May
27, 1999
This Date's Issues: 3307 •
3308 •
Johnson's Russia List
#3308
27 May 1999
davidjohnson@erols.com
[Note from David Johnson:
1. Reuters: Russian prime minister says he's the boss.
2. Washington Post: Viktor Chernomyrdin, 'Impossible to Talk Peace With
Bombs Falling.'
3. Jerry Hough: One so despairs....
4. Moscow Times: Boris Aliabyev, Unemployment Grows To 'Understated' 14.2%.
5. Alexander Lebed: The eXile interview.
6. Reuters: Gorbachev says Kosovo could usher in new Cold War.]
*******
#1
Russian prime minister says he's the boss
By Patrick Lannin
MOSCOW, May 27 (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin told his
new government he was the boss on Thursday in an effort to assert his
authority in a power struggle involving his two first deputies.
Intrigue has mounted following interventions by President Boris Yeltsin and
reports that a battle for influence is being waged by the premier, the
president, Kremlin courtiers and top businessmen over the formation of the
cabinet.
``I want once again to state that the government is run by the head of the
government and he answers for everything that happens,'' Stepashin said,
opening a government meeting. ``I ask everyone to bear this in mind.''
The battle revolves around the division of responsibilities between
Stepashin's two first deputy prime ministers.
Russian media say one first deputy, Mikhail Zadornov, has threatened to quit
if he does not also stay on as finance minister although his former deputy,
Mikhail Kasyanov, has already been appointed to the post.
Zadornov is facing competition in the cabinet from the other first deputy
premier, Nikolai Aksyonenko, a former railways minister who has said he will
run most aspects of the economy and was imposed on Stepashin by Yeltsin.
Stepashin, who was appointed on May 19, said his full team would be ready
next week, when he would announce how responsibilities were being divided up.
Zadornov answered no questions on the post of finance minister, saying all
would be decided at talks on Friday.
``I think that we will decide the range of my responsibilities. It is clear
that it will be economic issues,'' he told a news conference after the
cabinet meeting.
Yeltsin cut short a holiday by the Black Sea on Wednesday and held impromptu
talks with Stepashin and Kremlin chief of staff Alexander Voloshin as soon as
he arrived back in Moscow.
Yeltsin later summoned Stepashin away from a soccer match he was watching on
Wednesday evening to continued discussions.
Confusion over Zadornov's role has been intense. Stepashin won approval this
week for a second deputy to balance Aksyonenko but when the appointment was
announced, it was Zadornov who was promoted, not the man Stepashin had
initially wanted.
Stepashin seemed to think Zadornov would also be finance minister, but that
job went to Kasyanov. Increasing the chaos, Russian media later said Zadornov
would indeed have both posts. Stepashin did not say on Thursday who would be
finance minister.
Newspapers say the confusion masks a struggle involving Yeltsin, Stepashin,
Kremlin aides, and politicians and businessmen battling to win cabinet places
for their allies.
Yeltsin was expected to spend Thursday preparing for a meeting on Friday with
South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.
The Kremlin denied that Yeltsin's departure on holiday last week was linked
to any health problems and says the president, 68, is in reasonable shape.
Whoever runs the economy will have the task of persuading the
Communist-dominated State Duma, the lower house of parliament, to pass a
package of laws aimed at winning new International Monetary Fund loans.
Russia also wants to cut its $140 billion of foreign debt.
*******
#2
Washington Post
27 May 1999
[for personal use only]
'Impossible to Talk Peace With Bombs Falling'
By Viktor Chernomyrdin
The writer, a former prime minister of Russia, is President Boris Yeltsin's
special envoy for Kosovo.
I deem it necessary to express my opinion on the Kosovo situation as the
warfare escalates and the danger grows of a shift to ground operations, which
would be even bloodier and more destructive. I also want to comment on
certain ideas put forward by President Clinton in his contribution of May 16
to the New York Times.
In particular, I am anxious to express my opinion of his premise that "Russia
is now helping to work out a way for Belgrade to meet our conditions," and
that NATO's strategy can "strengthen, not weaken, our fundamental interest in
a long-term, positive relationship with Russia."
In fact, Russia has taken upon itself to mediate between Belgrade and NATO
not because it is eager to help NATO implement its strategies, which aim at
Slobodan Milosevic's capitulation and the de facto establishment of a NATO
protectorate over Kosovo. These NATO goals run counter to Russia's stance,
which calls for the introduction of U.N. forces into Kosovo with Yugoslavia's
sovereignty and territorial integrity intact.
Moreover, the new NATO strategy, the first practical instance of which we are
witnessing in Yugoslavia, has led to a serious deterioration in Russia-U.S.
contacts. I will be so bold as to say it has set them back by several
decades. Recent opinion polls back this up. Before the air raids, 57 percent
of Russians were positively disposed toward the United States, with 28
percent hostile. The raids reversed those numbers to 14 percent positive and
72 percent negative. Sixty-three percent of Russians blame NATO for
unleashing the conflict, while only 6 percent blame Yugoslavia.
