Best Russian Brand

Yevgeny Prigozhin. Photo: Yuri Martyanov/Kommersant

Russian businessman, owner of the Concord Group of companies, “Putin’s chef” and confidant of the president, founder of a media empire and the Wagner Group, and one of the most famous people in Russia, Yevgeny Prigozhin now faces criminal charges of organizing an armed rebellion.

Prigozhin was born in Leningrad on 1 June 1961. We know that his mother, Violetta, worked at a hospital, his father died early, and his stepfather Samuel Zharkoy raised the future “Kremlin chef.” Zharkoy also encouraged Prigozhin to ski: his stepson graduated from Athletics Boarding School No. 62, where the swimmer Vladimir Salnikov and the gymnast Alexander Dityatin were his classmates. Prigozhin then enrolled at the Leningrad Chemical and Pharmaceutical Institute, but, according to his own account, he did not finish his degree there.

In 1979, the entrepreneur was given a suspended sentence on robbery charges. According to media reports, in 1981 he was sentenced by the Zhdanov District Court to twelve years in prison for a number of crimes at once, but in 1988 he was pardoned, and in 1990 he was released from prison early.

Beginnings

As Prigozhin himself recounted in an interview, his first business, founded in 1990, was selling hot dogs at the Apraksin Dvor market, the first such outlet in the city. “The mustard was mixed in my apartment, in the kitchen. My mother also tallied the proceeds there. I earned $1,000 a month, and that amounted to piles of rubles,” the businessman said.

In the 1990s, Prigozhin managed Kontrast, a chain of private grocery stores. He launched his future restaurant business in 1995 by opening Wine Club, a bar and shop on Vasilyevsky Island. In late 1996, after meeting the Briton Tony Gere, Prigozhin opened the Old Customs House, which is considered one of the first elite restaurants in Petersburg. According to some reports, his partner in this business venture was Mikhail Mirilashvili, a well-known Petersburg entrepreneur who years later cofounded the VKontakte social media network.

Prigozhin later opened three more establishments: Seven Forty, Stroganov Yard, and Russian Kitsch. In 1998, he opened the restaurant New Island on the used passenger ship Moscow-177, purchased for fifty thousand dollars, which became a popular spot in Petersburg. When Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin and IMF managing director Michel Camdessus visited the city in June 1999, New Island was the only decent place to wine and dine the high-ranking guests.

In 2001, Vladimir Putin dined there with Jacques Chirac, and a year later with George Bush. In 2003, according to media reports, the Russian president celebrated his birthday there. Since the businessman personally served dishes to the president, he was dubbed “Putin’s chef” and “the Kremlin’s chef.”

By that time, Prigozhin had already moved into the catering business, founding Concord Catering in 1995. In 2002, he launched the Damn!Donalds chain of fast food restaurants: the businessman came up with the name himself. The chain was shuttered ten years later, however.

As the businessman recounted in an interview about the success of his catering business, by 2005 he owned “the largest catering company in Russia for ten years running.” “We did all the G8s and the summits,” Prigozhin recalled. From information available in open sources, it follows that the businessman actually did organize a number of banquets for high-ranking guests, including meals at the Russian Federal House of Government.

Buoyed by this success, Prigozhin decided to enter the school meals market. “I decided to try my hand at it and chose a couple of schools on Vasilyevsky Island — No. 10 and No. 18. Of course, it wasn’t a business. I began feeding the schoolchildren airtight-packaged box meals. I set up modern compact kitchens right in the schools — everything fit in a six-square-meter space. At the same time, I carefully researched the topic.”

In the 2000s, Prigozhin went into the construction business. In particular, he built Northern Versailles, a gated mansion community, in Petersburg’s Lakhta district. In 2016, a company belonging to the businessman built the Lahta Plaza [apartment and hotel] complex next to St. Petersburg Tricentennial Park.

In 2016, it transpired that a Prigozhin-affiliated company bought the premises of the Shop of Merchants Yeliseyev, which he had occupied on lease since 2010, after making expensive renovations. By 2015, Prigozhin’s companies had become the largest supplier of food to the Defense Ministry.

In 2018, Vladimir Putin said in an interview with western media, “He is not my friend. I know such a person, but he is not on my list of friends.”

Media Empire

In 2013, it was reported that the Internet Research Agency, which was informally dubbed the “troll factory,” was located on Savushkin Street in Petersburg. Hundreds of people worked on the media holding’s websites. Prigozhin’s connection with the growing media empire was denied by Concord’s press service.

2019 saw the emergence of the Patriot Media Group, which included the Federal News Agency (FAN), Economy Today, Politics Today, and Nation News. Yevgeny Prigozhin headed its board of trustees, but the businessman’s financial involvement in the project was denied.

Western sanctions against Prigozhin were imposed for the first time over the involvement of his media outlets in the information campaign [sic] for the US presidential election.

Wagner

The Wagner Group, a private military company, was founded in 2014. Subsequently, Wagner soldiers were involved in fighting in eastern Ukraine and, later, in Syria. In 2017, the company was placed on the US sanctions list. But [Prigozhin] admitted his involvement in founding Wagner only in 2022. Western countries have claimed that Wagner mercenaries have also operated in Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Mozambique, and Mali.

SMO

Since 24 February 2022 and the beginning of the SMO, Prigozhin gained worldwide fame in connection with the Wagner Group’s actions in Ukraine. Wagner’s troops have been heavily involved in the fighting. Mercenaries recruited among convicts have been actively joining the ranks of Wagner PMC. In March, the businessman claimed that over 5,000 ex-convicts had returned to Russia after participating in combat.

