April 18, 1999    
This Date's Issues: 3245• 3246  • 

Johnson's Russia List
#3246
18 April 1999
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
I think I need to restate my evolving sentiments about
JRL and the war in Yugoslavia. I don't like to disappoint
people and I am getting far more messages on this subject
than there is room for. So: JRL is not a vehicle for debate
among the recipients about the merits of the war. (With a few
rare exceptions). There are lots of other places for that.
I will pass on a few articles that are different than the
articles that most of us can easily read everyday in our local
newspapers and magazines. This is a reasonable action on my part,
consistent with the underlying philosophy of JRL. (Making room
for diversity.) Should not be a cause for anger. But it surely
and sadly is. Perhaps my own fault. Of course, items related to 
Russia and Yugoslavia are welcome. As is friendly advice.
1. U.S. News and World Report: Helping hand.
2. Interfax: Russian Army Chief Denies State of Emergency Rumors.
3. Reuters: Powerful Moscow mayor denies invited to be PM.
4. Reuters: Russia's Berezovsky returning, denies breaking law.
5. Baltimore Sun: Kathy Lally, Russia fawns over its starlet. (Pugacheva).
6. AFP: Russia seeks to revive Balkans peace push.
7. Reuters: Ivanov says NATO allies planning for ground troops.
8. Matt Taibbi: Eric Chenoweth.
9. Laura Belin: re: Watson/3245.
10. St. Petersburg Times editorial: Russia Must Play Delicate Balkans Role.
11. Alexander Studenikin: Moscow conference on intelligentsia.
12. Moscow Times: Garfield Reynolds, Kapitalizm Seen From a Wider Angle.
(Review of Rose Brady's "Kapitalizm").
13. New York Times: Jack Matlock reviews Martin Malia's RUSSIA UNDER
WESTERN 
EYES.] 

******

#1
U.S. News and World Report
4/26/99
WASHINGTON WHISPERS
Helping hand

Russia may be threatening to start a world war over NATO's Kosovo 
involvement, but that hasn't slowed down efforts by the U.S. Embassy in 
Moscow to make nice with the locals. The embassy and the USAID are moving to 
help Russia's orphans, especially the disabled. New parents will get 
counseling on why they should keep their kids instead of abandoning them; 
improved foster care will be promoted; teens will be advised on how to get 
jobs and on sex education. Objectives of the program include "the prevention 
of abandonment and institutionalization, and the promotion of community 
rehabilitation," says an embassy official

******

#2
Russian Army Chief Denies State of Emergency Rumors 

Moscow, Apr 14 (Interfax) -- Commander-in-Chief of 
Russia's interior troops Gen. Col. Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov has refuted the 
opposition's claim that national law enforcement agencies have allegedly 
been instructed to work out a plan for declaring a state of emergency in 
Russia. "I know nothing of plans to declare a state of emergency in 
Russia," the commander said at a briefing in Moscow on Wednesday [14 
April]. He was also critical of the State Duma lawmakers' plans to start 
impeachment proceedings against President Boris Yeltsin. "The initiators 
of impeachment are pulling the rug out from under their own feet," the 
general said. To make his point clearer, he noted that deputies name the 
war in Chechnya among the main charges against the head of state. "If 
military actions in that republic are found criminal, then servicemen 
will wonder whether they are doing the right thing by obeying the 
leadership's orders," the general said, adding that this may have an 
extremely negative effect on the troops' morale. 

******

#3
Powerful Moscow mayor denies invited to be PM

MOSCOW, April 17 (Reuters) - The powerful mayor of Russia's capital city, 
Yuri Luzhkov, denied on Saturday that President Boris Yeltsin had invited him 
to be prime minister and said he would turn down the job if asked. 

Russian media have said the unpredictable and volatile Yeltsin was unhappy at 
the growing influence of Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, and speculate he 
might want him out of office. 

But Luzhkov said he had held no discussions with Yeltsin, whom he met last 
week, about becoming prime minister. 

``And even if there was such talk, I would not agree to take up the post of 
chairman of the government,'' Interfax news agency quoted him as saying. 

Luzhkov is usually seen more as a potential candidate for the presidency. He 
said he had good relations with Primakov -- sidelined for a day last week 
with back pain -- although he said he had criticised the prime minister for 
not doing enough to support the real sector of the economy, meaning 
manufacturing. 

******

#4
Russia's Berezovsky returning, denies breaking law

MOSCOW, April 18 (Reuters) - Russian financier and politician Boris
Berezovsky, wanted for questioning by prosecutors as part of an
investigation into alleged illegal business activities, was due to return
to Moscow on Sunday. 

Interfax news agency quoted Berezovsky, who was in France when an arrest
warrant was issued against him earlier this month, as saying by telephone
that he was returning ``absolutely calmly because he has nothing to be
guilty about.'' 

The Russian prosecutor general's office lifted the arrest warrant last week
but said it still wanted to talk to Berezovsky, who says the charges
against him are groundless and politically motivated. 

Berezovsky, a fierce anti-communist who built a financial empire in the
aftermath of the break-up of the former Soviet Union, told Interfax that he
had never broken the law. ``All of the accusations levelled against me,
without exception, are false.'' 

The controversial businessman-turned-politician has criticised the
government of Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and accused him of
sanctioning a campaign against him, but Primakov has denied ordering
Berezovsky's arrest. 

