Russia Now #5 in Washington Post

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Moscow’s Club Scene Julia Vishnevets

50th Anniversary

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afp/east news

Justice for Sergei Magnitsky?

How modern relationships are changing

Presidential advisers: Charges fabricated Distributed with

Focus on the Family

It’s not all crazy excess P.06

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

of Manned Space Flight

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News in Brief

Business Yandex warns investors of political interference

Yandex, Russia’s Google, Launching IPO on NASDAQ

Foreign Minister Denounces Libya Group In a sharply worded statement concerning the Libyan rebellion, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that “the contact group is a self-appointed organizational structure that somehow made itself responsible for how the [U.N.] resolution is carried out,” reported The Daily Telegraph.

“From the point of view of international law, this group has no legitimacy,” Lavrov pointed out. He also indicated regret over Russia’s decision not to veto the U.N. Mandate.

Anti-corruption Activist Navalny Stays Put

kommersant

itar-tass

Investors are eager to get a piece of Russia’s burgeoning Internet market despite political risk. tim gosling

business new europe

Telling investors just how politically charged it is to work in your country might seem a funny way of selling your shares, but that is what Russia’s leading search engine did ahead of its widely anticipated IPO.

Yandex, Russia’s answer to Google, recently announced the price range for its upcoming share offering, which the company hopes will raise at least $1.3 billion.

However, in its 2,000 page prospectus, the company went out of its way to highlight the political risks and the dangers of a takeover bid from oligarchs close to the authorities. “Highprofile business in Russia, such as ours, can be particularly vulnerable to politically motivat-

ed actions,” Yandex stated in its prospectus. “Other parties” may also perceive Yandex’s news service as “reflecting a political viewpoint or agenda, which could subject us to politically motivated actions,” the document stated.

Russia’s most popular search engine filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to list 52.2 million shares at $20-$22 each on May 9, which would value the company at $6.7 billion at the top

of the range and make it Europe’s biggest online company, according to analysts with Russian investment bank Uralsib.

Yandex claims to account for 64 percent of all search traffic in Russia — compared with Google’s 22 percent — and is the largest Russian-based Internet company by revenue.

That puts it at the top of a segment likely to develop as swiftly as broadband is rolled out across the country and adver-

tising spending grows on the back of accelerating economic recovery. Even so, the price range is still low compared to Yandex’s peers in other emerging markets due to the high risks of investing in such a public and attractive company.

Under Russian law, all internet service providers have to allow the FSB, Russia’s security service, to attach a black box to their servers that can

Yandex, Russia’s version of Google, debuts on the NASDAQ exchange this month.

continued on page 2

Politics Anastasia Volochkova Defines Controversy

Ballerina Dances Away from the Party Banished by the ruling party, Anastasia Volochkova recreates her fairy tale. anna nemtsova

specIal to russia now

ap

In her many incarnations — political arm-candy, society princess, purring provocateur, magnificent artist and, yes, fat ballerina — no one has ever accused Anastasia Volochkova of understatement. Take her million-dollar wedding to the businessman Igor Vdovin. Volochkova arrived at the Catherine Palace in St. Petersburg sitting in an armchair attached to a hot air balloon and wore a snow-white dress with its train floating in the wind.

Or consider her recent transition from establishment darling to self-made dissident after a nude photo shoot upset the Kremlin’s official party, United Russia: “Today, membership in Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party is a much more compromising fact for somebody’s reputation than nude pictures published on Internet,” she

pronounced on her blog. For her, being shunned by the party was a wake-up call, she said. Now she is among its critics.

Volochkova, 35, is the talk of the town again. And she’s

playing a familiar role: The jilted, outspoken, slightly outrageous diva.

“I am bigger than your party!” Volochkova said in a recent interview. The United Russia she famously joined in

2003 and now scorns is maintaining a stiff upper lip. “We have a firm position of giving no comments on the Volochkova scandal,” sniffed United Russia spokeswoman Inna Chernavina.

Anastasia Volochkova, who once wowed the critics, is now fighting them off.

Russians love fairy tales. One could go so far to say it is their favorite type of fiction. What else is there to believe in, some Russians ask? Volochkova is Russia’s living, indomitable fairy tale princess.

In her book “A Story of a Russian Ballerina,” Volochkova compares the chapters of her life with the plots of 12 major Russian ballets she has starred in. Of course, the heroine triumphs again and again and again.

As a teenager, Volochkova heard from her teachers at Vaganova Academy, the notoriously harsh ballet school that also trained Vaslav Nijinsky and Rudolf Nureyev, that a bigboned ballerina like her would never dance on the best stages. The provinces, they said, beckoned.

A few years later, Volockhova debuted as the Mariinsky’s prima ballerina in Swan Lake at the Metropolitan Opera house in New York.

Continued on page 6

Following advice from former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky that he flee Russia, blogger-turnedanti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny has stated that he intends to remain in his homeland.

The statement is in response to a criminal case launched against him for a third time since 2009 for bad advice he gave while serving as adviser to a regional governor. Navalny has called the charges a fabrication. “I’m not going to leave the country,” he told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. “If I did, then there would be no sense in what I am doing. People will only believe you if you share the same risks that they face.

I can’t persuade people in Bryansk to follow me if I’m sitting in London, can I?”

Markelov Murderer Sentenced to Life A Moscow jury sentenced ultranationalist Nikita Tikhonov to life in prison for the murder of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova in 2009. The court also sentenced Tikhonov’s accomplice and civil partner Yevgeniya Khasis to 18 years in prison.

Markelov and Baburova, who worked for the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper, were gunned down in broad daylight in downtown Moscow in January 2009. Investigators said Baburova was killed as a witness to the murder of Markelov, who was an active member of an anti-fascist movement.

In this issue OPINION

niyaz karim

Looking Beyond Oil Russia’s dependence on raw materials has decreased. page 4

Reflections

The End of Multiculturalism?

Some new immigrants in Europe are a world apart. page 5

02

Economy

Russia NOW

section sponsored by rossiyskaya gazeta, russia www.rbth.ru

most read Doubling Labor Productivity Over Next Decade http://rbth.ru/12825

Yandex Launching NASDAQ IPO monitor all e-mail traffic. In April, the FSB raised the stakes, suggesting bans on Skype and Gmail, claiming they pose a serious threat to national security.

President Dmitry Medvedev, known for his web savvy, dismissed the idea, but the discussion throws into contrast the state’s uneasy relations with the information highway. Opposition figure Boris Nemtsov claimed in an interview that the state has forced most Internet service providers to exclude opposition Web sites from their services.

Things took an ugly turn at the start of May when the company announced that the FSB, Russia’s security service, had forced the search engine to hand over details of users of Yandex.

Dengi, its money transfer system. Specifically, the FSB asked for information on financial contributors to well-known anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, according to Yandex. Just over a week later, Russia’s Investigative Committee opened an investigation into Navalny, claiming he used his position as adviser to a regional governor to force a timber company into an unfavorable deal.

Still, investigators seem to be shrugging off the risks — as long as the price is right.

Hungry for exposure to Russia’s booming Internet sector, investors have been waiting for Yandex to offer up its equity for close to three years. Given the low price of the stock, analysts and investors doubted at press time that Yandex’s risk warnings

would have a serious impact on the IPO, because it has such a compelling story.

Tom Mundy, chief strategist at Otkritie Financial, said that investors in Russia are less concerned about murky politics and security services than many might think. “We rarely speak to investors who are not already skeptical concerning Russia risk,” he said. “Whether that be political issues, corporate governance, corruption, et cetera.”

Alexander Vengranovich, a media and IT analyst at Okritie, agreed. “The investors we’ve been speaking with aren’t pay-

appeared to be that pricing remains the ultimate key to the success of Russian IPOs. The market is clearly expecting demand to be robust for this jewel in the Russian Internet crown.

