March
4, 1999
This Date's Issues: 3076 •3077
•
Johnson's Russia List
#3077
4 March 1999
davidjohnson@erols.com
[Note from David Johnson:
1. AFP: Kremlin Orders Inquiries Into Corruption Allegations.
2. AFP: Kremlin Deny Yeltsin Ultimatum To Primakov Over Communist Ministers.
3. Reuters: IMF Issues Strongest Criticism Yet Of Russian Economy.
4. Boston Globe: David Harris, Anti-Semitism in Russia.
5. Los Angeles Times letter: Hardship in Russia.
6. The Guardian: Cook visits icy nuclear nightmare. Britain to clean up
radioactive ruins of Russia's northern fleet, writes James Meek in
Murmansk.
7. Rossiyskaya Gazeta: Roy Medvedev, Grigoriy Yavlinskiy: Politics and
Posture.
8. Chicago Sun-Times: Natalia Olynec, Big Mac blues in Russia.]
*******
#1
Kremlin Orders Inquiries Into Corruption Allegations
MOSCOW, Mar. 04, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) The Kremlin has sent
inquiries to a number of federal law-enforcement agencies asking them to
look into press reports of corruption in the top levels of Russian
officialdom, Itar-Tass news agency reported.
It said the Kremlin queries were directed to the Prosecutor-General's
office, the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB).
President Boris Yeltsin said Wednesday that no allegation of government
wrongdoing should be ignored, said his first deputy chief of staff Oleg
Sysuyev, speaking on NTV television.
Last Thursday, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, controlled by the influential financier
Boris Berezovsky, accused an unnamed top government minister of corruption
in what many understood to be a reference to Russia's economy chief, First
Deputy Prime Minister Yury Maslyukov.
Analysts saw the move as an attempt to strike back at Prime Minister
Yevgeny Primakov's government.
Last month, Primakov began a major anti-corruption drive directed mainly at
companies connected to Berezovsky, which included highly publicized raids
by the tax police.
Berezovsky is widely believed to be close to Yeltsin.
Maslyukov issued his own order Tuesday to prosecutors, asking them to
launch a criminal probe into Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
"If there is no official reaction, the scandal will grow. It will generate
speculation and unnecessary political motives. The questions that have been
raised need direct answers," Sysuyev said.
*******
#2
Kremlin Deny Yeltsin Ultimatum To Primakov Over Communist Ministers
MOSCOW, Mar. 04, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) The Kremlin moved swiftly
Thursday to deny reports that President Boris Yeltsin had issued an
ultimatum to Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov to sack Communists in his
left-leaning government.
Russian television picked up on an Argumenty i Fakti report according to
which Yeltsin gave his premier until the end of his Black Sea holiday on
Monday to "sack the Communists in the government."
Economy chief Yury Maslyukov, a Communist party deputy in parliament until
he joined the cabinet last September, leads the leftist bloc within the
Primakov government.
But Yakushkin told the Interfax news agency that "relations between the
president and the prime minister are such that it is impossible for there
to be that sort of tone in their conversations."
Moscow has been swirling with rumors for weeks that Maslyukov is about to
be sacked, and the renewed speculation came amid a welter of corruption
allegations leveled against the first deputy premier and his cabinet
colleague Deputy Prime Minister Gennady Kulik. Both deny any wrongdoing.
Analysts say Yeltsin and Primakov discussed the question of the Communist
presence in the government at a meeting last Thursday ahead of the
premier's departure on holiday, without reaching a final decision.
Primakov left for Sochi on Saturday, the same day Yeltsin was readmitted to
a Moscow clinic with a recurrence of the bleeding ulcer that forced him
into the hospital on Jan. 17.
********
#3
IMF Issues Strongest Criticism Yet Of Russian Economy
WASHINGTON, Mar. 04, 1999 -- (Reuters, Agence France Presse) The IMF chief
economist issued the fund's harshest criticism yes of the Russian
government Wednesday, escalating a war of words that has jeopardized
Russia's chances of securing a loan it desperately needs to avoid bankruptcy.
The two sides are still far apart in their long struggle to reach an
economic deal and the IMF must not bend its rules too far as it decides
whether to start handing over cash again.
Michael Mussa, the chief economist of the IMF, told reporters that the
government of onetime spymaster Yevgeny Primakov was already reversing some
of the macroeconomic policies agreed by his predecessors.
"There is a substantial distance between where the Russians are and where
the fund is at this time," Mussa said, in the latest round of what often
appears to be a game of brinkmanship on Russian policy.
Russian government officials, accusing the IMF of exerting "indecent"
pressure on Russia, say they need IMF money to repay the $4.8 billion they
owe to the IMF this year.
The IMF says new payments depend on appropriate Russian economic policies
and a budget which takes account of Russia's ability to collect taxes and
to pay its bills. IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus said on Monday
that the fund would not lend to Russia on "complacent terms."
"My guess is that it (the difference) will need to be narrowed to some
extent on both sides," Mussa said.