These attitudes result not so much from so-called Slavic fraternity as
because a sovereign country is being bombed -- with bombing seen as a way to
resolve a domestic conflict. This approach clashes with international law,
the Helsinki agreements and the entire world order that took shape after
World War II.
The damage done by the Yugoslavia war to Russian-U.S. relations is nowhere
greater than on the moral plane. During the years of reform, a majority of
Russians formed a view of the United States as a genuine democracy, truly
concerned about human rights, offering a universal standard worthy of
emulation.
But just as Soviet tanks trampling on the Prague Spring of 1968 finally
shattered the myth of the socialist regime's merits, so the United States
lost its moral right to be regarded as a leader of the free democratic world
when its bombs shattered the ideals of liberty and democracy in Yugoslavia.
We can only regret that it is feeding the arguments of Communists and radical
nationalists, who have always viewed NATO as aggressive, have demanded
skyrocketing defense expenditures and have backed isolationist policies for
Russia.
Now that raids against military targets have evidently proven pointless,
NATO's armed force has moved to massive destruction of civilian
infrastructure -- in particular, electric transmission lines, water pipes and
factories. Are thousands of innocent people to be killed because of one man's
blunders? Is an entire country to be razed? Is one to assume that air raids
can win a war?
I should like here to turn to the lessons of recent history. The U.S. Air
Force and the RAF dropped several hundred thousand bombs on Berlin, yet it
took a Soviet Army offensive, with its toll of several hundred thousand
lives, to seize the city. American air raids in Vietnam proved pointless, and
the Russian Army suffered setbacks in Chechnya. Serbs see NATO and the
Americans as aggressors against whom they are defending their native land. I
do not think a ground war will be a success, and I am sure it will bring
tremendous bloodshed.
Further, it will no longer be possible to thwart the proliferation of
missiles and nuclear arms -- another negative consequence of NATO's policy.
Even the smallest of independent states will seek nuclear weapons and
delivery vehicles to defend themselves after they see NATO's military machine
in action. The danger of global instability looms, with more new wars and
more victims.
More bombing makes it pointless to plan a return of refugees. What will they
come back to -- homes in debris, without electricity or water? Where will
they find jobs, with half of all factories in ruins and the other half doomed
to be bombed in due course? It is time for NATO countries to realize that
more air raids will lead to a dead end. No fewer than half of the refugees
are not eager to leave a prosperous Europe to return to a devastated Kosovo
to live side by side with war-embittered Serbs. Of this, I am sure. Clearly,
every hundred Kosovars will have to be indefinitely protected by one or two
soldiers; that is how NATO's presence in Yugoslavia will become permanent.
Also, sooner or later NATO will be expected by the world community to pay
Yugoslavia for damages, to compensate the bereaved families of innocent
victims and to punish pilots who bombed civilians and their commanders who
issued criminal orders.
Thus, the bloc is headed for a Pyrrhic victory, whether the conflict ends
with the Serbs capitulating or in an invasion of Yugoslavia. The campaign
will not achieve its main goals. Not all refugees will come back to Kosovo,
which will remain in some form under Yugoslav jurisdiction, and many billions
of dollars will be spent rebuilding the country from the ruins.
Now, a few words about the ethnic Albanian paramilitaries. They are
essentially terrorist organizations. Of this, Russia is sure. They are making
money chiefly from drug trafficking, with an annual turnover of $3 billion.
As it maintains close contact with these paramilitaries and modernizes their
weaponry, the West -- directly or indirectly -- encourages the emergence of a
major new drug trafficking center in that part of the world. It also
encourages the paramilitaries to extend their influence to neighboring
countries. The Greater Albania motto may soon start to take hold. This will
mean more bloodshed, more wars and more redrawings of borders.
The world has never in this decade been so close as now to the brink of
nuclear war.
I appeal to NATO leaders to show the courage to suspend the air raids, which
would be the only correct move.
It is impossible to talk peace with bombs falling. This is clear now. So I
deem it necessary to say that, unless the raids stop soon, I shall advise
Russia's president to suspend Russian participation in the negotiating
process, put an end to all military-technological cooperation with the United
States and Western Europe, put off the ratification of START II and use
Russia's veto as the United Nations debates a resolution on Yugoslavia.
On this, we shall find understanding from great powers such as China and
India. Of this, I am sure.
*******
#3
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999
From: "Jerry F. Hough" <jhough@duke.edu>
Subject: One so despairs.
One so despairs. That US tax money is going to fund a mortgage
fund that allows Russians with average income to get mortgages with $30,000
down payments only is the most ridiculous of what is going on. So once
again we put money in Russian banks to distribute to crooks. I assume
they will get the down payment from a loan from another "bank" and then
disappear or be arrested and default.
The grander policy is only more expensive and uglier. We still
use words like "oligarch" or "tycoon" for figures like Berezovnsy. The
right word is "bag man." Each bank is the patrimony of someone in the
leadership. As long as Luzhkov has power, his bag man, Gusev, is
important. Luzhkov goes, and his deputy and his bank will go.