The stock would join, and some say dominate, Mail.ru — which in November recorded the only really impressive Russian IPO offering.

Chernyshev said he expects the Internet advertising segment to grow at 27 percent annually over the next five years, adding that Yandex is the better bet for investors. “Unlike Mail.ru, Yandex offers a clear investment

“The investors we’ve been speaking to haven’t been paying much attention to the political risk. story,” said Alexander Vengranovich, a media and IT analyst at Otkritie.

“Investors in the Internet segment are very risk tolerant because the entry barriers are very low,” said Konstantin Chernyshev of Uralsib financial corporation.

ing much attention to the political risk story,” he said. ”They’re more interested in the Yandex growth story.” The proof is in the IPO this week.

Konstantin Chernyshev of Uralsib said that Yandex is a good bet for investors: “Investors in the Internet segment are very risk tolerant because the entry barriers are very low: It’s cheap to set up a venture and success is driven by innovation.

It’s not like drilling for oil.”

story,” he said. “Mail.ru benefited from being the first to offer exposure to the sector and the backdoor it offered to Facebook shares. It looks like it will lose both of those advantages in the near future.”

The Price Is Right At press time, the lesson here

IN FIGURES

60 million

Russians, or over 40 percent of the population, use the Internet, making it the seventh-largest audience in the world.

$1 billion

is the size of Russia’s Internet advertising market, which has experienced doubledigit growth for the last decade.

80%

of Russian Internet users prefer Yandex, making it one of few countries with a local search engine more popular than Google.

Blogger-in-chief Meanwhile, the flare-up of political risk surrounding Yandex is only the latest in a growing debate around the Internet in Russia, which is credited as one of the last bastions of independence in a media industry dominated by state ownership. The discussion appears to have opened a floodgate of sorts, with the sector front and center in the news media since.

Investors also consider that there are 60 million Russians, or more than 40 percent of the population, already on the Internet, making it one of the largest groups of users on the planet. And it is not near saturation.

The Internet has a powerful

Television Advertising Set to Grow

Arkady Volozh, CEO of Yandex.

champion in the form of President Medvedev. Russia’s “blogger-in-chief” has repeatedly insisted that he will not allow censorship of the Internet. And while some of Russia’s innovators in other fields — in the areas

of life sciences or nanotechnology for instance — have proved lackluster, IT is also the only hightech segment in which Russian companies have made significant strides. Yandex is showing the kind of progress that Med-

vedev has said should form the core of his top project, the drive to modernize the economy.

Whether that success, and the attention it brings, is purely positive for the country’s top portal remains hard to say.

Investment Climate Presidential commission concludes that security service officers fabricated Magnitsky charges

“Who Knows Where I Will Be Soon”

President Medvedev’s advisers speak to Russia Now about the case of Sergei Magnitsky. galina masterova, vladimir ruvinsky

The metal cage used for prisoners in courtroom No. 14 at the Tverskoi regional court was empty during a recent hearing, its door wide open. Moscow spring sunshine streamed through windows, their metal bars pushed aside.

There was no need for locks two weeks ago when the court considered the arrest of Ivan Cherkasov, a senior executive at British investment fund Hermitage Capital. Cherkasov lives in London and has no intention of returning to face the charges of tax evasion he says are false. He says his arrest is a counter attack by rogue forces in the Russian security services.

In a bold and surprising move just days before, an independent commission set up

by President Dmitry Medvedev said that the charges in the case of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky were fabricated

by Interior Ministry officials and that Interior Ministry and FSB security service officers were at least partly responsible for Magnitsky’s death in 2009.

Magnitsky died after 11

ap

Special to Russia Now

Natalya Magnitskaya holds a portrait of her son, Sergei.

“After the report was leaked, we started to be pressured by security officials,” Valery Borschev said.

months in pre-trial detention and after repeated requests for medical treatment.

The findings of the presidential commission are in a preliminary report that was leaked to Russian newspaper Vedomosti

Russia Beyond Emerging Market Russia is no longer an emerging market. That’s according to the cash-strapped European Union (E.U.), which wants to get rid of the preferential trade terms implemented in the 1990s to support Russia’s transformation into a free-market economy.

The E.U.’s executive has announced plans to exclude middle-income countries such as Russia and Brazil from special rates, according to the E.U.’s General System of Preferences (GSP). The decision to cut benefits is viewed as the most significant revamp of the trade system since the preferential scheme was first introduced.

“Global economic balances have shifted tremendously,” E.U. Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht told reporters. “If we grant tariff preferences in this competitive environment, those countries most in need must reap the most benefits.”

The E.U. accounted for 49.5 percent of Russia’s trade turnover in 2010 after the total volume of business increased more than four-fold in 2010.

photas

continued from PAGE 1

Business in brief

and then confirmed by commission members.

Magnitsky was working for the Hermitage Capital when he uncovered what he claimed was a $230 million tax refund scam set up by a group of corrupt police and tax officials.

“When Sergei Magnitsky testified against the police officers, the same police officers put him in pretrial detention, tortured and killed him,” said William Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital, in a telephone interview from London.

Magnitsky’s death became an international cause célèbre, and Medvedev has staked much on investigating the case.

“Medvedev has taken the Magnitsky case under his personal control,” said Alexei Mukhin, a prominent Russian political analyst. “If the authorities do not react to such things, then people will not vote in the elections and foreign investors will be reluctant to invest.”

People involved in the commission say that there is a battle going on behind the scenes to temper the results.

Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, is working on a separate part of the report. He says pressure has been relentless.

“There are several officials well-known in politics who have stated openly that they don’t give a damn about our investigation,” said Kabanov. “This is

wild, brutish arrogance. They aren’t puppets, they are players. And the [security service] isn’t prepared to surrender its employees, partially for the fact that they know a lot and could tell people. In addition, there is huge money at stake.”

The final report is set to come out at the end of May, beginning of June, Kabanov said.

Medvedev has made fighting corruption the centerpiece of his presidency, but critics say there have been few concrete results.

Officials from the Butyrka jail, where Magnitsky was denied medical help, were fired. But there have been no arrests or direct police investigation of the officials accused of corruption.

Soured Relationship Hermitage Capital was once one of the most enthusiastic of Kremlin cheerleaders. Since its head, William Browder, was refused entry to Russia in 2005, it has been a strident critic.

Hermitage Capital has spent an enormous amount of time and money on its own investigation of the officials involved in the alleged tax fraud. A series of videos have been released detailing the case, most notably documenting lavish purchases made by the officials in the year after the tax scam took place.

The refund, normally a complicated process, took only one day, according to Hermitage.

The most recent video created by the company accused a tax official who approved the tax refund of wiring millions into a Swiss bank account opened in her husband’s name. It also chronicles the purchases of luxury property in Dubai and Montenegro as well as a Moscow country house the size of an

airplane hangar, valued at more than $20 million.

The purchases were made even though the official and her husband, the video reported, have an annual salary of only $38,000.

Swiss authorities froze the bank account of the official’s husband after a complaint from Hermitage Capital. Russia has not made any similar moves yet.

The leaking of the report has unnerved the people involved, and Kabanov and others see the hearing against Cherkasov as a counterattack. Cherkasov himself has called it revenge.

At the end of the recent hearing, the court backed investigator Lieut. Col. Oleg Silchenko (who handled the Magnitsky case) and sanctioned the arrest of Cherkasov.

Silchenko refused to comment afterward, but he did throw out the phrase “Who knows where I will be soon,” a fairly common remark in a country where people are not used to planning too far in the future.

But it is a question with special resonance and poignancy in this case that has taken on international proportion.

“After this report appeared [was leaked], we started to be pressured by security officials,” said presidential adviser Valery Borschev, acknowledging he received phone calls from officials.

“They call me and ask why we are attacking Silchenko, and I answered that we are simply laying out the facts. We are striving for real punishment for those who are guilty, and we have only touched the tip of the iceberg at this point. Important figures stand behind the investigators and tax officials — we hope to get to them.”

