Tag: Nevsky Prospect

Blockade

“See the rally? It’s there.” How downtown Petersburg was cordoned off with snowplows and fences, although there were no protests
Anastasia Rozhkova
Bumaga
February 6, 2021

On the afternoon of February 6, downtown Petersburg was cordoned off with fences and snow removal equipment. Public transport did not run on the Nevsky and the surrounding streets, and the subway stations Nevsky Prospect and Gostiny Dvor were closed for entry and exit. People had to descend to the icebound Fontanka and Moika rivers to cross the road. No protests were held, however.

Bumaga shows and tells you what the city center looked like on Saturday afternoon.

On Friday evening, fences were installed on Nevsky Prospect and Palace Square. On Saturday morning, even more fences appeared, on Gorokhovaya Street and the Fontanka and Moika embankments. Security forces were also sent into the city center.

At 1:00 p.m, Nevsky Prospekt and Gostiny Dvor subway stations were closed for entry and exit. Around the same time, vehicular traffic was stopped on Nevsky Prospect and surrounding streets. Buses, trolleybuses, and trams were switched to shortened routes. The map of road closures looked something like this.

It was impossible to turn onto Nevsky Prospekt from Liteiny Prospect. Security forces told people to go to Ploshchad Vosstaniia [Insurrection Square] and from there to take Ligovsky Prospect.

Even ambulances had trouble getting through.

Bumaga’s Twitter account: “Vosstaniia Street is closed from Zhukovskogo to Nevsky. A reader reports that even an ambulance was not allowed through for several minutes.”

Last Sunday, downtown Petersburg was also shut down, but the security measures had to do with protests in support of Navalny and against the current government. This weekend, the opposition leader’s headquarters had not planned any rallies, and the authorities were unable to explain the restrictions.

The governor’s press secretary, Inna Karpushina, told Bumaga that questions about the street closures should be addressed to the local Interior Ministry office, where we were told this was not the case and referred to the city transport committee. However, earlier in the day, on its official Telegram channel, the transport committee had published a message saying that the subway would be closed by order of the Interior Ministry.

A Telegram message from the Petersburg city transport committee, informing readers that Nevsky Prospekt subway would be closed at 1:00 p.m. n orders from the Interior Ministry

The city center was shut down because of messages on Telegram, Fontanka.ru‘s source at the Smolny [Petersburg city hall] said. There had indeed been posts announcing a protest action on February 6: unknown organizers had asked people to bring flowers to the Monument to the Victims of Political Repression on the Voskresenskaya Embankment. Due to the road closures, the event was canceled, and consequently only seven people attended the event.

Flowers and a sign reading “It must not be repeated” on the Monument to the Victims of Political Repression in Petersburg. Photo: Yevgeny Antonov/Bumaga

Petersburgers furiously criticized the closure of downtown. People complained that they could not get to their jobs and doctor’s appointments. One social media user wrote, “For the first time in my life I made my way to a museum through the courtyards.”

“This is me this morning with a marshmallow cookie in my month reading the news that Nevsky and the subway stations from which I go to work on Nevsky were closed.”

Because of the road closures, Petersburgers were forced to take to the ice. “The Fontanka and the Moika [rivers] were completely blocked, so people just walked on the ice. At some point on the Moika, [the police] shouted through a megaphone about safety and ordered people to leave. Everyone was escorted off the ice, but five minutes later, there were a lot of people out there again,” Mediazona correspondent David Frenkel told Bumaga.

Petersburgers walking on the Fontanka River near Nevsky Prospect, 6 February 2021. Photo: David Frenkel

The street closures immediately became the subject of memes. Petersburgers joked about “phantom rallies,” which the police and the Russian National Guard had come out to disperse.

“See the rally?” “No.” “It’s there.”

