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asia.rbth.com

August 29 - September 4, 2015

Thursday, August 27, 2015

P12

See what Russian cosmonauts will soon be sporting

The latest in spacesuits

P8-9

RBTH profiles a few of the outstanding performers of the new tech generation

Startup boom

RUSSIAN ARTISTS TO PERFOM AT BANGKOK’S INTERNATIONAL DANCE AND MUSIC FESTIVAL

PAGE 3

Russian performers set to Russian performers set to cast a spell on Bangkokcast a spell on Bangkok

To those who lost loved ones in the act of terrorism committed in Bangkok, on Monday, August 17, we at Russia Beyond the Headlines offer you our sincerest condolences.

Our thoughts are with you and those who were injured in the attack and their friends and families.

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02 RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINESA global media project, sponsored by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia)

asia.rbth.comFar East

Logistics Strategic location alone will not ensure growth of free port

VLADISLAV INOZEMTSEVSPECIAL TO RBTH

AJAY KAMALAKARANRBTH

On the eve of Vladivostok -

a city in Russia’s Far East -

becoming a free port,

despite many handicaps,

let us look at the prospects

for growth.

There is a sea change in

official attitudes in the

once-closed city.

Old-school paranoia has

been replaced with a large

degree of openness.

Vladivostok faces hurdles in achieving its ambition

In the early 20th century, Vladivostok was the larg-est port in its region, but now its signifi cance is min-imal. In 2014, it processed only 15.3 million tonnes of cargo, compared to the 390 million tonnes at the Chi-nese port of Dalian, 330 million tonnes in Busan, Korea, and almost 230 mil-lion tonnes in Nagoya, Japan. In an ocean-eco-nomy era, when the share of the maritime transport in international trade tur-nover amounts to 67-68 per cent and when more than 60 per cent of the global gross domestic product is produced in territories se-parated from the sea by less than 160 kilometres, this gap requires action. Howe-ver, several factors are pre-venting Vladivostok’s port from increasing its through-put.

The port’s shortcomingsVladivostok is not an ideal location for a free port be-cause it has a major naval

Just a few years ago, a visit to Vladivostok gave foreign-ers a chance to see some of the rather unpleasant leg-acies of the Soviet Union. As soon as a domestic fl ight landed in the city, a police officer would come inside the aircraft and check the passports of all passengers before letting them get off. The police would also care-fully scrutinise the docu-ments of all passengers fl y-ing out of the city to make sure they registered with the authorities if they stayed more than three days. Long-term residents of the city used to mock such procedures by saying that the police were just fol-lowing rules to the letter.

On a flight from Hong Kong to the Russian Far Eastern city this week, I asked the crew for the mi-gration card that all foreign visitors have to fi ll when en-tering Russia. When an air-hostess of the Russian air-line said she had no idea what I was talking about, I braced myself for a long session at the airport, fi lling the card and then waiting in a long queue at passport control and dealing with a visibly irritated immigra-tion officer, since my fl ight landed at 12.40am.

Instead, I was surprised to see that the airport had the automated printing sys-tem in place for migration cards. I was later told that this was done in time for the 2012 Asia Pacifi c Eco-nomic Cooperation (APEC)summit. Passport control took less than 3 minutes and there was even a warm

Dr Vladislav Inozemtsev is

Director of Centre for

Post-Industrial Studies.

base and other military in-stallations, together which use many of the city’s har-bours.

Another shortcoming is that there are few large stretches of free space in the city for the creation of in-dustrial parks.

Vladivostok is also more than 100 km away from the Chinese border.

These three factors make it difficult for the city to compete with free zones in neighbouring Asian coun-tries.

Looking at a map, it is

easy to see the strategic im-portance of Russia’s Pri-morye Territory and also the fact that it cuts off a huge area of northern China from the sea. This includes three provinces: Heilongjiang, Jilin and Inner Mongolia - areas which have a combi-ned population of 90 mi-llion people and a GDP of $US750 billion.Goods pro-duced here should be deli-vered to the ports of Dalian and Yingkou to be loaded on ships 1,100-2,300km away from the places where they were produced, to be sent both abroad and to the ports of southern China. Ideally, the port should be established at a minimum distance (20-25km) from the Chinese border and connect with the territory of modern China by highway and railway - in-frastructure that could also be given extraterritorial status.

An area of about 200-250 square kilometres could be set aside around the port, surrounded with a wall, with customs and border check points set up, as has been done, for example, in Shenzhen, the Chinese pro-vince adjacent to Hong Kong.

Servicing ChinaGiven the scale of the econ-

omy of northern China, a new port could easily start processing 80-100 million tonnes per year as early as in fi ve or six years. And ac-cording to experts at the Far Eastern Federal Uni-versity, growth at Vladiv-ostk’s port could increase Primorye’s GDP by 30-35 per cent above current lev-els, if growth levels at other ports, like Dubai, are any-thing to go by.

The experience of rapid industrial development in China has shown that so-called greenfi eld projects – projects not developed in the course of “modernisa-tion” of long-obsolete faci-lities, but set up “from scratch” – proved and con-tinue to prove to be the most successful. The most recent example of this is the development of the project of “informational metropo-lis” in Qianhai near Shen-zhen.

Russia has long dreamt of becoming a leader in lo-gistics, serving cargo fl ows between Asia and Europe. But as long as there is the Suez and as long as busi-ness leaders care about the price and quality of trans-port on Russian railways, why does Russia not try to cash in on the far shorter and more lucrative trans-shipment routes?

City gets welcome makeover from stifling Soviet era

Vladivostok Changing times

This October the Far Eastern city of

Vladivostok will become a free port

smile on the face of the im-migration officer. I spotted my suitcase almost imme-diately after clearing immi-gration. This was in con-trast to my last trip when I waited half an hour for my suitcase (on a domestic flight that had about 25 passengers). The customs officials were also polite and (dare I say) friendly.

I did not need to use the train to the city centre since a friend offered to pick me up from the airport, but I watched an official guide a couple from Hong Kong to the platform, and he spoke very good English.

In the not-so distant past, another problem with the airport, which is located in the small town of Artem, an hour’s drive away from Vladivostok, was the taxi mafi a. There would be no buses after 6pm from the airport and the taxi drivers waiting outside the airport would ask for ridiculous prices. Now, there are de-dicated prepaid taxi offices inside the terminal. The air-port experience in the city has been totally transfor-med and is hassle free.

Visiting the city after a gap of eight long years, I was happy to see the trans-formation that it has un-dergone. All the heritage and pre-Civil War buildings in the city center have been tastefully restored. The fa-mous rotunda with a view of the Amur Gulf has also been restored, but unfortu-nately, vandals have spra-yed it with graffiti yet again! The parks and the lawns across the city cen-tre are maintained well, and Vladivostok now feels more like an elegant European city than a rundown Soviet outpost. It remains to be seen how the city can com-pete for business with the likes of Busan, but the change in official attitudes has transformed Vladivos-tok, which is now one of the most tourist-friendly ci-ties in northern Asia.

Ajay Kamalakaran is the guest editor for asia.rbth.com and was editor of the Sakhalin Times.

The airport experience in the city has been totally transformed and is hassle free

There are few large stretches of free space in the city for the creation of industrial parks

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03RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINESA global media project, sponsored by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia)asia.rbth.com Festival

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S U B S C R I P T I O N

Bangkok set for Russian cultural extravaganza

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

The Novosibirsk Ballet Theatre Company will have four performances of Swan Lake at The Bangkok International Festival.

JS Uberoi, the chairman of

the Bangkok International

Festival of Dance & Music,

spoke to RBTH.

The Bangkok Internation-al Festival of Dance & Music was established in 1999 to strengthen Thai-land’s cultural ties with the rest of the world and to im-prove the standard of music and dance in the country. It is now one of the largest cultural events in Asia.

There is a large Russian presence at this year’s fes-tival. JS Uberoi, chairman of the Media Transasia Group, who is also the chairman of the festival, spoke to RBTH about the Russian programmes being offered to audiences at the event.

What are the Russian high-

lights at this year’s festival?

We have a very interesting line up from Russia this year. The Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Bal-let Theatre is staging three ballets: Swan Lake, La Bay-adere (a Golden Mask-2009 production) and a Gala Per-formance. All the events are under the direction of Artistic Ballet Director Igor Zelensky, who is a People’s Artist of Russia and a win-ner of the Golden Mask, as well as a laureate of the State Prize of Novosibirsk.

The Prima Ballerina is Anna Zharova, a People’s Artist of Russia and a win-ner of the Golden Mask Award. All three ballets are accompanied by the Thai-land Philharmonic Orches-tra under the baton of Al-exander Novikov, also a Golden Mask winner at the National Theatre Festival, 2013. A fantastic collabo-ration is taking place be-

tween the two countries for the first time, and this is very signifi cant.

The other Russian com-pany travelling with over 190 artists, singers, dancers and musicians is the Sa-mara Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, which is bringing two operas. The two-act Prince Igor and three-act Tosca. Both ope-ras are accompanied by the Symphony Orchestra of Sa-mara under the baton of Alexander Anissimov, Golden Mask winner for the best conductor in the 2005 Golden Mask Festival.

Both Prince Igor and Tosca are enormous pro-ductions and both produc-tions have Yuri Alexandrov, another Golden Mask awar-dee as director. The art di-rector for both is Vyache-slav Okunev, yet another Golden Mask recipient.

