Notebook

Cold Front

Northwest residents

shiver through January

The bitter cold snap that began in Russia on New Year’s Eve was exacerbated by what has now become an annual event in Russia: the heating crisis. 

On January 12, some 28,000 people were without heat in their homes in the Northwest, Far East, Central, Volga, and Urals federal districts, while temperatures outside dipped below -30o Celsius in many regions. According to the Emergency Situations Ministry, the Northwest Federal District was the most severely affected, with some 24,000 residents without heat. 

In Karelia, where temperatures dropped to -40o Celsius in early January, thousands of people were shivering in unheated apartments. Local prosecutors opened criminal cases against gov-ernment officials for “insufficient preparation for the winter.” Damage to heating pipes in Karelia from the extremely cold temperatures might have been much less significant had the personnel at boiler plants been sober on New Year’s Eve and the holidays that followed, the Emergency Ministry said. At the end of January, there were still over 8,000 people without heat, according to the Ministry.

   

Putting it to a Vote

Moscow seeks to show Chechen

normality through referendum

The referendum on the draft Chechen Constitution and election law has been scheduled for March 23. The referendum is expected to approve a new constitution for Chechnya, which declares that the republic is an “inalienable” part of Russia. It will pave the way for presidential and legislative elections to be held in late 2003 or early 2004. 

The referendum has been touted by Moscow as proof that its war with separatist rebels, which has been raging since October 1999, is coming to an end. But it has been criticized by observers as coming too soon in a republic where separatists and federal forces suffer losses every day. Council of Europe Envoy to Chechnya and Co-chairman of the PACE-State Duma Working Group Lord Frank Judd, who visited the region in January on a fact-finding mission, was among those who called on Russian officials to postpone the vote because of the continuing violence and the fact that thousands of refugees from the Chechen war living in Ingushetia have not been informed of the referendum. After PACE rejected his proposal to postpone the referendum, Lord Judd resigned from his post as rapporteur on Chechnya. 

Some 17,000 Chechen refugees are currently living in Ingush refugee camps, while a further 48,000 refugees are estimated to live in private homes around Ingushetia. While the authorities have promised to arrange housing for refugees returning to the republic and to set up mobile polling stations in Ingush camps, many question the viability of the effort.

 

No More Holiday

Cyprus is expected to introduce visas for Russian citizens upon the conclusion of the 2003 tourist season, diplomatic sources told Interfax. If Nicosia takes this step, Moscow will introduce visas for Cypriot citizens as well, the sources said. “This is always a reciprocal issue,” they said. Nicosia’s measure will reduce the traffic of Russian tourists to Cyprus, which is currently the fourth or fifth most popular destination for Russian tourists, they noted. (One reason may be Cyprus’ very favorable tax treaty with Russia — many tourists may be going there to visit their money.)

Russia has already appealed to the European Union for explanations, showing its surprise over this, it believes, hasty step by Cypriot authorities. Cyprus is among 10 countries recently invited into the European Union, and the introduction of a visa regime for certain countries is one of the requirements to be met by the countries entering the EU. 

Changing Channels

Shake up at NTV has 

media watchers shaking heads

NTV, Russia’s third most watched TV channel, changed hands again this January. Its head, US-born businessman Boris Jordan, was replaced by former pulmonologist Nikolai Senkevich, son of Yuri Senkevich, the famous announcer of the “Around the World” travel program. 

Jordan resigned shortly after being dismissed as Gazprom-Media’s General Director in what was widely interpreted as a Kremlin-inspired move to ensure loyal coverage of the December 2003 parliamentary and March 2004 presidential elections. NTV has been one of the only major major media outlets which has not conspicuously toed the government line in its political coverage, as do the state-run Channel One and Rossiya.

A third-generation Russian-American, Jordan moved to Moscow in 1992 and became involved in Russian financial and media circles. Jordan took over NTV in April 2001 after the channel — at the time the most vocal critic of the Kremlin — lost a court battle to retain outright independence and was taken over by Gazprom, the state-owned gas monopoly. Its former owner, Media-Most magnate Vladimir Gusinsky, fled abroad. The Gazprom takeover was widely perceived as orchestrated by President Putin’s administration. However, NTV retained relative independence in its reporting. 

