Issue #1397 (61), Friday, August 8, 2008
 

TOP STORIES

SOLZHENITSYN LAID TO REST AT MONASTERY

MOSCOW — It was as though someone had suddenly removed the stopper from an overturned bottle. As the great man’s body, hoisted high by a military procession, made its final turn on the path toward the cemetery, a sea of mourners poured down the church steps like water down a rocky crag.

The crowds had to be held back as a salute was fired. They had to be held back as the choir, chanting a hymn about eternal life, hovered over the freshly dug grave. They had to be held back as Alexander Solzhenitsyn was returned to the Russian soil that he loved so much.

Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize-winning author and Soviet-era dissident, was laid to rest in the cemetery of Donskoi Monastery in central Moscow on Wednesday. The author, who revealed the horrors of Stalinist repression in his landmark works, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and “The Gulag Archipelago,” died on Sunday at age 89 from heart failure.

More than 1,000 mourners, including President Dmitry Medvedev and his wife, Svetlana, traveled to the grounds of the 16th-century monastery to pay their respects to one of the 20th-century’s towering ...

 

MODEL WIVES

Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times

Models wearing wedding dresses at a fashion display at the Petrovsky Stadium on Thursday. A spate of weddings will be celebrated on Saturday, it being the 8th day of the 8th month of the year 2008, with many of the ceremonies being conducted around the city in the open air.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS CAMPAIGN AGAINST WASTE FACILITIES

Environmentalists from the local branch of Greenpeace spoke out on Thursday about their campaigning to stop the construction of solid waste processing facilities in St. Petersburg. The organization argues that the technology used at the plants will severely damage the environment by contributing to air pollution.

“Burning silt, for example, means discharging ...

INTERPOL REPORTS ON PETERSBURG CRIME STATS

Interpol has declared 2,000 Russian nationals to be fugitives, 60 percent of whom were suspects in economic crimes, in the 18 years in which the Russian Federation has belonged to the 186-member International Criminal Police Organization, Interpol representatives ...

 

LAST RUSSIAN TSAR’S SHIRT TESTED FOR BLOOD TRACES

Genetic experts and investigators from the General Prosecutors office arrived in St. Petersburg on Wednesday to begin analysis of blood traces on a shirt ...

Site Editor Seeks Political Asylum

MOSCOW — The editor of the Ingush opposition web site Ingushetiya.ru has fled the country and will seek political asylum in a European country, a lawyer for the site said Wednesday.

Roza Malsagova, 51, traveled to Germany three weeks ago with her three teenage sons, lawyer Kaloi Akhilgov said, though ...


 

NEWS

TSARSKOYE SELO MUSEUM DIRECTOR SAUTOV BURIED

The director of the Tsarskoye Selo museum Ivan Sautov was laid to rest at St. Petersburg’s Volkovskoye cemetery on Wednesday.

Tsarskoye Selo, 25 kilometers south of St. Petersburg, is the location of the Catherine Palace, built for Catherine the Great ...

 

GOVERNOR TURNS TO BANKS FOR AID

Governor Valentina Matviyenko has asked St. Petersburg’s banks to help resolve a crisis with local investors who were cheated in off-plan residential property ...

2 DEAD, 3 WOUNDED IN SOCHI BOMBING

MOSCOW — A device exploded Thursday on a beach in the Sochi resort which will host the 2014 Winter Olympics, killing two people and wounding three, officials said.

The blast occurred in the southern city of Sochi when visitors touched the device on the ...

 

IVANOV TIPPED TO REPLACE LUZHKOV

MOSCOW — Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov could replace Yury Luzhkov as the mayor of Moscow in early September, the Tvoi Den tabloid reported Wednesday, ...

 

BUSINESS

MODERNIZATION PLAN UNDER WAY

In a bid to bring the country’s industry up to western standards, the government plans to give major financial support to companies working in the military sector. The Kremlin’s favorite is Rostechnologies, the state industry corporation set up by a decree ...

 

PEAT COSTS SUZUKI AN EXTRA $50 MLN

City Hall has reallocated a land plot in the Shushary industrial zone and prolonged the exploration terms for the automobile manufacturer Suzuki Motors, ...

KUDRIN SEES CAPITAL INFLOWS DESPITE JITTERS

MOSCOW — Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Wednesday that he still expected net capital inflows in the second half, despite a falling domestic stock market and global financial turbulence.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sent shares into freefall in June ...

