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Struggle from Stair to Door

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“In Russia, a disabled person is excluded from life with very few exceptions,” she said. “If the government could create a ghetto and exile all the dis- abled like in Stalin’s time, they’d do it. But because we want to be treated like a civi- lized country, we don’t do that.” Fyodorova was 27, a wife

and the mother of a 5-year-old daughter, when botched sur- gery for a ruptured disc left her paralyzed from the waist down. A surgical nurse herself, she had sought out the best doctors at one of the best hospitals, to no avail. “I came to the hospital in

high heels; I left in a wheel- chair,” she said. And in a de- spair so deep she’d begged her doctors for a fatal overdose. A year later, while she was

still bedridden, her husband left her, demanding custody of their child. “He said a disabled person shouldn’t raise a child.” Fierce anger banished the de- spair. “I said: ‘I’m going to live!’” The disabled in Russia are in-

visible people. Alexey Nalogin said he’d never seen anyone in a wheelchair until he was stricken himself. Like Fyodoro- va, he awoke from surgery a paraplegic. A series of bone grafts gone wrong had left him with an S-shaped spine so

deeply curved he couldn’t sit up. He was just 14. The system wrote him off, expecting him to die young. “In Russia, someone who’s dis- abled is treated as someone whose life is over,” he said. He spent the next 8 1/2 years

in bed. Enraged and unwilling to accept his fate, he and his family searched for a cure. Fi- nally, when he was 19, they found doctors who’d operate but gave him only a 5 percent chance of surviving. The odds were too grim. Nalogin faced the fact he’d never walk.

The success of Russia's Paralympians is helping change attitudes at home.

But as one door slammed

closed, another opened: the Internet. From bed, Nalogin taught

himself computer skills, creat- ed a charity website for a chil- dren’s hospital and started a web design business. Inspired by pictures of Western leg brac- es on the Internet, he invented his own full-body brace. It en- abled him to use a wheelchair; he was finally mobile. But, like Fyodorova, he faces a daunt- ing obstacle course just leav- ing his apartment.

Fyodorova and Nalogin are

among the 13 million Russians with disabilities, many of whom endure lives constricted by the walls of their homes. Russia’s top leadership recognizes how deep and broad the problem is.

“When a disabled person

can’t go to the store, get eas- ily on a plane or train, visit a museum, gym or cinema, or get a decent education, it’s not just indifference or carelessness, it’s a direct violation of the Con- stitution,” President Dmitri Medvedev said in a speech last year.

Under Medvedev, Russia has

signed a United Nations con- vention on the rights of the disabled. It promised to make Sochi a model of accessibility when the city hosts the 2014 Winter Olympics. There are new programs and services, mainly in Moscow. It’s now pos- sible, for example, for a dis- abled Muscovite to call a spe- cial taxi. But there is almost no access to public transporta- tion.

When Nalogin got his first wheelchair in 2000, he called the city for a list of places with handicapped access. “I was told the disabled don’t go to res- taurants and theaters,” he re- called. Many of the new laws are

flawed or get only token com- pliance. “Russia has much more bureaucratic inertia than

other countries,” said Mikhail Terentiev, a member of parlia- ment and secretary-general of the Russian Paralympic Com- mittee. The success of Russia’s Para- lympians, who took top hon- ors at the Vancouver games this year, is helping change atti- tudes. “They show the rest of society that we can make a con- tribution to improving the image of our country,” said Ter- entiev, who won seven Para- lympic medals in 1998, 2002 and 2006 in biathalon and ski racing. But even these star athletes

got no government support until 2005. Russian broadcast- ers didn’t bother to televise the Vancouver Paralympic Games even though the team far outshone their able-bodied

Region Did the grassroots protests in Kaliningrad amount to something?

