RBTH for The Telegraph #10

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Tuesday, October 28, 2014

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MIKHAIL GORBACHEV: I AM AGAINST ALL WALLS As the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaches, the last president of the Soviet Union condemns the building of new political and physical barriers between East and West in an exclusive interview with RBTH and Rossiyskaya Gazeta

The short, brilliant life of the tragic Russian prince of poetry

Politics & Society Ukraine elections A fresh start, but is the drive for national unity mission impossible?

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Business & Finance Rouble trouble Falling currency helps exports, but hits Russian consumers

POLITICS

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What made it possible to finally overcome the division of Germany? In your opinion, who played the decisive role in its peaceful reunification?

The Germans themselves played the decisive role in uniting Germany. I am referring not only to their massive demonstrations in support of unity, but also to the fact that the Germans in both the East and the West proved in the post-war decades that they had learnt the lessons of the past and that they could be trusted.

I think the Soviet Union played a crucial role in ensuring that the reunification was peaceful, that the process did not lead to a dangerous international crisis. In the Soviet leadership, we knew that the Russians – that all the peoples of the Soviet Union – understood the Germans’ desire to live in unity and to have a democratic government.

I want to note that besides the USSR, the other participants in the process of definitively solving the German issue also demonstrated balance and responsibility. I am referring to the countries in

Putin’s Valdai speech reveals Russia’s view of the global world policy rbth.co.uk/40869

the anti-Hitler coalition – the US, the UK and France. It is no longer a secret that François Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher had major doubts regarding the speed of reunification; still, the war left a big impression. But when all the aspects of this process had been settled, they signed documents that spelt the end of the Cold War. It fell to you to decide the fateful problem of global development. The international settlement of the German question, which involved major world powers and other nations, served as an example of the great responsibility and high quality characterising the politicians of that generation. You demonstrated that this is possible if one is guided – as you defined it – by “a new way of thinking”.

German reunification was not an isolated event, but a part of the process of ending the Cold War. Perestroika and democratisation in our country paved the way for it. Without these processes, Europe would have been split and in a “frozen” state for decades longer. And I’m sure it would have been a degree of magnitude more difficult to get out of that state of affairs.

What is the new way of thinking? It is recognising there are global threats – and at the time, it was primarily the threat of a nuclear conflict, which can only be removed by joint efforts. That means we need to build relations anew, conduct a dialogue, seek paths to end the arms race. It means recognising freedom of choice for all peoples,while at the same time taking each others’ interests into account, building co-operation and establishing ties, to make conflict and war impossible in Europe.

These principles lie at the foundation of the Charter of Paris for a New Europe (1990) – a vital political document which was signed by all the European countries, the United States and Canada. As a result, its provisions needed to be developed and solidified, structures needed to be created, preventive mechanisms needed to be established, as did co-operation mechanisms. For example, there was a proposal to create a Security Council for Europe.

I don’t want to contrast that generation of leaders with the subsequent generation, but the fact remains a fact: it wasn’t done. And European development has been lopsided, which, it should be said, facilitated the weakening of Russia in the Nineties.

Russia is not fencing itself off from the outside world rbth.co.uk/40505

H I S TO R Y

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The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, but it didn’t happen until November 9. In the summer of that year, at a press conference following your negotiations in Bonn with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, you were asked: “And what about the wall?” You answered: “Nothing under the sun is eternal […] The wall can disappear as soon as the conditions that gave birth to it no longer exist.

I don’t see a big problem here.” How did you assume events would unfold back then?

In the summer of 1989, neither Helmut Kohl nor I anticipated, of course, that everything would happen so fast. We didn’t expect the wall to come down in November. We both admitted that later.

I don’t claim to be a prophet. This happens in history: it accelerates its progress. It punishes those who are late. But it has an even harsher punishment for those who try to stand in its way.

It would have been a big mistake to hold on to the Iron Curtain. That is why we didn’t put any pressure on the GDR government. When events started to develop at a speed that no one expected, the Soviet leadership unanimously – and I want to stress“unanimously”– decided not to interfere in the internal processes that were under way in the GDR, not to let our troops leave their garrisons under any circumstances. I am confident to this day that it was the right decision.

BUSINESS

LERMONTOV 200TH ANNIVERSARY

How capable are modern world leaders of solving modern problems in a peaceful manner? And how have approaches to finding answers to geopolitical challenges changed in the past 25 years?

Today, we need to admit that there is a crisis in European and global politics. One of the reasons, albeit not the only reason, is a lack of desire on the part of our western partners to take into account Russia’s point of view and legal interests in security.

They paid lip service to applauding Russia, especially during the Yeltsin years, but in deeds they didn’t consider it. I am referring primarily to Nato expansion, missile-defence plans, the west’s actions in regions of importance to Russia (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine). They literally said: “This is none of your business.”

As a result, an abscess formed and it burst. I would advise western leaders to thoroughly analyse all of this, instead of accusing Russia of everything. They should remember the Europe we managed to create at the beginning of the Nineties and what it has unfortunately turned into in recent years.

We need to build relations anew, conduct a dialogue and seek paths to end the arms race

Mystical emblem: The secrets of the hammer and sickle rbth.co.uk/38327

One of the key issues that has arisen in connection with the events in Ukraine is Nato expansion into the east. Do you get the feeling that your western partners lied to you when they were developing their future plans in Eastern Europe? Why didn’t you insist that the promises made to you – particularly American Secretary of State James Baker’s promise that Nato would not expand into the east – be legally encoded? To quote Mr Baker: “Nato will not move one inch further east.”

The topic of“Nato expansion”was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a single eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Contract was terminated in 1991.

Western leaders didn’t bring it up, either. Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that Nato’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces from the alliance would not be deployed on the territory of the then GDR after German reunification. Mr Baker’s statement was made in that context, mentioned in our question. Mr Kohl and [foreign minister Hans Dietrich] Genscher talked CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

The Game goes on: Russia, the USSR and Afghanistan, yesterday and today RBTH.CO.UK/40835

Politics & Society P2_Tuesday, October 28, 2014_www.rbth.co.uk_THIS SUPPLEMENT IS SPONSORED BY ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA

NEWS IN BRIEF

Gas pipeline scrapped The EU has scrapped plans for a major new natural gas pipeline between Russia and Britain. The pipeline – a branch of natural gas giant Gazprom’s Nord Stream project that connects Russian energy sources with Germany – will not get the go-ahead, despite a feasibility study completed in February proving it could work.

The conflict in Ukraine and EU sanctions against Russia “appears to be the project’s death knell,” The Times reported yesterday.

The project was now

Russian companies found Snowden internet prize

REUTERS

Media spotlight: President Petro Poroshenko talks to journalists on a visit to a polling station in Kiev on Sunday

Russian internet companies have founded the first mass communications prize, naming it after the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

“It is the first prize in the sphere of the internet media, which evaluates major achievements in modern media,” the announcement posted on the website of the radio station Ekho Moskvy says.

The organisers of the event are the noncommercial partnership Association of Electronic Communications (NP RAEK), the developer of internet projects Notamedia, and Ekho Moskvy.

Nominees include business and specialised electronic media and prominent media personalities.

DMITRY BABICH SPECIAL TO RBTH

The apparent success in Sunday’s Ukrainian elections of the People’s Front (PF), a coalition of radical supporters for a forceful solution to the problems of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, is a surprise. According to preliminary results announced on Monday, PF, headed by Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk and the speaker of the previous Rada (parliament), Olexsandr Turchynov, had a narrow lead with 21.6pc of the vote. President Petro Poroshenko’s own political force, Bloc Petro Poroshenko (BPP)was a close second with 21.5pc.

The other participants in the parliamentary race all won a share of influence, polling above the 5pc threshold for gaining parliamentary seats (Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchina, Oleh Lyashko’s Radical party, the opposition bloc headed by some representatives of the now defunct Yanukovych coalition), apart from the Communist Party and the Party of Regions.

The ultra-right Svoboda (which until 2004 was known as the Social-National party of Ukraine) is also floundering, having polled just below 5pc. A significant new winner is Samopomoch, the party of Andriy Sadovyy, the mayor of the west Ukrainian city of Lviv, which polled 11pc of votes cast.

“In general, the new Rada will be more nationalist and less disposed towards compromise with Russia, since Yatsenyuk is seen as a supporter of tough language in talks with Russia,” says Vladimir Fesenko, head of the Kievbased Penta centre for political analysis.

No votes in Donetsk or Lugansk The election results seem to reflect a new version of Ukraine, smaller, more nationalist. No elections were held in Ukraine’s most densely populated areas, the Russian-speaking Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which remain under the control of the anti-Kiev Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR). And in the parts of those regions in Ukrainian military hands, turnout was around 26pc of eligible voters. Both the DNR and the LNR refuse to recognise the elections and say that they will hold their own polls on November 2. In the other regions with predominant-

In general, the new Rada will be more nationalist and less disposed towards compromise with Russia

ly Russian-speaking populations (such as Odessa and Kharkiv) voter participation was not much higher. In Ukraine as a whole, the turnout was 51pc.

The new Rada will be recognised by all foreign countries, including Russia (both the Kremlin and the Russian ministry of foreign affairs have already publicly committed to recognising the results). But experts say that does not mean that the road towards a political solution of the problem of Ukrainian territorial integrity will be any easier with the new Rada.

“Now that the supporters of the hard line are not only in the government, but also in the Rada, it is very hard to imagine a peaceful way to a Ukraine united within its pre-February 2014 borders,” says Mikhail Pogrebinsky, the head of the Kiev-based Centre for Research on Policy and Conflict Situations.

“Neither Crimea nor Donbass, which are both predominantly Russian-speaking rebel areas, will voluntarily return to a unitary state, where they are not represented in the parliament. Even the opposition bloc, which is heavily critical of Poroshenko, is actually the president’s loyal opposition. There is no reference to federalisation in its programme.”

Indeed, the winners of Sunday’s vote, the parties headed by Poroshenko, Tymoshenko and Yatsenyuk, may be good partners for the European Union, but they have already alienated the population of Crimea and Donbass. Months of civil war and widespread delays in money transfers for wages and pensions in these areas mean that many people in Donetsk and Lugansk hold Ukrainian’s new leaders responsible for these misfortunes. These attitudes may explain why in the Ukrainian-held city of Mariupol, a Russian-speaking port in the Donbass region, the opposition bloc took more than 50pc of the votes.

