December 14, 1998    
This Date's Issues: 2517 • 2518 • 

Johnson's Russia List
#2518
14 December 1998
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Reuters: Russia deputy PM sees IMF credits early 1999.
2. AFP: Lenin's birthplace grapples with crisis.
3. Newsweek: Bill Powell, Russia's Gulags for Children.
4. Michele Berdy: Bill Mandel on... what?
5. Vijai Maheshwari: Nightlife Continues After the Iceberg.
6. Martine Self: JRL 2517/2515.
7. Yevgenia Albats: Re 2517-Hough/Kiriyenko.
8. Jamestown Foundation Monitor: RUSSIAN ARMY'S WOES OUTLINED.
9. Moscow Tribune: Catherine Belton, AIDS Hotline Back in Business.
10. Jim Vail: Kiriyenko Criticism.
11. New York Times: Celestine Bohlen, Russia's Wards Survive on Strangers'
Kindness and Native Ingenuity.
12. The Independent (UK): Phil Reeves, Welcome to Hell. (Chechnya).
13. Itar-Tass: Lebed Says Not To Run for President If Region Not Improved.
14. Russia PM reassures foreign investors.]

******

#1
Russia deputy PM sees IMF credits early 1999
By Patrick Lannin

MOSCOW, Dec 14 (Reuters) - First Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Maslyukov said
on Monday he was optimistic Russia would receive International Monetary Fund
credits in January or February. 
Asked by reporters when he thought credits would be received, he said:
``Let's say, January, February.'' 
``Will this be January 1 or January 20, I do not know, but it could maybe
in January. In an extreme case, it will be at the start of February,'' he
told a news conference. 
Maslyukov, a moderate Communist who oversees the economy, gave no details
of how much Russia was expecting but said it was negotiating both new
credits and a refinancing of the $4.5 billion of repayments due to the Fund
next year. 
Russia, which sank into an economic crisis in August, faces a $17.5
billion debt burden next year. Finance Minister Mikhail Zadornov said last
week the country would ``cease to exist'' if it did not cut its debt. 
Maslyukov said there were different points of view and different
approaches between Russia and the Fund but that both sides were moving in
the direction of agreement. 
He said he believed Russia would receive new credits because the main
points of disagreement had been the role of the state in the economy and the
tax system. 
``These were the main points. I think we have found agreements,'' he said
after a meeting between Russian government and central bank officials and
key foreign investors. 
He said he had been working with IMF officials for three months and had
familiarised himself with the way the Fund worked and how its
representatives thought. 
He quoted U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers as saying during
a visit to Moscow last week that Russia had done the right thing in its
proposed changes to tax legislation. 
He added that IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus, during a visit to
Moscow two weeks ago, had also not been to able to deny the logic of the
Russian proposals. 
``From this, I come to the conclusion that we are going in the right
direction,'' Maslyukov said. 
Maslyukov, who had earlier said he had been invited to visit the Fund in
the second half of December, said he was unlikely to go to Washington for
talks but would meet IMF officials in Moscow. 
``A mission of the IMF is coming (to Moscow) at the start of January and
so it seems that we will meet here and not in Washington,'' he said. 
Asked whether Russia was negotiating new credits or a refinancing of the
$4.5 billion due in repayments to the Fund in 1999, Maslyukov said: ``The
one and the other.'' 

*******

#2
Lenin's birthplace grapples with crisis

ULIANOVSK, Russia, Dec 14 (AFP) - Ulianovsk, birthplace of Lenin, still
displays the signs of its past as a shrine of communism, but for its
inhabitants day to day survival is the only thing that counts.
Located on the river Volga 600 kilometres (375 miles) from Moscow, the former
Simbirsk lets no visitor forget that Vladimir Iyich Ulyanov, who took the name
of Lenin before leading the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, was born there.
An imposing statue of Lenin as a child with his mother, mosaics dating back to
when communists dreamed of a radiant future and streets named after ideologue
Engels and revolutionary Karl Liebknecht are among the features.
Above the city built on the Volga at the river's widest point stands a
memorial, housing a vast Lenin museum in white marble, built in 1970, along
with a cultural centre, a historical research facility and a concert hall.
Before the break-up of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Russian communist
rule in 1991 Ulianovsk was a place of pilgrimage for thousands, who stayed in
the immense hotels with redolent names like the Sovietskaya, the October and
the Volga.
Now almost deserted, ill-lit and poorly heated, such palaces still try to keep
up appearances with white table cloths, crystal ware and an orchestra playing
at dinner.
With an academy and three universities, the city of 750,000 inhabitants
attracted many scientists, teachers and intellectuals. It was the only place
in Russia to possess an annexe of Moscow university.
But Ulianovsk's position as a temple of communism has not saved the
professors, the doctors, the workers and engineers of the automobile and
defence industries based here, from the savage slide in their standard of
living common to most Russians.
Salaries, already low, are worth even less now with the August devaluation of
the ruble and are paid only sporadically. A school headmistress now earns only
550 rubles (27 dollars) a month, a retired worker 300 rubles.
"One doen't live, one survives," Viktor Vladimirovich said in the city's
central market. Aged 46 and with two children, this engineer in an aircraft
plant has not been paid for six months, so sells television aerials of his own
manufacture for 35 rubles apiece.
"You are forced to economise on everything", he said. "You can buy nothing,
not even clothes, you have to cut down your spending on food, and it's
impossible to make any repairs to the apartment."
On a neighbouring stall 69-year-old Nikolai Mayorov received his last old-age
pension payment of 300 rubles, as did his wife. He was asking 15 rubles for a
large net for fishing under the river ice which he had made himself over two
days.
The death earlier this month of an Ulianovsk teacher who with 460 colleagues
was on hunger strike for the payment of back wages caused great anger.
Yet life goes on in Ulianovsk, with the local theatre often putting up "house
full" notices. "Russians prefer the spiritual to the material, and they can
deptive themselves of a piece of sausage to go to the theatre," said a
teacher, who also works at night as a hotel receptionist.
But the Lenin Museum is deserted, and curator Valery Alexandrovich Perfilov
has also not been paid in months. A historian, he compares the present
situation to the period before the arrival of Lenin in power.
Perfilov expresses optimism, while admitting there is no real basis for it.
"Despite all their difficulties people continue to live," he said. "It is
surprising, but they create, organise exhibitions, publish books, paint
pictures."
"The Russians must find a way that is their own and which suits them," he
added. 