Russian media have speculated wildly about the reasons for Jordan’s ouster. There is general agreement that he was not sacked because of Gazprom’s dissatisfaction with his financial management of NTV, a company which was in heavy debt when he came to head it. Some suggested Jordan was ousted following Putin’s indirect criticism of NTV’s coverage of the Dubrovka theater hostage standoff last October, in which 129 civilians died. 

Others said Gazprom itself was infuriated by an NTV report last December chronicling corruption and oil exports to Kazakhstan, said to have affected Gazprom’s interests in the region. Some media also speculated that certain  Kremlin-supported business barons had been angered by Jordan’s decision to keep independent control over NTV advertising, rather than follow Channel One and Rossiya’s example in selling all commercials through the influential Video International group of companies.

In the meantime, NTV’s Executive Board, which includes Leonid Parfyonov, Tatyana Mitkova and the channel’s other leading journalists, issued a vote of no confidence in the channel’s new leadership. The vote came after Senkevich’s appointment of entertainment program producer Aleksei Zemsky as NTV first deputy director. Management ignored the vote, saying the Executive Board had no legal status and its decisions were without legal force. NTV’s Executive Board also sent a letter to Gazprom, expressing concern about the channel’s future and requesting a meeting. At press time, the dispute had led Leonid Parfyonov, host of the country’s most popular weekly analytical program, to say he was putting his show on a three month hiatus, because current changes were “the path to the destruction” of NTV.

City of Two Ilyiches

Seventy-nine years after the death of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the city of Ulyanovsk, birthplace of the leader of international proletariat, is struggling to rid itself of its now out-of-fashion revolutionary heritage. The town, founded in 1648 and originally named Sinbirsk, then Simbirsk in 1780, was renamed Ulyanovsk in 1924, the year Lenin died. 

Three museum heads from Ulyanovsk have proposed to replace Lenin with another Ilyich: Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, the protagonist of the eponymous 19th century novel, who became the literary symbol of laziness. The reason is simple: Simbirsk is the birthplace of Oblomov’s author, Ivan Goncharov.

The three women, who head the Goncharov Museum, the Lenin Museum and the Exhibition Hall of the History and Culture Center of Ulyanovsk, received a grant from the Soros Foundation to promote the idea among their fellow citizens. As a result, an exhibition titled “Ulyanovsk – the City of Two Ilyiches” was launched alongside a series of other activities, whose aim is to replace Lenin with his literary namesake in the minds of Ulyanov-skians. If the effort is successful, the town would be renamed Oblomovsk. 

 

Dangerous Profession

Some 148 journalists have died of unnatural causes in Russia since 1992, according to statistics kept by the Glasnost Defense Foundation, a human rights watchdog based in Moscow. 

In 2002, 19 journalists died of unnatural causes in Russia, Boris Timoshenko, a Foundation representative, told Interfax. “Speaking about these statistics, we do not mean intentional murders. However, in many cases, the circumstances surrounding the journalists’ deaths look very strange, and in some cases their deaths were preceded by threats and pressure,” Timoshenko said. Timoshenko noted that, in spite of the fact that in some regions more journalists died than in other regions, “it is difficult to see a pattern here.” 

 

Foreigners Carded

Starting February 15, resident foreigners in Moscow are required to have migration cards with them at all times. Foreigners who do not have migration cards will either pay a hefty fine or be deported, Moscow authorities have said. An estimated 860,000 foreigners are officially registered as living in Moscow; by the end of January, just over 30,000 cards had been issued. 

 

Money to the Oblast

Nizhegorodskaya Oblast residents will be fined R50 ($1.75) for drinking beer in public places, according to an article in the Administrative Offenses Code passed in its first reading by the Legislative Assembly of Nizhegorodskaya Oblast. The Code also introduces a R1500 fine for selling beer to minors and a R2500 fine for selling and buying homemade alcohol.

 

Godunov an Easter Treat

A second annual Easter Festival will be held in Moscow from April 27 to May 10. The festival will include over 40 concerts by Russian and foreign performers. The culmination of the festival will be a staging of Modest Musorgsky’s drama Boris Godunov in “real-life” decorations in the Sobornaya Square of the Kremlin where Tsar Boris’s coronation took place. 

