IZO

Yandex (acronym apparently of Yet ANother inDEXer), which is way ahead of Google in Russian search, is opening an office in Silicon Valley (CNN) (thanks, MK). If you use Yandex.Money and Alfa-Bank you can now link your accounts (hit search). Russian Firefox has made Yandex its default search engine (search engine land). Yandex profits last year were up 80% (arctic startup).

Killer sought out victims on social sites such as odnoklassniki and vkontakte; she chose women who looked as much as possible like her; then she murdered them, borrowed money using their passports, and sold their flats (Life, in Russian).

Hey, papasha! Russian top-blogger papasha_mueller takes me to task for a post last week (IZO) dealing with the Western powers' attempts to influence the russian-language blogosphere (papasha_mueller). 

He thinks that my last sentence, which states that the Russians are pursuing a similar strategy, transforms the whole post into anti-Russian propaganda. Well, I don't think that a reasonable person would agree: plainly, Western activities are the main focus of the post.  

papasha further asks for evidence to support my statement that "There is plenty of evidence that Russia has been waging this kind of propaganda war for some time." Well, for example, here's an article which discusses the creation by Russia of "a network of friendly bloggers ready to disseminate propaganda on demand" (WP).

In fact, it's not clear to me why my assertion that Russia is using the same propaganda tactics as Western powers should be viewed as anti-Russian. If I were Russian, wouldn't I want my government to be doing this sort of thing?

Raunchy online novel lawyer sacked (Daily Mail). Sacked for writing badly, I hope (IZO, earlier).

On 16 December, Pop-Off Art gallery put online a photo of the person they claim stole a computer belonging to their director, Sergei Popov (pop-off-art, in Russian). On 19 January the same person visited the Zverev Centre claiming to be a journalist; the Centre's director called the police and the man was arrested (art4ru, in Russian).

Promotional movie for the popular social site odnoklassniki.ru; seems to be all about seks. 

The importance of the Russian LiveJournal blogosphere is leading the Western Powers to suck up to the leading bloggers and infiltrate the discussion sites. In 2007 I reported on how the British ambassador invited the top bloggers to lunch (IZO). For the Obama inauguration leading bloggers were invited to the US Embassy. LiveJournal user south-fragrance is claimed to be in charge of contacts with bloggers at the US Embassy; apparently his department is a month-and-a-half old (papasha-mueller). Israel is recruiting citizens with Russian and other non-Hebrew first languages to fight ideological battles on the internet (life.ru, in Russian). And a School of Bloggers has been created by the Russian Glasnost Defence Foundation and the USA Centre of Journalist Education (latter name translated from Russian, may not corrrespond to original English nomenclature), at which students will be taught how to blog effectively (idiot.ru, in Russian); teachers include investigative journalist Grigori Pasko (Wikipedia). There is plenty of evidence that Russia has been waging this kind of propaganda war for some time.

Dasha Zhukova and Polina Deripaska (wife of Oleg) will invest up to $8 million in the film, showbiz and advertising social site krolik.ru via their Creative Media firm (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

Allen & Overy lawyer Deirdre Dare has been writing about sexual goings-on in Moscow in her serialised online novel Expat; now her employer has told her to stop (Daily Mail). Is the novel any good? Well, here's the first sentence:

There is something thrilling about being in bed with a Frenchman, even if he does have a small **** which he can't get up.

Doesn't sound too thrilling to me, I'm afraid.

Candidates for Miss ZhZh (i.e. Miss LiveJournal) 2008 (МИСС ЖЖ 2008). For some reason the total of the proportions of the vote seems to add up to more than 100%.

Rumour that Kremlin ideologist Vladislav Surkov is planning a meeting with Russia's leading political bloggers (kosmokoshka, in Russian).

A blog in support of the current Israeli military action in Gaza on the super-popular social site odnoklassniki.ru (27 million members) was hacked and destroyed after it entered into polemics with an anti-Israel site on Facebook (Nashe Kafe, in Russian).

Nikolai Voronov performs White Dragonfly of Love at the Solyanka club late last year. Voronov is an internet phenomenon: a spontaneous concert he gave last year at some provincial college somewhere (IZO, earlier) was videoed and put on Youtube, and a cult formed.