The productions of the Novosibirsk State Academ-ic Opera and Ballet Thea-

tre and Samara Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre are exactly of the same standard and quality as those staged in Russia. These are huge productions with elaborate sets. Both companies are bringing in four 40-foot containers each. So you can well im-agine the scale of the pro-duction, eight container loads is huge.

Besides the operas, the Symphony Orchestra of Sa-mara Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre will also pre-sent a Symphony Concert. The orchestra is also ac-companied by a chorus and singers. The fi rst part of the programme is devoted to Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture ‘Romeo & Juliet and Festival Overture 1812, Opus 49, while the second part showcases Beethoven’s Symphony No.9, Opus 125

What do you think Thai au-

diences find most attractive

about Russian performing

arts?

Thai audiences are attract-ed to the quality and the grand spectacle that Rus-sian companies bring to the stage. Russian operas and ballets have also inspired local artists and thus have helped improve the quality of performances in Thai-land.

In the seventeen years the

festival has been running,

it’s hosted many outstand-

ing Russian artists. Which

companies and performers

do you think really captured

the hearts of local audience?

Russian theatre groups that

performed for the Bangkok International Festival of Dance & Music have had an enormous impact on the art and culture scene. They have delighted the audienc-es and inspired local ar-tistes.

Bangkok had only three ballet schools and no opera theatres. Today, inspired by productions of companies like Theater, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchen-ko Music Theatre, Helikon Opera Moscow and Krem-lin Ballet, Bangkok has more than 20 ballet schools and three opera companies.

The festival has many spon-

sors in Thailand, but does it

also have any official support

from Russia theatre compa-

nies?

So far in its 17 years, the festival has received no sup-port from the Russian gov-ernment, but of course they support their own opera and ballet companies. Bear in mind that Russian com-panies have been well rep-resented at the festival al-most every year.

In contrast, several Euro-pean nations and the US have supported the festival every time their companies have performed. For 17 years, the festival has sin-gle-handedly promoted Rus-sian art and culture, and ed-ucated Thai audiences about the greatness of Russian art and culture. I feel it is time the Russian government showed its appreciation by providing support.

Interview byIrina Vinokurova

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04 RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINESA global media project, sponsored by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia)

asia.rbth.comBusiness

In June, Russia Direct released a new brief examining the topic of Russian hi-tech and science cities. New efforts to modernise the Russian economy have taken on an even greater signifi cance with the introduction of Western sanctions and the recent volatility in global energy markets. This report highlights the early successes and challenges of Russia’s modernisation drive, with an emphasis on the role of the state in supporting innovation efforts at the local level, primarily through creation of new technoparks.

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HI-TECH AND SCIENCE CITIES

June Report

Russia Direct is a forum for experts and senior Russian and

international decision-makers to discuss, debate and understand

issues in geopolitical relations at a sophisticated level.

RUSSIA-DIRECT.ORG Rakesh

Krishnan

SimhaJOUNALIST

The Shanghai Coop-eration Organisa-tion (SCO) – found-ed by Russia, China,

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – is often mocked in the western media as the “Club of Dictators”. With India, the world’s largest democ-racy, joining this regional security forum, such jokes have started going stale.

Unlike the BRICS (Bra-zil, Russia, India, China, South Afria) which is a rock star in the global media, the SCO has mostly operated away from the limelight. But the SCO has a wider footprint that stretches from Europe to the Pacifi c Ocean. And with India’s in-clusion, the group covers nearly half the world’s pop-ulation. The group has been

BEYOND THE FUTURE

SCO’s next big challenge: Keeping the peace in Asiaremarkably effective at keep-ing the peace in Central Asia. Pan Guang, director of the SCO Studies Centre in Shanghai, writes that the or-ganisation has stabilised some 15,000km of land bor-ders in Asia, constituting a major contribution to region-al security.

“The SCO’s counter-ter-rorism campaign is of stra-tegic significance for the whole of Asia. Not least be-cause the terrorist groups in Southeast Asia (which are potentially capable of dis-rupting energy supplies throughout the Indonesian archipelago) have close ties with the groups in Central and South Asia,” he says.

In “Rising States, Rising Institutions: Challenges for Global Governance’” Greg-ory Chin writes: “Despite its brief history, some ex-perts see the SCO as po-tentially evolving into one of the more powerful international organisations

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation has stabilised 15,000km of borders in Asia

t o e m e r g e o u t o f post-Cold War Asia.”

Nikolas Gvosdev writes in the National Interest that the SCO was a product of efforts in the 1990s to fi nal-ly and defi nitely resolve the border disputes between China and the successor states of the Soviet Union. “When that process was completed, both Moscow

the existing authoritarian rulers – created a need for some sort of ongoing forum to continue the high-level contacts that had been forged during the negotia-tions over the fi nal disposi-tion of the frontiers.”

According to authors Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping, “the SCO is becom-ing an anchor for stability in the Eurasian heartland” and is mainly a response to the growing western pres-ence in the region. Gvosdev agrees. “Worries about the ability of the US to project its power deep into the Eur-asia also helped to bring to-gether Vladimir Putin and Jiang Zemin to move ahead with the transformation of the more informal Shang-hai dialogue into an actual international organisation in 2001,” he says.

and Beijing realised that the possibility for rivalry be-tween them in Central Asia, plus the shared interests of all the states of the region in beating back challenges to the political status quo – particularly the threat of vi-olent insurgencies against

Rakesh Krishnan Simha, a New Zealand-based writer, writes for asia.rbth.com

ALEXEI LOSSANRBTH

The expansion of the scope

of US sanctions against

Russia in July will only lead

to the strengthening of

import substitution, many

experts believe.

Russia unfazed by US sanctionsTrade Blacklisted companies may face difficulties amid the ongoing political tug-of-war

The extension of the sanc-tions against Russian com-panies and individuals will fi rst and foremost lead to greater import substitution, Russian experts told RBTH.

The American govern-ment once again expanded the scope of the sanctions against Russia on July 30, imposing restrictive meas-ures against 11 individuals and 15 legal entities sup-posedly involved in schemes aimed at bypassing the ear-lier sanctions, introduced gradually since March 2014 to punish Russia for its role in the Ukrainian crisis.

The new list includes rel-atives and business part-ners of Gennady Timchen-ko and Boris Rotenberg – considered close friends

of Russian President Vladimir Putin – but also introduces sanctions against branches of Rus-sia’s main development in-stitute, Vnesheconombank, and the country’s largest oil company, state-owned Rosneft.

Rotenberg’s son Roman has also been included on the list, along with the Finnish company Langvik Capital, whose properties include a small hotel near Helsinki called Langvik.

According to Finnish media, this hotel is suppos-edly owned by the Roten-berg family.

Finnish businessman Kai Paananen also appears on the list “for his material sup-port to Mr Timchenko”and to a series of companies owned by Russian.

American companies are forbidden from doing any kind of business with mem-bers on the blacklist, whose assets on US territory will be frozen.

Konstantin Korischenko,

deputy director of the De-partment of Capital Mar-kets and Financial Engi-neering at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, de-scribed the extension of the sanctions list as “more of

a political move rather than economic,” speculat-ing that the decision may be related to Russia’s re-cent blocking of a UN Se-curity Council resolution on creating a tribunal to try those responsible for the shooting down of Ma-

laysian Airlines Flight MH17 in July 2014.

The American govern-ment believes that the Rus-sian companies that were earlier placed on the US blacklist are using their subsidiaries to bypass the sanctions, so subsidiaries belonging to Rosneft and Vnesheconombank, includ-ing the bank’s VEB Capital subdivision, have been placed on the list.

VEB Capital is one of the investors in the construc-tion of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline in Greece.

The project presupposes the laying of a pipeline along the Black Sea seabed from Russia to a distribu-tion hub in Turkey and then to the countries of south-ern Europe.

Russian experts believe that the blacklisted com-panies may experience problems with payments in American currency.

“The United States’ de-cision is a logical part of the latest events of the sanctions war being fought by the two countries, which is why we can’t call it un-expected,” said Anton So-roko, chief analyst at the Finam investment holding.

“It should not have a big influence on the Russian economy.”

The distruction of illigally imported Western food products sparked huge protests online.

US companies are forbidden from doing any business with members on the blacklist

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300 tonnesOn August 6 the Russian authorities destoyed 300 tonnes of illegal food im-ports.

IN NUMBERS

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05RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINESA global media project, sponsored by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia)asia.rbth.com Business

Sourat

RakhimbabaevEXPERT

The sixth Russia-Thailand Intergov-ernmental Commis-sion on Bilateral

Cooperation met in Mos-cow in July. The meeting was co-chaired by Denis Manturov, Russia’s Minis-ter of Industry and Trade of Russia and Tanasak Pa-timapragorn, Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister and then Foreign Minister. A large delegation repre-sentatives of major Thai ministries accompanied Patimapragorn.

The sides discussed the progress in the implemen-tation of agreements signed between the coun-tries when Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medve-dev visited Thailand in April. There were the usual expressions of de-sire to increase coopera-tion in manufacturing, ag-riculture and investment.

Do such meetings and subsequent agreements bring any tangible bene-fi ts for businesses and or-dinary citizens?

Ten agreements were signed as a result Medve-dev’s April visit to Thai-land. We, the members of the business community, truly hope that all of them will be implemented.