Berezovsky, who helped to fund President Boris Yeltsin's 1996 re-election
campaign, was once widely regarded as having vast influence behind the
scenes in Russian politics through his links to Yeltsin's family. 

But he says his influence has been overestimated. 

Berezovsky was sacked at Yeltsin's request earlier this month from his post
as Executive Secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which
loosely groups the former Soviet republics. 

*******

#5
Baltimore Sun
April 16, 1999
[for personal use only]
Russia fawns over its starlet
Celebrity: For her 50th birthday, singer Pugacheva gets hero's welcome at
the Kremlin.
By Kathy Lally 
Sun Foreign Staff 
MOSCOW 

MOSCOW -- The crowd pressed close together in the corner of a muddy
apartment courtyard yesterday, people fragrant with garlic, sausages, beer
and French perfume.

A father balanced a toddler on his shoulders and a video camera in his
hand; old women rested heavy shopping bags; model-like beauties strode
about, mobile phones pressed to their ears; women in fluorescent orange
work jackets put down cups of ugly green paint, to watch and dream.

They all awaited Alla Pugacheva, a national heroine who turned 50
yesterday. They waited, some holding a single red rose, others a bouquet of
yellow ones, standing cheerfully in an oppressive morning fog, simply
because she is a star, the nation's most-loved and longest-enduring pop
singer.

Her birthday was the top story on TV news programs, ahead of death in
Yugoslavia, attempts to avoid a world war and crucial World Bank
negotiations. Boris N. Yeltsin summoned her to the Kremlin, and gave her
the Order of Service to the Fatherland, second rank, apologizing that it
was not the first rank, held exclusively by the president as a symbol of
power.

Outside her apartment building, the crowd cheered and chanted her name when
she headed toward her stretch limousine, a white Lincoln Town Car from
Brea, Calif., that looked about 5 blocks long, though it's said to be 30 feet.

"I'm going to the Kremlin," she said, saying the word "Kremlin" as if in
italics, as if she were an ordinary person just like them, one moment
standing in the Moscow mud, the next swept off to the Kremlin with the rich
and famous. "I'm going to get a special order. I want to tell you it's not
mine but yours. If it were not for you, I wouldn't be getting it."

Alla Pugacheva has been famous ever since 1975, when she won a contest
singing a song called "Harlequin." Since then, the nation has seen her
through four marriages, the birth of a grandson, 150 million records, a few
face lifts, serious weight gains, diets, surgery, weight loss and constant,
lively gossip.

She is a consummately Russian heroine, admired as the perfect grandmother,
performing in white go-go boots, dresses high above the knee. When she's
heavy, the dresses billow like mini choir robes. When she's thin, they're
slinky and diaphanous.

Her songs are melodramatic. Her voice is raspy from too many cigarettes,
too much vodka and plenty of pain. She wears big hair and high heels. Her
fourth husband, a baby-faced pop singer named Filipp Kirkorov, is 18 years
younger than she is.

A month ago, the volatile politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky demanded that
presidential impeachment proceedings, scheduled for today, be postponed so
as not to distract from the important business of her birthday. At the last
minute, they were.

Yesterday, she was dressed modestly as she headed off to the Kremlin,
wearing a long black dress with a black jacket, carrying a cigarette in a
long black holder. Her hair, sometimes a bright, shouting red, was streaked
red, blond and brown. Her makeup was understated -- her husband had pinker
lips and darker foundation than she.

When she burst onto the stage, Leonid Brezhnev was presiding from the
Kremlin over what were called the years of stagnation. She quickly
attracted scandalized attention. In those gray days of conformity, she
spoke louder than other women. She smoked rakishly. She charged across the
stage in fancy costumes, full of showmanship, glamour and abandon. She was
said to swear. They called her vulgar, sometimes coarse. She made the
authorities uneasy.

"She never sang about politics," said Inna Rudenko, a well-known
journalist. "In a cold, hypocritical time, she sang about simple, natural
feelings. And she sang in such a way that every song was a riot against the
hypocrisy and heartlessness, against being an automaton. She wanted to live
and not just to exist."

In a repressed society, she acted as if she were free.

"I remember her youth," Maria Dyomina, 76, said yesterday as she waited
outside Pugacheva's apartment. "Those memories give me a good feeling."

"She's a national hero," said Fyodor Shirokov, a 19-year-old student
wearing a black leather jacket and carrying a backpack with the name of the
rock group Queen emblazoned on it.

"There's no one equal to her," said Leya Redzhini, 36. "She's not afraid to
change her style. She has changed with the times."

She even has an Internet site dedicated to her: www.alla.net.

In the late '70s, Russians told this joke: "Who was Brezhnev?" a child
asks, 20 years into the future. "He was a political figure who lived in the
Pugacheva era."

Yesterday, a playful Yeltsin summoned up that old joke.

"I'm happy to be remembered as one of the political leaders of the
Pugacheva era," he said in the reception hall were he entertains the high
and mighty. Yeltsin pinned a medal on Pugacheva's jacket and hung another
around her neck. She smiled and gave a thumbs up.

"If we were going to drink ...," she began, then caught herself and said,
"I forgot, you don't drink anymore."

The president interrupted. "We're going to drink. We're going to drink."

They clinked champagne glasses, and drank.

******

#6
Russia seeks to revive Balkans peace push

MOSCOW, April 18 (AFP) - Russia will revive its push for a solution to the
Balkans crisis this week when former prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin
unveils a new peace strategy.