A bad omen for Ukraine’s unity is that the Party of Regions (PR) and the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), long favourites among Donbass voters, were not represented in the poll in any meaningful way (their candidates were either not presented or failed to clear the 5pc threshold). Millions of people in Donbass and other regions were simply unable to cast a vote for their usual candidate.

In 2010, voters in these regions were strong enough to secureYanukovych victory overYulia Tymoshenko with 8.6 million votes and in 1999 almost six million Ukrainians voted for the Communist Party led by Petro Simonenko. Have

they all had a change of heart since Maidan?

It is doubtful, particularly since for many life in Ukraine has not improved since Yanukovych fled the country in February.

The reasons for the decision by PR and CPU to boycott the proceedings can be disputed: the“non-runners”themselves explain it by citing pressure from the authorities and “activist”nationalist groups, while the new rulers of Ukraine suspect both parties of collaborating with Russia (the pro-Maidan chairman of parliament, Olexandr Turchynov, even had the communist faction expelled from the Rada and pushed for the CPU to be banned).

Chronic conflict With the new Rada elected, the end of the old order – personified by former president Viktor Yanukovych, now living in exile in Russia – is complete. That does not mean a new beginning in the triangle of Kiev-EU-Moscow, where tensions reached their peak in the summer. “The political impossibility of a peaceful return to a ‘united Ukraine’ creates grounds for a chronic conflict between Russia and the EU,” Mr Pogrebinsky says.“German chancellor Angela Merkel sees conducting Kiev-approved elections in Donbass as a key condition for lifting EU sanctions against Russia. Ukraine’s internal conflict can now only be resolved outside the country.”

The virtual exclusion of Mr Yanukovych’s Party of Regions also does not bode well. A hastily created opposition bloc, which included some of PR’s leaders, got almost 10pc at Sunday’s elections, but experts doubt it will represent the east effectively under current conditions. Laws against the representatives of the “old regime” forced through the old previous parliament just before the elections, do not help.

“The new laws makeYanukovych’s draconian measures look relatively benign,” says Kost Bondarenko, head of the Kiev-based Foundation for Ukrainian Politics. “Maidan did not just bring to power the former opposition; it also ensured that any opposing political forces would be removed.”

The elections may have changed the political landscape of Ukraine but they have done little to resolve conflict. The Russian side considers it has taken steps towards the US and EU position by withdrawing its military from Ukraine’s borders and recognising the election result. Putin talks with Poroshenko. But a roadmap for a lasting resolution is yet to be found.

MULTIMEDIA

GETTY IMAGES/FOTOBANK

Nationalism emerges as the winner in Ukraine election Poll results Political landscape changes but conflict remains

shedding staff “as it becomes apparent that there is no chance of it proceeding soon,” the paper said.

Gazprom told RIA Novosti: “A feasibility study created a solid foundation for the project.”

RusEnergy partner Mikhail Krutikhin told RBTH that the project was mothballed a year ago, when the British side refused to pay its share of costs.

“The British side reckoned transport costs from the Yamil Peninsula would make the gas too expensive,” he said.

Berezovsky cash seized Scan this code to read more about the situation in Ukraine

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Swiss authorities have seized bank accounts belonging to the late businessman Boris Berezovsky, a source told Interfax.

“We are talking about accounts worth 21 million Swiss francs.

The accounts have been seized at the request of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office,” the source said.

The money is expected to be returned to Russia as compensation to people harmed

by Berezovsky’s actions,

the source added. The Moscow division of the Federal Court Bailiff Service is handling a class action in relation to Berezovsky’s debtors for a sum exceeding 3.2bn roubles. Claimants include Aeroflot, Russian Airlines and Samara regional government.

The Federal Court Bailiff Service said in April 2013 that it may take legal action to ensure that responsibility for Berezovsky’s debts is transferred to his legal heirs.

2014 Guidebook to Russian Foreign Policy offers you a look back at some of the defining moments in Russian foreign policy over the year as well as a look ahead to the new challenges facing Russia as it attempts to play a greater role on the world stage.

Download book today russia-direct.org/ebook

I am against all walls, says Gorbachev, 25 years on CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

about it. Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.

The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country, no additional troops would be deployed, no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. It has been obeyed all these years. So don’t portray Gorbachev and the then Soviet authorities as naive people who were wrapped around the West’s finger. If there was naivety, it was later, when the issue arose. Russia did not object at the beginning.

The decision for the US and its allies to expand Nato into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990. With regard to Germany, they were legally enshrined and are obeyed.

Ukraine and relations with Ukraine are a painful subject for every Russian. As someone who is

half Russian and half Ukrainian, you wrote in the afterword of your book After the Kremlin that you are deeply pained by what is going on in Ukraine. What do you consider the way out of the Ukraine crisis to be? How will Russia’s relations with Ukraine, Europe, and the US develop in the coming years in light of recent events?

Everything is more or less clear for the immediate future – we need to fulfil everything prescribed in the Minsk agreements from September 5 and 19 in its entirety. At the moment, the situation is very fragile. The ceasefire is constantly being violated. But in recent days there is an impression that the process has begun. A zone of disengagement is being created, heavy weaponry is being removed. Observers from the OSCE, including Russians, are arriving. If we can fix all this, it will be a huge achievement, but only a first step.

We need to recognise that relations between Russia and Ukraine have taken an enormous hit. We should not allow this to turn into the mutual alienation of our peoples. An enormous responsibility lies on the leaders – presidents Putin and Poroshenko. They need to show an

example. We need to reduce the intensity of emotions. We can figure out who is right and who is guilty later. Right now, the most important task is to establish a dialogue on specific issues. Life in the regions that have suffered most needs to normalise, and problems such as territorial status need to be set aside for now.

Ukraine, Russia, and the West could help with this, both separately and together.

Ukraine has a lot to do to ensure reconciliation in the country, to ensure that each person feels like a citizen whose rights and interests are safely guaranteed. This isn’t so much an issue of constitutional and legal guarantees as of the reality of everyday life.

So in addition to elections, I would recommend setting to work in a round-table format as soon as possible, where all of the regions and all layers of the population would be represented, and where any issues could be raised and discussed.

With respect to Russia’s relations with western Europe and the US: the first step is to abandon the logic of tit-for-tat accusations and sanctions. In my opinion, Russia has already taken that first step by

refraining from reciprocal measures after the latest round of western sanctions. The rest is up to our partners.

First and foremost, I think they need to cancel these so-called personal sanctions.

How can we conduct a dialogue if you are punishing the people who make the decisions and influence policy? We need to talk to each other. This is an axiom that they have forgotten completely in vain.

I am confident that points of contact will emerge as soon as dialogue resumes. Just look around – the world is tense, there are common challenges and a mass of problems that can only be solved with joint efforts. The disconnect between Russia and the European Union harms everyone and weakens Europe at a time when global competition is growing, when other “centres of gravity” in global politics are gaining strength.

We can’t give up. We can’t be drawn into a new Cold War. The common threats to our security have not disappeared. New, highly dangerous extremist movements, particularly the so-called Islamic State, have emerged in recent times. Problems such as the

environment, poverty, migration, and epidemics are getting worse. We can again find common ground in the face of common challenges. It won’t be easy, but there’s no other way.

Ukraine is planning to build a wall on the border with Russia. Why do you think it happened that our peoples, who have always been friendly and were even once part of the same state, suddenly fell out and now might be divided not only by a political, but also a physical wall?

The answer to that question is very simple: I am against all walls. Let’s hope that those who are planning such a “construction” come to their senses. I don’t think our peoples will fall out. We are too close in all respects.

There aren’t any insurmountable problems or differences between us. But a lot will depend on the intelligentsia and the media.

If they work to separate us, contrive to exacerbate our conflicts and quarrels, there will be trouble. The examples are well known. And so I urge the intelligentsia to act responsibly.

Prepared by Maxim Korshunov

Business & Finance THIS SUPPLEMENT IS SPONSORED BY ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA_www.rbth.co.uk_Tuesday, October 28, 2014_P3

Weak rouble: two sides of the coin Economy The falling currency helps exporters but means Russian consumers pay higher prices for food

does not. According to experts, about 30-40pc of the Russian consumer basket consists of imported goods (those produced abroad and those produced in Russia using foreign equipment).

“A 20pc devaluation of the rouble (in relation to the dollar) increases the cost of food by 30pc,”explains Mr Khestanov. Furthermore, the lower the level of income, the greater the proportion spent on food. Therefore, such a fall in the national currency hits those on low incomes the hardest. But Russia’s middle classes are also beginning to feel the impact of the rouble’s decline.

The Russian view: why is the rouble falling?

MARIA KARNAUKH, ALEXEI LOSSAN SPECIAL TO RBTH

Family budgets hit

Further weakening of the rouble: will it affect you?

ALYONA REPKINA

Another record fall in oil prices hits the Russian budget. The situation is ameliorated only by the fast-dropping value of the rouble, which is boosting export revenues. Experts believe that in the worst case the Russian currency could fall further.

Oil prices continue to drop. On October 16, Brent crude, on which the price of Russian Urals export oil depends, fell on international markets to below $83 a barrel. In the past three months, the price has fallen 24pc from $108.77 a barrel. It is the sharpest drop since the 2008 crisis, when oil prices shrunk to a record low of $38.40 a barrel. This time, according to professional estimates, the price could go as low as $80-$72 a barrel.

Mikhail Krutikhin, a partner at RusEnergy Consulting, believes that if the government lowers taxes on mineral extraction, oil companies will be able to make profits even with lower oil prices. Mr Krutikhin also doubts that oil prices will fall below $80.

Russian oil producers say that in the new market conditions, drilling may grind to a halt.

“We expected a reduction of oil extraction in Russia in 2016,” Leonid Fedun, vice-president of Lukoil, said in August. “But looking at our colleagues, we now think that it will happen even earlier, in 2015.” Mr Krutikhin estimates that in the next 10 years, Russian oil extraction will drop by between 15 and 20pc.

