Notebook

New Adoption Law seeks out corruption

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 new law amending the process of adoption in Russia was passed in its first reading by the State Duma. 

There has been a database of Russian orphans in existence since 1996. But, according to the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Women, Family and Youth Affairs, Zoya Vorontsova, since that time, only 19 children from the database have been adopted; another 6,000 are in its waiting list. 

“The bulks of adoptions were conducted without the database, which was advantageous to those who made a profitable business out of adoption,” Sevodnya newspaper said. As a result, Vorontsova said, 85% of all Russian orphans were adopted by foreigners and 15% by Russians.”

Sevodnya reported that the Russian Prosecutor’s Office surveyed adoption activities in 28 regions and found egregious violations, including many Russian public employees accepting bribes. 

The new law is intended to reinforce the role of the state database in the adoption process: families wishing to adopt a child will be able to get direct information without any intermediaries. The law will also reinforce the rights of Russians to have access to such information. 

Flat-taxers of the world, unite!

Government pushes 13% income tax

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t press-time, the Tax Ministry was finalizing its plans to introduce a flat 13% income tax. The main intent appears to be to decrease tax-dodging. At present, just 1% of all Russian taxpayers pay  income tax at the 30% rate, even though this marginal rate kicks in at just over $5000 per year.

“People are simply hiding their incomes,” Russian Premier Mikhail Kasyanov, said. “As a result of the new tax, the number of law-abiding tax payers will increase. And our estimates show that tax collection should increase.” 

The government said the switch to a lower flat tax does not mean the tax burden on the rich will necessarily be alleviated. In parallel, the government proposes to increase taxes on expensive real estate and raise excises on larger cars. Supporters note that the government will lose nothing  in this move. The bulk of the population already pays taxes at the 12% base rate, and tax evasion could not get any worse. Yet, opponents say that continued inflation will bring the higher excises to bear on average Russians.

BUG FREE AT LAST

In May, the US embassy finally opened its new annex, ending the decade long saga of the bugged building. In 1991, then head of the KGB Vadim Bakatin stunned the world by giving the US a schematic showing the location of KGB bugs in the building. The move heralded a new era of openness in bilateral relations. Russia’s ORT TV channel had a long reportage on the building’s opening, noting that no Russian media were invited inside for the inauguration.

CRITICS BE BANNED!

Russian Deputy Press Minister Andrei Romanchenko said in May that the US-funded Radio Liberty was hostile to Russia and was pursuing the agenda of its foreign backers. Romanchenko said the media law should be changed to allow licenses to be withdrawn if a foreign broadcaster takes a position hostile towards the government. 

BERIA STILL GUILTY

On May 29, the Military Collegium of the Russian Supreme Court denied a request to rehabilitate Lavrenty Beria. The court’s decision is regarded here as a moral and political action, rather than a legal one. While no one has ever doubted that Beria was a bloodthirsty criminal who shot hundreds of thousands of his fellow coutrymen, tortured his victims and raped hundreds of innocent girls, it was not for any of these things that he was shot. In fact, he was indicted by Khrushchev’s investigators not for crimes perpetrated under Stalin’s regime (which, of course would also have implicated them), but for being a spy of several foreign intelligence services.

battle lines

There were 139 conflicts between local governments and media outlets in March, vs. 63 in January (Fund for Defense of Glasnost).

LEFTIST WATCH

The watch factory in Chistopol (Tatarstan), famous for its Komandirskiye military watches, has launched a new watch line for lefties, Kommersant daily reported. The idea struck factory managers when they watched Vladimir Putin (a lefty) during his recent pre-electoral visit to Tatarstan (Putin wears his watch on his right arm, as many lefties do, making the winding pin a bit awkward to reach). The new watch brand is called Krem-lyovskiye and has already been patented as a product for lefties by the Russian Agency for Patents and Trademarks. 

