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Tuesday, September 30, 2014

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TERRORISM: AFTER BESLAN

O

n September 1, 2004, Chechen separatists took 1,100 people hostage in a school in the town of Beslan, North Ossetia. For three days, the terrorists made various demands for the recognition of Chechen independence and Russian withdrawal. In the operation to end the siege, 334 hostages were killed, around half of them children. What should have been the start of a new school year turned into the most horrific terrorist attack in modern Russian history.

In the 10 years since the tragedy, the school has been left untouched as a memorial. Its façade was shored up and a fence put up to prevent further destruction; but inside, everything remains as it was.

Today, School No 1 is a shrine to the departed,where people bring flowers, candles, toys, sweets and water.

On the wall is a memorial plaque with 334 pictures.

The new face of terror The Beslan outrage, characterised by its callous disregard for the lives of children, has become etched into the Russian psyche, felt most keenly by friends and relatives of the dead and the children – now young adults – who survived. However, the nature of terrorism in Russia has changed in recent years, and most Russians no longer fear an attack on this scale.

According to a recent survey by the All-Russia Public Opinion Centre (VCIOM), only 13pc of Russians consider terrorism to be a major concern; in 2004, 88pc of Russians feared a terrorist attack.

In the 1990s and the early 2000s, separatists from the North Caucasus republics of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia carried out most terrorist attacks in Russia. In the two wars Russia fought in Chechnya in the Nineties, the militants’ primary aim was to create a separate state. In the 2000s, however, the militant groups took on more explicitly religious goals and an ideology that had more in common with the militant Islam of groups affiliated to al-Qaeda.

Led by men such as Shamil Basayev and Doku Umarov, these militants declared their goal was an Islamic state in the Russian North Caucasus, a re-

As Russia marks the 10th anniversary of the nation’s worst terrorist atrocity of modern times, Gevorg Mirzayan explores how the nature of the threat has changed in recent years gion of six semi-autonomous regions populated by distinct ethnic groups and mostly practising a form of Sufi Islam. This change is reflected in the names the insurgents used for their unrecognised secessionist government: the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was eventually renamed Vilayat Nokhchicho and converted into a province of the larger militant jihadist construct of the Caucasus Emirate.

Terrorist activity has fallen in the North Caucasus for several reasons.“In recent years, security services have stepped up pressure on the terrorist underground,” says Nikolai Silayev, senior researcher at the Centre for Caucasian Studies at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.“Many militants have been killed or detained. Special services were particularly active ahead of the Sochi Olympics.”

Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), said in the first six months of 2014, 130 militants were killed, including 21 ringleaders, and more than 160 rebel hideouts and arms caches were destroyed. Mr Silayev says the Russian government has also been successful in convincing rebels to give up fighting and return to a peaceful life.

Some former militants have also joined the administration of Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Chechen government and a Kremlin loyalist who sees the future of Chechnya as part of the Russian Federation rather than as an independent state.

International events have also played a role in the changing nature of terrorism. As conflict between governments and Islamic radicals increased in the Middle East, “many of the most zealous militants have gone to fight in Syria or Iraq”, says Mr Silayev.

The most serious threat to Russia today is a further radicalisation of the situation in Ukraine

The movement of militants to the Middle East – to al-Qaeda and, increasingly, Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (Isil) – however, has created a different but no less serious cause for concern. Some experts fear these fighters could return to the North Caucasus and destabilise the region again.

Others think this threat is overstated. “There are relatively few Russians among foreign jihadists fighting in the Middle East, some 400-600 people,” says Leonid Isayev, an expert in Arabic studies.“For Russia, which has strong secret services and considerable resources, the potential threat from mercenaries fighting in Iraq and Syria is relatively low.” But he says returning militants could pose a more serious threat in the primarily Muslim republics of Central Asia, which could have consequences for Russia.

“For Central Asian countries, where the authorities have still not been able to eliminate the Islamist underground, it may become fatal.”

There is also a fear that increased conflict between Islamic radicals and government forces in Central Asia could radicalise Russia’s own Muslim community – about 7pc of the population but increasing.

Russia does not require visas for Central Asians, so some experts worry that radical Islamists, including some with fighting skills honed in Afghanistan, could enter Russia through these countries.

Others play down these concerns.“As US and Nato troops leave Afghanistan, many governments fear ‘foreign fighters’ from Central Asia who are in Afghanistan will return and destabilise their home countries,” political scientist Mariya Omelicheva wrote last year in the journal Education About Asia.

But she added: “Central Asian governments have exaggerated the magnitude of the terrorist threat.”

For many, the most serious threat to Russia today comes not from Islamic militants in the North Caucasus or Central Asia, but from a further radicalisation of the situation in Ukraine.

In August, Russia’s prosecutor general Yuri Chaika warned “political, nationalistic processes are seriously affecting the security situation in regions of three federal districts”.All of these districts had terrorist threats, arms trafficking and uncontrolled immigration. Even if Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, reaches an agreement with pro-autonomy militias, separatist groups could remain active. Indeed, at a recent press conference, Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, said his group would accept nothing short of an independent state: “We want independence. Federalisation does not suit us.”

Alexander Brod, director of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, has also said pro-Ukrainian paramilitary groups are operating in east Ukraine. “All those non-state structures starting from late last year have been viewing Russia as their enemy,” he says.

“The porous border between Russia and Ukraine could allow militants who were fighting around Donetsk and Lugansk to travel between the countries and destabilise the region even after an end has been officially declared to the fighting. The threat is particularly serious given the types of weapons available in the border region and the inability of international organisations to gain access to the area.’’

The international dimension Russia was invited by France to take part in negotiations on how to counter the Isil threat. However, there is still a mutual lack of trust between Moscow and Washington, with each side suspecting the motives of the other in the region. There has been trust CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

Read on RBTH.CO.UK: Alpha Group Veteran: Today terrorism has become a business rbth.co.uk/39449

Beslan 10 years on

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Oliver Stone on why Russia is a natural ally of the US Interview Director’s latest documentary is a history lesson for young people The latest documentary from the director Oliver Stone, Untold History of the United States, will soon be shown on Russia’s Channel One. In this candid interview, the maverick US film-maker talks about the significance of the work for a Russian audience and delivers his characteristically controversial views on some of the most pressing political issues of the day, including East-West relations and the Ukraine crisis. A book of the film will also be published.

On his new documentary and book

On Russia in the Second World War If you go back to the Second World War, there were very bloody fights in Ukraine. A lot of Russians died there fighting the Nazis, as well as those Ukrainian troops who allied with the Germans. But Americans don’t know that and don’t understand that Russia saved the world from Hitler. In my opinion, the Soviet army’s destruction of most of the German military machine saved at least a million American lives.

In that war, 300,000-plus Americans were killed.

Imagine if we’d had to enter the war earlier; if, for example, the Soviet Union after defeating the Germans at Stalingrad and Kursk had refused to go further alone and left the Allies to fight the rest of the war. This was the fear for Churchill and Roosevelt. The United States could have lost a million more soldiers.

On Gorbachev’s leadership I liked him, although I know that he was unpopular and was removed from power in 1991.

I think that if Mikhail Gorbachev had been allowed to continue, the world would be in a better position now. But the United States wanted to make Russia a capitalist country, sending its experts, the so-called Harvard boys, who advised and freed up the economy. And the result was a gangster economy.

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, has countered accusations by the West of Russian aggression in south-eastern Ukraine. Speaking last week at the general Assembly of the United Nations, he rejected the proposition that Russia has resorted to force to get what it wants in Ukraine and arbitrarily redraw geographic boundaries by turning the accusation against America. “Washington has openly declared its right to unilateral use of force anywhere to uphold its own interests,” he said.

He reiterated the Kremlin’s view that the current West-leaning Ukraine government was the result of a coup d’état, and argued that changes of government by force should be declared invalid by the UN. On events in the Middle East Mr Lavrov said: “The struggle against terrorists in Syria must proceed in co-operation with the Syrian government, which has clearly declared readiness for it.” In a subsequent interview for Russia’s Channel 5 TV, Mr Lavrov stressed that Moscow’s chief priority is to normalise relations with the US, the crucial member of the antiterrorist coalition. “The problem is that we are absolutely interested in normalising these relations – but we did not destroy them.

“What is needed now is what the US will probably call a ‘reset’. Perhaps something new will be devised: Reset No 2, or Reset 2.0.”

Under experimental new rules for Russian visa application, citizens of Britain, Denmark, Myanmar and Namibia will have to leave their fingerprints at Russian diplomatic missions abroad from January 2015.

Foreign Ministry Consular Department director Yevgeny Ivanov said: “In January 2015 we will start testing fingerprint scanning know-how when foreign citizens, or persons without citizen-

ship apply for Russian visas.”The move does not represent a clampdown, and “should not be seen as a move to tighten Russia's visa policy. Preparations for its introduction had been going on for the past few years,” he said.

The countries of the Schengen Area will start collecting biometric data about all Russian applicants in a mandatory procedure from 2015, he added.

Yevtushenkov arrest stands On Edward Snowden

2003 Comandante

We are finishing the screenplay of my film now.

We hope to start shooting early next year and have it released by the end of 2015. This is my work as a dramatist: to make you understand Snowden. And I’m working on it. I’m not taking a point of view, saying that Snowden is good or bad. Here is the story and I let the people make their own conclusions.

2004 Looking for Fidel

On Nato expansion

FILMOGRAPHY Oliver Stone’s documentaries (as director):

2009 South of the Border 2012

Castro in Winter

2012

Untold History of the United States

2014

Mi Amigo Hugo

On Putin’s key role I think, though many feel differently, that Vladimir Putin has played a very important role to stop the slide in Russia. He said no to Yeltsin’s policies, and put in the new state order and the new authoritarianism. I think it gave Russians a sense of certainty and consistency; gave them back their pride. In the Nineties, Russia’s economy shrank to the size of the economy of the Netherlands. Taking back the state from the hands of the gangsters was a very important move for Russia. On that basis, I certainly admire Putin as a strong man.

I went to see Mr Gorbachev a few months ago.

He disapproves of what the United States has done, calling it a betrayal of Russia and the spirit of agreements made with George Bush Snr. They were nothing on paper, but there was a spirit. That spirit was violated first by Bill Clinton and again by George W Bush and Barack Obama. Since then, 13 states have joined Nato. For Russia this is a nightmare.