WordPress trying to lure away LiveJournal users as the latter contracts (WordPress) (via larussophobe)? LiveJournal is Russia's most important blogging service and a vital aspect of Russian intellectual life.

Apparently the publisher of Open Space, Valeri Nosov, is pleased with the independent editorial line taken by the art section editor Ekaterina Degot in connection with the Kandinsky Prize controversy (which allays fears expressed on IZO earlier).

Media magnate Anton Nossik caused quite a stir (449 comments at time of writing, plus multiple responsive posts elsewhere) when he published a gruesome photo of a dead Palestinian fighter on his blog under the caption "Well done" (dolboeb, not safe for the squeamish). You may or may not share Nossik's point of view, but what is remarkable, from a Western perspective, is that such a well-known figure should express himself so uninhibitedly in a public forum. Русские штучки indeed.

Saving a post on LiveJournal nowadays you are offered the below option; according to Alexei Plutser-Sarno, accepting such an option would mean you were 'disseminating information' and mass-media laws would thus apply to the post (plucer, in Russian):

I hereby give third parties the right to reproduce or disseminate all of my materials as a whole or in part... (Настоящим предоставляю право третьим лицам воспроизводить и/или распространять все мои материалы целиком или любую из частей...)

Users of the social site odnoklassniki.ru are planning a boycott because of the introduction of paid services (Open Space, in Russian)

Spider has some comments and questions about what he calls "Nosov's pseudo-arrest" (spdr, in Russian):

1. This subject came up for the first time last Friday in exactly the same form. The next day our hero [Nosov] alive and well calmly accepted congratulations at the launch of Art+Auction.

2. [Nikolai] Molok [editor of ArtKhronika] knew about this matter, and being a cautious, professional person he said he was waiting for further confirmation. For what reason did he publish it today without double-checking?

3. In M. A. Guelman's LiveJournal, Mr Kashin suggests (fuck knows if it's true or a lie) that our hero is in London. This is also strange if true, given the undertaking not to travel (which is probably the case, because it's a common measure).

Spider adds that as things stand ArtKhronika has made a sizeable faux pas and is looking bad.

According to Open Space, ArtKhronika has apologised for the erroneous information posted on its website (see previous post). Well, that's all very well, but it's all over the Russian internet (Open Space, in Russian).

Extraordinary news: I can't vouch for any of it: I'm translating it exactly as it is, with the links, and appending the Russian below (kotomish):

According to information in ArtKhronika, Valeri Nosov, the former deputy Finance  Minister of the Moscow Region and the owner of Artmedia Group, which publishes the Open Space web-portal, the magazine Blacksquare and the Russian Art+Auction, the first number of which has just been published, has been arrested. Nosov is accused of financial and property crimes. According to information received by Artkhronika, at the end of the autumn Valeri Nosov was let go from his post in the Moscow Region government, his passport was confiscated and he gave an undertaking not to travel. Nosov is involved in the same case as ex-Finance Minister of the Moscow Region government Mr Kuznetsov and his spouse Zhanna [Janna] Bullock, who in the summer managed to leave Russia.

http://artchronika.ru/item.asp?id=116

That's all.....

UPDATE: Dear readers! The information about Valeri Nosov, owner of the company Artmedia Group, has not been confirmed. Please accept our apologies.

http://artchronika.ru/item.asp?id=118

http://www.openspace.ru/news/details/6563/- Open Space has discovered that the news has been removed, but really it had to be removed, it exposed Artkhronika to criticism.

But а little worry remains... And rumours have been flying for four days.... And talk of problems for the last six months... What's going on?

Back to my commentary now: According to Kommersant, Mr Nosov at some point took over Mr Kuznetsov's job as Finance Minister but resigned in late October.  (PRagent, in Russian). That of course could be the source of the "rumours" mentioned by kotomish and seems to confirm one part of ArtKhronika's original claim, that Mr Nosov was let go from his post. Apparently the budgetary situation in the Moscow Region is complicated:

An anonymous source of Kommersant in the banking sphere explained that the region's current problems are connected to the destruction of the method of atttracting investment that was created by the former Minister of Finances of the region Alexander Kuznetsov and his deputy Valeri Nosov.

