RBTH Australia (November 2014)

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Battle against Ebola Russian researchers help in the global fight against virus P7

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Thursday, November 13, 2014

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Distributed with The Age. Other distribution partners include: The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph, Le Figaro, La Repubblica, El Pais, Mainichi Shimbun, Gulf News.

The day East Germans once again embraced the West

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ON, WE RECALL EVENTS SURROUNDING THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL

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‘WHAT COMES AFTER THE G20?’ ’s latest monthly brief examines the G20’s potential to address new threats to world economic growth.

Become a subscriber or download the brief at www.russia-direct.org/archive

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IN PICTURES AND NUMBERS

ELECTIONS

'Respect' not recognition

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This month, the self-proclaimed people's republics in Donetsk and Lugansk went to the polls.

Russia’s official stance on recent elections in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk democratic people’s republics in eastern Ukraine is now clear.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry released a statement saying it “respected” the republics’ elections, while Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov specified that“respecting”the republics did not mean that Moscow “recognises” them.

The DPR and LPR held elections for the heads of local governments and representatives of legislative bodies.

Several European and US authorities said that the elections violated the Minsk agreements, while Russia said that condemning them would undermine efforts to reach a settlement.

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FORMULA 1 RUSSIAN ROOKIE FROM TORO ROSSO GOES TO RED BULL Russia's 20-year-old racing driver Daniil Kvyat will move from Toro Rosso to the Red Bull team next season, joining Daniel Ricciardo as a teammate. The news was announced just before the first-ever Grand Prix held in Russia, in Sochi last month.

7

Kvyat scored seven podiums and five pole positions in the the GP3 Series Championship in 2013, his first year in the series.

8

In his inaugural Formula 1 season, Kvyat has so far scored 8 points, outstripping his teammates with his impressive results.

DETENTION

Putin rated world's most powerful man

St Petersburg prison will be ONLY AT RBTH.COM moved out for World Cup

place, while China’s President Xi Jinpin was third. This top three has not changed since last year.

In regard to the US president’s rating, the magazine said that this did not relate to Obama’s personal qualities but to the fact that the US had lost almost all its advantages in forming the global diplomatic agenda.

“America has thrown away almost all the once-vast leverage it enjoyed to set the global diplomatic agenda,”

Forbes said. “It acted in the name of an idealistic cause: globalism, but at the end of the day its idealism has not been reciprocated.”

In September, Forbes wrote that Putin’s reputation would significantly strengthen, regardless of the outcome of the Ukrainian crisis.

OPINION POLLS

Obama not popular in Russia

A special services officer looks back at the 2002 Nord-Ost hostage crisis rbth.com/40823

tions remain the same and 8 per cent were undecided.

The survey was conducted across 130 locations across Russia in October and involved 1630 people.

Seventy-six per cent of the survey’s respondents spoke negatively about Obama, while 16 per cent felt neutral towards him, 2 per cent had a positive attitude towards him and 5 per cent were not sure who he was.

BUSINESS

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POLITICS

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Sixty-seven per cent of Russian citizens, recently polled

by Russia’s Levada Centre, believe that relations between Russia and the US have deteriorated under US President Barack Obama, the centre told the Russian news agency Interfax.

A mere 9 per cent of respondents said they see positive changes in ties between the two countries. Sixteen per cent believe that these rela-

In early 2016, inmates of the famous St Petersburg jail, the Kresty remand prison, will move to a new building in the suburb of Kolpino, 32 kilometres from the city, where Europe’s biggest detention centre, capable of housing 4000 people, is being built.

The new remand prison will become the biggest prison not only in Europe but in the world.

It will be like a small town, with all the necessary infrastructure: residential quarters, religious buildings, sports facilities, a hospital, workshops, and even a hotel for relatives and visitors.

Gennady Korniyenko, head of the Russian Federal Penal Service, told RBTH that the local government had decided to move the prison out of the city centre with an eye on the 2018 World Cup, in which St Petersburg will be one of the host cities.

“The problem is that the [old] prison is situated in the city centre,”Korniyenko said.

“Ahead of the FIFA World Cup, the city administration has asked us to relocate the prison.”

The new remand prison is being called Kresty 2.

The forces behind Russia’s plummeting rouble

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SCIENCE&TECH

For the second year in a row, Russian President Vladimir Putin has topped the annual ratings of the most powerful people in the world, according to ratings by Forbes magazine.

The magazine wrote on its website: “Putin annexed Crimea, staged a proxy war in the Ukraine and inked a deal to build a more than $70 billion gas pipeline with China.”

US President Barack Obama was rated in second

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FORBES RANKINGS

NIKOLAY LITOVKIN

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VLADIMIR STAKHEEV

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Aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky

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Russia, the USSR and Afghanistan — yesterday and today

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IN BRIEF

Airport staff arrested after runway death of Total chief

Netherlands to take back MH17 flight debris

Christophe de Margerie, chief executive of French oil and gas company Total, was killed in a plane crash at Vnukovo airport in Moscow on October 20.

GALIYA IBRAGIMOVA RBTH

According to the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, the accident occurred shortly before midnight, when the corporate jet carrying Margerie collided with a snowplough on the runway as it was taking off.

It has been reported that the driver of the snowplough was drunk.

“There was a collision with the airfield service’s snowplough at 11.58pm during take-off,”Vnukovo’s press service told RBTH. “As a result of the collision, the aircraft was engulfed in flames, and the passenger and all crew members were killed. The driver of the snowplough was not injured.”

The French chief executive, who was well-known for his opposition to Western sanc-

tions against Russia, was in Moscow for the annual meeting of the Consultative Council on Foreign Investment, which was presided over by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Total’s shares fell one euro to 42 euros immediately after the crash.

Given the scale of Total’s joint projects with Russian companies, there was concern among Russian energy commentators that some of these projects may now be in jeopardy. But Russian analysts and industry experts have said that the tragedy is unlikely to prompt the French company to abandon its biggest Russian projects.

At the moment, Total is participating in five large projects in Russia: the development of the Kharyaga field in the Nenets Autonomous Area, the Shtokman gas condensate field on the shelf of the Barents Sea, the Termokarstovoye field in theYamalNenets Autonomous Area, the Khvalynskoye offshore field in the Caspian Sea, and prep-

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Accident Investigation into Moscow collision of corporate jet and snowplough that killed all on board

Christophe de Margerie’s jet collided with a snowplough on a runway at Vnukovo airport.

QUOTE

Christophe de Margerie CEO OF THE FRENCH COMPANY TOTAL IN AN INTERVIEW WITH REUTERS IN JULY, 2014

"

You hear people say we've got to protect ourselves from Ukraine and then they talk about Russia. This is not the same thing...

Are we going to build a new Berlin Wall? Russia is a partner and we shouldn’t waste time protecting ourselves from a neighbour ... What we’re looking to do is not to be too dependent on any country, no matter which; not from Russia, which has saved us on numerous occasions.”

arations for the Yamal LNG project, which entails developing the South Tambey gas condensate field and producing liquefied natural gas.

“Total has significantly strengthened its position on the Russian market in the last two years. The company joined the Yamal LNG project, and Total is also involved in a joint project with Lukoil and Gazprom Neft,”the deputy chief of the National Energy Institute, Alexander Frolov, said in an interview with radio station Kommersant FM. Four Vnukovo airport employees have been arrested as suspects in connection with the crash, Russian Investigative Committee spokesperson Vladimir Markin said in a statement in late October.

“Leading engineer of Vnukovo airport’s aerodrome ser-

vice, Vladimir Ledenev, who was heading the snow-removing work; the chief of Vnukovo’s flights, Roman Dunayev; Vnukovo’s manager-trainee Svetlana Krivsun; and the airport manager, Aleksander Kruglov, who was leading the air traffic at the time of the crash, have all been arrested,” Markin said.

Investigators think that these employees did not follow security policies and failed to conduct ground checks.

According to the Kommersant daily newspaper, citing a source close to the criminal inquiry, not one but two unsupervised snowploughs were moving around the runway at the time that Margerie’s jet was taking off.

The source also said that the air traffic controllers knew about the snowploughs.

G20 Talks between leaders are likely at APEC in Beijing or the summit in Brisbane

Discussions between Prime Minister Tony Abbott and President Vladimir Putin will take place at the APEC meeting in Beijing and possibly the G20 Summit.

GLEB FEDOROV RBTH

Abbott intends to use the talks to question Putin about the progress of the investigation of the downing of the MH17 airliner over Ukraine in July.

At the time of writing, it was unclear when the MH17 topic would be raised.

Abbott has told the Australian media that he is determined to demand Putin’s full cooperation in the MH17 investigation.

Australia's Ambassador to Russia, Paul Myler, told the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that a discussion was definitely planned, and that Putin had been sent an invitation.

“We’ll see if Mr Putin agrees to a meeting like that,

but we have to seek it. [...] We have much to discuss with President Putin,”the Ambassador said.

In a long interview with the Russian news agency, Myler clarified the issues Abbott wants to discuss with Putin.

“We certainly hope for Russian assistance in determining who was directly responsible for the crash,” Myler said.“Currently an investigation is in progress, and it should be completed sometime next year.

“We need Russia’s help in this matter. I hope that Mr Putin will come here with a more thoughtful approach to assisting us in identifying the people who were involved in this disaster, and will make his own contribution to this investigation.”

Australia, like most other Western countries, is blaming the downing of the airliner and the death of 298 people including 27 Australians on so-called “pro-Russian separatists”, who alleg-

PHOTOSHOT/VOSTOCK-PHOTO

Abbott puts MH17 on Putin's agenda

Abbott will use a meeting with Putin to discuss MH17 inquiry.

edly shot down the Boeing using the Russian Buk missile system.

However, Russia rejects these accusations and says no conclusions should be reached regarding the guilty party before the results of the formal investigation, being conducted by Holland and the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO), are published.

The Brisbane G20 Summit (November 15-16) is intended as a platform for the discussion of economic and financial issues.

No formal meetings between the two leaders have listed in the Brisbane program, but officials on both sides have indicated that one is likely to occur,.

To a direct question from

Russian reporters about Putin’s schedule at the Summit, his press secretary Dmitry Peskov simply said that “a number of bilateral meetings have been scheduled”.

Russia’s G20 Sherpa, Svetlana Lukash, in an interview with RBTH, said there were no political issues in the official agenda of the Summit.

She chose her words cautiously, saying that Ukraine could be discussed“by a number of leaders” but “primarily in the context that this situation has undermined traditional economic ties and has had an impact on the growth of the global economy.”

[For a more detailed look at Lukash’s thoughts ahead of the Summit, see her opinion piece on page 10. ] Ambassador Myler said: “There is no doubt, and we saw this at the summit in St Petersburg, that when leaders of countries get together, they do discuss the major issues on which their attention is focused.

“I definitely expect that in Brisbane, the topics of discussion will be Ukraine and the Middle East.”

The Netherlands will start removing the remains of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing that crashed near Donetsk, the First Deputy Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Andrei Purgin, told the Russian news service Interfax.

“Dutch representatives have come to Donetsk. Negotiations are in progress.

They will be able to remove the jet’s debris a week or two from today,” he said, adding that a Dutch delegation had recently examined the wreckage “The debris was scattered over a vast area... and collecting it will not be a fast process,” Purgin said. “We will offer comprehensive assistance to the [Dutch] mission and will not create any impediments.” The DPR will also provide security for the mission.

Ukraine pays Gazprom debt

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Ukraine has made its first payment of $US1.45 billion to Russian oil giant Gazprom as part of a deal to pay its outstanding gas bill.

