November 8, 1998    
This Date's Issues: 2465 •2466• 

Johnson's Russia List
#2466
8 November 1998
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Reuters: Gareth Jones, FEATURE - Night at opera helps Russians
forget woes.
2. Boston Globe: Jean Mackenzie, Anti-Semitism is resurfacing in Russia.
3. St. Petersburg Times: Brian Whitmore, Will Liberal St. Petersburg Go 
With Russia's Flow? 
4. Thomas Campbell: Re 2463, Blundy/Language Purity.
5. Washington Post: Steven Mufson and David Hoffman, Russian Crash Shows 
Risks of Globalization. Speculators Ignored Economy's Realities. (Excerpt).
6. New York Times: Celestine Bohlen, Facing Oblivion, Rust-Belt Giants Top
Russian List of Vexing Crises. (Excerpt).
7. Interfax: Russia's Lebed Urges Cooperation Between Public Movements.]

******

#1
FEATURE - Night at opera helps Russians forget woes
By Gareth Jones

MOSCOW, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Amid the elegant marble columns and fountains of
Moscow's newest theatre, hundreds of opera lovers tuck into champagne and
caviar and speak glowingly about the performance of ``Boris Godunov'' they
have been watching. 
Russia's newspapers may be full of gloom and doom about the collapsing
economy, but the message from Moscow's scores of opera houses, theatres and
concert halls is, at least for now, a defiant ``business as usual.'' 
And nowhere is that message boomed out more sonorously than from the
glittering new home of the Novaya Opera company which opened its doors this
autumn after a renovation that took eight years and cost about $35 million. 
``'Boris Godunov' is the third thing I have seen here at the new theatre since
September and I think it is fabulous,'' said retired engineer Lyudmila
Mikhailovna. 
``We Russians love the theatre, and never more so than during times of crisis.
We have to forget our problems, that is why all the theatres are so full
now,'' she said. 
Director Yevgeny Kolobov's version of Mussorgsky's ``Boris Godunov'' typically
played to a packed house. 
As usual in Moscow, spectators ranged from pensioners clutching special
discount tickets that cost just five roubles (a few cents) to the well-heeled
nouveaux rich. 
``We are trying to keep ticket prices at pre-crisis levels. We have a duty to
provide spiritual nourishment to people, especially in times like this,'' said
director Sergei Lysenko. 

YOUNG THEATRES REVEL IN NEW FREEDOM, SCORN BOLSHOI 

But it is not just a question of helping Russians forget their problems which
have grown ominously since August's big drop in the rouble and the virtual
paralysis of the banking system. 
Novaya Opera is part of a wider post-Soviet renaissance in Russian opera and
drama in which freedom of creative expression is the driving force. 
For the outside world the Bolshoi Theatre still symbolises high-brow Russian
culture but to Muscovites the torch -- in opera, at least -- has long since
passed to theatres like Novaya Opera and Helikon Opera, both founded in the
early 1990s. 
``From our very inception we have stood against the concept of culture being
dictated by administrators. It is not just by chance that we are as old as
democratic Russia,'' said Lysenko. 
Novaya Opera and the Helikon ooze youthful energy and enjoy challenging dusty
old ideas of how opera should be performed. 
``There is still this notion that Carmen has to wear a long Spanish dress and
have a red rose in her mouth,'' said the Helikon's press officer Tatyana
Shekhtman. 
The theatre's own steamy version of Georges Bizet's famous opera caused a stir
in Moscow theatrical circles with its bold eroticism and allusions to drug
trafficking. 
``The most important thing is freedom of expression. There is no one, fixed
way of interpreting great works,'' said Shekhtman. 
The younger theatres are scornful of the Bolshoi, whose Byzantine system of
ticket allocation, artificially high prices and staid productions have long
deterred many opera fans. 
``Tourists go to the Bolshoi for the building, the name, but they come to us
for the music,'' said Lysenko. 

YOUNG THEATRES HELPED BY MOSCOW CITY CASH 

Both the Helikon and Novaya Opera are funded by the Moscow city government,
which under the dynamic leadership of ambitious Mayor Yuri Luzhkov found a
home for both theatres. 
The Novaya Opera even toyed with the idea back in the early 1990s of calling
itself the Luzhkov theatre. Luzhkov is one of the main likely contenders for
Russia's presidency in 2000. 
``This is the first operatic theatre to be built in Russia for 200 years,''
Lysenko said proudly during an interview at the opulent new building in
central Moscow's Hermitage Gardens. 
His theatre -- which has 500 employees including 40 soloists and a 90-strong
choir -- has for the past eight years led a peripatetic existence, performing
in diverse locations. 
Lysenko said Novaya Opera had various ideas for raising new cash, including
building a new recording studio on its premises to make compact discs and
video cassettes of performances. 
Private sponsorship and foreign tours also help tap cash. 
The tiny but very popular Helikon, whose iconoclastic artistic director Dmitry
Bertman is only 31, is planning trips to France, Austria, Finland and both
North and South America during the next two seasons. 

