May 8, 1999    
This Date's Issues: 3275 • 3276  • 

Johnson's Russia List
#3276
8 May 1999
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Washington Post: Michael McFaul, Russia's PR Coup.
2. AFP: Russian FM cancels trip to Britain after Chinese embassy bombing
3. Stratfor commentary: How Committed is Russia? 
4. AP: Russians Key to Israeli Election.
5. AP: Kosovo Said to Help US-Russia.
6. New York Times book review: Nine-Tenths of the Law. Charles Morris
reviews 
Richard Pipe's Property and Law.
7. Moscow Times editorial: U.S. Missed Lessons of Wars Past.
8. Moscow Times: Andrei Zolotov Jr., Luzhkov Capitalizes on Patriotic
Fervor.
9. Rep. Curt Weldon: CLINTON ACTIONS HAVE TURNED RUSSIA AGAINST AMERICA.
10. St. Petersburg Times: Fyodor Gavrilov, May Suffering Transformed Into 
Triumph.
11. AP: City Renamed Leningrad on Holidays.
12. Jerry Hough: Kosovo and Russia.
13. Segodnya: The Government Will Leave on the 13th.
14. Komsomolskaya Pravda: Yeltsin Does Not Say Hello to Primakov Anymore.
15. Radiostantsiya Ekho Moskvy: Poll Shows 64% Believe Primakov Will 
Resign Soon.] 

********

#1
Washington Post
May 8, 1999
[for personal use only]
Russia's PR Coup
By Michael McFaul (mmcfaul@ceip.org) 
The writer is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International 
Peace and a political scientist at Stanford University. 

Only a few weeks ago, Russia was one of the most downtrodden and detested 
countries in the eyes of Washington's elite. One could not utter the word 
"Russia" without adding adjectives such as "crime-ridden," "collapsing" or 
"corrupt." Russia was considered a basket case of a country that had failed 
at capitalism and democracy and was soon to fail as a state. Russia's 
reputation in the United States was so bad that Russian businesspeople began 
courting American public relations firms to help rectify Russia's image.

Russia's failure also was President Clinton's failure. A giant witch hunt was 
on to identify and punish those who had "lost Russia." Critics of the Clinton 
administration berated the strategies of constructive engagement and 
strategic partnership as empty slogans that achieved little for U.S. national 
interests. They charged that the Clinton administration was complicit in 
underwriting a rogue state that threatened U.S. strategic interests and 
squandered American aid. The new battle cry was a call for a return to 
containment.

What a difference a war in Yugoslavia can make. Although the initial Russian 
reaction to the NATO bombing campaign served to reaffirm Russia's enemy 
status in the United States, subsequent Russian diplomacy has turned the war 
into a major public relations coup for Russia in the West. After signing a 
G-8 joint resolution on ending the conflict in Yugoslavia, Russia is once 
again our partner on the international stage.

In Washington, the same voices that had given up on Russia only a few months 
ago now welcome and encourage Russian mediation in the Yugoslav war. Under 
the heat of criticism from both the left and the right, the Clinton 
administration has been compelled over the years to downgrade in rhetorical 
terms its policy toward Russia from strategic partnership to strategic 
patience. Yet those who bashed the Clinton policy only months ago now openly 
advocate getting a little help from our friends the Russians to end the war. 
The word "partner" is back in vogue.

Yeltsin's appointment of former prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin as his 
point man on the Yugoslav war was a stroke of PR genius. Although 
Chernomyrdin has little mediation experience and knows almost nothing about 
the Balkans, he has good friends in the United States, including Vice 
President Al Gore. His reasoned statements on Kosovo have been a welcome 
contrast to the fiery rhetoric of Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. By cashing 
in on his old network of American friends, Chernomyrdin has helped to rebuild 
Russia's image in the West and restart his own political career at home.

Tangible benefits, in turn, have accompanied this image makeover. Only months 
ago, Congress threatened to curtail American support to the International 
Monetary Fund, in part because of wasted loans to Russia. Today, such threats 
do not occur. Likewise, U.S. direct assistance programs to Russia are no 
longer in jeopardy of being curtailed.

This coup is all the more impressive when contrasted with the American public 
relations disaster in Russia. At the same time that Russia has improved its 
image in the United States, anti-American sentiment in Russia is at its peak.

This newly discovered interest in our Russian friends is driven as much by 
desperation as by anything that the Russians have done or are capable of 
doing in mediating the Yugoslav conflict. U.S. officials and the public are 
looking for a silver bullet to end the war. Last week, it was supposed to be 
the Apache helicopters. This week, the Russians have become our new secret 
weapon that will end the war quickly and without major loss of American life.

Russian and American officials must walk a fine line to continue to 
cooperate. Communists and nationalists have berated Chernomyrdin as an 
American lackey, while critics of Clinton rightly fear that the new spirit of 
cooperation with the Russians could result in compromises with Slobodan 
Milosevic. Today, however, the immediate foreign policy lesson is that the 
U.S. strategy of engagement with Russia over the past decade has produced 
tangible payoffs. Especially when articulated by Chernomyrdin, the Russian 
position on Kosovo has moved substantially closer to NATO's conditions for a 
settlement. Russia now agrees that an international military force must be 
deployed in Kosovo and tacitly recognizes that NATO states will make up part 
of this force. Imagine if containment had been the guiding principle of 
American foreign policy toward Russia throughout the 1990s. Russia would not 
be working with NATO to occupy Kosovo but defending Serbia from NATO 
aggression.

