Jewelry's world

BERLIN When Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the former Soviet Union and Communist Party leader, introduced perestroika in the late 1980s, his policies had a profound affect on almost every aspect of life.

The censors for music, newspapers, television, and radio melted away.Banned writers, whose secret books were read only in samizdat, often typed out so many times on fading carbon paper that they were difficult to read, could finally appear on the shelves neatly bound. It was a fascinating period of the 20th century because the freedom was so intense, almost frenetic.But what also happened during this time was the disappearance of a genre of art: Socialist Realism.“It happened so quickly,” said Alessandra Lucia Coruzzi.

“In the late 1980s, a part of Soviet history was deleted.”Ms. Coruzzi is one of two curators of the exhibition “Behind the Iron Curtain,” a fascinating collection of Socialist Realism art put on display in Berlin by a group of art collectors from Milan.Gaia Fusai, one of the collectors, said the paintings had been taken down at great speed under Mr. Gorbachev’s term,Ed Men Classic shirt, as if there was an urgency to break with the past.“The paintings were put into basements or corners, or thrown aside as if that part of the past had no meaning.

But that art is part of the former Soviet Union’s history,” said Ms. Fusai, who was in Berlin for the opening. “You can’t just blot it out. So a group of collectors decided to go about trying to find these paintings. It is about saving the art of Socialist Realism,” she said.From the mid-1920s to the mid-’80s, leading artists had been commissioned by the Communist Party, for propagandist reasons, to depict the achievements of the Bolshevik Revolution and its leader, Vladimir Lenin. Artists who did not want to paint under such restrictions retreated to internal exile or emigrated.

For 50 years, Socialist Realist paintings, many of them showing Lenin and all of them depicting heroic or optimistic facets of life under Communism, had hung in public places.Some still hang in museums in former Soviet republics. But they are few and far between.So in a strange twist of history, just as the avant-garde art banned by the Soviet regime was viewed again, Socialist Realism, discarded so quickly in the late ’80s, may be going though its own renaissance. At least, that is the hope of the Jeschke-Van Vliet Art Gallery, located where the Berlin Wall once stood 20 years ago. For the first time, more than 300 paintings, created between the mid-’20s and the early ’80s have been brought under one roof.The quest to bring the collection together began nearly five years ago, not much time to find so many paintings scattered across the former Soviet Union.

The issue of property rights further complicated things, since the state commissioned the artists to paint and owned many of the paintings. “We went through different channels to acquire the paintings,” said Ms. Fusai. “It had been easy for paintings to cross the border from Russia into the other former Soviet Republics. We could buy the paintings. All the paper work is legal and correct. But it was more difficult in Russia.”Finding them and buying them was one thing. Restoring them was another.Hassan Bayati, who studied at the Academy of Art in Baghdad and Florence and is the other curator of the show, said he could not have imagined what he was to find when he set about restoring at least half the paintings.“It’s not that they just had to be cleaned. You had to know which materials to use,” said Mr. Bayati. He explained that artists of the period had to be extremely inventive to find materials because of shortages. Some of the canvases were made from jute, or “sewn together from pieces of military tents.”

The artists obtained cement dust and heated industrial oil to bind the canvas. “And if you look behind the canvasses, sometimes you can read what the artist was thinking, what he wanted to paint, how much money he needed, and so on.”The themes of the paintings on exhibit are consistent, despite the immense changes that had taken place throughout the Soviet Union during this time.There are the typical scenes with Lenin standing with villagers or leading a Communist Party congress, or talking to workers. An entire room is devoted to Lenin in all his guises. But there are many paintings without Lenin, too.In the works there is never any sense of conflict or doubt.

But that does not mean that the artist, though commissioned by the Communist Party, did not develop a certain freedom.One painting, “Students — volunteers in the fowl-run” by Semenov Evgeni Vladimirovich, who was born in Russia and studied art at Kiev Art Institute, shows how much liberty was taken by the artist. It is mocking and absurd given the way he painted an abundance of well-fed hens and scantily dressed students. It was done in 1973.Inevitably there are the paintings of the big, collectivized farms. But not all show contented tractor drivers. “Wheat Harvest,” painted in the late ’70s by Kodev Petr Ivanov, a Ukrainian born in 1899, shows a combine harvester, but well in the background. In the foreground, the wheat with all its texture and colors is where the artistic freedom shines through.

A painting by another Ukrainian, Vosnyuk Petr Stepanovich, shows a teacher observing young students in a woodworking class. The boys wear the scarves of the Young Pioneers, or young Communists. But the eye focuses more upon the wood carvings and details in the painting that was completed between 1968 and 1970. “That is what this exhibition is about,” Ms. Fusai said. “It is more than just propaganda. It is about a time in the Soviet Union. That is why we want to show these paintings to a wider audience. We want to fill the black holes of history.” Behind the Iron Curtain. The Art of Socialist Realism. Jeschke-Van Vliet Gallery. Krausenstrasse 40, Berlin. Through Nov. 30.

ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND Offshore supply vessels resembling large, floating trucks fill Victoria Dock, unable to find charters, in a sign of the downturn in the British oil industry.

　With British North Sea production of oil and natural gas 44 percent below its peak, Aberdeen, the self-styled oil capital of Europe, fears the slowdown is not simply cyclical. An oil industry that at one stage inspired talk of Scotland as “the Kuwait of the West” has already outlived most predictions, having enjoyed a hydrocarbon heyday of almost five decades. As it prepares for the end of oil, Aberdeen is remaking itself, putting its hopes in renewable energy and tourism. “I’m steering my kids away from anything to do with oil,” said John Irvine, a truck driver who used to work on the rigs. “It’s not going to last forever.” The oil industry has been good to Aberdeen. BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes are plentiful in the traffic jams that clog the roads at rush hour, and Jaguar, Aston Martin and Porsche sports cars with personalized license plates are evident in the city, which has about 200,000 inhabitants.
　
　 The North Sea industry, with current output of 2.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, pays more to the British government’s coffers than any other industry, is one of the highest spenders on goods and services and is an important employer. About 40 percent of the Aberdeen area’s economy worth 10.5 billion, or $17.2 billion relies on the oil industry, according to the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce. Oil has pushed unemployment down in the Granite City, as Aberdeen is known for the hard rock from which most of its buildings are constructed, to less than half the British average, which is 7.9 percent.
　
　 But with Brent crude at about $80 a barrel, little more than half of its peak last year, the harbor is quieter now, the port authority says. Dockworkers say some ship owners are so pessimistic about getting charters soon that they will not even pay to dock at the harbor. A dozen vessels are moored a few kilometers off Aberdeen’s sandy coast. Normally, one might see one or two, oil workers said. As big oil companies like BP and Royal Dutch Shell have cut spending, Aberdeen has seen hundreds of layoffs,Ed Men Short Sleeve, and for the first time in years, engineering graduates from local universities have struggled to find jobs.
　
　The employment situation has resulted in vacant shops on Union Street, the main thoroughfare, while bars, restaurants and taxi drivers say business is slacker than a year ago. Tourism, life sciences and the export of oil services around the world are among Aberdeen’s preferred substitutes for North Sea oil and natural gas.But for many, the biggest prize would be to use its offshore oil expertise to build a renewable energy industry as big as oil. The city wants to use its experience to become a leader in offshore wind, tidal power and carbon dioxide capture and storage.
　
　 It hopes those industries will receive a lift from global climate change talks in Copenhagen in December. “We have to harness that expertise and turn Aberdeen into the energy capital of Europe and not just the oil capital of Europe,” said Mike Rumbles, a member of the Scottish Parliament from West Aberdeenshire. It is a broad marketing shift for the city. Alex Salmond, head of the Scottish government, told a conference in Aberdeen last month that the market for wind power could be worth 130 billion, while Scotland could be the “Saudi Arabia of tidal power.” “We’re seeing the emergence of an offshore energy market that is comparable in scale to the market we’ve seen in offshore oil and gas in the last 40 years,” he said. Tidal power remains at the testing stage, and the economic viability of new offshore wind projects has been questioned even by current investors like the German-owned utility E.ON. A carbon capture and storage industry could also be developed, filling depleted North Sea oil fields with carbon dioxide.
　
　 People in the oil industry doubt that any Copenhagen treaty would provide sufficient incentives to make this activity profitable. Another area of focus, tourism, has previously been hindered by the presence of oil. “The hoteliers got lazy,” said a taxi driver, Jim Moir. “They were full Monday to Friday with oil workers, so they never bothered attracting tourists.” Eager to put Aberdeen on the international tourist map, businesses have strongly backed a plan by the U.S. real estate tycoon Donald Trump for a luxury housing and golf project 12 kilometers, or 8 miles, north of the city, even though it means building on a nature reserve. Mr. Trump is locked in a dispute with landowners who refuse to sell to him. He hopes the local authorities will, if necessary, invoke compulsory purchase powers to facilitate the development. The city also wants to reorient its vibrant oil services industry toward emerging offshore oil centers like Brazil. “Just because the production in the North Sea starts to decline doesn’t mean that Aberdeen as a global center also declines,” said Robert Collier, the chamber of commerce’s chief executive. “That expertise can still stay here and be exported around the world.” Local companies plying their wares to international buyers at the Offshore Europe exhibition and conference last month said the shift in emphasis was under way. “Ninety percent of our production is exported,” said Ian McCormick, international managing director for Equalizer, standing beside a yellow mock-up pipeline to which were attached samples of his company’s stainless steel clamps.
　
　 When the oil finally does run out, the decommissioning of hundreds of offshore platforms and thousands of pipelines will be an opportunity in itself. The infrastructure will need to be disassembled and returned to shore for disposal, creating a market worth at least billion, estimates Oil and Gas UK, an industry lobbying group. “It could be the beginning of a whole new industry,” said Lewis MacDonald, a member of the Scottish Parliament representing Aberdeen Central.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan As Pakistani soldiers fought their way into the forbidding heartland of the Mehsud tribal territory on Tuesday against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants, they faced the most ferocious fighters in Pakistan, men whose ancestors were legendary for never succumbing to the British.