Russia, the world's biggest country, is also the IMF's biggest single
borrower. Mussa said the fund had handed over some $20 billion since the
Soviet Union fell apart and Moscow began its hesitant path toward a market
economy.
But the IMF halted disbursements to Moscow in August 1998 after Russia
unilaterally devalued the ruble currency and defaulted on some debts.
"Russia has been falling apart at a pretty spectacular rate since last
August," Mussa said.
He said the IMF needed to be flexible with Russia, but there was no reason
to set easier lending terms for Russia than for other countries borrowing
IMF cash.
"Each country faces its own problems and there needs to be flexibility, but
it cannot be that the standard for Russia is far laxer than it would be for
others," Mussa said.
He could not rule out the possibility that Russia might stop paying its
bills to the IMF, but noted this would also wreck the chances of a debt
rescheduling deal with the Paris Club of country creditors and that it
might be accompanied by a default on Eurobond payments.
"I think that no one at this stage should write out of his mind the
possibility that Russia might go into arrears to the fund, but no one
should write that down as a certainty either," he said.
"It would be a mess," he added. "Neither the Russian government, nor the
IMF, nor the international community could look at such an outcome with
equanimity. It's something to be avoided, but the fact that it is something
to be avoided is not an absolute assurance that it will be avoided."
No major country has ever defaulted on large-scale loans from the IMF,
although a handful of countries have built up arrears worth a total of
$3.05 billion. Sudan has the largest volume of arrears -- some $1.55
billion -- while Liberia has overdue payments totaling about $610 million.
Other countries more than six months overdue in payments to the IMF are
Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Somalia and former
Yugoslavia.
******
#4
Boston Globe
March 4, 1999
Anti-Semitism in Russia
By David A. Harris
David A. Harris is executive director of the American Jewish Committee.
NEW YORK
Recent high-profile anti-Semitic incidents in Russia raise disturbing
questions about the durability of Russia's fragile democracy.
In the latest outrage, Communist lawmaker Albert Makashov last week
delivered a vitriolic speech that led a leading Russian newspaper to state
in a front-page headline: ''Pogroms are not far off.''
Anti-Semitic incidents, whether perpetrated by leaders of the Communist
Party or by neo-Nazi groups, constitute warning flags that should should
not be ignored, especially in the current environment of economic and
social distress in Russia.
Given Russia's history, which lacks any sustained encounter with democracy,
Russia's democratic experiment is not assured of permanence. Indeed, this
embryonic democracy could yield - perhaps in next year's elections - to a
more nationalistic, authoritarian, or Communist regime, whose rallying cry
might well include the alleged responsibility of the Jews for Russia's
stagnation, loss of empire, or domestic turmoil.
The best antidote to stem the recent surge in anti-Semitism would be
consistent unambiguous statements from Russia's political, religious, and
civic leaders, coupled with appropriate action to relegate anti-Semitism to
society's margins.
Come elections, will there be Russian politicians with the courage to
denounce unequivocally those who play the anti-Semitic card as part of
their campaign platform and instead appeal to the higher instincts of the
Russian people? Will there be a critical mass of Russian people prepared to
reject any such crude charges against all Jews?
We are entering an election period when there will be a temptation to sound
the nationalist theme to pander to a disaffected electorate looking for
simple explanations - and scapegoats - for the country's serious economic
and social problems.
Some key Russian institutions, including the Russian Orthodox Church, could
play a more constructive role in countering anti-Semitism.
Until now the church's role has been at best equivocal. It has never
undergone the kind of soul-searching and moral and historical reckoning
regarding its relations with the Jews that the Catholic Church and many
Protestant churches, to their credit, have initiated in the second half of
this century. Such an undertaking is overdue.
Moreover, the Russian educational system could surely do much more to
promote concepts of tolerance and understanding among the country's many
nationalities and religious groups, including the Jews.
In addition, Russia must enforce its anti-hate laws. There are already
several laws empowering the government to prosecute publishers of extremist
publications, including those deemed to be unabashedly anti-Semitic.
However, these laws have seldom been invoked. That may be interpreted
benignly as just another manifestation of the country's current
inefficiency or more darkly as a calculated unwillingness to confront the
country's hatemongers.
History teaches that an accurate barometer of Russian society is the social
condition of the Jewish population. If attacks against Jews mount, it will
speak volumes about the health of Russian society, all the more so if those
political and legal mechanisms available to counteract these trends are not
employed by the competent authorities.
If Russia's Jews in urban centers like Moscow and St. Peterburg start to
talk seriously about emigration and begin packing their bags, it augurs
poorly for the future. After all, these are the Jews who, having had
essentially every opportunity to leave in the past decade, chose to stay,
whether for family, professional, or other reasons.
These are two parallel strategies to promote the well-being of Russia's
Jews. The first is to strengthen democracy and democratic institutions in
Russia so that Jews - indeed, all peoples who live in Russia - will be
governed by the rule of law, not the law of the rulers. The West must
continue to play its part, notwithstanding the daunting difficulties.