Another lesson is that individual relationships do matter. Critics have 
berated the Clinton administration for focusing too much on individuals when 
dealing with Russia. Yet Russia's recent cooperation regarding the Balkan 
crisis is the direct result of investments in personal relationships. Imagine 
if Primakov were still conducting Russia's mediation efforts rather than 
Chernomyrdin. Imagine if Communist Gennady Zyuganov were president today 
rather than Yeltsin.

Russia has won a major PR victory in the West through its diplomacy on 
Kosovo, and the Clinton administration has won a less-noticed victory for its 
policy on Russia.

*******

#2
Russian FM cancels trip to Britain after Chinese embassy bombing

MOSCOW, May 8 (AFP) - Moscow lashed out at NATO Saturday after the alliance's 
accidental bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade, just as Russia and the 
West appeared to be narrowing the gap this week over the Kosovo crisis.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Saturday cancelled a trip to Britain 
at the last minute on the orders of President Boris Yeltsin in response to 
the bombing, Interfax news agency reported.

Yeltsin, who condemned the bombing as "barbaric and inhuman," decided the 
minister should stay in Moscow to "analyse all the new aspects of 
developments in the Balkans," foreign ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin 
said.

Yeltsin called on NATO to end the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia and 
said that the attack on the Chinese embassy had been "a gross violation of 
international law."

"In the name of all Russians, outraged by NATO's actions, I call once again 
on the countries of the alliance to put an end to the bloodshed, to stop the 
air strikes and to resume peace talks," Yeltsin said.

Ivanov, quoted by Interfax, called the attack a "glaring provocation."

"This strike on the embassy of China, a permanent member of the UN Security 
Council, (...) complicates even further" the Kosovo situation, he said.

"We insist that the NATO aggression cease and that efforts be undertaken to 
find a political solution to the conflict," he added.

NATO called the bombing a "tragic mistake", saying it targetted the building 
in the belief that it was a Yugoslav government building. Four people died, 
according to the Yugoslav state agency Tanjug.

Ivanov telephoned his Chinese counterpart Tang Jiaxuan Saturday to express 
his condolences. The pair made a "unanimous" call for an end to the NATO 
offensive, Interfax reported.

Itar-Tass quoted Ivanov as saying that those "guilty" of the NATO bombing 
against Yugoslavia must be punished.

"We do not have the right to predict the decisions of the International 
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. However, those who think that 
they will succeed in avoiding punishment are very wrong," he warned.

Despite the cancellation of his visit to Edinburgh, Ivanov and his British 
counterpart, Robin Cook, spoke by telephone and agreed to meet at the 
earliest opportunity.

In London, Cook said after the phone call that Russia still supports the G8 
proposal for a Kosovo peace plan despite the bombing.

"Ivanov has assured me that Russia stands by those principles it agreed to on 
Thursday and regards them as a firm foundation on which we can build together 
for a settlement," Cook said.

He said he regretted Ivanov's decision to cancel the trip.

"It is very important at this particular time that we do keep our diplomatic 
bridges open, that we do increase, not diminish, our dialogue between 
ourselves," Cook said.

Meanwhile, Ivanov also announced that Russia's Balkans envoy, former prime 
minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, would meet moderate Kosovo Albanian leader 
Ibrahim Rugova Saturday in Bonn.

Chernomyrdin went ahead with a trip to Bonn as planned for talks with the 
German government and United Nations officials. He is then expected to travel 
on to Belgrade.

Warning that the incident could hamper peace negotiations for Kosovo, 
Chernomyrdin said he hoped to "hold talks with everyone, including US Vice 
President Al Gore" during his trip, but gave no further details.

The Russian foreign ministry said Moscow was not planning to reduce its 
diplomatic presence in Belgrade in the light of the embassy bombing.

Moscow vehemently opposes the NATO air strikes on its traditional ally 
Belgrade, saying they are hampering the search for a diplomatic solution to 
the Kosovo conflict.

The bombing came after a week in which peace negotiations for Kosovo seemed 
to have taken a step forward, with G8 nations including Russia reaching an 
outline agreement which would lead to the deployment of an international 
"security" force. 

*******

#3
Stratfor commentary 
How Committed is Russia?
1552 GMT, 990507

NATO Secretary General Javier Solana said today that if Yugoslav President 
Slobodan Milosevic refused to accept the peace plan for Yugoslavia, adopted 
by the Group of Eight leading industrial nations on Thursday, "we shall have 
to impose it." "Nobody in the international community can help Milosevic any 
more," Solana added. Leaving aside the question of how exactly NATO thinks it 
can impose a settlement, Solana’s confidence is based on two additional and 
not altogether guaranteed assumptions. First, Solana speaks as if the G-8 
adopted a plan. All who came out of the G-8 meeting, and particularly the 
Russians, emphasized that the Group had agreed to a common framework – 
guidelines within which to negotiate a peace plan. They did not adopt a plan. 
Much remains to be settled, including key issues such as the composition and 
armament of a UN security force for Kosovo.

