IZO

the arts desk is the best British culture zine; I believe that several of the journalists are partners in the venture (the arts desk).

 

Valeri Nosov, owner of ArtMedia Group, which publishes the top Russian culture zine Open Space and also Art+Auction Russia (for both of which I have written), has been questioned by the police in connection with a disputed 80 million rouble loan (Kommersant, in Russian). UPDATE: Nosov has subsequently been arrested over another matter, embezzling state property, and is being held without bail (Otkrytoe Informatsionnoe Agentstvo, in Russian).

Life-cycle of The Exile (Vanity Fair). I went on an excursion to Kirov with that Mark Ames once (he's now a columnist for Russian GQ (GQ)). I expected a hell-raiser, but he turned out to be a studious chap who ploughed through Solzhenitsyn in Russian at the breakfast table.

Russian free newspapers are now chock-full of ads for prostitutes (stillavinsergei, in Russian).

Latest copy of Moscow Art Guide; click to go full-screen.

Media control

Case against blogger Dmitri Solovev dropped after two years (Global Voices).

More on the Umida Akhmedova case in Uzbekistan (NYT) (thanks, MK).

Flagship publication of the liberal intelligentsia Grani.ru being investigated for extremism (Grani.ru, in Russian).

Girl accused of distributing pornography via vkontakte.ru social site (Krasnoe Znamya, in Russian).

Igor Desyatnikov sues over claim Brittany Murphy was at his party shortly before she died (Open Space, in Russian); (IZO, earlier).

Below: anti-Japan Greenpeace demo 12 February.

The new Kultivator magazine; click for full screen.

About Black Square magazine, a trend-oriented publication from the Art Media Group stable (Fashion Communication).

 

The "new samizdat" in Kazakhstan (Guardian).

One of the UK's main quality newspapers confirms it is discussing a sale with tycoon Alexander Lebedev (Independent).

Long-time Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Peter Vail has died (RFE/RL) (thanks, VK).

Dasha Zhukov's magazine, Pop (thepop.com). Seems quite good, at first browse.

Hacker news:

Climategate emails hacked from Tomsk (Daily Mail)? Coincidentally, top St Petersburg hacker Viktor Pleshchuk is a graduate of Tomsk university (Fontanka, in Russian).

The website of Moskovski Komsomolets newspaper has been attacked by South Korean hackers and some of the content - video and photo files - irrevocably destroyed (GZT.RU, in Russian).

NATO names Russian Business Network (RBN) as the major cyberspace threat (Newsweek, in Russian).

Sources in the hacker world say that the creator of RBN was Belorussian Alexander Rubatsky. He was born into the family of a policeman in Minsk but did not follow in his father's footsteps. First he worked for a local child-pornography dealer, then he struck out on his own. Rumour has it he also began by distributing pornography. The company he founded received payments through the Kiberplat system. In 2002 Kiberplat was involved in scandal. Six of its top managers were sacked for servicing sites involved in child pornography. After this Rubatsky is supposed to have started a new business - he created RBN on the foundation of the St Petersburg [telecoms] operator Eltel. In 2007 RBN transformed itself into a Criminal Internationale...

Finally: site offering to provide the correspondence of anyone on the Vkontakte social site (vkontaktereader). Scam?

Interview with Evgeni Lebedev, who with his father has repositioned London's venerable Evening Standard as a free paper (FT):

“The big problem with Russian culture is that it doesn’t move forward. Lots of institutions are run by dinosaurs, people who have been there 30 to 40 years. The director of the Pushkin Museum has been there since Stalin was alive. If you are the director of a museum, you only leave in a body bag. I don’t blame them for not wanting to leave but the young generation suffers.”

...

[he] tells me that he has plans to bring a couple of young Russian artists whom he admires to stay at Palazzo Terranova, his luxury hotel in Umbria, so that they can develop their art without interference from commercial pressures.

...

But Russia is surely beginning to make cultural links with western Europe – what about The Garage, the contemporary art space in Moscow created by Dasha Zhukova, Roman Abramovich’s glamorous girlfriend? “I call them the wives and girlfriends,” he says, not a little dismissively, of Zhukova and her art-loving cohorts, before hastily adding: “They are fulfilling a great service. Before them, there was nothing.

...

I ask if he collects major art works, and he is once more down on his compatriots. “No, I collect a little bit, but it has become a status thing. A lot of Russians, they buy boats and aeroplanes to prove their status, and then they realise they can be a tiny bit more sophisticated by buying expensive art: you can buy a Freud, or a Bacon. But most people see through that.”  

