Russia Now #9

wednesday, 29 september 2011 a paid supplement from rossiyskaya Gazeta (Moscow, Russia), which takes sole responsibility for the contents

electionsVladimir Putin has announced he will stand for the presidency in 2012again. would a third Putin term be good news?

PAGE 6

a few loose screws inspired a programmer to recreate 3d reality on the computerscreen

PAGE 4

profile

Anti-alcohol laws aimed at youth Russia’s civil servants

plan mass exodus

drinking beer instead of soft drinks, since they are about the same price, about 30 ru-bles (€0.70) per bottle.Brewers themselves link this trend to the growing popularity of beer among youth. Substance abuse professionals now believe there is a growing problem of alcoholism among teen-agers as a result of beer drinking, and in response, restrictions have been im-posed on beer ads. Addi-tionally, in 2005, a ban was imposed on the sale of beer to minors under the age of 18. However, the ban has been poorly observed, and beer consumption has con-tinued to rise.New restrictions set to take effect in 2013 are similar to those currently in use in many European countries.

Brewers in Russia are ex-pecting a major jolt after the Duma in the summer finalised policies promoted by President Dmitry Medvedev that designate beer as an alcoholic bever-age and restrict sales. While this distinction may come as no surprise to beer drink-ers in other parts of the world, until recently, the in-toxicating drink was con-

“Success is something you just can’t share with your children,” Mikhail Prokhorov said. “You can leave a leg-acy to them, pay for their education, explain how to run a business, but there is something you cannot hand over merely by wishing you could. It is precisely the tal-ent for business – the mix-ture of luck and intuition that distinguishes a true leader from merely a suc-cessful person.”There can be no doubt that Mikhail Prokhorov consid-ers himself to be a ‘true leader’. In his enormous of-fice in the centre of Mos-cow, with a glass dome for a roof, he treated his guests to a watermelon grown in

A new district for govern-ment offices and staff is set to be built on the outskirts of the Russian capital that will inflate the capital’s boundaries to create a ‘Greater Moscow’. The idea, which President Dmitry Medvedev announced in June, has now evolved with Moscow’s mayor, Sergei So-byanin, unveiling detailed

Vladimir ruVinskyrussia now

Viktor dyatlikoVichspecial to russia now

anton makhroVrussia now

major brewers and small kiosk owners alike are already bracing for new restrictions on beer sales and advertising, set to take effect in 2013.

business tycoon mikhail prokhorov thrust right cause into the big time. but then party rivals turned on him and his political career looked to be at an end.

medvedev and moscow mayor sobyanin enthuse over the gargantuan project but many office workers would rather stay in the centre.

public health Beer drinkers may shift to microbrews

politics ousted liberal party leader accuses Medvedev aide of engineering his downfall

expanding moscow over decades, a new government quarter will rise

distributed with european Voice

mikhail prokhorov after losing the right cause leadership. he later said he would consider whether to stay in the party.

continued on paGe 3 continued on paGe 8

continued on paGe 2

a billionaire’s political humiliation

plans for creating the enor-mous administrative district in a year’s time. The new home for the city’s bureaucrats is to be built on 1,400 square kilometres of land to the south-west of the present city bound-ary, more than doubling the area of the city, which now covers just over 1,000 square kilometres. Within it, 45 million square metres of offices and 60 mil-lion square metres of hous-ing are to be created – the equivalent of what Russia usually builds in two years.

eVery last thursday in european Voice

rbth.ruPolitics, economics, business, comment and analysis 27 october

Monthly suppleMent about Modern russia

sidered a food product in Russia, making it possible to buy or sell beer with lit-tle to no restrictions on time, place or age.Over the past 15 years, beer consumption in Russia has grown fourfold, according to Dmitry Dobrov, head of Russia’s Union of Liquor Producers. Research by con-sulting company ID-Mar-keting shows that between 2000 and 2009, beer pro-duction in Russia doubled to 120 million hectolitres, which made the Russian beer industry the third larg-est in the world in terms of sales, after China and the United States. Russians are in the widespread habit of

society paGe 3

healthsmokers hit by new laws

heritageinside the Moscow metro

opinion paGe 7

Viewpoints russia and the Middle east

inside

Features paGe 5

his own field and told blue jokes, bordering on obscene, as though trying to play up to his reputation as a tough, successful businessman who knows how to enjoy himself. At the time of that interview in September 2010, he claimed to have no intention of going into pol-itics. Yet his words revealed his ambitions and self-es-teem.The 46-year-old Prokhorov’s success story is, in many re-spects, typical of the Rus-sian ‘oligarchs’ who emerged out of the downfall of the Soviet Union. Son of a mid-level Soviet government of-ficial who headed the in-ternational department at the USSR Sports Commit-tee, he received a good ed-ucation by Soviet standards, graduating from the State Financial Academy. He was an active member of Kom-somol (the Communist Youth League) and joined the Communist Party.

ria novosti

reu

ter

s/v

ost

oc

k-ph

oto

froM personal archives viktor Bogorad

02 Russia now www.rbth.rusection sponsored by rossiyskaya gazeta, russia

29 september 2011politics

a billionaire’s political humiliation Prokhorov did not, howev-er, shy from doing such jobs on the side as handling freight as a student or, in the era of cooperatives, sell-ing jeans. His education granted him access to the Soviet financial system: In 1989, he started working for the International Bank for Economic Co-operation, where he met his future business partner, Vladimir Potanin. Together, in the early 1990s, they set up first the International Finance Company and then ONEX-IM Bank – the basis of their future business empire. The notorious loans-for-shares auctions of the Yeltsin era, which allowed businessmen to gain control over a number of big companies, made them billionaires when they acquired the oil company Sidanco and No-rilsk Nickel.Prokhorov’s subsequent bi-ography is an unending success story, despite a painful breakup with Potanin. Prokhorov man-aged to emerge a winner even from the global finan-cial crisis: just before the crisis, he sold billions of dollars worth of assets, which enabled him to buy up bankrupt companies.More importantly, Pro-khorov has always known how to get along with the government, has accepted all the rules of the game it imposed and has demon-strated his understanding of a concept dear to the Kremlin, the ‘social respon-sibility of business’.Basketball in Russia needs a boost? He creates the strongest European club, CSKA Moscow. Biathletes need helping out? He sets

up and finances the Rus-sian Biathlon Union. Rus-sia’s innovative potential needs improving? He launches the Yo-mobile hy-brid car.

a party in need of a leaderWith this year’s parliamen-tary elections close at hand, the Kremlin needed a con-vincingly competitive right-wing party to demonstrate their legitimacy and to act as an accumulator of built-up protest in the more lib-eral segment of society.

ments and forces for elec-t i o n p u r p o s e s . B u t Prokhorov is the wrong sort of man for that – he would see failure as a serious blow.” “While he was slated as a sparring partner, he start-ed an actual fight”, politi-cal scientist Gleb Pav-lovsky said of Prokhorov, and this precipitated his duel with the Kremlin´s chief ideologist, Vladislav Surkov.“Vladislav Surkov tried to impose his own candidates for the Right Cause party list. Prokhorov, assuming that Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin had given him carte blanche, refused to accept them,” said Pav-lovsky, himself a Kremlin insider and political advis-er to Medvedev until ear-lier this year. Surkov also objected to Roizman’s pres-ence on the party list. As Pavlovsky sees it, the old political hand Surkov was able to engineer Prokhorov’s ouster by his party rivals.“Even after 20 years in business, I still had some illusions. They were dis-pelled yesterday," Prokhorov wrote in his blog after the coup.As a result, Right Cause has lost any chance of making it into parliament, and Prokhorov is momentarily at a loss. He has promised to demand Surkov’s dis-missal from Putin and Medvedev and has spoken of trying to build a new po-litical force.“I value my mistakes just as I value my successes,” Prokhorov has said. “They show me the limits beyond which I cannot go.” The Right Cause affair has shown the billionaire how narrow the limits are.

