09.06.2005

Rap Star Beaten, Left Under Bridge

A member of the rap group Diskoteka Avaria went missing for two days before he was found under a bridge in central Moscow on Monday, apparently having suffered a severe beating while on his way to a gig.

Alexei Serov, one of the popular group's three singers, was hospitalized Monday with a concussion, broken ribs and internal injuries after he was found sprawled out under the Krymsky Bridge near the Park Kultury metro station, Natalya Krivova, spokeswoman for the city police's western precinct, said Wednesday.

Serov's wife, singer Yelena Firsova, reported her husband missing Sunday afternoon, saying he had left his apartment Saturday evening and driven off in his Mercedes but never returned, Krivova said. On Monday, Krivova said the Sklifosovsky Clinic notified her precinct that Serov was being treated in the emergency ward.

According to Serov's bandmates, Alexei Ryzhov and Nikolai Timofeyev, Diskoteka Avaria was booked for a series of concerts across the city Saturday night, including at the Kosmos Hotel, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported Wednesday. After playing the first concert, Serov planned to stop by home before heading off to play at a private party, but, after driving off, Ryzhov and Timofeyev heard nothing more from him, and he did not answer his cellphone, MK reported.

Details of the attack remained murky Wednesday, but an unidentified police spokesperson told Itar-Tass that "the criminals beat [Serov] up and ... left him under the Krymsky Bridge and drove off in his new Mercedes."

MK said Serov was attacked after stopping to fill up at a gas station. Kommersant said passersby found Serov and used his cellphone to call his manager, Dmitry Kraikov. Kraikov drove Serov home and called an ambulance, Krivova said.

The incident was the second tragedy for Diskoteka Avaria, whose name means "Discotheque Accident." In February 2002, band member Oleg Zhukov, nicknamed Tolsty, or Fat Guy, died of cancer.

City Crime Statistics (May 18 - May 24):

01.06.2005

Why Can't I Enjoy the Eastern Front?

The Eastern Front, WW II. Two huge empires fighting to the death on a battle line stretching from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea. The stats alone are awesome, the sheer scale of everything that happened.

Take the battle of Kursk: 1,300,000 Soviet troops with 20,000 cannon, 3500 tanks and 2400 planes facing 900,000 of the Wehrmacht's finest - that is, the finest divisions of the finest land army since the Mongols went out of business - who had a pretty fair arsenal of their own, 2700 panzers and 2000 aircraft. In one day of the Kursk campaign (July 12, 1943), thousands of Soviet and German tanks faced off and blasted each other point-blank, with each side losing over 300 tanks, while their air forces dueled in the skies.

This ought to be the ultimate in war. So why don't I enjoy it like I should?

There are a couple of reasons. One you can get from another key stat, civilian losses. Out of the 29 million Soviet citizens who died, 17 million were civilians. I'm no bleeding heart, but it's no fun imagining 17 million civilians getting shot, starved or frozen to death. Maybe it's because I keep imagining those Russian tennis babes getting killed. What kind of idiot would massacre girls who look like this Maria Sharapova? That's what I call a war crime.

To oversimplify a little, WW I was a horrible war to be a soldier in but not too bad for civilians. Ninety-five percent of the dead in WW I were soldiers. WW II was bad enough for soldiers, especially Soviet and German soldiers, but it was sheer Hell for any civilians who lived anywhere between Warsaw and Moscow.

Mobility - that was the key difference between the civilian casualty rates in WW I and WW II. The more mobile a war, the harder it is on civilians. You can see that even in wars where both armies make a real effort to spare civvies.

Take our own Civil War. In the Eastern theater, with the Armies of the Potomac and Northern Virginia working each other over in a fairly small area west of Chesapeake Bay, civilians didn't get murdered in big numbers. When crops and farms were burnt in the Eastern theater (for example in the Shenandoah Valley), it was out of hard military necessity. But out in the Western theater, where war was a hit-and-run business, towns like Lawrence, Kansas were wiped out in an afternoon, with no man, woman or child spared. When you're only in town for a few hours, you have to win hearts and minds the fast way: by shooting them in the heart, or blowing their minds out the back of their heads.

WW I was an insanely static war, especially on the Western Front, with the armies locked into a face-off in huge trenchlines, away from civilian populations. Except for a few families unlucky enough to live in the battlezones of Northern France, it was easy for civilians to survive.

WW II on the Eastern Front was the opposite, the most mobile warfare since the Mongols, and just about as lethal for any civvies in the armies' path. If you lived in Poland or Belorussia, someone was going to kill you and your family, you just couldn't be sure who it would be. If those poor bastards had been able to see in 1941 what the next four years were going to be like, they'd have begged Dad to kill them all with a hatchet, then throw himself down the well, just to avoid the horrible suspense and get it over with.

Maybe it would be the Soviet commissars who killed you; they had a policy of killing all politically suspect civvies in regions that were about to fall to the Nazis. And to the NKVD, "politically suspect" could mean nearly anything; your hut was too solid, you owned one too many pig, you didn't name your first child after Stalin. Weirdly enough, in 1941 it was the Nazis who were uncovering - literally - "human rights violations" in Eastern Europe; as they advanced, they kept digging up fresh mass graves where the NKVD had dumped its prisoners as the Soviet Army retreated.

On the other hand, it was the Nazis who would kill you if you were a Jew - or the ignorant Obergefreiter whose squad just rumbled into your village thought you looked like one. If you were a pretty Polish or Russian girl, you were likely to die too, after the German or Rumanian or Hungarian soldiers had raped you. The Wehrmacht also had a policy of summary execution for Communists, and a pretty flexible definition of what one was. And when in doubt, they killed.

The Germans killed for another Mongol-type reason: land clearance. The Mongols tended to kill people who were using up good grazing land, getting it all cluttered with houses and fences. The Germans thought about Slavs the same way, like gophers or some other varmint that was spoiling the land they planned on turning into thousands of blond, blue-eyed little clock-tower towns. Why not get the varmints out of the way while you had the ordnance on the spot? You'd be doing a favor for the planners from Berlin who were supposed to follow the armies, laying out the new towns. So they blasted the Belorussians and Ukrainians, even when the peasants came out on the roads with flowers, cheering the Wehrmacht columns.

That's what gets me down: those poor suckers thinking their saviors had arrived. You can't blame them. After Stalin, anybody else must have looked good. Especially to the Ukrainians, who'd been purposely starved to death in the early 1930s by the millions when Stalin collectivized their farms.

It's weird how nobody remembers those millions of dead Ukrainians. It's like they just don't count. Everybody remembers all the poor Londoners killed in the Blitz. You know how many English civvies died in WW II? Less than 60,000! According to my calculator, that means almost 300 Soviets died for every Brit who got bombed. But all my life I've been reading about them "cowering" in the subway stations as the bombs fell. I never heard a word about the millions of Ukrainians who died in Stalin's famine, and I sure as Hell never realized that 29 million Soviets died in WW II. Until I got serious about learning war on my own, all I ever heard was the "Battle of Britain" and D-Day, which were sideshows to the real war, back there in the snow in Russia.

Mobile warfare creates its own famine as it moves. It's a matter of logistics. If your army is in the trenches a few miles from Paris, the way the Franco-British army was in WW II, you can set up stable supply lines so your soldiers don't have to forage. The French poilu in WW I lived on endless tin cans of tuna and beans, carted out from Paris by tired old horses and even tireder old trucks.

But when the armies are fighting on a front hundreds of miles wide and thousands of miles long, with huge chunks of land changing hands every day, that sort of resupply is impossible. So the armies go back to the old ways, "living off the land." Which means, basically, getting food from the peasants at bayonet point. It's standard military practice, but it's not pretty: a squad breaks down your farmhouse door, grabs your baby son and starts sawing at his throat with a knife, screaming at you to tell them where your hoarded food is. Since those few sacks of grain and maybe a ham or two is all you've got to survive the winter, you don't much want to tell them. But then they start really cutting deep into Junior's throat, he's screaming, and you tell.

They dig up the hoard, and as likely as not they shoot you all anyway for making them go through all that trouble. If they don't, you have to figure out a way to survive the Russian winter with no food.

To go back to America's Civil War again, Sherman's sweep through the Georgia breadbasket turned the war mobile in a big way and introduced living off the land, and the "freebooter" to American warfare. The further his army moved into enemy territory, the less the rules of war that they were still observing up in Northern Virginia seemed to apply. Looting was taken for granted; if you had a pig or a chicken, consider it gone when his men showed. Burning was a real possibility; they burned all the "big houses" (plantation mansions) in Georgia, and when they reached South Carolina, the state that started the whole mess, they burned everything, from shack to mansion.

And I've always wondered if that other rule of war, the one against rape, sort of got forgotten on the way to Columbia, S.C. too. That scene in Gone with the Wind, where what's-her-name shoots the grinning freebooter coming up the stairs - I wonder how often that happened and the belle upstairs didn't have a pistol handy. They wouldn't have talked about it - the US in the 1860s had to be the most tight-assed, straight-laced place in the history of the world. But I suspect it was more than hams and chickens those bluebellies were grabbing on their way to the sea.

Another complication of mobile warfare for civvies is the fact that your home town might change hands several times. This happened to thousands of towns and villages in Eastern Europe in WW II. If you got along too well with the Wehrmacht, you weren't going to have an easy time when the Soviet Army rolled into town. If you lived in a strategic city like Kharkov (taken by the Wehrmacht in Autumn '41, recaptured by the Soviets in winter '43, retaken by the Wehrmacht in Spring '43 and re-recaptured once and for all by the Soviets in Summer '43), you were going to have a difficult time explaining to one side or the other why you were still alive and hadn't done the patriotic thing by dying under enemy occupation. We're talking about millions of civilians dragged into the GULAG for the crime of surviving the Nazis. It just sort of gets me down to think of.

The other reason the Eastern Front depresses me is simpler: the results. All it did was bleed the two coolest armies in Europe, the only really interesting armies on the continent. The USSR won, but left its best people dead on the field. The Germans lost for all time, vanished from history forever. And by massacring all those civilians, that asshole Hitler ruined the whole idea that there was a heroic life in war. I don't even understand what that moron thought he was doing. All these neo-Nazi idiots - losers who wouldn't even have been let into the Wehrmacht - talk about "the white race" - well, wasn't every single person Hitler killed white? Talk about black-on-black crime! The Nazis were the ultimate in white-on-white massacre.

All it did was give war a bad name. All that was left when the Germans and Russians had bled each other to death was the Anglos, us and the Brits. All was left to believe in after 1945 was business, making money, that whole stupid boring white-bread way of life. My life.