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An advantageous fall The devaluation of the rouble can partly compensate for the fall in oil prices. Since the beginning of the year, the rouble has dropped by 20pc against the dollar, and 11pc against the euro. According to Anton Siluanov, the Russian finance minister: “A one-dollar decline in oil prices results in a drop of 70bn roubles in revenue for the Russian budget, while a one rouble fall in the exchange rate adds a total of 180200 billion roubles.

“The weakening of the rouble is beneficial for the budget, since its main revenue source (52-55pc, depending on the estimate) is export,” says Sergei Khestanov, head of Alor Brokerage.

There is an increase in currency rescue, which improves exporters’ profitability and balances the budget. As a result, we see a surplus – budget revenues outweigh expenditures.”

Although the government benefits from the rouble’s devaluation, the population generally

FORECASTS

Positive “Oil prices will bounce back, as they did in 2012, and will return to the range of $95-120 a barrel,” says Alexander Baranov, deputy director of Pallada Asset Management. (In 2012 oil fell sharply from $100-130 a barrel to $90-100 and then returned to the range of $95-120). The rouble

Negative will return to the 35-38 mark against the dollar.

In the words of Sergei Khestanov of Alor Brokerage, if the sanctions are lifted, foreign debt payments will be reduced and turnover with countries that suspended relations with Russia will increase. This will result in a growth of 2-4pc in the economy.

120 dollars is a possible future price per barrel

35 roubles to the dollar is a possible future rate

“Oil prices will fall another $10 and sink below $75 a barrel, which will result in the devaluation of the rouble,” suggests Mr Baranov.

In this case, experts believe the budget would be short of 700bn roubles. To compensate, the rouble would need to be devalued by another 8-9pc, says Mr Baranov.

Another way to balance the budget would be to cut spending. According to Mr Khestanov, if oil prices fall further, there would be enough budget resources for another year and the government would have to reduce the number of government personnel, cut pensions and launch the “printing press”.

75 dollars is a possible future price per barrel

45 roubles to the dollar is a possible future rate

SLAVA PETRAKINA

Spoilt for choice: speciality beers on sale at the Moscow beer store Pilgrim. American-style brews have influenced the new generation of Russian beer makers

A lot of bottle: craft beer revolution is brewing Designer drinks A host of small companies have tasted success by producing a range of distinctive ales in a reaction against bland ‘industrial’ lagers JAMES ELLINGWORTH SPECIAL TO RBTH

Craft beer – is it a creative, flavoursome alternative to the bland beer produced by faceless corporations or the overpriced preserve of bearded hipsters?

Whatever reaction those two words prompt in your head, there’s one link you almost certainly don’t think of: Russia.

Yet exotic hops and citrusy pale ales have now spread from the experimental brewers of Colorado and the fashionable crowd in Brooklyn, all the way to Russia’s sprawling cities and snowy steppes.

Frosty relations between the Russian and US governments are not stopping inspiration from the United States reaching Russian brewers such as Nikita Filippov, one of a trio of friends behind AF Brew, a two-year-old startup producing fiercely hoppy India pale ales in St Petersburg.

“Originally it was just an extension of our beer-drinking and beer-travelling hobbies,”

he says, a reaction to the locally made “tasteless, industrial lagers” sold by Russian supermarkets – think Miller Lite with Cyrillic writing on the label.

“Our first slogan was: ‘We’re brewing beer that nobody brews, and if nobody likes it we are the ones who will enjoy it,” he says. “We seriously thought we would drink the first 500-litre batch of Ingria IPA if the idea failed.” Needless to say, that didn’t happen.

AF Brew – the initials stand for Anti-Factory – is now firmly established among the vanguard of Russian craft brewers.

St Petersburg, historically Russia’s window on Europe, saw the first signs of Russian craft brewing around a decade ago, but now young brewers around the country are setting up creative collaborations with foreign stars of craft brewing.

St Petersburg was Russia’s tsarist-era capital, but the industrial Urals city of Ekaterinburg became its antithesis when the revolution came – it was the city where the Russian royal family was shot dead. Now

solidly working-class Ekaterinburg is a craft beer centre, too. Local brewer Jaws, based near a Soviet-era nuclear power plant, has spent the past five years producing American-influenced beers with label designs drawn from Hawaiian surf culture.

Even the brewery’s name comes from a powerful wave off Maui.

Other up-and-coming Russian brewers include LaBEERint from the central city of Kaluga, and Martin, based in a village in southern Russia, whose innovative lagers were a big hit with foreign journalists at the Sochi Olympics.

Moscow remains a black hole for craft beer, despite being Russia’s largest city. It’s not clear why craft beer has yet to conquer the capital, but Moscow’s smattering of craft beer shops and its fashionable bars, such as downtown hipster den Entuziast, tend to stock bottles from St Petersburg and Ekaterinburg. Even there, things are changing. The bar at popular concert venue 16 Tons, modelled on an English pub, has a window offering drinkers a view of the fermentation tanks of its in-house brewery.

One thing brings all Russia’s craft brewers together: a revolutionary spirit. “We wanted our craft beer to be part of a lifestyle for creative and non-conformist young people in Russia – like it was with food, music, movies, clothes and gadgets,” Mr Filippov says.

“We took a lot from American craft brewing tradition, and we still lean towards American brewing style and innovations: beer styles, ingredients, label designs.

“At the same time we realise that we operate in Russia and the majority of our customers are Russians."

“The rising price of food is very significant for my family budget,” says Natalia Korshunova, a 43-year-old Moscow mother-of-one who works in the human resources department of a large company.“I don’t shop in supermarkets and have no idea about their prices, but in my street stores the cost of meat, diary products and fruit have jumped.”

Another Muscovite, journalist Alexei Nesterov, 34, is not worried about rising food prices and usually eats out. But he is concerned about the exchange rate because he plans to take a foreign holiday. “The falling rouble makes me think twice when I’m planning my road trip to Norway,” he says. “When I visited Europe two years ago, the euro was about 38 roubles, but today it’s 52. So, my journey will cost at least 20pc more.”

“The fall of the rouble has definitely hit me financially in the short term”, says Tobin Auber, 43, a St Petersburg-based British television executive. “I’d say my food bills have gone up by about 40pc. Like a lot of people in Russia, though, we’re generally geared up to expect bad things to happen to the rouble.”

So, is their worse to come? Experts have different views on how the relationship between the rouble and oil prices may develop.

According to Alexei Kozlov, senior analyst of UFC IC, supporting the rouble is only possible by increasing the attractiveness of the Russian economy for investors, thereby reducing the high level of capital flight. “The Russian economy overwhelmingly depends on the price of oil, growth rates and inflation. If these factors are stabilised, the depreciation of the Russian currency will also be stabilised,” he says.

Rouble inflation may even contribute to a gradual recovery in oil prices. On October 18, Bloomberg reported that oil prices had started to rise again on news that Iran was taking measures to prevent a further drop in prices.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are also planning to cut production at the Khafji field in the neutral zone between the two countries. As a result, the price for December Brent crude increased to $90.21 per barrel. On October 27, it moved back again to $85.74 a barrel.

What do Russians drink?

According to the Russian state statistics agency Rosstat, the hot drinks trade has 54.5pc of the market.

Beer has 31pc and wine 13.5pc. The research was carried out in July 2014.

The fruits of the revolution don’t come cheap, though. Once it has completed the almost 900-mile journey by road from Ekaterinburg to Moscow, a bottle of Jaws’ signature American Pale Ale costs 160 roubles (£2.35) in shops and 260 roubles (£3.90) or so in bars. That price difference has opened up a gap for Russia’s brewing establishment, which like the old guard in any revolution, is trying to exploit the trend.

St Petersburg’s vast Baltika company makes almost half of all beer sold in Russia, most of it the industrial lagers craft brewers despise. Now, however, even Baltika is discovering a bit of craft spirit.

In March, it launched two beers branded “Brewer’s Collection” – one a tasty, citrusflavored “California light”; the other a rather insipid “Viennese” lager. Retailing at around 65 roubles in supermarkets, they may not be craft, but they at least show a major brewer takes the new trend seriously.

Unlike Baltika’s typical mass-market lagers, the beers in the new “collection” sport labels that discuss hops, malt and fermentation. While many Russian beerdrinkers may not be able to afford experimental craft brews every day, they are increasingly aware of how good beer is made, and advertisers are targeting them.

If beer enthusiasts are now part of the Russian mainstream, where does that leave the revolutionaries?

Nikita Filippov has the answer.

“We must keep rolling 24/7 and keep coming out with new beers, crazy flavours, unusual ingredients, collaborations and events every day,” he says.

“And that's what we do.”

Year of Culture P4_Tuesday, October 28, 2014_www.rbth.co.uk_THIS SUPPLEMENT IS SPONSORED BY ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA

The short, brilliant life of the tragic prince of poetry Literature A man of reckless courage with a savage sense of humour, Mikhail Lermontov was a troubled genius who died in a duel at the age of 26 SPECIAL TO RBTH

Mikhail Lermontov, born 200 years ago, is one of Russia’s most charismatic and tragic Romantic poets, and one of the best-loved.Yet he died in 1841 at the age of 26, and from childhood was surrounded by controversy that has lasted long after his untimely death.

Earlier this year, the American-Russian Cultural Co-operation Foundation celebrates Lermontov’s bicentennial at the Library of Congress with an evening of culture in his honour.

The Pushkin effect Lermontov became famous overnight. As Russia was mourning its greatest poet Alexander Pushkin, like Lermontov killed in a duel, the 22-year-old cavalry officer wrote a bold and emotional poem, Death of a Poet. The work became an instant hit in St Petersburg, where it was copied by hand and passed on.

In the poem, Lermontov went on to assail society, in effect blaming Pushkin’s death on the authorities and the fashionable customs of the times. The official response was furious and swift: the freethinking poet was arrested and exiled to the Caucasus, where a seemingly never-ending war was in progress.

Lermontov was dispatched to Georgia and fell in love with the place. He returned from exile full of ideas and storylines, which fed most of his best-known works over the next couple of years.

Courage in Chechnya The young poet soon attracted the attention of the authorities once again: this time by taking part in a duel, which was banned in Russia at the time. An officer in the Russian Army, he was sent to the Caucasus again, this time to Chechnya, to help quell an uprising of the mountain tribes. Lermontov showed reckless courage, ruthlessness and even a kind of malice, on and off the battlefield – as those who had the misfortune to become the butt of his jokes found.

