June 17, 1998   
This Date's Issues: 2224  2225

Johnson's Russia List
#2225
17 June 1998
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. New York Times: James Billington, "Russia, Between a Dream and a
Nightmare."
2. Rossiiskaya Gazeta: ARREARS KEEP GROWING.
3. Argumenty i Fakty: RUSSIA'S FOREIGN DEBT IS 32,100,000,000 US DOLLARS.
4. Segodnya: CHUBAIS A STRONG PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, ACCORDING TO 
LEADERS OF RUSSIA'S DEMOCRATIC CHOICE.
5. Moscow Times: Lynn Visson, For Better or Worse Russian Brides Not Boring.
6. St. Petersburg Times: Matthew Murray, Rationalize the Tax System.
7. Newsweek: Owen Matthews, Bye, Beluga. Later, Sevruga.
8. Bloomberg: World Bank's Stiglitz Says Russia Committed to Economic
Reform.
9. Variety: REVIEW/TELEVISION: 'Face of Russia' disappoints.
10. Richard T. Davies: Plumbing or "Plumbing" in Minsk?
11. Interfax: ussian PremRier Promises Budget Stabilization.
12. RIA Novosti: THE PETERSBURG ECONOMIC FORUM IS A NEW BEGINNING
WHICH GOES BEYOND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LIMITS OF NIHILISM THAT HAS 
SHAPED UP IN THE ATTITUDE TO PRIVATE PROPERTY AND TO THE MARKET, 
YEGOR STROYEV STATED.]

********

#1
New York Times
June 17, 1998
[for personal use only]
Russia, Between a Dream and a Nightmare
By JAMES H. BILLINGTON
James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, is the author of ``The Face
of Russia,'' a forthcoming book and a PBS documentary series. 

MOSCOW -- Both the greatest opportunity and the greatest danger for the
United States internationally may well still lie in Russia. If we do not
soon seize the opportunity, the danger will increase -- and could present
us with the most serious threat to basic global stability since the end of
the cold war. 
The recent financial turmoil and labor unrest are signs of danger. The
West's response -- yet another International Monetary Fund bailout -- shows
that we are helping the reformers fight, and sometimes win, battles. But we
are not winning the war. We may not even have a strategy, because we have
not understood the extent and depth of either the material transformation
or the spiritual demoralization of the Russian people since the fall of
Communism. 
During a week of intensive discussions with intellectual and political
leaders in Russia, I found an alarming degree of fatalistic expectation
that Russia is heading in an authoritarian direction, raising fears here
that a nationalist dictator could come to power in the next two years. "He
would be more like Ivan the Terrible than Peter the Great," predicted the
leader of a Ukrainian province who was recently elected as a Communist. 
The most recent broad poll of Russian public opinion seems to bear out
this bleak assessment. When asked, "What leader on the territory of the
former U.S.S.R. do you believe in?" Russians picked the proto-fascist
dictator of neighboring Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, and the
authoritarian leader of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Each was
mentioned by 20 percent of those polled. The respondents did not give a
single Russia politician more than 0.4 percent of the vote. When asked,
"What idea could unify Russian society?" more Russians endorsed "the idea
of Russia as a mighty world power" (35 percent) than the combined total of
Communism, socialism, democracy, capitalism, Russian uniqueness and
religion (32 percent altogether). 
The danger is not that Russia would or could restore Communism, but that
some new leader, feeling the popular resentment, would end up playing a
role akin to that of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. The leader of Russia,
however, could be brandishing or distributing weapons of mass destruction
in the midst of a general meltdown of order in Eurasia. Having barely
contained chaos and violence in the former Yugoslavia, a relatively small
country in the heart of Europe, the West would be unlikely to do much of
anything at all about a larger mess in an even more remote region. Other
former Soviet republics would feel threatened, and some currently moderate
Islamic states might be driven to Iranian-type authoritarianism. Whether or
not Russia ended up fighting with or submitting to a still Communist China,
the results would be disastrous for democracy. 