Chernomyrdin resigns. Imperial is closed down. It is striking to see
how few of the "oligarchs" of the early 1990s are still around.
I am polishing my book on economic reform under Yeltsin, and Menatep
has interested me. Rose Brady is only one of those who has speculated
about its early party and KGB connections and she said that Westerners often
avoided it for that reason. I noticed it thrived after August 1998 and
that Khorodovsky was on the plane to Washington with Primakov that turned
back
after Kosovo. In a carefully-worded couple of sentences still on my
computer version of the book, I said that some might speculate that the man
with top joint party and KGB connections in the late Gorbachev period was
Primakov and wonder if Menatep's survival tended to confirm his connection.
Then lo and behold, Primakov falls and Menatep is closed. Has any of your
readers any references to earlier articles or evidence on this
question or know what the closing of Menatep really means? I would be
grateful for any information.
But it is the IMF that is so wonderful. Every time it makes a
demand, it is used for another scandal like the loans for shares and the
GKO scheme, both of which were the direct response to IMF demands in
early 1995, just as "inter-enterprise loans" (state-directed non-monetary
exchange of goods) were the response to the demands of early 1992. Now
it is demanding a closing of dead banks and a reorganization of the
banking system. So this will close the banks of the bag men of those
who have fallen, allowing new ones to thrive that are created by the bag
men of the new officials. They too will have to get their corruption
quickly and sent abroad before Yeltsin removes them in six months. Does
anyone believe that they will function any differently than the commercial
banks have since 1991? But there will be some Western "loans" and the
legitimization of all this with praise from the IMF.
The interesting political question is why in God's name Primakov
thought he could knock off Yeltsin's bag man, Berezovsky, if he did not
think he could knock off the king. Was this sheer stupidity, did he
have a good chance actually of getting Yeltsin, or was it like the
oppositions of the 1920s, with Primakov knowing he was out and deciding to
go out on a good moral issue? And what did America really have against
Primakov? Allegedly he was anti-Western when he wasn't. One assumes
that it had something to do with some kind of game of some bank with
Westerners or the like. One only wishes one will be around in a
few decades when someone will really write the history of this period on
the relation of American and Russian policy. It will not be something to
let children read.
******
#4
Moscow Times
May 27, 1999
Unemployment Grows To 'Understated' 14.2%
By Boris Aliabyev
Staff Writer
Russia's shrinking economy took its toll on the labor force during the first
four months of this year, with the ranks of the unemployed swelling to 10.5
million in April, up from the 8.9 million out of work at the end of 1998,
according to the State Statistics Committee.
However, the 10.5 million unemployed - which represents 14.2 percent of
Russia's economically active population - drastically understates the real
level of unemployment, according to Tatyana Chetvernina, who heads the
Economics Institute center for the labor market studies. The institute is
attached to the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The real figure for unemployed is probably around 20 percent of the
economically active population, Chetvernina said.
While data provided by the State Statistics Committee, calculated using
International Labor Organization standards, provides a far more realistic
measure of unemployment than Labor Ministry's official register of the
unemployed, its figures do not capture all those officially employed but
effectively laid off. These are people who have a job, but their wages have
gone unpaid for months, if not years, and attendance at their place of
employment is very much optional.
"This is a strange form of employment; when those employed do not receive any
wages," she said.
However, Chetvernina agreed that, whatever the real figure for unemployment
may be, the number of jobless is growing.
A major reason for the ongoing rise in unemployment is the effects of the
country's financial squeeze, which compels private businesses and state
industrial enterprises to shed jobs.
"Enterprises have been forced to count their money very carefully, and many
have found they can no longer maintain their policies of excessive
employment, " she said.
Meanwhile, the number of people officially registered as unemployed has
defied reality, inching down from 1.9 million as of Jan. 1, 1999 to 1.85
million as of May 1, according to Lubov Yeltsova, deputy head of the
employment problems department at the Labor Ministry.
Unemployed persons are increasingly uninclined to register, Yeltsova said,
explaining the widening gap between the register and the State Statistics
Committee's figures.
"Many appear to lack motivation because of the small size of the benefits,"
she said.
More than one-third of those officially registered as unemployed at the Labor
Ministry's 2,444 employment centers across the country receive the bare
minimum unemployment benefits - 83 rubles (less than $3.50) a month, equal to
one minimum wage.
The Labor Ministry did present a set of proposals to the government earlier
this month, aiming to promote programs for professional re-training and
temporary job creation schemes through public works programs, as well as
developing a federal data base of the unemployed.
Some 14.7 percent of the 13.5 billion ruble off-budget employment fund -
which is at the Labor Ministry's disposal - will be tapped for re-training
and job search programs, she said.
Just like the pension fund, the employment fund is financed by a levy on
employers, who must pay an additional sum worth 1.5 percent of each
employees' wage into each of the funds.
However, Chetvernina of the Economics Institute was skeptical that the Labor
Ministry's schemes would have much of an impact.
Unlike the pension fund, which accepts contributions from enterprises only in
the form cash, many enterprises found it possible to contribute to the
employment fund in kind, thus reducing its capacity to finance its programs.