Consistent with a recent agreement signed in Brussels, Naftogaz will pay a total of $US3.1 billion for 11.5 billion cubic metres of gas that Gazprom delivered to Ukraine from November to December last year and April to June this year.

Kiev will deliver gas to Donetsk

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Kiev is ready to deliver gas and electricity to the selfproclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Ukraine’s Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said on November 5.

He added that as soon as Kiev regains control of the region, the electricity costs will be taken from funds intended for social benefits for the region.

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INTERVIEW ALEXEI ULYUKAYEV

Russia isn't fencing itself off from the world THE MINISTER FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SPEAKS TO RBTH ABOUT HOW RUSSIA IS BEING AFFECTED BY THE INTERNATIONAL SANCTIONS. have been identified among its competitive advantages.

In that case, how fast do you think the Russian economy will be able to overcome this crisis ?

Our economic development forecasts are based on the premise of relative stabilisation and no further serious sanctions. Capital outflow may decrease substantially by 2017. GDP is expected to rise to 1.2 per cent in 2015, versus 0.5 per cent in 2014.

Faster GDP growth will primarily be connected with investment, expected to grow by 2 per cent in 2015.

We are continuing to work on improving the investment climate so that businesses feel comfortable and safe in all respects. Russia is not fencing itself off from the outside world and is not breaking business ties.

How can Russia solve the structural economic problems you have mentioned?

Russia has entered a period of new economic conditions,

BIO RUSSIA’S MINISTER FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Muscovite Alexei Ulyukaev, 58, is an economics graduate from Moscow State University and the Pierre Mendes University, France. He has been Russia’s Minister for Economic Development since June 2013.

and the government needs to tighten its belt. At the same time, right now seems to be the best time to make the most effective investments in the country’s development.

With Russia’s introduction of sanctions on imports from the US, Canada, Norway and the European Union, we have a unique opportunity to develop our most fundamental industries, such as agriculture and food processing. Programs to subsidise farmers, provide insurance and engage in public-private financing to

OLESYA KURPYAEVA / RG

RBTH: What changes has the Russian economy recently undergone, particularly as a result of the international sanctions?

Alexei Ulyukaev: We are seeing the dual impact of the sanctions on the economy.

On the one hand, there is the inevitable decline in growth rates, higher inflation, volatility of the rouble and reduced liquidity.

And on the other, these same new realities are capable of helping overcome structural imbalances that have long been a part of the Russian economy. I’m first and foremost talking about Russia’s excessive pegging to fuel and commodity exports, as well as the orientation towards imports of a wide set of goods. And the Russian economy is durable enough to ensure future growth.

In the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness 2014-2015 report, Russia rose by 11 ranks to 53rd out of 144. The high level of education enjoyed by Russians and its high innovation potential

construct enterprises capable of ensuring full import substitution demand substantial resources.

In your opinion, in what ways is Russia currently attractive to foreign investors?

In the UNCTAD [United Nations Committee on Trade and Development] World Investment Report 2014, Russia was named as one of the most attractive economies in transition for foreign investors.

Our advantages lie in the high return on energy pro-

jects, as well as projects associated with natural resources: oil and gas, and also metals and timber attract foreign investors.

Unfortunately, we are still seeing only individual examples of enterprises being created that produce high value-added products. Russia is interested not only in attracting financial capital, but also in new technology, know-how, and best-management practices that allow it to bring entrepreneurial activity to a new level of efficiency.

Several major foreign corporations have already entered Russia. Is Russia planning to raise the level of localisation of their production?

This applies to all foreign industrial enterprises with assembly operations in Russia.

Industrial clusters and parks are an effective tool to raise the level of production localisation.

Many Russian regions have created or are creating such production agglomerates.The auto industry is definitely the leader.

Finance Budget is boosted but low-income households face higher food prices A LOOK AT THE CHALLENGES FACING MOSCOW

Falling rouble cushions oil producers, hits consumers Falling oil prices and the weakening rouble are having strikingly different consequences for the Russian government and for consumers.

The Russian rouble takes a dive

MARIA KARNAUKH SPECIAL TO RBTH

Now available on

Learn more at

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Oil prices, along with the Russian rouble, have been falling. As of mid-October, the price of a barrel of Brent crude, the standard on which the Russian budget is based, dropped below $US83 on international markets.

Over the last three months, the price has fallen 24 per cent, from $US108.77 a barrel in June. This is the biggest fall since the 2008 crisis, when the price dropped to a record $US38.40 a barrel.

Some estimates have said the price will fall even further – as low as $US72 per barrel.

Some Russian oil producers believe that if the price falls much further, the extraction of oil will stop because

it will no longer be profitable.“We expected a reduction of oil extraction in Russia in 2016,” said Leonid Fedun, vice-president of Lukoil in August. “But looking at our colleagues, we now think that it will happen even earlier, in 2015.”

Mikhail Krutikhin, a partner at RusEnergy Consulting, estimates that in the next decade, the volume of Russian oil extraction will de-

crease by 15-20 per cent. Krutikhin also thinks that the Kremlin can maintain profitability for producers, if it lowers taxes on mineral extraction.

At the moment, the oil producers are staying afloat partially thanks to the devaluation of the rouble. Since the beginning of the year, the rouble has dropped by 20 per cent against the US dollar.

According to Russian Fi-

nance Minister Anton Siluanov: “A one-dollar decline in oil prices results in a 70 billion rouble reduction of revenue for the Russian budget, while a one-rouble fall in the exchange rate leads to a growth of 180-200 billion roubles.”

Sergei Khestanov, the director of the Alor Brokerage firm, explained how Russia is benefiting from a weak rouble: “The weakening of the rouble is beneficial for the budget, since its main revenue source (52-55 per cent) is exports.

“There is an increase in currency rescue, which improves exporters’ profitability and balances the budget.

“As a result we see a surplus – budget revenues outweigh expenditures.”

Although the government may benefit from the rouble’s devaluation, the population does not. About 30-40 per cent of the basket of consumer goods consists of imports.

A 20 per cent devaluation of the rouble [in relation to the dollar] increases the cost of food by 30 per cent, according to Khestanov. And lower-income Russian households are being hardest hit by these price increases.

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Trade bans No relief expected

Only changes in Ukraine policy will lift sanctions NIKOLAI LITOVKIN RBTH

A source close to EU officials told the Russian news agency Tass that any decision on recent sanctions will be based on “how the situation in Ukraine unfolds”.

The sanctions are likely to be in effect until mid-March of next year, an EU diplomatic source told another Russian news agency, RIA Novosti. According to Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, this logic is not surprising.

“Political leaders will continue to follow the development of events in Ukraine, and only in the case of stable progress will sanctions be attenuated,” Lukyanov said.

He added that he hoped the

EU will act sooner rather than later to remove at least some of the sanctions, since the ties between Russia and the EU mean that European economies are also affected.

Alexei Skopin, head of the department of regional economy and economic geography at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, said that Russia’s retaliatory sanctions were having their intended effect on the EU, although Russians may be suffering more.

“The first series of Russian retaliatory sanctions demonstrated its counter-productiveness both for Russia and the EU,”Skopin said.“In particular, it had been estimated that the prices of agricultural products [in Russia] would increase by 15 per cent, but prices on certain products increased by 40 per cent – which is completely unacceptable.”

Skopin said the effect of the sanctions is that in Russia, consumers are suffering,

POLLS

DPA/VOSTOCK-PHOTO

There are no plans to scale back the international sanctions against Russia in the near future unless the Kremlin's approach to eastern Ukraine changes.

while in Europe, the producers are feeling the pressure.

The influence of the US Regardless of what the EU decides down the track, Lukyanov emphasised the fact that the US leadership was not even open to discussing the lifting of sanctions at this point. Lukyanov says this is because the US is much less tied to Russia economically than Europe, and can therefore continue to put economic pressure on Russia for a long time.

“I think that Washington’s objective is not even the defence of Ukraine from Rus-

sia’s aggression, but rather the long-term intention to have Moscow assume a more circumspect foreign policy course,” he said.

Skopin thinks the US has additional motives for keeping the sanctions in place: “The US economy gains a new weapons market in Europe and Ukraine,” he said.

“New jobs will consequently be created and the economy will be boosted.

“The sanctions against Russia kill two birds with one stone: they reduce the market for Russian weapons and reduce the credit line for Moscow.”

71 per cent

18 per cent

68 per cent

think the sanctions are to weaken and humiliate Russia

believe sanctions are payback for Crimea

say Russia should continue with counter-sanctions

Russian opinion According to a recent survey

by Russia’s Levada Centre, most Russians do not make the connection between economic sanctions imposed by the US and the EU and Russian policy in Ukraine.

Of those polled, 71 per cent thought the main purpose of Western sanctions was “to weaken and humiliate Russia”.In the survey, conducted from September 19 to 22 with 1600 respondents from 46 Russian regions, another 18 per cent felt that the sanctions were in response to Russia’s reunion with Crimea, while 4 per cent said the pur-

pose of the sanctions was“to stop the war, destruction and human casualties in eastern Ukraine.”

In addition, 68 per cent believed Russia should“continue its policy” in retaliation against the sanctions. About a fifth (22 per cent) called for “seeking a compromise and making concessions, in order to stop the sanctions”.

While respondents generally supported retaliatory sanctions against the West, 51 per cent were against banning Western pharmaceutical products and 45 per cent against banning Western mobile phones and computers.

Reaction Survey suggests most Russians are taking the sanctions in their stride

No worries, say 'targeted' civilians Interfax reported that a recent survey in Russia showed that the majority polled say they are not experiencing ill-effects from the international sanctions.

INTERFAX RUSSIAN NEWS AGENCY

A relative majority (41 per cent) of those polled by Russia’s Levada Centre think that the recent international sanctions are targeting Russia’s civilian population.

In contrast, 30 per cent of respondents said the main target of the Western sanctions was a narrow circle of individuals responsible for Russian policy towards Ukraine.

Levada surveyed 1630 respondents from 134 localities in 46 regions across Russia in September.Twenty-one per cent thought that the countries behind the sanctions did not consider how the restrictions might affect ordinary Russians, and 8 per cent could not identify the motive of the Western countries.

A third of respondents (35

per cent) claimed that the sanctions had not created any problems for them or their families, and 44 per cent said that they had not faced any serious problems as a result of them.

However, 14 per cent said the sanctions had presented tangible problems for them, and 2 per cent said very serious problems. Surprisingly, 26 per cent said that the sanctions were potentially dangerous for their families.

Those polled were divided about whether the Russian government was right to compensate the losses of companies adversely affected by the sanctions from the federal budget.

Forty per cent supported the government’s policy, 39 per cent criticised it and 21 per cent were unsure.

Sixty per cent of respondents thought that the freezing of accounts and assets of Western companies which benefit from the sanctions would be a good retaliatory measure.

Seventeen per cent criti-

POLLS

Sanctions are not a big issue MOST RUSSIANS POLLED BY THE LEVADA CENTRE IN OCTOBER SAID THAT THE SANCTIONS HAD CAUSED THEM MINIMAL OR NO PROBLEMS.

cised the idea, and 23 per cent were undecided.

Those polled were generally supportive of boycotting Western goods: the idea was backed by 58 per cent of respondents, 25 per cent opposed it and 17 per cent were unsure.

On the whole, 59 per cent of the respondents said that the Western sanctions and Russia’s retaliatory measures would be good for the national economy. Twenty-five per cent thought they would be bad for the economy and 17 per cent didn’t know.

Some 68 per cent of those polled said that Moscow should not limit its support for the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics in eastern Ukraine, despite the West’s demands that it should.