The Russian prime min-ister noted that last year our trade turnover grew by almost 20 per cent to around US$5 billion, ac-cording to Thai estimates.

The positive trend con-tinues this year as well, despite economic difficul-

COMMENT

The road ahead for Thai-Russian trade ties

ties. Trade ties have been on the upswing for a while.

There is already an agree-ment for Russia to supply Sukhoi Superjet-100 (SSJ-100) civil aircraft.

Russian truck manufac-turer KamAZ has success-fully entered the Southeast Asian market.

We will celebrate when passengers in Thailand fl y on SSJ-100s.

KamAZ is eyeing big or-ders in the Kingdom and offers quality trucks that are more competitively priced than its Japanese or European counterparts.

Russia and Thailand have set a bilateral trade target of US$10 billion in the next fi ve years. For this, we also need to remove trade bar-riers.

Areas of mutual interest include energy, food sup-plies, Thai participation in the Russian agricultural sector, as well as global nav-igation systems and space exploration.

Moscow and Bangkok recognise the benefits of further investment cooper-ation, especially in sectors such as food processing and automotive parts.

Thailand is also keen to invest in Russia’s upcom-ing special economic zones.

The countries also decid-ed to establish fi ve pairs of so-called cluster cities: Bangkok-Moscow; Rayong- Vladivostok; Samut Pra-kan-Yekaterinburg; Song-khla-Kazan; and Chiang Mai-Sochi.

ALEXANDER KOROLKOVSPECIAL TO RBTH

A new agreement with

China should help Sukhoi

tap into the Asian market.

The Superjet faces tough

competition from other

manufacturers.

Sukhoi set for take-off to lucrative Chinese market

Aviation A new lease of life for Russia’s struggling civil aircraft industry

Russia will supply 100 ci-vilian aircraft Sukhoi Su-perjet (SSJ) to China over the next three years, Rus-sian Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov told media in July.

According to the minis-ter, fi ve SSJ planes will be delivered to China this year. However, it is necessary to take into account that the planes are not sold, but transferred to a joint leas-ing company, which will distribute them in the mar-kets of China and neigh-bouring countries, where everything will depend on the demand of local carri-ers.

The once-powerful Sovi-et civil aircraft industry fell into decline a long time ago. This decline continued throughout the 1980s, when the number of aircraft pro-duced was gradually re-duced. Soviet aircraft be-came obsolete, while the defeated and disintegrated industry could offer noth-ing new to replace them. The share of domestic pas-senger aircraft in Russia’s largest airlines’ fl eets only amounts to about 6 per cent. In 2014, the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), which was created to save the domestic aircraft indus-

try, produced only 37 civil-ian aircraft.

The project to create the SSJ began in 2003 and was initially focused on the global markets. The crea-tors of the aircraft from the design bureau Sukhoi, who have never been engaged in major civil aircraft, opted for a broad partnership with foreign companies, cit-ing the need to accommo-date all the best technology into the plane and to make it as globally competitive as possible.

As a result, the share of foreign components in the aircraft is greater than 50 per cent, and it would be a stretch to call the SSJ Rus-sian.

The Superjet competes in the 100-seat class with Bombardier and Embraer. In two years, it will have two more strong competi-tors, China’s Comac and Ja-

pan’s Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ).

The global market for re-gional aircraft is estimated at 3,000 units, of which the US and EU markets, which “are effectively closed for Russian producers,” account for 70 per cent, according to UAC head Yury Slyusar. As a result, Russia can

count on its own market as well as the Latin America, Africa and Asia. Outside Russia, the SSJ has so far achieved its only notable success in Mexico, where a local company purchased 20 Russian aircraft. All other sales of the plane have been limited to one plane at a time.

MA

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A LYSTSEVA

/ TASS

The writer is the executive director of the Thai-Rus-sian Chamber of Com-merce.

Russia plans to supply

100 civilian SSJ to China

over the next three years.

The successful Superjet-100

The Superjet-100 is said to be the most important and successful civil aircraft pro-gramme of the Russian aero-space industry. Russian air-craft manufacturer Sukhoi has created the Sukhoi Su-perjet-100 in a partnership with the well-known Italian aviation company Alenia Aer-macchi. The SSJ-100 is the first

100-seat jet with a full fly-by-wire (FBW) system, which provides full flight protection, enabling the aircraft to oper-ate safety under the widest range of conditions. The 100-seat airliner can sus-tain flight at 870kph. In December 2014, Thai-land signed a contract to buy three SSJ-100 for the royal court.

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77% say our online products are relevant to everyone − not just to readers with a special interest in Russia

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06 RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINESA global media project, sponsored by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia)

asia.rbth.comBusiness

IRINA VINOKUROVARBTH

A meeting in Irkutsk in

September will give energy

experts the chance to

discuss the development

of the energy sector in

Asia.

Energy ESCAP brings together experts to share their insights

The Melentiev Energy Sys-tems Institute of the Sibe-rian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Ir-kutsk will host the 2015 Ex-pert Group Meeting (EGM) on Energy Integration for Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacifi c, or-ganised by the ESCAP sec-retariat, from September 14 to 16.

The meeting will enable experts to share insights on the development of the en-ergy sector in the region, and will be divided into four main sessions.

1. The current energy scene and emerging energy trends in Asia and the Pa-

RUSSIA DIRECT IS A FORUM FOR EXPERTS AND SENIOR RUSSIAN AND INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKERS TO DISCUSS, DEBATE AND UNDERSTAND ISSUES IN GEO-POLITICAL RELATIONS AT A SOPHISTICATED LEVEL.

This summer, Russia Direct

takes a look at the BRICS

countries. Since the creation of

the term in 2001, much has

changed both in the global

economy and for the countries

themselves. What role can

these emerging economies

play in the global economic

scene today? This brief

examines the way the BRICS

have performed at different

stages of globalisation and

what BRICS 2.0 looks like. It also takes an in-depth look at BRICS-

specific initiatives, such as the new development bank.

BRICS and the changes

in globalisation

July Monthly Brief

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Preparing for challenges ahead

600 million people in Asia don’t have access to electricity.

cifi c; 2. Review of the pro-gress of the Asian and Pa-cifi c Energy Forum Plan of Action; 3. Promotion of trans-boundary power trade; 4. Increasing access to modern energy services through strengthened pol-icies, institutions, and pro-grammes.

“The meeting in Irkutsk

will mostly be devoted to a discussion of what the AREF Plan,” Sergey Tulinov, Economic Affairs Officer in the Energy Security and Water Resources Section of the Environment and De-velopment Division, ESCAP, told RBTH.

He added that the prior-ities and execution of the

plan would be discussed. “At the moment, more than 600 million people have no access to modern energy supplies in Asia,” he said.

The findings of the ex-pert meeting in Irkutsk will be presented for consider-ation to the countries dur-ing the ESCAP Energy Di-alogue, to be held in Bangkok on November 24 and 25.

ESCAP will also hold an-other event in Irkutsk on September 17 – a round table on cooperation in Northeast Asia to discuss joint projects in the fi eld of electricity.

It will involve experts and representatives of the larg-est energy companies from the Russian Federation, China, Japan, Mongolia and South Korea.

The results of this round table will also be present-ed at a meeting in Bangkok in late November.

ALEXANDER KOROLKOVSPECIAL TO RBTH

RBTH looks at Russian

alternatives to the C-130,

and other possible options

that could be chosen for

the modernisation of the

Indonesian Air Force.

Russia has options for new aircraft in Indonesia

Military Indonesia needs a military transport plane after one of its C-130 Hercules aircraft crashed recently

After a C-130 Hercules mil-itary transport plane crashed in Indonesia and claimed 140 lives, the country’s air force said it would conduct “market research to fi nd a replacement for these air-craft and upgrade its fl eet.” The United States, France and Russia were named as some of the countries that could supply replacements for ageing Indonesian air-craft. RBTH looks at Rus-sian alternatives to the C-130, and other options for

Il-476, a military transport aircraft, may well be of interest to the Indonesian Air Force.

the modernisation of the In-donesian Air Force. So what might interest the Indone-sian military in the arsenal of Russian aircraft manu-facturers?

a modifi ed wing was used for the Il-476. The plane also has a new control system, new fuel system, new auto-pilot, a new digital sighting and navigation system, as well as a ‘glass’ cockpit (con-trols were made using LCDs).

The Il-476 is capable of carrying loads of up to 60 tonnes with a cruising speed of 770-800 km/h over a dis-tance of up to 5,000 km.

MTS (Il-214)The multi-purpose transport aircraft (MTS) is a joint pro-ject between Russia and India. It was created to re-place the An-12, An-26 and An-72. The project’s research and development documen-tation is being completed at the moment. The Il-214 can

be operated in mountainous areas. It can also land on un-paved runways. The dimen-sions of the prospective air-craft’s cargo hold correspond to the characteristics of the Il-76, but at the same time, it is a lighter class of aircraft capable of carrying only up to 12 tons over a distance of up to 3,700 km or 20 tonnes over a distance of up to 2,000 km.

Tu-330This aircraft is also in a de-velopmental stage. It can re-

place both the An-12 and the heavier Il-76 on middle-distance fl ights. Like other Russian military transport aircraft, it can be operated from unpaved runways. It is similar to the civil version of the Tu-214, which is al-ready being produced. In case of an urgent order, the aircraft can be designed and certifi ed in a very short time.

