Yevgeny Zhumabekov: Returning the Names

“Yevgeny Zhumabekov, 96 kilograms” is how he introduces himself. Yevgeny is the person who came up with the idea of replacing Last Address plaques that had been torn down with homemade copies and who did this work incognito for almost a year. Now he can identify himself.

Bumaga has detailed the struggle that erupted over the plaques in December 2023. They began to disappear en masse, but copies subsequently appeared in place of the ones that had been torn down. These copies were also removed, after which a plaque appeared on the 14th Line on Vasilyevsky Island bearing the following message: “Plaques [memorializing] people who had been politically repressed in this place were repressed eight times.”

Here you can read Yevgeny’s own account of how the [Stalinist] crackdowns touched his family, what shaped his views, how his wife and children got involved in the fight for historical justice, why the Zhumabekovs had to leave the country, and who continues to install the plaques in their wake.

How the repressions touched Yevgeny’s family

I was born in the Sverdlovsk Region, in the town of Kushva, which has gradually been turning into a village. It’s a depressing place. Two of the industrial enterprises that supported the town have shut down. People have been leaving, while the old people are dying off.

It so happened that my history teacher at school was a good friend of my grandfather’s. He would come to my grandfather’s house, and they would drink hard alcohol together, play chess, and talk a lot. I often visited my grandmother and grandfather and heard these conversations. That’s how I learned that my grandfather came from a family of a person who had been politically repressed.

His parents had come from the Perm Region. My great-grandmother and great-grandfather were completely ordinary peasants. It was forbidden in their house to drink alcohol, [and because they were teetotalers] they harvested large crops. In 1931 or 1932, they were dekulakized and exiled far beyond the Arctic Circle, while their children were sent to orphanages. After a while great-grandmother and great-grandfather managed to escape, but great-grandmother had fallen ill in exile and died soon after returning home, while great-grandfather had to hide out in remote villages all the rest of his life.

I know that my grandfather also had a hard time as a member of a politically repressed family, but he never told me about it, although I tried to find out. It was such a profound trauma for him that he could discuss it only when he got drunk with his sole friend.

How the FSB visited Yevgeny’s workplace

In 2006, I moved to St. Petersburg, where I worked for a time in the car business. I held various positions: sales manager, head of the customer engagement department, manager of a car showroom. Then, before the war, I transferred to a construction company, where I sold real estate.

In 2021, I went to a rally in support of Alexei Navalny after he had returned from Germany. Then there was the protest action with flashlights and others. Not only did I attend these events but I also talked about them with my colleagues at work. I was just sharing my pain, not encouraging them to do anything.

Zhumabekov protesting next to the Bronze Horseman in downtown Petersburg, date unknown.
Photo courtesy of Mr. Zhumabekov (via Bumaga)

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The Terror Scam Gig Economy

Petersburg police have arrested a 24-year-old freight handler who threw a Molotov cocktail at a military recruitment office (voenkomat). He had been hoodwinked by scammers whom he had contacted himself.

The Petrograd District Court remanded Daniil Pavlov in custody to a pretrial detention center, Rotunda’s correspondent reports. Pavlov faces ten to twenty years’ imprisonment on charges of “terrorism” (per Article 205 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code). The pretrial restrictions hearing took place in closed chambers.

Baza writes that in early December Pavlov had been unable to log onto the Gosuslugi (municipal and state services) app, and instead of the number for customer support he found the scammers’ number on the internet. They asked him to move the conversation to Telegram and told him that they had hacked the young man’s account. According to RIA Novosti, Pavlov then wired 800,000 rubles [approx. 7,400 euros] to these persons unknown.

“Customer service” told Pavlov that he had to throw a Molotov cocktail at the military recruitment office on Tchaikovsky Street* [in Petersburg’s Liteiny District]. He thus intended to assist in the apprehension of certain “bad guys,” journalists explain.

RIA Novosti writes that he was promised a payment of two million rubles [approx. 18,500 euros] for the job. As soon as the young man threw the flammable mixture, he was detained by police.

📌 Daniil Pavlov lived in [the Petersburg suburb of] Sestroretsk and was employed as a freight handler. Judging by his subscriptions on VKontakte, the young man enjoyed anime and computer games. His girlfriend told Rotunda that they had been planning to get married.

* Tchaikovsky Street in Petersburg is named after the Russian revolutionary Nikolai Tchaikovsky, not the Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

Source: Rotunda (Telegram), 18 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

🍍🍍🍍🍍 WOW News: the number of pineapples needed to enter prize drawings has dropped! Hurry up and hunt for pineapples and get closer to winning! You still have time to take part in drawings for a flat in Moscow, cars and tours abroad.

It’s simple:

√ Go to the promotion page.

√ Search for pineapples on the product pages in the Ozon app.* The products marked with pineapples change daily. You can also get pineapples for purchases of 500 rubles or more. Pineapples are awarded for redeemed items.

√ Double your pineapples when paying for purchases outside Ozon with the Ozon Bank card (more details in the terms and conditions of the promotion).

*The promotion is available only in app versions 17.40 and up.

Source: Email flyer from news@news.ozon.ru, 18 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Alleged video footage of the arson attack in Bolshoi Kamen, Maritime Territory, Russia

A resident of Bolshoy Kamen (Maritime Territory) attempted to torch a building after he fell prey to scammers, writes the Telegram channel Mash.

After the 23-year-old male was detained, he told police that telephone scammers from Ukraine had persuaded him to take out a bank loan. He later realized he had been conned.

Sometime later the con men again telephoned the local resident. Identifying themselves as members of the secret services, they asked the young man to torch town hall and a bank branch, saying these actions would allegedly repay the detained man’s [sic] debt.

“They sent him instructions on how to assemble a Molotov cocktail and gave him subsequent orders over the telephone,” Mash writes.

Heeding these recommendations [sic], the young man broke a window in the bank branch and set fire to it. According to Telegram channels, he also attempted to torch town hall. The flames also engulfed fire department vehicles.

The fire in the first building was extinguished quickly, but what happened at the other two locations [lokatsii] is not reported.

Earlier in Blagoveshchensk, four people attempted to torch a military recruitment office and were handed prison sentences of up to seventeen years.

Source: Ekaterina Vasilenko, “Bolshoy Kamen man torches bank branch and town hall on orders of con artists from Ukraine,” Gazeta.ru, 14 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

[…]

Meanwhile, Russia’s Federal Security Services (FSB) published a video of the suspect’s interrogation.

In the footage, a dark-haired man wearing handcuffs with what appears to be a visible rip in his coat is seen speaking directly to the camera.

He is heard saying in Russian that he had been offered a reward of $100,000 and a European passport in exchange for killing Kirillov.

The FSB added that on Ukraine’s instructions, he arrived in Moscow and received a homemade explosive device.

It is unclear whether the suspect’s confession was made under duress.

[…]

Source: Amy Walker, “Russia detains Uzbek man over general’s killing in Moscow,” BBC News, 18 December 2024

Alexander Skobov: Behind Bars in the USSR and Putin’s Russia

The number of Russians who find themselves behind bars for opposing the authorities who launched the war with Ukraine grows by the day. There are hundreds of political prisoners in the country. We try to remind our readers about these people every chance we get. Today, Mediazona’s David Frenkel tells the story of Alexander Skobov, 67, a historian from St Petersburg, a defendant in the last criminal case against ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’ in Soviet history, a convinced Marxist, and a veteran of the dissident movement, who after decades has found himself on a very familiar path: searches, arrest, psychiatric ward, jail.