Such unpleasant thoughts are largely absent from what passes for
conventional wisdom in the West these days -- which is, more or less, that
Russia will bumble along for many years without becoming either a real
menace or a real partner, and can thus be safely relegated to the back
burner of our geopolitical thinking. 
It is precisely geopolitics, however, that should put Russia on the
front burner. America has fought five wars in this century -- all basically
to prevent authoritarian power from gaining control of Eurasia. Having won
the cold war, we may be in real danger of losing that older and more basic
struggle to help freedom prevail over tyranny in the world's largest land
mass. The sad fact is that Russia's ambitious project of democratization
still lacks popular legitimacy -- and is facing elections (for the
Parliament in 1999, the presidency in 2000) without a single unified party,
an agreed-upon reform presidential candidate or an appealing vision. 
Fortunately there is good news in Russia that makes this a time of new
opportunity for the West. Despite the outrages and inequities of their
"robber baron capitalism," self help and prosperity are growing in ways
that our macroeconomic charts have no way of describing. Moscow and St.
Petersburg are boom towns. Governors and mayors are finding ingenious ways
to raise money and provide services that are no longer coming from the
central government. According to the head of a leading research institute,
one out of three residences in the countryside has been built in the last
10 years -- as much as had been built in the preceding 40 years. 
The West has been given a new and golden opportunity to help secure the
interior Eurasian heartland for democracy and development. Russia now has,
for the first time, a thoroughly reformist leadership that is entirely
unencumbered by the methods and habits of the Soviet past. The 35-year-old
Prime Minister, Sergei Kiriyenko; his 38-year-old deputy and mentor, Boris
Nemtsov, and other youthful new ministers give Russia a chance for a fresh
start on its stalled effort to build a market economy relatively free from
cronyism and corruption. 
There is time -- though just barely -- to turn the present mood around
before the elections, and the United States has material as well as moral
and geopolitical reasons for being far more helpful in this crucial period.
Russia has the world's largest and most varied supply of untapped natural
resources and a technologically literate population with rising consumer
demands. 
The standard rationalization for American inaction has been that Russia
is just too large, too different and too impermeable for outside forces to
play a role. But the rising Russian generation has an open and
internationalist perspective. Moreover, Russians throughout their history
have always tended to use their main Western adversary as their secret
model for emulation. They took their religion and art from Byzantium in
the 10th and 11th centuries, their first modern government structure from
the Swedes in the early 18th century and their economic organization from
the Germans in the early 20th century -- all after or during prolonged
conflict with those nations 
The United States has long been such a model, and it is now seen
pragmatically as the most relevant and successful example of what Russian
leaders are trying to create: a continentwide federal democracy and market
economy in a multicultural, largely open expanse on the periphery of
European civilization. 

But America is losing its luster -- and its opportunity -- in Russia.
Young Russians who idolized the United States and rather liked our openness
and passion for extroverted bigness now see that the United States has done
relatively little for them. 
Russians are historically conditioned to believe that people who talk
big but do little are somehow conspiring to do something hostile
eventually. For a large country without secure borders and with many ethnic
hostilities in its outlying regions, this pattern of Western behavior is
interpreted as a desire to carve up Russia. 
Russians recognize that they have not created the best conditions for
foreign investment. But they feel humiliated that China is now getting more
than 10 times as much American investment as their own struggling
democracy. They are further aggravated by the spectacle of former high
American officials falling all over one another to promote oil development
in authoritarian Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan rather than the even greater
energy resources in Russia. 
The compensating gestures that Americans make to reassure the Russians
of our friendship after the eastward extension of NATO tend only to deepen
their sense of being patronized. Few people have ever suffered in peacetime
as rapid and extensive a decline of power and standard of living as did the
Russians after the collapse of Communism. 
The Russian people tend to put up with difficulties for a long time
before suddenly exploding. There is smoldering discontent just beneath the
surface. The many varieties of fascism have all arisen out of
disillusionment with a failed democratic experiment. Under almost any of
the many possible scenarios for an authoritarian takeover, the resentment
needed to support it would be directed against the United States. Having
been a source of their hopes, we would become the focus of the fury that
comes from unrequited love. 
I found that democratic reformers both in the Government and in the
opposition realistically recognize that Russia has to solve its own
problems. They seemed neither to expect nor to want substantial financial
aid. Since they think very pragmatically, however, they wonder why we
cannot multiply some of the small programs that have proved their worth
over the years. And, since their biggest problem in this nervous
pre-election period is their failure to capture the Russian popular
imagination, they wonder if America is -- as one reformer put it -- "any
longer capable of following that old Robert Kennedy idea about asking 'why
not?' rather than just 'why?' " 
Aleksandr Yakovlev, an author of perestroika under Mikhail Gorbachev,
said the most important thing the West could do was "to speak to and get to
understand a far wider range of the Russian people than Americans are now
doing." Trying to do that intensively for a week, I found universal
enthusiasm for two ideas that would not take much public money. They would
represent an effort on our part to do something big for the people who,
after all, themselves ended the Soviet menace for all of us. 
The first idea is to bring a genuinely large number of young Russians --
the entire cohort of new leaders, especially those from the provinces -- to
spend time in the United States before the next election so that they can
learn how democracy and civil society works. So far, exchange programs have
amounted to little more than tokenism, even though they have worked
extraordinarily well. 

Bringing large numbers of Russians to the United States avoids the
patronizing syndrome of sending Americans to Russia to tell the Russians
how to run their lives. Only 1.5 percent of the Marshall Plan was spent on
bringing young Germans to the United States after World War II, but it was
decisive in building a new democratic Germany. Only a small number of the
rapidly emerging new generation of Russian leaders have spent more than a
day or two in the United States. "Most of us," one brilliant young Russian
leader proclaimed, "don't really believe your kind of system can work,
because we haven't seen and felt it for ourselves." 
But some dramatic demonstration is also needed inside Russia of creative
capitalist development. I found genuine excitement in Russia about the idea
that the United States might begin its long overdue major investment in the
emerging Russian market with a key project or two that would reflect a
broader American commitment to help Russia develop Siberia. 
This vast region has enormous symbolic appeal for Russians. They view
Siberia as the still-unspoiled spiritual heartland of Mother Russia. But
they fear that China, which still has irredentist claims and a growing
number of energetic guest workers in Siberia, will eventually take over
much of it. 
Americans have the know-how (and plans in the files of many United
States corporations) to develop this unparalleled repository of resources,
and could do it in ways that would protect and even enhance the environment
-- thus giving the lie to the ultranationalist claim that capitalism will
destroy Russians' special links with the natural world. 
By collaborating across and beyond the Bering Strait where our two
frontiers meet, we could begin turning our sights away from old enmities
and current fears to the common development of this fragile planet's last
largely untouched region. 