Sixteen per cent did think Russia should limit support and 17 per cent were undecided.

As well, a majority (79 per cent) were opposed to the return of Crimea to Ukraine, 14 per cent supported the idea and 8 per cent didn’t know.

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Technology The challenge for teaching

Education Language and Soviet legacy seen as barriers to recognition

tions with a “proven model of the effectiveness of higher education”.

Language barrier

LORI/LEGION MEDIA

Russia plans to have at least five universities in the world's top 100 by 2020.

A new Russian government program aims to propel five of the country’s universities into the international rating’s top 100 by 2020. What are the chances of success?

GLEB FEDOROV RBTH

The most obvious conclusion might seem to be that Russian tertiary education is of a lower standard than the West.

Representatives of Russian educational institutions interviewed by RBTH say this isn’t the case. They say the problem relates to the ratings’ evaluation process and how their criteria fit with Russia’s educational system.

According to Alexei Okunev, rector of the Department of Higher Communications at the State University of Novosibirsk (328th in the QS Ranking):“The criteria of the international ratings reflect the Anglo-Saxon [tertiary education] model.”

The director of the Institute of the Development of Education at the Higher School of Economics, Irina Abankina, says the problem is “the ratings evaluate only our bachelor programs and our traditional specialitet [the Soviet five-year bachelor program] and aspirantura [the Soviet three-year PhD program] aren’t counted”.

Most Russian universities (almost 80 per cent) switched to the bachelor-master system only in 2011. This means that the first wave of bachelor students who will continue to masters and PhD programs will appear only in 2015 and 2016.

Over-specialisation The Higher School of Economics (VShE) in Moscow has been quite successful in the monetisation of education.

The university, one of the recognised leaders of humanitarian education in Russia today, was founded 25 years ago and operates according to the Western educational

QUOTE

Dmitry Livanov RUSSIA’S MINISTER FOR EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

Different criteria OLESYA KURPYAEVA /RG

September saw the publication of the international QS World University Rankings for 2014, which this year included 21 Russian universities – six more than in 2013.

Three Russian universities made the rating for the first time: the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (481490), the Saratov National Research State University (601-650) and the National University of Science and Technology MISIS (701).

For many Russian universities, international ratings are still a novelty, although in the past 10 years the country’s universities and government – after some hesitation and attempts to create their own international ratings system – have decided to start playing by international rules.

The Russian universities made it into this year’s ratings thanks to the 5-100 Federal Program of University Support, which includes the participation of 15 Russian universities. Its aim is for five Russian universities to feature in the international rating’s top 100 by 2020.

Despite quantitative achievements, none of the Russian universities made it into the top 100 this year. The best result was obtained by the oldest university in Russia, the Lomonosov Moscow State University (MGU), which was assigned 114th place in the QS Ranking. So what is holding Russian universities back?

A question of quality?

The general lack of proficiency in English is a key factor as well.“Our universities are very poorly represented on the internet, especially in the English language, which is why it’s very difficult to obtain the information necessary for the ratings evaluation,” Abankina says.

She adds that the language barrier influences the score for academic publications, since in Russia it is customary to publish studies in Russian scientific journals. These publications don't make it to international scientific databases used for the ratings.

Abankina’s view is shared

by Hong Kong professor of communication theory, Anthony Fung, who gave a talk to rectors of Russian universities at Moscow’s Skolkovo Innovation Centre this year on how to get into international university rankings.

“Language is an important factor,”Fung said, addressing the issue of why Russian universities are under-represented. He said this meant “no international English publications, no international conferences, no international faculty members, and of course no reaching out…”.

"

Substantial funds have been allocated to the program for increasing the international competitiveness of Russian universities – 45 billion roubles [$1 billion] for 2014 to 2016.”

model, with a large number of full-fee students. Yet the VShE also offers many subsidised places thanks to solid financial support from the state. Nevertheless,VShE occupies a modest 501-550th place in the QS Ranking.

According to the scientific director of the VShE Education Institute, Isak Frumin, the low rating is because VShE is a specialised university, while the general QS Ranking targets comprehensive universities, which include medicine and natural sciences faculties. Frumin accuses the ratings of being “guilty of vague terms and numerous deficiencies”, though deems them necessary since they provide institu-

Russian universities have other features that impede their progress in international ratings. The traditionally closed nature of technical universities, a legacy of Soviet times, is one such factor.

This is especially true of institutions that prepare students for defence industries.

“The Bauman is a defencespace university, therefore international ratings cannot evaluate us,”says Anatoly Alexandrov, Rector of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University (322nd in the QS Ranking).

Another problem, according to Alexandrov, is the difference in interpreting the results of research activity in Russia and the West.

“In Western culture, being cited is the main criterion for evaluating a university,” he says. “That was never – and never will be – the case in Russia. For us, the result of the research is the idea, the project, the ‘hardware’ that we have made, or the technology that we have created.

“Of course, we recommend [our colleagues] publish more actively. But there have to be reasonable limits. We publish 3500 academic articles a year.

That’s a lot.”

© RIA NOVOSTI

Universities set goal of entering global top 100 'Gamification' is the key to making education more engaging.

Digital generation is changing the face of education Russia is getting serious about integrating technology and education, speakers at Moscow's 2014 Open Innovations Forum revealed.

GLEB FEDOROV RBTH

“The new generations are born into a digital world,” Alexander Laszlo from the International Society for the Systems Sciences told RBTH. This realisation is already forcing companies such as Finnish video games developer Rovio Entertainment – creator of the video game franchise Angry Birds – to design interactive and engaging educational programs for schoolchildren.

The company even has a vice-president for education.

What Rovio does is the perfect example of the so-called gamification of education.

“The more opportunities kids have to play, the more opportunities they have to learn,” Angry Birds marketing director PeterVesterbacka told RBTH. There is no equivalent of Rovio in Russia, although the Russian government is taking steps to make education more technology-friendly.

“For example, the Russian Ministry of Education and Science is motivating publishers of [school education] content to transfer it from paper to electronic devices,” said Yakov Mendeleyev, who runs the development department of a project called ESchool of the Future, run by telecom provider Rostelecom.

“And these aren’t just electronic copies of books; this is interactive content.”

Even now, technology in schools, although unfortunately far from being in every school, is reaching more Russian children.

For example, Samsung has launched the program Education for Everyone in Russia.“This is for special needs children who are homeschooled. For them, technology is the only way to socialise and get an education,”said Sergei Pevnev, marketing director for Samsung Russia.

These children, who are growing up in the digital age and have never known life without the internet, will enrol in university in just a few years.

This will fundamentally change how information is presented and digested at universities.

“The gamification of education is all about engagement – you move from storytelling to story playing,” Laszlo said.“The main challenge is to engage a student’s brain, to engage them where they live and with challenges that face them in their particular life circumstances.”

In Laszlo’s opinion, it is still unclear how higher education will tackle what he considers to be its main challenge: involving students in education.

However, some elements of the future of education are already present, although not in all universities, “Our programming program [the Samsung IT School] is offered in 20 regions.,”Pevnev said. “It’s impossible to maintain a unified standard and level of quality without using mobile technology, webinars and online testing.”

According to him, this practice will be actively borrowed by traditional universities as well.

“Besides mobile technology, we see the possibility for Russian universities to build individual educational technology in the future that takes into account each student’s individual needs,” Pevnev said.

Michael Stopfold, the executive director of American company Weber Shandwick, thinks Russia already has the technology; the key task facing its universities is now to ramp up international partnerships and continue to integrate into the global education system.

“Russia has fantastic technology and innovation in education, but these technologies and innovations should make sure they have international partners,” Stopfold told RBTH.

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Health

RUSSIA’S SNOWDEN MEDIA PRIZE rbth.com/40718

Virus Russia is well prepared to deal with the possibility of an outbreak on home soil

EXPERT

Scientists aid fight against Ebola

Word from front line

Russia has been contributing to the global fight against Ebola, while two Russian research labs are currently working on a vaccine for the virus.

IN NUMBERS

SCIENTIST

hile in the past only the most difficult cases of Ebola were tracked, thanks to earlier diagnosis those infected are now coming to the attention of doctors sooner. The welcome result is that the death rate is falling.

At its peak the mortality rate hit 90 per cent and is now about 50 per cent.

Diagnostic processes at the Donka Hospital in Conakry – the largest public hospital in Guinea – are proving effective. The labs there are overseen by a graduate of the Russian university system, Dr Magassouba Nfali, from the Moscow State Academy of Veterinary Medicine, where research is conducted on the diagnosis of viral infections, some of which, including Ebola, are spread from animals to people.

We have been providing scientific and methodological assistance to local specialists. In particular, we are helping to improve the diagnosis of the virus.

I think our collaboration has helped. We are also consulting with local specialists on the Ebola virus.

And since Russia has seen Crimean haemorrhagic fever, for example, we have suitable experience.

4951 W

GLEB FEDOROV

WHO’s latest Ebola statistics indicate that so far, 13,567 individuals have been infected and 4951 have died from the disease. The average fatality rate from the virus is now 50 per cent.

RBTH

230 © RIA NOVOSTI

According to Anna Popova, the director at Rospotrebnadzor – the state agency that monitors public health risks – Russia has had about 600 suspected cases of Ebola since the beginning of the year, none of which were confirmed to be the virus.

Mikhail Shchelkanov, an Ebola expert and head of the Laboratory of Virus Ecology at the Ivanovsky Virology Institute, said authorities were prepared for the virus.

“The [Russian] population doesn’t even know that we have a bacteriological security system, making it possible to detect and isolate more than 200 cases of exotic viruses penetrating the country each year,” he said.

Nevertheless, ordinary Russians are afraid of Ebola. In a poll by one of Russia’s leading public opinion research centres, the Public Opinion Foundation, 47 per cent of those polled think there is a risk of Ebola spreading to Russia, while 60 per cent believe the Russian government needs to improve measures to combat the virus.

Of the latter, 18 per cent suggest strengthening sanitary measures for people coming into Russia, 10 per cent think Ebola needs to be researched and a vaccine developed and 9 per cent think entry into the country should be restricted for people com-

Mikhail Schelkanov

Around the world, about 400 healthcare workers have contracted the Ebola virus, and of these, more than 230 have died.

Russian scientists have been carrying out research on the Ebola virus since Soviet times.

ing from Ebola epicentres.

But according to government reports, all of this is already being done. Russia has allocated $US19 million towards the fight against Ebola and has redoubled efforts to develop a vaccine.

In addition, a Russian epidemic control team has been at work on the ground in Guinea since August. The team – which has a mobile pathology lab on a Kamaz truck – is using Russian testing systems, confirmed as effective by the World Health Organisation (WHO), to help local doctors to diagnose and treat Ebola. Popova says Russia will also send extra epidemiologist brigades to West Africa.

Russia’s Virological Centre of the Defence Ministry’s Microbiology Research Institute

and the Vector State Scientific Centre of Virology and Bacteriology are both working on an Ebola vaccine.

These institutions started working on the Ebola virus in Soviet times, it is thought, with the aim of developing biological warfare using the virus. Their work is still classified, although scientists who work there sometimes disclose information.

In mid-October, Vector’s deputy director, Alexander Agafonov, said the centre had managed“to develop several vaccines against Ebola”and that it was preparing for preclinical trials.

The vaccines have already been tested on guinea pigs and monkeys, and one of the vaccines was effective, he said. Scientists have not revealed any details about how

the vaccines were created or when they will be ready to be used. Rospotrebnadzor, Vector’s parent agency, declined to comment.

