years of stagnation and was read and passed from hand to hand in xeroxed copies. While critics may argue over the literary merits of the work, it had the advantage of being the first. As Itogi TV anchor Yevgeny Kiselyov justly put it, without having read the Children of Arbat, proponents of democracy would hardly have defended Yeltsin at the barricades during the August 1991 putsch.

Prokofiev museum

A state museum dedicated to the composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) will open in the first half of 1999 on Moscow’s Kamergersky lane. Perhaps best known in the West for his symphony Peter and the Wolf (1936), Prokofiev emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1918 and lived in the West until 1933, when he returned to live in the USSR, despite the limitations of socialist realism. He is the author of a number of world-famous works, including the ballet Romeo and Juliet (1936) and the score for Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky (1939). Despite becoming a People’s Artist in 1947, he was condemned for “cacophony, decadence and formalism” in 1948, but was not punished because he repented. In 1958, the Party repealed the accusations (in 1957 his 7th Symphony won the Lenin Prize).

Diners spend less

A poll of 150 Russian restaurants conducted by Restaurant Business magazine revealed that even the most successful have seen an average 30% drop in clientele since the August crisis. Most, however, lost 60% or more of their diners. Only a small number of extremely fashionable restaurants, some of which accept dollars, seem to have seen no drop in business. Many restaurants reported a drop in average total bills. Diners are ordering less food and paying more attention to prices.

Bolshoi funding campaign

An international fund raising campaign to reconstruct the Bolshoi theater will be launched in May 1999, said theater director Vladimir Kokonin. The total cost of renovation is estimated at $400 million and will be complete by the year 2002. Vice-Premier Valentina Matvienko called the theater “a heritage of global culture.” The remont is long overdue: the Bolshoi’s foundations are sagging and the back of the building needs to be lifted; in 1993 UNESCO included the Bolshoi on its list of the “world’s most important endangered cultural objects.” Half of the estimated $400 million will be spent on the renovation of administrative premises, workshops, a museum and warehouses. The remainder will be spent on renovation of the main hall and improvement of technical conditions backstage. There are also plans to construct a 1,000 seat affiliate of the Bolshoi nearby. 

Yastreb-Luzhkovsky

Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov officially introduced President Boris Yeltsin’s ex-spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, as his new vice-premier. In his new capacity, Yastrzhembsky will run international and inter-regional relations for the Moscow city government. Dubbed by journalists “Yastreb Zhensky” (literally, “women’s hawk”) for his handsome looks, he will be a local foreign minister of sorts and will promote Luzhkov as a presidential candidate both at home and abroad. Yastrzhembsky shares Luzhkov’s passion for tennis and has participated in a number of VIP tournaments, usually playing doubles with partner Valentin Yumashev, who, by the way, was recently sacked from the post of the head of the presidential administration. 

New Stops

Starting in 2001, Muscovites will be able to get straight to Victory Park (Park Pobedy) at the Poklonnaya Gora Memorial Complex via metro. The new metro branch is to open on the dark blue line (the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line). City metro officials promised to unveil a new station every year; a new station, Dubrovka, between Krestyanskaya Zastava and Kozhukhovskaya on the dark green line, will open in 1999.

Angara poisoned

Greenpeace has labeled an 18-mile stretch of land in Irkutsk a “chemical Chernobyl.” In a report issued in late November, the international environmental group said that mercury leaks from a closed chemical factory in the area have poisoned underground water supplies and mercury continues to flow into the Angara river, threatening some 500,000 local inhabitants. 

Robin Hood

A self-appointed Russian Robin Hood was running loose in Yaroslavl region, the Russian TV news program Vesti reported. The man is suspected of burning down 25 cottages of “New Russians” in the span of a year. The man is now in police custody and faces up to eight-years in prison.

