November 29, 1998   
This Date's Issues: 2494• 2495• 

Johnson's Russia List
#2495
29 November 1998
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Reuters: Alastair Macdonald, ANALYSIS-Party time as Russians regroup 
for polls.
2. Moscow Times: Helen Womack, VOICES: Tapping Into The Wisdom Of the 
Young.
3. The Independent: Phil Reeves, Russian red tape halts US aid to hungry 
Arctic.
4. Jerry Hough: Re 2493-Chronicle of Higher Education/Wedel, Weiler/Ferency, 
Current developments.
5. Yale Richmond: Historical/Cultural Perspectives in Poland and Russia.
6. The Globe and Mail (Canada): Geoffrey York, Symbols of Democracy.
7. AP: Deborah Hastings, Russian Women a Fast-Growing Market.
8. Los Angeles Times: Elizabeth Shogren, U.S. Worries That Russian Nuclear 
Technology Needs More Safeguards.
9. Washington Post editorial: Sick Boris Yeltsin.
10. AP: HIV Cases Soar in Russia.
11. Maris Ozols: Re 2494-Applebaum/Weiler.]

******

#1
ANALYSIS-Party time as Russians regroup for polls
By Alastair Macdonald

MOSCOW, Nov 29 (Reuters) - For a country that had just one political party for
most of the 20th century, Russia is making a belated rush to make up for it. 
``Russia overtakes capitalist America in manufacture of political parties!''
runs a 1990s wisecrack echoing Cold War-era Communist Party slogans on pig
iron output and the like. 
Most of the 43 parties that contested the last parliamentary election in
December 1995 have not been heard of since. Only four won the five percent of
the vote required to secure State Duma seats allocated by proportional
representation. 
And three of those may be lucky to keep them when the next election comes
round in a year's time, leaving, ironically, the rump Communist Party as
perhaps Russia's one recognisable, Western-style political movement with a
true mass following. 
Yet with President Boris Yeltsin's poor health fueling talk that the poll
could be brought forward along with a presidential election not otherwise due
until mid-2000, a host of new parties are springing up to tempt -- and confuse
-- the voters. 
Far from signifying a fizz of grass-roots activity, the party-forming flurry
is largely a top-down affair to secure backers ahead of the personality-driven
presidential contest. 
``There is no real civil society yet in Russia. Most Russians still do not
believe they can have an influence on politics so they see no point in
political parties,'' said Andrei Ryabov, an expert on the party system at the
Carnegie Endowment think-tank. 
``On the other hand, the authorities have no interest in encouraging parties
that could serve as mechanisms of popular control. They have instead created
bureaucratic parties.'' 
Typical of the new parties is Fatherland, a self-styled ``centrist'' movement
of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. 
Founded this month, its function appears mainly to provide a vehicle for him
at the Duma election and the presidential poll. 
Like Our Home is Russia, a ``centre-right'' movement created by then Prime
Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to contest the 1995 election, Fatherland seems
unlikely to have -- or even to want -- many individual members among ordinary
Russians. 
More important will be the loyalty of influential local and national
administrators as well as business and media groups. 
The classic case for neglecting parties as a mechanism for linking popular
opinion and power politics is Yeltsin himself. 
Despite urgings by supporters to create a counterweight to the Communists, he
has always refused to tie himself to a single movement and insisted on being
leader ``of all Russians.'' 
Given the sweeping powers he won in 1993, some argue Yeltsin had no need of a
party -- although the way the Communist-led Duma has frustrated successive
Yeltsin governments suggests he might have been better to do more to form a
favourable majority. 
A half-hearted Kremlin attempt to create a Western-style two-party system by
decree failed badly in 1995 when Our Home won 10 percent and a centre-left
counterpart sank without trace. 
``Yeltsin wasn't interested,'' said Andrei Piontkovsky of the Centre for
Strategic Studies. ``He wanted to keep his options open. But I don't think he
would have succeeded anyway.'' 
The biggest test for Yeltsin came in 1996 when he found himself facing single-
digit approval ratings and a resurgent Communist Party just months before the
presidential election. 
Yet even without a party, he was able to rally the media, big business and
other forces behind him as personal guarantor of democracy and defeat
Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov. 
But with minds now concentrated on what comes after Yeltsin, none of his
possible successors has such personal standing and so all seem anxious for the
support of some form of party. 
Among these is an as yet unnamed ``united right'' bloc whose imminent
formation was announced on Friday by former liberal prime ministers Yegor
Gaidar and Sergei Kiriyenko and former deputy premiers Anatoly Chubais and
Boris Nemtsov. 
Standard bearers of the so-called ``young reformers'' who were distanced from
power by the government's financial collapse in August, their vague loyalty is
to democratic market reforms. They were galvanised, they said, by the
apparently political murder of liberal matriarch Galina Starovoitova 10 days
ago. 
But Kiriyenko has already irritated his colleagues by announcing he will also
set up his own separate party and few analysts believe the new bloc can end
chronic faction fighting. 
On the left, too, Zyuganov struggles for party discipline in the Duma and
faces a host of rival left-nationalist groups. 
Professor Richard Sakwa at England's University of Kent, a specialist in
Russian parties, warns against assumptions that politics will eventually
crystallise into support for a small number of parties, as Western democracies
have. 
``There is no guarantee that two or three parties will emerge triumphant,'' he
wrote recently. 
Ryabov sees little chance of a rapid change in Russians' disregard for parties
but says a weaker president, stronger Duma and the economic crisis are factors
that could favour more active public identification with leading parties. 
``We certainly won't see 43 lists at next year's Duma election,'' he said.
``Maybe more like 15 or 17.'' 

