NEWS IN BRIEF

Oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, owner of the New York Nets and Snob Magazine, resigned dra-matically from the Right Cause Party this month, effectively ending speculation that he might join or break up the tandem of President Dmit-ry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Prokhorov had lashed out at Kremlin Chief of Staff Vladislav Surkov, but then seemed to re-cant in his blog: “There was no personal con-flict with anyone ... in the end it was a conflict of ideologies. ... At this stage the conservatives won. I wanted change, but the system was not ready.”

Russian Ambassador to the United States Ser-gei Kislyak has teamed up with Washington, D.C. philanthropist Susan Lehrman and Amer-ican University to launch the Initiative for Rus-sian Culture to promote cultural relations be-tween the United States and Russia. Ambassador Kislyak has made cultural exchange a focus of his tenure, and especially works to generate cross-cultural interest in Russian film. The Rus-sian Embassy will host screenings of Russian films in its theater for American University stu-dents. The project will be launched on Sept. 30 at the Library of Congress by Susan Lehrman and Peter Starr, dean of American University. More details at www.american.edu/cas/irc.

“Right Cause” Party

Reached a Dead End

Russian Films for D.C.

Students

After a summer of discontent over the Mag-nitsky List and a controversial resolution by Amer-ican lawmakers, Russian human rights campaign-ers have handed a new blacklist of Russian officials to the U.S. Senate. The campaigners, including Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Lev Pono-maryev, want 305 Russian officials to face sanc-tions in America for their role in the conviction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. Tom Washington, THE MOSCOW NEWS

YUKOS List Goes to U.S.

Senate

Culture Russia’s premier art-house director garners international recognition

It looked like President Dmitry Medvedev would chalk up po-litical points at the recent Glob-al Policy Forum in Yaroslavl, showcasing his plan to turn Russia into an innovation econ-omy.

Instead, it became a dam-age limitation exercise as the nearby wreckage of a Yak-42 passenger plane, which crashed on Sept. 7, offered a powerful symbol of the obstacles the Kremlin faces in modernizing Russia.

The crash, which killed 44 people, including most players from a top-level hockey team, has once again put the spot-

Crash Killing Hockey Team Raises Ire Safety Russia’s flight record is once again under scrutiny

light on Russia’s deplorable flight record, which has been explained by lax safety obser-vance, cost-cutting on main-tenance, corruption and the country’s aging Soviet fleet of planes.

Aleksandr Shokhin, president of the Union for Industry and Entrepreneurs, was in atten-dance at the Yaroslavl confer-ence. He told RFE/RL’s Russian Service that “all the contradic-tions of modern Russian soci-ety collided in Yaroslavl. I think this [illustrates] the two-sided nature of our politics,” he said. “On the one hand, we dream of becoming a great empire, while at the same time we haven’t sorted out elementary problems in basic technology in many sectors. This is a rea-son to ponder what type of modernization we really need.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

Alexander Sokurov’s much an-ticipated “Faust,” inspired by Goethe’s classic interpretation of the legend and filmed in Ger-man, was a popular winner at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month. It was the highest recognition for a filmmaker who long deserved a place at the table of great Russian film di-rectors, said critics and col-leagues.

“There are some films that make you cry, there are some films that make you laugh, there

GALINA MASTEROVA SPECIAL TO RN

TOM BALMFORTH RFE/RL

Following his mentor Andrei

Tarkovsky, Alexander

Sokurov became the fourth

Russian director to win the

Golden Lion with “Faust.”

The sport of hockey lost 44

players , from Russia, the

NHL and Europe, to a

senseless air tragedy in a

Yak-42. How can domestic

flying be safer?

Lokomotiv was one of Russia’s popular hockey teams, coached by Canadian Brad McCrimmon, who also died.

stand why such help was given; I am not a supporter of those who support the political cul-ture in Russia.”

Sokurov’s candor regarding his lack of love for Russian pol-itics is typical: The director is known for saying what he thinks. His early films were banned by Soviet authorities, which in a way brought him more international attention.

Sokurov says his serial obses-sions with dictators and “Faust” itself, which is the culmination of the quartet of films, goes back 30 years. “It’s amazing that there is so little attention paid to Faust,” he said. “If any poli-tician reads ‘Faust,’ everything is there.”

Johannes

Zeiler (left)

portrays

Faust and

Isolda Dy-

chauk (right)

is Margarete

in Alexander

Sokurov’s

film.

are some films that change you forever after you see them; and this is one of them,” said Dar-ren Aronofsky, director of “Black Swan” and head of the festival jury.

Accepting the award, Sokurov said it was an “emotional” mo-ment for him and noted that “serious, deeply felt auteur cin-ema is becoming more and more difficult” without govern-ment support. He should know, as his film never would have been made without an unlike-ly supporter—Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

It has been a long journey for Sokurov. His early films were banned in Soviet times, and the first three films of his trilogy, which Faust completes, al-though highly praised, were

mostly ignored by the interna-tional festivals.

“He has been aiming for this award all his life,” said produc-er Andrei Sigle, who said he had to convince Sokurov to enter the film in the competition after previous disappointments.

His trilogy of films about dic-tators—Lenin, Stalin and Em-peror Hirohito in “Moloch,” “Taurus” and “The Sun,” re-spectively—together form a pre-quel to “Faust,” the archetypal deal-with-the-devil story. His biggest success before “Faust” was with “Russian Ark,” filmed in the State Hermitage Muse-um in St. Petersburg in one con-tinous take, which wowed the international art-house crowd in 2002.

Sokurov, a figure whose in-

ability to compromise has seen him feted more abroad than at home, did not receive any fund-ing from the Ministry of Cul-ture to make this film—and for that reason it might not have been made. But money ap-peared after Putin spoke out in support of the filming of “Faust.”

Why Putin supported the film is still a mystery to Sokurov, who met with the prime minister and acknowledged the importance of his support. The fact that his film is about Faust, he thinks, was an important factor, the di-rector said in an interview.

“I’m not sure if [the film] will be interesting for him, although he knows the German language and German culture is close to him,” he said. “I don’t under-

NEXT ISSUE

Sokurov’s Deal With the Sokurov’s Deal With the Devil Epic Takes Top Prize Devil Epic Takes Top Prize

CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

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Sergei Petrov cuts a diminutive and modestly dressed figure in the midst of the crowd in the lobby of the Ritz Carlton hotel in central Moscow. That’s at first impression surprising because Petrov is the founder of Rolf, Russia’s biggest car dealership. He is probably the richest man in the room by far, and Russians are hardly known for understate-ment when it comes to display-ing their wealth.

As a taxi driver who built a car dealership empire, its not only Petrov’s clothes that buck the trend. He grew rich from selling cars, one of Russia’s most corrupt businesses, but he worked at making the business transparent, concentrating on quality of service rather than ne-farious schemes.

“We had to be strong and competitive, and we civilized this business,” Petrov said. “In 1992, importing cars was little more than a smuggling operation, and people didn’t know how to make real money. But we always tried to do it legally; later other com-panies followed us.”

Today, Rolf has 27 show-rooms in Moscow and St. Pe-tersburg. Business is flourishing. The 2008 crisis hurt Rolf along with everyone else, but in 2010, the company’s turnover was al-ready back to $4 billion, even if profits were halved.

Petrov is a poster boy for the potential for business geared to-ward Russia’s rapidly growing middle class.

“Is Russia better today?” he asked rhetorically. “Yes, things are better than when we set out on this path 20 years ago, but we hoped for much more.”

Taxi Entrepreneur

Perestroika and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union forced everyone in Russia to rely on their own resources. Petrov had been running the driver pool at Moscow construction company Mosinzhstroy, but left in 1991 to set up his own com-pany providing drivers to many of the international companies moving into Russia.

“We had a fleet of cars and the international companies needed reliable drivers. I drove

Business Sergei Petrov went from a pool of drivers to a dealership empire and survived

Driver Turned BillionaireA former taxi driver shows

that it is possible to make

money by appealing to

Russia’s growing middle

class.

BEN ARISSPECIAL TO RN

Russia’s Emerging Car Market

The taxi industry tries to go legit

Rolf dealer center in Moscow.

one and helped the clients carry their cases,” Petrov said.

Petrov obviously got on very well with his clients, because when he approached the head of Mitsubishi Russia for a soft loan to expand his fleet, he was instead given 40 new cars im-ported from Finland with no down payment and no collat-eral; a loan he was able to pay off almost immediately as the business flourished. A year later, the newly established Rolf won a tender to become the first of-ficial Mitsubishi car dealer in Russia.

Despite the economic chaos and hyperinflation wracking the country at the time, Rolf grew extremely fast. Not everyone had been ruined by the collapse of the old system; Rolf’s first cus-tomers were high government officials and the newly minted “Russian mafia,” mostly traders capitalizing on the mismatch between Soviet-era valuation on goods and assets and those in the international markets.