"What programs can there be if there is no money [to fund them]?" she said.
*******
#5
From: "Mark Ames" <exile.editor@matrix.ru>
Subject: lebed interview
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999
Alexander Lebed: The eXile interview
Despite having achieved national fame as the suppressor of the
Transdniester
rebellion and international renown as the bringer of peace to Chechnya, and
despite having scored a convincing victory last year in the race for the
Governorship of the Krasnoyarsk region, General Alexander Lebed remains a
somewhat ambiguous figure in Russian public life, a political underachiever
whose detractors are often more passionate than his followers.
In a way that makes little sense on its face, Lebed belongs to that
unfortunate group of Russian politicians-- a group that includes Anatoly
Chubais, Boris Nemtsov, and even Yegor Gaidar-- who are greeted with far
more enthusiasm by Western journalists than by their own constituents.
But while Chubais and the rest of the "Young Reformers" are clearly
disliked
mainly for being too solicitous of the West, the source of Lebed's
unpopularity is a little harder to trace... The general has a famously
malevolent sense of humor and a rare talent for the one-liner, but most
Russians appreciate Vladimir Zhirinovsky's sense of humor a lot more. He
has
a reputation for being tough, but the average Russian sees more potential
for a "strong hand" sort of leader in Yuri Luzhkov. No real corruption
allegations leveled at him have ever stuck, and he appears to be genuinely
disinterested in money as compared to his more obvious desires for power
and
glory, but Grigory Yavlinsky remains the politician most admired for his
honesty. His political rhetoric is protectionist, ultra-patriotic, and
laden
throughout with sentimental allusions to the prouder moments of Russia's
Soviet past, but it's the communists who control the nostalgia vote.
Ultimately, it's probably the very charisma and force of personality which
Western reporters find most attractive in Lebed that turns many Russian
voters off to him. He is unapologetically individualistic and driven, and
gives off an air of arrogant self-reliance and self-motivation-- all
qualities prized in the individualist West, but instinctively frowned upon
in the Soviet collectivist mindset. He makes a show of having his own
colorful and original opinions on every subject, a quality Westerners see
as
evidence of intellectual vigor, but which in Russia sometimes comes across
as political immaturity and evidence of an unstable and fickle character.
He is rumored to have problems maintaining his own political organizations,
particularly as regards his ability to manipulate and rally his
subordinates
to his cause. A common complaint among people the eXile staff talked to in
Krasnoyarsk is that Lebed's background as an autocratic military leader has
made it impossible for him to grasp the subtleties of managing, as opposed
to commanding, a political staff.
Nonetheless, Lebed remains, along with Zhirinovsky and Yavlinsky, one of
the
most candid and entertaining public figures in Russia today. Whether or not
he has any future in the national political arena, he at very least
continues to be a valuable resource for anyone attempting to make sense of
modern Russian politics. He is also the owner of what is probably the
physically largest head in the world, or at least this side of Darryl
Dawkins, making any visit to see him in person well worth the price of
admission. So when a CNN crew the eXile editors had travelled to
Krasnoyarsk
with offered to help arrange an interview, we jumped at the chance.
Reportedly contemplating a run for the presidency in the year 2000, Lebed
has a more immediate concern now in his struggle for political survival in
Krasnoyarsk, where he's been fighting an uphill battle as an out-of-towner
attempting to wrest control of the region away from entrenched commercial
interests, led by local aluminum magnate Anatoly Buikov. He has also lately
been an outspoken critic of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and as the
politician chiefly responsible for ending a similar military quagmire in
Chechnya, his commentary on the war has been actively sought out by Western
and Russian reporters alike. The thoughts occupying his mind when the eXile
visited him for dinner at his dacha last week therefore ranged from
national
presidential politics to Yugoslavia to a flood on the Yenisei river (which
had only just occurred when we arrived) to the history of reform in
post-communist Russia to the political future of Yevgeny Primakov, who was
two days away from being fired. The only questions he didn't have a ready
answer for were of the more juvenile eXile-style sort, a few of which we
threw out at him at the end of the interview. We still don't know, for
instance, whether the governor thinks blondes have more fun, whether the
way to a man's heart really is through his stomach, etc., etc.
Lebed may or may not be be as difficult a boss as the rumors contend, but
his reputation for being a good interview is clearly well-deserved. For
instance, when describing Boris Yeltsin's spooky, "almost supernatural"
ability to remain alive and in power while occupying an alcohol-ravaged,
"rotting" body, the general shuddered visibly at his recollections of the
president, and actually appeared to enjoy sharing the experience of having
been a witness to the Yeltsin phenomenon with the crowd of sneaker-clad
American slackers at the dinner table. He held up the interview on several
occasions out of concern for the health of a grinning young dirthead CNN
soundman in the party who had arrived underdressed ("He'll catch cold in
that t-shirt!") and became conspicuously lost during dinner when he excused
himself to go to the bathroom ("I'm worried he'll never find the toilet").