In a sign of the growth potential of Russia’s advertising market, Alfa Group has slapped a $1 billion price tag on its stake in the country’s largest commercial broadcaster, CTC Media.

Alfa, Russia’s leading financialindustrial conglomerate, is in talks to sell its 25.3 percent stake in CTC (pronounced “ST-S” — the company uses the Cyrillic version of its name in print) to Russia’s National Media Group, but has first offered the stake to fellow shareholder Sweden’s Modern Times Group at a price of just over $27 per share, or $1.07 billion. That’s almost double the cost of the shares during the company’s NASDAQ IPO in the summer of 2006.

“In terms of ad spending, Russia is already the ninth biggest market in the world, the fifth largest in Europe and, if current growth continues, it will be the largest in Europe as soon as 2013,” said CTC CEO Anton Kudryashov.

Nomos London IPO Deemed Success

getty images/fotobank

One of the largest banks in Russia, Nomos floated 22 percent of its shares near the top of its price range to raise $718 million on the London Stock Exchange. The money will be used to recapitalize the bank, which was low on funds after it took over Khanty-Mansiysk Bank (KhMB) in December.

After a record $54 billion of Russian listings in the first half of 2008, the last two years saw 22 IPOs that raised a mere $12 billion. The pent-up demand among owners for IPOs is rising fast but hadn’t been matched by demand from international investors until now.

Analysts say there is already at least $50 billion worth of IPOs likely to launch in the next two years.

The Nomos IPO bodes well for these upcoming IPOs; although the stock was priced near the top of the price range, that range was low.

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Politics & Society

03

Family Russia’s government wants bigger families, yet changing values and more stress have led to smaller ones

Happy Families Are Alike, but Are They Big? Elena novikova russia now

In the 1968 Soviet film “Let’s Wait Till Monday,” a schoolgirl named Nadya states during class that her idea of happiness is to become a mother of four. This bold statement infuriates her teacher, who stands firm in her Soviet ideology.

The film is now more than 40 years old; the country has transformed radically and people’s lifestyles along with it. Yet mothers with many children still face a wall of public indifference and even hostility, despite plummeting demographics and government incentive programs.

Maria Ipatova, 25, has two sons: Oleg is almost 2 years old and Trofim is 6 months. She and her husband are thinking of having a third child. “My older son was born very weak, the doctors said he would not survive,” Ipatova said. “Perhaps that was the moment when we realized that we would have many children. Having one child will make him an egotist; two children will be rivals, but three children are a family.”

But Ipatova is unique. There are fewer families like hers every year. Only 3 percent of all couples have more than two children and 48 percent, almost half, have none, according to statistics.

Victoria Yakovleva, 34, has been married for five years. “It’s not that I’m a follower of the child-free movement,” she said.

“On the contrary, I feel that children are pure joy and embody

51%

the entire meaning of life. But I just don’t have time for them.”

Anna Kuleshova, 30, has three daughters: “There are drug or alcohol a good many families with abuse by one of lots of children in our neighThe Vorontsov family has four chldren, a rarity in Russia. borhood of Chertanovo, and the spouses. scored by a shortage of kinderleaders in terms of the number marrying, and prefer this to a we always support each other. gartens and the high rates of abortions, and even late aborregistered marriage, someBut when I venture outside our charged by nannies. tions. Sixty percent of pregnanthing that was unthinkcircle I hear torrents of abuse.

The state is trying to encourcies are terminated. able in the Soviet People say we have no age young families to have more There are many reasons for years. conscience, that we jump children, mainly by offering sothe decline in the birthrate.

Another recent trend the queues everywhere, low incomes. called “mother’s capital,” a About 31 percent of Russians among mothers is to that we are lazy and we check for about $12,800 do not want to have children have a child on their have children in order lack of home (365,000 rubles) issued upon because of financial difficulties, own, without a husband not to have to go to ownership. the birth of the second and third as well as insufficient state supor partner: more than 30 perwork.” Kulshova made the child. While the measures have port for families, according to cent of Russian children are born point that she has a doctorled to a 22 percent increase in VCIOM, the state’s official staout of marriage, according to ate in social sciences and went the birthrate since 2006, they tistics organization. Combining the latest data. Add to this a seback to work when her younghave not been enough to fix a career with childbirth and raisrious drop in births, and the fuest daughter turned just three the demographic crisis. ing children is another probture of the nuclear family looks months old.

Last year, United Russia, the lem. One in every five young bleak. The average number of “My husband and I bought ruling party, took a desperate women between 24 and 35 is children per family in Russia is an apartment in Moscow on It’s estimated that approxistep: The deputies of the Chelynot prepared to marry and have 1.59, compared with 1.9 in credit,” Yakovleva added. “We mately 75% of marriages in abinsk regional government a child because she wants to 1990. have a mortgage to pay and Russia end in separation. Ten proposed reintroducing a childpursue a career. This is underRussia is still among the world we have to work a lot. I don’t percent of those end after over want to have a child so that 20 years of living together. he’s then raised by a nanny. I want to raise him myself, but, unfortunately, it’s very difficult in figures to be a mom in our society.”

There is no data available on how many families with many children divorce (as opposed to fewer children), but overall statistics are grim. They show that of Russian families have three while about a million marriages or more children, while 48% of are registered in Russia every married couples have no chilyear, 700,000 couples divorce. dren at all.

That means almost three out of four marriages are collapsing.

Psychologists and sociologists Domestic agencies in Russia have long been sounding the happy with my work. Her child every day. Her friends recomare branching out beyond alarm and talking about a “crihad changed a lot: He picked mended that she rent a dad to nannies and drivers to offer sis” and even the “extinction” up his toys, obeyed his mother see if it would change things. marriages and 4.2 divorces oc“fathers” for rent. But is it a of the institution of the family. and even started learning EngDima didn’t understand the curred for every 1000 people good idea?

It is not only about divorce stalish. One day we called Dima meaning of “no,” according to in 1980, versus 8.9 and 4.8 in tistics, however. More and more and told him that I had to reVladimir. Irina said that only a 2007, respectively. couples live together instead of turn to Cuba. He asked me how man would be able to help her Elena novikova russia now long I would have to stay there raise her son. and I told him two or three Vladimir, 35, recently found a Vladimir would wake up at years. He got very angry and job as a dad. He said he met six o’clock every morning to be told me that he would never Dima’s mother, Irina, in a fancy at his “son’s” home at seven. become a spy because it would restaurant in Moscow where he He would wake him up, premean he would have to abanwas working as a security guard. pare his breakfast, feed him and don his family.”

Irina offered him the job of actthen go to work. One day, he Vladimir said that for him the ing as the father of her child decided to teach Dima to wash role was only a job and he tried and assured him that he would his face with cold water. He said, to do it in a way that the child be well paid. At the time, Vladi“This is how all men do it.” wouldn’t realize it was a farce. mir was having some financial Since then, Dima has washed But he also seemed to become difficulties and accepted. Dima, his face with icy water, even attached to the child: A month who was 5 years old at the time, though until a short time ago after he stopped working, Vladiwas used to living without a fahis mother had to force him to mir said he hid in the park to ther. In fact, he never knew his take a bath, Vladimir said. Four Today, the number of chilmany, Holland, Norway and watch Dima play. dad. His mother told him that months went by like this. dren taken abroad by adopSweden. But up until now, RusIrina isn’t the only woman his father was working as a spy “I started getting tired,” Vladitive families is significantly less sia has had an official agreement who rents a father for her child. in Cuba and couldn’t write or mir said. “Irina paid me 1,000 due to already stricter condiregulating adoptions only with In Moscow and other Russian call his son. But he suddenly euro a month, which was great, tions and increased scrutiny.

