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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Internet Russian society is divided over potential for censorship and enforcement of new law

NEWS IN BRIEF

Bracing for Internet blacklist?

Doing business in Russia conference

New legislation in Russia designed to protect children from pornography and violence may also lead to Internet censorship. ANNA ARUTUNYAN SPECIAL TO RN

Lawyers, legislators and Internet experts are divided on how amendments to the Internet law will be enforced – but most agree that law enforcement agencies can already block content deemed illegal. Amend-

ments to the Federal Law on Protecting Children from Information Harmful to their Health and Development goes into effect Nov. 1. The controversy is about whether the legislation will expand those powers – or, possibly, curtail them. And the ultimate fate of a controversial video, the “Innocence of Muslims,” will be a case in point. Debates have raged for months since Russia’s parliament passed in July what became

known as the Internet blacklist law, a series of amendments that would create a register of websites hosting “illegal content” – such as child pornography or the promotion of suicide or drug use. Under the law, once a site has been listed on the register, the site’s provider would have 24 hours to demand that the owner remove the illegal content from the site. If the site’s owner refuses to do so, the provider would then have to block ac-

Children in a mathematics class at Moscow’s primary school No. 89 participate in a “Virtual Classroom” pilot project.

cess to the site. The Russian State Agency on Press and Mass Communications has been placed in charge of the register.

Censorship or transparency? The bill was widely feared to be part of a slew of legislative efforts to crack down on the opposition in wake of a series of massive anti-Kremlin protests that broke out in December of 2011. Following President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration in May

The Fifth Annual Doing Business in Russia Conference, presented by The Eurasia Center with the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Russian-American Trade & Investment Consulting, explores business opportunities on November 19, a few weeks after the presidential election. Former obstacles have been removed to buoy trade and commerce, such as accession to the WTO. Panels will also discuss privatization of state-owned companies, technology and energy, among other topics.

2012, Russia’s parliament passed a law increasing fines for unauthorized protest rallies, and another bill forcing NGOs with foreign funding to register as foreign agents. The Internet blacklist law, as it was dubbed, was the third such bill – and drew a heated reaction from human rights activists and the opposition. As the amendments were being debated in parliament in early July, the Presidential Human Rights Commission issued a statement calling the bill an attempt to introduce censorship, which is unconstitutional in Russia. “The bill stipulates ‘collective responsibility’ in the Internet industry for criminals not tried by a court of law.... It thus stipulates the introduction of censorship in the Russian Internet segment,” it said, citing similar legislation that was discarded in the United States because of censorship concerns. Fearing that the law, if passed, could apply to some articles on its site, the Russian sector of Wikipedia shut down in protest for a day in July, fueling the debate further. A wave of September protests brought no new spate of arrests, and the controversy over the bill has become more nuanced. Media and Communications Minister, Nikolai Nikoforov, has sought to dispel fears of looming censorship, explaining that the law would bring transparency to existing practices. “This law has no objective to introduce censorship or any sort of influence on media,” he said in interviews with Russian news agencies earlier last month.

Bout’s defense challenges extradition

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The defense team for Russian Viktor Bout, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for illegal weapons sales, will appeal the verdict on the basis that the extradition from Thailand was unlawful. “We have evidence that representatives of the American federal agencies used pressure, intimidation and bribery against Thai officials,” said Bout’s attorney, Albert Dayan. The focus of the new case is on the extrajudicial process, not Bout’s guilt or innocence. Read more about Bout at rbth.ru/19147

Chirikova loses election High-profile environmentalist and protector of the Khimki forest Evgenia Chirikova lost her mayoral bid (Russia Now, September issue) to rival Oleg Shakhov. The mayor-elect has invited her to join his team. She has made her participation conditional on his withdrawal from the plan to partially destroy the historic pine forest for a Moscow-St. Petersburg toll road. In regional elections, Pro-Kremlin candidates won overwhelmingly. The opposition cried fraud, but independent analysts said the result most likely reflected the direction of the majority.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

Policy Ivanov makes Latin America his mission

Bypassing Washington, drug czar asserts his voice Viktor Ivanov wants a more muscular presence in world drug policy as United States officials dominate Central Asia. ANNA NEMTSOVA SPECIAL TO RN

police and a representative of state structures,” he told reporters. Ivanov met with American officials who were traveling in the region. He also wanted to be seen at work in Washington’s backyard. Kremlin officials are concerned that the U.S. is militarizing counter-narcotics and that the deployment of Special Operations troops in Central Asia, no less than in Latin America, serves U.S. political and economic interests as much as it is an effort to interdict heroin or cocaine. “It feels as if the Monroe Doctrine swam across the ocean to our shores,” said Yuri Krupnov, director of the Institute for Demography, Migration and Regional Development, a proKremlin think tank. Since czarist times, Russia has tended to think of Central Asia as part of its sphere of influence.

PRESS PHOTO

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As the United States has stepped up its military and police assistance to Central Asia, Russia’s drug czar Viktor Ivanov realized he could sit in Moscow and brood, or gain a larger international profile by asserting a more muscular Russian role in global counter-narcotics. Choosing the latter, the peripatetic Ivanov, director of the Federal Drug Control Service, touched down in Peru, Argentina and Brazil as part of an ongoing effort to build diplomatic ties in Latin America while serving notice that there are voices other than Washington’s in setting drug policies.

On the flight to Latin America on his well-appointed Bombardier jet, Ivanov, a box of chocolates at his side, discussed his philosophy with a pool of reporters. He said that he wants counter-narcotics to become a multilateral project, led by the United Nations, that would give international legal backing to the liquidation of drug production in Afghanistan and South America. He said he also believes that a truly international war on drugs would have a greater chance of success than any purely American enterprise. Ivanov told reporters on the plane that he had many reasons for his visit to Latin America. He said that he wanted to “shut down two major intercontinental centers of heroin production.” But his goals in Latin America are twofold: intelligence and diplomacy. “I am alone with two faces, I am here as both Russian

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Ivanov speaks at a forum on fighting drug production in Afghanistan.

Russia’s most serious drug issue stems from the flow of heroin along smuggling routes from Afghanistan through Central Asia and into the country’s cities. About five million Russian addicts consume about 70 tons

of Afghan heroin annually. Cocaine from Latin America is a marginal problem in Russia with about half a ton sniffed each year by the wealthy elite. CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

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BUSINESS IN BRIEF

Logistics From Murmansk to Norilsk, a lone convoy brings supplies to the Arctic Circle, an area rich in precious metals

Ice express breaks through

$4 billion of arms heading to Iraq

IN HIS OWN WORDS

Mikhail Khomenko CAPTAIN OF TALNAKH ARCTIC CLASS DIESEL-ELECTRIC SHIP

Iraq signed off on a $4 billion arms deal with Russia during a visit to Moscow by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Russia will deliver attack helicopters and mobile air-defense systems to Iraq in a controversial deal that comes on top of arms sales to Syria. The agreement makes Russia Iraq’s biggest arms supplier after the United States. Some experts see politics behind the deal after Iraq strongly supported Russia’s official opposition to intervention in resolving the Syrian conflict of President Bashar al-Assad. This year Russia’s arms exports total $14.5 billion.

Diesel-electric ships carry Norilsk Nickel’s production to global markets and serve as a lifeline for the residents of Russia’s Far North.

Each winter, tens of thousands of Russians living in the Arctic Circle are dependent on a single convoy carrying food.

The Northern Sea Route

Transport artery in the Arctic The Northern Sea Route (NSR) is the shortest passage between northern Europe and the Asia-Pacific. The entire route lies in Arctic waters and parts are free of ice for only two months per year. It is an established national transport artery. In the early 1930s it was actively used to connect the European and Far Eastern parts of the country. The route is a potential alternative to traditional international seaways in terms of freight costs, safety and quality. In recent years, the volume of Arctic freight traffic has surged.