Alexander Chepurnov, the former chief of Vector’s laboratory of dangerous viral infections, told Russian media outlet Gazeta.ru in an interview that, judging by Agafonov’s statement, it is “very difficult to conclude whether they have actually managed to develop a vaccine or whether it is wishful thinking”.

Chepurnov started working with Ebola at the end of the 1980s. His laboratory also researched other deadly viruses, including Lassa, Machupo and Marburg.

In 1996, the laboratory discovered the “genetic basis of the virulence” of Ebola.

According to Chepurnov,“a working vaccine can only be made with a recombinant [a virus created by recombining pieces of DNA]. Such vaccines have been developed abroad, but with the help of our scientists, who are former employees of Vector.”

“Victor Volchkov, who now works at the University of Lyon, in France, supplied several components to make a prototype of the vaccine on the basis of the vesicular stomatitis virus.

“Alexander Bukreev, who now works at the Galveston National Laboratory in the US, did an entire prototype of the vaccine based on the p a r a i n f l u e n z a v i r u s ,” Chepurnov said.

According to WHO data, Ebola virus had killed about 4600 people by mid-October.

Mikhail Schelkanov, of the Ivanovsky Institute of Virology, spent time in Guinea this year assisting in the fight against the Ebola epidemic.

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SOVIET MEDIA CAUTION RUSSIAN NEWSPAPERS PAUSED – TO SEE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN, IT SEEMS – BEFORE THEY REPORTED THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL

who are considering leaving the republic to think again.”

A perceptive reader could conclude from that statement that GDR citizens had an opportunity to leave the country, which meant the Berlin Wall was no more.

A hint about the actual state of affairs could be found in the November 11 issue of Pravda. A report headlined “Visit interrupted” said that West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had interrupted his visit to Poland and returned to Bonn for 24 hours “due to the dramatic situation developing on the border between the two Germanys”.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble said that“the FRG [West Germany] intended to continue receiving all Germans wishing to move to the FRG” but asked GDR citizens “to give a serious consideration to their decision to leave the country because they would then have to spend a long time in constrained living conditions”.

Between November 10 and 20, Pravda continued to cover political events in the GDR and FRG, but none of the articles mentioned the wall. At the same time, a dispatch by Podklyuchnikov in the November 12 issue of the paper reported that East Germans were moving to the West en masse and handing in their Socialist Unity Party of Germany membership cards.

Finally, on November 14, the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper joined in the coverage with a news-in-brief piece reporting that GDR

The Soviet people were only able to learn about the fall of the Berlin Wall from rumours or subtle hints that managed to make it to the national press.

GEORGY MANAYEV RBTH

On November 9, 1989 several national papers did not reach the newsstands. The missing titles included Moskovsky Komsomolets, Sovetskaya Rossiya, Komsomolskaya Pravda and Trud. Only two main national papers – Pravda and Izvestia – came out on the day. However, they too did not say a word about the fall of the Berlin Wall, although they did report on the domestic political situation in the GDR (East Germany).

Reading between the lines to find the story “Changes in GDR” was the headline of a piece by Pravda’s Berlin correspondent Mai Podklyuchnikov in the November 9 issue of the paper, reporting that the East German government had resigned. Podklyuchnikov quoted a statement issued by the GDR Council of Ministers: “We appeal to all our citizens

border guard troops had been issued an order that “they should do everything necessary to assist the orderly and smooth implementation of the new rules regulating movement across the border between the GDR and the FRG and West Berlin”.

In the meantime, November issues of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Trud, Sovetskaya Rossiya and Moskovskiye Novosti carried no reports about this. On November 10, the professional holiday of the police force in the USSR, the papers were full of glowing reports about Soviet police officers but said nothing about the Berlin Wall.

Pravda means truth – but not all of it What reports did TV and radio carry on the day? In a recent interview with France 2’s Laurent Boussie, TASS correspondent Alexei Golyayev, former head of the news agency’s European section, said: “On November 9, Soviet radio and television carried only one brief report on it, consisting of just three lines.”

One could venture a guess that the ban on reporting the events in Berlin came directly from the leadership of the country. For a comment, we approached the Pravda newspaper, which still exists though it ceased being the country’s main daily a long time ago. According to a Pravda staffer, Nikolai Kozhanov, practically none of the journalists working there in 1989 are on staff today.

“Pravda journalists have always had a strong political sense,” Kozhanov said.“And, of course, when there came the news of the fall of the Berlin Wall, they were in no hurry to print it. Those developments in effect signified the collapse of the socialist camp and reporting them would have meant recognising the fact of the collapse. I think our journalists were hoping that things would sort themselves out somehow.”

According to him, Pravda, the main newspaper of the USSR Communist Party, was very careful about covering events that could damage the ruling regime.“For example, after Stalin’s death in 1953, there were large-scale workers’ strikes in the GDR,” he said.“Things went so far that troops had to be brought in to break the protest up. Yet all that Pravda reported at the time was that there were minor protests by workers.”

Nobody wanted to let Soviet people know that German workers had rebelled as it could provoke similar unrest in the USSR. “One should not think that Pravda’s correspondent in Berlin did not know what was going on,” he continued. “In cases like these, a correspondent had to write a ‘closed letter’ to be sent not just to the paper but straight to the party’s central committee. That letter contained a detailed account of the real state of affairs. It was then that party functionaries decided how the Pravda newspaper will be covering the story.”

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A MOSCOW METRO STATION BENCH

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PHOTOSHOT/VOSTOCK-PHOTO

Artist's Wall painting became an enduring symbol

Dmitri Vrubel has created thousands of works, but his most famous is the one he painted on the Berlin Wall in 1990, Fraternal Kiss (Brezhnev and Honecker), which bore the caption: “My God, help me to survive this deadly love.” At that time, many people were

painting on the wall, including some internationally renowned artists. Among them was, for example, the American designer Keith Haring. He painted his yellow-and-black composition on the west side, while Vrubel painted his mural on the east side.

“A photograph from [French magazine] Paris Match turned up,” Vrubel recalled. “An acquaintance showed it to me and I immediately knew what the subject had to be. Everyone asks me why The Kiss became such a universal, enduring symbol. First, it’s about love, and there’s a touch of eroticism. It’s still a kiss – an intense, deep one. Also, it’s between men – and old men at that ... Second, these are well-known figures, heads of state ... It’s not an abstraction. Finally, the faces are huge. The mural is monumental, and that’s part of its artistic effect. Presenting The Kiss on a small scale isn’t possible – everything immediately gets lost.”

ULLSTEIN BILD/VOSTOCK-PHOTO

NEWS BLACKOUT THE DAY WALL CAME DOWN

The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall

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HOW UNDERGROUND MUSIC ROCKED THE USSR rbth.com/29179

INTERVIEW MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

Dialogue of the early Nineties threatened by a new Cold War As the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approached, RBTH’s Maxim Korshunov sat down with Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, to discuss the historic rapprochement between East and West and the prospect of a new Cold War. RBTH: 1989 is the year the Berlin Wall came down. But that only happened in November.

Months earlier, at a press conference following your negotiations in Bonn with Chancellor [Helmut] Kohl, you were asked: “And what about the wall?” You answered: “Nothing under the sun is eternal […] The wall could disappear as soon as the conditions that gave birth to it ceased to exist. I don’t see a big problem here.” How did you assume events would unfold back then?

Mikhail Gorbachev: In the summer of 1989, neither Helmut Kohl nor I anticipated, of course, that everything would happen so fast. We didn’t expect the wall to come down in November. And by the way, we both admitted that later. I don’t claim to be a prophet.

This happens in history. It punishes those who are late.

But it has an even harsher punishment for those who try to stand in its way.

It would have been a big mistake to hold on to the Iron Curtain. That’s why we didn’t put any pressure on the government of the GDR [German Democratic Republic – East Germany].

When events started to develop at a speed that no one expected, the Soviet leadership unanimously – and I want to stress“unanimously” – decided not to interfere in the internal processes that were under way in the GDR – not to let our troops leave their garrisons under any circumstances. To this day, I’ve been confident that that was the right decision.

REUTERS

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

The Germans themselves played the decisive role in uniting Germany. I’m referring not only to their mass demonstrations in support of unity, but also to the fact that the Germans in both the East and West proved in the postwar decades that they had learned from the past.

I think that the Soviet Union played a crucial role in ensuring that the reunification was peaceful, and that the process didn’t lead to a dangerous international crisis. In the Soviet leadership,

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Mikhail Gorbachev says the West ignored Russia's interests.

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we knew that Russians – and that all the peoples of the Soviet Union – understood the Germans’ desire to live in unity and to have a democratic government.

I want to note that besides the Soviet Union, the other participants in the process of definitively solving the German issue also demonstrated balance and responsibility. I am referring to the US, the UK and France.

It’s no longer a secret that Francois Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher had serious doubts about the speed of [German] reunification.

But when all the aspects of the process had been settled, they signed the documents that spelled the end of the Cold War.

fence plans and the West’s actions in regions of importance to Russia (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Georgia and Ukraine). They literally said“This is none of your business.”As a result, an abscess formed and it burst.

I would advise Western leaders to look thoroughly at this, instead of just pointing the finger at Russia for everything.

They should remember the Europe we managed to create at the beginning of the ’90s and what it has, unfortunately, turned into in recent years.

It fell to you to decide the fateful problem of global development. The international settlement of the German question, which involved major world powers and other nations, served as an example of the great responsibility and high quality of the politicians of that generation. You demonstrated that this is possible if one is guided – as you defined it – by “a new way of thinking”.

How capable are contemporary world leaders of solving today’s problems in a peaceful manner, and how have approaches to finding answers to geopolitical challenges changed in the past 25 years?

German reunification wasn’t an isolated event, but it was part of the process of the end of the Cold War. Perestroika (restructuring) and democratisation in our country paved the way for it.

Without these processes, Europe would have been split and in a“frozen”state for decades longer.

So what was this new way of thinking? It was recognis-

ing that there were global threats – and at the time, primarily the threat of a nuclear conflict – which could only be removed by co-operation.

That meant we needed to build relations anew, engage in dialogues and seek ways to end the arms race.

It meant recognising the freedom of choice for all peoples, while at the same time, taking each others’ interests into account, building co-operation and establishing ties to make conflict and war impossible in Europe.

These principles lie at the foundation of the Paris Charter (1990) for a new Europe – a vital political document signed by all the European countries, the US and Canada. As a result, its provisions needed to be developed and solidified, structures needed to be created, preventive mechanisms needed to be established, as did mechanisms for co-operation.

For example, there was a proposal to create a Security Council of Europe.

I don’t want to contrast that generation of leaders with the subsequent generation. But the fact remains: it wasn’t done. And European development has been lopsided, which, it should be said, was facilitated by the weakening of Russia in the 1990s.

Today we need to admit that there is a crisis in European (and global) politics.

One of the reasons, albeit not the only reason, is a lack of desire on the part of our Western partners to take into consideration Russia’s point of view and legitimate security interests.

They paid lip service to applauding Russia, especially during the Yeltsin years, but in deeds they didn’t consider it. I’m referring primarily to NATO expansion, missile de-

PIONEERS OF COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY IN RUSSIA

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IORSH

LAMENT FOR THE EUROPE WE LOST Fyodor Lukyanov ANALYST

n the morning of November 8, I jumped out of bed like a scalded cat, realising I’d overslept. I’d been up late writing a presentation for a conference on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The following day editors and analysts from all over the world gathered at a newly opened complex on Potsdamer Platz with the old-fashioned name of the Common European Home, named after former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s original idea.