******

#2
>From RIA Novosti
Rossiiskaya Gazeta
June 16, 1998
ARREARS KEEP GROWING

Receipts into the consolidated budget in the first quarter
of 1998 amounted to almost 125 billion roubles.
The bulk of them fell to tax payments - more than 111
billion roubles. This is 5.5 billion roubles more than in the
first quarter of 1997. At the same time tax revenues decreased
compared with 1997. This was due to a sharp reduction in
receipts in noncash form (setoffs and so on). At the same time
tax revenues in cash form rose by over 15 per cent. The
positive shifts in the structure of tax payments to the federal
budget (the growth of the share of the receipts in the form of
"live" money), unfortunately, hardly brighten the overall
gloomy picture. The fact is that tax liabilities of legal
entities in the first quarter of the current year rose by 16
per cent, and on April 1, 1998, constituted about 110 billion
roubles. The entire increment of indebtedness occurred on
account of the increase of back taxes, which had by April
reached more than 102 billion roubles.

********

#3
>From RIA Novosti
Argumenty i Fakty, No. 24
June 1998
RUSSIA'S FOREIGN DEBT IS 32,100,000,000 US DOLLARS
Including under credits of:

international financial organizations - $18.7 billion
governments of foreign states - $7.6 billion
foreign commercial banks and firms - $5.8 billion

Russia has also recognised the external debt of the former
USSR at 91.4 billion dollars. It will have to be repaid within
25 years. The new Russian debt under the credits obtained from
international financial organisations must be repaid in 17
years. To governments of foreign states - over 8-10 years. To
foreign commercial banks and firms over 5-10 years. The
deferment granted to Russia ends next year. We must start
paying our debts. All told, more than 123.5 billion dollars
will have to be repaid. At the start of the year each of us,
even a newborn baby, owed foreign creditors 827 dollars. Now
this sum is approaching 1,000.

*********

#4
>From RIA Novosti
Segodnya
June 17, 1998
CHUBAIS A STRONG PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, ACCORDING TO LEADERS OF RUSSIA'S
DEMOCRATIC CHOICE

Anatoly Chubais, chairman of the management board of RAO
EES Rossii, could be a strong presidential candidate at the
2004 elections, provided the national economy starts climbing.
This opinion was expressed by several heads of regional
organisations of Russia's Democratic Choice and members of the
party's political council. 
Chubais could move closer to this goal by agreeing to run
for the post of St. Petersburg governor in 2000, said Andrei
Godunov, secretary of the party's political council responsible
for work with regions and election campaigns. He believes that
Chubais's work in St. Petersburg would show to the rest of
Russia the attractions of the party's implemented ideas.
Godunov believes that Chubais probably knows about the
discussion of this possibility in the party, but has not
expressed his attitude to it so far. 
The party leaders are also discussing Chubais's chances at
the 2000 presidential elections, provided Boris Yeltsin decides
not to run for reelection. It transpired yesterday that the
Russian government plans to suggest to the President the idea
of introducing the post of his personal representative on
relations with international financial organisations, in the
rank of vice-premier. It is expected that this post might be
offered to Anatoly Chubais. (Interfax)

********

#5
Moscow Times
June 17, 1998 
For Better or Worse Russian Brides Not Boring 
By Lynn Visson
Special to The Moscow Times
Lynn Visson is the author of "Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of 
Russian-American Marriages," just published by Hippocrene Books in New 
York. A Russian translation will appear next year. 

With the advent of glasnost and perestroika, the collapse of the Soviet 
Union, the lifting of travel restrictions and the boom in dating and 
marriage agencies -- including Internet services -- more and more 
Russians and Americans are opting for the closest of bilateral 
relations: marriage. The pages of the media are splashed with pictures 
of beautiful Russian women seeking American husbands. Are they after 
something more than a passport to the United States? And what do 
American men find so irresistible in these women? 