The conflict between the Defense Ministry and Prigozhin rapidly deteriorated in 2022, although friction between the two parties had essentially begun several years earlier.

A year later, in February 2023, Prigozhin publicly voiced dissatisfaction with the lack of ammunition during the battles for Bakhmut (Artemovsk). A campaign entitled #GiveWagnerShells gained momentum on the internet.

On May 10, the businessman, amid rumors of a “shell famine,” publicly announced his willingness to transfer Wagner’s positions in Bakhmut to Chechnya’s Akhmat Regiment at the suggestion of Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov. On May 20, the businessman said that Wagner had taken Bakhmut, and once again made highly critical remarks about the Defense Ministry. Five days later, Prigozhin announced that he was withdrawing his units from the city.

In June 2023, the businessman asked Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to release the Concord Group from its catering contract in the SMO zone after more than sixteen years of successful cooperation with the Russian military’s kitchens.

Moreover, Prigozhin said that an order that members of volunteer detachments must sign contracts with the Defense Ministry did not apply to the Wagner Group.

Then came June 23. Wagner’s founder made new public statements, triggering criminal charges against him. If convicted, Prigozhin faces up to twenty years in prison.

Source: Irina Kurbat, “Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin?” Fontanka.ru, 24 June 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Goods bearing the emblems of the Wagner Group (including chevrons, flags, t-shirts, baseball caps, and sewn-on patches) have been brought back to the “counters” at Wildberries, as our correspondent verified on the evening of June 24.

In the first half of the day, a source at Wildberries told RIA Novosti that the online retailer had bearing removing goods bearing the [private military] company’s emblems and was going to remove them altogether. Later, such goods were hidden by Ozon, where they are still unavailable.

Source: “Wildberries brings back Wagner-branded goods,” Fontanka.ru, 24 June 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

A search for the phrase “Wagner PMC” on the website of popular Russian online retailer Wildberries garnered 8,736 items, including the fetchingly reimagined Russian tricolor flag, below. This search was performed at 11 p.m. Moscow time on 24 June 2023.

Zenit FC midfielder Wendel has decided not to return to Petersburg due to the situation with the Wagner PMC, reports Sport Express, citing the player’s agent Cesare Barbieri.

“This is definitely a very delicate situation. Wendel will stay in Brazil until the situation improves. The club has already been notified of this. Zenit has reacted understandingly to the situation,” the agent said.

In the 2022–2023 season, 25-year-old Wendel has played twenty-five matches for Zenit in the Russian Premier League, scoring eight goals.

Source: “Zenit football player Wendel afraid to return to Russia,” Fontanka.ru, 24 June 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Russia’s Musical Blacklist

Vera Musaelyan (Aloe Vera) is one of the pop musicians on Russia’s black list.

Fontanka.ru has come into possession of a list of musical performers whose performances in Russia were allegedly considered undesirable. According to our information, the document has been circulated among promoters.

Some of the musicians on the list have, in fact, had difficulties organizing concerts since the start of the special military operation (due to their public stance on it), while others have simply left the country. The list was provided to us by one of the musicians who found themselves on the stop list.

Fontanka.ru contacted a number of concert organizers. Although they admitted having heard about the list, most of them refused to continue the conversation. One of our sources, however, confirmed that the list was authentic. But he clarified that the list was amended and supplemented daily. However, even without it, “all producers know perfectly well” which musicians they can work with and which they cannot.

We publish the list in the form (including peculiarities of spelling) in which it was submitted to us:

rap artist Noize MC (Ivan Alexeyev)
rap artist Oxxxymiron (Miron Fyodorov)
DDT (soloist Yuri Shevchuk)
Time Machine (soloist Andrei Makarevich)
Aquarium (soloist Boris Grebenshchikov)
Kasta (soloists Vladislav Leshkevich, Mikhail Epifantsev, Andrei Pasechny)
B2 (soloists Alexander Uman, Yegor Bortnik)
Accident (soloist Alexei Kortnev)
singer Zemfira (Zemfira Ramazanova)
singer Valery Meladze
Dmitry Spirin (ex-soloist of the band Cockroaches)
Anacondaz (soloists Artem Khorev, Sergei Karamushkin)
Louna (soloist Lusine Gevorkyan)
Pornofilms (soloist Vladimir Kotlyarov)
Nogu Svelo (soloist Maxim Pokrovsky)
Krovostok (soloist Anton Chernyak)
Elysium (soloist Dmitry Kuznetsov)
2MASHI (soloist Maria Zaitseva)
singer Manizha (Manizha Sangin)
singer Monetochka (Yelizaveta Girdymova)
singer Grechka (Anastasia Ivanova)
rap artist Face (Ivan Dremin)*
rap artist Morgenshtern (Alisher Morgenshtern)*
IC3PEAK (soloists Nikolai Kostylev, Anastasia Kreslina)
Little Big (Ilya Prusikin, Sofia Tayurskaya)
singer Vasya Oblomov (Vasily Goncharov)
rap artist Ligalize (Andrei Menshikov)
singer Dora (Daria Shikhanova)
Aloe Vera (soloist Vera Musaelyan)
singer Musya Totibadze (Maria Totibadze)

* Deemed a “foreign agent” in Russia.