Nato was finished after the end of the Cold War; there were no reasons for the western alliance to continue. It was a defensive alliance to protect Western Europe; it has since become an offensive alliance that incorporated Eastern Europe and is putting a missile shield near the border with Russia.

On Ukraine and Crimea The situation in Ukraine was the last test. It started with an attempt to put Nato into Georgia. Then there was a hidden desire to put Ukraine into the alliance and block access to Sevastopol for Russia, where it has a fleet. Doing so would be the equivalent of emasculation, and Russia could not accept it. I understand why Putin could not give up Crimea.

Western institutions – the European Union, Nato, the IMF – would like to have influence,

run and control Ukraine. I do not think that’s great for Russia – that defends the rights of people in the south-east of Ukraine.

I understand what the conflict is, but I think many Americans don’t understand the Russian point of view at all. They think that Russia wants to aggrandise itself, that Putin wants to revive the past. In my opinion, Putin has a defensive position, protecting the core geopolitical interests of the Russian state.

And Putin has a right to do so, just as the leader of any other country has. It is the United States that is invasive and pushing constantly at the limits of Russian patience; as it was with Nato’s eastward expansion. It’s a very dangerous situation.

It would be a catastrophe to push Russia past“the point”.The United States will not give up on Ukraine; but for Russia it is a frontier.

Untold truths: Stone says the tragedy is that the US is hurting Russia and itself

New policy President urges Russian food sector to rise to the sanctions challenge by boosting domestic production VLADIMIR ASTAFIEV RBTH

In the first half of this year, Russia’s industrial production grew 1.5pc more than the same period in 2013

credit has been around in Russia since the fall of the USSR, but enterprises have still not received them,” said Anton Soroko, analyst at Finam Investment Holding.

“Moreover, the situation in Ukraine has not helped. Therefore, in the near future we must start anew.”

Vladimir Osakovsky, chief economist on Russia and CIS countries at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, is also sceptical.

“We expect that the macroeconomic situation in Russia will worsen as a result of accelerating inflation caused by the restrictions on food imports, the fall of consumption and the volume of investment, as well as the reduction of exports,” he said in comments to RBC business daily. He predicted that Russia would sink into recession either in the second half of this year or the first half of 2015.

Alexei Kozlov, chief analyst of UFS IC, was more positive, saying: “The proposal to accelerate the development of the Russian economy that we heard during the State Council session is completely realistic.”

In the view of Mr Kozlov, achieving radical change in the working of the Russian economy is impossible without setting high targets – hence the declared goals being so ambitious. “Russia has been stating its aim to reduce dependence on raw materials for a long time,” said Mr Kozlov. “In light of recent

Moscow City Court has confirmed the legality of the decision to place the head of AFK Sistema Vladimir Yevtushenkov, who has been accused of money laundering, under house arrest. Investigators and lawyers representing Mr Yevtushenkov had asked

the court to permit the businessman to work at his office, receive correspondence and make work-related phone calls because, as the head of a major company, “the fates of several thousand people depend” on his decisions. The court rejected their appeal.

On sanctions It’s a shame. We are hurting Russia; hurting ourselves. Russia will find new partners in the East and Eurasia. They just signed new trade agreement with China. Russia will go on with or without sanctions. It’s a shame, but that’s the US style of doing things: they squeeze through the economy; through the media.

You need patience to fight the dragon. I think Putin knows this, he is a very smart man; he already has experience like this. After 9/11, Putin was the first guy to call Bush. Russia had its own problems with the Chechen terrorists, and knew the power of Islamist terrorism.

Therefore, in my opinion, Russia is a natural ally of the United States. Oh, it’s a shame. . .

FOTOIMEDIA

Terrorism: after Beslan CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Extract from an interview first published in Russian by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

Putin seeks home advantage During a recent session of the State Council, President Vladimir Putin suggested that efforts be made to boost the competitiveness of domestic producers during the period of economic sanctions imposed by Russia on foreign food imports. “In the next one-anda-half to two years it is necessary to take a real leap in the improvement of the sector’s competitiveness – doing something that in the past would have taken years to do,” he said. Key requirements will be availability of credit and competitive conditions for providing finance for businesses.

“The competitiveness of Russian enterprises will directly depend on whether they will be able to put out a sufficient quantity of production that will not be inferior to foreign production in price and quality,” Mr Putin continued.

“We need to make use of one of the country’s most important competitive edges: the capacious domestic market.”

Economists reacted to the president’s words with caution. “Talk of accessible

Russia urges US reset No 2

Visa applicants palmed off

CORBIS OUTLINE/ALLOVERPRESS

Peter Kuznik and I have just finished a 12-hour long documentary series, Untold History of the United States. The book came out of the film, not the other way around, which is more usual. I have been accused so many times by my critics of distorting the truth, that we decided to substantiate what we’re saying in the film with the book.

We’ve sold Untold History in many countries. I am happy that after much effort, we managed to release the book and the television series in Russia. Russians have a completely different point of view on the First and the Second World Wars. Americans don’t understand a lot of the history of these wars, and we deal with that in the book.

We wrote the book and did the TV series for young people, my daughter and sons, so that they can learn this history. I care very much about teaching history to younger people. The book addresses such controversial issues as the First and the Second World War, the Cold War and US-USSR relations.

The crisis in Ukraine is at the end of this long history. I am very interested in the history of these relations between the two countries, and it is a very large and complex issue.

NEWS IN BRIEF

events, this goal has been expanded and is now attainable.”

Russian industrial enterprises also continue to demonstrate positive economic signs. According to data collected this month by the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy (IEP), short-term investment expectations in the industrial sector are still high, and on the same level as 2012. The institute’s “index of industrial optimism” in 2014 was the highest for nearly three years.

In the first half of this year, industrial production grew 1.5pc more than the same period in 2013, while GDP rose by only 0.8pc. According to a study by the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, the last time this happened was in 2010-2011, when companies built up reserves. Now, however, growth depends completely on orders from state bodies.

Currently, many experts believe that growth is concentrated in the production of ships, aircraft, spacecraft and other means of transport, including railway trucks, helicopters and submarines. Most of the orders are placed by the government and state-owned companies.

Production in the transport sector has been growing since mid-2013 and now accounts for half of the increase in industrial production recorded in Russia in the first half of 2014.

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and co-operation in the past: before the US Afghan campaign, Russian special services gave the US military information about the Taliban.

And Russia welcomed the creation of American bases in Central Asia, allowing the US to supply its troops in Afghanistan.

It also gave the Americans all its contacts in the Northern Alliance, the union of Tadjik and Uzbek field commanders whom Moscow had helped keep control of northern Afghanistan.

Finally, Russia welcomed the creation of American bases in Central Asia and allowed Washington to supply its troops in Afghanistan through Russian territory. Moscow understood the Taliban was a serious threat to Russian interests and was willing to collaborate with the US.“These are not events that are reported on the first page of the Wall Street Journal, yet they raise the level of security and wellbeing of the American people,”said Michael McFaul, US ambassador to Russia.

But co-operation was short-lived. Moscow believed the US was refusing to take its interests into consideration. Washington reacted brusquely to Moscow’s objection to the Iraq invasion and violated the only condition that Russia posed in exchange for the removal of its objections to the American bases in Central Asia: that they would be temporary.

Moscow is willing to support the fight against Isil but demands maximum transparency on any operation in Syria, that it be agreed with Bashar al-Assad’s government with guarantees that Assad’s troops will not be bombed.

Washington, it seems, cannot give these guarantees. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said:“The US Secretary of State has told me many times that in the near future he will propose some kind of format in which the US, Russia and the regional countries will be able to evaluate what is happening and try to create a balance of interests, in order to purposefully attempt to remove the terrorist threat.

“I continuously confirmed our availability to such a format, but so far they are just words.”

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High stakes: Rosneft buys to beat sanctions Oil deal Energy giant softens blow of technology ban by acquiring shares in Norwegian deep-water specialist IGOR ROZIN

Russian oil giant Rosneft is taking a stake in the Norwegian-British company North Atlantic Drilling Ltd (NADL), which specialises in deep-water oil production.

The purchase means that the state-owned company, which is currently under sanctions imposed by the United States, will have technology at its disposal to extract offshore hydrocarbon deposits.

Russia’s largest oil company said in an official statement that the parties have agreed that Rosneft will acquire a substantial stake in NADL, which in return will secure access to the onshore drilling market in Russia.

To that end, NADL will purchase about 150 surface drilling rigs from Rosneft and sign a five-year contract for their use. In exchange, the Russian company will get approximately 30pc of NADL’s shares and two of the seven seats on its board of directors. In total, the deal is worth $1bn (£611m) at a time when Russia’s economy faces challenges from a fall in oil prices and a decline in the value of the rouble.

Cashing in: a fall in the value of the rouble has helped boost productivity

ITAR-TASS

RBTH

Industrial growth defies the prophets of economic doom

Drilling technology Rosneft’s press office told RBTH that the transaction would give the Russian company the fleet of platforms and drilling rigs it needs to explore and produce, both onshore and offshore.

“Rosneft has been interested in drilling companies for some time because it needs access to their technologies in order to successfully implement its many projects, particularly on the Arctic shelf. NADL has experience with this type of drilling,” said Ilya Balakirev, chief analyst at UFC IC. According to Mr Balakirev, the deal was given the green light before sanctions were in place, so there were no formal reasons for regulators to block it. “At the same time, it is not entirely clear how the current restrictions will apply to NADL after the deal is closed,” he said. Even though the company is Norwegian, its headquarters are in London.

The United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on the Russian oil sector at the end of July in response to the crisis in Ukraine, restricting exports to Russia of equipment for deep-water drilling, production in the Arctic, and shale oil production. However, Norway is not part of the EU, so the restrictions do not apply to it.

The companies agreed in July that Rosneft would use six of NADL’s marine rigs for its own projects until 2022.

In August, the West Alpha rig started drilling at the East Prinovozemelsky-1 licence area, which is in the Kara Sea in the Russian Arctic, as part of a joint Rosneft-ExxonMobil project. NADL, with capitalisation of $2.4bn, specialises in working in harsh climates. A Norwegian company, Seadrill, owns 70.4pc of NADL, with the remaining free-float shares traded on the market.

Domestic production Russian companies have risen to the challenge posed by western sanctions, helped by a weaker rouble ALEXEI LOSSAN RBTH

MULTIMEDIA

Russia’s Central Bank has pursued a consistent policy since the beginning of 2014 of allowing the rouble to devalue. As a result, by this month, it had lost about 20pc of its value against the dollar and the euro. The authorities are attempting to promote a liberalisation of the market, which has already produced some positive results.