EXPERIMENTAL HELIKON WANTS TO BREAK DOWN BOUNDARIES 

The Helikon has earned a reputation for unorthodox stagings. 
In its production of Donizetti's ``Don Pasquale'' the orchestra sits on the
stage while the singers perform down amid the audience and devices like a
video projector are also used. 
In the 40-minute ``Coffee Cantata'' by J.S. Bach, performed in the smaller of
its two halls, spectators are limited to 25 people. They sit at tables and are
served coffee during the performance. 
``We want to get away from the tradition of keeping the audience and the
performers rigidly apart,'' said Shekhtman. 
The Helikon, whose main hall seats only 220 people, has an intimacy completely
lacking in more conventional opera houses. Novaya Opera, which seats 650, also
has a friendly, informal atmosphere in keeping with its directors' aims of
making opera alive and accessible to all. 
The younger theatres have not only mounted exciting new productions of old
Russian favourites like ``Boris Godunov'' or Tchaikovsky's ``Yevgeny Onegin''
but have staged a variety of operas never or only seldom performed here
before. 
Shekhtman said her theatre was starting to set the agenda for older,
established theatres like the Bolshoi. 
``We put on 'Aida', then the Bolshoi did. We did 'Carmen', which in Soviet
times never played in Moscow, and then the Stanislavsky theatre picked it
up,'' she said. 
Back over at the Novaya Opera, Lysenko said his theatre wanted to put more
focus on the inner drama of classic works like ``Boris Godunov,'' not reduce
them to historical pageants. 
That is partly why the current version of Mussorgsky's classic work is the
shorter, more austere original, not the later and much better known work
revised by Rimsky-Korsakov and approved by the tsarist censors. 
Judging by the length of the curtain-call, his spectators were well satisfied
with this new emphasis. 
``What you get here is the living essence of the opera, not just an empty
spectacle,'' said pensioner Lyudmila. 
But in any case ``Boris Godunov,'' which centres on an ill-fated tsar crushed
by the burden of ruling his tragic land, is virtually assured an emotional
response in Russia as it weathers a new ``time of troubles.'' 
``Unfortunately, this opera still has a lot to teach us about the present.
There are so many parallels,'' said Lyudmila's friend, Marina Mitrofanova, as
they prepared to plunge back into today's Moscow of rising prices and
political turbulence. 

*******

#2
Boston Globe
November 8, 1998
Anti-Semitism is resurfacing in Russia 
By Jean Mackenzie

MOSCOW - The ugly scene, captured by news cameras, has been replayed countless
times on Russian TV: Fists raised, face purple with rage, a prominent lawmaker
calls for the extermination of the Jews. 
``I will round up all the [Jews] and send them to the next world!'' screams
Albert Makashov, radical Communist, retired general, and deputy in the State
Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament. 
The incident could have landed Makashov in jail. But the general's
parliamentary colleagues have refused even to issue an official rebuke,
raising fears that state-sponsored anti-Semitism is making a comeback in
Russia. 
At yesterday's demonstration to mark the 81st anniversary of the October 1917
Revolution, Communist crowds showed their support for the general, chanting
``hands off Makashov!'' and waving signs with anti-Semitic slogans. 
The Justice Ministry recommended that Makashov be prosecuted for his comments,
made at a large rally in early October on the anniversary of the violent clash
between President Boris N. Yeltsin and the legislature. Under Russian law,
incitement of ethnic hatred is a criminal offense. 
But Makashov is protected by his lawmaker status, and his Duma colleagues
balked at stripping him of parliamentary immunity. Instead, they drafted a
motion to censure that was so watered down by the time it came to a vote last
week that it barely amounted to a slap on the wrist. Even that emasculated
motion garnered just 107 votes, far short of the necessary 226 for approval. 
``We regard the vote on this document as a vote on whether to resurrect state-
sanctioned anti-Semitism in this country or not,'' said Sergei Ivanenko, a
liberal lawmaker. 
The Communists and their allies, who dominate the parliament, threw their
weight behind Makashov, either voting against censure or not voting at all. 
``This has made me deeply ashamed of my country,'' said Arseny Roginsky,
director of research for the human rights group Memorial. ``We elected that
parliament, and they have disgraced Russia in front of the entire world.''
Even the extreme nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who is half-Jewish, refused
to support the censure motion. Jews, he said, are ``very, very rich'' and
therefore can afford to assuage their injured feelings with vacations abroad. 
The issue of Jewish wealth is a sensitive one: Many of the country's leading
bankers and financiers are Jewish, which has made them a target for popular
discontent in a time of deepening economic crisis. 
Eduard Topol, a popular writer of political thrillers, who is Jewish,
published an open letter to the so-called oligarchs, warning them of the
dangers: 
`` Russian blackshirts and fascists are rising even now, in the fertile ground
of the Russian catastrophe. If you want to know how it will all end, just take
a look at Auschwitz.''
Russia has a long history of state anti-Semitism. Bloody pogroms were not
uncommon. Although often practiced in the Soviet period, discrimination was
officially ended, and it was widely recognized that certain universities and
professions were off-limits to Jews. 
The social upheavals that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union have
often been channeled into nationalist or racist movements. Youths in black
shirts and swastikas sell anti-Semitic literature on the streets of Moscow,
and anti-Jewish violence is on the rise. 
In May a synagogue in the center of Moscow was bombed, injuring two people.
Jewish cemeteries are regularly vandalized, and anti-Semitic remarks can be
heard more often on the street. 