Right Cause, a liberal party created in 2008, was avail-able, but it lacked an artic-ulate programme, reputa-tion and sufficient popular-ity, and, most importantly, a charismatic leader. Some-one like Prokhorov – a loyal and successful businessman who does not shy away from publicity – was just what the Kremlin was looking for.First, of course, Prokhorov had to sort out the dos and don’ts with the Kremlin.“Registered parties in Rus-sia observe certain restric-tions – tough restrictions,” political scientist Alexei Makarkin said. The first ‘don’t’, he said, is to never associate with the street op-position, with the ‘orange’ forces. The second is not to stray beyond the estab-

prokhorov talks to the media during the right cause congress in June, when he was named party leader.

lished political limits, not to raise issues putting the government at a disadvan-tage, not to trespass on an-other party’s electoral field – above all, that of the rul-ing United Russia party.Such a fix-up was not un-thinkable for Prokhorov – it was the kind of thing he had long been acquainted with in business. “Letting somebody down or not, performing obligations or not … It is a very difficult question,” Prokhorov said last year, trying to explain the intricate system of re-lations in Russian business. “There are arrangements and understandings ac-cording to the ‘code of the underworld’ and there are legal agreements. The former prevailed in the 1990s, while now everyone

continued from page 1

vladimir ruvinskyrussia now

central election commission head vladimir churov says russia has a more transparent, fairer electoral system than some western countries.

Russia’s election chief: Let the observers come

The Central Election Com-mission has established re-lations with electoral bod-ies in 20 countries.We often find that Asian and South American countries have the most advanced voting procedures and elec-toral laws. For instance, 100% of polling stations in Brazil, India and Venezuela have electronic voting.

how will the work of interna-tional observers be organ-ised?Russian legislation in this sphere is among the best structured in Europe. Of the 54 OSCE states, only 23, in-cluding those in the CIS, have passed laws recognis-ing the institution of inter-national observers. There

box is intended to cheat the voters.

critics say that refusal to reg-ister parties in russia infring-es upon the right of citizens to be represented in the state duma.The legitimacy of elections is determined by two factors, the most important of which is voter turnout. In this coun-try, it is about 60% and grow-ing. Second, representation in parliament, i.e., the per-centage of voters who cast their votes for deputies who have received mandates. Here it is 92%, that is, only 8% of voters in 2007 voted for can-didates to the State Duma who did not obtain a depu-ty’s mandate. That is a very good European result.

what is new since the last par-liamentary and presidential elections four years ago?In the December [parlia-mentary] elections, nearly 6,000 polling stations will be fitted with automatic bal-lot-counting equipment. There will be 1,000 electron-ic voting devices that do not require a paper ballot sheet. Voting will remain secret.

do you share experiences with your colleagues abroad?

are no such laws in the United States, Germany, France, Poland, the UK, Bel-gium or the Netherlands.

Here, international observ-ers have the right to be present at election commis-sions of all levels. … In

short, they can watch eve-rything that happens at the polling stations. When we asked to be allowed to do the same in Finland, our re-quest was turned down – not to mention the many re-strictions in various US states.

recent opinion polls have shown that many russians believe the ‘against all candi-dates’ box should be restored to the ballot paper.I am not aware of such a poll. The ‘against all candi-dates’ box has been abol-ished all over Europe be-cause the ‘against everyone’ candidate does not physi-cally exist. … I repeat, there is no ‘against all’ candidate and introduction of that

churov demonstrates the new electronic voting machine.

interview vladimir churov

TurnouT in russian ElEcTions is sTronG, aT 60% and risinG

has switched over to Rus-sian or Western legal stand-ards. This is a normal evo-lutionary process.”

playing by his own rulesWhen he took the reins of Right Cause, Prokhorov embarked on an aggressive campaign, drawing into the party savvy people who were out of favour with the government. One such per-son was Yevgeny Roizman – an adamant campaigner against drugs and a con-troversial, albeit charis-matic and very popular, fig-ure.“Russian political parties have long since ceased to see failure as a disaster”, Makarkin said. “Parties just symbolise the presence of various political move-

i have lost my illusions, Prokhorov blogged after party rivals booted him out.

rEu

TEr

s/v

osT

oc

k-Ph

oTo

ria

no

vo

sTi

03Russia now www.rbth.rusection sponsored by rossiyskaya gazeta, russia society29 september 2011

anti-alcohol laws aimed at youthpublic health As major brewers’ ad spending dries up, microbreweries could see their business start to climb

From 2013, sales of beer on the street will be complete-ly prohibited. Following the lead of the Baltic countries, the sale of hard liquor will be forbidden between the hours of 11 p.m. and 8 a.m. It will no longer be per-missible to drink beer in public places. But the most important restriction is the complete ban on beer ads – on television and out-doors. “Beer sales in the last 10 years have increased due to persistent advertis-ing,” said Pavel Shapkin, head of the Centre for the Development of a Nation-al Alcohol Policy.For Russia, these moves seem radical. In the 1920s, beer was not even consid-ered to be an alcoholic drink, and people drank small amounts just to quench their thirst in the heat. Mass production of cheap beer in the Soviet Union began in the 1970s when the government wanted to reduce the con-sumption of vodka.In the 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhai l Gorbachev launched another anti-al-cohol campaign. He used a simple tactic – he closed the majority of wineries, vodka distilleries and liq-uor stores. For all the short-comings of Gorbachev’s campaign, between 1985 and 1988, consumption of alcohol in the Soviet Union fell by approximately 27% and male mortality rates immediately declined by 12%. The new restrictions are not as sweeping, but au-

thorities in Russia today also hope to lower the rate of alcohol-related fatali-ties. According to the World Health Organisation, cur-rently one in five men in Russia dies from alcohol-related causes, compared with the world average of one in 15.But this attempt at saving lives could kill small busi-nesses. Street sales cur-rently account for about

25% of all beer sales. The nationwide small-business association Opora Russia says the owners of street kiosks will lose about 40% of their revenue and many will be forced to close. Ad-ditionally, brewers may take a hit, and the Union of Russian Brewers be-lieves that the law in its current form “will not re-duce the scope of alcohol consumption.” According

to brewers, the problem be-hind alcoholism lies in Russians’ social discontent, and new restrictions won’t solve that.Maksim Klyagin, an ana-lyst at investment compa-ny Finam, believes that the new rules will not signifi-cantly affect the beer in-dustry, 85% of which is controlled by five major in-ternationals: Carlsberg, InBev, Heineken, Efes, and

this market is largely de-pendent on beer gardens and beer restaurants, es-tablishments that are still in their infancy in Rus-sia.Anatoly Zhamaldinov, di-rector of Tinkoff Brewery, believes that it’s still too early to discuss the possi-ble benefits of beer restau-rants, since administrative barriers to opening them remain. Nevertheless, said Shapkin, “As a result of the new law, advertising for major brands will go away, and small breweries will have a serious opportuni-ty to grow.”

a beer after school: From 2013 scenes like this should no long-er be possible.

of the Russian beer market is controlled by five majorinternational brewers

million hectolitres of beer: Russian production in 2009, third spot worldwide after China and the US

litres of pure alcohol: amount the average Russian consumed in 2009. Experts warn of the health risks.

