guity you know it's kind of constructive ambiguity you might even say in their minds at least about policy here and i think they did that in particular and successfully in a way because they didn't want to see large cap large capital short term kind of hot money inflows russian economic growth has been slowed with an expected in two thousand and ten while inflation has been higher and the ruble hasn't a british aid to the as much as it could given the current oil prices but economists believe the country is well placed bank for instance predict g.d.p. growth of five percent in two thousand and eleven significant ruble appreciation and higher capital inflows that's a mechanical of a business aren't. and that's out there for this hour you can always find more business stories on our web site that's r t dot com slash business stay with us.

more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. challenge corporation to rule the day.

in the countries. in the united states. to take control of. obama's.

difficult for the president. critics. people would. regard it as one of their greatest. leo tolstoy has made a significant. history one hundred years. his award winning biography. just as valid as it was. the seventh of november two thousand and ten is the hundredth anniversary of player

tolstoy's death and to mark that out of our story i'm talking to one of his biographers a n. wilson he wanted award in one thousand nine hundred eight for a biography of tolstoy and wilson thank you very much for talking to r.t. now first as a biographer what attracted you to tolstoy here's a giant he was the great giant of the novelistic form greater even than dostoyevsky who i suppose of the two great try and so that's what attracted me to him under the us and so to really become a serious reader in my teens it was his novels are so regarded as the greatest tell stories books i'm thinking specifically of war and peace consistently tops these lists of the best book ever do you agree with these kinds of rankings you can't really compare war and peace with any other novel. himself so it wasn't a novel and it isn't really a novel it's a book about everything. yes all the years you know five campaign culminating in

the battle of our salutes and then the invasion of eight hundred twelve but the further it goes on you realise that it's a novel about the whole of russia and also it's a novel about personal regeneration. so it's really about everything but there aren't many books that you can say are really about everything tolstoy was as much a philosopher as a writer what do you think in compass is his philosophy in life well i mean it's a very interesting question what compass is tolstoy's philosophy of low and i answer it in two ways if you think of that. really quite early work of his cousin aki the cossacks there's a moment in that window lane in who's been hunting. for the day and it's all covered in that it's beautifully described fantastic scene and he's all alone he doesn't quite know where he is in the caucasus covered in that very hot

very sweaty and he suddenly gets down in the hole. where the itself has been lying and he has this strange feeling of life. in. which he's trying next to. he's not sure whether the future life whether there's life after death but the significance of life itself for each one of those mosquitoes are biting him just as for him just as for the. warriors and justice of the muslims that they're supposed to fighting there's an extraordinary significance in every single life and he has all his thoughts about being an heiress to trapped being a member of society in wall street they mean nothing to him what matters is this feeling of the sacredness almost the holiness of life and the importance of trying to live for other people now that's a very very early story and then when you get to the end of tolstoy's life and career the thousands of people who were following his coffin when he died and will

no doubt get on to this. they weren't following him because he was a great novelist they were following him because he had taught not only russia over the world how it ought to live how we should be less selfish how we shouldn't be wrecking the planet we shouldn't be fighting wars so this early story in which again has a sense of of the goodness of life the significance of life and how we should live more simply and more response to nature and to our conscience that really runs through the whole of his life and he essentially and underwent this transformation didn't he from high society to spiritual on a case told well what i was trying to say by mentioning because archy is that it's always there from the beginning actually this feeling that we are called to a deeper truer life away from the absurdity of society and so forth the tolstoy family were very grand i mean some of them were advisers to the emperor the family

. on whom old principle construct more in pieces based his maternal grandfather was also very grand military and political figure tolstoy himself lived almost entirely in the country at his estate and yes my apologies. he never really. played a big part in the political life unlike his cousins cotton peter. but you're right to say there was this huge crisis in the middle of his life when you'd finished and i trained you know. which was a fantastic success as was war and peace and i made it very very rich which he hadn't been before he'd been land it and it had peasants and it had a states but he wasn't very rich he then became a multimillionaire as we would say and he had a crisis what's the point of it all those the moment in his autobiography where he said he couldn't even be in a room in the room with a piece of rope for fear that he would want to hang himself he then thought the way to live was to try to be like a peasant and for

a few years he pretended that he'd by the way set up schools not only on his interstates but for vast acres and miles around the us and i probably on the starting education he was the great pioneer of russian education and even now they sometimes in some russian schools use his p.c. to teach people to read. so it wasn't just sort of pious try dreaming but having pretended to be a peasant he then went back to being the reasonable alignment man he was and he thought what is due to christianity and the church is teaching on ethics how to live. the miraculous stuff meant less to him and it was out of that was he involved his core philosophy of life which as you say is an excuse and he felt that. all governments not just the governments of the stars though they were particularly evil in his eyes all governments are based on violence and the

only way that we as individuals and we as society is to get away from a system of the military of war solving problems of torture is in ourselves to forswear violence but also to forswear the idea of authority so he was an extremely subversive figure and an extremely conflicted person if i'm not mistaken here there's an anecdote that i remember hearing about about tolstoy that he was walking along the road one day and he came across a gang of rock breakers yet people who break rocks with other rocks and he thought to himself. how much he envied them because as poor working people they were so much closer to god than he was and you can imagine this rock breaking hearing this story anything here you have no idea of the privations and hardships of my life and there was a great deal of un realism about him which was why his wife for example fantom so maddening in the second half of his life and you know for example in part of the