DMITRY LITOVKIN SPECIAL TO RN

It may not be winter in the city of Washington, but in the Arctic Circle the thickest winter ice is beginning to close people in. To ease the isolation, an enormous diesel-electric ship owned by Norilsk Nickel leaves Murmansk for the mouth of the Yenisei, Siberia’s largest river. The trip takes five to seven days across a sea of sometimes fivefoot thick ice. Eventually, the ship, carrying 4,000 to 8,000 tons of groceries and other household goods, reaches the port of Dudinka, a bedroom town of 25,000 people waiting on its arrival. The ship’s route across the Northern Sea is a lifeline without which the city of Norilsk and the surrounding towns like Dudinka in this isolated but mineral-rich area would not survive. The ship, which receives realtime satellite images of the sea ice and automatically integrates them into its navigation charts, has dramatically improved the ability of the Norilsk company (which takes its name from the city) to get its product to markets around the world. Norilsk Nickel Group is the largest mining company in Russia, where it produces four main metals - nickel, copper, palladium and platinum. The company also produces several byproducts such as cobalt, rhodium, silver, gold, selenium. Norilsk is involved in prospecting, exploration and extrac-

Norilsk Nickel Norilsk Nickel is the world’s largest producer of nickel and palladium and a leading producer of platinum and copper. The group is involved in prospecting, exploring, extracting and refining metals. The main Russian extracting assets of Norilsk Nickel are behind the polar circle on the Taymyrsky peninsula where unique

fields of Talnakhsky ores of nickel and copper and are located. The company was founded 70 years ago. In 2007, it began its acquisition of international mining assets. Norilsk Nickel now also has production facilities abroad on four continents. It has operations in Finland, Botswana, the United States, South Africa and Australia.

tion as well as the production of base and precious metals.

rilsk offers a harsh climate and pollution, which while improving, is persistent. Keeping the area supplied in winter used to be the role of the state, but in recent years the company has taken on the responsibility. A container ship that can

The only ship of its kind Most of the residents of Norilsk work for the metal company, known for its good pay and long vacations. However, No-

move through ice, the shuttle vessel is part of a wider fleet that runs between Dudinka, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Rotterdam, Hamburg and Shanghai. Without the need for icebreakers to accompany container ships, the company has slashed its delivery costs by 30 percent. “Our fleet effectively addresses all of our logistical challenges,” said Oleg Fedin, director of Norilsk Nickel’s Murmansk transport subsidiary, a fleet of six diesel-electric ships. Ships on the Northern Sea Route are estimated to carry around 1.3 million tons annually, including nearly half a million tons of metal products. Mikhail Khomenko, a deepsea master who has spent 13 years of his life on these seas,

is more than happy to show off his Talnakh arctic-class vessel, each of which costs close to $80 millon. All of the Norilsk ships were built by Aker Yards and Nordic Yards, headquartered in Norway, Finland and Germany.

The ship route across the Northern Sea is a lifeline without which the residents would not survive. At first, he said, “there were no ships of this kind in either Russian or foreign fleets.” He recalled the curiosity of German customs officers when he first pulled into Hamburg in one of the ships: Two inspectors came

aboard because they simply wanted to see it up close. These Norilsk Nickel series ships are the world’s first container ships built to Arc7 class standards. The ship is capable of breaking through more than five feet of ice without a special icebreaker supporting it. The ship is also the first in Russia with a propulsion device mounted outside the hull that can rotate 360 degrees, significantly increasing maneuverability and speed.

Breaking the ice In ice-congested waters, the Talnakh can turn the stern front to break the ice and is capable of breaking through five feet of ice at a rate of 1 to 2 knots. The once arduous winter run from Murmansk to Dudinka, which used to be handled by government-owned craft, has become almost routine. “My objective is not to break the thickest ice to prove that I operate the most powerful vessel in the Arctic, but to use navigation information to reach point B from point A via the shortest route and using a minimum of fuel,” said Khomenko. Companies like Norilsk are also well poised for the near future as rising temperatures make the trillions of dollars worth of natural resources above the Arctic Circle more available. International interest in the region has been growing in recent years. The Soviet Union began mining Norilsk in the 1920s, and it became part of the Gulag system. Later, the national mine became known as a way of getting a good income in the U.S.S.R. In the early-1990s the company was privatized.

ILAN GOREN SPECIAL TO RN

In 2006, as Russia was in the throes of a decade-long economic boom, a young entrepreneur named Albert Popkov had a paradoxical idea: To capitalize on his countrymen’s nostalgic tendencies in order to build a 21st century venture. He founded Odnoklassniki (Russian for “Classmates”) a website which combined reuniting old schoolmates with social networking. Within a year, one million Russians flocked to the

site, where they could reconnect with anyone from the kid they shared a tent with at summer camp 30 years ago, to their former next door neighbor. The site won the country’s top web prizes, and in 2008 Popkov was named GQ magazine’s “businessman of the year.” Odnoklassniki flourished, racking up almost 30 million visitors from Russian speaking countries by July 2008. Today the site boasts the same number of visitors – but each and every day. It’s the second most popular social network in Russia, vying to overtake the leader, Vkontakte, which boasts 35 million visits a day. Odnoklassniki earned $103 million (3.2 billion rubles) in the

first three quarters of 2011, securing a net profit of $45 million (1.4 billion rubles). When Durov launched Vkontakte (meaning “in touch”) in late 2006, he was accused of brazenly cloning Facebook, ripping off even the color scheme. Yet the English philology student who went to Saint Petersburg State University forged ahead with his brainchild, offering users free sharing of video and audio files. Accusations of intellectual property theft were quick to fly, but users loved the free content. They still do. Vkontake revenue swelled in 2011 to $106 million (3.29 billion rubles) while net profit rose to $16.6 million (516 million rubles). Respectively, those are in-

creases of 41.7 percent and 13.9 percent over the previous year. Facebook, which made its first serious foray into the Russian market two years ago, is now estimated to have 14 million registered users, and is popular among business owners who like to promote themselves on other media – particularly TV – as having a Facebook account. The strong results can be partly explained by Russian marketers’ appreciation of the power of free, though pirated, content. Ten thousand advertisers are registered with the network, each paying in advance an average of $645 (20,000 rubles). Analysts estimate Vkontakte to be worth more than a billion dollars and Durov’s personal for-

GETTY IMAGES/FOTOBANK

While the Facebook IPO grabbed the headlines, Russian social networks monetize traffic to beat the American giant.

Regional jets to get boost from state

PRESS PHOTO

In an apparent bid to improve safety standards on domestic flights, Russia’s Transportation Ministry has announced plans to subsidize regional aircraft purchases for air companies. The subsidies will give priority to Russian-made planes or those assembled on Russian territory. Specifically, the Russsian-made Expedition, Czech EVector EV-55 and Canadian DHC-6 Twin Otter will be supported.

Russian unemployment at record low The Russian unemployment rate has fallen to a post-Soviet historical low of 5.2 percent, according to Rosstat, whose findings are based on the opinion polls of the International Labor Organization. However, experts were quick to point out the economic downsides of this fact. “This means that companies are not rushing to modernize their production and increase their labor productivity. Consequently, in the future, the labor market may suffer a new shortage of workers,” explained Andrei Korovkin of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

GLOBAL RUSSIA BUSINESS CALENDAR

Social networks The Russian networks are still twice as popular as Facebook

From Russia with likes, two social networks battle

PRESS PHOTO (2)

There were no ships of this kind in the Russian or any foreign fleets. During one of our early voyages to Hamburg, two customs officials boarded the ship – the one who was ending his shift and the one who was starting. The German customs officers confessed that they were excited to see the ship and asked for a tour.”

OPEN INNOVATIONS OCTOBER 31 - NOVEMBER 3, 2012 EXPOCENTER, MOSCOW , RUSSIA

Pavel Durov, 27-year-old founder of VKontakte – the biggest Russian social network.

tune at around $260 million (8 billion rubles). Even better, not everything users seek is free. Paid services offered by Odnoklassniki include anything from social gaming, through the right to remain anonymous while peeking at another user’s page, and all the way to sending virtual gifts like songs, which can cost up to $2.50 (75 rubles) each. Russian-language social media may be entering its most competitive period ever, particularly since Facebook has built a 20

percent market share – which German Klimenko, editor of audience monitoring website liveinternet.ru describes as “an impressive foothold”. He predicts that the two big local players will be “pitched in a battle for every subscriber in order to continue thriving.” Popkov said that the Russian web “might remain a very good place for local players as foreign projects rarely succeed here.”