Based on the contacts I had with more than 100 Russian-American couples 
while writing my book, and on talks and interviews during a trip to 
Moscow last month, here are a few attempts to answer these questions. 
Even during the Soviet period, when Russian-American contacts in general 
and marriages in particular were a risky business, American socialist 
idealists, Moscow correspondents and diplomats were falling in love with 
and marrying Russians. In the '60s and '70s a wave of student, cultural 
and business exchanges led to more mixed marriages, and today the rapid 
development of cultural and commercial ties and the presence of numerous 
American expatriates in Russia have considerably swelled the ranks of 
these couples. 
Many of the Russian wives were really in love with their American 
husbands -- men they had met and dated in Russia -- and not just with 
their passports. But by the '90s, Russian women were flocking to sign up 
with international dating agencies and were openly advertising in the 
newspapers for American husbands. The explosion of Russian-American 
dating services was a result both of post-perestroika freedom and a 
reaction to the drastic economic crisis. 
"It doesn't matter if he's old, fat or ugly -- what matters is that he 
can get her out of Russia," one Muscovite woman said cynically. 
Fine. So many Russian women long for a better life. But what do American 
men see in them? 
The answer, the chorus of American would-be Prince Charmings sighs, is 
"femininity." These American men are attracted to Russian women who 
enjoy being women, are dressed to the nines, made up like models, eager 
to be housewives and mothers rather than to zoom down a career track and 
are free from the feminist desire for total equality with men. Compared 
to American women, Russian women seem old-fashioned and feminine rather 
than feminist. Despite the changes wrought by glasnost, many Russian 
women do not accept the feminist notion that women can and should do 
everything men do. "In Russian, the word feministka, or feminist, is 
very negative, meaning an aggressive woman who hates men," one woman 
remarked. Many of the American husbands I interviewed commented on their 
enjoyment of their Russian spouse's interest in homemaking, good 
grooming and sex appeal. "She'd never go out without doing her nails," 
one man said of his wife. "She really makes me feel like a man in bed," 
admitted another. "Not like my American girlfriends who treated me like 
a gas pump designed to service them and who treated sex like an aerobics 
class -- now do this and now move there." One young American married to 
a Russian stressed that he was tired of women in tailored suits and 
Nikes interested only in promotions and bonuses. 
The negative reactions of Americans and Russians to certain kinds of 
behavior in their own cultures help fuel their attraction to each other. 
Some American men have had enough of emancipated feminists, and many 
Russian women have had enough of men who drink and do nothing to help 
around the house. 

But there is another side to the domesticated young lady the American 
wants to escort down the aisle. Underneath the pretty, kittenish 
exterior there may be sharpclaws and an iron will. A look at Russian 
literature shows a series of strong heroines and weak heroes, such as 
Pushkin's Tatyana and Yevgeny Onegin, or Goncharov's Olga and Oblomov. 
Russian folk heroes take orders from their wives and mothers. Nearly an 
entire postwar Russian generation was raised without a man in the house, 
and Russian women have for so long had to cope alone on all fronts that 
many have become rather cynical about Russian men, considering them 
infantile little boys. The noted Russian sexologist Igor Kon observed 
that to be successful a Soviet man had to be devious rather than 
adventuresome and servile rather than proud. The two verbs most Russian 
women I spoke to used in talking about Russian men were prezirat' (to 
hold in contempt) and zhalet' (to feel sorry for). American feminists 
may resent men as oppressive exploiters, but a dominating chauvinist is 
not someone you feel sorry for. The Russian femininity that so charms 
American men is coupled with a toughness American feminists could well 
envy, which is something an American husband might take a while to 
realize. 
"Nina is a great wife and a wonderful cook," one American said of his 
spouse, "but when she wants something, there's not much I can do. She 
smiles, she purrs, and then she gets her way." 
Russian women are also attracted by American men who don't drink, bring 
home their salary (or put it in a joint checking account!), help around 
the house and are active partners in raising children. The Americans' 
ingenuous charm and politeness -- and often the Russian wives' lack of 
knowledge of America and Americans -- make the women feel the Americans 
are real men rather than mama's boys or drunken boors. "He's always so 
polite," Lyudmila said of her husband, Lawrence. "He treats me with real 
respect." Svetlana liked the way Mark came home from work on time every 
night. "He never goes out drinking all night with his friends," she 
said. "He takes a drink before dinner, but I've never seen him drunk." A 
Russian psychologist explained why her best friend had married an 
American. "Can you imagine that -- to marry her when she already has a 
child!" 
The young Russian wife of one American put it more cynically. "These 
days, what kind of a Russian can you marry?" Olga asked. "With a factory 
worker you'll starve. A New Russian businessman's money is here today, 
gone tomorrow, and he could be knocked off by the mafia. With an 
American you know you'll be taken care of for life." 
So in this best of all possible worlds, our Russian woman marries a nice 
man from the Midwest with a decent salary, a non-drinker who adopts her 
child and does the dishes every other night. And she sends home some 
money to mama and papa every month. What's the price? As far as many 
Russian women are concerned, the price tag is boredom. Real skuka. And 
that's one complaint I have never -- for better or for worse -- heard 
from an American married to a Russian. 

********

#6
St. Petersburg Times
June 16, 1998
FINDING LOGIC
Rationalize the Tax System 
By Matthew H. Murray
Matthew H. Murray is the president of Sovereign Ventures Inc./Bronze 
Lion ZAO, a management consulting group specializing in direct 
investment and small business development in Russia. 

