October 6, 1998    
This Date's Issues: 2414•2415

Johnson's Russia List
#2415
6 October 1998
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Moscow Times editorial: October '93 Still Poisons Political Life.
2. Journal of Commerce: Michael Lelyveld, Experts: Russia can survive
without IMF. Government would limp along financially.
3. Russia Today: Rod Pounsett, Give the Communists Enough Rope...? 
4. Vladimir Menkov: Trip report.
5. The Independent (UK): Helen Womack, Street Life - Brave new world 
derides old Utopia.
6. Reuters: Timothy Heritage, ANALYSIS-Russia fears impact if NATO 
strikes Serbs.
7. International Herald Tribune: David Hoffman, Ailing Russia Waits 
Impatiently for Successor to Faltering Yeltsin.
8. Interfax: Poll: 49 Percent of Russians Expect Early Elections.
9. RFE/RL NEWSLINE: ECONOMISTS PREDICT MORE HARD TIMES amd YABLOKO 
PRESENTS ECONOMIC PLAN.]

******

#1
Moscow Times
October 6, 1998 
EDITORIAL: October '93 Still Poisons Political Life 

Five years have passed since the terrible events of October 1993 but sadly
Russia is no closer to a consensus on what happened or who was right. Any
assignment of blame would be facile. 
Democrats at the time painted the insurrectionists as reactionary terrorists
whom President Boris Yeltsin had no choice but to suppress. 
According to this version, the Supreme Soviet, or Russian Parliament, which
was then based in the White House, represented extreme leftist and nationalist
elements who wanted to drive Russia back to the worst excesses of the
Stalinist regime. 
Rather than accepting the fresh elections that Yeltsin called to resolve a
constitutional crisis, they decided to stage an armed uprising. Armed bands of
red-browns broke a police cordon around the White House and went on an orgy of
looting and killing that sacked the Moscow mayor's office and then tried to
take the Ostankino television complex. 
Yeltsin, who in this version represents the good guys, was only responding to
this aggression when he sent the tanks in to blow up the White House. 
Five years have cast increasing doubt on this version of history f which was
more or less accepted by the West at the time. 
Yeltsin's own acceptance of violence in politics was made all too plain by his
invasion of Chechnya. In hindsight, it is clear that Yeltsin was equally
intransigent and aggressive in his battle for power against the Supreme
Soviet. And voices of compromise on both sides were ignored. 
It was Yeltsin who engineered the crisis that triggered the events of October.
He broke the constitution by dissolving the parliament and then laid siege to
the building with riot police. 
Historians will continue to ponder the significance of these events but it is
undoubtedly true that October '93 continues to poison the political scene here
in Russia. 
The legitimacy of Yeltsin's regime remains tainted with violence. He is only
one of a number of key players from that period who remain on the scene and
still harbor bitter resentment. The intransigence of the State Duma, the
Supreme Soviet's successor, is in large part due to revanchist sentiment of
those who were forced to accept Yeltsin's reforms at the point of a gun. 
Russia must learn, however, that violence should play no part in politics.
This year's political crises have so far been resolved without bloodshed. With
a nationwide strike due Wednesday, the message must be that no one has
anything to gain from street fighting. Yeltsin most of all must realize the
need for compromise. 

******

#2
Journal of Commerce
October 6, 1998
[for personal use only]
Experts: Russia can survive without IMF 
Government would limp along financially 
BY MICHAEL S. LELYVELD
JOURNAL OF COMMERCE STAFF

As Russia wrestles with crises on all fronts, its new leaders are facing the
question of whether the nation can survive without the International Monetary
Fund.
Since Yevgeny Primakov was confirmed as prime minister three weeks ago, his
aides have floated and just as quickly withdrawn a series of economic plans
that have met stiff resistance from either the Russian public or the IMF. 

Stark choice

The latest alternatives boil down to a stark choice. If the IMF and other
outsiders do not provide $2.5 billion soon, the country will print 100 billion
in new but nearly worthless rubles to cover its fourth quarter budget, said
Alexander Zhukov, head of the State Duma's budget committee, speaking Sunday
in Washington.
The amount of requested aid has fallen, while the ruble emission figure keeps
rising, in a sign of the slide in both Russia's hopes and finances.
Less than a month ago, the country was flirting with the idea of printing 20
to 30 billion rubles, while it was scheduled to get a total of $5.4 billion in
new loans from the IMF by November. 
Now with a national strike set for Wednesday and the worst harvest in 43
years, Russia's numbers have failed to add up.
Even if the IMF, the World Bank and embattled Japan deliver the new loans,
Russia faces at least $3.5 billion in fourth-quarter debt service at a time
when it has already defaulted on ruble-denominated bonds and credits such as
those from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for guaranteed grain sales.
If Russia cannot meet Western reform demands, can it get along without the
IMF? Most economists say yes.
"They've survived before. It doesn't mean they'll survive well," said Marshall
Goldman, associate director of Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian
Studies.
Mr. Goldman believes that Russia is entering a dark period that may last for
two years or more. 