PHOTOXPRESS

Looking for holiday gifts? See our list of the “Best Books from Russia” translated for grown-ups and kids

Read the full article at www.rbth.ru/19239

This international forum for innovative development offers new tools and methods for international cooperation in innovation. The forum hopes to act as a kind of club for world innovation leaders. The program includes exchanging opinions and experiences in technology, finance and management as well as in forecasting methods for innovative development. › forinnovations.org/en/

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SUE S I T X NE Nov. 28

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Politics & Society

ZURAB DZHAVAKHADZE

Instead, Nikiforov admitted that various Internet sites are often arbitrarily blocked across the country. “The law would allow this process to be regulated somehow. Right now everything is chaotic – something or other is blocked here and there. This law would introduce a single set of rules,” he told ITAR-TASS. According to Artem Tolkachev, a lawyer with the Tolkachev & Partners law firm, law enforcement agencies already have instruments to block Internet sites they fear are extremist – a concept that can also apply to political content. “Personally, I support this law, and I find the mass hysteria that accompanied it isn’t completely justified,” Tolkachev said. “Of course there are risks that state organs will abuse their authority. But they already have all the powers to shut down sites as it is.”

Innocence of Muslims controversy One example is the recent controversy over the “Innocence of Muslims,” a trailer and video which sparked violent protests in the Arab world. Russian lawmakers have asked law enforcement authorities to check the clip for signs of extremism, but even with a court decision pending, reports appeared last month that access to YouTube was blocked in Omsk and Volgograd. But under the new law, if the video is found extremist, it could jeopardize the entire YouTube domain in Russia. “You may laugh at it but the whole of YouTube may be blocked in Russia completely over this video on November 3 to 5,” Nikiforov said in his Twitter blog on Sept. 18. A local

court in Chechnya has already ruled that the video is extremist, meaning that YouTube, which is controlled by Google, would either have to block access in Russia, or face YouTube being blacklisted. Google stated earlier this month it would agree to block the “Innocence of Muslims“ video pending a court notice, after a Moscow court found the content extremist. The company cited its own policy of blocking certain material in countries where it is found illegal. Meanwhile, Alexei Mitrofanov, the new head of a parliamentary committee on infor-

If a video is found extremist under the new law, it could jeopardize YouTube in Russia. Russia’s Internet community argues the bill has far bigger problems than enforcement. mation policy and technology, assured journalists that YouTube wasn’t going anywhere and that any solution to the video controversy would be “creative,” RIA Novosti reported recently.

Child welfare and extremism Still, Tolkachev cites the Omsk and Volgograd incident as just one example of how access to Internet sites can already be blocked without a court ruling. “If there is an order from the Prosecutor General’s office to block a site, then clearly Internet providers react with fear.” Given the ease with which

law enforcement agencies can already block Internet sites, Tolkachev believes the new bill will make regulations more transparent – and make it difficult to arbitrarily shut down content. “Right now, a site can be shut down if there’s a court ruling that finds it extremist,” Tolkachev said. “There’s also a quasi-legal method in which prosecutors issue a deposition, and those responsible must remove the content or close down the site. At least this law introduces a series of specific rules about this process that will be understood by everyone.” The problem, Tolkachev said, is that how the new rules are enforced has yet to be worked out, so forecasting its repercussions on the media is very difficult. But leaders in Russia’s burgeoning Internet industry argue the bill has far more problems besides the technicalities of enforcement. “This law does not limit the powers of various law enforcement agencies to block sites,” Anton Nosik, an executive at Livejournal, said. “It just offers new procedures in addition to the ones that already exist. This law concerns the protection of children. But most current cases of sites being blocked or filtered is about content that’s deemed extremist. And there’s nothing in this law that will regulate how, exactly, content is recognized as extremist.” Compounding the problem are attitudes about censorship that are less than clear cut. While the Russian Constitution forbids censorship, a recent poll suggests that a majority of Russians support Internet censorship. Some 63 percent of respondents were in favor of censorship to block harmful content on the Internet.

Russian drug czar asserts his role Kremlin’s Drug Czar

ITAR-TASS

Viktor Ivanov strolls with Nicaragua Police Director (R) Aminta Granera in Managua. CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Ivanov has been spending some serious time south of the border. In the last year, he has visited Ecuador, Panama, Mexico and Cuba and signed a number of agreements on intelligence sharing. Ivanov was also in Nicaragua where he opened a Russia-funded anti-narcotics center that will train police and other security forces. Yet in bilateral meetings, he has criticized the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s “heavyhanded methods of militarizing the region” and labeled as “insufficient” U.S. assistance to Co-

Viktor Ivanov was born in 1950 in Novgorod. In 1974 he graduated from the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute of Communications. From 1977 to 1994 he worked for the KGB, the national security service of the Soviet Union (it became the FSB in 1995). In the late 1980s, he served as an intelligence officer in the Soviet war in Afghanistan. In 1998 he became the head of the Internal Security Department of Russia’s FSB. Ivanov has been a deputy head of the presidential staff for personnel appointed by President Vladimir Putin. Since 2008, he has been director of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service.

IN FIGURES

70 15 5 tons of Afghan heroin is consumed annually by Russian drug addicts.

day arrest or a $175 fine is the punishment for illegal drug use.

lombia and Mexico. Ivanov insists that is not an anti-American mission. He has established a good working relationship with his U.S. counterpart, R. Gil Kerlikowske, the former Seattle po-

million Russians consume drugs and about half of them are addicts.

lice chief. The two met for coffee in Lima, Peru. And Ivanov said he looks back proudly on a joint U.S.-Russia operation last May when dozens of American and Russian drug agents seized

1) Muslims protest in Moscow against the film “Innocence of Muslims” in September. 2) A one-man protest against the Internet law in front of the State Duma.

TIMELINE

Internet legislation

Parents and the Internet June 2012 • Amendments to the Federal Law on Protecting Children from Information Harmful to their Health and Development was submitted to the Parliament by all Duma parties.

July 2012 • Russian Wikipedia held a blackout for 24 hours to protest the readings of the Internet law in the Russian Parliament.

July 2012 • The new amendments to the existing Internet law were approved by the State Duma.

July 2012 • President Vladimir Putin signed the amendments to the Internet legislation despite controversy.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

Nikolai Nikoforov

Artem Tolkachev

Anton Nosik

MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS AND MASS MEDIA OF RUSSIA

PARTNER AT TOLKACHEV & PARTNERS LAW FIRM

EXECUTIVE AT LIVEJOURNAL SOCIAL NETWORK

There are risks that state organs will abuse their authority. But they already have all the powers to shut down sites as it is.”

Right now everything is chaotic on the web – something is blocked here and there. This law would introduce a single set of rules.”

about $110 million worth of drugs and weapons in Afghanistan. (However some American officials who did not want to be identified said that Ivanov at times overestimates the level of cooperation that actually exists among the agencies.) Domestically, Ivanov wants to criminalize drug use and give addicts a choice between prison and forced treatment. “It’s the only way to stop the disaster,” said Evgeny Rogozin, the leader of a grassroots organization that backs forced treatment. Currently, illicit drug use in Russia is punished by a $175 fine or administrative arrest for up to 15 days. Opponents of criminalization said it is doomed to failure. “Mr. Ivanov’s views demonstrate a shameless disregard for science, public health and any sort of logical analysis,” said Ethan Nadelman, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based group that supports decriminalization. Ivanov is acutely aware of the scale of the challenge. He recently read a disspiriting U.N. report that was also a call to action. On his last day in South America, he visited Santos in Brazil, the busiest container port in Latin America. One of the officials there told him “if we tried to open each container that would paralyze the entire port.” With the new use of submersible submarines to transport heroin, the job just got even harder for everyone. Heading back to Moscow, Ivanov said he was pleased with his meetings. He spoke about successful meetings in Argentina, where he said “we’ll fight drug barons together with our Argentine colleagues.” He also told reporters that he had reached a new understanding with the president of Peru and that he was pleased with the memo he signed in Lima, stating: “Together with Peru, we will put an end to the drug trafficking from Latin America.”