******

#3
Newsweek
December 21, 1998
[for personal use only]
Russia's Gulags for Children
Millions of the disabled live as virtual prisoners 
By Bill Powell with Yana Dlugy 

In the Soviet era, it was said that to visit a government-run orphanage for
disabled children was not much different from watching animals in a zoo. In
the new Russia, little has changed. In the "lying down" room of the Uvarovka
Home, 90 miles west of Moscow, a frail child is tied to a bed by a twisted
sheet. Another child, afflicted with elephantiasis, stares at the ceiling for
hours. Nearby, another rocks back and forth, moaning. 
Seven years after the Soviet Union's demise, such institutions remain a sort
of gulag for the disabled--a fact that Human Rights Watch will document this
week when it releases what is expected to be a scathing report on Russian
orphanages. Part of the problem is economic: more children are being abandoned
to state-run institutions. But the more serious problem may be old attitudes.
The Russian Ministry of Health still classifies severely retarded children as
"idiots"--those worst off--and "imbeciles"--children who are judged
"ineducable." 
Two million Russian children live in such homes. Some are merely blind, deaf
or have cleft palates. To Uvarovka workers like Lidia Korsakova, this is fate:
"God," she says, "has cursed these children, has chained them to a bed for all
their lives." Tatyana Mikhailovna, a nurse, has another view: "They live like
kings here ... They're fed four times a day, they're washed. We're the ones
who have to figure out how to get money for food." In struggling Russia,
there's little room for pity--even for the most deserving. 

******

#4
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 
From: "Michele A. Berdy" <maberdy@glasnet.ru>
Subject: Bill Mandel on... what?

I don't get the point of Bill Mandel's comment on Russian women and
abortion. Why quote figures from 1966 -- 32 years ago! Check out current
Gosstat figures, or the extremely comprehensive CDC/VTsIOM poll done in
1996. Russia has the second highest abortion rate in the world (after
Romania) and a low rate of use of modern contraception. As the Ministry of
Health announced, this is a serious public health problem, since abortions
result in complications (in 40 percent of the cases, according to Nikolai
Serov, the head OB/GYN for the Russian Federation), and the complications
can result in infertility. In addition, the use of "traditional methods"
is not only unreliable and can lead to unwanted pregnancy (which result in
abortions or abandonned children) -- it is not emotionally satisfying for
the couples. (The one woman in four who had never had an abortion in 1966
may not have enjoyed sex much, either.) 

******

#5
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 
From: Vijai Maheshwari <playboy@imedia.ru>
Subject: Nightlife Continues After the Iceberg

Hi David: There have been some changes in my life. Your former infrequent
freelance contributor who used to write for Business Week, the oil mag,
Newsweek etc. is now the editor-in-chief of Russian Playboy. If any
of your contributors have questions about Playboy, they can e-mail me at
playboy@imedia.ru.
Best,
Vijai Maheshwari
editor-in-chief Russian Playboy

Nightlife Continues After the Iceberg
By Vijai Maheshwari
The New York Times (dec 7, 1998 ran front page of the Sunday Styles Section)

