russia ↘↖
As Ikea opened stores across Russia, and became one of the most outspoken Western corporate critics of Russian corruption, renting generators to thwart extortion from power companies became standard practice. Ikea executives took great pride in their creative solution — renting generators “instead of putting ourselves into a squeeze,” as Christer Thordson, an Ikea board member and global director of legal affairs, put it in an interview. But Russian graft may have proved more stubborn than Ikea. The board of Ikea’s operating company, which is based in the Netherlands, has concluded that the Russian executive hired to manage the generators was taking kickbacks from the rental company to substantially inflate the price of the service. Ikea said that such a fraud could cost it about $196 million over two years. Ikea canceled the contract and sought redress in Russian civil court. But in rulings over the last two weeks, Ikea has lost another 5 million euros in damages that the judges awarded the generator rental company for breach of contract.
— Ikea Tries to Build a Case Against Russian Graft - NYTimes.com
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Mikhail Gorbachev’s ‘debut album’ sells for £100,000
“An “anonymous British philanthropist” bought what we suppose is Mikhail Gorbachev’s “debut album”, Songs for Raisa, in London this week, bidding $164,940 at an auction to benefit the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation.”
![[image]](http://19.media.tumblr.com/fPnBNXQHaov52ndg5lc0ellno1_r1_500.jpg)
“Around 1905, Prokudin-Gorsky envisioned and formulated a plan to use the emerging technological advancements that had been made in colour photography to systematically document the Russian Empire. Through such an ambitious project, his ultimate goal was to educate the schoolchildren of Russia with his “optical colour projections” of the vast and diverse history, culture, and modernization of the empire. Outfitted with a specially equipped railroad car darkroom provided by Tsar Nicholas II, and in possession of two permits that granted him access to restricted areas and cooperation from the empire’s bureaucracy, Prokudin-Gorsky documented the Russian Empire around 1909 through 1915. He conducted many illustrated lectures of his work. His photographs offer a vivid portrait of a lost world—the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the coming Russian Revolution. His subjects ranged from the medieval churches and monasteries of old Russia, to the railroads and factories of an emerging industrial power, to the daily life and work of Russia’s diverse population.”