******

#3
St. Petersburg Times
November 6, 1998
Will Liberal St. Petersburg Go With Russia's Flow? 
By Brian Whitmore
STAFF WRITER

St. Petersburg, everyone will tell you, is different.
It is more cosmopolitan than Russia's sleepy provinces, yet more sedate than
the Babylonian free-for-all of Moscow. Culturally, it is the preeminent
breeding ground for free-thinking artists and writers; politically, it is
Russia's most democratic and Western-looking city. And with Europe an adjacent
neighbor, the city boasts a promising geographic distinction as well. There is
no objective reason why St. Petersburg should not be a boom town.
For three centuries, this city has eagerly absorbed the latest Western
cultural and political trends and tried to push them on to an often reluctant
country - Russia's on-again, off-again courtship this decade with democratic
governance and market economics being but the latest manifestation of this old
historical pattern. Whether democracy, communism or empery, St. Petersburg has
always been Russia's stalking horse for new ideologies.
Eighty-one years ago this week, this city led Russia down the road to
communism, a revolution that eventually swallowed everything St. Petersburg
stood for - including its name. Seventy years later, the city found itself the
vanguard of a new revolution, with the free market and democracy as its
rallying cry. In the wake of the August devaluation, these values are now
dangerously close to being rejected by Russia. They are, however, still
embraced by much of St. Petersburg - and it is that crucial distinction that
sets this city apart. As Russia again contemplates a new ideology, the
question remains: Will St. Petersburg lead, or be led?
"I see one way out," said renowned poet and city native Viktor Krivulin. "With
Moscow weakened as a result of the crisis, St. Petersburg can regain its
position." 
Or lose it altogether. Years of antagonism with Moscow has left St. Petersburg
in the uneasy position of being defiant but vulnerable. Over the next few
years, the city could easily become even more marginalized, a distant second
city living in the shadow of the capital. It may once again prove the
motivating force behind Russia's next ideological makeover. Or - as some would
have it - it may simply go its own way, insulating itself from the turbulence
of Russia and carving out an existence better suited to its distinctly genteel
and urbane character. 
"The city needs to become more autonomous from Moscow and to become an example
of democracy and liberal economics for Russia," said Yury Vdovin, co-chairman
of the St. Petersburg-based Citizens' Watch human rights organization. 
"The so-called provincialization of St. Petersburg doesn't bother me. I want
St. Petersburg to distinguish itself from Moscow and if you call that
provincialization then that's fine. When you go to the Baltic states they
aren't as bright and loud as Moscow but the quality of life is better there.
This is what we should be aiming for."

A Tale of Two Capitals

The abstract debate over St. Petersburg's destiny actually reflects much
deeper historic, cultural and political sentiments about Russia and its place
in the world. Early in the 20th century, the great Russian philosopher Nikolai
Berdyayev, in his book "The Russian Idea," wrote, "Russia is the Christian
East which was for two centuries subject to the most powerful influences of
the West." 
This tension in Russia, wrote Berdyayev, was best represented in the rivalry
between the two cities that have acted as the country's capital: Eastern-
leaning Moscow and Western-facing St. Petersburg. This battle for Russia's
soul has been ongoing since Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg in 1703.
"The emergence of Moscow and then that of St. Petersburg are decisive events
in modern Russian history, and the profound if subtle rivalry between the two
cities is one of the recurring themes of its modern development," historian
James Billington writes in his book "The Icon and the Axe." 
The rise of St. Petersburg as Russia's capital in the 18th century represented
as much a "turn to the West," as a direct challenge to the conservative and
orthodox Muscovite ideology that had dominated Russia from the 15th to the
18th century. In this sense, St. Petersburg took up the mantle of an earlier
Western-looking city, Novgorod, a prosperous trading center and a member of
the Hanseatic League until it was sacked by Ivan III in 1470 during Moscow's
drive to dominance. 
Before Peter the Great, Russia was dominated by a Muscovite culture that was
traditional, xenophobic and explicitly anti-Western. But the founding of St.
Petersburg would change this, and divide Russia - perhaps forever. Over time,
the two capitals came to represent conflicting tendencies. Moscow epitomized
monolithic orthodoxy, respect for tradition and a rejection of Western
rationality and secularism. St. Petersburg stood for cosmopolitanism,
modernization and reform.
Peter's goal was less to liberalize Russia than to modernize it by breaking
the grip of the traditionalist Muscovite ideology, creating, in Billington's
words, "a secular nationalism," that would be the basis of a new European-
style Russian state. By bringing in foreign advisers, curtailing the power of
the Orthodox Church and creating a merit-based system of civil service, Peter
earned the wrath of traditionalists. 
And like all revolutions from above, Peter's yielded unintended consequences.
His quest for a new secular nationalism led to the emergence of a critical
class of intellectuals. In the 19th century, St. Petersburg, by then a great
European capital, was teeming with intellectuals of all ideological stripes.
Assimilating every Western ideology, the intelligentsia became increasingly
critical of the monarchy. 
Then came the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which, bred of a small clique of St.
Petersburg intellectuals infatuated with then-fashionable Marxism, eventually
turned on the city and all it stood for. After two centuries of taking a back
seat to St. Petersburg, Moscow, again the capital, would at last have its
revenge on the cosmopolitan Westernized pretender. And under Stalin, who
derisively referred to the metropolis now called Leningrad as "a provincial
city in the northwest corner of the country," the often brutal downgrading of
the city begun in the 1920s continued in earnest. The prominent Bolshevik
leaders associated with the city - Leon Trotsky, Georgy Zinoviev and Sergei
Kirov - were forced into exile, executed or assassinated by Stalin. 
"Stalin and those around him understood that he was nobody in this city,"
Rybakov said. "He therefore needed to eliminate his competitors."
Following World War II, in which the city withstood blockade and unimaginable
famine, Stalin opened up the infamous "Leningrad Case," again purging the city
of its entire leadership. The message was clear: The Soviet Union's second
city would remain so. There could only be one capital. 

