December 6, 1998   

This Date's Issues: 2505• 2506 • 

Johnson's Russia List
#2506
6 December 1998
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AP: Churches Hear Russian Gripes.
2. AP: Death Overshadows Russian Election. (St. Petersburg).
3. Baltimore Sun: Will Englund, Russians looking back in anger. Symbols: 
With calls to restore the statue of the secret police founder and to
investigate the Communists' rise to power in 1917, the battered country is in the midst
of a struggle over who will control history.
4. The Times (UK): Russian epic misses out on Oscars. Anna Blundy reports on 
a Siberian saga that Moscow has yet to see.
5. Transitions: Sergei Glazev, Good Riddance to the 'Reformers.'
6. Los Angeles Times: Jerry Hough, To Capitalism, in Stages. By dangling
money, the IMF prevents Moscow from taking the corrective steps it needs for change.
7. Washington Post: Amy Knight, Crime, but No Punishment.
8. Interfax: Russia Looks to Kaliningrad as Deterrent to NATO Expansion.
9. Itar-Tass: Russian Duma's Lukin Discusses START II Ratification Bill.
10. Robert Brown: Green Mail.
11. CSIS Conference Information in Washington.
12. Moscow Times: Russell Working, Tempers Boil in Unheated Far East.]

*******

#1
Churches Hear Russian Gripes
By RICHARD N. OSTLING
December 6, 1998

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- A Russian Orthodox Church official complained Sunday
that a council representing hundreds of millions of Christians is dominated by
liberal Western policies, and said his church was being isolated. 
The Rev. Hilarion Alfeyev, who is leading a five-person Russian delegation at
the World Council of Churches assembly in Zimbabwe's capital, said the
possibility of Orthodox Church delegates walking out was not a threat, but
``an outcry of pain.'' 
``We do not want to leave, but we want the WCC radically transformed,'' he
said. 
The Orthodox churches of Bulgaria and the Georgian republic have already quit
the council, and senior Russian Orthodox Church officials are not attending
the assembly, which meets daily through Dec. 14. 
The council has a total constituency of 350 to 450 million non-Catholic
Christians. The assembly, with 960 delegates from 112 countries, is the WCC's
highest deliberative body. 
Alfeyev said his church is the largest in the WCC, putting its membership at
more than 100 million. 
``Many Protestant churches have adopted the tendencies of liberal western
society,'' Alfeyev said. ``The WCC agenda is dominated by a western Protestant
ethos....We are becoming more and more isolated.'' 
Orthodox leaders have said many in the council take too liberal a stance on
key issues including homosexuality and the inclusion of women clergy. 
Dozens of Orthodox delegates agreed Sunday night that leaders of their
national delegations would jointly draft a petition stating demands to help
restore full Orthodox participation. 
Another top Eastern Orthodox leader, Albania's Archbishop Anastasios, said
Orthodox enthusiasm for the council and relations with Protestants had
deteriorated notably during his 35 years of interchuch involvement. 
The Orthodox pleas drew a testy response from several Protestants at the
assembly, including a bishop from Germany who expressed irritation that the
Russian had cited his church's size. 
In remarks that drew the day's warmest applause, one of the first generation
of women priests in the Church of England, Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin, also
complained about the threatened walk-outs. 
``You say I'm bigger than you are, or we have this great tradition. This is
all about power,'' she said. ``Let's not wrap it up in theological language.''

*******

#2
Death Overshadows Russian Election
By DMITRY LOVETSKY
December 6, 1998
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) -- More than 500 candidates competed Sunday in St.
Petersburg's down-and-dirty city election that was overshadowed by the
shooting death last month of a leading liberal politician. 
Turnout was high by Russian standards, with 38 percent of eligible voters
casting ballots. But with so many candidates vying for seats in the municipal
legislature, runoffs were expected in most if not all races. 
The election captured nationwide interest, mainly because of the Nov. 20
killing of Galina Starovoitova, the country's most prominent female politician
and a member of the Russian parliament who was pushing a liberal bloc of
candidates in the St. Petersburg elections. 
Some of Starovoitova's supporters have suggested she was killed to prevent her
faction, Northern Capital, from doing well in the election, although it could
have the opposite effect of rallying her followers. 
Preliminary election results were expected Monday. 
The election was considered important because the municipal legislature in St.
Petersburg has been given enhanced powers under a new city charter, and will
have a much stronger voice in city affairs than similar bodies elsewhere in
Russia. 
Perhaps because of those stakes, the campaign was marred by dirty tricks,
violence and threats of violence. 
Alexander Yakovlev, the city's mayor, strongly opposed the new charter, which
curtails his clout. He was not on the ballot, but critics said his supporters
contributed to the mean-spirited atmosphere surrounding the election. 
Yakovlev's opponents found that people with names identical to theirs
mysteriously wound up on the ballot in an apparent attempt to confuse voters
and take away votes from liberals. 
In addition, anti-Semitic leaflets were handed out asking citizens not to vote
for Jewish candidates, and one candidate's posters were defaced with slurs
against Jews. 
There were several reports of attempts to bribe voters. Police said they
arrested three people who were offering $1.25 to $2.50 in exchange for votes
for specified candidates, ITAR-Tass news agency reported. 
On election day, three polling stations briefly were closed after someone
telephoned bomb threats to local authorities. No bombs were found. 
St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, was at the forefront of the
country's democracy movement a decade ago, but much of its sense of itself as
a progressive, Western-oriented city has faded, at least in terms of city
politics. 
As it headed into the elections, St. Petersburg appeared at least as dirty and
deadly as anywhere in Russia. 
Last year, the city's deputy governor was gunned down in the city center. In
the past two months, hitmen have claimed the lives of a legislative aide, a
high-ranking city official and a prominent banker. 
St. Petersburg's 3.7 million voters seem fed up with the city's crime and
corruption, and its poor economic performance. But it wasn't clear how that
would play itself out in terms of voting. 