Chernomyrdin will meet with President Boris Yeltsin on Monday to work out
how to revive Moscow's flagging efforts to defuse the escalating military
stand-off between Belgrade and NATO.

The former Russian premier, appointed as Yeltsin's special envoy on
Yugoslavia on Wednesday after previous mediation efforts by the government
failed, did not rule out an early trip to Belgrade to meet with Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic.

"I am always ready," Chernomyrdin said, when asked when he would travel.
Chernomyrdin, well-known in western circles and in Belgrade, has already
consulted a string of western ambassadors and the Yugoslav envoy in Moscow,
as well as foreign ministry officials to get briefed on the situation.

In another bid to solve the crisis, according to media reports here,
Russian Patriarch Alexy II will leave for Belgrade on Tuesday for a one-day
visit for talks with Yugoslav leaders and the head of the Serb Orthodox
Church, Patriarch Pavle,.

Patriarchate officials would say only that such plans were under
consideration and was no more forthcoming when asked about plans for Alexy
II to visit Begrade on a spiritual mission in support for Russia's Orthodox
allies.

The patriarchate has already denounced the NATO air strikes on Yugoslav
targets, voicing a fury which is widespread in Russia at the campaign to
punish Belgrade for rejecting an international agreement granting autonomy
to the Albanian-populated province of Kosovo.

"Suppressing a nation entirely will never result in a lasting peace," Alexy
II said recently.

But the patriarch will also call on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic
to respect human rights in Kosovo, according to Patriarchate officials
quoted by Interfax.

Russia has also thrown its weight behind the humanitarian relief mission
for the hundreds of thousands of refugees driven out of Kosovo.

After a land convoy brought in some 900 tonnes of humanitarian aid for
victims of the conflict last week, an aircraft carrying more supplies took
off from the Volga town of Saratov on Sunday, Russian television reported.

"We are sending medicine and food to Macedonia," said regional governor
Dmitry Ayatskov, adding that his region was ready to accommodate up to
50,000 refugees should the need arise, despite the continuing economic
crisis in Russia itself.

"My proposal to accommodate 50,000 refugees from Yugoslavia has aroused a
great deal of controversy, but I would like to confirm these plans,"
Ayatskov was quoted by Interfax as saying. "We have enough space to
accommodate these people and enough jobs to offer them." 

*******

#7
Ivanov says NATO allies planning for ground troops

MADRID, April 18 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov was
quoted on Sunday as saying that NATO allies were planning for a ground
force in Kosovo but were not saying so as they did not want to upset public
opinion. 

Ivanov said in an interview with the Spanish daily El Pais that Russia was
gathering evidence that the allies were making plans for a ground troop
invasion of Yugoslavia. 

``This danger (ground troops) exists and each day it is worse,'' said
Ivanov, a former ambassador to Spain. 

``But it is understood that it could cause many victims, including among
the invaders, and in order to calm public opinion they say there will not
be a ground operation,'' he said. ``But we have very precise data that it
is still being prepared.'' 

Ivanov, who said that NATO has violated its promises to Moscow, said Russia
like all countries wanted to see an end to the crisis in the Balkans. 

``I did not go to Oslo on Tuesday to fight with (U.S.) Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright, to issue demands, but to discuss the way we can find a
political way out of the conflict, to exchange points of view and search
for a way to bring our positions closer,'' he said. ``We are all on the
same ship.'' 

Ivanov said the air strikes began mainly so NATO could show its might and
could act independently from the United Nations. 

``Before the (NATO) meeting in Washington, during which they will approve a
new military strategy, they want to show the role that the Alliance thinks
to play in the 21st century.'' 

NATO is holding a summit in Washington this week to mark the allaince's
50th anniversary and to welcome three new members. 

******

#8
From: "matt taibbi" <exile.taibbi@matrix.ru>
Subject: eric chenoweth
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 

I would like, if possible, to respond briefly to Eric Chenoweth's entry
regarding our "101 reasons" piece, as he casts us as pro-Serb nationalists
and racists, which is preposterous.

First of all, the contention that the "Name one Albanian!" entry means that
we're racists is ridiculous. A key theme of the piece is the fact that we
should not be intervening in Yugoslavia if we wouldn't intervene in, say,
Rwanda. The whole point of "Name one Albanian!" was to show how absurd it
is for us to be committing troops to an area of the world which the vast
majority of Americans know nothing about-- and which we have no compelling
strategic interest in defending. Ignorance is never a good starting point
for a war. If you can't find Albania on a map, you shouldn't be trying to
bomb it.

Furthermore, we made the point that if there is a ground war, the sons of
the people who started it won't be the ones dying. It'll be southern
rednecks and urban blacks who are going to get sent out with the infantry.
And, as we noted, we think that sucks, too.

Secondly, the whole point of introducing Serb historical data in the list
was to show, on the one hand, that the whole ethnic cleansing issue is a
lot murkier than has been presented by the mainstream Western media, and on
the other hand, to show that war with these people will be a lot harder
than the American public probably expects, following Iraq. The Serbs have
been presented as Nazi-oid monsters who are oppressing their innocent
Croatian, Bosnian, and Albanian neighbors, wheras the truth is that they're
ALL monsters who have been slaughtering each other for centuries. It's not
the kind of situation in which a rational person should, or could, take
sides.