More rubles, greater inflation

Printing rubles to pay wages seems certain to explode inflation, driving the
government to impose price controls. Shortages would follow quickly as
incentives disappear.
Black markets and hoarding would return, as in the days of Soviet Prime
Minister Mikhail Gorbachev.
But the government could limp along financially, if it can maintain political
power.
Keith Bush, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, said that Russia's $80 billion in annual exports could put a floor
under the plunge, if the government sticks to plans that require exporters to
sell 75% of their hard currency to the central bank.
As in the Gorbachev era, the basic Russian commodities of oil, gas, gold and
diamonds hold a core of cash value, even if the ruble is left to paper the
walls.
"They got by somehow in the Soviet days without the IMF," said Marty Kohn,
director of the Asia department at consultants WEFA Inc. in Washington.
But that assessment may already be affecting the outcome of decisions, as
pressure builds on the IMF to devote its shrinking resources to countries like
Brazil, where there is a political mandate for firm measures and U.S. exposure
is on the front line. 

No aid before December

Even if Russia complies with IMF guidelines, no aid seems possible before
December, raising the question of whether the country is already effectively
living without the fund. Russia has received no IMF loans since July, when a
$4.8 billion installment was wasted in a failed defense of the ruble.
But economic forecasts aside, Russia's suffering may be inestimable. The grain
harvest is expected to reach only about 51 million metric tons, more than 40%
below last year.
As is previous bad years, Russian officials are minimizing the need for
imports, a recipe for a potential humanitarian disaster this winter.
Mr. Kohn said that efforts may shift from official financing for Russia to
nongovernmental aid and emergency relief.
U.S. producers are lobbying the USDA to donate pork to Russia this winter,
hoping to preserve the market until it recovers.
But the Russian Agriculture Ministry is discouraging outright aid, saying that
it only wants better credit terms to preserve its reputation as a reliable
buyer. Russia was the third-largest market for U.S. pork exports before the
August financial crisis, Bridge News said. 

******

#3
Russia Today
http://www.russiatoday.com
October 2, 1998
Give the Communists Enough Rope … ? 
By Rod Pounsett 

This columnist wishes to make a sincere public apology to Russia's Prime
Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, and the powers behind the throne that
engineered his move into office. I was wrong. Far from steering Russia
backward into a Soviet-style disaster, the current farce we are witnessing,
although risky, is actually designed to bury opposition to reform once and
for all. 
Why else have the likes of Malsyukov and his band of 'has been'
academics been given the opportunity to make such public fools of
themselves. Clearly it was orchestrated to show the Russian people just how
stupid it would be to allow such men to have control over the country's
economy. I even suspect the advance leak of their plans to the influential
Commersant Daily was deliberate. 
I also believe Primakov could turn out to be the hero of the day. In the
interest of the nation, he is either prepared to sacrifice his public image
by taking full responsibility for the unfolding chaos and eventually leave
the stage in disgrace. Or, he is waiting for the strategic moment to sack
all the incompetents in his fake cabinet once they have all be given a
chance to display their uselessness in public. He would then reinstall the
best of the reformers and get on with the real job of putting Russia back
on the right tracks. 
Maybe, Boris Nikolaiovitch Yeltsin, or at least the power group
surrounding him, are not so mad after all. 
Look at the facts. Every important reform measure that has been
structured up until now by successive governments has been blocked by whom?
The left wing opposition in the Duma. And who has been boasting that they
could do a much better job? The left wing opposition in the Duma. And whose
ideas are reflected in the lunatic plans we have seen emerging from
Malsyukov's band of old guard economists? The left wing opposition in the
Duma. 
And who would suffer most if such plans were implemented? The Russian
People. And who would benefit most from a redirection of anger? Boris
Nickolaivitch and the reformers. 
Laugh if you want, but there are rumors circulating in Moscow that give
credence to my theory. I am told many of the reformers who have been
demoted to the sidelines and have are burying their hatchets and beginning
to cooperate. They are covertly forming an alliance in preparation for
either their recall or to independently step into the breach once the dam
has burst. 
Now you can put all this down to my feeble attempts at satire. Or you
can suspend judgement until we see how events unfold in the weeks to come.
Or maybe I am just dreaming. 

********

#4
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1998 
From: Vladimir Menkov <vmenkov@cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Trip report 

These are some of the notes I made during my trip to Russia in August-
September 1998. No politics or high finance here, just everyday
life. The full version of the report is available at
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~vmenkov/Usenet/Nizhni98.html. Question and
comments are welcome at vmenkov@cs.indiana.edu.

