From April You’ll Need a Doctor’s Certificate to Get through Metal Detectors in Petersburg Subway Fontanka.ru
January 25, 2017
Starting March 30, the Petersburg subway will be equipped with special barriers to stop people, including those whose medical conditions prevent them from walking through metal detectors.
The Petersburg subway’s press service told Fontanka.ru the special barriers had begun to be installed last year as part of the Federal Law on Transportation Security. They were tested at the Tekhnologichesky Institut station, and during the entire time they were in service, no conflicts with passengers arose, subway management insists.
Since the new year, the barriers have been installed at several more stations. Passengers with pacemakers and metal implants should proceed as follows at these stations: they should press a special button on the barrier to summon a trained staff member. The staff member is obliged to check the relevant doctor’s certificate and, if there are any more questions for the passenger, send him to have his personal belongings inspected. Passengers without doctor’s certificates will not be allowed to enter the subway, warns subway management.
Not all passengers are aware of the changes, and they have had trouble getting through the turnstiles. A Fontanka.ru reader has told us that, on the morning of January 25, he had been unable to bypass the metal detector at the Grazhdansky Prospekt subway station, as he had been able to do on previously. The man, who had metal implants installed in his head during an operation, claims he waited ten minutes for a subway staffer to personally inspect his belongings. When the subway employee arrived, he told the man that, according to regulations, he would not let him into the subway without a doctor’s certificate.
“No warnings had been posted in advance,” writes the reader, angry at having wasted so much time.
Subway management could not confirm additional efforts would be made to inform passengers, noting the necessary signage had already been posted in station lobbies.
Kushelev-Bezborodko Palace on Gagarin Street, Petersburg, home of the European University
European University Faces Eviction for Plastic Windows
Maria Karpenko Kommersant
January 24, 2017
The European University in St. Petersburg, one of the leading non-public educational institutions in Russia, may lose its building. Petersburg city hall has unilaterally terminated the lease agreement for the Kushelev-Bezborodko Palace, which has housed the university since 1995. The Smolny claims university management violated the conditions for using the historic building by making alterations and installing windows and air conditioners. Meanwhile, the university had been preparing to reconstruct the palace, investing 2.2 billion rubles in the project, 670 million rubles of which were to be spent on restoring the historic section of the building.
On December 27 of last year, the St. Petersburg City Committee for Property Relations (KIO) sent the European University notice it was unilaterally terminating the rental agreement. As a source at the committee told Kommersant, the European University hd not fulfilled its obligations to preserve the mansion of Count Kushelev-Bezborodko, built in the nineteenth century.
Officials discovered the violations last summer during an unscheduled inspection. (The Smolny could not explain yesterday why the inspection had been necessary.) As a source at the City Landmarks Use and Preservation Committee (KGIOP) informed Kommersant, university officials had made alterations to the premises and installed reinforced plastic windows and air conditioners without providing authorized documentation and obtaining permission for the repairs. The Dzerzhinsky District Court fined the European University 200,000 rubles in its capacity as user of a culture heritage site.
The Property Relations Committee then deemed it possible to terminate the lease agreement. The European University challenged the agreement’s termination in commercial court, arguing it was groundless. The court adopted interim measures, halting the university’s eviction from the premises until a decision has been made on the claim. The first hearing has been scheduled for March 15.
Meanwhile, the European University had planned in the near future to begin implementing an investment project for adapting the Kushelev-Bezborodko Palace to modern educational needs. The university estimates its cost at 2.2 to 2.4 billion rubles, 670 million rubles of which should go to restoring the historic section of the palace. The project has been in the works since 2013. Architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, designer of the Russian Cultural Center in Paris, won the competition to carry out the project. As European University Vice-Rector Vadim Volkov told Kommersant, the KGIOP had already partly authorized the reconstruction. (Our sources in the KGIOP confirmed that the methods for restoring the interiors of the palace that had artistic value had been approved.) Next week, the university had anticipated the KGIOP’s decision on the entire project.
“Given our intention to implement such an ambitious project, the KIO’s decision to evict us from the building on account of three windows, a plastic partition, and and extension that was erected under Brezhnev looks odd, at very least,” Mr. Volkov said.
The official statement on the university’s website stresses that none of the violations uncovered during the inspection “put the cultural heritage of the palace at risk. They would be automatically corrected during the adjustment project as mentioned above.”
The statement goes on to say “[t]here is a degree of incommensurability between the claims of the Committee and the consequences entailed by the latter’s tough stance.”
Vice-Rector Volkov likewise noted that the clause giving the city the right to terminate the lease agreement if the university violated its landmark protection obligations had been added to the agreement only in April 2015 at the behest of the KIO.
“First, the KIO inserted these conditions in the agreement, and then showed up to check just this, certain they would be able to turn up violations of some kind,” Mr. Volkov suggested.
Maxim Reznik, chair of the education, culture and science committee in the city’s legislative assembly, believes the claims are politically motivated.
“Apparently, the presence of such a university, when all the rest have long ago been marching in step, keeps someone awake at night. In my view, the situation can be resolved in the university’s favor only if if the head of state [i.e., Vladimir Putin] or people close to him intervene,” the city MP told Kommersant.
In December of last year, Rosobrnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science) suspended the university’s license. The European University appealed to President Putin, who asked Vice-Premier Olga Golodets to get to the bottom of the matter. As Kommersant wrote, officials who attended a closed meeting concluded the claims were unsubstantial and spoke out in the university’s favor. Three days later, its educational license had been restored.
The university first encountered problems with oversight authorities in 2008, when it was closed for a month and a half [allegedly] for fire safety violations. Last summer, the Prosecutor General’s Office inspected the European University at the behest of Petersburg MP Vitaly Milonov. Prosecutors then gave the university two months to eliminate violations.
A typical street scene in central Petersburg, 27 January 2017. Photo by TRR
Culinary Nomalism has finally blazed a trail to lowly Petersburg, ex-capital of All the Russias.
EM is a unique modernist [sic] cuisine restaurant where everything from the bread to the coffee is prepared on an AGA cooker in the open-kitchen dining room.
December — January
I
Spinach brioche with black caviar and edamame cream
II
Shrimps with cauliflower and red tea sauce
III
Neat’s tongue with baked portobello and blue tea chips
IV
Walnut with prunes mousse and powdered porcini
V
Sterlet with grey cheesecake and raspberry sauce
Stewed lamb with yellow tomatoes in different textures
Since just about everyone in Petersburg is (not) rolling in money, Nomalism’s advent in the city, which has just been celebrating the latest anniversary of the lifting of the 900-day Nazi Siege that killed off half its population in living memory, could not be timelier. At this eatery, the bimonthly non-vegan set menu (“Classic Set”), as listed above, will cost you 3,500 rubles (approx. 55 euros), sans wine.
That would be a steal for the actual Noma crowd, of course, but not so cheap for the vast majority of the city’s population. The average monthly old age pension in Petersburg is, supposedly, around 12,000 rubles (approx. 188 euros), while the average monthly salary is around 31,000 rubles (approx. 485 euros).
Who, then, are the clientele for this haute bourgeois splurgery?
These middle-aged women, picking their way across pavements caked with sand and dotted with islets of ice, hard-trodden snow, and frozen slush, because the city government is too poor or too feeble to remove them the good old-fashioned way?
Another typical street scene in central Petersburg, 27 January 2017. Photo by TRR
Petroneft-Biysk LLC has nothing to do with so-called black gold. As the company’s website reports, it is the legal successor to the Biysk Plywood and Match Mill, known to Biysk residents as the Match. The Match mainly produces plywood. On January 12, around 200 workers in the plywood facility went on strike, demanding payment of wage arrears dating back to September 2016. Around 300 people are employed at the plant.
According to local media, back wages were the cause of the conflict, but the workers themselves talked about an under-the-table bonus. According to them, since new management took over the plant, it has paid a third of their wages off the books. In the autumn, the company stopped paying wages altogether.
Wage delays are not news at Petroneft. As early as January 2016, management had tried to persuade staff to be patient while the company got back on its feet.
“We appealed to people: if you care about the company’s plight and you can make the decision for yourself, we ask you to go on an unpaid leave of absence. We didn’t force anyone to do it. We asked them to understand and accept the situation,” Olga Fischer, the company’s chief economist, said in an interview published in Nash Biyskin January 2016.
A year passed, and the workers’ patience finally snapped.
“The whole plywood facility went on strike. We notified the employer and got everyone in the shop to sign a petition naming the cause of the strike. We got copies of the strike notice back from management, with a stamp and number indicating they had received it. On Thursday, we didn’t go to work. There was no pressure. The foreman relayed our conditions to management, and ultimately they put us on technical downtime,” a striker told MPRA Omsk activists.