 

ONLINE ADVERTISING MAKES MARKET GAINS

MOSCOW — Internet advertising in Russia grew 73 percent to $260 million in the first half of the year and may top $600 million this year, according to ...

S&P CUTS RATING FOR TNK-BP

Standard & Poor’s on Wednesday became the second major international ratings agency to downgrade its expectations for TNK-BP over its shareholder dispute.

S&P said it had lowered its long-term corporate credit and senior unsecured debt ratings on TNK-BP ...

 

RUBLE FALLS AS INVESTORS DITCH WEAK STOCKS

MOSCOW — The ruble staged its biggest percentage fall versus the euro-dollar basket since mid-May on Wednesday, as a sharp sell-off on the Moscow bourse ...

Oil Delivery Costs May Grow 10%

MOSCOW — Russia’s decision to raise an oil shipping fee component will increase costs of oil deliveries by pipelines by 10 to 12 percent and further spur the country’s runaway inflation, analysts said Wednesday.

The Federal Tariffs Service said Tuesday that it had allowed oil pipeline monopoly Transneft ...

 

OPINION

SOLZHENITSYN’S TROUBLED PROPHETIC MISSION

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, viewed as a political figure, was very much in the Russian conservative tradition — a modern version of Dostoevsky. Like the great 19th-century writer, Solzhenitsyn despised socialism and yet had no use for Western culture with ...

 

JUSTICE ACCORDING TO KADYROV

News agencies reported last week that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov was the target of an assassination attempt. Chechen authorities immediately denied ...

 

WORLD

MUSHARRAF TO BE IMPEACHED

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan faced fresh political turmoil on Thursday after officials said the country’s ruling coalition had agreed to impeach President Pervez Musharraf, a vital U.S. ally in the “war on terror.”

The agreement came after three days of marathon ...

 

KINDER SURPRISE LABELED UNSAFE IN GERMANY

BERLIN — Despite being a massive hit with children and adults alike, German lawmakers want to ban Kinder surprise eggs on safety grounds, press reports ...

 

CULTURE

WORD’S WORTH

Hygiene is real simple in English — at least in terms of language. For the basics, all you really need to know are two verbs: to wash and to clean. You wash with water (your hands, the dishes, clothes, floors, etc.). You clean just about everything else ...

 

HANG ON TO YOUR HERITAGE

U.S. rock legend Patti Smith is worried about ongoing destruction of historic buildings in Moscow and St. Petersburg and urging people to act fast if they ...

SHORT BUT SWEET

A growing trend to make and exhibit short films has meant that short film festivals are experiencing an upsurge in attendance around the world, and traditional festivals are having to include shorts sections to keep up with demand. This is a trend worth ...

 

POETIC LICENSE

Like his earlier novel, “I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company,” Brian Hall’s latest work is that fashionable hybrid: a “bio-fiction” which sets ...

BEAUTIFUL RESOURCES

The headquarters of Nuclear.ru are located in an uninspiring building near Moscow’s Paveletsky Station. The company is an independent Internet portal providing the latest developments in the field of nuclear energy. But that is not what it is best known ...

 

BEAUTIFUL RESOURCES

The headquarters of Nuclear.ru are located in an uninspiring building near Moscow’s Paveletsky Station. The company is an independent Internet portal providing ...

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics will get the Summer Games — billed as the greatest show on earth — off to an explosive start on Friday.

You would not expect anything less from the nation that invented gunpowder, and fireworks are certain ...

 

NEW EATING POLICY

NEP

37 Naberezhnaya Reki Moiki // Tel: 571 7591. www.neprestoran.ru // Open daily from noon until the last customer leaves // Shows at 8.30 p.m. Wednesday ...

In the spotlight

Leonid Agutin isn’t the most famous Russian pop star. But whenever the curly-headed singer raises a glass of anything stronger than water (although water will do), a Zhizn photographer is likely to be snapping in the vicinity. The tabloid regularly writes stories accusing Agutin of enjoying his tipple ...

 

SPORT

Arshavin Said to Be On Strike

The star player of St. Petersburg’s FC Zenit, Andrei Arshavin, has gone on strike, refusing to play in a cup tie against Sibir Novosibirsk on Wednesday, British media reported Thursday. Arshavin, 27, took the decision to strike because he was upset with Zenit’s stubborn stance on his transfer fee to ...