Source: Fontanka.ru, 7 July 2022. Thanks to Marina Varchenko for the heads-up. Photo, above, courtesy of Then24. Translated by the Russian Reader

“One Person and God Are Already a Majority”: The Petersburg Teacher Fired for Reading Kharms and Vvedensky to High-Schoolers

“She had never read Vvedensky. It was so disgusting that I still feel physically sick.” • Teacher Serafima Saprykina recounts how Kharms and Vvedensky were put on trial during an emergency meeting at a Petersburg high school • Venera Galeyeva • Fontanka.ru • February 6, 2022

The class in which tenth graders listened to poems written by “fascist accomplices” and “enemies of the people” was guest-taught by the young teacher-organizer, who had been invited by the social studies teacher. Everything started because the school’s “literary sector was lagging” and they had been having a hard time finding a library director.

Serafima Saprykina, whose Facebook post detailing the unusual approach of the 168^th Gymnasium’s principal to the avant-garde OBERIU poets has gone viral, spoke to us about what exactly the director didn’t like about the work of [poets Daniil] Kharms and [Alexander] Vvedensky, why she decided to make the story public only now, and what she hopes will come about as a result.

Serafima, why did you decide to tell the story of your departure from Gymnasium No. 168 just now?

I watched the latest film from [journalist] Katerina Gordeyeva, about the children of people who were persecuted [under Stalin]: Mama Won’t Come Back: Women of the Gulag. I became terribly ashamed, I even started crying. I realized that I was doing the wrong thing. I had a chance to stand up for the repressed and I didn’t do it. I don’t hold a personal grudge against the person who fired me, otherwise I would have made the situation public right away. I just want evil to be called by name.

So why did you keep mum back in December?

I figured that I would go on working in the school, or maybe in a different one. And if I told the story no school would ever hire me. But after working in various schools for seven years I have seen all kinds of things and I understand that school, the system that schools are part of, is not going to change. When I was in school in Volgograd I was subjected to bullying. I was different, I read a lot and my classmates disliked me. I would never have thought that I would become a teacher myself but at a certain point I found my calling there.

How did you come to teach the OBERIU poets?

I wrote a dissertation about religious imagery in the work of the OBERIU poets for my master’s at the St. Petersburg State University philosophy department. I’ve been into this topic for a long time and wanted to tell the kids about it. But this wasn’t a one-off lecture, it was part of a series of lessons. The first one was about the [classical modernist] Silver Age poets, then the OBERIU poets, then a lesson about the stadium poets [of the late 1950s—Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Bella Akhmadulina, and others—trans.] and [Joseph] Brodsky, with contemporary literature at the end. Unfortunately, I only got to the second lesson. The series had been officially approved and accepted by my immediate supervisor, head teacher Tatyana Nikolayevna Golerbakh.

The lesson on the OBERIU poets came after the students’ regular classes?

No, I taught it in place of their social studies class—the teacher had invited me to take over that hour. This is standard procedure at the school, the librarian must ask the other teachers for permission to run a “library hour” during their classes. But I didn’t talk to the kids about the precise circumstances in which Kharms and Vvedensky died after their arrests in 1941, or about the arrests either. What’s the point in scaring the kids like that, anyway? I told them about the OBERIU group.

OBERIU (the Association of Real Art—Obedinenie realnogo iskusstva) was a group of writers and cultural figures that existed between 1927 and the early 1930s in Leningrad (now Petersburg).

When we got to Vvedensky, I gave the kids his poem “I regret that I’m not a beast” [Mne zhalko, chto ia ne zver’]. And that really sparked the whole situation that followed. All the people who participated in the emergency meeting called by the principal, including the director of the school museum, had been working with me for half a year and had nothing but praise for me. If the principal had said that I needed to quit because she didn’t approve of my work, I would have understood. But she said, “What a filthy title: he regrets, you know, that he’s not a beast.” She had never read Vvedensky. It was so disgusting that I still feel physically sick.

Actor Boris Dragilev reading Alexander Vvedensky’s poem “I regret that I’m not a beast” at the Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fountain House in Petersburg in 2013. Courtesy of Fontanka.ru

Your Facebook post went viral within three hours, it’s all over social networks and the media. What has changed in your life since then?

Absolutely everything in my world has changed. When I was writing the post, I thought that I’d get like five likes and three comments, with two of those claiming I was making it all up. I didn’t think that my post would elicit such a response and that people would start calling me a hero. What kind of hero am I? I haven’t even read all the messages and comments yet. But I am sure that the homeroom teacher for the tenth-grade class where I taught the Kharms/Vvedensky class will confirm that I didn’t tell the kids anything horrible during the lesson.

How long did you work at the 168^th?

I was hired there in late August of 2021. The school was looking for a library director, and they saw my resume on a recruiting site and liked it. The principal called me and said that the school was very interested in me. At the interview she explained that their literary curriculum was lagging, and they really needed lessons on extracurricular reading, which I as library director could teach. When I came in to get registered for employment, it turned out that they couldn’t hire me as director without my having librarian experience or education, so they hired me as a teacher-organizer and tacked on 25% of the librarian salary.

Surely that is no grounds for firing someone?

Within this system it’s enough for there to be even a hint that they don’t want you around anymore. And whatever you do after that, however hard you try, you just have to leave. I’ve never had a serious conflict with anyone in my life, that’s just not who I am. This is just the systematic stigmatization of teachers with initiative. It’s happening everywhere.

What exactly were your duties at the 168^th?

What does the school library director do? There are two options. Either she just sits there and doesn’t let anyone into the library, and if a pupil comes and asks for a book, silently hands it over. Or she doesn’t [hand it over], if the book isn’t in the library. Or the director runs classes on extracurricular reading, reading competitions, talks about what’s going on in contemporary literature. For instance, I invited Kira Anatolyevna Groznaya, head editor of [youth journal] Aurora, and she talked to the kids about literary journals and how to publish in them. They really liked it.