Revolution From Below

Attempts by the Communists to "provincialize" Soviet Leningrad, however, were
far from successful. Much to the chagrin of conservative local party
leadership, by the 1960s the city boasted one of the most vibrant underground
cultures in the Soviet Union. 
While old St. Petersburg produced writers of the quality of Alexander Pushkin,
Anton Chekhov and Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Leningrad counterculture gave the
world one of the 20th century's greatest poets, Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky,
and the city's underground literary scene flourished with writers such as
Yevgeny Rein, Dmitry Bobyshev and Anatoly Naiman. 
Leningrad was also home in the 1970s and '80s to the most vibrant music scene
in the country. Groups like Akvarium and Kino, which now occupy the pantheon
of Russian rock, started their careers literally underground, performing in
city basements. The now legendary "Saigon Cafe," which stood on the corner of
the Nevsky and Vladimirsky prospects, was home to the city's cultural
opposition and bohemian community throughout the Soviet period. 
In the 1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev's era of glasnost and perestroika made
openness the official party line, Leningraders took the change to heart - with
results that caused the Communist Party to seethe in consternation.
The first major political act by Leningrad citizens - and a sign of things to
come - was a doomed effort to save the historic Angleterre Hotel, slated for
destruction by local Communists. The Angleterre, located on St. Isaac's
Square, held a special significance for the city intelligentsia, not only as
an architectural monument, but as the place where poet Sergei Yesenin
committed suicide in 1925. 
On March 16, 1987, when plans to tear down the building became public,
something happened that for the Soviet Union was extraordinary - a
demonstration not sanctioned by the authorities. Several groups of young
protesters, led by the Council for the Preservation of Culture and the group
Spaseniye, or "Salvation" - set up pickets and successfully postponed the
demolition for two full days. The students also sent letters to the Ministry
of Culture in Moscow and collected signatures on the street. 
Nevertheless, the building was ultimately destroyed on March 18 and the leader
of Spaseniye, Alexei Kovalyev - now a Legislative Assembly deputy - was
arrested. 
There were no tanks for people to stand on and no CNN cameras to broadcast the
event to the world, but the small-scale demonstration to save the Angleterre
set the stage for a new political environment on the horizon - and established
the city as a stronghold for the fledgling perestroika-era democratic
movement.
And soon bigger demonstrations would follow, in Moscow and nationwide, this
time with CNN and the entire world watching. 
By August 1991, when the coup's tanks didn't even dare enter the St.
Petersburg city center - halted at the outskirts by members of the democratic
movement, accompanied by a police escort - it appeared that the city had again
captured Russia's soul.
It was then that Leningrad established itself, to many, as the glasnost-era
breeding ground for Russia's pro-democracy movement. It was here where
reformers swept the legislature in the country's first free local elections in
1990, and a year later won the mayor's office, bringing a law professor named
Anatoly Sobchak to power on the same day as voting to restore the historic
name of St. Petersburg. 
And it was here, during perestroika, where a then-unknown economist named
Anatoly Chubais first cut his teeth in government, making St. Petersburg a
model for economic reform that he then took with him to Moscow. 
Indeed, it was the market economists and Chubais protégés - popularly known as
"the St. Petersburg group" - who dominated Russia's economic policymaking from
1991 until August of this year. The end of Russia's romance with the market
has been in large part associated with this distinguished group of thinkers'
fall from grace. 