The second is to keep Russia's human rights record and commitment to
democracy central to the American bilateral agenda with Moscow.
Washington's perseverance in the past has helped protect the Jews of
Russia, sending the message that Moscow cannot act with impunity against
this vulnerable minority. Vigilant monitoring of the current situation must
be maintained, for the ongoing threats of anti-Semitism and scapegoating of
Jews, if not checked, could well undermine this fragile democracy.
********
#5
Los Angeles Times
March 4, 1999
Letter
Hardship in Russia
I found "Kremlin May Move to Rein In Democracy" (Feb. 26) to be one of
the most chilling examples of what has really been going on in the world
during the past year. There was once an American who bore witness to the
bread riot that brought down the czar in Russia. In 1917 America, we bore
silent witness to the dawn of the American Century. After World War I, the
U.S. and its allies embarked on what was to become our de facto foreign
policy regarding the conquered: We would help rebuild those nations that
waged war on us.
We continued this policy after World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam.
Though this century, we have been consistent in our use of compassion as an
important part of our foreign policy. Not only for the obvious reason that
it was the right thing to do, but for its real political impact as well. A
lack of domestic unrest creates stability, and a stable world is the
preferred choice among most people.
One of the most bitter and costly victories in this century was the Cold
War. Without our historic use of compassion, this victory will be very
short-lived. The bread lines are forming once again in Russia and my heart
goes out to her citizens. I hope Washington gets its collective head out of
the gutter in time to grasp this: Time is running out on the American
Century and is this to be our legacy? That America let the world stand once
again at the brink of totalitarianism and hunger?
DAVID A. KOWAL
Los Angeles
********
#6
The Guardian
4 March 1999
[for personal use only]
Cook visits icy nuclear nightmare
Britain to clean up radioactive ruins of Russia's northern fleet, writes
James Meek in Murmansk
The Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook touched down in one of the most
contaminated parts of the planet yesterday, promising aid to clean up the
radioactive ruins of Russia's Arctic-based northern fleet.
But the £3 million he pledged is a drop in the ocean compared to the
estimated multi-billion bill to tackle one of the cold war's most
frightening environmental legacies, the redundant nuclear submarines and
radioactive waste in the fjords of north-west Russia.
Arriving in Murmansk, the headquarters of the fleet, Mr Cook was taken to a
floating dry dock in the ice-flecked Barents Sea and shown an
inconspicuous-looking vessel 50 yards away. In its belly lay a mass of
damaged, spent nuclear fuel, its containers corroding for 20 years.
Most of the money pledged by Britain will fund the operation to extract the
spent fuel and store it in special casks. 'Britain has a lot of expertise
in working on nuclear waste and that's know-how we want to bring to the
former Soviet Union,' Mr Cook said. 'But we need the help of the Russian
authorities.'
Recalling British aid convoys to Murmansk during the second world war, Mr
Cook said: 'Britain and Murmansk are closely linked by deep historical
ties. The story of the northern convoys is a story of great heroism and
sacrifice by the men of my country and others, who brought Russia supplies
during the darkest days of the war. Murmansk was the port to which they
sailed and the fortitude of its people will aways be with us.'
With the Russian navy struggling to find the money to keep a single missile
submarine on patrol, the country is dependent on foreign aid to solve the
worsening crisis of its dying, poisoned fleet.
For Europe, the threat of the radioactive fleet on Scandinavia's doorstep
is comparable in scale and proximity to Chernobyl. Yet funding for a clean
up has been meagre. The European Union's Pacis programme, a United States
project to pay for the scrapping of Russian submarines, and Norway provide
only a few tens of millions of dollars.
Western budget constraints are not the only problem. The Russian navy's
efforts to protect its few remaining military secrets - and its pride - is
making it hard to attract foreign donors. Sometimes the secrecy merges into
a cover-up, as when the security services charged an environmental activist
and former navy captain, Alexander Nikitin, with espionage.
The British reprocessing company BNFL, which runs Sellafield, is scouting
for business in the Murmansk region and is working with Norway on a project
to make safe the Russian navy's main spent fuel storage site at Andreyeva
Bay. But neither the British nor the Norwegians are allowed to go there.
'It's a problem asking funders to give money for a place they've never seen
but have only heard about,' said BNFL's business development manager,
Richard Benbow.
In its glory days the Soviet navy, dominated by the northern fleet, had
more nuclear submarines than the US. The price of Moscow's breakneck
expansion of its under-sea force is being paid today. What few nuclear
waste-handling facilities were built were put up as an afterthought. When
the time came in the 1960s to refuel the first nuclear submarines, the
highly radioactive spent fuel was simply dumped in a field. Most of it is
still there, corroded by 35 years of storms.
There are about 100 nuclear submarines, either decommissioned or too
expensive for the Russians to operate, rusting at their moorings in
harbours along the coast around Murmansk. Most still have nuclear fuel on
board.
