Deputy prime minister backtracks over homosexuality rhetoric

Controversy is washing around a ban in some Russian cities on promoting homosexuality and pedophilia, as Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak says the press misunderstood him.

A bitterly disputed bill, equating homosexuality with pedophilia and banning “promoting” them around children must go national, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak told press on Friday. The law has passed its first reading in St. Petersburg and is already in place in Arkhangelsk and Ryazan.

Gay rights groups and human rights activists were up in arms over linking intercourse between consenting same-sex adults with intercourse with children. But Kozak says that he was misunderstood and that, despite the law’s most high-profile clause, he was only condemning the promotion of pedophilia.

Kozak told reporters in St. Petersburg on Friday that promoting sexual minorities was a “disgusting thing to do” and followed Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of Russia’s Federation Council, in saying that they should consider banning it across the country.

Human rights activists and gay rights campaigners were subsequently in uproar. “It is essential to see the difference,” Tanya Lokshina, deputy director of Human Rights Watch Russia, told Interfax. “Pedophilia is a punishable crime, while the rights of sexual minorities are defended in the Russian constitution,”

But his press-secretary Ilya Dzhus said Kozak’s condemnatory words referred not to homosexuality but to pedophilia alone. “The question to Dmitry Nikolayevich Kozak was about his reaction to the ban on propaganda of pedophilia among minors,” Dzhus told .

“He called that disgusting and called for a ban on any attempts to promote pedophilia, alone,” Dhuks said.

But his colleagues in high places do not see the need to differentiate and made it clear their sights were set on gay people as much as on pedophiles.

St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko said that a bill to ban promoting both homosexuality and pedophilia would “serve general public morals. There is nothing more disgusting than propaganda of these things,” has said.

Ptviyenko had earlier said that the ban would be put in place across the whole country and that ruling party United Russia, closely aligned with both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, was prepared to introduce a ban on promoting “the propaganda of homosexuality.”

The St. Petersburg ban would fine individuals between 1,000 and 3,000 rubles for infringing the ban and between 10,000 to 50,000 rubles for corporate entities.

Russia classified homosexuality as a mental illness until 1999 and decriminalized homosexuality between men in 1993, but homophobic attitudes remain.

The Magic of St.Petersburg

Alekperov stays at Lukoil helm

Lukoil, Russia’s largest privately-owned oil company, will continue under the guidance of President Vagit Alekperov for the next five years.

Shareholders supported his re-election at Thursday’s AGM.

It had announced last fall that he wished to continue in the role because of the company’s “numerous projects”.

St.Petersburg

Images of St.Petersburg

Images of St. Petersburg

Images from St Petersburg

If you open it, they will come to Russia

Yesterday saw a record number of foreign tourists arrive in St. Petersburg on cruise ships – all benefitting from an easing of visa rules.

Five liners docked at the city’s port on Tuesday, disembarking just over 10,000 passengers eager to tour the Hermitage, sail the canals and party into the white nights.

It stems from the decision in May 2009 to open up seven Russian ports to visa-free travelers for three days.

Since then ferry traffic to Russia has doubled and – air arrivals in the Northern Capital could soon enjoy the same perks.

Tourism experts have welcomed the scheme, which many want to see rolled out across the rest of Russia to stimulate foreign interest in the country.

But there are still question marks about how much Russia should open up while Europe keeps its doors closed.

Earlier this year, HVS Hospitality Services managing director Tatyana Veller said: “To really make progress we need to ease the heavy visa process – but that has to be a two-way process.

“If Europe makes it easier for us, we can make it easier for them.”

But tourists taking advantage of the chance to cruise around Petersburg are in no doubt.

“We really liked it, and we'd love to see more of Russia if it wasn't so difficult,” Irene Bainbridge informed, after visiting on a Baltic cruise earlier this year. “It's a fascinating place and we had a great trip but I don't really understand why there has to be so much paperwork to visit Moscow.”

Elsewhere in the world, at least, there are signs that Russia is relaxing its tourist visa regime. As part of a burgeoning alliance with Latin America, restrictions on travel between Russia and Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia have been eased.

The political implications of making allies in a traditional US sphere of influence – at a time when the west is accused of meddling in the former USSR – are obvious.

And as the country prepares its bid to host the 2018 World Cup it seems likely that a further relaxation will follow to combat the huge numbers of fans expected to want to watch the tournament.

Shuvalov urges caution on Russian stock markets

As Russia welcomed the world’s financial movers and shakers to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, vice president Igor Shuvalov appeared to shoot himself in the foot.

Shuvalov warned investors off the Russian stock exchanges in an interview published on the eve of the forum – alarming analysts.

“I’d be very cautious about stock investments in this country,” Igor Shuvalov said in a TV interview. “I would welcome real investors who can build factories, something new in this country.”