 

Trial by Jury

Starting in January, jury trials were introduced in 69 Russian regions. At least half of all “very grave” crime cases will be judged by a jury, according to the head of the Appeals Chamber of the Supreme Court, Alexei Shurygin. These include cases of murder, organized crime, terrorism, participation in illegal armed groups and other crimes that are punishable by life imprisonment. According to Shurygin, participants in illegal armed groups in Chechnya can request that their cases be tried by jury.

 

Two More Peters

Two cities are planning to present St. Petersburg with Peter the Great statues on the occasion of the city’s 300th anniversary, Rosbalt news agency reported. Riga authorities said they were considering presenting Petersburg with Riga’s own statue, unveiled there in 1913. During the First World War, the statue was evacuated, but the ship which carried it sank. The statue was rescued from the sea by Estonian divers and Riga bought it from them. By then, the place where Peter once stood had already been occupied by a statue celebrating the republic’s independence in 1920. The Petrine monument has been homeless ever since. Belgrade, Yugoslavia is also preparing to present Petersburg with Peter astride a horse. 

 

Careful, Free Speech

Six people who called themselves “Russian Orthodox believers” vandalized the Andrei Sakharov Museum in Moscow on 18 January. They broke windows, spray-painted walls, and destroyed the exhibition entitled “Careful, Religion.” Police arrested the six at the scene. In the meantime, the Orthodox Church has spoken in defense of the vandals. A church spokesman, Archbishop of Smolensk and Kaliningrad Kirill, told reporters that the exhibition “Careful, Religion” was a provocation that itself constitutes a “crime.” He expressed bewilderment at the fact that such an exhibition had been permitted by the authorities. 

Hallmark is Next

This January, relics of the martyr St. Valentine were presented to the Russian Orthodox Church, to be displayed in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. The gift was made by the Catholic community of the Italian town of Terni. The idea to transfer the relics was proposed to Patriarch Alexii II by the head of the Terni community, Vincenzo Paglia. In recent years, Russians, especially those of the younger generation, have taken to celebrating St. Valentine’s Day on February 14. The Russian Orthodox Church, however, celebrates St. Valentine’s Day on July 19.

Mariinsky Expansion

An international competition for construction of the new, $100 milllion Mariinsky Theatre building was announced in St. Petersburg in January. Of 11 participants, six come from abroad, including American architect Eric Owen Moss, Arata Yozaki (Japan) and Mario Botta (Switzerland). The participants will present their projects in May. The winner will be announced on June 28.  Construction is to be completed in 2007.

 

Comrade Janitor Stukach 

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has suggested that control over Moscow’s non-Muscovite population be tightened with the help of tax authorities, district police and … janitors. Luzhkov said that about 40% of crimes registered in Moscow were by non-Muscovites. He suggested that policemen and janitors provide information about non-Muscovites renting apartments in the capital to the tax authorities, who would make sure Muscovites renting their flats out to nonresidents pay their proper taxes. 

 

Luzhkovian Dreams

President of the Russian Academy of Arts, sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, said he will create yet another sculpture of Moscow Mayor and friend Yuri Luzhkov. “I would like to sculpt him for the third time, but I am not sure in which form. I need to see it in my dreams. Luzhkov comes to me in my dreams,” Tsereteli told Izvestia daily. Tsereteli has already cast the Moscow’s mayor as a janitor and a soccer player.  

 

A Mammoth Task 

Scientists in Khabarovsk said that they may be able to clone a mammoth. They assert that they found a clone-able cell in a mammoth bone discovered  last year during a joint Russian-Japanese expedition. If Japanese colleagues confirm the findings, the cloning operation would take place in Japan.  

 

High-Jump Legend 

Leading light of Russian sport,

Valery Brumel, dies

Former Soviet high jump champion Valery Brumel, who held the world record for 10 years in the 1960s and early 1970s, died on January 26 in Moscow’s Botkin hospital after a long illness. Brumel (see Russian Life May/June 2002) broke the world record six times in the early 1960s. His record leap of 2.28 meters in 1963 lasted for eight years. In America, he was best known for his rivalry with John Thomas, also known as “The Boston Grasshopper.”  

