Young Russians We Have Been Watching

Four years ago, in January 2001, Russian Life undertook an ambitious project: 100 Young Russians to Watch in the New Century. Spurred by then editor Mikhail Ivanov, we identified and profiled influential young Russians from all walks of life – individuals who, as we put it at the time, “are shaping what Russia can and will become in the decades ahead.” By honoring their achievements, we hoped to focus attention on the many positive things Russia has to offer the world and on the ways in which individual Russians are doing great things for their country and community. Now, four years on, we thought it was about time to check up on these young leaders. Ivanov, who has since moved on to other full-time pursuits, was excited by the challenge, saying that “charting the vicissitudes of fate is one of the most exciting assignments a writer can have.”

Since I personally interviewed the majority of these “personalities,” I feel they are almost like friends now. Think about it: 100 young, up-and-coming friends! As the Russian proverb says, “100 friends is better than 100 rubles.”

Another saying is that it is useful to have “friends in high places.” Few of the 100 individuals we profiled in our series are flying higher than stand-up comedian Maxim Galkin. Today he is virtually a demigod of the Russian stage. Since we profiled him in 2001, he has become the host of the Russian version of the TV program, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? He also regularly puts on one-man shows and seems to be tapped as a host for every important event-show, from the humorous TV program KVN, to the Nika award ceremony, to the TEFI TV award show.

Some have gossiped that the politically-savvy Galkin owes his meteoric rise to the fact that he did not refuse the graces of pop diva Alla Pugacheva, who likes to take boyish young stars under her wing. True enough, Galkin quite often hosts pop concerts, where he performs the obligatory duos with Pugacheva (flirtatiously holding the aging diva’s hand, though he could well be her grandson). And some wags even call him “Maxim Alkin” (i.e. belonging to Alla). But all of this overlooks Galkin’s huge talent. He did not need a Pugachevian “shot in the arm” to falsely inflate his abilities.

Galkin’s best friend – and the butt of many of his jokes – singer Nikolai Baskov has also become a megastar of the Russian pop scene. Yet, unlike Galkin, who many would include in a list of Russia’s top 50 bachelors, Baskov has gotten married – to Svetlana Shpigel, his producer’s daughter. It was a difficult blow for his army of female fans, but then he is still young (28) and handsome, and for that they will forgive him much.

Since our profile, Baskov has earned dozens of creative awards, but he said he most cherishes a medal “For Peacemaking and Charity Activities,” which was presented to him by the Russian Peace Fund for a record number (over 160) of charity concerts at hospitals, military units and orphanages.

While he is adored by his fans, Baskov has developed a love-hate relationship with music critics, who decry him for using his operatic voice (and training) on the popular stage. The Spanish tenor Jose Carreras offered the best response to such criticism when he invited Baskov to join his master-class, saying: “I began my career with classical music and now I am finishing on the popular stage. And you can start on the popular stage and then finish with classical music.”

Indeed, of late Baskov has been adding more and more classical roles to his repertoire. In 2003, during St. Petersburg’s tercentennial, he sang the part of Count Nulin in a folk-opera based on Pushkin’s work of the same name. In July of 2004, he participated in the European Festival of Classical Music in Reims, France, where he sang the part of Lensky from the opera Yevgeny Onegin. He has also sung the part of Mozart in Mozart and Salieri, Ismaele in Verdi’s opera Nabucco and Alfred in La Traviata. A notable recent success was his performance last October as Spakos in Massenet’s opera Cleopatra, sung in Barcelona alongside the world-famous Monserrat Cavalier, who played Cleopatra.

The role of that Egyptian beauty is one much-coveted by the actress Olga Budina, and it is one she could well conquer. But for now Budina has to “go commercial.” Since we interviewed her, she has starred in forty-odd TV episodes, including the TV movie Border and the acclaimed Moscow Saga, based on Vasily Aksyonov’s namesake trilogy.