*******

#2
For more articles from The Moscow Times, check out their website at
www.moscowtimes.ru

Moscow Times
November 28, 1998
VOICES: Tapping Into The Wisdom Of the Young 
By Helen Womack
Special to The Moscow Times

Wondering what the future of Russia might hold in store, I went this week to a
Russian college to hear what the students had to say about economic collapse,
relations with the West, fascism and the way forward for Russia. 
The students of the International High School - lawyers, linguists and
economists in their late teens and early 20s - had only vague memories of the
Soviet era. For one girl it conjured up pioneer camps and a more sharing
community, for another student the certainty of seeing his father go out to
work every day. 
We all agreed that some things about Soviet life needed to be changed. There
was not enough freedom and no private ownership. We also agreed that Russia
now was in a serious mess. What had gone wrong and what should be done? 
"Russians like being free. They won't give that up," said Yelena Pogosova.
"Our rights must be protected. [General Albert] Makashov is appalling. He
should be prosecuted. It is very dangerous when the crowd hears the racist
things he says." 
"In a democracy, everybody should be able to express their opinions," said a
young man in a black shirt. He then went on to say something so frank that I
feel I should protect him by calling him only Maxim K. 
Makashov was not dangerous, he said, because he had no physical power. The
really dangerous man was Alexander Barkashov, because he had an army. Maxim
himself had been attracted to the idea of "Russia for the Russians." He had
read the newspapers of the Barkashovtsy and telephoned to offer himself as a
potential recruit. 
"I was taken to a small military camp. I do not know where it was because we
went in a closed van. There were about 1,500 people there. I was shocked when
I saw boys and girls being turned into killing machines. I realized that was
not my way." 
Maxim said he came from an old military family. For him, concepts such as
honor and duty were as important as human rights. 
"Our people need some positive aim," said Olga Lekareva. "We have seen the
example of Germany. We will not make this mistake again." 
What should that aim be? 
"For 70 years, we were led by the hand like little children," said Irina
Tuyeva. "We had an animal instinct to follow the leader. We have to make our
country strong and respected in the international community. We all have this
aim. We don't need a leader to tell us what to do." 
"We should speak less and work harder," said Maria Potapova. 
"We should be careful what we say because so many of our people are
uneducated," said Masha Dombrovskaya. "The government should unite people and
make clear that we are all equal." 
"We should buy Russian," said Maxim, who also advocated reviving traditional
Russian arms exports. Masha thought it was more important to develop consumer
industries. 
The students were glad that people in the West wanted to help Russia, but
generally felt that their country should stop taking credits and allowing the
IMF to dictate policy. "We need knowledge from the West, not money," said
Masha. 
I felt a bit more optimistic about Russia's future after meeting this group of
young people. They were not anti-Western. They were proud of their country,
serious-minded, sincerely searching. 

******

#3
The Independent
November 29, 1998
[for personal use only]
Russian red tape halts US aid to hungry Arctic
>From Phil Reeves in Moscow 