85%

120

18

numbersSABMiller: “They will just completely switch to sell-ing at retail stores,” Klyagin said.Vadim Drobiz, director of the Centre for Federal and Regional Alcohol Market Studies, doubts that the new rules will reduce the consumption of beer over-all. “The ban on beer sales at kiosks in Belarus, intro-duced a year and a half ago, has not reduced beer con-sumption, and it has actu-ally increased,” Drobiz said. “And in Sweden and Fin-land, which have state mo-nopolies of alcohol sales, re-strictions have not reduced alcohol consumption at all,” he added.Nevertheless, according to a recent poll by Russian market researchers Romir, labelling beer as alcohol will nudge one in ten Rus-sians into giving it up en-tirely.

a silver lining for small breweriesKlyagin says that for busi-ness, the only potential beneficiaries of the new law will be microbrewer-ies, which have begun to appear everywhere in re-cent years. Currently, major manufacturers account for 90% of the beer market, according to Shapkin. Those bottled beers are full of additives, whose impact on the body Chief Narcol-ogist Evgeny Brune com-pares to “chemical warfare agents.” In recent years, Russians have been trying freshly brewed beer, according to Klyagin, and the demand for it will only grow. But

anton makhrovrussiA now

russians generally support anti-smoking laws, but many are not convinced that measures contained in a new bill will work.

Hard times ahead for smokers and tobacco merchants

smoking Government bill would ban smoking almost everywhere and end tobacco sales from street kiosks

effects easily available, cheap cigarettes are having on Russian society and who demand strict legal con-trols.According to the World Health Organisation, 40% of the Russian population smokes, compared to 34% in the UK and 17% in Bra-zil. Russia is fourth in the world in terms of the number of cigarettes con-sumed each year (around 400 billion), yielding only to China, India and Indo-nesia – and these are all countries with far larger populations.Tobacco is far more easily procurable in Russia than in most of Europe. A pack-et of cigarettes costing €4 in western Europe can be bought for €1 in Russia.The government anti-

The sale of cigarettes in Russia, like alcohol, has for years been subject to very light restrictions. There was nothing to stop peo-ple lighting up almost an-ytime and anywhere, and any restrictions imposed on the sale of tobacco were generally ignored by busi-ness.That is set to change when the Duma considers a to-bacco-control bill this au-tumn.Duma deputies seem to be listening to the health pro-fessionals who warn of the

smoking campaign follows the same timeline and strategy as the drive against teen drinking. The Ministry of Health and So-cial Development wants to see cigarettes disappear from street kiosks by 2013 and tobacco advertising se-verely cut back.

smoke-free airports and streetsSmoking at stations and airports would be com-pletely outlawed from 2014, and smoking areas in bars and restaurants be-come a thing of the past. And if you want to have a smoke in the entrance of an apartment building you will first have to obtain written permission from the owners. These restrictions will not

just extend to cigarettes; all nicotine prod-ucts will be affected, in-c l u d i n g h o o k a h s , chewing to-bacco and snuff.O p i n i o n polls con-ducted this s u m m e r showed that 70% of the pop-ulation generally say they are in fa-vour restricting the sale and use of tobacco, and even that four in ten smokers claimed to sup-port the idea. However the respondents were some-what less confident about the actual provisions of the

continued From page 1A

FP/e

Ast

new

s

cana

da

caLiFornia

ireLand

norway

maLta

itaLy

sweden

scotLand

eng

Lan

d

beLg

iumdenmark

France

Lithuania

austria

greece

spain

russia

19881998

20042005

20062007

2008

2009

20112014/15

40%Smokersin Russia

Smokersin Austria

26%

Smokersin Spain

the ban on smoking in

public places comes into

force in

Laws

Smokersin Belgium30%

36%

law. The new pricing of cig-arettes met with particu-lar scepticism: 55% of re-

spondents said that even if the price

of a packet of cigarettes was to double this would not be enough to make them give up smoking.

04 Russia now www.rbth.rusection sponsored by rossiyskaya gazeta, russia

29 september 2011business

alexej knelzeuropean voice

georgy pachikov reversed the typical russian way of innovation – he found an audience for his product before he developed it.

first person georgy pachikov

Virtual manuals to the real world

Georgy Pachikov’s compu-ter screen displays a large white museum hall. A race car, a large backhoe on wheels and an airplane en-gine sit on platforms. Eve-rything can be viewed three-dimensionally.Quickly, Pachikov grabs the backhoe with his mouse pointer and it morphs into Leonardo da Vinci’s ar-moured proto-tank.“See, this cog turns here and that simultaneously drives the tower.” After 10 seconds, he zooms in on a lathe: “This is where you horizontally insert the rough wood and the graver is in-serted vertically from above here. This button turns the machine on. The longer you press the mouse button, the deeper the cut. Look! Whoosh!” Pachikov says en-thusiastically.Pachikov is the founder and president of ParallelGraph-ics, a software house that develops animated user guides, repair manuals and technical documentation in 3D. His business helps an-swer a question he’s been asking since childhood: “How does that work?”

it all began with a broken washing machineIn a T-shirt that poses a dif-ferent question – “How do you feel today?” – sitting in an Asian café in downtown Moscow, Pachikov describes how he and his brother Stepan founded a company called ParaGraph in 1989.“Back then we were the first worldwide to simulate the everyday on a computer, long before Second Life,” Pachikov said proudly. The brothers programmed a vir-tual environment in which each user could stroll across Red Square as their alter ego. “Each avatar has a speech bubble above its head where you can chat.” As innovative as it all was, success did not follow. “After

a while, all the users left their avatars behind and limited their activity to chatting – interpersonal communication was still the most important,” Pachikov said. Nobody really knew what could be done with 3D graphics. The market wasn’t there yet.When Pachikov moved to a new apartment in 1999, his washing machine broke. With a friend, he took the machine apart, “down to the last screw.” When they re-assembled the machine again and turned it on, it worked, but there were five screws left.“We had no idea where to begin: the user manual was in French and there was no translation. And even though we are both engi-neers, we were at a com-plete loss,” Pachikov said. The washing machine gave the programmer a brilliant idea: “An animated 3D re-pair manual that explains each individual step se-quentially, translated into multiple languages – that would be the saving grace for all technicians!”That same year, he founded ParallelGraphics. His newly assembled team soon began testing ideas, even though, for Russia, they were act-ing counter-cyclically. “In this part of the world, innovation processes run in

the opposite direction: a Russian invents something and only afterwards wor-ries about what to do with it and where a market for it might be found,” he said. Pachikov, on the other hand, knew what audience he was targeting. After a two-year development phase, Paral-lelGraphics introduced Cor-tona3D, a software program that converts technical de-scriptions of individual tasks into three-dimension-al animation.