*******

#3
Baltimore Sun
December 4, 1998
[for personal use only]
Russians looking back in anger
Symbols: With calls to restore the statue of the secret police founder and
to investigate the Communists' rise to power in 1917, the battered country
is in the midst of a struggle over who will control history.
By Will Englund 
Sun Foreign Staff 

MOSCOW -- For years now, Russia has been trying to leave the past alone, as
if it were some ferocious creature best left undisturbed.
But that's changing. With the country battered by economic and political
tribulations, some of the resulting fears and frustrations are being
channeled into a struggle over Russian history and who will control it. It's
a struggle over symbols, but not over nuances. The differences between the
two sides couldn't be starker.
Wednesday, a parliament dominated by Communists overwhelmingly voted to
restore the statue of the founder of the Soviet secret police to its
pedestal in the heart of Moscow. Last night, a presidential aide vowed to
continue his effort to investigate the Communist Party -- over its seizure
of power in 1917.
What's it to be, a monument or a trial?
"It's a matter of historical justice."
Either side could have said that, though in this case it was Sergei
Modestov, an assistant to Yevgeny Savostyanov, who as deputy head of the
presidential administration is pushing for legal action against the
Communists. He wants to put before the country the question of the
Communists' methods as established in the earliest days and what he sees as
their disregard for law.
The Communists are closer to power than at any time since the downfall of
the Soviet Union. What they hope to accomplish by restoring the statue of
Felix Dzerzhinsky to its place in front of the Lubyanka, headquarters of the
old KGB, is to blot out the memory of their lowest hour. That was in August
of 1991, when a vengefully joyous crowd gathered at the Lubyanka to watch a
crane take the statue away. Since then, it has been lying on its back in a
park with other Soviet monuments.
Dzerzhinsky, with his leather coat and Mauser on his hip, was the Polish
founder of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police. The Cheka believed in
terror. The Cheka became the NKVD, and that became the KGB, but the aura of
the Lubyanka stayed pretty much the same. People here despised the place or
revered it, and that also has stayed much the same. Today the security
police are called the FSB.
The restoration of Dzerzhinsky's statue was presented to the Duma as a
symbol of the need to battle Russia's outbreak of crime.
"The people in the Lubyanka feel unprotected without the Dzerzhinsky
monument," said Nikolai Kharitonov, leader of the Communist-allied Agrarian
Party, who sponsored the resolution.
Restored to its place near the crest of a small hill at the center of one
of Moscow's busiest intersections, just up the street from the Bolshoi
Theater and overlooking the city's center, the statue of Dzerzhinsky with
the Lubyanka behind it would send an unmistakable signal to the country.
During the Duma debate over the monument, Yuli Ryabov sat next to the
seat left empty by his fellow deputy from St. Petersburg, Galina
Starovoitova, a liberal who was murdered last month. A picture of her stood
on her desk, next to a growing pile of red carnations.
"Dzerzhinsky was one of the most horrible butchers in history, with a
multitude of innocent victims on his conscience," Ryabov said. "How can we
possibly reinstate his statue in the center of the Russian capital?"
The Duma resolution does not have the force of law, but it is emblematic
of attempts on various fronts to push and probe for advantage.
A television network faces harassment in the courts, and fire inspectors
recently descended on an outspoken radio station. Brazenly dirty tricks have
marked the campaign for city council elections Sunday in St. Petersburg.
A Communist, Albert Makashov, said Jews should be rounded up and thrown
in prison. Boris Berezovsky, a tycoon who is close to President Boris N.
Yeltsin and is executive secretary to the largely irrelevant Commonwealth of
Independent States, responded by saying the Communist Party should be
banned. This week, the Duma called on the member nations of the CIS to
remove Berezovsky.
The charges go back and forth every day. Newspapers, including
Komsomolskaya Pravda, accuse Communist members of the Duma of taking payoffs
for their votes. Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist faction, called
yesterday for a law forbidding "russophobia."
The Communists have stumbled in their attempts to exploit discontent over
Russia's troubles, but their fortunes are improving nevertheless. Last week,
they won overwhelmingly in local elections in Krasnodar, whose Communist
governor is even more outspokenly anti-Semitic than Makashov. They have
influence with Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and several seats in his
Cabinet. Their opposition is divided and on the defensive, in a way that
brings to mind the last days of the Provisional Government eight decades ago.
Through the spring and summer of 1917, a quarreling government set up
after the abdication of the czar tried to establish its authority in Russia,
which was at war with Germany. That government failed to address the
problems facing the country, and in November the Bolsheviks seized the
Winter Palace in what was then called Petrograd. The rest of the country,
with the help of Dzerzhinsky's Cheka, eventually followed. Vladimir I.
Lenin, the Bolsheviks' leader, remarked that power was lying on the streets,
just waiting for someone to pick it up.
In January 1918, the Bolsheviks dismissed the Constituent Assembly, and
it is that act that Savostyanov would like to see investigated as an illegal
seizure of power.
A criminal investigation is unlikely, but even a political campaign could
be helped by the discussion. Savostyanov's aim would be to hammer home what
he sees as the illegitimacy of 70 years of Communist rule.
When he made the proposal Tuesday, it was dismissed by his opponents as a
fairly ridiculous attack on the Communists, but Modestov, his deputy, said
last night that he was determined to carry on with the idea.
He could, if successful, force Russia to deal with its painful history.
The problem is in deciding whether the 20th century was a glorious era or a
nightmarish one. There's not much in the way of middle ground. For a decade
at least, neither side has wanted to open the question, beyond a few jabs
here and there. That may no longer be possible.