FARCICAL and outdated Russian laws are thwarting efforts to provide
desperately needed aid to stranded inhabitants of the Arctic north, who risk
starvation as winter tightens its grip. 
Information gathered by Red Cross officials in Alaska, which has strong ethnic
connections with the inhabitants of Russia's far north-east, has produced an
exasperating picture of frustration and red tape. Concerned about the fate of
their indigenous counterparts in Russia, Alaskans have been eager to send
humanitarian aid across the Bering Strait, the sea which divides the
prosperous far north-west of the United States from Russia's crisis-hit,
perilously poor Chukotka region. 
Finding out about the scale of the crisis in the most threatened parts of
Arctic Russia is difficult, because of their extreme remoteness, but alarming
information has been reaching international aid organisations about villages
dotted along the Chukotka's coastline, some less than 100 miles from Alaska's
shores. The most remote and harsh parts of the country are worst affected by
Russia's economic maelstrom, which has severed fragile Soviet-era supply lines
from Moscow. 
The Independent on Sunday has learnt that reports gleaned by the US Red Cross
include the following complaints: 
t Medical supplies offered to Chukotka by US hospitals have repeatedly been
turned back by the authorities on the grounds that they were "outdated" - a
clause that even applied to bandages 
and plaster. 
t Although some of the most beleaguered Arctic villages in Russia have
received no new clothes supplies for three years, and are without heating,
Russian officials insist that aid packages of clothing come with a certificate
showing that they have been dry-cleaned. This is said to be a measure to
prevent the spread of vermin, although the Alaskans say there is no risk of
this. They also point out that Nome - the nearest sizeable Alaskan town to the
Russian coastline - has no dry-cleaners. 
t Humanitarian food supplies over the value of $10,000 cannot be cleared
locally but must be referred to officials in Moscow, more than 5,000 miles
away. Yet, as shipping the aid from the US West Coast to Russia's far north-
east is expensive, consignments worth less than $10,000 are not cost-
effective. 
The Red Cross has been told there is an "imminent risk" of starvation among a
"large proportion" of the inhabitants of some villages in Chukotka, whose
population of about 65,000 faces nine-month winters in which temperatures can
fall below minus 50C. 
Conditions have been worsened by a poor hunting and fishing season, the
cancellation of one of three shipping lines between Alaska and the Russian far
north-east, and the non-arrival of ships carrying supplies. Last week a
Finnish-owned tanker carrying 13,400 tons of fuel finally made it to
Chukotka's port of Pevek - on the peninsula's north coast - but only after
spending a fortnight struggling through thick ice in the Arctic Sea. 
Electricity in Provideniya, a regional centre on the coast, is off for 20
hours a day because of a coal shortage, a problem which is likely to be worse
in the more remote areas. Among the villages known to be struggling for
survival as the Arctic winter deepens are Lorino, Uelen, Inchoun, and
Yanrakynnot. Most at risk are the elderly - who have not received pensions for
up to a year - and the young. 
Last week the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
in Moscow warned that Chukotka was facing "unprecedented hardship", which
"could threaten the very survival of some indigenous minorities". 
Some officials say that life expectancy in the region has fallen as low as 40;
others say it could be as little as 34. Cardiovascular problems, tuberculosis
and other respiratory diseases are rife, but there is a dire shortage of
medicines. The Red Cross has dispatched a five-member team to Russia's east
and north on an assessment mission for a relief effort. 

*******

#4
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 
From: "Jerry F. Hough" <jhough@acpub.duke.edu>
Subject: Re: 2493-Chronicle of Higher Education/Wedel, Weiler/Ferency, Current
developments

May I respond to several recent items? First, to Dr. Weiler, 
the crucial thing about the Polish (and Hungarian and Czech) model is 
that it did not start with shock therapy. It began in 1956 with 
privatization of agriculture, it included years of a partially private 
service sector (in the late 1970s Duke got an undergraduate from Poland 
whose father owned a private tannery). Then it after 1980 it had years 
of administered price adjustments under martial law. It had close 
contact with the West. (Many Polish-Americans returned to Poland in 
the Communist period when retired and lived like kings with their social 
security checks.) Even after 1989 it did not privatize large industry as 
much as Poland, and others of your contributers have shown the other
deviations. Hungary and Czechoslovakia, like China, had variations on the
Polish model. The greatest tragedy of Soviet economic reform is that 
Gorbachev rejected Oleg Bogomolov as his chief economic adviser and that 
he didn't follow the real East European model. I had hoped that 
Primakov would bring Bogomolov back, but nothing good seems to have 
happened.
I have just finished reading Janine Wedel's Collision and 
Collusion. I think that it is a really first-class book, extremely well 
researched and right on the money. Her discussion of Poland shows the 
minimal role of Sachs in Poland and his maneuvering to get credit. The 
kind of thing he is saying now about Russia is flat wrong. He did have 
a major role with Gaidar, Chubais, and Larry Summers, and his role was 
disastrous. The defect of Dr. Wedel's book, in my opinion, however, 
is that it concentrates too much on the Harvard group. As she 
says, most of the money went to the big accounting firms. It would be 
interesting to know who they worked with and what they were pushing. As 
one of your contributers noted, there were many such cases as Ben and Jerry's 
getting quite significant money to train ice cream managers in Karela--and
then pulling out of the country. But Dr. Wedel has blazed a trail, and one
can hope that she or someone else will follow up.
I hope that someone will also do the same research on the 
democratization program. I watch the politics of the last three months 
with open mouth, and I try without success to understand it. There has 
been a long tradition of Yabloko and PRES in 1993 and afterwards calling 
themselves centrist when they were more radical than Gaidar, of 
Chernomyrdin calling himself right-center when there was nothing centrist 
about him, of Luzhkov talking about a left-center party when he is 
right-center. Primakov has seemingly carried this to an extreme by 
having very left-wing language and a very neoliberal shock therapy 
policy. Not surprisingly a person like Sysoev who is forming the new 
bloc with Gaidar, Chubais, et al thinks Primakov should be president. And 
not surprisingly The Economist continues its unbroken record of a decade 
of bad analysis of Russia by thinking Primakov can win. 
What is going on? In an honest three-way race between Zyuganov, 
Lebed, and Primakov (let alone Luzhkov and Yavlinsky), the fact that 
Primakov is a a Jew and is doing nothing visible to improve the economic 
situation is going to let him beat Lebed, especially if other right-wing 
candidates are dividing the vote, when the Communists and Lebed start 
denouncing his economic policy, Makashov starts emphasizing his ethnicity,
and the neoliberal bloc supports him?! I still persist in the thought 
that Primakov is not as dumb as he seems and that Yeltsin still has a 
decisive role in the government by supporting Zadornov and making 
Primakov get his approval. Or maybe Primakov has stronger ties with the 
military than Lebed and is going to head a military coup for which, like 
Yeltsin in 1993, he needs to win Western support. But what explains the
various political maneuvers and the wildly optimistic scenarios in a 
free-election? The question keeps intruding--where is American 
democratization money going? Are the same "democrats" who have been 
fooling Americans as much as the neoliberal economists and receiving 
American money still spinning out fantasies that are still being believed 
in Washington and that they still receiving their financial rewards--their 
main concern?
We can argue about the role of the IMF in the past. What is 
disastrous is its role today. With its regular visits to Russia and its 
dangling of aid, it is freezing either Yeltsin or Primakov in place. As 
one of the Russian contributions on your list said, Russia is following 
the same path as it did in 1995 and 1996, and it is expecting to get the 
same IMF loan it got then. In fact, your contributor was outraged it had 
not. But 1995 and 1996 were precisely the years of the GKO scam that 
sucked in Western money and stole it. 
The Financial Times reported that President Clinton is reconsidering
his Asian policy and capital controls. One can only hope that he will look
at Russia and its politics seriously. The things that have been done in his
name would horrify every political bone in his body, and they are going to be
a key part of his historical legacy. He cannot change the past, but he 
certainly can change the IMF policy today and make any aid contingent on 
a coherent policy that focuses on agriculture reform, investment, and jobs 
creation.