“We earned enormous money [in the early 1990s],” Petrov said. “After Yeltsin introduced trade exemptions for charities as way of funding their work, we were approached by one and imported the cars under this scheme without duties. We had to pay a third of the duties and were making about $20,000 per sale. It was a lot for a small company like ours.”

The first half of the 1990s op-erated on this huge arbitrage

cars, the company sold them wholesale to companies, ser-viced them and had a second-hand sales unit. Competitors concentrating solely on import-ing were forced to slash costs, but Rolf could sustain itself on its other businesses to absorb the losses from devaluation.

Fear vs. Greed

During the first six months of 2008, Russia briefly became the biggest car market in Europe, selling 1.65 million units to over-take former champion Germa-ny. Then the latest crisis hit. De-spite the widespread econom-ic problems, sales of passenger cars and light commercial ve-hicles were up 30 percent in 2010, according to David Thomas, chairman of the Asso-ciation of European Businesses (AEB). The uplift continues this year, and Russia is set to take back the crown in 2015, ac-cording to industry experts.

As it already represents many of the world’s leading brands—including an increasing number of domestically produced foreign brands such as Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen—Rolf will ride this wave. But building up the busi-ness has not been easy.

First, the company has always been forced to grow using re-tained earnings. “We’ve never gone to the banks for finances. The cost of money is so high that if you take loans there is no

profit,” Petrov said. “The only financing we have ever taken was from Mitsubishi, when we started importing more than 100,000 cars a year in 2007.”

Second, there is the bureau-cracy, especially in the import business. Petrov’s solution to this snafu was to build his own car import terminal in St. Peters-burg, which takes all logistics out of the hands of the customs service, leaving them only to carry out inspections. This smooths the supply of product to his dealership network.

However, Russia’s lawlessness has been the biggest obstacle. Organized crime reportedly con-trolled Russia’s car distribution networks throughout the 1990s, and imports arrived via schemes designed to avoid what were crippling import duties. Howev-er, Petrov declares that he stuck to his principles and insisted his cars were brought in legally.

“It was a battle of greed vs. fear—and fear won,” Petrov said. “When we started selling Audis my sales staff were de-motivated. Other dealers could offer a $2,000 discount on any car compared to our prices.” However, when Vladimir Putin took over as president and threw oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky into jail for tax evasion, Russian companies started to “go white.” The mes-sage to business was clear: pay your taxes or else.

“We had to be strong and competitive, and we civilized this business,” Petrov said.

Sergei Petrov

NATIONALITY: RUSSIAN

AGE: 57

CIVIL STATUS: MARRIED

Born in the city of Orenburg near the Ural mountains in 1954, Sergei Petrov became a military pilot; he was forced to quit in 1982, after the KGB ac-cused his unit of “anti-com-munist activities.” He moved to Moscow and re-trained at the Soviet Trade University, graduating in trade relations in 1987. In 1991, he set up his own company providing drivers to many of the international com-panies moving into Russia. In 1991, Rolf company was found-ed and became the first official Mitsubishi car dealer in Russia.

HIS STORY

and made multimillionaires out of fast-moving businessmen overnight. “Luxury goods was the only stable market then. The fish were there—mainly high government officials, oligarchs and mafia,” Petrov said. “The rest of society, about 80 per-cent of the population, had nothing.”

However, as the economy began to pick up, the car mar-ket slowly expanded, and by the late 1990s, Rolf had made Mitsubishi the best selling car in Russia outside the luxury seg-ment.

The 1998 crisis was another blow, but it hurt Rolf less than its competitors, as Petrov had already built up several business lines. In addition to retailing

It’s official: Authorities have been given the job of clearing “gypsy cabs” from Moscow’s streets, according to city legislation en-acted this month. But the new law has been the source of fre-quent, heated debate.

The law requires private taxi drivers to have a permit, and for their cars to be equipped with a meter, an orange light on the roof and checkered stripes painted on the side. The cars will also have to undergo an inspection every six months, and each region has the right to require all taxis to be paint-ed the same color.

The driver must have at least five years’ driving experience and must fill out a receipt or a report form for each journey.

Under the new law, taxis will be regulated by traffic police inspectors (GIBDD) and Ros-transnadzor, Russia’s transport safety regulator. They will at-tempt to catch unofficial taxis by posing as passengers and filming transactions.

Moscow’s official taxi com-panies are strong supporters of the law. “The anarchy caused by private cabs operated by people with no driving experi-ence and no knowledge of the

Transportation Expats and Russians alike found reassurance in the freelance driver fleet

New regulations are in effect

to help rid Moscow of gypsy

cabs, but some hope they

will not be enforced.

Alexei Krikunov, who has 20 years’ experience as a gypsy cab driver and has no plans to become legal, said it is impos-sible to catch an unofficial cab. “I often take passengers who are going my way,” Krikunov said. “If a traffic cop stops me, I can always say I am driving a relative.”

Even passengers that take taxis infrequently do not think that increased regulation will cut down on illegal fares.

“Half the cars that stop to pick up illegal passengers now are legal cabs,” Anton Zabo-rov said. “The driver is work-ing for this or that company getting orders from the call center, but he still is tempted to get some more rubles by taking an undocumented pas-senger. I cannot imagine how new laws will change that.”

Nevertheless, Stanislav Kri-vosheyev, leader of the All-Rus-sia Movement of Taxi Drivers and editor-in-chief of the web portal Taxi News, has decided to go legit.

“Getting a license in Mos-cow took less than 20 minutes, the car was not inspected, I simply produced the papers,” he said. “I chose a taximeter, a certified software utility, and installed it on the navigator. All the procedures took a month and a half and cost me 10,000 rubles. I went about this busi-ness purposefully and thor-oughly. But I think most taxi drivers will find it easier to go on working illegally.”

The law may have a side ef-fect of improving Moscow’s image as a business and tour-ism destination. Some foreign-ers in Russia have found the lack of official taxis in the city to be a problem.

But some foreigners have found taking gypsy cabs to be an adventure. Tamara Smith, an American who has lived in Moscow for seven years, said that she began using illegal taxis out of necessity, despite her initial misgivings. Overall, she has enjoyed the experi-ence:

“We have met many inter-esting people who pick up pas-sengers to make ends meet—surgeons, scientists and even the choreographer for the tra-peze at the Moscow Circus! Riding with them has been a great way to get the inside scoop on how locals feel about current events,” Smith said. But she is not opposed to the re-form. “Knowing Russian is an absolute must if one has to use gypsy cabs—so a system more like those of New York or Lon-don would be much more de-sirable and safer.”

Tail Pipe Dragging, It May Be the End of the Gypsy Cab Era

A passenger negotiates the price with the gypsy cab driver.

DARIA KOSTINALARA MCCOY ROSLOFRUSSIA NOW

IN FIGURES

40 thousand“gypsy cabs” are currently driv-ing around Moscow, but new laws may reduce the numbers.

9 thousandlegal cabs can’t compete with the freelance drivers, who are flexible and often cheaper, but sometimes don’t have enough driving experience and knowl-edge of the city.

According to private taxi driv-ers, the main problem with the new law is that licenses will be issued only to those who own their own cars. Drivers who use cars under a power of attorney will not be allowed. Addition-

ally, it is not clear what the med-ical check up for drivers and the vehicle safety inspections will entail, nor where these tests will take place and who will admin-ister them.

Almost all unofficial taxi driv-ers think the new law will be ineffective.

Russian language or the city will come to an end,” said Felix Mar-garian, general director of the New Transportation Company, which operates taxis under the Yellow Taxi brand.

But the law’s critics argue that it ignores the interests of entre-preneurs. “The list of require-ments and documents to be submitted by carriers is still to be approved. Putting checkers on the side of the car and a lamp does not cost much. But a taximeter is a different story. Some say the device can be bought for $48, others say you can just install a program on the navigator. “If color restric-tions are introduced, thousands of carriers will have to repaint their cars. That is expensive,” said Yaroslav Scherbinin, chair-man of the Russian Union of Taxi Drivers.

“Knowing Russian is an absolute must if one has to use gypsy cabs,” said expat Tamara Smith.

“Most taxi drivers will find it easier to work illegally,” Stanislav Krivosheyev said.

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Women Defying

the Odds

The Fairer Sex

Medvedev, who altered his timetable to visit the site of the crash on Sept. 8, ordered a dra-matic reduction in the number of domestic airlines, in a bid to weed out Russia’s many bud-get carriers inclined to danger-ously skimp on costs to main-tain tight profit margins.

But for many observers, the high frequency of plane crash-es in Russia points to a system-ic problem tied to the legacy of the Soviet Union and its aging infrastructure.