25.04.2005

Russia's Fascist Present

Sixty years ago, on May 9, 1945, Russia rejoiced at the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. I was 7 years old at the time. I remember how people came together on that day as they never would again. After the war, the world seemed to do everything possible to ensure that the horrors Nazi Germany had unleashed on the world would not be repeated. In the name of their fascist ideology, the Nazis had systematically murdered 6 million Jews, whom they considered an inferior race. Another 54 million people died in the war. Unfortunately, mankind will always pay a hideously high price when any one nation attempts to assert its superiority over others based on race, religion or social status. This is the lesson of history. But have we learned that lesson?

On the face of it, there would seem to be no way for fascist ideology to take root in Russia. But in the 1970s, it was widely rumored that youth groups professing a fascist or quasi-fascist ideology had been rounded up by the authorities. Fascist literature and regalia had been confiscated along with weapons. According to the rumors - which have never been confirmed - the children of highly placed party functionaries and of top brass in the KGB and the Interior Ministry belonged to these underground fascist organizations. This was long before glasnost, of course. The rumors nevertheless received a mixed response. On the one hand, people were pleased with the chekists for rounding up these groups. On the other hand, they found it difficult to believe that such groups could exist in a country that had suffered so terribly from fascism.

Those rumors from the 1970s would have long been forgotten if not for the recent surge of xenophobia, racism, religious intolerance and nationalism that quickly spilled over into plain old Nazism.

In the early 1990s, an organization called Pamyat, or Memory, responded to a natural desire to restore values lost during the Soviet era with an ideology of Russian superiority. Pamyat's ideologues didn't shy away from using terminology and regalia - black shirts and armbands - based on Nazi models.

Pamyat eventually disappeared, but it gave rise to hundreds of as-yet-uncoordinated fascist, nationalist and xenophobic organizations across the country, all claiming to defend Russia against alien elements that are ostensibly turning Russians into drunks, swindling them in the marketplace and stealing their jobs.

The authorities traditionally regarded such developments as the work of agents of influence and fifth columns. In fact, in times of social and economic instability, the regime has always sought to deflect popular discontent by blaming the current state of affairs on various enemies.

In recent years, Russia has been gripped by serious socioeconomic instability. When the Soviet system collapsed, it left a legacy of empty shelves and a socialist economy incapable of meeting the country's basic needs. The constant shortage of food, the lack of goods and services, and the terrible living conditions in dormitories and communal apartments all reached a breaking point in the early 1990s. To get out of this mess, the country needed new leaders capable of implementing new ideas. Instead, the old party nomenklatura retained control of the country's chief resources and went about reforming them insofar as their limited understanding of reform and democracy allowed. As a result, a chosen few thrived while most people endured grinding poverty.

This created an opportunity for Pamyat, the skinheads and faux patriots to capitalize on this popular discontent, blaming people's atrocious living conditions not on the political leadership, but on oligarchs , merchants and minorities.

At the same time, Russia's "traditional" religions - which often leave little room for Catholics, Protestants, atheists or the non-religious - began to assert themselves. Nationalists of all stripes, intentionally set loose by the authorities, have gone to war against anyone they consider "alien." Hundreds of newspaper and web sites advocate ridding the country of non-Russians. Meanwhile, there are numerous attacks on and killings of non-Russian university students, workers and even defenseless young girls.

Yet the trials of neo-fascist groups drag on for years. Evidence is analyzed by expert after expert until one of them finally concludes that the obviously inflammatory texts involved do not incite ethnic hatred. Those convicted of promoting Nazism, fascism and racial intolerance have even been amnestied in connection with Russia's victory over the Nazis.

In the short term, the regime clearly benefits from shifting the blame for the country's woes onto "alien" elements. But in the long term, the country as a whole suffers as people are made to believe that they are superior to others simply because they were born into the right ethnic group. This mindset is almost a guarantee of future tragedies.

Newspapers and web sites sow hatred and anger, but the authorities helplessly throw up their hands. And we have learned nothing from history.

To many, fascism seems like a good diversion. Some may secretly share this belief in the purity of the Russian people, although the Nazis included the Slavs among the inferior races. Our wars of imperialism only add fuel to the fire. It wasn't Russia's leaders whose decisions killed and maimed Russian soldiers in Afghanistan and Chechnya, so the story goes. It was the Islamists and the terrorists. They're to blame when thousands of young men's lives are ruined.

The old nomenklatura who preside over our current distorted prosperity ensure that extremists of all stripes go unpunished because they serve the regime's purpose: deflecting society's anger about the way they run the country. Is there room for fascism in a country that 60 years ago helped to crush fascism in Germany, providing all people with the hope of peaceful coexistence?

22.04.2005

Warning! Jurisprudence

The Sakharov Museum director and his assistant were convicted not only of violating the rights of radical Orthodox believers not to have anyone anywhere challenge their views, but also of "insulting the dignity of the Russian people," as the judge put it at Monday's sentencing. The court came to this conclusion by reasoning that since the majority of Russians consider themselves Orthodox, anything that insults a small number of Orthodox believers insults the entire nation.

While Orthodoxy and Russian nationalism are closely intertwined, one cannot help but wonder why the court felt the need to reinforce the tie via the law against inciting racial and religious hatred. One would hope this law would be used to do more than to protect the fragile sensibilities of the dominant religious and ethnic group in Russia.

Anti-Semite writers and politicians can send letter after letter directly to Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov with no legal consequences whatsoever. And young Chechen women like Zara Murtuzaliyeva, convicted in a flawed January trial of planning a bombing that never happened, can be sent to jail for expressing religious beliefs no more radical than those of the vandals who attacked the Sakharov Museum's "Warning! Religion" exhibit last summer.

In the end, the conviction shows that Russian courts can be bent to the will of religious bigwigs, as well as of political bosses. And perhaps this gives us some insight into how tightly interconnected the institution of the church has become with the government.

At the same time, the final sentences for museum director Yury Samodurov and his assistant Lyudmila Vasilovskaya belied the harsh wording of the verdict: Both defendants were fined around $3,500, not imprisoned as prosecutors had originally demanded. Perhaps the judge found the best compromise possible under the circumstances by delivering a guilty verdict while avoiding the dawn of a new generation of prisoners of conscience in Russia.

Beyond the strange logic of the court and the political clout of the church, the trial also reflects the elegant use of legal scare tactics as a form of social control. What better way to put the fear of God into artists, writers and protesters than to take them to court, threatening years in a penal colony, only to let them off with fines or - as in the case of several National Bolshevik activists, whose sentences were reduced this week - to halve their jail time a few months later? Fortunately for the Russian people, many artists and activists are not too easily frightened.

20.04.2005

Forced Into Slavery

A new exhibition sheds light on a rarely discussed aspect of World War II.

Many Europeans - and Russians are no exception - scoff at the U.S. system of legal liability that generates $2.9 million damages awards for burns from spilled coffee. But one of the most staggering results of any case to emerge from U.S. courts had Russians among its main beneficiaries - and nobody dared called it excessive.

In 2000, the governments of Germany and the United States announced the establishment of a $5 billion fund meant to compensate prisoners of the Nazi regime used as slave labor for Hitler's war machine. Nazi Germany conscripted over 8 million such laborers - the vast majority of whom were from the Soviet Union - and a series of lawsuits filed in U.S. courts brought the question of how to compensate them into public view. Now an exhibition at the Museum of the Contemporary History of Russia, titled "Slaves of the Third Reich," hopes to do the same with the experience of their suffering.

"Who truly knows what war is?" asked Tatiana Sokolova of the Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation Foundation, one of the exhibition's organizers, in a telephone interview Wednesday. "Those who were there: our veterans, of course, and all those who suffered in these camps. For young people it's a very difficult thing to comprehend. The exhibition gives them a chance not only to see photographs and documents describing what it was like but also to approach people who survived the camps and ask them."

The exhibition is one of dozens of events planned by the State Duma's "Victory" committee to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany on May 9. But according to the organizers of "Slaves of the Third Reich," this exhibition stands out from the crowd in a crucial way.

"During these days it's important that we don't talk only about victory," said Irina Shcherbakova, education director at the human rights organization Memorial, which also helped organize the exhibition, in a phone interview Tuesday. "Before the victory came a very long and bloody war. There was an enormous number of victims, and their experiences are crucial to understanding the human cost of the war."

Sokolova concurred. "In my personal opinion, never before in the history of our discussions about World War II have we considered the experience of those in the camps. The focus is always on the heroism of our soldiers, on the partisans, on the glory of victory." The suffering of millions of Soviet noncombatants during the war, on the other hand, is "one of those things we don't talk about loudly in Russia," she said.

Drawing heavily on materials from the Russian State Archive, the exhibition presents photographs, excerpts from diaries and oral histories, and personal effects of camp prisoners and forced workers, providing "both archival and emotional value," Sokolova said. The materials are divided into three themes: "Work Camps and Stalags: Factories of Death," "The 'New Order' in the Occupied Territories" and "Liberation and Repatriation."

In Sokolova's view, the impact will be dramatic even for those already familiar with the history of the camps. "I know a fair amount about what went on at that time, and I was still shocked by some of the photographs," she said.

Many people will have the opportunity to feel the exhibition's effects even after it closes in Russia. It will travel later this year to Belarus, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany.

The extensive archives that Memorial has amassed while documenting the Soviet Union's atrocities against its own citizens proved useful in creating "Slaves of the Third Reich." But the group's participation in a government-sponsored exhibition is striking, given its often fierce criticism of the Kremlin for its human rights record in Chechnya and for its reluctance to provide full access to documentation of Soviet-era political persecutions.

Shcherbakova acknowledged the clashes but stressed that "the government is large and encompasses many different structures. The department working to identify and compensate victims [of the camps] is doing useful work, and we are happy to use our archival material to further that work."

Still, she said, neither the monetary compensation of the German-U.S. fund - which many victims cannot access, because they lack the documents to prove that they suffered under Nazi internment - nor the emotional outlet offered by events such as "Slaves of the Third Reich" can begin to resolve the full horror of the war. And whatever good the present exhibition may do, "there's also the question of how the Soviet Union treated the German citizens it took prisoner, though at the moment this is completely outside the bounds of discussion both in Russia and in Germany."

She summed up the reason for this succinctly. "It's all politics," she said.

"Slaves of the Third Reich" runs from Tues. to May 29 at the Museum of the Contemporary History of Russia, located at 21 Tverskaya Ulitsa. Metro Tverskaya. Tel. 299-6724.

