By John Helmer in Moscow

For a brief moment, the death of Boris Yeltsin in April allowed his supporters and critics to reappear in full cry; particularly his supporters, whose attacks on the Putin administration have failed to attract an audience outside Embassy Row, and who are naturally nostalgic for the days when their bons mots drew better remuneration.

Since almost no Russian or western correspondent remains in Moscow today, who reported on the Gorbachev, the Yeltsin, and the Putin administrations, the Yeltsin obituary columns were largely an exercise in wishful retro-thinking -- and exhibitionism.

By John Helmer in Moscow
It’s a pity Vladimir Lenin was tone deaf, and dismissed music (along with chess) as an entertainment for the ruling class. Had he an ear and taste for classical music (like Karl Marx, who was keen on Beethoven, and Leon Trotsky, who loved Verdi), he might have devised a revolutionary doctrine for the performing arts. This could have protected Russia from the likes of Mstislav Rostropovich the cellist, Nikita Mikhalkov the filmmaker, Valery Gergiev the conductor, and X the theatre director.
I regret I am obliged to avoid using X’s, or his Moscow theatre’s real name, because he and his colleagues are so thin-skinned, so despotic, and so vengeful, they brook no criticism, and would react by attacking the livelihood of a member of my family.

By John Helmer in Moscow

There have been two deconstructionists and reconstructivists of the music of J.S. Bach in our time. Both are dead now -- Glenn Gould, aged 50, died in 1982; and Mstislav Rostropovich, aged 80, died this week. The music of one of them will live forever.

It was forty-four years ago, I remember, on a dry, wintry Saturday afternoon in January of 1963, when Rostropovich played Bach’s six unaccompanied cello suites in Tokyo. The concert was in the then brand-new, ultra-modern concert hall in Ueno Park, which was sold out for the solo recital. To get in for a back seat, I spent all of my scarce student’s money, and had to do without dinner that evening to hear the music. After watching the ungainly bulk of the man, alone on the vast stage, wrestle his instrument into life, and release the music like a slow detonation from one end of the music-hall to the other, I felt a charge; as you can see, I remember it to this day. For years afterwards, there was no other performer for me of the Bach cello suites – not Casals, nor Fournier, nor Piatigorsky, nor Rose, nor the next generation of Du Pre and Ma. To a young man’s ear, Rostropovich’s interpretation replaced the romantic, rhapsodic lilt, exposing the revolutionary structures of sound that had been missed in Bach’s own time. For all I knew then, Rostropovich’s performance was the first not to miss it.

By Ajay Goyal
Russians know how to throw a party – and how to ruin one.

The tenth year anniversary of the Russian Economic Forum of London might also be its last. There won’t be many Russians worth exchanging cards with this year.

I am surprised it lasted this long. For five years running, I asked my managers at The Russia Journal not to have anything to do with this forum. Here’s why.

The forum itself is a modest business success story for a Russian businessman from Siberia who came to England a decade ago. He partnered with some former employees of Russo-British Chamber of Commerce, and together they launched Eventica – the company that organizes this convention. Over the years the event drew thousands of Russians, their wives and mistresses to London. Russians mostly came to party, meet each other and shop. European and British companies, mostly to sell.

By John Helmer in Moscow

If life were a circus, then the only reason a contemplative man would walk behind an elephant in a ring, wielding bucket and shovel, would be for the money, not for the laughs.

John Lloyd, a onetime Moscow correspondent of the Financial Times, has made many of his colleagues and readers laugh at him. But it was his eulogy upon the death of ex-President Boris Yeltsin, just published by the Financial Times, that has been convincing. Lloyd hasn’t been clowning all this time for laughs. He’s been putting shit in a bucket for the money.

And good money it was, certainly when his then wife headed the Moscow office of a well-known English law firm, and Lloyd filled his Moscow despatches with tales of the good fortune falling from the parapets of the Kremlin for her clientele. There was the odd and embarrassing pratfall; the time, for example, when Lloyd reported, and the FT printed, that Yegor Gaidar had been voted in as prime minister, when that favourite of Lloyd, his wife’s law firm, and the FT had in fact been trounced by Victor Chernomyrdin. Thus did Gaidar’s high political career end – in retrospect, we can now say, for good – while Lloyd was telling the FT audience the reverse.