*******

#4
The Times (UK)
December 7 1998
[for personal use only]
Russian epic misses out on Oscars 
Anna Blundy reports on a Siberian saga that Moscow has yet to see 

NIKITA MIKHAILKOV'S lavish new epic The Barber of Siberia will not be
nominated for best foreign language film at this year's Oscars because his
Three T studio has broken the rules. 
The most opulent Russian film since Burnt by the Sun will be denied its chance
for an Oscar, Kommersant-daily reported, because it was not shown to the
Russian public for a minimum of one week. The studio claimed that the film had
indeed been shown for seven days at a Moscow cinema, but it transpired that
the only Russian screening was held on October 29 and was attended largely by
potential distributors. The film is set for international release after its
Russian premiere next month. 
Inspired by the massive international success of the Oscar-winning Burnt by
the Sun, Mikhailkov has spent the past two years filming a Russian epic,
jointly financed by Russian, French and Italian backers, shot mostly in
English and starring Richard Harris, Julia Ormond and Oleg Menshikov, a
Russian heart-throb. The film is a spectacular saga set at the beginning of
the century when an eccentric Irish-American, played by Richard Harris, sets
out to make his fortune by felling the forests of Siberia with his terrifying
new contraption, "the barber". 
A film of Gone with the Wind proportions, The Barber of Siberia has been
criticised by Russians who believe Mikhailkov has sold his soul to the West
and become the Russian equivalent of Merchant-Ivory. Although he has won
countless awards for his films over the years, he is thought to have been
leaning heavily westwards and his new film will have to be dubbed into Russian
for its grand Kremlin premiere. 
Many Russians find Mikhailkov's films too jolly, yet by Western standards
Burnt by the Sun was easily one of the bleakest films of 1993. In Russia it is
almost obligatory for all the protagonists to die horribly. Mikhailkov
describes his film unapologetically, though with a wry smile, as "a Siberian
Titanic". 
Stroking his impressive moustache in the Three T headquarters by Moscow's
Patriarch's Ponds, Mikhailkov, 53, tapped the side of his nose and laughed
when asked how he obtained permission to film in front of the Kremlin, an
unprecedented event. 
"I am the first person ever to have extinguished the stars of the Kremlin," he
said. "He is God," said one film critic. "He can do anything in Russia." 
Confident, charismatic and a committed Slavophile from an Orthodox family of
Russia's greatest artists and writers, Mikhailkov has made a film that does
for Russia what David O. Selznick did for Atlanta, Georgia. 

******

#5
Transitions 
December 1998
Good Riddance to the 'Reformers' 
by Sergei Glazev 
Sergei Glazev is a Moscow economist and former foreign economic relations
minister (1992-1993) and chairman of the State Duma Economic Policy
Committee (1994-1995). He is widely regarded as a co-author of the economic
program of the Primakov government. 

