March 6, 1998  
This Date's Issues:    2095  • 2096

Johnson's Russia List
#2096
6 March 1998
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Ray Smith: Pipes on Yeltsin-JRL #2095.
2. Wallace Kaufman: Change at MinAtom Is Not Clear Cheer.
3. Reuters: Chubais Wages War on "Crony Capitalism."
4. Fred Weir on folk medicine.
5. Moscow Times editorial: Sale of Land Is Necessary, Painful Step. 
6. AP: Russian parliament fumes at first land auction.
7. Financial Times (UK): Greg McIvor, Business in Russia: 
Balancing risk and reward.
8. Reuters: Zyuganov: Clever, Pretty Women "Frightful."
9. RFE/RL NEWSLINE: CHUBAIS SLAMS CAMPAIGN AGAINST HIMSELF, AUTHORITIES
STILL 
INVESTIGATING 'BOOK SCANDAL,' KORZHAKOV AGAINST ANOTHER YELTSIN RE-ELECTION
BID,
and ZYUGANOV TO COOPERATE WITH RADICAL COMMUNISTS. 
10. Interfax: Chernomyrdin Calls For Unconventional CIS Development Steps.
11. RIA Novosti: IGOR SHABDURASULOV: VIKTOR CHERNOMYRDIN'S WORDS IN
CONNECTION WITH THE EVENTS IN RIGA ARE "AN OFFICIAL STATEMENT
AND NOT AN EMOTIONAL SPLASH.
12. Interfax: Duma Wants President To Get Tough On Latvia.
13. Trud-7: Nadezhda Nadezhdina, SOS against a background of love.
(Domestic violence).
14. Reuters: Soviet Submarine Joins Capitalist Cause in Florida.] 

*******

#1
Subject: Pipes on Yeltsin-JRL #2095
Date: Fri, 6 Mar 98 
From: ray.smith@ndf.org (Ray Smith)

I think Pipes' comments on Yeltsin miss the mark. Yeltsin is a leader, 
not a manager. Leaders have to be judged on two attributes: the validity 
of their vision and their ability to pick subordinates who can move that 
vision toward reality. Ronald Reagan shared many of Yeltsin's 
managerial deficiencies, but he was a leader. Jimmy Carter might have 
been a great manager, but he was no leader. 
As for the musical chairs in the cabinet, that is hardly unknown in 
Western democracies. It is also common practice in major Western firms 
that have had disappointing quartely results. Commentators do not 
usually attribute such decisions to the CEO's psychological instability. 
While I don't think commentary on Yeltsin should gloss over his 
weaknesses, it should be relevant to his real role and consistent with 
standards applied elsewhere. 

*******

#2
From: "Wallace Kaufman" <wkaufman@sprintmail.com>
Subject: Change at MinAtom Is Not Clear Cheer
Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 

In the March 5 Electronic Telegraph Alan Phillips is too cheerful about
the changes at MinAtom. It is quite true that Western diplomats who had to
work with Mikhailov were intellectually and physically disgusted with the
arrogance of a man who flaunted his power, seldom listened well, and
literally blew smoke in the faces of foreign negotiators. It is no secret
that Westerners negotiating with Russia on non-proliferation, Chornobyl and
other nuclear safety matters not only welcomed but cheered Mikhailov's
departure. His continuing presence evidenced that Yeltsin was holding onto
the worst kind of Soviet megalomaniac.
Phillips, however, misleads readers when he writes, "The new atomic
energy minister was named yesterday as Yevgeny Adamov, a 58-year-old
scientist best known for his role in cleaning up the consequences of the
1986 explosion at the Chernobyl power station."
I believe this is the same Adamov whom the Ukrainians invited to the
G-7 meeting on Chornobyl in 1994. He shocked the group by using his
luncheon address to lay out an unflinching defense of Chornobyl. 