What also remains, as the Russian delegation pointed out, is for Belgrade to 
approve the plan. Russia was, at least publicly, quite clear in its assertion 
that a settlement can not be imposed on Yugoslavia. So either Solana was a 
little over-enthusiastic about the progress made toward resolving the crisis 
at the G-8 meeting, or Russia is quietly far more committed to a speedy 
resolution of the conflict – at whatever the cost – than it is admitting. 
There is nothing to suggest that this is the case. Chernomyrdin’s efforts 
have succeeded in eking some concessions out of NATO and raising Russia’s 
stature at the negotiating table – a small and tenuous victory for Russia’s 
liberals. However, this has occurred at the expense of the truce that had 
been called between embattled Russian president Boris Yeltsin and Russia’s 
communists and nationalists, as Yeltsin let his more hard-line prime minister 
and foreign minister confront NATO. 

As Yeltsin again attempts to balance the contending factions in the Russian 
government, making the case that Russia has achieved a diplomatic victory and 
regained its global prestige while still cooperating with the West, he can 
not allow NATO to go impose anything on Yugoslavia. He needs this battle to 
be over, not redoubled.

******

#4
Russians Key to Israeli Election
May 8, 1999
By LAURA KING

ASHDOD, Israel (AP) -- Working amid an array of decidedly non-kosher Russian 
treats like salt-cured pork and long strips of bacon, delicatessen clerk Vita 
Levin has something more to savor: her status as one of Israel's most 
sought-after voters.

Heading into the home stretch of campaigning for Israel's May 17 elections, 
Levin's leanings -- and those of Israel's nearly 1 million Russian immigrants 
-- are seen as the decisive factor in an ever-tightening race for prime 
minister.

For the Russians, it's a sweet moment. Over the course of an enormous Jewish 
exodus from the former Soviet Union in the decade since the collapse of 
communism, many of the new arrivals to Israel have felt scorned, patronized 
and misunderstood.

Now, as one-sixth of the country's electorate, they hope their pivotal role 
in the elections will serve as a springboard to greater social and political 
clout -- and the respect many feel is long overdue.

``The only way to make our voices heard was to get involved in politics,'' 
said Vladimir Gershov, a Ukrainian immigrant and deputy mayor in the southern 
port of Ashdod, where nearly 1 in 3 residents are immigrants from the former 
Soviet Union -- the highest proportion in any Israeli city.

At an all-Russian mall in Ashdod -- where Cyrillic-lettered signs proclaim 
the presence of Russian travel agencies, jewelers, drugstores and realtors -- 
Levin, the deli clerk, lounged a few moments in the spring sunshine to take a 
cigarette break and talk politics.

Reflecting what pollsters are describing as an erosion of once-overwhelming 
support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu among Russian immigrants, Levin 
and a surprising number of others interviewed said they were leaning toward 
Netanyahu's principal challenger, Ehud Barak of the Labor Party.

``I like his style,'' Levin said, narrowing her eyes against the smoke as sun 
gleamed on henna-reddened hair. ``And I think he'd do more to help the 
Russians.''

``I'll vote for Barak,'' chimed in customer Mikhail Jelizniak, a 60-year-old 
fellow immigrant. ``Netanyahu hasn't done much. Someone else can have a 
chance now.''

Because polls indicate up to one-fifth of Russian voters remain undecided, 
figuring out what will appeal to them has become a matter of urgent interest 
to the candidates.

Both sides are assiduously courting Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet 
dissident who now leads an immigrants' rights party. He's a member of 
Netanyahu's Cabinet -- but he hasn't given his boss an endorsement.

When Russian feathers are ruffled, candidates rush to do damage control. 
Barak released his first round of Hebrew-language campaign advertisements 
without Russian subtitles, and commentators quickly seized on this faux pas. 
By the very next night, the subtitles had been added.

A far more serious blunder came from Netanyahu's interior minister, Eli 
Suissa. In ads for his ultra-religious Shas party, Suissa -- whose ministry 
is the powerful gatekeeper of immigration to Israel -- pledged to keep out 
``forgers, cheats and call girls'' from the former Soviet Union.

The remark enraged Russians who feel tainted by the stereotype of universal 
involvement in organized crime and prostitution, and Netanyahu hauled Suissa 
before the TV cameras to apologize. Also present was Sharansky, who listened, 
accepted the apology -- then repeated the Russian demand for control of the 
ministry.

The flap, and the way the Russians reacted to it, illuminates some of the 
fundamental ways in which they differ from Israel's other mass waves of 
immigrants.

Israel's traditional attitude toward new arrivals could be summed up as a 
brusque admonition: Tough it out. Over the years, immigrants have done just 
that -- particularly Sephardim, or Middle Eastern-descended Jews, who mainly 
arrived in the 1950s and 1960s, enduring often humiliating conditions. Many 
feel downtrodden to this day by Israel's European-descended Ashkenazi elite.

The Russians encountered their share of difficulties too, particularly during 
the early days of their immigration wave, when stories of eminent Russian 
doctors, scientists and musicians working as housepainters or window washers 
were commonplace.

Instances of discrimination and ill-treatment still strike a powerful chord 
in the Russian community, such as last year's stabbing death of a young 
immigrant soldier in an altercation that broke out over him speaking Russian 
in public with a friend, or the death in Lebanon of another Russian immigrant 
soldier whose family was then found to be living in abject poverty.

But over time, as their numbers have grown, many Russians have made it clear 
they intend to take life in Israel on their own terms. They watch Russian TV, 
read Russian-language newspapers, eat the foods they remember from home.