Italy. cities, agencies that specialize appeared. but the kid exhausted me. I told The number of orphans in RusThe American agreement has in domestic services such as “I don’t like children,” conIrina, of course, but she didn’t sia is also decreasing. In 2005, involved five rounds of negohousekeepers, cooks, drivers fessed Vladimir, who did not want me to leave. She was very there were some 450,000, and tiations. Seventeen children adwant to be identified for this today that number has deopted from Russia have died in story. “I don’t have children of creased to 370,000. the United States in recent years, my own and don’t know if I In the opinion of experts leading to tension between the ever will, but I needed the from the Ministry of Education, two countries. The last straw, money and was willing to do the number of orphans could significantly hastening the almost anything to get it. I rebe reduced through a special agreement’s signing date, was member the first day I met foster care system to help both the case of Artem Savelyev. His Dima, the three of us walked poor families and adoptive parAmerican adoptive mother simin the park together. I told him, ents. Today, the guardianship ply put him on a plane back to actually made up, some stosystem has a mainly punitive Russia with a note. ries about the buildings we function: It imposes fines on The agreement offers new saw. The poor kid was mesnegligent parents, deprives means of controlling the adopmerized. Then we went to a them of their parental rights tion process. Adoption agencies restaurant. I took a cherry and and puts their children in orwill have to receive accreditaflung it at him. He loved it. He phanages. tion both in the United States would imitate everything I did, Yet positive examples of fosand in Russia. They will have to just because ‘his daddy’ had ter services already exist in sevcollect more information about shown him. What surprised me eral regions of Russia, such as future adoptive parents and even more was when I went Tyumen. They offer these fammonitor the foreign family for to tuck him in bed the first ilies help finding work, finanyears after the adoption. Finalnight and he hugged me and cial subsidies, as well as treatly, and most important of all, said, ‘You’re the best dad in ment for alcohol or drug this agreement will apply retthe world.” dependence. Advocates help roactively and cover all adopIrina, who also wanted her these parents keep their pations of Russian children by identity protected, needed help, rental rights and keep their American citizens in the last 16 according to Vladimir’s recountchildren at home. years. ing. Her son was less obedient Fathers-for-hire are increasingly common in Russia.

41%

Julia Vishnevets

The number of childless couples is growing in Russia, while families with multiple children stand out as unusual.

29%

Causes of Divorce

3%

10.6

Psychology Single moms hire men to help raise children

Daddy for Rent Becomes a Trend Among the Wealthy

Adoption Finally, a bilateral agreement

Svetlana Smetanina special to Russia now

The Russian government is tackling the problem of adoptions by foreign citizens in earnest. A watershed event is scheduled to take place imminently: the signing of a bilateral agreement on adoptions between Russia and the United States, which will take place at a meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The need for such an agreement has long been apparent.

Over the past 20 years, Americans have adopted some 60,000 Russian children. In the mid1990s, some 14,000 children left Russia for the United States every year. Various private agencies dealt directly with the heads of orphanages with little regulation. Russian children are adopted not only by Americans, but also by citizens of the United Kingdm, France, Italy, Ger-

fotoimedia

Protecting Russia’s Orphans, One at a Time Russia and the United States prepare to finalize a watershed agreement on adoption, and Russians explore the orphans’ plight.

less tax that existed in the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1992. Childless men between 20 and 50 and childless married women between 20 and 45 were supposed to have 6 percent of their salary taxed until they gave birth to or adopted a child. Members of the State Duma also proposed to “fine” childless parents several years ago.

However, a public outcry over the initiative forced deputies to drop the idea and promise to find more humane ways of combating childlessness. Still, innovative ways of encouraging family life seem to elude the state.

and nannies also offer daddies for rent. The cost of renting a father in the Russian capital is around $17 (500 rubles) per hour and between $140-200 (4,000 and 6,000 rubles) per day. In the regions, the agencies tend to charge a little less.

Most rentals are men between 35 and 40 years old; they tend to be psychologists or former soldiers, according to a representative of the Moscow agency The Lights of the Capital.

Psychologists and educators disagree on the wisdom of “daddy for rent” services.

Some say that communication with a man, even a babysitter who comes to the house on weekends, is a positive and important experience for any child who doesn’t live with his father. Others maintain that rental dads could cause psychological trauma in children, particularly if the kids are led to believe that the babysitter is their real dad.

04

Opinion

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two leaders, one throne Georgy Bovt

Special to Russia Now

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olitical analysts in Russia and across the world are speculating on who will become Russia’s president in 2012. It seems like both current President Dmitry Medvedev and former president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are doing all they can to keep tensions high. Recently, Medvedev took time out yet again to address the election, saying he “doesn’t count out the possibility” of running for a second term. At the same time, Medvedev made it clear that he and Putin have some differences of opinion on how the country should move forward. A few days later, Putin also made it clear that he “doesn’t count out the possibility” of running for president, and added that people shouldn’t be getting so excited over the presidential elections.

Political commentators, nonetheless, are continuing to create a lot of hoopla, now discussing how Putin and Medvedev differ on any given issue. Given that both of them are coming out more and more often with conflicting viewpoints on various topics, there is plenty of room for discussion.

To be fair, we should keep in mind that analysts are discussing differences that involve fairly minor issues.

dmitry divin

The speculation swirling around Putin and Medvedev is fueled first and foremost from the peculiarities of Russian politics, which have been shaped over centuries. In contrast to a “lame duck” president in the United States, in Russia, a president coming to the end of his

final term is not lame, but rather dead — and his corpse gets kicked around. Russian politics is traditionally dependent on a single leader. The country’s enormous bureaucracy is guided by this leader — his style, wishes, habits, whims, strengths and weaknesses — rather than

by institutions, the law and written rules. As soon as the leader leaves or makes it clear that he is leaving, he ceases to exist.

Because of this situation, if Medvedev were to announce that he won’t run for a second term, Russia would virtually be without a president for a year,

SEEING EYE TO EYE AFTER osama BIN LADEN Eugene Ivanov

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special to russia now

he liquidation of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden presented Russia and the United States with a rare opportunity to see eye to eye on an important issue. Lately, the two countries have been sitting in opposite corners of the ring, with Russia accusing the United States and NATO of exceeding — some in Moscow even say abusing — the mandate of United Nation Security Council Resolution 1973 on Libya.

Yet the death of the world’s most wanted terrorist has shown that both countries still share common interests.

Moscow was visibly pleased by the fact that President Dmitry Medvedev was in the selected group of world leaders whom U.S. President Barack Obama briefed on the news

before making a TV announcement. The Kremlin responded with a statement of its own that pointedly reminded everyone that Russia had firsthand experience with Al-Qaeda terrorist activity. The statement went on to express Russia’s commitment to increased international cooperation on fighting global terrorism.

With Panetta at the helm of the Pentagon, Obama loses his GOP helping hand.

Medvedev and Obama will have a chance to discuss specifics of this cooperation when they meet on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Deauville, France, at the end of the month.

Bin Laden’s death will increase pressure on the Obama administration to find an accelerated exit strategy for the war in Afghanistan. (The Washington Post quoted “a senior administration official” as saying “Bin Laden’s death is the beginning of the endgame in Afghanistan.”) A negotiated settlement with the Taliban is expected to be an intrinsic part of this strategy.

Russia has a lot at stake in Afghanistan and needs to carefully watch how the situation develops there. Obviously, Moscow was never happy with the presence of a substantial U.S. military force in Afghanistan. Yet the Kremlin is deeply concerned that any precipitous departure of U.S. troops may result in the installation of a radical Islamist regime in Kabul, which, in turn, will destabilize countries in Central Asia and send waves of radicalization toward Russia’s southern borders.

Russia’s additional pain is the constant flow of narcotics originating in Afghanistan that has increased dramatically in the past two years.

Russia feels that by agreeing to allow the transport of NATO equipment to Afghanistan through its airspace, it has earned a voice in the discussion of Afghanistan’s future. It therefore appears certain that the role Russia could play in achieving a “negotiated settlement” over Afghanistan will also be a topic in the Deauville conversation.