The gloomy November morning of my arrival resonated with the news on the radio: shelling in Donetsk; civilians killed; David Cameron threatening Russia with new sanctions; NATO exercises in the Baltic. The idea of a common European home has remained in my dreams.

What went wrong? Why has the Europe without dividing lines – the Europe people dreamed about during the years of“new political thinking” – been lost?

The Berlin Wall symbolised the absurdity of ideological confrontation. With its destruction, it seemed any rea-

O

PLAYING BY THE RULES

sons there might have been for division were also erased.

While there is a common understanding of this, everyone has a different view on the way out of conflict. Gorbachev believed that “engineers” from the two former camps would design the common European home together, that they would build a structure in which everyone

of a new equality turned into the carving up of the “Soviet legacy”.

The idea of building a common European home along Western patterns could have been crowned with a result only if the USSR’s fate of disintegration had also befallen Russia – and there was that risk; it was difficult to halt the destructive impuls-

The Berlin Wall symbolised the absurdity of ideological confrontation

But it seemed the West could not recognise Russia as an equal co-creator of the new Europe

could live comfortably, because it would take everyone’s wishes into account.

In this sense, Gorbachev probably unwittingly followed the logic of his great associate (at certain stages) and antagonist (at other stages), Soviet human rights activist Andrei Sakharov, in calling for the convergence of capitalism and socialism.

The West interpreted the collapse of the Soviet model as proof of its own unconditional correctness – moral, historical and economic. And what Soviet leaders thought would be a gradual, balanced convergence and the creation

es released by the collapse of the USSR. Disintegrated Russia and its parts would probably have been digested by the European integration project.

But that didn’t happen, and Russia proved to be an obstacle to the victorious march of this Western project.

The European Union (EU) did not know any other way than to pursue the bilateral dissemination of its sphere of influence in legal and regulatory fields into neighbouring countries. But it seemed the West could not recognise Russia as an equal co-creator of the new Europe. Nor

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would Russia agree to a subordinate role.

As a result, instead of building a common European home, the West began the process of enclosure. It expanded the structure that Western Europeans built during the Cold War with the active assistance of the US, and then it started to build auxiliary structures.

Sooner or later, this work was supposed to stretch to the neighbouring area, the wall of another building, which Russia undertook to restore and reconstruct, as it gradually recovered from its collapse in the early 1990s.

And a moat has again appeared in Europe – a moat moved to the east in comparison with the one dividing the continent 25 years ago.

To some degree it’s even deeper, because it’s a division not so much in ideology as in cultural and historical differences and mismatched mentalities.

So would it even have been possible to construct a common European home? If the Soviet Union had been preserved – not as a communist empire, but as a reasonable commonwealth – Europe could have united on truly equitable principles. Integration could have stood on two pillars: Brussels and Moscow.

The fruit of convergence would have been a qualitatively different structure in which energy supplies would never have caused crises, and the inhabitants of the eastern part of this enormous space would not have filled the market with a cheap, illegal workforce for its western part. And there would be no issue of the remilitarisation of central Europe and threats to European security.

Perhaps this is a utopia, and it was already too late when the decision was made to create a common European home.The USSR had reached the point of no return, and its Western opponents were not interested in agreements, once they sensed the possibility of victory.

If that is the case, the Europe we lost can exist only in the minds of idealists, where it will remain juxtaposed with images of late autumn 1989, when thousands of Berliners jubilantly saw the wall come down and believed that it would never come back.

Fyodor Lukyanov is the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs and chairman of the board of the Foreign and Defense Policy Council.

BRISBANE WILL MAINTAIN G20'S GROWTH FOCUS Svetlana Lukash RUSSIA’S G20 SHERPA

s last year, the main topic of this year’s G20 Summit will be ensuring global economic growth as well as job creation and labour participation. Australia has been working on developing further the measures and commitments of the G20 countries over the past few years, including those made during Russia’s G20 presidency.

This year, Australia set the main task for the G20 as developing comprehensive growth strategies for the main four areas of public policy: investments, employment, trade and competition.

Each of the G20 countries proposed new policies and measures in these areas to achieve a goal of lifting over the next five years the G20 countries’ collective GDP by 2 per cent above the trajectory implied by current policies.

The proposed measures were thoroughly discussed at various working levels and assessed by international organisations and through peer reviews. Now G20 countries are ready to fulfil their goals in these areas and commit to them at Brisbane’s summit.

This year’s work has led the G20 towards a more structured and focused strategy to achieve strong, sustainable and balanced growth. Ways to strengthen the global economy, ensure job creation and lift investments in infrastructure are the summit’s main goals.

To make the world economy more resilient, measures for reforming the current financial architecture, financial regulation and tax systems will also be discussed.

The G20’s joint actions to stimulate financing for investment and to combat tax base erosion and profit shifting were first placed on the agenda during Russia’s presidency in 2013. In all these areas, significant results have been achieved this year. Half of the plan on BEPS (base erosion and profit shifting) is being successfully implemented.

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Good dynamics are in place to fulfil further obligations, including the automatic exchange of tax information.

Much remains to be done in the area of financial regulation, although it’s the most successful area of G20 work and significant results in improving the stability of financial institutions have already been achieved.

These include addressing the problem of“too big to fail” and the risks associated with the shadow banking sector, as well as the transition to a more secure environment for the derivatives market. Joint work has already gone far beyond banking regulation. We are moving towards the coordinated and harmonious work of regulatory bodies in financial markets.

The summit will also be a platform to discuss other important issues. For the first time, energy issues will be a key focus. It is time for G20 to reflect on the inadequacy of existing international energy institutions in relation to current realities, which we can see in the international energy sector.

The role of the emerging economies – which are still under-represented in global energy institutions and accordingly, cannot influence the decision-makers – should be strengthened. The roles of traditional energy suppliers and consumers are changing.

All this is reflected in the balance of power. The traditional institutions offer no opportunities for quality dialogue in the current environment, so it is timely for the G20 to deal with this subject.

Current challenges to the global sustainable development, such as rising inequality and the Ebola outbreak, will also be among the issues that leaders will address in Brisbane.

Svetlana Lukash is deputy head of Russia’s Presidential Experts Directorate.

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MINSK AS A PEACEMAKER FOR RUSSIA AND THE WEST rbth.com/40751

Mikhail Shchelkanov SCIENTIST

here are four main reasons why today’s Ebola epidemic has reached an unprecedented scale.

The first is the natural foci of the Ebola virus in West Africa, at the crossroads of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The second is the lack of reliable information about the circulation of the disease in those places up until the beginning of 2014.

The third is the highly complex socio-economic environments in West African countries, and the fourth is the plethora of local customs that facilitate the spread of communicable viruses.

What is the likelihood that these factors could come into play in Europe and Russia?

Fruit bats are natural reservoirs of the Zaire ebolavirus. West African fruit bats should not be confused with other bat species: they are diurnal (as opposed to nocturnal) and feed on the fruit in rainforests.

These fruit bats can carry Ebola without symptoms, but excrete the virus with fluids, as a result of which other animals, including humans, can be infected with it. Sick animals can also be a source of infection. Fruit bats are a favorite dish of West Africans.

There are three types of Ebola outbreaks. The first is the forest type, when whole forest villages are infected.

Fruit bats infect monkeys or other wild animals, and these newly infected animals are hunted by the locals, who bring their kill back to the

T

village. Ebola can infect the entire settlement, and in conditions of overcrowding and a lack of treatment, mortality can reach 90 per cent.

The second type of epidemic is rural. Fruit bat behavior changed when tropical plantations spread right up to the edges of forests. The animals began to feast on fruit not just in the forest but on the plantations as well. In these conditions, the risk of Ebola infection skyrocketed.

It is likely that patient zero – the person from whom the current epidemic originated – came from near a plantation. Ebola patient zero is thought to be a two-year-old boy who died in December 2013 in Guinea.

The infection continued to spread and took on the characteristics of an urban epidemic, the third type, when the virus is transferred through contact with the sick person’s biological fluids.

Ebola is not thought to be transmitted by airborne droplets, like the flu. It would be impossible for the disease to spread in the US, Europe and Russia on the scale that it has in West Africa.

Most of West Africa is extremely poor and undeveloped. Heaps of garbage sit on the main street of Conakry, the capital of Guinea; sewage flows on its streets.

The healthcare system in the region is in its infancy. In these circumstances, it comes as no surprise that child mortality is 118 per 1000.

It should be mentioned that even without the Ebola virus, mortality in the region, particularly among adults, is considerably higher than the number of deaths from the virus. (This did not previous-

KONSTANTIN MALER

EBOLA: WHY RUSSIA'S RISK IS LOW

What is the likelihood that these factors could come into play in Europe and Russia?

Russia has historically had an excellent system for ensuring the country's biological security

PUTIN PLAYS BY RULES – JUST NOT AMERICA'S Fyodor Lukyanov ANALYST

speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin at this October’s Valdai Club attracted considerable criticism. (The Valdai Club is an annual forum at which international experts discuss Russia’s role in global affairs.)

If we were to exclude a couple of dramatic metaphors, such as “master of the taiga” (referring to Russia) and the geopolitical “nouveau riche” not being able to deal with the enormous wealth cast upon them (referring to the US), in essence, Putin’s speech was more that of an analyst than a publicist.

A

So why such a critical reaction, then?

The fact that the Russian president does not accept contemporary American policy is not news. Putin has been talking on this theme for several years. It is just that more recently his tone has changed.

During his first presidential term, Putin invited the US to review its course. During his second term he warned the US that Russia would not ignore public opinion. And during his 2012 electoral campaign Putin became perplexed, trying to understand Washington’s policies, which appeared to him to be purposefully destroying the international order, rather than strengthening it.

In this year’s Valdai speech there was a touch of fatalism in Putin’s tone.

He no longer counts on the US to change; he simply proclaims the destructiveness of its activities. Perhaps it is this lack of expectation that has created the biggest effect and made people interpret his speech in an exclusively negative light.

Meanwhile, Putin’s core undertaking is basically positive, since it echoes the principal theme of the Valdai meeting: the search for new rules of international intercourse, which would permit all parties to move to the next phase of development.

The world is still going through a phase of virtual erosion and now through a

ly cause much concern among developed countries.)

The last reason behind the growth in mortality from Ebola is local customs. There is a belief among some West Africans that when a person is being buried, all of her/his relatives should wash and hug the body of the deceased; otherwise “the dead will come for them”.Naturally, everyone involved in the ceremony could be exposed to infection because the virus is transmitted via direct contact.

Illiteracy is also a factor. It is easier for people to believe in established traditions – for example, that the deceased should be kissed before burial – than to accept that they could be infected with a deadly virus by doing something.

Russia has a solid system for monitoring natural foci, so even in the event that foci existed in Russia, they would quickly be under control.

Russia’s socio-economic situation is completely different from the one in West Africa, and Russia has historically had an excellent system for ensuring the country’s biological security. Theoretically a similar situation could not arise in Russia.

But it should also be understood that the precautionary measures currently being implemented at airports – taking temperatures, surveying passengers, and so on – are necessary but insufficient to completely rule out the emergence of the virus on Russian soil.

There is a non-zero prob-

ability of an outbreak even amid the most thorough checks at airports. The classic case of an imported virus is as follows: an infected person in the incubation period, without any clinical symptoms, crosses the border and gets sick in a new country.

Once again, I emphasise that Russian services would localise the illness immediately in a case like this.

Russia has 100-200 cases of imported viral infections every year, and none of them have had epidemic consequences, and the same would be the case with Ebola.

phase of a quick disassembly of the world order that was created in the second half of the 20th century.

