October 19, 1997 
This Date's Issues: 1294 •1295

Johnson's Russia List
#1295
19 October 1997
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
ALERT: No one will be switched to the JRL Weekly until
it actually exists. But contacting me helps me judge the
demand.
1. Reuters: Yeltsin aims to seal end to parliamentary row.
2. Boston Globe: David Filipov, Far from Moscow, overlords 
thrive.
3. Boston Globe: David Filipov, Regional ruler calls himself 
'democratic khan.' (Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of Kalmykia).
4. WP: Letter, Life Beyond Yeltsin: Policy, Not Personality.
5. AP: Last Pushkin Descendant Dies. (DJ: It would be very
nice if the content of JRL included more cultural items. Can
you help me with this?)
6. Reuters: Siberian bellwether sets political course.
(Election in Kemerovo).
7. The Independent (UK): The mafia beats Mir as a brilliant 
career. Phil Reeves on the hit film about a hit man that has 
fired the ambitions of Russian youth.
8. The Globe and Mail (Canada): Geoffrey York, Tajiks savour 
fragile peace. Holy warriors, diplomats, drug lords jockey for 
power.
9. The Economist: Russia’s Far East. Rotten to the core.]


********

#1
Yeltsin aims to seal end to parliamentary row
By Philippa Fletcher 

MOSCOW, Oct 19 (Reuters) - President Boris Yeltsin returns to the political
fray this week buoyed by the thought that he is well on the way to taming his
communist opponents. 
After a tense week in domestic politics during which Yeltsin made his
presence felt from behind the scenes, the 66-year-old Kremlin leader steps
back to the fore on Monday to try to seal a compromise with parliament over
his government's reforms. 
The Communist Party left what it likes to think of as a sword of Damocles
hanging over Yeltsin's cabinet when it decided on Saturday not to scrap a
parliamentary no-confidence vote planned for Wednesday until he has responded
to its demands. 
But many analysts say that the party blew its best chance of getting the
no-confidence motion passed when it postponed the vote last Wednesday after a
telephone appeal from Yeltsin, who had warned he would dissolve the
legislature if pushed. 
On Monday Yeltsin and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin will keep their side
of the bargain by holding conciliation talks with the head of parliament's
State Duma lower chamber, communist Gennady Seleznyov and the speaker of the
upper house. 
The Kremlin said Yeltsin, who has not been seen in public since he returned
from a Council of Europe meeting a week ago, hosted Canadian Prime Minister
Jean Chretien on Sunday for informal talks at a residence outside Moscow. 
Senior officials in Ottawa say Chretien intended to press Moscow on bids by
two Canadian firms to win billions of dollars of business in Russia at the
talks, which will continue on an official level in the Kremlin on Monday. 
Yeltsin is likely to face much tougher demands during meetings later in the
week with the leaders of other former Soviet republics this week aimed at
trying to revive the moribund Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). 
Many of the presidents of Moscow's former subject states have cast doubt over
the future of the Commonwealth, resenting what they see as Russian domination
of the forum. 
The leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan will meet Yeltsin in Moscow
on Wednesday before the full summit on Thursday grouping all 12 countries in
the Commonwealth to be held in Chisinau, the capital of the tiny southern
republic Moldova. 
The four are supposed to be aiming at close integration via a customs
agreement and free trade zone but rivalries over energy supplies and widely
varying attitudes to market reforms have hamstrung the both the grouping and
the CIS as a whole. 
``There were great hopes, but for the time being they have not been
justified,'' Interfax news agency quoted a unnamed top Kremlin official as
saying on Sunday, adding that Russia had a string of proposals to get things
going. 
In a sign diplomatic relations can improve within the former Soviet Union,
Yeltsin is expected to sign a landmark border deal with Lithuania during a
two-day official visit to Russia by the Baltic state's President Algirdas
Brazauskas starting Thursday. 
``It shows Russia is in the process of democratisation and creating good
relations with its neighbours,'' Brazauskas adviser Nerijus Germanas said in
Vilnius on Friday. 
Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, who has accused the
government of undemocratic domination of Russia's airwaves, threatened on
Saturday to keep up the pressure on the leadership to win more media time and
concessions on reform. 
``If promises are not fulfilled we always have the chance to bring them to
account,'' Zyuganov told Russian television after a party plenum, referring
to the pending no-confidence vote. 
But Alexander Shokhin, leader of the pro-government Our Home is Russia party,
told Interfax Zyuganov was just trying to save face, knowing that he would
win little of real substance from the government, which has pledged to stick
to its reforms. 
``The communists do not now want to bring the issue of a motion of no
confidence to the boil but at the same time cannot officially remove it,
their signatures, so as not to lose face,'' the agency said, quoting Shokhin.