“I think what is happening is far from coincidental,” said Rus-lan Grinberg, director of the economic institute of the Rus-sian Academy of Sciences.

“We are not just talking here about the human factor when there is a lower degree of pro-fessionalism,” he said. “There is also dilapidated infrastructure.

We can bemoan that or not, but this industrial landscape was created, and now it is begin-ning to fall apart of its own ac-cord.”

The crash of the Yakovlev marks the 13th serious plane accident or incident in Russia this year, according to the on-line Aviation Safety database, which it said makes the coun-try the most dangerous place to fly in 2011.

The latest air disaster comes on the heels of the crash of a Tupolev Tu-134 plane on June 20 in Russia’s Karelia region that killed 47 people.

Another major air disaster was narrowly averted on July 11 when the left engine of an An-tonov-24 passenger plane burst into flames in midair. The pilot managed a crash landing, al-though six members of the crew were killed.

Medvedev issued an order

er conditions were excellent.Interfax news agency report-

ed on Sept. 9 that a preliminary investigation shows the engines were working from take-off, but they may not have been cor-rectly serviced before the flight.

Investigators suspect the plane failed to gain enough speed before taking off. How-ever, further investigation has been stalled as the black boxes recovered from the wreckage on Sept. 8 need to be dried out before they can be properly an-alyzed.

As Medvedev delivers anoth-er directive on rescuing the country’s ailing air industry, an-alysts say that the president has suffered a blow ahead of the upcoming presidential and State Duma elections.

“The plans for modernization reflect an understanding of the need to bring the country out

of crisis,” said Sergei Rogov, di-rector of the US and Canada Institute, a Russian think tank. “But the way these plans are realized has us wishing for it to be better, to say the least, since very often these things are not carried out.

“This is probably linked to the nuances of the political system that has taken shape in this country and the immaturity of democratic institutions and pro-cesses.

“This awful catastrophe is the latest reminder that we have to haul ourselves out of this quag-mire.”

This was first published on rferl.org.

Copyright (c) 2011, RFE/

RL, Inc. Reprinted with the

permission of Radio Free

Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201

Connecticut Ave., NW WA DC

20036.

Yaroslavl Plane Crash Raises Old Safety Issues

Rescuers work at the crash site of a Yak-42 jet on the Volga.

grounding some older Soviet-era planes pending safety checks, with a view to phasing them out of use completely. But the deadly June crash was even-tually found to be due in part to pilot error.

The Yak-42 is reported to have crashed after it was unable to gain enough altitude when it took off from Tunoshna airport near the city of Yaroslavl 155 miles northeast of Moscow. It exploded on impact.

Russian investigators have said they believe the crash was caused either by faulty equip-ment or pilot error, since weath-

Russian-born U.S. citizen Tatya-na and her American husband decided to adopt a child from Russia. “My relatives in Russia objected almost with one voice, right from the start,” she said. “Our American relatives, on the contrary, were unanimously in favor.”

The couple wants to adopt a child with health problems. Russian rules give priority to Rus-sian would-be adoptive parents over foreign ones. Tatyana, who does not want to disclose her real name for fear of sabotag-ing the adoption process, said she and her husband “wanted, from the start, to adopt a child with health problems, because we thought such children would have less chance of being ad-opted in Russia.”

Adopting orphans, including sick ones, is part of American culture. The head of the Rus-sian office of an accredited American adoption agency said, on condition of anonymity, that “the children passing through our agency are all sick, serious-ly sick.” State Duma deputy Nina Ostanina admits that “chil-dren have better health and re-habilitation opportunities there than here in Russia.”

Tatyana said that Americans adopt special-needs children for simple reasons like traditional Christian values of helping one’s neighbor; people with disabili-ties in America are regarded as members of society and are less isolated.

Yet the number of adoptions from Russia has been falling in recent years. Russia does not have a single body in charge of adoption, so one has to produce various certificates for different Russian agencies. Even so, in 2010, Americans adopted 1,082 children from Russia.

Pavel Astakhov, the Russian children’s rights ombudsman,

Family Couples who adopt children need vetting and support

agrees that “Americans adopt many children with health prob-lems.” But the trouble is, he said, that the adoptive parents are not always fit to bring them up. So, adoptive parents, mo-tivated by good intentions, have only a vague idea of what they are letting themselves in for. Sometimes, of course, many things cannot be foreseen. There are latent diseases not yet diagnosed when adoption takes place in Russia. The head of a

Russian office of an American adoption agency confirms this view “I know of many such cases. They are connected es-pecially with genetic diseases that surface five or six years after adoption, sometimes at the age of 10 or 12. The disease may be very serious.” He said that, in such cases, “the adoptive par-ents soldier on,” doing every-thing they can to cure and sup-port such a child.

According to the Ministry of Education and Science, about 80 percent of the 770,000 Rus-sian orphans are “social or-phans,” that is, their parents are alive but may be alcoholics, drug addicts or serving prison sentences. It is not difficult for Russian parents to permanent-ly lose complete parental rights.

If a mother abused alcohol while pregnant, the child de-velops fetal alcohol syndrome

(FAS), which causes nervous dis-orders and behavioral problems, including marked aggression.

“If a child is in an orphanage from an early age, say, before three, the child often develops reactive attachment syndrome (RAD),” said Dr. Lucine Vardan-yan, an obstretician in Moscow. “If there is no [one loving] adult around, the child will never learn to trust people. It will come to regard surrounding people as objects for manipulation.” She warned that “the child provokes aggression in other people. …No matter how much the adop-tive parents love such a child, it is simply unable to recipro-cate.”

Over the last 20 years, about 60,000 children have been ad-opted and taken to America, and 17 of them have died at the hands of their adoptive par-ents. Some adoptive parents blame their behavior on persis-tent aggression on the part of the adopted children caused by their illnesses.

This was the case when the adoptive mother of Artyom Savelyev sent him back to Rus-sia like an unwanted package. The lawyer of the couple ac-cused of murdering Vanya Sko-robogatov refers to “a serious brain disorder” afflicting the ad-opted son. “A child’s medical problems cannot justify abuse by the adoptive parents,” Astak-hov said.

According to Astakhov, some adoptive parents misled the Russian guardianship agencies by producing fake certificates or by withholding psychologi-cal information. The new trea-ty on adoption signed this spring between Russia and the

United States now makes vet-ting parents easier. Russian agencies have the right to visit the house of the adoptive par-ents. U.S. authorities are in the process of creating a central-ized database of adopted Rus-sian children, and the Russian side has the right to verify adop-tion documents and, in extreme cases, reverse the decision. Most importantly, the treaty bans agencies not accredited in Rus-sia and adoptive parents will be obliged to take special train-ing courses and undergo men-tal health checks.

These measures complicate the procedures for qualified par-ents, who now have to seek ap-provals from 19 Russian agen-cies. “The question must be raised of creating an authorized institution in the Russian Feder-ation to handle adoption of our children,” Ostanina said. So far, bureaucrats have been reluctant to do this. Tatyana said that she and her husband have taken mandatory classes for adoptive children and have thought care-fully about what diagnoses they would be willing to accept in their child. They will consider “whether there are programs in support of a certain disease near-by, whether there are hospitals where they can treat it well, whether our living conditions are good enough for this disease and whether we are emotionally ready to cope with any given diagnosis,” Tatyana said.

The Moscow-Washington treaty protects the rights of Rus-sian orphans, but does not re-duce the number of sick chil-dren in Russian orphanages, said Boris Altshuler, head of The Child’s Right, a nongovernmen-tal organization.

Russian relatives wonder why Tatyana and her husband, who have other children, want to adopt; the couple hopes to adopt more children in the fu-ture. “It is difficult to wait,” Tatyana said. “I mentally move the clock to Russian time many times a day and think: what is the child doing at this moment, what is he eating, what he is playing at and how does he sleep. I can’t wait for the pro-cess to be over so we could start living a normal life, not one split in two by time and distance.”

Fixing Foreign Adoption

Special needs

adoption is not

well accepted in

Russian culture.

Can a treaty between Russia

and the United States help

match qualified American

parents with Russia’s special-

needs orphans?

SOFIA IZMAILOVAVLADIMIR RUNIVSKYSPECIAL TO RN

The adoption treaty cannot reduce the number of sick children in Russian orphanages.

During the Soviet era, Vladimir Lenin’s famous saying, “every cook must learn to govern the state,” was used to justify quo-tas for women in government positions. But in today’s Russia, female politicians are few and far between. In fact, there is only one woman on the na-tional political scene—Valenti-na Matviyenko, former gover-nor of St. Petersburg and speaker of the Federation Coun-cil of Russia, the upper house of parliament.