The presence in Russian-dominated areas of shops like the one where Levin 
works -- bursting with pork products whose consumption is forbidden under 
Jewish law -- rankles Israel's ultra-Orthodox establishment, but pleases 
customers.

``People like these things,'' said Levin with a shrug in the direction of a 
rack of pink shrink-wrapped hams. ``It's what we're used to -- we miss it.''

The Russians are proving themselves a canny voting bloc -- but a quirky one.

The headway being made by Barak defies conventional political wisdom holding 
that Russians -- as a result of experiences under Soviet communism -- harbor 
a distaste for leftist parties and are made uneasy by military men. Barak 
leads the left-leaning Labor Party and is Israel's most-decorated soldier.

Yaacov Roi, a Tel Aviv University academic who studies the Russian community, 
cites traditional Russian nationalism and abhorrence for ceding land as 
having boosted Netanyahu's showing among the Russians in 1996 elections.

Then, as now, the prime minister campaigned against Palestinian statehood. 
This time around, however, interviews with Russians tend to reflect the 
widely held Israeli view that some form of autonomy for the Palestinians is 
inevitable, and negotiation is the best course.

``We suffered enough in our lives -- peace is the most important thing,'' 
said Lyuba Linshitz, a retired engineer. ``We want to enjoy ourselves, the 
time we have left, and not have constant fighting.''

Another factor might best be described as snob appeal. In politics, as in 
life, the ultimate Russian epithet is ``nyekulturniy'' -- loutish, 
uncultivated. So Barak, in campaign appearances and ads aimed at Russians, 
has been careful to stress academic achievements and artistic interests -- a 
strategy that appears to be paying off.

``He's a cultured man -- he has advanced degrees, and he plays the piano,'' 
deli patron Jelizniak noted approvingly. ``That's very important.''

Netanyahu, on the other hand, has been courting Sephardic voters by trading 
on their sense of grievance against the elite -- a tactic that could backfire 
among Russians who like to consider themselves a part of it.

Whoever wins, the Russians have made it clear they will extract political 
concessions commensurate with their numbers. But they might well keep the 
pundits -- and the candidates -- guessing until the very last minute.

Irit Stravinsky, a vivacious 18-year-old from Belarus, said she would 
definitely vote -- ``It's my duty, just like going into the army'' -- but 
still hadn't decided who to support.

``I'll decide,'' she said mischievously, ``on my way into the voting booth.''

*******

#5
Kosovo Said to Help US-Russia
May 8, 1999
By KIM GAMEL

NEW YORK (AP) -- A former CIA chief praised Russia's efforts at diplomacy in 
Yugoslavia and said U.S. support for those efforts could help heal the rift 
between the two countries.

James Woolsey said Friday at a conference that President Clinton's unflagging 
endorsement of Russia President Boris Yeltsin and a small group of reformers 
had drained many Russians of their confidence in the West after last year's 
economic collapse.

``Kosovo may somewhat improve Russian-U.S. relations,'' Woolsey said.

But other speakers at the conference said NATO's war to stop Yugoslav 
President Slobodan Milosevic's campaign against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo 
was threatening Russia's fragile hold on democracy.

``The war in Yugoslavia has enhanced the power of the right wing and left 
wing extremists,'' said Marshall Goldman of the Davis Center for Russian 
Studies at Harvard University.

The comments came during an annual conference on U.S.-Russian relations, 
which is sponsored by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and The 
Associated Press.

Woolsey said America should share the blame for strained relations between 
the United States and Russia.

``The failures of Yeltsin and the reformists have been ones that we have 
aggravated,'' he said. ``We were more than tolerant with the self-serving and 
corrupt privatization system.''

Woolsey, who was CIA director under Clinton from 1993 to 1995, said Russia's 
economic problems and NATO's expansion followed by its airstrikes in 
Yugoslavia had left the former superpower feeling impotent.

Russia, which has close cultural ties with its fellow Slavs in Yugoslavia, 
has fiercely opposed the airstrikes since they started on March 24.

``It's very important to treat the Russian government respectfully,'' he said.

Kimberly Zisk, an assistant professor of political science at Barnard 
College, said the increasing anti-Western rhetoric would not hurt 
U.S.-Russian cooperation in other areas.

She pointed to Russia's involvement in a draft peace proposal this week at 
talks in Bonn, Germany, with six NATO members and Japan.

``Russian words don't match Russian deeds,'' Zisk said. ``Russia feels 
betrayed, but this is not disrupting relations with NATO as much as had been 
expected.''

*******

#6
New York Times book review
May 9, 1999
[for personal use only]
Nine-Tenths of the Law
Richard Pipes on the link between property rights and rule of law. 
By CHARLES R. MORRIS
Charles R. Morris's most recent books are ''American Catholic'' and the 
forthcoming ''Money, Greed, and Risk.'' 

PROPERTY AND FREEDOM 
By Richard Pipes.
328 pp. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf. $30.

Richard Pipes, a longtime professor of Russian history at Harvard, has had
the 
satisfaction, rare among academics, of seeing his once unpopular views 
adopted as American policy. During the early days of Soviet-American arms 
limitation talks, Pipes was one of a handful of academics who continued to 
insist on the criminal nature of the Soviet regime. His 1977 Commentary 
magazine article, ''Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Can Fight and Win a 
Nuclear War,'' was one of the half-dozen or so most influential articles in 
the entire period of the cold war, and his many books on Soviet and Russian 
history are standards in the field. 