His mother had died when he was just two years old. Scholars say that she was desperately unhappy in her marriage; some even believe that her depression may have caused her premature death. Lermontov’s father was of Scottish origin and said to be directly descended from the medieval poet Thomas Learmonth, aka Thomas the Rhymer. He was a military man who was not rich but was popular with

‘Banned’ poem is published

women. After his wife’s death, he left Mikhail with his wealthy mother-in-law, knowing full well that he would not be able to give his boy a decent education. The grandmother doted on the young Lermontov, but that love could never quite heal the lasting wound that had been inflicted by the twin traumas of death and abandonment.

Life and soul of the party Lermontov was a very impressionable young man: he experienced his first love at the age of 10 and wrote his first serious poems at 13.

He believed that he had grown up too soon; his poems suggest as much, but in some respects he remained essentially a child throughout his brief life. As a cadet at cavalry school, he had a reputation as the life and soul of the party, forever coming up with pranks and jokes, not all of which were innocent.

Even when his studies were over, Lermontov’s toxic sense of fun remained. He once took revenge on a young woman who had rejected him by pretending he was in love with her again. He managed to win her heart, but then sent an anonymous letter to her parents, slandering himself, which led to them denouncing their affair. He was very pleased with himself and discussed it at length in letters to friends.

Moscow

Transcendent talent No matter how dubious his pranks and behaviour may have been, his talent for poetry was transcendent. Lermontov was gifted not only with words, but in music and art, too. He chose a military career out of convention. Besides, there was something attractive about hussars – so daring and dashing – all the more so since Lermontov was insecure about his looks.

During his second exile to the Caucasus in 1841, Lermontov fought a duel with a former friend, retired officer Nikolay Martynov, in Pyatigorsk. The real cause of the duel would become a source of heated debate for the next century and a half. Was there a woman involved (as one theory suggests)? Was it a provocation by the tsarist secret police, who wanted to destroy the poet because of his espousal of personal liberty? The latest theory is that the row was sparked by Lermontov’s constant teasing of Martynov.

Whatever the facts of the case, the duel took place, Lermontov was killed and Russia lost its most promising poet. But the influence of his poetry and prose is still felt today.

Lermontov was born early on October 3, 1814, in a house near Red Gate, then on the outskirts of Moscow, now only surviving in the name of a Metro station, in Russian Krasnye Vorota. The poet was almost immediately sent off to his grandmother’s estate, and he was 12 before he returned to the city.

Lermontov entered a boarding school for children of the nobility at Moscow University and two years later was enrolled at Moscow University.

ALYONA REPKINA

ALENA TVERITINA

Memorial in market town celebrates the Scottish connection

French and Swedish. The publication is illustrated with the works of Mikhail Vrubel from the Demon series and prints of a handwritten copy of the poem.

“Lermontov’s creative work is quite well-known in Europe today,” says Yury Fridstein, executive editor at Rudomino. He adds: “In Britain they know him as a Russian poet with Scottish roots.

In Poland and Germany they pay great attention to our literature – one should not forget that Lermontov ‘transferred’ the works of Heine and Goethe into Russian.

His creative work has a certain German element. Plus, Demon was first published in Germany.”

New edition A Lermontov work unpublished in his lifetime because of its ‘diabolism’ has been released – in 13 languages

French following

GEORGY MANAEV SPECIAL TO RBTH

Lermontov's poem Demon was first published in 1856 in Karlsruhe, Germany, with a print run of 28 copies intended primarily for members of the influential Russian Stolypin family, who were related to his mother. Perhaps following the family’s intervention, the poem was finally released in Russia in 1860. This was the classic version of Demon – the so-called sixth version, written at the end of 1838, which preserved the original ending rather than the censored one written for the Empress.

Today, Demon is recognised as a classic work. In honour of the poet’s 200th birthday, the Moscow-based Rudomino Book Centre under the All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature has produced a unique publication.

In addition to the original text, it also contains rhymed translations of the poem in 13 languages: English, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Greek, Spanish, Italian, Latvian, Macedonian, German, Polish, Slovenian,

Lermontov is also famous in France because an enormous amount of his poetry has been translated into French. The book has a separate section dedicated to French translations of Lermontov by the poet Marina Tsvetaeva. “There is a special attitude towards Lermontov in Macedonia, where he is much loved and valued, and the best of the Macedonian translations of Demon were used in our book,” Mr Fridstein added.

The story of how Lermontov’s work was translated into Spanish is an interesting one: it was carried out in the first half of the 20th century by Konstantin Brusilov, who fled Russia during the Civil War. He settled in Madrid in 1933, where he graduated from university and then taught Russian.

This is not the Rudomino Book Centre’s only publication honouring the poet’s anniversary. Earlier this year, a new version of Lermontov’s play Masquerade was released, as reworked by contemporary Russian realist artist Mikhail Fedorov.

“Future plans include a bilingual publication of Lermontov in Russian and Italian, which will be published with a foreword by Stefano Garzonio,” Mr Fridstein says.

Book translates the poem into 13 languages alongside the original Russian text.

Cultural ties International festival to mark writer’s 200th anniversary includes dedication of bronze bust, Lermontov tartan and concerts PHOEBE TAPLIN SPECIAL TO RBTH

Lermontov’s Scottish ancestors include George Learmonth, who settled in Russia.

Brian Wilton, director of the Scottish Tartans Authority, wrote that the Lermontov family typified “the adventurous, high-achieving Scots who left home in search of fame and fortune”. He said Learmonth was an early adventurer who left Fife in 1613 to fight for Tsar Mikhail Romanov and founded the famous Lermontov dynasty.

One of Learmonth’s oldest and most mysterious forebears was a 13th-century bard called Thomas the Rhymer, also known by the surname Learmonth. He came from the town of Earlston, then a hamlet known as Ercildune. According to ancient ballads, Thomas the Rhymer met the Queen of Elfland in the Eildon Hills and she gave him the gift of prophecy. Intriguingly, Lermontov, as well as inheriting poetic genes from his semi-legendary ancestor, also seemed to prophesy the Russian Revolution. One poem foretells a year when “the Russian crown

Lermontov's work is highly accessible to 21st-century audiences, including those in the West

shall fall”, and “the food of many shall be blood and death”. Representing the Russian Lermontovs, festival organiser Maria Koroleva hopes the new bronze bust unveiled in the Scottish market town of Earlston will eventually “rest upon a plinth of stone taken from the Eildon hills, thus Lermontov and his ancestor would meet.”

Ms Koroleva is a senior lecturer at Moscow State University and Russia’s only expert on Scottish Gaelic. Her “main partner and helper and family” in the project was Gwen Hardie, a Scottish Learmonth and chair of Earlston’s Friends of Thomas the Rhymer Group. Ms Hardie told RBTH: “Our group are delighted to have been involved in bringing the memorial of Mikhail Lermontov to the home of his ancestor.

Yearning to fly “Lermontov’s desire to ‘fly like a raven’ to the land of his forefathers was epitomised in his poem Yearning, and we feel that we have fulfilled, albeit symbolically, that desire,” says Ms Hardie, who composed her own poem for

5

MUST-READ WORKS BY LERMONTOV PRESS PHOTO

THE SAIL Written by an 18-yearold Lermontov, The Sail turned out to be his most-quoted and popular poem, which deploys a metaphor that compares a poet’s

restless soul to a stranded sailing ship where “wind is strong, the mast is creaking”, seeking not refuge, but a tempest, “as if in tempests there were peace”.

VOSTOCK-PHOTO

TASS

MASQUERADE Written in 1835, this verse play tells the story of a nobleman with a gambling habit, devoured by jealousy, who eventually murders his wife.

Lermontov dreamt of seeing the play produced, but like many aspects of his own life, where he clashed with authority, it was too passionate to pass the censor.

DEATH OF THE POET Written in 1837 in reaction to Alexander Pushkin’s death, this poem became famous among St Petersburg intellectuals and circulated by hand.

Labelled “freethinking” by the authorities, the work was given as the reason for Lermontov's first period of exile in the Caucasus. An illicit duel sent him there for a second period.

KINOPOISK.RU

A HERO OF OUR TIME Pechorin, the main character of A Hero of Our Time, Lermontov’s only novel, is the antihero of Russian dandyism. A handsome and cynical

fatalist, he bears a certain resemblance to the poet himself. This Byronic image of recklessness and rebellion and a nonlinear plot structure are its key features.

VOSTOCK-PHOTO

DEMON Lermontov began working on this poem, considered a real masterpiece of European Romanticism, when he was only 14, but it

wasn’t completed until his return from his first Caucasus exile in 1839.

Set in Georgia, the poem praises love as a living force of nature, which can transform even a demon.

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The Mariinsky dramatises difference with a wry look at the ‘two camps’

Lermontov’s short but brilliant career was connected with several places in Russia where the poet lived, studied and fought. He described these places in his work, and there is a story associated with each location

St Petersburg

Penza Opera Legendary St Petersburg company returns to UK with classic works contrasting Russian characters with western counterparts YAROSLAV TIMOFEEV SPECIAL TO RBTH

In St Petersburg, at the time the Russian capital, Lermontov enrolled in the School of Cavalry Junkers and Ensign of the Guard, which prepared young noblemen for the Imperial Guard regiments. Lermontov moved in the city’s literary circles, and it was here that A Hero of Our Time and his first collection – entitled Poems – were published during his lifetime. He spent his last winter, 1840-41, in the city.

Conductor Valery Gergiev is again bringing the illustrious Mariinsky Theatre troupe to Britain, which is rapidly becoming the company’s second home. From November 3-5, the Barbican Centre in London will stage two operas in concert format based on literary masterpieces by Pushkin and Leskov: Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, and Rodion Shchedrin’s Levsha (The LeftHander) – as well as the choral symphony Perezvony (Chimes) by Gavrilin.

In August, the troupe completed a threeweek ballet run in London and put on three opera performances at the Edinburgh Festival, while in November the opera troupe will present Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in Birmingham and Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a monastery in Cardiff.

Despite all this abundant supply, demand for Boris and Perezvony has been high.