Alexander Skobov is one of the most experienced political prisoners in Russia. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was twice sent to a psychiatric hospital for compulsory treatment: the first time as an editor of samizdat, the second time for slogans in favour of political prisoners, which Skobov wrote on the walls of Leningrad houses.

Almost half a century later, in April 2024, the authorities came after him again. Skobov was accused of ‘justifying terrorism’ because of his post about the explosion on the Crimean Bridge and sent to a pre-trial detention centre. In protest, he refused to take his glasses and medication with him. Later, an article on participation in a ‘terrorist community’ was added to the charge, and Skobov was transferred from St Petersburg to Syktyvkar.

“We were left alone for a long time. The reasoning being: we’ll die out on our own. Or we’ll leave and live out the rest of our lives off the once acquired (quite deservedly) political and moral capital. The blow came to other people, most of them much younger,” he wrote from the pre-trial detention centre.

Skobov maintains an active correspondence in pre-trial detention. He discusses philosophical and political topics, his letters are even published in historical journals. Write to Alexander, argue with him, disagree with him, I’m sure it would be valuable to him. The only thing is that his wife asks that the letters to him be written in 18-point Sans Serif font. Skobov can’t even see his own texts well: he first drafts them on the back of used sheets of paper and then blindly transfers the texts to the reply form.

Address:

167028, г. Сыктывкар, поселок Верхний Чов, д. 99 , ФКУ СИЗО-1 УФСИН России по Республике Коми. Скобову Александру Валерьевичу 1957 года рождения

Please write letters in Russian, otherwise the prison censors won’t let them through. You can send letters online via a special services called PrisonMail.

You can also write in English, using the websites Letters Across Borders and Lifeline, two projects by OVD Info, a media outlet and human rights defense group.

Source: Mediazona, 29 November 2024. I lightly edited the text, above, for clarity’s sake. Featured image courtesy of the Moscow Times. ||| TRR

Antifascist Timur Kacharava’s Mother Remembers Her Son 19 Years After His Murder by Neo-Nazis

It is a tradition in Petersburg to visit the improvised memorial to Timur Kacharava outside the Bukvoyed bookstore on Vosstaniya Street every year on the evening of November 13. Candles and portraits of the antifascist, who was murdered at this spot nineteen years ago, are brought there by his mother and a changing roster of first-time visitors. Last year the memorial was torn down by far-right activists.

Eight people were convicted of the knife attack on the twenty-year-old Timur and his friend Maxim Zgibay (who was wounded but survived the assault), and five of them were sentenced to prison. All of them have been released (the killer was paroled in 2016) and disappeared from the limelight.

Bumaga asked Irina Kacharava about the people she has seen at the memorials over the past nineteen years, how she feels about the release of Timur and Maxim’s assailants, and what life choices her son would have made in today’s Russia.

— How do you usually spend November thirteenth?

— The day before, I always wish it wasn’t happening. I wish it was the twelfth or the fourteenth. I wish I could just forget it, erase it, and be done with it. But I cannot. The thirteenth comes. I spend it at work or at home. Between five and six-thirty my husband and I go to the wall [at the Bukvoyed bookstore] on Vosstaniya Square. We go to the cemetery the day before, of course. We make sure to leave Timur’s favorite flowers, irises, [at his grave].

We hate this day, and we don’t want it to happen. For some reason it’s easy to go to the cemetery, but it’s very hard to go to the wall. But we gave our word that as long as we are alive, as long as we are able, we will go, no matter how hard it is.

We are always surprised that we are not the only ones there. Each year we think that this time round no one will come for sure. People come, and I’m surprised that all of them are young people. I ask them how they even heard about Timur, since they weren’t even alive when it happened. Nineteen years have passed. They say they heard [about Timur] from their moms and dads, and some from their brothers and sisters. That’s surprising.

We dislike this day very much, but we go to the wall, and then we try to start living again.

— Do you meet Timur’s friends? Do you communicate with them on other days?

— For a long time, ten years at least, we kept in very close contact with all of Timur’s friends. We would even get together. That has been winding down now, but it’s normal, I think. So many years have passed, and some have families, while others have left the country.

Mostly strangers or people who have been going for years come to the wall — for example, adults [sic] from the former Memorial.

— Over the years, it has been suggested that a memorial plaque be erected or a street be named in Timur’s honor. Do you think it is still possible?

— MP Nikolai Rybakov (who is the national leader of the Yabloko Party but not an MP — Bumaga) launched the campaign to put up a plaque. He personally approached us at the wall: he said he had made a request to the authorities, and that he was waiting for response. Time has passed, but nothing has happened.

— Would you like it to happen?

— I don’t know: I never thought about it. I don’t believe anyone will ever do it. And I don’t think it could happen at all given the current situation [in Russia].

By the way, there were fewer lads of conscription age [at the yearly memorial] when all these sad events [the war] began. At the beginning of the [military] mobilization, they were afraid to come. Law enforcement agencies are always present there to prevent mayhem.

— How did you react when one of the people involved in the attack, Alexander Zenin, who had been in hiding for twelve years, was detained in 2018?

— I laughed. He had been living in Pesochny the whole time. During that time he had managed to have two children, but the police had been unable to catch him. The trial was hard for me; my husband went to it. The police investigator called us and told us that the case would start to kick off again, that we would have to go to the court hearings again. He said that if we signed a paper that the case could proceed without our presence, then it would be wrapped up in one hearing. So we signed it. It turned out that he just wanted to tick a box and close the case quickly, and so there was no investigation as such. But it didn’t matter by and large. Whether he was caught or not, I wish him well and hope that his children grow up, for God’s sake.

— In 2007, you said about the attackers: “I have no vengeful feelings.” You haven’t had any since then?

— No, it’s not rational to seek revenge.

— Did they try to contact you, to apologize?

— What apologies could there be after I attended the court hearings?! I was alone there without my husband, and our lawyer was away at the time. I was alone against the seven defendants, their parents, and their lawyers. Twenty-one people tried to bite me (figuratively speaking), cut me, and kill me. I had started going to the court hearings to defend Timur. The parents of the defendants felt so angry with me that Timur had crossed their paths and caused their children to suffer.

Zenin sent us fifty thousand rubles in 201. He was apologizing, as it were, so that he would get a big plus [in his character testimony] in court. But I didn’t take the money. I asked the investigator how I could inform the court that I had not taken the money. He told me: “It was the good will of the defendant — he sent the money. Nobody cares whether you took it or not.” (Alexander Zenin was sentenced in 2018 to one and a half years in a medium security penal colony for inciting hatred and enmity.)

— You are employed as a teacher. Do you observe political activism among young children? Have their views been radicalized? Or are their attitudes apolitical?

— I’ll talk about their parents, because everything comes from the family. The parents are completely susceptible to propaganda. Of course, there are children who voice their opinions, but I do not get into these conversations with them due to professional ethics.

There are children who repeat what the TV says, what their parents say. Although there were some pupils whose parents were of the same opinion as me, and, accordingly, their children also think differently. I didn’t discuss things with them, but I was pleased to hear that not everyone was marching in lockstep. Although young people are chewed out, they are decent folk; there are all kinds of different people [among them], just like we were, just like you are. There are always pros and cons. It’s just that now the propaganda is so heavy that it is difficult to analyze the situation and have an opinion.