Elsewhere lie thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste, some 20,000 spent
fuel assemblies, and old reactors.
The casual attitude towards nuclear safety has improved little in
post-Soviet times, and the penury of the Russian government has brought the
situation to what one admiral described as an emergency.
Accidents, murders and thefts have undermined faith in the ability of the
fleet command to manage its nuclear heritage. Thousands of tonnes of
radioactive water gushed out of leaky storage pools in the 1980s, leaving
the surrounding earth contaminated.
An explosion in a submarine missile tube last year caused panic in
Murmansk, with pharmacists selling out of iodine, taken during radioactive
emergencies to stave off thyroid cancer.
In September, a conscript on one of the navy's best remaining submarines
shot dead eight of his comrades and barricaded himself in the torpedo room
before committing suicide. In January, another conscript disabled an active
submarine when he ripped out 24 vital wires in the reactor control room and
sold them to another serviceman for £30.
******
#7
Historian Roy Medvedev Profiles Yavlinskiy
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
20 February 1999
[translation for personal use only]
Article by Roy Medvedev, historian: "Grigoriy Yavlinskiy: Politics and
Posture"
All Or Nothing
Grigoriy Yavlinskiy was the focus of attention several times in the most
intense weeks of the fall
crisis. It was Yavlinskiy that nominated Yevgeniy Primakov as a candidate
for the prime
minister's office and then defended this nomination so persuasively.
The same Yavlinskiy resolutely refused Primakov's offer of a place in his
government as
vice premier, however, after making several inflexible demands that would
have made
Yavlinskiy the key figure in the government instead of Primakov. This
"all-or-nothing"
principle, which Yavlinskiy has professed for such a long time, is
unacceptable in politics
in Russia, or anywhere else, because politics, according to Winston
Churchill's classic
definition, is the "art of the possible." Yavlinskiy, however, prefers
another, more common
description of politics as "dirty work."
"They say I do not want to get my hands dirty," Yavlinskiy once explained
his beliefs in an
interview. "That is true. I do not want that. No one does. I prefer to keep
my hands clean even
when I do the most difficult and unpleasant work. This is incomprehensible
to many people,
even very good people. That is why they criticize me, but it does not
matter unless they are
criticizing the work I do."
All of this is somewhat incomprehensible because it is hard to remember
even a single time in
the last 10 years when Yavlinskiy did any kind of difficult and unpleasant
work in politics.
That is precisely why his hands are always clean. Primakov's offer was not
the only one
Yavlinskiy refused. He refused several times to work with Gaydar and
Chernomyrdin, and even
with his friend Boris Nemtsov. His response to accusations of snobbism goes
something like
this: "The only thing they have against me is that I do not want to join
them in soiling our hands.
I will not. I cannot bear deceit and scandal."
When Yavlinskiy ran for the presidency, he did not make any agreements or
join any
coalitions, even though this sealed his fate in advance. This does not
bother him that much. "I
am an extremely ambitious man," Yavlinskiy once admitted, "but my ambitions
go beyond the
presidency." Another time he said this: "I am not running against people,
but against the
whole Russian way of life in the last thousand years." This was the goal of
only two other
individuals in Russian history--Lenin and Peter I.
Yavlinskiy's democratic maximalism has won the approval of part of the
intelligentsia. Commenting
on the results of the 1998 presidential election, Obshchaya Gazeta made
this observation:
"Yavlinskiy never even planned to win the first prize. He saw the campaign
as an experiment: He
wanted to show the public an example of honest political behavior. He is
like the soldier who
saved the regimental banner. Simply by virtue of his 'objectivity,' he had
little to lose in
the election. His more fortunate rivals won different events, but in his
event he is still the
champion." A public less refined than the readers of Obshchaya Gazeta would
have trouble
understanding this because there would seem to be only one event in a
political contest.
Composer of Economic Reforms
According to Yavlinskiy himself, he began working on the draft of the first
reform of the economic
mechanism in the USSR back in 1982, when he headed a sector of the
Scientific Research
Institute of Labor in the State Committee on Labor and Social Issues. His
notes were
classified, however, the book he had planned to publish was destroyed, and
even the
manuscript was confiscated by "authorized agencies." This had no effect on
Yavlinskiy's
career, however, and in 1984 the 32-year-old candidate of economic sciences
headed one of the
main departments of the State Labor Committee.
During the last stage of perestroyka, many different individuals and groups
were working on
various reform programs. One of the groups was headed by Academician Leonid
Abalkin, who had
been asked to join Nikolay Ryzhkov's government as vice premier. That group
was the State
Commission of the USSR Council of Ministers for Economic Reform. Abalkin
invited
Yavlinskiy, whom he had known as a capable student, to serve as the
commission secretary and to
head one of its divisions.