Feast amid famine

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov seeks to erect a statue of architect Vasily Bazhenov in front of Bazhenov’s creation, the famous Pashkov House across from the Kremlin, to commemorate the architect’s 200th birthday in August 1999. The Russian Academy of Arts will oversee the artistic contest. Sevodnya daily cultural critic Alexandra Tolstikhina expressed hope that the new monument will not be like the controversial monument to Peter the Great. An apt concern, given that the chairman of the contest jury is Zurab Tsereteli, sculptor of the Peter the Great monument and President of the Russian Academy of Arts. But the real concern may be whether there will long be anything behind the new monument. Pashkov House has been under renovation for 10 years, with little result due to shortage of funds. According to Viktor Fedorov, director of the Russian State Library (partly housed at Pashkov), the cost of the renovation is estimated at $200 million, which the library doesn’t have.

Mir trundles on

The Mir Space Station costs about a quarter of a billion dollars to keep in orbit each year. That, plus the deteriorating condition of the station (and Russia’s $300 million per year commitment to the International Space Station), had led Russian space officials to plan Mir’s closing later this year. But now an undisclosed firm is apparently offering to sponsor the station’s operations for another three years.

Witty monument

A monument to wit will be built in Russia’s capital, said Moscow’s Chief Architect Alexander Kuzmin. The monument will be executed in the shape of a stone-pyramid, with water falling over the pyramid, on which each side will symbolize the different moods of man. Below one of the sides of the pyramid, will be a bronze statue of a Muscovite made to look like the late Russian clown Yuri Nikulin. The pyramid will stand on Petrovsky boulevard. 

Lenin polarized

Politicians in the capital have been talking (without result) about removing the corpse of Lenin from his sarcophagus on Red Square and burying it as a symbolic end to totalitarianism. Meanwhile, communist activists in the town of Polyarniye Zori (Polar Dawns) near Murmansk erected a statue of Lenin in the center of their town. Interfax quoted a local communist leader as saying that the statue will remind “future generations of the merits of the leader of the world’s proletariat.” Statues of Lenin survive in many towns across Russia, but it is very rare to see one put up where none existed previously. In a related story, ITAR-TASS reported that a school in Chelyabinsk put up a bust of Joseph Stalin on December 21, the former vozhd’s birthday.

Fashion able

Notwithstanding the economic crisis, Russia managed to put together an opulent Fashion Show in the hotel Rossiya at the end of 1998. The event was the fifth annual Week of High Fashion. Models came from Russia’s leading agency Red Stars (see Russian Life, March 1998). “I have never seen such a quantity of long legs as at the casting, with 250 Red Star Models,” Peter O’Brien of the House of Rochas told the Moscow Times. The Golden Mannequin Prize went to the Russian designer Igor Chapurin, who competed with European designers like Fendi, Rochas, Torrente, Erreuno and Claude Montana. Red Stars’ model Tatyana Ettinger won the prize for Best Model for the second year in a row. 

Stalin’s voice dies

Valentin Berezhkov, a well-known diplomat and journalist and former interpreter for Stalin and Molotov, died in late 1998 of a heart attack in his Southern California home. During WWII, Berezhkov was a diplomat in the USSR Embassy in Germany and witnessed the delivery of German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop’s declaration of war on the Soviet Union. Of late, Berezhkov has been touring the world and lecturing on Russian-American relations. He is well-known for his book, How I Became Stalin’s Interpreter.

How many are enough?

According to the weekly Argumenty I Fakty, there are 67 Gennady Seleznevs in Moscow (namesakes of the Duma Speaker). Former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov has 13 doubles, the extreme leftist Viktor Anpilov has 6 namesakes, while mayor Yuri Luzhkov has only one “replacement” – 47-year-old worker Yuri Viktorovich Luzhkov. Gennady Zyuganov, Grigory Yavlinsky, Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Anatoly Chubais all have just one namesake in Moscow. Meanwhile, Moskovsky Komsomolets in December asked a leading Moscow stylist, Yelena Vasina, what could be done to spruce up the images of the “original” politicians. She offered that Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov could use a haircut, former Prime Minister Sergei Kirienko needs more modern glasses, and Communist Party head Gennady Zyuganov should wear shirts with looser collars and tie his ties with bigger knots, so as to counteract his large head and 

wide face.