The thing that separates Putin from leaders of other influential countries is that he not only condemns and criticises American policy, but he systematically denies the role that the US is taking – and this is what seems to be provoke the biggest reaction.

After the Cold War the world domination of the US became a self-evident truth.

In light of this, strictly speaking, the US’s bluntly negative view of what Putin is saying and doing is justified.

Washington thinks that the Russian president consistently casts doubt not on its policies but on its special rules.

They think he is recreating the classic situation in which a contender issues a challenge to the hegemon, intending to grab world domination from them.

Consequently, the contender must be restrained; they

must not be allowed to strengthen themselves.

The paradox is that Putin repeatedly says that Russia does not want global domination, it is not seeking to shape the world to itself and it will not enter a race for greatness.

This point was made in the

in Crimea – demonstrate that Moscow will follow its interests independently of what others think of it.

But one other move has not been made thus far: an appeal to the rest of the world.

Putin’s Valdai speech, like many other of his speeches, is just another conversation with the West.

In the new world – the one that the Russian president depicts with such broad strokes – it is vital to engage in a serious dialogue with countries and regions that do not oppose the West but which are simply not part of it.

The discussion about new rules cannot be conducted along the lines of the former Cold War opposition. The world is more democratic today and the outcome of the global process depends much more on the“vast world masses”. It is there that the agitation should be carried out.

The fact that Russia’s president does not accept contemporary American policy is not news Valdai speech, as well as in other speeches. The Russian president has a realistic idea of his country’s potential: no less than it is, and no greater.

However, Putin refuses to play by America’s rules – both with regard to conceptual declarations and on a practical level.

Russia’s moves in 2014 – primarily the decisive actions

The author heads the Laboratory of Virus Ecology at the Russian Ministry of Health’s Ivanovsky Institute ofVirology.

First published in Russian in Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

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Travel

MOST READ

PARIS, BERLIN AND OTHER RUSSIAN VILLAGES travel.rbth.com/1705

Vladivostok As well as offering memorable views, the striking towers have a colourful history

Lighthouses a beacon

for tourists few years later, simply kept the English name.

Bruce lighthouse was built in 1911 and its original appearance has been retained to this day. It consists of a stone tower 10 metres high, coupled with a one-storey building.

Nearby is the old sea bell (ship’s bell), which helped send signals afar during bad weather, when the lighthouse’s lamp was not visible.

These days in bad weather, though, modern equipment helps deliver a signal to passing ships.

These days lighthouses aren't just about navigation, they are also attractions. And those in Russia’s biggest city on the Pacific, Vladivostok, are no exception.

VASILY AVCHENKO SPECIAL TO RBTH

1. Tokarevsky lighthouse

2. Basargina lighthouse Getting to the second bestknown lighthouse in Vladivostok, which bears the name of Admiral Vladimir Basargin, is not quite as simple as visiting Tokarevsky.

Basargina is on lands owned by Russia’s Ministry of Defence, near the town of Terebilovka, on Patroclus Bay. The first lighthouse here was a 1937 wooden building. But today’s lighthouse, constructed in 1958, is a stone building with an eightmetre-high tower.

As well as Basargina’s lights, the GLONASS system (Russia’s alternative to the GPS) was recently established here to improve navigational safety.

Basargina is a favourite spot for local artists and photographers.

The striking structure is often depicted in calendars and postcards: a red-andwhite lighthouse against dark-blue sea and grey rocks, on which gulls and cormorants nest.

It is best viewed from the sea, and there are small boats that tourists can rent available nearby.

YURI SMITYUK / TASS

5. Asklod island lighthouse

Vladivostok's most famous lighthouse, Tokarevsky, was built in 1910, and is at the end of Tokarevsky cape.

YURI SMITYUK / RBTH (3)

Even though there are several lighthouses in and around Vladivostok, if you ask a local the way to “the lighthouse” they will point you in the direction of Tokarevsky – a white tower on a small island at the end of a long sand bar (called the Tokarevsky cat) which is submerged at high tide.

The lighthouse and cape are named after a secondrank captain who worked as a minesweeper in Vladivostok at the end of the 19th century.

Built in 1910, and standing at the very edge of the Muravyova-Amur peninsula, the lighthouse can feel like it’s at the edge of the world.

From this point, you can see sea routes to China, Korea and Japan.

Also visible is Russian Island – an island off Vladivostok where the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit was held in 2012.

In winter here, it’s common to see seals resting on the ice floes or hunting for smelt.

Tokarevsky lighthouse is a famous landmark in Russia, and features in several films, including Nikolai Khomeriky’s Tale in the Darkness (2009).

Bruce lighthouse stands on Bruce headland, and dates to 1911.

Landmark on an apartment block The most unusual of Vladivostok’s lighthouses, and one which perhaps sums up the maritime flavour of the city best, sits on top of a centrally located five-storey Khrushchevera apartment block at the bus stop of Molodyozhnaya. Despite being in suburbia, the lighthouse is clearly visible from Vladivostok's harbour, as well as from the city’s main thoroughfare — making it something of a city landmark. Even though putting navigational equipment on top of apartment buildings was not allowed under naval regulations, an ex-

ception was made for the lighthouse following a visit to the city of the former president of the USSR, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1960. After this, the city rapidly developed as part of the urban planning project “Big Vladivostok”. So that a new major street being built – called Prospekt 100 years to Vladivostok – would be straight, the Navy decided to allow a lighthouse to be moved on top of the roof of a new building. And for almost half a century, the lighthouse has helped ships find their way in the city's Likhternaya harbour.

Basargina lighthouse is popular with photographers.

3. Skrypleva lighthouse

4. Bruce lighthouse

A lighthouse which operates in tandem with Basargina is Skrypleva.

Together they form a sea gate for Vladivostok: Skrypleva lights up in red, Basargina in green.

This striking and ominouslooking building, which was constructed in 1876, is the oldest lighthouse in the region still in service.

The lighthouse stands on Skrypleva island, famous for its anti-aircraft (and according to some sources, antiboat) battery during World War II. The battery is well known because it was operated by women, since all the city’s able-bodied men had been sent to the frontline.

Remnants of these historic barracks can be seen today, although the island no longer has a military presence.

Skyrpleva island is, however, considered to be the official gateway to the port of Vladivostok.

In practice what this means is that local Russian sea captains board and take command of visiting foreign ships here, at the point where they are about to enter the city’s waters.

There is yet another lighthouse near Vladivostok, not far from the village of Slavyanka. Oddly named Bruce Lighthouse, the white tower stands on a picturesque grey basalt headland of the same name.

Some say the headland and lighthouse were named after Jacob Bruce, who was an associate of Tsar Peter the Great, a participant in the Crimean campaigns and the first Russian mason mentioned in Alexander Pushkin’s poem Poltava.

But there is another theory: the Bruce peninsula was first described in 1885 by the crews of the British warships Winchester and Barracuda.

At the time, Vladivostok had not yet been established, and the place where the city is located today was called by the British “Port May”.

At the same time, on British charts the names “Cape Bruce” and “Bruce Peninsula” appeared – referring to British admiral Bruce, who commanded the British Pacific squadron during the Crimean War. Some say that the Russians, who came to the area just a

On the isolated island of Asklod, to the south of Vladivostok, stands one of the most interesting and inaccessible of the area’s lighthouses.

Several legends are connected with the island, which is also known for its dramatic geography and sharp, jutting rock formations and tall cliffs.

It was here in 1868 that the Manzovskaya War began (Manzo is what the Chinese who lived in this region were called).

At the time, Chinese miners who were illegally mining Asklod gold were in dispute with the Russian authorities, sparking a conflict.

Having killed and wounded several sailors aboard the schooner Aleut, the “hunghutz” – Chinese bandits – burned the local villages of Shkotovo and Nilskoe (which were located where the city of Ussuriysk stands today).

An attack was then expected on Vladivostok itself, and it was only the intervention of the Russian army which put an end to the conflict.

In Soviet times, an air-force town was built on the island – a town which has long been abandoned, and which today is a strange and empty place to behold.

On the island of Asklod, only the lighthouse and its caretaker remain (although poachers sometimes visit the island to hunt deer).

The lighthouse is heated with a wood stove and its electricity comes from a diesel generator.

There is no public transport to the island, but sometimes a gunboat delivers fuel and product supplies there.

While the lighthouse was built in the Soviet period, there’s a second lighthouse on a nearby island.

Built in the early 20th century, this lighthouse no longer functions, but it has historical significance and sometimes attracts visitors.

While the structure, which stands on a cliff, is well preserved, its staircase is dilapidated, so climbing it is not recommended.

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SIX RISKY TRAVEL DESTINATIONS IN RUSSIA travel.rbth.com/1709

Offbeat Away from the big galleries, the weird and wonderful

TRAVEL TO RUSSIA’S FAR REACHES RUSSIA’S EIGHT MOST DRAMATIC BACKDROPS

LORI/LEGION MEDIA

From sin to superstition: unusual small museums Russia is well-known for the Hermitage Museum and Tretyakov Gallery, but it is also home to countless small specialist museums – here are some examples.

north of Moscow, where there is the Museum of Satire and Humour of Ostap Bender in a heritage merchant house.

The museum has exhibits representing different scenes from the infamous novel.

Tambov

Today this village in Tver, north of Moscow, where the museum of reptiles is housed, has the euphonic name Privolzhsky. But in older times it was called Gadovo (“gad” means a snake in Old Russian – the area was known for its large snake population).

The area is also famous for being the birthplace of the legendary three-headed dragon Zmey Gorynych of Russian folklore.

Different kinds of snakes are preserved in the museum – iron, stone, fabric and wooden. Particularly impressive is the local speciality: an alcoholic spirit called the “green snake”. By chance, a distillery also used to operate in the village of Gadovo.

› russianmuseums.info/M1776

The Tver region

Kozmodemyansk,

OLGA CHEREDNICHENKO SPECIAL TO RBTH

› kmkmuzey.ru

1. Sigmund Freud’s Museum of Dreams Freud put forward the idea that dreams aren’t the incoherent nonsense of a resting brain but rather the “imperial road to the unconscious” leading us to a treasure trove of information about the world and ourselves.

Russia’s cultural capital, St Petersburg, is home to the country’s Institute of Psychoanalysis and, in the same building, the museum of dreams – one of three museums in the world dedicated to Freud.

The atmosphere inside the museum is designed to create the sensation of being in a waking dream: all the surfaces move on different planes and there are mirrors and shadows, giving visitors an other-worldly experience.

St Petersburg, › freud.ru

2. The Museum of Satire and Humour The action in one of the most important chapters of the funniest Soviet adventure novel, The 12 Chairs (by authors Ilf and Petrov), occurs in the town of Vasyuki. Here game scenes with the “great grandmaster” Ostap Bender were simultaneously carried out on 160 boards and plans were made for an interplanetary chess tournament.

The prototype of fictional Vasyuki is the city of Kozmodemyansk, in Tambov,

5. Museum of Reptiles

3. Museum of Sin For 30 years the pathologist Yury Schukin collected macabre remains and preserved them in jars. These make up the bulk of the collection at the Museum of Sin, in Tambov, south-east of Moscow.

The museum, which has been compared to St Petersburg’s Kunstkamera, has 700 containers filled with preserved human limbs, organs and embryos.

There is also an impressive collection of coffins – one of them resembling a fish.

Novosibirsk, › musei-smerti.ru

8. The Tula Museum of Samovars Russia’s best samovars have always been thought to have come from Tula. The Russian writer Anton Chekhov said that travelling to Paris with one’s wife is as useless as travelling to Tula with your own samovar.