However, the workers did not have to sit at home for long. On January 17, the employer paid six months of back wages to workers from the striking shop floors. Support staff, who did not strike, were not paid the wages owed them, however.
“Afterwards, that bonus was issued, but it was issued only to those workers who had been on strike. Now they’re looking for the instigators, but we won’t give them up. The minutes of the trade union organizing meeting we had do exist, but unfortunately it won’t go any farther than that,” said our source in the mill.
MPRA congratulates the workers on their first victory. However, their success will not endure if they do not secure it by forming a trade union. We hope the folks in Biysk will be able to take this second, decisive step towards fairness. Then the Match will kindle the flame.
Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks again toComradeIvan Ovsyannikov for the heads-up. MPRA is the Interregional Trade Union Workers Association. MPRA is affiliated with the IndustriALL Global Union.
Government Refuses to Allocate 70 Billion Rubles to Combat HIV
Polina Zvezdina RBC
January 26, 2017
The Health Ministry has sent the government a plan for implementing the national strategy for preventing the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) until 2020. RBC has a copy of the document, whose authenticity has been confirmed by a source close to the government, in its possession. The plan does not stipulate allocating additional funds for combating the infection. In the financial feasibility study appended to the draft plan, officials noted the agencies responsible for its implementation, as well as the regions, would have to finance the plan’s implementation.
Additional financing of the plan was stipulated in a earlier draft, also examined by RBC. In the draft, the Health Ministry had indicated additional monies from the budget, 17.5 billion rubles per annum, would be required to meet the strategy’s targets. There were plans to spend 13.2 billion rubles of this money on treatment, 3.2 billion rubles on diagnosis, and 1.1 billion rubles on treatment oversight. This funding should have made it possible for all HIV patients currently registered at AIDS centers to undergo special treatment and increase to 35% the share of the population tested annually for HIV. In 2015, 19.3% of the population was tested for HIV, while 37.3% of infected patients were provided with medical treatment.
It was the Finance Ministry that did not approve allocating the 70 billion rubles, judging by a ministry review sent to the Health Ministry on December 22, 2016. First Deputy Finance Minister Tatyana Nesterenko did not support the additional allocation, because these funds were not included in the approved federal budget for 2017–2019. In the review, the Finance Ministry argued that budgetary allocations for new spending could be contemplated only at the beginning of the fiscal year and provided that the government had additional revenues.
The government will continue its discussion of the draft plan for HIV prevention, said Denis Godlevsky, an expert at the HIV Assistance Foundation. There is a chance the Health Ministry will succeed in obtaining the full funding, he said.
Percentages of HIV infected people in Russia by region. The percentage of people under the age of 60 infected nationwide is 0.72%. In the original article (go to the link at the top of the page), this map is interactive by region. The figures for Crimea and Sebastopol reflect the percentage of infected residents among all age groups. Infographic courtesy of RBC
Testing 35% of the population annually for HIV and providing 100% treatment for all registered patients were goals the Health Ministry hoped to achieve only if it received the “requisite” financing, as outlined in the HIV prevention strategy adopted by the government. If this money is not provided, the ministry proposes focusing on a different set of figures. Under the current healthcare budget, the number of people undergoing testing would increase to only 24%, while 56% of infected patients would receive treatment.
The Health Ministry has not responded to RBC’s questions as to which set of targets the ministry would follow when implementing the strategy.
If government agencies would use the funds already available effectively and rationally, the situation would begin to change for the better anyway, said Alexei Lakhov, deputy director for public relations at E.V.A., a noncommercial partnership.
“And when the situation changes for the better, a financial feasibility study can be done requesting additional appropriations,” Lakhov suggested.
The HIV prevention strategy was approved on October 20, 2016. It contained no information about funding.
Employees of the company Techsteel (Tekhstal’) in Novosibirsk have walked off the job, organizing a wildcat strike. The reason for the protest is prolonged nonpayment of wages. According to the workers, they have not been paid since last July.
Today, it transpired that management had placed everyone on administrative leave. Although no one had signed any consent forms, and people had continued to work during this time.
Irina Kochkina, crane operator:
“We didn’t submit any requests for leave. We found out by chance. They rename [the company]: I don’t know what organization I work for. We don’t know a thing. They don’t give us our pay stubs. We go to management, we go to accounting. There they tell us they’ve been forbidden to say how big the debt is. Director General Mikhailov said the debts were frozen, and there is no telling when they will be paid.”
The workers have filed complaints with the Labor Inspectorate and the prosecutor’s office, to no avail. Today, they downed tools. The plant’s workers say they won’t go back to their lathes until they get their wages.
Alexander Dugin and John Candy: Not Separated at Birth
Eurasianist leader and self-confessed fascist Alexander Dugin had something he wanted to say to you about Donald Trump and the US presidential elections.
Dugin and his voiceover artists’ delivery and (unintentional) self-parody reminded me of the Second City Television (SCTV) episode in which the lowly Melonville station’s signal is temporarily blocked and taken over by “CCCP1, Russian Television.”
But that was meant to be funny. And it was also meant to parody not so much the actual Soviet Union (although it did a little of that, too, especially in its prescient “vilification” of “Uzbeks”) as it did North American Cold War attitudes and stereotypes of the Soviet Union.
Now what begun as high farce has returned as . . . I wanted to say tragedy, but it’s really the most vulgar of comedies. It’s definitely not funny anymore, though, whatever the real or imagined connections between the Fascist Pig in the Poke and the Kremlin.
Thanks to Comrade Maximum for the heads-up on the Dugin video. This post was updated on 27 February 2023 because the original video featuring Dugin sounding off about Trump has disappeared from YouTube, alas. ||| TRR
Monument to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Petersburg, July 18, 2015
The pioneering Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was, undoubtedly, a certifiable genius.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is quite small (0.03%), which does not facilitate crop yields. Its quantity could be increased 30 times (to one percent) with great benefit to plants and no harm whatsoever to man. The gas is not poisonous, and an abundance of it in the atmosphere would only hinder its secretion from the lungs. One percent would cause almost no hindrance, even if we are talking about human lungs.
—Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, “The Future of the Earth and Mankind” (Kaluga, 1928)
I realize everyone is already sick to death of the topic of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, and that today is a weekend day to boot. But I’ve been mulling this text over in my head for three days and struggling with the desire to write it down. I’ve been persuading myself there are lots of smart people aroiund who will write what needs to be written. But I can’t get the arguments out of my head, so I’ve given in to my desire.
***
Folks, especially non-Petersburgers, who note melancholically, “Just give it back to the Church. Can’t you spare it?” really amuse me.
Well, no, we can’t spare it.
1. The ROC [Russian Orthodox Church] is not the Vatican, and all comparisons of St. Isaac’s Cathedral with St. Peter’s Basilica are irrelevant in this context. The ROC not only doesn’t know how to preserve architectural landmarks. It doesn’t want to preserve them. It wants to use them, and it preserves them the same way you maintain your apartment, for example. Imagine you’ve decided to put in parquet floors or throw out old furniture. Who is going to stop you? It’s your own business. You can figure out yourself what’s best for you: the new parquet or the old linoleum. This is basically how many church leaders and believers look at it. They believe an icon, however timeworn and whatever the destructive effects shifts in humidity, vibrations, etc., have on it, it should be in a church, not in a museum. Yes, it is has to be handled carefully and respectfully, yet it can be carried in a outdoor religious procession and venerated by parishioners kissing it. If something has happened to it, it means it was God’s will. A new copy of the icon will have to be ordered. I’m not exaggerating. I’m trying to explain that notions of “humanity’s heritage” and “universal value” are empty phrases for most members of the church community. They don’t understand how church property can be the business of unbelievers. Moreover, from their perspective, the right government should be Orthodox. It should maintain churches the way it maintains hospitals and schools.
The problem is not that we know of numerous cases in which the ROC has treated architectural landmarks and museum communities barbarically. The problem is the Church’s leadership has not publicly condemned any of these incidents. It doesn’t condemn them, because it doesn’t consider them important or it even approves them. So it will happen again and again, and heritage preservation authorities are basically powerless.
This is an answer to the exclamation, “Give back to the Church what was taken from it in 1917!”
Parents are given the right to raise their children. But if they treat them irresponsibly, hit them, don’t get them medical care when they’re ill, don’t feed them, etc., society acknowledges the need to restrict the rights of such parents. A hundred years ago, however, this would not have occurred to anyone. But our notions of violence, the value of human life, and children’s rights have changed. Our notions of culture and its right to protection have also changed. The ROC does not guarantee the safety and security of architectural landmarks in the sense regarded as normal in modern society. We cannot hand architectural landmarks over to the Church, at least not until the Church changes.