Regulars from Moscow's nighttime demimonde call it ``Kafe.'' Mick
Jagger, who popped in four nights in a row while here on a concert tour
this summer, referred to it simply as ``Jazz.'' By whatever name, the Jazz
Kafe, which is Russia's trendiest nightclub, seems to be one of the
country's few crisis-proof businesses.
The mighty banks whose gleaming ziggurats dominate the Moscow skyline
are half-empty these days. Both the ruble and the once-bullish Russian
stock market are in free-fall, and Western business executives are rushing
for the exits of one of worst emerging-markets disasters of recent years.
But at the ultra-hip Jazz Kafe, the economic meltdown and the onset of a
cold, harsh Russian winter is just another conversational ice-breaker.
``What crisis?'' said Boris Lifshits, a young entrepreneur, who was
guzzling a $10 Corona. ``There is no crisis until the Jazz Kafe empties out.''
Young women in tight-fitting designer clothes shook their
Wella-conditioned hair all around him, to the beat of stomach-twirling acid
jazz in the intimate lounge-sized club, which occupies the basement of an
academy of jazz near Moscow's Tretyakov Art Gallery. Men in retro leather
gear or Hugo Boss jackets mobbed the bar for drinks costing more than the
average monthly pension. It was early on a Friday evening in November, just
days after Russia asked the West for emergency food aid, but the club was
more packed than the Moscow metro at rush hour.
Outside, clubgoers without membership cards - which can cost as much as
$500 - shoved each other in the sub-zero temperatures, hoping to get past
the doormen. On the street behind them stood more Mercedes, BMW's and
French-made Cabriolets than at a Russian mobster's funeral.
``There's a small group of people who are going to party, no matter
what,'' said Sin Lazarovich, 32, the Jazz Kafe's co-manager. ``Where was
Coco Channel doing during World War II?. Not sitting home and sulking.''
Mr. Lazarovich, a Serb who was a club promoter in Belgrade during the
late 80's and moved to Moscow two years ago, said the ruble's nose-dive has
not ``wrecked the high,'' of the so-called Golden Youth, the sons and
daughters of the former Communist elite. They constitute a signifigant part
of his clientele. (For several months after the club opened last year,
foreigners were barred because they were not considered stylish enough.)
In Moscow today, young models are still being given new cars by their
flush boyfriends. or ``sponsors,'' as the men are known here. ``Someone
handed his girlfriend the keys to a Cabriolet the other day,'' Mr.
Lazarovich reported.
Around 5 A.M., the party swung into high gear. A lissome young woman
climbed onto the mini-stage near the bar and began undressing in an
impromptu striptease. Revelers crowded around and jousted with one another
to peel off her clothes, while the deejay pumped up the volume. Some of the
men shoved American $100 bills at her, chanting ``davai, davai,'' - ``more,
more.'' Within minutes there were three near-nude women on stage, and the
tension had reached such a peak that when someone popped a bottle of Veuve
Cliquot, the crowd let out a collective shriek.
``When things like this stop happening, I'm out of here,'' Christophe
Charlier, a French-American banker from the brokerage house Renaissance
Capital, said. His company has laid off 30 percent of its work force, but
he is hanging onto his job. ``The quality of life has not changed yet,'' he
maintained.
The Jazz Kafe is not the only night spot that's been twisting and
shouting its way through Russia's financial crisis. A new disco named
Gallerie, decorated with naugahyde couches, a granite-topped bar and prints
of the Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, is buzzing on weekends,
attracting a cocktail of models, bohemians, bankers and ``biznismen.''
It's a sharp contrast to the disgruntled lines that snake around banks
that have declared insolvency, or harried shoppers at the markets counting
their kopecks. Most of the men at Gallerie - Russians, except for a
smattering of foreigners - dress in dark European suits and seem to have
money to burn. ``No one knows what they do, and no one asks,'' said Victor
Gelman, a young television producer, taking in the scene. ``They're making
money somehow, and that's enough.''
It is these shadowy men - a potpourri of Russian and foregin yuppies,
children of the elite and mobsters - who are subsidizing Moscow's Saturday
night fever.
One concession to hard times has been the scrapping of cover charges at
many clubs. And this has encouraged the newly unemployed, with no offices
to report to the next day, to come out to party, especially on weekends,
dancing until the metro opens at 6 A.M.
``I was fired from the advertising company I worked for a few weeks
ago,'' said Masha Kuznetsova, who was at the Jazz Kafe dressed in a tank
top, navel ring and tinted pink glasses. ``So what? I'm not going to stay
home and eat sausages, am I?'' She maintained that Russians are whooping it
up even more now that the Russian Titanic has hit the iceberg.
``It's our Russian soul,'' she said. ``We turn to vodka in times of
crisis.'' With shots of vodka promoted at a post-crisis discount of $1 at
many clubs, the revelry actually seems to have gone up a notch. Call it the
last days of Pompeii. At a recent bash in a raw, plaster-strewn space that
was to have been an upscale cigar bar until funds ran out, actors dressed
as bums and panhandled the crowd, while models handed out papyrosi, cheap
handrolled cigarettes. ``Our mood and the mood of the economy are not
necessarily in sync,'' said Masha Repina, an anchor with the Russian
television station NTV, who was at the Jazz Kafe. ``Moscow was getting
boring for a while; now its exciting again,'' she said.
The Jazz Kafe has had no need to adopt an anti-crisis theme; it
continues to be Moscow's hottest club a year and a half after it opened.
Some compare it to Studio 54 in its heyday.
The designer Alexander MacQueen held a private party there the night
before mounting a show of his fall collection for Givenchy in a Moscow
Metro station last winter. The Pet Shop boys have drifted through on
visits. There was even a sighting of Leonardo Di Caprio during a recent
trip to Moscow.
The Serb managers, Mr. Lazarovich and a fellow Belgrade transplant,
Vladimir Ostojic, work the crowd, handing out membership cards to the bold
and beautiful of Moscow.
They recently branched out to open a cafe and fashion boutique near Red
Square, despite the hard times. Even more gilt-edged than the Jazz Kafe, it
features uniformed waiters and a high degree of Euro-snobism - no beer and
no American-style coffee are one the menu.
The intent is to make ``Dorian Gray envious,'' boasted Mr. Lazarovich.
Not to mention the masses of Russians struggling to survive. But for the
few Muscovites who have made the Jazz Kafe the focal point of their lives,
they are in no mood to scale back yet.
``These people can't go back to drinking around the kitchen table,''
said Mr. Gelman, the television producer. ``They might have lost their
jobs, but they haven't lost their social status. And that's more important
for us.''