The museum of Tula samovars is in a historic building named after Tsar Alexander II. There are a huge number of samovars: from a gigantic 70-litre model to a tiny vessel that holds only three droplets of water.

Tula, › samovar.museum-tula.ru

4. Babushka Lida’s home museum

6. Museum of Soviet Arcade Games

9. Museum of Myths and Superstitions

Lida, an old woman (babushka) from the small village of Stroevskoe, in the Arkhangelsk region in Russia’s north, has gathered together a very personal collection of traditional Russian household objects, tools and peasant clothes in her home. She opens her home to visitors and hosts classes in traditional crafts and industries.

For example, she shows visitors how to grind grain into cereal on a millstone. Those who visit Lida’s home also get the chance to try on traditional costumes and sing folk songs (or chastushka), with the accompaniment of a balalaika. Lida also serves tea from a traditional samovar, with delicious homemade cakes and pies.

This museum is like a time machine back to the 1970s.

It has a collection of more than 60 different game machines that were made in the USSR, most of which can still be played. The most famous and popular games were Highway, Auto-rally, Battleship and Gorodki.

In this museum it is possible to take a tour of Russian folk rituals and celebrations, learn interesting facts about ancient gods, beliefs, shamans, magicians and to get acquainted with Slavic esoteric practices.

Visitors to the Museum of Myths and Superstitions of the Russian People also listen to recordings of fairy tales and legends, learn about talismans, omens and methods of healing, and also get acquainted with many popular and rare methods of fortune telling.

Wax figures and stuffed “evil spirits”are recreated according to legends, books, manuscripts and traditions brought back from ethnographic expeditions.

The Arkhangelsk region, › ustyany.com

Moscow, St Petersburg, Kazan, › 15kop.ru

7. Museum of World Funeral Culture Among the exhibits at this museum in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk are hearses, memorial jewellery from the hair of the deceased, pictures of a particular photo genre known as “post mortem,” a collection of designer mourning clothes from the Victorian era, death masks, statues and monuments.

SIBERIA’S BEST OPEN-AIR MUSEUMS

Uglich, › sueverija.narod.ru

TRAVEL TIPS FOR THE WESTERN SIBERIAN CITY OF OMSK

More Russian travel destinations at travel.rbth.com

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History

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FUTURE LOOKS BRIGHT FOR EXPANDING HERMITAGE rbth.com/40533

Emblem Surviving the test of time

Originally the symbol of Imperial Russia, the doubleheaded eagle was restored as Russia's official emblem in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

VLADIMIR KHUTAREV SPECIAL TO RBTH

Although 23 years have passed since the collapse of the USSR, in the minds of many non-Russians the Soviet-era hammer and sickle still symbolise Russia.

However, the new Russia's state emblem pre-dates the Soviet era, and in fact, dates way back to the Byzantine Empire.

The state emblem of the Russian Federation – the double-headed eagle – is one of the oldest Indo-European symbols.

Its history can trace influences through Christianity, Paganism and Iran’s Zoroastrianism. These were epochs of great empires and those of feudal fragmentation. Entire states and civilisations vanished, but the double-headed eagle continued to soar above the people of Western Asia and Eastern Europe. Here’s how it evolved.

The symbol first appeared on the coat of arms of the great Hittite Empire, which occupied the territory of present-day Turkey in the 17th to 12th centuries BC. There it was later adopted by the heir of the Roman oneheaded eagle, the Byzantine Empire.

It then became the symbol of eastern Christianity and spread across Christendom, appearing on the coats of arms of Serbia and Montenegro, Germany [during the Holy Roman Empire] and of Armenia.

The eagle “flew” to Russia only in the 13th century, replacing the trident – an ancient symbol of the ruling dynasty.

First the double-headed eagle appeared in Chernigov, in present-day Ukraine, then in Vladimir [176 kilometres west of Moscow], then in Moscow itself. After the fall of the Byzantium Empire in 1453, Russia was left the only independent Orthodox country in the world.

The eagle subsequently became Russia’s official symbol

towards the end of the 15th century, when Grand Prince Ivan III, “the gatherer of the Russian lands”, married Sophia Palaiologina, the niece of the last emperor of Byzantium, and inherited the symbol of his wife’s kin. The eagle succeeded another ancient Russian symbol of power, the lion.

As Ivan III’s grandson, Ivan the Terrible, became the first Russian tsar, the two-headed eagle appeared on the first Russian coat of arms and the tsar’s seal. During Ivan’s reign, Moscow annexed the Kazan and the Astrakhan khanates, the Tatar feudal states and the remnants of the Golden Horde and began the annexation of Khan-ruled Siberia.

So in the early 17th century, the two-headed eagle began to be depicted with three crowns – to symbolise the victory over the three khanates.

That is how Tsar Alexis himself, the father of Peter the Great, explained it, in the middle of the 17th century.

During Alexis’ reign, the sceptre and the orb, which the eagle held in his claws, were also added to denote the tsar as the “autocrat and the owner of the land”.

Over centuries of Russian history, the three crowns have been assigned a lot of different meanings. Some said that they symbolised the primacy of the tsar’s power over both the government and the church.

There is also an opinion that three crowns denote the tsar’s power over Moscow, Little Russia [later, Ukraine] and White Russia [now Belarus]; or that the three crowns mean that the Russian tsar is both the sovereign of East and West. Whatever the truth may be, the three crowns remained on the coat of arms throughout the Russian Empire.

At times, other symbols were added to the coat of arms. During the Polish occupation of Moscow in 1612, the Catholic royal lily appeared on the eagle’s chest.

This was later substituted with a griffon by St George, as a symbol of the ruling Romanov dynasty.

According to Russian he-

TASS

The ancient two-headed eagle defies wars and revolution Under Soviet Rule, the eagle statues that sat above the towers of the Moscow Kremlin were changed to stars.

raldic tradition, there has always been a difference between large and small official coats of arms.

The large coat of arms, besides the eagle, also included the emblem of the Romanov dynasty, as well as the emblems of the most important lands of the Russian Empire.

The Russian emperor was concurrently tsar of Poland, Georgia and Siberia and the Grand Prince of Finland. In

order to emphasise the government’s Christian character, Archangel Michael and Gabriel were placed alongside the double-headed eagle.

After the February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government removed the crowns, sceptre and the orb.

And it is this symbol of the eagle that can now be seen on Russian currency.

During the Civil War the anti-Bolshevik powers rein-

stated the eagle as their coat of arms, but the crowns were replaced with a cross. The sceptre and the orb once again appeared in the eagle’s claws, though the emblem was living on borrowed time by then: after the Bolshevik victory the hammer and sickle was adopted as the official emblem of the new state.

The double-headed eagle returned to Russia only after the collapse of the USSR and

a three-year study carried out by a special commission.

In 1993, following President Boris Yeltsin’s decree, it was reconfirmed as the symbol of the official coat of arms.

Flying in from the distant past and alighting in Russia, the symbol of the doubleheaded eagle has undergone many adaptations, as if changing itself to fit with the political realities of its adoptive country.

History Designer of the hammer and sickle was not even a communist

Was Soviet symbol not all it seemed?

The hammer and sickle on the USSR’s coat of arms was one of the most recognised symbols of Soviet power. Yet what the image means is poorly understood.

VLADIMIR KHUTAREV SPECIAL TO RBTH

Initially, different ideas were considered for the Soviet coat of arms: a hammer and sickle, a hammer and rakes, a hammer and pitchforks, and a hammer and a plough.

The hammer, together with an agricultural tool, was supposed to represent Lenin’s famous slogan about the crucial unity of the proletariat and the peasants.

The hammer was chosen for its traditional association with workers in European countries, although the reason for the choice of the sickle is less clear.

In April 1918, the final version of the emblem was approved – a design by the Moscow artistYevgeny Kamzolkin.

In the summer of1918, the Fifth Session of the Soviets officially adopted it.

Ironically, Kamzolkin was not even a communist. He was a deeply religious man from a wealthy family.

He had also been a member of the mystical artistic

Society of Leonardo da Vinci for more than 10 years.

The hammer and sickle are associated with the Masonic symbol of the hammer and chisel. These items signified a clearly defined goal (chisel) and its firm manifestation (hammer).

In European religious symbology, a hammer is associated with aggressive male energy and physical force.

Did Kamzolkin deliberately choose symbols associated with death, war and the triumph of evil?

For example, the thunder gods Svarog (Slavic) and Thor (Norse) both wielded hammers. And in China and India, hammers have been the symbol of the destructive triumph of the forces of evil.

It’s hard to know what meanings Kamzolkin intended in his image, and whether he was infusing into the symbol his own attitudes towards the revolutionary power by choosing symbolism associated with death, war and the triumph of evil.

The Russian philosopher Alexei Losev gave the follow-

ing assessment of the crest: “It’s a symbol that propels the masses and it’s not merely a symbol, but it’s a constructive-technical principle for human actions and volitions … Here we see the symbol of the unity of the workers and peasants, the symbol of the Soviet state.”

In various religions, the symbol of the sickle represents death.

In Christianity, the sheaves and the harvest are equated with the human souls that the Harvester will gather after the end of the world.

And during the Middle Ages, death was depicted not with a scythe but specifically with a sickle.

The pagan pantheons of various Indo-European and Slavic peoples feature a goddess called Mara or Morana, who traditionally held a sickle in her left hand. In Hinduism the goddess of death Kali, sister of Shiva, holds a sickle in her left hand.

Curiously, the eagle on the coat of arms of republican Austria also holds a sickle in its left claw and the sickle is likewise placed on that side of the Soviet crest.

The historian

and academicianYury Gauthier wrote in his diary, in 1921: “A sharpness has pervaded Moscow for several days: how will it end? The answer will be in the words ‘hammer, sickle’ read in reverse!”

In Russian, when the two words are put together and read backwards, they read literally as “with a throne”; molot (hammer) and serp (sickle) create the word prestolom.

Perhaps the symbol was always a veiled comment on the dictatorial methods of the Bolsheviks.

Kamzolkin's Soviet symbol

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LERMONTOV’S ROUTE FROM MOSCOW TO THE CAUCASUS rbth.com/40611

Poetry Hailed as Russia's second-most influential poet, Mikhail Lermontov's 200th anniversary was celebrated this year

The shadowy side of a literary genius Mikhail Lermontov's poems and novels are well known, but few are aware of this 19th-century Russian writer's less-than-flattering personal reputation.

Censorship Poet out of favour

Demon suffered a diabolical time to become a classic

GEORGY MANAEV RBTH

Mikhail Lermontov’s poem Demon wasn't printed in his lifetime – for its alleged devil worship. However, this year it has been published in 13 languages.

GEORGY MANAEV RBTH

VOSTOCK-PHOTO

On the 200th anniversary of Mikhail Lermontov’s birth, RBTH looks at the darker side of one of Russia’s most celebrated writers and poets – a writer who is often held up as the country’s greatest poet after Alexander Pushkin, and who is widely credited with setting the foundations for the modern Russian psychological novel.

Like Pushkin, who often complained about his ancestry being “shabby,”Lermontov was frustrated by the low status his family name had among the nobility.

The young poet was viewed with contempt by his richer and more elite peers in Moscow and St Petersburg's noble circles, so he searched for glimpses of“greatness”in his own family’s past.

His father, Yury Lermontov, did not know much about the family’s background, but a legend had been handed down through generations that they had been descended from the ancient Spanish Duke of Lerma.