******

#2
Boston Globe
19 October 1997
[for personal use only]
Far from Moscow, overlords thrive 
By David Filipov

ELISTA, Russia - The first time Kirsan Ilyumzhinov ran for the top post 
in the dusty and impoverished southern Russian republic of Kalmykia, he 
promised each voter $100 if he won - which he did, in a landslide. 
Buying votes is illegal in Russia. But this was 1993, and federal 
authorities in Moscow, 1,300 miles to the north, were too caught up in 
their own power struggles to complain. Besides, Ilyumzhinov, a wealthy, 
youthful and charismatic proponent of capitalism, was just the kind of 
person Kremlin market reformers wanted to see take power in the 
provinces. 
And take power he did. Ilyumzhinov (pronounced EE-loom-ZHEE-nov) paid 
the members of Kalmykia's old parliament to dissolve itself, and 
installed a new body that changed local laws to give powers more 
befitting of a medieval khan (chieftain) than a provincial governor in a 
modern democracy. He turned this Maine-sized, mainly Buddhist region of 
320,000 into a private business empire he calls ''Kalmykia Corp.'' He 
closed down opposition parties, independent newspapers and business 
rivals. He won reelection, in 1995, as the only candidate on the ballot. 
All of that, too, was illegal, or at least alien to the democratic 
principles proclaimed in Moscow. But again, the Kremlin did not try to 
stop him. Russian presidential elections were coming up, and incumbent 
Boris N. Yeltsin needed loyal regional governors like Ilyumzhinov to 
help get out the vote. 
Ilyumzhinov's rise to power shows how regional leaders in Russia have 
been able to trade loyalty to the Kremlin for broad economic and 
political autonomy. Often, the result has little to do with the market 
economy and the democratic political rules in Moscow, and much to do 
with the enrichment of ruling regional elites. 
''There has been a principle of feudal loyalty between loyal governors 
and the Kremlin,'' said Nikolai Petrov, a specialist on regional issues 
at the Carnegie Foundation in Moscow. ''The central government hasn't 
gotten involved in human rights and economic violations if the local 
leadership demonstrates its loyalty to the center.''
But for the people who live in Kalmykia, the Kremlin's realpolitik 
toward regional leaders has become a source of bitterness and despair. 
''Our country's democrats live inside Moscow's ring road,'' Zinaida 
Dordzhiyeva, one of Kalmykia's few dissidents, commented in an interview 
in the region's sleepy capital, Elista. ''They aren't interested in 
democracy spreading out to the regions.''
Today, Moscow would like to rein in the power it has allowed regional 
leaders, but the question of whether it can is a big one. The evidence 
indicates that the answer is no. 
''The central government can jump up and down and say we're going to 
take back these powers, but let's see them do it, and I don't think they 
can,'' said Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, a Princeton political scientist and 
author of a book on Russia's regional leaders. ''The central government 
has almost no control. The problem is that central institutions are 
incredibly weak.''
Concerned that the decentralization is preventing any coherent progress 
with economic reforms, the Kremlin has complained that the regions 
violated federal laws more than 240,000 times in 1996 alone. 
Of the 89 regions and republics that make up the Russian Federation, 24 
have negotiated power-sharing deals with the central government in 
Moscow. Some, like Kalmykia, oil-rich Tatarstan on the Volga and the 
huge, diamond-producing Siberian republic Sakha-Yakutia, have won the 
right to keep much of their earnings from tax revenues, fly their own 
flags, open foreign trade offices and follow independent economic 
policies. 
None of the regions claims full independence, not after watching 
separatist-minded Chechnya pounded into ruins by Russian jets and 
artillery in a two-year conflict that claimed up to 100,000 lives. But 
the other lesson of Chechnya, which remains in the hands of 
independence-seeking rebels, was that even all of Moscow's military 
force sometimes is not enough. 
This reality has allowed regional leaders like Ilyumzhinov to ride 
roughshod over Russia's constitution, while proclaiming loyalty to 
Moscow. 
''As long as there's no shooting and no protests on the square, they see 
no reason to think about acting against Ilyumzhinov,'' said Larisa 
Yudina, the editor of the only local opposition newspaper. Prevented by 
Ilyumzhinov from publishing in Kalmykia, Yudina has to print weekly 
editions in a neighboring region and smuggle them in by car. ''They say 
in Moscow: `We can't put him in prison, you elected him.'''
Other regional leaders have used their autonomy to rebel against federal 
policies they disagree with. 
The leader of the Sverdlovsk region in the Urals has introduced a local 
currency, the Ural franc, to serve as a cash surrogate. The Communist 
governor of the Volga region of Ulyanovsk has reestablished Soviet-era 
price controls and set up tightly observed trade barriers against 
neighboring Russian regions. And Yevgeny Nazdratenko, the governor of 
Primorsky region, on Russia's Pacific Coast, has threatened to go to war 
with China over a border dispute. 
In June, Yeltsin demanded that regional leaders obey Moscow, and said 
that rebellious governors would be removed. The president vowed to make 
an example of Nazdratenko. 
''I know there are a lot of bosses who got big powers,'' Yeltsin 
thundered at the time in a national address. ''They think they are far 
away from Moscow, and there will be no control over them. They are 
wrong.''
But it was Yeltsin who was wrong. Today, Nazdratenko is still in office. 
In July, following a unanimous vote in his favor by the Russian 
Parliament's upper house - which is made up of regional leaders - 
Nazdratenko told journalists that ''beyond any doubt, it is I who has 
the power, just as I had before.''
Instead of illustrating Moscow's power, the failed bid to remove 
Nazdratenko demonstrated its weakness in dealing with the regions. 
Yeltsin last month repeated his call for a nationwide crackdown on 
lawless regional leaders. This time, however, the Kremlin chose as its 
example not a powerful regional governor, but the mayor of a remote 
Siberian mining town of 140,000. Last week, police arrested Gennady 
Konyakhin, mayor of Leninsky-Kuznetsk, on charges of ordering three 
contract murders and illegally privatizing the city's market, which he 
had renamed after himself. 
Some observers, like the Carnegie Foundation's Petrov, say Konyakhin's 
minor status as a provincial mayor, and the fact that he had three 
previous criminal convictions before being elected mayor, made him easy 
prey for investigators. Cracking down on unruly regional leaders has 
proven more difficult. 
The Kremlin no longer has the levers of control - the Communist Party, 
the KGB secret police - that once kept regional elites in line. On the 
other hand, Moscow's history of lording it over the regions has created 
a suspicion in the provinces that plays into the hands of rebellious 
governors like Nazdratenko. Kremlin officials acknowledge that if Moscow 
had forced Nazdratenko's ouster, he would have easily been elected back 
to his old post. 
Because most of the governors are elected, they have a legitimacy that 
it would be hard for the Kremlin to undo legally. Yeltsin has tried to 
compensate in some regions by shifting powers to his personal 
representatives, but this ploy is under attack in parliament as 
unconstitutional. 
Yeltsin's government has also tried to push through legislation that 
would give the Kremlin more control over how federal funds are spent in 
the regions. But analysts say these laws will not be approved by the 
upper house unless they are significantly watered down. 
Most regional elites also have imposed controls over local media, which 
give them a public relations advantage in the struggle with the central 
government. And regional leaders usually form powerful alliances with 
local business leaders. Nazdratenko, for example, has close ties to the 
four enterprises that control 60 percent of jobs in Primorsky region. 
Meanwhile, Moscow is divided between Yeltsin's government, which 
proclaims market principles, and the Communist majority in parliament, 
which calls for a return to socialism. In recent weeks, both Yeltsin and 
Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov have appealed for the support of 
regional leaders in their debate over the government's 1998 austerity 
budget, which the Communists oppose. This allows regional leaders to 
play Moscow factions off against each other. 
Or, as Kalmykia's leader Ilyumzhinov once put it: ''This mess in Russia 
is advantageous to us.''