On the personal front, Budina recently married real estate baron Alexander Naumov and gave birth to a son, Naum. “My mother always said that the vocation of any woman is her family and her children,” Budina said. “She seems to be right. I want the role of mother and wife to be the best roles of my life.”

For her part, the red-haired beauty Amalia Mordvinova needs some help learning this role. She has just “walked out” of her third marriage and her tempestuous private life has been splattered all over the media lately. Shortly after we interviewed her, she married businessman Alexander Goldansky, changed her name to “Goldanskaya,” partnered with her husband in a theatrical enterprise called “The Goldansky’s Theatrical Business,” and gave birth to a daughter, Diana. But she divorced Goldansky in 2004, apparently over a nervous breakdown during which she lost 15 kilos.

For now, Mordvinova is trying to get back in shape and reclaim her maiden name. While she has hardly disappeared from the public eye – her recent works include roles in the TV series Tolko ty (“Only You”) and Grekhi Otsov (“Sins of the Fathers”), Mordvinova seems to need some focus in her life in order to deliver on the promise of her leading roles at Moscow’s Lenkom Theater in the 1990s.

One who has not squandered his talent is actor Yevgeny Mironov. His starring role as Count Myshkin in the TV mini-series Idiot, based on Dostoyevsky’s novel, earned the already accomplished actor the Golden Nymphe in 2004 at the prestigious International Television Festival in Monte-Carlo. According to some polls, the TV series Idiot was viewed by some 15% of Russia’s TV audience – the highest rate recorded for any Russian TV series. Indeed,  Mironov said he helped film director Vladimir Bortko prove that “Dostoevsky is not a boring writer at all.” Bortko, for his part, said Mironov was “a true genius in the role of Count Myshkin.” Actress Inna Churikova concurred: “Show me a more compelling, more tender and touching Count Myshkin than Zhenya Mironov!”

It is always rewarding to see your friends prosper. Certainly this is the case with Arkady Volozh, CEO of Yandex. I have visited with this founding father of RuNet several times since we met in 2001. His Yandex portal is now one of the most popular news and search sites in Russia. The Internet search contest he created has become a regular annual event. And his search engine has become so user-friendly that he says “soon you will be able to simply ask the computer a straightforward question” (e.g. “Who are the founding fathers of the US Constitution?”), rather than typing in key words. Yandex is also doing well financially – notable for a dot-com firm. In August 2002, two years after Yandex’s inception, the company began making a profit. Today, Volozh said, “two-thirds of Yandex earnings come from context advertising” (ads which appear based on the user’s search terms), and the company has over 6,000 advertising partners. The RuNet boom is only beginning, Volozh said. “I can tell you, paraphrasing the character of the film Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears, ‘Ten years down the road, there will be nothing but Internet.’”

Visionary chocolatier Andrei Korkunov foresaw the Internet revolution some time ago and was one of the first to develop online sales of his chocolates. Today, his upscale confections are readily available via the net – making corporate purchases very convenient. In the summer of 2003, Korkunov opened a partner office in the US and recently added a similar office in Germany. In 2003, his business acumen earned him Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award. In December 2003, he opened a chocolate boutique in Moscow that sells hand-made chocolates for $60 a kilo – four times the price of other premium chocolates. But Korkunov, who says he never “settles for anything second-best in his business,” wants to go even farther. In 2004, his factory produced a new type of super-premium chocolate: 13 different types of hand-made truffles with fillings from pistachios to rum with dried raisins. One truffle costs $1 and Korkunov is confident the Russian market is ready for it.

Tennis player Yelena Dementieva has known her own share of sweet rewards – and bitter disappointments – of late. Last year was a turning point in her career. In 2004, she parted with her long-time coach, Sergei Pashkov, who confessed that, “for family reasons [he] could no longer devote to Yelena the time she deserves and decided to put her in good hands.” Coach Olga Morozova took over and Dementieva’s results improved shortly thereafter, twice rising to the level of Grand Slam runner-up: at the 2004 French Open she lost to friend and rival Anastasia Myskina; two months later, she succumbed to Svetlana Kuznetsova in the final of the US Open.

