Owner Of Stalin Museum Murdered

A Russian businessman who set up a museum dedicated to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was electrocuted and bludgeoned to death, Russian media reported.

Vasily Bukhtiyenko set up the Stalin museum in 2005 in Volgograd, previously called Stalingrad, about 560 miles southeast of Moscow.

“He was resting at a tennis court. That is where the murder happened,” state-run RIA Novosti news agency quoted a spokeswoman for regional investigators as saying.

Police said a motive for the attack was unclear at present.

Russian Elite Miss Their Volcano-Halted Oysters

Russia’s super rich are lamenting a shortage of oysters and peaches, whose deliveries have been cut by the Icelandic volcano which caused air traffic chaos in Europe, a popular daily reported.

Exorbitantly priced seafood and fruits from Spain, France and Italy, regularly lapped up by the Moscow elite, are missing from the Russian capital’s most glistening stores, Komsomolskaya Pravda said on its front page.

One worker in a luxury shop on the outskirts of Moscow said oysters, which stay fresh for 10 days, will be missing from parties this Saturday. “If will be dreadful if they don’t make it,” he told the paper.

Imported Spanish peaches that fetch 1,250 roubles (28 pound) a kilo have been replaced by much cheaper apricots from ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, but the moneyed Russians have been turning their noses up at them.

Couple Dies While Having Sex In Their Volkswagen

A Russian couple having sex in a car parked in a tiny garage have died from carbon monoxide poisoning, Interfax news agency reported.

“A man and a woman retreated to their Volkswagen to have sex… Most likely the lovers turned on the engine to get warm,” Interfax reported, citing a source in the Moscow police force. During a moment of “intimate closeness,” the pair, in southern Moscow, inhaled the gas and died, the source added.

Many Russians keep their cars in box-like iron garages near their homes, which snugly encase their cars.

Today’s Top Eurotastic Song By Dima Bilan

Here’s Russian Dima Bilan singing 2008′s Believe:

Believe was composed and produced by Timbaland and written by Jim Beanz & Dima Bilan. On 20 May 2008, Bilan sang in the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest, and the song was voted into the final by public vote.

The Russian figure skater, Olympic gold medalist and three-time world champion Evgeni Plushenko, skated on artificial ice on stage as part of the song performance, while the Hungarian composer and violinist Edvin Marton played his Stradivarius. This song won the contest, finishing with a total of 272 points, becoming the fourth ex-Soviet Union country to win the annual contest.

Bilan also represented Russia at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2006, with the dark pop song Never Let You Go, where he took second place.

Click here to check out Peter Nalitch,  Russia’s 2010 Eurovision entry.

Eurovision 2010 Update: Peter Nalitch To Sing For Russia

Russia has decided and a dream came true for Peter Nalitch and his music group!

They have convinced the whole Russian nation and a professional jury of their exciting entry.  The viewers of the three-hour thrilling live show from Moscow just can’t get that original ballad Lost And Forgotten out of their heads.  Peter Nalitch will represent Russia at the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest.

Alexander Rybak, the winner of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest, started the show in Moscow with his winning entry, Fairytale.  Afterwards all 25 participants were announced.  The public could start casting their votes after the first entry has been performed, and the voting window closed 30 minutes after the last song has been performed.  The entries were sung in different languages: Russian, English, Italian, French and Udmurt.

Russian Tanks Abandoned On The Side Of The Road

About 200 modern Russian tanks have been discovered abandoned on the side of a road in the country’s Ural mountains, footage published by websites showed.

Video clips from the E1.ru website that were rebroadcast on Russian television showed local people clambering over some of the unguarded T-80 tanks that were parked in long rows in Kamishlovsk, about 100 km from the Ural city of Yekaterinburg.

Russian military prosecutors are probing how the tanks, Russia’s main battle tank, came to be left in such a situation, state news agency RIA reported.

Russia is currently streamlining its massive military, with some commanders recently quoted in the Russian media as saying they only require half of the country’s 20,000 tanks.

Man Must Pay For Injury Caused In Suicide Bid

A court ruled that a Russian man must pay more than 100,000 rubles ($3,330) for medical bills and damages to the parents of a girl he hit when he jumped from a window in a suicide attempt.

The 7-year-old girl was in hospital for months after the man fell on her when he jumped from a ninth-storey apartment during an argument with his ex-wife, a court in the Siberian city of Omsk heard, the Interfax news agency reported.

Do You Smell A Grammy?

Check this out:

Do you smell a Grammy?

Thanks to WZLX / Boston for this musical discovery.

Giant Screen Shows Porn On Moscow Street

Russian police said they have arrested a prankster who hacked into a computer system to show a pornographic movie on a giant advertising screen, causing havoc on a busy Moscow thoroughfare.

The two-minute clip, displayed on a video screen above a main road south of the Kremlin, caused midnight traffic jams and a frenzy of excitement across the Russian blogosphere.

Police said the hacker gained control of the screen by breaking into an online company’s server in the volatile southern region of Chechnya as “he didn’t think the police would go looking for him there.”

“(The hacker) is a highly-educated, temporarily unemployed and extremely advanced Internet user,” police said. “The scandalous film was the talk of the town.”

The 40-year-old man said he wanted to “give people a laugh,” the popular daily Kommersant reported.

Rossiya-24 television said an elderly motorist suffered a heart attack at the wheel after seeing the scenes.

Stalin’s Grandson Seeks Apology From Radio Station

The grandson of Josef Stalin is suing the radio station Ekho Moskvy, it said, in a second attempt to stem media criticism of the leader whom many Russians still revere for victory in World War Two.

Yevgeny Dzhugashvili is seeking 10 million roubles’ ($326,900) compensation and an apology from Ekho Moskvy over comments made by presenter Matvey Ganapolsky on a program in October, who said:

“Stalin signed an order that children can be shot from the age of 12 as enemies of the nation. Which of the bastards dares say a single word in his defense?”

Ekho Moskvy said it had been notified of the lawsuit.

Earlier this year a Russian court threw out a similar case by Dzhugashvili against Novaya Gazeta newspaper which said Stalin had personally ordered the killings of thousands of Soviet citizens.

Historians said at the time the court’s decision was a victory in Russia where they say there is a creeping attempt to paint a more benevolent picture of the Soviet Union’s most feared leader, under whose rule millions perished.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin weighed into the fierce national debate on Stalin’s legacy this month, praising him for industrializing the Soviet Union and winning World War Two, but condemning his repression.

Some 37 percent of Russians look on Stalin with respect, sympathy or even admiration, according to a WCIOM poll published this week. Roughly a quarter of the population dislikes, fears or hates him and the rest are indifferent.