Unfulfilled Expectations

After August 1991 - with Chubais in Moscow and democrats in the legislature
and mayor's office - it appeared that everything was possible.
But over time, each of the dreams of St. Petersburg perestroika were exposed
as a mirage. Chubais's liberal policies for the city were drowned in
increasing national cynicism towards economic reforms, fueled by widespread
allegation of corruption.
Moreover, Sobchak - rather than turning to St. Petersburg's new generation of
democrats who put him in power - staffed the mayor's office with old Soviet-
era nomenclature. Arguing that "professionals" were needed in his
administration, Sobchak effectively left a notorious Soviet bureaucracy in
place while squandering a golden opportunity to create a democratic model for
all of Russia, relying instead on the old guard to concentrate power in his
own hands. 
And Boris Yeltsin, who while campaigning for president told Russia's regions
to "take all the autonomy you can swallow," quickly moved to reign in Russia's
restive provinces once in power - meaning any attempt to create a separate St.
Petersburg model for development would meet with stiff resistance in the
capital.
Yeltsin's Kremlin quickly turned into a Byzantine battleground for the
capital's quickly growing financial and bureaucratic clans. As these financial
conglomerates grew in strength, Russian oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky,
Vladimir Potanin and Vladimir Gusinsky used St. Petersburg and other regions
as places to fight their proxy battles. 
By the 1996 gubernatorial elections, Vladimir Yakovlev - widely seen as the
candidate representing Moscow capital - closely defeated Sobchak, whose
administration had become mired in corruption allegations. Since then,
Yakovlev has balanced the budget and initiated a campaign of urban renewal,
but has been no more friendly to democratic reform than his predecessor, hotly
opposing a progressive City Charter and clamping down on relations with the
press. 
Meanwhile, under both Sobchak and Yakovlev, plans to make St. Petersburg a
tourism and financial center have floundered, and the city has found itself in
a funk. Investment and tourists never came in the numbers expected. The
democratic experiment is seen as messy, corrupt and ineffectual. And the
city's cultural sphere has been unable to balance creativity and commercialism
in adapting to the free market.
"All the hope we had in the early years of reform has unfortunately turned out
to have been a fantasy," said Yuly Rybakov, a Soviet-era dissident artist who
now represents the city in the State Duma. "Every day St. Petersburg is losing
control over its political destiny. It is becoming provincialized."
Just seven years ago, after the failed coup of 1991, Rybakov was among the
jubilant democrats sealing shut the doors of Communist bureaucrats in Smolny -
once the base of operations for Lenin and the Bolsheviks - and taking down the
Soviet flag to hoist the Russian tri-color in its place. 
"I did this with my own hands, and now I can't help but wonder why we
bothered," he said. 
Rybakov and others say that, under Yakovlev, St. Petersburg has become little
more than a colony of Moscow, doing the bidding of the capital's powerful
financial clans. 
"St. Petersburg has become a playground for Moscow-based financial and
industrial groups," said Krivulin. "It's now like a seaside suburb of Moscow."
Perhaps most painful, St. Petersburg's fabled artists and writers -
traditionally the city's greatest strength - has been slow to respond to new
market realities.
"Culturally, St. Petersburg today is probably in the worst shape in its
history. The city has great intellectual and artistic resources that are
simply not being used," said Krivulin. "We have not found our place in the
market economy or even understood how to exploit the ideology of the market." 

What Is To Be Done?

If Russia ultimately rejects democracy and the market, how will St. Petersburg
respond?
The answer may lie in an observation by St. Petersburg native Joseph Brodsky,
who noted an ultra-democratic, almost anarchic tendency in his hometown - a
trait that will survive any ideological attempt to squash it.
"The city's very blend of architectural grandeur with a web-like bureaucratic
tradition mocked the idea of power," wrote Brodsky in his 1979 essay "A Guide
to a Renamed City." "The truth about palaces, especially about winter ones, is
that not all of their rooms are occupied." 
Others agree with Brodsky's assessment.
"If the country goes the way of an authoritarian regime, I hope and believe
that St. Petersburg would find the strength to resist and distance the city
from this influence," said Vdovin of Citizens' Watch.
"I have traveled throughout Russia and the one way that St. Petersburg is
different from the rest of the country is that its residents are more
democratically and liberally oriented," Vdovin added. "They respect pluralism
and are oriented on the ideas and values of the West." 
He and others see the crisis as potentially weakening not only Moscow's
oligarchic clans, but also the capital's vice-grip on St. Petersburg - and
thus see today's situation as a unique opportunity.
Krivulin agreed, saying that Yakovlev's attempts to make St. Petersburg into a
"little Moscow" are a mistake. Instead, he said that St. Petersburg should use
the opportunity presented by Russia's economic woes to take control of its own
destiny, create a viable investment climate and develop the city's enormous
economic and cultural potential - a sentiment shared by a small but growing
autonomy movement in the city.
"Autonomy means taking responsibility on ourselves. As things are now, we can
blame all our problems on Moscow, if we had more control over our future and
we fail we have nobody to blame but ourselves." said Daniil Kotsyubinsky, a
political columnist for the newspaper Peterburgsky Chas Pik and a member of
the For an Autonomous St. Petersburg movement.
"St. Petersburg needs to overcome its weakness and finally take its place as a
European city," Kotsyubinsky said. "And this can only be achieved by gaining
greater autonomy from Moscow. The crisis can serve to make this idea more
popular."
For Krivulin, St. Petersburg's political, economic and cultural renaissance
are all parts of the same whole.
"We will never be able to compete with Moscow in a commercial sense but this
isn't such a bad thing because Moscow's commercial culture is just a bad
imitation of American culture. St. Petersburg culture has always been
experimental and we can find the correct point between high culture and
commercialism," said Krivulin.
"Everybody talks about the Russian idea, well we need to define and market the
St. Petersburg idea. This is a city of myths and legends that are simply
golden that we need to exploit."
Federal lawmaker and dissident artist Rybakov agreed, saying: "There will be
no resurrection of the old St. Petersburg because you can never restore what
was. On the other hand, I am certain that a new St. Petersburg high culture
will emerge. This is simply a matter of time."