Lebed's dinner table was a spread of sproti, tongue sandwiches, and
Monstirskaya Izba Moldovan wine. All in all, we sat with the governor for
about two hours. What follows is an excerpt of our conversation with him:
eXile: What is Boris Yeltsin really like, in person? To us, he's always
been
an enigma... It always seems like he's dying, that he's a corpse, a zombie.
What do you think of him as a person?
It's simple. He has a pathological lust for power. Power to him is
absolutely everything.
I'll give you an example. After his first operation, he woke up from the
anesthesia, and the first thing he asked was, "Where's my nuclear
briefcase?" That's all you need to know. The briefcase the symbol of power.
He holds the briefcase and thinks-- "I am the state. I am the incarnation
of power."
He's been on the verge of death so many times... His doctors themselves are
in shock that he's still alive. Half the blood vessels in his brain are
about to burst after his strokes, his intestines are spotted all over with
holes, he has giant ulcers in his stomach, his heart is in absolutely
disgusting condition, he is literally rotting... He could die from any one
of dozens of physical problems that he has, but contrary to all laws of
nature-- he lives.
eXile: Like something out of a horror movie.
Yes, he's almost a supernatural phenomenon. A person can't possibly live,
having so many problems at the age of 68, and so many half-destroyed,
malfunctioning organs. He's got cirhossis of the liver, which alone puts
tens of millions of people who were healthier than he is in the grave every
year. It's a result of colossal amounts of drinking. And yet he still
lives.
eXile: Is he coherent? Can you understand him when he speaks? We get the
sense, just from watching him on television, that it's virtually impossible
to understand him in coversation.
There's a famous doctor, Mironov, who created an absolutely unique
life-support system. The President's normal condition is a sort of
continual, dreamlike, half-stuporous, inactive state. After two hours of
medical reanimation, he becomes buoyant and energetic, walks around, says
something or other...
eXile: Screams at someone...
Screams at one person, fires someone else, and then fades back into sleep.
And then our media goes and writes-- and this system is already
well-established-- we get a headline, like the one I saw (I think) in
Komsomolskaya Pravda not long ago, over a huge article, "Yeltsin-- THE
PICTURE OF HEALTH, Compared to the American Presidents." Then they go on to
describe the health problems of people like Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson... In
short, the American presidents were not known for their vigor and stamina.
eXile: Except Kennedy.
Right, except Kennedy, of course. There was vigor there...
eXile: Does he understand what's happening around him? Does he have any
idea what's happening in this country?
Oh, what's happening in the country simply doesn't interest him at all. For
instance, I went down to Chechnya on an emergency night mission, on the
night of August 10-11 [1996], and when I came back, I came to see him
intending to report on the state of affairs. He listened to me for three
minutes, then grimaced and excused himself, saying he wasn't feeling well,
and walked out.
After that, I didn't see him until I was fired. In other words, not only do
these things not interest him, they actually actively disinterest him. All
these annoyances, some soldiers somewhere, who can't defeat some enemy or
other, some kind of sticky situation...
eXile: Does he just listen to a few advisors, or does he read the
newspapers, or watch TV?
The problem is, he listens to just three or four people, one of which is
his
daughter. They only tell him what he wants to hear. They always tell him
that everything is good, everything's dandy, democracy is being built,
we're
just about to win in Chechnya, victory, in fact, is just minutes away,
everybody loves you... And that's the way it goes, all the time. He's just
a hostage to his own illusions.
eXile: There are plenty of experienced, sober, intelligent people out
there,
who see what's going on, and must perceive his weakness-- so why hasn't
there been a putsch?
Look, in our entire history, we've only had two leaders who actually
accomplished anything-- Peter the Great and Stalin. But in order to
accomplish what they did, both of those leaders had to kill a good third of
the population. The rest of our leaders were all either dim-witted
drunkards, fools, or plain old lunatics. Aside from Stalin, all of the
GenSeks of the Soviet era were all utter zeroes, or doddering elderly old
men, virtual corpses... They replaced the old dim-witted Brezhnev with old
half-in-the-grave Andropov, and when Andropov died, they were so anxious to
continue the pleasure of having exactly this sort of leader that they
elected Chernenko, who even before his election couldn't walk or speak,
couldn't make a public appearance. These people retain power because their
mere existence is reassuring to those people near the seat of pwer who are
venal and alert; these leaders are convenient for everyone.
It's the same with Yeltsin. Yeltsin remains because he is convenient for
everyone. Those around him know that as long as they observe a few simple
rules, respect a few boundaries, then anything goes. Just don't campaign
for
public attention, stay subdued, don't tread upon Yeltsin's public symbols
of
power, and you can do anything you like, as long as he's in office.
Anything you like.
eXile: Steal as much as you want.
Steal everything you can. And, in the meantime, lard on all the
"democratic" rhetoric you can manage.
eXile: How badly has the reputation of democracy suffered here because of
the war in Yugoslavia? You've spoken out against the bombing. Is this war
as potentially destructive to the American reputation as Chechnya was to
Russia?