In spite of a stagnation in GDP in real terms, Russia has seen an unusual increase in industrial activity. According to research by HSBC Bank and the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, Russia posted an increase in industrial production for the third month in a row.

“The manufacturing sector is quite effective in meeting demand and, in spite of the overall economic situation and expert forecasts, it has maintained positive growth,” according to the Gaidar study.

THE NUMBERS

17.6 pc – the increase in Russia’s production of electronic components (YOY) between January and July of this year.

3.3 pc – the growth in the production of consumer goods (YOY) from January to July.

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The report’s authors found that engineering and metallurgical companies, which secured an additional share of the domestic market as a result of a ban on supplies from Ukraine, posted better results. Sectors focused on domestic consumption, including the food industry, also expect to have filled the gap in demand in August for some foreign foods hit by the Russian import ban.

However, analysts argue that import substitution could not have had any impact in June, suggesting that industrial growth was a result

21.1 pc – the decline in truck production over the same period.

of events in February and March, when the rouble underwent a slight devaluation.

Alexey Kozlov, a senior analyst at UFS IC, says there are several reasons why Russian industrial production increased in August: “The first is the increase in demand for products from the metallurgical sector, as a result of the need to replace the supply of products from Ukraine.”

In addition, demand for steel and other metal products was stoked by the implementation of pipeline construction projects, in particular the South Stream gas pipeline to Europe and the Power of Siberia pipeline to China.

“The second reason is an increase in state orders in the military-industrial complex,” Mr Kozlov says. Third, there was a growth in food production and the agricultural sector as a result of the need to substitute for imports.

between January and July compared with the same period last year, with manufacturing experiencing the highest increases.

She also says that production of consumer goods increased over the same period by 3.3pc.

Textile and clothing production increased 6pc, while production of electronic components for communications was up by 17.6pc.

Lagging behind

Dmitry Bedenkov, head of analysis at Russ-Invest, points out that recent growth in production has been driven by the manufacturing sector. “Over the past seven months, growth in these sectors amounted to 2.6pc, compared to 0.8pc in the mining sector,” he says.

Anton Soroko, an analyst at investment holding company Finam, cites the rouble’s devaluation as the main cause of growth in manufacturing, along with increasing demand from China.

“Food producers are going to receive excess profits due to decreases in imported products, which could previously out-compete domestic food products,” Mr Soroko adds.

Olga Izryadnova, chief researcher at the Centre for Macroeconomic Research at the Russian Academy of the National Economy and Public Administration, says that the industrial production index was up by 1.5pc

However, not all parts of the Russian economy are growing.

“Among the lagging sectors, which dragged down GDP growth in the second quarter of 2014, are the service sector and the financial sector,” says Mr Kozlov.“Mass revocation of licences from banks, rouble instability, and rising geopolitical risks all had a negative impact on the activities of financial institutions.”

Ms Izryadnova argues that reductions in energy exports from Russia has also had an effect on the economy.

“Decreased exports of commodities and products made from these commodities, as well as reduced construction and property investment, had a negative influence on overall economic indicators,”she says. Moreover, car production from January to July this year declined by 0.7pc and truck production dropped by 21.1pc.

Experts note that if industrial production continues to increase, it is likely to exceed even the forecasts made by the Ministry of Economic Development, of 1.7pc for the year.

According to the Gaidar Institute study, in the best-case scenario Russian production can continue to grow until the first or second quarter of 2015, when the industrial sector will feel the effects of import substitution associated with sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States.

producing fusion energy for peaceful purposes. The project is being implemented by the European Union, India, China, South Korea, Russia, the US and Japan.

Delegates to the conference will have an opportunity to visit the institutes that conduct controlled nuclear fusion research and manufacture equipment for ITER as part of Russia’s obligations under the project.

The conference is also expected to feature an exhibition of the ITER International Organisation, with input from all of the participating countries. In particular, enterprises that are part of the Rosatom state corporation will present information on their involvement in the project.

Russia’s contribution includes the production and delivery of hi-tech equipment, key units of the reactor. In July this year, one

of the key components of the reactor underwent successful testing in Switzerland.

The unit is a PF (poloidal field) conductor, an essential element of the reactor, that will create a magnetic field for holding the plasma together. The conductor was made jointly by Russia and Europe; the Russian side made the cable, while their European colleagues put it in a steel casing. Russia will continue to supply the conductors until 2017.

In addition, in early June, it was announced that Russia will produce and supply diagnostic systems for ITER, which will allow scientists to monitor the plasma’s behaviour inside the reactor. Overall, as part of its contribution to the project, Russia is expected to produce nine of the 45 systems necessary to monitor the operation of the thermonuclear reactor.

Steady growth

Scientists reach for the stars in St Petersburg MARK COOPER SPECIAL TO RBTH

Since the event was inaugurated in Salzburg, Austria, in 1961, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has held the Fusion Energy Conference (FEC) every two years.

The conference provides a key platform for international experts to discuss fusion energy issues; this year St Petersburg, Russia’s second city, will host the event for the first time, from October 13-18.

The 2014 conference will discuss the current research into the technological and innovative possibilities of fusion energy.

Some 1,000 delegates from 59 countries are expected to attend, including scientists, government officials and representatives of major energy corporations.

In the mid-20th century, the world’s leading physicists, in a search for new sources of energy, turned their attention to the Sun. At its core, where temperatures reach around 15 million degrees celsius, a fusion reaction takes place, converting hydrogen to helium and releasing tremendous amounts of energy.

The knowledge and experience of controlled nuclear fusion first obtained in the USSR has become the foundation of a project that symbolises humanity’s energy dream: the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) currently being built in Cadarache, France.

In 1985, theoretical physicist Evgeny

Russia is expected to produce nine of the 45 systems necessary to monitor the operation of the thermonuclear reactor

Velikhov, on behalf of the Soviet Union, invited scientists from Europe, the United States and Japan to participate in the joint construction of a thermonuclear reactor.

One year later, an agreement was reached in Geneva on designing the facility, which later became known as ITER. In 1992, the partners signed a quadripartite agreement to develop an engineering project for the reactor. The first phase of the construction is scheduled for completion by 2018, with the first plasma expected to be produced in late 2019. Construction work began in 2011.

In terms of radiation, a thermonuclear reactor is a far safer option than a conventional nuclear reactor. To begin with, there are relatively few radioactive materials inside it. The energy that may be discharged as a result of an accident or a technical fault is also small and not enough to destroy the reactor. Furthermore, the design of the reactor envisages several natural barriers, preventing the spread of radioactive materials.

A test reactor is being built in France, about 37 miles from Marseille. The construction, the cost of which was first estimated at €5bn, was set for completion in 2016. But gradually the original cost estimate doubled, while the start of experiments was pushed back to 2020. The purpose of the experiment is to demonstrate the scientific and technical possibility of

PRESS PHOTO

Nuclear fusion Experts gather in Russia to consider the development of a future technology that emulates the energy produced by the Sun

First principles: the initial phase of the ITER construction is due for completion in 2018

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Hearing the music in Chekhov and Tolstoy’s words Interview Leading translator Rosamund Bartlett on her love of the classics and why British children should learn Russian ALEXANDRA GUZEVA RBTH

Rosamund Bartlett started to learn Russian as a schoolgirl in London. She is now the author and editor of several books, including Wagner and Russia and Shostakovich in Context, as well as acclaimed biographies of both Chekhov and Tolstoy.

She has also received recognition for her work as a translator, having edited the first unexpurgated collection of Chekhov’s letters for Penguin Classics, and produced the new translation of Anna Karenina for Oxford World Classics (to be released by Oxford University Press in November).

Ms Bartlett spoke to an audience at London’s Pushkin House last week about her work on Tolstoy’s classic novel, and told RBTH about her love for Russian writers and the art of translating the subtleties of great literature into another language.

How did you come to translate Anna Karenina?

It was my good fortune to be invited to write a biography of Chekhov and translate Anna Karenina, and those are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that I could not turn down.

The commission to complete new translations of some of Chekhov’s stories came first, with a view to marking the 100th anniversary of his death in 2004.

I have researched the apparently musical form of some of Chekhov’s most lyrical stories in connection with Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, both of whom saw innately musical qualities in his writing, and this has governed my approach to translation. The intense experience of translating Chekhov in turn governed my approach to writing his biography. Both activities proved to be mutually beneficial.

So I was delighted when I was given the chance to complete a new translation of Anna Karenina, having already decided I wanted to tackle a biography of Tolstoy next.

How long did it take you to translate the novel?

It’s difficult to say exactly, as I stopped work after completing a draft of the first half of the novel in order to write my biography of Tolstoy, then resumed again.

But it’s probably the work of about three years in total, maybe more.

Pop-up stars: Katrina Kollegaeva and Karina Baldry of Russian Revels,

top, and some of the Russian food promoted at the Southbank event

Tell us more about the move from biography to translation.

We have this conception of Chekhov as someone who was usually quite closed when it came to personal relationships.

What I discovered when translating his stories, however, is that he is very open, by contrast, when he writes about nature, and particularly the steppe landscape which lay beyond Taganrog, the southern provincial town where he grew up.

It remained his chief source of lyrical inspiration, and naturally became the subject of his first story for a serious literary journal. Rather than taking a standard life-to-death approach, therefore, I decided it would be more revealing to structure my biography of Chekhov through his relationship with place. This meant writing about the stifling merchant en-

A sense of place: writers visit gardens of the greats Literary tour From Gogol to Turgenev, British authors gain insights into Russian giants on visits to their country estates GEORGE MANAEV RBTH

A group of British writers visited Russia this month on a trip organised by the Russian Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communication, backed by the British Council. For a week, the 10 English, Scottish and Irish authors took part in discussions, gave lectures, and visited the estates associated with great writers and artists.

The itinerary for the British guests was packed with attractions: they visited the estates of Abramtsevo (Gogol), Muranovo (the Romantic poet Tyutchev), Melikhovo (Chekhov), Polenovo (painter Vasily Polenov), Tarusa (Soviet dissident Konstantin Paustovsky), Yasnaya Polyana (Tolstoy) and Spasskoye-Lutovinovo (Turgenev).

Among the visitors was Norman Stone, a historian and former Oxford professor who co-authored The Other Russia, a book about the fate of Russian émigrés.