18.04.2005

Rock Stars Recruited to Fight Revolution

What do you do if three of your neighbors have fallen to the call of revolution and you fear that "Finally the tables are starting to turn" and people are "Talking about a revolution," as Tracey Chapman once sang?

You get the rock stars on your side.
That is at least one theory behind a secret meeting that took place earlier this month between Vladislav Surkov, a deputy head of the presidential administration, and the elite of Russian rock, including foul-mouthed singer Sergei Shnurov, best known for his obscenity-strewn songs with the group Leningrad, and the depressed teenage girl's favorite singer, Zemfira.

If you were going to put the meeting into an American rock and roll perspective, a fair parallel would be something like Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and the Mamas and Papas meeting President Richard Nixon's chief of staff at the height of American students' protests over the war in Vietnam.

The meeting took place at a Moscow hotel, according to one participant, and also included the grandaddy of Russian rock, Boris Grebenshchikov, as well as groups B2 and Splin, Splin producer Alexander Ponomarev and Chaif producer Dmitry Groisman. The meeting was supposed to be at the Kremlin but was moved after one of the members of B2 had trouble getting into the Kremlin, not because of excessive nose jewelry setting off the metal detectors, but because of his foreign passport, the participant said.

Surkov called the meeting to ensure that a situation like Kiev, where many Ukrainian rock stars supported the opposition and performed in the center of the capital during the Orange Revolution, would not be repeated in Moscow, wrote Oleg Kashin in Afisha magazine.

Quoting a different source at the meeting, Kashin wrote that Surkov did not ask for anything specific, but said "the authorities wanted to help musicians decide any problems they may have and to count on them if there was an uprising of the people to keep neutral at least."

Surkov, who oversees most of the domestic political projects at the Kremlin, including federal and regional elections, has experience in dealing with rock stars. He wrote the lyrics for a rock album that was recorded in 2003 with members of the group Agata Kristi and then given out to friends.

Word of the meeting leaked out only after a report on Gazeta.ru. The Kremlin press service refused to comment Wednesday.

Those who attended the meeting have remained tight-lipped, perhaps worried how it would play with their fans.

"If the authorities invite you, how can you turn them down," said the participant, who asked not to be identified, saying that nothing concrete was discussed.

"We listened most of the time," he said, adding with a giggle, "they speak so beautifully," referring to Surkov.

Zemfira, speaking through her spokeswoman, refused to confirm or deny that the meeting had taken place. None of the other participants could be reached by phone this week.

The participant said it was kept secret because no one on either side wanted "a fuss." Alexander Kushnir, a music critic who founded a PR agency, Kushnir Productions, said the meeting was part of a trend.

"In the last two years, there has been a tendency for the authorities to start a gentle flirt, a light sex with rockers," he said. "Awards are given to some, others are invited to corporate events, to Courchevel and to their dachas on Rublyovskoye Shosse."

Grebenschikov was awarded a medal on his 50th birthday, while Shnurov and Zemfira have both played in Courchevel, the French ski resort much loved by the Moscow elite.

"The authorities understand that if there is a cataclysm or an election then you can comparatively inexpensively - that word is very important - get the vote of teenagers or the loyalty of teenagers with the help of 15 rock leaders," Kushnir said.

No one should be under the illusion, though, that Russia's mainstream rock stars are at any risk of being filled with the spirit of revolution, said Alexander Tarasov, a sociologist who has studied underground, opposition music in Russia.

"They're not rock; it's show business," he said, saying that all of the artists at the Surkov meeting had long ago lost merit in the eyes of revolutionary rock fans. Zemfira has a teenage audience and Shnurov is for "company managers who like to swear," he said.

The real rock and roll artists like Alexander Nepomnyashchy, whose song "Kill the Yankees" is a perennial favorite, and Umka, will never get airplay on Russian radio or television despite their popularity, he said. Early on, Zemfira was very similar to Nepomnyashchy, but she soon moved away to a less confrontational style, Tarasov said.

"No protest songs will ever get played on radio or television here," he said.

Kommersant senior writer Valery Panyushkin said Surkov was focusing his energies in the wrong direction.

"Does he really think that revolution will start because the musicians will stir up the crowd. I think that the revolution will start because of inequality," Panyushkin wrote on Gazeta.ru last week.

13.04.2005

Ban Sought on Jewish Organizations

About 5,000 people, including former world chess champion Boris Spassky, have signed a letter asking prosecutors to ban Jewish organizations because they believe one of the basic Judaic books professes religious hatred, said a center that monitors religious freedom.

The group sent the letter to the Prosecutor General's Office last Monday, the Sova center said last week.

The signatories claim that "Kizur Shulkhan Arukh," an abbreviated version of a 16th-century book that lays out daily rules for Jews, teaches hatred toward non-Jews, Sova said.

Moscow sculptor and head of the obscure nationalist All-Russian Cathedral Movement Vyacheslav Klykov, a signatory of the petition, confirmed the report, Interfax said.

A Prosecutor General's Office spokeswoman could not immediately confirm Friday that the the petition had been received.

One of Russia's two chief rabbis, Adolf Shayevich, condemned the letter as a way for "a number of ambitious politicians" to "earn cheap popularity."

Boruch Gorin, a spokesman for the Russian Federation of Jewish Communities, called for an investigation into manifestations of anti-Semitism. "People who have achieved success in life and have certain authority in society must understand that they cover their names with indelible shame by signing such documents," he said, in an apparent reference to Spassky, Interfax reported.

Shakhmatnaya Nedelya, or Chess Week, of which Spassky is editor, said Friday that he was in France and was not available for comment.

The letter came two months after 20 State Duma deputies sent a similar letter to the Prosecutor General's Office.

01.04.2005

Pic of the day:

Two men playing with a remote-controlled model airplane painted in Nazi colors at Streshnyovo Park in northwestern Moscow.

23.03.2005

Sharapova No. 3 After Win in Tokyo

Sharapova showing off her winner's plate after defeating Davenport in the final of the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo on Sunday

TOKYO - Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova beat a hobbling Lindsay Davenport 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 (7-5) to win the Pan Pacific Open on Sunday.

The Russian converted her fourth match point to take the third set tiebreaker and halt Davenport's bid for a record fifth title at the $1.3 million event. Sharapova's eighth career title means she will rise from fourth to third when the new world rankings are released Monday.

"I had belief in myself," she told reporters. "I don't want to set a timetable for myself to be No. 1. My job's just to go out and perform."

It had looked as though Sharapova would run away with the match as she took the first set in 22 minutes in Tokyo.

Davenport began her sixth Pan Pacific final with her left thigh heavily taped after straining her hamstring in practice and could barely run during a one-sided first set.

The world No. 1 went to the locker room for a medical timeout after the first set, and the American fought back to take the second as Sharapova's concentration wavered.

Still moving gingerly, Davenport took more risks in an attempt to keep the points short and the frustration began to show on Sharapova's face.

However, Sharapova refused to buckle. Muttering to herself constantly, the 17-year-old matched Davenport ace for ace as the third set went with serve.

The Siberian-born Sharapova beat Davenport in last year's Wimbledon semifinals in their only previous meeting. She came up with the big shots again to earn four match points. Sharapova squandered three of them - just as she did in her semifinal loss to Serena Williams at the Australian Open.

But this time she held her nerve and ended Davenport's brave resistance with a forehand down the line after one hour, 47 minutes.

21.03.2005

Free Speech Does Not Fit the Script

It was a rather unexpected phone call for these days. The producer of a talk show at one of the major television channels called to invite me as an expert on an upcoming program. "Are you sure? Did you run my name by your boss?" I asked. I know where I live, and I'm aware that there are lists of those who are allowed on national television and those who are not.

The young woman was confident: "I never cancel guests. The topic to be discussed is the increase of violence on television. So what is your take? Do we need a law banning violent scenes from television?" No, we don't, I said. There is no need to get the state involved in the realm of people's personal choices. Obviously, she didn't remember the Soviet era, when the state chose to play "Big Father" to us all, cutting sex, violence and, of course, unwelcome politics from television screens and feeding us a boring diet of the better world of communism to come. It never came, however.

"Sure, but violence is even on the evening news. Some say that those who run the networks are pushing violence to get higher ratings and more ads. Do you agree?" she asked. Yes, I told her, I did think that television should be socially conscious and responsible. Yet the reason why there is a constant supply of corpses on the news is not just because journalists lack taste, but also because the news menu is far too short nowadays. This, in turn, is because the Kremlin allows too few things to be broadcast by the major television channels. Chechnya is off-limits, for example, yet people are dying there on a daily basis. To cut a long story short, I said, if all television moguls care about is what President Vladimir Putin said, where he went and whom he handed out awards to - of course, I was exaggerating a bit - then you have no choice but to show police blotters on the news.

She said she needed to talk to someone and would call me back. She did. "You know, your point of view doesn't fit the script," she said. "No kidding. It doesn't?" I replied sarcastically. "You had better be careful when acknowledging such things to a journalist," I warned her. She didn't get me: "This is what we always do. We have to call several people before we find someone whose point of view fits the script." I laughed. After all, you had to give her credit: At least she was straightforward.

Another young woman from another major television channel who called me a couple of months ago was not. The topic of her show was a hot one, the new law that the Moscow City Duma was about to pass that would free the hands of confidential informers in a way reminiscent of the Soviet era. Sure, I was interested, I said, and asked right away if she had checked my name with her superiors. Her answer was an unexpected pleasure. She said she had read my book on the KGB, which came out in Russia in the early 1990s, and she believed I was the right person for the discussion. I asked her to e-mail me the legislation, so I could do some homework before the show. And, yes, I asked her to consult her superiors again, just in case. She was confident: Everything was set, and all I had to do was come into the studio in the next couple of days. She did e-mail me the bill the next morning. But she never called back.

I wasn't and I am not surprised. Yet there is always room for curiosity. For instance, last Thursday, NTV ran the pre-recorded debate show "K Baryeru!" It featured zealous anti-Semite and member of the State Duma General Albert Makashov ranting about Jews for more than an hour. Much of what he said was in direct violation of the Constitution and in any court would be declared the fomenting of ethnic and religious intolerance.

My question is a simple one: Why did that view fit the script? And who authorized it?