SIKORSKY FETED

A St. Petersburg square has been renamed for the Russian-born helicopter engineer, Igor Sikorsky, who emigrated from Russia in 1918. Sikorsky’s accomplishments were widely recognized in the West but were mostly ignored by the Soviet state. While still in Russia, he designed the first four-engine, fixed-wing aircraft and the Ilya Muromets—a passenger plane named after the famous Russian bogatyr. He was chief engineer of aircraft production at the Russo-Baltic Wagon Factory from 1912 to 1918, when he fled to France, fearing that his connections with the Russian imperial family made him a marked man with “Red Terror” squads. In 1919, he moved to the US, where he founded the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Company and registered his helicopter patent in 1931. Sikorsky’s son Sergei was present for the square’s dedication. “My father would have been quite pleased to come back to his old haunts and have a square named after him,” the younger Sikorsky told the Associated Press. “We spoke about Russia often, and I know that he loved Russia very much.”

CAPTURE of a

chechen painting

Five years ago, a famous painting, Franz Rubo’s “The Capture of Shamil,” was stolen from the Grozny museum. The painting, which depicts the surrender of a 19th century Chechen warlord, was recovered by the Federal Security Service as the thieves attempted to smuggle it out of Chechnya. 

The thieves’ apparent intent was to sell the painting and raise money for the present-day warlords. The painting was estimated to be worth $1.5 million and had been stashed in a remote Chechen village. Unfortunately, paint was spilled on the canvas and now it must undergo serious restorative work. 

STALIN REDUX

In May, activists of the Unified Communist Party of Georgia restored a monument to Stalin in the central park of Khashuri, Georgia, Kommersant daily reported. The 1.5 meter high statue was dismantled in 1956 during Khrushchev’s destalinization and was  housed at the home of a local war veteran. The group also wants Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze to ask President Vladimir Putin to transfer Stalin’s ashes from the Kremlin wall to Georgia. 

“...The so-called democratic Russia of the Khrushchevs and the Chubaises,” one activist said “which has nothing to do with the Russia of Peter the Great and Leo Tolstoy, spit on the grave of the great son of the Georgian people, who did so much for Russia, her greatness and might, and who sacrificed the dearest any man can have — his son — who heroically died in fascist detention, while the son of Nikita Khrushchev recently took US citizenship.”

Leading eye doctor perishes

Doctor, businessman, politician and humanitarian

Prominent international eye surgeon Svyatoslav Fedorov was killed on June 2 when his CH-41 helicopter crashed at around 8 pm at the Northern Tushino airfield. All three members of the crew were also killed. The French-made helicopter belonged to the eye clinic which Fedorov founded. 

Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov called Fedorov’s death “an incalculable loss for all of Russian medicine.” President Vladimir Putin said it was a “huge loss for Russia.”

Fedorov and his clinic (opened in 1986) were a showcase of new capitalism in Gorbachevian Russia. Within two years of the clinic’s opening, Fedorov was prospering, carrying out 1200 eye surgeries (mainly radial keratotomies) per year. 

But Fedorov was also a politician. His bold, audacious speeches at the USSR Congress of Peoples Deputies (he was elected to the first Congress, in 1989) were often decisive for the fate of democracy in Russia. Fedorov was twice offered the post of premier and once ran for president—not so much to win, but rather to spread the gospel of his successful business venture and his work principles. 

The sad irony of fate is that Fedorov dreamed of becoming a pilot all his life. In 1944, he entered the 11th Prepa-ra-tory Air School, but he failed to graduate because he lost his foot in an accident, having fallen under a tram. After he created his famous clinic and it became successful, he piloted his own private helicopters and planes. “Health care became my profession,” Fedorov once recalled. “Artificial crystals ... new methods of curing glaucoma, lasers ... all of this reminded me of flying! A surgeon, like a pilot, must make quick decisions. And, like a pilot, I wanted to get rid of the old and often useless ground control. As a doctor, I often wanted to get rid of the encumbered bureaucratic medical machine.” 

Fedorov was 72 at the time of his death.

“If the immunity of Federation Council deputies is 

lifted, some governors will sit [behind bars] 

immediately, some ... a bit later.”

Presidential representative in the State Duma, Alexander Kotenkov, 

on the consequences of the changes in Russian power structures. 

The changes, proposed by President Putin, would deprive Russian 

governors of their seats in the Federation Council (and, thus their 

immunity from criminal prosecution). Russian Television.