boeing and airbus came knocking at the doorPachikov’s first large client was the US aircraft maker Boeing. “Boeing maintains a design centre in Moscow where the boys scan the Russian market for innova-tions and new talent,” he ex-plained. After his presenta-tion, ‘the boys’ offered him an exclusive five-year con-tract. It was 2001.The collaboration was very successful. “The same day

the Boeing contract ended, Airbus knocked at the door,” Pachikov said. More big names followed, including General Electric, Honda and Siemens. Parallel-Graphics created all the technical documentation for the HondaJet small busi-ness plane. And in 2011, Pachikov signed a general partnership with Siemens. His virtual documentation is integrated into the elec-tronics giant’s Teamcenter package of computer-aided

complex processes automatically transformed into animated user guides

Cortona3D is a software pro-gramme that automates the development process of technical documentation. Application areas for the software are almost limit-less, Pachikov boasts: from Foucault’s pendulum to a hydro-power station. All the software needs to simulate a technical device are the computer-aided design files, which are converted into one of the international formats for technical documenta-tion. The animation process is completely automatic. Af-terwards, the files can be in-tegrated into the repair and maintenance manual as a video sequence that shows each task step by step.

ceo parallelgraphics

Georgy Pachikov was born in 1953 in Tbilisi, Georgia. He studied economic cybernet-ics in Moscow. Until 1988, he worked as a software en-gineer in the state gas in-dustry. In 1986, he started the first Soviet computer club with his brother Stepan and the chess player Garry Kasparov. In 1989 the broth-ers founded ParaGraph, go-ing on to sell the company to the US software giant Sil-icon Graphics bought in 1997.ParallelGraphics revenues in 2010: €4 million

biography

occupation: software developer

age: 58

design, manufacturing and product control systems.The applications in indus-try are huge, according to Pachikov: “Because of our software, General Electric saved 70% off the cost of technical documentation,” he said. The software also makes it possible to put a product on the market more quickly because it speeds the development phase.Beyond business applica-tions, Cortona3D can be used for training in techni-cal schools. “In the future, every auto mechanic, every electrician will have the individual steps readily available on their tablet PC and can then implement them,” Pachikov said.

the biggest technical museum in the worldThen he opens his laptop once more to the museum hall, the entry to his dream idea. He zooms in on an en-gine, grabs it with the mouse, disassembles and re-assembles it virtually, lets the turbines spin. “Imagine a virtual museum where every technical de-vice ever invented by man is collected. And you can walk through and operate each one, take it apart and reassemble it.” And answer the question: “How does that work?”

explaining complicated things simply is the secret of pachikov's success.

Duma elections: Russians will go to the polls in December. Who are the key players?

subscribe to our free

monthly e-paperwww.rbth.ru/subscribe

fro

m p

erso

na

l a

rc

hiv

es

fro

m p

erso

na

l a

rc

hiv

es

pho

tox

pres

s

05RUSSIA NOW WWW.RBTH.RUSECTION SPONSORED BY ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA, RUSSIA

29 SEPTEMBER 2011 Features

Welcome to the 21st century: The vestibule of Sretensky Bulvar station. One of the sys-tem’s newest, it opened in 2007.

Komsomolskaya station opened in 1952. Alight here for the grand baroque style of the Stalinist era.

All aboard: experience poetry, art, literature and history in motion

km: length of track when the Moscow metro first opened in 1935. The first line had 13 stations.

km: total track length today. The system has grown to 182 stations on 12 lines.

km/h: average metro train speed. Minimum headway between trains is 90 sec-onds.

11

300

41.6

THE NUMBERS

Urban art Moscow’s underground railway is a living museum as well as an essential way to move around the city

A trip down Moscow’s time tunnels

As you travel on Moscow’s metro, the history of the city’s last eight decades un-folds before your eyes. The stations range in design from palatial marble and granite structures to mod-ern day steel and glass con-structions – revealing the tastes, ideas, hopes and dis-appointments of the gener-ations that first used them.

First steps undergroundConstruction of the Moscow metro began in 1931, al-though engineers Pyotr Ba-linsky and Yevgeny Knorre submitted their � rst designs to the Moscow City Duma as far back as 1902. The Duma, then made up of wealthy people, was not convinced at � rst: after all, they lived in the centre of the city and didn’t have to travel in overcrowded trams. But, after � ve failed propos-als, the Duma finally ap-

The Moscow metro breathes history through its art and architecture. You’ll meet Lenin, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin and other famous Russians in its stations.

proved the plans and build-ing began. On 15 May 1935, 18 years after the Bolshevik revolu-tion, the metro threw open its doors and carried its � rst passengers down the esca-lators and on to its new wagons with padded seats (unlike the wooden seats in trams). The � rst metro line

– from Sokolniki to Dvorets Sovetov (now known as Kropotkinskaya) – was 11 kilometres long and had 13 stations. The system has since grown to over 300km of track with 12 lines and 182 stations at from � ve to 80 metres below street level. The city’s development plan for 2020 envisages that by then another 120km will have been added to the ex-isting routes.

The Lenin rebrandFor the � rst 20 years of its history, the metro was named after Lazar Kaga-

novich, the “iron commis-sar” and Stalin’s right-hand man, who oversaw construc-tion of the � rst stage (he also gave the order to blow up the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in December 1931 as part of the Proletarian Capital project). In 1955, however, the metro was re-named after Vladimir Lenin. Although Russia has long since changed its political path, you can still � nd por-traits of Lenin in the un-derground network, includ-ing busts o f h im at Belorusskaya and Komso-molskaya stations, impres-sive mosaics at Bauman-skaya and Kievskaya stations, and a tile panel in the passage between the Borovitskaya and Bibliote-ka Imeni Lenina (Lenin Li-brary) stations. Images of Stalin, which were omni-present on the metro in the late 1940s, were gradually removed after his death in 1953 and the subsequent de-nunciation of his legacy.