In the morning, police searched the homes of thirty people in connection with a criminal investigation of the “blocking of roads” on January 23. [The “crime” allegedly committed by anti-Putin protesters in Petersburg on January 23.] Police raided the homes of former Vesna Movement press secretary Artem Uimanen, former municipal district councilor Svetlana Utkina, and other opposition activists. Some of them had their electronic devices confiscated.

“Terrific! In Petersburg, the day has begun with [police] searches of the homes of activists as part of the ‘roadblocking’ case, and then the pigs blocked the roads and closed the subway themselves.”

By evening, there were almost no traffic jams downtown Petersburg, and the fences installed earlier were being removed.

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Read about the January protest rallies in Petersburg. To summarize, there are more and more dissatisfied people, the security forces and protesters have become more aggressive, and the authorities are not open to dialogue. Here you can read about the spontaneous protest rally that took place on February 2, at which police used stun guns on people.

Translated by the Russian Reader

International Women’s Day in St. Petersburg: Defying the Ban

88325787_2658545944242554_2755934399055790080_oFeminist activists queuing to picket at International Woman’s Day protest on the corner of Malaya Sadovaya and Nevsky in Petersburg. Photo by AnFem

AN-FEM
Facebook
March 8, 2020

The Banned Eighth of March, Petersburg

Once upon a time, the danger and risk in men’s lives were considered the basis of their alleged superiority over women. Only those who walked the razor’s edge looked danger and even death in the face and were thus spiritually elevated.

87848158_2658538717576610_6222493887676547072_o“My body is my business.” Picketer at International Women’s Day protest in Petersburg. Photo by AnFem

When today, International Women’s Day, the Petersburg authorities have used the pretext of events that did not even take place, including the Shoulder to Lean On Festival, to prohibit women from publicly speaking out about the issues that matter to them in any way, all that remained for them was step onto their own razor’s edge and take to the streets, risking their own safety and freedom, and thus one more time (if someone has not heard the argument) assert that archaic segregation is unacceptable.

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Because, under these circumstances, each step is a small victory. Among other things, it is a victory over oneself and one’s own fear. Each step is a reclaimed meter of urban space that should belong to people, but does not belong to them. It is a small step towards freedom, a step toward oneself — through the political, through the raucous intrusion into the chronotope of a spring day somewhere in the middle of an ugly regime. A small step into our common holiday. No one is free until everyone is free.

Photo reportage by AnFem

87905423_2658546174242531_2565779528093794304_o“On March 8, I think about women political prisoners, not spring.” Picketer at International Women’s Day protest in Petersburg. Photo by AnFem

Female Activists Hold Flash Mob Dance on the Field of Mars to Protest Violence Against Women; Pickets Held on Nevsky Prospect
Bumaga
March 8, 2020

MBKh Media reports that a feminist protest rally has taken place on the Field of Mars during which female activists played drums and performed chants protesting violence against women.

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The rally featured a dance flash mob. The girls [sic] chanted such lines, in particular, as “The patriarchy is a judge / that judges me for being born. / And my punishment is / violence day after day.” As MBKh Media reports, the Petersburg women borrowed the idea from Chilean feminists.

88336060_2658532417577240_2627163952307503104_oFeminist activists performing a flash mob dance and chant on the Field of Mars in Petersburg. Photo by AnFem

In addition, a series of pickets took place on the corner of Nevsky Prospect and Malaya Sadovaya, reports the web publication Sever.Realii. The picketers protested domestic violence and the law against “promotion” of homosexual relations, and in support of female political prisoners. Protest organizers had originally planned a rally [on Lenin Square], but city authorities refused to sanction it.

Thanks to AnFem for the photos and the first text. Translated by the Russian Reader

Totally Wired

DSCN5713A view of Kolokolnaya Street, in downtown Petersburg, crisscrossed by telecom cables. Photo by the Russian Reader

Telecom Operators Taking Their Time Clearing Nevsky Prospect of Wires
Zhanna Zhuravlyova
Delovoi Peterburg
May 15, 2018

Clear Sky, a program designed to move underground the thick network of wires stretching over Nevsky Prospect, has been launched. The results so far have not been promising. Only three out of dozen and a half telecom operators have gone underground.