Another guest, Alex von Tunzelmann, wrote a highly praised book about the Cuban missile crisis in 2011. The group also included Natasha Fairweather, a literary agent who lived in the country for four years; Flora Fraser, an author of historical biographies who is stepdaughter of the late playwight Harold Pinter; and Nicholas Shakespeare, a distant relative of the Bard and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature who had an article published in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia in 1973.

“It is hanging in a glass frame on my wall to this day,” he says.

The delegation’s organisers warned the

vironment of Taganrog, the more stimulating one of Moscow where he worked as both doctor and writer, and the exhilarating landscapes in the countryside where Chekhov rented dachas for his family during the summer.

There were also chapters devoted to the increasingly infrequent trips he made to St Petersburg, where he never felt comfortable; the astounding overland journey he undertook across Siberia to undertake a census of the penal colony on the island of Sakhalin; the lonely life he spent as an invalid, first in Nice and then in Yalta; and finally his last poignant journey to Badenweiler in Germany where he died.

With Tolstoy, it was the other way around, as the deeper understanding I gained of his personality through writing his biography made me more sensitive to the idiosyncracies of his literary style when translating his prose.

CALENDAR UK EVENTS |FROM OCTOBER 4

SIBERIA: AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

MANCHESTER MUSEUM, THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER, OXFORD ROAD, MANCHESTER M13 9PL

This exhibition examines the fascinating landscapes and diversity of living creatures – humans included – in the vast expanse of Russia’s northern territories. Among stunning artefacts is the body of a female baby mammoth, named Masha, preserved in the Siberian permafrost for thousands of years. The exhibition shows how the size, geographical position and rich natural resources of Siberia have helped shape Russian national identity. ukrussia2014.co.uk/article/645

|FROM OCTOBER 12

THE MOSCOW RACHMANINOV TRIO

Literary challenge: Bartlett says being true to Tolstoy in English is difficult

Have you been to all of the places associated with Chekhov and Tolstoy in Russia?

I have been to most of the places where Chekhov lived, such as Taganrog, Moscow, Melikhovo, Yalta and Nice. I have yet to visit Sakhalin and Sri Lanka, where he stopped off on his journey home from Siberia.

Where Tolstoy is concerned, I’ve naturally been several times to Yasnaya Polyana, where he spent some 70 of his 82 years, and have also visited the more remote railway station at Astapovo, where he died.

Last year, I was excited to travel to Optina Pustyn monastery, a famous place of pilgrimage for 19th-century Russian writers, including Tolstoy, who went there to consult its famous elders.

Which author would you recommend to a foreign student of the language to read as his or her first Russian book?

Probably Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, one of the earliest Russian novels, which is set in the Caucasus.

It is an astonishingly accomplished and sophisticated work considering the author was only 26 when it was first published in 1840.

The limpid writing in the story Taman was held up by Chekhov as the most beautiful example of Russian prose.

Because it’s such a compact work, it’s an excellent place to start before graduating on to the big novels, all of which were influenced by it in some way.

writers not to forget warm clothing, as the weather in Russia is very changeable.

However, as they left Moscow the sun came out, and the writers approached the first estate on a perfect day.

At Melikhovo, the group enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine in the tranquillity of Chekhov’s garden. “I’m not particularly interested in Chekhov’s personal items or his biographical details,” publisher David Campbell explained. “It’s possible to understand his texts without all of that. For me, it’s much more useful to look at what he saw every day, and to sit under the trees that could have been planted during his lifetime.”

Chekhov’s prescriptions

Flora Fraser shared a similar view, saying: “Precise details are necessary when researching the biographies of great historical figures. But with authors, what’s really important is atmosphere. To me, it seems the best way is just to sit here and look at the balcony where Chekhov might have written prescriptions for his patients; where he might have come up with ideas for his plays and stories.”

At Polenovo, the museum estate of the landscape painter Vasily Polenov, the British guests were welcomed with lunch, during which many of them tried buzhenina (cold boiled pork) with horse radish, and

The Victoria and Albert Museum in collaboration with the AA Bakhrushin State Theatre Museum

RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE THEATRE: WAR, REVOLUTION AND DESIGN, 1913-1933 October 18, 2014–January 25, 2015, London SW7

Read more at thekompass.rbth.co.uk/article/627

The Moscow Rachmaninov Trio is a widely acclaimed collective and a cherished ensemble for music lovers all over the globe. Their series of three concerts in Manchester pays tribute to the genius of at least three renowned Russian composers: Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and, of course, Rachmaninov. ukrussia2014.co.uk/article/487

|OCTOBER 13

RUSSIAN STATE PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

CADOGAN HALL, 5 SLOANE TERRACE, LONDON SW1

The Russian State Philharmonic Orchestra brings the daunting and inspiring genius of Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky to London – slipping in the premiere of Karl Jenkins’s Llareggub as an added bonus. The concert is part of the Zurich International Orchestra Series 2014-15. From Sergei Rachmaninov’s intricate Concert No3 to Tchaikovsky’s magnificent Fifth Symphony, the concert is bound to be a dynamic celebration of music from start to finish. ukrussia2014.co.uk/article/537

What difficulties have you faced when translating Russian literature into English?

For some reason I don’t find Chekhov too hard to translate, although it’s hard to reproduce his extraordinary concision in English. He packs an awful lot into very few words. Tolstoy is generally very difficult to translate, although he is probably the easier writer to read.

He is incredibly challenging, because he writes in such a clear and natural way, using simple, conversational Russian, but he also breaks all the rules of good syntax, as usual rebelling against conventions – as he did in nearly every other aspect of his life. You often encounter enormously long sentences packed with subordinate clauses, long strings of adjectives, and dense clusters of participles and gerunds, plus a deliberate use of repetition, all of which is hard to convey naturally in English.

What are your plans for translation in the future?

I am planning to translate more Chekhov stories, and also his plays.

ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC, CAROLE NASH RECITAL ROOM, 124 OXFORD ROAD, MANCHESTER, M13 9RD

|UNTIL JANUARY 18, 2015 JACK OF DIAMONDS EXHIBITION

THE COURTAULD GALLERY, SOMERSET HOUSE, STRAND, LONDON WC2R 0RN

The Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre presents a display of works from the Russian avant-garde tradition. Showcasing pieces from the Alex Lachmann Collection, the exhibition pays a long-overdue tribute to the Jack of Diamonds movement. Founded in 1910 by artists committed to combining European innovation and Russian national traditions, the group pushed the boundaries with their unique approach to art. The exhibition will feature paintings by Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Aristarkh Lentulov and many others. ukrussia2014.co.uk/article/41

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|UNTIL JANUARY 25, 2015 RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE THEATRE: WAR REVOLUTION AND DESIGN, 1913-1933

THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, CROMWELL ROAD, LONDON SW7 2RL

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pancakes with caviar. The visiting writers were also treated to a herbal tincture prepared by the museum’s deputy director Natalia Gramolina.

Before leaving Polenovo in Russia’s Tula region, the writers took a swim in the Oka River. The swimming season had been long over for the locals, but the frigid water did not seem to bother the British writers in the slightest: in fact, they enjoyed it.

It was Leo Tolsoy’s birthday when the group visited the writer’s home, Yasnaya Polyana. Yulia Vronskaya, director of international projects for the Yasnaya Polyana Museum, said: “We were stunned by the writers’ enthusiasm. As soon as their bus stopped, they dropped off their belongings and immediately began their excursion, putting off their meal and check-in until later. And even after the guided tour, the writers kept returning to the house to ask many more questions.”

As it turned out, the British writers felt more at home in Russia’s past than in its present. They felt a deeper affinity and connection to the Russian writers of the 19th century than to the country’s contemporary authors. So, how did the first-time visitors among the writers feel now they had seen this enigmatic country with their own eyes? As Shakespeare put it: “My head is simply spinning!”

In collaboration with the AA Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum presents more than 150 designs for theatrical production by celebrated artists such as Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, Liubov Popova, Alexandra Exter and Sergei Eisenstein. Renditions of classic works such as Zamyatin’s We (1920) and Vladimir Mayakovsky’s The Bedbug (1929) perfectly illustrate the short time-frame in which art changed radically. In the 20 years between the Russian Revolution and the First World War, transformations were rapid. With the help of Russian avant-garde chroniclers, this exhibition gives us glimpses into the essence of the avant-garde movement. ukrussia2014.co.uk/article/627

FIND MORE ABOUT RUSSIAN CULTURE IN THE UK ukrussia2014.co.uk

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Year of Culture P4_Tuesday, September 30, 2014_www.rbth.co.uk

The history cats: guardian spirits of the Hermitage Animal antiques Felines’ fortunes have followed those of St Petersburg Palace Joy neumeyer

special to RBTH

alamy/legion media

St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum is the treasure chest of Russia. Founded 250 years ago by Empress Catherine the Great within the magnificent teal Winter Palace on the bank of the Neva River, it contains 2,000 rooms with three million artefacts, from ancient Greek statuary to works by Monet.

But beneath the baroque grandeur lies a netherworld of heating ducts and storage rooms. Here, the walls are not covered with Rembrandts and Caravaggios, but cat photos. The cats’ story parallels that of the institution they have guarded for centuries, from splendour to poverty and back again. “It’s a true symbiosis of animal and human,” says Maria Haltunen, assistant to the director and the cats’ semi-official press secretary.

Royal pedigree: one of the Hermitage’s feline residents

Cats have lived in the Winter Palace since Empress Elizaveta Petrovna issued a decree in 1747 to bring “house cats suitable for catching” to the Winter Palace. A carriage of Russian Blues was sent from Kazan to the imperial residence. Elizaveta’s successor, Catherine the Great, made the palace one of the world’s great art institutions. “Very early on, she realised [art] was a status symbol among the rulers of Europe,” says Geraldine Norman, author of The Hermitage: The Biography of a Great Museum and adviser to the museum’s director.

In 1771, Catherine brought the first Raphael painting to Russia. Eight years later, she purchased the nearly 200-piece collection of British Prime Minister Robert Walpole, which included works by Rubens and Velazquez. In all, Catherine acquired around 4,000 Old Master paintings and an astounding 10,000 engraved gems, which Norman calls her “great love. It was a love affair, but also state policy, and a very clever state policy,” she says.

“She was competing with the French, the Germans, the English, and she was steadily outclassing them in her purchases.”

The rising prestige of Catherine’s collection, which opened as Russia’s first public museum in 1852, was mirrored by the status accorded to its guardians.