More info: Marat Guelman carries the same ArtKhronika report but then adds that Nosov is, according to [Open Space writer Oleg] Kashin, in London. A comment to Guelman's post by Kashin also states that Nosov is in London and that he has not run away (galerist, in Russian).

On another LiveJournal site there is speculation that this affair might be part of a "corporate war" between Open Space and ArtKhronika (art_links, in Russian).

.I can only add that if anything does interfere with Mr Nosov's publishing activities, it will be a significant loss to the Russian art world. Open Space has very quickly established itself as a major forum and the first edition of Art+Auction looked very good.

Marat Guelman says that the new snob.ru portal is getting its content by means of nice girls who phone you up and ask for commentary or permission to copy-paste from your LiveJournal. He also suggests that the popularity of Eurasian nationalism is down to boredom (скука) (galerist, in Russian):

I think that Kurekhin, Timur Novikov, Limonov and Dugin represent the consciousness of this boredom. I used to know Dugin well. ... He is a talented fringe figure who writes speculative texts, the main point of which is to be original. ... He's not a fascist. He's certainly not a nationalist. In this country there are more followers of Tolkien than nationalists.

Favourite Russian social-site passwords (exler).

It looks like DataArt, which has just finished an online auction system for artnet (Market Watch), is a Russian-emigre software firm (DataArt):

Headquartered in New York City, DataArt runs state-of-the-art R&D centers in St. Petersburg and Voronezh, Russia, Kherson and Kharkov, Ukraine, and maintains offices throughout the U.S. and in London, UK.

In the London High Court, the company i-CD and others are trying to wrest ownership of Russia's most popular networking site, Odnoklassniki.ru, from Albert Popkov (Komsomolskaya Pravda, in Russian).

Auditioning for Carnegie Hall on Youtube (NY Times) (thanks, MK). We'll see more of this kind of thing, I bet.

There are more than 6,000,000 Russian blogs, it seems (Yandex).

Oh boy, everybody is finding their content on IZO. For example, here's Natalia Radulova, one of Russia's toppest bloggers (compare IZO and radulova).

Viketz is blogging again (viketz) (IZO, earlier).

Mr Parker (Maxim Kononenko) has begun video-blogging (Youtube).

Whenever Google hears the world "culture" it reaches for its gun ;) "Culture" is only a category option on Google News in Francophone countries (France, Switzerland, French Canada, Belgium, Switzerland), a couple of Scandinavian states (Sweden, Norway), and in Czech Republic and Russia. Everywhere else gets "entertainment" or synonym.

Petr Nalich in concert, with video (NTV, in Russian). Nalich made his name on the internet; the queue for his concert at B1 Maximum was a good hundred metres long.

Cool Russian Actor (IZO, earlier), is back.

At the BOB awards in Berlin, photographer Denis Klyuev's LiveJournal site has been chosen as the best Russian-language blog (above-usual, in Russian).

Maxim Maslakov, General Director of Art Media Group, publishers of the Open Space web resource, the forthcoming Russian edition of Art + Auction and the contemporary art journal Blacksquare, is taking readers' questions on Culture and Crisis (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

From today you can download Peter Nalich's new album free; it's 52 megabytes (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

English Humour (thanks, RA).

The first governor-blogger? Oleg Chirkunov, governor of Perm (chirkunovoleg, in Russian) (via galerist). Apparently another LiveJournal blog, chirkunov, belongs to asper, who for a while produced a parody-site based on the governor's imagined thoughts; now the real Oleg Chirkunov wants it made over to him.

Russians see a possible "ideological operation" in Google Earth (ru_politics, in Russian):

All the cities of the world are clean, shot in summer, in sunny weather, there are no rubbish dumps or building sites - beautiful! But Russia is shot in winter or autumn, there's scarcely any retouching, which a specialist wouldn't notice. Basically, it comes across as uncomfortable, unenlightened, dreary. A real Empire of Evil where only frightful people live.

The number of readers of the first chapters of Dmitry Glukhovsky’s internet-published novel Metro 2034 has reached 100,000 in a month (Russia-IC):

According to the author’s concept, the content is updated every two weeks. The number of readers interested to know the continuation is growing thanks to the music accompaniment: the popular musician Delfin composes soundtracks for each chapter