After Soviet quotas were abolished in the early 1990s, women disappeared from pol-itics in Russia; today, a tradi-tional view of gender roles has replaced the Communist ideal of gender equality. According to Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a so-ciologist who focuses on poli-tics at the Institute of Sociolo-gy at the Russian Academy of Sciences, women trying to make it in politics fall into one of two categories: Those who have been placed there by a man who wishes to look at a pretty doll, and those who have achieved their positions by tal-ent and hard work.

Kryshtanovskaya considers Matviyenko representative of the latter category. “She is the only one with real political stat-ure—a vision—she is an ex-tremely experienced and effec-tive manager,“ Kryshtanovska-ya said. For her part, Matviyen-

ko has always resisted talking about herself as a woman in politics. At her final press con-ference as governor of St. Pe-tersburg, Matviyenko said that she always thought questions about women and politics “lacked sense.”

But other women in politics say they spend a lot of time trying to reform people’s opin-ions about them.

“A woman, regardless of her status or skills or qualities she possesses, will always be sub-jected to a level of distrust,” said Irina Khakamada, a former Duma deputy and 2004 presi-dential candidate who has now retired from politics.

“For 13 years, I spent 70 per-cent of my time and energy proving I am a politician with equal rights. I only had 30 per-cent of it left to actually pass laws,” she said in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio. Nev-ertheless, Khakamada is op-posed to quotas, which she con-s iders another form of discrimination.

“We must reform minds and the environment,” Khakamada said. “Politicians in Russia are often insignificant, because the system works for them. They can be completely uninterest-ing, yet be leaders. A woman

Women’s Rights Gender matters in Russian politics

Female politicians with any

power are few and far

between in Russia, but a new

NGO hopes to change that.

manage to exceed expectation. When former Olympic speed skating champion Svetlana Zhurova was elected to the Duma, most had low expecta-tions for her, as she seemed to continue the trend of young, attractive women backed by powerful men.

“At first, people said she would be just another cute ath-lete who will make up the num-bers [of women],” Kryshtanovs-kaya said. “But she proved to have real political skills.”

Zhurova belongs to the Duma committees on family, education, culture, physical ed-ucation and youth, but she is also the deputy speaker of the Duma and a member of the Olympic committee. “Women are capable of negotiating and cooperating, and looking at the impact of their decision on a real person,” she said in an in-terview with the German mag-azine Neue Zeiten, encourag-ing her female colleagues to participate more actively in major decisions.

Irina Khakamada is a mem-ber of the Other Russia coali-tion and is depicted as being in moderate opposition to the status quo. Her father defect-ed to the Soviet Union from Japan in 1939. Khakamada was a rising star in the 1990s, but when she ran for president, her own party did not support her. In recent interviews, she has suggested she is done with pol-itics.

As for Kryshtanovskaya, the sociologist is not only develop-ing theories on the role of women in the corridors of power, she is putting her thoughts into action. Since 2009, Kryshtanovs-kaya has been a member of the United Russia party and is now president of a new nongovern-mental organization, Otlichnitsy (roughly translated as “first in the class”), whose goal is to see a woman elected president of Russia in 2018.

But the organization is fight-ing an uphill battle. A recent study by state polling agency VTsIOM revealed that a quar-ter of all respondents believe there are already too many women in politics.

Women’s Place is in the Duma

Only 14 percent of the deputies in the State Duma are female.

VERONIKA DORMANSPECIAL TO RN

goes against the current; she must make herself be noticed. She must be extraordinary.”

Although 14 percent of the deputies in the Russian Duma are female, not all of them are role models.

“They are not politicians in the true sense of the word, with an ideology and a broad vision, but rather hired professionals,” Kryshtanovskaya said.

Some women, however,

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

High frequency of plane crashes points to the Soviet legacy of aging infrastructure.

1,082Russian children were adopted by Americans in 2010. Americans adopt children with needs who are not adopt-ed by Russians.

80%of Russian orphans are “social orphans,” that is, their parents are alive but are al-coholics, drug ad-dicts or serving pris-on sentences.

60,000children have been adopted and taken to America over the last 20 years, and 17 of them have died at the hands of their adoptive parents.

IN FIGURES

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“Women are capable of negotiating and cooperating,” Svetlana Zhurova told German press.

Olympic speed skater Svetlana Zhurova was elected to the Duma with no expectations.

04 RUSSIA NOWSECTION SPONSORED BY ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA, RUSSIA

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Opinion

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

MIDDLE EAST MISCALCULATED

IN PURSUIT OF QUALITY

I am still baffled: Why did the Kremlin commit such a gross error of judgement that led to such a visible hu-

miliation? From the moment Russia chose not to veto the United Nations Security Coun-cil resolution 1973 that effec-tively allowed NATO military action in Libya, Moammar Gad-dafi’s game was up. He had the world’s most powerful mil-itary alliance against him and hardly any support even among fellow Arabs. Moreover, Jordan, Qatar and United Arab Emir-ates supported militarily the al-lied operation in the Libyan skies. I think Moscow could have even supported the reso-lution and sent a symbolic frig-ate or two to Libyan shores, thus securing a place of honor

among future winners. Still ab-stention gave Russia a free hand to adjust its attitude later. And of course it was quite clear from the beginning that resolution 1973 gave a green light to the allies to root out the Gaddafi regime. No other outcome would have satisfied them.

But instead of being consis-tent and keeping a distance, Moscow nearly immediately rushed to condemn the NATO-led operation and, implicitly, support Gaddafi. It soon found itself in a particularly bad posi-tion: The Libyan dictator did not trust Russia after the United Na-tions abstention; the rebels felt it was working against them. President Dmitry Medvedev’s special representative Mikhail Margelov flew to have talks with the Transitional National Coun-cil in Benghazi in June. Sadly, the Russian leadership did not follow his promising mission with any concrete steps. Mos-cow had to recognize the reb-els as Libya’s legitimate govern-ment when it was too late.

So why did Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and their foreign policy advisors miscal-culate? I personally think the roots of this mistake lie in Rus-sia’s internal situation and men-tality. Post-Cold War humilia-tions, some real and some perceived, created an ideology based on anti-Western attitudes, as well as denial that values and ideas, as opposed to naked in-terest, play any role in interna-

One of the favorite say-ings of the new gen-eration of global Rus-sians is ,“Speak English,

dress Italian, drive German, kiss French, be Russian.” In spite of the fact that, like the rest of our global village, we have to replace some of these with “Chinese,” the passion of Russians for hav-ing the best of everything can-not be overestimated.

When the Apple iPhone first appeared on the market, be-fore anybody could predict that it would capture one-third of the mobile market in most de-veloped countries, Russians cre-ated one of the biggest “gray” markets of iPhones in the world, carrying them in suitcases from the United States and Europe. The first iPhone has yet to be officially sold in Russia, but three months after the launch in 2007, analysts estimated that there were at least 400,000 Apple handsets in our country. And four years later, a Russian man was the first to get the shiny iPad 2 after standing in a long long line on Fifth Ave-nue in New York. This is only one sign of Russian passion for the best products.

But it wasn’t always like that. In the Soviet Union, people didn’t have foreign products

because tyrannical Soviet lead-ers wouldn’t allow them to leave the country. A few Sovi-et products were known for their unique mix of Construc-tivist design and pragmatism, but many were the butt of jokes—like the water dispenser with a single glass cup for all. Unfortunately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a lot of production lines in Russia were

stopped. And now we have to start most of them from scratch.

This work has already start-ed. Despite not having a de-cent Russian make of car, de-cent Russian computer brand and decent Russian soccer team (the worst of all!), we have be-come one of the world leaders in making sophisticated indus-trial lasers (IPG Photonics), an-

Konstantin

von EggertSPECIAL TO RN

ti-virus software (Kaspersky lab), nano-microscopes (NT-MDT), optical character recognition systems (ABBYY software) and so on.

To make people’s lives easi-er, we have to start producing everyday products of good quality. And Russians can’t be-lieve in the quality of domes-tically produced products. Rus-sian advertising is rife with phrases like, “German quality,” “Italian style” or “American tra-ditions” labels. It will be tough to overcome the stereotype that Russian products equal bad quality in the minds of Russians, let alone in the minds of for-eigners.

But the mission is not im-possible.

My dream is to dress Rus-sian, drive Russian, eat Russian and have an “iRussianPhone” without feeling that it’s lacking the quality of foreign products. In order to change something, you have to start with your-self.

Young global Russians should WANT to have everything the best, and we should also hope to MAKE everything the best.

Konstantin von Eggert is a com-mentator and host for radio Kommersant FM, Russia’s first 24-hour news station. He was a diplomatic correspondent for Iz-vestia and later BBC Russian Service Moscow Bureau editor-in-chief. He was also once vice president of ExxonMobil Russia.