The first three telecom operators have removed their fiber-optic cables from Nevsky Prospect and moved them underground into conduits built as part of the city’s Clear Sky program. These trailblazers were Prometei, Obit, and Centrex Smolny, a wholly owned affiliate of city hall’s IT and Communications Committee (KIS), which acted as the project’s general contractor, according to Centrex Smolny’s director Felix Kasatkin.

According to Kasatkin, another three or four operators are ready to move their overhead lines, currently stretched between poles and buildings, underground in May. There are around a dozen and a half telecom providers whose lines crisscross the space immediately above the Nevsky. According to market insiders, the cost of dismantling the old lines and rerouting them to the access points into the underground conduits could range from ₽100,000 to ₽2 million. The cost depends on how many times the cables cross Nevsky, and how close they are situated to the necessary access points.

It is utterly impossible to force operators to remove the lines. The overhead lines may be ugly, but they are completely legal.

A Multi-Channel Story
The problem of overhead lines on the Nevsky surfaced in 2012, when Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko voiced his outrage over the large number of lines, which disfigured the city’s main thoroughfare, in his opinion. The solution appeared obvious: move all the telecom operators into Rostelecom’s underground conduits. Many of them, however, resented the prospect, complaining about the state telecom operator’s rates, the speed with which it performed work, and its frequent refusals to configure networks.

That was when an alternative and somewhat extravagant solution was advanced: putting the telecom lines in Vodokanal’s water main conduits. A design was drafted, but never implemented.

The final solution seemed simpler. The city would build its own infrastructure within Rostelecom’s conduit, offering to rent the space to telecom operators. The idea was that they would be more open to this proposal than to collaborating with Rostelecom, with whom they were in constant competition.

Built for Free
Ultimately, ten underground conduits were built under the Nevsky, and collective access fiber-optic cables were inserted in them. Ownership of the conduits is currently being transferred to Centrex Smolny, and telecom operators are encouraged to lease the fiber-optic cables.

Kasatkin emphasizes the rates for leasing the cables are as low as possible, since they include only servicing charges. There is no need to recoup the costs of constructing the conduits, since they were built at the city’s expense. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to find the relevant government purchase order for performance of this work, nor could Centrex Smolny could not provide us with specific information on on the matter.

According to Rustelecom, around twelve kilometers of conduits were constructed for the Clear Sky project. The cost of laying one kilometer of conduit is around ₽100,000, says Yuri Bryukvin, head of Rustelecom. So, along with the cost of materials and incidental expenses, the total costs could have amounted to ₽1.5 million. KIS chair Denis Chamara reported ₽30 million were spent on the project.

Broken Telephone
Telecom operators who have received Centrex Smolny’s offer say the cost of leasing one kilometer of fiber-optic cable is approximately ₽500 a month. One conduit can contain eight, sixteen or more fiber-optic cables.

All the telecoms who operate in the city centere have fiber-optic cables that cross the Nevsky five or six times, explains Vladislav Romanenko, commercial director of Comlink Telecom. In this case, a telecom would pay up to ₽50,000 a month to lease fiber-optic cables.

Andrei Sukhodolsky, director general of Smart Telecom, whose lines also hang over the Nevsky, says the company has not yet been made an offer by Centrex Smolny.

“I have definitely not received official proposals in writing,” Sukhodolsky claims. “Theoretically, we would agree to move our lines if we could understand the costs.”

“The cost of the lease you quote is quite decent, but we have not received a commercial offer to lease fiber-optic cables,” says Romanenko. “Currently, we are considering laying our own cable in Rostelecom’s conduits.”

ER Telecom told us they were working to move their communications lines, but they did not specify where they were moving them.