Under Catherine, the palace began making a distinction between house and court cats, which had free rein of the halls. Their work was more important than ever: in a letter, Catherine wrote: “There are few visitors to the galleries – only me and the mice.”

Dark days of war

In 1917, the October Revolution drove Tsar Nicholas II from the Winter Palace.

According to Ms Haltunen, the last Romanov rulers owned several family dogs and cats.

The dogs were shot alongside their owners, but the cats were left behind at the palace.

The Bolsheviks nationalised the Hermitage. In the Thirties, Stalin began selling off its art to finance Soviet industrialisation. The Old Masters purchased

by American industrialist Andrew Mellon became the foundation of the National Gallery in Washington, DC. The darkest days came in the Second World War, when the 872-day siege of Leningrad resulted in the deaths of up to 1.5 million people. The Hermitage collection was moved to the Urals. Meanwhile, the city starved. “All the animals in the city vanished, even the birds,” Ms Haltunen says. “There was simply nothing to eat.”

The cats sustained their keepers by being eaten, marking the only time in the Hermitage’s history when they were absent from the museum. After the war, the Hermitage recruited new cats from cities such as Novgorod and Pskov. As the country stabilised, the museum’s cat population grew, as did the collection. After Stalin’s death, the museum again showed postimpressionist and modernist canvases.

Hungry and neglected

In the early Nineties, the collapse of the Soviet Union left the Hermitage destitute. In the documentary Hermitage Revealed (see box, right), museum director Mikhail Piotrovsky recalls that there wasn’t even enough money to repair the roof.

In 1995, shortly after she began working at the museum, Ms Haltunen walked down to the basement and was shocked to see dozens of hungry and neglected cats staring at her.

Ms Haltunen and a friend began bringing porridge from the café to feed them and started the “Rouble for a Cat” campaign to raise money for food and medical treatment.

They also won Mr Piotrovsky’s support to devote an area of the basement to the cats.

Today, it has scratching posts, food bowls and blankets on heating pipes for the winter.

For his video installation Basement, Dutch artist Erik van Lieshout lived in the basement for nine months while it was renovated. He says: “The cats are the soul of the building, they are a subculture for me.”

The cats no longer roam the halls as they did in Catherine’s day, but some go to the courtyards or the riverbank, pausing to scratch their claws on the entrance gate.

Dedicated volunteers and veterinarians look after them and they have an annual holiday in their honour, when visitors have the chance to meet (and adopt) them. Now, they are less hunters than cultural ambassadors – or “spoilt house cats,” as Ms Haltunen jokes – but their presence still deters mice. They remain a part of Hermitage history, no less essential than its Monet paintings or the splendid halls of the Winter Palace.

Russian Revels (3)

Of mice and masterpieces

Delights of the dacha: Russian country fare by the Thames Film-maker goes behind the scenes

Food festival Russian Revels’ latest event, a ‘pop-up’ celebration of traditional rural food, took place outside London’s Southbank Centre

ated with “jam-making and allotments”. The idea of going to a dacha for a holiday suggests the Slavic values of“liberty and being in touch with the land”.

Elizabeth kaplunov

Dacha Pop-up took place at London’s Southbank from September 26-28 under the umbrella of the Real Food Market. Russian Revels curated a celebration of Slavic flavours with colourful food tastings and talks about the food presented at several stalls. It laid a zakuski (Slavic tapas) table with such creations as borscht-in-a-pie (Karina’s invention – beetroot in a crumbly pastry); Georgian-inspired zapekanka (meatloaf with lamb, prunes and rye bread and walnut crumb); and oladushki (Russian plump pancakes). The two women also invited several local artisan companies with Slavic roots, such as Bio-tiful Dairy with its organic milk drinks (Kefir), Karaway bakery, Kolonist wines from Ukraine and Georgian wine from the Georgian Wine Society.

special to RBTH

When British film-maker Margy Kinmonth set out to make a documentary on the Hermitage, she aimed to show more than its art. “I wanted to go behind the scenes and show what really happened after the Revolution,” she said.

Hermitage Revealed marks the first time a foreign director has been allowed to film in the museum. Kinmonth was given free access to staff, exhibitions and vaults by director Mikhail Piotrovsky.

“The storage areas are full of wonderful surprises, mysteries, stories, objects that the public just don’t see,” she said. Her favourite discoveries included an imperial bathroom piled with treasures.

Filming over two years, Kinmonth found the Hermitage “a huge world in its own right”.

While she was there, a curator’s funeral took place in the museum.

“I could go back and make another film that’s completely different,” she told RBTH. “There are so many stories.”

Katrina Kollegaeva first envisaged the Russian Revels adventure while running her own “tiny supper club at home” three years ago.

Ms Kollegaeva, a food writer and a food appreciator with Estonian roots, realised that the English knew little about the food she was preparing, and that their knowledge was based mostly on vodka and borscht stereotypes.

The aim of the company, which she formed with author Karina Baldry, is to “take inspiration from across the vast space of the exSoviet Union and apply it to the realities of our cosmopolitan lives in London”.

“When I met Karina and read her book Russia on a Plate, we both realised that we were on a quest to find what modern Slavic cuisine may mean,” Ms Kollegaeva explained.

“For us, Russian or Soviet cuisine is about both the traditional dishes we grew up seeing our mothers cooking and our own creations based on ingredients or techniques recognisably Russian, and born out of the culinary world of this great city.”

Their most recent event was called Dacha Pop-up. A dacha is a Russian country house – a symbol of Russian comfort which is associ-

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Celebrating Slavic flavours

Food for thought

In July, Russian Revels held an evening with Anya von Bremzen, author of the memoir Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. It was held in a characterful old building in Notting Hill, which helped to channel the intimate romantic atmosphere of the Sixties intelligentsia during long evenings spent with neighbours in Moscow’s kommunalki (apartments shared by several families, where each family would sleep

A search for truth in exile: the final stories of Vasily Grossman Translation award One of the Life and Fate author’s last works, inspired by a trip to Armenia, is on the shortlist for this year’s Read Russia Prize unforgettable pages about a night when Grossman thought he was dying”.

george manaev RBTH

An Armenian Sketchbook, the account of a trip Vasily Grossman made to Armenia in the early Sixties, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, was one of the nominees for this year’s Read Russia Prize, awarded for the best translations of Russian literature into foreign languages.

The most recent translation of Grossman’s works by the pair, An Armenian Sketchbook (New York Review Books Classics, 2013) is a short memoir written in early 1962 that was not published during Grossman’s lifetime, and which award-winning translator Robert Chandler believes offers a rare glimpse into the writer’s inner world.

“There is not a lot of reliable information about Grossman’s life,” says Chandler, who explains that this account of the two months Grossman spent in Armenia in late 1961 is of particular interest since it is his only autobiographical work. “From it we get a clear sense of Grossman’s sense of humour, of his reluctance to take himself too seriously, and of his constant curiosity about other people.”

The book also features “vivid evocations” of the country’s barren landscape, “lucid, witty discussions of nationalism”, a description of a village wedding, and what Chandler describes as “several

Radio breakthrough

Unforgettable: An Armenian Sketchbook is Grossman’s only autobiographical work

Grossman (1905-64) was little-known to British audiences until 2011, when a BBC drama serial based on Grossman’s epic novel of Stalingrad, Life and Fate (1959), aired on Radio 4. After that, the novel, which was first translated into English by Robert Chandler in 1985, became a huge success in the UK, topping Amazon’s bestseller list at one point. The military historian Antony Beevor has named Life and Fate, whose manuscript was confiscated by Soviet authorities in February 1961, the best Russian novel of the 20th century.

The principal reason for the ban on the book’s publication was the unprecedented honesty and courage of the author, who wrote about the Second World War not in the polished, patriotic style of many accounts of the conflict, but instead in a way that poured out all the truth about the hardships and bitterness of life at war.

In 1941, Grossman, already 36, worked as a war correspondent, dispatching articles straight from the front about the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin.

His novel People Are Immortal was among the first reflections, and is still the best first-hand account, of the historical achievement of the Soviet people.

“Vasily Grossman was a man of unusual

in one or two rooms). The writer discussed her work, while the Russian Revels provided food, including cold beetroot soup, a playful Soviet take on pulled pork and chocolate salami, a favourite of Soviet children.

Nutcracker magic

A contrasting event took place in conjunction with Pushkin House in London’s Bloomsbury.

This was “a journey through the original Nutcracker fairy tale’’, according to Ms Baldry, a story that is full of dark metaphors, unlike the light and happy ballet that everyone associates with The Nutcracker.

It took three months to create one night of magic, an immersion theatre and food experience, where the audience walked through the decorated house to meet characters from The Nutcracker and taste Russian-inspired winter food. The pop-up format works for Russian Revels, as you need only a few enthusiastic people and a story to tell, says Ms Baldry.

For ideas, the two women “forage though pre-revolutionary cookbooks, re-invent communist classics and create new recipes rooted in memories of the home”. Next, they plan to curate a series of interactive talks at Pushkin House called Understanding Russia through its Belly. Every month they will invite wellknown writers, scholars and journalists to ponder and appreciate modern Russia through its belly and soul. Russian Revels will be cooking specially themed zakuski for the event.

courage, both physically and morally,” says Chandler. “He spent longer than any other Soviet journalist in the thick of the fighting on the right bank of the Volga, in the ruins being fought over building by building and even room by room.

“And then, within months of the Soviet victory at Stalingrad, he was writing some of the first articles and stories published in any language about the Shoah. His mother – to whom he later dedicated Life and Fate – was one of the 12,000 Jews shot by the Nazis in a massacre outside the town of Berdichev.”

Manuscript confiscated

However, after the war, Grossman had to heavily edit his novel about the siege of Stalingrad, For a Just Cause, after it was heavily criticised in the Soviet press.

Life and Fate was to become the sequel for this novel, but in 1961, the manuscript was confiscated from the author by the KGB because of its anti-Stalinist message.

Life and Fate, which was smuggled to Europe by Grossman’s friends after his death, was first published in Switzerland in 1980. In the USSR, it was released only in 1988, during perestroika.

After Life and Fate was banned, Soviet publishers stopped printing all of Grossman’s books. In search of any kind of income, Grossman managed to get a commission to translate an Armenian novel and went to Armenia – just as another Russian writer, Osip Mandelstam, had done 30 years earlier, also in an attempt to escape the wrath of the Soviet authorities.

