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Sergei Filin Attacked


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This also caught my attention from Ismene Brown's blog linked above

The company manager Ruslan Pronin is also reported to have surprised the troupe by announcing that Filin yesterday had a phone conversation with another Bolshoi dancer, Batyr Annadurdyev, which has resulted in him being asked to make a statement to investigators.

I do hope eventually it all comes to light, but it seems a shadow will be hanging over the Bolshoi for a while yet.

It may be more than that. According to this link, the conversation between the two was extremely unpleasant and as a result Annadurdyev submitted his resignation.

http://www.gazeta.ru...n_2787489.shtml

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I think the unhappiness is coming from different places: there are a number of dancers and people affiliated with the company who don't believe Dmitrichenko was capable of it, despite the confessions, and Filin, who believes that Dmitrichenko and the two hit people are not the only ones involved. Still, both sides believe that this is a pat round-up and authorities are trying to close the case and sweep the unanswered questions under the rug.

It may be more than that. According to this link, the conversation between the two was extremely unpleasant and as a result Annadurdyev submitted his resignation.

http://www.gazeta.ru...n_2787489.shtml

A machine translation (bing) of the second-to-last paragraph is:

A surprise for all, according to the source, was the statement by the Director of the ballet company Ruslan Pronin of the artistic director of the troupe's Owl on Thursday hosted a hard-hitting conversation with ballet dancer Batyr Annadurdyevym, who is friendly with Paul Dmitrichenko and which also caused the STOCK MARKET to give evidence. In the address Annadurdyeva by the Owl's alleged threats and accusations, and he wrote his resignation from the theater. The troupe said in defense of the artist and the ineligibility of any charges against him.

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One thing that puzzled me in the NYTimes article is that it sounded as if Dimitrichenko admits to telephoning Zarutsky the day of the attack -- which makes him sound considerably less out-of-loop than his account of more or less forgetting he had even hired Zarutsky and then having to pay the piper. Both stories can't be true and yet it's not "his lawyer said" versus "the other guy's lawyer said": both stories seem to be coming from him...

As far as 'forgetting' you hired someone to beat someone up: if true, then...

You know, I tried various ways to end that sentence, most of which involved speculations on mental health, a few on character, and even one on neuroscience--and then I gave up. I trust we will find out a little more about what really happened but for the rest, I await the post-modern Dostoevsky who can do this story justice. Because I don't think any court of law will.

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Machine translation can be confusing sometimes. For example, the Russian word for ‘owl’ is ‘filin’, hence the word OWL appeared instead of the AD’s name, etc.

I found these two paragraphs worrying:

As confirmed by the “Gazeta.ru” ‘s source, based on some evidence, the interrogation of Dmitrichenko lasted for 18 hours.

‘As per official version, his lawyer was with him, but according to unofficial version the lawyer went out, after several hours of interrogation, to buy some food; whereupon he was prevented from coming back to his client for a long time. After some time Dmitrichenko made his confession’, the source said.

A surprise for all, according to the source, was the statement by the company’s manager Ruslan Pronin with respect to the straight-talk held on Thursday by the Artistic Director of the troupe Sergei Filin with a ballet dancer Batyr Annadurdyev who is on a friendly footing with Pavel Dmitrichenko and was also called to testify at the Investigation Committee of the Russian Federation. Allegedly, there were some threats and accusations made by Filin against Annadurdyev whereby he signed his notice of resignation from the theater. The troupe spoke for the dancer and about ineligibility of any charges against him.

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http://lifenews.ru/news/111507

I don't have time to translate the whole thing, but here is an excerpt that has to do with Mr. Annadurdyev.

On January 17 Dmitrichenko, together with dancer Batyr Annadurdyev and musician Alexander Yurasov, was going to go to his dacha in the Stupinsky district. In the afternoon he accidentally overheard at the theater that Sergey Filin was going to attend a gala at MHAT.

"We were sitting with Annadurdyev in a car in a parking lot and were watching some show, periodically re-parking in order to get a better Internet reception," said Dmitrichenko. "All this time I was watching Filin's car. Around 10:30pm I called Zarutsky to call everything off, but just at that moment I saw that Filin was approaching his car. And I told Zarutsky that he, most likely, was going home."

After awhile, according to Dmitrichenko, Zarutsky called him and said: "That's it, [translator's note: here he used a slang verb which I am powerless to translate into English and which can mean a broad array of things, including the infliction of unspecified bodily harm on someone]," without specifying what exactly they did to Filin. The accomplices met up, Dmitrichenko gave Zarutsky 3000 rubles for gasoline which he took from Annadurdyev under the pretext of buying Spice.

"At home, I heard a phone conversation of Anzhelina Vorontsova during which Nikolai Tsiskaridze told her that Filin was doused with acid," Pavel summed up.

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In order for everybody else to understand what you are referring to, here is a translation of the last paragraph of the same article.

The next day Dmitrichenko met Zarutsky and Lipatov, gave them 50,000 rubles, and said: "I do not know you any more." Dmitrichenko also said during the interrogation that he was fully repenting, that he had not wanted to inflict such harm on Filin, that he had not planned such a monstrous method for the attack, that he was ready to compensate the Artistic Director for damages, and asked to be forgiven.

