MOSCOW – The church is near but the road is all ice, Russian peasants used to say. The tavern is far, but I’ll walk very carefully. According to a story published recently in the Boston Globe, Andrew Okhotin is a well-meaning young American churchman with Russian origins, who was on his way to deliver donations […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, July 9th, 2003
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow When Russians gather to drink, they often offer each other a traditional rhyming toast that can be roughly translated as: “May we have more pies and doughnuts, fewer black eyes and bruises!” It’s a formula which Russia’s most powerful businessmen have been quietly offering the advertising-starved managements of some of […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, July 3rd, 2003
No Comments »

MOSCOW – England is far too sunless and wet to be able to grow olives. In Nyons, in Provence, where the best Mediterranean olives have been grown since Roman times, the peasants have two bits of advice for olive-growers. Roughly translated, the advice for proper pruning and cutting out of old wood is, “Undress me, […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 25th, 2003
No Comments »

MOSCOW – In 1927, as the benefits of Lenin’s market reforms were fast running out, and the Soviet Politburo debated whether to use markets or force to industrialize the economy, the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko told the tale of a man who bought a shirt to wear to a party. He managed to find one, he […]

by John Helmer - Friday, June 6th, 2003
No Comments »

MOSCOW – It is the 300th anniversary of the Grande Chaconne, the dance which Louis XIV, the sun king of France and creator of the splendor of Versailles, regarded as his favorite. Its composer was Marin Marais, the son of a shoemaker in a family of roofers. By the time Marais first came to Louis’s […]

by John Helmer - Friday, May 30th, 2003
No Comments »

Russia’s oil majors are going, going… but nowhere near gone. In February, there were six major companies. In terms of oil revenues, the largest was LUKoil, followed by Yukos, Surgutneftegas, Sibneft, Tyumen Oil Co. (TNK) and Tatneft. Measured according to market capitalization at the time, their order of precedence was a little different. Yukos came […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, May 15th, 2003
No Comments »

MOSCOW – When the announcement came last Friday that Roman Abramovich had decided to put a temporary stop, possibly a permanent one, to the merger between his Siberian Oil Company (Sibneft), and Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Yukos, Abramovich’s lawyer, Andrei De Cort, took ill, and stopped taking calls. He then left the country. Yukos board member and […]

by John Helmer - Monday, May 12th, 2003
No Comments »

One of the benefits the restoration of Christianity has brought Russia is that almost all Russian politicians can say that God is on their side, The Church hasn’t been especially helpful, however, in inculcating the lesson that, for more than a thousand years of European history, the real fight hasn’t been between God and the […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, May 6th, 2003
No Comments »

The oil industry in Russia has developed so quickly that current pipelines cannot handle the outflow. Now, it is up to the government and oil industry officials, both in-and outside of Russia, to decide the next step. A decision signaled by the Kremlin last month, to authorize the construction of a new oil pipeline to […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, April 9th, 2003
No Comments »

It’s stupid to shoot the messenger. That’s a message the billion-dollar Russian corporate public-relations industry fails to understand because it pays so often, and so lavishly, for distorting the truth, it can’t believe there isn’t a rival or a hostile commercial plot at work when the unvarnished truth slips out unexpectedly. Take, for example, Russia’s […]

by John Helmer - Saturday, March 22nd, 2003
No Comments »