“There are hardly any tickets left at the ticket offices,” the Barbican Centre’s representative Sabine Kindel told RBTH. Levsha is selling less well, and perhaps this is why the Barbican has organised pre-concert meetings with the opera’s author and his acclaimed spouse, the ballerina Maya Plisetskaya.

As a child, Lermontov spent about two years living with his grandmother, Elizaveta Arsenieva, in the city of Penza, 390 miles south-east of Moscow.

The Caucasus

The village of Tarkhany (now Lermontovo)

As a child, Lermontov lived in the village of Tarkhany, which belonged to his grandmother. He also spent time there in later years and composed his first poem,The Circassians, in the village. It now houses a museum that commemorates him each summer with readings by writers and artists that celebrate the great poet.

Lermontov travelled to the Caucasus for the first time as a child, when his grandmother took him to visit health spas – the young poet suffered from scrofula.

In 1837, after writing the poem Death of the Poet, which upset the imperial family, Lermontov was transferred to the Nizhny Novgorod Dragoon Regiment near Grozny.

His first stay in the Caucasus lasted just a few months and he did not take part in any fighting there. Instead, the poet travelled and explored the nature, customs and people of the region. Lermontov’s second trip to the Caucasus came when he was exiled there after his duel with Ernest de Barante, son of the French ambassador to Russia. In combat, the poet was distinguished by his courage, composure, and disregard for danger.

MULTIMEDIA

Two operas, two camps Boris Godunov will open the three-night run and the remaining two evenings will show that Mussorgsky’s traditions are still alive a century and a half hence, both in opera (for example in Mariinsky “court composer” Shchedrin’s fresh opus) and in choir works, (Gavrilin, who died in 1999, was born six years after Shchedrin).

Boris Godunov will be brought to London in its rarely performed first version, staged at the Mariinsky Theatre in 2012 by Graham Vick. Slimmer and devoid of romantic intrigues, it pays more attention to the sumptuous Russian bass: the parts of Tsar Boris and the monk Pimen are performed by Mikhail Kazakov and Mikhail Petrenko.

The continuity between Mussorgsky and Shchedrin is obvious. The latter borrowed the dramatic principle of “two camps” from the national theatre of the 19th century: Russians are presented in contrast to the western nations (in Boris Godunov the Poles; in Levsha the English), whereby the Russians predominantly sing and the foreigners mostly dance (in concert format, this will have to be imagined). Roughly speaking, the Russians act with the head, their foreign partners with their legs.

Patriotism did not stop Mussorgsky or Shchedrin from showing sympathy towards foreigners: their parts are written rather charmingly. But the Russian listener will sense something cold and otherly in them all the same. What will the English viewer sense, seeing themselves reflected in the mirror of a Russian opera?

“Leskov has a great story called Iron Will,” Shchedrin told RBTH. “In it, the Germans and Russians get it in equal doses. The Germans I’ve given this book to read have got angry at me and insisted that such Germans do not exist.”

But as Shchedrin pointed out, Leskov’s Russians are also portrayed as deceitful. “For all of this he really got it from all sides in his life,” said Shchedrin. “But he was right: All peoples have their strong and weak sides. So there is a reason each nation likes telling jokes about the inadequacies of others, especially those of their nearest neighbours.”

Levsha is the quintessence of the Russian mentality, which emerges even more clearly in comparison with that of the English, who

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Deep emotional intensity Mr Beavitt says people responded very positively to Lermontov’s “deep emotional intensity”. He also recalls a conversation about Lermontov’s novel A Hero of Our Time with a member of the Scottish Parliament, Jean Urquhart, proprietor of a bookshop in Ullapool, where “she always stocks a translation of this book”.

Until this year, Lermontov was mainly known in Scotland as a novelist, Mr Beavitt says. “My experience of translating and singing Lermontov shows, however, that his poetic voice is very strong and clear in translation; this means that his work is highly accessible to 21st-century audiences, including in the West.”

“Many people I met in Scotland are aware

3 FACTS

ABOUT THE POET’S LIFE

Lermontov’s parents had a disastrous home life; his father, Yuri, was unfaithful and reportedly assaulted his wife, Maria, during one of their many arguments. She became ill and eventually died as a result. Maria’s mother, Elizaveta Arsenyeva (born Stolypina), a wealthy and influential woman, cut all ties with Yuri and decided to raise her grandson herself, making sure the two had only limited contact

1

of Lermontov and his Scottish connection.

I even met one who named his son Michael after Lermontov,” says Ms Koroleva.

Lermontov is sometimes known as “the poet of the Caucasus”, and the mountains that inspired him there are reminiscent of the rugged Scottish Highlands. Co-editor Peter France wrote in his introduction to a new anthology, After Lermontov: Translations for the Bicentenary, that the poet’s “vision of Scotland was fed by literary sources – Ossian and Walter Scott – and this vision may in turn have influenced the way he saw… the Caucasus.”

The festival also included a conference in the southern Scottish town of Moffat. Among the assembled authors and academics was Evgeny Vodolazkin, a writer and cultural historian. His novel Laurus, about the life of a medieval saint, caused a stir recently in Russian literary circles. Conference organiser Alan Thomson says Mr Vodolazkin’s presentation was a programme highlight and that the recent trilingual anthology will “undoubtedly bring new readers to Lermontov”. Prominent Scottish poets and translators have produced “compelling” works and the “poems in Scots have a particular resonance”, he adds.”

Mr France hopes the new book will “give Lermontov a more prominent place in Scottish literary culture”.

This year’s festival faced numerous challenges, including revisions to the memorial. Ms Koroleva designed an official, mustard-coloured Lermontov 200 tartan but ran out of time to weave the actual fabric for this year’s events. “Gwen and I are planning to go on with the monument,” says Ms Koroleva, who has suggested another Lermontov festival next October to unveil a full statue. Ms Hardie added that she hoped Earlston’s memorial would “mark the beginning of future cultural links between the two countries”.

Although he had studied philology, when he left Moscow University Lermontov entered military service, enrolling in the Nicholas Cavalry School in St Petersburg, a closed institution that trained cavalrymen for the Russian Imperial Guard. In this school, cadets were not allowed to read fiction, so they secretly created a handwritten magazine where everyone could publish their mostly frivolous or erotic prose or poems.

2

Raised as an only child by his grandmother, Lermontov was spoilt – a trait that did not mix well with his sharp tongue and high level of education. He was forced to leave Moscow University after an altercation with a professor; during a philology exam, Lermontov answered that he knew more than the professor himself.

At Cavalry School he was put on a charge for bending rifle cleaning rods for a lark.

3

TASS

the occasion. She adds: “As a poet myself, I can relate to the passion and sentiments expressed. His solemnity and foresight at such a young age is unprecedented and, had he lived, his creative talent would have known no bounds.” Lermontov (literally, son of Learmonth) was already famous for his poetry when he died.

Lermontov was aware of his Scottish roots, and in the poem Yearning he imagines flying west to Scotland where, in Thomas Beavitt’s version: “On ancient walls ancestral shields hang/Above a broadsword rusty and lang.”

Mr Beavitt is a Scottish translator, singer and co-founder of the bicultural Sco-Rus organisation, which originally planned the festival. He resigned as a director earlier this year when the group faced funding problems, but he performed a bilingual, musical work called The Bard Is Not Dead! at concerts in Scotland and Russia as part of the celebrations.

“It is based on an adaptation of the medieval romance of Thomas the Rhymer,” he says, “together with translations of a selection of Lermontov’s poems.”

here are formal and cunning, valuing progress and money. Russians are talented and ill-adapted for life. Just as the English flea, artfully designed by Levsha, can no longer jump, Levsha is the same – attaining the peak of mastery, he dies of drunkenness, stifled by the bureaucracy surrounding him.

Shchedrin says that he has long been partial to England. He even personally corrected Anthony Phillips’s translation of Levsha – corrected “meticulously even though the extent of his knowledge of the language is very imperfect”. Shchedrin expressed his fondness for England in Princess Charlotte, a character he introduced himself. This role is sung by mezzo-soprano and State Duma deputy Maria Maksakova.

Theatrical controversy

Levsha is the quintessence of Russian mentality, which becomes even clearer in comparison with English attitudes

“The epoch of Princess Charlotte, who virtually ruled the kingdom in the time of George IV, corresponds to the time of Levsha. My heroine has many English characteristics: extreme tact, cordiality, and hospitality,” said Ms Maksakova.

“She is portrayed by the composer with great love, which must be pleasing for an English audience.”

On the third day, the choir under the Mariinsky’s Andrei Petrenko will perform Russian spiritual compositions and Gavrilin’s Perezvony, a popular opus in Russia that also explores the secrets of the national mentality, in which hopeless melancholy is inseparable from self-irony.

The visit by the Mariinsky is unlikely to be all plain sailing: the question of Gergiev’s ties to the Kremlin will inevitably be raised, ties which have already led to protests being staged against him.

“The Barbican believes in the right to free speech, and, as with any Barbican event, people are able to protest and make their views known. However, we respectfully ask that these protests happen outside the venue and anyone disturbing the concerts would be asked to leave for the benefit of other audience members,” the Barbican management told RBTH. Ms Maksakova said: “Yes, I am a politician and musician all in one, but I am an exception. Music and politics are usually completely different things. And when Gergiev is at the podium, and not at a press conference, he is one of those great directors, the number of which in the world can be counted on one hand. At this moment it is just not right to get in the way of people who have come to hear music.

“But, generally, I think that Russian artists do not need to involve themselves too deeply in Russian political processes.

A musician of the level of Gergiev is a goodwill ambassador and face of the state.

He should always have the opportunity to carry out a peace mission.”

A punishing schedule

Deep and meaningful: the Mariinsky Theatre production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, with bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin the title role

It is no exaggeration to say that Gergiev is a face of the state. The Mariinsky’s most recent history is one of the finest examples of the splendid flourishing of a major institution in modern Russia. A year ago, Gergiev’s 60th birthday saw the unveiling of the Second Stage, a hi-tech complex with a stage the size of a football field. Gergiev had already built another hall with good acoustics in 2006, and the Mariinsky now puts on an unthinkable number of performances and concerts. Last season alone there were 1,036.

From time to time this demanding schedule affects quality, especially if Gergiev is not in the theatre (an incredibly hardworking conductor, he is out on tour more than any other major conductor).