At the very end of 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev started making preparations for
the move to the
presidential form of government. This inspired Yavlinskiy, and he began
working with
Mikhail Zadornov and Aleksey Mikhaylov on a new sweeping program of reforms
for the future
president of the Soviet Union. "We took up the melody," recalled the
musical Yavlinskiy, "and
started drafting the program." Abalkin read Yavlinskiy's notes without much
interest,
saying only this: "Keep these. They could come in handy." Gorbachev was
more impressed by
Yavlinskiy's program, but Boris Yeltsin, who had just been elected chairman
of the RSFSR,
showed the greatest interest in Yavlinskiy's work. When he formed the new
Government of
Russia, he offered Yavlinskiy the office of deputy chairman of the RSFSR
Council of
Ministers. Yavlinskiy accepted the offer. Zadornov and Mikhaylov also
joined the
government as deputy ministers.
By the end of summer 1990, the program, called the "500 Days," was ready,
and Gorbachev sent
it to the USSR Supreme Soviet for consideration. Although the list of the
program's authors
was headed by the name of Academician Stanislav Shatalin to give the
program a more solid
standing, everyone was already referring to it as "Yavlinskiy's program."
I was probably one of the few people's deputies of the USSR to read the
whole two volumes of
the "500 Days" program and the accompanying reports with care. It was a
curious document,
telling the leader of the USSR exactly what he should do in the
economy--not just every month
and every week, but even every day. Furthermore, it was a program of
radical reforms, intended
to turn the Soviet socialist economy into a market economy of the Western
type. The program was
absolutely impracticable in 500 days, or in 50,000 days, even if the
people, the Supreme
Soviet, and the President had consented to its implementation. It resembled
a situational
war game or a command post exercise on an obstacle course, which became
increasingly complex
in each successive stage.
There was no indication, however, of what the leader should do if he failed
to surmount the
latest obstacle, because the attainment of each new objective was closely
related to the
resolution of the previous problem. Furthermore, the program did not look
smooth even on
paper: A careful reading revealed omissions and errors, inconsistencies and
contradictions. There was no chance at all of a serious discussion of
Yavlinskiy's program in
the USSR Supreme Soviet.
When our session resumed in September, the demonstrations by hundreds of
thousands of
protestors against Gorbachev had already taken place in Moscow. In December
Gorbachev
accepted the resignations of N. Ryzhkov and L. Abalkin. Valentin Pavlov,
the new head of the
Cabinet of Ministers, had trouble keeping the situation in the country
under control and had
no time for reform. In November 1990 Yavlinskiy also resigned from the
Russian Government. He
disagreed with some of Prime Minister Ivan Silayev's decisions, which had
been made at a time
of severe crisis and were contrary to the principles Yavlinskiy professed.
When Grigoriy Yavlinskiy was in the United States in the first half of
1991, he drafted
another sweeping reform program, "Taking the Chance." It was not discussed
in the Soviet or
Russian Supreme Soviets: The time for this had passed. It was another
absolutely utopian
document, co-authored by Yavlinskiy with colleagues from Harvard. The
program presupposed
concerted foreign aid in the amount of $150 billion over five years, but no
one was offering
Russia or the Soviet Union that kind of aid. After the fall of the State
Committee for the State
of Emergency and the CPSU, Boris Yeltsin, who had already been elected
president of the RSFSR,
began to form a new reform government. People talked to him about
Yavlinskiy, but Yeltsin
preferred the little-known and completely manageable Yegor Gaydar to the
ambitious and
capricious author of the "500 Days," who was only willing to head the
government on the
condition of a completely free hand.
In 1991 Yavlinskiy established the independent Economic and Political
Research Center
(EPItsentr). He took a team of experts from that center to Nizhniy Novgorod
to see his friend
Boris Nemtsov, who had just been appointed to head the oblast
administration. There he drew up
a program of partial, rather than global, reforms for the socioeconomic
development of
Nizhniy Novgorod Oblast. Some of the reforms were carried out, but the
innovations in Nizhniy
Novgorod did not arouse much interest in the country at large. The turbid
wave of
liberalization and privatization swept through Russia and stifled local
initiative. There
were almost no reviews in the press of "The Nizhniy Novgorod Prologue," a
short work by
Yavlinskiy and his associates from EPItsentr.
At the end of 1992 Yavlinskiy joined the Supreme Economic Council of
Kazakhstan and worked
on a program of economic reforms for Nursultan Nazarbayev. By the beginning
of 1993, however,
Grigoriy Yavlinskiy, whom his friend Konstantin Zatulin called the
"composer of economic
reform," announced his intention to establish a political movement or party
and to run for
president of the Russian Federation. Early elections for a new president
and a new Supreme
Soviet of the Russian Federation were being proposed at that time. Yavlinskiy
simultaneously began drawing up new versions of a program of economic
reform, but these were
for the new Russia.
Which Way Is "the Apple" Rolling?
The year of 1993 was a time of intense political struggle between the
President and the
Government on one side, and the RF Supreme Soviet on the other. Yavlinskiy
pointedly
criticized all of them, and his influence as an independent politician grew
quickly. In
summer Yavlinskiy ranked third, after Yeltsin and Rutskoy, in many voter
approval ratings.