Architectural eras The � rst stations, up until the mid-1950s, were con-ceived and built as luxuri-ous ‘palaces for the people’, grand architecture for a

great state. Art historians claim that the richly-deco-rated underground was a deliberate ideological move to eulogise the young So-viet country. Much of the design and decorations from this period is worthy of spe-cial attention. For example, the ceiling mosaics at May-akovskaya station (called

The 24-hour Soviet Sky) and at Novokuznetskaya station (called Heroic La-bour of the Soviet People on the Home Front), based on designs by artist Alex-ander Deineka, were made by famous mosaic artist Vladimir Frolov, who also created the much mar-velled-at mosaic icons in St. Petersburg’s Church of the Saviour on Blood. The Ploshchad Revolyutsii station is decorated with 76 bronze sculptures of work-ers, soldiers, farmers, stu-dents and other Soviet role models. People rub the nose

ALENA LEGOSTAEVASPECIAL TO RUSSIA NOW

� aunts its pastoral mosaic landscapes. In 2004, the metro system embraced Russia’s first monorail – an elevated track in northern Moscow, link-ing the All-Russian Exhi-bition Centre and the Timir-yazevskaya metro station. The evolution of the Mos-cow metro continues. It’s still a work in progress, with ambitious plans to in-volve passengers even more closely into its workings over the next ten years, not just by adding many kilo-metres of new track. “We want to strip the stations of everything we can,” chief architect Shumakov says. “We are trying to show the passengers the framework – what the metro is made of. Cast iron and concrete are beautiful.”

of the frontier guard’s dog for good luck.According to the chief ar-chitect of the system, Nikolai Shumakov, “Architecture developed along the same lines, both above and below the surface.” Thus, by 1955, the good times for Russian architecture – both under-ground and above ground – were over after the Com-munist Party decreed that extravagance in design and construction were to be eliminated. Dull stations, without any stucco work, mosaics, columns or other “unjusti� ed” elements, were built under the slogan “Kil-ometres at the expense of architecture”. Things were the same above the ground, where entire cities were built of commonplace � ve-storey apartment blocks, all looking the same, nick-named ‘Khrushchevkas’ after the then leader, Niki-ta Khrushchev. Tverskaya, Kitay-Gorod, Kolomen-skaya and other stations built between the 1960s and 1980s re� ect this period.

A return to designIn 2002, with the recon-struction of the Vorobyovy Gory station, which offers commuters a splendid view of the Moskva River, the Luzhniki Olympic Complex and the Academy of Sci-ences, design returned to the metro. Architectural styles of the 1930s and 1940s were reintroduced and artists were once again involved in decorating the stations. Sretensky Bulvar station boasts silhouettes of Pushkin and Gogol and of Moscow sights; Dos-toyevskaya is decorated with black-and-white pan-els featuring the main char-acters from Dostoyevsky’s best-loved novels, and Maryina Roshcha station

If you are on the platform of a Sokolnicheskaya (Red) line station you might catch one of its specially-themed trains. The Aquarelle Train (pic-tured) is painted with flowers and fruit on the outside. In-side, it is a gallery featuring reproductions of paintings from the Viktor and Apolli-nary Vasnetsov Museum in Kirov. The Reading Moscow Train carries extracts from il-lustrated literary works for

both adults and children. The Poetry in Metro Train is a mobile exposition, updated this year, dedicated to Ital-ian poets. All the poems and biographies are displayed in both Russian and Italian. The Sokolniki Retro Train looks exactly like a carriage on the first Moscow metro train, both inside and out. Painted brown, it has padded seats, period wall decorations and retro lamps.

Until the mid-1950s metro stations were grand, ornate palaces for the people.

Characters from Dostoyevsky’s novels inhabit the station named after the writer.

ITA

R-T

ASS

GETTY

IMA

GES/FO

TOB

AN

K

AFP

/EA

STN

EWS

Slide Show atwww.rbth.ru

06 Russia now www.rbth.rusection sponsored by rossiyskaya gazeta, russia

29 september 2011

A t the same time that Russia is marking the 20th anniversary of

the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West is begin-ning to talk seriously about the possibility of the col-lapse of the European Union. As with the Soviet collapse, the more politi-cians try to save the EU, the less viable it becomes.The EU is threatened with disintegration by the very institution that was sup-posed to unify and strengthen the continent: a common European currency.Back in the early 2000s, many economists, including

myself, argued that trying to integrate countries with different economies and na-tional cultures into a single financial system would not lead to greater unity but to increased conflict.We also argued that the euro would cause inflation in less developed southern EU countries to spread like a plague to their more deve-loped northern neighbours, and that financial policies aimed at austerity and maintaining a stable ex-change rate for the euro would strangle the econo-mies of Greece, Spain and Portugal.Unfortunately, these predic-tions have proven true. The unified financial system has led to a reallocation of cap-

ital in favour of Germany, the most powerful Europe-an economy, while the coun-tries with the weakest econ-omies suffered constant financial shortfalls and

were forced to borrow in-creasingly larger sums, pushing them to the brink of bankruptcy. Many had hoped that integration would improve the perform-ance of less-developed Eu-

ropean countries, but this didn’t happen.Meanwhile, countries with weaker economies were tempted to use whatever political leverage they had to improve their status within the EU. This was an important factor in the col-lapse of the Soviet Union and could have a similar impact on the EU.The fact that Germany and France propose strength-ening financial integration as a means of overcoming the crisis only proves that politicians have not learned anything from recent events. Stiffening the de-mands made by financial and political institutions will only widen the gap be-tween those institutions.

EUROPEAn UniOn FACES A SOViET-STYLE COLLAPSE boris

kagarlitskysociologist

Worse, it will decrease peo-ple’s standard of living.It is instructive to compare the EU to the Soviet Union. In many ways, the EU is less of an integrated body than the Soviet Union was. Social, cultural and economic insti-tutions were more homoge-neous in Soviet society, but under the pressure of mar-ket reforms, the ethnically di-verse Soviet republics began to diverge quickly.Historically, market forces have divided social groups. Brussels was more or less able to cope with these di-visive forces when the econ-omy was booming, but in a recession the situation has worsened significantly.Unfortunately, rather than acknowledge the problem

and institute reforms to cor-rect the negative effects of recent policies, European leaders are trying even hard-er to put their failed ideas into practice. The result will be disastrous.The Soviet Constitution granted republics the right to secede, but the EU Lis-bon Treaty does not offer the same right. This only means that if the EU starts falling apart, it will be even more chaotic and uncontrollable than the collapse of the So-viet Union.

Originally published inthe moscow times

Boris Kagarlitsky is direc-tor of the Institute of Glo-balisation Studies.

in many ways, the EU is less of an integrated body than the soviet Union was.

opinion

FiVE REASOnS TO inVEST in PUTinit’s easy to criticise Prime

Minister Vladimir Putin. Over the years, many voic-

es have readily – and often rightfully – called Putin to task on issues such as grow-ing corruption, selective jus-tice and his rollback of de-mocracy.Putin’s announcement on 24 September that he would run for the presidency in 2012 cracks open the door to new worries about the fate of Russia’s democracy and civil society, since Putin is all but certain to return to the Kremlin for a six-year term, and possibly an-other six-year term after that.But a third presidential term for Putin is far from all doom and gloom. Here are five reasons for foreign investors to cheer Putin’s announcement at the Unit-ed Russia convention and his economic-related re-marks a day earlier at the same event.