Pipes is now retired from Harvard, and his latest book is his first not 
specifically in his discipline. ''Property and Freedom'' is a meditation on 
the close connection between property rights and the development of law and 
individual liberty throughout the history of civilization. Pipes is massively 
erudite -- his source notes contain references in at least six languages -- 
and he has assembled a vast amount of material. But aside from a fascinating 
chapter on the sources of the perverse attitudes toward property and liberty 
in modern Russia, the book is a considerable disappointment, especially the 
querulous broadside against the modern welfare state with which it concludes. 

In Pipes's view, despite the vanquishing of Communism, ''liberty's future . . 
. is still at peril, although from a different and novel source. The main 
threat to freedom today comes not from tyranny but from equality.'' 

Pipes links the ''modern habit of thinking in terms of group rights rather 
than individual rights'' with ''Stalin's program of 'liquidating,' i.e., 
murdering 'kulaks,' for example, and Hitler's genocide of Jews and gypsies,'' 
both of which ''were justified by the notion that people are to be judged and 
treated on the basis not of their personal behavior but of their membership 
in a designated group.'' Affirmative action, it seems, is but a step toward 
the gulag. The modern threat to liberty, Pipes goes on, comes ''from below, 
from one's fellow citizens who . . . care more about their personal security 
than about general freedom.'' 

Does Pipes read newspapers? Raising a clamor that the Morlocks are taking 
over, in a country that has just severely limited public assistance and one 
in which economic inequality is increasing rapidly, seems like piling on, if 
not actually paranoid. The book's characteristic rhetorical device is to make 
an extreme statement, then immediately back off it, as if Pipes were afraid 
to stand up for how he really feels. So, ''abolishing welfare with its sundry 
'entitlements' and spurious 'rights' . . . would go a long way'' toward 
resolving the social predicament, is immediately qualified by ''but such a 
solution is not feasible.'' 

More seriously, there are real holes in Pipes's argument. The proposition 
that property rights usually reinforce the development of a rule of law is so 
unexceptionable as to be platitudinous. But Pipes seems to be making a 
stronger argument, that absolute respect for property rights is a 
precondition for maintenance of liberty. He admits a number of exceptions to 
that rule, but does so grudgingly, as he must, for they add up to a rather 
different argument from the one he would like to make. 

The Slavic rulers of medieval Russia, most notably Ivan the Terrible, held 
their positions by grace of their Mongol conquerors, but only so long as they 
ruthlessly collected huge amounts of tribute. Over three centuries, the 
institutionalization of the czar's role as surrogate Robber in Chief fatally 
retarded the development of a nobility as a countervailing economic interest 
group. Russia never had a class of powerful barons like the ones who wrung 
Magna Carta out of King John in 1215. The consequence was the Russian 
''patrimonial'' state, in which the czar could, and actually did, dispose of 
anyone's property virtually at whim. 

Catherine the Great finally granted her nobles legal rights in their property 
by a 1785 charter that Pipes extols as ''a revolutionary measure in the 
fullest and most constructive sense of the word.'' Although Catherine's 
reforms benefited only a tiny minority of the population, Pipes says that 
minority privileges are ''the most reliable way of implanting freedom and 
rights, because it gives rise to social groups interested in protecting their 
advantages.'' 

In the Russian case, however, there was a catch. The ''introduction of landed 
property,'' Pipes concedes, ''was a mixed blessing'' because it enslaved 
privately held serfs, or about one-third of the population. Before 
Catherine's reform, the serfs had accumulated real, if limited, traditional 
privileges, which were summarily swept away when they were made the personal 
property of their landlords. That seems a rather large qualification to 
Pipes's argument. Limited freedom for serfs was restored in the next century 
by reforming czars, but only by trampling on the property rights of the 
gentry. 

Pipes also conveniently ignores the case of modern Western slavery. Dred 
Scott surely didn't feel liberated by the Supreme Court decision that upheld 
his master's property rights. Nor does Pipes make any mention of the 
latifundista tradition in Spanish America that kept the great mass of 
peasantry in a state of virtual serfdom, or the destruction of Ireland in the 
service of the property rights of absentee British landlords. 

At the conclusion of an extended chapter on the development of property and 
freedom in England, Pipes speculates on why similar traditions did not arise 
throughout Europe, even though formal legal protections were roughly similar. 
Dutch burghers and Polish nobles, for example, enjoyed almost identical 
protections for property, but the Netherlands became a thriving middle-class 
republic, while Poland stayed sunk in the Dark Ages. 

Pipes never entertains the possibility that the distribution of property may 
be a far more important condition of freedom than the protection of property 
per se. Absolute deference to the property rights of the few can create 
private despotisms as surely as attempts to enforce absolute equality from 
the top can create despotisms of the state. The challenge is to tease out the 
balance between insuring a broad distribution of economic stakes and limiting 
intrusive state power. ''Property and Freedom,'' however, is an exercise in 
dyspepsia that is not interested in such difficult questions. 

*******

#7
Moscow Times
May 8, 1999 
EDITORIAL: U.S. Missed Lessons of Wars Past 

Sunday is Victory Day, the 54th anniversary of the Soviet Union's miraculous 
- it's not too strong a word - defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. And so 
there will be the usual parades and speeches and, given the war in 
Yugoslavia, probably many a truculent and fantastical statement about the 
good old days of Soviet military might. 