********

#3
Boston Globe
19 October 1997
[for personal use only]
Regional ruler calls himself 'democratic khan' 
By David Filipov

ELISTA, Russia - The president of this region, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, 35, 
has published a comic book autobiography in which he describes himself 
as a ''democratic khan.'' And he makes no secret of the fact that he 
controls nearly all his republic's economic activity. 
''Consider me the president of Kalmykia Corp.,'' he said in a recent 
interview in the influential Russian weekly Kapital. 
Kalmykia, a dusty tract of southern steppe, is a most unlikely power 
base. It has few of the natural resources of other Russian regions and 
until recently, was best known as a place where sheep outnumber people 
by 10 to 1. 
Ilyumzhinov, who in the early 1990s claims to have become a 
multimillionaire through a variety of business interests, was elected 
president in 1993 after making outlandish campaign promises: Kalmykia, 
which has little accessible oil or gas, would become ''a second 
Kuwait;'' every shepherd would have a mobile telephone; Elista would 
have a world-class international airport; Kalmykia's economy, dependent 
on sheep farms that lose thousands of acres annually to an advancing 
desert, would become a major producer of processed wool within a year. 
Four years later, Ilyumzhinov's one palpable accomplishment has been to 
win election as president of the International Chess Federation. Last 
year, Elista hosted the world championship match between Gata Kamsky and 
Anatoly Karpov. 
None of his campaign promises has been fulfilled. Kalmykians earn less 
than $70 a month, half the Russian average. Elista's cramped airport has 
one flight a day, on an outdated Yak-40 minijet, to Moscow. Aside from a 
new Buddhist temple and some brightly colored Chinese-style pagodas, 
Elista remains the drab provincial backwater it was in Soviet times. 
Three-quarters of the local economy comes from federal subsidies; caviar 
smuggling makes up another source. A refurbished wool-processing plant 
outside of town stands idle. 
Ilyumzhinov's personal affairs have gone much better. 
''The president's powers make him little different from a khan,'' the 
Carnegie Foundation said in a recent report on Russia's regions. ''The 
formation of all branches of power takes place with his participation. 
Everyone who has shown even a hint of personal opinion has been sent 
away long ago.''
A personality cult preserved by the local media presents Ilyumzhinov as 
Buddha sent to protect the Kalmyks, who were exiled from their homeland 
for 13 years by Stalin. Recollection of those hardships make even the 
hardest-hit Kalmyks want to support Ilyumzhinov today. 
''Sure, he made a lot of problems and has not delivered,'' said Sergei 
Badayev, an unemployed farmer in Komsomolsky, a town where the advancing 
desert has all but swallowed up the grazing land. ''But he is the only 
alternative for the Kalmyks.''
Ilyumzhinov's smile beams from portraits displayed in most public 
places. Local news media lavish praise on his every exploit, from his 
wild parties and joyrides across the steppe in his caravan of 
Rolls-Royces, to the visits with his friend, Iraqi leader Saddam 
Hussein. 
Ilyumzhinov declared a 1996 income of $1.1 million, of which he says, 
coyly, ''Some say I stole, others say I didn't.''
Even in Moscow, where a number of Cabinet officials declared incomes 
this year far greater than their paltry salaries, the figure turned 
heads. Sensing a violation of a Kremlin decree prohibiting elected 
officials from making money from their business interests, Russia's 
chief tax inspector paid a visit. But after being wined, dined, and 
presented with a prize stallion, all in front of news cameras, the 
inspector left and the inquiry subsided. 
Other investigations have had uglier endings. A team of top Interior 
Ministry officials that arrived in August to look into allegations of 
police abuses cut off its probe after one of its members, a police 
colonel, committed suicide by jumping out the fifth-floor window of 
Elista's police headquarters. 
Last month, a group of banking and Finance Ministry officials arrived to 
investigate numerous alleged violations, including a $70 million 
government credit that disappeared without a trace, and the alleged 
misuse of $800,000 in funds intended for pensioners as funding for the 
Kalmyk soccer team. 
The investigation collapsed when Ilyumzhinov and his entire local 
government left the republic for a vacation in the Crimea. 