1. The uncertainty has ended over who will run in 2012. Although

Putin has long been seen as the captain at the country’s helm, the lack of clarity from Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev on who might run has bewildered investors for months, if not years. Repeat-ed promises of a continua-tion of current policy clashed with what seemed to be con-flicting statements from Putin and Medvedev about domestic political reforms, foreign policy and even when an announcement might be made on who would run for president. With just five months left until the election, the 2012 riddle was erecting a poten-tial hurdle to ongoing invest-ment and looked positively embarrassing, especially in contrast to a developed de-mocracy like the United States where opposition hopefuls are already jostling

ment climate. Putin suggest-ed at the United Russia convention that he and Medvedev would swap hats next year, with him return-ing to the presidency and Medvedev replacing him in the White House as prime minister. Pundits are debat-ing whether Medvedev would make a better prime minister or, perhaps, chief justice of the Constitutional Court or State Duma speak-er. But no matter where Medvedev lands, investors can hope that he will be in a position to push ahead with the modernisation, an-ti-corruption agenda that he has made the hallmark of his presidency. More important, Putin stressed at the convention that he would oversee the drives for modernisation and against corruption by, like Medvedev, working to reduce the economy’s dependence on energy exports and tack-le key investment hurdles like corruption and the weak court system.“We must speak openly about the dependence of our economy on raw materials, about the dangerous level of social inequality, violence, corruption, about the feel-ing of injustice and vulner-ability that people feel when they are dealing with gov-ernment bodies, courts and law enforcement,” Putin said. “All this, unfortunately, con-tinues,” he said. “We can and must overcome these prob-lems.”We may never know wheth-er the Medvedev presidency was little more than a cha-rade. But it’s now obvious that Putin deserves to sit in the Kremlin. He has always called the shots and made the decisions, and the only place for the CEO of Russia is in the CEO’s office over-looking Red Square.

Originally published inthe moscow times

other things, the passage of key legislation and regula-tions that allow investors to work within an understand-able – if often violated – legal framework, a demonstrably greater effort by the author-ities to consider and act on investors’ concerns, and a steady increase in the stand-ard of living that has led to growing consumer de-mand.Incidentally, an important part of stability is predict-ability, and Putin is reliably conservative on political and security issues, and patriot-ic and fairly pro-business on economic issues.

4. The Yukos takeover won’t be revisited. Many investors

have long ago stopped fret-ting over the merits of the state’s legal assault on former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and its take-over of his oil company. But a shadow of doubt has hung over the affair, fuelling wor-

agenda to move the reset into the economic arena. The economic reset already appears to be bearing fruit – first and foremost with an agreement for Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organ-isation just around the cor-ner. A reset of sorts has also taken place with the Euro-pean Union, and there is reason to expect economic relations to continue to im-prove and flourish during a Putin presidency.

3. Stability. If Putin has proved anything during his 11 years

in power, it is that he is a strong leader interested in bringing stability to Russia. His means of ushering in stability and maintaining it have bred corruption and raised worries about the state of democracy and civil society. But at the same time, the investment climate has markedly improved from the chaotic 1990s, with, among

ries that the scandal might be revisited and the assets might be redistributed again. A Putin presidency prom-ises to lay lingering investor jitters to rest. The assets that were seized from Yukos and awarded state-owned Ros-neft will stay put. One won-ders in retrospect whether Putin gave US energy giant ExxonMobil a heads-up on his plan to return to the Kremlin when he blessed its multibillion-dollar deal with Rosneft on 30 August. For the US company, the stra-tegic agreement was purely business; but for the Rus-sian company, it was purely politics. The agreement gives legitimacy to Rosneft, and by extension to Putin, in its ownership of former Yukos assets. Incidentally, it is also clear now that Khodorko-vsky will remain in prison for years to come.

5. Hope is growing for further improve-ments in the invest-

to take on President Barack Obama more than a year be-fore the vote.

2. The US-Russia ‘reset’ will contin-ue. While Medvedev

and his perceived more lib-eral policies have been cred-ited widely with improving ties with Washington, it is now clear that Putin has been in charge the whole time, and thus engineered the reset. Medvedev indi-cated at the United Russia convention that he and Putin had tentatively agreed on Putin’s return when they first settled on their ‘ruling tandem’ arrangement in 2007. The good news for in-vestors is that the political reset appears to have been a resounding success and will remain in place because of the two sides’ many stra-tegic interests on everything from Afghanistan to the Middle East. Under Putin, both sides will be able to push forward with their

07Russia now www.rbth.rusection sponsored by rossiyskaya gazeta, russia comment29 september 2011

Letters from readers, guest coLumns and cartoons LabeLLed “comment” or

“Viewpoint” or appearing on the “opinion” and “comment” pages of this suppLement are

seLected to represent a broad range of Views and do not necessariLy represent those of the editors of russia now or rossiyskaya gazeta.

Please send letters to the editor to [email protected]

this eight-Page Pull-out is Produced and Published by rossiyskaya gazeta (russia), which takes sole resPonsibility for the contents. internet address www.rbth.ru email [email protected] tel. +7 (495) 775 3114 fax +44 20 3070 0020 address 24 praVdy str., bLdg. 4, fLoor 12, moscow, russia, 125 993. eVgeny aboV editor & Publisher aLexey kneLz editor ky krauthamer subeditor andrey zaitseV head of Photo dePt. miLLa domogatskaya head of Pre-Print dePt. irina paVLoVa layout

e-PaPer version of this suPPlement is available at www.rbth.ru. VseVoLod puLya online editor to advertise in this suPPlement contact JuLia goLikoVa advertising & Pr director, on [email protected].© coPyright 2011, Zao “rossiyskaya gaZeta”. all rights reserved. www.rg.ru

aLexander gorbenko chairman of the boardpaVeL negoitsa general director VLadisLaV fronin chief editor

any coPying, redistribution or retransmission of any of the contents of this Publication, other than for Personal use, without the exPress written consent of rossiyskaya gaZeta is exPressly Prohibited. to obtain Permission to rePrint or coPy an article or Photo, Please Phone +7 (495) 775 3114 or email [email protected] with your request. russia now is not resPonsible for unsolicited manuscriPts and Photos.

INTERVENTION OR LAISSEZ-FAIRE?Viewpoints russia and the arab spring

When Vladimir Putin likened the Western alliance’s air strikes on Libya to a crusade, Dmitry Medvedev

slapped his colleague down. The Russian leadership’s cack-handed handling of the Libyan affair may

signal a shift to a foreign policy that respects values no less than naked power.