Tu-330 can carry up to 35 tonnes over a distance of up to 3,000 km, and with a load of 20 tonnes, can fly over 5,600 km.

Il-112VThis small military trans-port aircraft is another model that could poten-tially interest the Indone-sian Air Force. These air-craft are designed to carry up to 6 tons of cargo over a distance of 6,000 km. The aircraft can be used for takeoff and landing on short runways, with a length of 1000 metres. An important feature of the Il-112V is an increased width and height of the cargo hold.

The Indonesian air force said it would conduct market research for replacements

Il-476 (Il-76MD-90A)This is a modifi cation of the Il-76. The Russian military took a liking to the new plane, and ordered 39 air-crafts.

The only thing the Il-476 has in common with its pre-decessor is the fuselage. New engines were installed and

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07RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINESA global media project, sponsored by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia)asia.rbth.com Society

Fatal consequences of selfie crazePublic safety A new information campaign aims to raise awareness about risks in blind pursuit of memorable shots

IGOR ROZINRBTH

The health and safety risks

associated with taking

dangerous selfies have

become a focus for

Russia’s Interior

Ministry.

Russia’s Interior Ministry issued a leafl et this July ti-tled ‘Safe Selfies’, after a number of accidents in which young people died or were seriously in-jured while trying to take pictures of them-selves on smart phones.

The Ministry also pu-blished a report on its web site, which said that the ‘Safe Selfi e’ campaign was primarily targeted at young people. “We have tried to illustrate, using icons, the most dangerous scenarios for taking sel-fies,” said the report. “We want to warn peo-ple against taking undue risks for memo-rable shots,” it said.

The two-page leafl et says that the risks associated with selfi es are that a per-son can be distracted, not look around, not perceive dangers around them or lose their balance.

The leafl et also spells out that health-and-safety considerations should be given more priority than getting likes on social media. “Take sel-fi es only after making sure that you are in a safe place and your life is not in dan-ger,” the leafl et says. It also recommends against ta-king selfi es on railway tracks, on water, with animals, on the roof-tops, on top of train ca-rriages, while holding weapons, or while driving.

Each tip is accompanied with an icon in the form of a prohibition sign and cap-tion. With a retro look and feel, the brochure on this new phenomeonon looks reminiscent of Soviet-era public information posters.

The leafl et’s slogans in-clude: “A selfi e on the road – and you’ll have no time to click,” and: “A selfi e while driving can make your trip much shorter.” According to the Interior Ministry, since the beginning of this year, more than 100 people have been injured and an esti-mated 10 have died in Rus-sia while trying to take sel-fi es.

For instance, on May 21,

Each tip is accompained with an icon in the form of a prohibition sign and caption

6 ultra-dangerous Russian selfies

asia.rbth.com/48291

A risky

indulgence that

can be fatal

According to Russia’s Minis-try of Internal Affairs, the country has seen at least 10 deaths and 100 accidents occur this year when people were trying to take selfies. As rates of smart-phone ow-nership increase worldwide, accidents associated with their use are also increasing. ABC News reported this July that new research from the UK revealed that one in fi-ve young Britons take selfies while driving. The research showed that young men we-re more likely than young women to snap selfies when behind the wheel. The re-search suggested that this was a sensation-seeking, ci-ting that the men said that they were more likely to take driving-selfies when they were bored.

a teenager was hospitali-sed having suffered a head injury and electrocution, in the Moscow region, after he fell and grabbed some-power lines, while trying to take a selfi e from on top of some concrete blocks he had climbed. On the same day in Moscow, a 21-year-old woman died after acci-dentally shooting herself while posing for a selfie with a gun. And on the eve-ning of July 4, another young woman died after she fell from a 10-metre-high bridge in Moscow while po-sing for a selfi e.

It is hoped that the cam-paign will raise awareness about the safety risks.

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08 RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINESA global media project, sponsored by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia)

asia.rbth.comSpecial

KEEPING AN EYE ON EMPLOYEES

IN RECENT YEARS, RUSSIA HAS HAD A BOOM

IN STARTUPS. RBTH LOOKS AT ONE THAT HAS A

PRODUCT TO INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY

RUSSIAN STARTUPS

DINARA MAMEDOVASPECIAL TO RBTH

Already quite popular in

Russia, CrocoTime is

designed for big companies

and is capable of

monitoring up to 10,000

users simultaneously.

With 20,000 employees al-ready under its watchful eye, CrocoTime is quite popular with some of Rus-sia’s biggest companies, in-cluding global energy giant Gazprom, leading fi nancer Tinkoff Bank, as well as the local branch of Danish shoe retailer Ecco. But what is so special about the pro-gram?

CrocoTime is installed on the client company’s server and comes with so-called “monitoring agents” that access employees’ comput-ers. The software tracks websites that are visited

activity shows the compa-ny has some management issues. For instance, one of the companies we worked with found out their client relations managers spent about 60 per cent of their time working in Microsoft Word, drafting contracts manually after having de-tected that the department had switched to using doc-ument templates.”

CrocoTime also has the ability to track idleness: if someone’s keyboard and mouse do not get used for some time, the software considers the employee as absent. A perpetual licence for a “monitoring agent” is currently priced at 2,560 rubles (US$47.80) per em-ployee computer. Accord-ing to Bochkin, due to his software most companies reduce the amount of wast-ed time from 25-30 per cent to 5-7 per cent.

CrocoTime is not the only employee monitoring soft-ware available on the Rus-sian market. Other products include Distsiplina, Ofis-METRIKA, Stakhanovite and YawareOnline – all pos-sessing similar capabilities, including tracking website activity and calculating hours worked. “CrocoTime falls somewhere higher than the middle of the price range and is designed for larger companies,” Bochkin says.

However, developers claim that CrocoTime has several advantages over other companies. Firstly, the program can track the ac-tivity of up to 10,000 users simultaneously. Secondly, it generates statistics not only for each employee, but also for each subdivision of the company for a specifi ed pe-riod of time, whether it is a week, a month or a year. Lastly, it includes automat-ic settings for certain de-

Most companies reduce the amount of wasted time from 25-30 per cent to 5-7 per cent

partments such as account-ing or IT. According to Bochkin, Infomaximum seeks to promote Crocotime in Europe, North America and Asia. However, Sergei Akashkin, an investment analyst for Prostor Capital, believes demand for the program both abroad and in Russia will be limited.

Akashkin believes that the productivity of employ-ees generally depends on the time of day and this fac-tor can infl uence the accu-racy of the data collected by the software and in turn have an impact on the de-mand and sales growth. Be-sides, he adds, employees have recently started to cir-cumvent monitoring at-tempts by using tablets and smartphones to surf the in-ternet while at work. Most managers understand that and do not see the use in installing monitoring soft-ware.

and programs that are used, and sorts all activity into three categories: productive, unproductive and inciden-tal. It is, of course, up to the client to decide what is good or bad for their em-ployees.

“Incidental activity is something that stands apart,” says Alexander Bo-

chkin, CEO of Infomaxi-mum. “Basically, this is when an employee uses tools that he is not supposed to use, going beyond his di-rect responsibilities. Such

CrocoTime is a system which

lets employers decide what

aspects of their employees’

activities they will monitor.

Time spent on social media (Jan 2015)’THE IDEAL POSITION HAS

BEEN FOUND!’ : OUTER SPACE

CHIT CHATrbth.com/48549

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09RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINESA global media project, sponsored by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia)asia.rbth.com Special

ANDREI RASKINSPECIAL TO RBTH

The developers of FireChat

have unveiled a new

version of the app that

has gained popularity

after protests in Iraq

and Hong Kong.

Revolutionary app takes messaging to new heights

Apps People can now chat in private with no Internet

This year the number of FireChat users exceeded 5 million people, and its de-velopers have ambitious plans to raise that fi gure to 5 billion. Until recently, the messaging app made it pos-sible to communicate in group chats open to every-one, but the new FireChat will allow users to ex-change private messages.

All private messages in FireChat are coded and only the sender and the re-cipient can read them. “For-get about SMS and IM; an era of peer-to-peer net-works is coming,” said Micha Benoliel, a co-foun-der and CEO of Open Gar-den. “Our invention is a step towards the next phase in the development of the

Internet: networks crea-ted by the people and for the people.”

The offline messen-ger that operates

without Internet con-nection or mobile signal

became popular thanks to civil protests. The fi rst to appreciate FireChat were protesters in Taiwan, who in March 2014 took to the streets to speak up against the signing of a trade agree-ment with China. It then became popular in Iraq, where the authorities res-tricted access to social net-works as a way of counte-ring the spread of radical Islam. The use of the app peaked during the Hong Kong protests in Septem-ber 2014. It was then in the Google Play store for An-droid smartphones that Fi-reChat made it into the “from 500,000 to 1 million” users category. The app’s user base grew further thanks to protests in Mos-cow, and in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo attack.

The developers are now trying to shed the image of the app as a revolutionary tool. “Indeed, FireChat be-came popular thanks to va-rious protests around the

world. But I see it as my task to get rid of this revo-lutionary subtext,” said Anton Merkulov, the Open Garden rep in Moscow.