Yevgenia Albats is a professor of political science at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

20.03.2005

Outrage Gives Platform to Anti-Semites

In early 1999, my magazine, Sreda, publicly accused Vladimir Gusinsky, vice president of the World Jewish Congress, of aiding and abetting anti-Semitism. Communist State Duma Deputy Albert Makashov had made some anti-Semitic statements in February of that year, and the ultranationalist Russian National Unity party had staged a march through Moscow. All of the major broadcast and print media responded with indignation to these events, but Gusinsky's television station, NTV, did more than anyone to expose the extremists, devoting 34.2 percent of its news programming to the battle with nationalist extremism.

As early as the end of February, public opinion polls showed that the previously little-known Alexander Barkashov, leader of Russian National Unity, had become one of Russia's 10 most influential politicians. Polls also showed that support for the ultranationalist party among NTV viewers was 50 percent higher than the national average and 3.5 times higher than among viewers of the Rossia channel, which devoted just 18.8 percent of its news programming to the issue. A similar situation emerged in the press. The tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets raged against Russian National Unity more than the rest, and its readership contained the highest percentage of party supporters.

I dug these statistics out of the archives when the press reported last month that two dozen Duma deputies had signed a letter asking Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov to ban all Jewish organizations in Russia. But the true significance of the statistics only hit home last Thursday after the broadcast of a political debate show on NTV, "K Baryeru!" The show pitted Makashov against the legendary cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.

Psychiatrists have a rule of not arguing with the mentally ill or attempting to change their minds even if their views appear to contain a certain internal logic. When I saw the show listed in the TV program, I wondered: "How can you give a man with such pathological views a platform from which to address millions of viewers, and how can you ask an intelligent man to debate him on the issues?" I decided not to watch the show for reasons of basic hygiene. But it's not hard to imagine how many scumbags huddled around the tube that evening to watch the heavily hyped duel, and with what relish they voted for their favorite by telephone.

It should come as no surprise that the wacko participant defeated his normal opponent. What's worse, the following day the papers were full of op-eds whose authors said the vote left them feeling ashamed for the Russian people. Why should anyone be ashamed for the Russian people? We should feel ashamed for the journalists who violate the basic norms of journalistic ethics - as well as various articles of the Criminal Code.

It is axiomatic that anti-Semitism is a shameful phenomenon, and that the presence of avowed anti-Semites in the Duma is a source of shame for the government and for all Russians. But it is equally axiomatic that anti-Semites, even those serving in the Duma, occupy a marginal position in society today. The press should approach the issue from this perspective. People need to know the facts about instances of anti-Semitism. We should demand that the Duma, political parties and law enforcement take a clear position in such cases. But giving anti-Semites a platform from which to proclaim and defend their views is the height of irresponsibility, because this gives the impression that they are worthy opponents.

If we journalists can't understand this, we shouldn't wonder why peripheral figures like Barkashov keep popping up in political top-10 lists.

13.03.2005

Selling Russia Down the River

Last October, President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly and inexplicably gave China two islands in the Amur River near Khabarovsk. He also handed over a chunk of land along the Tumen River that is of strategic importance to both countries. China has long wanted to expand the Tumen estuary and to build a port on the site with access to the Sea of Japan. So long as the land belonged to Russia, Chinese goods in the region had to go through Vladivostok and Khabarovsk.

The president stated vaguely that the land had been ceded to China in exchange for future investment in Russia. Last week we found out what sort of investment he had in mind. China provided $6 billion to facilitate Rosneft's purchase of Yuganskneftegaz. Russian officials have insisted that the money was prepayment for future oil supplies. If that's the case, the Chinese got one hell of a deal, locking in a price of $17 per barrel.

The point is that Russia ceded land to China, and in exchange China helped out Putin's inner circle in its hour of need. And the Kremlin's gratitude knows no bounds.

The islands are small potatoes. Chinese investors are actively discussing an investment of up to $1 billion in a state-of-the-art toll road between Moscow and St. Petersburg. This is an interesting project, to say the least. Toll roads never make back the money invested to build them. Revenue from tolls covers the cost of maintenance, but no more. The Chinese investors will never recoup their money from the road, so why are they interested?

This isn't a road-building project. The Moscow-St. Petersburg highway is a future Chinatown 800 kilometers long right through the heart of European Russia. It will attract Chinese construction workers, engineers and farmers.

Have you been to the Primorye region lately? An amazing thing has happened there in recent years: Watermelons have begun to pop up. Watermelons didn't use to grow in Primorye. But they did once the Chinese arrived. I have no doubt that when the Moscow-St. Petersburg toll road is built, watermelons will sprout up there, too.

You have to give the Chinese empire its due: It thinks in terms of millenia. What are a few islands? How about a Chinese Novgorod? Or Pskov filled with immigrants from Hunan province? The updated version of Alexander Radishchev's classic "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" might read: "By the side of the road, just beyond a charming Chinese restaurant with a sign in the window reading, 'Russian Spoken Here,' I noticed a marvelous Buddhist pagoda built by the respected Xe family, which owns most of the supermarkets along the highway." Did Peter the Great imagine the Chinese sitting on the sill when he opened his window to Europe?

China thinks in terms of millenia, the Kremlin in terms of dollars. Medieval Chinese military treatises contain a strategic principle: "Flow in slowly so as to destroy from within."

The Kremlin is incapable of strategic thinking. Everything's simple. In the build-up to the Iraq war, Russia took the side of Iraq apparently because Saddam Hussein had bribed Russia's top leadership with oil quotas. This story is being repeated with China.

Europe and the United States reacted poorly to the Yukos affair, calling it a redistribution of property. They are now geopolitical enemies who finance terrorism in the Caucasus and demonstrations in Voronezh. China facilitated the purchase of stolen property for pennies on the dollar. Now it's a geopolitical ally.

10.03.2005

Xenophobia Is All the Rage

It seems symbolic that these kinds of things happen on NTV, of all channels. NTV, once considered a bastion of freedom in the Russian mass media. A channel founded not only by an oligarch but - even more symbolically - by the head of the Russian Jewish Congress at the time, Vladimir Gusinsky. Yet it was NTV that honored that consummate anti-Semite, Albert Makashov. It all happened last week on the political debate show, "K Baryeru!" The show's host, Vladimir Solovyov, admitted his Jewish heritage on live television, which is still a bold move in 21st-century Russia. It all happened only a week after the world marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, at which President Vladimir Putin publicly apologized to Europe for the anti-Semitic petition to the prosecutor general initiated by 19 State Duma deputies, who called for a ban on all Jewish organizations.

Makashov repeated everything on the air that Putin apologized for.
Makashov's opponent was cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who came out in a uniform bedecked with medals. This worked in his favor for the first few minutes. However, after Makashov unleashed his main - and only - point, Leonov was not able to respond, and lost shamefully when the viewers' votes were tallied.

The premise of the show was: "Why are the bulk of those who struck it rich during privatization Jewish?" Makashov's answer was obvious: The Jews have robbed Russia blind. And his view was supported by the majority of NTV viewers.

The similarity of this view to that of the Nazis did not bother Makashov or viewers one bit. It's not enough, alas, to simply accuse someone of being a Nazi nowadays. Those who face such accusations are not afraid or ashamed of them. It is also symbolic in a country that defeated Nazism and plans to celebrate the 60th anniversary of this victory .

Neither Makashov nor his fans were fazed that Putin had just condemned anti-Semitism. Putin's word, it seems, is also not enough to settle the issue in Russia today. And neither is the Constitution, nor the tough laws prohibiting the encouragement of interethnic strife. This is not the first time the winners on Solovyov's show have presented the anti-Western, chauvinist and pro-communist solutions to various problems. It's always the liberals, the pro-market reformers and basically reasonable people who lose. This has become a pattern. There are two ways to explain this. Both are simple.

One: Something is wrong with NTV's audience. After the authorities purged the channel, the channel's previous, more progressive audience either no longer watches television or has moved to entertainment channels like STS. Entertainment is all the rage in Russia today. Russians are sick of politics.

The second version runs something like this. It's also simple. There is something wrong with the entire country. More and more frequently, people are inclined to blame those who are not like them. They are looking for foreign conspiracies. They ask why things are still messed up in Russia. It can't be that we're doing something wrong. Other people must be to blame. Anybody, but not us. George Soros. The Americans. The West. People from the Caucasus. Jews. Oligarchs.

This is not just a matter of ideas. It is more and more often a matter of spilled blood. Almost every day in various places around Russia, skinheads beat someone of Caucasus heritage or some student of color to a pulp.

Chauvinism and xenophobia are spreading rapidly, and not only among the poor. Once, you used to be able to find an "economic" explanation similar to the European theory of the rise of right-wing nationalist sentiments, the notion that the foreigners are stealing all the jobs. But now chauvinism has become part of mainstream thought and part of Russian neo-patriotism. No one is getting in the way of this wave at the government level. The authorities are passively playing into the hands of neo-patriot forces. They are not being brought to task, and official condemnations sound false and automatic. Official denunciations of "Western machinations" and "American conspiracies" resound in perfect unison with the xenophobic foolishness. Russians are a simple lot and can't tell an "American" from a "Zionist" conspiracy. It's all the same to them. Putin's public apologies, made for the benefit of Europe, were barely noticed back home.

If we don't learn history's lessons the first time around, it will give us new ones. Much tougher ones.

06.03.2005

TV Debate Truly Disturbs, Demeans, Distorts

Two scandals related to television erupted earlier this month. One came from abroad, from Britain, while the other was a purely homegrown production. In reaction to the first scandal, the Foreign Ministry sent a letter of protest to its British counterpart calling for it to stop Britain's Channel 4 from broadcasting fragments of an interview with Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev. British authorities responded that they did not have the right to interfere with the programming of a private television channel, especially as it was not breaking the law. For the British, Basayev may be a sinister figure, but he's someone else's sinister figure. Channel 4 introduced the interview by stating that though viewers might find Basayev's words disturbing, they needed to be heard to help people understand how someone could rationally justify murdering children. To further disturb viewers, the channel cut between Basayev's interview and footage from Beslan and other evil deeds Chechnya's main terrorist had a hand in.

The second big scandal came here in Russia, but it didn't lead to any protests from Russian authorities. On Vladimir Solovyov's political debate show "K Baryeru!" on NTV, two generals faced off: Alexei Leonov, a cosmonaut who was twice named Hero of the Soviet Union, and State Duma Deputy Albert Makashov, who from here on I'll simply call "M." Long, long ago, a colleague of mine, upset about the doings of another scandalous deputy, started referring to him by the first letter of his last name, "Zh," in all his articles. So, we'll just call him M., to avoid giving him more credit than he is due.

