The Duma has introduced a law targeting internet piracy of copyrighted video content, a measure long debated but in the end written in such a way that many internet professionals are saying it is simply a means for cracking down on the sector.
Critics say that the law is so vaguely worded that an entire website could be blocked at the request of a copyright holder if an offensive link were posted on the site by a third party. Internet giants Google and Yandex, along with a collection of other smaller firms and groups, drew up a list of suggested improvements, but all of them were ignored.
Russian citizens also protested the law, gathering signatures for an online petition to repeal the "Russian SOPA" law and calling for a bill with clear wording and no loopholes. At press time the petition had over 80,000 of the 100,000 signatures needed to compel discussion by senior government officials.
Russian preservationists are getting creative in their attempts to prevent destruction of the so-called Bolkonsky House, a Moscow building in a prestigious central neighborhood that belonged to the family of Leo Tolstoy. The home recently became a coveted piece of real estate for a company that seeks to raze the top levels of the building and add new ones, making it twice as tall and thus doubling the leasable space.
Archnadzor, a Moscow-based group that monitors the status of historical buildings, said the company was committing an act of vandalism not backed by any official authorization. Two Archnadzor activists climbed onto the home's cupola to prevent its removal by a crane, and the group subsequently organized a vigil, during which volunteers stood watch near the building while reading War and Peace aloud.
The house belonged to the Russian novelist's grandfather, Nikolai Volkonsky, who was Lev Tolstoy's prototype for the novel's elder Prince Bolkonsky.
At press time construction crews were continuing to tear down the building, despite an official order to stop work.
archnazdor.ru
Four years after her legendary 60-meter-high Worker and Kolkhoz Woman was restored and replaced in its historic Moscow location, another classic sculpture by Vera Mukhina has been restored and is being unveiled in a city park.
The monumental "brigade sculpture" We Demand Peace, completed in 1951 by a group of sculptors that included Mukhina, who coordinated the work, will be installed in the Muzeon Art Park, near the Tretyakov Gallery's contemporary art building.
We Demand Peace was a monumental protest against the Korean war and shows several figures standing and gesturing in an emotional appeal against war. It features black, Korean, and Russian male figures, a soldier who has lost his arm, a Korean woman holding up a dead child, and a woman who is letting a dove fly from her hand while holding a baby with the other.
The monument originally stood in Moscow's VDNKh park, but was removed when Prospekt Mira was widened. Along with many other Soviet sculptures, it was moved to Muzeon, but allowed to deteriorate, with only three figures on public view, as the rest were damaged.
Muzeon announced its plans to unveil the restored ensemble in August. The missing components were reproduced using the original plaster casts held at the Russian Museum.
Recently, archeologists working in the crypt of a ruined church outside of St. Petersburg were surprised to discover a corpse with dentures made by Fabergé, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported.
The site of the discovery, the once beautiful Church at Taltsy – which now has only walls and a roof, as it was largely destroyed during World War II – was built by Ivan Starov, the architect of the main cathedral in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
During reconstruction, the crypt in the ruined church was found to contain four bodies. Upon exhumation, scientists concluded that two of the bodies belonged to General Pyotr Demidov and his wife, members of a family that became close to Peter the Great and eventually became princes. A third body was identified as their 12-year-old son.
The fourth was dubbed "Lady X." Her skull contained gold and platinum dentures crafted by Carl Fabergé in the early twentieth century. Scientists said they will attempt to reconstruct the woman's face and compare it with portraits of members of the aristocracy.
Russia gleaned 19 medals, including nine gold, six silver and four bronze, to finish third in the overall medal count at August's 15th FINA World Aquatics Championships in Barcelona. It is the best result achieved by Russian swimmers since 1994. The US and China earned 34 and 26 medals, respectively.
As at the two previous championships, Russia dominated in synchronous swimming, sweeping gold in all seven events. Meanwhile, in racing events, Russian swimmers clinched twice as many medals as at the London Olympics.