Chenoweth's argument is exactly the kind of thing one would expect to hear
from today's breed of neo-liberal. In order to make himself feel better
about having abandoned, through his support of a war like this, all the
ideals he probably had as a kid-- pacifism, racial tolerance, etc.-- he
attacks other people who genuinely believe in peace by impugning their
"liberal" credentials. These are the usual witch-hunt tactics of modern
American academics, and, frankly, it bores me. I live in Russia-- that crap
doesn't work here. So Eric, try again if you like, but remember-- calling
me a racist doesn't make bombing civilians right.

p.s.
One more thing to add to my letter in response to Eric Chenowoth...He
mentions the eXile's coverage of the Chechen war. The eXile was founded in
January, 1997. The war ended the previous summer. We never covered the war.
I don't think Eric's ever read our paper.

*******

#9
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 
From: Laura Belin <laura.belin@st-antonys.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: re: Watson/3245

Paul Watson is skeptical about reports concerning massacres in Pristina.
He has toured ethnic-Albanian neighborhoods there and not seen piles of
bodies. It is important to have reporters on the ground, but it's also
worth recalling that during WWII the bodies of Kiev Jews weren't left in
their homes or on the streets of the city--they were piled up at Babi Yar.
You can fit a lot of bodies in a mass grave. Marching people to a site and
murdering them wouldn't be an unheard-of tactic for Serb military units,
as we know from what happened a few years ago in Bosnia.

Still, my information about what's going on in Kosovo is filtered through
the media. Watson could be right. Maybe there have been no massacres in
Pristina itself, and maybe those who left Pristina were just afraid their
homes would get bombed (I'd do the same if I lived near the airport
there). But eyewitness reports from thousands of refugees point to a
pattern of massacres and burning villages across Kosovo. Why aren't the
refugees saying they left because they were afraid of NATO bombs? Are we
supposed to believe that there is a massive conspiracy of western
journalists and aid workers in the refugee camps to cover up evidence that
Kosovo Albanians are not fleeing from Serb soldiers? 

The eXile is right that much of the western coverage focuses on Serb
atrocities and on NATO's chances for success rather than on the
justification for military intervention in the first place. But it's not a
universal bias. I can't comment on the American media, but the BBC has
certainly given air time to politicians who think the whole NATO operation
is a disaster. They have also been broadcasting daily dispatches from John
Simpson, a reporter based in Belgrade, who repeatedly says the bombing is
increasing Milosevic's popularity and strengthening his hand.

Watson says, "If NATO had not bombed, I would be surprised if this sort of
forced exodus on this enormous scale would be taking place." Undeniably
true. What probably would have taken place was an incremental destruction
of Albanian villages and forced exodus over a period of months or years.
Then we all would have shaken our heads at the West's failure to act to
protect the Kosovo Albanians (and argued over whether it was motivated by
reluctance to start a war or a callous lack of regard for Muslim
suffering). 

******

#10
St. Petersburg Times
April 16, 1999
EDITORIAL
Russia Must Play Delicate Balkans Role

THE war in Yugoslavia is indeed threatening to turn into an uncontrollable 
Balkan conflict. Early NATO claims that bombing would quickly cow Yugoslav 
President Slobodan Milosevic into backing down have given way to admissions 
that this is a conflict with no clear exit strategy. The Serb attacks on 
Albanian territory are a worrying sign that neighboring states could be drawn 
in. 

Apportioning blame for this catastrophe is difficult. Primary blame lies with 
Milosevic and his policy of ethnic cleansing. NATO has acted in a reckless 
manner - in the last few days it has wiped out a convoy of Albanian refugees, 
blown up a passenger train.

While doing little to protect the Kosovars (and in some cases killing them), 
bombing raids have generated a whole new series of diplomatic and 
humanitarian problems.

Talk of a NATO ground war is dangerous. The campaign would be ugly and NATO 
troops would be tied down in a partisan campaign against Serb nationalists 
for years.

What must concern everyone now is finding a way out of this disaster. Here 
Russia has a special role to play. With the appointment of former prime 
minister Viktor Cher no myr din, Russia is the one diplomatic conduit which 
enjoys the confidence of both sides and which could broker a solution, as 
Cher no myrdin succeeded in doing in Bosnia.

The meeting Tuesday between Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and U.S. 
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was a confirmation that Washington is 
beginning to recognize that Russia holds the key to a negotiated settlement.

Perhaps this would be a more natural role for the UN. But its authority has 
been eroded by its lack of leadership over the crisis and by the belligerency 
of both sides.

Russia must try to establish credibility on both sides of this war, assuring 
NATO that it genuinely wants to achieve the return of refugees. 
Simultaneously, it must advocate respect for Yugoslavia's national 
sovereignty.

No one is saying this mediation role will be easy. NATO will not stop bombing 
until Yugoslavia accepts an armed peacekeeping force. Perhaps some compromise 
can be found by varying the composition of the peacekeeping force - by 
leavening NATO troops with Russian troops or with observers from the 
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE.

At this stage, the chances for any such deal are slim. Russia must, however, 
play an active diplomatic role. In spite of its trenchantly expressed 
objections to NATO bombing - objections whose validity are now increasingly 
being borne out - Russia must try to work with an even hand. Turning a blind 
eye to Serb atrocities or rattling a saber at NATO may play well at home, but 
does nothing to stop the carnage.