The clandestine operation that led to bin Laden’s killing will undoubtedly become a crowning achievement of CIA Director Leon Panetta. Almost everyone in Washington agrees that Panetta’s two-year tenure at the agency was largely a success, albeit limited to improving the morale of the CIA cadre and facilitating intelligencesharing between different se-

until the next elections. Likewise, should Putin call it quits, the entire government hierarchy (already not very effective) would break down once and for all. Both men understand this perfectly well and don’t want to take this kind of risk.

Apart from that, each has his

curity entities. Panetta’s critics would argue that he failed to reform the agency to make it better handle the new security threats facing the country.

But who would listen to the critics now?

Besides, the time to criticize Panetta’s role as CIA director is up — Obama has tapped him to replace Robert Gates as the new secretary of defense, and there is little doubt that, given the recent developments, Panetta will breeze through his Senate confirmation.

At first glance, Russia need not pay much attention to this personnel change. Panetta’s limited experience in national security issues notwithstanding, he’s a savvy Washington insider and capable bureaucrat.

More importantly, Panetta is an experienced budget manager, and because of that, Obama picked him to shepherd through Congress the huge cut in military spending ($400 billion over the next 12 years) that Obama included in his deficit-reduction plan.

If anything, Russia can only welcome any reduction in U.S. military spending, however, Moscow may come to regret Gates’ departure. For more than two years, Gates — a Republican who served under

own political ambitions and visions for the presidential throne.

What isn’t clear at all is how Putin and Medvedev perceived this situation unfolding when they laid the foundation for it in 2008. How did Putin plan for everything? Will Medvedev, in having kept the presidential seat warm, walk away from power by conveying that he will not run for a second term? There was something behind the rumors that Medvedev, having just assumed power, would resign from office to avoid a long existence as a lame duck. But then why would Putin discredit the institution of the presidency, which he did so much to strengthen and to which he presumably plans to return? Did Putin initially assume that he would serve as prime minister for a long time, but now being convinced that Medvedev is able to handle his responsibilities, wants to take a seat on the sidelines? If that’s the case, then it isn’t clear what a politician like Putin, who is full of power fairly young, will do with his time.

And of course it’s possible that the dual-leadership scenario and how to get out of it was not thought through to the end, or that life itself has thrown Putin and Medvedev a curve ball. What is also uncertain is whether either of them took into account the possibility of the electorate becoming tired

President George W. Bush — has been Obama’s national security “cover,” giving him credibility with the Republicans in Congress. Gates was indispensable in “selling” to the Senate Republicans the New START treaty; there is every reason to believe that a number of GOP Senators eventually voted for the treaty only after personal assurances by Gates that the treaty was beneficial for U.S. national interests.

Russia can only welcome any reduction in U.S. military spending.

Although well respected, Panetta enjoys no such credibility with Capitol Hill Republicans. With him at the helm of the Pentagon, Obama will have no helping hand should any arms control agreement with Russia reach the Senate.

Moscow should also carefully follow the rise of the liberal interventionist “wing” of the Obama foreign policy team. It has been widely reported that the president’s decision to join military action in Libya was

of the same person being at the helm no matter how successful he may be. Today, people demand progressive growth, daily news. And even should it be insignificant news, there should be change nonetheless.

Just as people today want to see new episodes of a television series, politics needs to constantly have new themes.

Recent polls indicate that 25 percent of Russians said they would prefer seeing neither Putin nor Medvedev on the ballot in 2012. This doesn’t mean that their ratings are a lost cause, but it at least goes to show that the public is thirsting for change.

One way to respond to this desire for change would be to have both men run for president. Then, rather than debating who will run, the main issue in Russian politics would be each candidate’s goals and plans for a new presidential term. Despite the myriad of worries, this would not cause a dangerous schism in the ruling elite and break it into two irreconcilable camps. Rather, it would provide relative stability to the entire system. A competitive election campaign between Putin and Medvedev, one focused on separate, insignificant differences of opinion (for they may not have any significant ones), will ensure the country’s course for development as a whole will be safe, while at the same time preserving and relatively stabilizing Russia’s social and political system.

Georgy Bovt is a Moscowbased political commentator.

strongly lobbied for by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation Susan Rice and National Security Council official Samantha Power, who persuaded Obama that it was the moral obligation of the United States to intervene in what they called an imminent humanitarian catastrophe in Benghazi.

Curiously, Obama made this decision over objections from Vice President Joe Biden and Gates, both known as foreign policy “realists.”

If Obama gets re-elected — as it’s looking increasingly likely — and Clinton retires in 2012, as she promised, Rice will become a natural choice to become the next secretary of state. And Power will have a decent chance to move into Rice’s chair at the United Nations. Should this happen, military interventions to fulfill vaguely defined moral imperatives may become a new modus operandi of the Obama administration.

It’s only a matter of time before such a “value-based” U.S. foreign policy causes a new chill in U.S.-Russia relations.

Eugene Ivanov is a Massachusetts-based political analyst who blogs at The Ivanov Report.

LOOKING beyond oil’S curse

THE POLLS

Facing the Bills DO russian families PLAN A BUDGET?

While in 2009 a full 62 percent of those polled planned their family’s budget, today that figure has decreased to 49 percent. Heads of households cited many reasons for a lack of planning, including a lack of a sizeable income, not seeing the point in planning a budget and spending money too quickly.

Letters from readers, guest columns and cartoons labeled “Comments,” “Viewpoint” or appearing on the “Opinion” and “Reflections” pages of this supplement are selected to represent a broad range of views and do not necessarily represent those of the editors of Russia Now or Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

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Konstantin Simonov

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nalysts have been talking about Russia’s natural resource curse for years, but now the discussion has reached the broader population as well.

Recent polls show that about half of all Russians are aware of the main fallout from the curse — that high oil prices, although profitable in the short term, have a negative impact on the country’s long-term development. The logic is simple: A windfall of petrodollars from unusually high oil prices has corrupted the ruling elite, eliminating the incentive for them to diversify the economy beyond the export of natural resources.

Nonetheless, there are many examples of countries whose economies were heavily reliant on raw materials but were able to diversify. Take, for example, the United States, which is one of the largest raw materials producers in the world. Last year, the United States replaced Russia as the world’s largest producer of natural gas, thanks in large part to its booming shale gas production. In addition, the

United States is in second place for coal extraction and is the world’s third-largest oil producer. But proponents of the curse theory tend to downplay the United States as a leading global natural resource producer to avoid contradicting their theory.

Norway, Canada and Australia are three other good examples. They prove that stable democracies and effective public

Surprising as it might seem, Russia actually made some progress in diversifying its economy. institutions make the resource curse virtually unnoticeable.

Ten years ago, the resource curse was a main topic of discussion among economic analysts and commentators. Many focused on the need to raise taxes on the oil and gas industry to stimulate investment in manufacturing and other sectors.

Surprising as it might seem, Russia actually made some progress in diversifying its economy.

In addition to the manufacturing sector, Russia also has a significant services sector, and many economists believe that the growth of the service sector is a main indicator of a developed economy.

You can find another indicator of Russia’s diversity by looking at its employment figures.

Today, 10.5 million Russians are employed in the manufacturing sector, or 10 times more than in the raw materials industry. Almost 12 million work in trade, 6 million in education, 5 million in health care and social services, 1.2 million in the hotel and restaurant business and another 1.1 million work in the banking and financial services sector.

Thus, contrary to popular belief, manufacturing and service sectors dwarf the raw materials sector in terms of people employed.

The problem, of course, is that the manufacturing and service sectors produce relatively little wealth for the country in comparison with oil and gas.