I can tell you this about the younger children. Whereas before [the war] they played cops and robbers, and no one wanted to be a cop, and everyone wanted to be a robber, now they play terrorists. And for some reason both sides are terrorists.

— What would Timur be doing in Russia in 2024?

— I think he would have left by 2022. He would have gone to Europe: he had his own people there. I would not say that he would have left for political reasons. The most important thing for him was music. He expressed his views through music. That’s where he would have gone. The politics would have been secondary.

— Is life in Russia more dangerous now than it was in 2005?

— Of course. There is no comparison. Despite what happened to our family in 2005, it’s not even up for discussion.

— Would you have been happy if he had left the country, but was safe and doing creative things?

— When children leave home or leave the country, it’s always sad, I guess. I’ve been trying to fool myself all these years (as psychologists have counseled me to do) that he’s alive but has just left the country. But it doesn’t work for me.

Would I have welcomed his leaving? I think it would have been his choice. His father and I would have had to accept that choice. It wouldn’t have mattered much whether we liked it or didn’t like it, whether we were sad or not. And who’s to say he would have been safe there? We don’t know what he would have done there. We would just have had to accept his choices, like we accepted his life choices in 2005.

I was reproached at the trial for not forbidding him from doing all those things. Doing what? Rescuing animals from the streets and feeding homeless people? (Timur Kacharava was a vegan and fed homeless people at Food Not Bombs events — Bumaga.) What were we supposed to forbid him from doing do? I just didn’t realize at the time that it would prove to be so dangerous. We would have just accepted his choice, because he would have had the right to it, as well as the right to make it a reality.

So, it is better that he lived a short, tragic life that was his own life rather than than the long, boring life which we would have dreamt up for him. Of course I would have been sad [had he left]. How could I not have been sad?

Source: “‘It is better that he lived a short, tragic life that was his own life’: The mother of anti-fascist Timur Kacharava, murdered in 2005, on who in St. Petersburg continues to remember her son,” Bumaga, 14 November 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. As I was preparing this post, a friend of mine in Petersburg wrote me the following:

“Last night, I stood for a while next to the memorial to Timur outside the Bukvoyed store on Vosstaniya. Suddenly three antifa showed up, one of them sporting a mohawk. They told me that a bonehead [a neo-Nazi skinhead] had just shot at them with a trauma pistol. He had been going to attack one of the antifa, but when he noticed that there were three of them he ran away and fired a parting shot. That’s what they said. E. saw young boneheads at Avtovo that evening. Considering that they now often attack couriers and janitors [i.e., Central Asian migrant workers] in particular, there is partly the same disturbing feeling as before [i.e., during the intense wave of neo-Nazi attacks on ethnic minorities, immigrants, and antifascists in Petersburg in the late 2000s]. That’s on top of everything else.”

Severe Employee Shortages on the Homefront and Staggering Casualties on the Battlefield

How much have Petersburgers’ wages grown over the past year? How do companies and experts explain the shortage of personnel? How will the tightening of migration laws affect employers? Bumaga looked at the numbers and talked to online recruiters hh.ru to give you a picture of the main trends in St. Petersburg’s labor market in 2024.

***Bike couriers emerging from a pedestrian underpass in downtown St. Petersburg. Photo: Nikolai Vinokurov/Lori via Bumaga***

Petersburgers’ salaries grew by over thirteen percent during the year according to both official stats and hh.ru’s data

Analysts at hh.ru told Bumaga that the average monthly salary advertised to Petersburgers in early October 2024 had increased by nineteen percent compared to last year’s figures — up to 79,300 rubles a month [approx. 750 euros]. Petrostat cites similar dynamics, although it cites different overall numbers. According to the city’s statistical agency, the average monthly salary in St. Petersburg increased by 13.1% in August 2024 compared to last August, amounting to 99,800 rubles.

petrostat-average salaries august 2024 Download

Top managers enjoyed the biggest increase in their average pay — 20,600 rubles a month — Maria Buzunova, head of hh.ru’s press service for the Northwest Federal District and the Central Federal District, told Bumaga. Consulting and strategy professionals, whose average income increased by 20,000 rubles [approx. 190 euros], came in second place.

“Wages in agriculture, insurance, raw materials extraction, the auto business, and auto repair have also been on the rise. Amid the unfolding personnel deficit, employers are still trying to catch applicants in construction and laborers with the money hook. That said, there is not a single sector where advertised salaries have fallen,” Buzunova says.

According Buzunova, average salaries in agriculture, investment and consulting, the auto business, raw materials extraction, and management have exceeded the 100,000 ruble per month mark. Analysts at hh.ru recorded average monthly salaries of round 100,000 rubles in the information technology, transportation, construction, and real estate fields.

Petrostat’s numbers would lead us to believe that the growth of salaries in the city has already stopped. According to the department’s data, the average monthly salary of Petersburgers was higher in the period from April to June than it is now, amounting to approximately 103,500 rubles [approx. 985]. Data from hh.ru suggest the opposite. The online recruiters told Bumaga in mid April that they had estimated the average advertised salary at 72,500 rubles per month. Thus, in five and a half months, this indicator has increased by 9.4%.

petrostat-wages in SPb & LO, january to june 2024 Download

Employers are facing a shortage of employees. Demand for teachers and medics has grown in the city

The experts at hh.ru argue that the main reason for wage growth has been the stable growth of demand for staff on the part of employers. The total number of vacancies in St. Petersburg reached 750,000 from January to early October, which is eighteen percent higher than for the same period in 2023.

“Consequently, the problem of staffing shortages has been deepening. This is confirmed by our survey of employers, which we started a couple of years ago. According to the majority of company reps both in Russia as a whole and in St. Petersburg, staffing shortages remain the fundamental problem of the labor market,” the online recruiters told Bumaga.

Demand for teachers and tutors (up twenty-six percent compared to last year), sales clerks and other retail workers (up twenty-five percent compared to last year), and medical personnel (up twenty-three percent compared to last year) has risen the most in St. Petersburg. One of the reasons for the shortage of teachers and medics is their declining interest in staying in their professions and their leaving for other sectors with better working conditions, hh.ru noted.

However, entrepreneurs from other sectors — for example, owners of restaurants, bars and cafes — have also spoken out about staffing shortages. “There is a shortage of absolutely everyone, both waiters and managers,” Vitaliya Dolinskaya, operations director at the restaurants Chang and Che-Dor, told Bumaga.

According to the heads of the companies surveyed by hh.ru, one of the reasons for the shortage of personnel is the demographic situation in the country. Other factors that negatively impact the labor market are the lack of qualified personnel, the low labor mobility of Russians, and insufficient inflows of foreign migrant workers.

Stricter migration laws may aggravate shortages of sales clerks, drivers and couriers. Companies’ costs will be borne by consumers of their goods and services

The shortage of migrant workers can be explained, among other things, by the actions of the Russian authorities after the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall music venue outside of Moscow. The State Duma continues to tighten migration laws, foreign nationals have been increasingly deported from the country, quotas for temporary work-and-residence permits have been reduced, and the police regularly carry out “anti-migrant” raids.

The attitudes of Russians towards labor migrants have also changed. Eighty percent of Petersburgers surveyed by hh.ru believe that there are too many migrants in the city. At the same time, only thirty-six percent of respondents would agree to take “migrant” jobs. Most often this opinion was voiced by workers in the restaurant and hotel business, logistics and transportation, sales, construction, and the retail trade.