While Dementieva claimed to be “pleased with such career-best results,” and her Number 6 ranking, she obviously cannot be satisfied as a runner-up (she lost again to Myskina in the final of the 2004 Kremlin Cup). She has recognized that her Achilles Heel is her serve and has promised her fans “to improve that component” of her game. If she can do that, the sky is the limit, because she has not only a powerful groundstroke, but the brains for the game. In fact, Dementieva says she likes “brainy” distractions and plays chess in her free time. That should not be surprising. As chess legend Anatoly Karpov once put it, “tennis is like chess in motion.”

World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik likely agrees. Tennis is a part of his pre-match preparation program. On October 18, 2004, he played a last-ditch, desperate “chess tie-breaker” against Peter Lekko, beating the Hungarian in the final, 14th game of the Professional Chess Association Championship, in the Swiss town of Brissago. Kramnik was painted into a corner: his opponent only needed a draw in the final game to win the match. Luckily, the 29-year-old Kramnik knows how to keep his cool (which has earned him the nickname of “Mister Iceberg”). “After I lost the 8th game and then drew a couple of times,” he recalled, “I realized I needed to calm down and stop thinking about results, focusing on the game.” Thus, on the eve of the final game, Kramnik was completely relaxed, and was even spotted walking in the company of a beautiful girl.

In November 2000, Kramnik became the first person in 15 years to defeat reigning World Champion Gary Kasparov. Yet he said that his match against Lekko “was even harder than the one versus Kasparov.” Prior to the match, Kramnik had estimated his chances of winning at “55%, no more.” Such a sober assessment probably helped Kramnik to his hard-won victory, and gained him the respect of millions of chess fans. Oh, and a check for 650,000 Swiss francs ($390,000).

It was a good chess year for Alexandra Kosteniuk as well. She turned 20 in 2004, but her youth is by no means a barrier to her achievement. Last year she won the title of European Champion and, in October, was awarded  the highest honor in chess: GM (Grandmaster, Men). In so doing, the young shakhmatistka became the first Russian female chess player to ever win the GM title, and only the 10th woman to do so in the whole history of chess. With her title in hand, in December Kosteniuk traveled to France to play in a weighty men’s tournament, the Grand Prix d’Aix-en-Provence. She reached the quarterfinals, where she was eliminated by Grandmaster Murtas Kazgaleyev, from Kazakhstan. He himself lost in the semifinals to the tournament’s eventual winner, Anatoly Karpov.

What is perhaps most unique about Kosteniuk is that she combines her mastery of chess with an innate sense of marketing and public relations. In Moscow, you may spot her on a trolleybus (not riding one, but in an ad plastered on the side of the bus, advertising LG computers), or in the State Duma, rubbing shoulders with Russian lawmakers (in November, she was invited there to play a simultaneous display against 19 top government officials and their assistants). And, if you visit her website (kosteniuk.com), you can find out why she named her cat after the goddess of chess, join in her “Support Alexandra Kosteniuk Club,” and purchase her trademarked chess puzzles, autographed pictures of herself or other chess paraphernalia.

If tennis and chess go well together, so, apparently, do chess and business. Banker Nikolai Tsvetkov is a devout chess player (as well as table tennis and volleyball) who seems to be making all the right moves. In 2004, the 43-year old president of the financial corporation Nikoil made it onto the Forbes list of 100 Wealthiest Russians (the magazine evaluated his fortune at $1.3 billion). Until 1997, Nikoil was “fed” almost entirely by oil, but then, under Tsvetkov’s direction, it began moving into financial and credit markets. Today the company controls over 30% of Russian investment funds. Throw in 10% of the insurance market and 7.5% of the precious metals market, and it makes for quite a diversified investment portfolio. But Tsvetkov has not stopped there. Nikoil is also present in the Novorossiysky Sea Port – Tsvetkov is chairman of the port’s board of directors and his company owns 30% of the port, through which transits one-third of all Russian oil and grain exports.