Outpost of Change

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Konstantin Doroshok, leader of the movement Justice and rally organizer, once made a living by bringing in second-hand cars from Europe. He was po- liticized four years ago when Doroshok and other small busi- nessmen faced outrageous tax claims. The final blow to his business was dealt by the pro- hibitive import duties slapped on used cars that the federal government introduced dur- ing the economic crisis, main- ly to shore up the beleaguered Soviet-era dinosaur AvtoVAZ, the maker of Lada. In a city where official income

is quite different than one's un- official income, Vitautas Lopata is said to be the only person who pays the state everything he owes. “I joined the opposi- tion because I was fed up with inspections. The former mayor did not allow cafes to be built,” Lopata lamented. “So I decid- ed to go into politics to defend the rights of businessmen like myself.” Asked how he man- ages to pay his taxes without killing his business, he said that

A ‘Mandarine Flash Mob,’ in a reference to Gianni Rodari’s children’s tale about political repres- sion, gathered outside the local produce market in Kaliningrad earlier this year.

he cannot expand the business, hardly ever takes a holiday and can’t buy a new car. Lopata and other opposition members admit that the gov- ernor has changed since the ral- lies, however. “While previous- ly he thought only about mega-projects and ignored crit-

icism, he now regularly meets with the opposition, has be- come aware of everyday prob- lems and reacts to our ideas,” Ginsburg said. The opposition’s original demands have been met: the transport tax rise has been revoked and utility rates have been declining.

The question remains, though: What will drive the re- gion’s growth? Tourism could provide part of the answer, but the industry is in need of a major revamp. The best-known holi- day resort in Soviet times was Svetlogorsk, where a creaky el- evator takes one from the city’s

Russian counterparts. Jobs for the disabled are scarce. The government says 40 percent, around 5 million people, are able to work. But fewer than a million do. “They think people with dis-

abilities will be a huge burden to them,” said Denise Roza, ex- ecutive director of the advo- cacy group Perspectiva, a pio- neer in employment programs for the disabled. Similar barri- ers mean inclusive education remains a distant goal. After winning custody of her

child, Fyodorova spent years in rehab. Then, in 2002, she went to work at Perspectiva. “I started feeling like someone who was useful to society.” She spent two years work-

ing on employment issues. The job inspired her to go to law

beach to the high Baltic shore for less than a dollar. To the north lies Kurskaja

Kosa, a UNESCO nature reserve, with sand dunes that mirror a desert landscape and strange, twisted trees reminiscent of modern art known as the “danc- ing forest.” In the 1990s, the sandbank was developed cha- otically and is woefully short of tourist services. Of all the road- side cafes, only a small stall is open in April. Its owner sells po- tato chips past their sell-by date and suspicious-looking shash- lik.

“There is a lot of room for

tourist development,” said Al- exander Blinov, the mayor of the town of Yantarnoye (Amber). He started his tourist project from scratch. Five years ago, Yantarnoye was mainly known for its amber quarry, the prey of looters. Now there are sign- posts everywhere directing vis- itors to landmark sites; German houses are restored as a hotel is being built. “We promote tourism and

hold various festivals and sport- ing events, which attract a con- stant flow of tourists. We pro- vide the best possible environment for investors,” Blinov said. Of course, a lot of work remains to be done. The state of the Poseidon diving club makes drowning look like a pleasant alternative. But a via- ble holiday resort could well be in this outpost's reach.

school. She was the first wheel- chair-bound student at her uni- versity, which installed ramps for her.

Alexey's Armor

After Alexey Nalogin was left a bedridden, paraplegic teenager, he spent years surfing the Inter- net. One day, he noticed a pho- to of a polio victim in the West wearing leg braces. Nothing like them existed in Russia, and he was inspired. After several years of trial and error, he'd adapted the idea for his own body, in- venting a full-body brace that supported his damaged, bad- ly curved spine enough to en-

Fyodorova plans to devote

her life to disability law: “There are so many people like me in Russia.”

able him to use a wheelchair. He called it his armor, and it opened up the world for him. He was 22 years old and had been horizontal for more than eight years. Nalogin now has a small company, Armor, that makes similar braces for people afflicted with spinal problems. He employs 11 people and has two workshops in Moscow. Each brace is made to order with a plaster cast that mirrors the re- cipient's upper body.

See Alexey Nalogin's armor at

www.dospehi.com

Russia’s paralympic taekwan- do team has taken the highest honors at leading internation- al tournaments.