Dig and ye 

may find

A team of Moscow archaeologists unearthed jewelry, ceramic vessels and crucifixes during construction work under way at Gostinny Dvor – yet another of Moscow Mayor Luzhkov’s ambitious projects. According to The Moscow Times, the diggers also found near-perfectly preserved leather shoes, painted toy horses and even a piece of birch bark with a child’s drawing. All the items are at least 300 years old. According to scientists, the 16th century items were meant for sale at Gostinny Dvor (literally “Guest House”), which has been one of the largest trade centers in Russia since the 15th century. Visitors will have a chance to have a look at the artifacts in the year 2000, after a museum is opened underneath the reconstructed Gostinny Dvor building.

Cost of love

Religious authorities in Ingushetia, a largely Muslim region in southern Russia, have reinstated an ancient practice requiring that men pay a women’s parents the kalym – a fee for the right to marry her, ITAR-TASS news agency reported. The bride-price was set at R2,000 ($100 at the current rate) – a hefty sum by local standards.

Anti-communists 

to unite

Konstantin Borovoi, Duma Deputy and founder of Russia’s largest commodity exchange, announced the creation of an Anticommunist Front in Russia. The aim, he said, is to “put an end to the communist attacks on people’s rights and their democratic achievements, their property and their life.” The Front will have branches in 10 Russian regions, he said, and plans to register as an international organization. “We also intend to begin collecting documents for the launch of an international tribunal against the communist regime,” Borovoi said. On December 2, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that the Communist Party is backed by 43 governors (out of 88 regions).

Solzhenitsyn’s snub

Writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn rejected the Order of St. Andrew Pervozvanny, Russia’s Highest Decoration. The order was to be presented him by President Boris Yeltsin on the occasion of the writer’s 80th birthday. Solzhenitsyn said he could not accept the award “while there are people on hunger strikes to get their salaries” and because Yeltsin’s government had led the country to a “catastrophe.” Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994 after a long exile in the US (See Russian Life, November 1997). He has been a vocal critic of Yeltsin’s presidential record, hence his most recent book, Rossiya v obvale (Russia in a Shambles). 

Check Mate

Efim Geller, one of only two Chess Masters who had a winning record against World Champion Bobby Fischer, died in late 1998 at the age of 74. From 1945 to the present, all World Chess Champions have come from the Former Soviet Union. The only exception to this was 1972-75, when the throne was occupied by Fischer, who quit the post undefeated (he refused to play Anatoly Karpov, who automatically became World Champion). But few chess aficionados know that only two Soviet chess-players had a positive record against Fisher: the late Mikhail Tal (4:2) and Efim Geller (5:3). Chess Master Yuri Averbakh recently recalled in Kommersant Daily what an inconvenient opponent Geller was for Fischer. He played very aggressively, always on the cutting edge. In 1979, at the age of 54, Geller added to his laurels by becoming the oldest Soviet to win a national chess championship. He also authored a number of books on chess and will go down in the history of chess as a brilliant theoretician.

“On August 22, 1991 a tremendous stupidity was committed. Democracy was proclaimed without any real basis for it. Somebody just declared: “Democracy. Everyone rejoice, from 9 am ‘til 6 p.m. with a lunch break. Wait for the market, it will come like Santa Claus. This is all crap.” 

Krasnoyarsk Governor Alexander Lebed, 

on why Russia needs a dictatorship.

“We Presidents are forced to lead people where they don’t want to go to.”

Kazak President Nursultan Nazarbaev.

“It is well known that the President, to put it mildly, is not highly popular with the population.” 

First Deputy Head of Presidential Administration Oleg Sysuev, speaking at a regular briefing.

“Personally, I don’t like standing in line.” 

Communist Party Leader Gennady Zyuganov. 

“Moscow newspapers don’t write bad things about Luzhkov because he can turn off their sewage system.”

Saratov Governor Dmitry Ayatskov.

“Russians are just such a nation that, if they don’t have problems, they will invent them.” 