This law concerns the protection of children. There’s nothing that will regulate how content is recognized as extremist.”

September 2012 • YouTube was blocked in Omsk for a few hours. The court in Grozny ruled that “Innocence of Muslims” is extremist and should be banned.

November 2012 • Russia launches an official registry of domains and web sites whose content is deemed illegal.

Corruption Russians can now report bribes in real time

Fighting bribes with your phone The Bribr.org website offers citizens a new way to document bribery anonymously and call attention to the problem. DARYA LUGANSKAYA MOSKOVSKIYE NOVOSTI

A new website called Bribr – a mobile application that collects information on bribery – appeared online in early October. The stated goal of the project is to fight petty day-to-day bribery, rather than expose big-time corruption. Developers claim the website is apolitical. On the Bribr website, users can download the application to their iPhone and anonymously confess to paying a bribe – for example, after being pulled over for drunk driving. Users can specify the amount, location and category of the bribe given. According to statistics posted on the Bribr.org website at the time of publication, the total amount of bribes disclosed since Sept. 24 reached a shocking 2 million rubles ($66,000). Most of these bribes occurred in universities and kindergardens. Much of the website’s user interface is taken up by a map that pinpoints the locations of where bribes have been paid. “Corruption has become the number one problem in Russia, but people tend to place the blame on top officials, rather than on themselves,” said Yevgenia Kuida, editor-in-chief of Afisha magazine and founder of the Bribr project. The Bribr team acknowledged

ALAMY/LEGION MEDIA

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

ITAR-TASS

Bracing for Internet blacklist?

Russians reported 2 million rubles in bribes by mid-October.

that there is no way to guarantee the authenticity of each report; they must rely instead on the responsible behavior of their users. All input is pre-moderated, with absurd claims dismissed on the basis of common sense, and

The developers of the project hope that Russians will become intolerant of petty corruption. spam texting from single phone numbers blocked. “We are not claiming 100 percent accuracy. It is all about spreading the word and promoting responsibility through a game,” Kuida said. The creators of the project intend to take the idea of intolerance to petty corruption offline too. They have printed wads of zero-ruble banknotes – also downloadable from the website

– that can be used to bribe a traffic cop or to hang at the office for everyone to see. Apps are being developed for Nokia and Android smartphones, and negotiations for project support are underway with the Russian office of Transparency International’s anti-corruption research and initiative center. Experts and prominent figures in the fight against corruption are skeptical about the project. “While certainly interesting, this project is very specific and geared towards a very narrow section of the public that uses the iPhone, which is not the most popular platform around,” said Ivan Begtin, director of the Informational Culture NGO. “The main questions for Bribr are: How are false or erroneous reports weeded out, and why is there no app for Android?” Read more at www.rbth.ru/18991

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Opinion

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RECALLING THE MISSILE CRISIS THE MOMENT THAT SAVED US FROM WORSE Alexei Dolinskiy SPECIAL TO RN

rom October 16 to 28, 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union faced off in one of the most dangerous moments of the Cold War. After a U.S. spy plane took pictures of Soviet nuclear missiles being deployed in Cuba – just 90 miles from Florida – and diplomatic discussions did not bring any results, the U.S. Navy launched a “quarantine” regime around the island to prevent Soviet ships from bringing in more weapons. Every vessel going to Cuba was to be searched by the U.S. military. The Soviet side considered this a blockade, and an act of aggression. Soviet ships were ordered to ignore the quarantine and continue their way to Havana. A 40,000-strong Soviet military contingent armed with tactical nuclear weapons was already deployed in Cuba and was ready to use its arsenal to prevent an invasion. Several medium-range ballistic nuclear missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland were also deployed in Cuba. Soviet specialists continued constructing missile sites and Soviet submarines continued their travel to Cuba. In one episode of the crisis, Russian submarines were forced to surface by U.S. aircraft and battleships; in another, a U.S. spy plane was shot down over the island by a surface-to-air missile. As the construction of the nuclear missile positions was nearing completion, the two sides found a compromise – the Soviet Union would withdraw its troops and weapons from the island, while the U.S. would lift its quarantine and refrain from further attempts to overthrow the Cuban leadership as well as withdraw its missiles from sites in Italy and Turkey. This dramatic 13-day standoff must be viewed as part of the international relations of the time, not as a separate incident. One of the key questions still being discussed is why the Soviet leadership started what later became known as the Cuban missile crisis. Although the formal goal of the military contin-

gent deployment was to protect Cuba’s sovereignty, this in itself could not be the main reason for a military operation of that scale and potential risk. According to reports, the idea to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba came to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev shortly after his visit to Bulgaria when he learned that the U.S. had ballistic missiles stationed in Turkey and Italy. The Soviet nuclear arsenal was sig-

The Cuban Missile Crisis marked the end of rocket-rattling to influence the U.S. and NATO. nificantly smaller and less technologically advanced than that of the United States, and from the Soviet perspective, nuclear missiles in Turkey were a threat that needed to be either addressed or balanced. The government of Cuba, which had come to power in 1959 under the leadership of Fidel Castro

and had repelled a U.S.-organized attack in 1961, seemed a perfect ally: By deploying missiles in Cuba, Moscow counterbalanced the nuclear missiles in Turkey and won a bargaining chip that could be used to negotiate the missiles’ withdrawal. But even after 50 years, the question of who benefited the most from the crisis remains a subject of intense debate. According to Ivan Timofeev, program director of the Russian Council for International Relations, all parties to the conflict achieved their goals: the U.S. drove a nuclear threat away from its borders and demonstrated to its allies its ability to protect its interests and resolve international crises; the Soviet Union showed that it was capable of projecting power globally; and Cuba was assured that there would be no further attempts at its sovereignty. However, there is another component to the Cuban crisis that is often overlooked – its consequences for the doctrine of deterrence. Said Timofeev: “The Cuban crisis strengthened the bipolar international system,

revealed the balance of power and highlighted the strategy for future mutual deterrence.” Legvold pointed out that the crisis “altered the political use that Soviet leaders, in particular, were willing to make of nuclear weapons. At various points before 1962 (the 1956 Suez crisis, the 1958 and 1961 Berlin crises), Khrushchev had been willing to engage in nuclear rocket-rattling in order to influence the United States and NATO governments. Never again after October 1962.” The enduring legacy of the crisis is that it was the last time the two superpowers seriously considered launching a nuclear attack against each other. The psychological impact of having narrowly escaped a nuclear Armageddon profoundly influenced U.S. and Soviet policymakers and facilitated what became by 1969 the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (START). The Cold War continued for nearly 30 more years and the United States and the Soviet Union repeatedly confronted each other in “proxy wars,” but a nuclear strike was no longer an attack weapon, only a means of strategic deterrence. Alexey Dolinskiy is a public and corporate diplomacy consultant working in the Asia Pacific region and Europe.

A CHILD’S VIEW OF THE CRISIS Eugene Ivanov SPECIAL TO RN

was eight when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened. Believe it or not, I remember it well. For a kid of my age, I was remarkably interested in politics, and reading newspapers and listening to the radio was part of my daily routine. What really happened in these 13 fateful days in October 1962 occurred to me much later, when I was an adult; besides, you could hardly expect getting a full picture from the Soviet propaganda of the time. But I do remember spirited reports praising brave Cubans and their charismatic leader Fidel Castro for standing up to the world’s worst “imperialist,” the United States of America. The reports were usually interspersed by energetic assurances that the Soviet Army was capable of defeating anyone who would dare to interrupt our peaceful movement towards Communism.

