Steve LeVine covers foreign affairs for BusinessWeek. He previously was correspondent for Central Asia and the Caucasus for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for 11 years. His first book, The Oil and the Glory, a history of the former Soviet Union through the lens of oil, was published in October 2007. Putin’s Labyrinth, his new book, profiles Russia through the lives and deaths of six Russians. It was released this week.

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A Blog on Russia, Central Asia and
the Caucasus

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Cheetah Anyone?


If you want to communicate that you've arrived, some of your options are to drive a Ferrari, move to the Côte d'Azur, or perhaps walk around with an exotic animal, say a cheetah.

Or you can build a 67-story headquarters that resembles ... well ... it's obvious what Gazprom's new headquarters resembles.

Russia's Gazprom -- the world's biggest natural gas supplier, the breaker of nations, the scourge of Europe -- is erecting the building, designed by the U.K. architects RMJM, in St. Petersburg.

Can the Hermitage compete? UNESCO, the United Nations cultural arm, has complained that the building, well, diverges from the rest of the three-century-old city. But the city administration is aptly pugnacious. UNESCO "only came to our city because they smelled gas,” said Vera Dementyeva, who heads the city's Committee for the Preservation of Historical Monuments.

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