*******

#6
From: "Martine Self" <seawolf@aha.ru>
Subject: JRL 2517/2515
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998

Dear David
With regard to Fred Hiatt's story (Return of 'Iron Felix', Washington Post,
December 13, 1998)(JRL 2517) no mention is made of Mayor Luzhkov's
opposition to the Duma's stated intention of resurrecting Dzerzhinsky's
statue. Would any of your readers know whose will is likely to prevail?
Anna Blundy says in 'Moscow sobered by bubbly crisis' (The Times (UK) JRL
2515) that the price of Russian sparkling wine is selling at 150 roubles a
bottle (GBP4.76). Just a couple of weeks ago, I spotted it for sale in vast
amounts in Ramstore at 35 roubles a bottle 

******

#7
From: "Yevgenia Albats" <albats@glasnet.ru>
Subject: Re: 2517-Hough/Kiriyenko,
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998

I would like to reply to Jerry Hough's message in regard to Kirienko and
Nemtzov at Dec.13 issue.
Yes, Kirienko was a shipbuilding engineer, and yes, he was a Komsomol leader
in Gorkiy, as , in fact, were many others who got into business. Michael
Chodorkovskiy, the owner of the first commercial bank MENATEP, and nowadays
owner of the oil company "Yukos" -- is another example.
However, since then and before becoming a prime-minister, Kirienko was the
co-owner and the general manager of the oil company that still operates on
the market. He was alo co-founder and the general manager of the Nizhniy
Novgorod's bank GARANTIA that survived the crisis.
Talking about Nemtzov, HE HAS NEVER EVER BEEN IN ANY KOMSOMOL OR PARTY
STRUCTURES.
Nemtzov was a scientist, a physicist, and in fact a very good one in the
Gorkiy's Radiophysics Institute. He did his Ph.D. in the non-liner physics
shortly after he got thirty year- old, and was regarded as one of the most
brilliant theorist in his field.
He got into politics through the Green movement in Gorkiy ( the former name
for Nizhniy Novgorod) -- Nemtzov led the demonstrations against the new
Atomic electrostation, and he won.
Later, he became a member of the Russian Supreme Soviet, and was appointed
as a Gorkiy oblast governor in August of 1991 by Yeltzin. In early 1996 he
run for his second term at the office, and got in with 62% votes.
As part of my doctoral research, and as an independent journalist, I studied
his administration back dring the summer of 1996, and was amazed by the
rationality and effectiveness of his apparatus.
For that matter, I would also add that neither Chubais, not Gaidar
have ever-ever been in any communist or comsomol structures.
Usually, I do not reply to the articles or messages published on the list,
but to see that type of mistake from the one of the author's of the
brilliant study -- HOW THE SOVIET UNION IS GOVERNED -- sounded too strange
to me.
Best,
Yevgenia Albats,
author : KGB AND ITS HOLD ON RUSSIA (NY:1995)

******

#8
Jamestown Foundation Monitor
14 December 1998

RUSSIAN ARMY'S WOES OUTLINED. Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev painted
a dismal picture of conditions in the armed forces in remarks delivered to
Russian lawmakers on December 11. The one-time Strategic Rocket Forces
commander told the State Duma that about one-third of the armed forces'
military hardware is not combat-ready and that some 60 percent of the
country's strategic missile systems have been in service for twice their
service life. Some 70 percent of the ships in Russia's navy require repair,
he continued, while in the air force about two-thirds of all aircraft are
incapable of flying. So far this year, Sergeev said, the armed forces have
not received a "single nuclear submarine, tank, combat plane, helicopter, or
piece of artillery." Of some 5.7 billion rubles (US$267.6 million) allocated
for food, Sergeev said, his ministry received only 2.4 billion (US$112.7
million).

Not surprisingly, the situation is no better with regard to Russian military
personnel. Of greatest concern is the fact that the military continues to
hemorrhage officers under the age of thirty. Some 19,000 of them have left
the armed forces this year, Sergeev said. At the same time, the government's
failure to pay out salaries and various types of allowances has hurt morale.
Suicides among officers have grown "frequent," Sergeev told lawmakers, while
"many officers and their families are on the verge of poverty" (AP, Russian
agencies, December 11).

Sergeev's remarks are in part politically motivated. The Russian government
is currently drafting the state budget for 1999, and the Defense Ministry is
looking to raise projected military spending from some 2.5 percent of GDP--a
figure which reportedly appeared on an earlier budget draft--to 3.5 percent
of GDP--a level stipulated by Russian defense legislation (see the Monitor,
December 11). At the same time, the state of the armed forces has also
become a political issue in which the Kremlin's political opponents accuse
the Russian president of having destroyed the armed forces and endangered
the country's security.