This war will have disastrous consequences for America. People forget that
if one country fights another, that, as a result of having all those people
killed, having all those wounded, as a result of sinking into a philosophy
of an eye for an eye, and blood for blood...As a result of this, a great,
wide, unbreachable chasm is created between those countries, a deep hidden,
indivisible chasm, which only disappears after a long period of time has
elapsed.
For instance, it's been 54 years since the Germans started their war, and
in
that time they've renounced fascism, have paid war reparations and have
kept
on paying, have seen their war criminals tried and sentenced-- in short,
they've done everything they could to restore their reputation, and yet
they're not even close to being completely out of the woods everywhere yet.
I remember, not long ago, I visited Beligium. I was on a boatride, floating
on a canal, and I saw that the pilot of the boat began mumbling something
something to himself just as we were about to pass under a very low bridge.
I asked my translator what he said. He pointed to the bridge we were
passing
under, which was very, very low, and he said, "This is the spot where we
order the Germans to stand up."
The striking thing was that the pilot was a young man, no more than 25.
Obviously he hadn't been in the war, but was just the grandson of someone
who'd fought, and yet still he had those feelings.
It's always the same. One group of people starts the fight, and only later
someone else pays the price. In China now there are dozens of journalists
who've been beaten up just because they look like Americans. They had
typical Western looks, so they were slapped around just in case, and only
afterward they were asked who they were. And it turned out that they
weren't. This is the kind of thing that is going to happen more and more.
eXile: Do you think that, in Russia anyway, this loss of the American
reputation which has advanced in earnest since the Yugoslav war might
actually have started as far back as 1991, when U.S. advisors first arrived
in Moscow and began helping reshape the Russian economy? Many Russians had
previously looked to the United States with great expectations, but haven't
our policies toward Russia been steadily alienating the population
throughout, since the very beginning of the post-communist era?
Of course. The American policies were very naive. Only a die-hard communist
could force a country to go to bed on the night of August 21, 1991, while
it
is still in a totalitarian regime, and then wake the nation up the next
morning and say, "Hey, pal, now you're part of a democracy." Where would
this "democracy" come from? Russia is a 1,000 year-old empire, the last 73
years of which were a particularly brutal empire which was only won through
fighting dozens of countries... Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Korea, Mongolia,
Afghanistan...Throughout that time we were raising hundreds of millions of
people to despise world imperialsm. Every soldier had it beaten into his
head that every American is the enemy, that he should be shot on sight
whenever met. And suddenly he's told, no, an American is your best friend.
You need a transition period. The first step in the creation of any
democracy is the transformation of the public consciousness.
eXile: But the Americans who came here in 1991 didn't seem to understand
that.
Exactly...It's as if you came in, handed us a piece of paper, and said,
"Here's the recipe. Follow it and everything will turn out great." But in
your country, you've been building democracy for what, 220 years? Here, on
the other hand, you've got a completely totalitarian country with a
militarized population-- where are you going to get democracy? Every
solider
had to go to political education twice a week, during which time the image
of the enemy was drilled into his head. In this system young men serve
their
time in the army, have their heads filled with all this stuff, then get out
and go into the world, so it works out that the entire male population was
raised in this way.
Therefore only a die-hard communist would even think to take a population
like this and simply declare a democracy, to just say, "Today we have
democracy."
Sometimes people ask me, are you a democrat or not? Think about it-- me, an
Army airborne general who fought all over, starting in Afghanistan and
continuing on, and who's twisted off a pile of heads in his life... I have
no pretentions to the title of democrat.
In the same way, your General Clark simply cannot, just can't claim to be a
"democrat." Only a fool could say, describing the pilot who pressed a
button
which killed 70 Albanians-- only a absolute fool could say that that pilot
acted just as any "good Democratic pilot" should act. I mean, it's
absolutely impossible to confuse from the air a tractor and a tank, isn't
it? Through those high-tech viewfinders, any pilot with eyes can see that
that's a tractor, so what's he firing at? If he were a democrat he'd say,
what are you firing at, kid? What does killing 70 civilians give you? Fame?
Glory? Honor? What have you achieved? You've killed these 70 people, women,
kids, old people...all you've done is inspire hatred. You've won no glory,
no respect-- and nor do they give out medals for this sort of thing.
How difficult it is for man to travel the long road to civilization, and
how
hard to reach great heights... But to fall back down again can happen in an
instant. And all those achievements that have taken decades, centuries to
obtain, they're all smashed with one swing of the club.
eXile: Just as Americans, for instance, fought so hard all thoughout this
century, made such sacrifices in money and human lives, in order to have
this influence and reputation around the world, and now, in the space of
just a month and a half or so...
Yes, and to let it all slip through your fingers like that, in front of the
whole world... a shame.
eXile: What might be a result of the American policy failures in
post-communist Russia?
You know, I've almost lost count of how many times we've been fooled in the
last eight years. We've been fooled with privatization, we were taken in by
Gaidar, by Chubais, by Mavrodi. Now there's no trust at all, and because of
that now people have all the reasons they need to take to the streets and
create another 1917. But so far, for some reason, they're not going out.