******

#11
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999
From: "Alexander Studenikin" <STUDENIK@srdlan.npi.msu.su> 
Subject: conference on intelligentsia 

INTERREGIONAL CENTRE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES
INP, Moscow State University 119899 Moscow, Russia
Tel (007-095) 939-50-47, 
Fax (007-095) 939-29-91 or (007-095) 932-88-20

THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PROBLEM "INTELLECTUALS AND SOCIETY"
"INTELLIGENTSIA AND / OR INTELLECTUALS : THE FORTHCOMMING 
REALITY OF THE XXI CENTURY"
September 28-30, 1999, Moscow

Dear Colleagues,

The Conference on "Intelligentsia and/or Intellectuals : the 
Forthcomming Reality of the XXI Century" (the 3rd International 
Conference on the Problem "Intellectuals ans Society") will be 
held at the Moscow State University from 28 to 30 of September, 1999.
The Conference is organized by the Interregional Centre for Advanced 
Studies in cooperation with the Moscow State University, the 
Historical Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, editorial board 
of the journal <Problems of History>.

The aim of the Conference is to bring together researches working in 
various fields for the inter-disciplinary discussion on the past, 
present and future of intelligentsia. The Conference is organized 
within the inter-branch research project on <Intellectuals - Science - 
Society> that is supported by the ICAS. This research project has 
started with the First International Conference on the Problem 
<Intellectuals and Society> (subtitle of that conference was 
<Intellectuals in Non- Stable Society: Conformism or Leadership?>) that 
was held at the Moscow State University in September, 1995. The next 
conference of this series on <Intellectuals and Power> was held in 
September, 1997. The Russian scientists and public figures and 
scientists from Brazil, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, France, Italy, South 
Africa and the USA participated in these conferences. 

It is panned that the Conference of the year 1999 will examine 
the following themes:

1. Theory of intelligentsia and the problems of intellectual labor. 
Intelligentsia - what is this? The Russian roots of intelligentsia and 
its universal significance. Intelligentsia and spiritual world. The 
historical evolution of intelligentsia, the genealogy of intelligentsia 
in the XIX and the beginning of the XX century. Intelligentsia in a non-
stable society. Intelligentsia and power. Intelligentsia in Russia 
after 1917. 
Intelligentsia in external and internal emigration. Perestroika and 
intellectual elite. Intelligentsia and the class of <new 
intellectuals>. 
Contemporary intellectual labor in Russia and the West: common traits 
and difference.

2. Psychological and sociological portrait of intelligentsia. The 
typology and taxonomy of the Russian intelligentsia. The intelligentsia 
individual, intelligentsia behavioral strategies, false intelligentsia 
appearance. The humanities and engineering/scientific intelligentsia. 
The <lyrical> and <physics> types of intelligentsia. Intelligentsia in 
big capital cities and in the province. Moral orientations of 
intelligentsia.

3. The humanistic values and economy. The economic policies of the 
state towards the intellectuals. Can the material degradation and 
dedication to lofty objectives go together? <Homo economicus> - what is 
this? The intellectuals and moral culture of the contemporary business. 
The traditional moral values and the success ethic. Can a creative 
inspiration be a market product? Intellectual <products>, markets, and 
commerce. The moral dimensions of advertising, marketing and PR. 
Business and philanthropy.

4. Intelligentsia in the labyrinth of the cultural evolution in the 
XX century. High culture, mass culture, pop-culture, elite culture, 
folklore culture. In the laboratory of creativity: sociology of 
culture in the XX century. Makers of literature cinema, theater, music, 
visual and other arts. The experiments in arts and its social meaning. 
People in arts: are they prophets or producers of mass consumption.

5. A university as citadel of knowledge or the marketplace of 
professions? Ways and means of the commercialization of the university 
education. The manifest and latent privatization of the university 
education. Does the contemporary society need a high quality education? 
Between the fundamental orientation and competitiveness of high 
education. Who manage and who own a contemporary university. The 
<Golden Triangle> - the administration, teaching faculty, and 
students. The new social role and mutual expectations of teachers and 
students. A university in the XXI century. 

6. The moral and ethical responsibility of intelligentsia for the 
advanced studies in science and humanities applications . 
Responsibility of a scientist for undesirable consequences of 
scientific progress and introduction of new technologies The problem 
of protection of nature and respect for our environment (atomic power, 
destruction of the ozone layer, genetically modified food, cloning 
etc.). The role of intelligentsia in choosing the proper economical 
and social models provided the stable development of the society. 
Responsibility of intelligentsia for adequate vision of the future of 
the human civilization.

7. Intelligentsia and the World. A citizen of the world or a herald of 
his/her local homeland? How to work for your homeland and serve the 
whole humanity. The global paradigms of the present age. What does the 
modernization and globalization bring us? The trends of the 
forthcoming century. The leading mission of intelligentsia in times of 
instability and decadence. Intelligentsia of the World, unite!

Participants of the Conference, government and political 
officials, and intellectuals from business and industry are supposed 
to take part in the Round Table discussion that will be held during 
the conference. 