Some people might see this as a thinly veiled reference to the other Russian: Abramovich reportedly bought a very expensive Freud and a very expensive Bacon for Zhukova last May. I ask Lebedev if he had been quoted correctly when criticising Abramovich for his lack of openness.  

“It’s what I said at the beginning of our conversation – what we tend to import are these murky, shady individuals that no one knows anything about because they keep themselves to themselves, for whatever reason: insecurities, or they have something to hide. It creates an image of us as a closed, impenetrable society – God knows, we had that in the Soviet Union days, everyone thought there were bears in the street, and it’s still that way.”

Censorship-related events.

List of changes demanded to documentary film on RTR channel; includes the immortal request "Remove the theme of Yeltsin's drunkenness" (starshinazapasa, in Russian).

TVTs bans broadcast of programme about the scandalous Slutsker divorce (IZO, earlier) focusing on Olga Slutsker's failings; watch it here (Kompromat).

Debate between celebrated journalist Yuliya Latynina and writer Yuri Felshtinsky about the apartment bombings of ten years ago. Latynina says the FSB were not responsible, Felshtinsky says they were (EJ, in Russian; Radio Svoboda, in Russian).

New freebie in Moscow's posh cafes: the Winzavod Art Review. Best in issue 00: classic contrarian intellectual's interview with Pavel Pepperstein in which he says his main career interest is earning money and the essence of Russia is its abandonedness.

The St Petersburg magazine New World of Art has ceased publication due to lack of funds (thanks, NI).

Who's afraid of the Big Bad Bear: everyone!? GQ magazine running scared (npr). Plus: journalist Grigori Nekhoroshev admits he was thrice afraid: when reporting the Kursk submarine tragedy; when reporting on a business associate of Ludmilla Putin; and when reporting prez Putin's purported connection with the gymnast Kabaeva (Ezhednevny Zhurnal, in Russian).

Blogger David slays press-agency Goliath? Blogger and roving photographer drugoi (Rustem Adagamov) was invited to the Sayan-Shushen Hydro Electric Power-Station after the explosion last month of a transformer which killed several workers; but the correspondent from the old-established news agency Interfax was sent packing (Interfax). However,drugoi is not some two-bit part-timer blogger, he has 40,000 'friends' and is the head of multi-media blogs at SUP, the big media-holding company; and the Interfax man was asking awkward questions. One of drugoi's several picture reports (drugoi, in Russian) A look at the consequences of the catastrophe for Siberia, comparing it to Chernobyl (Georgian Daily).

On the Komsomolskaya Pravda website there's an explicit video of Russian skinheads chopping someone up. I'm not going to link to it. I got there via stanis-sadal on LiveJournal. But that's the kind of stuff that the Russian press is prepared to publish. Is that good or bad? I don't know.

Russian rapper Timati plans to open a bank of his own sperm from which any woman will be allowed to make herself pregnant for $100,000 (MIGnews, in Russian). But the story's from Life.ru, so I don't trust it.

Berlin has at least three fairly substantial Russian-language papers, which I think may be more than London has. At Schoenefeld airport I got my hands on Evropa-Ekspress, Russkii Berlin and the bi-lingual Deutsch-Russische Zeitung (DRZ). An article by Nadjeschda Schmidt in the DRZ told me that the Berlin suburb of Marzahn is home to many of the Russlanddeutsche who have come to Germany in last 10-15 years: it has become a kind of Russian ghetto, where the Russian youth is poorly-educated and disaffected.

Snob, the culture magazine (IZO passim, e.g. IZO, IZO) accessible previously only to a chosen few, is now open to all (Snob). Its Venice Biennale report has some good party pictures and videos (Snob).

Yet another unverifiable and implausible Russian sex story involving a woman who uses drugs on men so as to have her way with them; predictably it emanates from Life.ru (Telegraph). For variations on this theme, see earlier (IZO).

Oligarch news. Len Blavatnik has offered to buy a controlling stake in the Setanta pay TV channel (Forbes). Alexander Lebedev says "no comment" to suggestions he may buy the Independent newspaper (Reuters).

Ukrainian oligarch art-collector Igor Kolomoisky is the richest Israeli citizen and second-richest man in Ukraine (Izrus, in Russian).

Abramovich launches world's biggest yacht, the Eclipse; his fleet has 50 million euros p.a. running costs (Sail World):

The Eclipse is also being equipped with armor plating surrounding the bridge and Abramovich's master suite, as well as bullet-proof windows. There's also a submarine that can be launched underwater and dive to a depth of 160 ft. that doubles as an escape pod, as well as two helicopter pads.  Civilian ships are not allowed to carry weapons and so have to limit themselves to defense systems, but Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz gets around this by having his 482-ft. yacht registered as a Royal Saudi Navy vessel, said to be equipped with French-made Exocet missiles.