******

#5
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 
From: yale richmond <yalerich@erols.com>
Subject: Historical/Cultural Perspectives in Poland and Russia

In contrasting the experiences of Poland and Russia in their transition to
a market economy, Jonathan Weiler (in JRL 2493) questions
"historical/cultural assertions" which postulate that "Russia was
handicapped by its lack of experience with a market economy, in contrast to
Poland."
True, as Weiler points out, the generation of pre-1948 businessmen who
operated in Poland would be in their seventies today (and the large number
who were Jews are completely gone). But the history and culture of private
enterprise in Poland did in fact survive the almost four decades of
communist rule, especially in a country where some 75 percent of
agricultural production came from privately owned and operated farms.
But anyone who lived in Poland during the years of "People's Democracy,"
as I did 1958-61, also know that there was an underground economy where
almost anything could be bought or produced "priwatny." It was possible,
for example, to have quality suits and dresses tailor-made, food purchased
in private markets, and a host of services performed by skilled artisans
conducting small businesses "na lewo" (on the left, or illegally). Once,
when I needed a valve for my American Ford, I went to a Polish mechanic who
checked out my engine, said "No problem," and produced a genuine Ford valve
in a few days. 
In Krakow, once, arriving with a mud-spattered car after a long drive from
Warsaw, I asked the desk clerk at the state-run Francuski Hotel where I
could get my car washed. He directed me to a government-operated car wash
at the edge of town where the line of waiting cars was about a quarter of a
mile long. Returning to the hotel I asked the clerk where I could have my
car washed "priwatny." "Oh, right around the corner in the courtyard," said
the clerk, "there is a man who runs a private car wash, and you can get it
done right away" (and, as I soon learned, for a pack of American cigarettes).
Poland was a part of the West for many centuries before it became a Soviet
satellite, but Western traditions of individualism and private enterprise
survived Soviet efforts to eliminate them, proving that
"historical/cultural assertions" do indeed have validity today. 
History and culture also play a role in Russia, where I lived 1967-69, but
its traditions are far different from those of Poland. Witness the
reluctance of Russian peasants to leave the security of their collective
and state farms and strike out on their own, the tradition of government
interference and direction in business, and opposition to the sale of land,
to name only a few examples.
Yes, economic reformers can learn much from history and culture, but they
have to be willing to look.