Most rouble amounts are based on pre-August 17 prices, when the
exchange rate was around RUR 6.2 for $1 ( RUR 1 = $0.16). 

August 3. Monchegorsk, Murmansk Region.

Monchegorsk is as pure form of a company town as there may be. The
company in question being Norilsk Nickel, which owns Severonikel, a
huge nickel-smelting plant a few kilometers west of the town. People
employed in this kind of industry enjoyed comparatively high living
standard in the Communist days, and those who still keep their jobs
with the company are fairly well off even now. Not too rarely you see
a family where the husband pulls an equivalent of $500, his wife gets
maybe $100 at her teaching or or medical job, and they both have put a
lot of sweat equity in remodelling their privatized apartment -- and
as a result they manage to have a lifestyle that's in many ways as
comfortable as that of many an American working-class family.
But this prosperity is fairly precarious: if you lose your job,
there is not too much you can do earn a comparable income
elsewhere. You can move to the mainland if you own housing there, as
many people do. But if you don't, moving is quite problematic, because
the real estate values in these northern company towns is quite
depressed. You would be lucky to sell your 2-bedroom apartment there
for 20,000 roubles, while you'd need more like $20,000 to buy a
comparable apartment in a large city in the mainland Russia.
I was told that unlike many other enterprises, who simply delay
their employees' wages by months, while they keep working, Norilsk
Nickel tries to deal with redundant workforce in a somewhat more
civilized way. They try to reduce their workforce through attrition,
i.e. by freezing hiring new employees, and by sending some of their
employees to an unpaid leave (_administrativny otpusk_), from which,
however, they may be recalled at any time.

Private prosperity of many families contrasts with fairly dilapidated
character of public spaces. Apartment buildings' stairwells look
dirtier and more dilapidated than ever, even though almost every
apartment now sports a steel door, sometimes leather-coated even from
the outside. Sidewalks look like they have not been repaved for
several years. As population shrinks and the demand for new housing is
nil, the housing construction has stopped. You often see an building,
where the construction work was abruptly abandoned several years ago,
after a few floors had been built.
In a traditional Soviet city, almost any residential building was sur-
rounded by lots of trees. A newly built building would have some sapl-
ings in front of it; after several years, the trees would reach to the
2nd or 3rd floor, and an older 5- or even 9-floor building would
usually have trees almost as tall as it all around it. What you see in
today's Monchegorsk is in stark contrast with this: a building may be
6-7 years old, but have almost no trees near it. Planting them must
have been cut out of the city budget as a "non-essential" expense.

August 1998. Nizhni Novgorod.

After Moscow, Nizhni Novgorod is among the Russian cities where the
progress made since the Communist days is most visible. Just like in
Moscow, the main impression I had from the pre-August-17 Nizhni
Novgorod was that of _normality_ -- even though, as we were to find
all too soon, the country was living on borrowed time.
One can't deny that "the reforms" killed many parts of the national
economy. But in the same time greater freedom of private enterprise
and reasonably free competition in at least some areas resulted in
great improvements. Of course, as in any society, you benefit from
the greater availability of goods and services only if you have many
to pay; but, honestly, I could never get rid of the feeling that the
majority of people who complain about their poverty are the same kind
of people who, as the proverb says, "are too poor to sweep their
backyard".

Retail trade is probably the area where the progress made since the
Communist days is most noticeable. Apparently, competition in this
business is fierce -- anybody can open a store or at least a market
stall -- and as a result the things look very different than in the
Soviet or post-Soviet days. Grocery shopping is easy now: you usually
can buy anything you want within a few hundred meters from your house,
at any time of day. Lunch breaks -- formerly obligatory for any store
-- are much less common now. Many stores are open till 11pm, and some
even 24 hours a day.
And, unlike Moscow, which lives mainly on imported food, in the
Nizhni you can manage to do you grocery shopping with the "buy
Russian" motto, at least as far as most staple foods are concerned.
Most industrial goods, unfortunately, are imported. I spent half a day
in a department store trying to find a pair of shoes made locally, and
ended up buying ones made in China.
To find better deals, people go to all kinds of bazaars. Some are
just farmers' markets, where people sell farm produce from open stalls
or from the back of a truck. Elsewhere, huge metal containers have
been converted to kiosks, open by day and closed by night. And on the
city streets, a former kiosk now has become a veritable small shop: a
customer can enter into it through a door, and deal with the
shopkeepers indoors. The latter innovation, probably, is due to a
government order requiring that liquors be only sold in shops of such
kind -- and since most grocery retailers make a large part of their
income from selling alcohol, they had to remodel their shops.