General information

Participants are expected to arrive to Moscow on the 27th of September, 
1999. The opening session will be held on the 28th of September morning 
at the Moscow State University. The daily rates per person including 
the cost of accommodation in the conference hotel, breakfast and lunch 
will be US $ 100 (single room) and US $ 60 (double room). Registration 
fee will be US $ 180. The bus tour for the participants will be 
organized during the three days (October 1-3) for visiting ancient 
Russian towns Tver and Torzhok that are located about 250 km away from 
Moscow to the direction of St.Petersburg. This region is famous as 
one of the centres of the Russian intelligentsia of the XIX century and 
is connected with names of the outstanding representatives of 
intelligentsia like Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Bakunin, Nikolay 
Karamzin and many others. The price of the tour per one person will be 
US $ 400.
All of payments should be made in US dollars (cash) to the 
Organizing Committee (unfortunately, credit cards, international 
traveler's checks and international money orders cannot be used).
Please, send your request for participation in the Conference and 
the title and short abstract of your talk to the Organizing Committee 
before the 1st of July, 1999 by e-mail or fax. 
I should be very thankful to you if you could inform your 
colleagues who might be interested in attending the meeting. Should you 
have any questions on the Conference, please contact us by e-mail.

Sincerely yours,
Prof. Alexander I.Studenikin
President 
Interregional Centre 
for Advanced Studies 
Department of Theoretical Physics
Moscow State University
119899 Moscow, Russia
phone: (007-095) 939-50-47
fax: (007-095) 939-29-91, 932-88-20
e-mail: studenik@srdlan.npi.msu.su (Alexander Studenikin),
ane@srdlan.npi.msu.su (Andrey Egorov - Secretary of the Conference)

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#12
Moscow Times
April 17, 1999 
Kapitalizm Seen From a Wider Angle 
By Garfield Reynolds 
(Re "Kapitalizm" by Rose Brady. 289 pp. Illustrated. Yale University Press.
$30.)

Conceived as a review of six years of Russian reform, Rose Brady's new book 
could easily have gone the way of the ruble, dramatically devalued by the 
economic collapse. 

But Kapitalizm retains value as a chronicle of Russian economic life between 
1991 and 1997 thanks to the broad-ranging and sensitively executed interviews 
it contains. Brady, who was Moscow bureau chief for Business Week from 1989 
to 1993, moves seamlessly from the corridors of power to the mean streets of 
Moscow and Magnitogorsk. She remains true to her stated aim of letting the 
Russian people tell their own stories about the capitalist experiment of the 
1990s that followed the collapse of the many experiments inflicted on 
Russians by the Soviet regime. 

The result is a highly readable and accessible basic history of the mercurial 
economic policies of President Boris Yeltsin's government. Shock therapy, 
privatization and the transition toward a market economy are covered from 
both ground level and the overarching ideological and political perspective. 

With First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais' privatization program, 
Brady gives us a fascinating look at the way in which a pair of Western 
financial advisors - Boris Jordan and Stephen Jennings of Credit Suisse First 
Boston - first helped plan the voucher scheme, before spreading the word to 
foreign investors that voucher privatization was a potential gold mine. They 
made their own fortunes in the process. 

The pair woke up to the opportunity on offer on Dec. 13, 1992, when the 
privatization auction for a 44 percent stake in the Bolshevik Biscuit Factory 
valued the company at a mere $656,400 - set next to the $80 million that a 
similar Polish factory had gone for when Jordan and Jennings were working out 
of Warsaw. "We said, 'Jesus Christ, there's an incredible opportunity here,'" 
Jordan later told Brady. 

Within months, the dynamic duo were buying up vouchers to buy into Russian 
companies on behalf of clients. In the process, they transformed the very 
process of privatization,setting up a depository system that later grew into 
Russia's main share depository. This was building capitalism from scratch. 
Jordan recalled seeing the girls at the voucher vault using condoms to wrap 
the vouchers because there were no rubber bands. 

It is this kind of ground level reporting and insight at which Brady excels. 
The only time her instincts in this area let her down is in the 
slices-of-life montage she attempts in the tone-setting, opening chapter. 
Starting with a "conga line of babushki" and the multitude of new small 
traders and then cutting to a handful of all too obvious vignettes - a 
hard-up pensioner selling pens and children's toys she finds in garbage bins, 
a new Russian thug and a middle-aged factory worker - Brady offers us CNN 
journalism dressed up as history. 

Once the cutesy intro is out of the way, she offers her readers something far 
more real and engaging. Cutting to the chase, Brady starts with the food 
shortages and hoarding of fall 1991. While this is also clichÎd, it is 
energetically and feelingly presented and works well as a base from which to 
launch into the dramatic October 1991 presentation by Yeltsin of Prime 
Minister Yegor Gaidar's economic program, and the even more dramatic 
unfolding of that program. 

This big picture is competently painted, but the book really shines at those 
moments when it hones in on the individuals trying to cope with the storm 
Gaidar released. Here the book suddenly becomes a compelling read. 

Andrei and Vera are a couple, "in their twenties, and in love," brought 
together by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reforms that follow. 
Leaving behind their former lives - Andrei's factory job outside of Moscow 
and Vera's Irkutsk Komsomol role as a procuress for party bigwigs - the pair 
throw themselves into the new life that has opened before them. Their driving 
ambition: to own their own kiosk. It is such ambitions that make the many 
characters like Andrei and Vera in this book so engaging, even if (or 
because) we never find out how it all ends up. 

People and their ambitions also form the book's strongest narrative thread - 
the story of the Vladimir Tractor Factory, the main employer in the town of 
Vladimir, the two men who fight over it and the plant's slow decline. 