A letter to Russia's new tax chief:

Dear Boris Grigoriyevich,

You have been summoned for a monumental mission at a precarious moment 
in Russia's transition to a free market. International markets and 
institutions have become arbiters of Russia's economy. They judge 
performance by whether the government observes the legal imperatives of 
its reform policies, including improvement in the collection of tax 
revenues.
In response, you have made clear that Russia's privileged financial 
industrial groups will no longer be above the tax law. Among the most 
egregious types of favor they enjoy is the right to participate in 
government auctions of choice state property, even if chronically 
delinquent in paying taxes. In order to stop such practices, you deserve 
the undivided and unequivocal support of the president and the 
government.
In the realm of enforcement of tax law, your preference is to be feared, 
not loved. Hence, your declaration to target those among Russia's most 
wealthy individuals who evade taxes. Given the infinite riches that 
individuals have recently accrued in Russia, their payment of taxes 
should have a significant impact on Russia's budget deficit. Perhaps 
this measure will also help you bring some of Russia's wealth back home.
As you undertake the task of stricter enforcement, permit me to express 
the hope that you will instruct tax officials to treat fairly those who 
pay their taxes in full on a timely basis. Such parties are often 
persecuted by undisciplined tax authorities for their willingness to 
conduct transparent operations. In fact, the president himself has 
admitted that the Russian tax system punishes companies for their 
honesty. 
Ingrained in the tax agencies of Russia is a belief that they are 
entitled to control the revenues of private companies. Parties who are 
persecuted must fend for their survival, expending precious time and 
resources battling the bureaucracy and litigating in court. In many 
cases, a company's funds are frozen, so that they cannot even operate - 
much less expand their business - for the duration of their conflict 
with the authorities. Such scenarios can begin with an inadvertent error 
in judgment or calculation by a solid taxpayer.
The persecution tends to take two forms. Either a private company is 
literally squeezed for additional tax revenue because it is perceived as 
being rich enough to afford it, or a company is chosen to test an 
interpretation of a tax regulation which is controversial or difficult 
to decipher. Due to the many intractable issues that arise under 
Russia's irrational assembly of tax rules and regulations, the latter is 
a particularly frequent occurrence.
In order to treat Russia's taxpaying citizens fairly, the bureaucracy 
that governs them must be reformed. First, it is imperative to eliminate 

corrupt officials who treat taxpayers as objects of extortion. Second, 
the bureaucracy must be denied its sense of entitlement over taxpayers.
Such reform can be achieved only by leveling the playing field on which 
the government and private sector debate the proper interpretation of 
tax laws. Taxpayers must be able to defend themselves from overzealous 
attacks, and to do so without sacrificing their ability to conduct 
smooth operations. Tax officials must be penalized for arbitrary, faulty 
and frivolous claims.
A serious effort to enforce the tax law of Russia is an overdue step, 
one that you have the track record to carry out. But, it must not be 
pursued at the expense of wider voluntary compliance with the tax code. 
If you give tax officials more discretion to enforce the law, a direct 
consequence will be persecution of those who pay their taxes in full on 
a timely basis.
As you have stated, the Russian tax system should be more rational, in 
order to help the government raise revenues while also allowing business 
to grow. If the price of tax compliance is persecution, the most 
enlightened type of tax reform will not achieve the goal of increasing 
revenues. Businesses which regularly pay taxes will not grow and expand 
Russia's tax base. Those which would comply if only the government did 
not automatically assume control over their livelihoods will continue to 
operate outside the system.
In the long term, you will need these two groups as allies if Russia is 
to achieve a rational balance of high revenue collection and economic 
growth.

Yours faithfully, 
Matthew H. Murray

********

#7
Newsweek
6/22/98
International/ Russia: Bye, Beluga. Later, Sevruga.
Caviar is going to get scarce--and more expensive than ever
By Owen Matthews

Senior Lt. Aleksei Chepinov of the fisheries police balances on the
pitching bow of a police launch and strains to haul a sturgeon poacher's trot
line up from the depths of the fast-flowing waters of the Volga river. A long
rope hung with dozens of sharp hooks breaks the surface--and on it is a
struggling, four-foot sturgeon, a trickle of black caviar oozing from its
belly, where the hook has torn its flesh. From the bank, poachers watch with
binoculars as Chepinov hauls in and cuts a dozen illegal lines and impounds
four fish. The two pounds of caviar in each of the sevruga sturgeons are worth
$40 wholesale on the Volga delta--and up to $1,400 in New York or Paris.
Caviar is big business--but a dwindling one. So many sturgeon are being
poached out of the Volga and the Caspian Sea that next year could be the last
caviar-production season for up to a decade. Sturgeon take nine to 15 years to
mature, and the stocks of adult fish have dwindled to almost nothing. Though
Russian government-funded fish farms release 50 million baby sturgeon into the
Caspian every year, most are caught before they grow up and spawn. Catches
have fallen by 90 percent during the past decade to just over 60 tons of
caviar per year; the fabled giant beluga sturgeon has all but disappeared. The
last recorded full-grown, 60-year-old beluga was caught in 1989, and weighed