But even in a worse-case scenario — if, for example, all of Russia’s oil and gas were to disappear — it is highly unlikely that employees would suddenly start working better or that the ruling elite would rush to implement reforms.

niyaz karim

We need to rely less on the theory of a natural resource curse as an explanation for most of Russia’s woes. Although there is some truth to this theory, Russia’s oil and gas wealth is by far not the main reason why the country lags behind other leading economic powers. We should focus less on curses and more on developing and mod-

ernizing the country’s political and economic institutions.

Konstantin Simonov, director of the National Energy Security Foundation, is a columnist for Vedomosti, where this comment appeared.

This article was originally published in The Moscow Times.

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TAKEN IN ISOLATION

Unsung Icons of Design

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niyaz karim

A

Europe is increasingly coming up against extremism, not in hazy far-off regions, but at home, within its borders. Cameron said that many “point to the profusion of unelected leaders across the Middle East and say, ‘Stop propping these people up and you will stop creating the conditions for extremism to flourish.’ But this raises the question: If it’s the lack of democracy that is the problem, why are there so many extremists in free and open societies?”

A number of explanations can be given as to why many new immigrants do not integrate into Western societies, triggering a backlash of xenophobic feelings.

One factor is the entrenched social infrastructure of Europe that complicates quick assimilation.

Another involves an unspoken sense of national superiority that results in a condescending attitude toward immigrants — “By letting you in and allowing you to live and work, we have granted you a great favor.” The same bias exists in Russia toward emigrants from former Soviet republics who cannot obtain legal status and work.

Immigrants have long been an intrinsic part of any strong,

Newcomers enjoy all the privileges Western society offers, yet they have every opportunity to preserve their former way of life. What keeps immigrants apart?

Europe is increasingly coming up against extremism, not in hazy far-off regions, but at home, within its borders.

prosperous power. They realized all the hardships that a new homeland conceals even as they aspired to a new life, and were equipped to endure and overcome them.

Now, for the first time in history, newcomers enjoy all the privileges Western society offers, including welfare entitlements.

Yet they also have every opportunity to preserve their former way of life.

Investigating the flow of emigrants from Latin countries to the United States, Samuel Huntington wrote in his book “Who are we?” that this is the first wave in American history without the need to learn English or embrace an American lifestyle. This is not just because of the number of immigrants, but the technology that allows constant contact with immigrants’ homelands.

The result is paradoxical. Twitter, phones and television enable some to live apart from society. The alienation of ethnic communities grows as they are no longer compelled to assimilate.

Respect for minorities’ rights is an essential part of democracy. Those who are different from most, whether ethnically, sexu-

T

Special TO Russia Now

he current breakdown in communication between parents and children in Russia has been festering for decades — long before Perestroika: At least six generations of Russians were never taught how to bond, nor to be friends with their children.

I am not referring to the kind of friendship in which there are no boundaries or control, but a friendship in which parents enjoy and respect their children, and allow for their individuality as they grow.

This kind of nurturing has, until recently, been totally absent from Russian parenting; we are only seeing glimpses of it now that parents travel, read parenting books and observe that there are other ways to shape their children other than the way they were taught.

But there is a long journey ahead toward what I would call healthy, happy parenting.

As a rule, Russian parents don’t compliment their children enough. After a certain age, once the children enter school, parents are no longer affectionate in their language and tone. Yet the first step in nourishing Russian family life is for us to praise our children in ways we were never praised as kids ourselves.

Healing a History of Family Trauma At least six generations have been taught to indulge their

power at the expense of their children. During Soviet times, the only way a Soviet citizen — traumatized if not “spooked” by the State — could “feel the power” was by bossing younger people around.

Children were there to be controlled. As a result, several generations were raised as gods and slaves. There was no communication encouraged between family members, and the joy of family life was crushed.

In order to bond with children, Russian parents need to start forming a friendship as soon as their children are born, bearing in mind that they are no worse than you just because they weigh less or measure less in height. This is the kind of respect we have to start fostering in Russia. I will go even further by saying that children are smarter than adults!

If you can start perceiving children as fully legitimate members of the society right from the beginning, you are able to step into their shoes without bossing them around. Discuss any issues that may arise by listening to their arguments and proposing your own.

We expect our children to be better copies of ourselves, or some kind of trophy achievers.

We have not learned that our children do not have to do what we do and like what we like.

This concept of, dare I say it, God’s creation, an individual, is also almost completely absent in Russia.

What can you expect from a nation that has been deprived of its most educated people, in-

niyaz karim

a GUIDE TO Post-Soviet Parenting Elena Zaretskaya

05

Bibliophile

Svetlana Babaeva

fter decades of espousing a doctrine of multiculturalism and national diversity, Western societies are discovering that they have stifled themselves with their own ideals.

In simplest terms, where is the borderline between tolerance and the preservation of those values that turned Europe into a pilgrimage site for millions of immigrants?

Even more bluntly, why can women walk in London or Washington, D.C., in full Muslim dress, called the niqab, and this will be defined as tolerance, while walking in a tank top in many Middle East capitals is forbidden out of “respect for national tradition”?

That is certainly a simplistic angle; in reality, the problem is more expansive, namely, whether it hasn’t been an egregious mistake for Westerners to show infinite tolerance toward other identities while letting their own be diluted. Aren’t those foundations and values under threat, which shaped the very identity of Western society, a society that is so attractive and, at the same time, to some, repulsive?

Multiculturalism will be one of the topics of the Yaroslavl Global Policy Forum this September. While the United States hasn’t confronted the issue as acutely as, say, Europe, different aspects of multiculturalism and the co-existence of various societies will likely become very important to Americans over the next decade.

Following France and Switzerland, Germany and Great Britain are beginning to recognize their conundrum.

Last fall, Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged the utter failure of multiculturalism in Germany. In February, speaking at the Munich Conference for International Security, British Prime Minister David Cameron also lamented “the doctrine of state multiculturalism,” under which Europeans “have encouraged different cultures to live “separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream.” In his words, instead of providing “a vision of society” to which other communities wish to belong, Europeans “have tolerated” even those who live “completely counter” to Western values.

Reflections

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We expect our children to be better copies of ourselves, or some kind of trophy achievers. cluding clergy, in the first quarter of the 20th century? The clergy was exterminated while “intelligentsia” of all sorts were deported from the earliest days after the revolution.

I am not sure I can name all

of the reasons behind the malaise of the modern family. But it involves a great lack of trust and, secondly, failure to acknowledge the sacred rights of others. These same generations of people have been taught to take what belongs to others.

What did the Bolsheviks do in 1917? They implemented a policy of pillage. They forged the sense that someone else’s property is always, potentially, yours. This is one of the major causes of our lost moral compass, our cynicism. Why are we

ally or politically, must feel free and secure. Recently, this respect has turned more into a demand that new minority groups be allowed to live apart: A certain path is cleared so that they don’t feel obliged to learn a new language. They can invite their relatives, even those who will receive welfare benefits when they can’t, or refuse to find a job. And women are allowed to become isolated at home in their narrowly defined traditional roles.

The Western world has a considerable number of residents who remain foreign in their values with no respect, nor responsibility, toward their new home.

Ongoing turbulence in the Middle East could ignite a refugee crisis in Europe. As many as 2 million refugees could flee, causing new concern about the ability of institutions to cope and the willingness of these new Europeans to embrace a Western lifestyle. It again begs the question: Can the interlinked world avoid a “clash of civilizations,” and if so, at what price?

Svetlana Babaeva is the bureau chief of RIA Novosti in Washington, D.C.

failing at becoming a properly capitalist country? Capitalism rests on two giants — on the recognition of the sacred right to private property and on trust.

The trust element has fallen apart completely and the private property right is simply not part of our worldview.

In Russia, some think that someone else’s husband is potentially their property, and the same goes for someone else’s wife. Even at school, girls start sizing up other people’s pockets.

Let’s consider a woman who is young, attractive and married. In Russia, she might start looking for a new partner among her husband’s friends.