The Armenian trip, during which Grossman created the series of non-fiction sketches and stories that later became the work that the Chandlers have given the title An Armenian Sketchbook, turned out to be one of his last works: the author died of cancer in Moscow in 1964. The Armenian works were published in the USSR three years after his death, in 1967.

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ART OF DIPLOMACY

CAN POROSHENKO PLAN HEAL A DIVIDED NATION?

We need a credible investigation into MH17

Dmitry Babich SPECIAL TO RBTH

Alexander Yakovenko AMBASSADOR

T SERGEY YOLKIN

The standing ovations Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko won in Canada and the US stirred an array of emotions in Moscow. What is there to applaud in the president’s performance and in today’s Ukraine? According to the UN, at least 3,000 people, mostly civilians and Ukrainian citizens, have been killed in the fighting in the south-eastern region of Ukraine known as Donbass; the truce established in September is routinely breached, with more killed every day – a situation Ukraine has not witnessed since the Second World War. Even if Poroshenko is right about being a victim of an“intervention by a foreign power”,most fighting is done by local people and most of the victims are citizens of Ukraine. A situation which deserves pity and compassion, not applause.

But this has not yet disqualified Mr Poroshenko as a potential peacemaker. Russian president Vladimir Putin never reciprocated the Ukrainian president’s accusations of “barbarity” made in his speech in the US Congress, instead saying Poroshenko could be a partner for Russia. Even pro-Russian guerrillas from the embattled cities of Donetsk and Lugansk say there are viable points in the law on special status for Donbass, recently pushed through the Ukrainian parliament, the Rada, by Poroshenko. But analysts in Russia and Ukraine warn Poroshenko against being lulled into passivity by his fans in North America. Pessimists say the “united Ukraine” Poroshenko says he is defending in Donbass no longer exists.

“The crucial question is not which side has more weapons or who enlists more support from Russia or Nato,” says Mikhail Delyagin, editor-in-chief of the Moscow-based Svobodnaya Mysl magazine.“The question is: will Donbass agree to live in the united Ukraine again?

After the Party of Regions declined to run at next month’s Rada elections and after the Communist party was de facto banned in Ukraine, I doubt Donbass will have any chance of being politically represented in the parliament and the government of united Ukraine. Hence, there is a slim chance there will be such a thing as united Ukraine – with Lugansk and Donetsk, not to speak of Crimea.”

The Party of Regions (PR), once the power base of ousted former president Viktor Yanukovych, is sending mixed signals about its stance on the Rada elections: the party is expected to run in individual constituencies, but not on a party list. But even if it participates, its leader Mikhail Chechetov had a point when he said Kiev should end the war before having elections. The power base of the PR was traditionally in the east, primarily Donbass. So one can understand why the party does not want to run, since its voters in the east have no chance to vote. Authorities in the self-proclaimed new

Supporters of European integration for Ukraine failed to take into account the east-west chasm in the country

state of Novorossia, whose control is limited to part of Donbass, say they will have nothing to do with the regime in Kiev and won’t have Kiev-organised elections on their territory.

Supporters of European integration for Ukraine failed to take into account the eastwest chasm, which had been a problem for centuries. In fact, the divisions are natural, as the west had been until 1939 part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, while the east had been part of Russia for three-and-a-half centuries until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

“Until 2014, Ukraine kept a fragile balance of eastern and western orientation due to a certain freedom of speech and the representation of various regions in the Rada,”says Mikhail Pogrebinsky, head of the Kiev-based Centre for Conflict Studies. “In Ukraine, if you pull the country towards the west too fast, its eastern part may fall off. If you push east, towards Russia, the western regions fall off in the same way. Now, I hope, people understand why the previous presidents, especially [Leonid] Kuchma and Yanukovych, were so reluctant to say a 100pc ‘Yes’ to Russia or the European Union.”

After the takeover in Kiev by Maidan activists in February 2014, the Party of Regions lost support: when its office was set on fire in Kiev

by Maidan activists, people realised the political situation had changed and the party would no longer be calling the shots. The party fell from 36pc to less than 5pc in the polls. But it looks like the “regionals” will not be permitted even a purely symbolic political presence.

President Poroshenko, who was one of the founders of the Party of Regions, probably understands that not having this party on the

ballot list is a defeat for him. He might need the “regionals” now most of all, as radical Ukrainian nationalists accuse Poroshenko of “selling off the motherland to Russia”by signing the law on special status for Donbass.

“Surrender of Donbass to Putin won’t stop the aggressor,” Oleg Tyahnybok, chairman of the far-right Svoboda party and one of the three top leaders of Maidan, wrote recently in his blog on Pravda.com.ua.“Poroshenko wants to make Donbass a kind of occupied terrorist reservation, another region like Transnistria, managed from Moscow. In my opinion, terrorists and helpers of the Russian occupiers must be deprived of their voting rights and Ukrainian citizenship and take their place in jail, not in our government or our parliament.”

“Terrorists” is what the Ukrainian authorities call insurgents in the east and, of course, these people were not particularly happy to read Tyahnybok’s comments. It does not bode well for their future in “united Ukraine”, with promises of amnesty from Poroshenko not supported by several powerful nationalist groups in the Rada. Poroshenko will have to navigate his way between the stubborn Russian-speaking conservatives and the fiery Ukrainian nationalists. Both are ready to restart the war.

This will be a hard task. Much harder than winning applause in the US Congress. After all, the last Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev won even more applause there in 1990-91 – months before losing power along with the “united” Soviet Union.

Dmitry Babich is a political analyst working at theVoice of Russia radio station.

The ceasefire in the east of Ukraine is a long-awaited step that has put an end to brutal and pointless bloodshed. However, it has not brought the sides closer to an agreed solution, and the political process ahead is likely to be very difficult.

The first stage after exchanging prisoners would be to determine who controls what and delineate areas of responsibility. Any conflict of this type is a war without a clear front line, so a “border” has to be agreed after the truce. The establishment of any such border would require significant goodwill on the part of Kiev, since it implies the recognition that real control over part of Ukraine has been lost.

Assuming such a step can be taken, after the demarcation there is the question of control over the line of contact. It would be logical for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to assume this monitoring function, but it will require a mandate. Asking for such a mandate will probably cause heated debate at OSCE headquarters in Vienna, where decisions such as the powers of such a mission and the nationality of its participants must be made.

Once these issues are solved, a discussion about the status of the territory must begin.

In order to secure Ukraine’s territorial integrity, extra efforts and a very creative approach to autonomy rights are needed.

The authorities of the self-proclaimed republics would then face the task of establishing administrative structures that should be grounded in some legitimacy.

Therefore, there must be elections and, consequently, political parties taking part

SERGEY YOLKIN

SPECIAL TO RBTH

Russia faces a difficult choice: the responsibility for territories that have de facto separated from Ukraine lies with Moscow

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in them. In other frozen conflict zones on Russia’s borders, declared autonomy or independence was followed by the emergence of strong leaders, such as Igor Smirnov in Transnistria (between Ukraine and Moldova) or Vladislav Ardzinba in Abkhazia (between Russia and Georgia). But in eastern Ukraine there are no leaders who would enjoy this kind of authority.

A separate strand is the interests of outside parties, which have significantly raised the stakes and the degree of tension in the conflict. Russia faces a difficult choice because the moral and financial

responsibility for the territories that have de facto separated from Ukraine lies with Moscow. An ideal scenario for Russia, it seems, would be a united Ukraine with considerable autonomy for Donetsk and Lugansk. Then, assistance to those regions could be rendered as part of international efforts to restore Ukraine, which will inevitably follow.

However, the likelihood of such an agreement does not look high. Thus, Moscow will have to assist in the establishment of governing institutions in Donetsk and Lugansk without having clear prospects for the future.

As for the European Union, its priority will probably be to search for partners in the task of rebuilding Ukraine – in other words, someone to share the financial burden. Europe has realised that without Russia’s assistance, the task of restoring Ukraine will be unmanageable, so once the truce is signed, the Europeans will be searching for ways of interacting with Moscow in order to reduce the economic pressure on Kiev.

The most destructive position will belong to the United States, which views the Ukrainian crisis largely through the prism of its own strategic interests in Europe and the goal of containing Russia.

The events of 2014 have clearly shown that there are fundamental processes continuing in the former Soviet Union.

They will affect the borders and the national consciousness of different peoples as well as the geopolitical balance of powers. The fate of eastern Ukraine is an element in a big and complicated picture of the future, the nature of which we can only guess.

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

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What RBTH readers think about the hot topics. From facebook. com/russianow Orni Torinque on Ukraine’s association with European Union Joining the EU is the only way for Ukraine, a truly European country.

They have decided to turn their backs to the Russian system of corruption.

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Matthew Oliva on US refusal of special Nato status for Ukraine The moment you realise you betrayed Russia and it’s already cost you tens of billions of economic activity and you can’t even afford heat in winter... all for a counter offer of de facto slavery to Europe.

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Aftab Kazi on Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s statement that he wants to go back into politics He has no guts to be a politician other than being a businessman supported by politicians. He is just muddying the waters for himself by making such statements.

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Rebuilding Ukraine: Moscow is ready to help

Fyodor Lukyanov

VOX POP

he investigation into the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 raises serious questions. The preliminary report conducted

by Dutch experts under the agreement with Ukraine can hardly be considered truly comprehensive, thorough, independent and international. It does not shed light on the causes of the tragedy, nor does it contain convincing data about the details. It does not address our concerns and raises new questions to add to those already asked by the Russian defence ministry. Full transcripts of air traffic control communications have not been published, there has been no follow-up to reports of another aircraft seen at the time of the crash, and Ukraine has shown no willingness to share full data on the deployment of its anti-aircraft systems.

Surprisingly, the world’s media, including the British press, have virtually forgotten the issue, though most of those who died were Western nationals. It is in the interest of all to find and bring to justice those responsible through a comprehensive, independent and international investigation, as required by UN Security Council resolution 2166. There is reason to believe that the real purpose of the investigation is not to determine the cause but to make a case that puts all the blame on Russia, clearing the way for more sanctions. The delays in preparation and publication of the preliminary report point to a deliberate procrastination and soft-pedalling of the investigation process.