The initial list of streets that should have been cleared of unnecessary wires under the Clear Sky project featured a dozen streets, including Bolshaya Morskaya Street, Moskovsky Prospect, and Izmailovsky Project. So far the KIS has no specific plans to go beyond the Nevsky. And, perhaps, the issue will no longer be relevant after the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Market insiders point to Moscow as a positive example. The city moved its cables underground with no hitches and in much greater numbers. In Tatarstan, the authorities have obliged building owners to dismantle all structures that have not been vetted by the city on pain of paying a hefty fine.

“So the building owners dismantled the telecom lines on their own,” our source at Comfortel told us.

Our source at the KIS was at pains to emphasize that operators removed the lines “voluntarily and at their own behest.”

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The overhead lines on the Nevsky usually contain eight to sixteen fiber-optic cables, which means the price of leasing a single conduit for moving lines underground could be as much as ₽8,000 a month. Then it would make sense to take advantage of Centrex Smolny’s offer. But of an operator is running a large number of cables, he would find it more profitable to lease a conduit from Rostelecom. We have already moved our cables to Rostelecom’s conduits without waiting for the offer from Centrex Smolny. It’s odd certain operators postponed the move to May, since construction work is not carried out by telecom operators only when the temperature dips below –15°C.
—Dmitry Petrov, director general, Comfortel

We have been preparing for the move for three years or so. In one spot, where our cables cross the Nevsky, we took advantage of Centrex Smolny’s offcer. The terms for leasing the fibers really are good. Centrex Smolny is clearly not making any money on this project, but they are probably not losing any money, either. The important thing about the project is the telecom operators are not commercially entangled with Centrex Smolny, while many telecoms have long, complicated relationships with Rostelecom: for example, when a lot of illegal fiber-optic cables were laid in the conduits, something that is still a matter of controversy.
—Аndrei Guk, director general, Obit

Translated by the Russian Reader

This Is What Antifascism Looks Like

Varya Mikhaylova
Facebook
May 11, 2018

We stood, too. Not because we believed it would change anything, but so nothing would change us.

The good news was that many passersby were aware of The Network Case, especially young people. Tons of schoolkids had their picture taken with me, promising to come out next time themselves. Amazing kids.

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“Stop torture at the FSB”

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“They’re not terrorists. The terrorists are at the FSB, and they torture people.”

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“Frame-up, Sadism, Banditism (FSB). Free the antifascists!”

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“Antifascists are tortured in the country that defeated fascism. Rupression.com.”

picket-5
“Give me back my 1937. Antifascists are tortured in the country that defeated fascism. So who won? Rupression.com”

All photos by Jenya Kulakova

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Petersburg Anarchist Black Cross
Facebook
May 11, 2018

Nikolai Boyarshinov, father of Yuli Boyarshinov, a suspect in The Network Case, carried out a solo picket on Nevsky Prospect this evening. He held up a placard that read, “My father, Nikolai S. Boyarshinov, fought against the fascists. My son, Yuli N. Boyarshinov, an antifascist, has been arrested by the FSB. Did we defeat the fascists? Or have we been infected by fascism?”

picket 6

Nikolai Boyarshinov was joined by ten or so activists in a series of solo pickets. They also stood on Nevsky, holding up placards with slogans that read, “Antifascists are tortured in the country that defeated fascism,” “Stop torture at the FSB,” and “Free the antifascists.” They leafleted passersby. They also collected signatures on a group letter to the warden of Remand Prison No. 6 in Gorelovo, demanding Yuli Boyarshinov be housed in humane conditions.

The passersby included people who asked how to help, who thanked and shook the hands of the picketers, and who voiced their support to Nikolai Boyarshinov. There were also people who said it was not possible that antifascists were tortured in Russia, people who heatedly argued with the picketers.

Police offers warned the protesters a distance of fifty meters must be maintained between solo pickets. They checked the papers of the picketers. Standing next to Nikolai Boyarshinov, they waited an hour and a half for him to roll up his placard and leave Nevsky Prospect.