At the start of the 1990s, the factory was under the classically Soviet 
stewardship of Anatoly Grishin, the charismatic and paternalistic general 
director who had worked at the factory for 40 years, running it for the last 
18. 

He is puzzled by the very idea of privatization. "How could he let outsiders 
take a stake in the factory?" Unable to block the process, Grishin manages, 
initially, to control it, maintaining his post and his control over the 
factory after fighting off his rival and former underling, Iosif Bakaleynik. 

Bakaleynik, 42, who won a scholarship to Harvard Business School in 1989 
after several years under Grishin at the tractor plant, mounted a 
Western-style corporate raid on the Vladimir Tractor Factory in March 1993 
with the stated aim of turning the factory around through Western methods. 

The overwhelming majority of shareholders - most of them factory employees - 
put their faith in Grishin. When his methods failed, they turned to 
Bakaleynik in mid-1994. By late 1997, with the economy booming, the factory 
was finally showing early signs of a turnaround, but only after years of 
layoffs and machinery sitting idle. 

We are left wondering how well the factory has coped in the 18 months since 
then, and to reflect on the difficulties presented by the massive task of 
turning labor intensive factories built to answer to the Soviet plan into 
market-oriented engines for capitalist growth. 

Nevertheless, the ideological sympathy that Brady feels for kapitalizm - and 
for the course charted by Yegor Gaidar, Anatoly Chubais and others is obvious 
and often trying. Although she always strives for a fair portrayal, the 
triumphalism of Chubais, Vladimir Potanin and others at the time of the 1996 
election win and the 1997 boom jars with our knowledge of the catastrophe 
that followed in 1998. Brady also claims no evidence has emerged to support 
allegations that the Svyazinvest auction was rigged, concluding that the 
highest bidder won. But she entirely ignores the book-fee scandals 
surrounding the royalties paid to both Chubais and to Privatization Minister 
Alfred Kokh by a publishing house connected to Potanin. 

The postscript on the 1998 crash is more an exercise in denial than anything 
else, skating around questions of cause and culpability and offering a 
plaintive "We will live and see," at the end. 

Her helplessness in dealing with the events of 1998 emphasizes Brady's 
biggest flaw, her inability to be anything more than a chronicler of events. 
Her forte is in providing excellent in-depth coverage of those events, and 
she does it well enough that "Kapitalizm" deserves to be read and re-read for 
that alone. 

********

#13
New York Times book review
April 11, 1999
[for personal use only]
The Poor Neighbor
Formerly, a historian says, Russia was misunderstood because it was slow. 
Now it's developmentally handicapped. 
By JACK F. MATLOCK JR.
Jack F. Matlock Jr. is George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for 
Advanced Study in Princeton and the author of ''Autopsy on an Empire: The 
American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union.'' 

RUSSIA UNDER WESTERN EYES 
>From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum.
By Martin Malia.
514 pp. Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press. $35.

As Russia experiences a rocky transition from Communism to whatever the
future 
may hold, the public has been assaulted by a litany of simplistic 
explanations for its obvious difficulties. Russia, some say, never 
experienced the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment or Age of Discovery 
and therefore cannot be expected to develop the sort of society produced by 
these formative experiences in West and Central Europe. Some say, in 
addition, that Russia has always been expansionist and therefore is likely to 
resume an imperial course whenever its strength allows. And then there is the 
old argument, often combined with the other two assertions, that Russia is 
not part of ''Europe'' or ''Western Civilization'' since it borrowed its 
religion from Constantinople rather than Rome. 

In ''Russia Under Western Eyes'' Martin Malia takes on and demolishes these 
and other cliches that continue to infest our debate about what went wrong in 
Russia. Western opinion, he points out, has traditionally ''demonized or 
divinized'' Russia ''less because of her real role in Europe than because of 
the fears and frustrations, or the hopes and aspirations, generated within 
European society by its own domestic problems.'' 

As for the first of the stereotypes mentioned, it is true that Russia did not 
experience the Renaissance or Reformation -- though what predictive relevance 
this fact has for the 20th century is questionable. The epicenter of the 
Renaissance was in Italy, which in our time produced Mussolini and Fascism; 
the Reformation spread from what is now Germany, which gave us Hitler and 
Nazism. The Enlightenment and Age of Discovery are more recent and Russia was 
a participant in both. In fact, the intellectual fathers of the 
Enlightenment, Voltaire and Denis Diderot, for a time considered Catherine 
the Great the embodiment of an enlightened monarch, in contrast to the French 
Bourbons. European ''enlightened opinion'' did not mind that Russia achieved 
its most notable territorial expansion in Europe during her reign. 

Furthermore, every territorial acquisition by Russia in the 18th century was 
approved and abetted by other European great powers of the time, and the 
gains were accepted by all. The reason for this is clear: Russia played the 
imperialist game not out of some innate compulsion to dominate others, but 
rather because it was part of Europe and every European monarch sought to 
maximize his or her patrimony. 

Western European attitudes toward Russia changed after 1815 and the Congress 
of Vienna. The ''Holy Alliance'' of Russia, Prussia and Austria was seen by 
countries to the west as a bulwark of reaction, and images of Russia as an 
alien, ''Oriental'' despotism abounded, most notably in the Marquis de 
Custine's ''Russia in 1839.'' The problem, however, was not that Russia had 
suddenly become ''un-European'' (or had never been European), but that 
Russia, like Prussia and Austria at the time, was an Old Regime, while the 
countries to the west had established (or were in the process of 
establishing) states of a modern type. As Malia puts it, Nicholas I 
considered himself completely European, but his Europe was the Europe of his 
grandmother. When his armies put down revolts in Central Europe in 1848, 
''progressive'' opinion in Europe stigmatized him as the ''gendarme of 
Europe.'' 