And
here lies the danger: when these people who've demonstrated what seems like
inexhaustible patience finally lose their self-control, they'll tear down
everything. Then there will be nothing that can stop them. There's nothing
more fearsome than a people who have nothing to lose.
eXile: Was it an honest mistake on the West's part to actually expect that
democracy would be quickly created in Russia, or should the West have known
better?
It should have been obvious. Here you have a the first secretary of the
Sverdlovsk region, an ex-first secretary of the Moscow Communist Party
Committee, a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet, a Candidate
Member of the Politburo, member of the Communist party-- Boris Nikolayevich
Yeltsin-- who suddenly, at the ripe old age of 60, decided he was a
democrat. And the whole world believed him! It should have been obvious
that
this person simply doesn't know how to rule any other way, other than
breaking people. By then he'd been in the highest echelons of the party
apparatus for 25 years, he'd climbed the highest steps of the Soviet
structure. It was deeply embedded in his nature. After all, who destroyed
the Ipatiyev house, where the Tsar and his family were executed?
eXile: And then went on to create a national celebration in honor on the
occasion of the Tsar's burial.
Incredible hypocrisy, right? And who built the tallest regional communist
party committee building in the history of the Soviet Union-- 23 stories
tall? Yeltsin. Who, with an iron fist, with utmost ruthlessness, harrassed
and intimidated and expelled from the party hundreds, or thousands of
people? Yeltsin.
Yeltsin, who at the time was already 60 - an age when both the dogmas in
your head and the salts in your head ossify-- what you are at that age is
what you will be when you're buried. You can't change at that age. You can
only strike a new pose. You can play at being a democrat, you can play at
being whatever you want, but your inner core remains the same. Your
backbone is hardened, it can't bend into a new shape.
But, nonetheless, the whole world believed. And started to give money. And
to whom? Bandits. Crime lords.
I met with Madeline Albright three months ago, and she was aware that $10
billion that had been invested in "reform" in Russian had disappeared to
God
knows where. $10 billion-- that's a serious sum of money. She threw up her
hands and said, what kind of country are you, to let this happen? To which
I
said, what kind of country are you, to let that happen? You can use all the
resources of the CIA, the FBI, all of them, to figure out who exactly
you're
giving money to, right? Can't they figure that out? Of course they can.
That is, they can if they want to. If they'd wanted to, they'd have
reviewed
the candidates for aid, and if those people earned their confidence, then
they could have felt safe giving them the money. If not, then you've got to
work with somebody else. And so, what has all that money you've spent
bought
you? What what has that money helped achieve here? At least if they'd built
something, just for laughs, something big and beautiful, you could at least
show people and say, "Hey, we built that." But no, as it stands, there's
nothing.
eXile: Do you think it's possible that the United States intentionally gave
money to these criminals-- I mean, specifically BECAUSE they were
criminals?
I've already come to that conclusion long ago. There's no other
explanation.
It could only have been intentional. I don't think Americans are such
idiots
to give so much money away without knowing where it's going, and why.
[Pausing to listen] What's that?
eXile: The gentleman from CNN is asking, did you see the Holyfield-Lewis
fight?
Yeah, I saw it. Lewis won. It was no contest. The judges should be ashamed
of themselves.
eXile: Speaking of which, do you see anything in common between Don King
and
Anatoly Chubais? We wrote an article about that before, about all the
similarities...King fixes fights, Chubais fixes auctions...
Who's Don King?
eXile: The promoter of the fight. You know, the black guy with the big hair
that shoots straight up, like this...
Oh, right, him.
eXile: He's probably America's most famous swindler.
I don't know about him, but as concerns Chubais, he's a person without any
moral inhibitions whatsoever. Today he'll be your friend if he has a use
for
you, tomorrow he'll step over your corpse if it suits him. Without any
emotion whatsoever.
eXile: An intriguer.
Yes, he was raised that way. It's hard even to take offense with a person
like that. You can't take it personally. It's just in his nature.
eXile: Do you find it surprising that the U.S. government has focused so
intently on Chubais, that it has trusted and supported him as much as it
has?
I already noticed that long ago, and came to the conclusion that Chubais is
an original kamikaze, that he's the very embodiment of the will-to-live,
that he's the ultimate executor. Once he was in government they just wound
him up, gave him a push, and he went forth and razed everything to the
ground. He executed the privatization campaign with absolute abandon,
taking
a massive, wealthy empire and almost overnight reducing it to a state where
85% of the population is utterly destitute. And the worst thing is, the way
he did it, those people never had a chance. It's as if they said, you're
poor today, you'll always be poor, you're children will be poor, and
there's
nothing you can do about it. No chance. The Germans after the war at least
gave each person 40 marks, gave them something, some kind of start-up
money... Some succeeded, some failed, but here there was no chance. The
voucher, on the other hand, was good for a couple of bottles of vodka.