In public opinion polls in August, his name was mentioned second, and
sometimes even first.
This motivated Yavlinskiy and his friends to expedite the creation of their
own political
association. It started as a political club, with Yuriy Boldyrev, Vladimir
Lukin, and others
among its members. The club then became the "YaBLoko" electoral association
at the end of
1993, during the campaign. After the election, YaBLoko, which soon became
simply Yabloko,
started work as a parliamentary faction.
Within a year Yabloko started turning into a national political association
or party. That is
why the objections of some of Yavlinskiy's opponents--that Yabloko did not
start as a
grass-roots party, but was the product of an intellectual elite--are
justified, although
Yavlinskiy himself feels that this is one of the organization's assets. Its
core was the Duma
faction and the Humanitarian Political Research Institute (IGPI).
Yavlinskiy's
supporters in the regions were mainly united around local information
analysis and research
institutions. Many of these centers would get financial support from the
Soros Fund (United
States), the Friedrich Naumann Fund (FRG), the International Republican
Institute (United
States), and others.
After establishing a party with the exotic name "Yabloko," Yavlinskiy
announced right away
that this would be a "new type" of party: Yabloko would not be a ruling
party or an opposition
party in the traditional sense. It was intended to be an elite party,
setting examples of
democratic behavior and historical precedents of the new political style.
Yabloko had no
need for outside acknowledgement; its involvement in important decisions
would be enough.
"I do not expect anything from people," Yavlinskiy said. "My strategic goal
is to establish a
party of influence, and not power, that will be supported by just 12, 15,
or 20 percent of the
voters, but on a permanent basis. It is important for people similar to us
to be seated at the
table where important decisions are made."
In summer 1993 Yavlinskiy's popularity was growing so rapidly that his
supporters hoped
to get 15 percent of the vote, or even 30. During the days of the standoff
between the branches of
government, Yavlinskiy was involved in the reconciliation attempts, had
meetings with
Rutskoy, and advised the avoidance of any kind of confrontation. After the
offices of
EPItsentr in the municipal administration building were invaded by
parliament's
supporters, however, Yavlinskiy appeared on Russian television on the night
of 3-4 October
to demand that Yeltsin restore order at any price. This was an appeal for
the suppression of the
rebels with military force, and this was clearly inconsistent with the
public mood. As a
result, Vladimir Zhirinovskiy became the hero of the December 1993
election, and Yabloko was
supported by around 8 percent of the voters. Yabloko's share of the vote in
the 1996 Duma
election was around 7 percent, and 7.4 percent of the voters supported
Yavlinskiy in the 1996
presidential election. Yavlinskiy and his party are noticeable, but their
influence is not
as strong as it might be.
Yavlinskiy had published his program of reform and strategy for the
transition period in a lengthy
document entitled "A Different Kind of Reform" back in February 1994.
Within a year and a half
he had expanded and amplified his ideas in a work entitled "The Russian
Economy. Legacy and
Potential." These works, however, attracted little attention even among
experts.
Yavlinskiy has stayed true to the ideals of liberalism and the Western type
of market economy.
He occupies a strong position on the right wing of the political spectrum,
closer to the
radicals than to the centrists. He pointedly criticizes all of the leaders
of rightwing
parties and blocs, however, and they respond in kind. Many of the rightwing
leaders feel
something close to hatred for Yavlinskiy. In their opinion, he is a
"traitor," a "heretic," a
"blowhard," and an "arrogant and condescending egomaniac." Gaydar's
disciple David Sharpe
remarked in Izvestiya that "Yavlinskiy is a traitor by his very nature. In
contrast to Gaydar
and Chubays, he has been sitting on the sidelines for six years, making
incendiary speeches in
a well-modulated voice. They are like roman candles: a brilliant flash
followed by nothing.
These feelings are understandable: The strongest hatred arises between
friends."
Grigoriy Yavlinskiy responds to all of this with similar criticism of the
rightwing leaders. He
accuses them of cynicism and ignorance. These people, in his opinion, have
ludicrous and even
outrageous ideas about Russia, which they hate more than they love. "They
did not want to hear
about anyone's experiences but their own, which were absolutely inadequate
for
undertakings of the scale they envisioned. They were completely out of
touch with reality."
Yavlinskiy also admitted, however, that the differences between Yabloko and
other
rightwing parties are differences in their tactics and style rather than in
their basic
principles. During the 1996 presidential campaign Yavlinskiy kept saying
that he was the
candidate of the democratic forces, whereas Yeltsin was the "protege of the
communist
nomenklatura" and his government was the "last gasp of communism." "The end
of communism will
come at the end of the Yeltsin era."
"Whether we like it or not," Yavlinskiy said in one of his policy
statements, "whether we look each
other in the eye or from different vantage points, now matter how much we
denounce each other,
we have the same blood type. When I defend my own ideology, I am
simultaneously defending
theirs, because it is objectively the same. I would dare to say that the
basic elements of my
view of the world and my political philosophy are the basic elements of the
views of all liberal
and democratic politicians in Russia and, what is much more important, of
their
constituents, the democratic voting public. However much we may argue with
other democrats,
we still speak the same language and can finish each other's sentences. We
are still a
different species, however, from the ruling nomenklatura."