My friends kept telling me not to write about this show, that it was disgusting, that a week had gone by and I'd missed the boat. I'm afraid, however, that this boat won't be setting sail anytime soon. And I just can't keep my mouth shut when everyone is asking how this could happen and why.

Moreover, I just can't get the closing minutes of the show out of my head. Solovyov, shaking with rage, made a last angry speech and proudly walked off the set. The final results of viewer voting appeared on the screen. M. did not know he had soundly beat his opponent, as the program had been prerecorded but the voting was conducted as the show aired. But old M. felt he had won. Cosmonaut Leonov, smiling in confusion, held out his hand - obviously, the participants in the one-on-one debate had been instructed to civilly shake hands at the end. Then came M.'s real moment of triumph: He tossed out his hand in an impolite gesture - you could read his lips saying, "Take that!" - spit and walked away as the audience applauded wildly.

Why was this scene left in when it could have just as easily been edited out? Why was this highly respected man humiliated in front of the entire country? To further disturb viewers? But as the voting showed, the majority of viewers were delighted.

"In the past, people did not show their anti-Semitism publicly. In the past, they tended to this need in private," wrote philosopher and cultural critic Boris Paramonov. Those who voted for M. seemed to be saying that nowadays people should tend to this need in public. By serving the public a repulsive dish, television acted as a kind of laxative - excuse the simile - that cleaned all the gunk out of society's system.

Some might have felt relieved, but other completely innocent viewers, horrified at what was going down in the studio, had to stomach this muck.

If I were to give a detailed account of the retired warhorse's hour-and-a-half-long rant, I would be demonstrating a profound lack of self-respect. I will only say that a more pathological and inveterate anti-Semite has never graced the Russian airwaves.

Solovyov had obviously decided that he could easily take M. down and that this would make for a winner of a show.

But it didn't. Confronted with his guest's Neanderthal manners and open, very personal hatred for the show's host, poor Vladimir lost heart. He was hurt. He started pouting and was only capable of shouting stupidities in response to M.'s absurd savagery: "So, I crucified Christ? And I murdered anti-Zionist World War II hero David Dragunsky, did I? Or was it my parents?" M. boldly answered, "Yes, you did. And you're also to blame for the fact there's no running water." This sparked laughter and applause from the studio audience.

Later, many people insisted that Solovyov should have prepared better for the debate and should have found a hard-core polemist to oppose M., not some intellectual cosmonaut. Then everything would have turned out differently.

Yet I am sure that there would not have been any genuine debate under any circumstances. You don't debate with folks like M. You don't let them in the front door, you don't shake their hands, and, if you happen to run into them, you walk the other way to make a point.

There is another way to look at this whole scandal: You have to know your enemy. But don't we already know what people really think without testing the public waters? Did M. surprise us in any way? Unlike the British television viewers curious about what Basayev had to say, we know M.'s point of view perfectly well. Basayev is someone else's problem for the British, but M. is all ours.

At the end of the program, which had turned into a celebration of anti-Semitism, an insulted Solovyov drew things to a close, saying, "Our viewers pick the winner. Does their response show us where Russia stands? On the eve of pogroms as in 1904? In 1930s Germany? Or is this the way things really are in Russia in 2005?"

Everybody knows how European Russia voted. But this does not represent the entire country. In several cities in Siberia and beyond the Urals, Leonov won.

Importantly, interactive voting by telephone is not the same as an opinion poll. It all depends on someone's luck - the lines are always busy - and viewers' moods. Many listeners told Ekho Moskvy radio that they simply turned off the television in disgust halfway through the program. It also depends on how many aggressive half-wits happen to be watching the boob tube on a particular evening. It is likely that the numbers running across the screen have a hypnotic effect, and some people, without having a clear idea what the show is about, will simply go along with the majority.

Finally, and most importantly, even if the show measured the level of anti-Semitism in Russian society accurately, there is nothing worse that playing the prophet. At the same time, while we can never know how our words will be interpreted, perhaps it's time to try. Unfortunately, history has provided us with many instances - some of them very recent - of what can happen when the proclamations of people like M. are interpreted in a certain, terrible way.

18.02.2005

Odd Mix of Left and Right

Nineteen State Duma deputies petitioned the Prosecutor General to ban Jews. The document was published right on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and coincided with President Vladimir Putin's appearance at a somber commemoration. The president was forced to apologize. The whole thing was a scandal. Yet in fact, this was all nothing new. Only someone extremely naive could have failed to notice what kind of people make up the parliament. It is common knowledge that the Rodina bloc was cooked up using the leftovers of the political process. And no one should be surprised by the nationalist sentiments reigning in the upper echelons of the Communist Party.

I was amazed to read in the press and online that some authors find the letter particularly alarming because the deputies have voters behind them. Yet the only people supporting Duma deputies are their party bosses, who are in turn supported by their sponsors and the Kremlin. Has everyone forgotten how elections are conducted in this country? Hasn't anyone ever heard of administrative resources?

The quality of the anti-Semitic deputies' petition left something to be desired compared to the usual productions whipped up on Okhotny Ryad. It revealed their complete illiteracy and lack of familiarity with legal issues. But do any of the other documents, bills and laws created in the Duma prove anything to the contrary? Of course, the letter's authors wound up in a tight spot after reproducing the logic and arguments of the Third Reich. Now, anyone will be able to justifiably accuse them of being fascists. Yet no one has been bold enough to call them on their parliamentarian stupidity.

No one needed to wait for these deputies to put pen to paper to notice that there is anti-Semitism in Russia. You can get books on the Jewish conspiracy against the Russian people in almost any Moscow underpass, some even put out by fairly respectable publishers. However, these same publishers also put out books on the Israeli secret service, romance novels and basically anything else in demand.

If the current scandal in any way stands out from the boring string of similar scandals in the history of the Duma opposition, then it is because this is the first time in the history of the Russian Communist Party that high-ranking anti-Semites have been rebuffed by those below. Gennady Zyuganov could not find the nerve to disassociate himself from his colleagues or to honestly admit that he feels the same.

However, on the same day, activists from the youth wing of the party began to collect signatures for a response from the leftist community condemning the deputies. This strong reaction must have come as a surprise to the party leadership, which is used to a submissive rank and file. But the events of this January, when opposition actions unexpectedly swelled into mass protests, boosted the young Communists' self-confidence. They found their voice. At the same time, the response demonstrated a new solidarity between numerous left-wing groups, politicians and intellectuals, at least when it comes to the question of whether you can be a communist and a fascist simultaneously.

You have to hand it to the party's leaders, however; they were heroically silent. Of course, they did begin to exert pressure on party members who spoke out against anti-Semitism. In private, party representatives explained that the party was based on pluralism and therefore would not repress any supporters of internationalist views. The nationalism in the top ranks of the Communist Party is an anomaly, even in the post-Soviet world. Across Eastern Europe, neo-liberal reforms have come under fire from both the left, protesting against incursions into workers' rights, and from the nationalist right, which sees globalization as an extension of the Jewish conspiracy or as a backhanded attempt to make local owners bow to the will of international capital. As one leftist journalist noted, these right-wingers want only homegrown vampires to suck their blood.

Russia is the only country where these two approaches have not only been united, but where the first approach is subordinate to the second.

The political ineffectiveness of the Communists is no secret. However, the party bureaucracy is still capable of successfully working against its own activists. Letting rightist ideology dominate the left is an incredibly effective way to demoralize and paralyze the left wing.

18.02.2005

Police: No Skinheads in Moscow

Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin put in his two cents about reports of organized skinhead activity in the capital, saying there couldn't be a problem because there are no skinheads.

"We don't have any skinheads in the city," Pronin said Friday, RIA-Novosti reported. "I have never acknowledged them and do not acknowledge them. There is rabble from Moscow and its suburbs who attack people of various nationalities."

The statement may surprise anyone who lives in Moscow, and it certainly upset at least one well-known nationalist group, the Slavic Union, which goes by the acronym "S.S." The group promptly posted Pronin's statement on its web site with the headline "City Police Chief Vladimir Pronin: 'We Have No Skinheads! They're Martians!'" A nearby photo shows about 100 young people, including several skinheads, giving a "Heil Hitler" salute in what appears to be a small concert hall. The photo caption reads, "Satellite photo of a skinhead concert on Mars."

A quick scroll down the page shows pictures of skinheads in front of Nazi flags celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Moscow region chapter of another prominent nationalist group, Russian National Unity.

Russian National Unity "comrades from the Kaluga and Tver regions, as well as party activists from S.S. Moscow and S.S. Tyumen ... showed up to congratulate our comrades on their anniversary," reads a statement near the photos.

While St. Petersburg certainly drew the biggest headlines last year for skinhead attacks - the most recent on Oct. 13, when a mob of up to 18 young men with shaved heads and black clothes and boots stabbed a Vietnamese student to death - Moscow also was not immune to such attacks. On March 30, an Afghan asylum-seeker died of injuries he suffered a week earlier when he was beaten by a group of skinheads near the Chertanovskaya metro station in southern Moscow.

On Sept. 20, two weeks after the Beslan hostage crisis, a group of up to 50 young people attacked four people from the North Caucasus on a metro car between the Aeroport and Dynamo stations and shouted, "This is what you get for terrorist attacks!" Interfax said.
Passengers said the attackers had closely cropped hair and wore black jackets and military-style boots - typical skinhead attire, Interfax reported.

"There are about 60,000 skinheads active in Russia right now, and about 5,500 of them are in Moscow or less than an hour's drive from the city limits," he said. "[Pronin] himself knows quite well that there are skinheads in Moscow. Apparently he has received instructions from above to shift the focus away from right-wing groups to left-wing groups."

Tarasov was referring to remarks Pronin made the same day about a plan to crack down on radical leftist movements. "We're disturbed by the increasing number of incidents of extremism, primarily by young people," Pronin said.

"The seizures of [Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail] Zurabov's office and the [presidential] administration reception were just trial runs," he said, Interfax reported. National Bolshevik Party members broke into those offices last year.

Pronin singled out the leftist group Red Youth Vanguard as especially dangerous. The group has been holding anti-government protests over the benefits law in recent weeks. "The activities of this organization are extremely disturbing," Pronin said, Itar-Tass reported.

Meanwhile, two days after Pronin's announcement, veteran police officer Isa Tibolayev, an ethnic Chechen, was found stabbed to death near his apartment building on Belomorskaya Ulitsa in northern Moscow, police spokeswoman Yekaterina Malyugina said. A pedestrian discovered Tibolayev's body, with 28 stab wounds to the back and two to the chest, on the sidewalk at 11 p.m. Sunday. Police are looking into whether it was a skinhead attack.