*******

#4
Washington Post
18 October 1997
[destroy after reading]
Letter
Life Beyond Yeltsin: Policy, Not Personality

In his article "Russia Passes Bill Curbing Some Faiths" [front page, 
Sept. 25], David Hoffman draws attention to two fundamental aspects of 
U.S. relations with the Russian Federation: (1) the primacy of 
high-level diplomatic contacts and (2) the lack of a broad-based, 
multifaceted approach to policy.
Specifically, in its efforts to maintain peaceful relations with Russia, 
the Clinton administration has pinned its hopes on a single individual, 
Boris Yeltsin. During Mr. Yeltsin's campaign for a second term, the 
Clinton administration (and other Western powers) invested great sums of 
political and financial capital to ensure his victory. The recent 
accords signed between NATO and Russia, which allow for the latter to 
assume a consultative role in the defense alliance's decision-making 
processes, are largely predicated on the comfort derived from having a 
Russian president in office with whom the West believes it can 
understand and work effectively.
The policy positions taken by the Clinton administration have been 
politically efficient, to be sure. Yet one is left to question what 
might happen to U.S.-Russian relations when Mr. Yeltsin is gone. 
Moreover, as Mr. Hoffman elucidates, the United States and the West are 
without a leg to stand on when Mr. Yeltsin either decides, or is forced 
to decide, to take actions not in accordance with the wishes of the 
Clinton administration.
Both possibilities point to the myopic nature of current U.S. foreign 
policy. Without high-level attention paid to the "non-Yeltsin" elements 
of the Russian Federation, (i.e., the Constitutional Court specifically 
and the institutions fostering the rule of law in Russia in general) the 
United States is left to hope that in the future peace and cooperation 
between the two countries will define our relations. 
Thus, the United States and the international community must give 
greater attention to the development of governance in Russia that is 
based on the rule of law and not on the status quo of governance by 
presidential edicts. Russia is at a crossroads, as was the United States 
in the time of John Marshall, and it is essential that Russian political 
development follow the path that leads to the imperative of 
constitutionalism. 
All prospects of future peace between Russia and the West hinge on 
Russian republicanism, not on the hope of continuing to have "a man we 
can deal with" in office. From freedom of religion to the weakening of 
the mafia's power to inter-military relations, the strength and 
viability of the rule of law in Russia are necessary for peace and 
stability in U.S.-Russian relations. The Clinton administration must 
look beyond President Yeltsin to find the sources of future peace 
between Russia and the West.

SPENCER D. BAKICH
Charlottesville 

*******

#5
Last Pushkin Descendant Dies
October 18, 1997
MOSCOW (AP) - The last direct descendant of Alexander Pushkin,
Russia's greatest poet, has died at a Moscow veterans' hospital,
the Ministry of Culture announced Saturday.
Grigory Pushkin, the poet's great-grandson, died late Friday
after a long illness, the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted the ministry
as saying. He was 83.
Grigory Pushkin, a highly decorated veteran of World War II,
became a police officer after the war and later went to work for
the Pravda publishing house, where he helped collect his famous
ancestor's work.
Alexander Pushkin is perhaps the most beloved of all Russian
literary figures, and nearly every Russian can recite some of his
poems by heart. Among his best-known works are the epic poem
``Eugene Onegin'' and a play, ``Boris Godunov.''
Grigory Pushkin organized festivals of Pushkin poetry and toured
the country, delivering lectures about the Pushkin family.
In his will, Alexander Pushkin barred his descendents from
writing verse, but on a recent birthday Grigory recited the one
poem he had written during his life.
According to ITAR-Tass, Grigory Pushkin dreamed of living to see
the celebrations of his great-grandfather's 200th birthday, in
1999.

*******

#6
Siberian bellwether sets political course
By Peter Henderson 

KEMEROVO, Russia (Reuters) - A key Siberian region which is expected to help
fuel Russia's economic revival held its first gubernatorial election Sunday
in a closely watched vote that hinged more on personalities than policies. 
Coal miners and industrial workers in Kemerovo were choosing a leader they
hope can restore their once-rich province to greatness and rid it of
corruption. 
Turnout among the 2.1 million registered voters in the Western Siberian
region reached 50.7 percent, double the 25 percent needed to make the
election valid, two hours before polls closed, the electoral commission said.
Preliminary results are expected Monday, but the logistical problems of
gathering returns from a region half the size of France are considerable. 
Most of Russia's 89 regions want to beat crime and boost living standards and
are closely following events in the Kuzbass, as the Kemerovo area is
popularly known. 
"Kuzbass is a politicised region...What starts here spreads,'' favored
candidate Aman Tuleyev said as he cast his ballot and listened to a local
choir decked with military medals sing patriotic songs accompanied by
accordions. 
The outstretched arm of a statue of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin, much
more popular than in Moscow, four time zones west, stretched toward the doors
of the central voting precinct in Kemerovo, beckoning citizens to their civic
duty. 
No outright liberal reformers were running for governor of Kemerovo, whose
miners have long been admired as a workers' elite. Their strikes backing
President Boris Yeltsin after the fall of the Soviet Union galvanized Russia
into supporting democracy. 
The election was Kemerovo's first chance to choose its own governor after
years of rule by presidential nominees. It is the last of the regions to
switch to an elected governor. 
Russia, teetering on the edge of economic growth, will need the region's
metal industry and energy resources to thrive but Kemerovo must first clean
up its economy and reduce its high crime rate. 
``I have been talking about the mafia in Kuzbass since April,'' Tuleyev
opponent Viktor Medikov, a less well-known deputy in the State Duma lower
house of parliament, said by telephone. 
He says ex-Communist Tuleyev has not left the faith though he has resigned
from the party. But Medikov, 47, offers the same type of solution to local
problems -- instituting order without resorting to Moscow-style shock
reforms. 
Tuleyev claims the support of Yeltsin and the national Communist Party, a
sign political loyalties to reformers and opposition Communists are blurring
in the regions. The top local Communist refused to toe the party line and
endorse Tuleyev. 
Yeltsin named Tuleyev, 53, acting governor three months ago after firing his
previous appointee amid talk of corruption and economic problems which spread
poverty and bitterness. 
Voters of all ages throughout the day said the election hinged on personality
rather than programs. 
``I voted against everyone,'' said 22-year-old Alexander, who is in show
business. ``I've lived here a long time, and I don't trust them.'' 
But Tuleyev is popularly known in Kuzbass as ``our man,'' especially among
the older generation. 
``I know him,'' said 74-year-old pensioner Vasily Bolochev, who worked on the
railway when Tuleyev was the boss. ``His politics? Well, he is for the
people, but otherwise like all the rest.'' 

*******

#7
The Independent (UK)
19 October 1997
[for personal use only]
The mafia beats Mir as a brilliant career
Phil Reeves on the hit film about a hit man that has fired the ambitions 
of Russian youth 

ANY kindly uncle who dangles a child on his knee in Russia these days 
could be in for an unpleasant surprise if he asks little Ivan what he 
wants to be when he grows up. The answer is more likely to be assassin 
or racketeer than scientist or cosmonaut. 
The age when every adolescent wanted to be Yuri Gagarin is as distant as 
the stars themselves. That, at any rate, is the conclusion to be drawn 
from a survey of Moscow's senior pupils who were asked which professions 
they considered the most prestigious. The official beneficiaries of 
Russia's half-baked capitalism - accountants, lawyers and bankers - won 
overwhelmingly. But killing and crime made an alarming showing, coming 
in abovescientist, researcher, college teacher, clergyman, engineer, or 
space explorer. Alienated young Russians would, it seems, rather be in 
the mafia than on Mir. 
In the ideological vacuum and lawlessness that followed the implosion of 
Communism, teenagers are finding their own heroes, and their choice is 
not always particularly savoury. Chief among them is a young man called 
Danila. He is the fictional star of Brat (Brother), a home-grown movie 
that has acquired cult status among Russia's youth. 
"This is the number one movie in Russia," boasts Sergei Selyanov from 
CTB, the Russian company that made the film. It almost certainly 
influenced the survey results. The plot runs something like this: a 
sulky-looking young man (Danila) is discharged from the Russian army, 
and goes to St Petersburg to search for his elder brother. The latter 
turns out to be a mafia hitman. He pays his sibling to do a killing for 
him. Before long Danila is up to his neck in it. With no sign of 
remorse, he bumps off eight people, all nasty bullies, before leaving 
for a new life in Moscow. The End. 
This is not the stuff of a blockbuster. Yet the Russians are lapping it 
up: more than 400,000 video cassettes have been soldsince its release in 
May. Negotiations are under way in Germany, Holland and Japan for the TV 
and film rights. There are whispers of foreign prizes. "People are not 
only buying it, but they are talking about it, writing about it, and 
arguing about it," wrote the magazine Ogonyok, "Above all, they love it. 
This is the first film like this for many years." 
In a country with an average 500 contract murders a year and an epidemic 
of organised crime, it is a trifle disturbing to see such enthusiasm 
lavished on a film that glorifies both murder and vigilantism. But that 
is not the most pressing point. Little violence is shown. And, when it 
comes to body counts, it scarcely compares with the works 
of Schwarzenegger or Stallone. 
The difference is that Danila is not a moron muscleman who could only 
ever belong to cinema make-believe. Nor does he belong to the world of 
pastiche, such as Pulp Fiction. He is of a subtler, native species: an 
introverted youth who loves music and stalks St Petersburg's frigid 
cityscape, befriending and protecting tramps and prostitutes. For most 
Russians, he could be the lumpen-featured boy next door (his appearance 
seems to improve as the death toll mounts), except that he kills with 
about as much forethought as he would give to brushing his teeth. 
The advent of an amoral hero on Russia's cultural stage - an unthinkable 
event under Soviet Communism - has caused some soul-searching. In a 
plaintive article, Ogonyok challenges the "puritanical" Western 
assumption that screen baddies should always pay for their crimes as 
humbug. At least Russians are capable of admitting they admire a 
"perfect killer". The public likes Danila, the article goes on, "because 
the way he acts coincides with the way our folklore heroes acted; this 
is deep-rooted in our consciousness." 
Sergey Bodrov, the 25-year-old who plays Danila, argues that it is 
better that the public should worship a kind and gentle killer than an 
outright psychopath. "Itis good if our hero is popular because he has a 
different image to that of a killer. It is far better if such a hero - a 
man who protects women and the old - influences the minds of teenagers." 
Chillingly, however, the film has won other fans who - if the survey is 
to be believed - may soon face competition. 
"I was approached by a few bandits," said Mr Bodrov, "They said: 'That's 
how it is done, the way you showed it. That's how people are killed.' " 
Er, Bravo. 

*******

#8
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
18 October 1997
[for personal use only]
Tajiks savour fragile peace 
Holy warriors, diplomats, drug lords jockey for power 
By Geoffrey York

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan -- The black-bearded Islamic mujahedeen , daggers 
in their belts and Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders, were in for 
a shock when they descended from the mountains and entered the capital 
of Tajikistan last month.
Sashaying down the streets of Dushanbe were long-legged Russian women in 
short skirts, oblivious to the Koran's decrees on modesty. Russian 
soldiers were trundling about in armoured vehicles. Western evangelists 
were building churches and converting Tajiks to Christianity.
For six weeks now, the Islamic fighters have been warily eyeing the 
cosmopolitan chaos of their capital city. The uneasy coexistence between 
the rebels and the foreigners embodies all the contradictions of 
Tajikistan's divided society, where holy warriors and clan leaders are 
contending for influence with Russian military units, Western diplomats, 
drug traders, oil-pipeline planners and United Nations mediators.
In sharp contrast to neighbouring Afghanistan, the arrival of the 
Islamic rebels in this Central Asian capital has not yet triggered a 
cultural revolution. So far the Islamic opposition has been content to 
obey the terms of Tajikistan's peace agreement and bide its time until a 
parliamentary election ia held next year.
But although the peace accord has halted most of the savage warfare that 
has racked this former Soviet republic for five years, it has failed to 
produce a permanent peace. Bombs and terrorist attacks are increasingly 
common, and heavily armed renegade factions are resisting the peace 
process. The streets of Dushanbe are virtually empty after sunset, and 
sporadic gunfire echoes through the streets at night.
In the latest outbreak of violence, masked gunmen killed 14 members of 
the elite presidential guard on Thursday morning. A series of bomb 
explosions have struck Dushanbe since early September. Nobody has 
identified the attackers.
Tajikistan, a mountainous country of fewer than six million people, has 
acquired a strategic significance that goes far beyond its small size 
and landlocked location.
For the Kremlin, it is a bulwark against the Islamic fundamentalism that 
is perceived as a major threat to Russia's southern flank, especially 
after the military success of the fundamentalist Taliban in Afghanistan. 
With 20,000 troops in Tajikistan, the Russians have succeeded in 
maintaining an important foothold in the former Soviet empire in Central 
Asia.
For nearby Iran, which has a similar language and culture, its own 
growing influence in the Tajik mountains is a useful strategic passage 
to Central Asia's Islamic nations.
And for the United States and other Western powers, stability in 
Tajikistan could be vital to their dreams of exploiting the vast oil and 
gas wealth of Central Asia and the Caspian Sea.
Tajikistan is also a crucial link in the drug-transit route from the 
poppy fields of Afghanistan to the heroin addicts of Europe and North 
America. Without stability there, it could be almost impossible to 
achieve the goal of blocking the torrent of drugs flowing from 
Afghanistan to the West. Tajik warlords with links to the drug business 
are among the leading suspects in the bombings and terrorist attacks of 
recent weeks.
The current peace process, fragile and erratic as it is, remains the 
best hope for stabilizing the country. Since the June peace accord, the 
pro-Russian government of President Imomali Rakhmonov and the Islamic 
opposition coalition have become linked in the process that has ended 
full-scale military combat.
Under the peace deal, about 200 Islamic fighters entered the capital 
last month to guard the entourage of opposition leader Sayid Abdullo 
Nuri, who is now the chairman of a national reconciliation commission.
Some of the rebels are lounging around hotels in central Dushanbe, where 
they guard opposition offices. Others are based in a five-storey 
government building in the south of the city, where they swagger around 
with machine guns, daggers, grenades, bandannas, camouflage uniforms and 
sunglasses.
"We like it here in Dushanbe," one said. "We can go freely anywhere."
Many Tajiks, especially Western-oriented intellectuals in Dushanbe, are 
not so happy about the rebel presence. The International Red Cross, for 
example, lost several staff members when the fighters arrived. Afraid 
that the opposition might win enough power to impose Islamic laws, they 
fled to Russia and neighbouring Uzbekistan.
Most of the rebels are outsiders to the city, belonging to mountain 
clans with conservative traditions. This, too, has alarmed residents.
"People are scared by the appearance of the opposition," said Muzaffar 
Olimov, a political analyst. "They have beards and guns. Normal people 
are scared of people with guns."
In some regions, opposition commanders are reported to have established 
sharia courts to enforce traditional Islamic law. A growing number of 
women have faced punishment for dressing immodestly.
At their new base in Dushanbe, the rebels were infuriated when they 
discovered a nearby church where Western evangelists were preaching to 
Tajiks and converting them to Christianity. A confrontation erupted, and 
some rebels threatened to kill the evangelists. But the preachers 
managed to calm the fighters and keep their church open.
Officially, the Islamic leaders have taken pains to promise they will 
respect religious freedom.
"Our Islam is not like the Islam in Afghanistan or Iran or anywhere 
else," Mr. Nuri said in an interview. "Our people have their own customs 
and traditions."
Most analysts believe Tajikistan is not fertile ground for an Islamic 
revolution. In a survey of urban and rural Tajiks last year, only 1 per 
cent said they trusted the imam of their local mosque more than anyone 
else, while 25 per cent said they placed most of their trust in their 
clan leader.
Clan and regional loyalties, in fact, are a greater threat to stability 
than the Islamic groups. Several clans and regional factions have been 
excluded from the peace agreement. Indeed, many Tajiks see the agreement 
as merely a deal between the Kulyab region, which dominates the ruling 
circles, and the Karategin Valley, the stronghold of the opposition 
Islamists.
The government has promised to give 30 per cent of its cabinet positions 
to the opposition, and the two sides have issued an ultimatum to all 
renegade factions: they must decide by Nov. 16 to join the government or 
the opposition, or to disarm. 
"If not, the government and the opposition will neutralize them, destroy 
them," a UN spokesman said. "It will be a joint effort."
Both sides are optimistic about persuading the armed factions to disarm.
"If they don't want peace, forceful measures will be taken," said Zafar 
Saidov, a presidential spokesman. "The government has all the forces 
necessary to defeat them. If the government cannot resolve it, the 
opposition will help it."
The UN is planning to expand its mission in Tajikistan to monitor the 
peace process and supervise 10 assembly points where the opposition 
fighters will gather and disarm. The number of UN observers, now about 
45, will increase to 120 if the plan is approved.
Behind all this activity is the spectre of the Taliban across the border 
in Afghanistan. For years, Russian propaganda has fuelled fears of 
Islamic fundamentalism in the former Soviet Union. The Russians always 
portrayed the Tajik opposition as a fundamentalist group until the 
Taliban arrived in Afghanistan to demonstrate what a true fundamentalist 
movement can do.
Some Russian leaders have suggested that the Taliban could march across 
the border into Tajikistan and Uzbekistan if they achieve military 
victory in Afghanistan. Most analysts consider this an unlikely 
scenario, but certainly a Tajikistan weakened by civil war could be 
vulnerable to Taliban pressure.
It is not a coincidence that the Russians helped broker the peace 
agreement as soon as the Taliban emerged as a serious threat to capture 
Afghanistan. The Kremlin knew it needed a stronger Tajikistan to contain 
the growth of the Islamic fundamentalists next door.

******

#9
The Economist
October 18-24, 1997
[for personal use only]
Russia’s Far East 
Rotten to the core 
V L A D I V O S T O K 
Bad government is ruining what should be one of Russia’s richest regions 

SAVE that Vladivostok is one of the ugliest cities imaginable, 
consisting mainly of windswept concrete tower blocks in varying states 
of decay, it might evoke comparisons with Hong Kong or San Francisco. It 
sprawls across hills overlooking a great sheltered port. It has the 
Pacific at its feet. It has the vast natural resources of Russia’s Far 
East at its back. It ought to be humming with trade and investment. 
Instead, Vladivostok is a wreck. Its reputation for lawlessness and 
misery makes even hardy Russians wince. Most foreign investors look at 
it, shudder, and look elsewhere. What has gone wrong? The answer is 
painfully simple: bad government. 
The region’s notorious electricity-generating monopoly, Dalenergo, 
provides an example. Politically inspired mismanagement has made it one 
of the worst-performing utilities in the world. It cannot collect its 
accounts, service its debts or pay for its fuel. It cripples the region 
with power cuts. Lack of electricity alone has been enough to make 
ordinary life difficult in Vladivostok, and economic growth impossible. 
A second problem, less publicised but equally damaging, has been a 
customs bureaucracy cumbersome enough to frighten away legitimate trade. 
Cargoes in Vladivostok can take 12 days or more to clear the port. 
Duties are levied in unpredictable and seemingly arbitrary ways. “You 
can have two guys in the same room giving you different answers about 
what you have to pay,” says one shipper. 
A competent administration could have sorted out both those problems in 
six months. But Vladivostok does not have one. Primorsky Krai (the 
Maritime Territory), the region of which it is part, is a notorious sink 
even by the abysmal standards of Russian political life. The region’s 
governor, Yevgeny Nazdratenko, is a brutal populist whose idea of 
politics is to demand money with menaces from the federal government in 
faraway Moscow. Russia’s central government rarely complies, not least 
because transfers have a dismaying record of going astray once they 
reach the Krai. 
The pursuit of subsidies aside, Mr Nazdratenko’s main political interest 
lies in a vendetta with the well-meaning but eccentric mayor of 
Vladivostok, Viktor Cherepkov. This month has seen yet another attempt 
to oust the mayor. The regional parliament, a creature of Mr 
Nazdratenko’s, voted to appoint an acting substitute. Mr Cherepkov 
stormed off on sick leave and appointed his own man. The two acting 
mayors have squabbled ever since over who should have the right to 
mismanage the city. 
Hostility between governor and mayor has rendered impossible any 
concerted approach to the problems of Vladivostok. Social order has 
grown fragile. The city is not the sort of place where any but the 
bravest would want to get into a serious argument—or commit any serious 
money. A half-finished terminal building at the airport serves a 
warning. Firms from the Japanese city of Niigata put up the money for 
the terminal. When the shell had been completed, the Japanese were told 
their money had all gone, including the portion budgeted for fitting out 
the interior. There was nothing, apparently, the Japanese could do. Two 
years on, the terminal is a padlocked mess of concrete and broken glass. 
Not all is moribund. Primorsky Krai’s big fishing industry 
flourishes—mainly by exporting at least twice as much fish as it ever 
admits to the federal taxmen. The other industry keeping the local 
economy alive is small-scale trade. The Krai’s men deal in second-hand 
cars from Japan, the women in consumer goods from China. But police and 
customs men have grown greedier for fees, bribes and “fines”. One market 
trader says that such payments swallow up 80% of her gross profits, 
compared with 30% two years ago. 
Against that background, perhaps the most surprising thing about 
Vladivostok is the indestructible optimism among the businessmen who 
soldier on. The upturn may be three or five years away, they concede, 
but it will be mighty when it comes. 
Some of the biggest optimists are South Korean, led by Hyundai, which 
has just opened a $100m hotel and business centre in the city. It is “a 
symbolic project”, says its marketing manager. Korean firms talk of 
building a high-tech industrial park at Nakhodka, a port near 
Vladivostok—but only if the Russian government keeps promises to make 
Nakhodka a free economic zone. Two or three Korean entrepreneurs are 
opening workshops in Vladivostok to finish clothes for export to 
America. 
There are signs that the Russian federal government, frightened by the 
approach of winter, is trying seriously to knock sense into Dalenergo. 
Freight tariffs on the Trans-Siberian railway are starting to fall, 
which may help Vladivostok compete for container traffic to Europe. Big 
new oil developments are under way in the neighbouring island-region of 
Sakhalin. Money from these may well spill over into Vladivostok. Even Mr 
Nazdratenko has been a little more emollient since a scary week or two 
in June when it seemed President Boris Yeltsin might try to dismiss him. 
Instead, Mr Yeltsin has settled for appointing a tough new presidential 
representative in the Krai, Viktor Kondratenko, previously the local 
boss of the federal security service. 
But in the short run optimism is probably misplaced. Vladivostok is 
unlikely to prosper greatly so long as Mr Nazdratenko rules the roost. 
And, for all his faults, his voters still like him—and believe his 
claims that Moscow has engineered their misfortunes. They applaud his 
tirades against China, Primorsky Krai’s neighbour, which he says is 
stealing Russian wealth and land. If Mr Nazdratenko wants another term 
when an election comes round next year, he will probably get it. But, 
some time after that, his voters will notice that much of the rest of 
Russia, let alone the rest of the Pacific region, is leaving Vladivostok 
further and further behind. And, with luck, they will start to 
understand why. 

*******