Yulia Sakharova, hh.ru’s director for the Northwest Federal District, claims that the upshot of all this is a shortage of people to fill the most high-demand vacancies — for sales clerks, drivers, and couriers.

“The tightening of migration policy may complicate recruitment for companies. In most cases, the depletion of an already scarce resource leads to an increase in its cost. Employers will have higher recruitment costs. They will be forced to compete against each other by raising wages, and further shift the increased costs onto the price of their services, a price that will be paid by the end consumer,” Sakharova explained to Bumaga.

Factories are looking for young skilled workers, and IT salaries have stabilized. A few more trends in the labor market

Here are five more trends in the Petersburg labor market:

St. Petersburg has become less attractive for employment. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the city dropped from fourteenth to twenty-sixth place in hh.ru’s ratings. This happened due to increased competition and an increase in the number of Petersburgers willing to move to other regions. “This does not mean that the city has become a worse place to work. It means that labor conditions have not improved so dynamically in St. Petersburg compared to other regions,” Maria Buzunova.
Petersburg enterprises have been forty-nine percent more likely to offer jobs to young skilled workers than in 2023. Since the beginning of the year, the city’s factories and other production facilities have posted more than 14,000 vacancies which are open to recent graduates and personnel without work experience.
There were about one thousand vacancies for cab drivers in St. Petersburg in August 2024, which was fifty percent more than a year earlier. And yet, there are fewer applicants: on average, one or two people apply for each vacancy (the lower limit is four people per vacancy), hh.ru noted. This circumstance also affects the price of cab rides, which we examined in more detail here.
In 2023, the salaries of IT workers in St. Petersburg decreased for the first time in several years. In 2024, incomes in the IT sector increased again, according to hh.ru. For example, the salaries of developers have grown by seven percent, while those of analysts have risen by fifteen percent. “However, we have also seen a transition from a jobseeker’s market to an employer’s market. According to our research, the overheated market for IT professionals has reached its limit and will gradually stabilize as more and more companies refuse to give employees dynamic salary increases,” hh.ru explained.
Petersburgers are more and more often quitting stressful jobs that negatively affect their emotional state. Given these conditions, employers are forced to introduce practices for handling their employees with care and patience, hh.ru noted.

Source: “Companies compete by raising wages as Petersburg’s personnel shortage grows. Which sectors have the fewest skilled workers,” Bumaga, 4 November 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Russian casualties in Vladimir Putin‘s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have surpassed 700,000, according to Kyiv, which trolled Moscow over the round number of such a grim milestone.

In its daily update, Ukraine’s military said on Monday that over the previous day, Russian forces had suffered 1,300 personnel losses, taking the total number since the start of the full-scale invasion to 700,390.

“‘Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.’ Rene Descartes,” Ukraine’s defense ministry posted on X referring to the French philosopher.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry for comment. An accurate number of casualties, which Ukraine says are “approximate” and include those who are both dead or injured, is difficult to ascertain, with both sides remaining tightlipped over their losses.

Russia has not updated its figures since September 2022 when it said that just under 6,000 had been killed, while Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said in February that 31,000 Ukrainian troops had died, although this was lower than Western estimates.

U.S. officials told The New York Times that September was the bloodiest month of the war since its start in February 2022 and that more than 600,000 were dead and wounded, with the spike caused by assaults in the east of Ukraine where Putin’s forces have made slow gains but at a great cost in personnel.

An unnamed U.S. official cited by The New York Times said that more than 57,500 Ukrainian troops had been killed and 250,000 wounded.

Estonian intelligence estimated that Russia may have lost around 40,000 soldiers in October alone, a figure backed up by other estimates and higher than the 30,000 new soldiers that Ukrainian military intelligence believes are being recruited per month.

In its update in mid-October, independent Russian news outlet Mediazona said that 75,382 killed Russian troops had been identified, an increase of 2,483 since the start of the month.

Source: Brendan Cole, “Russia Hits Grim Troop Loss Milestone,” Newsweek, 4 November 2024

Janitors

Central Asian migrant workers cleaning snow from the pavement somewhere in Petersburg.

Janitors are the hardest-to-find workers in Petersburg

Since the beginning of 2024, an average of 0.8 applications have been submitted for every janitor job vacancy, the press service of the employment website hh.ru has told Bumaga.

In the first nine months of this year, employers increased the wages offered to janitors by eighteen percent — up to 45,000 rubles a month [approx. 430 euros].

Shop cashier and auto mechanic are the most unpopular occupations among job seekers. During the year, the salary offered to workers applying for these jobs has increased by twenty-five percent and twenty percent, respectively.

According to analysts at hh.ru, “the country’s negative demographic processes” are the main reason for the shortage of employees. “They are long term and quite amenable to forecasting, so, unfortunately, positive trends are not to be expected here,” they argue.

Petersburg has long been short on janitors. In 2023, Yevgeny Razumishkin, deputy governor of St. Petersburg, said that the city had not yet been able to recruit the necessary number of these workers.

The city has tried to recruit janitors and machine operators by increasing their salaries up to 49,500 rubles and 76,800 rubles on average citywide. Last year, the Housing Committee also told Bumaga that it had improved working conditions by installing changing rooms, showers, relaxation rooms and even mini-saunas in janitorial offices.

The Housing Committee told Bumaga that the understaffing is partly caused by the social stigma of the janitorial profession in Russian society. Alla Bredets, the head of Housing and Utilities Control, a regional public monitoring center, argued that the situation with staffing in the housing and construction industry was affected by the outflow of migrants.

Source: Bumaga (Facebook), 10 October 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Photo, above, courtesy of the St. Petersburg Housing Committee, via Bumaga

Despite an acute labor shortage, the Russian authorities are trying to curtail the numbers of workers arriving from Central Asia. The crackdown intensified after the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in March, which was reportedly carried out by Tajik nationals. But the appeal of Russia’s job market was already diminished prior to these restrictions. Now, Central Asian migrants are looking for job opportunities in other countries, including in Europe.

Historically, Russia has been the main destination for Central Asian migrant workers. Even after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine—and the recruitment of foreign migrants into the armed forces—Central Asians continued to go to Russia. The Crocus City Hall attack was a watershed moment. In its aftermath, labor migrants faced constant document checks, workplace raids, firings, flight delays, and hours-long lines at the border with Kazakhstan. If they were detained by law enforcement officials, they could be subjected to torture, or given a choice between conscription and deportation.

Even diplomats have been caught in the crossfire. In April, police officers burst into the Moscow apartment of an aide to Kyrgyzstan’s ambassador, ostensibly to establish who was living in the property. His wife and children were home at the time.

Afraid of antagonizing Moscow, Central Asian governments usually ignore such excesses. This time, the infractions have been so serious that officials have been forced into action, with both Dushanbe and Bishkek sending notes of protest. Tajik President Emomali Rahmon spoke up for his compatriots in a May meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, urging him to fight terrorism, not Tajiks.

There has been no change in approach, however, and that has caused an outflow of migrant workers from Russia. Since April, the number of job seekers from Tajikistan in St. Petersburg has fallen 60 percent, while the number of job seekers from Uzbekistan dropped 40 percent. St. Petersburg is second only to Moscow in terms of its appeal to migrants.

More than a dozen Russian regions have tightened labor restrictions. As a consequence, the Krasnodar region, a leading producer of wheat, corn, sunflowers, and rice in Russia, is experiencing a shortage of agricultural workers. In the Ural Mountains, the same is true for factories, including those producing military equipment. In Yakutia in Russia’s far north, migrants have been banned from driving taxis and other transportation jobs. In Dagestan, there are not enough workers to dispose of the region’s waste.