Moscow--The failure of market transformation in Russia was primarily caused
by the state's abdication from its regulatory functions and its roles in the
protection of property rights and maintenance of law and order. Now, with
new personalities at the helm of the government and the central bank, the
state's actions will become more responsible and management of the reforms
more competent. 
For the first time since the beginning of the "reforms," a Russian
government has declared an urgent need both to fulfill its obligations
toward the people and to follow the national interests. Until recently,
government and central bank leaders have been too busy servicing the
financial speculators to do either of those. They have ruined federal
budgets time and again and given away state property for nothing. Their
policies made capital flee from the production sphere into financial
pyramids and beyond Russia's borders. The previous governments were
primarily concerned with securing stable super-profits to financial
speculators. In order to make that possible, huge yields on state bonds were
granted and the ruble was deliberately kept overvalued. Over one-third of
the federal budget was spent to pay interest on state debt. 
The government of Yevgenii Primakov has announced a promising shift in
economic policy, stressing the following priorities: securing the basic
needs of the population, re-animating the real economy, paying debts on its
industrial contracts, solving the pervasive payment crisis, increasing
investment, promoting economic growth, securing private savings, and raising
people's incomes. 
As to the lessons of radical liberal reforming in Russia, we have
demonstrated to the world how not to effect a transition to a market economy
and democracy. Under the guise of ultra-liberal rhetoric, state regulation
was abandoned only to be replaced by oligarchy and organized crime.
Democratic slogans were used to make those in influential circles above the
law and to allow them to appropriate national wealth with impunity. 
Once again, Russia has shown that right ideas cannot be implemented
through wrong means. One cannot create healthy private property as the basis
for a market economy through simple appropriation of state assets. One
cannot establish the rule of law on arbitrary rule. Democracy cannot be
based on violence. Thus, if we want to create a socially oriented market
economy and a democratic society, we must ensure that those who have
organized the devastation of Russia, discredited the values of democracy and
liberal ideology, and paved the way for organized crime and violence never
return to power. 
--Translated by Victor Kalashnikov. 

******

#6
Los Angeles Times 
December 6, 1998 
[for personal use only]
PERSPECTIVE ON RUSSIA 
To Capitalism, in Stages 
By dangling money, the IMF prevents Moscow from taking the corrective steps
it needs for change. 
By JERRY HOUGH
Jerry Hough Is a Professor of Political Science at Duke Uni Versity and a
Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution 
In the wake of the financial collapse in Russia, the United States has
been having a self-serving debate on "who lost Russia?" It would be better
if we were debating who is losing Russia today. 
The International Monetary Fund visits Russia repeatedly, and the hope
for its aid has frozen the Russian government into a stalemated combination
of left-wing rhetoric and the old right-wing policy. The crisis only deepens. 
The advice given to Russia for a decade reflected, in the words of World
Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz, a "Washington consensus" widely shared
by neoliberal economists: that if property was privatized, government
regulation reduced, a free-trade policy introduced, inflation controlled,
money supply kept tight and prices set free, investment would automatically
flow and produce prosperity. 
Neoliberal economists now explain the failure of reform by the lack of a
balanced budget and a loose money supply, but American presidents from
Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan have always embraced a deficit in a
serious economic downturn. All the rest of the neoliberal policy was
introduced and even inflation was brought under control. 
But, as Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said a
year before the this past August's crisis in a criticism of IMF policy,
"Much of what we took for granted in our free market system and assumed to
be human nature was not nature at all, but culture. The dismantling of the
central planning function in an economy does not, as some had supposed,
automatically establish a free market entrepreneurial system." 
The massive corruption was not some external force that destroyed reform,
but the predictable consequence of the reform path chosen. Russians acted as
classic "economic men" and, rationally, put all effort into trying to
control the raw materials industries that produced hard currency. There was
little regulation to prevent them from diverting much of it to private use. 
Corruption is endemic in early capitalism, but in a healthy economy, the
corrupt invest their ill-gotten gains at home. As the corrupt invest in
respectable business, their children and grandchildren become respectable
pillars of society. 
In the mid-1990s, Americans poured money into emerging markets. Russia
was seen potentially as the best, for its assets were undervalued and its
population educated. Why would corrupt Russian insiders with all their
knowledge of the local scene put their money in Swiss banks with their low
returns rather than invest in their own emerging market? 
Clearly, the declining inflation and interest rates were not enough to
persuade corrupt Russians to keep their money at home. They understood that
the reform would not work. In the early stages when a capitalist culture
inevitably is lacking, government must take a greater role if capitalism is
to work. It must have protectionist tariffs as the U.S. did. In modern
industrial society, it must take an active role in investment, as Japan and
South Korea did. It must reassure business people by having a close
relationship with them. And, of course, it must create the regulatory
environment that even the most extreme right-wing American takes for granted
in the U.S. 
Today the IMF says that the role of the government must be emphasized in
Russia, but that Russia should follow the same noninstitutional economic
policy that it followed before. It thus continues to have the same effect on
Russia that it has had for eight years. By dangling money, it forces the
Russians to give lip service to IMF policy and prevents them from taking
steps that are needed. 
But because people can't be allowed to starve, the Russian government
takes off-budget steps to try to keep up consumption. Because there is no
investment in the real economy, it gradually grinds to a halt. Grain
production in 1998 was 40% of 1990 levels because agriculture gets no
machinery and little fertilizer or pesticides. 
We desperately need to change our approach and see capitalism in terms of
stages. An advanced economy such as ours should be open. Japan had a good
model for an earlier stage of development, but now it should become more
open and consumer-oriented. China and India, however, have thrived in the
crisis because they have many of the controls that South Korea and Thailand
loosened too completely. Russia, with its total lack of markets, needs to
look at the Chinese experience more closely. 
Europe at the beginning of the 20th century was at the early and middle
stages of capitalism. Fascism and communism were natural political responses
to the openness of the global economy, not only in Eastern Europe but also
in Germany, Italy and Spain. Our top priority today is not to defend a
doctrinaire ideology we don't even follow at home, but to work to ensure
that Asia and Russia (and later Africa) do not repeat the European
experience in the next century. 