And then, I remember latenight kitchen conversations between my parents when I was supposed to be already asleep in my room. Speaking in a low voice so as not to wake me up, my mom talked anxiously to my dad, asking him to explain what was going on. He, a quiet and thoughtful man, responded trying to sound calm and positive, not perhaps trusting his own words, as I now realize. Finally, when the crisis was over, I vividly recall a cartoon on the first page of the daily newspaper Pravda. The cartoon depicted the Soviet premier,

The lesson of the Cuban Crisis could be summed up in three simple words: Know thy enemy. Nikita Khrushchev, as a captain of a ship with the steering wheel in hand. There was a compass in the middle of the wheel, with the compass’ needle pointing to the word “peace.” I felt proud that I lived in a country that had preserved world peace. The next time the Cuban Crisis had a personal touch upon my life was just a few years ago, when my family and I were already living in the United States. For a high-school class in world history, my son decided to write about the Cuban Crisis. I volunteered to review a draft of the paper. Suddenly, my childhood memories of reading the Pravda newspaper were back. In a straightforward manner that would bring tears of joy to the eyes of any seasoned Cold War warrior, my son told the narrative of a young, clever and perceptive American president who single-handedly outsmarted an old, moronic and clueless Russian leader. The conclusion of the paper was simple: There was a crisis; the Americans won, the Soviets lost. I chose not to criticize my son’s opus. However, unable to restrain myself completely, I asked him a question: “Well, if the United States was allowed

to have military bases next to the Soviet Union in Turkey, then why was the Soviet Union not allowed to have military bases in Cuba?” My son didn’t know the answer to this question: They hadn’t discussed this aspect of the conflict in his world history class. A notable anniversary of every well-known crisis event provides all of us with the useful opportunity to reconsider its proper place in the grand scheme of history. I leave it to the pundits to decide how many serious world crises were averted by the so-called Moscow-Washington hotline, a direct communication established between the Kremlin and the White House in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I expect global security experts to weigh in on whether the concept of mutually assured destruction that proved its first worth during the Crisis, is still as valid today as it was in 1962. But for me personally, the lessons of the Cuban Crisis could be summed up in three simple words: Know thy enemy. When reading eyewitnesses’ accounts of the events of October 1962, I was struck by the level of ignorance from both sides regarding the intentions and mindsets of their respective opponents. Hopefully, things have improved since then: The famous hotline is likely to be regularly updated with the most sophisticated communication gadgets; modern spying technologies provide a clear picture of the military capabilities of the other side – and often of its plans as well; a small army of shrewd risk managers would come up with a plausible contingency for just about every risky scenario on a moment’s notice. What else? The leaders of both countries must listen to each other at least as attentively as they do to their own hawks. Only then will the Cuban Missile Crisis remain the only crisis of such magnitude that we will commemorate, if not celebrate, in the future. Eugene Ivanov is a Massachusetts-based political commentator who blogs at The Ivanov Report.

DMITRY DIVIN

THE POLLS

THE THIRD ANGLE

Online censorship

FREE SPEECH IN PERIL

ALMOST 60% OF RUSSIANS BELIEVE THAT INTERNET CENSORSHIP IS A NECESSARY MEASURE, A RECENT LEVADA CENTRE POLL FINDS.

Konstantin von Eggert SPECIAL TO RN

SOURCE: LEVADA CENTER

Deputy director of the independent Levada Center Alexei Grazhdankin said “it isn’t just the Internet people are afraid of, they are also wary of total freedom and the free, unlimit-

ed distribution of information: People here are used to a model in which the state takes responsibility for a citizen’s whole life.” The poll was conducted in September 2012.

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n 2003, Russia witnessed a court consider criminal prosecution of curators when a museum displayed images that were deemed offensive by some priests and members of of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, when a court in Grozny, the capital of the autonomous republic of Chechnya, decided to ban the controversial “Innocence of Muslims” video from distribution in Russia, it made history. Should this decision be upheld by the judicial system, it will become the first official act of outright religiously motivated censorship in the post-communist history of Russia. It will also have consequences going far beyond the mere issue of a half-baked home video. The official pretext for the ban is that the film is “extremist” – a punishable offense under Russian law. The penal code clause 282, dealing with extremism, was written as a safeguard against Islamist terrorists, Nazi skinheads and their ilk. It is now being widely used to suppress dissent and limit free speech. The fact that it was the Chechen court that took action against “Innocence of Muslims” confirmed in the eyes of many that Chechnya’s role as a selfappointed enforcer of Islamic orthodoxy across Russia is tacitly recognized by the Kremlin. The region, headed by a former

NIYAZ KARIM

guerilla-fighter-turned-Kremlinloyalist Ramzan Kadyrov, enjoys exclusive status in Russia. Many say the country’s laws there do not apply (or at least, are not observed in full). Stories of women in Chechnya being forced to wear headscarves or pray; the ban on alcohol sales and other tales keep surfacing at regular intervals. The gradual fracturing of federal legislation and introduction of “Sharia by stealth” bodes badly for the country’s unity. The “Innocence of Muslims” ruling places a question mark over the freedoms guaranteed by the Russian Constitution and the international human rights convention Russia has also

The “Innocence of Muslims” ruling places a question mark over freedom of speech. signed, which includes freedom of information and freedom of artistic expression, including the principle of the “freedom to offend.” The State Duma already decided to amend the penal code to include punishment, ranging from heavy fines to jail terms for “offending the feelings of believers.” It is an allencompassing and deliberately

vague term that lawmakers deliberately keep that way. In the wake of the scandalous and controversial Pussy Riot “blasphemy” trial this summer, the Kremlin intends to clamp down on free speech wherever possible. It also views the majority of believers as a bedrock of support against pro-democracy activism. In exchange the authorities promise to ensure that religious belief will de facto be off limits for criticism in Russia. The religious revival in Russia is only twenty-five years old. For many their faith has replaced the communist ideology of the past. There is practically no tradition of reasoned discourse and coexistence between believers,

agnostics, and atheists. For many Russians, Christianity, Islam or (increasingly) militant secularism are not causes to be argued for but imperatives to be executed in real life – and woe to those who resist! In this divisive atmosphere alliances of convenience are made or broken. While Muslim clerics sided with the Russian Orthodox Church in demanding that Pussy Riot receive strict punishment for their blasphemy, the Church itself views growing numbers of Muslims in Russia and their active proselytizing as a challenge at best, and a potential threat at worst. Orthodox activists organize campaigns to protest the construction of new mosques in bedroom districts of Russian cities, and Muslims complain they are not well represented in state institutions. This situation suits the Kremlin well, as it is then the ultimate arbiter in all disputes between different faiths and secular society, as well as among the religious communities themselves. In the name of stability, the state can now restrict free speech – pretty much on any subject. Konstantin von Eggert is a commentator and host for Kommersant FM, Russia’s first 24-hour news radio station. He was a diplomatic correspondent for Russian daily Izvestia and later served as the editor-in-chief of the BBC Russian Service Moscow Bureau.

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History The communist library has a capitalist treasure trove

JOY NEUMEYER SPECIAL TO RN

After winding through wooden corridors and marble staircases, visitors to the Russian State Library arrive at the Book Museum – or as it’s also known, the rare books collection. Among ancient Cyrillic manuscripts, they encounter a more surprising find: John Smith’s “Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England and the Summer Isles,” published in 1632. How the book got to Moscow is a mystery. “Through the process of acquisition, information is often lost,” said Elena Stepanova, head of the library’s rare books division, as she opened its white pigskin cover. The Russian State Library stands across from the Kremlin, its dark columns heralded by a slouching Dostoevsky statue. Founded in St. Petersburg as The Rumyantsev Museum, it moved to Moscow in 1862. Later the Bolsheviks named the library after Vladimir Lenin and proclaimed it the national Lenin Library in 1922. Still known affectionately as the “Leninka,” it retains its image as a Soviet temple of knowledge. But this communist library has a capitalist treasure trove: The Russian State Library amassed a collection of rare American books during the Cold War, when the U.S. and Russian governments poured funding into acquiring books from the other side.