It is also disappointing that the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has adopted a passive position in relation to the investigation. A growing number of doubts arise as to the compliance by the investigation with the organisation’s norms and standards. It is regrettable that the ICAO might be subject to outside political pressure. The initiative to convene a “task force of international experts” under the auspices of the ICAO to assess risks for civil aviation in conflict areas, rather than focusing on establishing the truth in this particular case, seems to be another attempt to impose a biased and politicised version of the crash on the international community.

Russia insists that strict adherence to UN Security Council resolution 2166 is the only route to a comprehensive, thorough and independent investigation of the crash.

This resolution contains a list of problems that have to be solved in order to allow for a proper investigation. They include the cessation of violence as a basic condition, the preservation of the crash site, the provision of unhindered access to it and the role of the ICAO in ensuring that the investigation meets international standards.

A detailed report by the UN secretary general on each of these matters should be submitted to the UN Security Council according to paragraph 13 of the resolution with a view to taking additional measures to promote an international investigation.

We believe that it is highly important to enhance the role of the UN if the investigation process is to be credible. In this context it is worth looking at the possibility of appointing a UN special envoy for the MH17 inquiry and sending a mission to the crash site in collaboration with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, ICAO and other relevant bodies.

It is important to remember that this tragedy took place against the background of an attempt at a military solution to the Ukrainian crisis. That is why it is incumbent upon the parties to the conflict to transform the current ceasefire into a permanent one and set up a peaceful negotiation process on the basis of the Geneva statement of April 17 and the Berlin Declaration of July 2.

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First World War Centenary www.rbth.co.uk_Tuesday, September 30, 2014_P7

Brothers in the Baltic: how Russia and Britain joined forces to tame German fleet Allies at war 100 years ago, Royal Navy submarines played a key role in a blockade that disrupted vital supply lines NIKOLAI GORSHKOV SPECIAL TO RBTH

Last month, the world marked the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War. Primarily remembered for the trench warfare on the Western and Eastern Fronts, the expected series of sea battles between the two greatest navies of the time, the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet, never really happened. The only major confrontation was the battle of Jutland,where each side claimed an indecisive victory. Otherwise, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz’s expensively assembled fleet shied away from taking on the Royal Navy, the established master of the seas.The Germans considered the Baltic Sea safe for their navy; it was their training ground. However they suffered painful losses thanks to a little-known British mission by British submariners in support of their Russian allies.

The sea was a vital route for supplies from neutral Sweden and the Royal Navy’s aim was to cut off supplies with a blockade. Without the Baltic, the blockade was incomplete. But Russia’s Baltic fleet, whose much-needed modernisation was stalled by the outbreak of hostilities, was no match for Tirpitz’s warships.

And the loss of its biggest submarine, the 400ton Akula, built in 1911 and thought to be the first in the world capable of firing multiple

pressed that they awarded him three military orders (St George, St Vladimir and St Anne) in one go, “conferred by His Majesty the Emperor of Russia in recognition of valuable services”.Cromie became a de facto commander of the Anglo-Russian submarine flotilla during the meltdown of the Russian military following the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917 after the Russian sailors, inspired by revolutionary feelings, threw many of their own officers overboard.

GETTY IMAGES/FOTOBANK

Secret mission: British submarine and crew

torpedoes was a major blow. It went missing in action in November 1915 with 35 crew and is believed to have hit a German mine. Divers finally identified the wreck of the Akula in June 2014 on the Baltic Sea bed off Estonia.

To complete the blockade and shore up Russian defences, Britain decided to sneak in a small flotilla of submarines to serve under the Russian high command. Between October 1914 and September 1915 four E-class subs slipped through the narrow and shallow Danish straits by shadowing neutral merchantmen and escaping close brushes with German warships.

Four smaller C-class boats were towed around the North Cape to Arkhangelsk, then transported on Russian barges through canals and rivers to the Gulf of Finland.

ran their rum rations low, and Admiral von Essen, commander of the Russian Baltic Fleet, suggested that they switch to vodka. The British proved a match for the Russians as vodka drinkers. They also shared quarters with the Russians and learnt to play Russian billiards and to ski during the long winter. There was even a football tournament among the crews.

Some British officers were keen to learn Russian. Francis Goodhart, the commander of E-8 wrote in his diary: “Russian alphabet is quite difficult, they are all laughing at my efforts, which is actually quite uplifting…”

Transport ships sunk The Russians were especially taken with the commander of the E-9 submarine, Max Horton. His larger-than-life character and fondness for a good drink and good company earned him many friends. The boat under his command sank and damaged many ore transports, as well as several German warships.

The joint patrols carried out by Russian and British submarines severely disrupted shipments of vital supplies to the German war machine. A dozen cargoes went down in just a few weeks and shipments were halted until the Germans developed a system of convoys to protect their cargo.

Many of those crucial kills were achieved by one submarine, the E-19 under the command of Francis Cromie. He sunk four German transports in a single day. The Russians were so im-

From rum to vodka The Russians tried to keep the arrival of the British at their base of Reval (now Tallinn, capital of Estonia) secret. They insisted that the boats should not fly the Royal Navy flag, their ID numbers should be painted over, and their crews should wear civilian clothes onshore. The British disobeyed; when the Germans discovered their presence, Berlin halted exercises of its big warships in the Baltic.

Soon after the British arrived, winter set in and the icy seas made it almost impossible to engage in any real action. To keep warm, they

Favourite: Max Horton

Fateful prophecy In May 1917, Cromie, a fluent Russian speaker, was appointed naval attaché to the British embassy in revolutionary Petrograd. It fell to him to arrange the evacuation of the submarines to Finland after the fall of Reval to the Germans, and the subsequent scuttling of the boats when German forces intervened in the Finnish war for independence from Russia.

The British crews made it safely back to Britain, with the exception of E-18, which had failed to return from patrol in May 1916. Goodhart wrote that the E-18’s commander, Robert Halahan, had his fortune told by a local woman who warned him that he faced great danger.

The superstitious Halahan then asked the wife of the British vice-consul in Reval to send a message to his family ahead of the official Navy telegram if anything happened to him.

The Tsar posthumously awarded top military orders to Halahan and two other officers, and every crew member was honoured with a medal.What happened to E-18 remained a mystery until Swedish divers found its wreck off Estonia in 2009. Her open hatch suggests that she was sailing on the surface and had probably struck a mine.

With time, the exploits of the small British submarine flotilla in the Baltic were largely forgotten. Yet Anglo-Russian naval co-operation had disrupted Germany’s war supplies, denied the German High Seas Fleet a safe training ground, and disproved German propaganda that claimed Britain had been failing to support its Russian ally.

Voices of the forgotten soldiers

GETTY IMAGES/FOTOBANK

War reports Recently released letters from soldiers provide a new perspective on Russian suffering in the First World War

In the opening stages of the conflict, many soldiers were full of illusions. “Of course, this is a tough enemy, but nothing that we can’t handle – and all fully believed in our final victory,” wrote Col Alexander Samsonov, commander of the Russian Second Army, to his wife. “Everyone sympathises with this war, and all are going hunting for Germans.”

The horror emerges NIKOLAI POSTNIKOV EXPERT MAGAZINE

The First World War has remained in some ways a forgotten conflict in Russia, unlike in many other European countries that took part. Its memory has been overshadowed by the Second World War, which cost many millions of Russian lives, and which the Russian state can celebrate as a victory. Yet in the First World War, Russian troops were on active duty for three years against Austro-Hungarian and Prussian forces on the Eastern Front, before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ended Russia’s participation.

At the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, Russia implemented the “provisional regulations on military censorship”, which allowed the government to review and seize letters from the front if they contained any secret information. It is thanks to this regulation that readers today can grasp the horror experienced by the soldiers of the Imperial Russian Army.

Previously held by government agencies, today these letters are available in the state archives, many in the Russian State Military History Archive, where several volumes of letters from the front have been preserved.

The words used by these men in their letters home give modern readers a true sense of their reaction to the dreadful suffering they saw and experienced in the war that was supposed to end all wars.

Many letters of this period expressed similar thoughts of the coming victory. However, soon the battlefields were covered with the bodies of the fallen, and their families began to receive letters of condolence. Eventually came the realisation that the war would not end quickly; memories of what soldiers had seen did not fade, but began to creep into letters sent home.

“Heavy battles are taking place on all fronts daily,” wrote one Russian officer.

“Many have fallen on the battlefield, and many more will fall. And who will return unscathed? All fields where there were battles are strewn with the killed and those dying from their wounds – our soldiers and the Germans. And how many more will fall? War… what a horror! Death and destruction all around.”

Lines from a letter by another Russian officer amounted to an anti-war appeal, a desperate incantation: “Every person who ever was in a war, who participated in it, comes to understand what a great evil this is. People should strive to eliminate wars.”

Mountains of corpses Other letters relate the brutality of the events in unflinching detail, documenting the terrible slaughter of battle. “We are defending a bridge,” writes one soldier.

“Yesterday the Germans wanted to cross over to our side, but, after letting them come up to the middle of the bridge, we opened such hellish fire that the Germans were forced to run like mad. Piled on the bridge

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were literally mountains of corpses. Today they again wanted to cross, or to remove the corpses of their men. Our artillery with its accurate fire instantly cleared the bridge of the red-faced pork-butchers.

“To the right of us, they wanted to cross at any cost. They rushed neck-deep into the water, but our machine gunners and riflemen did not even let them reach the middle of the river.

“After the battle, they say that the river water turned pink. Yes, that is as it should be, since they sent here at least 5,000-6,000 men, and all of them remained in the river.”

Another soldier wrote about similar battles, unprecedented in their cruelty, recalling them with a feeling of terror and a fluttering heart: “We were in the trenches, and repulsed the attacks of the Germans, who never came closer than 400 steps, being forced to turn back and leave. Four times they came towards our trenches (we could clearly see their faces), but could not withstand our fire and turned back.

Sazonov and I lay next to each other in the trench, shooting at their officers and selecting the bigger soldiers. Well, we dropped those damned ones! They walked in silence, without firing a shot, in a wall formation. We allowed them to come close to us, to the best shooting distance, and then opened up with a terrible barrage.

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“The ones in the front dropped like rocks, and the ones behind them turned and ran back. Frost bit at our skins, and the hair on our heads stood on end. I think Sazonov, the sergeant and I sent a decent number of Germans to the other world. Painfully close they came. Their faces were pale, when they came at us. It was terrifying. God forbid that this ever happens again!”