******

#4
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1998
From: Thomas Campbell <avvakum@mail.wplus.net>
Subject: Re: 2463, Blundy/Language Purity

I've long suspected that many foreign correspondents working in Russia
have either a poor or nonexistent command of the Russian language. I
suppose this may not necessarily be such a detriment, so long as a
journalist works with trustworthy translators: the story, after all, is the
important thing. As anyone who has lived here for some time will tell you,
however, where Russians are concerned, the language very often is the story.
Anna Blundy's article in The Times(JRL 2463) is a case in point. She
apparently isn't aware that the "linguistic colonisation" of Russia hasn't
been going "for almost a decade," as she asserts, but ever since Russian
become a more or less distinct language a thousand years ago. The Russian
language has a truly breathtaking capacity for wolfing down and digesting
words from other languages, and in this sense it resembles English.
Everyone knows (everyone except Ms Blundy, that is) that during the 18th
and 19th centuries, for example, a large number of French and German words
came into Russian, partly because the nobility often preferred to speak
those languages amongst themselves, partly because Russian sometimes had no
words of its own to designate realia introduced from the West (or the East,
for that matter). (Those realia were often themselves introduced by
"enlightened" Russians who knew only the French or German words for those
things and would have thought it odd to dream up Russian equivalents.) Many
(probably most) of these borrowings have long since become obsolete, but a
good number have put down such firm roots that no Russian today has the
slightest qualms about using them. The influence of French and German
shouldn't be belabored, however: they are only two of the many languages
that have contributed to the "great and mighty" Russian tongue.
Both the would-be defenders of Russian whose company Ms Blundy keeps and
their Western sympathizers are marked by their appalling ignorance (and
blessed with an abundance of nothing better to do). Last year, Mayor
Luzhkov led a short-lived campaign for linguistic purity; one instance of
alien invasion he cited was the use of the English word "supermarket" to
designate large foodshops. Why do we need such a word, the mayor fumed,
when we already have the good old Russian "gastronom" for such
establishments? "Gastronom" is, of course, not Russian in origin, which was
immediately pointed out by a number of Russian writers and journalists. Ms
Blundy is guilty of the same illiteracy (or perhaps she fudged the facts to
make the story spicier): we are led to imagine that "Beeg Mac i fraiz" is
something you can order at McDonald's on Tverskaya. Nothing of the sort:
"Beeg Mac," yes, but it is a brand name, after all; "fraiz," no -- the
Russian for "french fries" is "kartofel' fri," which even the non-linguist
will recognize as a combination of German (kartoffel) and French (pommes
frites). In any case, most Russians would just stride up to the counter (or
not, because they can't afford it) and ask for "Beeg Mac s kartoshkoi."
They really are not the victims of American imperialism they are made out
to be, just the victims of bad taste.
The focus of Ms Blundy's article, however, is the inability of Russian
politicians to speak Russian clearly. She doesn't bother to explain how
this plague is to be stopped by those very same politicians passing a new
law. Instead, we are offered anecdotal evidence of the sparest sort. A
bunch of troubled "literature lovers" gathers under the spiritual patronage
of Marina Tsvetayeva (whose "sad" gaze from a photograph has nothing to do
with the proceedings). One of the defenders of the faith tells Ms Blundy
that she cannot think of one politician who speaks Russian without making
"frequent and serious grammatical mistakes." I can -- Grigory Yavlinsky,
whose eloquence may even be said to hinder his chances of attaining high
office. Or Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose rhetorical virtuosity (rough-edged
though it be)and verbal intelligence is admired by many Russians who would
wish no more for him politically than a chief dogcatcher post in Smolensk.
It is true, however, that many Russian politicians make a mess of their
native tongue, but that has more to do with their having been functionaries
in a ruling party not known for the value it placed on clear expression.
Viktor Chernomyrdin -- whose unbounded love of the rough-hewn phrase and
the syntactically inconsequential sentence has been surpassed in recent
times only by George Bush -- serves as Exhibit A in Ms Blundy's case for
the people. She cites Itogi's "Mezhdometiia" page (27 October 1998) as her
source and then offers a translation (her own?):

"So the clever thing has found himself! Declare war on him! Him! Also! And
that! Right away, we'll do it all! And what does he know! And who is he
anyway! He's also crawling somewhere else if you don't mind.''

Ms Blundy fails to supply us with the context (which she presumably
doesn't know): Mr Chernomyrdin was speaking at an Interfax news conference
and commenting on Mr Ziuganov's sabre-rattling over the Kosovo conflict.
The ex-PM's point was well taken (this was the first time I found myself
agreeing with him), but as always it came out all wrong, the diatribe of a
drunken welder fed up with his communal apartment neighbor. In context,
however, the remarks made "perfect" sense, and Ms Blundy's translation
might be seen as an attempt to make Mr Chernomyrdin seem more tongue-tied
than he really was on this occasion. Actually, of course, she wasn't
attempting anything of the kind: she simply is ignorant of colloquial
Russian and passes this ignorance onto Mr Chernomyrdin. Here is a more
accurate rendering of the quotation:

"A wiseguy turned up! He wants to declare war! With bast clogs! His bast
clogs too! And that! Everything all at once! And what does he know?! And
who is he anyway?! Meddling in yet one more thing . . . Excuse me."

Not something you would want to include in the next edition of Bartlett's,
but Mr Chernomyrdin's remarks were "clear" to anyone who understands
Russian. Ms Blundy doesn't -- apply her translation method to the guardian
angel of her purist pals, Marina Tsvetayeva, and you end up with . . .
Viktor Chernomyrdin. So why, then, is she so troubled by the pollution of
the Russian language?
Those of us here "on the ground" (like Peter Ekman, whose personal
account of yesterday's October Revolution demonstrations on Lubyanka Square
was printed in JRL 2464) often find that the "realities" of contemporary
Russia as reported by Western journalists are at odds with what we see and
hear and know. I can only guess that the aesthetic that generates stories
like Ms Blundy's is akin to the "marketing genius" of Hollywood: Let's give
'em what they want! A little romance, a little sex, a bad guy they can
hate, a good guy they can identify with! Russia (or America, for that
matter) is more complicated, however, and deserves better foreign
correspondents: this kind of "light opera" can have undesired consequences
-- witness American policy toward Russia. At very least, a journalist
reporting on Russia might be expected to have a firm command of Russian
(especially its colloquial variety, in which the real business of life is
transacted) and a thoroughgoing knowledge of Russian culture and history.
When he doesn't -- as Ms Blundy doesn't -- then his articles will bear no
more relation to the facts than "Gone With the Wind" does to the Old South.
Making political hay from the supposed predations of the West (i.e., the
United States) on Russia is an old trick that Russian politicians of the
silly sort (Luzhkov, Ziuganov) like to pull when they feel the need to stir
up the downtrodden masses (who are, in the main, wise to such sleights of
hand and remain unmoved -- besides, they have bigger problems). Why
journalists like Ms Blundy collaborate with them in these efforts is hard
to fathom. Perhaps the downtrodden editorial masses in London also need
stirring up from time to time, especially when the agitprop is wrapped in
the attractive bunting of anti-Americanism?

*******

#5
Excerpt
Washington Post
November 8, 1998
[for personal use only]
Russian Crash Shows Risks of Globalization
Speculators Ignored Economy's Realities
By Steven Mufson and David Hoffman

Dana F. McGinnis was not a Russia expert when he went to Moscow on a trip
organized by Morgan Stanley & Co. in fall 1994. He did not speak the language
and he had made his first visit to Russia only six months earlier. But the San
Antonio-based fund manager had something Morgan Stanley and Russia were
interested in: a couple of hundred million dollars from rich and adventuresome
individuals and institutions in search of new investment frontiers.
McGinnis and two dozen other managers of big U.S. pension, mutual and private
investment funds were given a grand tour: a glitzy dinner at the Kremlin, an
enchanting night at the Bolshoi Opera, a stroll through the famous Novodevichy
convent gardens, receptions at the elegant Metropol Hotel, and meetings with
leading lights in Russian politics and economic policy. Meanwhile, in private
meetings with Russian executives, McGinnis plotted major investments in
Russian cement, telecommunications and electric power companies.
"There was great optimism that there would be an end to the arms race and that
some 250 million people would be brought into the capitalist fold," McGinnis
recalled. "There was a buzz in the air. The country was evolving by the hour.
You could feel it." It seemed like a historic moment and a historic business
opportunity.
McGinnis and many other people bought into that vision. Over three years, tens
of billions of dollars of foreign money flooded Russia's tiny new bond and
stock markets. 
Then just as quickly, the money poured back out in a financial panic this
spring and summer, leaving Russia and many banks and investors high and dry.
Russia's new market economy collapsed, throwing emerging markets into turmoil
worldwide, sharply reducing earnings at several major Western banks, and
forcing McGinnis to put his three investment funds into bankruptcy, wiping out
about $200 million of his investors' equity.
Those sorry results now stand as a cautionary tale about the new global
economy and its treatment of developing nations. Russia, like many developing
and formerly communist countries, acquired the trappings of a market economy
in the early 1990s -- bonds, stock markets, people in business suits and a
boom psychology. But like a number of emerging markets around the world,
Russia's new capitalist veneer hid deep unresolved problems from the old era.
Its underlying economy was still rooted in cronyism, lacking rule of law, and
hostile to the long-term direct investment it needed most. 
Western investors, in their haste to seize a new market, overlooked or
willfully ignored these realities. And while the wave of capital they supplied
temporarily buoyed stock prices, enriched the politically well connected and
papered over the government budget deficit, little of it went into new plants
or equipment that might have helped Russia grow. When the investment managers
suddenly lost confidence this year, their money flowed out of stocks and bonds
with bewildering speed, leaving the Russian economic terrain scorched.
Now, after defaulting on its $40 billion worth of domestic bonds and devaluing
its currency on Aug. 17, Russia's government has virtually no hope of
obtaining the foreign loans that have been its lifeline for three years.
Leading Russian banks are insolvent, and the ailing Russian economy contracted
by 9.9 percent in September. Above all, the whole notion of free markets has
been discredited in Russia for the time being.
The story of how Russia's meltdown happened shows how the removal of barriers
to global capital flows has led to extremes of speculation by investors who
barely understand what they are buying in new foreign markets. It demonstrates
how ill-equipped international financial organizations such as the
International Monetary Fund are to help new capitalist nations manage their
foreign accounts or survive speculative attacks.
Most of all, it shows that countries that embrace free markets do not
necessarily benefit from the money that pours into those countries. Instead,
their failure to fully and quickly implement reforms -- or other mistakes in
policy -- invite a virulent new form of financial punishment. "It doesn't help
to have a tidal wave of money go in and out of your country," said Ian S.
Campbell, an analyst for emerging markets at BancBoston Robertson Stephens
Inc. "One day you're swimming in money and the next day you're beached.".....

*******

#6
Excerpt
New York Times
8 November 1998
[for personal use only]
Facing Oblivion, Rust-Belt Giants Top Russian List of Vexing Crises
By CELESTINE BOHLEN

MAGNITOGORSK, Russia -- Ten years ago, when economic reform began its uneven
march through Russia's industrial heartland, the most visible landmark in this
steel town was a deadly multicolored plume that hung over the vast
Magnitogorsk Metal Works. 
Now, on a misty autumn morning, the sky is still, a welcome breath of fresh
air for the scarred lungs of the 430,000 people who live here on the banks of
the Ural River. 
One reason is the changes that have swept Russia under the banner of free-
market reform. Directors of the mill, now privatized, have done what Moscow's
all-powerful central planners refused to let them do: They have spent their
own profits to replace 11 of the mill's 35 aged and filthy open-hearth
furnaces that heat iron into steel with two cleaner oxygen furnaces. 
But there is another reason for the clear skies, one that illustrates why so
many Russians have come to associate economic reform with economic collapse. 
Today Magnitogorsk -- once the largest mill in the former Soviet Union -- is
producing less than half the raw steel it did a decade ago, with about the
same work force. It is a story repeated across Russia, whose gross national
product has slumped 42.5 percent since 1989, the most abrupt decline in any
major industrial country since the Great Depression. 
And new clouds loom on the horizon. The Magnitogorsk Metal Works is bracing
for a blow that could shut off its sales to the United States, where it now
sells 49 percent of its exports. 
U.S. steel producers, who say they are being undercut by imports from
Russia, Japan and Brazil, have brought a trade case accusing the foreign
competitors of "dumping" -- or unfairly selling steel in the United States for
less than it costs them to produce it. A preliminary ruling is expected in a
few weeks. 
As winter approaches, workers here are collecting only half their wages in
cash, with the rest provided as credit at stores owned by the mill. And there
are fears that this crisis, more than others before it, will hit home -- hard.
"If we lose our exports," said Anatoly Tamchuck, deputy chairman of the
local Mining and Metallurgical Union, "the drop in production will be about 50
percent, and layoffs could be about the same. This is the most frightening
thing. Since Soviet times, we never have had mass unemployment. This is a new
situation. The steel mill is the main enterprise in the city. There is no
other work." 
Of all Russia's problems, the most vexing lie in its Rust Belt, an
interlocking series of industrial giants now living off barter and choking on
bloated work forces. Many of the industries are pillars of communities that
have no other reason for being.....

****** 

#7
Russia's Lebed Urges Cooperation Between Public Movements 

KRASNOYARSK, Nov 4 (Interfax)--Governor of Krasnoyarsk territory
Aleksandr Lebed before November 7, the anniversary of the Russian
revolution, has called on public movements in his territory "to switch
from protest actions to cooperation actions."
"All protest actions today lead to instability," he said at a
Wednesday [4 November] meeting with local activists from political and
public organizations.
"I don't think a single person can say he needs anarchy or that he
wants to live in an atmosphere of arbitrariness, lawlessness and the cult
of power under which a mean tommy-gunner can decide the lives of
intellectuals," Lebed said. "This should not be so because it is a road to
a blind alley. If we take this road, we will go nowhere," he said.
Speaking of the October Revolution, he said that it "shook the world
and determined the lives of several generations of Soviet people, now
citizens of Russia."
"Today each of us can regard the date as his conscience allows him - 
that is everyone's right," Lebed said. "But nobody has the right to wipe
his feet on our common history, what our fathers and grandfathers did and
what they gave their health, youth and lives for," he said.
"Whether we want it or not, we are all Soviet people," he said. "Maybe
our children will be different in some way. And therefore it would be good
to learn to respect ourselves by respecting our own history," Lebed said.

*******