******

#7
Washington Post
December 6, 1997
[for personal use only]
Crime, but No Punishment
By Amy Knight (aknight703@aol.com) 
Amy Knight is a research associate at the Institute for European, Russian and
Eurasian Studies at George Washington University. Her forthcoming book, "Who
Killed Kirov? The Kremlin's Greatest Mystery," will be published by Hill and
Wang.

Two weeks ago, in the entrance to her St. Petersburg apartment building, a
woman was gunned down. The hail of bullets had all the earmarks of a political
assassination. But despite what Russian officials say is a massive manhunt, it
is unlikely that those responsible for the slaying of parliamentarian and
democratic reformer Galina Starovoitova--and the wounding of her press aide in
the same attack--will be apprehended soon, given who is in charge of the case.
The Federal Security Service (FSB), one of the KGB's successor agencies, has a
dismal record of finding the perpetrators behind what has become an epidemic
of politically motivated murders in Russia. Since 1994, five other
parliamentarians have been killed, along with investigative journalist Dmitry
Kholodov, prominent television commentator Vladislav Listiev and St.
Petersburg Vice-Mayor Mikhail Manevich. Each of these crimes remains unsolved,
suggesting that the FSB--the country's main security organ--is allowing a
climate of lawlessness in which violence is becoming a central instrument in
the country's political debate.
Indeed, the death of Starovoitova, 52, on Nov. 20 is not just a tragic loss
for the forces of democracy in Russia. It is yet another reminder of how
little progress Russia has made toward achieving a civil society since the
Soviet days, when the KGB spent much of its time persecuting those like
Starovoitova, who defended her convictions without regard to the vested
interests she offended. Her fierce independence helps explain why her funeral
drew thousands of people, many of whom openly despaired at the country's
inability to put an end to rampant criminality.
To be sure, the security police today do not round up dissidents for speaking
out against the government and do not arrest writers for printing subversive
literature, as they did in the past. But in allowing violent crime and
corruption to become a way of life, they have taken the country far off the
democratic path upon which it embarked in 1991. It is difficult to speak of
democracy or civil rights when politicians and their aides, journalists and
businessmen face a possible sentence of execution by hired thugs.
The FSB's failure to solve political murders does not stem from an
insufficient arsenal of forensic technology or a lack of experienced
investigators. The problem is that the FSB is run by employees of the former
KGB, which trampled with impunity on individual rights, colluded with
Communist Party officials in corruption and even used criminals to carry out
contract killings of troublesome dissidents. Old habits die hard, so it is not
surprising that since 1991 Russia's security agencies have been beset with
corruption scandals and charges of mafia connections. Former FSB director
Nikolai Kovalev, who was fired last July, has even been implicated in an
alleged FSB attempt to murder businessman Boris Berezovsky, one of Russia's
leading financial "oligarchs."
The new FSB chief, Vladimir Putin, has vowed to rid his agency of corrupt
officers and to stem the tide of violent crime. But this refrain falls flat in
the face of the FSB's crime-fighting record. In St. Petersburg last week,
Putin and his team of investigators were talking tough. They made it clear
that the seriousness of the Starovoitova killing--defined under the criminal
code as "encroachment on the life of a public figure"--calls for draconian
measures. The probe into her killing has resulted in more than 300 arrests and
widespread police raids in the St. Petersburg region.
But the FSB may just be blustering. Although some observers suspect that
Starovoitova's murder is connected with her support for anti-corruption
candidates in St. Petersburg's municipal elections, being held today, others
say the FSB should look for the killers in its own backyard. The expertise
with which her murder was carried out strongly suggests connections with the
security services. According to the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, the
killers used external surveillance and wiretapping to determine Starovoitova's
movements, and their sophisticated weapons were of the type that only security
professionals use. 
Even if current or former FSB personnel were not directly involved, the agency
has little motivation to bring the culprits to justice. Most FSB officials,
after all, spent their formative years in the KGB. Putin, for example, began
working for the KGB in the 1970s. Contrary to official claims that he was a
KGB foreign intelligence officer, reliable sources in Moscow insist that Putin
worked on the domestic side, possibly even for the KGB's notorious Fifth Chief
Directorate, which targeted dissidents.
Putin, who is originally from St. Petersburg, appointed as his new first
deputy Viktor Cherkesov, formerly head of the St. Petersburg FSB and a onetime
notorious KGB investigator of human rights activists. Instead of attempting to
curb St. Petersburg's rampant crime, Cherkesov devoted his time as security
chief in the city to the case of former navy officer Alexander Nikitin, who
was arrested in 1996 on charges of treason and leaking state secrets to a
Norwegian environmental group. Nikitin, whose prosecution drew widespread
protests from the international community as well as from Duma deputies like
Starovoitova, aroused the FSB's ire when he drew attention to nuclear waste
dumping by Russian submarines.
Given their past, it is hard to imagine that these FSB officials are anxious
to find the killers of such an outspoken defender of democratic freedoms as
Starovoitova. More likely is that, in the name of law and order, they will use
the murder as an excuse to violate individual rights by expanding the FSB's
already substantial powers of covert surveillance, search and seizure, and
other investigative methods. In taking this approach, the FSB can count on the
support of the state Duma, the Communist-dominated lower house of the Russian
parliament, for a police crackdown. As a response to the Starovoitova murder,
last Wednesday Duma deputies approved a draft resolution asking Moscow city
authorities to reinstall the statue of "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky, the ruthless
chief of Russia's first political police, in front of the security service
headquarters, where it had stood until it was toppled by angry crowds in
August 1991 as a protest against police repression.
Even if the parliament were inclined to reform the FSB, it is powerless to do
so. Under current law, the FSB and other security agencies are answerable only
to the Russian president. Although he has fired several security chiefs, Boris
Yeltsin has never attempted to curb corruption or institute meaningful changes
in the operations of these agencies. His sole strategy has been to use the
security services as a means to defeat political opponents and ensure his own
power. Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who has taken over many of the ailing
president's responsibilities, is unlikely to do things differently. A former
chief of the KGB's foreign intelligence apparatus, Primakov retains close ties
with the security police establishment. His main response to the Starovoitova
murder was to approve a new package of tough anti-crime measures, some of
which could open the door to police excesses.
With all its attention focused on the Russian economic crisis, the West, and
the Clinton administration in particular, may be underestimating how serious a
threat the deterioration of law and order is to Russia's future. It is hardly
useful, for example, for the United States to offer the Russians expert advice
on fighting organized crime when Russia's crime fighting agencies are corrupt
and neither Yeltsin nor Primakov will do anything about it.
Speaking at Stanford University in November, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe
Talbott, President Clinton's point man on Russian policy, observed that
democratization in Russia "has proved surprisingly durable." But we cannot
assume that democracy has taken root in Russia simply because there is a
parliament and freedom of the press. What good are elections if elected
representatives are assassinated with impunity? And how effective is a free
press if journalists who take on such issues as corruption are mowed down by
machine guns? In the end, it makes little difference that dissidents and those
who challenge the prevailing political powers are no longer jailed by the KGB
for speaking their minds. The KGB's successors can silence their voices just
as effectively by encouraging extremist violence against them and covering up
their murders.