In order to communicate via FireChat, users must be within 60 metres of each other. This allows them to create a peer-to-peer net-work. Inside it, messages are sent from user to user. FireChat makes it possible to exchange text messages

security. A Finnish expert in cyber-security, Mikko Hypponen of F-Secure Cor-poration, told the Slush conference in November 2014 that some of the mes-sages during the unrest in Hong Kong were sent to the protesters by the Chinese government in order to identify the organisers.

However, according to the developers, registration does not require data that would make it possible to identify users. In addition, FireChat has an in-built al-gorithm that makes it pos-sible to control any techni-cal interference with the system, including spam-ming. Open Garden has al-ready presented a prototy-pe of a personal server, GreenStone, the size of a key ring, which will make it possible to store and send messages via FireChat. The developers are convinced that it will make the app even more reliable.

The first to appreciate FireChat were protesters in Taiwan in March 2014

and pictures. In the future, developers hope it will be able to transmit voice and video too.

Open Garden will now focus on boosting daily use of FireChat. The top four countries where it is most popular are the US, Hong Kong, India, and Russia. Anton Merkulov points out that the company is now mostly interested in deve-loping countries, where there are still areas with patchy cellular coverage.

According to experts, one of FireChat’s weaknesses is

Telegram to rival WhatsApp

In the past five months, the number of Telegram messag-ing app users has increased by 12 million, reaching 62 million people. Telegram was created in 2013, and it was immediately oriented towards the inter-national market and had an English interface. In an in-terview with the New York Times, its founder Pavel Du-rov said the idea of the mes-senger service came to him after Russia’s Federal Securi-ty Service demanded that he delete opposition communi-ties from his Vkontakte social network. Durov refused these demands, and special service agents tried putting pressure on him and searched both his and his parents’ apartments. The entrepreneur then re-alised that he didn’t have a

safe channel for communicat-ing with friends and family. So he decided to create a se-cure messaging app.To protect the data that users exchange, Durov created the MTProto protocol. It uses sev-eral encryption systems, and the app also offers a secure chat option. Thanks to this, user data is safe and can’t be stolen.

FireChat: ‘Everything happens in the app’

asia.rbth.com/40299asia.rbth.com/startups

RUSSIAN START-UP WANTS

TO CLEAN ASIArbth.com/48403

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RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINESA global media project, sponsored by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia)

asia.rbth.comOpinion10

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FRANCE CANNINGWARSHIP SALEMAY BE A BLESSING

A YEAR AFTER MH17 CRASH

France’s controversial plan to sell Mistral helicopter carriers to Russia has finally

been scrapped, by the French government, and the issue of compensating Moscow for this decision has been re-solved. There is a Russian saying which may be fi tting in this situation: Whatever happens, happens for the best.”

Russian officials fi rst came up with the idea to purchase the ships back in 2008. This was largely a politically mo-tivated deal: Russia-France relations were on the rise thanks to French President Nicolas Sarkozy not only playing a crucial part in re-

On July 17, 2014, the world witnessed the most horrible of tragedies in the

ongoing confl ict in eastern Ukraine. That afternoon, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was brought crashing to the ground, kill-ing all 298 people on board. Social opinion in the West and in Ukraine has been convinced from the very be-ginning that the guilty party

in the tragedy is either pro-Russian Donbass rebels or the Russian government. And it’s possible that the of-fi cial investigation will con-fi rm one of these theories. But as long as the inquiry remains incomplete, people are forced to base their judg-ments on politically moti-vated and emotionally charged statements from representatives of the vari-ous parties involved in the investigation. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has said that the investiga-tion is close to identifying the culprits, but has not named them. The report al-ready exists in a preliminary version, which has been sent to specialists from various countries. For now the pub-

solving Russia’s confl ict with Georgia, but also helping to minimise its impact on re-lations between Russia and the West in general.

While Russia’s then-pres-ident Dmitry Medvedev sup-ported the deal, Russian President Vladimir Putin, then prime minister, was not keen on it. Moreover, as Putin revealed two years ago, “We signed these con-tracts primarily to support our partners and offer some work to their shipyards. Frankly speaking, it’s of lit-tle consequence to us or our defence capability.”

Indeed, the French war-ships were doomed to be-come an outcasts within the Russian navy from the start. First and foremost, Russia would become reliant on for-eign replacement parts

which would not comply with Russian standards. Granted, this is something you can live with – provid-ed you are on good terms with the supplier. But what happens if the country faces sanctions? Secondly, there were some serious doubts as to whether the navy actu-ally had any need for these expensive “toys”.

The Mistral-class vessels are versatile: They can serve as both flagships and as command and control cen-tres during naval combat. Incidentally, one of the rea-sons for the purchase was to try and obtain some in-sight into modern naval combat techniques used by Western countries. However, the main purpose of the Mis-tral ships is to land and sup-port ground forces on enemy

territory while remaining far from shore. The problem is Russia does not stage such operations – they are not even mentioned in the coun-try’s naval doctrine. The only thing Moscow would use these ships for would be landing a force in Syria to help President Bashar al-As-sad’s regime and, maybe, fighting pirates near the coast of Somalia. But do those missions really justify such a high cost?

In fact, the Mistral ships did not fi t into the tradition-al strategy for the deploy-ment of Russian naval in-fantry troops. To elaborate, unlike Russia’s amphibious warfare ships (which, admit-tedly, are obsolete and in need of modernisation), Mis-tral ships cannot approach beaches. Moreover, they need supplementary equipment to be able to land heavy ve-hicles, not to mention the fact that they are not capa-ble of carrying a great num-ber of such vehicles in the fi rst place. The deployment of this equipment takes time, and in the interim each ves-sel needs to be protected by a group of escort ships – which, given the standard strategy for amphibious warfare described above, are not at all numerous within the Russian navy. These technical issues and incon-sistencies were numerous, so the ships would probably have needed to be modifi ed further once delivered to Russia – while it was doubt-ful they would see any use at all. But it is a pity Russia wasted seven years on the Mistral deal. But, to recap, “anything that happens, happens for the best”.

lic knows about this version only from the leak broad-cast by CNN, citing un-named sources.

Concerning the most im-portant moral and political point of view, in the last year world public opinion has had to satisfy itself with not always plausible statements made by governments that have their own aims in the Ukrainian war. The second most important source of in-formation – “unnamed sources” – has been the often mendacious or partly edited material from social net-works or opinions from ex-perts who base their conclu-sions on “open information”.

In all wars, lies are told on all sides. In the Ukrain-ian confl ict, not only are the direct participants lying, but so are their infl uential back-ers – the West on one side and Russia on the other. Never before has there been such a loss of criticality in western public debate than there has been in the discus-sions and evaluations of this event. The main reason for the tragedy is the war in Ukraine. In order to discov-er the truth and not unleash a new spiral of bloodshed, public debate in the West needs to become more crit-ical. The killing of civilians in Donetsk or in Gorlovka is just as unacceptable as the deaths of the passengers of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

Killing of civilians in Donetsk is as unacceptable as the deaths of the MH17 passengers

Georgy

BovtANALYST

Vitaly

LeibinJOUNALIST

The author is a political scientist and a member of the Foreign and Defence Policy Council.

Vitaly Leibin is a Russian journalist and editor-in-chief of the magazine Russky Reporter.

Full version at

asia.rbth.com/48515

Full version at

asia.rbth.com/47847

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UNLIKELY SOLUTION

POTENTIALLY DISCOVERED TO

CLEAN UP NUCLEAR WASTE

rbth.com/47885

‘THE IDEAL POSITION

IS FOUND!’: OUTER

SPACE CHIT CHAT

rbth.com/48549

MYSTERIOUS CHILD MUMMY

FOUND AT THE SITE OF AN

EXTINCT SIBERIAN CIVILISATION

rbth.com/47913

ALEXANDER VERSHININSPECIAL TO RBTH

Building a super-modern

military plant and a city

deep in a remote forest in

the Russian Far East with

few transport links might

seem to defy all logic.

How a forest became a home to fighter jets

Aviation The amazing success story of the Komsomolsk-on-Amur aircraft factory

As the industrialisation of the Soviet Union gained pace in the early 1930s, the Russian Far East was still an uninhabited wilderness. Fewer than a million peo-ple lived across a territory the size of Europe. There were no large industrial en-terprises that could support the region’s economy.

There was not enough in place to build the factory, let alone a city with apart-ment buildings, shops and hospitals that had to be built from nothing in just a few years. The only human settlement in the vicinity was the main encampment of the indigenous Nanai people, where factory buildings were now to be built in place of the animal skin tents, or yurts, in which they lived.

In January 1932, the gov-ernment decided to build the aviation plant on the

banks of the Amur River. Within six months, the Communist Party had dis-patched several thousand civilian workers and members of the Kom-somol youth organisa-tion to their new place of work and residence in the Far East from the central regions of the Soviet Union. The city was named Kom-somolsk-on-Amur in their honour, while a discreet veil of si-lence was drawn over the assignment of several thousand prisoners to build the aircraft factory and sur-rounds. In 1934, everything was ready for laying the foundation of one of the country’s largest aviation plants, which turned out its first aircraft in just two years. The work was driven on relentlessly since the looming confl ict demanded a fast spike in production volumes. The fi rst Komso-molsk-built product was the P-6 light reconnaissance aircraft, designed by a fu-ture star of Soviet aircraft design, Andrei Tupolev. However, the speciality of the far eastern engineers

would be another aircraft, the DB-3, one of the fi rst Soviet long-range bombers, which was created in the design bureau of Sergei Il-yushin, who won promi-nence in aviation before the Second World War. Soviet DB-3 pilots set world re-cords performing non-stop fl ights from Moscow to the

Far East and North Amer-ica.