in at 2,163 pounds, including 265 pounds of caviar. It now sits, stuffed,
in a
museum, a testament to a bygone age. "We have to enforce a fishing ban in the
Caspian, or we risk losing this unique resource forever," says Dr. Yuri
Chuikov, chairman of a regional ecology committee. "The situation is
catastrophic."
Those accustomed to champagne and caviar couldn't agree more. One ounce of
beluga sells for $55 in the boutique at Petrossian, a New York caviar
restaurant. Within two years it could rise to $75, says Martin Adams,
Petrossian's executive vice-president. "It's just a question of supply and
demand. We're going to have to live through a period of scarcity and high
prices."
Preventing poaching on the hundreds of streams of the Volga delta is a
near-impossible task. Lieutenant Chepinov is one of a 25-man anti-poaching
group assigned to cover a 40-mile stretch of river. He earns a little under
$100 per month, about as much as a poacher makes in a couple of hours. Mass
unemployment and the collapse of the shipping industry in the Volga delta have
given the 1 million people who live in the region little choice but to fish
for the reptilian-looking sturgeon and their precious spawn. Even more
damaging is illegal, large-scale sea fishing on the Caspian itself by well-
organized gangs from neighboring Dagestan and Azerbaijan.
There is hope in a new international convention that could cut off the
poachers' favored export route through Turkey. Also, a Caspian-wide ban could
be in the cards if the states that border the Caspian agree on a political
demarcation of the sea and its resources. But until that happens, one of the
world's rarest luxuries will soon be even rarer.
With Avani Mehta in New York

*******

#8
World Bank's Stiglitz Says Russia Committed to Economic Reform

Washington, June 16 (Bloomberg) -- World Bank Senior Vice President Joseph
Stiglitz said Russia's government is committed to reforming its economy,
although he stopped short of pledging fresh money to the country. 
Stiglitz, who just returned from a visit to Moscow, said he was impressed by
the Russian authorities' understanding of the country's problems and their
resolve to deal with them. 
I came away from these meetings with a large number of people in Moscow very
convinced of the commitment of the government to meaningful economic
reforms,'' Stiglitz told a press briefing. 
Still, Stiglitz, also the World Bank's chief economist, declined to
comment on
whether Russia needs new money from the World Bank, International Monetary
Fund or industrialized countries. 
An IMF team will visit Russia next week to seek new pledges on boosting tax
collection in exchange for possible emergency aid investors say is needed to
avoid a ruble devaluation. 
Russia must make $3 billion in debt payments this month, about $6.5 billion
next month and more than $30 billion in total this year. The central bank
spent about $1.5 billion of its $10 billion in cash reserves in the past three
days alone to prop up the ruble and risks exhausting its reserves, analysts
said. 

The IMF team will arrive in Moscow on Monday to determine if Russia
needs more
money to support the ruble and ease its cash shortage, while demanding
additional policy reforms, IMF and Russia officials said. Investors say
without a loan of about $10 billion, Russia will have to devalue the ruble,
worsening the crisis as panicked citizens convert savings to dollars. 
The benchmark Russian Trading System stock index ended seven days of
declines,
climbing 4.15 percent to 171.96, after IMF officials said they'd visit Moscow.
The RTS index has fallen about 47 percent in the past month after demand dried
up for government debt on concern about Russia's difficulties in collecting
taxes and cutting spending. 
Stiglitz said at his press briefing in Washington he'll also visit Japan and
Indonesia this week and next. He said investors have been disappointed with
Japan's efforts so far to shore up its economy. 
It's important for their economy to be restored,'' he said. ``Whatever needs
to be done to restore their economy ought to be done.'' 
Japan's government said Friday the economy has slipped into recession, it's
first full-year contraction in almost a quarter- century. 

********

#9
REVIEW/TELEVISION: 'Face of Russia' disappoints
The Face of Russia (Documentary miniseries; PBS; Thursdays, June 18-July 1,
10-11 p.m.) [DJ: Actually, Wednesdays, June 17-July 1, 9-10 p.m.]
By David Mermelstein 
June 16, 1998

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - The task of tracing Russia's rich cultural history is
simply beyond the reach of any three-hour documentary, as James Billington's
unfocused and profoundly disappointing assessment indicates. 
Billington is the Librarian of Congress and a respected historian, but his
gloss on Russia is little more than a trotting out of familiar
generalizations. He presents the nation's history patchwork-style and
considers its artistic heritage with few novel concepts. 
For Billington, it's the icon, that sublime fusion of craft and devotion,
that
marks Russia's artistic heart, and he discusses this form with some eloquence
in the first hour. His tours of several breathtaking churches are also
noteworthy. But his stiff, tentative speaking style often undermines his
commentary, and he grows pedantic when discussing topics at length. 
Yet the real problem with this program is Billington's idiosyncratic
approach
to his subject. He devotes much attention to Gogol in the second hour but
never mentions Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy -- let alone Chekhov or Solzhenitsyn.
And though Eisenstein occupies a good deal of time, Stanislavski and Diaghilev
are never spoken of. Mussorgsky is discussed, Tchaikovsky barely mentioned.
Billington also fails to note that many of this century's greatest musicians
-- Horowitz, Heifetz, Chaliapin, Piatigorsky, to name but a few -- were
Russians. Most amazing of all is that he ignores the ballet, that pillar of
Russian culture, which is not once alluded to in this series. 
There are lovely shots of palaces and churches, but pretty pictures do not a
portrait make. And the occasional breezy anecdote hardly atones for the
serious gaps in this survey. The interviews spliced into the narrative help

alleviate the tedium, but not all the comments are that insightful or
informative. And Billington's concluding panegyric offers nothing but stale
platitudes. Even those completely unfamiliar with the history and culture of
Russia will not benefit from this poorly organized effort, as the confusion
encountered surpasses whatever learning can be gleaned. 
Tech credits are to be lauded. The film and opera clips are well-chosen and
excellently reproduced. 