******

#8
Russia Looks to Kaliningrad as Deterrent to NATO Expansion 

Kaliningrad, Dec 2 (Interfax/BNS) -- With NATO spreading eastwards and
Lithuania and Poland possibly joining the alliance, Russia handed its
military grouping in the Kaliningrad region "the role of a deterrent and
nothing more than that," First Deputy Defense Minister Nikolay Mikhailov
has said.Talking to journalists in Kaliningrad, the enclave in Russia's west,
Mikhailov specifically noted that "the presence of the grouping there does
not have the nature of intimidation."
Today, "the proximity of NATO to the borders of Russia is an objective
reality, calling for an appropriate rather than imaginary response," the
deputy minister said.
He reported that he was leading a Russian military delegation that
began a formal visit to Poland on Wednesday [2 December], the first
official visit by Russia's Defense Ministry to Poland in six years. The
visit was requested by the Polish military.
"Poland is joining NATO, and we've got to put up with this and build
up relations under these conditions whether we like it or not," the first
deputy minister said.
All the more so, he said, Russia and Poland have "certain mutual
interests since the bulk of the arms in Poland are Soviet-made."
When answering questions, Mikhailov reported that the sides will
discuss ways of upgrading military equipment and promoting "military and
technical cooperation."

******

#9
Russian Duma's Lukin Discusses START II Ratification Bill 

MOSCOW, December 3 (Itar-Tass) -- The State Duma lower house is
preparing proposals for President Boris Yeltsin concerning ratification of
the Russian-U.S. START-2 treaty, a house leader told reporters on Thursday
[3 December].
Chairman of the Duma Committee for foreign affairs Vladimir Lukin told
reporters after a session of the Duma Council that the bill would be
submitted to committees, commissions, and MP groups for further discussion.
After they come up with their proposals, the bill will be sent to
President Boris Yeltsin, as only the head of state is entitled to submit it
to the Duma for ratification, Lukin said.
Three Duma committees which were engaged in work on the bill are
hoping to receive proposals from factions and MP groups next week, and
these will be considered in the discussion of a final version.
As soon as the bill is ready for consideration, the lower house will
submit it to Yeltsin, he said.
Asked about his forecast on whether the president will make any
amendments to the bill, he said: "I hope the president will return the
document either without changes or a in a version very close to ours."