Of course everybody complains that prices are high. Certainly, liv-
ing on an old-age pension or a student's stipend has become much more
difficult: while the prices (as of the early August) were roughly 10
times as high as a decade ago, a student's scholarship or a retiree's
pension is only 4 times as high. (If there were no currency
denomination last January, the numbers would be 10,000 and 4,000,
respectively). for a person able and willing to work, it's not that
difficult earn 10 times as much as what you would get in the mid-80s;
so your purchasing power won't be much lower than in the old days.
Very importantly, the way people use their purchasing power has
changed drastically since 1988 or even 1991. Both businesses and
consumers now can (or at least could, until 08/17/98) make rational
decisions much more often than they would a decade ago. Instead of
running to the store and grabbing whatever is sold today, regardless
of whether they need it, people actually go to one store and another,
look at the prices, and figure out how much of what they need to buy
and where they can find the best deal. People in Russia call this new
shopping attitude "we go to a store as if it were a museum"; I call it
"comparison shopping".
One thing where the contrast with the Communist days was the most
striking was the way the market behaved after the rouble devaluation
of the late August 1998. In the old days, if people started believing
that a certain kind of merchandise was "in short supply" or was going
to become more expensive, it probably would disappear from the stores
for years to come: people would immediately buy up whatever amount of
it came on sale, even if they did not actually need it and did not
have any way of using it. (Plenty of people still have boxes full of
soap bars they bought around 1990, just because they could buy
it!). Now shopkeepers were free, at least to some extent, raise the
prices as high as the market could bear. As a result, panic buying
failed to clean the store shelves. After a few days, supply/demand
equilibrium was re-established, and some prices even went down
somewhat from their peak values.

A thing that would strike a person who has not had an occasion to
shop in Russia for a decade is the almost complete disappearance of
self-service stores, especially in grocery retailing. In the 1970's
and early 80's the traditional layout of Soviet stores (you pay your
money to a cash register in one corner of the hall, then you take your
receipt to a retail clerk, who gives you your merchandise from behind
the counter) was mainly replaced with more modern self-service layout,
larger _Universamy_ being not too different from a smallish Kroger or
Safeway. But by the late 80's, when the perestroika policies made cash
abundant and goods scarce, while shoplifting became the shopkeeper's
problem, rather than that of the state, the self-service stores all
but disappeared. Despite all the changes since then, self-service has
not made a real comeback in Russia yet, because the salaries are low,
while potential shoplifters numerous -- so savings from self-service
would not compensate losses from increased shoplifting. The exceptions
are upscale Moscow stores catering mainly to homesick expatriates and
Russian new rich. Only such stores can afford modern means of
protection against theft, as well as a large security staff.

After the retail trade, another area where improvements achieved since
the Communist days are easy to notice is urban (and suburban) transit.
Not counting taxis, Nizhni Novgorod has now three levels of public
transportation.
First, like in the old days, the city runs regular public buses,
which you can ride all day for RUR 2 or all month for RUR 50. You can
also buy a ticket from a conductor or driver after boarding, but it
will be cost you the same RUR 2. So almost nobody does this: when a
controller comes in, everybody flashes either a daily or monthly pass,
or some small red book that allows its bearer to ride the bus free for
one reason or another.
The second tier of city public transit, which existed even in the
Communist time but on a much smaller scale, consists of smaller buses
"fixed-route taxis", i.e. jitneys. Just like regular buses, they
display a placard with the route number and the list of important
stops, and if a given has existed long enough, it is shown on the city
public transit map as well. But unlike regular big buses, these
jitneys don't accept monthly or daily passes or any kind of little red
books. You pay your 2 rouble fare in cash to the driver, no exception
made. These may not seem a lot of money for a visitor from abroad or
even from Moscow, but apparently it is for those who already have
bought their passes or don't even need to buy them, enjoying the right
of free bus ride. Thus quite a few people may sit at bus stop,
watching half a dozen jitneys pass by, before the waited-for "free"
city bus comes in. As a result, jitneys are less crowded than regular
buses -- normally, every passenger has a seat. In addition to greater
comfort than in regular bus, you can expect a faster ride, because the
jitney stops not at every bus stop, but only when needed. So if you
can spare 2 roubles, this is definitely the way to go around the city.
The jitney routes are commonly referred to as "commercial routes",
implying perhaps that they are meant to make money for their owners,
rather then to be some kind of public service like the city buses. The
jitneys are owned by various IChP (single proprietorships), TOO and
OOO (partnerships and corporations), and perhaps by the city itself.
Finally, the third tier is represented by GAZel minibuses (something
like a Volkswagen bus, with a dozen or so seats), run by the national
franchise Avtolayn. Like the bigger jitneys, they seem to skim the
passenger transportation market, running along the most popular bus
routes. Charging RUR 2.50 a ride, they serve as an even more "exclusive" 
(_elitnyj_, as they say in Russia :-) means of transportation.