Host: James Billington. 
Filmed in Russia by Malone Gill Prods., the Library of Congress and WETA
Washington, D.C., in association with Public Media Inc. and Media-Most.
Executive producer, Phylis Geller; producer, Michael Gill; director, Murray
Grigor; writer, James Billington; camera, Douglas Campbell; editor, Dave
Jacobs; sound, Allan Young; music, Carl Davis. 

*********

#10
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 
From: "Richard T. Davies" <rtdavies@compuserve.com>
Subject: Plumbing or "Plumbing" in Minsk?

Recent events in Minsk recall the French saying, "The more things
change, the more they remain the same."
In 1952, during his brief season as ambassador in Moscow, George F.
Kennan was informed that his chancery and most of its personnel must move
out of their quarters on Mokhovaya Street, just a hop, skip, and jump away
from the Kremlin. The British ambassador was given the same demand: his
chancery and residence lay just across the Moscow River on the opposite
side of the Kremlin, so that when Stalin looked out the windows of his
offices, he saw on one side the Union Jack and, on the other, the Stars and
Stripes fluttering in the breeze. Not only were his erstwhile allies
"containing" the USSR geopolitically; their embassies "surrounded" him in
the very heartland of his power. Moreover, Stalin well remembered the
brief speech Kennan, then U. S. chargé d'affaires, had given by popular
demand to a cheering throng of Muscovites celebrating V-E Day in 1945. 
What makes these tyrants so insecure in the midst of their hordes
of secret policemen, informants, and technicians, servicing the
apparatuses of eavesdropping and recording which honeycomb the walls of
foreign embassies and residences, that they cannot bear to live within 50
or 100 meters of the emissaries of foreign powers? Is it not plumbing in
the literal sense of the word, but "plumbing," as practised by the henchmen
of another notorious paranoiac, Richard M. Nixon, that leads Lukashenka to
want to turf the ambassadors accredited to him out of their houses? Or is
it simply the playing out of the impotent rage of a man who, having by his
own actions made enemies of governments originally well-wishers of
Belarusian independence, now cannot bear to be reminded by the presence of
their flags and personnel of the blunders by means of which he brought that
about?
One more recollection from 1952-1953 about plumbing: The Americans
took advantage of the offer of the Soviet authorities to find them new,
more spacious, and up-to-date quarters and accepted the offer of the
complex on Chaykovsky Street which became their new chancery and apartment
house in late spring 1953. The British, however, were determined to hang

on to the graceful pre-1917 sugar baron's mansion which served as their
ambassador's residence and chancery. The Soviet authorities showed them
one potential replacement after the other, but for this reason or that none
was acceptable to HBM's ambassador and staff. Early in March, 1953, Stalin
died. The Soviet Foreign Ministry promptly informed both embassies that
there was now no reason for them to move. By that time, the Americans had
imported hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of modern plumbing
equipment, the installation of which in the new building was far advanced. 
Although the Soviet authorities offered reimbursement for the expenditures
we had made, there was general agreement that we would be better off if we
moved. So we did. Our more relaxed British colleagues profited by their
patience and remain to this day in their embassy on the naberezhnaya
overlooking the Moscow River and the Kremlin.
In Belarus, Lukashenka applies the methods he used on the
collective farm of which he was director a few years back. Understandably,
then, he has the same miserable level of success managing the country as
once he had managing the farm. Why waste the time of our personnel and the
other resources that must be expended to maintain diplomatic relations with
such a "President"? The governments of the European Union are asking
themselves the same question, as the German Foreign Office warned Minsk on
June 12th. (The government of India, which sets such store by being
regarded as a member of the nuclear club, comes readily to mind as a
potential participant in such a move.) 
The time seems near for the last ambassador out of Minsk to switch
off the light. Better yet, he or she ought to take the bulbs out of the
sockets and smash them, together with all the other equipment not worth
packing up and taking home. 

R. T. Davies
Political Officer,
U. S. Embassy, Moscow,
1951-53

*********

#11
Russian Premier Promises Budget Stabilization 

St Petersburg, June 17 (Interfax) - Russian Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko
said that the Cabinet of Ministers will have to show courage and political
will in implementing the currently drawn anti-crisis program. 
Russian President *Boris Yeltsin*, members of parliament will attend the
enlarged government meeting on June 23 where the program will be presented,
Kiriyenko said Wednesday, opening the Second Economic Forum of CIS States
in St Petersburg. 
"The program will be unpopular on certain parameters," but the
government will have to carry it out, given the current situation, he said. 
Kiriyenko cited both external and internal reasons for the Russian stock
market crisis. Slumping oil and gas world prices and "the international
financial crisis fell onto fertile domestic ground: a crisis of trust of
the system which today lives beyond its means," he said. 
Only "firm budget stabilization" can help to overcome the crisis, he
said. The fiscal task is not a priority in reaching this objective, he said. 
"The world financial crisis is a serious challenge to the current events
in Russia. We can respond to it only by consolidating efforts inside the
country and CIS," he said. 
"Russia is ready for constructive dialogue with all the Commonwealth
states interested in broadening integration," he said. 