There was probably nothing more horrible than a massive artillery “preparation,” in which the barrage of fire continued

Age of cavalry: Cossacks in the Russian army prepare to charge in 1914

unceasingly. The attacks reached such an intensity that, as one artillery officer wrote: “Artillery shots merged into a general howl, the sun was darkened, and one could see no more than five steps ahead in the smoke that was created.”

Sometimes, the nerves of someone coming under such fire would be shattered by the experience. As one officer wrote: “I wanted to cry.” Afterwards many were never again able to hear the howl of shells without starting to sob: “This incessant roar of guns and exploding shells, from which there is no peace, finally breaks the nerves.

Our Col Zhelenin even started to cry, like a little boy, his nerves could not stand it. And Rossolyuk also roars like an ox.”

Staring death in the face However, even in this sheer hell of war, many soldiers retained their clarity of mind and self-control, running out from the trenches and pressing on with their attacks under a swarm of bullets.

As one Russian officer described it: “Finally, the word was passed down the line: ‘Prepare to attack.’ Literally, an electric current passed through us: some started to adjust their ammunition; some, removing their caps, devoutly crossed themselves, involuntarily feeling the approach of the great moment. But already down the line flies the new order: ‘Forward.’

“Men, crossing themselves, pop out of the trenches with the words: ‘Brothers! To the attack, forward.’ Literally like ants, people began to jump out of the trenches, with eyes to the right, marching together, looking death right in the face.”

Deprivation, blood, the misery of the trenches and the death of comrades – that is what the First World War meant to ordinary Russian soldiers. This conflict at the beginning of the 20th century was unprecedented for humanity, in scale and in the sheer number of those killed.

Sport P8_Tuesday, September 30, 2014_www.rbth.co.uk

FINAL THIRD

Fans show red card to World Cup ‘superclub’ James Ellingworth SPECIAL TO RBTH

Club or country? That’s been a footballer’s dilemma for decades, a psychological battle to decide how much ambition and energy each of the two causes deserves. That could all change in Russia in 2017 if club versus country battles start taking place before spectators’ eyes each week. In a move branded necessary, naively utopian or even absurd, Russia’s national team could be entered into the country’s Premier League, in effect forming a superclub.

The idea is the brainchild of Russian Football Union general secretary Anatoly Vorobyov, who wants Russia’s top clubs to lend their national team players to create a club for the 2017-18 season.

To most fans worldwide, this idea is so novel it may seem risky, even eccentric – there are competitions for clubs, and competitions for countries, and never the twain shall meet. So far, Russia’s football fans are far from convinced.

Vorobyov’s unprecedented idea aims to achieve national glory at the World Cup hosted by Russia in 2018. In theory, creating this superclub, which Vorobyov has christened “Russia 2018”, would enable national team coach Fabio Capello to forge a unified team out of players from rival clubs.

"It is clear that we will only be able to compete on the strength of team cohesion,” Vorobyov told the Itar-Tass news agency.

“It’ll be offensive if we build new stadiums and the Russian team just goes out after the group stage.”

Vorobyov claims the Russia 2018 superclub would be modelled on the success enjoyed by Spain and Germany, the last two World Cup winners, with national teams heavily based on particular club sides. Barcelona’s stars knew each other inside out when they took Spain to the trophy in 2010, much as Bayern Munich’s players did for Germany in Brazil in 2014. In the Eighties, the Soviet team achieved modest success with a squad largely drawn from Dynamo Kiev.

But the removal of national team players from their clubs would sabotage the hopes of teams such as CSKA Moscow and Zenit St Petersburg in the Champions League in 2017-18. Vorobyov agrees, but argues it is a necessary sacrifice for national prestige, such as when Soviet industry was stripped of resources in the Forties to facilitate the development of the nuclear bomb. “Every effort was thrown at the atomic project,” Vorobyov says. “In some places, various types of industry were damaged. But the result was that the atomic bomb was obtained.”

To the plan’s critics, such rhetoric is almost comically overblown. The World Cup final may be high-stakes football, but few would compare it to a Cold War nuclear stand-off. Huge majorities of fans oppose the superclub in polls on Russia’s top sports news websites and even Capello offered a polite put-down. “The idea is obviously good, but it’s utopian,” he told R-Sport news agency.

Critics point out that there are crucial differences between the would-be superclub and its models in Barcelona and Munich.

In 2010, the victorious Spanish team comprised players who had been together not just for one season, but since childhood.

Such team cohesion allowed Spain to dazzle with the non-stop passing style known as tiki-taka, but that system had been developed at Barcelona’s La Masia academy for years. Bayern Munich’s academy is not quite so effective, but many German stars have played together for club and country for much of their lives. Trying to mimic that in one season with Russian players would not magically develop the near-psychic connections of those teams.

It’s unlikely the superclub plan would have been proposed if Russia had not had such a dismal campaign in Brazil. It exited after the group stage with defeat to Belgium and draws against South Korea and Algeria.

That prompted a crisis at the Russian Football Union, with frantic brainstorming for ideas to improve.

The superclub is facing such opposition that, as yet, it seems unlikely to happen. Still, a radical solution may be needed if Russia is to avoid a fiasco on the field in 2018.

Fast track: the new Olympic Park venue poses special challenges to drivers GETTY IMAGES/FOTOBANK

Formula 1 rolls into Sochi Motor racing Demanding new track promises excitement for drivers and fans at its top-class debut next month Under starter’s orders JEFF VAUGHAN SPECIAL TO RBTH

From the stands for Sochi’s first Formula 1 race on October 12, fans will see a vast open space and a thin asphalt ribbon twisting around the architectural marvels of the Olympic Park.

Behind the wheel at more than 100mph, the view is very different. To a Formula 1 driver, the track will resemble a twisting tunnel of concrete walls, where one error of judgment could spell disaster.

Fun at high speed

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Last weekend Sochi Autodrom hosted its first race meeting as Russian national championship events took to the track. On-board footage shows a tight, even claustrophobic environment, a far cry from the open, expansive view of the Olympic Park that next month’s spectators will enjoy.

The track is brand new, which could make the task of racing on it tricky. The asphalt on a new track is clean, lacking the grippy layer of rubber that is left behind by regular hard racing, as Sebastian Vettel, Formula 1 World Champion and Red Bull team member, pointed out after becoming the first F1 driver to test the track last month.

“There will be very little grip because everything is new, the asphalt is completely new,” he said.“It’s very smooth. We have highspeed stretches, the main straight is very long.

It should be a fun event.”

The track – one of F1’s longest at 19 corners and 5.853km (3.6 miles) – easily passed certification as an F1 venue and was praised highly by race director Charlie Whiting of motorsport’s governing body, the FIA.“Everything is in an extremely good condition. Everything has been done to the highest standards and I’m extremely pleased,” the long-serving official said in comments provided to RBTH by the Sochi Autodrom last month.

Organisers have been busy training a small army of track marshals, the brave men and women who volunteer their time to ensure the safety of drivers, if necessary moving into harm’s way to rescue them from crashed cars. Some of those marshals who will work in Sochi come from Russia’s other main international standard racetrack, Moscow Raceway near the capital, whose marshals have been distinguished by their diligence and bravery since that track opened in 2012.

Compared to other tracks Whiting has examined, Sochi has certainly been better organised, especially when compared to the chaotic lastminute preparations that greeted South Korea and India’s arrivals on the F1 calendar in recent years. In part, that success is due to the track’s design using elements of access roads from the earlier Olympic Park construction – the legacy was built into the Olympic plans. Of course, some challenges remain for Sochi’s organisers – most notably the fact that, other than F1, the track has yet to confirm any other major

Rising star takes to the grid Twenty-year-old Daniil Kvyat has the privilege of becoming the first Russian to race in Formula 1 on home soil.

The up-and-coming driver from Ufa races for Toro Rosso, the second team of champions Red Bull, and is considered to be one of the sport’s brightest young talents.

Kvyat has a history of performing well for a home crowd, having won two Renault World Series races on Moscow Raceway’s opening weekend two years ago.

He’s also raced well in the past on tracks designed by Sochi’s architect Hermann Tilke, in particular scoring points

this year in China and Malaysia.

Another Russian will appear at Sochi, but not in the race. Sergei Sirotkin, 19, will get his first taste of track time on a Formula 1 race weekend when he appears in Friday practice, Sauber confirmed last week.

international series, prompting questions about how it can be funded year-round.

Organisers say that at least 65pc of the 55,000 available tickets have been sold so far for the opening race weekend, which also includes Friday’s practice sessions and Saturday’s qualifying. Prices range up to 49,000 roubles (£776)) for top-level weekendVIP packages, while standard tickets allow fans the freedom to pick various points around the track to watch the action from. Making the experience easier for the fans will be more than 1,000 volunteers from Sochi and the surrounding area, working as part of a scheme that draws on expertise from the Sochi Winter Olympics’ hugely successful volunteering programme.

Racing into the night If F1 is often compared to a circus, then British billionaire Bernie Ecclestone is its ringmaster. In almost four decades holding the sport’s commercial reins, he has survived behind-the-scenes battles with the teams and brushes with the law.

After next month’s race, his opinion could be crucial to Sochi organisers’ hopes of moving their plans to a new level. The race’s promoter Sergei Vorobyov wants to hold the race at night – Ecclestone says that the lights on the Olympic arenas would give the race a“fantastic”backdrop – and in the summer, so spectators can combine watching the race with a holiday on Sochi’s beaches.

Still, that all remains far in the future. The 2015 calendar is a long way away from being finalised, and much will depend on how successful next month’s race is seen to be.

Tight and testing: the Sochi Autodrom

Adler-Arena Skating Centre

Ice Cube Curling Centre

Iceberg Winter Sports Palace Medals Podium

Track length: 5,832 metres (3.6 miles) Average speed: 216 km/h (134.2 mph) Time: 1 min 37.2 sec

Bolshoi Ice Palace

The Shayba Arena

Fisht Olympic Stadium

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1. Start/finish line 2. Main spectator stand 3. Stand T2 4. Stand T4 5. Stand T5 6. Stand T6 7. Free spectating area 8. Pit building and team boxes 9. F1 Village

The political dimension Politics has occasionally loomed large in F1 in the past, notably when the 2011 Bahrain race was called off amid human rights protests, but Russia’s race so far seems untouched by broader political issues surrounding western sanctions against the country over the crisis in Ukraine. Despite rumours that Russia’s major sporting events may be cancelled because of the sanctions, the country’s authorities show no signs of doubt about the ambitious projects.

One business relationship in particular could be influential – Ecclestone is a personal admirer of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

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