“Russia finds itself in between De Gaulle’s France and Pinochet’s Chile. The powers will act within the 

framework of formal democracy ... They began with 

the regional reforms because this is easier to carry out technically.”

Deputy head of the Center for Political Technology, Boris Makarenko, 

on President Putin’s proposed division of Russia into seven 

administrative districts. Sevodnya. 

“Lenin graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal. But what else was left for him to do?! Simbirsk was so boring. Now it’s different ball game: discos club, videos all over the place.”

Answer on a questionnaire distributed to school students from 

Lenin’s home city, Ulyanovsk (formerly Simbirsk), on the eve of 

Lenin’s 130th birthday, April 22, 2000. The question 

asked was: “What does the name ‘Lenin’ mean to you?”

“The possibility of higher consumer prices is just the tip of the iceberg of the difficulties the government could face with a 13% flat tax. The task will be what it always has been: convincing taxpayers to pay.” 

 Moscow Times on the proposed flat income tax.

“Bill Clinton needn’t be upset by the absence of a huge amount of attention to his visit. It’s enough that our people can recall his name. Thanks to the scandal with Monica Lewinsky, the American president became close and understandable to Russians, like the jokes about Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev.” 

 Izvestia daily on the US-Russia summit held in Moscow in early June.

The average Russian earns R1,717 ($60) per month, according to the Russian Statistics Committee. ! President Putin signed a decree fixing the monthly salaries of presidential representatives in his proposed new seven federal districts at R9,450 ($335). ! The average minimum survival level in Moscow was R2,811 this spring, according to the Moscow Federation of Trade Unions. The average Muscovite spends most of this (R1,283) on food, followed by non-food expenses (R960), services (390), and taxes and other payments (R178). ! 68% of Russians think Boris Yeltsin played a negative role in Russian history. Only 18% say his role was positive, and 14% had no answer (Russian Fund “Public Opinion”). ! If approved in July by the State Duma, Russia’s new 13% flat income tax will be one of the lowest in the world. Hong Kong’s income tax is capped at 16%, while most countries in Western Europe have income taxes of 30-50%. (Moscow Times). ! Foreign investment in Russia during the first quarter of this year was $2.45 bn, a 57% increase vs. the same period last year. (State Statistics Committee) ! Since 1991, the number of children in Russia has declined by 15.7%. Only one in five of all children born in Russia are born healthy and only one in ten primary school children are healthy. (Interfax) ! The Moscow mobile phone market is growing by 100,000 subscribers per month (Moscow Times) ! One quarter of all Russians owe back rent (Argumenty i Fakty). ! Inflation will not exceed 12% this year, according to Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin (Argumenty i Fakty). ! Average production growth over the first five months of this year was 8.1%, with light industry (64.8%), health care (32.2%) and non-ferrous metallurgy (27.0%) all far-exceeding these levels. ! The Agriculture Ministry originally estimated that the grain harvest in 2000 will be 70 million tons. That estimate has now been lowered to 62-63 million tons. (RFE/RL Newsline) ! 42.1% of Russians consider “casual sex” unjustified under any circumstances; 21.3% consider it wrong in most cases. 3% thought it was always permissible. (ROMIR) ! The number of teenagers infected with syphilis has increased 64 times over the past 10 years, while the average number of births for Russian women has declined from 2.14 to 1.3 (Izvestia). ! Russian banks had R145 billion ($5 billion) in equity at the end of last year. This equals just 3% of GDP, vs. 5.5% prior to August 1998. (Interfax) !  Russia may soon have to halt caviar exports. Because of declining sturgeon counts in the Volga and Caspian, fishing quotas are down 200% vs. two years ago. In April, caviar exports were one-third that of April 1999. ! The government’s proposed budget for 2000 foresees an increase in social spending from 14.1% to 19.5% of all expenditures. Meanwhile, the state will spend $11.6 billion in interest on foreign debt, and $5.6 billion on domestic debt. (Interfax) !  According to a poll by VP-T polling agency in May, Russia’s top five most influential politicians are (in descending order): President Vladimir Putin, Head of the Presidential Administration Alexander Voloshin, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, businessman and power broker Boris Berezovsky, and Sibneft head Roman Abramovich. Communist Party boss Gennady Zyuganov ranked 11th most influential in April, but dropped to #24 in May. 