*****

#10
Date: Fri, 04 Dec 1998
From: Robert Brown <StockFund@compuserve.com> 
Subject: Green Mail

Based on recent articles in NYT and Washington Post - as well at the SPB
Nikitin Trial, I think I want to change my description of the color of the
mail Russia is sending. Or at least add to it.

Remember the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper….
The Ant spends time preparing for the coming winter while the Grasshopper
basks in the sun, without a care in the world.
In an animated version of the fable, the Grasshopper sings a ditty, ‘The
world owes us a living…’
And, as we all know, when winter arrives, the Ant is well supplied and the
Grasshopper is without.
This fable, and many others, remind us to prepare for the future, look
ahead, do not always live in the moment.

Well, winter has arrived, and the Russian people are well prepared for the
onslaught of short, cold days and even colder nights. They have stored up
food and warmth for the winter. They have learned from experience that
they must fend for themselves.
Meanwhile, the Russian government is out on the street asking for food and
money and warmth and assistance to make it through the winter. 
Concurrently, it is distancing itself from its Soviet past and the legacy
of debt generated during that past. That debt does not stop with the $40
billion USD of Soviet government debt, but includes dangerous storehouses
of weapons of mass destruction and spent nuclear fuel from their naval
fleet and environmental hazards from years of putting production highest on
the priority list and more disasters lurking under the soil or in the
depths of the waters of Russia. And as each is brought to light, the
Grasshopper says, ‘To deal with that problem we need money.’ Because there
was not enough foresight to see beyond the urgency of today, the problems
of tomorrow have caught up with Russia. And the Grasshopper sings, ‘The
world owes us a living…’

Maybe we should call this Greenmail. Russia cannot afford to pay for its
sins; moral, environmental, mortal, … So, the world is asked to pay. And
if the world does not pay, not only will the Russian people suffer, but
also the people of the world. The environment will be damaged for
everyone, pollution knows no borders, disease knows no borders, radiation
knows no borders. A wall cannot be built high enough or thick enough or
deep enough to contain what lurks on the other side of that border.

Robert M. Brown, Jr.
stock@overta.ru

*****

#11
Date: Fri, 04 Dec 1998
From: Jeffrey Thomas <JLT@mail.csis.org>
Subject: CSIS Conference Information in Washington

Center for Strategic and International Studies
Washington DC

Tuesday December 8th 1:00pm-2:30pm at CSIS
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan,
Kassymzhomart Tokaev, will be visiting Washington next week. He has
graciously agreed to speak, on the record, at a luncheon seminar at CSIS
from 1:00 to 2:30 PM on Tuesday, December 8. Foreign Minister Tokaev will
cover the whole range of Kazakhstan's relations with Russia and the other
members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, its growing ties with
the West, and its attraction of foreign direct investment.
PLEASE RSVP BY FAX (202) 775-3132 OR PHONE (202) 775-3240

Thursday December 10th 3:30-5:00 at CSIS
With the August 17 default on Russia's ruble-denominated domestic debt
(GKOs) and with the imminent prospect of restructuring or default on a
large part of Russia's sovereign debt, the IMF represents virtually the
only possible source of substantial external funding for the Russian
Federation. The shape and viability of any strategic economic program for
the Primakov administration will be conditional upon IMF approval and funding.
In view of the IMF's key role in Russia's future--and its sometimes
controversial role in the transition to date--we are delighted that Aleksei
V. Mozhin, the IMF's Executive Director for the Russian Federation, has
graciously agreed to address our corporate briefing series once again. He
will speak, off the record, at 3:30 PM on Thursday, December 10 on the B-1
level at CSIS.
Dr. Mozhin received his BA and PhD in economics at Moscow State University,
with graduate work at SUNY Albany and at the Institute for East-West
Security in New York. He held a variety of research positions in Moscow
from 1981 through 1992, when he joined the IMF.
PLEASE RSVP BY FAX (202) 775-3132 OR PHONE (202) 775-3240

Thursday December 17th 10:00am-12:00pm at CSIS
>From 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 17 at CSIS, Grigori
Yavlinsky will appear in our "Statesmen's Forum" series to review the
current political and economic situation in Russia, and to spell out his
prescription for economic stabilization and recovery. He will speak on the
record in excellent English, and there will be plenty of time for questions
and answers.
Grigori Yavlinsky is the most prominent market-oriented reformer in Russia
today. He heads the Yabloko bloc that has 46 seats in the State Duma and is
an announced candidate for the presidential election that is due not later
than June 2000. Yavlinsky has been the leader of the democratic opposition
to Yeltsin over the past five years, and has been very vocal in his
condemnation of the use of force against the Congress of People's Deputies
in October 1993, the 1993 Constitution that gave Yeltsin enormous powers,
and of the military intervention in Chechnya.
PLEASE RSVP BY FAX (202) 775-3132 OR PHONE (202) 775-3240