If she entered the marriage as a way of getting on the “upward mobility ladder,” no one can expect her to be faithful and, subsequently, there can be no trust. She keeps looking for a wealthier spouse, while her partner may explore opportunities with women as objects, younger and more sexually attractive every time.

Of course there are many wonderful exceptions to these schemes, namely Russian romantics who get married in the hopes of spending their lives together. This kind of love and trust occurs in Russia as it does everywhere else. But just not frequently enough. It’s time to foster trust, and pass it on to our children.

Before it’s too late.

Prepared by Elena Shapovalova

Elena Zaretskaya, a Doctor of Philology, is head of the Department of Social Sciences at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration and professor and creator of the “communicative education in Russia” concept and other communication techniques.

Special to RN

n his irreverent, quirky and loving book, “Made in Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Design,” (Rizzoli), editor Michael Idov brings in a team of heavyweight writers and artists to explore Soviet life, art and kitsch. Together, they reminisce and rediscover the hardscrabble, ineffable designs that helped to shape Soviet life. They chose 50 of the most evocative icons to riff on.

Recalling one of the Soviet Union’s brightest moments, when Sputnik-1 orbited the earth in 1957, Idov quotes Claire Booth Luce, who called the spider-like orb “an inter-continental outer-space raspberry to a decade of American pretensions that the American way of life was a gilt-edged guarantee of our national superiority.”

Inevitably, Idov writes, Sputnik “jump-started a number of design trends.” He also readily acknowledges that many Soviet designs were clumsy rip-offs of Western inventions. Made in Russia manages to focus on the most inspirational emblems, the best of a “crazed, Modernist pastiche,” Idov writes. “It jumbled together wartime knowhow, space-age aesthetics, accidental shabby chic, Slavic motif and warped dreams of the West.”

Most of the items then, chosen by Idov and described by Bela Shayevich, are not feats of Soviet engineering. More intriguingly, they are the flotsam and jetsam of a dead society, from the ubiquitous 12-sided drinking glass to the loot-revealing fishnet shopping bag.

“Unsung Icons” offers dueling memories. One of the most

powerful images is that of street soda dispensers with a single communal glass. Pathetic, intimate and warm-hearted, the image does evoke some eerily simple life.

“The book started out as an antidote to nostalgia,” Idov said in a phone interview. He found a recent tome by acclaimed Russian journalist Leonid Parfyonov, called “Our Era,” “omnivorous in its nostalgia.”

Idov said he worried he had gone too far in the other direction. He decided to balance the hipper, ironic tone with personal essays.

The essays are written by the likes of artist Vitaly Komar and Russian Jewish émigré writer Gary Shteyngart. The result is a bit chaotic — the book is at times a raw mix of essays, text, description and images — but packed with emotional power.

Lara Vapnyar’s recollection of her school uniform — which awkwardly resembled a blocky version of a French maid costume — conjures an archetypal scene of an adolescent whose stirrings are stanched by a Soviet mother. The epic question: At what point does a school uniform fit? For a daughter, when it fits her form. For a mother, when it hides her growing daughter.

But the most visionary essay is written by Vitaly Komar, the pre-eminent founder of the Sots Art movement. Not only does he deconstruct the hammer and sickle, he recalls a limerick, what he calls an “infamous folk ditty of the 1960s.”

Here’s the hammer, here’s the sickle Our nation’s proud symbol Forge your steel, cut your hay You’ll be buggered either way.

EXPAT files

A history of dieting Jennifer Eremeeva

Special to Russia Now

D

ee Dee, a fresh expat, recently wailed: “Is there a Jenny Craig in Moscow?”

“Of course,” I quipped back.

“I’m amazed you didn’t notice it — it’s right there on Red Square, between Target and Whole Foods.”

Alas, no. There is not even one single Weight Watchers meeting. If you are feeling homesick for the United States, there is a McDonald’s on almost every street corner, KFC and a newly opened Chili’s on New Arbat Street. Moscow is the last place you want to diet: It takes twice as long to lose a kilo as it does a pound, and stocking your kitchen with fresh fruit, lean meat and whole grains is a three-day marathon. Is it any wonder expat women are struggling to take off some weight?

I met Dee Dee for a latte, and after much persuasion, Larissa the barista made them with 1.8 percent instead of the usual 3.5.

“I’ve put on 10 pounds in two months! I didn’t notice at first because the scale in our hotel room was in kilos — I actually thought I’d lost some weight — but then our container arrived with my regular scale and I was horrified. Do you think it could have been recalibrated during the voyage?”

“Very possibly,” I soothed.

“And look at all those skinny girls out there,” she waved her hand toward Tverskaya Street.

“Are you telling me they subsist on high-fat milk and deep fried everything?”

“They are the Banana Generation,” I explained. The dubious Banana Generation theory is a soothing balm to every expat woman who ever warily eyed her husband’s 89-pound secretary. According to the theory,

the generation of Russians who are now abnormally tall and enviously slim were entering puberty in the years just after perestroika, when vassal states such as Cuba were repaying their debt to Russia in fruit, flooding the previously barren shelves with bananas. And, the theory runs, bananas produce abnormally high growth spurts.

“That’s ridiculous,” scoffed Dee Dee. “There must be some dieting help here.”

In 20 years of Moscow life, I have seen hundreds of diet fads come and go. In the early 90s, there were hyperactive salesmen in the metro wearing buttons on their grimy leather jackets saying, “Want to lose weight? Ask me how.” Soon a revolutionary program known as “New Vays” took their place. “New Vays” potions and powders turned out to be manufactured from outdated talcum power at a dubious factory outside Minsk. Diet pills from Thailand enjoyed huge popularity, until a spate of hospitalizations.

Then-president Vladimir Putin introduced the briefly popular Kremlin Diet — an innovative program that eliminated sugars, starches and alcohol, leaving protein and vegetables. This was eclipsed by the arrival of the Atkins Diet. Finally a diet made for Russians!

Dee Dee and I hit upon a very expat solution. We created our own Weight Watchers-type support group, easily recruiting other expats as members. We met a few times for weigh-ins, but it quickly spiraled into a wine drinking/moaning evening about the servant problem.

Which is how we piled on the kilos in the first place.

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

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Entertainment Moscow nightlife offers diversity as well as excess

From Water and Chocolate, a Club Scene GALINA MASTEROVA

SPECIAL TO RUSSIA NOW

It’s 2 a.m. on a Saturday and there is a procession of BMWs and rickety Russian cars leading to the site of an old chocolate factory, once renowned for its rivers of chocolate and mouthwatering fragrance wafting over the riverfront neighborhood.

These days, the chocolate factory is one of Moscow’s most Dionysian of clubs, a study in crass opulence, what one club blogger called “the nightmare of a 7-year-old boy who ate too much candy and fell asleep.”

Girls, in heels designed for better pavements, get out of taxis and head toward the red brick building. To a paradise of sorts. Some say that Rai, which means Paradise in Russian, is not Moscow’s hottest club anymore, but you wouldn’t know it from the long line of hopefuls standing outside waiting to be let in on this Saturday night.

Entrance is free, but that doesn’t mean just anyone can get in. In its unparalleled celebration of excess, Rai is still the face of Moscow clubdom. It is also emblematic for its face control, which is now part of the Russian vernacular (feis kontrol). Entry depends on one man at the door.

Moscow has turned feis kontrol into performance art.

Yet some night owls suggest the oversized glamour clubs, with their chronic techno beats, are becoming a tad passe. At the very least, they have some earthy competition. A vast

range of clubs have debuted nearby since Rai opened its doors, even after the financial crisis of 2008. Many cater to entry-level professionals who can’t afford Rai’s VIP couches, or students looking for an alternative venue.

Vladimir Face Control A beautiful young girl comes up to Rai and stares doe-eyed at a man called Vladimir, Vladimir wouldn’t give his last name, saying that he could be referred to simply as “Vladimir Face Control.”

Entrance is free, but that doesn’t mean just anyone can get in.