How does he get away with it in Russia, PR-wise?

Finally, vice-chairman of the Eurasian Jewish Congres Telman Ismailov is under attack in the Russian media because of the claimed presence of $2 billion dollars-worth of contraband goods in Moscow warehouses controlled by him; Ismaillov is a business partner of Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov (Izrus, in Russian)

Bloomberg's and The Art Newspaper's specialist Russian art news reporter John Varoli has launched his own site (Varoli Art News). It's a little generic and unfinished at present but the aim is to include exclusive stories and third-party contributions.

The Slon.ru business portal under the direction of Leonid Bershidsky has been launched. It features a gas-barrel counter which indicates how much oil Russia has left and how long it will last. And the fascinating "Butyrka blog", written by a prison inmate (Slon, in Russian).

Kommersant art critic Milena Orlova has taken over from Nikolai Molok as editor of Artkhronika magazine (ArtKhronika, in Russian). Artkhronika's influence has been eclipsed in recent months by the art section of the Open Space website: articles on Open Space are more widely discussed by the art community. This is to an extent a reflection of Ekaterina Degot's editorial line, and to an extent of Open Space's capacity, as an online publication, to respond to events as they happen.

The London Evening Standard, now owned by Alexander Lebedev, has been re-designed (Press Gazette). To me, it definitely looks better and content-wise seems to be more substantial.

Really there needs to be an IZO tag for dubious stories about R. Abramovich, Esq. Some time ago he was rumoured to have bought a bit of the moon for Dasha Zhukova; now he's said to have lost a yacht at Poker (ABC News) (thanks, MK).

The Russian journal Smart Money is to cease publication (Lenta.ru).

Single-page website of Russian Art+Auction; it gives contents of the upcoming issue, but to read it you need to buy it (Artmedia Group, in Russian).

Another colourful story emanating from the lurid Life.ru publication and again involving a woman dosing a man with Viagra and using him for sex (Moscow Times). The earlier one here (IZO). Do you believe 'em? I think the similarities are too good to be true. I'll make an analogy between implausible newspaper stories and fake artworks. In the art world, you come to realise that the presence on a painting of the signature (say) "Malevich" is absolutely no reason to believe it might be by Malevich. In the media world, the fact that a lurid Russian sex tale appears in Life.ru is also zero reason to believe in it.

Vladimir Yakovlev is quitting as editor of the notorious Snob magazine, according to one report (Infox, in Russian).

The venerable illustrated magazine Ogonek will resume publication in May under the aegis of Kommersant newspaper; it ceased publication in January (Kursor, in Russian).

Last week Snob ex-editor Lena gave her version of life at the elite publication (IZO, earlier); Snob editor Boris Akimov has replied, insubstantially as it seems to me (Open Space, in Russian). And there's a long discussion on Snob's merits and demerits between a Snob rep and Leonid Bershidsky here (bearshitsky, in Russian).

It's reported that top newspaper Kommersant has prevented its journalists from accessing the social sites vkontakte.ru and odnoklassniki.ru at work (Vebplaneta, in Russian). Tangentially-related: according to this report, 60% of the original shares in vkontakte.ru were at one point owned by Vyacheslav Mirilashvili, son of a convicted criminal authority, Mikhail Mirilashvili, but control was recently transferred to Yuri Milner [MB: presumably, the husband of artist and model Julia Milner and sponsor of the Russian pavilion at the last Venice Biennale] and Grigori Finger of NCH Advisors (Kompromat.Ru, in Russian).

A big legal battle has been settled. The head of the Mirax construction group, Sergei Polonsky, was suing the Independent Newspaper for publishing negative commentary in exchange for payment; and the newspaper's editor, Konstantin Remchukov, was suing Polonsky back for libel. Now both sides have withdrawn their lawsuits (Kompromat.Ru, in Russian).

The recently-launched art journal Blacksquare, one of the publications in Valeri Nosov's stable, is to become a lifestyle magazine (kotomish, in Russian).

The elite journal/portal/club Snob was launched with big media buzz several months ago (IZO). Now ex-Snob editor Elena Kostyleva has given her impressions of an increasingly "Orwellian" atmosphere (Open Space, in Russian):

Four days later I receive directive No. 101/30: "A column should be about three or four events (under no circumstances two!). The work 'crisis' must not be used. Carry out."