Venichka’s long quest to stardom

Author of a literary classic is finally getting proper recognition

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he Moscow Foundation for Cultural Preser-va-tion, with direct support from Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, celebrated the 10th anniversary of the death of Venedikt Yerofeev. The event was celebrated by un-veiling a new sculpture of the protagonist of Yerofeev’s novel, Moscow-Petushki, Veni-chka, and his lyrical lover. 

Yerofeev’s “poem in prose,” Moscow-Petushki, (published in the US under the title, Moscow to the End of the Line) was banned in the Soviet era because of its heavy use of mat (profanity) and because it showed the seamy underbelly of Soviet alcoholism in a sympathetic light. The story revolves around the aimless wanderings of Veni-ch-ka. He says he is headed for the Kremlin, but never gets there: “The Kremlin, the Kremlin ... everyone is always talking about the Kremlin, but I have never seen it.” The novel derives its name from a commuter train route from Moscow to Petushki, a town east of Moscow, in the direction of Vladimir. 

Moscow-Petushki was vastly popular in the perestroika era and, in 1988, when Yerofeev turned 50, special TV programs were dedicated to him, and excerpts from Moscow-Petushki were published in the Soviet press (to date, the novel has been published in 17 countries). 

Yerofeev also wrote other fiction, including Notes of a Psychopath, Good News, and Dmitry Shostakovich. He also wrote a tragedy in five acts titled Fanny Kaplan (the Socialist Revolutionary who wounded Lenin in an assassination attempt).

But Moscow-Petushki re-mains Yerofeev’s most popular and enduring work. As literary critic Mikhail Novikov wrote recently, “The legend of Venichka in the first place is beloved because of the good-heartedness of the protagonist and his philosophy of total nonchalance and unpredictability, something that Russians love so much. The composition of the novel reflects the main phases of a drinking bout: from the hard-won ‘hair of the dog,’ to the ephemeral lucidity and thought-ful political discussion. And then the next station is called Belaya Gor-yachka [“alcoholic delirium”]. Yerofeev absolutely possessed a literary ear and intuition, but he was too talented to lower himself to sheer ‘professionalism,’ which supposes a certain literary form ... Truth be told he could easily identify with some of the traits of his hero Venichka—namely his addiction to alcohol.” 

The new sculpture unveiled this spring is actually Moscow’s second tribute to Yerofeev. Two years ago, on what would have been Yero-feev’s 60th birthday, a Venich-ka monument was unveiled near Kursky railway station (where the commuter train leaves for Petushki). The new sculpture stands at Ploshchad Borby, not far from Novoslo-bod-skaya me-t-ro station. It features the hero Venichka and his beloved heroine with an inscription from the “poem in prose”: “Jasmine never stops blossoming in Petushki, nor do the birds stop singing.” 

Russian film wins Cannes honors

Pavel Lungin’s film Svadba (The Wedding) received a Special Mention for the Best Selection of Actors at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Lungin, who years ago won the prize for Best Director at Cannes for his film Taxi Blues, lives and works in France. Svadba was made with French money but is a totally Russian film. All the actors were Russian, and the movie was shot in the small town of Lipki, in Tula region. Many locals were extras in the film. 

Lipki is a small town, built in the 1950s Stalinist Imperial Style, with a huge House of Culture, fountains, statues of writers ... and goats bathing in the fountains. Indeed, Lipki symbolizes Russia’s current transitionary period: the old epoch is over; the new one has yet to take shape. 

Still, Lungin said he wasn’t upset by what he saw in Lipki. In fact, he had to revise the original, rather pessimistic screenplay after being agreeably surprised and cheered by life in the town. “I have seen that the values we are talking about [in Russia] have been preserved. There are very strong families there. There is a wedding each week.” The movie is a story of one of the weddings, a 24-hour-long wedding party.

End of an era in theater and film

Two MKhAT personalities and a filmmaker pass away

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he Russian arts said goodbye to three luminous personalities this spring. 