Sergeev himself is under fire, moreover, for having embraced a military
reform program backed by the Kremlin that calls for considerable cuts in the
official strength of the Russian armed forces. Lawmakers and, reportedly,
some in the military high command itself have also criticized Sergeev for
his efforts to streamline both Russia's force structure and its military
district system. In the face of such criticism, and amid the army's
worsening economic woes, Sergeev has himself recently begun to speak out.
Whereas the Russian defense chief had earlier distinguished himself as a
"team player," he has more recently begun to complain in public of military
spending shortfalls. That criticism has reportedly irritated the Kremlin and
raised questions about Sergeev's future as defense minister (see the
Monitor, December 9).

******

#9
Moscow Tribune
Dec. 11, 1998
AIDS Hotline Back in Business
By Catherine Belton

Russia's only confidential telephone helpline for those suffering from AIDS is
now back in business after almost six months in limbo without office space and
funds. 
The helpline, run by the charity organization My i Vy (We and You) was forced
to cease its activity after the Moscow Health Inspection Center evicted them
from their four-room office near Prospekt Mira last April for nonpayment of
rent. 
According to the head of My i Vy, Gennady Kriminskoi, cutting off the
telephone line may have further exacerbated the soaring rates of HIV infection
in the capital. 
"The growth of HIV amongst the Moscow population has been catastrophic this
year. There are now more than 800 people in Moscow registered with the HIV
infection. 300 of these were registered this year which makes a growth rate of
216 percent," Kriminskoi told the Moscow Tribune. 
"It may seem immodest to say this, but the strong growth rate of the infection
this year could have been averted if our advice line telling people about the
dangers of unprotected sex and sharing needles had been kept open," he said. 
My i Vy's helpline provided advice to over 40,000 Muscovites during its three
years in business, surviving only on grants from the U.N. AIDS program in
Moscow and other foreign organizations. 
In addition to the helpline, the organization ran a counseling service and
support group for people who tested positive for HIV and their families, and
also conducted surveys. 
The organization has now been provided with accommodation at the Moscow
Infection Hospital No. 2 at Sokolina Gora. 
According to Kriminskoi, My i Vy will also provide support and counseling to
the hundreds of patients infected with HIV at the hospital. 
My i Vy is holding an evening of entertainment at Cafe Ostozhenka, 42,
(nearest metro: Kropotkinskaya) on Saturday evening to raise funds for its
telephone line. Doors open at 19.00. Please phone 916-4868 for further
information. . 

*******

#10
From: JVAIL900@aol.com (Jim Vail)
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 
Subject: Kiriyenko Criticism

I cannot understand the latest criticism aimed at Mr. Kiriyenko during his
recent tour of the United States. It seems to me that these Harvard types with
their failed policies in Russia now need to vent their frustration on someone
who can no longer carry out western policy. What Kiriyenko wanted to do in
Russia seemed to be correct in terms of limiting the oligarchs power and
bankrupting the insolvent banks. But he got fired. Then he came to the U.S.
and sounded quite intellible, particularly when he answered one agricultural
question about US government assistance, but he's being called a fool. You
decide for yourself as I quote from a story I wrote about his speech in
Chicago 2 weeks ago:
In terms of humanitarian assistance, Kiriyenko was critical of the US
government's pledge of food aid during Russia's worse grain harvest in 40
years which many say will bring starvation to some parts of the country.
"Personally I have doubts about the need for such a loan, because the food
situation does not require that," he said. "On the other hand, who needs it
more, American farmers or the Russian people? This also poses the risk of
bringing prices down in Russia and punishing those who work honestly. This
doesn't mean we don't need humanitarian assistance, we just need to think it
out more carefully."
That sounds stupid?? Well, if Americans keep fooling themselves that they are
actually going to solve Russia's problems, than I guess it is stupid.

*******

#11 
New York Times
14 December 1998
[for personal use only]
Russia's Wards Survive on Strangers' Kindness and Native Ingenuity
By CELESTINE BOHLEN

