MOSCOW BRIEFING April 2005

News this month

Wild East redux?

One of the country's least popular men was the target of an assassination attempt on March 17th. Anatoly Chubais, the head of Unified Energy System (UES), Russia's energy monopoly, was one of the brains behind the deeply unpopular post-Soviet privatisations of the mid-1990s. His car narrowly escaped a bomb that was allegedly placed along a stretch of wintry Moscow road he uses daily. Fortunately, it went off late, leaving a crater five metres wide. Gunfire from assailants in trees followed, but no one was hurt.

Analysts say the bombing may have been inspired by the proposed reorganisation of UES (as well as anger at the reforms of the 1990s). A politician as well as a businessman, Mr Chubais has alienated many vested interests with his frank style. He claims to know who the attackers are. A week after the attempt, Moscow prosecutors charged Colonel Vladimir Kvachkov, a retired army officer and explosives expert, with attempted murder and illegal possession of weapons. Police sources in the Russian media blame a minor personal dispute over land, as Mr Kvachkov owns a dacha near Mr Chubais. Few analysts believe this, though, and Mr Kvachkov maintains his innocence. Many worry that the botched attack presages the end of the relative political stability that has reigned under Vladimir Putin, Russia's president.

Maybe Moscow?

In March, members of the International Olympic Committee came to town to consider Moscow's bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. Highlights of their whistle-stop, four-day tour of the capital included a trip on the city's beautiful Metro, where the head of the network gave them free transport until 2015 (“with the hope that [they] will use them in 2012”); a journey between the proposed venues along Moscow's notoriously choked roads (under a rapid police escort, of course); and a meeting with President Putin.

The inspectors praised elements of the bid, including a proposal to transport competitors and spectators along the Moscow River. They also said they were impressed by the bid's popular support in Russia. But they were understandably troubled by the dearth of hotel accommodation in the city, and about security (and this was before the attempt on Mr Chubais's life). Members had previously visited Moscow's four competitors—Paris, London, Madrid and New York. Rumours put Paris on top; the decision will be announced on July 6th.

Bolshoi babble

Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, a top venue for opera and ballet, has been in the news a lot lately. The big rumpus has been over the world premiere in March of “Rosenthal's Children”, an opera that critics complain is pornographic. Vladimir Sorokin's work concerns a doctor named Rosenthal, who clones famous composers; it ends with a young Mozart falling for a prostitute and Mussgorsky, Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Verdi busking outside a bus station. “The Bolshoi Theatre is a symbol of Russia—these symbols of Russia should not be defiled by such productions,” said Sergei Neverov, a Russian MP, to Reuters. On March 23rd, a pro-Kremlin youth group called Marching Together gathered outside the theatre to protest against the opera. But the show went on. One MP who had denounced the opera without reading the libretto was forced to back down after a parliamentary culture committee said it couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Mr Sorokin claims his critics are simply still angry over his controversial 1999 novel “Blue Lard”, which included a steamy sex scene between clones of Nikita Khrushchev and Josef Stalin.

Also, Mr Putin recently announced that the Bolshoi's long-awaited renovation project will go ahead. Described by Anatoly Iksanov, the theatre's general director, as “life-threatening”, the theatre is certainly in need of modernising. The Bolshoi was built in 1825 and last renovated in 1856. Much of the electrical wiring dates from the 1940s. The plan now is for the main building to close on July 1st, reopening sometime in 2008. The wrangles over when and how to restore it date back to the 1980s, and disagreements the project's scope and financing had stalled the plan until now.

Paper trail

The Moscow Times (MT), Moscow's favourite English-language daily newspaper, has entered into a clever publishing agreement with the International Herald Tribune (IHT), the global Anglophone affiliate of the New York Times. The IHT will become the first international newspaper to be published in Moscow (five days a week), and will use the MT's network to gain prominence in its new market. The IHT will have the logo of the MT on the front, and a free copy slipped inside. It makes sense for both papers: thin resources limit the MT's international coverage, but the paper's ubiquity in Moscow—among both expats and the Russian business elite—will raise the new arrival's profile. The combined package will initially go to about 2,000 readers: MT subscribers, newsstand purchasers and guests at plush Moscow hotels.

A hard cell

Clinics in Moscow are advertising a new, controversial and illegal treatment for everything from chronic, debilitating illnesses to excess cellulite. While the rest of the world confines work with stem cells to research labs, Moscow's beauty salons offer injections of such cells, which come from human embryos, to make the thighs and buttocks of women “look younger”. Other doctors claim, also improbably, to have used similar injections from adult stem cells to treat diabetes and vision disorders.

The treatments come at a price—anything from $2,850 to $20,000—and, unsurprisingly, not all patients have noticed changes in their conditions. Many doctors are concerned about potentially serious and unknown risks to the patients, and worry too that some clinics lack the proper equipment for this type of work. What's more, even in post-Soviet Russia's young legal system, the injections are technically illegal; they exploit a regulatory loophole. As one doctor explained, “What is not forbidden is allowed”.

Catch if you can

April 2005

“Hello, My Native Land!”

Until May 20th 2005

This exhibition of the work of Marc Chagall, one of Russia's most famous cultural exiles, opened to great acclaim at the Tretyakov Gallery in March. It brings together over 180 paintings, sketches and drawings from a career that spanned eight decades. Born in 1887 in what is now Belarus, Chagall was ostracised by the Soviet regime as a dangerous advocate of non-realist art, up until his death in 1985; he spent most of his life in Paris and southern France.

Russian interest in Chagall grew in the 1990s, and his evocative modernist renderings of Jewish rural life in the Pale of Settlement, the region where Jews in the Russian Empire were confined, became increasingly popular. This show gives the excellent Tretyakov a chance to show off one of its gems: the designs for the Jewish Theatre that Chagall created in a series of murals in situ. Expect plenty of fiddlers (often, of course, on the roof), inverted faces, levitating figures and goats. To avoid the crowds, go on a weekday or early on a weekend morning.

Tretyakov Gallery, 10/12 Lavrushinsky Pereulok. Tel: +7 (095) 931-1362. Metro: Park Kultury, Oktyabrskaya. Open: Tues-Sun, 10am-7.30pm. For more information, visit the museum's website.

More from the Moscow cultural calendar