Perhaps things will ease up after a couple years, when the old stage, built in 1860, will close for restoration? But knowing Gergiev, such hopes are likely to be in vain. He is sure to still be involved in touring – in London and elsewhere.

Analysis P6_Tuesday, October 28, 2014_www.rbth.ru_THIS SUPPLEMENT IS SPONSORED BY ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA

ART OF DIPLOMACY

HOW WE LOST OUR DREAM OF A COMMON EUROPEAN HOME

Innovation can shape a future beyond oil and gas

Fyodor Lukyanov SPECIAL TO RBTH

It’s the morning of November 8, and I jump out of bed like a scalded cat when I realise I’ve overslept. Small wonder, since I’d been up late writing the text of my presentation for a conference on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tomorrow, editors of analytical journals from all over the world – from Lisbon to Reykjavik, Vladivostok to Busan – will gather at a newly opened complex on Potsdamer Platz with the slightly old-fashioned name of Common European Home. This“home” long ago became a common Eurasian one, but the builders decided to name the complex after Mikhail Gorbachev’s original idea.

I immediately head for the station keen not to miss the express from Moscow to Berlin.

Since this high-speed train route opened six years ago, I almost never fly to Europe. It’s better to spend six hours in a comfortable train that goes through Smolensk, Brest, and Warsaw and delivers me to Berlin Central Station than to trudge to the airport, wait, and from there leave the airport… Oh, what’s that sound?

Alexander Yakovenko AMBASSADOR

I

VOX POP

Creating new divisions

What RBTH readers think about hot topics. From facebook. com/russianow

IORSH

Suddenly I wake as the radio on my Chinese Lenovo alarm switches on. It was a dream. The gloomy morning resonates with the news. Shelling in Donetsk again, peaceful civilians killed.

David Cameron has threatened Russia with new sanctions. Nato exercises have begun in the Baltics… The Common European Home might remain in my dreams, but the real celebration of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, rather than emphasising the old world’s unity, stresses its division. What went wrong? Why has the dream of a Europe without dividing lines been lost?

The Berlin Wall symbolised the absurdity of ideological confrontation. With its destruction, it seemed any reasons for division were also erased. But it turns out that while there is a common understanding of this, everyone has a different view on the way out of conflict.

Gorbachev believed that “engineers” from the two former camps would design the Common European Home together, that they would build a structure in which everyone could live comfortably, because it would take everyone’s wishes into account. In this sense, Gorbachev probably unwittingly followed the logic of his great associate (at certain points) and antagonist (at other times) Andrei Sakharov in calling for the convergence of capitalism and socialism. In practice, however, convergence was substituted for absorption.

The West interpreted the collapse of the Soviet Union and the crash of the Soviet model as proof of its unconditional correctness – moral, historical, and economic. What was supposed to be a gradual, balanced convergence and the creation of a new quality turned into the carving up of the “Soviet legacy”. The method of building a Common European Home on west-

The West could not recognise Russia as an equal creator of the new Europe.

Nor did Russia agree to a subordinate role

ern patterns could have been realised only if that process had been shared with Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. That is where it fell apart: it was difficult to halt the destructive impulse released after the disintegration of the USSR. Russia and its parts would probably eventually have been digested by the European integration project in some form. But that didn’t happen, and Russia was an obstacle in the way of the victorious march of the Western project.The EU did not know any other way than to pursue the bilateral dissemination of its legal and regulatory field into neighbouring countries; it’s simply built that way.

A barrier further east The West could not recognise Russia as an equal co-creator of the new Europe. Nor did Russia agree to a subordinate role. As a result, instead of building a Common European Home, which would have become a Common Eurasian Home, the West began the process of enclosure. It expanded the structure the western Europeans built during the Cold War with the help of the US, then started to build auxiliary structures.

Sooner or later, this work was supposed to stretch to the neighbouring area, the wall of another building, which Russia undertook to restore and reconstruct as it recovered from the collapse of the early Nineties. And a moat has again appeared in Europe – a barrier further east than the one that divided the continent 25 years ago. But it is even deeper, because it is a division not so much in ideology

as in cultural and historical differences and mismatched mentalities. Was there a chance to build a Common European Home? If the Soviet Union had been preserved – not as a communist empire but as a reasonable commonwealth – Europe could have united on equitable principles. Integration could have stood on two pillars: Brussels and Moscow. And the fruit of convergence would have been a different structure in which energy supplies would never have caused crises and democracy would not have been accompanied by deindustrialisation, as in the Baltics. And of course, there would be no issue of the remilitarisation of central Europe and renewed threats to European security 25 years after the fall of the wall.

Perhaps this is utopian; it was already too late when the decision was made to create a Common European Home. The USSR had reached the point of no return, and its western opponents were not interested in agreements once they sensed victory. If that is the case, then the Europe that we lost can exist only in the minds of idealists, where it will remain forever, juxtaposed with the touching images of late autumn 1989, when thousands of Berliners were jubilant to see the wall come down and believed it would never come back.

Fyodor Lukyanov is chairman of the board of the Foreign and Defence Policy Council of the Russian Federation, an independent body that contributes to the development of Russian foreign policy.

A tale of different interpretations and missed opportunities

Andrey Sushentsov SPECIAL TO RBTH

The debate between Russia and the West about Nato’s expansion in Europe is currently the most pressing issue in any discussion of European security. Its roots lie in different interpretations of how the Cold War ended and its major consequences.

Russia believes that the Cold War concluded through the joint efforts of the USSR and the US in the late Eighties as the two superpowers were moving from confrontation to co-operation. The same view was prevalent in the West, too, until the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. As early as January 1992, US President George Bush declared in his State of the Union address: “By the grace of God, America won the Cold War.” It was seen in the West as the beginning of a brave new future, free from past agreements. The Soviet approach envisaged that both sides would jointly determine the future of areas where they had common interests, including European security. The main issue was the future of Nato, which had been established as a counterbalance to the USSR. In the late Eighties, the parties in talks on Germany’s future agreed that in return for the Soviet Union’s acceptance of the unification of Germany and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from its territory, that there would be no expansion of Nato. Talking to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker said: “We believe that consultations and discussions within the ‘two-plus-four’ mechanism should provide

Russia’s new leadership set aside Soviet demands on limiting the growth of Nato and even toyed with the idea of joining

guarantees that the unification of Germany will not lead to Nato’s eastward expansion.”

Nato member states undertook not to deploy the alliance’s military infrastructure in East Germany, which is honoured to this day.

Despite the fact that the USSR made clear its adamant opposition to Nato enlargement, no agreement limiting expansion was signed.

In 1989-90, the issue was not raised since the Warsaw Treaty Organisation was still in place and there was a hope for reaching a new status quo in Europe. However, from 1991 onwards, the USSR lost control over events in central and eastern Europe. “Velvet revolutions” and the subsequent dismantling of the Warsaw Pact created a situation in which the West was in no hurry to give any assurances to Moscow.

Matters were exacerbated by the attempted coup d’etat of August 1991 and the subsequent break-up of the Soviet Union. Russia’s new leadership set aside Soviet demands on limiting the growth of Nato and initially toyed with the idea of joining the alliance. Boris Yeltsin wrote in 1990: “In what appears to be almost a mockery of our four-and-a-bit years of perestroika, in a matter of days, the GDR, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria made such a leap from the past towards a normal, humane, civilised society that it is no longer clear if we shall ever be able to catch up with them.”These words explain Russia’s tolerant approach to former Warsaw Pact countries’ aspiration to join Nato.

For their part, Nato members put forward a programme of turning the bloc into a universal security organisation. In this context, Russia stopped being perceived as an equal partner and became just another European country with which the alliance would develop relations on its own terms.

These trends entrenched imbalances in

European security, which, from the midNineties, became the subject of fundamental differences between Russia and Nato.

Opportunities were missed. A system of omissions and reticence resulted in a complete breakdown of understanding. It became habitual to believe Moscow was moving towards the West and therefore the West could not harm Russia with its unilateral actions. This approach was not designed to ignore Moscow’s interests, but it did. Policies were not revised even after the first serious disagreements between Russia and Nato over the Balkan conflicts.

The West’s response to Russia’s appeals to agree European security steps, such as Nato expansion or the deployment of US missile defence in Europe, was: “We are no longer enemies; do what you please.”Washington and Brussels were unconcerned by Russia’s steps to strengthen its security because they did not believe Moscow was a viable threat.

It is this divergence of interests that prompted Russia to reassess its priorities in relations with the West. Plans for the establishment of an equal world order remained unfulfilled. The US and Nato on numerous occasions (together and unilaterally) used force in conflicts, bypassing international law in Russia’s view.

Russia’s independent foreign policy aimed at protecting its own interests was met with increasing criticism in the West.

The Ukrainian crisis became the last and most significant consequence of this breakdown. In order to prevent future conflicts in Europe, it now essential that Russia and the West agree new rules of engagement in Europe and beyond.

Andrey Sushentsov is an associate professor at MGIMO-University (Moscow) and a research fellow with theValdai Club.

Wayne Mallinson on the Russian submarine allegedly found in Swedish waters Russia just keeps losing friends because of its militaristic ambitions.

Once again we’re going to hear pathetic excuses like: ‘There was never any sub.’ Or, ‘It was a US sub.’

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Yulia Wright on the food embargo: Russia is not losing any food sources.

The fact that it is banning US and EU foods doesn’t mean it is not going to import foods. Brazil and Turkey are happy to get access to the Russian market, and don’t forget good old Cuba with its sugar.

The US doesn’t understand that the world does not revolve around it.

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Dean Hooley on the relationships between Russia and the West Since the fall of communism, Russia has extended the hand of friendship towards the West and done plenty to build relationships with previously unfriendly countries. What has Russia had back in return?

''

nnovation is at the forefront of national development strategies, for the most part relying on the most important resource: human capital. Russia is not standing on the sidelines of this trend, as it has all the conditions needed for another innovation breakthrough.

Russia’s greatest asset is its high level of education: knowledge has always been highly prized. The great Russian literature of the 19th century was a product of Peter the Great’s modernisation. As the Londoner Alexander Herzen said, Russia responded to Peter the Great’s challenge with the genius of Pushkin. The development of the sciences was another part of that response: important breakthroughs included Mendeleev’s periodic table, the first laser (in the Fifties), the Sputnik moment, and leadership in space exploration and nuclear energy.

