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CultureAll yours, Babushka: the Grannies rock EurovisionP.07

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

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In thIs ISSUE

The Russian wartime drama In the Fog has won an International Federation of Film Critics’ (Fipresci) prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It was chosen from the 22 films in the main competition. Directed by Sergei Loznitsa, above, In the Fog is set in occu-pied Russia in 1942 and tells the story of a Belarussian rail worker who is mistak-enly suspected by anti-Nazi resistance fight-ers of collaborating with the Germans.

A new, direct state-to-state international aid agency will make it easier for Russia to provide help to other countries. The agen-cy, which will employ 50 people, will focus on developing education, health care and energy infrastructure, according to docu-ments passed by the Finance Ministry to the government.

Russia’s foreign aid commitments have risen from $100m (£65m) in 2004 to $785m in 2009. “We’re not talking about one-time charitable donations. We’re going to work on global problems,” said Sergey Storchak, the deputy finance minister.

War drama wins honours at Cannes

OPINION

Fit for purposeWhy Putin must maintain his strongman image

Degrees from 210 high-ranking foreign uni-versities are to be recognised in Russia with-out extra checks being made, according to an order signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

The universities, from 25 countries and including 30 from Britain, have featured on prestigious lists including the Times High-er Education World University Rankings. Graduates from foreign universities not on the list will still have to undergo a four-month bureaucratic procedure to have their degrees officially recognised.

The order, published on Friday in Rossi-yskaya Gazeta, fulfils a pledge Mr Medvedev made in his state-of-the-nation address in 2009, when he said foreign degrees should be recognised to help attract foreign and expatriate researchers to work in Russia.

Graduates of Russian universities face similar checks when they go abroad, de-spite Russia being a signatory to the Bolo-gna Process, which was created in 1999 to make degree standards more comparable and compatible throughout Europe.

Red tape cut for foreign graduates

TURN TO PAGE 6

New agency to boost foreign aid

Diplomacy Russian and British foreign ministers meet to discuss how to end violence in Syria

Foreign ministers Hague and Lavrov agree to stand behind Kofi Annan’s peace plan for Syria but disagree over who is to blame for the violence.

Government forces and rebels share the blame for this weekend’s massacre in the Syrian town of Houla, ac-cording to Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

Testimony by United Na-tions observers indicated that both the authorities and the insurgents “were to blame for the deaths of innocent civil-ians,” Mr Lavrov said after talks with his British coun-terpart William Hague in Moscow on Monday.

“There can be no doubt that the authorities used ar-tillery and tanks,” Mr Lav-rov added. “[But] guilt should be apportioned objectively… It takes two to tango.”

Mr Lavrov also said “doz-ens of players” were involved in the current violence.

At least 108 people, around a third of them children, were killed in the town of Houla, near the former rebel strong-hold city of Homs at the weekend, according to UN observers. The UN Security Council, of which Russia is a permanent, veto-wielding member, unanimously con-demned the Syrian authori-ties on Sunday for the “out-rageous” attack.

“We are insisting on the carrying out of an inquiry into what happened in Houla,” Mr Lavrov said. “We need to understand how this happened to make sure it will never be repeated.”

Russian deputy UN am-bassador Alexander Pankin told journalists that Moscow did not rule out that the kill-ings in Houla were a “prov-

ocation” carried out by rebel forces ahead of the planned visit by UN peace envoy Kofi Annan to Syria on Tuesday. He also refused to rule out the participation of foreign special forces in the attack.

The Kremlin has opposed attempts to impose UN sanc-tions on Syria, an ally where Russia maintains its only for-

eign military base, over what western powers say is the brutal suppression of an up-rising against President Bashar al-Assad. Moscow, which continues to arm Da-mascus, says proposed UN resolutions on the violence-stricken country are biased in favour of the rebels.

But Russia has given its

full backing to UN envoy Kofi Annan’s faltering six-point peace plan for Syria, and Mr Lavrov reiterated on Monday that Damascus must show more decisiveness to end the violence.

The British Foreign Sec-retary said the UK accepted that rebel forces bore respon-sibility for some of the vio-

lence. “We are not arguing that all of the violence in Syria is the responsibility of the Assad regime, although it has the primary responsi-bility for such violence,” Mr Hague said. Both Mr Hague and Mr Lavrov insisted that Mr Annan’s peace plan was the only way forward. “We are very much agreed that

the Annan plan is the best hope for Syria,” Mr Hague said, adding that the alter-natives were ever-increasing chaos in Syria, and a descent towards all-out civil war.

Mr Lavrov said that Rus-sia was applying pressure “daily” on Syria, but that it believed certain other coun-tries were not fully commit-ted to Mr Annan’s plan.

Moscow has condemned western suggestions that re-gime change in Syria is the solution to the spiral of vio-lence, and Mr Hague was keen to emphasise on Mon-day that President Assad’s immediate fate was not the main concern.

“We have said all the way back from last August that finding a solution involves him standing aside,” Mr Hague said. “But the impor-tant thing is that the Annan plan is pursued.”

Mr Lavrov agreed, saying: “The main thing is stopping the violence, and to create a political dialogue among the Syrian people. Everything else is secondary.” He added: “And if we want to stop the violence, we have to work to-gether with the regime and the opposition. Kofi Annan’s plan is about consensus.”

Mr Hague and Mr Lavrov’s talks came as Syrian oppo-sition activists alleged that more than 30 people, includ-ing women and children, had been killed in the central city of Hama on Sunday by gov-ernment shelling.

More than 9,000 people have been killed in clashes between the government and opposition forces in Syria since the uprising against Assad began in March 2011, according to UN estimates.

Report by Ria Novosti

we must stick to Annan plan

Peace mission: william Hague and Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, where they held a press conference

With what could the Rus-sians surprise the Queen ahead of her Diamond Jubi-lee? Let me guess… flying past her on horses in the most spectacular way imaginable – this the Russians can do very well.

Slim and athletic, Artyom Vladimirov – what would Hollywood give for him – is famed as the “flying rider”. He stands on horseback, without a saddle, spreading his arms like wings. It takes your breath away.

Andrei Nenashev rides four galloping horses at the same time – he stands on two

Diamond Jubilee The Queen meets modern-day Cossacks

The famed Kremlin Riding School provided much equestrian excitement for the Queen at this year’s Royal windsor Horse Show.

and controls two more either side of them. The nimble Petr Ivashkov stands on one leg on the back of his sweeping black horse. All these virtu-oso tricks are performed at up to 25 miles an hour.

In the final showstopper – and the most dramatic per-formance – a young woman climbs to the top of a hu-man-horse pyramid; she stands on the shoulders of two horsemen and two per-fectly sculpted pedigree hors-es carry the pyramid as if hu-mans and horses are merged like centaurs.

The horses are magnificent; the national Cossack attire equally so, being designed to resemble the uniform of the tsar’s imperial escort.

This majestic display was part of the Royal Windsor Horse Show staged earlier this month, when more than

of the Presidential Regi-ment’s Cavalry Escort and Russia’s Kremlin Riding School was honoured with an invitation to display their horsemanship before the Queen. So, they naturally sent the crème de la crème to put on a good show.

Almost everyone in Russia knows that the Queen is an excellent rider because al-most everyone in Russia is

From the Kremlin to Windsor

Standard-bearer: The Kremlin School leads the way when it comes to spectacular riding skills

OLGA DMITRIEvASpeCial To RuSSia now

Twenty-five years ago, on May 28, 1987, as the Soviet Union celebrated the Day of the Border Guard, a single-engined Cessna-172 plane flew through Soviet air de-fences and landed near Red Square in Moscow, just miss-ing overhead wires.

A tall 18-year-old in a red jumpsuit climbed down from the cockpit and, smiling in a friendly fashion, began sign-ing autographs for members of the public who soon came running up to him. About 15 minutes later a militia car pulled up, and two men drove him away.

That evening, the sensa-tional news spread around the world. Mathias Rust, a West German amateur pilot with fewer than 50 hours’ fly-ing experience, had taken off from Helsinki-Malmi airport

History anniversary of Rust flight

Hundreds of military chiefs were forced to resign after an amateur German pilot penetrated the Soviet air defence system 25 years ago.

in Finland, overcome the “im-penetrable’’ Soviet air de-fence system and flown for 530 miles before landing his plane at the heart of the So-viet Union. “A German boy has punched through the Iron Curtain,” screamed the head-lines in the world media. The nation was shocked.

It turned out that Soviet air defences actually had big holes through which a small aircraft could fly. Although this was just a stunt, the dan-ger that such a flight could have caused soon became

The stunt that shook the world

vIKTOR LITOvKIN SpeCial To RuSSia now

CONTINUED ON PAGE 4 CONTINUED ON PAGE 8

1,000 riders from 18 coun-tries arrived with 700 horses in Windsor. For the Russian horses and riders, it involved an arduous four-day, 1,800-mile trip through Europe by truck and ferry to congratu-late the Queen on her Dia-mond Jubilee.

And on whose orders were these ranks of fine cavalry-men dispatched to British shores? The Kremlin. It was Kremlin horses and Krem-lin riders. The combined team

Fearless flyer: Mathias Rust

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02 most readRussia now www.rbth.rusection sponsored by rossiyskaya gazeta, russia distributed with the daily telegraph tuesday_may 29_2012

Russian observers go to Syriahttp://rbth.ru/15668politics & society

Events during Russia’s recent parliamentary and presiden-tial elections, and especially the protests that followed, highlighted the public’s de-mand for a public TV chan-nel in the country. The fact that the pro-Kremlin media simply did not cover embar-rassing events, such as alle-gations of vote-rigging at polling stations, caused an outcry among the informa-tion-hungry middle class.

While the independent media, such as Dozhd (Rain) TV channel, do try to report on all events, their limited resources often mean they can’t do “due diligence” on them, which results in fre-quent mistakes on air.

On the face of it, it would seem that the opposition’s demands for objectivity have not fallen on deaf ears. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has signed a decree to create public television in Russia, set a timeline for its creation and outlined the plan for the new media outlet’s structure. But the detail of how the public television station will operate has enraged the op-position, which says it will be public in name only.

In contrast with public TV services such as the BBC, where the director general is appointed by the BBC Trust, the director general and chief

media New channel provokes funding debate

with a public tV channel planned to launch next year, some industry insiders have voiced dissatisfaction with its proposed structure.

editor of the new Russian channel will be appointed by the president, as will the members of the station’s su-pervisory board. And the channel will be financed by the state treasury and not by a licence fee.

According to Oleg Kulik-ov, a member of the central committee of the Communist Party (KPRF): “The main criterion for public television is its plurality of opinions. It’s obvious that this chan-nel will voice the views of only one political group. In

short, we will get one more state channel.”

Stanislav Shakirov, a mem-ber of the Pirate Party of Russia, expresses a similar view. “What matters is not so much the fact that public tel-evision will mainly promote pro-government views, which is a foregone conclusion, but that the authors of the idea do not yet know what kind of original content they will show viewers,” he says. “A new TV format – and public television is a new format in our country – needs new and interesting projects.”

Mikhail Fedotov, chairman of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, believes that the sta-tion should be funded through a licence fee which

should be voluntary, and cost about 46 roubles (£1) a month per household. This would be cheap compared to the BBC licence fee, which works out at more than £12 a month, but then Russia’s population is more than double that of the UK. However, a fee in Russia may put off many viewers, and those that did pay would demand addition-al guarantees.

However, Artyom Liss, news editor of BBC’s Rus-sian Service, argues that be-cause of the licence fee, the structure of the BBC is high-ly transparent. “You can look up at any moment the sala-ries of all the BBC’s employ-ees, including the chief ex-ecutive. I doubt that such an efficient system of public ac-countability is possible in Russia,” he says.

Another flaw of the pub-lic Russian TV project, ac-cording to Vesna Pedchenko, editor-in-chief at RBC-TV, is the time frame for its imple-mentation. She believes that the deadline given by Mr Medvedev (January 1, 2013) to create high-quality broad-cast content is unrealistic. “I think initially the channel will produce three to four hours of air time a day. The rest will be filled with reruns or documentaries bought on the cheap.

“The people involved in trying to create public tele-vision have only a vague idea of this medium and its meth-ods. For them, carrying out the plan is the only thing that matters. Of course, with such an approach there can be no

Public TV raises private concerns

points of view: will public tV offer a plurality of opinions?

alexander VostroVrussia Now

question about the quality of the content.”

This view is echoed by state Duma deputy Dmitry Gudkov, who proposes an al-ternative way forward. He argues that potential view-ers should split the cost of creating TV programmes on the internet after deciding what exactly they would like to see. Russian bloggers have challenged this view, saying that if people get all their in-formation from the internet, they do not need television.

The architects of the Rus-sian public TV channel point out that the main task of public television in Russia will be to provide a forum for an exchange of opinions. The content will then take care of itself. United Russia Duma deputy Sergei Zhelezn-yak denies that state fund-ing will affect the content.

“Yes, the editor-in-chief will be appointed by the presi-dent,” he says. “But that does not mean that the state will decide what the channel will show. We will introduce a rat-ing system to see what peo-ple like and form the sched-ule accordingly.”

Russia did once have a channel called Public Rus-sian Television, or ORT, which was established by a decree signed by President Boris Yeltsin in 1994. Following the murder of its director gen-eral and the resulting inter-nal turmoil, it became Chan-nel One. Now it is hard to imagine a more overt gov-ernment propaganda chan-nel. Whether the new project will manage to create a com-pletely new format or wheth-er it becomes another offi-cious state-run media outlet remains to be seen.

a new TV format – and public TV is a new format in russia – needs new and interesting projects

Many travellers flying out of major Russian airports will no longer be required to re-move belts and shoes at se-curity, under new regulations. Rules on carrying liquids on board are also to be relaxed. But travellers heading for the United States and other countries that enforce strict-er screening rules may still have to go through the more stringent checks.