Vsevolod Pulya is executive editor of online content at Russia Be-yond the Headlines and a gradu-ate student in the journalism department of Moscow State University studying sociology and convergence journalism.

Russians can’t believe in the quality of domestically produced products right now.

Vsevolod

PulyaRUSSIA NOW

tional relations. For values read “Western values.” Moscow de-cisionmakers and the Russian public view global politics as a zero sum game, where some-one’s gain is always someone else’s loss. It is the consequence of Russia’s peculiar and tortu-ous post-Communist transition. The country is neither here nor there, neither a Soviet empire nor a global superpower. And it is not yet a fully fledged na-tion state. This makes the Rus-sians uncertain and defensive. They worship sovereignty, un-derstood as a sort of pre-World War I right of governments to do whatever they want within their national boundaries, be-cause they saw their own coun-try, the Soviet Union, disappear overnight. They are unable and unwilling to accept such con-cepts as “humanitarian inter-vention” and “responsibility to protect,” which underpinned the intervention in Libya. This leads to a recurring situation in which Russia finds itself on the wrong side of history trying to bail out dictators long past their expiration date. This happened with Slobodan Milosevic, the deposed Yugoslav leader; Iraq strongman Saddam Hussein; and Gaddafi. One wonders if it will occur with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

Global politics today are an interplay of interests and values, opportunism and idealism. Miss-ing this very real point leads the Russians to believe that any event over which they have no

control, such as the Arab revo-lutions, is by default a sinister conspiracy, usually a Western one involving oil. This belief is by no means an exclusively Rus-sian phenomenon. But among the G-8 nations, it is only in Rus-sia that such attitudes are as widely spread among politicians and top civil servants. It might take quite some time for my people to start adapting to the 21st century reality. It is in the power of the Russian leaders to speed up the process and final-ly get real.

Russians worship sovereignty because they saw their own country, the Soviet Union, disappear.

They are unable and unwilling to accept concepts such as “humanitarian intervention.”

Opinion

The announcement last month that Apple CEO Steve Jobs felt com-pelled to resign due to

ill health was met with sadness by industry experts, who rushed to praise Jobs as not just the driving force behind a compa-ny which this summer briefly became the most valuable in the world, but also as a vision-ary in the sector and even the greatest industrialist of the last 20 years—or ever.

But are the paeans justified, or is it all just hype? Apple cer-tainly stands out compared to companies such as Bill Gates’ Microsoft and the omnipresent Google, which are also highly successful, but have never won people’s hearts and minds. In fact, outside the business world, they have never even come close to creating a cult of their CEOs or their products. They might be respected, even feared, but never loved.

That is the big lesson to be learned from Steve Jobs and Apple, both for other compa-nies, and for countries such as Russia, which is now trying to jump onto the innovation and high-tech bandwagon.

But for all their technical ex-pertise, many in the industry are woefully ignorant of history and are far too young to have

Ian Pryde is founder and CEO of Eurasia Strategy & Communica-tions in Moscow.

CAN RUSSIA LEARN FROM STEVE JOBS?

Management (DRM) on firmer footing.

But in a classic case of agen-cy capture, legislators through-out the Western world bought into the geek argument that the Internet must be (a) free for all. Instead, they should have been doing their jobs properly and protecting the livelihoods of those who produce the music, films and books we all enjoy. The idea that copying and dis-tributing film and music digi-tally is somehow different from photocopying books and re-re-cording music on cassettes was fallacious from the start and has also led to huge feelings of en-titlement, with results that are becoming ever clearer, such as the vast quantities of junk edu-cation and news now polluting the Internet. And it is ironic that Western governments support companies’ bitter complaints about the rampant piracy in China, and yet have fallen short on protecting intellectual prop-erty rights at home.

Still, it is very hard to argue with Apple’s phenomenal suc-cess. It makes sexy, high-mar-gin products bought by millions the world over, and ultimately, that is what business is all about.

Copying this trick is hardly easy, even for world-class firms, and leadership can pass very quickly from one company—or country—to another.

Russia is now trying to mod-

ernize and is hyping its Skolko-vo project just outside Moscow at home and abroad as the country’s answer to Silicon Val-ley, but there is massive skepti-cism domestically and interna-tionally. Russia has precious few firms outside oil, gas, metals, mining and banking, and high-tech companies are conspicu-ous by their absence.

Instead of fixing this by prop-er reforms at the national level, as usual, the approach to Skolk-ovo is Soviet—a government-led project approach that pumps in large financial and other resources.

The Russian oligarch and TNK-BP shareholder Viktor Vek-selberg has said that Skolkovo had received a promise of $3 billion in government funding over the next three years. The aim is to raise the same amount from private sources, including major multinationals—Siemens, GE and Nokia-Siemens have said they would build research and development centers in the heart of Skolkovo and invest up to $50 million each.

But Russia’s brightest and best are leaving the country in droves. Some 40,000 Russians work in Silicon Valley alone, and about 300,000 young Russians emigrate each year, accrding to estimates, and the number is growing. And outside the tech sector, it’s also worth remem-bering that developing just one new drug costs half-a-billion, so $3 billion or even $6 billion won’t go far.

Nor do Russia’s leaders un-derstand science and technol-ogy. Both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have said, for in-stance, that money invested in research and development should produce results and not be wasted, but risk is the name of the game. There can never be any guarantee of success, and scientific and technologi-cal progress often results from sheer serendipity—it cannot be planned.

Russia has wasted years since the Soviet Union in its still un-successful search for a national vision, so it is just learning to “talk the talk,” but “walking the walk” across the board will be much harder.

German Gref, a former min-ister of economy and now head of Sberbank, Russia’s official sav-ings bank and biggest financial institution, said on Vladimir Pozner’s late-night talk show that a domestic car industry would take at least 15 years to create.

At the end of August, Av-toVaz, one of Russia’s biggest car makers, made a small step forward by hiring Steve Mattin as its chief designer. Mattin has previously worked at Mercedes-Benz and Volvo; he will start work in October. It will be fas-cinating to see if he can divine Steve Jobs and transform Av-toVaz into a sexy, high-tech car company.

iPod is self-contained—you no longer need to carry around spare batteries and cassettes, and the latest 160GB iteration of the iPod Classic can store 40,000 songs.

But for real music fans, the top-of-the-range Walkman had two major advantages over the iPod: They came with excel-lent headphones and had a bet-ter frequency response, which includes the inaudible over-tones vital to the full enjoyment of music. The Walkman Profes-sional of the early 1980s took things to yet another level and was beloved by hi-fi fans and journalists for its astonishing re-production, recording quality and sturdiness—I dropped mine onto solid concrete twice and it suffered no ill-effects. Sony stopped its production only in 2002.

Another thing the iPod—and most computers—cannot do is to replay instantly a passage of music or speech like you could on most old tape recorders by pressing “rewind” while in play mode. This is invaluable for mu-sicians and for journalists tran-scribing interviews, but try it with a digital recording on a computer, and you can hear the hard drive chugging away, try-ing to cope.

Apple’s real revolutionary product was not the iPod, but iTunes, an innovation that saved the recording industry from ex-tinction and put Digital Rights

experienced anything else first-hand. In fact, many modern products are by no means as revolutionary—or as good—as they seem to be.

Take the iPod. The BIG break-through in personal music on the move was the Sony Walk-man. Before that, the choice was between ghetto blasters, bulky cassette decks and tinny portable radios. The title of Deep Purple’s classic 1972 live album, “Made in Japan,” was a dig at the lousy quality of elec-tronics from the Far East. How times have changed!

The Walkman was a quan-tum leap forward due to its as-tonishing sound quality, and I still prefer the weight and feel of my old clunky Walkmen to the sleek and austere design of my two iPods. Of course, the

Reactions to RUSSIA NOW The interest I developed in Rus-sia when I studied the language some 40 years ago is still with-in me. The August 31, 2011, issue of “Russia Now” was like an old friend coming to visit. The several articles on the twen-tieth anniversary of the August 1991 revolution were excellent social commentaries.

Marc Collard

LEWES, DELAWARE

Dear Editor, Perhaps, according to Russian standards, there may have been some relaxation of attacks both

physical and psychological on journalists; by American stan-dards there is still a consider-able distance to cover. The un-explained deaths of a number of critics of Russia, including many known and admired journalists, certainly does not encourage freedom of press nor speech. Russia for the most part remains a society that is less than free in its ability to express diversity of opinion without the threat of punish-ment.

Nelson MaransSILVER SPRING, MD

Ian

PrydeSPECIAL TO RN

THE THIRD ANGLE

The public has developed a keen desire for what Apple is making.

Russia’s brightest are leaving. Some 40,000 Russians work in Silicon Valley alone.