great creed he built up apart from being a vegetarian a pacifist and so forth was the six itself was evil. well he was an extremely highly sexed man and even when these tracts calling upon the world to force sex were coming out his wife was having her tenth or eleventh child and so forth making her look absolutely ridiculous of course as well as making him look ridiculous and did his contemporaries frequently see him as ridiculous well he. ridiculous isn't really a word one uses of these great giants and where one. does mean feature of him is that he didn't have a sense of humor certainly not about himself but i think over the six question he did make himself ridiculous you know tolstoy was a deeply religious man but he did get into quite serious conflict with the orthodox church well he was. religious in this way that you get in the novels i think if you think of pierre or prince andrew in peace if you think of the of the in in

anatolian in that that worldly young man. soldiers or land innocent people very much like himself as to trap. with women trouble and all that and then they reach a crisis in their lives and they turn to what's all about a member prince andrew thinking he's dying. and then what it's all about is this great stride in terms of. identifying with the mystery of nature tolstoy was full of that to the end of his days where he parted company with the church was over the claim that for example the miracles were literally true or that the church had the right to dictate to men and women what they believed in what they thought and how they should behave and so he fell out with the church in a very very big way and they eventually after he wrote the novel called resurrection which has a lampoon of the holy liturgy of the orthodox church in it the extreme eunuch cases

him didn't make any difference to him because he hadn't been going to communion anyway but he was excommunicated it meant he couldn't have a church funeral. which was quite a big deal in eight days it was a big deal for his wife who was who was an orthodox it wasn't for him he never wanted to be buried in church ground anyway he was buried in the place that is the states where his brother thought he'd buried this green stick when they were playing it but a game in childhood on the green stick was written the secret of how we should live the secrets of human happiness so it's very appropriate he should be buried there. and we are celebrating the hundredth anniversary of tolstoy is that what celebrate well to celebrate is the greatest novelist who has ever lived but also this man who was guided with a passion for the truth and he alone stood up against this extremely powerful regime. and told the truth in a world of lies and this was a fantastic example for russia because in all the terrible years which followed his

death he died in one thousand. the civil wars the first of all the civil war the revolutions and so forth the tradition of tolstoy. lived and it's enabled the dissidents when they courageously began to emerge and stand in this times to look at his example and see that it's energy is one voice telling the truth look at a lot of our look at social needs and they would guided by the influence of tolstoy and that's really what we have to celebrate. and you said that he was in essence an a case if told so he'd be alive today what do you think he would be doing so. he wouldn't be very surprised that for example the americans just as the russians did before were trying to defeat the afghans nobody's ever defeated the afghans so he behalf amused by that he wouldn't be very surprised that the bag of the world. had made a complete mess of things and that this is what we call civilization was collapsing

because of the bangs and he would be saying just what he was saying in one thousand and two female self live will simply try to love people try to live for those. and wilson thank you very much thank you. i.

was. just. children now see a sow's murder by the end of elementary school five hundred thousand by the age of eighteen. showing video game. twenty four hour news channels is no team every day formulate a staple. in. shakespeare those who say this is think of. the artistic and journalistic features. you see but i have been coming. down from heaven and.

mormon in a plane what. makes the pill easier to swallow. everybody was. the headline. for hundreds of russians in the countries of the far east. spearheaded by in. full swing with two ships already free and three more still. in the united states republicans to take control of congress where they now outnumber obama's democrats experts warn the change could make life more difficult for the president has lost his majority on capitol hill for the first time in two

years. in the west bank start naming st paul and heroes but critics say the scheme is glorifying people with. one street name dark or an infamous bomber who killed. as we reported just a bit earlier junior hockey team has beaten canada five to three and now they're the world champions for the rest of the sporting highlights. hello there thanks for watching the sporting this is what is coming up. another name heads to k h l n god climb to the summit with victory over all. this city a two points behind munchie an i.q. pro bowler school at arsenal. reaching we high rushing teddy she

said to him are useful to get. now the top of the table of the k h l seems to be changing every day at the moment is now even god who are the leaders after they trying for nil on wednesday. bryce that the god replaced rock might see the sun next month of course with just behind after that over time when you could at. least also got a win in overtime against all who had to come from behind twice but eventually fell to so close we're not hang on to the coattails of the top great despite a four three sheet out loss of bodies balls up there with them falling dead she won when i reported side. and nothing can be got the better of simply yet every. now in english premier league city an arsenal played out a goal destroy at the emirates and the game where they going to hit the woodwork several times and both sides finished the game with ten men sun yet it's about

letters sent to the final minutes after a confrontation the point put city within two points of manchester united to do have two games in hand elsewhere chelsea lost to wolves will sing well with an angolan in the minutes not when and to the relegation zone while the blues stay fit everton go to choose one win over spurs coleman was a last minute new castle hit by cost west ham despite the absence of their star striker andy carroll leon best scoring a hat trick but a three one win over little. johnny scoring twice both and i'm working through one a page and sunderland out of one a win over ten man aston villa who had them all yes he said. probably stay with football because when you face people not seniors premier league is wrong with didio ac milan say their strike is heading back to brazil and he's in talks with his hometown club where it's reported he's about to sign. the deal but when rovers had expressed an interest in signing the former world footballer of the year.

switching to tennis and the cat open where fourth seed there were jenkins safely through to the last eight the four seed mark in a minute break sets and joined rafael nadal in the next round after he came from a set down to be laughter and also through to the next stage is world number two roger federer he looked like a bit times before coming through the market. on the face be deployed skipper of rights in the last. good c. joe will frequently come to be. junior the son of the world record breaking pole vaulter of the same name and was no match for the big show entrenched into song one sixty six to cruise into the future five. just as the new tennis season is getting underway there are a number of exhibition tournament taking place one such event is in taiwan and it has featured the former greats on the agassi marat safin as well as the current world number ten mikhail youzhny usually last tasted success in october the middle

age you know you can if you play the seven for a championship now the twenty eight year old russian is hoping to add more consistency to is going to try to stay in the top ten. for the big room before the improbable. and you really need to grab. my throat. through. a little bit more gutsy. but i can see usually a fellow russian marat safin will prior alongside each other at the exhibition tournament south bend over might be a bit rusty he retired after the two thousand and nine paris masters and is currently busy helping the russian olympic team prepare for london two thousand and twelve. for the things that i'm doing right now and so most notably the sports. president because he also became vice president in the run as.

far away from where we want to be but russia has had its fair share of tennis stars recently but is hoping for a bit of success in a new form of the game tennis the country's cold climate isn't exactly ideal but the russian tennis federation is keen to promote it is only expected. the western part of russia is not your typical place. especially in winter when it's minus ten sides and they could only be found on the pavement so that they would not slip and fall however that hasn't stopped in st petersburg holding a christmas tournament. this force was born in northern italy over thirty years ago particularly in rivendell a place the world's top beach tennis players still call home today a resort holiday makers call it the scene of their people hitting

a tennis golf paddle on the beach well it's now an official sport with established rules or regulations one that's gaining popularity in colder places like russia as well what can be done and should not be city only started playing beach tennis and we don't have full racquets in full people now take a look at how many people they had for the eighth inning many people a curious ticket to try and find it fan and that's what we're doing we have numbers of people who wish to try out because it's bad because it's easy. well fun or not beach tennis is starting to attract at least from its much older sibling regular tennis while it's on the three years old in russia drastically as an infant stage the country's national teams are already competing for top honors on the international scene county dominated by its release. well it's late outstanding results are tough to beat alexander crouch did manage to come close in two thousand and nine by winning silver at the european championships but it is not

a scrappy little italians have this hour fifteen years now so they are obviously believe. doing it. but i haven't had the opportunity maybe he lives in moscow for instance we only have outdoor facilities themselves get but it's a great thing that we now have an indoor facility in st petersburg we can keep training in winter to making beach tennis official in russia is a major push towards advancement into the masses but will that be enough to make it popular in the biggest con fan or much of which is covered by snow six to nine months out of the year all this the not as this new sport requires some infrastructure investment to adjust to the harsh climates in russia and make any headway in international tournaments and this is where private capital comes to the rescue namely a former athlete himself and now a successful entrepreneur. who founded at the sports center in st petersburg put some of his sure present us there we originally ran a food business and our first profits were spent on providing for our families and

to maintain a decent standard of living today luckily we can move forward and don't need to address these revival and what we'd like to do is find a way to do business in the areas of personal and professional with all that put together business. and fun too why not st petersburg has always been on the forefront of change in russia and each tennis is one fun example the city is now the center of the sports during the koehler season the russian language although large the cold can still provide a natural habitat for beach tennis not only in south or cities like tsotsi but in st petersburg as well as. tennis doesn't require that much investment in infrastructure where we are the go finland is just not northern italy where you can easily. each tennis grounds in the summer you don't need anything big on the other hand what you see here is in a way revolutionary peter bergen has had a history of revolutions and this is

a new revolution that has happened before you see some of beach schools more in the country's northern capital. well said their revolution indeed russian tennis players like dinners when i get a coffee go and maria sharapova to name just a few have already made a name for themselves in the regular game will there be colleagues follow suit and make russia a major player in this sport well the abundance of tournaments in twenty eleven will make that evident room on cost r.t. st petersburg. and i've got time to give you some boxing is heavyweight champion that may klitschko will fight britain after all the pair were defying last month that klitschko scored it off at the last minute up to picking up the stomach in free however the i.b.s. and champ has now agreed to face his or on a fourth the. classic consequence that he has any potential bat with there will be a champion david haye up and he had a unification fight at around the same time that we're now after like

a little longer behave it's. so that is all sport for now. oh yeah. it's not backyard i'm not an atlanta bid we are not i'm not trying to prop up and then spread all over the country. virtually all terrorists today are muslim do we have the right to make such provocative statements and the muslim schools have the right to exist. in defined new york city on our.

cool.