This was made possible by serious classical education, which was preserved in the Soviet era – education that intellectually challenged students from their first years at school. The basic sciences were given a high priority, though bipolar rivalry served as a stimulus during the Cold War. Now, in very different geopolitical conditions, this potential must be tapped to meet the needs of social development.

It holds the key to changing the nature of economic development and overcoming the consequences of the global financial crisis.

As President Putin put it, the key task of our economic policy is to steer the Russian economy on to the path of innovation. In order to address comprehensively all the challenges, we need to create a socially orientated development model in which the main economic growth factors are not the traditional industries in the fuel and energy complex, but rather expanded investment and support for innovation in the science-intensive and hi-tech sectors.

And this process is already under way.

This goal can be accomplished only through close collaboration with the main players in the global innovation process.

Work has been launched in a bilateral format with working groups on innovation and technology with Austria, the Netherlands, the US and France. Moscow’s annual international forum Open Innovations, the chief aim of which is to forecast technological trends and determine the role of the innovation environment in global processes, is gaining momentum.

This year the forum was on October 14-16, with China as main partner and joint organiser. The key theme was Creative Disruption: Staying Competitive in the 21st Century. The Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, listed the priorities for international co-operation in innovative development, including creating infrastructure to support innovation, raising the innovative potential of the largest Russian state-owned companies, and the need to concentrate the resources of the government, science and business.

The forum participants also discussed a host of problems associated with closing the technological gap between countries, as well as the challenge of converging technology and knowledge into a range of breakthrough solutions at the interface of science, healthcare, education, and hi-tech.

According to the science and business magazine MIT Technology Review, Russia is already investing more than the US and the UK in nanotech structures. This will soon be one of Russia’s competitive advantages, especially given its traditional strengths in chemistry, physics, and mathematics. This will determine the face of Russia as a partner in international innovative development as early as within a few years.

Keep in touch with the Russian Embassy in London: www.twitter.com/Amb_Yakovenko www.twitter.com/RussianEmbassy www.twitter.com/RussianEmbassyR (Russian version) www.facebook.com/RussianEmbassy www.youtube.com/RussianEmbassy www.slideshare.net/rusemblon www.flickr.com/photos/rusembassylondon russianembassy.livejournal.com

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A river runs through it: clockwise from top, Church of St Dmitry on the Blood, Uglich; a cruise ship passes the Yaroslavl shoreline; Rodina-Mat’ zovyot! (‘Motherland calls’) monument on Mamayev Kurgan, Volgograd; the flooded Kalyazin Bell Tower

River journey Twenty nationalities, hundreds of towns and cities and a thousand-year-old culture await along Russia’s national river ILYA DASHKOVSKY, DARYA GONZALES SPECIAL TO RBTH

TheVolga is one of the largest rivers in the world and the longest river in Europe. It is so long that its source and mouth are located in areas that have completely different seasons. Its source is in the Valdai Hills – at the same latitude as Denmark and the North Sea – and its mouth lies at the latitude of Lake Como in Italy. When the lotus blooms in the Volga Delta in late July, the residents of Volgoverkhovye, a village near the source of the river, are just beginning to enjoy the first days of summer.

Monasteries sinking in the black waves of taiga forests, fishing villages with wooden houses, towering concrete dams of water power plants; the Volga is silvery Valdai bluebells, Astrakhan watermelons and the endless steppe with its sheep and their herders. The Volga is Russia: infinite, boundless, calm and stormy, with thousands of faces reflected in its waters, filled with refractions of history. So revered is this watercourse, it is often referred to as Volga-Matushka (Mother Volga) in Russian literature and folklore.

Volga boatmen

Ancient and generous The ancient Romans called theVolga“Ra,”which meant“generous”.The Mari referred to it as“Yul” or “the road”. The Baltic tribes that used to live in the Upper Volga regions used the word“Ilga”, meaning “long”,and the Arab chronicles of the ninth century referred to it as “Atil”,or the“river of rivers”. The ancient Slavs first mentioned the Volga in the Primary Chronicle – the oldest historical compilation that has survived to the present day.

There are 22 Orthodox monasteries on the Volga. The capital city of Muslim Tatarstan, Kazan, home to more than one million people, lies on its banks. In the middle of the 16th century, Kazan, the capital of the Khanate, was an unassailable fortress. Ivan IV (the Terrible) ordered a wooden fortress to be built at the confluence of the Volga and Sviyaga rivers and, as Sviyazhsk, it became a military base during the siege of Kazan. Partly flooded in 1957 when the Kuybyshev Reservoir was built, the historic city

centre was saved only because the fortress was originally built at a strategic height. Thus, Sviyazhsk became an island.

The Volga witnessed the rebellions of Yemelyan Pugachev and Stenka Razin in the 17th and 18th centuries. Following the connection of the basins of the Volga and Neva rivers in the 19th century, 300,000 barge haulers worked the river. They towed barges upstream in spring and fall, during the flood seasons.

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Despite the prohibition of manual barge hauling by the People’s Commissariat of Transportation in 1929,Volga boatmen continued working up to the Second World War. Hydroelectic power plants on the river provided power to factories throughout the European part of the Soviet Union during the conflict. There are four cities with more than one million residents on the Volga: Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Samara and Volgograd. In all, there are more than 300 settlements on the Volga, peopled by 20 nationalities, from Finno-Ugric speakers to southern nomads. The Astrakhan steppes that flank the river are considered fragments of the Great Steppe, which once stretched throughout Eurasia, from the Pamir Mountains to the Danube Delta.The descendants of ancient nomadic tribes – Cossacks, Tatars, Nogai and Turkmens – still live in the Astrakhan steppe.

The endless plains with 10,000-strong flocks and sand dunes; the weather that changes every hour; the ground that is covered in camel thorn and swept by wind that causes sandstorms; all are symbols of freedom for nomadic peoples.

The capital of the Golden Horde, Sarai Batu, also stood on the Volga. A few centuries later, the site became home to the Kapustin Yar test range, where space satellites were launched and the Soviet army held exercises.

Around 620 miles to the north of the test range, near the source of the Volga, stands Volsk, which became one of the centres of the Russian Old Believers back in 1780. The villages of Old Believers alternate with fishing villages, and Muslim towns stand next to whitestone Orthodox monasteries that perch on high river banks.

Two famous salt lakes, Elton and Baskunchak, are in the southern Volga region. Lake Elton is the largest mineral lake in Europe. Lying 50ft below sea level, it is just 2-3in deep in summer and up to 5ft deep in spring. Lake Baskun-

A tourist’s guide to Volga cities

Peculiar salt lakes Some of these salt lakes are pale pink or orange and peculiar not only because of their colour, but also because of their odour: the salt smells faintly of raspberries or violets. The salt produced at these lakes – up to 100 poods (roughly 3,520lb) annually – was thought to be of the finest quality and delivered exclusively to Empress Catherine II. Scientists attribute these properties to the abundance of red brine crustaceans in the lakes. They eventually dissolve in the salty water, thus lending the salt its colour and aroma.

The Volga is enjoying a new lease of life as a tourist destination, the flamingos which feast on these salt-lake crustaceans being one of the many highlights. Cruise ships ply routes between Nizhny Novgorod, Samara and Kazan to the Caspian Sea. Starting from the Upper Volga, you will see cascade water power plants on the Rybinsk Reservoir and gems of the Golden Ring. Ecotourists will enjoy canoeing from theValdai Hills to Astrakhan, while Lake Seliger and the Volga Delta offer great fishing year round, with 220lb catfish, carp and pike waiting to be caught.

TheVolga has been the main waterway in Russia since the 16th century. After Ivan the Terrible conquered Kazan and Astrakhan, intensive movement of people and goods began on the river. The waterway’s economic value reached its zenith in the mid-20th century, when what is now called the Unified Deep Water System (UDWS) of European Russia was built.

However, the potential of the rivers in Russia has been neglected for many years and the Volga has virtually ceased to serve any significant economic function. According to Kira Zavyalova, an analyst at the independent research firm Investcafe, theVolga River is currently used for transporting coal, ore, building materials, wood, agricultural products, fertilisers, cars and agricultural machinery – but accounts for just 2-4pc of all goods transported in Russia. According to the Russian Association of Shipping Companies (ASC), the average Russian river ship is now 28 years old.

Today, no more than 20 small river boats are built each year in Russia; 30 years ago the annual figure was several hundred. Passenger transportation is also declining as few new passenger ships have been built since the Nineties.

Last year, domestic water transport systems carried a total of 13.6 million people. “Annual reductions in passenger river transport are now a common trend in Russia,”Ms Zavyalova says.

In Moscow, passenger transport companies charge 450–900 roubles (between £6.80 and £13.60) for a short boat trip. Mile for mile, maintaining waterways is 50 times cheaper than roads or railways. Waterborne freight is also 20 times cheaper by weight and volume than transporting goods by truck and eight times cheaper than by rail.

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GAIA RUSSO

Mother Volga, the Mississippi of the East

chak is a salt lake fed mostly by underground springs. Many of the springs flow into the lake along its north-western shore, bringing more than 2,500 tons of salt into the lake every day.

Salt depth in the lake reaches around 3.7 miles.

The extremely pure salt of the lake accounts for up to 80pc of Russia’s salt production: Baskunchak churns out between 1.5 and 5 million tons annually, depending on the consumption level.

Baskunchak Railway was built to transport salt from the mines.

Taking in the sights Many Russian tour agencies offer cruises on the Volga. The shortest – journeys along the riverbanks of cities on the Volga – last around an hour and are priced from 600 roubles (about £9). The longest trips take 26 days and cost from 70,000 roubles (£1,025). Tourist trips on the Volga usually run from May to the end of October.

For online tickets, go to: vikingrivercruises.com bestrussiancruises.com volgadream.com

1 Nizhny Novgorod (formerly Gorky) Population 1.3 million (260 miles from Moscow) Russia’s fifth most populous city.

Famed for its kremlin, Pechersky Voznesensky monastery and its beautiful river shore.

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2 Kazan Population 1.2 million (500 miles from Moscow) Russia’s Muslim capital is a major Volga port and one of the country's biggest economic and political centres. It is also known for its Islamic architecture and universities.