The leaders of rightwing associations and parties, however, refused to
accept this
gesture of friendship and supported Yeltsin in 1996. Yabloko's bids for
cooperation--obviously, on the condition of undivided leadership for
Yavlinskiy--were
rejected and viewed as political provocation.
The Search for a New Image
The crash and crisis in August and September were the ruin of all earlier
liberal policies.
They signaled the failure of the whole right wing and radical right. Many
leaders of rightwing
parties and groups are admitting this today, and some are even apologizing.
In this context,
there was considerable interest in a lengthy article in Kommersant by
Gaydar associate Petr
Aven, once a minister and now a banker, "The Compromise Economy," about the
failure of liberal
reforms in Russia. Aleksandr Smolenskiy, the head of another banking group,
publicly
acknowledged not only the insolvency of banks, but also of the hollow
market reform in the
country. "The time for liberal reform in Russia has not arrived yet," Boris
Fedorov, another
former minister, concluded from his own experience. In his opinion, no one
was prepared for
this in Russia: not the people, the ruling elite, the top administrators,
or the economists.
The failure of liberalism in Russia, however, is necessarily also the
failure of Grigoriy
Yavlinskiy's liberal ideas and programs, because he is responsible, even if
only in the
formal sense, for government policy in the last six years. Yabloko's lack
of success in the
regional elections of recent months indicates that the voters are turning
away from
Yavlinskiy along with Gaydar and Chubays. That is the reason for some new
trends in the
behavior of Yabloko's ideologists and its leader.
In the middle of the 1990s I participated in several roundtables that were
attended by
leaders of political groups, politicians, economists, and cultural
spokesmen. Yavlinskiy
always made interesting observations at these meetings, but he always
seemed detached. He
never joined in debates or argued with other participants. He would simply
express his own
views, ignoring all of the previously expressed opinions. He always left
soon afterward,
choosing not to listen to any rebuttals or answer any questions.
At that time Yavlinskiy clearly stated that he did not think of himself as
a social democrat
and did not share the social democrats' predilection for the term "social
justice," which
should be replaced by the concept of "social adequacy." Today, however,
there is something
like a social democratic faction in the Yabloko party and movement. At a
recent meeting of the
Yabloko Political Council, Yavlinskiy said, to the dismay of several of his
associates, that
he did not exclude the possibility of interaction with Yuriy Luzhkov's
"Fatherland." In an
interview in Italy's Repubblica in the beginning of December 1998,
Yavlinskiy said that
Yabloko no longer wanted to be the party of dissidents and human rights
advocates: "We want to
be a genuine party, capable of governing the country. To this end, although
we will remain
liberals, we will also need a social democratic plank in our platform, and
even a conservative
one."
Yavlinskiy expects to strengthen his faction in the State Duma after the
1999 election and to make
Yabloko the second most influential party in Russia after the CPRF.
Yavlinskiy has already announced that he will run for president in the 2000
election. It is true that
he does not expect to win and will be satisfied to come in third. He is
young, healthy, and
ambitious enough to wait for the elections of 2004, 2008, and even 2012.
"In the final
analysis, the presidency is the only office worth fighting for in Russia,"
Yavlinskiy said
after spending several weeks in a German clinic following a heart attack.
Yavlinskiy's main concern today is not the composition of new programs,
which he always has in
abundance, but the issue of authority. If the population of Russia and its
elite are not ready
for liberal reforms, they must be promoted exclusively on the strength of
the experience and
intellect of one party. Yabloko's experts are still focusing on the
intellectual elite
instead of various classes and segments of the Russian society. They
believe that the masses
do not actually participate in the political process, but simply constitute
resources for
various members of the establishment. That is why a president elected by
the population of the
country should be endowed with enough authority to institute reforms and
direct economic and
political processes without worrying about the objections of earlier
officials and
bureaucrats.
Even Lenin dreamed of a state without a bureaucracy in 1917. "That kind of
party does exist!"
Lenin's words are being repeated by Yavlinskiy today, although not as loudly.
There has been no sign of any rise in the popularity of Yavlinskiy and
Yabloko in the last few
months. Yavlinskiy's approval rating in the public opinion polls conducted
regularly in
Russia by various institutions and groups, including the U.S. Embassy, has
stayed the same,
not moving up or down. Yabloko ranked fifth in the State Duma election
forecasts. That is also
Yavlinskiy's own rating in the presidential election forecasts, below
Zyuganov, Primakov,
Luzhkov, and Lebed.
I do not think that the counterproductive stance Yavlinskiy and his party
have taken in
the State Duma, which has aroused protests from even the regional
organizations of this
party, could increase his popularity or his chances. The principle of
"nonparticipation in
government," to which Yavlinskiy has steadily adhered, may have its
advantages, but it is
also a great disadvantage for Yabloko.
