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Civil Society Students are not only protesting for fair elections, they are volunteering as monitors

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

NEWS IN BRIEF

In the Streets and at the Polls For some young Russians, simply turning out for protests isn’t enough. They are signing up as election day volunteers.

REUTERS/VOSTOCK-PHOTO

Opposition Shares Floor with Medvedev

PAVEL KOSHKIN RUSSIA NOW

President Dmitry Medvedev won tentative praise from opposition leaders on Feb. 20 after he met with them and confirmed a proposal to create a working group to discuss political reforms. In an unexpected move, Medvedev also endorsed a two-term lifetime limit for presidents. However, the most prominent opposition leaders in attendance said there were no breakthroughs at the meeting, which was devoted to reform proposals including the reinstatement of direct elections for regional governors, a simplified process for registering political parties and a reduction in the number of signatures required for candidates to run for public office.

Read the full article at www.rbth.ru/14902

Putin Proposes Military Reform

VASILY MAXIMOV_RIDUS

The allegations of vote fraud during last December’s Russian State Duma elections have led to a rise in projects hoping to monitor the March 4 presidential election. The increase in activism is considered a good sign for the development of Russian civil society according to experts and observers, even as some question the staying power of the protest movement.

Elena Panfilova, director-general of the Center for Anti-Corruption Research and Initiative, Transparency International-Russia, said the trend is positive.

But she added that the number of observers is secondary to the quality. “In this situation, statistics are not so important as the quality of volunteers,” Panfilova said. “What matters is whether people are able to fulfill their commitments as observers.”

Since early December, both new and existing civil society organizations have seen an increase in involvement. RosVybory, a new project of Russia’s vocal anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, enrolled more than 10,000 volunteer election monitors before the end of January. The liberal opposition party Yabloko also saw its ranks of monitors swell to between 20,000 and 25,000 observers, according to party deputy chairman Sergei Mitrokhin in an interview with the web-

based analytical magazine Slon.

Russia’s Association of Lawyers has enlisted 4,500 volunteer observers and hopes for more.

The League of Voters, an Internet-based watchdog founded by prominent Russian journalists and bloggers, is also recruiting and training volunteers.

The numbers are not only increasing among the opposition. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s headquarters is expected to provide about 35,000 observers, according to Slon.

Grassroots watchdog activity is also increasing in the form of social networks and special websites for monitoring the elections. Two Russian students studying abroad founded the online Grakon project to promote transparency in the upcoming presidential vote.

Mikhail Panko, who is studying at Boston University, and Sergei Kopylov from Lancaster University in the United Kingdom hope that their project will promote active involvement in

politics as well as teach people how to defend their political rights. The Grakon website, whose name is derived from the Russian words for “civil” and “control” will offer a series of recommendations for what individuals can do before, during and after the elections to help track fraud. According to the preliminary version of the site, the project will also encourage voters to file complaints in the case of violations to the election legislature.

Interest in vote monitoring is increasing most dramatically among students.

“During the parliamentary elections, I was disappointed with the work of observers and falsifications at my polling station,” said Lesya Ryabtseva, a student at the Russian State University for Humanities (RGGU). “That’s why I decided to be recruited as an observer for the presidential elections.”

Young people from across the political spectrum have been inspired by recent protests to volunteer to monitor poling places in the upcoming election.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

Regions Grozny has gone from a battered shell of a city to a shimmering reconstruction

Grozny, an Islamic Boomtown of Hope and Control Shattered cement and ghostly streets have been replaced by glitzy shops, soccer stadiums and reduced violence.

JUDITH MATLOFF

When I last visited Chechnya in 1999, the threat of ambushes was rife and the capital, Grozny, was pulverized by shelling.

Grozny was earning notoriety as the most destroyed city on earth, and the apartment buildings with facades blown off like dollhouses routinely won a comparison with Dresden in 1945.

The bombardment was so massive that the closest we could get to the city was an hour outside. (It didn’t help that our military escort had tipped into a ditch, on a road known for snipers.) Not that the word city applied anymore. Half of the 470,000 residents had fled, and those that remained hid in rancid basements lit by candles.

There was no running water for bathing. Shattered cement piled on ghosts of streets.

So you can imagine my marvel when I returned to the Islamic republic a few months ago and found it unrecognizably thriving. It was a cinch to get

DIANA MARKOSIAN

SPECIAL TO RN

The view from a window on one of Grozny’s main streets.

to Grozny, which had graduated to the United Nation’s list of fastest growing cities. We drove past villages that were once coiled with razor wire and peopled by fear into a rebuilt town that was so pristine it had a theme park feel. I touched the creamy stone of new shops to

confirm they were real. A woman fresh from the gym — the gym! — showed off an Italian bag she had bought for only $200. Then she dashed off to meet someone to discuss whether to get Botox.

I counted at least seven salons on one promenade alone and

just as many boutiques selling Prada knockoffs. A huge mosque — Chechens claim it’s the largest in Europe — shimmered with Swarovski crystals and rare marble trucked in from Turkey. Statues of gilt lions guarded a major drag, as glassy skyscrapers caught the rays of sundown.

Two brutal campaigns to quash Islamic separatist uprisings in the 1990s killed anywhere from 63,000 to 370,000.

But today’s Grozny sparkles with a luxury hotel, expecting a different type of visitor than invading Russian troops, Indeed, global soccer legends including Argentine Diego Maradona, Portugal’s Luis Figo, and England’s Steve McManaman played at the inauguration of the A.A. Kadryov stadium last year. The $280 million investment, unthinkable during wartime, is being followed by the “Veduchi” ski resort. Costing about double that amount, the resort is due to open in two years in the Itum-Kalin slopes.

Most of the money comes from Moscow, with the logic that bankrolling development is more effective than force to quell restive spirits. The Kremlin’s strategy also includes backing strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, the son of Chechnya’s beloved spiritual leader Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in 2004.

Russian rubles have poured into Chechen reconstruction.

Some government statements indicate $1.5 billion worth, others $21 billion. The city’s sewage, water, electricity and heating systems have been repaired, along with 155 miles of roads, 13 bridges and some 900 shops.

This is all the more amazing considering that six years ago most Grozny residents lacked heat or running water.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has published another op-ed as part of his election campaign, this time explaining his platform for modernizing Russia’s military. The proposed military reforms involve increasing funding while maintaing current levels of personnel. Critics suggest that current demographic trends will make it even harder for the military to keep its current numbers. Putin also addressed the country’s controversial conscription policy.

Read the full article at www.rbth.ru/14884

RBTH Takes Top Russian Communications Prize Russia Beyond the Headlines, which publishes Russia Now in The Washington Post, was awarded the 15th annual Silver Archer prize in Moscow alongside anti-corruption journalist Olga Romanova and poet and novelist Dmitry Bykov.

RBTH was awarded the top prize in the “Communications in a Globalized World” category.

“Independent journalism in Russia facilitates our country’s communication with the rest of the world,” said publisher Eugene Abov. “After five years of work, I’m proud to say that our project has been recognized as a very visible component of advancing independent information about Russia in foreign media.”

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Internet Russia expected to become the largest e-commerce market in Europe by 2019

Sales Soar on the Internet Advertisers are preparing for explosive growth in Russia’s e-commerce market, which is expected to be the largest in Europe by 2019.

IN FIGURES

Online Advertising Expected to Increase Dramatically

16

BEN ARIS SPECIAL TO RN

Russian e-commerce companies are being at least partially financed by Fast Lane Ventures. The most famous is KupiVIP.ru.

Russia is poised to become the largest e-commerce market in Europe by 2019, if it maintains its current pace of growth. In September 2011, Russia overtook Germany as the European country with the most Internet users. There are now 50.8 million Russians online, and in a December 2011 poll half of Russian urbanites said that they used the Internet at least once a day.

The growth of Russia’s online audience combined with the country’s vast territory and underdeveloped retail sector makes it ideal for online shopping. Websites are the simplest and cheapest way for retailers based in Moscow to reach the far corners of the country.

Russia became the secondlargest e-commerce market in Europe in 2009. At that time, the online marketplace was reponsible for $19 billion in sales, according to Troika Dialog.

Since then, e-commerce has been growing by between 22 percent and 30 percent a year, and is expected to continue this pace in 2012. That year, Data Insight estimates the market will be worth$12.6 billion.