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3 Samara (formerly Kuibyshev) Population 1.2 million (650 miles from Moscow) Samara has ■

one of the longest embankments in Russia, one of the biggest squares and the tallest railway station in Europe. It’s also famous for Samarskaya Luka, the largest river bend on the Volga.

4 ■ Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) Population 1.3 million (600 miles from Moscow) A city with a heroic past, the Battle of Stalingrad was a turning point in the Second World War. Today, tourists flock to The Motherland Calls, the tallest sculpture of a woman’s figure in the world, on Mamayev Kurgan hill, which was unveiled in 1967.

Sport P8_Tuesday, October 28, 2014_www.rbth.co.uk

Getting to grips with the inner warrior Combat sport With a strong tradition of wrestling excellence, Russian competitors are now making a big impact in mixed martial arts SLAVA MALAMUD

When, a few years ago, I sat down to interview Chuck Norris, the actor and martial artist surprised me by gushing about Russia’s future in the still-exotic sport of mixed martial arts (MMA). Norris was at the time busy with his now-defunct World Combat League and his dream was to have a Moscow-based team composed entirely of Russian fighters.

It was only natural to get the motherland of the great Fedor Emelianenko involved. “I would definitely rate Fedor as the best fighter of all time”, said Norris, the man who, in the opinion of American internet jokers, does press-ups by pushing the Earth away from himself. “His arms are like cannons, which makes standing up and punching against him useless, but he is also extremely good on the ground. I consider him the best fighter the world has ever seen.”

Coming from a man who had traded roundhouse kicks with Bruce Lee, one would be hardpressed to find higher praise. But had Norris ever tried to fulfil his dream of expanding his MMA promotion to Russia, he may have been surprised at the relative lack of popularity or understanding of the sport among the public.

Even now, with Russia producing numerous top-rated fighters, exposure remains a challenge for local MMA enthusiasts. However, while many Russians still cling to the old Soviet notion about the sport as a barbaric and evil western contagion, attitudes are beginning to change, in large part thanks to Emelianenko’s international fame.

“There was a sudden boom [in MMA’s popularity] a couple of years ago”, says Alexander Gotadze, former public relations officer of the Russian MMA Union. “There are tournaments now, regular ones instead of on a oneoff basis. That is important if you want to generate any real following. It turns out that we have a lot of young fighters in the pipeline nobody knew about, particularly from the Northern Caucasus. The competition is extremely tough now, in all weight classes.”

Fighting chance: Khabib Nurmagomedov weighs in for a UFC contest in São Paulo, Brazil

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None of this should be surprising, though, considering Russia’s rich history of mixed martial arts. In fact, Russia’s very own contribution to combat sports, sambo, is a mixed martial art all in itself. If this makes Russia’s all-too-recent attitudes about modern MMA puzzling, it helps to understand that sambo has always existed in two distinct varieties: as a sport and as a combat technique, both quite different. Developed in the Twenties and Thirties as a Red Army hand-to-hand combat training technique and then as a wrestling code, sambo (an acronym, which, translated from Russian, means “self-defence without weapons”) is rooted in judo with many elements of traditional ethnic styles of wrestling borrowed from the Asiatic peoples of Russia’s East.

Central Asia’s kuresh and Mongolian khapsagay, both ancient and complex grappling styles perfected by nomadic warriors, seem to have made major contributions to sambo. The sport’s founder, Anatoly Kharlampiev, spent a long time travelling in the East and researching local styles of wrestling with the aim of incorporating them into his creation.

Sambo has proven to be a perfect foundation for developing elite MMA talent, with all the major Russian fighters emerging from the local sport. While sambo as a wrestling style may be obscure in the West, its combat version, used by Russian elite troops and special forc-

es, is widely respected as one of the best allaround fighting systems ever developed.

“People talk about Brazilian ju-jitsu, but there is nothing original about it, as it’s basically a version of sambo”, says Gotadze. “Our sport is a perfect MMA. Even after Emelianenko became a big star in Japan’s Pride circuit, he would always call himself a ‘representative of the sambo school’ of fighting.”

Using a grappling and throwing technique, especially one as well-developed as Sambo’s, as the foundation makes perfect sense for Russia, where so many wrestling styles have flourished. For the people of Northern Caucasus, for instance, wrestling is both an obsession and a rite of passage, which greatly contributes to Russia being one of the world’s major powers in freestyle wrestling. It is no wonder that in the 2014 Russian MMA Championship, 21 out of 24 medal winners were ethnic Northern Caucasians. All of them started in wrestling and moved on to MMA through sambo.

“This is because it is much easier to teach a good wrestler how to punch than the other way around”, notes Gotadze. “It takes about five years to produce a competent wrestler, since it is a very technique-oriented sport. This is why Americans are traditionally good at MMA. They have great wrestlers.”

Of course, practitioners of combat sambo already know how to use their fists and feet to

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devastating effect, in addition to holds and throws, as anyone unfortunate enough to get on a Russian paratrooper’s bad side would know.

Emelianenko, Sergei Kharitonov and other Russian MMA heroes have all emerged from this ruthlessly efficient martial art. It is also where the current Bellator MMA heavyweight champion,Vitaly Minakov, learnt his craft. Minakov, incidentally, loves to knock out his opponents with a barrage of punches, something that should made Chuck Norris, the noted opponent of the grappling style, quite happy.

With regard to popularity among the masses, like many things in Russia it seems to follow the whims of the powers that be. Until recently, MMA was purely a commercial enterprise, operating without any help from the government. But now, with Emelianenko as the head of the Russian MMA Union and a member of the State Duma, things are sure to look up.

“Being an adviser to the Russian minister for sport is a big responsibility”, Emelianenko told Championat.ru. “I can promise that Russia will continue winning. As the president [of the MMA Union], I will do everything to bring Russia the results.”

With his own legend showing the way, Russian government financing and a mob of eager youngsters well-trained in the country’s cherished and fearsome martial art, Fedor Emelianenko is not likely to renege on his promise.

FINAL THIRD

Formula One star Kvyat has the class to bounce back from Sochi disappointment James Ellingworth SPECIAL TO RBTH

Daniil Kvyat doesn’t look like a star of the racetrack. When he walks into a room, his small stature and slim build resemble a jockey rather than a man who wrestles 600-horsepower beasts around tight turns.

At 20, Kvyat’s boyish features and shy smile allow him to pass for three or four years younger. His hesitant way of speaking, combined with his precise English, Italian and Russian, is more talented young student of languages than global celebrity.

But Kvyat is already a Formula One star, and on October 12 he was the main attraction for fans in his home country, as the only Russian on the grid for the first Russian Grand Prix at the Sochi Autodrom.

In the Saturday qualifier Kvyat shone, flying around Sochi’s Winter Olympic venues to secure fifth on the grid for the following day’s race. Afterwards, visibly struggling to contain his emotions, he insisted he’d won nothing yet, that the real race was tomorrow.

Those proved to be prescient words. Kvyat endured a miserable race, dropping two

By joining Red Bull, Kvyat will be moving into the elite. Red Bull won the constructors’ championship every year from 2010 to last year

positions at the start and clearly struggling as he dropped down the field, eventually trailing in 14th. As President Vladimir Putin congratulated winner Lewis Hamilton on the podium, Kvyat was nowhere to be seen.

Kvyat had already celebrated a triumph the week before the race, when he was confirmed to be moving to Red Bull for next season, replacing four-time champion Sebastian Vettel, who has signed for Ferrari.

With Red Bull, Kvyat will join the sport’s elite. Red Bull won the constructors’ championship every year from 2010 to last year and, although the team has been eclipsed by Mercedes this season (which won this year’s constructors’ championship in Sochi), any Red Bull driver is guaranteed to be among the leaders next season.

Signing for Red Bull is a huge achievement for Kvyat. He arrived at March’s season-opening race in Melbourne as a relative unknown, despite being last year’s champion in the lower-level GP3 series. He announced his arrival with a ninth-place finish for two points in his debut race for Toro Rosso, Red Bull’s junior team, and finished in the points in four other races so far, a very respectable record for a rookie.

However, when Vettel decided the time had come to jump ship from Red Bull to Ferrari,

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few would have seen Kvyat as the replacement for the four-time world champion. After all, the Russian’s points tally was less than half that of his French teammate Jean-Éric Vergne, so was Kvyat as stunned as many fans were? Not at all.

“No, I’m not surprised,” he told reporters.

“I will do my absolute best to keep the team’s name high, my name high, our name high. It will be interesting.”

His target will be to emulate the Australian Daniel Ricciardo, who moved from Toro Rosso to Red Bull in the winter and has since won three races to take third place in the championship.

Kvyat remains in his current seat with Toro Rosso until the end of this season.

While he may not have had the race pace in Sochi, his showing in qualifying was a hint of great things to come at next year’s Russian Grand Prix. After all, Kvyat already has experience of winning at home. In 2012, when the Moscow Raceway circuit opened, he shrugged off pressure from the home crowd to win both his races in the Renault Eurocup series to a rapturous reception.

In his first year in F1, Kvyat has attracted attention not just for his smooth yet aggressive driving style, but also for his surname, which has presented a few TV

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Kvyat arrived at March’s season opener in Melbourne as a relative unknown despite being champion at a lower level

commentators with a challenge. The standard response is to go for a version of “Kuh-veeat”, or even a three-syllable “Ki-vi-yat” (the correct Russian pronunciation is a brisk, one-syllable Kvyat).

As for his first name, in the world of F1, Daniil has universally become Dany.

Kvyat’s race in Sochi this weekend was more than a little different to his first visit to the Black Sea resort. That was back in 2005, when the then 11-year-old Kvyat won a junior karting race in driving snow.

After the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka ended with Marussia driver Jules Bianchi in hospital with head injuries following a crash, Sochi was under immense safety scrutiny, but passed with flying colours, albeit in a race with very few dangerous incidents.

For F1 drivers, the injury to Bianchi made the results of the Japanese Grand Prix fade into the background – the thrill of victory disappearing sharply amid worry for a colleague, a fellow professional taking severe risks in the pursuit of success.

Kvyat’s response was typical: “The only important thing this evening is that I hope Bianchi will be OK.” It was a softly spoken, measured contribution, but in that moment, Kvyat was every inch an F1 driver.