The new regulations, which are expected to reduce the time passengers spend queue-ing to clear security by 25pc, will come as a relief to many travellers. “It will make it a little bit smoother,” said Owen Kemp, an Austrian who has been flying in and out of Rus-sia for two decades.

However, not all passen-gers will be waved through the barriers, as there will be some exceptions to the re-laxed rules, according to a Transport Ministry order. Shoes with soles thicker than 1cm (2/5in) and heels higher than 2.5cm (1in) will still have to be removed, while belts thicker than 0.5cm and wider than 4cm will also be subject to inspection.

The rules on liquids, mean-while, are to be relaxed in the autumn, thanks to new technology that is capable of analysing a liquid without the need for staff to open the

travel Belt and shoe rules relaxed to cut queues

container. Currently, only 100 millilitres can be taken on board an aircraft. Flamma-ble substances, such as vodka, will still be banned.

Officials say that the re-vised rules will have no ef-fect on the safety of passen-gers. Maxim Agarkov, a former Interior Ministry of-ficial who specialises in se-curity issues, said: “Taking your shoes off in many dif-ferent places does not really affect security at all.”

Mr Agarkov added that the shorter queues as a result of the changes would leave fewer people exposed to the threat of an airport attack by terrorists.

Russian airport authorities welcomed the relaxation of the regulations, saying they were pleased that life would be made easier for passen-

gers. However, they said they did not know how security staff would decide which shoes and belts were too large and would, therefore, still need to be removed.

How the US and other countries might respond to Russia’s relaxed regulations is not yet clear. But the US, Britain and other countries have also been considering easing their own airport se-curity rules, which were im-plemented after the terrorist attacks on the US on Sep-tember 11, 2001. In the US, children under 12 are now allowed to leave their shoes on at airports.

Kip Hawley, a former head of the US Transport Securi-ty Administration (TSA) said that limits on liquids should also end soon. Mr Hawley told MSNBC television that the introduction of liquid re-strictions was “supposed to be a temporary measure — only until we developed the software that would be able to go in the advanced X-ray machines to detect threat liq-uids.” Although the software was developed in 2008, the TSA is still debating wheth-er travellers would be will-ing to stand in the long queues that would form if too many liquids tested falsely positive for explosives.

A YouGov poll conducted in Britain this month re-vealed that 71pc of respond-ents were in favour of keep-ing the tight security checks – despite the delays they cause – with only 11pc want-ing these security procedures to be relaxed.

Airports to ease security checks

body search: liquids will be screened by new technology

waiting times for passengers are expected to be cut by 25pc under new screening regulations for clothing and liquids.

max de haldeVangThe moscow Times

media survey suggests a growing number of russians are choosing to go online for their information

traditional state-controlled tV news networks are losing ground to new social media and independent sources on the internet.

An abandoned Vesti state TV van that angry protesters had splattered with milk, littered with plastic bottles and plas-tered with slogans was one of the most striking images of the protest on May 6 that ended in clashes on Bolot-naya Square in Moscow. It was a symbol of the mount-ing animosity between the internet-savvy opposition and the nationwide televi-sion networks, which have periodically aired critical documentaries about the Kremlin’s detractors.

But it also pointed to a larger shift taking place: the widening gulf between two Russian media landscapes – on the one hand, the lively, independent online media that in part nurtured and united the opposition and, on the other, the state-dominat-ed television networks that were brought to heel under Vladimir Putin’s first term in the Kremlin.

In a country that tradition-ally gets its news from mon-ochrome, pro-Kremlin tele-vision, the opposition was forced to rally and unite on-line. But analysts say that na-tional television’s monopoly on the news is starting to crumble – and not just among opposition-minded groups.

“They are fading, just like the American networks,” said Ivan Zassoursky, director of new media at the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University and founder of Chastnyi Korrespondent.

“First of all there are Fa-cebook and Twitter – new global players entering the market. Second, in Russia we have a huge and booming in-dustry of online media which are independent from tradi-tional media because in most cases they originated as in-dependent publications. Most online media are free, sup-ported by advertising, and are profitable.”

In a sign of Russia’s chang-ing media appetites, 24pc of Russians – up from 11pc in

the space of a year – told the Levada Centre poll last Feb-ruary that they now look to the internet for the latest news. The poll also revealed that 28pc do not trust what they see on television, al-though the same poll showed that 63pc do believe the na-tionwide television channels. “Traditional media are being eroded slowly but surely, al-though not completely – it is still enough to sway vot-ers. These are the people who matter in politics,” said Mr Zassoursky.

The trajectory of these shifting media appetites also poses a problem for the state and the country’s media mo-guls who wish to keep their grip on the levers of news

output. In Russia, the state owns the lion’s share of media – three national television stations, 89 regional televi-sion and radio stations and three newspapers. The rest is owned by individuals. But much of the so-called “inde-pendent” media is indirectly controlled by the state, ac-cording to Boris Timoshenko, analyst at the Glasnost De-fence Foundation.

The nominally private NTV channel, long seen as a tool of Kremlin spin by the op-position, in March aired a documentary called the Anat-omy of Protest in which the channel alleged opposition activists were paid “money and cookies” to demonstrate against Mr Putin’s formal re-

turn to power. It also implied that foreign governments were behind the demonstra-tions, prompting criticism of the channel from its own journalists. Mr Timoshenko said the programme was aired at the behest of the Kremlin but said it was dif-ficult to establish an overall pattern in the relationship between media ownership and its editorial line.

NTV is owned by Gazprom Media, the media arm of the state gas giant, which also owns Ekho Moskvy, Russia’s respected independent radio station, often an outspoken critic of the Kremlin.

Mr Timoshenko said that, while federal television sta-tions have blacklisted prom-inent members of the oppo-sition and often toed the government line, the author-ities have allowed certain outlets with smaller audi-ences to be more critical. “We’ve long had the impres-sion that the Kremlin delib-

erately leaves a small island of free press so that it can turn around and say: what do you mean we don’t have a free press – what about Ekho Moskvy radio station and Kommersant, Novaya Gazeta and a handful of other newspapers?” he said.

“The other reason might be that they don’t want to anger those who don’t agree with what is happening in the country.”

But even these leading out-lets in independent journal-ism came under pressure during the protests that broke out in December, dra-matically ending a period of seeming entrenched political apathy in Russia.

The influential Kommer-sant paper, owned by oligarch Alisher Usmanov, appeared to come under editorial pres-sure in the wake of Decem-ber’s parliamentary elections that saw Mr Putin’s ruling United Russia party suffer a

severe dent in popularity. The billionaire Russian fired an editor of Kommersant-Vlast magazine after he published a ballot paper cast against Mr Putin that was suppos-edly made void because it was defaced with an obscene anti-Putin slur. In February, Gazprom Media reshuffled the supervisory board of Ekho Moskvy in a move that the station’s editor-in-chief called an attempt to “correct editorial policy”.

Mr Zassoursky said that the relationship between ownership and editorial line was nuanced. He said that, while in many countries money and business dictates politics, in Russia politics dictates business and money. “The media is always stuck in between,” he said.

LifeNews, a Kremlin-con-nected online tabloid, in De-cember published embar-rassing phone-tap recordings of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov’s private phone con-

versations, in which Mr Nemtsov denigrated fellow protest leaders. Released in the wake of the largest op-position protests to have hit Russia in well over a decade, the phone tapping appeared to be a clear attempt to dis-credit and divide the oppo-sition. A criminal investiga-tion was launched, but nothing has been heard about it since March.

It came as little surprise that Mr Nemtsov – who is seldom if ever seen on na-tional television – had to go to TV Dozhd, an independ-ent online television station, in order to publicly respond to the publication of his phone conversations.

While investigations re-garding the phone-hacking scandal in Britain continue, and many are being called to give evidence to the Lev-eson Inquiry, it remains to be seen whether the LifeNews phone-hackers will be called to account.

net gain as viewers turn off tV news

tuning out: moscow 24 is just one of 89 state-owned local tV stations

tom balmforthspecial To rN

russia’s online media industry is mostly free, supported by advertising and profitable

in many countries, money and business dictate politics; in russia, politics dictates business

news in brief

The depiction of smoking in television programmes, films and adverts aimed at children may be banned.

The proposal is in a doc-ument submitted by the Health and Social Devel-opment Ministry to the gov-ernment on May 20, accord-ing to Kommersant. Officials say a ban is justified because nearly 40pc of the Russian population smokes.

Ministry representative Sofia Malyavina told Kom-mersant that children’s pro-gramming would be the most tightly controlled, but that artistic justification for smoking scenes in all other films would be required.

If the legislation is passed, the Culture Ministry will not allow the release of programmes that promote smoking.

smoking ban on children’s tV

Tougher rules on pilot train-ing are to be introduced fol-lowing this month’s Sukhoi Superjet crash in Indone-sia, which was blamed on pilot error. Forty-five peo-ple died when the airliner flew into a mountain on a demonstration flight.

Improving the standard of pilot training and bring-ing it in line with interna-tional standards was dis-cussed in the State Duma last week. Deputy Transport Minister Sergei Aristov said that the changes would in-crease the efficiency of state control over the training and certification of pilots, bringing it in line with in-ternational standards.

While big carriers have voluntarily adopted inter-national safety standards, domestic carriers operate under old regulations that are less stringent.

pilot training to be improved, says minister

“First of all there are Facebook and Twit-ter – new global

players entering the market. Second, in Russia we have a booming industry of online media which are independent from traditional media.

the Quote

ivan ZassourskydirecTor of New media aT The faculTy of jourNalism, moscow uNiVersiTy

of Russians now look to the internet for the latest news (up from 11pc in a year) while 28pc do not trust TV coverage.

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03most read Russia now www.rbth.rusection sponsored by rossiyskaya gazeta, russia distributed with the daily telegraph tuesday_may 29_2012 politics & societyGeorgia’s Stalin Museum reassesses its hometown hero

http://rbth.ru/15704

NEXT ISSUESkolkovo Innovation Park aims for the starsJune 26Special report from one of Russia’s ‘secret’ cities

history People are still debating the issues surrounding Russia’s most controversial leader

revered and reviled: stalin’s difficult legacy

There is a square near the Kremlin, where more than 20 years ago, hundreds of thousands of Muscovites pro-tested against Communists and the Soviet regime. This spot is now occupied by Okhotny Ryad, an under-ground shopping mall, where actors dressed as Stalin and Lenin pose next to the win-dows of expensive shops.

The lookalikes make money by having their pic-tures taken with tourists. “I am more popular and make up to 20,000 roubles (£400) a day,” boasts “Stalin”. He carefully imitates the iconic image created in Soviet mov-ies: masterful yet benevolent, and wearing a generalissimo uniform. Visitors from Rus-sian regions have more pic-tures taken with the looka-likes than other tourists. The lookalike believes Stalin is the most popular Russian fig-ure and would win an elec-tion against any Vladimir – Lenin or Putin.

personality cultThe truth is that the number of Russians with a positive attitude toward the former Soviet leader has fallen slightly to 30pc during the past decade, according to a Levada Centre study. Asked whether they would like to live under Stalin now, only 3pc said yes. There is a per-ception in Russia that soci-ety is split into Stalinists and anti-Stalinists; however, those with an unambiguous attitude toward Stalin are in the minority.

According to the Levada Centre, about 60pc of Rus-sians have two seemingly in-compatible images of the former dictator in their minds: the cruel tyrant who annihilated millions of peo-ple and the wise statesman who led the Soviet Union to prosperity. In Russian soci-ety, there is no rational un-derstanding of Stalin’s role, says Boris Dubin, head of so-ciopolitical research at the Levada Centre.

Any unequivocal assess-ment of Stalin’s role leads to conflict: a focus on the achievements of the USSR under Stalin is interpreted as an attempt to justify his crimes, while the emphasis on his guilt is seen by those Russians who want to be proud of their past as dam-aging their identity. “Many of my peers won’t believe the facts,” Alexander F, 15, writes of Stalin in one of the essays commissioned from Moscow

murderous tyrant or great statesman who built a prosperous country? many russians are ambivalent about the role of stalin.

Vladimir ruVinskysPecial to Rn

hero worship: some remember stalin as the man who dragged russia into the 20th century

pain of the past: mr drozdov researched his family history

high school pupils by Russia Now. “When I ask them about their relatives who were vic-tims of political repression, they say that they are not sorry, because they were real criminals.”

The authories, too, display a degree of ambivalence to-wards Stalin. “We should re-frain from a general assess-ment,” Vladimir Putin said in an address to the nation in 2009. He admitted that the USSR had been transformed into an industrial country under Stalin, to his credit, but it had been at the cost of too many lives. Mr Dubin argues that the two images are inseparable, albeit with no logical connection; one or the other comes to the fore depending on the situation.

the myth of stalinWhen giving reasons for Sta-lin’s popularity, sociologists refer to the “Stalin myth”, where people think of the leader as a heroic symbol of the Soviet people rather than a specific historical figure. This is the image of the Sta-lin who won the Great Pa-triotic War, which underlies the image of Russia as a mighty industrial power, Mr Dubin explains.

This myth was cultivated

back in the Brezhnev era of the Sixties and Seventies, when condemnation of the crimes committed by the state leader failed to expose the failings of Stalinism as a system of governance.

Opinions were also divid-ed at that time, says Boris Drozdov, 78. His grandfather was shot and his father was sent to a prison camp. “Those who were unaffected by the repression thought of Stalin as a genius, but those run down by the repression ma-chine believed that he per-sonified evil.” This pattern was imprinted in the collec-tive consciousness and has survived to our time.

Human rights activists be-lieve that the authorities con-tributed to the rebirth of the collective identity myth, using the Soviet achieve-ments as their role model. It reached a point where guide-lines for history teachers published in 2008, by order of the presidential adminis-tration, presented Stalin as an “effective manager” and “moderniser”.

The positive image of the dictator reflects a desire for order and the imminent pun-ishment of wrongdoers. Vic-toria Sultanova of the Putin-supporting Nashi youth

Mikhail Fedotov, head of the Presidential Human Rights Council, which initiated the campaign.

The council suggested that the last remaining archives should be declassified and memorials to the victims of repression should be estab-lished in Moscow and St Pe-tersburg. It also proposed creating the National Insti-tute of Memory.

In other words, the coun-cil wishes to shift the focus from the condemnation of Stalin’s image to something that should, in theory, unite people: the commemoration of victims. But the Commu-nists have vigorously opposed the initiative. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said: “Those who took this issue to the presidential ad-ministration are instigating a nationwide conflict.”

Mr Fedotov believes that the future of the programme is unclear. “I don’t rule out that Vladimir Putin may say that there are more serious problems for society than our programme,” he says.

However, he adds that the programme is likely to con-tinue following the appoint-ment of Dmitry Medvedev as prime minister. “Because presidential powers were being transferred, govern-ment officials had slowed the execution of the programme recently,” he says.

public debate neededIt seems obvious that sooner or later the issue will have to be discussed in public. “No normal society can develop without a public consensus as to its core values,” Mr Fe-dotov says. “We have to re-member this: totalitarianism is evil, because it is based on the idea that a human being is a means to achieve any ob-jective of a regime.” The idea that man exists for the state, not the other way around, is still dominant in Russia.

Mark Bochkarev, a teach-er in a private school, feels free to discuss Stalin’s crimes with his students. “However, even they sometimes employ the image of Stalin the cre-ator rather than Stalin the destroyer,” he says.

“From my nearly 15 years of teaching, I have gathered the impression that Stalin is still seen as the central fig-ure in Russian 20th-century history by the vast majority of students.”

Mr Bochkarev’s own crit-ical views of the Soviet dic-tator have obviously made an impression on some of his students, though, as one of them said: “Stalin is often spoken about in a half-bad, half-good light. But I think that Stalin’s Terror will be imprinted on people’s minds for a long time.”

Recently, the British media have been describing Russia’s military-political

policy as “aggressive” and threatening to the European countries that are planning to deploy elements of the American ballistic missile (ABM) defence system in their countries. All this at-tests to a one-sided view of the complicated and tricky issue and misleads the Bri-tish public about the Rus-sian position on the Euro ABM. I would like to clari-fy the situation concerning Russia’s position on ABM and tell readers candidly what has prompted our doubts and concerns.

The inseparable connec-tion between strategic offen-sive and defensive weapons has for many decades been an axiom for Russia and the United States. Military ex-perts and politicians in the two countries have always assumed that an imbalance in this area was fraught with destructive consequences for international security and strategic stability. Russia welcomed President Oba-ma’s 2009 decision to revise the plans for missile defen-ce in Europe that would ra-dically upset the strategic balance by giving the US substantial unilateral ad-vantages. The decision hel-ped to conclude the Strate-gic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) on April 8, 2010, which clearly states the inextricable link between strategic weapons and mis-sile defence.

However, while formally renouncing plans to deploy ABM, the US embarked on a new missile defence pro-ject in Europe as part of the “phased adaptive approach.” Russia finds this initiative equally worrying because it envisages the deployment of a capacity of interceptor missiles and other anti-mis-sile facilities close to Rus-sian borders and on waters adjacent to Russia.

Russia has never denied the possibility of risks and threats arising from missile proliferation. The Russian initiative to create a joint European missile defence system based on a sectoral principle put forward at the Russia-Nato Council sum-mit in Lisbon involved the formation in Europe of a common security perimeter with equal Russian partici-pation. The Nato partners were invited to develop a concept and architecture for a Euro ABM that would be jointly controlled and pro-portional to potential threats without undermining stra-tegic stability.

Russia was prepared to develop its proposal on the joint Euro ABM taking into account the opinion of Nato partners, but on the condi-tion that the equality of the parties is legally enshrined. Such an approach opened up unique opportunities for Russia and Nato to build a genuinely strategic par-tnership based on the prin-ciples of indivisible security, mutual trust, transparency and predictability.

Unfortunately, the United States and other Nato par-tners did not show a serious commitment to moving in that direction. They do not

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our security concerns must be taken seriously

intend, at least for now, to take into account Russian concerns about the architec-ture of Nato’s Euro ABM. They refuse to give Russia a say in determining the para-meters of the future European missile defence system, its concept and architecture.

The main stumbling block is guarantees for the non-tar-geting of missile defence de-ployed in Europe against Rus-sia and our strategic nuclear forces. We are being assured at all levels that the future missile defence system is not intended to weaken the Rus-sian nuclear deterrent. But our proposals to make these as-surances legally binding are rejected out of hand. Meanwhi-le, the creation of the Euro ABM is gathering pace.

We are ready to discuss the status and content of such obligations, but they must be formulated in such a way as to enable Russia to judge not on the basis of unsupported promises, but on the basis of objective military-technical criteria how the US and Nato actions relate to their decla-rations. During the conferen-ce on missile defence issues held in Moscow on May 3-4, Russian experts presented comprehensive assessments of these criteria. But we did not hear an articulate statement on Nato’s position.

We continue to assume that the creation of missile defen-ce in Europe without Russia’s participation will inevitably conflict with the Euro-Atlan-tic’s ongoing search for com-

mon principles of regional se-curity. There will be the risk of a rollback to the times of confrontation and dividing lines. The formation of new security architecture in Eu-rope will be called into ques-tion. There is still time to reach a mutual understanding. Rus-sia has the political will to do so. But if this is to become reality, our partners must ap-proach the task of taking into account Russia’s legitimate security interests in an honest and responsible manner.

Failing that, Russia will have to act in accordance with the way events develop. Rus-sia reserves the right to re-nounce further moves in the field of disarmament and arms control, although this would be a highly undesirable deve-lopment. In addition, consi-dering the inseparable link between offensive and defen-sive weapons, there may be grounds for our country’s wi-thdrawal from Start.

Russia is not shutting the door on dialogue with the United States and the North Atlantic alliance on issues of missile defence or on practi-cal co-operation in this sphe-re. But the road to such work lies in the creation of a clear legal framework for co-ope-ration that would ensure that our legitimate interests are taken into account.

Alexander Yakovenko is Am-bassador of the Russian Fed-eration to the United King-dom. He was previously Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federa-tion. Follow him on Twitter: @Amb_Yakovenko

there is still time to reach a mutual understanding. Russia has the political will to do so

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boris drozdov tells russia now how his father and grandfather suffered under stalin, and why their stories need to be told.

About 10 years ago, Boris Drozdov, 78, began research-ing the fate of his grandfa-ther, Alexei Drozdov, a law-yer and a Bolshevik, and his father, Pavel, an accountant who spent more than 10 years in the Gulag, the system of forced labour camps. Docu-ments relating to them were scattered over the former So-viet Union, but Memorial helped him to find them.

Like so many others, Mr Drozdov’s grandfather Alex-ei was accused of counter-revolutionary activities. In 1921, 18 days after his

arrest in the Crimea, he was executed.

Mr Drozdov’s father, Pavel, started work at the age of 15. “He worked as a nurse and an errand boy, wherever he could find a job,” Mr Dro-zdov recalls. His father, too, was arrested in June 1924 on

the same charge, but instead was sentenced to three years in a labour camp.

Released in 1927, he stayed on, like many other former prisoners, to build the local paper plant, where he worked as an accountant. Mr Droz-dov was born in Moscow in 1934 while his father was liv-ing in the city.

In early 1937, the chief accountant of the paper plant was arrested. “My dad was not arrested because somebody had to write the annual report. My father had beautiful handwriting and all of the reports were re-leased in my father’s hand.”

However, once his father had completed the job, he was arrested again and re-turned to a gulag in Kolya in 1938. “I learnt that my father was alive only in 1951,

when he was released.” The family travelled to the

camp by steamboat to bring him home. “When we got off the ship, there were three men waiting for us. I asked my mother, ‘Which of them is my dad?’ I had not seen him for 13 years.”

In 1956, three years after Stalin’s death, his father was rehabilitated. “The atrocities committed by Stalin out-weigh his services,” Mr Dro-zdov maintains. “The con-struction projects were built on the bones of the convicts and victory in the war was won by the people.

“I bear no grudge against the country or the people. But it is a pity that few victims of the repression are still around. There is no one to tell the young generation about it.”

‘the atrocities outweigh the services’

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movement told Mr Putin last year: “This corruption, crime… there were no such things under Stalin, because everyone was scared.” She said this was a good reason for Russia to return to total-itarian rule. Mr Putin said then that it was a “dead-end track,” which “smothers cre-ativity and free thinking” and leads to a country’s collapse. But Ms Sultanova did not seem convinced because she believed it was repression and prison labour that had brought industrial prosper-ity to the USSR.

memories erasedSociologists argue that in the 2000s, the Russian collective consciousness finally recon-ciled itself with the Soviet past. “But this happened by erasing the memory of the repressive nature of the to-talitarian regime, mass mur-der, the Gulag, deportation of entire nationalities, to say nothing of the Holocaust, which is practically non-ex-istent in the public con-sciousness,” says Mr Dubin.

“In Russia, the memory of the Terror has been driven to a far corner, not least be-cause there are no monu-ments, no memorial plaques, no museums – there is noth-

ing,” says Arseny Roginsky, head of Memorial, the inter-national historical and civil rights society, which aims to rehabilitate the victims of political terror.

Memorial notes that peo-ple are now less interested in discovering what hap-pened to relatives who were victims of political repres-sion than they were during a surge of interest in the sub-ject in the Nineties. The Le-vada Centre assumes that the main trend of the past dec-ade is the growing number of Russians who are indif-ferent to Stalin and his ac-tions. The proportion of those who are indifferent grew from 12pc in 2001 to 47pc in 2012. “It is not really indif-ference, but the abandon-ment of any attempt to un-derstand who Stalin really was,” Lev Gudkov, Levada Centre director, concludes.

Victims rememberedThe third attempt in the past 60 years to have a public de-bate on Stalin’s crimes took place in 2011, this time under Dmitry Medvedev. “This was essentially an attempt to per-petuate the memory of the victims of political repres-sion rather than a de-Sta-linisation crusade,” explains

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Making Russia a better place to live – in six yearshttp://rbth.ru/15635special report

aggeration, she does more work for the country than perhaps an entire ministry on the executive side of the government. She manages a very difficult family and she does that with considerable skill, too.”

And as Starr concludes in her Devushka Diaries, in an attempt to explain the ap-peal of monarchy: “There’s a little part in all of us that still believes (or wants to be-lieve) in fairy tales.”

As Britain celebrates the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, there will be many in Rus-sia wishing her well, too. Not only do many Russians fondly remember her state visit to Moscow and St Pe-tersburg in 1994, but many are aware of the various connections between the Windsors and the Russian Imperial Royal family, the Romanovs.

The royal love story be-tween the two countries spans centuries, from the tsar who proposed to an English queen to the countless Rus-sians today who love to watch the British Royal family on television. Katharine Starr, author of the The Devushka Diaries blog, wrote in April last year that “the royal wed-ding has captured Russia’s attention”. Starr attributed the phenomenon partly to historic links between the Windsors and the Romanovs and posts a remarkable pho-tograph of Nicholas II and George V, who were cousins, looking identical in their twin sailor suits.

ivan’s terrible courtshipImperial relations between Britain and Russia started long before either of the fam-ilies was on the throne, back in the days of Queen Eliza-beth I. Ivan IV (better known as Ivan the Terrible), who was the earliest ruler to call him-self a tsar, first established diplomatic and trading links with Britain in 1553. A let-ter written by the tsar to Eliz-abeth I in 1569 suggests re-lations were not all plain sailing. He called the queen’s

diamond Jubilee The linked history of the Romanovs and Windsors means the Queen has many Russian admirers who will be celebrating her reign

advisers “boors”who sought only “their own profit” and compared the Queen to an old maid. The letter backs claims that Elizabeth I re-jected a secret marriage pro-posal from Ivan the Terrible. The historian Felix Pryor, au-thor of Elizabeth I – Her Life in Letters, has called it “quite simply the rudest letter Eliz-abeth ever received”.

romance and tragedyElizabeth I may have reject-ed the tsar’s advances, but three centuries later, the two Royal families were connect-ed through inter-dynastic

marriages. Two of Victoria’s granddaughters – Elizabeth and Alix – married Ro-manovs; their stories are fraught with romance and tragedy. Elizabeth married the tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, in 1884, though Victoria did not approve.

Elizabeth’s younger sister Alix met the Russian crown prince Nicholas (Sergei’s nephew) at her sister’s wed-ding. The tsar disapproved of their relationship, hoping for a marital alliance with France, but Elizabeth and Sergei helped the young lov-ers write secretly to each other until finally, a decade after they had met, they were married. Alix converted to Orthodox Christianity and became Alexandra Feodor-ovna. Both met with a trag-ic end. After Sergei was as-sassinated in 1905, Elizabeth founded the beautiful Mar-tha and Mary Convent in Moscow, before being mur-

dered herself by the Bolshe-viks. There is still a statue of her outside the convent and another above the doorway of Westminster Abbey. Alex-andra and Tsar Nicholas II were executed with the rest of their family by the Bol-sheviks in 1918.

mementos from russiaOne of the most striking pieces at the royal Fabergé exhibition at Buckingham Palace last year was Queen Victoria’s silver-gilt note-book, a present from Tsar Nicholas II, which was signed by all the European kings and queens who came to Buckingham Palace for her Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

Among the many photo-graphs of Russian and Brit-ish royals is a well-known image of Queen Victoria with the Russian Imperial family at Balmoral Castle; Victoria is looking fondly at Nicho-las and Alexandra’s nine-month-old daughter Olga, who is sitting on Alexandra’s lap (right).

Frances Dimond, a former curator of the Royal Photo-graph Collection, says that these old photographs show that there was “a European union that went on long be-fore the EU. I like the idea that London was a meeting place for these people… it is fascinating to imagine them here, moving about among familiar places.”

soviet encountersOne of the most entertain-ing commentators on early 20th-century politics was Ivan Maisky, Soviet ambas-sador to London in the Thir-ties and early Forties. In his diary, he describes the shock when Joachim von Ribben-trop, German ambassador to London, greeted George VI with a stiff-armed Nazi sa-

Last year, a statue of the astronaut Yuri Gagarin was unveiled on The Mall in Lon-don. Gagarin became the first human in space in 1961 when his Vostok spacecraft orbited the Earth. When he visited London later the same year, he was greeted by cheering crowds. The most recent bi-ography of Gagarin, written by the literary critic and former Russian Playboy ed-itor Lev Danilkin, tells how Queen Elizabeth II “side-

stepped all regulations and invited the Soviet officer to her palace for lunch”, where she whispered advice about cutlery, joking that she was “born and brought up in this palace” and still didn’t know “in which order I should use all these forks and knives.”

royal wedding feverLast year’s royal wedding be-tween Prince William and Kate Middleton was watched with delight by many Rus-

sians. The fact that many of the invited guests had Rus-sian origins because of the intricately intertwined Eu-ropean royal families, made the event all the more ap-pealing to them.

A Russian friend praised the way the Queen has car-ried out her duties over the past 60 years, saying: “She is the single most admirable image of England and a per-fect ambassador for the Com-monwealth. Without any ex-

nations united by ties of love, tragedy and friendship

guard of honour: the Queen and the duke of edinburgh were guests of boris yeltsin at the kremlin in 1994

european union: clockwise from top, tsar nicholas ii, edward, prince of wales, Queen Victoria and alexandra Feodorovna (with nine-month-old daughter olga) at balmoral in 1896

the many russian connections with the british royal family include a secret marriage proposal from ivan the terrible.

phoebe taplin special To Rn

lute, almost knocking the king over, and a state ban-quet where the “food, unlike most English dinners, was tasty”. He recalled the young Princess Elizabeth, dressed in a light pink dress and clearly “terribly excited”.

In August 1940, Maisky wrote that the King’s wife, the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, “has set her-self the task of bringing pop-ularity and splendour to the Royal family”. Maisky’s com-ments suggest that Queen Elizabeth set the pattern for today’s busy royal schedules: “She never rests… bazaars, hospitals, telephone opera-tors, farmers… she visits them all, gives her blessing, graces with her presence.” The current Russian ambas-sador, Alexander Yakovenko, recommends Maisky’s diaries to anyone considering a dip-lomatic career.

Queen Victoria’s granddaughters – elizabeth and alix – both married Romanovs

The Queen side-stepped all regulations and invited Gagarin to the palace for lunch

Tsar Ivan IV wrote an insulting letter to Queen Elizabeth I calling her an ‘old maid’.

Mikhail Gorbachev meets Queen Elizabeth II. She took part in his 80th birthday cele-brations in London last year.

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interested in the British Royal family. I know this from my own experience as London correspondent for Rossiyskaya Gazeta. To re-port about the Queen too often and toо much is not an issue; there never seem to be enough Royal stories to sat-isfy the curiosity of Russian readers.

It was Lieutenant General Sergey Khlebnikov, superin-tendent of the Moscow Krem-lin, whom I have known for many years, who told me about the team of Russian riders getting ready to leave for Windsor. The general takes pride in having Brit-ish guests – the Royal Artil-lery Band and 19th Regiment Royal Artillery (the Highland Gunners) – attend the inter-national Spasskaya Tower military musical festival held in Red Square at the end of each summer.

It was in Red Square that the British organisers of the Windsor festival spotted the team of Kremlin equestrians in 2010 and invited them to attend the show. All have taken a masterclass at Rus-sia’s Kremlin Riding School, which was established more than five years ago by the Federal Guard Service of Russia and chairman of the board of Uralsib Financial Corporation Nikolay Tsvetk-ov. The president of the school is the Kremlin superintend-ent himself.

So why did the Kremlin need a riding school in the first place? To restore the unique horsemanship skills for which Russia has been

known for centuries, specif-ically embodied by the tsar’s elite mounted troops, the Cossack regiments.

Most riders could not even begin to imagine the outra-geous exploits a Don or Urals Cossack was able to perform on horseback. In the heat of battle, and at full speed, a Cossack could pass out of sight, hiding under his horse’s belly. Or turn 180 degrees in the saddle to face the enemy – who did not expected a bul-let or slashing sabre from that direction.

Cossack tricks on gallop-ing horses were called “spins”, because they left observers with a feeling of dizziness; these “spins” were designed to disorientate enemies on the battlefield. I heard about this from my great-grandfa-ther, who served in a Cossack regiment in the Urals. It was the “Urals spin” that was seen as a particularly complicat-ed manoeuvre.

The secret of the Cossack riders’ skills – called dzhigi-tovka – was passed down from father to son. After the cavalry regiments were dis-banded, the art of trick rid-ing was almost lost, but mod-ern Russian riders are rediscovering it using old documentary films and other archive material.

The secret was not only the rider’s mastery, but the spe-cially bred and trained hors-es. General director of the Kremlin Riding School Boris Petrov says that it is virtu-ally impossible to use foreign horses for dzhigitovka. It seems the indigenous Rus-sian breeds – Donskaya and Budenovskaya – carry the

ing. The peculiar design of the Cossack saddle and sit-ting position is ideal for dzhigitovka. When riding in a Cossack saddle, the legs go down in a straight line. Be-cause the legs remained straight, Cossacks never used spurs, but instead had a whip; today, spurs would be dangerous during trick rid-ing. However, the horses of the Kremlin Riding School are so well trained there is no need for spurs, let alone a whip: they start galloping smoothly at their riders’ bare-ly perceptible command.

The riskiest stunts on the horses are carried out by the woman who stands on top of the human pyramid. An-gelina Bragilskaya, 24, is said to be the greatest daredevil on the Kremlin team. “We have to cool her off from time to time, because she knows no fear”, Elena Kochetova, ex-ecutive director of the pro-gramme, says of her friend. She openly admires Bragil-skaya’s courage, though.

And what will the fearless equestrian do after leaving trick riding? “I will stay close”, Bragilskaya smiles, nodding at her stallion. “I cannot imagine my life without hors-es. I guess I’ll always be around them.”

Another star is 27-year-old Yulia Kalinina. A fabulous acrobat, Kalinina is a com-bat weapons master, show-casing her remarkable skills during dzhigitovka pro-grammes. The audience is mesmerised by the petite per-former, who spins on horse-back like a gymnast on the bars to chop the “head” off her enemy. Kalinina is a pro-

From the Kremlin to the Queen at the gallop

trick and treat: the kremlin school riders thrilled the windsor crowds with their astonishing feats of skill and bravery

fessional economist who started riding at an early age. She worked as an account-ant in her native Volgograd before she came to the Krem-lin Riding School. Coming from Cossack stock, it is no surprise that she preferred the horse and sabre to her calculator.

Vladimirov, 25, who is fa-mous for his “flying horse-man” trick, creates complex stunts together with his coach – a forward somersault or backward somersault to the ground from the gallop-ing horse. Vladimirov, who is from Khotkovo, near Mos-cow, trained at a private horse club before joining the Kremlin School.

The school accepts chil-dren from the age of two. “Children come to their first lessons with their parents, and we train the child, the mothers and the fathers to help them cope with fear”, Ms Kochetova says. “So we have turned into a family school. As soon as they turn 12, they start training seriously to be-come riders.”

It all sounds very impres-sive. But is the Kremlin School just a club for the Russian elite and their off-spring? “Not at all”, Ms Ko-chetova assures me. “The school is open to everyone. Many children come from far away regions, and they are from ordinary families.

“We are a not-for-profit or-ganisation; all the money we make at shows is invested in further development. We do it for pleasure, sport and as a history lesson. We are re-viving the traditions of which we are so proud.”

Windsor “battlefield” was performed by a grapevine with a hat and bottle of water placed on top.

However, if you think that slashing a vine is easy, think again. The blow must be de-livered from the shoulder and the warrior should feel the sabre as if it were a contin-uation of his arm. If the blow is delivered with the wrist only, the sabre will not slice through the vine.

This, along with many other techniques, is taught to would-be Cossacks at the Kremlin Riding School. First of all they are taught to ride

standing up on the horse; this is the fundamental skill to master.

In fact, there are only a few riders who have mastered all of these skills; the Kremlin School students have to train eight hours a day to attain this mastery. The riders and their horses must be able to negotiate obstacles – some of which are set ablaze – en-gage targets at the gallop and throw knives and daggers at full speed.

The Kremlin dzhigit trick riders use special Cossack saddles, because normal tack is unsuitable for stunt rid-

continued From page 1

ability to do this sort of work in their genes. “The Russians developed the breeds that could be sent into the heat

of battle, where shots are fired and sabres rattle”, Mr Petrov says.

“The Russian market for horse-breeding is currently on the rise, and we hope that,

in about 10 years’ time, Rus-sian-bred horses will be trad-ed at auctions and enjoy a strong demand as breeds that are uniquely suited to trick riding. If a country wishes to produce a show similar to that brought to Windsor by our team, it will have to pro-cure Russian horses.”

The Russian programme at Windsor was unique, the Kremlin riders demonstrat-ing horseback acrobatics and mastery of the cold steel that would have made their fore-fathers, the unsurpassed Cos-sacks, proud. Truth be told, the role of the enemy on the

cossack tricks on horses, or ‘spins’, were designed to disorientate enemies on the battlefield

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alexeymoiseev

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While popular reaction to the new govern-ment has been

mixed, business leaders have praised the stability that the new Cabinet brings. Most investors want to avoid radical changes in go-vernment but it is clear that some change is needed.

The steady-as-she-goes crowd have commented op-timistically on a couple of the new appointments. The promotion of former presi-dential economic adviser Arkady Dvorkovich to the post of deputy prime mi-nister for industrial and energy policy is seen as a big step forward for the li-beral camp, as Dvorkovich, like his former boss Ger-man Gref, talks sense. Part of his brief will be to over-see the energy sector.

The appointment of the relatively unknown Alexan-der Novak to oversee the energy portfolio came as a surprise, as Novak is not an oil man but comes from the Finance Ministry. At the same time, the departure of Siloviki top dog Igor Se-chin shakes up the control structure of the energy in-dustry. He will now head Rosneftgaz, the holding company that owns the sta-te’s stake in the oil major Rosneft.

It is assumed that Sechin will remain de facto in charge of energy. He will clearly be responsible for operational issues on the sector’s development. Mas-sive investment is needed, and deals galore will have to be cut with foreigners to develop the Arctic, the Ba-rents Sea gas deposits and

of law and reducing the costs and risks of doing business, these reforms will go a long way to making Russia more attractive to investors.

These measures follow other recent developments that suggest Mr Putin is ta-king the reform agenda very seriously. Recent big deals between the Russian oil com-pany Rosneft and its US rival Chevron and the Norwegian Statoil were personally pre-sided over by Mr Putin, which shows he is committed to working with foreign par-tners. This is a symbolic de-velopment for Russia, given how central its energy- exporting sector is to its ove-rall economy.

Furthermore, recent an-nouncements of investment in Russia by foreign compa-nies including the car ma-nufacturers Renault-Nissan, also demonstrate that the government’s attempts to

diversify away from natural resources might finally be starting to pay off.

On foreign policy, the go-vernment has recently an-nounced a new focus on fa-cilitating visa-free travel between Russia and Europe, which would help reduce the costs and bureaucracy of doing business in Russia.

Investors cannot be certain that all of these initiatives will be implemented and, given the government’s track record, there are reasons to be cautious. But this time, Mr Putin is under real external and internal pressure to se-cure his legacy as the presi-dent who finally delivered a modern economy for Russia. The stakes are high, not just for the president but for the millions of Russians who are looking for a secure econo-mic future.

Alexey Moiseev is head of macroeconomic analysis at VTB Capital, London.

As Vladimir Putin settles in as presi-dent of Russia, fo-reign investors will

wonder what the future holds for them.

The high levels of capi-tal flight suggest local in-vestors are unconvinced about the prospects for se-rious structural and econo-mic reform under President Putin, which is widely viewed as essential if Rus-sia is to maintain its cur-rent rate of economic growth. And their scepti-cism is not without foun-dation. The Russian autho-rities’ track record of reform has been chequered, with periods of very positive mo-vement (notably 1992 to 1995 and 2000 to 2003) being the exception rather than the norm.

This time things are dif-ferent. A new range of ex-ternal factors have cropped up over the past few years that will galvanise the Kremlin into real and trans-formative action. Not least of these is that it is unli-kely that Russia will be able to rely forever on high oil and gas prices, which to some extent have underpin-ned its economic perfor-mance in the past decade.

Already, there is a great deal of evidence that Mr Putin is this time taking personal responsibility for the reform agenda, which may indicate that things are going to change for the bet-ter. President Putin signed a decree “on the long-term economic policy” on the day of his inauguration. This de-cree contains around 30 major reform measures, in-cluding improving and sim-plifying business regulation and tax-reporting require-ments, selling all state sta-kes in non-resource com-panies by 2016, allowing foreign companies to par-ticipate in bids for road in-frastructure projects and removing the threat of cri-minal sanction from eco-nomic legal disputes.

By strengthening the rule

Investors pin hopes on putin’s reform agenda

london blog

moscow blog

ben aris

specIAl to rn

steady as she goes will keep business happy

open up Eastern Siberia. Andrei Belousov, appoin-

ted as head of Economic De-velopment, is a respected eco-nomist who is close to Putin and supports his preferences for state spending. The plan, it seems, is to extract more revenue from natural resour-ces and spend it on big state initiatives to promote diver-sification and growth.

The massive 20 trillion rou-ble spending programme on the military-industrial sec-tor will be one of the main beneficiaries of the revenue, and Putin is committed to making this plan work. The wisdom is questionable – for-mer finance minister Alexei Kudrin quit over the issue.

But while the economics are doubtful, you can see why Putin wants to do it: nego-tiations on the West’s missi-le shield continue, and from the Kremlin it looks like a threat to national security.

Other appointments are a mixed bag. Generally, we can expect more of what we had for most of the past decade: steady progress with reforms, but nothing to catch the hea-dlines and plenty of mishaps in the implementation.

While a dramatic change in the government would be exciting, so long as Putin continues to improve the quality of life, for the busi-ness community at least, steady as she goes is fine.

Ben Aris is the editor and publisher of Business New Europe.

the plan, it seems, is to take revenue from natural resources and to spend it on big state initiatives

putin wants to secure his legacy as the president who delivered a modern economy to russia

The government’s privatisa-tion programme suffered a blow last week when Presi-dent Vladimir Putin an-nounced that energy compa-nies would be withdrawn from the sale because of mar-ket conditions.

The announcement was seen as a U-turn after First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said only weeks earlier that a new “concrete plan” for the sale of equity in 10 state assets would be signed by the new prime min-ister, Dmitry Medvedev. Mr Shuvalov’s comments fol-lowed similar statements from Mr Putin, who called for the privatisation pro-gramme to be broadened and given greater priority in a pre-election manifesto pub-lished in Vedomosti.

But following the signing of the decree removing en-ergy assets from sale on Tues-day, the concrete plan seemed to crumble, resulting in in-vestors fleeing Russian stocks and causing market turmoil on Wednesday.

In an attempt to reassure investors on Thursday, Mr Putin ordered the govern-ment to approve a plan to sell assets held by state en-ergy holding company Ros-neftegaz in 2013-2015, pav-

privatisation shares will not be floated ‘for peanuts’

the much anticipated £18bn privatisation programme faces a new setback after last week’s announcement by president putin.

ing the way for the sale of stakes in Gazprom and Ros-neft, reported Reuters. But the president said Rosnefte-gaz could take part in auc-tions of state-controlled en-ergy and power companies to stop them being sold to the private sector cheaply.

“[These companies] are un-dervalued and we would not like them to be privatised for peanuts and then to be resold

right away for serious money,” Mr Putin said. Using Ros-neftegaz as a vehicle for ac-quiring state companies was a way to recapitalise them using non-budgetary re-sources, and “nothing has changed with regard to pri-vatisation plans”.

sell-off delaysThe privatisation programme, which was originally aiming to sell £18bn worth of state assets by 2014, has been on hold since the first stake sale – 10pc in the banking giant VTB, which sold for £2bn in

early 2011. This year, the gov-ernment had planned to sell stakes in three major com-panies – lending giant Sber-bank, the United Grain Com-pany and Novorossiysk Seaport – but analysts say the size of the Sberbank sale may swamp the market.

The placement of 7.6pc of Sberbank was postponed last autumn because of poor mar-ket conditions, which pushed down the bank’s share price. “The Sberbank stake sale is likely to happen this year, but it is likely that other offer-ings will be postponed due to the size of the placement,” Andrei Kuznetsov, a strate-gist at Citibank in Moscow, told The Moscow News.

“If the placement happens, say in the autumn, it will be hard for smaller companies to sell their stakes due to market supply,” he added.

ministers divided Mr Putin’s announcement followed hot on the heels of the new Cabinet being an-nounced last Monday. The former deputy prime minis-ter, Igor Sechin, wasn’t given a new job in the Cabinet but has been made chief execu-tive of oil giant Rosneft. Often described as Russia’s energy tsar, Mr Sechin is a close ally of Mr Putin. However, his de-parture from the government last week was not a surprise because of the past disagree-ments he has had with Mr Medvedev. Mr Sechin had long sought to delay the sell-off, claiming it would lead to

many assets being sold at un-acceptably low prices.

Like many other economy-related issues, the privatisa-tion question has caused a deep divide between the fis-cally conservative and the liberal-spending camps in the new government. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who initiated the privatisa-tion programme when he was

energy firms dropped from sell-off plans

share flotation: a 20pc stake in novorossiysk seaport on the black sea may be sold this year

natasha doFFthe moscoW neWs

president, leads the camp of ministers in the new Cabi-net who want to speed up privatisation to improve cor-porate governance and at-tract foreign investment. Other officials are in favour of waiting until share prices have risen, in order to max-imise revenues from the sales of state assets.

Much depends on the man-

agement of the individual companies due to be priva-tised. “If the companies are interested in privatisation, as Sberbank management seems to be, then there is a higher chance the process will go ahead,” Natalya Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank, told The Moscow News.

getting the timing rightAnalysts say in the short term at least, the authorities are likely to try to convince the markets that they are seri-ous about privatisation, while holding back from taking ac-tion for as long as possible.

“Investors view privatisa-tion as a litmus test to see if the government is able to re-duce its presence [in the economy]. Even if we are only talking about a minority stake, the message for the market is really important,” Ms Orlova said.

“You can’t realistically talk about reducing [government] control of the economy if you can’t even manage to priva-tise 10pc of VTB.”

projected privatisationsWe don’t want these companies to be privatised for peanuts then resold for serious money

the authorities are likely to try to convince the markets that they are serious about privatisation

legislation putin backs medvedev agenda with calls for growth and a better climate for entrepreneurs

president Vladimir putin promised to create jobs, raise salaries, build roads and increase investment on his first day back in power.

Hours after he took the oath of office on May 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin was busy signing a raft of eco-nomic and social policy de-crees, helping to project his image as an active, energet-ic and business-like leader.

Before becoming president, Mr Putin had promised to continue the modernisation and business-friendly poli-cies of the former president Dmitry Medvedev. The de-crees outline Mr Putin’s am-bitious plans to improve the business climate and speed economic growth. However, at a time when many public sector workers in Britain and other parts of Europe face pay freezes, Mr Putin also promised pay rises to Rus-sian public sector workers.

According to the news agency Itar-Tass, Mr Putin’s first act as president was to order a “lump-sum payment to a group of Russian citi-zens on the occasion of the 67th Victory in the Great Pa-

triotic War, 1941 to 1945”. Helping war veterans when presidents take office is be-coming a tradition: when Mr Medvedev assumed office in 2008, he immediately signed a decree to provide housing for veterans.

Another decree signed by President Putin ordered the new government to “increase the pace and sustainability of economic growth, increase

the real incomes of citizens of the Russian Federation and achieve technological leadership of the Russian economy”. It also spelt out a number of economic indica-tors the new government should aim to achieve. These include increasing invest-ment by at least 25pc of the gross domestic product by 2015 and by up to 27pc by 2018. Mr Putin also ordered the government to improve Russia’s “Doing Business” ranking with the World Bank from 120th in 2011 to 50th by 2015 and 20th in 2018.

Other business-friendly di-rectives in the decree include ordering the government to privatise the country’s non-oil sector by 2016 “with the exception of natural monop-olies and defence-related companies”. It also says that by September 1, the govern-ment must submit a progress report on the efforts made by regional leaders to improve the investment climate. State guarantees for projects of medium-sized businesses working in the country’s non-extractive industries are to be established. Mr Putin also told the government to pre-pare a bill on the use of oil revenues and submit it to the

State Duma by October 1 this year. As infrastructure is im-portant for attracting invest-ment, the decree says that the government must establish a mechanism to attract for-eign companies with ad-vanced technologies to build roads in Russia.

Mr Putin’s decree on the “implementation of state so-cial policy” includes a wide range of measures designed to fulfil his campaign prom-ises. They include a 1.4- to 1.5-fold increase in Russians’ real wages by 2018. He also promised to raise the level of teachers’ salaries and en-sure a 200pc rise in the sal-aries of doctors and research workers in the regions by 2013. The government must also explore the possibility of raising the average sala-ries of social workers and health-care professionals in the regions by 100pc by 2018. Up to a third of funds saved by reorganising ineffective bodies will pay for these rises. Mr Putin has also promised to create 25 million jobs.

In an attempt to reward only effective employees, Mr Putin wants to introduce a new system of performance-related pay for public sector workers by December.

It’s business-friendly as usual

going for growth: the investment climate in the regions must improve, says mr putin

tai adelajarussIA profIle

5,000roubles (£100) is the maximum one-off payment for Second World War veterans and former inmates of concentration camps.

200pcis the rise pledged for doctors and re-search workers in the regions by 2013. A 1.4- to 1.5-fold real wage rise for all is promised by 2018.

20this where Mr Putin wants Russia to be ranked in the World Bank’s “Doing Busi-ness” indicator by 2018. It is currently ranked 120th.

the numbers

markets micex-rts aims to attract international companies with a base in russia to start trading in moscow

the russian stock exchange micex-rts is changing the way it works to make it easier to list shares and attract foreign investors.

The newly merged Moscow stock exchange is encourag-ing more Russian companies to list there, and pushing for international companies op-erating in Russia to issue debt in roubles.

Last month, the Micex-RTS exchange hosted con-

ferences in New York and London called “Russia is not about bears” for fund man-agers and individual inves-tors. The aim was to update participants on the merger and encourage investors to list on the exchange by tell-ing them what the Russian market can offer.

The merger of Russia’s two largest stock exchanges, Micex and RTS, in Decem-ber 2011 has provided a one-stop-shop for trading equi-ties, bonds, derivatives, and currencies. It is part of Mos-

cow’s plan to become an in-ternational financial centre. The combined exchange has an estimated value of $4.5bn (£2.8m) and is reported to be planning an IPO in 2013.

Micex-RTS president Ruben Aganbegyan said the exchange wanted to liberal-ise the issuing of securities and improve the market for companies to launch IPOs in Russia. The exchange is working with local legisla-tors to bring procedures in line with international best practice. “We are trying to get

the country to move as quick-ly as possible to global prin-ciples of corporate govern-ance and information disclosure to investors, espe-cially the most liquid ones,” said Mr Aganbegyan.

“We are delighted at the strong interest the London financial community has shown in the reforms we are implementing at Micex-RTS. I am confident that, as these reforms come online, inter-national market participants will be increasingly drawn to trading in Moscow.”

As reforming the legislation will take time, Micex-RTS is considering the example of the Brazilian exchange Novo Mercado, which issued its own set of rules that compa-nies can adopt voluntarily in addition to the ones required by law to be listed in the new segment of the exchange.

“The first stage is to at-tract companies with a busi-ness or investment in Russia. We’re not competing for glo-bal listings but for ones in Russia, so they will not go abroad,” Mr Aganbegyan

said. Micex-RTS was talk-ing to several big interna-tional firms and planned to have them on board by the end of the year.

Last year, Micex-RTS signed an agreement on co-operation with the Organi-sation for Economic Co-op-eration and Development (OECD) to strengthen cor-porate governance in Russia. Mr Aganbegyan said the OECD had brought the ex-periences and best practices of other emerging markets to Russia.

Stock exchange to play by global rules

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06 most readRussia now www.rbth.rusection sponsored by rossiyskaya gazeta, russia distributed with the daily telegraph tuesday_may 29_2012

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strongman on a tightrope

cut to the real issuesit’s make up or break up

There are few statesmen today who can claim that their name has become a brand.

Vladimir Putin, though, is one of them.

As president and prime minister, Vladimir Putin has strode the political arena for almost 13 years; he has be-come not just a symbol of his country, but the personifica-tion of a certain type of pol-itics. This is a product of an era of transition, in Russia and in the world. It’s a peri-od when the long-established system of global political co-ordinates is in flux, many tra-ditional ideologies have been shaken, and borders have be-come porous and blurred – while new and puzzling di-viding lines are emerging.

Against a backdrop of moral relativism, conceptual incoherence (“humanitarian” intervention is an example) and uncertainty about the future, there is a need for strong leaders capable of pursuing their course and casting aside traditional con-straints. This is practically impossible in a developed de-mocracy, though it has be-come almost commonplace to speak about the destruc-tive inefficiency of this form of government in a crisis. But societies in transition can af-ford it: institutions limiting personal rule have not yet taken hold and popular be-lief in quick fixes is strong.

If such a leader appears in a small country highly de-pendent on events beyond its borders, he or she tends to become at best an enfant

While the Western press was busy comparing the numbers of Pu-

tin’s men with Medvedev’s men in the new Russian gov-ernment, Russians were look-ing at developments in the Cabinet from a wholly dif-ferent angle.

The new education minis-ter, Dmitry Livanov, proposed cutting the number of stu-dents given higher education at the state’s expense by 50pc, which unleashed a storm in the popular press. But it went almost unnoticed by the major international news networks and by the Russian liberal press. Both were too busy determining the degree of liberalism of the new gov-ernment, its openness to Western ideas and so on.

Livanov’s proposal chimed with the popular Russian stereotype of top-notch eco-nomic liberalism. After 22 years of reform, the average Russian knows that if a boss talks of making a sector more “competetive,” he means cut-ting jobs and charging for services that were previous-ly free – in short, making life harder and more expensive.

Was Livanov’s suggestion indeed a liberal one? From an economic point of view, yes. Business has long been complaining about Russian education being too detached from real life and requiring too much taxpayers’ money, often for an education that is of no use to business – such as teaching young people good taste in art.

From a pragmatic point of view, Livanov probably chose the right moment for his statement – the country is in post-electoral cycle. Now that the vote is over and Vladimir Putin is back in the Kremlin, one can safely start slashing free education plac-es. Interestingly, this kind of reform had long been advo-cated by the experts from the Higher School of Economics (HSE) – a powerful breeding ground for Russia’s econom-ic reformers, whose repre-sentatives can be seen in the government, in the Kremlin and among the speakers at anti-Putin rallies.

Livanov was echoing the HSE when he said the change was needed to raise salaries for university professors – strangely, one of the most dis-possessed professional groups in Russia. A similar reform was carried out by the Geor-gian president Mikheil Saa-kashvili. Modern Georgia is often suggested as a model for Russia by western and Russian academics with a penchant for radical market solutions.

Here’s the rub: Livanov’s reform is the exact opposite of what Putin’s voters cast their votes for during the presidential election. In one of his campaign articles, Putin promised to raise the students’ monthly allowanc-es to a minimum subsistence level. Putin then also praised the fact that so many Rus-sians had been through high-er education, seeing it as an advantage, not a handicap.

Then why is this man con-stantly appointing to various positions the men who do the exact opposite of his state-ments? Livanov is not the only example. Take Arkady Dvorkovich, the new govern-ment’s vice-premier respon-sible for fuel and energy is-sues. A year go, he made headlines by suggesting uni-versity students should not be paid an allowance. In Rus-sia, where most of the pop-ulation remembers when one could live on a stipend, such a statement was a public re-lations disaster for Dvorko-vich. Yet somehow it didn’t kill his career.

“The main problem of modern Russian politics is that Putin’s electorate is moderately left, but Putin continuously has right-of- centre governments with

In the coming years, it’s li-kely that Europe will lose its status as Russia’s big-gest economic partner and

that Russia will form closer bonds with the East.

Europe’s unwillingness to take Moscow’s opinion into consideration when it comes to strategic security matters, which became clear during the discussions of the future of the European missile de-fence system, as well as the economic troubles that the European Union currently needs to address, have prompted Russia to revise the exclusively western founda-tion of its international pol-icy. An eastern orientation appears to be the natural al-ternative, given Russia’s ge-ographical location.

In recent years, Moscow has increased its efforts to establish a strong footing in Asia by promoting its eco-nomic interests in regional organisations. The feasibil-ity of shifting the centre of gravity eastwards has been repeatedly mooted, but no practical moves have yet been made. However, Moscow has been promoting Russia’s Far East and building up its economic relations with China, Japan and the rising Asian “tigers”, while also pur-suing stronger economic ties with Europe.

But the situation has chan-ged dramatically in the past few months. It is not even just the matter of the elec-tion of a new Russian head of state, who appears to be disappointed with the pro-gress of Russia’s European policy. Furthermore, Mos-cow’s European partners are attempting to reduce their dependence on Russian raw materials and seek alterna-tive energy sources.

This instability, aggrava-ted by the current financial and economic downturn in Europe, has been forcing Russia out of the increasin-

fyodor lukyanovgazeTa.ru

yevgeny shestakov

specIal To rn

To preserve his image, putin must maintain an even and balanced level of authoritarianism

terrible (like former Hungar-ian president Pal Schmitt, who recently resigned); at worst an outcast (like Presi-dent Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus). However, in a huge, powerful country with vast natural resources and nuclear potential that plays a leading role in world poli-tics, a strong leader can offer an alternative model.

Putin is an ideal embodi-

gly inaccessible western mar-kets and into the increasin-gly available Asian ones, where Russia will be wel-comed with open arms.

Crucial internal factors are also conspiring to make the Russian administration re-vise its future economic stra-tegy and factor in the rapi-dly expanding economic potential of the Asian coun-tries. The change from the traditional role of Siberia wi-thin the framework of Rus-sia’s western efforts to be-come the vanguard of its Chinese endeavour gives Moscow much more room for competitive manoeuvre. The only question is how to re-direct investment and com-modity flows from West to East smoothly enough to turn Siberia, the traditional sour-ce of raw materials, into a key modernised sector of the Russian economy.

During the past few years, Russian politicians have dis-cussed two main options for developing the economy of the Far East. The first option was to set up a state corpo-ration to promote the region, and the second involved crea-ting a special state ministry to manage economic develo-pment projects there. The new Russian government has opted for the latter and has established such a ministry for the first time. Viktor Is-haev, 64, the former presiden-tial envoy in the Far Eastern Federal District, has been ap-pointed minister for the de-velopment of the Far East of the Russian Federation.

Russia has not given up on the idea of a state corpora-tion to implement projects approved by the ministry. Ex-perts agree that Ishaev’s ap-pointment is just the first step in a much more ambitious project, which is currently being discussed in Russia. The idea is to create a so-called third economic capi-tal of Russia in the Far East. During the most recent mee-ting of the Valdai Discussion Club, a few cities were men-tioned that have sufficient

ment of such a model. As leader, he is perceived in the world as stronger and more influential than the country he leads. While Russia is seen in the West as a shrinking petro-state and a declining kleptocracy, Putin has never been characterised as a dic-tator, although some radical elements of the Russian op-position would dearly like that to be the case.

He is thought to be a wily, sophisticated – and therefore doubly dangerous – player who achieves his goals. The demonisation of Putin in the Western media and public opinion is the flip-side of the fascination with his person-ality. The reason is that Vladimir Putin is doing what

Western leaders cannot be-cause of the institutional constraints they face.

He makes no bones about being anti-ideological, which enables him to make abrupt turns in policy when neces-sary and to use any rhetoric to further his ends. He has no use for political correct-ness, which enables him to formulate certain priorities without mincing his words. His preoccupation with na-tional sovereignty gives him a lot of leeway: Russia is one of the few countries not bound by commitments to an alliance and thus has a free hand, while being strong enough to translate that free-dom into reality. He is guid-ed by the principles of real-

politik, which is based on the balance of forces in which potential and not intentions count, while prestige is a ma-terial concept. The approach is often criticised as being old-fashioned but it is clear and understandable.

Finally (and perhaps most importantly), Putin is (or is perceived to be) the undis-puted master of his land who is able to do whatever he likes with it.

All (or most of these things) are unattainable for Western leaders who are hamstrung by ideology (an approach based on values), alliance commitments (Nato), and the need to package their inten-tions in such a thick shell of propaganda that they them-selves come to believe in the packaging and confuse it with the true goals. And they depend heavily on public opinion, their constituencies, interest groups and so on.

Putin has another side to him that appeals not to the West but to the East. He is seen as a leader who can stand up to American hegem-ony and promote a multi- polar world. That view is based not on objective real-ity (in practice Russia for many reasons cannot afford a confrontation with the United States) but on his willpower and an effective communications strategy. That is why the former Third World, including China and India, still sees Russia as a counterweight to America though Beijing, for example, could perform that function much more credibly now.

Putin’s perverse kind of popularity in the world is a sign of confusion in people’s minds. It is a mixture of fear

of a person who is able to act meaningfully in the midst of chaos and a sneaking hope that this dominant male can untangle a confused situa-tion. Will Vladimir Putin be able to preserve this image and, consequently, his weight in world politics during his third presidential term? The paradox he faces is that to do so, he must maintain an even and balanced level of authoritarianism. Any tilt would destroy the balanced picture. But the political at-mosphere in Russia is chang-ing, and Putin will have to react to these changes and probably lean to one side or the other.

A further shift in the di-rection of Lukashenko would make him a run-of-the-mill

autocrat. There have been many of those and they in-evitably lose touch with re-ality and lose power. Liber-alisation would remove the allure of a powerful leader who controls all the internal processes and with whom all deals and agreements should be made. Walking on a tight- rope is difficult. If Putin misses his step there will be no shortage of people – in-side and outside the country – who would be only too glad to nudge him off it.

F y o d o r L u k y a n o v i s editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs.

potential and favourable lo-cations to make them can-didates as the third capital – Ekaterinburg, Krasnoyarsk, and Khabarovsk. Moscow would remain the political capital and St Petersburg the cultural capital.

Those advocating a redis-tribution of functions between the capitals refer to the successful international experience of sharing capi-tal city roles in Brazil, Ger-many and Kazakhstan. Those political decisions gave a strong impetus to the deve-lopment of the areas surroun-ding the new capitals.

Russia transferred its ca-pital city from Moscow to St Petersburg in 1712, when Peter the Great decided his newly built city on the Bal-tic Sea was more suitable as Russia’s capital. Russian re-searchers argue that it was mostly because of that deci-

sion that Peter managed to open a window to Europe, providing a major impetus to development of the country for centuries to come.

There have also been more recent sharing of adminis-trative functions in Russia – in 2006, the Constitutional Court moved from Moscow to St Petersburg and it is said one of the reasons for the re-cent dismissal of Navy Com-mander Vladimir Vysotsky was his refusal to move the Navy General Staff from Moscow to St Petersburg.

Experts warn, though, that with all its obvious advan-tages, the creation of a third capital city beyond the Urals might have unpredictable so-cial and political consequen-ces. The new government does not currently have plans to transfer any capital city functions to a region that is much closer to Asia than

dmitry babich

specIal To rn

tight-fisted financial policies, requiring society to change at all costs,” says Boris Ka-garlitsky, the director of the Moscow-based Institute for Globalisation Studies.

Only a great connoisseur of Russian national psyche can explain this strange co-existence. Part of this para-dox can be explained by Pu-tin’s long-groomed image of a strict disciplinarian who can talk tough even to oli-garchs of Mikhail Khodor-kovsky’s calibre, thus replac-ing real policy with a reassuring image. Part of it may come from a lack of al-ternative. The Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov or the social-democratic frontman of the Just Russia party Sergei Mironov, with their unrealistic promises of a return to Soviet-era free-of-charge social guarantees, are not seen by the majority as serious alternatives.

This is not surprising: Igor Nikolayev, an expert at HSE, calculated that the electoral promises of presidential can-didate Sergei Mironov would require six times the annual state budget to fulfil. A strat-egy of unlimited electoral promises might have worked at the end of the Soviet pe-riod, and it was widely used by the late Boris Yeltsin, in-dependent Russia’s first pres-ident and most successful populist. But it does not work now when people do not be-lieve in miracles, but expect a somewhat more generous social policy – something along the lines of Vladimir Putin’s presidential pro-

gramme. This programme, according to Nikolayev’s es-timates, would require an ad-ditional investment of 50pc of Russia’s annual budget. But is there a political will to carry out this programme? This is the question that re-ally bothers people, not the fate of a handful of protest-ers camping in Moscow’s parks under the slogan “Putin, go away!”

It was not Putin who won the last election, it was the “budget-saving” likes of Li-vanov who lost it. But it does not mean the budget-cutters lost the sympathies of Rus-sia’s ruling elite. Putin in fact acknowledges his old minis-ters’ efforts. It is not a coin-cidence that the most unpop-ular ministers of the previous Cabinet – social development minister Tatyana Golikova and education minister Ser-gei Fursenko – were both taken into Putin’s adminis-tration as advisers in their respective fields. Hence, part of the popular discontent is automatically passed on to Putin, since he is the main talking head on television, trying to explain the chron-ically unpopular reforms.

So, the global angle of the western observers of Russian politics often plays a wicked joke on them, since they have to fit this complicated pic-ture into the simplified ma-trix of “bad conservatives against nice reformers”. And the old issues of KGB affili-ations or attitude to Soviet history do not play nearly as big a role with Russian vot-ers as with western observ-ers. But the mainstream glo-bal press just does not want to know this.

Dmitry Babich, is a political analyst of the Voice of Russia radio station

Dmitry livanov’s proposed education reforms unleashed a storm in the popular press

russians know that talk of being more competitive means cutting jobs and charging for services

Moscow. However, the more complications that arise in relations between Moscow and Brussels, the more fre-quently the topic of a third economic capital, remote from Europe, will be dis-cussed in Russian corridors of power.

Europe still has a chance to alter the situation, but it seems that the European Union does not have the po-litical will, the economic ca-pacity or any fresh ideas to m a k e a s u b s t a n t i a l breakthrough in its relations with Russia. This current lack of diplomatic impetus means that relations between Mos-cow and Brussels can now only progress through links forged long ago.

Russia’s Asian partners, though, are coming up with new ideas and are ready to expand their dialogue with Russia in all areas. The Asian

partners do not impose their state systems as administra-tive models or impose poli-tical conditions on economic co-operation.

Moscow has long been dis-turbed by the attempts made by members of the European Union to encourage it to fol-low western political models. The idea of punishing the West for its perceived arro-gance, especially during the era of perestroika, for what Russia saw as its unwillin-gness to build equitable re-lations with Moscow, is deep-rooted in Russian public opinion. If this punishment requires moving some Rus-sian ministries beyond the Urals, a large part of Rus-sian society may welcome this geopolitical decision.

Yevgeny Shestakov is editor of the international politics-desk at Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

If he misses his step, many would be only too glad to nudge him off the high wire

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07most read Russia now www.rbth.rusection sponsored by rossiyskaya gazeta, russia distributed with the daily telegraph tuesday_may 29_2012

Russian writing goes down a storm in Londonhttp://rbth.ru/15412 culture

It is not often that on fin-ishing a novel the reader feels compelled to go back to the beginning and start reading it again. But Ge-lasimov, whose unadorned prose and youthful, trou-bled narrative has invited comparisons with Salinger and Hemingway, is that kind of writer. His novel Thirst sails quickly over half-glimpsed depths, mak-ing you want to go back and explore them more. This slim volume of 100 pages is a haven of both comedy and horror.

The narrator Kostya (short for Konstantin) is a veteran of the brutal wars in the North Caucasus. He has been pulled from a burning tank and his badly disfigured face is unrecog-nisable. The novel starts with the hero trying to fit too many bottles into his fridge. We see him drink-ing alone, recalling his childhood, and travelling with fellow soldiers. Their quest is often pointless and confused, but there is an echoing sense of profundi-ty among the routine pro-fanities of his journey.

Kostya’s neighbour uses him to terrify her little boy into going to bed. The story of Kostya’s gradual self-ac-ceptance has some hall-marks of a coming-of-age story, but is tempered by a darker aimlessness that strays into the alcohol-laced traditions of many Russian writers, from Chek-hov to Venedikt Erofeyev.

The thirst of the title re-lates most obviously to a speech by Kostya’s nurtur-ing school director, who drinks vodka by the case and tells him: “I have a ter-rible thirst… my body craves liquids.” Insofar as he deals in metaphors at all,

read russia

A thirst for life, despite its breathtaking bitterness

Gelasimov explores a thirst for life despite its breathtak-ing bitterness.

The author was born in Si-beria in 1965 and trained as a linguist and theatre direc-tor. His literary career took off unexpectedly in 2001, when a short story he pub-lished on the internet start-ed to win prizes.

In a recent interview, Ge-lasimov said: “I was simply overwhelmed with grief… for the generation of students born at the end of Soviet era and doomed to redeem sins they never committed.” He said he was also influenced by his grandfather’s tale of fighting in the Second World War, but ultimately he came to believe that “all of us are tortured soldiers to a certain extent, including those who never saw any battle…”

Thirst is told mostly in a simple vernacular. The nar-rator expresses himself through drawings, filling pages with beautiful women and therapeutic warscapes. One of the challenges that Gelasimov sets himself is to describe the world in the credible words of a charac-ter for whom words do not come easily.

The award-winning trans-lator Marian Schwartz has praised the author’s ear for dialogue. “The challenge of Gelasimov’s simple language is that it is so dead-on right,” she said. “There are few if any pretty metaphors to hide behind.”

Schwartz recalls a meet-ing with poet and fellow translator, WS Merwin, when they talked about “hearing” characters and “that deli-cious moment when the translator knows what a character sounds like, what he can and can’t say”. This was a crucial issue in Thirst, which relies on pitch-perfect renditions of scarred adults and bewildered children.

Schwartz will be translat-ing more of Gelasimov’s nov-els for his publisher, Ama-zonCrossing.

phoebe taplin

Having scored a highly re-spectable second place in the Baku 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, the now world-fa-mous Buranovskiye Babush-ki will become legends in their remote home village of Buranovo in the Republic of Udmurtia. The grannies said they were very happy with their success and that their tears on the night were “tears of joy”. They can now fulfil their ambition to use the roy-alties from their song to help rebuild the church in their village that was destroyed in the Soviet era.

The traditional folk sing-ers, who range in age from 43 to 76, may initially have seemed an odd choice to rep-resent a country with such cosmopolitan cities as Mos-cow and St Petersburg. At home, the grannies still use wells to get water and have to stoke the furnace to keep their houses warm or make dinner, which calls for sub-stantial stocks of firewood.

Every household keeps cows or pigs in order to sup-port the family budget. In summer, local people work in their vegetable gardens, growing potatoes and other essentials for the table. Life is based on hard manual la-bour, and has hardly changed in the past 100 years.

In Russia, the Eurovision Song Contest is taken very seriously. A competition is held to decide which of the 25 finalists will represent Russia in the big event. This year the grannies charmed the Russian public and were their firm favourite to rep-resent the country.

In Britain, the BBC simply makes a tactical choice about its entry based on what it thinks has the best chance of impressing a European au-dience. The logic behind choosing 76-year-old croon-er Engelbert Humperdinck was that he is very popular in Europe. Last year he toured in Belgium, the Neth-erlands, Russia, Israel and Romania – all countries in the competition. But sadly,

eurovision The Buranovskiye Babushki’s traditional folk with a modern twist won hearts right across Europe

the buranovo grannies didn’t just sing for russia in the eurovision song contest, they championed age and a traditional way of life.

the tactic didn’t pay off as Humperdinck came a disap-pointing second to last – but thankfully avoiding the “null point” humiliation with a score of 12 points.

Swaying in their tradition-al birch-bark shoes and or-nate peasant dresses with their wide toothless grins and welcoming arm gestures, it’s hard not to like the grannies. Their song Party for Every-body was sung in their na-tive Urdmurt language with parts in English.

Despite their success, the grannies don’t believe their group is anything special. “There are many people like us,” they say. Indeed, there are numerous vocal bands com-posed of war veterans and pensioners in Russian villag-es – what else is there to do on long winter nights but sing in choirs? However, the

Buranovo grannies have been lucky as they have a shrewd producer. In 2008, they be-came an overnight sensation after performing folk ver-sions of songs by Russian rock legends Viktor Tsoi and Boris Grebenshikov.

In 2010, they participated in the Russian national Eu-rovision selection, but came third. They made another at-tempt this year and won.

No Russian participant in the Eurovision Song Contest has ever created such a buzz among foreign audiences.Since they became Russia’s entrant in the competition, reporters from around the world have flocked to their home village. By mid-April, Buranovo had welcomed journalists from the United States, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, the Czech Re-public, Poland and Finland.

The local authorities were pleasantly surprised by all the commotion, and organ-ised hiking routes to the huts where the babushki live, and tours to their cowsheds. The frenzy over the grannies has even reached the sphere of international relations – the Estonian culture minister called on his country’s peo-ple to vote for the Russian group. Given the rather cool relations between Russia and the Baltic states, the minis-ter’s appeal seemed quite su-prising. However, the Udmurt and Baltic languages belong to the same family, so the two peoples have a cultural connection.

The grannies plan to tour several foreign countries soon. But when asked wheth-er they would like to capi-talise on their fame and move to Moscow, where there is running water and where you don’t have to stoke a furnace, the singers wave their arms in horror. In unison, they claim they feel sorry for the poor Muscovites, who have to suffer in traffic jams and stuffy offices all of their lives.

grannies rock eurovision

country life: the buranovskiye babushki plan to use royalties from their song to rebuild their village church, which was destroyed in the soviet era

svetlana smetanina russiA Now

“How can you relax there? It is totally different here. All you have to do is walk into a field or a forest and you somehow feel revitalised," they say.

Far from wanting to leave their traditional lives, the Buranovo grannies want to improve them and plan to donate a portion of their roy-alty payments to help with rebuilding the church.

Maybe this is all part of their popularity – they are championing a lesser-known, traditional side of Russia and extolling the simple life of subsistence farming. They are

also great ambassadors for older women enjoying them-selves, in a world where youth, beauty and perfect teeth dominate public imag-es of women.

Both Humperdinck and the grannies were the oldest competitors in the contest. But the previously unknown grannies appealed to the vot-ers far more than did the ac-complished pop star. Maybe the BBC should take inspi-ration from the grannies for their 2013 entry and look for an act with a fun, warm and traditional appeal for next year’s contest.

swaying in their traditional birch-bark shoes with their wide toothless grins, it’s hard not to like them

The grannies are great ambassadors for older women in a world where youth and beauty dominate

The writing of Anna Staro-binets has been compared with that of a host of liter-ary greats, including Edgar Allan Poe and George Orwell. Yet the young Russian author is still only 33.

Her literary career was launched with a horror an-thology called An Awkward Age. The title story features a little boy who was so fat and awful that he repulsed even his own mother. She finds a diary in the boy’s handwrit-ing which reveals that a queen ant residing in his mind is lay-ing bare her insidious plan: to capture the boy’s body and then conquer all humanity. The readers are left guessing as to whether the boy will bend to his new nature like Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s Met-amorphosis.

The horror genre came nat-uarally to Starobinets. “I didn’t consciously choose hor-ror fiction in the sense that I never sat at my desk musing on which genre to choose for my writing,” she explains. “Horror, mysticism, surreal thrillers and so on just seemed to be a way of packaging thoughts, feelings, sensations, and possibly even fears, that intuitively work for me.”

After An Awkward Age was published, critics labelled Starobinets the Russian

Fiction A young writer is being compared to the likes of fright-meister stephen King

author of dystopian horror and apocalyptic fantasy novels anna starobinets talks about her terrifyingly successful writing career.

Stephen King or Philip K Dick. Despite the flattering comparisons, Starobinets is not totally comfortable with this attempt at pigeon-hol-ing: “I believe no serious writ-er can ever be defined by the genre he or she technically works in or even by another writer. I’m not Stephen King, Philip K Dick, Gogol or any other writer that I have been compared with.”

Indeed, Starobinets’ horror manifests itself in a variety of forms, way beyond the devic-es used by Poe, Ray Bradbury or HG Wells. They range from the mystical Asylum 3/9 (based partly on Slavic folk-lore) to the fantasy novel The First Squad: The Truth, 2010 (named after the Russian-Jap-

you can, nevertheless, some-times drag out and put to some use – although definite-ly not for their intended pur-pose. Inside every person there exists such a zone and some “stalkers” – people of art – venture into it on expeditions. I would not overestimate the danger of such trips.”

As well as English-speak-ing readers, Bulgarian, Polish, Italian, Swedish and Spanish readers can now shiver at the horrors provided by Anna Starobinets. “The Spanish edi-tion of An Awkward Age, just been published, got a surpris-ingly large number of reviews, and discussions about it were fairly intense on forums and in the media,” she says.

Along with other writers, Starobinets represented Rus-sia at the New York Book Fair last month. When asked whether the Russian presence at the fair would help boost interest in Russian literature, she replied: “No exhibition of achievements can, by itself, turn Russia into a major pro-ducer of global bestsellers, or (as in the age of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky) leading export-ers of “big-idea” novels. We need to have our own JK Rowlings, and new Tolstoys and Dostoevskys.”

At the same time, Starob-inets acknowledged the value of book fairs in helping show Russian books to their best advantage to a wider audi-ence. “Fairs increase the chances for Russian writers to have their works published abroad and to come under the spotlight,” she said.

The horror! The horror! Meet the new queen of scream

Just chilling: horror writing comes intuitively to starobinets

alexandra guzevarussiA Now

anese animation project of the same name) to futuristic dys-topia The Living One, which was shortlisted for the Na-tional Bestseller Award in lit-erature in 2011.

“The Living One is a pure genre piece,” says literary crit-ic Lev Danilkin, “a classic an-ti-utopia, imbued with Zam-yatin’s seriousness and Orwell’s acrimony, loaded with the author’s sombre ex-pectations regarding man-kind’s future, masterfully con-veying a sense of repulsion towards worship of the wis-dom of the crowds.”

In some of Starobinets’ sto-ries, horror infiltrates man’s unfathomable irrational depths devouring his con-sciousness. In The Rules (one

of the short stories in An Awk-ward Age), a silent voice is constantly setting rigid rules for the main character: how to walk, how to arrange things on a shelf, and how to live. Here, Starobinets manages to penetrate an altered con-sciousness to deliver a com-pelling account of schizoid behaviour from within.

While such experiments have proved detrimental to the health of some writers, Starobinets has no fears for her own mental state. She says: “I think a comparison with [Boris and Arkady] Stru-gatskys’ “zone” [from Road-side Picnic] is appropriate here: a dangerous area filled with strange, unpredictable and evil magical items that

“Russian cinema has a dual handicap: a lack of demand from abroad and poor mar-keting,” said producer Yevg-eny Gindilis during a round- table discussion in Moscow last month. But Elena Ro-manova, the director of Fond Kino, the state body respon-sible for promoting Russian cinema, stressed: “We want Russian cinema to be shown to the foreign masses.”

That ambition is still a long way from being achieved. However, the fact that the film In the Fog by Sergei Loz-nitsa won the FIPRESCI prize from a selection of 22 films at the Cannes Film Fes-tival at the weekend is a great promotion for Russian cin-ema generally. The film, which is a throwback to the era of classic Soviet cinema, will now be distributed interna-tionally. Apart from In the Fog and a few rare art and experimental films such as Elena or Faust which also won prizes at major interna-tional festivals and conse-quently enjoyed a wider dis-tribution, Russian films are rarely seen in foreign cine-mas. They tend to be confined to small screenings at Rus-sian cultural centres, such as Pushkin House in London.

Movies that are popular in Russia are often branded un-exportable, and most art and

Film industry ‘needs better marketing’ and more skills

experimental films fall under the radar of the internation-al distributors. In an attempt to remedy this situation Fond Kino has launched several initiatives. A Russian Cine-ma stand was set up at the Cinema Market on the side-lines of the Cannes Film Fes-tival this month which fea-tured the latest Russian films, such as Dukhless, an adap-tation of the Pushkin novel, The Queen of Spades (Pavel Lungin’s latest film), and Baba Yaga, a Franco-Belgian-Russian co-production in 3D animation.

Another initiative, Red Square Screenings, involves inviting the main players in the international film indus-try to attend private screen-ings of Russian films in Mos-cow from October 15-20. The screenings will be held at

GUM, the department store facing Red Square. “Compe-tition is very fierce, which is why we need to promote Rus-sian cinema in an outstand-ing way,” said Mr Gindilis, who is helping organise the screenings.

Key figures in the Russian film industry recognise that they have a lot to do at home before they can achieve their international goals. “We need tax incentives for producers and distributors,” says Ms Romanova, adding that the Russian industry receives less favourable treatment than those of countries such as Canada or France.

Everyone stresses the ur-gent need for more profes-sional training. “The current crisis was caused by a short-age of skilled operatives,” said Ilya Bachurin, director-general of film studio GlavKi-no. “There needs to be many more exchange initiatives with studios abroad, and we need to encourage foreign films to be shot over here. We don’t just need finance, we need skills as well.”