Wars, especially victorious ones, tend to be sentimentalized and glorified, 
and of course Russia is not alone in this. But what the martial music may 
disguise is that when it comes to war, Russians are actually thoughtful and 
wary. Hard experience - the loss of 27 million Soviet citizens, the 
devastation of dozens of cities - has taught them war's ugliness and its 
futility. 

This was reflected in the sullen disgust over the wars in Afghanistan and 
Chechnya. Each was a Kremlin war, not a people's war - if there is such a 
thing. Russians were less than inspiring in their public, civic opposition to 
the war, but their strong private disapproval was quite commonsensical. 

Nor is it much of a stretch to say that Russia's experience with war can be 
seen in its people's healthy indignation at NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia - 
Washington's fourth bombing run against another country in seven months, a 
war entered into casually and without a UN mandate. 

Some sober reflection on the meaning of war would be just what the doctor 
ordered for the United States - where public opinion has been too obsessed by 
investigative reporting on Monica Lewinsky's thong underwear to pay much 
attention to a sporadic air war over Iraq, to cruise missiles hitting 
purported terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Sudan, or even to the early days 
of the White House's rush into combat in Kosovo. 

Americans have yet to face up to what war means - and Western political 
leaders are doing their best to continue sheltering them. The result has been 
a made-for-CNN effort fought so gingerly that only two planes, and no lives, 
have been lost by NATO over Yugoslavia: The Clinton administration rightly 
fears that safe, comfortable Americans would be so startled to learn that war 
is not a video game that they would drop their low-fat, double decaf 
moccachinos. 

That's not an argument for ground troops or more violence - but it is a 
suggestion that a political culture that had truly wised up about war might 
not have started this one in the first place. As Russia celebrates a victory 
over Nazism in Europe, it is sobering to think that lessons learned more than 
50 years ago - and at such horrible cost - have been lost on her former 
allies. 

*******

#8
Moscow Times
May 8, 1999 
Luzhkov Capitalizes on Patriotic Fervor 
By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
Staff Writer

Knowing that most Russians still have a soft spot in their hearts for the 
Soviet holidays, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov's political movement has 
enthusiastically embraced the patriotic celebrations of May in an attempt to 
broaden its popular appeal. 

In doing so, Luzhkov's calendar has become increasingly similar to that of 
his political rival - Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov. This makes 
their rivalry look something like a competition for best patriot. 

On May 1, Luzhkov and the official trade union leader, Mikhail Shmakov, 
brought out more people under blue flags on central Tverskaya Ulitsa than the 
Communists managed to rally under their red flags on Oktyabrskaya Ploshchad. 
Their slogans were similar: protests against the impoverishment of Russians 
and against NATO's war in Yugoslavia, differing only in the degree of 
ferocity directed at the Kremlin. 

As Victory Day approaches, Luzhkov meets every day with World War II 
veterans, and television has meticulously covered the moving encounters. 

Such events appealing to Soviet nostalgia have been staples of the Communist 
Party in recent years. In the early 1990s, the Westernized liberal democrats 
freely left the Soviet patriotic traditions to the Communists, who 
capitalized on people's genuine regard for the May 1 and May 9 holidays. 

President Boris Yeltsin's government eventually realized it was missing out, 
and by the mid-1990s had taken over some of the initiative, by glorifying the 
World War II victory and transforming May Day into a vague Day of Spring and 
Labor. 

Now Luzhkov's movement Otechestvo, or Fatherland, is enthusiastically jumping 
on the bandwagon. 

On Sunday, Luzhkov plans to see off an antique World War II-era plane that 
will fly over the next several days to Hero Cities, carrying an appeal "Yes 
to Peace" to the mayors of these cities singled out by the Soviet government 
as having played a special role in World War II - Murmansk, Smolensk, Tula 
and Novorossiisk. 

The appeal from Luzhkov, which refers to the current military actions in the 
Balkans, but without naming either Washington or Belgrade as its culprit, is 
reminiscent of the Soviet "struggle for peace" and does not forget to mark 
Hero City Volgograd in parenthesis as Stalingrad and St. Petersburg as 
Leningrad. Popular television personality Leonid Yakubovich is to fly on the 
plane, just as he did on another plane in June 1996 as part of Yeltsin's 
re-election campaign. 

Political commentator Boris Kagarlitsky said that in the late Soviet period, 
World War II was the sole source of legitimacy for the Soviet regime, whose 
ideology had transformed from Marxist into "imperial patriotic." 

Today, Fatherland employs the old Communist approaches because, as a "party 
of bosses," it has the same nomenklatura mind-set as the Communist and 
Kremlin leaders, he said Friday. 

"They have taken over the initiative from the Communists because they can't 
act differently," said Kagarlitsky, of the Institute of Comparative Political 
Science. 

Vladimir Pribylovsky of the Panorama research center said Luzhkov is trying 
to use the same "revival of old values in people's minds" that accounts for 
Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov's popularity. 

But although people yearn for paternalism, stability and social guarantees 
from the government, they don't want to give up civil liberties, he said. 

"One can clearly see [Luzhkov's] attempt to play on the Communists' field, 
but I am skeptical whether it will be effective," Pribylovsky said. 