By John Helmer in Moscow

To understand how and what to buy in a Russian metals company, you need to understand a Soviet joke.

On a visit to Paris, the then Soviet ruler Nikita Khrushchev arranged to visit a brothel. On arriving, he asked the madam, “How much for a room?” “Depends on the room,” she replied. “There are 500-franc rooms, 100-franc rooms, 50-france room, and 1-franc rooms.” “Give me a 1-franc room,” Khrushchev said.

He was then shown to a room, where he sat for ten minutes. Noone came. For twenty minutes, still noone. At the half-hour mark, nothing had happened, and Khrushchev was furious. He picked up the telephone, and roared. The madam appeared swiftly. “This is an outrage,” shouted the First Secretary of the Communist Party. “I’ve been waiting here for half an hour, and noone has shown up!”

Dances with Bears

By John Helmer in Moscow

With a little more bulge at the waistline, and a little more bush in his beard, Victor Vekselberg would be a dead ringer for Tevye the Milkman, hero of Fiddler on the Roof, Broadway’s most famous musical about Russia. The fiddler of that tale was a symbol of survival in the rough days in Russia, before the Communist Revolution.

In the fifteen years since that revolution was reversed, starting in 1992, Vekselberg has survived especially well. You might say that Victor’s theme song has taken all the conditional out of Tevye’s famous song, If I were a Rich Man:

By John Helmer in Moscow

The ancient Greeks had unusual trouble understanding the weather and their bowels; the problem they had with Aeolus, god of winds, reflected this confusion.

Among the myth writers, Aeolus was at least three different characters, with more than three different fates. To some he was born a man of man and a nymph, ruler of Aeolia (central Greece, now Thessaly), and progenitor of at least 14 undistinguished children. To others he was born of a god; ruled an island north of Crete; and lived happily with 12 children -- until two of them committed incest. In a third version, he was a minor god, living on a floating island where he was visited by Odysseus and his crew in the tale of the Odyssey. To them he gave a west wind to help them sail home; but also a bag with each of the four winds, which they unwisely opened, just before reaching home, only to be blown back to Aeolia.

By John Helmer in Moscow

Russia's worst-ever coalmine disaster this week, in which at least 106 have been killed, casts doubt on claims by Evraz, the Russian steelmaker seeking to acquire Highveld Steel & Vanadium in South Africa, that its industrial practices, work safety record, and environmental compliance meet the required standards.

South African government regulators are currently reviewing Evraz's bid to buy control of Highveld for a total of $678 million.

US regulators have already cleared Evraz to take over Oregon Steel Mills, which operates plants in Oregon and Colorado. During that review, which followed Evraz's $2.3 billion acquisition offer last November, Evraz told the Oregon media: "We would like to be environmentally friendly wherever we operate."

By John Helmer in Moscow

The visit to Athens this week by President Vladimir Putin -- his second in six months, a Russian presidential record -- is so unusual, its meaning may not be fully understood by Greeks. Moreover, few Russians accompanying Putin are able to put into clear perspective the relationship which the President himself is trying to create.

For one thing, by choosing to meet his Greek and Bulgarian counterparts for a second signing ceremony that he could have delegated to a lower level, Putin is putting an end to false hopes that have bedeviled the Burgas-Alexandropoulos pipeline project for the decade that preceded Putin's direct intervention last year.

By John Helmer in Moscow

Oleg Deripaska is under unexpected personal pressure, at home and abroad, just when his plan to take control of one of the largest bauxite and aluminium producers in the world is close to final government approval. And that is exactly why the trouble for Deripaska is growing now.

Russian government authorization this month of the creation of a monopoly aluminium concern, integrating domestic and foreign bauxite, alumina, and aluminium production assets, has followed a no-objection ruling from the European Commission (EC) in Brussels. The unconditional ruling was issued by the EC on February 1.

By John Helmer in Moscow

Limits on the transfer of shares between Russia's state-controlled tanker companies, Novorossiysk Shipping Company (Novoship) and Sovcomflot, will fall short of the ambition of Sergei Frank, former Transport Minister and chief executive of Sovcomflot for two years. An international IPO of what may be, potentially, the third largest oil tanker fleet in the world, has also been vetoed for the duration of the Russian election campaign period, and the distribution of the IPO value premium put off.