MOZHAISK, Russia -- It is lunch time in the children's quarters at the
women's prison colony here, and 10 little pale faces are bent over bowls of
grey mush, a blend of watery potatoes with a dash of meat. The meal is not a
big hit with the scruffy 2-year-olds, but for the women who are trying to coax
spoonfuls into their mouths, the fact that there is anything on the table at
all is a small victory. 
By their calculations, the Russian government has practically stopped paying
a daily food allowance for the 64 children, all under age 3, who live in the
fenced compound where their mothers are serving sentences for crimes ranging
from theft to murder. 
"This year, for the children, we received 185,000 rubles," said Lyudmila
Yareva, who as head of the children's house can recite these figures by heart.
"After salaries and taxes, 47,000 goes to food, which as you understand is
nothing at all." 
At the rate the ruble is going these days, nothing is just about on target.
Four months ago, 47,000 rubles was worth roughly $7,000. Today, as the value
of the currency continues its downward drift, it is worth one-third that
amount, or roughly $36 per child a year. 
In a time of shrinking budgets and rising inflation, when Russia cannot
afford to pay its teachers or army officers a regular wage, let alone come up
with the cash for multibillion-dollar payments on its foreign debt, state
institutions like this one have been set adrift. At prisons and hospitals,
orphanages and psychiatric hospitals, money for inmates -- their food,
clothes, medicine and bed sheets -- is being squeezed out like drops from a
desiccated lemon. 
Here in this women's prison, the official daily food allowance for the 1,600
women is 65 kopeks, about three cents at current exchange rates. Down the road
at a juvenile detention center, the sum is greater -- 80 kopeks -- because as
one official explained ruefully, his charges are "under age" and need more
food to grow. According to the Ministry of Justice, the national average in
Russian jails and prison camps is 67 kopeks. 
But these are official sums, which in Russia these days are usually not
worth much more than the paper they are written on. In fact, here in Mozhaisk,
60 miles southwest of Moscow, the women's prison actually spends almost four
times more on its children than its budget allows. 
How Mrs. Yareva manages to clothe and feed her charges adds up to another
one of those baffling puzzles that explain how this country and its people are
able to survive in their calamity-prone economy. The answer is, as usual, a
mishmash -- involving both the kindness of strangers and a dash of native
ingenuity. 
The potatoes, for instance, come from a local farm which now relies on women
prisoners to help dig up their crop. Milk is also "free," after the prison,
unable to dig its way out of a mountain of unpaid bills, agreed to provide
milk maids to the local dairy. Soap comes from a local store owner who, after
some pleading by the prison wardens, agreed to throw in a donation together
with regular purchases. 
But mostly, these wards of the Russian state survive on "gumanitarka," the
Russian nickname for the humanitarian aid that in the last years has been sent
to institutions like this one. In this case, toys, blankets, medicine and
mattresses come from all over -- from Norway, from Germany, but also from
sources close to home: from the grandmother who periodically shows up at the
prison gates with a pile of neatly stacked baby clothes, to the Association of
Russian Aristocrats, whose help is acknowledged by the signed photograph in
Mrs. Yareva's office of the Grand Duchess Maria Romanova, and her son Georgi,
acknowledged by some as the heir to the Russian imperial throne. 
"We run around, we ask, we beg, we do what we can," Mrs. Yareva said, a
bitterness creeping into her voice as she remembers the days when the prison
got more money from the state than it was able to spend. The last normal year,
she recalls, was 1990, when Russia was still Communist, before "democratism,
or whatever it is you call this." 
Even with help, the diet for these children is not what it should be. By
Mrs. Yareva's reckoning, they actually live on 16 rubles (about 80 cents) a
day, when the "norm" should be 20 (a dollar). The missing four rubles, she
says, would go a long way toward buying them the proper portions of eggs,
fruits and vegetables that they should be getting, and do not. 
Even getting the supplies they have received requires running around. For
three weeks, prison wardens have been on tenterhooks, awaiting the delivery of
a container full of gumanitarka that has been held up with red tape at a local
customs office. 
"There are papers that have to be signed at every level," Lidiya I.
Pustovoit, a deputy prison director, explained as she dashed out the door to
do battle for the shipment one more time. "Each time I go there, there is
another level, and another batch of papers." 
Bureaucracy and budget shortfalls are part of the prison's routine. But what
happened in Russia on Aug. 17, when the ruble devalued and the banking system
froze up after the government defaulted on its ruble debts, was an unexpected
jolt, which threw a season's worth of planned repairs into confusion. 
By the time the banks released the allocated funds, fall here was turning to
winter. By the time new pipes were being installed in the two-story house
where the children live, winter had set in. The result has been an irregular
water supply, and days with no hot water at all, at a time when temperatures
here had dropped below freezing. 
But for mothers like Yanna Strukova, 27, who is here on a seven-year
sentence for armed robbery, having her son, Seryozha, close by, where she can
spend two hours a day with him, is for the moment better than the alternative.
When he turns 3 three next month, she faces a choice: either he goes to a
state orphanage, or she has to persuade her mother-in-law, who already looks
after her older daughter, to take him in. 
"The whole problem is money," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "Imagine, a
grandmother on a pension of 400 rubles, keeping two children. She doesn't even
have the money to travel up here and pick him up." 

******

#12
The Independent (UK)
December 13, 1998
[for personal use only]
Welcome to Hell
How did Chechnya - a country once applauded by the West for its spirit of
independence - descend to such levels of chaos and barbarism? By Phil Reeves 
(reevesp@glasnet.ru)