As a rule, the impetus for imposing restrictions on migrants comes from regional officials. They claim migrants have taken jobs from Russian citizens and depressed wages. In fact, the reverse is true: the economy faces such an acute shortage of workers that wages are rising rapidly. The war on migrants goes on, however, having clearly been accepted by the authorities as an expression of patriotism.

Should the pressure continue, Russia’s labor shortage will only worsen. According to the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Economics, the country lacks about 4.8 million workers, with deficits particularly affecting industry, agriculture, trade, construction, and utilities: sectors that are generally staffed largely by migrants.

The crackdown is particularly baffling given that migration has gone some way to offset Russia’s demographic problems. At present, Russia’s mortality rate is nearly twice its birth rate, making migration key to maintaining population levels.

Over the past two years, the annual number of migrants entering Russia has remained stable at about 3 million. Most, however, are seasonal workers who do not stay long. Net migration was nearly 500,000 in 2021—the year before the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine—but it fell to 62,000 in 2022 as a result of Western sanctions hitting wages, and the recruitment of migrants into the Russian armed forces.

It might seem an inopportune time for Russia to be alienating Central Asian nations. After all, their governments did not break with the Kremlin after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But it seems Moscow believes Central Asian migrants have no alternative to the Russian job market. In any case, Russia has a history of using anti-migrant campaigns as a political tool. In 2006, Georgian migrants were targeted in raids after a group of Russian spies was arrested in Tbilisi. And in 2011, Tajik migrants were detained after Russian airmen were arrested in Dushanbe on suspicion of smuggling.

The Kremlin has even used threats to punish migrants as a way to squeeze concessions from Central Asian governments on issues from language policy to economic integration. Central Asian leaders may care little about the welfare of their compatriots in Russia, but they do worry about the consequences that a fall in remittances would have for their economies.

Remittances account for up to 40 percent of Tajikistan’s GDP, and more than 20 percent of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan’s. With more and more Central Asians leaving Russia as a result of the pandemic, the invasion, and now the crackdown on migrants, less money is being sent home. In 2023, remittances to Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan fell by 42 percent, 12 percent, and 8 percent, respectively.

As a result, Central Asian governments are looking to help their citizens find work elsewhere, with officials facilitating labor migration to other countries and negotiating to reduce entry barriers to foreign job markets. Officials are even assisting laborers with visa applications. All of this is an attempt to soften the blow from the decline in remittances from Russia.

The number of those who have gone to work instead in Turkey, South Korea, and the Gulf states is already in the hundreds of thousands. Europe is also increasingly a destination for Central Asian laborers. In 2022, there were up to 6,000 Uzbek and Kyrgyz nationals working in the UK. In 2024, as a result of Brexit and the Ukraine war, London raised the caps on visas for Uzbek, Kyrgyz, and Tajik migrants to 10,000, 8,000, and 1,000, respectively.

There is also demand for Central Asian labor in the European Union: particularly in Eastern Europe, where many people have left to work in wealthier Western Europe. In Slovakia, 75 percent of companies report a shortage of workers. Little surprise, then, that the Volkswagen plant in Bratislava employed over 1,500 Uzbeks in 2023. Those workers made an average of 1,400 euros a month: far more than they could earn in Russia. Central Asian labor flows to Poland, Czechia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria are also on the rise.

For now, however, Russia remains the leading destination for Central Asian laborers, and no Asian or European job market will displace it anytime soon. Bureaucratic hurdles, language barriers, and cultural differences all act as obstacles in this respect.

Even so, just a few years ago it would have been impossible to imagine hundreds of thousands of Central Asians seeking work in Asia, or tens of thousands going to Europe. Russia is unmistakably losing its allure for Central Asian migrants: yet another unexpected consequence of the war in Ukraine.

Source: Galiya Ibragimova, “Why Are Central Asian Migrant Workers Spurning Russia?” Carnegie Politika, 1 August 2024

Policing the Polls

Elections observer who left message on ballot jailed for 5 days

Marina Popova served as an observer during the elections in St. Petersburg. On Sunday, she decided to vote herself. Prior to this, she specially had herself reassigned to Polling Station No. 2213 on Lomonosov Street [where she was working as an elections observer].

Popova told Rotunda that two other people voted after her. A police officer then noticed a ballot in the ballot box on which a pacifist message [“No war!”] had been written. According to Popova, a polling board member wrote out a statement saying that it was Popova who had dropped the ballot with the message into the ballot box.

Consequently, Popova was detained and taken to the police station. There, she was charged with “petty hooliganism” and, later, “discrediting the army.” The first charge sheet says that Popova disturbed the peace because she wrote a pacifist message in large letters in bright blue ink that was seen by people at the polling station.

Popova was taken to the police station on Sunday morning and never returned to the polling station. She was taken to court on Tuesday. When her detention period expired, she went home. She was taken back to court in handcuffs—the police collected her from her home.

At the court hearing, Popova’s lawyer Alyona Skachko told Rotunda, polling board members claimed that the ballot was state property, which the observer had spoiled. As a result, Popova was fined 30,000 rubles [approx. 300 euros] and jailed for five days.

📌 Marina’s husband Dmitry Popov and two people from the United Russia party were the only observers left at the polling station on Lomonosov Street after it closed on the last day of voting. During the vote tally, Popov was forcibly restrained by persons unknown who, as he claimed, tried to strangle him. Eventually, however, the police arrived and detained Popov. At the police station, he was charged with “petty hooliganism.” It is alleged that he used foul language.

Source: Rotunda (Telegram), 10 September 2024. Photo courtesy of Fontanka.ru. Translated by the Russian Reader

Residents of 81 federal subjects of Russia will vote in regional and municipal elections starting Friday.

The elections mark the second time this year that Russians are heading to the polls following the March presidential election. That vote, which saw Vladimir Putin win a fifth term virtually unchallenged, was marred by widespread reports of vote tampering, restrictions on monitors and pressure on voters.

But unlike the presidential campaign, Russian media coverage of this year’s regional elections has been scarce — likely the result of a deliberate government strategy of decreasing voter turnout to a bare minimum of loyal voters, an analysis published by independent election watchdog Golos suggests.

Golos analysts believe that the Kremlin is betting on mobilizing a relatively small number of voters working in the government sector and demotivating all the rest to ensure a smooth victory for its candidates.

To help you understand what else is expected in the upcoming September elections, the Moscow Times has gathered everything known about the vote so far[.]

What will the voting look like?

Multi-day voting, which was first introduced across Russia during the Covid-19 pandemic, will be implemented in most regions for the September 2024 elections. The majority of voters will have two or three days to cast their ballots depending on the region.

Some regional electoral commissions, including in the republics of Chechnya, Tatarstan and Sakha (Yakutia), have chosen to hold voting on one day on Sunday.

Twenty-five regions will allow residents to vote online via the state portal Gosuslugi, while election officials in Moscow have scrapped paper ballots altogether in favor of online voting.

Independent observers have long argued that extended voting periods and online voting make voter fraud more likely, as it becomes harder for independent monitors and poll workers to do their jobs.

Meanwhile, the CEC advised authorities in six southern Russian regions near Ukraine and in occupied Crimea to limit access to online broadcasts from polling stations, citing public safety concerns.

G[ubernatorial] elections

Residents of 21 regions, including the city of St. Petersburg, will vote for their governors.