The Russian State Library amassed a collection of rare American books during the Cold War. could be one of around 1,500 or so printed, though the library is unsure how many other copies survive. The title page, printed with copper plates, bears an exuberant map of the new colony of Virginia, complete with sailing ships, dashing explorers and a portrait of Queen Elizabeth. Of the library’s 300,000 rare and valuable items, she estimates that 2,000 are American. “We have very few [early] American books, because when Americans started printing it was practically the 18th century already,” she said. The collection’s holdings expand considerably beginning in the mid-1800s, when Yankee publishing boomed. One of the most eye-catching volumes is

Thomas Lorain McKenney’s “History of the Indian Tribes of North America,” printed in Philadelphia in 1855. Among its hand-painted lithographs is “Mo-Hon-Go, an Osage woman,” who is depicted in a red European-style blouse paired with indigenous jewelry. Smith himself reappears – in a somewhat different light – in an 1880 edition of Livingston Hopkins’ “A Comic History of the United States.” Its zinc-plate prints include a cartoon of a selfsatisfied Smith opining to skeptical natives. Newer items range from a pocket version of Mark Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi” given to U.S. soldiers to postwar leisure books like “The Second Treasury of Early American Homes.” While the library is creating digital versions of its pre-20th century books – an electronic database that currently numbers 100,000 items – the American rare book collection has so far not been included in the initiative. These books can only be seen upon request in the Book Museum. The library doesn’t keep records on what collector or library donated a book, so unless a title is inscribed with its owner’s name, its history is often lost. Complicating matters further, some books’ provenance was intended to remain secret. During the Stalinist Terror, owning English-language books was a dangerous liability. In hopes of preserving their libraries, some collectors gave them to eminent bibliophiles like Anatoly Tarasenkov, who then donated them to the library. “Sometimes people even re-

The Russian State Library history

PRESS PHOTO

On a recent morning, there were no visitors to the Book Museum display on the history of bookmaking. The real action was unfolding on a metal cart, where Stepanova had assembled a sampling of rare Englishlanguage books from the stacks. John Smith first published his New World chronicle of “all those Countryes, their Commodites, people, Government, Customes and Religion yet knowne” in 1624. The Russian State Library’s copy was printed “by I.D. and I.H. for Edward Blackmore” in London, only a year after the author’s death in 1631. Stepanova estimates it

John Smith’s colonial history, the Empress’s ‘Old Rose and Silver’ and other American treasures reside at the Russian State Library.

At the ‘Leninka,’ lost chronicles of a new world

The Russian State Library located in Moscow is the largest in the country and the third largest in the world for its collection of books. The library has over 170 miles of shelves with more than 43 million

IN FIGURES

2,000 American works are in the rare books collection of the Russian State Library. These books can be seen upon request in the Book Museum.

300,000 Storage units are in the Collection of Rare and Valuable Books. It contains books from the 15th century to the present.

items, including over 17 million books and serial volumes representing 367 languages; the foreign section represents about 29 percent of the entire collection. The library was founded in 1862 as Moscow’s first free public library, then called The Rumyantsev. It housed the art collection of Count Nikolai Rumyantsev, which had been given to the Russian people and transfered from St. Petersburg to Moscow. The donation also included books and manuscripts as well as an extensive numismatic collection.

moved gift inscriptions,” Stepanova said. “Because if the inscription was from an enemy of the people and you had the book, well...” Before giving a book away, owners removed any identifying bookplates. Today, some books still bear a discolored spot where an ex libris had been affixed. Fortunately, some books are less shrouded in mystery. A 1929 edition of “Candide,” published in New York with illustrations by Rockwell Kent, bears the signature of film director Sergei Eisenstein. Many books have the imprimatur of the Romanov librar-

3 2

1) Book depository of the Russian State Library. 2) A 19th-century edition of “A Comic History of the United States” by Livingston Hopkins. 3) The “Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles” written by Captain John Smith is the real gem of the collection, dating back to 1631.

ies, which were nationalized after the 1917 revolution. Chicago Tribune magnate Robert McCormick presented a signed copy of his book “With the Russian Army” to Nicholas II, whom he had interviewed as a war correspondent. In July 1914, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna carefully signed her name in her own dark blue, silver-embossed copy of Myrtle Reed’s “Old Rose and Silver.” Reed’s quiet narrative of a girl, her widowed aunt and their garden was printed in New York in 1911. Today, the Russian State Library maintains partnership with the Library of Congress and other American collections.

“Our specialists are in very frequent contact,” said Ekaterina Nikonorova, the Russian State Library’s director of special projects. Earlier this year, Nikonorova traveled to New York to represent the library at the annual New York Book Fair. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the flow of rare foreign books has slowed to a trickle. “It’s a pity, because there are new artists...and we just don’t have them,” Stepanova said. In the meantime, specialists hunt for the stories behind American works like Smith’s. “We try to find out everything we can,” she said. “It’s a constant search.”

Festival PostClassical Ensemble offers film events and concerts celebrating Shostakovich in D.C.

EXPAT FILES

Paying tribute to Shostakovich

HALLOWEEN FEVER

This month’s festival, “Interpeting Shostakovich,” offers an opportunity to listen to the Soviet composer anew. AYANO HODOUCHI

The film “Testimony,” will be shown at the D.C. festival, “Intrepreting Shostakovich.”

Dmitri Shostakovich

Beyond the decades of controversy, political tumult, and suffering Dmitri Shostakovich endured, there is of course, his singular and arresting music. However at the same time it’s impossible to ignore his chaotic life, which veered from the highest acclaim to the deepest despair more than once. Few composers are as closely associated with Stalin as Shostakovich. Stalin was fascinated with the composer, as he was with other artists such as the poet Boris Pasternak. Yet Shostakovich came very close to being purged, first during the Terror of the 1930s, and then again a dozen years later. His music endures nonetheless, and it is emotionally resonant for music lovers today. Shostakovich wrote for people who suffer. “People today feel very powerless, that there are forces beyond their control,” said the Russian journalist and musicologist Solomon Volkov, who is well known for his books, the controversial “Testimony,” and the more recent “Shostakovich and Stalin.” “Shostakovich expresses the voice of the individual,” Volkov added. “He always had sympathy for the powerless, oppressed by circumstances.” Shostakovich was a populist composer, unlike Stravinsky, who believed in music for music’s sake. And unlike Prokofiev, who allegedly turned up his nose at gypsy music, Shostakovich used their tunes as well as Jewish themes. In his opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District,” he portrays the murder-

AFP/EASTNEWS

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Stalin was fascinated with the composer, as he was with other artists such as Pasternak.

Dmitri Shostakovich was born in 1906 in St. Petersburg and studied piano and composition at the conservatory. In 1934 Shostakovich collaborated with Aleksei Dikij on the legendary opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.” During the first months of the siege of Leningrad in 1941 Shostakovich was in the city. He survived the first bombardments and joined the “night watch” patrol, helping

to put out fires during air bombardments. He was awarded the International Peace Prize (1954), State Prize five times (in 1941-1952) and was designated People’s Artist of the USSR. Shostakovich wrote 15 symphonies, of which the Fifth (1937), the Seventh “Leningrad” (1942) and the Thirteenth “Baba Yar” (1968) are the best known. Shostakovich died in 1975 in Moscow.

ous and adulterous Katerina sympathetically as a victim of a dysfunctional marriage and a tyrannical father-in-law. Stalin famously walked out of a performance of this opera in Moscow in 1936, outraged by

Shostakovich’s portrayal of figures of authority (the police as well as the father-in-law) as brutes. The tyrant being murdered by his victim was not acceptable, either. The near-end of the compos-

er’s career came in the form of an article in Pravda two days later. The piece called his work, “muddle instead of music,” attacking Shostakovich as being formalistic, coarse and vulgar. From that day, he lived in fear of arrest and execution. It is often said that Shostakovich wrote film music for money or to appease the authorities (he wrote music for blatantly propagandistic films such as “Great Citizen” (1945) and “The Fall of Berlin” (1949), one of the major representations of Stalin’s cult of personality. However Peter Rollberg, director of European and Euarasian studies at George Washington University, points out that the composer wrote for film even when his status in the Soviet Union was assured and he had no particular need to do so. The festival “Interpeting Shostakovich” is unique in that besides symphonic and chamber music, it also features four films that audiences and musicologists have largely ignored. Shostakovich chose to highlight certain scenes with dramatically charged music rather than allow his soundtracks to drone on incessantly. “There is an alternation of realistic sounds, silence and music, which strengthens the artistic effect rather than numbing the senses,” Rollberg said. Volkov said that the greatness and relevance of Shostakovich can be found in his many roles, from avant-garde composer to film music writer, from communist party member to dissident. “A genius in the truest sense of the word,” said Rollberg. “No political compromises, no ethical sacrifices can diminish the quality of his music.” For more information, go to › http://postclassical.com/category/ events/interpreting-shostakovich.