“Can you let me and my friend in,” one girl asked Vladimir plaintively. “I want to go to the VIP area.”

“You can come in, but you have to book a table,” Vladimir said. Tables cost a minumum of 50,000 rubles ($1,824).

“Our feet are tired,” she moans, knowing that if you are not in the VIP area, there is nowhere to sit down in the club.

“Show me your friend.

Maybe I won’t like her,” said Vladimir, explaining in a few brutal words the concept of face control.

Her friend, sheathed in a leopard-skin top, passes muster and they enter the Rai temple, which resembles a mad grotto with elephant heads coming out of the wall. Pretty girls and rich men are still the

cynical mainstay for these highend clubs. Yet a stone’s throw away, another club caters to an entirely different clientele. Rolling Stone Bar and Tattoo appears to be part college pub, part fashion rocker bar. It still has face control, but the contrast between the two clubs so close to each other is enormous.

The main gimmick is that those who drink too much may well end up in the tattoo parlor.

The financial crisis of 2008 scuppered plans to turn the chocolate factory into a “million dollar mile.” Luxury lofts were shelved, and instead it has become Moscow’s most thriving nightlife area.

At first, clubs closed down during the crisis. But soon, real estate moguls saw new opportunity for their failing developments — party caverns. “Prices are lower, but real estate is cheaper and new [clubs] are opening up,” said Rolling Stone’s face control man Fillip Alexeev, who says he gets a staggering $8,000 a month for his grueling two-day week.

“It’s a dangerous job,” he said. “I get death threats, people say that they will wait for me after work. The security escorts me home after work.”

His advice on getting in?

“You have to look good, have an intelligent face.”

For some, that’s too much pressure. They head over to Mayak, a bar linked to the Mayakovsky Theater. Friday nights is a raucous dance night in a place that has been adopted by journalists, actors and artists. Anyone who doesn’t dance when on the dance floor can expect to get shouted at by the owner.

A dancer at Club Rai, located in the old Red October Chocolate Factory.

RUSLAN SUKHUSHIN(3)

The famous Red October chocolate factory site on the Moscow River offers a dazzling spectacle of clubs, face control and arm candy.

Cars wait outside the Strelka club in central Moscow.

Some of these places, called “demokratichniye,” or democratic, are not wildly expensive, but they still have face control.

And if you can’t get past face control on looks and charm alone, it seems to be increasingly difficult to buy your way in.

A few hours before closing, Vladimir is surveying the appli-

cants for Rai, some hopeful, some arrogantly expectant.

Two young guys with watches that look too heavy for a wrist come up to the second gate.

When told that access is denied, one said, “I have known the club owner for years, do you know who my father is?”

The other, Adam, rubbed his fingers together in the global

Guests at Club Rai.

sign for money and asked, “Can we solve this in a Chekhovian way.” The euphemism is odd, but Vladimir understood the gesture. He refused the bribe.

Closing Time It is now 6 a.m., and nearly all of Moscow’s clubs have closed. The party moves to Krisha Mira, or Roof of the

World. Atop an abandoned factory, the club looks onto the Moscow financial center, called Moscow City. Some revelers cannot say goodbye, even when it costs $16-20 for a Cuba libre. Partygoers finally stumble outside to the waiting taxis, the girls’ heels in their hands. They pour into cars as the unforgiving sun rises.

Ballerina Dances Away From the Party CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

A longtime survivor of backstage battles, surrounded by what she called “jealousy and evil insults,” Volochkova describes the drama of the movie “Black Swan” as “little flowers” compared to the intrigues of the Bolshoi Ballet.

It was the Bolshoi Theatre that threw the next “never” at Volochkova, firing her in 2003, a year after she won the prestigious Prix Benois de la Danse. The executives of Moscow’s most famous theater pronounced Volochkova the “fat ballerina,” too heavy to ever appear on the theater’s stage again. Volochkova suspects the vindictive hand of a powerful former lover, but will not speak his name publicly.

She cried under the marble columns of the Bolshoi, she said. “Nobody had a word of support,” she said.

The ballerina remembers with bitterness the day she had to step onto a scale that a New York Times reporter brought to an interview for an independent measure of her weight — without fear or favor. That scale showed 109 pounds, a fine dancing weight for a 5-foot 6-inch woman.

But her Bolshoi career was over in the most embarrassing fashion, after performing as a soloist in six major ballets and touring the world for more than five years.

In the wake of the scandal, Volochkova joined United Russia, one of a number of celebrity recruits designed to brighten up a party more associated with colorless bureaucrats. Volochkova says she was a loyal servant. Her image adorned campaign literature. She accompanied regional governors on trips to Western Europe as a cultural ambassador. She demonstrated her famed 42-fouettéturns to 6 , 0 0 0 state apparatchiks, oil magnates, gas company e x e c u tives and investment fund managers at the country’s major concert hall in the Kremlin.

Just a few months ago, she danced between the tables at a United Russia gathering, gliding between the men in suits and the vodka bottles.

“For as long as I was spinning with their flag in my hand, they were my friends, but now they turn their backs,” she said.

The souring in her relationship with the party began in 2009 when “paperwork prob-

lems” led to her exclusion from the ballot in the race for mayor of Sochi, the city that will host the 2014 Winter Olympics.

One of the bespoke, gray men took the job. Suddenly, she said, solo dance performances were being cancelled for her political impertinence in challenging one of the party’s anointed.

The final break, however, did not come until recently when Volochkova photoshopped a semi-nude photo to make it seem like President Dmitry Medvedev was leering at her.

And then she posted it on the web.

“My beach photoshoot caused serious indignation in the party ranks. ‘How can this be! A member of United Russia suddenly bares her breasts!’ the party aunties yelled,” wrote Volochkova. “They suddenly remem-

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Volochkova performs the character of Nikia in the Ludwig Minkus Ballet “La Bayadere.”

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bered I was a member of United Russia.”

Senior members of the party dismissed her departure from the party ranks. But Volochkova fought back. She said that in 2005, without her knowledge, the party signed her name on a collective letter in support of the imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The former oil tycoon, she said in a recent assessment, was “more of a man” than those she saw in Putin’s party.

The standing ovations now come from Russia’s beleaguered opposition. “Anastasia Volochkova attracted the attention of Russia’s glamorous elite by showing an example of a stoic civil position.

I admire her choice,” said Boris Nemtsov, opposition activist and Kremlin foe.

Criticizing the party is not taken lightly, critics say, adding that mayors and administrators have lost their jobs for less.

Volochkova likes to say that underneath her fur coats and silk dresses given to her by admirers over the years, she is “a powerful horse with iron stamina.” And although it seems she has fallen out of favor with the ruler, her fairy tale life is not over.

In one of her recent blog posts, the ballerina posted photos of a new $1 million Maybach, the super-luxe au-

“I am returning to Moscow - but the memories I have built up in my mind may diverge significantly from reality. It’s like going back to visit your high school the summer after your freshman year in college and realizing for the first time that life goes on without you.”

“Further on, a group of students are having a pillow fight in the street, turning the Arbat into a snowstorm of fluffy feathers in the spring sun.”

VITAE

Anastasia Volochkova BORN: JAN. 20, 1976 SAINT PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

STUDIES: Volochkova studied at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg, where both Rudolf Nuryev and Mikhail Baryshnikov also trained. She obtained an MBA from Moscow’s Higher School of Economics in 2010.

AWARDS: prestigious Prix Benois de la Danse EXPERIENCES: The prima ballerina was a soloist with the Mariinsky (1994-98) and then the Bolshoi Ballet (1998-2004).

She has also worked as an actress and model.

tomobile. Curious reporters wondered where she got it.

“Where, where?” she wrote on her blog. “I just prayed to God. And He listened to my prayers. I got out of my home, and there it was, my beauty.”

Anna Nemtsova is a Moscowbased correspondent for Newsweek magazine.

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