******

#6
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 01:30:04 +0300
From: Geoffrey York <york@glas.apc.org>
Subject: Symbols of democracy

By Geoffrey York
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Nov. 28, 1998

MOSCOW -- Littered across the Russian landscape are thousands of
monuments to the Communist revolution that spawned the Soviet Union. Yet
in all this vast territory, there are only two monuments to the
democratic revolution that finally ended the Soviet empire.
Today, even those few icons of Russian democracy are in danger of
disappearing. As resurgent Communists return to senior posts in the
Kremlin, the symbols of the early 1990s are increasingly seen as
embarrassments to the new regime.
In Moscow, the most poignant monument to Russia's democratic movement
was a battered old trolleybus in the front yard of a czarist mansion on
Tverskaya Street, the city's main shopping street.
The trolleybus had been part of a makeshift barricade to defend the
White House, the headquarters of the democratic movement, in August 1991
when a clique of Communist hardliners tried to stage a coup against
Mikhail Gorbachev.
For three days, the defenders of the White House used this barricade to
protect themselves from a threatened military attack. At one of the
tensest moments of the siege, a Soviet tank rammed into the trolleybus,
leaving a big dent in its side.
After the failure of the Communist coup, the battered trolleybus was
preserved as an outdoor exhibit at the Museum of the Revolution, in the
czarist mansion on Tverskaya Street. It was a reminder of the bravery of
the youthful democrats who resisted the Soviet army.
The second monument to democracy was a torn-down statue of Felix
Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police. For decades, the
statue stood in front of the much-feared KGB headquarters in Lubyanka
Square. Then, in one of the most famous scenes of the democratic
revolution of 1991, a crowd of Russians descended onto Lubyanka and
toppled the monument of ~Iron Felix." The statue was taken to a grassy
park, where it formed the core of a graveyard of disgraced Soviet
monuments. 
Seven years later, a visitor to Moscow would have trouble finding any
trace of these democratic symbols. The trolleybus has disappeared from
Tverskaya Street. The statue of ~Iron Felix" has been brushed clean and
labelled with a respectful new sign that portrays it as a Soviet
artistic triumph. Some politicians are even proposing that the monument
be restored to its old site at Lubyanka Square.
The tale of the trolleybus is a revealing one. For several years after
the Soviet collapse, it had been a powerful symbol of the martydom of
the three Russians who were killed during the defence of the White
House. By 1998, however, most Muscovites had little interest in the
heroes of democracy. People began complaining that the trolleybus was an
eyesore. ~It spoils the view," they told the museum's staff.
The trolleybus was becoming old and rusty. Vandals were looting it.
Finally, this spring, the museum moved it to an inner courtyard, away
from public view. Officially it is being ~conserved" for future exhibit.
In reality, the museum has no idea whether it can raise the funds needed
for a new exhibit space for the trolleybus.
Its demise has left most Russians indifferent and apathetic. According
to the museum's staff, almost nobody has complained about the
disappearance of the trolleybus.
~Maybe if people's lives had improved after 1991, it would have
remained a symbol," said Tamara Shumnaya, director of the Museum of the
Revolution (now known as the Museum of Contemporary History). ~But if
you're not getting your wages paid, you lose interest in your ideals."
In another corner of Moscow, the graveyard of Soviet monuments is being
quietly cleaned up and rehabilitated. Each statue has been given an
official-looking sign, identifying its architect and the date of its
creation. The signs make no mention of why the statues were torn down.
The authorities are apparently too embarrassed to acknowledge the brief
era of democratic fervour.
Nikolai Kharitonov, leader of the parliamentary Agrarian faction (and a
loyal ally of the Communist Party), is calling for the statue of Felix
Dzerzhinsky to be restored to its site of honour in front of the former
KGB headquarters. ~Dzerzhinsky was a man with an ardent heart, cold mind
and clean hands," Mr. Kharitonov said. ~Nobody can say anything bad
about this man, who symbolized honesty."
In truth, it was ~Iron Felix" who perfected the police-state tactics of
the newborn Soviet state. He supervised the liquidation of opposition
groups and helped cultivate the terror tactics that led to the Gulag.
But none of this seems to bother his supporters.
As the Communists regain much of their old influence, Russia is
slipping deeper into a semi-conscious condition of historical amnesia.
In the Urals, a school principal has announced plans to display a bust
of Joseph Stalin in his ~gallery of heroes." And in Red Square in
Moscow, the corpse of Vladimir Lenin remains on display in his tomb.