Alexander Lebedev has abandoned plans to launch a Russian version of Dazed & Confused (Glossip, in Russian).

Last week I described media magnate Anton Nossik's attack on the Russian press: according to him, in exchange for cash, it is failing to publicise misdeeds by banker Sergei Pugachev (IZO). One publication named in Nossik's screed was Kommersant. It seems Kommersant editor Andrei Vasilev tackled Nossik on the accusation (Glossip, in Russian, quoting Snob):

I met him on Thursday night in Mayak and said to him, "Anton, why did you write that about Kommersant?" He answered, "I was drunk."

Breaking news: on or about 15th March in Kiev Anatoli Ulyanov, the founder of the well-known Ukrainian art magazine-website Proza (Proza), was beaten up by a man who first spat in his face and, when Ulyanov retaliated,  set about him with kicks and punches. Ulyanov attributes the attack to two factors: his public opposition to the Bratstvo (Brotherhood) movement, which has been described as an "extreme right-wing" political group; and his public opposition  to the Ukrainian governmental National Expert Committee for the Protection of Public Morals, which Ulyanov would like to see abolished (Izvestiya v Ukraine, in Russian). Ulyanov's own blogpost on the attack is here (dadakinder, in Russian) (thanks, NS). UPDATE: how does Ulyanov fight his moral guardians? Well, below is an entry from his blog lampooning a morality commission member, one Danilo Yanevski.

Media magnate Anton Nossik attacks "Putin's banker" Sergei Pugachev, whose son Alexander recently acquired the newspaper France Soir. According to Nossik, Pugachev, using the services of Leo Lyaiblikh of the "black PR" company Dark Adviser (Тёмный соратник), has organised a massive purge of compromising material in the media and, at a cost to Pugachev of a million dollars a month, media outlets are being paid not to publish critical material on Pugachev in future (dolboeb, in Russian). Some of the allegations against Pugachev - that he forged his educational diplomas - may be found here (Lentacom, in Russian).

Massive torrents of "Soviet futuristic magazine covers" (boingboing) and Lost Arcade Games of the Soviet Union (Wired) (thanks, MK). Below: a cover of The Technology of Youth from 1950.

On Alexey Brodovitch, the first art director of Harper's Bazaar (Chic Today) (thanks, MK).

Ksenia Sobchak is planning to sue Ekspress Gazeta for damage to her reputation (Kompromat, in Russian, with video, pictures).

On the Russian glamour magazine market (Russia Profile) (thanks, MK).

Alexander Lebedev plans to start an English-language radio station in Moscow (Guardian).

Several people have mentioned this to me. Muscovite Sergei Tuganov bet two women $4,300 that he could have sex with them for 12 hours without a break. To fortify himself lf he ingested a ton of Viagra. No sooner had he won the bet than he fell into a coma and died (Lenta.co.il, in Russian). On reflection, I don't believe it. Apart from anything else, the idea that two Russian girls would pay a bloke to have sex with them for 12 hours is more than a little back-to-front. And the only Russian-language result for "Sergei Tuganov" I get on Google news is the link above, to an Israeli paper dated 26 February, after the story appeared on Drudge Report. UPDATE: a reader writes to say that this story also appeared on Life.ru (thanks, AM); however, it doesn't come up when I search for "Viagra" or "Tuganov". UPDATE: but here's another one from Life.ru, more plausible I think (Life.ru, in Russian):

Orgy Ended On Life-Support (...) On 20 February, Stepan A. turned 30. According to tradition the young man began to celebrate from the break of the new day, together with Valentin A., with whom he had been friends since time immemorial. After an hour the lads were celebrating so successfully that they felt ready to make their wildest dreams a reality: they decided to order a girl to share between them. No sooner said than done. (...) Soon (...) into Stepan's flat came a stunning blonde unburdened by morality... So far neither of the friends is capable of saying what transpired between them in bed. After half an hour of amorous delights they were both taken by ambulance to the Naro-Fominsk hospital. The clinic told Life.ru that they were delivered to intensive care in a parlous condition. The lads were both completely naked and bleeding. On the way to the clinic the hero-lovers were able to tell the doctors only that they had fought over the girl.

UPDATE: here's the link to the original Viagra story on Life.ru, complete with fuzzy documents (Life.ru) (thanks, AM). With details: gangrene had set in in his penis, and he'd consumed sour cream and nuts with the Viagra. So, I'm believing it now, EXCEPT THAT on the fuzzed-out Russian-language dox the victim's surname clearly begins with the letter K and in reports he is Sergei Tuganov...