By John Helmer, Moscow

After he left Soviet trade union and youth organization work behind, Igor Yurgens became an advocate of the commercial Russian insurance industry. So he knows how to calculate risk and how to write an insurance premium to cover it. The Centre for Contemporary Development (INSOR), which Yurgens directs, has been widely viewed as the brain’s trust for Dmitry Medvedev’s run at a second term. But when Yurgens suggests the names of others more likely to become prime minister, after Vladimir Putin wins the presidential election in March, his assessment warrants careful attention. Like all insurance policies, it’s a good idea to read the small print.
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by John Helmer - Sunday, February 5th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Oleg Deripaska appears to have lost a nine-year long battle to take control of Vanino, an eastern seabord port on which Deripaska depends for imports of alumina to feed his aluminium smelters in Siberia, and to load finished aluminium for export to buyers in the US and East Asia.

The man who appears to have bested him is Vladimir Lisin, the steelmaker. The tussle for the port, on the Tatar Strait and the Sea of Okhotsk, won’t be over until Lisin wins the bidding for the state control shareholding – if he wins. But the flags now flying from the Vanino flagpole signal that Lisin has once again won over Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, the key decision-maker in the government for both the resources sector and for the maritime sector.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Quadraturin was the stuff which, when squeezed out of a tube and painted on the walls of an 8 square-metre Moscow room, turned it into a much larger one. Biggerized it — is the translator’s term from the Russian.

Russian politicians have been using it for years, long before the arrival in Moscow of $1,000-per hour election technology consultants from the US National Endowment for Democracy.

The author, who is enjoying a boomlet of revival in the literary salons of London and New York at the moment, is considered to be an “experimental realist” (who isn’t?). To help his books sell, he’s also being called “one of the greatest Russian writers of the last century”.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In the final quarter of 2011, Severstal, owned by Alexei Mordashov, lost its footing from the previous quarter as Russia’s leading steelmaker, falling behind Evraz, owned by Roman Abramovich, and Novolipetsk Metallurgical Combine (Vladimir Lisin) in total production of crude steel.

The chart, issued this morning by Alfa Bank steel analyst Barry Ehrlich, reveals what Ehrlich calls “a major negative surprise”. The recent production cutback is bigger at Severstal than for any of the five Russian steel majors.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Ignore the plot entirely, but try this Stalin point from a novel called Archangel.

The story by Robert Harris, written in 1998, is about a semi-alcoholic professor of Russian history – Englishman, with a New York address — who is hot on the trail of Stalin’s personal notebooks, which he thinks were spirited out of the Kremlin by Lavrenty Beria, while Stalin was in his dacha dying. Buried by Beria’s chauffeur in his backyard, the notebooks stay where they are in what becomes the Tunisian Embassy in Moscow, after Beria is shot by the Politburo. But the notebooks turn out to be those of a girl from Arkhangelsk. Stalin impregnates her in order to leave an heir, which he does, spawning a man scarcely more believable than the others in the plot. Almost everyone in on the story dies, starting with Stalin.
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by John Helmer - Monday, January 30th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In the Russian system, oligarchs can pretend to be patriots, but noone believes it. Nor does anyone, least of all outgoing president Dmitry Medvedev, believe them to be committed to competitive business.

But if you sit in the Kremlin, trying to run the power vertical over the wall to the rest of the country, the oligarchs serve the purpose of doing what they are told. When the red telephone rings, the oligarchs can be made to click their heels, salute, and say Yessir! more swiftly than the directors of state-owned or nationalized concerns. At least that’s the theory. In practice, Russia’s governors don’t have enough time in the day to make all the required telephone-calls (if they knew what to say, and wanted to).
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by John Helmer - Monday, January 30th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Alrosa’s state-owned shares will not be privatized until 2017, if then, a Kremlin document reveals this week.

The document is a 35-page briefing paper compiled by the Ministry of Economic Development, and presented by the Minister, Elvira Nabiullina, to President Dmitry Medvedev on January 24. In a tabulation of the government’s latest privatization schedule, at page 11 of the brief, a 50.9% stake in Alrosa is identified as subject to sale by 2017. The ministry declined to respond to a request for clarification.
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by John Helmer - Friday, January 27th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The future for Russian goldmining companies this year is bleak — even if the price of gold goes up.

The major Russian goldminers are all expected to fail to reach their mine output targets, so they will be able to sell less gold at what are expected to be higher costs. But there’s worse. In order to qualify for listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), Polyus Gold — the property at present of Mikhail Prokhorov and Suleiman Kerimov and Russia’s leading goldminer — will have to sell their shares. This isn’t the first occasion in which those two have felled the share price by signalling their desire to sell.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Never before has the American electorate been given the opportunity to vote for a president whose first name gives away everything he stands for. And I’m not talking about Honest Abe — Abe meant nothing.

In the history of Newts the climax was first reached in 1934 by Augustus Fink-Nottle (left), one of England’s most distinguished researchers on the minor amphibian species, the Salamandridae (centre). These creatures distinguish themselves by a skin that is not only tough for a predator to bite into, but they secrete a toxin which in some species is strong enough to kill a man.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The first Dance with Bears appeared in the Russia Journal, edited by Ajay Goyal, a decade ago. It began as a short commentary appearing once or twice a week. The title came from Astolphe de Custine, the greatest observer of Russia ever to be obliged to conceal what he was writing inside his hat, as the Russians he was writing about chased him across the frontier. That circumstance made for pithy style, sharp focus.

In 1839 de Custine had written: “Such ill-bred and yet well-informed, well-dressed, clever, and self-confident Russians are trained bears, the sight of which inclines me to regret the wild ones: they have not yet become polished men, and they are already spoiled savages.” His book drew denunciations in the Russian press at the time, and was banned in Russian until 1996.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
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