SIX WEEKS ago, looking as inconspicuous as possible in the back of a battered
Lada taxi, I slipped into hostage country for a few hours to confront the
President of Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov, about the fate of three Britons and
one New Zealander abducted in his republic. 
When we met in Ingushetia - a few miles from the Chechen border -the change in
the man was striking. Gone was the air of self-assurance and seasoned
competence that this former separatist general displayed on his election day
in January 1997. He seemed gaunt and depressed, like a man losing his grip. 
Last week's events could not have provided a more sickening example of how
true that now is. During our meeting, Maskhadov said he would accept "full
responsibility" for the four men (though he grumbled about their presence in
the republic). They subsequently became victims of an atrocity which was
shocking in its bestiality even by the terrible standards of the Chechen war.
Full responsibility turned out to mean nothing at all. 
In retrospect, his words never meant much. From a distance, outsiders might
have imagined that Chechnya's government bears some resemblance to a
functioning institution. But not so. Establishing his authority as leader of
the north Caucasus republic was always going to be extremely difficult for
Maskhadov amid the trauma and disorder that followed the 21-month war of
secession with Russia in which tens of thousands died. But he has got nowhere.
Kidnapper warlords, flush with the seven-figure ransom proceeds from their
trade in human beings, are richer, more ruthless and better armed than he. His
opponents include some romanticised heroes of the war - notably, Shamil
Basayev, who led a mass hostage-taking in southern Russia in 1995 in one of
the most audacious operations in the war. Maskhadov has tried, and failed, to
put down opposition from the outlawed one-eyed fighter commander Salman
Raduyev, who believes Maskhadov sold out to the Russians by failing to insist
on immediate, outright independence as a condition of peace in 1996. 
Maskhadov's administration has proved highly vulnerable. The head of the anti-
kidnapping unit - a singularly unsuccessful outfit - was killed by a car bomb
last month. On Friday there was further humiliation when the Prosecutor-
General, Mansur Tagirov, was abducted. He was later released. The Vice-
President, Vakha Arsanov, has been accused of protecting hoods in the
kidnapping racket. Chaos abounds. 
Still worse, Maskhadov has watched helplessly as fundamentalist Wahhabi
groups, with Saudi Arabian backing, have operated unchecked, challenging
Chechnya's semi-secular Islam. Most notorious among them is Arbi Barayev, a
young and particularly ruthless leader whose stronghold is in Urus-Martan.
Barayev is believed by many to be behind the kidnapping of the four engineers
murdered last week and the British aid workers, Jon James and Camilla Carr,
who were released in September. 
It is hardly surprising, then, that the creation of a civil society in
Chechnya has gone nowhere. More than two years after the war's end, Grozny
still looks like Dresden at the end of the Second World War, a Stonehenge of
charred foundations. 
Nothing works. There is no proper sewage system, no working medical service,
no tax-funded functioning local government. Awash with arms, unemployed former
fighters and downright bandits, the place is paralysed by crime, trauma and
the sheer scale of the task of rebuilding itself. 
It has, in some ways, returned to the wild days that began in 1991 when the
macho and despotically inclined president Dzhokhar Dudayev - killed in the war
- declared independence from Russia. He ushered in three heady, lawless years
in which Chechnya became a hub of arms-trading, money laundering and mafias.
Until, that is, Moscow's armies intervened. 
Maskhadov, a former Soviet army officer with a reasonable knowledge of the
world, has sought to establish foreign links to further his aim of clinching
international recognition for an independent Chechnya and to attract
investment for rebuilding. But he has been floundering. 
In March he visited Baroness Thatcher in Britain, where he was also hosted by
Lord McAlpine, the former Tory party treasurer, and Lord Tebbit. Elements of
the British right clearly admire the republic's courageous defiance of
Moscow's forces, and see Chechnya's resistance against the last vestiges of
Russian imperialism as worthy of quiet encouragement. After last week's
outrage, he cannot expect further overtures to the West to be taken seriously.
Chechnya's lawlessness has roots that run deep in the history of its 1 million
people, whose land is tucked in a pocket of the Caucasus mountain range
between the Black and Caspian seas. The very concept of state-imposed law -
for so long synonymous with tsarist and Soviet efforts at controlling the wild
Caucasus - has always been tissue-thin. Chechens look to their elders for
guidance, rather than to a chaotic state whose shaky foundations are further
undermined by the republic's indeterminate status. 
The mess has spawned a tangle in which power, business, crime and Islamic
interests have become enmeshed. It has also bred deep paranoia and suspicion,
which reared up in the aftermath of the death of the four engineers. On
Thursday a video tape surfaced in Grozny in which one of them, Peter Kennedy,
stated that they all worked for British intelligence, and were providing a
system that would be useful to the CIA, the Israelis and the Germans. 
It reeked of duress. Apart from anything, the notion that the world's major
security services (apart from the Russians) would want to eavesdrop on this
remote corner of the globe is, at best, implausible. Though the Caucasus is a
geopolitically significant region, and Chechnya has a Caspian oil pipe to
Russia running across its turf, it is too small and internally riven by
byzantine feuds to merit the expense or manpower of a Western intelligence
operation. Many Chechens don't see it that way, though: spy mania is rife. 
Echoes of this emerged before, in March 1995, when Fred Cuny, an American aid
worker from the Soros Foundation, was killed along with three Russians in an
area of western Chechnya not far from where the engineers' bodies were found.
Word circulated that he was from the CIA, although no evidence surfaced to
support this. 
Yet Chechnya's paranoia about espionage is, given its history, understandable.
In 1944 its entire people were deported by Stalin to Siberia and Kazakhstan,
where tens of thousands died of hunger and starvation. Survivors returned to
live under Soviet control, with its KGB snoops and meddlers, until the empire
collapsed. 
In December 1994 - keen to assert tough-guy nationalist credentials and
provoked by a series of Chechen hijackings - Boris Yeltsin sent in the tanks
and bombers to end the republic's recalcitrant attempts at independence.
Grozny was flattened, civilians were attacked, raped and tortured; "filtration
camps" were set up into which young Chechen men disappeared. 
Though the Chechen forces amounted to no more than a few thousand men, they
succeeded in both defeating the Russians and securing the moral high ground.
Western governments, many of whom have internal secession disputes (Britain
included), stuck by Boris Yeltsin, and said far too little to condemn Russia's
conduct of the war. But enlightened Western opinion saw Chechnya as a tiddler
nation that was being brutalised by a superpower merely because it sought -
like more than a dozen other former independent ex-Soviet republics - to run
its own affairs. 
That moral credibility has now been lost. It was corroded by the killing of
six Red Cross workers, including five women nurses, as they slept in a rural
hospital in December 1996. It slipped away with every new crime, every fresh
kidnapping. But it finally vanished when the severed heads of Darren Hickey,
Stan Shaw, Peter Kennedy and Rudolf Petschi appeared in a sack by a roadside
last week after what appears to have been a failed rescue attempt. 
Some Russians have seized upon the incident as a means of justifying a war of
which many of them were ashamed. "See how they behave?" said one friend, in
one of many similar remarks in Moscow last week. "Just like savages. See?
That's the Chechens for you." 
The murders will have horrified Aslan Maskhadov as much as anyone. And, let's
be fair, perhaps no one could have done anything to bring Chechnya to heel,
given the deep wounds of war and the republic's reflex resistance to
institutionalised government. At our meeting he openly despaired of the
"tragedy" of his nation. 
But the mere fact of his failure has ensured that Chechnya will be written off
by most of the outside world as a no-hoper delinquent, a no-go area which is
best forgotten about. Was that worth fighting for? 