*******

#9
Congressional Record
House of Representatives
May 6, 1999
CLINTON ACTIONS HAVE TURNED RUSSIA AGAINST AMERICA 

Mr. [Curt] WELDON of Pennsylvania: Mr. Speaker, earlier today we had a
member of the Russian Duma who held a press conference in this building;
and he said something that is very insightful. He said that for years and
years and decades and decades the Soviet Communist party has spent billions
of dollars to convince the Russian people that America should be the enemy,
and it did not work in spite of all the effort of the Communist party. He
went on to say that in 45 days President Clinton has done what the Soviet
Communist party could not do, he has turned the Russian people against
America. 

Our embassy now tells Americans to not speak in English when they walk the
streets. The Russians have cut off all contact with America. In 45 days
this President has done what the Soviet Communist party could not do with
billions of dollars in 70 years. Is this the kind of activity, is the
continuation of this insane and reckless policy worth driving Russia into
the hands of the ultranationalists and the Communists? I say no. 

*******

#10
St. Petersburg Times
Friday, May 7, 1999 
NOTES OF AN IDLER
May Suffering Transformed Into Triumph 
By Fyodor Gavrilov

WE'RE in the midst of a peculiarly Russian holiday season, one replete with
significance and contradiction. The season begins on May 1, the Day of
International Solidarity of Toilers (as it used to be called) and ends on
May 9, Victory Day. 

Like many of my countrymen, I've always had mixed feelings about May Day.
What, for instance, is a "toiler"? To this day, none of us have answered
this question with satisfaction. Whatever the case, in Soviet times it was
hard to avoid publicly expressing your solidarity with the toilers - like
it or not, you had to show up for the official demonstration. 

We would get up to be at the rendezvous by eight. It took a long time to
assemble into columns, then we slowly made our way downtown - to Palace
Square, where the Party bosses awaited us atop a high platform. The flanks
of the columns were carefully supervised, and side streets were blocked off
by policemen and trucks - so that no one made a run for it (my mild case of
claustrophobia dates to this time). I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but
I would guess that in the good years at least one million people from all
ends of the city participated in the May Day demonstrations. The march
downtown took something like three or four hours. I somehow don't remember
any proletarian enthusiasm on the part of the demonstrators. 

The beginning of May is marked, as a rule, by light frosts. Just the kind
of weather, in short, that made hundreds of thousands of marchers feel the
call of nature more acutely. As befits a tyrannical regime, this urge was
satisfied in the simplest way - it wasn't. I hate to put too fine a point
on it, but I'll never forget how I suffered as we passed over Palace
Bridge. The square was a stone's throw away, but a pedestrian jam had
formed: workers from that monster of socialist industry, Ki rov sky Zavod,
were muddling in from Nevsky Pros pect. I had to hold it in. 

Somebody had to orchestrate this throng of humanity, and so the successive
waves of marchers were cordoned off by soldiers. Those soldiers who had
already taken up their posts on the square had the rare opportunity to do
their business not just anywhere, but inside a 30-meter-high portrait of
Lenin constructed from meter-deep plywood cubes. The demonstrators got
their chance after passing through the square - having done their
ideological duty, they were permitted to solve their personal problems as
they saw fit - at neighboring houses! 

For me, then, May Day was a source of unnecessary suffering. But May 9 was
different. Despite vain attempts to impose homogeneity, several
philosophical cults coexisted in relative peace within the Russo-Soviet
Empire, as in a real empire. The cult of remembering the War - when
Russians say "the War," they always have World War II in mind - was among
the more prominent. That was because it was the only cult that enjoyed
official sanction and overwhelming popular sympathy. On May 9, thousands of
people hit the streets quite voluntarily - there was no supervision. The
air shook from the roar of hundreds of trumpets and trombones as an
enormous military orchestra passed down Nevsky. 

Though I'm an atheist, I'll allow myself a risky comparison: in terms of
emotional content, May 9 during the '70s and '80s was close to what
Christians experience during Easter, when the fact of death is miraculously
transformed into a cause for rejoicing. That's understandable: that
victory, with the indescribably tragic events that won it, was the only
genuine triumph we've had in this century. 

******

#11
City Renamed Leningrad on Holidays
May 7, 1999
By ANDREW KRAMER

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) -- Russia's grand second city on the Baltic has 
foiled mapmakers three times this century, flipping its name as political 
tides swept one way then another.

Once more, it's time for a change in St. Petersburg, but sign painters need 
not panic: The city will be Leningrad again -- for just five days a year.

City governor Vladimir Yakovlev signed a decree Friday restoring the name 
Leningrad for use on five holidays associated with World War II, at which 
time the city had been renamed after the Soviet Union's founder, Vladimir 
Lenin.

The other 360 days, the three-century-old city will stick with its original 
name, after its founder, Czar Peter the Great.

Yakovlev's move came just before one of those holidays, May 9, when Russia 
marks the anniversary of the Soviet victory over the Nazis. Victory Day is 
one of Russia's most revered holidays.

The decree says the name ``Hero City Leningrad'' can be used in tandem with 
St. Petersburg for official purposes on those five holidays.

It may, however, mark a step toward a full return of the Leningrad name, 
which is fraught with Communist symbolism. Yakovlev supports a movement to 
call the city ``St. Petersburg-Leningrad.''

Reviving the name issue was seen as a nod to veterans who fought to defend a 
city they knew as Leningrad.