17.02.2005

Only Action Will Quell Xenophobia

It is reprehensible that 19 State Duma deputies signed a petition accusing Jews of fomenting ethnic hatred and demanding that prosecutors investigate all Jewish organizations in Russia, even if the authors later retracted the letter. It is even more reprehensible that the Communist and Rodina factions, to which the deputies belong, refused to take any disciplinary action.

Faction leaders have probably calculated that any punitive action against the signatories of the petition would alienate xenophobic voters who helped them get into the Duma last year. Ivan Melnikov, the deputy head of the Communist Party's central committee, likely had these voters in mind Thursday when he refused to pass any judgment on Vladimir Kashin and Albert Makashov, two of his party comrades who signed the petition. Speaking on the day when the world commemorated the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Melnikov asserted that they had "the full right" to express their opinion. Indeed, why would the Communists condemn Makashov, a retired general? After all, he is one of his party's best-known members and has won seats in one Duma election after another, despite his regular anti-Semitic diatribes.

Rodina, the nationalist bloc that rode into the Duma thanks to tacit but strong support from the Kremlin, by most accounts has also refused to condemn its deputies who signed the petition.

The Duma factions are not alone in cynically exploiting xenophobia in Russia, where anti-Semitism is second only to dislike for natives of the Caucasus and Central Asia, and foreigners of color in general. Nikolai Kondratenko, who attacked both Jews and natives of the Caucasus in his speeches when serving as Krasnodar governor, can attest to how being an outspoken xenophobe can help a politician's career in this country. He is now a senator in the Federation Council.

Fortunately, these officials do not decide the country's fate. Russia is a presidential republic, and President Vladimir Putin has regularly condemned anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Addressing a forum Thursday near Krakow, Poland, Putin said he is ashamed of the anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racial intolerance in Russia.

However, mere condemnation of this evil will not make it go away, as frequent hate crimes in Moscow and other Russian cities prove. Both the authorities and the public need to stop talking and start acting to end xenophobia. The country's future depends on whether its hundred plus ethnic groups will be able to live and prosper side by side.

15.02.2005

Party Office Attacked

MOSCOW - Dozens of assailants shouting neo-Nazi slogans attacked the Moscow headquarters of the radical National Bolshevik Party, which opposes the Kremlin and has sharply criticized an unpopular law replacing benefits with cash payments, organization leaders and police said.

About 40 people, mostly young men, pushed their way into the offices and beat two party members, the Itar-Tass reported, quoting party spokesman Alexander Averin. The assailants arrived in minibuses that were escorted by two cars, he said. Averin told Ekho Moskvy radio that party members managed to seize five of the assailants and handed them over to police.

14.02.2005

Tears of Joy, Bitterness Over Anti-Semitism

Elderly Holocaust survivors, Jewish leaders and Red Army veterans gathered Thursday in Moscow to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with what they called mixed feelings - tears of joy over the Nazi defeat but bitterness over the persistent anti-Semitism in Russia.

"There are only a few Auschwitz survivors still alive today - most of them didn't live to hear our lawmakers asking to ban all Jewish organizations," Aron Zusman, head of Ruf, a union of Jewish prisoners of Nazi camps, said bitterly.

Zusman was referring to a recent appeal by 19 State Duma deputies for an investigation aimed at outlawing all Jewish organizations.

"This means that our train leaves for Auschwitz - today and every day," said Matvei Geizer, a 64-year-old Holocaust survivor who was 4 years old when Red Army soldiers freed him and his family from a Jewish ghetto in Kiev in 1944.

"We were saved by the Red Army soldiers, and although I was only 4, I can remember their faces so vividly that I would recognize them on the street," said Geizer, whose father had died in the ghetto. Only 12,000 to 16,000 out of the ghetto's 50,000 inhabitants survived.

Geizer recalled how his grandfather took him to a grave of some 300 ghetto prisoners who had been executed. "He wanted me to see it with my own eyes and hear with my own ears - he condemned me to always remembering it," he said.

He lamented the call for the ban, saying that means Russian society has failed to fully condemn the Nazi crimes. "Such things cannot be forgotten," Geizer said.

13.02.2005

Bank Bomb Suspect

MOSCOW - Police and security officers have detained a Moscow student on suspicion of organizing two bombings at Bank of Moscow offices, Gazeta reported Thursday.

Anton Dergachyov, who studies at the Automobile Road Institute, was detained Wednesday, and police believe he is a member of a radical leftist group, the newspaper said. The latest bomb was delivered to a bank's office by mail on Tuesday.

12.02.2005

Time to Fight Hate Crimes, Not Just Talk

This week, a group of State Duma deputies made it clearer than ever that certain members of parliament have disturbing sympathies with both Nazism and Bolshevik red nationalism.

Twenty lawmakers belonging to the Rodina, Communist and Liberal Democratic factions sent a request to the Prosecutor General's Office demanding that all Jewish religious organizations be prohibited from operating in Russia, as "the Jewish religion is anti-Christian, inhumane and involves ritual killings." Strangely enough, lawmakers composed the letter in response to a recent series of lawsuits and court cases initiated by the prosecutor's office against extremist organizations and publications that allegedly broke the law by promoting interethnic hatred.

"We would assure you, Mr. Prosecutor General [Vladimir Ustinov], that there are a large number of well-known facts in sources throughout the world in relation to these questions. Based on these facts, it is possible to come to a direct conclusion: The negative judgments made by Russian patriots of typical Jewish qualities and Jewish acts against non-Jewish people reflect reality, and such acts do not happen by chance, but are a part of Judaism and have been practiced for 2,000 years. For this reason, all the statements and publications against Jews that patriots are accused of issuing are actually in self-defense," said the letter, published in the newspaper Rus Pravoslavnaya, or Orthodox Russia. Though the group of deputies retracted the letter on Tuesday without any explanation, the fact is that elected authorities made unprecedented extremist demands publicly.

In the past, Duma deputies have expressed similar sentiments on occasion. Back then, such statements generated little response from officials and were most likely written off as the product of twisted minds mouthing off on the pages of a tiny nationalist paper. But now the picture is very different, and, even more surprisingly, there are signs that the Kremlin has finally begun to react to the disturbing nationalist message.

On Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin admitted that extremism "is a serious problem today." While talking to students at Moscow State University, Putin said the community and the state should join forces to resist extremism and even indirectly suggested that it is justified to beat up skinheads - or at least that's the way I understood the president: "Any action demands an equally forceful reaction. If you see that extremists are choosing new forms of action, then these actions must be resisted by means of a similar activity." I have been waiting for this kind of statement from the government for far too long.

Extremist movements have gotten completely out of hand in Russia in the five years since Putin came to power. One result of the new nationalist wave is the constant growth of hate crimes, including murders, against non-Russians. There are about 50,000 skinheads in Russia, compared to about 70,000 in the rest of the world, according to statistics presented Friday in a report by the International Bureau for Human Rights in Moscow. Their numbers in Russia may be even higher, taking into account that there are more than 10 hard-line extremist organizations operating in the country, said Sergei Charny, one of the report's authors. The best-known among these are Russkoye Natsionalnoye Yedinstvo, or Russian National Unity, and Slavyansky Soyuz, or Slavic Union, which has chosen a revealing abbreviation to identify its ideology: S.S.

Putin's statement regarding the problem of nationalist extremism may be right on target, but the time for words was over long ago. It is far too late just to talk about the problem. If the Kremlin has finally understood how serious the issue is, it has to take action. The first step should be to pressure the police to take hate crimes more seriously. Though there has been some progress in the courts recently, law enforcement officials often dismiss obvious examples of hate crime as mere hooliganism. The police should start calling things by their real name.

10.02.2005

Deaths Exceed Births

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The country's death rate in 2004 exceeded the birth rate by 50 percent or three deaths for every two births, the State Statistics Service said in a report Wednesday.

The population fell 0.5 percent over 2004 to 143.5 million.

More than 46,000 Russians killed themselves last year at a rate of 35 per 100,000 people.

The murder rate was almost as high, with close to 36,000 people being killed - almost 100 murders per day countrywide.

Deaths from alcohol numbered 34,500, and transport accidents killed nearly 39,000 people.

08.02.2005

After Attack on Moscow Rabbi, ADL Calls on Russian Authorities to Ensure Safety of Jewish Communities

Moscow, January 18, 2005 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has called on Russian authorities to investigate the brutal anti-Semitic attack of a rabbi near the Maryina Roscha Chabad community center on January 14.

According to ADL's Moscow Office, Rabbi Alexander M. Lakshin, the leader of the Magen League and a U.S. citizen, was attacked and brutally beaten by a group of about seven teenagers in a pedestrian tunnel a few blocks away from a community center. After the beating, Rabbi Lakshin was taken by a friend to the American Medical Center, where he was treated for multiple fractures and other injuries sustained in the attack.

"This is at least the third serious violent anti-Semitic incident to take place in the same area during the past few months," said Alexander Axelrod, Director of ADL's Moscow Office. "With the growth of the Jewish communities in major cities of Russia, it is essential that the police take proactive steps to ensure that the Jewish community is safe, and work to prevent incidents based on racial or religious hatred. We will be in contact with the prosecutor's office to ensure that all possible efforts are made to find and punish the perpetrators of this heinous attack."

Representatives of the American Embassy in Moscow joined in filing a complaint to the Russian police who stated that although they take this incident very seriously they anticipate difficulty in the investigation, as no one was able to identify the perpetrators.

07.02.2005

Shock Over Petition to Ban Jewish Groups

A senior rabbi and Israel's embassy on Tuesday criticized a group of nationalist State Duma deputies who accused Jews of fomenting ethnic hatred and called for all Jewish organizations in Russia to be banned.

The Foreign Ministry expressed regret about the matter and stressed that the Russian leadership rejects anti-Semitism.

In a petition, dated Jan. 13, some 20 Rodina and Communist deputies appealed to the prosecutor general to launch proceedings "on the prohibition in our country of all religious and ethnic Jewish organizations as extremist."

Echoing anti-Semitic tracts of the tsarist era, the petition's authors accused Jews of working against the interests of the countries where they live and of monopolizing power worldwide.

"It is possible to say that the entire democratic world today is under the monetary and political control of international Judaism, which high-profile bankers are openly proud of," it says.

Rabbi Adolf Shayevich said in a statement that the petition contained "lying facts and arguments, expressing the raving condition of animal anti-Semitism," and urged prosecutors to investigate it.