A paper swap without merger will be acceptable to Novoship's chief executive, Sergei Terekhin. "Whatever the state will decide to do, we will do it, ” he told The Russia Journal through spokesman, Tatiana Prokopenko.

By John Helmer in Moscow

Did Nicolas Sarkozy, the small rightwing candidate for President of France, benefit from the brief imprisonment in Lyon of one Russian billionaire, and from the award of a medal, days later in Paris, to another Russian billionaire, who happened to be the business partner of the first?

And was Sarkozy helped by Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, ministre blanchisseur, official custodian of French culture, receiver of kickbacks, and arranger of unorthodox donations to presidential campaign chests?

In short, on January 30, when Donnedieu de Vabres awarded the medal of Officer of the Legion of Arts and Letters to Vladimir Potanin, was this the end to an ingenious quartet of hostage-taking and ransom on the French side, procuring and precious metals on the Russian?

By John Helmer

Last week, the Estonian Parliament in Tallinn pulled back from a threat to remove the city's Soviet war memorial and the graves of Soviet Army soldiers who fell in the last war against Germany. As is traditional in the affairs of the Baltic states, nostalgia for Adolph Hitler is a cash register that promises to spit out money for all types of interests. But the local Tallinn land developers, who stand to make the most out of the proposed relocation, appear to have lacked the clout of the Estonian shipping lobby.

The confrontation has triggered bitter reaction from the Russian parliament, and from President Vladimir Putin, who told Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, at their summit meeting in Sochi, that the relocation was grandstanding on Estonia's part, with the aim "to gain some kind of advantage."

By John Helmer in Moscow

Mikhail Prokhorov -- until now the world's richest miner -- ought to have enjoyed the lentils, which are one of the staples on the menu at the Hotel de Police de Lyon. There, for four days in January, Prokhorov was jailed on suspicion of trafficking in women, pimping, and related sex commerce. He was released without indictment. It was the worst scandal to strike the two internationally listed mining companies, Norilsk Nickel and Polyus Gold, since Prokhorov and his partner, Vladimir Potanin, first took Russia's largest mining assets in a rigged privatization scheme a decade ago.

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Ukraine’s ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko said she was ready to head the country’s new government, she told reporters today. Tymoshenko was sacked by President Viktor Yushchenko earlier this month. “I can see that our relations are returning to status quo,” she said.

Rumors are circulating in Moscow about a looming financial default, Novye Izvestia newspaper reports. The default is expected September 21-25 or October 1 at the latest. Some banks and exchange offices are advising clients to keep their dollars and “dump” rubles as long as the exchange rate is appropriate.

Supplies of light-water nuclear reactors to North Korea can only be considered after it dismantles its nuclear program, the Russian foreign minister said Wednesday. Sergei Lavrov said he discussed the issue with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Ukraine’s parliament has rejected the candidacy of Yuri Yekhanurov for prime minister. Yekhanurov won 223 votes, against 226 needed for approval. He was not supported by Communists, the Social and Democratic Party and some other parties.

Deputy head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service Anatoly Golomolzin said the agency might impose sanctions against oil companies that intended to freeze only the retail gasoline price on the domestic market, leaving the wholesale price to further grow.

Russia’s government has raised the export duty on crude oil to $179.9 per ton. The decree, signed by prime minister Mikhail Fradkov, comes into effect on October 1, the government's press service reported.

Today, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov will pay a one-day working visit to Hungary to meet with his Hungarian counterpart Ferenc Gyurcsany and President Laszlo Solyom, RBC has been told by the government's press service.

The Moscow City Court has started hearings of the appeals earlier submitted by the former chief executive of Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev Tuesday.

A move to take control of the world's largest manganese plant in the Ukraine by the Renova group was the trigger for this month's dismissal of the Ukrainian prime minister and her cabinet by President Victor Yushchenko, according to Yushchenko himself and industry sources.

Russia supports an early signing of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the United Nations Sunday. Addressing the 60th session of the UN General Assembly, Lavrov said: "We expect the UN General Assembly to contribute to the fight . . .