Vice-Premier Yuri Maslyukov.

“The country has seen that the Duma is just a shallow, lousy circus. You just don’t vote unanimously for a salary hike for yourself under the eyes of a hungry and poor country.” 

Yuri Lyubimov.

At 1:40 am EST on November 20, the 22-ton Zarya (“Sunrise”) International Space Station module launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan, aboard a 770 ton Proton rocket. Leveling out at 240 nautical miles, the Russian module, which will provide power, communications and orientation functions to early stages of the space station, deployed its solar arrays ... At 3:59 am on December 3, the Space Shuttle Endeavor launched from Kennedy Space Center in Orlando, carrying the Unity module in its payload. The two modules linked up on December 10 after 21 hours and 22 minutes of construction in space (including three space walks). This photo, taken at 21:19 GMT on December 13, shows the two docked modules (Zarya on left, Unity on right) 240 miles above Earth’s glowing horizon. 

44 persons were detained for crimes committed in Moscow hotels in the first 11 months of 1998, the Moscow Interior Ministry said. Of these, 23 were detained for storing and selling drugs, 9 for theft, 6 for economic crimes, 3 for robbery, 2 for carrying arms, 1 for rape and 1 for hooliganism. ! Between 1992 and September 1, 1998, the Russian population shrunk by 2.2 million persons, Goskomstat reported. The current population is just 146.5 million. Goskomstat experts forecast that, by the end of 2000, the population will decrease to 145.6 million and, by 2015, to just 138 million. The birth rate in Russia has dropped 6% since 1989, while the death rate has climbed 3.5%, to levels as high as they might be for a country at war. ! Capital flight from Russia is as high as $1-2 billion per month, ITAR-TASS news agency reported, citing Interior Ministry data. ! Over the last 5 years, according to the Russian Interior Ministry, the number of criminal offenses perpetrated by organized criminal groups rose by 94.4%. Last year 1619 government officials were found guilty of corruption and ties with the criminal world. ! Meat consumption fell 25% in Russia from 1990 to 1995, the New York Times reported, and Interfax reported that meat production was 57% off 1990 levels. ! Russia earned $2.2 billion from the export of nuclear equipment and technology in 1998, Interfax reported. ! 2,000,000 Russian children lack families, and almost two-thirds of these children live on the street, Literaturnaya Gazeta reported. According to a study by the non-governmental Association of Child Psychologists and Psychiatrists, this number surpasses that of the period following WWII. Only about 650,000 Russian children without families live in orphanages, with some 100,000 more placed there each year. Data released by the Russian Prosecutor General show that 40% of children let out of orphanages each year become homeless. About 10 million Russian school-aged children never attend school. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch in December reported that some 30,000 children in orphanages for the severely disabled are being treated in violation of UN convenants. ! Inflation was 65% in the first 11 months of 1998, Goskomstat said. In 1997, the inflation rate was 11%, in 1996 21.8% , and in 1995 131.3%. ! Russia’s GDP shrank by 5.7% in 1998; the IMF has predicted a further 8.3% drop in 1999. Russian industrial output fell by an estimated 6% in 1998 while agricultural production fell by 10%. ! Russians’ real income decreased by 15.6% in 1998, according to an analysis carried out by the Russian Economics Ministry.  ! The Public Opinion Fund polled 1600 Russians and found that 82% felt their lives had gotten more difficult in the past 12 months. 43% named the financial crisis as the most important event of 1998; 32% named the murder of Galina Starovoytova. Meanwhile, in a separate poll in December, the Fund found that 45% of Russians would like the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky returned to Lubyanka square. ! According to Kontinent, alcoholism has increased 30% in Russia in the past 5 years, cases of neurosis 10% and drug addiction 600%. ! 70% of Russian pregnancies end in abortion, the Russian Health Ministry reported. There were some 2.5 million abortions in Russia in 1997, down nearly 25% from five years previous. 