The mass protests that have rocked the Mid-dle East and North Af-

rica since the beginning of the year came as a surprise to many of the world’s gov-ernments. As a result, their responses to the Arab Spring have been largely re-active and often inconsist-ent; it’s hard to name a country that has succeeded in designing a unified ap-proach to the events taking place in countries as diverse as Tunisia and Yemen. This has not prevented some pundits from criticising Russia’s Middle East policy as being particularly cha-otic: one said, “Russian pol-icy toward Libya [is] …a study in ambivalence”; an-other called it “a zigzag pol-icy”.Western analysts tend to as-cribe every ‘inconsistency’ in Russian foreign policy, whether real or imagined, to disagreements between President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin; volumes have been written about a public spat between the two following Russia’s vote on the UN Se-curity Council resolution to authorise a no-fly zone over Libya. Yet, a careful exam-ination of Russia’s recent behaviour in the region re-veals the presence of a rath-er consistent strategic line, an approach that is based on three general princi-ples.First, Moscow shows little appetite for bold solo moves in the UN, including using its veto power, which has been applied only four times in the past 15 years. These days, Russia prefers follow-ing the crowd of its fellow Security Council members. Russia supported imposing an arms embargo on Tripo-li; this resolution was unan-imously adopted by the Se-curity Council. Initially opposed to Resolution 1973 authorising the no-fly zone,

David Cameron and William Hague have to be grateful to the

Royal Air Force. The Brit-ish prime minister and for-eign secretary flew to Mos-cow as winners of the war in Libya, and this definite-ly created extra respect for them during difficult talks with the Russian leaders, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The Russians might not care much for the Brit-ish, with the Litvinenko murder and BP misfortunes serving as irritants. But in their hearts they have al-ways had high regard for military prowess. Actually, Medvedev and Putin must have felt a bit jealous. Moscow could have easily been among the win-ners of the Libyan cam-paign instead of suffering the indignity of having its Qaddafi-era contracts with Tripoli effectively suspend-ed by the new transitional government.I am still baffled: why did the Kremlin commit such a gross error of judgement which lead to such a visi-ble humiliation? From the moment Russia chose not to veto UN Security Coun-cil Resolution 1973 Muam-mar Qaddafi’s game was up. He had the world’s most powerful military alliance against him and hardly any support even among the fel-low Arabs. Moreover, Jor-dan, Qatar and United Arab Emirates gave military sup-port to the allied operation in the Libyan skies. Moscow could have voted in favour of the no-fly zone resolution and could even have sent a symbolic frig-ate or two to Libyan shores – thus securing a place of honour among future win-ners. Still, abstention gave Russia a free hand to ad-just its attitude later. And of course it was quite clear from the beginning that

IS REALpOLITIk ON ITS wAy OuT?

RuSSIA’S LIByAN CLIMB-DOwN

eugene ivanov

PoLiTicaL bLoggeR

konstantin von eggert

jouRnaLisT

Russia eventually decided not to veto it and abstained instead. In so doing, Russia joined a respected group of major international players, such as Brazil, China, Ger-many and India.Second, Russia’s sensitivity to regional sentiments helps explain another ‘inconsist-ency’ of its Middle East pol-icy: Its decision to abandon Qaddafi while continuing

to provide diplomatic cover to the Assad regime in Syria. Russia took note of the fact that Resolution 1973 was supported by the Arab League, an organisation that repeatedly condemned the Qaddafi regime for bru-tality. Syria was a different matter; there was no region-al consensus with regards to the amount of pressure to be applied on Damascus. For as long as the Assad re-gime enjoyed some support, however tacit, from two re-gional power brokers, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Moscow saw no reason to do any heavy lifting on its own in the Security Council. But that did not stop Medvedev from warning Assad in Au-gust that Russia’s approach to Syria may change if the Syrian strongman fails to implement promised re-forms. Third, Moscow seems to have abandoned its old habit of sticking forever to ‘friendly’ dictators; it now prefers to engage all the parties involved in a con-flict. Thus, Russia kept in communication with Tripo-li ; at the same time, Medvedev sent his special

Resolution 1973 gave a green light to the allies to root out the Qaddafi regime. No other outcome would have satisfied them. But instead of being con-sistent and keeping a dis-tance, Moscow almost im-mediately rushed to condemn the NATO-led op-eration and, implicitly, sup-port Qaddafi. It soon found itself in a particularly bad position: the Libyan dicta-

tor did not trust Russia after the UN abstention; the rebels felt Russia was work-ing against them. Medvedev’s special representative, Mikhail Margelov, flew to Benghazi for talks with the Transitional National Coun-cil in June. Regrettably, the Russian leadership did not follow up his promising mission with any concrete steps. In a humiliating climb-down Moscow had to recognise the rebels as Lib-ya’s legitimate government when it was too late.So why did Medvedev, Putin and their foreign policy ad-visors miscalculate? I think the roots of this mis-take lie in Russia’s internal situation and mentality. Post-Cold War humiliations, some real and some per-ceived, created an ideology based on anti-Western at-titudes, as well as denial that values and ideas, as op-posed to naked interest, play any role in international re-lations. (For values, read ‘Western values’.) Moscow decision-makers and the Russian public view global politics as a zero-sum game, where someone’s gain is al-

representative, Mikhail Margelov, to meet with the opposition stationed in Benghazi. After Margelov’s trip, the rebels put out the Russian flag and proclaimed Russia an “ally”.The same approach is being applied in Syria. In June, Margelov hosted a meeting with the Syrian opposition and called for an end to “any and all forms of violence”. Margelov then made it very clear that Moscow is will-ing to deal with any even-tual winner in the Syrian conflict. Needless to say, this message was well re-ceived.Russia’s hard-core realism in the Middle East is noth-ing new: it’s a continuation of the pragmatic foreign policy Moscow has been conducting since Putin came to office. Yet, some new, surprising elements seem to be emerging. When justifying Russia’s position on Libya, Medvedev ac-cused the Qaddafi regime of “crimes committed against its own people” and directly linked its “abhor-rent behaviour” to Russia’s refusal to veto Resolution 1973. In other words, by taking into account the do-mestic conduct of the Lib-yan leadership, Medvedev essentially rejected the sim-plicity of ‘realpolitik’ and introduced elements of the value-based approach that until now has been com-pletely foreign to the Krem-lin.Medvedev’s words were ech-oed by Konstantin Ko-sachev, the chairman of the State Duma’s foreign-af-fairs committee. In a recent article discussing the situ-ation in Libya, Kosachev argued that foreign inter-ventions into domestic con-flicts could be justified “when people’s lives are at stake”. This argument essen-tially rejects Russia’s long-standing position that sov-ereign rights of the nation are paramount. We must wait to see whether these statements are no more than tactical one-offs or perhaps signal a paradigm shift in Russian foreign policy.

ways someone else’s loss. This is at the same time the consequence and the rea-son of Russia’s peculiar and tortuous post-communist transition. The country is neither here nor there, no longer an em-pire and global superpow-er but not yet a fully-fledged nation state. This makes the Russians uncertain and consequently defensive. They worship sovereignty – understood as a sort of pre-World War I right of governments to do whatev-er they want within their national boundaries – be-cause they saw their own country, the Soviet Union, disappear overnight. They are unable and unwilling to accept such concepts as ‘hu-manitarian intervention’ and ‘responsibility to pro-tect’, which underpinned the intervention in Libya. This leads to a recurring situa-tion in which Russia finds itself on the wrong side of history trying to bail out dictators long past their ex-piry date. It happened with Milosevic in Serbia, Sadd-am in Iraq, and now Qadd-afi, and one wonders if the situation will not recur with Syria’s Bashar Assad.Global politics today are an interplay of interests and values, opportunism and idealism. Missing this very real point leads the Rus-sians to believe that any event over which they have no control – such as the Arab revolutions – is by de-fault a sinister conspiracy, usually a Western one and involving oil. This belief is by no means an exclusively Russian phe-nomenon. Many readers of the British Guardian news-paper seem to share this view too. But among the G8 nations it is only in Russia that such attitudes are as widely spread among poli-ticians and top civil serv-ants. It might take quite some time for my people to start adapting to 21st-cen-tury reality, although Rus-sian leaders have it in their power to speed up the proc-ess and finally get real themselves.