Jennifer Eremeeva SPECIAL TO RN

ussians have embraced Halloween with fervor – or rather, the trendy 20-somethings nightclub set has. Halloween in Russia is very much a grown-up event, with requisite sexy costumes, buckets of orange and black beverages, and all night raves. Russians do not, however, take to the streets with their costumed kids and knock unannounced on their neighbors’ doors in the hopes of candy and coins. And can you blame them? It’s a little too soon after the 1930s for unexpected knocks on front doors in the night. Yet there are those die-hard expats who would do Halloween in Northern Korea if they had to, so there are isolated pockets of trick or treating in Moscow in the foreign gated communities and on the row of town houses at the U.S. Embassy. I assiduously kept up friendly relations with someone in each of these communities to ensure that my daughter Velvet would have the opportunity to do Halloween properly. I make sure each summer’s shopping includes a suitable costume and a supply of Hershey’s miniatures. HRH, my “Handsome Russian Husband,” has never warmed to Halloween, since he regards traipsing around inadequately clad at night in late October a death wish. I honestly thought he was going to call that Russian Children’s Ombudsman dude who is always in the news the first year I floated the Halloween concept. The autumn Velvet was three years old, I bought her an adorable

bumblebee costume and found a large whole pumpkin in Moscow. I cut a lid around the pumpkin stem, and encouraged Velvet to help me dig out the slimy seeds and meat. It was a good mommy moment right until… “What’s going on?” asked HRH. “I’m going trick or treating!” Velvet shrieked ecstatically, “I have a costume and I’m going to get a whole bag of candy!” “We’re going trick or treating at the U.S. Embassy,” I explained, “they’re doing Halloween on Saturday.” “What is trick or treating?” asked HRH, patiently. “It’s like this, Papa,” said Velvet, “I come to your door and I knock – knock knock knock,” she banged on the refrigerator, “and you open the door…come on Papa, open the door!” HRH pantomimed opening a door. “And I say ‘trick or treat!’ And then you have to give me candy,” finished Velvet triumphantly. HRH looked appalled. “You are going to knock on people’s – foreign people’s doors…” he spluttered. “And then you are going to let our three year old take food from them, from these people who we don’t even know?” asked HRH. Velvet appeared in her bumblebee costume. “She’s going outside in that?” “It’s adorable!” I protested, “Do you know how hard it was to find?” HRH and I regarded each other wearily. Cross-cultural marriage is uphill work. Jennifer Eremeeva is a a freelance writer and longtime resident of Moscow. She is the curator of the culinary blog, www.moscovore. com, and the humor blog www. russialite.com.

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Subcultures The euphoria of covering great distances of Russia alone, with your feet and your thumb

Roadmap to the hitchhiking galaxy

BIBLIOPHILE

Like Kerouac half a century ago, Russian writers hit the road

The hitchhiking renaissance is nowhere near Route 66 or Main Street America, existing now on the long, lonely roads of the Russia. IGOR SAVELYEV SPECIAL TO RN

TITLE: OFF THE BEATEN TRACK AUTHOR: IGOR SAVELYEV, IRINA BOGATYREVA, TATIANA MAZEPINA PUBLISHER: GLAS

3 1 Drunken hooligans? I’ve met them only near cities or villages. The traffic cops have their own problems (usually to do with money and unconnected with our lot); at worst they may check your passport, and once a friend of mine was fined for walking on the road. On a federal highway, as soon as you are clear of a large city, you do not encounter any outsiders: The truckers haul their cargo, motorists head for other cities on business, and it is unlikely that anyone will be there with intent to kill. At first I made some safety rules for myself (for example, not to hitch a ride in

journeys that take them several days. The journey takes on existential meaning. This is one reason for the cult of hitchhikers who prize distance, places where they spend the night, the people they meet in various cities and adventures. I should add that trips to Siberia and the Far East are tougher and slower and therefore costlier. As for “stranger danger,” outsiders think that the main risk is being picked up by a maniac, but that is the least of the problems. Yes, gangs are sometimes active on the roads, but they rob heavy trucks and want no business with hitchhikers.

cars with license plates from the volatile Caucasus region), but then I decided it was futile. You can see whether the person at the wheel is normal as soon as you open the door and talk to him. The real danger comes from traffic accidents on Russian roads. In the 1970s and 80s, hitchhiking was part of the ideology of those who could be loosely called “Soviet hippies.” Hitchhiking today is mostly popular among those who are 20 to 25. The hitchhikers I’ve met are all brilliant, creative, thinking people. It’s as if the wanderlust is in their genes.

Couch surfing surges in Russia Frugal foreigners looking for adventure get a heavy dose of hospitality and one-of-akind insights into Russian life. MARIA DEGTYAREVA FROM PERSONAL ARCHIVES

SPECIAL TO RN

Jakub Kachelmaier, a student from Poland, recently spent a few months in Eastern Siberia. He didn’t know anyone there, yet he hardly spent any money on accommodations during his tour. “All we needed was a space on the floor for our sleeping bags,” said Kachelmaier. He is a couch surfer, a member of an international community of travelers who offer each other help and a place to stay for free. Yet saving money isn’t their primary aim. “This way of traveling allows us to socialize with the locals,” the student said, “who really know the best places to see, which really helps to discover a new culture.” The concept of hospitality exchange came to Russia through Servas Open Doors, an interna-

Jakub Kachelmaier (left in green T-shirt) and friends with Russian hosts on a mountain outside of Vladivostok.

tional organization founded in 1949. Servas began working underground in the Soviet Union in 1980. After Servas, other hospitality networks started to appear. Today there are more than one hundred all over the world, of which couchsurfing.org is the largest, with around 5 million members. The Russian community is large, with 40,000 registered online members. Almost half of all Russian members of

IN FIGURES

40,000

12,000

2004

couch surfers are registered in Russia. There are 5 million worldwide, but most couch surfers live in the U.S.

couch surfers live in Moscow, while another 8000 live in St. Petersburg. In Russia, most couch surfers are female.

was the year the couch surfing website was created; within a few months, the first Russian users had registered.

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couchsurfing.org live in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Kachelmaier has traveled to Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Chita and Ulan-Ude with the help of hospitality exchange networks. “I started looking for couches two or three weeks before the date of my arrival. I wrote messages asking for a place to stay for the night. Sometimes we would receive invitations after just a few days, although some cities were a little more difficult, as there were fewer couch surfers. It really helped that I spoke Russian as it was easier to find couches.” Some couch surfers found that many of their hosts spoke English, although not all. In large Russian cities the approach to couch surfing is similar to that of European cities, a fact that is well-known among travelers. However there are also certain areas of the country where “travelling by couch”

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500 miles is the longest distance one can travel on the lightest day in summer. Average speed is 34 miles an hour during the summer and 28 miles during the winter.