The Israeli Embassy said the petition espoused Nazi ideas, and lamented its appearance just days before the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. The embassy called on authorities to act against those trying to "inflame nationalist discord."

The Prosecutor General's Office said Tuesday that no investigation would be made because the petition had been retracted.

A woman who answered the telephone at the office of Rodina Deputy Alexander Krutov, who signed the petition, said it was "withdrawn" but refused to comment further.

Interfax quoted Krutov as saying that anti-Semitism was "minimal" in Russia. The Foreign Ministry said the petition had "nothing in common with the official stance of the Russian leadership, which categorically rejects any signs of interethnic strife and xenophobia, including anti-Semitism."

The ministry said it was "especially regrettable" that the petition appeared prior to the Auschwitz liberation commemorations.

Jewish leaders have praised President Vladimir Putin's government for encouraging religious tolerance, but rights groups say authorities are failing to adequately prosecute the perpetrators of anti-Semitic and racial violence in Russia.

05.02.2005

THE HOFFMAN WIRE

According to a report in the Israeli newspaper, "Haaretz" (reproduced below) a lengthy, well-researched letter was published this week in the influential Russian newspaper,"Rus-pravoslavnaya," signed by 500 Russian newspaper editors, academics and intellectuals, connecting the Talmud to the expulsion of the Palestinians. The document is so sophisticated it extensively quotes from the Shulchan Aruch and other Talmudic law codes, correctly citing these "sacred" texts as the genocidal backdrop to Israeli leader Avigdor Lieberman's plan for the mass deportation ("transfer") of all Palestinians. (Anyone who can furnish this writer with a complete copy of this document in Russian or English, please do so).

By specifically citing the Shulchan Aruch, the Russian authors undercut the standard disinformation ploy used by rabbis and their apologists when responding to exposes of Talmudic hate. The rabbinate lie to the inquiring dumb goyim and claim that "the Talmud is only a series of debates," hoping that the naive goy doesn't know the difference between responsora and minhag on one hand, and the Mishneh Torah and Shulchan Aruch on the other. The latter two constituting the halacha which rigidly regulate every minute and every action in the life of an observant Judaic.

The Russians, among the world's most accomplished chess players, have not fallen for that semantic trap, even as many Americans have. Americans often report to this writer that my book "Judaism's Stange Gods" can't be true because they have found out from the rabbis that the Talmud is "just a collection of non-binding debates."

You will also note in the article below that Russian-Israeli Natan Sharansky, who, according to the US media, is reputed to have assisted with or at the very least inspired the writing of George W. Bush's Second Inaugural Address on "freedom," has called on Vladimir Putin to "treat the authors of the document harshly." In other words, Sharansky wants Putin to fine or imprison the authors for criticizing the Talmud. Here is the "freedom" exemplified by the American-Israeli empire, the freedom to suppress the intellectual expression of the enemies of the Pharisees. Meanwhile, every conceivable incitement against Christ and true Christians and against Muslims and Mohammed is allowed to flourish in the U.S. under the shibboleth of "democracy" and "fighting terror."

Russia harbors the largest and most astute analysts and critics of Freemasonry, Judaism and Zionism in the world. No wonder that Russophobes like the John Birchers are encouraged by the occult secret society known as the OTO (as documented by Craig Heimbichner), while certain segments of Catholic "Fatima apparition" believers are backed and promoted by Rabbi Meyer Schiller. Both of these groups are used to agitate against Russia as the supreme font of evil in the world, by Israelis and Freemasons who fear that Russia, alone among the nations of the West, has the potential to produce a government that will one day wield the might of the state to officially oppose Freemasonry and Judaism.

A blood libel accusing Jews of murdering Christians for ritual purposes - a concept that disappeared for years from Russia's anti-Semitic lexicon - made a comeback this week as an important crux in a remarkably fierce anti-Semitic diatribe that was published Sunday in the Russian newspaper Rus-pravoslavnaya.

The fundamentalist Pravoslavic paper, which defines itself as "patriotic," ran a letter asking the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Ustinov, to open an investigation against all Jewish organizations throughout the country on suspicion of spreading incitement and provoking ethnic strife.

The letter calls for an end to government subsidies for these groups. The lengthy document was signed by 500 people, including newspaper editors, academics and intellectuals. These signatories were joined by 19 nationalist members of the lower parliament, the State Duma, from the nationalist Rodina (homeland) party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), and the Russian Communist Party.

Even though the story was picked up by radio stations and leading Internet sites in Russian, there has been no official condemnation.

The libelous document is divided into chapters with such titles as "The Morality of Jewish Fascism," "Provocateurs and People Haters" and "Jewish Aggression as an Expression of Deviltry."

"I'm not a psychiatrist, and I can't help them if they're crazy," said Russia's co-chief rabbi, Berel Lazar, in response. "The worst possibility is that they're sane and are making a cynical move for electoral purposes."

The blood libel, described here as a ritual murder of Christian children that has already been proved in the courts, is only one thrust of the letter, which is thousands of words long and weaves a convoluted web between classic religious anti-Semitism and current anti-Israeli sentiment.

The writers see a direct line between the Shulhan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) and other halakhic sources they quote profusely, and the transfer program espoused by Yisrael Beitenu chairman Avigdor Lieberman.

The letter also indirectly criticizes President Putin and the state courts for their policy of trying anyone charged with anti-Semitism and incitement without verifying the claims' veracity. Those charged spoke the truth, the letter maintains, and those accused of anti-Semitism were nothing but patriots.

The writers make use of quotations from traditional Jewish sources and current Israeli and Jewish publications. In the chapter on the Jewish oligarchs' devastating control of Russia's economy and politics, the letter quotes Jewish writers from Israel and the United States, along with excerpts from interviews with the oligarchs themselves.

Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Natan Sharansky expressed shock yesterday at the fierceness of the anti-Semitic letter, saying that although the signatories represent a slim segment of Russian society, latent anti-Semitism is clearly a major danger there.

Sharansky quoted Putin saying that anti-Semitism is not only a danger to his country's Jewish population, but a threat to the stability of his regime.

According to Sharansky, even though popular anti-Semitism is entrenched in Russian culture, Putin viewed the Jews as a bridge in new relations with the West, and granted freedom to Jewish communities there.

"However, Putin, for reasons of his own, precisely now needs to bolster Russia's national pride," Sharansky said. "The problem is that the moment you start playing with nationalist slogans, they immediately link up with the most primitive prejudice."

Sharansky called on Putin and the Russian parliament to treat the letter and its authors harshly.

24 Hour Revisionist News Bureau:
www.revisionisthistory.org/news.html

01.02.2005

Lenin's Body

MOSCOW - Vladimir Lenin's embalmed body, which has lain in state beneath the Kremlin walls since his death in 1924, should last at least another 100 years, one of its curators said.

"The leader of the revolution's body is in a great state, and if it receives proper care can stay in the mausoleum another 100 years, and maybe more," Yury Denisov-Nikolsky, one of the experts who cares for the body, told Itar-Tass on Friday, the 81st anniversary of Lenin's death.

30.01.2005

Cemetery Vandalized

MOSCOW - Vandals desecrated a Muslim cemetery in southern Moscow, destroying several headstones and knocking over more than 10 monuments, Izvestia reported Monday.

Police believe a group of nationalists broke into the cemetery on 2nd Roshchinsky Proyezd, near Tulskaya metro station, late Friday night. "I'm convinced that skinheads did this," Shukur Izmailov, head of the police precinct where the cemetery is located, was quoted as saying. "There were shoeprints at the scene of the crime left by boots typically worn by skinheads."

Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev is personally overseeing the investigation.

28.01.2005

Nationalists Call for Jewish Ban

A group of nationalist deputies is calling for an investigation aimed at outlawing all Jewish organizations in Russia, accusing Jews of fomenting ethnic hatred and provoking anti-Semitism.

In a letter dated Jan. 13, about 20 State Duma deputies asked Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov to investigate their claims and, if they are confirmed, to start proceedings "on the prohibition in our country of all religious and ethnic Jewish organizations as extremist."

Arguing that Jews were to blame for anti-Semitism, the authors of the letter want Jewish groups outlawed based on legislation against extremism and fomenting ethnic discord. "The negative assessments by Russian patriots of the qualities and actions against non-Jews that are typical of Jews correspond to the truth, indeed these actions are not random but prescribed in Judaism and have been practiced for two centuries," says the letter, faxed in part to The Associated Press by the office of Rodina Deputy Alexander Krutov.

Thus, it says, "the statements and publications against Jews that have incriminated patriots are self-defense, which is not always stylistically correct but is justified in essence."

The Prosecutor General's Office could not immediately be reached for comment on the letter, which Interfax said was signed by deputies from the nationalist Rodina and Liberal Democratic parties, as well as the Communist Party.

Russia's chief rabbi, Berl Lazar, said the deputies were either insane or "quite sane but limitlessly cynical" and were hoping to win support "by playing the anti-Semitic card." With President Vladimir Putin planning to join events this week commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops, Russia's Holocaust Foundation head Alla Gerber said it was "horrible that as we're marking the 60th anniversary of this tragic and great day ... we can speak of the danger of fascism in the countries that defeated fascism." She said that while the Russian state itself is no longer anti-Semitic, there are "anti-Semitic campaigns that are led by all sorts of organizations."

"The economic situation is ripe for this, an enemy is needed, and the enemy is well-known, traditional," Gerber said.

25.01.2005

3,000 Rally Near Belorussky Station

Police officers standing guard during a rally over benefits near Belorussky Station on Saturday. The banner reads, "Putin Resign!"

In the single largest protest against the monetization of Soviet-era benefits yet in Moscow, some 3,000 pensioners and other demonstrators rallied at Belorussky Station on Saturday with portraits of Lenin and a long banner reading, "Putin Resign!"

Pensioners also rallied over the weekend in Samara, Krasnoyarsk, Stavropol, Ufa and Kazan. Despite wind and wet snow, scores of pensioners and activists from radical youth groups gathered on the square outside Belorussky Station, one of the busiest in central Moscow, and chanted "Resign!" to the government and "No Genocide of the People!"

The rally was led by the Communist Party but included supporters of small hard-line groups like Viktor Anpilov's Working Russia and Red Youth Vanguard. Police detained the leader and nine activists from Red Youth Vanguard as they attempted to march to Staraya Ploshchad to break into the presidential administration building after the rally.

The target of protesters' anger is a social reform law, backed by President Vladimir Putin, that took effect Jan. 1 and replaces Soviet-era benefits like free public transportation and medicine with meager cash payments. Many regions were not ready to pay pensioners, leading to the wave of protests that started Jan. 10.