During the WWII, the Amur plant supplied almost 2,800 units to the front. However, the facility’s hey-day did not come until the post-war years, when the country’s distant former backwoods grew into a huge center for the produc-tion of new combat aircraft, unrivaled by any others at the time.

The plant was also given the daunting task of mas-tering the production of fundamentally new jet air-craft and Komsomolsk rose

to the challenge. The fi rst Soviet MiG-15 jet fi ghter rolled off the line in 1949. In the 1950s, the plant’s fate became inextricably linked with the work of the Suk-hoi Design Bureau, and the resultant Su-7 became the fi rst Soviet fi ghter plane to break the sound barrier.

This was followed by a series of outstanding “hits” from the enterprise: the Su-17, a pioneer among third-generation fighters, fol-lowed by the Su-27, the fi rst fourth-generation fi ghter and its various modifi ca-tions, the Su-27SK, Su

30MK, Su-33 and Su-35, which still form the backbone of many air forc-es in the world.

The Su-27 has for many years been the primary product and specialisation of the Komsomolsk plant, and since 2010 the compa-ny has been working on a new breakthrough devel-opment, a prototype of a fi fth-generation fi ghter. The aircraft, which has the working name of the T-50, has the potential to rival the only existing aircraft of this type, the US F-22 Rap-tor.

The aircraft factory

in Komsomolsk

was the place

where the most

sophisticated

Soviet and Russian

jets were made.

Su-27 has for many years been the primary specialisation of the Komsomolsk plant

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RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINESA global media project, sponsored by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia)

asia.rbth.comScience12

Space suit of the future will go into orbit in 2015

Technology Makers of the Orlan-MKS proudly claim that this spacesuit is the very best in the world today

DARYA KEZINARBTH

There are plans to send the

Orlan-MKS space suit,

which is equipped with a

unique automatic

thermoregulation system,

into space later this year.

The Orlan-MKS spacesuit was the main attraction at the Innoprom Internation-al Industrial Trade Fair held in Yekaterinburg in July. Companies from 70 coun-tries around the world par-ticipated in the event. How-ever, the Russian spacesuit set an expo record for pop-ularity as measured by the number of people who wanted to take selfi es with it. The organisers lost count, but believe the number was somewhere in the thou-sands.

The spacesuit was or-dered by RKK Energia, the main supplier of compo-nents and equipment of the Russian segment of the In-ternational Space Station (ISS). The testing of the new system, which is supposed to be fi nished by the end of 2015, is being done accord-ing to 50 parameters.

The creator of the new spacesuit, the Russian Tech-nodynamica Holding brought the suit to the ex-hibition straight from the testing facilities of Zvezda’s – the suit’s developers.

Presenting the novelty, Maxim Kuzyuk, the hold-ing’s general director, said that currently this is “the most perfect spacesuit in the world.” The new Rus-sian spacesuit has three main distinguishing partic-ularities.

Most importantly, it has the first automatic ther-moregulation system in the world, which ensures that astronauts do not get dis-tracted by monitoring and regulating their own body temperature while working in space. The suit’s comput-er can control their temper-ature and create optimal conditions.

“It is very difficult to measure the astronaut’s condition and enter the data into the cooling or heating system,” said a rep-resentative from Technody-namica. “No one in the world has yet been able to develop an algorithm with the correct sensor location.”

If the computer system suddenly fails, the space-suit is equipped with a ma-nual control, increasing its dependability.

The second unique fea-ture of the suit is its use of polyurethane sealed enclo-sures, which are lighter and more resistant, instead of rubber ones. This helps in-crease the length of service for the suit from 15 to 20 outings in open space and extend its use from four to fi ve years.

Due to its special design, the astronaut can easily put A visitor poses at Yekaterinburg’s Innoprom trade fair with the Orlan-MKS space suit.

the spacesuit on in about 5-7 minutes without any help. Until recently, putting on a spacesuit was quite an ordeal, taking almost an hour and requiring the help of colleagues. Additionally, previous spacesuits could maintain full pressure in the case of rupture for only 30 minutes, while the Or-lan-MKS can keep the suit pressurised for 50 minutes in such instances.

In the event of an emer-gency or as needed, all ne-cessary data appears on a liquid-crystal display screen.

According to a represent-ative from Technodynami-ca, currently only Russian astronauts preparing to work on the ISS are test-ing suits from this line. “Space technologies are similar to military technol-ogies and are sometimes even more secret, which is why international cooper-ation in this fi eld is a com-plicated process,” the rep-resentative said.

If the testing is successful, a new moon suit can be de-veloped based on the Or-lan-MKS.

The suit’s computer can control their temperature and create optimal conditions.

YELENA TEMCHENKOSPECIAL TO RBTH

What do people talk about

during a spacewalk? Is it all

work and serious, or are

there lighter moments?

RBTH recorded.

tos of the Russian orbital segment. RBTH followed the mission’s live online broadcast to hear what Russian spacemen talk about.

“Pinnned you down...”Cleaning a space station’s windows is not an easy task, and the cosmonauts said they could not fi nd a com-fortable position to do it.

Padalka: Is it OK like this? I’ve pinned you down from the top. Well?

Kornienko: Just wait, we’ll be comfy soon!

(A little later)K: Finally! The ideal po-

sition is found!

On August 10, two Rus-sian cosmonauts on the In-ternational Space Station (ISS) ventured outside. The commander, Gennady Padalka, and fl ight engi-neer, Mikhail Kornienko, completed several tasks - cleaning windows, collect-ing debris samples from the station’s solar panels, installing mounts for new antennas, and taking pho-

ment of the ISS. But while at it, they took a couple of photos of themselves.

K: By the way, when I took pictures of you I was facing the Sun, so the iPad only got your legs.

P: Why didn’t you tell me? You should have told me!

K: It’s not a big deal, we’re going to take some more!

Padalka asked Oleg to take photos of him through one of the station’s win-dows. Kornienko comment-ed that: “From this distance everyone will see that you didn’t shave today. Can you imagine that – a cosmonaut with a fi ve o’clock shadow?”

The chit-chat was broadcast live from the orbit on August 10.

‘Outer-space cosmonaut chit-chat broadcast online

P (to Mission Control): I’m sitting right on top of it, Artyom! And that’s the most comfortable way to do it!

“The iPad only got your legs”One of the mission objec-tives was to take several photos of the Russian seg-

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13

6FACTSABOUTRADIATION

1  In 1942 the world’s first nuclear reactor was built

under the football field at the University of Chicago, in the US. At that time, this type of equipment was used to as an under-the-hood for nuclear bombs.

2 Every human body is radioactive. We all con-

tain Carbon-14, which has a half-life of nearly 6000 years.

3 On June 27, 1954, the world’s first nuclear

power plant started opera-tion at the Soviet city of Ob-ninsk near Moscow. On April 29, 2002 it was shut down. In its 48 years of operations there were no significant incidents.

4 Out of the 170 grams of Potassium in the

adult human body, around 20mg of it is radioactive Po-tassium-40.

5 The Kashiwazaki-Kari-wa Nuclear Power Plant

(Niigata Prefecture, Japan) is the world’s largest nucle-ar generating station. It has seven reactors, which pro-vide 8,212 net power.

6 Men are more radio-active than women —

men have more muscle fibre than women, and muscle fi-bre is where the body con-centrates Potassium.

SVETLANA ARKHANGELSKAYASPECIAL TO RBTH

Radioactivity can be

decontaminated in less

than an hour, according to

new findings at Russia’s

Prokhorov General Physics

Institute in Moscow.

New tech for Fukushima wasteEnvironment Russian scientists discover a new technology for quick decontamination of radioactive water

This year, a research group led by Georgy Shafeyev from the Russian Academy of Sciences’s Prokhorov General Physics Institute announced that it had dis-covered a new way to rap-idly decontaminate certain types of nuclear waste.

The group has said that certain radioactive elements can be quickly converted into neutral substances if placed in particular chemi-cal solutions and exposed to light from lasers.

The discovery, the group says, was accidental and happened during nanopar-ticle experiments. In the ex-periments, radioactive substances appeared to be literally knocked out of metal when placed in cer-tain aqueous solutions, which prompted the resear-chers to go on to experi-ment with a variety of me-tals and solutions.

When Shafeyev and his colleagues put gold in a so-lution of radioactive Tho-rium 232, for example, they found that the thorium stopped emitting radiation. Cesium-137, a major pollu-tant from the nuclear acci-dent at Fukushima, Japan, is a radioactive isotope pro-duced by nuclear fission. This powerful radioactive pollutant spreads easily, is highly soluble and norma-lly has a half-life of around 30 years. However, when the experiment was done with Cesium 137, the dangerous isotope was turned into

neutral Barium in just one hour, according to the re-search group.

“Neither we, nor nuclear scientists, are yet able to provide a scientifi c expla-nation of this phenomena,” said Shafeyev, who is head of the Academy of Scien-ces’ Laboratory of Macro-kinetics of Nonequilibrium Processes. “Most likely, by placing the solution in these conditions, we’ve been able to change the environment of the nuclei of the atoms – the state of the outer shells of electrons.”

To enable this process, Shafeyev said, the solution

had to contain a refractory metal, like gold, silver or ti-tanium. “The rate of decay of a substance depends on the chemical environment – the outer electrons of its atoms,” he explained. “We are changing their electron confi guration because the nanoparticles are able to locally enhance the laser electromagnetic fi eld.”

Shafeyev’s team is cu-rrently waiting for their re-sults to be tested by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) – another Moscow research centre.

For the experiment, JINR scientists will use a sensi-

tive gamma-ray spectrome-ter based on ultra-pure ger-manium to watch the process in real time. The ex-periment will be done with Cesium 137. Some are scep-tical about the claims of the research group and are dou-btful that the JINR expe-riments will work.

“We need to see this pro-cess with our own eyes, and then look for an explana-tion,” says Sarkis Karam-yan, a senior researcher at the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at JINR.

The researchers who made the discovery, howe-ver, are already looking at

specific applications for their findings. They have said it is unlikely that it could be used for ground contamination, in places like Chernobyl, because the penetrating power of lasers in soil is measured in mi-crometers. But when dea-ling with radiatiation-con-taminated water, it could be useful.

“In other words, in Fukushima, where Tritium and Cesium continue to pour out of the [plant’s de-contamination] pool even today, this kind of develo-pment could solve a lot of problems,” Shafeyev said.

Victims of nuclear accidents

FUKUSHIMA, JAPAN

This devastating accident in 2001 caused the meltdown of three reactors, which resulted in the worst radia-tion contamination being concentrated within several hundred kilometres of the plant, especially to the northwest of the facility.

CHERNOBYL, UKRAINE

In 1986, this nuclear acci-

dent affected at least 6 mil-lion people in the area and has been estimated to have caused between 4,000 to 93,000 premature deaths.

MAILUU-SUU, KYRGZSTAN

This project produces radia-tion from large-scale uranium mining and processing ac-tivities. It caused around 1.96 million cubic metres of nucle-ar waste in the area.

In 1992, 1,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste spilled into the river when a land-slide broke open one of the dumps. The waste contami-nated the Mailuu-Suu River, which is the water source for more than 2 million people.

SEMIPALATINSK, KAZAKHSTAN

More than 456 nuclear tests were carried out from 1949-89 here — the highest num-

ber of nuclear explosions in one area in the world. Some 200,000 residents are currently suffering health effects from these explosions today. One in every 20 children in the ar-ea is born with serious de-formities, cancer rates are higher than in other areas and more than half of the local population has died before reaching 60.

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YANA PCHELINTSEVASPECIAL TO RBTH

ARAM TER-GHAZARYANSPECIAL TO RBTH

Paleontologists from the

Tomsk State University in

Siberia have collected

the skeleton of a giant

titanosaur after years

of painstaking efforts.

This July archaeologists

opened a bark cocoon from

western Siberia and found

it contained the remains of

a 13th-century child

wrapped in fur.

New species of dinosaur unearthed in Siberia

Paleontology ‘Graveyard of dinosaurs’ in Siberia yields a unique find

“We determined that we came across the remains of a very large herbivorous sauropod dinosaur belon-ging to the herbivorous Saurischian dinosaur [branch],” Tomsk State Uni-versity researcher Stepan Ivantsov told RBTH. “But only once we took out all the pieces, did it become clear that it was an entirely new species, previously unknown by scientists.”

The bones belonged to an adult titanosaur, a four-le-gged Saurischian dinosaur that lived from the Juras-sic period and until the end of the Mesozoic era.

The dinosaur, whose ske-leton is being assembled by Tomsk paleontologists, lived

Scientists from Tomsk State University have found the remains of an ancient crea-ture enclosed in blocks of stony rocks in southwest-ern Siberia. It took several years for paleontologists to free bone fragments from sandstone. However, when they were fully engaged in their work, the researchers realised that they had dis-covered a whole new spe-cies of dinosaur.

Archaeologists unearthed a grave tentatively dated to the 13th century in the vil-lage of Zeleniy Yar in the Yamalo-Nenets Autono-mous Region in Western Si-beria.

The grave contained a bark cocoon 1.30 metres in length and 30 centimetres wide, and when it was opened on July 15 scientists were astonished to fi nd the mummified remains of a child.

According to archaeolo-gist Alexander Gusev, who works at the Centre for Arc-tic Studies, the mummy is well preserved.

“After the season ended we opened the mummy in the museum in Salekhard,” said Gusev. “We did not open it in the fi eld because we wanted to examine the body carefully. Under the bark cocoon we discovered

in the Late Cretaceous pe-riod about 100 million years ago. It was a large animal with a long neck and tail. The total length of the spe-cies could reach 30-40 me-tres and they weighed seve-ral dozen tonnes, growing steadily throughout their life.

This discovery by Tomsk paleontologists is the fi rst sauropod found on Russian territory. Now scientists at Tomsk State University will assemble the available frag-ments of the dinosaur into a single model. The largest bones that made up the titanosaur’s sacrum will soon be connected. In addi-tion, parts of dinosaur shoulder and vertebrae have been assembled from mul-tiple pieces.

“We have repeatedly found the remains of other animals – mammals, am-phibians, lizards – close to the site where our titano-saur was discovered. This indicates that there was

once an entire prehistoric ecosystem functioning here in southwest Siberia.”

Next summer, these Tomsk paleontologists will continue to work on the “graveyard of dinosaurs”, which is known in the scientific world as Shes-takovsky Yar.

More than half a century ago, excavations and the search for the remains of ancient fauna were conduc-ted near the village of Shes-takovo in the Kuzbass re-gion in south Siberia. Russia’s largest dinosaur ce-metery was discovered by scientists from Tomsk State University in 1953.

Russian scientists attempt to clone a mammoth

asia.rbth.com/39395

The mummies in Zeleniy Yar well preserved

A mummy of a red-headed warrior was found in Zeleniy Yar during an expedition in 1999-2002. It was dated to 1282 and was well preserved,

thanks to the permafrost and the oxidation of copper items found in the grave. Mum-mified remains of four chil-dren were discovered the

same year. The area is divid-ed into three parts: the 6th-8th centuries; and two burial grounds, the 8th-9th and the 12th-13th centuries.

Burial remains found at Siberian siteArchaeology Remains of mummified child found at archaeological site in western Siberia

According to archaeologists, the mummy is well preserved.

Russian regions – the Urals, St Petersburg, Western and Eastern Siberia – to see the unique site. Besides ar-chaeologists and anthropo-logists, geneticists are also participating in the exca-vations.

The Yamalo-Nenets re-gion is one of the most nor-thern regions in Russia, and has a very short excavation season due to its Arctic cli-mate; the earth defrosts only towards the end of May, and in August work is halted because of the large swarms of midges, mosquitoes, gnats and hor-sefl ies.

This year, scientists plan to excavate a fi eld that to-tals 80 square metres.

“For now we only have preliminary data about those who were buried in Zeleniy Yar,” notes Roman Gilmintinov, a historian from the St Petersburg Eu-ropean University and a member in the expedition. “It is difficult to say what the results will be because the civilizations of the Rus-sian North do not resemble any other; they are a com-pletely unique world.”

the mummifi ed body of a child. It was wearing cha-racteristic fur clothing. Next to it there were many metallic domestic items and decorations. It seems that the child had died of some kind of disease, and was not violently killed or trauma-tised.”

Gusev said examination of the body continues, and conclusive results will be possible only after scientists fi nish their research.

Excavations in Zeleniy Yar began in 2013 when scientists discovered seven objects that led them to sus-pect a burial site.

“After the news, I imme-diately joined the archaeo-logists working here,” says Evgeny Svyatov, an anthro-pologist from Yekaterin-burg.

“My goal is to thoroughly study the remains of the bu-ried people. This is impor-tant for understanding what they ate, from where they migrated, their hygie-ne practices, as well as that society’s customs and rites.”

Excavations continue at Zeleniy Yar, with scientists fl ocking there from various

Convert ing monologues into d ia logue

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15

Russian composers show great talentComposition Five of Russia’s most influential contemporary composers and the reach of their work

1 2 3 4 5

SERGEI RUBLEVFEDORDOSTOEVSKY.RU

YULIA BEDEROVASPECIAL TO RBTH

Literature lovers will soon

be able to retrace

Raskolnikov’s steps around

St Petersburg by playing a

new board game.

RBTH looks at the five

biggest names in

composition in Russia

today and reveals the

diversity among them.

around a board represent-ing the centre of St Peters-burg, where the main plot takes place. They will be able to visit Raskolnikov’s house and spend their last money in the Crystal Pal-ace tavern. Dostoevsky was famous for describing the streets of his city with in-credible accuracy and the

St Petersburg – a city of people who are half crazed – and see if “you, trembling creature, have any rights”.

“We will raise funds for the project on the Boom-s t a rt e r p l a t fo r m [ a crowdfunding website],” continues Kumaneva. “We plan to collaborate with bookstores and toy stores. We are trying to make the game interesting for both children and adults.”

The players will take on characters from the book and use dice rolls to move

Boris Filanovsky (1)He is a representative of the St Petersburg school of composers. A conceptual-ist composer with a bril-liant academic education, a music critic and promot-er of new European music in Russia, he is also the Win-ner of several internation-al awards, including the IRCAM Reading Panel (1997, Paris) and the Irino Prize (2003, Tokyo).

Filanovsky’s music is per-formed by legendary Euro-pean ensembles, including Louis Andriessen’s Orkest DeVolharding as well as the Integrales and Da Capo Chamber Players.

Filanovsky is also the

game attempts to recreate this for his fans.

The game itself consists of cards with questions about the novel’s plot and the writer himself, which makes it educational as well as entertaining. This aspect is very important in the context of 2015’s Year of Li-terature in Russia, which,

according to Russian Pre-sident Vladimir Putin, aims to “remind everyone of [literature’s] exclusive sig-nifi cance and special mis-sion”. Indeed, the game’s we-b p a g e s p e c i f i c a l l y references the president’s words as the inspiration for creating and playing it.

Yulia Kumaneva, the

project’s organiser, notes: “It all began on Dostoevsky Day, when I saw the inter-est – how many people came to the readings. To start with, we wanted to use se-veral works, but we just chose one in the end.”

During the game the pla-yers will have to experien-ce events related to their selected characters, as well as test their knowledge of the novel and literature in general. They will have to immerse themselves into the yellow, hot, stuffy, dusty

Innovative board game brings players into the world of Rashkolnikov

Leisure A board game based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” is coming out in St Petersburg

Find the price at

asia.rbth.com/48315

Founder and leader of St Petersburg’s fi rst ensemble of contemporary music en-semble.

Anton Batagov (2)Batagov is a follower of American post-minimalism, and a pianist with a Tchai-kovsky Competition prize to his credit. He does not have formal education in musical composition.

He performed in the Phil-ip Glass Ensemble and was the fi rst to perform many post-avant-garde composi-tions in Russia. Batagov’s works have been performed in Russia and the US by the Philip Glass Ensemble at concerts and festivals, in-cluding the Diaghilev Fes-tival in Perm and the Bang On a Can festival in New York.

Batagov is opposed to complexity in new music and to dividing it into low and high genres. His com-

positions are equally infl u-enced by rock music and by the academic tradition, from Bach to Rachmaninoff to Grieg.

Dmitri Kourliandski (3)Kourliandski is one of the leaders of the new Moscow generation of composers. He is the founder of the Structural Resistance (StRes) group of compos-ers, the fi rst informal pro-fessional association in post-Soviet Russia, which made new music known not only to a narrow circle of specialists but to the gen-eral public too.

A graduate of the Mos-cow Conservatoire, he was a guest of the Berliner Kue-nstlerprogramm 2008 (DAAD Artist-in-resi-dence).

After winning interna-tional competitions (Gaud-eamus, 2003, Johann Joseph Fux, 2011), Kourliandski

became one of Russia’s most renowned living composers, whose music is performed internationally by famous ensembles that include the Paris-based Intercontem-porain. Many of Kurlyand-ski’s compositions were commissioned and fi rst per-formed in Europe, includ-ing the opera Asteroid 62 (staged in 2013 in Graz by director Barbara Bayer).

Currently Kourliandski is the artistic director of the International Academy of Young Composers in the town of Tchaikovsky in the Perm region and is the mu-sical director of the Stan-islavsky Electrotheatre in Moscow.

Alexander Manotskov (4)One of the most unpredict-able composers on the Mos-cow music scene, Manotsk-ov does not belong to any school or movement. Author

of operas, symphonies, can-tatas, oratories, vocal cycles, church music, music for theater and cinema, he is a musician, a singer, a multi-instrumentalist, a member of ensembles of old and contemporary music. His opera Gvidon, based on the works of Daniil Kharms, has been on the repertoire of the School of Drama Arts Theatre in Moscow for sev-eral seasons, while the opera Four Quartets has toured in the US.

Manotskov’s latest major premier, the opera Titus the Irreproachable, has become a theatre sensation this year and has been nominated for the independent critics’ award of the Moscow as-sociation of music critics.

Sergej Newski (5)Another leading fi gure on the Moscow music scene and co-author of the ma-nifesto of the Structural Re-

sistance (StRes) group of composers is Newski. Newski, who studied in Moscow, Dresden and Ber-lin, is a connoisseur of old and new music, an histo-rian and educator.

Newski is A winner of the composition competition in Stuttgart (2006) and of the Russian national theatre award, the Golden Mask (2014), for the opera Fran-cis staged at the Bolshoi Theatre. One of his most high-profi le European pre-miers was the opera Aut-land (performed at Ruhr-triennale).

Listen to the 5 most interesting composers on the Rus-sian music scene

asia.rbth.com/47757

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asia.rbth.comCuisine16

NEXT issue

24September

VISIT A SPACE CREATED FOR ALL THOSE WHO WOULD LIKE TO DISCOVER MORE ABOUT RUSSIAN CUISINE AND THE COUNTRY’S CULINARY TRADITIONS.

Learn the secrets of perfect Russian dishes:

asia.rbth.com/russian_kitchen

• Russian Salad • Borsh • Schi

RECIPE

Mushroom caviar

Eggplant caviar

Beet caviar

Ingredients:

250g pickled mushrooms (or 50 grams dried mush-rooms); 1 onion; 1-2 Tbsp vegetable oil.

Mushroom caviar can be pre-pared from fresh cooked, pickled or dried salted mush-rooms. If using dried mush-rooms, add water to them, let sit and drain before cook-ing. Chop the onion and then fry it in vegetable oil. Cool and mix with the mushrooms,

adding a little pepper. For a more tangy taste, add lemon

juice or vinegar, salt and pep-per and sprinkle with finely chopped onions. pan and add 2 cups of water. Put on the stove and boil for 5 minutes. Then strain and keep the juice. Add sugar to the juice and boil again on the stove until the sugar dissolves.Add starch and boil, stirring, until starch dissolves and mass has thickened. Add the reserved juice to the thick-ened mixture and stir well.

Ingredients:

300 grams eggplant; 1-2 onions; 2 Tbsp vegetable oil; 1 tomato.

Bake or boil the eggplant. Peel it and chop the pulp.Add a little fried onion and tomato, salt, pepper, vegeta-ble oil and a little vinegar.Stir all together, then simmer over until mixture reduces. Cool before serving.

Ingredients:

500 grams beets; 2-3 Tb-sp sugar; 2 Tbsp butter; ½ lemon.

Wash, peel, boil and mince the beets.Add sugar, butter, lemon zest and lemon juice to the beets.Stir and put in a saucepan over low heat for 5-10 min-utes, stirring frequently as not to burn.

Delicious dips were called “caviar” in Soviet times

Delicacies In Soviet times, theatres, and even to voting stations, were known for their tasty and spreads

ANNA KHARZEEVASPECIAL TO RBTH

Recently I was looking for

ideas for summer dips, and

to my surprise, I found

them in the Soviet Diet

Book. It really does have

just about any recipe.

I’ve previously made pate, which can be served as a dip, and it’s since become a regular on my snack table – and no guests have com-plained.

This time I decided to try three dips, which are usua-lly called caviars (ikra) in Russian. I picked eggplant, beets and mushroom to try and make into dips. The

ves well enough with Wes-tern food call these things “dipy” and “spready,” put-ting the Russian plural forms onto English words.

I don’t even dream of sa-ying something like that in front of my grandmother — she hates all Ruslish.

Back in the day, Granny reminisces, all these kinds of dips were called “ikra” and they were consumed like sandwiches before the main courses.

There was never beet ikra, though — and I’m not surprised. Honestly I think it’s the weakest link in the dip selection.

“As for mushrooms,”

Granny said, “there were – what do you call baked mushrooms with cheese? - juliennes in every cafete-ria.

The best cafeteria was in the Kremlin concert hall – anyone who went for a con-cert there would go to the buffet during the intermis-sion to get some julienne and other snacks.

They were affordable, too. In general, theatres and concert halls had good buffets – the better the venue, the nicer the spread of starters.”

Maybe Russians’ deep love for theatre lies with julienne. But the buffets at

went to vote to get hold of some delicacies like julien-ne, salami, vobla [dried salty fi sh] and canned food.

Another reason to go was so the agitator who walked around apartments urging people to vote wouldn’t get into trouble.

I’ve been an agitator and people would tell me: ‘We feel sorry for you, so we’ll go.’ The nature of the elec-tions was, as we called it, ‘voluntary-compulsory.’”

Luckily we don’t have to rely on voting station and theatres to feed us delica-cies anymore, although they could do with a nice spread of dips!

theatres today wouldn’t inspire anyone to sit through a play.

I remember coming down to the buffet at the Bolshoi Theatre during in-termission to fi nd that most of the food was gone and there were only a few over-priced salami and smoked fi sh sandwiches left.

Maybe I was spoiled be-fore, but the quantities and prices were certainly not up to Soviet standard.

“Another place to get great julienne and other treats,” Granny noted, “was at voting stations – they had very good food.

“A lot of people only

eggplant and tomato va-riation will certainly ap-pear on my table again – it was delicious!

I remember zucchini spread was popular when I was growing up. It was mostly store-bought, though.

At that time, dips and spreads weren’t served with pieces of bread or cut vegetables to be dipped into them.

Instead they were served with bread slices and but-ter, so maybe it makes sense that they weren’t called dips.

Today, Russians who have acquainted themsel-

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