Thanks to everyone who came out today to voice their solidarity. Write letters to the arrested antifascists, support their parents, and strengthen the networks of solidarity.

Translated by the Russian Reader

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What you can do to support the Penza and Petersburg antifascists and anarchists tortured and imprisoned by the FSB

  • Donate money to the Anarchist Black Cross via PayPal (abc-msk@riseup.net) and make sure to specify that your donation is earmarked for “Rupression.”
  • Spread the word about The Network Case aka the Penza-Petersburg “Terrorism Case.” You can find more information about the case and in=depth articles translated into English on this website (see below), rupression.com, and openDemocracyRussia.
  • Organize solidarity events where you live to raise money and drawn attention to the plight of the tortured Penza and Petersburg antifascists. Go to the website It’s Going Down to find downloadable, printable posters and flyers. You can also read more about the case there.
  • If you have the time and means to design, produce, and sell solidarity merch, please write to rupression@protonmail.com.
  • Write letters and postcards to the prisoners. Letters and postcards must be written in Russian or translated into Russian. You will find the addresses of the prisoners here.
  • Design a solidarity postcard that can be printed out and used by others to send messages of support to the prisoners. Send your ideas to rupression@protonmail.com.
  • Write letters of support to the prisoners’ loved ones via rupression@protonmail.com.
  • Translate the articles and information at rupression.com and this website into languages other than Russian and English, and publish your translations on social media and your own websites and blogs.
  • If you know someone famous, ask them to record a solidarity video, write an op-ed piece for a mainstream newspaper or write letters to the prisoners.
  • If you know someone who is a print, internet, TV or radio journalist, encourage them to write an article or broadcast a report about the case. Write to rupression@protonmail.com or the email listed on this website, and we will be happy to arrange interviews and provide additional information. It is extremely important this case break into the mainstream media both in Russia and abroad. Despite their apparent brashness, the FSB and their ilk do not like publicity. The more publicity the case gets, the safer our comrades will be in remand prison from violence at the hands of prison stooges and more torture at the hands of the FSB, and the more likely the Russian authorities will be likely to drop the case altogether or release the defendants for time served if the case ever does go to trial. Why? Because the case is a complete frame-up, based on testimony obtained under torture. When the complaints filed by the accused reach the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and are ultimately ajudicated, the Russian government will be forced to pay heavy fines for its cruel mockery of justice.

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If you have not been following the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case and other cases involving frame-ups, torture, and violent intimidation by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and other parts of the Russian police state, read and repost the recent articles the Russian Reader has translated and published on these subjects.

Another Last Address: Six Names

While I realize it was only two weeks ago when I wrote about finding four Last Address memorial plaques in my neighborhood I had not seen before, I would like to document another six plaques I found today, because I do not think it is enough to know they are out there somewhere. Instead, we should pause for a few minutes and read the bare facts on each plaque out loud or silently. It is also important, given the current frightening atmosphere in Russia, to show passersby that they, too, can stop and honor the victims of Stalin’s Great Terror in this way, as well as to share this witnessing and remembering with readers out in the big wide world, whoever and wherever you are.

Of course, Last Address will only be complete when there is a plaque or plaques on every one of the 341,582 addresses in Memorial’s database.

While that day seems far off, it is surprising how quickly Petersburg has filled up with Last Address plaques in a mere two or three years.

The plaques my companion and I found earlier this evening were attached to the streetside façade of the building at 146 Nevsky Avenue, the segment of Nevsky, east of Insurrection Square, known to locals as “Old” Nevsky.

The plaques have been placed on the building at eye level and are thus quite easy for passersby to notice, read, and photograph.

The building itself is a hybrid of two eras. First built in 1883 by Valery von Gekker to house the Menyaevsky Market, the building was rebuilt and expanded in the constructivist style by Iosif Baks in 1932–33, turning most of it into a block of flats.