*******

#13
Lebed Says Not To Run for President If Region Not Improved

KRASNOYARSK, December 9 (Itar-Tass) -- Krasnoyarsk region governor
Alexander Lebed said on Wednesday [9 December] that he would not run for
Russia's president "if the population of the Krasnoyarsk region sees no
real changes for the better."
Lebed was speaking at a press conference. He said his candidacy for
the president may be only up for discussions if "the country will take to
fighting." It is then that "his numerous talents" could be claimed, Lebedsaid.
On Tuesday, chairman of the Krasnoyarsk aluminum plant board of
directors Anatoliy Bykov said that he believed Lebed was failing his job.
Bykov was supporting Lebed during gubernatorial elections, but is now
criticizing him for "surrounding himself with the deputies and aides who do
not care about the region's needs" and are only interested in politics.
That is why, he said, Lebed has no moral right to participate in the
presidential election.
The governor himself says the conflict was caused by differences on
regional economic issues. Lebed reminded the press conference that he had
lifted privileged tariffs on electricity for the aluminum plant and
rejected an offer to set up in the region a new electricity-metallurgical
corporation.According to Lebed, if the project was implemented, the
corporation
"would have 85 million dollars in profit a year, while the region would get
only several hundred thousand dollars."

*******

#14
Russia PM reassures foreign investors

MOSCOW, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov said on Monday his
government wanted to boost foreign investment and vowed to make Russia fully
part of the global economy. 
Addressing a gathering of major foreign investors, he also repeated previous
pledges that there would be no renationalisation of companies or any
``uncontrolled'' printing of money to help Russia pay off its mountain of
debts. 
``We are convinced that we have all the grounds for foreign investment to
exist in Russia...Attracting foreign investment remains a priority for us,''
Primakov said. 
Among the achievements of his three-month-old government, Primakov listed
restructuring of the banks, a production-sharing agreement designed to attract
foreign capital in the oil industry and plans to open up parts of the economy
previously off-limits to outsiders. 
He said the government was also considering ways of improving Russia's
notoriously unwieldy tax system, the legal base in the energy sector and the
working of the banks and the securities' market. 
``Russia will remain part of the world economy,'' he said, adding that there
would be no cancellation of decisions taken by previous governments on
privatisation. 
Foreign creditors like the International Monetary Fund and Western governments
have been critical of Primakov's plans to boost state control over the economy
and to print some money to help bail out ailing banks and pay off debts. 
But Primakov's government, a broad-based coalition grouping liberals and
moderate communists, has also drawn up a tough 1999 budget which envisages
tight controls on spending. 
Primakov said one of the main tasks confronting his team was rebuilding both
foreign and domestic trust in Russia's economy and financial system, shattered
after the previous government defaulted on some foreign debt repayments and
allowed an effective rouble devaluation on August 17. 
Primakov said the government and the State Duma, Russia's Communist-dominated
lower house of parliament, were now working closely together to improve
conditions for foreign investors. 
Companies attending Monday's gathering included Ernst and Young, British
Petroleum and Coca Cola and also representatives of the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). 
Prominent members of Primakov's cabinet also attended the meeting, including
First Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Maslyukov, Finance Minister Mikhail Zadornov
and central bank governor Viktor Gerashchenko. 
Maslyukov told reporters that the Duma had already started work on the 1999
budget, sent by the government to the chamber late on Friday. 
``The draft budget is lying in the Duma. It is not just lying there, it is
already being worked on,'' said Maslyukov, who oversees the government's
economic policy. 

******