Among these, the Far East Zabaikalsky region, the Siberian republic of Altai and the southern republic of Kalmykia stand out as some of the most “troublesome” regions for the Kremlin.

The ruling United Russia party has struggled to secure strong wins for its candidates in these regions in the past and incumbents hoping for reelection remain largely unpopular among local populations and elites, according to Golos.

The Urals republic of Bashkortostan will also be under the Kremlin’s close watch as Moscow-backed incumbent Radiy Khabirov stands for reelection in the wake of the January protests in support of jailed activist Fayil Alsynov.

Coupled with high numbers of war casualties in Ukraine and a slew of recent corruption scandals involving Khabirov’s inner circle, those protests forced the incumbent’s approval ratings to plummet.

But as in most other regions, the Kremlin mitigated the possibility of a potential blow in Bashkortostan by not allowing a single independent candidate on the ballot.

Regional parliament elections

Members of regional parliaments will be chosen across 11 regions, including the capital Moscow, the republics of Tatarstan and Tyva and the Khabarovsk region.

This year’s election will see the participation of a record-low number of political parties with an average of 6.2 parties represented on the ballot, according to Golos.

Golos said this worrying statistic is a direct result of an unprecedented scale of repression faced by independent politicians regardless of their political views.

“[A politician] can be declared a foreign agent or convicted of extremism to be removed from the elections,” Golos wrote in an analytical report published last month.

“And if they still [manage to] register and win, there is…the possibility of being declared a foreign agent and deprived of his mandate a couple of weeks after the elections,” the watchdog said.

Municipal elections

Elections for city mayors and city parliaments will take place across 22 regions.

Abakan, the capital of the Siberian republic of Khakassia, and Anadyr, the capital of the Chukotka autonomous district, are two of only four Russian cities where mayors are still chosen through direct election.

Mayoral elections had also been set for Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Siberian republic of Buryatia, but the region’s parliament scrapped the procedure in favor of the council electors system in March.

In St. Petersburg, where 1,560 seats in the city’s [municipal district councils] are up for grabs, candidates running from so-called “systemic opposition” parties — namely the Communist Party (CPRF) and the social-liberal Yabloko party — were barred from registering en masse.

And while CPRF managed to get 25% of its original pool of candidates onto the ballot, Yabloko will not have any representation in this year’s [m]unicipal [c]ouncil[s] race.

Occupied Ukrainian and Russian territories

In annexed Crimea, Kremlin-installed head Sergei Aksyonov will stand for reelection and members of the regional parliament and the legislative assembly of the Crimean port city of Sevastopol — its own federal subject — will be voted in.

The Kremlin refused to cancel voting in the Kursk border region, where Ukrainian forces have been carrying out a bold incursion for more than a month, and where Putin appointee Alexei Smirnov is seeking to secure his mandate as governor.

The CEC instead extended the voting period to 10 days and is supplying local election officials with bulletproof vests and helmets.

Kursk regional authorities announced Thursday that nearly 27% of eligible voters [had] already cast their ballots in the [gubernatorial] election.

Source: “The Roadmap to Russia’s 2024 Regional Elections,” Moscow Times, 6 September 2024.

[…]

GROSS: So Trump recently spoke to the Fraternal Order of Police, and he urged them to watch out for voter fraud. Let’s hear what he said.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DONALD TRUMP: You’re in serious trouble if you get caught trying to find out what are the real results of an election. It’s an amazing thing. Do you ever see that? They go after the people that are looking at the crime, and they do terrible things to them. But the people that committed the voter fraud and everything, they can do whatever they want to do. It’s so crazy. And I hope you, as the greatest people – just as great as there is anybody in our country – I hope you watch for voter fraud.

So it starts early. You know, it starts in a week, but I hope you can watch, and you’re all over the place. Watch for the voter fraud because we win. Without voter fraud, we win so easily. Hopefully, we’re going to win anyway, but we want to keep it down. You can keep it down just by watching because, believe it or not, they’re afraid of that badge. They’re afraid of you people. They’re afraid of that.

GROSS: Nick, is that voter intimidation? He’s telling the police that these fraudulent voters are afraid of police, implying that the police should use that fear to find voter fraud so that Trump can win.

CORASANITI: I think it – certainly, were it to be carried out – would be challenged by voting rights groups, Democrats and probably even some Republicans – that that would amount to voter intimidation. It’s also pretty important to note that a couple states have very specific laws that, you know, outlaw uniformed police officers having a kind of patrolling presence in – at polling places during elections.

And, you know, there’s a very dark history in the Jim Crow South about uniformed police officers and voter suppression within the Black community. So a combination of history and state laws and then the kind of instruction that the former president was giving to these police officers could certainly amount to voter intimidation or possibly even more unlawful behavior.

[…]

Source: Terry Gross, “How Democrats and Republicans are gearing up for a post-election legal fight,” Fresh Air (NPR), 12 September 2024

French Kiss

Saint Pavel? A scene from a march protesting the blocking of Telegram, St. Petersburg, 1 May 2018.
Photo: Olga Maltseva/AFP, via Important Stories

French Kiss is an enchanting cabaret show in the style of the Moulin Rouge, as performed by the world-famous Bize Lisu Show Ballet.

The ballet dancers have already conquered the whole world with their performances. They have garnered roaring applause at the birthday of the Prince of Monaco and in the Kremlin Palace, at Europe’s oldest theaters in Malta and the largest modern concert halls in China.

The unique hand-sewn costumes, the sensual dances, the expressive vocals and the compère’s unsurpassed humor are all part of the grandiose performance.

Duration: 2 hours (with 1 intermission)
Age limit: 18+

Performers:
Bize Lisu Show Ballet
Vocals – Yana Radion, Maria Mantrova, Anastasia Radion
Compère – Denis Groshev

*Seat numbers 200 to 220, at the buffet tables in the second row of the balcony.

“French Kiss, the Show”

The venue
The show French Kiss will take place in one of the most entrancing places in St. Petersburg— the cultural space Gaika Space. And it will be held in LUXURY format [sic], in which the audience is able to choose festive board tables for two to four people.

The original menu, featuring delicious appetizers and exquisite drinks from the bar, will help you not only to enjoy the show, but will plunge you into a world of gastronomic discoveries. Our show will make your evening unforgettable!

Secure free parking is provided to guests of the show for the entire duration of the performance.

Source: Bileter.ru. Translated by the Russian Reader

A very cold welcome awaited Pavel Durov in France, but it increasingly seems this is exactly what Durov was aiming for.

Did he come clean? No, it’s just business

Only a week into the discussion of the Pavel Durov case did commentators begin recalling what kind of person he was, and several stories emerged about his life, which, incidentally, has involved support (including financial support), from the “authoritative” Petersburg entrepreneur Mikhail Mirilashvili. Without this support, Durov’s main business venture, the social network VKontakte, might perhaps not have taken off. (Formally, Mikhail’s son, Vyacheslav, was involved in the business, but the money belonged to Mirilashvili père.) To complete the picture, it should be remembered that Mikhail Mirilashvili “developed” (as they say) Petersburg’s casinos, for licensing of which the then-deputy mayor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Putin was responsible.

Vladimir Putin (left) and Mikhail Mirilashvili (right)

Vkontakte rose and flourished on pirated content, which is still abundant on the network, despite the fierce efforts to combat it. Business journalists relish recalling how Durov fought for Vkontakte—not in the sense of freedom of speech, but in the sense of the value of his stake in the social network—and won, pocketing 400 million dollars.

