Now here’s a good lesson for Google - one enterprising Russian publisher has decided that the next frontier in advertising is books.

Take a look at this screenshot below, where the reader is invited to send a text message to the publisher to receive more information in exchange for a small fee.

The footnote reads (rough translation):

“If you want to know what “goes beyond the Kuiper Belt” means, send an SMS to the number 30119 and text 2990, or use your mobile to call 09956 and dial the code 030119.”

Has anyone seen adverts like this in other books, Russian or English?

Source: Adme.ru. (And thanks to Xavi for help with the translation - the good bits are his, the mistakes are mine!)

Russia has won the Eurovision Song Contest. Dima Bilan’s song, Believe, notched up 272 points from Europe’s voters, comfortably beating Ukraine’s 230 points into second place.

Watch Dima Bilan’s Russian Eurovision Video Believe below:

Russia’s Eurovision Song Contest victory crowns a spectacular week for Russia - in the space of eight days Russia have won the World Ice Hockey Championships, Zenit St Petersburg have won the UEFA Cup and now, Dima Bilan has won Eurovision.

So successful have Russia been that poor old Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s new President must be wondering if his job is just about telephoning people to offer his congratulations.

Anyway, in honour of Russia’s victory, I’ve updated the Every Russian Eurovision Video Ever page, to include Dima Bilan’s song, Believe.

Zenit St Petersburg lifted the UEFA Cup last night, after a well deserved 2-0 victory over Scottish side Glasgow Rangers.

In front of tens of thousands of Russian fans who had travelled to Manchester for the game, Zenit were clearly the better side. But, although dominating the early exchanges, Zenit were unable to pierce Rangers’ well organised defence - the bedrock of their UEFA Cup campaign so far - during the first half.

But on 72 minutes, a wonderful goal from Igor Denisov, who burst through the Rangers defence, turned the final decisively in Zenit’s favour.

Rangers tried to push for the extra goal, but all of their desperate attacks were repulsed by Zenit and even a Rangers penalty claim was turned down by the referee.

Konstantin Zyrinaov sealed victory, and the title, for Zenit wth a cool side-foot into the net four minutes into stoppage time.

Russia is, as you would imagine, ecstatic - the victory was important enough that Prime Minister Putin called manager Dick Advocaat after the match to congratulate him. (No word, though, of whether new President Dmitry Medvedev, who is apparently a Zenit supporter, made a congratulatory call).

Victory in the UEFA Cup will be a wonderful boost for football in Russia, and for St Petersburg in particular. They’ll be especially pleased that CSKA Moscow, who won this tournament back in 2005 can no longer lord it over them.  Although they will worry slightly that victory will attract the attention of Europe’s biggest clubs, who will be keen to poach Zenit’s best players, and their world renowned coach Dick Advocaat.

The only downside to the match was the news that one Russian fan was stabbed by Rangers fans during the match. He’s reported to be in stable condition, and out of danger, but this can only heighten tension ahead of the Champions League FInal in Moscow next week. Two English teams will be playing in Moscow, but there will be a segment of Russian fans who want revenge, and who may not make the distinction between English and Scottish fans.

By announcing they are to make Kvas in Russia, Coca Cola have confirmed that there is no market they are not prepared to take on.

Coca-Cola, who have spent two years developing their own special Kvas recipie, began production of Kruzhka and Bochka (Mug and Barrell) at the beginning of this month. According to Coca-Cola’s President, Kruzhka and Bochk will depart from Coca-Cola’s traditional production methods, in that it will be “a natural product with no preservatives.” Proud of its naturalness and tradtion , they plan to market their new Kvass with the slogan “Kruzhka and Bochka - Real Kvass.”

Personally, I would have preferred “Koka-Kvas”, but that’s just me.

Anyway, before anyone’s even tasted Koka-Kvas Kruzhka and Bochka, it’s received a mixed reaction from Russians. Predictably, there are those who are protesting about the “Cola-nization” of Russia but there are also quite a few entrepreneurial Kvas manufacturers who are delighted that Coca-Cola have entered the market. Nikola Volkov, Marketing Director of Deka told the Guardian.

“If their kvas is sold alongside Coke it will improve its image among young people and raise the whole sector.”

Kvas is the fastest non-alcoholic beverage market in Russia today - according to Canadean, a beverage research company, sales increased by 43 per cent to $461 million in 2007 - which makes it the market for Coca-Cola to get into. In fact, the market is growing so fast, that there are even rumours that Pepsi plans to enter, with it’s own Pepsi-Kvas.

But money is a secondary matter for the purists who read Siberian Light.

The real question is - will Coca-Kvas ever taste as good as the Kvas you get from yellow tankers in the street?

Time for another roundup of the best blog posts about Russia. But, before I start, first a warning, then some shameless self promotion.

Warning - has your blog been hacked?

At the beginning of March, someone hacked into Siberian Light.