The thing is, it was just a stupid plan, even from a practical point of
view. Any sensible government strives to create a society where 60% of the
population is in the middle class. These people should have some kind of
property, even if it's not that much, but something that's their own, so
that he has something to lose. That way, he won't want another 1917. He has
a job, something to do, some kind of business to run, a family, kids to
feed... That's why any government that wants to protect itself, and insure
its survival, should strive to create a middle class. You can't make
everyone into millionaires. But to give a person something of his own--
let's say a cobbler, someone who has his own small shop-- well, that allows
him to feed his kids. Good enough. Then you make a tax and customs system
that makes sense, one that allows him to run his business, good and decent
laws which gives him and incentive-- it's a good word, "incentive"-- and
let
him do his business. But no, on the contrary, the Gaidar-Chubais plan did
everything possible to squeeze him, to humiliate him, to crush him. It
doesn't make any sense.
eXile: What's your opinion of Yevgeny Primakov, and why has he fallen out
of favor with Yeltsin?
Difficult question. Primakov is a powerful politician, of a caliber Yeltsin
had not had to face yet. He occupied a greater part of the political
landscape than anyone else in Yeltsin's inner circle ever had...He had a
solid relationship with the Duma, a solid relationship with the Federation
Council. He also brought order to the government. He didn't radically
improve things, but under his tenure things didn't radically worsen,
either,
which is no small accomplishment in today's Russia. Another problem he had
with regards to Yeltsin was that his popularity was continually growing.
The
President can't stand it when anyone in his inner circle has any strength
at
all. He can't have even one strong person among his subordinates. The
Yeltsin system is a pyramid where he's at the pinnacle, and everybody else
is struggling amongst themselves at the base. No one is allowed to come
anywhere near the top. Primakov more than once announced that he had no
Presidential ambitions, but the more the more often he made those
announcements, the less he was believed...
As for his likely replacement, Stepashin... Stepashin is just an
ideological
fire marshall, the chief of the public panic, the guy in charge of
screaming
"Fire!". No doubt Stepashin has grown in stature in the last few years, but
no way is he a Prime Minister. Stepashin-for-Primakov is a completely
inadequate, uneven trade.
eXile: Alexander Ivanovich, do you prefer blondes or brunettes?
What? What kind of question is that?
eXile: A dumb one.
Oh, well, in that case [tells complex dirty joke].
eXile: Thank you.
You're welcome.
-- Matt Taibbi, Mark Ames
Mark Ames
Editor
the eXile
tel: +7-095-265-9181
fax: +7-095-265-9103
*******
#6
Gorbachev says Kosovo could usher in new Cold War
By Philippe Naughton
SYDNEY, May 27 (Reuters) - Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the man
who consigned the Cold War to history, said on Thursday that a U.S. desire
for global hegemony risked creating another Cold War ``and even, perhaps, a
hot war.''
Giving his starkest warning yet of the dangers of the Balkan conflict,
Gorbachev also said that NATO troops would find it no easier to subdue
Yugoslavia in a ground operation than the Nazis had in World War Two.
``Kosovo is only part of the problem. I believe the central part of the
problem is how we should act to overcome this general situation, because if
it continues we could have another Cold War -- and even perhaps a hot war.''
``It is of course quite clear that NATO can quite easily defeat Yugoslavia
militarily and it will,'' Gorbachev told a news conference. ``After all NATO
represents two-thirds of the world's military power and it's pitted against a
tiny country.
``But a ground operation would be as unsuccessful for them as it was for the
Nazis in World War Two -- and that means the only way out for them is to
destroy Serbia, destroy the entire nation. Should they do that just because
they don't like (Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic?''
As NATO beefs up its ground force around Serbia's borders, much has been made
of the fact that Jozep Broz Tito and his guerrilla Partisans were able to
hold Nazi forces at bay in Yugoslavia throughout World War Two.
Gorbachev, in Sydney on a celebrity lecture tour, said nothing had changed
since the days of Tito -- unless NATO was willing to wipe Yugoslavia off the
map to ``show who is the boss.''
``There will be no winners,'' he said. ``Kosovo will be destroyed, Yugoslavia
will be destroyed and all the people of Yugoslavia, including the people of
Kosovo, will endure hardship and suffering.''
Gorbachev led the Soviet Union from 1985 until its eventual collapse in 1991.
During that time he restructured socialism at home and negotiated with
Washington for an end to more than four decades of superpower confrontation.
But he said that historic shift was now being abused by the United States and
its allies, causing a rise in anti-American sentiment in Russia and
elsewhere.
``For three or four years now I have been seeing that...attempts are being
made by some people to reverse the strategy to end the Cold War,'' Gorbachev
said.
``Kosovo is confirmation of that trend. I believe it is an attempt to show
who is the boss, who decides things internationally...We should not allow
this to continue,'' he added.
Gorbachev said both NATO and President Milosevic should stop military
operations and allow for a political settlement under the auspices of the
United Nations. But of the key protagonists in the Kosovo conflict, only
Milosevic had realised that this was a war that could not be won.
``I believe Milosevic understands that there can be no victory for him so a
way out of this situation must be found,'' Gorbachev said.
``Unfortunately I think the White House wants victory pure and simple and
that's why, so far, things are getting nowhere.''
*******
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