As in other sectors Russia will still have to work hard to overtake Germany, the European leader in e-commerce, which had $27.5 billion in sales in 2011, according to e-commercefacts.com, and continues to grow at 17 percent a year.

Industry investment will play a key role in achieving such high growth rates. Marina Treshchova, CEO of Fast Lane Ventures (FLV), one of Russia’s leading tech funds, said that the first round of venture capital (VC) money is arriving in Russia’s e-commerce sector, and that volumes invested into the industry last year were doubled from a year earlier.

But Russia is still an exotic destination for most venture capitalists.

“There are few big VC funds interested in Russia, but there is a ground swell of smaller VC based in Europe that is much more active,” said Treshchova.

But Fast Lane has already done several deals and has 16 Internet companies running or in development. The most successful is KupiVIP.ru which is already the largest online shop in Russia offering high-end goods to the emerging middle class. The company’s revenues grew to $120 million in only three years.

“We develop our own companies, but increasingly we are

SOURCE: AKAR, TROIKA ESTIMATES

also getting other people bringing us their companies. We give them seed capital to develop the business, then help them to raise more financing when they get a bit bigger,” Treshchova said.

One of her most recent deals raised $50 million from European venture funds for Heverest.ru, an online store offering

Internet ads should experience growth of more than 33 percent over the next few years.

outdoor and sports equipment.

The site targets hikers, climbers and those with a disposable income who are interested in a healthy lifestyle.

“The amount of money available from investors in Europe is limited, but the interest is definitely growing,” Treshchova said.

The most dynamic part of

the business is online advertising, where ad buys are growing faster than in the more traditional media. Analysts at Troika Dialog estimate the overall ad spend this year will remain flat compared to that in 2011. But within a year, they estimate that advertisers will enjoy double-digit growth.

Estimates suggest that Inter-

net ads should experience growth of more than 33 percent over the next few years.

This growth will come at the expense of television advertising, which will see growth slow to abour 16 percent, according to Troika Dialog. The next big thing will be advertising on mobile platforms. This market is just now starting to gather momentum.

“Although the level of penetration of mobile internet in Russia is currently low, at less than 10 percent, it is growing rapidly,” said David Ferguson, an analyst with Renaissance Capital, who added that all the major Russian firms are now rolling out new mobile applications and services to tap this new market.

INTERVIEW PAVEL DUROV

Russia’s Popular Social Network Follows Facebook Toward an IPO

I made the decision to donate, but there is a special procedure in which the donation has to be approved by the Wikipedia Board of Directors. They want to be certain that it’s not advertising.

Pavel Durov is the founder and co-owner of Russia’s leading social network VKontakte (“In Contact”). At the Digital-LifeDesign innovation conference in Munich, Durov sat down with Gazeta.ru.

What is the situation with the protection of personal data on the network?

We are in compliance with all laws on personal data protection. Social networks in Russia are in competition. If there are leaks, users will stop trusting us.

Have you negotiated with Google, Yandex, or any other Internet companies?

No. We are in no such talks currently, but we may sell a small stake, about 3 percent, before going public in order to increase our capitalization before an IPO. The social network VKontakte is on the U.S. administration’s list of the world’s biggest distributors of pirated products.

Do you plan to step up the fight against piracy and counterfeit products on VKontakte?

To start with, in order to call

Russia’s Facebook Connects

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Do you still have plans for an IPO in2012?Areyouintalkswithunderwriter banks?

We believe an IPO is possible in 2012 or 2013. I cannot go into more detail at this point.

something a pirated product you have to first prove it in court. We have established relationships with copyright holders, and we delete pirated products at their request. Moreover, Russian rights holders, such as Russia’s TNT Channel, may remove pirated content themselves.They can also use special intermediaries who monitor such content.

Is the VKontakte audience de-

Investors are keeping their eyes on VKontakte (VK), Russia’s largest social network.

VKontakte had 35 million users in 2011, with 33 million people logging on every day. VK is popular in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. Offering a striking similarity in design and functionality to its American rival Facebook, it has been described as a “Facebook clone.” One distinction

of VK is its integration with technology that allows users to share larger files. Pavel Durov launched VKontakte in 2006, just after his graduation from St Petersburg State University. Like Facebook, registration was initially by invitation only within university circles, but the site grew rapidly once it was opened to the public. Analysts advise Durov to hold off on an IPO.

clining in Russia because of Facebook? What is the audience of the Russian social network right now?

No, we don’t see Facebook as a competitor. Our key rival is the website Odnoklassniki. Our number of unique visitors has jumped by 35 percent over the past 6 months. We have 70 million active users per month.

The age of our audience is constantly changing. It is very important to attract new users,

and currently those are conservative people, 50-60 years old.

Russians Still Wary of Buying Stocks A class of investors has emerged in the past decade, yet they still represent less than 1 percent of the population.

VLADIMIR RUVINSKY

ILYA PITALEV/RIA NOVOSTI

RUSSIA NOW

Few Russians invest in the country’s leading RTS exchange.

Russians’ interest in investing has grown slowly. For years it remained the domain of brokers.

Russians’ interest in investing has grown slowly. Although the Russian stock market was established in 1992, for years it remained the exclusive domain of professional brokers.

One reason was the underdeveloped market itself, but additionally, according to Strebk o v, R u s s i a n s l a c k e d “elementary financial literacy

At two bond auctions in February, demand for Russian government bonds outstripped supply more than five-fold as traders in London and New York piled into the high-yielding 10-year Russian paper. “It was pretty spectacular demand, and the strange thing was that 70 to 80 percent of the bids came from foreign investors,” said a trader at Deutsche Bank, who preferred to remain anonymous. “I’ve never seen such high demand for [Ministry of Finance bonds] of this duration.” The auction raised 35 billion rubles, ($1.2 billion), more than twice as much as originally targeted. It was the first sale of Russian government bonds since a policy change opened up the local market to foreign investors without accounts or branches in the country. The new policy came into effect Jan. 1.

Gas Demand Increases

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Investment Volatility in the market has made independent investors cautious

Last year was not a lucky one for investors in the Russian stock market. Its major index, the RTS, fell 19 percent, and only 20 percent of listed funds reported profits. At the same time, the number of individual investors playing on the stock market independently increased 9.3 percent, according to RTS data.

Economist Denis Strebkov, an assistant professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, believes that the percentage of Russians who personally invest in the stock market does not exceed 1 percent of the population. In contrast, in the United States, approximately half of all households own shares in publicly traded stocks.

Treasuries Take Off at Auction

as an essential component of market economic culture.” Potential investors did not trust financial instruments, and the possibility of making money on the stock market made no sense; they only regarded securities as an alternative to bank deposits.

The mentality began to change in the mid-2000s as Russians became more prosperous and people increasingly saw investing in stocks as a way to manage their personal savings. Those wishing to play the stock market currently have two options — to invest in a collectively managed private mutual fund. which requires the equivalent of just a few hundred dollars, or to open an individual account with a stockbroker.

Prior to the 2008 economic crisis, unit funds secured their investors incomes that were two to 10 times the inflation and bank deposit rates. A yield of 30 percent was considered low, especially for companies

Why did you decide to donate $1 million to Wikipedia?

Information, for example, on Twitter, quickly becomes outdated. But Wikipedia keeps its information updated and it becomes even more relevant with time. Besides, it’s a free, altruistic product that holds great promise.

in the oil and gas, metals and banking sectors. The trend came to a halt in 2008 and again in 2011; Russian private investors lost up to 50 percent of their capital in unit funds.

As a result, interest in the stock market waned. The drop in stock prices worldwide combined with the high volatility of the Russian market, which is caused by dependence on fluctuating raw material prices, prompted investors to postpone active investment.

Trend towards independence But in the midst of crisis, a new group of semi-professional investors with access to online trading emerged. Futures on the RTS and MICEX indeces (the two merged in late 2011) became popular trading instruments with these private investors, who played the stock market independently. Short-term speculation using automated

In 2011, Russian investors lost up to 50 percent of their capital in unit funds. software enabled private players to increase their original investments several times over.

According to data from Investfunds.ru, in the first half of 2011, net investments in unit

How does VKontakte earn cash?

Fifty percent comes from contextual advertising, and 50 percent is from various games and gift services.

Russia’s lawenforcementagencies say that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency uses social networks as tools to influence Russia. In general, what is your attitude toward protest on social networks?