And how much were you paid for this work?

Schools pay well, I never had any problems with how I was paid. But I won’t tell you exactly how much. Even if I never have work ever again, it won’t turn me into a person who thinks the wrong way. I really want to do research, to do graduate study. And more than anything I would like to work for Memorial (an organization declared to be an “NGO-foreign agent” by the Russian Justice Ministry and liquidated in December 2021 by order of the Russian Supreme Court—Fontanka.ru), to help keep alive the memory of repressed people. But Memorial is gone. I really love my country and don’t want to emigrate. Everyone is ruled by fear right now. You asked what I experienced in the three hours after publishing my post. It would be better to ask what I experienced during the month and a half since getting fired. And what I experienced was, probably, everything that a person in the 1930s experienced.

Why? No one’s being lined up for the firing squad and there’s no Gulag, right?

It seems like that, yeah. But meanwhile I’m being fired for reading poems by “enemies of the people.” And I’m afraid that no one will hire me again if I speak up. But what does it mean for me to speak up? My voice is the voice of one little person who wants to live her little life. I’m not a hero. I’m a coward who was brave enough to speak up one time. But the worst thing already happened — I got fired, because the principal thinks that Kharms and Vvedensky are “German accomplices” and “enemies of the people.” There is plenty of work out there, I’ll find something. And if I can’t, I’ll just live with my husband. But maybe with my silly little voice I can inspire others to speak up as well. And then we definitely won’t find ourselves back in 1937.

Are you not afraid that the school will accuse you of making everything up? You don’t have a recording of that meeting, after all.

No, I’m not afraid. I know I’m telling the truth. One person and God are already a majority. Now I’m not afraid of anything. And you shouldn’t be either.

Translated by the Fabulous AM. Photo courtesy of Fontanka.ru via Serafima Saprykina

The Trailer

Ilia Kazakov
Facebook
January 25, 2021

Konstantin Selin is a born cameraman! He worked all Saturday in the epicenter of the largest protests in recent years in Petersburg, miraculously avoided getting shoved into a paddy wagon, and brought back the best video. I don’t know how he does it every time, but it looks like a seamless trailer for a documentary film, something for which Kostya deservedly gets awards the rest of the time. Only in his footage can you look into the eyes of a young man in the police cordon, hear what is being said in the crowd, and look at the faces. And what an ending! There is no need to read a dozen news stories and analysts, just set aside five minutes and watch this video once.

Presumption of Guilt

beglov Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov (in mask, on right) visited the city’s Maternity Hospital No. 9 on May 3. Photo courtesy of Sever.Realii

Beglov Explains Outbreak at Vreden Center Through Failure of Employee to Self-Isolate After Returning from Turkey
Bumaga
May 1, 2020

Speaking on TV channel 78, Governor Alexander Beglov claimed that the source of the coronavirus outbreak at the Vreden Traumatology and Orthopedics Institute in Petersburg was an employee who had returned from Turkey and failed to self-isolate.

“Again, we’re talking about conscientiousness, about people’s other qualities . . . One employee at the Vreden Institute came back from Turkey. By law, he should have stayed home fourteen days in self-isolation. He went out on the fourth day, engaged in certain activities and, consequently, brought the infection into the hospital. And a large number of people were infected, on the order of 150 people. Naturally, the hospital had to be closed,” Beglov said.

Beglov noted that during this time, a large number of patients were discharged and released to other regions of the country, thus “spreading” the coronavirus.

The governor did not directly respond to a question about whether any measures would be taken against the employee who did not self-isolate. “The law stipulates criminal liability. We have already opened five criminal cases. This is no a joke, ” Beglov said. The governor also cited the closure of three maternity hospitals where women in labor “forgot to warn” staff about their recent trips.

The Vreden Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics has been closed for quarantine since April 9 due to the coronavirus. Doctors reported a lack of personal protective equipment. There is no official information about the number of cases, but according to media reports, sixty out of 260 employees tested positive. TASS reports that 300 people at the hospital have been infected.

[. . .]

Photo by Mikhail Ognev. Courtesy of Fontanka

Presumption of Guilt: Petersburg Doctors Warned They Should Die from the Coronavirus Correctly
Alexander Yermakov
Fontanka
May 1, 2020

Not all doctors infected with COVID-19 will receive financial compensation from the city. The municipal public health committee has made it possible to shift responsibility to health workers and thus save the municipal government money.

The Smolny [Petersburg city hall] has given head physicians at the city’s hospitals the right to decide whether health professionals were “correctly” infected with the coronavirus or took ill due to their own negligence. Occupation health and safety experts see this as an acute conflict of interests and predict a wave of refusals to make cash payments to people whom President Putin has compared to soldiers fighting on the front line.

The Smolny decided two weeks ago on the amount of lump-sum payments to health professionals who have suffered while treating patients with COVID-19. The death of a hospital or ambulance employee has been valued at one million rubles [approx. 12,000 euros]; disability, at 500,000 rubles [approx. 6,000 euros]; and infection with no particular health consequences, at 300,000 rubles [approx. 3,700 euros]. Thirty million rubles [approx. 368,000 euros] have been allocated for this purpose. The small matter of outlining the procedure for determining whether a health professional was a victim of the virus remained. The task was assigned to the city’s public health committee.