******

#7
Russian Women a Fast-Growing Market
November 28, 1998
By DEBORAH HASTINGS

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP) -- On the matchmaker's video, a young Russian woman
saunters across a bridge in historic St. Petersburg. She wears a clinging T-
shirt, skintight pedal pushers and stiletto heels. 
``I really like big cities such as New York or Los Angeles,'' she tells the
camera, in heavily accented English. ``So I would be very glad to see you.'' 
Her goal is a ticket out of Russia's eroding economy and forbidding future. 
For at least 20 years, Filipinas have dominated the international mail-order
bride business. But since 1991, when the Soviet Union's fall unleashed
capitalism and unrest, Russian women have become the industry's fastest-
growing commodity. 
Men pay up to $10,000 to travel to Moscow and St. Petersburg to meet women
they have picked from catalogues and videos. More than 65 U.S. companies
advertise such services on the Internet. They even offer to send flowers to
prospective brides, and to put men in touch with women via e-mail. 
In the United States and Russia, these businesses are unmonitored. Reports of
white slavery, domestic violence and the 1995 case of a Seattle husband who
shot to death his pregnant mail-order bride have prompted legislators and
women's groups to demand industry rules. 
In 1996, Congress asked the Immigration and Naturalization Service to draft
regulations forcing agencies to inform women about marriage fraud, legal
residency and domestic violence. The INS also was asked to document
immigration fraud and physical abuse involving mail-order brides. 
Congress is still waiting. 
``We asked the INS to give us a report on an issue that's enormously important
and they've dragged their feet,'' said attorney Jon Leibowitz, whose boss,
Sen. Herbert Kohl, D-Wis., helped carry the legislation. 
INS spokeswoman Elaine Komis said officials have been slowed by uncooperative
mail-order bride clients. ``We got nothing that was very helpful in the way of
how to improve the situation or what could be done in the way of
regulations,'' she said. 
No one knows the number of American-Russian marriages sparked by matchmaking
services. The INS doesn't keep records on how couples meet. Its legal
responsibility is to determine whether marriages between foreigners and U.S.
citizens are legitimate. 
Americans often obtain so-called fiance visas for their intended mates. The
document allows an immigrant to live and work in the U.S. for two years. After
that, if the foreigner is still married and living in America, he or she gets
permanent residency. 
In 1991, there were 17 fiance visas issued to Russian women. In 1997, there
were 1,012. 
A social worker with Atlanta's Refugee Family Violence Project said she
received several phone calls from battered mail-order brides after writing an
article about domestic violence in a tiny, Russian-language newspaper. 
The women didn't know their rights under U.S. law, said the social worker, who
said she has been threatened by clients' husbands and asked that her name be
withheld. None of her clients wanted to be interviewed, she said. 
The St. Petersburg-based Svetlana Agency says it is a legitimate international
matchmaking service. Two months ago, it opened a satellite office in opulent
Newport Beach, about 60 miles south of Los Angeles. 
Svetlana Novikova, 29, began her human brokerage house four years ago. Her
company is one of the most expensive. 
Men are charged a $2,500 membership fee which allows them to see videos and
photographs. A trip to St. Petersburg, where men can meet as many as 10 women
a day -- including the student on the bridge -- can cost another $2,500. 
Like many of her colleagues, Novikova says she doesn't keep track of her
clients' marriages or divorces. She says she doesn't know how many clients she
has. 
``We provide our services to very serious people who want a very serious
relationship,'' she said. 
Newport Beach salesman Aldo Almodovar, 28, traveled to St. Petersburg this
month on one of her package tours. 
``I'm just basically going to have a good time,'' he said before departure.
``I've never been to Russia before and the girls are gorgeous. '' 
Paul and Galina Finkelman of Huntington Beach, Calif., were married four
months ago. They met last December in Moscow, where she had graduated medical
school and he had come looking for a wife. 
Both were clients of Russian-American Matchmakers, a Virginia-based service
started by an American who found his own wife through a mail-order bride
service. 
Finkelman, 41, said he had tired of American women who ``seem interested in
only one thing -- how big is your bank account.'' Mrs. Finkelman, 27, said she
was weary of alcoholism. ``The problem with Russian men is that they drink
vodka,'' she said. ``It's not good, you know.'' 
He proposed on their third date. She knew some English. He knew no Russian.
``Language is not a problem. I understand her,'' said Finkelman, who is
studying to become a computer programmer. 
``Look, I know it's kind of weird. Life is a crapshoot. You just have to be in
that space where you're ready to make that commitment,'' he said. 
In 1996 Mark Amspoker met a Moscow doctor 14 years his junior through a
matchmaking service, proposed to her a week later, and married her last year. 
Although he found a wife, the 44-year-old technology writer didn't like the
service he used. 
So he started his own. 
Since opening last year, Russian-American Matchmakers has signed 60 male
clients, each paying $1,500 in membership fees. The agency lists about 350
women and claims seven marriages. 
Most agencies charge women a small fee of about $20. 
Amspoker says he wants his countrymen to discover what he did. 
``I went to Russia and I could feel close to these women. I could connect with
them,'' he said. American women, he complained, ``just don't seem to have time
to think of settling down and having a family.'' 
Like other matchmakers, Amspoker doesn't discuss safe sex or HIV testing. ``I
don't get into the personal details,'' he says. ``We have this membership fee
that is fairly stiff and it filters out the fellows who aren't serious.'' 
Amspoker says he welcomes industry regulations. He has heard stories of
Russian women being sold into prostitution and has often listened to men
complain they were cheated by matchmaking services. 
``I think this business has always attracted not the best people,'' Amspoker
said. ``It's so easy to dangle sex in front of a man and get him all excited
and take his money.'' 