On May 18, veteran MKhAT actress Angelina Stepanova passed away. Born in 1905, she began working in the MKhAT theater in 1924. She worked there all her life and stopped acting on stage only in the last ten years. She played virtually every major female role, from Irina in Chekhov’s Three Sisters, to Betsy Tverskaya in Anna Karenina. One of her specialities was the “intellectual reading” of roles—in this she had no equal. She also had a deeply resonant, well-controlled “Mkhatovian” voice, distinguished by “Mkhatovian” pronunciation—which linguists once defined as the ideal for Russian speech.

 Stepanova was the last representative of the second wave of MKhAT actors who were pupils of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Dan-chen-ko. For many critics, Ste-pa-nova was the incarnation of old noble manners, both on stage and in life, even though she was a member of the Soviet intellectual elite, loyal to the Soviet regime (she was for many years secretary of the communist party committee at MKhAT). And yet, her purely “aristocratic” manners and acting style are hard to find in the new, post-Soviet theater actors.

Less than a week after Stepanova’s death, on May 24, famed theater director Oleg Yefremov died. He was 72  at the time of his death and was buried at Novo-devichy cemetery. Both Mikhail Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin attended his memorial service. In his youth, the romantic Yefre-mov signed an oath in blood to always remain loyal to the precepts of Stanis-lavsky. In the mid-1950s, when the wind of changes began to blow in the post-Stalin Soviet Union, Yefremov created Sovre-men-nik, called then “the first free theater of the yet-not-free Russia.” In 1970, when the MKhAT theater was in deep crisis, aging actors there (including Ange-lina Stepa-nova) turned to Oleg Yefremov and he became MKhAT director for the next 30 years. In fact, Yefre-mov saved MKhAT, bring-ing to it new, fresh ideas. After Yefre-mov’s death, Rus-sian actor Oleg Taba-kov took over the leadership of MKhAT. 

A week after Yefremov’s death, on June 2, film director Mikhail Sweitzer passed away. Sweitzer, who turned 80 last March, apprenticed himself to Sergei Eisenstein and worked as assistant director to the famous Russian filmmaker Mikhail Romm. His best films include the film version of Pushkin’s Little Trage-dies (starring Vladimir Vy-sot-sky as Don Juan), the film version of Tolstoy’s Resur-rection and The Kreutzer Sonata. But to many, Sweitzer is most beloved for his film version of Ilf & Petrov’s novel, The Golden Calf, starring Sergei Yursky in the role of Ostap Bender. 

Sweitzer died from the effects of a car accident of one month ago.

FROM THE ICE TO FILM

Nagano 1998 Olympic Gold Medalist Ilya Kulik has gone Hollywood. The famous skater recently starred in Nicolas Heater’s new film, Center Stage, about a group of young dancers who dream of becoming stars. During the very first weekend, the film reportedly collected $4.6 million and was ranked sixth in US box office proceeds.

DYNAMIC DUO

Marat Safin and Yevgeny Kafel-nikov both reached the quarterfinals in tennis’ French Open in June, yet neither advanced to the finals, losing to Magnus Norman (Sweden) and Gustavo Kuerten (Brazil), respectively. Kafelnikov nearly beat Kuerten, but made too many errors in the decisive fifth set. For the 20-year-old Safin, merely reaching the quarterfinals in a Grand Slam tourney is a success. His consistent play in the tournament showed that Russia now has two strong tennis players—both ranked among the top ten in the world. 

BEST OF THE CENTURY

Triple Olympic figure skating champion Irina Rodnina was voted the world’s best female athlete of the 20th century in a poll by Russia’s leading sports daily, Sports Express and the Russian Olympic Committee. After working as a coach for many years in the US, Rodnina is returning to Russia. An ice palace named after her was built in Moscow and she plans to open a figure skating school there.

BUBKA’S LAST FLIGHT

Legendary pole vaulter Sergei Bubka (formerly on the Soviet Olympic team, now on the Ukrainian squad) said he will retire after the Sydney Olympics. Bubka, 36, still holds two world records in the pole vault, and is a six-time Olympic champion.