While the committee has been designing this procedure, Petersburg health professionals began contracting the coronavirus in large numbers and dying. As of April 30, around 250 cases of COVID-19 had been registered among the city’s doctors, paramedics, and orderlies. If each of these cases had resulted in compensation, Smolny’s thirty-million-ruble limit would now have been surpassed: eight million rubles would have been paid to the families of the dead, and 75 million rubles to infected health professionals [for a total of approx. 981,000 euros].

A few days ago, a draft order appeared on the public health committee’s website, establishing the procedure for recognizing a medical worker as a victim. The document indicated that the families of those who died with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 would automatically receive payments.

On Friday, April 30, the final version of the document was published on the Smolny’s website. A significant addition has been made to it. The death certificate must cite the novel coronavirus infection as the cause of the medical worker’s death. If the medical worker died of concomitant diseases, their family cannot claim compensation. As cynical as it might sound, the family of Sergei Beloshitsky, an emergency room anesthesiologist at the Alexander Hospital, would not have received the million rubles promised by Governor Beglov had Beloshitsky died after April 30. The death certificate lists pneumonia-induced cardiopulmonary failure as his cause of death.

“This item [on the exact cause of death] was added at the approval stage of the draft municipal government decree ‘On the procedure and conditions for providing lump-sum payments to injured medical workers’; it is a clarification,” Fontanka was informed by the public health committee.

According to the committee’s order, payment to infected health professionals is almost entirely contingent on the opinion of the head physician at the institution where the person works.

Medical workers must append a whole stack of documents to the compensation application, including—and this will be the main obstacle to receiving money—a “certification of injury caused by rendering assistance to sick patients.”

For a medical worker to obtain this certification, he or she will be subjected to an investigation carried out by a commission convened at the hospital where the infected person works. The commission will include the hospital’s deputy head physician, the worker’s immediate supervisor (for example, a department head), someone from the hospital’s occupational health and safety office, and a trade union member.

The hospital’s head physician will have to approve (or deny) the certification of injury.

The investigation must not merely confirm or deny that the health worker contracted the coronavirus in the line of duty (and not in the subway), but also name a specific factor, for example, violation of sanitary regulations, working conditions, failure of ventilation systems, or lack of personal protective equipment. In addition, the commission has the power to determine in percentages the degree of the medical worker’s own liability.

For example, on April 30, Sergei Sayapin, an emergency room anesthesiologist at the Pokrovskaya Hospital, filed an application to be certified injured as a result of having treated a patient with a confirmed case of COVID-19. Sayapin was infected and underwent treatment at the Botkin Infectious Disease Hospital.

The Pokrovskaya Hospital will investigate this claim. The investigation’s findings will be approved (or denied) by the head physician, Marina Bakholdina. Sayapin claims that he was infected due to a lack of personal protective equipment, which was allegedly not provided by Bakholdina. In order for Sayapin to be entitled to compensation in the amount of 300,000 rubles, his hospital’s head physician must declare herself guilty.

“No hospital director in their right mind will take responsibility and sign a certificate recognizing their employee as a victim,” said Oleg Shvalev, an occupational therapist and associate professor of occupational medicine at the Mechnikov Northwestern State Medical University. “Under the usual procedure for certifying occupational illnesses and injuries, an independent commission headed by an official from Rospotrebnadzor runs the investigation.”

It is obvious that head physicians are not interested in recognizing medical workers as victims. Rostrud (the Russian Federal Labor and Employment Service) has already proposed deeming each case of coronavirus infection an acute occupational illness, running an investigation (involving Rospotrebnadzor), and holding the management of medical institutions accountable. It is entirely possible that while a hospital’s own commission could deem individual medical workers guilty of their own infections (thus depriving them of the right to compensation from the Smolny), the social security disability assessment board would find the hospital liable.

A source at city hall told Fontanka that the city had already clearly decided on its method for counting COVID-19 cases and did not plan to change it.

“Our statistics include people who died from covid, not with covid,” the official said. “There are dozens of instances when patients with confirmed cases of the coronavirus have had cancer, heart failure, or pneumonia listed as their cause of death. The same method will be applied to medical professionals.”

The Petersburg public health committee confirmed that the death of every medical worker would be investigated by the commission for the analysis of deaths from influenza and severe forms of other SARS, including COVID-19. Only if the death certificate lists the cause of death as infection from the novel coronavirus will families of the deceased be eligible for compensation.”

Fontanka asked the Moscow health department how they keep their statistics. All patients with a positive test result for the novel coronavirus infection and a confirmed diagnosis of pneumonia are counted in Moscow. “The cause of death could be another concomitant disease, but it does not matter for our statistics,” an official at the department added.

According to the head of the working group on combating the coronavirus, Yevgeny Shlyakhto, director of the Almazov Medical Center, only half of the healthcare professionals in Petersburg who have fallen ill with COVID-19 contracted it directly through their work. Most likely, infected doctors working in non-specialized hospitals will not automatically be covered under the Smolny’s compensation order.

Thanks to Dmitry Kalugin and Vadim Klebanov for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

Doctors at Petersburg Hospital Rebel over Coronavirus Unpreparedness

Doctors at Pokrovskaya Hospital in Petersburg Rebel over Lack of Protective Equipment, Oxygen and Drugs
Fontanka.ru
April 3, 2020

Doctors at Pokrovskaya Hospital have recorded a collective video message appealing for help. After their hospital was redesignated to treat patients with pneumonia, they do not have enough protective equipment and medications, and they claim not to have running oxygen in the wards. Management had threatened reprisals if they complained.