A coordinated trade policy is needed in the first place. It involves
elimination of customs barriers, of double taxation, introduction of single
import tariffs and protection of domestic markets, he said. 
Kiriyenko read Yeltsin's congratulating message to the participants of
the forum. 

********

#12
E X C L U S I V E I N T E R V I E W
THE PETERSBURG ECONOMIC FORUM IS A NEW BEGINNING
WHICH GOES BEYOND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LIMITS OF NIHILISM
THAT HAS SHAPED UP IN THE ATTITUDE TO PRIVATE PROPERTY 
AND TO THE MARKET, YEGOR STROYEV STATED
ST. PETERSBURG, JUNE 17. /FROM RIA NOVOSTI CORRESPONDENT
VIKTOR BEZBREZHNY/ -- Financial-industrial groups, big
corporations and private capital will in the long term play the
main, determining role in the development of the economies of
Russia and other CIS member states. This view was expressed in
an interview given to the RIA Novosti correspondent by Speaker
of the Federation Council and Chairman of the Council of the
Interparliamentary Assembly (MPA) of the Commonwealth Countries
Yegor Stroyev before the opening today of the second Petersburg
Economic Forum which he heads. The Forum is being held under the
aegis of the MPA of the CIS and the Federation Council, and with
the assistance of the President and government of Russia. Its
main purpose is to help economic integration of the Commonwealth
countries.
Emphasizing the role and place of non-state structures
which figure also among the financial sponsors of the Forum at
which the Russkoye Zoloto (Russian Gold) company is the general
sponsor, Stroyev pointed out that "from 40 to 70 per cent of
enterprises in the CIS countries have already been privatised,
and the economy has, in essence, already become private". "Of
course, private capital takes care of its particular interests
but it is enough for us to fight and to say that only return
backwards would remedy the current crisis situation", the
Chairman of the Federation Council noted. It is Stroyev's firm
conviction that "if we want to benefit our own peoples we should
not go back but should run forward but reasonably". This means
that "also private capital must be controlled by the state, by
law".
Stroyev called the Petersburg Economic Forum "a child who
is being born". "We are a new beginning which goes beyond the
psychological limits of nihilism that has shaped up in the
attitude to private property and to the market", the Speaker
explained. He holds the view that "it will be possible to regard
the comprehension of the necessity, wide scope and support for
the best people who know how to do business as a great victory".
However, "we do not support criminal structures but come out for
stringent compliance with law which would punish for any
violation, especially when it concerns the budget sphere, the
payment of taxes", Stroyev emphasized. "Fortunately, honest
people are always more numerous, and we rely precisely on this
part of society which builds the foundation of a market economy
and of new relations among people in these conditions", Yegor
Stroyev said in conclusion. 


********

#13
Jamestown Foundation Monitor
17 June 1998

RUSSIA'S INTERIOR TROOPS TO BE HALVED. Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin
laid out his plans for reforming the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD)
after a meeting with President Boris Yeltsin on June 15. Within the next two
years, Stepashin said, the ministry's troops will be cut from the present
240,000 to around 150,000. This will mean a sharp reduction in the number of
Interior troops (VV) and a reordering of priorities to improve the caliber
of the regular police and concentrate on the fight against crime. Stepashin
said he wants to move to an all-volunteer force and dispense with the use of
conscript servicemen. He denied rumors that the VV will be incorporated into
the regular army under the Defense Ministry, however: "We must retain a
different internal military that does not duplicate the ground forces."
(Russian agencies, June 15)

Reform is long overdue. The staff of the MVD grew rapidly in the early 1990s
because Yeltsin wanted a force he felt he could rely on: He realized that he
could not trust the Defense Ministry alone after sections of the army
supported the failed coup of August 1991. By 1995, the MVD numbered some
400,000 men. Stepashin, appointed to head the MVD in March, is keen to
assert his control. At a time when the Russian government needs to tighten
its belt, he has the support of Prime Minister Sergei Kirienko in cutting
the number of troops and reordering priorities. Stepashin has said that
reform will enable the pay of those police officers who remain to be raised
and for the police to be better equipped. (Russky telegraf, April 15; TV6
Moscow, April 19)

The number of reported crimes has grown by sixty percent over the last three
years and the police have not been able to control the rise in violent and
organized crime. Stepashin's predecessor, Anatoly Kulikov, claimed that the
police were solving between 70 and 80 percent of reported crimes. Since the
average conviction rate in most other countries is around thirty or forty
percent, observers suspected either that Kulikov was inflating the
statistics or that the police were obtaining convictions by illegitimate
means to. According to a report issued in the spring by the
Prosecutor-General's Office, a large number of arrests are carried out
improperly and beating of persons in detention to extract confessions is
widespread. Police corruption is endemic and opinion polls show that public
trust in the police is even lower than it was during the Soviet era.
(Komsomolskaya pravda, April 8)

********