Attackers Kill 6 at Islamic University in Pakistan, Mystifying Students

　A British governor of Waziristan, Sir Olaf Caroe, once wrote that the Mehsud tribesmen were the toughest opponents because, like wolves, they hunted and fought in packs. On the fourth day of their offensive, the Pakistani soldiers continued to meet heavy resistance, particularly around the peaks of Kotkai, the hometown of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud. Seven soldiers were killed when militants attacked a checkpoint there, an intelligence official from the area said. One thing was working in the armys favor, however.
　
　 In the time-honored tradition of the mercurial relationships in the tribal areas, the military has sealed alliances with two Taliban commanders of the Waziri tribe, winning deals that they would not attack the army on their southern and eastern flanks. The two Waziri commanders, Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadar, control territory that surrounds the lands that are home to the rival Mehsuds and that form the Taliban stronghold where the army has begun its push. It is an expediency that may serve the Pakistani Army, but that could work against American forces in Afghanistan.
　
　 Both Mr. Nazir and Mr. Bahadar are allied with Sirajuddin Haqqani, who along with his father, Jalaluddin, runs a good part of the insurgency battling American and NATO forces over the border in Afghanistan. At a news briefing on Monday, the army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, acknowledged the arrangement with the Taliban leaders of the Waziri tribe, saying any military would do all it could to isolate the enemy.
　
　 The Pakistani Army is actually borrowing a page from the British, said Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of the North-West Frontier Province who spent years serving as a government official in Waziristan. The British always tried to keep the Waziris on their side, organizing temporary truces with them to isolate the Mehsuds, especially when the British Army was stationed in North and South Waziristan from 1922 until independence in 1947, he said. As well, the Waziris were a little easier for the British to tolerate because, according to Sir Olaf Caroe, they were like panthers and hunted alone.
　
　 In the ever-shifting power politics of Pakistans tribal leaders, few expect the new understanding between the army and the two Waziri commanders to stick. This is not a case of instant love, tribal experts say. Early in the summer, Mr. Bahadars Taliban fighters ambushed a military convoy killing at least 30 soldiers including a colonel. But while it lasts, the new arrangement is of great tactical value to the military.
　
　 Its expediency, its very temporary, Mr. Aziz said. But if the armys rear is secure and the right flank is secure, the only part they have to worry about is the fight ahead. Only eight months ago, Mr. Nazir and Mr. Bahadar were the best friends of the Mehsud Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, the main domestic enemy of the Pakistani Army, and whose followers the army is now fighting. Mr. Nazir and Mr. Bahadar had forged a triple entente in February with Baitullah Mehsud in the much-heralded United Mujahedeen Council and had done so at the behest of Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, Taliban spokesmen said at the time.
　
　 The Mujahedeen Council joined the leading tribes in North and South Waziristan into one cohesive group. At the time, the council represented an ominous sign of militant solidarity against the Pakistani government as terrorist attacks unleashed from Waziristan steadily escalated on Pakistans security forces. But then, after the death of Baitullah Mehsud in an American drone missile attack in August, the council fell apart amid recriminations, and Mr. Nazir and Mr. Bahadar quit. Enter the Pakistani Army. As the military planned the operation to take on the Taliban and Qaeda fighters holed up in Mehsud territory, army officers used local government officials to win the neutrality of the disaffected Mr. Nazir and Mr. Bahadar.
　
　 Most importantly for the army, in the preliminary maneuvers to the current fighting, Mr. Bahadar gave the green light for soldiers to move their supplies uninterrupted and without attack through his territory in North Waziristan and into Razmak, a government-held town on the northern edge of the battlefield. What do Mr. Nazir and Mr. Bahadar get out of the bargain? The provincial government has agreed to allow the Waziri tribesmen loyal to the two commanders to travel on roads that are blocked by the army as part of a siege against the Mehsuds. Short of food and supplies after two months of siege, the freedom to move is a big plus for the Waziri tribesmen, Mr. Aziz said. How long would the deal last? If Bahadar thinks he will get tremendous advantage like a bag of money this agreement will be violated, Mr. Aziz said. An editorial in The News, a leading English-language newspaper, summed up the enviable positions that Mr. Nasir and Mr. Bahadar found themselves in. Watching from a position of armed neutrality from the sidelines allows them the luxury of watching their rival suffer at no cost to themselves, it said. Pir Zubair Shah contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar,Ed Wmn Short Sleeve, Pakistan.