Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 25.04.2006

For Ukrainian essayist Mykola Riabchuk, Chernobyl was the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire: "In spite of everything, the leadership ordered the 'International Day of Solidarity with the Workers of the World' to be celebrated on May 1 as usual with a mass parade – as if nothing had happened. It was a veritable 'feast in the time of the plague', a clear indicator of the rotten core of the Soviet system and a macabre prophecy of its unavoidable downfall... For the inhabitants of the Ukraine, Russians and Ukrainians alike, the catastrophe was a clear sign that they were all in the same boat and that Moscow was not only a foreign, but also hostile capital for all."


Die Tageszeitung, 25.04.2006

Writer Wladimir Kaminer recounts the hardships of being on the Berlin Theatertreffen festival jury and having to read his way through 557 plays. "You need nerves of steel to read just one in its entirety. Theatre plays generally consist of nothing but dialogues which drag on over several pages and often make no sense. 'Margot: Pull! Pull! Heinz: Yes yes. Margot: Pull! Moritz: Die! (orgasm). Death. Heinz: Good. Margot: Thanks. Heinz: That's alright. Margot: Good. Yes. How are you?' And so on and so forth. Of course these conversations eventually develop into a plot and sometimes even interesting stories, but it takes a while."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25.04.2006

On the media page, Kerstin Holm reports that Gazprom Media, a subsidiary of the natural gas monopolist Gazprom, "has annexed the most important non-state media, in particular that of the Guzinski family." With the inevitable consequences: "The news of the electronic Gazprom Media can only be described as an appetisingly veiled copy of state information policy. Dissidents are talking about a prescribed diet of pseudo news issued for the population to chew on instead of giving them more demanding fare. Last weekend environmental groups and concerned citizens demonstrated in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nishni Novgorod, Irkutsk and other Siberian cities against the planned construction of an oil pipeline along Lake Baikal and out into the Pacific. The Russian media has not breathed a word about it, and the same goes for Internet services and the non-state news service Interfax."

"Generazione mille euro" is the title of an Italian novel that has been published on the Internet, and which has generated a "very active blog," writes Dirk Schümer. "The distinguishing feature of the 'generazione mille euro' – in blog jargon 'G 1000' – is its modern blend of social insecurity, poor pay for highly-qualified work and immense pressure, with up to twelve working hours per day. Claudio for example, the nice ragazzo in the novel, works all over Europe as a mobile telephone advertising expert. But with the minuscule salary stipulated in his yearly contract, he can often not even afford the telephone cards he needs for his business calls, let alone advance the sluggishly reimbursed expenses for his business trips."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 25.04.2006

Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich calls Christof Nel's "Parsifal", which premiered on Sunday at the Frankfurt Opera, a breakthrough. This is Nel's "masterpiece", Jungheinrich raves: "Nel's interpretation boldly departs from recent practice, taking the operatic tradition of education and consecration to new heights. Yet in so doing it plays up an exceptionally important basic motif of Wagner's which is often neglected: the reactivation and restitution of pity. Consequently, the portrayal of the Grail Society as a a proto-fascist men's group is played down, if not entirely forgotten. Nel's knighthood emphasises pity and devotion, which come to the fore in many striking details, not the least of which is the loving care of shown for Amfortas, the moribund man of sorrows."