A not very nice person (from Russia, as it happens) changed one of the pages on SL to redirect visitors to that page on to various pornographic sites. At the same time, thousands of other sites were hacked, and links added to this particular page on SL. At one point, SL had such a boost in the Google rankings that around 10-20,000 one handed surfers were visiting SL every day.

Want to see how many websites linked to me? Take a look at my technorati page. According to them, Siberian Light is now one of the most popular blogs in the world (and by far and away the most popular Russia Blog)…!

Once Google noticed, my search engine rankings dropped like a stone - at one point, I didn’t even rank for the search “Siberian Light”. Visitors from Google went from several hundred per day to less than 30.

Happily, I fixed the damage pretty quickly, but SL has taken an absolute hammering in the search engines and is only now beginning to slowly recover its rankings.

Similar hacks affected lots of other blogs - including some about Russia. So, if you are running wordpress make sure you check your blog and upgrade to version 2.5 if necessary.

More details here.

Do you twitter?

I’ve been playing around with the micro-blogging service twitter recently, to see if it’s any good.

Because each post is limited to a maximum of 140 characters (yes, that’s characters, not words) it encourages short, snappy posts.

At the moment I’m using it to post thoughts that are too brief to merit a full post here on Siberian Light.

You can check out my feed and follow me at: http://twitter.com/siberianlight

Neeka is also twittering, as Smetanka. Is anyone else?

Blog roundup

OK, enough warnings and twitterings, onto the blogs. And, be warned, there’s a bumper list of links below. I recommend settling down with a nice cup of coffee and working your way through them, one by one.

Sean takes the top spot this month. Or, to be more precise, the readers and commenters of Sean’s Russia Blog take the award for ‘most interesting discussion in absolutely ages’.

Take a look at Putin’s Historic Achievement and Avoiding This Heap of Memes for two of the most wide-ranging and knowledgeable discusions I’ve seen about Russia for quite some time.

And it took at least a hundred comments before the inevitable row broke out…

Everyone else has had a hard act to follow this month, but here’s my pick of the best posts:

• Russian War Tubas!
• Wintrhop 360 beats Da Russophile to the punch and posts her top 10 Russophile predictions. My favourite? Russia to become the new Scandinavia.
• Da Russophile fans will need to content themselves with the Top 10 Russophobe Myths for the time-being.
• Tim Newman deconstructs A Russian’s View of Britain and then goes on to ask if Russia’s mega-projects are realistic.
• The Turkish Invasion of Russia has stalled, so he’s moved on to an easier target - Ukraine: The Bridebasket of Europe.
• Da Russophile examines Putin’s Presidency in Polls. Lots of pretty graphs.
• Vladimir Gushchin reminisces about his childhood in Libya, where has parents worked at the Soviet embassy.
• Gushchin also laments the Russian aerospace industry being late to market, yet again.
• The Moscow Blog’s guide to getting around by Metro.
• Soviet May Day Postcards from Russian Kafe.
• And some Soviet Propaganda posters from Russophile.
• Two-Zero asks: Is Moscow becoming the New New York?
• All you need to know about the Русская Душа.
• Eternal Remont is now troll friendly.
• Mark MacKinnon explains why the Kremlin is pulling for Hillary.
• Otto talks about German and Jewish emigration movements in the USSR.
• Patrols of Russian strategic bombers may be on the rise, but nuclear submarine patrols are decreasing.
• Soviet Russia remembers Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.
• Mikhail Zadornov - Russia’s top satirist?

So, what do you think?  Did I miss anything?  If so, let me know by commenting below.

At 10:40am on 30 April 1945 Mikhail Petrovich Minin scrambled to the top of the ruined Reichstag, and raised the Soviet flag. Unfortunately for him, though, the flag came off the next day during a desperate German counter attack.

So, ever mindful of the benefits of a nice bit of propaganda, two days later on 2 May the Soviets sent two different soldiers and a photographer up to the roof to do it properly.

The two men in the picture above are Meliton Kantaria (holding the red flag) and Mikhail Yegorov (less glamorously holding up Kantaria). Both were chosen for political reasons - Kantaria because he, like Stalin, was a Georgian, and Yegorov because he was a Russian, and represented the glorious motherland.

The now iconic photograph was taken by Yevgeny Khaldei, a Ukrainian war photographer who had been planning the shot he saw as his ‘Iwo Jima’ throughout the German advance on Berlin. In fact, he was so determined to get the perfect shot that, unable to find a good enough Soviet flag, he used a red tablecloth instead. The hammer and sickle was painstakingly sewn on by Khaldei and his uncle, back in Moscow.

Khaldei continued to work as a photographer for many years - mainly for Soviet news agency TASS - until anti-semitism forced him into retirement.

Khaldei died in 1997, aged 80. Despite taking one of the most famous pictures in world history, he never saw a penny in royalties.