“We, employees of Pokrovskaya Hospital, appeal to the media for help. What prompted us to do this is that our hospital has been admitting all the pneumonia cases [in Petersburg], including pneumonia caused by the coronavirus. We have no protective equipment. What you see us wearing is no means of protection against viral infection,” begins the video message, which Fontanka.ru received on April 3.

“We are not refusing to work. We love our patients and want everyone to recover. But it is not possible to work in such unprotected conditions. No one is immune to infection. Nor does the status of doctor protect one: the virus is not selective. It spares no one: neither doctors, nor young people, nor the elderly,” the doctors said.

According to them, oxygen is required for the treatment of viral pneumonia, but there is no running supply of it to the wards at Pokrovskaya Hospital. Either this must be done urgently or oxygen tanks must be provided. The hospital does not have the necessary medications. The doctors say that management has already refused to help them, and has promised to “deal” with anyone who complains.

“But we are not afraid, because our lives and the lives of our loved ones are also dear to us. All of us have families, all of us return home after our shifts. And we want to go back to work healthy, and for the people near and dear to us to be healthy,” said the doctors.

The city’s public health committee has promised to comment on the situation later.

Thanks to Victoria Andreyeva for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

pokrov

Employees at Pokrovskaya Hospital recorded a video message about the lack of protective equipment. Their management says this is not true
Bumaga
April 3, 2020

Employees of the Pokrovskaya Hospital in Petersburg, which has been repurposed to treat patients with pneumonia, recorded a video message complaining about working conditions, as reported by Fontanka.ru.

In the video, employees talk about the lack of personal protective equipment, and also note that oxygen has not been supplied to the wards (to operate ventilators). Marina Bakholdina, head physician at Pokrovskaya Hospital, says that what her staff claimed was “not true.”

The city’s public health committee has commented on the appeal by the employees—they say that Pokrovskaya Hospital does not admit patients with the coronavirus. The committee explained that pneumonia is not an infectious disease, so doctors do not need anti-plague suits [sic] to work with patients.

At the same time, the committee admitted that the hospital does not have enough personal protective equipment.

Public Health Committee Press Service

In Petersburg, as in the rest of the world, there is a shortage of personal protective equipment. However, the city is increasing the volume of personal protective equipment. In the near future, the Ministry of Industry and Trade is planning to supply personal protective equipment to all regions of Russia, including Petersburg.

Earlier, the cardiology department at Pokrovskaya Hospital was closed for quarantine due to a patient with COVID-19.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Bless This Mess

Metropolitan Varsofonius and his crew. Photo by Andrei Petrov. Courtesy of the St. Petersburg Archdiocese of the Russian Orthodox Church and Fontanka.ru

“Above All, We Must Repent Our Sins”: Petersburg Metropolitan Flies over City with Icon and Prayer Against Coronavirus
Fontanka.ru
March 31, 2020

Metropolitan Varsofonius of Saint Petersburg and Ladoga, following the example of his colleague in Leningrad Region, flew over the city in a helicopter. From the air, he prayed for an end to the epidemic.

This was reported on the metropolitan’s website on March 31. Varsofonius took on board an icon [sic] of the Icon of Our Lady of Kazan after holding a service in front of it at Kazan Cathedral.

“An aircraft containing the reigning archbishop and clergymen flew over the borders of the Northern Capital, crisscrossing its historical part, while a molieben and the akathist of the Intercession of the Theotokos were sung,” the metropolitan’s press service wrote of the devotional flyover.

The metropolitan emerged from the helicopter with the thought that the ubiquitous virus was a signal that “we [were] not living right.” Varsofonius advised us to take the quarantine as a time to reflect on our lives.

“Let’s not despair. All troubles pass—this too shall pass, and life will return to normal. Most importantly, we must repent of our sins and mend our ways, and the Lord will send deliverance,” Varsofonius concluded.

Two days earlier, a prayer flight passed over Leningrad Region. Bishop Ignatius of Vyborg and Priozersk took on board an icon of the Mother of God of Konevits and the relics of Saint Arsenius of Konevits.

Translated by the Russian Reader

“Aggressive Migrants Without Money Advance on Lakhta Center”

fullsizeoutput_2003 The Lakhta Center skyscraper construction site in November 2018. Photo by the Russian Reader

Aggressive Migrants Without Money Advance on Lakhta Center
Lidia Lvova
Moyka78
February 1, 2020

The workers who have been building Lakhta Center, apparently, have no plans to retreat after hearing promises that they would be paid for their work—but not now, later, possibly within six to eight months.

Moyka78 has a video showing offended workers storming an office building on the premises of the skyscraper complex construction site.

It seems that hundreds of people are not willing to wait for months for their hard-earned pay.

Amid the shouting, a mediator can be heard trying to negotiate with the strikers. The builders of Lakhta Center respond only with indignation to his promises.

The workers make obscene gestures and react aggressively to the promises.

It is possible that to improve their performance the workers were fed such performance-enhancement drugs as meldonium.

Videos Showing Unrest Among Workers at Lakhta Center Have Appeared on the Internet: According to Our Information, They Were Pacified a Week Ago
Fontanka.ru
February 2, 2020

Videos showing unrest among workers of the Turkish company Renaissance Construction, which is doing construction work at the Lakhta Center complex, have appeared on the internet. Fontanka has learned that the events recorded in the videos took place on the premises of Lakhta Center last Monday, January 27.

Police had to go to the site on the morning of January 27. The incident ended with one accidentally broken office window, the police issuing a ticket for swearing in a public place, and an awareness-raising discussion among the parties to the conflict.