Technically, of course, anything is possible. We try to be neutral, refraining from supporting either the authorities or the opposition. As for me personally, I am indifferent to politics.

Prepared by Gazeta.ru

funds had tripled since the same period of 2010. In August 2011, however, the indices fell and earnings generated in the first six months depreciated.

Despite the overall increase in the number of private clients with brokerage accounts, their operations decreased in 2011, according to figures from RTS. The number of private investors conducting more than one transaction a month fell to 96,000 in 2011 from 104,000 in 2010.

Analysts state that for the relatively prosperous investor, the stock market is a good alternative to banks. Yet the Russian unit fund market is small. Vladimir Savvov, head of the analysis department at Otkrytie Bank, said: “The total net asset value of all Russian unit funds is less than 500 billion rubles [$16 billion], which is not much compared to the 10 trillion rubles [$332 billion] in bank deposits.”

The government’s strategy for promoting the Russian stock market for the period up to 2020 envisages an increase in the number of private investors to 20 million. The figure was dismissed by the Audit Chamber. “If the situation proves favorable, with no new waves of recession, we might reach 4 to 5 million, but by no means 20 million,” said Finam Investment Company President Vladislav Kochetkov.

Russian gas monopoly Gazprom has announced that Russia is in talks with France to construct a new pipeline to Europe. The negotiations began after Russia was forced to restrict gas supplies during a February cold snap, despite the inauguration of the Nord Stream pipeline in November 2011. “The parties have come to an agreement that it is necessary to build new direct gas transport capacities from Russia to Europe to meet the growing demand of European consumers for Russian natural gas,” Gazprom said in a statement. Gazprom supplies a quarter of Europe’s gas, and France is its third-largest consumer. The country received nearly 4 trillion cubic feet of Russian gas in 2011.

Russian Guns Headed to U.S. The Izhmash firearms plant has signed a new contract to supply smooth-bore semi-automatic 12-caliber magazine-fed Saiga 12 rifles to American police units. The contract was signed during the Shot Show, the largest shooting and outdoor trade show in the world, held in Las Vegas Jan. 17-20.

The deal capped a year of intense negotiations between Izhmash and U.S. police departments. The Russian small arms producer has been supplying arms to the U.S. market for some time, according to Izhmash General Director Maxim Kuzyuk, who described the U.S. market as “very large and promising.” About 40 percent of the small arms produced at the Izhmash factory today are sold in the United States.

GLOBAL RUSSIA BUSINESS CALENDAR 7TH ANNUAL INTOURMARKET INTERNATIONAL TRADE FAIR FOR TRAVEL & TOURISM MARCH 17-20, 2012 CROCUS EXPO, MOSCOW, RUSSIA

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Hope and Control in an Islamic Boomtown The mufti, or spiritual leader, explained the thinking that every man who works is unlikely to strap on a suicide vest. “We need to keep the youth busy so they don’t become terrorists,” said Sultan Mirzayev, nodding towards building cranes outside the window. Yet official unemployment at 50 percent leaves room for much discontent.

Much of the construction has arisen under Ramzan Kadryov, and in good dictator fashion, giant portraits of the red-bearded strongman smile across town. (To make clear who is really in charge, though, the central thoroughfare was renamed Putin Prospekt after the Russian premier.) Cult of personality comes with excesses, and Ramzan threw himself a lavish party last October for “Grozny Day” on his birthday that featured international stars Seal and Hilary Swank. Asked where the money came from, he famously told reporters: “Allah gives it to us.

I don’t know, it comes from somewhere.”

Making Up for Lost Time That display, and his private zoo of tigers, lie far from the reality of thousands of Chechens who lack proper housing. Among them is Bela Khadzimoralova, 51, a university administrator who spent much of the war living in a tent just outside Chechnya. She is finally building a new home.

“My kids’ dream was of a house with walls,” she said. “We lost many years. Now we need to make up time very fast.”

At least she has somewhere to live in the meantime. Human rights groups report an increasing number of evictions from temporary accommodation of other returnees who lost the rights to their property while seeking refuge outside Chechnya. Many lack documents to prove ownership of homes that were destroyed or occupied by others in their absence. Most of these unfortunates no longer maintain the “forced migrant” status that gave them the right to city support or housing. They are forced to seek shelter with relatives or leave the city altogether.

Russia’s Faustian pact entails ignoring abuses, such as forcing women to wear veils in public buildings and dragging young men from their homes for suspected terrorism. The men can be shot or disappear, according to human rights activists.

To visit Memorial, the lead-

ing rights organization, one has to make contact ahead of time and then wade through construction rubble to an unmarked door. There, to the cacophony of drills downstairs, activists ask not to be named, to avoid the fate of their comrade, Natalia Estemirova, who was abducted in 2009, executed and her body dumped in woodlands.

Still, Chechnya has registered a dramatic drop in violence. According to Caucasian Knot, last year there were 20 disappearances and 18 killings compared to 186 and 60 respectively in 2009, the year Russian declared the anti-terrorist campaign officially over and withdrew its troops. Islamic militancy simmers higher in neighboring Dagestan and Ingushetia. At the many checkpoints along the shared road, photos of suspected terrorists stare grimly from the walls as security forces brusquely search cars. “Out, out,” a policeman in camou-

A couple on a date at a local park in Grozny.

DIANA MARKOSIAN (3)

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Left: Women at one of many salons popping up in Grozny. Right: Zalina Utsaeva with her daughter, Zhalenia, now 4.

flage growled at a carload of young men of fighting age. In our taxi, we discretely adjusted head scarves and assumed neutral gazes in order to be waved on.

On the comfortable commercial flight back to Moscow, I couldn’t ignore the violence, what with a regional security operative sitting behind me who had been shot in the face

History of the Conflict Chechnya was originally brought into the Russian Empire in the late 19th century following a lengthy resistance during several wars of expansion in the Caucasus region.

During the last months of the Soviet Union, Chechnya declared national sovereignty under the leadership of Dzhokhar Dudayev. Following an unsuccessful attempt to restore federal control in 1991, Russian

President Boris Yeltsin sent the army in. A series of military operations took place throughout the 1990s and an insurgency continued into the middle of the decade. Akhmad Kadyrov was elected president. After his assassination in 2004, his son Ramzan succeeded him. President Dmitry Medvedev officially ended the counter-terrorism operation in 2009.

Putin’s elite nor those who believed in him.

INTERVIEW ILYA PONOMAREV

The Elite Distances Itself from Putin Russia Now spoke with Duma member Ilya Ponomarev, one of the figures behind the protests that have shaken the Russian capital since December.

The protest movement comprises many different groups: Communists, Liberals, Nationalists. Does it have a chance of success?

So far there have been no serious disputes, even though there have been some attempts to fuel conflicts.

But the movement has now split into a political part, the Citizens’ Movement, and a civil society part, the League of Voters. The representatives of the League, including prominent writers such as Lyudmila Ulitskaya and Boris Akunin, seem to be studiously avoiding association with politicians. Why? Russians have a very bad attitude towards politicians. They do not trust them. This is entirely justified by politicians’ behavior in the State Duma. No-

Do you believe that the participation of nationalists in the Citizens’ Movement is a problem?

It is a problem, but it is unavoidable. We have an important principle. Anyone who participates in the protests, be it in Moscow or other parts of the country, must be allowed to join the movement. For me, nationalists have always been opponents, but in this situation, we have been able to agree on a common goal: free and fair elections. Therefore, we have chosen a white ribbon as our symbol: It unites all colors.

Is it possible that the “Siloviki” — that is, members of the secret service, army and police, as well as civil servants, all of whom profit from the system — will fight against its dissolution?

It is possible to profit in two different ways. You can try to get even more, or you can try to safeguard what you have.

Currently, the elite tends more towards the latter. A good example is former Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who took part in the demonstration on Dec. 24. The elite distances itself from Putin and talks of compromises in order not to lose everything.

Does the rest of the country know about the demonstrations in the capital?

On Dec. 10, 7,000 people took to the streets in Novosibirsk.

You have been a member of the State Duma since 2007. Did you believe in the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev?

Yes, and I was badly disappointed. I considered myself part of Medvedev’s team. Of course, I thought it was possible that he would cede power to Putin.

But not so cynically, without resistance! By doing this, he not only destroyed all his work of the past four years, but also his reputation. Medvedev the politician no longer exists.

But isn’t he supposed to become prime minister?

This is impossible. Nobody wants to talk to him anymore– –neither the representatives of

ITAR-TASS

Mr. Ponomarev, are we witnessing the end of the Putin era?

This is obvious. Whether he is once again elected president depends on the work of the protest movement, on how well we coordinate our activities.

The country is already no longer the same.

body wants to be part of a movement led by politicians, even if they represent the opposition. That’s why I greatly appreciate the formation of a group of moral authorities.

These people have never taken part in political power games.

When this issue had been resolved, we were able to unite politicians. They are necessary, after all. Somebody has to formulate demands and write laws.

3

HIS STORY NATIONALITY: RUSSIAN AGE: 36 STUDIED: POLITICS

At the age of 16, Ilya Ponomarev founded his first company selling computers and software. He also worked as an IT expert for the Yukos Group, which was later dismantled by the government.

Since 2010, Ponomarev has been in charge of international cooperation and technology commercialization at the Skolkovo Foundation. Politically speaking, Ponomarev describes himself as leftist: A member of the Communist Party until 2006, he founded the Left Front in 2005. In 2007 he was elected to the State Duma as part of the Just Russia party. Ponomarev is one of the initiators of the protests against election fraud that began in December.

Are you afraid that the regime might lose its nerve and use force to end the protests?

There is a quotation from Lenin: “The worse, the better.” He meant that the defeats suffered by the tsarist army during World War I increased the chances for a revolution. What can a revolutionary dream of today? That Putin forcefully ends protests? This would lead to a fierce backlash. We are not interested in such a development, but if the regime chooses that path, it seals its own fate.

Has the regime reacted to your demands?

There have not been any significant concessions. Of course, after the second demonstration, the government said: “Okay, let’s re-introduce gubernatorial elections [which were abolished by presidential decree in 2005].

All parties will have the opportunity to register.” But our main demand is re-elections for the State Duma.

In your opinion, what should Putin do next?

He should say: ”I understand that there can be no objective elections under the current conditions. If all candidates are prepared to withdraw, I will do so myself.”

Then the elections should be postponed for six months, and the laws should be amended to allow for fair elections. But Putin is still a very popular politician, and I do not rule out the possibility that he will be elected president in fair elections.

Prepared by Moritz Gathmann

and was on the way to hospital for treatment, Gripping a bandage over his shattered jaw, the man moaned and groaned as the women around us turned up their iPods and sprayed Chanel to obscure his rotting smell.

Indeed, most Chechens want to forget the war, Zalina Utsaeva, 21, spent much of her childhood quivering in a dark cellar, she said, and she named her daughter, now 4, Zhalenia, which means “Happiness,” to mark the recovery of her city and life as well. Half of her monthly $160 salary goes to kindergarten, and Utsaeva wonders, “Who can afford cafes?”

Yet she has a job, as a nurse, unlike many of her friends who don’t. She floats around the apartment like a little girl danc-

ing the traditional Lezginka, her dark eyes sparkling. Utsaeva’s two room home was toasty with heat and rich with the aroma of meaty soup, unthinkable comforts during wartime. Bullet holes on the walls of buildings here at the edge of town had been plastered over. “Things are getting better,” she asserts with inspiring resiliency. “During the war and directly after we didn’t have anything to enjoy.”

Judith Matloff is the author of Home Girl and Fragments of a Forgotten War. Matloff teaches at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.and has won various accolades during her 30-year career. She was Moscow bureau chief for The Christian Science Monitor in the late 1990s.

Allegations of Fraud Spark Civil Action CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

“I am going to monitor the elections because I want to see for myself that at least one polling station in Russia will have no falsifications,” said Roman Medvedev, a second-year student at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).

Yury Korgunyuk of the Indem think tank said the swell of enthusiasm is of course a good sign, but he also questioned how much the monitors can actually affect the voting process.

“There are a lot of remote regions, hidden corners in Russia that are difficult to reach and monitor,” Korgunyuk said.

“They may be out of the reach of observers who can succeed only in big cities where you can easily monitor. We also should keep in mind that there are a lot of fake organizations supported by the government that create only the illusion of social action,” he continued.

Yevgeny Minchenko from the International Institute for Political Expertise said, “The more people participate in politics, the less falsification we’ll see,” adding that today in Russia there is a high level of competition among such watchdog projects, which encourages them to be professional and effective.

The increase in the number and activity of organizations

working to involve people in the political process is also encouraging ordinary Russians to be more politically aware.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t sign up as an observer for the parliamentary elections, but now I want to be enrolled as an observer,” said Kira Tverskaya, a journalism student at Moscow State University. “It’s very interesting to look at the presidential elections from the inside, keep track of probable violations and, thus, minimize the possibility of voting fraud. After all, it proved to be effective during the State Duma elections when observers filed a lot of complaints to the court even though it remains unclear whether they will get through it.”

Darya Petryagina, a graduate of the journalism department of Moscow State University, who served as an observer during the Dec. 4 State Duma elections, has a similar but more nuanced perspective. “I believe that one should go to the elections as an observer. People should know what happens in the polling stations during the vote count.

Even though they may fail to change the results of the elections, at least they will be able to witness the falsifications and tell their friends and relatives about this. And this does matter because it makes the election process more transparent and less manipulated.”

4

MOST READ Syria: Russia Must Look Out for Its Own Interests

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RUSSIA MUST SEE U.S. AS “A NORMAL COUNTRY”

THE THIRD ANGLE

PROJECTING ON SYRIA

Fyodor Lukyanov

Konstantin von Eggert

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NIYAZ KARIM

T

here has been an uptick in anti-American sentiment in the Russian blogosphere recently. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said that the failure of the Phobos-Grunt mission, far from the only Russian space mishap in recent years, could have been caused by emissions from an American radar station. The response was powerful — we knew they were to blame! This was not the cause, but try convincing antiAmerican Russians of that.

Washington should cherish Russian anti-Americanism, as Russia is probably the last important country in the world to sincerely believe in America’s omnipotence. Everyone else is talking about the end of the unipolar world, waning U.S. influence, and how the United States must restrain its ambition.

However, Russia is not interested in the facts. On the Russian Internet and in other public domains, Americans are behind everything. If Europe is in debt crisis, America is to blame for protecting the dollar from the euro, trying to destroy the rival currency. Rallies for honest elections in Russia are explained as a U.S. conspiracy to launch a color revolution and establish a loyal regime in Russia. Even abnormally hot weather in Moscow is blamed on the United States. Anti-American sentiment was particularly pronounced a year ago as the Arab Spring unfolded in the Middle East. About two-thirds of guests on Russian TV talk shows agreed that changes in the region were definitely engineered by Washington. Not all of them could explain why Washington was doing this, but you can always invent arguments to support your cause.

Anti-American sentiment is widespread in the world. It would be strange for a leading world power, assured of its own moral supremacy and willing to use force to protect its interests, not to encounter resentment and condemnation, even if it is simultaneously admired for its many and diverse achievements. Many of its critics willingly go to live, study and work in the United States.

Russia is not the most antiAmerican country. According

It would be strange for a world power assured of its own moral supremacy not to be condemned.

Demonization of America and a compulsion to rebuff every remark reflects Russia’s own phobia.

to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2009, more people have a favorable view of the United States in Russia (44 percent) than in Turkey (14 percent), Pakistan (16 percent), Jordan (25 percent), Egypt (27 percent) and Argentina (38 percent), even though these countries are either U.S. allies or close partners.

Anti-American sentiment in Russia is not particularly virulent either. It does not compare with the genuine, deepseated anti-Americanism of left-wing intellectuals in France.

Their renunciation of the American way of life and the American style of conduct is rooted in their belief that their culture is superior, whereas in Russia, anti-Americanism is rooted in an inferiority complex borne of its defeat in the Cold War. The end of the global confrontation essentially destroyed Russia’s international stature.

The United States gained al-

most everything that the Soviet Union lost. Russian public and political consciousness is still unable to process this, although the Soviet Union would have behaved in the same way if it had won.

The Russian attitude towards the United States is a complicated mixture. It is partly disbelief that a country can be guided by anything but mercantile considerations. There is also the messianic inertia: Both the Russians and the Americans have long believed in the special mission of their nation, although now it is hard to understand what is left of it. The internal trauma from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 is intertwined with a subconscious desire to be like the U.S. and a simultaneous realization of the impossibility of reaching this goal.

To be fair, American policy perplexes even supporters of the United States. The U.S.

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Baby, You’re No Good

shocks the world with its deep conviction that as “the beacon of freedom” it can sit in judgment of the rest of the world and make them do the right thing, even by force. Meanwhile, American policy is often dogmatic, not free of mistakes and certainly not morally beyond reproach. There is nothing beyond reproach in international relations, but in the case of the United States, the gap between words and deeds is sometimes shocking. Any criticism of U.S. policy in Russia is attributed to persistent antiAmericanism, although Washington gives sufficient grounds for justified criticism.

We should replace our antiAmericanism not with love for the U.S. (which sometimes develops into a bizarre form of worship in this country) but a calm, rational and detached attitude to the United States — an interesting, intricate and equally contradictory country — based on an understanding that the interests of two enormous and completely different countries cannot coincide. Strategic competition is a normal and natural thing. The United States is a powerful country that plays the leading role in the world (at least for the time being) and seeks dominance

over its partners. However Russia’s demonization of and morbid obsession with America, (as well as our compulsion to rebuff every remark by some aging senator stuck in the Cold War) merely reflect phobias and complexes rooted in Russian’s fractured political consciousness.

Several years ago, two American scholars, Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman, published an article about Russia entitled “A Normal Country” that caused an uproar. They set out to prove that for all the unique features of post-Soviet Russia, developments in Russia remain within the bounds of predictability and that it should be approached without illusions or fatalism. It is time for a Russian to write an article by the same name about the U.S.. It would help free us from our paranoia and unjustified expectations of the United States.

Fyodor Lukyanov is Editor-in-Chief of the Russia in Global Affairs journal. He is also a frequent commentator on international affairs and contributes to various media outlets in the United States, Europe and China, including the journals Social Research, EuropeAsia Studies and Columbia Journal of International Affairs.

Dmitry Trenin THE MOSCOW TIMES

ally improved during President Barack Obama’s “reset” in relations, while negative feelings peaked during disagreements between the U.S. and Russia over the Iraq and Georgian wars.

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hen Russians look at Iran, they see a country that has been their neighbor and rival forever. As the Russian empire advanced, it wrestled the North and South Caucasus from the Shah. Peter the Great annexed, briefly, Iran’s entire Caspian Sea coastline and put his forces just north of Tehran.

In the early 20th century, Russia and Britain divided Iran into zones of influence. The Russians got the north and proceeded to occupy Iran twice, during each of the world wars.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met with Josef Stalin in Tehran in 1943, they were protected by the Red Army.

Yet there was never much love lost between the two countries. To Iranians, Russia was too powerful and too threatening.

Russians, meanwhile, remembered their own embassy trauma at Iranian hands in 1829.

Every schoolchild knows the fate of Alexander Griboyedov, the tsar’s ambassador to Persia, who was murdered, along with his entire embassy staff, by an angry Tehran mob. Griboyedov was a great Russian author, many of whose lines Russian children and adults know by heart.

This brief background is vital to understanding where Russians are coming from as they approach Iran’s nuclear program and why they have adopted

NIYAZ KARIM

W Polls conducted over the last decade reveal that most Russians generally disapprove of the role the United States plays in global affairs. Positive attitudes were at a high following September 11th, and have gradu-

Moscow has to balance its support for Assad with its larger interests in the Arab world. change. This notion has been anathema to the Kremlin ever since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 and especially the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 are seen by Russia’s ruling class as examples of a subtle regime change by the United States, with the help of money channelled to Ukraine via NGOs like the National Endowment for Democracy. The recent wave of anti-government protests in Russia seems to have only strengthened the Kremlin’s conviction that the West is out to get everyone who does not toe its line. Moscow’s unconditional support for Bashar Assad, its impending falling out with the Americans and the Europeans over Iran and its newlyfound alliance with China look to me as signs not so much of foreign policy realignment, but of domestic considerations projected on events abroad.

Konstantin von Eggert is a commentator and host for Kommersant FM, Russia’s first 24-hour news radio station. He was a diplomatic correspondent for Russian daily Izvestia and later served as the editor-in-chief of the BBC Russian Service Moscow Bureau.

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ussia’s influence in the Middle East, or rather, what was left of the Soviet influence in the region, is fading away. Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria, Moscow’s last ally, finds itself in an increasing international isolation and fights for its life.

Having vetoed the United Nations Security Council resolution on Syria — proposed by Morocco and supported by the United States, the European Union and the Arab states — Russia has found itself at loggerheads. What is even more dramatic, Moscow is now de facto dangerously involved in the regional struggle between fundamentalist Iran and the Gulf monarchies over the fate of Syria, Tehran’s proxy in the Middle East since the early 1980s.

Economic considerations are most frequently cited as a reason for the Kremlin’s intransigence. Russia is set to lose what it claims are $20 billion of investments, up to $5 billion of arms deals and a naval station in the Mediterranean port of Tartus. Yet I find the purely economic reasoning insufficient.

The United States sunk tens of billions of dollars into Egypt, but in the end had to relinquish its support for Hosni Mubarak when it became clear that Mubarak’s position was untenable.

Moscow has to balance its support for Assad with its larger interests in the Arab world and the damage that could be done to its reputation. But the Russian attitude toward Syria remains firmly based on its experience last year over Libya and its desire never to let anything along the same lines happen again.

The Kremlin seems to believe that it was deceived by the West after the Russian delegation to the United Nations abstained from the vote on the UN Security Council resolution 1973.

Moscow’s reasoning is that the resolution was instrumental in letting the NATO-led force help the Libyan rebels oust Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Russia lost several billion dollars worth of contracts in Libya, because it refused to believe until the very end that Gaddafi was doomed from the moment the first Royal Air Force plane took off to enforce a no-fly zone over the now-defunct Jamahiriya.

A very senior Russian diplomat told me not long before Russia vetoed the Syrian resolution in the UN: “You have to understand! The Saudis and the Qataris are pouring arms into Syria to overthrow Assad!” He seemed to have conveniently forgotten Iran’s massive support for Assad and Moscow’s own casual admission that it was sending arms to the Syrian regime by sea, after Cyprus briefly detained a ship carrying nearly 60 tons of Russian ammunition and arms to Syria.

Its is probably true that the Gulf monarchies are supporting the Syrian rebels. But Moscow refuses to acknowledge that the routes of what increasingly looks like a civil war in Syria are purely domestic and lie in the inability of the Assad regime to adapt to new conditions.

Russia’s leaders appear obsessed with the threat of regime

Russia is often portrayed as Iran’s ally, which sounds strange to most Russians. such a stop-go approach to supporting international efforts to rein it in. Although Russia has backed limited sanctions at the United Nations, it has clashed with the United States and Europe over the much tougher sanctions they are now imposing unilaterally. It strongly opposes any use of military force.

Russians see their neighbor as a historical empire which now seeks to reassert itself as a regional power in the Greater Middle East. They see a young

and growing population already half the size of Russia’s and a proud nation determined to rise to its full potential. They see, too, ruthless fanatics driven by some weird interpretation of their religion.

Many Russians reason that if such a country wants to acquire nuclear weapons, it probably will. The only way to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons, the Russians believe, is for the international community to craft a deal under which Iran would agree to stop after achieving nuclear-weapons capability, while the world’s leading powers would agree to reintegrate Iran into the international community by dropping sanctions, unfreezing assets and admitting Iran into the World Trade Organization.

The Russians are not resigned

to the prospect of Iran getting nuclear weapons. Iran, after all, is a close neighbor, meaning that even its medium-range systems can reach deep into Russia. Diplomats from Moscow have been trying hard to nudge the Iranians toward some sort of a compromise with the world’s powers and have hoped to secure special benefits in exchange for Russia’s role as a mediator in the process.

Russia, as a result, is often portrayed as Iran’s ally. Yet the notion sounds strange to most Russians — and probably to most Iranians. True, Russia has been selling arms to the regime in Tehran, but Russian weapons dealers have learned to look at their trade purely as a profitmaking enterprise. As for Iran, it might prefer other partners to boost its military, but doesn’t have much choice.

Russia is also continuing its nuclear-energy cooperation with Iran. The Bushehr reactor, Iran’s first, has been completed at long last. The Russians see nuclear energy as one of the few fields in which they are globally competitive. They look at Iran as a promising market they would be loath to cede to rivals. Russian officials, however, imposed a condition: Iran had to return all spent fuel to Russia for processing, thus preventing its use in a nuclearweapons program.

Where the assessment in Moscow does differ from that in Washington is in the scale of the Iranian threat. Russians tend to be more conservative in their estimate of Iran’s progress on

their nuclear and missile programs.

For a number of years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Iran turned out to be a very useful partner for Russia, particularly by abstaining from expanding its revolution to the new Muslim states of the former Soviet Union and by refusing to condemn Russia’s war in Chechnya. This pragmatic side of Iranian politics has been overshadowed by the far less cheerful streak of rhetoric from the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Meanwhile, the supreme leader of Iran, the impervious Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the increasingly powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps, remain totally out of reach for officials in Moscow. Russians are watching warily as tensions around Iran continue to rise. Sanctions, they think, beyond those already authorized by the United Nations Security Council, would empower its ideologues. Russia believes that stringent sanctions imposed by the United States and its European allies won’t accomplish what the West wants — stopping the Iranian nuclear program or turning the Iranian people against their government. This means that unless diplomacy is given a last chance, the two things that concern Russian leaders the most — a U.S. war against Iran and an Iran armed with nuclear weapons — may become a reality soon.

Dmitry Trenin is the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and a foreign policy expert.

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Heritage Tracking the fall of statues sheds light on post-Soviet social change and upheaval

When Monuments to the Regime Fall The toppling of Soviet sculptures illustrated the irreversibility of the collapse of the Soviet Union. But what is replacing them?

PETER CHEREMUSHKIN SPECIAL TO RN

REUTERS/VOSTOCK-PHOTO

AP

Georgian soldiers walk near a broken statue of Vladimir Lenin near their base.

AP

When systems fall, so do statues. Among the first victims of the revolutionary changes that swept Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union after 1989 were the country’s monuments to the men and mission of communism. Images of a fallen Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the KGB, on the streets of Moscow in August 1991 illustrated the scale, and irreversibility, of the Soviet collapse.

This was emblematic of a process that had begun two years earlier in Eastern Europe with the wholesale toppling of the hammer and sickle and sundry Soviet leaders set in stone.

The broken sculptures on the ground are mourned most by their creators. Lev Kerbel was one of the last official sculptors of the Soviet system. Kerbel, who built the final homage to Lenin in Moscow, complained to me that the banishment of his sculptures to distant cemeteries deprived the public of major works of art.

In 2005, I accompanied a U.S. senator to Kerbel’s workshop.

He left with a few pieces to take back to his home in New Mexico.

In Russia, it is difficult to say what is replacing the old monuments except cathedrals to consumerism. In Poland, however, these former icons were replaced with newly sculpted monuments to late Pope John Paul II, a Pole who is credited with playing a decisive role in the fall of communism in that country.

Polish sculptor Marian Konieczny told me that today Poland has more monuments to the pope than it had to Josef Stalin in the early 1950s. “And that is good,” said Konieczny. “After all my friends and colleagues are able to make extra money.”

When in November 2011 I saw a photo of the unveiling ceremony for a monument to

Left: The Bronze Soldier, Estonia; Right: Fallen Soldiers of the Great Patriotic War, Georgia

An unveiling of a new monument to the Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera in the western Ukraine city of Lviv was condemned by those who continued to bridle at his cooperation with the Nazis. While Bandera was a victim of Communism, assassinated in Germany by the KGB, he was, to many, a terrorist and a collaborator. Local backers of the monument were forced to protect it around the clock. The dispute captured some of the political tension in the country, with former President Viktor Yushchenko celebrating Bandera while his successor, Viktor Yanukovich, stripped Bandera of the title “Hero of Ukraine.”

In 2010, Georgia announced that it would destroy the mon-

The Germans saw some historical and educational merit in preservation as public examination. former U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Warsaw, it was one more indication that a new history is ascendant, and new heroes have replaced the fallen ones.

But elsewhere things haven’t always gone so smoothly. In Estonia, the decision to remove a monument to the Soviet soldier, the Bronze Soldier, led to a wave of protests from the indigenous Russian-speaking community, and street riots in the capital of Tallinn.

ument to the Fallen Soldiers of the Great Patriotic War (19411945), which was created by the famous Georgian sculptor Merab Berdzinishvili. That denuding must be seen in the context of the Russian-Georgian war and continuing tensions between the two countries. Some officials in Moscow suggested moving every last stone of Berdzinishvili’s massive creation to Russia.

These ongoing battles over monuments are representative of larger struggles over values within and between societies.

Russia is still very much tied to the memory of the Great Patriotic War, known in the West as World War II, which the Kremlin employs as an emotional and unifying force. The government

of Georgia, on the other hand, has decided that even its own heroes in World War II are too closely identified with Russia to be tolerated. Stalin remains something of an exception to anti-Kremlin sentiment in Georgia, and his intact image in the city of Gori must have stopped a couple of invading Russian troops in their tracks in 2008.

The uproar over the removal of the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn was also an argument about history – the monument was depicted as a symbol of the Russian occupation after World War II not the expulsion of the Nazis by the Red Army.

And it became a flashpoint over two competing views of a war record — whether fighting with the Germans was a matter of shame or a necessary anti-Russian tactic, and whether the ordinary Soviet soldier could enjoy any honor in Estonia.

By contrast, in reunified Germany, not a single monument to Vladimir Lenin or Soviet soldiers was destroyed. The German authorities reached an agreement with their Soviet counterparts to protect monuments. And even without the agreement, there was no public demand that they be taken down.

The Germans, perhaps, saw some historical and educational merit in preservation. Indeed the similar aesthetics in the monuments of Soviet and Nazi sculptors is somewhat revealing of the common evils in the two systems. In Berlin, it is still possible to see a large monument to Lenin in the eastern part of the city and the statues “Decathlon Athlete” and “Winner” made by Arno Breker at the request of Adolf Hitler for the Olympic Games of 1936.

A new Holocaust memorial near Potsdamer Platz is part of the evolving narrative. Yet in Berlin’s cultural space, there is little conflict between deeply contradictory sculptures.

The erstwhile official Soviet sculptor Kerbel would relish the fact that last year, the city council in the central Russian city of Ufa voted to restore a monument to Lenin. And strangely, a year earlier, in the Polish town of Poronino, where Lenin spent some time before the 1917 Revolution, the authorities renovated a statue of the first Soviet leader that had been destroyed in 1989.

“It is the only way we could attract Russian tourists,” said the mayor of Poronino in explanation for the decision.

Literature Zakhar Prilepin, a former policeman, is one of Russia’s hottest novelists

SPECIAL TO RN

Zakhar Prilepin has experienced a meteoric rise, both as a literary phenomenon and an opposition figure. At 36, he is one of Russia’s most acclaimed authors, and his novel “Sin” was voted one of the most important books to come out of Russia in the past decade. Prilepin’s new work, “Vosmerka” or “8” is the most anticipated Russian book of 2012.

“Prilepin is the biggest event in today’s Russian literature; his language reminds us of Tolstoy,” said writer Tatyana Tolstaya, author of “Pushkin’s Children” and “Sleepwalker in a Fog,” and a grand-niece of Leo Tolstoy.

It is hard to imagine that 10 years ago Zakhar Prilepin was Yevgeny Prilepin, a poorly paid officer with the Special Police Unit known as OMON. Frustrated by his lot in life, the veteran of two wars in Chechnya had empty pockets. Bitter and angry over the excessive wealth he saw around him, he began to sympathize with the now-

Life as a Policeman Prilepin was the commander of an OMON unit from 1996 to 1999, and was deployed to Chechnya at times during the conflicts there.

The author recalled that his OMON salary of 830 rubles (now about $27) a week could not cover the expenses of his first baby. To help keep food on the table, Prilepin said he took random shifts that stopped trucks coming from the Northern Caucasus. “They never had proper transit documents. I let them pass and they gave me bananas, apples and sometimes

HIS STORY NATIONALITY: RUSSIAN AGE: 36 STUDIED: LANGUAGES

Zakhar Prilepin was born in 1975. He was drafted into the Russian Army in 1994 and was trained as a policeman. His work as an OMON (special police) commander from 1996 to 1999 gave him much material for his later writing. After graduating from college in 1999, he moved to Nizhny Novgorod, where he has been working a journalist and novelist for the past decade.

© VLADIMIR VYATKIN_RIA NOVOSTI

ANNA NEMTSOVA

banned National Bolshevik Party.