Eugene Ivanov is a Massa-chusetts-based political commentator who blogs at The Ivanov Report.

Konstantin von Eggert is a former editor-in-chief of the BBC Russian Service Moscow bureau.

Moscow seems to have abandoned its old habit of sticking forever to ‘friendly’ dictators.

Russian leaders worship sovereignty because they saw the soviet union vanish overnight.

08 RUSSIA NOW WWW.RBTH.RUSECTION SPONSORED BY ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA, RUSSIA

29 SEPTEMBER 2011Society

To advertisein this

supplement contact

[email protected]

ph. +7 (495) 775 3114www.facebook.com/russianow

Don't miss our "Photo of the day"

on Facebook!

rbth.ru/[email protected]

Russia’s civil servants plan exodusThe local governments of Moscow and the Moscow Region have already ap-proved the ambitious project. And an internation-al competition for develop-ing the concept of Greater Moscow is soon to be an-nounced.It’s not the first time the capital of a major city will be recreated to accommo-date the government staff. Brazil, for example, built its capital, Brasilia, from scratch in the interior, far from the nearest cities. Ka-zakhstan’s President Nur-sultan Nazarbayev took a leaf from the Brazilian book when he transferred the capital from Almaty to As-tana. The move helped to sever the corrupt nexus be-tween government officials and members of the elite classes, by replacing them with people who had no connections to old, often criminal, schemes.Government offices are also relocated for more practi-cal reasons, such as stream-lining administration. That’s why France created its high-rise district, La Défense, on the edge of Paris. Medvedev seems to be thinking more along the lines of streamlining rather than replacing officials, as the proposed site is within commuting distance of cen-tral Moscow. The move will also help to relieve traffic congestion in the city.

Money mattersIt’s not clear how much the new city for bureaucrats would cost. “The cost is not yet known because there are no concrete projects,” is all Sobyanin would say. His deputy mayor for econom-ic policy. Andrei Sharonov, favours drastic measures: “It makes sense for every-body to move. If some in-stitutions stay in the old centre and officials have to shuttle backwards and for-wards between offices, the transport problem will re-main unresolved.”Artyom Tsogoyev, project manager with Trin� co Prop-erty Management, doubts that Sharonov’s optimism will be shared by local gov-ernments: “Russia has the unhappy experience of moving the Constitutional Court to St. Petersburg. The plan did not work very well because the judges still have to spend most of their time

in Moscow in the line of duty”, Tsogoyev said. “As a result, we may face a situ-ation where all the govern-ment institutions are nom-inally outside the capital but still have a major ‘branch’ in the city cen-tre.”

A new city at zero costIn any case, the bill will be hefty. “Every government official needs 12-15 square metres, each costing $3,000. And you have to bear in mind that the official will be accompanied by his sec-retaries and staff and that

commercial services are needed. It takes all these el-ements to make a normal city”, the architect said. If a city is un� t for living, there can be no question of a gov-ernment migration, he added.It is an ambitious but real-istic plan, according to Ser-gei Tkachenko, director of the Moscow Master Plan In-stitute. “Some ideas as to how to implement the plan were proposed several years ago. Architects and urban developers must always be ready to tackle new tasks and we have been consid-ering the options,” he said.Even so, previous attempts to build a Moscow version of La Défense have had lit-tle success. The idea of � nd-ing a new centre to accom-m o d a t e t h e e n t i r e government was mooted during the administration of the previous Moscow mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. In 2005, plans for an admin-istrative district on 800 hec-tares of land north-west of the Moscow City business centre. Factoring in the cost of shifting about 100 indus-trial enterprises out of the area, the total cost of the project was estimated at €58 billion. As a result, the project never got off the ground and experts are sceptical about the useful-ness of Moscow City itself. Anyway, urban developers still have time to avoid mak-ing the same mistakes: ac-cording to the Property Market Indicators analyti-cal centre, the president’s idea will take at least 10 to 15 years to be cast in stone.

they, too, need space. So it may cost between $50,000 and $100,000 to relocate a single government official”, mused Konstantin Kovaly-ov, managing partner with estate agents Blackwood.Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, however, feels that the relocation would virtu-ally “cost nothing”. He said the transfer of personnel would free up premises, property and other assets in the city centre. If these buildings were reused ef-fectively, the cost could turn out to be zero.The declared goals of the

A man steps over the "river" of a scale model of Moscow. The miniature city has been on exhibit since 1977.

project do sound impres-sive. “To improve the devel-opment of the Moscow meg-alopolis and simply to make life easier for a vast number of people” is the task set by the president. “Development density will be reduced sev-eral fold and Moscow will breathe more easily,” Soby-anin explained. “It will change the look of Moscow. Today it has hundreds of buildings housing govern-ment institutions; new and more comfortable buildings may appear in their place,” presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich said.

Imagine Moscow twice as big – that’s the idea Growing Moscow

Moscow city planners are at work on the ambitious plan to turn a large swath of the suburbs into a federal centre with relocated ministries and government buildings. The proposed development has the working title Moscow-2. Experts say over 100 million square metres of real estate could be built in the area, and it ultimately could be home to two millionpeople. “Building the satellite city will be a shot in the armfor developing nearby dis-tricts in the Moscow Region,” said Vladimir Avdeyev, a general partner at S.A. Ric-

ci, a commercial property firm. “While business activ-ity is likely to be concen-trated in the administrative centre, the city’s residents will spend their leisure time in the neighbouring villages and townships.”Architects say such a large-scale development presents significant challenges. And the need to blend adminis-trative offices and business centres with residential de-velopment and social infra-structure will require careful planning.“The plan has to be imple-mented over 25 to 50 years, otherwise the new city will

outgrow whatever we build,” said Pavel Andreyev, an ar-chitect with the state design bureau Mosproject-2.Some architects recommend building Moscow-2 symmet-rically. Astana, Kazakhstan's shiny new capital, was built on the same principle with development branching out on a hub-and-spoke plan from administrative and resi-dential nodes. A key goal for Moscow will be the creation of integrated transport net-works within the newly de-veloped area to prevent it from becoming a burden on the region's already over-crowded roads.

What the project amounts to is a fully-� edged city of between 100,000 and 500,000 people, specialists say.

Ambitious, but not impossible“The bureaucrats’ city may be small but it must be self-contained,” argues Mikhail Khazanov, the vice-presi-dent of the Moscow Archi-tects’ Union. “Top federal executive bodies are not only about the offices in which the bureaucrats sit. Housing, a social and trans-port infrastructure, and

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A

FP/E

AST

NEW

S