The third area of great progress achieved by the (pre-default)
Russian economy was banking. A customer could walk into an SBS-Agro
office, open an account, and have instant access to his or her money
anywhere in the country -- either in another SBS-Agro office, or via
an ATM. Transferring money from abroad into the country was fairly
painless and inexpensive. You would pay only whatever your bank
charged you for a S.W.I.F.T. transfer (if you elected using this
route, rather than the slower transfer via a correspondent account in
a US bank), plus possibly a 1% fee for taking your money out of your
account in a Russian bank.
ATM networks have sprung up all over the country. You could use a
Plus or Cirrus ATM card, in any of the ATMs displaying the
(SBS-Agro's) STB-Card logo; and you could find such an ATM in the
lobby of almost any Moscow subway station, or in front of any of half
a dozen universities or colleges in downtown Nizhni Novgorod. I tried
to use US-issued ATM cards in a few machines, and found that the
exchange rate was very decent (even in the late September -- provided
you could find an ATM with cash).

The fourth area where drastic changes have been brought by the
society greater openness coupled with the market competition is
people's access to information. You can notice them if you stop by any
map store. Even though you could buy a fairly adequate street map of
almost any large Russian city even in the Communist days, a popular
belief was that "over there, in the West" they had published much
better maps, where "you could find every building", and all Western
diplomats and spies bought such maps before travelling to the
USSR. Somehow, I failed to find any such maps in either Hagstrom's or
Rand McNally's stores in New York or elsewhere. But in today's Russia
you indeed can buy very detailed street maps. Several publishers
produced atlases showing Moscow down to a house; and maps like this
are available for other cities, such as Nizhni Novgorod, as
well. Detailed topographic atlases, in the style of DeLorme's, are
available for most of Russia's constituent oblasts and republics.
Telephone directories are now published more frequently than they
were in the Soviet days, although usually you have to pay for them.
Nizhni Novgorod book stores carry both a business and a residential
phone directory, selling for about RUR 50 each. The variety of phone
directories sold in Moscow -- published both by the phone company and
by independent publishers -- is even greater. Smaller towns aren't
that fortunate: in a Monchegorsk apartment you would be lucky to find
a dog-eared copy of the most recent phone directory printed in 1983.
Internet e-mail is not out of reach of a Nizhni Novgorod resident
either. There are several internet providers in the city, and although
the access rates were fairly high (one company I used a few times
charged $3.50 an hour, although cheaper plans are available), they were
not that outrageous (before the rouble devaluation) in comparison with
means of communication, considering that it would cost at least 10
roubles to send a short telegram, or 2-5 roubles a minute to make a
long-distance phone call.
High long-distance phone rates are not surprising, considering that
there is still little real competition in the telephone services
marketplace. Local service is still cheap, but none too good. Having
a telephone installed is still either expensive, or outright impossible.

You notice that most of the serious "national" newspapers commonly
quoted by international news agencies, as well as by JRL subscribers
-- such as Izvestiya, Segodnya, Kommersant-Daily, Novye Izvestiya, or
Nezavisimaya Gazeta -- are almost unavailable outside Moscow. Even in
such a major city as the Nizhni, newsstands carry mainly local
newspapers, tabloids, and semi-tabloids (like Moskovski Komsomolets).
Perhaps the only reasonably serious national newspapers in common
circulation nationwide is "Argumenty i Fakty" -- but this no Russia's
"New York Times", it is more like Russia's "USA Today". Komsomolskaya
Pravda and Sovetskaya Rossiya are also found frequently.

*******

#5
The Independent (UK)
October 6, 1998
[for personal use only]
Street Life - Brave new world derides old Utopia 
By Helen Womack

Samotechny Lane, Moscow 
When I was cleaning out my cupboards last week, I came upon some old magazines
called Sovietland, published in English in the 1930s to persuade foreigners
that Stalin had built a brave new world. 
Since the rouble crash has brought much talk of Russia going "back to the
future", I was in a mood to refresh my memory of the Communist era. No sooner
had I blown off the dust and started reading the magazines than I became
gripped. They were fascinating. I could not put them down. 
Printed on thick paper (no expense spared for the foreigners), Sovietland
glossed over the labour camps and mass starvation that were Stalin's real
gifts to his people and extolled the achievements of hero workers living in a
land of milk, honey and ethnic harmony. Many readers of the day, more
concerned about the rise of Hitler than the atrocities of Stalin, were
inclined to believe this propaganda. Alone among foreign correspondents in
Moscow then, Malcolm Muggeridge sent accurate reports home to the Manchester
Guardian. 
With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to laugh at Sovietland with its
crude attempts to hoodwink the naive and idealistic. "Crime is out of date,"
reads one reassuring headline. "The weaker sex comes into its own," trumpets
another. "Life is joyous among the many nationalities." 
The language is never anything but uplifting. The Jews who were sent off to
the back of beyond to found the republic of Birobidjan in the Far East are
described as a "regenerated people, enjoying a better life thanks to their
pioneering and selfless work". The accompanying pictures show smiling Jewish
women carrying overflowing baskets of grapes. 
Another article headlined "Toilers at Rest" tells how former aristocrats'
palaces on the shores of the Black Sea have been converted into sanatoriums
for the workers. "Boating is tremendously popular and rowing and yachting are
winning ever new free-time adherents. The kiddies rest in deck chairs." 
For the hours of fun I have had with these illustrated magazines, I should
thank Stas, a failed artist and boozer who died a few years ago. Stas never
threw anything away, not even bus tickets. The printed word was sacred to him.
"It's all history," he used to say. 
Although the single room he had on the edge of Moscow was so stuffed with
books and papers that there was no space for him and he slept curled up in the
kitchenette, he went on acquiring more. He used to visit the makulatura or
waste paper recycling station, where most Russians were glad to trade in their
old newspapers for a few roubles. 
The Sovietland magazines turned up at the makulatura during the Gorbachev era.
The man in charge was all for shredding them. Indeed, much from Communist
times has been lost. Nowhere today can you lay your hands on the hilarious
records of Leonid Brezhnev's speeches, which used to line the shelves of every
Soviet bookshop. 
But Stas, a fervent anti-Communist, resisted putting the writings of his
ideological opponents down the memory hole, as they had done when they wiped
out the evidence of the Tsarist period. "Without history, there is no future,"
he said and made what was for him a big sacrifice, giving the makulatura man a
crate of vodka to save the magazines. 
When he died of cirrhosis of the liver, it turned out that Stas had left them
to me in his will in the hope that I would make good use of them. 
Last week, I did. I invited some Russian teenagers who are studying English to
come and look at them. They had never heard of the Donbass coal miner, Alexei
Stakhanov, who was said to have hewn a superhuman amount of coal, a standard
to which poor workers were held for ever afterwards. And they were intrigued
to read a distorted report of the 1938 show trial against "Bukharin,
Krestinsky, Yagoda and other ferocious enemies of the Soviet people". 
We tittered at the Ukrainian rug weavers "reflecting the pulsating of the
collective farm and the stormy development of industry" in their work, and for
good measure sang a Stalin-era song about "wide fields" and "freely breathing
citizens". 
The healthy cynicism of the youngsters reassured me that, although Russia has
just taken a hard knock on the path to reform and may now be unsure how to
proceed, it has come a long way from that terrible Utopia. 

*******

#6
ANALYSIS-Russia fears impact if NATO strikes Serbs
By Timothy Heritage

MOSCOW, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Moscow has mounted a fierce campaign to prevent NATO
launching air strikes to end the Kosovo crisis but is anxious to avoid a
confrontation with its former Cold War foe, Russian political analysts said on
Monday. 
Russia's anti-NATO rhetoric, turned up to full volume in the last few days, is
intended to appease domestic critics by showing that Moscow is a force to be
reckoned with on the world stage and its views are taken into account. 
But the tough words have been mixed with diplomacy behind the scenes because
NATO military strikes would put Moscow under domestic pressure to freeze
relations with the Western alliance, a move that would threaten ties with
international creditors. 
``Russia has shown it wants to do all it can to maintain its influence in the
Balkans,'' Pavel Kandel, a foreign policy expert at Moscow's Institute for
Europe think-tank, told Reuters. 
``But its ability to act is strictly limited, especially now as it has an
economic crisis, and it has to do all it can to avoid a confrontation on this
issue.'' 
Moscow's balancing act, trying to look strong in global diplomacy without
alienating its Western allies, has been in clear evidence over the Kosovo
crisis in the last few days. 
As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, Russia has the
power to veto any moves at the U.N. to approve use of force but it is
increasingly worried the United States will press for military action without
U.N. approval. 
The Kremlin, government and parliament united at the end of last week in a
campaign to oppose NATO air strikes against Russia's Orthodox Christian allies
in Serbia over its crackdown on the separatist-minded ethnic Albanian majority
in Kosovo. 
The government and the Kremlin spelled out Russia's position in telephone
calls with foreign leaders on Friday and the State Duma, the lower house of
parliament, said Moscow would have to renconsider ties with NATO if Serbian
targets came under fire. 
``Use of force against Yugoslavia could lead not only to a review of the whole
complex of agreements and accords between Russia and NATO but would be an
irreparable blow to the system of maintaining international security upheld in
the U.N. charter,'' the State Duma said in a resolution. 
That raised the stakes, bringing into question the Founding Act which Moscow
signed with NATO in Paris last year to put their relations on a new footing,
and also the new joint council that gives Russia a role in some of the
alliance's affairs. 
Speculation mounted that Moscow might be ready to take on the West over
Kosovo, perhaps in the belief that Western creditors were about to refuse
Russia's requests for financial aid to ease its economic turmoil. 
Russia then sent Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defence Minister Igor
Sergeyev on an unusually high-ranking mission to Belgrade at the weekend. 
But Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin said on Monday Ivanov and
Sergeyev had given Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic a message from President
Boris Yeltsin advising him to carry out all his promises to the United
Nations. 
That message suggests that however fierce its anti-NATO rhetoric, and however
much it opposes use of force, Russia is determined to keep relations with the
West on track. 
``Russia wanted to show the West it can be influential and to try to get some
kind of an 'offset' elsewhere in relations with the West,'' said Dmitry
Trenin, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-
tank in Moscow. 
``Russia realises its relationship with NATO is important, especially now that
relations with the West are very much about debt restructuring.'' 
Russia has a lot to lose it the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation does resort
to force. 
It would come under pressure from the opposition-dominated Duma to freeze
relations with the alliance. The Duma would stiffen its already tough
resistance to ratifying the START-2 treaty reducing the Russian and U.S.
nuclear arsenals. 
Russia would also face pressure to increase its opposition to any former
Soviet republics joining NATO and to take a firmer line in relations in
general with the West, damaging relations with countries whose financial help
it is seeking. 
Moscow would feel the sting of another policy defeat in the Balkans, the
latest since it failed to play a major role in the Dayton peace accords that
ended the 1992-95 Bosnia war following NATO air strikes. 
Russia would also be in danger of losing its foothold in the Balkans and its
chances of winning potentially lucrative trade contracts in the region. 
If NATO used force without U.N. approval, it would be seen in Moscow as a
precedent that might be repeated elsewhere and would threaten Russia's hopes
of having any meaningful impact on discussions on the new security
architecture of Europe. 
``NATO air strikes would do long-term damage to East-West relations and would
set a precedent which Moscow would regard as very dangerous,'' Kandel said. 
The only gain Russia might stand to make if military strikes went ahead
without U.N. approval would be if the United States forced the moves through,
despite the reservations of some NATO members, thus splitting the alliance. 

******

#7
International Herald Tribune
October 6, 1998
[for personal use only]
Ailing Russia Waits Impatiently for Successor to Faltering Yeltsin 
By David Hoffman Washington Post Service

MOSCOW - It was just a coincidence: two Russian officials meeting at the same
time with President Boris Yeltsin. 
Oleg Sysuyev, a deputy chief of Kremlin administration, and Konstantin Totsky,
the new head of the Russian Border Guards, a paramilitary service, were
sitting with Mr. Yeltsin when the president made a surprise announcement.
Looking at Mr. Sysuyev, he said: ''Take the Border Guards under your mighty
wing.''
Mr. Sysuyev is well-known as the former mayor of the Volga city of Samara and
as the deputy prime minister for social issues, but he has no expertise with
the Border Guards. He said later that he knew very little about them - except
that he once set up a Border Guard facility at the Samara airport, now an
international airport. 
The episode - witnessed by journalists - was a small glimpse into the power
vacuum that has enveloped Mr. Yeltsin this year. He has looked like a tired
old king who cannot control his unruly court and whose impulsive
pronouncements have created so much havoc that no one can get anything done. 
Mr. Yeltsin's weakness was well known in calmer times, as well, but it has
caused far more problems here in these months of economic upheaval.
Hobbled by periodic illness, drained by growing public disenchantment, Mr.
Yeltsin has lost his grip. His failure to lead is particularly debilitating
under Russia's super-presidential system, in which virtually all the levers of
power are in the hands of the president. 
Mr. Yeltsin has not been using those levers much lately, and his critics and
would-be successors are jumping into the breach.
Especially since his failed attempt last month to reappoint Viktor
Chernomyrdin as prime minister, Mr. Yeltsin has appeared distant and sometimes
disoriented.
There is a consensus among Russian politicians and business leaders that the
country is drifting through an uncomfortable, fragile interregnum, waiting for
the next turning point - a decision on who will rule after Mr. Yeltsin.
''Yeltsin is mentally absent,'' said a well-informed business figure, who
added that the president's relatives were already discussing retirement for
him. 
But Mr. Yeltsin has demonstrated reluctance to give up power time and again,
and no one thinks he would accept an early departure easily.
In the recent economic turmoil, there have been repeated examples of Mr.
Yeltsin's weakness and inattentiveness. 
Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov claimed, for instance, that Mr. Yeltsin had
not given approval for the Aug. 17 decision to devalue the ruble, perhaps the
most fateful economic turn here since the collapse of the Soviet Union in
December 1991.
The next day, Dmitri Yakushkin, Mr. Yeltsin's fourth press secretary, said the
president had approved the move but perhaps had not recognized the ''scale''
of the devaluation. 
Mr. Yeltsin has never said whether he knew about it or whether he also
approved the domestic debt default and loan moratorium that were key factors
in the tumult that followed.
In another instance, Eduard Rossel, governor of the Sverdlovsk region, visited
Mr. Yeltsin last week and raised the highly controversial idea of barring the
circulation of U.S. dollars in Russia. 
According to Mr. Rossel, Mr. Yeltsin picked up the telephone and called the
central bank chairman, Viktor Gerashchenko, to suggest the idea to him. But
when word got out that buying goods and trading in dollars might be prohibited
- dollars are the ''safe haven'' of millions of Russian citizens - the rumor
unleashed a storm of criticism.
The Kremlin spent hours denying that Mr. Yeltsin had entertained any such
notion, even though Mr. Rossel said the call to Mr. Gerashchenko was made in
his presence. 
On Friday, Mr. Yakushin reported that Mr. Yeltsin was categorically against
the idea, seeing it as ''a sort of return to the Iron Curtain.''
Earlier in his presidency, Mr. Yeltsin at least demonstrated sway over the
rival Russian political interests, playing the role of balancer. But he seems
now to have lost his touch, shuffling subordinates so often that the result
has been paralysis.
Over the last 10 months, there have been three prime ministers; half a dozen
government ''anti-crisis'' programs - not one of which was ever fully
implemented - and three directors of one of the government's most crucial
agencies, the State Tax Service.
The latest was appointed last week as the government was reporting that
September tax receipts were half those of previous months. 
With hardly a word of explanation, Mr. Yeltsin also summarily dismissed his
press secretary, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, and the director of the Kremlin
security council, Andrei Kokoshin.
Vyacheslav Nikolayev, commenting in the weekly Vek on the turmoil, said that
1998 ''is going to have a special place in Russian history.'' 
''The country - which entered the era of large-scale transformations - found
itself without leaders,'' he added. ''For half a year, the central government
was not functioning. No one has yet estimated the price Russia had to pay for
it.'' 
One sign of the power vacuum is the palpable nervousness in Moscow about a
mass demonstration here Wednesday by workers protesting the government's
failure to pay overdue wage and pension arrears. Many are likely to carry
banners demanding Mr. Yeltsin's resignation.
Another illustration of the vacuum were comments by the Moscow mayor, Yuri
Luzhkov, last week signaling that he was prepared to run for president to
succeed Mr. Yeltsin. Mr. Luzhkov has been carefully deferential to Mr.
Yeltsin, but the remark was an unmistakable green light for a full-fledged
campaign.
The election is not scheduled until 2000, but there are widespread
expectations that it could come much sooner that that. 

******

#8
Poll: 49 Percent of Russians Expect Early Elections 

Moscow, 1 Oct (Interfax) -- Nearly half of Russians or 49 percent are
confident that early presidential elections will be held, according to an
opinion poll of 1,500 Russians conducted by the Public Opinion Fund on
September 19.Less than a third of those polled or 31 percent think that the
next president will be elected in 2000, as scheduled.
Supporters of Krasnoyarsk Governor Aleksandr Lebed account for 59
percent of those expecting early presidential polls. Of these, 46 percent
said that Lebed would become the next president.
Some 57 percent of supporters of leader of the Communist Party
Gennadiy Zyuganov also think that early presidential elections will be
called. Of these, 55 percent are confident of Zyuganov's victory.

******

#9
RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol 2, No. 192, Part I, 5 October 1998

ECONOMISTS PREDICT MORE HARD TIMES. Both the IMF and former
Prime Minister Gaidar's Institute for Economic Problems
during Transition are predicting that Russian GDP will fall 6
percent in 1998--Gaidar suggests it may drop even as much as
6.5 percent. The fund predicts that also in 1999 GDP will
drop 6 percent, while Gaidar's institute foresees a 4-5
percent drop assuming hyperinflation is averted. If not, then
GDP will drop from 12-13 percent. The State Statistics
Committee reported that inflation reached 38 percent in
September. "Izvestiya" reported on 3 October that wages and
salaries have dropped two to three times in all sectors of
the economy, while managers predict they will continue to
decline to 1994 levels. JAC

YABLOKO PRESENTS ECONOMIC PLAN. Yabloko party leader Grigorii
Yavlinskii published his version of an anti-crisis program in
"Nezavisimaya gazeta" on 2 October. Yavlinskii calls for
forcing all exporters to sell their foreign exchange for a
three-month period and for an immediate lifting of the
moratorium on servicing short-term treasury bond debt. First
Deputy Prime Minister Yurii Maslyukov's plan, at least
according to "Kommersant-Daily," required exporters to sell
75 percent of their hard currency proceeds for an indefinite
period. Yavlinskii also suggested introducing new taxes on
gasoline, alcohol, and tobacco, imposing a 20 percent tax on
all personal incomes, and guaranteeing the first $5,000 of
all individual bank deposits with Central Bank reserves.
According to "Kommersant-Daily," Finance Minister Mikhail
Zadornov also supports a 20 percent flat tax on incomes. JAC

********