******

#12
Moscow Times
December 4, 1998 
Tempers Boil in Unheated Far East 
By Russell Working
Special to The Moscow Times

VLADIVOSTOK, Far East -- Thousands of people are shivering in cold homes in an
icy archipelago across the Far East and the public's patience is boiling over.
A week ago demonstrators and motorists clashed here during a protest over
unheated apartments. About 600 apartment blocks in Vladivostok are still
without central heating or are inadequately warmed due to a combination of
fuel shortages, delayed maintenance work, and bureaucratic infighting, local
media reported. Tens of thousands of people in this Pacific port city of
634,000 are warming themselves with space heaters and by bundling up while
indoors. 
In the worse homes and offices, sewage freezes in toilets, porcelain cracks
and maintenance workers struggle to thaw frozen pipes. The overtaxed
electrical system in some apartment blocks is fizzing out due to the overuse
of space heaters. 
"We all stayed in one room with the space heater, and we all slept together in
one bed with the dog," said Olga Zinyakova, a 40-year-old shopkeeper whose
heat was only turned on Tuesday. "Our German shepherd was so cold he kept
trying to get under the blankets with us." 
The situation is similar elsewhere. Anatoly Makhankov, head of the Federation
of Trade Unions of Magadanskaya Region, said there has been no central heating
for weeks in homes in Magadan, about 1,500 kilometers to the north, because
the energy company can't afford coal. Schools have been closed and a
commission from the Emergency Situations Ministry called the predicament a
disaster during a recent visit. 
"People are hostages here because they have nowhere to go," Makhankov said. 
In the town of Mys Shmidta on the Arctic Sea in the Chukotka autonomous
region, 286 people had to be evacuated to an army base Thursday after the
explosion of a heating system that serviced 10 apartment blocks. Temperatures
are below minus 25 degrees Celsius. 
And less than a month after federal officials flew to Petropavlavsk-Kamchatsky
on the Kamchatka Peninsula to deal with an emergency fuel shortage, the
northeastern seaport of 265,000 is again running short of fuel. Homes have had
no electricity for three days and their heat has been reduced to save energy,
said Vera Vlasova, spokeswoman for the Kamchatka region Press Center. Despite
a wealth of natural gas and geothermal reserves, Kamchatka runs its power
plants and heats its homes with oil imported by tanker. 
Some small villages have been hit even harder. There is no heat in Olenevod, a
collective farm village of about 1,000 people in Primorye, the finger of
Russia flanked by China, North Korea and the Sea of Japan. Most villagers
there once raised deer but are now unemployed. 
Temperatures that have fallen to minus 22 C have mostly kept irate citizens
indoors. But last week in Vladivostok, anger boiled over when at least 7,000
people in 29 apartment blocks were left without heat because of a squabble
between the city and the port, which share responsibility for the boilers
heating the homes. Hundreds of protesters blocked a bridge in the Egersheld
suburb, and when a television crew tried to move its Volga through the crowd,
Alexander Shishov, 68, started beating the vehicle with his cane. 
"I can barely stand on my leg, and he tried to push me with his car," Shishov
explained. 
The mob attacked the Volga, tore off its grille, and nearly succeeded in
flipping the car over before police intervened. 
One motorist in a foreign sports car set his dog on the protesters, after
which some of the mob grabbed the man and threw him on the hood of his car,
news reports said. A police squadron rescued the driver. 
Vladivostok Mayor Viktor Cherepkov's office refused to comment on the
situation, referring reporters to a Nov. 26 news release stating that problems
with energy supplier Dalenergo's pipelines shut down heat to "half of the
city." 
Port officials scurried to return heat to most apartments left without heat,
but others remained in the cold. Pensioners lined up outside one building to
buy discounted herring, sugar and flour at a store. Workers bundled in scarves
and fur hats shoveled bags full of flour for the elderly, bulky in their
multiple sweaters and coats. 
Raisa Stratova, an accountant, huddled in an office decorated with her boss's
posters of a woman in a thong washing a red Mustang with a sponge. An electric
heater buzzed underfoot, but she couldn't get warm. "We can't turn on more
because there will be blackouts," she said. 
Upstairs, Tatyana Kasianova, 38, said her 8-year-old boy has a cough and she
doesn't know how to treat him in a cold apartment. The heat never rises above
7 C. The dormitory-style apartment has neither toilet nor bath, and the common
shower room down the hall is unheated. 
"We keep the space heaters on in the bedroom all night, although we are afraid
of fires," she said. 
Elsewhere in the building, workers removed a section of floor and began
thawing frozen pipes with a blowtorch. Sergei Besprozvanny, a plumber with a
household maintenance company, said the city and the port had squabbled for
too long over repairs, and now pipes have frozen in exterior hallways and
stairwells. 
"It's the end of the 20th century, and people are flying to outer space, and
we are thawing pipes with a blowtorch," he said

******