*******

#8
Los Angeles Times
November 28, 1998 
[for personal use only]
U.S. Worries That Russian Nuclear Technology Needs More Safeguards 
Security: 'Hemorrhage' of know-how to rogue states feared because of
political and economic discord. Washington considers greater assistance. 
By ELIZABETH SHOGREN (Elizabeth.Shogren@latimes.com)

WASHINGTON--The White House is growing increasingly worried that Russia's
political and economic crises will increase the flow of nuclear technology and
know-how out of the former Soviet Union from a trickle to a flood. 
One of President Clinton's top foreign policy advisors said this week
that there is a danger that the "leakage" of nuclear technology from Russia,
which began with the breakup of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, could
become a "hemorrhage." 
Clinton administration officials are contemplating new programs in the
president's budget for 2000 to ease the economic strains on Russia's massive
nuclear arsenal. 
However, nonproliferation experts warn that the danger is even greater
than the administration realizes, stressing that tons of highly enriched
uranium and plutonium are vulnerable to theft and misuse. 
"The assistance is not commensurate to the threat, which has grown
significantly as a consequence of the economic crisis," said William C.
Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey
Institute of International Studies. "I don't discount the progress we've made,
but it tends to be overwhelmed by the very, very destabilizing economic
situation." 
Bruce Blair, an arms-control specialist at the Brookings Institution, a
Washington think tank, said, "These programs that we've been promoting are
just a drop in the bucket compared to what's really needed. The deterioration
of security and safety in Russia has outpaced the effect of our assistance." 
The nonproliferation specialists said the situation underlines the dangers
that persist from Russia's nuclear arsenal almost a decade after the Cold War
ended. 
"There have been two periods of acute concern: one in early '90s, during
the breakup of the Soviet Union, and today, with another crisis in economical,
military and political spheres," Blair added. 
The U.S. government has created programs over the last decade to help
safeguard Russia's nuclear weapons and fissile material--highly enriched
uranium and plutonium. 
Washington has also helped pay the salaries of Russian nuclear scientists
so they are not tempted because of economic hardships to sell their skills to
rogue governments or terrorist groups. 
On a recent tour of nuclear facilities in Russia, Potter went to sites he
had previously visited and found that although some were in better shape
because of the U.S. assistance, others had deteriorated. His overall
impression, he said, was negative. 
The assistance has mostly been directed at bringing new technology to the
facilities, such as motion detectors and video cameras to protect against
theft. Yet many of the people who are supposed to operate the machinery are
suffering because of the economic crisis, he said. 
The nuclear work force is not being paid, and unlike previous crises,
when food was relatively cheap, inflation has now priced most goods out of the
workers' reach. 
In addition to increasing prices dramatically, a financial crash in
August also inflicted major psychological damage on the nuclear work force,
Potter said. 
"In the past, there were people who believed that in the future things
were going to get better," he said. "One of the consequences of the meltdown
in August was that those who held out for a brighter future no longer believe
it is possible." 
The security guards are the weakest link, he said, because they do not
have the same appreciation for the danger of nuclear material as the
scientists do. 
Potter said that, in some cases, the guards do not bother turning on the
expensive equipment from the United States. 
The administration should focus on the "human factor" as it decides how
to shape the new programs, he said. 
"We have to focus more on personnel. We have a tendency to assume we can
solve the problem by supplying technology," Potter said. 
The threat involves the hundreds of tons of fissile material scattered
across Russia in research facilities. Most of it is not well inventoried,
making it vulnerable to theft. 
Some experts warned that an even greater threat might be posed by the
deterioration and growing politicization of the Russian military, which
threatens the security of Russia's thousands of nuclear warheads. 
"I strongly doubt that Russia will be able to maintain adequate safety in
their nuclear weapons control, and an incident is quite possible," Blair said.
The White House said it is concerned about the potential threat of
fissile materials falling into the wrong hands and of nuclear expertise being
misused, but it rejected the warnings about the threat from the nuclear
weapons themselves. 
"It's something we are watching closely," White House spokesman P.J.
Crowley said, referring to the proliferation of fissile material and knowledge
of how to use it. "We have always recognized this as something we had to be
concerned about." 
However, "there is no evidence that there has been a degradation in the
strategic rocket forces," said one White House official who asked not to be
named. 
White House officials said the administration is working on proposals for
its next budget that would supplement the existing programs aimed at helping
Russia secure its nuclear arsenal. 
Officials said it is still too early to outline plans. 
"There's no question that because of the things going on, there is at
least the potential for a larger problem, so the idea is to get ahead of it
before it actually develops," said another senior White House official, who
also spoke on the condition that he not be named. 
Earlier this fall, Russian and U.S. officials unveiled a program designed
to encourage Russia's nuclear scientists to stay in their own country instead
of moving to others that aspire to be nuclear forces, such as Iran, Iraq and
North Korea. 
The United States will provide as much as $30 million to create
commercial projects in the 10 Russian nuclear cities that have traditionally
been closed to foreign visitors. Under the project, nuclear workers will be
trained in business skills, and nuclear facilities will be converted to
produce commercial goods. 
Congress agreed this fall to spend an additional $200 million to bail out
a program that reprocesses weapons-grade uranium into low-grade uranium that
can be used for nuclear power plants. 
The program was on shaky ground because the price for the low-grade
uranium had dropped, making it much less profitable for the Russians. 