Mayor Yury Luzhkov kept in place many benefits that were monetized in other regions, a decision that appears to have delayed protests in the capital.

At a State Duma session dedicated mostly to the benefits law Friday, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov partially admitted that the Cabinet had made some mistakes in enforcing the law in the regions, but they stood by the reform.

Following a heated discussion, Dmitry Rogozin, leader of the nationalist Rodina faction, and four fellow deputies announced that they were going on a hunger strike to demand a moratorium on the law and the Cabinet's resignation. They were still on hunger strike Sunday evening.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Governor Nikolai Vinogradov, in remarks broadcast on state-run Rossia television, urged the federal government on Saturday to take over the financing of cash payments to pensioners from the regions.

12.01.2005

Vietnamese Stabbed

MOSCOW - A Vietnamese citizen was stabbed by two assailants in northwestern Moscow. Two young men approached the 39-year-old Vietnamese man on Bulvar Matrosa Zheleznyaka on Monday evening and stabbed him with a knife in the chest. The man was taken to the Botkinsky hospital. The motive for the attack was unclear. Police said that nothing was stolen from the man, who sells clothes at a local market.

10.01.2005

More Glory for Russia's Tennis Queens

Sharapova kissing the winner's trophy after overcoming Poland's Marta Domachowska in the final of the Korea Open on Sunday

Maria Sharapova and Yelena Dementyeva both lifted titles Sunday to underline Russia's domination of the women's game.

In Seoul, South Korea, Wimbledon champion Sharapova trounced Marta Domachowska 6-1, 6-1 to win the Korea Open.

Meanwhile in Belgium, top-seeded Yelena Dementyeva rallied from 4-1 down in the third set to overcome third-seeded Yelena Bovina 0-6, 6-0, 6-4 in an all-Russian final of the Gaz de France Stars.

Grunting and grimacing to victory, Sharapova had too much firepower for Poland's Domachowska, who held her serve only once in the 58-minute match.

Sharapova took command in the third game after the two players had traded opening service breaks.

Pinning Domachowska to the baseline with a series of stinging service returns, Sharapova kept up the pressure until the 18-year-old Pole wilted, double-faulting to hand the Russian a 3-1 lead.

Sharapova never looked like losing it, closing out the set and looking stronger with every point.

"This is the first time playing three tournaments in a row, but I feel really good," Sharapova said.

Sharapova lost in the semifinals of the China Open to compatriot Svetlana Kuznetsova just over a week ago and will play in the Japan Open later this week.

"I think I played well this week. Hopefully I'll take that on to next week, play better and win there," Sharapova said.

At the Gaz de France Stars in Hasselt, Belgium, Bovina dominated the start over her hesitant compatriot, then Dementyeva managed a break to kick off the second set and powered through flawlessly.

The third set was another roller coaster, with Bovina ahead 4-1 before Dementyeva roared back with three straight breaks.

"When you play you don't even think about the score," Dementyeva said. "You're trying to win every single point. I was trying to stay focused."

Bovina blamed herself for relaxing "a little bit" after winning the first set. "You always get to give yourself a break after you win so easily," she said. "I guess that was my mistake today."

Bovina beat Dementyeva en route to winning her third career title in New Haven, Connecticut, in August.

It was the fourth ever for Dementyeva, who in her victory speech wished local favorite Kim Clijsters a speedy recovery from her ongoing left wrist injury.

Former world No. 1 Clijsters withdrew from her semifinal against Bovina on Saturday with pain in the same wrist that sidelined her for five months until this week.

Sharapova Storms to Victory in Tokyo

Defending champion Maria Sharapova celebrating her straight-sets win in the final of the Japan Open in Tokyo on Saturday

TOKYO - Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova overpowered American Mashona Washington 6-0, 6-1 on Saturday to claim back-to-back Japan Open titles before a typhoon forced play to be suspended.

Top-seeded Sharapova used her booming serve and solid groundstrokes to dominate the unseeded American.

"I served very well," Sharapova said. "I knew I had to dictate the pace this time and was able to do that a lot better than the last time we played."

The previous time the two players met, Washington defeated Sharapova 6-3, 2-6, 6-2 in the second round of August's Pilot Pen tournament at New Haven.

Sharapova, who broke through at the Japan Open last year to win her career first WTA singles title, is tremendously popular in Japan. A capacity crowd showed up for the final despite heavy rain from the approaching typhoon.

It was Sharapova's second win in less than a week after the 17-year-old Russian won Sunday's Korea Open final.

Washington, playing in her first WTA final, took Saturday's loss in her stride.

"I couldn't play my normal aggressive game," Washington said. "Maria is a good player, but she doesn't have any 'Oh, my God' shots. She just played very well and I didn't have any opportunity to get in the game.

"It was my first final so I'm not disappointed."

04.01.2005

Sympathy for the National Bolsheviks

It's nothing new to say that the court system acts in favor of the authorities, whether it is dealing with so-called tax violations allegedly committed by Yukos management or the latest openly unconstitutional presidential initiative to take away the right of the population to elect the heads of regions. In both cases, the Kremlin has mixed rational arguments with humbug, in effect tossing the Constitution out the window.

But from now on, those who dare to do the same to a portrait of President Vladimir Putin can expect to face serious consequences. The National Bolshevik Party members that intruded into the Health and Social Development Ministry in Moscow threw a portrait of Putin out the window as part of a protest against government plans to eliminate various social benefits. They were sentenced to five years in jail Monday.

Actions of this kind should be punished in some way, such as a fine. But five years in prison is completely out of hand. If someone told me in 1999, before Putin came to the Kremlin, that this kind of punishment would be introduced for people who found an unusual way of expressing their views, I would never have believed it. I also agree with certain human rights activists that "this verdict was a perfect present for Stalin's birthday." The authorities did absolutely nothing to punish those who destroyed an exhibit at the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center called "Caution, Religion" in 2003. A crowd of violent "Russian Orthodox activists" defaced the exhibit and destroyed most of the items on display. There was no portrait of Putin there, and this might be why all the vandals were let off the hook.

Until recently, I did not have much respect for NBP members, whom I saw as followers of dying communist traditions. But this year, NBP activists seem to be some of the most active members of society and practically the only people protesting the violations of the Constitution.The party joined and led protest actions against in-fill construction in St. Petersburg. They blocked roads in St. Petersburg, causing traffic problems. But what else could they do if authorities do not heed the concerns of the very voters who brought them to power?

Unfortunately, there is another trial coming with perhaps even more serious consequences for the 40 young people who broke into the presidential administration headquarters on Dec. 14. This group is not only charged with hooliganism, but also with attempted violent seizure of power. For distributing leaflets calling on Putin to resign, the NBP members are facing life in jail. Sadly, harsh sentences for these protesters would come as no surprise. Society no longer needs the open-minded.

28.12.2004

Publisher Convicted

MOSCOW - A Moscow court on Wednesday convicted an editor of publishing articles inciting ethnic hatred and gave him a suspended sentence.

The Timiryazev District Court found Viktor Korchagin, editor of the Rusich magazine, guilty of stirring up ethnic and religious hatred and handed him a one-year suspended prison sentence. The verdict is a rare instance of a court moving against anti-Semitic publications.

26.12.2004

The Politically Correct and Incorrect

Talking about ethnic groups and nationalities is a constant challenge: Just when you think you've mastered the current, politically correct term, the folks go and change it and you have to start all over again. And once you master the terms in one language, you discover yourself at a loss in another.

For example, Russian makes the nice and clear distinction between citizens of Russia (Россия), who are россияне, and ethnic Russians, who are русские. English ignores the "o" in Россия and calls both categories "Russians." If you need to make sure everyone knows you are talking about people of any nationality who live in Russia, you have to spell it out in English: Среди россиян есть армяне, грузины, татары и представители многих других национальностей. (There are Armenians, Georgians, Tatars and people of many other nationalities among the citizens of Russia.) You can also say русскоязычные - Russian-speakers - although this means just that: people who speak Russian. I once translated a speaker struggling to be utterly politically correct and describe the citizens of the Russian Federation who were united by culture: российские, русскоязычные ... люди русской культуры (Russian citizens, Russian-speaking people, people who identify with Russian culture).

Great country that this is, there are some people who think that Russian culture is the best in the world. Some of these folks are patriots; others are just plain old шовинисты (chauvinists). The latter folks are likely to use crude and insulting names to describe non-Russians. While you should never even think about using these words, it's useful to know them, if only to recognize a chauvinist when you see - or hear - one.

The slang word for Ukrainians (украинцы) is хохол (a man) or хохлушка (a woman). It is also the word Russians use to describe a tuft of hair: In times of old, Ukrainians shaved their hair, leaving only the topknot (хохол). This can be said fondly, but don't risk it. В нашей группе была одна хохлушка - белокурая, пышная, весёлая. (We had a Ukrainian woman in our group who was fair, buxom and cheery.) The slang word in Ukraine (and other former Soviet republics) for Russians is москали. This was originally the word for people from the state of Muscovy. While it can be used jokingly, it generally has an edge to it. For example, one headline reads: Понаехали москали: экспансия российских топ-менеджеров на Украину. (The Invading Russians Are Turning Up the Heat: the expansion of Russian top managers in Ukraine.)

The $64,000 question is: How do you know this headline appeared in a Russian newspaper? The answer: Because of the preposition на. Since 1991, Ukrainians have requested that English-speakers say "in Ukraine" rather than "in the Ukraine," and Russians say в Украине rather than на Украине, since it is a country, not a territory (as implied by "the" and на). Russians complain this is hard to do - режет слух, it grates on the ear (literally "cuts"). Ukrainians to Russians: Get over it.

If you hear a Russian referring to хачик or чурка, move away: These are very crude and derogatory slang words for an Armenian (or anyone from the Caucasus) and a Central Asian. Move away very quickly if someone refers to people from the Caucasus as чёрные (blacks). This word can also be used in reference to people of color; in either case, it is extremely insulting. This can confuse English-speakers, for whom "black" is an acceptable term. On the other hand, the Russian word негр, while sounding like a very derogatory word in English, is, on the contrary, a neutral and acceptable Russian term that simply means Negro.

What do Russians call us Americans? They used to call Americans штатники (something like Stateniks), but this is now dated. They sometimes call us америкосы (a kind of sound play on американцы and абрикосы - apricots) or more frequently америкашки, a slightly condescending diminutive.

Russians to америкашки: Get over it.