Yulia Yefimova won both the women's 200 meter and 50 meter distances, adding a silver medal in the 100 meter event and a bronze medal in the 4x100 meter combined relay with teammates Daria Ustinova, Svetlana Chimrova and Veronika Popova.
Yefimova said her US coach, Dave Salo, played a pivotal role in her success. "She is really maturing as an athlete," Salo said. "Years ago she just did it because she was good at it, now she has more control over it and realizes how good she is."
Meanwhile, Vladimir Morozov grabbed silver in the prestigious men's 50 meter freestyle.
Tennis phenom Maria Sharapova sent the news out over Twitter: "I am happy to announce that Jimmy Connors will be my new coach."
Sharapova's previous coach, Thomas Hogstedt, said he no longer wanted to travel so much, but pundits believe Hogstedt may have been stung by criticism that the strategy he encouraged Maria to take against her arch-rival (and world #1) Serena Williams at the 2013 French Open was often poorly thought out (others believe Sharapova was not listening to Hogstedt).
Sharapova said she likes the way Connors communicates and motivates her, and she can certainly afford Connors' weighty fees (she earned $29 million last year). Connors is known for his talent in convincing great players that they can still win major titles, and that they have nothing to fear from any other player.
Anatoly Rakhlin, the judo coach who once said he was President Vladimir Putin's "second father" died on August 7 in St. Petersburg. Rakhlin was 75 and had reportedly been battling a long illness. Rakhlin trained Putin for 15 years, from when he was 13 years old.
According to a 2000 profile of Putin in Vanity Fair, Rakhlin was called by the Kremlin for a private lunch with the president the day after his inauguration. "I was with him 15 years," Rakhlin told Vanity Fair magazine. "His mother died, his father died. I am a second father." (RIAN)
Ничего неожиданного наши "технари" не услышали
"Our technology experts didn't hear anything unexpected, it was just the naked truth that we already knew from other sources."
- Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, regarding revelations by Edward Snowden about US surveillance programs. (RIA Novosti)
считаю, что про Раскольникова, убившего старуху-процентщицу, ему надо прочитать
"I bought him ‘Crime and Punishment,' because I feel he should read about Raskolnikov, who killed the old lady moneylender."
- Edward Snowden's Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, on his gift to the US fugitive. (Rossiya 24 TV)
Я настаиваю, чтобы меня вывели из этой клетки!
"I don't see any sense taking part in this hearing. I have not even seen all the case materials. I insist that someone remove me from this cage!"
- Maria Alyokhina, one of the jailed members of the punk band Pussy Riot, speaking at a hearing to consider her appeal of the decision not to grant her early release. Despite her requests, she only spoke to the court via a video link, and the judge mostly ignored her. (Interfax)
Все это игры, которые мне малопонятны.
"Let's put Ivan the Terrible on trial, or rather his opponent Kurbsky, who allegedly betrayed his Motherland. This is all games that I don't really understand."
- Russian ombudsman Vladimir Lukin about the posthumous trial against lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, which convicted him of tax evasion. It was widely seen as instigated by the Kremlin. (Interfax)
К настоящему моменту наш бюджет полностью иссяк.
"At this moment, our budget is completely depleted. I don't know how we can keep on living."
- Anatoly Lysenko, director of Russia's Public Television channel, a project launched by former president Dmitry Medvedev in response to criticism that television is entirely controlled by the state. Public Television ran out of money after just a few months, and observers ridiculed it as unprofessional and only nominally independent. (Itar-TASS)
The founder of Moscow's Gulag Museum, Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko has died. A historian and son of the legendary revolutionary Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, who led the revolt against the Winter Palace in 1917, Antonov-Ovseyenko was 94 years old.