Hitchhiking has disappeared in the U.S., and gained its existential footing in Russia.

can mean something a little different. It mainly depends on the nature and mentality of the locals, as well as how well-developed the tourist infrastructure is. Elina Valieva is one of the few couch surfers in North Ossetia. She works in public relations and spent around a year living in Europe. This year, she decided to invite a foreigner into her home for the first time. “My first experience showed me that receiving guests in Ossetia takes up a lot of time. In Moscow there are maps and routes to interesting places. You simply meet a person, hang out with him for an evening, give him some advice and send him on his way. In Ossetia, you can’t do this – you simply have to show and tell. Our republic doesn’t cater to independent tourists as there are no services available to them. For example, it is not possible to get to the mountains by public transport, yet being in Ossetia and not being able to see the mountains is a real pity.” Valieva has hosted English teachers from London who were traveling in the Caucasus. “At times situations arose which reflected the particularities of life in the Caucasus.” She recalled one English teacher who couch surfed in her home. “We made him food and took care of everything. My mother even managed to do his laundry. He didn’t pay for anything during his three-day stay with us, which is nice for us because in the Caucasus, hospitality means you shouldn’t let your guests pay.” However later he seemed to find all the help too controlling. Valieva wondered, is there such a thing as too much hospitality?

els, clearly based on the authors’ experiences on the road and in the subculture of shared houses of modern Russia. The last piece, “Traveling to Paradise,” charts an autobiographical walking/hitching odyssey from Russia to Egypt through the Middle East. Kerouac’s influence is most obvious in Irina Bogatyreva’s “Off the Beaten Track,” the longest, central novella from which the volume takes its name. Bogatyreva’s prologue, repeated towards the end, sets out her characters’ lifestyles and philosophy: “Wayfarers on roads without end… We are legion, dots scattered along the road, romantic followers of our guru, Jack Kerouac....” They are young, they are free and their motto is “the road is always right.” We first meet Bogatyreva’s heroine, Titch with her trademark rucksack and tattered sneakers beside the hellish Moscow Ring Road on a rainy night, but throughout the story she returns physically or mentally to the Stalin-era apartment block where she lives. “Here in a rambling commune off historic Yakimanka in central Moscow, ‘I was reading Kerouac up in my gallery,’ surrounded at various times by African drums, an ancient piano and a pet crow.“ She feels as though Kerouac’s “stuff had been written by a mate in the Yakimanka commune I just hadn’t run into yet” and dreams of going to America and meeting him and hitching to the “warm, solitary, misty mountains of California.” Titch, whose nickname refers to her youth, is devastated to discover her hero is dead and to realize that the America Kerouac described is gone, “killed in Vietnam...it had become flabby and bourgeois, stuffed its cheeks with hamburgers and gone to Hollywood.” Her own political ap-

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Jack Kerouac’s books resonate in Russia because of a shared sense of distance. against each other.” Her adventures have an ecumenical inclusivity that is reminiscent of Ludmila Ulitskaya’s powerful documentary-novel, “Daniel Stein.” Mazepina seeks out the compassionate humanity that underlies all faiths. She encounters the “gifts of the road” with an open heart that sometimes borders on naivete, as when she walks into the desert with no water. An Orthodox Christian, she is equally delighted when a happy, singing priest blesses her with holy water or when a Muslim family unwrap layers of shawls and caskets to reveal a hair of the Prophet Mohammed. Her pilgrimage has a spiritual dimension; she tells the hospitable Jordanians that Russia’s moral and religious foundations “were completely destroyed and are only now being restored.” Readers may not agree with the protagonists, but there is something of Kerouac’s passion for life in these tales. The energy of these young writers carries you with them on their erratic, atmospheric journeys and might even change your life. Phoebe Taplin

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Since 1997 there have been spring and autumn meetings between Moscow’s and St. Petersburg’s hithchikers, which take place in the middle of the road in a tent camp.

A new film of Kerouac’s legendary “On the Road” is due to hit the big screen this month, reviving poignant memories of the Beat Generation. While the great era of American hitchhiking has faded, there are still numerous Russians for whom it is a way of life. This fascinating collection of stories by young travelers is a topical addition to the growing number of contemporary Russian novels available in translation. “Off the Beaten Track” (Glas, 2012) is a compilation of three works written by Russian hitchhikers. The first two are nov-

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FACTS FOR HITCHERS

There are about 10 hitchhiking clubs in Russia; the oldest one was founded in 1978. All of the clubs have workshops, some see hitchhiking as a sport.

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Hitchhiking is the subculture of the young, and a paterfamilias standing by the roadside trying to hitch a ride cuts an odd figure. Once I was hitching myself to recall the good old days. I had to take off my wedding ring and tell everyone I was 22 and not 28. If you are picked up by a long-distance truck driver and it turns out that you’re the same age, it’s a bit embarrassing: It looks as if he works to feed his family, spends his fuel on you and you’re, well, a slacker. Society seems to be growing older, leaving hitchhiking deep in the past. That’s the case in the West anyway. The American readers of our book “Off the Beaten Track” said that hitchhiking as a phenomenon is anchored in the 1960s and 1970s. Today it is merely a memory of the Beat Generation and the hippies. Americans tell me you can seldom see a hitchhiker on the road these days, which accounts for the Western interest in Russian subculture: Is it true that Russia has restored the flag of roaming free? From across the ocean, hitchhiking in Russia appears to be something exotic. First, there are the huge distances, sparsely populated areas and a harsh climate. Second (and this is always the main focus) it’s dangerous. All this makes a Westerner look at Russian hitchhiking as something like a space odyssey. There are no pat answers to these questions. On the one hand, it is not “a space journey” and there is nothing terribly extreme about it. On the other hand, anyone who has ever hitched a ride can recall episodes that fit the cliche. That may give rise to some confusion. I recall members of the audience at a New York Public Library event last year asking questions about the safety of hitchhiking in Russia. Fellow writer Irina Bogatyreva answered in the same ambiguous way as I am speaking now: She said hitchhiking was safe and then went on to tell the story of how she got a lift from a drunk driver who was being chased by police. Distances. They lend an element of sport: Almost all hitchhikers keep a record of how many thousands of miles they cover and compare their distances. Taking on a long distance trip in this country is easy. For example, I live in Ufa, a city on the border with the Urals region, but officially part of the Volga region. The regional capital, Nizhny Novgorod, is more than 600 miles away. And it is still in the same federal district. I once managed to cover that distance, without a stop for the night, between 7 a.m. and 2 a.m., with the benefit of a time zone difference. Usually, though, you can hitch a 400 mile ride during the day, but during the night few people dare to hitch a ride. These figures create a certain hitchhiker’s euphoria: You feel that you can cover such distances alone, you feel the planet under your feet because you can trace your progress on the map. Because most hitchhike to Moscow, St.Petersburg, the Crimea or Altai (it is no big deal to go to neighboring big cities, and the distances are still considerable) they end up making long

athy seems typical of her generation, for whom the Soviet era is history. She feels herself living at the junction of eras where “we can see clearly enough what used to be, but who can tell us what is coming next?” The young authors and narrators seek reassurance in new rituals or resurgent religion. They stress the power of storytelling, collecting tales of the road. The anthropomorphized road itself becomes a character in the central novel and in Igor Savelyev’s “Pale City,” the opening story. “Pale City” is a fresh and vivid roadside love story, winding through the Urals and following each interconnected hiker across the “vast expanses of his [or her] native land.” Western readers might be surprised how many single women travelers are represented here. One reason for Kerouac’s particular resonance in Russia is a shared sense of distance. The boundless Russian steppe is a recurring motif: “Our immense, immense country”, Titch calls it. One of the traits shared by all three writers is a powerful sense of place, lost in the forest or having coffee and sweets in Diyarbakir. Russia, distinct and massive, is always present, whether they are traversing its endless roads or comparing it with other countries. Savelyev’s chief protagonist, Vadim, talks about watching the shooting stars beside the unlit highways: “Russia’s not like Belgium, where they have floodlights on the motorways.” Over here, “it’s just you and the stars.” Loneliness becomes a key image in the novel. Savelyev observes at the end that many hitchhiking terms have been borrowed from English, but “the roads, the solitude and the melancholy are quintessentially Russian.” Tatiana Mazepina, whose Middle Eastern memoirs end the book, also loves to “scare the locals with stories about Russia. To tell Austrians who can cross their country in five hours, for instance, that in order to get from Moscow to Vladivostok it takes six days by train.” Mazepina travels not to be alone, but to meet people and discover kindness, “to disprove all the things people so love to say

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