For an interpretation of Durov’s arrest and persecution by the French authorities, see Baruch Taskin and Aaron Lea’s column. I would like to reiterate that Durov is first and foremost a businessman, and a very cynical one at that. It suffices to recall [the time Durov threw money out of a window] in Petersburg and Durov’s reaction [to the crowd’s reaction and the public and media backlash]. He laughed, before summarizing his mockery in philosophical terms:

“We refuse to accept a world where people can betray their humanity for money. If there are people who agree to do it, their behavior should be severely ostracized.”

We know nothing about Durov’s involvement with the FSB—all our assumptions are based on circumstantial evidence—but the left-wing albeit decent newspaper Liberation has written about his cooperation with the French security services, quoting Durov’s own statements.

Pavel Durov (center) may even benefit from his arrest in France:
the court ruling will be an excuse for Telegram’s transition from a media platform to a crypto-business.

Source: Moscow Times Russian Service weekly newsletter, 1 September 2024. All images and captions were included in the original publication. Translated by the Russian Reader

“Pavel Durov launched money from a window (Vesti report)”

Pavel Durov launched paper airplanes with five-thousand ruble bills on board into a crowd on 26 May 2012, which was St. Petersburg City Day. How the crowd lunged for the five-thousand ruble bills can be seen on the footage recorded by the Kazan Cathedral superview webcam. About ten banknotes were thrown, after which the crowd finally became furious and the amusement was stopped.

The webcam continues to follow the events as bloggers give Pavel Durov a bloody nose on 31 May at 6pm (GMT+4). Watch http://vpiter.com/web-camera-kazan/ for the live stream.

Source: Mobotix Webcams Russia (YouTube), 29 May 2012

The webcam is installed on Nevsky Prospekt. The webcam offers a view of the Kazan Cathedral. On the left in the frame is the house of the Singer company. On the days of city holidays, Nevsky Prospekt in this section becomes pedestrian. Live 24/7 we broadcast the life of our metropolis.

Kazan Cathedral (Cathedral of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God) is one of the largest churches in St. Petersburg. It was built on Nevsky Prospekt in 1801–1811 by architect Andrey Voronikhin in the style of Russian classicism to store a revered list of the miraculous icon of the Mother of God of Kazan. After the Patriotic War of 1812, it acquired the significance of a monument of Russian military glory. In 1813, the commander Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov was buried here and the keys to the captured cities and other military trophies were placed.

Source: Taxi Crew (YouTube), accessed 1 September 2024. Happening upon this livestream of Kazan Cathedral and environs, the neighborhood where I lived for my first two years in Petersburg, was oddly reassuring, and so I left it on in the background as I worked on this “collage” of news and views and images. It was only now, as I was finishing the piece, that I realized that Kazan Cathedral itself is a monument to the centuries-long profound misunderstanding, sometimes tawdry, sometimes violent, that goes by the name of “Franco-Russian relations” in polite society. ||| TRR

Hideout

It took me a while to understand why the news about the prisoner swap has been making me feel bitter rather than happy, although I wish all these people freedom, of course.

No, it wasn’t because, thanks to an American journalist’s arrogance and a German tourist’s stupidity, a professional FSB killer has been set free, meaning that his crime will go unpunished and nullifying the enormous efforts a large number of people made in apprehending him. And not because they mainly swapped for prisoners celebrated by the media, leaving in the gulag the unknown loners who wanted to fight on behalf of Ukraine. And not even because the leaders of the Anti-Corruption Foundation themselves took credit for the release of Navalny’s supporters while failing to thank the US authorities for their unbelievable efforts in haggling for their people’s freedom.

My bitterness arises from the very fact that the haggling took place. It shows that Putin is treated as a force to be reckoned with, that he is given what he wants. And that means that Putin’s Russia will be around for a long time to come. The regime is recognized and there is still no strategic decision on what to do about it.

Source: Julia Khazagaeva (Facebook), 1 August 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

In 2024, the creators of the Wynwood Hotel opened Hideout, a new public space [sic] at 22 Rimsky-Korsakov Avenue [in Petersburg]. Bumaga shows its readers what the neighborhood looks like and explains how it is laid out.

“You’re easy to love.” Photo: @3axapkina (Instagram)

People started talking about the space in the spring of 2024, when a banner emblazoned with the words “You’re easy to love” was hung on the facade of a historic building. This Is a Sign, a team that installs similar messages in the urban environment, was commissioned by Hideout to do the piece.

The Hideout Residence apartments began operating in the summer, and a Scandinavian garden in the courtyard was also opened, Hideout told Bumaga.

The garden in the courtyard was designed by landscape architecture studio L.Buro. The main works have been completed, but the garden will be developed and improved in the future, Hideout said.

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A post shared by САД КАК ИНВЕСТИЦИЯ В СОСТОЯНИЕ (@lburo)

L.Buro’s new Scandinavian garden project is now open to the public! Hideout is an urban space featuring an aparthotel, restaurants, and a fitness studio. Spoiler: a hotel and a contemporary art gallery will open there soon🤫 When designing this project, the studio’s architects managed to take a fresh look at Petersburg’s historic centre . In the video, L.Buro founders Valery Fedotov and Pyotr Lari talk in detail about the Hideout project.

The space’s press service of the space also noted that trees and plants were already growing at the site in the late eighteenth century. State Councillor Charles Gascoine, who owned the plot, laid out a fruit orchard near his mansion.

Suite Beauty Salon, Power Peach Yoga and Functional Training Studio, and other tenants operate in the space. The space’s first gastronomic tenant was Jam Café, by the creators of Atelier Tapas & Bar, which opened at the beginning of the year.

In the summer, Hideout added another gastro project, Aster Bakery‘s 23-table patio terrace in the courtyard.

Aster Bakery’s patio terrace. Photo: Hideout

An aparthotel featuring 60- to 100-square-metre residences has been welcoming guests. They have been decorated in neutral colors and sport designer furniture.

In August, the residences can be booked starting at 43,000 rubles [approx. 500 USD] a night.

Source: “Hideout is a space in Kolomna with a Scandinavian garden, an Aster Bakery patio, and a sign that says, ‘You’re easy to love.’ Here’s what it looks like,” Bumaga, 31 July 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Leningrad 4

If you have been to Chronicles Bar [in downtown St. Petersburg], you have definitely seen the photos discussed in this film. In today’s session of “Screening the Real,” we are watching Leningrad 4, a documentary about Sergei Podgorkov and other champions of Leningrad’s unofficial photography scene during perestroika. Yuri Mikhailin spoke to the filmmaker, Dmitry Fetisov, about dramatic structure, time as a form and rhythm, and Soviet-era beer stalls.

“Leningrad 4,” Dmitry Fetisov, 2023 (in Russian with no subtitles)

My path to documentary filmmaking was a tortuous one. At school, I was interested in writing texts, and at the age of seventeen I decided to apply to the St. Petersburg State University of Film and Television (KiT) to study drama, but at the interview I was advised to go into documentary directing. At the time, Victor Kossakovsky was accepting students, but I didn’t go to study with him, I went to Tver (I’m from the Tver Region) and studied three years at the College of Culture, specializing in directing and theatrical acting. Then I went to study in Konstantin Lopushansky’s feature filmmaking program at KiT. I studied for a year, but them I decided to try my hand at documentary filmmaking again, although I didn’t really understand what it was.