ALEX

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05RUSSIA NOWSECTION SPONSORED BY ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA, RUSSIA

WWW.RBTH.RU ReflectionsMOST READ Russia’s Election Chief: Turnout is Key

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GAMERS’ HARRY POTTER

BIBLIOPHILE

It’s no surprise that there is already a computer game of “Metro 2033.” Dmitry Gluk-hovsky’s dystopian novel,

with its episodic shoot-outs and faceless mutant enemies, some-times feels more like the prod-uct of an X-Box joystick than a literary imagination. But this post-apocalyptic, underground adventure, set in the disused tunnels of Moscow’s famous metro, also mixes action with occasional bouts of philosophy to keep more reflective readers happy.

Twenty-year-old Artyom, whose quest to reach the leg-endary Polis is the creaking mainspring of the Odyssean plot, reacts to his experiences along the way. In the subterra-nean nightmare that now pass-es for existence, bullets have be-come the main currency; Artyom wonders if Kalashnikov was really proud of his inven-tion, rather than driven mad by the ensuing carnage. Artyom falls in with a group of Jeho-vah’s witnesses and, instead of being converted, becomes even more convinced that life is chaos.

Dmitry Glukhovsky spent many years as a journalist. The novel, “Metro 2033,” started life online in 2002. It has since had phenomenal Internet pop-ularity. It has also been a huge commercial success, but only recently made it into paperback in English.

Natasha Randall, who has translated literary greats like Ler-montov and Zamyatin, handles the crucial changes of register well. One of the more chilling moments involves Artyom’s temporary companion, Bour-

bon, suddenly switching from his usual casual speech (“you couldn’t see for shit”, “it’s full of garbage”) to halting procla-mations: “the great darkness… shrouds the world and it will… dominate eternally.” Despite this stylistic control, there is often something a little stilted about the dialogues. Like many Rus-sian books in translation, “Metro 2033” has inconsistencies of transliteration, especially in ren-dering of metro names and lines, but these may bother only fellow metro nerds.

There are parallels with Ser-gei Lukyanenko’s blockbuster “Night Watch” series, where the forces of light and dark do bat-tle in the streets of Moscow. Glukhovsky also explores dis-tinctively Russian extremes: cor-ruption is still rife; faith and su-pers t i t ion coex i s t wi th atheism.

There are also moments when “Metro 2033” reads like an underground Harry Potter, as the young, orphaned hero is flung semi-willingly from en-counter to encounter. The hyp-notic sound of dead voices in the pipe system is reminiscent of the basilisk’s menacing hiss in the “Chamber of Secrets.” The comparison actually high-lights Metro 2033’s weaknesses of style and structure. There is little of Rowling’s flair for char-acterization or engaging sense of purpose, and female charac-ters are virtually non-existent. Ultimately, Glukhovsky’s novel struggles to rise above its aim-less format, despite moments of poignancy. Its success must surely lie in its appeal for seri-ous gamers. Yet when a book has this many fans, any critic who cannot see its charm is clearly missing something.

“Metro 2033,” Dmitry Gluk-hovsky, Orion Publishers

Phoebe

TaplinSPECIAL TO RN

THE BODIES POLITIC

EXPAT FILES

Both the United States and Russia are gearing up for a presidential election in 2012, and

nothing brings out the contrast between my native country and my sometimes-if-they-give-me-a-180-day-visa adopted coun-try like the differences between our political processes. While I love getting caught up in the hoop-la and intricate minute-by-minute politico.com ap-proach of the American model, there is much to admire in the clutter-free minimalist approach of the 35-minute Russian elec-toral cycle, where they waste no time on extraneous stuff like:

1. Candidate-branded bum-per stickers, lawn signs and baseball hats: Branded items are for winners only, and since the electoral cycle is so very short, and, of course, no one in Rus-sia actually has a lawn (that the public can see anyway), what’s the point?

2. Philadelphia Cheesesteaks: Ever since Boris Yeltsin’s ill-ad-vised boozy boogie on the tar-mac became the primary post-perestroika image, Russia’s leaders have avoided anything overtly physically sloppy or messy. Food consumed on na-tional television is limited to the traditional bread dipped in salt, which is much easier on the tie and shirt collection.

3. A hit television series: Last-ing through two presidential terms, a blockbuster series that details the inner workings of a fictitious presidential adminis-tration, in which the actor play-ing the president enjoys an ac-tual approval rating significant-ly higher than that of the real sitting president can be terribly confusing. Puh-leeze. There is enough controversy over who is really running the country

without putting Martin Sheen into the mix.

4. C-SPAN: “God is too high, and the tsar too far away,” runs an old peasant saying, and that’s the way the current Kremlin crowd intends to keep it. No need for raw uncut sausage fac-tory detail—the sitting Russian government is hard at work, a message reinforced each night on the news. The scene: ornate inner Kremlin office. Minister X perches uncomfortably across from either the prime minister or the president. He mumbles his set piece, which includes at least one set of statistics, peek-ing out from under his bushy eyebrows nervously at the boss, who leans back in the slightly condescending manner of a headmaster, finally nodding and saying “Yes, that’s right.” Flash-bulbs pop.

5. Sexual scandals: Russians are genuinely baffled by the prevalence of sexual scandals like the Monica Lewinsky “episode” toppling the political careers of powerful men. What is wrong with us? HRH (my “handsome Russian husband”) could not make head nor tail of the Sena-tor Larry Craig foot-tapping scan-dal, no matter how many times Velvet, our daughter, and I ex-plained it to him. The data went in, but his brain refused to fuse it together. He couldn’t link “gay” with “senator,” or “sena-tor” and “at” with “public air-port bathroom.” “Public airport bathroom” and “gay overtures” didn’t make sense as a pair, and he kept going back to “senator” and “public airport” as a dubi-ous match, and was finally de-feated by “gay senator” and “re-instatement.” Total data scramble. Tech support please.

Jennifer

EremeevaSPECIAL TO RN

Jennifer Eremeeva is a longtime resident of Moscow. She blogs at www.rbth.ru/blogs and www.dividingmytime.typepad.com. She is currently working on her first book.

Russians and Americans are far apart on so many issues, and many choose to see them as

opposites. Certainly, Russians add to the picture their own peculiar pessimism, while Amer-icans with their irrepressible op-timism take a more rose-tinted view. Yet both countries stretch across vast territories—a crucial factor in their development. Both have emerged rather iso-lated in contrast to tightly in-terconnected Europe with its compact co-existence that in-fluences all its politics and cul-ture, and even mentality.

On the way to the seacoast, a European may cross three countries in a few hours, which fosters a new interpretation of sovereignty and mutual liabil-ity. Unlike Europeans, Russians and Americans had in the past little opportunity to compre-hend a worldview outside of their own, and so have nurtured a more self-focused, insular view of life, and, by extension, a more distorted perception of others.

For centuries, Russia faced much more formidable and in-cessant external threats, while Americans were sheltered be-tween two oceans. The remote-ness of the United States from the center-of-the-world clashes gave the nation opportunity to emerge and join the world stage fully equipped to gain from oth-ers’ losses, while Russians had to deter potential aggressors throughout their history.

However, our differences often hamper us in our efforts to understand each other. Here are three striking illustrations of our differences—sources of dis-trust and misunderstanding when Americans think and talk about Russia:

The MediaFirst, state-owned media is taken for granted in Russia. Rus-sia’s extensive network of state-owned TV and newspapers is inconceivable to Americans. To them, it sounds like an oxymo-ron (either government or media). Most Americans jump

lic. People do not even trust one another, and this, in turn, prevents social networking from taking root. As a result, people avert their eyes from the prob-lems and put up with life around them as it is, which leads to the next phenomenon that is inexplicable for most Americans.

Appointments from AboveThe second difference is the fact that in Russia, the Kremlin ap-points governors. “Appointed by whom?” Americans ask in surprise on discovering that re-gional leaders in Russia are not elected. “Appointed by the president.” – “So, does the pres-ident decide who will govern a region?” – “Officially, a party that wins the elections in a re-gion recommends a list of nom-inees to the president, who then

Svetlana Babaeva is the Wash-ington, D.C., bureau chief of Ria Novosti.

PASSIVE VOICE CAN ALSO BE A WORLDVIEW

GOODBYE, MY NIZHNI NOVGOROD

As my taxi crossed the bridge over the Oka River, passing over a steep, picturesque

river bank, we rolled into the s leepy center of Nizhni Novgorod.

I looked around in dismay at my hometown.

The city seemed deeply scarred: The remains of burnt wooden and brick merchant mansions from the 19th cen-tury, once the pride and charm of the old town, were hidden behind garish billboards. Doz-ens of homes in the middle of the city looked like war ruins. Some of the abandoned old houses had graffiti on them, drawings of crying faces. Mon-strous glass and concrete cubes dominated once tranquil and shaded streets; I could still pic-ture them, with my eyes closed, as they once were.