Tsvetkov continues to acquire anything that moves, be it on land or the sea. Not long ago, the government charged his corporation (together with Troika Dialog) with finding investors for the implementation of a railroad reform in Russia. With Nikolai Tsvetkov at the wheel, the reform seems to be on the right track.

Definitely off the right track is the career of Moscow ballerina Anastasia Volochkova. Unlike chess, it seems, ballet does not go well with entrepreneurship. At least not in this case. When we profiled Volochkova, she was a prima of the Bolshoi and nothing seemed to augur a downward spiral in her career there. Except, perhaps, for her excessive penchant for “private ballet enterprise” (commercial recitals), and too-frequent pop concert appearances. Ballet critics said that all of this was interfering with her ballet career, and they may have had a point. Soon, rumors churned that no male Bolshoi artist wanted to dance with the tall prima, as she was too heavy and her technique was flawed.

In September 2003, Volochkova was fired from the Bolshoi. The then minister of culture, Mikhail Shvydkoy, trenchantly said that Volochkova could return to the Bolshoi “only by decision of the court,” and that, even if she did, she could only ever hope to dance “the role of the fourth swan.” Volochkova heeded Shvydkoy’s advice (as it were) and took the Bolshoi to court, saying she was illegally fired. She was reinstated shortly thereafter, but the situation soon came to an impasse.

To add insult to injury, in March 2004, a St. Petersburg-based construction company sued Volochkova for failing to pay $76,000 for renovation of her St. Petersburg apartment. Volochkova called the lawsuit a provocation, because she was served her subpoena in the halls of the Bolshoi, in the presence of witnesses and militia.

Whoever is right, it benefits no one to see such a talented ballerina enmeshed in lawsuits and scandal. It’s crystal-clear that Volochkova won’t be given a chance to dance the roles she desires at the Bolshoi. To wit – she was not taken to Paris in January last year, where the Bolshoi was a smashing success at the Opera de Paris. The Bolshoi’s Artistic director, Alexei Ratmansky, summed the situation up quite clearly: “Volochkova cannot represent the Bolshoi [in Paris]. It is not about her height or weight. She is a pop-ballerina, a personage of show-business, and this is not what the Bolshoi needs.” So it is definitely best for Volochkova to end her scuffles with the Bolshoi and pursue her career elsewhere. And the latest news indicates that she is moving in that direction. In November 2004 the ballet film “Black Prince,” which stars Volochkova, won the Grand Prix at the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival. Today, the ballerina is a de facto free agent in the world of ballet. Perhaps, given her indomitable character and showbiz allure, that is her best option.

Alexei Ratmansky certainly knows how to draw the line between show-business and art. His own career took a vertiginous turn in January 2004 when, at age 34, he became the youngest-ever artistic director of the Bolshoi ballet (even the renowned maitre Yuri Grigorovich was 37 when he took the same job). The Bolshoi theater had been eyeing the most promising Russian choreographer for quite some time. Their choice was quite logical: Ratmansky is the leading light of Russian choreography and seems the best candidate to pump new life into the Bolshoi. Ratmansky signed a three-and-a-half year contract and moved to Moscow from Denmark, where he had an open-ended, “contract for life” with the Royal Danish Ballet. Now the idol of Danish ballet lovers will see if he can prove that “nothing is rotten in the Kingdom of the Bolshoi,” and help the theater maintain its well-deserved place in the ranks of world culture.

Finally, as if on cue, as this issue was going to press, Marat Safin surged back to the front of the men’s tennis pack, with decisive victories over Roger Federer and Leyton Hewitt at this year’s Australian Open (see page 10 for full coverage and photo). Of course, I always knew he had it in him. But then, one can’t be exactly objective about one’s friends.  RL