The daily pressure to find money and food for his growing family eventually pushed him to re-invent himself as a reporter and writer, starting with a small regional newspaper. “If only they paid us well in OMON, I would still be a police officer today,” Prilepin said.

Today Prilepin is the editor of the Nizhny Novgorod bureau of Russia’s investigative newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. He lives with his wife, Masha, and their four children in a remote village on the Kerzhenets River with two dogs and three cats.

50 ruble bills — I was not ashamed.”

In 1999, Prilepin also graduated from university, and one of his college friends suggested he apply for a job at a local newspaper. He did, and quickly rose to become the chief editor of the paper, Delo. At the same time he wrote his debut novel, “Pathologies,” which was awarded the National Bestseller prize.

“Pathologies,” portrays Yegor, an immature and frightened

OMON commander in Chechnya. “War does not make people any different, but it exaggerates the traits the person already had,” Prilepin said. “If you liked people, you are a humanist, if you had maniacal thoughts, you are a total maniac.” Prilepin said that while his books are not autobiographical, he relates to his protagonists: Sankya, a National Bolshevik revolution leader in “Sankya” and Zakhar, a bar bouncer in “Sin.” Other critics have compared

Prilepin to Tolstoy, and Prilepin acknowledges that Tolstoy is his idol: “Of course I am a typical follower. If only I could feel safe about the future of my family in Russia, I would have 12 children and never leave my village,” Prilepin said.

Last month, Prilepin stood with opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on Nizhny Novgorod’s Freedom Square, where Prilepin leads the National Bolshevik movement.

“I have been arrested over 150 times...my photograph is number one on the list for detentions of radical opposition activists.

Now OMON grab me, beat me in my stomach, drag me with my face on the ground.” What I love about [Prilepin] is that he never leaves the frontline,” said writer and fellow war veteran Arkady Babchenko, author of “One Soldier’s War.” “He is an active participant expressing his social and political protest both by his books, and physically on the streets.”

Acclaimed poet and novelist Dmitry Bykov said that for the past decade, Russians missed writers involved in the process of social change. And then Prilepin’s books appeared.

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Russia’s Presidential Elections Where will a newly elected administration take US-Russia relations?

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TITLE: “HE-LOVER OF DEATH,” “THE DIAMOND CHARIOT” AUTHOR: BORIS AKUNIN PUBLISHER: ORION BOOKS

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estselling novelist Boris Akunin, whose real name is Grigory Chkhartishvili, has been an authoritative supporter of the recent protests in Russia. Like the fictional detective he created, the author opposes wrongdoing wherever he perceives it. When his LiveJournal account was hacked recently by an obscene blogger, he told news agency RIA Novosti, “Every action causes a reaction; when you oppose somebody miserable and revolting, they react in a miserable and revolting fashion.”

Akunin, born in Georgia in 1956, has become one of Russia’s most successful writers. He is best known for a series of clever, tsarist-era thrillers that have become hugely popular both in Russia and abroad. The brilliant first novel appeared in 1998 and was published in English as “The Winter Queen” in 2004. These historical whodunits, featuring the understated detective work of diplomatturned-sleuth Erast Fandorin, have been a hit ever since, despite a few of the stories lapsing into a predictably formulaic pattern. English translations of the last two in the series,

“He-Lover of Death” and “The Diamond Chariot,” were released at the end of 2011.

The “he-lover” in question from “He-Lover of Death” could be any number of characters — from a bandit prince to a rags-to-riches underdog/hero.

The hero Senka’s adventures in the 19th-century slums of Khitrovka are part “Oliver Twist,” part “Treasure Island.” The discovery of a horde of antique silver bars leads to a transformation in the tradition of “Great Expectations.” This gruesome tale lapses into the familiar mixture intrigue with moral undertones. The protagonists discover criminal gangs and murders, but also come to see the world more clearly. Disguised as Jews, they encounter anti-Semitism; dressed as a girl, Senka learns about sexual harassment.

Set during the Russo-Japanese war, “The Diamond Chariot” involves bombs, spies and murder on the Trans-Siberian express. The novel really comes to life, though, when it takes the reader back to Fandorin’s early days as a young diplomat in Japan. Each chapter ends with a haiku summarizing the mood with poetic images such as “early plum rain” and “the scent of irises.” Akunin elegantly combines Russianness with Japanese exoticism. The narrative is writhing with concubines, opium addicts, gambling dens and haunted Shinto shrines. In this vivid setting, many mysteries are laid bare, among them the secret of the author’s pen-name.

Akunin, readers learn, is the Japanese word for villain.

EXPAT FILES

THE POWER OF TIME ZONES Jennifer Eremeeva

A Present-Day Tolstoy Chronicles the Brutal and the Everyday Zakhar Prilepin writes about the hardscrabble life he once knew, from the lives of underpaid policemen to that of local street punks.

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he plane from Budapest landed at Sheremetyevo with a thud. Heedless of pleas in three languages to wait until the plane reached the gate, everyone, including the flight attendants, pulled out phones and switched them on.

“What time is it?” I asked HRH, my “Handsome Russian Husband.”

“It’s 6,” said HRH, who never changes his watch from Moscow time, no matter where he is in the world.

In my iPhone’s “Date and Time Settings,” I slid the knob on “Set Automatically” to the right. The screen flickered, then showed 5 p.m. Defeated, I scrolled down to “Set Date & Time” and adjusted the time manually to 6 p.m.

“There’s a potent symbol of the Medvedev legacy,” I said to HRH, “He’s such an Apple junkie and yet every one of their devices, even the iPad, refuses to acknowledge current Moscow time.”

HRH shrugged and motioned me into his passport line, which always moves faster.

“Poor old Medevev,” I said to HRH in the car on the way home, “he’s going to end up one of those incredibly short chapters in Russian history like Feodor II or...who was that guy who came after Stalin?”

“Malenkov,” said HRH as he cut off a Honda in mid-lurch, thereby gaining four more inches of wiggle room.

“All anyone is going to re-

member about Medvedev is that the number of Russia’s time zones was reduced from 11 to 9.”

What Rasputin-style adviser, I wondered, convinced Medvedev to reduce the number of time zones, once a proud Soviet 16, down to a pathetic 9?

Who told him that he’d get a surge in his approval ratings?

“Listen,” said HRH, “reducing the number of time zones might make good business sense, but canceling daylight savings time has to have been part of the next guy’s election strategy. There is no upside for millions of children going to school in the pitch-black dark.”

In 2011, as part of the time shuffle, Russia “sprang forward” in March but did not “fall back” in October. Medvedev tweeted that the change would reduce Russians’ “stress and illness,” as well as bring them closer to Asia.

But many find the convenience of a conference call to Shanghai does not make up for the extra hour it now seems to take on the return from a weekend shopping trip to Europe.

On the news that night, The Frontrunner in the presidential election (Prime Minister Vladimir Putin) fielded complaints about the time change from a group of entrepreneurs. “I’m not opposed to a review,” he said.

“Timely,” said HRH, nodding in approval.

Jennifer Eremeeva is a a freelance writer and longtime resident of Moscow. She is the curator of the culinary blog, www.moscovore. com, and the humor blog www.russialite.com.

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Fashion Costume designer Alexandre Vassiliev becomes a celebrity IN FIGURES

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The Russian television show “Fashion Verdict” destroys the stereotype that all Russian women dress in shapely dresses, chinchilla jackets and SexIn-The-City heels. Thirty million viewers turn to state-owned Channel One every week to watch Russian fashion pundits interrogate busy working women about their clothing and appearance. The contestants selected for the show represent Russian women who don’t usually get a lot of play.

The popular co-host on the show, Alexandre Vassiliev, recently visited New York and Washington, D.C., for the first time in a decade. The trip was a respite from his new life as a TV celebrity in Moscow, where he has discovered that there is famous — and then there is really famous.

Vassiliev is a heralded costume designer, collector and author well known in Moscow and his second hometown, Paris, where he went into exile in the early 1980s. But these days he can’t walk down Moscow’s main streets without being lovingly accosted by fans.

“It’s an incredible fame in the two-and-a-half years since I stepped into this show. I have written about the history of fashion and designed more than 100 ballets, yet now it is difficult to walk on Tverskaya,” he said during an interview while visiting D.C., where he has no trouble walking down K Street.

“I am very pleased of course with the success.”

Vassiliev said he came on the show as a “minister of happi-

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items will be on the display.

Dresses, costumes, bags, hats and photos make up the exhibit.

HIS STORY

Alexandre Vassiliev from the prestigious Moscow Art Theater School (MKhAT).

He worked as the costume designer at the Moscow theater on Malaya Bronnaya.

In 1982 he immigrated to Paris where he began to work for French theaters. Vassiliev creates scenery for operas, theatrical performances, films and ballets. He is a lecturer and owner of perhaps the greatest private costume collections. His book, “Beauty in Exile,” has been translated into English.

NATIONALITY: RUSSIAN AGE: 53 STUDIED: STAGE DESIGN

Alexandre Vassiliev was born in 1958 in Moscow into a famous theatrical family. His father was a renowned scenic and costume designer and his mother was a dramatic actress. He created his first suits and scenery for a puppet theater when he was five years old. Vassiliev later graduated

Embracing Soviet Style The current Moscow exhibit, “Fashion Behind the Iron Curtain,” explores what is considered an oxymoron: Soviet style.

His vast collection is the backbone of the show, which also includes museum collections.

“We are showing the personal dresses, bags and hats of the biggest stars in the Soviet Union,” he said. The costumes once belonged to famous artists like prima ballerinas Galina Ulanova and Maya Plisetskaya, actresses Lyubov Orlova and Valentina Serova, and Lyudmila Gurchenko.

had a very controversial relationship with fashion, which was declared a hangover from the bourgeois past,” said Korotkikh, curator at the Tsaritsyno Museum in Moscow. “Today it is hard to imagine the lengths to which the icons of the time had to go to keep up the image of genuine stars.”

Vassiliev knows something of this era, and he has designed his much-photographed Paris apartment and Vilnius summer home in the manner of the exiled aristocrat, a fin-de-siecle tribute that honors the beauty

Vassiliev said he joined the TV show “Fashion Verdict” to help women find their own style.

“Some of the dresses are homemade and some of them are American made, others were smuggled through the black market or came back with sailors or artists on tour,” Vassiliev added.

Irina Korotkikh assembled the ongoing exhibition. “This era

and rituals of days gone by with bamboo furniture, sumptuous fabrics, overlong curtains and antique books. His mother, a lyrical beauty, was a Bolshoi actress.

His father was once president of the design guild.

“They actually liked what I did, and I managed to collect a great deal,” Vassiliev said.

In 1982, at the age of 23, Vassiliev married a young French woman and moved to Paris. He stayed in Paris and joined a circle of Russian émigrés and still considers Paris his home. He lives there when he is not doing his television show.

He has worked extensively as a designer for the French theater scene. Additionally, he has designed costumes for the Las Vegas Ballet, Ballet du Nord, Cincinnati Ballet and the National Ballet of Mexico. But much of his time is consumed by television. On a recent episode of “Fashion Verdict,” a young mother wearing ill-fitting jeans and a grey hoodie peered at Vassiliev doubtfully over her horn-rimmed glasses.

She spoke about her long days working for a film company on location on city streets, then running home and car-

© ALEXANDR MAKAROV_RIA NOVOSTI

NORA FITZGERALD

years of Soviet fashion is on display in Moscow. Vassiliev said he prepared for 25 years.

ITAR-TASS

ness.” Russia is more than 60 percent female, he said, adding that alcoholism and prison reduces the number of available men. He added that American women have an easier time finding a mate, since in the United States, there are more men than women.

“I want to make women happy,” he said.

Vassiliev was in town talking to Kennedy Center management about supporting an exhibit from his costume collection. Vassiliev hopes to bring about 50 Ballet Russe pieces for an exhibit slated to open in the center’s terrace exhibition room.

In his book, “Beauty in Exile: The Artists, Models and Nobility who Fled the Russian Revolution and Influenced the World of Fashion,” Vassiliev opens with the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.

In the book, he explains how the visionary’s dramatic sense of style, as well as his obsessions with Orientalism and antiquity, captivated audiences around the world.

Vassiliev bought his first costume when he was 16 years old. Now he has a collection of 10,000 dresses and costumes.

Vassiliev has collected 10,000 dresses and costumes and hopes to bring his Ballet Russe collection to the Kennedy Center in 2012.

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See a costume slideshow at rbth.ru/14905

Prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya is known for her style.

ing for her young child and husband in their small Moscow apartment. Just as the audience was beginning to feel her pain, her mood lightened and she walked away with a closet full of clothes that had the blessing of Evelina Khromtchenko, Vassiliev’s co-host and the indomitable edimatrix of fashion

magazines. The show ended on a dreams-can-come-true-itcan-happen-to-you kind of note.

“I want to help them be more sure of themselves, to be self confident,” Vassiliev said. “Then, if they don’t get a man, they can’t blame their clothes.”

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Recovering the Lost Art of Soviet Posters “Windows of the War: Soviet TASS posters at home and abroad, 1941-1945” at the Art Institute of Chicago drew phenomenal attention. Art historian Konstantin Akinsha discussed the exhibit with Russia Now.

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How were these TASS posters discovered?

Some time ago, a big roll of Soviet propaganda posters was found between two fake walls during renovations at the Art Institute of Chicago. No one knew who put them there, when or what for. The posters were all restored. The question arose what to do with them, so Peter Zegers, Rothman Family Research Curator, Department of Prints & Drawings, came up with an idea of a poster exhibition. He also put a lot of effort into making it happen; I would say it was mostly his work. We began the research, and as a result of our travels across America we found out that many institutions in the United States have such posters because in Soviet times there was a very wide distribution abroad, even by subscription. The only problem was, those posters mostly were printed on newsprint fibers, which were very thin, so the placards were literally falling apart. Many American institutions had them, but in very bad condition.

These Soviet wartime posters were found in the United States; they were hugely popular during World War II both at home and abroad.

The posters were used to encourage people to support the war effort and rally the fighting spirit of the troops, both in the Soviet Union and in the United States.

During World War II, some of the posters were printed in parts and eventually glued together. So when we arrived at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, we found many separate parts that were printed on a surprisingly thick and nice paper, which was very unusual. We were collecting them,

(MOMA) warehouses. The most intriguing part was that the U.S.S.R. did not have those posters, because many of the very first ones, from 1941, didn’t survive World War II. Most of them unfortunately were lost and destroyed, especially when Hitler’s army was near Moscow — everyone was in panic and of

piece by piece, like a puzzle.

How did these posters survive?

This batch was printed on thick paper especially for an exhibition at the San Francisco Soviet American Institute, as well as a similar batch that were found at the Museum of Modern Art

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tor we asked lent us what we wanted. So we did not have to contact Russia for this, which was good, because last year, all of a sudden, Russian rules on lending and transporting art pieces became very strict.

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course saving TASS posters was not at the top of their priorities.

Some of them still exist in Russia, but only as small black-andwhite photographs. So as we prepared for that exhibit, we made a few great and surprising discoveries: Every American art institution or private collec-

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What can you tell us about the history of these posters in the Soviet Union?

A few days after Germany declared war on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, a group of artists [and writers] came up with an initiative of making propaganda materials to raise the fighting spirit of the Soviet people [under the auspices of the TASS news agency]. They grew more and more popular — maybe not among those fighting for their country at the frontline, but among cultured urbanites. At some point the smaller, lithographic versions that were much easier to produce started spreading, and that was the main reason for their popularity. Some images became iconic and made it to postcards. In the meantime, the production technology became more complicated with more colors. The board of TASS wanted to improve and make films and cartoons. At that time, there were light boxes on the streets of Moscow, screening those posters and war photographs.

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How come Soviet propaganda posters became so well known outside the Soviet Union?

The second life of those posters and images began when all of a sudden they became a popular export item from the Soviet Union abroad. Some of them looked weird, some cute, some were very funny, so they caught a great amount of attention in foreign countries.

TASS posters were exported through different channels, including the Communist Party.

First they were sent to the United States, then to the United Kingdom, then to many other countries, from Latin American to China, from 1942. Countless exhibitions of Soviet anti-war posters were held in many countries one after another, including those at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at the MOMA and in some art institutions in Chicago. The posters were covered in the press a lot, and also translated and used, for instance, in the U.S., to raise the allies’ fighting spirit. But after the end of World War II everyone forgot about them.

Editor’s Note: The catalogue and book, “Windows on the War” is distributed by Yale University Press.

Prepared by Xenia Grubstein

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