T h e l e g e n d i n s p i re d Mikhail, who chose Spain as the backdrop for early versions of his poem Demon. But around 1830, Lermontov learned that a family ancestor was a member of the Scottish Learmonth family, who had served in the Russian military in the 17th century.

Lermontov was delighted by this because he could now imagine that he was related to the legendary Scottish laird and poet Thomas Learmonth, known as Thomas the Rhymer. From that point on, images of the northern Highlands and ancient bards started to dominate his poetry.

An only child and raised by his grandmother, Lermontov grew up spoiled – a trait that did not go well with his sharp tongue and high level of education.

A famous example of his arrogance was when he was thrown out of Moscow University after an altercation with a professor during a philology exam, in which Lermontov said that he knew more than the professor himself.

Many accounts say that Lermontov was arrogant, haughty and had a shabby appearance.

Later, in the Nicholas Cavalry School in St Petersburg, Lermontov was held in the guardroom for bending rifle cleaning rods and tying knots in them for fun.

In another episode at the same school, it was Lermontov’s vanity that got the better of him. He tried to break in a young horse to show off his riding skills to other cadets, but the horse threw him, breaking his leg.

As a result, the poet walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

Lermontov’s harsh jokes, which did not spare even his closest friends, his mean caricatures and his witty epigrams earned him the reputation as a spiteful and acerbic person.

Although he had studied philology, when he left Moscow University Lermontov entered military service, enrolling in the Nicholas Cavalry School in St Petersburg – a closed institution that trained cavalrymen for the Russian Imperial Guard.

In this school, cadets were not allowed to read fiction, so they secretly created a handwritten magazine where everyone could publish their prose or poems. The magazine was generally frivolous – many cadets wrote erotic and scandalous poems, including Lermontov, who employed his poetic talents to

create celebrated uncensored verse. The popularity of these verses extended beyond the school to encompass the whole of St Petersburg.

Later, when Lermontov started publishing more serious poems, many readers in the city were scornful of them, remembering the frivolous nature of his school poetry.

Many of Lermontov’s contemporaries noted the poet’s lack of good looks. He had been a sickly child who suffered from lymphadenitis (scrofula), which gave him reddish eyes, even as a young man. Lermontov also was not very tall; he had a big head, an upturned nose, and, as well as his limp, he had a hunchback – that was often mentioned by his fellow cadets.

His looks were often mocked by his friends and the young women he tried to impress. Lermontov did not help his situation any with his haughty demeanor and extreme scruffiness. It has been said that sometimes his friends had to rip the shirt he was wearing to make him change it.

Nevertheless, as he got older, he learned to win hearts with his erudition, imaginative thinking and eloquence.

His poetic fame and the rumours of his courage on the battlefield added to his romantic image, and he came to be known as a womaniser.

3

FACTS ABOUT LERMONTOV

Lermontov’s direct ancestor, George Learmonth, was a Scotsman who settled in Russia. He was said to be an adventurer who left Fife in 1613 to fight for Tsar Mikhail Romanov and founded the famous Lermontov dynasty.

1

One of Learmont’s oldest and most mysterious forebears was a 13th century bard called “Thomas the Rhymer”, also known by the surname Learmonth. He came from the town of Earlston, which was then a hamlet known as Ercildune.

According to ancient ballads, Thomas the Rhymer met the Queen of Elfland in the Eildon Hills, where she gave him the gift of prophecy.

2

After the death of the great poet Alexander Pushkin, as a result of a fatal injury in a duel with a French officer, Lermontov, in his poem Death of the Poet, blamed Russian high society for being complicit in Pushkin’s murder. In response, Tsar Nicholas exiled Lermontov to the Caucasus Mountains, which at the time was a war zone.

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Lermontov’s poem Demon is based on the myth of a fallen angel – a story which has been incorporated into the works of many European poets, including those of John Milton, George Byron and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

But Lermontov put a new spin on it, describing the demon’s love for the earthly beauty Tamara – a love which turns out to be deadly for her.

Lermontov started writing the poem when he was just 14 years old. The first version described a demon and an angel who were in love with the same nun. But he later modified it so that the demon fell in love with the nun and killed her out of hatred for her guardian angel.

The work was originally set in Spain [the unwritten poetic code demanded that a romantic poem should take place in a faraway land, and the young poet was taken with Spanish motifs because he imagined he was descended from the ancient Spanish Duke of Lerma].

Lermontov had finished working on his earlier versions of the poem by 1834, but didn’t consider it ready for publication. He achieved a breakthrough after his first exile to the Caucasus mountains [1837-1838] for the poem Death of the Poet, in which he blamed the court aristocracy for Alexander Pushkin’s death.

Just a few months of army service in the Caucasus Mountains had a strong influence on Lermontov. After returning to St Petersburg, he set about rewriting the poem, replacing his weak Spanish motifs with images of the mountains, adding

powerful descriptions of its wilderness and Georgian feudal life.

In the first version of The Caucasus, completed in 1838, the poem was widely distributed and it became famous among Moscow and St Petersburg’s elite.

However, Lermontov rewrote the ending to avoid censorship. In the new version,Tamara was saved by the angel instead of dying. Even the empress read the poem in this form and it was approved by censors in March 1839 – yet never published.

The “diabolical” subject matter was partly to blame: in an era when Orthodoxy was the state ideology, a text like this raised too many questions.

Lermontov’s character might also have contributed to the work being censored – he was a duellist, a freethinker and known for having a difficult personality. He was generally out of favour with the authorities.

Demon went to print for the first time in 1856, but not in Russia; it was published in Karlsruhe, Germany, with a circulation of 28 copies, intended primarily for members of the influential Russian Stolypin family, who were Lermontov’s relatives on his mother’s side.

Perhaps due to their intercession, the poem was finally released in Russia in 1860.

This was the classic version of Demon – the so-called sixth version, written at the end of 1838, which preserved the original ending rather than the censored one written for the empress.

Today Demon is considered a classic. In honour of the poet’s 200th birthday, the Moscow-based Rudomino Book Centre under the All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature produced a unique edition. In addition to the original text, it also contained rhyming translations of the poem in 13 languages.

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Music Russian conductor Valery Gergiev leads London Symphony Orchestra on Australian tour

IN BRIEF

Rare chance to hear from greats

Ralph Fiennes to adapt Chekhov's plays

GETTY IMAGES/FOTOBANK

In his first Australian tour since 2001 Valery Gergiev will this month conduct the London Symphony Orchestra in Australia.

Artistic director and conductor Valery Gergiev has iconic status in Russia, which is why his Australian tour deserves more than a passing mention.

ERIC GLADSTONE RBTH

Top Russian conductorValery Gergiev will perform with pianist Denis Matsuev and the London Symphony Orchestra in Australia this month.

The powerful combination will perform classic works by 20th-century Russian composers Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky.

It will be Gergiev’s first Australian tour in 13 years and the orchestra’s first concert here in more than three decades.

Born in Moscow and raised in North Ossetia, Gergiev is considered one of the world’s most influential conductors and artistic directors.

Yet he commands attention with a humble toothpick – which he can often be seen using in place of a standard baton.

In contrast, “enormous” is the word frequently used to

describe Gergiev’s impact on St Petersburg’s Mariinsky theatre – a cultural institution of more than 150 years standing in Russia’s cultural capital, perhaps better known to some by its Soviet-era name, the Kirov– where he has been artistic and general director since 1996, overseeing the theatre’s opera and ballet companies.

Since his appointment, the Mariinsky opera company has been known for its energy and originality.

Its repertoire has expanded to include new European and 20th-century composers, performing numerous works in their original languages, in some cases for the first time in Russia.

Gergiev’s German language production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in 2003, for example, successfully toured seven countries.

Contemporary Russian composers – notably Alexander Smelkov and Nikolai Karetnikov – have also received due attention from Gergiev.

Under his direction, the Mariinsky’s orchestra was voted by critics as as one of

the Top 20 in the world in 2008.

The theatre’s ballet company has also been described as among the world’s more adventurous. It has become

Valery Gergiev is considered one of the world’s most influential artistic directors Burly and 182cm tall, Matsuev is known both for his pianopunishing power and his subtlety known for its performances of works by 21st-century choreographers, as well as for fresh interpretations of better known 20th-century works.

If Gergiev’s achievements with the Mariinsky were all he had under his belt, it would be enough to earn him preeminence. But he has also directed numerous music festivals, including since 1993,

St Petersburg’s White Nights Festival.

The conductor has also forged partnerships with several others of the world’s prominent theatres, and garnered more global honours than can be noted here.

His reformation of the International Tchaikovsky Competition – making both the performances and the judges public and uncensored – led journalist Norman Lebrecht to say he“had changed the music world forever”.

As well as directing the Mariinsky, since 2007 Gergiev has also been conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra – one of the world’s prominent symphonic assemblages.

One of his London violinists described working under the volatile Gergiev as being like “driving a Formula One car, trying to hold the bend”.

Perhaps the title of a 2009 documentary about Russia’s most well-known maestro sums up his firm mastery: You Cannot Start Without Me. Pianist Matsuev has also been acclaimed in Russia and abroad. This graduate of the

Moscow Conservatory, from the far-flung Siberian city of Irkutsk, has performed with the world’s most prominent orchestras and in Buckingham Palace and the Vatican.

The New York Times wrote of the 39-year-old that he has created his own artistic identity as an “athletically virtuosic pianist’. The Los Angeles Times described him as a“virtuoso in the tradition of Gilels, Richter and Horowitz”.

Burly and 182 centimetres tall, Matsuev is known for both his piano-punishing power and his subtlety, in both classical music and in his second love, jazz.

The tour promises to be an energetic collaboration, with performances of Prokofiev’s Symphonies 1 and 5, with Stravinsky’s Petrushka as the interlude.

While Symphony No. 1 in D major (Opus 25), written in 1916-17, was dubbed the “classical symphony” by the composer himself, it is Prokofiev’s homage to Haydn and Mozart. Its four movements are completed in a relatively brief 15 minutes.

Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major (Opus 100) is a much later work, written in no more than four weeks during the summer of 1944.

It was a tumultuous time in Soviet history and the piece is one in which the composer once said he intended to capture“a hymn to free and happy man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit”.

The dramatic work is formed in four movements, beginning with a melodic sonata, moving to a frenetic scherzo then a nostalgic elegy.

It finishes with a playful if somewhat maniacal rondo in a fast-paced 50 minutes.

Stravinsky’s work, based on the Russian folk tale of a straw-stuffed puppet come to life, links the two eras of the program’s other pieces – being composed originally in 1911 as a ballet, then revised in 1947 with a separate concert version drafted.

Four tableaux capture the story’s whimsical plot.

Concert dates: Sydney Opera House, November 24 and Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, November 28.

PHOTOSHOT/VOSTOCK-PHOTO

English actor Ralph Fiennes dreams of adapting Anton Chekhov’s plays The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull to the screen, he announced at a press conference in Moscow before the opening of the New British Film Festival, which ran in the city from October to early November.

Fiennes, who told the press conference that Chekhov was popular in English theatre, is already known for his role in the film adaption of the Russian poem Onegin (1999), by Alexander Pushkin, which was directed by his sister Martha Fiennes.

Support for Moscow troupe

REUTERS

British playwright and director Tom Stoppard has written an open letter in support of the feisty Moscow theatre company Teatr. doc, which faces eviction by Russian authorities.

In the letter, Stoppard said he was shocked the company was being thrown out of its building and went on to say that for the English-speaking world, Russian theatre culture had always been a source of inspiration.

Stoppard says this culture grew “out of new voices, new forms, new ideas, and new subject matter”.

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