*******

#3
Chubais Wages War on "Crony Capitalism" 
Reuters
6 March 1998

MOSCOW -- Anatoly Chubais, the "commissar" of Russia's liberal market
reforms, launched a counterattack on his powerful foes on Thursday by
saying that the "crony capitalism" they favor would lead the country to
collapse. 
In long interviews with the respected Kommersant Daily and the mass
circulation Moskovsky Komsomolets published on the same day, the
beleaguered first deputy prime minister portrayed himself as a man who
refuses to bow to business and media barons. 
Chubais described what he called enormous pressure on himself and his
relatives by his foes seeking to discredit him. They were digging up his
past, he said, back to age 11, and his mother had had to give up answering
the telephone. 
"Not to mention that all phones, including those of my wife's friends,
are bugged, that money is being offered for any negative information about
my past, present and future," he said. "Fantastic, enormous resources are
pumped into it." 
He added he had discussed with his friends whether or not there would be
an attempt on his life but declined comment on the decision, taken by
President Boris Yeltsin this week, to remove bodyguards from him and other
deputy premiers. 
"All this is extremely painful but this is a basic element of the price
you have to pay to achieve a result," he said. 
He did not link any name directly with those actions but made clear his
main enemy was Boris Berezovsky. 
Berezovsky was the driving force in a loose union of financial magnates
who put aside their bitter rivalries to help Yeltsin win presidential
re-election in 1996. They worked together with Chubais, who ran Yeltsin's
election campaign. 
Chubais and Berezovsky fell out bitterly last year over the
privatization of the Svyazinvest telecom giant. Berezovsky and his allies,
including powerful media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky, said Chubais had helped
a rival finance group to win the tender. 
Chubais denied the charges, saying he worked in the state's interests
and the company went to the highest bidder. 
The war between Berezovsky and Chubais has been so bitter that even
Yeltsin's personal interference failed to stop it. 
Berezovsky says Chubais carries out reforms ruthlessly, in the style of
Bolshevik commissars who spared no one. 
Chubais retorts by saying Berezovsky and other "oligarchs" want to force
their own rules of the game on to the state while he, Chubais, is there to
protect its interests. 
Referring to the Asian financial crisis, he told Kommersant that Russia
would face "a collapse worse than in South Korea" if his foes had their way. 
He said they favored "crony capitalism" in which the biggest firms
practiced non-transparency, had cozy ties with government and played by
different rules to those under which less privileged companies operated. 
He said such a situation had led to the crises in South East Asia. "I
close my eyes and it is so similar to us." 
Chubais, a brilliant administrator and much respected in the West, lost
some of his prominence last year after a scandal, initiated by the media
controlled by his opponents, over high fees he and his allies accepted for
a still unpublished book. 
He has kept a low profile since then but Thursday's interviews showed he
was ready to fight back. 
"The part of my life which does not change is that I have work but no
life, life as it is understood by a normal human being," said Chubais, in
government since 1992 with a short break in 1996. 
"(But) it is worth it -- to prove that not all state officials are ready
to dance to the tune of big money, that normal people have a sense of
self-respect." 

*******

#4
From: fweir.ncade@rex.iasnet.ru
Date: Fri, 06 Mar 1998 
For the Hindustan Times
From: Fred Weir in Moscow

MOSCOW (HT) -- When Olga Baranova was wheeled into the
delivery room of a Moscow maternity home last year, she asked for
something to ease the pain. The doctor offered hypnosis, which
she declined, and said there was nothing else available.
Yegor Chuffrin, a 27-year old street vendor, went to his
local clinic recently with a serious burn on his arm and was told
to put a urine compress on it -- preferably one made with baby's
urine.
On his doctor's orders, 63-year old Gennady Svetlichny
has for years treated his bad heart with extract of valerian
root, a herbal tranquillizer, purchased over-the-counter in any
Russian pharmacy.
None of these people claims to find anything unusual in
their experiences. All were brought up under the Soviet health
care system, which routinely drew on folk traditions to
compensate for its crippling shortages of modern pharmaceuticals
and hi-tech medical equipment.
Today Western medicines and treatments are increasingly
available for those who can pay, but a crumbling public health
system and the plunging purchasing power of the majority have led
to a resurgence of cheaper herbal remedies.
Some medical experts argue that the persistence of folk
tradition in Russian medicine is an advantage.
``In the West there is insurance-funded medicine, so
doctors have even gone overboard in using the most expensive
treatments for everything,'' says Dr. Vladimir Kukess, director
of the Traditional Medicines Centre, a branch of the official
Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.
``In Russia poverty forbids such a generous use of
resources, so we must utilize the body of knowlegde we have and
the medicines that are available.''
In this respect Russia is closer to India and other Asian
countries, where traditional healing techniques are used
alongside modern ones and retain the confidence of the community,
he says.
Mr. Kukess says that for mild, everyday complaints such
as colds, heartburn or acne, traditional treatments are often as
good or better than the imported Western-made chemical
preparations that nowadays flood Russian markets.
But he's more cautious about serious illnesses.
``At least 60 per cent of the world's medicines come from
natural sources, but science measures, tests and verifies them,''
he says. ``It's crazy to try to treat deadly diseases with
something out of the garden.''
The Russian parliament's health commission is drafting a
law that would order the medical establishment to make room for
traditional healers.
``The best achievements of folk medicine should be
integrated into the Russian health care system,'' says Viktor
Kolesnikov, an MP who chairs the commission.
Parliament will debate the bill later this year.
Even without a law, Russian doctors routinely prescribe
garlic for colds or flu, valerian extract for insomnia or high
blood pressure. They recommend chewing ginger for digestive
trouble, sage to ease a toothache.
For teenage skin disorders, there is an easy to make
lotion from birch leaves, chamomile and liquorice root.
``Herbal medicines are more popular than ever,'' says
Yelena Kruchina, a pharmacist who has worked in the same Moscow
apothecary for the past 19 years.
The shop has one case displaying imported Western
over-the-counter medications. Several others are stuffed with
dried leaves, grasses, flower bulbs, roots and multi-coloured
liquids in plain little bottles.
``People want traditional medicines partly because they
haven't got much money but also because they trust them more,''
she says.
``Russians are closer to nature than other people. Almost
everyone knows something about natural healing, and that's what
they go for.''

*******

#5
For more articles from The Moscow Times, check out their website at
www.moscowtimes.ru

Moscow Times
March 6, 1998 
EDITORIAL: Sale of Land Is Necessary, Painful Step 

The sale of land in the Saratov region Thursday marks a crucial step
down the path to private ownership of land. But no one should have any
illusions that it will be an easy or speedy process. 
The land sale was carried out under pioneering legislation by the
Saratov regional government, reflecting a trend across Russia that offers a
way around the deadlock on the issue at the federal level. 
Russia does have plenty of private land ownership. It is after all a
right guaranteed under the Russian Constitution. 
In the early '90s, the old Soviet-era collective farms were renamed as
joint-stock companies and handed ownership of most of the land. A few small
farmers also managed to obtain allocations of private land under
infrequently used procedures for breaking up the collective farms. 
But the State Duma's refusal to pass legislation governing the rights of
landowners has all but stopped the development of a normal market in
private land. Farmers can own land but, paradoxically, they cannot sell or
mortgage it. 
Rejection of private land ownership is a shibboleth for the Communists
who control the Duma. Russia's conservative and aging rural population are
also deeply suspicious of change. 
But the lack of clear procedures for the sale of land has retarded the
restructuring that is essential for the Russian countryside to get back on
its feet. Farmers who work efficiently need to be able to acquire more land
from those who do not. Farmers must be able to borrow against the security
of saleable land that has a market value. 
The legal ambiguity of the past few years has only forced this process
underground. Farmers engage in gray-market leasing deals and operate
through false identities. The lack of open prices opens the door to fraud.
In Saratov, at least, this is now a thing of the past. 
But if the movement toward an open market in land is positive, it will
not necessarily be without pain. Just as thousands of gullible city
dwellers were tricked into selling their apartments for a pittance, many
desperate country folk will also berobbed. For instance, the directors of
collective farms will likely find ways to sell collectively owned land and
put the proceeds into their own pockets. 
It will not, however, be the federal government's problem. The reformist
regional governments that are now passing laws on the sale of land will
have to deal with the likely growth of impoverished, landless rural
dwellers. Hopefully, this will be outweighed by the improvements in
agricultural productivity that private land will bring. 

******

#6
Russian parliament fumes at first land auction
03/06/98 

MOSCOW (AP) - Indignant over Russia's first public auction of farmland
since the Bolshevik Revolution, hard-line Russian lawmakers denounced the
sale today and challenged its legality. 
Members of the State Duma, parliament's lower house, directed the
legislature's legal affairs and agricultural committees to examine whether
Thursday's auction in the Volga River town of Balakovo broke the law. 
The motion was proposed by the Agrarian faction, one of several hard-line
communist and nationalist groups that together dominate the legislature. 
At the auction in Balakovo, 18 plots of land, two of them for farming, were
sold for a total of $80,000 - hefty revenue for the town's strained budget. 
The auction was held in accordance with a local law, adopted last fall
by the
Saratov regional legislature, which allows free sale of all land, including
agricultural plots. 
Saratov lawmakers passed the law after President Boris Yeltsin tried to
break Russia's long-standing deadlock on the issue by decreeing that local
authorities can decide the issue on their own. 
Ownership of land in Russia, especially farmland, remains highly
controversial. Since the Soviet breakup, Russian citizens have been
permitted to own land in urban areas, but agricultural plots mostly remain
state property. 
In Soviet times, all farmland was considered a state asset and was farmed
collectively. Many Russians still consider farmland a national treasure and
object to converting it to other economic uses. 
The government and lawmakers reached a tentative compromise on a
so-called land code in December, agreeing to introduce requirements that
land may be sold only to people who prove their ability to cultivate it. They
also agreed that land must be used for farming for up to 15 years following a
sale. 
Yeltsin has asked lawmakers to draft the revisions within three months and
pledged to sign an acceptable compromise, but there has been no visible
progress since then. 
``I will fight to the end,'' Yeltsin reiterated today. ``To have real
private
property, we must give the land to those who work it.'' 
A small group of communists turned out to protest the auction in Balakovo,
about 500 miles southeast of Moscow. Several put up signs reading ``Don't
Sell Russia'' and shouted protests before police drove them away. 

*******

#7
Financial Times (UK)
6 March 1998
[for personal use only]
Business in Russia: Balancing risk and reward
By Greg McIvor

Doing business in Russia offers rich opportunities but high risks.
Sweden's AssiDomän can vouch for this assessment. Dealing with the Russian
market over the past two years has been like coping with Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde.
The Stockholm-based forestry and packaging group has been a pioneer in
moving into former Soviet bloc markets. Since its privatisation in 1994,
Assi has built or acquired production facilities in a string of east
European states, latterly establishing two plants in Russia.
But while, overall, the east European expansion has been a resounding
success, Assi's taste of the Russian market is decidedly bittersweet. A
legal and bureaucratic maelstrom, culminating in Mafia-style threats
against its staff, last month forced it to pull out of Segezhabumprom, its
paper-sack joint venture in the north-west Russian province of Karelia.
Only a fortnight earlier, the group celebrated the opening of its new
$25m corrugated board plant at Vsevelozhsk outside St Petersburg.
The contrast between these two ventures could scarcely be starker. At
Vsevelozhsk - built on a 14,000sq m greenfield site - the factory floor is
studded with machinery built to the highest western specifications. The
Segezhabumprom plant, starved for years of investment, is a dilapidated
monument to Soviet times.
Assi's ambitions were high when in 1996/97 it paid $45m for a 57 per
cent stake in Segezhabumprom. The plant, one of Russia's biggest pulp and
paper mills, was already the country's largest supplier of paper sacks,
capable of churning out 250,000 tonnes of sack paper a year.
Assi's plan was to carve out a long-term future for the plant by raising
quality standards and productivity. The idea was to tap the European Bank
for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance
Corporation for the $100m-$120m needed to achieve the changes.
From the outset the project was beset by problems. Assi's plans to
improve efficiency provoked local suspicion of job losses and a campaign
started to get the new owners out. There were threats from powerful
interests close to the former management which was opposed to Assi's way of
working. These threats escalated to the point where Sören Öberg, the Assi
executive in charge of the plant, required a 24-hour armed guard.
Matters reached a head when Karelia's public prosecutor challenged
Assi's ownership and management, resulting in a Moscow court declaring
Assi's share purchase "illegal". Backdated tax liabilities relating to the
former management remained unsettled due to bureaucratic snarl-ups.
Segezhabumprom's bank accounts were frozen in lieu of payment.
Meanwhile, Segezhabumprom's finances were bleeding. Payment problems
meant the company suffered from negative cash flow, forcing Assi to pump in
working capital to keep machines running. But when Assi asked for a
contribution from its joint venture partners, the Karelian state property
fund and Upak, a Russian paper sack distributor, they refused.
Berit Hallberg, a senior Assi executive, describes Segezhabumprom -
where Assi has now written off its $69m investment - as a special case. "It
is quite different going into a new greenfield development than entering an
old plant with a long list of problems."
Yet if Segezhabumprom demonstrates the difficulties of such a
commitment, Vsevelozhsk has struck a brighter note. In spite of
bureaucratic hold-ups which delayed the opening for almost three months,
the project has been remarkably trouble-free. The St Petersburg authorities
chipped in with generous tax concessions to persuade Assi to locate in the
region. Relations between company and local politicians are good.
Assi's initial aim at Vsevelozhsk is to serve multinational groups
present in Russia, rather than compete with Russian companies for a share
of the local market. Companies such as Coca-Cola and Proctor & Gamble were
among the guests at the plant's inauguration and the first supply contracts
have been signed.
Assi's ups and downs are watched keenly by other European paper and
packaging groups. The Russian packaging market is growing by more than 10
per cent a year, compared with about 4 per cent in Europe.
Tetra Pak, the Swedish packaging group, sold 1.5bn liquid beverage
cartons in 1997, a figure it expects to rise to 4.5bn in five years. By
that time the company expects Russia to be one of its 10 largest markets.
Nils Björkman, Tetra Pak president for Europe and Africa, says the
company has invested SKr200m-SKr400m ($25m-$50m) in Russia in the past six
or seven years. It has acquired two plants - one near Moscow and one close
to the Black Sea - as well as developing sales, marketing and distribution
networks. It is now starting to make operating profits.
"You must take a long-term view," Mr Björkman says. "There is no way you
can make a quick buck in Russia any more because the size of the
investments is so big. But if companies don't invest they may miss out. It
is a question of whether you believe Russia will emerge from seven or eight
years of gloom and doom into a stronger economy. We believe so."
This is the first in a series of articles on doing business in emerging
economies. 

*******

#8
Zyuganov: Clever, Pretty Women "Frightful" 
Reuters
5 March 1998

MOSCOW -- Russia's Communist Party chief, in a departure from effusive
speeches marking International Women's Day, was quoted as saying on
Thursday that nothing was "more frightful" than a woman who was both clever
and pretty. 
Itar-Tass news agency said Gennady Zyuganov told woman journalists in
parliament that he was particularly fond of clever and of pretty women. But
there was "nothing more frightful," he told them, than a combination of the
two. 
Zyuganov, who finished second to Boris Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential
election, said he preferred women "who do not ask too many questions and,
after offering advice, don't come back the next day to see whether it has
been acted on. In general, women should not argue about critical issues." 
International Women's Day, March 8, was promoted during the Soviet era
as a means of underscoring the equality of the sexes that communist leaders
said was absent in the West. 
Russian women normally reduced to performing most household tasks and
kept well away from positions of responsibility are particularly fond of a
holiday on which they are showered with flowers, chocolates and perfumes in
addition to accolades. 
Zyuganov praised 18 Communist women members of parliament as "charming
and attractive" and would without hesitation include them in his proposed
"government of national trust." 
He told reporters it was difficult to say whether his own household was
a "patriarchy" or "matriarchy." 
"It's a matriarchy in the kitchen, where I listen to everyone,
especially those best at keeping me fed," he said. 

******

#9
RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol 2, No. 45, Part I, 6 March 1998

CHUBAIS SLAMS CAMPAIGN AGAINST HIMSELF. In an interview published in
"Moskovskii komsomolets" on 5 March, First Deputy Prime Minister Anatolii
Chubais lashed out against powerful businessmen who oppose him. He alleged
that "enormous resources" are being devoted to digging up compromising
information on him, even dating back to his childhood, through phone
tapping and offering bribes to family friends. However, Chubais claimed the
media campaign to "destroy" him has failed and has instead undermined the
political standing of Boris Berezovskii. In an interview published the same
day in "Kommersant-Daily," Chubais accused his opponents of supporting
"crony capitalism" and warned that if they succeed, Russia could suffer an
economic collapse worse than the recent crisis in South Korea. Chubais's
opponents, especially Berezovskii, have accused the first deputy premier of
favoring Vladimir Potanin's Oneksimbank over its business rivals. LB

AUTHORITIES STILL INVESTIGATING 'BOOK SCANDAL.' An official from the
Prosecutor-General's Office told ITAR-TASS on 4 March that the office is
continuing its investigation into last November's "book scandal" involving
Chubais. That investigation was scheduled to be completed in February.
Chubais and several associates have admitted accepting a $90,000 honorarium
each from a book publisher linked to Oneksimbank, but they have denied the
payments were bribes. President Boris Yeltsin took the finance portfolio
away from Chubais at the height of the scandal. LB

KORZHAKOV AGAINST ANOTHER YELTSIN RE-ELECTION BID. Duma deputy Aleksandr
Korzhakov, Yeltsin's longtime bodyguard, has called on the president to
show the "courage" to abide by the constitution and not to seek another
term. The Constitutional Court is to consider whether Yeltsin is legally
entitled to run for president again. In an article published in
"Nezavisimaya gazeta" on 5 March, Korzhakov warned that in 2000 it will not
be possible to achieve the same election results as in 1996. He added that
Yeltsin's health is poor and that running for president in violation of the
constitution would set a bad example. During the 1996 presidential
campaign, Korzhakov caused a stir by suggesting that the election might be
postponed. Yeltsin fired Korzhakov shortly after the first round of that
election. Last summer, Korzhakov published memoirs containing unflattering
portrayals of Yeltsin and some of his close associates. LB

ZYUGANOV TO COOPERATE WITH RADICAL COMMUNISTS. Communist Party leader
Gennadii Zyuganov and Viktor Tyulkin, the leader of the more radical
Russian Communist Workers' Party, have signed an agreement to cooperate in
organizing three nationwide protests in April and May, Russian news
agencies reported on 5 March . Last month, Zyuganov and Duma Defense
Committee Chairman Lev Rokhlin, leader of the Movement to Support the Army,
signed a cooperation agreement. On 4 March, the same day that 52 Communist
Duma deputies voted for the 1998 budget, Zyuganov warned that the Communist
faction may soon call for a vote of no confidence in the government.
Zyuganov's statements, along with Duma Security Committee Chairman Viktor
Ilyukhin's recent criticism of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, suggest
that the Communists are trying to address critics who have accused them of
"appeasing" the government (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 22 January and 26
February 1998). LB

*******

#10
Chernomyrdin Calls For Unconventional CIS Development Steps 

MOSCOW, March 6 (Interfax) - "Time has come for unconventional steps" to
be taken to develop the Commonwealth of Independent States, Russian Prime
Minister *Viktor Chernomyrdin* said, opening a session of the CIS Prime
Ministers' Council in Moscow on Friday. 
CIS "as a new system of interstate relations in post-Soviet environment"
is a reality, he said. At the same time, Chernomyrdin called for "improving
interaction within the Commonwealth above all by raising its efficiency." 
Now when the economic situation in CIS is changing, industrial decline
is receding, and some economic growth is even looming, new forms of
cooperation should be searched for more vigorously, Chernomyrdin said. 
One such form, he added, is a free trade zone. 
The CIS-type associations of states, existing in the world, "started
precisely from that." Chernomyrdin stressed. 
He regretted that trade turnover between the CIS countries was still
falling, investment activity was still sluggish, and dual taxation and
significant differences in national legislations impair economic
cooperation. It's these problems that Chernomyrdin invited his CIS
counterparts to tackle. 
He also reported that Russia's trade turnover with its CIS partners
amounted to $30 billion last year. 

*******

#11
IGOR SHABDURASULOV: VIKTOR CHERNOMYRDIN'S WORDS IN
CONNECTION WITH THE EVENTS IN RIGA ARE "AN OFFICIAL STATEMENT
AND NOT AN EMOTIONAL SPLASH." 

MOSCOW, MARCH 6, RIA NOVOSTI CORRESPONDENT REGINA LUKASHINA
- The words uttered today by the Russian Prime Minister in
connection with the events in Riga are "an official statement by
the Premier of Russia and not an emotional splash," said
official governmental spokesman Igor Shabdurasulov.
Addressing a press conference in Moscow in Moscow,
Chernomyrdin said that "our Russian people have shuddered at the
events in Riga." He emphasised that "it is a great pity that
there is such a Prime Minister in that country who sees in the
events the provocation of Moscow." "With such a Prime Minister
even more serious clashes are possible."
Chernomyrdin pointed out that in the past few years Russia
"showed maximum tolerance in cases of the sufferings of the
Russian-speaking population," hoping that the Latvian
authorities will change their attitude to this problem."

******

#12
Duma Wants President To Get Tough On Latvia 

MOSCOW, March 6 (Interfax) - The State Duma passed an appeal Friday to
Russian President *Boris Yeltsin* complaining that Russia was not tough
enough in protecting the rights of ethnic Russians and allowed the Latvian
authorities to continue their discrimination against the Russian-speaking
population. 
The appeal passed unanimously by all the 309 MPs present reminds the
president that "following the declaration of independence the Latvian
Republic's leadership has been pursuing the dangerous policy of creating a
monoethnic state, discrimination against and the ousting of people whose
mother tongue is Russian." 
It says that the president should take every necessary step "going as
far as economic sanctions, retorts and reprisals against Latvia so as to
insure full unconditional observance in line with international law of the
political, social and economic rights of ethnic Russians in that country." 
The executive branch should step up activities to settle the
Russian-Latvian relations in the payment of pensions, "an extremely
important issue for ethnic Russians of pensionable age living in Latvia,"
the appeal says. 
Russia should provide social security to World War II veterans and
invalids staying in the Baltic countries, above all Latvia who are not
Russia's military pensioners, it says. 
The State Duma reiterated its "essential position that the future of
Russian-Latvian relations, in particular in the economic field, must be
dependent to a decisive degree on the real human rights situation of ethnic
Russians living in the Latvian Republic." 
It also passed the general lines of an appeal to the CIS 
Interparliamentary Assembly, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe and the Interparliamentary Union "on the latest violation of basic
human rights by the Latvian authorities" asking these organizations to
"pass judgment in terms of international law on the action taken by the
Latvian authorities." 
The two documents are the State Duma's response to the break up by the
Latvian police of a protest rally staged by pensioners, chiefly
Russian-speaking, in Riga March 3. 
The State Duma International Affairs Committee has drafted another
document on this issue, Duma Chairman Gennady Seleznyov told the Friday
session. That committee and the CIS Affairs committee will draft a joint
resolution Friday for the Duma to vote on. 

******

#13
Date: 05 Mar 1998 21:28:18
From: elleon@c031.aone.net.au (Elena Leonoff * Melbourne, Australia) 
Subject: Moscow Women's Crisis Center (translated article)
To: Recipients of conference <women-east-west@igc.apc.org>

In January, the Moscow-based newspaper Trud-7 published an interview with
Marina Pisklakova, director of the Moscow Women's Crisis Center. In it she
discusses how the Center got started and what it does, including telephone
counselling for victims of domestic violence.

I've just translated this article into English,
so if anyone is interested, check it out at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2533/crisis.html

The original reference, for those who have access to Trud-7:
Trud-7, No. 8, January 16-22, 1998 (page 7)
"SOS na fone liubvi"
by Nadezhda Nadezhdina


SOS against a background of love
by Nadezhda Nadezhdina 

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in Russia there are up to 4
million domestic "disturbances" (to put it mildly). Each year there are up
to 3500 domestic homicides. In the first half of last year [1997] around
18,000 battered women were "registered" in casualty wards. Moreover, only
one-fifth to one-seventh of all battered women receive any medical
assistance. These figures are truly frightening. 
Domestic violence is a worldwide evil. Over there, however, in the
civilized West, they fight it. In almost every city there are crisis
centers for women, refuges where they can at least temporarily hide from
tyrannical husbands; the police take stern measures. But we have only just
begun to discuss this painful problem and to set up crisis centers. 
Today we talk with Marina Pisklakova, director of the Moscow Women's Crisis
Center. 

Marina Petrovna, how did you come to be involved with this issue?
I was working in the Institute of Socio-Economic Problems of the
Population, researching the position of women. We were doing a survey to
find out what problems concerned women the most. The results were
startling: a good third of respondents talked about violence within the
family. The husband won't allow her to work, demands that she stops seeing
her friends, never lets her out alone; he may abuse her verbally, or shove
her around, or strike her... Later, in order to learn more, we started
interviewing women wherever we could - in offices, at their children's
schools, in stores and medical clinics. 

And they would discuss it willingly?
Yes. They could feel we were really listening to them, and they had a
strong need to get it off their chests. Their families appeared to be happy
- a home, a husband, children. But twenty to fifty percent of these women
spoke of violence. For example, she's getting ready to visit a female
friend, and he won't let her go - he pushes her away from the door, tears
her blouse... Threatens to beat up the kids if she continues to do as she
pleases... Throws her parents' photos in the garbage can...
Even then, when we were conducting those interviews, we knew that we had to
do something. Later I was a visiting scholar at the Gotheborg University in
Switzerland, where I met a psychologist named Ritve Holmstrom at that
city's crisis center. She's been running the center for over 20 years, and
she taught me a lot. Then our Institute helped us to get office space, and
in July 1993 we broadcast our crisis-line phone number [telefon doveriia]
on Radio Maiak. I'll repeat it here: 124-61-85.
When we started work, we scarcely understood how complicated it would be.
We just knew it was time to move from academic research to providing
practical help for women. 

Do you remember the first call?
Of course. It's the kind of thing one doesn't forget.
She was crying. She spoke in broken sentences: 
"Yesterday he came home to change before a business meeting. He was angry,
frowning... I gave him a clean shirt, he started putting it on, found a
button missing. He tore off the shirt and threw it at me. I was getting
another when he hit me across the face... My daughter was playing with her
doll nearby, she started screaming and ran at him. He pushed her away too.
Then he dressed quickly and slammed the door."
Cautiously, I asked her whether this was the first time he had hit her, or
had it happened before. 
"Yes, it's happened before. But each time he's cooled off and apologized,
blamed his problems at work, brought me flowers."
I started explaining how violence doesn't just happen once, but has its own
pattern. When stress levels peak, the man raises his hand to his wife. Then
his anger passes, he repents, gives her gifts, apologises, even gets down
on his knees. But sooner or later he gets stressed again and it seems to
him that his wife has "taken advantage of his weakness" and is slipping
from his control. Then he starts harrassing her again, trying to bolster up
his power. Anything can serve as a pretext: their son gets a bad mark at
school, or the soup's too cold...
The woman was silent. I could sense she wasn't ready to make any decisions.
Women always feel responsible for family harmony, for creating and
maintaining domestic comfort and a good emotional climate. It's hard for a
woman to admit to herself that something's wrong - she feels as if she has
failed, that it's her fault... 

The phone rings. You lift the receiver - you hear a voice for the first
time, you can only remotely imagine what's going on in the home of the
woman caller. How do you find the right thing to say?
We have an iron-clad rule: no prescriptions, no pushing people to make
decisions. We provide information, we tell them how widespread these
problems are - it's very important for a woman to realize that she's not an
isolated case. For her it's a frightening time, she's at a loss, she's
crushed, she's lost the capacity for rational action. Above all, she is
afraid. So we help her work out a safety plan:
"Are you afraid he'll come back in the same state in which he left? Maybe
it would be better to go to your parents' place?"
"God, no, he might attack them too."
"Then you might try asking some friends to come over, he'll be more
restrained in their presence."
The woman's too afraid to concentrate. We try to help get her willpower
working.
"He'll be lost without me if I leave; and besides, we have two children.
Yesterday I was in tears, but my mother-in-law said, do you want to make
orphans out of the kids?"
She's thinking aloud. And our professional counsellor is thinking aloud
with her. The woman can sense the counsellor's taking her seriously and
paying attention. And already, in the course of this conversation, she's
finding support - she's no longer alone; and if the problem recurs, at
least there's someone she can call.
Over the past four and a half years, 8000 women have called us. We don't
know what happened in the end to many of them. Maybe everything turned out
well - maybe she left her husband. The main thing is that we were there for
her when things were at their worst, and helped her get through the crisis. 

But why does violence arise in families which were created in love?
This results from stereotypes in social morality and attitudes. 
It's often considered that a man should be the provider and the master, and
his wife should obey him. He wants to control her every move. If she goes
to visit a female friend, it means she doesn't love him, since she's
leaving him alone. If her parents come over, that's bad - he says they
can't agree on anything in front of her parents. If she visits her sister,
he's ready with an argument, says her sister doesn't like him and always
bad-mouths him.
So the woman gradually loses all social contacts. Her husband becomes her
only mirror, and a distorted mirror at that. 
"You're stupid!" he yells at her. "You ought to keep your mouth shut. And
you're ugly too, nobody else would have married you, put clothes on your
back. Stop tramping around with your friends. I work, and all you do is
have a good time - you just watch out, or you'll be left with nothing..."
In order to dominate her and control her every move, the man has to
undermine the woman's self-esteem. 
So he continues: "You're nothing as a woman. Who'd look at you? And you
don't really work - I know all you do is drink tea or coffee with the other
women. Why do they keep you on at that place? It's not like we need your
miserable salary at home..." 
If you hear such language day in, day out, you can really become convinced
that you're stupid and ugly. Especially if you don't see any other people
and never hear a good word about yourself.
What family is completely conflict-free? But if both sides are equal, any
dispute can be settled peacefully by argument and persuasion. However, once
a dominance/submission relationship has become entrenched, other means of
"winning" become permissible - shouting, cursing, hitting. He thinks: she's
"mine", she'll stand anything. This attitude of the property-owner, who
feels he has the right to subordinate another person's life to his own, is
revolting. But we ourselves have created it... 

What sort of people are these fighters, abusers, who strike out with their
fists at the people they love?
They're by no means all mad, sick or alcoholics. Like I said: we ourselves
have mostly made them what they are. As a rule, these are people who have
been abused as children themselves, or have been constant witnesses to
abuse. If a child is beaten and humiliated, what experience will he carry
with him into adult life? If there were always fights at home, and his
mother was always expecting to be beaten, it's hard not to grow up
convinced that physical violence is normal.
Look at the way we raise boys. For example, a pet kitten dies and a boy
can't hold back his tears. His father gets annoyed: "What are you, a girl?"
Or say a boy likes to cook, and wants to fry some eggs for himself. Another
baffled look from his father: "Men don't do that." The boy gets beaten up
in the yard: "What's the matter, couldn't you stand up for yourself?" 
And so the boy grows up: tearless, without compassion, without a tender
smile at the sight of a sleeping child. As an adult, he might be
experiencing problems at work - he's dissatisfied, anxious, he needs
support. But he's convinced that it's unmanly to complain, even to his
wife. His anxiety is converted to anger. And now there's no chance of
sympathy - everyone in his family keeps out of his way. We have not been
taught from childhood how to socialize, to understand our feelings, rather
than taking out our injuries and dissatisfaction on those closest to us. I
repeat: these are not bad people; it's possible, and necessary, to help
them too. 

So you have something to teach the fighters as well?
We've had a women's support group going for a long time. We ask our
callers: would you like to get together and talk with some other women who
have experienced violence? We organize meetings once or twice a month. They
discuss their problems, their hopes, they look for a way out. Just the
feeling that you're not alone really helps. Quite often, friendships arise
in this improvised collective, women start calling each other, keeping in
touch, supporting each other.
Now we're thinking of creating similar support groups and a crisis line for
men. We need to find a way of reaching them, of convincing them to trust us
and approach us. For instance, we could do a radio ad aimed at men,
something like this: if you want to keep your family together, you have to
value it highly - and it takes two to do this; after a burst of anger, you
feel bad, you feel remorse - this is normal, come and see us, we'll help
you understand yourself and change your behavior. Call us, and you can
anonymously express those feelings which you've never been able to share
with anyone... Yes, he may be an abuser, but he's also suffering and in
need of support. We're not in the business of judging anyone, we just try
to help people live a little more happily. By the way, similar support
groups exist in many countries, and the work in them helps improve family
situations. 

So people can only call you with all their problems, anxieties, injuries?
Can't they come to the Center and talk face-to-face?
Of course they can. We have consultant psychologists, lawyers, solicitors.
People can come in and work out a detailed plan of action for their
situation. Say a woman decides to divorce her husband, she can't stand any
more - but she's afraid for her children, doesn't know how to protect them.
Or she wants to make up with her husband, since they've been together for
years, after all; but she doesn't know how to approach him or find the
right words to say. 
If a woman has seriously decided on divorce, our lawyer will help her get
the paperwork together; our psychologist will support her until the
hearing, since this is a particularly stressful time for her, and will
accompany her to court. Divorce isn't easy, especially if there are
children involved. Maybe the woman couldn't get through it without our
help. However, although we help her through it all, we don't push her to
get a divorce. We give support, but not advice. It's her decision and hers
alone!
We also run educational programs, give talks for young people, police
staff, legal workers, teachers, doctors. We explain that, despite what many
people think, violence is not always synonymous with a physical blow. It
can also mean psychological humiliation, economic or sexual abuse. 

Who works in the Center, and where do you get your funding?
The Crisis Center is a public organization and runs on international
humanitarian grants. All of our telephone counsellors, psychologists,
solicitors and lawyers are volunteers. We get about 200-250 calls a month,
a vast outpouring of other people's grief - and our people faithfully turn
up when they're rostered, to take calls, attend training sessions, conduct
lengthy individual discussions with women. In order to work so hard and
selflessly, you need to have a kind heart and to feel that you're really
needed.
At present we don't have enough money or space to create a women's refuge
of the kind that exist in other crisis centers worldwide. Refuges are rooms
(their locations are a closely-guarded secret) where a woman can hide out
for a certain time, alone or with her child, in order to escape a tragic
outcome to her situation, or to get a break from constant beatings, regain
her composure and the ability to think calmly.
Anyway, what's the point of talking about funding, when the Government Duma
still hasn't passed a law against domestic violence? A law which would
define the responsibilities of teachers, doctors and legal institutions.
It's no secret that situations like the following can and do occur: a
battered woman calls the police and hears, "I've got three murders on my
hands, and you want me to deal with some little tiff between you and your
husband?" The policeman doesn't seem to realize that his own inaction might
result in a fourth murder.
Tragedies which take place behind the closed door of an apartment, unlike
street brawls, don't make it into the newspapers - but they are no less
frightening for all that. There's the humiliated, mutilated woman; the
neglected, terrified children; and the husband whose constant guilt doesn't
make him any less dangerous to those around him. Let's not forget that
every third or fourth violent crime takes place in the home. We try to do
all we can to teach spouses to fight for their own happiness... 

Translated from Russian by Elena Leonoff, March 1998. 

********

#14
Soviet Submarine Joins Capitalist Cause in Florida 
Reuters
5 March 1998

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- A Soviet submarine that once patrolled the oceans
as a weapon of the Cold War was being prepared on Thursday for a new life
in the arsenal of Florida tourist attractions. 
The 284-foot (95-meter) diesel submarine, identified only by the number
U-494, was in service from 1968 to 1994 with the Soviet and Russian Navies. 
The cash-strapped Russian government sold it last year to Canadian
businessman Stan Sherman for about $1 million. 
Sherman had it towed across the ocean and docked in the vacation and
retirement haven of St. Petersburg, Florida, which is named for the Russian
city. 
The U-494 will be docked next to a replica of the Bounty, the ship known
for the 1789 mutiny against Admiral William Bligh, that was used in
Hollywood's 1960s movie about the sailors' rebellion. 
The pier is home to an aquarium, observation deck and several
restaurants and bars. 
Pier manager Bill Griffin said he hoped the submarine could be open to
the public next week after minor repairs and an inspection by the U.S.
Coast Guard. 
Tours of the sub will cost $8 for adults and $5 for children. "It's
really interesting," Griffin said. 

*******