“If we have investors wishing to buy, they are welcome,” Shuvalov said. “There will not be any kind of delay if we have a real investor who says, ‘We want a certain asset, please organize an auction.’ We need just 45 days.”

But while analysts generally supported Shuvalov’s ideas, they were concerned about how he had presented them.

Campaigning for the real sector of economy against the stock market is pointless, executive Vice President of Lombard Odier Alexander Kochubei told Vedomosti newspaper. “Those who invest in the real sector and the stock market, are principally different types of investors,” he said.

Uralsib’s chief strategist Cris Weafer, in his note to investors, was also baffled by Shuvalov’s comments. “It is unusual, to say the least, to have a senior minister, whose role it is to promote a more positive investment image of the country, to say he would ‘be very cautious about stock investments in this country’,” he wrote. “For sure, the country does need to attract significantly more direct investment but that usually goes hand-in-hand with a strong stock market.”

However, Alexei Petrov, head of analytical development at Arbat Capital, was more supportive of Shuvalov, warning that speculative capital on stock exchanges is more mobile and sensitive to changes on world markets.

“Its excess influx in the country traditionally leads to overheating and inflating of bubbles, its sudden escape turns the still weak financial markets into ruins,” Pavlov told Gazeta.ru.

Shuvalov urged time, patience and long-term investment as Russia looks to modernize. He suggested that growth rates should hover around 5 per cent to control spending, and there should be no hurry to allow the rouble to trade freely in case it hampered domestic producers.

“The conversion to a knowledge-based economy while having 7 per cent growth rates is extremely difficult, because there’d be a big inflow of capital and everybody would want social spending,” Shuvalov said. “Growth of 4 to 5 per cent would let us really modernize.”

At the same time, it isn’t fair to compare Russia with its BRIC peers Brazil, India and China, because of structural differences in their economies, whose growth exceeds Russia, according to Shuvalov. Russia is interested in “quality” changes to its economy rather than high growth rates, he said.

The Russian economy expanded 2.9 percent in the first quarter, compared with annual rates of 9 per cent in Brazil, 11.9 per cent in China and 8.6 per cent in India.

However, the day after Shuvalov’s remarks, president Dmitry Medvedev called for faster growth in the national economy in his speech to the Petersburg forum.

Uplifting Tale of Leningrad Siege Wins Booker

Yelena Chizhova is the first St. Petersburg novelist to win the Russian Booker Prize in the 17-year history of the country’s most prestigious independent literary prize with her novel “A Time of Women.”
The novel looks at the consequences of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad during World War II. The siege is the setting for the lives of three women who are the novel’s central protagonists. Two of them have lost everything: their husbands, children and parents. The third, although much younger, is also deeply touched by the war.
Chizhova was given the prize at an awards ceremony earlier this month. Her victory was not entirely unexpected as she was short-listed twice before. The work is very much in line with Chizhova’s previous four novels, all of which focus on dramatic moments in history.
Andrei Ariyev, editor of the St. Petersburg literary journal Zvezda, which published “A Time of Women” in its pages and nominated it for the competition, said at a gathering to celebrate the victory last week that “A Time of Women” corresponds to Alexander Pushkin’s definition of the novel as “a historic epoch presented in the form of literary narration.”
In an interview, Chizhova said she based the novel’s central stories on what she heard from her grandmothers and others of their generation. The book produces a collective image of manifold suffering: those who remained in the city throughout the siege, those who were evacuated via Lake Ladoga, the many who were killed in the bombing and those who came back to live in the harsh poverty that followed the war.
Nevertheless, the author shows the misery indirectly, and a mood of tolerance and love prevails in the narrative. The technique of the composition is complex. It is narrated by an authorial voice into which extracts from the younger girl’s diary are inserted, providing the perspective of a 6-year-old.
Life proceeds on several levels. It is in the communal flat where the three women live, outside in the streets, in a church, at a factory, in food lines, in their conversations where they talk about their past, the years before the Revolution, their lives during the siege and the years of war; and then in the girl’s head, as she listens to all this, absorbing everything and then recording her impressions in her diary and drawings.
At first it seems that fate has been cruelest to the two older women, who are in their 50s, because they have lost all those who are dearest to them. They have seen better times and can compare them with the present. Antonina, on the other hand, is a representative of the younger, postwar generation. Her life is one of overwhelming poverty and hunger. She raises her 6-year-old mute daughter on her own and lives in permanent fear that Sofia will be taken away from her and put in a state institution for handicapped children.
Sofia has no father and lives in extreme poverty, but she is the recipient of so much love that her childhood might easily be envied. The two older women, her neighbors, bestow their love upon her, standing in for both her parents when Antonina dies. Despite all this gloom, Chizhova manages to take readers away from the darkness and raise them up to the sky.
The girl grows up, enrolling in the Arts Academy, and we follow her life into the 1970s as the novel touches on issues such as emigration. Sofia hesitates as she faces the dilemma of whether to leave the Soviet Union and start a new life or stay near the graves of her loved ones. She feels that leaving them behind would be a betrayal. She stays to be with the souls of those who loved her so much knowing that they would have sacrificed their own lives for her without a moment’s hesitation.
Russia has not given us much in the way of uplifting and optimistic novels in recent years and the Booker has repeatedly been criticized for being clubby, remote and giving the award to books that no one reads. This year St. Petersburg has turned the page.