Arts From no theaters to 2,100

A Revolution in the Film Business

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While directors may begin to

take a second look at patriotic blockbusters after Mikhalkov’s recent stumble, Soviet-era di- rectors and art house films have made a small but promising comeback. Films in recent years, from Andrei Zyagintsev’s haunt- ing “The Return,” to Kira Mu- ratova’s macabre “The Piano Tuner,” have shown a return to Russia’s real cinematic strength— its Soviet-era avant garde. Some of Russia’s most popu-

lar films in recent years have shown an overt nostalgia, crit- ics have noted, but that trend may begin to wane. “There is a certain wariness developing toward using cinema as a way to discuss national identity,” Norris said. More interesting is the reas-

IN HIS OWN WORDS

Kaliningrad Governor Georgy Boos

Why have social conflicts aris- en in the Kaliningrad Region?

This is a perfectly normal phe- nomenon for any democratic society. And it shows that the inhabitants of the Russian en- clave are taking an active posi- tion on life and possess a high degree of civil self-awareness. The outbreak of this kind of ac- tivity is also a result of exter- nal post-crisis factors: a reduc- tion in the standard of living as a consequence of the reces- sion against the background of a rise in certain taxes and utility charges.

Have you succeeded in dealing with the protests?

One of the main lessons from the mass meeting for me is that we need a new format for dia- logue between the authorities and society. This is already hap- pening. One new form of com- munication with residents is the regional TV channel’s live vid- eo link. I have already received more than 1,500 appeals from various parts of the region, some of which I have been answer- ing for four hours and the rest of which have been sorted and will definitely receive a reply.

German Influence in Kaliningrad

Almost all of the region’s Ger- man population left after World War II. In order to avoid being sent to labor camps, the reamining German women had to pass themselves off as Lith- uanians or Estonians. The last of them, Frau Marta, died in Kaliningrad two years ago, we were told at the German-Rus- sian House. The latest census puts the number of Germans in the area at 800. One of the most symbolic

landmarks in Kaliningrad is the House of Soviets, a huge mon- ument to Soviet constructiv- ism, which has never been fin- ished. Before 1967, the palace of the King of Prussia, which had survived World War II, stood on the site. Kaliningrad’s monument to communism was never finished. The huge House of Soviets was abandoned and now its foundation is cracked and the building is on the brink of collapse.

Founded in 1999, Gazeta.ru is Russia’s most widely read and popular internet publication with a monthly readership of 6.5 million.

sertion of the values of the Sovi- et-era avant garde among direc- tors, Norris added. Among Russia’s best directors, one can see an assertion of the less pop- ulist and more cinematic princi- ples of the great Russian masters, from Eisenstein to Tarkovsky. Ironically, it was the collapse

of the Soviet Union that brought the Russian movie juggernaut almost to a halt, with just 13 Russian-made films released in 1997, when total box office sales amounted to a paltry $6 million. Over the next decade, the number of domestically pro- duced films increased. Then in 2004, the vampire cult classic “Night Watch” grossed more than $16 million. It was followed by a procession of top-grossing Russian films, such as “Compa- ny Nine” (soldiers in Afghani- stan during the Soviet invasion) and “Turkish Gambit” (a detec- tive story during the Russo-Turk- ish war) in 2005.

Revenues fell sharply in 2009,

as dozens of projects languished, but the Russian economy has picked up ahead of expectations and people are going to mov- ies again. The reemergence of Soviet directors is also the result of good business; in the 1990s, there were no theaters to show their movies in; now there are 2,100 theaters. However, art films have distribution difficul- ties despite international critical acclaim. James Cameron’s “Avatar” al-

most single-handedly boosted first-quarter 2010 ticket sales 73

Ironically, it was the collapse of the Soviet Union that brought the Russian movie juggernaut to a halt.

percent from last year, and its success, along with “Alice in Wonderland” and “How to Train Your Dragon,” show how the investment in new theaters, in- cluding 3D, pushed the market in Hollywood’s favor. U.S. films may have bene-

fited the most from the busi- ness boom, but Russian pro- ducers made up half of this year’s top 10. That earning power, coupled with state sup- port for the industry that began in 2002, has led to bigger-bud- get movies and encouraged international studios to get in on the act. Mikhalkov’s disappointment

could lead other directors to re- think the formula of recent pa- triotic films. If blockbuster pro- ducers take interest in any of Russia’s significant avant garde directors, the result could be a winner, all the way to Cannes.

RG

NIKOLAY KOROLEV

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