We need to keep in mind the following flow of information: Dmitrichenko -> interrogator(s) -> article's source(s) -> the journalist (Nadezhda Gladchenko) -> the published text. Distortions are possible at every link of this long chain. It is also a possibility that Dmitrichenko was scared during the interrogation and much less scared during the court appearance.

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http://lifenews.ru/news/111507

I don't have time to translate the whole thing, but here is an excerpt that has to do with Mr. Annadurdyev.

On January 17 Dmitrichenko, together with dancer Batyr Annadurdyev and musician Alexander Yurasov, was going to go to his dacha in the Stupinsky district. In the afternoon he accidentally overheard at the theater that Sergey Filin was going to attend a gala at MHAT.

"We were sitting with Annadurdyev in a car in a parking lot and were watching some show, periodically re-parking in order to get a better Internet reception," said Dmitrichenko. "All this time I was watching Filin's car. Around 10:30pm I called Zarutsky to call everything off, but just at that moment I saw that Filin was approaching his car. And I told Zarutsky that he, most likely, was going home."

After awhile, according to Dmitrichenko, Zarutsky called him and said: "That's it, [translator's note: here he used a slang verb which I am powerless to translate into English and which can mean a broad array of things, including the infliction of unspecified bodily harm on someone]," without specifying what exactly they did to Filin. The accomplices met up, Dmitrichenko gave Zarutsky 3000 rubles for gasoline which he took from Annadurdyev under the pretext of buying Spice.

"At home, I heard a phone conversation of Anzhelina Vorontsova during which Nikolai Tsiskaridze told her that Filin was doused with acid," Pavel summed up.

There seems to be so much conflicting information... previous articles quote Dmitrichenko as saying he had asked Zarutsky to beat Filin up in the fall and then forgot about until he was surprised by the acid attack. Now this article speaks of Dmitrichenko having contact with Zarutsky on that day and watching Filin's car, telling Zarutsky he wanted to call everything off and that Filin was most likely going home.

I feel bad for whoever has to make sense of all of this, honestly...

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The most contradictory info is that Dmitrichenko was sitting in the car on a stake-out, but wanted to call the whole thing off, and then told Zarutsky where his target was.

The entire time Anandurdyev was sitting in the car but didn't come forward: if I were Filin, I'd be livid.

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The most contradictory info is that Dmitrichenko was sitting in the car on a stake-out, but wanted to call the whole thing off, and then told Zarutsky where his target was.

My interpretation of what's said in the article is that he was going to call it off because it was getting late and Filin hadn't come out yet. Just as he was going to call it off, Filin appeared, and so, instead of calling it off, he told Zarutsky that Filin just came out of the theater and was probably going to drive home. So I don't see much contradiction.

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The entire time Anandurdyev was sitting in the car but didn't come forward: if I were Filin, I'd be livid.

Apparently he is livid, which prompted the heated telephone conversation that resulted in Annadurdyev submitting his resignation.

Dmitrichenko and two friends were hanging out in a car in mid-January Moscow at 10:30 p.m. Does this strike anybody as a sensible thing to do?

Ilya makes a good point that so much of the information we're getting has been coming from "sources close to the investigation." This satisfies eveyone's desire to figure out what happened, but given that much, if not most, of what we've learned has been leaked by the police rather than coming directly from Dmitrichenko's mouth, I can also understand why at this point so many of his colleagues refuse to believe the semi-official version of events.

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My interpretation of what's said in the article is that he was going to call it off because it was getting late and Filin hadn't come out yet. Just as he was going to call it off, Filin appeared, and so, instead of calling it off, he told Zarutsky that Filin just came out of the theater and was probably going to drive home. So I don't see much contradiction.

I misunderstood -- I thought he meant he was calling to call off the attack altogether, not to give up for the night. That, too, contradicts the earlier statement attributed to him that when the beating didn't happen right away he forgot, and confirms one of the early reports that he confirmed when Filin was heading home.

If a fellow dancer witnessed the stakeout, even if had no idea what Dmitrichenko was planning, he would have overheard Dmitrichenko's end of the conversation and was a witness to his friend's plotting. It would also counter the assertions that there was no way Dmitrichenko could be involved. No wonder he was a reluctant witness and resigned.

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What makes no sense to me is Dmitrichenko taking his concerns about possible financial machinations to the theater management on January 16, and then going through with the attack on Filin the following day, rather than waiting to see whether anything would come of an internal investigation.

And if you're going to do a stakeout, why on earth bring along two witnesses? What sort of alibi could they provide?

"Where were you the night of January 17?"

"Parked outside the Moscow Art Theater."

That's not very helpful.

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If Dmitrichenko thought he was given the brush-off... then frustration could be a motive. The stake-out sounds so poorly done indicating that it was possibly coincidence or just amateur, and surely Dmitrichenko was not a professional criminal. We really don't have enough information to know what is true. Dmitrichenko's lawyer leaving the interrogation is just ridiculous. What can we trust out of what we've heard?