Around two hundred employees of Renaissance Construction, the general construction contractor at the facility, demanded payment of their 2019 end-of-year bonus from management.

“Owing to the unrest among workers at the Lakhta Center construction site on January 27, 2020, Renaissance Construction JSC has conducted negotiations with the workforce to ascertain all the circumstances that gave rise to their complaints and looked into all their claims,” a spokesperson for Renaissance Construction told Fontanka.

As the spokesperson noted, the company explained to workers that they had been paid in full on January 15, and no back pay was owed to them.

“Currently, work has resumed at the site, and a constructive dialogue with the workers and outreach work are underway,” the spokesperson told Fontanka.

Thanks to Sergey Abashin for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

Feminists vs. Police in Petersburg

2019-06-05-russia03-01-3

Police Show Up at Eve’s Ribs Feminist Festival in Petersburg
Mediazona
November 10, 2019

Police have shown up at the Eve’s Ribs Feminist Festival in Petersburg, human rights defender Varya Mikhaylova has informed Mediazona.

Mikhaylova reported that a uniformed male officer and a female plainclothes officer were in the festival space, and a police cruiser was parked next to the entrance. The male officer had asked festival organizer Leda Garina to show them the rental agreement and had inquired about the festival’s repertoire.

Mikhaylova added that the police visit had been triggered by a complaint filed by anti-gay activist Timur Bulatov.

“A performance of the play ’10 Scenes of Sexual Violence’ is scheduled for today,” Mikhaylova said. “[The police officers] want to stay and watch.”

garina police Eve’s Ribs Festival organizer Leda Garina and a police officer. This photo was posted yesterday on the festival’s VK page

Police Promise to Show Up Every Day of Feminist Festival Eve’s Ribs
Fontanka.ru
November 11, 2019

Police officers have visited the Skorokhod theater space, where the Eve’s Ribs international feminist art festival has been taking place. Festival co-founder Leda Garina told Fontanka.ru about the incident on November 11.

“The police officers told us they would monitoring the presence of minors at the festival,” Garina said. “They’re going to inspect the bar at the Skorokhod. And if we summon human rights defenders, the police will call in the guys in the masks, who will line us up against the wall, and then find a way to shut us down.”

As Garina noted, police had already been at the festival the previous day in response to a complaint by activist [sic] Timur Bulatov and had demanded Garina show them the lease agreement for the festival space.

“The police summoned the site’s managers, issued them an order to check the documents of visitors, and warned that they would come to the festival every day,” said Garina. “We’re afraid of provocations and really will be checking everyone’s IDs at the door. This is quite sad, however, because children face sexual abuse and lack of financial support from their fathers much earlier than the age of eighteen, but we cannot talk to them about it.”

Eve’s Ribs, an international festival of feminist theater, cinema, and performance art, runs from November 10 to November 17 in Petersburg. The main venues are the Skorokhod and the space run by the organizers, the social and artistic project Eve’s Ribs.

Thanks to Darya Apahonchich for the heads-up. First photo courtesy of The World. Translated by the Russian Reader

___________________________________________________

After decades in the shadows, Russia’s feminists grab their spotlight
Indra Ekmanis
The World
June 5, 2019

Russian feminists paraded a 13-foot-tall model vagina down the streets of St. Petersburg on May 1, 2018, without getting arrested. It was a big win.

“[Police] arrested only those who they have orders to arrest,” says Leda Garina, director of the Eve’s Ribs, a social, artistic, documentary and communication project devoted to the subject of gender discrimination. “But there were no vagina orders, so they didn’t know how to react.”

The giant vagina didn’t spark police action in 2018, but participants were not so lucky in 2019. Six Eve’s Ribs activists were detained.

In a country where the concept of feminism remains at best socially neutral and at worst a “mortal sin,” activists fighting for gender equality under the banner of feminism have to take success where they can get it. And it’s often fleeting.

“This year, one of the girls wore a vagina costume, and they made her take it off so right there in the middle of the May 1 parade, so she was walking basically naked in the middle of the parade and she was just showing everyone the finger,” says Garina, 37.

Activists like Garina and other women at Eve’s Ribs are working to unite people interested in feminism by bringing them together in a physical space. To that end, they opened Cafe Simona — a women-only workspace by day and event space by night.

“The idea was that here you can feel at ease, because in public spaces in Russia, men always bother you,” Garina says. “Men will always come up and ask, ‘What are you writing, what are you eating, what does it say on your shirt?’ It’s terrible.”

There’s a generational shift happening when it comes to feminism in Russia. Millennials and Gen Zers are online — many read English and have been exposed to the fundamental reasoning behind the concept of men and women being born equal. And after decades of repression under the Soviet Union, feminist activism is reemerging in today’s Russia.

“Officially, after the [1917 Russian] Revolution, all women’s rights were achieved, so therefore according to the Soviet system, feminism as a movement had no need to exist,” Garina says.

But the ideal of gender equality as espoused in Marxist doctrine was far from reality. Though equality was touted in principle after the Communist revolution and women’s education and literacy rates rose, in practice, it looked quite different. Female participation in the labor force was not free of gender gaps and didn’t translate into equality in domestic duties. Despite some strides (the Soviet space program had a woman cosmonaut decades before the US did), women were still largely expected to take on work in the home, care for children, and stand in long lines for food in addition to their “equal work” outside the home.

As the USSR was crumbling, feminism began to resurface as a more active movement. But when the Soviet Union did collapse in 1991, women faced new challenges.