The film critic and histo-rian Andrey Plakhov said: “There is no clear govern-ment policy. Look at what France is doing, for example, with the French Cinema Days in Paris; [film promotion agency] Unifrance is work-ing very efficiently from a commercial point of view.

“We need to create a fash-ion for Russian cinema, as the Koreans have done. The last time Russian cinema was in fashion was in 1990 with Pavel Lungin’s Taxi Blues.”

Can Russian cinema be fashionable again?

rare gem: the prize-winning elena was shown abroad

the film industry is demanding changes at home in order to boost its international reputation and create demand abroad.

paul duvernetrussiA Now

title: thiRstauthor: AndRei

geLAsimovpublisher: AmAzoncRossing

the grandmothers’ motherlandUdmurtia is an Orthodox repub-lic in the Volga region. Its capi-tal is Izhevsk, which is famous for its industry: transport, me-chanical engineering and metal-lurgy. It was founded as an in-dustrial settlement in the 18th century. Burunova, the village where the grannies live, is a collection of wooden houses

18 miles from the nearest town. The grannies are not the only famous people to hail from this region. It is also home to Mikhail Kalashnikov, designer of the AK-47 assault rifle, the composer Tchaikovsky and Olga Knipper-Chekhova, actress wife of Anton Chekhov and an original mem-ber of the Moscow Arts Theatre.

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08 most readRussia now www.rbth.rusection sponsored by rossiyskaya gazeta, russia distributed with the daily telegraph tuesday_may 29_2012

Moscow spends a ‘Night at the Museum’http://rbth.ru/15679Feature

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CONTACT USCatch the vibes of MoscowWhen I first arrived in Russia, I suddenly wasn’t as funny as I used to be back in the U.S. I needed

to adapt if I wanted to get the ‘spotlight of laughter’ back on me. That opportunity came in the

unexpected form of “KVN”.

leader of the russian synchronised swimming team natalia ishchenko tells russia now about life at the top of her sport.

When Natalia Ishchenko was taken to a synchronised swimming school aged five, the coaches did not rate her chances, saying she was not flexible enough. They were wrong. Ishchenko, now 26, is one of the most technically perfect and successful syn-chronettes in the world.

Ishchenko won gold at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; she now has 16 world and seven European titles. In 2010, she became the first synchronised swimmer in the European championship his-tory to win all four routines – solo, duet, team and com-bination.

The Russian team are the reigning champions. The British team are not expect-ing to beat them, having come 14th in the Beijing Ol-ympics, but they are hoping to finish in the top six.

Natalia is the leader and face of the Russian team, used to working 24/7 at all major international compe-titions. But this year the bur-den on the Russian team leader and her colleagues has doubled,even before the start of the Games, as they had to take part in the qualifying round, too. Here, Ishchenko describes her team’s prepa-ration for London 2012.

the olympic qualifying round for the leading team in syn-chronised swimming seems too much, doesn’t it?The qualifiers have indeed caused some problems for us. We could have started work-ing on our Olympic routines earlier, just like the Chinese and Canadian teams did as soon as they won the Asian

for it very hard. We increased the number of runs instead of the number of hours in the pool. We had to double our efforts, because running through the entire routine is the hardest thing to do.

do you think you have bene-fited from going through the qualifying round in london?On the plus side, we worked at an Olympic facility so we know what we’re in for. We saw everything, tried every-thing and found no defects. The London Aquatics Cen-tre looks a lot like the one in Beijing – the pool, the stands.

you have left last year’s duet free routine unchanged. isn’t that a step backwards for leaders?We only showed “The Dolls”

once, at the world champi-onships, so you can’t say it is an exhausted routine. It is very strong, both technically and artistically. We won the world title with it in Shang-hai, and we hope it will bring us luck in London. But we have changed lots of things and added a few new ele-ments. The only thing left is the swimsuits.

they are unique. where do you get such masterpieces?The coaches and swimmers tell the designers what they would like to see on the swimsuits. They bring de-signs to us and we finalise them together. The suits are tailored individually to fit each swimmer perfectly. There are some standards we have to meet – we can’t have very high cuts for example.

who will make the russian na-tional team at the european championships ahead of the olympics?We have decided that only two swimmers will go to the Championships in Eindhov-en – Svetlana Romashina and I. We will take part in solos and duets, while the team perfect new routines. We will show our free routine for the first time. The Olympic duet will also include some new features.

so are you trying to safeguard your unique features and lifts from your competitors?Well, we wouldn’t like to see our elements being repeated by another team; however, it makes it clear that you’re the leader and they use you as an example. They tend to copy the best combinations,

and the only thing you can regret is that the element loses its uniqueness and turns into a beautiful yet very hard position. We should be al-lowed to patent our signa-ture moves but, in our sport, they don’t give names to el-ements to celebrate the peo-ple who invented them, like they do in sports like rhyth-mic or regular gymnastics.

how do you combine your sports career with family life?My husband [Sergei Anikin, who won a silver medal at the European Diving Cham-pionships] is a former ath-lete so he understands very well why I have to stay away from home for months, why I get home tired after train-ing or from the camp. His support helps me so much. Besides, we have telephones and Skype. When we train at Ozero Krugloe camp near Moscow, I have one day off every week and go home. There are no privileges for married women.

describe a typical day for you and your team members.Our morning training session starts at 8am and we have choreography lessons for one-and-a-half to two hours, fol-lowed by three-and-a-half hours in the pool. Then it is time for a massage, after which we sleep for two hours, like when we were children. The pressure is so hard that your body cannot sustain it and you simply pass out. You cannot have a decent night’s sleep, either – the night ses-sion ends at 10pm, then you have dinner, relax after ex-ercise and go to bed, but you have to get up at 7am to be in time for the next session, and this goes on day after day. But we all know why we put in so much effort and spend so many hours in the pool. Our common goal is the to win at the Olympics.

making a splash at the games

golden moment: natalia ishchenko at the 2010 european aquatics championships in budapest, where the team took the title

anna kozinaspecial to rn

and Pan-American Games. Or the UK team, which en-joys the benefit of being the host nation. Although we won the world championship in Shanghai, which would be an automatic pass for us to the Olympics in any other sport, we had to compete for an Olympic licence again and prepare two routines – one for the qualifying round as well as one for the Games.

did you ever think about pro-testing to get the rules changed like the spanish did?These are the approved reg-ulations which you have to abide by. Because we couldn’t afford to participate at half steam, we decided to put our efforts into resolving the dif-ficulties instead of fighting them. We took that tourna-ment seriously and prepared

Euro 2012, to be held in Po-land and Ukraine this sum-mer, will be the first football championship to be played in eastern Europe, and is a tournament in which Soviet and Russian teams have been successful. The Soviet side won the trophy in 1960 and were runners-up in 1964, 1972 and 1988.

In Euro 2008, Russia were beaten 3-0 in the quarter-fi-nals by Spain, the high point of Russia’s post-Soviet foot-ball history so far.

Hopes are not high for this year’s tournament, however, and the Russian Football Federation has given man-ager, Dick Advocaat, the modest target of progressing beyond the group stage.

Advocaat’s squad for Euro 2012, to be held from June 8 to July 1, shows few chang-es; the same players have formed the backbone of the team for many years. Advo-caat tends to mistrust young talent and relies on experi-enced players, even if they aren’t in top form. For ex-ample, the Arsenal star An-drei Arshavin, currently on loan at Zenit St Petersburg, has not scored for the Rus-sian national team in the past two-and-a-half years but remains captain.

Russia is in group A, along with Poland, the Czech Re-public and Greece, and is fa-vourite to win the group. But the fact that they struggled to win against Macedonia and Armenia in the qualify-ing stages shows that their favourite status says more about the relative weakness

Football team faces a tough challenge

russia has the advantage of playing close to home this summer, but the odds are stacked against dick advocaat’s experienced side.

of the challengers than Rus-sia’s strength.

None will be a pushover, however. Greece won the 2004 tournament, and will offer a strong challenge de-spite their lack of success in the past eight years. As hosts, Poland will be dangerous ri-vals, especially considering the delicate history between the two nations. The same is true of the Czech Republic, which has had a variety of political scores to settle with Russia since 1968. The Czechs will send a young and prom-ising team to Euro 2012.

“We will try to win the Championship… try to achieve the maximum,” promised Advocaat, who has twice managed the Dutch na-tional team.

So why is the Federation so pessimistic? Well, the top two teams from group A will play the top teams from group B, which includes Ger-many, Holland, Portugal and Denmark. Getting past any of those sides to make the semi-finals would be a minor miracle. Then again, in foot-ball miracles do happen…

Russia sets a realistic goal for Euro 2012

still captain: andrei arshavin will lead russia in euro 2012

ilya zubkospecial to rn

apparent – the pilot could have been carrying a dan-gerous weapon on board, such as a nuclear warhead or a bomb containing a toxic substance.

It also became obvious that the enormous amount of money (officially up to 15pc of the state budget, but ac-tually almost twice as much) that the country had spent on strengthening its security and enhancing the combat readiness of the Soviet armed forces had been wasted.

This was the focus of the discussion held at an emer-gency meeting of the Polit-buro of the Central Commit-tee of the Communist Party (CSPU), where a decision was made to update the leader-ship of the armed forces. Three marshals of the Sovi-et Union and about 300 gen-erals and colonels were forced to resign.

Among them were Sergey Sokolov, marshal of the So-viet Union and minister of defence of the USSR, and Al-exander Koldunov, marshal of the Soviet Union and com-mander of the country’s air defence system. Western media claimed that such a large-scale purge of the sen-

ior command of the Soviet Army had not taken place since the Stalinist purges of the Thirties.

Colonel-General Igor Malt-sev, chief of staff of the air defence system, was only saved because on the day that Rust crossed the Soviet bor-der and landed near Red Square, he was in Tallinn attending a session of the Supreme Soviet of the Esto-nian SSR.

Many years later, after his retirement, General Maltsev told how he was summoned from the meeting by Karl Ko-rtelainen, chairman of the Estonian KGB, and told that an aircraft had landed near Red Square. “I did not be-lieve him,” recalled General Maltsev.

“We went to the air de-fence command post near Tallinn and listened to the operational duty officer for the intelligence centre. It turned out that the informa-tion was accurate – Rust had crossed the border over the territory of Estonia.”

But how could such a sup-posedly powerful air defence system, of which at the time the leaders of the armed forc-es were very proud, have al-lowed the young pilot cross half of the country? The Gen-

eral explained: “First of all, the most powerful Soviet air defence system of the time was designed to guard against massive air strikes targeted at facilities and troops on our territory; it was not meant to fight against light aircraft. Second, after the incident with the Korean Boeing 747 [on September 1, 1983, a pas-senger aircraft that acciden-tally violated the Soviet bor-der in the Far East was shot down], the USSR signed an

annex to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, which made it forbidden to shoot down civilian aircraft, regardless of where and why they flew over the border.

“Following the signing of this annex, the minister of defence of the USSR signed an order banning the armed forces from opening fire on passenger, transport and light-engine aircraft. For some reason, no one seemed to remember this at the time, and even now no one remem-

bers it. Most probably the main reason the plane went undetected is because it didn’t have a ‘friend or foe’ warning beacon. Radar mon-itors all aircraft, but it can only identify the state or de-partmental affiliation of planes if they have a warn-ing beacon installed.

“No small aircraft – light-engine planes, that is, as well as agricultural aircraft – have such beacons installed. And yet dozens of small aircraft appear in the area of respon-sibility of one division of the air defence system on any given day.

“Rust’s aircraft did not dif-fer from the others on the radar and therefore was clas-sified not as an intruder crossing a state border (we did not get any such infor-mation from the border guards), but as a violator of flight rules. His plane was spotted on May 28 at 14.10 near the Estonian village of Loksa, which is already over our territory. At 14.18, it was finally established that there were no Soviet civilian air-craft in the area.

“The commander of the 14th Air Defence Division decided to classify the air-craft as a foreign intruder, and reports were sent to the

command post of the 60th Army of the Air Defence Di-vision in Leningrad. All forc-es on duty were put on pri-ority alert. A couple of fighters took off, but at 14.30 the target had been lost. This was because the continuous radar field of 100 metres only functioned in a narrow strip along the border, beyond it were dead zones, and Math-ias Rust was flying in them.

“At 15.30, when the aircraft could not be detected, the commander of the 60th Army reported to Moscow that the suspected aircraft was a dense flock of birds. Rust at the time was in the area of the Dno train station, but was only found at 18.30 above Khodynka Field 25 minutes before he landed.”

General Maltsev expressed doubt that Mathias Rust could find his own way across Russian borders and territo-ries without being detected by the Soviet military. How-ever, there was no evidence of co-operation between the German and special forces or Nato. Neither an investi-gation nor the court which sentenced Rust to four years in prison could prove he did not act alone. And Rust him-self, who recently appeared on television in connection

with the anniversary of his remarkable flight, denies an-yone else was involved.

Many experts believe that Mikhail Gorbachev, then Communist Party general secretary, used Rust’s flight as an excuse to purge mem-bers of the conservative lead-ership of the armed forces who did not support his re-

forms aimed at strengthen-ing democracy, perestroika and glasnost. And analysts have also argued that from this moment on the collapse of the Soviet armed forces and the degradation of the country began.

But it seems that both of these assumptions are exag-gerated. The generals and

The teenager who flew through a hole in the Iron Curtain

destination moscow: mathias rust’s cessna landed in the shadow of red square in may 1987

marshals who replaced Sokolov and Koldunov were of the same breed as their predecessors. The degrada-tion of the Soviet Union and its military apparatus had begun long before Rust’s flight. The reasons for the his-torical processes that led to the end of Communism were, in reality, rather different.

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soviet air defences were designed to guard against massive air strikes, not light aircraft

interview natalia ishchenko

the russian synchronised swimming team are training hard with their sights set on gold

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