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If Dmitrichenko thought he was given the brush-off... then frustration could be a motive. The stake-out sounds so poorly done indicating that it was possibly coincidence or just amateur, and surely Dmitrichenko was not a professional criminal. We really don't have enough information to know what is true. Dmitrichenko's lawyer leaving the interrogation is just ridiculous. What can we trust out of what we've heard?

Amateur yes, but if the story is true then the stake-out can hardly be a "coincidence" since Dmitrichenko says he telephoned Zarutsky. Lucky chance of a criminal? In this story, he wasn't driving home, he was watching and deciding what to tell Zarutsky. Nor does he at all seem to be claiming this was a coincidence.

The fact that he includes the information that Annadurdyev was with him -- presumably not as an alibi but as a companion, if not a co-conspirator -- seems to suggest that the story is at least partly true, since it would have to be checked with someone who has no interest in confirming it but rather the contrary. That is, if Dmitrichenko is lying about the whole story because the confession was the result of coercion and stress, why invent a witness who could then be questioned and say it never happened or who might have his own alibi?

One can go off into less and less likely speculations: he just hates Annadurdyev or that he was purposely crafting a story full of impeachable details so it would have to fall apart in court? I have to say I think these are implausible explanations. Whereas he is an amateur in this kind of criminality...That said, a confession obtained in this way is unlikely to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

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http://lifenews.ru/news/111507

I don't have time to translate the whole thing, but here is an excerpt that has to do with Mr. Annadurdyev.

On January 17 Dmitrichenko, together with dancer Batyr Annadurdyev and musician Alexander Yurasov, was going to go to his dacha in the Stupinsky district. In the afternoon he accidentally overheard at the theater that Sergey Filin was going to attend a gala at MHAT.

"We were sitting with Annadurdyev in a car in a parking lot and were watching some show, periodically re-parking in order to get a better Internet reception," said Dmitrichenko. "All this time I was watching Filin's car. Around 10:30pm I called Zarutsky to call everything off, but just at that moment I saw that Filin was approaching his car. And I told Zarutsky that he, most likely, was going home."

This is what I had mis-remembered as coincidence... that they happened to see Filin leaving as they were moving around for better wifi... so very very strange. And what does Yurasov say?

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A new turn in this story.

Moscow. 10 March /ITAR-TASS/. The Artistic Director of the Bolshoi Ballet company Sergei Filin may not come back to Russia if the assault case is not seen through to the end. This was announced today by Filin’s friend Grigoryi Belkin in his interview to the ‘News of the Week’ programme on Russia-1 Channel.

‘I am afraid that if this case of assault (attempt) on Sergei is not seen through to the end after all and consequently his safety in Russia is not secured, he might not come back’, Belkin said. ‘He is receiving a huge number of offers from abroad, from the world’s top theatres.’

http://spb.itar-tass.com/c322/671691.html

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A lengthy New Yorker article by David Remnick:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/03/18/1318fa.fact_remnick

Sometimes an institution has an uncanny way of embodying the society to which it belongs. For decades, the office of the heavyweight championship of the world—and the battles for that crown, from Jack Johnson to Mike Tyson—said something about the racial dynamics of twentieth-century America. So it is at the pinnacles of Russian dance. Since the nineteenth century, the country’s two principal stages—the Mariinsky, in St. Petersburg, and the Bolshoi, in Moscow—have acted as microcosms of imperial Russia, Soviet Russia, and, now, Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

In the days I spent talking with dancers, instructors, and administrators at the Bolshoi, it was clear that everyone had accepted some version of this theme: “What happens in the theatre reflects what is happening in the streets.

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Katerina Novikova, in her role as Bolshoi press secretary states:

No one doubts the guilt of Dmitrichenko, he is involved in this terrible crime and ought to be held accountable. But it appears that he was not alone, and that someone else is standing behind him.

http://ria.ru/cultur...l#ixzz2NFMxTtEI

(Sorry for the lumbering translation.)

On the other hand, another outlet publishes an interview with a Bolshoi dancer, who asked not to be named because the Bolshoi had advised dancers not to talk to the press about a meeting that took place between Bolshoi employees and police investigators, in which he lays out their doubts about Dmitrichenko's guilt.

The meeting left us with an unpleasant aftertaste. Everyone knew and loved the guy, and no one believes that he is capable of such a thing. They doubt the facts being presented. And the troupe is especially troubled that he was arrested practically without any proof of his guilt. Because the only proof came after, his personal confession, after he was interrogated at night, after 48 hours of detention, not having been fed once, as far as we can tell from the information reaching us. And what happened there, what forced him to confess is unknown.

http://www.mk.ru/cul...-na-filina.html

Given that there have been quite a few articles in the Russian press along the lines of "people within the Bolshoi do not believe in Dmitrichenko's guilt," Novikova's attempt at message control and presenting a unified front seems clumsy.

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Why is it clumsy? She is the official spokesperson for the Bolshoi on this matter. She is stating the official position of the organization. If other employees want to leak their own opinions to the press, it is not relevant to the official position of the institution.

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