2. Why should the ROC be the main user of St. Isaac’s Cathedral? If we leave aside money and “historical justice,” the only reason could be to hold services on a full scale—not in the chapel, but in the central nave, for example, with the museum closed on feast days and so on. But think about it. Since the Patriarch can force [Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko] to give back a church, then of course the Patriarch could also obtain the best conditions for church services. Meaning this is not the issue.
The issue, of course, is money and “status.”
So we have a public museum. We know everything about it: how much money it earns, how much money it spends and what it spends its money on, and how much it pays in taxes. And we have the Church. We don’t know anything about it, and that will go on being the case. No, we do know one thing: it doesn’t pay taxes. So we won’t be able to find out whether the Church has the money for routine repairs and restoration work or not. Going back to my first point, the Church might not think that restoration is necessary. So the city will always have to have the necessary sum of money for repairs on hand. Plus there are the taxes, the taxes the cathedral museum pays now and won’t be paying in the same amount after the cathedral’s transfer to the Church. All this means that the “free” entrance with which the church community has been tempting us, will be free for everyone except Petersburgers. Every Petersburger will pay (via the city’s budget), regardless of whether he or she has visited the cathedral or not.
It would be nifty, beautiful, and right if entry to St. Isaac’s Cathedral were free to everyone. But we can’t afford it. A normal family doesn’t sell its only home to buy a Mercedes to show off to the neighbors, but drives a car it can afford or takes public transport. Similarly, Petersburgers cannot afford, for the time being, We should recognize this and live within our means.
P.S. I’ve come across a reference to Clamoring Stones: The Russian Church and Russian Culture Heritage at the Turn of the Millennium (2006), a book by the archaeologist and art historian Alexander Musin. It is about how restitution of church property has taken place and the consequences this has had for Russia’s cultural heritage. I haven’t read it yet. I haven’t even found where I can buy it. But I think it’s a must read. (Here’s a review.)
Several hundred people rallied outside a St. Petersburg landmark cathedral on January 13 to protest plans to give it to the Russian Orthodox Church.
The local governor this week announced the city was transferring the iconic St. Isaac’s Cathedral to the Orthodox Church, sparking a rash of protests in the former imperial city.
Protesters flocked to Isaakiyevskaya Square near St. Isaac’s to protest the move on the evening of January 13. The cathedral is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has been an important museum since Russia’s 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. More than 3.5 million tourists visit it every year.
“The Church should know its place!” one placard read.
Police confiscated one poster but did not otherwise block the protest.
TASS reported that activists have gathered as many as 160,000 signatures on a petition to revoke the local government’s decision to give away the cathedral.
The signatures include people from Moscow, Yekaterinburg, and Krasnodar as well as St. Petersburg, TASS said.
The church takeover of the landmark is part of a growing trend toward social conservatism in Russia. President Vladimir Putin has appealed to traditional values and urged citizens to eschew Western liberalism.
It’s embarrassing to brag about what a good day I’ve been having when I’m supposed to be all bummed out about the Fascist Pig-Elect’s taking the oath to become the plain old Fascist Pig in the Poke, but it’s true.
I don’t quite get it, but things have been going my way all day.
For example, I lucked out while shopping this afternoon at our neighborhood Auchan hypermarket. They were having a sale on $10,000 packs of hundred dollar bills: 67 rubles 39 kopecks a pop!
I guess Auchan knows something the rest of us don’t know about what’s going to happen to the mighty US dollar when the Fascist Pig in the Poke starts implementing his “economic policies.”
So Auchan decided to unload the wads of US cash they had lying round the store while they were still worth something, even if it was only 67.39 rubles.
Good on them, as the Aussies say.
By sheer coincidence, when my true love came home from work she presented me with a new, totally recyclable wallet, made from a synthetic material called Tyvek. It weighs next to nothing, but now I’ll have somewhere to keep my nearly worthless $10,000 safe.
And it’s embossed with images of Imperial stormtroopers!
If you’ve seen the terrific new Star Wars movie, Rogue One, the best Star Wars movie in 39 years, you’ll know it’s a very timely tale about what happens when ordinary people resist an emergent fascist government: they all get killed.
Factory workers. Photo courtesy of 
The Russian Reader 