******

#9
Washington Post
29 November 1998
Editorial 
Sick Boris Yeltsin

LAST WEEK Russian President Boris Yeltsin was admitted, yet again, to the
hospital, reportedly suffering from pneumonia. It's his third acknowledged
illness in recent weeks, the others having been described as bronchitis and
nervous exhaustion. Stretching back only a little farther, Mr. Yeltsin has
suffered at least two heart attacks and withstood quintuple coronary-artery
bypass surgery. His overseas trips have had to be cut short when he staggered
or didn't know where he was. And no one believes that the Kremlin has fully
disclosed the president's medical troubles. On Monday, his spokesman offered
the novel explanation that Mr. Yeltsin had been struck ill by grief at the
killing of democratic politician Galina Starovoitova.
Certainly there's enough in Russia today to break Mr. Yeltsin's heart. The
execution-style slaying of the principled Ms. Starovoitova was shocking, and
it only symbolized a wider failure to implement a rule of law. Mr. Yeltsin
imagined himself retiring, when his term ends in 2000, as the revered father
of Russian democracy, the man who had put Russia on the road to prosperity,
civility and inclusion in the West. Instead his country is once again
beseeching the West for free food so that Russians will not starve this
winter. It cannot pay its debts. All the nightmarish fears of 1991-92 -- a
breakup of the country, social upheavals, strongman coups -- have reappeared.
They may be no more realistic now than they proved then, but that they can be
taken seriously at all shows how short Russia has fallen of Mr. Yeltsin's
goals.
Undoubtedly he is responsible for much of that failure -- not only the
mistakes he made as president, but also his inconstancy and absence during
recent years of illness. There is much in his record to be proud of, but today
his government is close to paralyzed. A kind of coalition cabinet cannot agree
on anything of significance, and Mr. Yeltsin does not have the strength to
push it one way or the other. Any difficult decisions get postponed as
politicians await a transition. That no one can be sure when the transition
will come only heightens the uncertainty.
Almost from the beginning, Mr. Yeltsin's enemies have been trying to force him
out. For years those efforts were unworthy; Communists, for example, wanted to
impeach him for his role in breaking up the Soviet Union. But now there is
more logic to the widespread calls for his resignation and for a
constitutional process to replace him. Whoever comes next may well be worse
than a healthy Mr. Yeltsin. But Mr. Yeltsin today cannot govern; and as long
as he remains president, neither can anyone else. 

*******

#10
HIV Cases Soar in Russia
November 26, 1998

MOSCOW (AP) -- More than 3,250 new cases of HIV have been registered in
Russia this year, and 90 percent of those who contracted the virus were
intravenous drug users, the health minister said Thursday.
The new cases bring the total number of people with HIV in Russia to 10,283,
including 418 children, Health Minister Vladimir Starodubov said, according to
the Interfax news agency.
More than 220 Russians have died of AIDS since the disease was first detected
here in 1987, including 77 children, Starodubov said.
Russian officials warn that the actual number of HIV cases may be up to 10
times higher, as Russia still lacks comprehensive diagnostic and treatment
programs.
While this year's figure appear to mark a decrease in new HIV cases from 1997,
when 4,300 new cases were registered, Starodubov warned that the virus may
spread faster in the next few years if living standards continue to decline,
bringing a rise in drug use and prostitution.
Officials say more than 90 percent of people testing positive for HIV are
intravenous drug users who have caught the virus through infected syringes.

******

#11
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 
From: Maris Ozols <maris.ozols@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: 2494-Applebaum/Weiler

I fully concur with Anne Applebaum's view about the Polish economic
miracle. I would only question the statement that the Polish exposure to
Western economies started in the eighties. Already, by the mid seventies
London (UK) was chock full of Poles working on the black in the hotel,
restaurant, car repair and building industries. However, a lot of these
were dreamers who simply liked the bright lights and big city and they
missed the boat when the situation in Poland opened up in Poland, not
realising that life under the Polish variant of communism had made people
far more adept traders than working in the West ever would (from what I
know of my Polish wife's friends who remained there). This also seems to
have been the case in the Baltics, for instance, once again based om my
friends and acquaintances tehre, where people having had no exposure to the
West have nevertheless displayed admirable drive and resourcefulness in
pursuing their business goals. 
At the end of the day, then, I'm not really sure why the Poles have pulled
ahead. Perhaps it is that section of non-dreamers who returned early and
caught the worm who made the difference.
Meanwhile, London is now full to the gills with every possible variant from
Central and Eastern Europe working on the black, including the Poles!

******