News Items

Summer of Protest

Municipal elections spark backlash

For years, Moscow Duma elections have come and gone with barely a whiff of political debate. But this year the September 8 polling has been the focus of keen interest, and has led to a crisis in the capital that may result in several people being sent to prison for years.

The city’s Duma, which has a special status, since Moscow is no ordinary municipality, has to this point been dominated by unknowns who rubber stamp decisions by the powerful mayor, Sergei Sobyanin. However, earlier this year a network of opposition activists vowed to put an end to this monopoly. Activists who were well-known in their neighborhoods collected signatures from supporters and mounted a campaign that sought to add opposition voices in the decision-making body.

This seemingly straightforward exercise of citizens’ democratic prerogative turned out to be in vain.

Authorities hired unidentified “graphologists” and then rejected as fake a sufficient number of signatures to invalidate the candidacy of all the opposition candidates.

Muscovites were furious, and a series of protests were held, demanding that opposition candidates be allowed on the ballot. As widely reported, these peaceful demonstrations were suppressed with an unprecedented level of police violence and other security measures: the city’s mobile internet was down for hours throughout central Moscow during a protest in early August.

At press time, several protestors were being held on charges of mass rioting and violence against police, allegations that are wildly exaggerated based on the accounts of eyewitnesses at the rallies, but can lead to long terms in prison.

Sometimes in Russia an election is more than simply an election.

Toxic lake

Siberian water draws tourists

This summer Siberians flocked to the turquoise shores of a tropical lake that suddenly appeared near Novosibirsk… well, at least that’s what it looked like in their Instagram accounts.

Photos proliferated on social networks of people posing, picnicking, kissing, and even paddle-boarding on the bright lake. The only problem is that it turned out to be a toxic dump of ash that the local power plant mixes with water. In short, it is a waste site from which people should have kept well away.

The Siberian Generating Company, which owns the site, tried all summer to educate Instagrammers that the lake’s waters are dangerous, even going so far as to install warning signs. But curious city dwellers nicknamed the area “Maldivinsk” and turned up again and again with bikinis and colorful floats, circumventing the company’s checkpoints.

Novosibirsk officials eventually saw the situation as an opportunity. “If you can’t stop something, you have to lead it,” said Sergei Neshumov, head of the Novosibirsk Oblast Information Policy Department. The unlikely tourist destination will now be equipped with a lookout point and other infrastructure for photographers, he said.

instagram.com/maldives_nsk

Volcano Hopper

Lovers of Kamchatka, the Far-Eastern province in Russia famous for its volcanoes and brown bears, can now hop on a helicopter and descend directly into the crater of an active volcano. The new service, launched by the regional government, is meant to expand helicopter services from the existing popular sights like the famous Valley of the Geysers – the second largest concentration of geysers in the world. The new tour takes tourists to the Khangar volcano and Timonovsky mineral springs. Khangar last erupted 500 years ago and today has a picturesque lake in its crater, and volcanic glass scattered along its shore.

Roofs Closed

So long, romantic walks on the roofs of St. Petersburg – a favorite summer pastime for tourists in Russia’s cultural capital.

Authorities in the city on the Neva have vowed to crack down on unofficial tours taking people up the stairs and onto the roofs of prerevolutionary buildings to admire the views. The department of housing recently said it will install protective measures (cameras and alarms) in 170 city center buildings before year’s end.

Roofing tours are a massive business: the Fontanka online newspaper has estimated that an attractive roof can turn an annual profit of one million rubles ($16,000). Some tour firms claim they have an agreement with residents, while others sneak in and even break locks on roof hatches. As competition has grown in recent years, tours have added special services, like picnic baskets or violin serenades – perfect for that romantic rooftop engagement. City Hall is now mulling new fines for unauthorized roofing.

Balashikha Revived

The drive to turn abandoned industrial facilities into creative spaces has spread from the capital into neglected corners of the Moscow region.

One of Russia’s oldest cotton factories, in Balashikha, east of Moscow, has been transformed into an art space, offering tours to visitors curious about the company’s colorful history. The project seeks to buck the trend that has formerly independent towns surrounding the capital morphing into “bedroom communities” with nothing to offer their residents other than a place to sleep.

The red-brick facility, christened simply Fabrika (“factory”), offers art workshops, a museum, music concerts, and creative spaces for rent. The factory was founded on the Pekhorka River in 1830 by Prince Ivan Trubetskoy, and it gave rise to the town of Balashikha. Soon afterward, it was built out with English equipment and a British engineer, Michael Lunn, ran it for nearly 50 years. In its heyday, the factory was a buzzing five-story enterprise, but it struggled after the revolution and completely shut down after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The new space extends a revamped park along the river and is very popular with Balashikha residents.

General Found

Buried beneath city park

In July Russian archaeologists found what may be the final resting place of French General Charles-Etienne Gudin, who died in battle near Smolensk as Napoleon’s Grande Armée marched toward Moscow in 1812.

Prior to the battle, Gudin had lost his leg to a cannonball, which is what helped identify his remains. The general died at the age of 44 in hospital, without his uniform, and was buried in a wooden casket without his weapon, which had been sent to his family (his heart meanwhile was cut out and is buried in Paris’ Pere Lachaise cemetery). A makeshift sarcophagus was then constructed of French muskets, which were subsequently stolen by local Russians.

The site where the remains were unearthed is now part of Smolensk’s Lopatin Garden park. Additional proof that the remains are Gudin’s could be obtained through DNA testing, as well as by studying his skull, the Archaeology Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences said.

Gudin was said to be one of Napoleon’s favorite generals; the two knew each other as children.

Last Number

Willie Tokarev, the Soviet-born chansonnier who wrote songs about the immigrant’s life after moving to New York, has passed away after a battle with cancer. He was 84.

Tokarev, whose flamboyant moustache gave him a mischievous look even in his 80s, moved to the United States at the age of 40. His real first name was Vilen – popular among Communists as an acronym of “V. I. Lenin” – but he opted for the more appropriate Western name after arriving in America. His first album was released when he was 45 and immediately elevated him to star status in the Russian immigrant community. Tokarev’s songs can be categorized as slightly risqué “chanson” that romanticized the criminal underworld. This made him popular with some top criminal bosses, like Yaponchik, the infamous “vor v zakone” (or “thief in law” – an elite organized-crime professional).

Tokarev eventually moved back to Russia and continued performing late in life, even writing a song for Trump’s inauguration in 2017, for a party in Moscow.

Loan Bubble

For five years now, most Russians have seen their incomes shrink, leading to a “boom” in small, short-term, high-interest-rate loans. Disguised as easy cash, the “consumer loans” are easy to qualify for at a bank, online, or even at vending machines. In St. Petersburg, such machines advertise “loans in 30 seconds,” asking only to scan people’s passports.

But unpaid loans are already causing problems, and the government admits that the growing debt burden is exacerbating poverty and holding down consumer spending.

In August, 3.5 million Russians were officially branded as “debtors” and banned from leaving the country. Since 2014, the average Russian’s debt burden has increased by 150 percent. Today, the average debtor owes about 90 percent of their annual income.

The Finance Ministry has called ballooning debt a growing “social problem,” and some officials are warning of a credit bubble: outstanding consumer loans reached a record eight trillion rubles this year ($122 billion). While this pales in comparison with the US or other Western countries, this is new financial territory for Russia.

To make matters worse, some loan sharks prey on the fact that few Russians read the fine print of their credit agreements (what can you really read in 30 seconds?): some debtors have had to forfeit their collateralized homes after defaulting on loans whose value was far less than the value of that property. This summer parliament passed a law to make such forfeitures impossible.

Across Borders

After loosening its visa requirements for Westerners, Belarus has now turned its attention to attracting tourists, including those on bikes.

A new 50-kilometer link called August Velo follows the Augustow Canal, which has 18 locks and straddles the border between Belarus and Poland. It then travels to the historic city of Grodno and connects to biking trails in the Belovezhska Puscha Nature Reserve. In Poland, the route connects to the country’s extensive Green Velo bike trail.

Abstract Art

A new private museum is in the works in Moscow and is expected to open this fall. The Museum of Russian Abstract Art will be based on the private collection of Samvel Oganesyan, purchased by Russian businesswoman Olga Uskova in 2012. Oganesyan was a friend of Eli Belyutin, who founded the Soviet-era studio New Reality – a loose cooperative of abstract artists working from the 1950s to the 2000s.

Uskova bought an avant-garde building to house the museum in the capital’s Sokolniki neighborhood. The 1930 structure, designed by architect Konstantin Melnikov, once housed the Burevestnik Shoe Factory’s workers’ club, and incorporated cutting-edge (for its time) lighting and ventilation systems.

Sherry Tops List

In a recent survey of 106 international airports, the luggage storage network Stasher concluded that Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport had the fewest number of flight delays of any of the airports surveyed. According to Stasher’s findings, Sheremetyevo was the only airport with a perfect 10 for on-time departures (between June 2018 and May 2019), meaning most all flights off within 15 minutes of their scheduled departure time. The airport also got top marks for having very inexpensive long-term parking. But on other data points (distance to the city center and access to shops, for instance), Sheremetyevo did less well.

 stasher.com/the-worlds-best-airports