IZVESTIA
This year May 1 will be politically hot, the newspaper writes. Parties, trade unions and other organisations are trying to lure Russians to eight street events in Moscow alone. But the reasons they offer are different. Some will be celebrating the Day of International Working People Solidarity, others May 1, still others the Day of Spring and Labour. Everyone will be promoting their own.
On the other hand, May 1 is gradually losing the status of a holiday, sociologists maintain. For example, according to Yuri Levada's analytical centre only 52% or Russians are going to celebrate it this year, Izvestia reports. In 1995, this figure was 67%. Statistics provided by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre, VTsIOM, are also quite telling: today only one-quarter of the Russian population view May 1 as the Day of Working People Solidarity. Most respondents, 40%, believe that it is just the day of spring, 25% consider it an additional day off and every tenth Russian thinks that May 1 is a normal day.
Russians prefer to spend their May holidays working either at their dachas (40%) or about the house (every fourth person will be doing the cleaning or repairs), while a third of the population will be visiting children and relatives.
However, there are those ready to display some political activity: almost every fourth Russian told pollsters he/she was ready to participate in a demonstration supporting the president and the government. Still, specialists warn that these statements should be treated carefully, as in reality no more than 2% of Russians will go to demonstrations and rallies, Izvestia writes.
VREMYA NOVOSTEI
After a very heated debate the government failed to endorse a bill directly bearing on the interests of the 35 million of Russian citizens eligible to different benefits, mainly war and labour veterans and the disabled, VN writes. The long discussion did not resolve all controversial aspects of the bill, which gives citizens the right to choose between benefits or financial compensation.
The government wanted Deputy Finance Minister Tatiana Golikova and the Health and Social Development Minister to answer a simple question, whether citizens and the state stood to gain or lose from these measures, the newspaper goes on. They did not get one. Thus, at the end of the debates, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov supported the proposal not to endorse the bill. "The most important is not to worsen the position of people eligible to benefits, this is what the President is demanding", he announced. "So we will need additional coordination".
NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA
Gazprom board chairman Alexei Miller has proposed a mechanism that allows the authorities to leave out-of-favour oligarchs without profit sources, NG writes. "The issue of who should develop the largest fields in Yamal (West Siberia), Siberia and the Far East, should be decided by the Russian government," he said at a session of the State Council (a consultative body under the president), held in Salekhard, the Yamal-Nenets autonomous area in North Russia.
Moreover, Miller suggested adopting a special law on fields of federal importance. "They are few, [but] these are large and the largest fields," he said. Miller explained his sensational initiative by vague considerations of energy security, the newspaper points out.
Experts and analysts say that Miller's words openly contradict all principles of the market economy, while oil and gas companies have so far refrained from comment. At the same time, some experts describe the initiative as pure politics.
Evidently, this was an improvisation, NG writes, for President Putin, who was listening to Miller, corrected Gazprom's CEO when he was speaking of energy security. "You should be more careful with the term 'security'. It cannot be a ground for corporate or industrial interests," he said.
GAZETA
The initiative of St Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko to give architectural monuments to investors ready to restore the buildings is being fulfilled. Vera Dementyeva, head of the monuments protection committee, has released a preliminary list of monuments that can be privatised. Along with palaces and mansions, the city authorities want to sell military forts in Kronshtadt (an island in the Gulf of Finland, 29 km from St Petersburg) built under Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725). Officials, however, had to admit that investors will not be able to get any financial profit out of acquiring monuments, and will have to be content with "considerations of prestige".