In fact, the differences in societies and regimes in Europe, as one moved 
eastward from the Atlantic seaboard, can be placed on what Malia, borrowing 
from German historians, terms a ''cultural gradient.'' Social and political 
structures moved, in fits and starts, across the Continent from west to east. 
In the 19th century, Prussia was transformed from an Old Regime to a 
''modernized'' German empire. Changes in Russia followed those in Prussia 
after an interval approximating a half-century (Prussian peasants were freed 
of feudal obligations in 1810 while Russian serfs were liberated in 1861). 

Each country followed its own ''special way,'' just as England and France had 
followed distinctive routes of development, but the general tendency toward 
secularization of governments, industrialization of economies and 
democratization of societies, was apparent throughout Europe up to the 
outbreak of World War I. As one moved east, however, there was a time lag, 
and this lag frequently created problems in both practice and perception. 

BOOK EXCERPT

"The riddle the Red Sphinx posed to Western wayfarers, therefore, was often 
facilely resolved by declaring the spectre of Communism to be little more 
than the new face of eternal Russia. For those hostile to the experiment, 
Communism was simply a mutation of tsarist autocracy and thus an enduring 
menace to Western freedom. For those friendly to the brave new Soviet world, 
its difficulties, its shortcomings, and at times its crimes were to be 
explained away by the same tsarist heritage; and if the Socialist state 
appeared menacing, this was only because it was unfairly treated by a hostile 
world. Yet both evaluations presupposed, in some measure, an inherent 
difference of civilizations between 'Russia' and the 'West.'" 
-- from the introduction to 'Russia Under Western Eyes' 

Russia's belated development of a civil society was interrupted in 1917 by 
the Bolshevik Revolution and the Communist regime Lenin and his 
co-conspirators established, a regime that was not specifically Russian but 
international and ideological. The Communists' pursuit of a utopian goal by 
force, dictatorship and terror destroyed the incipient basis for a civil 
society by eliminating all institutions independent of the Communist Party 
and thereby atomizing society. Thus, when the Communist dictatorship 
collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions and irrationality, 
Russia was left more backward socially and institutionally than it had been 
in 1914. Developments since 1991 can be properly understood and assessed only 
with that heritage firmly in mind. 

As an integral part of his analysis, Malia offers a devastating critique of 
Marxist Socialism and its various offshoots, and also of such fads as social 
science theories of ''modernization'' and ''post-modern'' deconstructivism. 
His unsparing assessment of the fallacies of Socialist ideology and other 
knee-jerk reactions to ''bourgeois'' society and market democracy will 
doubtless infuriate those whose thinking is still infected by the debris of 
discredited faiths. Malia's critics, however, should be challenged to defend 
their assumptions and allegations with the same factual rigor and detail that 
Malia offers for his conclusions. So far as Russia is concerned, it is 
difficult to quibble with his observation that Lenin's ''leap into the full 
fantasy of Marxism'' led to ''a dead-end world whose totem is, appropriately, 
a mummy in a mausoleum.'' 

Malia does not attempt to predict Russia's future. His conviction that 
history often takes unexpected turns would prohibit his doing so. He does, 
however, describe some of the limits within which Russia's future is likely 
to unfold. He considers Russia today ''a poor power trying to modernize in 
the real world after the failure of its caricature modernization in the 
surreal world of Soviet Socialism,'' a country which ''must first become rich 
if she wishes again to be powerful.'' Though this is likely to take ''no 
small length of time,'' it is possible that ''the predominance of private 
property and the market . . . will in the long run produce the same effects 
in Russia that they have everywhere in the contemporary world: the formation 
of a civil society and a pluralistic culture.'' 

''Russia Under Western Eyes'' is the product of decades of research and 
thoughtful reflection by a historian as familiar with the intellectual 
history of modern Western and Central Europe as that of Russia itself. His 
broad perspective allows him to avoid the exaggeration of Russian 
distinctiveness frequently encountered in writings by those who know Russia 
better than the rest of Europe, or the rest of Europe better than Russia. His 
prose, though erudite and nuanced, is clear and straightforward. 
Refreshingly, Malia never leaves his reader in doubt of his views. In fact, 
he shouts out his key judgments with eclat. 

His generalizations are studded with brilliant, often epigrammatic, insights. 
Few readers will agree with every one. I would take some exception to his 
characterization of Gorbachev's perestroika and to his statement that the 
cold war ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. (Didn't it really end 
in December 1988, when Gorbachev officially discarded the class struggle as 
the basis of Soviet foreign policy?) In the context of Malia's book, however, 
answers to such questions are not crucial to his overall conclusions. One can 
disagree about the aptness of a particular simile or with a judgment of 
detail without calling into question the main contours of the picture Malia 
presents. 

''Russia Under Western Eyes'' is the most insightful book published in any 
language to date on Russia's place in European intellectual and political 
history. It is likely to stand as the definitive treatment of the subject for 
years to come, a source of pithy quotations for those who agree and of 
propositions to refute for those who don't. But Malia has set a standard of 
proof that will be exceedingly difficult for his critics to match. 

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