I transferred to Vladislav Borisovich Vinogradov’s course, and I more or less made a go of it there. I guess I had found my master. It was the first time I saw examples of poetic documentary films with characters and dramatic structures that intrigued me. I also really liked Vladislav Borisovich’s work (I Return Your Portrait, A New Year at the End of the Century). I think that I have inherited to some extent his format, in which the films are based on interviews with the characters, and the themes have something to do with Leningrad culture.

Still from “Leningrad 4,” Dmitry Fetisov, 2023

My interest in photography stemmed from moving to St. Petersburg. I liked the texture of its central districts, the most banal things—palaces and , the difference between the Petrograd Side and Vasilievsky Island. And I was very interested in the movies made at Lenfilm Studios—Ilya Averbakh, the so-called Leningrad school, the perestroika-era pictures. This texture intrigued me. I came across the photographs of Boris Smelov, Leonid Bogdanov, and Boris Kudryakov. I became a big fan of theirs, and started looking for lesser-known photographers.

You could say that Leningrad 4 was born in 2011, when I went to a photo exhibition at the legendary Borey Gallery on Liteiny for the first time and saw Sergei Podgorkov’s work. I thought that I should make a movie about this man. I was very impressed by Ludmila Tabolina’s show at the Akhmatova Museum, as well as the exhibition on the Zerkalo photo club, from which many photographers had emerged.

In 2021, I decided to make a short film about Sergei Podgorkov. At the time, I had no idea that it would turn out to be a forty-minute movie. I wrote to Sergei on VKontakte, and he invited me to his place in Borovichi. If I were making the film now, I would probably add a video chronicle of the trip. Podgorkov showed us around the town, including the old railway station, and after filming we drank some good Novgorod moonshine with him to celebrate our acquaintance.

Many of the shots were made with Soviet gear—a Helios 40 telephoto lens. I bought it in a thrift store, and I successfully fitted this 1965-made lens to a Sony mirrorless camera. The Helios 40 handsomely blurs the edges and thus emphasizes the subject in the frame. It is my favorite lens.

After filming Podgorkov, I realized that the topic could be pursued further. I had always been interested in the Leningrad Rock Club, and so I decided to film Andrei “Willie” Usov, who was the staff photographer for the band Aquarium and did all the covers of their records, and was friends with Mike Naumenko.

Andrei “Willie” Usov, holding his iconic image
of Boris Grebenshchikov and Mike Naumenko. Still from “Leningrad 4,” Dmitry Fetisov, 2023

The third character was the pictorialist Ludmila Tabolina. I appreciate this movement in photography. The next character was Alexander Kitaev. I liked the Kitaev’s powerful countenance, that of a bohemian. Petersburg photographer, and I decided that I would film him even before I got acquainted with his images myself.

Another character is Valery Valran. He is not a photographer, but a well-known artist in Petersburg, a popularizer of photography, a curator of photo exhibitions, and the first to turn [photos by Leningrad’s underground photographers] into a photo album: the book Leningrad Photo Underground appears at the beginning of the film. I decided to include it in the film to tell about this photography movement a little from the outside.

And finally, there was Sergei Korolyov. I filmed him, but during editing I realized that, unfortunately, a short subject about him did not fit into the film. I edited it separately and posted it on my “Blog Stall” which I dreamed up when blogging was the cool thing and where I publish stories related to cinema. This episode is called “The Photographer Korolyov”.

“The Photographer Koroylov,” Blog Stall, episode 26

How did I realize that these characters were enough? When I filmed them, I had an idea for the next film I might make: about photographers who are no longer alive, like Bogdanov and Kudryakov. And I decided that the filming was over.

The film took a long time to edit, almost a year. I realized that each photographer has a certain leitmotif. Sergei Podgorkov has a story connected with beer stalls (although he does not emphasize it himself), Andrei Usov has rock, Ludmila Tabolina has the white nights, and Kitaev has [Petersburg’s] Kolomna neighborhood.

To separate the interviews and photos, I decided to use a film footage frame. Some of my colleagues think that this is visual bad form, but for me it seems logical: conversations with photographers are the present day, while their photos are the past, and the footage works as a transition between them.

Sometimes I wanted to connect the times. The chapter “Conversations at Beer Stalls” features music by contemporary jazz-noir artist Bebopovsky and the Orkestry Podyezdov. I had enjoyed him for a long time. I met the artist, and the opportunity to use his music in the film presented itself.

While I was editing, I did a photo shoot on black and white film for an acquaintance. I was supposed to make shots like in the scene in Godard’s movie Le petit soldat in which the main character takes a picture of a young woman. For this photo shoot, my friend bought a Leningrad 4 light meter on Avito. I realized that I would call the film that, because the main character is late Soviet Leningrad, and there are four photographers in it. Then I decided that I would divide the movie into four parts. Besides, perhaps these photographers possibly also used the Leningrad 4, as it was one of the most popular exposure meters of its time.

It was later that Sonia Minovskaya, my co-director and assistant on the movie, noticed that in some mythologies the nuumber four is the number of decay, death, and demised. And indeed, in each chapter something fades away or dies. In the first one, the Leningrad white nights are buried, while in the second, Mike Naumenko and a whole erа exits the stage. Then we see the end of the Summer Garden in its historical guise, and in the final chapter, where the rallies in the squares are shown, we see a country disintegrating. I didn’t think about this symbolism when I was making the film. I did it intuitively.

Photographer Alexander Kitaev. Still from “Leningrad 4,” Dmitry Fetisov, 2023

I understand that the editing is finished when a special, unique time emerges in a film. Time is a rhythmic form to me. A movie is ready to go when it suits me rhythmically. My films are calm, lyrical, and meditative. I probably like the documentaries of Wim Wenders for a reason.

Leningrad 4 was screened at the Arctic Open Festival in Arkhangelsk, where it got a super-warm reception; at the Salt of the Earth Festival in Samara; and in the online program at Artdocfest.

At one of the premiere screenings at the Rosphoto Museum, Sergei Podgorkov, with his usual irony, criticized the film for being too sentimental about an era that, in his opinion, is not worth the nostalgia. I did not put nostalgia in the movie, especially nostalgia for the Soviet Union, which I do not have. Andrei Usov noted that the films uses images from a time when the city was more interesting texturally for photographers. Nowadays, Petersburg is quite touristy, shiny and bright. He also admitted that the film left him with a heavy feeling. He and Naumenko had a great, strong friendship, and he still takes his departure quite personally.

Still from “Leningrad 4,” Dmitry Fetisov, 2023. Photo by Sergei Podgorkov

Another character in the movie, Svetlana, attended the screening at the bar WÖD. In the final scene, we see a photo of her standing on the roof of a building opposite the Mariinsky Palace during the attempted coup in August 1991 and looking into the lens—as if that era were upon us today. This is a famous photo by Sergei Podgorkov. Recently, Sergei found Svetlana through the internet and invited her to the screening. And now, thirty-three years later, she saw herself on the screen and recounted how the picture was taken. Podgorkov had run out of film, but Svetlana was also an amateur photographer, so she lent him her own camera, and he photographed her.

Recently, I went to Chronicles Bar on Nekrasov Street and saw Podgorkov’s photos there. It was amazing. It is a young people’s bar, and yet the walls are adorned with photos of Soviet-era beer stalls, so it is as if two eras were connected through Podgorkov’s photographs.

Source: Yuri Mikhailin, “Screening the Real: Dmitry Fetisov’s ‘Leningrad 4,'” Seans, 25 May 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader