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Johnson's Russia List
 

 

November 13, 1998    
This Date's Issues: 2474 2475


Johnson's Russia List
#2475
13 November 1998
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Message from David Johnson:
IMPORTANT: If you sent me a message within the last day please resend.
I have lost some messages.
1. Reuters: Race hate could split Russia, Kremlin says.
2. the eXile: Abram Kalashnikov, Press Review. Hack to the Future.
3. Moscow Times: Leonid Bershidsky, MEDIA WATCH: Pressing the Press
Secretary.

4. Christian Science Monitor: Judith Matloff, Despite US Aid, Dire 
Russian Winter.

5. RFE/RL: Davit Berdzenishvili, Caucasus: Oil Companies Make Ultimate 
Pipeline Route Decisions.

6. Fredo Arias-King, Is it Power or Principle? A Footnote on Clinton's 
Russia Policy. ("Talbott Refused to Help Russia's Choice in the 1993 
Duma Elections Won By Zhirinovsky").

7. AP: Russia to Restructure Foreign Debt.]

*******

#1
Race hate could split Russia, Kremlin says
By Alastair Macdonald

MOSCOW, Nov 13 (Reuters) - A top Kremlin aide warned on Friday that ethnic
tensions could break up Russia just as they undermined the Soviet Union and
suggested a return to close police monitoring of political activity as a
preventive measure. 
As Security Council Secretary Nikolai Bordyuzha spoke to Interfax news agency,
the head of the FSB security service, Vladimir Putin, said he would ask
prosecutors to press charges against a leading Communist for making anti-
Semitic remarks and said parliament should act to lift the deputy's immunity. 
President Boris Yeltsin on Thursday ordered the government and security
services to crack down on extremism in a bid to calm passions fuelled by the
three-month-old economic crisis and mounting rivalries for the succession. He
must retire by mid-2000 but health problems could bring that forward. 
The Communist-led State Duma lower house, which last week refused to censure
deputy Albert Makashov for proposing the elimination of Jews, debated motions
declaring its opposition to the propagation of ethnic hatred. 
But the bitter row that has convulsed Russian politics for the past week and
all but eclipsed debate on economic plans and Yeltsin's absences on health
grounds seemed set to continue as the Communists renewed their attacks on the
media, whom they accuse of mounting the scandal to discredit the party. 
Adding to the atmosphere of mounting mistrust, the business newspaper
Kommersant-Daily led its front page with allegations by the prominent Jewish
oil-to-media baron Boris Berezovsky that senior FSB officials secretly allied
with communist and nationalist extremists had conspired to assassinate him. 
Berezovsky, who also holds political office and has played a role in securing
the release of hostages from rebel Chechnya, called at the weekend for the
Communist Party to be banned outright after it failed to distance itself from
Makashov. 
The Communist leadership, which has belatedly described his statements as
``inappropriate and incorrect,'' has turned its fire on the media, especially
state-owned ORT television, in which Berezovsky has an influential stake, and
commercial NTV, which is owned by the president of the Russian Jewish
Congress. 
ORT aired an item on its main nightly news programme on Thursday night
lambasting Makashov and Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov. In a bizarre twist,
it also suggested that Makashov's physiognomy indicated that he might have
some Jewish ancestry. 
In a country with a large Jewish population, despite heavy emigration in
recent years, and a long history of anti-Semitic pogroms and discrimination,
passions on such issues run deep. 
A Communist party statement accused ORT of mounting a campaign against it in
the style of the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. 
Security Council secretary Bordyuzha, said extremism could destroy the country
and called for measures to stop the rot. 
``The collapse of the Soviet Union was triggered by ethnic issues,'' he told
Interfax. ``Today we are facing similar processes and may face disintegration
of Russia unless tough steps are taken to stop extremism.'' 
Bordyuzha and security officials discussed legislative and practical steps
including police surveillance of extremists. 
``This would not mean a return to political police but rather practical
measures to fight extremism,'' he said. 

*******

#2
the eXile
November 5 - 18, 1998 
Press Review
Hack to the Future
by Abram Kalashnikov 

They've lost just about everything lately, but one thing that Russians have
gained since the August crash is stealth. Now that they can't afford to buy
anything the West is selling, Westerners, and particularly Americans, are
having trouble seeing them. Their photographic images are becoming hazy.
Soon they will completely disappear. Then they'll have room to move, and
presumably redeploy their forces. The New York Times Magazine reported this
past weekend that the number of foreign news reports broadcast by NBC-TV
dropped from 1,013 in 1988 to 327 in 1996. This is a trend in most network
television programming. All of the Moscow bureaus have cut back. Some (two
of the big three, to be exact) have already cut their staffs to such an
extent that their permanent correspondents have left, replaced by on-air
people who fly in on a rotating basis.
The reasons for this are varied, but chief among them is that Westerners
are entering a new age of unrepentant stupidity and isolationism. If the
collapse of communism ushered in the End of History, the collapse of the
world's emerging markets this year has brought about the End of Thought.
Perestroika-era Americans thought they'd conquered evil; Americans at the
millennium just don't want to see any of it. They've got their eyes, ears
and mouths covered up, with one lone cable sneaking through to pump Jerry
Springer, WNBA games and NASDAQ quotes straight into their cerebral cortexes.
New York Times Foreign Affairs managing editor Fareed Zakaria, in a
decidedly un-Timesian display of accusatory spleen, laid the blame on the
self-obsessed xenophobia of his own readers for the abrupt bottoming out of
post-cold war euphoria that was marked this past summer by the failure of
Russian reform:
"It is difficult to mark the end of an era with precision, but just as
Russia's embrace of the Western model ushered in the beginning of a new age
in world affairs, so the collapse of Russian reform this past July heralded
its end... It remains difficult to see on the horizon a worldwide
depression or a large-scale war, but gone is the expectation that the post
cold-war world was inexorably evolving into something new and better...
[It] is not the world that has given up on America but America that has
given up on the world. Historians will surely look back on this decade and
be struck that at America's moment of greatest global triumph-when all the
world looked to Washington for leadership-in the midst of an
almost-unprecedented economic boom, Americans became uncharacteristically
small-minded in their ambitions."
As is often the case with Times writers, however (the last Press Review
noted the same thing), the righteous-sounding Zakaria fell just short of
making a real point in his piece. The Times has earned its reputation as an
"intellectual" paper mainly through its occasional willingness to make the
mildly probing but completely obvious observation in print. It can do so
because its chief local competition, the New York Post, only counters with
items in its news section like this one about a dog owned by star couple
Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke:
UMA: Shaved Pooch
[Thurman and Hawke] are loving their new Greenwich Village home. But their
pet chow has had a hard time of it. The pedigree pooch came down with a
case of fleas recently that was so bad, the star couple had to have it shaved.
Ever since the eXile started publishing a Press Review, victimized
reporters have complained that they're not really guilty of any of the
things we accuse them of, mainly because editors and producers back home
won't run any story worth reading. Like Zakaria, they ultimately blame the
American public, whose responses to marketing surveys and Nielsen ratings
fuel the assignment decisions editors make, for being too "small-minded" to
digest anything but rah-rah softball stories in 500 words or less. But the
truth is that the small-mindedness of Western audiences is the result of a
systematic problem whose sudden preponderance journalists like Zakaria were
very much complicit in bringing about. It's a chicken-and-egg question.
Audiences are too stupid to read the news. But they're also stupid BECAUSE
they read the news. Editorial content is moving sharply downward for the
same reason reform in Russia collapsed. When foreign policy was left to the
market, Russia was left with an ideologically bankrupt government that met
with full international approval as long as its financial indicators looked
good. Soon, however, the complete absence of civic values or industry made
Russia's five years or so of stable currency and low inflation seem like
pretty meager accomplishments. The market doesn't build nations alone. It
needs a little common sense to make things work.
The press is the same way. Left to the mercy of the market, every paper in
America will have 100 pages of daily shaved-dog updates by the millennium.
Readers don't want to work hard any more than they want to get up out of
bed in the morning. If you don't make them work, they won't. Reporters can
complain about editors all they want, but the truth is that the news
doesn't come out without reporters. Don't like the garbage your boss is
assigning? Tired of writing fluff pieces in a desperate attempt to get your
Russia story in print? Well, then, don't. You can quit. There's always
McDonald's. That's the chief difference between the West and old Soviet
Russia. Because in all other aspects, the system isn't much different.
Probably 90% of Soviet reporters hated writing propaganda pieces for the
party and lies about capitalism, but, cowards that most of them were, they
didn't refuse the work, and in so doing kept the system going for over
seventy years.
When you, the hack, write down to your audience, you're doing the same
thing. You're making the world stupider, making it harder and harder for
real debate to appear in print, allowing the system of stupefecation to
proliferate.
So if you're a hack weighed down by his post-collapse prospects, please
don't complain that no one cares about Russia, or that everyone is
"small-minded", or give any other excuses, for that matter. If you can't
work they way you like, it's your fault as much as anyone else's. And don't
ever forget it.

*******

#3
Moscow Times
November 13, 1998 
MEDIA WATCH: Pressing the Press Secretary 
By Leonid Bershidsky 

Daily journalism is a stressful exercise, as any reporter will tell you.
The deadlines are tight and the frustrations are many. It's been two months
since I came back to a daily newspaper, The Moscow Times, after two years of
editing a weekly, and my dreams are already full of uninvited characters
like Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. Just the other night, he bet me a
bottle of vodka that high inflation will not kick in early next year. 
It's a good thing I am not yet dreaming of all the press secretaries my
colleagues and I have to call every day. It is well known that in this
country, press secretaries exist to make it harder, not easier, to get
information. But they make it harder in so many different ways that you
really have to admire their ingenuity. 
There are exceptions, almost always when you are dealing with private
companies. But it is the general rule a journalist is up against every day. 
As a rule, press secretaries fall into one of the following categories: 
1. Press secretaries who have their own press secretaries. These are
important officials who are almost, but not quite, as hard to reach as their
bosses. One example is Igor Schegolev, head of the government's information
directorate. He has a host of underlings who will not comment on anything at
all and a personal secretary who tells reporters to call back in an hour
because Igor Olegovich is conferring with his superiors. When you do reach
him, you almost always get the same "no comment" that you would have got
from an underling. 
2. Busy press secretaries. When you call them with a question, they tell
you they have plenty of work to do and you are distracting them. "But you're
the press secretary, right?" you yell into the receiver. "That's right,"
they answer. "And I'm busy." 
One of my colleagues at The Moscow Times was told by a Defense Ministry
spokesman to call later with his questions because the press service was
"busy accrediting journalists to a press conference." If you take into
account the fact that the Defense Ministry press service, headed by a
general, employs no fewer than a dozen people - and that is a conservative
estimate - you have to wonder how many Defense Ministry spokesmen it takes
to screw in a lightbulb. 
3. Press secretaries who deal with you by fax. This is a numerous group
that requires you to fax in your questions so they can go to one of their
superiors with a document rather than with an oral request for an interview.
For example, this is the accepted practice at the Central Bank, which, as
the only state economic agency with a real policy these days, generates a
lot of breaking news. Central Bank press people know that you need
information fast, but they are adamant that you should not get it. 
Recently, I gave in and sent a fax with questions to a press guy at the
Central Bank's Moscow branch. I called him every day to find out whether he
was getting the answers. On the third day he told me, "You know, there
probably won't be any answers. The people up there are too busy." 
This was as illegal as selling dope. The Russian law on mass media
obligates officials to provide information regardless of whether a
journalist asks for it orally or in writing. Moreover, if an official
refuses to provide information or asks for a delay, he must do it in writing
with a full explanation of his reasons. 
But I did not quote the law to the press guy. There are a million ways in
which he can withhold information, and no punishment is set out in the media
law for doing it, though if you misquote some official, you can be sure of a
vicious lawsuit against you in keeping with the same law. 
4. Press secretaries who want to help but cannot bring themselves to do
it. These people sound very friendly on the phone, and you get a warm
feeling from talking to them for the first time: They promise to get you an
interview with The Boss very soon or find the information you need and call
you back in 15 minutes. They never do. They are invariably friendly and
chatty as they inform you that something had sidetracked them but that they
would get on your case immediately. The routine can go on for weeks. 
There is always a way to get information, of course, even if the official
press services will not share it. And when journalists get it, it is usually
unfavorable to the government bodies that employ the huge, singularly
unhelpful press services. 

******

#4
Christian Science Monitor
November 12, 1998 
[for personal use only]
Despite US Aid, Dire Russian Winter 
Judith Matloff, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor 

ASKIZ, RUSSIA -- Danil Taskarakov keeps a snarling dog to guard his hovel,
but there's little left to take. The sole cow was stolen two years ago, and
he and his three small children ate their chickens.
The former machinist has been reduced to a hunter-gatherer existence since
losing his job three years ago. He stalks the frozen ground outside this
Siberian village for firewood and takes a fishing line to the river in hope
of catching something for dinner.
Things are particularly dire this winter for Mr. Taskarakov and his
neighbors. 
The poorest harvest in decades, the ruble's collapse in mid-August, and
prices that have soared fivefold mean they cannot afford to buy food and
have trouble warming their homes.
"I need help," Taskarakov says, watching his toddlers wolf down chocolate
bars offered by visitors. 
Experts estimate Russia's food reserves will run out anywhere between a few
weeks from now and the spring. The country, which imported a third of its
food last year, has asked for food aid from Western nations that will no
longer grant financial loans due to recent defaults on debt payments.
On Nov. 6, the United States agreed to donate 1.5 million tons of wheat and
100,000 tons of other foodstuffs and granted a low-interest loan of $600
million to buy American-grown food. The European Union is preparing $480
million in food aid and $8.4 million in humanitarian assistance. 
Aid is a gamble, with Russia's history of corruption. The EU wants
guarantees that the food will reach the truly needy and not be reexported
by unscrupulous officials. The US initially demanded strict monitoring, but
backed down. Instead, two US officials will be based in Russia to keep an
eye on distribution. Analysts say that will be inadequate to prevent
abuses. Russia's decision to name Roskhleboprodukt as one of three
companies to hand out the US grain has raised eyebrows. It oversaw a 1992
distribution widely seen as flawed.
"There is always slippage, anywhere in the world. But in Russia we are
satisfied that 90 to 95 percent of our aid gets through to targeted
beneficiaries," says Caroline Hurford, Moscow press officer of the
International Federation of the Red Cross. The organization has launched a
$10-million winter appeal for food and clothing.
The security and humanitarian implications of a starving Russia are too
awesome for the West to risk. Its bitter cold brings an added dimension to
the question of survival: People cannot grow food year-round nor sleep
outside.
Russia has had its share of famines over the past century, but
Western-subsidized aid only began to appear in force in the early 1990s
after the Soviet Union's collapse. Such was the ambivalence over dependency
that jokes abounded over nozhki busha (Bush legs), frozen chicken
drumsticks donated by former President George Bush. Like it or not, the
need for food aid is great. The grain crop was the lowest in 45 years - 48
to 49 million tons versus 88.5 million in 1997. 
Many of Russia's needy live in Siberia, where winter temperatures can
plunge 40 degrees below freezing and supplies are difficult to transport.
The region of Khakassia near Russia's southern border with Mongolia is
particularly vulnerable because of its remote location 2,100 miles
southeast of Moscow. Khakassia has the potential to be a thriving livestock
and mining area but has ceased to be productive. The streets of this small
town are lined with closed factories - wood-processing, milk-production,
and gold-extraction plants. 
Farm workers such as Ektarina Sultrekova and her family will eat their last
cow this winter. Ms. Sultrekova receives 2-1/2 gallons of milk per day for
her labor, but no money. Two of her five children don't go to school
because they have no shoes. "I ask myself every day, 'What can I do?' " she
says.
Regional administrator Mikhail Sarazhakov says the last time the local
population was reduced to such subsistence survival was after World War II.
He estimates unemployment at about 80 percent. "This is peacetime, but
there has been a complete collapse of the local economy," he says. "At
first people were too proud to accept humanitarian aid, but now they will
take all they can get." 
Mr. Sarazhakov acknowledges that aid will be little more than a Band-Aid
until Russia can revive its inefficient distribution and production system. 
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development last month
published alarming figures showing the collapse of large-scale farming,
which was only 44 percent of 1990's level. 
It said 50 percent of Russia's agricultural production last year was on
household plots of less than an acre each. These represented some 14
million acres, or 3 percent of all farmland.

*******

#5
Caucasus: Oil Companies Make Ultimate Pipeline Route Decisions
By Davit Berdzenishvili

Tbilisi, 12 November 1998 (RFE/RL) -- Late last month (Oct. 29), during the
celebrations in Ankara to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the
Turkish Republic, the presidents of Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan
and Uzbekistan and the U.S. Energy Secretary signed a political declaration
of support for the Baku-Ceyhan route as the main export pipeline for
Caspian oil. But that declaration may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory for the
signatories, as the declaration is purely symbolic. 
The crucial decision on the choice of a pipeline route lies with the oil
companies. Since their merger the oil giants BP and Amoco -- which between
them own a 34 percent stake in the consortium engaged in exploiting
Azerbaijan's Azeri, Chirag and Gyuneshli oil fields -- have reassessed the
politicians' wishes. Their verdict was that the Baku-Ceyhan route is
expensive and not without risk. Nor is there any firm guarantee that in the
next few years the volume of oil extracted in the Caspian Sea will reach
the 100-120 million metric tons needed to make the Ceyhan route
commercially viable. 
Consequently, the Ceyhan route is only a future possibility. At present,
the main focus is on the route from Baku to the Georgian Black Sea port of
Supsa, which will have an annual throughput capacity of 12-15 million
metric tons once repairs to it are completed. The pipeline from Baku to the
Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk can also transport almost that
amount. Work on the Azerbaijani section of the Baku-Supsa pipeline is
finished, and repairs to the Georgian section should be completed next
February. The export of Azerbaijan's Caspian crude to world markets through
that pipeline should begin on April 1, 1999. 
The routing of oil and gas pipelines via Georgia will mark the practical
implementation of the concept of creating a "geopolitical belt around
Russia." That concept was drawn up by Zbigniew Brzezinski in the early 1990s. 
Beginning in 1993, some pro-Western organizations in Georgia began to
promote the possibility and advantages of creating a geopolitical arc
comprising the countries of the Caspian and Black Sea basins. Georgia and
Azerbaijan were conceived of as a bridge, as the backbone of a Eurasian
corridor that would link Eastern Europe with Central Asia and, on a global
scale, Western Europe with the Pacific Basin. Creation of a Eurasian
corridor that would separate an unstable Russia from the fundamentalist
East was perceived as being in the interests of both the U.S. and Europe. 
The Georgian authorities' initial reaction was that the proposal was naive
and hopelessly romantic, and would place tiny Georgia in opposition to
powerful Russia. But a number of factors -- Azerbaijan's firm commitment,
the support of Euro-Atlantic structures and their growing interest in the
region, the clear hostility towards Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze on
the part of a weakened Russia -- soon impelled the Georgian leadership to
adopt a pro-Western course. Today Georgia has a key role in the Eurasian
corridor project. 
The U.S. Congress is currently creating the legislative basis for making
the revived "Silk Road" a reality. That project envisages the creation of a
grandiose communications highway -- with oil and gas pipelines along the
floor of the Caspian Sea by which Central Asian and Caspian oil and gas
will be transported to world markets. At first glance, it appears that
Georgia would benefit from the fact that the Baku-Supsa route is
acknowledged to be the most realistic. That pipeline runs through a longer
stretch of Georgian territory than does the alternative route to Ceyhan,
and therefore Georgia would earn more in tariffs. But there is a more
serious aspect to the pipeline issue: the choice of the Baku-Ceyhan route
was intended to intensify the political and economic cooperation between
the western-oriented states of the region -- Turkey, Georgia and
Azerbaijan. That trio was intended to balance the growing
military-political cooperation between Russia, Armenia and Iran. If Turkey
is left out of the proposed Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey linkage, that could
seriously weaken that linkage and strengthen anti-western forces within
Turkey. 
Ankara has already stated that it does not intend to turn the Bosporus and
Turkish straits, which are under its jurisdiction, into an oil pipeline. 
Russia, for its part, has the opportunity to increase exports via the
Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline to the maximum, and thereby hinder the
cooperation among Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan. 
Iran -- for the moment -- remains out of the picture for purely political
reasons, given that an Iranian pipeline route is the optimum one in every
practical respect. But the U.S. is resolutely opposed -- a fallout of
decades-old strains between Washington and Tehran. 
At present, it is safe to conclude that the struggle over the export route
for Caspian and Kazakh oil is not yet over.
(Davit Berdzenishvili is a Tbilisi-based contributor to RFE/RL. The feature
was translated by Elizabeth Fuller.) 

******

#6
From: Fariask96c@aol.com (Fredo Arias-King)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 
Subject: Is it Power or Principle? A Footnote on Clinton's Russia Policy

Dear David:

Because it is being published in Demokratizatsiya, the title is a bit boring. 
I guess the best way to re-name it for the Johnson's List is "Talbott Refused 
to Help Russia's Choice in the 1993 Duma Elections Won By Zhirinovsky."

It is being published in the Spring 1999 issue of Demokratizatsiya.

I hope you like the piece, tell me what you think.
Fredo


Is it Power or Principle? A Footnote on Clinton's Russia Policy
By Fredo Arias-King 

Fredo Arias-King is the founding editor of Demokratizatsiya. He holds two
advanced degrees from Harvard University, and resides in Mexico City. The
author would like to thank Robert Sharlet, J. Michael Waller, Richard Pipes
and other scholars for recommending that this information be written for the
record. 

Much has been made of the Clinton administration's excessive focus on Boris
Yeltsin personally, to the detriment of other democratic figures. Often,
analysts attribute this policy to Strobe Talbott, the brainy former journalist
who is the government official de-facto in charge of Clinton's policy toward
Russia and the other post-Soviet countries.
Whereas this "Yeltsin-first" accusation seems true with the generous and
often unwarranted U.S. support for the governments of former Prime Minister
Viktor Chernomyrdin and his lieutenants (the "Party of Power"), this was
pointedly not so with the democratic forces which lost their chance in late
1993 to become the dominating force in Russian politics. Yeltsin at that time
tacitly supported Russia's Choice as the preferred party to win the December
1993 elections for the Duma and carry out the reform agenda which the late
Supreme Soviet had stalled. However, the abysmal failure of Russia's Choice
and other reform-oriented parties in that election forced Yeltsin to change
his strategy, once again relying excessively on Chernomyrdin, the Party of
Power, the industrial-military complex and the power agencies-to the detriment
of the legislature and Russian democracy. 
The leaders of the Democratic Russia Movement, the broad anti-communist
coalition which pressed Gorbachev to annul the communist monopoly on power in
February 1990, launched Yeltsin into the Russian presidency in June 1991 and
then gave birth to the Russia's Choice party, believe that Strobe Talbott did
not support them in that crucial hour of need in late 1993. To this day,
Democratic Russia's co-presidents believe they could have done better in that
election if Talbott had simply answered their call. They are also frustrated
since Talbott never explained why he willfully chose to ignore them during
that fateful election, which, as is known, went to the Communist Party of the
Russian Federation (KPRF) and the Liberal Democratic Party of Vladimir
Zhirinovsky. Several American and Russian experts agree with Democratic
Russia, that the outcome of the election could have been different.
This specific incident also proves incorrect another widely held assumption:
that Russia's Choice and Democratic Russia believed they would win the
election and did little in the way of effective campaigning.
Democratic Russia and its friends and supporters had devised a plan which
many experts now recognize could have changed the outcome of the 1993
elections. The plan was simple: an endorsement from what was then two foreign
actresses which enjoyed massive popular appeal in Russia. However, their plan
ran into problems at the 11th hour when the Mexican television monopoly
refused to lend the actresses. This impediment could have been easily overcome
had the request originated in Washington. Democratic Russia co-presidents Lev
Ponomarev and Father Gleb Yakunin repeatedly requested Strobe Talbott to help
them overcome that last hurdle. But Talbott refused to offer them this help.
Talbott confided later to a British journalist that he indeed did receive the
calls and messages, but chose not to assist because he did not "freelance." 
By 1993 the largest popularity of any figure, artistic and otherwise,
belonged two Mexican soap opera stars, Verónica Castro and Victoria Ruffo.
Their old soap operas ("The Rich Also Cry" and "Simply María") were dubbed
into Russian and provoked a phenomenon the Guardian termed "Castromania." "It
is hard to exaggerate the fervour" of their following. The New York Times
called it "a kind of awe." The Houston Chronicle dubbed it "an adoring
frenzy," and "a head-over-heels love affair," where "finding a Russian who is
not addicted to the Mexican drama is as hard as finding a capitalist in the
Kremlin during the Cold War." Even the hardline Pravda's headlines beamed
with approving expectation before Castro visited Russia" About 200,000 people
awaited at or near the airport for her arrival at the end of 1992, causing "as
much stir as if the Virgin Mary herself had descended from an aircraft." The
Bolshoi audience and performers went into an autograph-seeking frenzy when
they discovered that Castro was among them. Her book was a bestseller.
In effect, these actresses enjoyed the largest genuine popularity ever seen
in Russian history. Russia's most renowned expert on public opinion, Tatyana
Zaslavskaya, commented to this author that the reason for their popularity is
that "with their beauty, sincerity, love and affluence, they take us away, at
least temporarily, from this gray, difficult life." Russians apparently also
share the Mexican fixation with fatalism, tragic love, unhappy endings, etc.
According to the estimates of leading Russian reformers and U.S. experts,
televised messages from these celebrities could have added several percentage
points in the democrats' and centrists' favor at the expense of the "red-
brown" parties. The plan never called for the endorsement of the main party,
Russia's Choice, alone-but also of Yabloko, and even of the centrist Civic
Union. The goal was mainly to deprive Zhirinovsky and the Communists/Agrarians
of some of their lead, as the Mexican actresses' mainstream appeal was found
among their main constituen-cies: common folk and disenfranchised masses who
tend to be swayed by emotional appeals from a charismatic leader.

The Power of Myth

There was already a precedent for arguing that the broad appeal of these
actresses could be translated into political power. For example, the
Chernomyrdin government was forced to accede in early 1994 to the demands of
the communication workers when they threatened to pull the soap opera from the
air. The one-day stoppage of the show by the communi-cations workers caused "a
nation-wide outcry." When Castro visited Russia, Newsday reported that
"powerful politicians [were] tripping over themselves to be photographed with
her." This included Russian cabinet ministers, which were "among the thousands
pushing and shoving to meet her." Even Yeltsin could not miss the photo
opportunity, as he and his top officials held a dinner for Castro at the
Kremlin-which was the top news story that night. The Russian president later
commented that when the actresses appear on TV, "even the criminals stay home
and watch them," reducing the crime rate. The Independent reported that "the
country grinds to a halt when the programme is screened." They added that the
soaps "have been a godsend to the Russian leader because they keep people in a
trance while he imposes his painful economic shock therapy." 
One who did translate the mass appeal of these stars into political/financial
power was Sergei Mavrodi, president of the notorious MMM corporation. He
attracted ten million pensioners and housewives to invest their rubles in a
pyramid scheme which later collapsed, leaving them penniless. How? With those
very same actresses. He used computer simulation to make it appear as if
Victoria Ruffo had endorsed his scheme, and success followed.
Communist leaders such as Gennady Zyuganov and Viktor Anpilov routinely
condemn the soap operas as the chief instigators of the "apathy of the Russian
masses" towards the Yeltsin government and the economic crisis. They have
lambasted the soaps for the population's failure to become politically active,
presumably to carry out the calls for strikes and demonstrations organized by
the KPRF and other "patriotic" organizations. In fact, whereas the Communist
Party has largely failed in their repeated calls for work stoppages, Ostankino
in 1992 was forced to change the programming schedule of the soaps since
industrial output fell due to widespread worker absenteeism during their
timeslot.
This phenomenon extended beyond Russia. Georgian warring factions held a
truce at the time the program was aired, the Ukrainian government was forced
to exempt the soaps from energy-saving program cuts, Kyrgyz collective farms
and factories emptied when the program showed on TV, and Estonia compro-mised
in its feud with Ostankino television to ensure that the soaps would continue
to show. Recently, the government channel and the U.S. embassy in Moscow were
swamped by angry citizens when the Russians announced they may have to stop
showing another soap, Santa Barbara, because of financial problems. They
rescinded their decision. 
The main parties competing in the 1996 elections to the Duma learned lessons
from 1993 and made wider use of popular artistic and sports figures in their
advertisements, for endorsements and as candidates for office. Chernomyrdin's
party even used the American rapper M.C. Hammer. These popular figures help
give parties an image where otherwise there would be none. Russia has no real
parties with definable constituencies. Therefore, the image they convey on TV
can prove more crucial than it does in more established democracies. Voters'
loyalty and affiliation to parties is close to zero. This means that whoever
has the slickest ad, appeals to the heart (not the head) and boasts the best
personality, wins the vote. Many attribute Zhirinovsky's surprise success in
the 1993 election to his adept use of symbolism and sleek soundbites. Others
have partly attributed Yeltsin's victory in the Russian presidential elections
in June 1991 to the advice by the Krieble Institute in Washington, which also
made wide use of popular symbolism. 

The Experts Opine

Russian and American experts agree that these actresses' appeal could have
translated into votes for democracy. On average, these experts estimate that
four million votes could have been obtained. The breakdown follows (in
millions):
___________________________
Galina Starovoitova 9
Tatyana Zaslavskaya 5
Lev Ponomarev 4 
Gleb Yakunin 4
Andrew Kuchins 4
Blair Ruble 3.5
Robert Sharlet 3.5
Oleg Kalugin 3
Marshall Goldman 1.5
___________________________

Average 4.2
___________________________

Tatyana Zaslavskaya's estimate is especially interesting, as she pioneered
the art of public opinion in the USSR-her institute became one of the main
think tanks of perestroika. Another one would be Kalugin, who also knows
Russian psychology well from his days as a chief of disinformation and
propaganda for the KGB before he opposed that system. Blair Ruble is the
director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington,
D.C.; Marshall Goldman is deputy director of the Davis Center for Russian
Studies at Harvard University; Andrew Kuchins at that time was the director of
the Russia department at the MacArthur Foundation. Galina Starovoitova is,
along with Yakunin and Ponomarev, co-president of the Democratic Russia
Movement, and former press spokesperson for Yeltsin. Robert Sharlet is an
expert on Russian constitutions and elections at Union College.
The rising star of post-sovietology and expert on Russian parties and
elections, Michael McFaul of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
and Stanford University, commented that the plan "would have definitely made
an impact" in the 1993 elections, but did not give a figure.

Further Background

This author was with two of the three co-presidents of the Democratic Russia
movement, Lev Ponomarev and Father Gleb Yakunin, the day in September 1993
when Yeltsin abolished the Supreme Soviet and called for new elections. We
discussed the plan and these two leaders became hopeful that it could be
realized. This author met with Verónica Castro in Cancún and she agreed to
endorse the democratic parties, but needed permission "from above," as is the
custom in Mexico. In that country, actors sign an "exclusivity agreement"
which prevents them from engaging in activity other than that stipulated in
their contract. The owner of that contract is the near-monopoly Televisa,
whose boss later refused to allow Castro to film the spot. Some sympathetic
subordinates commented that he would comply if the request came from Mexican
political authorities, as he has a strong symbiotic relationship with them.
The Mexican government has a policy of non-intervention in the internal
affairs of other states. However, this rule could be bent if the request came
from the U.S. government. There was a unique opportunity at that time: NAFTA
was being voted upon in the U.S. Congress within weeks. Mexico's political
leadership was keen to secure the goodwill of individual congressmen and U.S.
officials. The Mexican government was breaking its own laws to secure
individual votes (such as the non-extradition law, which the Mexican
government broke to secure the vote of a Florida congressman). So the key to
the plan's success lay in Washington's cooperation to convince the Mexican
authorities to allow the actresses to participate in this plan. Individual
congressmen proved futile, as they did not understand, not surprisingly, how
Mexican soap operas could help Russian democracy.
The only person in Washington that had the capacity to understand the value
of this plan and who wielded sufficient power to achieve it was Strobe
Talbott. The Democratic Russia figures and this author tried to reach Talbott
through numerous letters, faxes, contacts, calls to his office-and even
recordings in his home answering machine-to no avail.
The one comment Talbott made about the 1993 elections actually served to
humiliate the democratic forces. As McFaul comments, Talbott's call for "'more
therapy, less shock' articulated in the wake of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's
surprising electoral victory in 1993 helped to undercut domestically the
political position of reformers within the Russian government." 
Numerous attempts to reach Talbott to interview him for this article proved
futile. His spokesman at the State Department mentioned that the issue of
Democratic Russia and the actresses was not relevant enough to interrupt him. 

The Broader Picture

"To survive, Russian democracy needs Russian democrats," McFaul reflected in
a landmark essay on U.S.-Russian relations. His thoughts mirror the wider
opinion in the field on the legacy of Clinton's Russia policy:
"… U.S. government officials and nongovernmental organizations devoted less
effort to assisting those seeking to foster democratic institutions. Instead,
they devoted more time to whoever was in power … Prime Minister Chernomyrdin's
poor record on deepening economic reform underscores the negative consequences
of engaging too closely with individuals not committed to radical reform …
American engagement policies should be directed first and foremost at those
with proven democratic credentials." 
However, the perception is that Clinton and Talbott engaged with
Chernomyrdin
excessively to the detriment of democrats not in power at the time. Ponomarev
later told this author "Talbott betrayed us." Starovoitova essentially said
the same to Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post, who chose to ignore her
comments and this incident in general in an extremely favorable portrayal of
Talbott for the Washington Post Magazine.
The behavior of Talbott towards the Russian democrats in 1993 is indicative
of a pattern, not an isolated case. The first U.S. ambassador in Belarus,
David Swartz, resigned in protest in 1994 because Talbott refused to answer
his cables warning that U.S. aid money was being diverted to the Communists
away from democracy-building projects. He accused Talbott of "encouraging
those in Belarus who want restoration of the Soviet empire." Stanislau
Shushkevich, then the reform-minded leader of Belarus about to be overthrown
by the current president, Alyaksander Lukashenka, asked "If the United States
wants to foster reform here, why do you keep on supporting the communists?"
The Center for Security policy published a collection of other similar
incidents involving Talbott's tendency to support ex-communists at the expense
of their democratic opposition. They cite incidents in Hungary, Romania and
Serbia. A top member of the Bulgarian Coalition of Democratic Forces accused
Talbott and Clinton of similarly ignoring their requests just prior to their
loss of the 1993 elections to the former communists. Their request had been a
photo-op with Clinton. 

Conclusion

This brief note hopes to achieve the following: 1) explain through one
indicative incident that the administration's focus was not necessarily a
pragmatic policy of supporting whomever was in Yeltsin's camp (since Russia's
Choice was taunted the favorite at the time); 2) dispel the myth that
Democratic Russia was complacent during the December 1993 elections.
In one of his many policy shifts, Talbott later did acknowledge the
importance of supporting democratic forces in the region. However, the
administration continued to receive criticism for acting otherwise.

Notes not reproduced here.

*******

#7
Russia to Restructure Foreign Debt 
By Greg Myre
November 12, 1998

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia plans to seek a second restructuring of its Soviet-era
foreign debt, the deputy finance minister says, a move likely to further
undermine the government's sullied reputation among foreign creditors. 
Russia inherited about $260 billion in Soviet debt, much of it from loans
to developing countries that defaulted. 
Under a 1996 restructuring agreement, Russia was granted a grace period
through 2002, during which it only has to make debt service payments. But
even that is proving too much. 
Deputy Finance Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said in an interview published
Thursday that Russia would be asking creditors for some ``breathing space on
the payments of the debt in the next year or two.'' 
The Soviet-debt payments are part of the $17.5 billion in foreign debt
that Russia was to pay creditors next year. The government previously
indicated it wants to reschedule the payments. 
Foreign lenders expected the government to try to pay off the newer,
Russian debt first, and Kasyanov's announcement, in an interview with the
business daily Kommersant, confirmed the speculations. 
Kasyanov did not rule out the possibility that the government would also
want to reschedule the Russian debt. Russia has built up $50 billion in
foreign debt as well as inheriting about $100 billion in debt since the
Soviet collapse, Kasyanov said. 
Also Thursday, Russia was on the verge of signing a food aid deal with the
European Union that would start providing wheat, rice, beef and pork in
early January. Russia signed a similar agreement with the United States last
week. 
The country has not experienced any serious food shortages so far, but the
government wants to ensure its stockpiles last until spring. 
In a new sign of trouble for the Russian banks, Central Bank Chairman
Viktor Gerashchenko said the government won't bail out domestic banks whose
overseas assets are frozen by foreign creditors. 
A government-declared moratorium on debt payments that had protected
Russian banks is due to expire within days. 
Central Bank's deputy chairman Andrei Kozlov said that more than 700
Russian commercial banks will fail, because the government does not have the
$5 billion to save them. 
The banks hold 32 percent of all private deposits in the country, the
Interfax news agency reported. Many private bank accounts have been frozen
since Russia devalued the ruble and froze some of its domestic debt in August. 

*******

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