The public is also puzzled by the reasons for the political and personal
conflict between
Yabloko founders Yavlinskiy and Yuriy Boldyrev. Yavlinskiy's snobbism also
irritates the
liberal-minded press. "The leader of Yabloko," Ilya Milshteyn remarked in
Izvestiya, "is
certainly a good man. He is honest, talented, and intelligent. He has an
excellent sense of
humor. Sincerity is his hallmark. He has no ties to the special services
and no contacts with
gangsters. He has not been involved or implicated in anything. He has a
spotless reputation.
It would be logical for a country mired in default to place its hopes in
this young and
intelligent man, but.... It is a moot point, because the unbiased
individual would have
difficulty naming even one genuine accomplishment constituting a political
asset of this
intelligent young man with the spotless reputation. There are vague
recollections of the
'Nizhniy Novgorod miracle,' involving the issuance of some kind of bonds.
It is obvious that
Yavlinskiy did something necessary and useful in St. Petersburg, in
Novosibirsk, and in
Kazakhstan, but there are no tangible traces of this--nothing people can
point to with
tentative approval."
There is no evidence that the Yabloko leader can govern a country.
Milshteyn also deplores
Yavlinskiy's oversensitive nature. After any kind of failure, he would not
try to hold on to
the presidency, but would simply resign after presenting detailed and
cogent explanations
of the reasons for the failure and the parties responsible.
...Why do people go into politics? Some see it as an entertaining but
dangerous game. Others are
satisfying their thirst for power. Still others dream of wealth and
privilege. For many, this
is service to the state, the nation, the people, or an ideal. For others,
it is simply a job.
Sometimes it is a family tradition, and sometimes it is a calling. We can
only wonder why
Grigoriy Yavlinskiy entered politics. Many of Russia's citizens still do
not know.
********
#8
Chicago Sun-Times
February 28, 1999
[for personal use only]
Big Mac blues in Russia
BY NATALIA OLYNEC BLOOMBERG NEWS
MOSCOW--McDonald's Corp., whose restaurant on Pushkin Square here remains
its busiest worldwide, said it's slowing expansion in Russia after the
ruble's 70 percent plunge since August cut many Russians' budget for burgers.
McDonald's, the world's largest restaurant company, said it may open
another five restaurants in Russia this year, raising the total to 51,
though it has firm plans so far for only one restaurant. That's in Kazan,
the capital of Tatarstan in southern Russia, in May. In 1998, Oak
Brook-based McDonald's opened 19 restaurants in Russia.
``We're reviewing our plans on a regular basis,'' said Glen Steeves,
chairman of McDonald's Russia. ``In September we revised our plans and
we'll be very cautious moving forward. It depends on what happens with the
economy.''
McDonald's, one of the earliest and biggest foreign investors in Russia,
has invested about $134 million since it broke ground on its first
restaurant and processing plant there in 1989. It will invest about another
$7 million if it follows through with plans to open five restaurants in
Russia this year.
Russia offers a ``tremendous'' untapped market for fast-food restaurants,
Steeves said. The first restaurant, which opened to much fanfare in 1990 on
Pushkin Square, still serves an average 20,000 customers daily.
Consumer goods producers such as McDonald's and Pizza Hut were among the
earliest foreign investors in Russia, eager to tap a new market of about
150 million people. For most, sales growth was steady as a middle class
emerged during the past few years.
Then Russians' incomes plunged in dollar terms when the government
defaulted on domestic debts and stopped supporting the ruble in August.
Thousands of Russians also lost their savings when banks, the main holders
of government bonds, shut, forcing many foreign companies to reconsider
investment plans.
In October, Tricon Global Restaurants Inc.'s Pizza Hut chain said it would
pull out of Moscow after 10 years there.
Candymakers Mars Inc. and Nestle SA said they cut back Russian operations
last year, and this month, Royal Grolsch NV, the Dutch brewer, said profit
showed little growth in the second half of 1998 in part because of
declining exports to Russia.
McDonald's has 46 restaurants in Russia and has concentrated them near
Moscow, where incomes are higher than the official national average of 970
rubles ($41) per month.
``The food is good and the prices are not too high,'' said Vladimir
Kristev, 35, a businessman eating at a McDonald's restaurant a block away
from Red Square. ``I think for most Russian people it's very expensive, but
for me it's affordable.''
A Big Mac costs about $1.46 in Moscow, compared with $1.59 in Prague, $2.83
in Frankfurt and $3.10 in London.
McDonald's, which employs about 5,000 in Russia, is testing products that
cater to Russian tastes, such as cabbage salad and mushroom soup, Steeves
said.
Still, he said, the company will wait for the economy to pick up before
expanding aggressively.
``We're seeing the effect of devaluation in the amount of customers and
softening of trends,'' Steeves said. ``It's difficult to say what will
happen with the economy. The government is taking things very slowly.''
*******
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