All’s Well…

Top Russian tennis player Yevgeny Kafelnikov saved what was, by his own account, a rather mediocre tennis year by defending his title at the men’s Kremlin Cup-98 tournament, defeating Croatia’s Goran Ivanisevic in the finals 7:6, 7:6. He thus won for himself a last minute slot in the ATP Tour World Championship in Hannover, which features the world’s top eight players. Yet, in Hannover Kafelnikov could not make it to the semi-finals and won only one match. This year the Russian tennis star also sought to better his rocky relationship with the press, settled down to marry his girlfriend, the ex-model Masha Tishkova (who gave birth this year to their daughter Olesya) and parted with his long-time coach Anatoly Lepeshin. Kafelnikov also unveiled a three-cassette video on his rise to the tennis elite. The video, Kafelnikov said, is a not-for-profit project meant to promote the development of tennis in Russia. 

Still Number 1

Russia’s female cross-country skiers, led by multiple Olympic medalists Olga Danilova and Larissa Lazutina, won the 4x5 km relay at the World Cup held in Norway. The Russians were a comfortable 47.6 seconds ahead of runner up Italy.

Rink on Ice

The fifth round of the Figure Skating Grand Prix series, held in Moscow in late 1998, was dominated by Russian skaters. Olympic champion Alexei Urmanov won the gold in men’s singles; Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze won in doubles. Anzhelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsyanninkov were first in ice dancing, while Yelena Sokolova took the women’s singles title. Yet Russian coach Tamara Moskvina stole the show. Moskvina, who trains Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze now also trains the American team of Kioko Ina and John Zimmerman (who won the bronze medals in Moscow). Speaking at a press conference, an indignant Moskvina told Sport-Express daily that she was forced to work for the Americans because the Yubileyny ice rink in St. Petersburg is closed for repair. “In exchange for my acquiescence to work with Americans, they allowed my pairs, Kazakova-Dmitriev and Berezhnaya-Sikharulidze to live and practice in one of the US sports centers. What should I be ashamed of? It’s an ordinary barter deal.” 

Dementieva triumphs

17-year-old tennis prodigy Yelena Dementieva (Russian Life, Aug/Sep 1998) won the Orange Bowl in Key-Biscayne for the under 18 category, defeating her compatriot Nadezhda Petrova 3:6, 6:4, 6:0. Russia has had five Orange Bowl winners since the tournament’s inception in 1974: Natalya Zvereva (1987), Andrei Medvedev (1990), Yelena Likhovtseva (1991), Anna Kurnikova (1995) and now Yelena Dementieva.

Zyu Champion

Russian boxer Konstantin Zyu won the World Championship in the 63.5 kg (140 lb.) weight category, knocking out 25-year-old Cuban Diobelius Hurtado. Zyu was himself knocked down by Hurtado in the first round, yet in the fifth round succeeded in breaking through the Cuban’s defenses with two powerful left hooks. Next, Zyu will fight the famous Mexican boxer Miguel Angel Gonzalez, in March or April 1999. 

Unassailable Koloskov

Despite persistent calls from all sides that he step down due to the national team’s poor performance, the current President of the Russian Soccer Union (RSU), Vyacheslav Koloskov, was reelected to another five year term in late 1998. Koloskov kept his seat by securing support from the regions. Kalmyk President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who promised to bring the Russian team gold medals in the 2002 World Championship if elected, withdrew his candidacy in favor of Koloskov at the last moment. Under Koloskov’s tenure, the national team failed to qualify for the World-98 Soccer Championship for the first time in 20 years. As this issue was going to press, the coach of the national team, Anatoly Byshovets, hired in July for four years, was summarily fired by the Soccer Union and replaced by Oleg Romantsev, coach of Spartak Moscow, which, in December, failed to qualify for the quarterfinals of the European Champions League after losing 2:1 to Real (Madrid). 

Russia loses Baltika

At the international hockey tourney held in Moscow in mid-December (recently renamed the Baltika Tournament, after its main sponsor, the local beer company), Russia lost for the third year running, finishing fourth, its worst-ever showing at the tournament. This year the trophy will go to Sweden.