The St. Petersburg Tower

The United Nations on Friday renewed its warning that St. Petersburg was jeopardizing its status as a World Heritage site, ahead of final public hearings on Gazprom Neft’s plans to build a 400-meter skyscraper visible from within the historic center.
In a statement published Friday, UNESCO expressed its “grave concern that the proposed Okhta Center tower could affect the outstanding universal value of the property.” The organization also asked that the state-run company halt work and submit modified plans, “in accordance with federal legislation and accompanied by an independent environmental impact assessment.”
Preservationists, who have long contended that the tower would be an eyesore amid St. Petersburg’s historic architecture, say the government is trying to ram through approval without the necessary oversight or public discussion.
On Aug. 12, a city commission tentatively approved the tower and scheduled the hearings to discuss the Okhta Center project, designed by Britain-based RMJM Architects.
But protesters — including from Yabloko and the Communist Party — have filed a complaint with the Krasnogvardeisky District Court challenging the scheduling. They say City Hall printed its official announcement in a special issue of the small daily newspaper Nevskoye Vremya, which was only released on the day of the hearings.
The lawsuit also says the city has failed to establish a special land-use commission, which is supposed to be included in the hearings.
The court has yet to rule on the challenge.
“City authorities adopted two laws this year that contradict Gazprom Neft’s plans,” said Antonina Yeliseyeva, an activist of the Zhivoi Gorod movement. “The first, adopted in February, regulates the usage of city land and building policies, the second, adopted in March, determines the architectural protection areas.”
The laws limits buildings’ height to 100 meters and lists a number of places around the city from which no new construction can be visible, she said.
“If the city makes an exception for Gazprom Neft, it will be a dangerous precedent,” she said. “Then we are going to see numerous skyscrapers in the nearest future.”
Gazprom Neft could not be reached for comment Friday, but it has previously alleged that the protesters are being paid by unidentified opponents.
St. Petersburg was originally supposed to finance 49 percent of the project, but because of budgetary problems, state oil producer Gazprom Neft agreed to cover 100 percent of the costs, estimated at 60 billion rubles ($1.9 billion).
“The project is absolutely legitimate because we won it through a fair, architectural competition, and it was chosen by a jury, including the governor and city architect,” said Philip Nikandrov, chief architect on the Okhta Center and director of RMJM’s office in St. Petersburg. “The concept will be discussed Tuesday, during public hearings, and if we get approval, then we will go ahead with the project.”
The development must still be approved by several committees and federal building regulators, a process that could take several months, he said.
“UNESCO’s protest is about emotions, while they should be pointing out specific instances where the law was breached,” he said. “The building is supposed to go up outside the city’s central area.”
The disagreement stems from the fact that St. Petersburg has changed the borders of its historical center since it was included as a UNESCO site in 1990. The tower, which UNESCO says is being built in a buffer zone, now falls outside that area according St. Petersburg’s newly adopted development plan, Nikandrov said.
He also brushed off concerns that the skyscraper would be visible from some of the 130 points specified in the new law.
“If seen from Vasilyevsky Island, for instance, it will look two times lower than Peter and Paul Fortress,” he said.
He compared the debate around the project with the controversies over the construction of the 324-meter Eiffel Tower in the late 1880s.
“Lots of people were opposed to it then, now it has become the landmark of Paris,” he said. “So time will judge, who was right and who was wrong.”
Removing a site from the World Heritage list doesn’t happen every day, UNESCO spokesman Roni Amelan said in e-mailed comments, making it clear that the move was still viewed as a last resort.
It has only happened twice: at the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in Oman and the Dresden Elbe Valley in Germany because the sites lost their “outstanding universal qualities,” he said.
Unless changes are made, the historic center of St. Petersburg and related monuments will be put on UNESCO’s danger list.
The development, located on the banks of the Okhta River on the city’s eastern edge, sparked controversy almost as soon as details were announced in December 2006.
The building’s design, reminiscent of an ear of corn, immediately earned it a wealth of unflattering nicknames, most frequently Gazochlen (a reference to its phallic shape), Gazoskryob, or Gas-scraper, and Matviyenko’s Cucumber, in honor of its chief advocate, Governor Valentina Matviyenko.
City Hall maintains that the project would help develop St. Petersburg as a business center and bring Gazprom Neft, a big taxpayer, to the city.