``It's a sign of respect,'' said Alexander Afanasyev, a spokesman for 
Yakovlev. ``Those who want can now call the city Leningrad.''

The name issue is specially meaningful for older residents who lived in the 
city during World War II. Under the name Leningrad, the city survived a 
three-year siege by Nazi forces. Historians say nearly 1 million of its 3 
million people died, mainly of hunger and cold.

During World War I, the city changed its name from St. Petersburg to 
Petrograd, because Petersburg, a German word, reminded residents of their 
enemies of the day.

After Lenin's death in 1924, the city became Leningrad in honor of its role 
as seat of the Bolshevik revolution.

A popular vote restored the name to St. Petersburg in 1991, as Russians were 
seeking to shed signs of the country's totalitarian past.

*******

#12
Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 
From: "Jerry F. Hough" <jhough@duke.edu> 
Subject: Kosovo and Russia

It is striking how much the discussion of Kosovo avoids the real 
issues. On the moral level, the bombing of Voevodina and the Hungarians 
in and around Novyi Sad and the talk about invasion from Hungary seem 
either ignorant or an attempt to provoke ethnic cleansing in what has 
been a peaceful multi-ethnic area. The issue in Kosovo is whether 
it will have more democracy than Serbia (that is, much more than zero) or 
the protected right of self-determination in three years. If its political 
system is the same as Serbia's, it has some autonomy but no right to vote 
on self-determination in the future, and the KLA is 
controlled by Western troops and controls on arms acquisition, then 
Milovevic will be happy--and so should we. The Washington Times has been 
publishing some wonderful first page stories on the KLA being financed by 
drug smuggling and being trained in the terrorist camps of the recent 
recipient of our bombs in Afghanistan.

But the disaster would be if Russian cooperation resulted in more 
Western aid. The only way to get reform in Russia is to cut off IMF 
money and force Russia to take the real reform steps a la China, etc., 
that it should have taken years ago. The first needed step is formal 
renationalization of the resource exporting industries as a precondition 
and part of the attack on corruption and of the effort to ensure that 
investment energies must be directed into the manufacturing sector.

*******

#13
Russia Today press summaries
http://www.russiatoday.com
Segodnya
May 8, 1999
Lead Story
The Government Will Leave on the 13th 
IMPEACHMENT WILL NOT STOP THE PRESIDENT FROM APPOINTING A NEW PRIME MINISTER 
Summary

According to many analysts, President Boris Yeltsin will dismiss the 
government immediately after the impeachment vote at the Duma, which is 
scheduled for May 13. 

Yeltsin's aim in doing so is the dissolution the Duma. Under Russian 
legislation, the president must dissolve parliament if it fails in three 
votes to confirm his candidate for prime minister. The next government 
reshuffle will become a pretext for the dissolution of the leftist Duma, the 
daily wrote. 

The problem with this scenario is that the International Monetary Fund, as 
part of its conditions for the release of new credit to Russia, is insisting 
that the Duma pass a number of tax laws to secure an increase in budget 
revenue. Presidential decrees are not a valid substitute, the daily noted. 

Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov will have to make a choice -- either to go to 
the Duma and demand that the package of unpopular bills be adopted, or admit 
that the government does not want to meet the IMF's requirements. 

According to the daily, Yeltsin will order Primakov to bring in all the laws 
to the Duma immediately. However, Primakov will hesitate, because he wants to 
please the Communist-controlled Duma more than he wants to preserve his 
understanding with the president. His sacking is inevitable, the daily 
concluded. 

*******

#14
Russia Today press summaries
http://www.russiatoday.com
Komsomolskaya Pravda
May 8, 1999
Yeltsin Does Not Say Hello to Primakov Anymore 
Summary

Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov spent the whole day Thursday in his suburban 
residence, even receiving some ministers there, the daily wrote. 

The daily noted that his absence from his office followed President's Boris 
Yeltsin's speech at a meeting of the organizing committee for the celebration 
of the third millennium. At the time, Yeltsin did not greet Primakov and made 
a show of having First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, who is 
considered to be the main candidate to replace Primakov, take a closer seat 
to him. 

According to one government source, the display so angered Primakov that he 
was ready to resign the same day. His advisors, however, persuaded Primakov 
to calm down and take a rest. 

The worsening relations between Yeltsin and Primakov come as no surprise, the 
daily wrote. The government must pass a number of unpopular laws through the 
Duma, according to recent conditions set for obtaining the next tranche of 
IMF credit. This could result in civil unrest, which Yeltsin does not want to 
face while he is in office, the daily wrote. 

The daily concluded that Primakov will not likely be sacked in the near 
future, because this would lead to the dissolution of the Duma, which would 
ultimately strengthen the position of the Communists and other leftist 
forces. 

******

#15
Poll Shows 64% Believe Primakov Will Resign Soon 
Radiostantsiya Ekho Moskvy
May 6, 1999
[translation for personal use only]

A telephone poll was conducted on 6th May by the Ekho 
Moskvy radio station on the future of the incumbent Russian prime 
minister, Yevgeniy Primakov. A total of 1,165 phone calls were received 
by the radio station, and 64 per cent of those who phoned the station 
think that it is possible Prime Minister Yevgeniy Primakov will resign in 
the near future. A total of 36 per cent of those who phoned the station 
do not think that Primakov will resign. 

******