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146 Nevsky Avenue, Petersburg. Photo courtesy of citywalls.ru

When the six people memorialized on the plaques lived in the building, Nevsky was still known as October 25 Avenue, the name it bore from 1918, after the Bolsheviks came to power, until January 1944, when residents asked the authorities to restore a number of old street names in the city center to mark the lifting of the Nazi Army’s 900-day siege of the city.

The address listed on the Last Address map is thus 146 October 25 Avenue, as it would have been listed in the NKVD case files of the victims at the time.

DSCN1846“Here lived Mikhail Pavlovich Kovalyov, welder. Born 1887. Arrested 30 October 1937. Shot 7 December 1937. Rehabilitated 1958.” Born in the village of Raivola, Finland, near the Russian/Soviet-Finnish border, Mr. Kovalyov worked at the Khalturin Factory and lived in flat no. 186.

DSCN1847.jpg“Here lived Vaclav Adamovich Zaikovsky, litographer. Born 1897. Arrested 31 August 1937. Shot 21 November 1937. Rehabilitated 1957.” Born in the Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire, Mr. Zaikovsky was a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) from 1917 to 1937, and director of the First Art Lithography Works. He lived in flat no. 163.

DSCN1848.jpg“Here lived Dmitry Andreyevich Yeretsky, civil servant. Born 1900. Arrested 23 September 1937. Shot 21 September 1938. Rehabilitated 1957.” Mr. Yeretsky was born in Beredichev, Belarus. He was director of the State Institute for the Design of Wood Chemical Industry Enterprises (Giproleskhim) and lived in flat no. 164.

DSCN1849“Here lived Alexander Kirillovich Sirenko, civil servant. Born 1903. Arrested 10 February 1937. Shot 24 August 1937. Rehabilitated 1955.” Born in Ukraine’s Donetsk Region, Mr. Sirenko was director of the Nevsky Chemical Plant and lived in flat no. 146.  He was a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) from 1924 to 1937.

DSCN1850“Here lived Alexander Genrikhovich Kogan, theater manager. Born 1898. Arrested 26 August 1946. Shot 13 April 1938 in a work camp in Kolyma. Rehabilitated 1956.” A Jew from Nikolayev, Ukraine, Mr. Kogan was accused by the NKVD of involvement in a wholly fictitious “counterrevolutionary insurgent organization.” The number of the flat where he lived is not listed on the Last Address map or in Memorial’s Leningrad Martyrology database.

DSCN1851“Here lived Melania Ignatyevna Shoka, civil servant. Born 1908. Arrested 2 September 1937. Shot 1 November 1937. Rehabilitated 1989.” An ethnic Pole born in the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire, Ms. Shoka was a personnel instructor in the non-steamboat fleet of the Northwest River Shipping Company. She lived in flat no. 70 and was not a member of the Communist Party.

I am not an expert on the Great Terror, but I have noticed a preponderance of non-ethnic Russians and people born outside of Leningrad/Petersburg in the three hundred or so database case files I have perused. Given that the NVKD would also have had to fill its arrest and execution quotas in Central Russia, I am certain, of course, that ethnic Russians are also more than amply represented among the Terror’s myriad victims. It was just that Petersburg had been a cosmopolitan city almost from its foundation and twenty years previously had been the capital of a multi-ethnic empire. In its first two decades, the Soviet regime had also encouraged what historian Terry Martin has dubbed an “affirmative action empire.” But one of the signal victims of Stalin’s crackdown was  faith in a polity that was “socialist in content, nationalist in form.” So, Leningrad’s non-Russians were easy targets for Stalin’s newfound anti-cosmopolitan paranoia.