Brumel burst on to the world sports scene at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, when he took the silver with a jump of 2.16 meters, breaking Thomas’s previous world record. For three years in a row, starting in 1961, he was voted the world’s best athlete. He took the gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, leaping 2.18 meters. 

In 1965, Brumel had a motorcycle accident, resulting in serious leg injuries. After spending three years on crutches, hoping to somehow recover, he met surgeon Gavriil Ilizarov, whose pioneering treatment helped him return to professional sports. After he left sports, Brumel tried his hand at writing. His novel, Do Not Betray Yourself, has been translated into seven languages.

 

Kamaz Wins Rally

Russian truck prove

their mettle in Africa

A team from Kamaz won the truck category in the 2003 Telefonica Dakar rally held in January. The rally lasted twenty days and spanned 8,552 kilometers in 17 stages. The race crossed the territories of France, Spain, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. The Kamaz team included driver Vladimir Chagin, navigator and team captain Semyon Yakubov, and mechanic Sergei Savostin. Third place was also taken by a Russian team, which arrived 1 hour, 25 minutes and 4 seconds later. 

 

Hockey Dynasty

Defeating the

sport’s inventors

The Russian youth hockey team retained its World Championship title, defeating Canada 3:2 in Halifax on January 6. Last year, the Russian team won the cup by defeating the Canadian squad 5:4. Igor Grigorenko was awarded the title of best forward. 

 

Olympic Goals

Russia calculates it could

top gold medals list 

The Russian Olympic Team hopes to bring home more gold medals than any other national team at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. The goal is to win 36-39 golds, said Anatoly Kolyosov, head of the Athens-2004 working group. These plans, Kolyosov said, are consistent with results shown in World Championships in the sports that make up the Olympic program. According to this manner of projection, the Russian team could obtain 39-40 gold medals and 90-95 total medals, whereas the US team would be likely to win 36-38 gold medals and 88-90 total medals. China will probably earn 25-26 gold medals and 54-58 total medals, and Germany a possible 23-24 and 70-74, Kolyosov said. 

 

 

 

“Sometimes it seems to me that there is some kind of 

David Copperfield Collective sitting in the Kremlin.”

Boris Nemtsov, leader of the Union of Rightist Forces. (Profil)

 

“As I see it, the people of this country are moving to the left and becoming more sober.”

Gennady Zyuganov, leader of Communist Party 

of the Russian Federation (Itogi)

 

 

“Why do I hate America? Because they serve espresso in plastic cups there.”

 

“A Russian politician does not have the right not to like vodka.” 

 

Irina Khakamada, Vice-Speaker of the Duma and leader of the Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) 

(Itogi & Argumenti i Fakty)

 

“He is a man not interested in sports, drinking 

or banyas … in nothing whatsoever.”

Sergei Tarasov, ex-spokesman of the Legislative Assembly of St Petersburg,

 about the chairman of the Federation Council, Sergei Mironov (Itogi)

 

“The FSB is an inalienable part of the whole system of 

the government’s democratic institutions.”

President Vladimir Putin, speaking to the 

FSB—Federal Security Service—board. (Novye Izvestiya)

 

“What kind of a democracy can you talk about, when 65% of Russian territory is permafrost?” 

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Vice-speaker of the State Duma (Itogi)

 

I Am the Walrus

There is a certain, unusual breed of Russian who loves to swim in frozen rivers and lakes, like these specimens taking a dip in the Yenisei river this winter. Russians call them “morzhi,” or walruses. 

Among his fellow walruses, 13-year-old Vitaly Fetiskin from  Kulikovo village, Altaisky krai, stands out. He set a new Guinness record as the  world’s youngest winter ice-hole marathon swimmer. 

The young walrus covered 525 meters in 14 minutes 10 seconds in 0o Celsius water on a windy winter day, when the air temperature was -8o Celsius. 

 

Moscow to Petersburg 

by Dogsled

A dogsled marathon from Moscow to St. Petersburg was held to celebrate the
Northern Capital’s tercentenary
this winter. Ten people from
“Severny Veter,” dog-sleigh club,

in the suburbs of the capital, 

set out on January 23 behind thirty 

Siberian huskies, departing 

from the Moscow suburb of Sofrino 

and traveling through Tver, Yaroslavl 

and Vologda. They arrived in 

St. Petersburg on February 1.

 

 

1,500,000 

unemployed persons in Russia at the beginning of 2003 

 

 

$200,000,000

estimated annual turnover of counterfeit medicines in Russia

 

 

75,000 

Russian women have gone to the United States to get married over the last decade

 

 

100 

draft-dodgers were punished with criminal sentences in 2002

 

 

$11.7 bn

capital outflow in 2002

 

 

100,000 

firearms stolen or missing from military bases and currently being searched for in Russia

 

 

R2.3 bn 

highest declared income by a Russian citizen in 2001

 

 

12,726 

registered magazines in Russia 

 

 

868 

internet media outlets

 

 

230,000 

fires registered in Russia in 2002

 

 

156,000 

.ru internet addresses registered

 

 

5,500,000 

Tatars in Russia (see p. 54)

 

 

17,800,000

Russians have cell phones 

 

 

90 

Russians die in traffic accidents every day

 

Petersburgers

who

 

think films containing 

profanity should 

be banned 

from television 63%

 

think commercials with erotic imagery should 

be banned 

from television 46% 

 

think films containing 

scenes of violence and 

cruelty should be 

banned from 

television 41% 

 

think police blotter shows with gruesome murder 

and road accidents should 

be banned 

from television 23%

 

 

 

Ukrainians

who

fully trust 

the Church 51%

 

do not trust 

President 

Kuchma 53%

 

do not trust 

the government 43%

 

Russians who

 

consider the 

Ministry of Health 

the most important 

ministry 

in the country 40% 

 

are satisfied with 

the Russian 

healthcare system 11% 

 

believe the Ministry of 

Emergency Situations is 

the most efficient 

ministry in 

the country 33% 

 

do not think they 

can get good 

health care 

if needed 71% 

 

believe release on 

bail should be 

introduced 58% 

 

support the proposal 

to rename 

Volgograd 

as Stalingrad 31% 

 

said their job rarely

brings pleasure 

and moral 

satisfaction 80% 

 

know a referendum 

on Chechnya’s 

Constitution will 

be held in 

Chechnya 63% 

 

would welcome a ban on Caucasians coming 

to the region 

where they live 59%

 

Q: Who do you trust most among 

Russian politicians? 

(per cent of those polled)

 

Jan ‘02 Nov ‘02 Dec ‘02

 

Vladimir Putin  48 52 51   

Sergey Shoigu 17 19 19  

Gennady Zyuganov 16 12 13   

Mikhail Kasyanov 12 13 13   

Valetina Matviyenko 8 8 9   

Yevgeny Primakov 9 6 8   

Yuri Luzhkov 7 7 7  

Vladimir Zhirinovsky 9 8 8   

A. Tuleyev 6 8 7   

Boris Nemtsov 3 7 7   

Grigory Yavlinsky 5 8 6   

Gennady Seleznev 6 6 6  

Igor Ivanov 3 7 6   

Irina Khakamada 5 7 6  

Sergei Ivanov 2 7 6   

Sergei Stepashin 6 2 3   

None 17 15 20    

Not interested 

   in politics 7 5 6    

Don’t know 6 6 7

 

97% 

Gazprom’s revenue from foreign oil sales which å$14.7 billion in debt 

 

STATISTICS SOURCES. Page 10: Left column: Ministry of Labor, Rosbalt, Moscow Center for Social Aid to Migrants, Interfax, Central Bank, Interior Ministry, Interfax, Press Ministry (2), Emergency Ministry, RuCenter, Nationalities Ministry, J’son & Partners, Nezavisimaya gazeta. Marriage preferences: VTsIOM. Page 11:  Russians who: Fond Obshestvennoye Mnenie (1, 3, 7, 8); VTsIOM (2, 4, 6, 9), ROMIR Monitoring (5). Ukrainians who: Democratic Initiatives Foundation. Petersburgers who: VTsIOM. Trust for politicians: VTsIOM. Lower left box: Kommersant Vlast. Upper right box: polit.ru