Born in Moscow in 1920, Anton saw his famous father accused of Trotskyism and shot in 1938. His mother had been arrested in 1929 and committed suicide in 1936. Anton was himself arrested in 1940, as the son of an Enemy of the People, and spent 13 years in prisons and camps, including in Turkmenistan, on the Volga, and in the Russian North.
After the Thaw, Antonov-Ovseyenko was rehabilitated, and he began to research and write history books, including one about his father, which were published under the pseudonym Anton Rakitin. However, he was constantly under KGB surveillance and some of his works were confiscated.
In the perestroika era, he published several more books, and in 2001 he founded the Gulag History Museum in central Moscow, which exhibits the letters, memoirs, and personal items of Gulag prisoners, as well as pieces of prison history, such as a guard tower, located in the museum's courtyard.
The front man for what may be Russia's most popular punk group, Korol i Shut (King and Jester), Mikhail Gorshenev, has died in his home. Gorshenev, whose energy had kept the group together since its founding in the perestroika era, was 40 years old.
Nicknamed "Gorshok" or "Pot," Gorshenev was known for performing in medieval costumes and elaborate makeup, and for a smile lacking teeth, which he said he lost when he was a kid.
Gorshenev founded the band in 1988 with his schoolmates Alexander Balunov and Alexander Shchegolev. It was named Korol i Shut in 1990 because the songs were based on horror folktales and featured witches, castles, and reanimated corpses. The band has a huge fan base, especially in its hometown of St. Petersburg, and money is being collected for his family and a monument. But many fans want the band to disband now that its lead singer is gone.
One of the last WWII female pilots known as "Night Witches" – members of the 558th Night Bomber regiment – has passed away. Nadezhda Popova was 91.
The Night Witches, a name given the regiment by Nazi German soldiers, operated small, light biplanes and were sent to intimidate the German military during nighttime raids. The pilots often idled their engines for a silent approach and did not bother carrying parachutes, as they flew too low for them to be of use.
The regiment was formed on Stalin's orders. He tasked the legendary long-distance pilot Marina Raskova, to lead the detachment (see Russian Life, Jan/Feb 2003).
Popova, who was born in 1921, secretly enrolled in a gliding school when she was a teenager, making her first parachute jump at 16. She graduated from the Kherson Flight School in Ukraine when she was 18, and joined Raskova's team for military training.
Popova ended the war with the rank of captain and 852 flights under her belt, having been frequently shot down and wounded. She was a prototype of one of the characters in Leonid Bykov's popular film, Only Old Men Go into Battle, and her husband, Semyon Kharlamov, whom she met during the war, was the film's main advisor. She lived in Moscow and had a brief political career, serving as a member of the USSR Supreme Soviet.
Ilya Segalovich, a visionary who co-founded Yandex and was known as a humanitarian and democracy activist, passed away after a battle with cancer at the age of 49. He was the CTO of the internet company and was the one to coin its name, which is based on "Yet ANother inDEXer."
Born in Nizhny Novgorod, Segalovich started Yandex with his school friend Arkady Volozh. "I don't know how to replace his encyclopedic knowledge of technology," Volozh wrote on the company blog. "He left behind a generation of computer programmers, a school. And his ethical standards have set the bar for all of us."
Segalovich supported many democratic initiatives, such as the opposition's Coordinating Council, and often went to political protests, not hiding his views, in contrast with most Russian businesspeople.
He also organized a charity, Maria's Children, run by his wife Maria Yeliseyeva, which works with children in Russian orphanages, providing them with art classes, concerts, and creative projects in an art studio. "Everyone knows Ilya as the founder of Yandex and one of the internet luminaries, but for our kids he was an accessible, open friend, a funny clown and director of plays," the charity said on its website. Segalovich foster-parented many orphans, besides raising five children of his own. His death was deeply mourned by Russia's internet community and the many activist groups he had helped finance.
A tribute page was created at:
iseg.yandex.ru
Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.
Russian Life 73 Main Street, Suite 402 Montpelier VT 05602
802-223-4955
[email protected]