March 3, 2007 (March of the Dissenters, Petersburg)

the_dissenters_march_in_st-_petersburg_march_3_2007
Anti-Putin protesters gathered on Nevsky Prospect in Petersburg next to the old City Duma building, March 3, 2007. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

A comrade reminds me that today (March 3, 2017) is ten years to the day from the first March of the Dissenters in Petersburg (March 3, 2007), in which thousands of anti-Putin protesters who had been kettled by riot police on Ligovsky Prospect near Insurrection Square broke through the police lines and marched, nearly unimpeded and without anyone’s “authorization,” all the way down the Nevsky to the old City Duma building, where various “ringleaders,” including the then-fearless and inspiring local politician Sergei Gulyaev, several Natsbols (during their “liberal” phase, now long since forgotten), and Garry Kasparov tried to mount the steps to give speeches, which they did with more or less success until the riot cops infiltrated the huge crowd gathered around the Duma and dragged them away to paddy wagons.

Needless to say, it was a wonderful day, one of the most memorable in my life, and a rare manifestation of real grassroots people power in a city whose populace is too often prone to wait for the cops to give them permission to stand in a dirty, invisible corner of town and hold up their handmade placards, which will be seen by no one except their mostly fairweather friends on Facebook.

If you weren’t there that day, but could have been, you made a big mistake, for which, I suspect, the gods of Ingria will never ever forgive you.

A great time was had by all. Really. TRR

Thanks to Comrade Oregon for the heads-up

Petersburg Remembers Markelov and Baburova

On January 19, Petersburg, like its older sister to the south, Moscow, remembered murdered anti-fascists Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, as well as other fallen comrades in the struggle against grassroots and state-sponsored fascism and racism.

Events included an “exhibition” of posters, commemorating the dead, on the city’s main street, Nevsky Prospect; an unauthorized march to the Field of Mars to lay carnations on the Eternal Flame; and a punk rock concert at a local club to benefit the Anarchist Black Cross and imprisoned Russian anti-fascists such as Alexei Gaskarov and Alexei Sutuga.

Veteran journalist and photographer Sergey Chernov was on the scene to chronicle all these events. I thank him for letting me share some of his photographs with you here.

Picketer holds portrait of slain lawyer on Nevsky Prospect, January 19, 2016. Photo courtesy of Sergey Chernov
Picketer holds portrait of slain lawyer on Nevsky Prospect, January 19, 2016. Photo courtesy of Sergey Chernov
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Picketers hold portraits of Stanislav Markelov, Timur Kacharava, Anastasia Baburova, and other slain anti-fascists on Nevsky Prospect, January 19, 2016. Photo courtesy of Sergey Chernov
"I don't want to dive into a fascist whirlpool." Photo courtesy of Sergey Chernov
“I don’t want to dive into a fascist whirlpool.” Photo courtesy of Sergey Chernov

Continue reading “Petersburg Remembers Markelov and Baburova” →

Avenger

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Puskhin Street, Petrograd, October 14, 2015. Photos by the Russian Reader

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“Stockmann to sell its department store business in Russia,” Nasdaq GlobeNewswire, November 27, 2015

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The St. Petersburg Times
February 2, 2011
Governor Tries to Remove City’s Historic Status
By Sergey Chernov, Staff Writer

Actor Oleg Basilashvili and author Boris Strugatsky were among artists, teachers and rights activists who wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday asking him to deny City Governor Valentina Matviyenko’s request to exclude St. Petersburg from the Register of Historic Settlements.

“Recent years have demonstrated convincingly that the city authorities are not capable and, more importantly, do not want to protect the historic center of St. Petersburg,” they wrote in the letter.

“The ‘planning mistakes’ that appear one after another, distorting the unique appearance of our city, are a direct consequence of the permits and authorizations issued by the city authorities.”

The letter cites the new Stockmann building erected in place of two historic buildings demolished to make way for the Finnish department store, which has altered the view of the portion of Nevsky Prospekt close to Ploshchad Vosstaniya, and the 19th-century Literary House on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and the Fontanka River that is being demolished right now, as the most recent examples.

[…]

Source: Chtodelat News; the emphasis is mine.