This is not the first time bull-dozers arrived to demolish a 790-year-old city that was once Moscow’s most reliable military fort against the Tatars of Kazan. Both Czarist and Stalinist devel-opers demolished a dozen 13th- and 15th-century tent-roof and gold-domed churches in and around Nizhni’s Kremlin.

It was not the city’s fate to get destroyed in war: Houses fall here in peacetime. Nizhni has long had a penchant for self-destruction.

To clear space for the House of Soviets, the Transfiguration Cathedral, the pearl of Nizhni

list includes the city’s Evalanov house, a graceful classicist home built in the beginning of the 19th century. A pearl of local baroque, the mansion of A.R. Batashev’s mansion, has been gutted and the developer is planning some kind of pastiche reproduction to replace it.

City officials have told me that nothing can be done to

stop the process, arguing that many of the buildings are in such bad condition they can-not be preserved. But it seems that Nizhni Novgorod author-ities simply do not embrace the idea of restoration and preser-vation—office buildings have even appeared inside the an-cient Kremlin walls.

The region’s governor, Valery Shantsev, was deputy to Mos-cow mayor Yuri Luzhkov at a time when he oversaw the swift destruction of hundreds, more likely thousands, of historic buildings. Now Nizhni is Mos-cow-on-the-Oka, a playground for the developer’s bulldozer.

Decades ago, my father, then a “Pravda” newspaper report-er, wrote an article called Her-itage, criticizing the Soviet state plan for reconstructing the city center by demolishing its older buildings. A delegation from Moscow arrived in response and my father was called to the local authorities in the Kremlin. “What part of the city would you like to preserve?” a

Moscow bureaucrat asked my father, pointing at a large city map spread across a table. The architecture lover and reporter climbed on the table and lay down on the map, covering the entire city with his body. The development was can-celled.

This year, activists in Nizhni Novgorod have tried various tactics to try to save their town. Dozens of protestors came out to stop the construction of an 18-floor tower on Kavalikhins-kaya Street, but private secu-rity guards clubbed protestors. The local state television chan-nel aired a documentary de-tailing the old town’s disap-pearance, block-by-block, alerting authorities to stop be-fore it was too late. But hous-es continued to disappear. Some caught on fire at night, which was one way to avoid the paperwork of having them condemned.

Some defenders of local ar-chitecture are restoring homes against the odds. Lidiya Davy-dova–Pecherkina lives in an un-usual 19th-century house topped with a tall round tower. She restored the building by studying archives. But restora-tion didn’t stop developers from tearing down the house next to her, blighting the street. She vows never to leave her home. Elena Karmazina, an ar-chitect, has already restored one mansion. She has now moved into a magnificent, if rundown, 19th-century house on Studenaya Street, which she also plans to restore. “If all city architecture lovers move into the older buildings and try to fix them, we might save some-thing,” Karmazina said. I hope they succeed in preserving the best of what is left of our city’s heritage, but our hometown is almost out of time.

chooses one and sends this de-cision to the state legislature for its approval.” Since 2004, when then-President Putin abol-ished the gubernatorial elec-tions, legislatures have rubber-stamped their approval.

The Russian public is ambiv-alent about this. According to the latest survey conducted on this subject a year and a half ago, only 54 percent of Rus-sians favor the idea of a return to direct voting in regional elec-tions, down from 81 percent a year after the elections were cancelled. The “voters,” hence, are more accustomed to this disenfranchisement, which is completely beyond the Amer-ican scope. In fact, it’s sad for Russia. Over the long run, a country of indifferent onlook-ers has a troubled future. “Yes we can” would never have aris-en in Russia.

Passive VoiceThe third illustration of our dif-ferences is closely related to the two preceding examples, and even this very sentence reflects a national way of thinking: Namely, in Russia, passive voice is widely used. The elections

were conducted; governors are appointed; the candidate for the next presidency will be cho-sen and announced. “By whom?” – Americans are puz-zled again, and the reality is that it’s almost impossible to convey the essence of this de-cision-making process to those whose social practices are so different from the outset.

A popular language Web site that explains the difference be-tween passive and active voice notes that passive is used wide-ly in two cases: first for scien-tific objectivity, and secondly, for politics. “Politicians often use passive voice to intention-ally obscure the idea of who is taking the action,” explained Mignon Fogarty, author of a grammar Web site. Decisions were made, a nominee is about to be chosen, the plan is ap-proved. Ideas and attitudes should be presented in active voice; that’s the American vi-sion. Otherwise, nobody notic-es them. And eventually your concerns will be disregarded.

It was not the city’s fate to get destroyed in war: Houses fall here in peacetime.

Americans are astonished to find truly professional and critical Russian media coverage.

Ideas and attitudes should be presented in active voice; that’s the American vision.

Svetlana

Babaeva SPECIAL TO RN

Anna

NemtsovaSPECIAL TO RN

to the conclusion that the Rus-sian government suppresses ‘its’ media and what is reported cannot be considered true or independent. The convention-al wisdom is that Russian media, out of subordination or fear, would never put out a story that undermines the govern-ment. But a daily reader of the Russian press knows that just isn’t true. Still, Americans are astonished to discover truly pro-fessional and critical Russian media coverage, particularly re-garding the government.

In reality there is a problem and it runs deeper than state-owned media; it concerns the whole society. Russians either are too jaded to make a stand or have no real means to do so. Courts, NGOs and commu-nity groups are weak and, less well understood in the United States, distrusted by the pub-

Novgorod’s 16th-century ar-chitecture, was blown up in 1931. The grave of Kuzma Minin, the hero famous for rais-ing a volunteer army and sav-ing Moscow from Polish invad-ers, was moved out of the Kremlin. For decades, original architecture had been torn down to make way for gray, Soviet-era apartment blocks.

But not since the Mongol in-vasion has there been so much destruction to Nizhni Novgorod’s wooden architecture in a single year. The regional authorities took 76 architectural monu-ments off the city’s historical register, making it possible to re-build or demolish them. The

Anna Nemtsova is a Moscow correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

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From Bulldozer to Auction Block rbth.ru/13120Feature

Tourism The city festivals are increasingly sophisticated and international

In Moscow, All the City’s a Stage

Moscow opens its streets and

squares to performers, artists

and musicians over the next

month to draw tourists and

brighten the mood of locals.

ALENA LEGOSTAEVA SPECIAL TO RN

Tenochtitlan Folk Dancing Company from Mexico performing on Red Square at the Spasskaya Tower International Festival. The Palace of Russian Dining in the Izmailovo Kremlin.

Moscow. Red Square. One hour before midnight. A wind or-chestra from the Italian town of Lecco is surrounded by a dense circle of spectators. The men in the orchestra wear hats decorated with huge black feathers, throw up their instru-ments and, to the crowd’s de-light, play another few songs by the metro entrance. The evening program of the Spass-kaya Tower International Mili-tary Music Festival finished half an hour ago, but no one wants to go home yet. And at either end of Red Square you can still hear the sounds of bagpipes, trombones, drums and ap-plause.

The fourth Spasskaya Tower Festival in September featured more than 500 musicians from 15 countries. The festival in-

cluded all kinds of military, folk and pop music, weapons dem-onstrations and parades, a laser show, bikers and pyrotech-nics—on Red Square, lasting five days. Cannons were fired from the Spasskaya tower, giv-ing the event a special sense of ceremony. The Cavalry Honor Escort of the President’s Regiment, the Russian Horn Or-chestra, the Presidential Or-chestra all added to the event. The Jaguares de la Tamayo marching band and the Teno-chtitlan Folk Dancing Compa-ny from Mexico infected ev-eryone with their Southern optimism, and National Presi-dential Orchestra of Ukraine surprised the audience with their jazz numbers.

Sergei Shpilko, chairman of the city’s tourism committee, is convinced that a new cul-ture and tourism project, a Me-dieval Festival “Times and Eras,” which also debuted in Moscow this month, will become an an-nual fixture on the festival scene that “in time will become no less prestigious than, for exam-

Cultural Calendar

“Times and Eras” military-historical festival

THE FOURTH

MOSCOW BIENALE OF

CONTEMPORARY ART

SEPTEMBER 23–OCTOBER 30Contemporary Art Festival brings 64 artists and 14 groups from 33 countries.

www.4th.moscowbiennale.ru ›

INTERNATIONAL

HANDCRAFT FAIR AT

IZMAILOVO

UNTIL 15 OCTOBERSouvenir, clothes and honey fair, workshops of craftsmen.

www.kremlin-izmailovo.com ›

THE FIFTH WORLD

FESTIVAL OF CIRCUS ARTS

SEPTEMBER 30–OCTOBER 2World-famous legends of the circus ring and all the talent-ed newcomers to the circus scene will gather in Moscow and show off their best acts at the Luzhniki Olympic Complex. Passions run high, as the pro-gram is traditionally competi-tive and winners are awarded with gold, silver and bronze medals.

www.festival.circus.ru ›

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL

OF LIGHT

OCTOBER 20-23Held for the first time in Mos-cow, light and music instal-lations at the main historical sights and monuments.

THE BIG ANIMATED FILM

FESTIVAL

OCTOBER 28–NOVEMBER 7450 animated films from 22 countries, including Great Brit-ain, the United States, France and Japan, will be screened at 12 locations in Moscow as part of the international animation festival. The program will also include lectures, master classes and exhibitions.

www.multfest.ru ›

The first in a series of festivals dedicated to different periods in Russian history took place in Moscow’s nearly 1,000-acre Kolomenskoye Park earlier this month. This year’s “Times and Eras” event was dedicated to the 9th through the 11th cen-turies in Russia, and hosted guests from the United States, Germany, Sweden and many other countries. Spectators could visit a Slavic village, see a Viking landing from the Mos-cow River and dine in authen-

tic taverns from the Middle Ag-es. In accordance with Russian customs of the time, the open-ing ceremony included a fist fight among the actors. The feedback from the first festival was very positive, except some rain dampened the costumes, though not the spirits. How-ever, some craft vendors found linen tents to be poor protec-tion from the rain.

See photos, in Russian, at historyfest.ru.

Ironically, Sokurov was vehe-ment about his dislike of the festival experience before going to Venice.

“I don’t like being there. I don’t like the system of com-petition,” Sokurov, 60, said while sitting on a park bench. “How can you say that I am better? Directors with a name should not compete with young cinema people.”

Sokurov is outspoken on all fronts, and has long been a campaigner for the preserva-tion of his home city’s histori-cal architecture, and has been fiercely critical of the St. Peters-burg government, so critical that an opera he was staging at the Mikhailovsky Theater was shelved after he signed a let-ter attacking city policies.

He is also at the helm of the campaign to save Lenfilm, the second most famous Russian film studio after Mosfilm. The studio may be taken over by the media holding of the huge conglomerate Sistema Finan-cial Corp.

Sistema’s promises to pre-serve the studio have been met by disbelief by a number of Rus-sian directors, who have spo-ken out against the move. Sokurov began his film career at Lenfilm after he received a recommendation by seminal director Andrei Tarkovsky, the

author of “Andrei Rublyov” and “Solaris.” Lenfilm in St. Peters-burg has long had a reputa-tion for being more supportive of art-house directors than its rival Mosfilm. But Lenfilm makes a few films a year and is in dire straits.

There were some doubters among critics at Venice who found Sokurov’s art-house style deliberately obscure. But Sokurov doesn’t like critics ei-ther. One of the few exceptions is the late Susan Sontag, who he said added to his own un-derstanding. “No one is going to be harsher than me in criti-cism,” he added. “I know what I wanted to do and what didn’t work better than anyone.”

Sokurov Takes Top PrizeCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

In “The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment,” an installation from the 1980s, Russian artist Ilya Kabakov cre-ated an environment intimate and full of longing. In the work, a plank straddled two simple wooden chairs below a tram-poline harness; above the har-ness something has blown out the ceiling, and the viewer has missed the event. The walls of the apartment are covered in so many colorful So-viet-era posters that it has the appearance of an archaeolog-ical site. The work is ironic but also exists in a universe where magical realism—a man rock-eting out of a harsh reality, So-viet or otherwise—seems plau-sible.

Ilya Kabakov is a master of the art-installation. He could tell a story with some paints (he was a children’s book illus-trator) and broken furniture (he became a conceptualist) long before he broke the million-dollar mark. Since 1989, he has been working with his artistic

Art Ilya and Emilia Kabakov Finally Land in D.C.

In a Soviet flat, Ilya Kabakov

explored escape and utopia.

His career has soared in his

post-Soviet partnership with

Emilia Kabakov.

partner, Emilia Kabakov, who became his wife in 1992.

Both were born in Dnepro-petrovsk, in the Soviet Union, now Ukraine. Ilya was born in 1933, and will celebrate his 80th birthday in 2013. Emilia was born in 1945. Known as “The Kabakovs,” they are a force field on the international arts scene, traveling and showing their in-stallations all over the world.

“Ilya Kabakov attracted the attention of the Western art world, inspiring collectors and scholars to learn about the en-tire world of Soviet/Russian art,” said Natalia Kolodzei, a promi-nent collector of all the Russian Noncomformists, including Ka-bakov. Kolodzei also runs a non-profit arts foundation with her mother, who befriended Rus-sian artists when they were poor, underground and tightly knit as a group, like a family living in a prison. When many left Rus-sia and went into exile in the 1980s, the atmosphere changed, and they became more dis-persed.

Currently, HEMPHILL, a Wash-ington, D.C., gallery, is the host of “KABAKOV: Ilya and Emilia Kabakov,” through October. The exhibit features scale models of their larger work, including “Ship of Tolerance,” a project that includes building a ship;

meeting with children in a work-shop setting to discuss the con-cept of tolerance; then launch-ing the ship with children’s drawings as the mast. The ex-hibit offers a scale model of the sh ip made o f bamboo

($150,000) and a silkscreen on canvas of a mast ($60,000). The ship has already been created in a few harbors, including Siwa, Egypt, and Miami, Florida.

“The goal, of course, is mak-ing connections to different cul-tures,” Ilya said. The ship is a “romantic” medium traveling across boundaries, he said.

The D.C. show opened on the eve of the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, in the midst of a solemn nationwide mourning. Was the timing of their exhibit

a coincidence? “Nothing in this life is coincidence,” said Emilia. George Hemphill, the owner of the gallery, said there is a social relevance to showing the Ka-bakovs’ work now. “This is not a time of tolerance here on Cap-itol Hill,” he said.

Also on view at the show is a scale model and drawings for “The Large House of Humani-ty,” a 1998 project for D.C. that was never realized, perhaps in part because it was to be high-er than the Washington Monu-ment.

The D.C. show is just one of more than a dozen exhibits, in-stallations and projects slated for this year. The Kabakovs, with their children and grandchildren, claim to be slowing down, since he is almost an octogenarian, but it’s hard to see. They are pas-sionate about their legacy proj-ects, like the educational com-ponent of the “Ship of Tolerance,” where they go to schools and sometimes offer children their first class in drawing.

The Kabakovs live on Long Island and say they consider themselves American artists, and their Soviet preoccupations have become more universal. But to the world, they are Russian, from their explorations of uto-pia and use of fantasy and sci-ence to the way they make po-etry out of the banal. (Check out the meditation called “Toi-lets.”) It all identifies them as Russian to the art world.

They have been asked by Rus-sia to come to Moscow for Ilya’s 80th birthday. “We would like to celebrate in America,” Emil-ia said, “because we are Amer-ican artists.”

The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment

Ilya Kabakov went from underground, to exile, to international

acclaim.

NORA FITZGERALD RUSSIA NOW

“The goal is to make cultural connections to different cultures” through a ship, Ilya Kabakov said.

ple, the Venice Festival or the Brazilian Carnival.”

Moscow Showcases International ArtCertainly the Moscow Bienale of Contemporary Art, which draws many international art-ists and patrons since it began in 2005, is an example of how sophisticated Moscow festivals

have become in recent years, finally competing with cities like Edinburgh and Venice. This year, the festival is titled “Re-writing Worlds” and includes 64 artists and 16 artistic groups from 33 countries. In 2005, the Bienale helped launch the ca-reer of Russian provocateurs Blue Noses, who opened the show with their installation,

“Lenin Turning in his Grave.” Russian artists remain a signif-icant draw to the festival, and this year will include Olga Kisseleva and Igor Makarevich among many others. The Bi-enale opened Sept. 23 and closes Oct. 30.

In the middle of the Bienale showcase, the traditionally grey Moscow autumn will be bright-

ly lit in blazing colors, and the center of Moscow will turn into one big art installation. The di-rector of the famous Fete des Lumieres in Lyon has been in-vited to set up the first Inter-national Festival of Light. The magnificent light show will be projected around 15 sights right in the city center, includ-ing Red Square, Bolshoi The-atre, Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Historical Museum and Manege Square.

Tourists can also pick up sou-venirs at the International Handcraft Fair at Izmailovo until Oct. 15. This fairy-tale, mostly outdoor exhibition space fea-tures Russian rural skills and arts, and includes creations of both independent craftsmen as well as businesses from Mos-cow and Russia’s regions. The crafts range from birch baskets to fur hats. It all takes place in the romantic ambience of the colorful Izmailovsky Kremlin.

More details about the Spasskaya Tower festival at

www.kremlin-military-tattoo.ru

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