“The next problem that women encountered was capitalism. Suddenly there was this new pressure where women became objectified,” Garina says. “This was not the case during the Soviet Union. This meant that women needed to look like super sexualized models in addition to doing all the housework.”

In the post-Soviet years, the main achievements of feminist activists has been “gradual conscious-raising,” pointing to issues that had rarely been in the public discourse previously, such as domestic violence, sexual harassment and discrimination against women and sexual minorities.

But these gains have sustained major blows. In 2017, the Russian State Duma, or lower house of parliament, eased penalties for perpetrators of domestic violence.

“The 2017 amendments symbolized a green light for domestic violence by reducing penalties for perpetrators, made it harder for women to seek prosecution of their abusers, and weakened protections for victims,” according to Human Rights Watch.

Studies suggest that at least one in five women face domestic violence, largely from partner abuse. The vast majority of such incidents go unreported — only about 3% make it to court. The 2017 law — sometimes dubbed the “slapping law” — allows first-time offenders against a partner or a child to be subject to a fine, rather than a criminal charge. It was also supported by the Russian Orthodox Church, which touts “traditional family values.”

The church has been vocally opposed to feminist groups. The band Pussy Riot was famously detained for a rebellious performance in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral, then found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” — directly linked, by the judge, to feminism.

Garina of Eve’s Ribs has been arrested more than once for her feminist work. But she says it won’t deter her.

“My personal goal, as a creative person and as a director, is spread the word about feminism,” she says. “Therefore it needs to be funny, controversial, sexualized, but we can’t just complain. We can always complain about domestic abuse and sexual abuse, but I think that if we don’t show that we can be aggressive, none of our complaints will be heard.”

Another prominent feminist activist, Zalina Marshenkulova, 30, has taken to social media to talk directly to people. Marshenkulova runs “Woman Power” — a channel on Telegram, a popular messaging app in Russia.

Her goal is to explain feminism to a mainstream Russian audience, but Marshenkulova is also known for a Russian Reebok ad campaign that sparked outrage with this slogan on Instagram:

“Don’t sit around hooked on male approval — sit on a man’s face.”

Reebok deleted the campaign, but later put the images back up, except for the controversial one.

Internet users shared screen grabs of the deleted ad.

“I think this ad was good for the Russian audience because if this ad were to run in this light, vanilla, Western style, which I don’t like — something like, ‘be strong, women are great’ — you know, the stuff you see in European ads, this doesn’t work at all here,” Marshenkulova says. “Basically whining and saying ‘let’s respect women’ — this doesn’t work here. This is not Europe, it’s not America.”

Still, Marshenkulova’s frank attitude toward Russian feminism has won her a lot of fans online — including men.

“Yes, I have very many male supporters,” she says. “They understand what I want and they understand the patriarchy kills men too, not only women.”

Marshenkulova, who grew up in a small town in Russia’s far north, says she was raised to “be modest, be quiet,” but it didn’t suit her personality.

“Since I was a kid, I’ve always been rowdy,” she says. “I have a strong personality, you can’t shut me up, you can’t tell me my place. My place is wherever I want it to be, so I try to pass this idea along to other women.”

As in politics, going against the status quo in Russia means taking on some risk. “Opinion makers in this country are always in danger,” Marshenkulova says. But change is happening — slowly.

“I think that one of the big victories for feminism happened just in the past two years,” she says. “Now feminists sometimes appear on television, and not too long ago we were completely invisible. It’s a big accomplishment for us that some channels started talking about feminism in a neutral tone as opposed to highly negative tone. In the past, it was all negative.”

Marshenkulova and Garina take different approaches to feminist activities in Russia, but they agree most activists are largely working toward the same goal.

“Some of them are radical and separatist — they want to work with women exclusively. Others are more liberal,” Garina says. “I believe that all of these movements are important and are moving in one direction because they all influence society. I am willing to work with everyone, women, men, animals, plants, as long as we actually cause some change.”

People Apps

Petersburg police muster at five in the morning on May 29 in the parking lot of the Soviet-era Sport and Concert Complex (SKK) in the southern part of the city before heading off to raid the homes and workplaces of Central Asian migrant workers. Photo courtesy of Fontanka.ru

Petersburg Police Raid Migrant Workers After Diaspora Refuses to Help Find People Involved in Brawl
Mediazona
May 29, 2019

The press service of the Russian Interior Ministry’s Leningrad Directorate informed Interfax that Petersburg police began raiding places migrant workers lived. The raids kicked off when two diasporas [sic] refused to help security forces find people implicated in a large brawl involving knives.

Roman Plugin, head of the Interior Ministry’s regional directorate, gave the order for the raids. He ordered that people involved in a large brawl that took place on Salov Street on May 20 be found. Four people were stabbed during the brawl.

According to police, natives of the North Caucasus and people from a country of the near abroad, who are hiding in Petersburg [sic], were involved in the brawl.

Fontanka.ru writes that three hundred police officers are involved in the raids. 78.ru adds that the police officers, in particular, raided the wholesale vegetable market on Sofia Street and a wholesale warehouse on Salov Street. They were supposed to find people involved in the brawl, which occurred after a “group of Uzbekistanis refused to share turf with Russian nationals from the North Caucasus” [sic].

According to the news website’s source in the police, the security forces had attempted to negotiate the issue with prominent figures who had a say in circumstances at the major wholesale vegetable markets. They, however, had pretended not to know who was involved in the brawl.

Thanks to Yana Teplitskaya for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader